Elan Vital, which operates out of the Ivory's Rock Conference Centre, near Ipswich, Queensland, stands accused of using the deliberate stigmatisation of psychological distress and mental ill health as a device to discredit its critics.

The organisation, which has gained recent notoriety through its bitter legal attempt to silence Australian journalist John Macgregor, has published a series of FAQs on its website in which various unnamed members of a claimed 'hate group' are identified by their supposed mental incapacity.

 http://www.elanvital.com.au/faq/idx/11/084/article/ :

QUOTE
Are the people in this hate group credible?
Of the 15-20 people posting as various anonymous personae on the hate site, it has been documented that:
One has been hospitalised for hallucinatory paranoia.
One has acknowledged suffering from multiple personality disorder.
One became a member of the hate group after surgery to remove a brain tumour that affected his cognitive abilities.
One receives a pension for permanent mental disability
END QUOTE

Whether Elan Vital has any reason to make its hate group claim is open to question. It is however wholly unacceptable for any organisation no matter how oppressed it may feel, to use public fear and ignorance of mental health issues as a basis to attack its critics.

Elan Vital's tactics in its attempts to silence John Macgregor were stikingly similar to those pioneered by the Church of Scientology and which have been promoted by the highly dubious CESNUR organisation. Scientology has a well established antipathy toward the treatment of mental health problems and it seems that this may be another area of commonality between the belief systems of Elan Vital and the CoS.

Given Elan Vital's attitude to those who suffer mental ill health and its reliance upon litigation there is some irony in that Quinn & Scattini, Elan Vital's Australian lawyers, have as international partners, a firm of UK solicitors which is currently acting for suffers of clinical depression in a class action against the makers of Seroxat.

Not that Quinn & Scattini have any difficulty playing which ever side of a moral question their client pays for. Elan Vital has been involved in a well publicised sexual abuse scandal in which the victims were pressured to accept a paltry settlement - Quinn & Scattini trumpets itself as a defender of abuse victims rights but the Elan Vital dollar clearly persuades the firm to adopt a 'see no evil' approach when it comes to the abuse perpetrated by a senior Elan Vital operative.

 http://www.elanvital.com.au/elan_01.html

 http://www.quinnscattini.com.au/