Justin Karter is a staff psychologist at Boston College University Counseling Services. He is a recent graduate of the doctoral program in Counseling Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he completed his dissertation research on the experiences of psychosocial disability activists in the Global South.

He has served as the editor of the research news section of the Mad in America website since 2015. In addition, he has held executive board positions with the Society for Humanistic Psychology and the Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology. Despite being a recent graduate and early career psychologist, he has published over 25 papers and textbook chapters on topics in critical psychology, critical psychiatry, and philosophy of psychology.

While he has often been the interviewer for our MIA podcasts, today, we get to turn the mic around and ask him some questions. In doing so, we discuss his journey into the field and what he has learned through his work with MIA, research in critical psychiatry and psychology, and his practice as a therapist.
The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. Listen to the audio of the interview here.

Ayurdhi Dhar: Tell us about your journey to Mad in America and whether it has changed you as a scholar, a clinician, or person.

Justin Karter: I didnā€™t have an interest in psychology until I finished my first masters in journalism. Instead, I have always been interested in storiesā€”how they shape our experience of the world, and I also had an interest in politics and activism. In journalism, I learned how to listen for whatā€™s not being said in stories, to pay attention to whose stories are being told and when, and what interests they serve. While completing my degree in journalism, I was introduced to a different kind of psychology.

I took a class in Humanistic and Phenomenological Psychology with Dr. Brent Robbins. I was hooked from the start. It offered a new way of thinking about myself and the world, of articulating and exploring the sort of malaise I felt at the time. Humanistic psychology offered vitality, imagination, and possibility at a time when I was starting to worry that the world was pretty stultifying, robotic, and algorithmic.

I was also involved with student activists across Pittsburgh who were organizing and trying to make our universities more just by divesting from fossil fuels and resisting student debt structures. We also supported adjunct instructors as they unionized. But it brought us into conflict with our university administration.

When I started participating in Society for Humanistic Psychology, the APA was coming to terms with their involvement in developing torture procedures for Guantanamo Bay. Many humanistic psychologists had been calling attention to that for years. I was lucky enough to meet Dr. Lisa Cosgrove, who later introduced me to Robert Whitaker of Mad in America.

All of that reading and editing research has shaped me. First, I became aware of the fault lines in the field. There is so much we donā€™t know about the brain, consciousness, or how people in their relational and environmental niches become who they are. These big questions and looking at all the fights kept me humble and also in awe at the complexity of our existence. They were fertile ground for different models and narrativesā€” major disagreements among experts about what it means to have mental distress or mental illness or a mental disorder and how best to treat that. Thatā€™s been its own sort of education.

My very first research review for Mad in America had a critique of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy. I received comments and emails from people who were happy or unhappy with the piece for a variety of reasons, everything from ā€œhow dare you critique a form of therapy when itā€™s the only viable alternative we have to Big Pharmaā€ to ā€œCBT and exposure is a form of thought control or emotional abuse, and your summary didnā€™t go far enough.ā€

Itā€™s been a lesson from the start and a constant reminder that these theories and the research we cover here have very real impacts on peopleā€™s lives. Often people are in the midst of extreme suffering, and itā€™s not just intellectually interestingā€”these debates have real and immediate impacts on people. As the research news team, we break down the wall between the public and service users on one side and academic writing on the otherā€”whatā€™s in the Ivory Tower, locked behind pay walls. We provide plain language summaries of the research so they may be useful to people when theyā€™re evaluating treatments or trying to make sense of why theyā€™re feeling what theyā€™re feeling.

We emphasize research that is critical of these prevailing theories and treatments, which are often ignored in the mainstream press. We emphasize the connection between people and their environments, which sadly is radical these days. We focus on social determinants, peopleā€™s life experiences, their identities, and how that shapes their mental health. We broaden the perspective that people might bring when they think about themselves and others and why they might be suffering.

 

Dhar: Iā€™m glad we can bring some of that to the fore. You have written extensively about the DSM. What is your biggest critique of the systems of diagnoses that we use?

Karter: Itā€™s a sort of fault line. All these big questions like: What does it mean to have a mental illness? What is a mental disorder? What does it mean to be in distress? How do we conceptualize that? How do we understand the causes and precipitants? Most debates in the mental health field take a position on diagnosis because you have to.

At Mad in America, I was constantly exposed to different ways of making sense of mental distress. In my scholarship, I tried to find a concise way of putting together all these debates so professionals could use it to think through their position and strive for consistency. They could develop humility about these disorder categories, about what we know and donā€™t know, and have critical consciousness about the institutions and historical factors that influence the development of these categories.

Also, it could help in thinking through how we could talk with clients in ways that honor their experience and aid them in coming to their own narrative for understanding their experience.

