Then and Now: Will Psychiatry Ever Change?

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I was in a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey for five weeks in 1970, at the age of 15. I was depressed, rebellious, and flunking out of school. I had taken an overdose of Quaaludes, a drug I used habitually back then. After the overdose, my parents shopped me around to psychiatrists, one of whom told them I was schizophrenic and would have to be institutionalized for life.

My family was a mess. My brother told me years later that my mother had initiated proceedings to get me removed permanently from our home; he wasn’t sure how, being just slightly older than me, but she had told him about the plan. That tension, and others, certainly were things I sensed at the time.

My first psychiatrist before hospitalization gave me Tofranil, a tricyclic antidepressant and a reasonable thing to prescribe at the time. He also prescribed, very improbably, Dexedrine, an amphetamine and popular street drug. Of course, like the drug user the doctor knew I was, I popped these amphetamines at far more than the prescribed dose. Twenty pounds came off my already thin frame. My moods shifted drastically up and down. Thus the hospitalization.

I am an “organic bipolar,” which I say bearing in mind that the disorder has become wildly over-diagnosed these days and is rare. I believe bipolar disorder is an existential state as well as something that, in my case, might exist in some form  in the body—as the roots of many of our ways of experiencing the world do. It is not an illness. I don’t argue with the term bipolar; I want to redeem it. As I argued in my book A Mind Apart, just as the world needs biodiversity to survive, so too does it need neurodiversity.

I have diaries I began keeping at the age of nine, and they clearly describe my mood swings—my “A moods” and “B moods”—and show evidence of what would fall under the heading of psychotic thinking. I wrote at one point that my family was trying to poison me;  though this was a delusion, I do believe who we are is deeply knit into psychosis. Given what was probably already happening with my mother, that belief gave shape to a reality I intuited and was actually living. Perhaps on this website it goes without saying, but never did any medical interventions look into my life.

So instead, starting at 15, I received multiple rounds of electric-shock treatment, some as an outpatient and some in the hospital where I began this story. These treatments wiped out chunks of my autobiographical memory—my life— and left me with cognitive deficits in spatiality and math that I have to this day. When I had shock treatment (though of course I had no idea of this) the procedure was in a state of public relations crisis stemming from justified reporting and patient testimony about abuses. As David Rothman, a medical historian, reported at a National Institutes of Health conference, it is one of the only psychiatric treatments often used not for cure, but for the benefit of hospital staff.

The knowledge of shock’s use as a threat, and as a way of creating a hazy docility that makes ward life easier, damped down enthusiasm for it. Two years after I last received shock treatment—1974—California outlawed it. ECT was revived in the 1990s, and the talking point I hear from doctors, and see again and again in both popular articles and medical papers on the topic, is this: The abusive stuff was bad, yes, but it all happened in the 1950s.

This judgment wasn’t true to my experience. Shock treatment was often mentioned in connection with bad behavior at my hospital, and as it was a private one (my father had health insurance), we also heard that if staff chose to transfer us to a state hospital, there would be more and worse treatment, and more shock.

Patients called the shock machine the “buzz box” and it spawned a number of rhymes we sang to the tune of “The Hearse Song.“ They all began with the line “If you should see the buzz box go by…” followed by things like, “…remember that if you get high.” A majority of my fellow patients were also young girls and some stole pills from nurse’s carts to get stoned. Not all of these girls were patients who had been drug users on the outside. In a hospital like this, you have slender chance to assert that you are a human being with your own will.

I have clear, if fragmented, mental pictures of the worst moments at that hospital. I recall the chilly conducting gel being pasted on my temples before ECT. And I remember a particularly awful group-therapy session with the chief psychiatrist, a graying man as chilly as that conducting gel. During this session, he announced that a patient, a girl whose name I don’t recall and who was pretty with large breasts, would like to sleep with him, and that he would like to sleep with her but had decided to let us have a say in whether he in fact did.

He was middle-aged and she was a teenager like me, and his face held the same expressionlessness posing this question that it always had. My 15-year-old response is hard to explain now. I mostly registered that I was not pretty or busty enough to be the object of this discussion. Otherwise, it felt like a question arising out of life circumstances far beyond my understanding, and the right answer seemed to be yes. I think most of us said yes, with uncertainty, as we all felt some critical test hovered at the back of his words. I assume they then had sex. I don’t know.

I have had kind psychiatrists and uncaring ones over the years, more of the latter than the former. I will brush over the years I spent on large doses of Haldol to get to this point, for psychiatry is a discipline in which treatment and gaslighting exist in a complex braid. One side might show more than the other at times, but they’re closely woven together and hard to pick apart. Doctors are trained to believe patients lack self-awareness and are likely to be treatment-resistant due to their conditions, particularly if they have been labeled with psychotic disorders. The hardwired belief in treatment resistance means patients must be talked or coerced into treatment, a situation that exists very uneasily with informed consent.

Psychiatrists, by the terms of their profession, need to exist in a mental sphere far above those they deal with, and as a last resort, can point to the “illness” itself as their argument. Many psychiatric papers I’ve read on shock—and I’ve read hundreds—describe cognitive and memory losses as being caused by the “patient’s” depression or other neurodivergence itself. The author of one paper I read on the screaming gender biases in shock administration, with at least two-thirds of patients being female at the time I was treated, said he believed the reason was that women patients might elicit more “caring” from their doctors.

I say all this as one of those people who does use medication, in spite of the fact that I’ve found the dispensing of it rife with problems. My reports on the side effects I experience from what I’m taking, even listed side effects, are generally met with some reassurance that “that can’t be happening,” or at least happening at the levels I report. My responses to the drugs also count for nothing in favor of the all-important “clinical dose,” which means you must take a certain amount even if it is less is helpful. As if taking a few milligrams less of something renders it pointless, like swallowing air.

Our doctors also may not like us, not just individually, but as a tribe. I believe this antipathy is much more prevalent than anyone in the profession would admit. In 2011, the Albany Times-Union newspaper ran a blog post by a doctor-in-training titled “Psychiatry: The One Specialty Where It’s Okay to Hate Your Patients.” This woman had had an encounter with a patient who, she wrote, “really pissed her off.” Her own fury led her to understand that this patient had Borderline Personality Disorder. This soon-to-be doctor learned in her medical training that providers’ emotional reactions to psychiatric patients are part of diagnosing them. She wrote chirpily that “In fact, I hear the psychiatrists discussing their (often negative) feelings about patients every single day.”

Imagine reading “oncologists” and “cancer patients” into this sentence: “I hear oncologists discussing their (often negative) feelings about cancer patients every single day.” It horrifies me that such a thing was ever published. It never would have been if it referred to any other pool of medical patients.

