Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?

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Preface: Failing in my efforts to get this article published for the general public, apparently only here can I talk about a “cool subculture of anti-authoritarians” and how the Harrow study shows medication resisters have greater recovery.

Anti-Authoritarians and Schizophrenia: Do Rebels Who Defy Treatment Do Better?

While many Americans are troubled by psychiatry’s over medicating of children, and they doubt the legitimacy of some psychiatric illnesses such as “oppositional defiant disorder,” few question psychiatry with respect to schizophrenia, an often frightening phenomenon characterized by hallucinations, delusions, incoherent speech, and bizarre behaviors. But a major long-term study on schizophrenia challenges psychiatry’s authority here as well, and it just may get Americans to pay attention to a group of anti-authoritarians diagnosed with schizophrenia who have recovered without medication or doctors—and have become activists.

In February 2012, University of Illinois College of Medicine researcher Martin Harrow published, “Do All Schizophrenia Patients Need Antipsychotic Treatment Continuously Throughout their Lifetime? A 20-Year Longitudinal Study,” funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the United States Public Health Service.

Harrow and his research team found that schizophrenia patients who were “not on antipsychotics [which include “typicals” such as Thorazine and Haldol, and “atypicals” such as Zyprexa, Risperdal, Seroquel, Geodon, and Abilify] for prolonged periods were significantly less likely to be psychotic and experienced more periods of recovery.”

Unseen by most psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, there is a group of people diagnosed with schizophrenia who, at some point, reject doctors and medication and are in recovery. How big is this group? Harrow reports, “Our 20-year data indicate that the subsample of SZ [schizophrenic patients] not on antipsychotics represent a moderate-sized group (30–40%) of SZ”; and many of them, according to Harrow’s results, achieve recovery without doctors. Some within this group are self-identified “psychiatric survivors,” activists who fight against coercive treatments and for informed choice and more treatment options.

Welcome to a Cool Subculture of Anti-Authoritarians

If my sole experience of people who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia was purely a clinical one, I too would be wary of them going off their medication, and I too would have a far less hopeful view of the possibility of recovery. One of my earliest professional positions was as a psychiatric emergency room therapist where I saw many patients who were agitated and acting bizarrely and who were dragged into the hospital by police and family. These patients were diagnosed with schizophrenia, schizoffective disorder, or some other psychotic disorder. Most of them would in fact calm down after being given medication, and so it is common for police, family, and mental health professionals to view being “off one’s meds” as problematic.

Many mental health professionals, myself included, have seen psychotic relapse among diagnosed schizophrenics who have been “medication noncompliant.” But professionals ordinarily don’t compare this group to those “medication compliant” patients who also relapse or remain chronically psychotic. And most importantly, in their clinical practice, mental health professionals do not routinely see diagnosed schizophrenics who have recovered without medication and without doctors.

Outside of my practice, I have come to know this group of diagnosed schizophrenics who have long-term recovery without medication. In his research, Harrow discovered them as well and states, “For most SZ [schizophrenia patients] not on medications or not in treatment this was their choice, at times against professional advice.” It is my experience that those who have rejected medication and recovered are virtually all anti-authoritarians who question the legitimacy of authorities and resist those authorities they assess to be illegitimate ones.

I had not heard about psychiatric survivors until 1994, when I was contacted by David Oaks, director of MindFreedom, a coalition of psychiatric survivor organizations from around the world. David, now a good friend, comes from a working class family in the South Side of Chicago and won scholarships to attend Harvard in the early 1970s, but he says, “I didn’t fit in at Harvard, and I was under a lot of stress. Now and again I ingested too much cannabis, to which I’m highly sensitive. I stopped sleeping.” His behavior became erratic with psychotic symptoms (e.g., “thought the CIA was making my teeth grow” and that “a UFO was appearing in my living room”). He was checked into various psychiatric facilities five different times. David recalls, “A dozen psychiatrists diagnosed me as a psychotic. I was told I would have to stay on psychiatric drugs the rest of my life, like a diabetic on insulin. I was told that I was genetically flawed and had a permanently broken brain.”

David ultimately joined the then existing Mental Patients Liberation Front where fellow psychiatric survivors shared stories, went on camping trips, and supported and encouraged each other to exercise and eat better. David graduated with honors from Harvard, and he has been free of psychiatric medication since 1977. Today, he is living in Eugene, Oregon, married, directs MindFreedom, and maintains a busy schedule of organizing and speaking around the world.

I’ve become friends with many other people who were once diagnosed as schizophrenic or with other psychotic disorder but who have moved into long-term recovery without psychiatric drugs (see their personal stories). They include Alaskan attorney Jim Gottstein, now President/CEO of the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, and currently a leading organizer of Occupy the American Psychiatric Association in Philadelphia on May 5. Will Hall, now a psychotherapist and a radio host, co-founded the peer-support organization Freedom Center in Western Massachusetts along with Oryx Cohen, who is now the Technical Assistance Director at the National Empowerment Center (NEC).

Oryx and psychiatrist Dan Fisher, NEC director, like the term lived experience for those who have experienced hallucinations, delusions, and other “extreme states.” And the mission of NEC is “to carry a message of recovery, empowerment, hope and healing to people with lived experience with mental health issues, trauma, and and/or extreme states.”

Dan Fisher was psychiatrically hospitalized several times prior to becoming a psychiatrist, and he is one of the few psychiatrists in the world who publicly discusses his own recovery from schizophrenia. For anybody who doubts the possibility of full recovery from schizophrenia without psychiatry’s “standard of care” and who could also use a strong dose of morale, I recommend the video Psychiatrist Daniel Fisher Talks about Hope and Recovery.

I have spent time with hundreds of treatment reform activists who were once diagnosed with schizophrenia but who have recovered without medication, and my experience is that they consider themselves lucky to have had family and/or friend support for their choice to resist psychiatric authorities. They tell me that overwhelming anxiety is often a trigger for relapse, and having family or friends with confidence in the possibility of recovery and in their treatment choices is a great anxiety reducer.

Harrow’s Study

Martin Harrow and his research team enrolled patients from two Chicago hospitals diagnosed with schizophrenia (as well as patients diagnosed with mood disorders with psychosis), so as to examine long-term outcomes. All of the patients had received conventional medication treatments when hospitalized, and then Harrow followed them as their lives unfolded, periodically assessing how well they were doing. The majority of patients continued their antipsychotic medications, while about a third of them did not comply with medication treatment and stopped taking them.

The 20-year results showed that schizophrenia patients (and those patients with mood disorders with psychosis) who took antipsychotic medication regularly during the 20 years actually experienced more psychosis, more anxiety, and were more cognitively impaired and had fewer periods of sustained recovery than those who quit taking antipsychotic medications.

“Recovery,” according to the study criteria, required no psychotic symptoms, no rehospitalizations during the follow-up year, and partially adequate (or better) work and social functioning. Among the schizophrenia patients who remained continuously on antipsychotics throughout the 20 years of the study, only 17% ever entered into any period of recovery during any of the six follow-ups. By contrast, among the schizophrenia patients who remained off antipsychotics after the two-year follow-up and for the remainder of the 20 years, 87% experienced two or more periods of recovery.

Harrow’s results are inconvenient for the psychiatric establishment because, as Harrow points out, “Prolonged use of antipsychotic medications is the current standard of care in the field and is viewed as the cornerstone of treatment for SZ [schizophrenia patients].” And the pharmaceutical industry has good reason to want Harrow’s study buried, as antipsychotics are now the largest grossing class of drugs in the United States, grossing $16 billion in 2010. So, the psychiatric establishment and the corporate press have, for the most part, ignored Harrow’s findings.

The psychiatric establishment would like the public to believe that diagnosed schizophrenics who stopped taking their medication and gained recovery must have either been misdiagnosed or were less severely psychotic. However, Harrow makes clear, “At the 2-year assessment there were no significant differences in severity of psychosis between SZ on antipsychotic medications and SZ not on any medications. However, starting at the 4.5-year follow-ups and continuing over the next 15 years, the SZ who were not on antipsychotic medications were significantly less psychotic than those on antipsychotics.”