What is not part of the public discourse is thinking about how the presentation and the experience of different types of mental distress change cross-culturally and historically, as your work, Ayurdhi, shows. The narratives we have available to us profoundly shape our experience, and over time or cross-culturally, we have different ways of thinking and different concepts available to us. So itā€™s not just how we think about ourselves but how we experience ourselves and our world in an embodied wayā€”whatā€™s salient to us, what we attend to, and what we donā€™t.

If we think about disorders as discrete categories that exist in nature and weā€™re just naming them, we miss the opportunity to think about how people are making sense of themselves, of their own story, which is at the heart of psychotherapy.

Lisa Cosgrove and Robert Whitakerā€™s book, Psychiatry Under the Influence, looks at the institutional players that play a role in shaping how disorders get defined in the DSM. I mean pharma funding, physician pressures, and special interest groups. For instance, PTSD diagnosis has a lot to do with post-Vietnam War veterans advocating for their own best interest to ensure that the symptoms they were experiencing would be treated by the country that sent them to war. So it had to be defined in a way so that PTSD could be a long-standing condition.

We take for granted that symptoms that are listed in the DSM are somehow core symptoms to the experience of that disorder. But network research suggests otherwise. For instance, with major depressive disorder, symptoms in the DSM-5 have more to do with what historically has been defined as depression in the DSM than whatā€™s consistently reported by people as their experience of depression.

 

Dhar: With Sarah Kamens, you have written about an ecological model of diagnoses that would develop “conceptual competence.” Could you tell us about this and what would it look like with a patient?

Karter: The idea was to produce a way of thinking about diagnoses that could train professionals and help them think critically about when and how theyā€™re using it. What that actually looks like with a patient depends on who that person is, what theyā€™re bringing in, etc. Culturally, there are a lot of models of madness circulating rapidly. People talk about mental health on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. People are learning about the neurodiversity movement, DSM definitions, and psychotherapeutic and psychoanalytic ideas.

Weā€™re cobbling together a model for ourselves to understand our own behavior and the behavior of others, drawing more than ever from the psy-disciplines. Itā€™s confusing for a lot of people, and rightfully so. Amid all the uncertainty, we tend to cling to something that seems the most concrete.

But this is also an opportunity to think creatively. Without an obvious answer, weā€™re forced to get creative in combining and creating a new language to understand ourselves and others. When somebody brings up a diagnosis, I hope to work through it, talk it through, and get to a place where we create a new language for that person. It should make sense to them or help them explain something theyā€™ve been wondering about, providing a way forward.

 

Dhar: Being a new mother, I filled out a million depression screening instruments during different doctor visits. I know you have written about depression screenings. What have you found?

Karter: I did this work with Dr. Cosgrove. In 2016, the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommended screening everybody above 13 for major depressive disorder, especially in the postpartum period for women. This sounds pretty benignā€”itā€™s one more piece of paper to fill out. Itā€™s a great thing. You catch people who would have fallen through the cracks.

Unfortunately, thatā€™s not what the evidence suggested. We found Canada and the UK had decided not to implement mandated screening for depression because there wasnā€™t sufficient evidence that it would improve care. But the US decided to do it. So we reviewed the available research for screening collaboration with Dr. Brett Thombs, an expert on this topic. We found, as others had seen, that there wasnā€™t evidence that implementing these screenings would lead to improved patient outcomes.

And there are risks. Other countries might have made a different decision because, with government healthcare, youā€™re cautious about wasting resources. You pay more attention to the false positive problem and identify people at risk who arenā€™t actually at risk. In the US, the system is quite different.

So, one risk is that we treat people who otherwise wouldnā€™t need treatment, which diverts resources away from others. Also, through diagnostic overshadowing, it distracts from other things that might be going on. We are not denying that people, especially in the postpartum period, struggle or have depressive symptoms.

We didnā€™t find evidence that a questionnaire will lead to more support than having a skillful clinician check up on a struggling patient. In fact, a screening instrument makes it less likely that a clinician will have that conversation in a human way because it has been outsourced to the piece of paper which makes the decision for you.

It provides concreteness that isnā€™t always justified. If somebody scores above the threshold on a PHQ-9, which was developed by Pfizer and has a high false positive rate, weā€™re likely to think, ā€œthis person has depression, and this is what we do for depression.ā€ If we have a clinical interview with somebody and they tell us how theyā€™re struggling, not feeling how they thought they would after birth, not getting social support, nervous about their relationship, having trouble finding foodā€”then that points us to other solutions that might be more supportive. Screening lets the system off the hook.

We wanted to attend to womenā€™s distress in a way that allowed for a broader conceptualization of what might be happening to them and provided a broader menu of support.

