Ithought that if I consulted with another psychiatrist to alter my medication, I would eventually feel almost human. Perhaps if I took a different prescription or combination of prescriptions, my brain would magically adjust and rid me of my alleged āchemical imbalanceā.
I had been diagnosed with numerous ādisordersā because I had a traumatic childhood. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and general practitioners insinuated that I was permanently damaged and would require medication for the rest of my life. They advised me that if I followed their recommended protocols of therapy and pharmacology, I would inevitably be led, like an obedient Kool-Aid sheep, to better emotional, psychological, and physical health.
For twenty-two years, I was prescribed copious amounts of psychotropic medications: Venlafaxine, Fluoxetine, Quetiapine, Lamotrigine, Mirtazapine, Duloxetine, Olanzapine, Gabapentin, Amitriptyline, Diazepam, Sertraline, Pregabalin, and others that I cannot remember. When I was seventeen, I told a general practitioner from a remote town in the Northern Territory that I was depressed and cried a lot. He diagnosed me with āMajor Depressive Disorderā after a twenty-minute consultation and prescribed me my first āantidepressantā, Venlafaxine. He never asked me why I cried. There were no words available to verbalise that my father was abusing my mother or confess to him that my brothers raped me for nine years, and he did not ask.
Throughout the decades of consuming psychiatric medications, my mind and body slowly deteriorated. When I described my symptoms to the āexpertsā, I was told that my diagnoses were worsening, and the only solution was for my prescriptions to be increased. I was severely unwell. I was forced to self-medicate by experimenting with various combinations and quantities of drugs and alcohol to ease what I thought was the decline of my āmental healthā.
Every day, I attempted to find the right combination of chemicals to help me imitate my role as a functioning human adult. Gradually, my life fell apart. My husband evicted me from our home, and destitute, I was forced to resign from my job as an art teacher. I lost everything that mattered to me: my family, my friends, my career, my income, and myself.
Four years later, after a series of abusive relationships, I managed to become clean and sober for my two children. I had been on psychotropic medications for nineteen years, but nothing seemed to help me. I still believed that by blindly following my psychiatristās recommendations, the desire to return to using drugs would slowly diminish, and I would become well as my brain chemicals readjusted.
All I needed was more time, but time had halted, and I felt no better after two years of exclusively taking my prescriptions of Fluoxetine and Quetiapine. I couldnāt understand how I was previously able to manage full-time employment teaching classes of belligerent adolescents about artwork that they didnāt care about with my nightly drug and alcoholism, and I had now become a thirty-nine-year-old unemployed mother, obediently taking high doses of āantidepressantsā and āantipsychoticsā. I wanted to peel the crawling flesh off my bones. My brain sat in my skull like a dead goldfish. I was disgusted. I watched myself drive to the bottle shop, drive home, and drink half a bottle of vodka. It was uselessātwo years of sobriety for nothing. The unease, the constant feeling of dread, would not drown. Like a stereotypical drunk, pathetic and emotional, I called my ex-partner. Slurring, I told him, āI want to die.ā
He told me that I should kill myself. My numbness, my almost lifeless, psychotropic-filled body, was finally alive with alcohol and utter despair. I actually felt something for the first time in years. I knew what I had to do. He was right. I had to kill myself. Yet I couldnāt, not tonight. My children were home playing on their computers in their rooms. I could not burden them with my lifeless body. Besides, I had nothing to kill myself with, and if I was going to die, I wanted to use a technique that was final.
My tears were relentless. I had to silence my brain. I had to do something. I wanted to scrape my skull apart. I was wailing. Shh! I could not embarrass my children. I had to shut up. I wanted everything to slow down and cease, but I had no one to help me. Nothing. Years of prescription medications and drug and alcohol usage will do that to a person, especially when they become clean and sober, then they really have nobody.
I smoked some stale cannabis and then decided that I would call Lifeline, a suicide crisis line. I thought that they would understand. Surely, they could help me.
Unfortunately, they did not understand, and they did not help me. āHow are you going to kill yourself?ā they kept tormenting me. āWhy donāt you consider your children?ā Somehow, I was guilty. Of what, I did not know. Guilty of being angry, vulnerable, scared and abandoned. They didnāt listen to what I was saying and suggested I ask my family for help. My family! The best advice they could offer was that I communicate with the very same people who raped me, beat me, and tortured me since I was three. Frustrated, I ended our futile conversation, more alone than ever before.
