ISEPP Leadership

ISEPP Leadership

11/2/2015

Executive Director

Chuck Ruby, Ph.D.

Dr. Ruby earned his Ph.D. in 1995 at Florida State University. He is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of military service as a criminal, counterintelligence, and counterespionage special agent and investigative psychologist in many capacities across the globe.

Since his military retirement in 1999, he has been a psychologist in private practice in southern Maryland. He is currently the Director and General Manager of the Pinnacle Center for Mental Health and Human Relations, a large private group practice that offers a variety of evaluation and therapy services.

Dr. Ruby addresses emotional and behavioral problems as natural human responses to life distress, rather than as dysfunction or disease. He helps people use their inherent abilities in reorganizing and reconstructing their lives in order to help them find a sense of contentment.

Dr. Ruby rejects the idea of "mental illness" as it is a misleading metaphor that creates diseases and disabilities out of basic human struggles. He likewise disagrees with, and strongly cautions against, the use of psychiatric drugs as they do not correct any so-called chemical imbalances of the brain, and they have many harmful effects and lead to dependency. Dr. Ruby recognizes that as humans we all share the difficult challenges of finding meaning, accepting our limitations, connecting with others, and taking responsibility for the ultimate direction of our lives.

You can read more about him at his personal website. He is the author of Smoke and Mirrors: How You Are Being Fooled About Mental Illness - An Insider's Warning to Consumers.

Dr. Ruby is the past Chairperson of the Board for ISEPP and has been the Executive Director since 2015.


Chairperson of the Board of Directors

Mary Neal Vieten, Ph.D., ABPPMary-Neal-Vieten-179x300

Dr. Vieten is a psychologist and U.S. Navy Commander with the Select Reserves. She has a private practice in southern Maryland where she serves clients who are military, paramilitary, veterans, and civilians who are exposed to high risk environments like police work and combat situations. She encourages clients to pursue trauma recovery work outside the medical model and educates them on the dangers and ineffectiveness of psychiatric drug treatment.

Dr. Vieten is ISEPP's Director of Operation Speak Up, an effort to critique and challenge the government's medical model treatment of those who suffer from traumatic experiences. In furtherance of this, she recently developed the Warfighter Advance program. This program offers a free, weeklong retreat to veterans and military members who suffer from the traumas of war, using a non-medical, non-clinical, non-defect, and non-drug model.


Secretary

Gail Tasch, M.D.
Dr. Tasch is a board certified psychiatrist in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. She attended Loyola University Stritch School of Medicine and completed a residency at Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN. She does mostly inpatient work along with consulting for adolescent residential treatment services. Because current psychiatric treatment can lead to impaired functioning and lifelong disability, she is devoting much of her career to people who have been harmed by the mental health system including legal work for people who have committed violent crimes after taking psychiatric drugs. She believes that people can live strong, powerful lives with the correct approach using psychotherapy, nutrition, and meditation. She also believes people should receive the very best treatment for mental health problems and with proper help they can live life with joy and abundance.

Treasurer

Michael Gilbert, Psy.D.

Dr. Gilbert has worked in human services for the past 25 years, including foster care, group home, and hospital settings. In addition, he has worked as a school psychologist within the Syracuse City Schools for the past 17 years as well as an adjunct professor at local colleges. In 2000, Dr. Gilbert founded It's About Childhood & Family, Inc., a not-for-profit clinic and resource center. Recently, he launched the Inner Wealth Initiative in Central New York as a grassroots movement designed to provide families an alternative to the traditional mental health system. In addition to lecturing extensively, he advocates for non-labeling and non-medication approaches for families and teachers with children exhibiting challenging behaviors, commonly diagnosed as Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, or Bipolar Disorder.


BOARD OF DIRECTORS

TyTy Colbert, Ph.D.

Dr. Colbert is a clinical psychologist and director of the Center of Psychological Alternatives to Biopsychiatry. The center is dedicated to educating both the professional and the public about the fallacies behind the inheritance and the chemical imbalance models of mental illness. Dr. Colbert is also the author of several books including his internationally acclaimed Broken Brains or Wounded Hearts: What Causes Mental Illness.


