“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ―Anaïs Nin.
It’s May 17, 2022. Daniel Bergner’s New York Times article was released online today. “The Doctors Gave her Antipsychotics. She Decided to Live with Her Voices.” An attention-grabbing title to be sure. The piece is adapted from his book, The Mind and the Moon, also officially available as of this date. Its intent is to raise up personal stories and approaches that typically lie just beyond the public’s horizon. And, the comments section opens.
Ready. Set. Go!
Now, let’s flash forward to Sunday, May 22. 1390 comments later—no less than 72 of them my own—the Times blessedly decides to shut it down. I breathe a sigh of relief, and I take a step back to regard the mess of it all. It’s telling on so many levels.
Mainstream media is powerful, and relentlessly hard to break into if one doesn’t have the right sort of credibility, or is too many standard deviations away from mainstream views. However, what can be far more telling as to where we are as a society is not so much the articles that get published, but the ways in which the average citizen responds to them.
Bergner’s article—featuring Caroline Mazel-Carlton, Chacku Mathai, Ephraim, and Beth—is one of a very select few pieces questioning psychiatry’s rote answers to ever hit that mainstream media. It reminds me of when “The Challenge of Going Off Psychiatric Drugs” —written by Rachael Aviv and featuring Laura Delano—was published in The New Yorker in 2019. They are unapologetic departures from the conventional narrative, even rarer for not being overly bogged down with “the other side’s” perspective. Whatever imperfections we may see in what has been produced (and aren’t there always some?), these pieces act as beacons and promises for a different future.
No, not one where the systems have actually fundamentally changed. I wish, but I don’t think we’re there yet. Rather, they raise the possibility of a future where our ideas and experiences of something different more routinely at least get to be heard and seen in full, broad daylight. Where they are more than the occasional interloper in the spaces that have historically been occupied solely by our oppressors. Oh, to at least have a consistent voice at the table, because if one has an opinion that no one else ever hears, does it even really exist?
Okay, so, I’m being a bit melodramatic. Spaces like Mad in America and Madness Radio along with a handful of others have been making just that kind of room for several years now. And, of course, Madness Network News, Phoenix Rising, Dendron, State and Mind, and more did so before that. But, as gratifying as it is to write and be heard by people who largely “get it” and can relate and validate, what of the people we want and need to listen in order to make real change?
Existing spaces have offered welcome oases of differing perspectives particularly for people (those struggling themselves, family members, and providers alike) who are already seeking them out, and I’d not be giving them due credit if I didn’t laud them for opening as many other minds as they have, as well. However, reliably paving that inroad to the general public has been much slower going, and massive numbers will be required to effectively push back on the capitalistically-driven forces pinning the current narrative in place. (Pharmaceuticals do, after all, still maintain the highest lobbying budget in the nation, with healthcare next in line, and well above the gun lobby.) Regardless, here we are.
I feel like I should have been less impacted by the comments section than I was. After all, they weren’t talking about me personally. Just, you know, pretty much everything I believe in, and have worked to support. I certainly wasn’t surprised overall. Yet, across those more-than-one-thousand comments, several typical themes and familiar backlashes rose up in stark relief, and I did find them unusually… easy to see.
What follows are a handful of those themes and backlashes for your consideration, all building up to one foregone conclusion: People see what they want to see based on how they’ve learned to walk through and make sense of the world.
Aren’t You Basically All the Same Person Anyway?
“No one is disparaging Mazel-Carlton’s work, cello well played is incredible and rollerskating must be good fun.” —New York Times Commenter, Paris
“Any psychotherapist worth their salt will tell you that running from one’s shadow only grows it … Ephraim sounds very wise.” —New York Times Commenter, New York
I get that Caroline is at the center of this piece, but somehow—although she and Beth are written as two entirely separate people with distinctly different images and experiences—they aren’t actually allowed to own their truly separate identities (Beth is the cellist, not Caroline). Apparently, all white women are… interchangeable? That said, at least they are acknowledged as existing. Chacku Mathai, on the other hand, the only non-white person featured and who has arguably the best photograph of the bunch, seems to not have been noticed at all. Only Ephraim—white and male—appears afforded an existence clearly separate from Caroline.
There’s something about this—the interchangeable, the invisible, and the seen—that reflects a deeper truth around which our nation circles, and that bears further conversation. There are other layers here. Chacku was also featured in the article itself last and least. Caroline, Laura, and others have lived incredibly compelling lives, and do life-changing work, but when will we see a black or brown person featured in this manner?
And, on the other hand, perhaps Chacku’s gender was somewhat protective, even if his skin color was not. Maybe people found Caroline (and her not-even-close-to-a-doppelganger, Beth) just a bit easier to attack? Perhaps Chacku may even have been thankful for his seeming cloak of invisibility given how things played out.
Meanwhile, there’s also something to be said about who society feels they have a right to vivisect in the way that is required for these sorts of pieces to exist. There’s privilege in being featured, but also privilege (to privacy, and sometimes, to dignity) that is surrendered when the details of one’s story lies so prone and picked over. How do we decide how much is too much, versus what is for the greater good and a gift from those who offer themselves up in this sort of way? Which gifts are allowed to sit in the corner collecting dust versus those that get lavished with attention? What happens for someone after the gift has been accepted, used up, and inevitably forgotten, but all the bits and pieces remain floating around on the internet for an eternity? It gets complicated.
Moral of the Story: Welcome to the party. We already know your name… or at least the one we plan to give you.
Is There a Family Member in the House?
“Family and friends often give more accurate assessments of the benefits of medications.” —New York Times Commenter, Maine
“I find it more than puzzling that the author chose to not write anything on Mazel-Carlton’s own family. The impact on the families is usually devastating and I wonder if Mazel-Carlton has had a lot of family involvement that was not mentioned.” —New York Times Commenter, North Carolina
“An important discussion on a complex issue but what is missing from this perspective are the “voices” of family members who bring such patients to emergency care because they are rightfully scared that the individual will kill or harm themselves.” —New York Times Commenter, Massachusetts
First there were doctors. Then there were clinicians. Then there were family members. And then there were… more family members. Oh, wait, I forgot the pharmaceutical companies and other corporate interests. (They’re so consistently at the head of the line they become fixtures that are easy to miss for being such an immovable part of the landscape.)
The reality is that I can’t count how many stories I’ve heard of family members (and providers) complimenting a person for “how much better” they’re doing since getting “on the right meds,” only to eventually learn they’d taken themselves off months or even years ago. Yet the notion persists that the best judge is from without, for the within cannot be trusted.
Sure, it can be helpful to have an outside perspective, especially from someone who really knows you. If you trust them. If they’re not too caught up in battling their own demons of fear of loss of control, and self-blame, and intolerable levels of uncertainty. Because if they are so caught up, watch out.
Ultimately, the narrative that family knows best, or that the family must be protected from the terror of their loved one’s pain, is deeply harmful. Too often these ideas come from self-fulfilling prophecies of helplessness and discriminatory beliefs about frailty. Family members themselves can be desperate to push away any possible blame, or look for a respite from their own worries which is easy enough to understand given the lack of or similarly one-note support available to them.
Sometimes these sorts of takes come from providers looking to play a medicalized game of “hot potato,” viewing the person in distress as a liability more than a human, and the family member as the rescuer not of the “patient” but of the provider. Family members are regularly seen (by themselves and myriad others) as simultaneously victim and savior. It’s hard to compete with that, and perhaps that’s precisely the idea.
It’s also worth noting—before moving on—that Bergner’s piece does involve family. In fact, it concludes with Caroline supporting someone else’s family member (something she does quite frequently in her work), providing them opportunities to think about their loved ones’ experiences in ways they’ve never been offered before. Perhaps family members weren’t so forgotten after all. Maybe the real issue here is seeing family members not in the power position of being in the know, but rather, learning from those so previously dismissed.
Moral of the Story: These diagnoses are like a fountain of youth. You may not look any younger, but we’ll treat you like you’re a kid. Of the “silent unless spoken to” variety.
(I now also solidly qualify as a “family member” to someone who is struggling, and took the time to write about the complexity of that experience in the comments section of an anosognosia-ridden response piece by Norman Ornstein that interested readers can view here.)
My Side is the Best Side (Especially When It’s the Only Side)
“This is very one sided. My son who has schizophrenia does perfectly fine with no side effects or weight gain on antipsychotics for the last 17 years and would much prefer that to sinister voices.” —New York Times Commenter, SLC
“This article also focuses on a few patients with psychotic disorders without considering the impact of their disorder on family members or society. The perspective in this article leads to bias.” —New York Times Commenter, New York
DJ Jaffe, whose death in 2020 led to a lengthy obituary also published by The New York Times, was a fervent advocate for forced measures against people he referred to as “the seriously mentally ill.” He told the side so many of these commenters speak of… In countless editorials. At the White House. On television. And speaking of families, he was once given an award (one of several he received) by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI, a well-known advocacy organization that has centered family voices from its start) of New York State at their annual conference. He also maintained a “mental illness policy” website, and hosted a Facebook group, both of which live on to this day. And, he was adamantly opposed to “balance.” He argued that the people for whom he advocated were already invisible enough.
I’m loathe to agree with anything DJ. That said, he was absolutely right. In theory. The invisible bear no responsibility to share more space with those already so well seen. They know well enough that their chance to get heard is one in a million, and when it circles round they better use it for all its worth. Allowing for the ‘other side’ to take up precious space can also serve as permission to ignore all that challenges someone’s existing belief systems. That’s just how learning tends to go. We seek out what already aligns with what we believe, and anything else is left to try and chip their way in. Convincing the already underrepresented to share in those moments is essentially convincing them to participate in their own disablement. And again, perhaps that is precisely the idea.
The thing is, though, that DJ was playing the victim whilst already winning the game. Much like these commenters’ viewpoints, too. That the Times covered DJ’s death in such long form only serves to prove my point. Whining that they weren’t getting seen was all strategy and bluster, not truth. And I’ll be damned if I’ll be convinced that any of us need to share our one little sliver, while they’re over there coveting virtually the whole rest of the pie.
