Inpatient psychiatry is not a place of psychological healing; it is devoid of compassion and full of human rights abuses. Those trapped there due to their emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are controlled by pharmaceutical Americans and their cultish mindset hailing drugs at the expense of everything else. The conditions are prison-like, human rights nonexistent, and intimate friendships banned. Due to the presence of cutting-edge, next generation drugs and electric shock machines, though, psychiatrists have faith that these are places of psychological healing. Truly, these ātreatmentsā must be quite something to compensate for all of thatā¦ right?
People exposed āinvoluntarily,ā or even forcefully, to inpatient psychiatry are often those who are contemplating suicide. If someone has enough traumatic things happen to them, and there is no foreseeable way out of their situation, they may become suicidal. They may be stuck in deeply abusive circumstances, have a progressive incurable illness, or be subjected to any other set of problems. In our society, this distress is viewed as a medical problem; certain drug-company funded individuals gathered together and deemed it so. According to psychiatrists, the suicidal person is suffering from a sickness of the mind: their āmental illnessā is making them a threat to themselves! Pesky āmental illness.ā The usefulness of this construct is almost never questioned by the mainstream, taken as fact because āexpertsā deem it so.
The smartest way to convince someone in awful circumstances to live, according to psychiatrists, is to ban their suicidal thoughts or actions. This involves sending a team of police and EMS people to make as much of a scene as possible. They will restrain the individual to be brought in for a good strip-searching by strangers. From there, the individual is incarcerated, likely without trial, for an unknown amount of time. During this, they are under constant surveillance with very limited outside communication, no internet, and no cell phone. They are banned from forming friendships or showing any forms of physical affection with other inmates. They must āagreeā to pills, injections, or shock treatments or risk having these things forced. In young people, the pills actually increase the likelihood of further suicidality, which means more potential profit later. The individual cannot directly control when they can escape and dare not step out of line in this process.
This is also true for people who, due to their circumstances, suffer a scary loss of contact with reality, such as having paranoia that they are being surveilled constantly. (This can be due to abuse, homelessness, loss of sleep, or other factors.) Itās best to place those people into a situation where they are, in fact, always on camera and have no privacy, where they are truly being monitored and controlled with zero rights. Additionally, breaking other rules set forth by the United Nations is important, such as threatening or using forcible injection of neuroleptic drugs. Intelligent management of paranoid individuals involves ensuring that their worst fears become as close to reality as possible.
Sacrificing othersā dignity to bring their institutions more money is crucial. Dignity and rights are irrelevant to healing āmental illnessā because only drugs can do that! In fact, those things get in the way of administering drugs, so they must be done away with. Factors like freedom, connection, consent, and all other values have to be abandoned in pursuit of this end. There is no limit to how many times, or how much time, this can be done to innocent individuals eitherā¦ so long as they are deemed sufficiently āmadā or āmentally ill.ā Of course, psychiatrists rarely say the quiet parts out loud; their status as pharmaceutical Americans could come into jeopardy if they did.
Pharmaceutical Americansā faith in the value of pills, injections, and shock treatments above all else demonstrates a peculiar mindset which could be seen as a form of āmadness.ā Unlike the vast majority of their subjects, though, they are dangerous to other people. They use state-sanctioned mechanisms of violence to promote āmental health.ā According to the late Dr. Thomas Szasz, this is ācruel compassion.ā The emphasis is on the cruel part, of course, as compassion is nowhere to be found. What he saw throughout the field, and witnessed in practice, was a sort of witch burning wearing the cloak of an evidence basis. It was scientific only in veneer and horrifying in practice.
Liberationists like Szasz are resented by many for their unwavering stance against torture and for freedom. Whether people want to be locked up or take drugs should be their own choice, not someone elseās. Their faith should be practiced on their own terms, and, like all other faiths, should not be cultishly forced due to pill-pushersā delusions of grandeur. The fieldās insatiable lust for controlling every aspect of disturbed and disturbing behavior grows by the decade, now projected to pathologize the vast majority of modern Westerners within their lifetimes.
Were the psychiatristsā framework useful, their forced treatment subjects would be as grateful as those who wake up from (actually) life-saving surgeries. Also, people who adhere to drug ātreatmentā regimens would have better long-term life outcomes than those who do not. However, neither of these is the case; yet, in the Kafkaesque trap of āinsight,ā subjects who come out on the other side harmed get written off. In fact, it just shows even more need for ātreatment,ā because the system has failed to ātreatā them enough. They must still be too insane to know what was good for them all along. In no way can the violence or incompetence of psychiatry ever be wrong; itās always the subjects, who are too ill to know what is or ever was good for them.
