After user organizations in Norway demanded a change in mental health treatment procedures, drug-free units were established in all four health regions in the country. These units offer the basics: a safe place, bed to sleep in, meals, and people to talk to. The most significant change was that antipsychotic drugs were presented as optional for patients there, who tend to present with symptoms of psychosis.
A new study, conducted by Rafal Yeisen and colleagues, at the Stavanger University Hospital in Norway, solicited the perspectives of psychiatrists and their views on the new medication-free programs. The research, which was funded by a grant from the Stavanger University Hospital, found that psychiatrists carried negative opinions of this initiative. They understood the programs to be unscientific and rooted in the perspectives of dissatisfied service-users within a patient group that “lacks insight” into their problems. These recent findings were published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
This shift in public mental health services has sparked debate and discontent between health authorities, pharmaceutical companies, professional organizations, and user organizations. Some believe that this recent establishment of medication-free programs goes against treatment recommendations. Others contend that it addresses human rights, such as the freedom of choice, that have been neglected in mental health policy and practice.
Nevertheless, the Norwegian Ministry of Health permitted the establishment of med-free units for patients with “severe mental illnesses” in 2015. Yeisen and co-authors write:
“This change in governmental health policy has several direct implications, including making antipsychotic medication, largely, optional for patients with active psychosis.”
In their new study, Yeisen in colleagues were interested in gathering the perspectives held by psychiatrists about the med-free program, as well as their views on how it may affect patients’ adherence to antipsychotic drugs.
Data collection and analysis drew from qualitative methodologies, informed by phenomenology and thematic analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 23 psychiatrists, with 4-35 years of specialist experience, residing in Norway or various other EU countries.
The findings of this study demonstrated that psychiatrists’ perspectives coalesced around four major themes. Psychiatrists expressed views that (1) medication-free treatment was “an unscientific option for a stigmatized patient group,” (2) a discontented minority of service-users pushed for the establishment of medication-free programs and their views do not represent the experiences of most service-users, (3) a paradox existed between having a freedom of choice in treatment and patients presenting with a “lack of insight” into their disorder, and (4) medication-free treatment options would “exacerbate negative attitudes towards medication and further worsen already existing adherence issues.”
The following interview segments of psychiatrists’ views on medication-free programs were presented in the research paper to represent the four themes identified by Yeisen and colleagues.
Theme 1: “Medication-free treatment: an unscientific option for a stigmatized patient group.”
Psychiatrists expressed their negative views on medication-free programs, noting their belief that psychosis is a brain disease necessitating drug intervention.
“I think it has to do with stigma … I think that these medicines have a worse reputation than they deserve, in a way.”
“I think that some of the eagerness to remove medication I think you can only have if you haven’t seen how sick people in psychiatry are without medication.”
“My impression is that a lot of those who are skeptical of medication, I feel that they don’t really know how sick people are or how dangerous they can be, or how big of a difference medication can make.”
“That leaves me thinking that it will be like stepping back to 50 years ago, it will be like going back to before the arrival of antipsychotics.”
Theme 2: “When the minority is in charge: the loudest voices get their opinions heard.”
Psychiatrists felt that medication-free programs were driven by dissatisfied users who are ideologically-driven rather than based on science.
“Some have lost a child which has died and gotten the idea that this was due to the use of medication, wrongful psychiatric treatment or something like that, that the diagnosis led to suicide … A disgruntled next-of-kin has to take responsibility for that, but they do not represent the average next-of-kin who are actually quite content with treatment.”
“I know this is not a battle you can win, because the group you are fighting is ideologically based, and that means they will not allow themselves to be overridden by scientific studies.”
Theme 3: “Patients with psychotic symptoms: the paradox of ‘lack of insight’ and choice of treatment.”
Psychiatrists commented on patients’ “lack of insight” as one of the most “frustrating” and “challenging” aspects of their work and how this relates to the option of foregoing psychoactive substances.
“Patients who unfortunately do not have insight into their illness and it is difficult to get them to take an antipsychotic … They are afraid of taking medication in general, they say that they are not ill and that they do not need it.”
“I think it has a lot of impact, that part about insight … Why would you take some medication that gives you side effects if you don’t have any symptoms?”
“First and foremost that they will claim to have been wrongly admitted and that they are healthy. ‘I function well so why should I take medication.’”
Theme 4: “Professionalism vs. ideology disregarding science.”
All psychiatrists interviewed held the view that those in favor of medication-free programs were rooted in non-scientific, ideologically-based perspectives. They discussed their decision to stick to “guidelines, expertise and research studies” despite the “pressure.”
