I seem to have generated unexpected ire with my biographical information. This deserves more than just a few lines in the reply section. When I hear strong reactions, I suspect an iceberg. In this case, there may be two icebergs.
First, there are those who let me know they find it offensive that a good-natured and intelligent woman, as I see myself, could be drawn to the practice of psychiatry by the happy feeling of having fun at work and the desire to help others. This concept strikes them as unbelievable.
Second. The simple statement that I have a medical degree and professional title triggers angry reactions from some folks. For a few, this is not an innocuous reaction.
My understanding of the mission of Robert Whitaker’s webzine is to foster cooperative discussion and help move us beyond the current pill-based medical paradigm toward better models to reduce human suffering. I have gotten the feeling from a couple of participants in this discussion that the addition of my psychiatrist’s paddle to this boat is not entirely welcome. Still, we are all in this one boat.
First, happy and fun. Then, names and titles.
The idea that I could smile and have fun at work in a locked psychiatric unit and that I could enjoy my time with patients, for a few, paints me with the tar of Nazi genocide.
Wow. I had no idea.
I wrote about my sense of happiness and fun with the thought that people would like to know that I, as a human being and psychiatrist, have found my path though the same leadings of the spirit as others who enjoy their work.
I regret that my enjoyment of my work troubles people. However, I will not stop looking for ways to feel happy and have fun, whatever work I do. I don’t work any longer than necessary where there is no “fun” or “smiling”. I once took a mental health clinic job that lacked “fun”. I walked away on day two.
My dentist takes genuine enjoyment when he pulls teeth or drills cavities. I would not so I don’t work there. His obvious fun in his professional work makes it easier for me to go there when I need to. I have “fired” dentists whose motives to be at work did not include any obvious happiness.
I would feel sad if you told me you never have “fun” at your work and are not “happy” there. Whether I want help with a painful gall bladder or painful grief, I hope to locate a helping professional who is there because this is pleasant and fun for her.
I’ve met doctors who were not having fun. The results I’ve gotten in those situations were not useful. Even in non-medical settings, I’ve found the outcomes better if the person enjoys what they do.
The list of things that make me smile and happy at my work are pretty much the same as others in helping professions: seeing people take their personal power back, watching them find ways to feel happy and helping them suffer less.
Now, as far as names and titles go:
I do introduce myself to my patients as Dr. Keys. I tell them they may call me Alice and ask what they would like to be called. I think it’s clarifying to let people know my professional designation, especially in crisis work where this is not always clear because patients see many new “providers” in one trip.
I disagree with the assumption that stepping into my role as physician by calling myself a “doctor” when I am with a “patient” is inherently wrong or hurtful. When you go to professionals for help, you seek expertise. When you feel overwhelmed, out of personal resources and don’t know what to do, you want to talk to someone who has ideas about what to do next.
Back to my dentist. He is my doctor. I am his patient. I certainly do not feel “trivialized” or “infantilized” by this labeling in the context of our relationship. I go there because he has ways to help that I can’t manage alone. I call him “the doctor”.
I also call my dog’s veterinarian “the doctor”. Heck. I even call my doctor, “the doctor” and my kids’ pediatrician, “the doctor”. It’s what they are.
So am I.
A doctor, that is.
I’ve seen over the years, particularly in community mental health work, a constant re-naming.
Remember. Words create the world. Words matter. The naming of things makes a powerful difference.
In the early nineties, I was no longer called a physician or doctor or even a psychiatrist, but a “prescriber” in community mental health. I was introduced by first name only. No white coats. I was told that the “clients” were too “sensitive” for me to wear a white coat or be called a doctor in front of them. The patients had to ask me “So, are you a doctor?”
I find this “prescriber” designation to be an offensive trivialization of the depth and breadth of my skills and education. I was in school and professional training until the age of 31. I am licensed to practice medicine and surgery by the state. But with this “prescriber” label I am reduced to an interchangeable cog in the closet with a prescription pad attached to my hand.
These days I am referred to as the “LMP”. It stands for “licensed medical provider” to those in charge of such renaming. But to me, in routine medical history taking, it stands for the first day of your “last menstrual period”.
I suspect motives behind this professional renaming may include the desires of pharmaceutical purveyors to broaden the river of drugs that leads from their wellspring, through third party payers and to what we now call “consumers of mental health services”.
To increase patient “access” to drugs, there was a political movement that lead to prescription writing for nurses and, in Oregon now, for naturopaths as well. Psychologists have snagged this “prescribing privilege” in two states and the military. Social workers have lobbied to snag this “LMP” designation. I wonder where the money to back these agendas comes from.
If you lower the common denominator from physician to “prescriber”, then anyone can do this job. Perhaps the masters degree educators label individuals with psychiatric diagnoses in Oregon could also be given a prescription pad. Think of the improved rate of flow of psycho-stimulants to our school children (insert irony here).
My patients have also been renamed: “clients”, “CMI”, “consumers” and “SPMI”. I have heard the word “visitors” in use. One new name I learned recently is “citizen”.
Here’s my rant:
Architects have “clients”. “Consumers” eat and drink things. “Guests” come over in the afternoon for tea. “Visitors” drop by. “Citizens” have membership in a nation. I frequently treat patients that are not “citizens” of this country.
Prescribers only prescribe. LMP is the first day of your last menstrual period.
I am “the doctor” when I am with my “patient”.
Please call me “the Doctor.”
To be honest, I prefer doctors to be doctors and I even prefer them to wear white coats so I can identify who is who- but then I am old-fashioned. For some reason some people writing on this webzine seem to be tarring all psychiatrists with the same brush without giving anyone a chance to put their point accross. I was a target too because I dared to say that my son’s psychiatrist was a nice and well-meaning person even if he got things wrong. Actually I hope he will have learned something new from my son’s case which was rather unusual and that is probably why things went wrong. And yes, I am glad you enjoy your work and that is because you genuinely want to help and learn as you go along.For some reason it is also taboo to say that medications do help sometimes when used cautiously at the right time. People forget that doctors are just human beings. Doctors shouldn’t set themselves up though as being omniscient Gods which they do sometimes
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Alix,
Thanks for getting what I said. I just got home to look at the posts. I had not idea there would beso much commentary. I guess I’m old fashioned, too.
Alice
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Dr. Keys, I resonate with your post, again! And speaking of having fun, one of my favorite social workers many years ago always used to encourage people he worked with to become “fun persons” and he was quite good at encouraging and coaxing and supporting in that direction. I see nothing wrong with trying to move the field toward a little more humor and learning to not take everything with such gravity. Thank you!
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Bob,
Thanks for your support.
Alice
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Fun is what’s missing in mental health. I had fun with a business plan proposal and the judges chastised us for not taking this seriously enough. Yet in my work as a peer specialist, I’d ask people, “When the last time you have done something fun?” and the answer would be weeks ago if at all. That’s really the crux of the issue for many people who are stuck with labels and medications.
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Corinna,
Fun is n important part of life that works.
Thanks,
Alice
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people on medication are just about brain dead try to have a dead person have fun its impossible. ANd worse then that if they are having bad side effects it is like torture and the only comfortable place is laying in bed
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Gail,
I know that you’re right. Psychiatric drugs can “deaden” emotions. I have heard this directly from people taking them. Many have stopped taking them because of this. Some have kept taking them because of this.
I also know that the “side-effects” can be miserable. I have heard this directly as well. Some “side-effects” do make a person want to stay in bed. Some “symptoms” do as well. This has always been tricky to sort out for me. I have to depend on the person I’m working help with for this.
I have also heard directly from patients that they were having “symptoms” that were intolerable that were better or gone with medicines. For some, the “side-effects” are easier to tolerate than the “symptoms” and they choose to take medicine.
I am certain that the focus of mental health care has gotten too narrow and “pill” focused. There are other known helpful approaches not in widespread use.
Thanks for reading and posting here. You make a valuable contribution to this discussion.
Alice
Note: I use quotation marks around the words “symptoms” and “side-effects” herein because there is disagreement about the definition of each. I use them here as a well-meaning doctor (me) who is willing to hear how the individual before me is defining them. These definitions vary with the person and over time.
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I’m sure millions of psychiatry’s subjects would love to have as much choice in psychiatry as you have found in your dental care.
When you speak repeatedly in recent days of ‘crisis work’, are you referring to involuntary psychiatry?
I think you’d have a very hard task in actually directly quoting anyone, anywhere in the comments painting you personally with the tar of Nazi genocide. This is not how I feel, and I think you’ve misinterpreted some things.
People talking broadly about how Nazi doctors and nurses rationalized away their decision to use force and violence, and how victims of psychiatry’s force and violence can come to understand how professionals rationalize using force and violence in 2012, by studying the sociology of humans rationalizing violent acts in many contexts, is all you will find if you went back and looked for the mentions of Nazi doctors in recent days in the comments on here.
I seek to understand and comprehend how a desire to help, can ever be more important than a moral line in the sand never to employ violence and force in that job that the person who has a desire to help is employed in. I seek to understand this broadly, not as it applies to you personally, but as it applies to all who have ever chosen to work in a locked ward, because I know that violence and force is a part of that system, a part of that job, a part of that workplace. I don’t doubt for a second the sincerity of the ‘desire to help’ in many of these professionals. What I struggle to understand is how they rationalize locking up innocent people and forcibly drugging/electroshocking them and forcibly indoctrinating them into psychiatry’s belief system.
I’ve found great solace and understanding in studying the Nazi doctors, the Japanese world war 2 medical experiments, the American syphilis medical experiments, I’ve studied death penalty executioners, US torture programs in the 2000s, soldiers and war, police tactics and techniques, the drug war, prison sociology, anything I can get my hands on to understand the mindset of people who employ force and violence against captive people in their work.
Why do I track down every shred of information I can on this, and speak to people about it? because I always wanted to understand why I was the one left with endless trauma from the violence done to me in the name of forced psychiatry and in the name of someone more powerful than me’s idea of ‘help’, and how they were able to rationalize doing such harm for a living. I will always want to come to understand this better. So when people are having a discussion and the Nazi doctors are mentioned, it is in this context of wanting to seek an understanding in the study of how humans rationalize away doing violent acts to those being dominated by a system.
In terms of searching your own life for the meanings and choices you applied to your own relationships with dentists, veterinarians, and so on, while I’m extremely glad you don’t feel infantilized by your relationship with your dentist, it pays to remember that many people on here had their ‘relationships’ with psychiatrists violently forced on them without consent. And not only that, unlike other violent assaults, these assaults are legalized, and the perpetrators still pose a threat to us and could and would assault us again at any given moment if we ever find ourselves back in that involuntary relationship. So this isn’t some ‘experience’ people have had with psychiatry, it is the clear and present threat they live with every day of their lives while psychiatry remains powerful enough to throw their human rights into the meat grinder with the stroke of a pen.
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I am sorry to hear you have been coerced in a way that you imply was not justified. I am curious to know if it was in the past, or maybe you were unlucky and encountered a abusive doctor, that either abused the system or abused your trust in a way you signed papers that you would not have signed in retrospect.
From my understanding, nowadays the conditions for involuntarily treatment require someone being a danger to himself or others, and a judge can be involved to avoid abuse. Or am I too naive about the legal requirements for involuntary commitment in America today? Are you claiming that the laws are not as I believe they are, or that they are bad in some ways or that they are not applied correctly?
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“From my understanding, nowadays the conditions for involuntarily treatment require someone being a danger to himself or others,”
I would have thought the ‘conditions’ for any kind of ‘treatment’ be the demonstrable existence of a real disease. But that is beside the point.
Your understanding is wrong. Unless of course, you personally would feel like placing your complete trust in a determination of ‘dangerousness’ forced upon you without an attorney, without any due process rights to evidence testing, without even the right to a phone call, on the say so of one psychiatrist, behind closed doors, which is how it is done, pal.
And we are not simply talking about locking people up, we are talking about the government altering the functioning of their biology by brute force before anyone has been before a judge, when the ‘doctors’ perpetrating this cannot even demonstrate that the biology is diseased.
If you also would like to see yourself in the ‘completely equal’ adversarial hearing of being the mental patient versus the ‘expert witness’ psychiatrist, before a judge that sides with the psychiatrist 99% of the time, be my guest.
And we haven’t even touched upon the community commitment laws.
But it’s ok, the government has told you that only those with the objectively determined and evidence tested ‘fact’ about them of ‘are’ a ‘danger to self or others’ have their liberty taken away, just like all government assertions, I would take them with a grain of salt.
I find it very disconcerting that the only threshold you hold government to is to somehow have a psychiatrist ‘prove’ behind closed doors that someone is ‘dangerous’ and you’re happy to completely ignore the fact that nobody’s biology is proven diseased, yet you’re fine with people being ‘justifiably’ involuntarily treated.
But forget all that sir, let’s say someone was a danger to others? would that not then make them a criminal who the police can charge with conspiracy?
And let’s also take for a second that someone was suicidal, why is FORCED DRUGGING AND FORCED PSYCHIATRY the official solution handed a government monopoly in response to such an event?
Take a look around this site, and tell me if you think the pseudoscience that is psychiatry should be something the government is giving so much power to?
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In the state where I live, two people can go down to the sherrif’s department and swear that someone is a danger to themselves or others, and two deputies are sent out to pick the person up and bring them to court. Or the person is sent a paper telling them to appear at court on a certain date and time. Then the judge decides if the person is going to end up in the state hospital for a seven day evaluation or not. Your chances to go free hinge very much on who the judge is who hears your case. With some, no matter how erudite and sane you sound when you get to speak for yourself you end up in the wonderful care of the state hospital where I work. Our hospital is endeing up as a penal colony at this point. It’s easier to end up in the system than you think and you’d better hope that you never have to find out through personal experience. Many of the people who have issues can live fine on the outside but family members don’t approve or want to control them and when the person doesn’t cooperate two people from the family go down and swear out the paper that sets the deputies in motion to find the person and drag them to court and then to the hospital. It is disgusting.
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So why do you choose to work there? I wouldn’t.
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Good question and a fair one. I have this stupid idea that maybe, just maybe, I might be able to make a small difference in the system. Stupid I know, but I’m stubborn.
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You must live in one of the hardest states to force psychiatry on people. Usually a phone call, saying someone is ‘dangerous’ and telling 911 their address with suffice to set the ball rolling to a forced encounter with the quacks.
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I do think the system should be improved. And I think it is more likely to happen by taking into account the trade-off faced by the system. There are people who are dangerous to themselves (or others), and the system in place will always have both false-positive (people wrongly coerced) and false-negative (people dying or getting injured in a predictable way). The way the system should be improved is by making proposals that will reduce both false-positive and false-negative, such proposals can be easily endorsed (changing the balance between false-positive and false-negative is more likely to encounter some opposition).
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I cringe when I hear people talk about shifting the balance of false positives and so on.
I don’t believe forced psychiatry is the appropriate response to people who commit crimes or conspire to commit crimes against others (danger to others), and nor do I believe so called danger to self, is something that psychiatry should be used as the solution for. I note you seem to not calling for a system to take away the liberty of people who harm themselves more slowly, as in eating too much.
In the end, your forced psychiatry system becomes nothing more than a suicide prevention thing, and even then how is forced brain alteration justified?
People who speak of correcting the balance of the system are people who are prepared to accept the system destroying some lives, collateral damage, in order to help other lives.
I don’t and can’t accept that because I know I could be the collateral damage.
In which case all people say is ‘sorry to hear that’.
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Stanley, You obviously don’t have a clue about the reality of what’s going on or don’t want to admit it!!! And I don’t like your word “imply” to Anonymous since it is patronizing. Anonymous is very intelligent, insightful and well able to describe the fear, force and fraud all too typical of mainstream psychiatry to falsely accuse people to get them involuntarily committed to forced drugging and loss of all human rights and even force them to betray themselves by admitting they are mentally ill just like Communist brainwashing in prison camps. I think Anonymous has made some other very astute observations about having a huge need to try to understand the horror of man’s inhumanity to man and the “forces” behind it with similar situations like Nazi and other totalitarian principles all too applicable here.
And sadly, this is not fun!!
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I am as motivated than anybody else to see psychiatry be changed or replaced in a radical fashion. I have seen many people accept lifelong psychiatric labels, and there is nothing that revolts me more than this lifelong label. As you do, I consider brainwashing the fact that some patients are no longer even able to believe they can improve. I am not familiar at all with forced psychiatric treatment, so I am clueless there, sorry if my questions sounded inquisitive. And I agree ‘imply’ was a bad choice, sorry for that. That said, I think America is a place where human rights are respected, and I am looking for solutions that can correct abuse without needing to overthrow the existing government, or the justice system (I am not attached at all to the psychiatric establishment, but I honestly think demonizing as a whole reinforces its cohesion, and is thus counter-productive if you want to weaken its influence).
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When mainstream psychiatry continues to practice their pseudoscience biomedical paradigm though it has been more than exposed as a corrupt selling out to BIG PHARMA/BUSINESS with tons of conflicts of interest despite the fact they have known for all too long they were/are causing enormous harm to millions os people and literally destroying countless lives with impunity for their own professional gain and somebody exposes this, it is not “demonizing” anyone, but merely telling the truth. It’s rather ironic that psychiatry’s targets must act perfectly to avoid getting stigmatized, but when anyone tries to call them to account, they are accused of being negative, attacking them, demonizing them, dwelling on the past and any other guilt tripping device to silence and ignore their critics and those they’ve harmed. You are doing this right now and it’s called gas lighting or crazy making.
“You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free” or it might make you crazy with enough truth deniers around.
Many people here have been harmed greatly directly or indirectly with loved ones. So a little empathy for these people not enjoying all of life’s perks as a result of losing so much thanks to psychiatry would be much better than rubbing salt in the wounds! Or directing barbs at people discussing serious reform issues that one person chooses to take personally though it is made clear that is isn’t personal, but about deflecting the next tidal wave of human rights violations in the name of eugenics sought by Dr. Insel, NOW head of NIMH!
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Donna,
Please. I’m slow. Can you (or someone) explain the “eugenics” accusations being targeted at the psychiatric profession to me? I’m a psychiatrist. I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to have done that could be considered the genetic manipulation of the human population to improve the race (I looked it up on wikipedia just now).
Are there ways in which you personally have been “specifically targeted” by a psychiatrist or are you referring to someone else you know?
Thanks for your participation in this lively discussion.
Warm regards,
Alice
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Psychiatry uses, in it’s diagnosis, the same sociological constructs that define minority status, poverty, living in a war zone and other forms of trauma. These are groups that already are oppressed, people that can not adhere to statistical based norms, no matter how “crazy” that seems. To say that the behavior of these people is caused by a genetic abnormality rather than looking at the story of their lives, is considered a form of eugenics. And there is still great emphasis on trying to prove this genetic theory in psychiatry. It’s also falsely stated to be based on scientific fact when all there is is implications seen but not proven. Biological psychiatry treating these people as if their body doesn’t have the ability to handle trauma and handing out highly addictive controlled substances becomes a form of disabling them further. The statistical evidence points out that this doesn’t help these group of people, although the drug companies profit. In “developing” countries where there isn’t the amount of money “developed” countries have for these “medications,” it seems that people somehow do learn to deal with their trauma, have less disability, less relapses and more recovery.
The kind of economic take overs which are reported in the book the Shock Doctrine, are quite similar in how the psychiatric drug companies take advantage of people who are in a destabilized environment: the kind of coercion and exploitation of insecurities that goes on. And those who are already oppressed by poverty, minority status etc. stand to be oppressed one way or the other. Just teaching people non violence, what Jesus, Buddha and many others also taught, might be seen as something “inappropriate” to those maintaining all this “machinery.” A person who is then “justly” seen as oppressed can often learn to let go of these basic tenets of fear. Despite that there was some feeling of loss to not “make it” in the system which adds up gain and loss, victim status and perpetrator status. That’s always been the healing, the atonement that occurs beyond fear…
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Nijinsky,
You may not want to hear this, but I agree with much that you say in this one.
Labeling “abnormal behavior” (outside of the cultural “norm”) “abnormal biology” is far fetched. We also call unwanted behavior “abnormal” even when it is perfectly normal and understandable in the situation. Here are a couple of examples: little kids running around a lot when they’re forced to stay indoors all day every day in school, babies crying (see MIA article on the pathologizing of infancy) or reactions to traumas. We are quick, in this country AND when you can find a source of funding, to drug these behaviors rather than sort them out. Without the funding source, no drugs.
It’s easier for me to hear and understand your messages when the you use language that is less “strong” (This may not be the right word exactly for what I mean). Of course, how you speak is up to you. I understand you have strong feelings.
I kind of like it when we agree a little bit once in a while. It’s fun.;-)
Best,
Alice
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I know lots of good workers who want to change psychiatry from within. Many leave.
I have mixed feelings about this. They were doing their best in an awful system, but changing such a system one worker at a time is probably not a very good strategy. Also, I don’t like to see my friends driven mad by working in such an inhuman system.
I think we need to think about how to work with people who work for the system with good intentions and support them in their efforts to work on the behalf of people trapped in it.
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Stanley,
You sound like you are familiar with the laws concerning involuntary committement. They vary from state to state a bit. In Oregon you have to be dangerous to yourself or others and have a mental illness. Dangerous last week or yesterday or might be dangerous next week won’t do it. This has to be an active and current threat.
Dangerous behavior alone may route you to the jail system.
It’s rather difficult to gain access to a hospital bed in Portland, Oregon if you want to go (Yes, some do). They have reevaluate holds quickly to determine if the criteria are still met ie if no longer dangerous, the person is released.
In Louisiana (long ago, may be out of date) there was a third criteria called “gravely disabled” as well. This isn’t used in Oregon.
Thanks for taking an interest here and posting.
Alice
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“In Oregon you have to be dangerous to yourself or others and have a mental illness. ”
Sadly, Alice Keys cannot even see that a psychiatrist is not a judge, and a person labeled ‘dangerousness’ behind closed doors by the same decision maker who will get sued if something goes wrong, is NOT due process.
Sadly, Alice Keys seems to think that is an objective, proven fact, when a psychiatrist labels someone ‘dangerous’. We call for due process before having our rights taken away. The right to test the evidence and accusation of dangerousness. Alice Keys is fine with simply saying a psychiatrist said you are dangerous, so it must be true.
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Anonymous,
It is the judge who makes this final decision in Oregon, not a psychiatrist. The “holds” (brief) are written by two police officers OR two mental health professionals OR (I think) by two physicians in a hospital(ED docs). I do not have the legal power to wrote a “hold” in Oregon. A judge makes the final decision.
Involutary committment laws vary from state to state and are crafted by politicians. They change over time. Read up on what they are where you live.
Alice
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Speaking as a mother who “forced”psychiatry on her son, and then spent most of my time trying to get him to no longer need psychiatry, I get impatient with the view of people who resent being forced into psychiatry. If anyone is forced, it means there is usually a major problem with the individual’s relationship with his or her environment. This can often mean the person is terrorizing others or inflicting harm on themselves. Repeat psychiatric hospitalizations are the mark of failure, not just the failure of psychiatry to treat the underlying problem, but the failure of the patient to learn better coping mechanisms. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result . It applies as much to biological psychiatry as it does to repeat patients.
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Many people who get forced into the system against their will are trauma survivors who were traumatized by things that happened to them in their family situation by things that family members did to them. This is why biopsychiatry is so popular with many family members of people with issues; they can point to this bunch of rubbish, quackery, and flim flam tactics and say, “OH we are not the ones to blame for their problem, they have a broken brain!” This is why most people with issues and who’ve been in the system will have nothing to do with NAMI. NAMI is tied into Big Pharma and into biopsychiatry and they all get in bed together, so that family members will not have to take responsibility for the things they did which led to their “loved one” having issues. I have the distinct feeling that you really don’t get it.
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“This is why biopsychiatry is so popular with many family members of people with issues; they can point to this bunch of rubbish, quackery, and flim flam tactics and say, “OH we are not the ones to blame for their problem, they have a broken brain!”
This is completely correct. I would even say the moment the quack ideology of biopsychiatry was invented, the notion of the ‘bad parent’ ceased to exist in much of society.
Bad parents can always find an ally in the shrink willing to falsely declare their son or daughter ‘brain diseased’ by fiat.
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I have the distinct feeling you see the word “parent” and you jump to “NAMI” parent. Sorry. No. I am against NAMI and have always maintained that biopsychiatry wouldn’t have gotten as far as it has if parents hadn’t favored a damaged brain over a taking a closer look at what in the family environment is causing their child stress. It’s often not very obvious. You appear to hold a rather simplistic view of what constitutes trauma.
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“Speaking as a mother who “forced”psychiatry on her son, and then spent most of my time trying to get him to no longer need psychiatry, I get impatient with the view of people who resent being forced into psychiatry. ”
I get impatient with the parents who force their kids into psychiatry. Who are you to declare psychiatry ‘needed’? and furthermore to force this on those who deem it ‘needed’?
You get impatient with people who resent being forced into psychiatry. That would be laughable if it wasn’t so terrifying.
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Psychiatry wasn’t needed. Proper help was needed. Where was Open Dialogue or Soteria when we needed it? There are currently almost no alternatives to biological psychiatry but that doesn’t imply that having to use these current “services” means I endorse them. Let’s get real.
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Nobody put a gun to your head and said you have to force psychiatry on your son. You should own your decision to do so.
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“Repeat psychiatric hospitalizations are the mark of failure, not just the failure of psychiatry to treat the underlying problem, but the failure of the patient to learn better coping mechanisms. ”
Did you hear that everyone? it is our fault if we get locked up and forcibly drugged, because we failed to develop better ‘coping mechanisms’.
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I can’t believe that I’m reading these things from a parent.
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WOW!!!! This statement is a horrific lumping of a very diverse group to justify your own actions toward your son!
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I’m not so sure that this is what Donna was doing. There is something very disturbing to me also by Rossa’s comments but I can’t quite put my finger on it. My brain is sometimes broken but it’s because I took the oh, so wonderful toxic drugs without asking more questions and without asking for informed consent. Anyway, I am disturbed by her remarks and have been since yesterday when I first read them. Of course, she jumped right in and made some kind of statment about me having a very simplistic understanding of trauma but I decided to let it pass since I know enough to know what trauma is without a lecture from someone elese.
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“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result . It applies as much to biological psychiatry as it does to repeat patients.”
The difference between “patients” and biological psychiatry is that biological psychiatry keeps doing the same thing over and over again and DOESN’T see the result of what they are doing, nor has any ability to. If they were patients this would be different. And who is terrorizing who, and a danger to whom, and inflicting harm on whom?
The following statement shows a complete lack of knowledge as to what goes on: “If anyone is forced, it means there is usually a major problem with the individual’s relationship with his or her environment. This can often mean the person is terrorizing others or inflicting harm on themselves.” If anyone is forced it shows that there is a completely lack of interest in what helps and what doesn’t,whether the person has a problem with relationships or environment (which I think every human does) or whether they are said to be terrorizing themselves or others (something which certainly isn’t always the case at all, and most of the time is so highly exaggerated that it’s borderline slander, when someone is seen to be “Crazy” everyone is free to make up inflated stories about what they might do and act like this is most likely from the stories of people who did snap, usually from psychiatric drugs or inhuman treatments thanks to biological psychiatry). Someone with a “mental illness” is MUCH more likely to be a victim than to be violent. Inflicting human rights abuses on people is seen as a treatment and this is compared to the inability of people; whose rights have been taken away from them, their brain disabled, their trust in others ruined and their self worth decimated!?
And “I get impatient with the view of people who resent being forced into psychiatry.”
Wow, someone is forced into something that doesn’t help at all (and is no guarantee that they actually had a problem to begin with, except that they don’t respond well to human rights abuses); and when they resent this, one loses patience.
What’s clear is that you never understood what was going on with your son to begin with and expect him to magically chipper up after being forced into a treatment that I’m sure was not only confusing, dehumanizing and humiliating; but he’s supposed to see as encouragement to ditch all his resentments of it and move on with his life. I don’t even really see that he’s the one that has attachment to resentments; that would take someone who doesn’t want to see what they did to someone else, despite all of the evidence to the contrary; and then still make calculations and decide to resent that it’s because he has “resentments,” and then compares him to the people who abused him.
