Let me begin with a story.
Once upon a time, in a college, there was a boy and a girl. Both strangers, the boy and the girl were passing thorough the university corridor when they bumped into each other. The boy fell down. The girl fell down. When they got up and saw each other, it was love at first sight. And after that they started spending their time together. Many months passed. The boy finally proposed to the girl. But the girl rejected him. She broke his heart. The boy wasn’t able to face this rejection. He slipped into depression. He started using drugs, alcohol, and cigarettes to escape from his depression. His academic performance declined. His mentor (a senior) saw his behavior and took him to the counseling center. He received some counseling and things started improving. He started to attend classes again, went to the library, and started scoring good marks. He quit drugs, smoking, and alcohol. He overcame his broken heart. He became happy again. He graduated from the university. Happy Ending.
This was the story that was shown to me in a video on orientation day when I came to the university as a freshman. I was just 17 years old then. This was the image in my mind before visiting the counseling center: The center helps the students when they are going through a tough time, the center tries to solve the root cause of the problems of the students, the center is purely confidential and personal information is not shared with anyone. Overall the center had a positive image in my mind.
But I realize now that it was just a marketing strategy employed by the counseling center to attract troubled students. This video did not give the real picture of the functioning of the counseling center.
Many people including my fellow students do not know the reality about the counseling center. Whenever they see someone struggling with their inner problems, they advise them to visit the counseling center. The reason being the conditioning of students by the college and the counseling center with their utopian propaganda.
What I have experienced: Confidentiality is a myth in the counseling center. They say that your personal information is not shared with anybody. Anybody means ANYBODY. What they don’t say is that they are allowed to break confidentiality when they see you as a threat to yourself (like the possibility of committing suicide) or to others. Generally they contact the parents of the students whom they think might need some psychiatric help.
Back then I was an optimistic person. I used to think that the counseling center would help me to resolve my inner conflicts. That visiting the center would do some good for me. I have since realized that most mainstream “mental health” is more damaging than helpful.
At first, I did not think that there would be any stigma attached with the counseling center. I thought all sorts of people go there. It was also written on the university website that people who visit the counseling center aren’t mad or weak, rather they are showing some willingness to solve their problems. I never realized the stigma until I went there myself.
The decision to visit the counseling center has played a very crucial role in my life. It was like giving my future into somebody else’s hands.
At the center, I met the student counselor. She handed me a form with a questionnaire to fill out. We had a conversation, most of the details of which I don’t remember. When I filled out the form she asked me for the contact number of a friend. I gave the contact number of a senior girl to the counselor. The counselor called and asked her to come around 4 o’clock.
These days if the student counselors see any problem with a student visiting the center, they send him or her to see a psychiatrist.
The counselor told my friend that I needed help, that if the Deans saw me in this condition, they would tell me to go home. They were there to ‘help’ me. So the duty of the senior girl was to take me to the hospital to see the psychiatrist. And that day I and the psychiatrist had a long conversation, and in the end he prescribed me some sort of antipsychotics. Now I had to take these pills.
That night I received a call from the senior saying that according to the counselor, I had to go back home because it was vacation and I not had been allowed to stay alone on the campus. I had to leave campus and come back with my parents when the next semester started.
You see, when you reach out to the counseling center, they can even interfere in your personal life and your college life. You have disclosed your most private secrets to somebody and somebody used your secrets.
What is a better option instead of visiting the counseling center? Do seek any professional help if you need it, but don’t go somewhere your information might be used against you. Visiting a therapist outside the campus is less of a problem because at least they can’t interfere in your college life and put restrictions on your freedom.
I had not told my parents about me taking medications, visiting the counseling center or seeing the psychiatrist.
I took the medication for some days and I was feeling different. It was as if someone had put tape to my mouth and I could not smile much. It was the side effects of the medications. I visited the counseling center again to tell the counselors that I was feeling the side effects. They did not believe me. They thought it was the disease returning. They thought that I was not taking my medications. So they called my parents.
My parents arrived and they were told to sign a semester withdrawal form. The reason which was given by the counseling center people to my parents was that my mental state could get worse if I stayed there. They were forcing me to take a semester withdrawal. The counseling centers among all the universities have the same policy. Students are told to leave when they feel suicidal or mentally troubled. Students of Princeton and Stanford University were treated the same — they were told to go home when they visited the counseling center.
My parents and I did not like the idea of semester withdrawal. We thought it would be better to consult the psychiatrist. I had good grades. The psychiatrist, based on my previous academic records, told me not to take the semester withdrawal as I could perform well in the semester. So I did not take the semester withdrawal.
