“There is no such thing as paranoiaYour worst fears can come true at any moment.”— Hunter S. Thompson
-
Thank you for sharing these stories exemplifying the harm of psychiatric labels and drugs. The quote you started with, “There is no such thing as paranoia … You’re worst fears can come true at any moment,” reminded me of my second appointment with the therapist who ended up misdiagnosing the common withdrawal symptoms of Wellbutrin, worsened by prescriptions of Ultram and Votaren, as “bipolar” in me.
She asked if I had any worries that someone would harm me. I told her no, I had no such concerns. Little did I know, until I later read her medical records, that this therapist had run off like a manic lunatic and gotten a list of lies and gossip from some people who had sexually and spiritually harmed my children. I was also unaware of the fact my new PCP had given me mind altering drugs because she was paranoid of a malpractice suit since her husband had been the “attending physician” at a “bad fix” on a broken bone of mine.
I should have been paranoid that child abusers and incompetent and unethical doctors would try to harm me. But I was in denial of the abuse at the time, and I used to believe pastors were trustworthy humans, and doctors were ethical and respectable human beings who take a Hippocratic Oath promising to first and foremost do no harm. These same doctors oversaw, for 3 1/2 years, as I was poisoned via anticholinergic toxidrome with three distinctly different combinations of drugs, all the while, they were all swearing up and down that the “mad as a hatter” illness could not possibly be caused by their drugs.
Dealing with doctors and a pastor who barely knew me, but wanted to murder me to cover up the abuse of my children and proactively prevent a non-existent malpractice suit was far beyond my “worst fears.” I’ve since learned such a medical / religious cover up of child abuse and easily recognized iatrogenesis is “the dirty little secret of the two original educated professions.”
“Labels obscure what’s really going on” and the “gold standard” treatment for “bipolar” – poly pharmacy with neuroleptics, “mood stabilizers,” “antidepressants,” benzotropine, etc. can very definately cause anticholinergic toxidrome, which emulates the positive symptoms of ‘schizophrenia.’
I hope some day the religions and medical communities will get out of the business of profiting off of psychiatrists gaslighting people to cover up child abuse and easily recognized medical mistakes. “Dirty little secrets” are called such because they are unacceptable human behavior. It’s rather sad to live in a world where one can no longer respect the clergy, the medical community, the bankers, or even the psychiatrist believing legal and judicial communities.
I’m hoping for that happy ending, but I don’t know how we get there without exposing the real criminals within humanity, in the hopes these hypocritical “professionals” will change their ways. Our too paternalistic, greed only inspired, never ending warring, male chavanistic pig society is a not the answer. Our society needs to evolve.
-
Margaret:’From 1989-1990 I spent 4-5 months of my life in two state hospitals,’a private
Psychiatric hospital, and a crisis unit. Many auxilary personnel for genuinely decent
people,’and this greatly softened the blow on institutionalization and stigma. -
Excellent and heart wrenching reply to too very sad stories.
This is a note I emailed to my sister, like the rest of my family, very skeptical about anything other than the medical model. I live alone and continue to suffer the consequences of my association with this fundamentally evil, loathsome, and self-promoting profession:
STOP THE LIES
Hi (Blank),
You have no idea how much all of this has ruined my life and continues to ruin my life. My association with this horrible, false, and self-perpetuating profession will haunt me until I am dead, but hopefully not hooked up to a constant stream of ‘meds’, before then, which would be worse.
I’m a “talented,” intelligent, good-looking, kind, and caring gentleman, probably have been for the vast majority of my life. My hope for a “normal” life, according to them, was lost when I became a “patient.”
I wish it would just all go away, but I have to live with this and I’m going to be 56 next month. A psych label and its consequences, especially my old one, is a condemnation worse than death.
Love,
Dave-
Please no, do not think you have been lost to what may be considered a “normal” life. But, who wants “normal” anyway? There is a soul, a spirit, a unique person still inside you with specific intelligences, personality characteristics, way of thinking and learning. You are a very special person. You just need to “re-learn” yourself without the horror of the “mental illness label” and all the abuse and terror it included. It takes time, patience, hope, prayer, and willingness to trust yourself again. You must also be willing to take risks that only you might understand; not your friends, family, ill-informed and selfish professionals and others might not understand or might criticize you about. You will make mistakes; but you will learn more than you will ever know about yourself and the world. At times; you will go so lonely; you may not even be able to cry; but it is so worth it. I am on this journey now. And there are people who have got your back; as my pastor would say. You just got to find them. Don’t give up. Just because of what happened to you does not mean your life is over and done with. You are not six feet under yet. You are alive and you have a lot to give. Be strong. Be courageous. Take a risk. Get to know and relearn yourself again. It is God’s pleasure to restore and resurrect yourself to who you are truly meant to be. You have so much to give the world. Don’t give up now; Please! Thank you.
