Word: yoder
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...want to do this. But if I must to end a lifetime of torture, I believe I can." A 1996 letter claims he had "solicited [a local woman's] murder from two Iranian nationals ... The contract is already purchased." Similar letters went to "maybe 100" people, Yoder says. He says he often wrote them with a carbon sheet underneath and sent copies to prosecutors. In 1996, Yoder even sued a prosecutor for not charging him; a judge had to remind Yoder that he "has no constitutional right to be prosecuted." He stayed at Chester...
...then, the relationship between him and the facility was poisoned--and not only because Yoder never cooperated with treatment. Equip for Equality, a Chicago-based nonprofit for the disabled, has twice accused Chester of making false entries in Yoder's records; Chester staff allegedly lied in the 1999 reports by saying Yoder had called an Equip for Equality office and threatened violence. At the time, Chester director Hardy stood by the first report. He never responded to the second and now says he doesn't recall the incident...
Whatever the truth, it's doubtful that even if Yoder is sick, he could heal in such an environment. In 1998, a state commission that investigates complaints for the disabled issued a harsh report on Chester. It said the facility's treatment goals for Yoder--which he must meet in order to leave--were "vague and unobtainable." The commission said it "does not believe that Chester has done all that is necessary to determine if [Yoder] is appropriately placed." Hardy counters that no other hospital in the state is equipped to care for someone so dangerous. He also points...
...Thomas Szasz has been the most controversial psychiatrist in the nation for years, so perhaps it's no shock that he has become Yoder's biggest defender. Born in Budapest, Szasz, 82, immigrated to the U.S. in 1938. He has been a psychiatry professor at the State University of New York for nearly 46 years. Szasz's most famous book, The Myth of Mental Illness, was published in 1961. As the Atlantic Monthly said, the book argued "that both our uses of the term 'mental illness' and the activities of the psychiatric profession are often scientifically untenable and morally indefensible...
...incompetent patients who can't feed themselves. Neither is true. But at a time when psychiatry's power has grown dramatically--when it seems normal to grow up taking Ritalin and then graduate to Prozac, when even shyness is treated with pharmaceuticals--his views are worth revisiting. And the Yoder case offers an ideal venue in which...