At 6 pm, a single male police officer came to my residence. Lifeline had reported to him that I had āthreatened to kill both of my children and then myself,ā and he was now arresting me under the Mental Health Act. I was in utter disbelief. I had made none of those threats and vehemently advised him of this fact. I explained to him that I was neither homicidal nor actively suicidal and that I had done nothing wrong.
But it didnāt matter. Nothing I said to him mattered. The policeman had already decided my fate after he had traced my location from the āconfidentialā crisis call. He said that I had to be taken to my local hospital immediately because I was a danger to myself and others. I was considered āmentally unstableā because an unqualified crisis line volunteer disclosed false information to the police. Now, without a call recording or any evidence, under South Australian law, this policeman could forcibly take me from my children and home under suspicion and hearsay of mental illness. I had been witch-hunted in 2021.
At my local hospital, the nurses treated me like a criminal. They interrogated me, incessantly asking why I wanted to kill my children and myself. They wanted to know why I was there, at their workplace, the audacity! So, I told them. I cried and told them the truth about my life. I described everything: the incest, the violence, the drug abuse, the prescriptions, all my trauma was disclosed.
Maybe they didnāt believe me. They complained that I was being dramatic; āhysterical,ā they wrote in my files. I required more medicine. I was āpsychoticā, they said, and I needed to be sedated.
āMy children are home alone,ā I desperately pleaded with them, āI do not need more medication!ā The doctor decided that I required incarceration. Slamming me onto the hospital bed, two policemen manually restrained my wrists to the unforgiving frame with metal handcuffs. As they held my thighs down on the mattress, they replicated my two brothers, physically detaining me to abuse me. Like a trapped animal, I fought against my aggressors, but it was futile. The doctor penetrated my right thigh with the āantipsychoticā Droperidol. I was ārapedā, and then they abandoned me. I was attached to the bed for forty minutes; my arms were numb, and I was sobbing, helpless and alone again.
I was heavily sedated. Floating and confused, they transferred me to another bed and chemically restrained me further with another āantipsychoticā, Olanzapine. I lost consciousness. The night was filled with torch lights shining directly into my eyes, piercing my withered brain, as angry nurses tormented me in my drugged delirium.
The next day, I was terrified. My children had been alone overnight for fourteen hours, and I didnāt know when, if ever, I was going to be released. My captors lurked. They continued to taunt me and question me. The doctors and nurses were writing my narrative; they controlled my present and future. I was on trial and knew I had to ābehaveā. I had to play their convoluted Kafkaesque games. So, frantic, I blamed the alcohol, and they all nodded, brainless marionettes, ignorant in their agreement.
Not one of them considered that the psychotropics that I was prescribed were contributing to my emotional, psychological, and physical deterioration and akathisia. The doctor advised me to continue taking each of my medications. I agreed, assured her I was okay, and begged her to let me go home to my children. But my opinion of myself was worthless. I now had to consult with a new psychiatrist two hundred kilometres away to determine whether, in their subjective opinion, via video conference, I was āsaneā.
Again, I blamed alcohol. It was the safest option. I told the psychiatrist that I was sorry and that I would be compliant with my medication and therapy. I promised that I would never drink again. He prescribed another drug, Lamotrigine, to commence immediately. āIt will stabilise your mood,ā he informed me. The psychiatrist then signed my Inpatient Treatment Order release form and gave me my new prescription. I was freed from my abusive prison because I was subordinate again.
Everything worsened after my traumatic arrest. I was already afraid of men, but now I was fearful of all doctors, nurses, and police. The new prescription that was supposed to stabilise my moods had shattered my brain and body. I was tired, nauseous, angry, and in chronic pain. I spent most days in bed, and I rarely left my home. I was eventually diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I could not understand why my medications were not working, why they were not fixing me. Maybe I needed to increase my dose again?
I took another tablet. The insert from the Lamotrigine packet fell onto the floor. I picked it up and read its tiny writing for the first time. It listed tremors, aggression, drowsiness, pain, and kidney problems as side effects. Concerned, I found my phone and typed āFluoxetine side effectsā into the search bar. The results on Google read: suicidal ideation, weakness, uncontrollable shaking. I then researched Quetiapine’s side effects.
