Steindór J. Erlingsson is a psychiatric survivor, writer and an independent scholar, with a BSc degree in biology, and MSc and PhD degrees in history of science. Steindór participated willingly in traditional psychiatric treatment, including drugs, ECT and hospitalization, for 16 years. On a fateful day, few years ago, it dawned on him that in order to survive he had to revolutionize his life. Steindór decided to stop taken psychotropic drugs and to this day he has been drug free. This transition was certainly not easy. One of the things he will focus on in this blog is this transformation from a psychiatric patient to a psychiatric survivor. One of the most important consequences of this change was how he viewed the mental health system. Psychiatrists were no longer authoritarian figures that were to be obeyed, no matter what. Since 2009 Steindór has been an active critic of psychiatry in Iceland, giving lectures, interviews in newspapers and television and writing articles for newspapers and other publications. The blog will reflect this interest, as well as the consumer movement in Iceland, which in spite of its small size has been very influential. The title of Steindór’s blog, A New Beginning, reflects his metamorphosis into a psychiatric survivor and his hope that psychiatry’s drug driven culture will eventually be defeated. Steindor’s webpage is: http://www.raunvis.hi.is/~steindor/
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