Online Debates on Psychiatric Diagnosis Often Rely on Rhetoric Instead of Facts

A new research article examines the use of polemics and rhetorical concessions in the online debate about psychiatric diagnosis.

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In a new article published in the Journal of Mental Health, researchers Bethany Garner, Peter Kinderman, and Phillip Davis examine online debates about psychiatric diagnosis. Their study explores several blogs, both pro- and anti-psychiatry, and examines the polemics that differently positioned participants used to advance their side of the debate.

According to the authors, the contentiousness of this debate leads researchers to rely on “rhetorical concessions” and linguistic tricks rather than facts to bolster their arguments. This reliance on rhetoric negatively impacts the discussion around diagnosis in psychiatry. Therefore, the researchers implore blog authors to engage with facts rather than participate in petty linguistic games to advance the conversation around diagnosis.

“In these accounts, polemical tones tended to override the fundamental arguments. In this analysis, polemics between authors were preventing the emergence of solutions,” Garner, Kinderman, and Davis write. “This splitting into warring oppositions has occurred for years, and the risk is that this will continue. The differing conceptual models produce combative rhetoric. Debates online are still polemical.”

Psychiatry as a discipline has largely embraced the conventions of diagnosis—the proponents of psychiatric diagnosis point to several beneficial factors in defending this practice. Diagnosis offers a shared language for service users and providers, and it allows service users to name their suffering. It can also give service users access to specialized services and help determine what psychiatric interventions may work best to help alleviate their suffering.

More recently, however, voices from within psychiatry have become more suspicious of the diagnostic apparatus, and the biomedical model it is based on has come under criticism.  Authors have gone as far as calling psychiatric diagnosis a fraud based on the “damaging fiction” of mental illness as a biological disease. These authors point to life circumstances rather than brain states and abnormalities as the chief cause of mental disorders.

Researchers critical of the diagnosis project have often cited the stigmatizing effect diagnosis and the biomedical model of mental health can have on service users. The stigma diagnosed individuals experience can commonly manifest as prejudice and discrimination. Clinical mental health encounters also commonly result in epistemic injustice, a situation in which the service users’ concerns and knowledge are disregarded in favor of the service providers’ narrative.

Critics of psychiatric diagnosis have also pointed to service provider biases that affect diagnosis and subsequent treatment. Research has shown that racial bias likely plays a large role in psychiatric diagnosis. Black patients are twice as likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia as white patients, even when their symptoms are similar. Having a psychiatric diagnosis also doubles your risk of experiencing a medical error.

The current research examines the debate around diagnosis by analyzing six blogs that take various positions on psychiatric diagnosis. The authors chose blogs that were both critical of diagnosis and supportive of it, as well as blogs that took a more middle-ground approach to the debate. Several themes were present in each of the blogs examined by the authors: assertion of authority, rhetorical concession, appeals to moral clarity and positioning the opponent.

An assertion of authority is a rhetorical tactic whereby an author makes an assertion based solely on their authority rather than evidence or facts to further their argument. The authors found evidence of an assertion of authority in the pro diagnosis blog’s use of terms like “simply” to describe mental illness as “simply” a brain disease as well as in phrases such as “I have been practicing a long time.” Evidence of an assertion of authority could be found in the anti-diagnosis blogs as well, with the use of phrases such as “not so commonly understood,” implying that the blog author knows better than most psychiatrists.

Rhetorical concessions are linguistic tricks in which an author offers a vestigial concession to their opponent’s point to seem more reasonable to their audience. For example, the present research found evidence of rhetorical concessions in the pro diagnosis blog’s assertion that “some illnesses” are caused by situational factors, “but” most are biological. Similarly, anti-diagnosis blog authors used rhetorical concessions when they wrote that they have the “utmost respect” for psychiatrists, “but the medicalization of childhood has gone too far.”

Both pro and anti-diagnosis blog authors engaged in appeals to moral clarity when they asserted that their approach is the one service users “deserve.” These blogs also attempt to position their opponents as “morally bankrupt or scientifically illiterate.”

The current research argues that these linguistic tricks and rhetorical positioning distract from an important conversation that should be taking place within the psy-disciplines around the usefulness of diagnosis.

Garner and her colleagues believe these blogs could be a venue for creating a “richer speculative space” if the authors would engage with facts rather than polemics designed solely to advance their positions. They write:

“This analysis demonstrates the potential of nuanced thinking and where it gets sabotaged. These pieces of writing should be creating a space for thought, not driven by pre-determined polemical extremes, but equally not merely splitting the difference. That creation of a richer speculative space for investigation allowed for thought to challenge opinion and to make of blog posts not necessarily a polemic but more ideally a place for wider dissemination of thought and a more productive public debate.”