Explanations for Harrow’s Findings

Harrow concludes that those who stopped taking medication, while not initially different in severity of psychosis than the medication compliant group, are a “self-selected group with better internal resources associated with greater resiliency. They have better prognostic factors, better pre-morbid developmental achievements, less vulnerability to anxiety, better neurocognitive skills, less vulnerability to psychosis and experience more periods of recovery.”

For journalist Robert Whitaker, winner of the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and author Anatomy of an Epidemic, the most plausible explanation for why patients not on antipsychotics were significantly less likely to be psychotic and experienced more periods of recovery is that the medication non-compliant group was not damaged by long-term use of medication.

Whitaker, in “Interpreting Harrow’s 20-Year Results: Are the Drugs to Blame?” notes, “Those with milder psychotic disorders could be expected to have a better long-term course than those diagnosed with schizophrenia. Yet, the schizophrenia patients off meds fared better over the long-term than those with milder disorders on the medications. If the drugs have long-term iatrogenic effects, wouldn’t that explain this surprising outcome?” Whitaker points out, “Nancy Andreasen [one of psychiatry’s most respected researchers] has reported that antipsychotic usage is associated with a decrease in brain volumes over time, and that this decrease in brain volumes is associated with an increase in negative symptoms and cognitive impairment.”

The Harrow study results offer other support for Whitaker’s explanation of the long-term damage of medication. At the two-year follow up, an equal percentage, about 50% of medication compliant schizophrenia patients and 50% of the medication noncompliant schizophrenia patients, experienced “high anxiety.” But at the 4.5 year mark, 75% of the medication compliant group had “high anxiety,” while only about 20% of the medication noncompliant group experienced “high anxiety,” and this same difference persisted at the 20-year follow up. Harrow notes, “Some have proposed that, over a prolonged period of antipsychotic treatment, supersensitivity of dopamine receptors may occur as a compensation of the brain for many years of reduced dopamine resulting from dopamine blockade,” as many medicated patients develop tolerance for their antipsychotics, which means they need an increasingly higher dosage to reduce their anxiety.

So, was the greater recovery among the medication non-compliant directly caused by what Harrow calls their greater “protective factors” and “internal resources”? Or did those protective factors and internal resources provide some patients diagnosed with schizophrenia the strength and resolve to resist psychiatric treatment and thus not be damaged by the medication?

Harrow’s Recommendations

Harrow’s study does not challenge the idea that for those in the acute phase of a psychotic reaction, the short-term use of some tranquilizing medication can be helpful. Harrow’s results do challenge the idea that all patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or other psychotic disorders need to remain on psychiatric medication throughout their lives.

Harrow’s recommendations, given the study results and the adverse effects of antipsychotics, might sound conservative to the general public but are heretical to the psychiatric establishment. Specifically, Harrow recommends: “If protective factors are present and the SZ [schizophrenia patients] has already shown some periods of recovery, and wants to try a period without antipsychotics, then he/she is a good candidate to try going off antipsychotics, although, as with many other medical procedures, there is no certainty of the results.”

There are some mental health treatment activists in MindFreedom, the Freedom Center, and the National Empowerment Center who utilize medications to reduce their anxiety or to help them sleep so they can function. But Martin Harrow’s study and the lives of David Oaks, Jim Gottstein, Will Hall, Orxy Cohen, Dan Fisher, and many others dispel the myth that people do not fully recover from multiple psychotic states. The fact is that people can experience long-term recovery from schizophrenia and other psychotic states without medication, and for many of these people, rejecting mainstream psychiatric treatment has been their salvation.

* * * * *

Related Items:

Related Research
The Vermont Longitudinal Study & Correction of Seven Myths
Compulsory Hospitalization Does Not Improve Outcomes
People With Schizophrenia Diagnoses Actually Do Listen 

Bruce Levine
How the “Brain Defect” Theory of Depression Stigmatizes Depression Sufferers
How Technology Worship Keeps Americans Ignorant about Depression Treatment
Why Anti-Authoritarians are Diagnosed as Mentally Ill
Marginalization and the Mental Health Industry Racket (video)

Michael Cornwall
Are Some Psychiatrists Addicted to Deference?
I Don’t Believe in Mental Illness, Do You?

Corinna West
Why Can’t They Hear Our Truth? We Have a Cure
10 Reasons Survivors Might Know More Medicine Than Psychiatrists


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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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78 COMMENTS

  1. Psychiatry is quackery. There are millions of lives that have been destroyed or diminished due to someone either believing what psychiatry told them, or psychiatry being forced on that person. The ‘schizophrenia’ label is just a pseudomedical catch all label slapped on people who have experienced extreme states of mind.

    Listening to psychiatry, can be suicidal.

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  2. I think that the other studies should always be mentioned with Harrow’s study. It solves a lot of doubt. Too many people hear about Harrow’s study and immediately begin mentally masturbating all the ways in which it must be wrong, “Well, duh! Of course the people who are doing better wont be taking the drugs anymore!” but if you inform them of Courtney Harding’s study, the WHO outcomes, Loren Mosher’s soteria project, ect, then it might really help to get people to see that this is reality and not just some possibly bogus study.

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  3. Thank you for the clear arguments you made in this article. Re: the fact that “few question psychiatry with respect to schizophrenia,” in my experience, few also question the assumed biological etiology of “schizophrenia.” Numerous studies over the past 25 years point to the fact that the vast majority of those diagnosed with psychoses are trauma survivors. People who find ways to heal from the psychic injuries of trauma are likely among the anti-authoritarian group that does better.

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    • “in my experience, few also question the assumed biological etiology of “schizophrenia.””

      This is what disgusts me. I mean I know people hear my label and immediately assume they are talking to a biologically inferior being. You tell me what is the least bit right and just about a world where you are thrown into a degraded status, where everyone you meet assumes you’re brain diseased, yet at no point in the process does a physician have to examine your brain and prove it diseased. It’s obscene.

      It’s like the scientific racism of last century, a bunch of quack studies and received ideas circulate in society, proving exactly nothing objective, yet everyone was prepared to accept this quackery is a justification why the targeted group deserved less rights.

      True believers in the notion that people labeled ‘schizophrenic’ by a shrink are ‘brain diseased’ and have ‘bad genes’ are just as bigoted as the people who believed in scientific racism.

      It effectively says to me ‘hey, we believe you’re brain diseased, we believe in the future this will be proven, so it is OK with me that the inferior group loses their rights today’. Society’s belief in psychiatry’s ‘future’ proof that never comes, that is always ‘around the corner’, that is always coming ‘tomorrow’ justifies us being put in chemical chains, TODAY.

      Psychiatry’s never proved people with the ‘schizophrenia’ label have brain diseases, yet psychiatry has peppered the media and the society at large with the innuendo and lies that we have brain diseases, and tragically, society sees it as fit and proper that there be laws enabling the government to force drugs into our brains, to have us rounded up off the street and drugged. This is because psychiatry has convinced the greater community that there are human brain diseases running around on the loose ready to do all sorts of brain disease-ey things to innocent bystanders.

      Curiously it is always the bad behaviors that get blamed on the fake brain diseases, not the good behaviors. In society’s easily led belief, planning a complex college massacre and training yourself to shoot people in the head accurately and carrying it out, is a symptom of a brain disease, but taking your talents to another complex task, say, composing a new social media website, is not a symptom of a brain disease, but just an action of free will. It’s like a magical brain disease cult religion has permeated all over society. Bad things happen because of brain diseases, good things happen because of ‘health’. Yet nowhere to be found is a single brain getting proven diseased in the context of psychiatry.

      People like neat explanations. People generally don’t care about the millions of people who have to be thrown under the bus for this status quo to exist.

      It’s obscene, you’ll see how violently this ideology is pushed on people if you’re ever the one forced into the mental patient role. It’s like a society-wide cult. And I’m the witch in this witch hunt. I’m the one who stands to lose the basic right to not have my brain handed over to these fanatics so they can play with it like some kid with a chemistry set.

      And if I found this profound degradation of my basic humanity to be so disturbing and depressing that I ended my life, my funeral would be attended by people who simply would write off my desperate decision as the ‘symptom of a brain disease’. You can’t win.

      (I’m not about to suicide, I just used it as an example).