Moral of the Story: The seen shall cry loudest when they fall into the shadows because they’re most unused to not being heard.
It’s All About the Meds, Baby
“The article’s anti drug stance doesn’t show one example of how taking anti-psychotic medications, despite significant side effects, has literally given people their lives back.” —New York Times Commenter, California
“I vehemently disagree with the premise that discontinuing psychiatric medication in severely mentally ill patients is beneficial, or even harmless. … Severe mental illness must be treated on an ongoing basis just like physical illness.” —New York Times Commenter, Alaska
First let me start by offering this excerpt from the article that people in the comments section were so vehemently critiquing:
“[Beth] continues to have unsettling visions, but a religious practice along with a calibrated mix of drugs helps somewhat to make her life more manageable while inflicting only mild tremors, and she is playing her cello for the first time in 20 years.”
Sit with that for a minute.
People were criticizing an article for not including someone who’s explicitly been helped by psychotropics, when one of the people not only referenced but given the full professional photographer treatment was specifically described as… being helped by psychotropics.
In truth, what people really mean by “one-sided” is that they’re uncomfortable with the “other side” getting any space at all, let alone more of it than them. Because it represents a threat. Because so much of their power rests in convincing people—the diagnosed individual, families, lawmakers, providers—that their way is not just a way, but the only way. And the moment that gets threatened, it’s as if people’s brains shut down. It’s almost as if they’re having a trauma response during which the left frontal cortex shuts down and all the blood rushes to the emotional center—the amygdala—where “fight, flight, freeze, and fawn” lie in wait.
In other words, it’s not that the Hearing Voices movement says that someone should be okay with living with their voices and not taking psychiatric drugs to drown them out (because that’s not what anyone’s saying at all). It’s that the movement says that some people can; That it’s one real option among several. Some people find that threatening, and in those moments of perceived threat, their ability to truly see, hear, and reason go out the window. Fighting back with facts only raises further ire as emotions boil over.
Moral of the Story: In a world where the most progressive research says only around 20% of people will do best staying on psychotropics longer term, a fight ensues to cram 100% into the minority.
Science in Name Only (Isn’t Science at All)
“The author is clearly not a fan of neuroscience, and cherry-picking a WHO report as his only source of data is revealing – he has a particular story he wishes to tell.” —New York Times Commenter, Utah
“great to know there are people engaged in this healing by being who they are without harmful normalizing drugs.” That’s the argument that anti-vaxxers use, right up until they’re vented or dead.” —New York Times Commenter, New York
One critique I’ve heard of Bergner’s piece is that it didn’t include enough of the science that might help further legitimize the stories it seeks to tell. There’s some truth in that. It’s helpful when the science is right there next to the stories, easy to point to and all. However, given the themes already discussed, I’m not entirely sure how much difference it would have made.
There’s also some poetic justice in letting the stories stand a bit more on their own, knowing the science exists for those who care to look it up. Too many of us are sick of going ignored—sometimes to our own graves—until the same things we’ve been yelling into the void get raised up as “new discoveries.” They’re heard as if for the first time because some person with a lot more privilege got paid to research and “prove” what we’ve already known (and been saying) for years because we’ve lived it. It gets old.
That said, one of the things I’ve been most thankful to Robert Whitaker and Mad in America for over the years is creating a platform to say over and over and over again that we are on the side of science. Yes, science is not conclusive on many related matters at this point, and that’s important to note too. But the science points in a direction, and that direction supports so much of what we’re saying. And when people are forced to stop responding in emotion and generalities—to really go head to head on the points—it becomes plainly evident.
Yet no one wants to be labeled “anti-science” or a “conspiracy theorist,” even if they know it to be untrue. Those insults—even the implications of them—are often the kiss of death; An indication that everyone can stop listening to anything you have to say from here on out. They are routinely weaponized, and often met with a sigh of relief by onlookers who were momentarily afraid they might need to actually reconsider their beliefs.
Moral of the Story: Anti-science is a diagnosis for dissenters. Once diagnosed we can ignore them with impunity.
If You Don’t Fit in the Box Now, You Didn’t Belong There in the First Place
“I hope the NY Times will publish an article that better reflects the situation of people who do have psychotic disorders like schizophrenia and the research that supports medically based treatments. This article definitely supports the many people who hear voices who don’t have this brain disorder.” —Susan Inman
“Caroline Mazel-Carlton did not have schizophrenia. She is one of the many people that hear voices. A symptom doesn’t make a disease. Whether antipsychotics should have been used to treat her voices is a function of how distressed and disabled she was by them.” —Jeffrey Lieberman
And now for the heavy hitters. Inman is a parent based in Canada. She writes frequently for the Huffington Post and other publications about her experiences with her daughter, and finds no shortage of other platforms upon which to do so, as well. Even more notably, Lieberman is a psychiatrist who most recently lost his most prestigious post because of a Tweet he sent out that was rooted in racism and misogyny. Apparently that didn’t slow him down too much.
In fairness, I should acknowledge that this quote from Lieberman is actually drawn from a Letter to the Editor of The New York Times that he apparently submitted but the Times has not published. At least, not yet (and hopefully never). His wife, Rosemarie Lieberman, is circulating it around social media on his behalf. Regardless, it’s genuinely bad behavior for Inman and especially a doctor such as Lierberman to go diagnosing (or undiagnosing, as the case may be) people from afar. Surely, they both know that.
Yet, when bad behavior is the norm, and/or when you are in a privileged power position where the rules don’t apply in quite the same way, it apparently can become something of a free-for-all. The dismissal of evidence that disputes one’s hypothesis—called “confirmation bias” in the scientific world—is commonplace. But this isn’t just inanimate “evidence” we’re observing. It’s Caroline’s life. She’s a real, live human being. And she’s far from standing alone.
Perhaps Peter Bullimore (a prominent figure and internationally recognized trainer in the Hearing Voices movement) said it best when he said:
“You tell me I was just misdiagnosed. Then please also tell me who I should sue for those ten years of my life I lost when you were convinced I was seriously mentally ill?” (Note: This is a paraphrased statement, and not an exact quote.)
Moral of the Story: If you get to a point where you look too much like “us,” then the idea that you were ever too much like “them” becomes a threat.
Stop Pill-Shaming Me
“I strongly recommend, this Freddie DeBoer piece – which I thought was a solid, sober critique/rebuttal to this phenomenon.” —New York Times Commenter, New York
Mere hours after Bergner’s piece hit the Internet, Freddie deBoer hit back with an emotional video response.
“I am someone with a psychotic disorder who has suffered under the influence of medication for a long time. But I’m also someone who needs to be medicated, and the absolutely relentless insistence that I have to love my disorder, that I have to act like its somehow a super power or positive in my life is very tiring to me… I’m just so tired of being told that there’s something so wrong with my medication that it outweighs the benefits.” —Freddie deBoer
The problem is that—within the first twenty seconds—Freddie demonstrates that he doesn’t understand the Hearing Voices movement, characterizing it as “a movement of psychotic people [who say] there’s nothing wrong with them,” and “that being psychotic is just a different way to be.” (In actuality, and as aforementioned, the Hearing Voices approach does not assume but nor does it exclude the potential of regarding voice hearing in a pathologized manner, just as it does not assume nor exclude that getting rid of the voices is a desired outcome.) He then goes on to talk about his own experience as someone who has faced great struggle in the face of unusual beliefs, and significant disturbances to his emotional state.
Freddie deBoer’s pain is real, and I have no desire to even attempt to invalidate that. His desire to see newer psychiatric drugs developed that are more effective and cause less harm and that can be a real option for those who want to take them is entirely fair. It’s a hope that many people (including many connected to the Hearing Voices movement) share.
But the article doesn’t argue that everyone should uniformly love their diagnosis, or the struggles that earned them their label. It doesn’t venture to suggest that the psychotropic cons outweigh the pros for everyone across the board. For the bulk of his 10-minute-and-change video, DeBoer is responding to something else entirely and misdirecting it at this piece that apparently was received as salt in his already existing wounds. It’s clearly very painful and deeply personal to him.
Unfortunately, this phenomenon is too common, and it’s extra hard to counter because the pain people are expressing is so very real. (And few people want to try and have an intellectual debate with a person in tears. It’s not only generally ineffective, but also a bad look.) We need to make space to hear this pain, and explore what it’s really about. But we need to do that without losing sight of how these misdirected responses that essentially “misdiagnose” this article obfuscate what’s actually being shared.
As Caroline and I actually discuss in a piece we wrote for Mad in America in 2019 called “The Pill Shaming Phenomenon,” little of this is actually about the pills so much is it is about the power abuses involved in their use: with no informed consent, and as if they are the only choice available.
Moral of the Story: In a world where so many of us have been convinced to wholeheartedly adopt the belief that there’s only one way, even hearing about other ways can feel like a physical attack.
No Matter Who You Are, We See You as We Believe You to Be
“Roller skating successfully isn’t supporting yourself. Neither is playing the cello. Being so distracted that you can’t bathe or do laundry isn’t moving anyone forward.” —New York Times Commenter, New York
“We shouldn’t be content if an intelligent person can only rollerblade or play the cello for fun and live and volunteer in a group home.” —New York Times Commenter, Baltimore
Perhaps most perplexing (except not really) is that Bergner’s entire piece was about how Caroline, Chacku, Beth, and Ephraim had all moved to a place of having very full lives (albeit in less than conventional ways), but many people seemed unable to absorb that point. Between them, they are movement leaders, parents, homeowners, authors, an accomplished musician, spouses, and well-respected public figures.
For example, let’s look at Chacku. He currently works as the Director for the SAMHSA Healthy Transitions Initiative with the Center for Practice Innovations at Columbia University, while also managing his own consulting business focused on building racial equity. He’s married, a father, and highly sought after as a keynote speaker, board member, and more.