“I think that my responsibility as a treating physician is to recommend what works. I cannot justify a recommendation of drug-free treatment for a patient with schizophrenia. I cannot justify that based on experience nor research.”
“I think in that case our hands are quite tied if someone is to dictate that we are not allowed to give the treatment which I think is best for that patient’s illness.”
“Some patients will die or kill other people due to getting the wrong treatment that is what I think. I believe it is very damaging and see no benefits about it at all.”
“Clearly with politics being as they are now, society and the way we are moving to more focus on autonomy and voluntariness in the area which concerns people who are ill and perhaps do not have insight into the fact that they need treatment, we will have more violent acts. We will have more mentally ill people disturbing in the local community where they maybe should not be, because it is their human right to make that decision. That patients must be allowed to make their own decisions and try without medication increases the reluctance in those already skeptical in the first place.”
Yeisen and colleagues conclude by reviewing these findings, reiterating the concerns expressed by psychiatrists that drug-optional programs would foster anti-medication stances and interfere with treatment adherence. Overall, psychiatrists seemed to believe that drug-free options and the promotion of the right to freedom of choice were unscientific. The psychiatrists signaled that they would respond to this initiative by sticking to the promotion of treatment guidelines and their professional training.
However, there exists substantial debate in the clinical and research literature over the long-term effects of antipsychotic drug treatment for psychosis and whether the significant safety risks outweigh any benefits. Also, critics have pointed to the impact of guild interests and institutional corruption on current guidelines recommending this treatment.
****
Yeisen, R. A., Bjørnestad, J., Joa, I., Johannessen, J. O., & Opjordsmoen, S. (2019). Psychiatrists’ reflections on a medication-free program for patients with psychosis. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 0269881118822048. (Link)
Antipsychotics make people less active but have no effect on the duration of psychosis.
I made this picture after the hospital (but still in a state of cannabis induced psychosis) it shows the reaction of doctors to psychosis
https://imgur.com/a/zu1kVPS
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Essentially, psychiatry offers the people with psychosis to sleep.
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Sleep ah? You think it is a pleasant sleep? You obviously have not been forced to consume the drug, or brainwashed to consume the drug. And it is not sleep.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10565099
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You are lucky that you can buy and read new books on this topic. In my country, such books do not translated.
In the hospital, I saw old people die, due to age but also under the influence of antipsychotics, i think that this is partly their real purpose.
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“What dreams may come….”
Hell between my ears!
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You really think that is the essence of neuroleptic drug effects on the person that takes them?
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I think yes, if you think globally
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Your being vague when you say “globally”. It causes brain damage, plain and simple.
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From what you are writing here, you only took antipsychotics for a few weeks, and it does have a strong sedating effect. Taken long term, it is more severe. Old people dying in hospitals can also be given low doses of antipsychotics, to make them less anxious. Also, it’s sometimes given to people before surgery.
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What I saw – before death, the old man drooled. As I did before discharge, so I wouldn’t talk about low doses.
P.S. It is also given to people when their teeth hurt, depending on which people.
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Antipsychotics for tooth aches? I think you just made that up …
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In the hospital a man got a toothache and was given a chlorpromazine pill to put it directly on his tooth, in the psychiatric hospital of course. And you are talking about some complicated concepts – sedation, low doses, anxiety…
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I wouldn’t suggest that neuroleptics “have no effect on the duration of psychosis”. If anything, the evidence suggests that such drugs impede positive outcomes, and thus, are a contributing factor to extending the duration of what is referred to as “psychosis”.
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I read that it is not recommended to treat marijuana psychosis (like any other psychosis i think) with neuroleptics, but I was treated with very large doses. As a result, instead of pictures on the wall, I began to see cartoons, very real, like on TV (if you concentrate on the picture). It was very strange, I immediately realized that it was effect of neuroleptics.
Specifically this cartoon https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZodexUkiDI
This may seem unrealistic, but that’s how it was.
I’m not talking about toxic hepatitis, as a result of only 21-day treatment
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such drugs impede positive outcomes, and thus, are a contributing factor to extending the duration of what is referred to as “psychosis”
And what would you consider that “something” to be in reality? If “it” doesn’t exist to begin with how can there be an “outcome”?
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Extreme states.
I have experienced a couple after taking psych drugs myself.
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The antipsychotics are known to create “psychosis,” via anticholinergic toxidrome, and every doctor is taught this in med school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
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Reminds me of the critics of orthomolecular treatments and is probably about as well-informed. Even here I read some guy blogging in this vein. He undid himself by mentioning a number of alleged double blind studies involving niacin, which can’t be double blinded (if you’ve never had any niacin, take a gram on an empty stomach to find out why, but don’t blame me for what happens) unless you use niacinamide as a hidden control in your study, which these critical “studies” never do.