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  4. The confused ideas and thoughts evident in a period of massive overwhelm are something the subject needs time and distance from to interpret for themselves and understand, to mature and move on into a solid adulthood identity. How the hell is one supposed to do that if one is drugged on major tranquilizers for years or decades? this is my interpretation of the Harrow study. It is like asking a lobotomy victim to synthesize all the loose ends of a complex experience and move forward and mature, it can’t be done while impaired with psychiatric drugs.

    Major tranquilizer drugs are an assault on consciousness. A diminishment of the higher functions of what defines a human being who has all of his/her cognitive function at his/her disposal. There is a reason they use these drugs on the elderly demented, to shut them up, to put them on ice, to make them sit in a chair and shut up. The first thing you learn when you’re forced into psychiatry is that your current consciousness, the experience you are going through, the thoughts you are thinking right now, are so devalued and practically held in contempt by psychiatry and society at large, that society has legalized it that your consciousness be smashed with forced drugging.

    The violent human rights abusing thugs society has entrusted this brutal task of consciousness smashing to, the state hospital psychiatrist, the ‘nurses’, are all too happy to use any legalized force at their disposal to ensure the targeted individual can no longer think the disapproved of thoughts, by smashing brain function with brain disabling drugs. You wind up not being able to think a great deal of thoughts really…not just the disapproved of thoughts… should I stay sitting in this chair? when is meal time? You’ll watch whatever channel is on the tv… like a pet really. In fact there are three groups of living, conscious, breathing beings in the community who have to put up with needles being shoved into them against their will, dogs and various other domestic pets and farm animals, the condemned on death row, and those psychiatry has decided to terrorize with forced drugging.

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    • I replied because you sound like me. This comment sounds anti-authoritarian. Maybe it’s good for people who are looked down up by society to be anti-authoritarian. I feel schizophrenia helped me take a stand as an “anti-authoritarian.” I feel it’s what I really am inside. Before schizophrenia I was accepting a lowly place, I thought I didn’t matter. Schizophrenia shows me see how oppressive society is in labeling people as “bad” or less than, as it does today and it’s always done and perhaps always will do if people think they can “win” by not being the person labeled as “crazy” or (too) black or poor or whatever. Just as during slavery, society needs people to be “bad,” poor, etc. so others will have something to work toward: not being bad, (too) black, crazy, etc. I think this is why anti-authoritarian “schizophrenics” do better. It’s because everyone should be anti-authoritarian. People can choose to be less than as society says they are or they can choose to be the author (or “authoritarian”) of their own existence. They can choose to define themselves, their own lives, instead of letting society and others tell them what to think about themselves and what to think about EVERYTHING under the sun, which is what society does. It IS insane (insane = the impossible accepted as possible) for something outside you to interpret everything you feel, see, think as “good” or “bad” or “crazy,” as if it is you. Schizophrenia is meant to lead you to a place of authority that you deny when you let society define everything for you as if you don’t exist. Schizophrenia is a response to this oppression, a pull to sanity, a pull to CONSCIOUSNESS (consciousness =to be aware that you are, that you exist). That’s why people who are anti-authoritarian do better. To be your own author is to be sane, to be in line with what is already true: You decide whether to lead or to follow. You are in charge. Either you know it and are sane (anti-authoritarian/your own author) or you don’t and are insane (oppressed).

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  5. Yes they do better. Being MANAGED is not the way unless Your an ACTOR, or a COMPANY or a thing . Here take One of these , don’t really care which you take just allow me and company to MANAGE Your I’m OK. Not everyone can earn a living the same way, so I forgive and Thank GOD for them and Life goes ON.Yes they do better. Being MANAGED is not the way unless Your an ACTOR, or a COMPANY or a thing . Here take One of these , don’t really care which you take just allow me and company to MANAGE Your I’m OK. Not everyone can earn a living the same way, so I forgive and Thank GOD for them and Life goes ON.
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    Schizophrenia Brings us to HUMAN and therefor LOVE. Trouble LOVING HUMAN? Me no not at all LOVING HUMAN is wha brought me here, GOD being GOD don’t like one LOVING HUMAN at least not while in HEAVEN. THERE YOU LOVE GOD and only GOD. So with that said, I LOVE All while I’m here on Earth and the last thing I do on EARTH is LOVE only GOD. Like a switch I’ll stop LOVING HUMANS, and there You GO . My PLAN for stopping the cycle. EARTH HEAVEN EARTH so on and so forth is a Crappy GAME and I’m MAD at myself for entering. I could’ve been An Allien had I just dared to DREAM. NO I had to resort to the old Familiar LOVE game, for lack of a better name, and return to FA king EARTH. STUPID I SAY STUPID and so that’s Me STUPID, a genius at STUPID and a GENIUS at FORGIVING so All-Good here. .. I HOPE for You:All-Good!!!.

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  6. Another important point about the anti-authoritarian survivors who’ve had ‘schizophrenia’ labels slapped on their experiences at one time or another… of which I’m a member… it’s very important to note that a group of people who avoid psychiatry for the rest of their lives, are not going to wind up as participants or data points in a psychiatrist’s study more often than not.

    So while real medicine, might be able to recruit cardiology patients and control groups, psychiatry has to deal with the fact its data sets are limited only to those who are actually prepared to consider themselves patients and still be in contact with the researchers, whereas people who recover and generally don’t associate with psychiatrists or consider psychiatry worth associating with, are not going to be equally represented in the groups under study.

    But then again, problems in life never were an appropriate thing to bring under the umbrella of ‘science’ anyhow.

    You don’t go to an astrophysicist to fix your sink even though faucets are made up of subatomic particles. Nobody is an expert on your life and your problems except YOU.

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  7. As a young person growing up, I too watched family members get abused and finally put to death by a cold, unsympathetic, and incredibly narcissistic ‘medical’ profession. I went into this field because I knew help was needed, and I was determined to figure out, for myself, what this system was about. Naively, I did the full residency and barely survived due to the abuses inflicted even on residents who objected to the sadism and power dynamics my attendings and program directors acted out unconsciously. The more I raised the issue as a resident, the more I was silenced, threatened, and abused. I see psychotic patients now every day who are not only healthy, but powerful and effective people who have learned to use their sensitivity and genius for good. I realize now that psychiatry, Freudian in it’s loyalty, is engaged in a holocaust against the most sensitive and saintly among us. Of course the system wants these people dead. These are the people we need most to guide us all to a healthier world.

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    • You’re exactly right. People that are spiritually sensitive are called by God to be healers – through music, prayer, intercession (prayer & their music). Many musicians and people who end up as psych patients do not know this. The healing profess do not either. Psychiatry is ATHEISTIC – Freud was an atheist – this is why they try to destroy people of faith, by FALSELY calling them schizophrenic. The people running mental health are actually devil worshippers, masquerading as atheists.
      Freud said “I consider myself to be the greatest danger to religion”
      Psychiatry is a device of the devil to destroy Christians & others with spiritual experiences.

      Their 2nd question is always DO YOU HEAR VOICES and anyone who says they hear God or demons is thought to have auditory hallucinations, a supposed symptom of psychosis. But it is NORMAL CHristian theology to hear voices> Jesus said MY SHEEP HEAR MY VOICE John 10:27.
      EVERYONE hears voices as thoughts in our heads. They come from the spiritual realm The word ‘inspiration’ means “a spirit goes into it’.

      For 50 years, psychiatry has falsely called Christians schzo, genociding them with their deadly drugs.

      The nazis killed mental patients with drugs in the secret t4 euthenasia program, first exposed by Dr Peter Breggin, who has written many books warning about toxic drugs & how they cause suicide, homicide. http://www.breggin.com

      This genocide was a stealth genocide of Christians, since they used atheistic psychaitry to call them mentally ill.

      The nazi genocide of blacks, jews, christians, the poor, mentally lll & others they consider inferior has CONTINUED worldwide since before WWII, using Mental health as a COVER.

      The nazis were supported by the social engineers in the US & UK who supported & still support eugenics, euthenasia, sterilization, abortion.

      Their institute for racial hygiene changed the name to MENTAL HYGIENE after WWII .Mental hygiene behavioral health & mental health are all fronts for continued genocide.

