The Psychiatric Narrative & The Boston Globe: Violence, Force, & Derogatory Labels  

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“There is something inherently wrong with psychiatry, with every aspect of psychiatry, in its fundamental conceptualizations, with its power and its modus operandi, something so wrong we cannot continue with it.”

– Dr. Bonnie Burstow, Psychiatry and the Business of Madness

On February 13, the Boston Globe published an atrocious opinion piece by psychiatrist Jhilam Biswas, titled “Massachusetts law meant to protect people with mental illness may make them sicker.”  Though framed as an attempt to shed light on a need for better approaches to mental health law, the piece is blatantly disrespectful toward and prejudiced against those of us who have been labeled with mental health diagnoses: psychiatric survivors, mad people, and disabled people. It is rife with ableism and oppressive attitudes that would be recognized as violence were they not coming from someone in a position of power and authority, with anti-bodily autonomy undertones thrown in for good measure. The author uses all these tactics in arguing against Massachusetts’ Rogers Guardianship statute to support her ulterior motive: promoting dehumanizing legislation and the aggressive use of psychiatric drugs. These are precisely the messages that the psychiatric system feeds to the public using the corporate media.

A Manipulative Narrative

The piece leads off by describing a recent tragedy that began outside Brigham and Women’s Hospital in which police shot and killed a man they believed had a gun. Without proof, the author blames events on the fact that the man was labeled “mentally ill” and was probably “‘off his meds,’” reinforcing the popular myth that we are prone to violence.

Second, the article targets legislation that, if repealed, will make it easier to drug, detain, and incarcerate us. Biswas writes: “In …potentially dangerous moments, psychiatric treatment providers step in to procure medications through filing a request with the courts. However, this process is anything but easy in Massachusetts.” She goes on to criticize the Rogers Guardianship law, designed to protect the legal right of psychiatric “patients” to refuse psychiatric drugs, as putting too many obstacles in the way of forcing someone to take and stay on these drugs. She then warns of scary consequences of delay, including “persistent brain dysfunction and cognitive decline” and even “risk of suicide or violence.”

Third, the op-ed compares what psychiatrists call “untreated psychotic illness” (terms used throughout) to untreated heart or liver disease. This analogy is inaccurate, and the suggestion that all have potentially fatal outcomes is blatantly false. As a colleague of mine put it, “How sweet that they’d compare ‘untreated mental [illness]’ to ‘untreated heart disease’ while failing to mention that ‘treated mental [illness]’ has seen zero improvements in outcomes and a widening morbidity gap over decades while ‘treated heart disease’ (along with cancer, etc.) has seen plenty of improvement in outcomes.”

Yet another manipulative narrative in Biswas’ piece is her use of a disorder called “anosognosia” in connection with mental health problems. Her central argument is that “a patient’s refusal of medication may reflect their underlying disease state. Paradoxically and poignantly, it is a symptom of psychotic illness to believe you do not have an illness.”  The medical definition of anosognosia, a word of Greek origin that roughly translates to “without knowledge of disease,” is “an inability or refusal to recognize a defect or disorder that is clinically evident.” In the mental health realm, you may also hear it called “lack of insight.”

While anosognosia is a legitimate medical diagnosis as applied to people with Alzheimer’s Disease or who have had strokes, it can’t simply be taken from that realm and shoehorned into the world of psychiatry simply because medical professionals wish for a neat way to negate a patient’s disagreements with their doctor. Within this context, the term “anosognosia” is not only insulting but also can be used as a tool to force people to comply with “treatment” even when they have evidence that such interventions have not or will not be useful to them. That seems to be Biswas’ point: Without a belief in anosognosia, the mental health system will not be able to control the people they wish to control.

Reinforcing Scientific Myths

Let’s get back to the idea that the media is being used to spread misinformation and serve corporate needs. In order to remain relevant and for the pharmaceutical industries to continue profiting off the sale of psychiatric drugs, psychiatry needs a tool for fear-mongering, and op-eds like Biswas’ serve that role. Although psychiatry thrives largely on the minimal tangible science and broader behavioral classifications it has been able to produce, neurological studies still have not been able to legitimize classifying human thoughts, feelings, and experiences as an inherent “mental illness” or “brain disease.”