If peopleās negative thoughts and feelings are better conceptualized as nonmedical problems, what is the solution to their suffering? Well, getting to the heart of these things is more difficult than running a 5-minute checklist to assign a drug (or several). However, starting with the obvious is always best: kindness and support. A lot of people deemed ādisorderedā by psychiatrists are unheard and do not have their basic needs met. In our twisted, atomized modernity, these problems get written off as illness. āPatientsā are to be incarcerated, drugged, and reeducated away as a means of denial over how bad life can truly get, whether or not these policies work. Simply the appearance of promoting healthy behavior is enough to placate society, inner suffering of the affected individuals be damned.
Tending to peopleās needs and feelings may sound silly to people who believe in the biomedical model, but itās cheaper and more successful, even for so-called āserious/severe mental illness.ā Human connection and respect are, always have been, and always will be more important than pharmaceutical drugs to the human psyche. This is true regardless of whether one thinks the drugs are harmful or helpful to begin with. Safe shelter, dignity, and compassion are the bedrocks of building and nurturing psychological well-being, no matter what pharmaceutical Americans believe about psychiatric drugs and chemical imbalances.
The āseriousā and āprofessionalā facade of coercive inpatient psychiatry cannot hold up to scientific scrutiny any more than other practices founded on little to no unbiased evidence. Yet, to psychiatrists, if only the unwashed masses of those who ālack insightā were wiser, they would see how healing and transformative being locked away with no rights is. Surely, anywhere people who claim to be doctors are in power cannot be wrong, because doctors are enlightened, educated, and by no means have conflicts of interest. Only their patientsā best interests are at heartā¦ against their will, of course.
In the pursuit of understanding the human psyche, walking, or rather, sprinting away from the eugenic, legalistic roots of psychiatric practice is critical to developing a working model. The fundamentals of human contentment are currently being ignored en masse to individualize and medicalize all forms of deep suffering, ironically at the same time as the suffering itself is spreading. While large swaths of the world undergo a crisis of meaning, everyone who is part of these groups gets convinced they have an individual problem. While this worldview enriches the medical establishment, it disempowers subjects. The revolving door of psychiatric practice pushes these people further into the void trying to find the right ātreatmentā for their problems of living.
Fundamentally, the usefulness of psychiatric treatment methods should always lie in the impacts on the lives they touch. For reasons that are plain as day to anyone not neck-deep in psychiatric propaganda, the current biomedical model is failing our public. The World Health Organization has reiterated this multiple times, including in their recent comprehensive report calling for the end to human rights abuses and excessive drug-pushing in psychiatry. In exchange, they argue for more psychosocial models that respect decency. Any other time in history would laugh at how long it has taken the scientific community to acknowledge this reality (almost as though there were conflicts of interest at play all along). Only by following legal and financial motivations can one make sense of what has happened to our worldās handling of psychological distress.
You write the truth and, sadly, the current medical model is more destructive than helpful. I am a caregiver to a “victim” of psychiatric medicine and it may take a very long time to get over the trauma that was inflicted. We are being ghosted by attorneys, doctors, judges and more in our effort to address the injustices. Keep sharing this information to all so we can make significant change and help people they need emotional support.
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Thank you! I am sorry about the struggles you face finding justice. I think a lot of people who could help, like the lawyers, doctors, and judges view themselves as just cogs in a machine who can’t help even if they wanted to. If enough people stood up together, though, big changes could be made.
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Yes, those of us who have been abused and hurt, if we stood together and fought back, we could make some positive changes. We better remember that the first group that was exterminated after Hitler took power in Germany was the psychiatric patients. Something like this may happen again after our next election. Legislators of both major parties are already taking away our legal rights, even here in California, usually considered the most liberal state in the US, TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY WHILE YOU STILL CAN!
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Thank you Ted! It really sucks, but unfortunately the Democratic states actually seem to be worse on these policies from what I’ve seen. I think their pharma/healthcare donors bought them out and convinced them that forced treatment is somehow altruistic. Interestingly, Democrats know this argument to be b.s. when Republicans try to say forcing childbirth on women is “humane” and “appreciated later” since apparently pregnant women can’t think for themselves. That garbage never flies on the left. But, Democrats are split on accepting that psychiatric “patients” are in fact people, too, with bodies they should have autonomy over.
I think they see homelessness and suicide, and they want to end those issues, but they don’t think about the ramifications of the policies they pass to “help.” This problem is true of a number of Democratic policies, honestly, where they say “Wow, what a horrible thing! Let’s end it!”, yet their solution is worse. That’s not to say the Republicans are a better party. I’m just a cynic about anyone’s so-called “no-brainer” policies that are a lot more complicated than they want to think.
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I wonder what Trump will be saying and doing about these issues. We know what his hero Adolph Hitler did to psych inmates. Hmmmmm, will this become a campaign issue?
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Crystal, “nomen omen”. Your first name is very apt: you “crystallized” the callousness, duplicity, and indifference to human suffering that lie at the heart of the mental health industry in general.
But I wouldn’t exempt outpatient therapy from its share of harm. The overwhelming majority of those engaged in this field continue to base their so-called treatments on the recommendations put forward by the DSM, which the NIH itself does not recognize as a reliable source of medical knowledge. Their complicity in this scam is a disgrace.