      See my articles:
      quotes showing the real agendas behind mental health & education: they are mind control, genocide, atheism, world government.
      http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/09/quotes-showing-real-agendas-behind.html
      The same social engineers run mental health & education.
      I spent 7 years teaching in public schools; I saw the atheism & mind control agendas. They have deliberately dumbed down the population, for control. They use reading methods that cause ADHD, dyslexia as an excuse to drug kids.

      see article: “The Mental health system is a FRONT for nazi genocide- an eyewitnes account & excerpts from the book The Men Behind Hitler – a German Warning to the world by Bernhard Shrieber.”
      http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/08/mental-health-system-is-continuation-of.html

      He shows that the same folks who belong to euthenasia & eugenics groups run mental health.

      Aldous Huxley wrote BRAVE NEW WORLD as a warning. he was an insider & knew the agendas of teh social engineers. It shows a fascist society where everyone is drugged. That is their goal. His brother Julian, an atheist, belonged to the eugenics & euthenasia societies & was head of UNESCO, the UN arm for eduation. aldous Huxley said “A scientific fascism will be easy to sell the masses”.

      The people running mental health are masons, illuminati & nazis.

      The nazi scientists came to the US under Operation Paperclip after WWII running hte CIA & NASA> In the CIA they ran MKULTRA a program that brainwashed assassins with drugs. It was run by dr Robert Hanna Felix, a mason who also ran psych research for 32 level scottish rite masonry. He was head of the National Institute of Mental Health.

      Masonry IS devil worship. I Have seen the handbook for 32 level, written by Albert Pike, a sata-st. It says “we worship the luciferian principle, but don’t tell the lowers levels this.”

      Most drs are useful idiots to the occultists who run mental health; their theological ignorance has made them contribute to this genocide by falsely calling Christians & anyone with spiritual experiences, psychotic.

      Drs are brainwashed in med school to believe in CHEMICAL IMBALANCES which is a BIG LIE to sell drugs. Then they brainwash the patients to believe this same nonsense.

      How come so many patients CALL Themselves CONSUMERS & don’t relize they are obviously being used by BIG PHARMA to be a contniual market for their drugs? The word SHOWS it is not about Health but MONEY.

      it is all orwellian double speak, euphemistic nonsense.

      Treatment is really genocide & torture. Most drs are in denial that they are harming rather than helping their patients.

      Schizophrenia is a NONSENSE label. People off meds don’t recover, there is often nothing to recover FROM, in the first place.

      There is such a thing as mental illness. It is caused by demonic oppression. Jesus rebuked demons & told his followers to do it. It works. I have done it. ALl mental and physical diseases are actually caused by demons whose assignments are the names of those diseases.
      I have rebuked canc-, asthm-, dep-ress- & been healed.

      The psych meds MAKE people psychotic because ALL DRUGS are openigs for demons. This includes: caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, pot, lsd, etc & all psych meds.
      Llquor stores SAY wine, liquor & spirits – telling us they are openings for demons.

      I had a friend years ago who when he drank beer, spoke with 2 voices, 2 different expressions – it was obvious possession. He was an inspired painter/musician who was destroyed by psych meds. (and pot, caffeine, alcohol). They are all bad.

      I am a composer. Wrote music over 50 years since age 4.

      As a kid, I rememember thinking “I was put on earth to do music & it’s holy”

      I became a Christian at 33. God sent me into the psych system to be a witness AGAINST it & write a book FREE on my website: MANUAL for Transformational Healing-God’s Answer to Psychiatry.
      It exposes atheistic psychiatry & their genocide by drugs, & tells how to heal mental & physical illness thru prayer.

      God had told me prior to this, at a praYER MEETING THRU SOMEONE ELSE “i’M GONNA USE YOU TO WRITE A MANUAL”

      Then a court psychologist, an atheist, sent me there, after telling me :”if you believe in the bible, you’re mentally ill.”

      There was NOTHING wrong with me. I was not disturbed. Once on the drugs, they harmed my creativity. I forgot my music, scriptures, couldn;t pray in tongues, it blocked me from hearing music in my head – a total nightmare.

      I spent 7 years in psych system as a witness. 90% of the patients I SAW were NOT ILL. They are CHRISTIANS. Some were bothered by demonic spirits, but the dr’s thought that was just hallucinations; they were TELLING the dr’s what was going on.

      My book & articles are FREE at
      http://www.1prophetspeaks.com

      Also see article “What Kind of Musician Are YOu Going to Be? Musicians are called to be prophets, intercessors & healers”

      and “Musicians, lyrics, drugs, mental illness” (same article)

      http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-kind-of-musician-are-you-going-to.html
      Prophets are called to be independent thinkers. This is why they appear to be rebels to those who want to control people. god’s prophets are called to speak ‘truth to power”.
      I am a prophet. It is an office in the church. Ephesians 4;11. All musicains are called to be prophets & intercessors.
      “Illuminati mind control is psych drugs, music & education”
      http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/04/illuminati-mind-control-in-psych-drugs.html

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    • You’re exactly right. People that are spiritually sensitive are called by God to be healers – through music, prayer, intercession (prayer & their music). Many musicians and people who end up as psych patients do not know this. The healing professionals do not either.

      My FREE book Manual for Transformational Healing-God’s Answer to Psychiatry explains this. also see article
      What kind of Musician are you going to be?

      http://www.1prophetspeaks.com

      Psychiatry is ATHEISTIC – Freud was an atheist – this is why they try to destroy people of faith, by FALSELY calling them schizophrenic. The people running mental health are actually devil worshippers, masquerading as atheists.

      Freud said “I consider myself to be the greatest danger to religion”

      Psychiatry is a device of the devil to destroy Christians & others with spiritual experiences.

      Their 2nd question is always DO YOU HEAR VOICES and anyone who says they hear God or demons is thought to have auditory hallucinations, a supposed symptom of psychosis. But it is NORMAL CHristian theology to hear voices> Jesus said MY SHEEP HEAR MY VOICE John 10:27.
      EVERYONE hears voices as thoughts in our heads. They come from the spiritual realm The word ‘inspiration’ means “a spirit goes into it’.

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  8. As a born rebel, may I say that anti-authoritarians tend to break down because they are put under constant pressure by family, schools,society, convention etc. because they dare to speak their own mind. I spent all my childhood and youth trying to keep my self-esteem intact while grown-ups were putting me down. They managed at the end to break me and I started hearing two voices in my head. A very strange experience it was too. I recovered without any medical help or diagnosis working out for myself where I went wrong and thanks to the loving care of my parents. I became older and wiser and was never again plagued by voices.

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  9. People that are spiritually sensitive are called by God to be healers – through music, prayer, intercession (prayer & their music). Many musicians and people who end up as psych patients do not know this. The healing professionals do not either.

    My FREE book Manual for Transformational Healing-God’s Answer to Psychiatry explains this. also see article
    What kind of Musician are you going to be?

    http://www.1prophetspeaks.com

    Psychiatry is ATHEISTIC – Freud was an atheist – this is why they try to destroy people of faith, by FALSELY calling them schizophrenic. The people running mental health are actually devil worshippers, masquerading as atheists.

    Freud said “I consider myself to be the greatest danger to religion”

    Psychiatry is a device of the devil to destroy Christians & others with spiritual experiences.

    Their 2nd question is always DO YOU HEAR VOICES and anyone who says they hear God or demons is thought to have auditory hallucinations, a supposed symptom of psychosis. But it is NORMAL CHristian theology to hear voices> Jesus said MY SHEEP HEAR MY VOICE John 10:27.
    EVERYONE hears voices as thoughts in our heads. They come from the spiritual realm The word ‘inspiration’ means “a spirit goes into it’.

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  10. People that are spiritually sensitive are called by God to be healers – through music, prayer, intercession (prayer & their music). Many musicians and people who end up as psych patients do not know this. The healing profesionals do not either.
    My FREE book Manual for Transformational healing-God’s Answer to Psychiatry addresses this. It exposes atheistic psychaitry & their genocide by drugs which are deadly by design, and tells how to heal mental & physical illness thru prayer. http://www.1prophetpspeaks.com

    Also see article “What kind of Musician are you going to be? Musicians are called to prophets, intercessors & healers” http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-kind-of-musician-are-you-going-to.html
    Psychiatry is ATHEISTIC – Freud was an atheist – this is why they try to destroy people of faith, by FALSELY calling them schizophrenic. The people running mental health are actually devil worshippers, masquerading as atheists.
    Freud said “I consider myself to be the greatest danger to religion”
    Psychiatry is a device of the devil to destroy Christians & others with spiritual experiences.

