For the institutions comprising establishment psychiatry, self-preservation means maintaining legitimacy as a branch of medicine. Thus, any criticism of establishment psychiatry—no matter how harsh—that can also be applied to medicine in general does not threaten its existential legitimacy.
However, criticism that uniquely applies to establishment psychiatry but not to medicine in general does threaten its existential legitimacy, and it is not tolerated. Such criticism is either ignored by most of establishment psychiatry or it is attacked, often viciously so, especially from establishment psychiatrists who promote themselves as being open to criticism.
Before getting to specific criticisms that establishment psychiatry can and cannot tolerate, what are the institutions comprising establishment psychiatry?
In the United States, the most obvious such institution is the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the guild of U.S. psychiatrists, which promotes psychiatry as a legitimate branch of medicine. Another hugely important member of establishment psychiatry is the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), which has prioritized funding research on biological psychiatry (Thomas Insel, NIMH director from 2002-2015, famously stated: “I spent 13 years at NIMH really pushing on the neuroscience and genetics of mental disorders, and when I look back on that I realize that while I think I succeeded at getting lots of really cool papers published by cool scientists at fairly large costs—I think $20 billion—I don’t think we moved the needle in reducing suicide, reducing hospitalizations, improving recovery for the tens of millions of people who have mental illness”).
U.S. establishment psychiatry also comprises lesser-known institutions including the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, as well as psychiatry departments in approximately 150 U.S. medical schools. Worldwide, there are parallels to U.S. establishment psychiatry institutions, all of which have in common the belief that emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances, especially serious ones, are medical phenomena.
Establishment psychiatry does acknowledge that emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances—what it calls “mental illnesses”—have biological-psychological-social roots. Such an acknowledgement does not threaten the legitimacy of establishment psychiatry as a branch of medicine because many medical conditions, including cancer, are also accepted as having biological-psychological-social causes. Establishment psychiatry institutions are not threatened by any proposed cause of emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances, as long as the resulting conditions are seen as medical conditions.
Thus, establishment psychiatry is unthreatened by the idea that trauma and adverse childhood experiences are a cause of emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances—as long as these conditions are medicalized. This is why psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s best-selling The Body Keeps the Score, with its “Part Two: This is Your Brain on Trauma,” can safely exist within establishment psychiatry. As long as front and center is the book’s assertion that “the body keeps the score”—in other words, the body is damaged—then emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances resulting from trauma can be seen as a medical phenomenon; and psychiatrists can retain their authority as medical experts who determine whether the resulting condition requires their drugs and other somatic treatments, or can be treated by non-somatic therapies.
In contrast to The Body Keeps the Score, a book that would have threatened establishment psychiatry would have made clear that there are physical correlates not only with trauma but with everything we think, feel, experience, and do; however, physical correlates do not make a phenomenon a medical condition, and viewing the emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances that are the result of psychological and social trauma as a medical condition is, for many individuals, a problematic paradigm.
Criticisms That Establishment Psychiatry Can Tolerate
Establishment psychiatrist defender Awais Aftab has positioned himself as the highest-profile psychiatrist open-minded to criticism of psychiatry, and so he provides a good sense of what establishment psychiatry can and cannot tolerate.
As noted, establishment psychiatrists, including Aftab, can tolerate criticism that can also be applied to medicine in general because this does not threaten its existential legitimacy. Here are some examples.
Misdiagnoses. Since misdiagnoses occur in medicine in general, it is no existential threat for establishment psychiatry to acknowledge that it too is guilty of this. Establishment psychiatry not only acknowledges misdiagnoses, but it actually embraces misdiagnoses to explain their failed theories and failed treatment outcomes.
There are many patients who have been diagnosed with so-called “serious mental illness” (such as so-called “schizophrenia” and “bipolar disorder”) who ultimately reject psychiatric treatment including psychiatric drugs, and become highly functioning. It is not unusual for these ex-patients to then face claims by establishment psychiatrists that they are only able to become highly functioning without psychiatric drugs because they were initially misdiagnosed.
David Oaks, co-founder and former long-time executive director of MindFreedom, reports that as a college student he unequivocally had the symptoms that establishment psychiatry uses to diagnose schizophrenia:
“There were times when I thought the CIA was making my teeth grow, or that a UFO was appearing in my living room, or that God was talking to me via the radio, or that the performers on TV were directly talking to me. . . . A dozen psychiatrists diagnosed me as a psychotic. I was told I would have to stay on psychiatric drugs the rest of my life, like a diabetic on insulin.”
However, after David rejected establishment psychiatry’s drug treatments, recovered by other means, and became a highly effective articulate activist, he regularly faced claims by establishment psychiatry and its apologists that he must have been initially misdiagnosed.
This same misdiagnosis justification by establishment psychiatry is currently directed at Laura Delano, the latest high-profile effective articulate activist, who had received a bipolar diagnosis along with other psychiatric diagnoses during an extensive period of her life which she details in her recently published memoir Unshrunk (“I became a professional psychiatric patient between the ages of thirteen and twenty-seven”). However, in his review of Unshrunk, establishment psychiatrist defender Awais Aftab claimed that Delano was misdiagnosed with bipolar disorder, discounting Laura’s own following account that “I was properly diagnosed and medicated according to the American Psychiatric Association’s standard of care.”
So, establishment psychiatry has put David, Laura, and many other ex-psychiatric patients who have been diagnosed with serious mental illnesses in the ridiculous position of having to repeatedly assert that, according to establishment psychiatry’s criteria, they were properly diagnosed.
Iatrogenesis, which is defined as illness or injury caused by medical treatment. Iatrogenesis comprises all conditions for which physicians and other medical professionals, hospitals and other medical facilities, and their treatments are the causes of various types of harm. Again, establishment psychiatry acknowledges that iatrogenesis occurs in psychiatric treatment, which makes psychiatric treatment just like medical treatment in general.
So, Aftab titles his review of Laura Delano’s Unshrunk as “A Memoir for the Iatrogenic Age,” and he tells us that “Delano’s story has much to teach us about the iatrogenic realities of our work.” Aftab distorts the book’s message to be about iatrogenic treatment which occurs throughout medicine when practitioners are mistaken, incompetent, or arrogant. However, the major thrust of Delano’s Unshrunk is that she was damaged not by what establishment psychiatry would consider malpractice or even sub-standard treatment, but by its standard of care delivered by its most prestigious practitioners, and she was damaged by its paradigm of care.
Corruption by pharmaceutical companies. Establishment psychiatry tolerates such criticism because this puts them in the same category as medicine in general. While Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine, reported on the corruption of establishment psychiatry institutions by drug companies in her The Truth About the Drug Companies (2004), the book details the corruption by drug companies of medicine in general.
To repeat, any criticism that can be applied to medicine in general is not only tolerated but embraced by establishment psychiatry, as such criticism supports what establishment psychiatry cares most about—that it is just like medicine in general. There are other examples of such criticism, but I’ll offer one more to make the point that no matter how horrible the indictment, as long as it can be applied to medicine in general, it can be tolerated because it does not existentially threaten psychiatry.
Nazi embrace. Pretty horrific, right? However, as long as this criticism is applied to medicine in general, establishment psychiatry can tolerate it. So establishment psychiatry is unbothered by Alessandra Colaianni’s 2012 report in the Journal of Medical Ethics that, “More than 7% of all German physicians became members of the Nazi SS during World War II, compared with less than 1% of the general population. . . . By 1945, half of all German physicians had joined the Nazi party.” As horrible an indictment as this is, Colaianni does not single out psychiatry, and so establishment psychiatry is not existentially threatened by a criticism that can be applied to medicine in general.
In contrast, what is existentially threatening to establishment psychiatry is the 2007 Annals of General Psychiatry article, “Psychiatry During the Nazi Era: Ethical Lessons for the Modern Professional” by psychiatrist Rael Strous, who is critical of the contemporary training of psychiatrists. Strous begins by stating:
“It has been acknowledged that the medical profession was profoundly involved in crimes against humanity during this period, with various publications describing this malevolent period of medical history. It is less known, however, that psychiatrists were among the worst transgressors. . . .Their role was central and critical to the success of Nazi policy, plans, and principles.”
While Strous is by no means “anti-psychiatry,” he further differentiates psychiatry from medicine in general with regard to psychiatry’s essential nature, arguing that without such a recognition of psychiatry’s particular vulnerability, Nazi Germany atrocities may well be repeated by psychiatry:
“Moreover, psychiatry by nature incorporates contemporary ideology in its approach to the individual and society. . . . The experience of psychiatry during the Nazi era provides an example of how science can be perverted by politics and therefore can become vulnerable to misuse and abuse. An exclusive focus on the monstrous aspects of Nazi medicine enables us to dismiss such events as aberrant and deviant, with a subsequent failure to internalize the inherent and very real dangers of the perversion of science and clinical management by outside political influences. . . .While it would be expected that the involvement of psychiatrists in such a profound manner would be well-known in the field, this is not the case. Little has been published on the subject in mainstream psychiatry journals and even less is part of the formal education process for medical students and psychiatry residents.”
To Strous’s great dismay, psychiatry students go uneducated in this sad chapter in its history.
Criticisms That Establishment Psychiatry Cannot Tolerate
Misdiagnosis, iatrogenesis, corruption, and even a Nazi embrace are horrible indictments, but as long as these criticisms can be applied to medicine in general, establishment psychiatry can tolerate them because they are not existential threats that delegitimize it as distinct from medicine in general.
What makes a criticism of establishment psychiatry intolerable for it has nothing to do with either how horrific the indictment is or the degree of scientific support for it, only whether or not the criticism can also be applied to medicine in general. Here are some criticisms that establishment psychiatry cannot tolerate:
Establishment psychiatry, unlike medicine in general, has made no progress in terms of treatment outcomes.
This reality is so glaring that even some mainstream journalists, when they exit mainstream media, and even some establishment psychiatry institution directors, upon leaving these positions, acknowledge this truth.
In 2021, upon his exit from covering psychiatry for twenty years, New York Times reporter Benedict Carey concluded that psychiatry had done “little to improve the lives of the millions of people living with persistent mental distress.” Carey noted: “Almost every measure of our collective mental health—rates of suicide, anxiety, depression, addiction deaths, psychiatric prescription use—went the wrong direction, even as access to services expanded greatly.”
Unlike medical treatments in general, which can point to improved treatment outcomes in many areas, there is no area of establishment psychiatry treatment in which there has been improved outcomes, as its new treatments have only resulted in differing adverse effects.
Carey’s claim, he assures readers, cannot be seen as a radical one, as he quotes from a pre-publication copy of a book by Thomas Insel, director of the NIMH director from 2002-2015, who acknowledged not only a lack of progress but deterioration in some areas during his reign: the suicide rate had climbed 33 percent, overdose deaths had increased threefold, and people with schizophrenia were still dying 20 years early. In Insel’s 2022 book, Healing, he asks, “Why with more people getting treated and better treatments available are we in the middle of a mental health crisis, with rising death and disability?” To answer this question without offending establishment psychiatry, Insel offers an explanation in which, as I have previously discussed in a 2022 review of his book, his logic escapes me.
Establishment psychiatry’s treatments, unlike medicine in general, have increased suffering, transforming episodic conditions into chronic illnesses.
Establishment psychiatry defenders recognize that this criticism is so existentially threatening that all efforts must be made to marginalize it. Awais Aftab is civil and even agreeable with criticism that can be applied to medicine in general; however, he becomes dishonest and vicious in his condemnation of the highest-profile author of this criticism, journalist Robert Whitaker, who made a case for it in Anatomy of an Epidemic (2010). Aftab denounces Whitaker in this way:
“He noticed some interesting patterns in longitudinal studies and population data pertaining to the use of psychotropic medications, and fleshed out the provocative hypothesis that psychiatric medications are actually making psychiatric patients worse, causing an epidemic of psychiatric disability. His thinking entered the stage of “trapped priors.” When his views were ignored and rejected by the mainstream scientific community, he rapidly developed the anti-epistemology necessary to protect his thesis, according to which the psychiatric community was not receptive to his criticisms because of their sheer corruption and professional insecurity. Spurned by the scientific community, Whitaker made it his mission to directly convince the public—and basically anyone with an axe to grind against psychiatry—of the validity of his views.”