 

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Bethany Garner, Peter Kinderman & Phillip Davis (2022): The ‘rhetorical concession’: a linguistic analysis of debates and arguments in mental health, Journal of Mental Health, DOI: 10.1080/09638237.2021.2022631 (Link)

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Richard Sears
Richard Sears teaches psychology at West Georgia Technical College and is studying to receive a PhD in consciousness and society from the University of West Georgia. He has previously worked in crisis stabilization units as an intake assessor and crisis line operator. His current research interests include the delineation between institutions and the individuals that make them up, dehumanization and its relationship to exaltation, and natural substitutes for potentially harmful psychopharmacological interventions.

18 COMMENTS

  1. Richard,
    thank you for bringing up the issue of ‘logical fallacies.’ That knowledge is missing in most of our educations and has contributed to the decline of our ability to intelligently debate consequential topics.

    I sometimes wonder if a study of philosophical materialism might also shed some light on the obsession of the biomedical model of mental health’s attempt to reduce all mental suffering to ‘brain chemistry’ and such. But again, basic philosophy is something our educational system has eschewed, and so most people, even ‘educated’ ones, don’t even understand all the ‘a priori’ assumptions that are made and injected into so many of the debates of today, sigh.
    Sam

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  2. I agree, “an important conversation that should be taking place within the psy-disciplines around the usefulness of diagnosis” is needed. Yet when one tries to have an important conversation – about, for example, Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic” – with the people, including the “mental health professionals,” of my childhood church.

    All I got is the ELCA employees refusing to discuss that book, and passing on their “mental health professionals'” glee, regarding this disclaimer being taken out of their DSM5.

    “Note: Manic-like episodes that are clearly caused by somatic antidepressant treatment (e.g., medication, electroconvulsive therapy, light therapy) should not count toward a diagnosis of Bipolar I Disorder.”

    Then I was told that the ELCA therapists have no plans of changing their ways, and that they were “partners” with the ELCA employees. I was sent to a nearby seminary to be shown that the DSM “bible” is being taught in a local seminary. Then, after I politely declined to work with people who refused to discuss DSM diagnostic problems. I was attacked by a psychologist wielding a classic thievery / conservatorship contract, disingenuously dressed up as an “art manager” contract.

    And, since I don’t want to be in a religion that has adopted, largely privately, the DSM “bible” theology. Yet still hypocritically preaches from the real Bible. And since I have no desire to be in a church that sicks a psychologist – who had hoped to steal all my money and work – onto a person. I did have to leave my childhood religion for good.

    That’s what I got when I tried to initiate a conversation about Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy” in an ELCA church. Not only do the psy-disciplines not want to have important conversations, they resort to attempted thievery, to try to silence a well researched psychopharmacological researcher.

    I will say I’ve heard rumor my childhood church now has to pay people to sing in their choir, those choir members all stand 6′ apart, and that large church only has about 10 people attend there weekly. But, of course, our government declaring all pastors to be “non-essential” didn’t help that church.

    Yet I’m now attending another church – which is growing like gang busters – since that pastor is not afraid to discuss the truth. Including the truth that the ELCA psychologists, that I had the misfortune of dealing with, desperately wanted to cover up – the truth about our society’s pedophilia problems.

    Nonetheless, my experience shows that at least some within “the psy-disciplines” vehemently do NOT want to discuss the usefulness, or lack of usefulness, of the DSM diagnoses. And that conservatorship contract wielding psychologist literally told me his goal was to “maintain the status quo.”

    But I agree, the psy-disciplines do need to have a discussion about their DSM diagnoses, especially since their diagnoses were all declared to be “invalid,” by the head of the NIMH, nine years ago.

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  3. “Diagnosis offers a shared language for service users and providers, and it allows service users to name their suffering. It can also give service users access to specialized services and help determine what psychiatric interventions may work best to help alleviate their suffering.”

    If at any point in my life someone had asked me to name my suffering, at no point would I have named it borderline personality disorder.
    To me the name borderline personality disorder means, you’re not suffering, you’re a horrible person who’s making everyone else suffer.