I couldnāt understand. Who had approved these medications? And then the more I read, the more I realised. In my desperation and loneliness, I had been the perfect psychiatric victim. Everything that I had been told was part of an elaborate, profiteering form of mass human control by psychiatrists, pharmaceutical companies, and governments. The diagnoses, the drugs, the āchemical imbalancesā, and all my alleged ādeficienciesā were part of an insidious lie. They had been punishing me for daring to disclose that I was a victim of incest and for being bold enough to complain. Psychiatrists created fictional disorders to deny my reality of trauma, poverty, unemployment, social isolation, and grief. They told me that I was the problem whilst exonerating my perpetrators. God-like, they assured me they knew what was wrong with me and had the elixir. But their elixir was a poison. I was being chemically lobotomised. They were slowly murdering me.
I felt like my brain was being electrocuted. My body was in agonising limbo. Each day of detoxing was an entire lifetime. Ceasing heroin was easier by comparison. In six months, I managed to stop taking Fluoxetine, Quetiapine, and Lamotrigine through gradual dose reduction. I was continually warned against ceasing these drugs. My psychiatrist, psychologist, and general practitioner insisted that my āmental illnessesā were returning whenever I described my withdrawal symptoms. They knew nothing about discontinuing psychotropic medications or hyperbolic tapering.
āDo you think that Quetiapine has caused my brain to atrophy?ā I asked my psychiatrist during our final consultation. āOnly a little bit,ā they nonchalantly responded.
The fifteen diagnoses I was cruelly givenāāComplex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorderā, āBorderline Personality Disorderā, āGeneralised Anxiety Disorderā, āSocial Anxiety Disorderā, āPersistent Depressive Disorderā, Somatic Symptom Disorderā, āAttention Deficit Disorderā, āAutism Spectrum Disorderā, āBipolar II Disorderā, āLearning and Communication Disorderā, āAmnesiaā, āDepersonalisation/Derealisationā, āSubstance Abuse Disorderā, āAbsorptionā, and āAnorexia Nervosaāāare not mine. They do not belong to me. They do not even exist. For all those years, I was grieving. In shock and mourning the loss of my childhood, my body and brain had been trying to protect me from further harm. I was never āmentally illāāI was human.
Thank you for sharing your story, Cat. And, yes, psychiatry / psychology are largely child abuse covering up industries, and it’s all by DSM design. I was neurotoxic poisoned, to cover up the abuse of my child, according to my family’s medical records, that were finally handed over.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/your-child-does-not-have-bipolar-disorder/201402/dsm-5-and-child-neglect-and-abuse-1
If they can’t bill for it, it gets misdiagnosed as one of the disorders they can get paid for. Then they neurotoxic poison you … which does also function to aid and abet the abusers, and has left those of us in the US all living in a “pedophile empire.”
https://pedoempire.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/PedoEmpire-Flyer-One-Page.pdf
I’m glad you escaped.
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Dear Someone Else,
Unfortunately, Australia and the rest of the world are paedophile empires, too. The Australian police did not even bother to interview my abusers. Psychiatry and psychology continue to conceal sexual abuse crimes through quasi-diagnosis and victim-blaming. The only solution is the abolition of the psy-disciplines, and sexual abuse and consent education for all children and adults.
Thank you for reading my story.
Love,
Cat
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Dear cat thank you for this perfect description of Australia. Lies and cover up. No interest in truth extreme and highly planned and coordinated multi agency gaslighting of victims. That is terrifying about lifeline calling the cops.description of the nurses highly accurate.
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Dear K,
Australia’s government, police, and āhealthā systems are corrupt and severely flawed. Thank you for validating my experience.
Love,
Cat
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Corruption, incompetence, and apathy in the mental health industry are hardly unique to Australia, as the testimonies of the numerous victims of this unsavory racket on the MIA website make abundantly clear.
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Dear Joel,
The āmental healthā industry is akin to an untreatable venereal disease- it has no geographical or political boundaries, and its victims will suffer the consequences for the term of their natural lives.
Thank you for reading my story.
Love,
Cat
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Hey cat, your story is heartbreaking. My mom passed away in 2016. I have a story to tell.if you have the time email me.
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Dear Shane,
I am so sorry about your mother. I would really like to hear your story. Perhaps you could give the MIA staff permission to share your email with me so I may contact you.