    Their 2nd question is always DO YOU HEAR VOICES and anyone who says they hear God or demons is thought to have auditory hallucinations, a supposed symptom of psychosis. But it is NORMAL CHristian theology to hear voices> Jesus said MY SHEEP HEAR MY VOICE John 10:27.
    EVERYONE hears voices as thoughts in our heads. They come from the spiritual realm The word ‘inspiration’ means “a spirit goes into it’.

    For 50 years, psychiatry has falsely called Christians schzo, genociding them with their deadly drugs.

    The nazis killed mental patients with drugs in the secret t4 euthenasia program, first exposed by Dr Peter Breggin, who has written many books warning about toxic drugs & how they cause suicide, homicide. http://www.breggin.com

    This genocide was a stealth genocide of Christians, since they used atheistic psychaitry to call them mentally ill.

    The nazi genocide of blacks, jews, christians, the poor, mentally lll & others they consider inferior has CONTINUED worldwide since before WWII, using Mental health as a COVER.

    The nazis were supported by the social engineers in the US & UK who supported & still support eugenics, euthenasia, sterilization, abortion.

    Their institute for racial hygiene changed the name to MENTAL HYGIENE after WWII .Mental hygiene behavioral health & mental health are all fronts for continued genocide.

    See my articles:
    quotes showing the real agendas behind mental health & education: they are mind control, genocide, atheism, world government.
    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/09/quotes-showing-real-agendas-behind.html
    The same social engineers run mental health & education.
    I spent 7 years teaching in public schools; I saw the atheism & mind control agendas. They have deliberately dumbed down the population, for control. They use reading methods that cause ADHD, dyslexia as an excuse to drug kids.

    see article: “The Mental health system is a FRONT for nazi genocide- an eyewitnes account & excerpts from the book The Men Behind Hitler – a German Warning to the world by Bernhard Shrieber.”
    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/08/mental-health-system-is-continuation-of.html

    He shows that the same folks who belong to euthenasia & eugenics groups run mental health.

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  11. Aldous Huxley wrote BRAVE NEW WORLD as a warning. he was an insider & knew the agendas of teh social engineers. It shows a fascist society where everyone is drugged. That is their goal. His brother Julian, an atheist, belonged to the eugenics & euthenasia societies & was head of UNESCO, the UN arm for eduation. aldous Huxley said “A scientific fascism will be easy to sell the masses”.

    The people running mental health are masons, illuminati & nazis.

    The nazi scientists came to the US under Operation Paperclip after WWII running hte CIA & NASA> In the CIA they ran MKULTRA a program that brainwashed assassins with drugs. It was run by dr Robert Hanna Felix, a mason who also ran psych research for 32 level scottish rite masonry. He was head of the National Institute of Mental Health.

    Masonry IS devil worship. I Have seen the handbook for 32 level, written by Albert Pike, a sata-st. It says “we worship the luciferian principle, but don’t tell the lowers levels this.”

    Most drs are useful idiots to the occultists who run mental health; their theological ignorance has made them contribute to this genocide by falsely calling Christians & anyone with spiritual experiences, psychotic.

    Drs are brainwashed in med school to believe in CHEMICAL IMBALANCES which is a BIG LIE to sell drugs. Then they brainwash the patients to believe this same nonsense.

    How come so many patients CALL Themselves CONSUMERS & don’t relize they are obviously being used by BIG PHARMA to be a contniual market for their drugs? The word SHOWS it is not about Health but MONEY.

    it is all orwellian double speak, euphemistic nonsense.

    Treatment is really genocide & torture. Most drs are in denial that they are harming rather than helping their patients.

    Schizophrenia is a NONSENSE label. People off meds don’t recover, there is often nothing to recover FROM, in the first place.

    There is such a thing as mental illness. It is caused by demonic oppression. Jesus rebuked demons & told his followers to do it. It works. I have done it. ALl mental and physical diseases are actually caused by demons whose assignments are the names of those diseases.
    I have rebuked canc-, asthm-, dep-ress- & been healed.

    The psych meds MAKE people psychotic because ALL DRUGS are openigs for demons. This includes: caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, pot, lsd, etc & all psych meds.
    Llquor stores SAY wine, liquor & spirits – telling us they are openings for demons.

    I had a friend years ago who when he drank beer, spoke with 2 voices, 2 different expressions – it was obvious possession. He was an inspired painter/musician who was destroyed by psych meds. (and pot, caffeine, alcohol). They are all bad.

    I am a composer. Wrote music over 50 years since age 4.

    As a kid, I rememember thinking “I was put on earth to do music & it’s holy”

    I became a Christian at 33. God sent me into the psych system to be a witness AGAINST it & write a book FREE on my website: MANUAL for Transformational Healing-God’s Answer to Psychiatry.
    It exposes atheistic psychiatry & their genocide by drugs, & tells how to heal mental & physical illness thru prayer.

    God had told me prior to this, at a praYER MEETING THRU SOMEONE ELSE “i’M GONNA USE YOU TO WRITE A MANUAL”

    Then a court psychologist, an atheist, sent me there, after telling me :”if you believe in the bible, you’re mentally ill.”

    There was NOTHING wrong with me. I was not disturbed. Once on the drugs, they harmed my creativity. I forgot my music, scriptures, couldn;t pray in tongues, it blocked me from hearing music in my head – a total nightmare.

    I spent 7 years in psych system as a witness. 90% of the patients I SAW were NOT ILL. They are CHRISTIANS. Some were bothered by demonic spirits, but the dr’s thought that was just hallucinations; they were TELLING the dr’s what was going on.

    My book & articles are FREE at
    http://www.1prophetspeaks.com

    Also see article “What Kind of Musician Are YOu Going to Be? Musicians are called to be prophets, intercessors & healers”

    and “Musicians, lyrics, drugs, mental illness” (same article)

    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/05/what-kind-of-musician-are-you-going-to.html
    Prophets are called to be independent thinkers. This is why they appear to be rebels to those who want to control people. god’s prophets are called to speak ‘truth to power”.
    I am a prophet. It is an office in the church. Ephesians 4;11. All musicains are called to be prophets & intercessors.
    “Illuminati mind control is psych drugs, music & education”
    http://www.1prophetspeaks.blogspot.com/2012/04/illuminati-mind-control-in-psych-drugs.html

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  12. In the 1980’s there was a brief article published in the APA Monitor regarding an animal study seeking to determine why “patients” who have readmissions require an increasingly larger dose of anti-psychotics. It was determined from the animal brain autopsies that anti-psychotic drugs actually stimulate the creation of more of the synaptic sites that anti-psychotics are thought to suppress. The psychiatric association and the pharmaceutical industry, as you say, prefers to sweep these issues under the rug. To keep this alive I referenced this and similar studies in my recently published book, Healing Personal Psychology.

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  13. Re: The revolution in mental health care that we are seeing take place

    I agree with you, Dr. Levine… many of the people involved in MindFreedom and those of us who desparately want to see real reform are seen as “anti-establishment.”

    I am.

    But I am also a very conservative person in many ways.
    And I’m in good company.
    Look no further than the most “radical” psychiatrist of our time, Peter Breggin, M.D.

    He is, in my opinion a champion for human rights.
    He’s also very complex. He doesn’t easily fit into a “radical” box.
    Look no further than his books: ‘The War Against Children of Color’, followed some time later with ‘Wow, I’m an American: How to Live Like Our Nation’s Heroic Founders’

    So, he’s a radical.
    And in many ways, a political “conservative”.

    As this revolution continues to gain speed; as we move toward a complete transformation of the mental health system, I hope we don’t forget that the people out there who need help come from all walks of life; they have a variety of political views – some progressives, others who are Constitutional conservatives, with libertarian thoughts.

