This week on MIA Radio, we continue our series of discussions with Doctor Lee Coleman. In previous podcasts, we have discussed Lee’s views as a critical psychiatrist and the role of psychiatry in the courtroom. This time, we turn our attention to the need for action to address the inherent power held by psychiatry and how society might respond.
In this episode we discuss:
- How language has the power to trigger associations and can lead us to not question theories that are presented to us as facts.
- How we have come to equate psychiatric ‘treatment’ with interventions in other areas of medicine.
- The deception behind the names of the drugs used in psychiatry such as ‘antidepressants’ or ‘antipsychotics’.
- That society may well be blinded by language to the critical issues of the use of force and the relationship between the law and psychiatry.
- That, ultimately, society demands that psychiatry play the role that it does and therefore we need a societal and political response.
- That any movement to address the dominance of the medical model needs to educate the public at large and so needs resources to be able to provide that challenge.
- How the media often provides an amplified voice for mainstream messages leading to normalisation and lack of critical questioning of such messages.
- That we can and should partner with sympathetic media channels who are open to challenging mainstream messaging.
- That Lee will hopefully be leading a workshop at the 2019 NARPA (National Association for Rights Protection and Advocacy) Conference in Connecticut, USA.
Relevant Links
Article – Technology and Psychiatry
YouTube – Psychiatry’s “War of the Words”
YouTube – Dealing With Powerful Opponents: Psychiatry, Government and Pharma
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Basically psychiatry is a drug police.
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Yes, psychiatry is a police. Mostly it enforces the Self-Reliance Ethic, which is the substance of Capitalism and the Middle-Class Family. It is a completely bogus ethic.
But we must not let public fears of the violence in the so called “mentally ill” drive us. This was the foolishness of Mind Freedom.
The whole premise of supposed “mental illness” is that someone lacks a basic proper mind functioning needed to sustain them. Well part of this proper mind functioning is a willingness to use any level of violence when needed.
So the only person who would make an open ended commitment to non-violence as a way of life, and actually mean it, is someone who does not understand the severity of what is being done to them.
So such a commitment is wrong from the start. All options have to always be on the table. Making an open ended commitment to non-violence is admitting to some kind of mental defect.
In his movies, did John Wayne make an open ended commitment to non-violence? Did this undermine his popularity?
And then the other issue is, Psychotherapy is just as harmful and deceptive as Psychiatry with drugs. Psychotherapy is a con, and it hurts people by getting them to disclose their personal affairs to a total non-comrade. So you cannot oppose Psychotherapy and the Mental Health System, while still supporting Psychotherapy.
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If you corner an animal and then start jabbing at it with a stick, you know what will happen.
http://www.melanindvds.com/images/Black%20Panther2.jpg
But if it’s the animal that walks on too legs, then you can torture it for a lifetime, and any violence will be interpreted as “mental illness” and necessitating drugs, psychotherapy, and an unlimited commitment to non-violence as a way of life.
Like Foucault explains, the state used to punish with execution. But now that is no longer necessary. So it punishes by forcing people to go on living.
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Dr. Lee Coleman and James thanks for another informative podcast. Also the great video “Psychiatry’s War of the Words”.
Good to hear you plan to conduct a workshop at the NARPA Conference in September 2019. Thank you so much for your advocacy Lee! You rock!
Yes language and words matter greatly in psychiatry as a psychiatrist easily passes a biased judgment and labels someone with a “disorder” based on their own feelings, thus changing the narrative and re-defining someone’s reality in a detrimental way. War of the Words indeed!
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Thanks, Lee, for your elegant commentary on the power of language. You shine in your encouragement towards activism in this arena.
You mentioned some allies, or potential allies, as for example, the media.
In my opinion, you left out two most important allies:
1. Survivors with lived experience, advocates who are peers.
2. Intersegmental groups.
The latter are not only potential allies. Explaining social relationships goes a long way to describing people’s distress and suffering from the language you try to change, and goes towards looking at real change.
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Thanks for all the supportive comments from everyone, but especially for Don: Oh, how I agree with you about survivors, so please do me a favor and listen again: I give my dear brother James Moore equal credit and credibility specifically because he is a survivor and therefore has expertise that NO ONE BUT A SURVIVOR CAN HAVE, i.e. he has been through the degradation, etc. Likewise, I did what I always do, point out that survivor Laura Delano is my #1 hero in a big bunch of heroes, like Whitaker and Gotzsche for example, because she blends surviving terrible abuse (see her magnificent “youtube -the power of psychiatric diagnosis,”) with the intelligence, emotion, fierce commitment that we are all going to need to get anywhere. So please listen again, and most important, ask, no urge, no INSIST that everyone you know join us.
Finally, I don’t know the term “intersegmental groups” but from your description, it is obvious that social relationships are what every competent person trying to help, and every competent society trying to help, will investigate first, and then offer to , to people in pain. All that excludes, sadly, today’s corrupted “mental health system.’
Yours in solidarity…..
lee
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Thank you Lee, James and MIA. Thank you MIA, without your perseverance and incredibly hard work, none of us would be here.
Lee, your voice is needed so much. Psychiatry has infiltrated into every crevice and it has affected me within regular medical treatment, where doctors play psychiatrists. And we just have to listen, stare at the wall, and they have no clue that they are no longer being rational.
It has become a human rights issue and I know it is not nothing anymore in their circles. They will keep trying, or try to soften it, because under human rights laws, they are looking really bad.
I am not sure why some of them are not leaving, still hanging on, defiantly, hoping it will blow over. The evidence makes them guilty of heinous crimes. 200 years of this is enough.
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Thank you Sam and the many others for your oh-so-needed support. Those who will continue to ignore us, then falsely try to invalidate us, have things pretty much their way. That’s money and historical tradition will do, but we have justice, the evidence, and a people who only need half a chance with good information, on our side.
So, let’s go on, no stopping, but we do need to to vastly enhance our power. Right we have essentially none, and that is what we need to focus on. HOW WE CAN BEGIN TO GENERATE CONNECTIONS, FIND FUNDING, TRAIN MORE PEOPLE, INSPIRE MORE DEMONSTRATIONS, PASS MORE LEGISLATION, ELEVATE THE GENERAL PUBLIC’S UNDERSTANDING, ETC.
I will be speaking next year at NARPA/MIND FREEDOM, AND JOINING THE BOARD. Please come to that.
Also, starting a podcast soon, so stay tuned.
lee
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