    The specialized services I was given access to under that borderline name were not ones I would have chosen where I was told I just needed to learn coping skills and the past was irrelevant and my trauma didn’t matter and I needed to listen to my doctors and take the drugs.
    The service is I wanted I was routinely denied. First and foremost among those trauma therapy. I was discriminated against over and over and over again until I finally gave up. So now I have to live with the trauma of my childhood plus 35 years of trauma from being a mental patient who was abused by a system that is supposed to help.

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    • I think the thing that keeps these arguments going is that with psychiatry, there’s “no there there”. There’s almost nothing that anyone can point to, whether a psychiatrist or other expert or lay person or patient/ victim, that is based in fact. I can talk about what happened to me and people can believe me or not but there’s no way for me to prove what the drugs did to my brain. Diagnoses, chemical imbalances, drug studies — there’s no solid ground anywhere. Like I can go on YouTube right now and listen to a psychiatrist explain the difference between borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, or the difference between bipolar 1 and bipolar 2, or the difference between borderline personality disorder and complex PTSD, but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s all made up. I got a borderline personality disorder diagnosis because I was poor and had low status and the doctor needed a way to blame me after my functioning fell apart after his ECT treatments. He needed to discredit me when I had tried to report his colleague to the APA after I found out he had not kept any records over 6 years of drugging me. Hence the borderline diagnosis. My sister on the other hand, paid a lot of money to go to a residential trauma facility where she received a complex PTSD diagnosis. I wish I had had enough money to pay for that diagnosis instead of the borderline Dx that has ruined my life and prevented me from getting desperately needed medical care for the past 15 years.

      I can read some pharmaceutical propaganda about how such and such drug is “believed to” correct such and such chemical imbalance that is “believed to” cause x or y mental illness, which is in itself a construct, but there’s no solid ground there either. “Believed to”…by who? Who believes it and for what reason do they believe it and can they share with the others the evidence that has led them to believe it?
      If it wasn’t for the fact that psychiatry and the mental health system have harmed so many, there would be no point in talking about it at all, in my opinion.

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      • Do you know something? I’m a classical musician, I play the pipe organ and am very talented.

        There has been a similar type of dogmatic pseudo-religious “movement” among academic types starting in the 80’s, regarding the “authentic interpretation of classical music.”

        Where I feel it’s like they try to emulate a super stiff and stultified version of what they think courtiers for snooty nobility used to be in the past. Except it’s kind of childish in a way that would almost make one laugh.

        There are “rules of authenticity” and they get outraged if you violate such rules. I recall my mother mentioning one such musician she spoke to, a conversation, where this woman said something along the lines of “when it comes to the historical interpretation of classical music, I am a purist.”

        What’s interesting about this culture, though, is that they want to get you bogged down in the rules, to the detriment of actually playing as fully expressively as those musicians really did play in the past. Musicians like Bach.

        It’s as if the same stultifying political correctness now infecting college campuses with super strict speech codes also has infected music. And it’s actually not REALLY authentic, it’s really a product of the 1980’s, but they don’t see that.

        The 80’s were the start of mass incarceration, though. And, actually, I even decided to look up what happened with the prison system in the Victorian era, where women suddenly got encouraged to “lay down the law” vis-a-vis strictness and stringency, and always object or faint when a man violated “the rules” in his speech somehow, by saying something vulgar. Sure enough, the Victorian Era was a time of massive expansion of the prison system too.

        With “historical authenticity,” I should note — especially in the pipe organ world — what you have is arrogant male professorial types leading the way with the frigidness and aggressive dogmatic approach. Expressing all sorts of dismay at those whose adherence to “proper standards of historical authenticity” fall short.

        And they happen not to be personally attractive or charismatic in the least. But women, however, somehow feel obliged to put on this show of fake sounding impressed at their prestige, perhaps not based on their personal charisma but based on them having managed to gain establishment stamp of approval instead.

        I say fake sounding because it’s as if, on the inside, women aren’t REALLY impressed, these are men they wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, but they are being good sports about it and faking it.

        And if you look up certain Jim Crow stereotypes, just look up the brute stereotype. Interestingly enough, it’s actually very attractive and those are just the characteristics you want to see show through in your playing of music, if you are a musician.

        https://www.ferris.edu/HTMLS/news/jimcrow/brute/homepage.htm

        And there is this weird thing going on whereby, in truth, women — or gay men, which I am one — actually find that “brute stereotype” to be very admirable and sexy, and a lot of men yearn to live up to it and try to live up to it, at least in superficial appearances of toughness and masculinity, so long as one is not genuinely assaultive.