The other psychiatric assumption I encounter over and over again is that things now are “different.” Abuses happened decades ago. Shock treatment, now unilateral and done with pulsing currents, doesn’t do any of those terrible cognitive things. I’m agnostic about whether this “new” form of shock is better: I haven’t had it, and maybe it is. But I question the “now,” a time presented in psychiatric literature as new and enlightened and better, with the bad stuff left in the dust.  That bad stuff includes the astonishing eugenics of the 20th century, the attitude toward the value of neurodiverse people that allowed for the mass sterilization of men and women held in asylums, as well as lobotomies, and the use of shock for punishment and silencing. The last U.S. lobotomy happened in 1967, just three years before I entered the psychiatric system. The patient, a woman named Helen Mortenson, had a brain hemorrhage and died. If this death had not occurred, lobotomy would probably have been on the list of my possible cures.

The last U.S. forced sterilization took place in 1983. All these events are recent enough that doctors trained during that era are still out there practicing, possibly training others. Many are no doubt good people who would knowingly do nothing harmful. But historically, a few decades are an unlikely amount of time for attitudes to have actually changed so much.

Here is a story from today’s “new” psychiatry: Several years ago, I took a bipolar family member (I’ll call her Sarah), to the emergency room. She was having a manic episode, taking extreme risks with her own safety, and I believe she needed to be stabilized, or held until she again became stable. Nurses sedated her—she knew she needed that— and informed me they had no open psychiatric beds.—This is sadly normal at the main hospital of my small city. The ER nurse called places around the state and finally found one with open beds, a privately owned facility near Seattle.

We moved Sarah there by ambulance and I visited her the next day. She was so medicated she drooled and passed out as I spoke. It was clear we needed to move her somewhere, anywhere, else. At my questions about releasing her, a nurse mumbled something I couldn’t catch, then clammed up. My husband and I called hospital administrators, we called lawyers. We finally learned a commitment hearing had been scheduled behind our back, intended to keep her committed for two more weeks. We learned this only through endless persistence and found out just a day and a half before the hearing. We grabbed Sarah and moved her out.

I shared this story with almost no one. It sounded so Cuckoo’s Nest, like something an activist like me would invent. Or a patient like me. Later, though, a friend forwarded me a link to a Seattle Times expose of this hospital, titled “Free to Check-in But Not to Leave.” It detailed similar commitment abuses. Right now, a class-action lawsuit alleges this hospital did extensive, video-recorded strip searches of incoming patients. On Sarah? Maybe. She was too drugged to remember.

I want to end by saying that I have not only encountered psychiatrists who were good, caring people, but also that I believe more are out there. I recently wrote an article for The New York Times about my psychotic episodes, specifically about my rejection of the medical model. Whatever I might choose to do about such an episode, I wrote, there is no sick-me and well-me. There is just me. I cannot condemn a part of myself as sick, and I need control over what to do about my own cognitive and intellectual life.

After this article came out, I heard from people with psychiatric diagnoses and from family members of such folks, which I expected. I also heard from a surprising number of psychiatrists. I was invited to speak to grand rounds of psychiatric practitioners at hospitals and asked to just give them some sense of what their treatments should look like. I felt a hunger in at least some in the profession to provide care that respects that actual human before them, we who now mostly drown in the diagnostic numbers of the DSM-5.  In this I am following in the footsteps of Dorothea Buck, psychiatric activist and Nazi sterilization survivor, who died at 2019 at the age of 101, still asking one thing of psychiatry: listening.

 

 

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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45 COMMENTS

  1. Whew! I didn’t expect to hear a hopeful answer to the question of psychiatry’s potential for redemption. Throughout this piece, psychiatry’s failure, predation, and excuses were prominent themes. They definitely should have been presented first, even if readers couldn’t help but steel themselves to answer Susanne’s question, “Will Psychiatry Ever Change”, in the negative. And, Kudos to NYT for giving her a platform. When her article was published a few months back, I read it and shared it with everyone I know. Thank goodness it made a positive difference to a few clinicians.

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    • The first year of college would occur along with the experience of running for an office. No drugs, just the facts! What in part is a challenge, is to even venture into the realization of how fast change is occurring, in our aging and the way “parts” become Apart or A-part of the Whole Living Mind. What I do not understand, within this platform is a call for people who were wanting to vote, but were discouraged from doing so. Or held within an institutional setting and could not access the voting experience. However, the question also needs to be asked about running for any public office? As an option considered in participation within our democracy. If one starts a project, then finish it. One doesn’t have to take donations, which at the end of a race, by a different metric, an individual might show a better vote/dollar than the elected. The experience to run is definitely one of choice. And you would not believe how many will discourage you from running once entered into the race. Policy change requires at some point, elected officials to sign off on an emergent and stronger truth, that once might have been of a minority opinion. Thus what sort and degree of change does one want? Living in the State where Lincoln and Todd would live, and to experience a visit to the Henry Clay Estate, there seems to be a wealth of information to document our concerns for a better, more equitable economy for healing.

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      • No I do not! But what I do believe is the idea of having a mind, as potentially awakening to the awe in learning to learn. How expressions through technological connectivity are affording connections, richer beyond one’s ability to comprehend and make sense of meaning. On these pages, I sense similar thinkers, people who strive to share their story for others.

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      • I have to agree, sam, her story was published in the NYT because she claims to believe in the “medical model.” “I am an ‘organic bipolar,’ which I say bearing in mind that the disorder has become wildly over-diagnosed these days and is rare.”

        When in reality she was likely misdiagnosed as “bipolar,” due to the street drugs she freely confesses she was taking, and due to the trauma she dealt with in her dysfunctional family.

        “I recently wrote an article for The New York Times about my psychotic episodes, specifically about my rejection of the medical model.” The “medical model” which she didn’t reject, since she self proclaims to be an “organic bipolar.”

        Maybe Susanne is trying to pull off a psy-op on the the systemic psy-opting psychological and psychiatric industries? Since she then claims, “In this I am following in the footsteps of Dorothea Buck, psychiatric activist and Nazi sterilization survivor, who died at 2019 at the age of 101, still asking one thing of psychiatry: listening.”

        I don’t know. But I do know psychiatrists don’t listen to their patients, since my psychiatrist – in the end – declared the entirety of my life to be a “credible fictional story,” based upon some lies and gossip from child molesters, according to medical records.

        But I do know it’s very difficult to get published in the mainstream, if you can medically prove the scientific fraud of the psychological and psychiatric industries, and you refuse to accept their diagnoses.

