Interesting Information on Punishment

[Note: This is the Second post I've made today.]
I'm reading a book called Treatment of Behavior Problems in Dogs and Cats. What it's about is evident from the title. The author has the annoying habit of assuming that the animal behaviorist is always right when they and the owner disagree, and says people would be more likely to get rid of a cat whose marking is damaging their rugs than the rugs themselves (whereas I'd much rather have a marking cat and hard floors than get rid of my cat), but I really like his section on punishment.
One of the things he says is:
"Laboratory experiments and everyday experience indicate that the most likely effect of punishment is to produce only a temporary suppression of behavior. Behaviors which have been apparently eliminated with punishment methods alone tend to recur again and again in the future... Under special circumstances, punishment can sometimes be successful in producing long-term suppression of behavior. But here the punishment must be of traumatic or near-traumatic intensity, which makes it undesirable on both ethical and practical (i.e. side effects) grounds."
I wish the Judge Rotenberg Center would read and understand this. If they claim it's not traumatic to zap people for misbehaving, therefore it has only a temporary effect. If it is effective long-term, then they must be traumatising them. Incidentally, some people, like myself, tend to react to some punishments by consciously trying increase the behavior, and when that occurs, only traumatic punishments have even a short-term effect, and often only very severe ones (for example, I think I would comply if I was threatened with death for disobeying). The punishments school threatened me with were traumatic but not severe enough to stop the behavior I was desperately clinging to. I felt like if I let them win, I'd lose my self, and those are pretty high stakes.
Another thing he says is:

Punishment can have the side effect of eliciting aggressive behavior if it is painful, elicits fear in a fear-aggressive dog, or is seen as a status-threatening challenge by a dominant aggressive dog.

The shocks used by the Judge Rotenberg Center are painful. No wonder aggressive behaviors tend to be more common after a child is zapped. (For example, Linda Cornelison was apparently only aggressive when she was shocked.)

As a side note, here's something he said about medications:

Hart and Cooper (1996)[*] raise the more basic question of whether it is ethically justifiable to administer a psychoactive drug to an animal without altering the underlying factors which are causing the problem - above all in cases where the symptoms tend to recur after discontinuation of the drug and, therefore, it might be necessary to administer the drug to the animal indefinately.

I wish my school had a) read this, and b) recognized how much they were causing my 'misbehaviour', rather than insisting that everything would be fine if I got Ritalin. (Which was probably inaccurate anyway, since much of my behavior was because of anxiety and therefore would be worsened by a stimulant.)
Ettina

Planning for Support or Avoiding the Pain?

Quite awhile ago, I decided to write a post about the horrible Autism Every Day video. It was really upsetting me, but as long as I was watching and writing responses I barely noticed my feelings. Then we had to go, and I left it unfinished, planning to finish it shortly afterwards. As I posted soon after, though, I had a meltdown that night because of all the unhappiness I'd been pushing down.
This was in summertime. It's almost 2007 and the post I planned to finish at my next opportunity is not finished, and many other posts have been made. What happened? I decided to plan for emotional support. Thinking of that meant that every time I considered finishing that post, I'd anticipate how much it would upset me and put it off.
Recently, Amanda Baggs posted about a video by the Judge Rotenberg Center. I considered watching the video she discussed, but didn't have the time. Since then I've had time to recognize how much the JRC reminds me of my first school, only worse, and just how terrifying it is. They directly attack the ways I survived in my first school. I thought to myself 'they can't kill me' whenever I was heading for a big confrontation. I also knew I'd get sent home to understanding parents. The second is how that movie would trigger me.
Once, to my father's outrage, he was told they should treat me worse so I didn't want to get sent home. If I knew my parents would react to me describing how I'd hidden under a table to get away from my teachers and they'd dragged me out, hurting and terrifying me, by saying 'can you talk about something good about the school?' I have no idea how I'd survive. Running away, trying to kill parents/teachers, or pretending I can no longer see, hear or move come to mind. However, I might not be able to escape, and my dislike of hurting others means that killing someone is not something I'll do, and if I did get so desperate that I could bring myself from imagining killing someone to really killing someone, no doubt they'd be able to stop me. And as for the last, 'noncompliance' would be punished, and a punishment causing unbearable pain would be intolerable.
It's like acknowledging that something will hurt has given myself permission to avoid doing things that are important to me. I don't like this. We're home today, me and Mom, so I asked her if she could be there for me while I watch the rest of the Autism Every Day video. Mom told me she couldn't handle it today, but in a couple days she can.
I'm scared that I'll put it off again, that I won't be able to bring myself to do it. I'm worried that maybe Mom is really saying she doesn't care about me enough to put up with me needing support, and she'll put it off again (unreasonable, but try telling my emotions that). I really want to do this, but I'm scared.