Don’t believe it? Consider this quote from a peer-reviewed journal article, housed in the National Institute of Mental Health’s U.S. National Library of Medicine:

To date, there are no biomarkers of any kind available to any of the psychiatric disorders, and perhaps establishing those will be one of the most difficult tasks that medical scientists will ever face, This is due to several reasons: (1) the multifactorial characteristic of psychiatric disorders, (2) these are multigenic disorders in which each gene has a small effect; (3) the environment exerts a heavy influence in the establishment of the disease. These reasons lead us to conclude that “the biomarker” for a psychiatric condition will never exist .

But this “illness” narrative has allowed the mental health system to become a conduit for social conformity. The problem is that once we are labeled with a mental health diagnosis, that becomes the only narrative the public believes about us.

Since there are no pre-existing biomarkers that indicate any form of psychiatric “illness” or “disease,” we must recognize that labeling people as such is a reflection of systemic social factors, including class and a culture of ableism and unsustainable expectations. In light of these societal conditions, we should be granted the autonomy and the right to identify with our experiences however we see fit, and not merely to comply with these labels.

Psychiatry has not only created an illness-based narrative it “markets” through the news media, but also has granted its practitioners an almost king-like power. As the late Bonnie  Burstow wrote in her book Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, psychiatrists are the only people in the state who can have anyone locked up without their having committed a crime and can do so with impunity. Psychiatrists are more focused on billing and reimbursement using a list of socially observed “symptoms” than being helpful, and historically, psychiatry has been used as a way to make the oppression of marginalized people publicly acceptable.

A Pattern of Bias

The recent Boston Globe piece isn’t the first to reinforce this form of prejudice. A series of pro-forced-treatment articles released in 2016, titled “Spotlight on Mental Health: The Desperate and the Dead” was so bigoted against those labeled mentally ill—again playing the “violent” card— it drew a large number of critical responses and even public demonstrations.

The Boston Globe has been building an abhorrent reputation these past few years. In this op-ed, they targeted people labeled with schizoaffective disorder. In doing so, the Boston Globe didn’t just depict us as violent; they painted us as incapable of knowing what is best for ourselves. They also made a conscious decision to publish an article by Biswas, who not only serves as the director of the Psychiatry, Law and Society Program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital but also, more importantly, is a forensic psychiatrist at Bridgewater State Hospital. They made a conscious decision to include her charge that “untreated” people with psychiatric diagnoses would suffer “persistent brain dysfunction and cognitive decline.” And they published this piece knowingly leaving out the fact that plenty of studies show that psychiatric drugs are killing more and more people. That psychotropic medications are often the cause of the brain dysfunction and cognitive decline Biswas mentioned. But it doesn’t stop there: These drugs also cause liver damage, kidney failure, heart disease, seizures, and much more serious ailments.  Psychiatry manufactures the “illness,” sells the “treatment,” and offers barely any information on how to get off these drugs.

And yet here is the largest newspaper in the state joining the medical, criminal justice, and pharmaceutical industries in influencing the public on psychiatry’s behalf, conveniently ignoring the fact that Biswas represents one of the most oppressive institutions in the state. Bridgewater State Hospital is, after all, notorious for its abuses and unattended deaths, going back as far as the 1980s.

With this essay, the Boston Globe continues to promote the psychiatric narratives we are all expected to believe without question. Psychiatry has power and influence over every system and institution with which we interact—education, criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, and more. Let’s stay critical of what the mental health system and the media want us to believe.

Special thanks to Sera Davidow, Shayn Mcdonald, and Khalil Power for editing assistance.

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50 COMMENTS

  1. “Antipsychotics” themselves cause “Schizophrenia”, I “relapsed” several times when I was given permission to come off them abruptly.

    But when I tapered very carefully, I was able to make full Recovery from “Schizophrenia”.