        Are you trying to expose the psy-opting mental health workers, by seemingly buying into being an ‘organic bipolar,’ Susanne? At least you got published, huh?

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        • I hear what you’re saying but I definitely didn’t write any particular way to get published–I publish on other things & the fallout from this one was excruciating in many ways.

          Out of eight kids on my mother’s side of the family, three with very different histories share what fits the description of bipolar disorder–in my second book I claimed the term manic depressive, because to me it’s descriptive & now mostly outside the medical model. I struggle with language & I definitely feel that tug, with wanting to out completely from medical language but also wanting to fit myself somewhere on the spectrum of neurodiversity. So I’m really considering your comments & offering that I really struggle with language to share my experience myself. I want to find a way to define what may be common experiences outside the mainstream–tangible neurodiverse experiences–without medicine or psychiatry being attached. Maybe try to do some of the good work the autistic community has done in that regard.

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  2. The only way that psychiatry can be “redeemed” is by being turned over to the UN and courts so they can go to jail and people can collect their reparation money. (Mind you that’s not what typically happens right now when someone manages to do that, but in a just society, torturers would go to jail. )

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    • In a just society, torturers would come to understand the depths they had descended to, make up for all the damage the best they could, and be reluctantly allowed to keep the streets clean (or some such task). But yes, for now, they should at least be restrained from doing even more damage.

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    • I agree psychiatrists, and all doctors who bought into the fraud of the psychiatric DSM theology, have malpractice insurance. Thus they do need to pay all those they’ve harmed. Although since the courts, government, and medical/pharmaceutical industries have bought into the scientific fraud based theology of the psychiatric industry. Justice is non-existent.

      I do pray God delivers justice, in such satanic times. And I do have hope He will, because I know all about the systemic crimes of the “mental health” industry, and I am – most certainly – not more intelligent than God.

      So I do still hope and pray God will provide justice for all. But this will require the dismantling and destruction of the scientific fraud based psychiatric, and systemic child abuse profiteering, largely for the mainstream paternalistic religions, psychological industries.

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      • They also have nice big houses that could be put on the market…and the housing market is booming where I live…
        Think of all the people they made homeless and all the good it could do if they had to sell their homes and hand back the money they basically stole from us all.

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  3. With a mother in law who became a vegetable after several sessions of insulin “therapy” followed by several more sessions of ECT in an attempt to correct the mistake and a brother in law who, while receiving psychiatric counselling and on psychiatric drugs, became more and more insane and who eventually committed suicide, I have no respect for psychiatry.

    It IS quackery.

    They haven’t a clue what they are doing.

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    • They have an exact clue as to what they are doing. They have every reason to want to maintain their erections. Obviously because they want it hidden from being known as a flop.
      But then most bed partners do realize and so everyone has to live these lies behind the little blue pills.

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      • I can’t help but wonder about what the authorities believe after they examined what occurred in my instance, and the events that lead up to the ‘interruption’ of the negative outcome being planned for me in the Emergency Dept.

        Imagine, despite the need to conceal the truth, they would be totally aware of how this ‘field of medicine’ is actually being used to unintentionally negatively outcome people for convenience, AND that there isn’t a damn thing they can do about it. They passed the laws allowing it to be done…… well, actually the laws contain legal protections, but they are being ignored by the Chief Psychiatrist to enable arbitrary detentions, torture and kidnapping but …. putting that dereliction of duty aside.

        Speaking of laws, they did try to pass a forced sterilisation of children clause in our ‘new and improved’ mental Health Act but it was removed as a result of international condemnation. And I note the author writes

        “The last U.S. forced sterilization took place in 1983.”

        When was the last ‘coerced’ one performed though? Not that coercion is considered an issue with our Euthanasia Act or the Mental Health Act for that matter. There are legal protections that are ignored by the authorities should anyone ever try to make a complaint and these protections have been breached (ask me for proof)

        I also note the use of the term chief psychiatrist and find this term confusing as our Chief Psychiatrist in my State is a role created by the Mental Health Act to provide “protection for consumers, carers and the community”. The role is supposed to provide an avenue for matters to be investigated and any suspected misconduct referred to other authorities for investigation, and prosecution should there be a need. Of course our Chief Psychiatrist has a means of rewriting the law to ensure no action is EVER taken. He is supposed to report to the ‘watchdog’ if he “suspects on reasonable grounds that an offence carrying a term of more than two years prison has occurred”, but as with his rewriting of the burden placed on a Community Nurse of “suspect on reasonable grounds” to “suspect”, he simply never “suspects” (the “reasonable grounds” standard being the term of imprisonment) that an offence has occurred, and therefore has never made a single report to the ‘watchdog’ for investigation (see Parliamentary Hansards).

        Consider the no report going to the ‘watchdog’ in my instance. Intoxication by deception certainly meets the “reasonable grounds” standard on its own, never mind the concealment of that offence, and then the conspiring to stupefy to commit an indictable offence (20 years) namely kidnapping (20 years), but this does not require a report because they got the documented proof back and fuking destroyed me, and he simply doesn’t suspect despite examining the proof? It is of course an offence NOT to report these maters, but when the complainant has been negatively outcomed, why bother? It was of course a bother when the proof of the matters surfaced in a police station and a report HADN’T been done. That constitutes an act of misconduct, and we can’t have people turning up in mpolice stations with proof of crimes. Quick, someone make a referral to mental health for ‘treatment’ (yes our police are concealing their misconduct via mental health services and a few ‘friendly’ doctors prepared to sign prescriptions to conceal ‘spikings’ after they have been done to aid in interrogations aka torture sessions)

        The fraudulent documents sent to the Mental Health Law Centre and the response to the letter of complaint by the Chief Psychiatrist a clear demonstration of how they are dealing with serious criminal conduct within our system. target the victim and fuking destroy them and their families, distribute fraudulent documents and use police to threaten and intimidate any witnesses. Imagine a police force who turn people with documented proof of ‘spikings’ away because “we don’t have a copy of the Criminal Code in this Station”? They then leave it to the criminals in the hospital to sort out their ‘little problem’ of planting evidence on someone to create the appearance of lawfulness for their torture and kidnapping of a citizen (note, not a “patient”). And this conduct receives the full support of authorities. Well, i’m sure they’re offended by it but …. it’s a tough job and if you can’t torture and kidnap citizens how are you going to get it done? Doctor wants someone delivered to a hospital for treatment for speaking the truth, they need a means to achieve that. Call police and have them snatch the person from their bed after they have been ‘spiked’ of course. Police more than happy to assist with an arbitrary detention using the powers they have under the Mental Health Act of “suspecting on reasonable grounds that the person they have detained is suffering from a mental illness” (ie asleep in their bed). There is those words again, reasonable grounds, and in my instance that means you were alseep in your bed, we jumped you with tazers ready and handed you over to a Community Nurse who ‘verballed’ you up, and made the kidnapping appear lawful. 9 years later the authorities are still ignoring the truth in preference for the fraud distributed to conceal the torture and kidnapping and you life is fuking destroyed for complaining about being tortured and kidnapped. And well, all your property ….. we are going to give that to the person who is keeping their mouth shut about what the State did to you. And not a soul going to say a word to help you, not even people who claim to be lawyers (though their real role of enablers is being concealed to allow the exploitation of vulnerable people) Criminal co-conspirators is the correct term for these people at the Mental Health Law Centre.