Love,
Cat
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Dear Cat,
Dear Cat, Iām so sorry for your adverse childhood and adult experiences. Itās so important to be able to have a competent adult listen to you and to believe you and address the circumstances causing your feelings. Unfortunately, mental health professionals are not trained in psychology and are quick to label and prescribe. I wish you the very best in your recovery. You are a very strong woman to share your story with us. Much peace, good health, blessings, and creative expressions to you.
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Dear Bernadette,
I agree that āmental health professionalsā would rather utilise a book of lies (The DSM) and neurotoxic drugs than provide people with time, relevant support and compassionate understanding. It is imperative that others can empathise and bear witness to our suffering.
I appreciate your kindness and warm wishes.
Love,
Cat
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Brilliant………absolutely brilliant…thank you.
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Dear James,
Thank you for your positive critique, and for reading my story.
Love,
Cat
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Stunningly lucid account of a miraculous recovery against all odds. Reminded me of the horrific ordeal of Frances Farmer but with an inspiring ending. Equally stunning account of iatrogenic harm and incompetence. And the hell of SSRI, benzo etc withdrawal being mistaken for relapsing “mental illness”. Ought to be required reading for every psychiatric trainee.
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Dear GPM,
The most isolating aspect of my experience is the continued iatrogenic harm which I continue to suffer from. If I were to disclose it to a ‘medical professional’, I fear that I may be psychiatrically incarcerated and lobotomized like the unfortunate Frances Farmer.
Thank you for reading my story, and for your flattering comment.
Love,
Cat
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Hi, Cat.
Thanks for a…sorry, I have no words, essay.
Thanks for doing ALL that for us. To me, it reads likea proof that we simply MUST have many lives.
I wonder if you have ever wondered how any ideal initial doctor’s interview with you at 17 might have gone, please?
Is it just possible, do you think, that that doctor…oh, never mind!
Please take you time, if you care to try and answer this, at all.
Much love, light and laughter!
Tom.
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Dear Tom,
I often ponder about how my medical appointment might have transpired twenty-four years ago. Here is the utopian version:
Date: Mid-February, 2000
Location: Sterile, boring, powder blue medical centre, Katherine, Northern Territory, Australia
Weather: hot, humid and dramatically stormy
Dr. King (the nice one): “Hello, Catherine, how are you today?”
Cat: “I’m good, thank you (I always lie in response to this question because I do not want to offend or upset anyone). However, I’m concerned that I’ve been crying regularly. I’m scared that something is wrong with me.”
Dr. King (the nice one): “I’m sorry that you’ve been feeling upset. It’s typical to feel sad. Life can be very challenging. There’s nothing wrong with you for crying. Would you feel comfortable talking to me about what might be causing you to cry? You don’t have to answer right now if it’s awkward for you.”
Cat: *bursts into tears (maybe literally)*
Dr. King (the nice one): *passes a box of Blinky Bill tissues to Cat* “I’m going to order a full blood test for you. I’ll also provide you with the contact details of a counsellor and a psychologist. You don’t have to contact them if you don’t want to. I also have the number for emergency accommodation and financial support if you feel unsafe in your relationships or where you are currently staying.”
Cat: *desecrates Blinky Bill tissues with tears and mucus, and continues to sob* “Thank you, Dr. King.”
Dr. King (the nice one): “You can contact reception anytime if you want to see me again. I’ll also give you the details of a female doctor because you may feel more comfortable speaking with her. I can see that you are hurting, and I would like to help you. I’m going to cover the cost of this appointment, and we can schedule another meeting in a week. You don’t have to attend. Be kind to yourself, Catherine. Remember that crying is an ordinary human emotion. Please take care.” *passes Cat a pathology form, contact details for a variety of social support services and a female doctor, along with an anthropomorphic and overwhelmingly cute platypus scratch and sniff sticker because he realises that small gestures matter*
Cat: *still crying* “Thank you, Dr. King. Please call me Cat. Goodbye.”
Dr King (the nice one): āI am so sorry, Cat. Please forgive me. Goodbye.ā
*Twenty-two years of psychiatric abuse, and iatrogenesis are prevented through empathy.*
Fin.
Thank you for reading my story, and for your suggestion.