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It needs, at least, two to make for a relationship, like between the individual and his/her environment. Looking at the relationships between psychiatrised people and their environment, I again and again observe the environment (and that is both family and psychiatric staff) doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result, just as much as I see the psychiatrised person doing it. I like the Open Dialogue approach that locates the “illness”, understood metaphorically, in the relationship, not in the individual, and works toward having everybody in the relationship become aware of its dysfunctionalities, and eliminate them. Usually people terrorise others because they have been terrorised themselves.
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And, I should have added, the failure of the family (parents, usually) to learn better coping mechanisms. Fortunately, or unfortunately, biological psychiatry doesn’t teach the person or the family better coping mechanisms. Like most things in life, people have to discover these things for themselves. If you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself. (This especially applies when it comes to our own health.)
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Rossa, You’re right that biologic psychiatry doesn’t teach better coping skills.
In additon to “failure of the family” you mention, I would broaden the roots of distress and suffering to include cultural ones. The nuclear family bears a pretty heavy burden in psychological theories of mental health. Although our fragmented nuclear are the closest personal relationships we have, our society is increasingly isolated and lacking in long term community relationships. This puts the squeeze on what’s left of family to cope with a lot lone. I’m not surprised they fail.
Thanks for posting your personal story out here. This takes courage.
Alice
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Hi Alice. I definitely agree with this comment. Although I’m not sure how sensitive your post in general is. You’re dealing with often highly traumatized people who have felt their rights and dignity trampled, who have felt abandoned and mistreated, often, by the world at large… Nothing’s wrong with having a sense of humor but emphasizing the “fun” aspect of your work may be a bit insensitive given the realities/situations of the people you work with/for and the sensitivity of many in the survivor movement.
I haven’t read any of your other pieces so I don’t know if there’s stuff I’ve missed, but maybe if you made it clear that you like to have fun WITH YOUR PATIENTS, that might make a difference. That it’s not just you enjoying yourself, but you try to share that joy with those who no doubt need it more than you – the people you work with. Again this is just going off of what’s been written here.
I’m surprised at your take on the terminology of “doctor” and “patient” as well. You seem to get the point about biopsychiatry/the medical model being bad, so why are you surprised that people with nothing medically wrong with them would not like to be classified as “patients” and don’t need a “doctor” to deal with their problems? Unless you deal with psychiatric problems through medical or biological means, unless you focus on the mechanics of the body, of what importance is it that you’re a medical doctor?
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Perhaps I was unclear about “fun” I had and could have been more specific. It didn’t occur to me that anyone would assume I was “having fun” at the expense of others. “Fun”, to me, in a group environment includes the others in the group. On that unit in 1983 we had a pool table. I would shoot pool with the people (back then they were still “patients” on an “inpatient” unit) and talk with them at lunch.It was a delight to get to know them this way. Relaxed. I certainly remember we all seemed to be havng fun. Perhaps I am a bit dense.
But I am a doctor of medicine. I did the required training as a GP (general practitioner) back then, treated peoples’ diabetes and high blood pressure and stitched folks up in the ED. Why would I pretend not to be what I am beacuse I later recieved additional training as a psychiatrist? Again. I may be a bit dense here. I can’t stop being a doctor. It’s what I am. Kind of like a nurse is still a nurse even after retirement and a teacher is still a teacher and an accountant is an accountant. I know a retired primary care doctor. He’s still a doctor.
I get it that the “pill” model of all medical care is flawed and misleading. I include the “pill” model in internal medicine as well. Since I am a doctor, I do not limit my thought to mental health. I’m thinking of a much bigger picture here.
Thanks for your input,
Alice
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Isn’t the whole reason we are having this debate about biopsychiatry because medical doctors inappropriately started classifying emotional trauma and psychological conflicts as physical and medical in nature? That’s why we’re trying to move away from this doctor/patient/medical terminology. Because words do matter, as you say. Words frame how we conceptualize these issues. If we continue to classify psychological problems as doctor/patient issues, the inaccurate paradigm that is the medical model is going to persist. Some of these other words are being used in an attempt to more accurately portray the situation. I’m a “patient” if I”m going in for a medical procedure. I’m not a “patient” if I’m going in to talk to someone about social and emotional issues and get life advice. Sorry. If you consider love and life coaching (what I see as the main functions of therapists/mental health workers) as medical procedures, you might want to re-think that.
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Rossa,
I applaud you for recognizing this and not making your son a scapegoat for issues that affect the whole family. Obviously, you have learned a lot in your painful journey in spite of biological psychiatry.
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Anonymous,
True. No one has ever said “Dr. Keys is a nazi”.
No. Most of the crisis work I’ve done is not in hospitals.
Best,
Alice
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Does it involve outpatient commitment?
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Anonymous,
I’m not certain what an “outpatient committment” is? Committment laws vary from state to state. I do not sign committments. One of the crisis clinic’s goal where I have worked is to prevent hospitlizations.
Am I getting your question right?
Alice
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While I’m not a big fan of mainstream psychiatry or psychiatrists, the ones I liked were usually the psychiatrists who enjoyed their jobs and injected some humor (read “hope”) into a situation that other psychiatrists deemed hopeless.
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I wish psychiatrists had injected humor into my life instead of injecting me against my will with toxic drugs.
The fun and humor tends to dissipate out of life when you know you’re now a member of a group that does not even have basic human rights.
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Doesn’t fun and humour dissipate when injected with major tranquillisers? I’ve never tried them but that seems to be my impression.
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I doubt your betrayed son found it in the least amusing!! How cold!
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Donna, you don’t know what you are talking about
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That’s a matter of opinion!!! I had the same choice as you and chose the opposite one and things worked out far better!! So you don’t know anything about me or what you are talking about!
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I find this comment rather judgmental. Donna has passion and I suspect that she has a right to be very passionate. This is what so many people who’ve never been in the system, even though they may be a family member, do not get. We have a right to be angry and passionate and it’s very difficult to express this in wahts that don’t put certain people’s hackles up. I really find it very difficult to read your comments ssometimes but I don’t jump in and do what you just did. Give people a little slack, put yourself in their shoes or in front of their computer monitor, and try to see the world from their experience.
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Donna, we talk about his hospital stay quite a bit, and he is of the view that he didn’t feel traumatized by it, but he could see how some people would. He even says he liked his psychiatrists.
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Rossa, I do admire the fact that you said you learned all in your family had to learn better coping methods andthat psychiatry is the last place you will find them. You saw that your son shouldn’t be a family scapegoat when you didn’t known some harmful family dynamics might be going on and I respect that very much. Since I was aware of family systems theory, I made sure to avoid that in my own situation. So, I’m glad you could find the truth to set you ALL free!
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Donna, how does projecting negativity into this help? My son is doing just fine, he does not feel betrayed, and we both reject biopsychiatry. You and I are fans of Robert Whitaker, I presume. So what is your problem? Why do you not adopt positive attitude that goes beyond victimhood? We’re all victims, but I don’t want to wear it on my sleeve.
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It seems to me that all humans view the world through the lens of our own experience. I am a mother of a survivor and a survivor. I am so very aware of being reticent about saying anything at all in forums like this. Being a mother the same mistrust and disgust directed at bio-maniacs has also been directed at me, it is often directed at parents like myself. I am not so insecure that I believe I need to prove myself worthy of respect. I am also aware when I feel disrespected, mocked and put down.
This is the second time I have commented on this thread—the first time, I was put down, and I felt disrespected, but I was not surprised, just disappointed again… My point is that this experience coupled with reading through this entire thread again means I will be less likely to post comments in the future. I don’t know every other survivor or participant—and I sure as hell do not know what every single trigger other people may have is. I am real aware of is how hyper-sensitive I am.–I know my main trigger is being invalidated, mocked, ridiculed—being treated as if I am not worthy of respect. The thing about trauma that I’ve noticed, is the more I was traumatized, the more aware I became of the things which traumatized me–
I do not appreciate being disrespected, no one does. I am a human being, I get it—I have allowed my own anger about my experiences to be a justification for being rude to someone who does not see it like I do…Knowing myself like I do, I will probably do so again countless times before the month is out—hopefully only in my own head, because I don’t believe feeling justified is the same thing as actually BEING justified.
What matters to me is that there is some place that those involved in any and every capacity with winning Human Rights for those with a psychiatric diagnosis, with an goal to end forced psychiatric treatment can feel safe and not be afraid they will be ridiculed or castigated because they express an opinion or share a personal experience that is not agreed with or is disapproved of…I am a trauma survivor and I am the mother of a trauma survivor–up until almost two years ago I have always said what I wanted to when I wanted. –There are two reasons this is no longer the case. The first is the events which led me to start me blog, and means that I am not as vocal as I was when dealing with ‘professionals’ I say no more than absolutely necessary and I now write the things I used to say to them. The second reason a response to the way I have been corrected, criticized or put down because of how I phrased my thoughts, feelings or experiences is disapproved of or invalidated by another survivor. I suspect this is all an indication of a need for me to develop a thicker skin. I don’t know that I have the desire to do so in order to better tolerate demeaning and disrespectful criticism, or personal attacks as a constructive or healthy way to bring about positive changes. I am real sure I do not want negative feelings about people who, like myself are wanting people with psychiatric diagnoses to be treated with dignity and respect, and to not to have psychiatric treatment forced on them– I was hoping this website may be a place where people are not called names or put down with disparaging comments because they are disagreed with—but maybe there is no such place.
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Becky,
Thanks for telling us all how you feel. I’m sorry you’ve felt disrespected, disapproved and invalidated when you posted here before.
I know that anger is a natural consequence of being hurt. No one wants to be hurt again. Disrespect is hurtful. People who’s been hurt can still be pretty angry whether it was long ago or last week that they were hurt. Sometimes hurt, angry people hurt others.
This is a public forum. I’m new to this kind of posting as of April 19. There’s no way to guarentee that hurtful things will never be said. My understanding is that Bob Whitaker wants this to be as open as possible so that people can talk about what’s important and of concern to them (somebody correct me here).
I hope you can feel okay about joining the discussions. I would understand if you don’t. But please keep reading. You can still be in on the discussion even if you don’t wish to post.
I hope for peaceful discussions. I don’t want to run anyone off.
All the best,
Alice
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Re-reading Becky Murphy’s first comment she refers to, I cannot see where others disrespected? looks like the doctor thanked for participating…
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Becky,
Most survivors here have been traumatized, so sometimes we unknowingly unleash others’ triggers without seeing it. Then the triggered person overreacts with an angry remark that may have even started with another person or post in a vicious circle.
Anyway, I may have been one of the ones who seemed critical of you because I felt criticized by your comment because I was being constantly stalked and criticized by another poster. I realized that this trigger of my own traumatic encounter with psychiatry in the past and the ongoing attacks from the critic had caused me to overreact to another poster to defend myself against this critic.
Anyway, recognizing this insane merrygoround of clashing egos, I went back and admitted this to the person I criticized and appologized.
If it was my comment that upset you, I apologize to you too. I hope you comment all the more and feel safe here because as I hope the above proves, sometimes these seeming hurtful responses may have very little to do with you or what you said, but reveals more about the person making the comment. I hope you will confront people when you feel this way and give them a chance to think about if they were fair or just overreacting to a trigger or some other other reason why they seemed to unfairly criticize you. This would probably be best to do when the person has calmed down and can think more clearly.
When people confront me, it gives me the opportunity to rethink what I said and question if it was triggered by my own painful past or some current stessor. As you admit you have been there enough to know that hurting, traumatized people can hurt people and it’s not necessarily personal or deliberate.
It’s important to remind each other of this and I realize now that is what you were trying to do but my trigger at the time wouldn’t allow me to “hear it” until you reinforced it just now.
Thank you for sharing and again I am sorry if you felt attacked by what I said. I am glad you shared your pain and it is a good reminder to us that we should rethink our tendency to shoot from the hip when we may be only repsponding to a trigger instead of the real human being making the comment.
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Thank you Donna. I appreciate your kind response and your apology.
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Rossa,
Hope is essential to all life endeavors. I also think fun is.
Thanks,
Alice
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Dear Doctor
As usual a well reasoned, personal, and humorous reply to what seems to me much ado about nothing. Some people take these lables too seriously, stop identifing as a victim.
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“Some people take these lables too seriously, stop identifing as a victim.”
I take human rights abuses seriously. I can imagine it is not easy for those who have never had theirs ripped away to grasp this.
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Quite agree, Anonymous. Sometimes until people have walked a mile in the shoes of others, they will not understand.
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ಠ_ಠ
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Frankly, I can’t believe that you said this. Have you ever received “services” in the system? You get to be a victim whether you want to be or not since you have no choice in what is done to you.
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Hi robertr,
Sorry to be so slow to get back with you. I got behind the curve today.
Thanks for your support of my writing.
Best,
“The Doctor” 😉
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Robert, what on earth are you doing here? You obviously don’t empathize with the survivor movement or those who have indeed been victimized by this system at all. Shouldn’t you be over on NAMI’s site?
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I have the feeling that it’s very difficult for many people in the system or who have been in the system, to really trust psychiatrists. Although “first of all, do no harm,” is supposedly something that psychiatrists vow to carry out, the reality is that many of them are doing horrible harm seven days a week to thousands of people. I keep asking myself how they reconcile this in themselves. I’ve worked alongside psychiatrists as part of the treatment team staff, and I’ve received “treatment” at the hands of three of them. I have to say that the great majority of them were and are egotistical, paternalistic, know it all, pains in the arse. I will never forget the one who diagnosed me. I’d never met him before and the day before I had my appointment I was informed that my only sister had been murdered in New York City. The man never once looked at me in the fifteen minutes he spent asking me questions; he just kept his head down and wrote on his little note pad. When he asked how I was feeling I told him terrible and when he asked why I was feeling terrible I told him of my sister’s murder. Without looking up at me he replied, “Oh, that’s interesting.” No warmth, no concern, no empathy, no feeling, just an “Oh, that’s interesting.” I now work with two psychiatrists, a man and a woman, who I know to be good and wonderful people. However, I am in a quandry as to how to feel about them because they go about drugging people with the toxic drugs five days a week and go merrily on ther way. I can’t reconcile how I feel about them as people with what I know that they do to the people in their care.
I can only speak for myself and am making assumptions here, which is a dangerous thing to do. We have no real reasons at all to trust psychiatrists and psychiatry. It is difficult to believe that some of you really do care. I know that there really truly are some psychiatrists who do care deeply about people in their care, but who wants to make the first move to try and find out what you are like. It’s an iffy thing and people are gunshy as can be. However, we do have to struggle to take each psychiatrists on an individual basis instead of lumping everyone together in one group and stating that all are the same.
Personally, I like your posts. It is good to see a psychiatrist, or any doctor these days, who is willing to open themselves up to the world and let everyone peer around inside. That takes guts and I admire you for doing so on this webzine, or whatever it is. It is great to see a doctor who admits to struggling to understand things in new ways, instead of sitting there proclaiming that they have all the answers to everything. Thank you for your willingness to question and struggle and then to talk about what you discover in the whole process.
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I think it is obvious that you cannot trust someone who values forcing their version of ‘help’ on you more than they value your human rights.
I find it offensive that a ‘desire to help’ somehow is more important than pointing out that the doors are locked, and the doctor is the one that gets to go home at the end of the day while the detainees remain in cages and fearful of the next forced drugging attack.
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I agree.
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Dear Anonymos
Human rights abuses? The majority of people who get committed, which is not easy,need some kind of treatment, or just a time out. People who don’t manage their mental or emotional illness put themselves and others in danger. Extreme behavior is either delt with by you, or the community has to intervine. It’s the law.
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Where’s the love?
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Where’s you love? How possible is love without responsibility?
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Have you ever been committed. I think it’s all very easy to talk about responsibility and all that when you’ve never been in the system. Many people now enter the system as children and grow up on a constant diet of rubbish and quackery that many psychiatrists dish out. You can’t learn responsibility when you have little or no independence and no choice in the many things that are done to you in the name of “treatment.” Once again I ask you, have you ever been in the system that you seem to be so blithly commenting about here?
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How old are you? at some point in THE SYSTEM or not you are able to take some responsibilty for yourself, or are you still that helpless child?
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I’m quite prepared to take responsibility for my actions.
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“How possible is love without responsibility?” I do not think that I would want to date you.
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“Dear Anonymos
Human rights abuses?”
Yes.
“The majority of people who get committed, which is not easy,need some kind of treatment”
I don’t agree that people you cannot prove have brain diseases deserve to be terrorized with forced drugging.
“or just a time out.”
A time out? is that what you call solitary confinement, detention without charge or trial, with no due process? A time out?
“People who don’t manage their mental or emotional illness put themselves and others in danger.”
What makes you think there is such a thing as an emotional ‘illness’? What is it about people who eat too much and smoke too much that doesn’t have you calling for them to lose their freedoms?
“Extreme behavior is either delt with by you, or the community has to intervine. It’s the law.”
Extreme behavior? we have criminal laws for actions like this.
You’ll understand that what we are talking about are human rights abuses if you’re ever on the receiving end.
“It’s the law”. Well, lots of things that are immoral used to be the law my friend. Hopefully we can get the law changed one day so that we can have human rights.
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At one time slavery was justified by the law, as well as segregation and apartheid. Just because “it’s the law” does not mean that it’s right. This is part of the problem with the supposed “treatment” of people with mental illness these days. You can force them to do anything you want, even though it’s abusive and against all human rights, simply because we’ve involved the law in all of this. People with psychiatric issues are the one group who have no rights and can be forced into treatment against their will. But it’s the law, so it must be okay!
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So why do you choose to work in an institution designed to take away these rights?
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Did you ever hear of the “Resistance” in France during WWII? Sometimes you can do some good things under cover. Once again, call me stupid for thinking that I can make a difference.
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It is the law, because society believes psychiatry’s lies about us, that we are less than human.
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What is it about your behavior that get’s the System involved? If it is not brain disease then it is your behavior, right?
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“What is it about your behavior that get’s the System involved? If it is not brain disease then it is your behavior, right?”
Thoughts, not just behaviors, are what psychiatry uses as justifications to rob people of their rights. Speech, too.
If I ever committed a behavior that harmed another, I’m prepared to face the criminal sanctions for that.
Unwanted thoughts, unwanted speech, unwanted behavior that harms nobody, anything labeled ‘bizarre’ is a justification to force psychiatry’s drugs on people.
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This statement is totally wrong. People lie to have others comitted all the time when one is more powerful, which is mostly men. Husbands still get their wives falsely committed and declared mentally ill if they don’t kill them instead (see book ERASED about all the wife murderers who mostly got away with it)to rob them of custody and all assets. Same with abusive parents. May I ask what planet you live on? Are you part of the “mental health” system???
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How come male batterers or pedophiles known to cause huge risk and often death to their victims including children are allowed to roam free with no involuntary commitment or forced drugging by psychiatry? All must have heard about theat recent case where the husband murdered his wife and then blew up his children though others were warned including authorities. This happens constantly and psychiatry and the law does nothing. Answer: Mainstream psychiatry mainly preys on women, blacks, children or other minority vulnerable groups that they can exploit, overpower and abuse with impunity. Psychiatry has the same prejudices as the rest of society and more so due to its junk science DSM.
Just for the record, I am not attacking Dr. Keys but only bring up some huge problems within the profession.
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Donna,
I certainly know you are not attacking me personally. I have also been distressed when some people that have done harmful things to others are released from the criminal justice system or the courts.
Thanks for your post,
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
Thanks for your comment. But, what you address is not the same issue I brought up. You talk about these people getting out of prison or courts, but not the fact that they have shown themselves to be dangerous in that male batterers and pedophiles are known to reoffend and often kill their victims. Since psychiatry forces treatment on those merely labelled with their bogus stigmas while falsely claiming they are a danger to society when they have committed no crimes, wouldn’t it make more sense to label male batterers, pedophiles, rapists and others who really are dangerous to others and drug them into submission instead of their victims? Female victims of domestic violence and their children usually get stigmatized and drugged while psychiatry colludes with the abusers. This is also true of the courts aided and abetted by psychiatry. Dr. Carole Warshaw, Psychiatrist and others expose this absurdity in psychiatry due to their sole DSM focus on symptoms and fad stigmas and refusal to consider one’s environnment.
Anyway, I would answer my question by saying that it demonstrates mainstream psychiatry’s dishonesty and its own dangerousness by going after vulnerable traumatized abuse victims while ignoring their abusers who are often “pschopaths,” and a huge danger to society and women and children especially.
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Donna,
You’ve bumped up against an interesting point. “Mainstream” psychiatry” is not run by psychiatrists. The “research” to generate the DSM (also the PDR of ALL medicines) is funded by pharmaceautical money to promote their products.
The laws, made by judges and politicians, decide who is in jail or prison. Not “mainstream” psychiatry. However much there have been times that I would have liked to “put away” an abuser, society has never given me this power.
Rest assured, however, that those incarcerated and on release from prisons and jails recieve their (I hate to use this phrase) “fair share” of psychiatric drugs. This is enforced by judges and police and funded by our tax dollars.
I think you may be granting ordinary psychiatrists more power than we have. Certainly this is more power than I have ever had as a pychiatrist.
I’m finding, here, that I have more power as a writer.
Thanks be to Bob Whitaker for bringing us all together here.
Alice
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sorry I posted to the wrong reply button. I’m lost in this maze. will repost and adjust…
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This software has run out of reply buttons. This is in response to Alice’s May 4 post mentioning mainstream psychiatry.
Begging your pardon, Alice, mainstream psychiatry is run by organizations such as the APA, representing 36,000 out of about 40,000 US psychiatrists.
The APA is partially funded by pharma and partially funded by the dues you pay, plus publication revenues, such as the DSM.
That it represents the interests of research psychiatry rather than clinical psychiatry is a puzzle to me. It’s your professional organization, why don’t clinical psychiatrists question its direction?
How can the membership elect people like Alan Schatzberg as its president? Why doesn’t it protest the printing of garbage research in American Journal of Psychiatry?
It does happen that dissident groups change the direction of professional organizations. This is a concrete way psychiatrists can change “mainstream” psychiatry if they want to.
But I have yet to see any kind of agitation within the APA. Why do you think all the doctors are going along to get along?
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Altostrata,
I bailed on the APA years ago. I joined and paid membership dues to the national and state groups because it was the only way to access affordable professional liability insurance. I quit when this quit. Perhaps I am unable to speak to the thoughts of “mainstream psychiatry” and the “APA”. Could we get some APA members to comment?
Alice
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Peace Donna, I’m not lecturing you just reminding myself and sharing something that might help if you can relate to it, which is possible despite my “psychotic” rambling. Here’s more: There’s this legend that aboriginals could disappear into the dessert. This, I understand, happened because their culture didn’t contain fear, wasn’t based on traumatizing people in order to control behavior and create “harmony”; and so when confronted with an invader with a gun ready to shoot them, their response wasn’t fear based. They could send an energy of love to the “attacker”; their reflexes were such that they could respond to the higher self of the “attacker” without judgment, not see them as doing anything wrong in regards to where they were coming from, that they were acting from the best that they could, but simply put forth that they could not condone their behavior. The result was that there was a “disconnect” between the higher self of the “attacker” and his earthly brain. He stopped seeing the aboriginal, although they were still there. Thus the attacker walked away and spread this myth that aboriginals could disappear into the dessert. Or one might say that who a person is is beyond what one can “see”, that the mind transcends this limitation that is thought to be “objective” regarding the physical senses. This always exists, and so the connection is lost when there’s no love, because there is no connection there when this is missing, although we still remain connected beyond being separate. A Philipino healers hand (the one’s called psychic surgeons) might be able to move through all this stuff that is so “objective” and being attracted to what is causing a blockage allow his hands to be used to remove it (although who the person was was supposed to be more stable physically). Then “physical” healing takes places because it’s not physical. The same, reality is supposed to be more stable to validate the fear based control tactics which are used when people believe traumatizing others creates harmony.
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again wrong button
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Like the wise Nijinksy said, I’m not going to read these windy posts any more and try to riddle my way through them only to make myself nauseated. I’ve had enough of your neverending heroics and complaints against me today on behalf of biological psychiatry ‘s abuses of power!!
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Donna, I admire you just letting it go. There’s no sense in someone who tries to defend a system which has caused a whole epidemic; as if there’s a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation which um….. “excuses” the psychiatrists because they are trying to make a thoughtful decision (!?!?!?!?!?). These constant posts where things have been turned around beyond recognizing what they themselves are doing; and then after this acrobatic contortion is accomplished, this strange emblem still hangs there “place of healing” and because someone is “literate” they think they’re privy to what’s going on. This is more incoherent then anything the psychiatrists would label , as referred to: “psychosis” and things such as irrational-sounding beliefs, negative self-talk and reactions to trauma is a lot wider and less clear than we sometimes suppose.
yep irrational sounding beliefs such as these drugs will heal you, negative self-talk such as these drugs will heal you, reactions to trauma such as these drugs will heal you… just fill in the blank
attention deficit such as “these drugs will heal you.”
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NIjinsky,
“yep irrational sounding beliefs such as these drugs will heal you, negative self-talk such as these drugs will heal you, reactions to trauma such as these drugs will heal you… just fill in the blank
attention deficit such as “these drugs will heal you.”
Bingo. You’ve got it. These “beliefs and thoughts” are irrational and negative and block healing. Thes have been my arguments for years when I’ve been saying “no” to the drugs 9 out of ten patients that talk to me want.
Alice
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Thanks Nijinksy. Your comments have provided me with a great deal of consolation and lots of common sense when constantly attacked and oppressed by those insisting on defending the indefensible with their neverending Orwellian doublespeak and/or shifting the blame to others, which amounts to the typical Nuremburg Trial defense of ” I was only following orders,” which any decent human will see as an indefensible nondefense.
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I know Donna. Calm down, you’re not as alone as you think. Sometimes, when you get riled up you can’t see the not so little “little” things that are there for you. I’m not lecturing you, just reminding myself not to get so riled up I can’t see straight and might lash out at anything that comes along that might help and distract me from my anger. Seriously. None of us are separate from each other. It’s hard to believe that when you let go of anger towards another then you are reinstating something human that does communicate, even when this is just in your mind, a picture of what it is to be human that you allow to be there for all people, because it is there, beyond anger, free of the limitations anger would demand exist. Again, I’m saying this to remind myself. I, like so many of us, have had it that I got completely crazy because of the paranoia of people who look at labels, who look at content (DSM epitaphs…tomb markers). So, I experienced this lack of understanding and ended up in the “ghetto” of emotional life, experienced what “psychosis” is (something a psychiatric degree will not teach anyone, you have to have been there); and now have learned to let even that go (although it was teaching me to let go of fear, rather than it was a disease). There’s also this amazing spiritual aspect to psychosis, like there is for anyone that has been abandoned by the world. It’s not as if the machinery of society created the Universe (Monsanto copyrights new genetic model for the next big bang and is selling stocks in this creating a financial bubble which won’t burst for another 20 years…)…It’s actually something else that created the Universe, and this doesn’t have the fear based tactics of control, this doesn’t bankrupt everyone with guilt (no matter who you are and what you’ve done there’s no judgment on anyone). This is still there for anyone who has experienced what kind of fear runs people’s “cognition” making it impossible for them to really invest in this fear anymore and be “normal” or adhere to “statistical based norms.” Becoming psychotic is a way of acting out how ridiculous this is. At least it was for me, when I realized how fear was making me believe I needed to think things were going on which weren’t, things which took on “psychotic” dimensions, although this term “psychotic” breaks down when you look at the symbolism of my “non reality based thoughts” closer. In their symbolism and the emotional, cognitive and intuitive connections they have with life, they are much closer to reality than anything that judges them as being unrealistic. Nor do they have any of the danger put on them. The real danger is those labeling it as “psychotic” and trying to rob a person of the ability to experience what is designed (by nature) to help them let go of fears, find a true community and see there’s something there beyond it that does heal and no longer invest in the illusions that feed what causes the societal fears that causes the riffs in society that don’t attend to people which causes the behavior that traumatized them to begin with. Something does amend everything, I discovered. There’s not big or little about it. And it has no opposite, since it is real despite being as invisible as the connections the mind makes that are labeled as being “psychotic.” Anyhow PEACEOUT! IT”S SUCH A BEAUTIFUL DAY!
