They prefer not to see us as human beings. They WILL not listen to our pleas for mercy or how their precious pills–which grant them status as Real Doctors–have maimed and killed countless millions.
Instead, they chalk up our laments to proof of how hopelessly sick and crazy we are. Blame the iatrogenic damage from their professional treatments on defective genes/brain chemistry. Both assumed rather than proven to exist.
Which made staying in the “mental health” system life under a medical dictatorship. Rather than negotiate I fled.
Joshua–you might be interested in this list of anti-psychiatry principles and demands. It was created by a group of psychiatric survivors calling themselves Anti-Psychiatry Rising.
WE BELIEVE
1. That psychiatry is a tool of social control which enforces conformity to the prevailing social order.
2. That “mental illness” is a semantically absurd concept which falsely conflates the abstraction known as the mind with the physical brain to mislead people into believing they have literal diseases.
3. That the psychiatric system cannot be reformed but must be abolished.
WE DEMAND
1. An end to all forced psychiatric procedures and “treatments,” included but not limited to incarceration, solitary confinement, physical restraints, drugging, and electroshock.
2. An end to all state support for psychiatry, including but not limited to the use of psychiatric testimony in legal proceedings; psychiatric screenings in schools, prisons, and workplaces; licensing of psychiatrists; and the use of public monies to support psychiatric programs or research.
WE ASSERT
And plan to exercise–our right as an oppressed class to fundamental human rights and self-determination.
I’m sorry KateL.
In a similar situation.
On drugs for 25 years. Off for 5.
Feels like I have a moderate case of chronic fatigue syndrome most days. It was worse during withdrawal, but my energy levels are still low. Under 50 but feel at least 75.
Thank you, Antonia. The irony is I went through the system because I hated myself and wanted to become more normal. The experts made me more abnormal than ever and gave me a badge of shame.
Now I come across as a socially awkward but sweet and deep woman in midlife with multiple health issues. The latter puzzle people more than anything else about me. I also think I’ve suffered neurological damage due to extremely poor short term memory and not seeing things around me. (Worse than before I took the pills. Going off helps me appreciate my loss in cognitive function more.)
Maybe follow the Golden Rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
But running a society based on that premise has never been tried before. And I don’t think there is any law to make people kinder or more compassionate. Any more than there’s a kind of medical treatment. (The legal and medical tyrants trying to enforce morality by brute force are light years from practicing their own rules. No better than self-styled theocrats when it comes down to it.)
Psychiatry hurts people. Not just physically but the soul.
Ironic how the would-be-healers claim that afflicted part does not exist but go on to damage it by assaulting the organ they associate with the soul.
Some old school psychiatrists helped people feel better through talking and listening. But I have found a way to get this help through friends and pastoral counseling.
Just like I can get help for my underactive thyroid, anemia, B12 deficiency without “mental health.” These are physical problems known to cause depression and fatigue.
Hope you had a merry Christmas too, Bippyone.
I guess the psychiatrist who “helped” you did not like feminism.
Julie Greene once told me how psychiatrists decide how normal something is. Do they agree with/do it themselves? If they do, it is healthy and normal.
Existential has different meanings.
It can mean physical–or wiping out all or nearly most of humanity like that cheerful family flick The Road. (Lol)
Or it can mean a profound threat to more than mere corporeal existence. And often of the individual. The existential angst of Franz Kafka’s works for instance.
Psychiatry brought on a profound crisis of the latter with me. It conflicted with my former life philosophy that I was a unique human being who had a soul and free will. Psychiatry told me that, “No. You are just a bunch of random chemicals firing in a skull. And yours aren’t even firing correctly or the chemical balance is off. So you are subhuman at your innermost being.”
And these same Lab Coats whine about stigma. How “It isn’t fair that the mentally ill are discriminated against, scapegoated, and seen as subhuman monsters.” They write books and articles lamenting this.
Then you read between the lines. They really don’t give a rip about those who suffer from the “stigma” they create by their dehumanizing quackery. (Even NAMI owns that the “bio model” is counter productive in changing public perception for the better.) Lab Coats really just are worried about how their “stigma” may bite them when people are too afraid of having their lives and relationships destroyed to “get the help they need.”
That shrink’s yacht won’t pay for itself. Lower stigma folks. Just the right level. Enough to encourage unlimited involuntary “treatments” but not enough to discourage voluntary consumers either.
Been thinking about the Murphy Bill. How in 2017 D.J. Jaffe and Torrey conducted a media blitz ranting about all those “untreated mentally ill mass shooters.” Every other day it seemed some new “mentally ill” mass shooting occurred.
How “safe and effective treatments” were touted as necessary for the greater good. Not necessarily to help the “mentally ill” but for all they might come in contact with because they were such monsters when left untreated. Otherwise they were “almost as safe as regular people.”
Know why I stayed on those drugs that destroyed my ability to think, feel, or live independently for decades? Lots of guilting from places like NAMI. “If you don’t take you’re cocktail you are being selfish. And you might kill someone like Andrea Yates did drowning her children.”
I know the role psych drugs played with Yates and the mass shootings. But the narrative put profits above facts or the health of those trapped in the mental system.
FWIW, Jan, not everyone who reads MIA is a psychiatric survivor. Of course those who have never been on the receiving end of psychiatric abuse do not share our lived experience.
I remember back in 2017 when D.J. Jaffe and “Doc” Torrey were plugging away at the narrative of the mass shootings. With the help of the MSM who relied upon Big pHarma sponsorship.
The reason they called for the passage of Murphy’s Bill? Public health and safety. The “severely mentally ill” had no right to run around at large without their medication because–according to respected doctors such as Torrey, Pies, and countless others–they were putting others at risk.
Yes, they were–nearly all–out of their minds on these “safe, effective treatments” when they committed these mass killings. But the doctors didn’t care to share this because they had a product to promote. The last thing they wanted was to “pill shame” the psychiatric profession by drawing attention to the role SSRI’s play in violent or disinhibited behaviors or the dulling of emotions such as empathy or guilt that can prevent murders.
I believed the lying narrative for years. I believed the medical experts who lied to me and obeyed them. Out of fear of brining grief to my friends/family/innocent bystanders I took my cocktail religiously. I knew it was shortening my life and disabling me. Yet I took it as an act of duty and sacrifice for those around me.
Sadly this sacrifice was not only unnecessary, but the soul killing drugs made me a worse person–not better–to be around. Furthermore, it ruined my ability to care for myself. I’m slightly better, but had to rely on others because the drugs reduced me to a state of childish dependence for a quarter century of my life,
The men and women I looked to for controlling my “illness” did not care about people like me and had no qualms about lying through their teeth or knowingly poisoning us (psychiatric drugs are a “slow kill”) to further their careers and get free cruises and other goodies from Big pHarma.
Since going off mind altering drugs that cause mood swings and rejecting my “bipolar” label I am acting normally again. Learned normal social skills in my forties. Been in the system for 25 years.
Psychiatry drove me crazy. Leaving restored my senses.
“Mental health” exists solely to drive sane people crazy or prevent the crazy from ever returning to reality. Big profits in keeping people insane and helpless.
“You are nothing without me. You can’t make it on your own. You’re not smart enough to care for yourself and no one but a professional–like me–can stand to be around you.”
Shrinks act and talk a lot like domestic abusers.
Dr. Gotzche, thank you for this article.
I loved your book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Health Care.
Do you think that book played a role in Big Pharma’s concentrated efforts to get you banned–along with Kelly Brogan and others–from Big Tech platforms?
I got around that by relocating. I tell everyone–including my HUD apartment manager–that I get SSI for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and an eye condition. Both real and iatrogenic in origin.
Feeling well enough to look for work so I won’t have to worry about a reevaluation by the System. I will move back to my parents’ homestead in the near future too.
I wish David–described in the article–had waited another year. It took me two years after tapering off sertraline before I could feel good things again.
In my late forties I experience more carnal desire than I did twenty-five years ago. Everything has been restored emotionally. Maybe cognitively. Though I struggle to organize and don’t know if biology or frontal lobe damage is to blame. But my amygdala is up and running again.
I love music now. And I’ve become an excellent singer at church now that I have heart to put into it. And I know how to maneuver social situations too.
I have read a number of articles about teens and even middle schoolers committing suicide and leaving notes or telling loved ones it was because of the lockdown beforehand. Yet there are no more suicides than usual since March of last year.
Glory be! The suicides for other causes must have dropped. As the writer has noted suicides can also be from political unrest, economic problems, and domestic abuse. Ergo we can assume all three of these factors are no longer the problems they once were.
Thank you, Lancet Psychiatry. I won’t forget this report in the future.
Well said!
Now that I left my old community I’m doing better.
My undrugged personality is nicer and I can understand social cues at last.
My neighbors think I’m only disabled due to my autoimmune disease. (I really have one thanks to 25 years on drugs.) They treat me like a normal human. The whole experience is overwhelmingly sweet.
The “nocebo” effect. What happened to me after 3 weeks on a drug that kept me from sleeping. And a rushed trip to a psych ward where they convinced me it was not the pills but my brain to blame. My new identity as a schizoaffective was born.
Sorry about your experience Ekaterina.
It wasn’t just your chocolate or face creams that were taken. It was your peace of mind and security.
I had a lot of my nicer clothing stolen during a visit years ago. This stuff happens all the time in psych wards.
Years of these figurative slaps in the face led me to flee the System when an opportunity arose.
For that matter did the nurse–who gets a lot more than the pittance her charges have to survive on–DESERVE those things? Does the nurse deserve to rob much poorer people? Does she deserve to rule the most socially vulnerable. Those with no credibility or hope of redress when wronged?
If you’re searching for a bad guy to condemn, please consider those running the place and abusing their positions.
Had to recover from 24 years in the system by hiding in my parents’ back room for a year to withdraw. A remote, rural area.
Every afternoon I lowered my aching, trembling body into bed so I would have the strength to eat dinner. Drug withdrawals. My parents had no idea why I was so horribly ill on a physical level.
I also had to cope with painful thoughts. I can never have a family now. I’m forced to live on less than $10,000 a year. In chronic pain thanks to long term drug damage.
All so some controlling bureaucrat can present himself as a “real doctor” and earn $300,000 a year instead of a piddling $100,000. Sigh.
I have forgiven the individuals responsible. But what they did was wrong.
Drugs don’t stop child abuse.
I used to teach Sunday school and was asked to stop because women found out about my “diagnosis.” So hurtful and unjust.
Maybe people should be judged on the content of their character–what they actually DO–instead of what some quack in a lab coat says after talking to them and looking at files for 10 minutes.
I saw him in an interview with a renowned journalist back in 2017. He was talking about how the “mentally ill” should be psychiatrized since “they will just wind up in institutions otherwise.”
Makes me wonder if he knew how the standard “treatments” work by crippling and removing the labeled from mainstream society and “functional” people. By ruining our ability to function properly and causing us ticks, massive weight gain, and flattened facial expressions to aid in segregation.
Very callous dismissal of human beings. Utilitarian and light years away from compassion.
Not here to bash Jaffe, but point out how this ugly attitude has infected (metaphorically) so many faucets of society. Jaffe is dead, but utilitarianism remains alive and well. Along with the bioreductionist model–which dehumanizes everyone.
The “mentally ill” are viewed as malfunctioning robots (actually read an article in Psychology Today calling someone that because of her unusually cruel behaviors) but everyone else–by default–is just a well functioning robot. Psychiatry dehumanizes us all. Including the “normals.”
Psychology is a branch of the humanities. This should not be viewed as a bad thing.
The sciences are a worthy field. So are the arts, the humanities, and philosophy.
A fish is not a bird. This is not to the detriment of aquatic life.
Sam, what you describe in the second paragraph is a fallacy. Guilt by association.
Similar to linking RW to the Church of Scientology. Though he has no connections nor endorse it in any of his writings.
Do you think that’s why Dr. Pies so freely admits to the “chemical imbalance metaphor” in many articles?
He and his fellow quacks can laugh up their sleeves at everyone else’s gullibility, but also vent their indignation that the public think they’re stupid enough to believe their own BS. And they won’t be called out for it this way.
If a priest thinks your confession warrants kidnapping you, locking you up for days/weeks/months and plying you with psychological torture including the pharmaceutical variety he will go to prison. A shrink will be handsomely rewarded.
Why would he need a list for the “SMI”? Last I heard Biden wanted to abolish the second amendment and remove all guns. Rendering such a list superfluous.
A bit confusing Dr. Caplan. “Mentally ill” and developmentally delayed are not the same thing. As someone with an above average IQ I found being conflated with the second frustrating. Nothing wrong with not being too smart, but I got sick of being lumped in with them all the time. We are NOT all alike. The case workers often hated those like me because they couldn’t handle anyone not significantly below themselves in cognitive abilities. Julie Green often complained to me about similar things.
Glad I’m out of that situation.
But, like the DD people, those labeled “mentally ill” seem to get a great deal of not being held morally accountable. Severe “treatments” rather than overt punishment. But it’s not any better. Especially since they can “treat” or punish you for crimes you may commit in the future.
Mainstream psychiatry is cancer. A blight on the medical field.
The perfect excuse to ignore–not just the patient’s legitimate grief or trauma–but real physical ailments that could be treated or cured but the doctor is too busy to bother with.
The question is not whether psychiatry can be reformed, but whether Western medicine can be reformed. Doctors are so authoritarian now I hate seeing one.
I was repeatedly told in NAMI and day treatment and clubhouse that if I ever went off my “meds” I would either kill myself or someone else or both. Therefore it was my moral obligation to take the drugs even though they made me ill and I realized they would kill me prematurely.
Sad to realize the drugs were making me harder to live with and ruining my ability to perform ADLs and basic hygiene. Years and years of being lied to and about to my nearest and dearest. 🙁
Szasz made the comparison of a kindly, well meaning shrink handing out drugs for unhappiness in the sincere belief it will help people to an 18th century physician using blood letting on cholera sufferers.
Good intentions can kill in medicine if the premise is unfounded.
Psychiatry needs to go the way of leeches and bloodletting. The ideology is cancer to the medical system regardless of sincere, well intentioned people.
Yep. Psychiatry justifies and rationalizes the damage it does to the public by saying “Their genes make them intrinsically different from you. They don’t have thoughts or feelings like real people.”
As they watch the cognitive deterioration caused by their “safe and effective treatments” they sooth their consciences by saying, “They were only fit for asylums. If I hadn’t dumbed and numbed them out these defectives MIGHT have broken the law or even hurt someone.”
I already have read enough of your writings to know you don’t support TAC or involuntary confinements to psych wards David.
I believe you were the one who got Bob Whitaker to research the efficacy of psychiatric drugs weren’t you? We survivors owe you–as well as he–a debt of gratitude.
And, as Peter Breggin says in his videos, we know very little about the human brain too. Mainstream psychiatry would have us believe our brain chemistry consists of only two chemicals. Serotonin and dopamine. To be “tweaked” with those “life saving meds” they hand out like office mints. (At least they won’t force feed you their stale office candy if you decline.)
Hi David. I really appreciate what you are trying to do.
Here’s the problem I see with the concept of Mad Pride and why I find it hard to incorporate into the anti psychiatry/critical psychiatry narrative.
First of all let’s look at the archetypes (AKA “diagnoses”) of “severe mental illnesses.” The two most notorious are “Bipolar” and “Schizophrenia.” I’ll describe them–though I don’t believe in them–as I would Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
“Bipolar symptoms” include behaviors like cheating on your partner, petty theft for fun, verbal and even physical abuse, chasing someone with a knife, lying all the time, drowning your children, killing sprees like Ted Bundy, and mass shootings. All these behaviors have been attributed to “bipolar” by psychiatrists respected in their fields.
“Schizophrenic symptoms” include selfish coldness, hating humanity, violent crimes, killing sprees, and (of course) mass shootings.
By calling myself “mentally ill” or owning my designated role I’ll be living down to the reputation forced upon me by uncaring shrinks. If I’m not guilty of any of the behaviors listed above it’s a form of libelous slander to call me by one of the two “SMI” designations.
The LGBT community found acceptance because, after the sixties, people became more accepting of different expressions of sexuality. They have no problem accepting gays because they’re just like everyone else. Law abiding citizens with no reputation for harming others.
But because of its associations with violent crimes and other bad behaviors “severe mental illness” will never be accepted unless those labeled with it advertise the restraints they wear. Usually chemical. I often tried this in my years as a NAMI activist/mascot. “Look. We’re not bad. We aren’t serial killers or violent. We take our meds! Please accept and like us. We’ll be good and always take our meds even if they make us horribly ill, rot our brains, and kill us before age 53.” 🙁
I guess you can attempt to redefine what “severe mental illnesses” are and explain that even without drugs, shocks, confinement we can be law abiding, non violent citizens. But in the end shrinks define what “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” mean.
And as OH has pointed out there are no biomarkers. These are not legitimate illnesses or disabilities like your paralysis is David. The disabilities many of us share were inflicted by psychiatric remedies. Not problems we were born with.
The reason “born this way” won’t work with survivors is people will still avoid us. In fact it’s worse since they write you off as hopeless. NAMI has been trying this for years. Though for much of the time they’ve known it doesn’t work.
It’s especially problematic if you want the right to live drug free. As many here do. Society views the decision of the “severe mentally ill” to go without their “meds” as so dangerously irresponsible as to be criminal. To their way of thinking by going off your cocktail you run the risk of killing loved ones, cheating on your spouse, violently assaulting strangers, or the ever popular mass shooting spree. Not just your life at risk but all you come in contact with.
The ONLY reason I stayed on my cocktail for 23 years was a sense of obligation to all around me. I knew those pills were harming me and making it hard to function cognitively. But doctors I implicitly trusted assured me I would morph into Ms. Hyde without them and I felt it was wrong to take that risk.
But if you can find ways to work around this narrative–that the “severely mentally ill” are not just rude and inconsiderate but dangerous*–more power to you David Oak. I wish you and the Mad Pride movement well, though I respectfully disagree on its efficacy at ending involuntary and inhumane psychiatric treatment.
* We’re usually depicted as dangerous but not quite self aware enough to be evil, like house pets with rabies.
They aren’t Jesus. But they love to play God and take on the role of Messiah.
Only instead of offering themselves up to be crucified, they expect us to allow ourselves to be. Voluntary would be nice–but not essential. Actually that makes us martyrs…or is that unwitting test subjects?
“You need to suck it up. We all have to make sacrifices,” says the doctor making a 7 digit income off those like you, driving his luxury car off to one of his million dollar mansions. After successfully destroying your livelihood, adult independence, ability to feel happy, and all your ability to have ordinary human relationships. Ain’t doctors swell?
My blind obedience and worshipful submission to these unreliable cons playing god, made me a permanent burden to society. And especially the people I cared about.
It wasn’t in the best interest of me as an individual or the collective either. Unless you count morally (but not financially) bankrupt collectives like Big Pharma or the APA. It stinks to struggle with ADLs and only have $700 a month to live on.
I never wanted that lifestyle for myself nor did my parents. We thought I was getting helped by all the “meds” they claimed were keeping me from losing all cognitive skills and becoming violent. Just the opposite.
Now I hope to support myself as a “creative” like many survivors and even the few “consumers” who get off SSI. Struggling to “adult” in my forties when I’m much frailer than most my age. But at least my mind is coming back. My IQ has gone up nearly 20 points.
My dad is pretty angry and sad too. Occasionally he’ll commiserate with me over the life I lost. Mom is okay with my choice to leave “mental health” but insists the drugs used to help me. Claiming I acted weird at one point when I was fully compliant and took them religiously. (She doesn’t see the fallacy here.)
Hmm. The Experts kept telling my fellow “consumers” and me it was imperative to take drugs that crippled us, damaged our health, and sent many of us into a non stop depression. Why? For the greater good of society.
Does that count as individualism? It’s what the “mental health” center preached to us at every session.
“Mental illness” is not a social construct so much as an etiological one.
A phrase which makes no sense when viewed too carefully.
How does “mental illness” differ from neurological or brain illness? is a question to ask. How William Glasser got me to reconsider the hopeless “disease” I’d been repeatedly told I had.
Because they’ve chosen to write off these suffering people as either beyond help or not worth helping. (By help I mean ordinary human help or TLC which you stop receiving once labeled SMI.)
The “medicines” often have the desired effect of turning intelligent but suffering people into docile, childish creatures. Incapable of independent living or any quality of life most adults prefer yet easy to “take care of” or control.
Like severing someone’s spinal cord so they’ll obey the caretaker ordering them to a lifetime of bedrest.
Or cutting off a songbird’s wings and severing the vocal cords so it won’t fly away or annoy its keepers by singing. The songbird is unhappy but what it wants doesn’t matter.
Once I discovered the hoax about the “chemical imbalance” I look back on what I’ve been through with anger.
The drugs which were supposed to prevent cognitive deterioration (according to my doctor) did the opposite.
I frequently beat up on myself for my inability to find gainful employment, have decent human relationships or keep my house clean. Now I can do all the three.
They were forcing us to hobble around with our feet in fetters and ridiculing us for not running laps like they could. (Clubhouse/Day Treatment/NAMI) Disabling us while pretending to help us.
NAMI
National
Advocates for
Munchausens-by-proxy
Iatrogenics
The notion that I was hopelessly insane almost drove me to suicide.
Psychiatrists see only “bipolars” and “schizophrenics.” I see human beings.
Psychiatry exists to make a distinction between the “normals” with full rights as citizens and human beings and the “severely mentally ill” creatures who can be viewed as incompetent idiots (regardless of demonstrated cognitive abilities) or dangerous criminal masterminds (regardless of the content of our character.) Or both. Whichever psychiatrists–and any “normals” who know how to exploit us–find convenient.
Dr. Goetzhe wrote a book comparing Big Pharma to organized crime. And Psychiatry is their right arm. If not merely the right hand side of this underground dystopia.
A big problem is all or almost all the media rely on Big Pharma ad revenue for the magazine or channel to stay afloat.
“Always the patient’s fault.” Should be the motto for the American Psychiatric Association.
I strongly recommend the site Surviving Antidepressants for those who need help coming off and can’t get it. I cold turkeyed off Lamictal since I couldn’t cut the tablets. But I only took it for 13 days after being hospitalized.
Personally I found Abilify was a snap to come off. Went from 20 mg to 15 mg. Then 15-10; 10-7.5; 7.5-5; 5-2.5; 2.5-0. 2 weeks between each gradation. 10 weeks with only a few headaches. But Effexor was another thing altogether. Took me 13 months to come off 150 mg.
No more suicidal thoughts or melt downs since. The pills were holding me back.
I’m more at risk for dying if I contract Covid-19 due to my autoimmune disease caused by years on SSRIs.
Why is it surprising that STIMULANTS which wear the body down by artificially boosting energy levels make kids more prone to infection and poor prognosis from the infection?
Does forcing a child to drink 5 cups of coffee and a 6 pack of Mountain Dew every flu season make them less at risk for infection?
Our opponents would (probably) argue that it’s different because it’s not punishment, but “help.”
Peter Breggin points out how calling random brain damage, pharmaceutical torture (that is a thing) and imprisonment “treatment” instead of punishment enables psychiatrists to treat law abiding citizens worse than convicted felons.
Would D.J. Jaffe have given the cootie treatment and avoided eye contact with some cancer victim he was trying to organize a fund raiser for? Interesting how the pro-psych force can rationalize what they do so easily.
“I have the right to force these drugs on Blanche.” TAC Dude
“Blanche doesn’t like them. She says they upset her stomach and give her terrors. I see her seize on them.” Friend of Blanche
“Blanche is ‘mentally ill’ so if she doesn’t like them that’s just her illness talking. Lol. If she seizes or throws up she’s faking it for attention.” TAC Dude
That’s why I frequently compare psychiatrists to Dr. Farid Fata. He sold lengthy rounds of chemo to people without cancer. Killing some and crippling even more. Because of his gutless professional colleagues he got away with it for a very long time. The whole story makes me despise the medical profession.
His death brings me sorrow. Leukemia is an awful way to go.
Sadly it won’t undo the harmful policies passed through his activism. He was more of an advocate for annoyed family members and psychiatrists who made a killing off crippling and defaming through quack treatments than the “consumers” themselves.
What Briana describes in her encounter with him, his refusal to make eye contact or acknowledge her humanity is what I remember during my 25 years in psychiatry. Numbed and dumbed down as I was, I felt it keenly.
In dehumanizing others they dehumanize themselves.
It’s sobering that Jaffe will never have another chance to make amends to those he–more or less–unwittingly harmed. To undo his TAC policies is up to others.
Rest in peace Jaffe. May Heaven have mercy on your soul.
Thanks.
I don’t consider myself an anti vaxxer though. At least not as far as the basic MMR shots go. Even polio shots are still a good idea.
These shots are highly effective. And the polio one saves children’s lives.
My brother and I had all four as children. But I got my Chicken Pox immunity the old fashioned way.
Dedicating my time to trying to help keep local small businesses afloat. Pam Popper’s gives some tips on how we can do this. I highly recommend looking up her interview with Peter Breggin on YouTube.
A lot of people are desperately afraid they will lose their homes or be unable to scrape enough beans and rice together to feed their children. I visit a cafe near me and promised the owner’s daughter working behind the cash register that if another lockdown takes place I will still get carry out there regularly.
Just thought I’d mention that Pies’s article has been “misplaced.” A computer glitch I’m sure. Not like there was too much traffic from this site to the shrinks’ dirty little secret conflicting with those cute commercials.
I understand where you are coming from. I only wish I shared your optimism. Google “social distancing is permanent” and see all the articles that pop up and read a few.
Big Pharma is making money faster than ever as small businesses are forced to close. Not big chain stores though. This isn’t about preventing infection since more stores mean more distancing. It’s about cronyism and lobbying.
Okay. You want to spend the rest of your life in isolation? Because that’s what all the experts recommend. Utter isolation at home alone for everyone forever.
The only plan out there!
Sounds like a quality life and very healthy too.
Nobody work or see friends or family ever again. Stay locked at home for 50-60 years till you die. WONDERFUL.
Funny how a lifetime of permanent isolation is healthy now. Not like any of us have social needs after all.
This will never end. Get used to permanent house arrest. Years and decades.
The New Normal means you can never have coffee with friends again. I prefer death from this alleged plague myself. The rest of you can enjoy this nightmare dystopia. Funny how I’m the only person who finds it depressing. Crazy me to want friends and fresh air instead of spending the last years of my life locked alone in a room eating beans.
Weird how everyone but me suddenly loves endless isolation, wants it to last forever and enjoys dying alone. Cause you will die even without the Covid. Utterly ALONE IN ISOLATION.
Wish I enjoyed loneliness and hated companionship like the rest of you cranks. Everyone else loves being cut off alone FOREVER.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER END.
Why is Covid death so scary? As the last person with human needs or emotions I wish it or something else would kill me.
Dr. Fauci says we’ll probably never have a vaccine and should never be allowed out of our houses till the virus completely vanishes which he is pretty certain it won’t. Ergo permanent lockdown forever according to the Experts.
Oh yes. The Scientific Ex-Spurts suddenly decided isolating is not only healthy but praiseworthy. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s your fault and they will force drugs on you while forcing even more isolation on you.
Glad I live in the country. Like many labeled SMI I’m no stranger to loneliness. If I avoid thinking about the future I’m okay.
Curious how many other survivors are holding up. Like everyone else is caving in but we’ve already been through this crap. Same old, same old.
I wish these controlling Science Ex-Spurts would experiment on themselves. At least they’re too busy to hunt down every single depressed person now. Easier to escape their notice.
“If someone has committed a heinous crime let them pay their debt to society.”
Well said Caroline. We already have the legal system to punish all of us for law breaking.
But psychiatry has the authority to punish regardless of our behavior. The unquestioned absolute authority to inflict cruel and unusual punishment (without limit) on even the most mild mannered law abiding saints–more sinned against than sinning. Just because some Expert deems them biologically unfit for basic human rights or simple kindness and decency.
Psychiatry punishes the “biologically unfit” for the crime of existing. 🙁
Because of this pseudo science our culture chooses to judge us on the word of some Ex-Spurt Sciencey Dude–who just flipped through old notes without talking to us. Not the content of our character.
After i got labeled I hated myself. Everyone treated me like a monster.
The drugs killed all my ability to experience positive emotions and caused daily seizures. Everyone blamed my desire for suicide on my “illness.”
When they say, “You’re not your illness” it’s pretty laughable. In their eyes all “consumers” are walking diseases.
What scares me far worse than the thought of death itself–or even the deaths of my beloved Boomer parents–is losing touch with our humanity. If I see someone in need who can’t be helped otherwise I’ll gladly expose myself and stay in quarantine later.
It takes time.
I chose to forgive the people who injured me. But it took a long time.
If you don’t want to or feel you can’t I sympathize.
Part of forgiving meant acknowledging the wrongs done me. I’d always been taught nice girls don’t get angry or remember wrongs. My grandma told me we automatically forget bad treatment because girls are naturally sweet–made up of sugar and spice and all things nice. 😛 Nope.
My thoughts exactly Willoweed.
My odd behaviors and personality changes were similar to those of an alcoholic. My mom mentioned this but we never put two and two together.
Took me over twenty years to find stuff online saying the drugs I took were anything but life saving and essential. Or telling how to go off them without melting down. Ages 20 to 44 in psychiatry.
I’m better now.
Made real progress emotionally, cognitively, and finally physically.
I get along with people now. Smiling easily. I shower every day and keep up on household chores. And I am finishing writing projects since the first time in my teens.
I attribute these changes to going off drugs and rejecting the role society assigned me of madwoman.
I’ve heard of kids “inheriting” trauma.
It’s not to be confused with abuse. If anything the mother may strive to protect her children from the horrors she went through. Unfortunately this can backfire however kind and noble the intentions.
For example the children of Holocaust survivors and those who were molested as children.
You can’t fault the parent anymore than you can of unwittingly giving the child a cold. It just happens. The right kind of family therapy might help the parent. Such as Choice Theory by William Glasser. He only counseled adults. If the children acted out he would advise the parents on how to show love while preparing the child for life.
Being told you have an incurable brain disease that will keep you depressed forever is depressing.
Since (many believe) depression exists as a feeling, hopelessness will make the feeling worse. Plus the drugs make you sluggish and apathetic which can also cause “low grade” depression.
Yeah. Fine line between whacking myself over the head for everything that goes wrong and blaming others.
I dated a man also labeled “bipolar” though we had little else in common. One day I realized how we kept apologizing to each other in an excessive, compulsive manner.
“Nobody’s fault, it’s a brain disease” translates to “everything that goes wrong is the fault of the person with the presupposed brain disease.” One of Psychiatry’s paradoxes.
False dilemma. Reminds me of the story of how the disciples asked Jesus, “Did this man sin or did his parents so that he was born blind”?
Neither Mom nor I behaved perfectly through my existential journey into madness. Exacerbated and greatly prolonged courtesy of Big Pharma Psychiatry.
I gladly brought her to NAMI because she kept blaming herself for my weird behaviors under the influence of mind altering drugs and my new diagnostic identity.
Looking back, I’m more upset at how my crazy behaviors impacted my friends and family who stayed with me through the quarter century ordeal. I was a drug addict and none of us even knew.
Let me try. Here’s a disorder I’ve observed first hand.
1. Prolonged use of mind altering drugs and/or electroshocks to alter moods and thoughts.
2. The treatments entail distress and poor concentration.
3. The treatments cause pain, cognitive decline, and numerous other health issues.
If you are on good terms with family members the Mental System will try to create division quite often. Happened to me and others.
They only wanted me to date other “consumers” and discouraged socializing with non-consumers. Not sure what the motives were. But cutting you off from friends is what cults do.
I_e_cox I agree with you. This whole scenario with:
1. Expert Doctor Monarchs who must never be questioned even when they contradict each other.
2. The Doctors/Demagogues who inflict their will over us all in the name of “our own good” or “for the public” who are never held accountable for bad advice.
3. It doesn’t matter if it ruins your career, your hopes of a family, renders you homeless, depresses you, or injures your physical health from months/years of isolation and stress. Don’t you ever dare quit distancing till Experts say you can. Maybe before you die.
4. Because obedience is all that matters the Experts are happy to throw you a bone every month or two so you won’t starve (hopefully.) Quit taking care of yourself. Self reliance is evil and wrong. Only eat what the Demagogue/Doctors feed you.
1. Never question a psychiatrist. Ever. This shows “poor insight” and doctors don’t make mistakes or lie.
2. Being forced to take drugs that make you miserable, tired and stupid is for your own good. And you owe it to society to be good pill popper or you endanger them by morphing into a mass shooter or something through non compliance.
3. It doesn’t matter if you feel horrible and can no longer read, work, get along with others, or attend to basic hygiene. It doesn’t matter if the pills give you grand mal seizures, heart palpitations, spasms, make you vomit uncontrollably for days on end, or put you into a coma. You must be “meds compliant” till you die. Doctor’s orders.
4. Because compliance is all that matters, once the “meds” have incapacitated you the Experts will sign a paper so their cronies in Washington will give you a pittance every month to scrape by on. The flunkies at the Mental Illness Center chastise you for wanting to be able to care for yourself. Shame on you for wanting to work. Besides that’s unrealistic cause you’re crazy. Lol.
“Rejected the idea that insanity reduced people to animals…” Did it though?
The whole notion of “mental illness” is that those marked by psychiatrists are not fully human. Incapable of higher reasoning and completely amoral. Just like animals.
The “treated” are viewed as pets. The “untreated” as rabid dogs–either to be captured and rendered docile (helpless) or shot.
It’s paradoxical that the notion of “mental illness” discourages trying to better yourself. Just the opposite of what AA is supposed to preach.
Being told how hopeless I was as a “bipolar” led to my relinquishing self control. (Not alcohol but a psych drug that sent me on the bad trip that ruined my life.)
It’s also disgusting how opportunists are using the notion of “alcoholism is a disease” to push far deadlier and more addictive drugs on the person as a “treatment” for drinking wine or beer.
Since souls are immaterial the thought of healing them with drugs or surgery is ridiculous. If you believe in souls. Either way, “psychiatry” should go the way of mesmerism. It claims to heal what doesn’t exist (materially) by material means of drugs and brain mutilation.
I recommend saying, “False dilemma fallacy!” Then repeat your original statement or question. It should be apparent to onlookers that they’ve resorted to red herrings to avoid the real issue.
Susan, both Richard and OH agree with many of the points you have made.
Respectfully questioning is not the same as insulting. Please don’t take it personally.
“There’s nothing also to say that a Qualified Doctor, is any better than a Library Assistant at helping a person get through Emotional Distress.”
Correct.
Doctors are great at dealing with ruptured appendixes or inflamed adenoids or broken limbs. But if you feel sad or lonely you should phone a friend.
Asking a GP for help with emotional pain is like asking one for advice on roof repair. Not their field.
“So the obvious question is how hunting can safeguard the rights of its targeted subjects while its task remains to precisely turn them into venison jerky and sausage.”
It’s been a real struggle to me not to hate humanity.
Unlike Frankenstein’s monster I used to be a human being till They damaged me beyond hope of recover and dishonored me forever in the eyes of all Humanity.
Shrinks have harmed me–while causing suffering–by pretending their cruel, pointless experiments fixed known brain abnormalities. Apparently many were laughing up their sleeves when they talked about the “scientifically proven chemical imbalance.”
But they couldn’t have done it without help from all the “normals” applauding the cruel damage. I know this was ignorance (except for a few like Pete Earley.) But if your kid were getting worse instead of better every time the doctor put him on something to “treat” the problem which wasn’t bad till after the doctor “helped” it would make sense to try figure out what was wrong.
They don’t know because they don’t care. Sticking a “loved one” in a psych ward to be drugged and shocked indefinitely is easier than doing a little research to look for ways of actually helping people. Happier handing you over to the tender mercies of the experts. Then they can ignore the relative forever. Almost as good as locking them in the old asylums.
Lots of people have no choice Dr. Monk. Do you really think there are no social or legal repercussions to such a decision? It’s almost never an informed one.
After a break down following 3 weeks of sleeplessness from a bad reaction to the drug Anafranil my shrink cheerfully told Mom it wasn’t HIS fault her daughter had schizophrenia. Joyfully ruined my life causing everyone to write me off as a psycho killer.
Put me on 10 mg of Haldol. Hell between my ears. Seizures, constant dry mouth, tardive psychosis, eyes rolling back. All attributed to my illness.
Psychiatrists go around telling how those they diagnose are all would-be mass shooters. Through guilt by diagnosis/association they claim we’re morally defective in some intrinsic way no other human beings are. Only drugs can save us from becoming violent, suicide, cheating on our spouses, lying, stealing. All “symptoms” in various DSM categories known as “mental illnesses.” Whether we actually DO any of the above is irrelevant. The doctor has pronounced us morally diseased so we’re automatically worse than felons.
(I don’t know you personally Dr. Theolonius. But prominent members of your profession have gone on national television to warn society of the monsters posing as humans in their midst. Also known as “schizophrenics” and “bipolars.” You aren’t directly responsible for what Dr. Fuller Torrey says. But you must be aware of it.)
I was repeatedly told for 25 years that I had a brain disease with a known biomarker. That it had already been proven my “illness” came from a chemical imbalance in my broken brain. Not for two decades did I read William Glasser and then articles by the President of the APA declaring otherwise.
Had to relocate and start over where no one knows me while slowly tapering. No help from any doctor. I knew better than to ask for any.
For years I took the XXXX pills though they doubled my weight, made me seize, vomit, lose teeth, grow so tired I couldn’t keep up with simple ADLs like bathing regularly. They made me miserable and numb. Yet I took them conscientiously. Not for myself but for my loved ones. I didn’t want to hurt them or be a burden.
Because of my wrecked body…real doctors who don’t know all my psychiatric history have diagnosed me with IBD and other autoimmune diseases…I still can’t work. All iatrogenic I firmly believe. More of a burden then ever from trying to do the right thing as a “conscientious consumer with excellent insight.”
Obeying the rules doesn’t work in a corrupt system.
I wish I’d broken an actual law instead of seeing a shrink. That would have had fewer legal repercussions. Seriously. Criminals have more rights in our society than law abiding citizens labeled as “severely mentally ill.” Once you get that label how you behave–the content of your character–is completely irrelevant. Everyone expects the worst of you. Especially if they know you’re “off your meds”
Been off mine for nearly 3 years. Doing better in many ways. No melt down despite lockdown stress. My parents acknowledge I wasn’t crazy after all. I’m an embarrassment to the psychiatric profession. And doctors in general who remain thick as thieves and will carry the banner for men like Farid Fata.
Not anti-medicine but I don’t trust doctors. Buy the used car but don’t believe a word the salesman says.
Too much censorship can backfire. Hence the growth of the FlatEarther movement. I view it as too ridiculous to be worth censoring–even if I believed in denying them a platform. But I have more respect for people’s intelligence than Big Bro Mark.
Because of this heavy handedness more people are getting angry and distrustful of PolitiFact. Great at spinning. Though if you read the entire article PolitiFact puts out you’ll see they call things “fake news” based on technicalities. Often hearsay from an anonymous source.
More of us are leaving. Too angry to wait to be banned. Hopefully this will cause FB to become the next Yelp or Tumblr.
Been on FaceBook and repeatedly get censored for posting anything remotely hopeful. Got threatened with invisibility. Planning on transferring my followers to a new platform where many of them are already located.
Mild depression keeps people passive so they put up less resistance to sales ads posted on sites.
I have no problem–in theory–with Zuckerberg doubling his wealth. But it looks like he’s willing to cause a worldwide depression impoverishing nearly everyone else to achieve this end. I have a problem with that.
On the one hand you have the trope of the helpless “mentally ill.” The poor Village Idiot who wanders the street muttering to himself and is mentally a five-year-old.
On the other you have the trope of the “psycho killer.” The EVIL madman–sometimes with fits of brilliance in finding ways to do random acts of evil. Such as Hannibal Lector or Norman Bates. The scary creeper society needs protection from.
Psychiatrists use the second trope in calls to action against mass shootings and the first when trying to sound compassionate. They flip flop between calling a “case” or human being “cognitively impaired” regardless of how coherently the “case” can defend herself/himself. And warning the public of how dangerously “unstable” this person will be if they don’t have their way with them.
This two fold approach is useful for those who can’t see through it. By calling the person evil the psychiatrist alienates them from everyone–rendering the non-labeled more agreeable to subject the former friend or loved one to dubious treatments that cause obvious suffering. And depicting the person as incompetent and dumb makes the psychiatrist look benevolent and humane. Rendering him more trustworthy so family members feel safe delivering the relative into his allegedly tender mercies.
Yes, but without depicting all the “severely mentally ill” as dangerous they couldn’t readily turn them into cash cows to milk–uh, I mean get them the Treatment they need. 😛
Don Karp that’s why I’m so miserable.
Sorry, I have no reason to trust any doctors. Especially bureaucrats with degrees in medicine.
I would rather take my chances with the Bubonic Plague itself than let these micro-managing control freaks ruin the world. THEY are what really scare me. Not the Covid-19. Even if it had 70% fatality rates like many of the ignorant imagine.
No, I realize Dr. Fauci never said this. All a bunch of hysterical pearl clutching from watching the News on TV. But this insane fear encourages compliance to the lockdown.
This is supposed to be for the greater good and save countless lives. These people aren’t dead yet and won’t die–in this segment of the multiverse–if we all hunker down and OBEY the Medical Experts. They’re doctors after all. They don’t make mistakes and only want to save lives.
If lots of people die it will be in spite of lockdown. Or because we didn’t follow it strictly enough they’ll say. If mortality rates drop it will be because of the lockdown.
This whole scenario is all too familiar to me. Very depressing. And it may never end.
I got so sick of being told how much I needed to love myself during all those years of adult preschool. AKA “day treatment” and “clubhouse.”
Made me want to burst into song, “I love me. I love me so./I took myself to a movie show./I put both arms around my waist./I got so fresh I slapped my face!”
I actually did during one incredibly dull session. 😀
Like C.S. Lewis I find the reverse is true. I must love my neighbor before I can love myself as my neighbor.
Yes.
The entire premise of Pharma-psychiatry is that SCIENCE has proven people feel down or have weird thoughts only because of bad brain chemistry. And they have the pills to adjust it so you’ll feel normal again.
A giant hoax. And even the non medical people who spread this lie know it’s a hoax. Pete Earley admits as much on his blog–justifying this deception by saying the drugs work. Meaning they turn “loved ones” into passive, sickly zombies who won’t annoy relatives.
I was hoping this article would share more details on how ignorant or knowledgeable your friendly neighborhood shrink is. It doesn’t.
A blogger I follow is worried about how his alleged brain disease is flaring up. Being forced to stay unemployed and at home all day has nothing to do with it. He thinks.
Of course, like me, he’s dealt with “sadness shaming.” Our shallow culture can no longer handle anyone the least bit glum or serious. So it’s either a disease we must cure immediately or a shameful sin we must repent of so we can grin ear to ear perpetually like we’re s’posed to. 😛
Now that I no longer see my depression as a disease I no longer struggle with it for days or weeks at a time. If I feel blue I ask myself, “What can I do to feel better?” It never lasts more than a day or two. Amazing how changing that mindset helped me cope with it successfully.
They’re much better at concealing what their intentions. To be fair–most neighborhood shrinks believe they help people.
“Life saving medications. They are just like insulin for diabetes.”
But nobody gets better even if we take them faithfully. Our bodies and brains fail rapidly. And no one cares but us.
And maybe our loved ones. If “mental health” fails to alienate them. They don’t like family members offering real emotional support and love to us.
NAMI actually had a bunch of people slip in to do that? Okay. When I first read I thought it was gaslighting. Now it looks like was just an advertisement. “This is what having ‘schizophrenia’ feels like.”
I didn’t know NAMI was supposed to be a patient’s advocacy group. I belonged to it (as a mascot) for some years. It was supposed to be about helping us and reducing the discrimination or stigma NAMI created with other ad campaigns to begin with.
They liked to hear the voices of “high functioning” people like me. As long as I praised my life saving medications and the benevolent doctors who could do no wrong.
Check out Vernon Coleman’s blog. https://vernoncoleman.com He is an outside the box thinker. Argues that modern meat is unsafe to consume, criticizes the lockdown, and condemns modern medicine for pushing SSRI’s on everyone they can.
He left medicine (MD) to write books a while back. Reminds me of Peter Breggin a little. Same generation. I wonder if he’d write for MIA.
Covid-19 is being used for two things. Selling a vaccine that’s probably just a placebo. And propaganda.
They say they should have it out in a year so we should just stay home till then. Really? AIDS has been around for well over 30 years and there’s no vaccine for that virus yet. I’m sure Gates and Big Pharma will be handsomely paid after keeping the populace isolated and fearful for months on end.
It also makes great propaganda for Big Brother rising up from the depths of the sea. Every great tyrant knows the best populace is a divided one where everyone distrusts and fears their neighbor. Hysterical fear of a possible infection with a small chance of dying is a great way to turn us all against each other. A bunch of selfish, cowardly misanthropes with no social support except the evening news and “social” media is very easy to control.
I’ve already promised myself if I see an elderly person passing out from the stupid mask at WalMart I’m going to help them. Yeah, I know it means exposing myself. So?
Better to die from the virus (unlikely as that is) than live on as one of those caricatures who beats up little old ladies for coming within five feet (the old lady is way more apt to die than a 30 year old if she’s infected.) Or one of those killjoy “karens” who drives around looking for children to scream “I hope you all get Covid-19 and die!” at because they’re playing in the park. A school teacher was doing this. 😛 Or one of those people who doesn’t know their grandma died till six months after since they never made phone calls and rejoiced at the pandemic since they had an excuse to quit visiting her nursing home. Or–speaking of the medical profession–that doctor near me in Louisville who assaulted a teenage girl (choking her) for the horrible crime of enjoying a sunset in the park.
None of these behaviors are rational. If you’re so worried over infection why run toward the person for further contact as you try to punch or throttle them? These activities require touching the person. If you’re worried over their safety why scream how you hope they die?
Covid-19 offers a great excuse to act like selfish jerks. Many are taking advantage of the situation.
If this were the next Bubonic Plague (it isn’t) it still wouldn’t justify these behaviors. There are fates far worse than death. Like losing our humanity.
Quit lying.
Quit telling “consumers”–or using mouthpieces like NAMI to tell them–that Science has proven they have a “broken” brain proven to be caused entirely by a “chemical imbalance” and faulty genes already discovered.
Quit telling people experiencing a bad trip caused by the mind altering drugs you push that it’s all their fault. Those drugs never have that effect on anyone. Unless they’re crazy to start with or lying about taking them “exactly as prescribed.”
Quit telling family members “Drug X never does that to anyone. It’s all John’s illness causing him to sleep 12 hours a day, not cry or smile, silently pace for hours at a time, have mini seizures while his eyes roll back in his head. If he would just take his ‘meds’ exactly as prescribed he wouldn’t bother you with these symptoms. Obviously he’s not really taking them.” (Any search for drug side effects can help us catch you in this deception anyhow.)
Quit lying to the public about how your Science has the infallible ability to weed out serial killers, mass shooters and all other criminal types in our midst with laundry lists of personality traits that lump groups of random individuals together as guilty or “sick” by association. Is red your favorite color? So was Jeffrey Dahmers’!
Quit lying to the public about how you want to end “stigma.” You don’t. “Stigma” or slander is the best advertising technique to sell your product as Fuller Torrey, Tim Murphy, and countless others know.
Yes. Telling the truth is pretty essential to morality. Especially when people’s reputations, health, and lives are at stake.
Quit lying.
I keep thinking of that movie The Minority Report.
Psychiatry is our society’s pre crime division. But unlike the movie, no one holds them accountable for their mistakes. And those they accuse get punished anyhow.
All by pretending the treatments are restorative rather than punitive in nature. And they’re doctors. Not penal enforcers of unwritten rules they can change on a whim. 0 accountability and 100% immunity.
Why not just make suicide illegal and say all unsuccessful attempts will be punished by imprisonment, pharmaceutical torture, possible brain mutilation, and public defamation? The only difference between this scenario and the way things actually are is the Pre-Crime Psych(ic) enforcers are allowed to pose as medical healers. Psychiatry’s got nothing to do with healing people.
I say fear because I have had no direct encounters. My sister’s roommates caught it and recovered without hospital care. She tested negative. My rural community has no cases yet. A family friend in a city caught it and got better. As did my 89 year old great aunt.
The lockdown itself is stressful. But I’m okay.
Before stuff started opening I used Skype and Zoom to visit along with letters and phone calls. Way better than social media for human connection.
Now we go to church–with S.D. in place–and I visit my neighbors in the open air.
Since going off my psych drugs I’ve developed an emotional resiliency I never had before. Violating Expert orders was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.
But I ignored the Experts after doing a lot of homework. According to them I should be acting like Eric Harris/Ted Bundie/Norman Bates/a rabid dog. Or at least unable to talk coherently or care for myself or get along with people I meet. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
No more mood swings, better at reading social cues, normal heart rate, improved hygiene and home maintenance. All these horrible things happened after I fled the mental illness makers.
Stories like mine are an embarrassment to the APA and the AMA too. Psychiatry is cancer on western medicine. Not to mention the legal system–which now has a way to bypass due process and punish the innocent.
Don’t forget those branded at hopelessly “severe mental” cases to help cover some doctor’s butt because he refuses to acknowledge that his precious SSRI’s can drive people crackers.
Heaven forbid he let you go off the drugs so you can function again after catching up on sleep after he kept you awake for 3 weeks in a row. Better label you a “bipolar” menace to society so everyone will shun you till you die. And Dr. Quackenbush can bill your insurance for 3-6 drugs instead of just 1. Including the very drug he KNOWS caused the problem. 😛
I imagine these un-healers cackling with glee and sipping champagne to celebrate every time they ruin some young life this way. Cha-ching! Souls for cash.
I’d say “Shame on them.” But they are as shameless as they are remorseless for all the people they’ve harmed and killed.
I remember how Julie Greene emphasized that the whole point to psychiatry was eugenics. It is based upon the philosophy of social darwinism.
I admit I was slightly skeptical. Eugenics?
Not sure the mainstream shrink at your friendly neighborhood mental illness center knows. Probably clueless. Most of mine were friendly and tried to keep me from suffering too much.
But I believe there’s an inner circle at the top–the guys who invent new “diseases” and make guest appearances on national TV warning Joe Schmoe how evil and dangerous all the “untreated mentally ill” are. They know what they’re doing and show no pity.
The whole premise to psychiatry is certain groups of people are “defective criminal types.” This grew popular in the 19th century. According to eugenicists these “defectives” need to be weeded out from society and prevented from breeding more “inferior stock.” Regardless of the content of their characters and actual behaviors “blood will tell” and these Men of Science must weed out the defectives.
This demonizing of those they claim to help is necessary for psychiatrists since if others saw them as ordinary people they would call them out on the inhumanity of the cruel, pointless experiments they persist in inflicting on hapless test subjects.
This defamation campaign has proven highly effective. Stigma is a shrink’s best friend. They WANT to turn our families and friends and everyone including other doctors against us.
Most people don’t think this through. But they believe the SCIENCE. In their defense many think they’re helpful telling us to take drugs. But thinking we’re all dangerous monsters makes them avoid us. (Duh.) And my guess is doctors don’t care about the quality or quantity of our lives. They have similar attitudes about the disabled and elderly but the notion that we’re all would-be-mass-shooters rendered temporarily harmless via SCIENTIFIC MAGIC makes them treat us worse.
When I moved I managed to not get “bipolar” on most medical records. Just “depression” and all those physical problems inflicted by psychiatry. Amazing how helpful and nice doctors are now.
Lisa is bleeding? Where? Her heart is racing so hard it hurts?
WTH??? 🙁 This crap is killing people like Lisa.
Assuming she wants this drug I still worry about her health. But my guess is she’s not taking with with informed consent. Just told she has to take this miracle pill NO MATTER WHAT.
If Lisa tells her shrink or doctor how horrible it makes her feel–assuming her body can’t adapt–they may change her to something that makes her feel less horrible (for a while.) Or just threaten her with horrible things that will happen if she ever dares to go off. It’s a coin toss.
Pernicious anemia, IBD and other autoimmune problems. Including abnormal bleeding. My heart beat was very erratic till I finally disobeyed my quack. It may have saved my life.
“Antidepressants” have already had studies showing they lower inhibitions and empathy.
Yet prominent psychiatrists urge that still more people be put on these drugs to lower mass killings. Arguing that people murder others because of low self esteem. I dunno. How about not thinking about future consequences (low inhibitions) and not caring about others (lack of empathy)?
Astounding ignorance as to how human beings think or what motivates us. Pseudo science combined with a view of humanity less complex or nuanced than a comic book.
These mind altering drugs do not transform a bunch of Mr. Hyde’s into Dr. Jekyll’s anymore than heroin does. NAMI propaganda notwithstanding.
Yes. NAMI is behind the police brutality toward the “mentally ill.”
Doesn’t require much brain power to see how convincing armed enforcers that others are monsters will lead to more shootings and brutality of these people. But NAMI wants to make the world’s largest omelet and are more than happy to break countless numbers of eggs to achieve this end.
I avoid all things “mental health” now. If I know someone works for “mental health” I will cross over to the other side of the street to avoid them if I can. They think they’re kind when they lock you up and destroy you with drugs, shocks and other random brain damage.
They deny the humanity of their “compassion” objects. Zero empathy because of this denial. All our suffering is written off as fake just like we’re “fake people” in their eyes–without real thoughts or feelings. Only walking brain diseases.
Delusional and dangerous. Lacking insight into their own motivations.
Sadly psychiatrists are already planning on setting up their own police. My guess is if you end the current police system, “mental health” will take over completely as far as those already labeled are concerned. 🙁
Defund psychiatry. Its propaganda is behind police hatred and fear of the “mentally ill.”
This may surprise you OH, but many would not see the sarcasm. A lot of NAMI mommies actually tell themselves that.
I wonder how many killed themselves because they had been persuaded of that. It nearly drove me to suicide. 🙁
Unlike brain cancer or epilepsy, “mental illness” means you are hopelessly evil. Like hyper calvinism–only it’s just a minority of genetic throw backs or “criminal types” who are depraved. With no hope of redemption for any of them.
“Mental illness” stigma is actually based on character traits that are ascribed to one by a “medical expert” regardless of personal conduct or moral integrity.
Steve I imagine a couple shrinks discussing this.
“So Bob, how long do you think you’d grieve if your wife died?”
“I dunno Bill. It took me less than a week to get over her leaving me. Too many hangovers from partying.”
Both laugh.
“I can’t imagine grieving more than a week for mine. Ten days tops.”
“I never grieve over losing anyone. Emotional attachment is a sure sign of mental illness. My dog died today. No big deal. I did what any sane person would. Put the carcass out with the weekly trash and added ‘visit the pound’ on my things to do list.”
“Let’s say fourteen days tops. I can’t imagine loving anyone so much you grieve them that long unless you’re severely mentally ill.”
No word about the role all those “safe and effective treatments” play at wearing down the immunity, causing diabetes, heart or breathing issues. Guess that would be pill shaming. 😛
You got that right!
I actually prefer A Beautiful Mind’s depiction of someone labeled “mentally ill” despite its flagrant inaccuracies and NAMI approved message. At least it doesn’t show Nash turning into a comic book villain from going off his neuroleptics.
70% of those labeled “schizophrenic” used to get back on their feet or “recover” before pharma psychiatry.
Now it’s below 16% and only because they really lowered the bar for what counts as a decent life. And the life expectancy post diagnosis is roughly cut in half.
But the “mental health” industry likes it fine. More treatments to sell and more long term “consumers.”
Pretty annoying when two thirds of your buyers find they can lead better lives drug free and you need to drum up new ones. At that rate how are you going to expand your turf?
Makes me wonder if this was what the whole pandemic was started for.
To drive as many crazy as possible and sell more psych drugs. And finally an overpriced vaccine.
Frank, I’m not sure what OTC drugs are available in Britain. Over here it varies from state to state. But I’ve used adult cough syrup for one or two nights to break an insomnia cycle.
There are a number of sleeping pills here I could buy at Walmart. I try to avoid shrinks. If I see someone I know works for mental health I’ll do all I can to stay out of their way. They’re a danger to my health, my freedom, and my life itself.
Something I see as a potential problem for prescription cannabis is psychiatry’s long track record of blaming everything it does on the consumers’ alleged brain disorder. AKA the consumer him/herself.
A lot of young people labeled “schizophrenic” for life simply got locked up during a bad trip. As a sort of ironic and excessive punishment (called treatment) they’re forced to take massive quantities of mind altering drugs to make them miserable till they die prematurely.
I only took what Dr. M gave me. A “therapeutic” dose of the SSRI Anafranil. Yet my three weeks of sleeplessness and hallucinations were all blamed on me. Dr. M swore up and down that “They never have that effect on anyone!”
Is this merely a clever attempt to create more “schizophrenia diagnoses” by encouraging use of a drug that can cause vivid hallucinations?
For those of you who like MJ, my argument is with psychiatrists prescribing it and interpreting all the temporary effects as symptoms of a life long brain disorder–which requires crippling drugs and a life in segregation to maintain.
Drugs that cause real disabilities and segregation from mainstream society are psychiatry’s gifts. 🙁
I’m too damaged to work now. Iatrogenic disease thanks to psychiatric treatment.
But I escaped because I managed to sneak off to another county and my parents let me stay for a while.
Better to have a middle class or poor family that loves you when it comes to escaping psychiatry. Evan Durst’s family used its wealth to hound him. Just like rich people would pay tidy sums to asylum keepers for locking up annoying relations in Victorian times.
The great novelist Jane Austen had to get her brother to sign her publishing contracts for her since she was an unmarried woman. (No hubby to sign for her.)
Nowadays a woman can be placed in a similar situation. Not because of her gender but alleged “mental illness.”
It makes no difference how rationally you behave nor how reasonable your arguments. Your label will cover it all.
Well, if they’re talking about the Fear–rather than the virus itself–it’s entirely psychological. The Fear seems to be killing large numbers of people as they commit suicide and develop stress related illnesses.
Even though it’s contagious your odds of dying from it are slim. Not arguing the lock down here but pointing out how ridiculous the Fear is. Caution is smart; hysteria is not.
This reminds me of The Bird Box. Only the monsters aren’t Out There. They’re in our screens.
Way easier to avoid.
Don’t watch TV and moderate other media. Read more literary classics and talk to real people through Skype/Zoom/or the phone. Write letters. I hear physical stationary is making a comeback now. It gives a sense of physical contact that e mails don’t.
Me neither. Individuals can turn over new leaves, but they have to renounce wrong doing.
As OH has pointed out we already have a penal system for violent criminals. For the unhappy I think we need better social networks. Not an alternative to psychiatry, but something originally there which psychiatry has done its best to supplant.
Thanks for this piece, Maria. As you point out it’s not just our health and economy at risk, but our relationships and human networking.
All the “normals” are acting crazy now. Look at the videos going viral of screaming at teens at the beach, some doctor trying to choke a girl for not social distancing. How would choking a contagious person lower your own exposure???
Some school teacher screaming at children on a swing set, “I hope you all get sick and die.” Such compassion and dedication to saving lives. 😛
Crazy behaviors from otherwise “normal” people. Wonder how much sooner they’d have lost it in the psych system
This is not a war. A plague would be a stretcher, but more accurate. Similar hysteria occurred during the Spanish Flu Epidemic. The plagues were even worse.
And, despite higher mortality rates, there was less isolation. No internet to render “staying home” so widely accessible. During a war we can do active things and bond with fellow soldiers or our communities. Even those on the home front–like Rosie the Riveter. Instead we’re called to isolation and passivity. Way more stressful.
I feel no satisfaction at “normals” driven mad by medical bureaucrats. Only anger and frustration and sorrow. I put no faith in a doctor simply because he is a doctor after my experiences with psychiatry. A field totally approved as a legitimate specialty by the AMA. Fleeing it may have saved my life.
Some of my negative emotions might be considered “PTSD”? I don’t know. This pandemic reminds me so much of “mental health” with its gas lighting.
Who knows though? Maybe we outcasts who have survived it can help people through this traumatic event.
I was talking to a friend last night about this movement. Her cousin/friend hears voices. The drugs bring some relief but wear off. She frequently quits them and those around her blame the return of her voices on “non compliance.” As someone who fully “complied” religiously from 1992-2016 I know why she goes off the drugs (they make life miserable) and they really don’t stop the voices long term for most.
I went to Day Treatment. A lot of the “rebel” types would stop drugs cold turkey–frequently drink or use street drugs and act weird so they’d get locked up again. But there were many others who swore by their “meds” yet found no long term relief. “Despite” faithful obedience of swallowing the vile stuff they’d hear the same voices after a month or two. The smart ones learned not to complain. Doctors didn’t like it and would just lock you up again and put you on more drugs that made you feel worse.
Woe to you if the Sacred Neuroleptics did not quell the voices or amplified them. Telling this to anyone in “mental health” was blasphemy. It was either dismissed as an unfortunate fluke–your fault for being “resistant” or you were accused of lying to get out of taking these life saving pills that “never had that affect on anyone.” They also claimed Haldol doesn’t cause seizures and Risperdol doesn’t cause weight gain. Grrr.
Posting this article on FB where my friend and her cousin can read it. Thanks for writing it Kermit!
Psychiatric “diagnoses” are glorified name calling. As scientific as insults by the playground bully.
A lot of shrinks get upset at people joking about feeling “bipolar” or complaining about a “schizophrenic” coworker. They complain that only They–the leading medical experts have the right to call people these things.
Reminds me of some skit I saw on TV where a bully on the schoolyard yells at his toady that only he (the bully) has the right to call the other kids “stupid idiots.”
You COULD argue that names like “smelly poo poo head,” “dummy,” “slowpoke” and “ugly” are scientifically valid. Some people are dumber, slower, and uglier than others….Not sure how such names will help. But Bullies don’t want to help. Only show their supremacy and lord it over the other children.
Sadly psychiatry enables abusers. Usually by accident. But since they make snap judgments about moral character (diagnosing) they focus almost entirely on externals. If the abuser dresses well and is a smooth talker they’ll see him or her as the “normal” one as opposed to the nervous, unkempt victim.
They’ll label the victim as dangerous and give the well dressed abuser full power of attorney. Survival of the fittest is the law of psychiatry.
Why wasn’t Bailey locked up, drugged and shocked? Sounds like that psychiatrist had a severe mental illness.
Next time a psychiatrist complains about high suicide rates in their profession offer condolences before reminding them that according to their profession only the severely mentally ill ever think of suicide.
Apparently they’re too afraid of stigma. I for one, don’t want them killing themselves but getting the treatment they DESERVE.
The DSM gives psychiatrists the right to treat harmless eccentrics and sufferers of Lyme Disease the same as pedophiles.
They spread the word on TV, newspapers, social media about how “The reason this man kidnapped and murdered all those children is because he was a bipolar.” Doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together and decide all “bipolars” are serial killers.
Interesting how he brings up psychiatry’s power to punish people for being sex offenders without taking any actual crimes into account. Who gives a rip about what you actually DID? Lol.
The shrink says you’re a monster. The public will believe him.
Why I got kicked out of college.
Punish innocent people for crimes they might commit in the future. Great way to rehabilitate ’em.
The “sex offender” analogy sickens me. “Mental health” frequently lumps harmless eccentrics and the suffering in with perverts and murderers. I don’t think this is an accident either.
Scaring the public and whipping them into a frenzy against the alleged monsters in their midst is great PR for psychiatry as Torrey and Murphy know.
Label a law abiding citizen as “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” and you can treat them worse than a convicted murderer. My label ruined my life. No apologies coming from any of Kriegman’s colleagues.
I loathe psychiatry.
He doesn’t address any of us. Speaks over us to his esteemed colleagues and peers. Appears to think MIA is a respected site for scholarly articles endorsed by the APA.
I refuse to visit any counselor tied to “mental health.” I don’t need being repeatedly told how sick and crazy I am, how deluded I am for having dreams like “normal” people and why I should only date people as “defective” as myself. Since normal, healthy humans wouldn’t understand me.
A woman who drowns her baby used to be called a murderer. Novelists write novels. Painters paint pictures. Murderers commit murders. But people like a neat explanation to make themselves feel secure and build their egos for being “normal.”
Saying, “A woman only drowns her baby because she is ‘bipolar,'” is a way of imposing guilt by association on a lot of law abiding citizens. This made me suicidal after my “diagnosis” since I believed my shrink that I was a monster. 🙁
A bunch of women at church took up a petition to stop me from teaching Sunday school once they found out about my label. I obeyed my stupid shrink and got treated like a pariah.
Relocated where no one knows my dirty secret. I’m physically damaged, so i tell people that’s my disability and why I can’t work and never had a family. Amazing how nice they are to me.
Tapering off the drugs helped me pick up on social cues and nuances. This Covid 19 scare is making “normal” people act nutty and ruining everyone’s social skills. The great equalizer.
I obey the law. But Covid 19 doesn’t scare me the way it does so many. I faced the idea that I was hopelessly insane from a genetic brain defect at twenty and proved the experts wrong.
This illness doesn’t scare me as much as the threat of hopeless insanity shrinks held over my head to keep me in line. Even dying from it scares me less. At 60% infection rates and maybe 5% mortality with my autoimmune issues, I’m more apt to catch it than die from it.
It is what it is. 🙂
All those “normals” sure are acting “crazy and paranoid.” Violent too. Proof that sanity is all relative and no one is immune to craziness.
i started 6 mg of Stelazine in spring 1992. My life didn’t fall apart till fall of 1993 when they labeled me “Schizoaffective” which my dorm mom kicked me out over. Said I was dangerous and frightened the other girls.
I’m not a murderer and it’s wrong for psychiatry to treat me as a violent criminal. They are punitive, not restorative in nature.
In claiming to be merciful rather than just to violent criminals–as an excuse to treat the law abiding like dangerous criminals–the mental illness system acts in ways contrary to both. Psychiatry is neither justice nor mercy.
The man would be offended at what I said about him because it’s true and would hurt his inflated image of the compassionate benefactor he imagines himself to be. As devoid of self awareness as he is compassion.
All of mine were voluntary. The drugs kept me from thinking straight but they told me I needed them and my loopiness was all my (illness’s) fault. I kept wanting to kill myself because I believed I was an evil monster and dangerous to others so suicide was the ultimate act of self sacrifice and love. The only noble thing a monster like me could do.
Now that I decided shrinks are full of it I’m no longer suicidal. Just angry.
Yep. He became an activist after his annoying sister-in-law Blanche–whoops Rose–moved in with them. Finally he got her taken away so she’d get the help she needed.
Just like a certain play by Tennessee Williams. “Stellaaaazine!”
I hope I didn’t give anyone insomnia for a week with a mental image of Deej with his shirt off. Lol.
I daresay Jaffe would not appreciate being locked up for days or weeks then released on a bunch of drugs that made him ill and a badge of shame that made everyone treat him like Jean Valjean at the opening of Les Miserables.
His argument would probably be: “Of course not. But I’m not mentally ill. Pain hurts me.”
Thanks Dr. Eric.
Love your new spin on the old (inaccurate) trope of “What if we treated physical illnesses like ‘mental illnesses’?”
Assume Dr. Diatram’s patient manages to recover. She’ll take all the credit and force him to spend the rest of his life surrounded by ice packs, giving himself daily morphine injections, and popping beta blockers. 🙂
Well said OH.
Judging from the article Dr. Tasch believes the narrative though she means well and might let some “asymptomatic” people leave the system at their discretion.
I knew better than to argue with my shrink. AKA psychiatric blasphemy.
The psychiatrists get paid for keeping us sick with drugs, emotionally abusive brainwashing, and shocks.
My parents were shocked at how much crazier I acted the longer I stayed in the MI System. Now I’m emotionally stable but in chronic pain much of the time. IBD, fingerprint-map-dot-eye dystrophy, and probably ME.
At least I can clean my apartment now. Still forced to live on SSI.
Shrinks told me if I was “good” I could enjoy a career and even maybe get married. Bunch of rubbish. Doubtful any of them believed their malarkey. 🙁
I loved Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH as a child.
(At 8 I disliked Don Bluth’s film because of the liberties it took. The book was thought provoking and I read about finely nuanced issues regarding self reliance, morality, and responsibilities that come with becoming sapient. Not Disney lite on speed.)
Unbeknownst to me there really was a place called NIMH. But instead of making rodents as intelligent as humans they’ve dedicated themselves to making humans as dumb as rodents. The fact that we can still read and write is proof that their methods need perfecting.
And I was repeatedly warned of cognitive decline and “deterioration” if I failed to do exactly as my psychiatrist ordered. Counselors and case workers at the local Mental Illness Centers I dutifully attended. Support groups like NAMI. All the literature and TV shows…mainstream literature of course. All warned how dumb/crazy/helpless/dangerous I’d become unless I took my “meds” religiously.
I pointed out how since starting my “therapeutic” doses of Haldol/Risperdol/Zoloft/Xanax/Celexa/Pick-your-neuropoison I could no longer take full time course loads at college or work full-time at my summer job or get by with less than 11 hours sleep. They would tell me it was all my “illness” which began at exactly the same time I sought “help” for social anxiety and had a horrible reaction to the SSRI. All entirely by coincidence. 😛 SMH
It is 100% hereditary too. The reason it’s not only just but compassionate for society–led by the shrinks–to treat the “mentally ill” like pieces of garbage is we’re subhuman genetic throwbacks/monsters. Not really human like the “normals” and the shrinks.
Must have mutated their DNA. Kind of like green, radioactive sludge in those old Saturday morning cartoons. Real SCIENCE folks!
I have vented on this site about sadness shaming. Hence the insistence that DEPRESSION IS A DISEASE. They wouldn’t have to justify it by calling it purely biological (and beyond our control) if we weren’t pressured to grin ear to ear all the time like the Cheshire cat. Why not let me feel glum? Really. Feeling blue is not a crime, but to hear some people it’s worse than being a bank robber.
And regarding loneliness I am sick and tired of well meaning articles lecturing on how the only reason you get lonely is you’re not full enough of self worth. That’s just dumb. Loneliness is not synonymous with low self esteem (though even that’s not a crime) and scheduling a make out session with your mirror isn’t the answer. 😛
Something more immediate also related to this Covid19 is the relentless pushing labels and drugs on people who feel lonely and desperate from physical isolation and job loss.
Psychiatry continues to do its dirty work and remains fully operational when everything else but Covid19 services are shut down.
Nagging someone to come off her or his drugs without a support system or decent tapering advice is a bad thing.
Even though I wish everyone could live drug free I know many won’t since going off is painful and demanding. And you need to do your homework and find a place you can hide if you’re a busy long term psych consomme.
(Psychiatric Consomme. My new word instead of their word “Consumer.” Never did like it even when I was one.)
A friend of mine is in AOT because she didn’t call me for information and just went cold turkey during lockdown before freaking out in her apartment and going to the psych ward. Again.
Some of us are disabled. Either with legitimate physical problems doctors brushed off as “severe mental illness.” Or crippled by the “treatments.” Drugs, shocks, and psycho-surgeries….
But I agree with you about “mad” not being a real thing. David Oaks kind of goes into that.
So sorry about Abraham’s death, Mr. McNeill. Your son’s fears were rational and justified. He didn’t want to be slowly tortured to death. That’s what psychiatry was doing to him.
I consider myself disabled. But not from any “mental illness.” I no longer exhibit any of the required traits after 30 months off my drugs. My disabilities are multiple autoimmune disorders and poor concentration/executive function. I blame these on the “cure” for the unprovable brain disease men cooked up and voted into existence to prove how they were Real Doctors. I didn’t know what pain was until they “helped” me.
If I were going to be harmed again like your son I would want to do what he did too. Psychiatric treatments are a fate worse than death. They ruin your health, your ability to earn a living and all hope of having a family. They cut your years in half and destroy your bodily organs.
Vaccinations against viruses are very ineffective according to doctors themselves.
I read that if they come out with a vaccine for Covid19 it will only be 40-50% effective. I guess that’s better than nothing. But it’s not a magical panacea to save us all.
Yet, what do you want to bet that if they come out with one the medical establishment will be lauded and the nanny state will finally let us leave our own homes?
Covid19 is finally showing non psychiatrized people what tyrants doctors can be. All “for your own good” of course.
I’m hoping we can use public distrust to turn sympathies against the Granddaddy of Control Freak Medical Science. Psychiatry. By Medical Science I mean manipulating brains to render you “docile and child-like.” As opposed to independent and functioning.
I struggle to trust any doctors. Not anti medicine. But anti liars.
The fact that the entire AMA continues to enable and even applaud the damages psychiatry forces upon it’s guinea pigs makes me angry at the entire medical community.
They know the drugs cause excessive weight gain, kidney failure, severe GI problems, heart arhythmia, diabetes and extensive damage to the brain and CNS yet they support business as usual and often push these drugs on their own patients for kickbacks or just to avoid looking into legitimate medical complaints.
Phooey on doctors. Despite their smarts and education they lie all the time. Worse than used car salesmen. I don’t trust any of them further than I can throw a piano.
Shrinks express sorrow at the “stigma” their test subjects experience in being denied housing, jobs they could perform despite being drugged up and having family and friends reject them.
Yet they refuse to accept any responsibility for the situation and love to go on national TV to tell the world how dangerous/stupid/evil all their “patients” are. As Paula Capplan points out if I tell someone you have tuberculosis and they avoid you does it make sense for me to express outrage over how they treat you?
I’ve noticed nobody proposed taking any action to lower the numbers in nursing homes during the epidemic or find housing for the homeless. Both sides of the political aisle are happy to let the status quo continue in those areas.
Aside from “nice guys” who were proposing locking up all the homeless in warehouse style asylums where the virus could still run rampant. Pure benevolence and altruism. Of course.
Isn’t it swell to have a bunch of bureaucrats/doctors running everything now?
My great-aunt has the virus. Got it at her nursing home. No efforts were taken to separate the infected from the rest.
“Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on. That is–badly.” George Orwell. Animal Farm.
FWIW, more people than ever will be aware of the dangers of letting medical professionals grow too big for their lab coats and not holding them accountable.
It looks like the Covid-19 may be easier to contain than many feared. But the Experts are very reluctant to admit they made a mistake.
Epidemiologists are intelligent and know their stuff. But this virus was “novel” meaning something no one was familiar with. Baffling even to the experts. Hey, I’m fine with that. They know more than I do after all.
But rather than admitting. “Okay. We may need less draconian measures than we at first assumed. Yay! Let’s loosen up a little but wear your masks and wash your hands a lot and only visit outdoors for now. Here are the symptoms to look for if someone is contagious,” many insist on giving doom and gloom prophecies.
Hmm. Medical experts who would rather ruin people’s lives than admit they made honest mistakes or don’t know everything or give up unquestioned powers bestowed on them….This narrative rings a bell with me. And I bet many other survivors feel the same.
Glad I live in Indiana. Things are looking up. And I plan on lying lower than the government demands–this month–since the last batch of Medical Experts I trusted implicitly “helped” by destroying my autoimmune system.
My main source of stress has been “PTSD.” Fear of meddling (maybe less than honest) doctors taking over the world and destroying everything.
A lot of doctors seem to think now that human beings don’t need sunlight, fresh air, human companionship, or food to live. And can do just fine for another two years without them. Just like the shrinks assumed we didn’t need anything but our “meds” to lead a great life. Career, family, friendship, love, purpose in living, the amygdala, pancreas, kidneys, heart, frontal lobes, CNS, GI tract…all non-essentials for the “severely mentally ill.” Keep taking your “meds” no matter what!
(Food is hyperbole at this point. But if we keep total lockdown for 18-24 months like some experts recommend we can expect more and more empty shelves at the grocery stores and food banks when we’re allowed to go there.)
More people will realize how horrible SSRI drugs are and how they’re used to blame people who suffer from legitimate stressors as the opportunistic shrinks seize this opportunity to push their poisons. Dare we hope people will finally realize sorrow and loneliness are not brain diseases?
I agree. A better term might be emotional problems from poor nutrition.
I suffer from this thanks to years of psychiatric drugs messing up my insides. Now I require a B12 shot every month and an iron infusion every winter. Officially diagnosed with pernicious anemia and inflammatory bowel disease.
A public apology would be the best legacy Frances could leave at this point.
And maybe telling the public that those his profession branded “SMI” are not a bunch of would be psycho murderers waiting to go stabby stabby in the shower or licking their lips at the thought of cannibalism.
That was Julie Greene’s biggest offense against psychiatry. Branding all they claim to help subhuman monsters. Their drugs work well at making us look and act grotesque too. (I wonder if any psychiatrists realize this?)
So do you think the rest of us should be forcibly locked up and drugged? That’s what Allen Frances and all the members of the APA do and they use the DSM as an excuse.
If others want to use their labels and take psych drugs that’s one thing. But it’s forcing these on law abiding citizens against our will that we have a problem with.
The drugs made me hear voices and act weird. My label almost drove me to suicide. It’s very easy for William to get what he wants. Not so with the rest of us.
And my heart almost gave out. I might be dead if I hadn’t escaped. No suicide attempts despite the Covid19 stress either. My parents and siblings are amazed and pleased at my improvement.
As Whitaker explained above this article was not to validate psychiatry but to prove how it is political rather than medicinal. It also shows how large quantities of money are recycled through Big Pharma/APA/Washington.
But Anomie makes a great point about the APA calling the kettle black. And why do we need Lee and her colleagues to make decisions about how to vote?
They were slowly killing me for years with their “treatments” and my immune system that they damaged renders me more apt to die from Covid 19 even though I’m under fifty. My heart beats have finally stabilized thanks to defying Standard Treatment.
How dare these pearl clutching hypocrites use people like us–already damaged by THEIR profession–for virtue signalling to further their own careers?
It also shows how stupid our society is. It’s no longer enough to look at a person’s behavior and say, “He’s an abuser because he beats his wife and kids. She’s an arrogant, self-centered woman because she lies all the time to gain attention. He is a cruel sadist because he tortures small animals.”
Nope. That’s not good enough. Now we have to label the abuser as having “bipolar with intermittent explosive disorder” the liar as “narcissistic” and the guy who tortures animals is a “sociopath.”
Dr. Obvious to the rescue. Sad how some kind hearted abuse victims will stay with the abuser because the shrink says he’s sick instead of calling him out on his bad behaviors.
I remember urging this woman to leave her abusive husband. “But the poor dear has bipolar. I can’t leave him.” Another woman and I both urged her to leave since this did not give him the right to harm her. (Ironically we both were labelled “bipolar” yet shrinks say we’re all alike.)
Why judge people on the content of their characters? We have shrinks to brand them with pseudo scientific “diagnoses” instead.
And Heaven help you if you ever have a bad reaction to one of their drugs or run afoul of a psychiatrist. They’ll turn your nearest and dearest against you so you wind up leading the life of Richard Kimball.
By calling guilty people “sick” shrinks gain the right to punish the innocent for crimes they never have or will commit–by calling them “sick” too.
And only THEY have the power to do so. With no objective standards for anyone to hold them to.
I wish they would “diagnose” the most powerful man in the free world. Know why? It would show everyone how much undisputed power the APA has and how potentially dangerous they really are.
As well as the slush fund from the White House I wonder how much this fear of people wising up played a role in Lieberman’s behavior. Last time I checked he was not a Republican.
Shrinks are certainly not letting the Covid 19 emergency go to waste.
And when they act concerned about the possible lives lost I call BS on their fake compassion. Thanks to their “safe and effective treatments” I have an autoimmune disease and am as likely to die from Covid 19 as my Boomer parents.
And psych drugs make you more likely to die from it.
So sick of the pearl clutching virtue signallers. 0 regard for the lives of people like us. Phony as a bundle of three dollar bills.
A nation of lonely, depressed, alienated people is a psychiatrist’s ultimate fantasy. My guess is the APA is tickled pink at all the human misery now. Ghoulish and typical as we know too well.
Yes but these “untreated mental illnesses” do cause suffering which psychiatry can alleviate.
Psychiatry alleviates the suffering of the families who are embarrassed by the person’s odd behaviors and don’t want to look like bad guys by simply not inviting him to parties. So getting Johnny shot up with 15 mg of Haldol a day will make him quiet and inactive. No more suffering.
Psychiatry also alleviates suffering of the mainstream public by use of the placebo effect. Every time a mass shooting occurs some prominent shrink tells the public that of course only the “mentally ill” murder people like that and give him even more unquestioned authority and he will stop violent crimes forever by giving all the “mentally ill” people the “treatment” they so richly deserve for the crimes of a few they may have nothing in common with. Other than a shrink’s badge of shame.
Psychiatry alleviates the suffering of psychiatrists themselves. It stunk being the “Cinderella” of medicines. Now, thanks to drugs, shocks, and other forms of brain mutilation in the works they can show what honest-to-gosh-real-doctors they are.
When they praise psychiatry as highly effective this is what they really mean.
Thanks for sharing this Leah.
I’m going to post a link to this article on Facebook.
I suggest cloth masks. You can make them yourself with a YouTube video. Or just wrap a bandanna or scarf around your nose and mouth. That way we can reuse them and save the disposable kinds for medical facilities.
I’ve been using this time to instill distrust of the medical profession in the hearts of people using social media. Nothing blatant or out there. Just subtle little seeds of doubt and skepticism. A lot of people are open to the idea that doctors don’t have our best interests at heart right now.
My years as a psychiatric guinea pig while other doctors watched on smiling in approval, seeing the damage psychiatrists did to me have made me distrust and despise the entire American medical system. Not anti medicine. Anti doctors.
Just because someone is a doctor does not make them honest. All it means is if they decide to harm you they have superior training and smarts to do it without getting caught. And the other doctors cover for the crooked ones so they’re guilty in their own fashion. And of course the shrinks.
What kind of people do this? These doctors must know lithium destroys kidneys, neuroleptics ruin your brain and CNS, and SSRI drugs make your weight double and mess up your heart and gut. But they remain silent. Heaven forbid they save lives at the cost of “meds compliance.” 😛
Dr. Fauci has been caught changing his story. It was a minor lie about face masks not being helpful. To save masks for doctors he explained later.
But this has hurt public trust. Suddenly people are open to the idea that doctors tell lies and have their own agenda rather than the best interest of the public at heart.
I’m teaching some online friends the truth about psychiatrists right now. Many are open to this idea.
As Peter Breggin points out the reason they treat people that way with inpunity is because they claim to be “healing” them. Even if people could be persuaded it wasn’t “just your illness talking” they would see such bad experiences as a necessary evil in “getting them the treatments they deserve.”
The very word DESERVE speaks volumes. You can say a poor person deserves help. You can also say a horrible person deserves to suffer. We need to ask people making this argument what context of this word they are using.
Help the mainstream gain some insight into their own hearts.
Robert Nikkel, if you’re using your infiltration to save lives like Schindler did, God bless you.
I wish I knew more psychiatrists willing to criticize the damage their profession is doing. Aside from the writers here I don’t know any (personally) willing to question the way things are.
All mental centers I have gone to insist the only way to not kill yourself or those around you is take your “meds” without fail NO MATTER WHAT. Till you die prematurely despite the horrible way you feel. What I personally have seen and experienced after 26 years in the mental system.
They made me live in terror of my own mind for the whole time. Their message is what I hear preached on television, social media outlets and just about everywhere to this day.
But my view and experience are limited. I don’t know every doctor or psychiatrist in the world. I’m glad to know such men and women exist and wish they were more vocal.
I think I was unusually sensitive to SSRI drugs. Had an extreme reaction to Anafranil. High as a kite and sleepless for three weeks. The whole time I took it.
My “high” from Zoloft was milder and zapped me out of my depression. The depression was caused by getting kicked out of college, rejected by friends, having all my hopes and dreams dashed at age 20 and annoying my family by my drug addled behavior.
Their flocks are “defective.” Not sinful. Sin does not sound scientific. You can’t attone for bad DNA.
Not sure I’d call psychiatrists priests. More like tiny deities of their secular cult. (Yes. Some secular groups count as cults. I heard speculation that MLM can count.)
Because it exists in your core being you cannot repent and reform. You are the cancer to be eliminated or frozen so it won’t spread.
There can be no propitiation or sufficient penance when your existence itself is a sin.
I believe that’s why I couldn’t kick my suicidal urges after my diagnosis as “SMI.” Rejecting it gave me a new lease on life.
I feel for psychiatrists with consciences. I feel for their “patients” more though. Psychiatrists can always go rogue or choose a new specialty or become technical writers. They choose to stay in the field. No one court orders them to practice against their will.
Robert Nikkel if you want to help people you could see yourself as a secret infiltrator into the System. Then dedicate yourself to using your influence by kissing up and bribing the right people to save human beings who will otherwise be killed.
We could easily replace all shrinks and mental illness centers with kiosks where vending machines print out a diagnostic label and others dispense the appropriate drugs. But then who would malign us on national TV and write defamatory articles to the Boston Globe?
Bringing back old Victorian “lunatic” asylums seems to be the ultimate wet dream for psychiatrists I noticed. My guess is they’ll be able to collect more revenue for the millions they hope to cram in there after gas lighting them with SSRIs to make them hallucinate so they can label them “bipolar.”
I believe there is a Batman villain who runs an asylum where he puts his victims after driving them hopelessly insane with toxic nerve gas. Psychiatry is the only medical field that so closely resembles a comic book.
Dr Arkham: But Batman, they were already severely mentally ill. My toxic nerve gas just unmasked the symptoms
You mean the people who actually want the “mentally ill” to lead decent.lives and not die prematurely? I agree Nancy.
Take the message to those who want fewer people forced into disability and in asylums. Not swelling the ranks of the “SMI” so at least a third of the population is on a cocktail of poly pharma. Like the ancient Roman slave population. Or bringing back the Victorian asylums.
That still doesn’t excuse condemning trusting patients to a slow horrible death. And they make out like bandits.
Like my friend’s psychiatrist who partied on a Caribbean cruise after basically sentencing her to death at age 29. Dr. C seemed perfectly happy with zero regrets when she came back and found Karen dead. Plenty new cash cows where she came from.
I realized then they don’t care if we die. Literally. As long as we die “with our rights off” they’re chill with us dropping like flies.
According to psychiatric records there used to be a 70% recovery rate for “schizophrenics” too. And they didn’t die twenty to thirty years prematurely either.
Yet psychiatric professionals keep telling us how much better things are now. I guess they must mean the income and prestige that they experience. All that really matters of course. 😛
Just read an article in a journal of neuro-science how they think they found a bio marker for depression. Is this a real neurological condition they plan on actually fixing?
Heck no! Just an excuse to dole out more of the same poison that damages neuron receptors. Only now they’re hopeful for an excuse to force happy people to take the same old crap they’ve been handing out with for 30 years.
“We don’t know how SSRIs work. We just know that they always do. Because the consumers tell us so. If they don’t say the meds are working we keep them locked up till they do.”
How can anyone be that dumb? “Depression is the leading cause of disability.” Yet in order to get that disability check approved you need proof that you’re taking standard “treatments.” Hence SSRI drugs do not prevent disability from depression.
How can respected neuro scientists mix up cause and effect so thoroughly?
Since organizations/institutions are defined entirely by what they do, one cannot separate the who they are from what they do as one can individuals.
So I can forgive the psychiatrist who ruined my life–if he wants my forgiveness. But in order to forgive him I must acknowledge that he hurt me. I was wronged.
No debt means forgiveness is impossible.
The institution of psychiatry is all about punishing the weak while pretending to be merciful. It has dedicated itself to lies and punishment of the unfortunate. (Occasionally letting criminals off easily or pretending to. Part of their illusion.)
Deceit and senseless cruelty are evil. While I agree psychiatrists are human beings and some are kind and don’t abuse their powers as much as they could…most are not monsters…but they belong to the APA which demands deceit and cruelty in order to belong.
Some self deceive (I’m not hurting them. The drugs are good for them since they’d only wind up in asylums anyhow. They don’t have feelings like normal humans do. They’re all defectives, so it’s okay to inflict brain damage on them.) The prominent ones talk out of both sides of their mouths and keep changing the narrative through television interviews and books published.
The rest go rogue–like the psychiatrists blogging for MIA–or find another line of work. Or commit suicide because they can’t live with the guilt.
Angry as I am, I would rather a psychiatrist come clean and accept the forgiveness of anyone willing to give it rather than destroying himself. Suicide is a tragedy for anyone.
They keep talking about “non organic causes” too. Not just real doctors but shrinks.
A shrink will seldom admit to a patient suffering something medically proven like Lyme’s Disease or Crohns. But they do acknowledge these diseases exist and let other doctors treat them. In turn the doctors refer the “non organic causes” to them.
Hmm. “Non organic” causes. And yet they kept arguiing at NAMI how “mental illness is a real brain disease” and “an illness like any other” and “your meds are just like insulin for diabetes” and “science has proven that ‘mental illness’ is caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain.”
All those arguments sound like organic causes are to blame. Is the human brain not a real organ?
Or psychiatry just has a bunch of drugs and shocks to sell and since these remedies only operate organically they claim the brain is to blame even as they call the disorders they treat “brain illnesses.”
Needless to say this is a secret embarrassment to the psychiatric community.
Google “Why We Still Use ‘Organic Causes’ + psychiatry online” for an insider look at what psychiatry doesn’t broadcast to the public. They’re pretty mad at real doctors for making a distinction in the ICD-10, feigning concern about how this will contribute to “stigma.”
The only “stigma” shrinks worry about is the stigma against themselves as the poor little Cinderella they see themselves to be. They are the real victims and nobody gives them the respect they feel they are due.
Their “consumers” are so beneath consideration (subhuman monsters as they believe them to be) that they don’t even consider, let alone care, that discrimination ruins their lives.
No concern about those they harm. It’s all about them. And if they hurt their hands beating someone else they burst into tears about their own injury.
If a friend of mine were being battered by her husband and he was threatening to kill her would it be reasonable for her to sit down and speak in an articulate and reasonable manner about how it hurt when he bloodied her nose and blacked her eyes?
Even if he promised to change she should look for a shelter. What if he argued that battery was actually good for her and an act of compassion on his part because women can’t function properly without a little external “help”? No apologies or admission of harm.
Psychiatry would be like the latter. No apologies. No admission of wrongdoing. Just blaming the victim. If the drugs harm them it’s their fault for “resisting” treatments with their bad physiology. If destruction of your brain with ECT doesn’t make you happy, it’s your fault for having Borderline Personality Disorder.
Your kneecaps shattered when I hit them with a baseball bat? Well if you weren’t so frail like a china doll that wouldn’t have happened.
You almost bled to death from the knife wound? Well, you shoulda thought of that before you had flesh so soft and stab worthy.
Would you mind posting a link to your art website Someone Else?
I used to paint before psychiatry. I used to sew clothes I designed for myself and be very creative.
The truth is it’s only recently that mortality rates for the “SMI” have been higher. Since all those safe and effective treatments came out. (SAFE for doctors to prescribe and EFFECTIVE at making them and their Pharma cronies very rich.) And any hope of recovery has gone out the window too.
I refer you to Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic to look at the elephant in the living room.
Psychiatrists, medical professionals, mentalists, and many others don’t care if they kill us. They don’t care if we seize, lose brain function, can no longer live independently or walk, experience nerve damage and (mercifully) die at 52. All in a day’s work for them.
I realized how shrinks were okay with our dying when I lost a good friend at age 29. Her shrink gave her a drug that gave her grand mal seizures and threatened her not to go off it. My friend died that weekend while that shrink went off to party on a Caribbean cruise.
None of the NAMI mommies (we both volunteered there) gave a damn that she died either. That’s when I realized NAMI isn’t about helping people. It’s about selling drugs. The only non-professionals they actually help are parents and spouses who despise their “loved ones” so much they want them to lose all cognitive function, the ability to live independently, and die early.
Another friend left NAMI after she saw how chill they were with her “schizophrenic” sister being drugged on a poly-pharma regimen till all her organs failed at 49. If an eccentric adult relative embarrasses them so much they can always cut them off.
But…no…it’s all about control. And the praise they get about how “kind” they are to their burdensome “SMI” accessories.
Forcing us to take the drugs they worship means more to them than anything. Including our recovery, quality of life, or even survival itself.
Just saw a commercial advertising another drug to treat the tardive dyskinesia shrinks have denied for decades. Of course coming off that “medication” is unthinkable since you “need” that mega dose of Haldol to treat the “bipolar” your shrink created by giving you an SSRI you had a reaction to and blaming it all on you. Horrible people with no conscience or empathy!
We are only objects for them to get rich by performing cruel, pointless experiments on.
They don’t serve us, but the public by providing a sense of security and “protecting” everybody from the monsters they create through torture and brain/nerve damage. They don’t give a damn about the well being of their human lab rats!
The concept of SMI is far harder to grasp than the concept of Santa Claus.
Is it violent behaviors? Stupidity? It depends.
If they want to pretend to be nice they treat you like you’re MMR. If they want to alarm your family or turn the public against those like you, they say “mental illness” is all about acting like Norman Bates or Mike Meyers or one of those other Hollywood pictures inspired by shrinks.
You find this in other forms of discrimination.
Let me quote an MRA/incel: All women are independent, needy, career obsessed, gold digging, picky whores.
Note the contradictory aspects to the image he created? That’s how shrinks describe the “mentally ill.”
“Dangerous, helpless, childish, cunning, irrational, diabolically clever, illogical, manipulative, detached, needy, unemotional, hysterical, arrogant would-be mass shooters. With low self esteem.”
Besides limiting crime to more destructive behaviors society only publicizes “Mental illness” linked to the most destructive behaviors.
Psychiatry pretends to be merciful in how it punishes or “helps” the “SMI” criminal as a means to an end. That end? Legal impunity to inflict life long punishment on the innocent by accusing them of the potential to commit crimes.
Psychiatry is a legal force. Their treatments are cruel and unusual punishments inflicted on those guilty of having been deemed unfit to survive.
There’s an article from a few months back about a prominent shrink requesting special police who will answer to him alone. Pretty chilling.
What are you hoping for Robert Nikkel? I applaud your hard work and sincerity, but am not sure what you intend to accomplish in the way of helping people.
Psychiatry will abuse since it’s profitable and asking shrinks nicely to please quit destroying our lives isn’t working. Why should they? They have no reason to.
My real hope is grass roots education of people who are not invested in “mental illness.” Ex-NAMI members who watched the psych system kill family members. (Not hyperbole.) Faith groups who reject the philosophy intrinsic to psychiatry of monism. Others who have seen the devastating consequences of long term SSRI use.
People who desperately long to escape the Madhouse Without Walls but don’t see a way. They need help escaping an abusive system.
Not asking, very politely, to please be a little less harmed. Pretty please. 🙁
I was surprised at how much support I got in my choice to leave psychiatry. I showed loved ones the evidence of cognitive decline created by the treatments and the lack of evidence for any pathology corrected by the same. A lot of people want to get better. A lot of friends and family are upset too at what shrinks think is acceptable quality of life. Including very early deaths.
If we must embrace lost causes, I prefer hopeless abolitionist to hopeless reformer. If success is impossible let us aim high!
Even if I never slay the Dragon at least I can help some people escape being burned or eaten by it.
Mental workers have been known to “diagnose” people in notes with things like “worthless piece of sh*t.”
Read an article in a medical journal by a psych nurse joking about it.
They talk a good game to SOUND kind and polite in public. But even then they try to scare the public by explaining how dangerous these Subhuman Others are.
Fr. John thank you for this article. Ironically the damage to my soul that drove me “mad” occurred through a rupture in my church.
Spiritual abuse by adults when you are a sensitive child can be very traumatic. Something the secular mentalists claiming to help me never acknowledged. Especially since “mental health” chalks nearly everything up to biology nowadays.
Some find closure by ditching religion altogether. I only found true healing for my psyche by realizing the lies and false doctrine crammed down my throat and the disgust I felt at hypocrites. I have forgiven them, but am no more anti-religion than I am anti-science simply because medical quackery exists.
It is ironic how psychiatrists deny souls exist. They claim to fix “broken brains” but we already have the field of neurology. It’s interesting how psychiatrists and doctors talk about “non organic” causes of complaints. Many pro psychiatry groups like NAMI argue “What if we treated mental illnesses like physical illnesses?”
Hmm. If the disease is NOT organic or physical (as their language implies) why do they only offer physical remedies for bodily organs?
A lot of psych apologists like Jaffe argue that “It must be in the brain because nothing else exists.” Let’s ignore the a priori assumption of monism that the majority of the world’s people disagree with. Let’s assume all odd and erratic behaviors do originate in the brain. Some do–usually through brain trauma. (Others through liver failure, thyroid issues, etc.)
That still does not justify random acts of brain damage through coercing someone into long term use of mind altering drugs or mutilating the brain through shocks and other “psycho” surgeries. It’s like arguing for treating restless leg syndrome by severing someone’s spinal cord. Annoying as this neurological problem is, most of us would rather be able to walk.
Don’t forget the guy who lives all alone in the outback. He wears nothing but a poncho from a square of tent canvas with a leather strap holding it together. Eats nothing but insects and honey he finds in the wild.
Every now and then he wanders into town yelling, “Repent!”
We don’t need to manipulate King Herod into cutting his head off anymore. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine we can make this prophet as good as dead. Locked up forever and silenced.
And because they are “mentally ill” and “defective” they will be given low priority as far as medical treatment goes. Along with the elderly.
At least that’s what my brother reports from his home in Massachusetts. As far as the elderly goes. Though that usually includes the disabled.
I am disabled. At first it was a GI issue and symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Now I am experiencing symptoms associated with conditions like MS. Pretty scary. And they’re the long term effects of psychiatric drugs. I have no doubt of that. Nor do I doubt that any doctor will deny this ugly truth.
Makes me skeptical about this Covid 19 thing altogether, knowing that doctors lie whenever convenient. Could this be a ploy by Big Pharma to make billions with a vaccine with little real value? I am sure the disease is real, it’s very contagious, and kills people. But I also think the mortality rates are inflated. How much I have no idea.
I recommend practicing social distancing as they advise. But, because of my experiences with the medical system, I am very skeptical of anything that receives this much publicity on television. Especially a lot of experts–in politics and showmanship more than medicine–spouting off SCIENCE STUFF.
Dr. Fauci and other high ranking, celebrity shock docs have been found making faulty predictions of mortality rates–if not deliberately skewing the numbers. Incompetence at best.
He also has made some stupid statements about how unless the infection rate from the virus falls to 0 we can not end the lockdown for anyone.
Fauci claims we should all stay locked up for at least a year. Homelessness and starvation don’t exist in his Reality it seems. Finally his medical brethren and the Big Pharma messiahs will provide our salvation in vaccine form.
Of course once the vaccine comes out, any infections or deaths from Covid 19 in the vaccinated won’t count. Just like all the times you catch the flu after getting vaccinated at work. Or get depressed on an SSRI.
No vaccine is 100% effective. Especially regarding as far as viruses go. But that doesn’t matter because the AMA and Big Pharma will be Heroes and cash in on the illusion of security.
Just like shrinks who claim to save the world from the mythical monsters they create.
Actually fortune telling and sooth saying fall into the realm of mysticism. Not science. So beware of doctors giving numbers to hypothetical scenarios with high levels of assurance.
Like the movie 101 Cloverfield Lane we have no choice but to trust those claiming to help us. For now.
(And if you see the movie, you’ll know that while John Goodman is the bad guy there really is something out there. So please keep social distancing. And wash your hands.)
Hi Caroline.
I am less lonely practicing social distancing than I was in certain situations. Like being surrounded by people who regard me as an ogre. AKA severely mentally ill.
I want to read your book. Nobody in mainstream churches I have attended knows the truth about the “chemical imbalances” or how psychiatric drugs really work. Or even how they test you for a “severe mental illness.”
People are being maimed, segregated,, forced to live in poverty and dying young. They could know–if they cared to. 🙁
It’s either denial (I am actually helping them feel better, they aren’t fully human, they’re only fit for asylums anyhow) searing the conscience like the Big Baddies do (the kind who demonize their “mistakes” or victims on major media outlets), or succumb to guilt and have a breakdown. Or kill yourself. Maybe both.
Dr. Abram Hoffer cured “schizophrenics” with mega doses of B and C vitamins. Of course it wasn’t really “mental illness” they suffered from but a severe nutritional deficiency that caused hallucinations and other bizarre thoughts. Kind of like Pellagra.
Dr. Hoffer should have come up with another word for it. But he actually helped people. Mom talked about taking me to his clinic in Canada back in the early nineties after my diagnosis. But it didn’t work out. Unbeknownst to us both, just going off the “meds” would have alleviated a lot of my problems. 20 20 hindsight. 🙁
I can only speak for myself, but it wasn’t anything so grand or lofty for me.
I sank under the weight of years of bullying and two periods of homelessness as a child. Got so depressed and anxious I sought help from a shrink as a friend suggested.
Went on Anafranil for three weeks and snapped. Got put on a cocktail till I escaped after 22 years. Not sure I can ever quit grieving. The damage is real.
Stories like those of Mad Mom’s daughter don’t cheer me up. (Nor should they.) But they remind me not to wallow in self pity. Many are worse off than I.
Iatrogenic brain damage is the remedy. The only treatment Psychiatry offers. Its answer for everything.
Psychiatry helps people by ruining their jobs, relationships, and isolating them. Their treatments consist of branding the unhappy/lonely as hopelessly insane menaces to others. And now they push disabling drugs to keep them from functioning or looking normal for mainstream society. (Adds to the credibility of how inferior the Others are.)
Somehow they think what harms themselves and the “normals” helps the “mentally ill.” 😛
Black and white thinking as they shove everybody into neat, little boxes. The “healthy normal” people who have the right to feel sad or frightened or lonely. Versus the “mentally ill” whose feelings are only symptoms of the disease they have instead of a personality–according to shrinks.
It isn’t meant to be read by “consumers” judging from tone and subject matter. 😛
BTW, if you can understand it you must be “non-compliant.” Why aren’t you taking your “meds” you naughty kid? 😀
Tsk tsk.
They have ignored many inconvenient things. Like “consumers” dying 25 years prematurely. Diminished quality of life among those they “help” and brain damage proven to be caused by their treatments according to a member of the APA.
They also refuse to listen when anyone complains that the seizures, depression, hallucinations or thoughts of violence didn’t start till after they got put on the magical pills handed out like office candy. I knew better than to ask my shrink for help.
I ran away. And will do whatever it takes to keep away from the mental illness makers.
Body, soul and spirit. Mental and emotional are different sides to the soul.
In claiming to help the body with (short term) emotional pain killers, psychiatry harms all of the above.
Glad you are finding wellness, Laurel. I’m forty-six and struggling to heal my body after 26 years on drugs. 22 years were poly. Drug free for 2 and 1/2.
A lot more would get rid of those devices if the government (across the pond) actually threatened to track them. Chalk it up to Yankee paranoia. A lot of people are AFRAID to give up their guns because the first thought that comes to their heads is Government Take Over.