 

Dhar: Yes, weā€™re not saying there isnā€™t psychological distress for some in the postpartum period. I remember being extremely overwhelmed and worrying, ā€œIs this postpartum depression?ā€ This was despite all the critical research I had read on screenings. I had to remind myself this is normal, and it makes sense that Iā€™m struggling given the lack of social and familial support. When there is an available narrative like postpartum depression that takes away context, all you have available to make sense of your anxieties is ā€œthis is a chemical, hormonal imbalance.ā€

Karter: A number of studies find that the groups screened for the mental disorder have worse outcomes than the control group. That raises the question of the Nocebo Effect. Is it helpful or harmful to think about ourselves in terms of ā€œI might have a mental health problemā€?

 

Dhar: Your dissertation is about psychosocial disability in the Global South. Tell us about your research.

Karter: Thereā€™s the movement for Global Mental Health and then the emerging movement for a global human rights-based approach to mental health. This one has a different identity category, “Psychosocial Disability,” with different assumptions about mental distress. I was curious about how people under this identity or advocating under it thought differently about what it meant to have mental distress or madness and how people with lived experience participated in research, policy, and practice in the movement for Global Mental Health.

The movement for Global Mental Health was a call to scale up services for mental disorders worldwide, especially in the low- and middle-income countries or Global South. It has been criticized widely for assuming that we can take the conceptual, diagnostic, and treatment approaches to mental health from the West and apply them in a top-down way in the Global South. This is without any critical reflexive analysis about what works and what doesnā€™t, about how we think about mental health here in the Westā€”like our outcomes are wonderful!

That was being critiqued by service users. The consumer/survivor/ex-patient body of literature is remarkable and often ignored by mainstream psychology and psychiatry, but thatā€™s slowly changing. Because of the move towards psychosocial disability, thereā€™re now legal frameworks on the rights of people with disabilities. Rights-based organizations demand that people with lived experience be part of the process of developing research, practice, and policy in the psy-disciplines.

Suddenly, because of the “Nothing About Us Without Us” pressure, the movement for Global Mental Health was pressured to include people with lived experience. My participants were leaders in different psychosocial disability movements, had been involved in activism, and were from other countries and cultures. The majority identified at some point as having what was labeled a psychotic experience by mental health professionals, but they had come to make sense of it differently over time.

People journeyed through different models of mental health and initially thought about themselves through a biomedical approach which they found initially sometimes helpful. It connected them to resources and provided a narrative for making sense of their experience, but over time felt like it was missing things or was actively harmful. In addition, it justified having their rights restrictedā€”they suffered inhumane treatment. Over time they became reformers of the field and became aware of the UN’s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The psychosocial model suggests that disability emerges in an interaction between a person and their environment. The environment does not make accommodations, and that lack of ability to make room for that person in the world leads to a disability. This changed the frame and led them to push for more social determinants approaches to mental health.

Also, participants talked about having an a-ha moment where they started to think of themselves less as somebody who is suffering a deficit, but instead as somebody who was a rights holderā€”that I am a person who has rights that need to be respected, who can make certain demands, and speak about my needs, which I found empowering.

 

Dhar: Whatā€™s the process of getting people with psychosocial disabilities to the decision-making table? Who decides whom to inviteā€”this service user or that one?

Karter: Participants spoke about being stuck between a rock and a hard place where they would be invited to participate in a project. Sometimes theyā€™d be invited from the beginning, which is whatā€™s recommended, that you include people in even the brainstorming and study design process. Sometimes theyā€™d be called at the end to rubber stamp a problematic policy.

They felt they were being asked to provide their testimony or rubber stamp a policy so that the researchers or the policymakers could say they had lived experience input. They were aware if they turned that down, if they said, ā€œno, this is not CRPD compliant,ā€ or ā€œIā€™m not going to participate in this process,ā€ that some researchers and policymakers would shop around for somebody who would rubber stamp it. Thereā€™s a diversity of perspectives among people with lived experience. You could shop around and find somebody who was more friendly to forced treatment and still claim to have lived experience input.

 

Dhar: How do service-user and survivor movements get co-opted? Can you think of an example?

Karter: Participants in the Global South were aware that most of the researchers they interacted with in the movement for Global Mental Health were western-based researchers with institutional power, often White, from the US, Canada, the UK. They saw this as an extension of colonialismā€”the idea that we, the West, know the answers, the objective truth, and weā€™re going to advance the rest of the world and force them to use what we use.

One of my participants brilliantly said this is the ā€œgrandchild of the colonialism of 500 years ago.” She explained, ā€œIn Latin America, weā€™ve had dictatorship after dictatorship, extractivism, free trade agreements where workers are paid under minimum wage, have no rights, they count the times they go to the bathroom.ā€ She said that the movement for Global Mental Health operates from the same logic as these other policies brought to the Global South by the Global North: “Itā€™s a newer manifestation of that White supremacism, egocentric view.”

She made an explicit link between the Global North extraction of resources through slavery, mining, ongoing exploitation of labor in her country, and the way the movement for global mental health was treating her (a person with lived experience)ā€”coming to mine data from her to pursue their donor funding and support their academic careers on her back.

