My Support Forums - View Single Post - DJ Jaffe and the Treatment Advocacy Center

spiritual_emergency · Mar 10, 2010 at 11:59 PM

A little more info regarding DJ Jaffe and the Treatment Advocacy Center...

Quote:

"People care about public safety," TAC publicist D.J. Jaffee told attendees at a 1999 National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) conference. "Once you understand that, it means that you have to take the debate out of the mental health arena and put it in the criminal justice/public safety arena."

Jaffe went on to point out that efforts by NAMI to enact 'assisted' treatment laws as a way to provide better care for the mentally ill had failed because the public doesn't care about the seriously ill. He said that when the media does focus on mental illness (e.g., following an act of violence), it provides an opportunity to communicate policies which can simultaneously help individuals with mental illness and protect the public.

At a psychiatrist's meeting in Baltimore, Maryland in 1993, (E. Fuller) Torrey expressed his concern that "the public stereotype that links mental illness to violence is based on reality and not merely on stigma."[3]

However, The National Stigma Clearinghouse, which monitors reports of mental illness and alleged violence, stated in 2000 that "Actual acts of violence by psychiatric survivors are few and far between. TAC embellishes each episode with bogus homicide numbers".

TAC publicist D.J. Jaffee stated in 1999 that "People care about public safety...Once you understand that, it means that you have to take the debate out of the mental health arena and put it in the criminal justice/public safety arena." and earlier in 1994 stated that "It may be necessary to capitalize on the fear of violence." Allegedly TAC has a strategy to "romance the press--producing material for soundbites, scenarios and statistics that can be used to pitch to the media."[4]

Source: Wikipedia - Treatment Advocacy Center