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Nijinski,
Thanks for the reminder that we are “all one” ( “None of us are separate from each other.”).
Thanks also for the reminder that anger turns off perceptions. (“Sometimes, when you get riled up you can’t see the not so little “little” things that are there for you.”) Fear does this too.
I like this. “… experience what is designed (by nature) to help them let go of fears, find a true community and see there’s something there beyond it that does heal…”
Really great messages can drown and be lost among angry words.
While anger is an understandable reaction to wrong doings, correcting wrongs requires calm thoughts and careful actions, together.(see “all one” above.)
Words are important. How I handle my feelings is important.
The more I study the things you all say, the more I see how we are all alike.
And yes. Thank you Nijinsky. It is a “such beautiful day”, right at this moment.
Alice
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Peace Donna, I’m not lecturing you just reminding myself and sharing something that might help if you can relate to it, which is possible despite my “psychotic” rambling. Here’s more: There’s this legend that aboriginals could disappear into the dessert. This, I understand, happened because their culture didn’t contain fear, wasn’t based on traumatizing people in order to control behavior and create “harmony”; and so when confronted with an invader with a gun ready to shoot them, their response wasn’t fear based. They could send an energy of love to the “attacker”; their reflexes were such that they could respond to the higher self of the “attacker” without judgment, not see them as doing anything wrong in regards to where they were coming from, that they were acting from the best that they could, but simply put forth that they could not condone their behavior. The result was that there was a “disconnect” between the higher self of the “attacker” and his earthly brain. He stopped seeing the aboriginal, although they were still there. Thus the attacker walked away and spread this myth that aboriginals could disappear into the dessert. Or one might say that who a person is is beyond what one can “see”, that the mind transcends this limitation that is thought to be “objective” regarding the physical senses. This always exists, and so the connection is lost when there’s no love, because there is no connection there when this is missing, although we still remain connected beyond being separate. A Philipino healers hand (the one’s called psychic surgeons) might be able to move through all this stuff that is so “objective” and being attracted to what is causing a blockage allow his hands to be used to remove it (although who the person was was supposed to be more stable physically). Then “physical” healing takes places because it’s not physical. The same, reality is supposed to be more stable to validate the fear based control tactics which are used when people believe traumatizing others creates harmony.
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Dr. Keys,
I agree that psychiatrists like you may not have had much say in how psychiatry was developed by the key academics, APA and other leaders. But, I have studied this history in depth and these top leaders or KOL’s as BIG PHARMA calls them are the ones who decided to force psychiatry into the medical model when they felt Freudian psychoanalysis was waning and they had too much competition from therapists in psychology, sociology, etc. Thus, Dr. Robert Spitzer and Dr. Allen Francis plotted to come up with the DSM III and IV that allowed them to treat humans like rock and insect specimens based on invented stigmas with many typical human behaviors listed in clusters to create hundreds of bogus disorders. Dr. Paula Caplan, Psychologist, in THEY SAY YOU’RE CRAZY reveals how the white old boy network in power VOTED in these so called disorders without a shred of scientific evidence that she is protesting on this site now due to the massive harm this sham medical model with its degrading stigmas causes others.
Anyway, it was because of the huge subjectivity and lack of scientific evidence that this new model of psychiatry attracted BIG PHARMA. The APA with its powerful associates in high positions were more than happy to sell out the profession and its patients to BIG PHARMA. When one sees the impact of the likes of “Dr” Joseph Biederman, famous or infamous psychiatrist at Harvard who almost single handedly created the ADHD and child bipolar fad frauds and his selling children out for millions with Johnson & Johnson by promising positive studies in advance to them for the efficacy of antipsychotics in toddlers no less, I think it is questionable as to who corrupted whom. Think of Johnson & Johnson’s previous stellar reputation used as a textbook case for MBA students for how it dealt with the poisoned Tylenol scare with a massive recall. And now they are deliberately poisoning children with lethal psych drugs and being charged huge fines for pushing off label use to children and other fraud.
Again, I realize that you were not one of the mostly powerful males that made these decisions for psychiatry or made all the millions of dollars from them, but you like others were forced to carry them out as part of the profession. I can see where people can be unaware of the truth at one point and wake up to the truth at another point. All of us were brainwashed to believe all the marketing spin of the psychiatry/BIG PHARMA complex that Bob Whitaker explains in his books. Dr. David Healy on his blog does a good job of exposing this for psychiatric and other drugs.
Most people did not find out the truth until they or close loved ones were threatened with harm, which was true in my case, but it took tons of research for me to find and know the unpalatable truth.
So, I don’t agree that BIG PHARMA made the decision for psychiatry to focus soley on its prescribing ability. The opposite is true because the key leaders saw this as giving them their special medical doctor status doing only what they could provide. This worked well for psychiatry for quite a while though the opposite was true for clients. But, as one APA president said, when you dance with the devil, you don’t always get to call the tunes or steps. So, I agree that as BIG PHARMA made more billions with their dangerous drugs as a result of colluding with psychiatry and lavishing them with money and gifts at the top especially, they gained more power over the profession, elected officials and the public.
From what you are saying and other sources, it seems that this is proving to be a disaster for psychiatry in that now all that is wanted is the cheapest level of pill pushers for med checks which is the ultimate in reductionism of psychiatry’s original intentions. I imagine those same key leaders who created this debacle will continue to do well at the top, but it appears that they and BIG PHARMA have greatly betrayed people like you in the day to day firing lines of your profession.
That’s why it seems to me that psychiatrists like you and Dr. Stephen Balt posting here may want to consider your own unique paths as doctors rather than allowing the same old devils of the APA and BIG PHARMA to call the tunes when it is obvious there is no honor among these thieves. It seems to me that a total rejection of psychiatry’s pretense of a medical model should be considered while pursuing a real medical/scientific model of natural/alternative holistic health remedies that would focus on a healthy mind/body/spirit and not mainstream psychiatry’s outdated focus on individual body parts or pretense thereof since neurology handles the actual physical brain. General medicine is guilty of this too, but not as bad as psychiatry since they must deal with actual tests and proof of their conditions though they have their own spin for pushing too many tests, drugs and procedures. It seems the best of both eastern and western medicine would be to combine mind and body again as is obvious with common sense and practice holistic, natural medicine dealing with both.
Though a sole practice may not be financially feasible, if this type of alternative, holistic medicine seems like something you would enjoy, perhaps teaming up with like minded people or serving as a consultant to others in work and other organizations might be possilble. If you check it out online, many people are becoming wellness coaches and are hired by various businesses, etc.
Anyway, though I can’t pretend that some sordid history doesn’t exist, I don’t think the victims of the perpetrators including those professionals and patients who were deceived, harmed and misled should keep forcing themselves to believe that the bare emperors are wearing any clothes now or ever were. Like those fooled by the boy who cried wolf once too often, sometimes it is best to ignore those sounding false alarms that only benefit themselves to everyone else’s great detriment. I think psychiatrists like you should abandon mainstream psychiatry’s sinking ship and pursue your role as a doctor in a way that makes you happy without being forced to sell your own soul to the devil. You might want to check out alternative psychiatrists like Dr. Hyla Cass or other specialties that appeal to you.
This post is to try to give some positive thoughts on how the system could be improved in a positive way and meet the needs of both providers and clients without doing harm.
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Donna,
Thanks for the positive and encouraging post.
Right now I’m writing as an alternative path to being a helping person on the planet. Perhaps down the road I will find a satisfying a place in direct patient care or consulting. Today, this is good enough for me.
Alice
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Robertr,
As I said below, it is all too easy to get somebody committed with lies for ulterior, evil motives due to power disparities and discrimination including those in the BIG PHARMA/PSYCHIATRY pathocracy.
You sound like a drill sargeant. You also fail to acknowledge that many have horrible reactions to SSRI’s, benzodiazopenes and neuroleptcs handed out like candy for minor ailments like insomnia, stress, anxiety and others that can result in iatrogenic bizare behavior that Dr. Peter Breggin describes in his book, MEDICATION MADNESS that could get someone committed for that or even to save their life from the poisoning like neuroleptic syndrome, etc. Of course, instead of admitting the iatrogenic harm, psychiatry blames the victim and says they really had bipolar or some other fraud stigma. See Dr. David Healy’s latest post exposing how corrupt BIG PHARMA spin doctor Mitch Daniels now turned politician came up with the evil spin that all nasty drug effects hidden by BIG PHARMA and psychiatry would be blamed on the victim’s so called mental illness like the shrinking brains from Ritalin and neuroleptics or mania and suicide/homicide caused by SSRI’s.
You serve your masters all too well!!
You sound like a “mental health expert” and have the BIG PHARMA/PSYCHIATRY spin down to a science to blame your victims. Those harmed directly or indirectly sure know better!
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In Oregon there are really not many people that are forced to take drugs, many people in fact want to take psychiatric medications. Most comments on this page are emotionally charged with lots of angry buzz words and accusations. Which is not really helpful if the intent is to begin to problem solve what can be done to change the mental health system.
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“Psychiatric medications” are just drugs. They are not real medications, medications are for true diseases with a start and finish date. Legal drugs work no better or no worse than illegal ones. The problem here is that the Government has to foot the bill for the “psychiatric medications”. They are “medications” because those in power say they are medications. It’s just a huge con game. The system will break soon enough from the cost of the skyrocketing number of disabled persons.
Who is psychiatry helping?
Pharma Co wasn’t happy with the percentage of the population it already had as virtual slaves. Now that psychiatric judgment is expanding, people are objecting to the new DSM and perhaps the whole system will be brought into question.
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Markps2,
You are right about pharmaceutical corporations making efforts to expand their markets. This is the prime directive of immortal capitalistic corporations. In this country we have given them the same rights as live humans. I find this whole idea frightening. These same corporations will be around to “make profits” from my great grandchildren, no matter what we do today.
You have begun to see through the veils of deception a bit.
I would ask you to step back and broaden your perspective with regard to ALL pharmaceutical products. You may see that there are more people in our boat than you ever imagined.
Think about cholesterol lowering drugs for a moment. These are widely prescibed drugs making recent inroads into off label pediatric markets. They have enormous marketing campaigns that lead us to believe elevated blood cholesterol is a medical disease.
Where is the “endpoint” or the “true disease”? These drugs(All but one with other problems) lower cholesterol levels by poisoning every mitochondria in the body and brain. We depend on mitochondrial function for health. In short term studies (the ones we’ve seen) these drugs reduced the incidence of repeat heart attacks in a few men during a three month trial. The side effects include destruction of muscle tissue that can cause siezures and death, constant aching exhaustion and trouble thinking. There has been no evidence that these should ever been given to women, men or kids that have no history of heart attack.
So. I have another blog here to get the word out to folks not caught up in this conversation. Right?
This is a big boat we are in. Way bigger than psychiatry. Lets all work together.
Alice
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Donna,
I think some psychiatrists have been caught in the “system” just as much as we “patients.”
They went to medical school to try to help people. I know some psychiatrists who dig in their heels and go along with the “medical model” because they were in school at the wrong time in history.
Some are JUST NOW learning about how evil drugs and ECT are, but they are so deep into it that they risk their livelihood if they go against it.
When I brought Mad in America to my psychiatrist in 2002, I naively thought he would accept it and change his ways. He poo-pooed the book, even though I was excited about it. I stopped seeing him before Anatomy came out, which is good because I would have dropped it on his head.
Peter Breggin was way ahead of his time, and he was a voice in the wilderness for a long time.
I am just glad that some psychiatrists are starting to see their way out of this mainstream delusion.
Some day we will all look back on this time of transition (which I think it is) and wonder how it ever happened. You can’t turn the Titanic around overnight. But it can be sunk, and mainstream psychiatry is headed that direction.
I only hope it happens in my lifetime because it has caused too much suffering already.
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Marianne,
Thanks for talking about how psychiatrists could be “caught” in the system. They are. The risks for a psychiatrist certainly include the loss of livelihood for themselves and their family.
The hardest part for me has been the loss of my trust in myself and my own personal judgement. If I could be duped about safety and efficacy pharmaceautical products, what else could I be wrong about in my personal andprofessional life? This strikes at the base of personal identity and integrity.
What if all those years I believed I was doing good for my patients (excuse my archaic terminology) and I wasn’t? What if I had unwittingly being “doing harm?” This is a much bigger pain to face than not having a job. This is the complete loss of the foundations of my professional identity and internal sense of integrity.
This was a lot to have crash on my head at home alone one afternoon.
I know I will certainly take flack for saying that I understand and have sympathy for those doctors that don’t “getit” I even have sympathy for those that “get it” and then completely pack it all away under lock and key again deep inside. I have seen people in therapy with me do something quite like this to defend against the excruciating pain of awakening to painful truths of how they’ve been living. If they’ve been living that wrong then they’ve “wasted all those years”. Sometimes it’s easier to shut it all away and keep doing the same old pain you’re used than to face the big sudden pain of knowing.
I’m not saying this is “right” or condoning continued injury to their patients after they see what’s happening. I’m only suggesting that I can see things from their side.
Thanks for your understanding,
Alice
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Alice, I think it’s like being a sexual abuse survivor. It feels like you’ve been ruined. Like Nijinsky was (1890-1950).
As if you have been ruined, as if you’re not going to be good enough for whatever you believe being ruined robs you of. As if you’ve been broken and never will be fixed. As if it’s the end. This is of course never is the case, because you can turn this around and give from a place where there’s no limit to how much you can give, instead of being ruined. When people share thoughts and they are truly creative there’s not limit there. When you read this, if it means anything to you and you get something out of it, that doesn’t mean that there’s any loss to me. This is different than if one gives up their last piece of bread. Here there’s no loss. I won’t go hungry because you read this and got something from it. I think that’s what forgive means. for-give. To move on in such a way in life. And I think, when you do this, you tap into what created reality, and where home is for everyone beyond time and space. A place where all these things we think we need to fight against, and change, and do battle with don’t exist. A place where the belief in the need for defenses (to fight against loss) isn’t causing all the things we are trying to fight against. Because here there isn’t any loss. And so there’s no fear of it causing all of the loss. If you can turn things around this way there’s no loss for having been “duped” either.
“Nijinsky”
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Nijinsky,
Very shams/Rumi/Barks Sufi poetry sounding to me. Lovely.Thanks.
Alice
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Nijinsky,
So you know what I mean about Rumi’s poetry, here is one translated by Coleman Barks. Rumi was a Sufi poet from the 1300’s.
Alice
One Song
“Move beyond any attachment to names
Every war and every conflict between human beings has occured because of some disagreement about names.
It’s such an unecessary foolishness because just beyond the arguing is a long table of companionship set and waiting for us to sit down.
What is praised is one, so the praise is one too, many jugs being poured into a huge basin.
All religions, all this singing one song.
The differences are just illusion and vanity.
Sunlight looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall and a lot different on this other one, but it is still one light.
We have borrowed these clothes, these time-and-space personalities, from a light, and when we praise, we are pouring them back in.”
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Wow Alice. Thanks! I never heard of Coleman Barks, I looked him up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTFsUQZcSJU
I wasn’t trying to be poetic, it’s what A Course in Miracles taught me…..So you can see there’s something Universal there
And since that poem (the one Barks recites on the link) is about not picking up a book but picking up an instrument. I can do two more things
1) Explain that your mind when it’s involved with music and something aural, that it has a better perspective in regards to time. People who have motoric injuries and need to learn to walk again or such are helped immensely with music that goes with the movement they are making. This also helps with speech. It helps with things mapped out in time. http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=26122
2) Feel completely free to share with anyone of your patients or anyone interested the sound of “Nijinsky” (me) healing of “schizophrenia.” Or rather music healing me: http://www.youtube.com/oelte
(not that there isn’t music in a book)
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Nijinsky,
I’m not surprised to hear the effect of music on healing the brain. It has been known for a long time that music study makes for more complex brain development in kids. With the new-ish thought that brain developement and re-wiring goes on our whole life, it only follows that music will help this.
Good work.
Thanks,
Alice
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Nijinsky,
Dang. Is this you playing? Who is the composer? Lovely.
More tears in eyes this morning from the lovliness of this Suite in Three Movements.
Alice
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God’s the composer, I suppose. Those thoughts came into my mind and I put them into the computer. Then they were printed out so I could play them on a piano. Or maybe it’s something like water that composed it. Something that soothed me so I wouldn’t crumble and fragment into many different part, after knowing I could go to the music or get “mad.”
Note of warning. Although water may have composed this music. Do not pour water into your computer thinking it will then be able to print out music.
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This maze here of Comments! I think this should appear as a response now to Alice’s asking me whether “Nijinsky” composed the music….. And I tried responding once and it appeared underneath everything. So, here we go again:
God’s the composer, I suppose. Those thoughts came into my mind, I played with them and I put them into the computer. Then they were printed out so
I could play them on a piano. Or maybe it’s something like water that composed it. Something that soothed me, gave me something to be involved with so I wouldn’t crumble and fragment into many different part, after knowing I could go to the music or get “mad.”
Note of warning. Although water may have composed this music. Do not pour water into your computer thinking it will then be able to print out music.
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Nijinsky,
Thanks. I will not pour water on the computer.
Alice
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I just left a reply that says “your comment is waiting moderation.” After that another reply did post. I’m wondering why this happened. I do find this a bid unnerving trying to figure out such things and what I possibly might have done or said wrong. Were there to many links on that post?
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I don’t know; if it was automatic, it must have had to do with links in the post.
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Can I say something about ECT?
I had 28 of them when I was 19 years old. I felt giddy and goofy and forgot why I was in the hospital.
After about six months the giddy feeling went away and the depression and the fact that I was stuck in a State hospital hit me very hard.
Because I was under 21, my parents had signed the consent. They were told that if I didn’t have ECT, there was “nothing else that could help”, and they would release me.
Of course I was also given drugs and all the other “therapies” that were in vogue at the time.
I later found out that having a grand mal seizure makes a person feel pretty good afterward, as though in an altered state. But it is temporary.
I have known people, back then, and even now who believe that ECT does wonders, and they go back for more.
They are willing to sacrifice their mental capabilities of logic and reason, and sometimes have been TALKED INTO it for the sake of the people around them.
I knew an elderly woman who had been shocked over 200 times. She had the kind of anxiety that caused her to wring her hands and moan. Her husband would have her shocked six times and she would be “OK” for awhile.
That was not “functioning” in my opinion, but as long as she could wash dishes, he liked her that way.
I was sure I had lost IQ points, I just felt stupid and didn’t care about anything.
Since I was part of a research program, they tested my IQ four times over a year, and it was back to where it was when I first came into the hospital.
Of course, I didn’t need ECT. But they needed research subjects. They were testing unilateral ECT at the time. So only half my brain got zapped.
Now they use low-pulse, lower voltage AC or some nonsense. It’s still like kicking your computer to make it work.
Every doctor I asked, “would YOU ever have ECT?” said, “No, but I don’t NEED it!” That was the most arrogant, disgusting, dehumanizing thing anyone said to me.
It took me two years (so much for the high IQ) to figure out the right answers to “do you hear voices?’ and “are you suicidal?”
That was 40 years ago. I truly hope that Dr. Healy doesn’t think this should take the place of brain-disabling drugs.
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Marianne,
Thanks for telling your personal story about your experiences with ECT and at the state hospital. I’m sorry you were put through these. Nineteen is so young. (Not that anyone should have to go through what you went through at any age). I look around and see 19 year olds. They are all so young and growing still and fragile.
Best,
Alice
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Hey robertr,
Sorry to be slow to get back with you here. “Unexpected” level of responses and I was out all day.
You sound like a guy with lots of experience and knowledge about the laws and how things work. Thanks for offering your expertise here.
Best,
Alice
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Robertr,
SSRIs and second generation neuroleptics were approved for use on the basis of short-term studies. Scientifically speaking, their long-term efficacy and safety were unknown, so any long-term use of these drugs on people is experimental from a scientific point of view. Yet, thousands of people have been forced to take these drugs on a long term basis through the use of inpatient and outpatient commitment orders.
Large scale, forced medical experimentation on human beings. Sounds like a human rights abuse to me.
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Mary,
The state laws vary considerably with regard to committments and forcing people to take medicines against their will. The place I have seen mandated long term outpatient psychiatric medications has been in the PSRB (psychiatric security review board) situation where a person committed crimes for which they were convicted. In this case, medicine is part of the their sentencing.
The majority of inpatient and outpatient medications are taken on a voluntary basis.
Yes. All medicines, including psychiatric ones, are released after short research protocols. No one knows the long term effects when they are released. I explain this to people that come in wanting the new drug they saw on television. I recommend, if they must take medicine, to use one that’s been around for years so we have a better idea what to expect from it.
Best,
Alice
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Is it wise to agree that anyone “must take” medications, given the knowledge available (listed in Robert Whitaker’s and Breggins books to mention just a few). What’s the difference between this and selling street drugs except that someone selling street drugs doesn’t advertise that they address the chemical imbalance an emotional condition allegedly created (which it hasn’t been proven to create, although the drugs that address this alleged imbalance do create a chemical imbalance)? What’s the difference between this and being a pusher for street drugs, many of which were psychiatric drugs 50 or so years ago? Do you know that the CIA is implicated in introducing Crack Cocaine into the ghetto, because they weren’t given enough government funding, and could illicitly make money that way? Is this also offensive to point out a sort of correlation with this and eugenics in that is destabilizes the ghetto even further, same as psychiatric drugs have done here and in other places (And did 50 years ago)?
I’m not even judging the people so traumatized and so lacking in self worth that they do such acts. It’s not my place to judge, this would just add to the fear that caused such behavior. But I don’t think that putting them on psychiatric drugs because of their behavior will help them understand themselves.
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Nijinsky,
I agree with your statement that “putting them on psychiatric drugs because of their behavior will (not) help them understand themselves”.
I have always had concerns that addicting drugs are addicting drugs, however nicely they’re packaged.
In my primarily psychotherapy based private practice for 13 years, I said “no” giving to a lot of medicines because I knew they would block the work of self understanding.
Be careful. We may have to agree.;-)
I can’t keep up with you on the historic CIA and things. It sounds like you’ve studied it all a great deal more than I.
Alice
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The fact is that it was known what the SSRI’s did, even with short term studies. The drug companies hid all of those studies and shoved the information deep down into the maze of the innards of their companies and wouldn’t let anyone have access to it. this is why so many of them have lost million/billion dollar lawsuits to many states. Johnson and Johnson lost their Respirdal case in Arkansas two weeks aga to the tune of 1.1 billion dollars because they hid the effects of their wonderful drug. The effects have always been known, at least by the drug companies making these poisons.
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Stephen,
Thanks for reminding us all that this information was hidden from all of us. I had no idea at the time either. It has been assumed by a some that I (we psychiatrists) must to have known what was going on. Nope. Known “at least by the drug companies” is the key phrase.
This is why I agreed to write for MIA when I was asked.
Alice
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Alice,
You sound like a wonderful person and I’m sure you would never force someone to take medications. I myself took an SSRI for many years, and I don’t see any problem with that. It was a clear case of informed consent. I was perfectly aware that the long-term effects were unknown and made the choice to take the risk.
Involuntary subjection to polypharmacy regimens and long-term usage does happen, though. I don’t think you need to feel responsible for it since you haven’t participated and you’re out here publicly calling for reform in the mental health industry.
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Dr. Keys,
Didn’t you have access to side effect profiles of drugs you prescibed, access to the PHYSICIAN’S DESK REFERENCE and other sources to find some of the many horrible side effects of psych drugs? Some of the worst ones for SSRI’s and other drugs were available in these sources, Dr. Peter Breggin’s work and others.
So, if a psychiatrist prescibes SSRI’s for a diagnosis of depression, many people can have dangerous side effects including mania, suicidal ideation and other symptoms. For a long time psychiatry and BIG PHARMA lied and said that SSRI’s only negatively affected those with bipolar disorder, so then they were givent the usual cocktail of many toxic drugs combined. The stigma combined with the chemical lobotomy of the drugs frequently destroys the victim’s life per the DSM article by Dr. Paula Caplan yesterday. Maybe the psychiatrist prescribing the first drugs is left by the patient who goes on to have this horrific bipolar horror story due to the iatrogenic effects of the initial SSRI drugs. Of course, if not enlightened about the truth, this person will be destroyed and the original psychiatrist won’t have a clue about the huge damage caused by providing a depression stigma and SSRI’s, the gateway to the latest bogus fad fraud bipolar disorder stigma with its never ending spectrum expansion.
Anyway, just food for thoughts.
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Alice:
One of the main reasons you end up being called “a prescriber” or “an LMP” is because many of the people writing the prescriptions are not doctors. In Oregon the trend, particularly in public mental health services, is to use nurse practitioners to replace doctors. From the perspective of administrators, a nurse practitioner costs about half of the salary of a psychiatrist. In fact the role is mainly about writing prescriptions. We don’t task psychiatrists, nurse practitioners and physician assistants with doing anything other than assessment and writing prescriptions. So the name used for that role is a product of seeing medication as the primary treatment for people with mental disorders.
And I agree that having fun at work is a good thing.
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Prescriptions are just a permission slip from the government who treat adults like children when it comes to drugs.
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I think you are one astute person. If you were ever in the system, and I have the feeling that you were, you must have given those psychiatrists one hell of a run for their money. And becasue of that, you probably got drugged worse than ever! Those of us in the system who get well and truly survive and recover, are the non-compliant people who won’t accept the quackery and flim-flammery of those calling themselves “doctors!” I like your responses; you’re quick on your feet and think fast.
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Thank you. I’ll never be compliant. It’s a badge of honor not to bow down before the altar of the cult of eugenic quackery that is psychiatry.
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Amen and pass the ammmunition!
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Be careful what you wish for!!
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Scott,
Thanks for posting here. Yes, I love having fun at work.
Alice
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Alice the people I have served for 35 years don’t want to be called patient because of the pejorative label of mental patient. You say a patient is a patient is a patient. But imagine this- “There goes Alice the dental patient” vs “There goes Alice the mental patient.” Can’t you see the difference?
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And the reason it is a pejorative to be labeled a mental patient was helped along by psychiatry creating millions of patients against their will.
But by far the worst crime against humanity that psychiatry committed was to smear a whole group of people as having no agency, no responsibility, no humanity. Psychiatry lied to the world and lied to the loved ones of people and told the world that people labeled so, were nothing but talking brain diseases. Psychiatry did that. Not the people themselves. Not their actions however bizarre.
Psychiatry’s belief system perpetuated the Hollywood stereotype too.
That is, unless the good doctor is prepared to prove my brain is diseased… (and then they fell silent).
Crickets. Chirping.
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Dr. Cornwall,
Do you have your favorite replacement word then? Mostly in the office I say “Mrs. Jones” or “Mike”, depending on our agreement. I have yet to say “mental patient Mike”. I think of them as “my patient” not “my mental patient”.
Alice
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Alice I always call everyone by their first name and they me call me by mine.
Hang in here with us Alice, you are taking allot of heat now, and a great deal that clearly doesn’t belong to you. We need your heart and grit in this struggle to turn this ship around for the sake of the ones suffering that I know you have dedicated your life to helping.
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Michael,
I came home this afternoon to 67 replies from this morning’s post. “Unexpected” again. A bit much to sort through in one go but I’m having fun.
I am also mostly on first names with people after those first polite introductions. I haven’t spent much time working in years where I see the same person twice. We are always on the polite first meeting terms. I introduce myself as “Dr. Keys” and invite them to call me “Alice” if they prefer.
I’m old school. They are legally my patients and I have legal and moral responsibilities to them because of this from the moment I agree to treat them. Perhaps I should have gone to law school. 🙂
I am dedicated to working to turn this boat around. Glad you’re on board. We can only do this together.
Warm regards,
Alice
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Actually, I feel like I have taken “heat” from Dr. Keys on other blogs no less when I had been avoiding this blog.
