I have just put down the phone from another protracted, agonising conversation with my adult son’s psychiatrist. Stuck in a forensic psych unit for two years, Tama has been on antipsychotics for nearly twenty mind-f***ing years. Placed under the Mental Health Act for most of that time, he has been treated with so many different antipsychotics, including, in the last ten years, Clopixol by ‘jab’ (in the buttock, every two weeks). In and out of hospitals, police cells, community settings… all the usual stuff. I (and his father) have experienced internal agony whilst witnessing the impacts on him. Seen by clinicians as chronically ill and a risk to others, he is now doomed to stay in the forensic setting until he accepts the drug clozapine, and gains ‘insight’ into his illness, which he and his family have said a strong ‘No’ to.
His is seen as a complex case.
And it is, now.
At the very first assessment, I refused to accept that he had an illness. I believe to this day that his unusual thoughts and talk of suicide, all those years ago, were a reaction to abruptly stopping recreational drugs. At the time of seeking help, Psych services saw him as psychotic and started Risperdal immediately. Even then, without knowing any of what I now know, I protested; surely talking therapy was better? Now he is ‘ill,’ from years of drugging, with legal drugs. The last twenty years have been a two-part battle of wills: one against the doctors, their nurses and their illogical ‘medical’ view, and the second battle to support my son’s integrity against the views of family and friends.
Tama has been the direct victim of negative institutional culture and clinical inadequacy. But his family have also been victims-in-the-shadows in bearing witness to the direct and indirect effects on him. In spite of hundreds of phone conversations, face-to-face meetings, court hearings, letters of complaint to authorities, we have not been able to stop his treatment nor get him out of the system.
He has experienced legalised subjection to continuous harm by the drugs, the trauma of being forced into inpatient treatment, forced seclusion, group physical restraint, misrepresentation before the law by doctors and psych nurses and so on, and on. Nothing unusual, really, for the standard psychiatric patient over the last 200 years — especially for a young male, it’s been the typical assaultive, misinformed practice.
I am so familiar with these phone calls from psychiatrists. Contacts are few and far between but usually made with the family just before the routine court review to continue the inpatient treatment order. Tick that box — ‘consulted with family’. It’s been nearly 15 years, next month, since Tama was put under the Act. My internal dilemma when I get these calls is always:
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Do I lie and change the story line and agree with the psychiatrist that my son has a mental illness so they don’t maintain their view that the family is persuading the patient away from gaining the insight he needs to accept he has an illness and therefore… blah blah bull s**t? Or,
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Do I maintain my position that he was never ‘ill’ and only has become so because the antipsychotics have caused irreparable damage, in addition to the psychological trauma of being viewed as insufficient? And,
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How do I shift my view of doctors as being enablers of harm, to one which encourages a more constructive interaction (even though I know that Tama cannot recover whilst being maintained on heavy doses of antipsychotics)?
Every time I have these conversations I get ‘triggered’. I experience powerful emotions of intense frustration and desperation which surge up in my body and require a massive effort in self-restraint in order to avoid ruining what could possibly be a mutually useful conversation where we both gain some insight into each other’s position. This practice in self-restraint has taken years to develop, and still it’s a struggle. Throughout the last two decades, I have observed these feelings of desperation rise up as I hear the same old bulls**t being repeated by nurses and clinicians alike. Mostly the emotions spill over and I hear myself saying the same thing too, something like:
“I can’t believe you are saying this when you know the evidence says blah blah….! Your drugs have made my son worse, how can you say it’s the illness when there is not a scrap of evidence to support this? His violent attacks stem from the drug change/increase, he can’t even think properly! That’s the drugs, he wasn’t like this before! His whole quality of life is down the tubes! Please take him off the drugs!”
Doctors are stubbornly emphatic that he ‘needs’ them and that without them his ‘illness’ will make him a risk to others. They consider him chronically mentally ill. The notes say this, the doctors say this, the legal people repeat this, the managers and commissioners repeat what the clinicians tell them. Family concerns bear no weight.
My reading began with Toxic Psychiatry, a book which almost literally fell into my hands at the beginning of this awful journey in 1999. A year later I bought a copy of Your Drug May be Your Problem. These books supported my intuitive hunch that psychiatry had a poor idea of how to work with unusual behaviour. (I now have an extensive library, books, articles and online bookmarks and e-documents, all gathered in search of best practices.)
Our family supported Tama to withdraw from antipsychotics three years after that first meeting. The process was overseen by a holistic doctor, but all of us were not aware of the full picture of what to expect. A brush with police a year into the withdrawal put Tama back into the mental health system and he has never gotten out. This was in his early 20’s, 15 years ago. He was put under the Mental Health Act and he was seen from then on as both ‘non-compliant’ and a ‘risk to others’. Now I see that psychiatrists simply maintain this ‘chemical straitjacket’ in order to cover themselves and escape litigation in the event of their patient harming a member of the public. This very defensive, fear-based practice which is encouraged by the legal system motivates clinicians to continue drugging in spite of current evidence of harm and antithesis to recovery. It was a shock to discover the truth.