A big fuss in the mid west. We are afraid of getting infected and dying. But we don’t automatically trust the feds either.
Convincing others not involved in the psych system that the “Mentals” could be coming for them next–to take away their health, freedom, businesses, family–is way more hopeful than trying to reason with those in the psych system. Whose income depends on refusing to acknowledge the damage they do.
A working title for a new dystopian series. Medocracy. “Don’t be afraid. We’re the Healers. We only want to help you.”
If psych hospitals become harbingers of contagion they will lock people up indefinitely. Turn the wards into those asylums that make psychiatrists teary eyed with nostalgia.
Worried that homeless rates will skyrocket thanks to businesses shutting down. And large numbers of homeless people will be another excuse to set up more long care asylums. 🙁
In America there have been 143,000 cases severe enough to be diagnosed. The asymptomatic do not count. 2,500 deaths out of those. If you have a calculator you can crunch the numbers.
Italy is far worse. The worst as far as fatalities go. With 7% of recorded cases dying.
Please read my comment below. I believe social distancing is a necessary evil after all. But with proper medical care the death rates can be kept very low.
The idea is that with fewer cases there will be more medical resources for those who do get sick.
No one had any motive for silencing me. Unless you count not acknowledging that the psych drugs were responsible for turning my “neurosis” into full blown “psychosis” with hallucinations that terrified me.
But they insisted that “they never have that effect on anyone” despite label warnings. Can’t have pill shaming after all.
Still no belief in what I say. I’m very nervous around doctors because of this.
Depression and anxiety are different things. Gratitude can fix discontentment or depression because it helps you appreciate what you have. But we get anxious that these things we are grateful for may be lost.
And there are few things as evil as crippling children and adults while pretending to cure them. Telling them powerful, mind altering drugs are “just like insulin” for the diabetes they never had.
Psychiatrists are ruining Western Civilization by making it go bankrupt supporting those they themselves have disabled. They expect to get way more money than all the disability checks combined for the benefit they add to society by disabling people. Not that they care.
Remember The Lorax by Dr. Seuss? The POV character never meant to destroy all the Truffula trees. His business was based on them after all.
That’s how psychiatrists and pharma CEO’s are. They don’t plan on destroying everything since they enjoy sipping champagne on their yachts.
But they insist on chopping down children who won’t grow back. There’s a reason Gen Y has so few workers in it. Check how many young people “use” mental services.
Generation Rx. They’re worse off than my generation where losers like me were exceptions. Why else are many college kids so incoherent in debates? Why else this utter lack of emotional resilience and surge in obesity?
Cognitive decline, loss of inhibition, obesity…all minor side effects. Proven to come from the “safe and effective” treatments often forced upon the public. Courtesy of the Mental Illness makers. 😛
I wish they would judge us on our behaviors. The content of our character. Not what some “expert” who asks us ten perfunctory questions determines after less than fifteen minutes.
Roger Elliot was a nervous, awkward young man. But that doesn’t mean all nervous, awkward people deserve punishment for what he did.
Psychiatry finds a few arbitrary behaviors and quirks that may annoy relatives but are perfectly harmless. Or social anxiety which I had and they “helped” by bringing shame, dishonor and the ultimate social degradation upon me.
Isolated me by causing family and friends to reject me in disgust and horror. They created artificial disability from drug “side effects” they blamed on the alleged brain disease. That’s how they helped me along with countless others.
Comfort the comfortable by afflicting the afflicted. Should be the motto of the APA. 😛
10 should scare everyone. I guess the rationale behind the “MH” article is that doctors are in short supply and (maybe) all those “mentally ill” won’t observe proper social distancing and will require more lock ups.
In America it’s mostly the right wing who’s afraid. But even they tend to be in awe of SCIENCE.
My brother works for Big Pharma. THE DISEASE KILLS PEOPLE. IF MOM OR DAD LEAVE THE PROPERTY THEY WILL DIE!!!
He gives much worse death rates than those I read in other places. I read that even frail octogenarians in nursing homes are more apt to beat the bug than die. 90% survival odds in worst case scenarios.
Joel assures me that there is at least a 15% chance that Mom and Dad will die if infected. Both are under seventy and have health issues. So some precautions make sense.
But locking us up for six months? I don’t see that as sustainable. Yet Joel assures me it’s absolutely necessary or PEOPLE WILL DIE.
People die every day. This is not the Bubonic Plague. And it’s not even the Spanish Flu. People didn’t hide at home during that epidemic as I recall. Now we have better sanitation and nutrition.
But we won’t if the economy collapses and hundreds of thousands become homeless while starving on the streets. 🙁
IMHO this is a scare tactic as a bid for power by Big Pharma/Big Government. Since Joel only hears what Big Pharma says, working 13 hours a day all week from home, he is brainwashed. For all practical purposes.
Syrena Clark, even when I believed in psychiatry, I disliked the “educational” narrative that “all schizophrenics” act like something out of a horror movie. Murder is a moral issue. Not a cognitive one.
If people choose to take the pills and see therapists or whatever, cool. It’s their choice. Provided it’s an informed one.
But whether you are in the system or out–getting treated like a monster or shot is horrible. No human being deserves to be treated that way.
All the “education” foisted on the public only leads to more paranoia among people like the police. Like soldiers they have finely tuned “fight or flight” mechanisms. Scaring them with stories of how evuuullll “severely mentally ill” people are will not end the shootings.
I had the police called on me during a bad trip from a drug reaction combined with stress. No guns were pulled. They called the paramedics before I passed out.
They thought I was having a bad drug trip. Actually I was. All psychiatric.
That was an odd experience and I had seen my shrink that day who told me I was “depressed” though I explained I was loopy instead. But not listening to me was par for the course with most of them.
As far as violence goes, preventing that by force is what police are for. I don’t see why “educating” police about the “mentally ill” is necessary or helpful. Let them deal with each situation as needful.
Telling them someone is freaking out on a bad drug trip but seems harmless might be better if they are told anything at all. It may have been why they were so nice to me. Of course I was in a passive, trance like state but if they had pulled guns on me I’m not sure how I would have behaved.
Sam, you think doctors love to “diagnose” everything as mental so they can ignore real medical problems and throw drugs at phony ailments with no biomarker? (Incapable of DISPROVING. Hence they get off Scot free since they can never be accused of a misdiagnosis.)
They love to throw SSRI’s at everything. Stomach cancer. Lyme disease. TBI. Crohn’s. Arthritis. Yeast infections along with all things female. 😛
Beats having to be professionally competent and solve real issues doesn’t it?
Yes. I’m bitter and mean as that post revealed. Too much time alone.
I’m used to being isolated but it only took a little extra to break my reserves.
If it weren’t for others I’d be exposing, I would choose to infect myself with the XXXX virus and get it over with. After what I’ve been through death’s not that scary. Once you are dead there’s nothing more human beings can do to you.
I wouldn’t argue this in court. A good lawyer would dig up dirt on the “medical expert” which usually is not hard to do and undermine his credibility so the judge would drop him.
Dr. Biswas probably labeled the man herself. And drugged him too.
Someone in her field told the police he was dangerous and should be feared as a vicious, murderous psycho killer. Then acts shocked when they shoot him–using the information about him that her industry provided.
I love to think of some of the “lock them up” commenters getting dragged into the psych system. They get no pity from me when they do. They deserve none. I hope they wind up in one of “Doc” Drew’s new asylums since they thought it was good enough for the Others they loathed.
Hitler would never have risen to power if the Germans had not elected him and applauded when he blamed the Jews for all that was wrong with Germany. Cotton Mather only was able to hang a bunch of “witches” because the other Puritans mindlessly accepted what he said. They thought killing them might help the crops grow better and end the plague.
I recommend Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay on “stupidity.” Not what is usually meant by that word.
I’m pretty sure my serotonin is too low. That’s what SSRI drugs actually do. The “high” is temporary and your body quits producing enough thanks to disrupting the way your body recycles it.
And people with poor fashion sense, or those who laugh in public, or write in a journal are abnormal. Therefore “mentally ill” and dangerous. According to our current Mental Illness Czar.
It’s a great shell and nuts game. Pretend the mind altering drugs are medicine. When the mark goes insane, blame them for having an inferior brain and DNA.
The mark is spell bound and isn’t sure what’s real. They know they’re screwed up mentally and trust the doctor. Normally a logical decision.
If they stay on the “meds” they act crazy. If they go off–almost always cold turkey–they act crazy from withdrawals. The family doesn’t know what to think. The shrink tells them, “The family member you loved is gone forever. Lol. Make sure she takes her medicine. They never do. Remember if she acts weird she’s lying.”
My family was never fully deceived since they knew I was obedient–wanting to “get well” and quit being a burden and bother. They knew I took those things dutifully–though they bought me a pill chest since the doctor said “Okay. Maybe she’s not lying. They forget all the time too. That illness makes them lazy and irresponsible.”
The whole time my conservative, teetotaler, anti-marijuana, “just say know” family, college, church were urging me to become a drug addict and then yelling at me for acting like one. I was the only person willing to do any research or read articles in the APA journal. None of my loved ones read anything I show them.
But they never disowned me and accepted my decision to come off once I revealed how I had done it nearly two years after the fact. Most families are NOT that supportive. So I’ll always owe them for that. And they’ve suffered too from having an unwitting junkie for a daughter all these years. 🙁
Idea for a meme.
“Just remember Batman. If the citizens of Gotham weren’t mentally ill to begin with they never would have had that reaction to my toxic nerve gas.” Dr. Arkham aka Scarecrow
One of these days I’m writing a book that cites works by characters like Torrey, Pies, etc.–making them accessible to mainstream public who actually want to help people and restore them to health and sanity.
Trying to reason with those who benefit from afflicting us and driving us crazy is a waste of time. No more discussions. Like trying to “work something out” with an abusive spouse.
If we go back or remain the beatings will continue.
“Mental illness” is not a social construct. It’s an iatrogenic one. Created by psychiatrists. Sometimes knowingly.
Over 95% of all SMI cases were perfectly sane until they got put on a drug for being sad because the family dog died or were nervous over exams. Then they went bonkers and got branded by their shrink.
Anthony, if possible, I advise you to leave Australia. From what I have read it’s psycho-state is far worse than ours.
The fact that our health care is still partially privatized comes in handy since you can relocate to another state if ordered to be drugged or shocked without consent and they can’t legally kidnap you there. Or–if not state ordered–relocate to another community where no one knows your past and provide scant details for the hospital/doctors you see there.
When you have to see a doctor he won’t automatically have access to the records of another system. You’ll also receive better care for kidney damage, IBD and other cruelties the shrinks have inflicted on you. It’s like they don’t care if you die if you have an SMI label.
Ironic. Stigma and loss of income is what I got from seeking “mental health.”
I am wondering how all those who attend community mental centers are doing. I’m sure the already marginalized “consumers” miss the time spent with the few friends they have. Especially since so many live alone. 🙁
Calling a friend who’s still in the “mental illness system.” Hard to leave as I know too well.
Thank you for this article Dr. K. You left out how television–also a great tool of stupidification was utilized by psychiatry to sell themselves. Nearly all the drug commercials you see on TV now are psychiatric. The police and hospital dramas on the idiot box push the narrative of “mental illness” as well.
Few non-professionals read journal articles or books by Torrey/Jaffe, Lieberman, Pies or the rest. Otherwise they might see through the charade and discover how inhumane their treatments are.
Torrey actually boasted in his underground work Shrinks about how he drove a number of “asymptomatic schizophrenics” crazy by drugging them without knowledge or consent. When reprimanded he joked about how causing “schizophrenics” to go out of their minds was no big deal.
It’s actually lucky for these guys that their books are not widely read. I think they want their articles and books to remain an inside job–read and reviewed by approving peers–and never see the light of day. Those who practice evil love darkness.
“Freud and other fathers of psychiatry may have been evil, but they were not stupid.”
Freud was one perv who loved to “project.” Especially on the young wives he saw. He would explain to these vulnerable, trusting women what their dreams “really” meant.
Been on at least one psych drug from age 18 to 44.
Off now since 08/31/17.
My mind is clearer despite brain damage and spaciness. But my body is a wreck. I can no longer digest food normally.
At 46 I am forced to live with relatives because my SSI check won’t cover rent and no HUD anywhere. Exhausted from malnutrition since my body won’t absorb vitamins or minerals so I remain unemployed despite recent job openings that won’t be there once this scare is over.
I don’t know what I will do when my parents are gone.
I remember The Wizard of Oz where the humbug says, “I’m a very good man, but a very bad wizard.”
My guess is there are a number of psychiatrists who could say, “I’m a very good person, but a very bad doctor.” Assuming they are well meaning but clueless makes it easier to forgive the damage.
Like Dorothy and her friends I’m still very angry at their deception. And–unlike Oz–they continue to keep the up charade.
Psychiatry means never having to say you’re sorry.
FWIW psychiatry puts a great deal of emphasis on how powerless you are.
Being told I had an incurable brain disease that would surely drive me mad without unquestioning obedience made me feel helpless and hopeless. Truly horrific.
Your mind came back but not your body. Not uncommon Laurie. Check out the archives for beyondmeds.com and read Monica’s story.
“This caused my family to believe I didn’t care enough about THEM to seek ‘treatment.'”
I read lines like this and feel sick. God bless you, Laurie, it’s not at you but how selfishly many families of the “mentally ill” behave.
It’s all about them–though you’re the one in torment. And they take the word of a stranger in a lab coat over the family member they should know and love. 🙁
Doctors are known to make mistakes, but they refuse to consider this. Too inconvenient.
Their faux compassion fools no one. Except maybe themselves.
Basically they believe that all murders in the world are committed only by a mass of inferior beings called the “mentally ill” and they want these people to be drugged, locked up, or both for their own good. I despise hypocrisy.
Crippling and labeling certain individuals is a public service psychiatry performs.
1. It provides a sense of moral superiority to all the “normal” as well as a sense of optimism about the innate goodness of humanity. All normal people are sweet and kind. The only ones capable of doing evil are those with “schizophrenia” or “bipolar.”
2. It provides a sense of security. After every mass shooting the Experts point out the shooter was labeled or label him posthumously. They skillfully evade the questions as to whether or not he was “medicated.” They keep silent and nobody ever asks the question.
I remember reading about Andrea Yates in a NAMI newsletter. They said her “bipolar” was why she drowned her kids. No mention of the psychiatric “care” she was receiving as I recall. NAMI wanted to let her get off on the grounds of her alleged brain disease.
I found the whole thing confusing and resented letting a murderer get off scott free on the grounds that she had a “mental illness.” Didn’t NAMI know that would make us all look bad and feed the flames of “stigma”? Now I realize they were just using her case as a promotional gimmick. And it was really due to involuntary intoxication. I discovered this after I finally gave the NAMI cult the finger.
The only reason I remained obedient to my psychiatrist as long as I did was out of the belief that I would otherwise harm innocent people. For their sake. Not because the drugs made me feel so darn good or helped me function.
Now that I know the truth I’m very angry. Not just for my own sake either.
She seemed to be blaming it on him not being forcibly drugged. Though most (not all) people truly out of their gourd are indeed drugged. Shrinks twist the facts to suit their agenda.
Briswais fails to say whether drugs were in his system–making me suspect he was “medicated” and refuses to consider whether her demonization of people like him played any role.
Calling people dangerous does not end discrimination. But it is great PR for forced psychiatry.
Then when there’s the predictable decline in voluntary “consumers” these same shrinks will have a giant pity party about how “stigma” is hurting their own careers. “Poor me. I only make a 6 digit income instead of a 7. Only we psychiatrists suffer from the pain of ‘stigma.’ We are SO oppressed. And no one has offered to officially crown us sovereign monarchs yet.”
Google “stigma + psychiatrist” and log onto a psychiatric professional site sometime. Quite a lack of insight in these virtual sob fests. Laughable in fact–on my good days. 😀
Yet they use this same “stigma” as a marketing ploy whenever convenient. Making me question their intelligence as well as whether or not they possess a shred of conscience.
Psychology will always treat its “consumers” like objects because of unquestioning acceptance of psychiatry’s bio bio bio model. Hence objectification is inevitable. My therapists encouraged me to feel helpless and accept a horrible life with no purpose, happiness, or love. I’m through with all of that.
I suffer many of the above. IBS, chronic pain, artaxia, weird burning sensations on occasion. All of these came 20 years after my diagnosis of bipolar 2 after a bad reaction to Anafranil which the psychiatrist blamed on my unmasked illness.
Antidepressants are proven to mess up your digestion and heart rhythm. And significant nerve damage is normal. None of these were a problem before-though I did feel depressed and anxious. Those are easier to control now.
I have witnessed cognitive decline, premature death, homelessness, and suicidal desires in countless people fully drugged according to psychiatrist’s specific orders. Yet they pretend all these people are perfectly happy and lead great lives. I guess if you wind up homeless, suffer IQ loss by 40 points, and kill yourself while “compliant” it doesn’t count. Sick of psychiatry’s denial of its botched experiments on unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs.
I bet the police shot the man because they had listened to shrinks like Biswas tell what dangerous monsters all those she treats are. Calling innocent people dangerous murderers is not compassion. Claiming it will end bigotry is ludicrous. And I find it hard to believe those like Biswas want to–even on a conscious level.
I have witnessed cognitive decline, premature death, homelessness, and suicidal desires in countless people fully drugged according to psychiatrist’s specific orders.
Yet psychiatrists and the media pretend all these people are perfectly happy and lead great lives. I guess if you wind up homeless, suffer IQ loss by 40 points, and kill yourself while “compliant” it doesn’t count. Sick of psychiatry’s denial of its botched experiments on unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs.
I bet the police shot the man because they had listened to shrinks like Biswas tell what dangerous monsters all those she treats are. Calling innocent people dangerous murderers is not compassion. Claiming it will end bigotry is ludicrous. And I find it hard to believe those like Biswas want to–even on a conscious level.
Sickening and sad how folks believe what TV and propaganda puff pieces say more than what they perceive with their own senses. 🙁
Someone here at MIA really needs to do a piece on how people can be “compliant” or on AOT and still wind up homeless. RW has done a great job showing how psych drugs severely reduce chances for employment–especially gainful. It seems an inability to pay rent should be admitted to play a role in homelessness. Funny how drugging people is supposed to magically create shelters for them.
I call BS on this celebrity shock doc’s claim that “all mentally ill people enjoy being homeless” and drugs will fix it. And asylums are more cost effective than HUD. If he is put in charge of them we know who stands to come out ahead financially. Not the tax payers. Definitely not the people struggling to survive because his profession maimed them.
I have been pretty depressed lately. Not getting much done.
My depression is a symptom of pernicious anemia. A physical (real) illness. Anemia can be treated with iron supplements and infusions. By a real doctor.
Love this article Megan. It offers a new spin on “What if we treated ‘mental illnesses’ like physical illnesses?” Ignoring that “mental illnesses” are supposed to be brain diseases (physical) and rendering the analogy nonsensical. But the doctors who claim to fix these alleged brain diseases act like no others.
My own pet peeve is how our culture practices “sadness shaming.” Like there’s something disgraceful about not grinning like the Cheshire Cat 24/7. It really irritates me.
My peeve is not that people find their own sadness/depression intolerable (understandable) but those around them do. No matter how much cause you have to feel gloomy friends and neighbors nag you to hurry up and see a doctor to take some medicine cause unhappiness is a disease.
If you express reluctance or argue your sorrow/grief is reasonable since you lost your job, your kid disowned you, your spouse left or beats you, you have cancer, your dog died, your house burnt down it’s always…”Oh no. You must have depression.” Then, if you still decline they get mad at you. Accuse you of being too proud to get “help.”
Like being sad is a crime. Ironically once you say you’re getting “helped” you can quit smiling altogether and act gloomy all the time and quit bathing or going out. But say you’re taking your “meds” and everyone applauds. Never mind it isn’t working or maybe you feel like Riley in Inside Out once she lost Joy and Sadness.
Reverse pill shaming. You must take drugs–even if they make you feel 10 x worse–as penance for the sin of unhappiness.
I wonder if having to pose as Happy Stepford Robots is behind the loneliness epidemic. Phoniness can be VERY alienating.
Ironic how according to psychiatrists “black and white thinking” is a sure sign of one of those pesky things they label “personality disorders.”
And a sure symptom of “schizophrenia” is the inability to distinguish between the metaphorical/abstract and the concrete/literal.
But my apologies to any any well informed psychiatrist reading this. I acknowledge that you never made that mistake but only cited the “chemical imbalance metaphor” in order to dupe prospective customers and the public.
Hmm.
1. Lying without remorse for self gain.
2. The belief that might makes right. The rules do not apply to you.
3. No regret or remorse for the people you have hurt.
4. Convincing someone they are worthless, inferior, insane.
5. Self pity when called into account for how you have harmed others.
6. Extending cordiality, respect, and regard toward some–but exhibiting harshness, cruelty, and inhumanity to those in a group you regard as weaker and less than human.
Now what “mental illness” would these be “symptoms” of?
Remember that line from Jerry MacGuire? “Show me the money!”
Show me the disease!
The fact that recovery can occur without medical treatment should really make us question the bio model.
For the sake of argument, even if psychosis is linked to a brain disease–until scientists can produce a bio marker they don’t know what’s wrong and can’t fix it. Assuming improved brain function is what they are after.
Actually the Georgians (early 19th century Britain) had a better way of viewing extreme states than 21st century psychiatrists IMNHO.
Today’s APA composes lists of arbitrary traits their elite group deemed unacceptable and votes into existence.
In Georgian England, madness was as madness did. “Diagnosis” was composed solely of behaviors. Way more honest than our system. Once the extreme behaviors stopped you were no longer considered mad. And you had to be very weird to be considered mad.
Ordinary “consumers” you regularly meet at NAMI or mental centers would be too rational to qualify in that era. Even those visibly muddled by the ball and chain treatments of today.
A certain Shaun S. commented here that psychiatry needs to distinguish between the consenting and nonconsentual “consumers.” I heartily agree with him on that.
But I think it is far more important to distinguish between the dangerous and the harmless.
The pop culture narrative (touted by celebrity docs–experts in showmanship and propaganda) is that all the treated are harmless and safe to be around.
All the undrugged are dangerous and a public menace. Black and white thinking to put real, complex human beings into little boxes where the Benevolent All Knowing Psychiatrist will keep them forever. Amen.
The evidence (statistics, long term studies, empirical) tells another story.
All people deserve to be judged on the content of their character. Not the claims of some bureaucrat in a lab coat who doesn’t know them from Adam.
Harmless eccentrics, trauma victims, and those with head injuries should not be categorized with violent criminals. In claiming to be merciful to the latter psychiatric law proves itself neither merciful nor just to the former.
A word of encouragement.
Charlotte Perkins was cured from her “hysteria” by rejecting her role as a madwoman and made a new life for herself doing work that brought her satisfaction.
This is the cure I’m trying now. Sadly my body is damaged and I have real disabilities.
But I’m no longer acting like a “bipolar” because I relocated and went off the “meds” that caused my mood swings to start with.
You can read “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins online for free at Gutenberg or in downloadable PDF format.
How the Experts try to “help” the POV character:
1. They cut her off from everybody.
2. They prevent her from working.
3. They encourage her in idleness–tell her to lie in bed all day thinking about how insane she is.
4. They patronize her–treating an intelligent, rational adult like a child or developmentally delayed person.
5. Sensory deprivation.
6. When she complains of depression and how intolerable the situation is, her doctor husband tells her, “That’s just your illness talking.”
But things have changed now they say.
Here’s how:
1. They brand you with a new “mentally ill” identity so you get cut off from friends and family.
2. They actively discourage you from working. The drugs and discrimination play a role. (Never ask for reasonable accommodations for you “mental illness”! They kept telling me to do that. Bad advice and I think they knew it.)
3. They only encourage “peer” activities. Weekly “groups” at the mental illness center and NAMI meetings to discuss your “symptoms” and talk about how hopelessly crazy you are.
4. They patronize you. Treating you like a child or developmentally delayed person even though you’re an intelligent, rational adult.
5. They put you on drugs that dull your senses.
6. When you complain of depression and how intolerable your life situation is, the Experts say, “That’s just your mental illness talking.”
A lot of us here–including the anti-psych crowd–are not against the use of SSRI’s or whatever. It’s coercive psychiatry we oppose. Involuntary. Obviously not your situation.
Glad you have a doctor willing to work with you. 🙂
My ex had a therapist try to seduce him. When Michael said “No” the therapist warned him not to tell anybody because “No one will believe you since you’re mentally ill.”
This is an even bigger problem with women–though horrible for anybody. Julie Greene told me how having a counselor proposition her almost drove her to suicide.
As long as the policy is #believenomentallyill there will be a gross power imbalance leaving clients/consumers/patients with no recourse when the authority figure takes advantage of them.
Solution? Don’t see any counselor who uses the labels. Either rogue practitioners or uncertified or those who belong to the Choice Theory/Reality Therapy school or something similar.
Even counselors who mean well often treat you as “less than” if they believe you are hopeless and not quite human. For example a counselor I talked to automatically sided against a woman whose family refused to let her see her grandchildren. He didn’t know her from Adam but said, “She probably was unstable or they (the “normals”) would not have treated her this way.” Troubling how his education made him automatically make these assumptions. That the “mentally ill” are intrinsically subhuman and the “normals” they interact with are never at fault.
Check the NAMI site sometime. You can scan the forums without joining. A lot of complaining from parents, spouses, etc. about how horrible their “loved ones” act. How abusive the thirty year old son they force to live in the garage behaves. (If only he would take his meds.) Yet not a word of complaint from the “loved” one about how the caretakers abuse them.
We know that caretaker abuse is a real thing. My guess is either they are too brow beaten to notice emotional abuse–and may feel they deserve physical abuse as well. Or the moderator censors the posts of more than “pill shaming” thought crimes.
“Remember mental illness is nobody’s fault” could be translated “Remember everything bad that happens is the mentally ill person’s fault.” If you interact with most “SMI’s” who are conscientious patients with good insight you’ll notice how fearful they look. How they apologize for EVERYTHING.
Not saying this is a conscious thing on shrinks’ part. But telling you that you are walking disease. (Your mind or soul is a cancer and you are hopelessly “ill” meaning evil.) That everything wrong in every relationship is YOUR fault as the “crazy” person is why so many of us get into abusive relationships.
A few decide, “Hey, since everyone tells me I’m evil/crazy just like a serial killer why not act out on my anger? Not my fault after all.” So they become abusive and use the label as an excuse. Few do this but psychiatry encourages well meaning spouses to stay with abusers. “Mrs. X your husband can’t help his abuse. His scientifically proven brain disease means he can’t be held responsible for body slamming you against the wall and smashing the sculptor you worked on for ten years. Making him take his medicines will turn him into the sweet guy you dated.”
But usually the shrinks will enable abusive “normals” with “crazy” spouses. We all know how that goes. And therapists will always side with the abuser as long as he or she is “normal.” Since only “sick” people hurt others after all.
I almost married a man who treated me badly. When things didn’t go his way he told me how crazy I was and used my “bipolar” against me. I felt lucky any man would deign to be with me and let him treat me that way till he threatened my dad and sister.
I quit dating forever once I realized the only kind of men I can attract are abusers thanks to my training at the mental illness centers for 20 years. I always felt ugly and awkward since my teens. Then the shrink told me I was a crazy psycho too.
“But no” says Dr. Quackenbush. “I don’t like the words ‘crazy’ or ‘psycho’ since they undermine the validity of the branch of hard medical science which I practice.” All about HIS career. Of course.
But he knows “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” mean dangerous/murderous/evil. They are moral judgments and if he doesn’t know that he’s the only one who hasn’t caught on.
Maybe we should just look at behaviors themselves. “Bipolar” is basically meaningless. Breaking a nose, screaming vile names, locking someone in a room…you don’t need a shrink’s diagnosis to know these behaviors are unacceptable.
And if your partner acts that way you don’t need a shrink to diagnose YOU because you’re depressed or anxious! Get out of dodge. Find a way to escape the abuser. You need all your mental faculties–and your anxiety to escape. Fight or flight is a normal response to emotional games or threats of physical harm.
Calling it a disease is an insult and dismisses how horrible your situation is.
The more “educated” in psychiatry a counselor–or just about anybody is–the worse they treat those branded “severely mentally ill.” That’s why I will never see anyone who believes in the DSM again.
I received some helpful advice in interviews with Will Hall during withdrawal. He’s uncertified by any of the mental illness factories. That only added to his value in my opinion.
I felt inferior. My shrink said, “No Rachel. You don’t have an inferiority complex. According to my DSM you really are inferior.” 😀
Actually trauma by itself could have been overcome. Psychiatry ruined my life in every way imaginable.
No friends. Too sick and old for a family or career. Living in poverty and isolation. Too sick to leave my room some days.
I sit alone awaiting the sweet release of death. Beyond any hope of improvement in this world.
It’s too late and I’m too damaged for anything good. I’ll spend the rest of my days holed up alone in some relative’s spare bedroom like my “schizophrenic” great aunt who also gave up on life after Psychiatry had its way with her.
Nowhere to get rid of her shame. She lived out her days closeted away-a desolate woman cut down in her teens.
Dr. Hall, I applaud your courage in writing this article. We are hard on members of your profession here at MIA. But if you will take the time and trouble to read through some of our heart breaking stories you may understand why.
I assume you mean well and want to help people. But here are some problems with the system you are working with. Not just the mind altering drugs used to treat distressing thoughts and feelings.
But psychiatry attempts to use the Linnaean System to categorize human suffering and bad behaviors. It’s really like mapping constellations in the sky. No–not all “mad” behaviors are just social constructs. The stars in the sky are very real. But human beings are the ones drawing the lines between the stars to make pictures of hunters, bears, princesses, etc.
Those of us labeled do not find them conducive to reintegration. They harm our relationships, prevent us from gainful employment, and can cause homelessness from lack of income and discrimination from landlords. (Not enough HUD for everyone categorized as SMI anymore.)
For starters, do you have any idea how horrible it is to have your friends and family turn from you in disgust and loathing because you have been categorized as a monster by a respected professional?
Ironically the more “pro psychiatry” a group is the worse they treat someone classified as “severely mentally ill.” It did not help that my “meds” caused seizures, ridiculous weight gain, and made me act weirder than ever due to hindering my thought processes. These helpful pro psych people insisted the weight gain was all my fault and everything else was proof that I was “noncompliant” when the exact opposite is true.
And how is labeling someone “schizophrenic” or “bipolar” for life supposed to motivate them to change? It’s great for aiding “meds compliance” and “insight.” But neither equals improved life–either in quality or quantity.
I no longer act bipolar. But no doctor would ever pronounce me cured because the DSM 5 states that that is impossible. They label me based on certain “symptoms” yet when these symptoms are gone they refuse to acknowledge a misdiagnosis or pronounce me cured. This happens all the time for those who escape the system.
All my psychotic mania was caused by a reaction to Anafranil. Most doctors argue “Well it just unmasked the illness already there.” Guess what? I remasked it by going off the crap that caused it to begin with.
Since all psychiatry offers is “controlling the symptoms” shouldn’t we try what works instead of rigid, mindless adherence to status quo that isn’t helping people?
Even in the Victorian days psychiatrists distinguished between the harmless and the violent “lunatics.” Yet now they lump harmless, but lonely eccentrics into the same category as serial killers regardless of any history of violence or current behaviors.
Ironically, by treating dangerous criminals as though they were sick, members of forensic psychiatry treat law abiding citizens as though they were dangerous criminals by calling them sick–and encourage our communities to do likewise.
Don’t we deserve to be judged on the content of our character rather than because we once scored 6 out of 9 random emotional/cognitive traits on an arbitrary chart decades ago?
Even those of us who choose to remain consumers are greatly upset at how those like Tim Murphy, Fuller Torrey and others scapegoat us for all society’s evils. Even if we continue taking our drugs our neighbors will view us as would-be-killers. How is such education of the public helpful to anyone but those seeking to further their careers in politics/psychiatry?
When we “deteriorate” so we can no longer maintain basic levels of self care let alone hold down a job our pro psychiatry neighbors will often blame us for “non compliance.” Or–at best cluck their tongues. Saying, “It’s just the disease.”
I did indeed go through a rough patch at 20. I could have used some real help from someone who cared. Instead I got psychiatry. 🙁
I have indeed been properly punished for my depression and anxiety. Because mainstream psychiatric treatments are punitive rather than restorative in nature.
Still alive. But it’s not a good life.
I won’t blame you for what men like Torrey and Murphy have done in “educating” the public to further their careers. That would be unjust. But it is also unjust for law abiding citizens to be blamed for the crimes of every serial killer and mass shooter who happens to be diagnosed bipolar or paranoid schizophrenic regardless of the individual’s behavior.
I felt vindicated–though privately– on learning that I wasn’t lying or delusional when I kept telling my psychiatrist that the Haldol made my psychotic symptoms worse. In addition to the seizures. He maintained that neuroleptics “never did that” and insinuated to my poor parents–also traumatized–that I was faking the “spells” I experienced at least once a day on that horrible stuff.
They obviously believe their test subjects are crazy. But they want to replace “crazy” with a more medical-sounding term to prove what Real Doctors they are.
How many are organically damaged and psychologically traumatized by shrinks? I’m struggling with TBI and ME inflicted on me by lying “mental health.” I am also grieving the life I will never have, isolation and poverty. I owe it all to the Mental Illness System.
I don’t want an institution. Those places scare me more than death itself.
A living Hell with doctors striving to abandon their humanity and take on the role of devils. May God have mercy on their own psyches.
Ariel Castro’s victims had a lot of problems. But no one suggested giving Castro permanent guardianship of them!
Why are articles at MIA arguing that our abusers have our best interests at heart and will take good care of us?
It is pretty scary. The ONLY reason shrinks aren’t arguing for the humane practice of putting us to sleep–our alleged agsognosia means they can assume we want whatever they want–is that they can’t prescribe drugs to a corpse.
The real reason shrinks are praising asylums now? They know more people with soft diagnoses will be going off their drugs or dying. Fewer will replace them. Asylum franchises can rake in way more profits than letting them live in less restrictive environments. Though the latter costs the public less.
Dr. Moncrieff things are worse today–in a number of ways.
There are a number of problems with locking up people who have committed no crimes. Few of the people locked up were violent and failure to separate them from the harmless reminds me of the prison system William Wiberforce decried.
Not all were inhumane. But those that were seldom were held accountable.
Recovery from bizarre mental states was acknowledged to exist. Now it is not. This is used as an excuse for endless druggings–and proof of how necessary the pharma-psychiatrist is.
Nowadays we have the asylum without walls. This sounds better. But because they are able to “incarcerate” much greater numbers in the system and fewer are able to leave (numbers not percentages) there is a lot more suffering.
Psychiatry causes segregation as well as disability. While HIPAA may keep them from blabbing your label to the community, they will tell your loved ones. You need a go between. Sadly you are excluded a lot. And when included they talk over you. My mental illness team–as I call them–kept telling my parents how hopeless I was.
How I could never function normally and would be sure to be naughty and must be forced to take my “meds” regardless of how I complained. And if I didn’t recover they could be sure it was only because I was spitting them out on the sly.
I completed a four year degree in just eight years. I’m surprised I could do it at all. When I complained how I couldn’t concentrate they would tell me: A. It’s just your illness. Not the medicine! B. Sometimes the meds do that. It stinks but it’s necessary since horrible things will happen if you don’t take it religiously.
I took my drugs religiously for 24 years. Nobody believed I was taking them–except my family and a few others. Why? Because I deteriorated and wanted to kill myself.
My mental illness team kept promising me bad stuff would happen if I went off my “meds.” And occasionally mentioned good things might happen if I were really, really good. Showing insight and unquestioning compliance. A whole lot of stick with just a bit of carrot. Best way to keep us dumb beasts under control. 😛
When I told them how the “antipsychotics” caused disjointed thinking and psychotic symptoms and the “antidepressants” made me miserable and anhedonic–they told me that was proof of my illness. I was too crazy to know how they were helping me.
Which begs the question–if these drugs make crazy people sane why do these now sane people go off of them? Shouldn’t having these miraculous sanity inducers prevent noncompliance? Going nuts is no fun I can tell you. My true insanity was all drug induced. And the gaslighting my mental illness team dished out did not help.
It should be called the Mental Illness System. They don’t want you to recover. If you’re sane going in it won’t last long.
My parents–unlike many–stuck with me through my unlovable craziness. Despite the mental illness team’s efforts to cut me off from family and friends. I have had a couple good “normal” friends who stuck with me too. Thank God for their unconditional love. 🙂
They believed when I said I took my “meds” and were as upset as I was when I got worse “despite” Psych Magic. The whole thing was very frustrating for all of us.
I’m sorry for the suffering I caused them now. I never wanted to be a drug addict.
Very angry at being lied to and about! Struggling to forgive those who damaged me and really altered my life. (Some might say ruined but I refuse to think that way.)
“Delusions” are what William Glasser referred to as “creative symptoming.”
They’re acts of creativity. Which is why art therapy can sometimes be helpful.
Find other ways to express creativity and you won’t need “hallucinations” and “delusions” anymore.
Or help someone figure out how the “delusion” is helping him or her. Szasz referred to erroneous, odd beliefs–Bertrand Russell’s man who thinks he’s a poached egg and wants toast to sit on–as lies people believe.
The truth is far more complicated than psychiatry would have us believe. And far more interesting. 🙂
I met a man my dad was trying to help when I was fourteen. He had ambition based delusions.
“Willie” would go through periods of believing he was the Chosen One called to save the world be becoming President in 1988. Alternating with periods of intense despair and suicidal depression.
We thought the drugs helped him because he became subdued and less annoying after every hospitalization for a month or two. But he still got depressed since he was lonely and his life stunk.
The problem with commenting on this is where to start?
“Evidence based medicine.” How about any proof that the drugs work at all?
By “work” I mean helping at thinking clearly, living independently, getting along with others, not dying prematurely or going through cognitive decline or suddenly becoming morbidly obese. No one in the mental illness system leads a high quality or longer life that I can tell.
Yet numerous doctors claim that there’s no disputing what they see every day. THE MEDICATIONS WORK!!!
How do they know this? Don’t they see the damage these drugs do to people long term? They must know these are slowly killing people.
I have had NP’s who honestly seem to care diagnose me with mysterious ailments. Pernicious anemia, severe vitamin deficiencies, microscopic colitis, heart arrythmia, fatty liver, uncontrollable recurring yeast infections. But when I ask what’s behind them they grow silent and look weird. Yeah…they know.
Funny how no doctor gets freaked out because I’m losing weight and my heart is normal again. These should be perceived as sure signs of “non compliance.” So there must be some ignorance involved too.
Mom blabbed to her FNP that her daughter didn’t believe in “antidepressants” and had gone off of them. The nurse expressed horror and assured Mom that I would be sure to have a manic episode. With a straight face.
Lucky for me Mom laughed at her. She’s been living with me and notices my moods are stable without drugs. 🙂
And I thought SSRI’s were supposed to fix depression. Not mania. Neuroleptics are supposed to do that. Doctors need to work more closely with the Big Pharma propagandists to fill up the plot holes in their epic fantasy known as Mental Health.
Yes. We should leave our echo chamber. But my stomach is already upset. Thanks to decades on SSRI’s that “work” at messing up my digestion.
It’s pointless to argue with people that are living in a fairy tale. The medical student with “mental issues” may wonder why her magical meds aren’t working when she turns thirty-five and can no longer hold down a job because of cognitive decline and failing bodily systems. And everyone tells her how great her quality of life is–evidence to the contrary.
Funny how extremely hostile “grateful consumers” can get at having the truth pointed out. I felt relief. Then anger at the people who had gaslighted and slandered me for twenty-five years. Not people who told me the (unpleasant) truth. I never was proud or happy of being “mentally ill” though. Some wear it like a badge of honor for reasons I can’t fathom.
They’re invested in the System and make lots of money off it. So of course they want to preserve the status quo.
Now they have the HUD ghetto and homeless centers and the streets.
I believe there is a link between psychiatry and homelessness. Long term use of mind altering, addictive drugs can really destroy your ability to hold down a job.
And I have known a number of ideal “consumers” who wandered the streets due to shortage of HUD housing. Driving people crazy with SSRI’s and benzos who were only mildly depressed before getting “helped” and making short term problems life long drove up the numbers.
I also met people who wanted homes and perhaps needed them because their brains and CNS were too messed up for independent living. 🙁
Lobotomies are about keeping people childish and docile. Not independent! This includes the chemical kind.
Yes. The very act of aggressively pursuing large numbers of POC to force treatments upon could be viewed as racist. Check Breggin’s YouTube videos on The Violence Initiative.
Psychiatry already displays its inherent bias against the disabled in the way it targets them. Especially those who already have cognitive problems.
The Mental Center I once attended “served” people with Down Syndrome, Spina Biffada, and TBI. How? With lessons on life skills and lots of drugs to render them almost impossible to learn.
Google Karl Binding. A head honcho in German psychiatry who gave Hitler a lot of his ideas. He wrote propaganda such as Lebensunwertes Leben.
Psychiatry is inextricably bound to social darwinism and eugenics. Racism must be covert but they still justify mutilating, imprisoning and imposing often fatal treatments on the disabled who–according to their judgment–do not have lives worth living.
The only real reason shrinks don’t advocate for euthenasia now (I suspect) is keeping people alive to drug indefinitely is how they make money. Fuller Torrey probably knows that the jig is up. So like others he has determined to cash in on opening a chain of asylums since it’s growing impossible to claim that these wonder drugs they push help with quality of life or independence.
If the APA starts promoting euthanasia at the same time a mysterious new soap or protein supplement shows up on the market we’ll know why.
BTW, people die of metabolic disorders and other problems in mental wards all the time. A faulty assumption that she would be alive if she had gone to one instead of an honestly named jail.
Julie hated and feared psych wards and every profession linked to “mental health” after almost dying on a ward because they restricted her to one liter of water a day. The argument being dangers of water intoxication.
Yep. It doesn’t help that the psych treatments cause so many additional health problems either.
Even militant psychiatry apologist “Natasha Tracie” at Bipolar Burble has complained of how doctors dismiss her real health problems after learning of her “bipolar” label.
My guess is most doctors simply don’t care if those psychiatry has written off as “defective” die. Our culture has less mercy on the disabled (especially mentally) than convicted felons considered sane.
“I am not sure what would make a journalist NOT want to expose the human rights issues.”
Employment. Whether a reporter for a magazine or website or a TV newscaster they work for whoever sponsors the publication or show.
(I bet Bob Whitaker could share some tales of lost job opportunities despite the success of Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic. Glad he won the Man Booker Award.)
Banning Big Pharma ads would help immensely. Most news is all a bunch of commercialized propaganda. Used to sell drugs and psych ideology. No concern for truth at all!
I’m trying to contact private YouTube journalists who are open minded enough to look up out of The Box. They don’t get funded by Big Pharma companies either because of how small they are despite their big followings.
Funny how no one talks about “sadness shaming.” Why do we need to go around grinning like the Cheshire Cat all the time for crying out loud?
And the “depression is a disease” is no help. It’s just a ploy to obligate you to take the “meds” and pretend they make you happy even when they make smiling nonstop more difficult than ever and you feel too numb to enjoy anything. And the original problem making you depressed is as bad or worse than ever.
People will quit yelling at you for being unhappy if you tell them you’re taking psychiatric drugs. That’s the only benefit I experienced long term.
One of the early Simpsons episodes showed Lisa going through the blues. In the end she pulls out of her funk when her mother, Marge, tells her the family will be there for her no matter how she feels and she doesn’t have to fake a smile anymore. Lisa smiles and tells her mom that this time it’s real.
Maybe once we quit treating the blues like leprosy fewer people will be depressed?
Not defending or praising Trump but pointing out the toadying hypocrisy and double dealing intrinsic to psychiatry. A political branch rather than a medical one.
Funny how these very shrinks who condemn Donald Trump and want to “diagnose” him are more than happy to curry favor and kiss up to him when it serves their purposes. Such as siphoning more tax dollars to open new AOT programs to indirectly sell more drugs and psycho surgeries or open a franchise of lunatic asylums.
Dr. Drew, Dr. Torrey, etc. What a bunch of back-stabbing phonies! As all of us who have had dealings with this profession know.
Biederman went on the air saying it was an insult to “bipolars” to call Donald Trump one. Before you applaud him too hard remember he called Trump worse than Hitler too.
So definitely not a complement to anyone he labels. More like a back handed insult. I guess Biederman gave up hope of cashing in on the mass shootings like others have done.
The “medicine” drives sane people nuts and ensures people going through a rough patch never come out of it.
It makes me so angry how they lie to well meaning family and neighbors to cripple people and turn functional people into hopeless lunatics/village idiots. That’s what psychiatric “treatments” do after all.
I remember Mom and Dad crying and getting upset at how my “treatments” weren’t helping me as I took them religiously. They had no positive effects except when I took 10 mg of Haldol and could no longer voice my misery though I seized every day.
When I say the treatments don’t “work” I mean as the shrinks promised. Helping us to lead meaningful, productive lives and get along with others.
They don’t work for any of the above. Nor do they prevent crime nor suicide.
The only way psychiatric treatments successfully work is at making shrinks and pharmaceutical makers filthy rich and providing the former a professional status no legitimate doctors enjoy–along with unquestioned legal powers.
So Dr. Hickling is worried. HE knows what’s best for those “psychotic” Jamaicans who don’t know any better and are afraid to come to people like him for help because they associate his institution with the master/slave relationship.
How is Dr. Hickling any different? There’s the real question.
“Those ignorant, potentially dangerous, mentally incompetent defectives need a White Knight to take care of them.” That sums up all Western “mental health” in a nutshell.
The symbols for psychiatry since the Industrial era have been whips and chains. Traditional treatments of all written off as hopelessly mad. A casual perusal of Victorian Gothic literature will furnish plenty of references.
Then shrinks realized scars from lashings and and chain cuffs made their profession look brutal. So they figured out new ways to torture and harm without leaving any visible marks.
In America thanks to HIPPA red tape, you can simply relocate and not inform your new doctor about your all “diagnoses.” Changing states is best, thanks to different health systems–but just changing hospital systems will do. For example, seeing a doctor in a nearby county or city.
The “deep pit”? Do you mean being found out eventually?
Their big mistake was targeting too many people. If they had been content with just a modest number of “lunatics” in their asylums without walls they would have gotten away with it indefinitely.
But by drugging over 20% of the population for decades, it’s impossible to ignore the long term results of the pills they hand out like office mints. Ruining the lives of 2-5% of the populace wasn’t good enough for them.
How is labeling moody teenagers “Bipolar” going to help them become emotionally stable adults?
How is labeling a woman who has made poor relationship choices “Borderline Personality Disorder” supposed to help her make better decisions in the future?
Don’t psychiatrists realize people can change, grow and improve?
Unless you get “helped” by them so your brain quits forming normal synapses and everyone in your community shuns you thanks to the self-fulfilling prophecies these psychics/pseudo-scientists make all the time.
Instead of “mad” or “crazy” Bruce might say “outside the mainstream” or “unusually passionate.” Or “very zealous.”
Kind of like Szasz’s explanation of the link between “genius” and “madness.” Both are unusual and extreme ways of thinking and behavior.
St. Francis of Assisi was different. So is your eccentric aunt who plays the mandolin for a living. So was Ted Bundy. So was John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Robert Fulton, Mother Theresa, Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey Dahmer, Joan of Arc, Emily Dickinson, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, a bunch of serial killers I don’t like reading about, you get the picture…
Funny how so many psychiatrists have it in for their own family members.
It’s like they hate a certain parent or sibling so much that simply having that person “put away” to rot and die prematurely isn’t good enough. They have to hunt down others with similar characteristics to “help.”
Denial of their hatred and harm done to the “loved one” mixed with a subconscious desire for revenge perhaps. Eccentric family members can be embarrassing.
Of course some socially awkward people strive to look “normal” to please others and it results in break downs–which only make them weirder than ever. Bringing MORE embarrassment to the image conscious family. Hopeless cycle. And the designated freak bears the brunt of it.
You mean well and want to help people. But you are working with a morally and cognitively bankrupt system–corrupt at its core. (Not all individuals within it are that way. Including psychiatrists. The system itself is based on a lie.)
Knowing what you know must make it that much more frustrating. Corinna West has expressed similar frustrations trying to work with groups like NAMI.
I got a “real diagnosis” from a case manager with a BS in physical education. Stuff that’s not ‘sposed to happen is par for the course in “mental health.”
It’s a Kafkaesque bureaucracy based an a network of incongruous lies. So of course nothing in the Mental System makes sense.
This piece reads like it belongs in another publication. But this is not meant to be an anti-psychiatry site after all.
I wouldn’t call this piece “critical” either. But helping people in poverty is a good thing. I agree with that.
I just don’t like how psychiatry does it. Way worse than ineffective. And kindly people (psychologists, therapists, peer support workers, case managers) who team up with psychiatrists burn out quickly if they are trying to make a difference.
It’s like trying to bale out a leaky boat while the quacks keep drilling more holes in the bottom. The epitome of futility.
Most of us here only want one thing from “mental health.” To be left alone!
Their “services” lower self image, teach helplessness, prevent gainful employment and isolate from the community. Their treatments cause physical and mental disabilities.
It makes sense that the Mental Illness System is targeting POC. (Watch Breggin’s videos on the Violence Initiative.) Many minority communities are distrustful of Mental Centers.
An African American friend of mine commented on how many white women she works with pop psych pills all the time, talking about their “bipolar” and “chronic depression.” It looks like so many have these labels they can actually find work now–as long as their CNS and brains hold out.
“Mental health” creates poverty. Lots of us grew up middle or upper middle class and are forced to subsist on $775 a month thanks to psychiatry’s “help.”
Almost three years off my drugs and finally found a job. For the first time as an adult. (I went on psych drugs at 18. “Therapeutic” amounts at 20 after getting labeled.)
Can’t wait to go off my “benefits.” I HATED going on them. Never wanted to be a bum.
Psychiatry forced me to. They lied to me–saying my only hope for gainful employment was unquestioning obedience/”med” compliance. Basically shrinks forced me to violate my conscience by tricking me into going on mind altering drugs (against my principles) and mooch off the public.
I kept asking, “Hey, if these treatments ‘work’ how come we can’t get jobs and act like freaking grown ups?” These questions would throw the idiots leading day treatment sessions into fits of rage. (Not all case workers acted that way. The idiots were those who threw tantrums at my innocent questions.)
But “work” doesn’t mean independence, health, or productivity to shrinks. It’s all about docility and childish dependence.
The welfare workers make you feel like a piece of trash at those bureaucratic offices. Far more dehumanizing and humiliating than hand outs from locally run charities.
People are beginning to wise up and we don’t have any scientific proof yet. (And whatever we may dig up may not exonerate us.)
We can’t be held responsible for our behaviors over the years due to how excited we were—at earning $800 an hour instead of a measly $200 and gaining the status of honest-to-gosh real doctors.
So hurry up. We need a coherent narrative. It doesn’t help that all our stories published on various sites and online magazines (which the public can access) contradict each other. Doesn’t look like Real Science at all!
Been called worse things than “deluded” by shrinks after the SSRI I took exactly as prescribed kept me awake for 21 days straight and sent me into a full blown psychotic mania. Can’t have pill shaming. Better gaslight the patient instead.
I started out with depression and anxiety. Wound up labeled Bipolar 2 and on a cocktail. Off the cocktail and finally stabilized after 20 years though my body is a wreck. Lost a huge chunk of my life and forced to start over with broken health, no work history, no savings and no friends at 46. Will never have a family and live in fear someone will discover my dirty secret (of being harmed) and believe my abusers. Not me.
They’re not looking rational nor humane.
A lot of psychiatric sites and mags complain about how media depicts them.
They also worry about “stigma” of their patients–because the shame associated with being treated is bad for business. And those inconsiderate patients keep dying in their fifties. Tsk tsk.
My question is what if (hypothetically) psychiatrists were to discover a physical cause for the emotional/cognitive problems associated with “bipolar” or “schizophrenia”? What are the odds that their hit and miss (miss and miss?) treatment with mind altering drugs would be a good thing? Isn’t it more than likely that it would be proven they were doing something to exacerbate the real problem? In addition to creating a slew of new ones. (Like Diabetes 2. I was one of only 3 out of the 15 members of my day treatment group without diabetes. One of a minority with all my chompers too. We were all morbidly obese except for one member I knew was “non-compliant” but refused to snitch on.)
The way psychiatrists go about their model is like a surgeon assuming there is something wrong because your stomach hurts. With no scans or other tests, he does intensive surgery removing random bits of your digestive system–a bit of a colon here, your small intestine there, a fourth of your stomach, and maybe sever some muscles in the lower part of your esophagus just to be sure…what are the odds of this actually helping the patient?
I’m very angry at being lied to. They kept telling me they were fixing a complaint SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN TO RESIDE IN MY BRAIN.
Being told you are hopelessly sane is far from comforting!
It made me frightened–and then despondent.
Now I’m angry at the hoax pulled on me.
I’d chalk it up to cluelessness on psychiatrists’ part but they are good at figuring people out in order to manipulate them into doing what will benefit their careers. Survivors as well as the non-consuming masses.
Kind of like my ex. He was a little awkward so I thought maybe he didn’t mean to insult me. Then he started emotionally abusing me.
My guess is psycho-social explanations for weird behaviors associated with “mental illness” lead to less discrimination because they humanize the other.
From what one sees on the media the “mentally ill” have no feelings or motivations. Aside from the “mental illness” itself.
A headline I read after the mass shooting in Los Vegas. “We Discovered the Motivation for the Mass Shooter: He was Mentally Ill.” 😛
I still can’t work very easily. Trying for a full time job in customer service because sharing a single wide with my mother is more stressful/depressing than trying to work forty hour weeks. If I do little but sleep and eat and work I can make it work. Maybe.
Even though I’m still pretty sickly after 30 months off the drugs (the chronic illness started at least six years ago while I was fully compliant though I hurt more now) I’m glad I went off. I did stuff on the drugs I wasn’t proud of. I feel ashamed and apologetic but angry too. They kept telling me the “meds” made me a better more moral person and without them I’d turn into an evil monster. Involuntary intoxication. Some believed the nonsense they told me. But many of the doctors did not. I have no respect for those professionals.
I strongly regret seeing a shrink. I wanted to do the right thing. By taking my “meds” religiously for 22 years I thought I wouldn’t burden my family or friends. It was supposed to be the mature and responsible thing to do.
Instead I’m forced to rely on my aging parents at 46 since I can’t hold down a job now. Never have known gainful employment as an adult though I worked full time at 17 before I left for college a year early.
My life was ruined at 20 when I took Anafranil for intrusive thoughts and couldn’t sleep for three weeks. I keep having flashbacks and ruminating. The years 1993-2017 are just an ugly blur. I don’t know who I am anymore or what I’ve done. The only good thing is I was too numb to appreciate the horrors of what I was put through because I trusted a member of a respected medical profession. I still relive the horror of having my nearest and dearest turn on me because my psychiatrist told them I was hopelessly crazy. And I acted crazy because the drugs messed up my thoughts and I believed he was right. I couldn’t stop thinking of ways to kill myself and make the world a better place so my family could be free and remember who I was before I turned into a psycho freak. 🙁
I would have done better getting help from Walter White instead. His “medicine” is just as safe and effective and he never labels his clients. And their teeth stay in better shape too. Lol. (But seriously if you ever visit a mental center look at how many people are toothless in their early thirties. Shrinks love to blame this on how lazy they are, along with morbid obesity and poor hygiene–dehumanizing “consumers” makes the Experts look good.)
Dr. M tricked me into taking a bunch of mind altering drugs by calling them medicine like insulin. And he scared me by driving me insane with Anafranil first and attributing the hallucinations to my broken brain. Though I never had such visions before or since. Gaslighting is a shrink’s best friend. Almost as good as stigma.
People talk about “pill shaming” which is actually shaming those who take or prescribe psych drugs. (I try to avoid the former since it’s victim blaming.)
What they don’t acknowledge is reality shaming. How they heap scorn on the heads of those who honestly say, “My life is not better. My pills do not help me think clearly or get along with others. Taking them has not made me a kinder more responsible person. After going on them I can no longer function independently.” Even though it’s the truth.
I often hated myself because “In spite of” all these wonderfully “safe and effective treatments” I was not getting better. Must be my fault right? That–plus the numbness–led to my obsession with suicide.
It was a relief when I read William Glasser’s Warning: Psychiatry can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health. Up till then I felt guilty that my drugs weren’t “working.”
By working I meant as promised to me. Greater independence and better relationships and employment. Not passivity and childish dependence which is what they’re really meant for.
Joanna we do not have the right to refuse ECT in America.
Yes, Steve, it’s weird how TV shapes our perception of reality so believe what we see on the tube more than what we see in the real world around us. I saw a crime show last year where a “schizophrenic” was accused of murdering his therapist. He was not the murderer (for a change) but could only speak “word salad” when asked who he had seen murder her.
He agreed to be injected with “medicine.” Within five seconds he sat up and began to speak coherently. I sat and thought “I have never experienced enhanced clarity or cognitive ability. Nor have I witnessed it in anyone else.”
It’s scary how gullible we have become. They put anything on TV and people believe it. Even if they know it’s fiction.
Mom has seen me recover without “meds.” She knows my allegedly “schizophrenic” great aunt did fairly well without any “meds.” I blame her reclusive life on ECT and the trauma and shame of being locked up and labeled.
Yet Mom firmly believes these “meds” are helpful. She feels low spirited or blah and goes to the doctor complaining of unhappiness. (A bad idea. Never complain of emotional pain to any GP you have to see. Unless it’s physical pain from a real disease your doctor is not equipped to deal with it anyhow.)
Mom is sickly and worn out from over a decade on multiple SSRI drugs. She is at loose ends because it’s hard facing retirement and she has nothing to do. She just sits in a chair watching TV. She complains of boredom and unhappiness and gets more “medicine” instead of asking “What can I change to feel better?”
But the TV tells her drugs are all she needs to feel happy again. I expressed concern telling her she may have early Alzheimers or other dementia. Mom agreed. She expressed concern before we moved.
I told her there were steps she could take to reverse it at this stage. Physical exercise–she’s too drugged and apathetic to do much. Learn a new language or how to play a musical instrument. Read books. (She never reads now.) She shrugged and said, “They have medicine to fix Alzheimers now. I saw it on a commercial,” sighed and went back to staring at the tube.
BTW, I notice how people who work in “mental health” pushed TV on us almost as much as “medicine.”
I hope I can get my own place soon. It’s depressing watching Mom make self destructive choices and be powerless to stop.
Edward Bernays. Nephew of Sigmund Freud. First generation American.
It’s mostly because of his slick techniques promoting cigarettes as slimming and soothing to the throat, that smoking became popular among women in the thirties. He also spread the notion that drinking out of anything but disposable Dixie cups was unsanitary.
Joseph Goebbels studied Bernays’s techniques and used them to help Hitler rise to power. This cannot be blamed on Bernays. But what he promoted wasn’t benign either.
And consciously manipulating people–often with lies–is wrong. Even if you try to use it for good. Like the Ring of Power Tolkien wrote about.
Blaming the “severely mentally ill” and promising to punish (aka treat) an entire group for the crimes of a tiny minority doesn’t make anyone safer. But it provides the illusion of safety, making the public feel more secure. Just like many taking SSRI drugs have the illusion of feeling better.
People like us–who recover after leaving–embarrass psychiatrists. We’re a much bigger threat to their institution than the Scientologists. 🙂
Most of these guys aren’t sadists. By and large shrinks are tickled pink with a modest degree of recovery. Too modest for most people’s taste.
Then they can parade you around at various groups and conventions as a success story. As long as you give all the glory and honor to them and praise their treatments.
In the story of David and Goliath, the young lad turns down King Saul’s offer of full body armor before taking on this seasoned warrior who’s at least 9’6″ while David was probably under five feet. (Typical height back then.)
David knew he was already facing impossible odds so he went out with only the rocks and the sling he used for killing wolves and bears while looking after the sheep on his own.
We can’t beat them with massive campaigns or television/magazine ads or support from the cowardly or corrupt AMA. Our only hope is the unconventional.
As Gandalf said to Borimir in The Lord of the Rings, “Our only hope lies in foolishness.”
The book actually received a negative review from the NYT in 1991. Pretty ironic.
The reviewer complains that the last third of the book veers off into a diatribe against diseases that Shorter claims are purely imaginary. Such as allegies, temporomandibular joint disease, yeast infections…I kid you not.
Shorter reluctantly admits the first two exist but maintains they are most cases are cooked up by coffee sipping housewives with too much time on their hands. Serves ’em right for not vacuuming enough.
If we could do these three things I would be ecstatically happy.
1. Ban cronyism. This would solve so many problems besides the psychiatric one.
2. Ban involuntary treatment. I call it treatment because torture is a form of “punitive treatment.”
3. Make it illegal to advertise psychiatric drugs on TV.
I meant never to see a shrink. But maybe using the word “doctor” through you off. 😀
Our only course of action is the one taken for dealing with corrupt judges. Make the public hate them. Troll psychiatric sites and you’ll find this is the stuff that composes their worst nightmares.
I’m starting a satire site dedicated to revealing the ugly side of psychiatry. It will be labeled satire, but will contain links to real psychiatric articles I will draw on for inspiration.
Be sure to mention Shorter’s book A History of the Bodies of Women and his lecture to a group of people suffering from ME where he told them it was only hypochondria and compared them to swooning Victorian ingenues. Sounds like someone is still living in the 19th century and it isn’t the patients!
Edward Shorter denies that ME and most other autoimmune diseases exist. He claims these are all fashionable maladies dreamed up by hysterical females whilst they sip tea during afternoon calls.
And then pull out the smelling salts. Before collapsing on the fainting couch. 😀
Maybe he thinks blood letting and cauterization are underrated modalities of treatment that should be brought back. Lol.
At least Shorter has moved beyond the Four Humors.
By the way, don’t quote me. I’m indulging a satirical impulse. But mocking this guy is not hard to do.
Google “An Open Letter to Dr. Koroshetz occupy me” for details.
He denies ME because “it lacks scientific evidence” but promotes the concept of “mental illness” despite the lack of biomarkers not created by psychiatrists themselves.
My guess is Shorter loves to hand out Zoloft or Xanax as quickly as possible instead of searching for actual maladies.
And his attitude shows how inconsistent the concept of “mental illness” is. If it’s a real brain disease why don’t they treat it as such? Even Shorter views it as different from a physical disease. And yet they tout the notion that it’s a physical illness in the brain just like any other. The way they treat people they claim “suffer” from the alleged brain disease aren’t treated like real patients at all. Last time I checked the brain was a physical organ. Not a mental one.
A lawyer is interested. Please pass around this info to veterans, civil rights, and mental health groups.
Share it on libertarian and humanitarian groups. It isn’t just about Marci. This is about everyone’s right to due process and protection of life, liberty and freedom from torture.
Just kidding. Sort of.
Someone needs to write an article or two about stuff this guy has written and said in the past.
A friend of mine–an older woman named June–had severe stomach pains a while back. So bad she couldn’t eat. Her energy went down and she couldn’t get out of bed–for obvious reasons.
Her family doctor told her she didn’t have stomach issues. (I don’t know what tests he ran. I assume at least one or two.) He said she had a chemical imbalance in her brain making her think her stomach was bad when it was fine. He urged her to take SSRIs to fix the alleged disorder.
June asked if she was crazy. He told her emphatically she was not but mentally ill instead. Which is really only the polite, medical-sounding term for crazy.
June is still alive. I guess the placebo effect gave her the gumption to ignore the pain and eat anyhow. Her digestion is still very bad. And tinkering with serotonin levels is bad for the GI even if your gut is sound to begin with.
“But I know Dr. X. He’s a good, kind man and would never lie to me.”
I don’t know about that. But he probably is ignorant about psychiatry like most real doctors are now. A lot actually believe in the chemical imbalance.
A doctor I saw a while back said I was ridiculous to want my Bipolar 2 diagnosis reevaluated. He gave me the old “But you wouldn’t have had a psychotic episode if you weren’t mentally ill to begin with” crap. Told me I needed all of my cocktail or vague horrible things would happen to me. Unbeknownst to him I had tapered off everything but my Effexor and should have been full blown manic. Nope. 😀
He also claimed that nobody discriminated against others for having a diagnosis of bipolar or schizophrenia. He urged me to lose as much weight as possible. Told a woman in her mid-forties who had been at least slightly overweight all her life to lose 230 pounds in as little time as possible. He said I needed to weigh 120 pounds with no regard for bone structure.
When I lost “only” ten pounds in two months he urged me to take metformin–claiming it would suppress my appetite. Told me to go on a carb free diet with lots of protein and animal fat and nothing but vegetables and fruit. Didn’t know fruits have carbohydrates it seems.
I found this character’s medical know-how pretty underwhelming to put it mildly. It’s because of doctors like him that psychiatry continues to flourish I guess. None of them bother reading articles in journals to keep abreast with things, but trust the experts and prescribe whatever that cute pharma rep recommends.
Shorter ticked off a lot of people by speaking at a convention for those suffering from ME or myalgic encephalomyalitis at the National Institute of Health in the University of Toronto.
He ridiculed people suffering from chronic illness, comparing them to Victorian women luxuriating on beds of pillows simply to be fashionable. Real piece of work.
Yet Shorter supports psychiatry despite lack of evidence that those brain diseases called “mental” actually exist or that the pills he promotes save lives. His mockery of ME sufferers probably comes from the link between autoimmune conditions and psychiatric treatments.
Most people arguing that “mental illness” kills are actually talking about suicide.
Guess what? People in “treatment” kill themselves all the time.
But if they commit suicide off the drugs everyone blames their non-compliance. If they commit suicide on the drugs everyone ignores the fact. Or hems and haws claiming it’s “in spite of the finest medical care.”
I don’t despise Rick Warren the way Pacific Dawn does. But his line of reasoning is severely flawed. He and others need to have their faulty logic pointed out to them.
(Rick probably embraces the idea of depression as brain disease so he doesn’t have to worry about his son being in Hell for the sin of suicide. I can’t blame him there. He probably also feels guilty because his highly public ministry caused a lot of stress on Matt who was an introvert in a church that teaches “Jesus was an extrovert.” See Quiet by Susan Cain where she describes a visit to the Saddleback megachurch.)
Please read Shorter’s masterpiece about gynecology. He barely admitted allergies exist and goes off into a diatribe against female hypochondriacs toward the end.
My guess is he hopes this book of his will be forgotten. Several critics have accused him of misogynistic views. Many conscientious physicians are embarrassed by it.
Someone needs to drag up this forgotten masterpiece of his and ask why Shorter believes in random brain damage to cure unproven brain disorders but not allergies or yeast infections.
Shorter started out as a gynecologist it seems and got in trouble for claiming his female patients didn’t suffer from allergies, yeast infections, or other real physical diseases. He reluctantly admitted that allergies exist but hysterical women folk seldom suffered from them and probably took to handing out “antidepressants” to everyone who came in.
You know how them women folk be. Wink wink. 😛 His career change speaks for itself.
Google the New York Times review of Edward Shorter’s book. 1991. It makes him look like a raving misogynist.
He claims that women are hysterical hypochondriacs who imagine yeast infections, temporomandibular joint syndrome, allergies, and all other chronic illnesses. Wow, this work has not aged well.
No wonder he loves psych drugs so much. Great way to dismiss the medical needs of women who come to him for help.
Lucky for stuff shirts who hide behind stethoscopes and only get read by other academic stuff shirts this bovine excrement goes unnoticed. They get the glory of having a book published–proving professional expertise–but no popular audience reads it or holds them accountable for their views. Much stupidity that street smart folks would get but the Mutual Admiration Academia let slide. Because of intellectual “inbreeding.”
Medicine and other sciences should be studied more by the common people. We can no longer assume doctors have our best interests at heart.
Never see a doctor unless you know you can sue him for malpractice. They are that corrupt. We owe lawyers an apology.
It’s a little late, but maybe we could give Eddie a good trolling.
His fellow physicians are embarrassed by some of what he’s written. Dig up some of his worst experiments. Post a link to those along with a quote from his article trashing Bonnie.
Point out how he probably had it in for her as a successful female academic who wrote better books than himself.
“A priori assumption of materialism bio-psychiatry is built upon.”
Basically a denial of free will. You can also see this in the unethical experiments performed by behaviorists like B.F. Skinner.
Behaviorism is psychology I realize. So no, it’s not just psychiatry at fault.
(Interesting side note. One of the characters in The Simpsons–Principal Seymour Skinner–was named after the founder of behaviorism.)
I do not relish the idea of shrinks using “shrooms” on consumers. Though I doubt they will till Pfizer or Lilly puts them in pill form. This is needed to preserve the image of the shrinks as the real-honest-to-gosh-doctors they crave to be seen as.
Getting people to use hallucinagens through trickery or force would be a great way to manufacture more “schizophrenics.” AKA cash cows to milk. Or rather bleed till they expire.
“Yeah but if you weren’t ‘schizophrenic’ to begin with that LSD would never have had that effect on you.” Thus spake Dr. Quackenbush. This gives him the legal authority to force you to injest “therapeutic” or massive quantities of more LSD’s and probably “anti-depressant$,” neuroleptic$, “mood $tabilizer$,” and maybe $edative$ and other crap at hi$ di$cretion.
I do not share the author’s enthusiasm for yet another mind altering drug. Especially since “mental health” will likely foist it on the public as “life saving medicine,” “like penicillin,” “just like insulin for diabetes.” And other nonsense we already have been spoon fed by commercials/NAMI/psychiatrists. They all sound alike because they’re reading the same script.
Please don’t take my criticisms personally Shariq. I’m sure you are honest and sincere in your desire to help distressed people.
It’s others I take issue with. I don’t like liars. Or bullies.
Oldhead, Sanders is definitely the least of the choice of evils though.
I would advise homeless people to do whatever it takes to leave California. There are fewer homeless people in cities where I live–which means more community resources for those we do have. More HUD housing–and cheaper regular housing. More available jobs.
And no laws–like the one recently passed in California rendering it impossible for gig workers to make a living in most cases. You can earn a living as a freelancer where I live and rent an apartment for $500 a month.
Come to Indiana where the cost of living is only about 40% of what it is out West. Where even I could find a job. Where you actually have a chance to bootstrap your way out of financial dependence on the “mental illness” system!
BTW, I agree that the only disabilities the “mentally ill” suffer from are those inflicted on them by the “doctors.”
Puts the lie to psychiatry’s promise to cure us of all our moral failings. I bought into the bill of goods years ago. They did not make me more moral–in fact my family complained of my increased selfishness.
Psychiatrists claim their magical/scientific pills will end mass shootings, adultery, murder, theft, drunkenness, violence. How will they do this? By causing the frontal cortex and amygdala to wither away. The parts of our brains responsible for impulse control, empathy, and responsible adult behaviors.
This makes no sense at all. But–to my knowledge–no one ever asks shrinks why destroying the frontal lobes and amygdala cause improved morality.
Overriding natural brain functions does not improve cognitive function, nor does it stimulate the conscience. Mind altering drugs have been known to do the exact opposite in fact. Shrinks get around this by claiming these are not regular drugs but life-saving medications that only protect and heal and are safer than aspirin.
And if you get crazy they will blame a brain disease they can’t prove but assume must exist because #pillshaming. Or claim–as they always did for me–that you are cheeking the pills on the sly or faking the seizures and other real problems Ye Precious Pills caused.
Health Ranger.
The MI system is cancer–eating America alive.
Poetic justice. People are happy to see the “mentally ill” tormented and isolated as they die prematurely. They refused to even look at the pills causing our torments.
Now, due to denial that they were promoting the poisoning of their “MI” neighbors they’ve been deceied themselves into taking SSRI’s. Hey, it shut Johnny up. So it must be good for your brain, right?
You were happy when they came for your annoying neighbor.
You laughed as you saw him cry out in torment.
You called for them to lock him away.
Now they have come to destroy your brain.
And no one is left to help you.
Have fun, Normals.
I’ll play devil’s advocate.
Do drugs called “antidepressants” ever make people feel good? Yes they do.
I enjoyed two SSRIs when I first went on them.
I took Anafranil back in 1993 because of intrusive thoughts brought on by anxiety. It felt good at first–but like a horror movie it soon turned scary. The buzz turned into full blown hallucinations and I didn’t sleep the whole 3 weeks I took it.
After getting put on massive amounts of neuroleptics and kicked out of college because of seizures and other stuff, I became suicidal in 1994. They put me on Zoloft. It too gave me a buzz–but mild enough I could control it.
I didn’t need a buzz, but friendships and a purpose in life.
So, if someone says, “These antidepressants make me feel great. They ended my depression,” I agree with them. They are probably right.
Any “upper” from a street dealer could have similar benefits though.
I predict Gaga’s career will take a nosedive in a couple years. Maybe sooner. Her weight will go up markedly. Everything she experiences health wise or cognitively will be chalked up to her “illness” and used to prescribe more pills.
Eventually–like Carrie Fisher and Patty Duke–her principle gigs will come from entertaining shrinks and Big Pharma people at psychiatric conferences and “educating” the public on various PSA commercials, etc. Her only real identity will be the “Good Consumer” who talks about her disease all the time and has no real life apart from psychiatry.
I wonder how Mariah Carey’s career is going. She’s better off than Brittany because she does what they want, but a career as a public performer requires lots of energy that the pills don’t leave. Especially emotional energy.
I’m no fan of Scientology, but neither Tom Cruise nor John Travolta promotes their cult as much as the devoutly “SMI” celebrities.
Will Gaga read it?
My problem with talking to people about my problems with psychiatry is none of them read anything. They are happy to get all their information off TV programs and commercials and brochures put out by drug companies. Not unbiased sources. “But doctors know best.”
A couple friends laughed at me when I talked about Anatomy of an Epidemic. They said RW only was interested in making money. SMH. If Bob Whitaker is reading this I bet he’s having a hearty chuckle.
Lots of people who never read books also have some idea that all authors are multi-millionaires or billionaires and J.K. Rowlings’ success is the norm. Even well-known authors have other jobs or supplement book sales with speaking/teaching/coaching/consulting/editing/etc.
If making gobs of money is your only goal and you aren’t hindered by a conscience the best route would be writing ad copy for Big Pharma. Especially ghost writing articles under the name of prominent APA members!
“In reality it wasn’t about Bill’s quality of life at all but other people’s annoyance at him.”
That sums up what psychiatry is all about. And it didn’t even help with that in my case. The more drug addled I became the weirder I acted (low inhibitions, lower empathy, lower cognitive ability.)
From my days in the NAMI cult I collected some Lilly paraphernalia. Living in the country now. Gonna get out the big drum can and have myself a Lilly roast! 😛
Trump honestly believes that psychiatry prevents crimes just like Obama did. Just like 95% of the population does. Excluding shrinks.
Sometimes I wonder if uber-shrinks like Pinsky/Torrey/Murphy want mass shootings so they can use them to advance their careers. So they hand out more drugs knowing they cause violent crimes and rub their hands gleefully at every shooting that occurs. “Waste no emergency.”
(His field is psychology. He lectures about human behavior rather than biology. Probably ignorant what SSRI’s do like most non-scientists.)
What really riles me up are psychiatrists who pass out their drugs like office mints. And–despite complaining of suicidal depression–refuse to take any. This blatant hypocrisy sickens me. Not just hurting people through well-meaning ignorance, but callous deception. I have only contempt for such people.
This is a short article. Obviously it can’t go into detail due to brevity.
But it fails to distinguish between voluntary or involuntary asylums. A very big difference.
Is Bobak advocating for the type of Soteria House that Loren Mosier ran till the APA cut his funding? Or the chain of asylums old “Doc” Drew wants to start?
Either way, count me out. I will never trust a shrink again after what I have experienced.
Releasing a wrongfully accused prisoner after a number of years would also produce similar problems. Lack of employment history, etc.
If he has been manhandled routinely in prison by the guards so he suffered extensive TBI and nerve damage it will be still worse. Yet no one would oppose his release and pretend it was an act of kindness!
The “mental health” system makes reintegration into mainstream society impossible.
I have never been in a true asylum myself–or the modern version called the state mental hospital. But once people in your community know your status as a “severely mentally ill” individual they treat you worse than a felon.
I find the whole concept of mental illness intellectually problematic.
Is it poor cognitive skills? No. That’s called “developmental delay” or whatever the popular term is now. It seems–according to prominent experts on mental illness–that it is bad behaviors impossible to overcome without their help.
“Symptoms” of “bipolar” include rage, pride, lust, and greed. Traditionally called sins. According to psychiatrists certain people have no agency and can never change. This dates back to the Victorian concept of “criminal types” who could be labeled defective by low foreheads and hairy hands and skull size. Assuming you were white. Everybody else was automatically judged defective.
Many here can testify to how wrong these alleged experts are.
Somehow it’s innately biological AND a moral defect at the same time. How can this be? It leads to being treated worse than a convicted felon. Rather than judging you on the content of your character people will judge you on what some shrink who talked to you for fifteen minutes decided. And your bad drug reactions.
So there’s the prejudice (premature judgments with no regard to actual behavior.) Prominent psychiatrists go to great lengths to promote this.
People can change their behaviors without medical help. Human beings have been doing it for ages. But everyone assuming the worst of you makes change impossible till you relocate and start over.
The drugs and shocks make gainful employment–needed for housing usually–difficult if not impossible. Suffering from GI issues myself. At least it’s a great excuse to my neighbors for why I’m on disability.
So the bigotry and brain damage passed off on the public as “safe and effective treatment” are why releasing those in the asylum wasn’t much of a success.
Hi Jane. Thanks for your story.
Just finished reading the 01/24 article here at MIA about Drew Pinsky’s views on homelessness. Reread yours.
We need more stories like this You put the lie to Pinsky’s BS statements about how all “mentally ill” people enjoy being homeless.
You tell why it’s difficult if not impossible to bootstrap your way out of poverty once psychiatry has “helped” you.
The proper term for stigma is segregation. Psychiatry’s primary function has always been to separate the “unfit” from mainstream society via labels or incarceration. Making getting hired difficult.
Once diagnosed SMI you are subjected to treatments designed to render you childish and docile. Not independent or level headed. Even if you escape these brutal regimens of drugs/shocks/brain mutilations the damage is real. Whatever health issues you may have had are far worse than before.
And SSI for the disabled punishes you for trying to better yourself by cutting you off at the knees.
With the high housing costs in California it’s no wonder homelessness is a problem.
Dr. Phil is too behavior oriented. Jerry Springer II.
Dr. Oz would be a better proponent of the bio bio bio model. And he uses cool gimmicks.
He could fill a telephone booth with black balloons and say, “These are gloomy thoughts filling your brain.” Takes a knitting needle: “This is shock therapy.” Pops all the balloons in the booth. “See how shocks can save your life by killing those gloomy brain cells.”
Torrey would smack his head. “Brilliant! Sheer genius! How come I never thought of that?”
According to NAMI (not an anti psychiatry organization) only 20% of the homeless are supposed to be “mentally ill.” That still is a significant minority.
Are any of them undergoing AOT while homeless? This is an important question to ask for sites that want to get at the truth.
I got angry at “Dr.” Drew’s assertion that the “mentally ill” all enjoy being homeless. Apparently he would have all believe these subhumans among the “normal” are not only too stupid to take the “meds” that restore their powers of reason, but enjoy exposure to the elements and threats of bodily harm.
I have sat up nights with a weeping friend who feared homelessness thanks to HUD inspections. Her executive functioning so damaged she couldn’t straighten her room properly. (As I couldn’t till recently. I finally shower regularly too. Restore normal brain function my foot!)
“Doc” Drew’s statements that all the “mentally ill” love being homeless is as insulting as it is stupid. I doubt he discussed homelessness or anything else with anyone he treated.
The man just wants to make a killing running a chain of asylums and is eager for warm bodies to cram into them. Psychiatry is the only branch of medicine easier to succeed in than day time talk shows.
“Scripted lines”? Nobody writes my comments but me.
Just a fantasy for any of us. Of course. Like getting back the lives they ruined.
Preventing them from locking up, crippling, and killing more people would be enough for me.
My body is inflamed and my brain damaged from the treatments. My heart was going bad before I escaped. Psychiatry was killing me. As it has countless others. My “bipolar 2” was created by a drug reaction no one acknowledges.
What’s left to improve about psychiatry? They get 6 or 7 digit salaries and never have to worry about lawsuits. The Professional House is in great shape. No one is about to burn it down. Like the pigs at the end of Animal Farm. They get what they want and that’s all that matters.
Lots of people come here to mock the suffering. “Psychiatry is not going anywhere!”
My response? Doing right is more important than winning.
It’s better to lose fighting for what’s right than win by joining the forces of evil. If Hitler had won World War II do you think opposing him would still have been worthwhile? (It cost Dietrich Bonhoeffer his life.) I say Yes.
Assuming–for the sake of argument–psychiatrists do know more about human brains now…that does NOT guarantee they will refrain from abuse. By that logic all Josef Mengele needed were more lessons in human anatomy. 😛
The idea that giving anyone absolute power with no repercussions for anyone they harm somehow benefits those at their mercy is ludicrous.
My question is: What if a family member gets sick of a “mentally ill” person and makes an appeal for involuntary euthanasia? If the “loved” one cries “I want to live!” they can chalk it up to lack of insight.
The Scapegoat is irrational and can’t appreciate how subhuman they are. That their life is unworthy of living as the Germans put it. 🙁
i worry that abusive families and doctors may be allowed to euthanize troublesome members someday. At their own discretion of course. (“Loved” one be damned.)
It’s all about control. Drugs cut life expectancy in half. As Jaffe and Earley well know.
They also know the Chemical Imbalance is a lie but gladly foist it on the public and cram those drugs down family members’ throat. They know they don’t protect or heal but push them anyhow. Defectives are only fit to be locked up. Crippling them and having them die prematurely is convenient for devoted dads like Earley. Or loving brothers-in-law like Stanley–uh–I mean Jaffe.
So Earley admits his book is a work of fiction, hmmm? i daresay there’s professional envy involved.
I bet I know who really wrote the letter he published on his site.
It speaks volumes about Earley’s character that he accused his son of attempted homicide when attempted suicide would also have gotten him hospitalized. Kevin got treated far worse. But the homicide lie was more dramatic. Priorities.
I read an article in the UK Guardian by Edward Bullmore. Glad he’s taking his colleagues to task.
Psychiatry’s standard treatments cause inflammation. If there’s any validity to Bullmore’s hypothesis, what his colleagues are doing is exacerbating the original complaint.
i was repeatedly told
1. The drugs were correcting a chemical imbalance in my brain.
2. That they were neuro-protectors to prevent decline.
3. And they were needed to prevent me from hurting myself and others.
4. And they were my only hope for independent living and gainful employment.
All lies I found out. Doubtful any shrinks believe them. Except number 3.
The real justification behind psychiatry is what I saw in an interview between Stossel and Jaffe. Jaffe told him, “These people will only wind up in institutions anyway.”
Writing his fellow men and women off as garbage has been the life mission of D.J. Jaffe.
In the sight of Heaven Jaffe may be judged far less worthy than those HE judges unfit to exist.
Shrinks consider that an improvement because making people look scary proves how necessary their profession is. It also helps segregate the “mentally ill” from the mainstream and promotes stigma.
Many a well informed shrink loves stigma, segregation, and visible nerve damage. Great PR for his quackery.
Yes. Suicide has been going on long before psychiatric drugs/shocks–or even psychiatry itself existed.
I do think psychiatry has caused suicide rates to skyrocket. I wasn’t suicidal till the shrinks punished me for my reaction to Anafranil at age 20. 10 mg Haldol that caused seizures and tardive psychosis. My shrink told my friends and family the only reason I experienced these problems was non-compliance. Took the pills religiously but my failure to improve was seen as evidence of my naughtiness. My tearful protests were to no avail. I got kicked out of college.
I couldn’t talk normally, or enjoy anything. I was told no man could ever love a schizophrenic and I would die a virgin like my great aunt. Everyone yelled at me all the time. After a year I decided we’d all be better off if I died. God wouldn’t answer my prayers for cancer so I felt suicide was necessary.
Weird thoughts and hallucinations exist. But there are no known bio-markers to distinguish a “schizophrenic” brain–except for those caused by iatrogenic damage.
I read about how William Glasser “cured” people diagnosed as SMI. He called what they experienced “creative symptoms” since they’re creative mind games to cope with pain.
I thought this article would be about the link between “mental health” and disability related poverty which RW touched on in his Anatomy of an Epidemic. Mildly disappointed.
I’m happy for Ms. Davis btw.
Like many here I didn’t grow up poor. All those wonderful “treatments” sentenced us to lives of poverty. 3 years off my cocktail I can finally clean my room again after 20 years. Thanks for the systemic damage “mental health.”
I hope and pray I can earn enough with online gigs to save myself from homelessness soon. My parents are frail and elderly. They may have to sell the house soon.
I can’t drive due to neuroleptic seizures that prevented my drivers license when young. Never had a family of my own. Almost no friends. In horrible pain every day with symptoms like Crohns and Lyme Disease that seem to baffle doctors.
They get very mysterious and won’t venture guesses on the causes of the disorders they diagnose. My CNS, GI, and executive function are wrecked from long term druggings.
Very angry. I weep inconsolably almost every night holding my cat–mourning the life psychiatrists stole from me.
If you don’t want to wind up sick, lonely and poor stay far away from shrinks!!!
Hmm. Notice how astronomers don’t get their panties in a wad because Flat Earthers exist.
The Church of Psychiatry knows they’ve got the Good Stuff. They don’t take kindly to any one invading their turf.
I got suspicious of NAMI when I realized they were censoring what we could read or listen to. They canceled a speaker who got better off her drugs and wouldn’t tell us why. I found out from the grapevine. Then I realized the people running the show–the “normals”–were also listening in on our conversations.
They knew the truth would set us free. And it scared them.
The more hysterical rants I hear demonizing the anti-vax crowd the more distrustful of the flu vaccine I become too. 😛
I’m certainly not. As long as I live my “diagnosis” will hang over my head. No one with the label of schizophrenia or bipolar can see a medical specialist without the threat of being found out.
Julie Greene was terrified her past would bite her in the butt if a doctor realized the full extent of her kidney damage. (That it had occurred from “therapeutic” lithium levels used as standard treatment for an illness like no other.)
I’m sure you are a kindly, well-meaning doctor. My rant is not meant as an insult to you.
It would be great if more doctors like you existed. But EVERY medical specialist I know personally either believes the medical model–sadness and all negative emotions as well as the rarer extreme states are indisputably brain diseases–or cheerfully lies to the public.
Dr. Blatt, as a medical practitioner, you see things the rest of us don’t. Which would you say it is? Honest ignorance, deception (reluctance to blow the whistle and a desire for pharmaceutical perks) or a combination?
It’s troubling to think how most doctors go along with this. Whether it’s because they’re incompetent, cowardly or corrupt this keeps most survivors from trusting them. 🙁
Way to hide that embarrassing truth…that people in developing nations recover from what they would call “severe mental illness.”
Shrinks are scared Westerners abroad will discover this. The solution? More chemically crippled brains all over the globe to “prove” how hopeless their test subjects are.
Or pretended to treat non-existent heart diseases and prescribed pills to damage the hearts of your patients. Then sold more drugs to treat the damage you caused which caused more damage in other vital organs.
Now all that’s needed is more effective marketing for replacing those pesky patients who keep dying.
Lieberman makes himself still richer by turning even more people into penniless cripples. Who slowly die.
People like him deserve the reward Farid Fata got.
The mother strove to turn her son into a murderous lunatic and succeeded.
Why do these women enjoy having adult children living in their basements for crying out loud? Most parents view that as a bad thing.
Why are they so upset at adult offspring moving out, getting jobs and having relationships? Most parents WANT grandchildren. NAMI mommies would love to sterilize their young. (At least those they designate the Scapegoat.)
NAMI mommies are way nuttier than the offspring they claim to want to help. At least till the “doctor” these gaslighting drama mamas hire succeeds in destroying the son/daughter’s brain and CNS.
The shrink never seems to care–if he notices–what pieces of work the “loved ones” are. Probably because they pay the bill.
Why not let the poor offspring have a life? Instead they force them onto welfare and prevent them from getting jobs. And Heaven help the “kid” if they ever fall in love with anyone! More drama, screams and hysterics from their “normal” NAMI mommy dearest.
I would like to ask Rick Warren if the “mentally ill” have souls like real people.
Since he denies us free agency and claims we have no moral accountability for our actions this is worth asking.
Would dearly love to find a way to spike the food supply of a couple dozen shrinks with SSRI drugs in therapeutic doses. My guess is out of 30 approximately 5 would develop psychotic mania within a week or two.
When they find out, remind them that according to their alleged science this reaction means they were Bipolar all along. The drugs just unmasked that condition. Then tell them they’ll have to take cocktails for the rest of their lives. Watch them wriggle out of that. Record the whole thing for social media.
It would have to be publicly recorded to work. They never play by their own rules. (Whining how lack of government funds is forcing them to commit suicide instead of getting “diagnosed” and “hospitalized” and “treated” for suicidal desires like the rest of us.)
Public exposure of the profession’s bovine excrement would be great.
You got that right.
There’s plenty of spraying pretty fragrances around. Scented like vanilla, flowers, fruit. But the stench is overpowering. What we need is a good flush.
Consider that mainstream psychiatry is about destroying the health and cognitive function of those it “helps.” Psychiatry fills the human heart with existential angst and self loathing.
Psychiatry prevented me–and countless others–from marriage, a career, family, or friendships with any but a few other outcasts. 🙁
Is it any wonder so many of those with psychiatric labels kill themselves?
All I can say in Dr. K’s defense is maybe all his clients are newbies to psychiatry who have never taken SSRIs for more than 6-12 months.
Or maybe they know that psychiatrists will always laugh at how horrible they feel–say it’s imaginary and/or they’re faking it for attention. Like the seizures I had on Haldol. 😛 After that I quit sharing anything negative about ye precious pills.
(Your mainstream shrink would rather hear you insult his own mother than the pills he prescribes. Like his whole sense of self worth is wrapped up in those things.)
Dr. K is obviously not a mainstream psychiatrist. That’s why so many here–including myself–get upset and angry at his casual dismissal of our suffering. We expect it of the dangerous quacks working in community mental illness centers. But we hope for better from mavericks like him.
Close was nice enough to force her sister to wear a T-shirt saying ‘Schizophrenic” out in public and actually touched her. With people watching and everything.
A lot of heroism and self sacrifice on Glen’s part. 😛 Ugh.
I think what most people consider prolonged withdrawal symptoms are simply damage from long term drug use. Before starting my taper I had been diagnosed with pernicious anemia and heart arrythmia. I also was experiencing Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Though the diagnosis was pretty recent.
Going off seemed to exacerbate autoimmune problems. Not sure why. My pain threshold is lower for one thing. (Psych drugs numb physical pain too.) And my stomach acid levels are different. Was on the stuff 24 years.
There are young people who start acting oddly. For whatever reason.
Mom has always been worried about looking Normal and Blending in. It bugged me how looking good was more important than being good on the inside.
I was a weird child. Too eccentric and imaginative. Used to throw ugly tantrums and they drove my folks nuts since everyone at church condemned them for not punishing me severely enough.
Before kindergarten my folks took me to an educational center that ran tests. I drew a woman as they requested. The skirt was “too long” according to them.
They asked me why I disliked preschool. I used a big word when I told them. “Responsibilities.” Tongue clucking and note taking.
They told my parents it was their fault I was messed up. Using big words I obviously didn’t know because they forced me to. Drawing women wearing long skirts meant my parents made me feel ashamed of my legs.
My mom was very upset. She has told me since she always knew there was something wrong and weird about me. The center blamed my environment. The bio-model blamed heredity which she claimed came from Dad’s side too.
Why is being Weird the unpardonable sin? Lots of “normal” people do rotten things all the time. But if their cruel, selfish behaviors are socially appropriate and NORMAL everyone is fine with that.
Thank you for this article Dr. Hahn. Nice to have more specialists of legitimate sciences writing for MIA.
With the many adults involved in the life of today’s child there are plenty of potential abusers other than the parents.
My brother and I were emotionally abused by a teacher we both had different years. My parents never found out till we were teens. We thought our folks approved of Mrs. I’s behaviors and teachings. They had no idea and were upset when we told them.
SomeoneElse and others here could share how their children were abused without their knowledge or consent. So blaming the mom or parents is a gross oversimplification. Often unjust.
Though this article points out the problem was less common than represented. Psychiatrists are misrepresenting their own history even as they misrepresent what they know about the human brain.
Nobody seems to acknowledge that large numbers of people attempt suicide while religiously adhering to the drug regimen–exactly as prescribed by the doctor.
While taking my cocktail exactly as prescribed by my shrink I frequently was suicidal and would be hospitalized 1-3 times every year.
Off my drugs for 30 months and despite my poverty and sickness (iatrogenic digestive system damage) I have regained the will to live. But no one wants to hear stories like mine.
The APA will only strip Open Dialogue of all meaning and value by incorporating the bio model. Just as they have CBT and meditation.
My guess is they’ll turn it into a gripe session where the “SMI” person’s family is encouraged to gang up on him or her. “Keva you need to own up to being the schizophrenic in this family. Why won’t you just admit you’re the problem and take your meds?”
Not with a single lethal injection though.
A prolonged death over the course of many years via 3-10 various neuroleptics/serotonin inhibitors/tranquilizers.
That’s the only humane course to take. Motivated purely by compa$$ion. 😀
My mental illness team told me logical thinking was impossible for my kind and I needed to rely on everyone else to do my thinking for me. Around that time I really “lost it.” Ain’t insight grand?
A lot of doctors chalk them up to fake diseases. Anything to prescribe more SSRIs and get rewarded with warm doughnuts and views up Barbie’s miniskirt.
That’s why most of us survivors distrust doctors. If we even continue to believe in allopathic medicine.
So Dr. K…how would you classify real physical disorders created by fake meds to treat fake diseases? Funny how these real diseases are ignored or minimized if the doctor knows you’re being treated for a fake disease.
My anemia and thyroid problem kept getting used as an excuse to boost my SSRI dose. Now I smile and say I feel perfectly happy but just a little sluggish. Could they please just check my hemoglobin and thyroid levels?
I understand the frustration many here feel. Like others I share a small living space as the only alternative to homelessness and am still too messed up for a regular job. Autoimmune diseases and trouble concentrating, remembering or organizing.
Plus the MI System strongly discouraged me from finding work–partly by requiring long hours in “day treatment” and “clubhouse.” So my work history is very poor.
Others of you are worse off. Living under a bridge or abandoned warehouse. Maybe forced into AOT or locked up or forced to live with abusers. Maybe you don’t even get disability to live off.
Melissa’s cards are not a solution to problems like homelessness. Houses of cards are for shrinks to construct. 😉 Nor do they free the imprisoned nor end the pharmacological torture. But these problems are things even the greatest medical and legal experts struggle with. Dr. Goezhe, Dr. Breggin, Jim Gottstein….
At least Melissa is trying to bring the teeniest ray of comfort into the lives of those who exist just to serve as scapegoats for all that’s wrong with humanity today. Letting them know that someone still sees them as Human Beings instead of monsters or garbage.
I’m trying to do more of that myself. Maybe volunteer for a warmline for survivors.
There are other contributors here far worthier of our ire. One of them is a mainstream psychiatrist who posted a mocking comment on a young man’s memorial page a while back. It makes more sense to get angry at people like him.
Of course the idea that mindlessness meditation–as Julie used to call it–or counseling can benefit purely neurological disorders flies in the face of the bio-bio-bio model narrative psychiatrists have written.
They struggle with the narrative when they wax eloquent upon how the internet spreads agosognosia. Yet claim this lack of “insight” is completely genetic in origin.
Respected psychiatrists seem to be arguing that genes can be altered through reading internet articles they disagree with. Lol
Why many find “mental health”=depression. You get your entire identity out of popping pills and attending “groups” to reinforce how sick/crazy/helpless you are.
Normal things that give most a sense of life purpose–career and family–are strongly discouraged.
There’s way more to our neurochemical makeup than dopamine and serotonin despite what NAMI would have us believe. Most of the chemicals in the human brain remain unclassified by science.
If they don’t even know what they’re trying to fix how can they fix it?
I keep hearing shrinks tell everyone–not just us–how their treatments are 100% safe and effective. They prevent murder, adultery, homelessness, drunkenness, theft, suicide, etc. And they’re “safer than aspirin.” “Just like insulin for diabetes.”
So they admit to each other that all their medical help is worthless? A pack of lying scoundrels.
Shrinks whining about how the geese laying their golden eggs squawk too much.They’re the ungrateful ones IMHO.
Yep. Replace all psychiatrists with kiosks containing computers. You can take the test for “mental illness” with in the multiple choice quiz already used by shrinks.
Print up the new diagnostic label/s on a receipt. Then run your Medicaid/Medicare/insurance cared through various vending machines that will dispense 7-30 days worth of pills.
The machines won’t make you wait 2 hours extra for a 10 minute office visit. They don’t play golf.
The worst thing about psychiatric “remedies” is they cause exquisite suffering no onlooker can see. Even kind hearted people can’t appreciate the Hell that’s between your ears.
My mother would tearfully ask my shrink why I paced, jerked uncontrollably, had mini seizures, couldn’t carry on a conversation, concentrate or smile. “She never was like this.”
“Doc” M covered his butt with judicious victim blaming and gas lighting. Of course.
Most serial killers live in their own homes, hold down jobs, and even have families.
I also object to “Doc” Drew’s nonsense that “All the ‘mentally ill’ people enjoy being homeless.”
It reminds me of how racists say “People of ethnic group X enjoy living in the high crime district.”
I am afraid of homelessness for crying out loud! Been having nightmares about it. Lots of “consumers” are. A friend of mine kept begging to be sent to a “home” because her frontal lobes were too messed up on her cocktail to keep the Marine-style level of cleanliness and order that HUD demands and most people would find challenging.
It’s safe to assume Drew wants nothing but state hospitals. Basically prisons rife with every abuse imaginable–including rape.
WTH is wrong with Drew? It’s a safe bet HE never talked to them or any of his victims. Can’t humanize ’em since that would be unprofessional.
It’s essential to wear a nice lab coat, have clean finger nails, never raise your voice (you can scare people into submission without shouting.)
Flash your MD around. From the only medical field that accepts people who swoon at the sight of blood.
Forget losers like Louis Pasteur and Alexander Fleming. Song and dance numbers outweigh facts. Make like P.T. Barnum.
Remember a happy mark won’t give much repeat business. Give them something highly addictive with as many side effects as possible. With luck you’ll get to sell 3 drugs for every original drug you put them on. 😀 That’s a cocktail of 9 meds for your average Bipolar case. Cha ching!
Remember–only do horrible things in socially appropriate ways.
Precisely Boans!
What’s to prevent shrinks from involuntarily euthanizing the “SMI”?
We already have no say in what they do to us. And they ignore the damage their “safe and effective” treatments have on those they regard as lab rats.
It’s only lack of insight preventing Ms. Smith from appreciating her subhuman condition and that she has Lebensunwertes Leben (a life unworthy of life.) Therefore kindly, wise Dr. X will kill her despite her protests.
So does Jaffe advocate telling police to not be afraid of shooting anyone accused of being “MI”? If not, this is still the result. Not that he would care.
Are the folks running NAMI that dumb or do they want to get their loved ones shot if the drugs don’t work fast enough. 25 years is a long wait for an annoying “loved one” to die.
I’ll never forget a commenter here who supported AOT and said she was glad her “mentally ill” daughter would die young and didn’t care her life was ruined by the drugs because she was happy forcing her to live hopelessly dependent in her basement forever.
Why isn’t that woman considered a menace? She’s the one with messed up thinking. Her “crazy” daughter wasn’t the one saying that crap about her.
Isn’t wanting your adult offspring to be crippled, unemployed and living in your basement forever pretty bizarre? But that’s the ultimate NAMI mommy wet dream. Creepy.
Leaving psychiatry is indeed the only healthy response to this brutal regime. Never argue with anyone whose 7 digit income depends on writing off your complaints as delusions.
But I couldn’t keep the entry-level job due to old age and long term damage causing my autoimmune disease.
Creative freelancing will allow me to “come out” as a survivor more easily. I have made a vow to do so in 2024.
Leaving California would help those folks a lot. Housing is way more affordable in my state. $20,000 here goes further than $50,000 in the Sunshine State.
An institution is four walls. Pinsky should have this pointed out to him.
They are very wrong to say all the homeless enjoy being that way. Krista didn’t choose homelessness. Nor did Julie Greene or me. Yet we nearly wound up that way because psychiatry prevented us from gainful employment.
By deliberate crippling with their cruel, pointless experiments. And promoting bigotry as Pinsky is doing. How is one supposed to find/keep a job when Pinsky and his ilk are out to sabotage all efforts and terrify neighborhoods to promote NIMBY even after finding jobs?
Of course letting these people become gainfully employed so they can afford their own housing is not an option.
I was gainfully employed at 17. Went to college and took a full course load and PT work at the campus library. Then I saw a shrink, took his pills and stayed awake for 21 days. Labels, more drugs than ever, unemployment…
Struggling to work with a chronic illness from home.
I still think psychiatry is exacerbating–if not causing–the homelessness epidemic. And benefits are being cut because almost 30% of the population is iatrogenically crippled/barred from working thanks to “Doctor” Drew’s colleagues. All the mental workers swore up and down if I took my “meds” religiously I could find gainful employment and maybe even get married.
But it all depended on unquestioning obedience and taking whatever drugs my shrinks dished out. Even if they caused seizures, uncontrollable vomiting, heart problems, strokes, etc. 😛
There are more jobs now. Sadly though, my autoimmune condition from 25 years on drugs makes many of these impossible. I can no longer work as a cashier due to bodily weakness and chronic pain.
What did I get for it? Alienation. Segregation. Dire poverty. Banned from gainful employment. Massive weight gain (more than 100% body mass.) Autoimmune disease. Heart problems.
That’s how the mentalists reward you for the insight they praise. And they assume you’re stupid and warn your family that you won’t take your “meds” since “they never do.”
Of course my “insight” and reputation as a “good consumer” helped me escape once I figured out I’d been had. The real advantage to compliance.
Never underestimate the placebo effect.
Of course there is more than that at work. A lot of drugs bring people out of depression by producing a mild euphoria.
I experienced this with my first time on Zoloft. But my depression came from being labeled “schizo-affective” after a bad trip on Anafranil. I got kicked out of college thanks to my label. 10 mg Haldol destroyed my ability to socialize/enjoy anything/smile.
Mental services blamed my suicidal misery on my brain. Not being labeled hopelessly defective or drugged out on seizure causing neuroleptics.