But my parents were told to stay with me in the apartments inside the college so that one of my parents (my mother) could monitor me taking the medications. I had to vacate the hostel I was staying in. I feel this amounted to discrimination against people with a mental illness.
The counseling center people are so smart that they even signed my signature and my parents’ signature on an application written in the first person, from my point of view, saying that I take the responsibilities of all my actions. That meant if I happened to commit suicide, the center had the record so that no blame could be put on the college administration. What I feel is that they were trying to protect the college’s reputation in case I committed suicide. However, I did not think they helped me even a little bit in resolving my conflicts.
They just order the semester withdrawal so that you can swallow the medications at your home. In my home university, taking a semester withdrawal on this basis is not a good option. They won’t return your tuition fees if you withdraw midway through the semester. The maximum that can happen when you don’t take a semester withdrawal is that you fail every course, meaning you earn no credit, but you would also not get any course credit if you do take the semester withdrawal. And the next semester when you come back to join the institute again, you are required to meet the counselor to prove that you are in good mental condition to continue your studies. A Stanford University student had to write an essay to say that he was in a good condition to return and in a way had to take the blame on himself. You would have to submit your medical report to the counselor. A Princeton University student even tried to sue the university for discriminating against him on the basis of mental health.
The counseling center people argued that so many people came to the counseling center and given the number of students visiting the center and the number of counselors, solving everyone’s problems would take a much longer time. It is not possible to help each and everybody effectively. I agree on this point.
Finally, I would like to summarize my terrible journey through the counseling center of my home university:
Do I regret going to the counseling center? Yes, I do.
Were my inner conflicts resolved? No.
Was my privacy intruded on by the counseling center? Yes, many times.
Were other students told about my mental illness? Yes.
Was my confidentiality broken? Yes, many times.
Do they really help the ‘mentally ill’? Not at the core, no.
What counseling centers generally do:
Give you a semester withdrawal (sometimes forced semester withdrawal).
Give you an accommodation where you can live with one of your parents who can monitor you taking medications (sometimes forcing students to take medications).
Keep your personal medical records with them.
Would I recommend anybody to visit the counseling center? Not highly recommended. Proceed at your own risk.
Putting quotation marks around “mental illness” is meaningless if one accepts that there is a “thing” which can be named, even if not referred to as “mental illness.” If you think you “have” something you have fallen for the fundamental deception of psychiatry. All other problems emanate from there.
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I don’t want to step on your toes here, Oldhead but it sounded to me like the only thing he was “having” was a rough time and he went to people who had previously promised to help him by talking about his problems and instead he was targeted as crazy and given drugs.
I mean, maybe the author does believe in such a thing as “mental illness” but his point was that the systems set up to “help” do harm by pathologizing situational distress as symptoms of disease. That’s an important point, regardless of whether he thinks other people might have something called mental illness. He recognized that he was situationally depressed, not mentally ill, and the place that told him to come to them in that situation played a bait and switch.
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Yes, the bait & switch. But the trailhead of that path is the notion that feeling the natural effects of life situations necessitates seeking professional help. People used to recognize and respect the fact that life is not all roses and rainbows, that bad shit happens to good people– that is the human condition, and we are all in it. Having bad shit happen and feeling bad about it is NORMAL, but we’ve been sold a bill of goods that says it isn’t, that convinces people that only professional “help” is the proper response. That is the first dangerous lie, and the other lies that follow it (diagnonsense, chemical imbalance, unmasking, etc.) are set in motion by the lie that natural supports are not good enough, that trusted friends are not equipped to handle the job of hand-holding through life’s rough spots.
Not to put words in oldhead’s mouth, but I think that’s what he was getting at.
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LavenderSage, I don’t disagree with you at all. But the people who need to hear that message are the counseling centers telling kids to come in and talk and then diverting them to psychiatry.
I also don’t think the author intended to turn to “professional” help, he just went to talk to a friendly person in a time of struggle.
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It’s important to, if possible, inculcate among young people a sense that psychiatry is not “cool,” that taking neurotoxins is worse than smoking cigarettes, and that people who diagnose their friends and use terms like “pill-shaming” should be ridiculed and avoided.
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He went to the counseling center, which is officially-sanctioned ‘friendly’ people. Most college towns have pubs and bars, plenty of clubs to join, etc. where you can encounter friendly people. But when people are encouraged to ‘reach out’ in their time of struggle it is always with the message that the people to reach out to are officially-sanctioned ‘helpers.’
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“diagnonsense,” LOL, Lavender Sage. Good one. And “bait & switch” is a good description of the role of the “mental health counselors” who really do nothing but send people to the psychiatrists.