And back to Caroline. She works full-time (and then some) directing the Wildflower Alliance’s training team, developing curriculum, and traveling all over this nation and beyond to share her wisdom (sometimes with her husband of five years in tow). She’s worked consistently for over 14 years now in settings from Southern Appalachia to forensic units in Massachusetts, channeling all those experiences into the support she offers and the trainings she develops. Even by the most conventional standards, she has found substantial success in her life, both personal and professional.
Yet an astounding number of people in the comments section wondered aloud whether she could hold a job, or minimized her down to her orange roller skates as pictured in the photograph that the Times selected to represent her. Sadly, that not only demeans and diminishes who Caroline is, but also the power that roller skating has symbolized in her life. Having traveled a great deal with Caroline and heard her story several times over along the way, I know that joining a roller derby team while still living in a group home was one of her first steps to regaining a sense of citizenship in the world. I know it was on that team that she first found so many other women who were getting to be loud, proud, and quirky and respected for it, and so it was there she learned that perhaps her true self could also exist on this plane without needing to be silenced or shamed. And I’ve heard her talk about the definition of ‘recovery’ in the context of the derby world, where what it refers to is not whether or not you fall, but how you are able to get back up.
Yes, I found some of these comments among the most painful. Because so much meaning and beauty is lost. And because it’s one of the most hopeless messages of the entire thing: You can’t ever escape the trap of the lens through which we choose to see you. You will always be whoever we want you to be in our eyes. You are powerless over our perceptions.
Moral of the Story: Among the marginalized, only the exceptional get noticed, often just before we prepare to knock them back down to where we think they belong.
Challenging Psychiatry Is Accepting Chaos
“It’s not “discrimination” to want such people locked up somewhere they cannot do any harm to others. It is basic self preservation.” —New York Times Commenter, Unknown Location
“There are a lot of sick, cruel, confused, dangerous people who are better off being medicated.” —New York Times Commenter, Washington DC
“The science on the efficacy of pharmaceutical and other medical approaches is overwhelming and largely positive in that it makes lives not perfect but certainly better, and keeps dangerous people from being dangerous.” —New York Times Commenter, New York
There are certainly other things I could pull out of the New York Times comments section on Daniel Bergner’s article, including the good ol’ tried and true, “If you’ve got a diagnosis, then you’re dangerous.” And that is in fact the last one I’m going to attempt to tackle.
What I think I’ve come to realize over the years is that—for too many people—challenging psychiatry means accepting chaos. It withdraws the easy surface answer that tells us, “We’ll all be safe if we just get those people into treatment,” or lock them away, or what have you.
Challenging psychiatry doesn’t mean accepting the Hearing Voices movement as the new answer. An awful lot of the time, it means accepting that we don’t know. And that is too terrifying to bear for many people who just want to go about their day, and need to have some sense of safety in order to reasonably do so.
Some of us find liberation in the admission of what we don’t know. It means opportunity, exploration, and the power to self-determine a new path. Others find intolerable and paralyzing fear. That fear drives them to look away from inconvenient truths, and to participate in the construction of a system that employs its enforcers to treat outsiders as threats to the illusion of safety it was designed to preserve.
Bergner’s piece challenged that illusion in a substantive way and in a forum that was too visible to ignore or discredit outright. That made some people angry, even outraged. Or scared. Or all of the above. The New York Times’ comments section is what resulted. As discouraging as it was, at least it raised up some of the realities for us to see a little more clearly and all at once.
Moral of the Story: It’s not about the truth. It never has been. And so truth as the lone weapon will inevitably fail.
I guess that leaves us in a place of needing to better figure out how to use the magic of illusions ourselves if we truly intend to elicit lasting change. Convincing people to simply give up their favorite illusions seems the most futile mission of all as it requires a fundamental shift in human nature. That said, I hope we can find a way to continue to weave in what we know to be real all the same. Too many of us have found liberation in truth to just let it go now.
My position is that anyone who is not suffering from a cancer tumour should maybe not speak “for” those who do.
I have been attending Hearing Voices groups for a decade and NOT ONCE have I heard anyone berate a schizophrenic for coming off meds.
N O T O N C E.
What I agree does happen is that schizophrenia suffers do not readily want to come off their meds. Other people who DO NOT have schizophrenia may have all manner of worthy or healing reasons to help people titrate down but if anyone knows how appallingly dangerous and difficult and protracted are the withdrawal syndromes it is the schizophrenia sufferers themselves, the people with the metaphorical cancer. I saw a video today of a rather famous schizophrenia advocate. She had quit meds some months ago or titrated down. In the video she mentions how impossible it is to function whilst caring for a baby and going through the rollercoaster of panic attacks born of withdrawal. There is nobody there to help her and her relationship took a knock mid detox. Sera it is not that easy for some to just fling a pill box into the stormy sea. I am on the side of those who think antipsychotics are odious, however, I think the same about heroin and alcohol. I would not dream of telling those heroin dependant others to quit what they are using to stop themselves going over the edge.
People seem to want to accuse someone of causing dependency rather than build a detox house that offers to help people overcome their dependency. The key word is “offers”.
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Hi Daiphanous Weeping,
I’m a little confused by your comment. My piece has nothing to do with who should and shouldn’t attempt to withdraw from psychiatric drugs, or how easy it will be if they try… The reality is that many people with privilege fail, and many people with little privilege succeed… But privilege (especially when one doesn’t need to work, raise kids, etc.) certainly does open up a world of possibilities that increase one’s chances. Neither I nor the NY Times piece would or do disagree with those points…
-Sera
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Dear Sera,
I think the word priviledge is an attempt to catagorize and pigeonhole people one has not spoken to enough to gage the extent of suffering.
A very good psychotherapist I lived with for a few years was not very pandering to me after my father died. I once went stroppy and told him he was dismissing my grief. He shocked me by telling me…
“So you think your grief is more deep and painful than anyone else’s grief?”
I found this dreadful at that moment but after it I always found it a helpful way to spot that heirarchical way of thinking in other people. A “my suffering outmatches your suffering because of xyz so therefore I am more entitled to compassion than you are”.
Compassion don’t do entitlement.
ALL ARE EQUAL.
ALL BEINGS HAVE SUFFERING.
ALL SUFFERING SHOULD CEASE.
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HI Sera, Thanks for your very thoughtful and informative critique of the comments on the NYT article. I was actually quite happy to see them print something that tells a different story about meds and hearing voices. The comments seem to reflect how thoroughly brainwashed people are about “dangerous” others and what a good job pharma has done with obscuring the facts about their poisons.
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Ann,
Yes, it’s great the article happened… I just wish the comments reflection wasn’t such an accurate reflection of how hard it is for some folks to hear and just how far we have yet to go!
Thanks for reading,
Sera
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https://youtu.be/rAMJ6FzEy3A
Sera, here is that video that came up in todays algorhythms.
This made me want to tell this fellow schizophrenia endurer in the video to keep navigating through the rigors of withdrawal but in watching the whole video I don’t see that she feels she is in the right spot to be doing a year long breakdown ordeal whilst the life of her young baby is relying on her being in some semblance of an even keel. When I quit antipsychotics there were times when it got really dangerous. I mean dangerous for me and for others. If a stranger shut someone in a room and forced them to be having shapeshifting hallucinations and psychotic paranoia for several months or more through the gamble of quitting and plunked an infant on their lap and a boyfriend whispering sweet nothings in their voice hearing ear that ravaged being would soon be crying out to get away from the withdrawal nightmare. Most people who quit antipsychotics are strong people in every sense. Tough. This lady has strengths and I am sure she will quit someday if she wants to but I go with HER choice that now is perhaps not a good time. I feel wincing that I cannot free her from drugs that equally may be doing her a mischeif but it is not my right to tell her what to do with her body and mind. Too many articles are trumpetting a call to rescue schizophrenics from aparent abuse. It reminds me of the furore over satanic cults in Orkney a few decades ago, where the whole of Britain believed children needed rescuing from their loving mothers and fathers. There was no proof those parents were defiling their offspring. So what the hell was going on? Where was the mass hysteria rising out of?
I believe most psychiatric medications are harmful. But so is drink driving. So is smoking while pregnant. So is scoffing a vat of ice cream and pizza every evening. So is living with a partner who breaks your heart on a monthly basis. So is boxing and wrestling and white water rafting. So is touring tropical war torn countries with a bag of heroin in your sports shoe. Humans have the right to make rotton choices. Because to impinge on their choices means we are trying to live their safe life for them. Which means they don’t get to make choices. Which is a form of abuse also.
I believe baby caring is the best way forward. I mentioned it in another comment elsewhere, click on my name to find it, I explained how it is a way of tolerating a person’s free choice as if they are a big baby. It is feasible to venture to “educate” a baby without damning their free choices. But education does not mean turning out identical rows of identical nodding puppets on strings. Education is like being a servant in an up market restaurant where you bring the world to the diner, the baby, and you ask the baby what she finds most delectable about the world. You don’t shove it down her throat. That was the problem with psychiatry. Always “educating” the enlightened mad woman.
Believe that being schizophrenic makes you enlightened. This is because schizophrenia is torment to live with and all forms of torture from gas chambers to prisoner of war camps to abusive relationships make a person have to be enlightened to endure the unendurable. People ought not to be so quick to want to pontificate superior choices to the figures in our community who know the true worth of the term “freedom of choice”….since year after year after year their hallucinations never give them this GIFT of FREEDOM. No one should tell someone “what” free choice they ought to make if they live a life of never having their OWN free choices UNINTERUPTED.
I would argue that all of us should be this way, ceasing to presume to know what everyone else needs.
It is fine to share knowledge that antipsychotics can be damaging. Sharing is great. Shaming the driven mad who hallucinate is not caring.
Some people do feel they need their medications. That is all you need to know to back away from upseting the clever decisive people tha schizophrenics are.
They are NOT imbeciles.
To think they don’t know that antipsychotics are not nice is perhaps as condescending as psychiatry has been at times of the brightness of these people in the past. They take the pills often not through a doctors mandate but because the hallucinations are frightening and they get angry aand desperate. That is never to suggest there arenot reprehensible psychistrists and pill poppong culture, there certainly is.