-
You are not a “patient” in this community. You are a respected, unique individual and courageous to share painful feelings.
-
-
“Our too paternalistic, greed only inspired, never ending warring, male chavanistic pig society is a not the answer. Our society needs to evolve.”
You’re exactly right. And sadly nothing covers up the crimes while blaming the victim as well as psychiatry.
-
-
Margaret,
It’s so sad to read about Mark’s suffering and death. He sounds like a sweet person who was overwhelmed by family abuse that was then compounded by the medicating and illness-labeling of the system, such a common story. It’s a moral crime and a tragedy that he wasn’t offered more understanding and whatever form of social help could have benefitted him – peer support, counseling, meaningful part-time work, whatever he would have wanted and been able to make use of.Too bad Kim cannot go to see Dr. Lawrence Hedges, my favorite psychologist in the Los Angeles area. He is great at understanding and helping “schizophrenic” people like Kim work out their delusions and fears – if the family and surrounding system allow it.
-
Thank you for your comment. Do you know that most of the people who were labeled “Schizophrenic” in the in patient units, the ER and the jails were some of the nicest, most frightened people that I have ever come into contact with. When I was out sick for a day, they were the ones who asked how I was feeling and said that they “missed” me.
-
I’ve been doing research into psychotherapy of “schizophrenia” over the last two years. I’ve found anecdotal and clinical outcomes reports for about 800 total severely psychotic “schizophrenic” people, in psychotherapies usually ranging from 2-5 years.
Some of the data sources are papers and books by Gaetano Benedetti, Lewis Madrona, Vamik Volkan, Ira Steinman, David Garfield, Murray Jackson, Paris Williams, Bert Karon, Harold Searles, the 388 program from Quebec, and interviews I’ve had with about 30 currently practicing therapists from ISPS (www.isps.org), including many people who’ve done intensive psychotherapy with schizophrenics for 20-30 years. All of these people use no medication or very limited short-term medication approaches to psychotherapy of schizophrenia.
What I’ve researched indicates that, if a secure place to live and access to long-term psychotherapy are available, about 80-90% of people with schizophrenia can and do recover to become functional, able to have good relationships, and totally or mostly free of psychotic symptoms. It’s a continuum of outcomes but the average outcomes are WAY better than with medication and no long-term psychotherapy.
Lest I make cure of schizophrenia sound too easy, it’s very challenging work and involves dealing with strong feelings of terror and rage and learning to trust someone else in depth. But with a sufficiently supportive environment good outcomes can often happen. Coincidentally these outcome levels are similar to Open Dialogue in which 80-85% of clients return to work and functionality within 2-5 years.
Unfortunately, long-term medication precludes these outcomes because it damages the capacity to think, reflect, and process emotions. Secondly, there are not enough therapists offering this type of therapy at an affordable cost, and not enough safe housing / other supportive low-stress environments for people labeled schizophrenic, as you well know because of your work in jails and institutions.
It’s sobering to think of what sort of transformative help could be offered to the several million people in the US labeled “schizophrenic”, and the type of “help” that is actually offered. In other words, psychiatrists are responsible for the soul murders of millions of “schizophrenics” who could be redeemed but never get that chance.
-
-
-
Thank you for this. I had tears in my eyes reading about your friend. I am so sorry for your loss and so grateful that your experience inspired you to do the work you have done and are doing.
Psychiatric labels absolutely do change perceptions in a negative way, obscure what is really going on, and shut down communication. We as a society can do better than that and we as individuals deserve better than that. The current paradigm of “care” is inexcusable. Often, it is murderous.
-
You could write a blog entitled “The current paradigm of care” and reveal all of the inexcusable and harmful issues, and then your own thoughts on what a caring paradigm is.