First glaring Aftab dishonesty: “His views were ignored and rejected by the mainstream scientific community.” While Anatomy of an Epidemic was rejected by establishment psychiatry, this book won the 2010 Investigative Reporters and Editors Association book award for best investigative journalism, and Whitaker has long been held in high esteem by the scientific community, as he is a past winner of the George Polk Award for Medical Writing and a winner of the National Association for Science Writers’ Award for best magazine article.
As previously noted, New York Times reporter Carey, who covered psychiatry for 20 years, concluded that outcomes, with greater access to treatment, have gone in the “wrong direction,” quoting a former NIMH director to support this. Correlation, as any scientist knows, does not necessarily mean causation, so increased psychiatric treatment is not necessarily the cause of worsening outcomes; however, any genuine scientist would want to investigate the source of this correlation and examine all of Whitaker’s supporting evidence for his hypothesis as to why this is occurring.
This leads to Aftab’s next dishonesty. Anyone who has read Anatomy of an Epidemic, as Aftab has, recognizes that Whitaker does not simply offer “some interesting patterns in longitudinal studies and population data” for support for this hypothesis.
Whitaker makes clear that correlation is not equivalent to causation, and that increasing mental illness disability rates corresponding with increased psychiatric drug treatment is not proof of his hypothesis, but rather should provoke scientific inquiry. Such inquiry reveals a great deal more evidence including: (1) World Health Organization cross-cultural studies which show that compared to the U.S. and so-called “developed” countries, there are far better outcomes for individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia in so-called “undeveloped” countries in which antipsychotic drugs may have been used for acute psychotic episodes but not used chronically as is the case in the U.S. and other “developed” countries; (2) a 1994 Harvard study that determined that recovery rates for schizophrenia patients in modern times had declined over the past 15 years; (3) a long-term NIMH-funded study of patients originally diagnosed with schizophrenia which found that “four years later and continually until the twenty-year follow-ups, patients with schizophrenia not prescribed antipsychotics had significantly better work functioning”; (4) in mood disorders, long-term superior outcomes with no treatment as compared to antidepressant treatment; and (5) several physiological reasons for the counterproductive effects of long-term drug treatment, including: dopamine supersensitivity which makes individuals more biologically vulnerable to psychosis, debilitating adverse effects of these drugs, and severe withdrawal effects which routinely get misdiagnosed as “mental illness relapse.”
Moreover, since the publication of Anatomy of an Epidemic in 2010, there has been even more evidence for Whitaker’s hypothesis, not the least of which is a randomized controlled trial (RCT) published in 2013 in JAMA Psychiatry that found at the end of seven years, the recovery rate for those individuals diagnosed as psychotic who had discontinued/reduced antipsychotic drugs was twice the recovery rate as those individuals who were maintained on their antipsychotic drugs.
Yet despite all of this (and other evidence), Aftab accuses Whitaker of “entering the stage of trapped priors” which, as defined by Aftab’s link, means not believing one is wrong even after having been proven wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt; and he accuses Whitaker of having “rapidly developed the anti-epistemology necessary to protect his thesis,” with anti-epistemology being a jargon term for not respecting the rules of reasoning.
Instead of simply insulting Whitaker, perhaps Aftab has somewhere provided an alternate hypothesis for why outcomes have gone in the “wrong direction” with increased treatment, but I haven’t found it.
Psychiatric drugs, unlike many of the drugs used in medicine, do not correct any abnormal state or underlying condition, but rather induce an abnormal (or altered state), and psychiatric drugs should be seen as in the same category as cannabis and alcohol rather than in the same category as insulin or blood pressure medications.
This “drug-centered” model of psychiatric drugs as distinct from a “disease-centered” model of most of the other drugs used in medicine is detailed by dissident psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff in her 2008 book The Myth of the Chemical Cure (she summarized this distinction in 2013). For making this distinction between psychiatric drugs and most other drugs in medicine, Moncrieff has been demonized by establishment psychiatry, including Aftab, even though Moncrieff makes clear that she is not anti-drug, and that she prescribes psychiatric drugs in some instances. She is simply saying that psychiatric drugs are in a different category than most of the other drugs in medicine. Specifically, Moncrieff states:
“Psychiatric drugs are psychoactive substances, like alcohol and heroin. Psychoactive substances modify the way the brain functions and by doing so produce alterations in thinking, feeling and behaviour. Psychoactive drugs exert their effects in anyone who takes them regardless of whether or not they have a mental condition. Different psychoactive substances produce different effects, however. The drug-centred model suggests that the psychoactive effects produced by some drugs can be useful therapeutically in some situations. They don’t do this in the way the disease-centred model suggests by normalising brain function. They do it by creating an abnormal or altered brain state that suppresses or replaces the manifestations of mental and behavioural problems.”
Despite Moncrieff stating here and elsewhere that “the psychoactive effects produced by some drugs can be useful therapeutically in some situations,” Aftab has attacked Moncrieff as having anti-drug views in his 2025 “Anatomy of Moncrieff’s Anti-Medication Playbook.”
What appears to especially enrage Aftab is Moncrieff’s point, “If you give someone with depression a dose of a mind-altering drug, like heroin, they would most likely feel less depressed for a while,” and she adds that while antidepressants are not the same as heroin, by numbing the emotions, antidepressants might reduce depression scores. Aftab reacts to this with a frequently used tactic by establishment psychiatry: the ad hominem attack of “guilt by association” in which the psychiatry critic is associated with a person who is abhorrent or polarizing in order not to have to deal with merits of the criticism. Specifically, Aftab states, “It doesn’t seem coincidental that RFK Jr. also brought up a comparison between antidepressants and heroin in his confirmation hearing.”
The application of establishment psychiatry’s medical model of emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances, unlike the application of this model in medicine in general, has been unhelpful and damaging for many individuals.
Psychiatry’s medical model, in common practice, consists of “diagnosing” a person with a mental illness if the person has been assessed to have enough qualifying behaviors termed by psychiatry as “symptoms,” and “treatment” consisting of eradicating as quickly as possible these symptoms. In psychiatry’s medical model, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and schizophrenia are seen as diseases like gonorrhea and cancer, and medical treatment consists of eradicating the condition, with the idealized goal being the eradication of the cause of the pathology, and the practiced goal of eradication of its symptoms.
In medicine in general, this medical model has in many instances effectively reduced suffering, and in some instances, actually eradicated the cause of suffering. However, when it comes to emotional suffering and behavioral disturbances, psychiatry’s medical model has been itself injurious for many individuals. Specifically, by terming phenomena such as anxiety, depressed mood, inattention, and voice hearing as “symptoms of illness” rather than informative and meaningful “human reactions,” many individuals develop a mental patient identity, become disempowered, and stop searching for what their reactions are trying to inform them of.
To be clear, there are psychiatric patients who state that acquiring a psychiatric diagnosis helps them feel better; and for some of these individuals, drug and other somatic treatments can numb their pain or function as a placebo that fulfills their expectations of pain relief. And so for some individuals, this model can help them feel better, at least initially (though even for many of these individuals, the long-term adverse physical and psychological effects begin to outweigh the benefits).
Thus, abolishing psychiatry’s medical model is unfair to those individuals who have found it to benefit them. However, it is also unfair to force this model on individuals who have found it damaging.
Establishment psychiatrists, unlike physicians in medicine in general, have no experience or expertise in major areas critical to their patients’ well-being, and so these professionals are routinely less helpful and more harmful than many nonprofessionals who have greater experience and expertise in these areas.
One of the clearest examples of this is helping individuals who want to reduce or eliminate their psychiatric drugs. Dissident psychiatrist James Greenblatt’s 2024 article “Antidepressant Withdrawal: A Brief History” describes the recent history of how establishment psychiatry denied the phenomenon and then minimized it:
“As providers started to recognize the problem, the published research—almost all of which was sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry—started to downplay the phenomenon by using the term “discontinuation syndrome” over withdrawal. . . . minimizing withdrawal symptoms, claiming they were rare and that they only lasted a few weeks . . . . However, as the research continued, it became clear that withdrawal was a real phenomenon that could have devastating effects.”
Due to establishment psychiatry’s ignoring the realities of psychiatric drug tolerance and dependence, and its denial and minimizing of the suffering caused by psychiatric drug withdrawal, it routinely labeled this phenomenon as “mental illness relapse.” And even after establishment psychiatry no longer denied withdrawal suffering, it has remained uninformed about the science behind safe tapering, which is detailed by dissident psychiatrists such as Mark Horowitz (see his video Antidepressant Withdrawal Effects and How to Safely Stop Them).
Even at present, the New York Times reported (March 17, 2025) that psychiatrist Jonathan E. Alpert, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Research, acknowledges that the APA has yet to issue its own de-prescribing guide (claiming the APA has plans to do so).
So, given this void of both information and support, online peer groups emerged, and Laura Delano and Cooper Davis launched Inner Compass Initiative, which provides information and support for that large group of individuals who want to reduce or eliminate their psychiatric drugs, but who lack any useful information and support from their doctors. Predictably, Inner Compass Initiative has been attacked by establishment psychiatry.
Alpert at the APA, the New York Times reported, “reviewed Inner Compass’s resources and described them as ‘biased and ‘frightening.’ He said online peer communities risk becoming ‘echo chambers,’ since they tend to attract people who have had bad experiences with medical treatment.”
The New York Times also reported that establishment psychiatrist Gerard Sanacora, director of the Yale Depression Research Program, was also critical of peer support because he claimed that it took trained clinicians and licensed practitioner to guarantee “some level of minimum competency” to determine whether a patient is experiencing drug withdrawal or mental illness relapse of underlying conditions.
Establishment psychiatry and its mainstream media apologists neglect the reality that for the last several decades most establishment psychiatrists have routinely been labeling all suffering following drug withdrawal as relapse of the underlying condition; and such labeling has created chronic psychiatric patients.
The Issues are Pluralism and Tolerance, Not Pro- and Anti-Psychiatry
Virtually every critic of establishment psychiatry makes clear that they are not anti-psychiatry, however, establishment psychiatry defenders, including psychiatrist Ronald Pies (interviewed in 2020 by Aftab), label as a member of the anti-psychiatry movement anyone who voices criticism that establishment psychiatry cannot tolerate.
Aftab claims to dislike the anti-psychiatry label, however, similar to Pies, in Aftab’s “The ‘Antipsychiatry’ Dilemma,” he states that this term is suitable for critics who want to “delegitimize” psychiatry. Aftab makes no distinction between delegitimizing the monopolistic authority of establishment psychiatry, which many psychiatry critics desire, versus attempting to abolish psychiatry, which virtually no critics are seeking.
One would hope that this distinction would now be clear to Aftab after interviewing Cooper Davis, Executive Director of Inner Compass Initiative, who told him in 2025:
“We are not ‘anti-psychiatry,’ ‘anti-drug,’ or ‘anti-diagnosis.’ What we are for is providing people with straightforward, factual information about psychiatric treatments, the diagnostic paradigm, and alternatives to them. If, after getting that information, some people find solace in medicalizing their pain and seeking the guidance of a clinician, we are unreserved in our appreciation for mental health professionals and treatments being there for those who want them.”
Davis made clear to Aftab that he is not seeking a “replacement for our current mental health system,” but rather his goal is a mutual-aid, nonhierarchical parallel “built outside of that framework . . . to function as a second beacon of light for people finding themselves lost at sea and looking for safe harbor. . . . I think that any truly effective model ultimately needs to find itself working outside of any medical or clinical context.”
While establishment psychiatry defenders attempt to make the conflict one of “pro-psychiatry” vs. “anti-psychiatry,” the conflict is really one of pluralism versus monopoly.
Pluralism is a political philosophy which holds that autonomy should be enjoyed by various groups within society. Pluralists maintain that diversity is beneficial to a society, and that there can be peaceful coexistence between groups of people with different beliefs, convictions, and lifestyles.