I would argue that it is irresistable for many people right now to tell other people what is “for their own good” because it meets their own need to feel posessed of the “right logic” or “right moral intellectual integrity”.
If a baby refuses to be babied by its mother then the mother, respecting that momentary need of theirs, IS being baby caring.
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Daiphanous,
At least at first glance, the only thing I would clearly disagree with here is that all people with schizophrenia diagnoses know the potential problems with psych drugs. Unfortunately, that information is so intentionally withheld so much of the time that many people actually do NOT have accurate information either on the dangers or the lack of consistent efficacy.
But in any case, just to reiterate… I’m still confused about your comments here… It’s not that they are bad comments. I just don’t see anyone saying that the drugs are uniformly bad and everyone should get off of them.. I’m certainly not saying that.
Sera
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I’m very dangerous to people. People who try to hurt or harm me. I’m very kind to people. People who are good to me. I’m very neutral to people. People who don’t care about me nor me about them.
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Registeredforthissite,
I appreciate the sentiment! Unfortunately, of course, we live in a world where folks with psych histories will be viewed terribly far too much of the time if they respond with aggression even if they were in the right or doing so in self-defense.
Sera
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Dear Sera,
the name is Diaphanous Weeping. The weeping is what I was getting up to last night around four am as a fresh battery of hallucinations made me dash to my stockpile of killer pills. I do not mean antipsychotics. I have not had one for three years. I mean a beaker of about a hundred lethal pills guaranteed to mean this is my last week of bearing the insufferable. I have a kind of schizophrenia that has a hellish tyrant hallucination who DEMANDS, night and day, every five minutes, around the clock, no matter what I am busy doing, that I force myself to recite that I am schizophrenic or he will destroy me. Armchair inqisitors who recommend their zealous answers for treating their own upsets to me, usually that of defiantly challenging “a hallucination” as if it is the same thing as a depressed low mood from a valentines rejection or the same as defying an insult from a bossy dad, seldom “get it” that HALLUCINATIONS are BEYOND MY CONTROL. Instead, there is a growing trend of victimizing the victim of nightmare hallucinations by telling them how to “properly” deal with their hallucinations. There IS NO PROPERLY for any person’s private HELL. But I have tried telling that to the crooning lips of a preacher and a lecturer, who has NEVER had a moment of hallucinations, never mind decades of hallucinations.
I am too ILL to go over your article in depth.
My angels say…
THE ILL HAVE A RIGHT TO BE ILL and they HAVE A RIGHT TO SEE THEIR OWN ILL SELF IN THEIR OWN PREFERRED FREE CHOICE OF A WAY THAT SUITS THEM.
I say if everyone regarded everyone in this way there would be no need to laboriously and logically comb over the details of this person’s experience or that person’s experience in an effort to exalt whose narrative is “right” in the latest “consensus paradigm”. Any pontificating critic who is trying to be “right” about anyone who is driven to a point of despair upon suffering endless endless endless hallucinations is frankly putting the need to be “right” before the need to be “pity”.
I am not saying you are like this. I am saying I have encountered many who have this “agenda” around the hallucinating, ill psychotic people who by dint of being people who hallucinate are ALREADY being PERSECUTED by tyrannical AGENDAS beyond their control.
In my view too many want to erase the reality of the ill because they want the illness to be a political bogus form of indoctrination. So that any schizophrenic who does try to discern that they do have schizophrenia is increasingly shunned as antiquated. It reminds me of when conquistadors shunned the antiquated dreamy notions of indigenous tribes. You try to heal but do the suffering want your mission of healing? Many may. But not all.
You cite a “prominent figure of international etc etc etc”. Why cite an “authority” on what I suffer from? There IS NO AUTHORITY ON MY HELL but the one living through it night and day…which is ME…not your popular expert who possibly has a totally DIFFERENT set of hallucinations and delusions or notions of beliefs. Not ALL HALLUCINATIONS are IDENTICAL.
Unfortunately the idea being promoted elsewhere, that they are all a people dimly labouring under a psychiatry given, samey dismissable error of their own INTELLECTUAL or LOGICAL perception fits snugly with the misconception that hallucinations are now LOGICALLY CAUSED by WRONG BELIEFS, which is the convenient bus stop of all ideologies that thrive on telling ill people they have been stupid and allowed themselves to get converted into an antiquated take on HELL and so therefore their HELL does not exist and so therefore neither does their abject decades of suffering exist. All the ill gotta do is believe in the GOD of LOGIC that now says they are not ill.
You write…
“That said, one of the things I’ve been most thankful to Robert Whitaker and Mad in America for over the years is creating a platform to say over and over and over again that we are on the side of science. Yes, science is not conclusive on many related matters at this point, and that’s important to note too. But the science points in a direction, and that direction supports so much of what we’re saying. And when people are forced to stop responding in emotion and generalities—to really go head to head on the points—it becomes plainly evident.
Yet no one wants to be labeled “anti-science”.
I do not know about your use of “we” if you are being clear that you are happy for voice hearers to remain firm in their OWN beliefs of what is the matter with them. Presumably many of those “beliefs” will be as diverse as are indigenous tribal beliefs. Some will be “for” science. Some will want nothing to do with genuflefting to science. Rather they might want to be “emotional” about their hellish hallucinations…so let them be! It is not our place to indoctrinate even those we believe have been previously indoctrinated. That path leads to bloody holy wars.
You mention a Frank deBoer. I have not read his actual fragment but you seem to be rewriting his own self descriptions in your own word choices. He does not call his “psychotic disorder”….”pain”. To call it pain can blur the specific suffering he feels into being a sensation everyone feels, even someone who feels pain at loss of a job or exam. I am not sure if he calls his “psychotic disorder” a “significant disturbance” or if you rename his hell “for his own good”. Ditto his “emotional state”. Does he use these exact words for HIS suffering? If not then may I ask why you are translating his exact choice of words for him? Given that you say your Hearing Voices Network upholds the “freedom of choice” that ALL beings have, to interpret and navigate their OWN EXPERIENCES of their hallucinations IN there OWN way why reshuffle the exact words? But maybe that is my misreading of what has occurred and if so please forgive my HALLUCINATING brain for making sitting still to read ANYTHING pitifully impossible. That said, just because I am addled by hallucinations this does NOT permit any “expert” on me to step in and pontificate and give me “LESSONS” in hallucinations they have never had. Psychiatry traditionally went down that path, by virtue of “rescueing” me from my IMBECILIC inability to MAKE MY OWN FREE CHOICES as to how I regard my OWN illness, and now antipsychiatry is a doppleganger diagnoser of my need to diagnose myself. Frank deBoer seems to have diagnosed himself as having a “psychotic disorder”, just as a Christain might “diagnose” their suffering as caused by the Fall. Whatever makes sense to the suffering ought to be respected. This means respecting those who do not think they have “psychotic disorder” AND EQUALLY respecting those thousands who do think they have whatever they wish to think they have, be it a kind of epilepsy or hereditary glitch from the way humans interbred with other hominids way back before the snowball Earth thawed. The exact words a baby may use to describe a grazed knee IS the exact words THEY WANT you to respond to.
Hallucinations DO NOT CAUSE the shambolic history of the pharmacological factory. Any more that a person choosing to believe in God CAUSED the Spanish Inquisition. A baby believing their grazed knee was from an impudent tree elf who shoved them DOES NOT CAUSE the millions of bullies in the world who shove.
It is NOT BELIEFS that CAUSE BULLYING it is the lack of emotion, a blend of emotions needed to arrive at compassion for all people’s free choices to believe what the hell they like. Whether that means believing in martyrdom or headscarves or crucifixes or blue elephant deities or empirical science or pushy tree elves.
I sense Sera, that you have a wonderful belief that many beings can heal in your way of understanding why they might be ill and suffering from AND I DO NOT WANT TO STOP YOUR AMAZING HEALING BELIEF.
I bring you INTO my kind of HEARING VOICES group that welcomes your ridiculing of tyrants of psychiatry as you perceive them. Please understand that I live with a hallucination of one that a political placcard and trauma informed care does nothing to erradicate. I need baby caring. Not a reframing of dictionary words. Words may have the power to dissolve indoctrination by giving fresh outlooks and paradigms. But words will not stop my hallucination of a tyrant who orders me to recite that I am schizophrenic. And so words will not stop me rushing for a beaker a pills at four am. The reason people are so in love with notion that words can cure everything is because they need to think “logic” can straighten out ANY anguish, even a truck load of prisoners of war stuffed into a train. It gives an excuse to avoid believing in the healing power of just holding.
No caring scientific direction is needed to just…
HOLD THE PITIFUL.
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People hurt people.
It is what people do.
Given that there are eight billion of them and thus eight billion reasons to feel fed up with people…which adds up to a lot of fed upness…
I prefer to forgive them.
I have often found that the ones I do forgive become my steadfast friends.
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Hey Sera, thanks for writing this. I was stunned to encounter an article that good in the NY Times, especially in their magazine and on a Sunday. Then I too went to the comments. God bless you for putting up 72 of them: I couldn’t read past the first four most upvoted ones. You mentioned that it was alas a good thing that the Times shut down commenting, and I concur; however, I really wish this piece on MIA that thoughtfully challenges some of the main presumptions could have been linked in there for those who are so firm in their beliefs on these matters to find.
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Thanks, Steven! I wish I could have linked it there, too, although I don’t know that there would have been any real hope of the people who most needed to actually reading it!
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Sera,
I’m really struggling how to respond to your article. I’m torn in so many different ways. I am obviously sympathetic and empathetic to your perspective as I have literally spent the last 15 years dedicated to helping my wife heal while I kept her completely out of the mental health system and off any drugs…I had to learn to listen to her. Her fears. Her perspective. Her everything…
And yet, as a ‘family member’ we have real fears, real perspectives, real needs, too. I don’t share them much on this site because I understand its perspective and also because I chose to walk with my wife when all her trauma and dissociation exploded into our marriage and family…and so I chose the emotional distress and sacrifices that walking with her through all that stuff would require me to make in order to be a good healing companion for her.
