In 2010, I had been a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist for 22 years in Bristol, the 8th largest city in England. I had been the chairman of the medical committee in the hospital, the largest hospital ’trust’ in the Southwest (one of the loveliest areas in England). My wife and I had recently celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. We had two children doing well at school and captaining their sports teams. I had worked extremely hard to get to this prestigious position, 120 hours per week at work in my junior hospital doctor days.
Then my world started to collapse. Many bad life events over three years culminating in understandable distress and an appointment with a psychiatrist.
In 2008, I had been on holiday in New York when I received a call from a local GP asking me if I could see a woman with intermittent bleeding months after a second elective caesarean section. She had a condition called an isthmocoele, a gap between the two scars from the caesareans. She eventually asked for a hysterectomy as the only definitive solution to stop the bleeding. This was unusual for a young woman of 26 but she demanded it. We went ahead, and all went well.
Years later she had some bowel complaints and was referred to the colorectal surgeons. She saw a Dr Dixon. He told her she had a degree of rectal prolapse, which was very unlikely in a young woman with no previous vaginal deliveries. He recommended a new operation called a LVMR, using polypropylene mesh inserted laparoscopically. He carried this out, but ran into operative difficulties with surgically induced bleeding. She had to return to the operating theatre and ended up with a bowel resection and a colostomy. She sought to sue him.
He tried to blame his problems on my simple hysterectomy years earlier. All complete fabrication and nonsense. He manufactured a medicolegal case against me, using well-known biased experts for the prosecution.
This all happened suddenly, and if his claims were proven, I faced a threat to my practice and previously unblemished reputation. I had never been sued before. I knew I had done nothing wrong and advised the hospital to get expert reports from two top colorectal surgeons and gynaecologists. When investigated, Dr Dixon was found to be responsible for all of the young woman’s surgical disasters, and was subsequently dismissed by both the NHS trust and the private hospitals. He was eventually found responsible for 460 cases of surgical negligence and was finally struck off the medical register. He also had falsified medical follow-up records in an attempt to embellish the results of his procedures.
All this caused me enormous distress, and I had to take extended leave to help prove the case against him. I had previously considered medicine to be a noble, empathetic profession without such deceitful individuals. This whole process had a profound effect on me. I had never been in such a situation before and it shocked me to the core.
I was really low during this time and eventually decided after some months to take early retirement, as my faith in medicine was shaken and waning. I wondered if I could possibly have a psychiatric breakdown and saw the head of the psychiatric trust for a consultation. He assured me I was just low because of all that was happening to me, and did not have any psychiatric disorder. That year my wife lost her father, and her mother had to be admitted to a dementia home as he had been her carer. My wife had a medical scare too, and stopped her hormone replacement therapy abruptly so she was not feeling great either, entering into an abrupt menopause. Everything was getting so bad over such a short time.
Even though I had been reassured about my psychiatric normality, a ‘friend’ suggested I see another psychiatrist who, although retired, had looked after ‘troubled doctors’ before. A little reluctantly, I did see this second psychiatrist. It was an awful mistake. He came to my house and after just half an hour pronounced that I had ‘agitated depression’. He recommended that I start paroxetine straight away. No discussion of other solutions. The only answer was drugs.
From then on, I was snared into a world of psychiatry that I had no knowledge of. I was then given mirtazapine, and over the course of a few weeks, other antidepressants and then antipsychotics too. My family were told, mainly by occupational therapists, that I had various forms of psychiatric problems and was very unwell. Although my son was an orthopaedic surgeon, like me he had no experience of psychiatry so he could not challenge the psychiatric management.
I was now drugged and beside myself with confusion and anger about the way I was being treated. It was all alien to me, and most discourteous. The psychiatrists seemed to enjoy the role reversal with a previously highly successful surgeon as a patient. Psychiatrists hate successful conventional doctors, especially surgeons who make so much indisputable difference. They were particularly aggressive with me because of my position. The increase and changes of drugs were awful. I was soon seen at home for a MHA assessment and I was fine, so was not committed. However, they said instead that I had to see the ECT psychiatrist, to discuss ECT treatment. I did not know anything about it.
When I saw Hewitt, who was in charge of the ECT service, he encouraged me to have it. This was early on in my ‘treatment’. Hearing more about it, I was sure it had no scientific value, so I refused it.
My wife was very upset on many grounds, and was convinced by the psychiatric picture being painted. She was annoyed with me for not believing all they were saying, but I knew that my distress and sadness were due to all that was happening in my life, and were not a disease. My wife, however, was frantic and threatening to leave me, and my son was saddened that his dad was not able to help him in their shared profession. He was in the process of applying for consultant posts. It was all a terrible dream. All due to unnecessary drugs.
Community care was continued, with forced medication. One day my wife became very angry and we fell out badly. She threatened to leave me again. I had always been her anchor and the head of the family. Eventually it was decided that I needed inpatient care and I was admitted. No formal MHA assessment was made prior to admission which made it illegal. In hospital, I was on a mixed ward and started on a number of new drugs including lithium. No diagnoses were made but all sorts of drugs were added. I was discharged after a few weeks, on a collection of drugs.
Because I was not improving on the medication, I was seen privately by a psychopharmacologist from Bristol University who decided I needed to try old-fashioned antidepressants and prescribed a MAOI and a tricyclic, together with a strong benzodiazepine, clonazepam. The latter made me sleep for eight hours during the day after one dose, so I stopped it. No alterations to my diet were made which I knew were necessary in view of the MAOI.
After attending my son’s wedding in a daze, I was feeling awful on the new collection of drugs and I was snatched from my home to be admitted to a psychiatric ward in my own hospital trust. Once again, no formal MHA assessment was made. I was just ‘put away’.
This ward was close to the obstetric wards where I had worked for 22 years. My medication was changed again to olanzapine at a maximum dose of 20 mg, and a high dose of escitalopram. The consultant spent no time discussing my problems, just talking about the DSM categories. Soon after my admission I had serious flank pain which I knew was renal colic, having had an endoscopic stone removal years before. The ward staff didn’t believe me and offered additional diazepam as treatment. I asked for some diclofenac (voltarol) suppositories and gloves to self-medicate. Sadly, I developed a fever and then my temperature fell to 35 degrees celsius with threatened sepsis. The mental health nurse who took my temperature asked for advice, and I was offered paracetamol (acetaminophen).
In the end, I had to call the urology registrar on call for proper help. I was seen, given antibiotics and an MRI. A large stone was diagnosed, and I had to have an urgent endoscopic lithotripsy. Without my actions I could have had full-blown sepsis. No wonder the death rate in psychiatric hospitals is alarmingly high.
The psychiatrist then said I should have twice-weekly ECT. He did not discuss the benefits and drawbacks of ECT. A single sheet of information about ECT was left on my bed in the evening. No discussion at all. The sheet said it was a successful treatment but did not specify what for. The only side effects listed were a possible mild headache. That’s all.
I refused the ECT. I was informed that a second psychiatrist would come to see me as a second opinion. A SOAD, as it turned out: Second Opinion Approved Doctor. He agreed with my considered opinion of ECT and my reasons for refusing it. Despite this, however, I was told later that I was going to have it anyway.
In the UK, ECT is the only coercive procedure that can be forced upon an individual without fully informed consent.
I was subsequently driven in a blacked-out car to the ECT unit on the other side of the city at 9 am. On the first day of treatment, I was starved from 5 pm the day before. On arrival I waited my turn to take a very brief test of instant recall before the shock. Memory tests to assess the effect of ECT must be performed after the seizure, not before and should test memory of past events, not instant recall. After the first ‘treatment’ I awoke confused, as all epileptics do after a fit. There is little difference except that the initiating electric shock was at a much higher voltage.
Further sessions of ECT followed, with worsening memory, for fifteen weeks. The side effects got worse. After the 30th I was losing my memory for all past events. I had complained regularly at the clinic but they planned to continue. To finally stop this, I made sure that I ate on the ECT mornings so that I was not allowed to have an anaesthetic. They stopped the ECT.
I attended a tribunal. The chairman seemed amused, saying that he had never seen a surgeon at an NHS tribunal before.
I won the tribunal and was released.
I spent time at home but was not able to do much with all the memory loss. I was visited at home by the crisis team who watched me take a new antipsychotic and another pill each day. I don’t know what they were and was not informed.
During the pandemic and lockdown my wife delivered food and drink every few days. I was alone. My daughter got married whilst I was having ECT and I missed her wedding, my speech and everything she and I had dreamed of. She has supported me with phone calls, but was told that I was to blame for not having more ‘treatments’. She is a paediatric physiotherapist now. My deterioration caused her great sadness. I have four grandchildren now but don’t know them, really.
We had been a very loving, close and successful family. Summer holidays at my wife’s parents’ place in Mallorca where they lived, and skiing every winter across the Alps. The children and my wife became black run skiers. Great times. All magical. I had worked very long and hard to afford it all. NHS and private clinics. My wife gave up nursing to be a homemaking, all-attentive mother. A 1950’s type wife and mother. She was great for them, but lost out on a career and a life of her own. A mistake, in retrospect. I had to work evenings privately to make up for the lost second income.
I was not coping well at home with virtually no memory. After a time, I was so drugged up and confused that I was sectioned again and admitted to a small hospital in a small seaside town called Weston-super-Mare. It was like a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I was Jack Nicholson. I spoke to and helped my fellow inmates and encouraged the staff to introduce scrambled egg for breakfast as an alternative to the ubiquitous cereal and toast.
The consultant was an Indian locum (a temporary healthcare professional) who didn’t really understand English. He relied on his junior trainee. I explained to her that I was not psychiatrically ill but just drugged to the hilt. She began to believe me and I stopped taking psychiatric drugs. The consultant tried to reintroduce them but I refused them successfully. The consultant wanted to investigate me with a CT and genetic blood tests, all of which I had already had years before. Using my better knowledge of medicine I was able to disprove his explanations for the need for further investigations. I realised he was not very well informed and his junior was the more sensible doctor. After three weeks, they had to interview me again with a view to moving me onto a treatment section of the Mental Health Act, so they could enforce medication again.
I had previously had a small heart attack during my enforced treatment at home and was admitted to the cardiac assessment unit. The investigations seemed to me to confirm a MCI with raised troponin levels. I should have had an urgent angiogram as there were changes on my ECG as well. It was then revealed in the hospital computer notes that I had a ‘psychiatric history’ and had been on numerous medications. Because of this, my whole case and presentation were questioned and I was just given analgesics and observed overnight, waiting for a consultant review in the morning.
The chest pain increased and more morphine was needed to alleviate it. At the morning ward round, my serum troponin was elevated further and ECG abnormalities were obvious. The cardiac consultant who reviewed me at 8 am was annoyed and angry that I had been overlooked because of a psychiatric history. He agreed with my assessment that I indeed had suffered a heart attack and gave me more analgesics, ordering an angiogram ASAP. I had the angiogram and a stent at 2 pm the next day, missing the agreed ‘presentation to stent target’ by many hours. I had a cardiac MRI later that week and was put on the usual cardiac prophylaxis drugs.
Cardiac events are more common in patients treated with antipsychotics. Especially olanzapine.
Back to Weston-super-Mare. I was called to face an MHA assessment to decide if I was to move to a level 2 section with enforced medication, etc. This assessment was a shambles but concluded that I should move to a level 2 section. I knew my rights and called for a proper tribunal. For this the consultant had to provide a report and treatment plan. In addition, reports from a community mental health nurse and an inpatient psychiatric nurse were required. I was to read these pre-tribunal. Neither nurse had met me before!
On the day of the tribunal it was postponed as the medical report was inadequately prepared. At a subequent tribunal I was informed that the consultant was ‘away’ and a substitute was requested, who I had never met before. At the tribunal I was able to argue successfully against my collection of diagnoses and the plan for treatment, and the tribunal was dismissed. I was allowed to leave the hospital. I later found out that the Indian locum had been investigated by the General Medical Council and had ‘left the hospital’.
I spent another year at home again with community visits to provide medication. Sadly, at home on drugs I deteriorated again and was admitted back to the Callington Road Main ‘Mental Health’ hospital. Here I was treated worse than ever. I was under the ECT consultant again. When at home I had previously stated that I never wanted ECT ever again. An Advance Statement to this effect banned him from giving me ECT again unless I lost ‘capacity’ and needed it.
Fortunately, he did not enforce ECT again. Instead, he made my time as awful as possible with cold showers and having me hoisted in and out of bed with straps, which has had residual effects on my musculoskeletal system. I eventually had to use a wheelchair. He then transferred me to a men-only ward filled with very disturbed men. Likely criminals avoiding prison by claiming a mental health defence. Here I was given weekly depot antipsychotic injections at twice the normal dose. These made me feel worse than ever. I was returned to the Hewitt-led Aspen ward, next door to the ECT unit.
Hewitt needed to get me off his hands. He then decided to state that I did not have a psychiatric disorder after all, but was suffering from a less common form of dementia instead (Fronto Temporal Dementia). He therefore told my family to move me into a residential home out of NHS care. Thus no clinical or financial responsibility for him or the mental health trust. I was moved by my family to a home nearer to the family homes. He also put a Deprivation of Liberty (DOL) order on me so that I was effectively still ‘imprisoned’.
I have now had a cognitive function test and passed with a 90% score. I have asked a social worker to apply for a lifting of my DOL restriction. No progress there yet.
Now off all medications for 18 months I have regained my cognitive capacity again, except for the severe memory loss due to the multiple ECTs. I also still have the mobility problems due to a lack of exercise, muscle wasting and the hoisting effects from Callington Road Hospital physical abuse. I am still trying to get my family to listen to all the truth about psychiatry here in Bristol.
Wow! Every word in your article rings true and it’s atrocious. So so sorry for what happened and for what you’re still dealing with. I had a serious psychological issue in the mid 1990s. I didn’t know of anyone challenging the medical model at that time. However, like you, I was 100 percent sure that my psychological issues came from a life event, not my biology. What I went through because of the psychological distress (I don’t think the term “distress” comes close to describing the seriousness of my situation) was really, really bad. I barely survived. But I consider myself lucky because I never sought treatment. I worked in a related field to Mental Health (protective services for adults and children). I knew what the MH field offers and didn’t believe any of it would be of any help. If I were to question my decision, I’ve heard many stories like yours that tells me, don’t. It was the right one. But it’s sad that there isn’t constructive support and assistance. I know people will argue that there is; but there definitely isn’t what I was looking for. I feel what I had was a choice between going through it alone or bad treatment that would make my situation worse. I chose to go through it alone. It’s appalling that the MH field has been able to force so much abusive treatment for so long. Especially the ECT although it’s all bad. Total abuse! Thanks for writing the article. It’s information people need to know.
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What an articulate and helpful assessment. I too had a torturous series of absurd “treatments”–total Cuckoo’s Nest–without any informed advocate. It is Kafkaesque!
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Oh Phillip, I’m so sorry for everything you have endured at the hands of psychiatry. It may help a few, but many times it disables and even kills. I’m so glad you were able to get off all the drugs and have made some sort of improvement.
It’s sad and painful when those we love the most can’t see the truth. Maybe one day they will.
Thank you for sharing your story.
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Beautifully said
The inmates are running the asylum!
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I wonder if the heart problems might have something to with ECT. It is well known here at Mad in America that ECT causes heart problems. I advise tou to read, if you haven’t already
https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/07/ect-proponents-deny-harms-as-the-tide-begins-to-shift/
Bt the way, ECT is also what drove the famous writer Hemingway to suicide. How psychiatrists can consider it as safe and effective is beyond my understanding. I wish you to recover as much as you can.
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This is what really happens when science meets psychiatry… I had ECT “voluntarily”, I can’t imagine being forced into it, absolute torture. I’m honestly amazed you can recall all of this. I don’t remember any of my psych history prior to ECT, which I’m not necessarily complaining about.
I’m trying to write an antipsychiatry story using stories like this as inspiration, and the main theme that keeps coming up is how some of the deepest harms psychiatry does comes from breaking trust. Once someone gets a DSM brand, they become unreliable narrators to their own lives. People no longer listen to or trust you, and breaking trust breaks communities. It’s driving me away from my dad. It kills people with medical negligence. A trustless society is no functional civilization.
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“Once someone gets a DSM brand, they become unreliable narrators to their own lives. People no longer listen to or trust you, and breaking trust breaks communities.” And especially it breaks up families … and destroying families should not be the business of the medical system … but it does seem this is what the scientifically “invalid” mental heath industry, has turned into big business, via big Pharma.
Thank you for sharing your story, Dr. P.. I’m a little surprised doctors can get sucked into the psychiatric insanity fest, since you’re all taught about anticholinergic toxidrome in med school. But maybe that’s something to remind your fellow surgeons of, and of course I’m trying to educate everyone else, about.
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We weren’t taught about that in the 70’s and 80’s. In practice we concentrate on our specialty.
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Dead Soul
You certainly have a wonderful understanding and way of communicating.
topspin2780
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AGREE !
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I witnessed both parents, 2 uncles and an aunt all get ruined by psychiatry during the 80’s and 90’s. Burned thier brains on different dugs all with ’empathetic’ pill pushers all too glad to have captive patients once hooked on the first set of prescriptions. I won’t take any pills and actively write about it to share with others, targeting the young crowd, hoping to make a change. A bit of my story is in this missive: Astrocytes, research and psychiatry – https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wOwe_-DWVHanV99ION31nLWfez-dqIMlpajoRgk9wM8/edit?usp=sharing
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I hope he will regain his power to decide his own medical treatment…and I do fervently wish he recover well…
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Thanks. Yes the MCI may be related although I have a bad family history of heart attacks. Should form part of the consent procedure.
Around the world we must act to reform psychiatry radically. People like Cooper are just older biological psychiatrists who won’t accept the harm that they personally cause. Perhaps a new generation of young, evidence based psychiatrists will take over from the flat earth brigade soon. All push for change. Ban ECT!
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Hi Phillip, Feel free to disagree with me but would like to get your opinion on a factor that I think is critical in the formation of long term psychological distress. You said
“All this caused me enormous distress, and I had to take extended leave to help prove the case against him. I had previously considered medicine to be a noble, empathetic profession without such deceitful individuals. This whole process had a profound effect on me. I had never been in such a situation before and it shocked me to the core.”
The MH field often speaks of different reactions to similar or sometimes the same trauma. A trauma can have a long term serious psychological impact on one individual and not on another. They call the difference in reaction proof that it’s more than a traumatic life event that causes longterm distress. It must be a difference in the individual. Therefore we need to find the abnormality in biology or function in the individual. I think they are missing a critical second factor outside the trauma itself that results in longterm psychological distress. That’s what you state in the quote I cited. It’s not a difference in biology or a difference in coping skills. It’s that some life events will be outside an individual’s view of understandable and expected behavior. The event can’t be incorporated into the person’s worldview so the impact of the events remains long term. Given that people are different in expectations and what they find understandable, the situations that result in longterm distress would vary according to the individual. But that’s not a difference in biology or coping mechanisms.
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That is very well said, Christine! They act as if there is trauma and no other environmental or experiential effect that might affect how one responds to a given trauma. We are not machines!
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Could not agree more . The trauma propagators are machines; for making reputations and getting money . Even psychiatry falls for it !
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As an acute surgeon I had a lifetime of experience in dealing with the unexpected and serious events and coped well for 30+ years. I think my ability to deal with stress was good. No one can imagine the trauma of having to deal with an arrogant fool destroying women’s lives and dumping the resultant complications on your lap. He’s sacked and struck off now, but it has a profound effect on me, when I had coped with all that a lifetime in O&G can subject you too. I think my biology was fine until all this happened.BW
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I agree completely with your comment above. But I’m feeling that you think I was suggesting otherwise.
I was in a very serious psychological situation myself. I don’t think it was my biology that caused it. I don’t think it was my emotion intelligence, or my ability to handle stress. I worked in a chronically stressful job. It wasn’t that I had a poor support system. I had a very good support system. I had very close family members and friends who cared about me and would help me if they could. I had good health insurance to seek whatever treatment I would want. And none of it protected me from what happened or provided me with a way out of my situation.
Like your experience, I was dealing with behavior that I considered totally unethical, abusive etc. and I didn’t have a clue the mindset that would produce such behavior. Like your situation, I was under extreme stress for a substantial period of time. It was two years of emotion continuously building. I wasn’t just building in me, it was building in my abuser too. Towards the end I thought I might be killed.
People feel if you’re being abused, then leave. Simple. If the experience has a long term psychological impact more than a couple of years tops, that there must be something wrong with you. I don’t agree, but that’s the view society including the field of mental health promotes. After a period of time psychiatry says you have a disorder. You’re defective either in your biology or function. Again I don’t agree. The belief that the individual is defective is what leads to the treatment you received. That absolutely has to change for people to be treated in a way that give them to opportunity to recover instead of being further harmed as you were.
In my view, the field of mental health needs to recognize that not all stress is the same. Stress that goes outside what someone would expect and understand has a long term impact. It’s different. It isn’t easily released and it does adversely impact one’s mind in many ways. Psychology is going straight to declaring reactions as abnormal and looking for a defect in the individual without trying to identify what conditions lead to longterm psychological distress. That’s wrong and resulting in harmful responses.