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Yeah I think it’s Jan Carol who I’ve seen using the word ‘diagnonsense’ and I really dug on it, so I adopted it. I love wordplay!
Bait & switch is exactly what is going on. I think most people actually believe that people who seek emotional support from the mh system are getting talk therapy, that they are getting listened to as they spill their guts about the situations in their life that are causing their distress. The only ones who know otherwise are the ones who’ve been in the system, on one or both sides of the desk. I think there are a lot of people who, if they understood the reality of what happens to people who “seek help,” would never utter that phrase again, but they are duped into believing there’s still a couch.
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Fair enough KS, there’s always a subtext though. My comment had nothing to do with this author per se. It’s addressed to everyone, as most of my posts are. Maybe I should have made that more clear.
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However to expand some:
I mean, maybe the author does believe in such a thing as “mental illness” but his point was that the systems set up to “help” do harm by pathologizing situational distress as symptoms of disease.
My frustration is more with MIA than the author, who like most MIA authors writing of personal experiences are experiencing these things for the first time. But reading them I sometimes think of people who don’t watch “pet” movies because they know how they’re invariably going to end. The basic theme always seems to be a variation of “I put my hand on a hot stove and got burned.” Followed by suggestions by readers about how maybe the temperature could be lowered, or a different sort of stove used, or meditative techniques that could be learned for dealing with pain from burns. Never a suggestion that “maybe you should just stay away from these places.”
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Varun is not where we are OH. Can’t expect him to know the lingo.
As KS points out he has a valid story to tell. It’s worth the read.
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And on which of these points do you think I disagree?
Check again my comments about MIA’s editorial approach in framing these sorts of stories. There’s never a solid solution proposed at the end, or a suggestion that there’s a way out. This could have an unconscious effect of planting the seeds of pessimism in people’s minds, rather than an attitude of “f these mf’ers!” (I know you would put it differently). 🙂
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Having something is different from having nothing? And to be in search of a truth can be more manageable than the truth. And then, as one learns, can these beliefs yield to deeper understandings of what the inner life is about or what collisions might cause as an expression of chance or weaving?
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Thanks for sharing your story, Varun. It’s not just the university counselors who work, hand in hand, to railroad people off to the psychiatrists. It’s many or most of the “mental health counselors” and psychologists, unfortunately.
I went to a “holistic Christian talk therapist” psychologist, and on my second appointment with her she convinced my husband that it was mandatory I see a psychiatrist. For of all things, according to her medical records, belief in the Holy Spirit, and disgust at 9/11/2001, in late 2001. Wasn’t the whole world disgusted by 9/11 at that time? And all, according to her medical records, based upon lies and gossip that she had gotten, without my knowledge, from people who had raped my child (according to other medical records that were eventually handed over).
So I agree, “mental health professionals” are really nothing but traitors to their clients, gossips, defamers of their clients to their families and all who will listen, forgers of people’s signatures, liars about the adverse effects of the psychiatric drugs, as well as liars about the supposed “chemical imbalance” etiology of the DSM disorders, and iatrogenic illness creators. Hope you got off the horrendous antipsychotics. Thanks for sharing your story and cheer up, buttercup!
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That film is more than a marketing strategy, it is false advertising and blatant propaganda. Especially if your confidence was violated, as it appears that it clearly was, repeatedly.
I started out by going to my college counseling center (this was 39 years ago) and while I did not experience what you did in many ways, I still found it not only extremely unhelpful, but also filled with incompetent counselors. They were awful, and indeed, made me feel as though something were terribly wrong with me, because I was depressed. There were reasons for it, but they did not bother to probe that, and I tried 2 different counselors. The last one was the one that convinced me that something was wrong with me, whereas now, I can see that she was judging me, purely. Looking back, I can now understand the projection.
Great truth-speaking here and well-written piece. I hope this article gets around, especially to the counseling centers and universities. I also hope you find your peace. Speaking your truth is a good start.
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Alex said, “The last one was the one that convinced me that something was wrong with me, whereas now, I can see that she was judging me, purely.”
Psychiatric diagnosing is a judgmental act, pure and not so simple.
Define judgmental: critical, fault finding, censorious, condemnatory, disapproving, disparaging, deprecating,
I would add insulting, infantilizing, self serving, egotistical, narrow minded, and most of all, passive-aggressive.
Define passive-aggressive: behavior that is seemingly innocuous, accidental or neutral, but that indirectly displays an unconscious aggressive motive.
And what’s the aggressive motive behind most therapists?
Holding power over others —
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What’s the unconsciously aggressive motive behind most therapists?
Wanting power over others through a “power imbalance”.
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Removed for moderation.