The real problem I see is that everyone wants their own perspectives, needs, fears, etc., validated but I rarely find someone willing to do the same for someone else, even a loved one, especially when that requires validating a perspective antithetical to or in competition with our own. And so then we engage in a battle of wills and the stronger wins…at the sacrifice of the relationship.
What we need are people willing to seek win/win solutions. I believe you and this website are just trying to get ‘this side’s’ perspective out there, but I’ve tried to walk in such a way with my wife that there isn’t ‘her’ side and ‘my’ side. I always refer to this as ‘our healing journey’ because if I other her in any way…it creates space for us to grow apart and this journey is so hard on both of us, even today, that we won’t make it if I don’t own it all as my own because we are in it together.
Sam
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Sam,
I can’t help but think you may be doing essentially what I’m talking about throughout this article which is to apply your own lens and not read what’s actually there.
I *do* acknowledge in the family section that an outside perspective (be it family or otherwise) can be useful, if they’re trusted and not too caught up in their own stuff. The problem is that far too many family members aren’t that either because they were a part of causing the trauma and/or too caught up in their own stuff in trying to respond to the other person’s distress… And yet, most of society typically does see the family member as having NOT *some* input worth hearing, NOT equal insight into what’s happening, but MORE, BETTER, etc.
That’s my point there after reading so many people who wanted to know what Caroline’s family had to say, suggested in ways that honestly came across as suggesting the family would be able to overrule Caroline’s take and correct for the distortions they believe she’s offering…
If you aren’t that family member whose insisting that your voice is MORE important and more accurate that your wife’s, etc. then that section really isn’t about you.
I’ve never argued that family members are useless and have nothing to offer, and I’m fully aware they need their own support and can play a critical role in things.. Hence why I do fairly frequently talk about Open Dialogue, an why we do offer two Hearing Voices groups specifically for family/friends at my work…
I don’t know you or your wife beyond this community so I can’t say anything definitive one way or another, but from most of what you’ve said, I just don’t think that section is really about you.
Either way, thanks for reading.
-Sera
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Hi Sera,
based upon your response to me, my original comment should be rated a ‘fail’ for conveying what I had hoped to do, sigh. I’ve wondered for the last 4 days if it was even worth a 2nd attempt, but as I continue to see negative comments directed toward the family, perhaps I will try again.
1) I do believe I understand the general purpose of your analysis of the comments section of the NYT article. Having walked with my wife these last 15 years and having followed Mad in America these last 6 or so years, I believe I understand the general perspective you are sharing and agree with much of it.
2) However, I believe your analysis and the generally negative comments directed toward family by others here presupposes a generally negative ‘bad faith’ motive concerning the majority of family. However, I see them as victims of Big Pharma and psychiatry who are manipulated along with the rest of those in our culture to accept the common biomedical narrative of mental health. And NAMI to whom family turns for help, support and training, as you have written here in the past, is just an arm of that coalition and so family go there, thinking they will be helped, only to be corrupted, sigh.
3) Moreover, I believe this analysis forgets the inherent selfishness we ALL have. We all have hopes, dreams, desires and needs. They aren’t necessarily bad, but when something extreme like severe trauma and dissociation is thrown into a relationship, sadly those things can turn a loving relationship into a war campaign to have those needs met.
Sadly the manipulation of Big Pharma and psychiatry; our general culture, as well, and our inherent selfishness all work to create a ‘battle of wills’ even among loved ones and sadly the strongest win and the weaker loses.
My wife inadvertently saved us from this by asking me not to read anything about her ‘condition’ when we first started our healing journey, and I kept that promise for the first 2 or 3 years until we had sufficiently developed a rhythm and methodology that worked for both of us. But I also had to fight my inherent selfishness and tell myself over and over that I was fighting for a win/win for me and my wife, rather than allowing my selfishness to twist my relationship with my wife into a battle of wills.
Have you heard of the Better Angels group? In this ugly culture war in which our country is immersed, this group and others like it are trying to help people stop presupposing the inherent ‘bad faith’ of the ‘other side’ and instead learn to really understand each other and find our overwhelming common ground.
I truly am sorry for each and everyone of you who have been hurt and betrayed by your family and loved ones, but unless we can find that commonality and love that I believe motivates most of us, then those who are struggling will continue to lose.
I’ve been at this 15 years, and I’m more than my wife’s ‘ally’ as the Left uses that term. I’m her foxhole buddy who walked with and at times literally carried her thru every extreme state and everything else she experienced no matter where or when it happened. There is no group in the world that can do what family can do, period. And so we’ve got to move past the larger culture-war milieu that literally believes those on the ‘other side’ are ‘evil’. We’ve got to train and empower our loved ones to be the healing companions those who are hurt need most.
Sam
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Dear caring Sam,
How interesting that group sounds, Better Angels.
Revolutions are ageist. There are stages in life. A baby can see that much is true. In my teens I had a priority list that involved getting thin, getting a boyfriend, having money that week to buy the skirt or shoes, writing an award winning story. In the next stage those concerns were revealed to me as petty. And in the next again stage I wanted to be influential and regarded as amazing for my dynamic intelligence, and the following stage revealed those ambitions quite besides the point. At different ages a human is meant to focus on what that age means to them. A teenager is not going to resonate with an older person. And the teenager that the older person once was themselves is not going to resonate anymore with their older self. We are meant to evolve. The butterfly does not cling to its youthful encasement. Aging is the houdini escapology trick we keep tinkering with to fly free. But each age brings us immense treasures. We look back wistfully on our simpler phases, those earlier priority lists, with fond affection. It is this affection that also becomes a treasure because it brings a certain mellowing about the different ways a person may want to be. Age makes us more “baby caring” towards all the ages we have lived through. But because the other ages have not arrived there yet they may not have the tolerance that older people have, even as they campaign for world tolerance.
In any revolution there comes a point where being mellow is deemed to be fraternizing with old mores. The treasure that the older person has that could go into the revolution as a steadying factor gets rejected to make the revolution muscular.
In ancient tribal cultures this was not seen as wise. Indiginous people always included the elders in group decisions. Seeking their good counsel over friction and incursions and in fighting. A communuty is NO community without ALL AGES being brought into decision making. This is the path of strength through harmony.
You can forget about such “baby caring” mellow communities in the near future. Everyone will be destroying real communities in the rush to make “perfect” communities.
There is little one can do to stop it. Anyone older sadly has to keep their kindness, mellowness and tolerance a secret.
Like a dirty filthy mark of excrement.
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Hi Diaphonous Weeping,
You so often say things well.
I wish you the best.
Sam
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Sera, I enjoyed your approach to the NYT article. It’s very creative to look at the comments as a way of showing how hard it is for so many people to accept alternatives to mainstream psychiatry.
One of the points I made in my comment on the article was that since drug research has resulted in such minimal benefit, maybe funding should be diverted to other things, such as providing housing as well as social and psychological support to the mentally ill, something that was promised when mental hospitals started closing, but never happened to any significant degree.
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Thanks, Marie! I appreciate that perspective. In some of our trainings we’ve increasingly been talking about what if ‘By any means necessary’ meant not locking someone up against their will, etc, but getting them housing, and other basic needs met. People getting so stuck in ‘more of the same’ being the answer rather than addressing basic needs or some of the other things you mention is so damaging.
-Sera
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Sera, I admire your willingness to deal with the bigotry of the readers of this NYTimes article and the thoughtful way you have gone about it. But I wonder whether it is possible to fight bigotry with rational argument. I have always seen us psychiatric survivors as an oppressed group like any other, and in my 65 years or so of political activism, as a supporter of other oppressed groups and of psych survivors like myself, I’ve found that rational argument does not work well in fighting bigotry. It isn’t what stopped slavery, it hasn’t stopped sexism or racism. The few positive changes we’ve accomplished came about through political activism, from refusing to accept being treated as less than human. I wish we were out there refusing very forcefully to accept the debased role in society that the bigots have tried to force on us.
Here in the United States, as people are starting to realize, our country is rapidly becoming a totalitarian state. The people who want it that way don’t give a damn about intellectual arguments. We have to try to stop them in a different, more political way. If we psych survivors don’t do that, I fear that, just like under the German Nazis almost a century ago, we will be the first group to be exterminated.
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Ted,
I – for the most part – do not think rational argument can win this. (I think I say something to that effect in at least one spot in this piece.) That said, I do think us working to fine tune our own understanding of what’s going on with the other side, name it, find ways to pull it apart and make sense of it… is important to figuring out how we want to push back.
I’d love to believe this piece might get through to all those people who couldn’t see the NYT article for what it was… Maybe it will be successful with a few who were already closer to the fence. I don’t think it will otherwise solve the problem on their end. It’s really more to give voice and make meaning on our end, I think.
-Sera
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Sera, I think you make a very good point (as I understand it) that we need to understand the thinking of the people who oppose our freedom and like to think of us as “nut cases”, although of course they think of themselves as too respectable to use such direct language. But I don’t believe we have to wait to figure out completely what is going on in the minds of our respectable oppressors. We can use the same tactics as other groups through the centuries, making ourselves impossible to ignore by insisting we have to be listened to. I’m talking about classic tactics like demonstrations, sit-ins, all the ways that oppressed people have always used to force their oppressors to have to justify themselves.
The New York Times just published a book review talking about the Scientologists. I’m not a big fan of Scientology, psychiatry, or any other cult. But what most struck me about this review is that it ran through a catalog of those who criticize psychiatry, AND THERE IS NOT A SINGLE WORD ABOUT THOSE OF US WHO HAVE SURVIVED PSYCHIATRIC ABUSE. I am sure you are very aware that for quite some time. it was psychiatric survivors who were leading the fight. We are easy to ignore now because our movement has made itself invisible. We have to make ourselves VERY visible, and soon, and the methods for that are classic.