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Donna,
Sorry if you feel you’ve taken “heat” from me. Thanks for being here.
Alice
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I agree! Hang with us and bear with us for a while. We do have much to share and teach, even though we have “broken brains” (supposedly). We need intelligent people from your side of the fence to join us in this battle to save the lives of people. People truly are being destroyed every day and we need help in turning the ship around.
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If Alice Keyes wants to be called a doctor then she should behave like one. Prescribing medications that have as little scientific backing as saying that sugar, alcohol, street drugs, chocolate, caffeine etc. make you feel better; overlooking the damage; saying this has something to do with “having fun in life,” not seeing the addictions, disabling effects, loss of life all of this has… and then ranting about wanting to be called a doctor. Then practice healing: scientifically!
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This comment is too much of a personal attack. I despise so called biological psychiatry, despise the decision many in the psychiatric profession make to coerce people, despise the quackery and pseudoscience, but I tried to be a little more restrained in relation to the author of this blog post herself. I talked about broader systemic issues and my moral views on the choices the personnel in the system make.
I know it is tempting to unload in a less focused way in the discussion. I know it is an emotive topic. But what you’ve gone and done there is just jeopardizing the entire thing here, if you push too hard like that, they may shut down the whole comments section on the whole webzine.
Alice Keys is rather new here. Psychiatrists write here. People who hate psychiatry write here. Both groups read here, both groups comment here. People in between read here and write here. Alice Keys has written some good stuff, and some poor stuff. Just the other day I saw a comment where she was praising Soteria. She’s participating. She’s trying to evolve along what must be a harrowing and confronting intellectual journey for any psychiatrist.
I really wouldn’t be writing this comment if your comment Nijinsky had just been just 20% milder, but I hope you won’t hold it against me if I point out that I read your comment thought ‘wow’, danger zone, you’re pushing too hard there.
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That’s your choice to think my comment is a personal attack. However, I’m just pointing out facts in relationship to the term “doctor” and healing. And I’m not going to be phased to look at what’s truly going on in another manner, whether you see that as a personal attack or not. There’s nothing “mild” about overlooking the truth, in fact that’s quite harsh!
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I just feel there are ways of strongly, very strongly speaking about things in broader terms than making it laser focused on Alice Keys herself.
I don’t think that the writers should have carte blanche to say anything they like without facing the potential gauntlet of disapproving comments if some readers disapprove of the article.
I just think I’ve read hundreds of comments on here in recent days and yours is the harshest couple of comments, inc. the one below…
Bob Whitaker had to take time out of his busy schedule preparing his presentation for Philadelphia to write this piece warning against personal attacks…
http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/04/guidelines-for-a-thoughtful-discussion/
Just in the last couple of weeks, and I’d hate to think that the comments section on here might get another smackdown in the wood shed. I’d just say, there are ways of saying psychiatry isn’t real medicine without ripping particular psychiatrists to shreds. Especially ones who are making an earnest effort to bridge the gap.
Look, there is a potential ally in everyone. You talk to them in a few years they might believe completely different things about the key moral issues of the subject.
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Hi Anonymous,
Thanks for the support. We are all on journeys.
Alice
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A few quotes:
“When you feel overwhelmed, out of personal resources and don’t know what to do, you want to talk to someone who has ideas about what to do next.”
Were you ever aware, in all your happiness to be around people in a locked ward, that they didn’t have this right anymore?
And no, I’m not looking for someone acting happy about their job, as an excuse to be put on something I don’t need.
And “Second. The simple statement that I have a medical degree and professional title triggers angry reactions from some folks. For a few, this is not an innocuous reaction.” I’m not surprised at this lack of understanding, even when it’s someone who went to school till they were 31. It’s not about the medical degree whatsoever (no matter how happy you are about it, how hard you worked or anything else which is supposed to correlate with jealousy, resentments…whatever). It’s about what you do with your medical degree, what you practice; and that it completely doesn’t add up medically. And since “medically” doesn’t meant much anymore: scientifically in regards to healing…
Focusing on other people’s supposed unjust or reactions and saying you are then aware of icebergs… this is quite a fantasy about the Titanic I imagine.
Other people are more interested in reality.
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Again, I don’t think that’s quite called for, too personal.
We can argue broadly and non-specifically about whether an M.D is of any help with anything other than a biological determinist response to human distress, but really, I say tone it down, play the man/woman and not the ball.
can we restrain ourselves in the comments here just 20% take it down a notch.
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Again, I don’t see this as a personal attack, I’m simply pointing out gross inconsistencies. Those can’t be “toned” down; they are that severe. And I’m not going to argue about this anymore, or respond to a whole series of posts that aren’t about the material anymore, but about personal interpretation on how someone should express themselves.
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Nijinsky,
The “happy” time I referred that made me turn the corner into psychiatry was 6 months in 1983. The majority of the people there were voluntary at the time.I was also happy for the two years (87-89) I worked on another locked unit. Again, most were voluntary back. Things have changed. I’ve spent my outpatient and crisis work helping people avoid hospitals.
I did not refer to reactions as “unjust”, simply as unexpected to me. I thought it could mean there were more strong feelings that I wasn’t hearing expressed, the “under water” part of an iceberg metaphor. I am, you see, a member of the group of humans called psychiatrists. When the entire group is blasted, it hits me too.
Thanks for reading and responding.
Alice
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After being trained as a chaplain in a huge psychiatric hospital in New Orleans, after working as a chaplain in a large medical hospital, and now working as a peer worker in a state hospital; I put all doctors on alert and not just psychiatrists. All too many doctors of all specialties act like they are God Almighty and that they are the experts about our lives. I give no respect to anyone, just because they have the letters M.D. behind their names. Each and every doctor of every specialty must prove to me that they are worthy of taking care of my precious life. Those who are honest, transparent, and genuine receive the title doctor from me, and no others. I chose to call Alice Doctor because she is willing to admit that she doesn’t know it all and is willing to struggle alongside the rest of us to find some answers to a horrible situation.
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Stephen,
Wow. This one brings a tear to me eye. I am indeed struggling here with you all. Thanks for noticing. Alice
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Nijinsky,
Hello. Thanks for reading my rant and for your post in response.
Alice
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When you compare being the patient at the dentist’s with being referred to as a patient by psychiatry, you’re comparing apples to oranges. Where’s the disease? Where’s the body part that doesn’t function properly in your “patients”? As mentioned in my comment to Rossa above, I like the Open Dialogue approach that sees the “illness” as located in interpersonal relationships, not in individuals. Your “patients” are relationships, not people. People who work in the field of helping others in emotional distress are, at best, “doctors” in a metaphorical sense. A medical degree matters in this field about as much as it would matter to a person in emotional distress asking for help at the crisis center where I work that I’m a classical dressage instructor, too.
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I agree. All the practice suturing and all the nights spent head buried deep in cardiology textbooks are not going to help you one iota tell you why human beings under stress have breakdowns and sometimes escape into delusion and unwanted thoughts in the face of massive overwhelm.
One use of a medical education I could think of off hand is to know the fatal dose of drugs so that when you order the nurses to carry out another brutal take down and forced injection you know the approximate weight of the person and not to overdose and kill them, and even then sometimes they get it wrong and kill people. But hey! what’s malpractice insurance for?
A medical education allows you to control behavior with drugs, like a thug, and know more than a layperson about what precisely those drugs are doing to the brain you never proved disease in in the first place.
Whereas the common date rapist simply slips a roofie into his victim’s drink and doesn’t need to know the half life of the substance and what precisely is happening in the neurochemistry of the drug action etc. The principle is the same…
1. Person labeled mental patient is not doing what the thug wants them to do, so the thug will order nurses to do their dirty work for them and drug them.
2. Woman at the bar is not consenting to have sex with the date rapist so the thug will drug them.
If the thug labels the woman’s refusal of consent a ‘symptom of a brain disease’ that is not going to stand up in court as an excuse for slipping a roofie into her drink.
But a psychiatrist can stand up in court and label refusal and noncompliance a ‘symptom of a brain disease’ and the judge will rubber stamp some more thuggish attacks against the person labeled brain diseased.
Labeling them brain diseased, drugging them, and filling their minds full of lies and hope destroying learned helplessness, is a crime against the distressed person’s humanity so grave and dire that very few can even grasp the gravity of what is occurring in society with psychiatry meddling in so many lives.
Society holds the date rapist in contempt, for his brutal and callous disregard for the human rights of the woman he drugs.
Society gives Psychiatrists a Nobel Prize for the lobotomy. And life tenure for coming up with new ways to label infants Bipolar.
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I think that the factor of people not being convenient figures large in involuntary commitments. One does not have to commit a crime or have an illness to have one’s liberty taken away. Extreme and bizarre, or even just odd and eccentric behavior is THAT disconcerting to others?? Where is the crime? I have seen so many people who could carry out the functions of their own lives in their own ways be committed because they were loud and their families or neighbors could not understand why. I am not kidding. This was the major reason for more commitments than I can count. First of all, it is inconvenient, as I said. But second, people jump from “I don’t understand” to “I am afraid” to “You are a danger to me” without any logic necessary. And last, involuntary commitment and forced treatment are the ultimate in blaming the most sensitive person in a family or social network when things are going wrong. When I can locate the problem in YOU, I do not have to look at ME.
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Lowry,
“people jump from “I don’t understand” to “I am afraid” to “You are a danger to me” without any logic necessary.”
“When I can locate the problem in YOU, I do not have to look at ME”
Very nicely written. I think you may be able to add “I’m rightfully angry” in after the “I am afraid” in many human situations. Scared shifts to mad pretty fast for most folks.
I’m curious what state you live in that has a law that allows committment based upon noisy, odd and eccentric behavior alone. I’m familiar with “dangerous to self and others” having to be witnessed attempts or actual harm.
I live in a financially resource poor state. This may help protect the rights of some. Psychiatric committments are paid for by tax dollars. Although Oregon does have involutary committment laws, money is channeled into keeping folks out of this situation. The financial bottom line ends up as a protector of human rights.
Thanks,
Alice
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The commitment comes when people fear odd behavior or the behavior is annoying to others. These behaviors subject them to other people trying to control them (or move them out of the way so that others are not inconvenienced or annoyed and their routines are not disrupted), which results in people feeling attacked and some may lash out because of feelings that they need to defend themselves. Family members convince doctors and courts that this translates to “danger to self or others.” Instead of help, people get controlled and provoked. All of us get frustrated when we are misunderstood and mislabeled, and we all rebel against being controlled. I have lived in several states and it happens in all of them, though I currently reside in a middle-of-the-road mid-Atlantic state.
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Lowry,
What you say makes sense to me. Thanks for walking through the process. I’m sure this must happen.
Alice
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Marian,
I am mom, a writer, a teacher, a baker, a walker, a gardener, a friend, a wife. But people consult me at work because I’m a doctor. It’s what I am.
I also (when I had an office pracice) did much work with cognitive and behavior therapy, relationship therapy, gestalt therapy, hypnotherapy, family therapy. I have always personally preferred the non-pill treatment approaches. But I’m still a physician. Even if I never write another prescription in my life, even if I let my license lapse, even if I never treat another patient I am still a doctor.
So you don’t have any use for doctors? Fine.
Thanks for reading me and responding,
Alice
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I didn’t have any use for a doctor when I experienced existential crisis. I wasn’t sick. I was confused and overwhelmed with emotions, and needed to make sense of the experience. Nobody needs a medical degree to help somebody else make sense of their experiences. Otherwise we’d all need a medical degree, because we’re doing it all the time, communicating, which is helping each other make sense of the world and understand ourselves. So, to me as the one who was looking for somebody to communicate my confusion to, and have them communicate their take on it back to me, the person’s professional training couldn’t have been more irrelevant. Which was relevant, was the person’s “training” in being a self-/aware human being. Professional training, no matter what kind, very rarely provides this sort of training. Life does. What professional training provides is the possibility to create and uphold a “safety gap” towards the person who’s perceived as “the patient”. The Norwegian psychologist Christian Moltu talks about a shield, held up by professionals whenever they feel overwhelmed themselves, whenever the Other (cf. Kierkegaard) confronts them with themselves. “Patient”, then, is a projection. It’s an understandable survival mechanism. But helpers in the field should have enough self-/awareness to be able to do without it. That would be their real professionalism.
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Marian,
I agree that no one needs a medical degree to help someone make sense of their experience. I couldn’t have said this better myself.
Of course my medical degree is not the only thing that has given me the skills I have used to help people. Much reading, experince, introspection, mentoring and being mentored has gone into my particular skill set. Other things as well. Medical school and residency training have only been parts of that.
I assert that all physicians and all psychiatrists are not interchangeable parts any more than all social workers or all poets are the same. Although I am a physician, I am (personally) good at things besides writing presciptions.
But I am a physician. It’s what I am.
Thanks,
Alice
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Now I’m a bit confused. First you say, you’re a mom, writer, teacher, baker, etc., etc., and then, all of a sudden, you’re a physician. Period. And not mom, writer, teacher, baker,… after all?
Some people consult you at work because you, among various other societal roles, also play that of a doctor, at your work place. True. More and more people who experience one or the other kind of emotional distress today turn to an MD in search for relief. The question is, why is that so? Why do people, increasing numbers, believe med school training is what qualifies somebody to provide the solution to their emotional problems? Is it because medicine has been able to provide a solution to emotional problems that is superior to any others? Or is this belief maybe due to what in marketing is called “creating a need”?
I’ve said it before: I for one feel concerned whenever I hear somebody talk about their emotional problems as an “illness”, and refer to themselves as a “patient” in need of some medical fixing. Why do people so willingly give up on their ability to solve their own existential problems? What has happened to them that they seem to no longer have any belief in this their ability anymore?
And then you have the other group of people, those who usually are referred to as “lacking insight”. Those who, for very understandable reasons, don’t want to be labelled “patients”. Those who don’t believe they’re “wrong” (= sick, in their heads), who are in a process where they are trying desperately to liberate themselves from whatever oppression they’ve been subjected to, mostly throughout their entire past, and to (re-)gain control in their own lives, trying to solve whatever the problem themselves. IMHO, what they need is to have their belief that they’re not “wrong”, but actually quite right to, eventually, revolt against the oppression, supported and strengthened, and to be offered some guidance through the process.
Language is a powerful tool. Call somebody a patient, and, if they accept this term applied to them, and identify with the societal role of the patient, they will feel sick, weak, and disempowered. Call them, for instance, a student (“teacher”), and you will get a very different reaction. Do you want to empower people? Do you want them to take responsibility, fully, in their own lives? Do you want them to discover that they can, and that there actually is no limit to what they can achieve? Or do you just want to treat?
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Marian,
Of course, I’m all of those things inside of different relationships with different people at different times. All of us are. When friends and family eat my bread they are appreciating my individual skills as a baker. They also know I’m a doctor. Being a doctor doesn’t make my bread any better or worse. But I am still a doctor.
I have no answer ot your question of why people would believe that a medical degree qualifies someone to help with emotional distress. This is a great question for which I have no answer. You may wish to pose this question to those people holding this belief. There are certainly many others better qualified and trained to help with emotional distress. That said, any individual doctor could have exceptional skills to help with emotional distress.
You pose a lot of good questions,
Alice
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Having no answer to the question why people think a medical degree qualifies someone to help with emotional distress, do you have an answer to why you prescribe medications, with your medical degree, which you otherwise couldn’t do, having no answer to why people would want such help?
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Nijinsky,
This is a longer and more complicated answer than fits in this moment. But consider that much of the answer will be viewed through my “retrospectroscope” which changes how things look. All decisions are time dependent.
Best,
Alice
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Dear Marian,
thank you for your thoughtful comment. It is really to the point, as I see it.
Being aware of one’s own position in relationships, one’s own blind spots, one’s own fear of human suffering, first and foremost being a fellow human, and being respectful and acknowledging towards self and others, are what constitute possibilities for being helpful in meeting with an Other’s confusion and pain. A medical or clinical psychological degree in itself is in now way sufficient or even neccesary.
But nor is it disqualifying, I firmly believe. I work, and often struggle with, these ethical and relational issues, trying to become better at helping, and through writing and talking about them, trying to help other’s becoming better at being helpfully present in themselves with the Other. And, I do have a doctoral degree in clinical psychology and I do work from within a psychiatric system. Does that render me useless?
True and important, the psychiatric system has been, can be, and probably also will be to a certain extent, athoritarian and oppressive. But within it are doctors, nurses, psychologists who are human beings with a deep intent to help. And many are helped here, not by the system, but by the relationship to a human, working in this system, being a doctor or nurse and also being an self-aware and other-aware human.
I teach students in the university who are to become clinical psychologists. True, some are motivated by getting a position in a system. Also true, some are motivated by a deeply felt wish to be helpful. The despair they feel when they doubt their own personal skills in being helpful is big, the process of self-awareness it motivates seems genuine.
The study you cite is one that I am proud of. And what you cite is precise, and still not the full story. I am proud of it because it shows how dedicated therapists (both psychologists and psychiatrists) from different affiliations work and struggle to be helpful relating to the depths of human suffering in an Other. It shows that therapy is profoundly human rather than technical. What you write is true, they describe “a shield” of professionalal techniques available and often temping to use to create a distance to the other. What you don’t mention, and what the study is about, is ways that they work, in their professional lives and in their personal life, to put away this shield, to find hope with the other and to stay committed and present to the suffering. And that they say, this is what professionalism is really about, the committment to presence and not shielding off.
When does my degree help me be helpful? Especially, I think, when I meet the people who suffer the most, suffering beyond words, suffering ofte beyond a meaningful connection to existence. Having knowledge about how others have experienced similar yet different suffering before, what has helped other people, and also how others have managed to survive helps me think. And it gives me hope where the other might have lost hope. When I can think, when I can hope, this can help me remaing close and human, contributing with hope and understanding, with the other when she or he searches for meaning. It can help me keep my shield down.
Thank you again, Marian, for the comment. I basically agree, and at the same time take issue with your quite harsh and one-sided description of destructive effects of professional training. I think what I say is, we have the professional system, and we have the people in it. They are as different as they are many. How they use their professionalism in their meeting with suffering others is their personal responsibility, which can be managed in good ways, or bad.
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Christian,
Thanks for your well-thought, well-written description of your work and professional background. This helps give balance to the discussions here.
Welcome,
Alice
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Marian,
Exactly. Very well-said! Apples and oranges. (I like the idea of the “patient” being the relationship/environment, too!!)
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When I got out of high school, I set my sights on studying forestry. I grew up in the Texas Hill Country, and loved the outdoors – fishing, camping, all of it.
I attended the largest forestry school in the world, in Nacogdoches, Texas – Stephen F. Austin State. There were guys there who were better at it than I was, much better.
So I started considering law enforcement. In my sophomore year, I was the sole security guard for a major hospital – working the grave yard shift, and I got to know each of the local police officers who came into the place, along with the paramedics… I thought this would be a great career.
As fate would have it, many people came into my life, and I went on to pursue a career working with people with disabilities….
Now that I’m in my mid-fifties, I often wonder what it would have been like to have been a police officer… As my wife can attest, I’m still fascinated by what these guys do every day.
The reason I bring this up, is because as I read the comments on this post, it seems like something an office must encounter every day… At four-way intersections across the country.
Hearing what happened.
From everyone involved.
The one who swears someone “ran the light.”
Another who “didn’t notice the light had changed.”
Somone who had a baby in the back seat, and “turned around to see why she was crying.”
A young kid on his way to “his first date.”
A three-time drunk driver.
The young professional who was on his way to “close a big sale.”
The recently divorced woman with three children, who was in a huge “custody battle with her spouse.”
And then there must be all the witnesses…
The one who saw “the man driving recklessly.”
The one who “heard the tires squeal.”
Another who “saw the car plow into the side of the SUV.”
The one who swore “he wasn’t paying attention.”
And of course, the stories after the wreck, in hospital rooms with family members:
You were doing so well.. You “hadn’t had a drink in two years.”
Why did you let me take the car… “You knew I was to upset to drive.”
“You should have known better.”
I “had no idea the brakes were low.”
“I was changing the station on the radio.”
“I didn’t see her coming.”
“Why didn’t you slow down?”
“It’s your fault…. you should have been paying attention.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”
“This all wasn’t supposed to happen, I just wanted to see my grandmother in the nursing home.”
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive them.”
“I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself.”
I often wonder what my life had been like, had I heard all the stories.
Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a police officer.
There are a lot of stories I’ve heard along the way.
“Four-ways” of a different sort.
I don’t know what the answers are anymore.
I truly don’t.
Duane
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Thank you for listening.
Duane
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I doesn’t matter if they meant to cause the vehicle accident. They still go to prison. And the ones killed or left disabled get justice. Sometimes even some money.
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Duane,
Your writing is lovely and expressive. Thanks for putting yourself out here.
A lot of conversation today. A lot of energy. A lot of differing points of view. This is all good. Sorry I was out for the day. It was unexpected.
Warm regards,
Alice
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I’m really starting to find these remarks — I’m not reading anymore — I’ve found abundant here and in other blogs, as if it’s anyone’s task all of a sudden to give therapy to the therapist (tone it down, make it more mild) , otherwise they see it as a personal attack; this is like people suggesting that Kandinsky should soften the lines in his paintings, that Handel should have written music that was a little less Euphoric, that Beethoven should have been more “nice”….etc.
And this really only separates you from communicating anything on all sides! There is no gain or loss with inhibiting people’s responses; only people fragmented into incoherent statements based on gain and loss and how it will look according to gain and loss. And all there is is loss, because expression is creative; you inhibit it and all you get is loss, wagering with what you think you didn’t loose, since you believe in loss.
And I’m not talking about any “justice.” I’m simply talking about being human and expressing yourself. In the end I feel really sorry for psychiatrists, and their inability to actually relate to what heals. Those ARE the broken souls, not the people they are treating. Any act of compassion makes a difference in such areas. And I don’t add up everything they’ve done as if it’s my personal task to add it up and expose it as evil. It means nothing because it doesn’t add up. There’s nothing there. As little as someone thinking they need to start “educating” me on how I should respond, as if the life of the whole Universe depends on this one blog.
And it’s quite interesting for Mr. Whitaker to start saying this or that, when what I read it was because he was threatened by someone legally that was a psychiatrist. Because someone posted things that might cause legal trouble, because of what they exposed. This is something different than a whole new trend about personal attacks.
I also think that Mr. Whitaker whould do himself a favor to actually look at more than just “psychiatric” medications as something un-medical and un-healing that occurs in medicine. What I’ve heard is that he’s quite apologetic about vaccines and other things that ALSO clearly and scientifically correlate with harm, causing mental illness and an epidemic.
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Well that was a million times a better piece of writing in response to the having fun at work in a locked psych ward than Alice Keys could present to us evidently.
“door was double locked- keeping on the outside of the unit at least some of what the kid needed a break from.”
I can only point out that in a perfectly coercive world we could give smokers a “break” from the cigarettes behind a locked door, and food addicts a break from Burger King behind locked doors. I find it offensive that only a specific subset of unwanted thoughts and behaviors are targeted for forced psychiatry while everyone else gets the liberty to make mistakes. Why pick on us?
In a free society locking up people who have not committed a crime against others or property simply cannot be justified, no matter what small or large core of non-criminals you’d love to ‘help’ by coercing you’d like to focus on.
In my experience, people who employ coercion in their do-gooding, tend to remember with rose colored glasses the ones they coerced who wound up ‘thankful’ and they don’t give a rip about the ones they traumatized for life. Therefore, why coerce in the first place? if you’re doing more harm than good, wrecking one group of detainees’ lives in order to craft a coterie of coerced indoctrinated admirers, why bother coercing anybody? wouldn’t it be better to let people alone? It’s the arrogance and hubris of it all that disgusts me. The arrogance that forced psychiatry is the solution to a crisis, it’s no solution, it’s like injecting cancer cells into the crisis.
“I focused on protection from intruders,”
What’s the closest an intruder can get to someone? break into their house? No. The closest, most intrusive intruder I know of in existence, is somebody who will assault you on the molecular level, with forced drugging.
You sound okay. I’ll give you that. But you were part of a profession where a lot of us feel safer if you’re on strike. Maybe I’ll re-read what you wrote and think on it.
I
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Thank you. Those “defining moments” make all the difference in the world. thanks for sharing.
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“locking people up who have not committed a crime”…and then sending them a bill for $6,800.00.
True story.
Trying to explain the situation to the person in the billing department for four hours a day, two weeks and no solution, creates frustration and a bad mark on one’s credit report.
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Saying what one has to say, is important. This thread was an emotional read—as is the post by Dr. Keyes; thank you doctor.
Two things, thank you anonymous for pointing out that one’s manner of delivery matters, and for your courage to call it like you see it, specifically for saying Nijinsky’s comment seemed to be a ‘personal attack’ and telling him/her it was inappropriate.
Thank you Marian for bringing up the value of Open Dialogue the underlying premise of Open Dialogue is that is only in relationship with one another that we experience distress, crisis and psychosis and that only in relationship, can we promote healing.
This means empathy and positive regard for others is really IMPORTANT all of the time for all of us, regardless of our own personal experiences. It is our own personal experiences which at times put each of us at risk of our perceptions becoming a justification for showing others no empathy, compassion or respect…If this has caused any of us grave harm, why would we do it to someone else?
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Becky,
Thanks for coming into this conversation.
Relationships and communication are important. The most important healing tool, relationship, in psychiatry (and all of medicine) has been diminished by the growing focus on pills and by the takeover of the “doctor-patient realtionship” by insurance “care managers”.
Thanks for your thoughtful and caring response,
Alice
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And you are critizing others here in the process of lecturing people here like children while proclaiming your noble traits.
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I’m still quite bewildered…. what this whole article about having fun at work; contrasted with people that have said certain things, …. although we don’t have anything but a condensed version of what they said….And then call me Doctor.
From what I can gather, because you’ve said you were having fun in a locked ward with your patients, others are shocked, have communicated this, and according to you say that’s you’re like Hitler.
No further statement about what goes on in these locked wards, what entails fun, or any mention of the dire straits that all of these people in a locked ward go through.
I have no problem understanding that “oh, I had fun with the people in that concentration camp, while working there as a guard.” that this would rattle a few bars. And I don’t find the comparison to a concentration camp out of place or inappropriate. If nothing else, what goes on in a locked ward is way beyond anything that can be referred to as having fun or not, whether the patients there are voluntary or not.
“I am, you see, a member of the group of humans called psychiatrists. When the entire group is blasted, it hits me too.”
This is your interpretation of what others have said, others who haven’t been invited to explain their side of their statements here, at all.
I don’t see anyone really “blasting” psychiatrists, just allusions by you to things others have said, which is already basically hearsay and quite inappropriate. Certainly, since these people aren’t here to defend themselves, given that what they said could be completely taken out of context, and they might read references to it here. Perhaps these allusions taken out of context can be seen as “blasting” as well, given the context of “psychiatric treatment and diagnosis.” And I really have nothing to do with this, except I see that I’m supposed to take on a a view point of what these people have said that is very much comparable to a sort of diagnosis, without their input, whatsoever!
For the rest, people are trying to point out true concerns. Marion Goldstein, for example, simply pointed out the difference between what a Dentist does and a psychiatrist. To make a reference to her implying that she has no need for doctors, is inappropriate.. I’m also sure there are doctors who don’t demand that they be called doctors.
I truly don’t really know what you are going on about. I’m not interested in untangling these little snippets you have shared of the statements of others. If you were trying to defend what you do, that certainly doesn’t help one bit…
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And so basically, you might want to take a look at whether your blog here isn’t unprofessional, in making allusions to things others have said, without their input. I don’t believe this is how a therapist should behave…
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Nijinsky,
I’m not acting as a therapist here.
Alice
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That’s correct. You aren’t.
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Nijinsky,
Sorry my article didn’t work for you. I suppose I could have written a great deal longer article and clipped quotes from the replies to posts and other blogs to substantiate my observations. Perhaps this would have worked better. But it seems that way would have been more personally intrusive and considerably longer.
Since I have heard talk of nazis and eugenics have been tossed around in reference to psychiatrists, I wanted to bring it up for a more open discussion. Since psychiatrists in general are a customary target here (and I am one), this also seemed a good discussion to open up.