        Good people behaving badly? Nope, people doing things they know are criminal and fully aware that their misconduct will be concealed by their criminal colleagues who are concealing their misconduct using their positions via negligence, fraud and slander. And it should be a concern for you all.

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  4. This is as an appropriate place as any to re-state my group’s position on this matter.
    The mental health system as it exists now should be abolished. Psychiatry should go with it.
    But that doesn’t mean there should be no one to turn to when one is suffering at home or at school, or has become dependent on drugs.

    Psychiatry – and many psychiatrists – wants to save itself for the “right” reasons. Because they got into the profession to help people… and the profession pays so well! It’s a moral conundrum few of them can really deal with. And then of course, there are the closet Nazis.

    Those of us who have been immersed in this issue longer than I have – since the 1970s – are quite clear about this: Psychiatry has to go. There is no redemption, no set of “reforms” that would be adequate to justify its continuance. But while we have identified psychiatry as the central strategy that criminal elements rely on to advance their dominance on the world stage, we also know that existing as it does in a larger context of harm and criminal intent, it cannot be defeated by any sort of ordinary campaign or “war.”

    Our basic strategy is to expose it and undermined all public support for it. We started with obvious vulnerabilities like abuses and treatments that don’t work. You’d think that would be enough, but they have on their side a very irrational fear of “going crazy” which they have continued to play on to maintain their position.

    While my group in general will continue to concentrate on the most obvious abuses, it is clear that more work is needed in the direction of demystifying the mind, how it works, what can go wrong with it, and what to do about it. In my work, I attempt to run out ahead of this coming educational effort with basic data and reassurances to those who know something is terribly wrong and something should be done about it that they are right about that, and that something can indeed be done about it.

    I am not particularly interested in sticking to the paradigm of “modern psychology” that is used by psychiatry to justify the use of awful practices like ECT and dangerous “medicines.” That’s where I differ from the academics on this site. They think that better data lies just around the next research corner. That we just need a few more studies in this direction and in that direction, and the whole subject will begin to clarify. Who are they trying to fool? Though others may have the patience to suffer such ignorance or self-aggrandizement, I don’t. The choices are right in front of everyone’s faces if they just care to look. I can’t make them look, but I can assume that if they refuse to look, their “expert opinions” can be thoroughly ignored.

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    • When you speak about your “group” l_e_cox, are you referring to CCHR? If they can be silenced by the State then what effect can they have on this system of abuse? Not prepared to even examine the documents I have that show a Chief Psychiatrist enabling arbitrary detentions? And believe me, I have the proof of what i’m saying. Going to let a few ‘slip through to the keeper’ as we say here in Australia?

      I’ll wait to hear if this is the group your referring to before saying any more.

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        • I wouldn’t say “negative” l_e_cox. It was actually nice to discuss the Mental Health Act provisions with someone who understood what a burden of proof is, understood the laws relating to mental health, and wasn’t engaged in a process of actively gaslighting and slandering me (as those in authority were as a result of the false flag placed on me, including people who offered me ‘assistance’ as my legal representatives. An absolute disgrace to even consider themselves human rights protectors and ‘advocates’ when they work with torturers and kidnappers to conceal their crimes. Good to know they were all removed at least, though I wonder if they are still allowed to practice law)

          Though the young lady concerned had been very busy with trying to have the “Forced Sterilisation of Children without Parental Consent” clause removed from the new Act, and admitted she was tired from all the work that had gone into that.

          I simply find myself in a position where I have the proof of what I am saying and yet not a soul prepared to even look as a result of the threats by State authorities.

          Consider, if this letter from the Chief Psychiatrist was FORGED (by lets say ….. oh I don’t know a lawyer at the Mental Health Law Centre on instructions from the Minister) then they should be exposed and dealt with. But that’s not what is being done here. I have been denied access to legal representation in order to create the space for criminals not to be held to account.

          If someone had photos of people being loaded into the ‘showers’ and then the resulting ‘outcomes’ would threats from the State have stopped people looking? It sure has where I live. Now I also understand there may be reasons for that, but should the people doing these convenience killings be left to continue doing what they are doing because it is embarrassing that the government didn’t notice, and in fact assisted in silencing me when I took the proof in to a police station?

          I could go back and look at my notes from my interaction with your group. I can’t help but wonder if it was perhaps thought I was a ‘plant’ or an agent provocatuer. The State obviously killing anyone with the proof would mean not a lot get through with the documented proof of torture, kidnapping and well, lets stay with the “unintended negative outcome” euphemism for now (and I once again challenge anyone to look at what I have and deny a motive for murder).

          It must have all sounded so insane. Police thinking they had retrieved the documents, and well assuming the victim had been outcomed, and the fraudulent documents sent to the Mental Health Law Centre to conceal the truth and ensure any other help I sought was sent packing. They were certainly slandering me to other law firms (the comment made by the divorce lawyer I had when I produced the documents proving I was ‘spiked’, “but I thought you were mad, but you’ve got the proof” shock horror because the lawyers had been slandering me with ‘He is claiming he was drugged without his knowledge, a common delusion of paranoid schizophrenics’. I can’t begin to tell you how effective that slander has been, and done deliberately by the Operations Manager who threatened to “fuking destroy” me as a representative of the State)

          I made comment about the difference in the level of cruelty between what is being done at Guantanamo Bay and what was done to me. At least the detainees at G.B. have the hope that their families still love and care for them. My torturers used my family to turn on the tap and hold my feet while they ‘waterboarded’ me, as an act of ultimate humiliation. I don’t even get the hope of believing my family miss and still care for me. The added level of cruelty by the Operations Manager to be admired by those who wish to ‘reform’ this system and ‘improve’ the methods employed to have those who wish to maintain their right to silence, and not be subjected to ‘treatments’ they don’t need for illnesses they don’t have. And I get it why no one wants to know me anymore. Once you have been subjected to years of abuse you become a person not worthy of life, and I fond myself partially agreeing with the ‘outcoming’ of victims of torture. Life not worthy of living, no wonder they needed to pass a Euthanasia Law here. And still they turn away, the proverbial Dead Man Walking for nothing more than not wanting to be ‘spiked’ with benzos, and be locked in a cage for not agreeing with someone over a family dispute. And i’m considered the mad one? Only as a result of being tortured and kidnapped, and then “fuking destroyed” by the caring individuals at a local ‘hospital’ who have found a way to set up Guantanamo Bay franchises with assistance from police and the negligence of the Office of the Chief Psychiatrist.