Al Galves, Ph.D.

Dr. Galves is a clinical psychologist in New Mexico and Colorado. He has worked as a psychotherapist in community mental health centers, in health clinics, and as a school psychologist in public schools. He is a board member of MindFreedom International and the author of Harness Your Dark Side:  Mastering Jealousy, Rage, Frustration and Other Negative Emotions. Dr. Galves was our Executive Director from 2011 to 2013.


JamesGottsteinJames B. (Jim) Gottstein, Esq.

A Harvard Law School graduate, Mr. Gottstein has been practicing law in Alaska for over 30 years. Since it's founding in late 2002, he has devoted the bulk of his time pro bono to the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights (PsychRights) whose mission is to mount a strategic litigation campaign against forced psychiatric drugging and electroshock in the United States. He has won reversal of four trial court decisions running roughshod over people's rights in these proceedings through appeals to the Alaska Supreme Court, including three on constitutional grounds. These decisions substantially limit the State's legal right to lock up and drug people labeled as mentally ill against their will. Mr. Gottstein is the author of several publications (available here, here, and here). Mr. Gottstein is best known for subpoenaing and releasing the "Zyprexa Papers" which documented Eli Lilly's suppression of information regarding the tendency of their antipsychotic drug to cause diabetes and metabolic disorders; Eli Lilly eventually paid $1.4 billion dollars in criminal and civil penalties. Currently, Mr. Gottstein is spending most of his time on Psychrights' Medicaid Fraud Initiative Against Psychiatric Drugging of Children and Youth.


Todd DuBose, Ph.D.

Todd DuBose is an award winning Distinguished Full Professor at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, as well as a licensed psychologist with over twenty years of teaching, supervising, and consulting experience, and over thirty years of clinical experience, including nine years as a former chaplain at the famed Bellevue Hospital in New York City. He holds degrees in contemporary continental and comparative philosophy of religion (B.A., Georgia State University; M.Div., Union Theological Seminary, NYC) and in human science clinical psychology (Ph.D., Duquesne University).  He integrates these traditions in an existential-hermeneutical-phenomenological way of caring for others, specializing in extreme, limit or boundary events and their accompanying crises of meaning (e.g., violence, loss, trauma, psychosis, nihilism).  He teaches regularly in international venues and has done so in twelve countries. His research and scholarship also focus on critiques of implicit biases in foundational ideologies of standardized practices of care, particularly the medical/disease model of engineering existence, that can intentionally or unwittingly harm others in the name of care.  He is committed to the engaged practitioner, public scholar practice of community engagement and advocacy.


Jake Johnson, Ed.D.

Dr. Johnson is an Associate Professor in and past department chair of the Department of Counseling in the College of Education at Bowie State University. He is a Licensed Professional Counselor, a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, a Nationally Certified Counselor, trainer, consultant, educator, and author. He teachers graduate courses in school counseling, mental health counseling, and counseling psychology and supervises the practicum and internship in school counseling. Professionally, he is an active member of the American Counseling Association (ACA). In ACA, Dr. Johnson has chaired, participated and presented in sessions and workshops on creating a healthy workplace, stress management, rage, diversity, multiculturalism, existentialism, and existential cross-cultural counseling at national and international conferences. He is also an active member of the Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (AMCD): Past-Chair, Association Development; Co-chair, Twentieth Anniversary Committee; and Past-Chair, Twenty Fifth Anniversary. He is a Past-President of the Maryland Association for Multicultural Counseling and Development (MAMCD), and a Past-President, Maryland Association for Counseling and Development (MACD) and currently serving as a board member.


Pepe Santana, Ph.D.