The two points I had hoped to make were:
I think it was okay to have fun at work even if I’m a psychiatrist.
and
The labels you give people matter.
The first point, I will probably not convince you of.
The second point, I suspect you already knew. No one misses being “mis-labeled” in this life.
This is okay with me. We don’t have to agree about everything. Concentration camp metaphors for psychiatric care don’t work for me. Maybe I missed the boat on the iceberg metaphor with you.
Words matter.
Thanks for bringing your words here,
Alice
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Again, I’m supposed to suddenly get involved with a conversation that apparently was deemed to be finished, when it started someplace else, and is transported here out of context. I haven’t said anything about it not being OK to have fun when you’re a psychiatrist. That’s also out of context, as well as implying something I never said nor believe. Nor did the people you are referring to make such a statement. I said that I could understand people’s reactions, after what they might have experienced in an asylum. If you don’t know the connection with psychiatry and the Nazi’s here’s a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQZdUmxG1Es
And I think I should repost what I just posted in response to this question of what psychiatry has to do with “eugenics” being asked above already once by Alice Keyes:
Psychiatry uses, in it’s diagnosis, the same sociological constructs that define minority status, poverty, living in a war zone and other forms of trauma. These are groups that already are oppressed, people that can not adhere to statistical based norms, no matter how “crazy” that seems. To say that the behavior of these people is caused by a genetic abnormality rather than looking at the story of their lives, is considered a form of eugenics. And there is still great emphasis on trying to prove this genetic theory in psychiatry. It’s also falsely stated to be based on scientific fact when all there is is implications seen but not proven. Biological psychiatry treating these people as if their body doesn’t have the ability to handle trauma and handing out highly addictive controlled substances becomes a form of disabling them further. The statistical evidence points out that this doesn’t help these group of people, although the drug companies profit. In “developing” countries where there isn’t the amount of money “developed” countries have for these “medications,” it seems that people somehow do learn to deal with their trauma, have less disability, less relapses and more recovery.
The kind of economic take overs which are reported in the book the Shock Doctrine, are quite similar in how the psychiatric drug companies take advantage of people who are in a destabilized environment: the kind of coercion and exploitation of insecurities that goes on. And those who are already oppressed by poverty, minority status etc. stand to be oppressed one way or the other. Just teaching people non violence, what Jesus, Buddha and many others also taught, might be seen as something “inappropriate” to those maintaining all this “machinery.” A person who is then “justly” seen as oppressed can often learn to let go of these basic tenets of fear. Despite that there was some feeling of loss to not “make it” in the system which adds up gain and loss, victim status and perpetrator status. That’s always been the healing, the atonement that occurs beyond fear…
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Nijinsky,
I don’t know much about “eugenics” except what I read on wikipedia last night. It referred to making changes in the genetic content of a population of people by selective breeding and culling. (This is not a quote but only my understanding by a quick read)
The thought of eugenics horrifies me. This is emotionally evocative language but I’m not sure it’s an accurate use of the term in this situation. I don’t see how your earlier post, repeated here, supports the accusations of “eugenics” toward psychiatry.
Perhaps we can “agree to disagree” at this point?
Best,
Alice
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With the amount of personal freedoms taken from someone in a locked ward at an asylum:
You can not refuse medications (or other brain damaging treatments), even though you can scientifically verify their lack of efficacy, can list studies that show the amount of chemical dependency, brain damage, loss of life and addiction that they cause, can list studies that show that people not put on these “medications have a better chance of recovery, less disability and less relapses.
Your freedom to leave this situation depends on the judgments of the person forcing you on these treatments.
For the people that have to endure this, this can be a valid comparison to a concentration camp.
And “Doctor Keys:” Not seeing a clear explanation of how psychiatry maintains that people have a genetic flaw (that there’s said to be a genetic component to their disease); something which has more been proven NOT to exist than it has been proven to exist; when this is combined with the disabling treatments, the amount of freedom taken away, and the reduction of life span and the stereotyping, the societal ostracizing (because of this “schizophrenics” rarely have children, so this also blows the genetic model out the window, and as Mr. Miller pointed out the drugs cause sexual dysfunction); this is easily called eugenics by those frustrated and abused by it.
Are the true conditions in a locked ward something one can relegate to agreeing or disagreeing about? Is this pushing to the side what “psychiatry” does? This sort of oppression according to a genetic model for mental illness which has as little been proven to exist as that negro people are less sensitive to pain and more suited to manual labor can be seen as: “selective breeding and culling,” of a populace.
All this, while you are contesting other people’s allusions to these actions because you decide to see it as hate speech. The allusions to eugenics and concentration camps, while horrifying to you, are not horribly out of place, despite you being a psychiatrist. I’m only saying that I understand these people’s responses.
And I’m sorry, but it’s difficult to understand where you are coming from, given your immense good intentions to become a psychiatrist, and then to encounter things which perhaps you are now only beginning to see in the light. So, let them be in the light, then it’s clear that there’s nothing there, because they are illusions. There is no genetic flaw, no chemical imbalance. Perhaps people aren’t even victims but just learning to let go of having a place in a society which bankrupts everyone with guilt and tries to control them with fear.
I’m sorry, But what I’m truly concerned about is that you as a therapist would show the same inability to understand another’s point of view as you have shown here on this blog, where you are saying that you aren’t “acting as a therapist.” None of us are being paid to try to explain all of this to you, either. If you tried to understand these things, perhaps you could bypass prescribing psychiatric “medications” at all. Nor would we be allowed to give a class on all this stuff (scientifically and conceptually verifiable) in a formal setting for those studying psychiatry. When you were studying psychiatry, I doubt you had a class of psychiatric survivors come to give you a lecture. I’m sure that all of us have been there for people without an on off switch as to whether we are acting as therapists. I really do appreciate you taking the trouble to try to understand these responses. When people refer to psychiatrists in a certain light, and you aren’t part of that branch of psychiatry, there’s no need to include yourself. It’s hard for any of us who have seen what’s going on.
Have you looked at the video of the speech Doctor Breggin gave?
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Dr. Keys,
You totally missed the point I and Bob Whitaker were making about eugenics because you chose to make it all about you personally. So, without considering the real dangerous issues you left an angry, defensive blast on the blog stating this was hate speech against you and psychiatry when the real hate speech is the bogus eugenics theories used by psychiatry past and present to target and destroy countless people. Perhaps you may want to go back and read those comments calmly without taking them personally to see the real concerns that have nothing to do with you personally.
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Donna,
Perhaps you could give specific examples of how “eugenics” is practiced by every day psychiatrists (like me) today. We would be the ones doing it, if it were happening. I’m still confused. Perhaps a clear definition of what you mean by eugenics would help clarify the discussion.
When blanket statements are made concerning any population or group, they mean every member in it. I’m a psychiatrist. It’s personal. If I began making blanket statements about a group of(for example) “teachers” or “therapist” or “baseball players” or “mothers” or “Italians” or “patients” it could rapidly become very personal if you were a member of that group.
One cannot say “psychiatrists” without including me. I am a real person with a face and a name. I am also a psychiatrist.
This is an important issue. Thanks for pursuing it with such vigor.
Alice
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No, when blanket statements are made about a group they *don’t* necessarily implicate everyone in it. It’s a *generalization* because you’re talking about many of the group’s participants in general, not every one specifically.
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I had (past tense) a friend long ago who used to tell me “I don’t like doctor-types” and “I don’t like psychiatrist-types and then explain that present company (me) was excluded. He also made derogatory generalizations about “women” (not me, I was “different”). He also said things about a racial minority group and “excluded” another friend of mine . It all felt the same to me.
Alice
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Excuse me you cannot separate what psychiatry and the biological model of psychiatry has done to people. These mind altering substances that cause brain damage, addictions, loss of life, having no true scientific backing, cause the very things they are said to heal (a chemical imbalance) having horrible side effects, have become part of an economic bubble… they haven’t just fallen from the sky, nor are the transported into people’s hands by the flittering butterflies one sees on commercials.
It’s your choice to be insulted, the same as it’s your choice to dole out these “medications” or not. That also has no genetic factor (as in being a mother or an Italian), this “choice” you make.
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Dr. Keys,
You do know that psychiatry claims that there are genetic causes of their so called “mental illnesses” in the junk science DSM such as bipolar, schizophrenia, depression, ADHD and all the fad fraud stigmas used to force lethal drugs on people for life. This is the science of eugenics that claim that certain people have deficsient genes in their brain or otherwise. Then, these theories are used to justify treating such deficient people as subhuman and gradually rob them of all their civil and human rights to the point of euthanasia as has been the case with the Jews and other targeted groups in the Holocaust, Soviet Russia and Bosnia and always those psychiatry stimatized as mentally ill. Other minorities targeted by psychiatry have been blacks, women, children, gays, etc.
There has never been a shred of evidence proving these dangerous eugenics theories past or present though many people have been brainwashed to believe them by hate groups, psychiatry, BIG PHARMA and others through the use of propaganda/marketing.
There is no scientific evidence of any genes causing any so called mental illnesses like the latest fraud fad bipolar disorder stigma used to push the latest toxic drugs on patent as explained by Dr. David Healy in his book, MANIA. There was a new post today by Dr. Paula Caplan protesting the bogus, harmful stigmas of the DSM and she gives a perfect, all too typical example of a woman’s life thato was totally destroyed by the horrific bipolar stigma.
These are modern examples of using bogus eugenics theories to destroy people’s lives and force them on a lethal cocktail of expensive drugs for life that will cause all kinds of disease and shorten their lives by 25 years if they don’t kill themselves due to the crimes commmitted against them that destroyed their lives.
I would think you should be aware of the reasons psychiatry uses to justify its medical model of “mental illness” they create by VOTE with a show of hands without a shred of scientific evidence they exist or tests to prove anyone has them (See Dr. Paula Caplan’s THEY SAY YOU’RE CRAZY). This is like the infamous “chemical imbalance of the brain” BIG PHARMA ad ploy lie that psychiatry and BIG PHARMA still perpetuate on a brainwashed public that Bob Whitaker exposes.
Dr. Breggin has an article I cited on the blog where you expressed your anger over the discussion of this whereby he compares the totalitarian tactics of psychiatry that caused the Holocaust to those used today to dehumanize people with bogus eugenics theories of deficient brain genes to justify DSM stigmas causing them great harm and robbing them of all their rights too.
Bob Whitaker has written an article on his blog about the fact that the head of the NIMH, Dr. Insel, is all the more determined to pursue genetic proof of DSM stigmas to find the right treatments, which horrifies me given his past history with drug company shill KOL Dr. Charles Nemeroff recently exposed in Congress for huge conflicts of interest and unethical behavior causing him to lose his job at Emory.
I assumed from your articles that you became more aware of this history by reading Bob Whitaker’s book and other reasons. As I have said, I am not attacking any individual psyciatrists because there are many noble whistleblowers like Dr. Peter Breggin who have been trying to warn people about the dangers of the medical model of psychiatry for decades. It is the corrupt, life destroying medical model of psychiatry that needs to be exposed and reformed/abolished. Yes, it would be good to be positive, but until this menace that hijacked all of the mental health system, money, power and definition and treatment of emotional distress or crisis is toppled, there isn’t much hope of implementing widespread alternatives in my opinion. Again, we assumed you were on the side of survivors by your posts, so I didn’t expect you to take my criticisms of mainstream psychiatry that you seem to have rejected personally because it is this paradigm that is the problem and those at the top dictating it due to huge conflicts of interest.
So, I regret if I have offended you, but that has not been my intent or that of others, especially those greatly harmed directly or indirectly by psychiatry.
You asked me to explain the threat of eugenics and I have tried to do this as briefly and simply as possible.
This really isn’t about you.
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Dr. Keys,
Here is Dr. Peter Breggin’s superb article about Psychiatry’s Role In THE Nazi Holocaust. I urge you to read it because it is crucial for all people to see how these false, unproven, nonscientific theories can brainwash people to dehumanize people to the point that the worst crimes against humanity can be justified. I agree with Dr. Breggin in this article when he says the dehumanizing, degrading stigmas backed up by the latest bogus eugenics theories today are very similar to the totalitarian abuses of psychiatry in World War II Germany. When giving DSM diagnoses did you ever think about the fact that you were giving people very damaging lifelong unproven, nonmedical stigmas in the guise of medicine that could and did destroy their lives in many instances?
If not, I hope you see it now and are able to join those like Dr. Paula Caplan protesting the untold harm caused by the junk science DSM.
Again, not a personal criticism of you; just sharing what I had to learn through extensive painful research to save loved ones from such harm.
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Dr. Keys,
Fair or not, blanket statements are made about groups all the time. And I can’t think of a more dangerous, degrading, evil one but “the mentally ill.” Every person who ever made the fatal error of seeing a psychiatrist or so called mental health expert since the medical model hijacked psychiatry is now supposedly a member of this blanket group, “the mentally ill” in which you participated. Just by having one of psychiatry’s bogus stigmas, a person is forever considered part of a blanket group of “the mentally ill” from which one cannot escape the related loss of human rights and other horrific consequences.
So, now when we say that psychiatrists promoted dangerous eugenics theories in America and Germany in the 1930’s that led to the violation of rights of the mentally ill” to the point of euthanasia in mental hospitals by psychiatrists in Germany, who do you think was/is more harmed by hate speech here? There is that blanket group of those unwilling victims psychiatry chose to stigmatize as “mentally ill” deprived of all their human rights and very lives because of psychiatry’s hate speech of bogus eugenics theories to target and destroy certain groups as inferior. Psychiatrists at that time, unlike their victims, made a choice to engage in this profession and advocate these theories overtly that led to their crimes against the so called “mentally ill” and ultimately many other groups like the Jews.
Now, when this history is brought up, you take offense because you think it is applied to you personally. But, you are not a member of the psychiatric profession of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Nor is anyone labelled “mentally ill” now a member of the “mentally ill” of this period. Yet, the same horrors have continued in a far more covert form to the present as I and others have explained repeatedly as has Bob Whitaker, Dr. Peter Breggin and others here.
Isn’t part of being human, ethical, honest and mature learning from past mistakes or actions that caused harm to one’s self or others? I guess I would ask given the above, which blanket statement would you pick if you had to choose “the mentally ill” or “psychiatrists” given the above history? Since this sordid part of psychiatry’s history has been covered up for the most part, most people don’t know it.
Obviously, you did not make the choice to engage in the actions of past psychiatrists any more than the “mentally ill” chose their fate then.
It seems to be that the only important blanket statement should be humans and each human should be judged according to their motives and actions. So, though we did not take part in past behaviors of humans, it is our responsibility whether we wear the mantel of psychiatrist or “the mentally ill” or just “human being,” to examine human actions in the past and present that led to evil against other humans and do all in our power to refuse to engage in such actions even if perpetrated in the most covert way.
That’s why I think it is very important for all human beings to be aware of the ongoing eugenics approach to psychiatry that create a stigmatized group, “the mentally ill” by falsely claiming they have genetic or other brain deficiencies that they pretend justifies robbing these HUMANS of all their civil and human rights including their very lives. Thus, it seems that all humans who value life and human rights and dignity for all should abolish this predation on certain people based on evil, unscientific abuse of eugenics theories and do all in their power to end this threat to all of humanity since any group can be targeted at any time as history shows all to well.
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Dr Keys,
“Redirects” are done with children or “mental patients” as “behavioral” controls or the euphemism, “behavioral health” that only a psycho could have dreamt up for perfect doublespeak. I find that comment to you made about me to Katie insulting and an attempt to degrade me to sidetrack from the issue.
I especially don’t appreciate your doing this with another so called mental health expert.
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This is a difficult discussion for me, and I hope I don’t regret posting such a personal story here. I’m embarrassed that I’ve been psych-hospitalized a bunch of times over the past 23-odd years. While a few of them involved an involuntary hold, even for most of those I was a willing participant in getting myself admitted. Some of my stays I later ambivalently regretted initiating. So why do I keep doing it?
I struggle with dysregulation in my daily life. The usual tools for grounding and calming (and I’ve been introduced to lots of them) seem to paradoxically backfire for me, so I’m mostly stuck using hypervigilance, distraction, and increasing avoidance. Those can help me cope, but they don’t help me thrive. I’m grateful that I have a decent job, decent income. But before I ever saw a psychiatrist at age 28, I was having some ongoing difficulties that clearly weren’t getting better on their own (or with my own best efforts).
Being overwhelmed is painful, but what’s worse is not having any safe place to be when I’m overwhelmed. Being acutely suicidal can be very stressful state. I was (sometimes) grateful when I was in the hospital, because suicide was then that much harder to actually do, and I couldn’t easily leave the hospital on a whim. That it meant I didn’t need to think so much about suicide right then. I could maybe take a break for a few days from dwelling on imminent suicide. I think it would sometimes help break the metaphorical “fever”.
Actually, locked hospitalization oftentimes wasn’t much of a “safe place to be when I’m overwhelmed”. With little privacy, and people ready to label my difficulties in suppressing my dysregulation as “doing it to get attention” or “being melodramatic”, etc., I sometimes struggled to raise my internal walls that much higher, blocking out much sense of mutual connection, to avoid shame. I don’t think that constantly trying to suppress or hide the visible signs of my dysregulation (via an increasingly avoidant life, maintaining hypervigilance, etc) is the way to learn how to master self-regulation better. But if I let others see (much degree at all of) my dysregulation, I get shamed for it.
I have this “crazy” idea in my head, that if I could be permitted to try moving back toward the states and movements that tend to trigger the paradoxical here-and-now dysregulation, but with lots of support and help with safety in place (almost like physical therapy? or “a safe place to fail”?), I might slowly learn how to better master the dysregulation and not have to just be avoidant all the time. But the process wouldn’t be pretty. I’ve already shown I can’t consistently keep myself calm (or safe) when the dysregulation is too high. It gets hard, and crushing, trying to stay calm enough when my internal system hasn’t had much natural sense of calm for years. But does that mean that I actually want a locked hospitalization and even a padded room or area, which many of the others here would (very understandably) find abhorrent and traumatizing? Of course, the whole notion of using a hospitalization to actually do significant real healing work is pretty lost these days anyway. My whole “crazy” idea is highly impractical for a number of reasons.
I’m angry that the years of psych meds may have contributed to the chronicity of my situation. I’m upset that all the years of psychologists, psychiatrists, and hospitals haven’t helped much, and have often hurt. But I’ve done it to myself. I can’t blame anyone else, for putting me in these situations, or for my inability to get better. I have repeatedly failed at learning better coping techniques (whether on my own, in office settings, in day hospitalization, in inpatient hospitalization). I haven’t succeeded at leaving the mental health professionals behind because, for all their faults, I have nothing better. There is no one else equipped in any way (for good or bad) to deal with me when my dysregulation gets worse.
I write all this personal stuff because I know I can’t be the only one. But I feel almost ashamed of admitting here that I sometimes almost want a place that’s locked, that will help keep me safe even when I’m having trouble keeping myself safe, and help keep me from impulsively doing things that could jeopardize my longer-term quality of life further. (Should people who readily admit fear of the consequences of their potential actions have some means available to help them with limiting those risky actions for the time being? What should that look like?) It would probably differ in considerable ways from most current psychiatric hospitals. Whether the ways it would differ matter much to other readers of this site, or whether its similarities constitute the most egregious violations, I can’t say. But just being out there coping on my own, without any place to seek even a badly broken refuge, feels scary too.
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Philroy,
Thanks for your deeply personal post. It takes great courage to reveal your personal story here. You could get some flack for this. I know you know that’s possible.
I know you are not the only one who struggles. This story coming from you is a powerful way to add balance to our discussion here.
I would like there to be other refuge options as well. We’ll all have to put our heads together and design some. Dr. Mosher’s Soteria ideas are good.
If we’re going to make a difference in the direction that psychiatry takes in the future, it will take all of us together. Posts like your help.
Best,
Alice
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Thank you, Alice. I was quite intrigued the first time I read about Soteria House several years ago, and further reading here on madinamerica that there were a few others. Most of them seemed to focus mostly on psychosis (I might be mistaken about that). But hopefully we can all help new healing modalities to emerge (or re-emerge!) that help the person and not simply suppress (or shame) the identified symptoms.
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Philroy,
Yes. The Soteria model does focus on intervention in psychosis. It does a good job, too. Traditionally (this means,I was taught this long ago) the symptoms of psychosis have not been thought to respond to psychotherapy. Soteria is one model that disproves this theory to me.
I think the Soteria model could be used more widely for a broader range of distress.I think the lines between what we psychiatrists refer to as “psychosis” and things such as irrational-sounding beliefs, negative self-talk and reactions to trauma is a lot wider and less clear than we sometimes suppose. Soteria’s community and relationship aproach reminds me of ho’oh ponopono, a traditional community healing process I have read about in Hawaii. I don’t know if it is used any more there.
Thanks for continuing this discussion.
Alice
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For what it’s worth:
I still believe the “mental” part of mental health is the most important. I believe beyond everything else we are thought, and we can discover what thought is. That we can go to the source (which seems invisible because it’s not separate from anything, which is thought, which remains intangible) and get to know it. You can get to know this which is you. Not a body. Not a mind which needs “medications” but thought. And I think you can find the source of the Universe there, a creative forced called love which has no opposite. You actually can chose whether you are going to invest in the same fear based energy which causes the problems you think you are separate from (what you think you aren’t causing with your investment in fear, and then think you’re separate from investing in fear to defend yourself from it); or whether you are going to invest in something which has no opposite, and is timeless in the sense that it’s free of everything that investing in fear would manifest in time and space. This then maybe seems invisible, as well. But I think that’s the source, and that comes from thought. And it seems that this is what’s most feared, that you could let go of fear rather than invest in it.
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And what’s referred to as psychosis I see as someone actually acting out the programmed fears that have started to be incompatible with what they have experienced in life. Although this can seem quite scary (also to the person going through it) when you allow a person the space to go through this process and allow them to be in an environment where they can let go of programmed fears, they let go of these things. That’s something different to the basic matrix of what societal “survival” is based on. Same as that the brain wasn’t created in a factory, although as machinery it’s supposed to serve society the same way or seen as something broken.
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Katie those really are just thoughts reflective of a book called A Course in Miracles. Thank you for calling my writing “brilliant” but this is simply something the mind does by itself. I would more agree that “God” is brilliant, perhaps, rather that trying to take credit for something I couldn’t. This book entered the mind of a woman Helen Schucman who was of all things a biological psychologist, and by her own words militantly atheist and highly competitive in her field. The “voice” or book wouldn’t go away, so she started writing it down; and even ducking into a room with her co-worker to go over what she had “written” the night before, closing all the curtains scared people would think she was crazy. In the course of it’s melody unwinding, the voice identified itself as “Jesus.” The book has been printed in many languages and has sold millions of copies without ANY commercial advertisement. It has exercises for every day of the year (for 365 days); and they are similar to cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s quite interesting that Helen was a biological psychologist and had a shift in thinking which completely went against her beliefs in order to allow this book to emerge. Before the book emerged, she wasn’t getting along so well with her co-worker and he suggested that “there must be a better way.” If you are interested in such things there’s also a man who became a healer after he was institutionalized as a child, because healing would happen and he actually knew things he wasn’t supposed to. If you go to 13:45 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_imYR18uHQ&feature=relmfu he can tell you his story. What’s completely miraculous is that he holds no resentments about what happened to him as a child. I think he knows that then the healing would go away, with him it’s a basic reflex… He has helped me experience a healing that would have been called a medical condition. This man, by the way, received the Russian Cosmonaut medal from the Soviet Union, because of healing work he accomplished with victims from chernobyl…seriously he was awarded that medal, which I think only in recent times was awarded to Mitterand as well.
And then maybe I should share this from today:
In my beautiful backyard today…
Butterflies
And Birds (how red is a Cardinal? how warm and round is a Robin with
it’s orange breast?)
And whether it’s birds or a butterflies, seeing them flying in the air
turning circles around each other
Makes me wonder whether they feel the happiness I feel to see them
As my mind goes off on philosophies of whether these miracles have the same
cognition of life that we as “humans” do (and in destroying the
environment refer to cruelty as “inhumane”)..Dolphins and Gorillas
having been proven to have the same cognition as we do..
I realize that God feels this joy
That’s what made me, what makes me me and who I am
And everything feels this
There’s no separation
And I’m so looking forward to seeing such things again, assured this present moment called heaven
isn’t devoid of them
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I can’t stop! LOL:
Flitting and Dancing around each other
Turning circles inside and outside of space and time
Their own playfulness creating a Universe of joy
Tumbling with themselves,
The intimate laughter they share turning into the source of the Universe
This Inside they turn Inside Out
Birds and Butterflies
Flying
(Nijinsky)
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Dr. Keys,
I forgot to include the hyperlink to the article I cited by Dr. Peter Breggin in response to your request for me to explain my huge concern about the ongoing pursuit of eugenics research by those in power in the NIMH led by Dr. Insel, so I had to include it here.
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:fKJyiuk9OnoJ:breggin.com/index.php?option%3Dcom_docman%26task%3Ddoc_download%26gid%3D157+peter+breggin+on+psychiatry's+role+in+nazi+holocaust&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEEShjsB0RQa5cqGArs6_jWiOrSzrSMtxamFlJQ82M6532kOSQ4j4akBHvkPs7_uzG4AA8pFiUpHMXcaVYX8rxdj_9ssBShEzyatcf1-C6e6gLpwAjlTBoQDSXCUMDCdJ2jMuUYvXd&sig=AHIEtbSvtFm3wzkLlhos-YKFY4irY14mmw
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Philroy,
Thanks for sharing your journey with us.
I would like to say, first of all, that you are an equal – to every person on this site – professionals and non-professionals alike. An equal.
Secondly, I hope you never give up hope.
Not ever.
Hope is what sustains any of us.
We are not so very different – all of us have very similar needs – for shelter, nutrition; but also for community, love, warmth, understanding, apppreciation, respect. I hope you always remember that you are worth a great deal – more than you will ever know – We all are… each of us!
This is a list of treatment centers that I’ve found along the way (other readers may know of more, if so, please comment) –
http://discoverandrecover.wordpress.com/category/holistic-treatment-centers/
If you spend time on the site, you may find some links that are helpful. I hope so. It’s the only reason I put it together, to show people where to start, in hopes that they might finds some tools that help.
My best,
Duane
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Duane,
Thanks for being so quick to offer Philroy support. You are a kind fellow. Your warmth is great to have here. You are also good with the resources.
Best,
Alice
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Thank you, Duane. I’ll look at the site.
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Philroy,
This is a poem I wrote a while back…
I send it to you tonight –
Heavenly Kiss
Unique
With magnificent pattern
Brilliant craftsmanship
Crystal perfection
With worth that transcends all understanding
You were released from the heavens
By an artist
In a flurry you descend
Through the clouds
Swayed with enormous force
You spiral across the sky
Born to gleam
With genius in your blueprint
A snowflake
Sent to impact the earth
To crest a mountain
For all to observe
Or, to land softly on the cheek
Of one who sleeps
And awaken them to the wonders
Of the source of your being…
With a heavenly kiss
– Duane Sherry
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Duane,
I know you meant this for Philroy, but I enjoyed it, too.
Lovely poem. This reminds me of the feeling of some of the Sufi poetry by Rumi.
Alice
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I don’t really know so consciously what you mean by dysregulation; but, even in the asylum, aren’t you around people that are all going through something? Perhaps, you’ll find that there are people that you can make yourself vulnerable too. Outside the asylum, if not the other way. Everyone has gone through stuff, I think. Whether they are in the asylum or not. There’s absolutely nothing to feel ashamed of or guilty about. Whatever you’ve been through or what decisions you made looking for healing.
There are many books. I do a book which has a sort of cognitive behavioral exercises for each day of the year, it’s called A Course in Miracles. That works for me. That doesn’t mean that that would work for you. Some people really don’t like A Course in Miracles. I’m sure there’s got to be something there for you. I don’t believe anyone is ever really abandoned, not that there’s anything wrong with feeling abandoned. Maybe you’re letting go of something? Music. Reading and writing books. Painting. All these things help me. I do think it’s possible to heal. I’m just trying to say something. Bless you for sharing your story…
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Nijinsky,
Thanks for you kind and supportive post to Philroy. These are good suggestions to look at. You’re right. Everything doesn’t help everyone. It’s good to have a lot of thins that help.