          Negative? No, not negative. I just wonder if it was an opportunity missed to ask the Chief Psychiatrist why he doesn’t like the protections afforded the public and is neglecting his duty to us all and allowing people to be tortured and kidnapped, and then happy with going along with a cover up.

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          • And this letter of response I have from the Chief Psychiatrist makes it very clear he knows he is going along with a cover up.

            It was provided to me by the Mental Health Law Centre along with a letter saying they hadn’t had time to read the response, which was kind of fortunate because the “absolute rubbish” (the comment from a well qualified professional) contained in that letter does, as I have stated, enable arbitrary detentions and allows citizens to be ‘spiked’ with benzos by people not authorised to administer or prescribe drugs as long as they don’t document what they did, and then have them interrogated by both mental health nurses AND police. Sound strange? it’s meant to, like a means of having me poison myself, and he should be proud of himself for such vile and vicious attacks on vulnerable people. Unless of course it was FORGED? But he has not even bothered to respond to my claim that the public can not be arbitrarily detained, and why would he respond to a nut job, window licker when he can simply ignore them? Of course I would have liked to have had access to a legal representative to ask these important and critical questions for me but ……. no way Boans. We’re busy fuking destroying you, and are going to make questions of law, questions of your sanity by gaslighting you to suicide.

            Yes, Australians value a rule of law Prime Minister. They simply ensure that only the select few can get access to it when the criminals allow them that right. Everything else gets ‘buried’ with “it’s under investigation” (or like the original letter of response by police “insufficient evidence” which is hardly surprising given they refused to take the documented proof they thought they had retrieved for the hospital) so piss off while we find means to pervert the course of justice.

            Glad it’s not MY government. I’d feel cheated having voted for people who would act in such a manner, and then claim they were the “Party of the Downtrodden”. Having lobster lunches with Roger Fedderer on the taxpayers dollar which of course is not open for the public to see how much that cost them. Ask and the Operations Manager can “fuking destroy” you I assume. How downtrodden does it get?

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          • I know you have written extensively about your case on this forum. I haven’t followed it all, but it seems a bit complex.
            I know the main website gives people the opportunity to report their case in some detail if they wish. I don’t know how many cases they are able to assist on an individual level.

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          • “I haven’t followed it all, but it seems a bit complex.”

            Yes, I did try to resolve the matter early when it wasn’t….. “complex”, but then they sent out fraudulent documents and attempted to murder me before police needed to do their duty, which of course would mean an admission that they tortured me so …… they looked the other way while doctor arranged a little accident.

            And imagine now they have made the water nice and muddy, people have the justification of not acting on torture and kidnapping because its’ “complex”. Not really, I just have difficulty explaining it because of the trauma of being tortured and kidnapped by procured police (and the gaslighted by my family who were being threatened by hospital administrators). The documents make it all very clear, but the threats from the State to lawyers make the matter “complex”.

            The Minister and people pretending to be my legal representatives made an agreement to do a cover up and pervert the course of justice. They are now gone, but still people will not assist me due to the threats and intimidation BEFORE these criminals were removed from their positions.

            Once again I offer the proof to anyone who claims to be an ‘advocate’ and who does not agree with police being enabled in the use of known torture methods, and then handing their victims over to mental health services to conceal the use of torture. Because there are people here who make that claim, but as I can show, they are also hypocrites.

            “I know the main website gives people the opportunity to report their case in some detail if they wish.”

            I’m sure my case isn’t that bad in the scheme of things really. Most of these cover ups would actually work. I mean who is a family of a dead man going to complain to, police who don’t have a copy of the criminal code? A Chief Psychiatrist who doesn’t even know the basic legal protections of the mental Health Act and is enabling ‘suss laws’ with forced treatment as a consequence?

            I just find it strange that people who say look at what psychiatry has done in the past, are then presented with absolute proof of the crimes then turn away? Or do they have so many people with the proof of psychiatric torture and kidnapping that one more is of little to no use? Or is the state sanctioned intimidation and threats stopping them? aka they will ‘fuking destroy’ you. How much more direct does it get? And it is not only me who knows, there are many other witnesses who have been silenced. And why? To ensure no one finds out police are torturing citizens, making false referrals of citizens that DO NOT meet the required standard, and then doctors are signing prescriptions for the drugs they were ‘spiked’ with?

            And not a soul prepared to look because ……..? I know there have been people who looked and then needed to ‘unlook’ and deny my existence. More of the same turning blind eyes.

            And all I really want is what belongs to me so I can leave. I get it, torture away, kidnap, and kill anyone they like. No point complaining to our police when they are providing material support to these criminals. In fact, they have made referrals to people they KNEW had motive to harm me, whilst deliberately failing to perform their duty and refusing to take the documented proof of the ‘spiking’ with benzos, because they interrogated me whilst I was under the influence of that ‘spiking’, and the Community Nurse told them he would conceal their torture for them and he failed.

            I’m sure others are aware, though they have got to the point where, like the people who ignored the systematic raping of children, they can claim they did their duty and ….. you mean there were that many? Shock horror at a later date. Well, until it is one of their own, then I’m sure the Criminal Code will be used like the old telephone books were, as a coercive means of extracting a confession via bruising to the brain.

            Offer is there should anyone care to check what i’m saying. Though the lack of concern from ‘advocates’ leads me to wonder how much ‘advocating’ they are doing in between lunches with the criminals. I would offer the exchange of emails with the Council of Official Visitors who offered to help, approached the Chief Psychiatrist with his letter enabling ‘arbitrary detentions’ and then high tailed it out of town, leaving me in a pile of dust, but no one even wishes to examine the letter they got all scared about having read. Wouldn’t want to upset someone with the power to remove the legal protections afforded by the Mental Health Act without even needing to pass it through Parliament. They are right to shut their mouths when told, despite it making them hypocrites, at least they’re ALIVE hypocrites, and not DEAD advocates.

