Canadian Mindscape Monitor

CMM editor Rob Wipond has just published an article in Focus magazine about the overlapping mental capacity and mental health laws which allow elderly people in British Columbia to easily and quickly be stripped of all their legal rights. Check out “Who Has the Right to Control Your Life?“

In a very interesting test case, the German government is claiming it is ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, even as it is sneakily trying to rewrite one key clause, according to a German psychiatric rights organization. The Convention clearly states that “the existence of a disability shall in [...]

It is difficult to fathom how a person can let a basic misunderstanding spread like an infection through his mind until it blossoms into a vitriolic, fascistic attack on the most vulnerable in our society, but such can be witnessed in this bizarre opinion piece by Robert Sibley in the Ottawa Citizen. Sibley is protesting [...]

According to LawyerAhead, there will be a new trial to assess the “mental health” of Jan Luedecke an Ontario man who was acquitted of charges of sexual assault earlier this year after he claimed he did it all unconsciously in his sleep. While this case has received substantial publicity, many other cases like it have [...]

A Globe and Mail article includes some damning testimony from the public inquest into the death of Jeffrey James at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. After angering and embarrassing staff by performing a sexual act in front of them, James was left in restraints for FIVE DAYS in Canada’s “premier” psychiatric hospital, and [...]

We’re cautiously hopeful about the trial of a new type of “community court” to help resolve crime issues in Vancouver’s troubled downtown. If it truly works itself into a consensus-based, restorative justice model for people charged with crimes who also have addictions, learning disabilities or psychological difficulties etc, that could be grand. However, CMM is [...]

In the wake of protests, the Nova Scotia government has decided to remove its strange, invasive questions about psychological history from its driver’s licence applications, criticized by CMM two days ago. The gov’t will revert to using the existing national legal standards for deciding who is medically fit to drive.

The law firm of Rochon Genova LLP has launched a class action suit against Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Eddie Kingstone, on behalf of patients who were “negligently” drugged by him in ways that, they say, “he knew or ought to have known would lead to drug dependency and addiction”. The preceding Ontario College of Physicians and [...]

In a saga which began almost two years ago, the New York Times reports a U.S. judge has finally ordered the public release of a slew of Eli Lilly’s internal documents about its big-selling “antipsychotic” sedating drug Zyprexa. The confidential documents became infamous when maverick Alaska civil rights lawyer Jim Gottstein of the Law Project [...]