Love,
Cat
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Dear Cat,
I lost my son to suicide 4 years ago after his dose of Zoloft was increased.
At the Suicide Survivors support group, all the parents asked why and we were given a list of “risk factors” that included homelessness, financial problems, drug/alcohol abuse, no family support, lack of early treatment, job loss, etc. But my son had none of that. I thought they’re all stressors.
It also listed depression, which is considered a mental illness and family history of mental illness…and I have a history of depression. I thought it was my fault. I must have done something. I believed them. We all did.
It was not until I read your story that I understood. He wasn’t mentally ill, he became depressed because he broke up with his fiancee, hid grandmother passed, one of his best friends died from brain cancer and someone broke in his car and stole his work laptop and that put his client’s data at risk and he was isolated by covid. He was human.
Thank you for giving me that part of my story. I hope I can be of help to you.
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Dear Silvia,
I was truly heartbroken to learn about your son’s passing. I can’t begin to imagine the pain and sorrow you must be experiencing. It’s clear that your son was dealing with an immense amount of stress, which is a completely understandable reaction to such overwhelming circumstances. Please always remember that you are not at fault for what occurred. The responsibility lies with Pfizer and your sonās prescriber.
Wishing you love and strength,
Cat
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Dear Cat,
Thank you.
Having posed you that question, of course, inevitably, I naturally had to sit down with my wife and ask her what, ideally, I might have said to that poor doc that day, before he had me committed.
“”‘So, what has my family been telling you, please, Doctor?'” she told me, Cathy – meaning my Irish siblings et al.
OOOOOH, yeah. Wisdom in hindsight.
And, of course, inevitably, naturally, I then start asking me, again, how can I blame my ****ing family – Irish siblings et al – and those ****ing doctors et al for being no wiser than they were, and no wiser than I was….and, QUITE probably, no wiser than I still am?
Because, if I were half as wise as I wish I were, would I not already have written all it takes to liberate us ALL – AND to make us all laugh in the process?
Thanks a ton.
The Top Ind can obviously be as tragic as it can be comic, btw:
When my (Irish) brother spoke to our newly qualified (in Victoria) vet cousin, Katie, she told him she’d landed a precious role as vet part of some high-faluting, government sponsored, ?ethno, botano, zoological, social and paleontological survey of the Northern Territory.
When her cousin, Peter, spoke to same Conor not long afterwards, he confirmed, “Yeh, I hear Kitie’s up Top Ind, countin’ crocs.”
Maybe she missed this one, and hopefully he and Dr King missed our Kitie:
Much love. Many thanks.
https://youtu.be/rPSQFe7FHII?si=iUAWOivkPRALQBLA
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“I was never ‘mentally ill’—I was human.”
That alone says it all.
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Dear Birdsong,
If only this fact was common knowledge.
Thank you for reading my story, and for your insightful comments on numerous articles on MIA.
Love,
Cat
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Dear Cat,
I wish it were common knowledge, too, and I believe it will be sooner rather than later thanks to people like you. I greatly admire your courage and tenacity.
Take care,
Birdsong š
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I wish it were common knowledge, too, but it will be sooner rather than later thanks to people like you.
Thank you for writing your moving story. I greatly admire your courage and tenacity.
Birdsong š
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Thank you for letting me know that I am not alone. Your story is so close to what I have lived with and I am presently going through. I have been asking if I am human? I don’t have any of the rights that humans have. I feel your pain and live in the loneliness you felt. I am so sorry about the time you didn’t deserve to have stolen. I know you have real love in your heart no matter what has been done to you. Sounds like you are a hero to many. I am so grateful for you to be here today and the strength you found to make sure. I can’t wait to see more of your we writing!
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Dear Cas,
I’m so sorry to hear about the difficult situation you’re facing with psychiatric abuse. It’s heartbreaking to know that you’re going through this, especially when you have every right to be treated with dignity and respect. The fact that psychiatry, pharmaceutical companies, and governments don’t recognize your human rights is truly disturbing. Have you thought about reaching out to organizations like Mind Freedom International or others in your country that advocate for people in involuntary psychiatric situations? I truly hope you find a way to break free from this complex position.