Back in the system, Tama sank back into a drugged state which was distressing for me to witness. During the time he was off meds I remember him telling me that he could think again. He lost all the extra weight he had gained on the drugs, he got his energy back and he was living independently, with full agency. Now he plummeted back into frustration, agitation, hopelessness, dependence and stagnation.
It became clear to me that regardless of how ‘informed’ I might have become, it did not help Tama’s situation, and my awareness antagonised the clinicians. Knowing the evidence only made it harder to see that the longer Tama was on antipsychotics the less likely he would recover and the more damage to his health would ensue. It also put me at odds with other family members who would argue that I should go along with the doctors.
When Tama was released into the community on clopixol depot jab, those close to him began observing a pattern where he showed symptoms of extreme drug overdose directly after the jab was given, then acute withdrawal towards the end of the two weeks. Tama described cycling between insomnia and agitation at the end of the cycle to sleeping 18 hours or more and not being able to function for days after the jab. We wrote to his psychiatrist with our concerns and had meetings and phone conversations but nothing was done, no dosage change, drug change or reduction. Even though Tama was medication compliant for many years he was still in and out of hospital because of ‘risk incidents’, but never was clinical practice evaluated, it was always Tama’s fault, and as for those parents with their antipsychiatry views…!
The family was, and continues to be, caught in a chronic catch 22 dilemma. As we observed the deterioration of our loved one, our observations were not acted on even though we wrote to several government agencies that are tasked with acting as watchdogs. We cannot find legal support to stop the medications or to hold clinicians accountable for deliberately and blatantly breaching Tama’s human rights. We have found we have no voice — that is, no matter what ‘evidence’ we supply to support our view that Tama is only ill because of the effects of the drugs and that the only way he can regain his life is to be carefully withdrawn, this is not acted on. Of course, Tama has the final say, and he now says, “No, I want to stay on the drugs.” It’s hard to know if he is saying that because he wants to appear compliant and indicate that he has gained insight, or because after all the years of drugging he suffers from anosognosia, or he is so afraid of the effects of withdrawing, or he can no longer see clearly the negative impact of years of drugging.
For me, I struggle to put my son’s case clearly whenever I have a conversation with clinical staff, particularly a psychiatrist. I come away from the conversation feeling desperate and traumatised. As a mother, I want to share a meaningful connection with my son as I do with my daughter. I want to witness him happy, healthy and living the life he chooses. I also want to be free of the grief and distress I experience every time I have contact with the very people who are having this overwhelming effect on Tama’s quality of life, health, spirit and mind. This situation affects all of us; this impacts my/our whole life, how can it not? That which negatively impacts one person in the family impacts all of us — we are connected, like it or not.
To Act or Not to Act
Reading evidence is not action. Learning about others’ experiences and building a library of research has done nothing to change Tama’s situation; doctors get very defensive if you talk about what you have learned, they see this as challenging their practice and status as an ‘expert’. For me, taking direct action is a necessity in order to avoid getting ill from the perpetual stress and trauma from this insidious situation. Direct action includes networking with peer organisations, writing to authorities, attending meetings led by proactive peer groups, organising petitions, attending education events and connecting with others who are going through this horrendous situation. This helps, sort of. But it hasn’t changed anything for Tama. The same messages are coming from the same people. He’s still locked up, forcibly drugged, humiliated, pathologised, secluded, restrained, punished.
After all this I have decided that fighting the system does not work. I have not been able to find an avenue to stop what is happening to Tama, even though there are so many mothers/families like me who share my experiences, we are all up against the same very hard, cold brick wall.
What precipitates change? What precipitates healthy change?
Not all families, particularly mothers, want to change the medical paradigm. Attending a Mental Health event called THMes a few years ago in NZ, I had an experience which shook my view that all families saw the situation the way I did. At the conference, families were split off from ‘consumers’ and had their own area of the plush venue to interact and to listen to other family experiences. An Australian mother and daughter presented and repeated the ‘illness’ paradigm to the audience, describing their campaign for more services that supported more controlling, dictatorial medical containment for their two ‘very ill’ adult male family members. Suddenly, I was aware of an insidious push from a group of families for the state to up the funding to supervise their loved ones in the community more closely. A strong and powerful collusion with the psychophamacological complex. This Australian mother-daughter duet were reinforcing the call for the family to control all the choices for their family members. Together with the old ‘schizogenic mother’ model which views families as precipitating trauma and triggering distress ‘symptoms’, mental health services treat families, particularly mothers, as persons to be suspicious of. I was disturbed by the knowledge that there are mothers/families potentially sabotaging the movement for change. No wonder the peer movement were wary of them!
Sure, Tama’s father and I have had long and difficult conversations around the question of “Did we cause this?” Introspection of this nature creates relational complexities with the wider family and induces trauma which is potentially destructive. Family members become distrustful, blaming each other and creating further schisms in relationships, making the whole situation more complex.
For our family, there is an overwhelming weight of frustration, introspection and confusion around the question of “Can I help, should I help and if so, how?’ Tama should lead his journey, sure, but what about when he is f***ed up by the drugs? Who would he want to advocate for him, on his behalf?
