March 24, 2013

Speaking as someone whose whole family has been affected by psychoses and the subsequent psychiatric treatment I am fed up with the separation and segregation that continually is and has been our lot … The stigma and discrimination foisted upon us by a psychiatric opinion, non-medical, subjective, yet taken as gospel and written in the notes.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: bipolar, Bipolar Disorder, brain surgery for mental illness, complete recovery, ECT, family history of, lifelong mental illness, mental health strategy Scotland, psychiatric system, psychiatry a religion, psychological therapies, Psychosis, Recovery, remission, resistance, Schizophrenia, severe and enduring mental illness, shock treatment, Social Control

March 16, 2013

The problem with anti-stigma campaigns, to my mind, is that they are focusing on the wrong target, society, when the real issue is to do with psychiatric diagnoses, biomedical models of mental illness and lifelong psychiatric drug prescribing that can restrict and cause disability. Therefore there will never be an end to stigma until there is a turnaround in psychiatry so that patients become people and mental illness becomes life’s problems that can happen to any of us.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: anti-stigma campaigns, brain surgery for mental illness, ECT, forced treatment, governements, human rights abuses, long term chronicity, mental distress, mental illness, problems of living, psychiatric drug prescribing, psychiatric labels, Recovery, reinforcing stigma, religion of psychiatry, Social Control, stigma, survivor activists

March 4, 2013

The Dundee Advanced Interventions Service (DAIS) at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee, Scotland, became a National Specialist Service in April 2006 and has been spearheading the advancement of neurosurgery for mental disorder or brain surgery for mental illness. The standard definition of Neurosurgery for Mental Disorder (NMD) is that provided by The Royal College of Psychiatrists: “…a surgical procedure for the destruction of brain tissue for the purposes of alleviating specific mental disorders carried out by a stereotactic or other method capable of making an accurate placement of the lesion”
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Categorized in: Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: advance statement, anterior cingulotomy, brain surgery for mental illness, Dundee Advanced Interventions Service, ECT, forced treatment, legal coercion, locked ward, mental health act scotland, Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland, named person, neurosurgery for mental disorder, NMD, psychiatric drugs, Scottish Recovery Network, severe and enduring mental illness, treatment refractory depression, treatment resistant

January 29, 2013

There’s a children’s book that’s popular in Scotland and it’s called ‘Where’s Wally?’, or Waldo in the USA and Canada. I read it with my grandchildren. The purpose is to find Wally in a large crowd and he’s the one who looks slightly different, dressed in red and white stripes with bobble hat and glasses.
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Categorized in: Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: Bipolar Disorder, cocktails of drugs, delusions, labelling, mad, mental health act, psychiatric notes, psychiatric system, schizoaffective disorder, Schizophrenia, spiritual faith

January 3, 2013

I can remember when psychoses used to be called nervous breakdowns and people just disappeared for a while and came back better, or at least more acceptable to society. This was in the 1950′s and 60′s of my childhood and youth, when diagnoses were either schizophrenia or manic depression. Things seemed a lot simpler then.

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Categorized in: Adult, Blogs, Disorders, Foreign Correspondents, Schizophrenia/Psychotic Disorders | Tagged as: childbirth, chlorpromazine, DSM5, ECT, hearing voices movement, ICD10, menopause, psychiatric drugs, puerperal psychosis, Recovery, shock treatment, survivor, Trauma

December 31, 2012

Here’s to all of us who are working together to bring about change in the psychiatric system, even transformation, a different paradigm. “And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere! And gie’s a hand o’ thine!” What an encouragement to think that we’re not alone in the battle or on the journey. The Mad in America community and website bridging the “seas between us”.
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: Activism, brain surgery for mental illness, campaigning, compulsory treatment, ECT, electroshock, force, NMD, perinatal psychiatry, psychiatric drugging, stigmatising labels, treatment resistant, without capacity

December 12, 2012

2013 is going to be a year of protest, for me, demonstrating against the psychiatric system.  In particular, speaking out about the psychiatric drugging of women and children, forced treatment, ECT/electroshock and brain surgery for mental illness.  ‘Bringing in the …
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Categorized in: Blogs, Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: activism and engagement, alternatives to working with psychosis, carer, ECT, electroshock, mental health act safeguards, neurosurgery for mental disorder, peer support, psychiatric drugs, Recovery, survivor, user involvement

December 3, 2012

Throughout my childhood and youth in Perth, Scotland, I remember my mother having nervous breakdowns and stays in the local mental hospital, from mid 1950′s to late 1960′s.  These episodes didn’t affect the happy memories of my upbringing as grandparents …
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Categorized in: Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: childbirth, chlorpromazine, ECT, forced treatment, grabbed and jagged, lithium, menopausal psychosis, mixed gender psychiatric ward, peer support, puerperal psychosis, Recovery, risperidone, venlafaxine

October 31, 2012

As a sometimes conscript of the psychiatric system I have reflected on ways of staying in control at times of mental distress and have come to believe that an advance statement or directive has the potential to take back control.  …
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Categorized in: Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: advance directive, advance statement, compulsory treatment, crisis plan, mental distress, mental health tribunal, Pathways to Recovery, peer led crisis alternatives, peer support, reclaiming stories, recovering lives, taking back power, WRAP

October 13, 2012

I want to explore the challenges of telling other people’s stories in the context of psychiatric treatment and mental health services, and the potential difficulties that can arise. And to do this in as dispassionate a manner as possible. I’m thinking primarily of the notes that are written about us when in psychiatric inpatient care.
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Categorized in: Featured Blogs, Foreign Correspondents | Tagged as: anosognosia, anti-depressants, Benzodiazepines, compulsory treatment, cultural change, diagnoses, mental disorder, mental illness, psychiatric notes, service user feedback