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Yes! I agree with you. We need a paradigm shift in order to keep away from blaming people and pathologizing them for different adaptations to their lives. Thank you for bringing this point to the fore.
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Perfect way to put it. Pathologizing adaptations to difficult circumstances. That’s what the DSM is all about. And of course, the ones creating the difficult circumstances never get mentioned!
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From my experience, I think your comment is very astute. Also needed to be factored in is the mindsets, education, and experienceof the various MH practioners. Alas, they’re only human and we must assume they really don’t “know” what they’re doing.
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I agree with Christine. Here’s my take on what happened:
Phillip S. suffered a profound betrayal from a group of individuals he thought he could trust, followed by a series of more betrayals from more people he thought he could trust. Very difficult for anyone to integrate, because you no longer know whom you can trust—including yourself.
Some call it “dark night of the soul”. I’d call it existential shock. Nothing to do with biology or personal failing. Unfortunately, psychiatry now has the public over a drug-filled barrel.
They called Phillip “sick” and everyone believed them.
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I was never biologically sick as you say. I was out of it after the barrage of strong drugs and ECT, which is the object of psychiatric ‘treatment’. Lock them up and drug them. The same as the old asylums.
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I never said you were sick. The psychiatrists did.
Those in the know understand what happened to you.
Tragic there’s so few of us.
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Dr. S. I was profoundly shaken by your account of the horrific abuse, indeed torture, that you suffered at the hands of so-called mental health professionals. It makes me reflect on the fate of countless other people who have experienced similar mistreatment in various institutions, but whose stories never see the light of day because of social marginalization, racial prejudice, and other barriers.
I will, however, disagree with you on a single point: I don’t believe that anything, even the most well-meaning steps, can reform psychiatry, a field that lacks scientific legitimacy and credibility. It’s essentially a cargo cult posing as a branch of medicine, and as such it has no valid reason to exist, except in the eyes of those who profit handsomely from its myths and collusion with pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers of ECT and transcranial magnetic devices.
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Thanks. Yes perhaps you’re right. I believed the same until i listen to the likes of Joanna Moncreiff et al. I’m sure she does an awful lot of good, even if is untangling the harm done by previous psychiatrists.They have a different approach in Italy with no separate mental hospitals.They have stronger family ties, culture and art and Sangiovese wine to help them cope with life’s ‘challenges’. Could we completely do without psychiatry? Their medical training is unnecessary and pharmacists could handle the sedation required in acute crises. Joanna would know!
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Thank you for your life’s dedicated work and commitment.
Although I have been studying psychiatry’s forty years of failure for fourteen years, your courageous exposure of this Axis of Evil is deeply painful to read.
This is a cult which is built upon diagnostic incompetence, arrogance, certitude, ignorance and routine abuse of power.
AKATHISIA, a common adverse drug reaction to SSRIs and other psychotropic drugs, repeatedly misdiagnosed as ‘Serious Mental Illness’ with Wrongful Detention and enforced multiple toxic drugging leading to loss of life, or lifelong, irreversible injury: Psychiatric Grievous Bodily Harm. ‘PGBH’. Also leading to social and financial destitution.
Absence of empathy, and absence of accountability.
There are courageous, persecuted exceptions, but NO – they don’t need any medical training.
If they ever did learn any medicine, the abuse and destruction I have seen destroy the life of my once beautiful and gifted adult daughter proves that they have forgotten everything they were taught.
She never had any ‘Mental Illness’.
Why do proper doctors tolerate such abuse of our profession, its ethics, and our duty of care?
Primum Non Nocere.
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Very thoughtful reply.
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Oh, my god. This proves what I’ve always suspected – that the psychiatric “profession” too often brings out the worst in people who either work in or around it.
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Psychiatric treatment most of the time should go hand in hand with psychotherapy by a licensed psychologist. Most probably treatment by a multi disciplinary team with other professionals also would include occupational therapist like psychiatrists psychologists.social workers and spiritual people. I belief a holistic approach will give a patient the best chance for a full recovery and adjustment to the demands of life challenges.The case study gave the impression that the treatment of this patient was mostly by psychiatrists and probably elementalistic and not holistic.
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Without getting into critiquing the system itself, Johan, the vast majority of people receiving psychiatric “treatment” don’t get psychotherapy or other forms of “treatment” unless they’re advocating for those things themselves. It’s also a sad reality that a lot of psychotherapists are very much married to the DSM model and count on drugs as the first line intervention for anyone with serious issues. There is nothing holistic about the average person’s experience with the psychiatric system. Hang around and read some of the personal stories and you’ll see what I mean.
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You nailed it. I had a GP recommend a combination of therapy and an anti-depressant once. On the followup visit, when I declined the drug and opted for therapy she was looking at me like I was mildly radioactive. It was part of her own recommendation! I think doctors recommend therapy out of habit and to convince themselves they are not Pharma Docs. Here’s the kicker: she never wrote the agreed upon treatment plan in my chart even though she said my plan was safer, ie not initiating a medication and opting for therapy. I learned more about psychiatry in those visits than from reading this excellent website.
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I can identify with what you are saying but you are missing one thing. Perhaps because you have not had a lifetime of psychiatrisation (forgive me but you seem to have sections 2 and 3 mixed up). I have had a lifetime of it and now live with what the designs of research cannot pick up . The very long term effects of these drugs. In my case Drug Induced Parkinsonism . Neuroleptics for years destroy the networks of dopamine in the cerebellum . Just like Parkinson’s Disease doed pathologically. At one time I was completely paralysed for two months . I am ‘better” now but still need help everyday with the basics . I do not think most psychiatrists are evil although generally they are not nice people . It is a structural question – the psychiatric apparatus has infiltrated so many aspects of life that it inevitably reproduces itself . It is breaking that reproduction with a new narrative that we need . So far that has not happened . It will – the system will implode under its own contradictions . Not in my life time but I hope us ‘survivors’ have helped prepare the ground
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“It will – the system will implode under its own contradictions. Not in my lifetime but I hope us ‘survivors’ have helped prepare the ground”
I think we’ve been planting some hardy seeds.
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Johan, I don’t share your faith in the usefulness and legitimacy of the credentials of the “licensed psychologists” whose services you recommend to people with various problems in living.
Are you aware that the overwhelming majority of psychologists (nearly 90%) make use of the bogus, purely arbitrary DSM categories for the purpose of diagnosis and insurance reimbursement? Why should I trust the integrity and competence of practitioners who willingly rely on a pseudo-scientific mishmash of concocted disorders just for the sake of their careers?
To me, the paying of mental health “professionals,” whatever their credentials may be, in order to solicit supposedly healing empathy and guidance from them is a pathetic, sordid business.
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Agree with a lot of that. I never found a psychologist helpful at all. You need family, mates and good friends not theories.
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Open ended therapy with ‘good enough’ friends.
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Diana,
That’s really bad. Drug induced Parkinsonism is due to the long term effect of antipsychotics. It’s damage to the basal ganglia rather than the cerebellum. The cerebellum is concerned with other symptoms. Balance, coordination and memory. Are you off all medication now? I hope so.
Phillip
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Reading this story parallells stories of five members of my family, starting with my fahter, who went to a psychiatrist in the 80’s, and was undermined with other family members who were brought in to push more meds. Eventually, that psychiatrist was able to wrangle four additional family members into patterns of drug treatments that boggle the mind. That doctor burned five brains and ruin the lives of four extended families who never recovered. The entire medical and legal system is set up to not only hide these errors, but to promote them. I”ve written about this in many journals and to the younger generation.
Don’t trust doctors and research all medicines and medical procedures yourself before seriously considering taking any.
Radical Responsibility matched with Informed Consent is what we need
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Unfortunate to say the least that you maybe understandably chose psychiatry rather than psychotherapy or counselling support for your reaction to “normal” difficult life events. I wish everyone had financial access to the wonderful therapies out there and avoid the medical model.
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I wish we could go back to a time before therapists when people had supportive friends or family or community members, so that finances would be unnecessary, and the prospect of healing wasn’t a business. Psychiatry AND therapy will continue to be problematic so long as they are businesses, because making money will ALWAYS take priority over doing an actual good job helping people.
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Sheila, could you tell us what “wonderful therapies” you are referring to and what in particular sets them apart from those you would consider ineffective or downright harmful? And what are your criteria for making this distinction?
I myself doubt that any kind of psychotherapist, regardless of credentials, can offer more insight and empathy to a person experiencing emotional distress than a non-hierarchical group of intelligent peers with relevant life experience.
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Perhaps Sheila is referring to Jungian or transpersonal therapists? I do agree that an intelligent peer group could also be a valid and invaluable experience. There was an article I read online about a severely depressed man who couldn’t get out of bed. A concerned friend went and sat by his bedside every day for a number of weeks–not speaking, just being present. Eventually, the “patient” got up and soon carried on with his life–no medication, no conventional therapy. Great story!
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My major life event Sheila was trying to deal with an ill advised and arrogant person trying to destroy my lifetimes work by shifting the blame for his surgical disaster onto me. He was set on ending my hard fought reputation and record to avoid his subsequent 460 cases of medical negligence, being sacked and struck off the medical register. Not an expected life event.
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Dear Phillip, I can’t believe you survived all that abuse, and my best wishes for a complete recovery. If you are retired I hope you treat yourself well and are on the road to happiness, and hopefully your family will realize what you survived. I hope you can return to a warm and happy place in your life. Get well and trust your own self, healing without medications.
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Thanks sadly my situation is absolutely appalling now. I have lost my thrilling and satisfying job, my family who were convinced by the psychiatrists that I had 10 DSM’s, and urged me to have maintenance ECT, and most of my savings too. A total turnaround in a decade.
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Have you tried what skeptics do, regarding your family ? Asking for what sort of evidence would be enough for them to believe you and change their mind ?
I regained my credibility with my family this way (before the autism diagnosis).
You should be able to point out how grossly incompétent they were with many examples. Many such examples where you were right and they were wrong. Although it’s possible they may not even be willing to try and listen, as it was the case for me for a while.
Anyway good luck I lost the peeing and pooping reflex because of antipsychotics at 14 years old, because I was born autistic in France. I used to be the top of the class, since then, I’ve been failing in everything. It took 10 years for a diagnosis, and 12 years after that for my autism diagnosis and my family realizing “I wasn’t crazy”. Now they know I’m more competent than them for health decisions in general, so I’m safe.
Wish you all the best !
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I’m glad you’re In a better place. Your ‘autism’ isn’t a disease. It’s what you are. Different. We are all different. We all need help,friends and support in times of need. It’s what makes us human. The ‘autistic spectrum’ stretches to include most of us. Different, not neurodiverse. In medicine we call some conditions ideopathic and this reassures some. It means we haven’t got a clue. Just confusing language. Blame the Romans Latin language.
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Agreed
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This is interesting because it is written by a doctor.
I am impressed (negatively so) with the number of creepy people he encountered in his “tour” of the British “mental health” system. It is an obvious disaster, as it is in most places around the world.
Think of what resources this man had to fight back with, compared to an “ordinary” patient. And yet he was severely harmed.
And though we concentrate here on a specific sector of society that has been broken basically forever, many other sectors of society are in a similar condition. To right this ship now requires a massive effort. I really wonder if the sensible people left on this planet can manage it.
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Thanks Larry. Yes I thought I could deal with all life sent at me but this was a tsunami of problems and a now stuck off individual trying to end my career. A monster. If only I had been supported and more able to face such a uniquely deranged arrogant ‘colleague’.
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This has a lot to do with the phenomenon of psychopathy (as it is usually called) which is not well known in the medical profession or even among psychologists. I wish it were better known amongst the general public, too.
Your story is very poignant because of the extent of harm that your “antagonist” was hiding, and the fact that it was discovered. We can be confident that this is not the only case of severe malpractice in the profession, as I imagine many doctors manage to keep their transgressions hidden.
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The worst of the horror stories I’ve read regarding psych abuses all seem to come from the UK or Australia…
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Actually, I would think the topic of documented abusive psychiatric practices worldwide would be a very worthwhile project for a team of qualified researchers to undertake. Is it really true that mental health practitioners in the UK and Australia are the most egregious ones in this regard? I imagine that victims of horrific treatments in Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and other authoritarian states could tell equally harrowing stories, but because of language barriers and strict censorship their voices may never be heard.
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CCHR has done a lot in this direction.
They keep statistics on how many psychs have been found guilty of crimes.
Australia has been a hotbed of malpractice in the past.
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Actually an organisation is doing just that
It started in Ukraine then changed its name when it went global to something i can’t remember. The current Chair I better not name but he is à psychiatrist who believes that the CRPD can be à revolutionary template . I have 2 major misgivings;
All members are professionals of one sort or another
They are are at least wobbly on whether psychiatry can be rescued !
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This story is all too familiar to me. It must be galling that your family have so much trust in these mind butchers.
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Yes. I cannot blame my family who were duped and misled. So was I for a while too. Psychiatry must be radically reformed or abolished.
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Abuse, sadly, is common.
Each instance of abuse I experienced was treated by those directing it as benevolence. My trust shaken I have not sought help from psychiatry for many years.
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So correct. Shall we just let it continue or press for change. First objective is to drop ECT and the like.Then restrict the use of long term drugs. Bin the DSM as a useless piece of information and replace the process of remuneration for psychiatrists who change away from the failed medical model of care.
BW
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We have been trying to get ECT banned in California for a number of years now, but there seems to be little political interest in the issue. If no particular political interest group sees themselves as targeted by a practice, it is difficult to prod anyone into action, as plain and sensible as the arguments for a ban might be.
I would like to think that we have the alternative of making our case so widely known to the public that the practice becomes refused into disuse. But that is not an easy road, either, though one that is at least accessible to us.
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I do not believe psychiatry can be reformed it needs to be abolished for historical (T4 into the holocaust) and on going crimes against humanity. There was a leaked report to the Independent a year or so ago of 15,000 psych deaths on the UK in just one year. God knows how many world wide.
It’s so sad that you are still in an appalling state I sincerely wish you all the best. Am also lucky to be alive after akathisia and treatment’ by psychiatrists.
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Since psychiatry is based on myths, innumerable conflicting hypotheses, half-truths, and outright lies, it can’t be reformed or formally abolished. The most effective way to do away with a false belief (in this case, a pseudo-science) is to consistently expose its fallacies and raise public awareness.
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Joel. Gather support and make the necessary changes. Stop all ECT first, then develop a new approach to tha management of severe distress. End the reliance on the DSM labels, and radically reduce the power that the pharmaceutical industry has over psychiatry.The use of all the psychotropic drugs must be limited to short uses of non addictive sedatives and neuroleptic should be abandoned altogether.
Phillip
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Hello,
Reading this story is a PSTD trauma for me. From mindless, multiple drugs, incarceration in US hospitals to psychiatrists who sought to shame me in my own country to the Chief Medical Director of a prominent psychiatric institution threatening me with ECT to make me eat to the many psychiatrists with a huge ” God complex “. I have vowed to take on this field of medicine- Psychiatry- where ordinary mortals trained in the ethics of improving life, get a chance to control people’s minds with medications. The real irony is that I fell into the abyss while trying to do a residency in this practice that has given me a real lesson in how power can be corrupted especially when psychiatrists are treating a fellow physician. When I felt low, I would be shamed for letting go. Whenever I put up a brave front, they had the audacity to imply that I was gaming the system because I answered all questions correctly. Every single psychiatrist i saw seemed to take pleasure in administering at least five medications- Olanzapine, Mirtazapine and the usual cocktail. It was often so random, almost like putting a cocktail together in no particular order. Almost every one of them wanted to add me to their conquest of ” I cured you of your mental illness” rather than a genuine act of getting me better. All through it, I watched helplessly at the non Medical patients who could not advocate for themselves with sudden bogus diagnosis of Bipolar disorder- a mental health disorder that can easily be produced from an over prescription of an antidepressant such as Amitriptyline
Every morning I would worry about my increasing heart beat now at 110bpm and not once did the buggers tell me 75mg of Amitriptyline was the cause. For this reason, I was kept for weeks on end until I medically became “Bipolar “.
All of this saga from chronic insomnia .
Reading your article has reminded me of the work before me. An advocacy for people who find themselves under the control of this human machines with little conscience parading as Psychiatrists and sadly I know when I start to talk, I will be labeled as unstable and relapsing. It will not deter me because they have unwittingly helped me understand my consciousness better than ever before. My sanity and my awareness of it is my greatest weapon.
Anonymous Dr.
Lagos, Nigeria
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You have my sympathy. Another profusion of medications. It is a ‘specialty’ obsessed with control.
Are you back in Nigeria now?
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A terrible experience for this surgeon, and my heart goes out to him. But his experience is far from typical from what we hear from the carer members of POPSUK.
Our loved ones with psychotic illnesses are more likely to experience minimal care than forced care. And if they don’t want treatment, they don’t get it unless they are a danger to themselves or others, and often not even then. We regularly hear from members who are frightened of the loved ones they live with but no hospital bed is provided – for one reason or another.
As for ECT, we only sometimes hear about people having it so my impression is that it is rarely offered.
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Lisa, people with a diagnosis of psychotic illnesses should not be forced to have psychiatric treatment. If people are afraid of a family member, this is a completely different problem and forced psychiatric treatment is not going to solve it.
I was diagnosed with a psychotic illness (schizophrenia) in 2012. I don’t think that I have a mental disorder. I am not taking any neuroleptics, but I have never had a relapse. My family members are certainly not afraid of me when they visit me.
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So sorry about the hell this writer went through and the remaining fall out from having been through so called treatment.
The mental health industry is dangerous often lethal even for high status people/patients. Per Szasz, the whole thing is slavery…the brain damage stigma and costs are part of the equation but the industry is slavery is the core issue and it explains everything else.
I don’t think the talking “experts “ are necessarily less harmful than the pill pushers or the shock docs. This is especially true here in my part of the USA because they’re all networking and sharing information about people and deliberately ruining vulnerable human beings lives truly seems to be part of the MO.
People need people undoubtedly but not self important so called experts who defraud those they claim to help and often don’t seem to have their own lives in order.
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Thanks. Yes agree. Some psychologists abhor the pill pushers and ECT boys though, and Prof John Read, ULNE, has done much work and reaearch on the scandal that is ECT.
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This is a very well-written and thought-provoking piece, and I am sorry that you went through such an experience. One idea that stands out is the question of the sovereignty of being human. As you describe, you once held power and now find yourself on the other side, having lost that power and been harmed in the process. This reversal reveals how power, consent, and care are intertwined.
In many parts of the world, families decide what happens to a person in psychiatric treatment, often without consent, which brings its own harms. In Western societies, that power was transferred to the state, and psychiatry became its representative, acting as both judicial and medical authority. I think we are reaching a point where this structure must be questioned and opened for broader discussion.
There is a spectrum of ownership, from the family’s claim over the person to the state’s claim over personal sovereignty. Psychiatry now dominates this entire spectrum. With the rise of social media and artificial intelligence, this has become even more pressing, as we see new forms of disability and dependency that might have been prevented through more community-based ways of support. The issue is not only psychiatry itself but who holds authority when an adult loses capacity yet is not violent.
Diagnosis may once have served to control human behavior, but now, with data-driven systems that fail to match human complexity, psychiatry is increasingly positioned to function like artificial intelligence. Both reduce experience to categories and checkmarks. The real opportunity is to ask what differentiates humans from AI, since human differences shift with context rather than being fixed.
Families can misuse their power, and so can the state. The discussion needs to open beyond these limits to explore models that work for most people, especially when data collection means anyone can be diagnosed or managed at any time. This is not about giving therapists or professionals new authority but about developing fairer ways to protect autonomy and dignity. Without imagining a return to psychiatry as it is or to family control as you described, it is vital to explore new tools that fit our evolving societies. These are not abstract questions; they are central to our humanity. AI itself has become a euphemism for psychiatry, since both rely on unscientific data and diagnostic markers to process the human mind.
Even during COVID, when the question of bodily autonomy briefly surfaced, it was quickly shut down. Yet it is all connected. Who owns the body, and who decides what is best for a person? These questions remain at the heart of what it means to be human.
I hope you do not mind me widening your story a little, but I am beginning to feel exhausted by yet another account of bad psychiatry. One more story and we may all become too paralyzed to move the conversation forward. Because you were a doctor, a person with resources and insight, I think it is important to recognize that the system is now beginning to consume itself. It is time to talk about what lies beyond psychiatry. Many concepts have come and gone, and perhaps it is time to imagine what renewal might look like after psychiatry.
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Dogworld, thanks for your insightful comment on the relationship between psychiatric practices, state power, and personal autonomy. I agree with the thrust of your argument, but will just say that I find the use of the expression “bad psychiatry” somewhat problematic. It’s my own belief that psychiatry, a pretentious pseudoscience with the deceptive trappings of a medical discipline, is neither good nor bad, but simply false. Similarly, there can be no such thing as good or bad phrenology, a nineteenth-century fad propagated by charlatans.