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  2. It’s time for people to act by documenting what is going on in psych ‘hospitals’ – the normalised abuse and torture and share on Youtube and we will see who has anosognosia. There are now cheap and effective recording devices – ebay look up:

    ULTRA MINI SUPER SENSITIVE AUDIO MICROPHONE 8GB DIGITAL VOICE RECORDER & PLAYER

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  3. We’ve got to have derogatory labels, particularly the “schizophrenics”, who are not only daft, but have at least partial immunity to viral diseases and cancer (when unmedicated), and don’t succumb from wound shock, as they’re resistant to it. How can crazy people have these good qualities unless they got them from the Devil, so they can annoy the world’s Decent Citizens without letup?

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    • Sjogren was a Swedish eye doctor who discovered this syndrome named for him in 1933. People with the syndrome have a high levels of adrenochrome. Adrenochrome can be seen in their eyes in the form of deposits on the retina, and offspring of mothers with Sjogren’s are many times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia (whatever that is) or some other “mental illness” than those in the general population. Hoffer found adrenochrome in the blood of most patients hospitalized with schizophrenia. Near the end of his career, Dr. Hoffer also saw connections between schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, schizo-affective disorder and Pellagra. See http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7396/is_317/ai_n42850579/ Like Robert S. DeRopp, Hoffer also suspected that schizophrenia is an evolutionary defense against severe stress. See http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1994/articles/1994-v09n04-p205.shtml and the Adrenochrome Theory of Schizophrenia. http://orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1999/articles/1999-v14n01-p049.shtml

      For years it has been known that those people diagnosed with schizophrenia have very low rates of all forms of cancer, and Hoffer associate, John R. Smythies recently found that most lack the functioning gene for Glutathione S Transferase, which detoxifies adrenochrome. Adrenochrome is almost identical to mescaline, and mescaline is the drug which will most closely produce the experience of schizophrenia in normal individuals. However, Smythies suspects that adrenochrome is also protective against cancer.

      Sjogren’s Disease may not be a disease at all, but simply a genetic variation, which caused no problems with those on the traditional diets in ancient Scandinavia. It could also explain the high rates of “mental illness” and alcoholism in Scandinavia today, and why in some people stress causes “mental illness” and in others cancer. In ancient Scandinavia, there were special Viking “shock troops”, warriors called the Berserkers, from which our expression “going berserk” is derived. Legend has it that they were also “shape shifters” and had other special powers.

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      • R. Gordon Wasson, early authority on the anthropology of mushrooms, thought that the Berserkers got that way by getting buzzed on Fly Amanita mushrooms, which contain anticholinergic hallucinogens. There definitely was something unusual about them, because prior to a fight, they’d be deployed far in front of the Vikings’ main body, where the missile troops could turn them into pincushions if they went after the wrong enemy.

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  4. I agree, the article is deplorable psychiatric propaganda, filled with lies from start to finish.

    No mention, however, of the fact that the “schizophrenia” treatments create both the negative and positive symptoms of “schizophrenia.” The negative symptoms are created via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome, and the positive symptoms are created via antipsychotic induced anticholinergic toxidrome.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroleptic-induced_deficit_syndrome
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome

    No mention of the fact that “schizophrenia” is not a “valid” disease.

    https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml

    No mention of the millions of people being killed, via these fraud based DSM disorders, and with the psychiatric drugs every year.

    https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2015/mortality-and-mental-disorders.shtml

    No doubt, the Boston Globe is “fake news.” And it seems the psychiatrist/author blamed the murder of a distressed individual, on that individual himself? That’s actually quite disgusting, but oh so typical of the psychiatrists.

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    • She seemed to be blaming it on him not being forcibly drugged. Though most (not all) people truly out of their gourd are indeed drugged. Shrinks twist the facts to suit their agenda.

      Briswais fails to say whether drugs were in his system–making me suspect he was “medicated” and refuses to consider whether her demonization of people like him played any role.

      Calling people dangerous does not end discrimination. But it is great PR for forced psychiatry.

      Then when there’s the predictable decline in voluntary “consumers” these same shrinks will have a giant pity party about how “stigma” is hurting their own careers. “Poor me. I only make a 6 digit income instead of a 7. Only we psychiatrists suffer from the pain of ‘stigma.’ We are SO oppressed. And no one has offered to officially crown us sovereign monarchs yet.”