Alice
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Thanks for your post. It is eloquent. You are correct; psych hospitals are often not the safest places to be. It’s a paradox. Often, the staff responses and the socalled treatment are as traumatizing as the original event or experience that initiated the emotionsl and mental anguish in the first place. thanks again for sharing.
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Ilove your blog so far. I found it at aek’s blog, another one I really like. I always call my health care providers (yes, I go to a clinic, too) “Doctor.” Actually, there, they’re PCPs or primary care physicians. Or Psychiatrists or what ever they are as applicable. I am called by my first name. I don’t mind it. I once met another patient of our common psychiatrist, who had since left and we talked about her. She referred to her by her first name, which was actually a beautiful name. I said “You don’t CALL her that, do you?” She said no, but she liked her name. This doc was pretty authoritarian, and I often wondered what would happen if I called her by her first name. I really liked her, anyway, though. What I do for a living garners many appellations that are not complimentary… sharks, shyster, sleaze… what have you. I’m a lawyer. I am called “Ms.” in Court, or Counselor, which is fine. However, when I first meet my clients, I do what you do – I point out that they can use my first name, and ask what I should call them. I am comfortable with first names. I find male clients are slower to use my first name, however, even if I use theirs. Interesting. I look forward to reading more about your journey and in general.
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it was a great relief to find such passionate responses against the pseudo science of psychiatry. Here in Canada most seem to accept whatever lies they hear and view psychiatrists as Gods. The one wish I have for all of humanity is to see the collapse of the psychiatric empire. I would love to see them charged with criminal offenses, locked up, exposed, humiliated and destroyed. Their profession serves no valid purpose. They are all Nazis. Just as Hitler fell, so should psychiatry. All we need are psychologists with a humanistic approach and naturopaths. There is not a single condition that can not be cured without toxic drugs. There is not a person out there as dangerous as a psychiatrist. The term mental illness needs to be abolished. Labelling normal reactions to trauma as an illness is proof of a sociopath. Psychiatrists are the sick ones. Save your cliches and ignorant attacks. Anyone who defends psychiatry and demonizes its victims like robert are not worth listening to. Some minds are too judgmental and small to question what they hear. When good people do nothing and believe the lies, evil (psychiatry) flourishes. And that is a great tragedy.
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Amen.
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Greeney,
Once a boy and his father were in a German concentration camp. One day, a prison guard had been very cruel and after a trying ordeal, the boy and his father were alone again. The boy started talking about all the cruel and abusive things he would like to do to that nasty prison guard. He became quite heated up and excited about getting even for all the misery he and his father had endured from this guard. After he had gone on for a while about various tortures he would like to inflict on the guard, he noticed his father was looking at him sadly.
He said, “So, you’ve become what you hate and are just like that cruel guard?”
The Buddha said, “When you seek revenge, dig two graves.”
Th Buddha said, “When you are filled with hatred and revenge, it is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
We are all guilty of this, but if we want psychiatry to stop what we consider hate speech in the form of stigmas and eugenics, do you think using hate speech against them makes us look credible?
I am guilty too of letting my own anger over past abuses get the best of me at times, but I know this is like acid to our minds and souls and just destroys us over time.
And here is one of the worst thoughts, “While you’re angry and hating another person, they’re out dancing.”
(The last one is really shows this to be self defeating behavior).
The truth is living well is the best “revenge” so it is critical that we refuse to allow ourselves to be destroyed by hate and vengeful thoughts because they just destroy us in the end and play right into the hands or our perceived enemies.
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Donna,
I want to thank you for this series of posts. You have some very good things to say about anger, hate and revenge.
Alice
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Philroy, I just now read your earnest and evocative post. When I posted last, it was in response to much earlier posts. I am very sorry that you had to endure such an ordeal. You placed your faith in the system because you were misled by society to believe some benefit might exist in the route you took. I truly believe that a humanistic psychologist specializing in psychotherapy, but one in private practice who is not connected to other health care people, hospitals, clinics or anything else. In fact, one with a 1970s background of anti establishment thinking would be a good choice. Perhaps Behavior Modification would have been precisely what you were seeking. What you describe does not require any meds, but then, nothing – nothing justifies the use of psychiatric drugs. You did not need to have any contact with psychiatrists, hospitals, or drugs. Just a solid psychologist, psychotherapy and behavior modification. Thank you for being open. I truly wish you the very best. My regards, Greeney
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Greeney,
Thanks for you kind reply to Philroy.
I agree that we have left behind treatment and healing modalities that work well in the rush for more pills.
You make good suggestions.
Alice
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Since there are all these archaic references to Hitler in this thread, on both sides of the fence as long as he’s seen as denoting something evil or meant to denote something evil. What does this have to do with anything?
Do you know that Hitler was so abused as a child that he was in a coma for three days, after being beaten by I think his step father? Do you know that he lost such respect for himself and what it is to be human that he couldn’t draw the human form, and consequently wasn’t let into art school because of this? It would have been quite different if he was seen as needing help, and that the therapy of art he would have gotten at art school was vital for him.
When he became a politician he also was quite abused by psychiatry, in that he was pumped up to the max with meth-amphetamines called “happy pills” or something.
There’s also an incredible amount of collusion with both English and American big business and Nazi Germany. There’s more than a bit of evidence that both these powers supported Hitler at first, because they thought that he would de-stabilize Germany. According to this theory, they were scared that if Germany had an alliance with Russia that they would become too powerful. I’m just mentioning this because it’s not such a black and white story of the evil Nazi, anymore. I could go on about what happened to German scientists after WW2.
And I’m not condoning the holocaust or racism mentioning these things.
To continue this vicious cycle using Hitler as a means to categorize (or in this case allegedly categorize) others or be insulted, is this really helpful?
Hitler perhaps needed help just like everyone else. Is this really separate from what any human needs?
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Nijinsky,
Thanks for pointing out the complexity in the life of this historic figure. I had no idea. I always learn something from your posts.
Alice
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The history of Hitler and the Nazi’s is very complex with many tentacles and interwoven entities. As for psychiatry’s eugenics agenda and people’s incredulousness to it, do you think, first off, they are going to come out and say it? Of course not, that does not mean it is not going on. Secondly, what better people to essentially rid from the gene pool through brain damage and sexual dysfunction than those with broken brains (as psychiatry sees it)? I cannot think of much better candidates. Eugenics is mostly an elite philosophy emanating from families at the top like the Rockefellers who have those under them, psychiatrists and others, carry it out. A more open eugenics operation is Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood was started by a blatant racist who spoke at KKK rallies and that is why you see them in predominately black neighborhoods. Before it was taboo many prominent people were noted eugenists (as noted on the Wikipedia page) and believed, and still do believe, that this is a scientific endeavor to better humanity (sound familiar). Eugenics is all around us and psychiatrists are just the foot soldiers of the elite that believe in it.
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Scott,
Psychiatric drugs are very prevalent in the USA today. It seems that everyone (across every socio-economic and racial boundary) is taking mood stabilizers, mood elevators and anti-anxiety pills. Some of these drugs have sexaul side effects. If this is a eugenics plot, it’s doing a lousy job. (insert irony here).
The prescribing of antihypertensives (Blood pressure medicines) is very prevalent. Some of them cause sexual side-effects. Perhaps the primary care docs are in on it, too? (insert more irony here).
If we want to make better options to reduce suffering and have people live happier healthier lives, we need all of us together: you, me, families, neighbors. We may even need psychiatrists. Well maybe I shouldn’t go that far (insert third bit of irony here).
Best always,
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
Atypical antipsychotics are now the top prescribed and best selling drugs for depression, insomnia, stress and of course, psychiatry’s mainstay or “sacred symbols” per Dr. Thomas Szasz of the new fraud fad bipolar largely replacing schizophrenia often iatrognically caused by SSRI’s, benzos, kiddie cocaine or used as a mis or up diagnosis for abuse related trauma or to exploit one’s health insurance to the max. Neuroleptics are brain damaging drugs used to perform a chemical lobotomy on people as has been exposed by Dr. Peter Breggin and Bob Whitaker. These dangerous drugs cause many diseases and shorten lives by about 25 years as I said above. Since they people of their humanity and very selves, they also destroy one’s sex life like SSRI’s and other psych drugs.
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You know your history well. You are absolutely correct in your entire post. thanks for pointing out these important things to ponder.
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People are not using Hitler when they protest against dangerous eugenics theories that were promoted by psychiatry long before Hitler and long after to the present. Germany’s Holocaust is just one of many horrible examples of what these horric unproven, unscientific theories that really cover up prejudice, racism, sexism, homophobia and the targeting of vulnerable groups to destroy in general.
I don’t bring this up to shame Dr. Keys or to accuse her of doing this personally, but to show her that psychiatry does use lies to brainwash everyone that those they stigmatize as mentally ill have a brain disease due to their faulty genes. There is not one shred of evidence that ANY DSM stigmas is caused by any brain chemical imbalances or faulty genes since any so called studies claiming to prove this were proven fraudulent. Dr. Jay Joseph’s books, THE MISSING GENE and THe GENE ILLUSION, demonstrate that the century long search for such genes is futile since the emotional distress or trauma psychiatry stigmatizes is caused by one’s environment. He also exposes that a right wing agenda uses such eugenics to justify maintaining their grossly unjust status quo of insane power grabs and robbery of the majority of the nation’s wealth and productivity while doing all in their power to make all nations slave nations under a small number of the entrenched power elite who have hijacked our democracy and human rights.
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Exactly Donna, it is all connected. The banking fraud, the endless wars, the police state, and the mass drugging of the US populace. I think we must understand this agenda of total takeover if we are going to effectively combat the direction psychiatry is going. Everyday i am becoming more terrified. This is no joke. It boggles my mind how people do not see this.
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Scott,
I’ve noticed things you list in your post: bank fraud, wars, drugging of more and more people including infants now. The part I’m missing is how psychiatry is at the helm of all this.
Yes. These things are scarey. No joke.
Alice
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As i have said before, psychiatry is just one of the foot soldiers or cogs in this grand scheme. They are not at the helm at all. Just like the TSA is a tool for humiliating and subordinating the public. That does not excuse the atrocities being committed in their name, just that there are bigger forces at play.
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Scott,
Sorry. There have been times in this discussion that I have felt endowed with powers that I lack.
“Cog” is how I’ve felt working in modern psychiatry outside my private office. And “care managers” of insurance corporations made it more and more so over time.
So much of American living is based on the premises of industrialization and the education process that goes with this. I think the roots of much that’s off-kilter about our culture dates back to the changes brought about by industrialization.
Best,
Alice
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When reading some of the comments, one gets sometimes the impression that people end up in the mental health system for no good reason at all: that nasty psychiatrists are lurching around corners and grabbing people at whim, locking them up at random, medicating them and putting them in restraints etc. Now, I am no fan of modern psychiatry either but there was a good reason why my friend’s daughter ended in the system in the first place: she thought she was an angel and was going to jump off a bridge. My own son thought that the whole police force was after him and had bugged our house etc. The problem in my friend’s case as well as mine was that once you had asked psychiatry’s help they took over in a big way and neither “the patient” nor their nearest and dearest had any say anymore. May be something needs to be done in that respect. Also, the lack of alternative places to go to is a real problem and the absolute lack of psychological and emotional support in hospital- at least where I live. Trust me, I will not ask for psychiatry’s help again- not as things stand at the moment. People get trapped in the system: “patients”, their carers and even well-meaning and enlightened psychiatrists and nursing-staff: yes, I met a few.
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Alix, you haven’t heard stories of people being locked up at whim almost? Someone in Australia who went to an emergency room because he had a head ache after having tried marijuana for the first time ends up being listed as a dangerous psychotic (which was first a writing error, if I remember correctly). Then after being administered medications he’s allergic to, is further “diagnosed” because of the medications. And he’s been in the asylum for 12 years! Can’t get out. They won’t admit their mistake or what the medications do (and facilitate calling him a danger to himself to prevent him getting out and people finding out) https://www.facebook.com/FreeGarthDaniels. Another girl had to have vaccines in order to go to school (I think she was home schooled before this), had a bad reaction to the vaccines, was put on psychiatric medications which made her worse, and when she was bing weened off of these medications with doctor’s advice, the Child Protection Agency came and removed the girl from her mother and put her in an asylum, (after a big public outcry the mother did get her daughter back). Two mothers had their children made ward of the state and assigned a guardian because they acted too distressed in a distressing situation at ER. And this was just natural distress to a physical condition. Both girls are forced on “medications” that they didn’t need, weren’t helping them and are mind altering and damaging. These are stories I hear all the time.
And I’m sorry but, the way that psychiatry tries to fit people into “accepted” forms of thinking; the very thought that one would be an angel (which perhaps we all are) is not something they are helping society to integrate. In fact, I have no difficulty seeing that maybe this was your friend’s daughter’s way of getting into a place where there is no understanding for such thoughts. That’s just a thought mind you. I’m just trying to understand it. OR maybe she was expressing how confused such a thought becomes. I can’t say that I don’t think that psychiatry is collusion with creating such a confusing environment as to what an angel is. Anyone who hears voices (something spiritualists encourage) or sees or hears things that “don’t exist,” (like music, anything any angelic muse might be tending to)…these are all labeled as symptoms of diseases. I truly empathize with your friend’s daughter and hope she has acquired some kind of understanding of what an angel is beyond what you mentioned! A person who is emotionally distressed, hasn’t gotten the kind of cognitive help or empathy they might need, could easily say things that sound disturbing in an attempt to get the attention they were missing; and not really mean any of it but just felt like they had to act disturbed. And truly and certainly with there were places for them to go that encouraged an understanding of what was going on rather than an oppression of it as being meaningless…
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Sorry, I wrote “In fact, I have no difficulty seeing that maybe this was your friend’s daughter’s way of getting into a place where there is no understanding for such thoughts.” This wasn’t clear. I meant that perhaps there was a sort of devil’s advocate going on here. In the asylum she might have met others like herself and learned to understand the lack of understanding. I don’t know if this makes any more sense. Sorry
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I have heard about “a bad reaction to medication” because it is exactly why my son went psychotic and you are right when you say that the psychiatrists didn’t seem to recognise such a thing. They didn’t believe me when I told them that the medication was to blame. They thought they knew better. I didn’t know at the time that asking for help would get my son sucked into the system and that it would be very difficult to get him free again. I even thought about kidnapping him and whisking him out of the country.
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OUCH! If I’m correct, you only have to go outside of state boundaries to avoid forced treatment. You don’t have to completely leave the country. I’ve asked somebody about this, and will let you know if this isn’t the case.
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People should have choices about treatment, alternatives should be offered. Unfortunately this is not the case. there is only one treatment and by now we all know what that is. Perhaps people should be allowed to have no treatment at all?
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Amen.
Duane
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The real problem is the billions psychiatry made for BIG PHARMA that was used to lobby our so called elected officials who are obviously being bought out by such huge corporations and certainly no longer represent the people who elect them. George W. Bush and his father had close ties to Eli Lilly, a huge psych drug company, which is why Bush pushed for more “mental health” bogus screening from cradle to grave and pushed for BIG PHARMA’s toxic drugs to be pushed on everyone. He created the bogus FREEDOM COMMISSION ON MENTAL HEALTH to promote more psychiatric labels and forced drugging under forced treatment advocate Sally Satel.
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Donna,
Thanks for catching us up on the political end of things. I have not kept up with them. We all need to know things from every angle to get clear about what’s been happening here to us all.
Everyone brings special expertise
Alice
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How about “partner in care?” With all due respect for the hard work and wisdom that may be behind the title (or not) attached to the caregiver’s name? At its heart, these relationships are about respect, trust and, hopefully, mutual empowerment and personal responsibility. There is a Tibetan saying, “Everything rests on the tip of intention.” Perhaps that could be our guide through these murky waters?
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Jennifer,
This is a nice suggestion. I have always encouraged partnership in treatment relationships.
Alice
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Appears there are a lot of personal attacks going on…who’s monitoring this threat & enforcing the new comment policy anywise?…didn’t they assign a psychiatrist “because they are doctors after all” to monitor the conversation; rule from on-high what is sane & acceptable discourse, and what is obviously deranged mentally ill rambling……
never mind…the comment policy must only apply when “certain” people are offended or when someone threatens to call their lawyer……carry on…
As many can clearly see, mental health issues/topics tend to be deeply personal – even “Doctors” sitting on their mighty “I’m the Dr” perch react defensively & with personal vigor when their ordained authority comes under informed scrutiny.
The hard reality is that there will be no lasting or formative enlightened change going forward without society and patients first holding psychiatry (including their practitioners) accountable for the damage they have caused and their ongoing indefensible actions…only then, maybe…& that’s just a simple maybe, the conversation can begin to move forward..
Whitaker unfortunately in this case does have it wrong….you don’t invite the foxes (establishment psychiatry) into the hen house (reform movement); and reasonably expect they are going to come to some form positive compromise with those they have deceived & damaged….you just end up with lots of further havoc, feathers flying & more dead poultry..
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Agreed. Lots and lots of feathers!
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Peanut gallery,
Did you know that as a writer here I have “edit” and “delete” buttons (plus other buttons of mass destruction) here on my dashboard and could do that to anyone’s post I choose? I feel like writing “bwa ha ha” here but I fear no one would understand the joke. I’m a bit worn out by the mayhem (lively discussions) of the last day but am still having fun here with you all. Together having fun, I hope.
I mean really. I’m the “fox” and you guys are the “hens”? Guys. “flying feathers and more dead poultry”? I love your use of metaphor. Visually evocative. There are a lot of psychiatrists Mr. Whitaker could have invited in. But he asked me. I suppose he could also “un” ask me.
I have only deleted one response of another person (My husband’s several days ago, he asked me to.). I suppose I have the power to moniter and enforce the discussion if I wanted till someone took away my buttons.
I like the free flow of ideas. I like it when I see folks sticking up for themselves and one another. I even like it when somebody sticks up for me. I like finding agreement. I like the energy. This energy pointed in a useful positive directions? Who knows where it could go? We could fix things, come up with better ideas and see them happen.
As I see it, we’re all in this boat together. We may as well take down part of the fence. Okay. We can leave up your part for a while longer. (Again. I’m risking humor here.) Humor is hard on the internet. It works better with voice and facial gestures.
Much love (in the Dalai Lama sense)
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
I have to say I found this post funny and would like more explanation of bwa ha ha. I give you a lot of credit for not allowing your hot buttons to be pushed to the point of pushing your real buttons. You continue to be a good sport and have been very liberal about people being able to express their views. That’s probably why your blog has lasted so long and gotten so many hits and comments.
Peace,
Donna
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Donna,
“Bwa ha ha”. My kid use this as a joking “evil laugh” in both talking and writing. Maybe it came from a Terry Pratchett book? I was tired after many hours of trying to keep up with the lovely flood of commentary. There is only one of me. It sort of slipped out and I left it.
Thanks,
Alice
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The reaction the comment section has had regarding the commenter “Rossa Forbes” is exactly why many parents who have been harmed by psychiatry by watching their children suffer at the hands of incompetence, drugs that don’t work or help at all, been witness to their kids being forcibly treated—remain silent in forums like these. What else would people like parents to DO when their child has an existential crisis of the mind, soul and spirit? sit back and not do anything? people ASSUME parents are all savvy and know “how psychiatry works” and that psychiatry is based on medications for care only. Do the negative commenters ripping Rossa Forbe apart understand that one cannot possibly learn how the psychiatric system works until entering it? Has anyone bothered to read Rossa Forbes’ blog? She is hardly the mother to attack here, in fact you can LEARN from her.
I find it ironic that once again, people come out of the woodwork to attack doctors AND parents.
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Parents aren’t the only people who commit patients, remember, case managers, social workers et al all have the capability to testify as witnesses to “danger to self or others”.
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I find it ludicrous that you use the word ‘testify’, as though people being accused of being dangerousness are in a court of law with due process rights and access to an attorney.
Wrong. This ‘testimony’ is done behind closed doors to a psychiatrist in the first instance.
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Well, “Anonymous” it IS “testify”! sadly! In WA state they have “mental health court” and they will and DO use family members, case managers, friends and neighbors to testify UNDER OATH of the person’s behaviors to use agains them to hold them for longer than the 72 hr hold, this “court” comes with a free public attorney for the person “accused” of mental illness! and of course they are sentenced from there, placed back on the gurney or taken w the group who came there in a van–back to the psych ward, locked. Most of the clients I have seen do not have anyone there “for” their side, so they lose–meaning they get 14 to 90 days in the psych hosp by court order.
So, you stand corrected, with all due respect. it is a public court room, with a judge, prosecution and defense attornies and witnesses….
The court is restricted to what they will hear also–testimony on the behalf of the client usually falls on deaf ears.
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This is called a Kangaroo Court as exposed by the great Jim Gottstein, Attorney, fighting to expose this vile pretense of justice to rob those targeted of all human rights. One wise judge said he believed those stigmatized as mentally ill should have the same rights as criminals, which of course they do not. It shows the values of psychiatry and society that they aid and abett wife/children abusers/batterers/killers (See Lundy Bancroft’s superb book, WHY DOES HE DO THAT? and THE BATTERED WOMEN’S TESTIMONY REPORT showing how abused women are routinely humilated, disrespected and destroyed by the courts along with their children). Similarly, psychiatry aids and abets pedophiles, rapists, psychopaths and other criminals and has made no move to routinely involuntarily commit and treat them for their KNOWN dangerousness and the very high likelihood they will reoffend. Rather, psychiatry and society prey on their traumazized victims with the pretense that they are the dangerous ones in a neverending Kafkaesque nightmare. They are dangerous in that they try to expose the truth about this corrupt, misogynist system. in a futile attempt to get justice and save their children.
So much for psychiatry and the so called justice system protecting society from dangerous people when they created most if not all school and other public/private mass shooters with their deadly SSRI’s and other drugs causing suicise and violence as exposed by Dr. Peter Breggin in MEDICATION MADNESS and many other works of his and others.
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anonymous, (lower case “a”)
I stand corrected.
You have more experience with committments that I do.
We all depend on each other’s experiences and knowledge to gain a more accurate world views.
Thanks,
Alice
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This happens all the time in my state as well.
Michigan… And if someone has had their ability to process what they are going through interrupted by forced medications or “treatment” then there doesn’t seem to be a thread of chance that anyone will see they need to NOT be “treated” or medicated by the people causing this imbalance. I watched a friend being committed. The police were lied to, they thought she had done things she hadn’t, I only know this because when I tried explaining that her “friends” had terrified her so much, threatening her with commitment, that she fled and they actually trespassed into her own house, called her case manager on her own phone; all this AFTER she had fled her own house, feeling completely unsafe. I found out about the lies when I had called the police to explain that she had been threatened and then her friends had trespassed into her house. At one point, before all of this, I told her friends that they needed to get out of her house, since it was clear that she didn’t want them there; their response was to act like this was some chance to lay a whole story on the police. If I called the police to tell them to tell these people to get out of a house they were trespassing in, they would explain “we’re her friend and she’s gone crazy, you need to pick her up.”So, I didn’t call the police, they apparently did ; because, when I came by later, and simply wanted to talk to her while the police were there, and was asked to leave the scene otherwise I would be interfering with an investigation and arrested: I then went home and called the police to inform them what I knew myself, and a lady police officer simply answering the emergency line (apparently hearing gossip from her desk) seemed to think she knew things my friend had been doing, which she hadn’t been doing at all. And I only found out these were lies afterwards. If someone is seen as being actively crazy, it can be free bait for all sorts of people to get alarmed and feel free to make up scenarios that never even happened: that they might hear have happened, or that might have happened in the past. This friend of mine was committed, then lit up with medications to such a degree that she was intoxicated enough to convince them she could leave. And by this time also, her Achilles tendon had been ruined. In trying to escape she had ripped it, at the “medical” institution called an asylum this was never properly looked at, although her leg was swollen up to the knee. And they held her there without treatment for it (as if it was a sprained ankle) and it was ruined for life because of this.
So, she got out of there. Then, she probably didn’t know whether it was day or night anymore, was frantic trying to find people to hang out with, hung out with the wrong crowd that staked out her house, and she got raped. Then she was re-admitted to the asylum (and her house broken into while she was incarcerated). At the asylum they didn’t believe she had been raped. She was accused of walking around too seductively. When she couldn’t hold her urine because of the Geodon she was put on she was strapped up as if she did this on purpose. Then, they kept her in the asylum for another month or so.
The doctor had threatened her with “if you don’t take this and this and that I won’t let you out.” She was having incredible ups and downs from this at first. Then she started sounding quite wretched and desolate and lost. And then I heard she had succeeded in committing suicide.
Her “Friends” still would come up to me with sob stories about her. The same people who made me out to be the stupidest, weirdest disruption there was because I was pointing out exactly what they were doing that didn’t help and what would come of it, which did. And they were incredibly rude to me while they were assaulting her with a threat of commitment which they then accomplished with lies and their form of terrorism. When all this happened, I had simply been visiting with her and saw her for what she was: someone who had never had the chance to be a child, and was looking for the space to experience this.
After she died, I heard from one of them that she had said I was the kindest person she knew, or something like that. I think because they had all been trying to convince her that I was not helpful at all, weird and disruptive; when they had decided she was getting “crazy.” She never agreed with all of that.
They never apologized, would come up to me like some stinking wet kitchen rag full of germs and rot and hang on me with their sob stories like some kind of infection. I finally had enough of it and wrote one of them a letter telling them what they had done, how they had treated me, and that it was highly inappropriate for them to approach me the way they did, and to stop.
And I loved this person immensely, she was one of the most real people I knew. And she still is!
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NIjnsky,
I’m so sorry this happened to your friend. I’m sorry for your loss. This morning, reading your story, I weep.
Best always,
Alice
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Since I’m on my way out the door to the soup kitchen, I don’t have time and will post more later: But Alice this poor girl’s behavior was something that most people would have become alarmed about, so this goes beyond psychiatry, but their responses to her would not have been and weren’t helpful. It’s about their triggers not her behavior. And as Donna pointed out, this allows those people to have their alarm exploited and their heads filled with responses put there by the people running the whole DSM. And have the treatment be fill in the blank with whatever is making money keeping the system running, regardless of efficacy.
She was just trying to be a child… “laughs at a scruple, believes all sham but paradise” and now I’m crying again:
The Child’s faith is new
by Emily Dickinson
637
The Child’s faith is new—
Whole—like His Principle—
Wide—like the Sunrise
On fresh Eyes—
Never had a Doubt—
Laughs—at a Scruple—
Believes all sham
But Paradise—
Credits the World—
Deems His Dominion
Broadest of Sovereignties—
And Caesar—mean—
In the Comparison—
Baseless Emperor—
Ruler of Nought—
Yet swaying all—
Grown bye and bye
To hold mistaken
His pretty estimates
Of Prickly Things
He gains the skill
Sorrowful—as certain—
Men—to anticipate
Instead of Kings—
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Alice, I was going to tell you more about my friend, but haven’t had the quiet till now to continue. This was all so shocking! Another friend (also stuck on “medications” because of the asylums etc.): she called me up to tell me that our friend had committed suicide. and she was so sad. And to tell you the truth I immediately had the response that the psychiatrists would call “psychotic” or is this what Jesus meant when he said “let the dead take care of the dead.” I told my that she wasn’t dead, that it was her body that was dead, but this could be revived; that it was just so she could get away from the mental health system. I then took a magic wand I had (I had been reading Harry Potter books and actually liked to take sticks I found outside and make wands out of them, it’s quite easy if you break them into appropriate lengths and you can use the sidewalk as sand paper to smooth out edges); and I waved it. My friend appeared before me complete, just like a hologram, but spiritually. And now you can argue: Which part is real, that part that the physical eyes see or that part that’s the “hologram” and wasn’t destructible? So, there she was and she asked me: “How did you do that?” I just smiled at her, demurred and let my dimples do the talking. This wasn’t that easy to process mind you. I actually thought that her body would be revived, after she was legally dead. This way, the mental health system couldn’t get in the way of her healing, could prevent her from having the ability to pry herself free of the limitations and fears she both felt she needed and which were imprisoning her. This, didn’t happen. I ACTUALLY called her mother and told her mother this, and (not surprisingly) the mother didn’t at all respond to this in a way which engendered a group of spiritually active people to go pray over her daughter’s body. She told me they were going to have her daughter cremated. I mean: I even during that time found myself walking past a hospital and believed I saw a whole group of people from a Christian College there especially to be praying for my friend to be resurrected, and I thought afterwards I saw her here and there for a moment. I thought she had become part of a convent like a nun where she was free of what had gotten in her way (she actually had told me once that she liked that kind of a contemplative life the most). So, back to what’s real and what isn’t. She wasn’t dead the moment I saw her in the “hologram,” and who we are isn’t really a body. It’s even happened, if you read the books of Joan Wester Anderson, that a person whose bones are buried someplace else can appear in full form (body and everything) and help someone out. Jesus did this, and it’s happened throughout history: this has always been there, that the “blueprint,” is still available to reanimate temporarily at least, what was there and is called a body.