For most families that I know of, those who know the evidence or have a hunch that the system is fundamentally flawed but know no other way, they, in their despair, move away and leave their loved one to find their own way. Most often, their loved one sinks further and further into ill health and distance. Then the family has to choose, do they pick up or do they leave their son or daughter to the halfway house, the street, the hospital or the ‘four winds’.
I have watched and heard of many, mostly mothers, who battle on, with their loved one living with them as they age, and the rest of the family leaving the support entirely to them. I have heard of mothers moving into aged care and their loved one being shipped into the same care home by their families. If this journey continues for Tama as it is, will this be my lot? What will happen when I die?
People say to me, “You have to live your life and just be happy” and I think, how can I leave this situation aside and not continue to equip myself with up-to-date evidence of what constitutes effective healing practice? How can I pretend that it’s okay to maintain this abusive system of care? Who will push for accountability?
Families deserve to heal too
How can individuals find true recovery if their family is still fragmented and hurting and they are disconnected from them? Should there not be recognition of the trauma they too have been through? Where trauma is multi-generational and communication is compromised, should families not be given the opportunity and support to gain insight into how to change this? Where would we turn for this help, and can we be sure it would be safe?
My dream is that someone, somewhere would facilitate this type of full family healing using something like the Hawaiian process of Ho’oponono as practiced by Dr. Ihaleakela Hew Len. He is well known for emptying the island’s forensic hospital in the 1980’s, over a period of three years, using an indigenous practice of forgiveness. Perhaps this worldview is similar to First Nations in the Americas where blame and trauma were lifted using ritual, and love and forgiveness were the products of ceremony. Dr. Lewis Mehl Madronna, in his work, describes the extraordinary power of full acceptance of the individual in the context of family, their history and their community. For people who hold Maori and Pacifica worldviews, we all carry our ancestors with us and healing happens when we reconnect with the spirits of those who know where we come from and can create the potential for who we were meant to be.
Here in Aotearoa, I earnestly hope that my son, Tama, his family and our ancestors can find completeness, peace and freedom from this psychiatric stranglehold, within an emotionally safe environment with people who support forgiveness, acceptance and reconnection within the spirit of love.
I hold and support this possibility: that the right people can be gathered to create a healing community for families to release trauma. Perhaps that is what we need to do?
My condolences Theresa.
Tell the shrinks what they want to hear. They are holding your son hostage till their demands are met. This will make them relax their guard till you can help your son escape the Hell between his ears.
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Although I agree with you that the quickest way to get away from the buggers is to tell them what they want to hear, this is often very difficult for people who are locked on the units to do. I don’t know whether this is out of sheer stubbornness and wanting to be proven correct about their situation or what. I’ve come to believe that for many people it’s a matter of integrity and trying to hang on to their true self and personhood against the onslaught of aggression on the part of the psychiatrists and staff. To bring themselves to say that they are “ill” and the psychiatrists are “right” is just too much to even imagine. I’ve not found a way to help people who are mired up to their necks in this crap. I’ve tried telling them what you counsel but they refuse to hear any of it and often won’t speak with me for days or weeks after such a suggestion on my part.
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Hi, Stephen,
I think there is a distinction here between the patient and the family. It is the author who is non-compliant in the eyes of the medical staff and this may be one of the things that is creating a standstill. Not at all easy path to navigate for patient or family.
Best,
Rossa
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Thanks for helping me to see this. Yes, I am very heavy hearted for those families who struggle to do the best thing for their loved one held in the “hospital”. They immediately become suspect in the eyes of the staff and in many cases the staff work to make sure that the loved one is not sent back to the family but to an RCF or a group home to live. They claim to know better than the family about what needs to be done. I’ve even heard these families referred to as the “truly crazy ones”! It’s infuriating.
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It’s true. That I have made things worse by voicing my concerns was a reality very hard to learn. And I don’t think the clinicians would ever trust me if I started agreeing with them. I also wonder if Tama would wonder which is story and which is truth. It messes with my head so I stay out of it at Tama’s request. For him they have said he won’t leave until he accepts clozapine
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Thank you for responding and I truly do feel some of the pain that you have about all this. I am a former “patient” who now works among the people held on the units. You are so perceptive and Tama is blessed to have you as his mother. So many families just bow down to the psychiatrists and accept everything as the gospel truth. You actually have his best interests at heart.
I walk among many people each and every day who are like your son Tama. I wish that I could do more for them than I accomplish.
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Dealing with professional staff who seem to always know better is an awful thing to have to go through. The drawbacks of these meds need to be pointed out to them (how can we live with ourselves if we don’t do this), and it seems like a lose/lose situation. If a parent doesn’t voice concerns, the patient may feel that the parent isn’t working in his or her best interests. My son didn’t express an opinion one way or the other about the drugs, and would agree with everyone. He didn’t do his own research on the drugs/take agency, so it was left to me to do the heavy lifting. This is tiring and stressful. There are ways of putting forth concerns without getting the professionals defensive, but these nice/nice approaches don’t always work. Hah. I wonder why these psychiatrists continue to belive that clozapine is a wonder drug. I guess it’s because they are insistinting on a long term injectable.