From a logical point of view, it’s hard for me to understand how psychiatric dogma, which is based on unverifiable speculation and culture-bound beliefs, can produce anything “good”–apart from profit and self-aggrandizement for its practitioners.
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Hi Joel Stern,
If I used the term “bad psychiatry” rather than “false psychiatry,” it was simply a choice of words to avoid sounding polemical. My intention was to shift the conversation toward imagining what might come after psychiatry, even if that idea still feels like a distant dream. The purpose of that opening was to create space for reimagining—how communities of support and more nomadic forms of thinking might allow us to trust both our bodies and minds, especially when our faculties are weakened or incapacitated. I mentioned AI precisely because, combined with psychiatry, it raises a new concern: the issue will no longer be about good or bad practice, but about dangerous and unlimited power.
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Dogworld, your comment about the potential danger posed by AI combined with psychiatry reminded me of a recent MIA thread on which a certain person (whom I shall leave unnamed) wrote enthusiastically about a future genetically engineered caste of super-intelligent beings that would have unlimited power to program society in line with their own notions of human perfectibility. This, s/he claimed, would finally solve the problem of schizophrenia and other disorders on the “schizoid spectrum.” Needless to say, I objected to this grandiose eugenicist fantasy put forward by such transhumanist “visionaries” as Curtis Yarvin, Elon Musk, and Peter Thiel.
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Joel, this vision of beings with “unlimited power” who would “finally solve the problem of schizophrenia” and other similar disorders inevitably reminds me of the Nazi extermination of psychiatric patients.
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Well put.
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Thank you so much. Yes, you are so correct. A major part of my distress was due to my loss of self determination that I had enjoyed previously. Very junior people were telling me their opinions on what was ‘wrong with me’ biologically and telling my family so too. I knew it was not a disease at all. Add the effect of the heavy medication and my eventual behaviour was affected and I became understandably angry.I was always a placid, altruistic doctor fighting for women’s rights to decide on their safe treatment, but I was suddenly in the totally different world of psychiatry, where science was ignored and opinion prevailed.To hear my family being told and believing the mantra was living hell.
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One is erased and outfitted with a forever label. If one comes for the just folks ( and really the divisiveness but I guess the process is highlighted more?) this process can be harder to see. When one as a professional experiences this erasure and forever labeling it is forceful just because of the slide down sometimes within minutes.
Total change is needed on every level with out of the box thinking.
Nelly Bly did undercover work on this very topic. Folks should look her up.
Now both folks in crisis and family members or loved ones harmed and hurt. And I would guess professionals that see
this also can be harmed as well. The politics of help has gotten extremely corrupt.
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The Manufacture of Mental Illness, written in the 1960s and 1970s, and The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz are both excellent books that you should read if you have the time. The pharmaceutical school of thought now has more influence over psychiatry than it did in the past. Today, the disease management paradigm of pharmaceutical medicine has supplanted social psychiatry.
The Royal College of Psychiatrists denigrates and banishes those who argue for the advantages of social psychiatry. The era of R.D. Laing’s The Divided Self is over. There is still hope for people like Vancouver’s Gabor Mate. It is essential to read his book Stress, the Mother of All Diseases.
Dr. S, The art of psychiatry and healing is incompatible with the so-called evidence-based medicine, which has taken over psychiatry and caused it to collapse. Indeed, there is no denying that EBM has a role to play in modern psychiatry, but it does not hold a dominant position.
As someone with training in psychiatry and as someone who has cared for a loved one with a chronic mental illness, I can speak from personal experience. She sadly died not long ago, and I can attest that the drugs she was taking to take care of her mental illness were the cause of her death.
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R.B., you highly recommend two seminal books by Szasz, who rightly rejected psychiatric myths and falsehoods, yet you speak of a loved one who suffered from a “chronic mental illness.”
Do you see the discrepancy?
If the concept of mental illness is invalid, her condition was not the result of some chemical imbalance or faulty brain wiring, but rather an adaptive response to an earlier traumatic event or series of events. Such a response is not an illness and therefore should not be misleadingly labeled as a disorder. This misuse of language is one reason why psychiatric jargon has mesmerized the public into believing that “problems in living” result from types of pathology that are best treated with neurotoxins, ECT, or other brain-disabling modalities.
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Thanks. I have now read all the great books by Szasz, Moncrieff, Read, Timimi, Whitaker (head of MIA) and many other critical psychiatrists. You are the future of psychiatry if it is going to continue to exist. The biological model must be challenged by you. Drugs short term can be useful, but the place of ECT and the DSM are not. You have your exams and future to consider, but it is no future to propagate a lie. Form the Maudsley young critical psychiatry society and challenge your old fashioned bosses as a large group, not a vulnerable individual.
Read all about Peter Gotzsche and listen to what this genius says. He has been at the top of the game as head of the Cochrane Collaboration but has had it all taken away from him by those unwilling to change their outdated views and protect the status quo. Get him over (Danish) to address the Maudsley. I used to be a research fellow/ senior registrar in perinatal medicine in Kings College Hospital opposite the Maudsley. People questioned our advances in ultrasound that have eventually transformed Obstetrics and Gynaecology over my lifetime. The same needs to happen to psychiatry now.
Best wishes. Phillip.
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I don’t know why I have to keep repeating this, especially to people from the USA, but SASZ was an extrem free market liberal who believed “problems in living’ should be fixed by ‘freely chosen’ psychotherapy . I never said to him I HAD bipolar disorder, I said having the diagnosis was a pathway to welfare benefits. Nonetheless, the very mention of the term elicited a one-word riposte : MALINGERER And like many extreme freemarketeers he did not just not know the price of a bottle of milk, he did not know that “freely chosen” psychotherapy has a price way beyond the means of most . Most exploitation entails such. Steve : is it unethical to speak ill of the dead ? Of course it’s not TS as such but what he represents .
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Posting as moderator: Szaz would be considered a public figure and hence can be criticized in a more personal fashion.
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I admire Szasz for many of his insights, but neither he nor anyone else in the mental health field should be revered as an infallible guru. For all his brilliance, he too was a product of his time and place, thus his opinions on politics, economics, culture, and other subjects must be evaluated in that context. Szasz thought anti-psychiatry was “quackery,” which I think was a simplistic characterization of this very diverse movement.
As for Diana Rose’s question as to whether it’s “unethical” to speak ill of the dead, if their views are sheer speculation and often misogynistic (e.g. Freud’s dubious hypotheses about a death instinct, Oedipus complex, penis envy), criticism is by no means unethical but quite appropriate. That’s precisely how genuine progress in science and medicine is achieved.
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And the person I criticised was NOT a public figure? Depends on what counts as the public’. I know I’m annoying !
But there is another point . Philip”s story has generated so much interest because he is special – a “real” doctor . But they are not infallible. An oncologist whose speciality was testicle told me my breast cancer would kill me in 2 years. In 1991. I’m still here .
No-one is specialvtn thi field, it”s just buying into cultural norms . We need lots of stories from different persptives and we need solidarity too . But the invention of the star just plays into divide and rule m
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Diana, I agree with your criticism of Szasz. From what I have read he believed that people diagnosed with schizophrenia are able to lead an unproductive, idle existence thanks to this diagnosis (he was writing about it e.g. in his “Idleness and Lawlessness in the Therapeutic State”, https://www.szasz.com/idleness.pdf).
Of course there may be some cases of people with “schizophrenia” like the ones described by Szasz (people for whom their diagnosis has become a way of leading an idle life at the expense of their family and/or society), but he was unfortunately making too sweeping and too negative generalizations. Moreover, I don’t think that he understood the situation of the poor in neoliberal societies.
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That’s sad. Are you still practicing psychiatry now?
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What an incredible number of wonderful responses to your tragic story, Dr. S! I have been creating an essay based on my late husband’s work that involves seeing the entire psychiatric venture as fraudulent. So many can see what is wrong, but they are not grasping the origin of the problem: I believe that we need to go back to the historical roots of psychiatry rather than keep expounding on what is obviously an evil, corrupt system whose only interest is “curing” through medication and a variety of tortures. What may eventually be understood is that the Western medical model of “mental illness” is completely skewed. First and primarily, we need to understand what consciousness is and where it comes from. Without this, we cannot begin to comprehend the delusional claims that a concept like schizophrenia actually exists!
I am so sorry for the losses you have had to endure. The head of the psychiatric trust was right (at the beginning of your nightmare) who said you had no disorder. If this can happen to a member of your profession, it’s no wonder the lay public is completely confused and feel they must rely on psychiatry for their despair and sadness–unavoidable existential problems!
Thank you for your moving narrative.
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Yes, exactly, unavoidable existential problems resulting from injustice, exploitation, physical and emotional abuse, and other distressing life circumstances are not illnesses in a medical sense. I would just change your wording slightly: what psychiatrists dispense is not “medication” but mind-numbing neurotoxins.
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Neurotoxins, psychotrophics, etc I agree. But using words that the public understand might be better? It may need public opinion to change. I don’t know. Politicians worry about elections and the economy. Perhaps a headline prosecution of a psychiatrist could be a step. They do kill people after all.
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Drug is a word the public understands quite well. And it doesn’t have a particularly positive connotation. I just call them psychiatric drugs. “Medications” is the problematic term. It implies a “treatment” for a “disease” which we want to emphasize is not the case.
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Ok Agree. Drugs it is. Have you any suggestions Steve as to how we change things? Do we just hope it never happens to us? It did to me. Never in my wildest dreams did the possibility that I would end up where I am exist. It happens to thousands of non doctors all the time and they are swept away. I hope I can make a difference.
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It will not change until people aren’t making massive profits selling the current “model.” The first step would be to outlaw DTC advertising of drugs. A second might be to remove any tax writeoffs for lobbyists or others trying to influence our legislators for a profit. Something also needs to be done about the revolving door between the drug companies and the FDA or equivalent in other countries. Maybe insist on 50% of all panel members be survivors? Or ban drug company reps from joining for say 5 or 10 years after leaving the industry? Using other scientists who aren’t necessarily medical experts but understand how to analyze research honestly?
And of course, we need to stop researchers from being able to profit commercially from their “discoveries.” We should also introduce “Miranda rights” readings for anyone being evaluated for involuntary detention, including the right to legal representation.
There are lots of other things that could be done. But we need representatives who are willing to take on the big contributors. Which also means reforming how campaigns are financed so that representatives are not beholden to moneyed interests.
So lots of things that COULD be done. However, the motivation is not there, because too many folks are making too much money off the status quo.
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Steve I agree with all your suggestions as to how things need to change. A manifesto! We need to press that all pharmaceutical research results are published and not buried if they do not find new chemicals useful. Much of which you suggest is based on the USA but a lot applies here too.
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I’m so sorry you had to be subjected to this senseless institutional violence, Philip. As I read your story, I kept thinking “Holy Kafka”. I don’t think the “uninitiated’ reader can appreciate how difficult it is to reclaim the magnitude of confusion and displacement caused through these cumulative betrayals, and then weave a coherent narrative, much less one that is highly instructive! So good on you Philip for doing the very difficult work to bring this narrative into the public square! And I’d bet my last penny, that not one of the clinicians depicted in this sordid tale, could provide, either from memory or clinical notes, a scintilla of representation of their own participation therein, and zero narrative about the larger context and circumstances surrounding this entire ordeal. But, then, when you’re just a brain in a box, and said brain is an isolated chemical thingy with no cultural and external relevance, save context, it makes perfect sense to electrically and chemically shock that thingy into its thingy mono-stasis compliance. The idiocy and arrogance of the bourgeois professional managerial class never ceases to amaze and terrify me. I’m no lawyer-though who nowadays escapes being compelled to think like one, but there seems to be the potential for a lawsuit or two here? God knows that’s the only language these careerist troglodytes understand. I wish you well Philip. And no matter what, you’ll always be better off than Hewitt and the miserable lot…
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Most psychiatrists live too much in their head.
A dangerous place for anyone.
That’s what makes psychiatry the world’s most dangerous religion.
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It appears my reference “brain in a box” really missed the mark! So please allow me to clarify because I think it’s an important MIA point.
So…by brain in a box I was referring to various schools’ of human consciousness that posits that our brains function far, far less as an independent brain relegated to its individual neuro-biology (ergo brain in a box/skull), and far, far more so a developmentally formed “matter” dependent upon human interactions-from birth throughout one’s lifetime (i.e., attention, attunement, culture, etc.). This school of thought suggest that the human brain functions in ways that fly in the face of psychiatric diagnoses and the neuro sciences, and thereby that our brains are not “isolated minds”, but rather supercomplex instruments within an interwoven web further interweaving a symbolic web (culture) to distribute a cognitive network. So much more on this subject of human consciousness and the brain with loads of books (Merlin Donald’s “A Brain So Rare, an excellent intro) to dive into. Suffice to say, to my mind, to psychiatrically treat someone as an isolated mind with a hapless life in tow, is but the first scientific and ethical line crossed by psychiatry…
If I may add, too, that I don’t think there’s any evidence to suggest psychiatrists live in their heads any more than any other profession or group of people-per your comment. Ditto that doing so is automatically a “dangerous place for anyone”. My guess is that living in one’s head varies widely between psychiatrist, and my guess is that psychiatrist like Sami Timimi and other psychiatrists who’ve contributed greatly to MIA, spend more time in their head than psychiatrists who reproduce status quo treatments? Moreover, I don’t believe there is anything inherently wrong with living in one’s head, only a choice and or an affective disposition that, for many reasons, have both positive and negative consequences. One person’s thinking is another person’s noise; one person’s thinking is another person’s opportunity to think “qualitatively”, one person’s noise is another person’s spark of a brilliant idea with profound social implications, etc. To imagine for a moment (a mode of thinking, btw, and one increasingly antagonistic these days) that living in one’s head was inherently defective or problematic-as your comment intimates, would be to eliminate so many of history’s great minds (one need only invoke Einstein here), that I’m not sure the human species wouldn’t have perished a long time time ago, sans these magnificently exceptional thinking people (who invariably lived in their head!). Of all of psychiatry’s problems and challenges, me thinks thinking is way, way down the list; however otherwise the appearance of thinking appears operational.
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Kevin, maybe a more careful — or dare I say mindful — re-reading of my comment would make you aware of two key words within it: “most”, and “too”; most as in not all, and too as in too many.
My point is that most psychiatrists would do well to think more with their hearts than just with their minds—something many people regard as quite dangerous.
Perhaps you should ask yourself what exactly in my comment seems to have elicited more emotion than thought in YOU.
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Kevin, nowhere have I ever said the mind isn’t a good thing.
All I’m saying is it might be a good thing to stretch it and bend it from time to time…
“The Human Experiment Is Ending!” Mystic REVEALS How the Next Stage of Evolution Will Split Humanity in Two | Igor Galibov, @GuyLawrencePodcast
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Noted! I just re-read your comment and can very much see it in that light, now. Thank you for pointing out. Perhaps I conflated a previous comment of yours in reply to my comments surrounding critical thinking, of which I chose to not reply to? fwiw, I read and comment here on a “time sensitive” library computer, so I can get a little sloppy in reading, thinking, and writing out comments. I need to do better there it seems!
But I couldn’t agree more, its a very good thing to bend and stretch ones mind from time to time!
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Thank you, Kevin. I’m glad we’re in agreement 🙂
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“Frozen”, MADONNA
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Thank you for courageously sharing your story. It resonated deeply with what my partner went through. He did not survive. You did though, and I’m so glad you did. You didn’t deserve any of this. You dedicated your life to your patients, to your family, to your fellow humans, I wish you so much continued healing. Thank you again
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Thank you. I am still alive but have nothing now. I just exist. Of course i considered suicide when they took away my intellect but the harm it would do to my kids was not acceptable. Believing I was ‘mentally ill’ is easier, perhaps. That’s the story that has been propagated by the psychiatric community.Free from meditation for 18 months has restored my cognitive abilities, but not my memory. I still try to persuade my family but the ‘narrative’ is hard to turn around.
BW.
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Thanks. You have hit it on the head. We need the public to be told the truth. Difficult because of the power that the psychiatric association has, heavily backed up by the pharmaceutical industry which makes millions of dollars for America. Invite Prof Joanna Moncreiff, a psychiatrist, over again to speak at the American Medical Society, or whatever is the highest level. Ask Kennedy to arrange it saying it challenges medical opinion to appeal to him. Radical changes are essential to save our medicated society. I write and talk to our feeble politicians about the ballooning welfare bill here for people off work due to over diagnoses and copious medications. Do it!
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I am in so much pain and hopeless
Anyone who cares?
[email protected]
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I believe rank jealousy had everything to do with the way the psychiatrists “treated” Phillip.
It comes with the territory with people who pretend to be something they’re not—a predicament endemic in “psychiatry”.
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Exactly. Because their work is completely unscientific and fraudulent they act even more aggressively when they find a real senior doctor in their clutches. They were particularly keen to throw all they could at me. Huge courses of drugs which made me act abnormally in themselves. ECT – the most unforgivable treatment designed to destroy your mind and thus your ability to reason.
To enrol my beloved family against me is something terrible. To lose the love of the most important people in your life, and have them tell everyone else the lies is torture beyond belief. You are what you have done.and how you care for your family and friends. I have lost them all. There cannot be a God.
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I’ve long suspected there’s more than jealousy going on in psychiatry.
That it’s a haven for white-collar sadists. The kind no one suspects.
Nothing else explains they’re poorly disguised pleasure in slowly destroying the lives of other human beings.
That being said, I decided not to let the evil in others diminish my faith in ultimate good.
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Thankyou. All I know is that in my personal case the psychiatrists involved in my coercive ‘care’ for over 10 years, took obvious pleasure in repeatedly humiliating me. This was particularly the case for the psychiatrist in charge of my management for the final 2 years of my inpatient care, who is the same person in charge of the ECT unit for the trust. On finally unexpectedly changing my ‘diagnosis’ from one of varying psychiatric disorders to one of a form of dementia, (on the grounds of ‘opinion’ rather than because of any biological test results) he then decreed that I should no longer be looked after by the NHS Psychiatric Trust, but should be transferred to a private residential home at the expense of my family and the local council. On top of that he instituted a ‘Deprivation of Liberty’ order to essentially continue my imprisonment away from society. He had no need, or I believe authority, to do that apart from to cause further harm to me, because of my persistent argument against the valid scientific evidence of any psychiatric diagnoses. Shameful, and indeed an admission that they had wrongly’diagnosed and treated me with psychiatric labels for a decade.Essentially an admission of medical negligencr extending over 10 years. Legal confirmation anyone?
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What psychiatry did to you and your family is a crime. I just wish there were reliable avenues to pursue some kind of justice for you and your loved ones.
I also wish I could do more for you than just offer my deepest condolences and thank you from THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART for taking the time to share your story here on MIA.
I believe good will come from you telling your story. That it won’t be in vain.
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It sounds like he didn’t want any challenge to his authority and he felt that you could pose a challenge. I’m outraged by how you were treated and know you are far from alone in such treatment. Is there legal action that can be taken? It’s very frustrating the way someone in a vulnerable position can be abused and there isn’t recourse.
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But what about the person who actually has a psychiatric disorder and needs her medication to live a normal life. She needs therapy to help her deal with her psychiatric disorders and daily stressors that can lead to another episode. Medication and therapy together saved her life and continue to keep her safe and steady. She’s been on medication and in therapy for 20 years, but went undiagnosed for years. She’s had a tough road but has been in a great place for awhile. A few episodes here and there but nothing that wasn’t controlled quickly. She now worries about the way the USA is going in terms of mental health. What do you tell her? Does she not need her medication? Is she being medicated unnecessarily? Does she not need therapy? Is she misdiagnosed?
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Michele, the vast majority of the hundreds of hypothetical disorders listed in the DSM (apart from those arising from verifiable physical pathology) were not discovered through rigorous scientific tests and replicable findings, but were arbitrarily voted into existence by panels of so-called experts whose objectivity and integrity are quite dubious because of their financial ties with producers of the “medications” (i.e. neurotoxins) they prescribe to misinformed clients. This unconscionable situation has been thoroughly documented by researchers such as Robert Whitaker, Peter Goetzsche, Bruce E. Levine, Phil Hickey, and Peter Breggin.
While I can’t speak to the particular circumstances of the woman you mentioned in your post, I suspect that for every person whom biomedical psychiatry keeps “safe and steady,” the number of those harmed, often irremediably, by its brain-disabling treatments is likely to be far greater.
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Yes so few realise the origin of the DSM. A self selected group of psychiatrists in a room trying to construct an encyclopaedia of made up disorders into a manual, to enable a reference used to justify interventions and apply an appropriate fee for service. That’s all it is. Bin it
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Personally, I don’t try to steer people in a particular direction. I don’t feel it’s constructive. It causes stress. There are significant numbers of people who feel a diagnosis is helpful. Some people tolerant psychotropic drugs well and feel better with them. Some don’t want to be trauma probed and I understand that. I wouldn’t interfere with someone’s choice. However, in this case, there was force treatment impacting Phillip’s physical and psychological wellbeing to a profound extent. The treatment was sold to him and his family not as experimental treatment based on unproven theory but evidence based treatment. I don’t think deceit should be part of mental health treatment. I think there should be consequences for using deceit to pressure people into a particular MH treatment. Why is it allowed in psychiatry?
