DRUG FREE COUNSELING SERVICES FOR CHILDREN, FAMILIES, AND ADULTS- NORTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA

If you are seeking assistance where you are respected as a person, where self-determination and self-advocacy is a key principle, where you are not seen merely through the lens of a diagnostic label and where you can begin the process of discovery, we welcome you to contact us. We have helped many distressed children and families resolve areas of distress, create meaning, build better relationships. If you are a parent, mental health professional or educator, you may be interested in our training programs or arranging to have a lecture or seminar for your organization.


Dr. Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D,B.C.S.A.
202 W. Tioga St.
Tunkhannock, PA 18657

DoctorEdmunds@DrDanEdmunds.com



www.humanepsychiatry.com
stores.lulu.com/voice4kids

Existential-Humanist Psychotherapy (Children, Families, and Adults)
Autism/Developmental Differences
Post Traumatic Stress
Posychological Assessments
Educational Advocacy/ Assistance with Individual Education Plans (IEP)
Forensic Consultation
Behavior Consultation
Lectures/Workshops













The International Center for Humane Psychiatry was founded in 2006 by Dr. Dan L. Edmunds, Ed.D., B.C.S.A., and is an emancipatory movement of mental health professionals, psychiatric survivors, educators, activists, and others concerned about human rights in the mental health system.

Our work is to fight against oppression and coercion in the mental health system, to eradicate the hierarchical barriers between 'doctor and patient', to eliminate the medicalization of emotional distress, and to develop means of helping distressed persons where their autonomy, experience, and dignity is respected. We seek to return a conscience to the field of mental health and create an environment where people undergoing distress feel validated, empowered, and capable.

We believe in the power of the human spirit and each person's potential to be resilient. We believe that the forging of relationship is a key to emotional healing as well as the ability to help a person explore themselves, their world, society, and the human condition. We we seek to join with people in setting life goals, understanding the human condition and experiences without looking upon the person as defective. ICHP encourages involvement in issues related to social justice and believes that our working together to create a world free from poverty, greed, conflict, and discrimination will go a long way towards the development of true mental health.

We seek to be pro-active and preventative in our care for persons. We promote drug free, relationship based approaches for troubled and distressed children and adults and encourage the development and implementation of community based programs. We advocate for juvenile justice reform and for an education system that inspires a zeal for learning and is respectful of children's innate strengths and abilities. We believe in the development of community based options. We are opposed to force and coercion in the mental health system.

We seek to provide a place of sanctuary for people in crisis or undergoing extreme states of mind, where they can feel supported and validated, and not be subjected to any 'treatments' they do not desire. We believe distressed people thrive in environments that are non-threatening and they feel safe.

We collaborate with and offer consultation to parents, educators, and children and their families to develop relationship based approaches and problem solving towards resolving issues of distress, realizing that people are resilient and capable of healing from distress. We have been successful in helping individuals not have to resort to psychiatric drugs or to be able under the direction of their physicians significantly reduce their use.

We believe the key to this healing is by the forging of relationship and the construction of meaning. We believe that compassion is one of the highest ideals. We believe that psychiatric drugs do not teach new ways of living, thinking, loving, and being, whereas people do. We are particularly concerned about the vast prescribing of psychiatric drugs (many which carry warnings of suicidal ideation, violence, agitation, and aggression) upon individuals' well being. We are concerned about the unethical conflicts of interest existing between medical psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical industry.

We seek to provide to those individuals undergoing serious distress a place where they feel safe, secure, and can begin to begin the process of discovery and overcome fear and emotional chains.

We do not feel that locking individuals away in institutions solve human problems, rather it is through compassion, empathy, and seeking to understand our human condition that true mental health will arise. We believe that placing persons in mental hospitals is equivalent to incarceration however the distressed person has committed no crime, rather they are subject to a psychiatric ceremonial where the pschiatrist seen as 'sane', interrogates the person, makes a judgment, and then declares a sentence. We believe that psychiatric diagnosis often stigmatizes and limits opportunity for individuals. We believe that modern society is driving people 'mad' and that we must have radical transformation of ourselves and our values as well as return to a greater sense of community. We believe those who call themselves therapists must be actively involved in issues of social justice, helping end oppression and encourage liberation for marginalized persons. We recognize that distressed individuals must be treated as persons with respect and dignity. We believe in recognizing that even the most troubled persons and families have innate strengths. We believe that persons need to be given informed consent and not seen merely by a diagnostic label. We believe that ethics must proceed technology. We believe that bio-psychiatry has often used brutal methods (such as electroshock, insulin coma, toxic drugs, and lobotomy) and has evoked much harm in the lives of individuals and does not provide any true answers to the problems of life. We believe that there is no objectivity and science to the process of psychiatric diagnosis and that those diagnosed are often stigmatized and oppressed in society by virtue of this label.

We encourage drug free relationship based, problem solving, and holistic approaches and encourage individuals who choose to use helpful adjuncts such as meditation, acupuncture, tai-chi, and yoga. The International Center for Humane Psychiatry is one of few entities taking a strong stand on social justice issues and seeking to create a mental health system that does not treat people as objects, but persons.

We believe that it is also necessary for us to assume personal responsiblity and accountability for own own actions and choices and to not resort to the use of or embracing of labels to exonerate ourselves and institutions.




We are joined and supported in this endeavor by a number of talented and compassionate professionals as well as members of the psychiatric survivor movement.

OUR OBJECTIVES:

provide information on the adverse events associated with psychiatric drugging of children and inform the public of how these drugs have been implicated in causing violence, mania, and psychosis in some children and provide research on effective psycho-social approaches.

encourage informed consent in regards to mental health treatment of adults

advocate for community based alternatives and reform in the juvenile justice system
promote social justice and equality
support consumer choice and the voices of psychiatric survivors

expose the lack of scientific evidence for bio-chemical theories of mental distress

oppose the role of the pharmaceutical industry in influencing psychiatric practice.

encourage science to be tied to ethical principles

seek to listen and understand the experience of people undergoing emotional distress and extreme states of mind

encourage spirituality and psycho-social human services

eliminate psychiatric abuses and support psychiatric survivors

encourage informed consent be given to adults involved in the psychiatric system

respect autistic/ developmentally different individuals and encourage drug free relational approaches towards furthering their self-determnation and self-advocacy