Throughout history, there has been a conflict between those who favor tolerance and pluralism versus those who believe that singularity is the only way a society can function and thus are intolerant of differences. Tolerance and pluralism were key Enlightenment values, and radical Enlightenment thinkers such as Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) and his friends faced persecution from religious authorities for being uncompromising in their belief in tolerance and pluralism.
This historical conflict has not disappeared, but simply taken on a different shape.
Great article. I think, this is like an excellent response to the joint statement from America’s leading psychiatric organizations. Thanks Bruce Levine.. 🙂
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I thought I understood the article. When I read the comments below, I realized I was wrong.. In my opinion… Psychiatry is not a ‘medical field’, it is an industry. In other words, psychiatry is a ‘money-making’ industry. Psychiatry is far from being a ‘medical field’. The reason for this is due to the serious damage it has done to humanity; (The number is uncertain, an estimated millions of people (using psychiatric drugs) are disabled and die every year. And the possibility of this number (being uncertain) increasing is also frightening, we can say.)
Psychiatry has never functioned as a ‘medical field’. And because it has not functioned… psychiatry has never been seen as a ‘medical field’ by those concerned about the harms of psychiatric treatments.
Probably… Psychiatry is carrying out the greatest ‘hidden genocide’ of the 21st century. As I mentioned above.. Psychiatry is probably responsible for the deaths and injuries of millions of people (worldwide) every year. And there’s more..
Probably… Every day, millions of people around the world are subjected to some form of ‘chemical lobotomy’ (solely due to psychiatric drugs); (This is the situation before you experience permanent chemical brain damage. A state where your brain chemistry turns into a ‘chemical soup’. A psychiatric drug taken every day causes the brain’s natural chemistry to turn into a soup of chemicals. And it does. But people don’t know this. A psychiatric drug taken every day causes the brain’s natural chemistry to turn into a soup of chemicals. (And it does. But people don’t know this. Even medicine is so lacking in knowing this. It’s like a joke.))
As this chemical soup accumulates in the brain chemistry every day (usually over long periods – months and/or years of psychiatric drug use), a complete ‘chemical lobotomy (chemical permanent brain damage)’ occurs. Probably the vast majority of people subjected to ‘chemical lobotomies’ suffer permanent chemical-induced brain damage each year.
Probably… There are tens/hundreds of millions of people on psychiatric medication worldwide; Maybe more… Although the exact number of people using psychiatric drugs is not clear… Even the WHO probably doesn’t know exactly ‘what this number is’. My guess is that over 1 billion people may be using psychiatric drugs.)
If we do a little calculation… Considering that tens or hundreds of millions of people take one or more psychiatric drugs every day for months and/or years… We can say that out of these tens or hundreds of millions of people, at least more than 1 million people suffer from chemical-induced permanent brain damage every year. Probably… We can say that more than 1 million people suffer from chemical-induced permanent brain damage every year.
And this we, may explain why people in ‘mental hospitals, psychiatric hospitals’ and other mental health units (rehabilitation centers, nursing homes and care homes like) for the rest of their lives (until their die). This may also show us that it is psychiatric drugs that make people (if not all, the vast majority) like this (cause them to have permanent mental illnesses).
Have you ever wondered why the people around you who are ‘mentally unstable’ are in this situation? Have these people ever used psychiatric medication? If so, how long have they been using it? Since people with severe mental health disorders – in other words, those who have suffered ‘permanent chemical brain damage’ to the point where they cannot answer this question – will not answer these questions… this situation makes the job of psychiatry easier. Therefore, the ‘medical records’ of these people need to be examined. Since these medical records belonging to such people can also be falsified, the truth may not be revealed.
As we said above… Probably… Psychiatry seems to be quietly carrying out the greatest unnamed ‘secret genocide’ of the 21st century. But probably no one is even aware of it.
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Psychiatry is far from being a medical field. Mind and mental illnesses are not in the brain, but in the soul of the person. None of the psychiatric drugs can cure these mental illnesses. It doesn’t even cure it anyway. What they do is just numb people’s healthy brains.
Brain numbness is caused by the brain’s natural chemistry being flooded with the toxic chemicals of psychiatric medications. Just like illegal street drugs do. Illegal street drugs (narcotic drugs like heroin and cocaine) instantly numb healthy brains. People who take them become semi-zombies. They lose their senses. If street drugs are taken for even a short period of time, brain chemistry can fail. They can even kill people.
Psychiatric drugs have the same effect as illegal street drugs. But with one difference… There is no difference in effect between psychiatric drugs and illegal street (narcotic) drugs. Both have the same serious deadly effects. (How do we know these? We read and research. Those who research these things know. Experts say them.)
The only difference between psychiatric drugs and illegal street (narcotic) drugs… is that psychiatric drugs have this harmful, deadly effect over long periods of time (after months and/or years of use). So… In fact… We can say that psychiatric drugs are the domesticated version of illegal street (narcotic) drugs. (The domestication situation is that the potential fatal side effects of psychiatric drugs are reduced to long-term (months and/or years). There is no difference in the ‘fatal side effect’; the difference is in the duration.)
The healthy brain of a person taking psychiatric medication goes numb (due to the chemicals in the medication). When the brain goes numb, people remain quiet and calm. They are confused about what is happening. They either remain stable or become active. They experience what is called a ‘zombie’ in the media. I call this the ‘zombie position’. When the brain of people taking psychiatric medication goes numb, they enter the ‘zombie position’.
This can sometimes lead to people behaving in ‘strange ways’ such as ‘being more stressed, more aggressive, more hostile, more unaware’ etc. This is the mobile (moving) zombie position. Psychiatry (and psychiatrists) incorrectly labels “such ‘strange behavior’ due to psychiatric drugs” as ‘mental illness’; (A condition in which human behavior that is impaired by psychiatric medication is incorrectly labeled as mental illness.) This allows psychiatrists to prescribe other psychiatric medications (which further turn the brain into a chemical soup).
Probably… Some (/the vast majority) of people who use psychiatric drugs… feel a sense of relief because (the chemicals in psychiatric drugs) numb healthy brains. And “Psychiatric drugs were good for me. If it weren’t for psychiatric drugs, I would have died!” They express the benefits of psychiatric drugs by using similar expressions.
However.. As we said above.. Brain numbness is not a ‘condition that treats mental illnesses’. Psychiatric medications do not treat mental illnesses. Brain numbness is a manifestation of the brain’s natural chemical makeup being disrupted because healthy brains are being filled with the chemicals of psychiatric drugs (which are quite toxic). This is not a condition that cures mental illness; it is the brain’s natural chemical makeup being flooded (with psychiatric drug chemicals) and then disrupted.
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As a final word.. I must reiterate that psychiatry is not a medical field, it is a money-making industry. How can psychiatry, which is clearly harming people, be seen as a medical field? Psychiatrists (except honest psychiatrists) are not ‘real medical doctors’. They are far from being ‘real medical doctors’.
If psychiatrists want to be real medical doctors…
1) They need to acknowledge the incredible harm and genocide that psychiatry (i.e. psychiatric drugs and other harmful psychiatric treatments like ECT) has done to people for decades.
2) They need to take a serious stand against psychiatry and harmful psychiatric treatments (especially psychiatric drugs and ECT) and embrace ‘non-drug treatment’ in mental health.
3) And they need to implement these themselves as soon as possible. They need to ensure that psychiatric drugs and ECT are banned.
4) Mental health systems need to be reorganized into ‘drug-free treatment methods’.
5). A ministry of mind and soul health needs to be established. And practices that include ‘drug-free treatment methods’ such as the ‘Norway and Storia houses’ need to be expanded.
Psychiatry should be removed from medical schools (as a medical field). The reason for this is because it is committing the greatest ‘hidden genocide’ of the 21st century. How sad that the medical community is also involved in this hidden genocide. This is a sad situation.
I am sure that this hidden genocide will deeply affect ‘honest psychiatrists and other medical doctors’. Because of this hidden genocide, it would be a ‘shameful’ situation for the medical community for psychiatry to be included in medical schools. In medical schools, ‘mind and soul health’ units should be established instead of psychiatry. ‘Drug-free treatment methods’ should be adopted in the mental health system.
And other mental health changes that I can’t think of. . I hope that the winds of change in mental health systems will blow in these directions as soon as possible. Otherwise, these unnamed secret genocides will continue. It’s a shame for these innocent people. . Best regards.
Thanks again Bruce Levine.. 🙂
With my best wishes.. Y.E. (Researcher blog writer (Blogger))
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Very clear and to the point ! Where there is risk, there must be choice !! Tolerance and pluralism, not monopoly and singularity !! Yes, informed consent for all interventions and medical treatments !!! And, let us give pride of place to clinicians and supporters who practice holistically, in community, beyond the psychiatric paradigm !!!! This being said, it does not go unnoticed that here Dr. Levine seems content leaving our current Secretary of Health and Human Services flapping in the breeze.
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Hi, Wyllhart Halle.. Thank you for commenting and opening the topic. 🙂 Your comment is logical and positive. I have a different opinion on one subject, though. If you let me, let me explain.
What is ‘informed consent’ in psychiatry? Psychiatric ‘informed consent’ is already being done. People are clearly being harmed. They are dying and being disabled (injured). This is the LEGAL name for ‘informed consent, psychiatry’s way of harming people’. People are already LEGALLY being killed and maimed by psychiatric treatments. Harmful (injurious and lethal) psychiatric treatments are already LEGAL. Informed consent keeps these deadly LEGAL psychiatric treatments on solid ground. It prevents millions of people (their families) who died or were injured due to psychiatric treatments from taking legal action. It prevents billions of dollars in compensation lawsuits against psychiatry and psychiatrists. In psychiatry, ‘informed consent’ means CONSENTING (APPROVING) to the killing and injuring of millions of people around the world. And that’s what happens anyway..
For these reasons… I would like to state that I am against ‘informed consent’ until psychiatry, which is responsible for the deaths and injuries of an estimated tens/hundreds of millions of people every year, is eliminated (and psychiatric drugs and other harmful psychiatric treatments such as ECT are banned).
Because there are important reasons for this.. Informed consent would mean the continuation of the ‘sale and use of toxic psychiatric drugs’. (It is already being done.) Informed consent will mean the continuation of other harmful psychiatric treatments such as ECT. (It is already being done.) Informed consent…. will mean the psychiatric institution continuing its as yet unnamed ‘secret genocides’ with ‘informed consent’. (Unfortunately, in this already being done.)
I am very curious. Informed consent already exists. How will psychiatry organize and explain the revised (revised) informed consent in an honest manner to patients and their families? Can he do this honestly? I don’t think so..
Because…. the pharmaceutical industry runs psychiatry. It would be naive to expect a correct and honest informed consent from psychiatry, which is dependent on the pharmaceutical industry. The enormous power of pharmaceutical companies has virtually taken over psychiatry. “‘Money’ talks in psychiatry. Honesty doesn’t talk. Informed consent doesn’t talk. In Psychiatry, money talks.”
Unfortunately, probably… Almost the vast majority of psychiatrists worldwide are dependent on the ‘psychiatric establishment and pharmaceutical companies’.
To go against psychiatry would mean ‘signing one’s own death warrant’. The psychiatric establishment could excommunicate psychiatrists. It could strip them of their medical ranks, fire them from their jobs (professions). That is, it could take away their licenses.. (Psychiatry may have such authority. It does in some countries. How about in America?)
In my opinion… First of all, the psychiatric institution (in itself) must be cleaned. Psychiatrists who have connections with pharmaceutical companies and who make money need to be cleaned out of psychiatry. Psychiatrists need to get rid of this DIRTY ADDICTION. However, this is not sufficient.
———
Psychiatric drugs do not treat mental illness. What does it do? It clearly harms people. So first of all, psychiatric drugs should be banned.
But… There are some ‘expert psychiatrists’ who say that psychiatric drugs should not be banned, even though they do not treat mental illnesses and they know and have revealed the harms of psychiatric drugs. (Some anti-psychiatry ‘expert psychiatrists’ say that psychiatric drugs should not be banned. However, they know that psychiatric drugs ‘do not treat mental illnesses’ and that psychiatric drugs are harmful. And what’s more, they are the ones who reveal these things.)