She told the story of a psychologist who opened up a peer support group that they led and charged money for people to enter. This was infuriating, a travesty for her. It was a sort of perversion of her goals, of what she was trying to offer the community. This co-option is doing the same thing that people with lived experience are doing, which is offering peer support or group psychotherapy, but doing it from a Western researcherā€™s perspectiveā€”charging money to get in and spreading their own narratives about psychosis to the groupā€”changing how safe people feel to explore different explanations.

 

Dhar: It always amazes me how much people on the ground know and how little we listen to them. I had my physiotherapist in India talk about withdrawal from benzodiazepines among his patients. There is a lot of information on the ground amongst people we would consider not worth listening to.

Karter: There are also many possibilities right now because there are so many shifting narratives around mental health. There are some big cracks that the public is becoming more aware ofā€”as in the narrow chemical imbalance theory and the DSM.

But as narratives shift, the forces and systems weā€™re operating within are trying to take advantageā€”for example, the right-wing authoritarian pickup of the chemical imbalance theory. Critics have pointed out that the chemical imbalance theory served neoliberalism and the right-wing political agenda because it depoliticized stress. Now that weā€™re seeing the serotonin hypothesis fall away, the right will try to use it as justification for defunding mental health treatments. As weā€™re questioning these narratives, they are going to be used to justify existing injustices.

 

Dhar: Youā€™re also a humanistic-existential clinician with a relational bent to your practice, and you are very critical of how psy-disciplines deal with peopleā€™s distress. How does a humanistic psychologist work in a world where the first line of intervention is the drug-based treatment?

Karter: The field of psychotherapy is under threat by the neoliberal culture that wants to turn it into an AI chatbotā€”a set of flowchart responses that will lead to a corrective thought. Whatā€™s fundamentally countercultural is also whatā€™s healing about psychotherapy, and thatā€™s the experience of being a version of yourself that can come forward because of another person. Thatā€™s the process of psychotherapy for me.

Itā€™s hard even to articulate this because our language is built in a culture that thinks about people as individual beings. But in therapy, thoughts, feelings, or embodied sensations emerge in an inter-subjective space because the other person is contacting something within themselves thatā€™s powerful that you also feel. Theyā€™re also reaching that because of something that youā€™re able to put into the room. So you get to experience yourself as a relational and open being over time. So if a good psychotherapy process is allowed to unfold, you get to be a different kind of self that our culture keeps telling us we canā€™t be.

 

Dhar: That idea of coming into different beings through others and with others is lacking and connects with the underlying idea that ā€œIā€™m this contained self.ā€

Karter: Itā€™s seductive because itā€™s challenging to get to the edge of what you can be certain about yourself and step over it because weā€™re under pressure from others to be consistent. It requires a lot of energy and vulnerabilityā€”to be open to being a different version of yourself.

 

Dhar: Or being different versions in different contexts. In psychology, the idea of multiple selves immediately connects with the negative idea of fragmentation.

Karter: I think we need different types of stories. I love finding a good piece of literature that captures a different way of being a selfā€”seeing people who carry multiple selves with them or have their ancestorsā€™ voices in their heads. Hopefully, these stories will help us think about ourselves differently, with the ultimate goal of not just feeling better but of being the kind of subject that is unruly and ungovernable.

****

MIA Reports are supported, in part, by a grant fromĀ The Thomas Jobe Fund.

 

16 COMMENTS

  1. Dear Justin Karter and Ayurdhi Dhar

    It’s noted you are both psychotherapists/psychologists who write and interview for Mad in America, directly.

    Your interview above, within your own discipline, claims, “…The field of psychotherapy is under threat by the neoliberal culture…”

    Yet ‘psychotherapy’ (talking) has long regarded itself as a ‘medical treatment’ has it not, which (first) medicalised our non-medical emotions and distress responses to our social and political environments as a ‘mental health issue’ – well before today’s (neoliberal) hegemony of American biomedical DSM-5 psychiatry?

    You also claim that, “… in therapy, thoughts, feelings, or embodied sensations emerge in an inter-subjective space because the other person is contacting something within themselves thatā€™s powerful that you also feel. Theyā€™re also reaching that because of something that youā€™re able to put into the room (my emphasis). So you get to experience yourself as a relational and open being over time. So if a good psychotherapy process is allowed to unfold, you get to be a different kind of self that our culture keeps telling us we canā€™t be….”

    *Isn’t this ā€˜therapy cultureā€™ an inherently neoliberal capitalist practice, itself?

    What type of culture or society, encourages citizens to pay therapists for formally booked and regulated appointments where human conversations are regarded as a medical ‘treatment’ (perhaps for insurance claims purposes?) – in order to experience themselves as a ‘…relational and open being over time…’?

    Therapy, is a financial transaction and thereby a conditional ‘relational experience’ – isn’t it?

