Patient or Prisoner? My Hospital Experience
We need to come up with a plan that destigmatizes mental health issues for all races, including respectful and non-punitive treatment in in-patient settings.
Creatively Managing Voice-Hearing Through Spiritual Writing
I am a psychiatric survivor of over thirty-six years. Since my nervous breakdown in 1978, I have undergone multitudinous experiences ranging from the subtly humiliating to the horrifically debilitating at the hands of incompetent psychiatrists and psychopharmacologists who, in the name of medicine, did more harm than good.
“Don’t Worry, You’ll Be Fine”
I was prescribed a âbaby doseâ of diazepam for pain management. Over the following months, everything got progressively worse.
Becoming Whole: How a Change in Me Became a Change in My Practice
It feels challenging to commit to a lifetime process of self-reflection and self-improvement when someone is offering you an easy way out.
Lithium Toxicity and an Almost-Human Hospital
Lithium is a notoriously toxic substance, and if it isnât managed carefully enough, can have some very nasty effects. I discovered this the hard way. It got to the point where I could barely eat or drink or walk around. Yet lithium never made a dent â not for a single moment â in what was going on in my head.
Reversing My Diagnosis
I was fine until traumatic events collided and pushed me to a state of emotional crisis. Yet I emerged this time as a different person, and knew I had to exit the mainstream mental health system.
The Failure to Acknowledge Suicidality
I feel like I have been failed by the healthcare system over and over again. I expected to be able to rely on therapists, psychologists, and doctors to properly evaluate, diagnosis, and treat me⌠especially when chronic suicidality is in the picture. Instead, I have a lengthy list of ways I have been failed. These failures have often added to my hopelessness.
Awakening: Shedding the “Mentally Ill” Identity and Reclaiming My Life
If I had not crumbled, brought to my knees beneath the weight of the misdiagnoses and sordid side-effects of the medications, I would not have had the opportunity to rise up and gain such a strong sense of selfâsomething for which many spend their whole life searching.
I Am Not the Next Headline in Tragedy
I may be psychotic but I am not the next headline in the news. I am thoughtful and questioning. I am different and unique, but I am not violent and my life will never be anyone's tragedy.
Would you like to stand with me?
The Abused Children to Bipolar Pipeline
The mental health system traumatized me further. They were allies with my abusers to cover up and continue my abuse.
Compassion and the Voice of the Tormentor
I'd like to share some personal thoughts on the nature of the Hearing Voices group method, and the insights that this kind of support generates. Through these groups, a tradition of mutual healing is being created that honors subjective experiences, and sharing our stories with each other in this way propels this exciting movement forward.
Children Are Vulnerable Cogs in the Psychiatric Machine
My guardian decided to seek out âprofessionalâ advice about how to diminish my âoutbursts.â I was perceived as a problem that needed to be extinguished into a compliant state.
The Cost of Being Psychotic in America
People living with psychosisâpeople like meâare dying because we are being discriminated against by people whoâd rather see us hurt than attempt to work with us and give us the decency and respect that should be accorded us as a human right. And nobody deserves to be assaulted or shot after theyâve reached out for help.
Invisible Trauma: The Children Left Behind When Parents Are Hospitalized
It would take decades before I recognized the trauma caused by repeatedly being separated from my mom when she was hospitalized. I grieved almost exactly the way children did who had lost a parent to death. Yet it was grief without closure because my mom was not dead, just... gone.
Seeds of Hope: A Journey Toward Truth about Psych Drugs
I believed I needed the drugs to keep me going, because every time I tried to get off, I couldnât function. Years later, I learned the truth: The meds had only been masking the festering sores beneath the surface of my stability.
Broken Is Not All I’ll Ever Be: Military Veterans and Psychiatric Drugs
I had been an excellent combat medic â I had deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan totaling over 28 months of combat in Infantry and Cavalry units. Yet, after over six years on these psychiatric drugs, I felt reduced to a helpless being who would require assistance for the simplest of menial tasks.
The Power of Light and Dark
It is possible to prevent and alleviate both depression and mania by managing the timing and intensity of exposure to light (and dark). I wasnât sure these measures would work for me, but they did.
The Year Of Potentiality
I lost three years of my life to my first psychosis. I am living proof that your entire world can be smashed into a trillion pieces and you can recover and turn the broken pieces of glass into a kaleidoscope.
What Does it Mean to be Anti-Psychiatry? Thoughts of a Cartoon Anteater
How did I get here? What turned me from loyal acolyte into fearsome-clawed rebel, itching to take on the high priests of psychiatry? Well, there is nothing like being given a taste of psychiatryâs vile medicine for igniting the revolutionary furnace and getting it glowing white hot.
The Prescription that Changed My Life
What I have learned is that benzos donât discriminate. They donât care that you have a masterâs degree or that you are a good person in the community or that you were just doing what the doctors told you to do and you were woefully ignorant and misinformed of their dangers.
Surviving the Bipolar Label
The label bipolar validated that I was suffering, yes, but it was also a bargain that asked me to see my suffering as unreasonable, the result of a deformity within my body.
I Almost Got Hit by a Lightning Bolt
I am so thankful that my brain healed from the damage caused by psychiatric medications. Most importantly, finding my purpose in life and living an authentic life helped to ground me and prevent further psychosis. Psychosis is the psycheâs cry for transformation and healing. When one listens to the call, one is brought from darkness to light.
From Surviving to Thriving: Unleashing Creativity
There were days that Iâd wake up and all I could do was cry for no particular reason, just another miserable day of withdrawal. However, the idea of taking photos would get me out of the house. Especially on those days, the absolutely only thing that would get me to move at all was the idea of taking photos. One particular day, I was just crying, crying, crying, and as soon as I got to a beautiful spot that I loved, I stopped crying, took photos, and felt at peace. I even found that the days I felt the worst were the days I took the best photos.
One Familyâs Encounter with Modern Psychiatry and a Call for Social Change
Asking the psychiatrist to discontinue medication was one of our bravest moments. It went against everything doctors had told us over the past twelve monthsâagainst Rebeckaâs regular psychiatristâs vehement opposition (âYou can come back when it doesnât work.â). It went against what we heard repeatedly in the media and in pop culture. It went against what we saw in the advertisements during the evening news. And it was the turning point in Rebeckaâs journey toward optimal mental health.
Seeking Justice
My life flashed before my eyes as my entire medical history over the last decade was rewritten from having a genetic brain disease to being a victim of a medical scam. It was bittersweet, for I realized that I was not sick and dying, but I had been robbed of so many years of my life due to the psychiatristâs lies. Now I am suing my former psychiatrist for damages.