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Thank you so much, Joel! I agree that outpatient care is awful too. Inpatient is unique in how extreme it is, though, and how it is almost impossible to hold people accountable.
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Thank you for this, Crystal. Our misunderstanding of “mental illness” has been an ongoing problem for over 200 years and it is a crisis now because of scientism and our “need” for empirical evidence and a quick fix for everything. There is little, if any, good outcome from the current psychiatric method that seems to always involve toxic drugs and other terrible treatment options–ECT, for example. The patient always comes away in many ways worse off than before these “therapies”. I am glad you mention the great Thomas Szasz. Also, there seems to be a movement away from the Western medical model toward new paradigms which is encouraging, if slow. (I am writing a paper on the causes and new perceptions of “mental illness”.)
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Thank you Louisa! Indeed, scientism is a massive problem and very different from actually following the scientific method. Factors like agency and social connection are scientifically known factors in “mental health,” to the extent it exists, yet mental institutions would have one think the only relevant factor is drugs.
I’m a big believer that one can have common sense “educated out” of them. People only arrive to the conclusion of the psychiatric police state being helpful to the individuals affected by making convoluted appeals to diagnosis, insight, medical capacity, and treatment. Those who oppose it can just say “Look at this cruelty! Is it working?”, and the answer is a plainly obvious “no.”
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I remember the debate over the DSMV here when it came out in 2013. So I have been here awhile. I was institutionalized in 1989 and again in 1990. They failed at this in 2016 thanks to my wife and I believe because the prior institutionalizations didnāt follow me electronically. I have twenty-five years of experience as an educator and youth worker with at-risk youth and the developmentally disabled. Both groups have a high rate of psychiatric drug use. We have a foster care crisis year in West Virginia, but I havenāt been able to get the local independent media to take an interest in the psychiatric drug prescribing to these group. I decided to run for Congress, and one of my planks is to end forced treatment and the prescribing of psychiatric drugs to minors.
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Chris
This makes me so happy….. You are a hero.
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Thank you for your comment Chris. It’s good when institutionalization records don’t follow you–those can be misleading at times regardless. I wish you the best in your congressional run!
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I too, am a care provider. My adult 33 year old daughter is beautiful, loving, and creative human being who was institutionalized in state mental hospitals and other ‘step down’ facilities for six years while being forcibly drugged. She experienced so much torture that it is hard to distinguish her original unmet emotional, physical, and spiritual needs (needs prior to being tortured) from the cascade of drug side effects and iatrogenic trauma that was the result of well intended mental health providers who brutally squashed her agency, confidence, and hope. She has been living at home for the last six years and voluntarily taking drugs that consistently appear to be doing more harm than good. She internalized the messages of hopelessness and she spends most of her time talking to herself in her room. We are afraid to take her to the ER out of fear that she will get forced back into a state hospital.
This piece was spot on and strangely cathartic. In other words, only satire and irony, as expressed in this writing style can capture the truly twisted and evil underpinnings of the current mental health system. I am a survivor of vicarious trauma simply by witnessing my daughter and many, many others like her being systematically tortured in institutions. I can’t imagine what the primary trauma survivors in the carceral mental health system must be feeling if I feel this crappy just witnessing it. The carceral mental health system is so brutal and bad for so many; it’s like, on your worst day when you reach out for help, someone forcibly pushes your head into society’s sewage and vomit and holds you under till you nearly choke to death. I still can’t believe there are still parent lobby organizations like NAMI loudly calling for more ‘psychiatric beds’ . They may as well be calling for more coffins.
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Thank you for the comment Sarah! I think a big reason behind parents lobbying for beds is very politically incorrect, but it needs to be said: These parents often caused their kid’s problem to begin with, and do not care about what they go through in the system. They are perfectly happy gaslighting their so-called loved one until the end.
Psychiatry, when people are subjected to it by family against their will, is basically a cult. It has all of the known elements of a cult, and is even more invasive and restrictive than the best-known ones. I am so lucky to have escaped the cult of coercive psychiatry and my mother who subjected me to it because my birth caused her to be.
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Yes my parents both abused me and my brother, and my brother abused me endlessly. My mother was also severely traumatized, violent and addicted to pills. Psychiatry was a godsend for them. They could infinitely subject the both of their kids to forced interventions to get rid of any behaviors they didnāt like without focusing at the system level on what might have been driving our distress ā namely, them. When I spoke up about it I was of course villianized by my whole family. Everything in my mothers psyche revolves around the need to stay blameless, and a āperfect parent.ā She once told me theyād write on her tombstone, āshe got two fucked up kids but she did her best.ā Well, I wonāt be at the funeral.
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Thank you for sharing your story Ryan. I’m sorry that happened to you. The fact that psychiatry ignores this at a systematic level is horrible. I think it’s from conflicts of interest.