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https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/high-blood-cholesterol/expert-answers/niacin-overdose/faq-20058075
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Pretty conventional stuff markps2. The capacity to eat niacin varies with individuals- my old friend Henry the Paranoid used to consume at least 15g/day (I once watched him down 10 500mg tablets with one swig from a drinking fountain). And yes, it was therapeutic for his paranoia although it didn’t work fast (he was chronic, but he did get markedly better over a couple of months).
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I find it truly ironic that doctors in different disciplines often times pathologize their patients resistance to harmful treatments, and how guild interests are largely to blame.
Lyme Disease patients are similarly pathologized as either never having been sick to begin with, or were accused of doctor shopping, told were being taken advantage of by quack doctors with harmful unproven treatments, or just that were crazy.
Cancer patients have been pathologized for refusing harmful chemotherapy regimens despite cancer deaths being accelerated by the toxic cocktails called chemo.
I’m certain at this point that many disciplines have similar attitudes toward patients. We’re doctors, we know what’s best, in other words.
I read a suggestion the other day that air passengers would need to organize and essentially unionize in order to prevent have enough collective power to hold companies accountable for fatal design flaws like the Boeing 737 Max aircraft that was changed to an aerodynamic that makes it stall-prone rather than stall-resistant. I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that citizens need to unionize our different rights groups into an umbrella organization to create a body so large that we actually have some power to change the way western medicine is delivered, especially as it relates to its sexist and racist research history that leaves women and communities of color with inferior care.
If we hope to fight back against these harmful narratives, we cannot just be the angry psych patients but instead the informed, loud, and demanding consumer of medical care that we all are. Unscientific treatments must go and they must not continue to be propped up by those who stand to lose the most from their demise – physicians.
End the corruption. End the medicalization of human distress. It’s time to create a medical system that honors the human experience in all its diversity, including in its justified response to a pathological and toxic world.
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That’s the field of medicine for you, anything that disagrees with a doctors ego or hinders his or her privilege, anything that doesn’t cause a medication company to make a gain is considered “unscientific”. You want to start a revolution? I’m with you. I’m 24 years old and got tardive dyskinesia and akathisia due to a neuroleptic. It was from metacloptamide, not an antipsychotic, meaning after two days when I noticed symptoms I stopped it immediately. 3 years later I am still suffering. I am just trembling at the thought that vulnerable people with mental health conditions are forced to take drugs that can do this to someone. It makes me so mad that doctors do not recognize the cruelty they are practicing when they prescribe these drugs. Akathesia and TD make every other form of suffering from any disease look like child’s play. They literally turn your body into a torture chamber, often for the rest of your life, and you aren’t allowed to rest. It’s like being electrocuted and punched all over and its all happening from the inside out. They are worried about psychotic people being “sick”- how can they turn a blind eye to how sick they make them by giving them these drugs? And of course the pharmaceudicals would have something to say, they gain from our suffering. What’s worse, when people with mental illnesses suffer from this drug induced monster, they often blame their illness and don’t listen to them, continuing the drugs and making things worse. Mental health drugs DO cause suicide; it even says so on their labels. I take allergy medication and I get extreme anxiety on them; if I didn’t pay attention and figure out it was the meds because I am completely normal off them, I might have tried to hurt myself because at high doses the anxiety from them can literally dribe you insane. The side effects of drugs get swept under the carpet but they often make you feel even worse than before taking the drugs. Doctors don’t acknowledge these things. They have never been held accountable for anything and they don’t want to be. We need to rise up against their oppression and fight for our freedom. Drugs are not the answer. Drugs get rid of the symptoms; they don’t fix the problems. We need treatment that restores our bodies, not just masks our frailties.
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And we must rise up against the medical system itself and not just psychiatry because most doctors of all the specialties are too big for their britches and feel that they can force people to do whatever it is that they want them to do, whether it’s taking a drug or having a procedure. You’re not supposed to say the word “no” these days to any doctor. It’s the entire medical establishment that we must rise up against.
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Perhaps the fact that the antipsychotics/neuroleptics create both the negative and positive symptoms of “schizophrenia,” according to the medical evidence, might be relevant to this discussion? The negative symptoms of “schizophrenia” are created via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome. And the positive symptoms of “schizophrenia” are created via antipsychotic induced anticholinergic toxidrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroleptic-induced_deficit_syndrome
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
If these psychiatrists garnered insight into this medical reality, then they might garner insight into why their clients don’t want to take their antipsychotics. In a rational and just world, it would be illegal for the psychiatrists to make people “psychotic” with the antipsychotics.