This is like a joke. In other words, millions of deaths and injuries occur every year due to psychiatric drugs. But on the other hand, they imply that psychiatric drugs (at least some of them) can be beneficial for some people. And they say psychiatric drugs should not be banned.
It’s like as if they want to say… (What’s important is not the millions of deaths and injuries, but the fact that some people benefit. In other words, they actually mean that ‘deaths and injuries’ should continue.) Isn’t that right? Or am I wrong?
Why do they act like this? Are they afraid of the psychiatric institution? Or are they afraid of incurring the wrath of their other colleagues (psychiatrists) who are dependent on the psychiatric institution? Why do they act this way when harmful and deadly psychiatric treatments (especially toxic psychiatric drugs) are out there? Are they afraid of their colleagues or the psychiatric institution? How honest are they about the harms of psychiatric drugs? How sincere are they?
In my opinion.. Psychiatry should be eliminated. It should be removed from medical schools. All psychiatric drugs should be banned.
Psychiatric drugs can only be used to calm down very violent and aggressive people. Maybe that too… But even this can have very dangerous consequences for that person.
Psychiatric medications do not target the main source of ‘violence and suicide’, they do not stop or eliminate it. It calms people by numbing the brain. Probably.. The main source of violence and suicide is not the brain, but the person’s own soul; that is, it is spiritual. In other words, it is about one’s own soul.
Psychiatric drugs do not work to ‘change the thoughts of souls’. They only change people’s behavior (by numbing their brains – calming them down) for a short time. (This does not mean that the mind and mental illnesses (thoughts) are in the brain. It does not mean that psychiatric drugs cure mental illnesses.)
For reasons like these… Especially in cases of ‘violence and suicide’, giving psychiatric drugs is illogical, absurd and dangerous. Especially for long-term use..
——-
In my opinion.. The mental health system should be reorganized according to drug-free treatment methods. ‘Mind (mental) and soul health care and rehabilitation centers’ that apply ‘drug-free treatment methods’ such as ‘Norwegian example and storia houses’ should be expanded.
The institution of psychiatry should be removed from medical faculties. Instead, ‘mind and soul health’ units should be established that deal with drug-free treatment methods. Psychiatrists and psychologists should serve as ‘mind and soul health doctors’. All mental health units should be designed according to the new mental health system. (i.e. mental hospitals, psychiatric hospitals and other mental health units for the mentally disabled, ‘rehabilitation centers, nursing homes, care homes’ etc.)
Am I ‘imagining’ too much? These are not things that will not happen. Unfortunately, the possibility of financial relationships (of psychiatry, psychiatrists, some politicians and mental health units) with pharmaceutical companies… seems to be one of the biggest problems preventing the mental health system from being redesigned according to ‘non-drug treatment methods’. As we said, in psychiatry (and mental health units) MONEY always talks.. Informed consent can only be useful if mental health systems are revised with drug-free treatment methods. Absolutely. Best regards… Y.E. 🙂
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Bravo Bret !!!
Bravo Niko !!!
Hello Yildirim ! Thanks for your lengthy reply. You eventually arrive at a theoretical that seeks to distinguish between consent and informed consent. The good news is: this already exists; and, it compels activism outside the field of psychiatry. I would refer you to Informed Consent Action Network. I have been supporting their legal initiatives and wins since 2015. Though one of many such groups, ICAN is the tip of the spear for litigation. In solidarity, Wyllhard Halle
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I agree. Relying on informed consent is naive, considering that the pharmaceutical industry funds not only drug research, but medical schools and the textbooks they teach from.
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I listened to the joint presentation given by Moncrief and Delano. They discussed why their approach threatens establishment psychiatry. If folks can just walk away from Psychiatry and have a demonstrated thriving life like Delano, what use is there for their psychopharmacology services? This is a bitter reality to face given the time and money spent to fashion their careers, but the failures of psychiatry are well documented in the scientific literature and popular culture by films like “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest. I think this is just desserts for a profession that delegates itself God like powers to involuntarily commit and forcibly drug people.
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Internal Medicine and Psychiatry share all the same deficiencies but one: psychiatry is uniquely prone to demoralizing and dismissing its patients. The End.
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So true! I would guess that’s because psychiatry for the most part is based on wishful thinking and cherry picked data more than sound science—which naturally makes defending their claims of scientific legitimacy all the more difficult when faced with valid criticisms.
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While I wish this were true, doctors of internal medicine and other specialties as well can be equally guilty of this. It’s part of the human condition:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0738399125000680#:~:text=In%20most%20studies%20on%20DM,to%20provide%20appropriate%20information%20about
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“While I wish this were true, doctors of internal medicine and other specialties as well can be equally guilty of this. It’s part of the human condition.”
CORRECTION: It’s part of the human condition and of living in a society that commodifies everything and places a higher value on profit than human life OR sound science.
A related issue is that many or possibly most Western doctors (but definitely not ALL) are beholden to the corporations they work for and therefore offer conventional allopathic treatments and protocols that don’t necessarily result in better patient outcomes, sometimes causing unnecessary harm.
This includes the overprescribing of medications (and drugs) for various reasons, without proper oversight or awareness of their effectiveness and/or potential dangers, sometimes relying on questionable clinical trials without proper oversight or follow-ups. And without offering more natural, holistic and/or preventative alternatives when appropriate, affordable and easily available based on long term evidence that (unfortunately) contradicts the profit motive. During the pandemic, this was true to a shocking extent.
A separate issue is one related to income. Low income or destitute patients often (but again, NOT always) are more likely to receive episodic, substandard care, if at all. Or of facing medical bankruptcies and even homelessness in the event of a significant medical event, which can be dehumanizing.
Nursing homes and larger hospice facilities, which are federally required to be overseen by doctors, are usually terrible places. I’ve witnessed this first-hand on numerous occasions. My efforts to politely advocate on behalf of residents in one facility in particular, were met with absolute resistance and a refusal to acknowledge the realities patients were suffering and how easily they could’ve been addressed.
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I find this a helpful and clearly written article overall. But I think it stretches the truth a bit when it claims that no critics would like to abolish psychiatry. I have read articles by people propounding that we should not have psychiatrists at all, which is an extreme of “deligitimizing psychiatry.” And there are anumber of people who are proud to be labeled “anti-psychiatry.”
It is possible though to see some of even most of the claims made by, and the practices of, mainstream psychiatry as illegitimate, even while seeing a legitimate role for a more modest sort of psychiatric practice. It’s this vision that mainstream psychiatry finds most threatening, as it is both moderate and yet severely threatening to the status quo.
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Great article – but I disagree with the conclusion.
You talk of the ‘…distinction between delegitimizing the monopolistic authority of establishment psychiatry, which many psychiatry critics desire, versus attempting to abolish psychiatry, which virtually no critics are seeking’, and state that ‘the conflict is really one of pluralism versus monopoly….Pluralists maintain that diversity is beneficial to a society, and that there can be peaceful coexistence between groups of people with different beliefs, convictions, and lifestyles.’
It is not true- at least in the UK – that ‘virtually no critics’ are calling for a future in which psychiatry as we know it has no place. This particular understanding of emotional distress has only existed for about 150 years, and for most of that time, not in the majority of the world – and the criticisms you have summarised make it entirely reasonable to want to work towards its end. I am aware of many who would align with that position.
I take issue, though, with the phrase ‘the abolition of psychiatry’, which, much like the phrase ‘anti psychiatry’, implies some kind of ideological mission to destroy this system, rather than positive support for the many far more effective and evidence-based alternatives, which already make psychiatry redundant. I also do not see how pluralism implies the continuation of a discipline that is, frankly, fraudulent, and based on ruthless propaganda, mass deception and the silencing of criticisms ( as you have illustrated.) By all means, let people take drugs and adopt psychiatric labels if they personally wish to, but that is not at all the same thing as permitting institutional psychiatry to continue to perpetuate its harms through the co-opted authority of science and medicine, even if some people are persuaded – by the same bad actors – to choose this option.
I suggest you read some of the blogs on this site about the Power Threat Meaning Framework, which seeks to articulate a set of principles not based on the medicalisation of distress. Humans lived without psychiatry for thousands of years, and in some cultures, still do. It is not impossible to imagine doing so again.
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Thank you Lucy and Ron for your thoughts about anti-psychiatry and abolishing psychiatry, which gives me an opportunity to expand on this topic.
There are certainly people who want to abolish psychiatry, however, I think most serious critics of psychiatry understand why it is not politically wise to label oneself as an anti-psychiatrist or psychiatry abolitionist, and they understand why serious critics such as Thomas Szasz rejected those labels.
In 2009, three years prior to Szasz’s death at age ninety-two, journalist Natasha Mitchell asked him, “Would you describe yourself as an anti-psychiatrist?”
“Of course not,” Szasz responded. “Anti-psychiatrist sounds like anti-Semite, or anti-Christian or even anti-religion. I’m not anti-religion, I just don’t believe in it. Anybody who wants to have their religion is fine. Anybody who wants to go to a psychiatrist is fine. Anyone who wants to take psychiatric drugs is fine with me. That’s why ‘anti-psychiatrist’ is completely inaccurate. I’m no more anti-psychiatry than pro-psychiatry. I am for freedom and responsibility.”
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/allinthemind/thomas-szasz-speaks-part-2-of-2/3138880#transcript.
One reason that establishment psychiatry hated Thomas Szasz as much as it did was that Szasz was adamant about NOT describing himself as an anti-psychiatrist. He knew that this label would have made it easier for his criticism of psychiatry to be dismissed by the world. Instead, by equating psychiatry with a religion – for him, a damaging and ridiculous religion – Szasz was quite content to leave psychiatry for people seeking such a religion, and this really pissed off establishment psychiatry. HOWEVER, that is very different than allowing that religion — or any religion — to have monopolistic coercive powers, which Szasz adamantly opposed.
Similarly, a major goal of radical Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza and his friends was not to abolish any religious institution but to prevent a society from giving it monopolistic coercive power to perpetuate Inquisitions and other violence.
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Thanks for clearing that up, and showing how easily catch phrases are used. With the spike in the occurrence of “mental illness” people are already frantic that “SOMETHING” needs to be done. And yet what is in collusion with the spike? So then, anything against psychiatric treatment is anti-psychiatry, regardless of any data whether psychiatric treatment is making things better or worse. When one is promoting informed consent, or free choice, or valid criticism being acknowledged, or even accurate sharing of data or scientific protocol that’s untainted towards favoring one side above the other, then bingo you’re “anti-psychiatry”. In fact, you can’t point out that when someone really looks at the data, at the outcome, at the lack of informed consent, at the rise in the problem; and when they are objective about it, that the results psychiatry is getting might be anti-psychiatry in itself, were they openly and objectively shared.
Anti-psychiatry would mean someone has a bias, but informed consent, objective scientific data, pointing it out when the treatment correlates with more of the problem (and thus informed consent NEEDS to be implemented, as well as the treatment questioned and the treatments looked into when it only helps a minority); none of those things are coming from a bias at all, in fact the bias is from the people calling all of that anti-psychiatry.
Maybe one needs to simply ask them: “Are you saying I am biased when I am pro informed consent, when I support scientific protocol, when I think treatments whose outcome causes more of the problem should be looked at closer?”
How does one respond to people who have been bombarded with advertisements regarding psychiatric drugs, who have seen that every school (another poor man in the blog here regarding how 50 percent of the people on antidepressants end up being considered treatment resistant, he shared how his son simply going to a counselor who promoted ADs then said it was OK not to tell his father, then along with seeing a child psychiatrist the dosage was increased at least four fold, and the boy took his life, while his father never knew he was on what is listed as causing suicidal ideation at that age; and when neither the professional were monitoring whether such ideation occured and the father was prevented from even knowing whether his son was on something that could cause such, it was all found OK professionally), every medical establishment now asks you questions regarding depression, a metaphysical healer Charlie Goldsmith playing the game of getting into hospitals although he disagrees with vaccines and takes them just to get into the hospitals to treat people there and states this openly during healing talks, has on his website the same blurb you read everywhere steering people towards places that correlate more with causing more of the problem, and the rest https://charliegoldsmith.com/mental-health/ and in NONE of those places, INCLUDING this healer (not that the healer doesn’t get results, but he is playing political games that really can get in the way for very vulnerable people looking for help), in NONE of those places are you going to be told, to begin with, the absolute truth regarding the science of antidepressants, or other psychiatric medications, with objective untainted informed consent. And so, after being inundated with all of that, when you simply start sharing objective data, or objective scientific research, it interferes with their programming, and the feeling of comfort they had when they were told there is a solution and it’s what’s promoted as being one. And then someone who is forced, coerced or advised into treatment that isn’t working for them, they can’t express what’s going on with them without encountering the same indoctrinated responses.