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I don’t think anyone should be forced into treatment either. I do believe that treatment does work for people. I do believe that some people are misdiagnosed with a mental illness as some are misdiagnosed with something else but actually have a mental illness. There’s a lot of misdiagnosing going on. If it is a mental illness and treatment is the right choice then that is what you should do. Some people will only need therapy. Some people with mental health disorders may decide they don’t want any treatment.
I just don’t think we should suggest that all psychiatric choices are wrong. That the dsm is wrong. That medication is wrong. That therapy is wrong. It does work for people and it does save lives.
And I am the “she” in the original post.
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Michele, you clearly have a strong belief in the validity and effectiveness of mental health “treatments.” So let me just pose one simple question, which I have asked various people before but to which I never received a satisfactory reply.
You claim that therapy “does work for people and it does save lives.” Can you tell me, then, the exact percentage of clients who have benefited from psychiatry (whether from its drugs, talk therapy, or a combination thereof) as opposed to those who have suffered harm, sometimes severe and irreversible, as a result of their experiences with it?
In other words, do the benefits outweigh the well documented risks? If you care to answer, please cite credible sources to substantiate your argument.
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What studies along those lines has there been? There’s clearly people who feel they benefit and those who have been harmed but I have no idea what the percentage is. I’ll be interested to know.
I worked with people receiving MH services and didn’t see positive outcomes. When I had my issues I was pretty desperate. If I saw the slightest evidence that the MH system would be helpful to me, I would have gone there in a heartbeat. But I knew a DMS diagnosis would work against me. It would take away credibility. I knew I would be told my problem was biological and lifelong. I would be pressured to accept medication. The fact that I was sure it wasn’t biological wouldn’t matter. Why would anyone pay attention to someone mentally defective? I would be pressured to follow the experts. My closest family members would pressure me to follow the experts. When I’m barely hanging on by a thread, I’m I up to fighting with my support system. I definitely wasn’t. So I hid my problem and searched for a solution on my own. I barely survived. But in the end, I recovered. Where would I be if I went to the Mental Health system. Not any place I would want to be, I’m sure of that.
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Well said Joel. Agree. As ahe is a psychiatrist I dought you will receive a scientific answer.
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“I don’t think we should suggest that all psychiatric choices are wrong. That the dsm is wrong. That medication is wrong. That therapy is wrong. It does work for people and it does save lives.”
Medication and therapy worked for you. That’s great. It was also very lucky.
The real question is how can people be sure they’re making the right choices unless they’re given the correct information?
The truth is the majority of emotional problems are not “mental illnesses” because the majority of emotional problems are not biologically rooted. The DSM is just a book of labels voted on by committees run by psychiatrists, many of whom have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
And the “medications” aren’t “treating” a biological illness. They are actually sedatives that blunt emotions.
The other troublesome reality is that most medical doctors as well as most therapists are unaware that psychiatric drugs pose serious risks both physically and psychologically, including a host of serious iatrogenic illnesses and the very real possibility of addiction.
These realities aren’t widely known in mainstream medicine because the pharmaceutical industry has not only hijacked psychiatry but the entire medical profession.
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The term “psychiatric diagnosis” is a misnomer because they’re essentially based on the interpretation of crude checklists—not medical science.
Which means they’re subjective. Based on opinion.
It’s not uncommon for one person to get different psychiatric diagnoses from different medical doctors.
Or even different psychiatric diagnoses from different therapists WHO HAVE NO MEDICAL DEGREE.
Which means “psychiatric diagnoses” is nothing more than a guessing game.
And if you’re really lucky, you might find a medical doctor or therapist who takes the “DSM” with a huge grain of salt.
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If people like their psychiatric diagnoses and drugs, that’s fine.
But what about the people who don’t?
Everyone has the right to know that a psychiatric diagnosis is nothing more than an opinion, and a biased opinion at that. That psych “meds” aren’t “treating an illness” but are in fact merely masking difficult emotions that could be alleviated doing other things that don’t involve serious risk to health and life.
But most people are NOT told that psychiatric diagnoses aren’t based on medical science, or that taking psychiatric drugs involves serious risks. Or if they are, they’re not being given enough to information to make an intelligent choice.
What works for one person may harm another. People need to know this before taking unnecessary chances with their physical and emotional health.
It’s called INFORMED CONSENT.
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Relieved to read a comment that suggests there may be another side to the story. I’m very sorry for what happened to Philip but I do believe there are – amongst other things – some good people out there trying to help and not to coerce people into every awful treatment that they don’t want. There is a lot wrong with mental health care but to me, the comments here seem unrealistically narrowly focused and one-sided.
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You might be on the wrong website then. I used to be way more sympathetic to psychiatry until I kept learning more and more about it.
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Lisa. You have obviously not been on the receiving end I hope, otherwise you would, like the vast majority of respondents, think differently.
Talk and listen to more victims.
Phillip
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Philip – I haven’t been on the receiving end but my son has. He was the person I described earlier as having voices telling him to kill himself all the time.
He was 20 years old and took too many drugs at university. The suicidal voices went on for months with him repeatedly trying to end his life. We lived at home with locked doors and on constant alert. (I really don’t believe in respecting the suicidal wishes of very young people who are clearly experiencing some sort of mental breakdown as my son evidently was.)
He was in contact with our local mental health service but wasn’t forced to do anything, not meds, not hospital, not ECT. The problem was more about getting help. We tried various therapeutic approaches – serious attempts – but he wasn’t interested.
After about 10 months, a bed was found for him and he went into hospital as a voluntary parent. He was scared of the voices and the hallucinations and wanted them to stop. The hospital experience wasn’t great, not because he was forced to do anything or that staff were unkind – this was a MH rehab ward, quite peaceful and staff were really nice to him. But because there weren’t enough staff and he was pretty much left to himself apart for meds. The psychiatrist was a nice, softly spoken guy who I believe wanted the best for my son.
My son now takes clozapine and is pretty much ok. He works and plays lots of sport. I am grateful for the drug.
I also mentioned that I help run an online group for carers of people with psychotic illnesses. It’s very active and I think most of them would recognise my experience. Because of what I read in this group, I do not believe my son’s experience is unusual or even extreme.
Somebody said this is the wrong website for me and it is. But the link popped up and I was interested. Phillip your care was obviously seriously lacking and I’m sorry for that. Many other people have had terrible care I know. But from my perspective, the blanket psychiatry is evil approach seems positively dangerous.
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Lisa, thank you for sharing your experience with your son. I actually also disagree with the idea that psychiatry is evil in all circumstances.
However, there is something I find worrying in your son’s story. As far as I can see, he became psychotic because of street drugs. You are saying that he is now taking clozapine, so I guess that he has been diagnosed with a chronic mental illness.
If his psychosis was triggered by drugs, why do the psychiatrists assume that he should keep taking a neuroleptic? Why didn’t they treat his illness as a drug-induced psychosis?
I can tell you on the basis of my personal experience that people can be completely wrongly diagnosed with a mental illness. I had a psychotic episode in 2012 and I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, but I have fully recovered and have not had any relapses. I am not using any psychiatric drugs. I am able to live on my own and work as a translator. It is obvious that psychiatrists were wrong about me.
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Well, Lisa, I wouldn’t condemn all psychiatrists as evil (though many are arrogant and dogmatic), but the mental health system on the whole most certainly does cause untold harm through its phony diagnoses and treatments for hypothesized chemical imbalances and defective brain circuits. I refer you to articles by Phil Hickey, Bruce E. Levine, Peter Goetzsche, Joanna Moncrieff, and other researchers which have appeared on the MIA website.
In regard to your son’s clozapine regimen, did his “nice, softly spoken” psychiatrist disclose to you in detail the possible severe side effects that could result from long-term use of this neurotoxin?
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Lisa your son was a victim of drugs. Like psychiatry causes illnesses using drugs. The human body so complex and brilliant and should not have additional chemicals added they all do harm. The least harmful are the alcoholic drugs. Wine, beer, spirits etc. Antidepressants and even more antipsychotics are hideously dangerous. I know I was on them for 13 years! They are not useful except in acute crises and for just a week or two. Then stop
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The bottom line is that Psychiatry doesn’t know what it’s doing. If an individual psychiatrist finds a way to really help his or her clients, he or she will likely be forced out of the profession (see Kelly Brogan and probably many others). Psychiatry as an organized group has set a course for itself that is factually destructive and any wise person should steer clear of that profession.
In the case of someone who is seriously troubled, they are basically screwed unless they can somehow afford special care outside of mainstream psychiatry.
MDs have long been aware that various medicines can lessen certain symptoms (like painkillers for pain) but this approach has been very destructive for most psychiatric patients. There are various reasons why a patient can feel that their medication is “helping” them. For some, this may be the only way they can find to avoid suffering. But It should be made clear to them that it is doing nothing to “cure” them. Same thing with psychotherapy, though in that case there can be no biological harm, only emotional harm if the therapy is poorly delivered (as it often is).
It should be made clear that Psychiatry is purposely avoiding therapies that are demonstrably curative. They don’t want cures; they want “treatments.” It’s an unethical approach to medicine and healing that should not be tolerated anymore, as curative therapies DO exist.
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Who is this person you talk about who claims she is helped by drugs?
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The person i am talking about is myself.
I saw two psychiatrists who had me on too many medications before I found a psychiatrist that worked with me. He told me that I was on way too many medications and that was why I was feeling nothing. He got off most of my meds and on ones that actually worked. I was suicidal and self harming before taking any medication and being diagnosed, and also during that time period before finding my third psychiatrist that got me off most of the medications I was on. He always explained what, why, and if I understood what he wanted to do. He also asked if I wanted to make those changes. I have said no to certain medications or not at this time and he respected my answer.
FYI I have bipolar and anxiety disorders. Before diagnosis I had gone to the emergency room quite a few times over four or five years thinking I was having heart attack (I was only in my late 20’s). My chest was hurting and it was hard to breathe. Every single time they’d send me home with pepcid and tell me it was heartburn. It wasn’t heartburn. I knew it on the way to hospital, in th emergency room, and back at home. Nobody listened to me. Now I know it was panic attacks. I also recognize all the manic/depressive cycling I went through for years before my diagnosis.
So yes, I was overmedicated at a point but I found a psychiatrist that worked with me and didn’t just push drugs onto me.
As for my therapist, I find it extremely helpful to have someone who is unbiased in my life to talk things over with. She has never diagnosed me and has made it very clear that she can’t because she is not a doctor. She more or less deals with my anxiety disorders that were diagnosed by my psychiatrist and not so much my bipolar unless I’m in a really bad place. It all depends on current situation and if im doing well or if im not doing well with my moods because we need to stay on top of that. It’s not just about medication.. She’s someone I can talk to about anything. She also helps me have conversations with the people I should be having them with. She helps me figure things out without telling me. As of right now I plan on seeing a therapist for the rest of my life because I think it’s one of the healthiest things I can do for myself.
i also recognize that medication and therapy is not for everyone. Some people are misdiagnosed and some people don’t want to take medication or talk with a therapist. That’s fine but no one should say that one way is better then the other. That’s how stigma is caused. Stigma is a real thing and it’s very strong in the mental health world. Everyone should be careful about what they say and not say things like all or nothing because I’ve dealt with a lot of stigma and it hurts. It shuts you down and makes you hide. It makes you feel ashamed.
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Hi Michele,
I am sorry for the stigma and shame you have experienced. Please understand that us psychiatric survivors are no strangers to “stigma.” In fact, having to constantly center the feelings of people who have felt helped by the mental health system when we share our stories is part of what perpetuates the kind of “stigma” WE face, and it is far more often that we are the ones locked into silence & hiding for fear of our safety.
I personally faced far more “stigma” for quitting psych drugs & therapy than I ever experienced for using them. (Before you assume that it must be because I live in a particularly “progressive” region, I should mention that I’m from the US South.)
I highly recommend checking out @thebooksmartbimbo on Instagram. She has a great way of putting things into words. Here’s a couple of posts by her on this topic:
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cc1IIl4grYZ/
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSm8sr5HRJl/?img_index=1
I also hope you can read & learn from this article I wrote about the importance of “mental health” narratives: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/08/narrative-reclamation/
I would also recommend reading this article to help you understand “stigma” from our perspective. It is an old article, but it still holds just as true today: https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/04/false-arguments-part-2-anti-anti-stigma/
I hope you’re able to learn something from those resources! And welcome to Mad in America!
Thanks,
Jasmine
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I agree, the “stigma” against people who choose the non-drug path is quite substantial. Though I prefer the term “prejudice” as it is more active than simply having negative beliefs. Such people are literally and figuratively attacked for taking such a “radical” stance, even though the evidence supporting the status quo’s view of reality is thinner than cheap one-ply toilet paper.
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Jasmine, so well said, thank you.
It is so exhausting to deal with these “not all psychiatrists..” and ‘not all patients…” arguments.
They come across as incredibly dismissive of other’s experiences.
In my understanding “stigma” or, actual discrimination, is not about hurt feelings, but is a mechanism of power which materially alters lives. As unpleasant as it is, it’s not an act of discrimination or oppression to make someone feel uncomfortable. And an idea or opinion cannot be “stigmatising” if it’s not backed up by actual power.
The reality is that the opinions and knowledge shared here are rarely admitted in fora where change actually happens – ie where the power is. Dissenting opinions are no threat to anyone’s choices.
This idea of “pill-shaming” in my opinion is constructed and spread to derail and distract from structural criticism.
Thanks for the links too!
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Hi Michelle,
I’ve heard a few stories like yours where it took awhile to find someone who works with you in providing therapy and finding the best medication in the right doses. I do believe in looking at all sides of an issue to see where there’s benefit and where there’s harm. But personally I object to labels suggesting a mental defect without evidence. I think that’s stigmatizing and discrediting. I think it works against the cooperation that led to better treatment for you.
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I’m glad to hear you are making progress. I would suggest that the therapist is the answer as no drugs are beneficial apart from for a week or two if sedation -that’s all. I don’t believe in any labels, bipolar included. You needed proper support, understanding and someone to address the trauma that put you into the state you were in.
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Hi Michele,
To answer your question, the first thing I would tell her is that her mental & emotional difficulties are valid, regardless of how she chooses to label or cope with them. The second thing I would tell her is that it is understandable to be concerned about the way things are headed with MAHA as someone in her position. Therefore, I would recommend she finds new ways to cope outside of the mental health system, in case that does get taken away. In other words, “join the club”; us psychiatric survivors have been doing it for years, and she might be able to learn something valuable from us by listening.
She might be confused as to how it is possible to cope outside of the mental health system, since she sees herself as “diseased” and these treatments as medical interventions that saved her life. The truth is (which she may not like to hear), there is no such thing as an “actual” psychiatric disorder, and so these are not life-saving medical “treatments,” they are simply ways of coping that she has found helpful, and she can adapt to find new, different ways of coping that may be helpful, just as humans have done (and continue to do) since the beginning of time. As to whether or not she is being medicated “unnecessarily,” I would say that it is no mystery that drugs have a consciousness-altering effect, and some people may prefer the way this effect makes them feel, but it is false to assume that this means it is correcting an underlying pathology in their brain. Some use non-prescription drugs to alter consciousness, some use prescription drugs – both may help a person survive, cope, and “function” – and though there may be a legal difference, there is no difference in regards to morality, health, or biology. Drugs are drugs.
So if she chooses to heed my advice, to learn to “cope outside of the mental health system,” what might that actually look like, in terms of concrete, actionable steps? Well, the first thing I would recommend is to educate herself on psychiatric drug tapering and withdrawal. This is not something her doctor or psychiatrist are likely to be well-educated about – which may be confusing for her to hear given that she has probably revered them as trusted “experts” until now. Mad in America has lots of great resources on tapering, and I would also encourage her to check out Laura Delano’s website https://www.theinnercompass.org/ . Then I would urge her to strongly consider starting to taper off her drugs, as it will be far safer than being forced off of them cold-turkey in the event that these drugs become no longer available. (Especially because she has been on them for 20 years, and typically the longer one is on them, the more brutal withdrawal effects are likely to be.)
The next thing I would do is ask her a question: What is it that she feels she benefits from in therapy? There is nothing inherently magical or irreplaceable about therapy itself. Again, these are not medical “treatments” like any other. So I would ask her to think about what specifically helps her about therapy, not just “therapy” as a concept. Is it the therapeutic relationship? Talking about her emotions? Receiving compassion from another person? Or is it exploring her childhood trauma? Learning new coping skills & techniques? I would argue that all of these things (and more) can be achieved outside of psychotherapy. If what makes therapy helpful to her is just having another person to talk to, then I would encourage her to surround herself with friends who she can talk to about her feelings/struggles without having to pay them. (That’s literally what friends are for.) If what makes it helpful is the coping skills/strategies she learns from her therapist, and so she feels that she could not replace this with friendship alone because her friends are not “qualified professionals,” then I would encourage her to pick up a few self-help books, or better yet, go straight to the source – buy herself the same academic textbooks that they use in counseling school.
As for her last question, I would tell her that no, she is not “misdiagnosed,” because that would imply that there is a such thing as correct psychiatric diagnosis. Which, as I have established, there is not. Experiences are real. Suffering is real. But “diagnosis” is not.
The last thing I’d say to her is that I think it is highly inappropriate to hijack another person’s story of trauma and abuse with “what-about-isms” and making it about yourself & your own (positive) experiences. I hope I’m not too bold in my assumption that the woman you are talking about here in the third person is yourself. It’s like if someone was telling their story about their traumatic, near-fatal car accident that they survived, and the first thing someone says after they finish telling their story is, “But what about me? I need a car to get to work every day! I think cars are great & I wouldn’t be able to survive without them! What would you tell a person like me if they were to ban cars?” Do you see the problem here? Doesn’t that come across as more than a little tone-deaf?
However, to extend the metaphor, I would answer, “I think we could all benefit from better public transport and more walkable cities. Then, maybe cars wouldn’t be so necessary.”
That is the goal of critical psychiatry/psychiatric abolition.
Sincerely,
Jasmine
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Beautiflly put, Jasmine. Every single word.
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Jasmine, I’m not trying to hijack Phillips story of his trauma and abuse. I feel awful for what he has gone through and I don’t think anyone should have their right to choose taken from them.
You’re right I am talking about myself. The thing that most scares me is the stigma that comments like these add to all the other negativity around mental illness. I had symptoms of mania, depression, anxiety, panic, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts long before my diagnosis so my diagnosis did not come as a surprise to me.
I believe Phillip 100% and if he were my father I’d be fighting for him round the clock. I also don’t blame his family. You do the best you can with what you know at the time. I fight for my own father (which is not connected to this story) who’s in a senior care facility and has dementia. I also fought for my mother who had early onset Alzheimer’s and ended up in a care facility until her passing.
I also believe that every person has their own path to take. I don’t believe in labeling people either. I dont walk around with a sign on my head that says bipolar, anxiety, medicated, etc.
It scares me how much stigma there is around mental health, therapy, medication, and so on. I have felt it and it doesn’t feel good. When I read Philips story, right from the beginning I was wondering why did this happen to him and how did the system fail him this bad. It’s when I read the comments that my heart sank and i lost my breath. I have empathy for Phillip and anyone who is hurting. I just dont like the all or nothing thinking.
So I meant no harm with my post and didn’t mean to hijack his story.
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Hi Michele,
First of all, this is not about your moral goodness as a person. All the people in your life you have fought for (or hypothetically would fight for) have nothing to do with the fact that people who feel “helped” by the mental health system tend to have a nasty habit of telling psychiatric survivors that we need to tone down our anger or pain or act like our stories are “rare exceptions” to the general rule that the mental health system is innately good & “life-saving” in order to center y’all’s feelings. Which is exactly what you were doing, intentionally or unintentionally.
You said, “It’s when I read the comments that my heart sank and I lost my breath.” Firstly, I feel the same way when reading comments like yours. Secondly, I am struggling to find the “stigmatizing comments” that you speak of. Most of what I have seen here are comments empathizing with Phillip’s story and/or sharing their own similar stories. Some comments do discuss the pseudoscience of psychiatry itself, but that is not “stigma,” it is simply a fact.
You said, “I had symptoms of mania, depression, anxiety, panic, self-harm, and suicidal thoughts long before my diagnosis.” I am not arguing against any of that. In fact, so did I (minus the “mania”). I am not one of those people saying “it’s all in your head”, and I am not trying to argue that you only started having symptoms after your diagnosis because you convinced yourself you were “mentally ill” or something. Quite the contrary; I think your experiences are very real. I also think they are not symptoms of underlying pathology. These are not conflicting beliefs.