      Google “stigma + psychiatrist” and log onto a psychiatric professional site sometime. Quite a lack of insight in these virtual sob fests. Laughable in fact–on my good days. 😀

      Yet they use this same “stigma” as a marketing ploy whenever convenient. Making me question their intelligence as well as whether or not they possess a shred of conscience.

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  5. Thank you Vesper.

    We need to do much more than show the obvious.

    Bonnie was very aware and thank god she reached a few before her passing.
    “There is something inherently wrong with psychiatry, with every aspect of psychiatry, in its fundamental conceptualizations, with its power and its modus operandi, something so wrong we cannot continue with it.”
    – Dr. Bonnie Burstow, Psychiatry and the Business of Madness

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  6. I just subscribed to the Boston Globe because I was hoping to move to Massachusetts and beco part of the recovery community that exists in Western Massachusetts. In my current state – Connecticut – there isn’t anywhere safe for someone like me, who’s been labeled, brain shocked and drugged, then thrown away by the system and by whatever family I had. I’m too sick to move again and now believe there is nowhere safe for a person like me. I’ll definitely cancel my subscription to the Globe.

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  8. I have witnessed cognitive decline, premature death, homelessness, and suicidal desires in countless people fully drugged according to psychiatrist’s specific orders.

    Yet psychiatrists and the media pretend all these people are perfectly happy and lead great lives. I guess if you wind up homeless, suffer IQ loss by 40 points, and kill yourself while “compliant” it doesn’t count. Sick of psychiatry’s denial of its botched experiments on unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs.

    I bet the police shot the man because they had listened to shrinks like Biswas tell what dangerous monsters all those she treats are. Calling innocent people dangerous murderers is not compassion. Claiming it will end bigotry is ludicrous. And I find it hard to believe those like Biswas want to–even on a conscious level.

    Sickening and sad how folks believe what TV and propaganda puff pieces say more than what they perceive with their own senses. 🙁

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  9. I have witnessed cognitive decline, premature death, homelessness, and suicidal desires in countless people fully drugged according to psychiatrist’s specific orders. Yet they pretend all these people are perfectly happy and lead great lives. I guess if you wind up homeless, suffer IQ loss by 40 points, and kill yourself while “compliant” it doesn’t count. Sick of psychiatry’s denial of its botched experiments on unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs.

    I bet the police shot the man because they had listened to shrinks like Biswas tell what dangerous monsters all those she treats are. Calling innocent people dangerous murderers is not compassion. Claiming it will end bigotry is ludicrous. And I find it hard to believe those like Biswas want to–even on a conscious level.

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  10. The Rogers legislation was a major movement accomplishment for its time and must be protected!

    However, don’t make the mistake of expecting the corporate media to respond to reason, that’s not their job. Their job is to obfuscate and distort. Sera Davidow has spent a lot of time banging her head against the Globe’s brick wall, check out where it’s gotten her.

    Once we have a viable movement the media will cover us more readily, again for purposes of obfuscation.

    Good article though.

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    • dfk,

      Truth.
      The psychiatrist’s chair is the judgment seat, that you failed in this environment.
      Imagine being in a cushy position to drag down further, the poor, the hurting.
      Governments should be very interested in looking for systems that work better,
      that know how to build systems to raise people up. They should be asking
      the users on how to build such systems.
      It would never be perfect, but it would be better.

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  12. If the Boston Globe weren’t staffed by sanist hacks, it might actually try to do its job and force this quack to PROVE how “noncompliance” would impose ANY measurable detriment to anyone’s life outcomes. Plenty of people, some of whom read the Globe, have ditched psychiatry and resumed their lives: completed their educations, launched their careers, raised their families, found their voices. #FAKESCIENCE should not be allowed to hype its overblown and baseless “predictions” for ANY population, and particularly not one as vulnerable as ours. Whether we’re healthy (as demonstrated by the vitality of our LIVES, not our score on a BS DSM checklist) or not, quacks would sooner kill us than to deal with the inconvenience we create for them, merely by *existing*. Realistically, there are very few people whose lives are *worse* off without psychiatry. Biswas hawks his sanist “psycho killer/corpse”, because, literally, everyone else – the homeless, the hermits, the mainstreamed or semi-mainstreamed noncompliant Mad – belongs to a large and “silent” majority of psychiatric dissidents, most of whom struggle less or no more than they did “as patients”.