        So it’s not ACTUALLY an insult to those tarnished by it. It’s more shameful or insulting to be those men who don’t live up to it and are jealous and get angry because of their jealousy. But we pretend it’s an insult, just to assuage their feelings and their hyper sensitivity.

        As if, well, it’s as if Jim Crow America had a component to it that shamed and insulted those white men who did not live up to the “animalistic” norms of masculinity black men were tarred with sometimes, as if to arouse their jealousy just enough to help discourage them from helping black men out who were being oppressed.

        Now why would I be inspired to say this regarding psychiatry? Well, interestingly enough, my music skills were always on the charismatic side and I eventually did get – only temporarily – corruptly “diagnosed” by Harvard, as a ploy by them to avoid investigating my complaints of wrong doing — hazing and various bullying — on the part of other male musicians, who happened to be nowhere near as good as me, nowhere near as popular. And I also was very handsome, muscular, and well built — so they couldn’t say I “made up for it” in terms of looks either. It was just plain unfair.

        Harvard refused to investigate my complaint but instead corruptly arranged for their own doctors to try to “diagnose” it away. Although, the wrong doing had left a paper trail so, in a way, you couldn’t diagnose it away. It was more that such “diagnosis,” however absurd, was part of a campaign by Harvard to threaten me via, see they also started saying “people feel threatened by your complaints” blah blah blah.

        Now, the truth was, they felt threatened by how my complaints could tarnish Harvard’s reputation, but they threatened to tarnish me with that very same Jim Crow “Brute Caricature” as what they told me their defense would be, should I try to hire a lawyer and sue. What all these jealous inferior male musicians who had engaged in lots of vicious back stabbing would say about me.

        And they even told me they had ties to the media, the New York Times at their beck and call. They will get journalists to pillory me, have lots of people come out of the woodwork to accuse me of having been “menacing” to them, should I sue Harvard.

        They even had psychiatrists at their beck and call — and threatened various retroactive falsification of records, and they even threatened to hack my emails and retroactively rewrite all of them, so as to fabricate fake paper trails portraying me in a bad light. (And I did indeed have typos introduced into a few of my Harvard emails by some IT worker at Harvard — just to demonstrate how much they meant it.)

        And, at another time, I do have a series of medical records, which actually portrayed me in a very good light, stolen from my apartment. I later try to retrieve them again — they were falsified. Another set of medical records got falsified, portraying me in a horrible light — although these records were too obviously falsified for them to want me to keep them in my apartment, I could have claimed they were obviously falsified and it would have made a good case, so they were stolen too from inside my apartment. (Probably by my landlord.)

        I ought to disclose, my story is not so unusual within psychiatry. But is common. Common enough, I’d say, so that I think the whole profession is tarnished by it, and the diagnostic categories deliberately made vague or ill defined, precisely so institutions like Harvard and wealthy corporations can leverage psychiatry for their own corrupt ends like this.

        The end result is that psychiatry does not help the people it serves, and the very thinking of the whole entire psychiatric profession is tarnished by it. Ordinary people ill served by it are viewed as collateral damage, in a system that is primarily there to cater to monied interests.

        If you are an ordinary person, how much money do you have compared to well heeled establishment players?

        I am reminded of what they say about public housing. The managers of public housing treat the residents terribly, because they view their true “clients” as members of the government that is funding them, and not the actual tenants living in the apartments.

        This is what the world is like. This is what the world has always been like. I think, in the past, that people were far less naive about society working like this than they are today. Today, we are asked to be gullible and naive. Well, actually, we are all overworked to exhaustion and do not even have the time to research stuff and figure out the truth on our own.

        I do have to say it is interesting just how closely Harvard adhered to innuendo that plays into those Jim Crow stereotypes, in their dealing with me. Because it’s as if it amounts to hinting to a well known societal phenomenon that people don’t openly talk about, but instantly know exactly what it means.

        Everyone has had issues with “the jocks.” The football players who would pick on the little wusses and give them wedgies. Well, I was home schooled and not exposed to those “high school” dynamics. So perhaps I don’t know. But I do think everyone else does.

        I wonder, does psychiatry play off of somewhat absurd stereotypes perhaps? Which are jealousy based and immature? And, recall, psychiatrists were not themselves “the jocks” but were, instead, men who felt jealous of them. And now do they seek, in their diagnostic categories, to “get even?”

        Actually, there was one psychiatrist involved in that whole saga who was just awful. He had an unattractive geeky nasal tone of voice but talked in this super authoritative way, like he was the “big man” who as an “expert,” a “guru.”