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None of this is simple or easy. Parents like you are better informed than staff about all this. Staff don’t keep up with the latest about any of this stuff. I’ve found them to be badly informed. Most of them have drank the Kool-Aid and are true believers. I’ve run into a few staff who know what’s going on but they don’t say so publicly. They feel me out first to see where I stand on issues before they make any commitments one way or the other. Speaking out against the drugs as a staff person is the kiss of death. People have been fired for working with peoples’ voices to see if that might be helpful for them. The drugs are supreme and are the only treatment, period. To suggest anything else is a quick death for those saying it.
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Rachel777 makes a powerful point. Tell them what they want to hear and eventually you both can make your escape from this living hell.
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i agree with the above. i was released from an over-priced, insurance de-frauding hell hole once i played nice with the shrinky shrink.
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Another thing hospital staff loathes is the knowledgeable patient, particularly one who knows his/her psych drugs as well, or (gasp) maybe better than staff do. Staff doesn’t like it if you can snap off side effects better than they can or if you can point out that somebody’s “quirk” that is actually a tic that nobody realized, and you’re only a patient. The therapist can become humiliated, while the doctor can suspect that you’re actually a plant or agent introduced by some nameless authority to spy on them. Another nice touch is to have a regular visitor who takes you over to some corner and then converses in low tones, punctuated by bursts of laughter (when asked, neither of you will say or admit to anything).
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Those who are pretending but don’t have an actual grasp of their subject are always threatened by any person with real knowledge and understanding, as they know they are always vulnerable to being “outed” as the charlatans they are.
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Yes Steve and it’s happening more and more in regular medicine. If one speaks up, it is written down as anger.
It WILL ALWAYS be the client’s fault. Ever noticed that? It’s rather curious that a client can’t be right.
I find it odd too that physicians refer people to a shrink for sleep meds, yet physicians will prescribe ALL psych drugs.
Now we know why that is. scientists know ZILCH about sleep problems. They can be caused by anything at all, which science, BECAUSE THEY DON’T KNOW THE BRAIN (Lol) then wants to put on something “psychological”.
WHICH OF COURSE, gets people on the mouse wheel of psychiatry.
So say NO, if a physicians tries to bump you off.
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Hi! I hear what you say as a mother and I too have a son who has been diagnosed with bi polar. He was never on social drugs in his life maybe very rarely he smoked a splif under peer pressure. He doesn’t smoke or drink. He is never in trouble with the law and has no criminal record although I constantly ask police for help when in crisis with him. He is on low doses of medication which he feels he will give a chance and see what the outcome will be for him. It helps him get by daily and he has suffered from depression since he was a small child of three years old. He suffers mania and psychosis. He has been ill since being very little and spent his life having two parents with a mental illness and we too have no criminal records. Social Services have never been involved with us as we were always considered to be good parents.
I think you should ask yourself the reason why your son decided to take the road of social drugs to begin with and why now he feels that medication helps him. Like you say it is his choice. It is agonizing as a parent to see your child affected by the side affects and somnolence and insomnia these drugs can produce in someone but what they suffer from is worse and your son whether the walking wounded or not seems to need so much help which I believe whether you want to hear this or not you were unable and are unable to give.
My son was never medicated as a child until he became very ill when he was 24 years old and he has been medicated ever since and he is now 39. He has a life. Not the kind of life I would choose for him but he holds his own. I have a wonderful relationship with him as he is gentle, intelligent, loving and is never in trouble with the law. He is not considered a risk to anyone but does spend time in hospital when very ill.
As long as I live I will support him in any decision he chooses to make and support him when he is ill by yes agreeing to him being in hospital and medicated because that is the safest place for him and like I say he is on small doses and the psychiatrists do listen to me. I hope your son recovers one day as I still hope my son too recovers but it probably won’t be in my lifetime.
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Bippyone, your comment was the most difficult one I’ve read in a very long time. I’ll be respectful and leave it at that.
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Teresa, my heart goes out to you, your husband and son Tama. I feel so much sorrow and disbelief at these injustices and how government bureaucracies that exist to protect citizens are not doing anything. Reading your story was very difficult, I can only imagine how hard this is on you as parents. By forming a withdrawal support group I hope you draw strength and gain knowledge from other parents or families and find some way for your son to reclaim his life. As others have commented, playing along for the time being might be the best way to get them to release their grip. Best wishes and God bless.
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Hi Teresa,
I’m sorry for all the pain you and your family are in. I wish there was some place for families to heal. Soteria and Open Dialogue seem appealing to me from afar, but they aren’t available in small-town Midwest where I live, and so we’ve had to find our own way to healing individually and as a family. It wasn’t easy, for sure, but I refused to let my family fall apart or continue the dysfunction on both sides of our families for the sake of our son. For us attachment theory gave us the roadmap.
I wish you well.
