Involuntary Obedience: Rituals of Humiliation Disguised as ‘Care’
Like slavery took such a long time to be âofficiallyâ forbidden, psychiatric hospitals will be with us for some time yet. Their masters, the doctors or administrators, no longer give beatings with their hands but with the far more treacherous chemicals that allow them to keep a good conscience and distribute what are beatings nevertheless.
The Political Abuse of Psychiatry in America â My Story
Imagine going to the airport to travel to London, only to find yourself locked in a high-security psychiatric ward a few hours later, paralyzed by psychoactive drugs and deprived of all your belongings. This happened to me, and you will be shocked to learn how easily it could happen to you.
Dialogue with a Psychiatrist
âYou need to realise that what we see and hear in our madness might be very real!â I tell the psychiatrist. âIt isnât just delusions, hallucinations or nonexistent voices! What if it is indeed all real? And magic does exist?â
Mental Health Services Turned My Daughter’s Crisis into a Way of Life
My world turned upside down when my daughter nearly died from a serious suicide attempt. After several years as her caretaker I began to wonder: What can we do to change the way our mental health services are organized so they won't turn a crisis into a way of life for already distressed and vulnerable people?
Iatrogenic Domino: I Was Poisoned by Polypharmacy
I did not suddenly develop some perverse form of mental illness out of thin air. IÂ was a victim of repeated misdiagnoses, unrecognized adverse drug reactions/drug toxicity, and profound polypharmacy.
The Forced Psychiatric Treatment of a Child
This is my story of forced psychiatric treatment as an eight-year-old girl, from my perspective as an adult mental health professional. Being held down kicking and screaming to be injected with a benzodiazepine is a human rights violation no child should endure for saying no to a pharmaceutical. In hindsight, when I reflect on that day, it feels like a form of child abuse.
Memories of a Childhood in a Mental Hospital
My stay at the hospital had no impact on the problem that led to my admission. But it did exacerbate other problems and change me in fundamental ways. I am a deformed product of that âcutting-edge facilityâ and the âtreatmentsâ I received there â social isolation, pills and shots, ice bath and ECT.
Snakes and Ladders: How Psychiatry Took Away My Choices
The psychiatric system takes away all choices and freedom and calls the resulting state "mental illness." Psychiatry justifies alienation rather than repairing it.
Recovery of Soul After 22 Years on Antipsychotics
After 22 years and many attempts I finally stopped taking antipsychotics. I still feel weak and quite injured by the accumulated doses of numbing drugs, though I feel brighter, and love life more than ever.
A Troubled Teen With a Pocket Full of Lithium and Nowhere to Go
Despite the full awareness of Congress and hundreds of deaths in these facilities, little has been done to enact standards in private pay facilities that house troubled teens.
Why Iâm Glad I Did Not Complete the Mental Health Counselor Education Program
One needs no psychiatric or counseling degree to have the common sense of displaying some good manners in a profession that claims to be all about helping people. Iâm glad I did not get further involved within a field that seems to be so hypocritical and moody.
How 1 Panic Attack Led to 15 Years of Psychiatric DrugsÂ
My brain zapsâsymptoms of benzo withdrawalâwere like having a mini seizure on a daily basis. But my doctor kept telling me that my âunderlyingâ anxiety was causing all my distress.
Mood Tracking: My System for Reducing Psychiatric Hospitalizations
Mood tracking can make someone realize: Iâm starting to become manic, and this is why, and this is what I can do about it.
From âMadnessâ to Self-Mastery: Overcoming a Life of Disconnection
You are trained to trust a system, to trust a professional⊠But I was always following my intuitive self telling me that there was a way out of the madness and the labels.
Dan’s Journey Through OCD
Editor's Note: To protect the anonymity of her son, this author has published under a pseudonym.
With the help of the Internet, my seventeen-year-old son...
On the Other Side
It was the first time in my Klonopin journey it occurred to me the problem might not be inherent in me. The problem might actually be the Klonopin. Convinced my very life was at stake, I made the firm decision to get off the stuff once and for all.
The Breaking Point
How did I become someone who could barely function? I was a high-performing sales executive ranked in the top 2% of an international business communications company. But now, after using powerful psych meds for depression and anxiety for more than a decade, I couldnât do basic things like go to the grocery store, plan a meal, make dinner, or get together with friends.
Ambushed by Antidepressants for 30 Years
They helped me function for a while, but the debilitating side effects of antidepressants held me prisoner. I'm still having a hard time understanding how this could have happened. It's been suggested to me by a therapist that what I'm going through now is another kind of PTSD: the ongoing trauma of realizing what antidepressants did to me for 30 years.
The Hidden Harms Within the Psychedelic Renaissance
If I would have read a story like this before I entered into psychedelic-assisted therapy, I would have been more careful, which might have prevented a lot of unnecessary hurt.
What Itâs Like to Be Involuntarily Committed
Ten years after being fired for taking a mental health leave after the Virginia Tech massacre, I was diagnosed as "schizophrenic" and involuntarily committed to a hospital. Now I have a job and a life, but I'm still forced to take drugs and report to a social worker.
Whatâs Missing from NAMI and Pro-Psychiatry: Lived Experience
Since many psych patients become forced consumers, their advocates have a duty to be educated and concerned with adverse reactions.
Guardianship Destroyed My Family
People who canât take care of themselves need support and protection, but guardianship provides neither. I know: I've lived it.
Child Abuse and Psychosis: My Healing Journey
Hospitalized for "grandiose delusions," I began to wonder: Was my dis-orientation really just a sickness? Or in "treating" it, was I missing a powerful re-orientation toward healing old wounds?
State Hospital Memories: More of My Story
The Detroit Free Press did an excellent job in bringing to light the conditions at Pontiac, its loss of accreditation, and closing. Still, they didn't quite grasp the severity of violence there.
Against the Odds: âUnimproved Schizophrenicâ to Yale PhD
Forty years after I had first been admitted to the hospital, I was ready to confront my past. So, I sent for my hospital records, and I read them. As an experienced clinician, I recognized immediately what the doctors hadnât been able to see in 1960: my problem wasnât âschizophreniaâ but PTSD, connected with incest.