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Students must associate to defend their rights. It is legitimate to post counter-propaganda on campus’ free expression boards to warn of the danger of the Student Counseling Services.
If I were faced with this problem, I will not hesitate to have A3 posters printed with the following message:
“The Student Counseling Services will not help you!
They can search to expel you from the university for one semester, or even definitively.
If you go to see them, you take the risk that they destroy your studies!
[QR code toward the article]”
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Excellent tactic — and pretty easy for motivated people to do.
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Add to that, that the counselors are there to “bait and switch” and send you to psychiatrists, who will destroy your life with their psychiatric drugs. Since it’s now known that the ADHD drugs and antidepressants can create the “bipolar” symptoms, as Whitaker pointed out.
https://www.alternet.org/2010/04/are_prozac_and_other_psychiatric_drugs_causing_the_astonishing_rise_of_mental_illness_in_america/
And the “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” treatments, the antipsychotics/neuroleptics, can create both the negative and positive symptoms of “schizophrenia.” The negative symptoms can be created via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome, and the positive symptoms (like hallucinations and psychosis) can be created via antidepressant and/or antipsychotic induced anticholinergic toxidrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroleptic-induced_deficit_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
But next to none of the “counselors” know this, or they are there to deny this, because neither of these medically known psychiatric drug induced syndrome/toxidrome are listed in their “invalid” DSM.
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Varun your story about the effects of the drugs you had been told to take–how they killed your ability to smile and act human–got you accused of “non compliance” made me want to cry.
Been there. Done that. Kept getting accused of going “off my meds” in college when I kept having Parkinsonism and mini seizures from 10 mg of Haldol. The psychiatrist claimed they never did that. My dorm mom told the guidance center I wasn’t taking them or I wouldn’t have the problems the Haldol was creating! This got me kicked off campus.
Funny thing is, now that I have tapered off the 3 drugs I was prescribed for “bipolar 2” no one knows I’m off when I visit a doctor. They often say, “Wow. Your ‘meds’ must really be working well. No flat affect; you’re smiling. Emotionally stable. No longer depressed or suicidal despite your health problems.”
I smile and say the “meds” are working fine. The Placebo Effect cuts both ways. 😀
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I had much the same experience in college. The center at my school was woefully equipped to help anyone, even though there were a *ton* of students struggling (The school was/is a pressure cooker by design. The “best” rise to the top. There are several suicides every year.).
I wanted to go into a DBT group where I hoped I would learn some skills on how to wrangle my strong emotional reactions. While I was able to participate in the group, I had to get a therapist outside of the school because I was seen as “high risk.” The school wanted to make sure that it had its ass covered legally and I had to sign an agreement that no matter what happened the school could not be held liable for what happened to me.
I ended up going to see one of the only psychiatric specialists for OCD in the area. She came to me highly recommended by the school. I went looking for help and found abuse instead. The psychologist invalidated my feelings, gaslit me, and told me that I would never get “better” without a drastic increase in my medications and a few months inside an inpatient facility.
The entire time I saw this psych she was constantly trying to push me into the deep end of exposure therapy. I was struggling with strong contamination fears. One of the things she had me do was to pick through the garbage that she had in her office and then not wash my hands. During the time I was handling the garbage, I was to not think about anything else other than the fact that it was germy trash and to “face my fears” until my body gave in and just stopped triggering my fight-or-flight instinct.
She disliked me a lot, mainly because I was not new to therapy or psychology. She’s one of those people who likes to keep her patients on a tight leash and for them to not expand their knowledge on anything. After our first few sessions, I looked at her floor to ceiling bookcases packed with books on psychology and asked her if she had any recommendations. She told me that *she* would tell me what I needed to know and stressed that I should *not* read about different therapies or talk to other people about therapy.
While this is all going on, I was really struggling with stress from school. The breaking point for me was a few months into therapy when I had finals I needed to work on, grocery shopping to do, and errands to run. I didn’t have time to have a panic attack.
When I politely told her this much, she told me I was non-compliant and said that I should not return to her office. She told me again that I’d never get better without her treatment, but that she couldn’t treat me until I had a few months of inpatient care and a new drug regime.
Needless to say, I got worse instead of better. Any benefit I would have gotten from CBT because she used it as a weapon against me.
I’ve got other stories about other times with other people that I’m sure I’ll share here. I’ve stupefied counselors and therapists with my experiences.
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Ugh! What you’re describing should be a crime subjecting the “professional” to jail time.
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Almost makes me wish I were back in school, dealing with the mental issues of others in addition to writing their term papers for them. I wouldn’t want any money for doing treatments, in order to stay vaguely legal, so I’d use receiving favors in lieu of that, the papers being for generating monetary income.