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  13. Interesting they compare “psychotic illness” treatment to treating heart failure or liver disease.

    https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/11-year-follow-up-of-mortality-in-patients-with-a-Tiihonen-Lönnqvist/71ab15c16a5ebea862a110daac4236df6e73633c/figure/1

    According to this now “infamous study” on duration of antipsychotic treatment and risk of death, an interesting find is that if you treat a “schizophrenic” with neuroleptics for less than 6 months, he / she has the lowest risk of death. Unfortunately, it’s not explained why that may be so.

    How would you compare such a bizarre finding to treating heart failure or liver disease?

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  14. I think I’m a good example of someone who can reliably “say” that “antipsychotics” cause “Schizophrenia” as the circumstances surrounding my Original (1980) Diagnosis were quite odd, the Formulation was odd, and the History was factually inaccurate.

    The original UK (Diagnosis Formulation) Doctor “committed suicide” around 2000, and the original Irish (Diagnosis Formulation) Doctor was barred from practising medicine within 6 months of this “suicide”.

    I ended up in hospital several times (1983/84) when I attempted to discontinue “antipsychotics” and was more seriously diagnosed each time.

    The prescribed depot “medication” had been causing extrapyrammidal disability, and when I stopped taking it, I was able to return to normal work and a normal longterm life (1984 – 2020).

    I can describe the psychological means with which I was able to deal with ‘drug withdrawal syndrome’ when I came off “antipsychotics” – which was similar to a Step No 3, in a 12 Step Fellowship.

    I don’t believe in “Schizophrenia”. I don’t believe drugs like Cannibas cause “Schizophrenia” – they might cause ‘fuzzy thinking’, which usually abates with discontinuation.

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  15. Thanks for this piece Vesper (and Sera, Shayn and Khalil)

    ”Psychiatry has power and influence over every system and institution with which we interact—education, criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, and more.”

    And once psychiatry puts fraudulent labels on someone you are stuck carrying those labels for life. (very problematic if the labels get published on widespread electronic records which is always accessed by every health care worker when healthcare is required for any physical illnesses)
    Psychiatry certainly has “granted its practitioners an almost king-like power”.
    The totally subjective, biased ‘opinion’ of a psychiatrist is given far more validity than any other medical doctor, psychologist etc. A psychiatrist’s “opinion” can never be challenged by the person with the label or by a person’s family doctor or even another psychiatrist. A psychiatrist’s opinion is akin to the word of God.

    The general public has no idea what goes on. Psychiatry gets to feed the media harmful lies and it is deplorable the media spreads the harmful misinformation, serving corporate needs rather than protecting innocent people’s lives. Shame on the Boston Globe.

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    • ”Psychiatry has power and influence over every system and institution with which we interact—education, criminal justice, employment, housing, healthcare, and more.”

      True Rosalee,
      Perhaps Psychiatry thinks of itself as the second coming. Not sure of my bible knowledge, but that would mean that they rule the earth for a 1000 years lol.

      I think psychiatry is closely related to religions/cults. Supplementing the vacant buildings.
      If these “diagnosis” affect me being heard by justice, or healthcare, that means they assume that I am defective and unable to know anything at all, yet they let me make a will, let me raise my kids.

      I guess it’s too much for governments to raise the kids of all those “diagnosed”, but it is profitable to make them fight for their rights.

      Canadian doctors in ER will look at your charts and the pain you came in with will be looked at as if non existent once they stand in front of their monitors and mumble amongst each other.

      So it makes me realize at my age that there are no honest options in Canada. It’s a game, that is all it is.
      Simply shirking of honesty and responsibility to have honest dialogue and it was always based on power and the idea that we are their underlings, that ultimately they have to protect themselves.
      At the expense of many lives.