But no doubt, taking away the psychiatrists ability to make healthy people “psychotic” with the antipsychotics would greatly decrease the number of “psychotic” people, thus greatly decrease the psychiatrists’ client base.
The antidepressants can also make people “psychotic” via anticholinergic toxidrome, not to mention make people suicidal and homicidal. And the ADHD drugs can also make people “psychotic.”
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/03/adderall-use-associated-increased-risk-psychosis/
Getting rid of all these “psychosis” creating psychiatric drug classes would greatly reduce the burden of “mental illness” in our world. But that would be bad for business for the “mental illness” creating psychiatrists, whose only function on this planet is pushing these neurotoxins onto innocent others.
Oh, but everyone who disagrees with the fear mongering psychiatrists “lacks insight,” of course. Fear mongering like, “Some patients will die or kill other people … we will have more violent acts …We will have more mentally ill people disturbing in the local community ….”
Fear mongering despite the reality that “the majority of people who are violent do not suffer from mental illnesses. In fact, people with a mental illness are more likely to be the victims, rather than the perpetrators of violence.”
https://cmhadurham.ca/finding-help/the-myth-of-violence-and-mental-illness/
And the medical evidence does show that the vast majority of those who are psychiatrically “diagnosed” are, in fact, child abuse survivors – victims of a crime – not violent people.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
Fear monger and defame your clients with lies and “invalid” disorders, child abuse covering up, psychiatrists and psychologists.
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml
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There is s lot of evidence that psychiatric drugs can create psychotic symptoms in well people and this is scientifically accepted by the drug manufacturers who place WARNINGS on the drug labels (to protect their own interests).
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Yes. I had a roommate who went into four, horrible days of hallucinating because his psychiatrist convinced him to take Abilify along with his “antidepressant” to make it work better. First of all, the Abilify didn’t make one damned thing work better so that was a lie on the part of the psychiatrist. And secondly, he made him hallucinate over a four day period. If I could have gotten my hands on that psychiatrist’s neck he would have been a goner!
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The Dr’s said “I think in that case our hands are quite tied if someone is to dictate that we are not allowed to give the treatment which I think is best for that patient’s illness.”
Good, as it should be.
I think this shows there is a fightback happening by Dr’s and drug companies, that these meagre reforms are at risk and it will be a long struggle to ensure psychiatric patients have their full human rights.
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“What I think best for the patient’s illness.” Yeah, that sounds DEEPLY grounded in “Science.” Sheesh!
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By “best for the patient’s illness” I take it they mean most effective at prolonging it. 😛
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It reminds me of those cockroaches who were told that a cook could work in a clean kitchen.
Of course cockroaches find this horrible.
What will happen is that drug-free units will have better long-term results, and therefore these units will be closed. Like Soteria.
It also emphasizes that there is no need to discuss cockroaches about clean kitchens.
The negationism of psychiatrists about long-term scientific research can only be compared with that of the extreme right, which seeks to defend Nazism by explaining that gas chambers had never exist.
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“un-scientific” ? OK. silly me…I thought psychiatrists -knew- that their industry was a destructive con. blame it on my borderline misanthropic view of human nature. this…this delusional thinking, deeply entrenched, irrational beliefs that psychiatry has any sort of valid scientific underpinnings and that “standard treatment” is somehow necessary and/or “life saving…”
that is actually far more frightening than my mental image, which was that of an industry full of mediucre hacks who happened upon psychiatry to feed both their egos+their families (and, quite often, their own drug habits).
so…who is going to protect “patients” from the deranged “professionals” ?
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The idea that psychiatrists can decide what is and isn’t scientific – lol.
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hey , you know they can vote it IN, or OUT of the DSM, you know that’s objective science. SARC
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Yeah, science is all about voting on what’s true or not true. “Committee science” – that’s the ticket to truth!
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Their “science” is based on the lie of chemical imbalances. They know it’s a lie, yet they promote it.
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The first theme struck me as really bizarrely worded. “Medication-free treatment: an unscientific option for a stigmatized patient group.” AS IF, medication-free treatment might be a scientific option for an non-stigmatized patient group. The real reasoning here is a rather lame-brained, we’re doctors and doctors give people medicine. Doctors who don’t see drugs as medicine, and who don’t give them to their “patients”, are being “unscientific”. One could make similar claims about witch-doctors and their magic potions without evidence, the thing that is so sorely needed.