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I don’t disagree with any of that, Ted. I think we’ve lost a lot of our critical fight energy for the employment/peer support side of things (among other reasons, I’m sure). I’m not saying there’s not value in the ‘peer support’ side of things (where it’s not super co-opted). I do think there is value in Jim Gottstein’s Transformation Triangle lay out of how real change happens (a mix of impacting public opinion, legal action, and creating real alternatives), for example. And I’ve seen first hand how peer support can lead to people building new lives, and sometimes getting invested in pushing back on these systems. But I also think SO much has been lost by folks getting too dependent on these systems for their material survival, and their voices getting quieter as a result. I have some of the old publications of Madness Network News, etc. on my wall, and it’s always a reminder of how much more fight (of the sort you speak of) there used to be, and it’s a real problem that end of things just isn’t really audible anymore.
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I found the comments criticizing the NYT article for its failure to include the perspective of “loved ones” equally disturbing— and equally amusing . The individuals whose experiences are chronicled in the article are independent adults and leaders in their fields, all leading very successful lives, by all conventional measures. Surely, a quick Google search would have provided ample evidence that many of those unmedicated “crazies” were in fact doing quite well.
In the eyes of these commentators, does having a DSM label make the “diagnosed” person a permanent dependant and perpetually requiring care of (allegedly) “sane” and “stable” loved ones — because no matter how “stable” they are, sooner or later they will be in “crisis”?
Do the readers of the NYT fail to recognize that family dynamics can be anything from complicated to outright abusive — with the so-called “mentally ill” family member oftentimes being the designated scapegoat? What do the NYT readers have to say on “loved ones” being “traumatized” by things like their family member being gay, transgender, or a disobedient female — all of which were historically deemed as mental illnesses. If giving high doses of antipsychotics to your gay son attenuates his sex drive, and giving sedatives to your disobedient daughter makes her more feminine and docile, is this “off-label” use of prescription psychotropics justified, under the pretext that it brings peace and tranquility to the family? Surely, many people on the “conservative” side of the political spectrum would endorse the view that parents ought to be entitled to treat their minor children for “homosexual perversion”, “transgenderism”, and “feminine hysteria” — and perhaps be able to do so on an involuntary basis.
Have the commentators on the NYT article never considered the possibility that problems within the family sometimes stem from toxic dynamics and interpersonal dysfunction, rather than from someone being “mentally ill” — and that claiming that someone has a mental illness is a tactic sometimes used by domestic abusers to strip their victims of credibility?
Based upon the written comments alone, I can easily see how interpersonal conflicts and “unstable emotions” could easily arise in persons who are unfortunate to be these commentators’ “loved ones”. I can certainly see how a domestic abuser who happens upon a NAMI meeting can learn to weaponize psychiatric labels to make their victims seem like they are “mentally ill”.
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Hey, cynical.nihilist. Thanks for your comment. It certainly seems to me that many family members are necessarily invested in silencing or heavily minimizing the fact that family often play such a role in someone’s distress. It’s certainly not the truth within all families, but we all know its a prominent issue for a number of people… And it would seem that acknowledging that too readily (as something more than a rare exception) feels like a direct threat and accusation for a lot of folks.
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A few years back, I attended a public talk by Pete Earley on mental health legislation and on his family’s experiences with mental illness. The event was organized by DJ Jaffe and NAMI’s NYC chapter.
Earley discussed how his son refused to take prescribed psychotropic drugs due to “anosognosia” and “poor insight and judgment”, how his behaviors lead to an arrest, and how mental health services helped him start on the road to “recovery”.
Sitting in the audience, I couldn’t help but wonder whether an individual rejecting a label that — de facto and de jure — stripped them of their credibility, basic civil rights, and fundamental right to bodily autonomy was indeed “anosognosia” or merely a person trying to preserve their right to selfhood. I also wondered whether living in a group home, with a severely mentally ill roommate, receiving a tiny disability income, and mostly unable to work entailed an acceptable quality of life to most people. I also wondered whether it wasn’t all that unreasonable for a young adult to be closed off in their interactions with his parents and whether the act that resulted in Earley’s son’s arrest was nothing other than an act of hooliganism. Surely, young people have done far worse things than break into their neighbor’s house and take a bubble bath?
I found the part regarding how “stigma” must be fought and mental illness regarded as no different than diabetes somewhat entertaining. Seemingly lost upon the speaker and the audience was the fact that environmental and lifestyle factors play a significant role in the development of disease — and how oftentimes lifestyle modifications can significantly lessen the severity of most chronic diseases. Very few diseases arise solely from faulty genes. Even diabetes — including juvenile diabetes — can oftentimes be effectively managed through lifestyle dietary modifications, significantly reducing the patient’s need for insulin injections.
During the social part of the event, where the speaker and members of the audience got to interact over coffee and cakes, I was quite taken aback by the personalities of many of the attendees — who were mostly mental health professionals and family members of the “mentally ill”. Even in the context of casual conversation, many seemed incredibly overbearing and more than a little bit condescending. Any questions or comments that politely challenged their position were perceived as a personal attack. I found myself pulling up technical papers to “justify” my arguments in a casual conversation with woman who had a day job as a psychiatric nurse, who insisted that the “science” said otherwise.
Given how unpleasant many of these people were in the context of casual interaction over snacks, I couldn’t help but wonder how difficult it must be for someone to live under the same roof with them — or even have to regularly interact with them. The closest analogy that came to mind were religious zealots who were more than happy to proselytise — but refused to entertain perspectives contrary to their own. It’s not hard to imagine how having some of these people as a parent or a relative might cause someone to eventually “go crazy”. I found myself clenching my fists and jaw — and experiencing a profound sense of relief and a weight lifting as I exited the talk. I wondered if some of these people’s relatives or spouses similarly took efforts to avoid them — or at least, try not to get into arguments and spend as little time at home as possible.
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cynical.nihilist, many thanks for your very interesting and thought-provoking comment. Your description of the behaviour of mental health professionals and family members at that event sounds so convincing (I had similar feelings in an online group dominated by the voices of mental health professionals and family members).
I totally agree with you on the role of environmental and lifestyle factors and the example of diabetes is excellent. The role of pharmacotherapy keeps being hugely overestimated at the expense of other treatment approaches and methods.
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To cynical.nihilist,
Thank you for your keen observations and assessments regarding the types of people NAMI attracts and caters to.
And how would I describe them? The word “obnoxious” comes to mind.
I don’t think anyone (except maybe NAMI fans) has to think very hard to figure out why these people’s relatives go nuts (no disrespect intended). I sure would.
But it sounds like the NAMI-ITES would have a hard time hearing someone tell them, “you drive me crazy”, and – unfortunately – some people DO –
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…except maybe NAMI fans and NYT readers –
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…incredibly overbearing and more than a little bit condescending.”
Thank you cynical.nihilist –
This is THE BEST description of “mental health professionals” I’ve ever read!
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“This article also focuses on a few patients with psychotic disorders without considering the impact of their disorder on family members or society. The perspective in this article leads to bias.” —New York Times Commenter, New York
So many comments on “we need to listen to the family members”.
I wonder if people ever consider the impact of families and society on people who end up as patients. Sure, some families are good and they suffer along with their suffering family member. Certainly you must keep yourself safe from a person unwarrantedly harming you.
Other families have ill-intentions, and they use psychiatry to gaslight, to harass, to blackmail and to subjugate other family members for unwarranted reasons. These people deserve retaliatory harm. How does a person get justice from that? It’s almost impossible.
The nexus formed between them and psychiatrists is utterly devastating to escape to a person who is already suffering and has lost most degrees of freedom in his/her life.
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registeredforthissite,
Thanks for your comment. I think there’s also a whole nother category of families that is more prevalent than those who have actual ill-intentions… Where they are so desperate to ‘help,’ but so unwilling or unable to see themselves as a part of the problem that they do far more harm than good… I know Open Dialogue is imperfect as an approach, but I love that they see the ‘problem’ as existing in the spaces in between people even if it is most visibly represented by one person in that network. That idea just isn’t even a vague thought in most families or networks within the US.
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Oh yes, that’s a big sub-type of families.
Either way, it becomes hellish, and if you retaliate or yell out of anger and frustration and helplessness, you’re doomed.
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As a historical note, NAMI was initially started by parents of the “severely mentally ill” who rejected the Freudian notion that “refrigerator mothers — and poor parenting in general — was what caused mental illness. At a time when psychotropic drugs were increasingly used to “manage” the “mentally ill”, NAMI embraced the biomedical model and the notion that mental illnesses were genetically-based pathologies caused by faulty neurochemical signals between networks of neurons in the brain, which resulted in cognitive and behavioral aberrations.
On it’s face, the idea that you can blame your kid turning out less than perfect on faulty genes — rather than on your faulty parenting skills — is a very attractive concept. It didn’t matter where you lived or how you raised your kid, because they were going to develop a mental illness regardless of what you did or failed to do. It certainly absolves parents of a sense of guilt and responsibility…
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In the d.i.d. world, we have to deal with the ‘False Memory Syndrome Foundation” that was largely created by abusive family to gaslight the now-adult children they had abused and say they were remembering ‘false’ memories about their abusive childhood.
There’s no doubt there are plenty of bad-faith families out there: neither of my wife’s nor my immediate family were willing to support and join us on our healing journey, and yet, change is possible. I’m proof of that. When we first started our journey, my wife said she spent more time dealing with my weekly blowups at her counseling sessions than her own stuff. But once I got my issues dealt with, then she told me I was now the greatest factor in her healing.
That is what we need to fight for: teaching family who are willing how to become the healing companions every struggling person needs. It’s not natural or easy. I have to fight my own self interests because I still sacrifice a lot of my own needs to make space for her healing: but I do it because I love her and because I’m seeking a win/win for us. And I just have to believe there are others out there who are like me and who would change if someone showed them the way…and there’s a chance, now, that I may be able to make that happen…(keeping my fingers crossed as it develops)
Sam
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Thank you cynical.nihilist –
Yes, I had a general knowledge the stated reasons for NAMI, but I soon sensed its less obvious reasons: deflect blame, scapegoat offspring. But I’m grateful to now know its impetus more fully –
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There are people from good families with good parents who end up developing psychological issues. It is not right to blame the parents in that case. They are as helpless as the child.