      Why do so many go to the US to get away from “profiling”? Although, the US has exactly the same crap system, but one starts to look for validation.
      It is the most corrupt system, since it takes advantage of the vulnerable, the unsuspecting.

      No government can correct the mess, the funds it would take to try and fix it, so they use psychiatry which is costing them billions in creating a worse mess.
      And THAT is what politicians do not realize, although I am most certain the failure of our psych system is talked about in political offices.
      The one huge mistake they keep making is talking about the failure as “the mentally ill”.

      It is an absolute guarantee that IF they don’t change the hierarchy, the othering, NOTHING will improve.
      The fault lies in the powers, in the systems, not in the victims of that system.

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    • I live in a “third world country”. Even if there is poverty and what not, society here is still not yet AS psychiatrised as it seems to be in higher income nations.

      The system of electronic medical records is not yet as prevalent here. I do know of at least 1 individual who was talking positively about why we need such a system. In my mind, I was flabbergasted when I heard that. The last thing I would want in my life is the psych. labels I was labelled with existing permanently every time I went to a hospital for any kind of physical problem.

      I fear the day the EMR system becomes popular here. Most individuals have no idea about what it could do.

      Something they were labelled with in their teenage will exist till they’re dead. And it will just keep getting worse.

      They’ll be trapped, locked, permanently in revolving-door hell, and if they come from an abusive family, it will almost certainly result in prolonged incurable pain, suffering and gaslighting leading to fearful and confrontational behaviour, which will result in even more labelling and the cycle will continue till death. I won’t be surprised in the least if people commit suicide as a result. Constantly on the run. First from their families, then from psychiatry, then from ordinary medical doctors even for standard physical conditions.

      I’ve frankly become very fearful of doctors.

      Is there no way to escape from EMR in your countries?

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      • It is pretty blatantly obvious what psychiatry and it’s protectors, the politicians, want.
        Except we are not allowed to say it.
        We do in fact not have “freedom of speech”, we do not have such a thing as a “free country”.
        And everyone knows it.

        I agree with you, I believe people will decide that they have ultimate agency.
        We do not need more gods than we already have.
        I am certainly not ever again kissing someone’s behind, nor ever lowering my eyes.
        Of that I am sure.

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      • “I fear the day the EMR system becomes popular here. Most individuals have no idea about what it could do.”

        and so you should registeredforthissite. I know my government is prepared to forge records and then utter with them in order to conceal their involvement with organised criminals.

        The EMR system has been introduced here with claims it will be good for all, and it was done with an ‘opt out’ provision meaning that if you didn’t inform them that you did not want a record created, one was made for you. Civil libertarians pointing out that of course it would make sense that it should be that you ask that a record be created for you. But of course that would not have allowed a whole bunch of misinformed people to be swept up into the net by their ignorance of what it actually meant. And once in, there was no way of getting out.

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      • Registeredforthissite, unfortunately in Canada there is no option to opt out of electronic medical records. Worse is even with a ton of indisputable evidence (some obtained thru legal action) that proves statements and labels a psychiatrist published to EMR are outright lies and totally erroneous, you can never get your EMR records corrected. No one can make a psychiatrist correct an erroneous label or false statements they have published. It amounts to widespread character defamation with impunity.

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        • I figured that that would be the case in countries with a high degree of systematisation and purely socialised healthcare. What’s good for the group could be disastrous to individuals.

          All this would do in the context of psychiatry would be to put already suffering people at risk of permanent labeling, and observations that they can never get changed. Even if they could, it would be a never ending and draining battle.

          Even if there’s a certain “compassionate” shrink who “understands”, it is relying solely on his mercy and charity which he can chose to rescind when it fits him.

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          • True compassion, in my opinion, can’t come from a place of hierarchy and authority. Authoritarians are capable of pity (hence the “anti-stigma” campaigns), but true compassion requires stepping away from the superior role, and a true authoritarian can’t ever allow that.

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  16. Very nice job deconstructing how the concept of anosognosia is used against people who are labeled with psych diagnoses as just another tool to strip them of their rights.