From my understanding, it seems like you are mistakenly under the impression that this is a debate between people who are “mentally ill” (such as yourself) and people who aren’t & therefore don’t “get it” (such as the rest of us here). However, many of us carry psychiatric diagnoses ourselves, and were probably in your shoes once – vehemently defending psychiatry and going on about the “stigma” of “mental health.” I can only speak for myself, but I know that me 3 years ago would’ve felt totally attacked & defensive if anyone questioned the legitimacy of psychiatric diagnosis or medication, even if it wasn’t directed at me specifically. I would’ve felt judged, like they thought I was “weak” or “faking it” or something, and I would’ve written off anything they had to say as “stigma.” I was fully convinced that medication & therapy had “saved my life,” despite the fact that they were literally making me worse. It would’ve been hard for me then to imagine feeling the way I do now, and it’s hard for me now to imagine feeling the way I did back then, even though it was not that long ago. I imagine that’s probably similar to the way you’re feeling, and honestly I don’t know if there’s anything I can say to change your mind. Unfortunately, what it took for me was going through it myself.
You seem to believe that you (and other “mentally ill”-identifying folks) are the only one here on the receiving end of “stigma,” but that is simply not true. As I mentioned in my other reply, I personally faced far more “stigma” for quitting psych drugs & therapy than I ever experienced for using them. For me, this “stigma” more than just “didn’t feel good”; it resulted in emotional/verbal abuse, trauma, and threats to my safety. In fact, the concept of “stigma” itself was leveraged to coerce me into taking psychiatric drugs in the first place – by insisting that I only felt hesitation because of the “stigma” – and then was used to guilt-trip me for stopping them as well – by claiming that my personal choice was somehow “stigmatizing” to those who do use them.
You say, “When I read Phillip’s story, right from the beginning I was wondering why did this happen to him and how did the system fail him this bad.” Your surprise amuses me. His story is not a fluke. There are hundreds of other stories like his that you can find & read on this site, if you are willing to listen & keep an open mind.
I’m not sure if you saw my other reply, but if not, I strongly encourage you to check out the links I sent you. Especially the instagram ones.
Lastly, I’m genuinely curious: Do you know what this site is about? And what were you expecting to find here, on a site dedicated to critical psychiatry? If what you are looking for is an echo chamber full of pro-mental healthcare advocates who center experiences like yours & think the only issue is “stigma,” then I’m afraid you’re in the wrong place. Luckily for you though, spaces like that are pretty much everywhere else.
-Jasmine
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Really good reply. Very articulate and respectful too
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I’m sorry. The article popped up my Google feed page and I just read this one article. I have no idea what this site is about. I was just reading this story and felt compassion and empathy. I don’t normally leave comments or even look at comments but felt compelled to do so with this one. My opinion is obviously not needed here and I understand that. Thank you all for your advice and further reading. I will read what was suggested to me so I am more informed. I do like to know all sides and its obvious that I only know one side.
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Michele,
Thanks for sharing that piece of context; your reaction is totally understandable given that you’re completely new to Mad in America & critical psychiatry. I hope I didn’t come across as offensive in any way either. You seem like a very kind, sweet, genuine, self-aware person, and I am glad we were able to have this conversation.
I hope you’ll stick around here on Mad in America & learn more about our perspectives. If not, thanks for stopping by! I appreciate your open-mindedness and compassion.
Best wishes,
Jasmine
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Yes. You cannot confirm a psychiatric disorder as there are no such scientifically proven entities. Her improvement has been due to time and caring therapy, and not helped by unnecessary long term harmful sedative medication.
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Reply to birdsong.
Thank you. We are releasing the story on Mad in the UK this weekend. It will not help me personally. It may help accelerate the necessary reform or abolition of the ‘medical model’ of psychiatry. Psychiatrists should be trained to talk to and help people, not how to label and medicate them. No psychotropic drugs help people in distress. Just silence and tranquillise them. causing long term disability and harm. When will governments realise this?
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Hopefully sooner rather than later.
The key is creating public awareness. And people like you, Laura Delano, and Brooke Siem, Dr. David Healy, Dr. Josef Witt-Doerrig, Dr. Peter Gotzsche, Dr. Peter Breggin, Dr. Joanna Moncrieiff, Robert Whitaker and many other concerned citizens on MIA around the world are doing just that.
It will take some time for the powers that be to begin realizing that they now have to deal with a better educated public—thanks to the internet.
But the process has started which means THERE’S NO TURNING BACK.
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Thank you.
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🙂
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Thanks for speaking out Phillip. It will take many voices for change.
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Your average government, politician, or administrator is between a rock and a hard place on this issue. They rely on the financial and political assistance of the corporate world, and today that includes Medicine, but Psychiatry in particular.
If a government goes against these “vested interests” because of good hard evidence that they are behaving in a criminal manner, those who made that decision will be making a wise spiritual choice, but they will probably be replaced by people who are more compliant. Who needs to realize the evil that is done in the name of Psychiatry is the public at large. I am sure that is part of what motivated Mr. Whitaker to write all his books. I know it motivates me.
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Christine
Psychiatrists have unlimited power and to prove medical negligence against them is impossible as they use their own ideas, theories and lies to defend themselves. No one is in a position to say that all that they do is rubbish. Even when the SSRI theory was shown to be nonsense they said that they knew about that 20 years ago and that the SSRI’s magically work by different mechanisms. Neuroregeneration, neuroplasticity or whatever. The whole selective, serotonin reuptake inhibitor story was made up. A lie essentially. Surely a good barrister could prove that in court?
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Yes, What the field of psychiatry does would have to be challenged since any given psychiatrist could argue their treatment fits into the guidelines of the profession.
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Birdsong and all thanks . I do hope my opening up simulates action to change it all, and makes you all decide to do something about it yourselves. Letters, talks, utubes, do all you can.
Phillip
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Phillip, I must admit that I have a problem with your assumption that we have not been doing anything – or not doing enough – about psychiatric oppression. As I pointed out in my comments, many of us have been resisting psychiatric oppression for many years.
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Phillip, thank you speaking out. Public awareness is the first step towards change. I would do more for you if I could.
It’s been my hope that the notable people you’ve written to that are associated with MIA would’ve replied to you by now. It’s saddening knowing they haven’t. Hopefully they will in the near future or have been making inquiries about your situation behind the scenes. It’s outrageous the way psychiatry holds all the cards which is the injustice of it all: it has the power to legally destroy the lives of innocent people.
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You think that’s a simple question : DOES SHE NEED HER MEDICATION? With the obvious answer: YES . But you have not factored in time and time counts in neurobiology.
To break it down : Did she need her first dose? Whether or not she did , it did not do nothing. It disturbed the balance (homeostasis) of some neural circuitry. With repeated dose that circuitry found a ‘new” balance. This repeated recursively so her current ‘homeostasis’ is nothing like it was before that first dose . So she needs her medication NOW to sustain a brain that is a product of a lifetime of said drugs. To ‘return to the origin ‘ means undoing all that . And I have put it in the simplest terms. That , neurologically speaking, is why withdrawal is so difficult. But you must add the impact of the complexity of power and ‘knowledge ‘ to see why your answer is ‘yes , she needs them’. The question is WHY? It is certainly not to ‘cure her psychosis’.
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Phillip,
I wanted to cry reading your story and shocked that you survivied their cruelty. It’s criminal what our psychiatric doctors, hospitals, etc. are doing to people. I’m in the USA and it’s happening everywhere.
I was raised to trust doctors and my psych doctors nearly killed me tapering me too fast off an antidepressants then poly drugging me with 18 different psych drugs within 3-4 mos. leaving me barely able to walk or feed myself, my brain and body wouldn’t work with a mile long list of symptoms leaving me bedridden for almost 5 yrs.
Many don’t survive what our psych industry does to people. It’s a miracle or the man above that I’m still here and made it through the worst. 12.5 yrs. later and 3.5 yrs. drug free, I still have lingering symptoms from the damage psych doctors did to me.
Thank you for publishing your story bringing awareness to others what our so-called psych care industry is doing to people. They are harming people, not healing people. I’m sending you continued healing prayers and vibes from someone who understands and can relate.
Take care my friend
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Thanks. I was reluctant to write about it all because of any blame people would attribute to my family, who were misled by the psychiatrists. That’s why I put it into MIA rather than MITUK. I was previously unaware that psychiatry was unscientific and initially listened to them. I wasn’t convinced for long but my wife and children were collard by them and thought they were doctors so must use researched and validated treatments. They gave support to the psychiatrists plans for me as they wanted me ‘better’. Now because they were party to all that was done and the developed narrative about me, they would feel awful if they had to admit it was partly their fault.
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Psychiatrists for the most part are not evil people who enjoy getting the better of other doctors. This is really unproductive of MIA to publish these kinds of reductionist accusations.
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True, not all psychiatrists who follow the biomedical paradigm are evil, power-hungry sadists deriving pleasure and profit from human misery, but I would say that publishing numerous real-life accounts of people throughout the world who have been harmed physically and/or emotionally by its common practices is far from being “unproductive” and “reductionist.”
What would you consider a “productive” approach to the issue of widespread deceit, corruption, abuse, cover-ups, and incompetence in the mental health field? Or if you think these problems are greatly exaggerated, why?
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Well put Joel, I so hope my real life account will encourage a radical reform of psychiatry. Whether we could do better without it at all I am unsure. I would bow to the educated advice of those psychiatrists who have seen the light like Professor Joanna Moncreiff.
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I would consider a productive approach an approach which examines psychiatry’s failures from a structural and institutional perspective and one which does not paint all individual psychiatrists as insecure and power hungry dunces. I think when we do that we immediately silo our perspective into an echo chamber. I do think user experiences are extremely valuable and should be given a platform at MIA, I just don’t agree that speculating about these psychiatrists’ insecurities and personal failures is helpful or reflects the problems of psychiatry accurately.
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Henry, the flaws in the structure and institutions of the mental health field in general are the direct result of acts of commission and omission by the huge number of individuals participating in and profiting from it for mercenary or careerist motives.
As I have mentioned previously, the great majority of psychiatrists and other therapists base diagnoses and treatments of the sham DSM, thereby legitimizing and propagating the APA’s fraudulent narrative about chemically or genetically caused brain pathology to the public. Likewise, over 60% of the membership of the DSM panels tasked with defining and classifying mental disorders have questionable financial ties with pharmaceutical companies.
Contrary to your opinion, I think it entirely appropriate, indeed necessary, to explore the underlying reasons for the behavior of these “professionals,” inasmuch as their conscious, voluntary decisions to deny, obfuscate, deceive, and collude have such a profound impact on the health and well-being of millions of people–including schoolchildren and elderly nursing home patients drugged en masse to make them docile and compliant.
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This is OK, but you left out theoretical/technical and good results.
Any field that does not really know what it’s doing tends to attract people who just want to pretend in order to take advantage of others. This happens in politics and economics – even law I think – but is very obvious in psychiatry because their theories are so off base and their results have been so horrific.
Mankind as a group could be said to be ignorant in certain areas, and one key area is the one that is supposed to be handled by psychology and psychiatry. I am sure there are problems with psychiatry that relate to power structures and institutions, but the fact that they don’t know what they’re doing is the big one for me.
There might be structural and institutional problems with a field like – say – engineering. But engineers know what they are doing and when they don’t bridges fall down and machines don’t work.
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The fact that they don’t know what they’re doing is huge along with making up ridiculous theories and shoving them down people’s throat. But much of the general public doesn’t know that the MH field doesn’t know what they’re doing. People go into the field not knowing that. I majored in psychology more because it was a subject of interest not because I had plans to work in the field. I became a caseworker because it was an area to work with a degree in Psychology. Never had an interest in working as a therapist. Why? Because working as a caseworker made it clear to me that I didn’t understand the problems I was seeing. I would agree that when you know you don’t understand or how to help, and you become therapist anyway that isn’t good. The money some therapist charge is out of this world. It blows my mind the amount of money spent, in the helping professions in general, that makes people and the situations they’re in worse. When I started writing about the psychological issues I had, I started getting comments from therapists that I should get counseling from them. Sure, I’ll save my money. 1) I know they don’t believe it but I healed myself. 2) I’m not giving a dime to charlatans.
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Henry, psychiatrists constantly speculate on other people’s insecurities and personal moral failings. Take the case, for example, of Dr. Bandy Lee, a psychiatrist and former Yale professor who has made a career out of analyzing and pontificating about Donald Trump’s mental state and threat to democracy.
I see no reason why an ordinary citizen should not enjoy the very same right to examine the motivation of psychiatrists and the real harm they cause to public health and welfare–unless you believe their professional credentials and standing exempt them criticism.
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Hi Henry, I see your point. I, also, read the replies to you and see their points. I’m someone who majored in psychology and worked in the “helping profession”. Not as a psychiatrist or therapist, I was a caseworker whose job it is to find services to meet a need. I feel on this site it a little dangerous to admit to being any part of “helping profession”. Of course so is admitting to having a psychological issue. But this subject is too important to be silent. I put “helping profession” in quotes because I feel much of the time (actually I’ll say almost all the time) there’s more harm than help, at least when the “helping profession” move away from help with food, housing, basic necessities to trying to change/fix people. I don’t understand but I’m going to “fix people” doesn’t work at all. It’s better to be supportive, respectful, and help in more concrete matters like food, housing etc. I think most people go into the profession with the idea of helping but they burn out with a lack of success and they end up separating themselves from other’s pain to protect their own mental health. The MH profession, also, put blame for the lack of success on service users (they’re not following treatment) versus the services itself where it should be. Of course, we have a medical model that says these are live long diseases so the MH system can’t be blamed for the lack of recovery. There are professional who vent their issues and anger; taking advantage of their position over others.
But I do think the problem with staffing relates to the structure of the Mental Health industry. The education of people going into psychology and social work is full of falsehood. If people are treated in accordance with these falsehoods it doesn’t matter who you pick for staff the treatment will be bad. Staff will burn out and their interaction will deteriorate. I noticed that staff really mirrors their management. People follow their training and supervision. If those at the top believe in high levels of medication and paternalistic treatment, you see it all the way through the agency. So I think you get the most change by changing the structure. Easier said than done. There are good people like John Read and Joanna Moncrieff who are in the system, see it at work and want change.
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It may not be accurate to call the majority of psychiatrists evil, but it is accurate to call the majority of psychiatrists ignorant.
Meaning most don’t know what they don’t know, and most don’t care to know what they don’t know.
Meaning most are willfully ignorant.
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Willful ignorance is one sign of a cultist mentality.
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How about adding complacency and arrogance to mix?
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Birdsong, very well said.
“most don’t care to know what they don’t know.
Meaning most are willfully ignorant.”
Mainstream psychiatrists live in denial and redefine reality to suit their narrative.
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Thank you, Rosalee. I like what you said too: “Mainstream psychiatrists live in denial and redefine reality to suit their narrative.”
Psychiatry does this better than any other organization.
Their collective denial is exactly what make it possible for them to keep peddling potent neurotoxins without a second thought.
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However, per one study, 12 percent of psychiatrists have had suicidal thoughts.
From another article online: “A survey published in the British Journal of Psychiatry found that 10% of psychiatrists had experienced depression, while another study in the American Journal of Psychiatry reported that up to 60% of psychiatrists had experienced burnout at some point in their careers.”
This is a troubled profession. And it should be a profession that is much more effective in its work than current results show. So I think the accusations are largely justified. If you really want to help people get better, don’t be a psychiatrist. The profession is up to no good; there’s no way around it.
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Agree!
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So what do you suggest people who are hearing voices telling them to kill themselves should do? Think about how made up their diagnosis is?
Mental illness labels are indeed made up; the drugs are sadly inadequate; there’s also no money for decent rounded care. In addition, some psychiatrists are hopeless and drunk on power, and many more are worn out and overworked and unable to care as they would like to… in my view, these things are true.
But i don’t believe in this wholesale trashing of anything and everything to do with psychiatry. I don’t think it is accurate. And I don’t think it is helpful to people in real terrible distress who need “sedating” to save their lives.
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Drugs have effects on people. That’s not a mystery. But there does not appear to be anything else that psychiatry has to offer, and non-psychiatric physicians can prescribe drugs if need be. The problem I see is that the DSM model IS wrong from the beginning, because it places the source of the problems on the person who has them, without consideration for experience, personality, or social context, not to mention spiritual needs and beliefs. To take something as normal as “anxiety” and to decide that anyone feeling anxious for more than an arbitrary period of time in an arbitrary selection of ways is somehow “diseased” is simply wrong and destructive. For one, it assumes that ALL anxiety comes from one source or cause, which is of course nonsense. For another, it denies the reality that anxiety is a normal part of living and is a general indicator that something is out of balance in the person’s LIFE, not their brain chemicals. But the real indictment of psychiatry is that it leads to the wrong “solutions.” If you haven’t read Whitaker’s works, you really should if you want to understand this. Psychiatry as practiced today has taken what were once solvable problems and turned them into chronic and intractable conditions. This alone should be enough to condemn the entire enterprise. People who used to recover are now chronic “patients” who never get better. Even the most serious “diagnoses” like “schizophrenia” used to recover at something like a 60+% rate. Now the rate is more like under 10%, and many of those who recover are ones who stop engaging with psychiatry partly or entirely.
But you have to want to do the research to understand all this. It’s not about not recognizing that people are suffering. It’s about recognizing is that suffering is made worse by standard psychiatry. And psychiatry as a profession denies the facts behind this. That’s what needs to be abolished.
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“Psychiatry as practiced today has taken what were once solvable problems and turned them into chronic and intractable conditions. This alone should be enough to condemn the entire enterprise.”
My thoughts exactly. And I have a hard time understanding why the American Medical Association seems unaware of psychiatry’s hijinks.
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Yes Steve but just one point. EVERYONE is having a go at DSM. Rightly so . But DSM is published by the American Psychiatric Association and officially speaking is only applicable in the USA. The rest of the world uses ICD and I bet Phillip’s formal diagnostic codes come from there . You may say that is splitting hairs but they see the fashionable ‘trauma” question differently . Why this American hegemony is my question .
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The problem to me isn’t that they see trauma or anything differently, it’s that the whole thing is so ridiculously subjective that whether you’re talking ICD or DSM criteria, you’re basically making it up!
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I would say that if their “voices” are only occasionally troublesome, they should research the whole subject from the point of view of others who have survived similar experiences and see what worked for them. This is part of what psychiatrists should do, if they really cared. At least the academic psychiatrists should do this.
But with the way the system is rigged now, that hypothetical troubled person is in real trouble. Because they probably haven’t been educated in how the mind really works, or what could really be causing their trouble. And the people around them (friends, family members) probably don’t have that training either. All they know to do is “call a psychiatrist.” Or perhaps, “call a psychologist.” And as long as people are kept that in the dark about how life really works and how the mind really works, they are going to fall victim to “experts” who claim to know.
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Lisa, I don’t recognize the right to take any coercive measures, including forced sedation and hospitalization, against an adult who has self-destructive thoughts. Suicide is not a medical, but a philosophical, moral, or religious matter. That is how it used to be perceived in past ages.
Granting psychiatrists this right is an assault on individual freedom and autonomy.
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My beliefs about self-destructive thought are different to yours Joel. I don’t believe it’s a philosophical/religious position if, for example, someone is repeatedly told by voices to kill themselves. I don’t know if it’s medical. But I believe that person needs help. I also believe, using the same example, that that person might think and feel differently without the voices. I also wonder what are people’s views on handling aggression.
It may be that this disagreement is at the root of my dismay at what seem to me like quite extreme views about psychiatry that, as I see it, chuck out the baby with the backwater. Believing as I do, such views feel unhelpful.
I did know this blog was anti-psychiatry when I clicked on a link that happened to appear for me on X. But I was still shocked at just how anti many views here seem to be.
I was also surprised that people believe Phillip’s harrowing experience is common. I think I said that I am an admin for a Facebook group for carers of people with psychosis. We have nearly 2000 members, the group is very active and I read a huge number of very negative comments about mental health care in the UK. I honestly cannot remember reading anything like Philip’s story before. I do read elsewhere about truly awful care for people with an autism diagnosis.
I’m know my views will be antithetical to most people here. But I wanted to make how I feel clear.
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Hi Lisa,
The fact that stories like Phillip’s seem “rare” to most people is no accident. Most psychiatric survivors’ stories & voices are drowned out by the mainstream narrative. This is a very intentional, strategic way for the mental health system to avoid accountability. It is also convenient for most of its victims/critics to be framed as “mentally ill” and therefore not credible narrators of reality.
I wrote about this in a blog that was published here just a couple months ago. I highly recommend that you read it if you are genuinely interested in understanding more about this. Here it is: https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/08/narrative-reclamation/
In the example you gave – of someone hearing voices that repeatedly tell them to kill themselves – is that a specific person you know, or just a hypothetical example? If it is a specific person you know, then I cannot speak to their experiences. If it is just a general hypothetical, then perhaps I can help provide some alternative perspectives.
First of all, not all voice-hearers experience their voices as distressing. Some hear voices that may be positive, encouraging, or even just neutral. They may find meaning in the voices they hear, as it may have some religious, spiritual, or cultural significance to them. They may have no desire to get rid of these voices. Voice-hearers like this really do exist, it’s true.