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“Maybe someone needs to simply ask them: ‘Are you saying I am biased when I am pro informed consent, when I support scientific protocol, when I think treatments whose outcomes causes more of the problem should be looked at closer? . . . in NONE of those places are you going to be told, to begin with, the absolute truth regarding the science of antidepressants, or other psychiatric medications, with objective untainted informed consent. . . . And so, after being inundated with all of that, [psychiatric propaganda] when you simply start sharing objective data, or objective scientific research, it interferes with their programming, and the feeling of comfort they had when they were told there is a solution and it’s what’s promoted as being one. And then when someone who is forced, coerced or advised into treatment that isn’t working for them without encountering the same indoctrinated responses.”
Thank you, Nijinski, for beautifully pulling together the most salient criticisms of the current “mental health” system—psychiatry in particular—criticisms that psychiatry not only dislikes but actively cannot tolerate. It’s a deeply a unfortunate phenomenon, regularly put on vivid display for all to see by none other than psychiatry’s lastest self-appointed wonderboy, Awais Aftab— whose genius lies in selectively tolerating unconventional views that do not directly challenge psychiatry’s characteristic resistance to meaningful critique.
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And, remarkably (?) Aftab keeps proving himself to be psychiatry’s absolute and undisputed King of Obfuscation, where complexity replaces clarity, and what he calls “nuanced discourse” is reduced to strategic dodging—leading to no real progress, undoubtedly his unspoken aim—and he’ll keep doing it forever… over and over… endlessly…
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As one who has found that if one claims to be a critical psychiatry person, and psychopharmacology researcher … that is an effective approach. I do recommend use of that term. At least I found a young psychiatrist will agree, ‘I, too, am a critical psychiatry person.’
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The term “anti-psychiatry,” originally used by David Cooper, has been very useful for psychiatrists since it has allowed them to paint all of their critics as unreasonable opponents with personal axes to grind.
I think the main problem is that the term conflates two types of criticism of psychiatry in order to dismiss them.
The first use of the term signifies a disagreement with the main thesis of psychiatry: problems in living are symptoms of biological diseases that can and should be treated by medicinal means such as medications, electroshock and brain surgeries (lobotomies). This theory underscores psychiatry’s claim to be a legitimate branch of medicine.
The second use of the term has to do with psychiatry’s legal ability to force this view on citizens via involuntary commitment and treatment. With the exception of people who are unconscious and unable to give consent at the moment, medical doctors do not treat people against their will and do not force their treatments on people who do not want them. This aspect of psychiatry contradicts its claim that it is doing medicine and psychiatrists are just like other doctors.
One may or may not agree with the basic tenets of the Catholic religion. But condemning the wide-scale prevalence of child sexual abuse and its cover up by Catholic authorities does not mean that one is “anti-Catholic.” Even practicing Catholics can object to child sexual abuse by Catholics or anyone else.
This is why Tom Szasz, the author of “The Myth of Mental Illness,” who certainly did not believe that psychiatrists are real doctors practicing real medicine, always said the main issue is involuntary treatment. If people want to believe their problems in living are biological in nature and want to take drugs to solve them, they should be allowed to do so provided that 1) they are of the legal age of consent, and 2) they have been provided with true informed consent as to the potential benefits and harms of any treatment they are offered.
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And isn’t it shameful that the number one function of all DSM deluded “mental health professions” is covering up child abuse for the mainstream religions?
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Thank you, as always, for your truth telling, Bruce. I’m new to the concept of “pluralism,” but think I agree more with them. Since I do stand against the DSM “bible” deluded psychiatric / psychological DSM monopoly. Thus I think the psychological industry, et al, should break from the DSM deluded psychiatric industry, and actually become real helpers instead.
But I will say, I do understand why this is, for greed inspired reasons, difficult to do, for the “invalid” DSM “bible” billing psychological, et al, industries.
For goodness sake – the take a percentage of gross, conservatorship, “art manager” contact, I was handed over by a psychologist – that I refused to sign, pointed out the greed only inspired system of the DSM “bible” billers … and really the entire medical system.
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In the UK and a few other countries gender medicine for young people got seriously challenged and that’s a form of psychiatry. The Cass report said there is no evidence for puberty blockers and cross sex hormones for children and young people unhappy with their gender and the Tavistick GIDS clinic got closed down. At the clinic they diagnosed, drugged and disposed of the clients and ignored what was actually going on in the rest of their lives much like they do in most of psychiatry. A small victory but worth noting.
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Bruce, I always enjoy your articles. This one is excellent!
I’ve occupied this space for a while. This article, with a few minor changes, could have been written 10, 20, 30 years ago even, with the same arguments and observations. And with a few exceptions here and there, not much has changed. In fact, the mass diagnosis and medicalization of human suffering and prescribing has only increased, and colonized new territories of what used to be considered normality like teenage confusion around identity and sexuality.
This makes me wonder what it would take to actually change things. Clearly, scientific evidence is irrelevant, as is philosophy and logic. Psychiatry is impervious to them all. So what would it actually take?
I think it would take government intervention, with teeth. As I recall, the state of Florida maybe 15 years ago, in response to shocking numbers of toddlers being prescribed antipsychotics, instituted a requirement for prior authorization. Doctors had to submit an application to an expert panel to get permission. Overnight, prescriptions dropped to near zero. I see no reason why it wouldn’t be medically justified to do the same thing for, say, the prescription of antidepressants in youth, just to scratch the surface.
It will be interesting to see where RFK goes in his efforts to make America healthy again – he has signaled that psychiatric drugs will come under scrutiny. The dominant political party in the US appears a bit antagonistic toward psychiatry. So does Joe Rogan – and independent media is my other possible source of actual change. The legacy media is essentially a marketing arm of big pharma which only baby boomers still take seriously. Social media is driving an epidemic of suffering in young people which psychiatry and their pharma partners are only too happy to manage. But governments here and there are beginning to restrict access to it.
In my view, nothing short of societal political revolution encompassing government policies that restrict prescribing combined with compelling messaging free from pharma influence that changes hearts and minds could work.
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Thank you, this sets this out very clearly.
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I thought that the one criticism that psychiatry really cannot tolerate is that Psychiatry is not natural science by definition: it addresses the philosophy of “mind” (Thomas Szasz).
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It’s evident that anyone advocating for any version of psychiatry has never endured the harrowing experience of being confined in a psychiatric facility that resembles a torture chamber.
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If psychiatry were actually a legitimate branch of medicine, it wouldn’t keep having to claim that it is.
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A curious claim: if something corrupt is part of a larger corruption, it gets away with murder, or iatrogenesis. The problems of psychiatric pseudoscience arise in large part from the myths of modern medicine as a supposed science, rather than a pharmafia-driven bizzness for profit (and power) over people, based on its own exaggerated and false advertising of ‘managing’ if not curing disease.
Distinctions drawn above between psychiatry and medicine are dubious, to put it mildly. For instance, both routinely train and employ charalatans in white coats pushing drugs based on little more expertise than pharma sales reps who are wining and dining them with slices of the action on money-making snake oils (the more the merrier). These products are routinely designed to treat symptoms over underlying conditions, if only to ensure a permanent customer base. Both promote unproven allopathic theories of germ warfare over natural, environmental, and social causes of disease, even as the latter, when addressed with such public health measures as better nutrition and sanitation or just less industrial pollution, arguably have proven far more effective for human health (poverty kills). Insofar as such practice misdirects us from real causes, they constitute a form of magic which causes more harm than good. And the eugenicism behind both attests to deliberate evil.
Both psychiatry and medicine in general need radical overhaul, because both are part of an established social and ecological system in need of revolution.
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Psychology 101: Defensiveness that attacks the messenger, “So and so is anti-psychiatry!” is the oldest trick in the book.
Psychiatrists who feel secure in who they are and what they do welcome those with critical minds. Insecure psychiatrists do not. Fair-minded criticism only provokes their barely contained, deep-seated rage at those who dare expose their all-too numerous stupidities.
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The ad hominem attack is the last resort of those who have no actual data to support their argument.
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Ad hominem attacks definitely signal desperation. Maybe that’s why Awais Aftab uses them repeatedly.
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I looked up Aftab since I have never heard of him and these people are kind of scary to me I tend to avoid it, and then I found this https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-podcast/episode-235-serotonin-hypothesis-controversies-awais-aftab which is too full of scientific sounding like devices that I can’t make much sense out of unless s I would spend too much time with it and learn how to make deals using robotic scientific sounding jargon to hide any real communication honest people can understand rather than going on like it means something. But he goes on about trytophan depletion that he says shows up with people with depression if that is even true, as if it has anything to do with antidepressants, so I had to look up what that is and that’s a substance an essential amino acid you have to get from outside of the body since the body can’t produce it and so what does this have to do with antidepressants? I mean, at what point does an essential amino acid you get from your diet and that you might be lacking what does that have to do with an antidepressant which isn’t an amino acid nor a nutritious food. You would think that points out your diet not the antidepressant… I can’t even make out what he is going on about…
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Aftab is an individual whose reasoning I have yet to deduce: he seems to enjoy envisioning himself as a critical psychiatrist, which is rather strange, given that whenever he is confronted by voices more critical than his own, he resorts to psychiatry’s favorite pastime—ad hominem attacks.
One would think a critical psychiatrist would champion responsible engagement with evidence presented by critics with views more critical than his own. But perhaps that’s too big an ask for those whose minds are too deeply psychiatrized.
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…but heaven knows everyone has their reasons for preferring the status quo over the discomfort cognitive dissonance.
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…especially for people actively resistant to rigorous introspection—who view critique not as engagement, but as a threat to be neutralized.
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…and who pride themselves on intellectual maneuvering…
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Birdsong, I went back to that article, but I had to call it quits for today when he went on about how a seratonin releasing agent helped [he says] in certain conditions: “Colwell and colleagues used a selective serotonin releasing agent, fenfluramine, which directly elevates synaptic serotonin levels, to investigate its effects on behaviors traditionally associated with serotonin function. The study (n=53 participants) demonstrated through computational modeling that increased serotonin reduced sensitivity specifically to aversive outcomes (Cohen’s d = -0.57, p = 0.04), influencing how participants responded to negative feedback during reinforcement learning tasks. Additionally, increased serotonin enhanced behavioral inhibition by promoting more cautious decision-making, particularly reducing impulsivity during aversive emotional interference (e.g., fearful faces) (Cohen’s d = 1.28, p < 0.0001). (Colwell et al,, 2024). These results suggest serotonin's role in reducing impulsivity and moderating negative emotional reactivity, possibly by dampening the exaggerated negative biases seen in anxiety or depression."
[well with the half our to edit stuff the site allows, I looked a bit more]
Again, antidepressants after a person has gotten used to them, after the initial period (I don't know what to call it, shall we say after their body has gotten so used to it that they will have withdrawal symptoms, a BIG problem when they were doing the initial trials, but then that, and all the side effects were just dismissed, side effect so bad when people had to leave the trials they just discounted that, rather than it being a negative; and when people in the non control group getting the antidepressants were having severe withdrawal symptoms, that simply wasn't shared), after the "introductory" period, the person has LESS serotonin. So, what is that statement above supposed to relate to!? It AGAIN says that antidepressants wouldn't work…..
That's just maybe a fourth into THAT article…..
He starts saying that the serotonin deficiency theory is simplistic, and that it hasn’t been held to, then he goes on about….listen, is tryptophan REALLY is something antidepressants help to not be deficient, then we would have heard about this all over the place.