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Sarah, I know exactly how you feel. I also have a beautiful daughter, who is wonderfully talented, considerate, and artful and very loving. She also developed paranoid schizophrenia when she turned 25. Since then the battles that I’ve tried to fight for her have been met with disregard and to my Surprise acting as if I’m not even in the room at all. I’ve been asked if I was crazy for asking that my daughters rights should be taken into account. In the very beginning of this I had no idea what I was dealing with . There is fact that when I’ve had her at home, she does remarkabley well. She does make improvements surrounded by safety and love. Unfortunately she had a paranoid schizophrenic episode at Walmart a year ago and we are still going to court over it. She spent 135 days locked up between jail and state hospital. When she returned to jail she wasn’t doing well was having seizures. Everytime we went to court we got a new public defender . No council. Her bond was set at 20,000. I had to bail her out 6 months ago for fear she wouldn’t make it . I’ve had her six months this time without any psychosis until we got a call from probation, which she is not on. Telling us that she signed a paper a year ago that states she is on court compliance and needs to come in regularly for pee test and whatever it is they wanted. During that phone call that was on speaker my daughter went right into psychosis and has been there. It was that threat of taking her freedom away that put her there. We had made progress in those 6 months but now everything is as if this impending doom is over her head. Her lawyer filed a 18-2-11 and a week later I’m still waiting for a call to take her to the D. E. For evaluation to go back to state hospital. It’s a horrible cycle. The only thing I can say is find what your daughter likes to do and spend time with her doing that. For my daughter it’s art and we’ve made wonderful things together. That and the safety with you. The talking to themselves and the invisible people you get used to. Consistency, patience and love does bring improvement to their mental health. There will be days when you think you can’t do it, just breath and know there’s more of us out here trying to do the same thing. Taking a break and finding motivation for yourself doesn’t hurt either. Keep your head up.
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My 23 year old son recently had what I would call a schizophrenic episode with delusions of grandeur and paranoid delusions. He lost his job, was arrested for disorderly conduct, which we are still dealing with. I borrowed from a family member to post bond because he’s having mental struggles, he’s not a criminal. I am looking for how to help him. We have younger children living at home and his manic and paranoid behavior was intolerable to the point of having him evicted. He is living in his car and my heart is broken – his verbally abusive behavior is hurtful. At this point, I am the only family member that will proactively talk to him and try to help. Any advice for someone in my position?
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Thank you for your comment. The best thing you can do for your son is to help him take steps to re-establish accountability: get back into work or school, etc., if he doesn’t want to live in his car. This is very hard to arrange for while he is living in a car. Maybe offer to edit his resume or send some free employment and shelter services.
The worst thing to do is accept him back in with no standards and enable him.
Best of luck!
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Does he use drugs? Are some of his problems (mania, paranoia, delusions) a result of chronic drug use? Is he on any medication like SSRIs (fluvoxamine, sertaline etc.) or stimulants like ritalin etc.? Those can cause mania in some people (and subsequently delusions of grandeur too).
Or are his problems just “spontaneous”, that is, he is just inherently that way with no environmental factor? Why do you think those episodes have taken place?
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“This is also true for people who, due to their circumstances, suffer a scary loss of contact with reality, such as having paranoia that they are being surveilled constantly. (This can be due to abuse, homelessness, loss of sleep, or other factors.)” … or because “somebody is watching” us!
For goodness sakes, my phone tries to tell me where I want to go, before I even try to tell it where I want to go. And I’m so sick of the ‘targeted advertising’ by car companies, who apparently have not yet figured out that we already purchased a new car. “Somebody’s watching you!” … seems to be the sad truth in the internet age.
Nonetheless, great blog, Crystal! I agree with so much of what you say … LOL, for your truth speaking, many times! Thanks!
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Thank you! It’s so true that privacy rights are virtually all gone now with the police state. They’re advancing it with psychiatry too. Now even “anonymous” Reddit posts alluding to suicidal ideation can get people raided by cops.
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Yes, it’s a thought crime straight out of George Orwell’s 1984 book. And it’s those closest to you, your “friends” who will rat you out to the authorities if you are suspected of harboring thoughts deemed inappropriate by the state, such as suicidal ideation. It’s just incredible, it’s shocking, when you think about it in depth and see it for what it is, from first principles. It is absolute tyranny. Literally state informants in your own home.
This is what you would expect from totalitarian societies such as East Germany, China or russia, not a supposed free country such as the United Kingdom or USA. It really is a police state, and we have slowly sleepwalked into it unaware.
Instead of hunting heretics and witches as we did in medieval times, in the 21st Century we are witch-hunting those deemed thinking inappropriate thoughts. History repeating itself again and again. And it looks like Orwell was right in the end.
No wonder why people isolate themselves from others, or become hermits, after they have experienced being treated like this by their supposed “friends” or “family”. And of course many times such suicidal thoughts just pass, or they were wrongly suspected of having them, and no suicide actually happens in the end. Experiencing such mistreatment forces you to see modern society for what it is.