In the hospital someone told me I wasn’t a monster and listened while I sobbed out the year of pain I had been through. The Zoloft gave me a speedy lift. I got released for Thanksgiving.
My guess is those pushing MI System don’t want to wreck society since an end to Western Civilization would mean no more yacht parties.
But–like the Onceler in the picture book–their greed has made them very short sighted. And instead of trees they’re chopping down young human lives just as fast as they please.
I struggle with the urge to go full misanthrope myself.
In my phone talks with Julie Greene she told me that distrust–even hatred–for most of humanity is common to psychiatric survivors.
It comes from being cast out of society so only a few fellow outcasts will still speak to you. Of being blamed for every violent crime committed. Of trembling every time you hear of a mass shooting since you know people will blame duly appointed scapegoats for society, known as the “mentally ill” for the actions of those you have no control over.
if it were seen as punishing a group for the crimes of a single individual, people would be forced to acknowledge the injustice. But call life long imprisonment/mutilation/druggings “treatment” and dismiss those forced to suffer. They can take pride in their benevolence and only need to fear dislocated shoulders from patting their own backs.
But we who survive the System are not fooled. We see through this faux compassion for what it is. Cold indifference to the suffering of their fellow human beings. Projecting the murder and madness in their own hearts onto the designated Other. 🙁
Every morning I feel what has been inflicted on my body. I make a conscious choice for forgiveness and love. Not easy and the damage remains. But my psyche is noticeably better.
I only know what goes on in the hearts of the scapegoating “sane” because I too am guilty of this behavior. i truly am one of them–acknowledged or not.
It looks like the movie Unsane takes a more realistic look at psychiatry than Joker.
The funny part of Unsane is how it’s viewed as some sort of unusual scandal the psych hospital locks people up as long as insurance covers it. And gets shut down when this Unusual Scandal comes to light.
I have said some harsh things about real doctors on this site.
In justice to those GPs and FNPs, they lead such busy lives that aside from maybe a few trade articles to stay current, none have time to sift through all the propaganda/marketing campaigns disguised as medical science.
The truth can’t keep pace with all the lies the enemy grinds out. Truly sad. 🙁
“In other words, the conservatee has to prove he or she has been handling the very responsibilities or freedoms that the conservatorship has limited their ability to engage in.”
This sums up the Mental System as a whole, actually.
Strap a ball and chain to our ankles and mock our inability to run laps.
Yes, Anomie. Survival of the Fittest as the standard can be brutal to those judged unfit. Weakness is viewed as the ultimate crime–worse than robbery or murder.
A major difference between “original sin” and “mental illness” is the playing field is level. We’re ALL sinners. And genetic defects–though they exist–don’t make anyone inherently better than another.
Whereas psychiatrists believe the majority are born sane. Such as themselves.
Furthermore the doctrine of “original sin” goes along with the doctrine that all human beings are special beings who bear the divine breath within. And have basic rights to life and liberty by nature of our common humanity. Regardless of intelligence, strength or beauty.
Monism is the philosophy psychiatry is founded upon. Monists believe we don’t have thoughts. What we call thoughts are merely random chemical reactions in our skulls.
Psychiatrists ignored me whenever I said anything negative about the pills they put me on. Either I was lying or it was my “illness” which (quite coincidentally) had never manifested in that form before I took their “100% safe, effective life-saving medicine.”
Liar or inherent defectiveness. Can’t pill shame.
So I decided two can play at this game. I lied and flattered shamelessly. As long as you kiss up and praise ye precious pills they’ll believe anything you say. It shows “good insight.” LOL
Arrogant people are highly susceptible to flattery. Remember Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes?
It helped me escape.
They hate the truth so you feed them the lies they prefer.
Oh, they’ll easily believe you are “symptom” free. AKA no depression. Regardless of how you feel.
What highly scientific method do they use to figure out your depression levels? Blood tests? Brain scans? Spinal taps?
Nope.
A quiz with 0-5 for negative feelings. They throw some physical symptoms that could be caused by real health issues, but it’s a trap. Just put 0 on everything and three 1’s so they won’t get suspicious.
My joys and sorrows are my own business. I’l deal with them as I see fit. And calling my real life sorrows or griefs mere symptoms of some (unproven) brain disease is insulting the way I see it.
The teen talking to non-existent people. The man going around calling himself Moses or Gandhi. The woman who imagines the CIA is spying on her.
Very few people in the MI System I met ever experienced this pre-drugs.
Most were nervous and unhappy from crap in their lives. Till the psych treatments sent them over the edge.
Or they got a plea deal for shop lifting or assault.
Or had a drinking problem that AA used to help with. Now they’re addicted to stuff far worse than booze.
That is the main reason I chose to come off my drugs. Despite the suffering my withdrawal caused.
I was brought up a teetotaler, non-smoker, “just say no” kid. if these drugs were the same as street drugs how could I continue to take them?
BTW, a lot of little old ladies on SSRI’s would be irate if they could be convinced they’d been tricked into taking addictive, mind altering drugs by that nice-seeming doctor they trusted.
Dr. Ronald Pies did in a couple articles published in the APA journal.
He was very indignant that anyone thought members of his profession were ignorant enough to believe the lies they told those who trusted them. 😀
‘”Far away from the from the eloquent critiques from Mad in America, one is as likely to have a patient REQUESTING to be diagnosed or start a new medication.”
Dr. T.N. Tampiyappa
“The Matrix: Disentangling Antipsychiatry”
MIA 12/19
I have heard other psychiatrists say this. Though my label almost made me commit suicide before I decided to live above it.
FWIW I have known some people who enjoyed being able to turn over adult responsibilities to the mental system.
Do they even want to make valid scientific discoveries?
Assume–for the sake of argument–they discover more about the chemicals of our brains and classify more. Then they discover all the “safe and effective” treatments they based their careers on have done the exact opposite of what they were supposed to.
It’s safe to assume psychiatry would not come out smelling like roses in this scenario. So my guess is they would promptly skew or suppress the results.
His evil is the icy sort rather than the fiery sort.
Most of his victims are strangers to him. He doesn’t hate; he is coldly indifferent to the sufferings of his fellow human beings. Whom he perceives solely as means to the end of his own prestige.
He only actively hates those like Breggin and RW who get in the way of his money, fame and power.
Julie Greene had a dream of consulting to help people going through extreme states see it through and avoid the mental system entirely. Or leave the system after getting sucked in.
I really would like to see her ebook “Life Without Lithium” get published.
One of her brothers came over to the anti psychiatry side. Maybe he would be agreeable to getting it published as Julie wished.
As an orthodox Christian who attends a Church of Christ assembly based on the Bible and fundamentalist notions, I struggled with the incompatibility of my religious faith and psychiatry.
Yes, brain illnesses exist. Meningitis, epilepsy, dementia, brain cancer, ALS, traumatic brain damage. These cause cognitive problems–along with other issues like motor impairment.
But what psychiatrists–especially the high ranking kind–love to warn the public against are not people with cognitive problems. (Torrey doesn’t go on national TV to warn the populace about how dangerous all people with Down Syndrome are. Notice that?)
Basically “mental illness” refers to moral issues. If a young man goes berzerk with a gun or knife or homemade bomb he isn’t cognitively impaired. Often these murderers show great ingenuity in gaining or constructing these weapons.
The problem is moral–not cognitive in nature. The idea that any pill can cure moral problems by strengthening the conscience and rekindling love for your neighbor is ludicrous.
My religion promises help in overcoming moral problems (AKA sins) through traditional means laid out in our scriptures. But when well meaning church members urged me to get “help” and take my “meds” I wondered what good our church was. Did “mentally ill’ people like me not have souls since the Atonement was insufficient for our redemption?
No one else pondered these questions. Then I discovered most shrinks–especially the high ranking members of the APA–don’t believe in souls. They are actually monists or materialists.
My dad is a retired preacher with a graduate degree in theology. I read him Dr. Pies’s article arguing both against the chemical imbalance “metaphor” and in for hard core materialism. This turned my dad against psychiatry–realizing it was actually a rival religion sneaking into churches by posing as a branch of medicine.
For my part I value good counseling, but cannot afford anything outside the MH system and so many are 100% pro pharmakiah as well as telling me how hopeless my “bipolar’ status makes me. Afraid to see any and tired of the depressing messages.
The DSM is full of odd thoughts and behaviors but most shrinks would be hard put to define what a “mentally healthy” person is supposed to act, think and feel like.
William Glasser wrote about it, but he was a rogue the APA would love to forget. Glasser rejected the notion of labels and long term drugs or shocks as helpful.
With all due respect Dr. T, I don’t have the power to vote anyone off the Island since I lost all citizenship rights after getting labeled. (The label itself made me suicidal while i believed it.)
You might say I have fled the island no longer feeling safe there.
I have no doubt the pills help some by numbing their emotional pain.
i sought out psychiatry willingly but had no idea i would be labeled ‘bipolar’ because the SSRI would keep me awake for 3 weeks straight. On a cocktail for 22 years and kicked out of college. No career or family or friends in my late forties thanks to being labeled and drugged so heavily I slept 10-12 hours a day. (And too numb to pick up on social cues and nuances I ordinarily could.)
You could argue I came willingly but so could the victims of Farid Fata who willingly took lengthy chemo treatments because he told them they had leukemia. And they didn’t.
Unlike you Dr. T., my psychiatrists told me I had a chemical imbalance in my brain their drugs would rectify and I would probably harm myself or others without the cocktail i must take. Most denied what i experienced–my tonic seizures (minor side effect)–and blamed my weight gain on nutritional ignorance and gluttony. Then marveled at my depression and low self esteem. Fancy that. *Eye roll.*
When I read William Glasser i was so relieved to know i was not a monster and it was not my fault the drugs made me feel awful instead of helping me live independently and get along with others outside the MI ghetto.
Nowhere but MIA to share stories like mine it seems. And there are plenty.
Thank you for acknowledging people like us exist and shouldn’t be locked up for what others have put us through.
They do a great job at concealing their dislike. I no longer trust the medical profession because of this collusion.
Like a city run by a crooked police force. It may be just 5% of the police breaking the law they claim to uphold. But they couldn’t do it without all the rest supporting and covering for their corrupt buddies.
Their pills destroy grey matter and cause brain shrinkage according to studies done–but not brought up–by Dr. Nancy Andreason. Prominent p-doctor and author of The Broken Brain.
I agree Alex.
The best treatment for prolonged stress would be good nutrition, proper exercise, enough sleep, plenty of water, and people who loved you.
Kind of how I’m curing the damage done by those I’d thought were helping me.
I admit I know little about these studies. But even if accurate, they do not justify psychiatric drugs/shocks any more than Brittle Bone Disease justifies taking a crow bar to the legs of a sufferer.
If ‘bad mental health policy’ means denial of due process, segregating and gas lighting select individuals, and slowly crippling and killing the weakest–including newborns–I agree.
But it probably means the laws are not draconian enough and we aren’t dying fast enough in large enough numbers to suit the powers that be.
Tie a pretty pink ribbon on torture and call it compassion.
A friend of mine left NAMI and urged me to leave “mental health” when her sister died at 49 and she saw my rapid decline. My heart is finally beating regularly again.
My family agrees the drugs did not help me. Many people are upset at the cruel, pointless experiments performed on their loved ones. Families that actually love each other. Even the sensitive types having a rough time.
How anyone could knowingly force a child to take drugs they know are crippling and slowly killing them is beyond me. At least my parents believed the chemical imbalance lie and were sincere though misguided. (By evil guides.) You can’t make such a defense in Pete Earley’s behalf. On his blog he unapologetically acknowledges this is false but claims it’s necessary to promote it to ensure “meds compliance.”
Google “Pete Earley chemical imbalance metaphor.” His blog will likely turn up with the article I’m thinking of.
I can finally read this without being blinded by tears.
Julie Greene was a true friend. We never actually met but talked on the phone a lot. As well as texting and emails.
She encouraged me to come off my “meds.” Gave me great advice for my own writing, job hunting and reintegration. (Hard for those who spent all their adult lives in the MI system.)
Sad she died so young, but she outlived the average psychiatrized person by ten years. There’s no doubt fleeing the system prolonged her life.
And she died at her own place with Puzzle. Not in an institution as she feared.
I find comfort in that thought.
Long before I heard about Robert Whitaker, I learned the truth about psychiatry from rogue psychiatrists–like William Glasser and Terry Lynch.
Far from upsetting me, the idea that the pills were not fixing my brain but harming it, was a great relief. I had often felt frustrated and depressed that my effective, neuro-protective pills weren’t helping me lead a happy, productive life like the MH people kept promising. No one else at the MH center seemed that “functional” either.
Opponents would argue “cause does not automatically mean correlation.”
But the fact that there are larger numbers of young people taking these drugs than ever and rates of joblessness due to emotional problems have skyrocketed should make anyone reconsider how effective these drugs are at helping people lead independent, meaningful lives.
Psychiatry has been compared to a dragon on this site.
I believe it is a Minotaur. An unnatural, hybridized monster lurking in a twisted maze of hopeless complexity. It prowls the darkness, devouring the young who have been placed there by the state. A convenient sacrifice to maintain tyranny.
Unlike its Greek counterpart, our minotaur is not satisfied with 14 young people. Every year its appetite grows as it devours larger numbers of our young–and bellows for more.
It is insatiable. Unless we find a Theseus, it will devour our future!
I am grateful for anyone trying to help, including the writer of this piece. At least he tells those who come to him the truth about the drugs he prescribes and it sounds as though he only supports consenting consumers.
Psychiatry is chalk full of euphemisms and oxymorons.
Examples of oxymorons:
“Integrate” means isolate or segregate
“Diagnose” means perform degradation ceremony
“Serve” means rule
“Insight” means breaking point
“Hospitalization” means imprisonment for no legal reason
“Assisted outpatient treatment” means pharmacological torture
“Mental health” means gas lighting
Psychiatry’s primary function for any but “soft diagnoses” is punitive. Whether you commit any crime or not they’ll treat you like a criminal and punish you for existing.
We already have a legal system to deal with people who actually commit crimes.
Tom Cruise has gone on record against psychiatry. (No, I don’t want him for a celebrity spokesperson!) Funny how he never has connected the Pre-Crime Unit in The Minority Report with Psychiatry.
Only instead of predicting real crimes and preventing them, these would be Pre-Crime Police get violent criminals released for “good insight” and “meds compliance” like Eric Harris, Devin Kelley and countless others. As well as locking up peaceful, law-abiding citizens indefinitely. Because they MIGHT commit crimes someday you see. Due process be hanged.
We already have a police force and psychics with better track records than shrinks.
In Anatomy of an Epidemic, RW implies that psychiatry faced extinction back in the 60’s. We have counselors to help adults make better life choices as well as neurologists to treat real brain disorders and other specialties for medical problems that get labeled “SMI” by psychiatrists.
Why do we need psychiatrists when we already have yoga and meditation classes at the local YMCA and fitness trainers? There are also a few counselors who belong to the Choice Theory/Reality Therapy school of thought founded by William Glasser or the kind founded by Peter Breggin.
I’m not anti-therapy or counseling or whatever you choose to call it. Szasz himself practiced counseling “between consenting adults” if my fellow APs care to remember.
The APA has chosen to put not just profit but personal egos above the health and lives of those who trusted them. Proving they were honest-to-gosh doctors practicing a legitimate medical specialty, required real medicines, diagnoses, and surgeries.
Never mind that the “medicines” were addictive mind altering drugs similar to the street kind. Never mind their “diagnoses” had only the “expert’s” say so with no objective tests and consisted of insulting laundry lists of character traits which shrinks wrongly claim are lifelong. Never mind the psycho surgeries (SOME of the surgeons do resemble Norman Bates come to think of it) are only random acts of brain damage any semi-literate thug could perform with an icepick or wooden baseball bat. They proved they are Real Doctors. Which is all that counts.
The only thing I admire the APA for is their clever marketing techniques mixed with ingeniously packaged propaganda that would make Big Brother green with envy. Master Illusionists.
I find your fourth paragraph interesting Dr. T. As a layperson i wouldn’t guess other specialists feel that way about psychiatry. They certainly hide it well from the public. Why is that?
i applaud your honesty in telling those who come to you for help that your pills restore nothing, but sometimes kill emotional pain.
As far as needing the drugs to kill the pain, how much of the pain was caused by social rejection/isolation and enforced idleness and poverty from getting the diagnosis and drugs to begin with? My SMI label nearly drove me to suicide since everyone turned on me.
Fled to where no one knows about it and I tapered off the soul killing drugs. Still on disability because of my Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Official diagnosis. I believe this is from long term SSRI use.
But I’m able to make friends, since I can understand social cues for the first time in my adult life. I am finally able to lose weight, shower regularly, and keep a clean house. People don’t shun me, or patronize me for a physical disability. For the first time in decades i feel like a human being again. 🙂
And i hope to start a tutoring business preparing high schoolers for SAT and ACT tests. The pay could help me earn a living working part time since my habits are frugal.
I never wanted to be unemployed forever. Many people in the system hate the enforced idleness, social isolation, and poverty. Do you think they knew what they were signing up for when they begged for a diagnosis and pills?
And yes–many do beg for these. You are perfectly right. Few of the fellow “consumers” could conceive that the drugs and labels played a role in the unemployment and alienation they often lamented.
If she had said all people of an ethnic minority were alike and should only date each other that would be racist.
Had a number of workers try to set me up with guys I didn’t like or enjoy being around. Guys with really poor cognitive skills (couldn’t read) and physically abusive. But “we’re all alike” you know. 😛
Allan Frances and others have been trying to cushion the fall for themselves.
And also remove a few cards to steady the structure. But the whole house is bound to fall anyhow.
I told my last therapist I was glad the drugs wiped out my sex drive since my label, rolls of fat, and drug altered personality rendered me undateable.
She acted shocked. “Well–uh–why not ask Dr. X to change it?”
Me: “To what? You know an SSRI is a standard part of treatment for Bipolar cases.”
That shocked her as much as the news that the drugs killed my mojo and the “stigma” rendered me unattractive. She kept telling me to date “bipolars.” Said only one of those could understand someone like me. We’re all alike you know. 😛
None of the guys I went to group with was that bright or had anything in common with me. Besides being labeled SMI.
And the labels are so subjective and elastic they’re only meaningful as a legal status–depriving you of your rights as a citizen. Granting the psych system absolute, unquestioned authority over you.
Since when has any tyrant VOLUNTARILY yielded his throne?
I wish this excellent site would focus more on reaching the mainstream. Those who don’t have a vested interest in keeping us segregated and ill.
Why do they need legitimate tests when their fake ones bolster their credibility so nicely?
If they did find bio markers they would conceal them. Why? It would show how counter productive their brain destroying “treatments” are–doing the exact opposite of what their test subjects needed. Like bleeding cholera victims.
And then they could no longer tout their quack remedies. The whole field would be swallowed up by the real brain specialists–the neurologists.
Hence anything that doesn’t support the efficacy of their “treatments” (AKA any legitimate study) will be suppressed. Or spun beyond recognition to support their preconceived notions.
And who will stop psychiatrists with grandiose thoughts who think they will achieve great things via poly-pharma, shocks, and psycho-surgery? That worries many here.
Lobotomies are making a comeback. But they say not to worry because it’s different. They mutilate your brain with lazars now–so that makes it okay.
BTW, people in mental “health” repeatedly called me delusional for pursuing a college degree and trying to start a career though my shrinks assured me my “meds” would make such a thing possible by rendering me independent and productive. I’m pretty sure the psych doctors themselves thought it was baloney but fed it to me to ensure “compliance” and yacht payments.
Does it count as harm to others if controlling family members get embarrassed by eccentricities and have the “loved” one committed instead of setting boundaries like reasonable people (not control freaks) would?
You know one group they really help no one here mentions? Lazy hacks writing for Hollywood and publishing houses.
Without the grossly simplified view of humanity–portraying people as stereotypes and tropes instead of complex individuals–Grade D novelists and screen writers can grind out a bunch of material with minimal effort.
Why did that man murder those children?
Because he was mentally ill.
Yeah. But what was his motivation?
Mental illness.
Why did that woman cheat on her husband?
Mental illness.
Why did that man torture a puppy?
Mental illness.
Why did that character commit suicide? Did something bad happen offstage?
Nope. Mental illness.
Why did he rob a bank?
Mental illness. People don’t rob banks for money after all.
He’s the Conscience of Psychiatry after all. I’m sure every hardened killer views the conscience as his number 1 enemy to destroy. Hence psychiatry’s hatred for Breggin.
My mom takes the idea that I “lost it” through trauma very personally.
She was determined to be the “perfect mother” when I was born and failed. She is not a bad woman and wasn’t abusive till psychiatrists told her I was defective when i was twenty.
But Mom could not protect me from the three times our family faced homelessness thanks to our idealistic, improvident father’s vocation. (A lot like the great Bronson Alcott.)
Mom’s crazy-making efforts to shelter me–my over sensitive, high strung personality worried her–backfired. She kept moving me from school to school to get me the “help” I needed so I wound up in SBD for a year where the teacher got frustrated by how smart I was. They were only equipped to deal with MMR kids.
After 2 months of homelessness in my teens we found a new place and I enrolled in a new school in a new city as a high school sophomore.
Had some highly sexualized bullying which traumatized me more than it would most girls due to my super modest, old fashioned background. Suffered severe anxiety in college which I saw a shrink for. He put me on an SSRI which drove me loopy.
Just one thing led to another and snow balled. I don’t blame Mom. But she does get defensive, saying there has always been “something wrong” with me.
She feels guilt at the idea she played a (minor) role in my suffering by encouraging my “meds compliance.” And she finds it hard to believe experts in pretty white coats and TV drug ads could deceive people.
i love Mom and find her ignorance easier to forgive than the malicious lies told by “well-informed” quacks.
A good counselor should look out for abuse and help victims to escape instead of labeling them “SMI” and having the shrink put them on drugs.
All my counselors worked for “mental health” community centers. Hence their advice was nearly all worthless, based on the assumptions that 1. I needed my crippling, mind altering drugs to survive. 2. My accumulating list of pessimistic, defeatist labels proved how hopeless I was.
These are the only kind Medicaid covers. In theory I’m positive about ethical counselors or coaches who know what they’re doing and how people think. But that kind seldom works for your local mental center. Those who do burn out easily due to frustration at how “clients” never improve.
“Mental health” enables and encourages the abuser in human relationships.
One MI worker confided that few were ever “diagnosed” with “narcissism” or “sociopathy.” Those labels are not legitimate diseases but there are some evil people who don’t care how they hurt others. Psychiatrists almost never call them out.
Shrinks like that kind of people because they dress well and have excellent social skills. “MI” workers and serve as the abusers’ gullible patsies or sometimes willing accomplices. They despise the weak and suffering–loving to grind them into the ground with their heels.
The men who drew up the DSM have no idea how human beings think, feel or behave. You could probably get a better idea of human behaviors from a computer working entirely from algorithms.
Psychiatry’s mission: To afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.
What good is income security when it’s not enough to save you from homelessness? Even in the mid west.
And you can have your benefits revoked at any time through some bureaucratic bean counter’s carelessness.
A very few writers here have. Krista the ex-nurse for example. But it’s far harder than having a cancer diagnosis changed. You can actually prove someone has cancer.
“Schizophrenia” should be viewed as a legal designation rather than a medical one.
Yes, you’re completely irrational. Nothing you say should be taken seriously. You are definitely a danger if left untreated. Your complaints are all proofs of your psychotic lack of insight.
Innately defective yes. Lacking empathy. Potential serial killer without my help. Flawed at your core due to being born a genetic throwback.
All your thoughts and emotions are merely symptoms. Meaningless projections of your broken brain.
1. The “mentally ill” are monsters
2. The “mentally ill” mean yes when they say no
3. Most of the “mentally ill” eventually relax and enjoy their “meds”
4. Normal people don’t get labeled and locked up
5. Psychiatrists are only guilty of minor wrong doing when they lie to and about their ‘consumers”
Psychiatry is bolstered by the cultural view that all psychiatrists are irreproachable gods and all they treat are dangerous AND irrational.
It’s not just the disabling drugs causing the poverty but the discrimination from the labels and demonizing which shrinks actively promote on national TV.
Plus the drugs cause most of the “symptoms” attributed to “mental illness.” Flattened emotional expressions, irritable (common with brain damage), lowered empathy, disorganization.
Along with obesity and seizures–also iatrogenic in origin. It’s hard to “pass” when on these things. I can only now act in socially appropriate ways after spending most of my adulthood on a cocktail.
I feel like some fast talking con swindeled me with a shell and nuts game. A carnie would have been happy with my wallet. But Psychiatry took my being and would have tortured me till I died if permitted. I only put up with it out of fear of a repeat of the psychotic mania created by an SSRI which the quack blamed on ME.
Shrinks cause the amygdala and frontal lobes to shrivel up, then write papers and give lectures on how their “patients” are hopelessly antisocial, stupid and lazy. Genetically inferior defectives fit only to experiment on.
You damaged our brains, “doctors.” Now what’s YOUR excuse for your own moral impairments?
“ACT” or “Assisted Community Treatment” is a euphemism for Pharmacological Torture.
The definition of Pharmacological Torture is the use of drugs–including psychotropic–to punish a person. The aim is to force compliance by causing distress. This can be in the form of pain, anxiety, psychological disturbance (ironic huh?), immobilization, and/or disorientation.
Only with Psychiatry it doesn’t matter how “good” you are in some cases. They’re Hell bent on tormenting people till they die.
Get Big Pharma to mass produce those. And get the marketing/propaganda agents to work.
Publish a bunch of articles on various sites and magazines. “Science Has Shown Therapeutic Value in Straight Jackets!” “Straight Jackets Now Proven Highly Effective for Depression and Anxiety!” “Straight Jackets Valid Modality of Treatment for ADHD!”
Scary!
In America at least our records don’t follow us. Yet.
I’m forced to use Medicaid. But i tell people I’m on disability for IBD. I actually have the diagnosis and see a GI and cancer specialist for it. (Can’t absorb iron and other nutrients.)
Ironically my condition was caused by long term psych drug use–though no one will admit it. My heart is better, no longer pre diabetic, and have lost 50+ pounds and still losing. In my forties. For the first time.
I think dr-reid-piz is a psychiatrist, Steve. Hence his decrying OUR lack of a medical background.
They “diagnose” us by our own admissions and drug us. When we tell them the drugs keep us from sleeping and cause terrifying hallucinations they joyfully tell our loved ones how hopelessly insane we are and that our lives are ruined. (No longer human.) Our fault when the pills cause that reaction.
Once they have damned us by our own words (usually) they make it so our words count for nothing. The only words that are to be taken seriously are those that show insight into our condition.
“Gee Dr. X, you’re so smart. Gee, these new pills make me feel great all the time. Yes I know I have Diagnosis X. It’s a bummer. Glad I have such a kind, smart doctor like you Dr. X.” All taken as proofs of how well we are doing.
Then we go home, depressed but too drugged to cry. Can’t stop suicidal thoughts. Barf our guts up or binge uncontrollably since we can’t feel full and sleep 12 hours in the HUD room we can’t clean. A happy, productive life according to psychiatry.
No other doctors blame patients for reactions to penicillin or anesthetic or pain pills. They immediately take them off.
Shrinks don’t seem to care if their “safe, effective treatments” cause grand mal seizures and heart attacks. Lost two friends that way. 🙁 Not like our lives count.
I know my GP diagnosed me with heart arrhythmia, IBD causing pernicious anemia, and prediabetes. All those real medical conditions are better now. And my weight is going down.
Psychiatry was slowly killing me. If it were anyone but the SMI being harmed this way psychiatrists would be treated like Farid Fata.
No “patient” who knows what’s good for them ever complains about their pills. They never listen to anything we say unless it’s to praise them and their pills making us so dizzy we can’t walk, nauseated, unable to read, doubling our weight.
Psychiatrists for the most part hear what they want and attribute everything else to “lack of insight.”
Says Doc Karadzic went from psychiatry to New Age “quantum medicine.” LOL
Funny how shrinks so often turn to demagoguery too. Psychiatry is more about politics than medicine.
Read 1984. In the part where O’Brien tortures Smith he uses psychiatric jargon. Including “saving you from yourself” and warning him he needs to be made “sane.”
Thank you Robert Whitaker and everyone else at MIA.
Without the support I found here (and also SA which I heard about through this site) I could not have come off my drugs due to the debilitating withdrawals after 25 years of being the “perfect consumer.”
I notice a lot of good counselors–ignorant of how psych “treatments” work–get frustrated at how apathetic and helpless their “SMI” people remain. Not knowing the drugs aren’t supposed to make you independent and productive but childish and docile. Like a house pet rather than a grown up. Or a “mentally handicapped” person who wasn’t that way till Psychiatry had its way with them.
Many of us who sought help got the exact opposite.
Gaslighting is the word. 🙁
“Just like insulin for diabetes.” “Antidepressants wouldn’t drive you psychotic if you weren’t already born defective.” “You’re just imagining or faking those seizures since Haldol never has that effect on anyone.”
If by “capitalism” you mean selfishness and greed, then I am 100% opposed.
But these are attitudes. Not an economic system.
Great religious figures like St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, just about all Catholic saints, John Wesley, George Mueller, A.W. Toser embraced lives of voluntary poverty. The key word being VOLUNTARY.
Everyone knows this. They need scapegoats badly to project their own darkness onto.
One reason psychiatry is so popular with the mainstream. By blaming all crimes on “mental illness” not only can they make the public feel secure from violent crimes but from the fact that they too have shadows that Dr. Quackenbush is ill equipped to save anyone from. He himself is overpowered by his own shadow.
Sorry about your son. I guess it’s good I never had kids. They would have been taken by the state and viewed as “bipolar” at birth most likely by virtue of being mine. 🙁
Now the kids will be drugged up and detained indefinitely once they get labeled “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” to justify it. It will also excuse inhumane conditions that would not be acceptable for the “normal” in America.
Shrinks get major kickbacks from Big Pharma–often directly but always in the form of “little” gifts tallying up to $2,000-3,000 a year per company of tax free goodies.
No $$$$$$$ in lobotomies nowadays. If the APA changes its tune rest assured Big Pharma invented a fancy machine that does lazar lobotomies and is shelling out mega bucks for anyone morally bankrupt enough to shill them. Lucky for them that psychiatry exists.
Yeah. According to Anatomy of an Epidemic, the psychiatrist who first used a drug to “treat” the “insane” praised it as a chemical lobotomy.
Now that lobotomies are no longer fashionable, but neuroleptics are most psychiatrists would like to forget that quote. Along with words like “drapetomania” and “hysterics.”
Every now and then a shrink comes here to complain that’s he’s not getting enough $$$$$$ from Uncle Sam yet–despite the billions more added to the mental illness regime every year. And they don’t have absolute authority as sovereign monarchs either but must answer to the President of the United States for their actions. 😀
I’m sure these tales of woe must bring tears to the eyes of anyone whose CNS is not too damaged to cry.
Convincing people (and all around them) that they’re broken machines, incapable of rational thought, ethical behavior or responsible decisions can be dehumanizing and lead them to view themselves as mere objects.
Wow!
The authors were Castro, Diniz and Bernandes. Maybe Dr. Obvious was a ghost writer.
But understand “normal” is defined completely in negatives.
If the “loved one” doesn’t say embarrassing things or wear embarrassing clothes–but only those put out for him by his good/kind mommy, never goes places or expresses interest in girls (sure sign of SMI), never reads books or web articles the NAMI mommy disapproves of he is making progress.
By this definition the best progress would be a life long coma. Only he might not technically gain good insight since he can’t parrot back his disorder from his shrink.
NAMI thinks it’s an improvement when someone attending college on honors two weeks before can almost wash dishes–unassisted.
Not being able to smile or weep, speaking in slow, halting sentences, doubling your weight in a year, lifelong unemployment in a HUD ghetto or institution, alienation, sleeping 12 hours a day, seizures and dying before 53 are all “normal” things we should aim for by NAMI standards.
I was very angry when I found out I had been lied to. For years I lived in terror of not getting my “meds” refilled or having them suddenly “stop working” as the NAMI leaders and babysitters at the mental center repeatedly warned us.
Totally dependent on the drugs and all the “sane” people. I knew I was powerless to change my life or make any rational choices. Chalk it up to “good insight.”
They told me the “mentally ill” are helpless and stupid even on their “meds.” But evil when taken off.
You know what’s really evil?
Lying to trick someone into taking addictive, mind altering drugs is pretty darn evil. Worse than anything Walter White ever tried.
I read a post on Pete Earley’s blog where the Not-My-Father-of-the-Year said it was a no big deal lying about it. Apparently all the high ranking NAMI mommies are in on the hoax.
I have nothing good to say about that organization now. Though letting my young friend die from a neuroleptic grand mal seizure should have clued me in.
“The inmates are running the asylums.” And their treatments kill larger numbers of people than the “mentally ill” killers these self-anointed messiahs claim to be saving the world from.
Rosalee, I believe they act that way because they choose to. Unscientific and old fashioned of me I know.
IQ, height, bone size, hair color are hereditary traits. But good and evil are not.
Poor cognitive skills are not the same as greed, violence, or the burning desire to control others. As far as those traits go I guess not-so-bright underdogs can have them too. But they hurt far fewer people than intelligent, highly educated medical experts lacking conscience and compassion.
Most people with low intelligence I know are unusually sweet and kind. Their warm, generous hearts should put the smarties to shame.
Attributing wickedness to weakness and stupidity (aka bad genes) doesn’t cut it. Hitler did not start World War II because of weakness or stupidity.
Weakness is not a crime. But the APA has basically classified it as such.
Yes it would! Money could save me from homelessness.
Homelessness is poor quality life.
SSI does not cover rent. Even in my state. Living in a garage with no running water now.
My sister is allergic to penicillin but no doctor forces her to take it. That’s because she doesn’t deal with shrinks.
My shrinks never listened to anything negative. Just what they wanted to hear. And blamed my crazy, drug-induced thinking on me–or my “illness.”
A life on disability in a ghetto for the SMI is “what works” as far as shrinks are concerned. And dying in our early fifties. Read RW’s Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic as far as viewing the majority of outcomes.
Would you want the rest of us forced to take what was killing us? That’s what this site is about.
Not about forcing happy consumers like you to quit.
Been thinking. We’re little fish being torn up by two sea monsters.
Turn these parties on each other. Here’s how.
See if the Democrats could “compromise” by not demanding gun restrictions on the condition that ALL gun owners be forced to take a battery of a dozen tests for mental illness by a psychiatrist or forfeit the right to bear arms.
Once 50% of the NRA has been labeled this will bite Sen. Cornyn and other politicians promoting RESPONSE in the butt.
I was hoping liberal Torrey or someone similar would try to use his pseudo medical authority to remove Trump. Turning half of America against the APA. But he knew it would tip his hand to how his faux science is just a political weapon.
Persuade Democrat lawmakers who aren’t “in the know” to force these tests. The NRA members–and many others–will soon discover how dangerous psychiatry is to the liberties of ALL Americans.
Anyone consider a big thing behind all these mass killings, besides drugs, is a vicious contempt for human life?
Human lives do not matter in Western Culture.
“Mentally ill” loners gun down or knife the innocent who have done them no harm out of this contempt for their fellow humans. It helps make them feel big and important.
Psychiatrists and demagogues (IS there a difference?) have learned how to express their contempt for humanity in socially acceptable ways.
Like the lone shooters but smarter and successful.
Paranoia of the masses.
Psychic psychiatrists claim they can foretell the future and read minds to weed out criminals BEFORE they break the law and punish them accordingly. The gullible herd is scared of the dangerous “crazies” and Dr. Shrinkenstein offers to save them from the monsters he creates.
“But it’s treatment–not punishment,” Norman Normal argues.
Ask Norm to take a cocktail and he’ll argue “I don’t need it. I’m not sick.’
Diagnose Norm with Agosognosia AND Schizophrenia. 🙂
The drugs are meant to pacify and cripple would-be criminals. (SSRI drugs do a mighty bad job of that.) They are NOT meant to help anyone think clearly, live independently, nor add longevity. Shackles and muzzles–not health is what psychiatry offers.
Crippling and segregation is the work of Psychiatry! Punishing “defectives” for the crime of existence.
These drugs and labels force potential workers out of the work place, forcing us to live off the pittance doled out in smaller and smaller amounts to greater and greater numbers. There is a real lack of HUD. Regular housing is hopelessly expensive on less than $800 a month.
Institutions cost more. Yet Big Brother is intent on increasing the latter.
If PTSD is proof of defective genetics what about veterans who lose a limb or two?
Well if they hadn’t had defective genes then stepping on that land mine wouldn’t have blown off their legs now, would it?
Eugenics is tied to the idea that all crimes–especially bizarre, violent ones–are committed by Criminal Types. The Poor Stock Lovecraft loved to rant about before WWII. Not just POC if you read up on eugenics.
All bad behaviors are hereditary. Hence it’s justifiable to injure/imprison/kill “defective criminal types” innocent of wrong doing.
Psych treatments DO KILL quite often. But as long as the intention was not to kill, it can’t be held against them legally.
Yep. One of those “moderate” articles published to show MIA is not too anti psychiatry and (hopefully) score points with members of the APA and other big shots.
You can find pieces like this all over. Guardian, Psychology Today, etc. College sites too. Talk of “culture” could make it a shoe-in for the psychology department’s website.
And I agree with Szazs that this absolute power corrupted the church and ruined the good it once did.
The founding fathers knew the dangers of a state church just like they did a monarchy. The Church of Psychiatry sneaked in by posing as something else entirely.
This site is supposed to criticize psychiatry. Not condemn religion. But if Dr. K wants to compare psychiatry to religion I agree.
And if a church did what psychiatry does the law would come after them. Kidnapping apostates, locking them in the church basement for pharma torture and other psychological abuse till they recanted (gained “insight.”)
Psychiatry is more dangerous than any cult because they have legal powers no clergy nor doctors have. Accountable to no one–least of all those they claim to serve. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Dr. K the pills don’t “work” in anything permanent. They aren’t supposed to. They make life worse and cause dependency.
They want drug addicts. Pure and simple. Healthy people=no $$$$$$$ for dealers.
I got fed up when They kept telling us how great our lives were when we were poor/segregated/really sick/morbidly obese/miserable.
The more “help” we got the faster we deteriorated.
Neither our quality nor quantity of life were better. When I found out certain psychiatrists like Glasser said the drugs messed up your thinking worse than ever I realized I would have to flee the MI System.
Thanks for this article. I limit my own screen time Dr. Wedge.
Does “autism” exist? Is it bad or simply different?
If the kid can get along with others and learn what’s needed to “adult” why do they need a label?
Whether autism is real or not I would avoid getting my child “diagnosed.” A boy in Tasmania diagnosed as autistic with epilepsy wound up in the hospital for a seizure. A doctor–knowing he was dangerously allergic to neuroleptics–put him on massive doses that caused his brain to swell, killing him. The doctor said she would do the same thing over anyhow since he would have wound up in an institution. He was headed for college.
My guess is a big reason for all the autistic diagnoses is an excuse to sell more drugs. And–I suspect–legally off them (indirectly) like that creepy doctor down under did.
A lot of young people are proud of being called autistic I guess. Beats licking ice cream in Youtube videos for attention. Or eating Tide Pods. And as screen junkies they see limiting a toddler’s screen time as worse than starving or exposing to the elements.
I prefer fitting in and refuse to get an evaluation. Hate being viewed as a freak!
If I can act normally in public and “pass” that’s what counts. The System sucks at integration. Whether labels or pills.
I always acted ‘weird.” My parents took great pains to socialize me by reminding me to look people in the eye and observe other social cues and nuances. (May have led to my social phobias later.)
A friend suggested I get diagnosed with Aspergers to cancel out my Bipolar 2 “diagnosis.” I patiently explained to her that’s not how it works.
High school bullying literally drove me crazy. Wound up in Charter Hospital for Children for 2 weeks. “Too sensitive” I guess.
Funny how victims of bullying are more apt to wind up labeled than bullies themselves. Maybe because shrinks automatically side with the Strong as part of psychiatry’s intrinsic social Darwinism. Weeding out the Unfit who lack proper levels of Gemute.
I thought this site was for criticizing psychiatry. Not religion.
I agree with the premise that psychiatry is a religion/philosophy rather than a science. Dare I say the APA is our new State Church?
As far as KindRegards’s last sentence, even if a grateful consumer believes in psych drugs the “placebo effect” is pretty limited. Personal experience speaking. 🙂
But many religious people do NOT believe God automatically heals those who pray. I have been praying for healing from the harm my stay in the Church of Psychiatry created. Still sickly.
The Bible contains many examples of sick or disabled people–good people–who were not healed.
I think He may be saying, “My grace is sufficient for you.” At least my soul is better. 🙂
Alleviating loneliness is commendable but it’s not the government’s job. Actually what Sanders describes is increasing material goods–money, food, etc.
It still does not deal with isolation or alienation. These depend on community groups such as churches/senior centers, individuals who will visit shut ins, and the willingness of seniors to reach out to others in retirement instead of chilling in front of the tube 15 hours a day.
Psychology is a very soft science if not a branch of the humanities like history or anthropology.
Psychiatry is a pseudo science. Psychology has been poisoned by buying into its unduly pessimistic, brutal view of “defective criminal types.” AKA social Darwinism.
I remember when I started on stelazine (6 mg) I lost my zest for life but could write more. Though the stuff was dryer. Like how Ritalin is supposed to work.
(May have spelled both wrong. Spell check doesn’t like them.)
Back before the 19th century it was understood that love and care could “cure” someone who was out of it. Shakespeare had Cordelia love King Lear back from his madness. Mary Shelley had Victor Frankenstein’s friends nurse him back in Frankenstein as well as Prince’s Adrian’s in The Last Man.
Lucky for shrinks people don’t read much nowadays.
My “psychosis” was caused by the SSRI they had me on. After the drug induced episode they doped me up on 10 mg of Haldol and everyone at college shunned me.
Forced to live with my parents who found my zombie state hard to cope with and Mom took my psych label personally. Total alienation. It’s amazing I “came back” at all.
You COULD make a break for it by crossing state lines. If you really wanted to.
Others have.
If you earn over $9,000 a year writing online you could brush up on your Spanish and migrate to Argentina. I may do that.
No AOT for me right now. But all this talk of imprisoning and torturing (AKA treating) a bunch of us for the crimes of a few murderous individuals scares me.
Ironically, bizarre ideas like Flat Earthism are flourishing. Why? Because people are growing skeptical of the media…including SCIENCE driven sites.
This dogmatism–refusing to even discuss the opposing viewpoint–shows intellectual laziness at best. Lack of evidence at worse.
This is why the anti-vaxxer movement is growing. Not despite–but because of the militant censorship. I’m for vaccines myself (except maybe the flu kind) but the means the medical establishment has taken to silence the voices has backfired. Even some of them are admitting it.
I agree with the anti-vaxxers that the bureaucrats running the medical system do NOT have our best interests at heart. Something a lot of people know or suspect to be true.
Since these safe and effective treatments came out “bipolar” cases have gone up 3,900%.
It seems to this layperson (with no psychiatric career to protect) that nearly all “bipolar” cases are iatrogenic in origin. Stay away from shrinks and you won’t develop the mood swings associated with it.
BTW, the Mental Illness System only seems broken to those who go to it for help. Psychiatry exists to create outcasts who will never be believed. To exonerate those who bully and abuse the scapegoats it appoints, enhancing the self esteem of the “normal.” And–above all–sell as many drugs as possible by whatever means possible and silence those damaged by the drugs.
Do you want to achieve these goals?
1. Become an outcast.
2. Never have anyone believe you.
3. Have the whole world bully you.
4. Spend life caught in an abusive situation where the law always sides with your abuser.
5. Have your human needs automatically ignored and dismissed by everyone.
6. “Volunteer” (more or less) to participate in terrifying experiments which should only exist in horror flicks.
If so be sure to seek out help at the nearest mental center.
I agree that psychiatry has got to go. The system is inherently flawed–because it is built on the faulty foundation of social darwinism and views human beings solely through the lens of biodeterminism.
Perhaps trying to eradicate psychiatry is unrealistic. But not as unrealistic is hoping psychiatrists will willingly forego their absolute authority just to be nice.
As Jimmy Stewart said in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: The only causes worth fighting for are the lost ones.
Please consider addressing the mainstream, Indigo. They do not have an ax to grind in keeping the MI System intact.
Since more people are experiencing emotional pain now–and pharma-psychiatry’s overwhelming appetite for more “consumers” knows no bounds–psychiatry is effecting us more than ever.
It is everyone’s concern now. Not just a handful of unusual criminals, people who think they’re Napoleon, and catatonics.
Anyone could get psychiatrized. People need to know the truth.
Many of us here refuse to consume. We have suffered enough at the hands of those claiming to want to help us through random iatrogenic damage. All we ask from “mental health” is to be left alone. (Though public exoneration would be nice.)
Leaving your family is not just necessary for you but it provides an opportunity for them to face what’s wrong with themselves. Whether they change and grow is up to them. Out of your hands now.
Torrey has been promoting more institutions. When not touting AOT.
I think he’s talking out both sides of his mouth and hoping no one notices.
There is less HUD now which costs less than institutionalizing people. But thanks to all the scapegoating Torrey and others have built careers on, people want to round up all the “mentally ill” and lock them away to rot.
A lot of people will commit suicide if this happens. And my guess is when the asylums overflow the “doctors” will take a page from Hitler’s finest and kill people through “natural causes” like starvation, exposure to extreme temperatures, refusing insulin for the diabetes their profession already inflicted. Humane isn’t it?
Yeah. Mom thought the Haldol helped me more because it kept me from saying stuff that bugged her. A less potent drug let me talk on and on about how miserable I was I would never have a life. Too numb to turn my mouth off.
I think when PD uses the words “recovery” or “healing” they’re not referring to recovery from pneumonia nor healing a broken leg. More like buzzwords of certain groups they dislike.
I’m grateful to RW for his research and writings. But long before he came along we had MDs like William Glasser, Peter Breggin, and Szazs calling out the quacks.
“Are you a doctor? No? Then you have no business criticizing Toxic Psychiatry.” Say that at a NAMI convention. I dare you. 😀
I thought you weren’t supposed to carry a firearm if you are “mentally ill.”
If you believe Psychiatry is true you should force suicidal cops into desk jobs.
This is not just wrong but stupid. I wonder how many “well-informed” shrinks are behind this. Something tells me they are cringing if they are aware of it.
But maybe this is a calculated move to cause police to go “postal.” More free publicity and more guest spots on TV shows to stir up mass hysteria about how “all them untreated crazies” are a menace but Old Doc Pillshill has the cure for murder if only the tax-payers will fork over the additional $$$$$$$ he feels entitled to.
By “broken system” Doc Pillshill means less buck for his bangs.
“Being Labeled With ‘Common Mental Disorder’ Ensures Loneliness.”
That was MUCH more accurate. Stay as far away from shrinks as possible. They will ruin your life in every way imaginable.
39 out of 40 cases of “Bipolar” would not occur without “help” from pharma-psychiatry. And they always blame the patient for bad reactions. My sister is allergic to penicillin but has never been punished for it.
Shrinks are different though since they write their victims off as crazy, thereby evading accountability to anyone. Psychiatry means never saying you’re sorry.
More people are on drugs than ever. If drugs are so good why are they complaining since 20% of the population is on them?
40 years ago almost none of these drugs existed. And fewer people lived on disability or committed mass shootings.
BTW my drugs never made me feel better. They made me sick and miserable while I willingly took them for 24 years. Not because I enjoyed it! That’s the real reason people go off them. They ruin your ability to think at all. Because the doctors warned me I might kill someone and I was trying to do the right thing. Unlike them.
What do shrinks plan on doing with more tax money? Slicker marketing, and more lavish summer homes and yachts while they force their victims to live on disability in the MI ghettos or locked away in institutions. (Because they created Hell between their ears.)
Homelessness bugs them since they can’t bill the state for empty warehouses and bridges the way they can “homes.”
For what it’s worth I have sought reconciliation with Kimmy and others. My own actions were often far from saintly. None of us knew the drugs were making it hard for me to behave.
As far as protecting the public we already have the penal system. This is understood to be punishment so it’s limited to an acceptable degree. But because psychiatry pretends to be medicine instead of a punitive system they get away with all kinds of BS the legal system never could.
Such as denial of due process. Cruel and unusual punishments. Extended, indefinite imprisonments based solely on the whim of the warden. And treating harmless eccentrics, those with TBI, and unhappy loners exactly the same way as violent criminals.
“Terrorists and paedophiles.” You forgot mass shooters.
Only shrinks claim to be able to discover these people BEFORE they actually commit crimes of rape or murder. Psychic psychiatry. Then they have the right to inflict cruel, unusual punishments on them. Due process?
“Darn it Jim, I’m a doctor. Not a judge and jury!”
I thought the belief that you can read minds or see into the future was a symptom of “severe mental illness” but every good tyrant is above his own laws.
I am depressed. My health is poor from long term drug use. Too sick and old to start over.
And I’m lonely. My past will haunt me forever and the shame of being accused for violent crimes I never committed. (What an SMI label is all about.) So close friendships are impossible.
No “mental illness” required. My life just stinks.
I have the right to be depressed for crying out loud!
So sick I could barely get up today thanks to years on a “cocktail.”
I’m afraid to tell people at my church why I’m sick, broke, and alone since they’ll treat me horribly. I got kicked out of a religious college since the dorm mom blamed me for acting weird and having seizures on 10 mg of Haldol.
“If Rachel were only taking her meds she would be great with a smile on her face, friendly, happy, improved hygiene. And they never, ever cause seizures.” That was Kimmy’s excuse for booting me off campus.
In vain I protested that I was taking them exactly as prescribed. No one believed me. Know why? No one cared as long as they had an excuse to get rid of me.
Recycle plastic, but people can be thrown away since they are biodegradable and make great compost.
Those like Kimmy are more than happy to throw everyone like me under a bus since all they want are pretty, rich couples with kids and their own homes.
They don’t give a damn if “crazies” lose jobs, can’t think straight, lose everyone they love, get horribly sick and die on the streets. Psychiatric nurses and psycho-therapists are rich and respectable and bring money into the church by touting the lie. If they believe it, their ignorance is appalling. Apparently they don’t read any articles from the journals of their profession.
And when people take their very bad advice and go on SSRI Drugs because the family cat died and can’t sleep for 3 weeks/have an “episode” and wind up labeled Bipolar and on a cocktail of 6 drugs, unable to work or interact normally in polite society these same people will warn them to stay away from the nursery, gossip about how crazy they are at lady’s luncheons the “bipolar” is no longer invited to, and calculate how best to freeze her out so she’ll leave. 🙁
Their love is as phony as the science of psychiatry. I call BS on it! 😛
Elizabeth it’s funny how many churches teach the members that psychiatry is the cure for emotional pain and host NAMI in the church basement. One mega church I attended had the nurse and counselor from the local mental illness center get up and preach the Gospel of Psychiatry. How Science has proven we have chemical imbalances in our brains to cause depression etc. and only “meds” can save us.
Why has organized religion sold out to psychiatry? A little online research could show the “chemical imbalance” is a filthy lie, yet they promote this from the pulpits more than Jesus and urge members to see a psychiatrist if they’re sad because their puppy died. I saw this at a megachurch and wanted to puke.
Depression is a feeling, though it may come from anemia or another deficiency or thyroid problems. A symptom of health problems (sometimes.) NOT a disease in itself.
I’d be apt to hire a financial coach with a degree in accounting.
Usually you read their blog/book and decide to hire them based on that. If it’s practical stuff–making a career change, time management, organizing your house, managing your finances–they have little in common with “therapists.”
Health and fitness coaches or weight loss coaches are just personal trainers like you meet at the gym.
The kind most like psychologists are life coaches who specialize in feeling better and relationships. They aren’t directly in cahoots with shrinks but love to refer people they think may be “mentally ill” to community clinics. So that’s risky if you escaped.
The worst kind of all, IMHO, are the dating coaches.
You’re right Anomie. I recommend Peter Breggin’s videos on the “Violence Initiative.” While shrinks are afraid to openly link their eugenics theory to race nowadays they have been taking great pains to target the young men in predomnately non-white neighborhoods. Even tricked members of the NAACP into going along with it. Disgusting.
If by work you mean crime prevention, suicide prevention, helping people feel better, think clearly, live independently, have better relationships, maintain gainful employment, or add to the quantity or quality of life for those “helped”….no they don’t work.
But they do work for achieving the number one (and only real) priority for “Doc” Torrey and his fellow quacks. It gives them something to prescribe to maintain their respectable image of honest-to-gosh Real Doctors.
You say that other stuff is important to you? Pish tosh. You’re a “defective” according to those who ruined your reputation, brain and CNS. What you want doesn’t count as long as ghouls like old “Doc” Torrey can win more awards.
It seems to sciencey types like these that if you can’t scrape off a piece of something and scan it under a microscope it does not exist.
I read some article by monist psychiatric types (are there any other kinds?) mocking the idea that souls are “separate substances” from the brain. (Souls–if they exist–are immaterial. Not SUBSTANCE at all.)
I won’t accuse those guys of a straw man fallacy since they actually seem to think that dualists believe souls are ectoplasmic goo saturating the human brain.
That’s what happens when you get all your philosophy lessons from pop culture. Shrinks owe more to Ghost Busters than they realize. 😀
A lot of people are desperate. Our culture thinks sadness is a disease. Instead of asking, “How can I change my life to end my sadness?” they opt for the easy solution.
My SSRI/SNRI use never ended my depression. Still lonely and hurting physically from the years of damage and social alienation. But I can process my feelings again. That’s something.
So people who were abused as children are more likely to commit violent crimes? Funny how upset folks would get if we suggested punishing survivors of child abuse as though they were violent criminals regardless of their behavior. Yet this is what happens in “mental health.”
Torrey conveniently ignores this since it would draw attention to the fact that his profession exists to punish the weak. Primarily abuse victims.
Psychiatry’s function is penal; not medical. Only they punish for crimes the accused MIGHT COMMIT in the future (according to themselves.)
By treating the law abiding who exhibit signs of emotional trauma as if they’re violent criminals psychiatry punishes the unlucky. Just like the courts of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.
TAC is the law of the jungle. No justice since they don’t punish for actual crimes–but the mere existence of those they brand “defective.” No mercy either.
If the idea of a life on dialysis saddens you that must be a BRAIN DISEASE. Be sure to seek out help for these bizarre, irrational feelings of sadness proving there’s something wrong with you for feeling bad. 😛 You actually find this crap on med sites.
Remember those drugs tax your endocrine system. The irony!
My SSRI drugs made me feel guilty for not improving.
I believed what I had been told. That I was being helped with these safe and effective medications. Yet I couldn’t find work or get along with people. The constant exhaustion and inability to think straight or process human emotions (which hadn’t existed prior to the cocktail) were all my fault according to my counselor and other folks running the mental illness system.
And before “Doctor” Freeman there were parents and husbands eager to lock up their family members in madhouses. Ensuring that they would never get over the episode and–if not already crazy–would soon become that way.
Thank God my mom was not a “NAMI mommy” and actually wanted me to lead an independent, happy life.
We had one commenter here saying she would never let her beloved daughter read MIA. She censored her reading material. She further stated she didn’t care if her daughter suffered and died prematurely. If she could get the treatment the NAMI mommy wanted her to get the “good” mother would be happy.
It’s easy to see why the daughter had emotional problems with a piece of work like that controlling her every move. That’smother love. 😛
Look up Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Not all members of NAMI act that way by any means. But getting a spouse or child labeled mentally ill and incapacitated with drugs is so easy to do in our society. And there are a few horrible people, eager to control others and gain attention as the saintly parent/wife/husband of a crazy sicko, who know how to milk the system.
Sadly these eager beavers usually end up running NAMI. Those who sincerely love the members they are told to write off as hopeless are apt to encourage the loved ones to succeed apart from the MI System. And they have lives too.
A friend of mine left NAMI in disappointment after psychiatry killed her sister with lethal “side effects.” NAMI didn’t care since she died with her rights OFF.
Blaming the victim for a “broken brain” and “defective” biology is all psychiatry has to offer.
Once they have discredited you as SMI and drugged you out of your gourd you can look forward to even more outrageous violations from the folks pretending to “help.” And all the so-called normal folk walking around. Sad.
The APA claims, you wouldn’t be overwhelmed by emotional pain if you weren’t a genetically inferior defective to start with. Crushing down the already suffering is what psychiatry is there for. Enabling abusers.
Psychologists exist to enable psychiatry now. For the most part. With a few exceptions they have sold out to the bio-bio-bio model. Why I want nothing to do with any.
Suggesting that it’s possible to take too many drugs would be “pill shaming.” Can’t have that.
Yes suicides and crimes occur. But acknowledging pills were at fault might cause (GASP!) non-compliance. And undermine the credibility of psychiatrists as honest-to-gosh-specialists and Real Doctors. Which would be a tragedy. 😛
The judges haven’t any idea how psychiatry “works” or they wouldn’t allow any of these purveyers of bovine excrement a say in this matter. They probably believe in the “chemical imbalance” thanks to all the propaganda.
No other doctors have this legal authority. Yet we have psychiatrists complaining how “handcuffed” they are and how frightened they are at losing the prestigious legal powers they feel entitled to.
“It’s not easy being a Dark Lord but someone’s got to do it.” Proposed motto for the American Psychiatric Association.
“Deliberate creation and management of a huge underclass!
Psychiatry exists to create scapegoats for society.
They differ from the KKK, neo-Nazis and similar groups in that they create the group to be persecuted. By drugs and labels these mad scientists impose an alienated life of sickness and isolation on their test subjects. They induce insanity with their mind altering drugs and then label the victim as SMI to ensure everyone will hate and reject them forever.
There have been madhouses since before the Industrial Revolution but the people often got better. Now pharma psychiatry ensures no one does.
At least 95% of all the SMI would not have gone nuts if they had avoided those morally bankrupt liars to start with. Modern psychiatry exists to ensure permanent alienation from the rest of humanity and altered mental states/cognitive decline from iatrogenic brain damage.
Isolation, confinement, degradation, urging a sense of futility, and pharmacological manipulation all constitute psychological torture. Used for deliberately breaking those already emotionally healthy and sane.
Yet these are standard treatments which our mental system uses on those already distressed and it claims these methods to be restorative and healing. Somehow. The SMI are not real human beings (according to shrinks) and torture is good for “defectives.”
The phrase is as nonsensical as “mental illness” which is allegedly a brain disease but different (somehow) from physical illnesses according to NAMI and similar groups.
Most just give you advice on finances or finding a job or time management. Less prone to abuse than others since they aren’t involved with “mental health.” Therefore easier to sue if they take advantage of you.
Some are charlatans who prey on the desperate. Dating coaches are the WORST I hear.
I dislike the term “pill shaming.” This is a favorite buzz phrase of psychiatrists more interested in covering their own butts than helping those coming to them for help. (Voluntarily or otherwise.)
How about “shaming people who choose to take pills”?
Anger (expressed in acceptably passive aggressive ways) and disgust for fellow humans. But not even those emotions are “healthy” unless you’re one of the shrinks.
Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff went to prison for fooling people.
So did Farid Fata who has a LOT in common with psychiatrists though his specialty was different.
There are already laws against scams.
If I gave someone rat poison to put in his coffee in place of sugar do you think the courts would buy it if I argued, “But he chose to drink the stuff”?
Kitty never chose to share any of her own psychiatric experiences. And as far as my GAS LIGHTING Abena and Serena neither of them are here to speak for themselves.
Well only a biologically defective specimen would get really sad or angry at being abused according to the APA Journal. Thus they rationalize their cruel, pointless experiments on fellow human beings.
Only the strong are worthy of life according to these “doctors” accountable to no one. Least of all their patients. Social Darwinism at its finest.
It’s hard enough to find employment or housing if you have a psychiatric history. This is more than the loss of second amendment rights.
It’s like putting the names of people on a sex offender list though they have never been convicted. Just because someone said they look like one. A gross injustice disguised as medical care.
Abolish involuntary hospitalization AND false advertising and lies–telling patients they have a “chemical imbalance” the “meds” will fix and claiming it’s the defective patient’s fault if the SSRI drugs drive them nuts.
Using a stethoscope to betray patients’ trust makes consent impossible.
I want to abolish psychiatry, but it’s not going to topple all at once.
Too many people believe in it. Those outside believe in the “chemical imbalance” myth.
Those inside rationalize it by saying, “Those people must be innately defective to act weird from grief or trauma or freak out on the mild drug I gave. They’re unfit for polite society and would only be institutionalized without my help.”
RW, for what it’s worth, I want to say “Thank you.”
You owed us nothing. But you have risked your own career as a medical journalist to help people like us. The ultimate underdogs of Western society.
And you have given us this site to visit and support each other. Not to mention your books. Got my dad reading Anatomy of an Epidemic. i doubt i could have escaped the system without MIA.
So thank you once again.
And–if someone calls you a Scientologist on social media–remember to call them out on the Reductio ad Absurdium Fallacy.
In order to forgive someone you have to admit they wronged you.
It’s impossible to forgive those who can do no wrong. So acknowledging the evils of psychiatry as a practice is necessary before we can offer forgiveness.
And unless they can own up to the harm done they cannot receive our forgiveness however willing we are to offer it. But that’s their choice.
Not forgiving and cherishing hatred for your fellow human beings has long been understood as a way to give the devil a foothold in your life. It’s all related.
Ever read The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom? A great story of overcoming evil when all seems lost.
11. It offers fast and easy solutions for shutting up people you don’t like. Either literally–through 72 hour holds–or large doses of neuroleptics. Hey, Willy finally shut his pie hole. So we can assume he feels better. Go drool in the corner and leave us alone Willy. Aren’t we humane?
12. Everybody loves a scapegoat to hate. “Symptoms” of “mental illnesses” are extreme behaviors of what everybody does. By branding others innately depraved and beyond redemption they deny they–or their “normal” people can do anything really bad. And it does wonders for the self esteem. If you’re undiagnosed.
I just celebrated my 46th birthday. Sad for your mother Leah. And my own friends who died young from “standard care.” Not suicide either. Side effects.
Off my drugs for 2 years. Can finally keep my room clean, shower regularly and half way through my first written novel. My heart is beating normally, I sleep less than 12 hours a day, and I have lost over 40 pounds. I can enjoy music and the beautiful scenery where I live for the first time since 1992.
No mood swings or thoughts of suicide anymore.
I owe it all to non compliance.
But MIA is one of the few places anyone will hear stories like mine.
(For my part the “antidepressants” caused my psychosis. The massive quantities of Haldol used to help caused seizures and worsened the psychosis causing terror to me and all around me. I got kicked out of school. Still forced to live on SSI thanks to years of iatrogenic damage.)
It’s good these drugs managed to shut off the right parts of the brains in both instances. This is not always the case. It’s troubling they were the only answer for people with a damaged liver and brain, since they only make those physical problems worse.
I wonder if dialysis might have helped Abena. A damaged liver causes the body to fill with toxins. She needed to have these filtered out of her somehow.
As far as the third example the use of pot and emotional trauma may be to blame. Does your friend trust you enough to tell you what’s going on in her head?
Kindred Spirit, you have Lyme Disease. What’s your take on using drugs to calm two already physically disabled people?
Too bad only those drugs work at calming Serene. There is a reason she hates taking them. They cause a peculiar suffering of their own invisible to spectators. And they correct nothing–biologically speaking.
Neurologists might be able to come up with solutions other than destroying what brain tissue she has left. Sadly they have abdicated cases like hers to psychiatrists.
Leah, they don’t care if we die. As long as we die compliant.
My friend didn’t want to die. But her shrink made her take a drug that killed her. 🙁
Two years off the “meds” I realize my heart is beating normally again. I believe doctors knew this was so but feared ramifications if they told me my “meds” were slowly killing me.
Why did patients want MyCite? If they forget pills they want to take there are pill boxes.
So MyCite can monitor heart rate and sleep patterns?
In my imagination I see someone watching a monitor. “Dr. Q, Ms. X hasn’t slept at all in three weeks.”
Dr. Q, “Later. Got an office visit with Bambi. That new pharma rep.”
Monitor “Ms. X’s heart beats are off the charts. Her breathing patterns are erratic.”
Dr. Q, “Let her ride it out. I’ve got a Caribbean cruise to plan.”
Monitor “Ms. X didn’t take her Abilify at all the last twenty-four hours.”
Dr. Q, “Get the police out there immediately!”
Monitor, “Turns out she’s dead.”
Dr. Q. “At least she DIED WITH HER RIGHTS OFF.”
That’s like saying Dr. Fata’s chemo treatments worked. From his perspective they worked fine at making him lots of money.
But a lot of us were told we could live happy, productive lives if we took our “meds.” Even many NAMI parents were fooled. Then when you spend year after year in “day treatment” and still can’t take care of yourself or think straight or watch your 35 year old son forced to live in your basement–so zoned out he can barely make a sandwich or wash dishes unassisted–you ask HOW IS THIS AN IMPROVEMENT?
This is not what we were promised. Not what we signed up for.
So yes it has failed those who needed help. Like Bernie Madoff’s retirement plan.
Psychiatry is NOT help, but exploitation of the sad and lonely.
Psychiatry is anti-help.
Stigma against “mental illness” is pervasive in America and is perpetuated by the American Psychiatric Association.
Why is there an anti-psychiatry movement? Because no other branch of medicine has so little regard for the health, well being, or lives of those it “treats.” No other branch can vote illnesses in and out of existence. No other branch claims powers of mind reading and fortune telling. In short, no other branch of medicine has 0 grounding in known science, 0 cures, and premature deaths of all its patients by 25 years.
All other medical branches have patients instead of “consumers” too. This choice of wording on the part of psychiatrists themselves is significant.
If orthopedists acted like psychiatrists they would amputate legs to cure sprained ankles. Pediatricians would euthanize children with head colds. And dermatologists would amputate noses to cure pimples.
Psychiatry has wasted no time in transforming itself from Cinderella to the Wicked Stepmother. They’re very defensive about their origins. And they take it out on the hapless soul whose only crime was trusting a liar with no empathy or conscience.
I was in a thing called semi-care a couple times. The doors were unlocked during the day. In theory you could leave, but there would be consequences without a psychiatrist’s okay.
So you can be a teetotaler AND an alcoholic? Why not?
I heard you don’t need mood swings to count as “bipolar” now. All you need is depression on occasion and 5 or 6 mix and match traits assigned you at random from a shrink’s laundry list.
And mental illness is different from physical illness but it’s still really a brain disease according to NAMI. So strokes and brain cancer aren’t really physical in nature I guess.
To claim that human beings are pure and innocent creatures incapable of wronging others and only a defective minority murders because of bad genetics is ridiculous. It shows a true lack of insight into humanity as a whole.
These shooters are lonely young men living in isolation. Usually on psych drugs.
Yet the solution offered is only larger numbers of people locked up or at least isolated and disabled through drugs. Unable to work or maintain human relationships, these lonely people will sit brooding at home all day, like young Raskolnikov–Dostoyevsky’s protagonist in Crime and Punishment.
Finally Raskolnikov murdered the pawn broker. Yet take heart gun control activists. At least he did not obtain a fire arm, but used an axe instead.
If it makes you feel better Krista the massive damage in psychiatry’s wake is restoring your credibility.
Many KNOW you are telling the truth but feign skepticism or disbelief. Afraid of betraying the Brotherhood I guess. This going along with whatever psychiatrists say though they know it’s harming people and not helping will kill Western Medicine.
All the evil “doctors” need is for the good doctors to do nothing.
Have you heard of Farid Fata the cancer doctor who deliberately misdiagnosed healthy people with leukemia to sell endless rounds of chemo? Killing some and crippling others? Other doctors knew. But it took a long time till one finally blew the whistle.
Scary how morally bankrupt the medical profession is now.
I’m not saying the pre Pharma kind was better Oldhead. But surely you agree the newer model is more dangerous and has done more harm.
People used to look at psychiatry with skepticism. They laughed at the bearded old man asking you for graphic dream descriptions. (Preferably dreams of nudity.)
Then in the early nineties it all changed. They told us scientists had discovered why people acted weird and felt prolonged emotional pain. AND luckily they now had magic bullets to fix your brain. “Just like insulin for diabetes.”
The “chemical imbalance” legend is believed by nearly everyone I meet offline. A lie impossible to disprove because people prefer sound bites and TV medical/police procedural dramas to wading through hundreds of articles and dozens of books like I did.
Honestly Bcharris I think psychiatrists don’t WANT to find biomarkers for the “illnesses” they presuppose. If they did they might find the methods used have been worsening the damage As Whitaker pointed out psychiatry would become obsolete since the neurologists would take over. Doctors who specialize in the brain rather than the imagination.
I remember a part of Animal Farm where the pigs ask for the other animals to labor 7 days a week to rebuild the windmill. The labor will be completely voluntary. But if you don’t volunteer your rations will be cut.
Segregation in the HUD ghetto is the exact opposite of fitting in!
More like whittling at a square peg till its a tiny splinter that won’t fit into anything at all and is completely useless and unwanted so they toss it out with the trash.
Putting blue dye into brown eyes only blinds them. It does not change the color.
Like many survivors I’m frequently housebound from iatrogenic damage. And the draconian laws in America make it unwise to “come out” as a psychiatric survivor.
I have my plans. But I prefer not to discuss them here.
I differ from you Ekaterina in that I don’t consider myself mad anymore. It never was a lifelong condition–with a few exceptions–till psychiatry came along.
Read hagiographies like that of Francis of Assisi. Or King Lear. Or MacBeth where Lady MacBeth was not born mad but experienced extreme guilt. Or the novel The Last Man by Mary Shelley where a main character “loses” it but is nursed back to health by his loving friends (bad diet) and is recognized as sane enough to be elected to Parliament.
Psychiatry ensured these bizarre emotional states would become lifelong. First by locking people away in a hostile environment. Later by the drugs they punish you for having a bad reaction to.
Very astute of Dr, Plomin to skirt the issues of differences between male and female chromosomes. It looks as though he evades the issue of possible racial differences altogether.
Something left out of this nature/nurture debate is how our choices shape our personality as we grow and age.
So you haven’t heard of Tim Murphy, Fuller Torrey, or countless others who have written articles and gone on national television demonizing the “severely mentally ill”?
Many who willingly take psych pills are upset about being called killers. But maybe it’s different over the pond.
Steve, since coming off my Effexor I get along better with all around me. It killed my ability to feel for others.
Now I find it easier to not envy those with better lives than mine. And it’s not just fear or will power preventing my suicide.
I want to live again.
All along I took the drugs out of obligation to those around me. If it had only been my life at stake I would have gone off them. But I feared hurting others if “untreated.” Pretty ironic.
Why indeed–assuming our brains were deformed–would they subject it to drugs that damage already healthy brains? Some use the chemotherapy analogy. But you have to prove the cancer exists first and it’s acknowledged to be a desperate remedy not to be performed indefinitely over 20-30 years.
However, this makes sense when you realize psychiatry is not about saving lives, healing brains nor helping people lead higher quality lives.
It’s really about segregating and crippling the “unfit.” Barring us from participating in the marketplace–which is linked to eugenics according to an article I read. And preventing us from reproducing since the drugs render us grotesque to behold and often cause impotence/frigidity.
They pretend their victims are dangerous in order to justify crippling them. Not about health or independence/ but creating docility, helplessness, and stupidity. Psychiatry’s real function.
The “severely mentally ill” are supposed to be subhuman and dangerous. So it’s okay to perform cruel, pointless experiments since they say our brains are already broken and we’re only fit for institutions anyhow. (According to Jaffe in a Youtube video I saw.)
In the sight of God those like him may be far less worthy of life than the “defectives” whom they judge fit only to be crippled or killed and tossed into the dust heap. 🙁
Normal people explain depression as the natural expression of depressing experiences.
Or they did before shrinks and Big Pharma poisoned our thinking with ads everywhere saying the slightest uncomfortable emotion is a disease required massive amounts of emotional pain killers.
Pushing the negative does indeed have the opposite consequence.
The “mentally ill” have already been identified as dangerous by men claiming to be experts on millions they have never even met.
I prefer “Innocent until proven guilty” myself. And I don’t call myself “mentally ill.
According to Expert Shrinks “bipolar” and “schizophrenic” are synonymous with violent murderous monster. Why identify as “violent murderous monster”? That’s Torrey’s slanderous accusation. He doesn’t know any of us from Adam.
And funny how no one asks shrinks to prove they are not dangerous.
I am also a Christian. A lot of sincere, well meaning people at church are being lied to and encouraging members to be harmed.
Visited a large church with a friend one Sunday and two prominent members got up to tell us “the truth” about the “brain disease.” One a nurse and the other a therapist at the local mental center.
Sorrow, happiness, fear and anger could be called labels or categories. Words to describe these things have been around as long as humanity.
What psychiatry–wrongly–does is try to quantify the unquantifiable. Like trying to put love under a microscope. Or assign numerical values to the Seven Deadly Sins in order to use them in mathematical equations.
I thoroughly believed my drug induced episode was proof of my hereditary brain disease. Doctors don’t lie and medicines are only helpful I had been taught as a kid.
The anafranil was terrifying. I was so scared of experiencing it that I did whatever the quacks told me afraid it would happen again. It did. Repeatedly. They told me it was all my brain disease at fault. NOT the medications.
I went back since I knew hallucinations/etc. weren’t normal. But I lacked insight into the moral bankruptcy of the gas lighting dealers who call themselves doctors.
I have more faith in the word of a used car salesman or a carnival barker than a psychiatrist.
Why almost no one in “mental health” can read a book, hold down a job, or have a relationship.
And some guy called “Alexander” on the site yells at the doctor with ye olde “just like insulin for diabetes” propaganda.
I was afraid of leaving too much personal info or I would have responded that:
A. Psych drugs correct nothing. At best they’re emotional pain killers.
B. According to shrinks these drugs are harmless and have no effect on anyone “normal.” So this proves that’s a lie too.
No one listens anyhow. Reading a short article from the APA Journal is too hard I guess. SMH. Hopeless trying to reason with the public.
Yes. Psychiatry is great at making you question your own sanity.
Feeding you drugs to cause bizarre sensations and claiming “they never have that effect.” Either you’re lying or crazy.
Telling your family you obviously are lying about taking your “meds” since if you were “compliant” all your problems would magically vanish. All the time you take them religiously though they make you feel horrible.
And the shrink blames your cognitive problems, sleeping too much, mood swings, annoying habits you’re too stupified to control on you. Either you’re 1. Lying about your “meds.” 2. Faking the seizures, dizziness, etc. since the “meds NEVER do that.” 3. It’s just your inherint defectiveness showing through. Requiring more pun–uh–treatments in the form of doubling the drugs making you sick and imprisonment.
Came to a point I started lying all the time–since I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. And no one believed me anyhow. Psychiatry=insanity. It exists to gain life long guinea pigs to exploit. To gas light and drive people insane.
Shrink: You know if you weren’t totally insane you wouldn’t be coming to me for help.
Me: Took the words out of my mouth Doc.
1. It’s perceived as a emotional state. Not an inherited moral inferiority.
2. Classical writers saw it as temporary.
3. It lacks the pseudo scientific pretensions of modern psychiatry.
Many of us are life long cripples and we owe it all to the quackery of psychiatry. Like severing someone’s spinal cord to cure restless leg syndrome. 🙁
The “lunatics” back in 1930’s Germany and Austria were much fewer in number. We owe the vast expansion of the disabled “mentally ill” to Pharma-psychiatry chicanery and their unsafe, ineffective treatments. (Unless you mean effective at crippling and killing.)
Thanks to the vast numbers of people like us they have deceived and the internet they don’t fully own like TV or radio more of us are discovering the truth.
So the bio-medical model increases self blame and stigma. Ironic, since according to NAMI and all those other groups it’s supposed to do the reverse.
I found rejecting the bio-medical explanation empowering. As soon as I read William Glasser’s book Warning: Psychiatry can be Hazardous… I felt a sense of hope and joy I never had before. And I quit hating myself. I could change my life after all! 🙂
Depression also can be a symptom of anemia, low thyroid levels, and digestive problems. None of these need psychiatry. Especially the last which the “go to cure” of quackery will only make ten fold worse.
I know a woman with stomach problems who had so much trouble eating she got weak and lay in bed. Her doctor told her it was all a chemical imbalance in her brain and put her on an SSRI which messes the stomach up even more. Filthy liar. Or incompetent idiot at best. Some really are that “uninformed” to use Pies’s term.
Bippyone I would not advise you or your loved ones to just quit taking your pills cold turkey. Especially SSRI drugs or benzoes. Took me over a year to get off Effexor.
I can think more clearly and socialize with ease I never possessed before as an adult. But I still developed a couple autoimmune disorders that may clear up in another year or two.
Oldhead, yes abuse in the form of “asylums” has been around since the 18th century.
But thanks to it’s associations with the AMA psychiatry has been able to deceive many more people since the 1980’s. Far greater numbers suffer under it.
And, before psychiatry “proved” that “mental illness” was a life sentence and poor life choices young people made meant they should be written off as hopeless has not improved things. If you read Shakespeare or Mary Shelley you’ll see that the “mad” got better all the time.
It may not be more cruel, but it is far more dangerous. A kitten may be as angry as a tiger but it can’t inflict the damage a tiger can.
Well OH, I think if someone is in psychiatric “treatment” and goes on a killing spree his shrink should be held accountable for the murders. Just like Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice.
Right now shrinks always pretend these killers weren’t “being helped” when they know they actually were. Putting them on trial would draw attention to how worthless said “treatments” are at crime prevention.
Absolute power and zero responsibility. No other medical profession has legal authority. Especially the kind that can overrule a judge’s.
Violent people are more prone to strokes I believe.
Treat all stroke victims worse than convicted felons. (Being facetious.)
Actually a stroke is a proven brain disorder. Maybe it should be re-classified as a “mental illness.” Proving how stupid the term is.
“All mental illnesses are really brain diseases.”
“What if we treated physical illnesses like mental illnesses?”
I thought the brain was a physical organ.
My cocktail was causing my mood swings till my body wore down after more than 20 years on the stuff.
I have had some troubling experiences with being forced into mindlessness meditation. For two hour sessions every week. Almost drove me nuts. Everyone else fell asleep or didn’t care.
If you like and benefit from voluntary mindfulness meditation that’s fine. I was forced to do it and hated it.
In Brave New World the elite stayed in power by use of the carrot. In 1984 it was the stick.
In our world the “soft diagnoses” and “normals” live in Huxley’s future and may enjoy “soma.” But fall out of line, be unlucky, or get sick from the “soma” and you’ll find you’re in 1984 and Big Brother owns you.
The scene where O’Brien “cures” Smith of his “insanity” by shocking him into thinking as told is SO psychiatric.
Like how they force the “non compliants” into the “insight” of the Chemical Imbalance lie they know is not true. It’s not about curing delusions to trick someone into believing a lie nor about restoring cognitive function through 3-6 brain drugs. It’s about power and being someone else’s god.
Some of the behaviors associated with “severe mental illnesses” are wrong.
Maybe just say the behavior is wrong instead of labeling the person as irredeemably “mentally ill” which is just a moral judgment disguised as a scientific pronouncement.
Friend,do you want to wind up homeless or institutionalized, friendless and broke? Do you want to suffer dozens of bizarre health problems, gain over 100 pounds and die before your mid fifties? Do you want to be socially isolated or segregated in a setting reminiscent of Kindergarten no one ever outgrows?
Be sure to call Dr. Bernie S. Gas at 555-555-5555. As a licensed psychiatrist with decades of experience in putting people on various medications and diagnosing them with terms that would be an insult coming from anyone but a real doctor I have just what you need to achieve these goals.
Call Dr. Gas MD at 555-5555. Don’t let stigma scare you away from the life that I deserve.
I will. Finding a way to earn a livelihood comes first since publicly sharing my story will likely cause me to lose SSI.
Having my label would be nice–if possible–since it would restore my legal rights. Once you are “diagnosed” something like “schizophrenic” or “bipolar” you’re no longer a citizen and can have your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness stripped from you at ANY time based on the word of some guy in a lab coat who doesn’t know you from Adam.
I knew better than to ask my shrink for my freedom, nice as she was as a person.
I used to struggle with the concept of “mental illness” when I believed it. Here’s why.
There are real brain diseases. Traumatic brain injury, dementia, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, tumors, etc. These cause problems thinking and/or physical problems since the brain controls bodily functions.
But take someone like Ted Bundie. He was clever and resourceful at the crimes he committed. Not cognitive problems but moral.
Many shrinks say he must have been “bipolar” just like your eccentric, sweet Aunt Betty, or your mom who happened to have a really bad SSRI reaction that almost killed her thereby “unmasking” her “disease” (Can’t pill shame so it must be her fault.) According to many shrinks these law abiding women are exactly like the notorious serial killer and deserve to be treated like criminals.
There is also the etymological trouble in the oxymoron “mental illness” itself….
Precisely. Demonizing the “SMI” is great PR for psychiatry in keeping its “customer base”, but it backfires since it helps them keep their “life long consumer” stable but make us hard to replace when our painful, stunted lives are tragically cut short.
Psychiatry is NOT about helping those they label to lead productive, high quality lives. It’s about crippling those they view as threats somehow. The “help” offered is on par with how JFK’s embarrassing sister was “helped” by a doctor damaging her brain till she couldn’t walk or talk again. 🙁
Actually getting drunk at a bar every night and sharing your pain with fellow barflies is at least as successful in coping with life as going to a mental illness center.
Look at things like gainful employment and ability to hold relationships together at people who go to those centers. As someone who would never have taken mind altering drugs willingly I’m angry at being lied too. Many of us here are.
Over and over I was told, “Your only hope for a productive life–a job and good relationships is to accept you’re hopelessly evil (SMI means this) and take your meds.”
Getting along better with my family since my conscience and empathy are awake once more. And rejecting my label helped alter behaviors associated with that. My parents are amazed. Dad is angry too and sad I was swindled out of years of life and am forced to live in extreme poverty since the drugs and label prevented gainful employment.
I find solace in music, poetry, the beautiful scenery, friendships (now that I can get along with others), and my faith.
Sadly my system is really messed up after 25 years on drugs. Heart problems and 2 autoimmune diseases started before I came off. Benign side effects of my “treatments” I guess. Lol.
They preyed upon my fear of madness for 20 years after I went nuts on Anafranil and they blamed me for it. Like those slick carny style medicine men in the 19th century.
Judging from your narrative alone you sound normal in that you’re reasonably angry at being treated in a shameful fashion like a criminal when you have done nothing wrong. The only thing they were punishing you for was being put in harm’s way by your shrink.
So they handcuffed you and locked you up for the crime of BEING POISONED by your alleged doctor.
Psychiatry is insanity.
Drugs never helped me either. Voices like yours deserve to be heard. You’re not alone.
I won’t say ALL shrinks conspire with abusive partners and parents to gas light those they abuse. Often, though, shrinks don’t ask any questions about current living situations. Just ask how you feel. They can “diagnose” you in less than 15 minutes and never talk to you for more than 10 minutes afterwards. Gives them just enough time to write more prescriptions.
If you don’t feel great or annoy others by “odd” behaviors–even if they lie about it–the shrink assumes it must be a brain problem. Since they automatically assume all emotional pain or quirkiness is proof of a brain disease.
Got a broken leg? Here’s a sledge hammer. It will fix it. A sledge hammer is their only tool, so by golly they’ve got to use it. How else can they bill your insurance? 😀
Unwittingly though it usually is, they enable abusers. The snappy dressers with proper grooming who smile nicely, have firm handshakes, and know how to charm the socks off everybody. A great looking front is proof of sound “mental health” as far as psychiatrists are concerned. 0 insight into how human beings think or feel or what motivates their fellow human beings.
Bullies are healthy, well adjusted members in this society so they don’t need “mental treatments.” Just “diagnose” those they bully as “schizophrenic” and “bipolar” in order to drug and lock them away.
We human beings are very good at deceiving ourselves, when ignoring certain problems has immediate pay offs for us. Especially when others sustain all the damage from these problems.
Read “The Banality of Evil.” Evil is not inherently sexy, spectacular or mind blowing. Most people behind atrocities are not sadists with maniacal laughs but calm, methodical people who just don’t care.
They willingly serve as little cogs in the Big Machine instead of becoming monkey wrenches to stop It. Understandable since the monkey wrench will be bent out of shape and the little cog can work safely. Until the machine stops.
A make believe land where they treat the criminals kindly–as though they suffered sickness–and punished the people with real health problems and also the poor and grieving like criminals. It was written over a hundred years ago so Butler wasn’t trying to depict our current “mental system” but it’s really weird how it resembles psychiatry’s role of absolving violent criminals (sort of) by punishing the innocent who suffer.
Butler meant it as a critique of Social Darwinism as I recall.
Someone Else this is attributable to the “pay per click” system of online journalism. Sensational headlines get more clicks. Conservative sites also are guilty of this.
To them all people are machines. All belief in the supernatural is a symptom of defective machinery.
Self-styled Christians go along with this because they have no compassion for the “SMI” so they just don’t care if we die. And they think they’re normal so it’s not their problem and not worth researching.
“If you did it not for the least of these you did it not for Me.” 🙁
A lot of democrats own those places too. The chapter of NAMI I once belonged to was full of democrats
Every mental center I went to told us to vote democrat so we could be taken care of. Great trick for harvesting votes.
And a bunch of prominent shrinks wanted to “diagnose” Trump. Which is ironic.
Torrey opposed it. Probably he knew this would tip the hand to the public how much power the APA has with 0 accountability. Least of all to their patient/victims.
Both sides are over eager to throw us under the bus since abusing us looks like compassion to the outsider.
Great idea MM. Along with banning involuntary treatments.
People get all their “science” off commercials now. Too lazy to read articles from the APA Journal for crying out loud.
Even if they’re not drugged out of their gourds people believe everything on TV or in drug brochures now. Scary how unapologetically stupid everyone is. SMH
Coming off my Effexor ended my desire to commit suicide. I actually care about things again.
And leaving psychiatry has helped reaffirm the faith of my childhood which I could never reconcile with the a priori assumption of materialism bio-psychiatry is built upon.
Actually as a kid, I had adults telling me to stuff my anger because Real Girls were always sweet and passive and might weep softly on occasion (like Cinderella) but never got angry. Nearly all were women as I recall.
My mom, my grandma, teachers, family friends. “Nice girls don’t get angry.”
7. Pharma has been tied to psychiatry in unholy matrimony and using their lies about a “chemical imbalance” to prescribe drugs to create all the symptoms of “mental illness” in hitherto normal, sane individuals.
Note how we don’t hold all members of other groups accountable of the crimes of individuals? But when people blame all the “SMI” for the crimes of an individual that’s supposed to be compassion as opposed to discrimination.
We need to judge people on the content of character. NOT on the word of some character who calls himself a doctor and slanders millions he never even met.
Like that Russian short story where the shrink comes to town and locks up everybody. Finally he decides he must be insane too. (Unlike most shrinks thinking Everyone But Me.)
Kind of like that episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Barney Fife puts every citizen in Maybury in jail.
The Donald is known for proposing impractical solutions.
Good luck rounding up 20-25% of the population to imprison them and pay the required jailers/security guards at tax payer expense. (The remaining tax payers.)
He ran primarily on the economic platform. Long term institutionalization is actually costlier than the semi-institutionalized HUD form where round-the-clock “care givers” are not required. My guess is Torrey wants a vast expansion of the latter instead.
Imprisoning large numbers of law abiding citizens without due process will also alienate many Republicans I know who believe in psychiatry’s bogus cures but draw the line at having friends and family locked up. My own family will leave the GOP if this happens. Turn Libertarian perhaps.
The big problem is these mass shooters nearly all get their guns illegally. There are any number of Red Flag laws no one is bothering to enforce. (My dad has to go through a LOT of red tape to buy a squirrel rifle despite no mental label or legal record.)
Buckling down on enforcing laws that already exist to prevent illegal gun sales is the obvious solution both parties should be able to work together on. But it doesn’t sound as “sexy” as passing new laws no one will bother enforcing and showing faux compassion for the “mentally ill” bogey men who need to be crippled and imprisoned “for their own good.”
Take comfort in the ineptitude of our bloated, bureaucratic machine. Like a 10 foot insect it’s pretty scary to look at but the size of its massive exoskeleton makes it hard to chase people. 🙂
“Recovery” has so many different meanings attached. Many anti-psychiatry people oppose it.
On the other hand militant pro-psych people oppose the idea too. Such as our “mental health” czar who also complained SAHMSA is too soft on the psychiatrized.
I went to a “Mental Illness” Center for many years. Repeatedly they told us we would be “depressed” forever and would never recover from our “illnesses” that were created by the alleged “treatments” they warned us never to quit taking or our heads would explode or a comet would collide with earth or something.
“1,000,000 untreated mentally ill people are running around.” Where did Torrey get this number? Is he going to archives or names listed on computer records somewhere and tallying up everyone who disappeared without a record of dying? (A pretty Orwellian scenario in itself.)
Or does he just know somehow in that magical clairvoyant way those Real Scientists have that 1,000,000 people are in need of being “diagnosed” and “treated”?
He also knows that 500,000 fewer murders will occur if he has his way. How can you provide numbers for things that never happen? Is he traveling through the Multiverse in his spare time?
In order to win presidential nominations you must be arrogant and loud.
America can’t handle thoughtful, discerning candidates who only speak when they have something sensible to say. No way Coolidge or Lincoln would be considered now.
Psychiatry generates its own astounding form of isolation in the form of disabling drugs and psycho surgeries and labels to tell communities who to shun and segregate. 🙁
And the fact that the government not only allows but helps maintain psychiatric tyranny over vast swaths of the population–forcing them into extreme poverty, alienation, and premature death–is troubling.
You acknowledge drugs are not long term solutions. I agree and applaud this statement. But psychiatry does not. They are the sole tool “mental health” centers say is absolutely essential. All other services are disposable. But life long drugging–the more the better–is essential according to all community centers I have attended.
Maybe you live where counseling is not subordinate to druggings and is not just telling you repeatedly how hopelessly sick and crazy you are and don’t forget your “meds.” I speak solely from what I see and have experienced in my state and communities.
I agree when people say we don’t need a “replacement for psychiatry” because psychiatry has itself replaced everything I enjoyed when seen as a human being and not an SSI. It has replaced my hope of a career with $780 a month to serve as a lab rat. It replaced my friends with therapists and my hopes for a family with casual acquaintances passing through “day treatment” like me.
After my Haldol induced seizures and odd behaviors due to grief I couldn’t process and label of SMI caused everyone to turn on me I first thought of suicide. Now that I’m free I can mourn, enjoy friendships again, can write and learn marketable skills. Guess what? No longer suicidal.
Hope and love cured me. 2 things not to be found anywhere near any psych center I have been in.
Only if the SBC subordinates itself to Psychiatry and implements its “SCIENCE” into church doctrine. But considering how everyone at a Southern Baptist church I attended mindlessly swallowed anything psychiatrists put out (pun intended) I can see it happen.
Very disheartening. A few individuals from churches have offered me emotional support. But no church body I attended has ever taken a stand against this pseudo science that destroys lives.
Yep. Even websites offering counseling to those who lost family members urge people to consider “medication. Grief is a disease! So is fleeing an abuser, extreme poverty, or any emotional pain or discomfort.
Much of it is well meaning ignorance thanks to the propaganda put out by slimy pharma-psychiatry merchants. Everybody believes them because TV commercials never lie. *Eye roll.*
Part of the overwhelming success of these drugs is the also due to 0 tolerance for pain in our culture. People think if they aren’t ecstatically HAPPY 100% of the time something is wrong with them. Many love the “diagnosis” of depressive disorder because of it. “Please excuse Janie for not smiling and laughing all the time today. She can’t help being sad. It’s because she has an honest-to-goodness brain disease.”
Why do we need written notes from a doctor to excuse feeling down in the dumps? Oh yes. Because everyone around us is self absorbed and tears of grief annoy them and prevent them from enjoying themselves.
🙁 And telling someone “Shut up and take your meds. And kindly go rot in a corner somewhere you won’t bug us” shows you care and you don’t have to do squat to help them afterward. “Mental health experts” are there for that after all.
A big challenge we face is most people view these damaging drugs as “safe” and “healing” and firmly believe they correct brain abnormalities and save the lives of all who take them.
That is a BIG problem. Even those who wish the “mentally ill” well think they’re saving the lives of the “SMI” with AOT. Not to mention other lives if they go on killing sprees.
I managed to convince my family with carefully chosen arguments and an article by Dr. Pies from the APA Journal. That is a damning piece of evidence. It convinces many–if they aren’t too busy to read it.
In a society where the heart was viewed as the center of the soul maybe we would have shrinks figuring out ways to cause heart damage to “save” their patients from themselves.
It’s really no dumber than what they do to healthy brains. (Assuming they aren’t healthy, you still need to know the problem before randomly damaging healthy tissue. Neuro surgeons want to make sure they know where the tumor is located–not to mention knowing whether or not one exists.) 😛
“Welfare does not exist for the needs of the poor, it exists to put the poor through ritual humiliations….”
TRUTH!
And through crippling and ostracizing all those the shrinks have branded hopelessly insane, “mental health” ensures their victims will live in shame and poverty forever!
As Bcharris says up above, murdering a bunch of people is not caused by a cognitive defect but a moral one. I know a lot of people with low IQs but far higher morals than geniuses with multiple graduate degrees.
I have always had a philosophical issue with the concept of “mental illness” because many of the “symptoms” are simply acting like a jerk. So, it’s not stupidity–associated with real brain disorders–they’re referring to.
It really seems to boost the egos of the “Normals” though.
I noticed–when drinking psychiatry’s kool-aid that most trolls on sites to support the “mentally ill” were pretty proud of how “normal” they were. Lol.
I had my first break down at 14 when an older woman who had befriended me betrayed my family and caused us to be homeless for a summer.
She was the wife of a prominent elder at church. Dad was the preacher. She manipulated her husband into forcing him to resign with no place to go.
Psychiatry=Rejection. That’s all I got from it. Worse than Dr. Frankenstein since they take sweet, gentle people who were normal to begin with and transform them into monsters so they can play the Hero by blaming those they have already tortured and maimed. 🙁
Psychiatry caused humanity as a whole to reject me. I curse the day I ever sought help from the quack who called himself a “soul doctor.” All he gave me were mind altering drugs to destroy my body and a label to make everyone turn on me, finishing the destruction of my soul.
No mercy. No justice. Just drugs and lies, lies, lies…
And once “mental health” has its claws in you any community support you had before is terminated.
I had a dorm mom tell my friends at college not to talk to me. Only “mental health experts” were qualified to do so. It was dangerous for anyone else.
Horrible to have your nearest and dearest turn on you because some quack tells them you’re hopelessly insane. And urges them to make sure you keep taking drugs to make you act insane. “And if she has any problems she is lying about taking her ‘meds’ like They all do or she’s faking the seizures and pacing.” 🙁
Finally vindicated after 25 years thank God. At least my father finally believes me. He knows I’m not a monster after all.
In some cases for unusually cruel murders they’ll “diagnose” the person after the crime is committed.
I remember a TV interview.
Interviewer: So Dr. X, why did that mother drown her preschoolers?
Shrink: Because she is bipolar.
Interviewer: How do you know she is bipolar?
Shrink: Because only a bipolar could do such a thing.
This says nothing about her motives. She was a profoundly selfish, unloving woman who wanted a fresh start on life and new boyfriend. Her children got in the way.
But the obvious explanation doesn’t sound scientific enough. Plus it scares people since we all are guilty of selfishness from time to time or neglecting those who need us.
By claiming only a special category of people called the “mentally ill” are capable of such actions and special scientists can weed out these Others from polite society it produces a sense of security for those not accused of being born evil. And it must boost their egos too.
“I thank Gawd I ain’t a lunatic.” (Dialogue from a Flannery O’Connor short story “Revelation.” The woman saying it is at the bottom of the Social Ladder.)
And–according to psychiatry’s narrative the “severely mentally ill” have been around forever. Their “safe and effective medications” were–for the most part–non-existent till recently.
Yet though these magical snake oil elixirs are everywhere now and the “SMI” have always been around (according to shrinks) mass shootings occur more than back in the 80’s. Amazing how no one asks these head honcho shrinks WHY this is.
There is stuff to laugh at and educate us online. Without the internet I would still be in bondage to “mental health.” A lot of shrinks hate public access to the internet for this reason.
One said the internet caused “agosognosia.” Then he had to backtrack and dance around since devout eugenicist that he was he firmly believed only “biological defectives go crazy” and reading something online can’t alter DNA.
The internet has brought to light a lot of ugly truths the psychiatrists longed to keep hidden. More and more are finding out now that that Artful “Science” is based entirely on a lie dreamed up by ad marketers. And its “treatments” nothing but random acts of brain damage.
Plus more gruesome publicized murders means more power and authority for the members of the APA. Probably rubbing hands with glee every time a shooting occurs like Tim Murphy the Merciless did and using it to sell themselves as saviors of humanity.
I’m sure Torrey doesn’t want these to end. No crime sprees means no reason to demand his victims be handed over for cruel, pointless experiments.
“So what if all my test subjects and a few hundred other people die in the process? As long as I get the glory and honor I deserve as a legitimate Scientist. Real SCIENCE folks!”
Know something all mass shooters have in common? They are very, very angry.
We all get angry. But we–as a society–used to control our anger better and realized murder was unacceptable.
Sadly SSRI drugs lower empathy and many atypical neuroleptics such as abilify harm the brain centers linked to impulse control. Empathy and self control are essential for preventing murder.
No drug can stimulate the conscience or help us love our fellow human beings.
One solution would be taking someone seriously when he posts threats on social media about killing people. A lot of the killers crave notoriety and have done this.
My sister has a really bad reaction to penicillin, but no one punished her for that. Probably because real doctors prescribe it.
Psychiatry refuses to admit their drugs ever hurt anyone. They are above the law. Better to brand everyone they make deathly sick as hopelessly insane and punish them by tripling the drugs. And upping the dose of the drug that drove them bonkers. That’ll learn ’em.
Randall, there is a lot of irrational violence. But anger, like other extreme emotions, causes irrational behaviors including violence.
A lot of those labeled “mentally ill” do not act this way. I got my label of “bipolar 2” because I sought help for depression and had a bad reaction to the drug Anafranil. I have been iatrogenically damaged by decades on a cocktail.
I have broken no laws. I don’t ask for the right to bear arms.
Just live peacefully in the community where I sought refuge and am slowly healing after 23 years on the same class of drugs that harmed me. Do people like me deserve to be segregated? Do we deserve to be treated worse than felons? We are not all criminals.
I have struggled with guilt for living on disability. I have a strong work ethic. I volunteered regularly even when I couldn’t find a job. We are not all lazy.
I have a number of health problems linked to decades on a cocktail. The segregation, isolation, and extreme poverty with the constant threat of homelessness is horrible. I have done nothing to deserve this. All I did was seek out help for anxiety and depression. And religiously obeyed my doctor’s orders even as my brain and body fell apart. We are not all lazy or irresponsible idiots who refuse our “meds.”
(It took me years to come off mine because I felt I owed it to society. How I decided to come off them is a long story.)
I will never have a family now and am overcome with grief. The “mentally ill” aren’t allowed to marry due to financial penalties and I chose celibacy rather than promiscuity like the “mental health” staff encouraged. We are not all hedonists.
We are not monsters just because we had a rough time long ago or even a simple drug reaction. The vast majority of us are in this situation.
Famous Shrink: All the mentally ill are murderous monsters who should be locked up or neurologically crippled to keep them from hurting you. And, by the way, we need to end stigma by educating the public on how dangerous these creatures are.
You don’t hear cardiologists going on TV and telling everyone how evil heart patients are. Or gastroeneterologists warning how everyone with Colitis is a menace to society. Only psychiatrists do this.
And that “Doctor” Torrey, is why there is an anti-psychiatry movement. No one but a psychiatrist demonizes all those he claims to help and maligns their character simply because they made the horrible mistake of seeking “help” from his profession.
Shame on Torrey for his defamation of law abiding citizens.
As far as Obama and Trump go, chalk it up to ignorance. Like 90% of the public.
But Torrey knows it is a lie. He has been quoted as saying he knows the drugs aren’t that effective in Anne Harrington’s book. Yet he goes on the air saying these things and writing slanderous articles. Hence he is truly reprehensible. 🙁
This is why I would never advise an abused wife with kids to seek out psych “help.” A psych label will just make the courts award custody to the abusive dad.
Sites where abuse victims are urged to get “help” for “clinical depression/anxiety” when their sorrow and fear are justified and the abuser will be the one who benefits…these advisors mean well…but their foolishness hurts many. Makes me want to rip out my hair!
I would say that defending SSRI drugs and then blaming the patients for not being able to think straight of feel better causes stigma. Pretending these drugs are magic bullets (denying any painful effects they produce) that would make “crazies” normal if they weren’t refusing to take them is as stigmatizing as it gets!
She was taking X when she killed herself.
Solution?
Prevent suicidal despair by putting even more people on drug X.
Those spreading this message are ignorant of the facts (drug X was tried and found wanting.) Or very stupid. Or liars with no regard for their fellow humans.
I remember some shrinks lecturing us at NAMI, “The problem with the mentally ill people is they’re totally ignorant of nutrition and have no self control.”
“Life is great. You’re just depressed because you’re a ‘mentally ill’ loon. And if our ‘meds’ don’t make you feel great you’re a severely mentally ill liar.”
My mom has always fretted, fussed and obsessed over What Others Think of Us.
I believe that’s why she feels the SSRI drugs help her “nerves.” Blunting her ability to care helped her for a while. Though now she is very ill with IBS and tired all the time. Can’t read more than a page at a time and passively watches TV all day.
My counselors were (mostly) kind and well meaning. But because they believed I was a hopeless “SMI” their advice was useless when not actually depressing.
A leftist on FB was complaining about America. One of his top complaints was not enough being spent on “mental health.”
I wish the government would confiscate the multi billions Big Pharma companies have made and give $500,000 apiece to everyone crippled by their psych drugs. If it bankrupted them so they could no longer hurt people, so much the better. Of course that ain’t gonna happen. 🙁
Real doctors heal. They don’t make a living lying about problems to patients to sell them mind altering drugs or perform random acts of violence on vital organs by pretending its surgery. (And slandering their patients on national TV.)
Ironically I could perform constructive work before psychiatry had its way with me.
A bunch of physical, autoimmune disorders now. Map-fingerprint eye distrophy and inflammatory bowel disease. As well as CNS damage and heart arrhythmia.
Something you never hear about is “non compliance shaming.”
There are dozens–no hundreds of websites and mags where people can praise their pills, shots, shocks. NOWHERE but MIA and a couple private sites are available for those of us who know we have been damaged.