-
-
Please let me thank all of the thoughtful and compassionate people who respond to my post. I have not, in the past shared my personal stories….but I feel safe here to share and to promote alternative ways of helping individuals through their terrible periods of distress. As a therapist and a survivor I did use non-medical and non traditional ways of helping people trapped in the locked wards and jails but here I have found new ways of thinking about what I was doing and how it helped. This forum is amazing and stimulates me to reach out with renewed energy and with your support.
-
There really is too much murder and rape going on in the mental illness conspiracy and no one is willing to admit to their sins or any wrongdoing. Evil begats evil. Tragedy begats tragedy. Yet, we should never give up. We should keep fighting as if our life depended on it; because it does; all our lives; every single worthwhile person on this planet is affected by this. So, let’s keep fighting; because it is so worth the fight and for all those we have lost let us honor them with the integrity, goodness, and righteous of our fight. We are on the side of right. We shall win. For each step forward; we may go two or ten steps back; but we will win. It is our destiny. Good always defeats evil’ always!
-
Your words are inspirational…they somehow stay in my mind and move me forward.
Thank you
-
-
Thank you so much for these heart breaking stories. It sounds like you were an amazing child – I hope sometimes you are able to sit and think about about your wonderful friendship with Mark, and about the joy you must have brought him – without all the sadness and heartbreak taking over.
-
I do think about him, in a loving way. Thank you for responding…I appreciate your taking the time and reaching out to me.
-
Please take a look: http://bit.ly/1VUgJ4K
-
The power of labels needs to end.
“When mom was frantically trying to convince the ministry that the sexual abuse allegations were real, they basically labelled her as crazy. And the more she protested, the more she was labelled as being crazy,” Hittrich told CBC.
The wrongful conduct “ranges from intentional misconduct, bad faith, reckless disregard for their obligation to protect children … to unreasonably supporting the … the children’s father even if it meant he sexually abused them,” he wrote.
—
Thanks in no small part to the mother, in her distress, being labelled mentally ill by the abusive father.-
This is terribly disturbing and it probably is not the only case of it’s kind. Money cannot make up for the tragedy in the children’s and mother’s life. Yes, labels have to be thrown out with the garbage. We refuse to acknowledge them, we write about how damaging they are, we can use new language but many have suffered and are still being oppressed.
Thank you for the comment and the link -
It reminds me of the movie “Changeling”. It shows beautifully how mother’s fear for her kid is turned into “mental illness” by the system which has no interest in protecting her or her child.
-
-
Thank you for writing this. You were able to help others because of your friend’s lost life.
When I was working in the psych unit I would ask about childhood history and found what you have found. I think Alice Miller discovered this truth as well.Your story reminds me of the story of “Sybil.” I don’t think she ever was able to live a full and integrated life that she could have if the abuse did not take place or if family members and community members were able to speak their suspicions out aloud in the air and sunlight.In my life, even though I was more informed than most professionals, I had the hardest time verbalizing and telling my close encounters with emotional abuse. I still observe it in some of the extended family and it can’t be changed. So hard to first see, then understand the game plan for life is way off kilter, and then tell and be able to tell a safe and knowing person who has the time and I mean time to sort the whole story out. Then the decision to act how to act and to be able to stand the consequences when you do act. The word “trapped” comes to mind.
I feel so much for your friend’s mother. The tales she was never able to tell and she is so not alone in her silenced life journey.I would really like for Trauma to come front and center in all treatment.
I really believe it can be generational and the levels we see it in human society are all encompassing.
Not that everything is trauma. I would allow other factors in, but in my eyes if you dig deep enough it will be there in some way, shape, or form. I would posit the Armenian Holocaust that is so very problematic seeded some very serious personal and family issues for the survivors down through the years. Not to mention slavery of all kinds, famine, other kinds of genocide, and the soldiers of all countries and their families after their return. -
Far too many George Bushes, Mike Huckabees, Donald Trumps, etc., running amok in destroying our humanity; and far too few Margaret Altmans and those like her restoring humanity.
-
Thank you, and you restore my faith in some of us (including you) who are truly put on this earth to balance out the Trumps and others
-
-
Such a poignant message for all of us. It is important to see how one’s story influences the character of his or her symptoms and to attempt to influence how that story can be constructed differently in order to help the individual.
-
You are so right, it is a message and I hope that others will look beyond the outer and sometimes unusual presentation of many people who are in emotional pain and see the small, abused human being who is hiding in his or her “closet” due to fear.
-