With love,
Cat
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Way to give back Psychiatry its hot potato of shame and guilt Cat, though they’d scarcely notices if served to them. The 15 diagnosis would be hilarious if not for the needless suffering they and their respective drug treatments inflicted. I say hilarious because 15 psychiatric diagnosis denoting such distinct yet different psycho-pathologies in one person, “under an extended period of professional care”, is a 4 alarm warning of cluelessness and abject incompetence. But I really couldn’t avoid laughing out loud at the ADHD and Autism Spectrum diagnosis! I guess when giving one person 13 psychiatric diagnosis, it seems rather foolish if not ‘professionally irresponsible’ to leave out two pseudo diagnosis that are ‘so popular” and generally acceptable to the public. Keep writing Cat, you never know where it can lead; and keep doing whatever it is that got you this far along this journey!
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Dear Kevin,
The accumulation of fifteen psychiatric diagnoses is a series of errors that could be considered comical. However, it seems that psychiatry lacks remorse for the pain and disability it inflicts. I believe that your characterization could serve as their defining label: Psychiatry – “professionally irresponsible.”
Love,
Cat
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After my son passed, a therapist offered to “teach me how to live with unanswered questions” and I thought that was crazy, my son was way too important and I wanted answers. So I went looking for them. I looked at everything, family history, pulled the past apart, talked to some of the experts, the orgs, the Complex PTSD and BPD forums, and the suicide survivors group.
The first thing I noticed was that the suicide victims seemed to be sensitive, kind people with high IQ and some had talents for the arts (my son played violin), and had been diagnosed with one or more of the so called “Reward Deficiency Syndrome” conditions, …Autism/Asperger’s, ADHD, PTSD, Addiction, Bipolar, schizophrenia, depression and BPD (as a matter of fact the traits for BPD and reward deficiency are EXACTLY THE SAME). I knew that the RDS conditions shared the “alcoholic gene” according to the man who coined the term RDS and he said it led to having low dopamine. So I wondered if maybe they shared other things.
They actually share MANY things. I think that’s one of the reasons why people end up with multiple diagnosis and doctors can’t tell them apart or they change their mind.
I agree with you, it’s all BS. Will tell you more later.
“If I were to disclose it to a āmedical professionalā”
For the sake of disclosure, I’m a nurse, but have never worked in psych. I actually became depressed after I disobeyed orders and helped a patient get a liver transplant and got fired. I guess that makes me “black sheep”.
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My eyes are tearing … for you, for your experience, for me, for my kids and grandkids. The failure to listen among practitioners is not universal among practitioners, though I have found that about a third are simply trying to get you “done” … “away from them.” Another third does listen and a final third would be suitable for a shared coffee before Christmas. The use of mind-deadening drugs is very common among the visitors to my office over the past nearly 50 years. I’m not a physician but a psychoanalyst and a psychologist who has tried to listen, to show up, to be present and walk alongside these people who show up in some kind of desperate pain. I’ve never had an active patient suicide and have never hospitalized a patient against their will. Indeed, all but one of the half dozen hospitalizations were to allow people a safe place to withdraw from medications (particularly, the benzodiazepines). I’ve treated many who spoke of wishing to be done with the pain and just die. It’s not difficult, either, for me to feel that same sense that life is not worth the cost of the ticket. We are the only creatures who can think about the outrageous “house rules” of life and to contemplate ending it. I remember the night, being in a reading group with other practitioners, that I suggested that my biggest concern was with anyone who had never considered suicide; I had. There was a gasp among many in the group. What to say? I remember 55 years ago a psychologist telling me that I was hanging on by my fingernails and that I should increase my thorazine, elavil and melaril. I told him that I would grow my fingernails very long and hold on just fine. He had no interest in my dilemmas … no interest in me. Apologizing for the 2/3rds of my colleagues who are sphinctor magnums won’t do anyone any good. They come wanting someone to walk with them through the darkness and to relate with them as people in their own right and not simply as sufferers (Latin: patiens). They know because I tell them that it is above my pay-grade to keep them from suiciding … that my role will be to understand with them how they came to being in a state where life doesn’t feel worth the pain. They pay me only because I’ve been down this road, before, and only if I demonstrate that I can actually be present with them in pain, in distress, in sadness (often confused for depression) and can regularly show-up as another person after their repeated experiences with people who either can’t show up for anyone or can’t show up for them because they’re too complicated, in some human way. I don’t agree with you that all the psych&%$#@^%’s should be disposed of … just 2/3rds of them. Your experience — let me close by saying — reminds me of Ellen Saks writings about hers … I hope you and others continue to write about those 2/3rds; this work, to my way of thinking, is of central importance. … P.S. When a patient tells me that they intend to visit a psychopharmacologist for meds, I tell them to be certain to wear their running shoes, just in case they meet a credentialed arse, whatever letters follows their name.