Weird how happy consumers keep logging in here to yell at us instead of going to one of the countless other sites to tell how happy and productive their “meds” have made them and how they found salvation in psychiatry alone.
Ironically, Bonnie, your resistance to psychiatry has been likened to eugenics by a grateful consumer who stirred up trouble because of your scholarship. I get so frustrated with battling mindsets that assume brain chemical imbalances are a PROVEN FACT and nothing I say or show convinces them.
I just want to rip my hair out at such willful ignorance. Why is reading an article from the APA journal or this resource or listening to me talk about Anatomy of an Epidemic too hard for my friends? Why this resistance to learning anything not approved by the boobtube? 🙁
The big wigs running the APA and inventing “illnesses” for the DSM have an astounding lack of empathy or compassion. And they have diagnosed themselves as Sane. 😀
Dr. Harrington said psychiatrists should focus on people who are totally “out of it” and leave depressed people and squirming children alone. It went on to say these people are already in institutions or prisons. Dr. Harrington does NOT recommend putting them there.
Thank you for this review Sandra Steingard. I ran into a copy of Anne Harrington’s book when visiting the library of another town and could only skim it.
When she talks about a “sympathetic view” of psychiatry I ask myself “Sympathetic towards whom?”
I am one of those who derived more harm than good from standard psychiatric treatments. Not psychotic till I took Anafranil for 3 weeks. Got diagnosed “Bipolar 2” and put on 3-4 drugs as a consequence.
After 20 years I became chronically ill. Finally went off the drugs in secret with only online support. Forced to live on SSI even now thanks to IBD and nerve damage from long term drug use.
It troubles me that Dr. Harrington wants to lock up swaths of people in institutions. Doc Torrey, our old friend, has gone on record saying we need to build more institutions. So is he admitting his magical pills are NOT 100% safe and effective after all?
A lot of us have suffered long term iatrogenic damage already from drugs that drove us crazier than before we took them. Now they want to simply lock us up and throw away the key? 🙁
Arguing with psychiatrists and “mental health” professionals is indeed futile.
While I agree with Bob Nickel that these changes would be an improvement, I also agree with Oldhead. The “MH System” is too invested in preserving its own money and power to reason with survivors.
Rather than waste time and energy debating shrinks, we need to win over the kind but deceived people who honestly think psychiatry helps its victims. A lot of people I know fall in this category.
Let me clarify. By “always” I meant generally and from the beginning. Ever since Francis Galton cooked up his theory that crimes were due to “bad breeding” and certain families of “moral degenerates” were less than human.
After World War II killing/sterilizing the unfit became unpopular. Even among psychiatrists.
Recently they found they can transform people into cash cows through the drug induced “bipolar” epidemic. Since they can’t milk dead cows they oppose suicide–assisted or otherwise.
My fear is since shrinks are notorious for forcing their own will on patients that euthanasia–once permitted–would NOT be truly voluntary. They can force AOT on people after all.
Why not say, “Your honor, Erma Jones thinks she wants to live. This is only due to lack of insight into the severity of her condition. The only humane thing to do is permanently fix her schizoaffective/BPD/agosognosia by mercy killing. If she screams and pleads for her life remember it’s just her illness talking.”
For now, in America, they find it more profitable to slowly destroy our brains and other organs.
For number 2 I wish people would acknowledge the drugs the person is forced to take on AOC can make them weirder than ever. Abilify has 4 warnings about “odd behaviors” as a potential side effect and has been linked to an increase in poor impulse control.
Yet Abilify seems to be a favorite for AOT. How is this supposed to help people act responsibly and obey the law?
Thank you Njinsky. 🙂 Actually the Parkinsonism is gone. Got off the drugs in time.
My big problem now is microscopic colitis linked to a wider auto-immune disorder. There is a lot of that in our society you’ll notice. Also terrible short term memory and other things linked to the CNS. My dad is begging me to get tested for Lymes though i think it’s not that.
The reason I said such harsh stuff about Torrey is because he strongly supports “medications” to prevent crimes or just odd behaviors on the one hand. But in a book called Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington he goes on record as saying the only real help for “schizophrenics” is institutionalization. Either his memory is failing or he is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Drugs did NOT make me passably acceptable to people.
Doubling body weight, tics, inability to observe social cues or hold a job…not passably acceptable in our society. So that in itself is a bald faced lie.
…As medical professionals, we cannot afford to view our patients’ afflictions in emotional or humanizing terms. Nor can we afford the luxury of supposing that the only treatment we offer causes permanent incapacity and premature cessation of physiological vitality.
The best evidence suggests that focusing solely on the modality of treatment (whether pharmaceutical agents, ECT, or a synergistic combination of both with compliance enforcing therapy) is more important than the outcomes themselves.
Needless to say, we must take precautions against plunging heedlessly into the maze of spontaneous eclecticism in our modalities. If we recommend therapy or treatment for actual (physical) diseases we may undermine the credibility of our science.
We must allow ourselves to be guided by studies designed to prove the effectiveness of the treatments we offer and the evidence carefully selected to support the same….
It is time to consign this “chemical imbalance” metaphor to the dunghill of vicious cartoons. As medical practitioners of a legitimate science it is an outrage that people actually think we believe the nonsense which we publicly promote.
~from “Professional Outrage of a Well-Informed Liar”
Don’t bother searching the archives of the APA Journal. This is a satire.
Thank you for this story Lee. What you experienced sounds like what they used to call “negative self talk.” Till throwing pills at every sorrow became the rage.
Did you know William Glasser (who rejected mainstream psychiatry) considered voice hearing and hallucinations as subconscious acts of creativity?
Your art is beautiful. I wish you success in your future career.
Some politicians hire “hatchet men” to slander opponents. We have that going on with the APA letting drug commercials, “mental health” centers, and NAMI do its dirty work.
“Show me the biomarker!” should be the rallying cry of survivors.
Assuming–for the sake of argument–that a pre-“treatment” brain abnormality existed, until they knew what it was how can they claim the drugs corrected it?
Ever notice how a lot of articles from psychiatrists’ journals contain literary allusions and quotes from poets? To my knowledge they are the only medical specialty that does this regularly.
Pies is really ticked off at all the people claiming psychiatrists actually believe in the chemical imbalance.
Kudos to all his tireless efforts at putting out PSA’s and going on speaking tours to educate the public so they know better and how he used professional influence to stop NAMI from printing misleading brochures. Lol.
Shrinks’ for example. They earn $250,000 per year (or more) and professional glory by defaming people, making them die 25 years prematurely and forcing them to live in poverty and segregation.
What psych drug was Jill Kesti taking to keep her awake for 3 weeks? Mine was Anafranil. And shrinks pretend the psychosis was caused by noncompliance since “the meds never have that effect on anyone.” And after 3 weeks of no sleep I had bizarre notions of running around naked and screaming obscenities I could barely repress. MEDS COMPLIANT THE WHOLE XXXX TIME!
I tearfully told my parents how I couldn’t think straight on massive quantities of drugs, though I took them faithfully. The good doctor would kindly gas light me. “Those medications are 100% effective on anyone who takes them exactly as prescribed. And Haldol doesn’t cause seizures. Your daughter is obviously non compliant and lying like They all do.”
After years in the system I took to saying stuff that wasn’t true. Mom wondered at it since I had always been scrupulously honest.
Shrinks had turned me into a drug addict. Which explains my personality change. And due to their gas lighting I could no longer tell truth from reality.
Thank God I kept from killing myself and am mentally the woman I used to be. Only older and horribly sick with IBD which I blame on 2 decades of SSRI drugs.
Lots of places like that in my state. I don’t mean to brag but NAMI gave us a D- in our mental illness system. It’s hard to get better than that in America. 🙂
Psychiatrist: Do you have schizophrenia?
Accused: Yes.
Psychiatrist: You admit it. I sentence you to 12 mg Haldol a day for life.
Psychiatrist: Do you have schizophrenia?
Accused: No.
Psychiatrist: Schizophrenics lack insight so you must be a schizophrenic with agosognosia. I sentence you to 15 mg Haldol a day for life. Strictly voluntary, but if non compliant we have far less pleasant ways of dealing with your kind.
I would do everything in my power to prevent someone from suicide, aside from seeking psych “help.” That would make them far more likely to kill themselves. Some even do it while locked up.
It’s extremely hypocritical for shrinks to oppose suicide under the guise of “compassion” when the profession has always been about involuntary euthanasia and sterilization of those they deem “unfit.” Their “treatments” are nothing but a slow, agonizing death sentence. After 25 years of “help” I can barely leave my house most days.
Now some shrinks support “assisted suicide.” Totally voluntary–but we all know for those labeled “SMI” the word voluntary means absolutely nothing for us.
If someone really wants to destroy him or herself they don’t need a doctor to do it. Ending a life is way too easy. I think that’s why Szazs mocked Jack the Dripper Kavorkian.
The “good doctor” Torrey says! Who are you mere mortal human to question this self appointed deity?
Not like psychiatrists would ever knowingly deceive patients or the public after all. 😛 Psychiatry is the only medical specialty that publicly maligns the character of its patients on national television.
Torrey’s sole goal in appearing on TV is the CREATION of stigma against those his profession has damaged. Ending it is the last thing his ilk would want.
Far worse than Farid Fata. He lied to patients, crippled and killed them. But at least he didn’t gas light them and go on TV accusing them of murders never committed and urge the public to segregate and imprison them.
Seems Torrey knows his BS can no longer be hidden. Too obvious his poisons are not magic cure-alls. So he is now running around urging to have all the “SMI” locked up forever. Seriously.
Wish we had surveys on how many folks labeled “SMI” started out normal and rational till psychiatry got its claws on them.
I have a friend who works as a speech pathologist. Largely with those suffering from TBI.
She told me 90% of those who suffer extensive brain damage become far nastier and harder to live with. (I believe individual choice plays a role too but we’re discussing generalities.) When people are drunk or high on heroine or meth they don’t turn from evil killers to sweet, gentle little lambs.
Yet shrinks like Torrey claim that the way to prevent crime is to force everyone his profession has written off as hopeless and subhuman to partake of “treatments” consisting of—traumatic brain injury and mind altering drugs. Despicable. And–even those who choose to take those drugs he lies about suffer from the public defamation. Muzzled or not, no one wants to hang with Hannibal Lector
Lying all the time, zero empathy for those harmed, a profound hubris setting himself over those he has branded subhuman–these are all personality traits Torrey has displayed. Why have we made men like him the moral guardians of our society?
It was a relief to me when I found the Biomedical model had no basis. That people like me were not monsters after all and the drugs really were messing up my thinking. (Not imagining it or faking the Parkinsons and seizures.)
Like that scene in T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party where the woman is glad to know things are (partly) her fault because she can change them after all.
Psych “diagnoses” are unduly pessimistic and lead to us being treated worse than convicted felons. But they help shrinks and groups like NAMI make money and maintain political clout. So they will keep promoting them unless forced to stop.
Not interested in dating now. Trying to pick up the shards of my life. My body is slower to heal than my soul oddly enough.
Looking for work. Too old for kids so I’ve lost all romantic interest.
I don’t think Melissa meant to give me callous BS. She honestly believed there was some invisible bond between everyone labeled “bipolar” so only we can understand each other. Well–it does sound like BS now that I think of it. 😀
Almost married a fellow “bipolar” I had little in common with. He had the mind of an 8 year old and wanted a mother.
Maybe try POF or OKCupid? Wait till they really know you before sharing your story.
I sought out psychiatric help because of some rough experiences. An awkward loner in my teens. Had felt there was something bad/wrong with me for a long time.
My dad was a clergyman who couldn’t keep a church for long. How long he stayed depended on how well his family members–as well as he–performed for the “right” people. Appearance was EVERYTHING. And we were watched ALL the time. I felt woefully inadequate.
2 years of sexualized bullying in high school made my anxiety worse than ever. (And made me loathe my body.)
Depressed and anxious as a college freshman I was afraid to leave my dorm room. Dr. M gave me Stelazine which took the edge off my anxiety. Unfortunately it made me sluggish, numb and the good effects wore off.
I mentioned I had negative thoughts that wouldn’t leave on a visit later. Dr. M put me on Anafranil. No sleep for 3 weeks. 23 years in the MH System as punishment for my bad reaction to a drug he put me on. (My sister is allergic to penicillin but no one suggested she be shamed and segregated forever.)
I would have told young me to 1. Get a driver’s license despite Mom’s protests. Can’t go car free in Indiana. 2. Drop out of the university and get a clerical job after a year at business school. A 4 year degree was my parents’ dream. Not mine. And they were dead wrong when they said it would help me find work. No MI history and a good work history are the ticket. I held several jobs in my teens and had a reputation as a conscientious worker. All ruined at age 20.
Lol. 😀 The real reason “mentally ill” often choose to only date each other is the reason lepers in leper colonies do. No one else will dare touch these social outcasts.
Not bashing those called SMI. Discrimination is real.
Psychiatrists have a vested interest in keeping everybody their profession “diagnoses” “medicated” till they die alone, crippled, and miserable in a HUD slum or institution before their fifty-third birthday. Why? So these professionals can enjoy the glory and honor of Real Scientists and honest-to-gosh doctors and live lavish lifestyles on seven digit incomes.
It’s obvious who benefits the most from neuroleptics.
And the bare idea of survivors who escape and lead good lives despite mainstream psychiatry’s best efforts must stick in their craw.
Loved your essay Phoebe. I’m checking out your art site.
I find caffeine helped me create in the past. Now I have one cup mixed with half decaf each morning. Off psych drugs now I find more caffeine too stimulating. Used to drink 5-10 cups a day on “meds.” And still slept 10-12 hours out of 24.
Tiff how does your son seem better? Are his odd behaviors and words lessened? Maybe his anxiety is better. I had short term benefits on the drug Stelazine at 6 mg for a few months.
I seemed better on psych “meds” to those around me because I was too tired/deadened to do or say anything weird. But i could never build an adult life for myself, wound up with OCD, couldn’t get along with others due to emotional numbness, have not been gainfully employed since my teens and was in low grade depression non-stop for over 15 years. Frequently suicidal.
I went off my “meds” without my family’s knowledge. Asked forgiveness rather than permission. Mom was shocked at how improved I am now, but my organizational skills and short term memory are horrible and may not improve much. Still, my OCD is gone along with extreme depression. I get along better with people when not exhausted from the iatrogenic disease I developed and am motivated to keep my room clean (despite aforementioned fatigue.)
Mom swears I used to need the “meds” though I was fully compliant during my freakiest episodes. The numbing out would make me do dumb things I never did before. Short term effects were way better than long term.
Tardive psychosis came with my experience on neuroleptics. i didn’t know that was a thing for decades. Doctors told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and it was just my “illness” talking when I tearfully told everyone ‘Antipsychotics make me psychotic.”
Trying to fit human beings into neat little pigeon holes is actually what we call stereotyping. “All women love to knit.” Part of the problem with racism/sexism/other prejudice is it claims everyone in Group X is alike–lumping diverse individuals into a blanket category and subtly dehumanizing them in the process.
The only significant thing about this piece of news is that Psychiatry Research admits what most familiar with the System have known forever.
It’s worth noting that 2 people can have the same “diagnosis” with no traits in common. Yet shrinks say we are all alike and should be subjected to the same “treatment” and psycho-therapists have told me I should only date others with my label. Since being called “bipolar 2” is way more important than life philosophy/religion, common interests, personal connection and life goals.
I think Matthew Warren was an introvert. Just a theory.
Saddleback is really into group activities and Rick has gone on record saying “Jesus was an extrovert.” I refer you to an analysis of that mega-church in Quiet by Susan Cain.
As a preacher’s daughter I got tired of being in the public eye and the constant criticism. I also need my downtime and the pressure–even as a child of nine–led to a couple break downs.
Became suicidal after being drugged up on 10 mg of Haldol and labeled SMI got me kicked out of college and my zoned out behaviors infuriated my long suffering family. Was put on Zoloft and a “mood stabilizer” in the psych ward.
After 22 years on a “cocktail” I tapered off over 13 months. I have the will to live again, sickly as I am thanks to a ruined digestion. Never suicidal.
Just an anecdote. But the psych community loves anecdotes and uses them all the time. They just don’t like mine because it won’t sell their pills.
A sure fire proof of good insight is when a shrink holds up four fingers and insists you see five. By means of their safe and effective treatments you wind up screaming that you do indeed see five. And you do. Thus they restore their vic–uh–patients to sanity.
I never knew what insanity truly was till I sought “help” from a shrink. His methods created my madness.
The Mental Illness Centers help with weight gain of 100+ pounds by mocking everybody for how fat they are in day treatment. Some scrawny little case worker with full gym membership who doesn’t take the neurotoxins they’re forced to, lectures “clients” for more than an hour at a time about how “mentally ill” people have no self control.
Also had a joker who ran the “Club House” ridicule us for sleeping to much and being too thirsty. Accused us of dipsomania because our mouths were dry. 😛
I relocated. I promised to find a new “mental health” center and then didn’t.
Off my bipolar inducers now. Building my health up and looking for work after 25 years in the Madhouse Without Walls!
No one knows I’m supposed to be an “unmedicated bipolar” since I don’t act the part, not being on the drugs that caused my psychosis/mood swings anymore.
Mine was iatrogenically caused by massive quantities of Haldol and Stelazine. Along with Parkinsonism, mini-seizures, and OCD I had not exhibited before taking psychiatric drugs.
I started out depressed and anxious because I feared social rejection. Psychiatry made my fears come true and almost drove me to suicide.
I agree with Rosalee, Bob. I would welcome a continuation of this essay.
Glad you went through with your decision to make a career change. You sound like you are good at working with people. As a former engineer you have a lot to offer adults in remedial education.
Njinsky I know it wasn’t a movie. I wish it were.
Totally stupid. And, as others have pointed out, beating someone over the head with a wooden ball bat can have similar benefits.
I remember reading a report by Dr. Abrams about how some institutionalized people were cured of “schizophrenia” by accidentally spilling boiling water on themselves. The only reason psychiatrists have not tried boiling water is it would be hard to cook up some sciencey sounding gobbledy-gook to establish how they ARE SO REAL DOCTORS! 😛
What I had in common with other “bipolars” were the problems created by those claiming to help us. Extreme poverty/unemployment, obesity, excessive thirst, sleeping all the time or not enough, relationship problems because our relatives learned we were “psychotic monsters,” and the ever present threat of homelessness (thanks to the extreme poverty, unemployment, and relatives’ shunning.)
All caused by the stigmatizing lables and drugs handed out so freely by the Mental Illness Center.
PD, I don’t subscribe or write to NAMI, BipolarHope, Wellness Place, etc. Just pointing out to those who want to sing the praises of their psych remedies that there are dozens if not hundreds of other sites on the internet that allow them to do so.
Never heard of a school of psychiatry called “critical.” It refers to a way of perceiving psychiatry versus “anti” or “pro/mainstream.”
Yes “therapists” who exist solely for the purpose of forcing kids to repress abuse memories are pretty evil, though I have not actually met any.
My mom’s counselor did the exact opposite and helped her remember stuff she had buried and deal with it. Encouraged her to get her 4 year degree in education and pursue a career as a teacher. A great “treatment” for depression before the bio-model took over.
Now all they do is throw pills at everything. Counselors provide no advice to those branded SMI beyond “take your meds and accept how hopeless your life will always be.” Because of this wide-spread sell out I avoid counseling and urge others to do likewise. Especially at those “Mental Health” Indoctrination Centers. 😛
Maybe the devil wanted to see Gene tormented through shock therapy. *Eye roll.*
A lot of supposedly religious folk will sell out to pseudo science when it fits their purposes. Like when some church goers argued eugenics to exploit other ethnic groups. Since eugenics presupposes evolution–not arguing that here–but the 19th century church did not, they decided God created whites in His own image. But other people evolved from apes. (Nowadays scientists say “a common ancestor.” I’m talking about Victorian science.)
When a shrink–or at least as often a Big Pharma marketing huckster–points a finger at someone putting down someone being harmed by their quackery they have four fingers pointing back at themselves!
Psychiatry is nothing but SHAME if you take away the trappings of drugs and psycho-surgery.
Were Dr. Farid Fata’s patients voluntary victims when he subjected them to numerous rounds of chemo under the pretext that they had leukemia? If a doctor sells heroine to his patients by telling them they have diabetes and it’s insulin are they voluntary?
The only excuse I can give for psychiatrists is that SOME–not sure how many–actually believe the lies they promote about the “chemical imbalance.” According to Dr. Pies they are uninformed. Tsk tsk. So bad to accuse his profession of ignorance. He’s proud of what a well-informed, professionally competent charlatan he is. 😀
I thought of your story as soon as I read the title to this. 🙂
Like you I started out with a mild problem. Anxiety and depression instead of smoking. Got “help” and went completely bonkers. The quacks pretended to be surprised.
She loved us dearly and meant well. But as an intuitive child I picked up on her pain. (Her own childhood.) Along with the community politics associated with Dad’s career.
I have been shamed numerous times for not taking my “medicine.” Ironically this was when I took them religiously. They were like food or oxygen to me….I thought.
Then I would be consumed with self loathing and suicidal longings. The pills were magic. So it must be my fault I couldn’t think straight, gained 60 pounds in 3 months, couldn’t study or understand social cues anymore.
Tapered off them. Lo and behold my head didn’t spontaneously combust from all those imbalanced chemicals reacting. And gravity still exists. My folks didn’t know about it for over 32 months. And I was living with them too. They were kind of surprised.
Requiring Big Pharma to shell out $1,000,000 to maintain each of the “mentally ill” brain trauma victims they have created would be a very good thing. Especially since it might force these unaccountable corporations to downsize and focus on medicines that help people. Instead of crippling and killing the formerly healthy. And ban the drug ads
A great tool for stirring up angry mobs with minimum appeal to reason. Perfect for a “science” consisting of nothing but political propaganda and marketing campaigns.
I honestly believed the lies NAMI pushes. That my “mental illness” was caused by a proven chemical imbalance.
When I found out the truth I was devastated. But instead of “killing the messenger” I planned a suicide. The plan was really an effective one. If a dear friend hadn’t stopped me I almost surely would be dead.
There are plenty of ex-smokers who act pretty self righteous toward those struggling to quit. And formerly obese people sneering at those who can’t lose or are too busy with other stuff to do 24 hours of step aerobics a week.
Appropriately called TIC. And they’ll have tics aplenty along with seizures, tardive psychosis, morbid obesity, akathisia, and diminished IQ. All children being groomed for lives of isolation and physician induced disability so these Dr. Mengele wanna be’s can try cruel pointless experiments on them.
So Oldhead you never had a shrink say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You look perfectly healthy. But your behaviors/thoughts/mannerisms/tone of voice bug me. So I’m going to lock you up and experiment on you with a bunch of mind altering drugs. Been ‘tested’ by the place that manufactured them. No conflict of interest there.
“Nobody knows what the long term results of these drugs are. Or even how they work. But I’m sure they work cause Yolanda, that hot babe of a Pharma rep offered me warm doughnuts–and further…office calls–if I try this out on a lucky consumer.
“So how bout it? You don’t want poor old Doc Quackenbush to go doughnutless would you?” 😀
There’s a thing called the Sunken Cost Fallacy. After a heavy investment–be it money, time, effort–people prefer to keep investing in it though common sense would be to cut their losses and bail out.
I think that’s at work among the “consumers” who get angry at the messenger. Perfectly normal human reaction.
Many of us who have been damaged by these poisons–and know it–are shamed ALL the freaking time. I was shamed for a bad reaction to Anafranil and given the label “bipolar” for life. Psychiatrists love to punish their test subjects for suffering too visibly.
No offense toward Sera Davidow, but I wish our feelings (and ruined reputations and blighted lives) were taken into account more often. I don’t perceive this article itself as guilty in that respect though.
It’s harder than quitting booze or cigarettes. Harder than quitting heroine even. Because your “dealer” has the legal ability to hunt you down, lock you up, and torture you for “just saying no.”
The courts defer to the dealers and their mobster cronies (Pfizer, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, etc.) buy all our politicians. Sickening!
“Pill shaming” is as absurd an etiological construct as “mental illness.” Pills feel no shame.
People who have been tricked or forced into taking them do. They have already been hurt, and the truth can be very traumatic, causing them to “kill the messenger.”
Those who squeal loudest about “pill shaming” are usually the Patient Shamers. Psychiatric bigwigs blame everything on their victims in order to exonerate their precious pills. Shame on them!
In lieu of the term “mentally ill” I suggest the term “psychiatrized.” This term could include grateful “consumers” as well as escaped survivors and everyone in between.
And yet “diagnoses” ARE lifelong. NAMI and psychiatrists routinely tell people they know why they’re “defective.”
Realizing you were lied to all your adult life and cheated out of everything for no good reason is unavoidably hurtful. 🙁 Stopping the lies may spare others our suffering.
They get you fired from jobs, denied housing, denied custody of kids, and kicked out of college.
They allow harmless law-abiding citizens to be lumped into the same category as serial killers.
My label made me want to kill myself. Rejecting it gave me the will to live.
I prefer the term “emotional distress.” Dr. William Glasser called bizarre mental states “creative symptoming.”
Have you read any books by him Mad in Canada? I recommend Choice Theory. The neat thing about Reality Therapy/Choice Theory is you wouldn’t have to get your son to go. You could learn how to draw him back to the real world using methods Glasser employed.
MIC speaking as a “mentally ill” adult child sometimes I pity my parents more than myself.
Off my drugs which never helped and made me crazier than before, I still can’t work. My SSI won’t pay for housing so I have to live with my retired parents. In my mid-forties and have the symptoms of bad Crohn’s Disease. Iatrogenic damage on my digestive system.
It’s rough on my parents. Having me here depresses Mom. Sometimes I feel guilty for just existing.
The reason I took the drugs that have crippled me and kept me from gainful employment as an adult is it pleased my folks. Mom repeatedly told me how my “meds” made me more pleasant to be around so they must work. 🙁
Looking back she disliked me talking. The solution was never talk unless she speaks to me and she picks the topic. I do this and she thinks I don’t need “meds” though she still threatens to send me to a “home” when I misplace things. (TBI is to blame.)
We need less emotional PSAs perhaps. But the pro psych side has plenty of emotional stuff too. Crime dramas. A lot of NAMI stuff. Books like Crazy. And don’t forget the way Tim Murphy exploited those grieving families to get what he wanted.
Well conditions like anemia, thyroid disease, Lyme’s disease, traumatic brain injury, etc. can cause depression and problems thinking straight.
BUT we don’t see psychiatrists to treat these problems. We see nutritionists, endocrinologists, neurologists, and so on. The best way to get TBI (and other physical problems) is to see a shrink. As Peter Breggin says, “That’s how it WORKS.”
Ironically the bio model can increase prejudice toward those labeled “mentally ill.”
Once my dorm mom found out I was supposed to be “schizo affective” she grew hostile to me. I was horribly depressed and had drug induced seizures. My mom had a similar reaction. Cause TV shows depicted how wonderful psychiatry is.
Everyone blamed my grief/loneliness/seizures on not being compliant. Because “meds” magically fix everything. So if your suffering annoys others you must be a naughty patient who deserves to be punished.
There’s a real stigma against unhappiness. Unless you get an official “diagnosis” and take pills for it. Then you can explain your blues by saying “I have a real brain disease causing my depression. I take drug/s X for it.” Then everyone is expected to show sympathy.
My response? Who the heck says you have to grin ear to ear all the time? We have the right to feel unhappy.
Thank you Dr. Caplan. I like your analogy of psych labels as constellations in the sky in They Call You Crazy.
I see them as libelous slander. Moral judgments against people. Psychiatrists go on TV saying things like, “That mother murdered her two sons because her bipolar made her do it.”
Great plug for his profession. But it’s a slam against everyone he and others have labeled who do NOT murder small children.
This used to really bug me, even when I thought psychiatry was real medicine and followed their orders exactly as told. No other medical specialty regularly badmouths its patients. You don’t hear cardiologists telling how those with heart disease are violent. Nor osteopaths saying those with bone cancer are deceitful.
The a priori assumption being that psychiatry is rational. To my knowledge there are no surveys or papers proving that alcoholics put on SSRI drugs fair better than those who don’t. (If there are she should have cited them. Citing the psych “expert” was apparently sufficient for Gabby.)
Bcharris I don’t ascribe my vitamin deficiencies to my emotional problems as a teen, but they are the result of iatrogenic Crohn’s Disease symptoms from decades of using them in good faith.
“Sick” is a synonym for evil as far as psychiatry goes.
“Why did that man murder that kindergarten class?” With the understanding that his ex taught the class.
The normal person says the man was evil.
The mainstream shrink says he was “sick.” Then he calls a bunch of law abiding citizens “sick” as well so he has an excuse to treat them like criminals.
I was using “psychic” in the pejorative sense. Like the con artists who advertise on daytime TV.
Psychiatrists claim the ability to read minds (can tell what the thoughts of patients are) and predict the future (will he commit a violent crime or not.)
There are a number of us who were turned into “ne’re do wells” through psych treatments. Psychiatric drugs, labels, and hospitalizations ruined all my hope for gainful employment.
Crippling and defamation is a great way to ruin a life. 🙁
The five Scriptures have nothing to do with psychiatry. Ignorant or dishonest.
The Five “Truths” of the circle should read:
1. I’m upset. vs You’re sick and crazy.
2. I need hope. vs You need a counselor to tell you to give up on life.
3. I need love. vs You need to be segregated.
4. I need help with obvious life problems. (Poverty, physical issues, abuse.) vs You need drugs and probably shocks too.
5. I’m unhappy. vs You are a disease.
That’s what Psychiatry is really about. Rick doesn’t mention this. Perhaps he wants to offer real help, but why not just give it instead of promoting drugs and segregation?
Psychiatry did NOT save your son Rick. Why push it as the magic cure to everybody else?
A lot of the abolitionists worked the Underground Railroad before slavery was finally outlawed. We need a similar support system to help people being destroyed by psychiatry.
Been reading about Maiti Girtanner who wound up disabled after being tortured by a doctor in an interment camp. She never could pursue a career as a musician.
Those of us who have been “treated” for more than 8 years struggle with real disabilities–inflicted by respected professionals we often trusted. 🙁
Psych drugs do not fix bad behaviors. Interesting this creeper was getting “help” the whole time he was doing this. Yet shrinks claim they are messianic figures that can transform mass shooters into Gandhi.
A lot of states that can’t pass this could get around it by framing this as “treatment.” You can get away with any torture if you claim it’s for the Greater Good. (Like a shrink’s yacht payment and a drug CEO’s summer home.)
Since shrinks are within their rights to imprison, damage and kill at their discretion we need a legislative overhaul. Changing the unjust law is essential.
Yes. Sadly there is a dearth of accurate information. I believe 90% of America’s population thinks all “mental illnesses” are caused by chemical imbalances proven to exist in people’s brains. Because NAMI and other educational orgs tell them so.
I was drinking 2 quarts of coffee a day for a while. The only thing that made me feel alive. Now I drink one cup diluted with decaf and often get jittery.
i also lost all interest in diet soda pop since going drug free.
More people involuntarily forced onto disability through the crippling effects of long term drugs may not be the (stated) intention of those supporting more “mental health.” But that is the practical result.
Spending more money to keep more people from gainful employment. Keeping them OUT of the workforce and forced to live on public assistance. A colossal waste of money. And human lives.
Just read an article bashing AA as unscientific. The argument is alcoholics are people with the “brain disease” of depression which SCIENCE proves drugs called “antidepressants” can fix.
Like saying you can cure alcoholism by taking crack. Woo hoo!
The Perfect Person is high in extrovertism. High in conscientiousness. Middle ground in agreeableness. Very low in ability to feel negative emotions. And a 0 in openness.
Don’t forget fortune telling. “Mental health” clairvoyants claim they can foresee crime sprees before they happen.
Yes, some psychics give tips to police officers in solving cases. But the only psychics judges themselves listen to are the self-styled prophets who can allegedly foretell the future of someone they never met at a hearing. And no one holds them accountable if murder/suicide occurs under treatment they impose either.
That’s why getting drunk or high are called “self medicating.” Alcohol and street drugs are no more dangerous or counterproductive than psych drugs. And if your bar tender or dealer locked you up to force his wares on you he would do serious time.
Allow me to pour sugar in the engine please. I’m the expert.
The engine was already broken so whatever happens is your car’s fault not mine. It happened DESPITE my brilliant auto repair skills. Quit sugar shaming!
Label a bunch of shy, awkward , unhappy kids hopelessly defective.
Force them to take a cocktail of mind altering drugs.
Publicly parade them in front of others. Tell them how sick and crazy these kids are in order to lessen “stigma” through “education.”
Good golly, what could possibly go wrong with this plan?
It IS the perfect plan. Assuming the plan is grooming a criminal class through the educational system.
Psychiatry is the penal system which exists solely to punish the suffering. Not the bullies but the bullied. Not abusive parents or spouses but battered kids and spouses.
If you suffered TBI, Lyme Disease, recent emotional trauma (like rape or homelessness) or a bad reaction to the SSRIs they hand out more freely than office mints don’t worry.
The mental illness makers will hunt you down and punish you good. Ensuring a lifetime of every abuse imaginable. 🙁
Punishing law abiding citizens for crimes they MAY commit. Sadly, taking these drugs will not gain the “consumers” acceptance but worsen it as they create “positive symptoms” that never existed before taking the drugs.
My parents are taking my decision well because 1. They see I’m doing better drug free and enjoy better emotional stability off the cocktail supposed to “treat” the mood swings it caused. 2. They actually want what’s best for me. Not all family members do though. 🙁
Szazs was not some cuddly, warm teddy bear you could hug. BUT he wouldn’t lock you up, drug you, or accuse you of crimes you never committed (diagnosing.)
Yes, he lacked mercy. But I appreciate his justice and rigorous honesty. Most shrinks pretend to be nice but are unmerciful, unjust, and phony as the house in Leave it to Beaver.
I guess Steve means Szazs acknowledges depression can be a symptom of a physical disorder like anemia or hypothyroidism. But we treat those with iron and thyroid supplements. Not SSRIs.
There is a religious group called CAPA. In America. Christians Against Psychiatric Abuse. Pentecostal. NOT affiliated with Scientology.
Most churches believe in psychiatry because they can’t believe doctors and pretty TV commercials could lie so flagrantly.
They also embrace psychiatry because it allows them to ignore the emotional needs of rejects.
They can look on them and say, “Be warm, be comforted, and take your ‘meds.’ Am I my brother’s keeper? Of course not. We have psychiatrists who serve that role.”
Sodium nitroprusside. Hypotension, headaches, dizziness and a host of heart problems. Minor side effects for us crazies according to the APA.
It also causes restlessness and anxiety. Which they will either 1. Accuse the “patient” of faking. 2. Attribute it to the original malady they presuppose exists. Always the patient’s fault. Shame patients. Not pills.
Many weak vulnerable individuals are incapable of protecting themselves. Against psychiatrists bent on locking them up, segregating them, and inflicting bodily damage through drugs and “surgery” for the purpose of destroying neuro function.
The treatments don’t heal or restore balance. All they do is impede cognitive function. Otherwise they would raise IQs instead of lowering them.
It’s not about helping people live longer. Nor restoring independence or productivity. It’s about rendering “patients” docile and passive to the point of helplessness. That way they can stuff us away in institutions or “mental health” ghettos.
🙁
I remember a “mixed” NAMI chapter. “Loved ones” and “consumers” in one room. One woman would tearfully bemoan her “sick” son and his refusal of “treatments.”
His symptoms? He would dress up like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Also deride the political party his mom and her friends belonged to. And he refused to look for work or move out.
Obviously he was acting rudely and irresponsibly. He probably enjoyed watching his mom clutch her pearls at his weird public behaviors. She needed to give him an ultimatum.
If “Jack” ever got the alleged help his mom wanted him to she will enjoy having him live in her basement unemployed forever. Or institutionalized. But as long as they are on drugs it’s okay if they can’t keep a job, live independently, clean their room, or string a coherent sentence together. It’s also okay to have horrible health problems and die prematurely.
If a psychiatrized person commits a violent crime or suicide while “compliant” it’s ALWAYS in spite of the high quality care received. If they have gone off these decisions are always attributed to lack of compliance.
$90,000,000 is just the tip of the iceberg. The MIS is geared to keep people messed up so they never function as adult human beings. Those places are run on tax dollars.
And thanks to segregating psychiatric labels plus all the “safe and effective” damage they endure, the human beings used as lab rats are forced to live on tax payer expense. With government run housing or institutions due to the housing shortage. And since they’re forced out of the workplace there are fewer tax dollars going in as well.
For all the goods and services paid by taxes my guess is the psychiatric bill could easily top $1,000,000,000 in one year. Abolishing psychiatry would be a boon to the economy.
The psychiatric system is funded largely by tax dollars since few of their “consumers” are capable of gainful employment. Hence most of us have no real say in our treatment. You get what you pay for.
Persuading the public footing the shrinks’ actual bill of the damage psychiatry has created would be a worthwhile endeavor.
More so then begging the shrinks to please be nice to us. (Bwahahaha!) Shrinks are paid to drug, shock, and convince the public they’re being saved from “mentally ill” monsters. Not likely to stop voluntarily.
Glasser referred to “psychosis” and extreme states like depression and EDs as “creative symptoming.” Often the person is creative and has unusual thoughts as a coping mechanism or escape device according to him.
That’s why art can help. You don’t need a “therapist” either.
I’m doing creative writing and graphic art. A lot of my annoying tics have gone away.
Never wanted to be a lab rat for a career. Not my choice.
The APA claims their pills turn bad people good and irresponsible people productive. Yet their magic wonder drugs work by shrinking the frontal cortex (impulse control) and amygdala (altruistic behaviors.) How’s that supposed to work?
Psychiatry is the only branch of accepted medicine to regularly demonize its “patients.”
You won’t find cardiologists going on 60 Minutes to terrify the public with tales of all those monsters with heart disease who should be locked up and subjected to cruel, pointless experiments to protect the public.
I know pro psychiatry friends who got angry at Murphy for maligning them. Basically called them murderers.
Psychiatry is an ideal religion for do-gooder materialists.
I have an idea for a book called The Gospel According to Psychiatry targeted to a religious audience. A lot of church goers don’t realize that psychiatry is based on the assumption of bio-determinism and that souls do not exist.
So do you believe in the chemical imbalance myth RR? (The APA does not.) I ask this because you left this as part of the quote from me you take issue wiih.
If they don’t know WHAT the pathology is how can they correct it–assuming the a priori assumption is true? They are likely exacerbating the original complaint and/or adding new ones.
Lyme disease, anemia, Hashimoto’s are indeed physical problems that cause messed up thinking. None are treated by shrinks.
Those of us who’ve suffered are dismissed all the time. MIA is one of the few places we can share our experiences.
Have you ever read Robert Whittaker? Anatomy of an Epidemic is an eye opener. Also the works of William Glasser, Terry Lynch, Joanna Moncrieff, and Peter Breggin. All the latter are certified psychiatrists.
Sounds like Catani and Mazzarello are more concerned about making money than learning, discovering,making art, or doing science. At least Leonardo is dead so they can’t hurt him.
Why not “diagnose” a dead man? Psychiatrists have no physical markers for locating any of the diseases they invent. My guess is the APA frowns on “armchair diagnosing” since that will let the cat out of the bag about what frauds they are.
ECT is effective in adults because it causes massive brain damage rendering them childish and easy to control. It’s also wonderful because it’s a sort of surgery (destructive) showing that psychiatrists are really honest-to-gosh medical doctors after all.
I haven’t been “heard, respected, or helped” by many working for “mental health” since I was labeled. Those working for centers adopt a certain attitude toward the “SMIs” in their care.
This attitude is one of condescension to inferiors. I imagine ethnic minorities get a double or triple dose of this smug, patronizing treatment.
I have forgiven the men who lied to me and damaged my life. But I will not claim they did me a favor. Nor stop fighting the institution of abuse which treats law abiding citizens the same as sadistic serial killers and punishes people for grief, Lyme Disease, or entering the Foster system.
Quit punishing those who suffer Psychiatry! Quit mutilating grieving widows, battered wives and the elderly by frying their brains. Quit forcibly drugging abuse victims, people with head trauma or digestive problems, and children who squirm in class.
Jennifer maybe you should relocate. You aren’t dependent on your parents. I’m not sure why they were concerned. Because you were “too” exuberant I guess.
If you were paying your bills and all the stuff adults are supposed to do they were misguided to even worry. Let alone have you locked up.
My parents–and others–were frustrated at the profound malaise I showed. Laziness they called it. But they wondered why the “meds” didn’t fix it.
Most “NAMI mommies” are themselves hapless victims drawn in and deceived by those frauds called psychiatrists.
They wonder why their adult kids become less able to care for themselves the more “treatment” they receive. Often they wind up burying the offspring they truly wanted to help lead an independent, quality life. 🙁
I can’t post links here, but on BeyondMeds.com archives Monica addresses how NAMI deceives everybody. Including family members who believe they’re helping.
They’re merely misguided. It’s the well-informed liars, with no compassion or moral compass, who deserve the blame.
Was that a grateful consumer praising the EC they had undergone? Wow.
I believe others have praised it after surviving it. Stockholm Syndrome perhaps. Or the Sunken Cost Fallacy.
The APA doesn’t list Stockholm Syndrome or Munchausen’s by Proxy for good reason.
To shrinks, Stockholm Syndrome is just “good insight.” Munchausen’s by Proxy makes you a “concerned caregiver.”
The reason I haven’t commented more is I haven’t experienced shocks.
But they ARE brutal. Random acts of brain damage. Like all the “help” shrinks offer.
They differ from neurologists in that their sole purpose is to destroy healthy brain tissue to make people dumb and helpless. It’s not about saving lives or improving the quality but turning us all into domestic animals.
This is electrical shock we’re discussing–not drugs or counseling.
And it is not the same as corporal punishment. If EC were viewed as punishment it might be banned for being cruel and unusual. But since it’s viewed as medical treatment you have can’t make the same legal arguments against it.
How about pride that you survived being lied to and about? Being tricked or forced to abuse mind altering drugs under the pretext they would “correct your brain chemistry”? Possibly brain shocks, imprisonment, and poverty?
That you figured out you were being conned and managed to go off a bunch of drugs as addictive as heroine with no help at all except an online community.
I can’t remember the name of the shrink who put me on 10 mg of Haldol. Caused some terrifying seizures with eyes rolling back and tardive psychosis. (Yes, that’s a thing.)
The “doctor” told my parents Haldol never, ever caused that kind of thing. Either I was faking it or it was my “schizo effective disorder” to blame. Looking back some of the orderlies–who treated me kindly because I gave them no problems and nicely pulled my pants down for the injection–reassured me the Parkinsonism, eye rolling, mini seizures were common and happened all the time. Hmm..either the shrink was pulling a fast one or knew less than the CNAs and orderlies. Take your pick. 😛
I bet at least 90% of all psychiatrized folk would show marked improvement if taken off all their drugs. Most of us weren’t that out of it till the quacks got hold of us.
A question the APA has never even asked itself is “What is sanity?”
To my knowledge they have never written a profile of the ‘Mentally Healthy Ideal” they cherish. It would probably stir up controversy if they did. Each would want the MHI prototype to be an image of himself. 🙂
As someone labeled Bipolar 2 I believe all my “manic symptoms” were iatrogenically created by shrinks. I started out depressed and anxious. They helped by causing full blown psychotic mania with drugs like Anafranil.
They said i would need a bunch of drugs forever. That my reaction to Anafranil proved I was “defective” and I deserved a life of agony/premature death as punishment.
Got off their neuro-poisons. No more mood swings. My family is amazed. We realize now that mainstream shrinks are full of it. 😛
Full of themselves. Which is kind of the same thing. 😀
A therapist/counselor is like a spouse. An abusive one is far worse than none at all.
I quit seeing one when I realized the sessions were pointless. I kept talking about my problems in a loop like a hamster’s wheel. It did not help they were all in the pay of the “Mental Illness” System and basically just parroted stuff like “A disease like any other” and “be sure to take your meds.” In essence remind me I was hopelessly diseased at my innermost core and I should give up all hopes for my future. More depressing than a therapy session with my cat. 😛
Many do benefit. I did at one time–but the good stopped after I was diagnosed SMI. The label made them write me off as hopeless.
If cigarettes, cold medicine, and nutrasweet can cause birth defects it’s a safe bet that psych drugs do.
My own theory on the “autism” epidemic is too much screen time too early in life. And “diagnosing” is extremely profitable. I believe they’re drugging the “aspies” now from commercials/news clips I have seen. (Is there a difference?)
Also the article published here about how the latest scientific research shows no difference between the “schizophrenic” brain or the “autistic” compared to the normal.
I agree with you–assuming ED enjoyed her reclusive lifestyle. From what I have read she willingly chose it. Her sister was also considered a failure (unmarried back then) and enjoyed an active social life.
Psychiatry creates insanity through the drugs it tricks or forces people to take.
When I saw Dr. M at 20 I was depressed and anxious. Thanks to the Anafranil he prescribed I went 3 weeks without sleep and had a terrifying break from reality. The experience was so scary I did anything shrinks told me after that to prevent the very breakdown THEY had caused.
Interesting they call him a “madman.” He was mad–or angry at the loneliness and rejection he kept experiencing.
Eliot Rogers could have used some help. Not from being locked up and tortured but simply someone willing to reach out to him with compassion. One true friend might have made the difference. 🙁
Articles like this completely ignore those of us who experience terror AND dry mouth etc thanks to taking the drugs. You complain to the quack. “How come I’m loonier than ever?’ He tells you the “meds” never ever do that and yells at you for “non compliance” though you take the drugs that mess up your thoughts and cause seizures. All you did was “pill shame” by honestly telling how they effect you.
Psychiatry is gas lighting. Pure and simple. They made me question my sanity until I totally lost it.
Psychiatry exists to “other” individuals by labeling them “schizophrenics” so their communities will segregate them and help psychiatrists sell mind altering drugs by force.
I have two friends killed by standard psychiatric “treatments.” If either had known about the survivors’ movement she might not have died. 🙁
Psychiatry has messed up my digestive system. I’m glad I escaped when I did. It was killing me too.
Btw, someone should ask shrinks who mock the idea that “mental illness is just a social construct” why drapetomania never made it into the DSM. Benjamin Rush firmly believed in it.
My “meds” caused mood swings. Much more stable emotionally off them.
Glad I have more control over my emotions since the temptation to let bitterness and gloom take over is powerful right now. Part of grief at my wasted life I guess.
Part of it wasn’t just brain damage from the shocks but the humiliation and trauma of her ordeal in the institution. At least she had grandpa and grandma to save her from being locked up or dying on the streets.
It’s safe to say most shrinks are not Platonic philosophers. Yet mainstream psychiatry has subscribed to a dichotomous notion of the flawed versus the ideal real.
The unaltered sufferer is the “flaw.” The mad scientist sees himself as a godlike creator of the ideal as he alternately fries, cuts up, or chemically damages the brain of his hapless test subject.
It’s indeed odd how they think taking away people’s ability to work, have relationships, or live independently is an improvement. But acknowledging the damage would force them to accept responsibility. What’s a god to do? Blame the victim of course.
It’s like the ending to Alonzo’s Oil. The source of injury was discovered by the detective work of a non medical amateur (me.) And removed.
But the damage is real. And not all reversible.
I’m grieving that I’ll never have a family. And all a tragic hoax!
At least I can appreciate things like music, beautiful scenery, and human interactions again. Not dead inside.
Sadly I long for companionship more than ever. But am a childless old spinster with no friends in a small rural community. Struggling financially in isolation, I weep almost every evening. Things look pretty bleak.
My condolences Ann. “Antidepressants” ruined my own life.
Anafranil triggered psychotic mania in me back in 1993. Couldn’t sleep for three weeks. Was called “bipolar” for having the audacity to get sick on a psychotropic drug prescribed by a doctor who didn’t care my life was ruined.
25 years on a “cocktail” including the same class of drug that caused the problems.
Yes.
The truth is the “medicines” given/forced on people correct nothing. There is no pathology to correct. The chemical imbalance is a filthy lie. And the only way to think straight is to flee the SMI Lobotomizing Machine.
You might wonder why they don’t give us an extra $300 a month to rent an apartment. It would save the bureaucracy money. But it’s really all about segregating the “crazies” from the “normals” just like doing all they can to prevent us from becoming gainfully employed. The Vocational Rehab is a crock of bull. Their real job is to keep you from getting “uppity.” They told me I was “delusional” for wanting to work for the local newspaper even though I had a BA in English and writing experience.
Demanding financial compensation for crippling and defaming is not incompatible with capitalism OH. Extreme medical malpractice and libelous slander by calling law abiding citizens a menace to society.
As far as chattel slavery goes, it was not psychiatry. Szazs himself took care to point out they were different.
Psychiatry can also be compared to a cult, a snake oil selling medicine man, a drug dealer on the streets, Dr. Fata who pretended healthy folks had cancer before crippling them with chemo, an abusive partner, and the Holocaust.
Psychiatry itself is an alternative–to community support, holding criminals responsible for their behaviors, eating right, and legitimate medical care for Lyme’s Disease and countless other ailments doctors ignore in order to sell SSRIs.
A big reason communities push psychiatry is it helps them write off the suffering and annoying folks. Then they can pat themselves on the back for ignoring the outcast since “I’m not a professional. Only licensed professionals should talk to bipolar freaks like Mary.”
“….it’s (anger) probably best tied to stories of actual physical or emotional abuse.”
Okay. So is anger justified after being lied to and about? Being called hopelessly insane and drugged out of my gourd and having my system wrecked so I can’t leave the house some days thanks to 25 years on a cocktail?
Google the name and read the horror stories of those he crippled and killed for dollars. That is the psychiatric racket. Only it’s legal when shrinks do it. 🙁
Well, in Robert’s defense, part of MIA’s readership wants a new form of psychiatry, believing it can be rehabilitated. We disagree, but we are “radicals” even here.
A lot of ex slaves were terrorized or murdered by the “night riders.” Or continued working on the same plantations “voluntarily” since they had nowhere to go.
You could call share cropping a kind of halfway house.
This is as stupid as letting car manufacturers conduct all the safety tests on the cars they put out to market and not having anyone else hold them accountable. Conflict of interest should be obvious.
Time for Big Pharma to recuse themselves from judging products safe. But, since they won’t, they must be forced to.
Never took lithium. Sounds nasty. I’m posting this article to Facebook and tagging the friend whose cousin swears he can’t live without lithium. At least W is benefiting from the placebo effect. 🙁
Actually the myth of mental illness is tough to define.
For example the myth of Santa Claus is a magical man in red with a white beard and big belly flying to different homes on Christmas Eve with gifts for kids.
The myth of mental illness is more nebulous. Is it cognitive impairment? Or moral impairment? Or chronic unhappiness/distress? “It” is supposed to be a chemical imbalance in your brain.
Touched by Fire gives the idea that the “mentally ill” are geniuses. So not cognitive impairment.
Chronic unhappiness or distress? Why is that supposed to be a disease?
The public likes the idea that bizarre or vicious crimes are all “symptoms” of the mythical disease. But then Dr. Torrey says not to confuse bad behaviors with illnesses. So looks like it’s not moral impairment either.
And the chemical imbalance does not exist either. Dr. Pies is livid anyone would think he was ignorant enough to believe the lies he refuses to correct.
How would demons fit in with a Pollyanna worldview?
I sought out a deliverance minister myself once. (Protestant exorcist.) My choice. Those who reject the supernatural and the Christian worldview would say it was all hypnosis or I was susceptible to the power of suggestion. That’s okay. I would not force it on anyone. It doesn’t work if you’re unwilling.
He treated me more respectfully than any shrink I have ever known. He did it all for free too.
It helped end my suicidal desires and depression eventually. I learned techniques from him that helped me finally banish the Evil Voices for good. Coming off the drugs helped me too.
If you don’t like or believe in that, that’s okay. I WOULD oppose forcing this on anyone the way shrinks do. Only consenting adults.
The government does not finance exorcists the way it does shrinks either.
The psychiatrists portray themselves as serving two functions.
A. Healers of diseased people. The “mildly mentally ill” or the “severe cases” if they have good insight and take 10 drugs at a time without question.
B. Saviors of the “normal” folk from the dangerous “SMI” ogres running around. If they are given full control of society and allowed to reign as absolute monarchs they will rid the world of crime.
“Bipolar” is more lucrative than “schizophrenia.” For Dr. Quackenbush and his twin brother Mr. Quackenbush the CEO of Phake–the major pharmaceutical company.
“Schizophrenia” usually only requires one drug. Though they tend to add on more. (It’s shrinks we’re talking about!) “Bipolar” requires at least 3 drugs. An SSRI, a neuroleptic, and a sedative. Though they may do 5 or 6 or more.
If you could force or con someone into buying 3 drugs or 1 which would you choose? (Assuming you didn’t have a conscience.)
Not anti-allopathy. BUT…when we consider how every medicine works by overriding basic bodily systems (except for supplements) shouldn’t more doctors practice minimalism in how they prescribe things?
At least with antibiotics you only take them for 10 days. But when it comes to long term drugs, physicians should be especially careful.
Sam, my family has been more supportive than most. My parents are realizing psychiatry did not help me and are surprised how much better I’m doing now.
Julie’s parents also were in her corner. Have you read her most recent article published here?
A lot of homeless people wind up that way BECAUSE of psychiatry. They can’t find employment due to work gaps from “treatments” and the drugs causing real disability. And their friends/family want nothing to do with them thanks to the label or are so emotionally abusive they prefer the streets.
It enhances the self esteem of the “undiagnosed” by tearing a minority down. Similar to how racism “works” for non minorities.
Ever read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson? *Spoiler.* Readers wondered why the people of the nameless community want to kill a random person. Sacrifice to some corn god? Literal witch hunt? My guess is the town needs someone to pick on every year. And–until she “wins” the draw–the woman stoned thought it was okay too.
Psychiatry is our real Lottery. It defines our nation more than Power Ball.
Yes, wandering down aisles and talking to yourself or other “odd” behaviors are perfectly legal. Psychiatrists like Torrey and “concerned” PR guys like Jaffe are responsible for the irrational fear of harmless eccentrics.
Ideally a friend or family member would have talked to your brother. Likely he would have found them less intimidating than a police officer.
EVEN if he had reacted aggressively they would have realized he was beside himself and not pressed charges.
I am no longer suicidal. (Long story.) But if I knew a woman close by who was I would ask her to stay with me and offer her moral support till the desire passed.
I’m NOT embracing stereotypes. But I have known mothers beside themselves because their “kids” of 17 or 18 lose touch with reality and talk to people who aren’t there.
You would maybe tell her to wait it out till the kid snaps out of it. But if his/her bizarre behaviors keep everyone up all night and those around her urge her to get “help” saying he will never get better otherwise, what do you think the stressed out, sleep deprived woman will choose?
They should have seen that the ex-slaves were given more than the clothes on their backs after being set free. “5 Acres and a Mule” would have been great if it had materialized.
Would the anti-psychiatry folks like those who are severely out of it (“mentally ill”) wandering around homeless muttering to themselves? Unable to meet their basic needs? Even–in rare instances–pushing people in the paths of oncoming subways? (There was talk of this happening in NYC.)
Would they like folks so unhappy they can’t–or believe they can’t–get out of bed not be able to talk to anyone or get over their overwhelming sadness?
Anti-psychiatry people need to be able to answer questions like this. Rest assured people will ask them.
“Lumping an individual person…into a clustered group of diverse behavioral symptoms is badly motivated and asking for–perhaps even INTENDING–bad outcomes.”
It probably is intentional. Helpless and dependent lifelong consumers is a great business model.
Does someone who experienced a bad reaction to anafranil deserve to be lumped in with child molesters and serial killers? Once women in my church found out about my “diagnosis” they tried to make me quit teaching Sunday school. Since the “severely mentally ill” hurt children according to shrinks.
Saying “mental illness” is a myth IS dangerous. To psychiatrists.
No absolute monarch likes being deposed. Plus–once the truth comes out–a lot of people will be very angry at the liars who stole away health, earning potential, and killed people. (Not counting suicide. Psychiatric drugs KILL.)
The solution to abusive counselors is simple. Allow the person being counseled to fire them at any time without having to give a reason.
IN THEORY we could do this at the Mental Illness Centers I attended. But in actuality this was discouraged or even punished in the underhanded ways centers have.
I hear voices–but it’s by choice. I write fiction and work out bits of dialogue between writing sessions.
That man might have benefited from the Hearing Voices Movement. Psychiatry obviously wasn’t helping him if he’d been in “treatment” since he was a child.
Child molesting is a crime. There’s the legal system for folks who do this stuff.
And by calling those monsters “mentally ill” shrinks insult all the other people they “treat.”
I prefer to call psychiatric labels defamation of character.Once a law abiding citizen receives one he or she is treated worse than a convicted felon. In many ways.
I disagree with this article that labeling ANYONE hopelessly insane and chemical lobotomies will help them.
Btw, I highly recommend Peter Breggins’s Youtube videos on “The Violence Initiative.” A very underhanded attempt to lower birth rates among POC (eugenics) by aggressively “treating” young African American men. Our good friend the APA is behind this creepiness. And almost no one is holding them accountable.
Oldhead has been sick. So is it all because he has “subsumed reactionary political views and is unable to come to a strong anti-psychiatry anti-psychotherapy anti-recovery movement position”?
I’m opposed to psychiatry because it hurts people.
I have had two friends die directly from psychiatric drugs. As prescribed.
One had seizures from a neuroleptic, hit her head during a grand mal, and died at 29.
The other had been on a cocktail for years. Suddenly her decline accelerated. She went to a nursing home. Took to bed and all her organs began to shut down. Died at 49.
Right now there can be no legal justice since shrinks are breaking no laws when they cripple, defame, and kill. Changing the laws by discrediting psychiatry as a legitimate medical branch is essential.
But people who use cocaine buy it on the street. They aren’t deceived into thinking they need it like a diabetic needs insulin.
Even if you’re okay, there’s a risk of an SSRI triggering an episode of “psychotic mania.” That can get you labeled “Bipolar” and put you at the bottom of the totem pole so you can never climb up again. 🙁
A doctor who falsely diagnosed patients with cancer to sell them numerous rounds of chemo would disable people. This does NOT prove they had cancer to begin with.
Nor does destroying people’s brains and other organs with drugs, shocks, lobotomies, etc. prove they had a disease to begin with.
I guess “doctor” Pies is not used to debating. Petty tyrants who rule with an iron fist have a hard time talking to their serfs as equals and are unaccustomed to making a rational defense of their tyranny.
It must stink to have to give an account to others when you’re used to playing god. 😛
Shrinks make lousy philosophers. Name calling, strawman arguments, and accusing the opposition of wanting to kill you does not a sound argument make. Pies sounds–dare I say it?–downright paranoid. Guilt is making him go Lady MacBeth it seems.
Where are these death threats or rants? Maybe on the dark net. But certainly not here, nor MadBlogger or AuntiePsychiatry.
It stinks not being believed. Oddly enough I took to telling crazy stories after a few years of “treatment.” I guess I decided no one believed me anyhow so I told a lot of over the top stories. More dramatic at least.
The weird thing is I had always been scrupulously honest before. I couldn’t tell truth from falsehood at one point. 🙁
What I presented was not a Strawman argument though. Many argue in favor of drugs, shocks, etc. on the grounds that the brain must be at fault. You can find such an argument made by Jaffe in his review of Anatomy of an Epidemic.
Sam, I’d say only a few here do. I don’t and many others don’t.
Reducing it all to class warfare is a gross oversimplification of views expressed, even for most commenters who espouse socialism. Not all of us are socialists either.
(Of course the bizarre comments stand out of the crowd.)
I had problems before I got psychiatrized.
I’m against class warfare and covetousness.
Emotional suffering is real enough. But since there is no KNOWN link to brain problems how can psychiatrists fix it? How can random acts of brain damage help anyone?
If you read Anatomy of an Epidemic it’s not some massive conspiracy. Or it didn’t start out that way. Drug companies found they could make big buck$ selling fake remedies for coping problems and trauma.
Psychiatrists were desperate for enhanced status and prestige. They were mostly ignorant of how their prescriptions worked. At first.
Now there are a lot of cover ups. Big Pharma makes more money than any other industry in America. And a hefty chunk comes from drugs no one needs.
I meant we don’t hear about the “treatment” they went through.
We always hear about the shooter’s “mental illness” even if a shrink has to “diagnose” him posthumously.
These experts always go on TV to demonize those they say they’re “helping.” By attributing murders to “mental illness” they’re implying all those they label are would-be murderers. Character assassination is an act of compassion for shrinks.
This idiocy leads to a lot of circular reasoning.
So, Dr. Quackenbush, why did the mother murder her two preschoolers?
Simple. She had Bipolar.
How do you now she had Bipolar, Doctor?
Because only a person with Bipolar would murder two small children.
Steve, I think there’s a time and place for the emotion of guilt like other negative feelings. Like anger it can be channeled to make us more sympathetic and conscientious individuals.
Mine was exaggerated as a young adult–leading to a few melt downs. I sought psychiatry out to cure my violent and sexual thoughts. Anger and lust. It replaced guilt with shame. You don’t DO bad things; you’re just a hopelessly bad person who deserves to be flung on the garbage heap. Existence was now a sin.
Selective bio-calvinism. Only a few are totally depraved due to bad genes/broken brains. There’s no redemption for them, just shunning and torture from the rest of us genetically superior saints. 😛
When you stop recovering you die. That’s how it works.
What if psychiatry makes someone sick and they are bedfast or homebound so taking care of basic needs is a fight?
I’m recovering from psych damage like many here are. Sorry us getting over ECT and drugging makes you angry, PacificDawn.
Denying “mental illness” is one thing. I don’t believe in it either. But you claim none of us are hurting or in pain. I find this callous dismissal of yours annoying–even infuriating.
Watched the video. That was a very weird statement by Warren. “The moment I had feared since he was born.” ?????
Did he think as he held his newborn, “Oh no. He’s gonna kill himself some day”?
Is he claiming to be psychic? Or maybe his weird idea caused a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe he was just being a drama queen and made an over the top statement that popped into his head during the interview.
Rick Warren is nuts. He’s now embraced quantum mysticism. Which is to quantum physics what psychiatry is to neurology.
And if someone goes on a murder spree while under psychiatric “treatments” we never hear about it. Since it’s always “in spite of” and shrinks can do no wrong. And the media has too many drug ads to “pill shame.”
My grandpa urged me to go off at least some of my “meds.” My parents and I shook our heads. Didn’t he know that “science had proven crazy behaviors are chemical imbalances in the brain”?
Grandpa knew what he was talking about. He hadn’t been deceived by the shrinks’ cock and bull story.
They’re polysyllabic to make shrinks sound like the medical experts they long to be revered as. But they’re really as scientific as the insults of a playground bully who ridicules smaller, weaker children to puff up his own ego. He teaches other kids to call the weak outcast “stupid,” “dummy,” “loser,” “slow poke,” “retard,” “wimp.”
Psychiatry. The profession for overgrown bullies in lab coats.
Matt might not have killed himself if he had given psychiatry the finger. Thus invalidating the gloomy, hopeless labels that made him hate himself and wish himself out of existence.
I’m not some DSM label. I’m a human being!
Rejecting psychiatry’s lies and drugs cured my desire to kill myself.
Without SSRI’s there would be no “bipolar” epidemic. Therefore shrinks and Big Pharma are determined to push them everywhere.
More “bipolars” means more people you can legally force feed 3-6 drugs instead of just 1. Who cares about the lives ruined and dreams crushed? Cha ching! $$$$$
OH, the fact so many homeless people have psychiatric labels is confusing the cause and effect, IMO.
It’s hard to find a job when brain damaged from drugs and psycho surgery. Plus not having a job makes you less marketable–and explaining long periods of unemployment as “I was in psychiatric treatment” is not a good idea.
Not saying group homes are good. But my friend has been drugged and treated like a child so many years she can’t care for herself. Szazs realized this was a problem psychiatry itself creates.
Despite talk of more institutions, in Indiana at least, they are shutting down more state hospitals. My brainwashed friend–a proud “mental patient” was upset when she told me this.
I think this is a good thing–in some respects. But it may lead to homelessness too.
Yes Steve. “Moral materialism” refers to consumerism and greed. “Philosophical materialism” is basically monism which psychiatrists subscribe to.
Many non psychiatrists do not. I don’t, and was surprised to find this is an a priori position of psychiatrists. Minds do not exist, according to Pies, Jaffe, Torrey and the rest. I had always thought, till recently, they had an actual pathology to work with. Wondered why they never used blood work or spinal taps to check the chemical levels in our brains.
It’s troubling too, that Big Pharma is so tightly coupled with the massive bureaucratic government. It owns all our politicians thanks to legal bribes called “campaign contributions” from the lobbyists representing these corrupt businesses.
I agree DS. Psychiatry is a natural outgrowth of the philosophy of materialism. It emerged about the same time materialism became widely accepted by intellectuals in the late 18th century.
All bad behaviors stem–not from bad choices–but bad biology. Moreover, using the bio deterministic premise, the psychiatrist believes he can predict suicide and crimes before they happen through “symptoms.” These are composed not just of bad behaviors, but harmless quirks, expressions of emotional suffering, and what could be considered strengths in the mainstream population. To a non psychiatrist.
The whole concept of “Mental Health Day Treatment” is profoundly insulting.
“You’re all alike.” Despite what those godlike shrinks said we were vastly different people thrown together with no common traits except being drugged out of our gourds and segregated from everyone else.
The “classes” were dull and so stupid they would insult anyone who wasn’t too sunk in their own self worth to get upset at being talked to like an 8 year old at age 38. 😛
Btw, that’s my experience. I’m not trying to bash Cody or anyone else in that circumstance. I’m mad at the folks who run those centers/groups. And that’s always been a patronizing “Normal telling us how hopelessly sick and crazy were. In my experience.
Stephen, on some level I sort of chose the scapegoat role. I have always had poor coping skills and been too sensitive and cried too easily.
I wish I had been made of tougher stuff like my siblings. One thing this society frowns on, it’s sensitivity. Be a steel bowl, cause they smash the china dishes.
Bob, thank you for Mad In America. Thank you Laura Delano, if you’re reading.
I have a story similar to Laura’s, but I was in the System for 23 years. I already read Glasser where I discovered psych treatments are no different than street drugs. But without sites like MIA I never could have gone drug free and escaped the System.
John, I can’t speak from personal experience. But I imagine court ordered/involuntary would be far worse than my “voluntary” role as a deceived patient. Abusers don’t like it when things don’t go their way. If you are “ungrateful” and “non-compliant” they will take it out on your butt. Which belongs to them.
“Your soul belongs to Jesus. Your a** belongs to me.” Could have been spoken by a shrink. They don’t want your soul since most are materialists and if they believed in souls would assume the SMI don’t have them like Real People. But they do own your butt quite literally and can get 6 toughs to wrestle you to the ground and inject you with maddening neuro-toxins.
I had always been a willing patient till my escape. By “willing” I mean I acted on the deception presented as medical information.
But I knew from the beginning if I were naughty there would be severe punishments. 😛 I mean “treatments.”
“A bumper-sticker phrase that saves time.” Or just a bald lie to trick folks into taking drugs and forcing others–including small children–to take them.
Sickening! Why should anyone trust a doctor who routinely practices this level of deception on his patients and the public? Would you even buy a used car from this character?
Assuming there was something wrong with someone’s brain–since they have no idea what the problem is–all bio psychiatry consists of is lots of mind altering drugs and other forms of random brain damage. It’s not “like insulin for diabetes.” They have no idea how they’re screwing with the human neuro chemistry. It’s not like removing cancer from the brain the way a neuro surgeon would.
Know why I’m radical? I’m very angry at being lied to. By NAMI, the psychiatrists, everyone in the Mental Illness System. They also lie about us, and slander the character of their patients. No other medical specialty does that. 🙁
I read that article by Doc Pies in the APA Journal. The cold-blooded fraud and his fellow cons seem to be laughing up their sleeves at the “uninformed” public they pulled one over on. Disgusting!
Escaped this grotesque hoax after 25 years. Living in poverty, crippled from the fake “medicines.” I feel like one of Dr. Farid Fata’s victims. But no one will listen to people like us. So the inhumane barbarism continues!
It’s just destroying normal brain functions. They could achieve similar benefits with baseball bats, icepicks, and street drugs like heroin and meth. Only that would not LOOK like real medicine. It wouldn’t LOOK scientific. PR is all that counts after all. 😛
They did effect me. The SSRI known as Anafranil kept me awake for 3 weeks in a row. Brought on psychotic mania–for which Dr. M blamed me.
#patientshaming is my rebuttal to #pillshaming. The latter hash tag is just the psych establishment’s attempt to cover its naked rump with a kleenex. Not hard to see through.
I have had acquaintances tell about police breaking into their homes with guns drawn though they weren’t breaking the law or violent. Why? Suicide calls.
As dumb as it gets. Reminds me of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera where a man is going to be executed for attempted suicide. Dumb, dumber, dumbest….
Because that way they can dismiss worsening of hallucinations, depression and cognitive decline in those they treat. And bill them for “meds” until they die.
A major problem in researching recovery narratives is many recovering survivors have gone underground.
They are afraid–understandably–of being yanked back into the system. After recovering not just from the original trauma but the trauma disguised as “treatments” by those they naively trusted.
I’m not against everything he did. Just lying to patients about having leukemia to sell them unnecessary cancer treatments and make them bald, toothless, and homebound. (If they survived.)
Tut tut. Pretty extreme of me.
Btw, psychiatrists who do not tout the bio-model exist, but they’re an anomaly. I do not know a single one in person. Most write for this site.
Where I live even GPs don’t criticize the bio model. That would be “extreme.” So they watch us get horribly sick from the drugs and die young. Yay for the “middle ground” heroes.
I think I’ll write a book about reasonable folks who went with the flow and never offended (the powerful.) How about Portraits in Moderation? Courage is SO extreme and radical. 😀
I prefer living in a Red State BECAUSE of the lack of “help.”
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” Henry David Thoreau.
I thought psychiatrists like to paint their critics as “science denying, flat earther Scientologists.” Lol.
Have actually read some articles using this over-the-top language. And they accuse “moderate” nice guys of it too. Like you Ron.
Might as well defend ourselves with a strong offense. Unlike many with jobs in the system, those opposing psychiatry have nothing to lose.
They have destroyed our reputations, careers, and everything for the crime of asking for help. Now we make our living as digital nomads in the shadows. Why beg for mercy from those who think they own our souls? Give us FREEDOM instead!
To our psychiatric overlords: Even a cornered rat will fight back. Even if you kill it you may not walk away with your nose intact!
I was not helped by my “medicines.” They exacerbated my depression and caused some psychosis I had not experienced before. Going off them has helped “cure” my mental problems.
No doctor will hear stories like mine. Just those that reaffirm their foregone conclusions. “We don’t know how the treatments work. We just know they do. If a patient says they’re not feeling better we know they’re delusional. Or they ‘resist’ our treatments and need the severe kind.”
There are many others doctors will not hear. And they try to sweep it under the rug, “Oh, I guess you never were mentally ill in the first place.” How many others would get better if they escaped? That frightens psychiatrists. So they never ask.
How to get out of the revolving door? If you ride the darn thing in circles you will never get anywhere. So quit riding it.
Maybe they assume MLK was “middle ground” because he encouraged pacifism. The two are NOT the same. Tyrants have a long history of regarding pacifists as enemies of the state. And not without reason. 🙂
If a psychiatrist pets puppies or feeds kitties good for him.
But those are him acting as a human being. Not a “doctor.”
Psychiatry as a branch of science is not about healing but destruction of the brain and other body parts. And defamation of character without due process.
I’m not against everything X does. Just everything Dr. X does to his “patients” with drugs, labels, shocks and any other brain damaging surgeries. Quite likely Dr. X acts out of ignorance rather than cruelty. But the damage is real.
I have suffered myself and continue to do so. Your words come across as harsh and unkind.
Whose suffering have I dismissed? I have described my own experiences. If you and others can’t find a “silver lining” I don’t wish to shame you.
I do wish to end the injustice of psychiatry, but that will not undo the damage causing my body to ache head to toe on days like to day when I’m home bound. It won’t help me find a decent place to rent.
Please think of that when you accuse me of “meanness” and get hostile to others who try to make sense of or transcend their pain.
Trying to treat depression by altering the brain chemistry…isn’t that what alcoholics already do? The big difference between an alcoholic and a “meds compliant consumer” is one regularly visits the bartender. The other sees a guy who claims the soul is an organ and the drugs he pushes will save it.
If a bartender were found to be kidnapping former customers and forcing them to drink copious amounts of Scotch or whiskey he would get in big trouble. And he can’t bill Medicaid for the booze.
If one said, “Hey, since trying this herb you recommended I can’t sleep and feel nervous all the time,” you wouldn’t double the dosage. (Then forcibly inject it when he/she demurs.)
White supremecists do a lot of what Freud called projecting.
I think projecting may be behind some of the over-the-top articles posted by elite shrinks on the APA Journal about the “vast underground anti-psychiatry conspiracy.” If they weren’t shrinks–and therefore the epitome of cool reason and sanity–you might call this paranoia. 😀
As RW points out in Anatomy of an Epidemic we already have brain doctors–neurologists. We already have folks who help with philosophy called psychologists.
Psychiatrists attempt to treat “disordered” souls with mind altering drugs. Even as far back as Shakespeare and Hawthorne people realized this was something doctors could not do.
Part of how I convinced my religious parents it was okay to go off the drugs a psychiatrist prescribed was reading Dr. Pies’ piece about how dumb people were to think psychiatrists actually believe in chemical imbalances. He also harps about the philosophy of materialism and the a priori assumption of monalism. (Must be the brain because minds/souls don’t exist.)
My dad is a retired clergyman and theologian. When he read the article he actually snorted.
Mom has opted out of going on more drugs for her depression. I’d like to think this canary has been of some use to the coal miners. 🙂
Is there a “medication” for cowardice? Cowardice is to fear what depression is to sadness.
But cowardice benefits psychiatry since they can use it to force “insight” admissions and threaten the “non compliant.” So I doubt we’ll see any anti cowardice pills soon.
Cowardice also motivates reporters to stick to “middle ground” position and not offend the all powerful Experts though they know innocent lives are being destroyed.
Sadly many continue to suffer in the meantime Dragon Slayer.
A support system for going off these neuro toxins is nice. But good luck finding one in most areas.
My only support system was the virtual community: Surviving Antidepressants. The folks there know more about SSRI withdrawal than most doctors. Because they actually help people go off. Hard to be good at something you refuse to even permit.
Life coaches can make over $200 an hour. They don’t work for Mental Illness Centers and generally look down their noses at everyone in that system. No way folks like us could afford them.
They have a rule not to work with the “mentally ill” either and will usually refuse services to anyone with a label–I hear.
Of course there are a wide range of coaches. Career coaches can be helpful if you want to think over employment options. Finance coaches can help figure a way to get out of debt. One coach I actually hired was a “blogging coach” just starting out. It was nothing like psycho therapy.
If you don’t like a coach you can say, “Forget you!” and fire him/her. Not so easy with “therapists” at community centers. I fired my last one and everyone responded with gas lighting. “You must have imagined she said that since she’s ‘normal’ and you’re nuts.” A lot of pressure and nags.
But I put off getting a new one till I carried out my escape plan. Then I ran.
So you believe Rick Warren pulled the trigger to stage Matt’s murder? Why???
Btw, his cognitive dissonance is astounding. “My son despaired of life on these ‘safe and effective meds.’ Since they did NOT help him I want to force them on everyone since I’m sure they’ll save their lives.”
But idiocy and first degree murder are very different. Rick Warren is now dabbling in Quantum Mysticism. A movement physicists laugh at.
If we can ban involuntary psych “treatments” and ban false advertising along with educating the public, psychiatry may be destroyed since we’ll cut it off at the knees.
Right now many grateful “consumers” will attack our movement along with the entire medical profession (all doctors) every branch of government and nearly everyone else.
Szazs himself practiced counseling on “consenting adults.”
Of course the problem with counselors assigned by your “mental illness” center is they are paid to keep you drugged and in the system. Keeping people miserable and helpless is their bread and butter.
The majority of the “mentally ill” would spontaneously recover if properly tapered off the psych brain drugs. With no other help. This is obvious since “recovery” has plummeted from 70% to 10% since psychiatry started pushing their cursed brain drugs everywhere.
Would you prefer 10% (with Parkinsonism, seizures, brain damage, premature death) or 70% in seeking medical options? If you were a “doctor” who made big bucks from repeat customers you would prefer the former. But patients feel differently.
Remember the lying cancer specialist who told people they had leukemia to sell them lots of chemo? Psychiatry is a branch of “medicine” composed entirely of Farid Fatas.
In The Screwtape Letters Lewis’s unreliable POV character talks about how they long for the day of the “materialist magician.”
Materialst Magician sounds like psychiatrist to me. Their DSM is spells and curses. They rely on potions and amulets. (Placebos.) Instead of summoning spirits they work with “chemical imbalances” they know don’t exist and laugh up their sleeves about.
Articles like this make me more anti psychiatry than ever.
I plan on taking the message public when the time is right. But it will be for regular people. No sense wasting time on psychiatrists who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.
A lot of the “mentally ill” and many others would like to know the truth if I can persuade them.
Yes. No legitimate medical branch defames its patients this way. That’s why there is no anti-cardiology movement or anti-gynecology movement.
Without “stigma” they would lose their real power and they know it.
The Middle Grounder looks at the evidence presented on the damage done by psychiatry.
“Yes. Those medications seem to not help people. They shorten lives and destroy bodily organs. But why adopt such a crusading, militant tone? Why this irrational movement of zealots out to destroy psychiatry?
“Just because your life has been destroyed is no reason to get all radical and try to stop those who harmed you from hurting others.”
What is wrong with those people? Their “moderation” comes across as cowardly and cold blooded.
I guess I never experienced it; I don’t even know what the letters stand for.
None of my “therapists” followed any real theory. Some helped a little–or would have if I hadn’t been drugged and labeled. Many just repeated, “Take your meds. Realize you’ll always be insane. Take your meds. Don’t follow your dreams, or have dreams. Take your meds….”
The true enemies of science are those who use “anti science” and “X denier” as political buzzwords to silence dissent. How is that any better than prosecuting Galileo for his theory of the heliocentric universe?
Krista from where I am now, I find your advice helpful as well as motivating.
But I don’t think Katel is coming from the same place you and I are at. There was a time reading something like that stirring comment would have made me gloomier than before.
My cat has been shunned by other kitties. Her own litter mates drove her away from the barn where she used to live. Abby is a sweetheart and tends to walk away from fights with other cats.
She lives with me now. We’re both happy with the arrangement. 🙂
Steve, I think there’s more than economics at play in our culture’s embrace of bio-psychiatry. A lot of us are selfish pigs.
Thanks to the concept of Mental Health we don’t have to pat someone on the back. “Sorry you’re feeling depressed. Let’s discuss it over coffee. Then, if you feel like it have dinner with my family and we’ll watch a movie together.”
Now we say, “Your depression is a disease like TB or leprosy. Please see a doctor and take meds to fix it. I’m not equipped to deal with you since I’m not a certified professional. And please stay away from my kids in the future.”
On the positive side, my “diagnosis” cured me of perfectionism. I no longer had to play the role of Perfect since I had been assigned the one of Madwoman.
My parents were not perfect, but the real abuse came from bizarre, controlling adults at church. Like sometimes good parents discover their kids are being molested. (Someone Else’s situation.) Church can be a very good thing. Like an extended family. If a family turns dysfunctional though, you need to set some boundaries. Now, as an adult, I can finally. 🙂
My family was more accepting of my choice to leave psychiatry than I dared hope. Going was my idea (originally) to “fix” the problem that I was too smart, interested in abstract ideas, and bored by pop culture. 😛
I have felt, since my mid teens, like I was an embarrassment to my family.
As a preacher’s daughter I was in the public eye–on a small scale. Instead of open rebellion I became obsessed with winning approval by being as thin as possible, wearing the appropriate amount of makeup, earning good grades but not showing off my intelligence in public (unfeminine.) Not to mention currying favor with high ranking, wealthy parishioners and kissing the butts of the nastiest elders’ wives who would make trouble for Dad otherwise.
Sadly I could never say the Right Thing all the time. Mom would take me aside often and harp on my social inadequacies and failings. Nothing was good enough!
I learned it wasn’t about Jesus or holy living but looking good and keeping up appearances. And kissing up to the “right people.” 😛
I took after Dad. I read a lot, was interested in ideas instead of things, and couldn’t figure out what came naturally to other girls. Like talking for hour after hour about nothing. Or expressing interest in a guy without actually telling him. Or keeping abreast the latest fashion trends and pop culture.
At 15, after a prolonged period of homelessness I felt responsible for, I decided to go quiet and try to become invisible. Since everything I said or did was wrong and brought shame upon my family.
As the new girl I made an easy target. Serious, bookish, and quiet. A group of the nastiest male students would describe graphic sex acts to me in the halls. Try as I would to conceal my distress and ignore them–which everyone told me to do–my face would look weird and my body would tremble. The sight of my emotional pain brought them exquisite delight. But none of them were “diagnosed SMI.”
According to the APA that kind of bullying is healthy and normal. Lol. (Maybe the psychiatrists who write the DSM identify with school bullies. Or enjoyed bullying weaker kids when in high school themselves.)
This led to severe social anxiety at 18. Too afraid to leave my college dorm room.
I readily believed I was SMI when told, unhappy as the diagnosis made me. What else could it be? I “knew” there was something terribly wrong with me since I couldn’t win the love and approval of all I met.
It relieved my family a little–shameful and scandalous as the label was. At least they understood why I couldn’t play the stupid social games to perfection! (Ever tried social hobnobbing and butt kissing while drugged out of your gourd? It’s a bummer!)
Dr. Fred, I sense you want to make reparations for what you have done. Perhaps your conscience troubles you. 🙁
I never had you “treat” me but as a member of a group wronged by members of your profession I want to offer you my forgiveness, even as I hope to be forgiven for my trespasses.
FWIW, Dr. Peter Breggin was threatened with the loss of his license by NAMI.
So…even if a psychiatrist is reprimanded it could just as easily be for doing the right thing as something unusually bad (and not covering it up cleverly.)
Seems like our society as a whole assigns the blame to the one who’s “too” emotional, speaks unpleasant truths, or is weaker than the rest. These are usually those who “lose it” from stress and get punished for it by shrinks and others. 🙁
Well, part of our focus on the role of psychiatry is that that’s what this site is about. If this were a site about abusive parents/partners/religious cults there would be more conversation about THAT. 🙂
I understood neuro plasticity to be a form of healing.
Btw Sam, many here have suffered horribly from the MH system. But I haven’t heard any regulars say their lives were idyllic before. Julie Greene was in an abusive relationship which caused a lot of other problems leading to the ED she sought help for. Frank admits he had an “episode” due to stressful crap in his life. KS was abused as a child by her parents and others. I moved around a lot and struggled with attachment issues since I gave up trying to make new friends in my teens. Betrayal by an older woman friend who got my dad fired and my family evicted for petty reasons. Two prolonged periods we were forced to stay with relatives since Dad couldn’t keep work due to his lofty idealism. Two years of sexual harassment in high school and the teachers laughed when I told them. Went off to college but was scared of people….stuff adds up.
Let the guilty off easy by punishing the innocent. (Assume all “bipolars” and “schizophrenics” are guilty of horrible crimes they will commit if they roam at large. “Untreated.”)
Lock up the innocent eccentrics in a warehouse with violent rapists, serial killers, and child molesters. All “bipolars” are exactly alike after all. Then tell yourself what a benevolent good guy you are while you pocket what Big Pharma paid you.
When I read this I thought, Folks will accuse this writer of victim blaming.
But there really are people who love these labels. Even “hard” ones. Kay Redfield Jamison built a career on being “bipolar.” It’s her personal brand.
I read a Xojane article where the writer describes how happy she is to know she’s depressed. Which makes you laugh if you think too hard.
I have also known (a very few) nasty individuals who used “mental illness” as an excuse for abusing spouses, partners, and kids. And seen reports of serial killers who were glad to use the insanity defense to escape full legal penalties.
Not just guns. The “MI” already have no Second Amendment rights. A lot of do-gooders want us all locked up in institutions. At least the “severe” cases. “Softies” described in this article who like to talk about the “brain disease called depression” will probably be left to lead almost normal lives and praise the miraculous SSRI drugs. Assuming they don’t have a reaction like I did and wind up labeled “bipolar.”
Yes. These poor oppressed psychiatrists are the only ones actually affected by the diagnoses they hand out. Alas!
We lowly SMI scum can’t appreciate how ONLY these poor professionals endure the stigma. Not even their $100,000 a year can compensate for the bigotry they alone must endure.
For those of you not forced to take neuroleptics I’m sure what they suffer brings tears to your eyes. *Sniff.*
Even if you take the drugs that make you suffer you’ll still get punished. Shrinks have angry tantrums when you have the audacity to sieze or fall over or have heart failure or diabetes while faithfully taking their poisons. If you don’t magically improve on massive quantities of drugs you must be #pillshaming. 😛 Like forcing people to wear balls and chains while making them simultaneously run laps.
They’ll lie to your friends and family. “If she would only take her ‘meds’ she would get better. They NEVER cause people’s eyes to role back in their heads. She’s crazy or lying and faking it.”
Cause gas lighting is what they do best. Can’t win for losing.
Shrinks talk about the stigma of “mental illness.”
Americans–and the Western world–stigmatize sadness. It’s viewed as shameful. Stupid to need a permission slip from a doctor to excuse not grinning ear to ear 24/7! 😛 Why the heck do we have to PRETEND we’re happy all the time?
During the Black Death folks were miserable, but they weren’t shamed for it or forced to fake a stupid grin when weeping was called for.
So Bcharris, do you recommend a paleo or vegan diet for maximum health? Or maybe pescovegetarian?
Yes John, the “mentally ill” eat a lot of junk food along with guzzling quarts of coffee and chain smoking in a desperate attempt to counteract the horrible feeling those drugs create.
Now I drink a cup of coffee a day. More makes me overstimulated. I’ve lost 11% of my body weight and hope to lose more.
Sorry about your situation. I realize you–and many other case workers–are not medical professionals and if you spread misinformation it’s because you’re also deceived.
While I was working out a MH escape plan I remember a worker at day treatment telling us to eat right, exercise, and always take our “meds.” I thought how sad it was he honestly wanted to help us. But taking the “meds” was the opposite of healthy and would undermine the benefits of the first two.
Szazs would agree that many embrace the role of madman or madwoman.
I hated mine, but never questioned it. I felt there was something wrong with me. Everyone expected me to be someone I wasn’t. Sweet, soft-spoken, fine-boned, slender, blonde, never angry only gentle tears under the worst circumstances, smiling nearly always. The Perfect Preacher’s Daughter.
At 20, after I was labeled “Schizo affective” thanks to a bad reaction to Anafranil I hated myself. Couldn’t quit thinking of ways to kill myself.
They told me no one could ever love a crazy freak like me. Also I could never even earn an independent living since no one hired SMIs. Not like I could work full time. 🙁
I did Number 1 on the list. But as a consolation prize. I really believed I was a sick, crazy monster.
It was a relief to realize I wasn’t hopelessly insane. But at 45 my life is mostly over. Not sure there’s much of anything worth saving. 😛
Janebeth, are you in a situation where you could adopt another kitty? Pounds are always desperate to find homes for adult cats who make excellent pets if given the chance.
My dad adopted a stray, but couldn’t keep her because the other house cats bullied her when her leg was damaged and she couldn’t live outdoors. So Dad gave Abby to me and visits her regularly. Everybody is happy now.
Abby is so happy someone loves her at last. 🙂 So am I.
Starting over at 45. Kind of the reverse of you Jane.
My goal is to be earning enough to go off all benefits in another 3 years. Feeling well enough to work part time from home. I can also keep a decent home–even by HUD standards. And find social groups outside the MH ghetto.
My health is slightly improved after being drug free for 19 months. My mysterious heart arrhythmia righted itself and I’m no longer borderline diabetic. Could be MUCH worse.
Speaking from personal experience when I first took a tiny amount of the neuroleptic Stellazine I had been suffering severe social anxiety as a college freshman. It shut down the part of my brain used for tensing up so I made friends and could stay on campus.
Looking back though, alcohol would also have had similar benefits. “Exposure therapy” would have been the real answer to my problems.
Like how Szazs described “mental illness” as a role people play. Educators know it’s harmful to label a kid “stupid,” “liar,” “lazy,” or “worthless.” But somehow they think these names help them.
Yes. To her credit Kelly Brogan is using her medical license and knowledge to undo the damage psychiatrists have done and helping unhappy women–often with nutritional deficiencies–to avoid the SSRI/SNRI gauntlet offered by psych ex-spurts.
Get medical training in neurology, a legitimate branch of medicine that actually does deal with the brain. Or, if you actually like people, become a counselor like Peter Breggin and other old school “psychiatrists.”
I believe you. So can Peter Breggin, RW, and countless others.
But hard evidence is no match for propaganda like Big Pharma ads, TV shows, and catchy soundbites. People believe what is simple and easy to understand. If an idea is too complex they dismiss it as “paranoid conspiracy theory.” Why bother trying to understand the whole truth when little lies are easier to grasp?
Sadly even credentials, research, and platforms aren’t convincing people. Probably because off this site many do not read books. They get all their info off TV shows, medical leaflets, local NAMI groups, and word of mouth from family doctors.
Also giving people these life long badges of shame (“schizophrenia” and “bipolar”) for having temporary break downs is the exact opposite of helpful. Along with the crippling drugs.
But that’s assuming psychiatrists wanted us to lead healthy, productive, independent lives.
I’m sure you don’t dismiss what patients say, I mean. Sorry. I appreciate what you have done and are trying even if I don’t agree with all you say here.
Seriously, I predict this getting angry and fighting those asking them for humane treatment will blow up in these psychiatric head honchos’ butts. Or faces…whichever.
Saying you oppose human rights is not the best PR. No other (legitimate) medical branch could get away with it.
And that Dr. Torrey is why there’s an anti-psychiatry movement. Cardiologists aren’t actively opposing human rights for heart patients. 🙂
“Great Scott! What’s the world coming to? Must psychiatrists treat their test subjects humanely? How outrageous!
“What’s next? Cancer patients claiming the right to refuse unlimited rounds of chemo on the spurious grounds the cancer specialist can’t prove they have leukemia?
“By George, this is unsettling! How’s an honest-to-gosh science guy in a lab coat supposed to make monthly yacht payments with all this nonsense about human rights, ethics and other anti-science stuff?
‘Pardon me while I go puff up like a blowfish.”
Thus spake Dr. Ariel Castle at an APA awards banquet.
Dr. Joanna you can never fully appreciate the torment these drugs cause if you haven’t taken any. Emotionally versus chemical reactions. I hope you listen to what your patients say and don’t dismiss it, but I’m sure you don’t.
Haldol (10 mg) caused me seizures, Parkinsonism, and worsened my OCD and caused full blown psychosis during my fits. No one believed me. 🙁 The doctors told my parents I was lying and if I took those drugs (I did! I did!) everything would be fine.
It’s over…thank You God! But being drugged for 25 years–on a cocktail between 1994-2016–has left its mark. My life never will be a good one even if it is a few years longer.
Most shrinks realize “bipolar 2” cases brought on by SSRI/SNRI reactions would go away if they just let you go off the poison and recover. But that would be pill shaming.
So they exact revenge on you for daring to have a reaction to the “meds” which can do no wrong and they have gone on record calling “safer than aspirin.”
My sister is allergic to penicillin but no doctor spread nasty rumors about her and forced her to take a “cocktail” of benadryl, advil, and double the original amount of penicillin till she died. Yet that’s exactly how psychiatry works.
I missed that part about the therapist. Surprised one would admit those “lifesaving medicines” could hurt you. My guess is she or he runs an independent practice. Am I correct Jane?
The depression lifting near the end of the taper is what I experienced too in coming off Effexor after 23 years on SSRI’s and 25+ years on one psych drug or another. But mostly “cocktails.”
Your story is a great example of the “patient shaming” psychiatry routinely practices. “Our pills are magic. Yet you gained a bunch of weight, can’t hold a job, make friends, or even clean your living space. What’s wrong with you? It can’t be the fault of the stuff we prescribe. You’re just not trying. Let me double your medication.”
Both are based on what cannot be scientifically proven and promise to cure the dark side of human nature. Many people “choose” to follow psychiatrists’ orders despite the sickness and misery it produces out of fear the “mental illness” will make them do horrible things otherwise. Even harm other people.
FWIW my religious faith stopped me from suicide. Not any “help” from my (mostly) well-meaning but clueless psychiatrists.
Dumping my faith in psychiatry has given me a new lease on my original faith in the Man of Galilee.
Faith is not about the irrational but the invisible. Not all faith can even be called religious.
I have faith a country named China exists though I have never visited there. I have faith the food I eat is not poisoned though I can’t run lab tests on it. I have faith that the earth is a sphere and revolves around the sun. Yet I have never been to outer space.
A lot of religious people are scrupulously honest too. Because of their kindly, simple hearts they don’t believe nice Dr. Brown could tell outrageous lies and sell mind altering drugs by comparing them to “insulin for diabetes.”
They can’t know. So…to be safe..they assume all visitors are diseased, the drugs help (though they say they don’t know WHY) and the physical disease actually exists in the brain. Since–they assume–minds do not.
Nearly all traits associated with “schizophrenia” are highly unflattering. So whatever the name is it will be insulting and cause discrimination in all who take it seriously.
Psychiatrists have determined the term Schizophrenia to be stigmatizing. So they’re replacing it with the alternative diagnosis Crazy Creepy Psycho Disorder.
Yes. When a woman is lactating she’s very vulnerable to micro nutrient deficiencies.
Also the situation of bringing a newborn home is very stressful.
In the old days this was helped by having an older woman–mother, sister, sister-in-law help out while she adjusted to motherhood. However, even back then, new mothers would stress out. Like a lot of Weir Mitchell’s victims. Anyone read “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins?
Yes JanCarol. The closest thing to voluntary patients psychiatrists have are people desperate to end their unhappiness–but unwilling or unable to make necessary life changes or simply deal with negative circumstances. So desperate that–though the doctor or psychiatrist tells them the drugs fix no known brain problem but may make you feel better before giving them. Silly how many would think it scandalous to get pills or injections from street dealers to feel good, but if a man’s a doctor it’s okay. (Doctors have dealt illegally with drugs too. Further complicating things.)
I don’t believe in mind altering drugs to feel good and am angry at being lied too despite no “involuntary” imprisonments or AOT sentences. I did what I thought was the responsible thing to do–not just for me but those around me. As a result my finances, relationships, and health are ruined. And I’m forced to mooch off my aging parents who aren’t happy about the “help” I was given either.
To be fair no psychiatrist ever told me that Steve.
But numerous workers at the Mental Centers where these professionals work did. Countless supportive family members–the real brains–told us this at NAMI. Pete Earley admits this is a falsehood on his blog–can’t do links here–but says if it makes people take their “meds” it’s okay to lie.
Yes the insulin is actually heroin. We can’t prove you have diabetes.But don’t you dare stop taking the white stuff. For rea$on$. 😛
“Outside the body” is a metaphor since souls don’t occupy space and are not substances. Independent of is what I believe.
I have read monist psychiatrists ridiculing the “idea that the mind is a separate substance in the brain.” Perhaps they think the concept of mind or soul we hold is ectoplasm similar to the glowing slime in Ghost Busters?
May not be a Strawman Fallacy. Psyches are incomprehensible to these psychiatrists.
Even atheists like Szazs believed in the power of mind over brain.
Dr. Coleman, if you want to help people with legitimate medical problems causing gloom or weird thoughts/behaviors I am all for it. 🙂
That, however, is not psychiatry. You don’t visit psychiatrists for anemia, thyroid disease, Lyme’s disease, or brain tumors though they’ll gladly label you with “Clinical Depression,” “Schizophrenia,” or “Bipolar” if you do.
You misunderstood me DJ666. Psychiatric drug addict. All my drugs were prescription and coerced.
SSRI’s are highly addictive.
Since “DJ666” is plugging this new wonder drug, let me plug the site SurvivingAntidepressants.com. It helped me–and countless others come off those highly addictive toxins. Effexor has been compared to heroin by someone who took both and she said it was harder to come off of.
I might not have made it without my friends at the online community and the advice they gave. No doctor could give this advice because they refuse to take people off–with a few rare exceptions. (And if you suffer withdrawal they blame you and put you on more drugs.)
The people running this site are all volunteers working out of the generosity of their hearts. They do not get paid for these services.
And they are not paying ME to sell anything either. 🙂
Two part poll for people officially “diagnosed” with “Bipolar 2.”
1. Did your psychiatrist claim an SSRI unmasked the “symptoms” you never had before using it?
A. Yes
B. No
2. What did the psychiatrist prescribe the SSRI for?
A. Depression
B. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
C. Other
Moral injury–unlike physical or emotional–can only be done with the consent of the injured. Lack of moral backbone–as Madmom says is the big problem leading to “moral injury.” Do what is right and you won’t damage your conscience.
Btw, when I hear high ranking shrinks enjoying wealth, power, and fame whimpering how stigma really only effects them i laugh out loud. Like some Grand Wizard saying any opposition to the KKK is racist. And it’s all directed at him personally. Bwahahaha!
Well if I conduct it for journalistic purposes OH, I don’t need to follow scientific research guidelines. Polls don’t require doctorates come to think of it. They conduct them on the 6:00 news all the time.
And it’s not just feelings but the “diagnosis” of a “medical expert.” You need the legally valid psychiatric label of Bipolar 2 to take it. Is it scientifically valid? No. Is it socially valid? Many here say “mental illness” is a social construct. It can really alter your life.
I too have struggled with misanthropy Lcostanzo. Many survivors do–long after withdrawal has ended.
My solution? Unconditional love. Still a work in progress.
Realize in rejecting the “mentally ill” the undiagnosed seek justification for their own failings. In rejecting us they are rejecting the dark, ugly sides of themselves they refuse to own. They are not so much EVIL or delighting in cruelty as foolish and careless of others.
Plus it’s impossible for “outsiders” to fully understand the agony psych drugs cause us. My best friend was shocked when I told her how dead and miserable I felt under the influence. For some reason I seldom complained about THAT, though I whine a lot.
Probably knew no one would listen; just one of those things I had to put up with. Plus I didn’t want to hurt anyone and feared I would if undrugged.
Psychiatry has indeed overreached itself by telling 20% or more Americans they have brain diseases rendering them hopelessly insane “without treatment.”
Like the McCarthy hearings, the Salem witch trials, and the Reign of Terror in 18th century France–we have reason to hope that this cruelty and mass paranoia will collapse under its own weight. How many psychiatrized people are enough? Just like there were endless “commies” and witches and traitors the APA refuses to say, “This far and no farther.” More and more “consumers.” Never enough for the bottomless pit of Pharma Psychiatry.
McCarthy had his breakdown on live TV. Citizen Robespierre finally had his own date with Madame Guillotine.
Soon, the members of the APA will be reminded that they too are but men and not God.
It’s worth noting psychiatric “help” leads to poverty, poor health, and segregation. It forces you out of the workforce and estranges you from your nearest and dearest. And doubles your aging speed. I don’t look it, but healthwise I have the body of a 75 year old. I’m 45 and took at least one psych drug for over 25 years.
Side effects include spontaneous combustion of the head, stomach acid eating its way through internal organs, and behaviors associated with rabies. Should any of these occur, contact your doctor immediately. Especially the first.
What does “anti science” mean? Luddites who reject post-Industrial technology? Christian Science members who believe the physical universe is an illusion? Or simply a fellow scientist with a theory another rejects as unscientific and leads to a struggle between them and their followers–based more on egos than mere difference of reasoning patterns?
It’s a highly elastic term meaning whatever the scientist or pseudo scientist wants it to mean. (Like “dummy.) It saves time and energy needed to present a rational argument.
Plus psychiatry is an easy way to get rid of or brush off members who suffer extreme pain. Instead of hours of pastoral counseling to a depressed member going through divorce/job loss/loneliness, you can tell them to shut up and take their meds. Then pat yourself on the back for being a good Christian. 😛
So, why do you suppose mainstream religions have embraced psychiatry instead of regarding it as a threat? Most Christian preachers wouldn’t urge members to convert to Buddhism for example.
Yet I have heard preachers urge people to seek “help” from psychiatry. Directly from the pulpit.
Short term use for 4-6 weeks may be okay. These pills correct nothing but if someone is really stressed they can help them chill. Not as addictive as Xanax.
A short term remedy at best though. Like using sleeping pills to break an insomnia cycle.
And, I know, OH it would only be a consenting, informed individual over 18. Wouldn’t need a psychiatrist for this. No lies about “broken brains” or “chemical imbalances.”
I remember one physically violent guy who was angry at being there. He really wanted to hurt the staff but could have hurt anyone in his way if allowed to go on a rampage.
His anger was justified but so overpowering he might have hurt someone. I have been very angry/irrational at times when my cocktail was highest. Now I can control it better.
I’m deeply concerned how many people urge battered wives not “to be afraid to get help from a psychiatrist for the disease of depression.”
I urged a woman in one forum not to take SSRIs since she needs her wits about her to escape. Plus she may get a harder diagnosis (like bipolar) and wind up unable to work, and losing custody rights to her husband. Plus the court will be biased against her due to her label. Egregious and unjust as that is. 🙁
Labeling someone “schizophrenic” is a great way to ensure that they never marry.
Even if they find a fellow outcast compatible the drugs make it hard to make relationships work. And the government will punish you by docking your income by more than a third. Great way to discourage “criminal types” from breeding.
I always wanted to marry because of my parents’ happy, respectful union.
When I was labeled SMI at 20 I realized I would probably frighten all but abusive creepers away. Good guys shun “schizos” after all. 🙁 For years I was inconsolable.
A search engine. But they also have a bunch of other services like Google Docs and gmail.
I hope the monopoly will be broken up if they censor enough people. There virtual empire is already threatened by “vertical search engines.” If I were tech savvy I would be designing a search engine that would allow users to block out sites they dislike and vote “up” on those they do. 🙂
My condolences Theresa.
Tell the shrinks what they want to hear. They are holding your son hostage till their demands are met. This will make them relax their guard till you can help your son escape the Hell between his ears.
Or once you have the audacity to complain about a drug causing seizures, heart arrhythmia, your weight doubling over a few months, uncontrollable vomiting, hallucinations you didn’t experience before, horrible depression, etc.