    This ‘….different kind of self…’ (?) whatever this means, seems to be an ‘experience’ usually conditional upon one’s ability to afford ongoing transactional payments of a therapist’s fees.

    Transactional human relationships that consist of paying for ‘therapy’ where our human emotions and distress are still, by and large, seen as being ‘treated’ – by a ‘therapist’ who is a regulated licensed ‘professional’ paid for their ’emotional labour’ – might seem to some, to be the very epitome of neoliberal culture?

    When the late Queen Elizabeth II of England lost her husband in 2021, it was reported in mainstream media that she sought solace, as she had done throughout her life – from spiritual counsel in her religious faith, along with support from family and friends.

    There don’t seem to be reports of Her Majesty paying for ‘therapy’ to have a ‘relational experience’?

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-11196937/The-Queens-lifelong-Christian-faith-inspiration-anchor-reign.html

    By contrast, Prince Harry (a ‘millennial’ raised in the era of America’s (neoliberal) positive psychology happiness movement) – apparently lamented recently, that he never heard of ‘therapy’ while growing up in the Royal Family.

    https://www.iheart.com/content/2022-10-21-prince-harry-never-heard-the-word-therapy-growing-up-in-the-royal-family/

    Is the British Royal Family really so unique?

    Or, have the vast majority of the pre- millennial generation, in countries outside the US, also grown up without ‘therapy culture’ (or mobile phones, social media etc.) – until America exported its (neoliberal) therapy culture, around the world?

    http://philosophyofculture.org/happiness_positive_psychology_binkley.pdf

    Noting the seminal work of Professor Frank Furedi on ‘Therapy Culture’ – *how do MIA readers know, whether your psychotherapy-psychology field, which arose largely during (and perhaps in support of) the rise of capitalism – is not itself in some way responsible for ushering in and sustaining the very ‘neoliberal culture’ you claim now threatens it?

    Any clarification would be appreciated. Many thanks.

    https://www.frankfuredi.com/therapy-culture

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roger-Foster-2/publication/281481842_The_Therapeutic_Spirit_of_Neoliberalism/links/58af601745851503be952fc6/The-Therapeutic-Spirit-of-Neoliberalism.pdf

    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Roger-Foster-2/publication/293645499_Therapeutic_culture_authenticity_and_neo-liberalism/links/5c61b3ea299bf1d14cbf6e47/Therapeutic-culture-authenticity-and-neo-liberalism.pdf

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    • Magdalene Dā€™Silva asks, ā€œWhat type of culture or society, encourages citizens to pay therapists for formally booked and regulated appointments where human conversations are regarded as a medical ā€˜treatmentā€™ (perhaps for insurance claims purposes) in order to experience themselves as a ā€˜ā€¦relational and open being over timeā€™?ā€

      THATā€™S the question Iā€™ve been asking myself since I was a kid. And it makes no more sense now than it did then. But my answer hasnā€™t changed: We live in a SICK CULTURE when we think we need to farm out our psychological health to a ā€œprofessionalā€ that demands payment.

      Magdalene then asks, ā€œIsnā€™t this ā€˜therapy cultureā€™ an inherently neoliberal capitalist practice, itself?ā€
      Thatā€™s what itā€™s always looked like to me! Have someone pick at your wounds while they pick at your wallet, because most therapists have made emotions ā€œa sicknessā€ for themselves, as most are, in reality, greedy at heart.

      Magdalene then states, ā€œThis ā€˜ā€¦different kind of selfā€¦ā€™(?) whatever this means, seems to be an ā€˜experienceā€™ conditional upon oneā€™s ability to afford ongoing transactional payments of a therapistā€™s fees.ā€
      Disgusting, isnā€™t it? But it makes perfect sense to many a ā€œtherapistā€ ā€”

      Magdalene finishes by asking, ā€œ*how do MIA readers know, whether your psychotherapy-psychological field, which arose largely during (and perhaps in support of) the rise of capitalism – is not itself in some way responsible for ushering in and sustaining the very ā€˜neoliberal cultureā€™ you claim now threatens it?ā€
      If MIA readers donā€™t know this already, maybe they do now. But I doubt most therapists are able to grasp what Ms. Dā€™Silva is talking about, as sheā€™s the exception ā€”one of those rare therapists who actually uses her head.

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      • Magdalene then asks, ā€œIsnā€™t this ā€˜therapy cultureā€™ an inherently neoliberal capitalist practice, itself?ā€

        I don’t think that there are too many medical professions where the refusal to attend ‘therapy’ can result in you being drugged without your knowledge, have a knife planted on you for police to find and justify your delivery to a cage where you are assaulted and force drugged with brain damaging chemicals to ‘restrain’ you, and deny any right to complain. Where your confidential medical records are handed around like a T.V. guide and used as a weapon to “fucking destroy” you should you try and exercise your human rights, or access to the protection of the law (Australians value a rule of law? What an absolute joke that is)

        My dentist likes me to come see him and show him ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ (what he calls my mouth) every 6 months, but I don’t get snatched from my bed by police should I fail to make an appointment.