    Many of our military service members and veterans haved been drugged into oblivion… They don’t fit into a neat and tidy political box… Many now need our support, from coming back from tours of duty… And we ought to make them feel welcome into our tent… And I know we will.

    I think that if this revolution is going to be successful, we will need to begin to open the tent to all kinds of “radicals”…. including some of the most patriotic and political conservatives some of us have ever met.

    “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” – Senator, Barry Goldwater

    Duane

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  14. Thanks for the informative and mostly respectful article. I know shifting one’s ingrained vernacular is a challenge, but it would be most helpful and least jarring to readers who have suffered the humiliation of diagnosis, to be referred to in more careful honest language.

    For example, instead of “schizophrenia patients”, you might try “people who report experiencing extreme states to doctors”, or even just “people” here and there. I imagined editing this essay and tried such substitutions in a few places where your meaning remained perfectly clear. A little effort and imagining in this area would go a long way in helping to make the shift we’re all after.

    Otherwise, the article is great. Thanks.

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  15. I am a concrete example of a non-compliant patient, and a psychiatric survivor, labeled schizophrenic, and then schizo-affective who has done well. I am, let me add, in no uncertain terms, not “mentally ill”. I have recovered from whatever misfortune I was previously experiencing, and I’m doing fine now. The same cannot be said for many people I have known who were taking psychiatric drugs. Some of these people are no longer with us.

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  16. I, too, have always believed that the people who work in the mental health system are evil, and seek to destroy good. Those who end up as victims of evil psychiatrists are always the wounded, sensitive, highly intelligent, intuitive, gentle saints and angels. That is why some drastic measures are long overdue to overthrow this corrupt regime!

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  17. Thank you! It is sad that it is so difficult to get those views out in the public.

    Here in Norway we try to show that recovery is possible,but also here medisine and diagnoses is the main treatment.And little focus on recovery.
    But open dialogue and allianses with familiy and friends, together with good healthworkers,can change ererything!

    Another good and down to earth-treatment is Basal EksponeringsTerapi (BET)(in norwegian). It is hard work, but make people challenge their fears and accept that life is painfull sometimes and that we can take it – also without medication.People that has had all sorts of diagnoses, and been given up by the hospital after 10 years in and out, has been totally recovered.
    This therapy started in USA in the 1970 I think, with fantastic results -but therefore it was a big threat to the Established Psyciatry and send out in the cold.
    How is it today?

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  18. Regarding “grossing $16 billion in 2010.” I am an unmedicated schizophrenic. Schizophrenia seems obvious to me to be a trick. Those given the diagnosis of schizophrenia can not (easily) object to medication, can not refuse the diagnosis. People profit from the selling of the drug cure and treatment. Who watches the watchers?

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  19. I too consider David Oaks a friend, living in Eugene Oregon and working alongside him on several projects. I mention this for a reason, that my “recovery” from the diagnosed chronic and severe paranoid schizophrenia had more to do with my ability to form friendships than with anything that came from psychiatry.
    Take a hundred perfectly “healthy” people, lock them in state hospitals the mental cloud of mind control drugs, away from family and friends, tell them they are mentally ill with some made up disease, a diagnosis that is the worst stigma generator in our culture, and then stand back. Most will fulfill your prognosis, and will be disabled for life. Goodness knows I sat in a Rescue Mission for 5 years because of it, just daydreaming, until I saw the path, and it involved more “Randle Patrick McMurphy” than compliant mental patient.
    Thanks for a wonderful article.
    Hugh Massengill

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    • “Take a hundred perfectly “healthy” people, lock them in state hospitals the mental cloud of mind control drugs, away from family and friends, tell them they are mentally ill with some made up disease, a diagnosis that is the worst stigma generator in our culture, and then stand back. Most will fulfill your prognosis, and will be disabled for life. ”

      BINGO!

      Take note anyone reading this who has ever labeled somebody ‘mentally ill’. Are you certain you didn’t sow the seeds of an innocent person’s destruction? search your conscience.

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  20. Thank you Bruce for this important article. Indeed I would say that I fully recovered, though I too prefer not to use the label schizophrenia any more. Granted I fir the criteria of the label, but the predictions from that label remain so dire, I reject it for myself and others. I prefer to use the term altered states of reality, or monological reality from which I needed assistance to find dialogue (as is described by the Open Dialogue practitioners in Finland.) It is also true that I did not follow traditional psychiatric advice. However, I prefer to describe myself as thinking for myself, rather than antiauthority. I agree with the comments that point out that many of us who end up trapped in a hospital and a label are sensitive souls. We also in many cases were traumatized, which may make us learn that we should not overly trust authorities. Trauma left me mistrustful but it also taught me to be an original, as I had to learn my own way through this dangerous world.

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    • I remember a psychiatrist saying to me, ‘you dislike authority’ and I thought to myself er no you’re not an ‘authority’ to me. He was saying that because I didn’t agree with him. I have my own descriptions such as perceptual differences, voice hearer etc.
      So I rebelled against their delusion of ‘authority’, but I do worry about those who really do chose to take meds being chastised by those who don’t. We have to hold onto our humanity for all irrespective of whether we agree with their choices.
      I still maintain that those who get saddled with the PD tag are in an even worse position with the worst of all worlds, medication, long term psychological bullying, at greater risk of high secure services and hated, despised and feared. Even psychiatrists fear that diagnosis for themselves more than Schizophrenia because at least with that it’s viewed as separate from the person, a biological affliction [not that I support that]. Whereas for those deemed to be PD it’s viewed as integral and immovable, hopeless. I remember a forensic psychiatrist describing Schizophrenia and PD like this – a raspberry ripple ice cream with a cherry on the top. He viewed Schizophrenia as the cherry on the top which can be removed, and PD as the raspberry ripple sauce which cannot. My observation of survivors labelled as PD is that it has annihilated their sense of self to a greater degree than Schizophrenia which is far easier to disprove because there is no evidence of it being a biochemical imbalance or faulty gene. It’s much harder to disprove a ‘faulty’ personality. People defined as having psychosis who fail to recover are now being redefined as PD, this is quite a ploy by psychiatry at least here in the UK. I don’t feel our movements are addressing this at all, because Schizophrenia is the biological backbone of psychiatry but PD is the psychological backbone with powerful support from governments and the criminal justice system. We ignore this at our peril. The patient groups are probably worst case of Stockholm syndrome you will ever see, and some have clung to their diagnosis because they couldn’t get any other support in other services.
      For myself as someone who was diagnosed as Schizophrenic and pronounced at one point as incurable although I’ve made sense of much of my life I don’t have a recovery narrative. I can’t offer a recovery story, I experience enduring difficulties and don’t fit many descriptions [whether that’s directly stated or implied] of recovery which leaves me very isolated. I don’t fit in anywhere.

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      • What difficulties are you talking about? Why do you think you have not “recovered”? Why do you think you don’t fit? You’re writing here and you’re free of the clutches of shrinks, that’s already something…
        Everyone can describe the recovery in their own terms, it can be about your internal state (how you feel and think and experience the world) or your external circumstances (if you are able to live autonomously).
        Personally I don’t think about myself as “recovered” because I don’t think I was ever sick. I still have life problems and many of them didn’t change and I don’t know if I’m not going to break down again somewhere down the road. This is just life. The only thing I hate is someone trying to tell me how I am supposed to feel and behave about MY life.
        Psychiatry has tried to pathologise the very best thing I like about myself – my rebelliousness. They have taken the fact that I was “distrustful”, “unapproachable”, not “easy to direct” and so on as a symptom of an illness. Simply because I didn’t want to talk to them and do anything they wanted me to do. I am so very proud of myself for not letting them own me.

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  21. On Labels

    Regarding the term “anti-authoritarian,” Dan Fisher writes, “It is also true that I did not follow traditional psychiatric advice. However, I prefer to describe myself as thinking for myself, rather than antiauthority.”

    The definition of an “anti-authoritarian” is someone who thinks for himself/herself, and does not blindly obey any and all authorities. It’s my experience from that many “psychiatric survivors” (another label that not all embrace) like seeing themselves as “anti-authoritarians,” but perhaps others don’t like the friction and conflict implied in the term “anti-authoritarian” or don’t like the term for some other reasons. But if one wants to think for themselves, one is not unquestioningly complying with all authorities.