Theme Two. “When the minority is in charge: the loudest voices get their opinions heard.” When IS a minority EVER in charge? In a totalitarian state or a prison, of course. Or a mental hospital. They’re calling their “patients” ideologically-driven. Isn’t it true that, in some cases, it isn’t ideology that drives them at all, it’s a desire for liberty, and beyond liberty, for equality.
Which brings us to theme 3. “Patients with psychotic symptoms: the paradox of ‘lack of insight’ and choice of treatment.” I remember when the refusal to confess to having a “mental illness” was a defense mechanism rather than an entirely separate disease entity. How convenient! “The better to commit you with, my dear.” I just don’t see the paradox. As long as treatment is forced on patients, treatment is not a choice, it is a decision of state, a court order, and a law in violation of the law.
Theme 4. “Professionalism vs. ideology disregarding science.” Professionals don’t disregard science, OH NO, it’s the plebes who do that. Especially the plebes who are not steeped in scientific training. Follow the money! Follow the money, and I imagine you will end up somewhere in the vicinity of a major pharmaceutical company. These doctors aren’t professional for nothing, sometimes it’s because they took pharmaceutical company money. The same pharmaceutical companies, after all, that have funded their educational establishments and pursuits.
I wouldn’t imagine that, if all the psychiatrists interviewed held the same position, the pressure to change could have been that great. On the other hand, they feel pressure. Way to go, folks! Keep the pressure on! Maybe someday they will begin to see the light and change their ways.
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This is a very incisive analysis, Frank. Would that the psychiatrists could think so clearly. The best they seem to be able to come up with is the myth of the dangerous mental patient and their own fear of loss of control over the patient. Plenty among their own ranks admit the chemical imbalance theory is bunk and the pharmaceutical small prints always start with an acknowledgement that they don’t really know how the drugs “work”. Well of course they don’t, because they don’t. This is unscientific at best and openly corrupt at worst.
The one thing I wish we could agree on was the idea that voluntary psychiatry should also be abolished. When the drugs themselves can cause dangerous changes in thinking that end with violence – against the self or others – shouldn’t those of us who walk around in the public have some protection from the potential acts of those voluntary patients? I can’t see how if psychiatry is unscientific and the treatments can make people violent, how it’s at all ethical or reasonable to allow people to sign up voluntarily.
Interested in what you think about that.
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If lying as a professional were forbidden, that would bring an end to psychiatry in short order!
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I’m not for the abolition of volunteer anything, except maybe an army. I imagine we could do without many of those.
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How do you prevent the exploitation of vulnerable populations if people are allowed to “volunteer” for pseudoscientific “treatments”? The elderly, children, and the intellectually disabled could be “volunteered” by the caretaker or doctor who makes medical decisions for them.
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I’m not a big fan of paternalism whether it comes from you or anybody else. “Voluntary” has been twisted by the present plea bargain mentality into its opposite, “force”. I’m not twisting voluntary to mean anything it doesn’t mean. I meant the kind of voluntary that actually means voluntary.
I think we’ve had this discussion, after a fashion, before. As Thomas Szasz, by way of Karl Kraus, liked to point out, a chamber pot is not an urn.
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When IS a minority EVER in charge?
Try the U.S. government. The ruling class is a minority of 1% or less of the population.
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Good point. Representative government as we’ve got it is scarcely ever truly representative of anything but the corruption of the few. I don’t need a man up there pretending to represent what he takes to be my views any more than I need a person living what he thinks my life should be for me. Where certain matters are concerned, I think it must stay very much DIY.
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When people talk about abolishing psychiatry they don’t necessarily mean by edict, but by exposing and delegitimizing it in the public eye, and eliminating forced intervention, which would deprive it of its economic base. On the other hand if other sorts of fraud are considered crimes, why shouldn’t psychiatry be outlawed as well?
As for “voluntary psychiatry,” the debate is less about the theoretical notion of “voluntary” psychiatry than the issue of whether there is or even can be such a thing. For most if not all the context is involuntary, even without a gun being put to their heads.
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I don’t think anyone who is benefitting should be forcefully removed from the drugs, as is currently being perpetrated against chronic pain patients and long term benzo users. Physicians could certainly supervise those patients. But banning new prescriptions in drug naieve patients seems more realistic considering we do have an FDA and Consumer Product Safety Commission tasked with ensuring the safety of products and we ought to be able to expect that the drugs and medical devices currently on and those entering the market are indeed safe to use.