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You can just be suspected of harboring revolutionary thoughts against the government, that is all it takes for you to be disappeared without trial as they did so in the East Germany. And a close relative or friend will rat you out to the modern equivalent of the Stasi.
No different from East Germany or the Soviet Union in the end.
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From George Orwell’s book “Nineteen Eighty Four”:
https://medium.com/@legowrites/1984-a7d26f5f3063
” Everyone was monitored by the government through the use of a device called the telescreen, which is similar to a television with a webcam and a microphone. Any sound, above the level of a very low whisper would be picked up by it. The thought police, were monitoring every citizen, at almost every instant, to catch people with revolutionary thoughts. Any individual with the smallest indication of a revolutionary thought or an anti-government thought or even if they had a doubt, would be captured by the thought police and would be executed. ”
That is what can happen to dissenters here in the West. They don’t execute you, but they will disappear you without due process and it’s done in the name of “psychiatry”. Instead of the telescreen it’s so-called “friends” and “family” who will snitch on you.
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Changing the paradigm of the mental health system requires our society to undergo a top to bottom spiritual revival such that restoring human dignity and protecting people’s basic human rights is as important as creating wealth, protecting wealth, and enforcing basic ‘law and order’ It is challenging, if not impossible to put a dollar figure on a person’s dignity and the loss of human potential that results from iatrogenic harm, gender violence, trauma, child abuse, social injustice, racism, ignorance, and poverty, etc. We cannot easily quantify what we are losing or gaining by changing the mental health system. Our mental health system is the underground sewage system where we are cramming all of our social ills. Throwing money at the current system won’t help and nearly anything is better than the current system. Leading our children to psychiatry for comfort and ‘help’ is like leading lambs to the slaughter.
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Thank you Sarah! “Lambs to the slaughter,” indeed. Psychiatry thinks every negative or exploratory or spontaneous act is a “disease” now. I wonder how much damage is being done to developing minds.
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Thank you for your insights, please continue the good work
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Thank you so much Mariam!
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Where you said āSafe shelterā ā¦ I am acquiring safe shelter, today (itās been 5 months).
I wanted to get my teeth cleaned, tomorrow. The dentist made me grovel and seek his permission to get my teeth cleaned. He made me explain why I was not up for the discussion about having all my teeth pulled, to be replaced with dentures (he referred me to an oral surgeon 18 months ago, but I could not acquire a driver for after the surgery). Instead – he explained how if we caught cavities early, we could save the teeth. There is nothing wrong with my teeth. I have periodontal disease. Obviously, he didnāt know who he was speaking to on the phone (this was not personal). He gave his permission to get my teeth cleaned, but next time – no excuses.
No excuses? He does not live in my world. Safe shelter & groceries ā¦ supersedes preventative dental care – always!
You know what? Perhaps those 22 teeth didnāt even need to be pulled. They are still in my mouth 18 months later. I was trying to take care of myself (get my teeth cleaned). I canceled the appointment. This is capitalism. I will not give this guy my money. Sure, he has a right to rule his medical practice. But it is not about my health care. I am an old woman, and I will not grovel before any man!
This is the only solution. We have to starve the beast. If we didnāt voluntarily visit these practitioners, or fill their prescriptions – they wouldnāt be living so opulently.
Some dogs in this country get better health care than the people do.
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Thank you! I am glad you got safe shelter. Our healthcare system is a mess indeed, and it’s not just psychiatry.
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Awesome commentary from all I read, thanks.
Though I have a delusional label I think we will get there with this line of discussion.
A $400+ billion dollar network of organised crime and those running protection for them are no match for children’s tears ..we saw this with the child sexual abuse enquiries around the world.
A return to what happened to you rather than what’s wrong with you will help.
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Thank you David! Psychiatry seems to analyze people’s psychology in a vacuum, like emotions, thoughts, and behaviors come from nowhere and only “treatment” matters to it. They don’t consider any other factors.
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Chrystal
You are a gifted writer and you are right on point..Think about writing a book or just putting these blogs into a pamphlet. Don’t let them get lost, to time.
best
Jim
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I agree about Crystal’s writing talents and I hope I will be able to read at least her first book.
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Thank you James! I submitted a book idea to a publisher recently and am waiting to hear back. š
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Wow, this is a powerful and MUCH NEEDED piece. Every sentence speaks the truth. As a psych survivor, I applaud you. As a human, I applaud you. As a woman, I applaud you. Oh, and you’re a great writer. Thank you for doing such great work in this world. Thomas S. would be proud. (I’m sure he is)
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Thank you so much Melinda! This is the best writing on my work I’ve ever gotten.
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Thank you so much Melinda! This is the best compliment on my work Iāve ever gotten.
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Crystal, thank you for exposing psychiatry’s well-hidden dark side, euphemistically referred to as “coercive treatment”. “Treatment” it is not; it’s a horrifying abuse of people’s basic human rights that too few people know about.