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Dear Howard,
It is disheartening that we reside in a society where individuals who have endured trauma must financially compensate another human to āregularly show-up as another person after their repeated experiences with people who either canāt show up for anyone or canāt show up for them because theyāre too complicated.ā
Thank you for your empathy and for reading my story.
Love,
Cat
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I would go further: I think it disturbing that in too many Western Democracies adequate medical care, as well as psychological care, is available to and affordable by only a modest slice of the population. In the US, it is difficult to find psychiatrists, psychologists and primary care folk, too, who are willing to accept payment from Medicare and other insurances. The matter you raise — to my way of thinking — needs broad-brush societal changes in how we take care of our sufferers and the ill.
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On reading your comment, I could not help but recall Dr. Peter Goetzsche’s remark in one of his MIA articles to the effect that emotionally distressed people should avoid consulting psychiatrists, who more likely than not will pin a stigmatizing DSM label on them and prescribe the neurotoxin du jour.
I also remember another article whose author pointed out that nearly 90% of all psychologists make use of the DSM compendium of concocted mental disorders for insurance billing purposes.
So, if a considerable percentage, if not the clear majority, of mental health professionals participate either deliberately or unwittingly in medical fraud, i.e. the use of scientifically invalid diagnoses and questionable treatments based on the DSM, why should they be accorded any legitimacy, credence or authority? Do they really possess the superior knowledge, insight, and skills needed to “take care of our sufferers and the ill,” as you put it?
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That was a harrowing read. It terrifies me to think it, the amount you have suffered. Believe me though that a recent experience makes me understand you more than I ever could have previously. So I’ll write about it because there only a couple of others who I can tell who can even try to understand. I too am from Australia. Recently I was suffering from an increasingly bad allergic symptoms. Having many food allergies, I have been hospitalised on 4 or 5 occasions with anaphylaxis, the last time a few years ago when my breathing had stopped entirely. This recent reaction was to something unknown, and had me itching intensely with red and inflamed skin all over, and was getting worse, until after a couple of nights of no sleep I was so distressed a friend called paramedics not knowing what else to do. I didn’t THINK it was anaphylaxis, having experienced it beforeāit is an acute allergic reaction and this had developed more slowlyābut I really had no idea what was going on, and it was in fact worsening. When the ambulance and crew arrived, they didn’t examine me beyond a quick discussion, and suggested I should try a cold bath (I had been in the bath for hours already). Distressed as I was feeling I snapped at this and asked them to leave. They did. Maybe 15 mins later they returned with four police. They said nothing except they were here to take me to the hospital. I asked why they were in my house, and they grabbed me and on instructions of a paramedic strapped and shackled me, wrists and ankles, to the ambulance stretcher. Then I was given a shot in the shoulder muscle of the drug you were given, droperidol. The ambulance trip was nightmarish. I had no time to think why this was even happening at all. I am quite claustrophobic and lying on my back I suddenly felt I had to get out of the restraints, and my left wrist was feeling numb. I pleaded for my limbs to be released, water was pooling in my throat and I found it harder to breath. I tried to sit up a little, was pushed down and the oxygen mask thrust on my face. For my writhing efforts to be released even a little, I was then injected AGAIN with droperidol. I feared for every breath, but finally arrived at the hospital, and wasn’t put in a regular bed but in what seemed to be a holding cell, stark with only the one hospital bed, heavy chair and bathroom. I went to sleep I think, but woke up some time later and found myself bizarrely tense and unable to relax in any way. I couldn’t stay in the chair. I tried lying down, but that didn’t help. I felt like I was constrained again, but there was no restraint. Every moment seemed like a great stress was constricting my body, and I couldn’t escape itāI felt claustrophobic like being buried alive, more and more detached from my body, more and more panicked and terrified. I called for the nurse, and eventually one casually arrived and I desperately tried to tell him what I was experiencing. He left and returned with 4 valiums. I begged him not to leave and he said he would return shortly to check on me. I felt so alone and unable to express exactly, or even closely to be honest, what the hell was happening to me. I must have slept again. When I awoke it was worse, for many unforgettable hours, the most terrifying hours of my life, until