Second of all, there are people who experience these voices as distressing, that is true as well. In fact, let’s go with the “extreme” example you gave of someone who hears voices repeatedly telling them to kill themselves. Well, I actually know of a person who had this exact experience. Earlier this year, I attended a Mad in America webinar called “The Hope of Harm Reduction” as seen here: https://www.madinamerica.com/calendar/?mc_id=1166 and one of the main presenters was an individual named Caroline Mazel-Carlton. She talked about her lived experience with voice-hearing and suicidality, and mentioned that at one point, she was hearing voices telling her to kill herself. I don’t want to tell her story in an inadequate way, so I will leave these links if you would like to learn more: https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/07/like-living-voices-head/
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/09/talking-about-suicide-helps-us-stay-alive/
I will, however, speak on my own experiences with suicidality, which were similar to Caroline’s, sans voice-hearing. Conventional mental health treatments & carceral crisis interventions did not “help” me, they traumatized me and contributed to my desire to die. As I wrote in my article “The ‘Sick Enough’ Paradox in Eating Disorder Treatment” (also published on here): “half the reason why I wanted to kill myself was directly because of all the things that were done to me supposedly to prevent me from killing myself.” My suicidality was deeply symbolic. It represented that something in my life – some version of myself – needed to die, in order for me to live.
There are many alternatives to these mainstream psychiatric interventions, such as peer support and Alternatives to Suicide (Alt2Su). From both research & anecdotal evidence, they show promising outcomes. Involuntary hospitalization, on the other hand, tends to increase people’s risk of suicide after discharge. Antipsychotic drugs for “schizophrenia” also tend to worsen outcomes over time. (You can find plenty of articles about both those topics on this site with a quick search, so I won’t link them here.)
You said, “I also wonder what are people’s views on handling aggression.” I think another perspective to consider here is the aggression that is often used against people in crisis. It is not uncommon for force and restraint to be used on people in crisis even when they are not being violent or threatening. It is generally assumed that if the patient was restrained, it was only because the doctors had good reason to do so. Can you imagine what kinds of problems this kind of power imbalance might lead to?
-Jasmine
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“Aggression” is also commonly an understandable response of a labeled person who is being assaulted by staff. If someone comes along and tries to hold me down and pin me into a table with leather straps to hold my wrists and ankles so they can inject me with some substance I don’t want in my body, you bet I’d be inclined to whack them one upside the head! But if the client defends him/herself, s/he is almost invariably considered to have assaulted the staff, even though the staff were the ones assaulting them and they were simply resisting the indignity of being held down and forced to do something against their own will.
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@Steve Yes, that’s a very good point! Thank you for elaborating on that!
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Jasmine, the stories of psychiatric survivors which go against the mainstream narrative are simply virtually never published in the mainstream media. This is why most people assume that it is very wrong and irresponsible to stop taking prescribed psychiatric drugs.
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Interesting observation about psychiatrists and depression, but I would sooner argue that this is what leads psychiatrists to become abusive psychiatrists in the first place, not a sign of a troubled profession.
Does it not make more sense that people who struggle with depression but learn to cope effectively and think they’ve cured it then become soulless psychiatrists who boil all suffering down to pathology?
Every psych horror story I’ve read fits much better with the idea that psychiatrists include a lot of people with unresolved but compartmentalized trauma that fundamentally misunderstand how trauma works because they think they’ve fixed themselves when they really have no idea what that means.
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I agree.
I think most people who choose to become psychiatrists and psychotherapists do so as a way to unconsciously deny their own unresolved issues.
While on the surface it may seem that psychotherapists act less unconsciously than psychiatrists, I think their desire to engage in the power dynamics psychotherapy demands indicates that these people have yet to resolve their own issues.
Meaning their DESIRE to have that much POWER over another human being’s INNER WORLD shows how far they’ve yet to go on their own journey.
I didn’t grow from one-sided relationships, i.e. “psychotherapy”. I find it infantilizing. Engaging in it made me feel I was inherently weak, i.e. “disordered” instead of what each one of us actually is: unavoidably human.
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Dead soul,
I disagree with the notion that “depression” and/or trauma causes people to become abusive. In fact, I think it’s a bit of a sanist notion & can be very stigmatizing for trauma/abuse survivors. I won’t elaborate much here, but I’ll probably write an essay on it in the future.
-Jasmine
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Jasmine, some believe that many people deny or repress their uncomfortable feelings, memories and traumas. This defense mechanism—often invisible to the person themselves—can diminish their capacity to empathize with those who are suffering.
In contrast, those who remain connected to their painful inner world often retain a deeper ability to empathize with themselves and others.
The theory suggests that the more dissociated a person becomes from their true emotional landscape, the more likely they are to act cruelly toward those who remain emotionally intact, as opposed to split off, i.e. emotionally “fragmented”.
In this view, cruelty is not just malice—it’s a reaction to unprocessed pain, projected outward.
Dead soul’s reflections reminded me of Alice Miller’s Drama of the Gifted Child. Her work explores how emotional repression in childhood can shape empathy, dissociation, and adult behavior. If you haven’t come across it yet, I think you may find her insights deeply clarifying—especially around how unprocessed pain can lead to cruelty, not just withdrawal.
It’s not light read, but it’s one that honors emotional truth.
~Birdsong
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Birdsong,
Unfortunately, I am well-aware of these theories. I went to years of therapy, and spent years thinking I was going to become a therapist myself, so I am pretty familiar with most theories out there. It is not for lack of understanding. I simply think they’re wrong.
I actually came across that very book at my local used book store recently; funny you mention it. However, I put it back on the shelf specifically because I found it, well… intolerable. I picked it up because I was labeled “gifted” as a kid (for better or worse) and thought it might be insightful or relatable or something. However, from what I skimmed through standing there in the aisle, it seemed to be either a) things I had already discovered independently in my healing journey & so they weren’t going to be very illuminating to me at this point, or b) things that were just straight-up wrong (or inapplicable to me at least) & also actively triggering because they reinforced damaging & false narratives about myself.
I was “emotionally repressed,” “dissociated,” had “unresolved trauma,” etc for years. I was also highly empathetic, often to a fault. I think my empathy at times was a direct result of my trauma – not in spite of it – for various reasons, and I also think it’s just the way I am to some extent. I am still very empathetic, but now I also know how to be firm if I need to, and prioritize my own needs/feelings.
The reason why narratives like these harmed me is because they planted this idea in my psyche that emotional pain equals morality, and that until/unless I “healed properly,” I was a “bad person” by default. Even if I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I just figured I was probably “unaware” of it or “in denial” or something. This actually (combined with my hyper-empathy) led to me getting taken advantage of in relationships, because others could easily make me feel like I was the problem, that they weren’t emotionally abusing me/ I deserved it, and that with enough self-reflection I could fix the relationship. They gaslighted me to believe that I was simply not having enough empathy/understanding for their side, when in reality, I was almost always being “too nice.”
These kinds of narratives were also a huge contributing factor to my suicidality, self-harm, and general self-hatred. I believed that I should never be in a relationship, get married or have kids because I would surely, inevitably turn into some abusive/neglectful monster if I hadn’t healed by then.
Those narratives may apply for some, but I think for others they can be very damaging. They are far from inherent truths, and like most of psychology, they are more speculation than evidence, yet tend to go unquestioned. Like I said, I plan to write & submit an article about this at some point in the future, so stay tuned for that.
-Jasmine
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Hi Jasmine,
Alice Miller’s theories resonated with me in ways they clearly didn’t for you—and I think that speaks to how personal and varied our healing journeys are.
I didn’t experience her work as moralistic, though I understand how it might land that way. That often happens when therapists publicize their frameworks—it becomes a kind of brand, and sometimes that branding can feel heavy-handed or prescriptive.
The bottom line is: her ideas didn’t help you, and made you feel even worse. I empathize with that. It mirrors how I’ve felt—and still feel—about therapy in general.
That said, I do find inherent truth in Miller’s theories—but that doesn’t mean I believe they apply to everyone. Which means I’m looking forward to reading the article you plan to write on this, as I’m eager to see Miller’s views from another perspective.
Warmly,
Birdsong
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Hi Birdsong,
Thanks for your empathetic & understanding response. I hope I didn’t come across like I was overtly dissing something that you obviously found meaningful. Clearly I have very strong & personal feelings about these ideas, but if you found them helpful, I’m glad for you!
I agree that our trauma & healing journeys all look very different; I guess my main point was that it’s not universal truth or formulaic like it’s often presented as. The problem is, so often when one responds to a certain psychotherapeutic theory with, “well this doesn’t apply to me,” they’re told “well that must be because you’re in denial,” and there’s no arguing out of that accusation (especially when said to them by a therapist!).
Also, I guess I wasn’t referring to just Miller’s book/theories specifically, but moreover the general cultural narrative that “hurt people hurt people” or “traumatized/abused people will pass on the trauma/abuse” UNLESS they heal “properly.” Also the idea that “every abuser was once abused themselves.” Those may be true in SOME cases, but I can think of a lot of exceptions. I also don’t think it’s direct cause-and-effect like it may seem. I won’t give too much more away here, but hopefully you’ll see what I mean when I write that piece.
Anyways, thanks again for your thoughtful reply. Looking forward to bringing a new perspective & continuing this dialogue!
-Jasmine
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Joanna. That’s correct. The press is not really interested. They generally don’t believe it can be so bad, and corrupt. That’s why something like a Panorama special will be the only way to get the public involved.
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I totally agree with you, Phillip. What I have noticed is that the media mention psychiatric oppression only when it is perpetrated against people who are not perceived as “mentally ill” (e.g. people with a diagnosis of autism). Unfortunately the general assumption clearly is that some people *need* forced psychiatric treatment.
I remember reading a social media post about “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest”. The author of the post actually wrote that McMurphy had undergone a “medically unnecessary lobotomy”, as if a lobotomy could ever be justified…
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Well you can think that if you wish, but my story is 100% true and in my opinion and 11 years of experience psychiatrists have been trained to believe a lot of nonsense and protected theories. They may have decided to leave mainstream medicine because of many reasons (fascination with the brain, disillusioned with anatomy and real physiology, because it was so hard and required long nights on call) but they have ended up in philosophy and non scientific theories, which they have spent years believing, sadly. No exciting new developments such as have happened in mainstream medicine during my lifetime. Apart from this ludicrous adherence to a medical model of psychiatry which doesn’t stand up.
Regards.
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The irony is that “exciting new developments” have in fact occurred. But they have almost entirely been blocked from view, not only by those studying human psychology, but from MDs and most of the general public. You really have to hunt to find someone who is doing well in this field based on some recent innovation.
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Yes. Theories and nonsense make up psychiatry.
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I’m very strongly in the camp wanting psychiatry to reform and drop its biological and pharma obsession. I just don’t think it helps our cause to paint with a very broad brush and say that psychiatrists are insecure and have nefarious motives. I see the problem as far more structural and institutional than on the level of personal moral failing. I recognize that it’s possible that you dealt with a psychiatrist who was particularly incompetent and nasty, and those individuals exist in every profession.
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Well, Henry, given the fact that a large proportion, if not an outright majority, of so-called mental health professionals rely on the scientifically dubious DSM and have ties with the pharmaceutical companies whose toxic products they recommend to their clients, I certainly do think personal moral failings and nefarious motives play a significant role in the perpetuation of psychiatric abuse. Structures and institutions are not abstract entities but are made up of individuals, who should be held accountable for their actions–or inaction.
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Here, here!
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Absolutely Joel. As a decade long medically trained victim of psychiatry I can support all you say. What we can do about it in the USA and Europe is te question. My blog has caused quite a reaction over there, but I will be forgotten in another week. Releasing it in the UK will cause criticism from the CPN and heartache for my deceived and misled family here.
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No sorry that’s not true. I have been treated by a dozen psychiatrists who all worked to the same model. Hewitt the ECT chief was particularly nasty as he objected to me questioning his unscientific actions and beliefs. They treat patients as children and just consumers of drugs. No one ever discusses whether drugs are required, just which combinations and doses, and which DSM label to apply. Inpatient psychiatry is what they all try to avoid so it is left perhaps to the worst of them. Outpatient care is left to occupational therapists in the UK with minimal suitable training or abilities. One told me they have 3 months training. There are no excuses or justification for psychiatry.
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Sorry, but some of my replies are recorded out of sequence, and may not be referring to the preceding comment.
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You are entitled to your opinion, but not in my case and thousands like it. The ostrich phenomenon.
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My replies are against the defence of the current psychiatric model of care and appeal in this blog in the wrong order ! So much support for the wholesale abolition of psychiatry. But we have thousands of psychiatric drug addicts that we have created who will need care for a while. Sympathetic enlightened clinicians will be needed until this generation dies out.
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Attrition is the only thing that will bring a definitive end to the way psychiatry is currently practiced.
Because there’s one thing psychiatry didn’t count on: people’s access to the internet.
Which means the following: psychiatry’s masquerade is slowly unraveling, no matter how furiously the pharmaceutical companies keep churning out their slick ads for “psychiatric medications”.
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You haven’t met enough psychiatrists then. The end result is, their profession produces these sorts of horror stories every day, and has for decades, and nothing’s been done about it. Evil’s being done, and defended, by people, and those people are all psychiatrists.
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Actually, the evil is defended by a lot of people who are not psychiatrists as well. Lots of people are making lots of money off of this effort, plus there are some patients/clients who have bought into the model and try to sell it, as well as parents and relatives and friends who gravitate to groups like NAMI who like the idea that their own behavior has nothing to do with their children’s distress.
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Collective denial is as old as time.
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“Groupthink.”
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“…parents and relatives and friends… who like the idea that their own behavior has nothing to do with their children’s distress.” Story of my life.
Not all “profits” are monetary.
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Quite so! Being so subjective, DSM “diagnoses” simply invite people indulging in secondary gain!
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Jasmine, yes Steve’s comment re relatives is spot on. Hope you have a read of this recent article on Mad in America…. https://www.madinamerica.com/2025/11/when-the-family-is-the-patient/
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That’s your opinion which is at odds with 99% of these responses. I Hope nothing similar happens to you but you never know. Without radical change this coercive abuse will continue. Psychiatry is very dangerous and inappropriately powerful. We would do better without it.
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In the most part? Not in the Trust that captured me. I did not meet a pleasant psychiatrist. All they discussed was the DSM and drugs. Many commented that they had not had a surgeon to look after before as if I was a novelty. My Trust has the highest rate of ECT usage in the UK at 47x the rate of the lowest level. It seemed that drugs and ECT were the only items of any use.
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Thanks. My story is true. I met a dozen psychiatrists and they all told me psychiatric lies.They really did express joy at reducing me to the status of a lowly misguided object for their amusement.
Another part of psychiatry is that nothing is confidential. Your whole story is discussed in open forums with medical students present on occasions too. Unbelievable
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Henry,
There’s always one.
You are so wrong.
Read my again. It’s all true.
Take your head out of the sand.
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I’m going to throw Lisa a bone and say not everything in the study of psychology is wrong. The medical model is complete made up crap. What drugs that were found that show some relief of symptoms were found by happenstance. Presenting them as correcting an abnormality (chemical imbalance) is total deceit. Presenting diagnoses in the DMS as deseases is deceit. They are simply names given to clusters of characteristics seen in people in distress.
But there is much in the study of trauma and psychological dynamics that is true. I didn’t go to therapy because I didn’t want to deal with a therapist’s unresolved issues getting projected on me. But I did read books. It was a book that helped me find repressed emotion that I didn’t know I had. I could see that the repressed emotion I had directly related to aspects of myself that I never understood. It was making that discovery along with developing my own paradigm in an area that I think psychology is missing that allowed me to make sense of my experience and recover. So I’m not in favor of throwing the baby out with the bath water. I think there needs to honesty and collaboration in psychology. I don’t feel we have either now.
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Christine, psychology is not a monolithic field, so if you don’t want to throw out the baby with the bath water, as you put it, which one of the hundreds of “babies” in that field would you keep? Hubbard’s Scientology, Janov’s Primal Therapy, Skinner’s Behaviorism, Beck’s CBT, Jungian Therapy, etc. etc.? What criteria would guide you in making this choice?
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There isn’t any set of belief from well known researches, philosophers, etc. that I would treat as scripture. But I think there are partial truths in many.
Obviously, I don’t think the MH field has the knowledge it would need to be helpful. If I did, I would have sought assistance through them. I didn’t because I felt with a lot of certainty that MH services would cause me more harm.
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Lisa, it definitely is true that our views on emotional suffering are diametrically opposite.
You reject the idea that suicide, for example, is primarily a religious or philosophical issue, but you admit your uncertainty as to whether it can be regarded as a medical one. I contend that when a particular state of mind has no verifiable physical cause, any medical intervention is inappropriate and potentially harmful. Phillip’s disastrous experience with the UK psychiatric system makes this fact abundantly clear.
As for the complicated matter of voice hearing, neither you nor anyone else has the right to impose an interpretation of that phenomenon and forcibly hospitalize an individual in the hope that s/he will recover in accordance with a subjective concept of normality. As another thread on the MIA website has shown, such coercive treatment has overwhelmingly negative consequences.
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I agree Joel.
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Talking of suicidal thoughts, these occurred to me when I first realised that I was so distressed about the thought of stopping work at 61.I so loved my job and all that Xiamen with it. Comeradery, grateful patients at follow up, the love, respect and support of my family. I had all this for 40 years. To lose it made me make plans for suicide. Driving off the road into the Avon Gorge, jumping off the Clifton suspension bridge, contacting the rope shop for a suitable length, all went through my head. I eventually stopped making plans when I thought through the aftermath for my family. The effect of a parent’s suicide etc. Itvwas my reasoning that saved me, not the drugs I was on.
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In terms of aggression towards staff, there are staff who enjoy abusing ‘patients’. I used to be forced into a tiny bathroom naked by three large African female staff for a cold shower each morning. They never had warm water. The then towelled me down and forcibly dressed me into other past residents clothes and put me in a wheelchair to go to the dining area. The use of hoists to move me around had damaged my musculoskeletal system. I did fight them and punched the most aggressive ones if I could to get them off me. I did not resist the injections as needles were involved. Subject anyone to that ‘treatment’ each morning and all would resist and fight to get free.I am ashamed I did fight these women but it was their brutality and their enjoyment of embarrassing me that forced me to react as I did. This was after years of lining up to receive handfuls of drugs, checking my mouth to make sure I was swallowing the drugs, and moving me to the dining room for daily porridge and toast. It was the scene from Oliver Twist eating not porridge but gruel . Such humiliation daily.I have flashbacks now when I think of those days. No wonder previously normal people become aggressive under those circumstances. All then noted down as aggression, psychotic behaviour etc. whe it really was self defence to avoid this ritual daily embarrassment.
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Thanks for all the comments and support shown to me. All work hard to change the status quo.This psychiatric pharmaceutical axis of evil cannot be allowed to continue.Many of you have influence and the power to change the ‘narrative’ (annoying word)
I will fight on.
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“Many of you have influence and the power to change the ‘narrative'”(annoying word)”
Not nearly as annoying as “self-regulate”.
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Christine. I agree the fees that that psychologists charge are high. Some do help you think through your problems, and some just watch the clock.
However they don’t have the ability or licence to harm you with drugs and even worse ECT, like the nasty psychiatrists do.
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True. A psychologist just doing therapy is less dangerous particularly if one chooses who to go to. Some therapist provide support and help one think through one’s problems. Part of the reason I stay away from therapy is I had a method I developed for working through my issues. I was looking for the time, space, and would have liked support, while recovering. That’s hard to get because people press for fast improvement and want you to do what they think you should.
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Yes indeed. They talk to you about your experiences ,rather than about your DSM disorder and possible changes to medication.
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I am sorry for the jumbled way my replies to comments have been arranged. There is no explanation to it. All my entries are replies to comments.
I used to be agnostic as a lot of scientists are. Now I think l must be atheist as no God would allow a person who has dedicated his life to helping people often at the expense of lost time with his family, to be treated this way.
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Phillip, I think replies are approved in groups so if you don’t hit reply on a particular person it gets thrown in with a group of responses at the end. It is confusing and difficult to know which comment was related to which previous comment. But I recognize a need to have a moderator approve comments.
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When you reply or comment on the Times, for instance, the reply appears immediately after the comment. It can be done therefore. Thanks Times has a moderator too. It can be done.
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I am sure that any Christian apologist would tell you that it’s not God’s job to police the people of Earth. He can only urge you to be true to yourself and shun evil urges.
But I’m an atheist, too. Instead of God, I believe in Spirit, which exists in each of us, but can become heavily corrupted. You ran into some very corrupted beings.
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Thanks.
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Looks like the lifetime of my blog it’s short. Tomorrow’s fish and chip paper as we say over here.
Thank you everyone for your kind words and support. Do what you can to change it.
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I’m glad my story is still stimulating discussion amongst you all, but so disappointed that none of you are really trying to make a difference with any action.
America has today announced that it will punish our NHS with higher prices and demands for more pharmaceutical trade. Most neurotoxins are made in America now, so that’s where the blame lies. Thank you to the previous ungrateful colonies for all you do to support the psychiatric pharmaceutical axis of evil. I have not met an honest, trustworthy psychiatrist in all my dealings with them. Sorry Lisa.