        Neoliberal? Capitalist? I think the model fits so much better with what Il Duce called Fascism.

        Your 6 monthly dental check has been missed. Were here to ensure your smile isn’t suffering as a result. No worries about us kicking your teeth out, we can put them back later.

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ9UQKBUrsg

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    • Thank you, Ms. Dā€™Silva, for so eloquently articulating how clueless the psychotherapy-psychology field is on so many levels. Itā€™s another case of ā€œconceptual in-competenceā€, thatā€™s for sureā€¦.yet they pride themselves on thinking they know what theyā€™re doing. Itā€™s one of ā€œthe storiesā€ (call them fairy tales) they keep telling themselves.

      But itā€™s the pot calling the kettle black, once again.

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      • And on the subject of potsā€¦.a historical reference worth noting is this: sometime in the first half of the last century, politicians promoting prosperity touted ā€œa chicken in every potā€. But nowadays, itā€™s a psych diagnosis and psych drug for everything and everyone ā€” all thanks to ā€œtherapy cultureā€.

        Some would say the worldā€™s come a long way, but I beg to differ.

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        • People in other countries have their own cultures, and donā€™t need outsiders profiting from their pain, some of which is caused by the very same outsiders, many of whom unconsciously live by the motto, ā€œYOUR pain is MY gainā€ ā€” in more ways than one ā€”

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        • Hereā€™s a question: has the psychotherapy-psychology field ever questioned the value of having so many psych diagnoses? Or any diagnoses at all? And if they havenā€™t, why is that? Who truly benefits from so much diagnostic overload?

          And as for their ā€œglobalā€ this and ā€œglobalā€ that ā€” whenā€™s the last time they actually bothered cleaning up their own backyard?

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          • Lots and lots of people have questioned it, but they are shot down by the orthodoxy and massive “group agreement.” It eventually became so bad for me that I realized I could not ethically continue in the “mental health” field, as the purpose had shifted away from trying to find ways for people to live better to trying to find ways for people to “stop feeling bad,” and that drugs had taken the center stage despite all the very rational arguments against them. It became clear, I suppose, that rational arguments would never win the day, because the field had become predominantly irrational, and rational critiques led to shame, punishment, and shunning.

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          • Itā€™s good to know a lot of people have questioned the value of so many diagnoses. But of course it never gets very far, as mainstream psychiatry wonā€™t hear of it, as itā€™s even less rational and has even less integrity than the psychology field. And Big Pharma rules the day.

            And what does it usually mean when people use the word ā€œglobalā€?
            It usually means they canā€™t see whatā€™s right in front of them.

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          • There’s been a ‘debate’ of sorts going on in Australia which kind of highlights what your saying Steve.

            The Australian netball team has stood by an indigenous players desire to not wear a uniform carrying the name of a billionaire mining magnate who once said of the aboriginal population;

            ā€œHerd the worst of the Aborigines into one area, and put a chemical in their water that sent them sterile,ā€ he said.

            ā€œIn time thereā€™d be none of them left. Well that solution has been put forward by none other than one of the Premierā€™s closest friends, Australian mining magnate…..ā€

            The defense of the decision for his daughter to take back her $15 million ‘reputational laundering’ money (called sponsorship by the media) bringing a lot of the closet racists out into the open.

            What has really fascinated me is that a lot of them claim ‘it was 40 years ago he said that’. Yes, and it was 6 years ago the State government tried to pass laws which would have allowed the worst of the aboriginals to be rounded up and sterilized without parental consent……. This after an epidemiologist identified a potential for a large bill for the damaged people resulting from these people breeding. And you can bet your life the Mining companies weren’t going to wear the cost…… socialise risk and cost, privatise wealth and profit style.

            Pure coincidence that the billionaire is still a ‘close friend’ of the Premier, and that her fathers ideas still seem to hold some sway with the government (though couched in medical terminology rather than outright stating that the people concerned were aboriginal).

            Much kudos to the Scientologists and the international community for stepping in where the laws were a foregone conclusion, both sides of the House supporting them …. until they realised others were not so impressed with what ‘they’ were planning on doing.

            Of course none of this is recognised in the ‘debate’, and only the ‘it was in the past’ and ‘it’s her money’ defense seems to get any airtime.

            So it seems that rational argument on the part of the indigenous player costing Netball Australia $15 million needs to be silenced with “shame , punishment and shunning”.