But yes, that scum-like population group also exists which will blame the child’s genes to absolve responsibility from their own bad behaviour (I’ve experienced it in my life).
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It is also very possible that the best of parents make errors and their kids end up hurt. It is very important that parents are willing to take responsibility for their contribution to thhe problem, and the best parents are willing to do that, and make it OK for their kids to give them feedback about their experience as children. You don’t have to be a “bad parent” to contribute to your child’s emotional struggles!
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Steve says, “It’s very possible for the best of parents to make errors and their kids end up hurt”, and “You don’t have to be a “bad parent” to contribute to your child’s emotional struggles”.
I agree. In many ways, I had the best of parents. But then life happened, and in desperation, one of my parents turned to the mental health system to help me, which was more than happy to make inroads on me.
When I was a teen, I hated therapy, because it wanted and expected me to speak against my parents, whom I dearly loved, and I strongly felt our family issues a private matter. I therefore saw the mental health workers as instrusive and meddling, which they proved to be, and much, much, worse.
Parents don’t need to have their kids pathologized. They need to learn better ways to help their children navigate their stressed out worlds –
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You’ve hit the nail on the head. If you do that it gets worse. Some of us know that intuitively.
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It seems to me that you have hit the Diana. Yes, when you answer something angry, it becomes worse.
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Sera, you need to submit a version of this article to the New York Times, and they need to publish it. Please, please try to do this.
I noticed this vitriol in a NYT piece a couple of years ago about arbitrary, never-ending commitment (even for someone who is demonstrably not ill) in forensic situations. There were then all the same tropes as referenced here, with extra emphasis on “I don’t care lock ’em up” due to the context. (Although the focus on perhaps one of the least sympathetic cases I’ve ever seen instead of the reams of relatively inconsequential stuff was also noteworthy to me, almost as if it were designed to get clicks and elicit outrage…)
The comments are prototypical of how these things play out. Publishing a response to them wouldn’t be some sort of retort. The comments – ignorance, dismissive, fear, anger, the ironic but still frustrating attempt to compare pleas for evidence and ethics based treatment and policy to antivaxxers/anti-science nonsense (I’m surprised I had to scroll as far as I did to find proclamations of conspiracy and connection to Scientology) and the rest of it – are exactly the problem, and so breaking them down, in the same public impossible-to-ignore forum is, would be exactly the thing to do, and hard hitting to boot. Perhaps the real conversation starts with why we can’t seem to have the conversation.
On another note, one thing I do think is lacking here and even in general in places like MiA is that there are other people, other diagnoses, than just schizophrenia (and depression) that suffer the same abuses and are treated in the same way, but that look very, very different. There are also many people that aren’t trying to live with something, as the Hearing Voices Network focuses on, but trying to escape unwarranted treatment or regain lost rights/dignity, that have no symptoms at all but do have a label, and are not allowed, no matter what they do, to be recovered. There are people with substance use histories that are treated in the same way (and in a different way in psychiatric facilities as compared to dedicated substance use facilities) and there are people who have maladaptive coping, trauma, compulsive and all sorts of disordered behaviors, but who do not hear voices and so on, but are treated in the same way. And there are people with problems that go unaddressed because of the myopic lens through which they are viewed while conforming to the Model. Someone who was diagnosed as OCD for example is usually never allowed to recover; a lot of non-research literature reports it as impossible, despite it clearly being untrue and contrary to what little research there is for many. Even for PTSD – which is universally acknowledged as recoverable in principle – I’ve seen many clinicians tell recipients their PTSD needs medication and demand to know if the recipient understand that their PTSD “has a biological basis/is a chemical imbalance”, as if physically incapable of thinking about what they’re saying (or at least caring). It may be proportionally less common for people with other sorts of labels to be institutionalized or violated to to the same degree as someone with a schizophrenia diagnosis, but it still happens frequently. As you say, it’s not about the truth or mental health at all, but about narratives and Models and other circumstances. Once in the system, they are treated the same way, dismissed in the same way, and face the same helplessness. But the stories can both be different and I think may resonate differently.
The personal stories of those who for whatever reason received a psychiatric label, recovered and are not permitted to have that reality acknowledged are especially troubling to me (and probably also to people like Jaffe and Torrey, which may be why they froth at the mouth to insist no such thing really exists). But they are endless. And when being diagnosed, treated, and when receiving a prognosis – that they must take their medicine, validate their treatment, acknowledge their badness/dangerousness/cluelessness, or else – they are blamed for having real insight and goals that that do not align with a narrative wholly detached from reality. And of course all are kept silent. I think it would be more approachable to have this sort of conversation about someone struggling with the system and stigma but who is not as “alien”, hearing voices or hallucinating etc. or someone who is not trying to get others to see past stigma but to just get others to see the reality of their mental status and condition not at all being what is asserted or presumed about them, that “everyone knows that these people are/do/need to be X’d” is catastrophically wrong.
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Hey George cLoony,
Thanks for your comment! I can’t imagine the NYT would ever consider this piece or some version of it, but it sure would be interesting if they did. I did connect with the author of the article that resulted in this comments section as I was writing this, but not folks at NYT proper. I should indeed at least send it along to them.
And yes, they do just move the ‘goal posts’ or change the game when folks seem to ‘recover’ too much… The whole ‘oh you were just misdiagnosed’ or didn’t have ‘real mental illness’ (such as Inman and Lieberman in fact did in response to this article) response is basically a big admission even for those who pay lip service to the idea that people can ‘recover’ that they in fact don’t believe it and see any such example as nothing more than proof that those people weren’t one of the actually truly “sick” in the first place.
And yes, the Hearing Voices movement chose intentionally to focus on one of the most scary-to-the-general-public “alien” seeming experiences and named itself for it with the intent to push on what people were most afraid of and bring it to light. It’s important to do that. But also important to find the more relatable experiences that less automatically put people in the us/them place to help hook them in to seeing some of this as *about them, too* whenever possible to build bridges and all. Of course, then we bump up against media and capitalism and what is sensational enough to sell…
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“You were misdiagnose.” What a classic line! Because our “diagnoses” are “incurable,” anyone who gets better must by definition be “misdiagnosed!” That way, they can never be wrong, just by redefining their terms whenever their assumptions are proven false. You can’t lose that way!
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Exactly, Steve. What I always find most interesting are the people who vehemently insist they believe in “recovery,” but then just as vehemently insist that someone must have been misdiagnosed or similar. Sometimes it’s a little hard to tell just how much they might be lying to themselves about what they actually believe.
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I think for some people, “recovery” means “accepting of diagnosis and taking all drugs prescribed by doctor.” The idea of recovery WITHOUT or IN SPITE OF medical intervention seems to be heretical in some circles. It’s almost like you’re saying it’s not a medical problem at all! Which might suggest that maybe THEIR acceptance of their diagnosis and medical intervention could be called into question. EEEK!!!
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The problem with the idea of Recovery is that it implies innate moral defect. It is used as the new Original Sin. Rick Warren says “everybody needs Recovery”.
So the substance abuse model is adapted for incest survivors.
You are supposed to “Recover” from being bothered by anything.
People who have been treated with dignity and respect and who have been given the chance to develop and apply their abilities are very unlikely to develop problems with drugs or alcohol. So what is needed is not this “Recovery”, but the opposite of it, awareness and understanding.
Judges make people go to Recovery Programs, and they ask them what step they are on. This should not be.
Joshua
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Joshua,
I’m not a fan of the term of ‘recovery’ either for a myriad of reasons. I talk about some of them https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/04/the-recovery-trap/. Thanks for the link, I will check it out!
-Sera
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Joshua nails it –
“People who have been treated with dignity and respect and who have been given the chance to develop and apply their abilities are very unlikely to develop problems with drugs or alcohol. So what is needed is not this “Recovery”, but the opposite of it, awareness and understanding”.
Awareness and understanding. Absolutely. The only thing I would add is that people who have been treated with dignity and respect aren’t likely to end up in a “therapist’s” office either, as I consider “talk therapy” just another form of addiction – albeit a socially acceptable one –
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Here, at 5 min in he explains it, Second Chance Grace Place, and how Recovery Is One Of Our Key Values, and Everybody Needs Recovery.
If you endorse the idea of Recovery, this is what you are endorsing!!!
https://saddleback.com/watch/summer-sermons-2011/what-is-a-saddleback
Joshua
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Why I cancelled my subscription to the NY Times in one Mad in America blog.
The paper of record reinforces the mess of psychiatry.
I don’t need the trigger.
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That’s fair, Gina! I’m really glad the NYT published the article in question, but so much else there serves to reinforce the psychiatrized world, that is true.
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I read that article on the original posting and commented empathically on the subjects covered and was shocked and dismayed with the anger and finger pointing in the comments. I was even angry the highest rated comment was hostile and anti-social – how is this different than what the people were accusing of the those in the article?
There are many but few “fake truths” that people really need good pushback:
You cannot cure trauma
You cannot cure anything on the bible (DSM)
Top down therapeutic styles (based on Freud) that masquerade as “person centered” as if adults learn like children (they do not for very obvious reasons)
This confusion/argument of mental health – biology vs societal
The fear of Peer Support and ostracizing them
The covert shame of mental illness (how is this different than honor system shame – they do not all kill – you know…they shame you to do the honors) How are we different? I grew up in that type of culture and find our western sensibilities more subtle, veneer of politeness, and just plain sadistic.
I could go on but I think I am repeating myself.
This is very good article of deconstructing the mainstream media which only publishes articles to appease the click trigger, who makes enough money to keep commenting during work hours, and who is also ironically on meds for something (no shame but why throw rocks!).
NYT could have easily link the subjects who provided their pictures and full name a bio link so they do not get harassed online! Shame on NYT and us – the society that rewards this type of punishment.
Thank you again for breaking it down so we can see through the ridiculous ways we are controlled by sheer information systems.