I never knew to what to complain about in the “side effect” department since most would deny it or shrug it off as no big deal even if it was listed on the thing the pills came with saying you should report. I learned early on reporting problems was futile and kept my mouth shut about anything negative. Shrinks only hear what they want and dismiss anything negative as delusions/poor insight/agosognosia/personality disorder/fill in the BS. Or they think your premature death by multiple strokes, seizures, or heart attacks is a risk they’re willing to take for Big Pharma kickbacks.
It’s perfectly legal for shrinks to kill patients in the US if they do it by “standard treatment.” Lost two friends to that. Not suicides. Not mistakes. “Standard treatment side effects.” 🙁
(By mistakes I mean bungling the dosage or forgetting allergic reactions. Karen’s shrink knew she was seizing on her drug and thought that was acceptable for her. By her I mean the shrink. Plenty more where Karen came from.)
Labels exist Oldhead. Biologically valid or not.
I want to show the public how even using drugs for “soft diagnoses” like depression/anxiety can ruin your life with a Bipolar 2 label rendering you a degraded non-person in the public’s eye. And a non-citizen with no legal rights at all.
Knowledge of neurobiology can come in useful in revealing and repairing damage done by psychiatry so don’t poo poo that.
I would survey those already labeled by psychiatrists as Bipolar 2 to discover how many were fine till a shrink messed with their brains.
Btw, my parents roll their eyes at news about “antidepressants” now. Mom said she was surprised how much better I am off of them.
And the horse tranquilizers creep many out. More skepticism is occurring even though there are few true “anti psych” people are around. Dr. Phil yelled at a mom for putting her kids on ten drugs apiece through three different doctors.
🙂
Okay. Not attacking you Alex.
So, you’re not protesting his earning a livelihood so much as overpricing it?
Btw, I wish someone would do a survey on people diagnosed with Bipolar 2 to find out how many cases were triggered (“unmasked” the mental illness makers call it) through SSRI use for depression or some off label purpose. Do you need to be a professional to conduct one?
If my writing never pays–the interesting stuff probably won’t–I will have to find another way to earn a livelihood. Using up time and energy that could be used for writing.
Don’t you charge something for the services you offer?
The laborer is worthy of his hire.
I only had one psychiatrist I could call truly evil. On the other hand–out of more than a dozen–only two or maybe three talked to me like a human being. They will only listen to you (generally speaking) if you say what they want to hear.
If you say, “Gee doctor you’re so intelligent. These medicines you prescribed make me feel great. This Zoloft is a life saver.” That they will listen to and use as evidence that what they’re doing works.
If a “consumer” says, “This Haldol is giving me seizures and while I seize I have terrifying hallucinations.” “I haven’t been able to sleep since you put me on Anafranil two weeks ago.” “My depression is worse than ever on Prozac. Can’t quit thinking of suicide.” Well all those patients are clearly delusional and should not be taken seriously. Except you should lock up the third. That will teach him to be treatment resistant! 😀
Things are certainly different now. Even though most guys don’t find obesity attractive they are happy with healthy looking women. Glad that part of the eighties is over! 🙂
Depends on how far you get into it. But my late depression is because it stems from bitterness and lack of faith as well as ingratitude. I had a friend lie in bed and refuse to get up or let his family know he was alive because he was bitter at how his life had turned out. Anger turned inward.
Yes, I have been depressed and have been very much so lately.
But it comes and goes like any other feeling. My life sucks– largely because of psychiatry. I have a right to feel very sad.
Not sure it will ever go away for long. Because–oh yeah. My life stinks and will never get better!
Psychiatrists only make your problems 10x worse and pretend your rotten life situation is irrelevant. That’s why these guys are worse than useless in solving any problems. Physical, social, or spiritual. Worthless physicians.
Jonathan, I was always dieting in my teens. Anorexic eighties.
My mom, my aunt and every other female friend told me it was impossible to be too thin. All the boys wanted us to look like Callista Flockhart or Kate Moss.
I went off to college desperate to find a husband. I wasn’t fat but far from that lean and hungry supermodel all guys demanded. In my religious subculture you only have a narrow window of time to marry if you’re female. Between 18 and 22. On your 23rd birthday you’e well past your prime since all the guys are taken and you might as well be 46. The colleges are 70% female and female curves make guys think you’re a slut I suppose.
I never could become thin and pretty enough. But I’m sure all those laxatives and crash diets and 3 day fasts for the beautiful body my rotten genes denied me messed me up long before I started SSRIs at 21.
Morbidly obese now, hopelessly alone and middle aged I stay at home and cry with my cat. Still less depressed than on those darn drugs. Tears feel better than that undead zombie state psychiatrists call “good mental health.”
Fatal Attraction meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
My dad frequently remarked on how nutty everyone running the System was. The “crazy’s” were too drugged up to think straight. The real nuts were the sanists running the thing. 😛
The woman who got me diagnosed BPDS actually fits the “symptoms” better than me. But because she slept with a different guy every month or so and never bonded with any she thought she was emotionally sound. 😛
Congratulations Madmom. Your daughter is blessed to have you helping her.
Was in the System for 25 years. Mom almost took me to Canada to see Dr. Abrams but couldn’t. She and I kept telling the doctors I hadn’t been so out of it till the Anafranil kept me awake 3 weeks. No one listened. Till they told us it proved I was crazy by “unmasking” some brain disease that couldn’t show on MRIs.
Finally off drugs for 18 months. Mom is happy. She gave up years ago. I did till I read RW and others.
“I’ll see you at the malls!” While the others held her back from physically assaulting a “patient.” Sounds like one emotionally stable woman with great interpersonal skills. The epitome of reason and a bastion of sanity. 😀
The best situation for a psych test subject to be in is where they thoroughly deceive the deceitful abuser. Kiss up to them. Never complain about “side effects” since they don’t care and are capable of doubling or tripling the drug making you deathly ill as an act of petty revenge. Absolute power does that to people.
Flatter them nonstop. Like a rape survivor I heard who tricked her captor into thinking his kidnap and rape had made her fall in love with him. He took a shower and she escaped. Pretty stupid to think his cruelty would win her undying love and loyalty. But a surprisingly large number of power-crazed people think that way.
A friend of mine watched how shrinks drugged her sister to death and encouraged me to flee the system afterward. 🙁 They kill people. They treat us worse than lab animals.
The big problem with psychology is its association with corrupt drug dealing/brain mutilating psychiatry. If a psychologist or counselor wants to help people they have to start their own practice. Work at the mental illness center and you have to tell folks to remember they’ll always be “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” and promote the drugs the shrink prescribed. Then yell at the “client” for not trying harder or skipping “meds” on the sly (though you lack proof) when they deteriorate on the 3-6 mind altering drugs Dr. Frankenstein has them on.
Btw, Eric Maisel, I know you reject the bio model and work independently. Probably for the reason I describe. Please don’t take this personally. 🙂
Like the priesthood, psycho therapy has a number of sex predators. Only no one believes those preyed upon by the corrupt therapists. (Which is why they do it.)
Going through life with a medicine head is pretty disabling.
If someone were forced to go through life on “therapeutic” levels of Nyquil that kept them from thinking straight that would likely ruin relationships, prevent gainful employment and lead to early death.. Just call the narcotic syrup life saving medicine, claim it saves the lives of those you keep doped up, or prevents them from killing others (because you say it does.)
Psychiatry in a nutshell. The only disability I had was the one they gave me.
Wow! Sorry Fred.
What was Dr. Gestapo mad about? That you managed to escape and he would make you pay for doing so well?
I have to see MDs for physical problems caused by the years on drugs. I have a “mental health” center I say I go to but don’t. Getting rid of my label is very important to me.
Even here people laugh it off as no big deal. But until I get my “diagnosis” changed I’m not safe around any doctor and can be institutionalized if ever discovered. Being denied the rights of citizenship and possibly locked up without due process is no joke.
Anesthetics are used short term for surgeries. Not for a lifetime. Big difference.
Most people don’t want to sleep their lives away. And most wouldn’t take this crap if they weren’t deceived by drug companies, social workers, and doctors they think they can trust.
These people will not get accurate information from traditional sources. 🙁
I’m sure the APA is tinkled pink. More folks taking horse tranquilizers=more psychotic breaks. Which means more bogus claims the drug “unmasked” a condition they couldn’t find before. How convenient–for shrinks! Because the drug’s so addictive psych doctors can fool people into thinking they “need” their “medicine” to fix the imbalanced brain chemistry (well informed) shrinks secretly laugh at.
Just like Anafranil messed my life up. At 45 I feel like a woman of 75.
When do you think Big Pharma will alter adhesives (slightly) to sell as inhalants for the desperately unhappy?
I was taught not to abuse mind altering drugs as a kid. The “mental illness” makers told me repeatedly these were different–non addictive brain fixers. Turned me into an unwitting drug addict.
Lots of street drugs can alleviate depression for a little while. So can huffing rubber cement in a bag. But you can’t bill insurance companies for model airplane glue–gosh darn it! 😀
Think about it. They can try pointless, brain damaging regimens of drugs and psycho surgery on “patients” against their will–often killing them as a side effect of Standard Care. All against their will since the “SMI” don’t know what’s good for ’em and “no” means “yes.”
Why not extend this same line of reasoning to euthanasia?
“Yes, Mrs. Mable says she wants to live. But as a Paranoid Schizophrenic she’s delusional when she thinks her life has meaning. Better do the humane thing and put the poor sicko down immediately. Aren’t we humane?” 😛
I believe Szazs would argue she had a right to kill herself but the doctors shouldn’t get involved. After all you don’t need a medical degree to end a life.
Kind of pompous of doctors actually.
I refrained from suicide as a matter of conscience. I owe psychiatry NOTHING in that respect.
Thanks for sharing, Nic. Dr. Brogan has written a book supporting this. A Mind of Your Own.
It’s worth noting psychiatrists who work at “mental health” centers do not treat thyroid conditions or other endocrine problems nor nutrient deficiencies. I suffer anemia and thyroid problems but seek help elsewhere. The same with proven brain issues like Lyme disease.
SOME psych doctors may check people with depression for thyroid levels or the other conditions you mention. I have been to a number of health centers and clinics and not one ever mentioned checking for these. Even GPs frequently overlook these concerns if you bear an SMI label. 🙁
Varun your story about the effects of the drugs you had been told to take–how they killed your ability to smile and act human–got you accused of “non compliance” made me want to cry.
Been there. Done that. Kept getting accused of going “off my meds” in college when I kept having Parkinsonism and mini seizures from 10 mg of Haldol. The psychiatrist claimed they never did that. My dorm mom told the guidance center I wasn’t taking them or I wouldn’t have the problems the Haldol was creating! This got me kicked off campus.
Funny thing is, now that I have tapered off the 3 drugs I was prescribed for “bipolar 2” no one knows I’m off when I visit a doctor. They often say, “Wow. Your ‘meds’ must really be working well. No flat affect; you’re smiling. Emotionally stable. No longer depressed or suicidal despite your health problems.”
I smile and say the “meds” are working fine. The Placebo Effect cuts both ways. 😀
I had a couple times I experienced a weird, mild tingling sensation in my skull during withdrawal. But from the brain zaps you describe sound like something different. I was lucky that way. Also never suffered from insomnia, believe it or not.
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. At least not one run by human beings. The Big Pharma companies want as much money as possible and–like greedy, selfish people often are–have no forethought and refuse to think more than a decade or two ahead.
Like the Washington demagogues who refuse to think beyond winning the next election. Or the NAMI mommy who just wants her “crazy” kid to shut up for the short term, though she should know it will keep him from adult independence–likely forcing him to live in her basement in his forties.
“Do you want it done right or do you want it done fast?” Pharma psychiatry offers fast fixes and easy answers. Forget the long term results! This is America.
In defense of Sheriff Steve, he is the most fair minded and just moderator MIA has had that I remember. Wish you wouldn’t call names. Especially names like that.
You aren’t a psychiatrist, so the names won’t stick like a psych “diagnosis” but we survivors know words have power.
Yep. After 3 weeks on maybe 8 hours sleep thanks to Anafranil I was finally allowed to cold turkey off it.
I needed sleep and still couldn’t think straight. The good “doctor” cheerfully told Mom and me I had classic schizophrenia since the “medicine never did that to anyone.” Hearing that sent me into full blown psychosis.
Cat, if you want to contact me, my blog is lookingupliving.wordpress.com. A religious site–not about psychiatry. (Except a couple pieces.)
Like you, I’m a libertarian Gen X-er who’s mad at all the bovine excrement we’re being fed. By Big Pharma and others. Dialogue with the “mental illness” makers is pointless.
“Let’s compromise and do things my way. Bend over, grab your ankles and I promise when I hit it won’t hurt VERY much.”
B-b-b-but, Bcharis if they did that it would be “pill shaming.” Pointing out how Ritalin and SSRI drugs cause psychosis might discourage “meds compliance” and lower numbers of folks diagnosed with Bipolar 2. Which would be a tragedy. 😛
Ellie is hallucinating too. Bring on the neuroleptics!
Am I the only one to question how counseling does anyone any good if painful emotions are reduced to a brain disease? If pills are the only cure for sadness why bother talking about it since the sadness is just an irrational symptom of a disease and should be ignored like delusions or hallucinations?
I was depressed as a 7 year old. Not a brain disease. Lousy learning environment. Kept getting yelled at for knowing more than my cognitively disabled peers. SBD class for behavioral issues no amount of punishment could cure. I was a wicked child. 🙁
Don’t forget the psych ex-spurts. Can’t risk offending those either. Cause old “Doc” Torrey and his puppet Jaffe might call us mean names like “anti-psychiatry” and “scientologists” and “flat earthers.” Can’t risk offending these “Real Scientists.”
If we make nice and kiss the butts of all the members of the APA maybe we can peacefully dialogue–before they lock us up and drug or shock us to death. Lol.
Let’s see how long either of these comments stays up.
We anti psychiatry folks need to think outside the box. Social media has been doing a lot of censoring lately. Kicked the anti-vaxxers off Facebook. I’m starting to become an anti-vaxxer myself since the massive propaganda and censoring is a sign there’s something weird going on the vaccine pushers want to hide.
It will destroy Western Civilization. My 12 year old nephew was put on Zoloft for his fixation on tidiness and anxiety. Now he’s failing every subject and is indifferent to everything. His parents shrug it off as a minor “side effect of the medication.” I kid you not. How is that an improvement?
I see the boy’s being groomed for a future as a professional mental patient. Ugh. 🙁
Entertainment causes people to turn on the set. No two way TV’s yet, so they have to lure folks in. Once people are set up for hours of passive, mindless entertainment they’re ready to be mystified and confused.
I don’t think it’s all a conscious effort to make people stupid, but it has that effect sadly. Every time I have been in a psych ward there is a set blaring for 12-14 hours a day. Despite the proven fact excessive TV causes depression. My guess is the staff does it to stupify everyone further (in case the drugs left a few brain cells alive.) You see this in day cares and nursing homes too.
The idea that “bad things only happen to bad people” has been around since ancient times. Harold Kushner talks about this in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He speculates people like this idea since it gives them a sense of control and safety. “If I’m really good I won’t go bankrupt, my spouse won’t leave, and I won’t get cancer.” Of course this backfires if tragedy strikes despite how “good” the person was.
A major problem JClaude is people think psychiatry=help. Many “looneys” go around saying it saved their lives and souls. I have known people with lives obviously ruined by drugs and labels. Poverty, shunned by family, horribly sick, barely able to function outside institutions…yet they swear psychiatry is their savior.
I think this is due to spell-binding, being fed constant propaganda till it outweighs your real experience–like a cult, and the sunken cost fallacy.
With so many career “consumers”, institutionalizing all of them is not as financially expedient as letting them wander the community, crippled and shamed.
Yeah-I-Survived my only problem is $770 isn’t enough for a regular apartment and there’s a stigma with not working.
Every social situation I’m in I get asked, “What do you do for a living?”
One church I attended I sort of lied. Told them I get SSI for Fibromyalgia. (They said some horrible things about “crazies” later. I was right to lie.) The preacher’s wife kept demanding why I didn’t substitute teach, work in daycare, work in fast food, be a cashier. Just because moving is agony and it hurts to stand more than 60 minutes at a time is no excuse for not flipping burgers 40 hours a week it seems! 😛
I’m in that middle ground. I have never been locked up “involuntarily” if you can call being thoroughly deceived that my brain would deteriorate without the “treatment” offered voluntary. Is a diabetic taking heroine because the doctor they trust called it “insulin” a willing junkie? (Food for thought.)
Many like me are too disabled to work after years of psychiatry and need the meager handouts to live. I would have left the System earlier but a poor work history, discrimination, and symptoms like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome still keep me from gainful employment. My heart and other organs were “mysteriously” giving out. None of the doctors would tell me why or what to do about it. I think they knew. 🙁 Escaped just in time!
I knew a man called Dave who believed God was telling him to become President of the USA in 1988. Dave was treated badly by all but my Dad and one or two others. To keep from feeling like a loser Dave NEEDED to hear voices telling him he was special and would be President someday. The reality would be too painful to face. So he had “delusions” and lived in denial of reality.
Nowadays there are doctors who desperately NEED electro shocks to work because this will prove their medical specialty is legitimate and this “surgery” shows they’re more than glorified drug dealers. Plus they hate the idea that all they do is cause random acts of brain damage for “help.” The reality is too painful to face. So they have “delusions” that they’re helping their victims and live in denial of reality.
Yet Dave was crazy and the doctors are considered sane.
Psychiatry also provides the illusion of safety by blaming all violent crimes and shooting sprees on the “genetically defective criminal types.” The high ranking shrinks promise to save the public by “helping” those they’ve scapegoated.
Because they have thoroughly dehumanized us all in the public’s eye, everyone is happy to have the “monsters” locked up and put through cruel, pointless experiments. Even those who have never committed misdemeanors are treated worse than “sane” convicted felons.
If we must have psychiatry it should be kept separate from the government. When the government has the power to lock up and torture without due process only evil can come of it.
Bruce, the article you cite and link to mentions “shift in responsibility” under the part about the willingness to inflict pain.
This is why psychiatry is inherently cruel to its “patients.” The psychiatrist is not responsible to those he diagnoses as “severely mentally ill” but to Society as a whole. He is no more working for us than a prison guard is working for prisoners or an exterminator is working for the rodents he kills.
I have symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome myself. Every so often I need iron infusions and B 12 injections thanks to years of psychiatry. My body can’t process micro nutrients anymore. At least my heart arrhythmia has stabilized.
$770 a month is not enough to rent anything but HUD. (A lot of those are slums.) Even in Indiana.
You never talk to people who feel they have been harmed, only helped Don?
You accuse Dr. Breggin of knowing omission? I know I would feel safe enough with someone like him to share things most psychiatrists laugh off or blame on the “patient.”
I was accused of faking seizures, tardive psychosis, etc. Learned early on to keep “side effects” to myself. Even if they were supposed to be reported no one wanted to hear them or would listen to one of us.
Never had shocks but they sound horrid. Weird how seizures–by drugs or psycho-surgery are supposed to be good for the SMi but not Real People who count.
Pharma-psychiatry owns the media. Nowhere in any mainstream media outlet will anyone criticize Psychiatry. In fact they go to great lengths to hide negative stories.
Plenty of sites for folks to gush about the “help” they have received though.
Sorry KS. You needed and deserved info that wasn’t there.
But what about people like the blogger at Bipolar Burble who get mad at us, and want to have us all locked up because she’s scared of having her “meds” taken away? People throwing tantrums for shocks, drugs and labels?
Personal accountability is why I took the damn drugs Dr. K.
They assured me I was bipolar and my only hope for gainful employment, successful relationships, and living outside an institution depended on compliance. Furthermore I might murder someone if “untreated.”
My family assured me I was “better” and they could stand to be around me now. So, the drugs made me miserable and sick, but I took them as an act of self sacrifice for those around me.
I feel bad about living with my parents and mooching off the tax payers. But my family and the tax paying public wanted me crippled. So it’s their tough luck. By all rights Big Pharma should pay everyone in my situation $1,000,000 for malpractice and false advertising. They won’t though.
Ban involuntary psycho-surgery and drugs. If someone wants their brain damaged and ignores information put out that all ECT and drugs are is brain damage, it’s their brains being mutilated.
Sad. But Dr. K’s article would apply to people seeking easy answers for problems with living.
What about the involuntary “patients”? What about those who can no longer read, talk, or walk from brain damage? What about those who can’t remember family members? Time for them to have their say!
I withdrew by fleeing. No medical help at all. In the USA involuntary shock is standard care. If the authorities knew where I was I could be dragged back. My body can no longer process food properly so I need iron infusions regularly.
The drugs did not help me. They amplified the voices, killed all pleasure, made my weight double, and caused seizures. But no one listens to stories like mine or countless others. Time for OUR voices to be heard!
It’s good you think what they did to you was helpful Bippy. Many of us are not pleased and MIA is one of the few places we can express less than worshipful sentiments toward psychiatry’s random acts of brain damage.
I guess if they damage the right part of the brain the “patient” will stop thinking painful thoughts. And lobotomies are making a comeback according to Live Science August 14, 2018. But it’s “better” because it’s done with lazars so it looks more scientific.
While lobotomies were hip and trendy they compared psych drugs to lobotomies. Nowadays people call that “pill shaming.” Yet the principles remain the same. Where would psychiatry be without its public relations team?
I’m angry they lied to me about a “metaphor” the inner circle tries to pass off as a joke. The Chemical Imbalance Legend is not funny Dr. Pies!
Transportation is the real issue. I will have to make any plans while visiting friends in another city. I live out in an isolated rural area 5 miles from the nearest town of 1400 people. I can’t drive.
I depend on my folks to get everywhere. Was not allowed to get a license at 16 and Mom used my “diagnosis” later as a reason for me never to drive.
But if vampires don’t exist what will Buffy and Van Helsing kill?
Seriously the fact that you can make diseases magically disappear or transform them into something else lends credit to the notion that “mental illness” is indeed a social construct. Can doctors vote cancers into existence? Or turn melanoma into liver disease with a stroke of the pen?
There are groups of writers, educators and editors that assemble to vote on expressions and rules of grammar for proper writing. What I read in They Call You Crazy reminded me of those groups.
But everyone acknowledges the language experts’ efforts are social and artistic–not hard science. And they don’t have the power to lock you up, publicly shame you, or operate on your tongue for bad grammar.
Do these “scientists” have any theory of how ECT is supposed to help people? Or is it just “We don’t know how it works but we know it does (because we really want it to and it shows we’re more than drug dealers)”?
They seem SHOCKED at the idea that brain damage occurs or claim it’s minimal. Get real. No brain damage means it’s not working.
Psychiatry “helps” people in emotional distress by shutting off or destroying random parts of the brain. Nothing has changed since they started drilling holes in people’s heads or ice pick lobotomies. Just better PR and bribing the right people. 😛 And they’re crippling and killing a lot of people who would have been safe from their cruelty a few years ago.
No Bippyone.
I was referring to the woman Peter Breggin mentions at the end of his article. Sorry about the mess your family is in.
I’ve escaped psychiatry but an forced to live in the boonies with my grouchy, critical mother. At 45 she treats me like I am 12. Totally isolated except for her and Dad. Suffering from 25 years on a cocktail so working–even part time is difficult. Plus there’s no ride to work and Mom discourages all efforts to find employment with her put downs.
No housing anywhere. $770 a month is not enough for rent even in my state. Plus if HUD opens Mom insists it must be within less than 25 miles of her and Dad. Now and then she says I should go to a “home” but there are none available. (Thank goodness.)
I have heard of women like me who made remarkable improvements when the mommy they “couldn’t live without” died. I think of this and feel guilty. Hopefully I can escape before then.
Anyone want to hazard a guess why that woman gave a glowing recommendation of ECT and then gave Peter Breggin that note? It sounds suspiciously like an abuse situation. As if she were afraid of someone she knew was watching her and–perhaps–had put her up to saying what she did.
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. ~John Stuart Mill
Like the witch Circe, Psychiatry lures us in with promises of a happy life if we drink the potion. The desperate among us do so and are transformed into pigs.
Thanks. Leaving psychiatry, disowning the labels assigned me and going drug free has helped a lot. My body is a wreck. I feel like a woman of 75 instead of 45. But my soul is no longer asleep. Great to have my mind back!
Stealing from the “consumers'” already meager checks happens all the time in the Mental Illness Factory. Not supposed to anymore than rape or physical beatings, but it does because no one believes the victims–or at least not till there are a lot of them and a truckload of evidence impossible to ignore or hide.
Had it happen to me. The old lady running the boarding home I was stuck in stole the $50 a month I needed to buy personal items like shampoo and toothpaste.
One place in South Bend was so corrupt they not only stole from “consumers” but fudged on government payments too. You don’t steal from Uncle Sam without consequences. They shut Madison Center down. Huzzah! 😀
For Dragon Slayer or anyone else, what books do you recommend for learning the history of modern psychiatry? RW’s books are great but focus primarily on modern Pharma-psychiatry in the last 30-50 years.
From my readings “asylums” began as an industry around the time of the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution. I think the former played a really big role in the obsession with the sane vs insane dichotomy of “mental health.”
I’m curious Sam. Do you feel you have sought to “medicate” your distress and now regret it? Are you upset the wife you speak for has chosen to do so? Or something else entirely?
That’s why I will never have children Mark. Nothing like an SMI label to destroy all your dreams and hopes for this life.
This is already happening. Crippling 20-25% of the next generation before puberty is almost as effective as sterilization. Birth rates in developed countries are in steep decline. In Europe there are actually programs and incentives encouraging folks to have kids.
I don’t see it as a conscious effort, but short sighted greed and not giving a rip about the people harmed. Western civilization is doomed–in large part thanks to the “doctors” who gladly sell poisons to trusting patients in exchange for warm doughnuts and free peeks up Yolanda, the hot pharma rep’s mini skirt. 😛
Two of my friends (at least) were killed by psychiatry. Not suicide because of the misery it created. Not malpractice. “Side effects” from standard care.
Karen was 29 and died from a grand mal seizure caused by a neuroleptic her shrink refused to take her off. Donna was 49; doctors weren’t sure what to put on her death certificate. She was on half a dozen drugs; a bunch of her organs shut down at once.
You’re right. It’s not helpful MM. NAMI has been trying the “Be nice to us; we’re different” for years. Of course with NAMI it’s more like, “Please don’t hate us because we’re defective. If we swallow all these gosh awful pills we’re almost safe to be around.”
The Mad Pride or Neuro-diversity movement tries to put a positive spin on Crazy but the notions of life long madness can never be viewed as a positive. And Kay Redfield Jamison and others have sort of been trying to prove that because an occasional “mad genius” emerges maybe society shouldn’t ostracize some members for crimes they never actually committed.
About the “inflicting pain,” I imagine there are a few cases of doctors turning to sadism. Psychiatry would be an ideal specialty for them since no one will believe people with SMI labels.
The whole thing is scary. #Notallshrinks But the psych system is a hotbed for this cruelty. Psychiatric medicine is Absolute Power. And you know how the saying goes.
Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff’s marks were naive and gullible but they did not deserve to be robbed blind. Nor do those deceived by shrinks deserve to have their lives ruined.
Another thing Dr. K doesn’t mention is the bizarre mindset in America that not being happy ALL THE TIME is shameful if not wicked. As if people need a medical excuse for not grinning like the Joker in Batman 24/7.
Why is this? It’s very stupid.
One example is Bella Depaulo’s impassioned argument that singles were every bit as happy as married people. A question we should ask both Dr. Depaulo and the folks conducting the survey she refuted is: who cares?
Seriously.
Maybe we need to assert our right to unhappiness. 😉
Good point.
In our society astrologers don’t collude with judges to get someone innocent locked up. “He’s a libra and therefore dangerous to himself and others.”
Prominent astrologers don’t go on TV to warn everyone about how virgos may go on killing sprees unless force fed this magical elixir astrologers sell. (Sugar water, rubbing alcohol and meth. Yummy!)
So Dr. K, if someone fed me a capsule of cianide saying it was a vitamin and I swallowed it would you say I voluntarily chose suicide when I was lied to?
There is some truth to what you say, but it borders on victim blaming.
Yes, calling depression and anxiety brain diseases instead of making better ife choices is tempting. BUT…everywhere you go people post or say stuff like “Depression and anxiety are real.” Meaning they are brain diseases. For some reason calling them painful emotions gets people mad. (Aren’t feelings real?)
The church I attend advocates for psychiatry. Tells us how “science has discovered that mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.” Have gone on record saying it’s cruel to tell people to trust Jesus when Prozac is needed to save them.
It should be obvious even to non-religious types that it’s all a sell out. Helps the other members pass the buck and ignore the suffering. “Don’t talk to me. I’m not a licensed professional and might make you crazier.” Having the poor/awkward/unmarried get SMI labels makes a great excuse to give them the cootie treatment too.
No more annoying people to spoil our country club atmosphere. Not enough green stuff to plunk in the offering plate. 😛
Churches selling out to psychiatry are basically saying “Souls don’t exist. Or at least the mentally ill don’t have any. Jesus can’t save you if you’re mentally ill. You’re unredeemable or a nuisance (no real difference) so please stay at the county home where you belong and quit bothering us.”
My dad used to bring a van load of people from a county home where people too brain damaged from shocks/drugs to care for themselves lived. People went to great lengths to stop him from bringing them. Did I mention the church was really pro-psychiatry? Compassion and psychiatry aren’t synonymous. But the latter makes a cheap and easy substitute for the former!
I believe this passing the buck to psychiatry will kill a lot of churches. Why bother with attending when you can bypass the church and go straight to the MH Center for salvation? Can’t even mourn it since the church was already dead. A corpse with a lot of riger mortis. (Saddle Back.)
A friend of mine in her 70’s had stomach pain, couldn’t eat and became so weak she couldn’t get out of bed.
In the hospital a doctor she trusts told her she had a chemical imbalance in her brain and “antidepressants” would fix everything. She’s pretty frail but got out of bed. (Placebo effect? Being fed in the hospital?)
It’s a safe bet she has gut issues, but her lazy, lying MD chose to put her on psych drugs instead. Creep!
June believed him because she’s scrupulously honest and would never endanger someone for bucks.
Why are most MDs monsters nowadays? They know the chemical imbalance is a myth so that makes them filthy liars when they spread it as gospel truth.
The intolerance of emotional pain cuts both ways Dr. K. In the old days people would support grieving widows and provide companionship for the unhappy.
Now they tell you to see a psychiatrist and take some “meds.” It sounds nicer than “bug off.”
Something you neglected to mention was the ubiquitous psych drug commercials. Despite what I have told family members they find it hard to believe the pills aren’t helpful (except for quieting folks to stuff in institutions.) Cause the dancing pill commercials are so cute! And Dr. Phil says….
So Edith Sheffer addresses the “severe cases”? I guess I will read the book.
My BFFL is an educator and has been encouraging me to get diagnosed with autism. She believes it will automatically cancel out my “bipolar” label. But that goes contrary to what I see.
Even if it were valid I don’t need another XXXX label! People are cruel and hateful to everyone the least bit different. All you have to do is wear ugly paisley slacks, bite your nails too much, talk too much or too little, not be organized 100% of the time, or say something clever/creative. Bingo! You’re crazy and worse than Jeffrey Damer with leprosy in the eyes of the “Normals” who act, dress, and talk like everyone else.
“There’s no such thing as repressed memories. Or implanted. Just hallucinations and delusions of the severely mentally ill.” That’s a popular cultural narrative now.
In America the media is terrified of losing drug company sponsors.This shows not just in the news but on crime and medical dramas. Murderers are always “untreated bipolars” I notice.
“It looks like you have no idea what mindfulness therapy is.”
Not sure the perky worker who forced us to hum and empty our brains for 2 hour sessions did either. Ugh! Torture. You had to be REALLY “medicated” to sit through one of those. Most just took naps.
I referred to them as mindlessness exercises. Relaxed and dumb as possible is what mental health wants for all the clients. 😛 They love to force you to watch lots of TV too. They play it 16 hours per day in every psych ward I’ve visited.
Of course forced therapy only “works” if inflicting pain is the end goal.
Dragon Slayer what would you say to parents like MellowMack? What about those classified as “autistic” who can’t talk or take care of basic needs for themselves?
Some of us can call ourselves socially awkward or eccentric but others have real problems learning and holding down jobs. How do you explain that?
As a former voluntary patient the idea of chaining someone going willingly is stupid. It’s like they want to humiliate you as much as possible.
Police give rides to non arrested people all the time. A bunch of balogna sauce!
If you’re desperate enough to seek help at the funny farm better get a family member to drive you or take a cab. Or–better still–avoid those places altogether.
Thank you Ann and Hugh. The title of this article made me smack my head. (It’s the shrink who decides of course.)
But it offered insight for those of us who are not therapists about the frustration you may feel when “consumers” insist drugs and more drugs are the answer. I even read an article by a “bipolar” woman bad mouthing her “evil psychiatrist” because he was holding out on her and not giving her the “good stuff.” She hunted till she found one who gave her massive quantities of what she insisted she needs to feel good. This is one of those (rare) cases I feel more sympathy for the shrink than the “consumer.”
In her defense she has received a miseducation through TV commercials and NAMI that psych drugs will cure all your problems and save your soul.
As far as psychiatrists who oppose these drugs or “swear at them” yes, they exist. (Most write for this site!) But they are few and far between–greatly outnumbered by the pill pushers. Only the pill pushing kind work at centers, serve on the APA boards, or are asked to speak at NAMI conventions. During my years in the System I never met a single one who criticized the pill magic or offered to take me off or inform me of alternatives to drugs and shocks.
Methinks Dr. Andreasen’s biggest fear is enough people will stop taking the drugs and recover to prove her profession is worse than useless in helping the broken among us.
I prefer the term “emotional pain killers” for these drugs. A tiny amount of Stelazine helped me short term.
Unfortunately it deadened my ability to experience joy or feel affection. It also made me think psychiatry had all the answers. This led to an anafranil-inspired bout with psychotic mania and 3 weeks with no sleep. 😛
Down the rabbit hole for 25 years. Doing okay without any drugs now. Grieving over my wasted life though.
My condolences. Your son no doubt has a learning disability, but it sounds so different from Anders’ experience that lumping them into the same category is doing both a disservice.
As Dr. Breggin has said the human brain is the biggest mystery in the known universe. Precious little is known about it.
Have you seen the short documentary “Autism is a World”? The young woman in that can’t talk but communicates through a machine like that Steven Hawkings used.
25 years of psychiatric drugging has made me more “autistic” in my behaviors than before. Public rejection and TBI. All my life I have struggled to look “normal.” To this day I’d sacrifice my eye teeth to fit in and be like those around me.
Being yelled at as a kid for “being weird all the time” by my mom only increased my awkwardness. Ever tried focusing on NOT being weird in your pubic interactions? Great way to drive yourself nuts. 😀
“It” is an extreme state labeled a disease by shrinks. Depression is real, but it is not a brain disease. And calling it that invalidates the experience and prevents any positive changes the unhappy person might make.
Yes that does cause confusion when I have brought this up. I pointed it out to David Healy on his blog. The experts hem and haw. “Yes. Well mental actually means the brain.” “Yes we should call ‘schizophrenia’ a physical illness; not a mental one.”
But getting shrinks to call extreme states physical illnesses will not automatically end the battle. Great for making folks ask questions though. If depression is caused by a brain disease why is it called a mental illness? We don’t call brain cancer a mental illness or see psychiatrists to treat it.
Drugs and psych labels make gainful employment all but impossible. Not enough subsidized housing for all of psychiatry’s victims. And SSI payments will not cover rent in any state.
Hoping to bootstrap myself up now that I’m drug free and can write more easily and don’t need 12 hours of sleep per day. If not for my kind relatives I’d be homeless probably.
Yes. It could also be a metaphor for mindless hyper consumerism. Noteworthy how homelessness expands even as psychiatry does. Also disability rates. As RW has already pointed out if the “treatments” helped people function and lead productive lives shouldn’t the reverse have occurred?
Before I found out about all the writings discrediting pharna-psychiatry I would sit in day treatment feeling confused. (More than just the drugs at work.) They told us how much our “meds” were helping us; how they made our lives so much better; and how these “meds” were saving our lives. I noticed how sick everyone was with legitimate ailments–but at a rate most folks did not. We still acted on impulse, had crazy thoughts, heard voices, and struggled making ordinary decisions. We couldn’t work or get along with other people. Most of us wanted to die and struggled with suicidal desires.
They told us how great things were and it made me angry. What was good enough for us would not have been good enough for “real people.” I knew our lives stunk but no one dared admit it.
I agreed with Sylvain about scientific proofs and arguments. The proofs already exist thanks to writers like RW and many others along with obscure papers published by the APA itself.
It’s not more scientific research we need (unless it’s helping survivors heal from the damage shrinks have done to them.) What we need to work on is public relations and presenting anti-psychiatry in trendy, dumbed down ways so John and Jane Doh! can get it. Sadly we can’t get a platform on TV. Few people read anymore but they mindlessly consume countless hours of television. Maybe catchy tunes on Youtube videos?
Convincing them our rights are being violated and we are being harmed would be a good first step. Many believe they are helping us by drugging, shocking and imprisoning us. (And saving their own lives too.)
Stigma means “shame.” Who shamed us? Why the lord high stigmatizers themselves at the APA.
A true “stigma buster” would be publicly discrediting a shrink! You avoid stigma by shunning their “help.” Man do they lack insight into how human beings behave!
The way society sees it Alex, is we are all mass murderers who will go on killing sprees without our chemical muzzles. They believe we are being helped–not hurt–because these drugs restore the chemical balances of our hopelessly defective brains.
Can you blame them for not wanting to be murdered?
(I know this is all bovine excrement promoted by the drug industry and shrinks. But I guess more than 95% of America’s population believes the “metaphor” Pies is laughing up his sleeves about is a scientifically established fact.)
Many more would come to our aid or find the courage to leave the System if they realized there is no known brain disorder behind the emotional distress and therefore the pills cannot correct it.
It’s because of lying creeps like Lieberman stigma is the problem. TD and other marks of brain damage, morbid obesity, homelessness all come from “help” creeps like him have tricked or coerced the innocent into taking. He knows his profession is behind the rash of killing sprees. Everyone here knows he’s morally responsible for these deaths and is happy to have them continue since its great PR for his profession. That man has no conscience or empathy and is a menace to society.
Know why there’s an anti-psychiatry movement and no anti-cardiology movement? Because heart specialists don’t go on national TV and demonize folks with heart attacks. (Also they don’t cause heart attacks in a bunch of hitherto healthy people.) Real doctors don’t slander their patients!
KumininExile, could you elaborate how homeless rates will cause psychiatry’s downfall? I don’t care how it happens, I long for its destruction. No one is safe from shrinks anymore. Not even toddlers!
I’ve noticed severe housing shortages for folks disabled and labeled by psychiatry. But I can’t see how this will bite shrinks in the butt. They can (indirectly) cause mass shooting sprees with their Hellish drugs, then use the drug induced violence for unlimited expansion of powers by lying to the public on TV. Nobody holds them accountable for anything.
The idea is learning to control your OWN negative thoughts. Not letting someone else control them.
Like Thomas Szazs I only support counseling sessions between consenting adults. If it doesn’t work for you or you don’t want it they shouldn’t force you to have CBT.
Dr. Breggin thank you for your efforts to help us. Sadly when Toxic Psychiatry came out in 1993 I was already sucked down the psychiatric maelstrom which ruined my life. I never knew the book existed till recently.
I want to remind readers that while Dr. Breggin is not a survivor, he has nothing to gain by taking our part. It has almost been career suicide. If career advancement and prestige is all he’s after he’s doing it the wrong way. He didn’t have a dog in this fight–but chose to put himself on the line to help folks like us. Remember Oskar Schindler?
Hi Sandra. Did you also start out as a member of the “worried well” till psychiatric treatments drove you bat-sh*t crazy? That’s my story. The System never acknowledges this either. That would be “pill shaming.”
My guess is “schizophrenics” in these studies get a little too stoned and hallucinate. They get locked up and put on psych drugs to make them “schizophrenic” till they die or escape.
Ironic how Psychiatry wants to use this same substance they have condemned in the past to “treat” the “illness” they accused it of causing. But we’re talking about Psychiatry here. 😀
One of the best therapists I ever had–Kevin–told me he used a bunch of different methods and applied whichever fit the situation. He used CBT occasionally, but if the person was too down hearted he would try another technique.
I used the book “Feeling Good” by David Burns. But it’s not the same as having it forced on you by an emotionally abusive “therapist” or shrink.
CBT can help in certain situations. But self blame should be avoided. Most people abused by psychiatry already blame themselves for everything. That’s why standard “mental health therapy” is ineffective.
Tell them, “Hey you’re not a defective monster. Your brain is not broken. You can think for yourself and not believe everything the ‘sane’ folks tell you. They have no right to treat you like dirt just because they call themselves ‘normal’!”
That would cure their depression in most cases. But it would make them leave the crazy house without walls. We can’t have that after all. 😛
Convincing insurance companies of psychiatry’s impotence and the harms it causes is also necessary. Convince the general public and the insurance folks will follow.
The DSM forced to compete and Big Pharma banned from legal bribing in the form of “contributions” from their lobbies. Those two things would really defang the Monster Psychiatry.
An unusually large number of psychiatrists kill themselves each year. Could they be suffering from”untreated mental illnesses”? *Gasp!*
More likely they can’t bear the torments of their guilty consciences over all the people they lied to and damaged. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth. Or the commandant depicted in Schindler’s List. (In real life he did lose it. Emotional pain is behind break downs. And guilt can be quite painful.)
The “mental health” system is working.
But if you actually want to help people you need to look for another job I’m afraid.
I’m finally getting my life together slowly. Learning to build a social network. Lose 200+ pounds. (Down 40 so far.) Rebuilding my shattered body, mourn my broken dreams and accept responsibility for my bad choices.
Hard to “adult” in your mid forties. If I hadn’t fled the crazy making system it would be impossible. It exists to keep people helpless and dependent.
Chronically ill from years on prescription drugs. Never gainfully employed. Never had a relationship. I owe it to the boon of modern psychiatry.
My life stinks. But I wouldn’t trade places with you Manuela.
It must be horrible to honestly want to help people who only get worse in every way possible. 🙁
I was hungry, but instead of making dinner I took a phenthin. Shoot, instead of grocery shopping this week I’m just going to stock up on diet drugs. Since drugs are the cure for everything now. Why solve a problem when you can just numb it and continue the thing that caused the problem to make it even worse?
It doesn’t matter how smart a person is or how many letters come after his or her name. If you know they lie whenever convenient they are not to be trusted. An honest janitor with a high school diploma is more credible than these well-informed liars.
Congratulations for standing up to them Dr. Gozche! Unlike most of us commenting here you stand to lose a lot for doing what is right. And nothing to gain in the material sense.
Maybe if more of us loved people and used things to help them (remember Schindler’s List?) our loneliness would end. But people are selfish, greedy and unloving. Because no one cares about their “loved ones” our culture is glad to farm out unhappy people who are no longer useful to worthless quacks. That way–even if they suffer horribly and die–they won’t cramp our style.
The writer lost me with the phrase “mental health.”
Psychiatry is the cause of my loneliness. If I had not been stupid and gullible enough to see a shrink back in 1992 I would be a much happier woman today with a family, friends, and career.
Today I have nothing. Broke–living on gov. assistance with relatives and in occasional HUD slums. So sick I hurt all over and can barely leave my room most days. Never married. Will never have kids.
I owe it all to trusting my shrink and “meds compliance.” 😛
“Compliance” is all that matters in “mental health.” I remember a study NAMI conducted (need to look it up) where they determined successful treatments solely by how many continued to stay drugged. The quality of life was irrelevant since they didn’t record it.
You can be miserable, vomiting uncontrollably, unable to speak or move without difficulty, and obsessed with suicide. But if you’re “meds compliant” no one gives a rip. And they’ll dismiss any suicides as “in spite of” never “because of.”
I know plenty of people “on their meds” who act that way. I often was.
The Haldol and other crap made me too numb to speak often. But it did not make me more coherent or rational. Nor did it enhance my problem solving skills.
Why should anyone in “mental health” want to change? They’re happy with the status quo. And when they finish slowly killing us they can get fresh meat through ads/propaganda disguised as news.
The words health and independence draw attention to the fact that NAMI is dedicated to the exact opposites. Causing sickness and disability. Also premature death.
Ds_Ghoste, my gut no longer functions. I can’t absorb micro nutrients after 23 years on one SSRI or another. Pretty sick all the time. It started 3 years before I went off, though I notice the pain more.
If the damage can’t be reversed at least the thing causing it has been stopped. My heart arrhythmia is better now. And I can lose weight again.
Of course I’m not Corinna. But how about National Association for Health and Independence? That would fight NAMI and SAMSA and similar groups since they create sickness and disabilities in people they view as threats. That’s how “mental health” actually works after all.
But keep giving out SSRI’s as much as possible doctors. Keep a big dish to hand out to visitors like office mints. With any luck you can induce psychotic mania, label them Bipolar 2 and force feed them 3-6 drugs instead of 1 every day till they die.
You got that right OH. I didn’t take those XXXX drugs for 25 years to become “docile and child-like” aka helpless. The quacks promised they would help me lead an independent, productive life outside an institution. A lot of my “SMI” friends are now begging for institutionalizing now, believe it or not. They can’t keep up on their ADLs needed to keep HUD thanks to long term brain and nerve damage. 🙁
Like the shamans for so-called primitive societies. The “diagnoses” of psychiatry are incantations and the “medicines” are talismans and elixirs. This belief system is called the Power-Threat narrative. It’s usually a religious system.
Because people believe in the hexes the medicine man places on his enemies they can actually die.
Steve and Alex you both make good points. If my gut tells me something is off I don’t immediately ACT on it. I investigate. Like someone accusing someone of a crime. Innocent till proven guilty. But you carefully look at the evidence being submitted.
Not in foster care thank goodness. Makes me angry to read about this after the crap psychiatry has put me through since age 18. Hard enough as an adult.
If I ever have the financial means I want to take in foster kids. That’s why I’m reading this. 🙂
You got that right. Profitable for psychiatry and pharmacy companies, but bad for the economy as a whole. Crippling 20-25% of the next generation is very short sighted. But evil always is.
Plus the shrinks can pretend to be humanitarians and express surprise at all the horrible stuff that happens to their victims. “Ruh roh. Look what the schizophrenic disease did. Not my fault. It’s the disease that did it. But please don’t ask me to scan the ‘treatment naive’ since that would be unethical.” Unethical meaning “bad for my career.”
Your final sentence packs a powerful punch. I said I was suicidal when I wasn’t. Why? People quit treating me so horribly–as they had since the quack told friends and family I was hopeless.
Without psychiatry I never would have done this to start with since I was viewed as a human being before.
If you ever pay a little visit to NAMI’s forums for “supportive family members” who run the whole show a lot of them whine about the “emotional abuse” they put up with from the “mentally ill” kids in their 30’s and 40’s. Boo hoo. Who crippled them and forced them to live in the basement to begin with?
The “mentally ill” never complain since they believe everything bad that happens is always their fault for being crazy.
Verbose AND articulate? So is the priest using too many words or just the right amount of them?
Psychiatry is full of its own delusions. Despite the death and destruction in its wake these men persist in playing god with cruel, pointless experiments on those they deem unworthy of life. Szazs was right!
Yes. Emotions are always a “symptom.” Meaning the “doctors” consider themselves to be androids or emotionless space aliens. (“I am a Vulcan. There is no pain.”)
Can’t get any saner than that. Bwahahaha!
Zombies is a great metaphor too. Soulless. Devoid of all emotions except the hunger for the brains of living creatures. Dr. Torrey I presume?
They have completed premedical training however. How can they not know the history of the science behind their profession? Are they really that ignorant of what their prescriptions do? How they maim and kill people?
However kindly their intentions their ignorance and the damage they inflict (even if unwittingly) terrifies me. It should terrify us all. Damaging a patient through avoidable ignorance or neglect can still lead to a legitimate doctor being sued.
Dr. “I-don’t-know-any-real-psychiatrist-who-promotes-the-chemical-imbalance-metaphor” Pies.
You know. That old rascal. 😀 Needs a better organized filing system to keep his lies organized.
Fooling all of the people all of the time is a tough act to pull. Lincoln said it was impossible. But what would Honest Abe know about successful mass deceptions?
I wish they would since that would go over like a lead balloon nowadays.
At least the 19th century folks were honest. “I don’t like this behavior so I’m going to punish those who do it even if it is legal.”
Everything in “mental health” is punishment for weird but legal thoughts/behaviors. If laws were broken there are already courts for criminals to be tried.
It’s not about sex so much now but little nit picky stuff. Sadness. Anxiety. Squirming in class. Liking anything authorities don’t. Liking art “too much.” Being too sensitive. Or independent. (That’s “toxic” now. Independent folks don’t consume enough.)
Furthermore these same people will dismiss or demonize those suffering after years on these drugs–shaming them to exonerate the pills (and their morally bankrupt profession)–and ignore how many health problems we have including early onset dementia and premature death. Skew the surveys and use anecdotal evidence–but only the anecdotes that they want the public to hear.
Been off thyroid medicine for 3 weeks. Couldn’t find a prescriber thanks to a Medicaid card glitch.
Lucky my cancer doctor was nice enough to write one. (No cancer, but pernicious anemia and other deficiencies thanks to decades on my psych cocktail. Iatrogenic disease is real!)
In defense of the oppressors, Steve, they would be in a lot of hot water if the American Psychiatric Association ever made a PSA saying, “Heh heh. We goofed. Seems these things never fixed any brain problems, muddled people’s thoughts, destroyed inhibitions against suicide and violent crimes, and were addictive as street drugs too.”
A lot of people would be angry. A lot of us already are, but multiply that number by 20.
Tsk tsk. How dare you “pill shame” Concerned Carer?
Shaming the victim–er–consumer for gaining weight on these toxins, having seizures, getting Parkinson’s and not benefiting is how psychiatry helps us. 😛
You’re not alone in your thinking Z. It really is a huge miscarriage of justice.
The “experts” are clueless and lack real insight into how human beings behave. The legal experts might have caught on if the shrinks weren’t deceived by your abusive ex and willing to pass the deception on.
Judges and lawyers need to learn not to believe anything these guys say. Mind reading and fortune telling is what psychiatrists actually claim to do. Psychics–not scientists.
The pre-crime division. IMO the rates of crime would plummet if psychiatry were banned and the legal system didn’t have these “experts” to give them consistently bad advice!
I’m troubled by your implied endorsement of electro shocks Fr. John. They “work” by damaging the brain and (sometimes) destroying painful memories–along with things the victim wanted to remember.
I’m sure you don’t realize this though. I know psych nurses who don’t. (Got all their education from promotional videos of the ECT machine manufacturing company.)
The “mental health” system reminds me of the novel A Wrinkle in Time. While visiting the planet Kamazotz the kids discover that they euthanize anyone who develops a head cold.
How psychiatry helps people upset and/or out of touch of reality by random brain damage ensuring they can never think straight again. 🙁
So sorry!
If you would like to e mail me offsite my address is lulivingnichols at gmail dot com. I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you what keeps me from utter despair.
And I am not selling a product. Love can’t be sold because it’s priceless.
I don’t know what’s behind your emotional pain LT. Mine stems from chronic loneliness, poverty, barrenness and the realization that nothing good will happen to me in this life. The idea that I need a disease to excuse my sorrows seems insulting to me.
I’m unhappy because my life sucks! No psych “diagnosis” necessary. And psychiatry is largely responsible for my failed life.
I came to this conclusion after reading about Saddleback by Susan Cane. Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking.
As a PK you could only form a whole bunch of “relationships” with folks you barely knew and couldn’t care about. I’m not a total introvert but I like depth to my relationships.
Living as a hermit now. Almost total isolation except for internet and phone. Go to church and pretend to love on total strangers who you know don’t care about you. Just as well. No one likes the real me. Had to play a role since I was a child. 😛
Not calling Rick unloving, but I believe Matt had the “wrong” personality type. An introvert in a family of hyper extroverts. Very stressful.
Rick often said in sermons that all Christians should be 100% extroverted since Jesus was. (Jesus needed down time too. RW skipped over the parts where he went away to pray.)
Publicly embarrassing his son by calling him “mentally ill” in front of everyone may have played a role too. Loving after a fashion but devoid of gentleness, patience or empathy (trying to understand someone.) Being considered “MI” causes people to quit trying to understand your pain since it’s no longer supposed to make sense. Your tears just show your “meds” aren’t working and your “broken brain” is honking people off again.
Shut up and take your prozac! No one cares about you, nut job! See how NICE we are to crazies at Saddleback? 😀
Psychiatrists believe only some biologically defective evolutionary throwbacks are “mentally ill.” These deserve whatever torments the shrinks throw at them. Total depravity of all humanity versus biological depravity of a select few. And the shrinks are all 100% sane–of course.
Thank you Father John. I’m a Church of Christ Christian myself.
What you said echos my existential conflict with psychiatry. When I believed it was a proven fact I wondered how my faith could be true, since the blood of Jesus and the Holy Spirit were not sufficient to save me from my sinfulness without the pills. Now I realize it was all a lie.
The pills numbed my empathy, conscience, and impulse control while amplifying the voices of my inner demons. Off the stuff at last. Thank God I can pray again! I can feel love for those around me.
Like you Stephen, I suffer from malnutrition–fat though I am. Have you tried building up your intestinal flora? I’m trying that now. Not sure how effective it will be. I’m sure I can’t undo decades of damage in one month.
My depression significantly lessened since coming off my “antidepressant.” But no shrink wants to hear stories like mine. My life is still not that great which makes my (somewhat) upbeat attitude more noteworthy.
Psychiatry tries to categorize behaviors which are bad or self defeating or odd or simply ones they don’t happen to like into “diseases” like astrologers drawing lines between stars to come up with zodiac signs.
People are too complex to fit into the boxes shrinks try to stuff us into. The labels are worse than useless and do nothing to end the suffering. The only people these help are the shrinks in their endless quest for power and money making billing codes.
“Dr. Rached” did not allow Bibles on her ward. She claimed there was too much religious mania, but no one else thought so. No one was calling himself Jesus or proclaiming prophetic messages at the time. Doc Rached was the jealous type who couldn’t share the spotlight with any other gods. Lol.
Like Peter Breggin I started out wanting to teach English literature and write novels. He chose a career helping the psychiatrized. I “chose” a career as a “mental patient” unwittingly since I thought I was doing the responsible thing for myself and all around me.
There are fewer positions in academia now. I’ll see.
Today is one of the good days. Not hurting all over and coughing my head off. 🙂
Maybe lithium helps take the edge off your emotional pain, Zmenard?
6 mg of stelazine helped quell my overwhelming anxiety as a college freshman. Unfortunately it killed my ability to feel joy and made me think the drugs actually helped to fix my brain. This had serious repercussions when I went requested help later and went bonkers on anafranil.
Sera, a surprisingly large number of people commit suicide when locked up for it. I don’t have the information right now. I believe it can be found in the index of An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison.
If I had a suicidal friend I would keep an eye on her, call her, show her unconditional love and try to keep her spirits up. But you don’t find much love or hope in a psych ward. 🙁
I did not notice that. I need to reread the article. 🙂
Krista, I refer you to the article recently published here by Eric Kuelker. “Why the ‘Psychological Injury Model’ Will Ultimately Triumph.” This explains how I–and many here–view the extreme states of mind/emotions psychiatrists refer to as “mental illnesses.”
Zmenard your story is a great illustration of how psychiatry tends to side with the strong rather than the well behaved. Also why abused women should do what they can to avoid the Mental Illness System.
Your emotions are perfectly “normal” given your circumstances. Glad your shrink is one of the nice ones.
Edith Wilson and other famous women mocked the suffragettes. They asked “Why do women want to vote?” Not all slaves wanted their freedom. (The Holocaust happened fast. Plus none of the Jews thought the Nazis were out to help them.)
In many respects the psychiatrized are like patronized women denied the status of adults or chattel slaves. Or even if freed African Americans were viewed as “childish” etc. for many generations.
Getting “undiagnosed” makes it harder for them to pick us off. We become true citizens again–with due process and those other things the non-psyched take for granted.
Btw, a lot of ex-slaves still wanted freedom papers in the antebellum south. These came in handy when working on the Underground Railroad. Simply saying “Slavery is wrong,” wouldn’t help if the slavers had the legal right to capture a man and sell him as chattel again.
If I were accused of witchcraft in Salem–and convicted–merely saying women can’t fly around on broomsticks wouldn’t do the trick. I would need the conviction and witchcraft label overturned before returning to Salem. Until I have my “bipolar” label removed I will always live in some degree of fear and avoid doctors. I must live in the shadows and hide my past from all I meet.
Harper West, I no longer see a counselor because I ceased to benefit. Plus they’re all linked to “mental health” and my Medicaid won’t cover.
Nevertheless I fully support psycho-therapy between consenting adults. Different from psychiatry. Szazs himself conducted sessions with adults.
Sometimes “therapy” turns to emotional abuse. Forcing someone to sit through verbal beatings and mind games can be eliminated by making it all voluntary.
In my MH center you were supposed to be able to leave a therapist at your discretion. Sadly this was just not true. 🙁
Just because folks were trying to abolish slavery did not get rid of a need for the Underground Railroad OH. While the allies fought to win World War II people defied the Nazis to hide Jews and smuggle them out of occupied territory.
It’s easy to become so wrapped up in the Big Picture one overlooks the individual one could help right now.
I follow a libertarian blog called “Economic Freedom.” Dan Mitchell, the blogger, has written a book called Cronyism. In it he decries the bribery and other dishonest tactics major corporations use to get Big Brother eating out of their hands. He doesn’t know much about psychiatry because he has never mentioned how the APA stays in power no matter how much damage they create.
A lot of fast food places are being replaced by kiosks.
“Mental health” centers could easily be replaced by arcades of vending machines. Get a “diagnosis” and recommended drugs from an online app on the website owned by the franchise. Then hustle down to the center, swipe your Medicaid/insurance card and select the drug and dosage out of the proper machine. A week’s worth of drugs pop out in a box. Set for the week!
The APA wouldn’t like this of course. Machines lack the “human” touch. They’re not arrogant, spiteful or into sadism. 😀
Psychiatrists are like drug lords or mob bosses. 🙂
You are free to consume Big Gino’s stuff as a client…or he will get 6 thugs to jump you, pound on you, and give you an overdose while you plead for mercy. That’s what happens to “clients” who say “No” to Big G. See?
Or you can escape like we did. Harder for some. I have not been in AOC. My reputation as a good consumer–with great “insight”–helped me conduct a low key escape.
It is hard to reject “the concept and industry of psychiatry” if you are labeled a “hard” SMI and forced to endure AOC. Or even living in the twilight zone like I do–fearful to see a doctor for legitimate medical problems because of my ugly records.
I’m pretty sick after 25+ years on at least one “therapeutic” dose of a psych drug in my system. A cocktail for 22 years. Been drug free for 18 months, but my body is a wreck. I’m in chronic pain, tired all the time, and have breathing problems. And I’m pretty sad/angry at my wasted life. Sometimes I wonder why I escaped since it’s too late to do anything now. Too old to start over!
About No. 1: Due to its associations with Silicon Valley, “spectrum” sounds nice and scientific. Wrong branch of science–since these people CLAIM to be experts on neuro-chemistry–not airwaves. But it sure sounds impressively scientific.
N. 3: It’s not about the “patient.” It never was. A psychiatrist helps his “patients” the way an exterminator helps termites.
About domestic abuse…
There are plenty of online forums where well meaning, STUPID people encourage abused wives to not be afraid to seek out “mental help” for the “diseases” of anxiety and depression.
What frustrates me is the women running the forum mean well–but believe the “chemical imbalance” is an established fact proven by cutting edge medical science. They’re clueless about how a “mental diagnosis” will harm those who seek to leave or divorce an abuser.
Wish I could get them to read Paula Capplan. But that would be more of a mental challenge than watching a Zoloft commercial. They just don’t wanna!
Yes. There’s some ER drama (can’t remember the title) where the resident psychiatrist is a kindly older man. Equal parts psych therapist, neurologist, and wizard.
Not a Peter Breggin type, since he never challenges the “truths” of the pseudo science. More like a Dr. House but with the bedside manner of Dr. Kildare. Few of the cases are actually “mentally ill” but have some mysterious malady–neurological or otherwise–he struggles to solve.
In real life few shrinks can diagnose a case of Lyme Disease or other legitimate disorders. Too busy inflicting fresh brain trauma in hopes it will somehow produce a cure.
Like the old cartoons of Tom and Jerry or The Flintstones where one good whack to the head causes amnesia or a bizarre character change–but gets fixed by a second whack. Psychiatry–the “science” of cartoons! 😀
For what it’s worth OH, Dr. Kuelker puts the lie to the notion that the drugs actually fix something and correct any brain problems instead of creating new ones. Because of this I’m posting this article on Facebook to educate my friends and family who believe psych drugs are “safe and effective meds.”
My argument against the a priori assumption of Psychiatry: “If the problem is not in the brain it doesn’t exist.”
“If what you say is true that still does not justify random acts of brain damage on those you consider already impaired.”
Osteogenesis Imperfecta is undoubtedly a disorder of the human skeleton. But it does not justify taking a crow bar to the limbs of someone suffering from it.
Sam, assuming you have been telling us the truth–likely you have–if your wife is ashamed of her experiences perhaps she wants them hushed. Maybe you should respect her wishes and not go public unless/until she feels differently.
It is odd she is never here. I’m sure it’s trauma you had nothing to do with. But you yourself say she doesn’t like talking about her extreme states or psychiatric experiences.
My mom has agreed to keep quiet about my “diagnosis.” Bless her!
Thanks to America’s ubiquitous drug ads, Big Pharma owns our television air waves. Even the content of doctor shows/crime dramas/sit coms is full of psychiatric “facts.” 😛
Though real shrinks would laugh at most since they know you don’t need hours of rigorous testing to “diagnose” someone. I actually saw this on a crime drama episode. A fictional shrink said this. The writers didn’t do their homework.
The thing is they often “diagnose” people who commit grotesque, horrible murders as SMI. No known pathology for “mental illness” so they can label anyone.
Bizarre crimes are proof of “mental illness” since “mentally ill” usually refers to extreme behaviors. This would inflate the crime stats of the “mentally ill.”
Ted Bundy was “bipolar” just like the harmless eccentric Aunt Betty everybody loves. Different=bad. Ergo murders like Bundy committed are proof of his “mental illness” since most people don’t do what he did.
We don’t need “mental health experts” to label criminals like Bundy. The penal system can function well without them.
We survivors have been told to “stay in our place” a good deal. By very arrogant people who think they have the right to treat us like children, trained animals, or inanimate objects. To be spoken ABOUT and over. Never directly to.
Sick of having our voices overpowered and others speak on our behalf!
Tom Jackson’s family THOUGHT his odd thoughts were better because he quit talking. Not always true! My mom thought a mega dose of Haldol helped me since I was too zoned out to complain semi coherently about my ruined life.
Still angry and devastated. But I can control my speech now. Glad I’ll be dead soon since my body’s a wreck. Left psychiatry too late. At 45 there’s nothing to salvage.
My life is just a big awful waste. Countless people like me had a lot to offer that no one wanted. They preferred to throw us away like worthless garbage!
Are you “healthy” Western Society? Are you “normal” to write people off–to segregate and lock up the innocent so we slowly die from cruel, pointless experiments?
I hate your “health”! I spit upon your “normality”! You deserve to die Western Civilization–for you have no pity on the weak and vulnerable.
Gas chambers were more humane in some respects. As opposed to slowly poisoning a “mentally ill” person to death over 20-30 years. Way less lucrative making soap out of our body fat though, then billing tax payers for the $$$$$$ of “safe effective poisons” to kill us with.
Hey Dr. Coleman. Are you one of those rogue psychiatrists like Dr. K., Breggin, and a couple other writers here?
The ones called “mentally ill” aren’t the people running NAMI, btw. It’s the “mama grizzlies.” Not all NAMI mothers!
But SOME are horrible women/men who enjoy the attention they get as the parent of a sick, crazy child in their thirties or forties–forced to live in their folks’ basement or an institution thanks to being too drugged up to work.
Then everyone can say, “What a brave woman you are Pamela! I hope Bobby appreciates how lucky a bipolar like him is to have a mother like you who cares about him–sick as he is.” Bobby looks embarrassed despite his “meds” and Pamela basks in the public approval–eating it up.
Are there any animal mothers known for eating their young? I have heard of cats doing this.
Psychiatry is a “science” of insults. Do cardiologists show up on 48 Hours to bad mouth heart patients and call them a menace to society? Do endocrinologists tell the public how most crimes are committed by people with kidney or thyroid problems?
That’s why there’s no anti cardiology or anti endocrinology movement “Dr.” Torrey. 😛
High ranking, prominent shrinks do nothing but malign those they say they want to help in PSA’s. They can dish it out but they can’t take it.
Lenora I agree unhappy people need better social support systems.
Sadly, while NAMI and other “mental health” organizations provide some social support they take away others. Once people find out you’re supposed to be “SMI” they quit talking to you, shun your company, and tell you only a “therapist” or fellow “bipolar” can understand someone like you.
My dorm mom in college found out about my label and told the other girls to quit talking to me. She said only professionals were equipped to do so.
Because most abusers are socially adept, poised, self confident, with good self esteem. They never seek “help” from shrinks for themselves. When they drag “crazy loved ones” before these self appointed moral judges–the shrink glances at the distressed, disheveled abuse victim versus the smooth talking, well-dressed, smiling villain and promptly sides with the villain.
To be fair most shrinks who do this don’t even KNOW they’re aiding abusers. Just shows what horrible judges of character these quacks are. And how incompetent they are at protecting society from violent crimes. (Worse than useless in that regard.)
My guess is these elderly people are taking all that crap because they’re in nursing homes. Disgusting. Doping them into premature senility makes them easier to stuff into cramped rooms and corridors that reek of urine with minimal staff. Ageism is real enough.
I had a good friend in her eighties who needed a walker. Concerned she might fall again, her adult kids convinced her to move into a home. I visited her a week later and she was full of good spirits. Sharp as a tack.
A month later she couldn’t talk. She was fearful and incoherent. Something rotten was going on. Probably after a doctor visited. It’s not about helping the residents but keeping them quiet and easy to subdue or abuse. Kind of like “treating” those our society has written off as hopelessly crazy. 😛
MLK fought racism. So what he stood FOR was not racism but universal love and getting along together instead of fighting and driving people away based on their skin tone.
Racism is indeed a “black and white” issue. Bigotry or prejudice are not. All racism is a form of bigotry. Not all bigotry is racism though.
Psychiatry is based on the assumption that all strange behaviors (including some Christians would otherwise call sins) are proof of a brain disease. A priori.
Churches have subscribed to materialism. They no longer believe in human souls it seems. It may explain the drop in membership since there’s nothing real to save.
Rick Warren–psychiatry promoter–is into Moral Therapeutic Deism. He also believes in Quantum Mysticism. Like psychiatry this is a pseudo-science but less socially respectable.
A lot of people join these groups out of desperation since they’ve been deceived and thoroughly believe they need psychiatry to survive or keep their loved ones from going totally insane.
I hate NAMI as a tool of psychiatry. But when I look at the people making up its membership I feel more sorrow and grief than anger. These individuals are precious, wonderful human beings but the lies they have been taught are what I hate. Without the lies of pharma psychiatry NAMI would not exist. Hardwired into their ideology.
I left NAMI myself. It was not much of a privilege to be one of their subhuman drug mascots. We were only allowed to say a few words at public functions–in praise of the drugs. (I always wondered why they didn’t make us better.)
About us without us. Seems all the NAMI chapters in my state are based upon the bio–control-force model.
I have been so deeply depressed I caught physical diseases. My first bout of depression at seven and a half led to mono.
I couldn’t figure why I was depressed. Looking back it makes sense. I was reading at the 6th grade level, but forced to attend an SBD school for daydreaming since I learned too quickly. The SBD teacher got angry at me for not being dumb enough to fit in.
Prelude to my life as a career “mental patient.” 😛
I struggle with executive function problems more than ever after 25 years of brain damage. Lately I’ve developed ME symptoms making me get exhausted easily.
But I keep my place cleaner now. Despite exhaustion, organizational problems, and sometimes cramping from head to foot. Know why?
I actually CARE again! Same with my social interactions. I care about how other people feel.
Remember the Care Bears (back in the 80’s) and the villain they dealt with? Dr. Cold-Heart who always tried to freeze kids’ emotions so they numbed out and didn’t give a rip about anything? A man well ahead of his time. Lol.
Depression is real. I have experienced it. But it’s an extreme feeling, not a brain disease.
Churchill experienced this. So did Lincoln.
The cure? Figure out if my thyroid levels are normal. Eat better. Sleep and exercise. If there’s a non physical reason for the depression–fix the problem or learn to live with it.
My mom’s counselor helped her overcome depression by helping her figure out she was disappointed at never finishing college. Mom got her BS in education and became an elementary teacher. Depression solved!
Opened up a discussion about use of Finnish Dialogue to cure “schizophrenia” with my parents. Both were incredulous. “How can you cure a brain disease by talking?”
I tried explaining this would make sense if the problem were not organic in nature. As a preacher, Dad rejects the materialist view of humanity. It’s still hard for him to accept since it runs contrary to the mainstream media narrative spanning both sides of the spectrum.
Mom argued the brains of the “mentally ill” look different from normal people’s. I cited Dr. Andreason’s paper about how the structural changes were directly linked to the “meds” used to sedate the people. Also pointed out the people in that 90’s documentary we watched would all be undergoing “treatment” as a matter of course since psychiatrists were doing the research.
(Leaving someone “treatment naive” was unethical. They might recover and show your “science” was a bunch of poppycock, depriving poor shrinks of needed income for yacht payments.)
Sad how Mom is letting her mind go in retirement. I blame the SSRI, but the 12-15 hours of TV she consumes daily is even more to blame.
The internet can be addictive too, but it can engage the mind more if properly used. It’s interactive in a way TV cannot be.
I knew some nice individual psychiatrists. They were nice since I never questioned them and always did exactly as told. 😉
Nevertheless psychiatry is a fake science. As Szazs noted, a lot of kindly, well meaning doctors applied leeches and opened the veins of people with cholera over a hundred fifty years ago. Good intentions notwithstanding, people died from it.
I found out recently that MLK suffered horrible depression all his life. Especially in his teens. At 12 or 13 he tried to kill himself.
He survived the fall and overcame his gloom to do great things.
Just think what would have happened if he’d had access to psychiatric “care”? The Civil Rights movement might never have gotten off the ground.
Btw, surprised no one here has mentioned the Violence Initiative which is rife with covert racism. But–since it’s disguised as medical help for poor youth–the psych bureaucrats get away with it. Check out Peter Breggins’s videos on this. Eugenics is alive and well thanks to psychiatry.
Shocked my parents by “coming out” as a Libertarian. Less is more when t comes to government.
Legalize all drugs and we can end psychiatry altogether. Let “mentally ill” people pick their drugs off the shelf and buy them over the counter. That’s what they do in many Latin American counties like Uruguay.
Btw, I don’t even drink wine. Personally opposed to mind altering drugs. Once I found out that’s all psych drugs are I felt it was my moral duty to go off them.
But people have the right to make their own choices. Including bad ones.
9 out of 7 people reported feeling better on the awesome new antidepressant Zombify!
(Should Zombify lose it’s effectiveness there’s the new atypical antipsychotic Xacerbate!)
Here’s a commercial for Zombify. As put out by the pharmaceutical company Pfaker.
Before taking Zombify I was a 125 pound wife and mom trying to maintain the perfect work-life balance between family and my full time career in education. Very depressed.
Now, thanks to Zombify, I’m a 250 pound divorcee, barely able to get out of bed in the morning. I live on disability since even a part time job’s too exhausting. My husband won the custody battle when the judge found out about my bipolar 2 disorder. I have heart problems, diabetes, and cholesterol levels double what most women my age have.
I’m more depressed than ever and can’t stop thinking of ways to kill myself. But think how much worse I’d feel without this life-saving wonder medication.
I love Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander.
A must read underground classic for thinking people. Ironically it didn’t sell very well because Mander refused to promote it on TV like Marie Winn did for The Plug-In Drug.
What if a scientist uses a word that doesn’t mean anything? Like “mental illness.” If it’s a brain disease that would make it a PHYSICAL illness. In which case–there are already brain specialists. Neurologists. Psychiatrist means “soul doctor.” Pretty ironic.
No CURE s the wrong word. But save lives/make you a great marriage partner/enjoy a career/and become a kind, caring, morally upright person. All by taking their magical pills.
They did the exact opposite for me. Have all the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue and live in poverty and isolation. I’m alive, but it’s not a good life. I owe it all to those lying monsters who drove me crazy, then sold me cocktails till I broke away. Too sick and old for it to help.
I wouldn’t need HUD or other hand outs if I hadn’t been crippled by those remorseless, cold-blooded drug dealers who pose as doctors. Never wanted to be a welfare case. Everyone in the MI System thinks living on subsistence hand outs is great. NO IT’S NOT!!!
Living in a garage now. No water or toilet. Keeping (somewhat) warm with a heater. Ugh!
Dr. Quackenbush says your sense of humor is inflamed–probably from a bad infection of the imagination. The solution is putting you on an IV drip of snake oil immediately! 😀
Had a fellow patient wake me up one night asking to get in bed with me. (!!!) 😛
So groggy I couldn’t figure out what he wanted at first. When I did I popped out of bed and told a male staff member. Happily he believed me though the patient denied it.
The next day he apologized after his wife finished visiting him. I told him he was forgiven, but please not to try anything like that again!
I didn’t enjoy that at all. Dr. M told my mom Anafranil never had that effect on anyone. It terrified me, but all he did was threaten us and say, “Don’t you dare go off your medication.” 21 days of no sleep stinks.
Psychiatry creates more problems than it solves from what I see.
I turned to a deliverance minister to drive my voices away. It worked. The drugs just amplified them. The preacher treated me more respectfully than any shrink I’ve met. And he spent 8 hours working with me–for free.
Of course a deliverance wouldn’t work for agnostics or members of other religions. But psychiatry claims to cure everyone–even though it often makes folks worse. Especially long term.
FWIW, we need fewer girls in the MI System. Not more boys.
This is an obvious ploy by the APA to drum up more “consumers” for the crap they aggressively hawk in a way that would make a used car salesman cringe.
Neurotoxins, adult kindergarten, and never-ending angst sessions they call “therapy.” NO ONE needs this stuff.
And they’re kids too. Convince the gullible mama that her son squirms in class, likes sports, and dislikes her smothering ways because he’s SMI and needs “treatment” before puberty and cha ching! Another cash cow for life.
Remember the good people and be sure to thank them. This helped boost my morale during my stays. (Never was involuntary–unless you count the fact that I was deceived into thinking I needed THEIR help.)
How much TV do people watch in Finland? Seriously.
I believe all the mindless, passive viewing leads to isolation even if you’re around someone most of the day.
My retired mom–I’m forced to share a place due to poverty–screams at me for talking during the “important parts” of her show. All the parts are important and all the shows are her favorite. Has gotten irritated when Dad and I talked interrupting a skin cream commercial.
She’s not depressed though. Just doesn’t give a rip about anything or anyone not on the blasted screen. Quit reading and has no hobbies.
I stay in another room except for dinner. Even then Dad and I have to be quiet so she can hear the news. Has it on full blast though it’s making her deaf.
Curses from the DSM book of incantations aka “diagnoses.” The magical potions are their SSRI’s, neuroleptics, and tranquilizers. The amulet of ultimate power would be the electroshock machine!
(BTW, the ancient religions frequently had mind altering drugs for religious ceremonies.)
My brain is “different” too. I have a different way of thinking than many–causing it to form a different shape thanks to neuroplasticity. Starting a successful business before age 22 requires an atypical style of thinking. (Or more would do it.)
Trauma does cause brain damage as well as drugs. Years of drugging and shaming/segregation in the MI System can really mess anyone up. But it sounds like you’ve been keeping your brain active even while drugged Abrianna. 🙂 This helped me a lot, along with other survivors.
Remember you’re not alone. There are many worse off than either of us.
Wish my first shrink had proposed psychedelic drugs. My parents would not have become so enamored with them. Mom wouldn’t have kept shrieking, “Rachel, shut up and take your LSD.”
See, fun drugs are naughty. If they make you feel lousy and the dealer wears a pretty white coat they’re good for you.
Fun=naughty drugs
Feeling like crap=life saving meds
Very strict home. No booze ever! Yet my folks wanted me to take mind altering drugs due to the faux respectability. Sigh.
The reason patients cherish grandiose, unreal views of themselves is coping with a horrible reality. Escapism. Make reality better, show the person respect, treat them as an equal and they may return to consensus reality sans coercion.
And the shrinks have no scruples about lying to patients whenever convenient. I call BS on this hypocrisy. We know they’ll say anything to cram those XXXX neuro-toxins down a hapless consumed’s throat or stick them in the butt. Whatever. Long as they get paid.
KS, I heartily agree. For the second class of victims though certain levels of abuse are standard “care” and therefore acceptable. They have less legal recourse because of this. Like children, the “MI” will not be believed so they make easy prey.
A lot of friends who think psychiatry is great still find horror stories of rape, physical blows, and theft believable. It stands to reason. These people are kindly but think “meds” work and chemical imbalances are scientifically proven facts. Can’t convince them to read anything to the contrary. 🙁
Daycares have to be careful screening out pedophiles since they want to work there. Likewise heartless sadists thrive on settings like locked mental wards.
Unfortunately the brutality of the latter qualifies as “standard care” most often.
The_Cat I’m a naturally vindictive person. Like you I thirst for justice and have revenge fantasies when it’s not immediate.
During my withdrawals from Effexor I was so sick I needed a nap every afternoon. I would call out to God quietly, reminding Him of His promises to avenge the poor, the weak and defenseless.
As I let go of my right to vengeance–asking merely for the damage they inflicted to end–my physical and emotional pain lessened. I survived another day by His grace.
He will hold the shrinks accountable even if no human court ever does. He laughs at their delusions of grandeur that make them play Him.
Psychiatry is rooted in eugenics. Not just racism (that part is underground now) but the idea that some people are of “Criminal Stock” and must be eliminated fro the gene pool and monitored for crimes they are sure to commit.
The concept of “mental illness” is not so much cognitive impairment as what could be called moral defects or bad habits. (According to shrinks’ bias of course.)
They see the “SMI” as born evil. The psychiatrist is the doctor of society rather than the individuals he “treats.” It’s not about helping THEM at all. They’re cancer he tries to remove from the body of society at large. They’re the roaches and he views himself as the exterminator.
Dirty Harry in a lab coat. “You’re the disease. I’m the cure. Do ya feel lucky punk?”
The Mental Illness System strongly encouraged us to do nothing but sit in front of the tube and drool between visits to the center. (As well as cook, clean apt, sleep.) They only expected us to talk to each other.
Excessive TV is known to cause depression and cognitive decline. Yet they think 16 hours a day is good for you and keep it on nonstop in psych wards for some reason.
When I volunteered at the Humane Society, read books, went to community plays and art galleries all the Center’s workers were surprised. A few were gratified. Many seemed displeased that I “didn’t know my place.”
Know how I helped myself get over depression, quit sleeping 12 hours a day, maintain ADL’s, get along better socially and lose over 40 pounds Jessica?
I disobeyed all my shrink’s orders. Quit “day treatment,” “therapy,” and tapered off my highly addictive brain drugs he said I’d die without. Been off them for almost a year and a half. My heart arrhythmia s gone. Is that a danger sign? Lol.
I’m naming this the Charlotte Perkins Therapy. Ever read “The Yellow Wall-Paper”? That’s how she got better. Disobeying her quack’s dangerous orders. 🙂
“Time to go heal people” indeed! “Time to go sicken people” is more accurate.
Devil’s advocate here.
Our opponents would say “Mental illness is actually a brain disease and these drugs have been proven highly effective in treating the symptoms though we don’t know why yet.”
A priori.
Of course there is the semantic problem that brain diseases are physical in nature–not mental–that RoboHugs and other “consumer” sites can’t seem to GET. But you see my point.
“Whatever else I personally think of modern psychiatry, what I truly believe is we still know very little about the mind/brain complex and need more unbiased research, full stop.”
Luv ya Cat. But calling those who’re still shell shocked “snowflakes” is not helping matters.
We need to deal with one another kindly and gently here.
Abrianna had NO idea she was hurting people’s feelings. Please remember this. Her words hurt many, but it’s like someone who accidentally sticks their foot out too far and causes you to fall. As opposed to deliberately tripping people.
To Abrianna, I hope you’ll forgive us for judging you unfairly. You had no idea how people here feel about psych labels. Particularly the “personality disorders” can of worms. My biggest problem is it’s horrible to write anyone off as hopeless and irredeemable. No human can read minds or see the future. But when people assign personality disorders that’s what they’re pretending to do. Sometimes these become vicious self fulfilling prophecies, making reformation more difficult than ever.
That is true OH. But we must be just and not make our opponents out to be nastier than they are. Most are ignorant of the damage they do and actually think they’re helping people. (Those in the “Inner Circle”–presidents and high ranking APA officials, shrinks turned bureaucrats, famous pro bio-bio-bio model writers–are another matter.)
I fled an abusive guy myself. Didn’t need a shrink to “diagnose” him either. I just checked his zodiac sign and realized he did horrible things because of the Sign he was born under. Lol. 😉
I also read his fortune cookie and it said, “You will hurt the people you love.”
Using the exact sciences of fortune cookies and astrology I realized he was abusive. Couldn’t have figured it out by watching the way he kicked puppies. I needed science to help me out.
My sister’s disability–skeletal deformities–have required numerous, painful surgeries. While she has a high pain threshold and has done a lot with her life she makes a lousy nurse if you’re sick or in pain. Maybe Cat’s boot-strap philosophy helps him maintain a positive outlook, but renders him less sensitive to others than he should be.
Glad Cat’s not hurt by the talk about “personality disorders.” I’m not myself–exactly. But I understand why others are. That seems to be a hot button topic for this site. Hope the editors take note of this.
I don’t consider psychiatry or drug addiction good as institutions.
As far as individuals–I try to look for the good in others. Most of the shrinks I have known strike me as good natured but detached. If you went along with everything they said, and didn’t ask questions they were pretty nice. Only one was truly evil, and her patients had no defense against her abuse.
But even if they mean well the treatments still have done many grave harm.
In the old days they used to treat cholera patients with blood letting.
It happens often enough however. I got my own delightful BPD label from a case worker, btw. Not supposed to be that way. She thought my desires for emotional connection and monogamy were unhealthy, swinger that she was. 😛
Have you ever asked yourself how labeling someone BPD or a narcissist will help them? Or even the victims of abuse–if they’re abusive.
I had a wonderful friend named Gladys who refused to leave her cruel, abusive husband. Why? He had been “diagnosed” “bipolar.” Gladys felt it would be cruel to leave the “poor, sick” man. Countless folks also labeled SMI begged her to consider his abusive behavior. Not his “mental illness.”
“Bipolar” was irrelevant. Kenny was cruel, selfish, and bad tempered. In Gladys’s case her kind heart combined with pseudo-scientific lies was her undoing.
The only difference between a “personality disordered” person and anyone else is a shrink (or messed up case worker with a BS in PE) labeled them for any reason whatever. Didn’t like their attitude/voice/hairstyle/labeler going through a divorce or not enough protein for breakfast.
Why not just say, “My roommate was violent and bullied me?” For crying out loud.
See your shrink to adjust your poisons every 3 months. (Always upping the dose. Never lowering it.)
Go to Preschool for Grown-Ups (AKA day treatment or clubhouse) 3 times a week for lectures on how messed up you are and how you BETTER TAKE your “MEDS.”
Once or twice a month a fruitless visit with a therapist. Some want to help and get frustrated. Telling folks how broken and hopeless they are and filling them with neurotoxins.
But the psycho-therapist is a tool of the system. Questioning orders can get you fired. Better yell at the consumed for not trying hard enough–if you know they’re poison compliant.
Like asking someone to run laps with a ball and chain under the belief these devices help them walk upright. Stupid stuff!
Been wondering if non-certified folks outside the MI System could learn these techniques and use them. You don’t NEED a PhD in psychology or MSW to listen or show compassion.
(Of course you can’t enroll as a student I realize.)
Are you debating those who conducted this survey or the MIA authors who are criticizing it? (Those who conducted the original survey are probably not reading this.)
Stupid and pointless. I have visited open AA meetings with a friend (and was a member of another 12 step program once) The man leading the group grumbled afterward to me about judges forcing people to attend these meetings as punishment for DUI’s.
“Waste of their time and ours!” he said.
You can’t force someone to become a better person against their will.
Its NOT a silly overreaction. But the horrible stigma came from a shrink. Not the writer.
Those labels are spurious and stupid. I got mine for thinking of suicide after a man I loved dumped me for no known reason. (And my mom had been telling me for years I was unlovable and no man would want a bipolar/schizo/fatty like me.) Didn’t get mine from a shrink either, but a case manager with a BS in phys ed who fit the “type” way better than I ever did.
I hate break ups but they quit making me suicidal some time ago. The label lasts though. Believe me, I empathize with you. Your anger and pain are legitimate.
I only ask you to remember Abrianna did not label you. Some quack playing god did.
It is an insult. But not intentional. Consider it a stray bullet.
Abrianna doesn’t know any better and believes in her own label. Takes time for people to come around. Plus she doesn’t know any of us from Adam. You know you’re not whatever the shrinks called you. So do I and the majority of others here.
Weird how I no longer act “bipolar 2” and no one knows I am supposed to be that way. But when I read articles or see crap on TV about “mental health issues” my heart races and my stomach churns.
Weird how I don’t have such an automatic knee jerk reaction when I hear the term “bipolar killer” on TV. I used to–especially when I believed it applied to me.
But it still scares me people will discover my painful past.
Takes time to emotionally distance yourself I think.
Cat, I believe KS acknowledges there are plenty of horrible characters in psych wards. I have met my share. Many of those opted for “treatment” over a legitimate prison.
My problem–and perhaps KS’s problem–is legitimizing these labels.
The author meant no harm however. She’s a newcomer and doesn’t understand why people are upset.
I respectfully disagree, but I’m not angry myself.
Abrianna I agree that if they’re going to lock people up they should at least separate the violent from the peaceful. Even the prison systems do this. Not all “psychotic” people are violent. I never was–just very frightened.
Who said Breggin was a liar or Szazs cold blooded? Truth and love are actually conjoined twins who’ll die if taken apart. They just emphasize one more than the other.
Szazs has written some witty stuff on par with Mark Twain. Not a sci fi space alien or android! And the favorite butt of his wit were the quacks who loved to deceive people at the expense of others’ liberty, well-being and life itself.
Breggin spoke the truth when it got him into trouble. Wish I had read Toxic Psychiatry the year it came out. It could have saved me years of heart ache and misery.
I’m in favor of restrictions on pharmaceutical crimes. But as long as government officials stand to benefit there will be none. The FDA has proven worse than useless in the recent ECT hearings.
Get rid of Big Pharma lobbyists AND lying commercials. Not an either/or proposition. Though ending legal bribes will probably lead to the latter. Crooks aren’t into evil for evil’s sake the way altruists are into goodness for goodness’s sake.
If she did go drug free it would probably end her position as a peer specialist and might get her involuntarily committed. So–if she chooses to leave–she will probably not announce it in that kind of setting.
Surprised they allowed you to make this presentation. But the low-key method you used helped. Congratulations on using the term “drugs.” They aren’t medicines the way insulin, thyroxin, or antibiotics are. The first two are to be taken long term but replace real deficiencies in the body. Antibiotics are only prescribed short term.
Zoloft replaces nothing, kills nothing known to be harmful, yet is prescribed for a lifetime. It’s destroying my 12 year old nephew’s brain. 🙁
For me, just going off my drugs wasn’t enough. Had to leave the “mental health” setting. Being told how sick, helpless, hopeless, and dependent you are–day after day–year after year–can be depressing.
Not necessarily harm them. Just turn them into helpless drug addicts good for nothing but Consuming psych drugs till they die 30 years prematurely.
Most shrinks aren’t Snidely Whiplash types, but they just prefer their prestigious, cushy jobs to acknowledging, “Hey these drugs–the only thing I can actually do is prescribe them–are harming patients. Making many crazier than they ever were to start with. Causing all of them horrible, scary health problems, brain shrinkage, and nerve damage. Diminished quality AND quantity of life. Why am I even here?”
(All bets are off for the high ranking creepers on the Inner Circle. You know. The “well informed” ones.)
Once you let yourself ask this question you’re faced with the ugly task of leaving the field for training in a different specialty where lawsuits can occur or talk therapy that pays 1/4 or less what filling out a dozen prescriptions for 4 patients in one hour would. Your pesky conscience may turn you into a whistle blower. If their’s one thing psychiatry hates more than those it “helps” it’s a conscience.
Yet Psychiatry says it’s guarding society from sociopaths and psychopaths. Ha ha.
Surprised this was published on MIA. It reads like an article from NAMI or Psychology Today.
Who says “boys need more help because they won’t accept passive roles and ask for quarts of happy pills to smile ALL the time?”
More like “Why do girls accept passive roles for mental illness promoters and ask for/take quarts of happy pills to smile 100% of the time?” That’s the real problem
Saw an article on Xojane explaining how happy the writer was for her “depression diagnosis.” Somehow she felt guilty for not being HAPPY 100% of the time and not grinning like the Cheshire cat 24/7. Why was she ashamed of a simple feeling? Like being unhappy was a crime or something?
She admitted the SSRI’s didn’t help all the time. But she seemed to see the “diagnosis” as a note from her doctor. “Please excuse Jane from smiling all day today. She has depression–a real honest-to-gosh BRAIN DISEASE. She has the right to look unhappy now and then.”
Why is this a thing? Why this sadness shaming?
If Jane is sad all the time and wants to feel better that’s one thing. But why does she have to fake exuberance and joy? That may be causing her depression. Partly caused mine.
I was thoughtful, pensive, and occasionally melancholy as a young girl. Not only was this seen as NOT GOOD, but this led to bullying in high school/social phobia/then full blown depression.
The teachers/counselors didn’t do much to teach me social self defense or emotional resilience. Just “self esteem affirmations” I couldn’t believe. Then drugs. Always my “problem” for not fitting in. Like they want us all to be vapid, shallow morons.
Be yourself. As long as you’re “mentally healthy” like everyone else. 😛
Psychiatry was a strong right arm of the Soviet Union.
Smaller government is the answer. Not a bigger totalitarian state which would only appropriate psychiatry for the new regime.
If we got rid of the FDA and abolished cronyism and bribery (lobbying) Big Pharma would lose its legal clout and the government would lose the incentive to push travesties like the “Cures Act” through.
This is good. In middle school a nasty boy kept calling me ugly and hid his face pointedly whenever I entered. One day I said, “Thank you for sparing me the sight of your face Chad.” He quit trying that!
Do you think teaching victims of bullying to do stand up comedy instead of karate might be a good idea?
Thanks Sam. I have read these comments from you before and appreciate you are not speaking OVER your wife. Most SO’s who do are not on this site.
Every now and then a controlling (possibly abusive) relative does show up. Like that one woman who censored her adult daughter’s reading material–wouldn’t let her online without watching over her shoulder it seems–and said she didn’t care if the “meds” killed her daughter in her forties or fifties. Ick!
Most of us know you aren’t anything like “Kate.” Glad for your wife and you as well. Most “Kates” are very unhappy people. No wonder their SO’s are so crazy to start with.
My own parents played a more ambiguous role in my psychiatrization. Most do. Other SO’s know the loved ones are being hurt, losing all ability to function but can’t stop it.
I know you’re not a “Kate.” Many others do too. But I hope you’ll be charitable and patient to those whose suffering makes them uncharitable and impatient with kindly SO’s like you who only want to love and heal.
Maybe show the kids kindness and compassion instead of brain damage and torture…but that would be just plain nutty.
As Breggin points out in an article from years back, if they were doing this as a form of punishment for actual crimes committed, a bunch of human rights groups would be breathing down their necks but torturing/crippling/killing (through negligence) the innocent are all acceptable. They’re only “treating” “useless eaters” and “defectives” after all.
And how can they determine numbers of stuff that might have been so but isn’t?
Great science fiction. But don’t confuse the figures pulled out of thin air with science.
If people read these statistics and know the “chemical imbalance” myth is BS I guess that’s informed consent. If they want to try anyhow they must be desperate and at least they have all the facts.
Like most survivors here I was lied to.
A positive and more accurate word for these drugs is “emotional pain killers.”
In my case the cocktail prevented me from working. 90% of “med compliant” people can’t maintain gainful employment. As far as the woman you cited Craig, it may be the placebo effect. If she suddenly quit her neuroleptic she probably would suffer withdrawals. And as a peer support specialist being “naughty” would definitely lead to her getting fired. Not just that her “meds” are working but she needs to toe the line.
“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Psychiatry is about comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted. The perfect “science” for grown-up bullies who loved to name call on the playground and torture the weak. Just like the names bullies gave their victims stuck through school the “diagnostic” insults last through life.
It wasn’t always this way. Most churches support psychiatry because they believe in the “chemical imbalance” psychiatrists themselves laugh at. I think they bought into it during the 90’s when the “bio-bio-bio model” took over and NAMI spread its propaganda all over the place.
In the old days many places told you depression was a sin. So, while they wouldn’t force “meds” on you they would lecture you on your sinfulness if you weren’t smiling all the time. Kind of led to the outbreak of psych marketing.
Assuming there is a biological cause to emotional/cognitive problems (such as head trauma or Lyme’s) psychiatry is still not a good answer. All they offer is further brain damage and abnormalities.
As someone diagnosed “Bipolar 2” whose mood swings started from an SSRI reaction and stopped 24 years later when I finished going off I strongly agree. From R. Whitaker’s writings and comments here and elsewhere I wonder how many cases of “Bipolar” were iatrogenic snafus the shrinks refuse to own up to.
A lot of stalkers love their objects. But it’s unwholesome. If these guys continue their pursuit–after being told their infatuation is unreturned–they can get locked up.
Abuse victims do have a hard time “accepting love” because they can’t trust anyone. Peter Breggin would say deal with them kindly instead of further cruelty and punishment for weakness. All standard “treatments” of psychiatry.
I know that’s not activism. But this is NOT an anti-psychiatry site for activism or support. So complaining that it isn’t is like finding fault with a grocery store for not selling nails. But produce here and get your nails at the hardware store.
Danzig, I can read Greek mythology and understand the human mind better than the average shrink’s spiels. Though articles in the APA journal are great if you want to write a novel with an unreliable POV narrator. 😀
Psychiatrists cannot pretend to believe something they know is false.
Hmm….Does that include telling the “consumer” that their distressed states are known to be caused by chemical imbalances in the brain? And that’s okay since psychiatry has a bunch of “safe and effective treatments” which are magic bullets “just like insulin for diabetes”?
“Mental health treatment” is the perfect passive aggressive revenge scheme for that annoying relative you can’t stand. Or maybe you are just jealous of them.
You can ruin their life and come out smelling like a rose. The Long Suffering Saint. And everyone will tell you how LUCKY the “crazy” relative is to have someone like you in their life.
Psychiatry destroyed all the love in my life. When they labeled me “hard core” my friends shunned me. This was after “psych education” by the way. Telling people “Mental illness is real. They’re crazy and hopeless,” is great at selling (involuntary) “treatment” but it causes ostracism and cruelty.
My relationship with my mom got really bad. The doctor assured her the “meds” were highly effective and if I acted weird, had seizures, or lazy/apathetic I must not be taking them properly. They made me horribly numb. I felt everyone in the world hated me. I wondered if I had a soul like other people. And all the drugs did was make me hard to live with. I still act stupidly from TBI after going off.
I may love others but no one will ever love me again. Except my cat.
I wonder how many other survivors have turned misanthropic. Occasionally I meet people in casual situations but I don’t trust them or share much beyond casual small-talk.
People aren’t all mean or nasty–just around me and those like me. I bring out the worst in all I meet. Like a curse.
And if you get worse instead of better they accuse you of “pill shaming.” Defend pills by shaming patients for becoming disabled or dying.
I’m not out for shaming gel capsules or tablets. Those who should be shamed are the lying hucksters who hurt people and call them crazy for suffering. Too bad they’re shameless.
Remember Dr. Farid Fata, the cancer specialist? If he’d gone into psychiatry he would have gotten away with it. 😛
“Madness” is not only elastic and subjective but qualitative rather than quantitative. Impossible to measure in facts or figures. Like beauty, happiness or a life well lived.
I see it as a state of mind rather than a group of people. It can also mean angry. Though no one thinks certain people are born angry with brains forcing them to be angry all the time.
Soft sciences used to be labeled humanities in academia. Nothing wrong with them, but when a humanities specialist poses as something they’re not…say an anthropologist claiming to be a heart surgeon..then you have some problems.
Agreed. A lot of unlabeled people do things that puzzle onlookers from time to time, though the people have perfectly sound reasons for doing them. A common plot for sit com episodes.
Human beings are complex. All of us have mysterious behaviors with layers of motivation.
Pop culture and psychiatry actually don’t view the extreme states called mental illness as complex or mysterious.
“Why did that man go on a shooting spree?”
“He was mentally ill.”
Assuming that were a thing that STILL is not a motivation. It allows them to dismiss anything that led to that decision. Calling him a misanthrope or nihilist would explain this behavior better. Since hatred of humanity and belief that chaos is the ultimate good actually have motivated the shooters behind Columbine and other places.
“What was his motive in killing them?”
“Simple. He was a Villain.”
Villains do villainy stuff. The “mentally ill” do “mentally ill” stuff.
Different than just being short changed in raw intelligence. Had a couple friends laugh at me for reading Anatomy of an Epidemic–dismissing the book without even reading the back blurb.
Cookbooks and sweet romance novels make up the bulk of their reading. Though most down time was spent watching TV. SMH.
You don’t find groups like Heaven’s Gate allowed to make pitches in mainstream churches though. Heard two specialists from a Mental Illness Center give a promotional speech at a mega church I visited. 🙁
However coming out as a “survivor” would not be playing it safe.
The concept of being dangerous and unstable is not comparable to having skin of a different color. The color of your skin does not show the content of your character.
However “mentally ill” means someone with character flaws they can’t help/be held accountable for because of defective brains. “Mental illness” is itself a moral judgment. An unjust, arbitrary one. But as long as psychiatrists go unquestioned and unchallenged….
It works in many cases. “We’re a minority group that has been treated unjustly. Give us our rights.”
But RR pointed out this can’t work with the notion of the “mentally ill” as an oppressed/separate people. Many of the psychiatrized just want to fit in and be accepted by the mainstream. Talking about your “diagnosis” identity is counterproductive. The fact that it isn’t true makes it more confusing and therefore worse.
Using identity politics won’t work here. “Mentally ill” are perceived as mass shooters or stealthy villains who cannibalize their victims. These behaviors will never be socially accepted–nor should they.
In educating mainstream people regarding psychiatric abuse this would be a good idea. Instead of othering folks as “mad” and not quite human it would point out how psychiatry could happen to ANYONE. No matter how well-behaved, intelligent, educated, or conscientious you are. Once the shrinks have got you by the frontal lobes you’re dead meat.
For what it’s worth Dawkins is himself very pro-psychiatry.
“If science has difficulty explaining something, there sure as XXXX is no one else who is going to explain it.” To an arrogant scientist’s liking that is. Tough to admit anyone might know something he doesn’t. 🙂
Sam, I like you. Can’t speak for everyone but others on MIA like or at least don’t hate you.
The reason many here dislike SO’s is they abused them, then used psychiatry to cover their butts.
While covering for abusers is not NAMI’s official position, it’s “Nobody’s fault except the ‘defectives’ for being born” attitude makes it attractive for those who wish to abuse spouses, adult children, and elderly parents with impunity. Not all SO’s at NAMI are that way of course!
Glad you and other SO’s here want to help. Sometimes people will listen to you because you’re “normal.” Often shrinks will dismiss even you or threaten you since you lack proper deference to these gods of the madhouse.
My mom wanted to help long ago. But the “treatments” only made things worse. So she decided I was hopeless long ago.
I want to see a BIOLOGICAL cure for the damage shrinks have inflicted on me. Real, BIOLOGICAL damage no doctor is willing to help me with because of the unearned worship they pay psychiatry.
Sometimes, yes Steve. But in my–and many other cases–the poverty, unemployment, unsafe housing, and homelessness are created by psychiatric interference. Just like the “bipolar” brains they create that were apparently normal before their “help.” 😛
I was doing well as a college student. Making friends, preparing for a career as a librarian. Sought out psychiatry at the recommendation of a therapist for the anxiety plaguing me. Bad social experiences in my past made me afraid of looking bad.
(I blamed myself for my family’s homelessness since the woman who got Dad fired had been sort of a friend/mentor. I struggled hard after that to avoid talking unless what I said was perfectly acceptable and not weird. Bullying in the new high school made me more convinced of my freakishness.)
The shrink put me on Anafranil, saying it would stop my obsessive thoughts. It didn’t. It kept me awake for 21 days straight causing psychotic mania. Angry at my audacity in having a bad reaction to this drug the Lord High Executioners of Psychiatry sentenced me to death by slow, prolonged poisoning. Not much kinder than the gas chambers imho.
Finally I escaped. But I still can’t think straight, am in constant pain and tired all the time. It ruined my life.
The moral boys and girls? Never ask for help. People are evil and devour the weak. If someone says he wants to help you because of compassion or empathy he’s a filthy liar.
I have lived in a mixed gender halfway house, OH. I agree. Some of the scarier guys threatened me. The violent ones had embraced the MI label to avoid jail time.
They’re wrong.
You are your “diagnosis”. And nothing but a walking disease.
They want it that way. To segregate you and make money off their Mental Illness Centers harvesting brain disorders created by their drugs.
I always perceived Dostoevsky’s figure as a Forrest Gump character. Cognitive impairment with saintly character and flashes of supernatural wisdom on occasion. The Idiot has health issues rendering him impotent as I recall. But Forrest Gump is not the same as Norman Bates.
A lot of Kay Redfield Jamison’s writings seem to be along the lines of “the ‘mentally ill’ have awesome super powers. But going off ‘meds’ is our kryptonite.” Would make a great comic book series. Lol.
“Schizophrenics” are types or tropes rather than actual people who are way too complex for the lazy hacks writing for TV and movies to bother with. 😛
Part of the reason pop culture loves psychiatric “diagnoses.” It allows us to separate humanity into neat little boxes. The biggest box has the Sane and Normal people. Then the SMI and soft diagnoses.