            And I thought this place would get better with time. And then I was woken by Police and Mental Health Services who were doing the bidding of criminals they call ‘confidential informants’ in order to conceal their ‘elegant methods of overcoming resistance’ (Fanon)

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    • Magdalene asks, ā€œTransactional human relationships that consist of paying for ā€˜therapyā€™ where our human emotions and distress are still, by and large, seen as being ā€˜treatedā€™ – by a ā€˜therapistā€™ who is a regulated licensed ā€˜professionalā€™ paid for their ā€˜emotional labourā€™ – might seem to some, to be the very epitome of neoliberal culture?ā€

      It lookā€™s that way to me. But at least the ā€˜therapeutically trainedā€™ Ugly Americans have smiles on their faces.

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  2. “the APA was coming to terms with their involvement in developing torture procedures for Guantanamo Bay.”

    And how did that work out? I know the consequences are still being felt here in Australia, with the arbitrary detentions and ‘acute stress reactions’ being caused by police to have ‘mental patient’s’ comply with their ‘treatments’ The Chief Psychiatrist claiming that the “observed behaviours” are all that matter regarding the need for treatments…… hence the cause of the man in the videos distress matters naught, only that he needs ‘treatments’. It’s just a matter of not looking until he has been prepared for referral…. as was the case in my situation (and also I note, in Abu Ghraib). Plant a knife on me after ‘spiking’ with date rape drugs, and then have police cause an ‘acute stress reaction’ before interrogation.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ9UQKBUrsg&t=11s

    The “concerning aspects” of this detention for me are that the request from hospital staff for such ‘roughing up’ by police of ‘patients’ doesn’t even enter the narrative here.

    And keep in mind that the ability to ‘spike’ people with date rape drugs before causing these acute stress reactions is possible due to the ‘after the fact due process’. Doctor simply writes a prescription for the drugs and the matters go from being a crime (stupefying with intent to commit an indictable offence ….. 20 years prison) to being the “outpatients” “Regular Medications” (given that citizens in Australia are either “inpatients” or “outpatients” according to our Chief Psychiatrist, thus enabling anyone to be snatched from their beds at any time by police on a request from a Community Nurse under the powers of the Mental Health Act. And they reckon people in China have got it tough?)

    I note that one of our Federal Ministers described the threat to release the confidential medical records of customers with Medibank a “dog act”. And yet when my medical records were released from a Private Clinic (which does legal medico reports for the Courts and defense attorneys) after I was incapacitated with date rape drugs and arbitrarily detained and tortured, the State did nothing more than “edit” the documents to conceal the offending for the perpetrators, and arrange to have an unintended negative outcome with the person complaining.

    Such powers in the hands of psychologists with Masters degrees seems a little risky, especially when they are compromising the court system by acting as a ‘confidential informant’ to the State in matters where they gain an advantage by obtaining access to legally privileged information.

    Still, I note there is nothing that can’t be resolved when the State can “edit” legal narratives and deny access to legal representation. The release of my confidential medical records to assassinate my character highly effective, and when the Minister is prepared to utter with known fraudulent documents and threaten you and your family with ‘treatments’ for complaining about such criminality………. i’m sure they have their reasons (the conflict of interest seems to be the dominant reason)

    “In addition, it justified having their rights restrictedā€”they suffered inhumane treatment. Over time they became reformers of the field and became aware of the UNā€™s Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.”

    Extremely dangerous to go to the Chief Psychiatrist and explain that he doesn’t understand the protections afforded the community by the law when he has rewritten the law to remove said protections. Once the documents have been “edited” and he has responded to the offending based on the fraudulent set…. best you don’t turn up with the real set. It causes all sorts of problems. The Convention against the use of Torture? Simple, “edit” the documents and make the person an “Outpatient” and your free to do whatever you like…. any complaints, ‘negatively outcome’ them. Unintentionally of course.

    Trying to access the right of complaint under Article 13 of the Convention against the use of Torture is responded to with threats of ‘treatment’ (beatings, electricity, incarceration and loss of family described by Amnesty as being human rights abuses if done in Iran, but called ‘medical care’ if done in Australia) by the Minister for Health. The Attorney General passing the buck on the matter to someone with the power to have the matter dealt with in a way beneficial to the State (ie mental health snow jobs)

    I’m not an expert (and therefore assume not worthy of a response) but all this talk about human rights is dangerous to people having their heads kicked in to get them the ‘treatment’ they require. What good were rights to Japanese/Americans in 1940? What good is it when the State (via the Chief Psychiatrist who’s duty it is to enforce those rights) simply denies they exists while they hold you down and inject you with enough anti psychotics to lay an elephant out for a week for complaining? (“He was breathing threats of litigation”…….’chemical kosh’ please)

    See also Jim Gottstein’s article re ‘Why you shouldn’t talk to a therapist’. Or possibly even more appropriate in Australia the “elegant method of overcoming ‘resistance'” described by Frantz Fanon in his book Wretched of the Earth (regarding mental health services in French Algeria).

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  3. There has been a confirmed ‘hack’ of our Medicare system, with the confidential medical records of about 4 million clients being compromised.