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student counseling service= weed out the riff raff. its worse when a professor or instructor gets a student to go for ‘help,’ but it seems there’s often someone, somewhere using coercion tactics to psychiatrize vulnerable individuals..it just plays out differently, in different segments of society.
i remember…comparing prescriptions (i was on benzodiazepine abc…she got ativan…), being brainwashed into the bullshit…
and then the terrifying Great Reveal. Long story…I survived, I am doing remarkably well, I am healthy…
and now I find that their bullshit is never ending–this is their meal ticket, after all– but i can play my role, they play their’s…
the play is ongoing. i manage to somehow contain my boredom and disgust. sometimes, when they talk, i see their lips moving…
but i dont hear a damn word they’re saying. having said that, i know damn well what they’d do to me, given the opportunity.
and the beat goes on…
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I had a dedicated counselor in the disability support services office in my community college who took one look at my entrance exam and marched me to the honors center to personally introduce me to the director of the program and convince me to sign up for honors classes. She could just as easily have decided to steer me toward easy courses just to get me through school, as others had done in the past.
My experience at university mirrors others who say they were ushered out with forced leave at the first hint of trouble. I never went back to university after taking what amounted to forced leave from my first semester but I’m still damn proud of my AA degree, and graduating from my colleges honors program.
Some students need more support and all too often what they get is a message that maybe they aren’t college material and told to go home and this has long term consequences, not just for the students emotional well-being but for their economic prospects as well. It’s a devastating blow that many don’t recover from.
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Hmm, don’t know how this got nested under your comment, YIS. Whoops. 🙂
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I didn’t even think about it.
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I can speak from firsthand experience that this is definitely changing.
I am a therapist on a college campus for nearly 4 years, my caseload is roughly 25 students at peak, maybe 40 students in and out the door per semester, and have never had to make a single psychiatric referral EXCEPT on a few occasions when a student who was already on psych meds appeared to be having side effects. If I believe those side effects might include self harm, I absolutely inform them that this is a possibility. I tell them what Akathisia is, and how in my experience, intrusive images caused by SSRIs differ from images caused by trauma, (as one example), and that encourage students to do research on their own and discuss with their prescriber so they can make an informed choice.
I cannot advise students to consider a taper– I could lose my license for that– but I can absolutely provide education about side effects, and encourage them to review literature on their own, and often direct them to the RIAT reanalysis of Paxil Study #329. I help them weigh the pros and cons, and encourage students to advocate for themselves.
I do visit students in the hospital and check all doses of medications– because, of course, typically the only students who need to be hospitalized are those who were already taking medication before coming to see me. If I notice a student’s voice is trembling, and that the dose of a medication has been increased, again, I cannot tell the hospital what I think they should do. But I can say, ‘I noticed that you tripled the dosage of this medication, and my client cannot sit still.”
The counseling center on campus probably does make more psych referrals, but they do not refer every student.
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You may be an exception, or your school may be. But I don’t think this has changed. Schools are very concerned with liability and try to “counsel” students with “mental health difficulties” to go on leave, at least in the USA. The confidentiality violations alone in this story are hair raising. I think the advice to be VERY careful about college counseling centers is very much on target.
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I would definitely agree that counseling centers should be approached with great caution, and the school I work in– as well as a few others locally– may well be exceptions. After re-reading the lead to my post, it does sound like I’m saying things are changing everywhere, and I do not actually know if that is true. I tend to think that because a lot of the people I trained with are activists, and even at my group practice I don’t hear as much doctrinaire blather as I used to about people ‘needing to be on medication’ so they can participate in therapy. That part of Varun’s story really broke my heart, because I haven’t personally heard anyone peddling that twisted fantasy since about 2010. That is just the strangest idea I’ve every heard of– I’ve always felt that folks who were medicated are often harder to work with in psychotherapy, unless their symptoms are so intense l that they can barely make it to the consulting room. We don’t work with people who are stoned or drunk, so why is it better to work with people who are chemically altered in some other way?
If I were a student, I would want to know exactly who I was meeting with, and be able to have a look at the clinician’s website, as well as checking for any actions taken against them by a licensing board– at a minimum. Better yet would be to have referrals from another student.
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Quite so. In the “mental health” system, it’s essential to start off playing defense until you know who you’re dealing with. The consequences of getting connected with the “wrong” kind of counselor could be devastating to your life!
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You are complicit any way you look at it.
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You are incorrect. The abuse of neurotoxins marketed as medicine will never stop unless licensed professionals suit up, show up and confront their careless and/or irresponsible colleagues.
The people who actually make money from dangerous psychiatric medications would like nothing better than for people like you and me to waste our energy bickering with each other.