Sam
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Teresa, I am so sorry for your suffering. I agree w the other comments. ARGEE w everything the cruel idiot professionals want to hear until he is free. Then find the right help. For 32 years psychiatry had me and the last time i got locked up was bc i told them medicine doesnt work for me it just lobotomizes my brain. The only way i got out was to once again agree that i had a chemical imbalance and take the drugs marketed as medicine. This is written in my chart as I gained insight into my illness. I got out and I am very thankful to Mad in America. I contacted a wonderful therapist off the MIA resource list and he has helped me fix my life in 1 year what the other assholes could not do in 32 years. I stongly suggest as the others have get him OUT FREE ESCAPE if it is possible. My shit was never court ordered. Then get the right help. Also I escaped this by learning of Dr Breggins work (bless his beautiful heart) and one thing he said is dont waste any time playing the blame game. At this point the blame game is counter productive. My heart and hope goes out to u and your son.
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Just wanted to add how insane this all is. When u try to tell psychiatrists that they are not curing a chemical imbalance they are creating one w the drugs.. they call me insane. The truth is it is completely insane but i am on the sane side of this fraud. So they just wont see it as u do Teresa. It is still some what unbelievable to me. But my proof is once i fixed my life and left my brain chemistry alone I have never felt better. And I want to thank every single person who has worked to get the truth out.
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you’re brave! a ‘professional’ i deal with was talking about ‘chemical imbalances,’ and i asked…are they genetic? environmental? does anyone know? she shrugged, faking a look of bewilderment.
i had -1- counselor who told me the truth: you so much as drive by a shrink’s office, they’ll label/diagnose you with something. its…what they do. and…
thanks. that’s about all i can say…thanks. you came thru, you’re doing well now, and…thanks 🙂
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Thank u for the support. I am literally only safe to talk this truth to people like you. I have had to leave my entire family except my son and all my friends except one. I think every one thinks the world is going to end if i dont take my medicine. So i stay away and am beyond grateful to people like u.
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Your last paragraph brought tears to my eyes…
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Thank u for caring. My escape from psychiarty has been a very lonely and misunderstood time for me. I wanted to add for Teresa and any one else… I live in a small upstate NY town and I found no one here that undetstood the error of the chemical imbalance theory. So the therapist I contacted off of MIA resources is out of Chicago. I have never met the man in person. We did phone sessions. So if no one in your community gets it, the phone was all i needed. I am not exaggerating. After 32 years of seeing an entire lifetime of idiots from age 15 to 47 years old this man new exactly what i needed to do to fix my “Bipolar”. One of his smartest statements to me was stay away from psychiatry and u will be alright. And he told me he learned from Dr Breggin. I never met Dr Breggin. I nor my insurance has ever paid him a penny but this beautiful man has saved me from another 30 years of internal torture and physical abuse 8and physical torture in psych hospitals/torture centers. Thank u to him and all of u is such an understatement.
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Heartbreaking, frustrating and all-too-familiar story. I love your vision for a new society, based on healing, forgiveness, peace, and love. Keep to it, as will I and I know many others who have this same vision, and perhaps the world will fall in line, if we are walking our talk. I believe that is essential, and I know with certainty that it is the direction in which hope, light, and blessed truth are found. We be the change, and others will either follow suit, or get out of the way.
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Teresa,
I re read your article and realized the escape freeing etc is not as uncomplicated as it was for me. I never had and court or forensic orders. I am just so so sorry for u and Tama. And as many i wish u could do an action to help. But i cant. I can tell u though as a peer who has struggled about 30 years with drug induced suicide ideation, the LOVE i felt for various family members at different times was the only reason I did not act on the suicide thoughts. I wish I had more to offer.
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‘Where Can Families Turn for Help?’ – This story is beyond tragic, my heart goes out to this Mother. I’m realizing there is no where for families or iatrogenically harmed patients to turn for help, especially when withdrawing cold-turkey from our neurotoxic cocktail of drugs. We’re still being blamed for our justifiable anger at the system. ‘Anger isn’t good for you severs no purpose’ they say. We eventually do forgive, but oh boy what a process! Even long into recovery from decades of taking our ‘medicine’ suffering unimaginable adverse effects along the way, our behaviors, integrity, morals & ethics are put under a microscope and judged by those who’ve never taken the drugs for years or decades, experienced the true horrors of a c/t benzo withdrawal or an SSRI withdrawal that drove them to become homicidal when that’s not their true nature. As the editor of my book just did with me. When I became extremely homicidal during my SSRI withdrawals admitting myself in a psychiatric hospital begging them to treat me without using more drugs. They’re response: ‘You complain about one more side effect and we’ll start injecting’. I was locked in knowing I wasn’t going to receive any kind of care what so ever, but filled with more drugs that caused me to be there in the first place. So I began telling them everything they wanted to hear. ‘Yes, I’m mentally ill, Yes, I’ll take my medicine, Yes, I understand the need for them’. All total lies. But my goal was to get out of there as fast as I could which still took weeks. If I wanted to save any sanity I had left, and after 35 years of being psychiatrically drugged & harmed with ECT’s, I knew it wasn’t much. But it was something. So NO, there is no where inside the Medical or Psychiatric field for us to go for help. Self education about psychiatric drugs was my only salvation and to this day when trying to inform family members how dangerous psychiatric drugs are, none of them believe a word of it. And every single member of my family, extended family and one grandchild is being prescribed and taking one or more psychiatric drugs. It’s honestly so tragic to watch that I’m glad I’m old and my time on this planet is limited.