You are 100% right that the problem begins with psychiatry’s so-called “medical model. This unfortunately has captured the public’s fascination; all one needs to do is to say the word “science” or “evidence based” and they think they’ve won an argument.
The truth is psychiatry isn’t based on medical science, it’s based on scientism, and fact that so many seemingly bright students studying psychiatry or even psychology don’t know the difference between the two I think says a lot about the quality of education in the American university system.
My personal belief is that science has no place in helping people in emotional/psychological distress. I think a mindset like this just distracts from what’s really going on in someone’s life. Psychiatry’s medical model ignores the fact that life isn’t experienced objectively, it’s experienced subjectively, whether we’re using our intuition or intellect. The inappropriate use of word like science or “evidence based” only leads society down the wrong road.
I personally think a lot of people can help themselves if they haven’t already internalized the mistaken idea that they need “professional help”, which, imo, is one huge grift.
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Thank you! Yes, so much of this biomedical stuff is scientism. It’s not even accurate scientism; social determinants of mental “health”, if you use the language, are known to be extremely important to well-being, yet psychiatry does not care about this.
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Hi Crystal, just a couple of comments from me.
“Additionally, breaking other rules set forth by the United Nations is important”…. these ‘rules’, in some cases are Conventions, which have been ratified by States, who then find ways of simply ignoring the agreements they have signed to ensure the human rights of the people who elect them. So, for example, in my State they simply ignore any complaints about people who have been subjected to acts of torture, they “edit” the legal narratives (to ensure the laws protecting citizens do not appear to have been breached ie to expose the arbitrary detentions and acts of torture), and refer victims for ‘treatment’ which results in what our Chief Psychiatrist euphemistically calls “unintended negative outcomes” (you can’t prove otherwise given the fact that the documents have been “edited” before being provided to those who are supposed to be protecting human rights. See for example our Mental Health Law Centre who work with the State against their ‘clients’ to cover up State sanctioned torture and political killings). Should see the faces when they realise what’s been going on behind their backs, these ‘good people’
“They use state-sanctioned mechanisms of violence to promote āmental health.ā”
Might I add that given the above, they also use unlawful methods to remove human rights and bring people in for ‘treatments’. For example ‘spiking’ peoples food or drink (which is an offence in our Criminal Code) but which can be ignored by Police as having “insufficient evidence” (once Police have retrieved the documented proof of such crimes). Insert forged prescription for the ‘spiking’ here (Stupefying drug administered covertly becomes “Regular medication” and combined with an “acute stress reaction” [ie police put a gun to your head and threaten you with execution, this is your mental health which is suffering right?])
So not only State sanctioned methods, but unlawful ones made to appear as if they have been State sanctioned by people you should be able to trust.
Still, I notice the reference to Uncle Adolf above. I think it important to understand how and when Hitler removed human rights (burning of the Reichstag), and obtained a ‘weapon’ with which to suppress any and all opposition to his ‘plans’.
To quote Bart Simpson……. “are we there yet?”
Personally I don’t think so. The people who were looking to silence me appear to have been dealt with, and well, no longer in a position where they can be prosecuted. Probably for the best given the disease they had in their heart.
I am reminded of Margaret Thatcher who is quoted as saying “democracy is the rejection of violence”. Which brings me back to something I wrote in my journals such a long time ago (call it a symptom of an illness if they must).
“Psychiatry is to medicine, what Islamic State is to Islam” These are people who KNOW their way is the right way, and are prepared to use violence to ensure it is enforced. Democracy be damned.
Love the article, and so glad to see a young person thinking deeply about some of the issues.
P.S. I don’t think the US has ratified any of the UN Conventions regarding human rights?
Regards
Boans
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Thank you Boans. I agree that way too much power is given to these people and the lack of compassion is so apparent when that imbalance is so large. If they want to be doctors, they should act like doctors.