    Regarding “schizophrenia,” I agree that all of the psychiatry labels — not just “schizophrenia” — are dehumanizing and counterproductive. As I have written before, “Sticks and stones can break your bones, but the DSM does permanent damage.”

    However, since the “ news hook” for the entire article that was Harrow’s study “Do All Schizophrenia Patients Need Antipsychotic Treatment Continuously Throughout their Lifetime? A 20-Year Longitudinal Study,” and since Harrow uses the term “SZ” that stands for “schizophrenic patients,” it is impossible to avoid term schizophrenia. It was important to quote Harrow as much as possible, or I would be accused of inaccurately interpreting his results, and so that’s why there is all his SZ stuff.

    Also, by not using the term “schizophrenia” at all, general public readers would not know that I am challenging psychiatry’s authority in an area that few professionals and journalists (except people like Bob Whitaker) are challenging them.

    For example, in the opening paragraph, I say, “But a major long-term study on schizophrenia challenges psychiatry’s authority here as well, and it just may get Americans to pay attention to a group of anti-authoritarians diagnosed with schizophrenia who have recovered without medication or doctors—and have become activists.”

    I’m sorry if just seeing the term “schizophrenia” upsets some people, but “a group of anti-authoritarians diagnosed with schizophrenia” feels pretty accurate to me.

    Like, Bob Whitaker in his “Interpreting Harrow’s 20-Year Results: Are the Drugs to Blame?” I try my best where possible to use the term “diagnosed as schizophrenic” to accurately refer to the population that is being discussed.

    I did include the sentence, “Oryx and psychiatrist Dan Fisher, NEC director, like the term ‘lived experience’ for those who have experienced hallucinations, delusions, and other ‘extreme states’ ” to indicate that people diagnosed with schizophrenia prefer other terms for their experience.

    I would have liked to written lots more about the damage of labels, but there are only so many things one can talk about in one article.

    Finally, there are many people who see much of language itself as violent, see it very difficult as to name something without objectifying something, and thus do violence. I think there’s a great deal of truth to this.

    I myself would be rather around people who may not use exactly the language I would prefer but their heart is one of non-violence and non-objectification rather than being around some one who is using exactly the politically correct language I would prefer but, at heart, they are still trying to control me.

    Thanks everybody,
    Bruce

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    • “I myself would be rather around people who may not use exactly the language I would prefer but their heart is one of non-violence and non-objectification rather than being around some one who is using exactly the politically correct language I would prefer but, at heart, they are still trying to control me.”

      Damn straight Dr. Levine. I totally agree.

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      • the term schizophrenic doesn’t really bother me anymore because I (most of the time) feel unashamed of my experience; I’m starting to see that it’s a good thing, a response to a mindset that results in unhappiness and EXTREME restriction. That’s how I felt before schizophrenia, that mindset IS what I’m recovering from, not the voices (which are just meant to call attention to a sick mindset, they have said, “Bamboozled,” “Let go,” etc.).

        At first I felt the term “anti-authoritarian” was just one that is not a part of everyday vocab, but I think it makes sense here and I like the definition you used in the comment, Dr. Levine. Writing that can be understood by others is a good thing.

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  22. Absolutely spot on. I can testify to this as someone diagnosed with schizoprhenia 20 years ago. I started to hide my meds, pretended I was compliant to avoid confrontation, but I just did not trust the clinicians. Within a year I was virtually symptom free and got on with my life without the interference of a psychiatric system that dehumanised and was 100% free from medication which disabled.

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      • my advice : If you get TOO angry at psychiatry , you might fall under the power of psychiatry.

        Find humor in psychiatry to get rid of excessive anger. Get other interests. Psychiatry is in power it’s not my (your) fault, not my (your) responsibility to fix it. Injustice occurs all over the world every day.

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        • Personally, I’d disagree. I’m not saying that what you’re advising is wrong, but it may not work for some people.
          Being angry at the injustice is an important think in life and for some it’s better to use this anger to get involved as an activist rather than just try to forget it and pretend nothing happened. I think when you act like that you’re repressing a valuable emotion and it poisons you from inside.
          I am in fact very angry and don’t see a problem with it. The point is to channel it into something good, the same way that every other activist out there, be it anti-war, Occupy, black liberation or a member of any other repressed group.
          Psychiatrists don’t want us to be angry, they in fact don’t want us to feel much at all. Being angry in itself is an act of rebellion.

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  23. I think that “anti-authoritarians” are people who automatically think for themselves and take charge of their own life. They will not let others push them around. If I say or do something, it is because I have thought it through and have consciously come to the conclusion that it is the right thing to do.It is also about taking responsability of my own actions. I would not think of imposing my opinions on others-explaining: yes, imposing: no. Anti-authoritarians resent others imposing their rules on them if they disagree with them, psychiatrists included.

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  24. I think you got the question backwards. They’re torturing political dissidents in mentaal insstitutions now and have been for for over ten years.

    Being a political dissident is not a mental illness!

    And it looks like I’m about to be sent to jail again for life. I’ve never been accused of breaking any law, they refuse to even say if they know who they are!

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  25. I was confronted with the reality of schizophrenia at the age of fifteen. Iwould say I’ve definitely been a rebel, pursuing alternative means to fine tune my health over the years. The results have been positive and the odss have been beaten.

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  26. Meds usually or perhaps always prevent cure or resolution of the personality functioning. Recovery is a misnomer because the schizophrenic has nothing to recover to- recovery is the biomed model term and I refuse to use it.
    Meds place the personalty in stasis or half-death – this is how they “save” the person. They save the person by destroying the personality.
    Being off meds doesn’t guarantee cure but at least the door is open.
    ..
    Schizophrenics who refuse to take meds are not necessarily anti-authoritarian. I was cured 35 years ago. Previously as a schizophrenic I refused to take meds because I knew intuitively that meds could not “solve me”. I was a being with desires and fears and anxieties, I knew intuitively and with certainty that the only way I could get what I wanted was somehow to exert some kind of energy to conquer myself though I did not know exactly what that entailed.

    I don’t think I was unique in that. It is this fundamental feeling or memory of feeling from which I understand very well why schizophrenics and other functionally ill persons do not want to take meds. I am certain that like myself they simply ‘know’ because in that we share a fundamental sense of understanding ourselves even in that very disturbed state or especially because we are or were disturbed in obtaining our desires and were frustrated in achieving them.

    They are not beings that are simply disturbed or dysfunctional, they are beings that want things and they know that a pill is not conscious effort and only conscious effort can resolve problems of conscious awareness.

    And yet isn’t it ironic or odd – that the helpers – the psychiatrists etc who have no inner disturbance don’t intuitively know this? And are so puzzled by the ‘non-compliance’?
    And of course – how would they? – they only could if they are the rare type of personality that can empathize more another rather than have the desire to control them and also accept the full emotional range of human beings both positive and negative as part of life.

    I did take meds for two years, later on so I can also understand what motivates compliance and how one can accept or even desire the security and comfort of this compliance.

    But a word on the ‘comfort’ of this compliance:

    How did time go by for me on meds? It didn’t. Time ceased to exist. Snap your fingers – that was my experience of two years on meds, whatever happened I wasn’t there.
    Why is that? Because a sense of time requires an emotional life.

    That two years was the only part of my life that is practically memory-less and yet my memory for my life both post and pre-cure otherwise is generally holographic.
    This was my experience of biomeds – I experienced personality death aka biomed death.
    ..

    ..

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    • “They save the person by destroying the personality.”
      Treatment worked but the patient died…
      You sound like an anti-authoritarian to me, skybluesight. You had your own opinion and you trusted your feelings and didn’t blindly follow what you were told. anti-authoritarian does not mean someone who’s just opposed to everything – it’s a person who does not accept illegitimate authority.