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Hi Sandra, first of all I would like to thank you for your bravery in what you have written here and how you have survived. I too am what could be classed as a survivor. There is nowhere to go for help. There is only doctors and medicine. Also detention. I have attempted after years and years to become drug free. I have failed so far. I came across a doctor Dr William J Walsh who has had results with nutrition and mental health. I couldn’t afford the tests by his practitioner but decided to change my diet completely.
I have become Vegan and just this past week or so I feel so much better. Less depressed less clogged in thought processes and have become clear minded. This is just one week of becoming meat and dairy free. Remember it is not just us humans who suffer but animals at the expense of drug companies and then they are tossed aside like rubbish.
I haven’t given up hope that I will make a complete recovery because I still get deluded and have all the symptoms of insanity and I am not sure if this will go away eventually. I will be taking Dr Peter’s advice and reducing my injection by 10% 5mg a fortnight and by one year and eight months I should be drug free. In the meantime I will continue with my new diet and being Vegan and know it can only do me good.
I wish everyone here good luck and a better life free from drugs. It takes extreme bravery to fight a system as powerful and big as psychiatry.
My marriage of 33 years ended because of the medication I was advised to take and the fact I knew i wanted to be drug free. Then my husband died. I know if he was alive today he would be proud of me and even prouder of me if I could make it in the end.
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Sandra,
I read an article you wrote about how psychiatry stole everything from you except your current home that u are comfortable in. And I just read your comment. I just want to tell you how helpful you are to me. I am new to the truth about psychiatry. So you stated that people you try to educate dont listen to a word you say. I practically cling to every word you write. There is no help in my area for recovering from psychiatry. You and people like you are the help. So thank you. I am listening and very very grateful!!!
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Hi Sandra.
I hear you.
It is a grieving for society, mixed with grieving for family and self.
I get the “I’m glad my time is limited”. It’s a tough pill to swallow, when you realize just how toxic it all can get.
I am also glad that each person will only be allotted a chunk of time to ruin people and their families, and then it’s bye bye for them.
There are a few that rise to the occasion towards the end of their careers, but that is an easy thing to do, and I’m not about to absolve them of their guilt in participating.
Think about how it works. Based not on suffering, although psychiatry tries to defend itself by saying people come to them in “states”.
The whole insanity is that these “states” are then called an anomaly, an illness, a sickness. Somehow you are no longer okay, you are different and you are viewed through that lens. You become your illness through all of society.
Psychiatry invented stigma, they keep it strong. You lose rights. They preach against stigma and that there is no shame in MI. The MI that they invented. They preach that “you are not your illness”, but created your illness or if you’re lucky, you get to own 4 or 6 illnesses with overlaps.
It is so toxic that it has no words and only getting rid of it, is the answer, because it invades everywhere.
The suffering you went in for, or the confusion or state, is of no concern to them. They have no special interest in you as a person.
In fact, you annoy them, they dislike people and their jobs.
They just want to retire. It is why the meds were invented.
Families should be able to turn somewhere, but usually it’s not the neighbour, because he also believes in MI or some form of it.
It takes turning the beliefs around and there are PLENTY of shrinks who understand the issues from where we are, yet they like the lifestyle they live, no matter how miserable it makes them or society.
No matter how I look at it, psychiatry and it’s lies need to say goodbye.
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“Remember, there is no shame in being labeled a worthless, helpless, permanently brain-damaged drain on society of whom other people are taught to be irrationally afraid and who will remain on disability for the rest of his/her medically forshortened life, no matter WHAT those other people say!”
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My son is now 39 and I have watched as I have lost him under psychiatry. He is damaged. I simply go out to all mothers who witness the same happening to their children. What do we do against this wall of forced drugging and shock? It is eugenics at its worst. Mother’s like me must feel so small like I do most of the time and so helpless and how can we fight against this?
Maybe one thing would help? Maybe if we became united?. Maybe somehow across the seas we could all become united and then become strong? Maybe before we expire to our graves we can free our children? I don’t know how this can be done but I wonder?
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Even if they let your son go free at some point, they most likely will make sure that he doesn’t return to your care because they know that you won’t support him continuing on the toxic drugs. They will send him to an RCF or a group “home” where they can continue to control him. I’ve sat in morning reports where such things are discussed about the “patients” on the unit. During one such meeting the staff were going on and on about how one “patient’s” mother always took him off the drugs when he came back to live with here. At one point a nurse asked who the truly “crazy” person was in a very self-righteous tone of voice. At that point I spoke up and pointed out that not everyone believed in the paradigm of “care” that is promoted. It was totally silent in the room and then the psychiatrist spoke up and affirmed me statement.
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I want to thank you Stephen for being in a professional setting and not just going along. If more people did that maybe this problem would not be so horrific. Thank u again.