finally my pleading resulted in being given more valium. When I awoke after that, the horror of it (what my research since has since taught me was akathisia) had passed the worst of it. I was in no condition however to say or do much more than get out of there when I got to see a doctor for the first time since my admission: he asked a few questionsāname, day of the week that sort of thing, and discharged me. I have had nothing but raised eyebrows and the suggestion that “maybe” I had had a panic attack, when i tried to explain what had happened to me to my local doctors. I don’t want to see any doctors, paramedics or hospitals again. Nothing has haunted me so deeply as the experience of akathisia. It preoccupied my mond for weeks, and now months later hardly a day passes without thinking of it once or twice. It is NOT anything like a panic attack, it is like being crucified without even the prospect of death as release. What surprises me is not that the condition so often leads to suicide, but that it doesn’t drive more people, some I understand suffering for prolonged periods, to suicide more often. I have, like many people, in times of depression, had thoughts of suicide, but never really considered it beyond “ideation”. Now an enormous fear haunts me all the time, that somehow I might end up being on the wrong end of a syringe of droperidol again. So I have had to really plot out in my mind what I would have to do, practically speaking, to escape akathisia’s torment if I was ever in that nightmarish situation again. I also believe that any “medication” proven to have such a high risk of akathisia as a side effect as these evil “anti-psychotics” have, then any prescriber or anyone charged with administering them should first have been forced to have akathisia induced in them themselves. I imagine that after such an experience, the only ones who would be prepared to inject it in anyone else under any circumstances could only be a psychopath. The report from the hospital I requested, characterised me as “crazy”āthings like “he was pacing frantically around the room as if looking for something”. Any more psych meds and no doubt I would on the path to deteriorating mental health and would advise anyone now to avoid the mental health system and its medication quackery at all costs. I’m so sorry for what has happened to you, I can barely imagineābut maybe now I can imagine just a little.
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The legalized drug pushers known as psychiatrists are fiends.
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Dear Mark,
Thank you for sharing your experience of the brutal Australian medical system. I am so sorry that you were treated abhorrently when evidently you required compassionate care, medical assistance and understanding.
I appreciate your empathy and am glad you read my story.
Love,
Cat
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…not to say that you approve of any of the āmental healthā acts in use, or purportedly in use but possibly more often than not in misuse and/or abuse – around the world, Cat, I presume?
I think the presumed, often unspoken basis of any democracy is that all human beings “are created equal” – as asserted by the Founding Fathers of the US, who perhaps really believed that all propertied “white” human males over a certain age ought to be considered equal, at least as far as voting went.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness…”
Now, Cat, or anyone, I don’t think all human beings by any means accept as given facts that
there is a Creator;
that same Creator has created, creates and will create all human beings;
created them utterly “equal,” at that (whatever this might mean);
AND that this is all “self-evident” – not to mention that there exists any number of other “inalienable rights”- all also āself-evident” – which they and we need not concern ourselves with!
I spent a year in Oz.
I was told that Aussies considered themselves more egalitarian than Americans and so tipped less!
Since coming to the US in 2009, I have asked scores of people here if we are all equal.
Perhaps the single most common answer I get is the very same one I get when I ask perfect strangers “What is the meaning of life, please?”
It is “Huh?”
Of COURSE, people pay at BEST lip-service to crazy “mental health” acts worldwide, and consistently play fast and loose with them!
In my own case, in Ireland in December, 2008,
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-20177721.html ,
I am not sure there was a single aspect of Ireland’s “Mental Health Act 2001” which was honored either to the letter OR in spirit!
https://www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/2001/act/25/enacted/en/html
And, thus far in human history, The UN, the ECHR, European Convention on Human Rights, and Amnesty International, among others, have failed to defend the rights of those accused of being “mentally ill” or of “suffering from a mental disorder!”
Please let us neither accept nor dignify any such “mental health” acts in the first place, eh?!
And, though you have thanked me for reading your story, Cat, I don’t mind admitting that I have not yet found the wherewithal to read it all, but plan to…
Undying thanks, Cat and MIA!
Tom.
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