Phillip
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Phillip, I think that you should realize that our ability to “make a difference” is often very limited. Many people come on this website because of their own personal experiences. To take my own example, I am not an influential person. Our ability to “make a difference” is often limited to our own life and the lives of our family members or friends.
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Ungrateful colonies? Right now those persons are being swamped and drugged by something called the Movement for Global Mental Health . Subjecting yet again these post-colonial peoples to the ideas and practices of the West . Only this time it is Psychiatry that is capturing their bodies/minds . Do you really think they should be grateful?
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Hi Phillip,
I going to Inner Compass Initiative conference today. There are groups pushing for change but as you can imagine changing such a entrenched system that many want to continue as is, is a monumental task.
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But go, and speak up as l would do. You know it will take time but we must all keep be pushing for change.
Remind RFKennedy that JFK’s sister was the victim of American Psychiatry. She ended up with a Lobotomy and was a cabbage for the rest of her life.
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Joanna, I hope that by revealing the wrongs done to me, that I would stimulate those readers who might be in a position to make a difference themselves.The majority of comments are shocked that this could happen to someone who dedicated his life to ‘make a difference’ every day. As a surgeon this might be by performing and teaching a procedure to the best of my ability, but alternatively by deciding that to not operate is the right action. A good surgeon knows when not to operate.
I just hope that readers in positions to change the psychiatric and pharmaceutical damage occurring daily on both sides of the Atlantic, will decide take some steps to ‘make a difference’ themselves. Not just agree, but to do something however small, to move change a little closer. Write to someone, change attitudes and don’t accept this abomination any longer.
Phillip
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Phillip, I fully understand what you mean. There are organizations like MindFreedom International which fight against human rights abuses in the mental health sector. Have you maybe already contacted them? They organize campaigns on behalf of people who undergo coerced psychiatric treatment https://mindfreedom.org/services/ .
I actually think that it is much easier for people to organize to help a person like you than to organize against psychiatry itself. It is very difficult to fight mainstream psychiatry because there are plenty of people who embrace psychiatric labels and want to take psychiatric drugs. And of course the pharmaceutical lobby is very powerful.
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Joanna.
No I haven’t spoken to them. No matter how hard it is we cannot just accept the status quo.Nothing worth fighting for is easy. Whatever you can do you must try.
Primum non nocere.
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I agree with you, Phillip. And believe me, at least some of us are doing more than merely leaving comments on the MIA website. Many of us have been personally resisting the pressure to accept psychiatric labels and take psychiatric drugs.
I also question the assumptions of mainstream psychiatry when I feel safe enough to do it, but I have to be careful because of the persistent stigmatization of people with experience of psychosis. People who have the most power to change the situation are influential psychiatrists and psychologists, not psychiatric survivors whose views are often dismissed as “unscientific”.
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Joanna,
Replying to comments is a minor part of my actions. I have written to all the individual board members of the ‘mental health’ trust (without a single reply), to now 50 members of our parliament, to the health service ombudsman, and to notable individuals such as Gotzsche, Moncrieff, Read, Whitaker et al. I have read many of their books and listened to their videos. I have tried to form All Party Parliamentary Groups, and have written to the senior members of our Royal College of Psychiatry. No replies.They have no answers, or are directed not to reply to any criticism.
What a disgraceful bunch of individuals.
Phillip
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Phillip, yes, I do know that you have been doing many things. What I meant is that many other people here don’t limit themselves to leaving compassionate or indignant comments.
It is depressing, though unsurprising that all these people have not replied to you. Maybe it would be a good idea to contact doctors you know personally, even if they are not psychiatrists. Have you tried to get a second opinion when it comes to your current diagnosis (frontotemporal dementia)? How was the diagnosis actually made?
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No. I have just disagreed and questioned it. There is no treatment for it or confirmatory tests I understand. No scans etc. it’s just another ‘opinion’
As with all psychiatric ‘disorders’. It’s just a way to get me off their hands and free NHS care, as my family and the council now pay. I did disagree and took a short cognitive test, which I was told I achieved 90%. If they revert back to one of their previous guesses, they would send me to a chronic institution out of town evidently, and enforce drug treatment on me. You cannot win.I have said I have been misdiagnosed all along and asked for a legal opinion and claim for medical malpractice but as the treatment had been for 10 years I was told it was too late? There have not been any successful claims for negligence for malpractice in the UK i don’t think. How about the USA?
They threatened to send me well away from Bristol. What do you think? My family still believe that I was/am ‘I’ll’ , as to agree I have been maltreated would involve them in some if the blame, which the psychiatrists have hoodwinked them into believing. My family say I was behaving badly when on massive doses of medication and ECT, which was all drug/ ECT induced. The ‘Home’ I am in in a dementia ward with really bad 80+ year olds is American owned who are only interested in profit, and the care, staff and food etc is abominable. The charges here are the highest in town and all the claims about the place are deceit. They have me on a ‘deprivation of liberty’ label too which means I cannot leave. Any legal eagles out there who can advise? The damage done to me physically limits my mobility, and in the 10 years I have lost my personal clothes and now wear all previous residents clothing. Mine is in all the laundry’s of the 4 ‘bins’ I have been in. I cannot shower properly and have no clothes the change into. I am overweight due to the antipsychotics and awful quality food (all wholesale) for a decade, potatoes and awful bread, so no regular clothes will fit me anymore. I am about 95 kg now and 5ft 8. I had always been a regular 11 stone, size 34 chest 34 inch waist man. I must be 38-40 waist now. My hair is aufull and I look a wreck. I only have old single blad disposable razors and refuse the ‘personal’ care for demented people that is offered by the mainly foreign staff, whose English is terrible. Even my shoes don’t fit and I spend my days lying on a waterproof sponge mattress. Sponge pillows for incontinence which I used to have when drugged. I can shuffle to the wet room/toilet so have remained continent for the last 18 months. I was used to being hoisted in and out of bed in the last psychiatric institution when in depot antipsychotics. My family refuse to agree that I have been’abused’ as they gave permission for all the treatment for a decade. All my friends and colleagues were told I had whichever DSM label I had for 10 years on drugs.
Legal advice please?
Thanks Phillip
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To continue, my family want to sell my large family house, the only possession I have. When confined all my accounts and passwords were changed, and I was robbed of my wallet and credit cards etc. My room was broken into when I was out on nature walks etc. I have refused to agree to a divorce as l still ‘love’ my wife of 45 years. I adore my children who are 42 and 40 now. They have been told since 2013 that I was ill. I was behaving badly due to the treatment I was forced to accept for a decade, not surprisingly. I was frantic at the loss of everything I held dear to me over the course of 2013/14 and thereafter.
No claim against a psychiatrist for coercive ECT has ever been won in the UK as they all stick together protecting the medical model. I think it’s the same all over.
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Phillip, what makes you think that if your current diagnosis was changed, you would be still sent to a chronic institution and forcibly drugged? In Britain people can’t be treated in this way only because they have a psychiatric diagnosis. There are people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia who live in the community and are not forcibly drugged.
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Phillip, I think that it could be a very good idea for you to contact an Independent Mental Health Advocate: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/advocacy/imhas/
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Phillip, I am very sorry to hear about all your experiences, especially the way your family has been acting. There is a British NGO which helps older people who experience abuse, maybe it would be a good idea for you to contact them: https://www.wearehourglass.org .
I am sure that you have the right to a second opinion when it comes to your diagnosis. I have read that the only accurate way to diagnose frontotemporal dementia is via genetic testing or by brain autopsy https://www.theaftd.org/for-health-professionals/diagnosing-ftd/
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Brain biopsy? Post mortem? That’s not appealing. All rubbish I’m afraid. The whole idea specifies an anatomical location to some brain disease. We know it’s all made up.
Thanks for that.
Phillip
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Phillip, couldn’t you ask your children or your wife to buy for you shoes and clothes which would fit? If your children and wife refuse to do it and if you have no access to any money, there must be a way to contact a social worker or someone who would help you in this situation.
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Joanna. There are no clothes that will fit me now. 11 years of abuse, hoisting, terrible diet and anti psychotics has turned me into a physical freak. Like you see in those grossly obese people being fed on hideous TV. I have been size 8 UK shoes since I was 18, but had to order size 91/2 when I last bought shoes 3 years ago. There are no trousers that would fit me now.
My wallet and credit card details were stolen in ‘hospitals’ that I’ve been in, along with all my old chothes not by my family. The money passwords were changed by my wife under the direction of third party’s. I wore suits at work for 40 odd years with formal shirts and commonly cuff links. Really smart. So my wardrobe was full of those clothes. We are banned in the UK from wearing white coats or jackets due to a made up infection risk.I was moved around in a wheel chair for two years at the last place, and haven’t been dressed in underclothing since that time. Thanks for the suggestions that I contact those other people, but I’m finished with all that now. Today I received an email from our health secretary and the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister reiterating all I know about the situation with regards to psychiatric treatment in the UK. It’s all totally untrue in practice where there is no protection from them if you disagree at all with their actions and archaic treatments. They say they are ‘reviewing the Mental Health Act’ which dates from 1983 and that ‘no drugs are prescribed unless of proven value and efficacy’. They say that nobody is given ECT against their wishes ‘unless necessary’ to save their lives when medication has not worked! Psychiatric treatment never cures anything as we all know, it just sedates and controls. All drugs and procedures are assessed by the ‘National Institute of Clinical Excellence’. A committee made up of‘experts. The mental health issues ask for psychiatrists advice, so that’s all one sided. In parliament there are some doctors but predictably only previous GP’s and, you’ve guessed it, disillusioned psychiatrists. No front line senior physicians or surgeons who have better more useful things to do.
Sadly there is no hope.
Phillip
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Phillip, I am very sorry to hear about it all. Unfortunately I don’t think that anyone is going to admit that you have been harmed by ECT and psychiatric drugs. In my opinion trying to make someone admit it would be only a waste of your time and energy.
However, I am sure that you can still do something to improve your situation in the residential home. So not all hope is lost… If I were you, I would focus on what you can do to make your situation better.
I don’t know if you are forced to take psychiatric drugs in the residential home. As I have personally found out, the best way to protect oneself from unwanted psychiatric treatment is to remain calm. If a person seems resentful, angry etc., the staff may well see it as a reason to increase the dosage or to add new drugs.
In fact, if you show any strong emotions, it may be unfortunately seen merely as a symptom of an illness. People who are not seen as “challenging” patients are treated better.
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Phillip, you say that your family changed all your passwords, took your wallet and your credit cards. Maybe they have very good intentions and want to protect you, but they should not leave you without properly fitting clothes and shoes.
If they refuse to buy you properly fitting clothes and shoes, their behaviour is abusive. I think that you should realize it despite your love for your family.
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Joanna,
Yes you’re right. I’m not on any drugs now. Not for 18 months. It us so difficult not to get angry when your family say you have been, and still are, unwell. lf I had the latest ‘diagnosis’ of FT Dementia, could I have written the blog for MIA and MITUK, written daily to the government and ombudsman, and still advise and help the carers in this dreadful, money grabbing place? No. Daily I have to avoid showing anger. I have a different person giving me my weetabix daily, and I have to explain how to provide it and a cup of tea (I sugar) to the latest non British person each morning. I get given soup spoons, caster sugar, other residents personal cups and every variation each morning. I could scream. Add to that various truly demented women coming into my room all day long, lost, and refusing to leave. I have to keep calm and call the staff to remove them. I then have to lock my door to keep them out. Thus I receive no attention from the staff in the form of care and food for the rest of the day. Lastly, I had a pathetic old age psychiatrist asking to see me, with a view to medication for my ‘anxiety and complaining’ behaviour! No one could believe it. He is due to return this week. I can destroy his theories and psychobabble, but due to the residual severe memory loss due to the ECT , if he assesses my cognitive function with short term memory tests, I won’t do well and he will say I have dementia. I cannot win. But I still will try (not fight!) to try.
Sorry to reply in such length.
Phillip
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Phillip, yes, you don’t come across as someone who has dementia and this is why I think that it would be a good idea to try to get a second opinion. In the case of frontemporal dementia changes in the brain are typically visible on structural (MR) and functional (SPECT) imaging (page 6 here: https://forensicnetwork.scot.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FTD-Resource-Full-Version-FINAL.pdf).
Your family unfortunately seems to be convinced that you are seriously ill. I realize how disappointing and painful it is to you, but I guess that you just have to accept the fact that you are unable to change their attitude.
Great to know that you are able to lock your door. As to anger, I understand why you feel that way, but – as I said in my earlier comment – your anger is unfortunately seen merely as a symptom of your illness. As you know, the staff in such places is badly paid and this is why it is so often non-British. And it’s probably not easy for the staff to remember every patient’s wishes.
Maybe it would be a good idea for you to write down your observations in the residential home, to keep a diary. This was something which helped my brother a lot when he had to spend some time in a mental hospital.
You might also find comforting the thought that you are not in such a bad state as many (if not most) other patients in this residential home. You can read and write, you also have some control over your life and your surroundings, unlike these unfortunate people.
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If anything in this matter is “unscientific,” it’s the utterly presumptuous notion that so-called mental disorders can be arbitrarily voted into (and less often, out of) existence by panels of self-styled experts without employing rigorous testing and replication of findings, the hallmarks of all legitimate scientific endeavor.
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Joel,
Yes agree totally. All proper medical disorders and diseases have confirmatory tests and are provable. All except ME, fibromyalgia, and long Covid etc All the made up disorders in the greatest work of fiction, the DSM 5, are without any confirmatory tests. We often name disorders with Latin terms to make them sound real, like again fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Idiopathic (we have no idea) and the word meaning ‘medically induced’ which my post ECT brain forgets at present. Help please! Psychogenic? No.what is the word? Ah, iatrogenic !! That’s it. Iatrogenic puerperal fever. Caused by maternity staff not washing their hands between the pathology room and the delivery suite, before germs and antisepsis were realised and identified. Diseases caused my medical staff, like everything in psychiatry. Iatrogenic amnesia post ECT. Parkinsonian movement disorders caused by antipsychotics, All of psychiatry.
Phillip
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Joanna.
In reply to your note today.
Thanks for your support and opinion. I had an MRI 2 years ago. My third. Nothin noted apart from the mild symmetrical atrophy for a 72 year old. Page 6 of the document says neither special MRI or Spect can confirm or refute the rare diagnosis of FTD. I don’t have it. I personally don’t believe any imaging is helpful for diagnosing any psychiatric disorder. My speciality in my perinatal ultrasound training was the CNS, and I lectured on it across London. Mild ventricular dilatation is not uncommon and is non specific. Remember too that in animal studies (monkeys) mild cerebral atrophy is a result of long term antipsychotics too!
I don’t believe any psychiatrists now except those in the CPN. I’m not going to see any random old age psychiatrist. He would find some odd DSM label for me, or make up a new one, with an appropriate list of medications.
They could say I am now fine and how clever they were to cure me, even though a decade of ECT and neuroleptics has affected my memory severely and the inactivity and hoisting has left me with bad mobility issues, due to weight gain and muscle atrophy.
Joanna Moncreiff is writing a letter signed by a very large number of psychiatrists and other doctors for the Guardian tomorrow.
I cannot think of myself as lucky that I am not as demented as all in here. I’m not lucky in any stretch of the imagination.
Best wishes.
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Phillip, among the many accounts of psychiatric abuse that I’ve read on the MIA website and elsewhere over the years, your experiences are the most horrific of all. If the mental health system can mistreat a prominent physician like you so cruelly and with such impunity, one can only imagine the fate of others less well known who have the misfortune to be crushed in the gears of this machinery of death.
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Joel,
Indeed. It must all be radically changed on both sides of the pond. We cannot just moan about it. Those working in the psychiatric industry are not fools, just misguided previous medical graduates who for various reasons could not carry on in real medicine. Probably they were unsuited in the first place. Some decided that philosophy would have been a better choice and others liked the status and power of medicine but were not prepared for all the hard work. Joanna and friends excluded.
Phillip
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Phillip, in the same document they say (also on page 6) that “a normal scan, reported in about 10% of cases… suggests a need for diagnostic caution”. So if you now have a brain scan and it turns out to be normal, the results of the scan could be used to question your diagnosis.
Brain imaging can and should be used to diagnose frontotemporal dementia – see also page 16 here: https://forensicnetwork.scot.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FTD-Resource-Full-Version-FINAL.pdf
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Joanna
Thanks again I have had 3 Head scans MRI or CT. All within normal limits. Psychiatrists are not neuroscientists and order these tests with no idea how to evaluate any results.They should not be allowed to order these tests at all! They are just psychologists with a past history of a medical degree.
As a gynaecologist I was not qualified to assess the results of say any neurological tests that were available. That’s the danger of easier access to special investigations without previous proper history and examination. The time honoured preliminary medical assessments
Phillip
Phillip
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Phillip, yes, your brain scans should definitely be evaluated by specialists with sufficient knowledge.
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Phillip, if doctors find out that you don’t have frontotemporal dementia, this will be great news for you. Most importantly, this will mean that you will not be forced to spend the rest of your days in a residential home. As long as you are perceived as a patient with a form of dementia, other people, including your family, believe that you are not going to improve.
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Joanna
I appreciate that but even if prolonged further evaluations do cast doubt on the label of FTD that they ‘choose’ to apply, they would just move my label back to another unprovable ‘disorder’ risking the then enforced medication! My ECT induced memory loss would be the basis of their new label. ECT is one of their tools to inflict physiological brain damage, the memory loss from which forms the basis of the poor performance at cognitive tests.
Because of psychiatry I have no way forward! From one made up condition to another. I want them to agree that I have suffered enormously because of their ‘non specialty’. The answer? The radical reform of or abolition of psychiatry.
Thanks
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Phillip, I truly think that moving your label to another “disorder” would be much better for you. There is much more pessimism about patients with dementia than about patients with psychiatric diagnoses.
As a person with a diagnosis of FTD you will probably never leave a residential home. If you had a diagnosis of, say, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, you would be able to live in the community. I know that there are people in the UK with such diagnoses who live in the community and are not forcibly drugged.
According to what I have read the symptoms of FTD are largely behavioural (striking changes in the person’s behaviour). I guess that in your case FTD was diagnosed on the basis of your behaviour.
As long as you have a diagnosis of FTD, psychiatrists will not agree that they have harmed you. They will keep seeing you as a seriously ill person who is bitter and resentful because of his experiences and because of his illness.
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Phillip, according to this document the frontotemporal brain atrophy observed in the vast majority of cases of frontotemporal dementia differs from the one observed in psychotic patients. This is what they say on page 9: “The presence of frontotemporal atrophy on imaging, executive impairments demonstrated by neuropsychological evaluation, as well as the temporal evolution, can be helpful in distinguishing FTD presenting with psychosis, from psychosis mimicking FTD.”
I think that the whole document https://forensicnetwork.scot.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FTD-Resource-Full-Version-FINAL.pdf is really worth reading. It describes, among others, various tests which can be performed when FTD is suspected.
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Thanks.
‘Can be helpful’ is the crucial line. From my personal experience in assessing the degree of ventricular dilatation/ cerebral atrophy, from my scanning days in perinatal medicine, is a very poorly evaluated area still.
Thanks
Phillip
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Joel,
Agreed. Nowhere in real medicine do a self selected group of ‘doctors’ sit down to consider which collection of symptoms constitute a disorder requiring a recommended, chemical medication, and which if any previous collection of symptoms does no longer constitute a treatable disorder. All totally unscientific and peculiar to psychiatry.As I’ve said previously, psychiatry is not a branch of medicine, but a social political construct out of control, which needs radical reform or elimination.
Phillip
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We’re in total agreement on this, Phillip. I would just point out that since psychiatry is based on the myth of mental illness, myths can neither be reformed or abolished. The best way to draw people away from a false belief is to prove its absurdity–just as phrenology fell into deserved oblivion after its heyday in the nineteenth century.
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As a nation we are broke in the UK now. With me being the only breadwinner in my family, when I was forced to leave work on all the drugs, I went from the top of the Consultant scale with a private practice to a pension. My brainwashed and estranged wife takes half of my pension income after advice from I don’t know who, and all my medical colleagues (20 years of friends) have been told to accept the psychiatric DSM diagnoses. All this is detailed in the ‘blog’.
It’s unbelievable that the nation believes in the chemical imbalance theory of ‘mental illness’ still, after all the serotonin etc nonsense has been accepted by the APA and RCPsych as unproven. SSRI ‘s are still one of the most prescribed group of drugs in the country.
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Hi Phillip,
I just read your reply today to Joanna. I want to say my thoughts are with you. I absolutely understand how frustrating your situation is. You’re not crazy, what goes on in this world is crazy. It’s hard to see it and not be able to do anything about it because you’re dismissed with a label that says you’re the problem. I’ve been there and still are to some extent.
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I’m so sorry. I believe you. I’m retired medical and have also met what I now call the ‘mental harm system’, and it has been horrifying beyond belief. Utterly appalling. Thank you for sharing your experience and wishing you healing.
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Thank you ‘Sunflower’. Getting worse being still treated as mentally ill. The harm is real and terminal. I’ve been brave and am telling my story. Why are so many comments anonymous? We must not whisper. Get on the attack with me. What are you afraid of?