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Thank you, Teresa, for sharing and writing this piece. My sister was diagnosed with schizophrenia in her early 20s, almost 25 years ago. She has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and has had many run-ins with the legal system. My parents took guardianship of her last year and they are in their 70s. I am a survivor of psychiatric medication which caused irreparable damage. I started taking an SSRI 18 years ago and later on, a benzo long-term. I know first hand what some of these drugs can do and I am concerned that my sister will not get the chance to experience life again without medication. My family has suffered a lot and my other two sisters and I aren’t in close relationships. My mother tries to keep us all connected and to help my sister and her children. My father is a physician and he and my mother generally lean toward keeping my sister medicated. I have watched the health of our family deteriorate over the years. I played a part with the severe difficulty I had in getting off the medication I was taking. I am finally getting my reality and health back and can see more clearly now than ever. I’m heartbroken and everything you have said is true for our family as well. We need to heal. I fear we will never heal and these issues will be inherited by the next generation that is coming of age now. How can we stop this from happening??
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I have found that the interference from services has a direct impact on relationships. The impact of the effects of meds the stigma and the guilt and blame all negatively effect connection. And I don’t know how to avoid that.
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I totally agree about the impact on relationships. I said to a psychologist that our family was seeing that having all of these professionals voicing their opinions was like living with an interferring grandmother. And I don’t know how to avoid it except that when I see an opportunity to drop their help, I do.
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Psychiatry ruins everything. Psychiatry IS Toxic.
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” That which negatively impacts one person in the family impacts all of us — we are connected, like it or not.” Absolutely true, and I’m sorry your son is being held against his and your wills, and is being poisoned with antipsychotics. It’s shameful that the psychiatrists have been given to ability to do this to anyone. And their attacks on individuals absolutely are attacks on that person’s entire family. My “mental health” workers destroyed my marriage, and strained all my familial relationships.
I wish I could help, but agree the satanic psychiatric system is … I guess it’s a dragon, like dragon slayer used to call it. And what’s really sad is that dragon is even hanging out in the churches. I guess that’s at least part of why many of my paintings show the dragon in the churches, and the churches as upside down, just like Chagall used to paint. When psychiatrists are given control, they always end up creating holocausts. Why are our leaders so stupid as to not learn from history, and to never give any group, especially the psychiatrists, the power to play judge, jury, and executioner to other human beings? My prayers for healing to your family.
If you want to anger your son’s psychiatrists, do remind them that the antipsychotics can create the negative symptoms of “schizophrenia” via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome, and they can create the positive symptoms of “schizophrenia” via anticholinergic toxidrome. God bless.
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Theresa, forgive my other comments as I too am medicated and have been for over 45 years. I get doped and suffer somnolence and also withdrawals at the end of the weeks injection. I get confused by constant friendly nurses who aren’t what they seem. My son suffered depression yes from a very young age and I protected him as long as possible but he is now wound up in the psychiatric system and has gone down hill these past years.
I have lost contact with my family my brother also was a psychiatric nurse and is a staunch churchgoer.
I have little defense at my hands like even you too with your family behind you have been helpless to uphold the welfare of your son and have had to witness his suffering more and more like I have to sit back and witness my sons suffering more and more.
I haven’t given up and wonder if I will outlive him and yes who fights his corner when I am gone? I live with this daily entangled myself in a system named care which is anything but and is abusive and cruel.
I am isolated like so many mothers and alone in dealing with a system that is overbearing and powerful. I am a small person and growing old. I have to die knowing I will be leaving behind a beautiful son who they will kill himself in the end or torture for the rest of his life. He has no life. Sleeps his days away and is up during the night online hardly being awake these days or having the sun on his face.
I would support and help you Theresa in any way I can and my heart goes out to you as it does to other mothers like Sandra Breakspeare who founded the charity Chy Sawel and who has lost her son to the system in the end. Anything I can do in any way I will help and support you. Please let me know there is a way and I am many miles from you and live in the UK.
[email protected]
What they have done to our son’s is not only a crime against humanity it is the silent holocaust that nobody wants to hear about and disclose. Psychiatry is responsible for killing millions and torturing billions of young and old alike.
None of us live forever and I believe that all the electrical impulses in our bodies leave when we die on earth and go into space where we are from originally and those electrical impulses are from our brains too. I don’t believe there is any such thing as a judgement when we pass into space I think we simply carry with us our experiences and that we are recognized for who we are deep down. Cowards and those shallow uneducated people who like to think they are important because they qualify as a psychiatric nurse or carer and who have power over those vulnerable will be recognized for what they are once they leave their own dead bodies. Space is vast and remarkable and unexplored and we are tiny but we will live on and those who have experienced the richness of sorrow and happiness will be recognized and treated specially.
It is human to be cruel but it is also human to have empathy and be kind. Those rich in these emotions will take that with them when they live on and be recognized as valuable beings.
I believe this. I just wanted to thank you for your heart rendering post and that I do admire your courage and determination and most of all the love you have for your son which I too have for mine.
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Bippyone
Thank you for this response. I can feel your heart in it.