      “Authority, unless justified, is inherently illegitimate and that the burden of proof is on those in authority. If this burden can’t be met, the authority in question should be dismantled.” Noam Chomsky

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  27. I have been off meds for close to thirty years. The reason i went off them was not to rebel but they didn’t work for me. it was hell. The voices wouldn’t stop and then there were no other therapies available. But finally I ran into a therapist who told me to write down what the voices were saying. I did. I wrote them down as I heard them. And that helped a lot. They lost power over me. I ignored them and then they faded into the background. They are still there to this way.. the best way i can describe it is if you are in a restaurant and hear people talking at all the tables you can hear them but can’t really make out what they say. Or if you occasionally do then whatever..it means nothing. they don’t bother me.

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  28. This is a philosophical conversation but what do you ACTUALLY DO with an out of control 19yo who thinks the radiation from Japan is killing him and angry at you for not picking up and moving east? What do you do instead of meds to have a functional life and not have your home destroyed and be walking on eggshells?

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    • A very valid question. Unfortunately, the medical treatment model is so completely dominant in the US that very few treatment alternatives exist currently. You might want to read Robert Whitaker’s book, “Anatomy of an Epidemic,” which prompted the development of this community. There are alternatives, such as the Open Dialog approach (80% recovery rates with minimal to no medication use), the Soteria House model, and various peer-directed services. There is new research supporting “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy” for psychotic symptoms. There are also reported successes with nutritional approaches, meditation/mindfulness, vitamin therapy, and others. The biggest problem with the diagnosis of “schizophrenia” is that it probably encompasses a lot of different things that might cause the same kind of symptoms or reactions. I think the most important thing is to figure out a way to help the sufferer define the situation in a way that he can embrace. This requires a lot of skills that most mental health professionals don’t have, and honestly, I have not always been successful with it. And honestly, short-term use of antipsychotics can help get there in some cases. But the research is in, and long-term maintenance on antipsychotics clearly does not lead to good outcomes in life. Whether they are used short term or not, it’s vital to look for alternatives that the person suffering the symptoms can get his/her head around.

      Hope that helps a little. It is an awful situation, and I feel for you. Wish I and/or the mental health system had more to offer.

      —- Steve

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    • I don’t know what to “do” exactly, but from my experience with schizophrenia, I think it adds to the frustration when people treat me like I am crazy and don’t try to understand me. I felt dumbfounded at times by this. Why not try to understand the person, not see them as so different?

      All people suffer from very similar feelings (feeling less than). Some people can’t grin and bear it, some people can’t lose awareness of these feelings. I think these people are the so-called mentally ill.

      Mistrust is a big part of schizophrenia and I think maybe it’s time someone started to mistrust the ways of life that have obviously brought us to view others as so different. Seeing others as different is probably at the root of every human travesty in the history of man AND human suffering. I think mental illness is a response to the human condition, just like other forms of evolution have been responses (as far as I know).

      If people in Japan suffer from the radiation, why is it so unbelievable that we would also suffer? What makes us so different? Seeing others suffer is bothersome. Some people can go on and not be bothered by or aware of the implications. Some people more acutely sense that some people suffering means it’s just as likely that they somehow deserve to suffer, too.

      The illusion is that some people can suffer while others thrive–our typical way of life depends on that illusion. Some (“unfortunate”?) people sense the imbalance of that illusion and it haunts them until they awaken and see another reality, one that no one else around them seems to offer. That reality is awakening, consciousness and that is what “mentally ill” people need, seek. They are unable to endure unconsciousness, the way of the world, any longer. This is actually a good thing.

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  29. well!there is no such thing as psychic disorders.its the opossite.i think the crazy ones are the other way around(there are not crazy either,nobody is crazy,crazy is the world from the first place and someone trying desperately to explain and stay in one path that he already knows and its more logikal to him).normal people are crazy.are crazy ,because we see how bizzare our life is,whats out there,but because we cannot fully explain ,we stay on one path ,just to make as comftortable..we explain things we cannot explain, with options that we see possible.but life wasent ment to be comfortable,you need a little crazyness to understand the whole,bizzare picture,but the system cannot work that way.we must walk on proofs,on sertainenty.but nature dont provide proofs,only the human mind can,that finds clues.the second is that those disorders we speak ,is like a mirror of how society works.its how society values a person and stay on that too much,that is wrong,because that person is not only his disorders,(in fact if a scizofrenic person is knowledgable enough he is a very usefull tool also)but society afraid of him ,that he dont fully understand and that is mirroring in his psychology.our psychology good and bad,comes from the evaluession we take among other people.our chemikal system in our brain is working from our psychology.disorders reflecting how society is working right now,because emotionally and knowledgable we are emature and we cannot understand that is our fault and it isnt ,because we have taboos that drive us back,too much egoism and too much protecting our own life properties and life is not like this way that:what the most people do ,its normal then.we must stop afraiding people with disorders ,because we cannot fully understand them.people thinking how the system is used to think.we must first consider them as not a patient,all humans must be egual,cause disorders are another aspect of life.our life we evolve.patients with disorders afraid to go out in life ,because they know what they are going to face.they sense too much.they sense what people thinks about them and this is making things worst.we afraid of them and we put them down,nobodys trying to listen to them carefully.they are also searching for anwsers about life and they are suffering the same things like us,but in a much grater level.scizofrenic peoples brain working with much greater dopamine than ours,this big energy in the brain of course sometimes will think erationally in this erationally eviroment,but if we treat it with caution ,to some level they will become real usefull,in some targeting circumstanses ,they will give another aspect of life.its just emotions and facts we must face.man is made not to afraid other things in life,but other things are going to afraid the man and the man his self,his own mind.that stops aspects of life, just to be fit in a sertain way of life, folloded by the most people.i mean that humans dominate, they have nothing to fear in our planet,except our own fear and guild.and what is going to come, is going to come.also we hate easy and we love less.people suffering the most and some few of them are having fun and living great.this must stop!.people should be more helpfull eachother for real if you want disorders to disappierd.people must be more supportive and not give up easy, if you want things to really change.excuse my beliefs true or wrong and also my eng

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  30. Hi Dr. Levine

    Thanks so much for your article!

    From the title, first subheading, and earlier parts of the article, I thought this would be a study about psychiatric political activism.

    Have there been any studies showing that political activism results in more positive outcomes and recovery than those who are not politically active?

    As a former member of Mental Patients’ Liberation Project in the ’70’s, I can attest that this helped me somewhat. But I feel that landing an excellent private psychotherapist had a much greater effect.

    For reference, I had five hospitalizations over a ten year period, labeled as a “paranoid schizophrenic.” I think my recovery was partially due to my non-compliance: not taking meds, going to outreach or living in neighborhoods with other ex-patients.

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  31. After understanding that my psychiatrist lied to me since 2000 until 2009, I started to stop administrating all antipsychotics in 2009 and to recover myself (…) I will just tell you that today I can manage myself psychosis with some simple exercises or some simple activities (walking, sleeping, diet, athletics…). Beside this, I am still today trying to recover many physiological disorders that started to appear in 2009 while I was decreasing the administration of antipsychotics. Life is hell because in my country psychiatrists never listen to me and never discuss about my real troubles. I am going round forever without real answers. It’s all about money because the truth is : you will never recover from schizophrenia and psychosis is only an everyday discipline to acquire so you never more fall back into the black hole. Then life can continue.

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  32. I have schizophrenia (…) Do you know Game of the Goose ? Start again from the beginning ! Think by yourself ! A psychiatrist may still be a good “companion” too. Dangerous game ! You can “drive out of the road” too. Schizophrenia ! Some psychosis and “all” the garbage with it. Don’t forget that it’s neither your fault, neither the society’s fault. It is.

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  33. NATURAL CURE TO SCHIZOPHRENIA: I’m so appreciative for this type of platform, it gives us all opportunity to openly share our experiences without fear of shame. It is no longer a news that there is permanent cure to schizophrenia. My daughter was diagnosed of schizophrenia 15 years ago, over those time, I spent more time in hospital than out of hospital without much improvement. It was difficult and humbling, she had a major breakthrough only with CONSUMMO treatment. We’re so proud that we’ve done it all to save her, She now think more clearly. She has grown as a person in all facets of life. She more compassionate, intelligent, wise, sociable, and actionable! I see people suffering with ineffective treatment. For more detail, Send Email: [email protected], And if you have used this medicine in the past, I will advice you create an awareness to help others, because, every family that has a mentally ill patient are battling unimaginable pain. Thank You

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