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Drugs used for social control should be outlawed, using the same logic as drugs used for lethal injections. I don’t think we should allow the excuse that something “medical” is going on here. Of course people addicted to psych drugs should not be forced to CT, but the main problem is that they’re being used at all.
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Essentially, OldHead, I think you are being unrealistic. Nobody is likely to abolish much of anything except by edict. I don’t see psychiatry as pure evil. I don’t even think the fact that psychiatry exists is the problem. If anything is to be abolished make it be forced institutional psychiatry. If anybody wants to consult a trained witch-doctor, it would not be right for me to stand in their way. They can make their own mistakes. You want to consult our contemporary form of headshrinker, go ahead. Only leave me out of it, and I will be content. Psychiatry is not the problem. Psychiatric power, control, and coercion–deprivation of liberty–what amounts to psychiatric slavery is the problem. Do something about the excessive authority granted to psychiatrists, and you’ve gotten rid of any need you might have to abolish the profession itself. The problem is not so much that we have phony hospitals, the problem is that those phony hospitals are actual prisons pretending to be hospitals. I don’t think they can be prisons as such without violating those rights that people supposedly have by law.
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Or, to be more explicit, the problem is not psychiatry, the problem is mental health law. Repeal mental health law, and forced treatment becomes abduction, false imprisonment, assault, torture, poisoning, etc. Do nothing about the law, and psychiatry is just a word that was current yesterday replaced by whatever word they are using today. Psychiatry as a philosophy of anything is not the problem. Psychiatry as legalized abduction, imprisonment, torture, and murder, that is the problem. I don’t give much of a fig about all the talk, however, the abduction, imprisonment, torture, and murder. That, I’d like to see ended immediately, and with finality.
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I think you are perhaps not taking into account the impact of the lies and mythology spread so widely by mass marketing. I personally think it should be illegal for ads to claim things that aren’t true (actually, I think Pharmaceutical ads should be banned, as they are in every other industrialized nation except New Zealand), and I think it should be illegal for doctors to lie to their patients about what is supposedly known about “mental illnesses.” I also think it should be illegal to invent “diseases” by committees.
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Huh? If your complaint is about capitalism, we have the same complaint. Advertising is the propaganda of capitalism, and so I wouldn’t go looking for truth in it. I agree with you about direct to consumer drug advertising, it should be outlawed, but you’ve got to hold medicine a little accountable for encouraging it and capitalizing on it. On the other hand, I don’t think you can outlaw folly. (They already tried that, and what they came up with is something called the “mental health” system.) Nor do I think you can mandate wisdom, and any attempt to do so, in general, must be considered rank folly itself.
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Yes, sadly, wisdom can not be mandated. It can only be arrived at through experience, and there will always be fools aplenty for the unscrupulous to mess with.
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And saying “hey, these pills make me feel worse, not better,” is also a lack of insight and denial.
These people lack insight into the fact they don’t give a rip about their “patients.” And they deny they’re crippling and killing people.
Being perceived as Real Doctors is more important to them than anything else in the universe.
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The drugs are not medications.
This is what the psychiatric profession is hinged on. If there are no psychiatric medications ( there are not) , then they are not doctors.
So the drugs have to BE medications or they are out of a profession.
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Hey, we have a winner. The drugs aren’t medications. The Book of Diagnonsense is agreed upon with a vote by committee, not on hard evidence. It’s a profitable industry. Several antipsychotic drugs have been blockbuster billion + dollar drugs – of course it’s in their interest to prescribe as widely as possible and to malign those who resist.
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Yes. It’s all about THEM and their bloated, Jabba-the Hut sized egos.
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It bothers me very much that several of the psychiatrists they interviewed raised the specter that without drugs, patients would likely become violent, even homicidal! Way to perpetuate stigma, docs!
When they should know that the vast majority of people diagnosed with mental illness are more likely to be the victim than the perpetrator of violence. These psychiatrists, in my opinion, simply can’t stand to lose control, so they fall back on the charge that drug-free programs are “unscientific.” A savvy strategy. But it won’t work forever, because the science doesn’t seem to be in psychiatry’s favor.
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“patients” are often victims of psych “professional” violence, including the downward spiral to poverty…that’s economic terrorism on a massive scale.
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Especially since the drugs increase the odds of violence rather than preventing it.
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Yes. No legitimate medical branch defames its patients this way. That’s why there is no anti-cardiology movement or anti-gynecology movement.
Without “stigma” they would lose their real power and they know it.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW7mBJrL5XM
I found this quite entertaining. CEO of the American Psychiatric Association. Ending discrimination. Ok. Most of the psychiatric news youtube channel don’t allow comments. I guess this one slipped by them.