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There is no winning for anyone here. Your writing hit home a terrible reminder of the situation many of us are in I wrote a poem recently that appeared from nowhere. Until you have watched helpless as the boy you gave birth lies shackled on a trolley for 97hours you have never lived.until you have waited for hours for the end of the world the voice said was due at 5pm you have never lived.until you have watched the armed police take away the boy u gave birth to u have never lived..until u have sat in support group with all the other mad mothers trying to explain this crap u have never lived..it goes on for hours.. Won’t bore u all.. But to all u mad mothers out there love you and bless you all.. There is no help or support.. One million candles burning for the hope that never came We are alone with a dream of a normal life a life that cannot be just endless mourning..
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Thank you to all the people who have commented above. Certainly a tragedy shared has been helpful. I find I thirst for open dialogue on ways in which peers and family can find common ground as a means to strengthen the impetus for change. IT’s a funny thing that this world is changing so rapidly but psychiatry is stuck in a time warp, and the institutions and people within them stay stuck. Just like the freaked out animal cornered in a trap, fear based practice continues; the broken record. I do wonder that if we all, en masse, just said “NO!” when confronted with labels and drugs, what would happen? (We would need to be trained in how to physically protect our loved ones). Direct action at the coal face.
1. Always go to psych interviews with at least two other support people.
2. Be prepared to stand up and walk out.
3. State your position clearly and decisively.
4. Have your decision on paper and legally endorsed ahead of your interview.
5. Draw up your recovery plan and have a copy ready for your doctor.
6. Should he choose not to endorse it, leave the room and find someone who will.
Am I just dreaming?
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Teresa, this is a excellent comment and sage advice.
You put it well, “this world is changing so rapidly but psychiatry is stuck in a time warp”.
Yes! Along with their gross arrogance they are stupidly stubborn in clinging to narrow-minded, rigid thinking. Too arrogant to ever consider being wrong!
Yes going to psych interviews with at least two other support people is better than just one.
And when I realized the young, privileged female psychiatrist I saw during cancer treatment had as much compassion and empathy as a stone how I wish I had “stood up and walked out”.
In my case I was never told about the psych labels, instead she plastered the labels along with a pack of devious lies, all over my electronic health records without my knowledge while I was in cancer treatment. It is a violation of informed consent for a psychiatrist to put labels into someone’s records without ever discussing the labels with the person and without informing the person what the symptoms, rationale and reasoning was for the labels. But violations of all sorts of human rights are allowed to occur in psychiatry and that is truly criminal.
Thinking of you and hoping you, your son and family will find peace and freedom from psychiatry.
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Hi TERESA. I feel your pain because I am a mom. Your son suffered psychosis from the street drugs, which most likely would have went away slowly or he could have learned to live with it. It sounds as if the meds broke him if he is not willing to work with you. The “insight” the docs talk of is simply a killing of the needed parts of the brain. I saw this happen with my friends son, except he was a kind gentle spirit. When you refer to the possible or impossible future, what will happen, to him, to you…….I get that. I understand the surreal place, where your mind can’t go, because we create sad stories, but stories that are evidence based. We wonder but we do not want to know the outcome. Stories like yours fill me with compassion, I want to go and get your son out as much as you do. I want his brain to kick in, to be able to fake, then I want you to take him and leave dodge. It makes me want him to have a cabin in the woods. My mind says, what if he can never be who he was? What if he becomes too much to deal with for you? Trust me, the shrinks, the ugly mean nurses with their fake smiles, will NEVER shed a tear, ever. They hate their fake lives. They always have to hide. You realize it is well known that truly crazy people do not know there is something wrong with them? Psychiatry works pretty dam hard to stay with the program of deceiving themselves, so they need people to join them, if not willingly, then by force. I used to love catching would be shrinks or shrinks while out for coffee. I engage them and make them angry. They have a very short fuse. The majority of people one can talk with rationally, or perhaps either one of us apologize after insulting. You can not reason with a shrink. I am trying to maintain here, because stuff like your story makes me irate. I can only think of one thing. Can you escape the country with your son? Or scope out the smallest town with the smallest psych ward? I’m grasping at straws. “forensic psychiatry” Do they keep certain people because they are able to predict with accuracy that the person will commit a crime? Even prisons let people out, knowing they might reoffend. The difference is, walking in through the psych doors.
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I am so sorry for the nightmare you and your family are going through. Psych meds are just synthetic (man-made) chemicals. They’re not designed to cure anyone, just suppress symptoms. Here in the U.S. there is no federal law that says psychiatrists must even attempt to find, let alone correct, any proven biological or energetic cause of mental illness. The Amer Psych Ass’n is allowed to choose any approach they like and what they like is what brings in the highest profits. What could possibly bring in more money than turning each patient into a lifelong customer of goods (drugs) and services (talk therapy) which they happen to provide? Psych treatment is like giving cough syrup to a pneumonia patient: it isn’t designed to cure anyone, just make them quieter. I’m convinced mental illnesses have been curable for close to 200 years, just not with synthetic drugs, and yet patients are not allowed anything else. It’s drugs and talk therapy or nothing. –Linda from Facebook, “Real Recovery for Mentally Ill Loved Ones.”
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