            “I know the main website gives people the opportunity to report their case in some detail if they wish. I don’t know how many cases they are able to assist on an individual level.”

            Two points, you believe the site is secure? You KNOW it is? And the answer to the second comment where I live is none, unless the State allows them to. This was demonstrated by the State being able to use my legal representatives to deny me access to the law. The truth is whatever fraud they want, despite me now having the documented proof. Not a lawyer will touch it knowing the consequences for their career if they do. Nicola Gobbo is not alone. The State is using legal representatives as informants and to conceal public sector misconduct, and they are breaching their code of ethics and conduct knowing there will be no consequences (other than ending up in someone elses pocket).

            I have a story about how a lawyer who accepted lies from the Mental Health Law Centre and gave me the ‘run around’, later found herself being used to throw me under a bus. Very clever and well worth knowing how to do it if you should ever need a corrupt lawyer to serve a purpose. They wriggle around a lot when you actually catch them out in an act of negligence, and make a great foil as ‘insurance’. She will keep her mouth shut knowing it is in her best interest, and not of course, mine. You keep right on seeking out vulnerable people to exploit Ms *, you certainly fooled me into thinking you were working for the money my Union was paying you. And such a prestigious law firm too, I wonder if your Principles are aware of your conduct.

            The wheels of justice grind slowly but …….

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          • Mind you, thinking through it, had this lawyer actually done her duty rather than simply accept the lies told by the Mental Health Law Centre, the State would have been aware that I still had the documents much, much sooner, and thus they would not have acted as if their fraudulent documents and attempt to pervert the course of justice had succeeded. So in that sense she owed them one, because her negligence allowed those fraudulent documents to be used to respond to the Law Centre and show that they were aware of the torture and kidnapping, but were PRETENDING they weren’t.

            Pretty ugly when you realise the person charged with the duty of protecting the public is not doing what they are paid for and simply going along with the cover ups done by the likes of the Operations Manager.

            So thanks for not telling the Mental Health Law Centre that I still had the “proof”, and allowing them to maintain the fraud all the way to the Ministers desk. I had no idea that lawyers were not acting in the interest of their clients when the time came for them to make a complaint regarding human rights abuses such as torture and kidnapping. I do now, and thanks to another politician who spent the time looking at the two sets of documents and understood the significance of the fraud (note not “editing”). I appreciated his time when police couldn’t look due to a conflict of interest (ie they are the torturers and should not be the ones investigating their acts of torture, OR for that matter, referring the victim to mental health services for an ‘unintended negative outcome’. Don’t believe me, ask the psychologist who is afraid for the safety of his family for NOT accepting their referral, and was concerned when he found out for them “who else has got the documents”. This type of fraud only effective for the State when they have had police retrieve the real set, and THEN distributed the fraudulent set. No good leaving the proof around to walk into a police station and leave some poor copper with the job of ‘stitching’ the victim up for you all. ie referral fails, then I get told I am going to be arrested for having my own medical records obtained via FOI, though they still can not tell me what the charge would be. Still does it matter with a State Chief Psychiatrist that is authorising arbitrary detentions, and chemical restraints to silence witnesses? A police corruption waste basket).

            Hard copies in the post, and at least three sim cards and two phones please 🙂

            Any smart cookies here know what the charge would be for a “Mental Patient” with documented proof they were being abused by a doctor? And is the same charge possible with a “citizen” who actually has some human rights (though easily removed when all you need to do is ‘spike’ them and plant stuff for police to find and start the ‘trick cycle’ off)? Or was this copper making an assumption about the widow licker he assumed I was? And how many victims of crime are turned away because mental health? Is this turning away based on things like the color of your skin? (eg they find the copy of the Criminal Code if your white? And probably do things like take copies of the documented proof of the crimes before writing their is “insufficient evidence” and ask nothing other than ….. well, nothing to be honest. 1 Senior Constable who doesn’t take the proof of such serious crimes, and we wonder why our homes aren’t safe while we are at work lol. Can’t even put it right under their noses without them not wanting it to be true.) And for what crimes if kidnapping and torture are fair game for a Senior Constable? Discretionary powers abound these days.

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          • “Know your enemy, know yourself, and in 100 battles you will not be in peril.” Sun Tzu.

            Certainly my “normal precautions” were of no use when the Operations Manager put my wife in her pocket and began using her to keep a short leash on me. Not only did they hack into my communications, they actually made sure I knew they had done it to enable the use of my suspicion as a weapon against me. I believe the same was true of Hemmingway (something ot lost on these psychological abusers being employed by my State). I like this Operations Manager in a way, in fact she would be of great use to some of my colleagues in Afghanistan, which is I hope where she will end up working for our government.

            Such vicious psychological assaults on vulnerable people in our community (of which I do not consider myself to be one, most people she is doing this to would have committed suicide which is demonstrated by the rates of deaths at this particular hospital no doubt) seems such a waste when she could be involved in a much grander theater. The rewards so much greater than anything she will achieve ‘fuking destroying’ pitiful “patients” in some back water mental hospital. Lets have her take on an enemy that does not have their hands tied and being held down when she is kicking them in the face, and having their families assist in holding them down eh? And we know she has the stomach for torture, it’s what she is being paid for in her current position (psychological torture and ‘gaslighting’ of anyone with a valid complaint about her colleagues), though it is not expressly stated in her job description.

            And imagine, people trust her while she is preparing to defraud both them, AND the community when she distributes these fraudulent sets of documents and releases confidential information from peoples medical records to allow them to be slandered. I had no idea to be honest. I thought the enemy was the Taliban lol. They are an enemy within, those who would conceal public sector misconduct even from the relevant authorities who they have a duty to report to. It’s how we identify who is and isn’t corrupt and protect the public from organised criminals like ….. her.

            Instead she is identifying people who have been tortured and kidnapped and ‘sorting it out’ before the authorties have been informed. And of course as long as they believe it has been ‘covered up’ they will frown on her conduct, but will, as I have proof of here, support that corruption. They were happy with her fraud until they found out I still had the documents, and of course the legislation says that you are to report “as soon as you become aware that an offence carrying a penalty of more than 2 years prison has occurred”, though I’m certain the Chief Psychiatrist can rewrite that to read “or if you get caught doing a cover up, you can then do your duty and leave it on someone elses desk after the fact”. What do you mean he is still alive and running around with the documents? Thanks a fuking heap guys.

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          • Actually, just on this issue of hacking, and in case anyone has doubts about my sanity regarding the interception of my communications by the hospital concerned with my torture and kidnapping I provide the following information. And I accept my sanity being questioned, I was after all subjected to some of the most vicious abuse by people in a position of trust. However.