        He apparently told my mother I was a narcissist. Or that whatever psychological issues I had were narcissistic related. I remember thinking, that’s not true. My “issues” were not tied to me craving attention or adulation, as I kind of got swamped with that when young because of my musical talent and got used to it and so it didn’t have an effect on me. My “issues” revolved being excluded by my peers and ostracized, not treated a an “equal” and not allowed to just be “one of them.”

        He said that because of what HIS issues were. And he wouldn’t even know what my issues were. But he would have grown up in school, jealous of the “cool kids.” Wanting the same attention.

        See there is a “the grass is greener on the other side” phenomenon going on here.

        Still, how much of the psychiatric profession, and psychology as well, how much is it made up of a small clique of people — men — who hail from a certain subset of society, or of masculinity. And they have their own issues which they project onto the world?

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      • KateL, that’s one of the BEST WRITTEN comments I’ve seen on here! You pulled no punches, and spoke your TRUTHS clearly. That’s why the quack shrinks ignore you when they can, and try to gaslight & silence you when they can’t ignore you! SAME THINGS happened to me, and many of my friends. But it’s the MONEY, POWER, & CONTROL that psychiatry represents, – that’s why it endures, & why it was invented in the 1st place! Psychiatry is a pseudoscience, a drug racket, & a mechanism of social control. It’s 21st Century Phrenology, with potent neuro-toxins. Psychiatry has done, & continues to do, FAR MORE HARM than good! The DSM-5 is nothing more than a catalog of invented & created billing codes for insurance billing, & Medicare & Medicaid. Nothing in it was discovered. Literally, so-called “mental illnesses” did NOT exist until they were created! And they were invented to serve as excuses to $ELL DRUG$ derived from petroleum, a la “Rockefeller Medicine”…. Even Frances, who helped write the DSM-IV, admits in his book “Saving Normal”, that the bogus “chemical imbalance” nonsense comes from PhRMA Marketing hype, & nowhere else. PSYCHIATRY IS MEDICAL FRAUD, & medical fascism…..

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          • And a much “grander scheme” than you know. You might not want to know the whole sad, sordid story. As much as I’ve read & studied, there are many holes in the narrative. But the outline of TRUTH, & FACTS remains. Psychiatry is an intentional fraud, and few psychs can or will endure the cognitive dissonance necessary to break through the lies. But I want to KNOW the WHOLE TRUTH, – Almost wish I didn’t….

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  4. This is an interesting article, but in my opinion, it just takes up space—no offense to Mr. Sears. I did take logic in college. I actually received a “B” but only because I had a “crush” on the teacher’s assistant. I had several “crushes” that year and so my grades weren’t quite so awful. However, honestly, as it can be said we can debate this stuff until “the cows go home” but does it make anyone’s life better. Sadly, probably not as it is all just academic nonsense. It is all just meaningless words without a moral or spiritual backbone. And that, in my opinion describes, psychiatry, psychology and also probably the related field of sociology. Therefore, those who go to psychiatry, psychology, etc. come up wanting and even more tragically with the use of alleged treatments like drugs, ECT, a plethora of therapies and who knows what they’ll try to come up with…it becomes dangerous, debilitating, disabling and for some even tragically deadly. The psychiatrists originated a term that claim is a symptom of schizophrenia but accurately is really a description of their “fraudulent study” —-“word salad.” All of this is just “mumbo jumbo word salad.” It’s like the witch putting a spell on Hansel and Gretl but I doubt she would use “spells” as bad as psychiatry does. Thank you.

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  5. I am tempted to post this link from Tocqueville on how Democracy has modified the English language.

    http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/ch1_16.htm

    And we can understand that, all throughout history, societies have never really been one entire language without dialects but, actually, there have always been dialects that are usually associated with a person’s occupation. And, in non-democratic societies, those occupations were more fixed and stable and the different languages/dialects end up very precise.

    In Democracies, you end up with all sorts of confusion and ambiguity. Language gets less precise and that imprecision can be abused and even result in peoples’ thinking being affected.

    Tocqueville did not live in a society where there was a race religion that turned into something that policed language about race the most virulently of anything else. But that’s what goes on today.

    It’s interesting how I think we can say we have an image in our minds of the typical “racist” or “white supremacist,” and we imagine a working class or super macho muscular type of man with bald head and tattoos. Colorful. And that’s what a white supremacist is, in our minds.