    The New York Times is just as guilty of this kind of thing. Liberal/Progressive? Not on this issue. Do they even recognize it as an issue–as something that needs attention, the fact that psychiatry is completely out of control and trampling all over people’s basic rights? It doesn’t seem like they do.

    A recent column by Jane Brody (NY Times, “When Mental Illness is Severe”, Nov. 18, 2019) besides being a thinly veiled plug for a recently published book by a psychiatrist (friend of Ms. Brody’s?), was similarly full of ideas about the “dangers” of allowing “mentally ill” people to forego “much needed treatment” simply because “they don’t know they’re ill”. Barf.
    A few of the people who commented called out Ms. Brody on the general stigmatizing tone of the article and it’s many factual errors, but many of the comments were right on board with the idea that “mentally ill” people had just too many rights and certainly some of those rights should be removed…for their own good.

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    • Their faux compassion fools no one. Except maybe themselves.

      Basically they believe that all murders in the world are committed only by a mass of inferior beings called the “mentally ill” and they want these people to be drugged, locked up, or both for their own good. I despise hypocrisy.

      Crippling and labeling certain individuals is a public service psychiatry performs.

      1. It provides a sense of moral superiority to all the “normal” as well as a sense of optimism about the innate goodness of humanity. All normal people are sweet and kind. The only ones capable of doing evil are those with “schizophrenia” or “bipolar.”

      2. It provides a sense of security. After every mass shooting the Experts point out the shooter was labeled or label him posthumously. They skillfully evade the questions as to whether or not he was “medicated.” They keep silent and nobody ever asks the question.

      I remember reading about Andrea Yates in a NAMI newsletter. They said her “bipolar” was why she drowned her kids. No mention of the psychiatric “care” she was receiving as I recall. NAMI wanted to let her get off on the grounds of her alleged brain disease.

      I found the whole thing confusing and resented letting a murderer get off scott free on the grounds that she had a “mental illness.” Didn’t NAMI know that would make us all look bad and feed the flames of “stigma”? Now I realize they were just using her case as a promotional gimmick. And it was really due to involuntary intoxication. I discovered this after I finally gave the NAMI cult the finger.

      The only reason I remained obedient to my psychiatrist as long as I did was out of the belief that I would otherwise harm innocent people. For their sake. Not because the drugs made me feel so darn good or helped me function.

      Now that I know the truth I’m very angry. Not just for my own sake either.

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    • Barf is correct.
      Although all the people agreeing are not immune, nor are the generations following.
      I know of a few people that were all for it, even dealt in the industry and have learned the hard way….and
      now question whether it’s a kind of karma.

      I don’t believe in karma, good and bad happens to many, even shrinks. But I do suffer from schadenfreude in certain cases.

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      • It’s a classic tautology. Since it’s not “normal” to do antisocial things, anyone doing something antisocial is “abnormal.” But since we’re not allowed to say things like “evil,” we say such people are “crazy” because “only a crazy person would do something like that.” So they did it because they’re crazy, and they’re crazy because they did it. Then, by analogy, anyone who is “crazy” (aka “Mentally ill) is dangerous, because by definition “crazy” things are done by “crazy” people. QED.

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    • I was on Reddit a couple of days back. It was pathetic.

      The stuff that people write there about “our crowd”. “Mentally ill”, “denial of illness”, “frustrated because of illness”, “treatment didn’t work on them”, “they’re personality disordered”, “more treatment”, “scientologists”, “anti-vaxxers”.

      There’s also a psychiatry sub-group there full of the usual psychiatrist/mental health worker/patient talk.

      Then there’s the skeptic movement type. “Show me the study”, “just anecdotal evidence”. Despite the flaws of “anecdotal evidence”, not everything in life will have a journal paper associated with it. An individual can’t be omniscient and omnipresent.
      Some of the perpetrators of things like this tend to be the patient population themselves.

      Frankly, a large chunk of the patient population and their “caretakers” are just as pernicious as mental health workers themselves. And they’re everywhere! On chat rooms, YouTube pages, social media.
      It took me some time to regain my composure after reading that vomit.