A couple of years later also, an acquaintance I was talking to, who happened to be a friend to a trance medium we both know: we were talking on the phone and she “happened” to find a channeled message from my friend who had committed suicide. Our mutual medium friend had seen a notice of what happened and then she had had channeled a message. In the message (which ended up exactly where it would be found at the right moment), the pertinent message was that committing suicide HADN’T helped her deal with her depression, that it was a dead set. And it was when, one of my friends “friends” who had had her committed came up to me starting a conversation and I tried to relay the channeled message, and this person responded with “I hope that’s not true, that committing suicide didn’t help her depression.” that I had to write a letter to who were the ring leaders in this group of people who had my friend committed and tell them they needed to stop coming up to me. I mean ONE of them is even a college English professor and wrote this poem (I could share the link, but I’ll spare you; plus this is confidential): this STUPID poem “baring” the “enduring” name: the “flower-that-has-the-same-name-as-my-friend” always hangs its head. And “you don’t know why.” And then references to wanting some mythical creature to leave a propoganda trail to help. THEN says he can’t tell whether this creature with golden skin like the sun is going to burst or whether it’s um… been hijacked by “fly by night” tendencies. THEN he thinks the head of her (the blossom) looks like a pelican and he would leave it that way “if addressed.” Then he mentions there’s other version where the pelican sticks out it’s head. Where by, I suppose, the reader is left to wonder whether it gets chopped off or whether it stops “hanging.” All of this amazing menagerie made up completely after the fact…
And now, my friend who called me in the beginning to tell me what happened, I was just visiting her a couple of days ago, and she has this reaction to drugs where she feels as if she’s projected onto something she sees. There’s a name for this, I don’t remember what it’s called. She has to keep her walls pretty much bare, so that if she starts feeling that way, she can just stare at the wall. She’s had this reaction 15 times, and is scared to go off of the medications, because she says she has that reaction as withdrawal symptom as well as when they put her on something new.
And my friend who committed suicide, her mother: I had warned her that I thought that ,if they had her daughter committed, when she got out she would get so depressed that she would commit suicide. But no, she had all these “reasons” why this was better for her daughter. And when I talked to her after her daughters death she said something like “none of has thought this would happen.”
After all of this, I was driving in a car with a mutual friend, and for a moment could feel this poor girl’s spirit there, and how sad she was that she wasn’t with us. But she’s actually doing well now. When she speaks to me it’s truly helpful and simple. She was always spiritual. One day, way before all of this, I was thinking about going swimming and she suddenly called me, as if we had been talking about this. She was rather taken back by this, that she had been responding to thought so easily. But all children are like that….
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NIjinsky,
Thanks for telling me more about your friend. Perhaps “Sorry for your loss” isn’t quite right considering your experiences of her death. Still. I’m sorry this happened. I am sorry for your loss.
You are not the first I have heard this types of experince from. All is not known in this world.
Best,
Alice
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Correction: there’s one sentence that reads: “This way, the mental health system couldn’t get in the way of her healing, could prevent her from having the ability to pry herself free of the limitations and fears…” This should read: “This way, the mental health system couldn’t get in the way of her healing. could NOT prevent her from…..”
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correction two. I wrote: “And then references to wanting some mythical creature to leave a propoganda trail to help.” This is wrong. For all I know a Zeppelin is a mythological creature, but then it turns out to be these machine that fly up in the air. Apparently the poet wanted a little zeppelin to leave a paper trail of propaganda behind to help him with his alarmed stated, that the flower’s head was hanging. This goes real well with a quip of Naomi Klein’s: Projecting the Coca Cola Logos on the moon…
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Anonymous,
Read my post below. There is no”testimony behind closed doors to a psychiatrist” happening in Oregon when a person is “placed on a hold”.
Alice
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Anonymous,
You go guy. I like seeing you bring your thinking and writing talents to good use.
Peace,
Alice
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Great idea Anonymous.
Alice
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Anonymous, you seem to have forgotten that you were upset and criticized Rossa’s unfair comments that went well beyond her personal situation of forcing psychiatry on her son when you said ALL forced psychiatry is justified and nobody has the right to complain because they deserved it due to their actions or inability to cope with their current environment. That’s why we all found Rossa’s comments offensive though I can empathize with what she went through with her son though I can’t condone it.
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Keep track of commenters here and whom you are responding to; I am the “anonymous” with a lower case “a”, there is another one w a “capital A”.I was never “upset” with the Rossa Forbes comment as you imply in your comment above. You might get to know Rossa Forbes via the blog she writes, before you write continued judgements on her.
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Thank you for pointing out the difference between you and the other Anonymous poster. I think I would prefer to seek out the views of someone who does not try to bully others to accept forced psychiatry because in their arrogant opinion their victims deserve it and have no right to complain just because these would be universal oppressors violated the rights of their own so called loved ones. This blanket statement by Rossa and your support of it blindly assumes that everyone’s situation is exactly the same as Rossa’s and psychiatrists and/or others forcing psychiatry on others despite tons of conflicts of interest including escaping their own personal responsibility are absolutely right in all cases. This narcissistic view and scapegoating is revolting to me and one more violation of human rights and dignity many have suffered at the hands of forced psychiatry.
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anonymous,
If you have been in Rossa’s situation, you need not be ashamed. Many of us have been there and all of us had to have our wakeup calls about mainstream psychiatry when personally affected directly or indirectly due to the threat of harm to loved ones.
I certainly do not condemn a parent who’s child suffers some kind of psychotic or other breakdown emergency and due to lack of availability or knowledge about any other resources seeks help from psychiatry as the only available choice. Or the decision may be made for them by other authorities like the police or courts. This happened to some people here and elsewhere and they were not happy with the consequences of having their own and their child’s rights violated by psychiatrists or others in the system. For others it may have worked out okay by eventually finding better alternatives like Rossa.
This is a common story and is worthy of respect and empathy. But, some parents take it further and insist on coming up with their own theories as to causes and required actions that are just as bogus as psychiatry’s and even more so that they try to force on others. So, I hope you can see that having a unique problem with your own child as a personal experience is far different than trying to make it univeral and trying to practice medicine without a license by forcing those limited views on others who have many different experiences and realities that nobody has the right to define especially concerning those of strangers.
I know it seems like I’m tough on such parents, but I hope the above makes it clear that it is their attempts to violate others’ free will and choices that upsets people rather than how they did the best they could with their personal, unique situation with the best knowledge they had at the time.
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Parents, like anyone, should have the common sense to know that being committed, is not going to a fun experience for their kid. It’s not hard to figure out what is going to happen to your child if you force psychiatry on them.
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anonymous,
Please go back and read Rossa Forbes first post about forcing psychiatry on her son and then justifying it by making universal negative assumptions about every person subjected to forced psychiatry, which were totally outrageous. I addressed this on several other responses you can check out. You have greatly misinterpreted why we were upset with Rossa’s [deleted by administrator] comment [deleted by administrator].
Knowing the history of many in this audience, she could have stated the truth in a more sensitive way. I won’t define her reality, but it appears her son had some kind of meltdown, so she felt forced to seek help from the only game in town, psychiatry. Later, she learned that psychiatry was not the best approach to her family problems of which her son was only a part since all had to learn better coping skills and not just her son. This sounds like a familiar story for which Rossa would get much empathy for trying to do the best she could for her son with the knowledge and experience she had at the time. But, instead, Rossa now claims that all forced treatment is justified for all victims regardless of their unique history, which seems to greatly conflict with her other claims. I’m still waiting for an apology from Rossa for her outrageous attacks on others here.
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Well Donna, you’re right, considering the audience that reads here, you’d think no one would comment other than the selected few who seem to know it all. Again, I suggest educating yourself by reading Rossa’s blog instead of picking apart one or 2 comments here, she’s more on your side than you think; but then who needs sides right? after all this is the all-voices count-even-the-doctors and mothers at the open forum called Mad in America! Have fun living in this bubble!
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Well Donna, you’re right, considering the audience that reads here, you’d think no one would comment other than the selected few who seem to know it all. Again, I suggest educating yourself by reading Rossa’s blog instead of picking apart one or 2 comments here, she’s more on your side than you think; but then who needs sides right? after all this is the all-voices count-even-the-doctors and mothers at the open forum called Mad in America!
Have fun living in this bubble!
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anonymous,
Looking at these posts after the fact makes me feel bad. You are right. I overreacted because this topic triggers some of my own traumatic encounters with psychiatry trying to save my loved ones.
So, I do apologize to both you and Rossa for that. I see from your comments below you are not a great fan of mainstream psychiatry yourself. I hope you and/or your loved ones didn’t suffer too much harm. And you are right that what’s important is that Rossa is good mother and her son is doing well. I was most impressed that Rossa found a way to improve the entire family in healing with new coping skills so her son didn’t have to play the role of perpetual scapegoat as happens in families who aren’t as enlightened as Rossa.
Thanks for sharing. Sometimes we need to get these feelings out!
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Permanent harm from medication was suffered by my loved one.
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PS Rossa Forbes has not posted what you call “an outrageous attack on others” here. Really, stop looking for a way to pound down others. What you say about Rossa is unacceptable in my book, so maybe you should be the one to apologize.
Her son is thriving due to have a mother than cares! How about that?
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anonymous,
You are more than entitled to your views and if you look at all of my comments, I tried to look at all aspects of Rossa’s comment and gave her lots of credit for all the positive, enlightened things she did once she learned more about her family dynamics.
Perhaps it is true that I overreacted just as I think Rossa and you may have done. I just tried to send you a compassionate email because I realize this is a very difficult issue for all those affected. I repeated that I have great empathy for parents who have children in an emotional crisis and have no known alternatives of where to turn, so they seek help from psychiatry. Later, parents may be upset by loss of control with this system and if fortunate, find better options as Rossa did and apparently is what you are trying to do.
Why don’t you be more open about your views here? That’s what I was trying to encourage you to do. I don’t pretend to have a monopoly on the truth, but many have been seriously threatened and harmed by psychiatry.
So, now we have both expressed what bothers up and I hope you feel better.
In keeping with your recommendation, I will check out Rossa’s blog. You may not have noticed, but I have had a critic following my every post and zapping me with all too typical accusations of what a monster I am for saying or thinking certain things. The truth is we disagree about just about everything including her support for ECT, a known brain damaging barbaric practice mostly forced on women and the elderly. I must confess that I became more defensive than I would normally be about why I was upset with Rossa’s original post being subjected to this ongoing attacks.
So, I regret if I have upset you and you are certainly as welcome here as everyone else along with your own experience and views.
Have a nice night.
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anonymous,
Do you have a link to Rossa’s blog? Another thing is that I think I may have felt somewhat more upset by Rossa’s comment because the part of it that she applied univerally did not seem like her usual views that I recalled. Oh well!
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Yes you click on Rossa Forbes name and it will take you to her blog.
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Donna,
Thanks for the peacemaking. You are very skilled at this. There are a lot of people reading and posting here that have been hurt.
Best,
Alice
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Donna,
Again. Wow. I like this lovely, peaceful side of you. Good job.
Alice
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ECT just like someone who has suffered traumatic head injury, induces a sort of Euphoric state, because of the injury. This is because of injury, not because of any therapeutic effect. And now there’s also some hi-hifalutin reference to neuro-plasticity. When this is also a result of traumatic injury. This is like saying that upon receiving an open cut, and a scab forms to help heal this; the scab is a sign of skin healing; and when anyone has skin problems you can start assaulting them with various cuts to create scabs which heal the skin. And people are given whole series of shock treatments because this is believed to “maintain” the euphoric feeling one gets from head trauma, rather than it’s creating head trauma.
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I read Peter Breggin’s article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/electroshock-treatment_b_1273359.html I find that it clearly questions whether, with the misinformation David Healy spreads about ECT, those he advises about ECT could be making an informed consent.
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No I’m not spamming the site, I’m trying to get my grammar straight, sorry: I read Peter Breggin’s article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/electroshock-treatment_b_1273359.html. I find that it clearly questions whether those David Healy advises about ECT could be making an informed consent, with the misinformation he spreads about ECT.
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I read very carefully through the whole complete article and Peter Breggin doesn’t in any way mention Healy as looking for “profit.” What he mentions is that Healy is promoting the idea of ECT as healing, as rarely doing damage, as being difficult to show that it creates cognitive or memory problems beyond three months, and that it is the most effective treatment for severe depressive disorder.” He (Breggin) gives reference to where you can find evidence that contradicts all of this. Breggin nowhere makes any inference that Healy is in this for the money, he simply refutes the information Healy puts forth about ECT. The article is about whether ECT is an effective treatment and whether Healy has given accurate information as to whether it is. When someone refutes what a person says, and does it articulately, and presents evidence to back it up this does not mean he is accusing the other person of being in it for profit. When a person gives information about a treatment as dangerous as ECT, and the information is highly questionable given the research that has already been done and the statistics known; to point this out isn’t an attack on someone’s motives.
For anyone else reading this and wondering if they have time for it: you can do a simple search of the article if you have the find command in the edit menu. Put in the word profit and it doesn’t find that word in the whole article. Neither does the article infer this or distract from the topic with inferences as to motive
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I really wonder whether you and Donna are simply having problems because:
1) having worked in a psych ward, you are forced to see things a certain way, you know if you respond too fervently you are going to have difficulty there, you also know how much trouble anyone there can get into when they don’t hold something back; you can’t help but take these things on. I actually can see how it would seem that Breggin was infering that Healy was only critical of anti-depressants in order to promote ECT, and this might seem going too far with judging someone’s motives. But this isn’t really the case, as it also is in reference to his inconsistent responses to scientific evidence and his criticism of the reform movement.
2) Donna has had to step in and prevent people from having to deal with what goes on behind the closed doors you work in, so her approach is 180 degrees another direction, and equally necessary and valid. Rather than being careful, and avoiding creating the kind of controversy that can end up causing a person to be singled out in a locked ward, she has to be incisive and create controversy to prevent them from ever getting there, and so she doesn’t have the same filters in regard to responses as you do. And she’s not meant to.
Please don’t feel I am trying to diagnose either one of you, I’m just trying to say something that might help with perspective. If this doesn’t help or you feel I’m imposing, please feel free to completely ignore what I’ve said.
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Again, I’m also just reminding myself how to respond; and consequently telling myself not to see things as an attack; things that are half just abstract energy related to possible memories; but I know this makes me feel better: in harmony and at peace
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You are cracking me up about ‘you know who” since I do know who that is of sorts; but it won’t hurt to investigate it further
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In fact, the only inference to motive is that Breggin mentions is this: Healy was critical of anti-depressants and that this is backed up scientifically; but promoting ECT as an alternative and using the critic of anti-depressants to infer that ECT is effective in contrast, when there is considerable evidence that ECT also isn’t effective, this isn’t appropriate. And then for him to leave out information he couldn’t but have known, since Breggin had shared this: http://breggin.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=40&Itemid=52 this becomes further questionable. And it simple doesn’t add up to criticize one things and promote the other, and be inconsistent with how you handle scientific evidence, when they are both highly questionable. If it’s not about integrity to all scientific evidence, and one thing is favored, there’s a problem here and a clear bias. And when someone does this, he is clearly trying to promote whatever his bias is toward.
Peter Breggin says that Healy’s commitment to promoting ECT explained his rather peculiar stance against anti-depressants while being critical of those in the reform movement.
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Saying one can make an informed decision about ECT, is perhaps something like saying that people can make an informed decision to become a member of a violent gang. This would have the same results as desensitizing a person to violence (head trauma), would make them believe that repeated “treatments” make them feel more part of things and stable; and prevent them from working out societal problem that might otherwise be challenging (why do we have gangs, why is there violence, why are people happy with disabling themselves with violence, why aren’t people able to free themselves on discipline that’s dependent on traumatizing people to “behave”)
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anonymous,
I am so sorry to hear about what happened to your son. I did briefly check out Rossa’s web site and it looks like it has a lot of good information on it that I would like to explore more in depth.
I think my own traumatic experiences can cause me like others to get triggered too easily and shoot off the hip too much, which I later regret.
I wish we had delete buttons.
Thanks so much for sharing. I hope to hear lots more from you and Rossa.
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Please delete this post. Reconsidered below before this.
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Donna,
I hit he “trash” button on the one from you to “Mary” (Marianne) from 7:36 pm today 5/5. I hope this is the one you meant. There’s an undo key but I don’t know how long it will work. Let me know If I got the wrong one. I’m not real sure how this works.
Best,
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
The ones I meant for the trash button were to Rossa for reasons I say in my responses, but I realized I was overeacting and regretted it when “anonymous” and Rossa objected. I have been being stalked and singled out for critique for many posts by Katie due to our past wars about ECT as I explained to you. Thus, my being triggered about my own traumatic encounter with psychiatry to rescue my loved ones and Katies’s ongoing attacks made me more defensive than I might have been otherwise. That’s why I thought it was time to clear the air.
I think that we should have our own delete buttons that could apply to only our own comments. It’s hard to “flag” certain comments since we run out of delete buttons.
But, thanks for your efforts. Do you have any suggestions for resolving this on removing things we regret saying when triggered and shoot from the hip? I’ll try to do better, but I never pretended to be a saint though I try to be a decent, honest person overall.
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Donna,
Hang in there. Your contributions here are essential to the mix. I wish I had some magic way to help things feel better all the way around.
Sorry.
All my best,
Alice
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Anonymous,
You are absolutely right. Most of us had to learm about psychiatry the hard way directly or indirectly due to threats to one’s self or our loved ones. Maybe the problem is when people use the term “forced psychiatry” it triggers others’ traumatic encounters with psychiatry. Again, I’m glad you spoke up and hope you will continue to do so when you see others or yourself being hurt by those triggered into overreacting as I did. Obviously, you did the best you could as a parent and as Rossa says there aren’t many if any alternatives initially for those in crisis since the PSYCHIATRY/BIG PHARMA pathocracy hijacked the whole system with their bogus biomedical model to push lethal drugs, ECT and other barbaric tortures.
Thanks again for sharing.
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Dr. Keyes you have certainly gotten a lot of feedback. I’ve tried to read all the responses but could have missed a few so please forgive if my thoughts are repetitive.
My initial thought after reading your blog was, “Doctor of what?”
I think you might agree that Psychiatrists are “Doctors” unlike any others in that their supposed area of specialty (study and treatment of mental disorders) is fraught with so much uncertainty and disagreement. For example, a cardiologist and a psychiatrist are both doctors but the cardiologist actually focuses on something real and tangible (the heart). She/he can see it, hear it, etc. The psychiatrist focuses on the mind and mental processes. You can’t see the mind since it’s a construct, a metaphor. How does one effectively treat a construct or a metaphor? This argument is nothing new and has been argued by Szasz and others for over 50 years.
Some argue for the discontinuation of this specialty altogether. Let the neurologists continue their work on the brain itself and see what they come up with.
You may want to read Whitaker’s section of how in the 70’s psychiatry as a profession saw its looming demise. They knew than that, what they were doing could be done by so many other professionals, and done more inexpensively. In an effort to survive, they brainstormed and decided the one thing they could do that no one else could was to prescribe psychiatric medications. The strategy was set and has played out these past 40 years. Being called a “prescriber” may be offensive to you, but that is exactly what your profession set out to become.
Enjoy your posts!
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David,
Thanks for your post. I, too, may have missed a few here. I am certainly behind the curve a couple of hours.
I went to medical school, licensed to be a doctor, started in neurology, completed the “GP” (general practice) training then trained as psychiarist. I was a doctor before I became a psychiatrist and am still one now. If I completed psychoanalytic training I would be a psychoanalist (sp?) and but still would be a doctor.
Alice
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I’m not sure you’re getting the broader point. Specializing in the mind is just so different from specializing in something like the heart or the brain. As you’ve discussed in previous blogs; what’s the future of psychiatry as a medical speciality if not a prescriber? Some have mentioned helping to facilitate people titrating off meds which sounds like a good possibility. What is unique about the training Doctors receive that helps them assist people with problems of living? Will reimbursement entities pay for that or just prescribing and monitoring? I’m just not sure the speciality is salvagable over the long-term.
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Great! Thanks for this feedback. My gut tells me there has to be things that physicians can bring to the table that are unique and will help bring about the changes we are looking for, I’m just ignorant of their specific training/experience to know what those things are. Thanks again.
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David,
I’m not so sure it’s salvagable either. I thought about this while I was cooking dinner for my family tonight. I had one of those “a ha” moments. Probably I’d better write an article about it so the word gets to more people. Others can think about this idea of mine, too. This is a tangent off your topic but I hope worth reading.
More and more psychiatric prescribing isn’t done by psychiatrists at all. (What percentage of psychiatric prescriptions are written by psychiatrists?) Along with the ramped up market demand (through direct public marketing) there has been a long term marketing of the idea of a “psychiatrist shortage”.
I’ve been hearing about this “psychiatrist shortage” as part of the “doctor shortage” since the 1980’s. This was the rationale for licensing nurses to be “prescribers” in Oregon. One post yesterday (Huffman) mentioned that they use PAs and NPs because they cost half as much as psychiatrists and that is all they want us all for, “prescribing”. I knew that. Most “prescribing” in Portland community mental health is done by NPs and PAs.
In Oregon, under funding pressures, we have methodically shifted mental health “prescribing” to primary care docs and pediatricians, NPs. PAs and now, last year, Naturopaths were approved and licensed by the state of Oregon. Social workers also lobbied for “prescribing” in Oregon a couple of years ago.
Psychologists in two states and the military now can pescribe psychiatric drugs. It could be a good piece of research to find out how much of the funding for these initiatives were drug company based. I heard at the time that those helpful pharmaceutical companies helped us out with our psychiatrist “shortage” by lobbying for several other professional classes to be able to “prescribe”. Just to help us overworked psychiatists, you know.
At this point it’s absolutely fine if psychistrists are scapegoated for all the hidden information about drugs, the manipulation of the diagnostic criteria, the artificial “consumer” market for the products.
At this point, from a pharmaceutical market perspective, psychiatrists are completely disposable. While we sit here on MIA and shoot at psychiatrists, the pharmaceautical companies can laugh all the way to the bank. They have new conveyances for their products.
Yikes. I think I’ve frightened myself with this one.
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
What about practicing alternative medicine/psychiatry or what Dr. Mark Hyman calls functional medicine? This approach dumps most if not all toxic drugs that only treat symptoms or risks of very unhealthy life styles like insulin, statins, psych drugs and others. Instead, doctors do tests and exams to find nutitional and vitamin deficiencies, allergies, unhealthy life styles like lack of exercise and overeating addictive toxic junk food, stres reduction, hormone balancing, etc. There is a web site, Safe Harbor or Alternative Mental Health that has all natural methods of treating emotional symptoms labelled in the DSM. For example, many doctors prescribe fish oil, B vitamins, flax seed oil/meal and other supplements along with exercise and/or meditation to improve mind, body and spirit. You are probably familiar with many of the famous ones like Dr. Andrew Weill, Dr. Hyla Cass, Psychiatrist, Dr. Joel Fuhrman focusing on nutrition, etc. There are many great books for nutrition and other lifestyle factors that contribute to a healthy mind/brain and body.
I don’t know if this would qualify for insurance, but even if out of pocket, it would probably be popular and people would be willing to pay since many are fed up with the broken main stream medical system of toxic drug pushing and other medical procedures for profit at the expense of good health. If the practice went well enough, less wealthy people might be taken on a sliding scale. Or you could be a health coach using alternative methods. If enough doctors do alternative, natural medicine and get enough proof that it works along with healthy, satified customers, perhaps this might be one possibility.
I am not an expert or doctor, so I don’t know how realistic this is for you, but I know many doctors are going in this direction and writing books about it. Dr. Mark Hyman is one example and he just wrote the best seller, THE BLOOD SUGAR SOLUTION, to deal with the nation’s diabesity epidemic.
It’s really those psychiatrists at the top who sold out psychiatry to BIG PHARMA and made all the profits from it.
I’m sure many psychiatric survivors would be happy to see you if you could provide an alternative to the current biological paradigm of psychiatry with no stigmas or toxic drugs.
Please don’t take the angry posts personally. I hope you realize that the angrier or nastier the post the angrier and nastier were the psychiatrists these people had the misfortune to encounter often in forced, unfair situations. I know it’s hard to take, but perhaps you should be more disgusted by those colleagues in psychiatry who behaved in such an abusive vile manner, their so called patients feel nothing but hatred, rage, contempt, trauma, disgust, outrage and terror about how such traitors to your field treated them.
Thanks for listening. I do feel for you and hope you are on the side of survivors though those hurting badly from psychiatry are not at their lovable best.
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Donna,
These are great ideas. This is quite a lot like my focus in my old private office practice. I was alternative before alternative was cool ;-). I did a lot of therapy work. I’ve been active in learning about health and nutrition and “prescribed” nutrition, exercise, socialization, education, life-changes etc. I used my prescription pads for “do this week” lists.
I did cash business as much as I could, kept my rates low and gave 20% of my gross back in sliding fee treatment. Dare I use the “F” word again in public with regard to psychiatric work? I had fun. (humor)
The economics of a part-time practice like this didn’t pan out for me. Doctor liability insurance rates were skyrocketing ($10,000 a year with plans to double). Rent and utilities. Accountant. Taxes. The math just didn’t work out. I worked without paying me for a long time then closed up shop. Too bad.
I love to write. I’m doing a lot of it. It’s fun. Words are really really important. They create the world.
I’m not taking the angry posts “personally”. I’m pretty solid in knowing who and what I’m about so I know it’s not me folks are mad at. I know bad things have happened. I know bad things still happen. I’m sorry about all of that.
I’m also hopeful people can move past anger and fighting so we can work things out and make the world a better place. Maybe one small corner over here where we are is a place we could start with.
Best,
Alice
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David,
Hasn’t anyone explained to you that “psychiatrists know all about brain chemistry and neurotransmitters and will help you feel better by prescribing medications that correct your chemical imbalance”?
Dr. Keys was educated under this myth. However, she has “seen the light” and doesn’t associate herself with that myth anymore.
We need more MD psychiatrists who are going through the same re-learning process as we “patients” and the general public.
She’s also a good writer and has a sense of humor. I’m so glad she is onboard here.
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Marianne,
Thanks for the understanding and support. Thanks also for encouraging both my writing and sense of humor.
Your mention of my being educated under the neurotransmitter myth: I remember having so much trouble keeping them all straight. I went up to the medical school to a special grand rounds (many years ago) determined to learn them at last. I listened and took many notes from the several speakers. At the end I realized that if the first guy’s theories were right then the last guy’s had to be wrong. There were mutually exclusive parts in the theories. I wish I had those notes today.
I think that was the day I got clearer about the difference between theories and facts. I decided henceforth to tell people who wanted to talk neurochemistry with me that these are theories. There’s a line in the PDR with all the antidepressants I read to people alot: “the mechanism of action is unknown”.