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If you are overseeing people poisoning themselves you are complicit. And in denial.
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Ghastly and I can totally see how this happens. Whats happening is that butt-covering and psychiatric ideology is trumping your own interests.
In the UK I’ve found that using a private psychologist, although it costs £65 an hour, puts you in charge. Technically they could still break your confidentiality in dire circumstances, but not as badly as an NHS clinical psychologist, who is basically getting intel for the psychiatrist.
I can totally see how this all snowballs out of control and you end up doped up and unable to get back to school. I know because it happened to us. We were told antipsychotics would “get you back into life” (lol) and they would work on helping get back to school. They did no such thing. Instead, when the drugs make you even worse, the psychologist tips off the psychiatrists who threatens sectioning and wants to do higher dose meds. And so a problem in your life becomes life in a coma.
Its so hard because basically its best to keep out of the MH system, but in the early days you don’t know enough and if someone told you how bad the system is, then you wouldn’t believe them.
It sounds like you are back on track again and well done you for that.
I personally think these problems need compassion and commitment from those around you to be there 24/7, not judge, not impinge on your agency, and listen, listen, listen. Then you have to try and do stuff, whatever it is you normally do, maybe supported by someone alongside you. I know thats a bit idealistic but basically the more social hand-holding the better.
Loads of people come through this great, I think thats where we might be heading, but many others fall victims to the system or end up tragically. Crossing everything for you!
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Varun, I was a college student also when I started therapy. This was during the summer. My choice to go outside the campus counseling center was driven by my desire for privacy. I was so scared that anyone might find out I was going to counseling. I was scared that someone might find out I had an eating disorder. I also personally knew the college counselor from another situation. So I chose to go to the local counseling center in town.
This was one of the worst decisions of my life. Therapy caused me to become self-absorbed, thinking there MUST be something wrong with me, that is, fundamentally wrong with my character that caused me to have an eating disorder. What I did not realize was that the diet itself, that I had gotten out of a popular diet book, had caused the entire problem. People do not realize the serious consequences of drastic restrictive diets. You end up stuck in it, and further weight loss and low caloric intake only worsens a person’s distorted ideas about losing yet more weight. It is an endless cycle. A trap.
I didn’t realize this, though. I wondered if a character flaw caused it. Those therapist said, “You have an eating disorder so you must have an enmeshed mother.” This was a stereotype they had back then, and it is so false in my case that it is laughable. Then they said, “You have an eating disorder because of perfectionism.” This, too, didn’t fit me at all. They even tried, “We can’t help you, so your eating disorder is trivial and you’re probably faking it.” I latched onto “chemical imbalance” because I wanted to find some cause of the ED. That must be it! Then, drugs might fix it, right? I started asking for drugs. They claimed I was nothing but a spoiled Jewish girl.
They did indeed violate my confidentiality, and they also violated other patients’ confidentiality. I went to an emergency room on advice from my roommate. She had told me that “If you go to the ER then they will give you drugs. They HAVE to,” she said. I was hoping they would hear me, finally, and give me the magic pill that would stop my ED.
Instead, those idiots called my parents and I had not authorized for them to do so. I was 25 years old at the time and not a minor.
They never heard me. They continued to drug me and couldn’t figure out why I didn’t “respond.” They gave me more. They diagnosed me with schiz but I did not have any schiz characteristics such as the ability to hear voices. It was so unfounded….and I was stuck on disability payments for the next 35 years.
I regret the decision to start therapy. I regret continuing the therapy and my own failure to recognize that it was addicting. I regret believing them and seeing them as authority figures for as long as i did. I was 23 when I started therapy. I was 56 when I finally left that world. I am 61 now, employed at last, and finally ending disability payments.
It is so quick and easy to fall into that trap. It will take a long, long time to get out of it.
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Varun,
So you want to reveal the truth about the university mental health system? Why not reveal the truth of our ENTIRE mental health system? Dr Steven James Bartlett’s book “Normality Does Not Equal Mental Health: the needs to look elsewhere for standards of good psychological health” just might help your cause.