And then the points antidepressants put on the table as to effectiveness, which is about as low as you can get, and he goes on about how this means something. Add to that all of the rest of the game playing. People in the control group that got better the first week or so were taken out, so that means they weren’t included with who got better without the ADs, people who had such severe side effects in the non control group that had to leave before the end, again weren’t counted (again this rigs the odds for ADs), and then they had to get people in the trials that already were on a psychiatric drug, and they had to hand out sedatives with the ADs, and then when a trial didn’t come out how they wanted, this simply was dismissed, and they rearranged stuff untill they somehow got these 2 points, along with all of the stuff I can’t say is actually honest.
I don’t think you could talk to this man without having to go around and get lost listening to him going on about stuff, and not have enough memory left over to remember where it started, in ways. That’s called confusion technique, or fundamentalism. Always something that sounds like something because it’s like a cult. In ways it points out how bad things are because for him to maintain his image he has to make out he’s a “critical psychiatrist.”
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I notice with the copying and pasting, I left out my initial comment. How Aftab goes on regarding one case where serotonin releasing agent helped. !? In the long run ADs cause serotonin depletion, so what Aftab was going on about AGAIN would prove that ADs don’t help……
I wonder how much the sole thing going on is money. Because when you putts around making excuses for what’s mainstream, then there you go…..main$tream
I don’t buy everything organic, but right now I can get most of my stuff organic (with double up food bucks). But at the farmers market was a stall with apples, and I asked them whether they used organic pesticides or fertilizers (they had some sort of advertisement that looked like it might be akin, so I asked), and he says their stuff is organically made. After going round in circles for awhile, he finally admitted ( and acted worn out and exhausted that he had to admit to that, because he had been trying to hide it) that they get whatever is available at the store, round up or whatever. But he tried to make out their stuff was organically made, just like the stuff that actually then has to be organically certified…. I had enough of it. Maybe I might have asked him how his stuff is organically made but not organically certified, as if he didn’t know the difference. I also didn’t venture to add that cyanide also might be organically made, or gasoline. I had no problem however they make things work for them, but to try to lie like that by turning words around and deceiving people, as if organic certification denies who knows what, and you can ignore the difference to the mother earth etc…… and he was real soft spoken about it, like someone who is in an environment where they are resentful about those people challenging what they do. So he talks real quiet, as if he’s being sensitive, which he probably himself thinks he is being. There’s enough knowledge in how to take care of agriculture that were it more mainstream we wouldn’t be destroying the planet and still have enough food for everyone (and probably we wouldn’t have the corrupt economic system that keeps food that IS there from getting to people)…. Quite groomed I’m sure he was, about those annoying people that dismiss anything that’s not organic…..
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Nijinski, I’ve read some of Aftab’s writings, and you’ve absolutely nailed it: “Always something that sounds like something”—yet somehow adds up to nothing.
Clearly Aftab’s genius is confusion, his art is misdirection, and his greatest skill is ensuring that truth never catches up. It’s hard not to wonder whether Aftab’s rhetorical slipperiness is deliberate—whether his intellectual sidestepping is not just a habit, but a carefully honed art designed to overwhelm, disorient, and ultimately neutralize critique. His fixation on being psychiatry’s “critical insider” isn’t about challenging power—it’s about curating a persona.
He doesn’t disrupt; he postures. He doesn’t question; he performs. His rebellion is a branding exercise, not conviction. His critiques are carefully measured—just enough skepticism to give the illusion of independent thought—but never so bold as to offend the old farts whose chairs he’s undoubtedly looking to slide into someday, folding neatly into psychiatry’s coolly detached intellectual fog—where critique is performative, rebellion is branding, and complicity is the price of admission.
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Nijinski, if you’d like to become even better acquainted with Aftab’s sophisticated obfuscation, I suggest you read his review of “Unshrunk” by Laura Delano that he somewhat flippantly decided to call “A Memoir for the Iatrogenic Age.” You’ll find the link in the 16th paragraph of Bruce’s article. Here’s my take on Aftab’s problematic musings:
Aftab’s review isn’t just subtly dismissive—it’s a classic example of psychiatric infantilization. In other words, rather than appropriately honoring Laura’s firsthand experience, he reclaims her story for psychiatry, discreetly rewriting her suffering through a lens of pathology.
Instead of meaningfully reckoning with the iatrogenic harm Laura so bravely endured, Aftab strategically sidesteps this core issue by questioning her original bipolar l diagnosis—only to impose the other equally disempowering diagnosis foisted upon her as a logically anxious young woman—the so-called “borderline personality disorder” label. He can’t seem to stop himself from imposing psychiatry’s framework onto Laura’s narrative, subtly reframing her understandable rejection of psychiatry as just another diagnostic misstep that reduces her autonomy while pretending to engage with her views.
Aftab’s review isn’t just another sad case of misdiagnosis or protracted iatrogenesis, it’s a perfect example of a stealthy theft that refuses to let people define their own experience, a tactic long used by psychiatry to absorb criticism, neutralize it, and spit it back out as “clinical observation”.
Aftab’s review follows psychiatry’s time-honored tradition of co-opting of patient narratives—a quiet but deliberately lethal erasure of an individual’s own story, reshaping defiance into mere pathology.
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“(If you are one of those clinicians opposed to a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, substitute it for whatever descriptive characterization you prefer for a syndrome of maladaptive traits related to the dimensions of negative affectivity, antagonism, and disinhibition.)” from that article you mentioned. That really made me laugh because he’s trying to diagnose this person or this condition or this thing of diagnosing a diagnosis and all I can think is well that really describes what you’re doing yourself. Negative effectivity, antagonism and then the disinhibition to just go on and make it sound like a bunch of fluttering cognitive meanderings and make this out to be objective observation. Do they hand out candy with these words on it somewhere between classes or something? The most disconcerting part of that whole smorgasbord of avoiding making any substantive statement was when he tried to relate his relationship with patients and Delana’s attempt to work as a peer support person. I know this myself what Delana went through, I went through this with friends and it’s harrowing. When someone has been taken in by the mental health system and they are used to functioning with a disabled brain, even though they know it’s slowing down the thoughts even though they will acknowledge how it’s holding them back, for them to actually step forth and deal with the period where the stuff that is being pushed to the side emerges and you’re going to have a real catharsis and you’re going to have to spend time really I don’t know what to call it. Reordering your life spend time by yourself and your own thoughts spend time getting used to letting go of stuff spend time outside of the Mickey mouse Disneyland avenue? Maybe it’s because the treatment didn’t completely disable their lives, and they’re still somehow able to function within the superficial parameters of we accept you now, but….. It’s harrowing, (and then one might ask whether someone who has a more serious or critical diagnosis from the psychiatrist is more likely to recover because then their life has been disabled and they’re not going to be able to take part in such superficiality but then of course those people are the ones that end up Warehoused in foster care facilities or imprisoned in what they call asylums) you actually get a conversation started where the scientific truth about the medications is acknowledged, but as soon as the parameters of adapting to a culture a community and environment that requires a person to subdue seeing what’s really going on, as soon as they have to actually articulately, allow their own brain to interact with stuff they’re not supposed to see and would cause difficulty then you get the whole parameter of adaptations and the ingrained responses of how to avoid realizing what’s going on and the standard responses of it’s not reasonable to actually take in reality but instead fill in all this indoctrinated….. And I’m at loss because I hear the word pillage in my head but I guess that’s what it is in ways: go along with the system and learn how to steal the stuff from people that actually dare to wake up and produce something meaningful. And the problem is then what I’ve encountered is that for people to actually deal with a brain that isn’t disabled they would have to stop at the same kind of avoidance of actually getting involved with anything substantive that this Aftab person goes round and round about as if this is kindness and survival and intelligent and helpful. You disable someone’s brain and what’s the difference between that and putting blinders on? The difference is that Delana actually wrote a book and the book has gotten attention beyond the parameters that the system doesn’t want this information out. Aftab then has a real problem because he’s never going to say anything that’s substantive to stick its head above the water, so yeah you get this going around in circles. And then he uses the term Moncrieff-Whitaker as if this is something negative, when his reactions actually go more along with his diagnosis of the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (which he does as a kindness to his colleagues that if they don’t like this here diagnosis label just look at it this way blah blah blah) the way he just is negative about something it’s pretty much what he just shared is how you look at it, but if it weren’t there, what is being negative about, he wouldn’t even be able to take on this supposed act of being critical about psychiatry and get points for it. He is the one that started going on about diagnosing a diagnosis and if you don’t want to use this term look at blah blah blah well there you go, example of what he is going on about is in how he’s going on about it. And now people that really need someone to be able to talk to that is going to deal with concrete issues and has the ability to open that venue up, instead they’re going to get this reflection of the diagnosis in the person diagnosing it…. And with him of course is not that obvious so learn how to steal being human from everybody so that the only thing you have left is this…. This image of being productive…. And it’s a beautiful day now I’m going to go out in the sunshine before I start doing it myself…….
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“…. and he was real soft-spoken about it, like someone who is in an environment where they are resentful about those people challenging what they do. So he talks real quiet, as if he’s being sensitive, which he probably himself thinks he is being.”
Wow. Intriguing how effortless it can be at times to imagine two different people peddling entirely different wares yet if someone were to suddenly wave a magic wand the two could easily trade places for a day with no one knowing the difference, including the said pair of peddlers….
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…which just proves that, many times, charm can indeed be a salesperson’s best weapon—especially when integrity takes a backseat to persuasion.
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Most disconcerting to me is how Awais Aftab presents himself as a thoughtful, measured voice of reason, a psychiatrist uniquely willing to engage with critics of establishment psychiatry. But there’s a deep contradiction in his engagement—rather than participating in a truly open dialogue, he subtly reinforces psychiatry’s authority while casting dissenters as misguided or irrational.
His rhetorical style isn’t about genuine intellectual exchange—it’s about gatekeeping psychiatry’s perceived legitimacy, deciding which critiques deserve acknowledgement and which must be discredited. He positions himself as a kind, indulgent guide to the orphaned misfits of Mad in America, a “goodwill ambassador” to critics of psychiatry, as if their skepticism stems not from substantive arguments but from their lost and misguided state.
It’s a performance of open-mindedness, masking an underlying intellectual superiority complex—one that allows himself to dismiss sharp critiques not by refuting their logic, but by pathologizing their motives. When a critique of psychiatry truly threatens psychiatry’s legitimacy, Aftab abandons engagement altogether—falling back on rhetorical mischaracterizations and academic posturing rather than confronting psychiatry’s failures head-on.
His condescension isn’t just accidental—it’s tactical. It gives him authority without vulnerability, ensuring he remains psychiatry’s gatekeeper while appearing magnanimous to its critics. But the illusion is fragile, and more his tactics are exposed, the harder it becomes for him to maintain his benevolent facade.
I hope my critique of the way Aftab operates makes him wonder (uncomfortably) whether or not people he sees fac-to-face have read my brutal takedown of his well-oiled facade—one that masquerades as intellectual honesty but is actually more about portraying psychiatric dissenters as unhinged.
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Bird song I have to honestly say that your comments here are so well written the way you describe this whole weird phenomenon….
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Thank you for your generous complement, Nijinski 🙂
And I totally agree—psychiatry is a weird phenomenon!
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Aftab is an individual whose reasoning I have yet to decipher: he seems to enjoy envisioning himself as a critical psychiatrist, which is strange, given that whenever he is confronted by voices more critical than his own, he resorts to establishment psychiatry’s favorite pastime—ad hominem attacks.
One would think a critical psychiatrist would champion responsible engagement presented by critics whose views are more critical than his own. But perhaps that’s too much to ask of people too deeply psychiatrized . . . but heaven knows everyone has their reasons for preferring the status quo over the discomfort of cognitive dissonance—especially for people actively resistant to rigorous introspection, who view critique not as engagement but as a threat to be neutralized and, most of all, take pride in psychiatry’s perpetual intellectual maneuverings—evasions that follow a predictable pattern of dismissal rather than direct refutation.
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Nijinsky, I wanted to thank you again for complimenting my comments, but I did have some help from ai. It didn’t occur to me to mention that because I put so much work into them, and because it’s like asking my parents for suggestions. In other words, my comments are for the most part my own creation. Some comments took hours of back and forth with ai for me to get things the way I wanted. I’m bringing this up now because this morning I read about a teacher whose students just take her essay questions give it to ai and then they copy ai word for word. I just wanted you to know I don’t do things quite like that!