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Long story short my husband was a drug addicted, I finally got the nerve to leave him, and even reached out to my kids school informing them of what happened and asked for any help they could give for my already troubled son. Never responded to my plea, my son got worse, I told them I was trying and even made him a therapist appointment just to be told by the school cop that the school had a therapist the entire school year I was asking for it. The cop goes to get her and she walks in and says who is it that needs medicine? I was shocked I said no no we just need therapy, well Iām booked up she says heāll have to go on the waiting list and he wonāt make it before end of school year. I say thatās ok cause I got him an appointment with the same company she works for and thatās when she informed me that he wonāt be able to go there that she has to be the one to refer him first. So I say how about you put my sons name on that list of yours because Iām willing to bet that if he needed this help the first of the year and still needs it now at the end that in 2 months when school starts again Iād be willing to bet heāll still need it then. The next year starts he gets into trouble and they place him first student ever in this pilot program for troubled kids citing it was a therapeutic alternate working on his emotional well being over academics with 4 teachers hovering over him all day with questions. With calls home to report his bad behavior saying I needed to come get him. And the next days call I say I guess Iāll be on my way just to get chewed out, the staff saying how dare I come get him that Iām enabling him giving him exactly what he wants, that I was hurting my son. Iām told by them they are not therapist and they canāt make him do better. They called DCS and with my sons already filled head of bad mommy thing his jealous resentful father made by sure to unload on his then 8 year old son. And telling me that if he just told them what they want to hear it makes them happy and their nice to him for the rest of the day. And with that I was labeled a drug addict with the insistence of my husband saying so, they took my kids away and told my husband who was 2 days out of a rehab by getting kicked out that he had full access to the kids. Which he he never once stood up quit drugs and handled the business of being a father. So I keep standing barley but I did and while the kids were forced to live with my volatile mother with my daughter saying who was never even interviewed during this process that the living conditions were horrible but we all three new not to fight back to bear the bad and just do whatever dcs said so we could be together again. It was absolutely the worst year of my life yes a year with clean hair follicle tests I took and all the other many things they had me do. Just to get them back their father never seeing them or trying to, goes to jail then straight to rehab then comes out and sees the kids everyday for 7 days, it was beautiful he was actually sober, everyone of us were so damn happy, and then we get the call 7 days later on July, 10 2021 he had died of a drug overdose. Iāve been so mad for so many of their wrong doings had they focused that much time on Jordan as they did me he might, we might would have had a chance. He didnāt want to die, he never quit trying to quit. But while they were busy labeling me a bad mom because I wasnāt giving this medicine to Tyler from a psychiatrist they referred me to after speaking to Tyler for 30 minutes. No mentions of therapy follow up therapy no mentions of any therapy only drugs that I knew nothing about so I didnāt give them to him and my last straw on that was when we went to pick them up he asked to hold the bottle and I said you can look at it but I have to keep it. Mommyās have to give their kids the medicine kids canāt give it to themselves. The way he held onto that bottle and almost hugged it while saying finally Iāve got something that I can take thatāll make me a better boy, Iām so glad that we have this medicine and this medicine is going to make me better. I about lost it in the car right there. It all started with me asking for therapy help for my son not medicine, and it ended like this for us. In the end I want to so badly stand up for other kids I have even started taking any and all classes associated with child development. Anything I can think of any book I can any research paper I can learn from and study. All I know is that I have to keep learning itās all Iāve got is the possible knowledge that could save somebody elseās kid. but I have to admit I have obsessively surrounded myself in this learning become a hermit. Iām scared to even leave the house for the longest time I didnāt do anything with my kids and fear of somebody seeing something in public and reporting it Iāve had my kids taken away from me when Iāve done nothing at all , that fear will make you fall to your knees. Yes I stood tall and I fought for them and I got them back. I didnāt see any other way. It was my only choice but in the aftermath Iām struggling, my kids are struggling because their mom has been absent in this way going through something like this will mess up every thing that there ever was about you everything that made you you is gone and youāre in constant survival mode and nobody nobody understands it unless theyāve been there. I went to therapy all those years ago with my son they were giving me books to read and Iāll never forget going home and reading them so damn excited to go back to therapy to talk about what I read just for them to say oh, I havenāt even read that book yet. being mom in this situation, knowing the lack of mental help there is in my city and the mental health that is there it really isnāt mental help itās a pharmaceutical factory literally I had to tell my own therapist that if I wanted Xanax, I could get it anywhere that thatās not my issue that I needed coping skills I had to tell my therapist that. Having this type of knowing with no schooling and no education baffles me on every core that this is happening the way it is so when you come out and you get what you want in the end everything youāve lost to get it cause more damage than just possibly suffering in silence and getting yourself through it on your own I regret absolutely everything I did and those beginning stages and Iām also mad at the system of justice while my kids are being taken from me. The first responding officer was telling me that it was uncalled for , but that if I wore a wire for this bad drug up the road for him to catch them, he would come to my court date and batch for me that my kids shouldāve never been taken. Bribery I was receiving bribery, while my children were being taken for me. Where do you go and what do you do , and how the hell do you move forward?
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Thank you for sharing your story Kristen. I am so sorry you went through all that.
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It was hard for me to read this article because I am a victim. I call myself an innocent victim. Over the past 3 years I have been in these hospitals 4 times, one rated as the best in the country. I have been given so many medications, 25 in the past 3 years, and have had my life turned upside down. I was initially diagnosed with anxiety and given 3 medications after talking to a doctor for 30 minutes on the phone. From there it generated into a nightmare. The stays in the hospitals added so much trauma that I cannot get situations out of my mind. I am now in the middle of withdrawal from Ativan and find it difficult to get through each day, but I am home and will never go back. The same thing happened to me with Klonopin when my doctor kept telling me it was helping even though I was so sick. I finally found the Benzo Coalition of Boston and learned that I was in interdose withdrawal. My doctor said she did not know about this! I took myself off of this drug only to ended up in the ER and then put into a hospital. I will never go to the ER again as you are labeled a certain way and put into a room with a guard outside the door until they can transport you to a locked facility. I have never felt so helpless and hopeless but try to stay as positive as I can while getting off of these horrible drugs. Reading this article and other information from Mad in America has helped me understand that it is not me, it is what happens when you trust in doctors that only know how to give you pills and more pills.