      Psychiatry’s behavioural labelling and its concepts of mental illness tend to attract a lot of vicious individuals who are absolutely masters at gaslighting. Individuals use it as a weapon against other individuals who in some way or form pose a problem to them.

      How can you not be equally harsh as a means to defend yourself, especially given the fact that the opposite side has vastly more power than you?

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      • I don’t bother leaving responses to those commenters.
        It just becomes beyond ridiculous. Obviously psychiatry has been shown to be full of holes, as have the actual MD’s.
        They know this and so need to try and defend it. They have no “evidence” except behaviours, which then they have to pronounce as deviant or abnormal.

        It is a cult-ure we live in. Always was. Cult-ure like yoghurt which has lots of bacteria and multiplies.
        I play games online and of course there are a lot of yahoos on there. The first thing these yahoos type to other yahoos is “TAKE YOUR MEDS”, or “SOMEONE FORGOT TO TAKE THEIR MEDS”.
        Who needs to bother explaining shit to stupid or indoctrinated? There is no point.

        The “mental illness” is clear. It exists in every single person and the ones most affected are the ones that think others have it.
        Therein lies the problem.
        The whole thing acts identically to a cult. A belief that others are a or the problem.

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        • I wish they would judge us on our behaviors. The content of our character. Not what some “expert” who asks us ten perfunctory questions determines after less than fifteen minutes.

          Roger Elliot was a nervous, awkward young man. But that doesn’t mean all nervous, awkward people deserve punishment for what he did.

          Psychiatry finds a few arbitrary behaviors and quirks that may annoy relatives but are perfectly harmless. Or social anxiety which I had and they “helped” by bringing shame, dishonor and the ultimate social degradation upon me.

          Isolated me by causing family and friends to reject me in disgust and horror. They created artificial disability from drug “side effects” they blamed on the alleged brain disease. That’s how they helped me along with countless others.

          Comfort the comfortable by afflicting the afflicted. Should be the motto of the APA. 😛

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          • Don’t you know that “problems in living” should be shamed? Judged as a fault?
            After all, is it not something to be ashamed of if our minds are “faulty”? After all, if we simply adopt being “ill”, then there is nothing to be ashamed of. We can walk proudly into ER, to get our real illnesses treated, because society respects people with brandings. It just depends which society we are in at the moment.
            The yellow star on people’s jackets was not a good thing, but they should not “feel” it to be personal.
            They were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time.

            Gosh I’m so radical. Using comparisons of such heinous crimes. Certainly no comparisons. One might say that it is far worse when the whole world condones a slow death, a stripping of who people are.

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  19. Dr. Biswas probably labeled the man herself. And drugged him too.

    Someone in her field told the police he was dangerous and should be feared as a vicious, murderous psycho killer. Then acts shocked when they shoot him–using the information about him that her industry provided.

    I love to think of some of the “lock them up” commenters getting dragged into the psych system. They get no pity from me when they do. They deserve none. I hope they wind up in one of “Doc” Drew’s new asylums since they thought it was good enough for the Others they loathed.

    Hitler would never have risen to power if the Germans had not elected him and applauded when he blamed the Jews for all that was wrong with Germany. Cotton Mather only was able to hang a bunch of “witches” because the other Puritans mindlessly accepted what he said. They thought killing them might help the crops grow better and end the plague.

    I recommend Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay on “stupidity.” Not what is usually meant by that word.

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    • Yes. I’m bitter and mean as that post revealed. Too much time alone.
      I’m used to being isolated but it only took a little extra to break my reserves.

      If it weren’t for others I’d be exposing, I would choose to infect myself with the XXXX virus and get it over with. After what I’ve been through death’s not that scary. Once you are dead there’s nothing more human beings can do to you.

      I’m not suicidal BTW. Just stir crazy.

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      • “…. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

        Make some playdough from flour, or do a paper mache. I don’t paint, seriously. But I got some pencil crayons, some water colors and I just sit and blend colors. Play.
        I would call it “art therapy”, but I’m developing a distaste for the word, because it definitely seems to mean different things to different folks.

        I paid a shitload of money to give “therapy” to those in a therapy position. If I knew then, the teacher is really the client.

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