Says he,
“As a result of human recalcitrance to acknowledge our own pathology, in the history of behavioral science, and in particular in the history of psychology and psychiatry, almost no effort has been made to gain an understanding of human pathology that has its roots in normal–as opposed to abnormal psychology. Primarily among psychiatrists there have been a few notable exceptions, including Menninger, Fromm, Peck, Milton Erickson, and others whose observations are discussed in Bartlett (2005), all of whom have had the courage to recognize the pathological constitution of the ordinary person who so often is a willing participant in inflicting suffering, death, and destruction. But despite the work of these few researchers, psychology and psychiatry have doggedly reserved the term `pathology’ exclusively for application to individuals and groups judged to be abnormal, that is, whose psychology deviates from the norm. This, as Bartlett (2005) attempts to show, is short-sightedness in the extreme”
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Good on you Virun to post this article. You should make a thousand copies and fling them from a plane, or perhaps a drive by flinging in the middle of night. Often I feel like printing the articles from MIA and throwing them on hospital grounds, the streets, anywhere. I agree with you that counselors are just part of a broken system. There seems to be no common sense left. I think we are better off to get a tree and sunshine to counsel. It is all so dehumanizing. It has zero to do with help. I get it, some believe that as soon as we ‘think’ we need ‘help’, we become part of the problem. But I am not a piece of wood that can just drift. I went through counselor stints and I think with a defensive, not trusting mind most often, and really kind of despising them and myself for even giving it another shot. Perhaps because the secret lies within us. Probably depending on one’s personality, or situation, time of life…perhaps some gain something. I don’t know if I ever did. Perhaps someone has said something that was helpful without neither part knowing. Carry on Virun and thank you very much for your valuable contribution.
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Hey there, I am the author of this article. I have few more points to add. It has been many years since I have written this article.
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These points are limited to the author’s terrible and eye-opening experiences with the student counseling services at IIT-Delhi where he was an undergraduate during 2013-19. You might have different experiences and opinions toward the counseling center of your college.
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1. Why would you reveal your secrets to a stranger? What if the counselors played bait and switch? I watched the movie Good Will Hunting, and I thought that Robin Williams, a therapist to Matt Damon, was giving effective talk therapy and trying to resolve his inner conflicts. I went to the counseling center thinking that I would be listened to, but the counselors at my college played bait and switch and sent me to see a psychiatrist only after listening to me for not even more than five minutes. They turned my experiences into a disease. Most of the mental health crises are episodic. However, I was not offered any kind of therapy, which is the main work of a counselor. I could say that I was being judged purely. There are so many students and the counselors can’t solve everybody’s problem, the counselors claim that. That is why they send students to see the psychiatrists or just don’t seem to care about the student’s problems or give very ordinary solutions to the student’s concerns or even worse over-diagnose the students. They can even call the parents of student visiting the center asking them to live with the student in a separate apartment in the college, because the counselors can’t be present every hour at the college to take care of the student.
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2. The counseling center is always responsible and answerable to the college administration. There are certain institute’s policies upon which the counseling center work. So, even the counseling center is controlled by the college administration. Your information will always be shared with the Vice-President, Board of Student Welfare or the Associate Dean, Student Affairs of the college (IIT-Delhi). So, your visit to the counseling center is not strictly confidential. Therefore, even if Freud or Carl Rogers or Jung becomes your student counselor; you should avoid them because they will also be bounded by the rules set by the college administration.
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3. Whenever a suicide happens at the college, the administration of the college also asks the counselors whether the person who committed suicide has visited to the counseling center or not. And if the student has visited the counseling center, the administration would likely to point out, in this case, that the person was suffering from the ‘mental distress’ and it becomes easier for the administration to justify the suicide of the student. However, if the person (who committed suicide) has not visited the counseling center, the administration tells the other students that seek the ‘professional help’ from the counseling center in case of feeling troubled. This is the catch in visiting the center. The administration does not take the blame of the suicide on itself. When a student commits suicide (I am never in the favor of suicide) after visiting the counseling center, it is evident that suicide is something that many people in mental distress or with mental health issues commit, as Naoko commits suicide, in the end, in Norwegian Wood.
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4. The counselors generally say that seeking help is a sign of bravery. I agree. But do not seek help from anybody who labels you, be it a psychiatrist or a psychologist. I have visited the careless and incompetent counselors of two colleges, one in South Korea and one in India. From, my experience, the clinical psychologists or the student counselors at the college listen to you only to collect the information for diagnosing the ‘illness’ in you, so that they can send you to the psychiatrist for the treatment of newly diagnosed ‘mental illness’. Even if you do not have any illness at that time, the counselors could destroy your life by planting a thought in your mind that you need help and you are ‘sick’. These guys have studied the DSM-5 in their training. Now-a-days, there are so many disorders in the DSM-5, and any normal person can be diagnosed with at least 3 mental disorders as listed in DSM-5, and they might be given mind altering drugs by the psychiatrists. The counselors at the college do not have any incentive to give you the therapy. Again, I am saying all these points based upon my experience, which was horrible, with the student counselors of IIT-Delhi.