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Thank you for sharing your story Elaine. It absolutely is not you! It is the system, a very cultlike system which makes things so much worse while forcing you to behave in some arbitrary way.
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I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when i was 24 in 1975 and looking back i was showing all the traits of autism. Then i was prescribed psychiatric medication and started to have my first psychosis. I had my first breakdown when i was 17 and it wasn’t until I was 24 I had my first voluntary admission.
I have always felt i was wrongly diagnosed but i was confused because i did experience psychosis delusions and voices. Now after years of taking the meds i realise all of that was psyche meds induced because i never suffered from anything like that for seven years before i was prescribed psyche meds.
Now my psychiatrist laughs at me when i tell him psychiatric meds all of them are highly addictive and have withdrawal symptoms even after a short cut.
According to Dr Peter Breggin these withdrawals and side effects show in the form of what could be classed as the very symptoms psychiatrists say we suffer from. I just know that in my case it was all drug induced and both my son and I have aotregenic illness.
Since my husband died i have been incarcerated almost every year for the past 14 years. Mainly due to my neighbours from hell and the tricks they played on me and two police officers who were called out who sexually harassed me.
The Mental Health Team say i imagine all of this.
I have physical illnesses and the GPs can’t help me with any of it. I have found my own way.
Seems like Dr David Healy wrote it is all medicating madness and all doctors know of today is how to write scripts and they don’t know one half of what the drugs can do.
What people who have real mental illness need is sanctuary and when i first was admitted to hospital in the mid seventies there were no locked wards. There was however forced drugging. The treatment was what suits one suits all. Drugs and more drugs.
That is all these doctors know. The laws need to be changed not to give doctors so much power. While the drug companies are making their billions of profit though it looks like things won’t change for quite some time. I am sorry to say.
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Thank you for your story Anne. These doctors have long had way too much power, and they make all sorts of excuses.
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Clearly written by someone who has not had their life saved by inpatient psychiatric care.
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Hi Mina, You are right. That’s the point.
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During the pandemic, I could not see my psychiatrist. I went to a university hospital and asked to be prescribed an antidepressant. They took my cellphone, my billfold, the drawstring from my pants before I ever left the ER, where I was for 11 hours without being able to call my family and let them know where I was. I told them from the moment I walked in that I was not a danger to myself or anyone else, so they could not claim that I was. When a bouncer-type-body guarded me in a curtained-off area for hours, I asked to call the police so I could tell them I had been kidnapped. Because it was, in all aspects, kidnapping. Held against my will in a place I did not want to be without recourse. I protested that even if I had presented in the ER with a heart attack, it would have been my right to walk out the door and leave. But mental illness is considered different and differently. I was told THEY would be glad to call the police, tell the police I was dangerous, and have me legally committed against my will. I was finally put in a bed in their psychiatric ward where a camera pointed down at me a few feet over my head. I felt like I was in a peep show being ogled by unknown persons. This was the teaching hospital of a major medical center. The next day, 2 young doctors spoke to me for less than 10 minutes and made an unwarranted diagnosis without looking at prior medical records, getting a history, or anything of the kind. They agreed I could leave because I was not suicidal or homicidal (as I had said from the beginning), but they would not prescribe an antidepressant unless I agreed to be an inpatient on the unit so they could observe me. This, even though lots of doctors prescribe antidepressants every day and send their patients home after an office appointment. I left “against medical advice” and told them I would never again seek “care” of any kind for emotional dysregulation or anything approximating mental distress. They shrugged and said I got the same treatment there that was standard in any psychiatric ward in the U.S. I don’t doubt it. I don’t want it.
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Thank you for your story Donna. I am so sorry that happened to you. Coercive psychiatry is so evil.
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Crystal, nice piece of writing. Spot on.
Iām curious about your term āpharmaceutical Americansā. Who, how, what, why where did you come up with that?
Please explain & expand?
Are you referring to everyone involved in the American mental health industrial complex?
Why are you excluding other countries? Why are excluding the others in whole medical industrial complex?
Itās not just psychiatric products & services. Thereās a huge problem in all of allopathic medicine. All of them push pills that are not safe nor effective and just create more problems & illness. All for profit.
Theres a big difference in that psychiatric MDs can and do literally legally force themselves on people.
But how long before theyāre all like that?
This is serious. Things are getting worse. This could stop. We could rise above this nonsense. We actually could create a better, safer egalitarian & peaceful society. We need to want to though. Iām not sure we really do though. Which makes me so sad. What do you think?
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