    The Minister has called the threat to release these medical records a “dog act”, though I wonder if, given the way the COVID tracking data was used by police despite assurances that it would be used for no other purpose than COVID tracking, if the government is not actually pleased about obtaining access to such stolen data. They never really meant it when they said it wouldn’t be used for any other purpose right? having the ability to track every citizen in the State? It’s a fascists dream come true.

    I know in my situation the person who stole my confidential medical records from a Private Clinic and provided that information unlawfully to the State, was treated as a ‘confidential informant’, and was provided with significant State resources to ensure their criminal release of my information was concealed (even going as far as having legal representatives forge and utter with a letter from the Chief Psychiatrist)

    I find myself not feeling so alone knowing that there are many of those 4 million ‘victims’ whose psychiatric billing codes are about to be released to the public. Whilst it is sad that their characters are about to be “fucking destroyed” (this is the term used by the Operations Manager when releasing more of my medical records in an “edited” form to slander me for daring to complain about their conspiring to pervert and criminality), surely it may bring about some discussion about how ‘stigma’ works?

    That and the fact that the criminal release of medical records from a Private Clinic because you have gone to the trouble of ‘spiking’ someone with date rape drugs and planting items for police to find (thus the claim being that the release was lawful. The victim unable to provide consent to the release of the records due to the effects of the offences. Shame I’m the only one who can see a problem here, and the means used to ‘protect’ their ‘confidential informant’ is absolutely disgraceful).

    In fact, as the ‘hacker’ has provided some of the medical records of some high profile individuals as proof they have them, surely they now become a ‘confidential informant’ for the government and any complaints about their criminality would require cover up?

    The one significant difference I note between my situation, and those who now find themselves in a position where their records have been compromised (other than the fact my records were ACTUALLY released) is that in my situation the clients of the Private Clinic were not given the opportunity to protect themselves from the breach. At least when Citizen A finds his diagnosis published on his workplace bulletin board (and Facebook) they can be ready with a response (though let me tell you the loss of credibility when such slander is used as a weapon against you is much much worse than you could begin to imagine)

    I imagine that the suicides which will possibly result form such releases can be attributed to the ‘chemical imbalances’ of the victims rather than the slander and character assassination? What’s good for the goose huh? Here’s a slander narrative we prepared earlier.

    Having such ‘confidential informants’ (the hacker) providing such information to the State isn’t such a bad thing after all? And the government will provide significant resources to ensure the protection of their sources, seeing anyone who has proof of who the informant is as a threat to their security and reputation.

    I suppose I was easily “fucking destroyed” (and my legal narrative “edited” post hoc), whereas 4 million ‘victims’ might not be so easily silenced?

    “The ammunition’s been passed, and the Lords been praised, but the wars on the television will never be explained…… all the Bankers getting sweaty beneath their white collars, as the Pound in our pockets turns into a Dollar”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPSO8pdAX6c

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  4. “There is a lot of information on the ground amongst people we would consider not worth listening to.”

    I understand that India has a caste system, but the US is not supposed to. Here, we were all taught that “all people are created as equal.”

    So – as one who had the misfortune of being medically unnecessarily shipped to, and psychiatrically “snowed” by, a now FBI convicted Indian doctor, in the US – I do find it quite appalling that so many psychologists freely admit that they view their patients as “not worth listening to.”

    But, as one who had the misfortune of dealing with a couple of child abuse covering up psychologists, I already know the child abuse and rape covering up psychologists and psychiatrists – of all nationalities – are mind bogglingly disrespectful humans, who will stoop to the lowest criminal levels imaginable, to cover up child abuse.

    https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
    https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/

    “Information on the ground,” like for example, that the ADHD drugs and antidepressants can create the “bipolar” symptoms?

    “Information on the ground,” like for example, that the antipsychotics can create the “positive symptoms of schizophrenia,” via anticholinergic toxidrome, and the “negative symptoms of schizophrenia,” via neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome?

    Definitely, us banker’s daughters, who got in the top 99.95% on our math SATs, are “not worth listening to.” One psychologist even told me that the social workers – who try to drug up the best and brightest children in America, are “right” to do that – in order to try to “maintain the status quo.”

    But when the “statice quo” is a “pedophile empire,” I for one, do NOT stand in support of “maintaining the status quo.”

    https://www.amazon.com/Pedophilia-Empire-Chapter-Introduction-Disorder-ebook/dp/B0773QHGPT

    I do hope and pray the pedophile empowering, child abuse covering up, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, CPS, et al will some day get out of that illegal business, as well as the human trafficking business.

    https://medicalkidnap.com/2018/08/05/america-1-in-child-sex-trafficking-and-pedophilia-cps-and-foster-care-are-the-pipelines/

    But woo-hoo to all the internet truth tellers, who are making us “unruly and ungovernable,” for the pedophilia controlled powers that shouldn’t be.

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