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Case in point: Aftab himself is guilty of being “anti-epistemological” as he employs such slippery tactics to deftly evade direct engagement with contradicting evidence—reframing critique as ideological resistance rather than addressing its substantive claims, all while misappropriating philosophical concepts to lend unwarranted legitimacy to establishment psychiatry’s rhetorical defenses.
And ultimately, Aftab’s rhetorical slipperiness isn’t just a personal quirk—it’s a hallmark of establishment psychiatry itself, where intellectual maneuvering replaces genuine engagement, and where philosophical misappropriation serves as a shield rather than a search for truth. But it’s clear certain people devote their lives to intellectual sidestepping.
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Nijinski, I found a YouTube video featuring Aftab called “The Philosophy of Psychiatry” from Medicating Normal. It’s a textbook example of how Aftab skillfully uses volubility to create the illusion of meaningful discourse.
(If it puts you to sleep don’t worry because you won’t have missed much).
In case that happens, you might glance at an article of his entitled “Epistemic justice is an essential component of psychiatric care” from cambridge.org. It’s a masterclass in intellectual gaslighting; instead of acknowledging that epistemic in-justice is deeply embedded in psychiatry, he presents epistemic justice as a principle psychiatry should stand for.
He takes gaslighting to a whole new level.
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WHAT!? “This is especially so when we consider that the implications of hermeneutical justice are far more radical for psychiatric practice than testimonial justice, and these implications have recently been productively theorized and debated in the philosophy of psychiatry community ”
I looked up hermeneutical (also had to look up epistemic): “”Hermeneutical” refers to something related to the theory and practice of interpretation, especially of texts like the Bible or other religious or philosophical works. It essentially means “interpretative” or “explanatory”.
note: epistemic doesn’t necessary mean “bullshit” neither does hermeneutical mean “superstitious,” or even “discriminatory,” or the rest of it (resentful, suspicious etc.)
I really wonder whether such activity requires some “help” other than just ambition, or the usual attempt at heroics….to hold all of that in your head, go around insulting merry go rounds with it, and not have it questioned, or release it to fly away, there are medications for that, for all I know……I don’t know, but if that’s the case, they do seem to work…..quite fluidly
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“I really wonder whether such activity requires some “help” other than just ambition, or the usual attempt at heroics…..to hold all of that in your head, go around insulting merry go rounds with it, and not have it questioned, or release it to fly away, there are medications for that, for all I know….I don’t know, but if that’s the case, they do seem to work…..quite fluidly.”
Yup. Aftab is a master at calculated misdirection, turning straightforward arguments into rhetorical mazes. He accuses Kious et al. of using strawman arguments—only to engage in the same tactic himself, dressing up his deflections with philosophical jargon like “hermeneutical” to obscure rather than clarify, cleverly ignoring Kious et al.’s claims that psychiatric patients’ voices are systematically dismissed, reframing the issue as a minor ethical concern already adequately addressed within good psychiatric care. In doing so, he avoids engaging with the real critique and ensures psychiatry’s authority remains unquestioned.
He’s made a career of rhetorical games.
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CLARIFICATION:
I found a YouTube video featuring Aftab called “The Philosophy of Psychiatry” from Medicating Normal. A textbook example of how skillfully he uses glibness to create the illusion of depth.
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Nijinski, I looked over my previous comments to you and realized I misspoke about Laura’s experience which she bravely recounts in “Unshrunk”. I hope you like my rewrite:
“If you’d like to become even better acquainted with Aftab’s sophisticated obfuscation, I suggest you read his review of “Unshrunk” by Laura Delano entitled “A Memoir for the Iatrogenic Age”; his reasons for misusing the term “iatrogenic” are not hard to decipher. Here’s my take on his problematic musings:
Aftab’s review isn’t just subtly dismissive—it’s a classic example of psychiatric infantilization. In other words, rather than appropriately honoring Laura’s firsthand experience, he reclaims her story for psychiatry, discreetly rewriting her suffering through psychiatry’s lens of pathology.
Instead of meaningfully reckoning with how psychiatry hijacked Laura’s identity—convincing her that she was fundamentally broken and needed endless medical intervention—Aftab strategically sidesteps this core issue by reframing her experience as a problem of misdiagnosis by questioning her original “bipolar l” diagnosis then promptly replacing that with the other even more damning diagnosis of “borderline personality disorder”—foisted upon her as logically confused young woman. It’s obvious he can’t seem to stop himself from imposing psychiatry’s framework onto Laura’s narrative, subtly reframing her understandable rejection of psychiatry as just another diagnostic misstep that reduces her autonomy while pretending to meaningfully engage with her experience.
His review isn’t just another unfortunate case of misdiagnosis or protracted withdrawal, it’s a perfect example of a stealthy theft of someone’s lived experience, a tactic long used by psychiatry to absorb criticism, neutralize it, and spit it back out as “clinical observation”.
Aftab’s review follows psychiatry’s time-honored tradition of co-opting patient narratives—a quiet but deliberately lethal erasure of an individual’s own story, reshaping defiance into mere pathology.
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CLARIFICATION: Instead of meaningfully reckoning with the way psychiatry hijacked Laura’s identity—-convincing her that she was fundamentally broken and needed endless medical intervention—-Aftab strategically sidesteps this core issue by reframing her experience as a problem of misdiagnosis by questioning her original diagnosis of bipolar l, then, despite never having met her in the flesh face-to-face, he suggests (surreptitiously) the even more damning diagnosis of borderline personality disorder—-also foisted upon Laura as a logically confused young woman seeking an identity, a universally human and healthy process. He then conveniently proceeds to refer to her painful search for an identity as “maladaptive”, ostensibly supported by the following dismissive remarks that discreetly SEEK TO BLAME LAURA for how badly psychiatry affected her her life:
“All of the above is made worse by an unhealthy attachment on Delano’s part to the role of psychiatric patient”, and “In some ways, ‘Unshrunk’ is a memoir of Delano’s unstable and intense relationship with psychiatry, alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation”, then finishing with his own subtle devaluation of Laura’s testimonial with this insulting statement: “Because the possibility that she may ever be able to function outside the mental health care system had never been presented to her, her successful ability to do so became, in her mind, a radical proof of the falsehood of psychiatry.”
ALL of which begs the following question:
HOW MUCH MORE PROOF DOES ANYONE NEED???
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CLARIFICATION:
“Instead of meaningfully reckoning with the way psychiatry hijacked Laura’s identity—convincing her that she was fundamentally broken and needed endless medical intervention—Aftab strategically sidesteps this core issue by reframing her experience as a problem of misdiagnosis by questioning her original diagnosis of bipolar l, and then, in spite of never having met Laura face-to-face, he suggests (surreptitiously) the even MORE damning diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, the other diagnosis foisted upon Laura as a logically confused young woman, seeking an identity, a process (struggle) universal to all human beings at many stages in life.
He conveniently refers to her painful search for her own identity as “maladaptive” – as well as a “psychopathology” – ostensibly supported by the following dismissive remarks that discreetly SEEK TO BLAME LAURA for how negatively psychiatry affected her life.”
Aftab’s review of “Unshrunk’ makes one thing undeniably clear: his primary objective is to deflect from the main role psychiatry plays in harming people’s lives. main role in harming patients’ lives—allowing him to evade the reality that psychiatry owes a debt to patients and society—one it cannot and will not ever repay.
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Lol! Yeah, she was in an unhealthy way dependent on psychiatry, but let’s give her a new diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. Does this mean she is or isn’t supposed to believe this diagnosis? Would it be healthy of her to believe it or not? Does this mean that anybody with borderline personality disorder is too dependent on psychiatry and does this also apply to the rest of the diagnosis? Does this mean that having borderline personality disorder means that you’re too dependent on psychiatry, what does this have to do with whether you believe the disorder or not? If you do believe the disorder then you’re too dependent on psychiatry? What if you actually believe you have the disorder and think you should do something about it although psychiatry handed this out to you is that again showing you have invested too much in psychiatry for help? But if you’re too dependent on psychiatry and you believe the disorder you think you have to do something about that then you’re still too dependent on psychiatry so what are you supposed to do? If everything gets worse it’s because you were too dependent on psychiatry and thus it’s borderline personality disorder, because psychiatry not working for you with the other disorder it has to be something else but it’s still a psychiatric disorder which show is it too dependent on psychiatry because you actually got better without them. But, if you get better on your own when you get away from psychiatry, do not blame that on them… But do believe you have personality disorder. What is the disorder going to be if you actually show not to have personality disorder? Does that have anything to do with ever having believed any of what went on to have such a label? They know what’s going on with you and you need to believe it but if you depend on that you have another disorder when their health didn’t work but do believe the other disorder while knowing you’re too dependent on psychiatry which gave you the second disorder already. I’ve actually encountered a sort of modulation of this from a social worker who was teaching a yoga class and if I was in class everything I did was misinterpreted as if it was some sign that something else was going on, if I actually was interested in yoga in reality I had a psychotic fixation on her. And then when I didn’t go to class because I couldn’t get there although I had tried, then I was showing that I had dangerous resentments towards her that could become violent because I didn’t show up because of some disagreement we had had. And that’s actually taking seriously although there’s no way she could know why I did not then show up in the class but she states it as objectivity: the reason I didn’t show up was……. But as long as it’s called a mental disorder, even though it doesn’t make any sense even though it can’t be objective even though they go around every corner they can imagine to try to make out that they know what’s going on and they need to have the position of being the helper……….. Someone else another dialogue here on the side I don’t even know whether it’s this discussion here but mentioned that they couldn’t even get a proper report of what a diagnosis was, and when they asked whether they were being held prisoner they were told no they were being accommodated in the asylum. And then when this person gets the paperwork from the court case the excuse that the psychiatrist gave to not give a proper report of the diagnosis was that they don’t put people in boxes. So when you’re in the asylum you’re not in a box but you’re being accommodated. I mean this is so blatantly dishonest buy avoiding any reasonable question of what athey you going on about. They can make any kind of statement: but I know this is that although I can’t substantiate it but I know this don’t ask me to be reasonable about it. Like every other social rule…. They put themselves in a box to begin with and blinders on, so with anybody still reasonable enough not to play such a game theory they of course are highly offended in ways or just have this brainwashed need, this response of having to find something wrong….. Tell people they are scientifically objective about evaluations that don’t stand up to science and wow what you can’t all get them to start going on about……
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Oh wow I get it! Anybody that was treated by psychiatry and managed to get away because things are getting worse, whatever diagnosis they had, in reality it was borderline personality disorder because they were too dependent on psychiatry. Somehow though I don’t think this means that everybody that was getting the borderline personality disorder will then be alleviated of any further psychiatric treatment because they were too dependent on psychiatry. They of course will be forced on very selective treatment for such a condition which is all kept under medical confidentiality I just wonder whether this means that the rest of the population that got better and doesn’t need psychiatry that this means they actually because they got better with two dependent on psychiatry which is how they got better. I mean at one point all of them should have realized the psychiatry is not working which means that before that they were too dependent on it so then they actually have borderline personality disorder…..
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Sorry about the rambunctious attempted at humor I mean what are you supposed to do with this this is so effing ridiculous. I mean like after all she went through Laura is going to show up at his office knock on his door and say yeah you were right I have borderline personality disorder what am I supposed to do? I mean she has to show up at his office and display that she still has too much dependency on psychiatry in order to validate his diagnosis so he can “help” her. Let’s avoid pointing out that I’m sure she was told how many times that she needed this and this would help and that she could depend on it, but if she depended on it then there was something wrong with her not with…. No she was just given the wrong diagnosis because that’s what they need to do, give diagnosis otherwise they’re not professional, so here’s a new one that includes those who are too dependent on whatever….. This way we can include anyone for whom psychiatry didn’t work as having been too dependent on it which is part of borderline personality disorder….
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“And then he uses the term Moncrieff-Whitaker as if this is something negative…”
Yup. It’s part of his rhetorical armor.
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I looked at that article, where he’s, who knows what he’s doing?….. responding to Moncrieff.