This is a list of institution-related links I want to print out later. I'm posting them here in case anyone wants to look at them.

http://csindy.com/csindy/2003-07-24/cover.html
About two different disabled children who died due to restraints in the same insztitution. One was Orlena Parker, a depressed 15 year old, and Casey Collier, a 17 year old autistic. Both of them were overweight and held facedown, which is especially risky for people in that weight range.

http://www.caica.org/NEWS%20DEATHS%20Casey1.htm
Another story about Casey Collier's death. Apparently he vomited while restrained, which might have contributed to his death (by reducing air flow). He was also asthmatic. As an asthmatic myself, I know that even just the terror of restraint can cause an asthma attack. Combined with being facedown with someone on top of you, breathing would be very poor.

http://www.isaccorp.org/devereux/devereux-colorado.03.13.03.html
More about Orlena Parker and Casey Collier.

http://www.ualberta.ca/~jpdasddc/abuse/ICAD/digests/restraints.html
A discussion in which people are outraged about restraint deaths, including Casey Collier's death.

http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?cat=47
Amanda Bagg's institution entries.

http://www.inclusiondaily.com/news/institutions/nj/bancroft.htm
Stuff about Matthew's Law, a proposed law limiting aversives which is named after an autistic 14 year old, Matthew Goodman, who was killed by restraints.

http://www.judgerc.org/
Judge Rotenberg Center's website. This is a center for people with "behavioral problems" which uses aversives, most well-known of which is electric shock treatments. Some people have died due to these aversives. Others have been traumatized.

http://normemma.com/lcorneli.htm
Information about Linda Cornelison's death. She was a 19 year old, developmentally delayed, nonverbal woman. After being starved for a long time, she started acting ill. She was repeatedly punished for these behaviors, meanwhile nothing was done about her illness. She died of a perforated stomach, thought to be related to starvation. She had extensive ulcxers, which probably caused the perforation.

http://www.nospank.net/jrc-1.htm
A list of links about Judge Rotenberg Center.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/05/22/a_question_of_tough_love_vs_torture/
About Antwone Nicholson, who was traumatised by JRC. Antwone, 17 years old, once said to his mother that she must not love him because she let them hurt him. His mother is now suing the state for sending him there.

http://edwatch.blogspot.com/2006_05_21_edwatch_archive.html
Someone's blog entry about Antwone Nicholson and JRC.

http://www.nospank.net/jrc-2.htm
Another article about JRC, with stuff about Antwone as well as others.

http://www.aspergersexpress.com/restraints_and_aversives.htm
The Asperger's Express opinion statement about restraints and aversives.

http://users.1st.net/cibra
CIBRA stands for Children Injured By Restraints and/or Aversives. It is an organization representing parents who are outraged at how their children were treated.

http://radio.weblogs.com/0119802/
A number of articles about institutional abuse along with comments.

http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk2Mzc2OTg1
A description of an autistic boy, Nicholas Aquilino, age 13, who was severely traumatised by an institution. He will not leave his house and has been diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder.

http://www.neurodiversity.com/restraints.html
Neurodiversity.com's list of links about restraints. At the top are links to other relevant link lists.

http://www.winonapost.com/archive/www/041303/1news.html
A story about Bailey Philipps, a 12 year old developmentally delayed, autistic girl who was physically abused in her school.

http://www.geocities.com/growingjoel/iamnot.html
Joel has a list of "I am not" statements such as "I am not an object." A number of them refer to attitudes which are prevalent in institutions.

http://www.prisonexp.org/
An account of the Standford Prison Experiment. In many cases institutions for disabled people are worse that prisons, because disabled people are more devalued.

http://www.feministpeacenetwork.org/survivors.htm
Women survivors of psychiatric abuse talk. Most of them were diagnosed as crazy.

http://www.cchr.org/index.cfm/5353
This is a page for reporting psychiatric abuse. It lists as one of the things "falsely diagnosed". So if you really do have the condition they diagnosed you with, is it not abuse?

http://www.mindfreedom.org/
Mind Freedom is an advocacy group for psychiatric survivors.

http://www.oikos.org/psychabuse.htm
Abuses in a Montreal institution.

http://www.astraeasweb.net/politics/badpsych.shtml
Astraea's page about psychiatric abuse.

If you can suggest more links, please do so.