    And psychiatrists? No, they have protection. Which is a kind of class protection that makes it so they get away with racism because of who they are. All the while the white man with the coarse language, tattoos, and rough around the edges look gets pilloried in the media and culture as the quintessential racist, because it’s convenient.

    The racist is not someone we know. The racist lives on the other side of the train tracks. We stick our heads in the sand.

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  6. I, too, prefer simplicity. I was lied to…I did not have a “mental illness” but was drugged and therapized any way by psychiatry, etc. until they told me that I allegedly had a “severe and pervasive mental illness.” But without the drugs in my system, I can say now that I only have some brain damage from the drugs. Thank you.

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      • Yes, you are partially right. It was the iatrogenic neurolepsis that put me in the hospital back in the spring of 2013. But, I think now I just have some of the damage left from the drugs. I don’t sleep like that so heavily. I don’t have a normal sleep cycle anymore and I don’t expect to ever have one. To my family and neighbors, I tell them it is because I worked all kinds of shifts at all times of the day and night in my various jobs, which is true. I do have other odd issues sometimes, though they are mostly lessening. I can’t cook a real recipe anymore, but I have figured out ways to adapt. I have learned, that for me, most of my “weaknesses” and most of my “strengths” are more pronounced. Some things, I thought were my strengths have definitely become my weaknesses. And my memory, especially for the years I was so drugged so heavily is mostly a lost cause. It is a constant and daily learning experience. But it is very much worth it. I am glad to be alive after all this. I am not one for revenge and I have mostly forgiven those who harmed me, even myself for allowing myself to get harmed; but if there is revenge—living is the best revenge. Otherwise, they win, and they are evil and good must always overcome evil. Thank you.

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  7. “Diagnosis offers a shared language for service users and providers, and it allows service users to name their suffering. It can also give service users access to specialized services and help determine what psychiatric interventions may work best to help alleviate their suffering.”

    And if there were some way the government could force those with a diagnosis to wear some form of external ‘marker’ so we could identify these people who sneak into places with humans…… we could ensure that they receive the ‘specialised services’ and ‘help’ they so desperately need. It would save having to use police to torture them into ‘confessions’. (see videos I have posted elsewhere to conform this reality)

    I note the use of the same methods of having the public act as ‘proxy police’ in regards the enforcement of covid mandates passed by the government is not a unique idea. It has been used before, so nothing new there. Report suspected mental health problems to your local ‘dob in a nutjob’ helpline has been greatly expanded as a result of the pandemic. Were are now doing their ‘morality policing’ for them (and by them I speak of those genetically superior people who rule over us. Isn’t the fact that they have achieved such high places in our community proof enough of their genetic superiority? I’m sure their argument from authority says as much)

    The public identification, humiliation and isolation of the unvaccinated in my state where coercion is seen as consent, and the media is ensuring that the isolation is used to deceive parts of the community into thinking they are alone has worked extremely well. Though I guess it was kind of obvious the methods which were to be used were going to be borrowed from National Socialism, given they also talked about passing laws making it illegal to make comparisons of what they have been doing to the ‘Nazis’.

    So accept your ‘yellow star’ as a means to ‘name your suffering’, and the ‘specialised services’ it gives you access to (and the rights it removes from you are not mentioned? Only right left is as George Carlin said “right this way”). And keep in mind that when they speak of ‘alleviating your suffering’ they have after all passed Euthanasia laws in a State where the hospitals are “editing” documented realities to conceal their misconduct and fucking destroying the victims of their crimes, having police threaten witnesses and fail to perform their duty (“insufficient evidence” when they refuse to take proof of public officer misconduct. Mock executions and threats of pack rape as a means to coerce [is that your illness making you anxious? A chemical imbalance the cause? Because we know ‘they wouldn’t do that’ right?] Knowing they are unaccountable) and have the full support of their ‘colleagues’ (which include your doctor, lawyer and priest as a mean to break down ‘resistance’ See Frantz Fanon quote re breach of trust and confidence in this regard. Or the ex Principle of the Mental Health Law Centre) in the concealment of human rights abuses, that include the ‘unintentional negative outcomes’ occurring in the Emergency Dept should the truth not be preferred.

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  8. BTW, thank-you, Richard, for this piece. It helps a little. I’d rather see the authors take a solid position. Psychiatry is a bogus pseudoscience, and most psychs are frauds & quacks…. They NEVER admit their iatrogenic GENOCIDE. Psychiatry is pharmaceutical genocide. I am a surviving victim of the lies of psychiatry.

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