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5. Your name will be tainted even after you die. Look what they did to Isaac Newton, Nikola Tesla, Beethoven and so many great geniuses of the world. They (mis)diagnosed them after they died. See, what kind of contributions have been done by these great men, and all they got the stamp of ‘mental’ over their forehead for being themselves and for being different. Creative traits are punished by the schools and colleges.
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6. If you follow the counselor’s advice of visiting a psychiatrist for your ‘mental illness’, your history with the psychiatric drugs begin. You will now have a medical record for your ‘treatment’. The counselors at SCS claim that your medical records will be kept completely confidential. That is the most deceiving thing that the counseling center of your college could tell you. The counselors can keep the medical records confidential but your psychiatric drugs history will be with you. What I have seen is this – whenever you will likely to fill a form for a scholarship to study abroad or apply for a visa of a country (even in some cases) after graduating from the college, you will be asked to be honest about your medical history of mental illnesses. But since you have taken the so called psychiatric drugs for your abnormal experiences of life, your medical history with psychiatric drugs will be a sign of you being the ‘mentally ill’. That happened with me. You will be discriminated against taking the admission to the institutes, jobs, and visa and permanent residency to the other countries. You can’t become the Prime Minister of India if you have a label of ‘mental illnesses’ on your forehead. You will be required to be mentally healthy to do anything. The medical records that the counseling center had could be disclosed on your permission (forcibly) to any other organization or entity. It is foolish to assume that your medical records are completely confidential.
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7. You will, like most people, face difficulty in getting a life partner, if you plan to go for an arrange marriage in India, because it is believed, that mental illnesses are genetic and run in families, which is again harder to explain. The stigma is too strong. In India, marriages can be nullified on the basis of mental illnesses. So, if the counselors or the psychiatrists put a label of ‘mental illness’ over your forehead, your life will be most likely difficult. Before the marriage, you would have to disclose the status of your mental health to your to-be partner. If you don’t reveal your mental health information to your to-be partner before marriage, it will be considered as a fraud and the marriage could be dissolved very easily post marriage. Hence, it does not matter whether counseling center is confidential or not. You would be having a stamp of ‘mentally ill’ on your forehead given to you by the counselors and the psychiatrists. So, it is best to avoid the psychiatry and the clinical psychology. Even, Peter Gotzsche said in his book ‘Is psychiatry a crime against humanity?’, that if you have an emotional problem, you should avoid psychiatrists. It is also a conclusion of so many people with so called ‘mental illnesses’ whose life has been ruined by psychiatry, that you should avoid psychiatrists.
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8. The student counselor is the most dangerous person in the college; that is my belief. The incompetent student counselor can break your confidentiality in the name of protecting you. There is a very thin line between helping you and controlling you by the counselors in the name of mental health. They could also interfere in your personal life in the name of helping you. They could inform your parents if you visit the counseling center. The counselors are mental health policeman and the psychiatrists are mental health judge. The counselors can give you a forced semester withdrawal, thereby, extending your degree and the college administration won’t return your tuition fees. It will result in loss of one year or more than one year of your professional life; just calculate the opportunity cost for a year long stay in the college. The counselors can send you to the psychiatrists, which they often do, who provides you the drugs you don’t need for the ‘disease’ you don’t have. And your life will be on a disastrous path.
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9. If you really think that you need a professional help, you may visit a good and trusted professional outside the college. You are free to leave the professional whom you are meeting, if you think that the professional is not a good fit for you. However, this is not the case for the college counselor. Once you visit the counselor in the college, and you came to know that the counselor is not helping you or the counselor is not a good fit for you, you can’t leave the counselor. You will be stuck with the college counselor for the rest of the stay till the college graduation. The counselor will be having all your secrets which might be misused. This would make your stay painful for you. I went to see the counseling center because it was free of cost while the therapist outside the campus charged the fees. It cost me two additional years to stay at the college to complete my degree, paying the tuition fees and messing and boarding charges for two more years. I paid a huge cost in terms of my mental peace and hard earned money of my father. I wish I had not visited the student counseling services of the college, rather I should have seen a professional outside the campus even if they charge fees.
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10. In spite of all these points, sometimes it is better to seek help from the student counselors if someone else is harassing you, is trying to hurt you, or you are a freshman facing difficulties in adjusting to new environment of the college. If you are not able to score good grades, the counselors can motivate you to do so. But don’t discuss your mental health with them. That is the point where it becomes tricky. It is generally said that the counseling center is only if you are suffering from ‘cough or cold’ of mental health, not for other diseases or purposes. We don’t visit a doctor when we aren’t sick. Remember, as the brave psychologist Late Dr. Paula Caplan says that the beginning of something bad starts with a psychiatric diagnosis.
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