Sam, my chief problem with counseling is that it sold out to psychiatry. If anyone wants to see one make sure not to get her or him at a Mental Illness Center.
Better off seeing an independent one–even if uncertified. Psychiatry has contaminated talking “therapy” like it has injured legitimate medical science.
Szazs said he only worked with consenting adults. This is important. If they won’t let you fire a therapist for bad behavior or personality conflicts, it’s not counseling but a hostage situation.
Once an ordinary counselor knows you’re labeled hopeless (SMI) they’ll do little but remind you of how hopeless your alleged brain disease makes you and how YOU HAD BETTER NOT GO OFF YOUR MEDS TILL YOU DIE!!!
Had a woman scream this at me when she found out I had been reading stuff by Dr. Abrams. Mom had started it since she saw how mega-doses of Haldol and Stelazine caused me intense suffering and talked about visiting Canada.
I guess Dee didn’t give a rip. I left her office thinking of the one way out of taking my “meds.” Suicide. Thanks Dee. 😛
A small but very vocal minority. And they’re rewarded with a big platform and $$$$$$. Dr. Kay Jamison Redfield who wrote amusing works of spec fiction like Touched by Fire. And Patti Duke who earned a tidy sum as a poster child for pharm-psychiatry.
Interesting both were treated mainly with lithium. That stuff will ruin your kidneys but it seems to cause less brain damage than a “cocktail” of 3 drugs or more used on most people now.
Do you think GLT could be the latest form of counseling? (Gas Lighting Therapy.) Nothing like having your client question their sanity or even losing it occasionally to promote good insight and treatment compliance. 😀
If you’re trapped in the system you can counteract these effects a little by reading, playing chess, Sudoku puzzles, physical exercise, journaling, etc. Sometimes the keepers applaud this. Sometimes they view you as a troublemaker since you won’t sit quietly in front of the tube 16 hours a day like everyone else.
You don’t know my friend or her family yet you automatically question her integrity. (Stability you call it. Hurting children shows a lack of moral integrity as well as emotional control.)
The reason he gave her is he didn’t trust a mentally ill woman. He gave her diagnosis for his official reason.
I have been expelled from college, had a bunch of gossips try to prevent my teaching Sunday school, been fired from a job, and denied housing just because they heard my “diagnosis.” My behaviors had been acceptable till then and hadn’t changed. My label was the deciding factor.
My friend’s son-in-law was a jerk, according to our case worker. She was SANE so maybe you’ll respect her view on the matter. Everyone listened to the son-in-law and let him have his way since he was a SANE jerk.
RW remarked on this in Anatomy of an Epidemic. Long term drug use can cause dementia–especially in the younger folks. And your brain doesn’t care if they’re prescription.
Shaun, my friend loved the MI clinic because psychiatry had ruined her reputation in the community. Her son in law refused to let his kids see their “crazy Grandma.” (Someone at the clinic labeled her crazy to start with.) Only fellow outcasts acknowledged her humanity.
During the Jim Crow laws in the south even where not officially segregated many African Americans preferred isolating in their own communities. (As a way to avoid being murdered by racists.) The larger community treated them with condescension and/or abuse, then argued that “they like staying in their own neighborhoods.”
But this article is not about improving the community but–assuming it’s already intact and functional–reintroducing someone to it under the new SMI identity psychiatrists have branded them with. A ceremony of public degradation.
The scapegoat is forever shamed and degraded in the eyes of the community. They will never accept him or her back no matter how they behave or obey the law. 🙁
What horrible thing did this person do to deserve this? Often nothing at all.
Good idea KS. Though even Community College classes can be expensive unless it’s non-credit or a life enrichment course.
Also toast masters, the local Y, art centers, library activities, volunteer organizations, and groups you can find using the app Meetup. When I lived near Notre Dame U. they offered free lectures to the public sometimes.
A local chapter of EA might help you improve your current relationships while making new friends too.
To any consumers reading this neither KS nor I want to victim blame. We’re mad at those who exploit and hurt you. I used to be a “shuffling zombie” myself.
No offense to the writer, but the information presented makes me sick to my stomach. Even if the intentions are benevolent.
Reintroducing the person to the community under their new identity of life mental patient. Hopelessly insane, dangerous idiot no one need ever talk to again.
No. Please no! The person has been through enough. Why do you want to torment them further with public humiliation? 🙁 Can’t you see that that’s what this is? That everyone will treat them like a moron, a monster, or alternate between the two extremes from now on?
Reminds me of the opening of The Scarlet Letter where they force Hester to come out wearing her bright red A for all the town folk to gawk at.
But they called it punishment. Not therapy or ending stigma.
Shaun, I agree that MH centers provide a place of acceptance many consumers lack outside. The problem is the diagnosis and mind numbing drugs ruin other relationships.
Too sensitive and high strung I always struggled to master social situations. When Dad kept getting fired I blamed my own lack of social skills for our bouts of homelessness and withdrew–afraid of saying the “wrong thing” as I always did. 🙁
Drugs took the edge off my anxiety created by constant worries over winning everyone’s approval by acting and talking perfectly. They also hampered my social skills the way being perpetually drunk might.
Now that I’m off I can sense vibes and non verbal cues better. Read people. My sister-in-law thought I had Aspergers–I acted like I did. But screwed up as my thoughts are from anemia and vitamin deficiencies I no longer have enough “symptoms” to qualify for the spectrum.
Maybe give folks lists of social events and gatherings? I joined Friends of the Library, volunteered and was active in my local church while a career mental patient. One center in a small town was fine with this–though surprised at my desire to give back and socialize with those outside the MI sphere. Another, corrupt and enormous center in S. Bend would get angry and “punish” us in subtle under-handed ways for not staying in the ghetto where they wanted us to stay. Almost like a cult.
When higher education for the blind became popular thanks to Braille you could see a similar phenomenon. Often the students became teachers because there was no place for them outside the Perkins Institute or wherever. Few careers for the visually impaired back then too aside from caning and teaching other blind people.
I have known a woman who lost all her friends and family after her “diagnosis.” Could no longer earn a living but squeaked by in extreme poverty on SSDI. Suffered Diabetes and countless other health problems. Was a revolving door patient to the psych ward for overwhelming suicidal desires.
Yet she insisted her life had improved thanks to psychiatry and its magical pills. Furthermore she went out of her way to recruit others to join our “joyful” community of sickly, impoverished outcasts.
Anyone heard of the Sunken Cost Fallacy? How many psychiatric “cures” are owed to this?
Ironically my stomach was already messed up due to intense stress and constant low calorie diets as an adolescent to earn love and acceptance by looking like Kate Moss or Calista Flockhart. Lol.
“You can never be too thin or too rich girls!” What all our mothers kept telling us.
Despite going 2 or 3 days at a time on little but iceberg lettuce, I never became thin, lovely and lovable. Just messed up my digestive system.
It is important people stay on their “meds.” Otherwise they might get better and leave the system, forcing poor “Doc” Andreason and countless others to find real jobs.
And next time a psychiatrist posting here mocks the idea that “mental illness” is a social construct we should ask him some questions.
“Hey ‘Doctor’ could you tell us about Drapetomania? What modality of treatment would you employ for this disorder? Is it classified as a personality disorder in the DSM5? How come it only afflicts African Americans?”
“Hey ‘Doctor,’ there is some disagreement on the origins of the ‘mental illness’ known as Hysterics. Is it entirely neurological or does a wandering womb play a prominent role? Would you advocate the Weir Mitchell cure as a form of therapy in combination with medications and/or ECT for women thus afflicted?”
Legitimate diagnoses agreed upon by psych experts. Till overt racism and sexism were no longer socially acceptable. (Not referring to the covert forms.)
I’m going on a regimen Rosalee. 2 Tbs of apple cider vinegar (with the “mother”) and slices of fresh lemon mixed with hot water after getting up each morning. Half an hour later 2 Tbs of EV coconut oil chased down by almond milk. Half an hour later breakfast with kombucha and a probiotic tablet. Before bedtime a charcoal tablet.
No refined sugars, dairy, or gluten for the month. No caffeine except the kombucha tea. Dairy tends to “set off” my system if I’m not okay just like gluten–though when my health is good and I’m not stressed out I can digest moderate amounts of these foods. I plan on eating fermented veggies every day instead of yogurt or kefir.
Roberta I was expecting another tragic story here. MIA contains many.
I’m so glad my expectations were wrong and your family had a happy ending. Like other happy endings on this site, you owe it to disobeying psychiatric orders. Congratulations! 🙂
Happy for you, your dad, and other family members.
Did you know research is showing that there are effective treatments for early stage dementia? Proper nutrition, rest, physical exercise, and lots of mental exercises. There are no drugs to fix these problems, but solutions exist. We need to stop looking for magic in a drugstore bottle.
When I attended Day Treatment or Clubhouse the folks running the show kept trying to fix me up with guys based SOLELY on our “diagnoses.” Nothing against the men. Often they were nice human beings–sometimes nice looking. But we had nothing in common!
“You guys are both ‘bipolars.’ You should get together. You have so much in common. Only you can understand people like you.”
Yeah, we’re all alike. If someone said this about members of an ethnic minority he’d be (rightly) called a bigot. But it’s okay to tell psychiatrized people this crap.
I vented before about how “bipolar” applies to so many types of people and behaviors the label is about as useless as terms like “dummy,” “stupid,” or “ugly.”
Ted Bundy the serial killer has been classified as “bipolar.” So has your fun, eccentric Aunt Betty. So has your overachieving neighbor across the street who struggled to be the perfect wife/mother/CEO and snapped from an SSRI reaction. So has the battered twelve year old boy trapped in foster care. All alike my foot! 😛
At least no one takes the term “cracked” literally. Though if they tried to treat you for a fractured skull they would stop once they discovered your cranium was intact.
Bcharris, my gut is very unhealthy and it’s messing up my absorption of micro-nutrients. And ability to think straight. Off my SSRI drugs after 20+ years but they wiped out my intestines’ natural ecosystem. What should I do?
Our standards of high cleanliness are responsible for all these autoimmune diseases and allergies. Some respected professionals have conducted studies in support of this. One famous doctor has even linked the high rates in childhood leukemia to lack of exposure to viruses and bacteria.
Remember what killed the Martians in War of the Worlds?
Glad you can see that Shaun F. Counselors notice stuff like that more than psychiatrists do,
Have you ever read People of the Lie? Written by a counseling psychiatrist in the 80’s before that kind of thing was all but phased out. Interesting ideas, but I disagree that evil can be reduced to a science anymore than a sonnet or Plato’s Dialogues.
I also am against one human being capable of labeing another “evil.” The author acknowledges the danger of this. My question is how it would help anyone–even their victims? If someone is suffering abuse helping them to escape should be enough.
I don’t see “Evil” making the DSM 6 however. It sounds like a moral judgment; not sciency enough.
Remember kids, the important thing is just to be yourself. Unless you have a “mental illness.”
Then you need a lobotomy. We can’t fix your social skills or make people like you, but we can make sure you’re not smarter or more talented than they are.
Convince the public the shrinks are the (indirect) cause of mass shootings, enormous numbers on disability and a waste of tax dollars and the battle is half won.
Dialogue with unrepentant shrinks is useless. “Please Mr. Beater, quit hitting your wife. She’s here to tell you how bad it makes her feel.”
What we need to focus on is reeducating real people. Those who want to help us.
OH you say the drugs “work” since all People want is to make others quiet and dependent. Not EVERYONE.
Have you read Anatomy lately? Folks took those neurotoxins believing they would cure their unhappiness or keep them from running around biting like rabid dogs. Not all mothers of the “mentally ill” are NAMI mommies. A lot of these women never wanted their sons or daughters to turn into drooling houseplants who couldn’t think straight and had to live in their basements till the kid dies from the drugs’ eventual toll. Reaching these folks would be great.
A good friend who encouraged my withdrawal lost a sister to psychiatry. I told her about Pies’ self-congratulatory article about the “harmless metaphor” and she was very angry. L started out as a NAMI member who introduced me to the group. We finally left when it became obvious they didn’t care about ANYTHING but drugs. Not crime prevention, saving lives, improving quality of life…none of these mattered .1% as much as forcing “meds” down as many throats as possible.
If a group juxtaposed against NAMI were formed, those who lost loved ones to psychiatry should be allowed to join. Or watched loved ones damaged beyond recognition like that British doctor who comments here. I know L would love to join. Or Sam Ruck.
Not saying shrinks aren’t people. Just the roles they take on make it impossible to act like real people around their test subjects. If you perceive someone as a thing to be fixed or broken into splinters you won’t take what it says seriously.
Good point. My own were always distressing, even the bizarre highs many others enjoy. One acquaintance used his “manic” states to fight low self esteem that made him suicidal.
They’d drug the mania away and he’d talk about killing himself. He’d quit cold turkey, get DT’s, and everyone would say, “It’s Dave’s fault cause he’s a crazy idiot who won’t take his ‘meds.'”
Watching Dave’s suffering made me the “perfect patient” for over 20 years.
Guess what? Everyone still treats you horribly.
I have more emotional stability now than ever before in my adult life. Too bad about my body.
How about “sad pride” or “frightened pride”? Mental states change not just daily but hourly. Unless something horrible is going on. Why turn something not just very negative and immaterial but transitory by its nature into your core identity?
I don’t fit my “diagnosis” anymore. Not moody or depressed though my executive function is permanently damaged making me do stupid things so I can’t find work. Cashier/sales associate/server/stocker are the jobs available and I can’t even figure out how to organize my room.
The accurate word for the drugs is neuroleptics though in your case they helped silence the voices. In others’ they are ineffective or amplify them.
Sorry you have been through that crap. I understand your complaints about the controlling, heavy-handed way the experts treat other human beings. A lot of folks who choose to remain consumers still hate the condescending emotional abuse they receive.
Hope things get better soon. In too much physical pain to concentrate today, but someone has posted links to studies here about the link between psych drugs and brain deterioration a psychiatrist conducted. Fww, prolonged stress can lead to loss of brain matter as well.
During the Middle Ages people treated the “mad” differently. They were more the harmless buffoon. Kids would laugh at them and throw dirt at them, but if they were harmless folks would let them go their merry way till they snapped out of it.
I wish you had commented on that period Ekaterina.
St Frances of Assisi went mad for a while. He went to be alone in a cave and did a lot of manual labor trying to rebuild a crumbling chapel single-handedly. While he was never the “normal” Freud or other shrinks would approve of, he led a happy, productive life with many meaningful relationships once he sorted things out.
What is worth noting is no one was surprised at how his madness resolved itself once Frances sorted out his calling. Everyone welcomed him back to the village. Even at his nuttiest, no one tried to lock him up.
One conclusion is psychiary creates insanity in many otherwise normal people and prevents all its victims from ever returning to reason.
I no longer consider myself mad. Most of my insanity was created by the psychiatrist I saw.
I don’t consider “madness” as the same thing as “mental illness” but a bizarre state of mind and inability to perceive reality.
Our opponents would argue that psychiatry no longer supports slavery or DIRECT euthanasia of the unfit. Trying a bunch of cruel and pointless experiments that (allegedly) shorten your patient’s life or kill them doesn’t count unless they can prove you were trying to murder them. Not like anyone cares if they off their victims anyhow. But force feeding them drugs the torturers can bill the public for is way more profitable than turning the bodies into green cookies or soap. 😛
The shrink would be locked up for Manslaughter. The test subject is already screwed. At least they could keep others from being harmed.
Shrinks tell everyone their drugs make murderers safe to be around. If someone is on AOT and kills someone punish the shrink.
But what shrink wants to prevent mass murders when they’re great PR? Mass shooting sprees are great for devils like Torrey to spread their lies. The APA probably throws a party every time a Sandy Hook happens, damn them.
Pointing out the hypocrisy or hidden abuse going on in a church is a great way to get in trouble. I grew up as a preacher’s daughter so I know.
Not all churches do this. But some are about hiding ugly family secrets–wife beating. Emotional abuse of children. Secret drinking binges when everyone’s supposed to be a teetotaler. Affairs. “Everyone” knows these things go on, but you aren’t allowed to say it out loud. Just smile big and say things are perfect and you feel so blessed.
“People who are experiencing emotional pain/psychic pain need understanding, support and help.”
I agree Maradel. But the best way to block yourself from understanding, support and help is to seek out a psychiatrist. I did that. In return they damaged my brain, CNS and reputation.
Bio-reductionism is not understanding.
Segregation is not support.
Destructive mind-altering drugs are not help.
🙁
I only became a vaccine skeptic after my eyes were opened to the corruption of psychiatry and the fraud rotting all Western medicine. Some vaccines have helped us greatly. Smallpox and polio for example. But the flu?
I notice flu rates are as high as ever. Of course this is because the vaccines only protect against a few of the most common. And the flu virus mutates rapidly.
Despite the mandatory flu vaccines I hear all these PSA’s by doctors worried about the “unvaccinated” since flu rates are higher than ever. So, despite more vaccines than ever experts attribute high flu infection rates to a lack of vaccines….Sound familiar?
The Spanish flu epidemic killed a lot of people back in 1912. Flu epidemics like this are a rare phenomenon. And we have not had such a fatal epidemic since. Could it be that back in 1912 folks had poorer sanitation and nutrition? While that might be true, telling kids to wash their hands and eat more veggies wouldn’t let “non-profits” collect tax dollars by forcing parents to buy these treatments.
Maybe I am unduly suspicious. I think the claims of damage from flu vaccines are exaggerated by many–that they’re more ineffective than harmful to the vast majority. But if flu vaccines are so great why aren’t flu infections down now? More people than ever receive these injections. Like claiming all the mass shootings that weren’t a problem before the 90’s are due to the lack of drugs that weren’t around before the 1980’s. Lucky for experts Americans are so gullible and anti-literate.
Just thought of something OH. Psychiatry itself is an alternative or substitute. For human friendship and self improvement. Counterfeit of course. But people seek it out voluntarily for a reason.
8. Don’t mock your child, call their pain “symptoms” or call them crazy when they weep over their shattered lives. Don’t tell them they’re mentally incompetent, helpless and utterly dependent on you. Don’t keep reminding them how unlovable a “schizo” or “bipolar” is and how no one but you would be willing to put up with them. That they should be grateful they aren’t homeless or sent to an institution. 🙁
No KS, not just the psych system. But this pseudo-science invented solely to destroy/sterilize “criminal types” has infected all the legitimate medical branches as well.
Judi, there are many in my situation who started out taking an SSRI for depression or some off label use and wound up labeled “bipolar.” (I want to write a book about this atrocity.)
Big Pharma and the APA are too big to fight. How about a couple hundred individual lawsuits against shrinks who drove depressed people bonkers–lying about the drug the whole time? And try to publicize the legal suits.
Shrinks should also be held legally responsible every time someone under their care murders others and they mislead the police, claiming the “meds compliant” person is not a threat. This happened in Florida. If they know there is a small chance the person may try this can’t they at least keep an eye on him or lock him up for observation while they drug him? Manslaughter 1 sounds appropriate.
Steve I’m afraid to see doctors now. At least if I’m uninsured shrinks have no financial benefit for locking me up or AOT. I suggest all who bear psych labels get rid of insurance, pay the fine, and go to the ER only for a broken leg or something. And pick a mental illness center nearby to brag about your awesome doc who gives you meds that work perfectly.
It’s about a country where criminals are treated like they have a sickness and the sick, poor and grieving widows are punished like criminals.
Butler was mocking the double standards of classist Victorian society in how–for example–it harshly punished prostitutes but let off the men who hired them with a scolding. But reading it now makes it sound a lot like modern psychiatry.
He was poking fun at social Darwinism. This does play a big role in psychiatry.
JClaude, unlike some here, I’m a discouraged conformist. An outside the box thinker–too sensitive and imaginative–i have struggled to fit the box to end my loneliness. By fitting in I might have found love and acceptance.
Psychiatry did NOT make me normal. It turned me into a freak. A hideous monster. It told those around me their treatment of me didn’t matter since all my tears and suffering were manipulative symptoms of my brain disease and proved my inferiority. My seizures, contortions, and eye rolling proved I wasn’t taking my “meds” as prescribed they claimed. My mom took to verbal and emotional abuse till I wanted to kill myself.
What crime against humanity had I committed? Seeing a psychiatrist and having a bad reaction to the drug Anafranil he gave.
My sister is allergic to penicillin but was never punished for it.
More importantly it would reveal psychiatry as a penal system of punishing law abiding citizens for painful emotions, sustained abuse, and behaviors judged “odd.” Not a branch of medicine.
Not about helping the subjects at all. It’s true role–only alluded to by people like Torrey–is protecting society by crippling and imprisoning everyone these self appointed prophets deem threats to it.
Yes, SE. And the “peak” people are the one’s most apt to get labeled crazy since they see things differently then others, are “too sensitive” and aren’t happy all the time. Sounds “Bipolar 2” to me.
25 years in the Mental Illness System and the only model ever presented was the bio-medical model. They told us we had brain diseases proven by science to exist. This settled science had also proven life-saving medicines would save our brains from deteriorating by restoring the proper chemical balance to our brains.
All the while psychiatrists were laughing up their sleeves–not just at their victims–but the gullible public. While expressing private indignation that anyone thinks psychiatrists are ignorant enough to believe their own lies, Dr. Ronald Pies has yet to put out any PSA’s setting the public straight.
This chem. imbalance bovine excrement is taught everywhere as the gospel truth. (Btw, Pete Earley and other NAMI bigwigs know it’s a lie, yet do their best to promote it. For shame, Pete!)
I finally convinced my dad of the truth. He endorsed my coming off the drugs. He never wanted me damaged body and soul. He thought the doctors would help me.
So did I. That’s why I took the pills for over two decades though they made me miserable, stupid, and so horribly sick I’ll never recover. The moral? Never believe anything your doctor tells you.
Ironically Rosalee, many believe that these labels help people. That if only we could end “stigma” exacerbated or caused by these labels all would be well.
I’m supposed to be “bipolar” but no longer meet the criteria. They get around this by using the last question: Have you ever been diagnosed as bipolar in the past? If the answer is “yes” your current behaviors and mental state don’t amount to a hill of beans.
People change and grow. Psychiatry won’t admit this and therefore is dedicated to causing its subjects to deteriorate.
Enormous drug companies should not be in charge of all the research determining the safety of the products they wish to sell. If an American judge were accused of a crime he would not be allowed to preside over his own trial. The former scenario is just as dumb.
Steve, as someone who makes mean chocolate chip cookies from scratch I’d say “diagnosing” is way easier. If my cookies taste like crap people can spit them out and refuse to eat them. No such luck with what the quacks cook up so they have no standards at all.
I struggle with poor concentration–though making myself read short stories, essays, novellas is helping.
What’s worse is BAD short term memory, non-existent organizational skills. Seriously, I can’t organize a dresser drawer. My coordination is poor so I keep knocking stuff over. Mom keeps yelling at me for my carelessness, telling me I’ll need to go to a home when she dies. 45 is too late she says.
Most of today’s “mentally ill” have real physical problems related to involuntary drug use for years on end. TBI is a legitimate brain disorder created by the shrinks pretending to fix a problem that never existed till they rushed in.
The whole thing is pretty incestuous. Dr. Pills (renowned pharmacologist) cites Dr. Shill (renowned psychiatrist) who cites Dr. Pills in his major works also. The very companies producing the drugs run the tests proving their safety and effectiveness.
Mutual butt kissing. Like the Snake Around the World of Norse mythology but replace it with a giant tapeworm enjoying its own tail. Yummy.
Psychiatrists are supposedly doctors not judges. Shrinks who come here defending their right to serve as the judge/jury/witnesses in cases where they can not be held accountable should be asked why they demand the powers of government officials that real doctors don’t have. Likewise the FDA is not the executive, judicial, nor legislative branch but a petty bureaucratic office.
They abuse these unlawful powers to punish people for UNHAPPINESS! They’re treating unhappy folks worse than convicted murderers or pedophiles.
Depression is a soft diagnosis too so this should scare us all. If you’re unhappy stay as far away from shrinks as possible for they have the legal right to perform unlimited acts of brain damage on you to the point of death–if they see fit. Judge/jury/torturer/executioner rolled into one. A menace to freedom.
Your average layman imagines psychiatrists have an intimate knowledge of the human brain no human being has yet. I actually saw this on the series Longmeyer. Someone has been obtaining psych drugs illegally for PTSD veterans lacking insurance? Insight? Maybe both?
Anyhow the psychiatrist bitterly laments how people are getting these drugs underground for their crazy relatives. Says, “How can they get the proper care they need without the hours of painstaking tests including body scans and blood work to provide the exact medicine necessary to stabilize their brain chemistry and restore equilibrium?”
Hmm. Where were my hours of painstaking tests including scans and blood work? All I got was a BS questionnaire similar to the kind found in tabloid magazines. Gosh darn it, do I feel cheated.
My cats can tell when I’m having a rough time physically or emotionally. They’ll curl up next to me with a solemn look in their big eyes like they know something is wrong.
Cats can be just as loyal as dogs–but you have to earn their devotion.
Furthermore if you’re hopeless and the only thing wrong with you is a defective brain why waste your time learning better life choices or coping skills? That’s what confused me. You don’t teach life skills to lab rats.
Those “therapists” and other flunkies must know it isn’t working but they go along with it for a paycheck. Looks like more MI Centers are downsizing these services since drugs and shocks are all people need.
“Are you a doctor? Did you go to medical school?”
“Are you a con artist? Did you go to swindling school?”
Psychiatry is for people who can’t make it in real medicine and pass out at the sight of blood. Hey, let them enter the field with a 0% success rate since they’ll do the least damage there. Most of what the APA does is propaganda/slick marketing as any perusal of the journal will show. Hence their dependence on characters like Jaffe and Earley. Neither of those guys has a medical degree but psychiatry owes them big time. They play “Squealer” to psychiatry’s “Comrade Napoleon.” (Orwell’s Animal Farm.)
Answering back to nasty voices who put you down by questioning the validity and telling yourself the truth. As well as the voices–whatever they may be.
Also a form of coping with “negative self talk” which can be the same thing.
Kitties are low maintenance. Great for the chronically ill. I had to find a home for my pet cockatiel after more than a decade. My ears have become hypersensitive since going off drugs. (The drugs dulled my senses more than normal.) Poor Pearly’s shrieks became unbearable. He needs someone who is okay with them.
My folks found a kitty but there’s no room for her in their single wide. The other 3 cats don’t like her. So Abby is living with me now. She doesn’t need walks like a dog and is much quieter than a song bird but warm-blooded and affectionate–unlike a fish. Great pet.
I agree with Rosalee. I am anti-psychiatry but believe good CAN come from counseling sessions between consenting adults. Of course the thing must be perceived as a partnership of equals. If the counseled person can’t fire the counselor it’s unequal and tends toward abuse.
Mindfreedom has a list of therapists/counselors/coaches not associated with psychiatry. I recommend Will Hall since I have had a few sessions with him. Nice guy and great listener!
Try googling Choice Theory Reality Therapy. Also William Glasser Institute. Counselors who subscribe to this school reject psychiatric labels or “remedies.”
If you want to flee the Mental Illness System avoid psycho-therapists who work for these community centers. They told me how hopeless, helpless and crazy I was for 20 years. My depression is gone now that I left this negativity disguised as therapy. If you have an SMI label they tend to be worse than useless with all their negative self-fulfilling prophecies.
If you’re not ready that’s okay too, Anja. I understand. Took me 4 years to make my escape. Scary as heck.
Fair enough Frank. If a fat bald 59 year old CEO finds a hot 18 year old blonde to marry they deserve each other. If Mr. Money-Bags is smart the gardeners will all look like Quasi Modo. 😉
Dad did give folks like me an exception clause. My sister never married. unlike me she seems to prefer this. He attributes it to her unusual genetic syndrome with bad joint problems and really small stature. (Most adults are 60″ or less.) So we’re both off the hook.
It’s hard trying to find a guy in your late teens or early twenties who won’t get scared if you’re too smart and literate. In our subculture you have to find a man to marry before graduating from college. Or consign yourself to spinsterhood. Lol.
Sick of playing “The Game” anyhow. Mom frequently cried and had a breakdown during my childhood trying to be the Perfect Susie Homemaker and impress the other Stepford Wives. I was an abysmal failure as a Perfect Child reflecting her Perfect Mothering skills.
A lot of my friends had eating disorders striving to please our moms with our Perfect Bodies. Slim and chaste. No ugly fat or naughty curves.
Stinks to be the outcast but knowing you’ll never measure up provides closure.
According to William Glasser hearing voices is “creative symptoming” or the imagination run amok to cope with emotional pain. Thomas Szazs referred to it as “believing a lie.”
The way I choose to deal with them is a little like Will Hall’s method. But significantly different.
It’s not scientific but it works for me. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Not fully effective til I went off the pills though.
Drapetomania was a legitimate diagnosis back then. Meaning mainstream psychiatry accepted it as a “thing.” A black person who longed to be free MUST be insane. The treatment modality was beating the runaway unconscious.
And remember Weir Mitchell’s cure? “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is valuable not just for feminists but psychiatric survivors. The crap the POV character suffers in this story is similar to how “Mental Health Centers” help people today.
1. Enforced idleness.
2. Keep reminding them how crazy they are. To focus on NOT going insane.
3. Infantalizing.. Call them “kids” and belittle them like Ricky Ricardo on steroids. Laughingly tell them what helpless little geese that they are.
4. Remind them how hopeless their “brain diseases” are.
5. Instill proper gratitude in them by telling them how they could never make it without “help” from the System.
6. Cut them off from loved ones. The drugs are a big help with this. If any family members dare to ask why the patient is worse since starting Drug X tell them it just means the loved one is hopelessly insane. They should leave them alone so experts like you can save them. They’re hopeless (dangerous and toxic too) so abandon them to a life in the Madhouse Without Walls.
In a matter of months it won’t matter how emotionally stable they were to start with. They’ll be battier than the old church belfry.
Congratulations! They never would have made it without your care. 😀
Here’s an idea to minimize medical corruption. Doctors can only bill patients if they fix the complaint. This was the tradition in many Asian cultures and may be that way today.
All doctors would work “on spec” like freelance journalists. Since shrinks’ owe nearly all success to the placebo effect and have a lot of dissatisfied customers who go crazy only after taking their damned “safe and effective treatments” the specialty would go bankrupt. Doctors are supposed to make people better. Not cripple and kill them for the crimes of unhappiness or being bullied.
I know my brain is damaged. It’s scary but I have almost no executive function skills now. Seriously.
If I get my own place far enough away from my folks I plan on being minimalist. The only way I can keep a clean, orderly home is to keep as few items to organize as possible.
What if a doctor thinks I should get my arm amputated for a sprained wrist? I object to his brilliant solution and he locks me up and amputates it against my will on the grounds that I must have agosognosia?
For the record I have never been through shock treatments. But those who have had their brains mutilated for no clear purpose–such as removing a cancerous tumor through neurosurgery–deserve to be heard.
They have to suffer the long term trauma of brain damage as opposed to the shrinks or ECT machine vendors whose only concerns after these procedures are finding luxury tax loopholes on their new yachts. Most likely the shrink who shocked Mrs. Smith won’t have to listen to her as she struggles to remember her grandchildren’s names, can no longer perform basic organizational tasks, play the piano or–in some cases–read.
To both Sam and OH, a lot of folks on sites I follow accuse singles of selfishness. My dad once said that selfishness causes the higher levels of singleness. Then he looked at me and sadly said, “Except in cases like yours.”
Single/selfish are not synonyms. Gold diggers are selfish. So are men who marry women they treat like pets because they make great arm candy. Being a wife and mother doesn’t kill all possibility for selfishness, but drives it underground. Like the “NAMI mommies” condemned here–and they can cause more damage than selfish childless singles would.
Mother Theresa was not perfect. But she wasn’t single for selfish reasons. She deeply loved like many other spinsters.
So lumping all marrieds into the mature/loving/sacrificing good guys and singles into immature/cold/selfish bad is a gross generalization. Like other arbitrary categorizations we psych survivors have endured. 😉
Brw, Mark, Jesus referred to Himself as the Great Physician to heal us from our sins. I never left the church but often puzzled over what behaviors were sins (willful) versus symptoms. Now I believe they were all willful but many were harmless eccentricities that annoyed people–neither illegal nor immoral. A lot of sinful behaviors are considered respectable and therefore “mentally healthy.” Remember the people Jesus really got mad at?
A lot of church goers should puzzle over why after 2000 years a bunch of people need drugs for salvation. (My dad has.) Only nobody thinks about deep issues now. Churches I go to are filled with super loud shallow, meaningless songs and the messages are often shallow too. I heard one preacher say people were complaining over a book’s doctrine. But he read it and found it sound…because it made him FEEL GOOD. That explains why church goers fall for anything advertised by pastel cartoon commercials of dancing pills, smiling picnickers and lemonade. No discernment or depth of thought anywhere.
Got mine because I thought I had found “The One” but he dropped me for no given reason. Mom had been telling me since I was labelled SMI at age 20 no man could ever love a crazy woman. When David dropped me like that I blamed myself and made plans to kill myself since I was an unlovable monster unfit to live.
It wasn’t David’s rejection behind my overwhelming desire to end my life but humanity’s rejection. Now I live alone, shunning humanity. I wish I weren’t a misanthrope but I hate people. My guess is this is typical for psych survivors who have had the trauma of seeing humanity at its ugliest. 🙁
Men no longer reject me. The secret is…never date.
My experience is different from many here. But I started hearing evil voices at age 9. My family was homeless and I blamed myself for offending Dad’s employers I was expected to kiss up to. (I was an ornery kid who knew stuff I shouldn’t. My folks were always being blamed for not keeping me under control and punishing me severely enough.) After a year or two I willed my inner bullies away. But at 14 we were homeless for several months again. Bullying/sexual harassment in my new high school drove me bonkers again.
Anyhow, after a bad reaction on Anafranil keeping me awake for 21 days straight the voices came back. The drugs made them worse–like I could no longer push them away or filter them. The neuroleptics destroyed my ability to control my feelings or imagination.
Off the crap finally! I have processed my painful feelings finally. No “therapist” necessary. The drugs did NOT make the voices leave–they amplified them and weakened me so I couldn’t fight them like I normally could have.
Shrinks get mad at kids on Tumblr “diagnosing” themselves. They also fly into an impotent rage at people using “bipolar” or “schizo” as persona insults to folks you disagree with or don’t like. They also get mad at people they haven’t officially labeled for joking about “having a bipolar day.” Meaning moody/irritable/silly.
As the head bully on the playground only THEY get to dish out the insults. Bwahahaha!
“Only I get to call him a stupid poo poo pee pee head.”
So far there is no diagnosis of “Stupid poo poo pee pee head” in the DSM. (i think that would be a personality disorder.) Maybe the DSM 6 will have it.
Anja, since tapering off my drugs I no longer have mood swings or suicidal thoughts. (Sadly the brain damage is real. Very poor short term memory and executive function.)
In Anatomy of an Epidemic Robert Whitaker talks about SSRI drugs triggering “bipolar” mood swings. But he didn’t do research on people curing the roller coaster simply by getting off. I’m not the only person who succeeded–by any means. 🙂
I do not recommend going cold turkey. Slow and steady is best. I highly recommend Surviving Antidepressants. Not sure how long you have been on psych drugs. But IF you decide to go off a good rule of thumb is one year for every ten spent taking them. If you’ve been on your cocktail for a decade or less–give yourself a year to gently taper.
The women urging the battered wives to see shrinks denounced the Patriarchy themselves. Totally clueless how a psychiatric diagnosis can effect a divorce case–especially if custody is an issue.
If you’re fearful of the husband you’re forced to live with why do you need “Major Depression Disorder” to explain your misery for crying out loud? I encouraged one woman to quit her SSRI’s–warning her they could cause mania and get her the hard label of “bipolar 2” as well as interfering with her ability to think and plan the necessary escape instead of popping pills. She followed my advice and quit seeing the quack–putting her fight-or-flight response into escaping her cruel husband. 🙂
Leaving one abuser for a network of abusers is a bad idea. But they were naive and thought “doctors” are all good guys and saviors.
I’m good friends with an interesting woman who suffers Lyme disease. I suffer a lot of what she does since brain and nerve damage are a reality for us both. Hers caused by a virus. Mine is iatrogenic.
My pills work as a placebo for my parents. I pop supplements from time to time and they think I’m compliant since they believe if I quit taking my “meds” I’d wind up at MacDonalds in my underwear in the wee hours of the morning.
(We knew a “bipolar” man this happened too, but he went cold turkey. Dad–his clergy–talked to the shrink who told him that was D’s “illness” and all would be fine if D weren’t a crazy fool who refused to take his “meds.” That frightened me so much I was the Perfect Patient for over 20 years.)
SSRIs “work” by blocking your natural inhibitors. If someone already acts out an SSRI will make it way worse then say a neuroleptic or something like Valium.
I’m speaking entirely from the point of view of family members. Not the person forced to live in the personal Hell these drugs often create, but no one around can fully appreciate.
My uncle has been a jerk since a traumatic brain injury he barely survived years ago. I talked my aunt out of putting him on an SSRI. Part of the reason Uncle B acts so badly is his filters don’t work. Totally disinhibited would NOT be an improvement.
Niki, you obviously loved your daughter. She was lucky to have you for a mother during her short life.
You couldn’t save her from those who slated her out for destruction. But knowing you loved her must have been some consolation for poor Lucie even as she suffered.
They punish you when you don’t obey, and they punish you when you do;
They label you “borderline personality disorder” when you are sexually active;
They label you “disassociative” when you aren’t.
When you smile they tell you you’re “manic”–
When you don’t smile–or can’t–they say you have a “flattened affect.”
When you cry because they ruined your life they say you need massive doses of the drugs damaging you–or ECT.
When you gain massive amounts of weight on their drugs they say you’re too dumb to eat properly.
They take notes of your poor organizational skills after destroying your frontal lobes.
They take notes of your poor interpersonal skills after destroying your amygdala.
When the community shuns you, they lament how Ignorance causes Stigma–
Because Stigma can be bad for drumming up business–but great for enforcing AOT.
Then the high ranking bigwigs show up on national television to say how YOU have no conscience or empathy and lie all the time.
Being a psychiatrist means turning violent criminals loose on the public (They’re “meds” compliant!) Demonizing the “patients” like no other medical specialist would.
An aversion to the truth.
Crippling and killing the innocent through pointless experiments.
The Thief who only breaks in to kill and destroy.
People of the Lie.
Not just a habit or tic. I itch like crazy sometimes. Really dry skin and eyes too.
During my Effexor taper till I had been off 6 months I kept having horrible nose and throat infections. Couldn’t quit coughing between infections either.
Glad to be told it’s normal. I HATED it when shrinks told me seizures/uncontrollable eye rolling/gaining 60 pounds in 3 months on a restrictive diet shouldn’t happen. Really?
Turned out these problems are common when on Haldol and Risperdol. But shrinks lie–all the time!
Don’t pill shame. They never do that. Must be YOUR fault. 😛
Convincing someone they’re going insane can really terrify them. No wonder “insight” is considered important by shrinks.
Dr. Rush practiced blood letting. Maybe they’ll invent some fancy machine to suck large amounts of blood out of the “mentally ill’s” jugulars. Then we’ll hear the APA touting the benefits of bleeding. “But not like the old days!” 😀
Science does not hold all the answers to life’s problems Psyche. I agree with you there. I’ve seen TED talks about managers who hire humanities majors to solve the tech company’s problems because STEM majors tend to be narrow minded and only thinking in the box. When it comes to getting people to work together or improve morale STEM experts have no advantage.
I wish I had read Toxic Psychiatry when it came out the year Dr. M gas lighted me. 🙁 I was clueless anyone but Scientologists opposed psychiatry. And a few “crazies” who thought their hallucinations were real so they wouldn’t take their “meds.”
I second LS and strongly suggest Anja read Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker. There is no known physical cause of depression or bipolar so the drugs cannot resolve anything. Some find them useful as emotional pain killers. I found them way more useful as joy killers though. They blunt the emotions–good and bad–as well as dulling the cognitive processes including social skills and executive functions.
For what it’s worth Anja, putting “bipolar” cases on SSRI’s is standard treatment for many psychiatrists. They generally make it a cocktail, adding neuroleptics and “mood stabilizers” to the former.
I had a horrible reaction to the SSRI Anafranil so I was sleepless for 21 days and went bonkers. They said I was “Bipolar 2” but after tapering off the drugs I took for 25 years I don’t have mood swings or thoughts of suicide. There are many out there like us.
Since you believe in psychiatric remedies please take your pills as prescribed. A pill box can really be a life saver (literally.) You don’t want to take more than the psychiatrist prescribes. In my experience, they are not minimalist in their prescriptions.
I realize the rest of what I said about “stupid, insensitive, selfish….” contradicts this. But I have had nurses and social workers in psych wards–later case managers in centers and clubhouses–who lectured us on how crazy we were for not being happy as they were. If they were on disabling drugs and segregated in crushing poverty they might not grin ear to ear either.
“How come you’re not smiling all the time like my super awesome hubby and kids and I did during our Caribbean vacation?” Save it for Facebook Missy! 😛
Covetousness is a sin. So’s arrogance and mocking the suffering.
Our society has a big problem with Sadness Shaming. Like we need an excuse not to be ecstatically overjoyed 24/7.
Doctors love selling pills for the “disease” of unhappiness. But SSRI’s are a smashing success only because people have no tolerance for painful emotions and think sadness is sinful. (I was told this in church. Now they say, “Depression is a sin unless you have the mental illness bipolar. Which is really a physical illness you’re born with and can’t help without ‘meds.'”)
We have a right to unhappiness! If you’re freakishly happy all the time you must be stupid, insensitive, selfish, sheltered, or a combination of the above.
The problem, Marion, is that would involve paying tribute to the “psychiatric experts.” As a survivor of psychiatry’s drugs and mind games I refuse to acknowledge it as a legitimate branch of medicine. Societal control is its true function.
I’m sure they have no interest in anything “crazies” say unless its telling how
“Psychiatry saved my life! Now I no longer go on drinking binges and wake up with strangers in my bed. I get along with everybody, have a wonderful career, a happy, affectionate marriage and am a pillar of the community.”
The truth is the exact opposite happened. Never a party animal, I’m a lonely virgin at 45, my health is ruined, and 25 years of psych drugs/labels destroyed all chances of gainful employment after my teens. I’ve no interest in more effective mind altering drugs to perhaps stop my heart from beating or mess up my thinking again.
There can be no dialogue with those determined to use us as subhuman test subjects. Who dismiss anything but mindless hymns of praise to their guild as proof of Severe Mental Illness and would lock us all up for drugs and shock if possible.
If you’re trying to foist more brain drugs on gullible consumers this is the wrong place, btw. Most of us are fighting or have fought like mad to get OFF those things. Like trying to sell handcuffs to someone kidnapped and forced to wear them for 20 or 30 years.
Forgiveness is impossible if a person is not responsible for bad behaviors. This helps explain the conflicted views of “mentally ill” people our society holds.
They’re not to blame for horrible behaviors and crimes because their existence itself is viewed as a crime. Hence the stigma since they can never be anything but deviant/criminal/insane.
In a survey people said they’d rather have a convicted felon as a neighbor than a “severely mentally ill” person. Why? The answer was “Felons can change.” If wickedness is hard wired into your brain and DNA you will always be a menace and a nuisance.
“I don’t believe genes have nothing to do with it,” is a double negative. But, given the context, it’s correctly used.
Littleturtle believes genes have something–if only a little–to do with “mental illness.” I don’t believe in it myself since the very term “mental illness” means existing in one’s mind rather than the physical world. Brain problems can cause weird thoughts and feelings. But those are physical illnesses since the brain is a physical organ. TBI, epilepsy, brain cancer, Parkinsons, and Lou Gehrigs are brain diseases as opposed to “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” which are “mental illnesses.”
As far as mental states go, we do not stay in one mental state all the time. Our thoughts change as we age and we can alter them with enough effort.
Our brains are living organs continually being reconfigured through our thoughts. Not blocks of rock shrinks can chisel into whatever hideous forms THEY think best.
(Many of them seem to have minds of concrete. All mixed up and permanently set. Heh heh.)
Yep. I never smiled “enough” as a kid. Couldn’t be the Perfect Preacher’s Daughter. Smiling non-stop, fastidious, perfectly organized, obedient, no sense of humor, unimaginative, good grades but not too smart. (Brains aren’t considered girly after puberty.)
After going on my cocktail I could barely smile at all. Then got scolded for my “flattened affect.”
Me too. Anafranil kept me awake for 21 days straight, driving me into a psychotic mania. The shrinks NEVER let me go off them after that. Told me it was my fault for being SMI and gave me more drugs than ever. (Finally I fled the crazy makers with their drugs that were making nuts all along.)
But admitting this publicly would be “pill shaming.” Psychiatry would rather shame its victims.
Some would sneer that they don’t want to help anyone but themselves and Big Pharma and Washington cronies. But I find that hard to believe of ALL everyday shrinks. (Not talking about the APA bigwigs who lie as a rule and have no conscience.)
Many actually think they’re helping people even as they slowly poison them or fry their brains. How can this be? It takes some intelligence to make it through medical school. Are they idiots or monsters? Or just plain crazy themselves?
I believe in craziness. Not the “mental illness but it’s really a physical brain illness” nonsense. But if we people are stressed out, lonely, or troubled by guilty consciences we can persuade ourselves into believing all sorts of nonsense. If the lies we believe correspond to mainstream society we aren’t certifiable.
In order to live with themselves, psychiatrists MUST cling to the belief they are helping. Not hurting people. Amazing the mental contortions they can perform to maintain their riches, prestige, and legal authority.
Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life….
I have to agree. There are studies–but they’re very skewed and conducted by folks who should recuse themselves from such research the way judges won’t preside over cases where they have vested interests.
At the same time, I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. We need to show compassion to the deceived.
For the deceivers it’s another matter. “Shame patients. Praise pills,” is the mantra of today’s shrink.
If someone says, “My meds give my life meaning and hope,” I sigh with pity. If you live to consume drugs and all your hopes are in the latest pill, you must have one sad life. My hope is you’ll discover the truth and be set free.
They don’t believe in themselves, so the capsule or tablet is the lucky talisman given by the witch doctor (shrink.) Incidentally the witch doctor has taught them not to believe in themselves but be totally dependent on him and believe all he says without question.
Jan, my cardiac issues started long before the taper. Those drugs damage the human heart. Doctors must know this.
My lengthy cardiac test revealed bad arrhythmia. An MA gave me the news and hung up immediately. No comments from her or the FNP who ordered the complicated test. 🙁
By “work” perhaps the ex-spurts mean, “help us maintain our prestige as a legitimate medical specialty/protectors of the public/saviors of the suffering mad.” Or maybe, “Help us earn a comfortable living where we rake in more per day than the test subjects we crippled get to live on per month.”
Placebo trials have done nothing to stop the epidemic of psych drug use due to the public’s gullibility, slick marketing/media control, and suppression of evidence by authorities.
The opiate of the masses in 21st century America is opium. OK, just drugs as addictive as opium. And the dealers have the legal authority to force you to buy AND consume their wares, and lock you up if you “just say no.”
I think they believe destroying skills, obliterating memories of loved ones, destroying independence so someone like my great aunt lived out her life as a hollow shell of a human being is no big deal. Cause the “mentally ill” are all just dangerous mass murderers lacking empathy, conscience, or life skills anyhow.
Famous shrinks go on national TV to tell the public how their patients are a bunch of dangerous monsters. No other medical specialty publicly maligns the character of its patients. (That’s why there are anti-psychiatry people, “Doc” Torrey!)
They’d wind up in institutions and probably murder strangers for a hobby without being helpfully crippled by shrinks. Not like they’re maiming real people or destroying lives that count after all.
I believe Emily Dickinson wrote her love poems to a highly idealized lover who may or may not have been based on a real human being. If they had “medicated” her they might not have helped her socially, but would likely have cured her massive poetry output. Ditto for Van Gogh’s paintings.
There are pockets of Old School Mormons who force teenage girls to marry middle aged polygamists. You never hear Psychiatry decry this. Probably because those who escape provide fresh meat to devour like abuse victims looking for help do.
Lobotomies are making a comeback, believe it or not. “Treatment” for “OCD.” Despite there being behavior modification ways of dealing with these obsessions just like phobias.
They use fancy machines to destroy the sections of the brain that light up when you think of what you obsess over. Ice picks aren’t used anymore for the same reason EC machines are used instead of wooden baseball bats.
A couple thoughts:
1. More profit in expensive machines than pills now. Hence the comeback of shocking people.
2. Using pricey medical-seeming machines looks more professional than ice picks or wooden bats.
If there is no brain damage the ECT machine is not doing its job. Destroying or overriding natural brain functions is how mainstream psychiatry works. Just like botox injections work by paralyzing muscles.
Thank you MLP. The fair ends in the summer, so fair has nothing to do with life. Lol.
I had a rough time in my teens due to my negative attitude. Can’t blame that on psychiatry. Though if I hadn’t sought out psychiatric help, as I was counseled to do, I probably could have straightened out my messed up thinking a lot faster.
I don’t envy rich people. My problem with Big Pharma CEO’s, marketing specialists, and sales reps is not the money they make, but the deceitful means they use…with no regard for human lives. If they earned big bucks by helping people or even entertaining a lot of people I’d congratulate them on their good fortune.
I would be happy on $1,500 a month myself. Especially since I could go off disability. I never wanted to live off well-fare. But the drugs, label, and busy work invented by the centers to keep us in line have kept me from employment.
I think most “mental health” folks use the procedures with these 3 directives in mind.
1. Making money.
2. Making the subject quiet, docile, and easy to control.
3. Making the subject feel less suicidal–as long as it doesn’t violate either of the first two directives.
Psychiatry still adheres to the concept of hereditary “criminal types.” Hence the justification for AOT since the “born criminals” will probably murder unless they cripple them first.
In ancient China they punished certain people by forcing them to wear a yoke around the neck which prevented free use of the arms and head. Humiliated and crippled, the person wandered about living off hand outs from those who didn’t spit in his face, waiting to die.
This is an analogy for what psychiatry does, only it pretends to be helping those it punishes for being genetically criminal types. (According to the arbitrary standards they vote into existence.)
The officials in ancient China never pretended to be helping those they afflicted. Modern psychiatrists show more chutzpah and less insight than they did.
Adults who don’t believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny still buy gifts and candy for kids. But if they realized Childhood Bipolar was fake they would not just quit buying drugs but want to lock up the quacks responsible.
The cure is obvious. Make everybody stupid and boring.
Ah! The bliss of a certifiably “sane” and normal world of conformists.
Ever read “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut? A Dystopia where the authorities put “handicaps” on those deemed too smart so they can’t think as clearly. Just like shrinks “help” folks by dumbing down, numbing, and keeping them in a low grade depression.
(A psych worker told me they actually aim for low grade depression since happiness often leads to mania.)
I don’t advocate non compliance either, assuming you have a choice. I didn’t. No way my Medicaid funded conventionally minded psychiatrist would let a “severe” case go off any of the 3 drugs recommended for the “bipolar” whose “symptoms” I don’t even have.
As Monica in the BeyondMeds site said make sure to educate yourself first! I waited over a year till I felt confidant to start my taper. Effexor was the worst as far as withdrawals go.
In which case Mom will do better with SA than she would most doctors. Assuming they’d work with her. Most will if they’re not shrinks and you’re not labeled SMI.
Living in a cave is far fetched. But sustainable building structures and off grid living could be done–even for the chronically ill.
In my state, the best kind of alternative house materials would be cordwood, cement, and recycled materials. I could build a 400 square ft. house for $7000 or less. Heat it with a wood burning stove made from an oil drum.
Recycle pop and beer cans to make solar panels for alternative energy.
Neesa, my hat goes off to you. I have taken a “cocktail” of 3-4 psych drugs for almost 22 years. No way I could do what you do on yours.
In my own case I knew my psychiatrist would not let me do what I wanted. Which was go off my drugs altogether. So, when my parents took up homesteading in retirement I left with them and tapered off my drugs–one after another–for 16 months. I should have allowed myself at least 2 years.
No one knows about my SMI diagnosis except my parents and they’re coming around. I tell folks I meet I’m recovering from CFIDS and am living with my folks on disability.
My own mom has gone on Cymbalta and Celexa. At least her doctor took her off the latter. (Way too fast!) I noticed how sluggish and apathetic she has become. Dr. Goetzhe says people over 65 taking psychotropics have a very high mortality rate. I need to tell her I’m off mine and offer her advice on coming off Cymbalta.
Her diagnosis, Major Depression, is a soft one. No legal problems for her being “naughty.”
No. When I’m not too exhausted from Candida infections I can feel joy again. Even my painful sensations–like guilt and sadness for other people–make me more fun to be around. Owning responsibility and empathy are good qualities psychiatry put to sleep in me.
My dad has cancer. I know he’ll be glad to find out I’m not hopelessly insane after all. And I don’t need drugs to function. They prevented me from loving others as fully as possible.
(I had him read the Pies article where the not-so-good “doctor” laughs up his sleeves at the “metaphor” his minions in marketing have foisted on the gullible public. Dad was miffed, criticizing the piece for its philosophy of monism and the idea lying to sell pills is justified.)
Maybe the pain and exhaustion are my body’s attempt to heal itself. But I can only fully feel them now. Most folks on cocktails can only function at what the ME/FM/CFDS sufferers call a level 50 on the “energy envelope” spectrum. So I wasn’t capable of a full time job since age 24 after three years on my cocktail and six on at least one psych drug.
A lot of “Bipolar symptoms” are brain damage created by the shrinks. So there’s a reason doctors confuse the two. Lyme virus causes natural brain damage–just like psychiatric treatments.
Maybe they could use all the morbidly obese “severely mentally ill” to reenact Soylent Green. Fattening ’em up like so many cattle with their funky “meds.”
I’m no longer in withdrawals but seem to have developed a heck of an autoimmune disorder.
Pretty discouraging. A recent round of antibiotics has made me sicker than ever.
Everyone recommends a special diet. Alkaline, low carb, grain free…. Stupid. Nothing works. Can’t afford expensive, weird foods. Can barely keep my personal living space clean. Need almost 12 hours bed rest to function at all.
Funny. You don’t hear parents ask kids, “Did you take your uppers?”
When I was tricked into going on drugs that messed up my thinking, I contemplated how odd it was my thoughts would get screwed up without mind alterations–how pills could fix my thinking so it would CAUSE sobriety and clear headed thinking. Afterwards I discovered they were no different than street drugs and grew very incensed at the deception pushed on me.
I didn’t become psychotic till I went on an SSRI either. Neesa is lucky. At least as many of us started out nervous and unhappy till we took psych drugs and went nuts. It kept me from having a career and triggered an autoimmune disease I can’t recover from.
Probably hasn’t heard about those reports establishing brain deterioration of the “mentally ill” is caused by the “treatments.” A mainstream psychiatrist conducted and published these reports, but you won’t see them on TV or NAMI pamphlets. So many are ignorant of them.
KS, one of my incentives for going off my drugs was having my “supply” cut off suddenly a few times by gaffes from incompetent shrinks and pharmacy workers. Now i don’t have to worry about sudden drug withdrawal. 🙂
OH, the Pre-Trib Rapture, Premillinneal eschatological view–which I do not share–is that by supporting the nation of Israel they will hasten Christ’s Second Coming.
Israel will be attacked by all the other nations in the world, but they’ll all be miraculously destroyed like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Israel will be the last man standing. Tim LaHaye wrote 12 books about the End Times–each about as thick as a Bible.
This is really off topic. If it gets censored I’ll know why.
But if Tom’s control had taken the form of him forcing psychiatry down Katie’s throat against her will he would have been lauded as a loving, long suffering husband who lived to help his sick crazy wife. 😛
Our society can’t handle negative emotions. Everything is Awesome!!! Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!
Remember the Pixar flick Inside Out where the anthropomorphic emotion Joy wants to suppress all the negative emotions–especially Sadness? Her efforts to make the girl HAPPY 100% of the time almost ruin her life.
CCHR has some supporters who aren’t Scientologists. Szazs for example wrote articles for them. He was an atheist. Not a worshipper of UFOs.
They have confronted human rights violations. Not advocating joining Scientology. Sadly no one else is willing to do this. All mainstream orthodox religions are drinking the kool aid since they’re awed by “medical science.” And they watch TV instead of reading books.
Weird how pro psych people are fine with Moonies, JWs, Mormons, and other cults. They never bad mouth them. Next time some pro psych person asks “Are you a Scientologist?” say, “No. Are you a Moonie?” and see what happens. 😀
I wish no one took those drugs. But blaming it on the “Patriarchy Conspiracy” isn’t accurate since women are more apt to see shrinks voluntarily and urge others to do so.
I have come across forums where women were urging wives of abusive husbands not to be afraid to seek out “treatment” since “Depression is a real brain disease. I seed it on TV!” Ugh.
Of course the regulars at MIA know what happens when battered wives seek out “help” from a shrink. They need to figure out an escape plan. Not pop pills.
Unhappiness and nervousness over abuse is a healthy reaction to an unhealthy situation.
Leaky gut and candida tend to travel together. Kill off the excess candida. Certain levels are needed for your body and antibiotics often get them too low. Then you can replenish your gut with sauerkraut, kim chee, kefir, yogurt, or kambuchi.
When your intestines have tiny holes the bacteria gets into your blood stream causing autoimmune problems and over-growths in other parts of your body.
Peter Breggin annoyed some anti psychiatry purists by saying the problem behind psych abuse is a lack of love. It’s not just found in the “mentally ill” though they may feel the social lack more than the majority. Honestly the folks in the system are no nastier–generally–than the folks outside.
I guess this makes me sound like an air head. I don’t care. Psychiatry is a denial of our humanity. Not just our reason but our ability to love and be loved. Love is the answer to a system of coldness and calculation. Love will vanquish psychiatry.
Yeah. That’s my plan. Going on a diet first to fix my candida which became a problem over 2 years ago after starting my taper. Weird how many of us coming off the drugs after decades have problems with our systems being out of whack struggling to function without the toxins. (My heart arrhythmia is better now.)
Eventually I want to write a series of short novels I can promote without a massive offline book tour. And use my artistic talents to design covers for other writers of fiction. You can earn two or three times as much selling services to other authors as selling your own books I hear.
Yes. Have you read Anatomy of an Epidemic? Whitaker sums it up nicely.
Like others, I started out depressed and anxious. The SSRI Anafranil triggered a psychotic manic episode when I was 20.
I spent the next quarter century paying for it. Unlike some with “bipolar” diagnoses, the mood swings ceased (along with suicidal depression) once I got off my cocktail. My physical health has taken a beating though. Often I feel like a woman of 70 instead of 45.
Still, many are worse off than I am. I have much to be grateful for. I’m still alive and able to think again! I can’t describe the joy of thinking my own thoughts and feeling my own emotions even on days I can’t leave the house. 🙂
About income inequality. It stinks to live on $770 a month because you can’t work and haven’t been gainfully employed since your teens. I never wanted to be a career mental patient/consumer/whatever. Pretty tragic.
Oldhead commented above: “Littleturtle has always been a sympathetic participant and I don’t want them to get caught in the crossfire.”
He does not want to take you down Littleturtle. He hates the System. Not people like you.
My religion teaches hating people is wrong and I must forgive and love even those who wish me harm. However it’s right for me to escape abusive situations whenever possible. I don’t hate psychiatrists–let alone those who feel they are helping them. (Psychiatry as an institution however….)
You’re right Steve. Racism aside, eugenics was based on the idea that not only attributes like physical beauty, strength and intelligence were hereditary but what we call moral behaviors as well. They were obsessed with weeding out the “criminal classes”–often dark skinned people. But not always. They disliked “degenerate” white families too.
In most cases sterilizing the “mentally ill” without consent is not allowed. Though Pete Earley advocates for forced sterilization and abortions performed on “severely mentally ill” women I hear. Forcing them to take drugs that will likely deform the baby or cause a miscarriage is the only option he sees after all.
People here have advocated for physician assisted suicide. My response? Be careful what you wish for. They love to force “treatment” on their subjects “in their best interest.” No consent needed. Right now pills and shocks are too lucrative. Methinks that’s why Dr. Pies and others oppose a subject’s “right to die.” You don’t need a doctor for suicide. Ending a life is much easier than preserving it.
While killing patients makes them look less than humane and drugs/other brain trauma generates more $$$$$$, shrinks get away with all the deaths and disabilities happening to the test subjects on the grounds they tell the public the subjects are a bunch of depraved monsters libel to go on killing frenzies without “treatment.” Thanks to their PR campaign to demonize those they wish to help, nobody cares how many “SMI” folks die under psychiatry.
That slimy Pharma shill, Jaffe appeared on John Stossel telling him they needed to drug more people to prevent random crime sprees. Stigma–in moderation–is a great publicity tool for psychiatry. Though it can bite them in the butt since people become afraid to get “help.” 😛 Wonder why!
(Many of Jaffe’s killers were actually on drugs during these episodes–including the kind from your friendly neighborhood drug dealing shrink. 1 in 1,000 get this bad. But about 20% of the adult population is taking SSRIs at any given time. You do the math.)
Unlike some on the anti-psychiatry side I’m not opposed to therapy–or whatever you choose to call it. Szasz himself was a counselor of consenting adults. My one complaint about counselors is most work in “mental health” centers or refer people to psychiatrists routinely.
And if someone is unhappy with a counselor they have the right to stop seeing them. I fired mine though everyone at the center was upset and told me I must have imagined her saying what she actually said. 😛 Gas lighting is found to be therapeutic I guess. Lol.
Benzos are hard to come off of too. Some people never are able to ride out the stress from withdrawals.
I have friends who choose to remain in the System. I wish they could leave but it’s difficult and dangerous too. If they catch you trying to “escape” they’ll drag you back to the loony bin, drug you more than ever, and attribute your worsened state to decompensation.
I understand why they choose to remain. It took me 4 years to make a break for it.
Activism and healing are different things. I have sought out my own path of inner healing with little or no help from other human beings. (Unfortunately my body got messed up from the physical strain of withdrawal and I’ve been battling infections ever since.)
We really need a support forum for people leaving psychiatry. Since not everyone at MIA pursues the same goals of activism this is more of a dialogue tool than a place for healing or social activism.
I do look at myself Littleturtle. Which is easier to do off drugs
Innocent people will be hurt I fear. But this is already happening all the time.
Accepting that I wasted years of my life and permanently damaged my health because of a hoax was traumatizing.
I believe Valium helps you feel better. Oldhead and others would say you should be able to take it without a prescription.
Gandhi knew what he was talking about when he said, “Be the change.”
I’m curious why having us believe you are incurably “mentally ill” is important to you. I was relieved at the thought I could get better off my drugs. But others feel very differently.
Would you like to share why you feel this way, Littleturtle?
There are a few rich people like Brittany Spears, Patty Duke, and Hemingway. MANY (not all) of these were forced into “treatment” by embarrassed relatives.
I sought it out myself. I was “deep”, sensitive and high strung. Not popular character traits in this era.
Being bullied throughout high school and the social pressure of being a preacher’s daughter who kept getting nagged for my “weird” behaviors, I strove to normalize myself with psychiatry. Unfortunately I got weirder than ever.
I have decided as long as it’s moral and legal I don’t care how eccentrically I behave. My family seems happier too.
Lol. I have always thought the transcranial thing sounded quackish. But I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt people since it’s just running a big magnet over your brain….Sounds like I didn’t understand the procedure.
As far as motives go the human heart is a dark and twisted labyrinth. Speaking entirely from my own experience, I’m good at rationalizing behaviors I know are wrong to quell my conscience.
Prolonged emotional stress has been proven to cause brain damage in kids. But that does not justify more brain damage performed by a “doctor”!
Do you fix brittle bone disorder by smashing someone’s legs?
And arguing the victim quit annoying you or complaining does not prove things are better. Removing the tongue or vocal cords could achieve that benefit!
Most of my problems are caused by candida. If I can cure this horrible infection plaguing me since I began the taper in March of 2016 I will feel much better and be able to work 20-25 hours a week from home. Enough to afford my own place in Indiana. No more HUD slums or sponging off relatives. 🙂
I have a lot of those symptoms. I still can’t work after 15 months drug free. So I tell folks who inquire I suffer from CFS. Way less stigma there than any mental labels. And honestly I no longer have the “symptoms” of my so-called life long mental disorders since tapering off the drugs and rejecting my label. The cocktail was causing my mood swings, my label gave me a reputation to live down to, and my self loathing (insight) led me to act the role of madwoman.
You forget abusive family members too. I’m lucky mine loved me enough to help me escape and give me a place to recover from years of traumatic brain injury.
Gas lighting occurs. Psychiatrists, as a whole, tend to side with abusers since they know how to smile and put on a great front. And they often foot the bill.
The same family members who have the legal right to shock the subject I might add.
What good are the elderly? Who gives a rip about them?
The reason shrinks get away with maiming and killing patients in the name of standard care is they have persuaded society that the test subjects are all useless eaters who should be thankful to be chemically lobotomized or shocked instead of killed.
Have you considered the benefits of beating a patient unconscious with a wooden mallet? The effects of random brain damage would be much the same. Destroying healthy brain tissue is what it’s all about.
I can’t read your mind so I’ll assume you’re sincere and well meaning. But don’t you realize random acts of destruction are what you advocate?
A surgeon at least would KNOW what he or she wanted to cut away, which is why folks with real brain disorders see neurologists, not psych doctors. Like slicing someone’s vein open because they MAY have bad blood though you can’t prove it. Cholera victims frequently died from blood-letting regardless of the sincerity of the “leech” who did it.
Thanks for clarifying, Ebl. My condolences. Obviously you’re not pro psychiatry either.
I have lost two friends to psychiatric treatments myself. Not suicide influenced by suffering from treatments, but the drugs themselves killed them. A friend of mine left NAMI (family members) after they let her sister be slowly drugged to death at 49. L. wanted to help her beloved sister–not kill her.
Yes. As Peter Breggin says, the reason shrinks get away with all the damage they do is they inflict it on those viewed as society’s ogres. Fortunately for them (the shrinks) only they have the magical power to spot ogres from Real People.
Society’s expendable members often include the disabled, foster kids, the elderly, and those already suffering TBI. Like a pack of ravenous wolves picking off the stragglers and weakest members of the flock. So moves the APA.
A lot of people not involved in the MI System confuse psychiatrists with psychologists. They’re mentally frozen in the 1960’s.
I have a hard time explaining to the (lucky) uninitiated that the two are totally different. Shrinks often make small talk but it’s no more relevant to the course of action they take than a kidney specialist’s would be. On the other hand, the kidney specialist who started randomly prescribing drugs and surgeries without running tests would be viewed with suspicion.
I’m an abolitionist, but I see where you’re coming from CC.
You’re wrongfully imprisoned for a crime you haven’t committed. Should you ask for more humane treatment at the hands of the jailers? Or hold out for being released? A lot of us circumnavigate the system by escaping.
It’s hard persuading people the drugs don’t work–that is helping otherwise dangerous lunatics to lead happy, productive lives. Or that the “diagnoses” are themselves the stigmata branded on innocent citizens by self appointed moral judges/priests/prophets. Aka shrinks.
On the other hand if people find out about sexual abuse, physical abuse, or starvation and other deprivations forced on the imprisoned they will sometimes speak out against it. Many pro psychiatry friends agree when I tell them rape is common in psych settings.
Don’t forget those abused by partners or guardians. If a wife or teen looks stressed and out of it while the abuser is well dressed and knows what to say the shrink will blame everything on the abuse victim.
“Nobody’s fault. Just the crazy with the messed up brain. Their fault always. But we’re not ‘blaming’ cause we write them off as hopeless so they can let us take care of them like five year olds till they die. See how nice we are!” 😛
Yes. Thoreau once said his biggest life regret was that he had behaved so well. My biggest regret is trusting and obeying my doctors. I despise not just psychiatry but legitimate medical professionals now. They know this is going on but are fine with people being maimed and killed. Shame on the medical profession!
I agree Frank. What I’m talking about would not be psychiatry but a way people “out of it” could hide till they could think straight again. Not medicine but help. A way of escape from psychiatry if you like.
I know this is semantics but the underground railroad WAS an alternative to slavery. So we need an alternative to offer those who suffer or psychiatry will devour them.
With all respect, OH, not everyone’s experience with psychiatry is the same as yours. I’m not saying psychiatry meets legitimate needs; rather there are legitimate needs people seek out psychiatric “help” for and wind up worse off than ever.
From what you have said, I think you had a “bad trip” and got locked up for that when all you needed to do was ride it out.
But there are others like me who were depressed and anxious. Often the SSRI made them label us incurably evil deviants. (A shell and nut game. Ha ha! You wouldn’t have gone crazy on that life saving medicine if you weren’t EVIIILLLL to begin with.)
Still others were freaking out in extreme states and bothering family members who worried at the ravings of their loved ones. Yes, we know drugs ruin all chance for full recovery but they see the tranquilizing effect sometimes produced and imagine it proves they’re being “helped.”
A few are dangerous, eccentric criminals. For this last category we have the penal system of course.
All the first three groups need places to crash while they get their heads together. The third and–maybe second group–need moral support. I realize psychiatry does exactly the opposite–alienating those around you, ruining your ability to think straight. But people think they’ll get help there. Or they wouldn’t go voluntarily. Many do–including those in extreme states.
Any evidence–even the “hard” kind–is suppressed by the propaganda machine controlled by Pharma-Psychiatry. It’s hard to say neuroleptics cause OR prevent suicide.
We’re dealing with what MIGHT have been. Not what actually has happened or is happening.
But neuroleptics do make life unbearable. They motivated me to contemplate suicide, but I decided it was immoral. That’s what saved my life. Not the devil drugs!
According to Viktor Frankl, some of the folks running the concentration camp took compassion on him. Not all antebellum slave owners were Simon Legree. This still doesn’t justify the corrupt systems.
Off the drugs for well over a year, but struggling with weird physical problems. Occasionally I break down and see a doctor but they’re baffled. Plus my records read my “mental” history so I’m scared they’ll discover I’m a naughty runaway.
Can’t absorb micro nutrients very well. Now I have spells of horrible itching and break out in welts.
Hoping an alkalized diet will offer relief. My system is undoubtedly inflamed and out of balance.
Psych drugs like neuroleptics can sometimes calm people down if they’re upset. But if people are sleeping in their own feces or ranting in the street they can be helped without drugs at all. They did this a lot back in the 19th century and long before by showing the “mad” person TLC and helping them rest and eat properly. (For my part, I was nervous and depressed till psych drugs made me rip snorting crazy.)
In the old days there were few life long madmen or madwomen because “madness” was understood to be a state of mind that was usually transient in nature. Not a life sentence. A lot fewer people became career mental patients. Then the Victorian asylum keepers found they could make big profits in locking up “crazy” relatives and keeping them insane with cruel treatment.
For a bird’s eye view of the evolution of modern psychiatry and its inflexible bio-model, I recommend Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker.
I do agree gentleness, dignity, and respect are good treatments for human distress.
For my part I was thinking about the kind we hear about most often where underage girls/boys are farmed out by pimps who take all their earnings. The kind called sex trafficking similar to slavery rather than voluntary.
As far as “therapy” goes I’m not opposed to it either. But it should be voluntary. A lot of today’s counselors aren’t paid directly by the consumed but the state pays them (sometimes) for coercing people to visit them. They can no more be said to work FOR the “client” than a prison guard or jailer works FOR the imprisoned.
One thing I like about most Law and Order episodes, they don’t always wind things up with “the schizophrenic did it.”
Of course as many here would agree, categorizing someone as permanently “schizophrenic” is itself problematic and dehumanizing. As angry as I am about NAMI influencing Ron Howard to insert a pro drug message in A Beautiful Mind (not to mention they fudged on many important facts) it was refreshing to see a sympathetic portrayal of someone written off as “crazy” and hopeless.
When I found later that John Nash recovered because he did not take drugs for more than a few months I was ticked!
Will Hall I appreciate the help you have given to countless people including me. You may need a sabbatical soon. Or maybe look into a career shift if not change. Your friend Daniel Mackler quit therapy due to burn out. Take care of yourself or you won’t be able to help others. 🙂
If we have left the system how can we be part of it? I’m a survivor–not a user or “consumer” any longer. I’m struggling to forgive those who damaged me with mind games, defaming me to my loved ones, and tricking me into dangerous addictive drugs I never would have taken if they’d been truthful.
I left an abusive boyfriend who threatened my family. I forgave him. I pity him and hope he can get over his issues. But our relationship is through. The same applies to psych workers.
OH, you’re not the first survivor I heard compare “therapy” to prostitution. Only with prostitution the power dynamics are reversed with the “john” calling all the shots.
Jerks will be jerks. Without the power dynamics the men couldn’t get away with it so readily though.
Not only does a shrink or counselor have substantial power the consumed lacks, but by virtue of psychiatric labels the victim is stripped of all credibility and has no voice that an employee would have if an employer sexually harassed her.
Thanks for the great article, John. If I had a suicidal friend or acquaintance I’d be hard put knowing what to do. I’m no fan of the bio model since it almost ruined my life.
I would prefer to set up a “watch” with a couple other people to give comfort and hope to the sufferer. Kind of like they did for President Lincoln when his “blue pills” made of mercury didn’t cure his sadness.
Medicalizing human distress makes people take it less seriously. One of those counter intuitive truths we seldom acknowledge. Instead of saying “Joe is sad because he lost his job,” folks say, “Joe’s depressed because he’s nuts and has a screwed up brain.” Depression and anxiety are real. But by brushing them off as brain diseases we teach Joe he doesn’t need to find a new job. Unemployment isn’t the problem. He is. Then marvel when Joe’s depression worsens.
Be forewarned some here may object to your terminology and lack of quotes bracketing terms like “Mental Illness.”
College is not that sound a financial investment anymore. Even when I attended. I might have done better to take a year off. But Mom insisted I needed a degree to amount to anything. It was totally worthless. Any benefits were more than offset by my psych label and drug created disability.
Philosophical questions are a sure symptom of “mental illness.”
Just like writing poetry, dressing oddly, enjoying the wrong sorts of books or movies, enjoying life, hating life, enjoying sex, not having sex, voting for the wrong political party, dating people your shrink/therapist wouldn’t, and practicing the wrong religion (worshiping any god but your shrink.)
Never had a therapist try to seduce me Steve. But two of them did seem to use me for emotional support in nonsexual ways. One needed help with her marriage; the other had issues with her dad.
In the case Will talked about it wasn’t just the inappropriate sex. But once it was found out the man blamed it on the eeeevul “borderline” herself.
Should have asked Dr. Sane McFeely what his excuse was since he claimed to be “mentally healthy.” Forcing folks like him to take a barrage of psych tests when caught in the Act would cut back on a lot of this crap.
When police get caught committing crimes they fare poorly in prison. I wonder how “mental health” enforcers would fare in the hellish system they have enforced.
Will is not anti-psychiatry. I agree with you there Oldhead.
But he isn’t certified to work in the traditional “mental health” system. He chose to opt out. And he talked me through some rough spots when I was coming off my SSRI.
Call him mistaken–if you like–but his intentions are good. He sincerely tries to help others rather than appear at “hearings” to lock people up. 🙂
Yes. They also push this pro-drug message on TV shows like Law and Order where a paranoid schizophrenic is injected with neuroleptics and starts speaking rationally in less than 10 seconds.
Yep. Use the brave men and women who risked their lives defending us as guinea pigs. Or pieces of chewing gum. Chew till the flavor’s gone. Then toss ’em. Sickening.
Sorry about the loss of your daughter George. Been on drugs since age 18 in the spring of 92, but it was a tiny amount. I took an SSRI anafranil in the fall of 93 and stayed awake for 3 weeks straight. Went bonkers, but the psych doctors refused to acknowledge the drug was responsible. Got labeled “bipolar” and believed I was a monster. I threw self control to the winds–due partly to “good insight”–but also the inability to control my thoughts or feelings on the drug cocktail. Went from depressed to full blown insane.
I wondered if I had a soul. No one understood my existential crisis when I tried to tell them. Even religious people. If I needed a drug not to commit heinous crimes against humanity how could I be a true human being?
Turns out the drugs were making me crazier. And believing I was hopelessly insane made me want to cleanse the world of the monstrous blight that was me. Off the drugs now. And I have rejected my label. I am a fully sentient, ensouled human being. Not a machine or trained animal.
And I have a stronger conscience than a lot of prominent “soul doctors” I know.
Rick Warren wouldn’t use those words. He’d say nonsense like, “Despite the best psychiatric care my son killed himself.” But if his son had died outside the psych system it would be, “If only my son had remained ‘meds’ compliant he’d be alive.” No one calls folks like that out on this double standard of thinking. You find it in NAMI forums all the time.
I guess we should feel sorry for him, but someone should (gently) ask him, “Rick, if psychiatry couldn’t save your son why are you so determined to force it on others?” My guess is Matt Warren was quiet and shy in a family/megachurch that worships extroverted behavior. His introvert tendencies and failure to conform led to a label of chronic depression.
Lately Rick Warren has embraced the pseudo science of quantum mysticism. Quantum mysticism is to quantum physics what astrology is to astronomy. Or psychiatry to neurology.
The studies are conducted mainly by drug companies and members of the psychiatric establishment. Would they even conduct such a study? And, if the results were unfavorable, would they publish them?
James Holmes–the Batman movie shooter–murdered a bunch of people because he had been told he was incurably insane or “bipolar.” Of course mass murder was his (bad) choice. Suicide wasn’t dramatic enough for him perhaps.
Since rejecting my own label I’m no longer suicidal. But when I was told my life was over at 20–no one could ever love me and I might never have a job, that I would have to take massive quantities of Haldol that made me seize and unable to enjoy anything…I wanted to die.
Glad I resisted the urge. 25 years later I’m free.
It doesn’t help that many of us are so trusting of authority figures. And that is how we view doctors.
Until I read the works of William Glasser I had no idea psychiatry was ungrounded in known science. Seriously. I majored in liberal arts and left science/medicine to the experts like most do.
Still trying to persuade my parents. My brother works for Pfizer so there’s a real conflict of interest there.
My dad’s a retired preacher. Well read and intelligent. I showed him an article by Dr. Ronald Pies published in the APA Journal. Dad was upset by the philosophy of monism underlying the premise of the article. This runs counter to the doctrine of many orthodox faiths.
Now they realize the Chemical Imbalance is an urban legend and characters like Pies are laughing up their sleeves at the “uninformed” public they have deceived. For our own good of course.
Dr. Blatt, I firmly believe the cause for the increase of depression and other extreme states comes largely from loneliness and lack of community. One of the places people used to find unconditional love was through churches/synagogues/etc.
I notice the churches I have attended the last few years have been heavily pushing psychiatry. On the one hand I want to commend their desire to help people. But I also get irritated because they seem to be using it as a way to tell those who are suffering to bug off.
Instead of asking Dave to join you for a cup of coffee while he grieves his recent divorce or job loss you tell him you’re not qualified to help him. He needs a certified therapist instead. Oh, and is he taking his “meds?”
If he’s not he deserves to be severely punished by being locked up, then shunned by everyone at church on his release. This is not good for anyone. The “meds” are only half the reason so few people with labels lead good lives.
“‘Flakes of infinity’ are fine and dandy, up to a point….”
Bwahahaha! Love it Frank. 😀
If you’re already too prone to naval gazing–like a lot of “depressed” people including me–you really need to get out and DO something. Look outward; not inward.
Hi Jan. Rachel from the Land of Corn and James Whitcomb Riley. I lost access to my old email account with your address. My new one is r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com.
Why should they regulate it? They’re getting massive $$$$$ from it themselves. Bribery in the guise of “token gifts” worth monthly salaries and campaign contributions. Big Pharma owns the APA.
Cronyism at its finest. And both sides of the aisle are guilty. The only two Congress members to vote against the Curse Act were libertarian outsiders.
Poor Emilia! I saw her kind of “success” story every day at the center for years. And “enjoyed” it in my own life.
Everyone who worked at the center told us we should be happy to be segregated, dependent on meager hand outs, horribly sick, and unable to smile or weep. Would they consider this desirable for themselves? I think not.
Those pretty cartoons with dancing pills and lemonade are a bunch of bovine excrement.
No. I avoid TV by staying in my room a lot. Looks typical. The woman looks like a success story for SSRI’s. Totally calm and blah.
I know women like that. They are too pain free now. Some are couch potatoes since reading and going on walks are too much work. Others fly into crying fits between “meh” days when the drug is “working.”
Mine had sent me into a moderate/severe depression for the last decade I took it. No longer depressed enough for suicide. Thanks to quitting my “life saving meds.”
William Glasser, the first writer I read who condemned mainstream psychiatry’s coercion and brain drugs, had a lot to say about the educational system. In addition to inventing Choice Theory/Reality Therapy, he came up with a different educational process to help kids learn by letting them pick out reading materials about what interests them. A bit like Maria Montessori in his approach.
Madmom was just saying she wishes she could opt out more easily. If you have a lower pain threshold and don’t want to be awake during a colonoscopy, that would be your call.
Don’t think I would want to be awake for mine either, Artanis12. 😉
The major problem is presenting rational arguments to irrational people. “Yeah, but the lady in the cartoon Zoloft commercials looks so happy! I know that stuff must help people.”
I tried telling my friends. Instead of doing any research they laughed at me, saying RW just wrote his books for big bucks. Reading is a waste of time, they think. They work hard and chill in front of the tube when not working.
People don’t say this of course. But the brainwashing is real. I don’t own a TV and I bet a lot of the survivors here don’t either since it’s full of psych propaganda. Enough of my brain cells have already been killed.
BTW, if Bob Whitaker wanted $$$$$$ he did a poor job of it. The awards he won are great but they’re prizes. Not guaranteed. He could earn serious money writing for TV or ad copy for Big Pharma. Or combine the genres, writing cartoon drug commercials for the magical new “antidepressant” Zombify. And the atypical “antipsychotic” to help it work Xacerbate.
In the MI System they kept encouraging us to numb our pain–with drugs and crap like “mindlessness” meditation. That’s like encouraging an abused wife to be perpetually drunk or high to cope with her creeper husband instead of seeking out a woman’s shelter.
Thank God my parents have provided a place to crash! I didn’t need more “meds” or mind emptying but to get away from that abusive system. Emotional abuse from the segregation, gas-lighting, and constant put downs no one else saw as insults. Physical abuse from the constant fear of being locked up and rendered truly disabled from the cocktails of drugs.
Many here talk about changing the system. But even as individuals, numbing ourselves into a coma instead of doing something to solve the problem is a bad idea. The system is made up of individuals.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Keep wisdom alive! Psychiatry is the death of her.
“How did violence even make its way into your consciousness here…?”
Violence is intrinsically linked to psychiatry. The psychiatrist frightens the mainstream audience with tales of dangerous crazies running amok committing random acts of violence like some apocalyptic horror flick.
The self appointed white knight will protect the public by rounding up everyone he thinks may commit a crime in the future. Yes, force will be required–even violence. But it’s for the greater good.
And it won’t hurt the crazies…much. Not like their kind have feelings anyhow. 🙁
So, I think Out is saying that they can’t trust themselves to express anger over this in public? Correct me if I’m wrong Out. I have similar emotional problems linked–I believe–to TBI from a quarter century on the drugs. It’s one thing to be angry over ruined lives and needless deaths. But frothing at the mouth and hysterical or passionate weeping is another. Because they automatically assume you are unstable and dangerous (Dr. Quackenbush told them you are a cold-blooded killer) any display of intense negative emotions is suspect. Best talk about it calmly and clinically detached for an air of “scientific” credibility. Like Mr. Spock.
Going to educate my parents. My mom is 68 and taking celexa. I love her and maybe knowing I came off my cocktail despite the severity of my “diagnosis” might give her the courage. Her doctor took her off cymbalta but Mom was pretty sick and confused since the GP didn’t know much about tapering and had her take pills every other day. 😛
A lot of uneducated, untrained survivors would know better than that. That’s why survivingantidepressants.com is so trafficked.
Been off all psych drugs since September of last year. For over a year I took nothing but Effexor. According to psychiatric experts I should have been floridly psychotic and manic, but I was quite calm the whole time with only one brief melt down due to severe autoimmune symptoms like FM. Living in a single wide with my parents too, so it was stressful.
Still extremely absent minded, disorganized, with poor social skills. My frontal lobes are badly damaged I fear. Segregation with eccentrics/isolation for my whole adult life deserves some credit for the last.
Anyhow I did not go nuts, murder myself or others, wind up at local eateries in my skivvies, or tell my parents I was actually the princess of another planet…the usual stuff we’re all s’posed to do cause shrinks say we should. Tired of obeying those quacks.
Staying sane is my ultimate act of defiance to those lying oligarchs. Gainful employment and marriage would be others. (At the center they kept threatening us not to marry. Or even date any “healthy” people.)
If any militant psych docs are reading I’m sorry I didn’t lose it to prove what omniscient god like beings you are. Oh wait! I’m not. Medicate yourselves.
How about the attitude of the one giving the “diagnoses” and warning the public that the SMI are dangerous monsters who deserve “treatment” for crimes they may commit otherwise?
“And could we please stop these wonderful, enjoyable shock treatments? They’re so helpful and bring so much happiness into my life I may die of happiness overload soon.
“Doctor dearest I’ll never stray again.”
They let you out, shut the door, and you smile and wave goodbye–with your middle finger slightly lifted.
FWIW, Szazs was himself a psychiatrist. If Breggin were starting his career he probably would go for a Ph.D. in psychology, since he is a counselor who only uses his medical knowledge to undo damage done by others. Nowadays, counseling psychiatrists, are very few in number.
Counseling/coaching/training can itself become counterproductive if you don’t make changes needed to reach your goal.
And don’t get me started on how “therapy” or counseling has been corrupted by its reliance on psychiatry. I steer clear of community mental illness centers now. When I hear others urging unhappy people not to be afraid to seek out “treatment” I feel like screaming and ripping out my hair.
“Plastic legoland of love…” brought a smile to my lips. It conjured up visions of marketable sentiment. “Sweet” romance novels, Hallmark holiday movies, a lot of greeting cards, Valentine’s day merch, and the wedding venue industry. 😀
If I went out and convinced the public that a bunch of people were suffering from contagious diseases and they held them off at arm’s length, whose fault is that? If I became morally indignant, yelling at them for being mean to those with leprosy and TB that would prove that I was A. Clueless about human behaviors or B. cynically laughing up my sleeves at those I had played for fools while pretending to be the White Knight.
I borrowed this analogy from Paula Cappla’s excellent book So They Call You Crazy.
I see your point, Truthisbest. Psychiatry doesn’t CLAIM to be punitive–though they have a lot of clout in the legal system legitimate doctors don’t. Nevertheless the way they operate is understood–if not admitted–to be a form of punishment. For drinking too much, irresponsible behavior, bugging people by threatening suicide, or dressing oddly so you embarrass relatives.
After they “help” you, you are treated worse than a registered felon in many ways. Even if you have broken no laws. So psychiatric “treatment” should be regarded as a form of punishment–not medicine. When they have broken/brainwashed people (or been fooled themselves) they declare the broken one “in recovery.” Though now their patient/victim must recover from the “treatment.”
Psychiatry is not about punishing evil doers but the weak and suffering. Those they judge “unfit.” If a well-dressed, confident, strong (but abusive) person drags in a victimized spouse or child dressing and acting oddly because of the nightmare they live in, guess who the mainstream shrink automatically sides with? The strong and confident person. Social Darwinism at its finest!
Most shrinks don’t do this because they are evil. They just lack insight. Oh the irony!
Ever saw that Simpsons Halloween episode where Ned Flanders is the supreme overlord and re-neducates the Simpsons?
First they’re put in machines stretching their faces into giant grins.
Then Ned says:
“Okely dokely. There are three things that always cheer you up when you’re feeling down. Puppies, a glass of warm milk, and a complete frontal lobotomy!”
Ativan and similar drugs mess up your appetite too. Usually they make you blow up like a blimp overnight. Sometimes they cause loss of appetite at first though.
Being scared by your surroundings also makes you too sick to eat. And note how he credits the random brain damage with her eating again? It may have been she would have eaten again without having her brain assaulted.
Never been shocked myself. But I’ll take the words of those who have survived the ordeal over those who get paid handsomely to perform it. These scientists rhapsodize over how docile and (mindlessly) obedient the subject becomes, and let the released subject enjoy the brain damage at their leisure for the following decades.
I know this sounds weird, but believing in my diagnostic label made me act crazier than ever. I would study the symptoms of said “illness” and–not fully consciously–excuse these bizarre, out of control behaviors on the grounds that I couldn’t control myself.
My frequent reason for thinking of killing myself was a fear of morphing into a monster because I couldn’t get my “meds” or they quit working. Like the end of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where the poor doctor sits alone in his office all the time mixing and drinking the formula to keep his dark side at bay. Psychiatry has taken the premise of a dark fantasy novel and passed it off as hard science.
This isn’t just found in businesses. Day Treatment at the “Mental Health” Centers is nothing but a grin fest. Since you can’t smile easily drugged up they keep cajoling you to SMILE like Barney the Dinosaur on steroids. Then they chide you for your “flat affect” the drugs have caused.
One day I had a bad headache from withdrawal since they hadn’t gotten one of my drugs to me for 3 days. I looked gloomy and explained I felt awful from lack of “meds.” The case worker insisted I had Low Self Esteem and had everyone write down positive things about me and me write 20 nice things about myself. Lol. Still had a headache.
Yes. Just like stopping the holocaust and ending slavery.
Interesting how Szazs emphasized truth while Breggin has emphasized love. These are the weapons against Psychiatry–a pseudo-science built on lies and selfish exploitation.
For my part, my problems really did start in my teens–maybe before–when some family friends betrayed my dad, causing him to lose his job and our whole family to become homeless.
About 14 or 15 I was so upset with multiple moves and betrayals of adult friends that I made a semi-conscious decision to keep to myself and avoid emotional closeness. I remember things went downhill from there.
For those who feel Dr. Breggin was wrong about your case, maybe he is. You’re the best judge of how things are in your interpersonal relationships. But in my case his essay hit the mark. I’m striving to love boldly now.
Actually Peter Breggin means those in distress aren’t receiving enough love. He’s NOT accusing us of being incapable of love. (Like mainstream shrinks often do.)
And folks certainly aren’t loving in their behaviors now. Especially toward those labelled “SMI.”
Here’s an idea. Sell insecticide in syrup form, calling it Xovify or Zovu.
Have some high ranking shrink with lots of charisma (and a dog and pony) go on the road. Call it liquid love. Guaranteed to help all your relationships, save your marriage, and help you make friends!
How does it work? The placebo effect. Or blame the patient by saying they weren’t taking it properly or it must be their pesky bad biology at fault. Not the miraculous, magical elixir of love aka Zovu.
I wonder how accurate any of these statistics are.
They decide the hearing of voices is better when a patient tells them it is. But patients may be fearful of further experiments and just want to go home so they lie.
I remember friends in Day Treatment whispering that the voices were bugging them again. I suggested they tell the case worker in charge who could help them see the shrink soon. They would shake their head and whisper “no” then beg me not to tell. I didn’t since I was starting to realize how pointless the “meds” were.
The case workers gushed about how our miracle drugs “cured” our problems–not knowing that after a month or two on new drugs the hallucinations/delusions were BACK. Because the consumers never said so. Many realized the whole “treatment” regimen was hopeless. 🙁
If they find a problem in the brain causing distress they would have some idea of what they were doing.
But psychiatry’s “treatments” are more about making people docile and submissive. Not healthy or independent. They rationalize this by saying the “mentally ill” are vicious monsters who would all go on killing sprees if they weren’t perpetually disabled.
Psychiatry is the only medical branch dedicated to crippling and defaming its patients. (And sterilizing and killing when society permits it.)
I was forced to practice “mindfulness” for 2 hours at a time for months in day treatment. Ugh.
Telling us to empty our brains repeatedly. Boring as all get out. My brain already wasn’t functioning well and they wanted me to shut it off still more.
I jokingly called it mindlessness meditation. All about keeping us quiet, pacified, and subdued.
I heard later that that was really a bad way to teach mindfulness. The woman was a caseworker, untrained in the meditation field.
Steve, Dr. Breggin has said abusive families and trauma cause the “break” which causes people to be psychiatrized. He does not demean us. Quite the contrary.
And I don’t think “trauma informed” will ever be as lucrative as the “bio model” Oldhead. How can you put compassion in capsule form and sell it for $100 a pop?
Eric I am truly sorry your friend felt this was the only course of action for her. Your kindness was probably one of the few rays of sunshine in her sorrowful life.
It’s hard to lose a friend at such an early age. 🙁
I love Dr. Breggin. Lol. And by staying in the field he has helped many he couldn’t have otherwise.
Psychiatry’s toxic “treatments” could warrant a new branch of medicine in its own right–treating withdrawal, TBI, and a myriad of real medical disorders created by mainstream psychiatrists.
But good point, Oldhead. Love is not a physical medicine to be used by doctors. Not that I see mainstream psychiatry adopting it any time soon. 🙂
“There is a problem in this person, how do we fix it?” Could also be rephrased, “This is a problem–not a person–how do we ‘fix’ it to make it more docile and compliant?”
I never had my brain shocked but they kept telling me, “Drug X doesn’t do that.” Then it turned out it did.
I take the word of someone like you, Jane, who survived ECT over some perky psych nurse who watched a promotional video on how great shocks are now and rhapsodizes on its joys. She might think differently after getting shocked herself.
I can’t read the minds of those who drugged me. But the effect of causing me to question my own sanity was that of gas lighting.
With all their drug company sponsors why should they observe it?
The few journalists who criticize psych drugs are on Youtube instead of MSNBC, C-Span, or FOX. Big Pharma owns TV and this is evident in the shows–not just the countless drug commercials.
What Hurford failed to take into account–since doing so would mean questioning the lies she has based her life on–is the teen was having severe withdrawals thanks to not being able to get his neuroleptic fix sooner.
Of course she thinks addictive, mind altering drugs are all “safe and effective life saving medications.” The kid’s not the only one with delusions. 😛
Glad meetings like this are possible now so shrinks are actually held accountable for their actions, albeit to a very tiny degree.
I’m no longer “mad.” The whole idea of “madness” is you can and should snap out of it. Even in Mary Shelley’s novels–Frankenstein and The Last Man–characters went nuts and became normal. Their buddies nursed them back to health with TLC and good food since they hadn’t been feeding themselves.
Not a life sentence requiring drugs, imprisonment, lobotomies or shocks. Self identifying as mad is like calling myself infatuated since I had a crush once at fifteen.
The madness was created by a drug for “worried wellness.” Without psychiatry I wouldn’t have gone nuts. And thanks to my cocktail I never fully recovered till August 2017.
I’m not mad. I’m a survivor. And far more rational than many “normals” who believe everything on TV and never crack a book.
Yes. Fighting can lead to more drugs, longer stays, and shocks.
If you can quietly “tongue” or “cheek” without arousing suspicions that’s good. But otherwise take it. And never question anything told you–especially by the shrink.
It’s like being kidnapped and held hostage by bad guys with all the power on their side. They’re the ones calling the shots so you play by their rules till you can escape.
Real Informed Consent would scare prospective “consumers” away and spell the end of psychiatry.
“If you want I can give you a drug to mess with your brain functions and cause TBI. It may work by fooling you or MAYBE sabotaging the part of your brain used to process (bad) emotions, but there’s a greater chance it will do the exact opposite or even turn you into a monster, alienating those around you. It’s mostly miss with an occasional hit that obliterates way more than you wanted. It will also wreak massive damage on every other organ in your body. Oh, and if you don’t already suffer low self esteem this will take care of that when your weight doubles in less than a year.
“In addition to random acts of brain damage I can assign you a stigmatizing label to ruin your chances of marriage, gainful employment, higher education, or renting anything outside a HUD ghetto. It will also cause doctors to laugh at you if you have a heart attack, stroke, or cancer–not to mention akathisia, and other iatrogenic damage caused by this treatment. Of course we won’t shame the pills. We shame patients instead. Blaming it all on you…that is your horrible illness causing you to suffer.
“Nobody’s fault. At least not mine.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Well, yes you are doc. That’s what you aspired to be, after all.
Also, if more psych drugs were the answer to mass shootings, why were these shootings not a “thing” till the 90’s? Back in the 60’s all they had were thorzine and a few other drugs they seldom gave unless you were totally out of it and maybe violent. Shouldn’t 0 psych drugs mean more mass shootings than today if they were the answer?
I’m moving to a city where family doesn’t live and no longer stay at my brother’s house.
They’re not always that bad. The sad thing is with my MI “diagnosis” many folks view me as having symptoms instead of feelings. I had the same way of viewing my emotions till recently. All symptoms of my disease where most people have feelings and souls. They scared me so when I felt anything “too” strongly I would run to my psychiatrist for help numbing out the sadness/depression or the joy/mania.
Latuda made me very angry for no reason. When I told my shrink she tried to double the dose!!! Thank God my case worker managed to talk her out of it since my behavior was weird enough to scare her too.
I wish I had one but aside from my parents, the cats and occasional phone calls I go 3 or 4 days sometimes with no social support offline. Very lonely.
Mad is actually less of an insult since it was understood to be a (sometimes) temporary condition. “Mental illness” means the person is hopelessly evil and stupid. They have sinned the unpardonable sin of bad DNA and must pay for it with imprisonments, segregation, drugs, and shocks until they die.
“Mad” is more a state of mind understood to be subjective and elastic like beautiful or obscene. “Mentally Ill” is meant to refer to biological inferiors who are evil/stupid/childish/geniuses.
Does the concept of “mental illness” make sense? (It never did to me even when I believed and struggled to understand this pseudoscience pushed as fact.) Who cares as long as it helps the “experts” hold total, absolute authority over those they accuse so everyone else can imagine they’re safe.
I keep praying the Serenity Prayer. If we refuse to take responsibility for our own actions we become passive and lazy. But if we assume responsibility for others (esp. adults) we can enable abuse or become manipulative and emotionally abusive ourselves.
A lot of women who join NAMI honestly want to help their adult kids. They think “meds” will solve everything and they sometimes make the kid quiet. Couple the drugs with coercion–constant nags and put downs that are the emotional equivalent of water boarding.
Then, ten or twenty years later the “kid” is still unemployed, can barely make a sandwich without help, has doubled in weight, has more health problems than the parents, and lives in their basement unable to keep their room clean thanks to the funky cocktail. And they are often weirder than ever. (The shrink blames the progression of alleged disease.)
Sad story. Hard on everybody. The mom only thought she was helping. Now the “kid” is hopelessly stunted and can never adult. Nobody is happy–not even Mama!
{Those last 3 paragraphs are an example of how assuming responsibilities for other people can spoil lives.}
It is a bad habit I wish I could stop. When it’s really bad I have scratched bald spots into my head. I try to stop but can’t. Wish they could understand but they think reminding me often enough should help. (Usually they don’t yell, but it does irritate them.)
Sad how family members turn on the “mentally ill” member they used to love. Thanks for alienating my nearest and dearest psychiatry. You helped a lot. 😛
Btw, Dr. Goetzhe I consider you a hero, but it’s because you stuck your neck out for the voiceless though you probably knew something like this might happen. Actions not biology.
I was a little nuts. I went to a shrink who drove me loonier than Minnesota in the spring with his quack remedies he knew nothing about.
The same drugs that drove me crazy kept me in a low grade state of madness for 25 years.
I left the MI System, tapered off my crazy making drugs and am struggling to make a place for myself in the real world. I’m a Survivor. No longer crazy despite the system’s best efforts to keep me that way.
Wrestling with anger, shame, guilt, and bitterness. As Noel points out it’s my fault too. If I hadn’t been such a thin-skinned wimp I never would have seen that shrink. I see my wasted life as a sort of punishment for failure to forgive promptly enough and not being sweet enough to fit in. That’s why my siblings never went nuts. No skin; no spine. Serves me right.
Maybe if they give drugs that alter body chemistry enough to produce a nasty body odor they can claim it proves the validity of the diagnosis they also thoughtfully provide.
The first term that came to me as I read this story was “gas lighting.”
Acknowledging these pills cause these torments would be unprofessional and unethical. That would be “pill shaming.” Pills can never hurt anyone unless they deserve it (unmasking mental illness.)
“The meds never do that….”
They said when Anafranil kept me awake for 3 weeks in a row sending me into a psychotic mania I never experienced before or since.
They said when Risperdol made me gain 60 pounds in 3 months.
They said when Haldol made me seize with eyes rolling back into my head.
Escaped after wising up but it took 25 years and the damage is done. Pill rolling and mindless scratching. Could be worse. But my relatives scream at me for them when I stress out on visits. Stress makes it worse but they think it’s my “illness” and yelling at me will help since they believe I take my “meds” or they’d attribute my tics to being naughty. Everyone assumes seizures, tics, etc. come because you aren’t taking your “meds.” (Must be great to be that stupid since it means they never took these poisons.)
Horribly dishonest, manipulative, utterly lacking in compassion/empathy for those they hurt. The people who exhibit these behaviors the most love to “diagnose” them in others. Projection. Freud was right about some things.
All the smarts and education don’t matter to a hill of beans if a doctor lies all the time and doesn’t give a rip about his patients.
Dr. Mengele was a highly educated, licensed medical professional. He used it all to harm people in hopes of furthering his prestigious career. Stupidity and ignorance were not the issues with him.
I find this piece interesting. But the way it refers to “psychiatric users” in the third person makes me wonder if the writer is talking to users/survivors at all.
Of course the way to flee stigma is to flee psychiatry–the enforcement of life long insanity. No psychiatrist means no “diagnosis” and no “diagnosis” means no stigma.
I thought internalized stigma was “good insight” a laudable thing in the SMI, leading them to mindlessly swallow anything the shrink provides. Pun intended.
A lot of heroes are little, ordinary people who rise to the occasion. Often fearfully and reluctantly. But it’s the right thing…and someone’s got to do it!
If you can’t stand bullying stay far away from anything labeled “mental health.” A great way to ensure a lifetime of bullying and physical assaults.
I was an idiot to reach out for help. People only pretend to care to exploit others like livestock they want to fatten and eat.
The moral boys and girls is hide your negative emotions and never cry in front of people. Especially guys in white coats. Act tough, never tender, never gentle, never kind. Only the SMI want to love or be loved after all.
It’s a coin toss how your body, brain, and CNS will react if you come off psych drugs.
But guess what? It’s a coin toss how your system will react if you go ON them to begin with.
If you get horribly sick, disabled or killed from going on them that’s okay. That’s an acceptable risk from standard care.
If you get horribly sick, disabled, or killed from going off the drugs that’s a horrible tragedy. Your local NAMI chapter will probably lecture others about how only wrong headed fools disobey “doctors.'”