            The hospital had my wife (and her boyfriend with 20 plus years of working as a computer technician [he even set up a business called (*&^ Computer repairs at my home 2 weeks after I had been evicted by police]) install what is commonly referred to as a keylogger on my system. easily achieved when you realise they had my wife acting against our interests as a married couple, and her believing these criminals knew what they were doing.

            I always liked the way Bugs Bunny played the damsel and got Yosemite Sam to do the work for him. Not unlike my wife having holidays at wineries with her ‘new man’ while the hospital and the clinic psychologist are trying to sort out the crimes they now found themselves trying to conceal lol. I still luv ya Dear, you really were quite the manipulator 🙂 And you do still have all my money.

            Thus the password to my emails, bank accounts etc were ALL compromised. Now, instead of changing my password completely from what it was (lets say abc17536984278BC) I simply added a single letter to the front of it (to Xabc17536984278BC). Knowledge of how a keylogger works means that anyone looking at the string of text provided would only see the long old password, and ignore the first letter added to change that password. So you then wait, while the ‘hacker’ tries to use the old password assuming it to still be relevant, and you receive a message showing who it is that is trying to access your emails.

            This was particularly useful when I had been sitting on the documents for two years with no activity, and then ‘triggered’ a response from the people who were engaged in the conspiracy (ie the police who tried to refer me back to mental health for “hallucinating” when they had been provided with the proof that I had been ‘spiked’. Who didn’t get the documents back before sending out the fraudulent set? That person should be sacked. Look at all the work you have made for police to conceal their torture and kidnapping methods. The Community Nurse making promises he simply couldn’t keep regarding drug fuking me to cover his kidnapping and torture session). They had moved on since that time and were now desperate to get up to date with who I was communicating with. And sure enough, my wifes boyfriend was in another State (thanks Facebook) and the attempted ‘hack’ of my email account from the same State. Had I changed my password completely he would have noticed in the keylog text. It should be a crime to do that when your doing it to commit other offences but …… police can’t find their copy of the Criminal Code and well, these are not your average everyday criminals, they are organised criminals who are also public officers. And I guess as long as the police are not going to do anything about any crimes you commit, well they are free to hack anyones system.

            Always the simple stuff that catches them out though.

            Keep it in mind

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  5. ” I was invited to speak to grand rounds of psychiatric practitioners at hospitals and asked to just give them some sense of what their treatments should look like.”

    You mean they don’t have a sense? It seems that on a daily basis people educate them. When they do meet someone who they think might make holes in their cult, they invite them to become part of “them”. After all, engaging in endless discussions is what keeps them operating.

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  6. Agree. Psychiatry is not medicine and not geared towards any kind of health. There is no “science” to it, and the entire industry is based on fraudulent and theoretical nonsense. What psychiatrists do is criminal — they are perpetrators of abuse and should be called to justice and required to pay for the harm they do. I understand there are hurting people who do need help for mental distress and emotional pain, but psychiatry has foisted a huge, false narrative (hmmm, could that be called “gaslighting” — I smell gas) on Western civilization in particular, and they are not helping the vulnerable, suffering people who go to them. People need to be heard; the pain comes from somewhere, not from chemical imbalances and because of “anger patterns stored in your amygdala.” Sheesh, how reductionistic can you get? My synapses = me. My chemicals = my mind. My thinking = biologically determined. It is insulting, not to mention absurd. I cried when I read the last sentence of the above article by Ms. Antonetta, where I heard of Dorothea Buck, who just died in 2019, at age 101. I would like to have met her, because I have recently become despondent as to “Why did I have to suffer so much and for so long? I was going to “treatment” like a good, compliant victim of domestic violence and other crimes that left me unable to function; and, so, I sought “help” where people said to go to “get the help you need” and got swept into the “mental health” (a non-sequitur, for sure) system, and have per force lived a marginalized, unhappy life in the care of psychiatrists and psychotherapists who were at best inadequate and at worst narcissistic abusers, themselves. If she could live that long and continue to be an activist against injustice, then maybe there is a purpose and a reason for my having survived to age 65, because it has not been fun. No one promised me a rose garden, but, wow, no one told me anything about the thorns, either. I have been wanting to die while looking back on the waste of my life, which I had not intended to waste. I mean, I sought help, didn’t I? At one time, I had known a “me” that was “the real me” — who was a lover of life, had high hopes for overcoming obstacles, was physically active and even quite humorous. Sit that in a psychiatrist’s office for 40 years, and it will all be gone. They are sadists. I call the state of being that psychiatric treatment put me in for several decades, in the name of helping me to — what? — feel better? be safe?? understand what happened to make me so unemployable and socially frightened??? Duh, NO. I digress. Anyway, I call it: Drugged Up-Dumbed Down-and-Numbed Out. Haha, isn’t that psychiatry in a nutshell? (See, I told you I was funny!! In a bleak way . . . .) Thank you for listening. I finally began to remember who I was, just in the last few years, when I found a friend who simply listened to me while I told my story. She wasn’t assessing me through the psychiatric paradigm (medical school training, lenses, framework, whatever you want to call it; mishegas comes to mind) of “you are simply not aware of how sick you are; you lack insight into your illness and will need continual treatment and to stay on drugs for the rest of your life.” (That is what I was told — how very hopeful that was to hear — NOT.) No. She just listened, just listened and believed me, trusted that the human being sitting in front of her was presenting a truthful depiction of her own experience of suffering. Yep. That has been very healing, and I am starting to recover from a lifetime of emotional abuse, which is what caused my functional disability, and, yes, depression. I admit to depression (who wouldn’t be depressed if they went through what I went through?? But the shrinks don’t want to take that into consideration — your “story.” They want to blame YOU — I smell scapegoating and gas, again). My emotional and significant life troubles were never due to a freaking “chemical imbalance” or any of the bogus, DSM-depicted diagnoses. If only someone would have listened. Sooner. Oh, well.

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    • Thanks Janebeth,
      Awfully glad someone heard you. Perhaps you can reclaim the many parts that are you.
      I would not mind psychiatry if they warned people that they do no such thing as “help”, that
      they do not work in a “mental health” system.
      If they point blank told the public exactly what it is they do, they would have few subjects.