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Thanks Phillip. I am recovering and have a plan. I am not quiet about my experience. I need to protect myself until I am recovered enough to step forward. I developed a serious brain injury from the medication adverse and withdrawal effects, and the egregious ‘care’. I am adding my voice to the sea of voices out there.
I am also working on my heart, on my inner wisdom, and with the light of the universe using the Ren Xue system. This system is underpinned by theories, and with practices aligned with uplifting life. We need this theoretical foundation to truly understand life.
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Sunflower, that “sea of voices” should be compiled in a huge volume, or even a series of volumes, to counteract the dubious psychiatric narrative that “patients” receive credible, accurate, objective information on the potential harm they might incur by ingesting the therapeutic “tools” (neurotoxins) or undergoing the ECT that are supposedly designed to safely treat their hypothetical disorders.
Elementary logic suggests that if the DSM’, on which the great majority of mental health professionals base their practice, is an unreliable pseudo-scientific mishmash, any advice they give clients is automatically suspect.Detailed real-life accounts by psychiatric survivors (such as Dr. Phillip S. and Julie Martin, whom I referenced in previous posts) could not be casually dismissed as mere “anecdotes” and would provide cogent proof of psychiatric incompetence, deception and manipulation on a massive scale.
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Totally agree Joel. It’s beyond belief that even after all the excellent scientific work done by CPN members such as Joanna Moncrieff and John Read especially over the last few years, has not yet been accepted by psychiatry as conclusive evidence that psychiatric treatments still inflicted on thousands of people each day are destroying lives (like mine and so many others).
Psychiatry has no scientific basis, and continues to invent new theories to defend their despicable physical and pharmaceutical practices. A complete revision of the whole of psychiatry and the MHA is long overdue.
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I so agree with all you say. It is unconscionable. I agree that doctors who have been harmed, and then learnt about psychiatry though that experience, directly addressing doctors as to what it’s about, could help.
Yes, anything without a proper theoretical basis is bound to have problems in it’s application.
Also understanding how medical culture operates, the thinking patterns within it, the inherent misuse of power, the basis of misogyny, racism etc etc, I think is important. That can provide a bigger context within which to position the historical development and current way Western medicine operates. Otherwise just ‘giving the facts’ may not be enough for people to hear it, without a rigourous framework, and an emotional impact.
I feel so sad for so many patients for so long who have been and are still seriously harmed. What happened to me was beyond belief – I thought – until I discovered it was neither personal nor uncommon.
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I understand needing to protect oneself until you are ready to take on other’s critiques of your experience and viewpoints. I did that to.
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Very good question Philip
Maybe they are not what they seem; some at least
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Dear Phillip,
I find your experience highly relatable, being all but forced to take this drugs by people who in ny view have latent mental health problems themselves. They tried convincing me with cheap rhetorical artifices and they used it to form a maximum pressure environment when I remained unconvinced. One thing example I like to recount is how when I said “I fear …” They would retort that it was a sign of anxiety, disregarding that it is a valid figure of speech like how one would say “I better close the windows for I fear it would rain”. Having said all that, I would like to reach out to know more about your case to better fight against such artifices again. My email is [email protected] if it isn’t available to see on the website.
Thank you
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Tay,
Thank you. Most psychiatrists have nothing good to offer those in distress.Traditionally they would talk to those with problems and help. Some would psychoanalyse but this was not always helpful, and could have harmful effects.Then it was discovered that some disturbed people had cerebral syphilis and could be treated with antibiotics! Thus began the medicalisation of psychiatry with various drugs, initially largactil, then other heavy tranquillisers to empty the asylums and stupefy the innocent victims.
Then an Italian at an abattoir watching animals being stunned before slaughter, thought it would be a good treatment for melancholy, and easier than insulin induced coma’s! You couldn’t make it up.But then, because they had wasted 5 years studying proper medicine, They decided to start prescribing other sedatives and tranquillisers (and Lithium?) for a list of invented ‘disorders’ put together by a dozen American Psychiatrists, by voting.No scientific value to the decisions made at all. These new disorders were then allocated various of the drugs in increasing doses and combinations, and published every decade or so in a catalogue called (for unknown reasons) the Diagnostic ‘Statistical’ Manual.Sent free to psychiatrists by the pharmaceutical industry! Again you couldn’t make it up.
Best wishes Tay
Phillip
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That says it. It’s something how it all developed to what we have now and is accepted as scientific expertise. What people know through their experience is pushed down for that.
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Robert
How many reads and comments did I get altogether? It’s not on the website anymore I think. Hope it inspired some to take action and support the movement to radically improve psychiatry.
Best wishes,
Phillip S !
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Phillip, your story is still on the website. It currently has 18 672 views and 284 comments. This is a very good result!
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It’s the most views and conversation provoking of any article I’ve seen. I don’t believe any articles are removed. There are just new articles highlighted. People can always do a search for yours.
I think issues around Mental Health services won’t be resolved quickly or easily. I believe change requires a lot of work over time. The movement for change is growing but I see many difference viewpoints among service users on how psychological issues should be understood and treated.
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Thanks Joanna,
18000+ views, and 284 comments .Will it make any difference though? Does it just prove that people like to read about the traumas and misfortune of others? Will it stimulate anyone to take any action to change things? Isn’t that the whole point?
I thought it might help, but now I’m not so sure. My wife and son still believe that the psychiatric misdiagnosis, mistreatment and damaging medication/ECT was scientific and sound, despite all the evidence against it. I’ve sent them Moncrieff,Read, Whittaker, Gotzche, and all the others but they are still unable to accept that they were misled and therefore partly responsible for it all. The main cause of my profound distress has finally been stuck off the medical register after I exposed him, so will not cause any more harm.I have now been told that the final ‘disease’ diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia has been withdrawn. However I cannot as yet find a legal firm to obtain the damages for negligence that should be unopposed in view of their admission of misdiagnoses I have been given for a decade. Surely in America l would be looking at a considerable settlement for loss of income for 11 years, assault for coercive treatments and all the rest. I’ll have to sell my house now too. Does anyone have any ideas? America is tops for litigation so someone must have some advice? I have tried to obtain apologies from the main psychiatrists involved but they don’t reply to my letters. I have spoken to senior politicians but they are restricted by the archaic British Mental Health Act.1983, and the financial muscle of the pharmaceutical industry. I believe all my communications with politicians has driven the current concern about overdiagnosis and over medicalisation of so called mental health‘disorders’.
But the carnage will go on. As it has done for multiple decades. How can we make a change?
Merry Christmas
Phillip S
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Phillip, like many others I think that your story is crucially important because it shows that coerced psychiatric treatment (including ECT) can affect even respected doctors. There are surely many academics, activists and mental health professionals among people who have read your story.
Unfortunately your wife and your son – like plenty of other people – probably assume that psychiatry is “scientific” and that those who criticize it are against science. And you are right – most people find it very difficult to accept that they have been misled and that they are partially responsible for someone’s misfortune. I really hope that your family members are going to change their approach.
The fact that your frontotemporal dementia diagnosis has been withdrawn is excellent news! As to possible damages for negligence, unfortunately I know too little about British law to know if you have a realistic chance of obtaining them.
Merry Christmas and please don’t give up hope!
Joanna
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Joanna.
Thanks. My son should be able to sort out what is and isn’t scientific. He’s an orthopaedic surgeon. There used to be an old medical joke; how do you hide money from an orthopaedic surgeon?
Put it in a textbook.
Not so funny now because of the internet.
I now know the psychiatric literature (what there is). He doesn’t so probably uses AI which just scans the internet.
AI cannot think and reason.
Phillip
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Phillip, yes, one of the problems is that doctors, too, are often victims of societal brainwashing which portrays psychiatry as a very serious science which should not be criticized by “laymen”. And the use of AI is another huge problem.
Of course probably the biggest problem is many people’s refusal to accept that they may be participating or have participated in something absurd and evil.
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Christine,
‘It will take time’
That’s a defeatist attitude.Isn’t 90 years long enough?
I question whether many of the psychiatrists in the CPN really do want change to the totally unscientific practice that it is. It is as effective as homeopathy but has incredibly harmful effects. It is a disgrace to the honourable practice of modern real medicine. Some facts are indisputable:
ECT should be stopped immediately and be confined to the history books alongside insulin induced coma.
Antidepressants do not treat the made up condition of depression. They are just placebos with bad serious side effects.
Antipsychotics are hideous drugs with even worse long term effects.
Psychiatry is heavily supported by the worst section of the pharmaceutical industry.
The DSM is a work of fiction and is of no clinical value at all. It is an aid for billing purposes.
All psychiatrists are protective of the occupation that they have wasted their lives on, which is understandable. Medicine was not the correct choice for most, with some notable exceptions, fighting hard to make changes.
This country’s financial mess is partly due to the explosion in welfare, a major component of which is the large numbers claiming inability to work due to many of the new conditions listed in the DSM.
The discredited theories of psychiatry are still being taught in medical schools and appear in AI answers and current texts too.
Nothing will change unless decisive action is taken. Women wouldn’t have the vote now if it wasn’t for the suffragettes.
Merry Christmas All.
Phillip S.
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Phillip, I see two problems here. First of all, many people *want* to be perceived as unable to work because of all kinds of diagnoses. And some of these people would have to learn or relearn how to engage in some form of (paid or unpaid) work.
Secondly, there are relatively few people who are aware of the harms of psychiatry and the mainstream discourse continues to marginalize such critical voices. It is quite difficult to find groups and communities which don’t defend the use of psychiatric drugs as supposedly positive in some cases.
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No no no Joanna. Some people are not prepared to do any work because they can survive on the state for handouts. There are those with confirmed medical conditions that make physical work difficult or impossible but those are now in the minority of claimants. So many people cannot work because the drugs that they are put on for some unproven DSM label MAKE them very unwell.
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I agree with you, Phillip. There are definitely people unable to work because of the effects of psychiatric drugs, including disabilities caused by these drugs.
However, there are now also people with such diagnoses as ADHD, autism, chronic fatigue syndrome etc. who are receiving PIP benefits in the UK. These are sometimes young, able-bodied people who see benefits simply as a source of income (I am not talking about people who really have serious difficulties with social and everyday functioning).
The alleged success rates for PIP claims for various diagnoses are listed here, they are very high for the diagnoses I have mentioned https://www.benefitsandwork.co.uk/personal-independence-payment-pip/success-rates .
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Absolutely. Asbergers and Autism don’t exist in the DSM5 now. Amazing what is being claimed for, with others running marathons with stage 4 cancers. The demise of face to face evaluations is a huge problem. Nobody would force an individual with severe dementia or cerebral palsy to work but some of the others are very questionable.Evidently 45% are for weak ‘mental health’ disorders.
It’s all a disgrace.
Phillip
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Phillip, I fully agree with you. As you said, the fact that people no longer have to be evaluated face to face is a huge problem in the UK. Anyone can claim that s/he has e.g. extreme agoraphobia and is unable to leave his/her house. I personally suspect that thanks to this approach the British government is able to hide the scale of unemployment.
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Women got the right to vote through the Women’s suffrage movement. But they didn’t get it in a day. Frankly, I would say there was more unity and agreed upon goals in the Women’s suffrage movement. The only area where I see wide spread agreement, in changing our mental health system, is in the need for more respect, not dismissal, for the service user’s input on treatment.
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Christine.The psychiatric nonesense has been going on for close on a century since the asylum, insulin coma, lobotomy days! The answer is much more drastic than just listening to the ‘service users’. Yet that term shows the disrespect in itself. It’s a service, not a medical practice. As a victim the information given was appalling and a host of unproven lies about efficacy, safety and consequences of ‘treatments’. Medicine has patients, not service users.Public toilets have service users. Radical reform is the only answer.
Stop ECT immediately. Ban all the unproven SSRI’s that do not do what’s on the tin. Both the APA and RCPsych admit that the neurotransmitter theories are fiction now. Short term sedatives for acute distress are sometimes needed, but not drugs that ‘take six weeks to have an effect’. The passage of time does too. Stop all the heavy antipsychotics with their dreadful side effects. Stop imprisoning people with distress, and adopt the ltalian model for any necessary inpatient care.
Force the pharmaceutical companies to release all the results of any psychiatric drug trials, not just the ones that clearly show safer outcomes. Publish long term results of any treatments. You know it makes sense. Let’s demand action now.
Phillip s
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Phillip, your latest reply reinforces the points I made in a recent debate I had on this website with a practicing psychiatrist: indeed, the information commonly being provided to psychiatric clients (neither patients nor “service users”) is more often than not incomplete, deceptive, or downright false.
It should be obvious that no matter how many accounts by persons with lived experience refute the standard psychiatric biomedical narrative, their testimonies will invariably be dismissed as anecdotal and thus unreliable. This cavalier attitude speaks volumes about the intellectual integrity and professional competence of practitioners engaged in this harmful pseudo-science that has striven for over a century to be recognized as a legitimate branch of medicine.
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Joel
Agree. Completely. But we’re preaching to the converted. Who should we make thee points to? Governments, the media, the masses? There must be a way.
Phillip
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There isn’t anything in your comment that I would dispute. I agree with what changes you propose. The Italian model would be a step in the right direction. I can imagine how appalling it must be as a physician to have psychiatry presented and perceived as a scientific medical practice when it very clearly isn’t. My point is there are many people currently receiving Mental Health services that will fight the removal DSM and the medical model. If you question that all you have to do is read comments on “X”.
My story is different from yours and I see the problem as being wider than the medical model. The beliefs around psychological issues in general are a problem. When you remove the medical model people see psychological issues as character flaws or poor coping skills. Which is also wrong and my experience is that one is treated in a hostile, disciplinary way when one’s psychological issues are view along those lines. So many people will take the label with the acceptance that what they’re experiencing is real, serious and out of their control. I wrote an article for Mad in America the title “Is Mental Health a Choice—and can understanding help us heal?”. Someone commented that the title was clickbait. The title wasn’t for clickbait. The title represented my view that it’s not a choice and until people start seeing psychological issues as naturally occurring when certain conditions are present, they are never going to treat those who develop a serious psychological condition well, appropriately, or in a manner that heals. But if we could do all that you suggest that would be a very substantial improvement.
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Christine, you make some excellent points in your comment. I personally think that psychological issues are very real even if we don’t assume that a person has a “condition”. E.g. the feeling of hopelessness is a very real psychological problem.
I totally agree with you that there is the constant danger of seeing any psychological problems as character flaws/poor coping skills, which can be extremely unfair to the suffering person.
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Joanna,
Yes. The government for some reason prefers to bury the increase in mental health claimants in the unemployment numbers rather than the unfit to work statistics. Cannot understand why.
Phillip
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Joanna Badura,
Looks like you are the tail of the comment writers now. Are you a psychiatrist or psychologist?
Nobody has had any ideas how to effect the change necessary to the awful status quo.
Best wishes
Phillip S
[email protected]
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Phillip, I really don’t envision any meaningful change in psychiatry without a fundamental transformation in the wider social, economic, political, and cultural order in which it functions as an integral part. The problems so widespread in mainstream psychiatry—its connection with the Pharmafia, coercive and manipulative practices, promotion of the false biomedical paradigm–inevitably reflect the ethos of ruthlessly exploitative systems, whatever their nature. As I’ve pointed out before, psychiatry has found a welcome and profitable home in various fascist, communist, and capitalist countries. Given the privileged status and dogmatic mindset so typical of its practitioners, can this be an accident?
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Joel,
Thanks again. All understood but like all victims I can’t stop believing that I can change things to prevent harm to others. I should be able to change the most unscientific unproven inappropriate part of medicine, still in existence. As a medic I am best placed to push for change.
I skipped the psychiatry lectures after a week as nothing made any sense and lacked proof.Just a collection of ideas and theories about the mind. They didn’t mention the shocking history in the seventies, and the SSRI’s and the medical model were not dreamed up then. I recall that the tricyclics and MAOI’s seemed daft and dangerous. I made a good contribution to Obstetrics and Gynaecology, but to abolish the medical model, ECT and psychotropic drugs before l go would be the crowning glory. Perhaps in 2026.
Phillip
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Phillip, unfortunately I am only a sociologist and no longer affiliated with a university. As to ideas for change, I would say that the crucial thing is to stay away from psychiatrists and psychiatric drugs.
One of the sources of today’s situation is the widespread assumption that a person who has some kind of problem (anxiety, depression, sleeping problems etc.) should see and trust a “specialist”. There is far too much uncritical trust in mental health “specialists” and of course this is constantly reinforced and perpetuated by the mainstream culture. And the persistent extremely negative stereotypes of the “mentally ill” contribute to maintain the belief that forcible psychiatric treatment is both justified and necessary.
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Joanna,
Ah, good for you for not being a psychiatrist. What you say is obviously right and I have managed to fight against coercive treatment for 18 months, so I’m not drugged anymore. Memory is destroyed though. Family of medics who don’t know about the deceit and lies of psychiatry and let them poison and electrocute me. Being a pure scientist I know little about sociology, but I imagine it’s not harmful.
Thanks for your good wishes.
Phillip
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You are very welcome, Phillip! Yes, I know that you are fortunately no longer drugged. I was very sorry to hear about the impact of ECT on your memory.
The sociologist Erving Goffman wrote the seminal books “Asylums: Essays on the Condition of the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates” and “Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity”. I can definitely recommend them and they are also very well-written. One does not have to be a social scientist to appreciate them.
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Venetia
I think you have missed the whole point. Xerostomia is yet another side effect of antipsychotics. The way to stop it is to stop antipsychotics. Not to suggest another unproven ‘way of breathing’ as therapeutic.
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Diana Rose.
Most British psychiatrists use the DSM5 not the ICD10. The ICD mainly mirrors the DSM anyway. My various false diagnoses were discussed as DSM entries I know.
Phillip
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Well we can agree or disagree about that!
Which just about sums up this whole thread . Yup I just re-read the whole thing.
Guess what ? There’s nothing new . It’s just arranged – or deranged – slightly differently . Individual/ society or structure / agency are everywhere or re-purposed as evil v dupes .
Anything can be derived from one thing including sliding in right wing ideas if they fit with the ‘critical” narrative which at one point itself becomes suspect . Sorry to be cynical but
But what? I find it profoundly depressing . The public won’t change its mind . The public is allergic to disability, sickness and anything reminiscent of mortality. Of course it’s misguided but Psychiatry survives on HOPE . The more you show how hopeless it is the more you support it’s survival because denial of mortality and suffering is today’s opium of the people . Self-righteous anger, right or not, never punctured religion .
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Diana,
Your recent two messages don’t make any sense to me at all. Who is the’she’ to whom you refer?
The rest is defeatist and appeasement . An attitude which would have lost this country the war in 1939.
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Diana, I think that I understand what you mean. As you said, today’s mainstream society tends to deny suffering. Instead of seeing a suffering person who needs compassion and help many people prefer to see someone who has “mental health issues” and needs “treatment”. And there are also so many people who assume that if a person has any problems, s/he should share them with a “specialist” instead of “burdening” others.
I also totally agree with you that self-righteous anger is not going to puncture strong, religion-like beliefs. The anger of a psychiatric survivor may be actually seen as one of the symptoms of his or her “illness”.
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Phillip, in response to your question regarding the proper audience–government, the media, the masses–to whom we should address our concerns about and criticism of psychiatric practices, I don’t have a ready answer.
I frankly don’t believe that government agencies and the mainstream media, which for various reasons largely accept the psychiatric biomedical narrative, will be very responsive to counter-arguments. The entrenched interests supporting the current mental health system are powerful and hostile to any voices that could threaten their authority and, of course, their profits.
I can only repeat my pessimistic conclusion that only a complete breakdown of the existing economic and political order could create an opportunity, however slight, to change things for the better.
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Joel,
That’s. Frank, albeit pessimistic. As you point out I’ve tried just about everything so far. Even baring my soul with this blog as the final sacrifice.
But carry on I will, to prove that I am mad after all.
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Yes, do carry on. If you persuade even one person to avoid or stop taking neurotoxins or to refuse ECT, your efforts will have proved worthwhile.
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19,000 reads and 330 replies. I hope some are persuaded to ask for, or demand change.
Phillip
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Hi Phillip, I read your story and find it so brave that you are sharing this. Especially coming from the medical field yourself.
I was wondering if you would be open to having a chat and sharing your story on a podcast that exposes abuse in the field of psychiatry? We would love to interview you.
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Hello Cassie
Yes I am keen to be part of the progress to expose psychiatry. Let me have your contact details and we can talk off this platform
Phillip
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Hi Phillip, terrific! Please email me at [email protected] and we can connect further!
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Sorry-
Please email me at
[email protected]
or
[email protected]
Looking forward to connecting with you!
– Cassia
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Hello Phil,
I well remember you from when you were a medical student at the London. Brian R had seen this article and told me about it. I had heard of your situation via medical friends in Bristol, but knew no detail. What a tragedy for you and your family. Well done for writing about it all.
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Thanks Dave. What was BJ doing as a Gp reading Mad in America
My email is
phillpalexandersmith7@gmail com
Lizzy Fischl very unwell,sadly
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Call me DAVE
07850302288
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