Because $$$$. Love things and use people is the New Golden Rule adhered to by mainstream psychiatry. 🙁
Instead of Original Sin, the priests of Psychiatry teach you you are guilty of moral defectiveness encoded in your DNA. As penance you must take massive quantities of drugs even if they ruin your reading ability, make you vomit everything you eat and seize every day. Stricter forms of penance include sequestration in the cell they provide and mortification of your gray matter via ECT and other bizarre surgeries.
Black and white thinking occurs when psychiatrists neatly divide the world into the MI and the normal telling the latter the former are defective/murderous and deserve to suffer for being born.
Psychiatry destroys all hope of an adult life. Mothers/fathers who don’t want kids to be permanent adolescents in their basements forever should think twice before getting them psych treatment. When shrinks have had their way with the kid he will wind up institutionalized or dependent on you forever. (A few live in HUD slums if they’re lucky. Or live under bridges since they’re too messed up to work just like the voluntary drug addicts.)
Why do so many people willingly seek out psychiatric “help” Oldhead?
A lot of us had emotional problems to start with. Many felt there was something “wrong” with us because we were awkward or too smart or fashion impaired. I had repeatedly been criticized and bullied as a teen for my lack of social skills, or the “wrong” body. Built like a big, ugly plough horse instead of a dainty figurine.
Psychiatry offered easy but false answers in capsule form. Now I’m the fattest, ugliest woman alive with fewer social graces than the characters in Big Bang Theory. Cocktails bloated my body into a gross cartoon and public ostracism through my shrink “educating” my friends/family got me thrown out of college and segregated.
We would have been better off trying street drugs of course. We are more alienated and damaged than ever kudos to the quacks. But there you have it.
Jaffe and Pete Earley are neither one MDs yet they scream at Bob Whittaker for daring to write about people ruined or killed by psych drugs.
Earley has a son he got angry at because the boy was unhappy and hungry for assurance of his father’s love. He pretended his son was trying to murder him to get him “helped.” (Accusing him of attempted suicide wasn’t dramatic enough I guess.) Apparently Kevin is the designated scapegoat everyone in the family picks on.
As far as Jaffe’s family drama it reads like a Tennessee Williams play. “Stelazine!!!” Yeah. That play.
Based solely on the way they treated these unwanted, despised family members, these scoundrels–a writer of sleazy marketing ads and a hack journalist–claim to be experts. Almost on level with the shrinks themselves.
Looks even nastier than NAMI. The commercial is sickening!
Some demonic voice boasts about ruining the parents’ lives and destroying the family. The parents and a bunch of other folks claim they will conquer It.
The autistic member never appears. This creepy ad makes the viewer assume the “defective” member is Damien from The Omen who needs to be conquered somehow. By the Normal members banding together they can banish the demonic autistic to the Realms of Outer Darkness from whence he/she came. ICK!!!
Not always the case. Just like child molesters may not be family members but teachers/clergy/baby sitters. My brother and I both had a Sunday school teacher tell us we would go to Hell if we cried. She taught the pre-schoolers.
More traumatizing than it sounds. J did better because he was a sweet, sunny boy everybody liked. I was a naughty child who day dreamed and asked questions Mrs. X couldn’t answer. J also has a lot of emotional resiliency I lacked.
Mom and Dad were upset and angry when we told them years later. We didn’t before since we thought it was okay for Mrs. X to say that stuff. They were mystified when we both brooded over Hell, obsessed over being wicked, and stayed awake at night crying.
“NAMI mommies” are all too real however. Not to be confused with loving family members who seek out NAMI in desperation to help suffering family members and watch aghast as they decline in every way possible and die young. A friend of mine left NAMI in disgust when they let her sister die. I told her I was leaving psychiatry. She said, “Thank God!” Donna, her sister and my friend, had died just a few years ago.
(Hey, Donna was “meds compliant” when she died at 49 so who cares how she suffered and curled up and died? NAMI doesn’t give a rip if consumers live or die as long as they consume. They were also happy to let another friend of mine die of a grand mal seizure brought on by a neuroleptic at the ripe age of 29. Blood on YOUR hands NAMI!)
No more mood swings. But my brain is horribly damaged. Shrunken frontal lobes. I struggle to clean my room. Not sure I can ever hold down a job. I am indeed disabled thanks to psychiatry.
Not exactly depressed. But few would envy my isolated life in poverty. Forced to live with elderly parents thanks to roaches over running the HUD slum I occupied.
Never was a “Patty Duke bipolar.” I’m a teetotaler virgin in my 40’s. I was a model teenager who religiously observed curfew and strove for good grades. Never partied. Graduated from high school a year early with the highest average.
Psychiatry did not make me “marriage material” to quote Patty. Sad since I have a capacity for love and loyalty no one wants. Leprosy does not make for good marriage prospects. 🙁
Still waiting for a PSA from Dr. Pies undeceiving the public about the chemical imbalance lie touted on commercials, thus proving how well-informed he is. Lol.
The con man’s pretty angry folks think he’s dumb enough to believe the lies he promotes. Check that. His limbic system is hyperactive.
But alas! Undeceiving the public might result in massive outbreaks of agnosognosia. Which might undermine the unquestioned credibility of his profession. Which would be a tragedy.
The NAMI chapter I belonged to up north monitored our speech. If you were a consumer you could never say “my pills aren’t working” though you MIGHT quietly mention you couldn’t stop puking your guts up or having grand mal seizures or erratic heart beats. Minor side effects.
We also weren’t allowed to complain about the insulting way the real members treated us or question the lack of materials they presented us with when we wished to educate ourselves. They provided family members with 3 times the materials they gave us. And ours was written on a 3rd grade level. They assumed we were a bunch of dummies, but we weren’t. Massive drug doses notwithstanding.
Always found the concept of “mental illness” confusing. Is it cognitive impairment? Not according to Kay Redfield Jamison and the countless psych professionals who tout her writings. Is it evil behaviors? NAMI argues against this with its “stigma” alerts.
Essentially the “Mental Illness” Makers vary both tropes as they see fit. Alternate between the stupid consumer who must be damaged for their own good and the murderous SMI boogeymen to frighten the public with in order to enforce “compliance” and cut the victim off from friends. Great way to control someone, as any abuser knows.
They wouldn’t know the person was “mentally ill” if a “friend” or neighbor hadn’t told them. Notice how all the crime dramas now talk about how the “mental illness” made the criminal perform a series of disgusting murders?
Because only genetically defective folks of the criminal classes are capable of crime. (Not social Darwinism cause we call white folks evolutionary throwbacks too.)
Don’t be afraid to be yourself. “You are special” everybody tells kids.
As long as you’re special exactly like everyone else. Be special like Miley Cyrus or Kim Kardashian. Not like “Crazy” Betty who lives with 3 cats, collects salt shakers, reads Hispanic surrealists, doesn’t own a TV, and plays the mandolin for a living. That’s “severe mental illnesses” because she’s not glamorous or rich. Bad weird. Not good special.
“I’ve actually tried very hard to blend in with the crowd….” Sigh. Me too.
I thought psychiatry would make me normal. It just made me weirder than ever and encouraged my friends and family to shun me.
Psychiatry helps us in two basic ways. Random acts of violence on our brains (and other vital organs) and isolating or segregating us from the mainstream community.
Destroying our brains and public shunning. What’s not to like?
Nothing. Nothing is inherently wrong with shaving half your head and wearing a plaid shirt with polka dot pants either. But you should expect funny looks from people. And it will give sanist critics plenty of fodder if you denounce psychiatry in public.
Winking at routine corruption in the practice makes all doctors suspect. They see people getting sick and dying on these “safe and effective” poisons but refuse to speak up. Heroes they ain’t.
The secret to being an academic big wig of the APA or NIMH is to say unclear and unproven things. But hide the lack of substance by raising the fog index to at least a level 17. That way you’ll sound so darn smart people will assume you know your stuff and won’t challenge it even if they can wade through. This kind of thing really helps the APA look like they know stuff.
So sorry! There are some ways to delay and even sometimes reverse dementia.
Eat right, sleep enough, get physical exercise, journal, play games like Solitaire or the kids’ game Memory, memorize songs or quotes.
Other brain boosters include learning a new language, learn to play an instrument, read books, and eat fatty fish. Like sardines and salmon. And limit TV to two hours a day.
My pain is created by the “meds” for an unsubstantiated illness. Getting better now, very slowly. I prefer magnesium, potassium, and vitamin B12 to pain killers. My body is deficient in those (medical tests) so supplements treat the problem not just the pain itself.
Dr. Frost from That Hideous Strength is the perfect shrink. Remember his famous soliloquy about how all our thoughts, feelings, and choices are nothing but random brain chemicals? Lewis was ahead of his time.
I love Szazs’s ability to cut through the bovine excrement. Some of his essays vie with Mark Twain’s writing style for biting humor.
Many Catholic kids leave the church. I got the idea from his commenting on the guilt viewing the cross brings. (Not my experience.) I imagined some pious granny dragging young Thomas to church against his will. Like many hypothetical scenarios it was wrong.
They really hate it when people get well and lead healthy productive lives in society. The ultimate form of “pill shaming” and “diagnosis shaming.” Health and sanity are what really honk off psychiatrists. 🙂
The problem with fighting “stigma” is that it involves “educating” the public on “mental illnesses” which are themselves stereotypes.
Like fighting sexism by dressing like Wilma Flintstone and showing up at educational venues.
“Womanhood consists of 7 symptoms. Being completely passive. Flirting with every man you meet. Sneaking behind your husband’s back. Wasting his hard earned money on dresses. Swooning over celebrities. Crying to get what you want. Playing dumb.
“If you don’t like these seven behaviors you are guilty of stigmatizing women. Waaaah!
“We can’t help it we’re stupid, helpless, and sneaky. Not my fault. I’m just a girl! Tee hee!”
The analogy breaks down of course. Women existed long before biologists. And we have identities other than those of the Superficial Airhead.
May get hit by a truck and die at 45. No one knows. Speculation on my part. But ending my drug use is already paying off. My arrhythmia is stabilized and I’m no longer border diabetic.
I’m 45 and would only have 7 years left btw. Finally discovering myself minus “mental illness.”
No “schizophrenic” displays all the “symptoms.” Carter, Glenn Close, and others play “mentally ill” characters. But instead of real people they portray lists of “symptoms.” All of them according to the DSM 5. And the “symptoms” are all that remain, leaving nothing but stereotypes.
That explains why my digestion has become so horrible now after going off of them. My brain seems okay, but my stomach is messed up. Off my psych pills but I swallow fistfuls of supplements now.
More “bootstraps” than authoritarian. Authoritarians want to control people. “Bootstrappers” say people should be free even if they starve or hurt themselves by not managing their freedom properly.
TBI can cause childish behavior. So can continual patronizing and put downs in an institution.
Few realize most folks with psychiatric “diagnoses” do have legitimate brain problems–along with countless other health issues. Long term druggings and shock cause brain injury.
Actually both. They shell out big bucks to drug unhappy or flamboyant people. Then they shell out big bucks to treat diabetes, heart disease, and other real medical problems they created. A win win for Big Pharma.
I live with chronic pain and fatigue but opt out of pain killers. Overuse of these can really take a toll on you in the long run.
My own ME problem is iatrogenic. It’s my punishment for taking the short cut to happiness. I wanted to have a happy, productive life.
I was nervous and unhappy so I thought something was wrong with me since I wasn’t out going, upbeat, and vivacious all the time like other girls at college. Took anafranil and it ruined my life. Had a bad reaction and got blamed/punished for 25 years till I escaped.
On my trip through Psychiatric Neverland I got weirder than ever. The damn drugs made me withdrawn, suicidal, and moodier than ever. Never had a family or career. Probably never will.
Like Pinocchio taken in by the Fox and the Cat or Little Red Ridinghood by the Wolf I got suckered by con men posing as doctors. Worse than ordinary thieves since they won’t just steal your money, but your health, your reputation, and your sanity. That last is pretty ironic. 😛
Dr. K, I’m off the drugs. But I still live on disability. Long term drug use has indeed disabled me.
Sad how many of us thought these drugs would EN-able us. Helping us to function better, form better relationships, find work. Like the snake oil selling medicine men from the 19th century with “Dr. Fortunano’s Miracle Elixir” that made folks feel great from whiskey and worse crap as “secret ingredients.” Mainstream psychiatry is a menace to society.
We need to do two things.
1. Educate the public. All the chronic sickness and disability are hard to hide. They escalate even as “mental health services” become more readily available and it’s getting hard for the quacks to fool everybody all the time.
2. Petition to change three things.
A. Ban legal bribery/chronyism aka “campaign contributions” by any but private individuals. Bribery creates conflict of interest and makes justice a commodity to be bought or sold. Why else do you think the Cures Bill passed unanimously? We have the finest elected officials money can buy. 😛
B. Ban involuntary confinement of law abiding citizens. If the person is guilty of violent crimes he/she is a criminal. Prison sentences are limited. Once you have paid your debt to society you can go free. With psychiatry your prison sentence is totally dependent on the whim of your warden who gets paid for cramming the prison. Neither merciful nor just!
C. Ban false advertising. No commercials for psych drugs. People will still be desperate for these poisons and need help tapering off even if they are able and willing to go drug free. If doctors must sell these toxins to desperate people they should call them neuroleptics, SSRI’s, and tranquilizers. Don’t lie about a “proven chemical imbalance.” Every regular here knows that’s a dirty lie and there are no tests to prove it. The APA secretly acknowledges this and are laughing up their sleeves at this “metaphor” they have foisted on the gullible public. Tell the patient they’re addictive and dangerous emotional pain killers that work by shutting down parts of the brain and central nervous system.
If I can ever earn a livelihood I am going to NOT buy insurance. The fine is less expensive if you’re poor anyhow. As an uninsured person they have less motive to imprison or drug/shock you since there’s no $$$$ to milk from your Medicaid/insurance.
I’m afraid of all doctors now because of their sneaky concealment of the damage and death they KNOW happens all the time. Not anti-science but medical professionals are unworthy of my trust because they lie.
I can barely cook and keep my place clean and perform basic hygiene. I went to shrinks in good faith. Too damaged to ever work again it seems. Those liars told me the drugs would help me function.
Ideally those crippled by psychiatry wouldn’t live on tax dollars. Just pay us $1,000,000 apiece from Big Pharma and the wealthy Psych conglomerates. That would not only provide for our needs but bankrupt those Blights on western society rendering them impotent to hurt again. Plus their credibility would be shattered. Yay! 😀
“Mental illness” is the original sin. Psychiatrists are the high priests who provide absolution of this sin through confessions: owning the label they assign through the act of “insight,” and penance in the form of drugs, imprisonment, and shocks.
Not only are the shrinks granted priestly status but they are gods too. And you had better fawn all over them with their due offering of praise and gratitude for the damage they inflict.
The non labeled folks love psychiatry too. Know why? According to the gospel of psychiatry only some are capable of horrendous crimes. The “mentally ill” are the only ones who rape and murder according to television. Therefore everyone without a “diagnosis” is absolved of all sin, and also has someone they can sneer at, enhancing their self esteem and blaming all the evils committed on the “mentally ill” boogie men. 😛
The experts insult those they “help” all the time but they do so using polysyllabic Latin-based terms and speak of murder, abuse, and stupidity in matter-of-fact ways. These same experts get self-righteously angry at Hollywood’s sensationalized depictions of those they label, but have no qualms about showing up om TV to say essentially the same thing.
If anyone has time to kill try reading Images of Madness by Fleming and Manwell. Those guys are utterly clueless. They’re like a doctor misdiagnosing someone with tuberculosis or leprosy and demanding why everyone avoids them. Lol.
I know I’ll die young thanks to the psycho quacks. Instead of 52 I may see 59 or 60 though. Probably bought some time.
I’m losing weight in my 40’s. It’s finally possible. No insulin resistant diabetes for me! My heart is damaged. At least the arrhythmia won’t get any worse now.
Yeah_I_Survived I hear you. The church has sold out to psychiatry. Partly because they’ve been taken in by the chemical imbalance myth. They think it’s the latest cutting edge medical treatment for crying out loud! Funny how they have no problems rejecting other stuff the Science Establishment teaches.
In justice they see someone labeled “bipolar” coming off his “meds” and freaking out. They think this means the drugs treat a real brain disease. But you can see the same thing in meth or heroin addicts who can’t get a fix. My folks have no idea I am off mine. They have this idea that if I quit my “meds” I’d froth around, show up at McDonalds in my birthday suit late at night, and assault random strangers–biting them perhaps. 😛
I don’t have the energy for any of that nonsense even if I were that out of it. Worn out but my emotions have stabilized. Like trading mood swings and suicidal thoughts for chronic fatigue syndrome. Got to tell my parents soon. I hate lying and Mom is on an SSRI that makes her act like a zombie.
When I was 14 we really did know a “bipolar” man who came to church. Frequently he would cold turkey off one or more drug (sometimes adding uppers) and had an episode where he wound up at Hardees in nothing but his boxers at 2 or 3 am. He had no idea how he got there. Remembering poor David made me scared to quit my cocktail. 🙁
If bizarre thoughts are caused by lack of micro nutrients the person will benefit from supplements like you recommend Bcharris. I suffer from lack of B12 and iron. I believe years on those safe and effective toxins has ruined my digestive system. Blood work shows the deficit but the doctor doesn’t know the cause. Or isn’t telling.
Glad that you are speaking out against the practice of labeling victims of rape and other horrors defective and attributing their pain to inferior biology.
Cruel and unusual punishment for crimes law abiding citizens MIGHT commit. That’s what psychiatry is all about.
Been on the drugs for 25 years. Off for over a year. Still horribly sick and in chronic pain. Can’t concentrate. Scared of institutionalization. Praying my parents outlive me. 🙁
Will I ever be able to care for myself? Why bother coming off since no one cares if the poisons kill us? I feel worse than ever now. Will things ever get better?
I took the drugs in good faith. When I complained of how messed up I felt and how I couldn’t think straight no one believed me.
If you talk your problems to death and don’t do anything different counseling won’t work.
I believe once you have an SMI label the counselor or therapist will view you as hopeless and encourage you to view yourself as hopeless. Most counselors want to help folks but the power imbalance makes it hard as well as the inherent pessimism.
A lot of counselors get depressed since no one gets better (unless they flee the funny farm.) They get depressed themselves or quit caring. I feel sorry for the well-meaning ones who work at a community mental illness center.
A lot are mystified at how those they treat become more childish and impaired over the years “despite” the best neurotoxins available.
*Sniff.* LavendarSage every time someone says a “I don’t believe in antidepressants,” a little gel capsule bursts into tears because of the shame it feels. 😀
I read about a survey conducted that showed not only does exercise work better than Zoloft alone but better than Zoloft and exercise combined. Meaning, perhaps, exercise can be hindered by SSRI’s.
i feel better after 20-25 minutes low impact exercise but it hurts like crazy while I do it. I’m still messed up. 😛
Praise the pills by shaming patients. That’s how psychiatry works.
Did an SSRI make you psychotically manic? Your fault. You’re a bipolar monster who deserves to have your life ruined. The pills are safer than aspirin and never hurt anyone who wasn’t a crazy SMI already who deserves a lifetime of segregation on a disabling cocktail.
Psych docs whine about “pill shaming” but pills have no feelings. These same people have no qualms about shaming their patients/victims by calling them bipolar or schizophrenic and going on TV to tell the public how dangerous all “bipolars” and “schizophrenics” are. (There is no other medical profession that routinely maligns its patients on national television.)
It’s not pill shaming or patient shaming psychiatrists are worried about it seems, but the shaming of their own profession. Cruel, pointless experiments on trusting people and libelous slander are pretty shameful behaviors.
It sounds weird, but I felt like if I needed “meds” to keep me from doing what was wrong I must not have a soul. Ergo religion was fake and God too.
Went through a lot of existential angst. The shrinks were lying. The drugs made me a worse person morally. This makes sense. Since when did being high all the time cause a moral reformation?
No one at church even thinks it through. Someone needs to ask Rick Warren if the “mentally ill” have souls like real people. Wonder what the purpose driven psych drug pusher would say to that.
This explains why I’m still feeling sick after coming off Effexor. Took it for 3 years and another counting the taper. Poor memory, coordination, and a lot of symptoms associated with fibromyalgia. At least the dizziness ad nausea are gone. 🙂
Thank you for this thoughtful, well written article Bob.
Like many psych survivors I do not share your cautious optimism. But I believe psychiatry will collapse in the next 20 to 30 years under the weight of its own numerous deceptions and insatiable hunger for more people to “treat.” They want 25% of the population on at least one drug. (Some sources say 33%)
One sixth or seventh of adults forced onto disability is economically unsustainable. If nothing else psychiatry will die when Western Civilization goes into its death throws.
They prefer to call it sanity or good mental hygiene rather than morality. That way they can condemn harmless eccentrics, dangerous criminals, and moral paragons (like Francis of Assisi or Joan of Arc) as hopelessly insane and a menace to society.
Sanity is much harder to define than morality. Not only can they absolve the insane of their “disease” they also can serve as a faux pre-crime division.
We don’t need Tom Cruise to advocate for us by praising Scientology while hopping up and down on the table. But he has made a great movie called The Minority Report which reminds me of how our culture perceives psychiatry.
Not just as punitive legal enforcers who tell judges what sentences to pass but actually able to prevent violent crimes from occurring. Only in the movie it actually worked.
Thinking you have psychic powers so you can foresee crimes before they occur is perfectly sane and normal. 😉
Thanks Miss Penelope. I am not yet recovered fully. Probably never where I would have been. It will take another half dozen years to see how far I can recover. 🙂
The Nazis were really big into “Gemut” claiming good social skills proved you were not of criminal stock. Murdering 9,000,000 innocent people is pretty criminal no matter how socially adept you are.
I try to be. I forgive them with my head. But the pain they have caused will never go away. My life is ruined. Gassing me would have actually been less cruel. Not that I advocate murder.
1 year off my drugs. I’m still in Hell on earth. Not just physical pain and disability but isolation. I really can’t trust anyone now.
My heart goes out to you. No support around here either.
I went off with online support from SA. I was already on disability. I stayed on my parents’ farm, getting my drugs from a GP for tapering and the placebo effect (on Mom.) I pretend to have Fibromyalgia to this day and many of my withdrawal symptoms are the same as FM.
Out in Indiana everyone touts the “chemical imbalance” myth like the latest, most up-to-date medical discovery. I have printed a copy of the article where Dr. Pies puts his foot in his mouth about this “metaphor.” Yet he goes on to argue how his “science” (of destroying random parts of the brain) is so darn effective.
Tell a lie often enough and you’ll believe it long after others wise up.
I can’t argue with their experiences. In my case the neuroleptics caused psychotic symptoms I never had before. Tardive psychosis.
I would have petty seizures and my eyes would roll back while my limbs convulsed. I experienced nightmarish hallucinations, “thought salad,” and uncontrollable thoughts of hurting others I could not control so I would hide myself when these spells occurred.
All the doctor did was tell my parents I was crazy and/or lying. These drugs “never had that effect on anyone.” Yet his own MA’s told me similar reactions to 10 mg Haldol were frequent. Was the psych doctor really so clueless about the patients he treated?
I guess if painful thoughts occur shutting off part of the brain may be helpful. Like Novicain helps a tooth ache or extraction. If someone finds emotional Novicain helpful in killing unbearable pain and choose to go through life on it they must really feel awful. They have my support in staying on it; I am glad the right part of their brain is overridden or destroyed. They’re lucky. Many are not.
I got tired of the numbness my neuroleptic produced. My joyless existence soon became unbearable, but I stayed on it because I was told going off would destroy my brain/sanity. Deception is coercion.
Let me play Devil’s Advocate by presenting a view I don’t hold but an argument opponents MIGHT make against Noel’s article.
Psychiatry is not linked to eugenics because it doesn’t assert the superiority of one race over the other and they seek to help not kill the disabled “mentally ill.”
Noel, or anyone else who cares to debate this anticipatory argument please do.
A lot of people don’t access the readily available knowledge online. Like articles published in the APA Journal. Following links I provide and reading pieces of under 500 words is too much work I guess.
Hey the drug commercials and ad brochures would never lie, now would they? 🙁
Did they ever tell you to only date or socialize with other “mentally ill” people? They kept telling me that on the grounds that “no one can understand bipolars but other bipolars.”
Told me who to date from group, how to vote, what to eat, to watch more TV, what clothes to wear….Ugh.
Not just therapists who acted this way. (I had a few good ones but they kept leaving or getting fired for inadequate paperwork.) Caseworkers were generally the worst control freaks in the system.
I refuse to call these SSRI drugs “antidepressants.” My only full blown manic episode was caused by Anafranil. They put me on a cocktail of 3 or 4 drugs for 23 years as punishment for my audacious drug reaction. I was pill shaming by getting sick I guess.
I still pretend to take them around family and doctors. I also pretend to have FM since I have all the symptoms and every social function I get asked what I “do.” Once they hear I have FM they don’t ask about why I’m still single and childless. (Rural Indiana.)
Still have a poor quality life. Can’t work–even from home. Irritable a lot which scares me though I try to be sweet and kind. Frequently I break down crying. Glad I’m alone so much.
On the positives my heart arrhythmia is no worse. May be better. My blood sugar is normal. And I have lost 35 pounds and keep losing. At 45 I have a waist again after 25 years! Not normal but psych drugs are as abnormal as they come!
No longer quite as depressed or suicidal all the time and I can enjoy nature and music again a year after going off the pills to “fix” my unhappiness.
I fired a therapist who kept pressuring me to violate my conscience which would lead to guilt. After the third time I fired her. Everyone–the staff–insisted I must not have understood. They insisted I discuss it with her and them. I politely declined until I relocated and escaped Crazy.
I was nervous about possible gas lighting. She had never done that, but the MI System encourages that kind of thing since no one will take the word of a “crazy” over a respectable professional.
A friend had this same therapist and received the same pressuring. She got mad but kept her appointments cause that’s what the staff told her to do.
“Not eating, not sleeping, having your fight-or-flight response activated every waking moment, fending off customized intrusive thoughts every day, and legitimately wanting to die” are all nasty. For me, these were created by the drugs I was told to take by a psychiatrist. Like many others.
If autistic people want the right to refuse drugs that make them feel worse instead of better they might still want to look into anti-psychiatry. Though this is NOT an anti-psychiatry site as Robert Whittaker has made clear.
For what it’s worth, Van Gogh did not undergo psychiatric treatment, had a rough life and decided to kill himself anyhow.
The inconsistency of psychiatry’s advocates should be pointed out though. If someone commits suicide after leaving the system they argue that it happened “because” they left.
At least as many of the suicides committed by the “SMI” occur while they’re undergoing “treatments.” The psych advocates will conveniently say this was “in spite of” all the help the SMI received.
I did not become fully suicidal till after a year of 10 mg of Haldol and Stellazine that made me seize uncontrollably and killed all my positive emotions and crushed my ability to think straight. Being maligned and stigmatized in the eyes of all my family and friends as an evil, dangerous lunatic–kicked out of school–alienated like Gregor Sampsa did not help.
I say I have stayed alive in spite of the psychiatric “help” I endured. I received life saving help–but not from psychiatry. Hence I call myself a psychiatric survivor
Don’t forget the “happy happy joy joy” culture that views not feeling AWESOME 100% of the time as a disease or else some shameful character defect. This is the only explanation I can think of for why people tout their chronic unhappiness as a “brain disease” as though they need an excuse for crying out loud.
“Please excuse Jane from being happy all the time. If you see her not grinning from ear to ear it’s her brain disease. Not her fault.
Dr. Smith.”
I read articles by people “diagnosed” with depression and wonder why they feel like they need a medical excuse for not feeling ecstatic all the time. As someone who can easily point out the negatives (accurately I might add) I say I don’t NEED a freakin’ brain disease to justify my ability to point out that the glass is half empty as well as half full!
“MLK didn’t deny space to white folks when he marched.”
No, he did not. But he wouldn’t have been pleased if they had taken over the show. Speaking over Dr. King and others who dealt with racism daily and silencing dissenters.
I’m not accusing Richard or others of this motive. They probably want to help. But this has happened numerous times in the past. NAMI only values the voices of “consumers” treated like trained animal mascots. SAMSAH, and DBSA likewise.
Good old Tim Murphy, Pete Earley, and Dr. Torrey have given heart rending speeches about “helping the severely mentally ill” even while defaming the objects of this dubious compassion. If any speak in their own defense they are silenced. We do not need more of this.
A network of support would be nice. But it would be made up of volunteers. And it wouldn’t be (financially) profitable since the Mental Illness System would never fund it. Why pay to help your property escape?
It would have to be underground. Instead of Peer Support Specialists we would be Runaway Mentors to help others escape.
Good point. There was a nice article published here by a woman who worked hard as a peer specialist for years. They paid her a minimum wage salary and held her in contempt–forcing her to tout the merits of psychiatry AND her SMI label like a trained animal. I need to dig up the article. It must be in the archives.
Thank you for letting us know where you stand, Sascha. Or trying to.
You’re firmly committed to improving psychiatry rather than leaving or helping others to do so. Critical psychiatry seems to be your position.
This is a pretty elastic category. It could mean any one of a number of things to a broad spectrum of people. But it will probably make you more or less popular here.
Why would Sir Simon want to change the Mental Health system at all? (Assuming it were possible.)
I have been accused of “demonizing” those poor psychiatrists, But this is just human nature. Psychiatrists are humans. Make a human being an absolute monarch and he won’t abdicate the throne any time soon.
Oddly, I find that though my negative emotions have doubled or tripled in intensity I find them easier to control than when I took my drugs.
I feel intense anger but don’t act on it. The nastiest things I “do” are my unkind posts on sites like this. I have written some wickedly funny pieces mocking the “Lame Science.”
I feel intense sadness and often cry for an hour in the evening. But I no longer regard suicide as an option.
The drugs helped numb my pain–but not enough to make up for my stolen life. And they destroyed what emotional resilience I had to begin with. Even my mom realizes I’m doing better.
We really need to emphasize the worth of all human beings–on the grounds of their common humanity.
Yet I understand and appreciate Bonnie’s attempt at strengthening our movement through alliances with other minorities who have endured discrimination too.
I have nothing but negative emotions 98% of the time. (Went off my drug cocktail in 2016-17. Been off everything since August 31, 2017.) This makes me a joy to be around. Lol.
I try to avoid human contact out of compassion for others. Even if I control my temper and hide my irritability successfully I often have crying jags. This worries friends/family.
My physical suffering is very real. Coughing, itching, head aches, painful cramps all over, weakness. My body can’t absorb micro nutrients. Yogurt, saur kraut, probiotics are worthless. For a while my whole body was terribly dry and my left cornea kept ripping off. My folks thought I was faking it for attention till an ER doctor told them 95% of my upper cornea was missing.
My negativity troubles me. Is it realizing the crap I have been through? Or is my brain too damaged to feel joy now?
That’s why I want to tear my hair out when I read articles urging abuse victims not to be afraid to seek out “help” from psychiatry. That way she can be totally discredited, lose hope of financial independence and forfeit custody rights to the abuser.
If stupidity were a crime these advisers would be doing life. Being depressed and anxious because your life is in danger is a healthy response to a bad situation. NOT a brain disease to be drugged or mocked.
Thorzine and other brain damaging techniques helped Danvers pack warm bodies in till they were overflowing. Ugh. No wonder things went downhill. I hate psych drugs more than ever.
I have been in some jam packed, depressing places that stunk of urine and stale cigarettes. I was another body to stuff in till I died. Thank God I escaped!
If you aren’t crazy when you enter they’ll take care of that. Horrible. 🙁
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. The man would tell me I was too old and ugly to find anyone else. Abusers also tell their victims how stupid and helpless they are without the abuser to take care of them.
Psychiatrists tell you you’re so sick and crazy only paid professionals can deal with you. They malign you before the community too (also popular with abusers.) They frequently remind you how sick and helpless you are without their “help.”
I ghosted a forum of survivors venting how psych guys had hurt them. One trolling shrink posted a lengthy threat, reminding everyone how stupid, sick, and crazy they were. How they should go back on their brain drugs and submit to their shrinks immediately. They told him some nasty stuff I won’t repeat. 😀
I burst out laughing. The creep never posted after that.
You’re right Judi. People WILL realize how bogus the “remedies” are as well as the “diseases.” Psychiatry is undermining itself by its own overwhelming greed and inability to say “when.” That’s what brought the Salem witch hunts to a screeching halt.
Pointing at the governor’s wife and screaming she’s a witch is a major social blunder. Lol.
Good point Steve. Sometimes large amounts of drugs can silence the loved one–allowing the family to assume they are “better” though the suffering is unbearable.
This happened to me. Mom insisted I needed more Haldol because it made me quiet, though jumbling my brain with drugs caused my “broken record” behaviors to begin with. I’m sorry I put them through it. Psychiatry screwed us all royally!
You weren’t the only one who couldn’t tell it was satire, Bradford. I couldn’t tell whether or not Coombs realizes Trump Derangement Syndrome is meant as a joke either. And I still can’t. No one I have heard use the term thinks that it’s in the DSM.
But it would be pretty funny if they did and got some shrinks to interview from opposing political sides. Watch the XXXX hit the fan and all the quacks dodge for cover as their beloved thesaurus of fancy-pants insults goes everywhere.
If Coombs wants to succeed as a humorist maybe he should read Mark Twain, Mencken, Thurber, and watch more Seinfeld stand up routines. There’s a dearth of humor today. We need more funny people.
Trump is arrogant and loud. Both essential qualities in any presidential nominee nowadays. 🙂 If someone is soft spoken, modest, and wise he or she won’t get elected.
Neither “arrogant” nor “loud” is sciency enough. These are descriptive words a novelist, philosopher, or clergy member might use. Not good enough for psychiatry.
Not enough to judge someone’s bad deeds or character now. We have to tag at least a couple polysyllabic “diagnoses” onto him/her to impress people with how “sick” aka hopelessly evil/stupid the individual is and how super scientific we ourselves are.
Weird how a few think Trump Derangement Syndrome or Anxiety Disorder are “mental illnesses” when most people regard them as jokes. Shrinks haven’t voted these disorders into existence yet, therefore they don’t exist. And probably never will since they aren’t Latin based enough to sound sciency.
Not that “mental illnesses” are a social construct or anything. *Cough. Cough.* 😀
Hmm. Your definition of empathy sounds a little different from mine, Michael. That’s okay.
Basically you’re talking about getting inside someone’s head to outmaneuver or manipulate them instead of offering TLC? Like a detective or criminal investigator?
I can see why these people would not help the suffering.
I have read literary critics who lost the joy of reading literature for its own sake and only enjoy picking it apart to support their theories. Some professions do that–not to art or literature–but people.
I think a lot of mysterious chronic pain conditions like FM and CFIDS may stem from malabsorption or poor diet. Lack of magnesium can cause a lot of symptoms linked to fibromyalgia. Iatrogenesis also may play a role. Many of these conditions were rare or non existent 50 years ago.
A lot of us got angry at Dr. K. when he wrote an article claiming drugs aren’t responsible for helplessness among the psychiatrized but institutionalization was. Institutions and infantilizing can be disabling, but minimizing the harm drugs do upset us.
Dr. K. did explain that he believes brain damage occurs but not directly from long term drugging. Rather brain atrophy from being shut off so long. Not sure why that makes a difference, though I think there’s more than just an atrophy like couch potatoes get.
Yes, but if I choose not to buy liquor from a bartender he has no legal right to lock me up and have six thugs jump me to pour whiskey down my throat. And he doesn’t claim his scotch is insulin for diabetes.
I heard you can get a more natural form of it at health food stores. A friend of mine swore he “needed” it and went to the doctor’s instead (for some reason.) W. threw a fit at the doctor’s so he wound up in the hospital.
Saying you wish you were dead around a doctor is a great idea if you want to get locked up. At least he’s benefiting from the placebo effect. It’s his lucky rabbit’s foot. Too bad he can’t believe in his own abilities but believes whole heartedly in his “bipolar” label. 🙁
Nope. My mind is affected but it’s a gut problem. A (real) physical illness.
The very term “mental illness” is tortured hermeneutics if you consider. And when a comic or article argues “What if we treated physical illnesses like mental illnesses?” the author is unwittingly pointing out that a difference exists.
Guess what? So is cancer! Maybe we could lower cancer rates by yelling insults at folks with massive tumors and leukemia.
Eating right and exercising are factors within our control. Doctors need to focus more on those. Not saying we should pitch the scales but the genetic lottery plays a big role in our weight. Some research suggests by 50%.
And doctors who push psych drugs should keep their mouths shut if their patients grow morbidly obese. I have finally lost 35 pounds (from 350 to 315) only after getting off my “cocktail.”
Ever heard of The Midnight Disease, a book by Alice Flaherty?
I was drinking the psych kool-aide when I read it but thought it weird she called hypergraphia (strong desire to write) a disease. Szazs mocked her pretentious nonsense as only he could. 🙂
I am very low in micro nutrients–especially iron, vitamin B12, and magnesium. This makes me feel very gloomy as you can guess.
My problem with malabsorption probably stems from decades on psych drugs. But no doctor will dare even speculate such a thing out loud. I found this in an article about SSRIs from the UK Guardian.
Will Hall I want to thank you. That documentary you, Daniel Mackler, and others put out called A Meeting of the Minds gave me the courage to come off my drugs. I had hated how they made me think and feel for decades but feared morphing into Ms. Hyde without them.
I saw all of you allegedly “mentally ill” folks smiling without the glazed, emotionless faces I saw in day treatment and my own mirror every day.
(And for those who feel you need your meds, sorry. Not bashing you. But it is a side effect I have seen and experienced. They lied–or were ignorant–when they called my flat affect a “symptom” instead of a side effect.)
I also want to thank you, Will, for those coaching sessions where you gave me helpful advice on dealing with all the painful emotions as my numbness wore off after 25 years.
Oldhead I will never take neuroleptics again. We need to call them that since sometimes they made me more “psychotic” with weird ideas and even hearing unreal things I never heard before taking them.
But let me play devil’s advocate. These drugs “work” by shutting down part of the brain like pain killers do. And your weed apparently did. If someone had painful thoughts they might be willing to override part of the brain to stop it.
They never worked that way for me–though 6 mg of stelazine took the edge off my anxiety so I found the courage to come out of my shell as a nervous college freshman. IF Dr. M had tapered me off the stuff after a month it might have turned out okay.
Unfortunately Dr. M. was clueless and knew less about the drugs he pushed than a pharma rep with only a high school education. He knew zilch about tapers. (In all justice few doctors do. Even the real kind.)
Talked to a psychiatric social worker about graduate school–how my over-protective mom didn’t want me to go. 20 minutes later she told my folks they “needed to cut the apron strings and let Rachel get her GED.” Someone wasn’t taking notes. 😀
There are people here I will never respond to again because of their insults. I’m all for answering questions but I draw the line at personal attacks when I try to be nice.
Other psychiatric apologists have been annoying but never acted this horribly. (Except GMYK.) If they harass me by posting insults under my comments two can play the moderator game.
My problem with psych labels 1. They cause people to assume horrible stuff you have never done. Guilt by association. 2. It’s like calling someone a “liar” instead of saying “you lie.”
In an ordinary court of law you are tried for actions you have committed. Then you are only punished till you have paid your debt.
According to Mainstream Psychiatry you are the crime. You can never pay the debt for the sin of existence.
And all you literalists–who can’t figure out what metaphors, similes, or conceits–and who think my quotes sum up what I imagine RR was actually saying are 100% wrong. 😛
I was pointing out how most “diagnoses” are insults. And btw, some people ARE ugly, stupid, and fat. Not sure how a life long diagnosis can help.
Yes, obesity is a diagnosis. But if you lose weight the diagnosis changes. Unlike psych “diagnoses.”
I would rather go out for a cup of coffee with a BPD person than some self righteous sanist any day.
I don’t meet the criteria for BPD myself and got my diagnosis from a case worker. Not a doctor. Yes, that happens.
But some insecure, nasty folks need BPD bogey men to hate on. Even though others hate THEM for being “mentally ill.” They’re the kind I would want to avoid meeting.
Funny how this inner nastiness/lording it over others permeates circles like this. Like the problem of “colorism” Charles Chessnut described.
“I may have dark skin but it’s lighter than yours.” All the while society sneered down on them all.
I fled the system so that kind of fixed the problem.
She was a sweet woman. Her occasional looks of agony would melt a heart of stone.
Funny how Grandpa loved her. Many others did. You never met her, Vanilla, but you sound like you assume she deserved to be tortured.
Treating a harmless madwoman worse than a convicted felon. Real compassion!
She never hurt anyone the way the shrinks hurt her. But since they took responsibility for controlling others’ actions that makes them Super Sane! No diagnosis=perfectly sane (saintly.)
Child beating can make kids tone down “bad behaviors.” This worked for the Victorians Dickens depicted so scathingly. Oliver Twist was a “good little boy” because Mr. Bumble beat him so much.
Torturing criminals might help them “be good.” Remember the premise to A Clockwork Orange? And most psych victims aren’t even criminals.
Not all changes from torture are good ones. My great aunt quit acting as flagrantly weird. But she was a broken woman who hid in a backroom at grandpa’s till she died. Often I saw a look of terror in her eyes. Grandpa hated psychiatry and warned me off my drugs. If he can see me now he is smiling. 🙂
I will forgive the men who ruined my life. But they did ruin it. Denying the damage they have done would make forgiveness impossible. How can you forgive someone who never hurt you?
Solzhenietzin and Viktor Frankl grew as a result of the atrocities they faced. But they were atrocities.
The establishment meant it for evil; God meant it for good.
I’m very angry at the lying quacks who “help” alcoholics and other drug addicts by turning them onto the “good stuff” they push. Glorified dealers in lab coats!
These trusting souls have no idea there are trading one drug addiction for another.
Gasp! Out, how can you DEMONIZE those poor oppressed psychiatrists? They’re the only group in Western Civilization who knows what it is to be persecuted or discriminated against. 😛
Sob!
As lowly “survivors” we can never appreciate the stigma and oppression they face all the time. Stigma affects them and no one else.
They live in voluntary poverty like members of a religious order to show love to others. They never take vacations either.
Funny. Everyone says, “Be yourself.” Unless they think you’re mentally ill. Then your Self is a disease to be destroyed if it kills you.
Psychiatry is popular with the mainstream because it helps them box the world into two neat categories: the good sane and the evil insane. Psychiatrists don’t like the words “good” or “evil” cause they don’t sound like real SCIENCE. But their “diagnoses” are really moral judgments. And bad ones.
Moral judgments used to be based on good or bad behaviors. Psych labels often have little or no bearing on moral conduct at all. Once they call you “schizophrenic” or “bipolar” everyone assumes you do stuff you quit doing long ago or never did to begin with.
According to psychiatrists “bipolars” are drunks, promiscuous, unpredictably violent, and have 0 empathy. Many folks these science guys brand “bipolar” are teetotalers, celibates, visit each other in the hospital, volunteer, and lavish love on the one creature–a cat or dog–we can love because psychiatry has segregated us.
A friend was dying of kidney failure. Two of us at the center offered our own kidneys since they wouldn’t put a worthless SMI on the transfer list. That very week Germanwings occurred and some psych doc got on TV to reduce “stigma” by telling the public how “bipolars” just are that way. No love or empathy is how they’re born. S’cuse me?
That idiot was full of it! Like some white guy claiming to want to eradicate racism by explaining how everyone of African descent is incurably evil because they were born inferior.
Hmm. No empathy…
You mean like deliberately driving a bunch of people insane without their knowledge or consent so you can write a book bragging about it?
You mean cheating on your wife with a younger woman but keeping it hushed because you’re a big shot congressman?
You mean routinely lying to patients and selling them mind altering drugs by calling them “life saving medications” they’ll die without?
Mother Theresa they ain’t!
But rest assured they are all perfectly good or sane because they say so. As medical experts on morally acceptable (sane) behaviors they have diagnosed themselves the epitome of Moral Rectitude. All that is sane and virtuous.
Bwa ha ha! 😀
Lest I be accused of DEMONIZING shrinks–only they’re allowed to malign entire groups of people they don’t even know–yes, not all are reincarnations of Josef Mengele.
Some actually want to help folks. The help they offer is like blood letting for cholera patients but that’s incompetence. Not evil.
It is noteworthy how the shrinks who rise to the top seem devoid of conscience though. The nicer ones don’t wind up leading the APA. And the APA sets the tone for psychiatric practices in America even though there can only be one Dr. Pies, Dr. Torrey, Dr. Lieberman. (Always a bright side.)
They also go on TV to lie to the public about the sick and stupid but very dangerous SMIs. Yeah, the “crazies” are dumb as a box of rocks AND diabolically clever at murdering people. Not sure how both characteristics can apply but the experts say they can. And they are never wrong.
Dr. Biederman is never wrong. He has diagnosed himself as practically God. Sounds like a down-to-earth, well-balanced individual. 😀
Churches used to sneer at psychiatry. Now they unquestioningly preach about “scientifically proven chemical imbalances” during assembly.
Yay! The latest state-of-the-art proven scientific theories from the early 1990’s. And the APA didn’t buy it then. Pretty scientifically advanced of these churches huh? Hip and current like the trendy music they play.
If you point out the damage done you’re a meany and probably have secretly joined Scientology as well.
Many preachers honestly want to help those they think have brain diseases. BUT others just want annoying people–often hurt by other church members–to shut up and take psych drugs. Even if you do–I speak from experience–they’ll treat you worse than a convicted pedophile and do all in their power to freeze you out.
Way to go pro-psych church! Aren’t you a bunch of humanitarians? And scientific sounding too. Like the techno-babble from Star Trek. Don’t throw out your shoulders from hours of patting your own backs.
Rick Warren needs to ask himself, “Do the mentally ill have souls?” His treatment of those labeled SMI makes me wonder.
The easiest way to gain notoriety as an unpopular teen is to go on a shooting spree. Wrong on so many levels!
Talking about them is unavoidable. But the news media insists on publicizing the name and face of the bullied turn bully everywhere. Wish they would stop.
If you commit a crime it’s in your best interest to be tried as an ordinary criminal instead of opting for a shrink to declare you not responsible for your actions.
1. You will only be tried for crimes you have actually committed–not crimes you MIGHT commit in the future according to the clairvoyant shrink.
2. The sentence will be shorter.
3. They won’t forcibly drug or shock you. As punishment these are considered torture and our legal system would not allow them.
Thank you Doctor. I wish there were more members of your profession like you.
Every MD I visit unquestioningly supports psychiatry. Why is this?
Are they afraid of challenging an accepted medical specialty? So ignorant they actually believe drug ads? Or a little bit of both?
They have found a lot of things wrong with me but refuse to speculate on the cause or advise a plan of treatment. Heart arrhythmia and malabsorption are my main health issues. Both caused by psych drugs used long term.
They will diagnose and refuse to answer any of my questions but send me home. Like they know something I don’t–or they hope I don’t.
Ironically psych drugs cause inflammation. And long term SSRI use blocks your ability to absorb micronutrients according to research not widely publicized. It’s in the UK Guardian and the article also says the drugs are ineffective at best.
I keep eating yogurt/kimchi/saurkraut/kevita/other probiotic crap to no avail, Will need supplements forever. At least I’m off the drugs causing the damage.
Blood tests have revealed I’m low in iron, magnesium, B12, D3 and about everything else. The doctor wouldn’t hazard a guess as to WHY.
Seek out psychiatric “help” and you’ll lose all friends, support, and guidance. You don’t need compassion just drugs cause crazies don’t have feelings. If you express pain you’re faking it and manipulative. 😛
My dorm mom told everyone in my dorm to shun me. Said only trained professionals should talk to something like me.
Psychiatry isn’t about healing people but vaccinating society against those they deem walking diseases–the “mentally ill.” Real doctors don’t appear on 48 Hours to demonize their patients.
Remember Dirty Harry? The way they see it we’re the disease and they’re the cure.
The stigma is not just against those who reject pills but those who take them and get worse. By deteriorating you are showing how psychiatry does nothing but destroy, steal, and kill. The devout disciples of the Church of Psychiatry will not forgive you.
I gave psychiatry a try. I’m thankful to be alive after 25 years. 🙂
Vanilla your father was an abuser. Nuff said. I hope you got away from him.
It feels like I’m being throw human beings on a garbage heap by these “sanists.” Cause it seems THEY think THEY’RE “normal” and “mentally healthy.” If throwing people away and telling them they’re toxic and need to commit suicide is “sane” I hate their sanity.
I have a BPD label but I’d never do that to another person, “toxic” though I may be. 😛
Ostracism and solitary confinement work wonders on reforming people.
I have a friend who does this with lithium. He swears by it.
I’ll say, “W. it hurts your kidneys.
W. says, “I drink a LOT of water.”
So basically he’s keeping the lithium from building up to effective (harmful) levels in his system. Long live the Placebo Effect! That’s what really works for him.
Vanilla, the person called a “narcissist” is not, in my view, suffering from a disease. They often seem to gladly assume this role to control and hurt others. And they almost NEVER are diagnosed either RR. Their “mentally ill” kids are instead.
Because Mrs. Brown is a gas lighter. Usually she goes to NAMI and dramatizes about how her “mentally ill” kid emotionally abuses her. Boo hoo. Mrs. Brown doesn’t need a diagnosis but to acknowledge how evil her actions have been and the harm she does others. She never goes to a shrink though. Not on her own behalf. Nothing wrong with her after all. Everyone around her is sick and crazy.
And the shrink never diagnoses her either. Because he knows nothing about human beings or relationships but sees them as robots and chemistry experiments to control. Mrs. Brown is his kindred spirit so she must be the epitome of sanity.
I couldn’t make it through the entire comment by RR. It seemed to be accusing “Borderlines” of being horrible human beings who need to be avoided. I found it pretty traumatizing.
It seems that some people are completely oblivious to what some of us have gone through. And labeling abuse victims “incurably evil” so everyone can ostracize them doesn’t help! One of MIA’s writers killed himself because he never got over being labelled BPD.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can kill the spirit!
Toastmasters is recent. That happened 27 years ago when I was a nervous college freshman getting over years of sexual harassment from high school.
My phobia is gone but I’m terrified of people learning about my past. So I try to keep all relationships as surface as possible.
I no longer act “mentally ill” but at 45 I have no past. At least none that doesn’t embarrass me.
No family, no career history. I’ll have to stay in the shadows for the rest of my life.
I feel like Richard Kimball in The Fugitive. I know I’m innocent but the authorities assume my guilt and everyone assumes what they say is the gospel truth.
Knowing what I know now about psychiatry I could not work for them in good conscience even if they offered me a bigger salary than the psych guy makes. And they don’t. 🙂
More like minimum wage for going around telling others, “Hello I’m Rachel and I am a severe mental illness–whoops! have a severe mental illness.”
This prestigious, lucrative post would have me encouraging others to be grateful consumers–obey orders without question even if they kill you–and fight “stigma” by telling the public about their assigned identity as a severe mental illness…carrier.
Not sure what role inflammation and poor diet played before my ramble in Psychiatric Wonderland. Since coming off my drugs I suddenly have a lot of symptoms that come with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and I am sensitive or allergic to many things that never bothered me before.
How can you, or anyone, NOT personalize such cruel words and actions? 🙁
The thing your therapist should have told you was that your husband’s behavior was unacceptable. His deeds made him a bad person. No one deserves this treatment.
It’s safe to assume there are others your husband treats poorly–employees, fast food workers, and others “beneath” him. Sadly for you he vented all that was darkest and worst inside him on the one nearest him. His wife.
Some people do get clingy and manipulative–often from abuse and loneliness. They certainly need to change their behaviors. But the labels are cruel and hopeless.
If someone labeled BPD stops acting this way does she really deserve to wear it emblazoned on her shirt like Hester Pryn? She may be the victim of abuse rather than the abuser. Does she deserve to be shunned for life?
I was clingy because all my life I had been told no one could love me since I was fat, ugly, and later crazy.
If someone slips and break their leg break the other one. And never let the bones get set. Serves ’em right for being clumsy!
Members of that profession have psychic powers you know.
They take part in our legal system. The Pre-Crime Unit. Lol.
Remember The Minority Report? Only instead of actually preventing murders from happening they just say they can and get innocent people locked up. Because these law abiding citizens MIGHT commit a crime someday.
They can also predict suicides with these awesome clairvoyant powers.
Real science folks! Fortune tellers, mind readers, and psychiatrists.
In America more whites get “treated” because we urge each other not to be afraid to seek out “services.”
My African American friend says those in her subculture view psychiatry with suspicion. For what it’s worth, their churches and other social structures tend to help the poor and misfits.
White churches tend to shun “weirdos” without plenty of green for the offering plate. Not all though. The one I attend now treats me kindly and encourages a developmentally delayed man to attend.
Ideally churches would be interracial; not “black” or “white.” I’m hopeful that will happen soon. We need to unite.
It’s generally NOT that the counselor laughs, “Broo ha ha! I will gas light this helpless individual and make sure she never recovers!”
More likely the counselor honestly wants to help, but even if he/she looks beyond the diagnostic label the client cannot because the new identity gets drilled into them through day treatment/clubhouse/NAMI meetings/case worker sessions/10 minute interviews with psychiatrist/controlling family members…The client lives down to this new identity. Yes, the drugs bring some relief–at least short term–for many. But they dull emotional pain by shutting down ordinary brain functions. This makes it harder to make intelligent, mature life choices.
The therapist sees the clients continue to do stupid, immature things and gets frustrated since he’she has a personal investment though it is primarily professional. The doctor at the center says the “meds” seem to be working. The client is compliant–perhaps even forcibly injected–so there can be no doubt.
Why isn’t the consumer happier or more productive? Why can’t they find gainful employment, make friends, or get along with family members?
Perhaps the therapist will say things like, “Only babies want a change.” It’s easy to imagine how this can happen. One of my therapists cried out in frustration, “You just aren’t trying hard enough! The medications can only do so much.” He was one of my favorites too.
You weren’t the only one confused and frustrated Kevin! 🙁
Stephen, I’m “coming out” as a psych survivor. Right now I’m fighting to start a career in my mid-forties.
I’m fighting psychiatry with the Truth and educating the public.
Oldhead sneered at my talking point that, “Psych drugs do not work.” He said they work perfectly since all people want to do is keep us passive and stupid.
For abusive family members, the nasty shrinks, certain politicians, and others this is true.
But many are convinced these drugs are life saving medicines that are good for you and slow brain degeneration. Why else would loving family members encourage others to “take their meds” while watching in horror and amazement as they grow crazier, sicken and die? Why do so many of us take these poisons religiously–scared of missing a dose?
I didn’t WANT to take addictive drugs and rot my brain. Many family members love the “mentally ill” child or spouse. Even those who join NAMI often do so out of desperation. The friend who introduced me to NAMI left after her sister died and the organization seemed okay with it since she died “meds compliant.”
The truth needs to be known. Some people are already seeing how worse than useless psychiatric remedies are. Hard to deny what you see with your own eyes. People get worse–not better. Crazier, not sane or able to care for themselves.
People deserve to know the truth. I’m taking it to faith-based centers. I already have connections. And they are a form of social gathering folks still attend.
Well Shaun there was a reason I attended day treatment regularly though not court ordered. Segregation is less painful than isolation. Thus lepers and other outcasts form communities.
I got tired of the put downs and depressing talk by the case workers running the show. Telling us we were hopeless. Calling us “kiddos” and acting surprised when I politely asked them not to.
Pretty lonely now. Trying to fix this.
I still can’t work so I tell folks I have Chronic Fatigue Disorder. This answers the question, “What do you do?” But they don’t treat me like a cross between Forrest Gump and Norman Bates.
Making friends at church, the library, and a local chapter of Toastmasters. As a human being–not a disease!
Frankly RR, I find your remark insulting and i bet others do as well.
“He wouldn’t have called you an ugly, worthless moron if it didn’t apply to you.”
Getting “loved ones” labeled BPD is popular with some truly evil people. The wife MAKES her husband beat her before MAKING her shrink “diagnose” her as irredeemably “toxic.”
There are videos on Youtube popular with misogynists about EVIL women with Borderline Personality Disorder who should all kill themselves. Doesn’t sound like the wives are as evil as the normal husbands does it?
A mental illness cannot exist in a literal sense. Your imagination cannot be inflamed nor your empathy infected.
Traumatic brain injuries are real and effect people’s behaviors. These are PHYSICAL though. Not mental in origin.
If they found a physical cause for hallucinations, bizarre beliefs, crippling fears, and extreme mood swings that would be a physical illness lodged in the brain (a physical organ.) Not a mental illness at all.
Well “mental illness” really means idiosyncratic behavioral patterns. Say it’s a social construct. Social constructs are real–though not in the same way as brain tumors.
Not going to attack biological psychiatry frontally? Okay, we won’t lobotomize it. Lol.
Sorry Mickey. Couldn’t resist cracking a funny.
“Biological psychiatry” is a redundant term since all psychiatry offers now are drugs and shocks which are nothing but biological. There are a few mavericks (who write for this site.) But the APA does not like them. A more accurate term would be mainstream psychiatry.
To any Hindus or other believers in Karma I know this is an over-simplified version of this belief and it isn’t always used to beat up on those who are down-and-out.
I was puzzled too. At first. Maybe that shows I’m used to the MI System where we got asked last of all. If we were even asked.
The order should be reversed. Due to spell binding, friends and family can notice odd or bad changes in psych drug users before they do.
The medical experts should come last of all. Despite their advanced degrees and superior knowledge of physiology/chemistry/etc. they tend to be timid. Upsetting the status quo is never a good career move for a guild related professional. The American Psychiatric Association is a guild.
The psychiatrist who prescribed the drug that wrecked my life was totally ignorant of the side effects. He refused to even peruse the pill manual where he could have found them. Not sure why people like him should have their input valued over those who have suffered tardive dyskinesia or watched loved ones grow rapidly worse under the influence of all those “safe and effective treatments.”
Sadly Shaun, once folks in their lives find out they have an SMI diagnosis, they will have no support system outside the community center at all. 🙁
If they’re lucky, they’ll get away with a mild label like depression or anxiety disorder. My sister-in-law and mother are diagnosed with clinical depression and keep reminding me of how inferior I am with my “bipolar” label–which no longer fits and was drug induced to start with.
Well said, Oldhead! Which is why I refuse to see any mainstream counselor again.
They may help “normal” folks sometimes, but once they know you have an SMI label they keep reminding you of the “fact” that you are hopelessly insane/incompetent. Depressing!
Shrinks are agin’ life coaches–and other non-psychiatrists–labeling folks as well. They’re scared it will show how easy “diagnosing” someone else is.
It’s like “diagnosing” someone with ailments such as Stupid, Ugly, Slowpoke, and Weirdo. Just a bunch of fancy pants name calling. The DSM is a thesaurus of insults. “Scientific” of course. Lol.
Many–maybe half–of the Psalms sound like the writer was “depressed” and “paranoid.” Jeremiah is one unhappy story. Job is pretty gloomy till the last chapter. And Ecclesiastes is a summary of existential angst that even the wealthy suffer.
Smiley religion is actually a modern invention linked to the Prosperity Gospel. Pray for health, wealth, and a soul-mate. If you are sickly, poor, or lonely it’s your own fault because your prayers weren’t good enough or blessings are withheld due to sin in your heart. More like the Hindu concept of Karma than anything in Judaism or Christianity.
On the positive side, there are more unhappy people than I realized. I am in a position to comfort them now. There’s a time and place for Sadness too.
YIS, years ago I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. Even as a child of 7 I suffered from gloom for months at a time. I just was and am “too sensitive” to emotional pain. Sometimes this frightens me because it makes me vulnerable to cruelty. Animals are smart enough to hide their pain. I cried too easily and made an easy mark for bullies.
My religious subculture frequently condemned my low spirits. These were–they claimed–a lack of joy and proof of how great my sin was. Yep. Unhappiness is a sin. Telling someone this is sure to cheer them up.
Psychiatry offered a hope. If something was wrong with my brain this overwhelming guilt at my low spirits and not fitting in to the cookie cutter/Stepford wife role might be excused if not exactly fixed. Normalizing myself was what I really wanted.
Psychiatry “helped” by telling me I was a biologically defective monster. The Gospel of Psychiatry. The only “good news” is for the “normals” who can build their egos by mocking and maligning all the crazies.
Sadly, I’m more alone and miserable than ever. At 45 it’s too late to start over.
Go to a regular doctor to get tested for anemia, thyroid problems, or even diabetes. (Blood sugar affects our thinking.)
Talk to a friend, trusted relative, clergy member, or life coach/guru type for possibly messed up thought patterns.
Go to social functions for the social part.
My therapists were a confused and confusing bunch. The messages they sent were mixed.
“You are hopelessly sick with a brain disease. This makes you helpless and powerless over your own actions. Your only hope is lots and lots of ‘medicines’ so you won’t think or do bad things.”
“You really should have a better self esteem. You need to take responsibility for your actions and act like an adult.”
“But always remember you are totally helpless. Your dreams will never come true because you’re rotten to the core with your diseased mind/soul which is actually a brain disease. Your only hope is to act like a child and always do exactly as you are told and never question doctor’s orders.”
“You need to think more clearly. Make better decisions since you are an adult.”
“Your brain is the enemy. Take some pills to kill it.”
Are you confused? Me too.
The more intelligent, open therapists–who cared–seemed to realize the conflicting messages they kept presenting and would get frustrated. 😛
Sounds like psychiatry’s current push to end “pill shaming” by labeling those with bad reactions to drugs as hopelessly insane. Gas lighting at its finest!
At a forum for abuse survivors I suggested love–not psych “remedies”–were what depressed and traumatized people need. It was awkward since they didn’t want to seem mean. (Who wants to deny battered “mentally ill” wives love?) But they KNEW psychiatric drugs worked and the chemical imbalance was an undeniable proven scientific fact.
I got irritated and left the forum. But not before posting a link to Dr. Pies’s article about the harmless “metaphor” well informed psychiatrists like to use.
Stephen Gilbert, rejecting the drug paradigm can be career suicide for a psychiatrist. Breggin almost had his license taken away and Kelley Brogan is maligned as a “hysterical” female. Sexism is alive and well in psychiatry–knotting it together with sanism helps.
My Mom was not a “NAMI mommy.” I sought out psychiatry and made my Faustian pact because of guilt from my numerous imperfections.
Mom hated me for my diagnosis. She took advantage of it though to turn me into her project or doll. If I succeed in escaping she will be devastated. Tough.
Got my BPD label when I grew suicidal over a break up and my mom repeating, “He couldn’t handle being with a bipolar like you.”
Unworthy of love!
I have given up on any sort of love or intimacy and shut myself away from humanity. Even friendships are impossible. 🙁
Eventually I hope to earn $18,000 a year writing from home. Then I can have a modest place without vermin swarming or my mom’s constant put downs and monitoring. I could own a car and drive quietly to buy my groceries, occasionally visit the library and attend a large church where I won’t be noticed much. They would only make fun of me for being an “old maid.” Better being invisible.
I have a lot of love to give–even now–but no one wants it or me. The only folks who want me around are emotionally abusive.
I have a few superficial acquaintances at church or the library but they’ll treat me with disgust or horror if they know my past. So I put up on a mask and never let ANYONE past my front porch. Most aren’t even allowed there. I dress to blend in and become inconspicuous.
Not into looking attractive. Lost cause. Don’t say anything but superficial nothings. Smile a lot but avoid laughter or tears. Act as much like everyone else as possible. Blend in like a chameleon.
Different is socially unacceptable. I would do almost anything to be like everyone else and fit in. Different is bad, wrong, unlovable, and ugly. Different is frightening.
I always say weird things when I open my mouth so I’m very guarded and careful when I talk. I don’t hate myself but everyone else would. So…I do my best to be fake. That’s what everybody likes.
Recovery is psychiatry’s kryptonite. Every person who gets better by not “complying” and saying “no thanks” to being treated like a child makes them horribly threatened and angry.
This is why they go around slandering the “untreated” and forcing drugs and shocks on them. Mass shootings are wonderful–as far as they’re concerned. A boon for business.
People getting well, going on to lead productive lives, embarrass and even scare them. Much better to keep them maimed and useless and sometimes dangerous to others. Bizarre murders by the “mentally ill” are great PR for psychiatry.
There was a myth about a king named Procrustes who forced every visitor to sleep in his bed of iron. The bed was the length of the perfect person according to Procrustes.
If the guest was “too tall” the host would chop off his lower extremities and he would bleed to death. If “too short” the king would put him on a rack and pull him asunder. By golly the guest would fit no matter what!
One day King Procrustes made the mistake of inviting the hero Theseus home. Theseus had brains as well as brawn. Hercules would have been happy just throttling the bad guy. But Theseus believed the punishment should fit the crime.
He made King Procrustes fit his own bed by adding 6 inches to his height.
You can probably see where I’m going with this. The psychiatrist is Procrustes; his iron bed is the DSM 5.
Psychiatrists should be forced to take tests for every last “illness” in their monstrous volume. Especially the Personality Disorder clusters.
And lots of blood letting too. Surprised they don’t still view that as an effective modality of treatment since anemia keeps people passive and quiet. That’s what “treatments” are all about; recovery is not what psychiatrists want for us.
Nope. We don’t feel pain since mental illness renders us incapable of suffering. Ergo if we weep or openly grieve we must be manipulative. They respond by diagnosing us with Borderline Personality Disorder.
If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?
Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice.
There may well be biological causes for some extreme states. Vitamin therapy helps a minority of cases. But until they know WHAT causes the problem doctors cannot fix it.
If they actually found a neurological cause for “madness” it would be the death of psychiatry. Neurologists would take it from there. Shrinks would retire or get real jobs.
And psychiatry has ruined my social life. Lonely and isolated thanks to that pseudo-science.
Why is there an anti-psychiatry movement but not an anti-cardiology movement? Hmm.
Renowned cardiologists don’t make television appearances to demonize those with heart problems. 🙂
Insight was a jab at a psychiatric term. The opposite of the so-called disease of “anosognosia” or disagreeing with the label your quack assigns you.
A consumer with Insight is helpless, subservient, childish, unquestioningly believes everything the shrink says and unquestioningly does everything they are told even if it kills them. And it has killed some friends of mine. One was 29.
I’m not surprised more discoveries are being made. Nor am I opposed to research or “bashing” them Little Turtle.
It was probably a neurologist who discovered this. As far from psychiatry as an astronomer is from astrology.
Pretending to know things they don’t or even know to be falsehoods and committing random acts of violence on bodily organs under the guise of medical treatments–these are unconscionable.
Enough unbiased research would prove how much senseless damage psychiatry inflicts. There is proof that structural disorders in “bipolar” brains are caused by psychiatry. But these studies aren’t widely publicized.
“Mental illness” is not viewed as a neurological issue nor a cognitive disability but incurable, irredeemable moral degeneracy. Don’t believe me? Look at the list of “symptoms.” Many are character flaws.
There are three major problems with medicalizing bad behaviors.
1. You write people off as hopelessly depraved and encourage them to quit trying to become better people. Saying, “Evil is hard wired into your DNA” may excuse nastiness on one level, but it teaches everyone that striving to become morally upright is impossible for the Designated Criminal Class.
2. Because “Mental Illnesses” are random clusters of thoughts/feelings/behaviors harmless cat ladies get labelled “bipolar” just like Ted Bundy though they are kindly, law-abiding, and have no significant traits in common with him. Pick 6 out of 11 and you’re “bipolar.” Ted Bundy and Aunt Betty may have just one trait in common, but according to Psych Experts they are exactly the same and should be punished–I mean treated–accordingly. This also understandably leads to “stigma.”
3. Since every illness requires medicine you try to solve character issues with mind altering drugs. How is that supposed to work? If mind bending drugs turned people into model citizens we wouldn’t have groups like AA or NA. Heroine addicts would never commit violent crimes. Wrong on so many levels!
I have no ethical problems with counseling as long as it’s between consenting adults and free from abuse. Counseling does not help you if you bear the SMI label though since they view you as hopeless and remind you of the “fact.” Self fulfilling prophecy!
IMHO, a good life coach could probably do at least as much to help you through rough life choices. Which raises the question: Why get a doctorate or MSW with intensive certification when a 12 week course could work just as well?
Chaya, psychiatry “works” by destroying its “consumers” according to Dr. Peter Breggin. Breggin knows medicine, but unlike most shrinks he cares about people more than dollars.
The drugs work by disabling the brain. Let’s assume–as Jaffe says in his review of Anatomy of an Epidemic–all odd thoughts, feelings, and behaviors stem from neurological problems. That still would not excuse what psychiatry does.
Take Brittle Bone Disease. We all know something is wrong with the bones. Does that justify taking a crowbar to that person’s limbs? That’s what psychiatry does to the brains and nervous systems of those they “help.”
There need to be more local authorities supervising these projects too. Often they are funded by some bureaucrats who never even visit. They send a flunky or two. Everyone cleans up to hide the roaches and mold. The flunkies leave. Back to normal. Continue receiving fat checks for visiting the office 8 or 10 hours per week. 🙁
Psychiatry is not based on reason. It appeals to people’s emotional needs for security, relief from guilt, chronic misery from life problems, and low self esteem…it DOES help all undiagnosed folks feel good about how “sane” they are. And it makes them feel safe because they can protect society from all the Evil SMI.
The answer? Ridicule shrinks. Make them into villains, buffoons or both. Online skits and ebook stories. Satirical/troll sites. Shrinks’ credibility is based on discrediting and demonizing others. Discredit and demonize them till they become laughing stocks and no one listens to their lies. Psych lies only have power if you believe in them. Like voodoo curses.
I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be full of out of control rage. Psychiatry was powerless to help me. I finally took things into my hands and did something odd by our society’s standards.
I got help from a clergy member and got the nasty stuff out of my life. Pretty grueling and scary. My choice though. The preacher did it for free. More respectful than any shrink I have dealt with.
This might not work for you though. And till I managed to go drug free it was still hard to keep my temper. Catch 22. 🙁
Are you sure you definitely cannot control your rage? You may be right. But it’s worth asking yourself this question.
I feel my anger at least as intensely now off my drugs. BUT ironically I can harness it for good now–or at least keep from hurting others. (By hurting I mean saying cutting things, harsh criticisms, etc. Not violence.)
I had one good psychiatrist who wanted to help his patients. Dr. Guilley. My guess is he had been sold a bill of goods. Probably Dr. Pies would call him uninformed.
Dr. G. was very excited last time I saw him. He had discovered that by putting patients on the smallest amount of drugs possible they rapidly improved. I feel sorry for those like him. If and when they realize the truth they must really suffer from their consciences–though they are far less guilty than those in the know. The “well informed” guys.
Something tells me Dr. G. has left conventional psychiatry.
Self reliance and family, friends, and community. Along with drugging you, psychiatry “helps” by alienating your nearest and dearest.
Like some evil wizard, the mainstream psychiatrist transforms you from a human being into a hideous monster that everyone recoils from in fear and loathing. He does this by means of incantations (“diagnoses” from the DSM) and potions (“meds.”)
We need to stand up to this Wizard. The Truth will break his evil spells!
At the end of The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom signs a paper saying she was treated humanely in the Nazi concentration camp. She consoles herself with the knowledge that she will tell the truth later. And she did by writing this book.
My solution? Say you get “treatment.” Then don’t. One good lie deserves another.
HUD housing is often a slum. They know they can cut corners on basic maintenance and still get government checks from piling warm bodies in. Because of impossible standards of cleanliness–even for many not on “cocktails” of disabling drugs–the slum lords can blackmail tenants into accepting horrible living conditions.
My place is swarming with vermin. I can’t even eat here anymore. It’s that bad. Management refuses to do squat and blames me for the problem. Only dirty folks attract roaches; so you must be dirty. My housekeeping is now a 5 out of 10. It used to be a 1, but this is the only place I’ve had this problem. When I was moving my stuff in I saw a big cockroach climbing the wall. So it was like this when I got here.
Yes psychiatry has been thoroughly debunked and discredited…but no one off this site seems to know that. Everyone I talk to believes in the chemical imbalance “metaphor” without any question because they saw it on a drug commercial. And TV wouldn’t lie.
Googling articles by the American Psychiatric Association is way too HARD man! And you gotta read them too. They use those real big words. Double plus ungood!
Idiocracy meets Brave New World with a little 1984 thrown in if you get out of line by thinking too much.
I think my nutrition was poor due to constant dieting in my teens. And 25 years of psychiatric drugs depleted it further. Neuroleptics rob the body of magnesium.
I believed in Christian doctrine, but thanks to the drugs I couldn’t integrate them into my heart. My animal mind was dumbed down but functional. My soul–ability to love, dream, hope, pray–was in a coma. I wanted to kill myself since my soul felt dead already. 🙁
Thank God I got off those pills. They did not make me a kinder, more loving, generous person after all. Man, did they pull one over on me. Sucker that I was.
Dr. Charlatan has written numerous scientific papers in support of the discipline of iridology. He is fully supported by the College of Iridologists where he earned his advanced degree. The journalists trust him because he is an expert in the field of Iridology and has many credentials and awards from the Center for Phrenologists, Iridologists, and Alchemists.
A little academic incest going on at this mutual admiration center? 😀
A bunch of rich, powerful “doctors” afraid of becoming obsolete when the truth prevails. And a society of wooses who consider emotional pain not just intolerable but an aberration. Plus the shrinks can prevent mass shootings and suicide with their Psych Magic. They provide the sheep with a sense of security–unfounded though it is.
Ever read the play An Enemy of the People by Ibsen?
I’m low in magnesium, iron, B12, D3, and other stuff. I don’t know if this caused my depression and anxiety–I was always trying starvation diets as a teen because adults told me no one could ever love a fatty.
Of course the “meds” sapped my body of nutrients too. Years on neuroleptics have really sapped away my magnesium and other good things. Oddly enough, the psych folks banned vitamins. Those are bad for you. Lol.
I’m sometimes anemic too with low levels of B12, D3, and magnesium. I find monthly injections of B12 help immensely along with a daily magnesium capsule. Sometimes I take vegan iron supplements. Ferrous sulfate tablets upset my stomach.
Bippyone, it’s highly inconsistent–and hypocritical–for psychiatrists and other MI “experts” to advocate for the “right to die” for those they brand hopelessly subhuman. Yet they force these same people to be locked up for threatening suicide. What gives?
My guess is they get paid if they assist the “patient” in the Happy Departure but if the victim takes things into their own hands they don’t.
There’s also the issue of control. I read how the communists locked up dissidents and tortured them and often killed them but took pains to prevent suicide.
“I’ll say when you had enough!”
(btw, I did not say ALL. But there are SOME who hold both positions, absurd and contradictory as they are.)
Psychiatrists never take their own tests I suspect.
Notice the lack of those diagnosed with Narcissism, Sociopaths and Psychopaths receiving “treatment.” Psychiatry is about punishing harmless eccentrics to absolve the worst people of the horrible things they do with their manicured hands, faces clean shaven or carefully made up, and smooth voices they never raise because they never have to.
It’s okay to be evil if you observe social niceties and keep your nails clean. 😀
I was a “good” consumer for over twenty years. They promised me that if I took my “meds” and did what the “experts” told me to without question I would become well enough for gainful employment and my personal relationships would improve. Instead my messed up thinking alienated friends and family and made working impossible. I couldn’t even clean my room!
When I found out the truth it made sense. Crack, meth, and heroine don’t make people better friends/employees/spouses/etc., but they do provide short term benefits by relieving emotional pain.
After being drug free for a year I’m keeping my apartment clean, making friends outside the MI System, and looking for part time work. And I blog more regularly too.
I’m very angry. I never would have taken street drugs to cope with my problems. By lying to me about a non-existent chemical imbalance they tricked me into going against my conscience and turned me into an addict.
A lot of other people would feel the same way if they knew and accepted it. They have the right to know too.
Like selling cocaine to a diabetic by pretending it’s insulin!
Thank you for this informative article Dr. Ploderl and Dr. Hengartner.
When it comes to Pharma Psychiatry there is a lot of ignoring research that doesn’t support the popularly accepted theories. This is not the only branch of medicine/science where this occurs, but it may be the worst.
“Binary distinctions between ‘service users’ and ‘professionals’…are often unhelpful….”
I read a YA novel back in the 90’s. Winter of Fire.
A race of slaves called the Quelled were forced to mine coal for the Chosen. But the Quelled and Chosen looked alike.
So…every Quelled child at age five would have his/her forehead marked with a red hot iron. This branding, creating a binary distinction, was not helpful to the Quelled. But the Chosen found it very helpful indeed.
I am not sure I fit in either Frank. During a revolutionary war there is one side more or less happy with the way things are and the other wanting a change.
During the American Revolution there were the Tories as well as those who wished to kiss the Crown of England good bye.
I have nothing against the grateful consumers but they embrace the status quo and love the Way Things Are. What can they possibly have in common with our movement? They already have havens in NAMI, SAHMSA, and the DBSA. There’s a reason escapees of Ye Olde Madhouse don’t join these organizations.
I dislike “day treatment” and “clubhouse” as much as the drugs. They have helped to segregate me from society and humiliate me in the eyes of the community. Often they would force us to volunteer and go on field trips while notifying everyone around that we were “special.”
The case workers told us we should only date within our groups because “normal” people couldn’t understand us. All SMI folks are exactly alike after all. Ha ha.
Omnipotent moral busybodies will go to great lengths to defend the ruined lives in their wake.
My parents have moved around a lot till my dad recently retired. My community mental illness centers kept asking why I moved with them despite my controlling, smothering mother.
Answer: I was afraid to be left to the tender mercies of the mental illness makers with no family to go to bat for me. Seriously.
Better to live with Fay Dunaway from Mommy Dearest than with the MI System. Ugh!
Mom became concerned when I came home and sobbed and wailed in the shower from the abusive, cult-like practices I endured in “day treatment.” Afterward I found out cults use this method called “The Breaking Point” where the Leader of a group will sick all the other members on the newbie or dissident to tear them down and “rebuild” them as the Leadership sees fit. 🙁
A social worker or therapist told me they deliberately keep us in a state of “low grade depression” since that was easier than stabilizing us.
My view? They like us that way since we’re easier to control–between pesky fits of longing for death.
I had a job coach–“mental health” of course–laugh at me and call me delusional when I proposed working for the local paper. Yep. Can’t let those crazies get manic and uppity so they forget their place!
Tsk. Tsk. Are you saying the honest-to-gosh, legitimate, hard science of psychiatry is only a social construct? How horrifying!
It’s perfectly legitimate. If Dr. Quackenbush thinks you have psychotic mania you are mentally ill. If he eats a high protein breakfast (Yolanda–the pharma rep hasn’t brought his warm doughnuts yet) or you don’t go to see him you are Sane. That’s all. 🙂
Their “diagnoses” are really fancy pants insults like 5 year olds calling each other names.
Only instead of “stupid,” “dummy,” or “slowpoke” they call people “bipolar” or “schizophrenic.” Then all the other kids laugh at the insulted ones and don’t play with them.
It’s called “common sense” because it defies hyper-educated interleckshuals so obsessed with their own thoughts and speculations they lose touch with reality. 😀
Too common for them cause they’re super geniuses. Lol.
Loonier than Minnesota in the spring. Many shrinks could easily qualify as “Sociopaths,” “Narcissists,” and “Messiah Complexes” if they would subject themselves to “diagnosis.” But who will label a fellow shrink?
My case worker accused me of Borderline Personality Disorder. She actually meets more criteria for it than I do. Meets guys in AA or bars and moves them into her house three days later. 😛 At least she did when I knew her.
Yes. Psychiatry is a great boon to abusive parents and partners.
Also, as I have ranted on this site before, shrinks make no distinction between Ted Bundy and the eccentric, kindly cat lady down the street. “Bipolars” are all alike after all!
Social identity. You mean like injecting a bunch of youngsters with the virus for leprosy and forcing them off so they start their own colony? Better not to become lepers at all, IMHO.
The Masses need “Mental Illness” as a trope because it explains evil. “We’re all a bunch of humane, altruistic saints. Except for the Severely Mentally Ill. If we ‘fix’ them and lock them away somewhere our Society will be perfect. Violent crimes will cease. Cause only the Severely Mentally Ill ever hurt or kill people.” 😛
They hurt the “mentally ill” for money. If they’re not dangerous the real question is: How much money can we make slowly poisoning this person to death? Will they endanger our racket?
For what it’s worth, the MI Center’s continual screw ups on my drugs so I kept going into withdrawal made me finally decide to come off them. No more physical dependency!
That wasn’t the ONLY factor. Heart and kidney problems played bigger roles. Plus I always hated the deadening effects. But it did give a sense of urgency since I couldn’t tell when the paper pushing flunkies of the Bureaucratic State would mess up again so I couldn’t get my fix for a week.
Joining oppressors to become a minor oppressor yourself is a common social phenomenon. In Man’s Search For Meaning Frankl tells how the Nazi captors chose some of the prisoners to bully the others in exchange for food and cigarettes. Often they were meaner than the guards themselves who had nothing to prove.
The comments make me sick. I wish I knew they were all made by MGOW since that would be a favor to women. Most likely they “diagnosed” their exes to punish them. With or without a shrink. “My EVIL undiagnosed bipolar ex” is a forum rant staple these days. Both sexes.
Not enough to say, “My ex was a fat, stupid, ugly cow who wasted money.” Nope. Way cooler to say, “My ex was a narcissistic sociopath.” Makes you sound so Smart and Scientific and justified in treating the monster horribly.
Do you think we could post links to this guy on NAMI and other sites while extolling his “science”? Wonder how long before anyone would complain. Cause…”It’s real Science folks.” As “Dr.” Torrey says. The DSM 4 is a Real Psych Diagnostic Manual. His misogyny might make the NAMI mommies clutch their pearls. Lol.
I don’t log on as much now. Oldhead’s not the only one who’s ticked.
And he is not locked up. MIA does not have that power.
Only shrinks who pretend to be soothsayers with the power to predict violent crimes before they occur can lock folks up sans due process. Like John Anderton in The Minority Report. Played by–irony of ironies–Tom Cruz. 🙂
Bruce I know you well enough to know you’re no “Psych Head.”
But I think you may be a leetle too charitable.
I’m scared of doctors now. Since they all unquestioningly believe psychiatry’s lies they must either be liars with total disregard for their patients’ lives or dumber than a box of rocks. Do they spend 11 years in higher ed to mindlessly accept whatever they read off drug ad pamphlets?
My guess is they know–on some level–they are killing us very slowly but don’t care.
Good Eric. I live out in the community. My pastor’s wife and others ask why I don’t work.
(There are job opportunities galore here. I actually found one as a cashier at Dollar Tree and almost fainted several times. Broke down crying twice. Finally quit.)
I tell people like the pastor’s wife that I have fibromyalgia. They don’t give you the cootie treatment for that.
Have been putting off seeing a nephrologist. Don’t know what my GFR is. Nervous about the dialysis since they keep “mental health” weirdos nearby to monitor you for depression so they can cram pills down your throat on a moment’s notice.
Leave me alone! Unhappiness is not a disease you quacks. 😛
There is stigma. Stigma is a badge of shame causing discrimination.
The Lord High Stigmatizers brand people with a mark showing them to be incompetent/dangerous. They educate the public on how to deal with those Evil People they have branded.
Then they get on their moral high horse when prejudice ensues. Are they really that clueless?
If “insight” causes someone to accept craziness and indulge in bizarre, out of control behaviors that could be a very bad thing–though they will more likely take their drugs. My psych drugs clouded my thoughts and feelings making me crazier than ever.
When around my friends they marvel at how well I’m doing. My secret?
1. Gradually tapered off my uppers and downers. Slow and steady wins the race.
2. Rejected my diagnosis. This helps me act normally. Surprising, huh?
And psychiatrists utilize that fear to promote themselves. They only whine about “stigma” when it makes unhappy people think twice before paying a visit to their friendly neighborhood “mental” illness maker.
Some have the audacity to claim that only THEY can know what “stigma” is. That it hurts them more than those they stigmatize.
Like a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials crying that those condemning him were being anti-Semitic. Pretty dumb.
Wish we could shame doctors who tell lies, and then shame patients to defend their precious pills/medical reputations.
That life-saving med would not have kept you awake for three weeks straight if you weren’t hopelessly insane to begin with. You deserve to be punished for the crime of “treatment resistance” by being put on 3-6 drugs and publicly humiliated until you die at 53 or younger!
More of a Madeline L’Engle than a John Lennon myself. Not a rebel. A stickler for law and order till I discovered the System surrounding me, thanks to “Mental Health,” was rife with corruption.
Forced into the roll of societal outcast/madwoman by the cruel, careless “mental health system.” Serves me right to have my life destroyed at 20 because I was dumb enough to ask for help.
Full of grief at my blighted life. 🙁
Nothing wrong with my brain till those quacks messed with it. Why? To become filthy, stinking rich by forcing tax payers to pay them $2,400 a year for using me as a guinea pig. Plus the lavish trips to exotic islands/cruises and other kickbacks paid by Big Pharma companies while folks like me drop like flies.
I can see that happening. 17% of shrinks are atheists. These guys like to argue Darwin’s Law. I think Christian shrinks must leave their Christianity at home.
Dr. McSadist forbade all talk of God or quietly reading Bibles in the lobby. She locked people up in solitary because they were crying quietly with the head down. She said they were praying–proof of sickness.
Yet she claimed to be a “good Catholic.” If “good” means her religion never made her uncomfortable I would agree. But Christianity is supposed to afflict those comfortable with harming others.
You could try what I did. Leave psychiatric “services” like “day treatment” and therapy if you aren’t court ordered. Ask nicely if you can get your “meds” through an MD instead of a shrink.
I moved to the middle of nowhere. Off my drugs altogether. Leaving infantilizing “day treatment/clubhouse” really helped my morale. If you feel down you don’t need to be told how hopeless, sick and crazy you are day after day. That was very depressing. Not enough drugs to numb that sorrow away.
Shaun F, a lot of folks need drugs to function because they’re addicted. Heroine addicts can become horribly sick if they suddenly can’t get a fix. That doesn’t prove heroine is a life saving medicine.
Addiction to prescription drugs is a major problem in our society. Doctors lying to patients is behind it. I’m angry to see little old ladies at church wax eloquent on how “antidepressants” helped them; they know because they feel bad without them. “Dr. Quackenbush told me my brain was sick. He’s a wonderful man who would never lie.”
Inexcusable and unconscionable! Like diagnosing patients with diabetes and selling them heroine by calling it insulin.
Remember Dr. Farid Fata? More doctors are like him than most people admit.
My mom is on two SSRIs and swears they help her “nerves” since she feels anxious when she misses a dose. Smokers make similar claims about cigarettes.
Oldhead there are SOME individuals so “out of it” they can’t take care of basic needs. Is a nice place in the country run by compassionate non-psych people going to hurt them? Most likely the TLC will bring them back to reality. You can’t gain their consent because they can’t communicate. And yes these are a tiny minority. I have known only 2 or 3 in my life. Most folks at “hospitals” or psych centers are okay except they’re sickly from being drugged up and unhappy at how family/friends have cut them off due to their psych labels. 🙁
Otherwise only voluntary folks would stay at these places. That might pose a problem if too many folks crash there and refuse to go back to life again….
SomeoneElse, the drugs and label Psych Services gave me caused me to become morally worse not better.
Despite the suffering withdrawal has caused (my iatrogenic sickness was already there; going off the numbing drugs just made it more noticeable) I get along better with everyone now. My conscience and empathy have reawakened.
Bet I’m not the only person made less moral by psychiatry! 🙁
I am not insulting the writer of this piece. She has done a fine job of summing up the content of the article. Not fair to kill the messenger.
Psychiatry cured me of perfectionism by totally ruining my life. Damaged by years on drugs and publicly humiliated by my badge of shame, I live in poverty, isolation, and chronic pain.
Why would anyone want to ruin their career, health, alienate humanity, and die before 55? I wouldn’t recommend “mental health treatments” to my worst enemy.
Hi Amy. Your comment near the end about how you fear missing a dose or missing a refill resonates with me.
The way psych patients are trained to view those pills as magical talismans is amazing. For years I felt the same way.
But, once you come off them you realize you had what you needed inside you all along. The “meds” aren’t responsible from your achievements. You are. You did it IN SPITE of the chemical ball and chain!
Glad you are coming off them while you’re still young. 🙂
They can only “diagnose” us by words we say. How come they then use this same “diagnosis” to discredit our words ever afterward?
The drugs are all based on changing feelings anyhow. Assuming it’s consensual. So, if a “consumer” says “This pill makes me sad, sleepless, irritable, angry,” the shrink is an idiot to poo poo them.
They know how they feel better than you do, you quack!
The nastiest shrink I ever endured was a female. Total sadist. I don’t use the term lightly. None of the others I knew would qualify.
I only saw her laughing after she had reduced a patient to tears. She seemed to derive a quasi-erotic pleasure from inflicting pain on her “patients.” Back in the 90s she told everyone how wonderful shocking people was–though she preferred to do it on unwilling people.
Even a judge was so shocked at Dr. McSadist’s cruelty he ordered her to stop shocking a family friend. Poor Jean finally went home.
It’s common in oppressive systems to single out certain members of the underdogs to groom as boot licking minions to the overlords by keeping those beneath THEM in line.
Often the minions will be nastier than the overlords themselves.
Like Josef Mengele these “doctors” who try brutal, destructive experiments on children will never be put on trial in any human court. God will not let them off though.
Funny how many Christians prefer the idea of brain disease to sin. Gone totally materialist and bio determinist without even knowing.
I have a crabby uncle. His brain injury has taken his original nastiness and multiplied it by ten! I talked to a Christian friend. She said he must need “meds.”
I said, “Janice, what he’s doing is a sin. He acts that way by choice.”
Yet she insisted it was not sin, but a brain problem “meds” would easily fix. Sigh.
Throw out the communion wafers and wine. Bring on the soma and Dixie cups of water. Brave New World, here we come. 😛
Here’s an idea. Dr. Pies is highly indignant about the nonsense going around about the chemical imbalance in the brain “metaphor.” He and other well-informed professionals find this view personally insulting.
The solution? Have Dr. Ronald Pies come out with a PSA to educate the public. This way he can save the credibility of the Psychiatric establishment and establish his own legacy as a “mental health” expert.
“It has come to my attention that many believe the myth promoted by the Pharmaceutical company ads on television. There is actually no chemical imbalance known to cause ‘schizophrenia’ or any other ‘mental illnesses.’ We don’t know what causes them to be honest. But we know what we’re doing helps ‘mental ilness’ since we have more folks with disabling ‘mental illnesses’ than ever…
“The truth is the ‘chemical imbalance in your brain’ was a harmless practical joke we cooked up during one of our annual conventions. We thought it would make a great gag to tell this story to a few ad executives. Unfortunately those low brows high jacked this amusing metaphor and misinformed the public. Tsk tsk. Very uneducated of them.”
My dream is a network of survivor coaches. Job coaches, relationship coaches, fitness coaches, financial coaches, etc. to help people flee the Psych Crazy Makers and start life over after 30 or 40.
No good business model though. These fugitives would be penniless. And because of draconian laws it would have to be underground.
Komarek I can only work now because I fled the MI System. Not only did the drugs disable me (slept 10-12 hours a day) but the MI folks coerced me into Day Treatment and Case Manager BS to eat up 25 hours a week leaving me no time or energy to work.
They actively discouraged us from working or bettering ourselves. Told us we were sick, helpless and crazy and could never amount to crap.They tore down the smart ones and belittled me for hoping for financial independence. Called me delusional.
Can’t wait to tell Social Security I don’t need their XXXX hand outs now. Like they WANT us economically dependent.
Lived in several cities and towns. Not sure WHERE you live, but it must be far away. No way would the MI System here work with me to help folks, since they want us all crippled and dependent. So I stay as FAR AWAY from those people as possible. They would do all they could to sabotage my independence and drag me into their infantile Clubhouse grown up baby-sitting crap.
I’m actually a capitalist. But crippling and keeping people from employment is unsustainable long term even if the crooks behind it make $$$$ for another decade or two.
Why would they want their livestock to escape? Asking them for help would be suicide for my financial hopes!
Did Edmund Dantes graduate from the Bastille? What kind of degree did he need to become a count?
Being a “good mental patient” helped me, Lavendar Sage. Because I was responsible about taking my “meds” and obeying other orders–I don’t rebel for the heck of it–they let me go without bugging me when I moved away.
“Rachel, be sure to have your caseworker set you up with a new ‘mental health’ center.”
My CW was overbooked. She mentioned it once; I told her I had set things up myself. She said, “Great.”
I relocated. My folks think my “meds” are needed but hate Day Treatment and other crap. They let me get my pills from a GP nearby. I only took the stuff I needed to keep from whacking out while I tapered.
Have my own place now and a work from home company offering me a job that will pay better than my SSI if I work part time. Subbing/tutoring ESL came in handy after all, despite the MI folks’ efforts to make me attend “Day Treatment” or “Clubhouse” instead.
Off all my pills except for Levothyroxin now. Yay! Over 10 months. My kidneys may be failing. Glad I didn’t wait any longer.
It is what people seek when they enter it and why they refuse to leave.
Like a woman who refuses to leave her abusive lover. He has cut her off from friends, isolating her from the world and making her dependent on him alone.
Every now and then he brings her flowers and candy. The rest of the time he’s a monster.
But she quit her job long ago. Economically, emotionally, and socially dependent she clings to the illusion of his love for her.
Something similar happens when you enter the MI System. You are segregated by your labels so your only relationships are with other MI members. Shrinks and therapists will frequently forbid your seeking gainful employment. Constant put downs and reminders of how sick and crazy you are undermine whatever shreds of dignity you still might have.
My dad has never read Szazs but he mentioned once in frustration that they wanted me to be their grateful slave and not get uppity.
The social workers/case workers/housing directors/clubhouse leaders/other flunkies of the MI System gave me more grief than the shrinks themselves as far as outright abuse. Shrinks and NP’s just give you your pills. If you don’t flip out they can’t even tell you’re tapering I found.
The interfering, nagging b*tches who micromanage your life are horrible! They either have no interpersonal skills or don’t waste them on the “mentally ill.”
Good article Corinna! I have given up on working in “The System.” I see more hope for the recovery model as an underground network.
Number 5 on your list is what I always hoped for in the “Mental Health” System and never found. Pretty angry when I found out the truth about the “meds” they push.
Often I was yelled at or belittled by caseworkers and social workers (occasionally therapists) for wanting to do stuff like marry, have a career, or go to graduate school. Despite my rigid “meds compliance” and “good insight” my uppity attitude frequently led to emotional abuse.
Have you experienced nastiness for teaching recovery?
Littleturtle I am anti-psychiatry. However one of the reasons psychiatry came to power is a lack of compassion and emotional support in our communities and families. With its “diagnoses” psychiatry only breeds further loneliness and alienation.
So yes psychiatry does need a replacement. In a word–Love.
You mean like the dysfunctional family with one kid (the SMI labeled one) who serves as the “scapegoat” while others play the “golden child” and “winged monkeys” and other roles assigned by the cold, selfish “narcissist” at the center creating the whole drama?
Or we could spoon feed him pharmapsychiatry propaganda till he goes on the road using the Scientology platform to promote psych drugs and make shrinks look guilty by association. Lol.
Actually that approach might be easier to pull off.
Dr. Moncrieff is probably busy. I would highly value her opinion if she could give it.
But a lot of laypeople here know about drugs. What do you guys think about the new drug to target Alzheimer’s? A friend of mine swears it has improved the cognitive abilities of a friend of ours suffering from the disease. (I haven’t seen or talked to the latter for a long time.)
That sounds exactly the opposite of how neuroleptic or antineurological pills help by dumbing you down and numbing you. Of course they said they have detected excess build ups in dementia victims’ brains. That might explain the ability to help them. If it’s true.
I don’t so much view MIA as a movement in itself as a forum where 2-3 separate movements can dialogue.
There’s the Anti-Psychiatry Movement.
Then the Critical Psychiatry Movement which can be subdivided into the Moderates and Conservatives. The Moderates believe psych labels are empowering and psych meds can be life-saving, beneficial, nutritious and character building but no one should be forced to take them. The Conservatives oppose beatings and lack of hot meals and beds in psych wards/institutions but think things are otherwise fine.
Consider me anti-psychiatry. Do any other like-minded folks know why we can’t start our own website or forum? They aren’t that expensive to set up.
Will remains uncertified despite earning graduate degrees. I think his advice on coming off psych drugs and personal non-compliance play a role in this decision.
“It seems the movement is being too PC, too careful, too conservative.” I agree Stella.
Are you referring to the movement here or a larger one outside MIA?
I don’t defend, let alone advocate for Scientology. But they have far less credibility and power than Psychiatry. I don’t see courts calling in the inner circle of Scientologists for help making making decisions. Nor do Scientologists have any LEGAL right to lock someone up, inject them with toxic amounts of LSD and other drugs, damage their brains with electric volts, etc.
So Psychiatry is a much bigger threat than the kooky cult they go around accusing every doubter of joining.
Yes, people here can be rough on those who say they need psych pills. No one has ever been banned from this site for saying this though.
And I’ll bet if one of those of us who are angry at psychiatry posted on Healthy Place, NAMI or some other popular site for the SMI:
“My drugs damaged my kidneys and heart along with diabetes that won’t respond to insulin. I’ll be dead soon thanks to treatment.”
“Thanks to psychiatry I went psychotic and had horrible mood swings causing me to squander my life savings and act bizarrely to those around me. Now my family has disowned me.”
“Thanks to psychiatric pills and labels–along with being forced to attend years of group therapy and day treatment–at 50 I have never been gainfully employed.”
“My psych drugs made me impotent. But that’s actually good. Because they also made me morbidly obese, caused disfiguring tics, along with poor communication skills from feeling numb. And no one wants to date a ‘bipolar-schizo.’ Might as well be given the Bob Barker treatment.”
“Thanks to psychiatric treatments I’m hideously disfigured by tardive dyskinesia and pace uncontrollably for half the day. I’m a miserable recluse and my emotional problems are worse than before.”
These people would be censored and booted off in no time flat! Can’t have pill shaming after all. Screw their lived experiences. 😛
I agree, Frank. Diversity of race, economic class, background, experiences is not only good but inevitable.
But without unity in purpose we’ll achieve nothing. Like a rowboat with half rowing one way and half another. Unless emotional support is all we are after and unending healing.
How do you define “critical psychiatry” Emily?
I consider myself anti-psychiatry, though I believe folks should be allowed to make a choice as long as no deception is involved. For example, selling heroin to a diabetic by calling it insulin is not an informed choice on the diabetic’s part to use the drug.
I was lied to for years. Never involuntarily locked up. Always took my drugs. Had “good insight” by never questioning my “healers” or the stigmatizing labels they slapped on me. I was deceived and violated. Not a real choice at all!
Was reading an article on maintaining kidney health. Ran across a section on kidney failure warning about how people needing dialysis may suffer depression and should “Not be afraid to seek out ‘treatment’ for it.” WTH?
If you already have kidney failure putting more crap in your body for them to filter out is as dumb as it gets. Because of their zeal to prescribe unnecessary drugs modern doctors are causing health problems and deaths even as folks come seeking help.
Maybe in some cases madness is caused by poor nutrition. Unfortunately it’s not always the case. For some–like me–coming off our “meds” restored us to sanity.
If I ever take my message “on the road” I won’t start out saying, “Mental illness does not exist,” since–yes it is a metaphor–people won’t know what the heck I am saying.
Is seeing and hearing unreal stuff normal and good? Or are those who hallucinate or feel so unhappy they can’t function just faking it?
Spouting off those five words makes sense to our inner circle here. But to the average Joe and Jane Q. Public it’s crazy talk. And they’ll most likely assume you say one of the two things I listed above.
Collecting can be taken to counterproductive extremes. Sometimes therapy can be useful or even necessary in helping someone understand why vast amounts of STUFF are so important to them. Loneliness and insecurity are often issues.
I feel negative emotions pretty strongly. But this can be a good thing.
Because I feel guilt I am less inclined to do what is wrong and will fix wrong stuff I have done.
Because I feel sorrow I can empathize with others in pain. Remember the character Sadness in Inside Out? Joy realizes Sadness is just as necessary as she is.
I had been following a couple forums for people who had been spiritually abused.
(Both my brother and I were pretty frightened by a Sunday school teacher telling us we had to be good to avoid Hell. Being good meant not asking hard questions in Sunday school, crying, or ever disobeying a grown up. A bunch of other crap happened–as a preacher’s family we were frequently on the point of homelessness. Common in the Church of Christ.)
I got angry and left one forum when they were counseling battered wives to seek professional “help” for depression. Ugh. They meant well…but how could anyone be that stupid? Obviously they watched a couple SSRI commercials and think they know everything now.
Many psychiatrists want to help their patients…but despite their sincerity and kind intentions the methods hurt people. Like a kindly, well-meaning doctor in the 18th century bleeding cholera victims in order to cure them.
The best psychiatrist I ever had, Dr. Guilley, seemed amazed at how much better his patients got when he lowered their “meds.” Apparently he was honest. It was the 90’s so perhaps he really believed in the chemical imbalance “metaphor.”
Unhappiness can be a great tool in prompting necessary life changes.
Take a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship. She feels depressed. She needs to realize why she is depressed and leave the guy.
What she does not need is being told she’s crazy and a bunch of drugs to numb her so she’ll let the abuse continue. Abuse victims blame themselves too readily to begin with. The last thing she needs is a psych label since her boyfriend will probably use it for gas lighting and other creepy stuff.
Fibromyalgia. FM is probably iatrogenic in origin. Funny how it popped up out of nowhere now that we have pills for every ill. And the DSM folks keep inventing new ills for new pills.
Another idea. If we need a celebrity spokesperson why not Kanye West?
He has refused to play the role of crazy sicko assigned him by psychiatry.
A lot of people have noticed he got locked up and “treated” soon after insulting bigwigs in the pop music industry. I don’t think he’s a Scientologist either.
I tell my friends and neighbors I have FM if they ask what I “do.” Pretty sick physically. Trying to find a way to work from home. Have taken rides from two neighbors worried about me hobbling home. The way I walk reveals my pain.
People treat folks with FM more kindly than “bipolars” because FM and CFIDS aren’t associated with senseless murders and random acts of violence.
Cool. The new video games seem to be a lot like those “Choose Your Own Adventure Books” that came out in the 80’s when I was a kid.
Auntie, I have less experience with illustrating than you. (Though unlike many I have continued to draw and paint after childhood.) Maybe we could cook up something like Undertale. I could do the story line/narrative and you could do the graphics?
Szazs bashed psychiatry a good deal himself. Why did he sneer at anti-psychiatry? Sounds like he was essentially anti-psychiatry in all but the name.
