Tag: medical errors

[10-11-23] UN and WHO call for ‘significant shift away from biomedical model of mental health’

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

UN and WHO call for ‘significant shift away from biomedical model of mental health’

WHO and UN are calling for significant shift away from the biomedical modelof mental health which encourages psychiatric diagnoses, medications, forced restraints, institutionalisation, imprisonment and other oppressive medical practices – towards a trauma-informed, social, human rights, person-centred approach to mental health

WHO and UN highlight the current ways the biomedical model of mental health harms, oppresses, controls, isolates, stigmatises and discriminates against those who have been told they have psychiatric disorders, and who have not been validated in their traumas, distress, poverty, environments, oppression, or experiences

WHO and UN recognise that women and girls, people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender are more likely to be labelled as mentally ill, and more likely to face forced sterilisations, coerced abortions, coerced contraception, and conversion therapies.

WHO and UN recognise that there are widespread human rights violations and harm being caused by current biomedical model approaches to mental health, which includes our psychiatric hospitals, services, treatments, and approaches

WHO and UN recognise that people who have been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders have been positioned as dangerous, unreliable and unstable, meaning that they are stigmatised and discriminated against in multiple systems of power (including health, criminal justice, family justice, education, employment, finances and their rights)

[2021] The Dying American Autopsy

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The Dying American Autopsy

Before 1970, 40-60% of patients who died in hospitals received an autopsy. In 1970, The Joint Commission, the organization responsible for hospital accreditation, eliminated the requirement of a 20% autopsy rate for in-hospital deaths for hospitals to receive accreditation. In the years since this decision, we have seen drastic declines of autopsy rates. In recent years, less than 5% of hospital deaths are followed up with an autopsy.

In a move that has further contributed to our declining autopsy rates, in 2019 the Trump administration pushed through the Omnibus Burden Reduction (Conditions of Participation) Final Rule. This rule attempted to “cut through red tape” by eliminating redundant, or excessively burdensome regulations that affect hospitals and healthcare providers. A part of this rule eliminated the requirement for hospitals to “attempt to secure autopsies in cases of unusual death and of medical-legal and educational interest”. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Trump administration argued that the autopsy requirement was redundant because states have their own autopsy regulations in place. However, the American Society for Clinical Pathology highlighted that only six states have laws requiring autopsies in the case of all unusual deaths.