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  7. Dear Janebeth, Your comments are SO powerful and profoundly expose the very fraudulent and destructive nightmare so many endure if they are lured into or snared by psychiatry. My brother was also very athletic and physically fit until he saw a psychiatrist while in a temporary phase of depressed mood due to marriage breakup and kids moving away with his ex. I helplessly watched him go downhill, develop tics, etc (and wondering why the “help” wasn’t working) and due to the psych drugs he was dead a couple years later at age 40. I have my own sordid story of an encounter with a shrink when after chemo drugs & steroids (you must take to try mitigate all the damage being done by chemo) triggered insomnia. The psychiatrist immediately gave me 4 major psych labels (but never informed me of the labels she permanently put onto my widespread electronic health records) Although I had become very physically unwell from chemo, and was bald, emaciated, etc along with the labels she prescribed a string of drugs, including Seroquel, Ativan, clonazepam, Elavil etc and then mocked me for the side effects of the psych drugs.

    The older I get the more disgusted and horrified I am by the corruption and destruction being wreaked on people by psychiatry. Talk about kicking people when they are down. You express yourself so well and write very eloquently and I hope you keep speaking out and maybe write a blog here on MIA. The more people who expose psychiatry the better. Best wishes to you always and please know you are not alone in your experience, views and thoughts. Take care.

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    • I am sorry Rosalee that you lost your brother.
      Long ago, I did not understand completely. I saw people vanishing and saw distress, but we really never knew that real suffering was not “MI”. Only through experiencing the shit show plus ones age of reason, does it become illuminated as to what was going on.

      I think there are a lot of “reformists” or wishful hopers, that keep flitting back and forth whether anything is redeemable about psychiatry. I’ve done so also. But the issue is that these reformists keep looking at distress or suffering and conflating it with psychiatry, which leaves people dead.
      And I don’t know anyone that thinks about it deeply who thinks that anything about psychiatry is redeemable. Because psychiatry would need to come out and say they’ve been talking shit. That humble stuff is NOT inside a shrinks head. If it is, he stops spouting the lies and goes against his own system.

      I always thought psychiatry practiced something called psychotherapy. (not that I see this as redemptive) Boy was I wrong. Now every medical doctor also practices psychiatry.

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      • I would also remind everyone that a great number of people who eventually become antipsychiatry activists started out as “reformers.” I am one. People evolve over time, and I think that insisting on “ideological purity” does a lot of damage to progressive and radical causes. That is not to say that people should not be firmly educated regarding the truth about psych drugs and the DSM and the history of psychiatry as a “profession” and their knee-jerk refusal to consider any research data that conflicts with their incomes. But harshly criticizing people who are beginning to understand the destructiveness of the psychiatric system for not “getting it” tends to drive away people who have a real chance of “getting it” if nurtured toward that understanding.

        There are, of course, power issues involved that have nothing to do with reformism vs abolitionism, but I think these need to be dealt with as separate issues. My personal view is that anyone who thinks psychiatry as practiced is messed up, I welcome in for further discussion. And I try to find out why they think it’s a problem and what they think should be done about it before I start telling them where I want to see their thinking go. After all, we all agree that self-determination is a primary issue in any critique of psychiatry. I don’t think any movement is going to get where it needs to go if we don’t support the self-determination of adherents to the movement itself.

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      • Thanks Sam, yes it was a shock when my brother Joey died. I used to be brainwashed to put all doctors on a pedestal and blindly trust them. I was also under the impression psychiatrists were privy to some deep knowledge about the brain and why people became depressed or anxious. Even after my brother died while he was receiving psychiatric “help” I thought it must be an anomaly. I didn’t realize what a destructive, ludicrous racket psychiatry really is until my encounter with a psychiatrist for insomnia during cancer treatment.

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  8. Probably the majority of people now labeled “bipolar” are thus labeled because they suffered dire effects from SSRI use. As such asking to redeem “bipolar’ now means trying to redeem being poisoned.

    And doing that to someone who was poisoned, trying to get them to like identifying as “bipolar” is not a kindness to them. It is misleading and potentially very dangerous, since they may not look more deeply into just WHY they got the label. At an extreme end, suffering serotonin toxicity can be fatal. Mixing two or more SSRIs together can be fatal, particularly in high doses. It is critical that the victims of adverse reactions from SSRIs learn the true nature of what has happened to them or they may never get off the drugs so they can start to heal the neurological damages.

    And of course trying to get anyone to like the label bipolar is not a kindness either seeing as though that can lead to horrendous human rights abuses.

    “People will go willingly into the gas chambers if only they believe them to be showers”. Forget who said it.

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  9. Psychiatry is a pseudoscience, a drugs racket, and a mechanism of social control. It’s 21st Century Phrenology with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry has done, and continues to do, FAR MORE HARM than good. “Will it ever change”, asks Susanne….
    It “changes” all the time, but that “change”
    is really only going around in circles, and becoming the newest facade of an old LIE.
    So-called “mental illnesses” are exactly as “real” as unicorns, or presents from Santa Claus, but NOT MORE REAL. The DSM-5 is in fact a catalog of billing codes. Everything in the DSM was either invented or created, nothing in it was discoveted. The distinction is crucial. In light of all this, psychiatry needs to GO AWAY FOR GOOD. Psychiatrists can be easily and quickly re-trained and re-educated to become “prescribing psychopharmacologists”. Psychiatry is EVIL. The fact that there are a FEW “good” psychiatrists only PROVES that MOST are EVIL. Psychiatrists are the genocidal nazis of healthcare. Psychiatry has done, and continues to do, FAR MORE HARM than good…..

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    • The point has been made to me many times that psychiatry creates the vast majority of the ills they blame society for. They are there to create a situation that will justify their existence. There is considerable evidence that if their practices were all terminated, many social problems, quite beyond what we call “mental illness” would largely disappear.

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  10. Thanks, everyone, for this conversation! I do not believe in the medical model & I own that the language is problematic–I found organic bipolar used in Robert Whitaker’s Anatomy of an Epidemic, though I’m sure he’d want the use of that term to be guarded.
    Certainly having the cognitive damage of multiple rounds of shock treatment when I was a young girl puts me in a place where I’m never going to defend psychiatry.
    I think the kinds of things coming up here are part of why my current research is on consciousness itself–its richness, the ways in which it can’t be explained by brain processes alone. Difference is not a medical issue but a human one. I almost feel like we need to invent a language for this (if anyone has any, share it!).

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    • Well Susanne, I believe you said the correct language right there. “difference”, “human”
      Why do you have to explain yourself to others? Because the ones you are explaining yourself to are also “different”.
      Is there not something “sick” about a person that sits across from you and says you are “sick”? And that same person goes and gives someone haldol or injections by force? Or even guilttrips people into taking their chemicals? Remember, these are the same people that shocked men for being homosexual. Now only feelings are shocked, or drugged.

      Even if you believed that there is something weird going on within you. Psychiatry has no clue.

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