Yes. I continued to prescribe these drugs. But I knew it was a theory and explained it as such. It was the best I could do at the time with the information I had. Back then I still was working from the literature that said anitdepressants worked and didn’t have withdrawel symptoms. It never occured to me to think these were also “theories”.
My mentor used to call this looking through “the retrospectroscope”. It makes things look different.
Best,
Alice
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PS-This post is also a friendly reminder to the commenters who give accolades to doctors blogging at Mad In America, that they ARE DOCTORS first, they like to discuss change and all that, but who are you kidding? they are doctors, thus the title of THIS POST.
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True. I am a doctor. Perhaps a doctor (me) could have good ideas to add to the mix.
Alice
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Forgive my frequent posts on this Dr. but I’m reallly curious about this particular angle. Will your ideas generate from your experince as a Doctor? A neurologist A psychiatrist? Again, what’s the unique training and experience that a doctor brings to this discussion that will lead to these ideas? Is it even possible for Dr’s to then take those ideas and practice differently or are the ideas academic ones?
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David,
My concern is that by excluding all psychiatrists from a discussion of remaking mental health care you may be losing some good thinkers, some good insights, some good “insider” information that could be useful, some good-hearted and dedicated souls. This would be a loss.
I’m not certain yet where I fit in the big picture of the mental health world of the future, if at all. I have stepped off the train to think.
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
I gave some suggestions about alternative brain/body health medicine above, which I think could be very popular and sucessful. Even if you sat around and gave people placebos all day you’d be doing better than mainstream psychiatry. I mean that as a compliment since you are considering alternatives. Do you know much about nutrition? That’s a major factor in mental heatlh and many doctors are promoting that now in psychiatry and general medicine as I said above.
So, in anwer to the questions above, as a medical doctor you have a lot to offer one’s overall health even if you had to brush up on alternatives like nutrition, necessary supplements and vitamins, healthy lifestyles, ect.
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You’ve got it Donna, that’s the kind of brainstorming I was trying to get at with Dr. Keys. I’m just curious to hear from someone who is actually a Doctor about their views on these issues. I enjoy your posts and look forward to the next one!
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David,
Thanks for reading and contributing here. Brainstorming is one of my favorite things to do. I enjoy generating options with other people. A very old book by Napoleon Hill he called this a “mastermind alliance”. You get together people with a variety of different skills and viewpoints and work together in a coopertive manner to come up with options and solutions. This is way better than any of one of us can do alone. I don’t agree with every single thing in his book and his language use is out of date but I like his phrase. The idea is powerful.
Alice
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Alice,
Some of the biggest names at the forefront of the mental health reform movement are psychiatrists/MDs — Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman, Loren Mosher — many on the board of the International Society for Ethical Psychology and Psychiatry. You’re by no means the only one…
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ssenTC,
Thanks for including me here. I hope to make useful contributions in necessary changes in psychiatry.
Best,
Alice
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I love history.
Especially World War II history.
I’ve read most every book ever written by Stephen Ambrose (who, IMO was the very best)
And I’m familiar with Ernst Rudin and the boys of the SS; the long train rides and brutal deaths of some of the most vulnerable – the poison soaps, the starvation… all of it.
But I have a question.
What next?
Where do we go from here?
We can get online or go to the libray to learn about the autrocitiees of the Reich.
We can say, “Never again!” on this site.
WE can say, “Stop it! Stop it!”
May of us have.
Many of us continue to do so.
But where do we go from here?
Can we remain committed, yet open to reconciliation?
I hope so.
But I think the question remains to be answered.
Time will tell, I suppose.
I only know one thing for certain.
The revolution has begun.
And is is unlike any before.
“As our case is new, we must think and act anew.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Duane
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Duane,
I applaud your noble motives and thoughts, but unfortunately, psychiatric eugenics oppression, slavery and destruction of the millions they target grows every day.
I agree that excellent alternatives need to be offered, but we pretty much know what they are in terms of good nutrition, supplements and vitamins, exercise, spirituality, good relationships, hormone balancing, stress reduction, meaningful work and other quality of life issues.
The problem is that as long as the medical/drug model of psychiatry and even mainstream medicine in bed with BIG PHARMA/BUSINESS/GOVERNMENT is allowed to continue to hijack all the money, power and options through legal force while outlawing healthy alternatives and free choice, there isn’t a great deal of hope of changing the whole system immediately.
However, wonderful, enlightened people like you helping to spread the word can help individuals make such positive changes in their lives one by one until the number becomes so great, it will create a new pardigm shift of medical care that all people demand for a unified healthy mind, body and spirit. Many doctors have already adopted this new paradigm having rejected the current toxic ones and their books often become best sellers because they work like Dr. Joel Furhman’s EAT TO LIVE.
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Donna,
Thanks for pointing us in the direction of healthy alternatives to the current “pill” model of medical care.
Thanks for your encouraging words to Duane. He is a resource gatherer who brings a positive flavor to the thought mix here.
Keep reading and posting. You have a lot of energy. Your words matter.
Here’s to the “…one by one…” “…the new paradigm shift…” and “…unified healthy mind, body and spirit.”
Like you say “…spread the word…”.
Best,
Alice
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Abraham Lincoln also led America into the civil war where it pitted brother against brother, in one of the bloodiest wars America ever fought–over what?–standing up for what is right.
The question is what are people willing to sacrifice for this change, and, what are doctors REALLY going to do beyond neat and tidy blog posts full of carefully thought out words.
Words on paper mean nothing like action does.
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You’re preaching to the choir here…
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Let’s all sing. 😉 (humor)
Alice
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hallelujah chorus…:)
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anonymous,
I think people like you are brave for risking telling the truth about the harm done by mainstream psychiatry. That’s a good start. I’d like to hear more about your experience.
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I come from a family with a long-line of military service.
I know the cost of war.
Lincoln needed to defeat the Confederacy, but he didn’t hate the South. In fact, he had admiration for the South in many ways, and respect for Southerners. One of his favorite songs was ‘Dixie’. And his wife had a relative who served in the Confederacy, who was invited into the White House during his service there, during the Civil War.
I remember reading about the Civil War’s Battle of Antietam.
The bloodiest battle in our nations’ history.
I had the opportunity to visit the site during a business trip, and was overtaken with the solemness there.
Re: Lincoln..
Had he been alive after the North defeated the South, we would have seen a much less brutal Reconstruction.
Duane
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To clarify, I am not a veteran, but many in both my immediate and extended family served, some in combat zone.
This revolution of ours in not a battle (or war), but we must find a way to win this thing.
And I’m not quite sure how to do so.
I think many of us are saying the same thing here.
And I’d like to see us come up with some concrete ways to make this thing happen.
That’s all Im really trying to say.
Duane
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Thanks. I’d like the same thing.
Alice
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Duane,
Is this a metaphor for us all knocking ourselves apart here? Even if it’s not, it’s a lovely sentiment.
Alice
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Had you asked me a few weeks ago, I would have had quick-response. Had you ealier in this thread, I might have been able tosay something halfway coherent.
But I’m too exhaused to think.
This post and the comments that followed has worn me out. And somehow I think I’m not alone.
Not alone?
I guess that’s a start?
Duane
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Duane,
I’m pretty tired, too.
Get some rest.
Alice
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On the labels and the names thing: here in the UK the term, “Service User,” is very prevalent. But only in psychiatry (my friend with type 1 diabetes has never been refereed to as a diabetes service user – though technically he is).
Some, “Service Users,” dislike the term because they feel that it implies they are, “Users,” ie like drug users or people who use others and offer nothing back.
I dislike it because there is not much of a service and it leaves you feeling used.
Boom boom – must restart my career as a stand up comedian, or some such job or other.
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David, thank you for discussing the importance of nutrition. I have always believed naturopaths can heal any psychiatric condition with natural, balancing remedies gently and safely. I also think an internist could test hormone levels and balance them with supplements. The major role of hormones is completely dismissed by psychiatry. All psychogenic drugs can and must be eliminated completely. People need to sue pharmaceutical companies and expose them…….I do not see any purpose for psychiatrists at all. They have nothing to offer. But psychologists have a great deal to offer and should no longer be delegated to such a low rank. They deserve to be top rank. The term psychiatry is also obsolete. So is the term mental illness. People in distress or any other nonderogatory term should be utilized. Psychiatrists need to leave suffering people alone and practice neurology, which is their only skill….I also would not want to see nurses prescribing even an aspirin. The nurses around here think opiates are not a controlled substance. Social workers, i trust even less.
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Greeney,
Forgive me for repeating a post to David here. I think your question bumps up against these same thoughts. As you will see, nurses and naturopaths (and everyone else) already presecribe psychiatric drugs in Oregon. Also, psychiatrists are not neurologists.
Of course psychiatry is obsolete. It has been (at least) since we allowed our profession to be diminished into “prescriber” roles. Read the following.
Thanks for your post.
Alice
David,
I’m not so sure it’s salvagable either. I thought about this while I was cooking dinner for my family tonight. I had one of those “a ha” moments. Probably I’d better write an article about it so the word gets to more people. Others can think about this idea of mine, too. This is a tangent off your topic but I hope worth reading.
More and more psychiatric prescribing isn’t done by psychiatrists at all. (What percentage of psychiatric prescriptions are written by psychiatrists?) Along with the ramped up market demand (through direct public marketing) there has been a long term marketing of the idea of a “psychiatrist shortage”.
I’ve been hearing about this “psychiatrist shortage” as part of the “doctor shortage” since the 1980′s. This was the rationale for licensing nurses to be “prescribers” in Oregon. One post yesterday (Huffman) mentioned that they use PAs and NPs because they cost half as much as psychiatrists and that is all they want us all for, “prescribing”. I knew that. Most “prescribing” in Portland community mental health is done by NPs and PAs.
In Oregon, under funding pressures, we have methodically shifted mental health “prescribing” to primary care docs and pediatricians, NPs. PAs and now, last year, Naturopaths were approved and licensed by the state of Oregon. Social workers also lobbied for “prescribing” in Oregon a couple of years ago.
Psychologists in two states and the military now can pescribe psychiatric drugs. It could be a good piece of research to find out how much of the funding for these initiatives were drug company based. I heard at the time that those helpful pharmaceutical companies helped us out with our psychiatrist “shortage” by lobbying for several other professional classes to be able to “prescribe”. Just to help us overworked psychiatists, you know.
At this point it’s absolutely fine if psychistrists are scapegoated for all the hidden information about drugs, the manipulation of the diagnostic criteria, the artificial “consumer” market for the products.
At this point, from a pharmaceutical market perspective, psychiatrists are completely disposable. While we sit here on MIA and shoot at psychiatrists, the pharmaceautical companies can laugh all the way to the bank. They have new conveyances for their products.
Yikes. I think I’ve frightened myself with this one.
Alice
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Wow. Clearly Alice Keys the psychiatrist is a very controversial addition to this site.
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Josephene,
YAY? 🙂
This was unexpected to me.
Busy times to sort through the posts. There is but one of me.
I am having fun and learning. Both are good things in my book.
Alice
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I think psychiatry will change and the change will come from within the profession. It is the only way. I have noticed already quite a few changes in our local services here in Britain and they all are going in the right direction. The young psychiatrists on the whole are so much better at listening.
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I think you’re wrong. What good does it do if a psychiatrist ‘listens’ yet still takes away someone’s rights? which is happening at record levels across the world, including Britain.
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There’s a way around using a psychiatrist, if someone wants to be listened to, why not utilize a psychotherapist, therapist or psychologist, who do not use medications as their sole treatment option? The best advice I can give is to avoid psychiatry if you do not want pills when you walk out the door as your treatment and care platform.
Psychiatry is based on medication for treatment, simple as that. Psychiatry houses people with court ordered treatment and “sentences” in locked psych wards/hospitals, and psychiatry will never deviate from that medical model. If anyone believes all psychiatrists are going to throw away their prescription pads and “change” you are wrong.
Listening to patients and writing prescriptions…does not make them open-minded or part of “the crowd” for change–until they give up the rx pad, and change careers, they are still the psychiatry platform most patients here are objecting to; so why not dump psychiatrists? go to talk therapy! Any doctor can write an rx for tapering meds too.
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Alix,
Change has to come from within psychiatry.
And within the practice of medicine,
And within third party payment corporations,
And within the government (ie stopping drug ads),
And within drug companies,
And from MIA.
Best,
Alice
We are all in this together.
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And also from survivor organisations, Alice.
all the best
John
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John,
Imust have missed this lovely post of yours. “Service user” is a bit like “consumer” to me.
Alice
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Bio-psychiatry.
It sounds intriguing…
Bio: Life
Psyche: Spirit
Life-spirit.
In reality, however bio-psychiatry has been anything but “life-spirit”.
How can we move from this medical nightmare toward holistic modalities that offer hope?
Ones of real “life-spirit”?
Duane
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Dr. Keys,
I see you as someone who is examining her life and where to go with her experience and knowledge.
The fact that you didn’t get all defensive about being a doctor and continue to maintain the staus quo as a prescriber is good for MiA.
The last doctor I saw told me her successes were people who who had decided they just didn’t want to live that way any more.
It turns out that I have been much better without therapy, and am still working on getting off the drugs. So I think that, while drugs and fear and despair are all serious, we do have that ultimate choice, but, as a patient I sort of had to be given “permission” to be someone other than a mentally ill, unhappy person.
I was hospitalized at age eighteen for two years, shocked, drugged, fought my way out of it. Caught in the system for many years, I believed I was sick. Things haven’t gotten better, but I have, and getting out of the psychiatric machine was the best thing that ever to happened to me.
As for the “eugenics” part of your post, I was told not to have children because they would inherit the gene for schizophrenia and “you wouldn’t want that, would you?”. Being so naive and having led a sheltered life, I didn’t understand why they pressured me to date the guys in the hospital, who were also crazy and I was afraid of them.
I hope you will continue to post on MiA, because I think you have it right. It is nice, even fun, to watch you grow and change, and become a better doctor right in front of my computer.
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Mariane,
Yikes. Thanks for sharing your personal experience in the “eugenics” area. Sorry. Especially since there is no known “gene” for schizoprenia. I have suggested people not get pregnant while taking medicines with known birth defect problems. I suppose my “wait till these drugs are not in your body” and “don’t get pregnant while you’re taking this” could be interpreted as “eugenics”.
Thanks for clarifying this to me. I understand things better when given clear, specific, current examples.
I’m sorry these things happened to you. I’m glad you’ve found your way into the clear.
Best,
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
I give you lots of credit for recognizing the drugs caused birth defects and warning people!!
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Donna,
I warned people that these drugs are not studied in pregnancy and cannot be considered “safe” even when there are no birth defects known (yet).
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
SSRI’s have been proven to cause birth defects so it was a good warning. Probably the other drugs do too because atrypicals are somewhat similar to SSRI’s. Better be safe than sorry.
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Donna,
I was warning people off way before that news came out. Nothing is absolutely “safe” for use during pregnancy. We just don’t know everything.
Alice
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There are still a lot of people who believe it is genetic. Or biological, etc.
I know a psychiatrist who got sick of being a prescriber and went back to school to study psychology.
While I don’t think you would need to do that, she basically told people up front that she didn’t prescribe drugs. She is a compassionate human being who happens to be a doctor.
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Marianne,
There are a lot of smart, compassionate humans who believe in the genetic, biological and neurochemistry theories. I know and like many of these people. I’m sure there are other kind, smart, compassionate people who also believe in other theories that I don’t.
Personal tangent:
I’m comfortable not knowing for now. Since no one really knows, I guess I’d better be comfortable with it. I’m better and better with uncertainty in my life all the way around. Not needing to know feels liberating to me. I’m pretty clear on what and who I am right now. This feels liberating as well. I’m not waiting around for anyone else to define me or un-define me.
Thanks loads,
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
What right do people have to destroy people based on theories or or their unproven beliefs?
If your doctor said he theorized you had cancer and wanted to start chemo immediately, would you allow this or would you demand more concrete evidence, a second opinion and proof of the alleged disease? I think we all would.
So, I realize sometimes people are blind about their own dangerous assumptions, but doesn’t every doctor have the responsibility to do what is in the best interests of the patient with so called EVIDENCE based medicine? I find it horrific that doctors/psychiatrists are allowed to destroy people’s lives based on these APA/BIG PHARMA “theories.” It makes me wonder in that this whole thing about so called mental health care is so bizarre and UNBELIEVABLE, it strikes me as a power elite conspiracy to destroy millions of people with this bogus plague of lethal drugs and stigmas for so called “mental illness” for population control, etc. So, given their real agenda backed by huge power and billions, as with the Iraq phoney war, the corrupt Bush administration didn’t even seem to care if they appeared credible or not as seems to be the case with “mental health.”
Go ahead and call me a Scientologist or Conspiracy Nut, but I feel like I’m living in 1984, BRAVE NEW WORLD and ANIMAL FARM combined.
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Donna,
I find life in the USA scarey as well.
Last winter on a car trip with a 71 year old lady friend of mine in New Mexico we were stopped and questioned (not in a nice way) by armed uniformed men with dogs over an hour’s drive north of the border. There were banks of cameras on every highway there for “facial recognition” purposes and “border patrol” vehicles everywhere I looked.
We’re killing people on multiple fronts in the middle east with hightech computerized machines. Families with children are homeless. Bank owned houses are boarded up and empty. Food banks are doing a brisk business. People spend so much time indoors that, even in the deep south, there are epidemics of “pathologic” fractures due to lack of sun. The grocery stores are filled with “food products” that are an amalgam of high-fructose corn sweeteners, partially-hydrogenated seed oils and unpronounceable additives. I struggle to find safe food for my family. The polar ice caps melt and we each drive, one to a car.
Donna. There is so much so wrong with how we all live here in the “land of the free and the home of the brave”, that I fear this whole psychiatry thing, however big and important it is to all of us here, is the tip of another iceberg.
Sorry. I wish you were a “conspiracy nut”. This would make the situation very different.
I pray and meditate alot. Now I write. Words are important. Words can re-make the world.
Best,
Alice
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Dr. Keys,
You may want to check out the books THE SHOCK DOCTRINE and POLITICAL PONEROLGY for more ideass on why all this mayhem is happening.
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“There are a lot of smart, compassionate humans who believe in the genetic, biological and neurochemistry theories. ”
Depends on your definition of ‘compassion’. Ripping away the human rights of those they have ‘compassion’ for based on the belief that those poor, gene defective, brain diseased, neurochemically disordered souls don’t know what’s good for them, is often sold as ‘compassion’.
And I am sure they are nice to their children and dogs when they go home at night too.
I don’t care who believes in what whatever, the moment they take someone’s rights away in the name of their ‘compassionate’ belief that I am genetically inferior, they cross the line.
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Anonymous,
Any time anyone believes another human is “genetically inferior” they have crossed my line as well.
Alice
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Any psychiatrist or nurse who has ever rationalized away coercing or forcibly drugging someone on the basis of them believing that person was brain diseased, and had bad genes, is guilty of crossing that line.
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I read Peter Breggin’s article. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/electroshock-treatment_b_1273359.html I find that it clearly questions whether those David Healy advises about ECT could be making an informed consent, with the misinformation David Healy spreads about ECT.
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I have been talking with Bob today about how to handle this. I can’t watch the board every minute, nor can I always read everything that gets posted. Certainly Bob can’t. I only know about this pist becase someone emailed it to me. I am in the woods, playing frisbee golf right now, but this is important enough for my friends to wait while i respond on my phone.
I intend to edit ad hominem attacks, rather than delete them. It will take more time, but it’s important to us to be as respectful as possible toward everyone’s contribution.
But we will block posters who repeatedly fail to respect others. When I get home I will look at this more closely.
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Kermit,
Thanks. I just got back from the woods a few minutes ago myself.I am also not on line every moment. I am happy to participate in whatever way possible to help the discussions be useful.
Thanks,
Alice
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These cannot be the pages on which interpersonal issues get worked out. These must be pages for the discussion of ideas. If anyone has issues with how they or anyone has been spoken to or about, please bring it to my attention.
These pages are for anyone who has been affected by the “Bad Science, Bad Medicine, And the Enduring Mistreatment Of The Mentally Ill” mentioned in the title of “Mad in America.” That means all of us, including, if we are correct, psychiatrists and people who have either chosen or fought against “treatments” with less-than-fully-informed consent. If it is true that something must be corrected, it affects everyone who is touched by this issue and needs the full involvement of everyone involved with this issue. That is why civility in the process of ferreting out the injustices all of us have endured must be paramount, and grievances between this website’s participants interpersonally must be worked out as well as possible behind the scenes.
I had thought that editing a post with the intention of leaving the thought intact while removing the ad hominem content was respectful. I understand that, for some, it is not. I hate to delete posts in their entirety. For one thing, it seems to mess up the thread. So I am left with deleting a post’s content in its entirety but leaving the name up. None of these options are ideal. So I am left to ask again that people try to be civil to each other and, if someone feels wronged, to bring their grievance to an administrator so that the many people who come to this site for information and discussion are not turned off by finding themselves party to heated conversations that they are not really a part of. I know I have stopped going to other websites for this reason, and it saddens me to think of it happening here.
Soon, we will have forums up and running and the forums editor, Matthew, will be taking over moderation of these discussions. He will be placing a button on the comments window for flagging unacceptable content: sometimes there is simply too much happening for us to keep up with, and that will make it easier to be sure we get to unacceptable content in a timely manner.
Meanwhile, I will spend my evening going through these posts and doing the best I can to remove the ones that seem to be personal attacks. If I miss some, I am sorry; please let me know. If I remove some and you take exception, please let me know that and hopefully we can speak about it with a problem-solving spirit.
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Kermit,
Thanks for taking your Sunday evening to assist with sorting this out.
Alice
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Alice,
I just want to say thank you for dedicating your life to helping those of us who at times require the compassion and knowledge that you have during serious times of our lives. Having experienced both the bad and the good that psychiatry offers I would much prefer to have a doctor who knows that having fun is essential to life and living!
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Patti,
Thanks for this post. This warms my heart to hear. Having fun is, indeed, essential to life and living.
Thanks for reading and responding here.
Warm regards,
Alice
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I have, at the request of a poster, removed all of her posts from the website. I have also removed all posts that reference her by her full name, including replies to her posts that include her full name in the header. This is an extremely regrettable outcome as her posts were voluminous and high-quality, as were the many thoughtful responses to them. This is a real loss to the conversation here. We will be increasingly vigilant about preserving the sense of safety required for people who want to engage in this necessary dialogue.
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Kermit,
Thanks again for the time and energy you put in here to keep things on track. Thanks, especially, for working on it this weekend.
Alice
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I don’t mind working on the weekend. I do mind the feeling that people are afraid to post, feel hurt by posting, or that others will lose interest in following the posts because it’s painful to witness others work out interpersonal issues in what is meant to be a public space for discussions of issues and, hopefully, bridge-building.
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Kermit,
I, too, want this to be a safe forum for discussion. Everyone brings a unique and valuable point of view to the meeting table. An open and inclusive conversation is most likely to get us where we need to go to improve mental health (and medical) care.
Thanks again.
Alice
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I’ve been thinking about how interdependent we are for our experience of reality, for what we can trust and feel to be “true.” How, when someone’s guiding principles are or seem to be at odds with ours, it is disorienting, dissociating, and maddening. When I’ve been able to get under the anger, to get curious about the other point of view, the anger goes away and the possibility of something new arises.
But it’s so hard to see that when you’re angry.
I’ve been thinking about how I used to get infuriated at psychiatrists. And I have so much less to be angry about than most – mostly things I’m angry about having happened to others. I’ve had my perilously dark days and years – and I’ve experimented with pharmaceuticals – but I’ve never been forced to do anything. But I would completely lose my cool when a psychiatrist was high-handed or autocratic or dismissive, because I knew they usually had little basis to be dismissive of me in terms of our relative education – at least in the areas I was trying to engage on.
But, when I was able to find a way to simply keep the conversation moving, rather than becoming reified one way or the other, I found that more often than not the conversation wound up where I wanted it to without either of us being the worse for wear. It wasn’t the argument that did it. Certainly not the anger. It was simply that when more awareness was created, and more known, the situation tended to evolve in the more inclusive, holistic, contextual way I had hoped or fought for in times past. “Intractable” diagnoses gave way to formulations that included perspectives on family and personal history, environment, phenomenology, etc.
My anger arose when it seemed the conversation might end. I learned to trust that – if my view had merit – it would prevail as long as I kept the conversation going. Or, if not, at least the conversation would continue, within which there is always hope. Or, perhaps even better, being in dialogue is itself the goal; itself the prize for having shown up.
Often enough for my sense of satisfaction, I have experienced my sense of things as having been – if not correct – at least sufficient. Reading “Mad” and “Anatomy” affirmed things I had suspected or felt to be true, and working from or within the principles they (and other works) suggest has been for me a good-enough proof of concept.
That’s not the same as knowing everything or resting on my laurels. But it is enough to say that – even if I don’t win the fight – I know enough to be comfortable with what I feel I know. And that’s a pretty good day in my book, whether or not what is “known” remains “known” into the next day. It has worked for me to say “I believe what I believe not because I know it’s right, but because today I know it’s what I will fight for.” I am comfortable that what I believe will continue to be, if not fixed and eternally true, at least sufficiently true, and therefore there is no reason to be at war any more.
I’ve thought a lot about why people get SO angry at the “mentally ill.” They are thought of as the people who don’t “get it.”
I think that what gets seen as illness is the mark of people who are still trying to “get it.” This may arise from not being satisfied with or complacent about the answers they have encountered so far. Usually, in my experience, they are unsatisfied and non-complacent for some very good reasons.
But that can be fundamentally, existentially frightening because it’s hard to think about how fragile this sense of reality is – that it is so inextricable from that of others. We depend on others’ ability to scan the horizon as much as or more than we depend on our own; our ability to see being limited to such a small fraction of 360 degrees.
But others get angry at people whose perspectives seem suspect because they want to believe that the “it” that is there to be gotten is the right and only and eminently good “it.” (This is known as the ‘just world bias,’ I think.)
But it is never so simple, and while some enjoy the luxury of thinking it is, or are merely content with what they “know” already, there are some who are compelled to keep looking. For this they start to feel, or are called, “crazy.”
“Crazy,” in my book, is simply the moment when we are saying or doing things we or others can’t explain, and feel frightened by. This can arise in any context, and can be thought of as good or bad, depending. But I don’t think it’s more complicated than that.
If we are to heal the schisms in the way we think about the challenges that come to be thought of as “psychiatric,” we must be able to hold that space and moment between the meetings of minds. There is no margin for error here. Minds are not things that it is any one person’s to lose; they are property of the collective, and none can be wasted. Loving people involves holding people in mind while they are lost in theirs.
I was so sad when it seemed that some of the conversation on this particular board had reached an impasse. Much if not most of the conversation on this site is elevated and idea-driven. But just as I have always been drawn to the hard cases – the people who it seemed might not be coming back – I feel bereft when a good conversation between clearly good people goes awry the way some have here.
But, it’s not over yet.
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Kermit,
I’ve had to come back and read your post several times throughout the day. You’re saying so many things and saying them so well. Every paragraph or so I take a deep breath and say “Yeah. That’s right. I wish I’d said that.” You have an eloquent way with words.
Our reality is one big thing we all share but we don’t always see things in just the same way.
Psychiatrists (and anyone) who behaves in an autocratic or dismissive way pisses me off, too. If I am vulnerable to their power, this is especially touchy.
We have to keep talking. Ongoing communication can get through a lot. Letting anger run unchecked blocks clear thought and conversation.
“Reading “Mad” and “Anatomy” affirmed things I had suspected or felt to be true.” This could have come out of my own mouth.
We’re all in this together. It will take us all.
“It’s not over yet.” (Yeah. That’ right. I wish I’d said that.”)
I hope people come back.
Alice
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Might I point out that it’s not known the reason for a blogger wanting all posts removed that make reference to her full name. This might be for reasons outside of this blog. There are many things discussed here that create a controversy the mental health system disregards as appropriate conversation whatsoever and would be discriminatory against.
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Nijnsky,
You are right to point out that we can not know for certain someone’s reasons for action unless thay tell us themselves.
Alice
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