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Thanks, dogworld! Yes, the comments that became the highest rated (by a relative landslide) were pretty disappointing. And while I think you’re right that the NYT could have done more to link the main ‘characters’ of the story to their work and bios, it doesn’t really seem like a lot of people would have looked. I’m not too sure a lot of people who commented actually read the article so much as responded to the title… Thank you for reading and commenting here and trying to push back in the comments section over at NYT yourself 🙂
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dogworld says it best –
“Top down therapeutic styles (based on Freud) that masquerade as “person centered” as if adults learn like children (they do not for very obvious reasons)”, and “….our western sensibilities more subtle, veneer of politeness, and just plain sadistic” –
Thank you dogworld.
I’ve been trying to find the right words to describe my experience with “psychotherapy” my whole life –
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“…as if adults learn like children…”
Finally someone articulating the nitty gritty going on behind psychotherapy’s unshakable belief and frantic hold on their beloved “power imbalance” –
But they can only wish…
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Psychotherapists’ JEALOUS HOLD on their beloved “power imbalance” speaks volumes of their own unconscious fears of what they really don’t know much of anything about – and the general public has faithfully followed their lead –
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“….as if adults learn like children (they do not for very obvious reasons)” –
Key words: AS IF –
Anyone up for infantilization???
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People have a right to their own delusions, whatever they may be –
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Unfortunately, most psychiatrists, and much of the public, have distorted points of view, borne of their own misplaced fears, both conscious, and unconscious, and have therefore made psychiatric “patients” their psychic “beasts of burden” –
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Beauty isn’t the only thing that’s in the eyes of the beholder.
So is “psychiatric illness” –
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Congratulations on getting the article in the mainstream media and I am saddened but not surprised at the comments reported. I agree with you about families. On my entrance to the doors of the psychiatric career path that I followed for much of my life, the psychiatrist’s initial comments were that I had all the symptoms of someone who had been abused and recommended family therapy. That did not take place as one parent refused to participate and the other parent being complicit went right along with that. As a result I was the one who was pathologised and drugged. As for anti psychotics – I wasn’t even hearing voices and I was still put on them for three years – the reason I was given being that ‘they’re very good for anxiety and not addictive’. Only for finding ‘Toxic Pscychiatry’ in a bookstore on weekend while on release from a psychiatric hospital after having been on them for three years I would never have known about tardive dyskinesia – no one told me.
One of my parents knew about the side effects and told me that it made her ‘terribly worried’ but not worried enough to confront the reality of what neglectful and abusive parenting had done. So I agree with you about families. They generally have direct involvement in causing the emotional difficulties in the first place but take no or little responsibility – that’s too difficult for most of them. That would mean acknowledging their own failure and most don’t want to do that. Most people are cowards at heart.
And as for the comments to your article, most people are sheep – they believe the information that is pushed by those in power because it makes them feel comfortable – a variation of all is the best in the best of all possible worlds. That’s how fashion trends work – it’s how murderous movements like Stalinism and Nazism work. It’s how Gallileo and Corpernicus were ostracised for publishing scientific truths. Psychiatry is just yet another ethos that people cling too now in the absence of organised religion – people need to ‘believe’ in something.
Ultimately we’ll destroy ourselves as a species – modern psychiatry is one of the last gasps of that – you can add irreparable environmental degradation, uncontrollable nuclear proliferation, mass displacement of populations caused by war in totalitarian and failed states and climate change, disenfranchisement of millions by the automation of work, degradation of labour laws by the gig economy that lead to insecure and badly paid employment, the wealth differential between the tiny percentile at the top and the rest of us, uncontrolled availability of violent pornography to children, the widespread acceptance of the use of other illicit substances and the disintegration of a safe home life that that brings.
Hopefully what comes after us will be better.
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Thank you maedhbh,
You’ve knocked it out of the park –
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The Times’ non-moderation of its comments section demonstrated why Daniel Bergner’s book and your Mad health org are so desperately needed. Thank you both for fighting the good fight. Lives will be saved because of you.
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Fantastic work, Sera.
*In truth, what people really mean by “one-sided” is that they’re uncomfortable with the “other side” getting any space at all*
Yup. This reminds me so much of when I used to edit Phoenix Rising magazine (if you don’t know what that is, please see psychiatrized.org/PhoenixRising/PhoenixRising.htm). Whenever someone started whining about the lack of balance, I’d say, “We *are* the balance! Everything published everywhere else exclusively promotes the other side!”
*In a world where the most progressive research says only around 20% of people will do best staying on psychotropics longer term*
Sad if true. Progressive research should be proving the truth: that precisely 0% of people will do best staying on psychotropics longer term.
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Thanks so much, Irit. Absolutely to “We *are* the balance!” I actually mention Phoenix Rising in this piece. (See 5th paragraph down from the image.)
I’m not sure I agree that 0% should be the answer we seek. I do think folks have used drugs since the beginning of time in so many different ways, and what even gets classed as a ‘drug’ (vs. a medication, vs. as neither) is hazy and often capitalistically and morally driven. I do think the actual number – if we factor in adequate supports of all other kinds – would be lower than 20%, but I don’t know about 0!
Thanks,
Sera
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Sera, I don’t think that the difference between drugs prescribed by doctors and other drugs should be minimized. Many (if not most) people start taking psychiatric drugs because they have been told by authority figures that they need them. People start using e.g. street drugs for other reasons.
Moreover, we should ask themselves: what does it even mean that “around 20% of people will do best staying on psychotropics longer term”? “Best” in what sense? Does it mean that they will actually feel better and be happier if they stay on psychotropics longer term? And how do these researchers know it?
Let’s not forget either about the impact of psychiatric drugs on people’s physical health. People diagnosed with schizophrenia have a much shorter life expectancy than the rest of the population largely because of the effects of neuroleptics.
Of course I respect many people’s decision to take psychiatric drugs, but let’s not forget that this decision is influenced by the mainstream discourse on mental health and illness and by the opinion of psychiatrists who are very often authority figures for their patients.
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Most people would probably feel much better if they start off every day with a bottle of vodka and several grams of cocaine. Most people would certainly feel far less anxious and depressed about the mundane realities and inconveniences of life. A worker wired and stimulants would likely be much more productive and useful to their employer.
Most people, if presented with the situation of such an individual and their drug preferences, would be inclined to ask: “if someone requires daily intake of alcohol and cocaine to make their existence manageable, perhaps what requires changing is that individual’s life circumstances, rather than their brain chemistry”. The only true difference between “recreational”, “illicit”, and “prescription” psychotropic drugs is a matter of manufacturing controls and prevailing criminal statutes in a given locale. Use of a particular substance might be widely prevalent — and even socially coerced — in one place, while earning a user hefty fines and a lengthy prison sentence in another. Considering the American “War on Drugs”, it’s ironic that one set of drugs is aggressively criminalized and usage might result in a person spending decades in prison; meanwhile, a court might give authority to psychiatrists to forcibly drug a “mentally ill” person.
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Sera, Great article. I never did read the NYT piece, so gladly I missed the uninformed comments. And that they are, uninformed.
And we really don’t want to hear from families, because family is fallible just like the “professional”. The person in question is “seen” through very personal lenses, no science involved. And no logic can penetrate personal views and beliefs, at least not in the moment, but I feel the arguments are never wasted, because somewhere, at some future time, someone will reflect back and get it.
Also articles such as these do indeed save a few from going down that rabbit hole of brain shrinkage.
I argue every chance I get, creating enemies. People do not like you if you don’t support their views :).
I get massage for my back and my massage therapist several times has mentioned her kids add, or adhd. Ahhh such a common “disease”, “disorder”.
I finally stated that to make your kid think there is something “wrong” with them is more harmful than anything.
Because belief is strong, and to believe something about yourself that others tell you, about you, is probably the biggest harm Psych has done. And lets face it, we all “see” people through lenses, but psych nor anyone can do so in a failproof manner.
So no, we can’t ask the family. It is WAY too complicated, a lifelong living experience which a shrink is not privy to.
And THANKS SO MUCH for leaving those comments, they did NOT go unheard. Someone will indeed be affected and even if the system stays as crappy and full of BS as it is, it becomes important to try and save a few from ever going the route of the BS.
I see then that the NYT is not part of the silencing group, although they love controversial pieces, but are also chicken of backlash from the “professionals”.
So no matter why, kudos to them for doing that story. And Kudos to you for following up there and here. You have powerful voice and used it, which we are all thankful.
MIA has had some of the best articles and writers, and I am certain has contributed to get a few people thinking.
MIA helped me a lot in this area and took my thinking ability a bit further. And articles such as yours are the ticket to this process.
Of course you will get those fervent present day believers, but it’s mostly because of the challenging of their belief. They do not realize that they believe something they have not thought about, or if so, not thought through. It’s as old as the hills. Anything different must be heretic, anti establishment lol.
Changing powers is just a constant exposing, educating. With powers continuing but hopefully slowly save a few from believing that their experiences are “wrong” or “sick”.
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The pharmaceutical industry greatly financially gains from the continual sedation and/or concealment, via tranquilizers and/or antidepressants, of autism-spectrum-disorder-related anxiety symptoms as well as those from adverse childhood experience trauma.
I wouldn’t be surprised if industry representatives had a significant-enough say in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s original composition and continue to influence its revisions/updates.
From my understanding, only a small percentage of Canadian physicians currently are integrating ACE-trauma science into the diagnoses and (usually chemical) treatments of patients.
I don’t believe it is just coincidental that the only two health professions’ appointments for which Canadians are fully covered by the public plan are the two readily pharmaceutical-prescribing psychiatry and general practitioner health professions.
Such non-Big-Pharma-profiting health specialists as counsellors, therapists and naturopaths (etcetera) are not covered at all.
Thus I get agitated when it’s suggested or implied from within the media, however well-intentioned, to get therapy, as though it’s reasonably readily financially accessible. Where I reside, it definitely is not: such psychotherapy averages $200-plus per hour.
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