The discrimination still abounds in psychiatry, schizophrenics are seen by psychiatry, from the article, as all being potential homicidal maniacs. What does the science tell us?
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Better tear down your house and replace it with a concrete pillbox. Replace the lawn with ankle-tangle and concertina wire. I haven’t had any psych meds in 35 years.
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Obese people are perceived in a wrong way, knowledge about fitness is also full of BS. Psychiatry is full of lies too.
They will tell you that 10 minutes of exercises, like crunches, for example, will make your Abs visible. They won’t tell you that your muscles will push out the fat tissue and you will look fatter than before.Usually woman have 30-32 % of fat tissue, which is normal. For Abs to be visible, you need to have only 19% fat tissue, including having less than the correct weight. And this is just an example.
There are people who will tell you the truth, about weight or psychiatry. No one likes them, because no one likes the truth.
So no one likes Szasz, Breggin, Hillman , or this article —
https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/everything-you-know-about-obesity-is-wrong/
Victims of lies usually know the truth, so they become enemies.
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Naturally privileged people demand impossible, inaccessible things from discriminated minorities. They themselves have never been in their situation. They rob other people of the right to identity, because it is easy for them to live.This sad fact, this lack of empathy gives them power.
This is the natural thinness that does not require torturing with diets. This is mental health (apollonian ego archetype), which costs nothing.
James Hillman, “Re- Visioning psychology.”
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Psychiatrists View Drug-Free Programs for Psychosis as “Unscientific,” Study Finds
The obvious conclusion in that case should be “FUCK SCIENCE!”
Science can be used for human benefit or human destruction, it has no intrinsic value in and of itself. It is a means to an end — good or evil as the case may be.
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Our psychiatric community has got to make a lot of noise, because it has to disguise the poor results of its treatments. Schizophrenia syndrome is the worst example, where the drug-induced 10% or so recovery rate is one third of the untreated natural recovery rate of 30% or thereabouts.
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In other words, the 10% recovery rate is likely not due to antipsychotics, but likely in spite of them.
In what other area of medicine would a reduction of recovery by 2/3 be considered a “success?”
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What the article does not say, OH, is if these psychiatrists did any research or worked with alternative programs.
My guess is they don’t even bother attending these programs or talking to those pronounced recovered.
This is just name calling and fear mongering. And some idle speculation. What psychiatry is all about.
The Science of Lies.
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Should read Psychiatrists Insult Drug Free Programs and Patients.
No science involved. Just name calling and insults.
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As far as I know, the only people that genuinely recover, recover as a result of not taking their “medication”. And I can scientifically validate my own experience of this type of genuine recovery with documentary evidence from my records.
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Are these people telling lies?
The British Psychological Society:
“..The problems we think of as ‘psychosis’ – hearing voices, believing things that others find strange, or appearing out of touch with reality – can be understood in the same way as other psychological problems such as anxiety or shyness…”
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Why do psychiatrists keep forgetting the *science* of neuroplasticity? The organization of brain circuitry is constantly changing as a result of our experiences. For example, when mice are subjected to various psychological stresses (e.g. if they are restrained) their neurochemicals and their brain changes and these changes are reversible through psychological means (e.g. when these stressed, restrained animals are released, the brain returns to normal).
Similarly, when people are stressed or get depressed by things that happen to them, their brains change, but these structural changes come back to normal when these issues get addressed. Mental habits also change the brain – for example, mindfulness practices are known to change the structure and function of the brain in positive ways (e.g. increases in gray matter and cortical thickness).
Instead of focusing on this broader picture, psychiatrists focus only on the brain and think that the brain has to be somehow ‘treated’ with chemicals!
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Yep. People should find it hilarious that shrinks talk about “science” as they discuss entirely fallacious concepts such as “psychosis.” Evey “mental” state is correlated with — not caused by — a unique biochemical state. For example, does adrenalin “cause” fear or anger?
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Exactly. They should go back to school and learn that correlation is NOT causation…
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No, but it makes you stronger should you be scared or outraged. It also can induce distortions of sense perception should it be unable to metabolize into harmless compounds like leucoadrenochrome after the scary things have gone away.
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In The Screwtape Letters Lewis’s unreliable POV character talks about how they long for the day of the “materialist magician.”
Materialst Magician sounds like psychiatrist to me. Their DSM is spells and curses. They rely on potions and amulets. (Placebos.) Instead of summoning spirits they work with “chemical imbalances” they know don’t exist and laugh up their sleeves about.
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They don’t forget, they choose to ignore.