Dr. Santana is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Denver, Colorado. He earned his doctorate in 2004 from the California School of Professional Psychology at Fresno. It was there during his practicum experience at the San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center (SJPC) that he learned of the fallacy of the biological basis of mental illness and the harm of pathologizing the human experience. He stayed on at SJPC through his predoctoral and postdoctoral internships, wherein he learned to use a Jungian perspective to help people work through and find meaning in their suffering without a reliance on psychotropic drugs. Throughout his career, he has also worked with domestic violence offenders, prison populations, nursing home and medical rehabilitation facilities, children with special needs, and doing neuropsychological evaluations for individuals with dementia. He moved to Denver, Colorado in 2008 and continues to grow his practice in which he uses the Jungian psychological perspective and philosophy to help individuals, including those who experience hallucinations and extreme emotional states, who seek treatment without the use of medication.


Burton Seitler, Ph.D.

Dr. Seitler is trained as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst. He is the Director of Counseling and Psychotherapy Services, with offices in Ridgewood and Oakland, NJ; the Director of the Child and Adolescence Psychotherapy Studies program of the New Jersey Institute for training in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy; has worked at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital and Neurological Institute and in residential treatment centers; has been a consultant for the public schools in his area; and has taught psychology at the Undergraduate and Graduate school level. Dr. Seitler has developed and run conferences on ADHD; Trauma; Schizophrenia; Autism; Resilience; and Neuro-Science, and has lectured across the United States and presented papers in Lugano, Baden Baden, Lisbon, and Buenos Aires.


Jeanne Seitler, Psy.D.

Dr. Seitler is a clinical psychologist, a graduate of Widener University in Chester, PA, and has a Masters degree in Education from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Seitler is in private practice in Ridgewood, NJ, and is the past-President of the Philadelphia Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology, PSPP (APA Division 39, local chapter).


Joe Tarantolo, M.D.

Dr. Tarantolo is a graduate of Mt. Sinai Medical School and a board-certified psychiatrist. He has been in practice for 33 years on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., where his practice is dedicated to psychotherapy and helping patients withdraw from psychiatric drugs. Dr. Tarantolo has helped hundreds of patients come off psychiatric drugs through individual and group psychotherapy, herbal remedies, meditation, nutrition, and spiritual counseling.


James Tucker, Ph.D.

Dr. Tucker holds the McKee Chair of Excellence in Learning at the University of Tennessee at Chatanooga. Previously, he was Professor of Educational Psychology and Director of the Graduate Program in Leadership at Andrews University. Dr. Tucker has served as Director of the Bureau of Special Education, Pennsylvania Department of Education, and, prior to that, Director of Federal Programs for the Department of Special Education, Texas Education Agency. Dr. Tucker is one of the leading authorities in America on the subject of integrated educational program development for at-risk students, including students with disabilities. He has served as a consultant/trainer to hundreds of school systems, both public and private, in more than 40 states and provinces in North America, as well as to school systems in Brazil, England, Japan, Lithuania, Norway and the West Indies.


Noelene Weatherby-Fell, Ph.D.

Dr. Weatherby-Fell is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, University of Wollongong, Australia. Her current role is Education Coordinator at UOW Shoalhaven, with responsibility for providing leadership in curriculum and pedagogy within the graduate teacher education programs and across the School. She represents the School and the University on State and National bodies that govern the standards for teacher education courses and their accreditation. A practitioner with 22 years in schools, Dr. Weatherby-Fell’s research interests include pre-service teacher preparation, epilepsy education and recognition of the individual including self-esteem/pastoral care of students and teachers. In 2011 the Australian College of Educators and UOW Faculty of Education presented her with an Outstanding Achievement in Education award. Internationally, her work with the International Society of Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry was recognised in 2012 with an award for Intercultural Research Contributions. Dr. Weatherby-Fell is a founding member of the Teacher Education Advisory Board for the Response Ability Project, an Australian Commonwealth initiative with the Hunter Institute of Mental Health focusing on pre-service teacher education and social and emotional wellbeing/mental health. She has presented and written both nationally and internationally on her work in this area. Dr. Weatherby-Fell is a project team member on the OLT project BRiTE (Building Resilience in Teacher Education).


EDITORIAL STAFF: ETHICAL HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY & PSYCHIATRY:

Editor-in-Chief: Don Marks, Psy.D.

Co-Editors:
James Tucker, Ph.D.
Niall McLaren, MBBS, FRANZCP