He’s not even responding to what she said, he’s responding to getting hyper and bringing all sorts of stuff one might think are potentials, but for them to be such [potentials] he’d have to actually look into what potential is, and it’s not just getting hyper bringing in counterpoint.
For example:
“Important molecular imaging evidence was misinterpreted. Moncrieff and colleagues stated that reduced binding of serotonin 1A receptors suggests increased levels of synaptic serotonin, but reduced binding can also be because of decreased receptor density or affinity. Jauhar and colleagues appear to have mistakenly assumed that serotonin 1A receptors are exclusively presynaptic autoreceptors, but most serotonin 1A receptors are post-synaptic heteroreceptors. Diminished availability of serotonin 1A receptors in unmedicated depression is consistent with lowered serotonin transmission, and Jauhar and colleagues say that this is a replicated finding in people who were not on antidepressants.”
He says “Diminished availability” of serotonin etc. in unmedicated depressions is consistent with lowered serotonin. But we’re NOT told in comparison to WHAT! Antidepressants, in the beginning, they cause there to be extra serotonin because the re-uptake isn’t going on, that’s in the beginning. So, if one is dishonest, one can say voila, there’s less in those not “medicated.” And what does that have to do with pre or post synaptic, and what does this have to do with reduced binding and receptor density?
And then how the roller coaster ride continues when the body has stopped making as much serotonin. And with the whole roller coastal ride, that can’t but disrupt the whole “complicated” system he’s going on about, because that’s what disrupting natural functions of the brain does, when they have such a matrix. Calling it complicated, and Moncrief simplistic, that’s simplistic in itself. As long as there’s so much stuff going on that it’s too much to keep track off, then calling anything for what it is is “simplistic,” because you have to always say it could be some other connection.
Such “mental” striving go well with the coffee and donuts they get when having meetings, I think…..and the office chairs, and the fashion of clothes, and shoes, and being able to go home to an upper middle class house, go on vacations and….finding something to go on about for these nice pundits and their work ethic to make out they are helping you to make life easy from those nasty emotions that get in the way of the rhythm of the grind…..
And there was this other psychiatrist awhile back, who came into the discussion regarding that poor lady and what benzos did to her. He did EXACTLY the same thing as you mentioned with Delana! Oh, just make up another diagnosis, when you don’t even know the person, she has never sat in your office, never asked for it……
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“I mean like after all she went through Laura is going to show up at his office knock on his door and say yeah you were right I have borderline personality disorder what am I supposed to do? . . . No she was just given the wrong diagnosis because that’s what they need to do, give diagnosis otherwise they’re not professional, so here’s a new one that includes those who are too dependent on whatever…… This way we can include anyone for whom psychiatry didn’t work as having been too dependent on it which is part of borderline personality disorder…..”
Nijinski, no need to apologize for your rambunctious humor—it helped me get out of the funk that engulfed me after wading through Aftab’s slickly obtuse treatise on epistemic justice, packed with rhetorical acrobatics designed to disorient rather than clarify.
And many thanks for humorously delineating Aftab’s absurd reaction to reading ‘Unshrunk’. It’s reassuring to know there are actually sane people in this world after all.
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“He [Aftab] says ‘Diminished availability’ of serotonin etc. in unmedicated depressions is consistent with lowered serotonin. But we’re NOT told in comparison to WHAT! Antidepressants, in the beginning, they cause there to be extra serotonin because the re-uptake isn’t going on, that’s in the beginning. So, if one is dishonest, one can say voila, there’s less in those not “medicated”. And what does that have to do with pre or post synaptic, and what does this have to do with reduced binding and receptor density?”
BINGO.
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I decided to do a search for Aftab, fortunately I don’t have time to go into it because I have to go pick up my organic vegetables for the week but… As it goes with borderline personality disorder which he just feels free to add on to someone who was free of all such intrusions there’s actually this whole talk where they go on about whether this is a valid diagnosis which I’m sure you encounter him, I don’t even know what to say about it he’s going to go all over the place again https://www.intothewoodsportland.com/a-therapist-cant-say-that-podcast/episode-3-9. It actually seems like absolute nonsense would be more helpful because that’s just nothing or look at the data is of where chaos had more Harmony and still doesn’t all the rules that caused world war I and the rest of them ongoing, but if someone knows the statistics the science and acts like he’s being critical but then still adds on a bunch of concocted arguments that are quite fabricated and as you say side steps and all the rest of it that can be incredibly destructive. And desperate people are going to think oh I need to try that and again all the other methods the correlate with recovery they’re push to the side because hey he got his degree and you know what. I was having a discussion about modern composers even the ones that don’t write extremely aggressively dissonant disturbing music and even when it contains melodies when they have to write a whole concerto for example it still sounds like they’re at the mall being distracted by something that’s attracted their attention because of the lights and the smell and having money and consumerism and so there isn’t any real inner form going on where everything’s related, the whole organic process of allowing what’s going on itself to speak in creative form like you do when you’re nurturing a garden and you trust nature, that’s just missing because of consumerism and convenience and distraction and…. You have it all over the place and now you can see it’s an academia because there’s enough papers and ability to turn the truth around and argue something with who knows what kind of perversion and you can read this all over the place so if you don’t want to see the truth about psychiatric medications and diagnosis yeah there’s all this media available and you can start using that for these catchphrases and everything. I don’t think Aftab knows what he’s doing at all, I’m also on auto detector when I say his name it comes up as off top…… !? The whole internet and the computer industry does the same thing every time you want to do something while every time or often enough the machinery chimes in with something that’s supposed to be user friendly so you forget what you’re doing or are distracted by some advertisement, and it just seems so easy to just click this pop this pill etc…… please don’t feel you’re obliged to listen to that whole talk I just left the link of! Probably two or three minutes here and there probably will tell you enough. I mean what the f again because now borderline personality is unhealthy attachments but not when it’s to psychiatry such as the diagnoser himself is displaying, but it is when you got away from psychiatry right!? Obviously I’m being sarcastic again…..
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“I don’t think Aftab knows what he’s doing at all.”
I don’t think he does either. The problem is he thinks he does.
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I did listen to that podcast, quite amazing. How two people can go on about diagnosis, completely skip for the most part that it’s like going on about what food dye to put in products that would be more nutritious without them, and then go on about who puts too much dye in in order to continue to put such in, because you know they are more “epistemic” about it, and then….. have said nothing about nutrition at all basically. Why the food is there, what therapy is about, other than naming different methods. To have to deal with someone who greets you with such supposed empathy, that they understand your trauma, because they can go round in circles with criteria, or be so hyper about it that it’s like the little voices reminding you to be concerned about stuff that you really just need to not entertain as having anything to do with it….
I mean to hear two grown people go on like they’re having a nice Frappuccino and making business deals, and not hear one word about the horrible trauma anyone has gone through that ends up having to deal with them, how they have perhaps from childhood had to suppress their real thoughts, how they are on edge the whole day wondering whether they can do anything without it failing or being criticized (added to this the drugs disabling their ability to even know what the source is), the consequent dismissal of their feelings, the ingrained wounds that are triggered when anything that touches upon what’s been suppressed emerges…..or how much they [these two bloggers] might have learned from people who have had a completely different life than them, how much they might learn about things they didn’t know were going on, probably weren’t interested in, and how they learned to not judge people….. Instead stroking of each other’s “insights.” And then smiling how they can go on like that without truly touching on what’s going in any critical manner, or even really knowing how, but make themselves out to be…..
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I listened to the podcast, too. Nothing but a two-way word salad.
Aftab talked a mile a minute, defending BPD as “useful” and “helpful” for his “treatment goals”.
Neither he nor his host meaningfully addressed the harm of a “personality disorder” diagnosis.
Both are clearly empathically vacant.
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Nijinski, a new video featuring Laura just dropped yesterday on Dr. Josef Witt-Doerring’s YouTube channel. It worked liked an antidote to Aftab’s circuitous verbal meanderings.
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Birdsong I have to say again that your writing is so well done the different ways you describe this phenomenon that is basically confusion technique. Make a person so dizzy having to follow all of that that they just give up. I think probably Aftab is quite a victim of that because he seems completely unable to actually relate to what he’s going on about. He’s constantly displaying that he believes being functional is thinking that he needs to be finding some slant in order to defend psychiatry because, I don’t know but, those are his colleagues and he thinks they’re nice and that’s the gang he hangs around with, has to be supportive of them; or the idea that he’s doing something to help people, and if he would realize what he’s really doing he probably would have to deal with severe depression himself for a while wondering how he could have been fooled in such a manner. But Birdsong please be kind to your mind. Just trying to wade through all of that stuff is incredibly confusing and infuriating. Sometimes you just have to decide this doesn’t make any sense why should I figure it out and, I had to just laugh and drop it and maybe look at it the next day to see if any sense was breaking through. Like the stuff about serotonin and it tells us there’s a depletion but he doesn’t say in comparison to what, so for all we know it’s because people who are medicated, in the initial period mind you not in the end, they have more serotonin. And that’s not even what goes on in the long run so what’s the point, because it doesn’t really have anything to do with it. In the end from the treatment people have less serotonin so if they were going to be logical they would actually try to make out that that helps with depression, but then they’d have to say well this is after the roller coaster ride. And they still get away with it this is just terrible. But just be kind to your mind Birdsong, and feel free it’s okay too just take a break or let nature itself take care of that without trying to make any sense of why when it’s supposed to make any sense it does not. Because it’s infuriating and it’s tiring and confusing. And then in ways it seems like they’re trying to make you angry and infuriate and tire you out. That’s another way people are trained to respond not to actually interact but just do things to get the other person on edge, tire them out make them angry. It’s a game with them. And then they get all hoards of people believing this, people that actually think they know something and are informed, which is even more infuriating of course. That’s what media does. Play around with people’s minds. So just be kind to your mind your brain and feel free to allow yourself to not have to try to make any sense out of it, because it’s like they keep on adding stuff that doesn’t really make sense and who knows to what level they actually know that but they just keep on adding it on to overload people. Or somebody like Aftab who might just be incredibly unrealistic like these people that think if you just park your ass in church every Sunday your going to go to heaven or something, and they will go on and on about this all smiley faced, and positive. who knows how addicted they are to this stuff they’ve invested in but they don’t want to question. And any of us who have actually been through stuff and been treated in a way that you just don’t understand how things could be that messed up you’re not going to fit into such little clubs: people all smiling at each other about their pretentious ideology…. and so it’s better to go outside and see that the sun is still shining or even to feel the rain against your skin or the air or whatever of nature or distraction of any kind……. Which then isn’t a distraction actually….. Something else actually can take over beyond the conscious mind and it does work even though the world says to be making change and be responsible we’re supposed to…..
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Thank you, Nijinsky. I appreciate very much your insights and thoughtful concern for my well-being. 🙂
But please rest assured: I already see and understand the likely psychological landscape (and the likely reasons for it) you astutely describe regarding Aftab, a landscape that truly is all too common among most “mental healthcare” workers, unwilling or unable to see what they are really doing.
And thank you for suggesting I step outdoors, something that does indeed take over the conscious mind, that works even though the world says to be making change and be responsible we’re supposed to…..
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…IMHO.
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Is it possible that to make itself appear really scientific, the mental health industry has these job titles like ‘mental health nurse’ ?
Having nurses makes it appear like a proper branch of medicine and some of a mh nurses duties will veer into physical health – like if they have to deliver depot injections, doing health checks etc. These are more similar to regular nursing and maybe make it seem like mental health really is some sort of biological reality, like a way of trying to legitimise it.
Either way, most of the mental health nurses I encounter are very middle class and above careerists.
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Great thread ! Brava, Bravo Bird Song !! I read ‘Nijinski” by his wife Romala in the Summer of 1969; and, everything by Herman Hesse from Sidhartha to Magister Ludi !!!
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Thank you very much, Wyllhart Halle 🙂
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You are so welcome birdsong !!!
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🙂
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Laura Delano is a featured speaker in the upcoming Brown Stone Massachusetts
schedule. Another great health freedom advocacy group; I have been following Jeffery Tucker’s online journal since 2020.
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Thank you 🙂
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XO
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