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Yes – “choose to ignore” might be a better way to put it. I also think they are suffering from “confirmation bias” – the tendency to look for and favour information that confirms one’s pre-existing beliefs.
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Especially powerful when your current way of thinking allows you to justify making a lot of money by doing things of questionable validity.
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Good point!
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Articles like this make me more anti psychiatry than ever.
I plan on taking the message public when the time is right. But it will be for regular people. No sense wasting time on psychiatrists who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.
A lot of the “mentally ill” and many others would like to know the truth if I can persuade them.
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The majority of the “mentally ill” would spontaneously recover if properly tapered off the psych brain drugs. With no other help. This is obvious since “recovery” has plummeted from 70% to 10% since psychiatry started pushing their cursed brain drugs everywhere.
Would you prefer 10% (with Parkinsonism, seizures, brain damage, premature death) or 70% in seeking medical options? If you were a “doctor” who made big bucks from repeat customers you would prefer the former. But patients feel differently.
Remember the lying cancer specialist who told people they had leukemia to sell them lots of chemo? Psychiatry is a branch of “medicine” composed entirely of Farid Fatas.
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I have been on anti psychotics for over 45 years and last year with the agreement of my psychiatrist I came off the drug for three months. My circumstances came about where I found my son lost contact with me so did my therapist and I became very isolated. As a result I then became delusional again sought help and was admitted and forced more medication on me at a higher dose. So now my situation is that I am still being drugged. I do suffer side affects like weight gain and somnolence and have just spent the winter sleeping most of my days.
However, I followed the doctor William J Walsh and read his book along with Dr Pfeiffer and their books and read and re read Nutrient Power and realized they had something and diet could in fact help people like me. So I became Vegan cut out dairy cut out meat because I care about animals and am aware of the cruelty done to monkeys experimented on in science laboratories.
I have suddenly woken up and have lost 3 1/2 lbs in weight in one week. I feel more active and not as tired or over dosed. I feel alert and am not sleeping all the time. I am in contact with my son and haven’t given up on him and never will although the MHT work on him all the time and do their very best to keep us apart and turn him against me. I am after all his aging mother and why would he listen to me?
All I know is since I have changed diet this last three weeks I feel so much better. I eat and enjoy my food so much better also and this I feel is no coincidence.
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Congratulations, Bippyone!
Glad you feel better.
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Well the psychiatrists arguments in this article are weak and typical.
Of course they had to resort to the word “insight” and “science”, and “dangerous”, “murder”, “deaths”.
Key words.
The nay sayers are “idealogical”
So Dr how is it science to create a drug that does nothing more than a lobotomy? Did you first locate a point to treat, and developed a drug for that one tiny miniscule spot that is causing the ‘sickness’?
No your science did something anyone could do, is create drugs that can and do increase suicides, lobotomy via drug, early deaths, poor quality of life, unable to work. Your labels caused personal and public shame.
You can go ahead 50 years, and compare our ‘mental health’. You say our mental health is worse? And you create more labels to try and prove it. You go backwards with your approach. You view a person a certain way and create the label. You did not identify anything with science, you identified it through what you saw as unreasonable distress. And After the label you created the drugs.
You defend this backward approach and project onto patients words such as “lack of insight”. You try and convince the public by saying we are being idealogically maybe radical even. If there ever was anyone suffering from an ideaology , it is the psychiatrist. Again it is projecting, and an endless argument.
Go ahead, keep your science. Use the “dangerous patients” fearmongering. People will still ask why you would think millions and millions of little kids need a diagnosis of ‘illness’, why they would be given HORRIBLE drugs. Why your labels cause discrimination EVEN within medical care, why no one leaves your office without a label and most often with drugs.
Why would people who went to you, lose every single right?
The public does have to know because they do not find out until it’s too late.
What is the rate of MI now? One in ten, or one in five? So out of 10 psychiatrists, which one has the MI? What kind of drugs are there for Psychiatrists or their family? The psych nurses?
If we can identify people with disorders of personality, psychiatry fits those well. Insight is letting go of entrenched beliefs about others.
I’ll let go of mine about psychiatry when they let go of theirs.
But you can start showing me the insight you speak of. Perhaps one day, the twain shall meet.
Change your beat to one more in tune with a diversity. The reason you exist is because of diversity, not sickness.
You cannot identify with any diversity and want to rule it, and I have yet to wrap my mind around that. You live within some kind of tunnel vision of the world you want, and are using people to maintain that wretched position.
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Of course, quacks are triggered by research on drug-free options in psychiatry. They know large numbers of people will use those options, and, in doing so, improve their health and extend their lives.
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