His disdain for Jack “the Dripper” Kavorkian also puzzles me since he supported people’s right to commit suicide. Maybe he was disgusted by a doctor charging money for something any high schooler can do. Ending life is easy; no need for a professional. 🙁
There are more rogue psychologists than shrinks though. This makes sense. Why waste time and effort on an MD when you can counsel with just an MSW or PhD?
Any therapist working at a community center has to go along with the bio-bio-bio model though.
Why NAMI and similar groups should be called out on their anti-stigma campaigns is they seem aware touting the bio-model–Please be nice to the severely mentally ill cause they can’t help it they have messed up brains–is not working. There was an article on their website 5 years ago (or more) acknowledging this.
Pete Earley and many others active in the movement are aware that the “chemical imbalance” is nonsense.
Surveys have shown that teaching people the “mentally ill” went bonkers due to crap that happened leads to viewing them more kindly. (More humanizing perhaps?)
However, ignoring these findings, NAMI soldiers on promoting the Broken Brain.
We had a similar rule in my family of origin Steve. Dad told us once sternly, “It’s okay to say, ‘You lie.’ But don’t call someone else a liar. When you call someone a liar you’re saying it’s who they are. They’ll never change.”
My dad’s a clergyman, Shuan. He has also been fighting the dark side of human nature.
I have a crazy idea of setting up an outreach program where teens would be encouraged to single out kids being bullied. Ending bullying may be impossible. But having a support network for these unhappy youngsters where they find unconditional love and acceptance might save them and prevent them from going bad and harming others. And they could grow up into decent adults too. 🙂
Just trying to cheer up Littleturtle. Like Alex I took multiple drugs for over 20 years. But never more than 3 or 4 psych drugs at a time.
Went off my cocktail in 16 months. 9 months ago. Still sickly. Not just withdrawal but long term damage that had been building up before my taper. Exhaustion, bodily cramps, heart arrhythmia, kidney damage. The two areas blur over. Not sure which is which.
It’s not that cut and dried. They lump sins/bad behaviors with harmless eccentricities and emotional trauma. But they they throw them all in the same garbage pail like Victorian jails where they threw debtors in with highwaymen and Jack-the-Ripper types.
Aunt Betty across the street, the weird but kindly lady with 4 house cats and a huge collection of Classic Coke bottles is diagnosed bipolar. Just like Ted Bundy. Ain’t psychiatry grand?
You may not be able to. Seriously. If you have taken psych drugs long enough you may need a tiny amount to survive. Will Hall and Daniel Mackler address this in A Meeting of the Minds.
And when crimes, murders, and nastiness continued the psychiatrists could say, “Glory be! Somehow the SMI gene has spread despite the death of all who carried it.” Sane people are perfect angels who never do anything wrong dontchaknow.
Murder never results in swift, certain, and severe punishment anymore. If you commit first degree murder you will probably be on death row for 10 years or more till sentenced. Regardless of who you killed.
I appreciate what Cruise is trying to do. But his manner of delivery and unfortunate ties with a weird cult would hurt our movement more than his celebrity status could help it.
Jumping on tables and yelling while denouncing psychiatry makes people view YOU as needing its services.
I saw that video of his (that even the Scientologists wanted taken down) in my kool-aid drinking days. I honestly thought he was “off his meds” or on some mind bendingly awesome street “meds.” I still think the latter might be true. 😀
“As far as truth itself being a powerful weapon…people generally prefer fantasy to reality.”
Great point! For some reason I was happy to find out I wasn’t hopelessly insane and could come off the drugs that clogged my heart and mind.
Not sure why others get so angry at the good news. Maybe they enjoy being told what to do. And being absolved of difficult things–marriage, career, community involvement….
I have suffered depression–extra strength sadness.
Try telling someone proud of their cool new scientific brain disease that depression is a feeling.
No it’s not! You’re saying depression doesn’t exist!
Sadness exists. Who says feelings don’t exist for crying out loud?
But they get vitriolic and may even make death threats if you point out depression is not a brain disease.
I have suffered from it. But there was stuff going on. Dark Night of the Soul. BD classroom where I kept getting shamed and punished for knowing too much. Homelessness. Friendlessness. Etc. I don’t need a “brain disease” to absolve me of unhappiness.
If you have a brain disorder causing depression, then depression is a symptom. Not the disease itself. I have experienced the symptom of depression from anemia and hypothyroidism.
Whining “I have depression” when you could see if you’re anemic, start exercising, find out WHY you are so unhappy is counterproductive. But it sells more SSRIs. That’s what counts. And folks often prefer popping pills to making difficult life changes.
Basically I meant (in my experience) people told me to get the Heck away from them they didn’t want a crazy around. OR they abused me verbally and emotionally. My dad took to slapping and cuffing me after my diagnosis. He never did that before. Guess he thought that was necessary for dealing with the insane.
I saw a video of his 10 years ago. He acted very bizarrely. Kept ranting about conspiracy theories and laughing at things that weren’t funny. Like someone on cocaine. The Scientology cult tried to suppress it since it was an embarrassment.
It’s pretty funny actually. But NOT a good case against psychiatry.
Power corrupts. Sad fact of human nature. Without their political clout and pseudo-credibility shrinks would be as harmless as irridologists.
Unlike racial differences a “mental illness” is not immediately apparent. If behaviors aren’t very eccentric police can’t tell. Calling police to check on a “mentally ill” “loved” one is a great way to get that person shot.
Emotional pain killers is a better label. I benefited ages ago from a small dose of the neuroleptic Stelazine. If I had used the period of mild numbness to enhance social skills–then been taken off in 4 or 6 weeks it might have been a good thing.
Creativity: Mental disorder.
Sense of humor: Mental disorder.
Brain: Cancer. (2) Vestigial organ found in those we treat.
Personality: A collection of mental disorders.
Empathy: Obstacle to helping the mentally ill.
If you want to sell a picture book you target parents; not children. Young adult/tween entertainment would be a better time investment. Or market to the kids’ parents.
Parents have more say in the pills kids take than the kids do. A lot of parents know ADHD drugs are hurting their kids. For some reason they are easier to convince of this than that folks sicken on “bipolar meds” and psych drugs don’t prevent violent crimes.
I found out later it does not, Oldhead. They were using it for their own advantage.
I kept doing what got me in trouble with Sunday school teachers as a child. Asking questions they couldn’t answer.
“If our meds are helping us, why aren’t we gainfully employed and getting along better in our communities?”
“If Keats, Dickens, Tolstoy, other folks diagnosed posthumously by Dr. Jamison did so well unmedicated how come our lives suck?”
“Why can’t they figure out a way to measure our brain chemistry to more accurately prescribe stuff to normalize it accordingly?”
One caseworker (not a psychotherapist Shaun!) had a screaming tirade at me. Nearly frothing at the mouth she accused me of not accepting the fact that I had a mental illness darn it!
This reduced me to tears. My firm belief in my brain disease led me to take my “meds” religiously but it made me desperately unhappy–even suicidal. I felt my suicide might be justifiable since at any time my meds could quit working or I might not be able to get new ones and I might become violently, murderously insane killing innocent people. At least suicide would only end my life even if it sent me to Hell.
I was thinking about my beloved girlhood novel Anne of Green Gables. Due to Anne Shirley’s mercurial temperament, impulsive behavior, and daydreaming she would have been a great candidate for psychiatry.
“You laugh and cry far too easily,” grumbles Marilla, her adoptive mom.
Yet Anne Shirley learns to act more responsibly as an adult than a young prepubescent. (Gasp!) Despite her tragic lack of life saving meds and diagnosis trail she has the audacity to lead a full and productive life.
How about an addiction to cooking up new “diagnoses” for psych tomes?
Why 5 instead of 4 or 6? Well…if we used the number 6 we would have fewer diagnoses and therefore less business. But if we used the number 4 people might catch on to how bogus our “medical science” is and it would go the way of leeches and blood letting.
I have had a doctor ( a real one) tell me unless I took a cocktail till I died I would surely run manic. Unbeknownst to him I was weening off my Effexor. Not taking my neuroleptic or other crap. So if I had manic tendencies everything would have already hit the fan.
He actually told me discrimination against the “mentally ill” does not exist. I told him about the stuff on every program. He laughed and said that nobody believes stuff on TV. I said, “You’re right. Only 98% of the population.” The naive fool laughed his head off. 😛
Dragon Slayer, I was sick and miserable coming off Effexor. As I lay down for my afternoon nap (I had pseudo CFIDS from withdrawal/long term druggings?) I would tell myself to keep doing it for my nephew Elijah. My brother has him on some drug. Xanax maybe. He’s still on it.
But I hope I can show my family that if “Crazy Rachel” can go off her “sanity creating meds” (lol) and do better than before, Elijah, my mom, and my sister-in-law can go off their mind benders too.
That weird little neo-Nazi sounds like a member of the alt-right Eric. The phoenix sprung from the ashes of the KKK. Very racist and anti-Semitic but they’re okay with being gay. Think Breitbart.
Rossa, one of my biggest problem with the bio bio bio model is–assuming odd or extreme thoughts/emotions are pathological–they still don’t know WHAT is causing them.
They pretend to know things no one does because smart as scientists are the human brain remains a mystery. All psychiatry offers is random acts of violence to something they know little about.
If they actually found an organic cause that would be the death of psychiatry as we know it. We have neurologists who could take over from there. They are the real brain experts.
Because of this psych doctors are all talk and no action when it comes to discoveries. Like 20 term career demagogues blabbing about budget balancing or deficit reduction to get reelected. Only psych doctors are even less motivated since they don’t want to go out of business.
I have dealt with a large number of professionals who hated having me in groups or even talking to me. They preferred working with the developmentally delayed. These secretly hated me and would tear me down in “day treatment” to belittle me before others.
They also would sick everyone else on me to tear me apart. I found out this is standard practice in cults. They call it “breaking point.”
I came home one night–I lived with my folks. I was taking a shower and started screaming and weeping from the head games I’d endured at group that day. Mom was really worried and mentioned how I always seemed worse after Day Treatment.
I was warned to never tell anyone about these groups because of confidentiality. 🙁
After my diagnosis it wasn’t just my psychiatrist and other MH professionals who refused to take me seriously. My family and the few friends who didn’t shun me quit listening to anything I said.
I no longer had thoughts or feelings. Just symptoms. It was okay to treat me like crap as long as I took my “meds.”
I no longer had a personality–just a disease. I was a disease.
You are your “illness.” It defines you in a way no literal illness can.
I owe you an apology Shaun. Since you obviously don’t know anything about Jaffe beyond that review he wrote, you can’t be held responsible for the nastier stuff he has pulled.
Not least was launching an “anti-stigma campaign.” What was his plan?
Since only the “untreated severely mentally ill” go on shooting rampages–Jaffe claims–NAMI can prevent gun violence and stigma by telling the public that the SMI were ALMOST safe but only when drugged.
This is simply not true. Harmless madmen have been recorded throughout the centuries. Francis of Assisi was one for a while. Many–not all–shooters were receiving psychiatric care. And continually promoting the violent madman trope in the pubic consciousness will not end discrimination. They always assume you’re “off your meds” no matter how religiously you take them. After 22 years of strict “med compliance” I know.
About my comment above, I refer to the idea that aliens were talking through the TV as harmless because it only bothers the hallucinator. I knew one man who heard voices from the set telling him he was a wonderful guy who would become President and save the world. He enjoyed these voices.
Unlike your son Rossa, I started out depressed and anxious after years of bullying and 2 months of homelessness in high school. Saw Dr. M who gave me the SSRI anafranil. Kept me awake for 3 weeks straight. I went bonkers. Might have recovered if allowed to sleep and get over the trauma. But by golly the shrinks weren’t about to let that happen!
The label is filled with accusations of bad character traits you may be innocent of. 6 or 7 out of 10 subjective, elastic feelings, thoughts and habits. And if someone acts badly isn’t branding them hopelessly depraved a great way to kill hope of moral reformation?
Obviously you don’t watch TV. I only do with my parents. But every other drama contains a creepy “bipolar” stalking children, trying to murder the heroes, or something equally nice.
Maybe the label is sexy if you’re a guy. Some women prefer bad boy criminal types. (Personally I don’t.)
Hmm. A doctor was sentenced to life in prison after knowingly misdiagnosing people with leukemia to sell them unnecessary chemo and other hazardous cancer treatments. Some were killed; others maimed for life.
Those who survived were angry. Gosh! Pretty weird huh?
You don’t suppose they were psychotic or something?
Before fleeing psychiatry my interactions reminded me of the end for Hunt for Red October. The bad guy (Joss Ackland) has been lying to the Americans about a Russian defecting to America with a submarine. Jack Ryan finds out the truth. Finally the American and Russian reps face off, lying through their teeth. The American slyly shows they have the goods on the bad guys (keeping up appearances.) Both continue to smile. The American says, “I really appreciate your candor.” The Russian says, “Allow me to return the complement.”
That’s the only kind of relationship we can have with psychiatrists. Lying through our teeth and wearing masks.
But they decided to base our relationship on a lie. They continue to lie to and about us.
Will I scream or act stupid? NO WAY. But knowing someone lies all the time makes me distrustful. And any respect I display is a facade colored with scarcely concealed irony and disdain.
Oh yes. I feel justified in lying to them as much as possible. Most think I’m a subhuman imbecile incapable of independent thought so they can’t pick up on how I despise them for their utter lack of character or conscience. If they were used car salesmen I wouldn’t buy from their lot!
Yours sounds better than “bipolar” Vanilla. If you can find anyone willing to listen to such a lengthy exposition. Maybe cut it down to 25 words or less?
75% of my patients say their meds work when I suggest ECT as an alternative method. The other 25% obviously suffer anosogonosia! I’m the expert. I know how they feel better than they do themselves. 😛
Moody is less associated with cruel/criminal behavior.
My dad is called “moody.” He goes up and down. Thank God he never saw a shrink to “bipolarize” him! No career, no marriage, no kids. Great way to mess up your life forever! 😛
Madness exists. Self deception. Harmless kinds like “Aliens are talking through my TV set.”
Rapists who convince themselves the girl wanted the rape and they were curing her of frigidity.
We also find this in “doctors” who ignore how sick and stupid long term druggings make those beneath them–deluding themselves into thinking it’s okay to live in segregated slums and die before 53.
Thanks for clarifying, you aren’t Jaffe. But it makes little difference.
If someone said, “I’m not a member of the KKK, but read this piece by the Grand Wizard. This sums up my own views on race relations…” Well, he MIGHT be a racist. Even if he is not a member of the KKK or the leader himself.
I considered the low sex drive a positive thing. My diagnosis drove all the men away. Why want what I can never have? Thank God my libido is still barely existent. 🙂
Interesting to see the “bipolar” that makes them act like jerks is “not the real them” but the good characteristics are. Using “bipolar” to excuse bad behaviors will be tolerated by friends and family for a while. “Poor John can’t help it when he screams obscenities at me and smashes my antiques. His meds must need readjusting.” Eventually John’s wife will get sick of his crap and leave, claiming all “bipolars” are evil. I can see where she gets the idea, unjust as it is.
Nor do I, Littleturtle. It’s not a racist epithet, but a moral judgment. A slam against one’s character. Like calling someone a liar, a jerk, a slut, or a thief.
Oldhead I have heard of folks misdiagnosed with cancer who discovered they were okay. Guess what? They became horribly depressed. Apparently cancer patient was integral to their identities now. They had no sense of who they were without their diagnosis. 🙁
I appreciate what Chris is trying to do. During the Revolutionary War, the solders taunted the colonists with the song, “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It involved a stupid hick who complained he couldn’t see the town because of all the people. When Washington accepted Cornwallis’s surrender, he had the American militia strike up the tune. “In your face Brits!”
I have always felt my label made me like Richard Kimball. Wrongfully accused of a crime I have not committed. Watch any one of a number of TV dramas and you’ll find a “bipolar” who runs around murdering people for the thrill of it.
I prefer not to don a T shirt with a picture of Anthony Perkins brandishing a butcher knife and the words “Proud Psycho” on the back. Better to be judged on the content of my character and not some badge of shame a creepy shrink slapped on me years ago.
“Once a thief always a thief!” says Inspector Jalvert in Les Miserables.
“Once a bipolar always a bipolar,” says Dr. Jalvert in Modern Psychiatry.
The vast majority of us were driven bonkers by the drugs supposed to cure our suffering. A few were gaslighted like you Someone Else. Others took an SSRI for depression or some off label problem and were sucked down, down, down…into the Mental Illness Inferno.
Yes. Reductionism is anti-religious at its heart. Most churches don’t realize how reductionist psychiatry is by its nature.
Because of how “spin” has created the myth of reductionism for madness and human behaviors I’m unusually skeptical about the claims for AI. Quite likely they are inflated too.
“I’m a robot who doesn’t have any feelings. Sometimes that makes me really sad,” says Bender on Futurama.
Glad you’re feeling great Fred. My dad is younger than you and his sleep is poor. I sleep less but better now. Used to sleep 10 hours and wake up unrefreshed on my “cocktail.”
Some say Vincent suffered late stage syphilis or malnutrition from poverty.
He was pretty sensitive, high strung and given to melancholy thoughts. Things are worse today. No tolerance for those with low emotional pain thresholds. 🙁 No compassion or mercy on the weak. Just punishments and control!
If things had gone differently and he had learned how to deal with life’s troubles better things might have gone better.
You got the quote wrong. Trump bragged–quite tastelessly–that many women came onto him because he was rich and famous. That is pretty disgusting though.
I’m sure you approve of Trump’s new mental health czar though. Right D.J.? Lol.
Well now we know “Shaun F” is a fictional persona for none other than D.J. Jaffe. Not sure what he does for a living, but it looks like PR rather than therapy. Remember that when you read his claims about the haven of love and joy where he works.
The guy is completely ignorant of “minor side effects” like tooth loss and lowered cognitive functioning. That’s my charitable spin.
He wants more HUD ghettos to stuff people in. Pretty generous.
But some would like alternatives to these roach-infested slums. Is he aware that the MI system ensures you’ll never find gainful employment? Does he even care?
Tell a lie often enough and even you won’t know truth from fantasy. 🙁
I prefer the word “mad” myself. But I see madness as a state of mind. Traditionally madness was seen as something you got over like a headache or fever. But that sounds pathological–and I don’t believe madness is biologically based.
Try reading literature like I Samuel where David pretends to be mad to scare a king away who might kill him. Later that same king hires David as a mercenary warrior. Apparently the king realized folks get over madness. In Don Quixote the hero goes mad. At the end he comes back to his senses. This happens in King Lear, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Lost Man.
It was only after the locking up and segregation of the mad started 200 years ago that recovery was viewed as impossible. The Keeper of the Madhouse hated losing the $$$ he got for warm bodies.
Now a bunch of folks profit from keeping others mad. HUD slumlords, therapists, caseworkers, social workers, Big Pharma CEO, drug reps, etc. Not just shrinks. And they won’t let you go NO MATTER WHAT.
Neuroleptics and “mood stabilizers” were easy peasy coming off of. Effexor was horrible. Not just withdrawal–the exhaustion and muscle cramps started a few years before. Long term effects of drug use. But the withdrawal exacerbated the symptoms.
Been off them for better than 9 months. There is progress, but painfully slow.
Plus I’m allergic to everything. SSRIs also serve as antihistamines. That’s why they won’t let you take cold syrup if you’re on one.
Chris, you can call yourself whatever you like. But I have always seen my psych label as a moral judgment.
I don’t have mood swings, btw. Sick and irritable from drug withdrawals. Striving to be kind and thoughtful to those around me. Better off than your friend Monica was though! Yet my “bipolat” label remains etched in stone regardless of the content of my character.
Have you ever considered identifying as a spontaneous, sensitive eccentric? Less cootie treatment from that.
When I look at the “symptoms” to DSM labels I see three categories:
1. Unwanted feelings or thoughts bugging the one who has them. (Caused by abuse or other trauma, but psychiatry makes no allowance for that.)
2. Bad behaviors. The diagnosed may not mind them but others do.
3. Plain old quirkiness or eccentricities. These bother no one but meddling relatives and soulless killjoy shrinks.
Number 2 bothers me. I don’t run around cheating on my partner, going on drunken sprees, throwing money away, picking fights, or killing people. But when I call myself “bipolar” people assume that not only am I guilty of at least some of these behaviors but they are indelibly engraved in my character. This leads to prejudice and bigotry like racism. Only instead of judging us on the color of our skin they judge us on the label slapped on us by an “expert” who lies about pathological differences cutting us off from Normal Humanity.
If I were wrongfully accused of murder I wouldn’t self identify as a murderer. Nor will I self identify as a bipolar. Except under torture.
My psych drugs opened my soul to demons. Mind altering drugs have been used throughout history to invoke the spirit world. So it makes sense. Deliverance helped me even before I went off my drugs.
If you want, I can direct you to a friend of mine who runs a ministry. We dated for a while.
You may not consider the DSM as your model of care Shaun, but you speak out in favor of “treatments” that employ the bio-model.
Not quite the same of course. I guess that means you don’t prescribe the drugs yourself and maybe don’t offhandedly label all who walk through your doors.
They believe what they write–unlike many shrinks who would never take their own “medicine.” Nevertheless it is a choice they make. I might make it too had things turned out differently.
Uh, not being able to salivate does cause dental damage. A lot of “mentally ill” folks are toothless even in their thirties. My teeth were great–genetics–but they went to pot as a minor side effect of my treatments.
And not being able to work can lead to homelessness too. Folks at the MI Center mostly live with aging parents/group homes/homeless centers/or HUD. Better than a 3 x 3 box you say? Yes, but not by much. Plus no one will rent to you if you live on SSI. Thanks for the stigma shrinks.
Most SMI’s are really just involuntary drug addicts. Including me. Pretty sickening. I never would have taken street drugs voluntarily. Thus the lies about how the pills were “medicine” curing the “chemical imbalance” and preventing brain damage.
Anafranil made me higher than a kite. Zoloft provided a warm, tingly, erotic glow for over a month. Ever heard of an SSRI triggering a manic episode? Great way for shrinks to bag more “bipolars.”
No one I ever met in the Center or Clubhouse was gainfully employed. Ditto for those at NAMI and other places. Robert Whitaker’s research supports what I also saw.
I got my BA IN SPITE of psychiatry. And all my case workers/social workers/treatment team flunkies/bureaucrats did their best to discourage me. Scared my college degree would make me uppity. Then they claimed my college degree as THEIR success story.
It’s not as simple as an African American hating Whites because he was threatened by KKK members or a woman hating men because she was raped. When therapists and other mental illness professionals comment here and boast about their expertise, they’re choosing the role of the “Expert” lecturing the mentally/morally inferior.
I try to be just and charitable. Their desires to help are likely genuine. Even if they are as misguided as a 19th century doctor putting leaches on a cholera victim to purify his body of bad blood.
Nevertheless they come across like the ladies in “The Lovers of the Poor” by Maya Angelou.
Mr. Blobby looks like a character from a dream I had when I decided to go off my psych drugs. (Hadn’t tapered too much. But my agonized decision inspired this dream.)
I was at a long table with friends and family. Then somehow I escaped something holding me back.
I divided into two. One–the Real Me–looked at the other. I was thinner, had a healthy complexion, and could think and feel like a real person.
I looked back at the other. She was a bloated doll with grotesque, knobby features. Green, the color of poison or vomit. Occasionally foul-smelling toxic gasses leaked out of her. She WAS an inflatable doll.
The friends and family ignored me. They continued to treat the Doll like the real human being. Occasionally they seemed to hear my voice when I called to them. They would just scowl and turn back to the Doll.
They didn’t like her. But they hated me. So they chose the Doll despite her poisonous nature. 🙁
Probably because Slater is so well off she doesn’t choose to escape. Safer and easier to keep taking her “meds” and sing their praises. Though even she seems to find that harder to do now. The same can be said for figures like Patty Duke, Carrie Fisher, and Kay Redfield Jamison.
Yes. In his biography of V. Woolf My Madness Saved Me, Szazs scoffs at both genius and “mental illness” alike, saying there’s no correlation between creativity and madness. Granted “genius” is pretty subjective and elastic as a category. Like obscenity. “I know it when I see it.”
I take William Glasser’s position that creativity causes altered mental states such as hallucinations and the belief you can’t get out of bed. Not all creativity causes madness but all madness is more or less creative. That might be why art therapy helps people so much.
Racism and psychiatry are intertwined. Both stem from eugenics–the belief in bio determinism. The idea that certain people are born morally defective. Punishing those born with the “wrong” color of skin is no longer acceptable. Hence the witch hunts for the “mentally ill” under the pretext of ending violent crime forever.
Due to their alliance with psychiatry even well meaning psychotherapists who care about people are unable to do much. For one thing they encourage mindless, unquestioning “meds compliance” regardless of obvious deterioration since starting the drug. For another they are pessimistic and cynical. Understandable since the bio bio bio model makes true recovery impossible. Life long labels are also to blame.
Psychiatry serves two functions. Hope and security.
The hope is for desperately unhappy people and their family members. Hope that the next magical pill will solve all life’s problems, destroying all pain and maximizing pleasures associated with living.
The security is for those worried about crime and acts of violence. Psychiatrists assure the public that they can know–by scientifically verified magic–who will commit crimes and they can save these people from themselves and society from THEM.
Of course the hope and security are illusions. But when we critique or question psychiatry people get very angry. We popped the pretty soap bubble they based their lives around.
I understand why you feel let down by Dr. Moncrieff. I have the unusual idea that suicide is a choice. While drugs, poverty and segregation (all givens with psychiatric involvement) cause horrible misery we still have a choice. Press on through the torture or end it. Understandably many choose the latter.
If it weren’t for her writings I never would have discovered tardive psychosis. Haldol and stelazine really were making me crazy! Up yours, you quacks who said it couldn’t be possible! You never took your own poison. I guess I know how it made me feel better than any of you did..mind reading psychics that you are!
Not sure if Oldhead had this in mind, but maybe you could write a rebuttal to Dr. Jamison’s Touched By Fire Julie. A bunch of mini-biographies of psychiatrized creatives and what became of their works after long term “treatments.”
I love My Madness Saved Me. But Virginia Woolf died before pharmapsychiatry emerged in all its dubious glory. Many say “meds” would have prevented her suicide. Countless suicides by folks doped up on psych drugs say otherwise.
Shaun F your center must be radically different from any I have ever gone to.
I read an article by a therapist complaining about how childish and irresponsible his clients were. I wish I could find it. It was in Intellectual Takeout, but their archives are very hard to navigate.
He sees the problem many “ex-consumers” here do, but can’t add two and two together. He just face palms and wonders where the four came from.
Drugs aren’t about increasing independence, function and responsibility but making people passive and submissive. Hence childish and dependent. The Parent/Child relationship inherent in the system of MHCenterWorker/Consumer also causes this. Along with negative self fulfilling prophecies upon being “diagnosed.”
I always LOATHED my drugs. They made me feel horrible. But I believed my psychiatrists and took the pills in good faith. 25 years of taking neurotoxins religiously as penance for the sin of being “defective” with a hereditary brain disease that turned out to be a harmless little joke the APA decided to pass off as hard science. A little metaphor. A funny gag.
Check out ALLCAPA.com. I joined the group CAPA. Christians Against Psychiatric Abuse. The guy running that site believes pharmapsychiatry is destroying western civilization. I do too.
It’s not that hard to find evidence against the chemical imbalance myth. Just look at stuff the APA puts out.
Most people have no vested interest in doing research. That’s the only reason I can think of for why everyone still believes it.
A question Julie. Does Lauren still believe what “no well informed psychiatrist” does? Does she think that SSRIs and other drugs are magic bullets or “medicines” for chemical imbalances?
Or is her approach more pragmatic? “These drugs make me feel better so I don’t care how they work. I’m gonna keep taking them no matter what.”
For the latter I shrug and say, “Kudos for your honesty!” Even though I have made a different choice.
Szazs might get mad at me. But he was sometimes wrong.
A lot of what we call “mental illness” is immense unhappiness + creativity. “Hallucinations,” “delusions” of fantasy worlds, belief that you can’t get out of bed are all imagination gone bad.
You can be creative without these problems. But if you are unhappy enough the temptation to use your imagination to escape reality can be overwhelming.
The drugs work by killing the imagination–along with the rest of your brain and bodily organs.
Plus shrinks seem to have it in for creative, artsy types.
Dr. Lieberman’s army of anti-psychiatry idealogues is about as real as Emmanuel Goldstein and the Brotherhood in 1984. (Or the chemical imbalance.) He dreamed them up to scare people. At Bipolar Burble, the blogger is terrified of hordes of anti-psychiatry armies out to destroy her. She scheduled a 2 Minute Hate in some of her posts. “I love Big Doctor!” All perfectly rational of course. Mindlessly accepting whatever someone says and being afraid to think are signs of good insight and lead to meds compliance. 😀
B.B. is scared to read a word of anything Bob W. or others write. She might catch a bad case of the thought disease called anosognosia. “Mentally ill” folks don’t have paradigm shifts or Aha moments. Just a lot of scary symptoms.
Who cares if they kill “crazies”? We’re all mass murders waiting to happen according to everything the media spews out. So what if the drugs make us get sick and die?
A truly free market wouldn’t force people to buy shoddy or harmful products. Or even quality, helpful products they prefer not to.
And such massive, wide-scale deception of the public should be punishable with prison sentences for the advertising execs. Like the one Bernie Madoff received. That kind of crooked!
Psych drugs enrich a few but are costing middle class tax payers a lot. Almost $10,000 a year per “mentally ill” person who is too iatrogenically disabled for gainful employment and about ten times the amount for quacks who keep us from working and paying our share of taxes. Pharma-psychiatry is a drain on our economy!
Those “somatic symptoms” could easily be caused by legitimate medical problems. But since you’re on a psych ward they’ll probably feed you neuroleptics/SSRIs/other crap instead! Then when your condition stays the same or worsens they’ll up your cocktail. Ugh.
Frank was angry. I’m angry. But not at you. Or any individual per se.
I appreciate how you try to help people, Shaun. I would not want your job. The model you are forced to work with is a great way to keep people helpless and childishly dependent. Therefore it must be frustrating for you.
Human beings are emotional. Frank is a human being.
If by emotional you mean raving hysterically, no he was not.
MI Experts can be pretty emotional. But since they don’t have to worry about being locked up, drugged, or shocked their emotions consist of getting angry and offended at their patients’ complaints at the way they are treated–the lack of these wretches’ gratitude, honor, respect–maybe veneration…Hey, is a little burnt incense too much to ask for?
Shaun, my biggest problem with counseling is the way it sold out to the bio-bio-bio model. Most of my therapists would ask if I was “meds compliant” remind me to set “realistic” goals for myself and only to date other mental patients. My last counselor told me repeatedly to go out and fornicate before I got too old. I wasn’t the only patient she gave this advice to despite our religious beliefs and protests.
I fired her. Looking back, therapy had become counterproductive since I talked my problems to death instead of fixing them or learning to accept and cope. I’m not against (good) counseling though. At least the voluntary kind.
Bcharris, I’m in terrible physical pain since tapering off my Effexor and Abilify. I’m allergic to a lot of stuff and itch from head to toe. Plus my whole body cramps continuously so I ache and tire very quickly from light housework and short walks.
I have experienced severe psychosis twice, RR. Not sure my episodes would count since they were induced by a “medicine” to cure my sadness and nerves. They felt pretty real though!
Judging from your above statement, E. Causes you are not one of those “many” I mention. I want to be just. Still, there are those who think the “severely mentally ill” don’t feel pain or bleed red like Normal People.
I have a real problem with anyone wasting away in a psych ward. Odd how many realize it’s wrong for Suzannah who had a real brain disorder. A physical illness not the metaphorical “mental illness.” Yet they’re okay with “schizophrenics” like Frank and countless other human beings rotting away in wards or being segregated/marginalized/etc. should they be released. I guess the “mentally ill” don’t feel pain like Real People. If they claim they suffer they must have Borderline Personality Disorder since pretending to hurt is an obvious attempt at manipulation. 😛
RR, I guess dreaming is a “mental illness” the wonder drug Anafranil cured me of. 21 days of NO REM I recall. Maybe 8 hours of light dozing altogether during this period of time.
I became loonier than Minnesota in the spring.
But I mustn’t #pillshame by saying SSRIs ever do anything negative. 😛 Far better to punish and shame those who have reactions to these miraculous life-saving “medications.” Let’s #patientshame instead!
The Greek philosophers knew more about the human psyche than those quacks who deny souls exist. I would rather talk to a philosopher than a shrink myself.
Everyone unquestioningly believes the chemical imbalance lie, Phil. People are dumber than a box of rocks. They swallow anything they see on commercials–literally. No one I talk to is willing to read more than a page of sustained prose. Too much work!
I blame TV. And a refusal to THINK. That’s what the “experts” are for.
I laugh at the shrinks. What are they so scared about? They grossly underestimate how stupid and gullible the doublethinking mass is. (Mass is collective. They can only function as a herd mind.) Maybe the shrinks should evaluate themselves since they sound downright “paranoid” from their rants.
I have given up on those myself. Went off my drugs, but am in constant–almost crippling pain. Nonstop muscle cramps from head to toe, horrible itching and dryness, extreme sensitivity to certain noises, and exhaustion from the cramps.
Clear headed for the most part. I think I extended my life by a few years. (No longer in danger of diabetes. My heart is better. I’m losing weight which I couldn’t before.) Not that good a life though. Still can’t work and am lonely as nobody’s business. 🙁
Maybe I should build a tiny house on wheels with stuff from the city dump. I am sickly and in pain most of the time now. Maybe in another year I will be well enough.
Part of the reason folks love the idea that “depression” is a brain disease instead of plain old unhappiness is they get the status of an invalid. “Be nice to me. I’m not unhappy, but REALLY sick! My doctor said so.”
They don’t have to consider leaving an emotionally abusive relationship, take up exercising, figure out why they hate their job, or make new friends. Just pop a new pill for happiness.
Draptemania, melancholia and hysteria also predate the DSM manuals. Melancholia and hysteria were “treated” with blood-letting and cauterization. Lovely stuff!
Blood-letting and starving were considered effective treatment modalities since they made the patients quiet and easy to control. There is nothing new under the sun.
Tardive dyskinesia and death are minor side effects when you consider that his yacht won’t pay its own bills…Oh. You’re referring to the patients and not the psychiatrist himself.
1. Psychiatrists have unusual power and influence in the world.
2. My psychiatrist revealed his powers and clairvoyance to me. Mind reading and sooth saying are powers psychiatrists possess since they know who will commit crimes and can tell what patients think. We can be sure of this; they say it after all.
3. Psychiatrists have special plans for me as a career test subject for their Mengele-like experiments, and a societal scapegoat to blame for all violent crimes that occur. They also cherish similar plans for 20-25% of the population.
4. Psychiatrists run the world. People accept any bologna they serve on television or in court rooms without any question at all. They are in bed with government and you are condemned at their word since they are never wrong. Like Cotton Mather at the Salem witch trials.
The Tumblrites have some bizarre ideas. Don’t forget the Flat Earthers. But whatever reason people have for espousing beliefs in otherkin, therians, or a flat earth they aren’t considered “mental illnesses” for some reason. “Flat earth believer” doesn’t sound sciency enough for a psych “diagnosis” I guess.
Hi Dr. Paula. I loved your book, They Call You Crazy. The part that sticks out in my mind is when you compare diagnoses of “mental illness” to constellations rather than actual illnesses.
Benzos are HORRIBLE but SSRIs deserve second place in Most Addictive Drug Class. Came off abilify in 10 weeks with just a few headaches, insomnia, and disorientation. Took me 13 months to taper off Effexor. So sick my Mom worried I might need a “group living” situation. I urged her to wait; I knew it would end. Still puny after 9 months living drug free.
Akathasia must be horrible. I have seen friends with it. Not surprising it leads to suicide. Nasty stuff!
For me, the main thing that led to my suicidal desires was the diagnosis itself. It alienated me from humanity even as the mind altering drugs alienated me from my own psyche. It made everyone regard me with fear and loathing–which made me want to die.
Sounds like what happened to me. Only I never attempted suicide. The dorm mom “educated” the others about how sick, crazy and dangerous I was. Never invited me to these meetings for some reason. She told them not to talk to me; only licensed professionals could talk to people like me. Then she kicked me out. Said my drug-induced Parkinson’s proved I wasn’t taking my “meds.”
I was “meds compliant” for over 20 years, btw. Big reason I’m so puny now.
Neuroplasticity might produce a demand for brain coaches or trainers–kind of like a physical trainer at the gym. I really think psychologists have excessive amounts of formal education for what they do.
Ms. Monique, I always felt the “meds” messed up my thinking. But no one believed me. My parents did at first Mom said, “Rachel never was this bad till she went on Anafranil.” The shrink said it was my fault I went crazy. If I weren’t mentally ill the life-giving medicine would never have hurt me.
When I read William Glasser, Terry Lynch, Bob Whitaker, and others I felt relief. I was right after all. it really was the pills making me crazy!
Some people get angry, insist that they are too bipolar, their pills are “salvation” and become quite hateful. (They often post these misspelled, ungrammatical rants in all caps.) I don’t understand that behavior at all. I never aspired to be a career mental patient myself.
Part of our society’s infatuation with psychiatry is it enables us to shuffle off those who suffer onto the backs of “trained professionals.”
Before I got kicked out of college, the dorm mom told everyone in my unit to quit talking to me. She said only trained professionals should talk to people like me.
It was better before the darned “treatments” existed. Before they came along 70% of all “schizophrenics” recovered. Now only 16% do. (My guess is the bar for recovery was lowered too.) Yet shrinks seem to think these odds warrant their so-called services.
Yep. Shaming people for being sad does not lead them to happiness.
And psychiatry and its minions on the hotlines are there SO WE CAN NOT BE THERE for each other.
“Quit bugging me with your crap. Call the suicide hotline. Call someone who cares.”
Once a loved one has a “diagnosis” like “bipolar” or “schizophrenia” you have a great excuse to ditch that toxic person out of your life.
“Had to leave my wife. She was an evil, crazy bipolar!” Go to any number of forums and you’ll find this. It’s the EVIL bipolar’s fault. I’m normal, therefore I was a perfect saint who did no wrong in our relationship. Uh huh. 😛
Why were they worried about being held accountable? Shrinks never are.
If they were, they would be tried for criminal negligence leading to mass homicides when a gunman under their care kills a bunch of people and they tell everyone his “meds” make him safe. They’re a menace to public safety when they do that!
I drank ten cups of strong coffee a day on my psych drugs. It made me feel almost alive. The “cocktail” caused hypersomnia and would have kept me from working full time if anyone had hired me.
I was ripe for psychiatry when I met my first shrink at 18. The real me was unacceptable and wrong. Psychiatry helped me crush the real Rachel down. I hoped they would normalize me. But all they did was destroy the good stuff (lowered my IQ, destroyed creative interests) and exacerbate the bad (more than doubled my weight, artificial autism.) Mom thought the “meds” were great because they subdued me so I stopped saying stuff that annoyed her. But she would yell at me for moving my legs too much and overeating. 🙁
That’s the popular spin no doubt. Anthony Bourdain already wrestled with substance abuse problems. Psych “experts” would have just put him on other crap. Aside from patents, there’s no difference between their drugs and the street kind.
Many of them write articles condemning themselves by their own double speak and self contradictions. I’m trying to curate a bunch of stuff for the appendix of a book I plan on writing.
Pat, I agree with you there. I want to open a new kind of place for those who are out of it. Like the Solteria Houses or the Moral Therapy homes the Quakers founded.
But it seems to me that change can be affected better from outside the System.
There’s so little positive about being labeled “severely mentally ill” that it really is tempting to act out and say, “Hey, my broken brain made me do t. Don’t blame me.”
This only makes things worse for the one assigned the “Mad” role in the end.
TV also plays a role. I have taught a number of Amish kids as a sub. (The Amish are a religious group in America that reject most technology that wasn’t around before the 20th century.) These kids have better attention spans than many adults. Limiting kids’ TV intake would “cure” short attention spans. Read The Plug-In Drug.
The fake “peer specialist” might work. Don’t show any victims’ faces. Just the perps. They’re the villains who have no moral right to privacy. Not sure HIPPA covers them.
The very way they treat their peer specialists as “mentally ill” mascots and token “nutters” would be quite a show. Condescension at it’s finest. 😀
I wonder how many of us survivors wind up as misanthropic recluses. I struggle not to be a misanthrope. Nothing like being branded “mentally ill” to get to see humanity at its ugliest.
I’m a writer of fiction. That is a long range project actually.
The Other Mrs. Smith sounds like an excellent literary novel. I intend to read it. But urban fantasies and dystopias garner wider readership. And I like spec fiction too.
Writing a shorter work of 50 pages. “Children of the Lie.” Strongly critical of the psychiatric premise that all bizarre/unreal thoughts stem from organic defects. Should be out by July 4 on Kindle. Permafree.
Steve it also helps to write people off or stereotype them negatively. Like astrological signs.
All leos are thus and so. Watch out for him!
To be considered bipolar you only need 6 out of 9 or 10 criteria. Two symptoms of bipolar are being out of control and promiscuous. Ergo she must be dangerously bad-tempered and a slut! She may be mild mannered and celibate but it doesn’t matter. Her psych label trumps character.
Some people take mega doses of two or three drugs supposed to cure depression. And they’re desperately unhappy and want to kill themselves. So much for that myth!
Anemia makes me tend toward depression. Vitamin deficiencies can screw up our thinking. So ruling those out is a good idea. Doctors prefer selling Prozac or Zoloft to checking your thyroid or iron levels. And the crap depletes our bodies of good stuff even more.
No, I’m not saying all bizarre mental states, uhappiness or social problems stem from vitamin/mineral deficiencies. But we do need stuff like iron, vitamin B12, and magnesium. These occur naturally in our bodies, unlike lithium, haldol, or ritallin. And taking a kid off refined sugar won’t kill him/her.
About half the writers for MIA support psychiatry, though not stuff like AOT. A portion of the readership does too. I’m surprised at your surprise Oldhead.
I have been really well off in my withdrawal. After 22 years on various SSRIs I tapered off Effexor over the course of a year. Was pretty sick with symptoms like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Been off for more than 8 months now. Clear headed and the physical pain is bearable. Looking for at home employment.
Many who have taken these drugs for years become bed ridden when withdrawing. Monica who wrote the blog BeyondMeds barely left her bed for 2 years at the end of her taper. She was lucky enough to have a spouse and alternative healer around. If I had been that bad off I would have been sent to a home!
In my more pessimistic moments I envision the DSM-VI. A series of volumes that fill an entire shelf. The DSM-10 will fill a warehouse. In that dystopia psychiatry and government will have fully merged and proclaimed psychiatry the new state religion of America. All other religions are mental illnesses. And at least 90% of the population will be diagnosed as mentally ill. The upper 10% will include the psychiatric overlords/priests and those who work for them.
By the way, being locked up in a psych ward makes you 100 times as likely to kill yourself. So psychiatrizing someone isn’t the answer. Psychiatrists have actually reported a whopping 7-27% of those dubbed “bipolar” committing suicide in their hospitals. Once they are released to their shattered ruins of what was once a human life the numbers soar.
I became suicidal a year after my “diagnosis” because between the Hellish effects of the Haldol and the way my family treated me like a monster I felt life was unbearable. Dad took to slapping me and Mom was verbally abusive. They never were cruel till shrinks told them it was okay; I was defective anyhow.
People into “clean eating” tend to be slim because they’re health conscious. Different from anorexia. Also different from the morbidly obese who usually eat “normal diets.”
Swallow pills to boost the happy chemicals and some more to suppress the gloomy chemicals.
Happy now?
No? That’s okay. As long as you’re “meds” compliant it’s okay to feel like a pile of crap. But if you felt like a pile of crap OFF your “meds” that would be a sure sign of your “mental illness” coming back.
If you commit suicide under psychiatric control that’s okay cause it’s unavoidable. But committing suicide while NOT under the authority of psychiatry is a tragedy.
We will loudly lament it at NAMI, while warning others of the dangers of disobeying their good, kind, all-knowing, benevolent psychiatrist. WHY you made this choice is irrelevant. The “mentally ill” don’t have motivations like the rest of us normal people. Unless you count “mental illness” itself as a motivation for suicide or villainy. (Like a Blaze article covering the Los Vegas shooter.)
Remember those cartoon villains off Rocky and Bullwinkle. Why? Because I’m evil. Nyah-ah-ah!
Dr. George I’m sorry for your loss. I too wish to end suicide, but while I agree with your ends I respectfully disagree with the means you recommend.
Loss of hope for a future and having everyone turn on me, almost drove me to suicide. Being labeled as incurably insane–kicked out of school, shunned by family and former friends, being told my dreams would never come true, enforced idleness and a meaningless existence–these made me think of suicide continually for over two decades.
Psychiatry was the CAUSE of these horrible things. What kept me alive was the belief that it was morally wrong to end a human life despite my loneliness and hopeless situation.
That’s why we need alternatives to psychiatry for lonely, desperate people. Drugs and stigmatizing labels only make the suffering 10 x worse and many people kill themselves while under psychiatric care.
You can’t end emotional pain with mind altering drugs and stigmatizing labels. Human compassion and love end where psychiatry begins. The most reviled and hated people I know are those branded SMI. I was one of these untouchables till I relocated to a new place and assumed a new identity like Richard Kimball.
The alternatives were there inside me all the time. Psychiatry convinced me otherwise for a while, telling me I was diseased and so hopelessly insane I’d morph into a psycho killer or at least kill myself without them. Now I know I’m alive IN SPITE of their “treatment.” Not because of it.
For me nearly all my withdrawal problems were physical. I had to spend eleven months in a single wide with my folks. Only one melt down when Dad accused me of being manipulative. He meant no harm but I have been told repeatedly how manipulative I am and how that’s part of my disease (hopeless to change) by mental illness professionals. Already sick and headachey. That sent me over the edge. My mom did some things that could be construed as emotional abuse. She was on happy pills. I blame them for her insensitivity. I used to have melt downs every week so nothing new there.
I suffered horrible pain, muscular weakness, nausea and dizziness. No brain zaps or weird mental states till I had lowered the Effexor from 150 mg to 15. Took SSRI of one kind or another from November of 1994 to July 2016 when I began my taper. My last dose was on August 31, 2017.
My aches and fatigue are better. I can work again–as long as it’s not physically demanding. But teaching, writing, coaching can be done full time I believe. Applying for a tutoring job this week. Never could find gainful employment under psychiatry’s thumb. 🙂
Going to get off government handouts. Just chump change anyhow and I felt it was used for the caseworkers/therapists to put me down. “You could never take care of yourself. Totally helpless without us. Tsk tsk.”
My only really bad problem is my body is suddenly all acidic for no reason I know of. Putting a teaspoon of baking soda in my daily supply of drinking water to alkalize it. Coming off my SSRI probably altered my physical chemistry somehow.
Yeah-I-Survived, I’m angry and disappointed at how churches mindlessly swallow psychiatry’s lies (pun intended.) They say they have to believe what science has proven. Yet that doesn’t hold or they would fight climate change, teach evolution to their kids, and maybe close the door. Richard Dawkins is a real scientist after all and he says God is a delusion.
The three reasons churches espouse psychiatry.
1. They want to help the suffering, and think this will help. (Good motive. But if they really want to help they need to get more facts. None are willing to dig beneath the surface it seems.)
2. They are tired of unhappy or eccentric people/relatives and farm them out to the MI Center in desperation. (Bad motive. But understandable.)
3. Two of their prominent members make big money at the MI Center. And they tithe. When they ask to “educate” the congregation about how “safe and effective” psychiatry is, the preacher gladly lets them take over the worship service that day. More money for the center means more money for these women who TITHE. (Very bad motive.)
There was second hand smoke with its dangers. But Big Tobacco never hired goons to grab innocent people off the street, lock them up, and tie them to chairs while shoving lit cigarettes in their mouths. So Big Pharma is even worse that way.
My mom taught me early on that being “weird” is not okay! If you must indulge in odd behaviors do it behind closed doors where no one can see.
I’m not referring to sexual stuff, btw. Still a virgin at 44 thanks to psychiatry’s “diagnosis.” 😛
More like trying to translate Chaucer into modern English for kicks. Or reciting a play in my head out loud and laughing at the humor. Nothing immoral, illegal, or fattening. But it’s “weird” cause “normal” people don’t do it. Better keep it hushed or they’ll think you’re crazy. Shhhh!
Americans have a lot more STUFF–mostly high quality–than citizens of other countries. But we’re often lonelier than poor people in South America or Africa. Loneliness leads to unhappiness.
In your case this would not apply. But for every one of us escaping or trying to escape the system there are dozens if not hundreds of people desperate for drugs and MI labels. Check the net and you’ll see. Bipolar burble, NAMI, Healthy Place, the list goes on indefinitely.
Many of these sought out the “services” psychiatry offers and fly into hideous rages if you suggest they might be sane and deny that their shrink is a messiah and his drugs are the elixir of life. These are whom Dr. K is describing.
“What? I’m not crazy!!! Insults like that I take from no one! Grrrr!!!”
We have the right to unhappiness. We need to fight for this right now.
A lot of people feel guilt and shame because they aren’t walking around with permanent grins attached to their faces. What gives? This is stupid.
Prolonged unhappiness is not fun. In the churches I grew up in people would yell at you for saying negative things. “Depression is a sin.” “If you walk with the LORD you are never unhappy.”
Telling a troubled soul God’s mad at them for feeling bad can be a real pick-me-up. (Not.)
Now they have discovered the “science” of psychiatry from drug brochures from the 90’s. “Depression is a sin. Unless you have a mental illness. Then, get help. And take your ‘meds’ or we don’t want you back. Your tears are spoiling our country club for yuppies atmosphere!” Pretty compassionate, huh?
And guess what? The drugs are about as helpful as being told how sinful you are for crying.
No one cares how you feel really. As long as you wear a permanent grin from ear to ear in public and say, “AWESOME!” every time they ask you how things are going, everyone is content and don’t ask for further details. If people cared depression would lessen automatically.
Maybe botox injections could work as “treatments” for depression. If you go around smiling like the Joker from Batman you’re not depressed. 😛
A lot of unhappiness leading to psychiatry and/or suicide comes from dysfunctional families. But not always. My own did not.
My dad was betrayed by a bunch of family friends who used their influence at work to get him fired so we wound up homeless. And I was bullied and sexually harassed for two years straight. This led to extreme social phobia which led to my big mistake of seeking out psychiatric “help.”
A great way to off a husband you disliked. Get a carton of cigarettes. Soak them for a couple hours i enough water to cover them. Add a few tablespoons of this to his coffee every morning. The beans would conceal the flavor. This really would work if he were a smoker.
Great idea for a murder mystery. Not recommending anyone do this!
Churchill was a Debby Downer. Maybe he found his gloom helpful. Remember his speech about “nothing to promise but blood, sweat and tears”? Everybody loved it.
SSRIs would only have made him fatter. And ruined his ability to speak and write.
Can you imagine The Donald giving that kind of speech? Not that today’s populace could appreciate it.
Neuroplasticity, from what I can tell seems to run counter to psychiatry’s claim that our brains can only be changed by external force. People change over their lifetimes. Psychiatry fails to account for this.
Brett, I am not anti-psychology like some here are. I try not to hate psychiatrists, but they truly frighten me. And psychiatry–the practice itself–ruined my life.
Let me be clear; justice demands it. I have had two good shrinks who honestly cared about me as a person. One actually lowered my drugs till I felt like I was me again. He said I was no longer psychotic. Then we moved and I had to see Dr. Evil. I never saw her laugh except when she had reduced a patient to tears.
The next good psych doctor saw me after her. He seemed concerned at my pain and marveled out loud at how I was the only person he had ever seen with “delusions of inferiority.”
Kind but clueless. How could I not hate myself since I was a soulless, amoral monster unfit to associate with human beings? That’s what “severely mentally ill” means folks.
Most shrinks I have seen are in between. More like used car salesmen of dubious honesty than the commandant from Schindler’s List.
Speaking of Nazis, they were more complex than we realize. In Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor Frankel records how men running the camp sometimes practiced kindness despite their jobs. Most did not kick puppies for a hobby. And those who did had not started out that way. 🙁
My truly disturbing behaviors did not begin till after I was drugged up and pronounced hopelessly insane Pat. Now I get along with my family again. They have no idea it’s due to quitting my psych drugs and rejecting my label.
I’m struggling with bitterness at being cheated out of life. At least I have my mind back.
Is it possible to start over at 45? I feel like just giving up. Not suicide, but giving the finger to humanity and becoming a recluse. Worn out old hag that I am. Like falling asleep at age 20. Then waking up 24 years later. But unlike Snow White or Sleeping Beauty I have aged while asleep. 🙁
I never was violent. My experiences are not your son’s. Yet I can be locked up without due process at any time–despite a clean legal history!
The drugs damaged my heart and brain, ruined all my hopes of having a family or career. Never was crazy till Anafranil sent me over the edge. Most here are in my situation.
When I complained about Parkinsonism, weight gain, tardive psychosis, the doctors pretended they didn’t know what I was talking about. My GPA went down by 1.0. I could no longer write. My weight more than doubled, my heart developed arrhythmia, and my IQ went down 20 points. Not quite comatose but still…
My life has been Hell on earth thanks to psychiatry. Not insanity at work there.
You’re assuming shrinks want to leave their six or seven digit incomes and prestige. Most prefer not to. Plus they dislike acknowledging all the lives they have ruined. Cognitive dissonance.
Most prefer to view us as stupid, subhuman, and helpless. They view us as domestic animals. This makes it easier to justify the way they treat us. A social process called dehumanizing. Funny how you don’t perceive psychiatric dehumanization. Or maybe it just doesn’t bug you like it does me.
Not all slave owners were like Simon Legree, yet they patronized and manipulated their cheap sources of labor–telling them how stupid and helpless they would be on their own. Like chattel slavery and marriages where women had no property rights, psychiatry is an inherently abusive system.
The only reason they log onto this site is to justify disabling, defaming, and killing people. I have forgiven them for ruining my life. Sort of. But I don’t like or trust any of them.
Many here want revenge. I don’t. But I feel like shrinks are a lost cause. An abusive spouse begging his wife to come back alternating with threats and insults. Incapable of saying, “I was wrong.”
And who wants to waste time listening to domestic animals anyhow? That’s how they view us. One or two shrinks have trolled this site just to get kicks out of mocking our suffering. Creeps!
Till they can admit the damage they have created with their cruel pointless experiments on unwilling guinea pigs I would rather they stay as far away as possible!
There really are sweatshops (CALLED sheltered workshops) where folks labeled SMI are put to work making seed packets for less than a dollar an hour. The owners are millionaires who get “mental health” centers to recommend these jobs as therapeutic for patients. The argument is by only earning $100 a month you can keep your benefits.
I worked in one after graduating from college. Ugh.
Like the other networks FOX has too many major pharmaceutical companies sponsoring them to be any use. I’ve noticed many here don’t watch TV. Not hard to guess why.
Some youtube commentators have criticized SSRIs. Most here won’t care for the side of the political fence they sit on. I would be happy for support from anyone. From Howard Stern and Rachel Maddow to Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingram.
I’m sort of thankful for Tom Cruze’s kindly intentions. But his affiliations with a certain cult and jumping on table tops while arguing kind of hurts his case.
If anyone asks, “Are you a scientologist?” say, “No. I’m an agnostic/Baptist/Methodist/Catholic/Orthodox Jew.” Make it sound conventional and boring as possible. Then ask, “Are you a Satanist?” When they ask why, reply, “I just thought you sounded like one. You were the one who brought up religion.” 😛
For what it’s worth I took a “bipolar” test. My score was 7. According to the site I need to get checked since I have some of the “symptoms” of depression. How about if I don’t and say I did?
Frankly I don’t feel that unhappy. Just physically sick. Developed a bad case of candida with mouth moss, really bad psoriasis, and itching all over. Wish Bcharis would offer some advice. Keep having this problem since my Effexor went below 75 mg or half the original dose.
Btw, if “depression” were a brain disease as shrinks claim–unhappiness itself would be a symptom of the disorder. Not the other way around.
But Steve, people don’t want reality. We need “mental illness” because it gives us the hope of happiness in a bottle. Plus it explains bizarre, evil behavior away as a diagnosis allowing “doctors” to prevent crimes before they happen. Just like Tom Cruze in The Minority Report. 😀
Kanye is coming off most of his mandatory drugs. He posted it on Youtube. Highly unwise.
As rich as he is he could take it to court. I hope he does.
One of his “symptoms” was unusually vehement criticism of pop culture. Can’t have that. Almost as “mentally ill” as loving cats and preferring books to movies. Shudder!
Psychiatry has ruined therapy for the most part. The only one I have been happy with lately is Will Hall. He offered great advice for answering back to negative self talk. Not even certified. Like that matters.
Number two is foolish. Entering the psych system is the best way to ensure you never are gainfully employed again. How is “treatment” supposed to prevent lost wages since those labeled MI are nearly always unemployed for crying out loud?
“Less than half of all people with ‘mental illness’ receive help.” This is only a cross section of the population but 25% of all college students are getting “treated” for some kind of “mental illnesses.” Would 50% be an improvement? How about 90%?
If enough people are drugged out their gourds won’t they run out of people to run the asylum? And even if most live in HUD housing who the heck will foot the bills? Not just the pittance these involuntary addicts subsist on but the costly “services” forced upon them by over-priced enforcers, thought police, and drug lords?
The only good thing is with all the hostages Pharma-psychiatry has taken–many willingly–it will make it harder to monitor/control all of us.
Yep. Looks like what Big Pharma concocts to cure “mental illnesses” Despondent. Now should we market this poisoned apple as an antidepressant, an antipsychotic, or a mood stabilizer? How about all the above?
All you Mama Grizzlies at NAMI need to check into getting a prescription of this for your unruly SMI grown kids. It can cure them of delusions, hallucinations, depression (or complaints which is all that matter) and all those other pesky symptoms that annoy you no end. Your kid will spend the rest of their life in a coma.
Ta da! No more annoying or embarrassing behaviors for you to deal with. 😀
I got all my help online. Books, Peter Breggin’s book and videos, Surviving Antidepressants forum, and A Meeting of the Minds which I watched over and over to hype myself up through headaches, dizziness, nausea, etc.
One thing the video shows is most professionals have no idea what to do when we suffer severe withdrawal. We really stand just as good a chance of going it alone as getting medical help. And most shrinks will never give permission, let alone help. Bad business to let all your cash cows run away!
Fibromyalgia is considered a physical problem. Maybe caused by malabsorption or iatrogenically induced. Yet I read an article encouraging MDs to hand out SSRIs on the grounds that digestive problems caused by serotonin level upsets in the stomach often occur with ME disorders. Grrr!
Then, if the patient goes bonkers on a bad SSRI trip tell them you unmasked a “bipolar illness.” Hot dog! Break out the champagne. Now you can force them to take 3-6 drugs even against their will.
You’re posting under a pseudonym. Even if they read it–mental illness makers avoid this place usually–how will they know it’s you? They can shove their own perfectly balanced brains where the sun don’t shine! You’re safe here. 🙂
Many disagreements on MIA stem from difference of experience. Some of us felt fine but got locked up by meddling family members. Others needed emotional help like I did.
I was afraid to leave my dorm room and took to sleeping non-stop from fear of facing other students. Sounds weird now. But ugly church politics and a whispering campaign against Dad led to our family’s homelessness after my freshman year of high school. As the new kid I decided not to try to fit in. After several moves I was sick of fighting my way into a new herd. Hard for teen girls anyhow. Like a lioness kicked out of her pride or a she-wolf banished from the pack.
The kids took to gossiping about me and bullying/sexual harassment every day. Finally got to college, but had social phobias without my family support to fall back on.
A more insightful therapist could have used exposure therapy to help me overcome this fear. Maybe let me take a semester off to do it. Getting sucked down the psych rabbit hole made me lose 4 years in getting the degree and wrecked all hopes of any career.
But Brian–bless his heart–thought psychiatry might have answers he didn’t.
I had it badly on Haldol and Stellazine. Aside from some minor tics only fellow psych survivors could pick up on I escaped free from the disfiguring lip smacking and grimaces I saw other folks getting at day treatment. 🙁
Not all folks with SMI labels are alike. One of the things I hate about these labels is they lead to prejudiced thinking. Assuming you know everything wrong with someone for some reason independent of the person. Shabby clothes, obesity, red hair, “wrong” color of skin, or “bipolar” diagnosis.
Maddow and others believe in a direct correlation between “mental illness” and violence because the “expert” shrinks on television tell everybody how dangerous all the “untreated SMI” are. No other medical profession talks that way about those it wishes to help. Or claims to wish to help.
Actually they should call it a “brain disease” (since that’s what psychiatry’s disciples mean) yet the term “mental illness”persists. On some level everyone must sense “mental illness” is not literal because they churn out articles and comics entitled, “What If We Treated Physical Illness Like Mental Illness?’ They don’t even realize that by posing that question they are acknowledging that there’s a difference. Since a brain tumor is a physical condition after all, not a “mental illness.”
In the old days, a lovesick young man might take to the woods singing weird ballads and claiming that the tree he embraced was the maiden who rejected him. He was recognized as “mad.”
If he quit acting that way, returned home, started talking rationally, and got on with his life, people would say he had “come to his senses” and was “in his right mind.” No psych drugs needed!
For my part I have never known a person to become morally upright because of psych drugs. They numb empathy and shrivel the frontal lobes that provide impulse control.
Are you in favor of forcibly drugging folks like me to make us “better behaved”? While drugged I could not control my eating, socialize with people, or keep my apartment clean. Is that an improvement?
And all we have to go on that the people are safe to be around is the shrinks’ word. No proof that the drugs were helpful in preventing further crimes.
If you refuse to take your “meds” why do you keep extolling their virtues?
Off since August 31, 2017. My taper began in March, 2016. Effexor took over a year. I went cold turkey off Lamictal after only 13 days of taking it. Abilify took 10 weeks to quit.
Effexor withdrawal lasted 13 months. Depression and suicidal thoughts vanished about halfway through my withdrawal. No mood swings or “weird” thoughts or melt downs. Except one time in the single wide I was sharing with my parents and Dad accused me of being manipulative. I got upset, yelled, and burst into tears. My folks begged me to get help. I realized I still had bad habits and was falling into old behavior patterns I no longer needed. I delayed my taper and called Will Hall for a session.
Haven’t been “manic” in 17 years. The SSRIs created it since I never had it before I started anafranil.
I itch all over and my skin is horribly dry. Congestion and cough most of the time. Chronic aches and muscle cramps and weakness. Headaches sometimes. Digestive problems. Hair loss, brittle nails, hoarse voice. Metallic taste in my mouth. Anemia and other deficiencies even doctors admit to. Sensitivity to loud noise in the morning. Like waking up with a hangover every day. Crying too often. Tired all the time.
This started before my taper. Long term drug effects. But my taper seemed to worsen the suffering. Probably stressed my system. It helped me lose weight though. It also kept me from developing diabetes like everyone else in day treatment and prevented further heart damage. My arrhythmia is better now. The doctor wonders why.
Ever read articles about the Kung!? The exclamation point is part of the word–no English equivalent exists. They only work 15 hours a week hunting and gathering. At the end of a book called Off, the narrator and his wife find how to support their family working 30 hours a week combined.
Of course there are trade offs. The Kung! live in tents and move around, owning little but their loincloths and a very few primitive tools they hold as common property. The family in Off rejects cars, the internet, television and limits electricity. They also do a lot of work that doesn’t pay. Gardening, canning, sewing clothes, home carpentry.
If we wanted to be semi-luddites, grow our own food, shoot our own meat, mend all our clothes till the cloth falls apart–we could get by on less than $600 a month. Or less than 20 hour work weeks.
How about calling them injured by lying quacks and segregated in the “mental health” ghetto? Not sure I will ever be gainfully employed due to long term iatrogenic damage.
Yes. Involuntary euthenasia of the severely mentally ill.
If they cry out, “No I want to live, don’t kill me please,” while being led away remember this is a symptom of anosognosia. Your loved one is so mentally ill they don’t realize how worthless their life is.
Their “No” really means “Yes.” Humanity dictates that we end their suffering immediately.
Many therapists were less than helpful. They “helped” me in three ways for the most part.
1. They kept reminding me I had an incurable brain disease. If I didn’t take the drugs that made me horribly sick, obese, and numb I would turn into Ms. Hyde and murder everyone. My duty was to take the “meds” even if they killed me slowly and painfully.
2. They reminded me to give up all hopes of career, family, or any semblance of a happy life. They also told me to only date “bipolars” since we were so weird we could only understand each other. I had nothing in common with the guys in group, btw. Nice guys but not on my level somehow. Most just watched TV all day. Just because you share the same label does not make you soul-mates! Ugh!!
3. When I had had enough of this I would contemplate curing my “illness” the only way I knew how. Stopping my brain and heart and other body organs entirely. They were nice enough to get me admitted to the nuthouse. Always mystified them since I had “good insight” and adhered to my “treatment.” Must need my “meds” adjusted since my soul wasn’t dead yet. 😛
A lot of this is exacerbated by psychiatry’s promise of a quick fix.
Joe Blow is trapped in an unhappy job with inadequate pay. Instead of figuring how to change his situation: get more training, find another job, work as a contractor–or how to cope with it better: stress management, living within his means with the envelope system–Joe asks his friend for advice. Jack tells Joe his girlfriend saw Dr. Quackenbush. The friendly neighborhood psychiatrist at the community center Mental Illnesses R Us.
Dr. Quackenbush tells Joe his anxiety and unhappiness are due to a brain disease. Joe’s stressful lifestyle has NOTHING to do with either. Joe starts taking a new SSRI. He loses the ability to sleep. After 3 weeks without sleep Joe starts talking to people in the corridors at work. People no one else can see or hear. This gets Joe a ticket to the inpatient ward of Mental Illnesses R Us.
Dr. Quackenbush swears up and down that the life-saving medication he gave Joe never has that effect on people unless they were evil/insane to begin with. He puts Joe on a double dose of the SSRI making him nuts along with a hefty dose of Haldol and Depakote and a benzo thrown in for good measure.
Like Gregor Sampsa in Kafka’s tale, Joe gets out of working by becoming a vermin. Only in this fairy tale there’s an evil wizard behind the transformation of man into roach.
Alcoholism and other bad habits have been called “mental illnesses.” This IS ridiculous, but no more so than what already exists. And a lot of people blame promiscuity on the already existing label of “bipolar.”
Btw, I have been accused of “Bipolar” and am still a virgin at 44. Put that in your pipe and smoke it APA!
Jclaude I live in a new town. I explain my inability to work to friends as fibromyalgia. I really have many of the symptoms of ME. That is more believable than bipolar. No mood swings or suicidal thoughts. Just a lot of physical pain and exhaustion.
I still worry that I will come across as crazy to people. Weird I know. Due to physical weakness I cry too easily now. Tried to hold down a part time job at the Dollar Tree but wasn’t fast enough, broke down crying, gave too much change to a customer, and couldn’t do the housework needed to pass HUD inspections.
“Odd since the ones who do the least productive labor are the ruling class.”
Like the ones inventing fake diseases to explain emotional trauma, eccentricities, and bad behaviors? Then using fake diseases to sell street drugs under respectable names calling them “meds”?
These societies (less technically “advanced” than ours) have high recovery rates for those who lose touch with reality.
They do sometimes lock up family members in attics. But you have to be truly dangerous. The “harmless mad” can wander all over the village and people look out for them till (hopefully) they come back.
SOME do, Oldhead. Szazs was aware of this. Virginia Woolf, Kay Redfield Jamison, Patty Duke, Carrie Fisher all used the “insane genius” role to their advantage.
Most of us here didn’t. I always hated the thought that I was incurably insane and had group leaders attack me in group or sick other group members on me. They do this kind of thing in cults, btw.
Speaking from personal experience Steve, depression can be addictive.
I have battled it since age seven. Ironically I learned my own good ways of coping. Then–at fourteen–my family was homeless for a couple months. In my new school I was bullied/sexually harassed for over two years. This threw everything out of whack.
I always was way too sensitive. Not emotionally resilient and strong like my siblings. In college I was still scared of people. Went to a shrink who gave me anafranil. Effected me like bad acid. Ruined my life. 🙁
How did the police know Dontre Hamilton had a diagnosis of “schizophrenia” Sera? That doesn’t show like skin color. I’m sure his poverty (homeless!) played a role too.
Julie Greene blogged about Roseanne’s ambien use. That does play a role since ambien probably breaks down inhibitions and may be indication of anxiety or unhappiness to add to the “mental illness” nonsense.
I know a woman who excused her husband’s abusive behavior saying, “He can’t help it. He’s bipolar.” Another woman excused her friend’s son cursing his mother in public so she had heart problems. “He can’t help it. He was off his ritalin.”
I argued with my friend a little too harshly. “He cussed her out because he was angry and disrespectful. Now Jan, what ‘medicine’ on earth can cure those bad behaviors?”
(I know he probably had a headache from withdrawal. But Jan believed the “meds” turned bad people into saints. When I demanded how pills can reform bad character she hemmed and hawed before admitting they really couldn’t.)
Now they probably will add racism as a “symptom” for “illnesses” already invented by shrinks. Like Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and maybe BPD as well. Not only does this provide a handy excuse for spewing nasty stuff, “I can’t help it I shouted racist epithets at the restaurant last night. My meds for my Bipolar need readjusting,” but it will make the “bipolars” (or whatever) automatically accused of racism.
Guilt by association. And shrinks will gladly use it as a marketing tool. Phooey!
For all it’s emphasis on racial “diversity” Starbucks sells overpriced coffee as a status symbol for rich people. I don’t hate rich people.
But selling super expensive items just to help people show off their money bugs me a little. No wonder Starbucks employees dislike and fear the homeless.
Back just 100 years ago–or less–there were the harmless madmen/madwomen and the (very few) dangerous lunatics. But, salivating over all the repeat business they’re assured of for promoting their defamatory lies, shrinks tar all the SMI with the same brush and swear it’s permanent (no one said that 100 years ago.)
You never get better, you can only be muzzled chemically. In me power! Broohahaha!
And if you seem better you have anosognosia. Therefore you are doubly a menace and must be locked up for your own good. How dare you act normally when the “experts” have designated you insane for life?
So in describing states of mind where people have odd beliefs (think they’re Gandhi or Eleanor Roosevelt) or see/hear nonexistent things you would use the term “extreme states” perhaps?
Hmm. If I went to a doctor for IBS and he forced me to take something that disintegrated my bowels, despite my protests, he could be sued.
A lot of folks with FM and IBS don’t waste time with allopaths because modern medicine doesn’t provide many answers. Not against medicine in most cases. But in dealing with painful, chronic conditions you should figure better techniques than popping pain pills all the time.
Assuming the mind and the brain are synonymous. Many of us do not.
A portion of the brain lights up when you think unhappy thoughts. Does the brain produce these thoughts out of nowhere? If thoughts emerged from random chemicals in our brains nobody’s thoughts would be relevant including the self-styled healers who “diagnose” those with the “wrong brain chemicals” which they infer from their materialist mindset and punish accordingly.
If people choose to murder because they hear a voice telling them to do it why are they obeying the freaking voice anyhow? “Just following orders” didn’t work as an excuse for the Nuremberg Trials.
Szazs argued that hallucinations are caused by lying to your subconscious. If a man hears a voice saying, “Murder your wife,” and obeys it, he must have desired widowhood. He dreamed up the voice to help him accomplish it. Just like a man coping with overwhelming feelings of inferiority decides he must be Abe Lincoln.
If someone is so unhappy they can’t get up in the morning, yelling at them won’t work. Someone at MIA got offended when I chided a friend for taking to bed, not answering his phone, and marinating in self pity though (or maybe because) he knew it would upset his family.
Here’s the deal. This was a long term behavioral pattern. Warren was not in bed or contemplating suicide when I told him this. And he knows it upsets his family and friends when he does this.
Is it too much to speculate that–at some level–he wants them to suffer too? Misery loves company.
I’m no friend to Warren if I encourage him to behave selfishly. I’m friends with his cousin and sister and get angry at how he is treating them. They have gone through a month or more wondering if he was alive or dead. As have I.
I dropped out of life for a year to withdraw. Survivingantidepressants helped me greatly. I lived with my retired parents in a single wide in the boonies. (Got away from those infantilizing “mental health” baby sitting workshops.) They never found out I was withdrawing because I didn’t act “crazy” just sick all the time. Mom thinks I have fibromyalgia.
Often I wished I were a heroin addict instead. Then I would receive support and praise for coming clean. Everyone I know offline drinks the psych koolaid and would want me locked up if they knew I “escaped.”
Many–not ALL–therapists insist on the SMI paradigm for their clients though. If any of those have a clue they must be tormented by their consciences or not have any left–like the psychiatrists they serve.
Hard working for one of those “Mental Wellness” community centers. Your bread and butter depends on preserving the status quo.
Psychic psychiatrists. They’re not delusional. Using hard science they can diagnose your brain without medical equipment. They can also read minds and predict murders before they happen.
Yes, those SSRI drugs are antihistamines. Came off mine after 23 years of taking them. Have symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Even many survivors sneer at this.
Glad I’m off. My mind is back but my body is a wreck!
Screen door on a submarine! Guidance counselors in high school are supposed to help kids pick out colleges or apprenticeships. Now they probably hand out drugs like pez candies too.
“Hey Jimmy. You ever considered a career in mental health? No, not a psycho-therapist.
“You could be a lifelong mental patient/test subject for drugs. The pay isn’t great–for you anyhow. But it’s a necessary field. How else can poor Dr. Quackenbush make his yacht payments?”
I was reluctant to leave psychiatry because of this.
For 4 years I kept thinking, “Everybody believes these pills are saving my sanity and life. How could a small handful of weirdos be right and at least 95% of the population be wrong?
Classrooms are way too big! Take the money that is blown on speed/counselors/child psych quacks for restless kids and spend it on more teachers and aides. A lot of bored, restless kids are that way because the lessons are BORING and they’re so smart the teacher gets frustrated with them.
I learned my lessons halfway through the class and got bored. I would daydream and the teacher would get mad. How dare I learn faster than the other kids?
After a semester of SBD classes I came down with mono and became very depressed. School was depressing. Trying to dumb me down to fit.
Later, when stuck in the MI System, I frequently had nightmares I had been sent back to second grade as a 30 something adult. When I asked if I could advance or graduate the Teacher would yell at me or laugh patronizingly.
Sam, many “normal” people indulge in the behaviors I listed above. Including shrinks–like the Angry Congressman Tim Murphy.
This has led to discussions and arguments among the experts about “bad behaviors” versus “mental illness.” They can’t figure it out–because there is no clear cut difference.
And hearing voices/visual hallucinations/and prolonged unhappiness aren’t sins by any stretch. It’s way more complicated than most religious folks or shrinks want to admit.
Being labeled “severely mentally ill” is the ultimate shame. I loathe my damning label so much I would consent to have a limb amputated to get it removed. There are only three solutions once you get a label unless you enjoy public shame. (NAMI’s so called stigma busters.)
1. Relocate to where no one knows you and avoid doctors at all costs.
2. Shell out large sums of money and travel to the other side of the continent if necessary to become publicly exonerated as sane by a medical professional. You probably need a lawyer too because of records.
3. Suicide. It’s common for those in other cultures to kill themselves after public humiliation to “save face.” Since this goes against my religious beliefs the next best thing is withdrawing from all public life and becoming a recluse.
Sadly I may choose number 3. (Recluse option.) I score high in agreeableness and get along better with people than ever, but I refuse to undergo the public humiliation of being called “Bipolar.” It IS a SHAME I cannot bear! I would rather live in isolation forever than endure the scandal.
Anyone who pretends it’s no big deal must be an emotional masochist who enjoys being degraded and mocked. Or maybe they just are way less sensitive than most of us.
My mom turned on me. Alternating between excessive control and disgust/contempt for the shame I brought upon her, things never have been right between us since the doctor told her I was incurably insane at age 20. Both parents told me no one would ever love me because of my SMI. Mom tells me I should be grateful since no one but her could put up with me. Sigh.
Something tells me you would like the works of Peter Breggin. Our society is crueler than ever to the disabled. Although mistreatment of any but the “mentally ill” and maybe the developmentally delayed is officially frowned upon.
Dad was teaching a class and mentioned forming movements to end discrimination. Not one student thought of the disabled.
Talking to family and friends in a cruel way, cursing, ingratitude, rebellion, drunken orgies, overwhelming urges to lie or steal, physical or emotional abuse of spouse. These are supposedly “symptoms” of “mental illnesses.” And we’re supposed to go on murderous rampages if not drugged till we die.
Belief that I had a brain disease that would make me do these things troubled me greatly. I wondered if I had a soul. Because I was a morally bankrupt monster (I believed) killing myself seemed like an altruistic act–the only loving thing I could do for those around me.
Then I began to wonder. Despite my “diagnosis” I never did most of these things. This made me angry since by labeling a large, heterogeneous group of mostly innocent eccentrics and those drafted into the mental illness system through a bad drug reaction and branding us with the same label as depraved murderers on TV psychiatrists were insulting all who had committed no crimes at all.
Basically it’s like sending developmentally delayed teens and random strangers off the street to live in prison with Ted Bundie type killers and telling the local population that the prisoners were all serial killers. Guilt by association inflicted by the psychiatrists who imprisoned us. Shame on them!
Christianity has traditionally referred to sin as a spiritual disease. Not to be treated with physical remedies for obvious reasons.
Not all extreme states even count as sinful according to the Bible though. Nor vice versa. A lot of truly evil people are articulate and “with it.” Their conscience causes them no pain so it doesn’t drive them bananas.
If another professional changes the diagnosis there will still be records–but you will be exonerated to an extent–and you can no longer be locked up without due process.
I recovered from “bipolar” shortly after beginning my taper. Now I suffer physical problems. Chronic allergies and aches and pains for example. These come and go. In a couple years they probably won’t be bad enough to impact my life.
I’m well enough to work part time and keep my apartment clean. Never could on my XXXX cocktail! Struggling to “adult” in my mid forties. Exhilarating but discouraging too.
Yes. Psycho came out long before the drugs came out.
Peter Breggin does have valid points about how the SSRIs may cause/exacerbate violent tendencies.
If I were to present the argument it would simply be that the drugs are not working at stopping killing sprees. The psych drugs taken escalate as do violent crimes. Is it causative? My guess would be no, or at least not entirely. But drugs do not work at moral rehabilitation of bad people.
The Label seems like a good thing at first. “Hey, I can do whatever and no one has the right to hold me accountable cause I have a screwed up brain. Be nice to me everybody!”
Then you realize you no longer exist as a real person and no longer enjoy the rights of citizenship. You can neither love nor be loved. The drugs make the alienation worse and provide their own exquisite torments. And no one believes a word you say…you’re crazy after all.
I had one for a while. Then my parents moved and I went too. My next shrink was truly evil. I don’t make the accusation lightly.
She had a sadistic streak. Loved electroshock–especially involuntary. And I never saw her laugh except a couple times when she had reduced a patient to tears.
I don’t care for the psychiatric institution, but Dr. R was–in all justice–the only Evil one I had the pain of being under.
In which case you’re a menace to society–or rather their profession–if it comes to light. No matter how successful you may be or how many people you have helped, you must be locked up, drugged and shocked. For your own good. Plus there’s a 1% chance you MIGHT commit a violent crime in the future they think. So those orphans in Africa will have to find a new benefactor while the MI System sucks you back into a bleak life drugged up in abject poverty subsisting on government handouts. 😛
A lot of unhappy people. And a perceived means of stopping bizarre/violent criminals.
Ever watched a police procedural drama? No one commits a crime because he’s mad at his cheating ex or wants the inheritance now.
No. It’s always some fancy-pants polysyllabic term from the DSM5 to magically explain what the SMI perp thinks and outwit the madman/woman before they torture the next innocent victim to death. 😛
I’m a right winger myself. So is Slaying the Dragon. Communism and psychiatry can make very happy bedfellows. Ever heard of “Sluggish Schizophrenia”?
Taking Big Pharma advertisers to court for false advertising in their commercials would be great. As a whole a major pharmaceutical company is untouchable. But taking out a smaller advertising company or even individual writers might be doable.
RR, I’m angry that I was lied to and about for the best years of my life. I am grieving, to put it mildly. Like waking up from a semi-comatose state in my 40s after going under at 20.
If shrinks want to hawk their wares as emotional pain killers to consenting adults, that should be legal. They should also share the poor long term prognosis of depending on these drugs to cope with life. But they don’t. Or MOST don’t. And they pretend they will prevent further brain damage along with other high pressure fear tactics.
And they have the legal right to lock up their patients for rejecting their advice. No other medical specialty has this right. And they demonize those they claim to want to help on national television.
That’s why there’s an anti-psychiatry movement and no anti-oncology or anti-cardiology movement.
A long time ago, the term Negro was considered a polite, respectful term for those of African ancestry. Like the word Black in the 70’s and now the word African American.
Let me play devil’s advocate though, Oldhead, since the opposition will probably bring this up. The Black rights advocates never argued that Africa did not exist. For that reason the survivors’movement will need different strategies from theirs.
I like the narratives on the site “I Got Better.”
Simple messages the sheeple who believe Big Pharma commercials and everything else on TV can grasp are what we need.
“Psych drugs don’t work.”
“Recovery is possible.”
“Psychiatry ruins all hopes of recovery.”
“Psychiatrize your kid; you’ll have a kid forever.”
“Psychiatry eats dreams.”
“A drug is a drug is a drug.”
RR, okay. I didn’t realize the DSM5 listed things that weren’t classified as “mental illnesses.” An uncle of mine became an insufferable jerk after his head injury.
My aunt wanted to put him on SSRI’s. I talked her out of it. Uncle B’s nasty behaviors stem from a lack of “filters” or inhibition. The last thing he (or his wife) need are to break down what inhibitions he still has.
I notice you were troubled by how your thoughts were different Eric. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you had been undergoing a paradigm shift and suddenly came to realize it while visiting your “hipster” acquaintance.
I plan on visiting a psychiatrist one last time–to get my stigmatizing “diagnosis” removed. My best bet is seeing one of the doctors who write here. A long trip to California or New England from my home in the midwest looks inevitable.
Sounds as bogus as arguing that, “SSRIs help people greatly and save lives. While they have been shown to cause suicidal thoughts there is no direct link to suicide established.”
So…suicidal thoughts don’t cause suicide. And if greater numbers of folks commit suicide on these drugs that’s just the mental illness at work. Quit pill shaming. 😛
Move along folks. Nothing but a few hundred corpses to see.
My depression stemmed from loneliness and not fitting in. My anxiety stemmed from being bullied/sexually harassed and nearly homeless. (Complex story. An older woman who I thought was my friend got her husband to pressure the board to fire Dad and make our family homeless. Ugh.)
When shrinks told me these stemmed from being defective and hopelessly insane they were adding insult to injury by saying these traumas were no big deal. It was my fault for having a broken brain. Their treatment was and led to further bullying and extreme poverty resulting in homelessness.
You’re obviously new here. In many cases I would have modified my language. But I had listened to Warren’s complaints for hours at a time. You have not. His cousin and I both felt the same way. He was angry because his life had disappointed him (Me too!)
Some cases of depression require encouragement. Others may demand a little sternness.
Depression can be very addictive like heroine. And there is no known organic cause for depression either regardless of what the drug commercials on TV say. A brief perusal of articles–not just here–but in the American Psychiatric Journal and other sources will verify this. No well informed psychiatrists believe this.
I tried to keep Warren out of the hospital. I wanted him to feel better and lead a productive life. How cold-blooded and lacking in compassion.
Guess that was cruel of me. He was determined to get locked up and put back in the system. That’s what he got. Forced to go through Day Treatment babysitting and drugs.
I know what Warren is going through, because I have been there myself. Refusing to talk to family or friends in order to frighten them is pretty selfish imo.
No known organic disorder differs from no organic disorder, RR. But if they don’t know WHAT the disorder is how can they fix it? Right now they don’t even know if it exists.
The reason many of us are angry is they diagnose people as hopelessly insane to the point of incompetence and keep our brains from functioning properly to make sure this prophecy comes true. Like paralyzing someone’s legs to “fix” restless leg syndrome.
An old fashioned term for a bad guy was “black hearted” man. Useful as a metaphor. But if a doctor pointed to a man and said, “That man is black hearted. Help me inject bleach into his upper left chest cavity to cure him and make him good” the doc would be taking the metaphor too literally.
I call it defamation of character. But, call it what you like, there are extreme mental states where folks can’t function or understand the real world. Psychiatric drugs and pessimistic, life-long labels are the last things they need!
Rossa Forbes uses “mental” illness. I would use mental “illness.” It’s mental enough (imagination, feelings, and social constructs are mental.) The illness suggests brain disease. Things like traumatic brain injury, brain cancer, Alzheimers are brain diseases.
Yes, I’m aware no one can see what causes Alzheimers all you hecklers. Scientists are still very ignorant about the human brain. The idea that they can fix chemical imbalances–even if they exist–is therefore ludicrous. Like a 10 year old messing with his chemistry set in hopes of curing cancer. And it’s well known that drugs don’t restore cognitive function to dementia patients. They don’t help or heal–just destroy.
Eventually Mat, you will probably want to discard your label of “mentally ill.” Unless you’re talking to a doctor who could have you locked up of course.
A friend of mine got off his lithium. He did it all wrong though. He cold turkeyed after years taking it. And long after any withdrawal problems should have vanished he lay in bed wallowing in self pity and bitterness.
Finally he would get up for a little. Then back to bed. This went on for 10 years.
His nutrition went kaput. He told me he only ate a bag of chips and can of pop a day during one episode where he lay in bed for 3 months or so.
I told him, “Of course you feel awful. You are only eating crap and getting no exercise or communicating with anyone. Don’t you see this is actually a choice?” I also chided him for not talking to people who loved him–his sister, his cousin, and friends like me worried if he was still alive. I asked him if he realized how selfish this behavior was.
Last I heard he got out of the hospital where he got committed. Warren continued to insist he was bipolar. Naturally he had mood swings. (Like calling yourself stupid over and over.) He kept wailing how he wanted to die. I told him to avoid saying that in front of doctors if he didn’t want to be locked up.
My guess is he tried to set up an appointment with a psychiatrist to get the lithium he thought he needed. When he couldn’t get in, he started telling everyone he wanted to die. Sigh. You get the picture.
I lost mine too, Frank! Sort of. May need to relocate AGAIN to get fresh medical records so the doctors will treat me decently and companies will put me on insurance plans without funny looks.
Through withdrawal though my body’s still adjusting to being drug free after over 25 years of regularly “taking” some drug or other prescribed by a mental illness making quack. Got a part time job. Making plans for the future. Starting over in my mid-forties is bitter sweet. Glad I’m finally free; for a while I thought only death would free me.
Matt’s right about one thing (at least.) We need a common narrative or story as survivors. But we’re not only heterogeneous as a group, even as individuals our stories are confused.
I remember reading a book by Szazs ridiculing how writers like Virginia Woolf, Kay Redfield Jamison, and Alice Flaherty couldn’t keep their narratives straight, due to confused ideas about “mental illness” and the human mind as a whole, and self dramatizing behaviors. For example rhapsodizing on “mental illness” experiences for attention–even the negative kind.
Some people aren’t smart enough to care for themselves. “Mental illness” is another matter.
“Severely Mentally Ill” people would be artificial fools, though mostly involuntary. Lowering people’s brain functions, infantilizing them, and degrading them in the eyes of society are a great way to prevent adult independence.
In his novel That Hideous Strength C.S.Lewis invented some highly eccentric villains that would have done credit to the Batman movies.
Dr. Frost is one of the most memorable. He is cold and detached as he experiments on people. At a turning point of the book, he indoctrinates the naive young protagonist who is disillusioned with N.I.C.E.–the sneaky corporation Frost serves–and wants to leave.
Dr. Frost tells him that love, hope, affection, goodness, evil, despair do not exist. They are merely chemical reactions in our brains randomly occurring to make us do one thing or another.
During this speech Dr. Frost has no facial expressions and talks in an emotionless almost monotone voice. He acts like a rigid automaton throughout the book. I can’t remember what his specialty was but I think he was a psychiatrist.
Wow! This wasn’t even directly physical–drugs, shocks, or surgical lobotomy. I’m not sure how or why it messed you up Eric, but I believe you. When I took large amounts of Haldol or Stellazine flickering lights drove me bonkers. I would have to lie alone in a dark room till my thoughts cleared.
For my part I found the message that antidepressants don’t work to be highly empowering. This message gave me a sense of hope! It was not my fault the drugs made me feel awful after all. They were no better than street drugs and long term use of those never helped anyone think straight or feel good. They told us that in the 80’s.
But some liars told us the psych drugs were medicine that would set everything straight in my brain since sadness was a brain disease. No way I would have taken them if I had known. Nor would my conservative parents have willingly forced their first born into the career of professional Junkie. 🙁
Been drug free since August 30. Celebrating my anniversary of Drug Free Living in a few months.
I found a job. I can keep my house clean with effort (never could on my drug cocktail.) And I am writing more. And I can enjoy novels in a way I haven’t since I was in my teens.
Like coming alive again. Just sad it took 25 years.
My solution? Withdraw carefully by tapering and hiding out. If necessary fake an illness like FM or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. You will probably be very sick for a while.
And tell nobody!
I took vitamins at pill times to psych my folks out. To this day they don’t know. And they don’t know why I’m suddenly doing better either.
Bonnie I know a nurse I met who could benefit from reading your novel. But until they put it out as a movie or comic book she won’t touch it. Too literary and thought provoking.
To the point, I want to start a grass roots faith based movement to “cure” young people of “depression.” This would prevent suicide, homicide, and wasted lives in bondage to psychiatry. I don’t believe I need “certification” or a masters to do this. My hope is I can teach others this process in a week or less so it can go from community to community.
When people realize a loving small group or family or neighborhood/small town can “cure” people without academic credentials or the occult knowledge integral to the wizards of psychiatry it will undermine psychiatry’s credibility as well as saving lives.
“Mental Health Consumer” is the ultimate BS job. And it takes up 20 hours or more per week if you let it. If you sleep 12 out of 24 hours that’s a lot of time.
Judi, a lot of depression probably is due to malnourishment as you say. If someone feels sad all the time for no apparent reason maybe they could try both. Anemia and thyroid problems frequently make me blue also. I see a real doctor for those. Homeopaths and nutritionists are also good. I am skeptical of most therapists because the mental illness system owns them. I steer clear of them myself. Talking my problems to death got old after 30 years.
I benefited from a few visits with Will Hall in a way no “normal therapy” sessions ever did.
I think instead of “therapists” who would have to wade through the corruption/ineptitude of the Mental Illness System a bunch of coaches or consultants–those who flew over the cuckoo’s nest–could help people recover much better.
The idea that you need a PhD or MSW to help others emotionally is ridiculous to many of us here. Daniel Mackler and Bruce Levine (certified therapists) admit this and ridicule the concept.
Consultant sounds better than coach actually. Many folks escaping psychiatry tend to be dependent and clingy. The idea is to foster independence. Not enable it.
Consultants work on a short term basis opposed to coaches. And they aren’t expected to have certificates.
Maybe consultant for finding work or coming up with a career plan and coaches (short term) for social reintegrating yourself. Just throwing out ideas.
Thanks Rossa. Glad your son is better. (And you too of course!) My own mom is surprised and happy at my improvement. Had to figure it out on my own. Mom gave up on my getting better long ago, but staying where I was would have destroyed me. May resurrect my dream of a career as a librarian soon. 🙂 I thought that was dead forever.
I really wish the psychiatrists would differentiate between the dangerously violent and the harmless. Most fall into the latter category. “Med compliance” is not the significant factor but behavior. But they have “services” to sell the public…and us.
As a diagnosee myself I realize we need to balance the needs of the psychiatrized individual against the needs of the family/community/society. We are not meant to be independent loners in isolation. Some Catholics choose this but it’s an ascetic lifestyle–penance for the sins of humanity. More of a sacrifice than an ordinary celibate makes.
Psychiatry did not help my relationships with others sadly. This effected not just me but those around me as well. I thought the pills would make me a kinder, better, more mature, rational person–that I owed it to those around me to sacrifice my own mind and body–even cutting my life short by 25 years–to make them happy.
In the end it made us all worse off. My family thought I had Asperger’s but now all the symptoms are gone. They’re pretty puzzled. I am overwhelmed at the sensations of empathy and affection I have. Not just anger and grief like at first. Learning social interactions at 44. Suffered from social phobia since 15. Got drugged up at 20. Trying to adult now. Sad I’m so late but glad my progress is speedy. Can keep a clean house and am starting a job soon. 🙂
There was a psychiatrist who helped me a lot. The best I ever had and one of the only two who gave a rip about me as a person.
Dr. Guilley was his name. He frequently talked about my problems and took my side when Mom begged him to put me on Haldol again.
He seemed excited at his personal discovery that “less was more” and he could help unhappy people detached from reality by lowering their drugs. Unfortunately I moved with my folks and saw Dr “Rached” in the next town.
Is Dr. G. still in psychiatry? Something tells me he left the field. He honestly wanted to help folks. Pharma-psychiatry is a bad tool for that.
Too busy defending their right to bear arms to care about the rights of others denied due process. The rights to life and liberty and blah, blah, blah. Stuff that crazies don’t need after all. “They’re not real people like us.”
As someone who has always supported the 2nd Amendment I’m hurt and angry.
Even one political part questioning psychiatry is good. The “Cures Act” or Murphy’s Law went through almost unanimously. No one had any doubts that it was a good thing. Even the sick crazies would prosper. Who doesn’t want safe and effective treatments?
Who indeed? But we’re talking about psychiatry here. Lol.
Another reason network news on television would want to praise drugs as a cure for short attention spans is one obvious solution for restless kids who can’t concentrate is ditching the boob tube!
Pitch the thing! Let the kids listen to the radio or read or learn to play musical instruments. Get the really restless ones outside engaging in physical play. Most “ADHD” kids are just healthy, energetic ones if you take them off the plug in drug and get them moving so all that pent up energy has somewhere to go.
I made the argument on another site that even if fat is ugly and unhealthy (ugly is subjective, but if the majority of a society deems something ugly then I guess it is) it still does not make treating fat folks with cruelty right. Cancer is ugly and unhealthy but no one mocks those with cancer.
I am struggling to lose weight and it’s more difficult than a naturally slim person can imagine. I sigh and realize I never will weigh 120 pounds.
The genetic lottery plays a role. So do psych drugs. (Don’t go on those if you don’t want to be fat!) So do behavioral factors like exercise and eating right.
I am walking 2 miles a day now. And I will walk even more in the future. Maybe anaerobic exercise too. Changing my eating habits is essential since just dieting doesn’t work. Replacing fast food with batch cooking healthful, nourishing meals and organizing community potlucks are a few examples.
Psychiatry isn’t just hurting the consumers–destroying their bodies and souls bit by bit–but it’s hurting their families and society as a whole with its inflated (often deceitful) claims about the safety and effectiveness of the products they sell.
Oddly enough I met two mothers with mad adult children. Not NAMI mommies, but well meaning women who loved their offspring and were wringing their hands in despair.
One had a son. “If only jr. would take his meds.” But the behaviors she described were not being out of it. Rather her son was an ungrateful brat. He refused to help out around the house and verbally abused her and his siblings. But she was convinced this was just his “sickness” and continued to beg him to take his pills.
(Neuroleptics can “help” people by making abusive loud mouths too tired and numb to be as mean. Still doesn’t make them think more clearly or fix character flaws. Duct tape could probably work just as well. Duct tape jr. to a chair so he can’t smash things or put holes in walls. Duct tape his mouth so he can’t verbally abuse family members. Ta da! Duct tape is a safe and effective modality of treatment.)
Telling the “mentally ill” person they are no longer responsible for their actions is bad for their characters in the long run. Besides ostracizing them from the community–both by labels and morbid obesity/uncontrollable tics/apathy/coldness from the drugs–the idea that “you can’t help yourself, you aren’t responsible for your actions, it all depends on those around you, you’re sick, if you keep “taking your meds” they have no right to complain. These can turn anyone into a jerk if they believe them. Plus emotional numbness and poor cognitive skills made me lazier and more selfish.
Communities don’t know what to do with these people. If their behaviors or suffering worsens there can be only one answer. They aren’t taking their “meds.” Exasperating for all. Devastating for the banished member.
As far as how the hyper-inflated claims of psychiatric treatments have harmed society and put the public at risk, Dr. Peter Breggin says all that I could say–only better. Read his article about the false security psychiatry provides enabling school shooters to run amok.
If Dr. Pies becomes so angry and offended by the idea that members of his profession are uninformed enough to believe in the “chemical imbalance metaphor” why doesn’t he simply make a public announcement to enlighten the masses when “mental illness” makes the news? Say, after a major school shooting. He could find a ready audience as a well-respected psychiatrist elected president of the APA.
I’m not against emotional “therapy” like many commenting here are. But do you really need an MSW or PhD in psychology to help people?
The whole business of “therapy” could easily be replaced with peer coaches. (No MI affiliations!) I found Will Hall’s counseling more effective than any “certified therapy” I ever experienced before. Will almost has his doctorate but chooses to remain uncertified. Not hard to guess why.
There are pay offs to calling yourself mentally ill. Especially if you’re a celebrity like an actor or singer. The pills may make you morbidly obese and ruin your acting ability. But that’s okay.
Take it on the road! Shill psych drugs at various conventions and go on TV specials sponsored by Big Pharma. Likely you’ll earn more than you ever did as an ordinary actor.
Just like America’s favorite Identical Twin Cousins.
Myths exist. Of course this is a philosophical argument grappling with the meaning of reality and language deconstruction rather than science.
Hence we can talk about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. They don’t literally exist but they “exist” as figures in popular imagination–even if we know they won’t bring us stuff.
“Treatment” for “mental illness” is a great way to ruin physical health. I would most likely have Diabetes if I had kept taking psychiatry’s brain drugs.
25 years. Finally I can lose weight in my forties. Contrary to the natural order of things. But drugs violate the natural order.
I’m kind of lonely too. Not telling people I’m supposedly bipolar helps immensely.
Maybe volunteering, joining a hobby club, or taking a cheap class at a community college or art center would help. If they ask why you don’t work tell them you have chronic fatigue syndrome. That doesn’t scare people like “mental illness” does.
I have joined a writing group and Toastmasters.
Thinking about enrolling in Public History at a university and volunteering at a couple museums to start a career as a grant writer/fundraiser.
Psychiatry serves a couple purposes in our society. It fulfills a societal desire (not need) and poses as the answer to a couple legitimate problems it actually exacerbates.
One: It enhances the self esteem of “normals.” I may not be a success or a college degree, but at least I’m better than that “schizo” in the corner muttering to himself. Some “crazies” take to their assigned role too–to escape adult responsibilities, act like drama queens, and excuse bad behavior..to name a few.
Two: Many “crazies” actually think psychiatry is saving them. You talk to folks at Clubhouse, Day Treatment, or NAMI and none ever question that their lives would be infinitely worse or they’d be dead from spontaneous combustion of their imbalanced brain chemicals. (Heads blow up. Just like the Muppets!)
Three. Our society believes sane people never commit crimes. Therefore psychiatrists are better at protecting the public from violent crimes than the police/courts/and Armed Forces combined. Due to the awesome psychic powers they obtained in med school, shrinks can read minds and foretell crimes before they happen. Just like in The Minority Report. 😛
They deceive trusting people coming for help with crippling emotional pain. They deceive the public. And they commit libelous slander against those they first deceived by bad-mouthing them on national television.
I hate it! But his site offers alternative perspectives. At least Healy is more honest than most shrinks who claim they know the exact cause of madness and have magic bullets or life saving medicines that will fix everything.
“Mental illness” actually is a contradiction in terms unless you mean it as a metaphor–an imaginary illness that exists only in the mind as opposed to the body. People use the term to mean brain disease or physical illness.
Some truly stupid articles have been written. “What Would Happen if We Treated Physical Illnesses Like Mental Illnesses?’
What indeed? Would we have renowned cardiologists warning the public of how heart attack victims were a menace to society on 48 Hours? Would cancer specialists force people to undergo endless rounds of chemo with no proof they had leukemia? Would ear, nose, and throat specialists amputate people’s noses and ears just because they looked “abnormal”? Would endocrinologists sell cocaine to diabetics claiming it was insulin?
But I digress. By the very wording of these articles the writers unwittingly acknowledge that there IS a difference between physical and mental illnesses. This would undermine their point if the American public weren’t so darn gullible!
Steve, surveys show that viewing “mental illness” as caused by emotional distress lessens bigotry while the alleged biological explanation increases it.
NAMI published an article a few years ago acknowledging that educating people about the “chemical imbalance” does not decrease “stigma.” Many of the bigwigs–such as Pete Earley–know it’s a myth, but continue to use it. Without Big Pharma’s support NAMI really would be a nonprofit. 😛
Working and being productive to society are impossible once you get “helped” by psychiatry. Being disabled by drugs and socially outcast because of their defamation of character (diagnoses) render both of these impossible.
What discourages me most are the lazy, stupid people like Brennan. Semi-literate sheeple who enjoy loafing in front of TV and whining about the “mental illnesses” they promote for self dramatizing. Like Kay Redfield Jamison and Patty Duke to name a couple.
If they admitted they weren’t hopelessly incompetent and crazy they would have to grow up and take responsibility. Scary! Let the Nanny State supply the bottles, change their diapers and burp them.
My biggest beef is, like the fable of the crabs caught in a trap, these adult infants want to tear down those of us who wish to recover. Not enough to ruin their own lives but ours as well. Catty, spiteful, jealous so-and-so.
Had one troll on Dr. Healy’s site tell us to go to Hell, cause she had a “happy, productive life.” I told her most likely her “awesome” life was a dumbed down, numbed out state–unable to work, go to school, or do much of anything like housework or talking to others–in a ghetto of other mental patients since no one else wanted to be near her. Ms. Troll never responded. I guessed correctly. Ha.
I never aspired to be a mental patient. Apparently many LOVE the role.
Glasser was against drugs or labeling. He encouraged leaving abusive situations and was not against unions. Maybe you have confused him with someone else.
Before I read Bob Whitaker, Glasser’s book Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health helped me realize that the “life saving medications” I had been conned into taking were the same stuff a street dealer sells. I was angry but empowered. Not hopelessly insane after all.
Before the Civil War many slave owners accused abolitionists of not understanding or loving the folks who “needed” to be enslaved. MacFarlane’s accusation of you sounds similarly ridiculous, Phil.
They’re resistant to making $200 instead of $800 an hour. Plus losing all the exotic vacations and gold wire fruit baskets Big Pharma heaps on them. That’s why. Poor babies. 🙁
Quit inflicting mental illness on us and we can find our own darn housing!
The only employment I have ever found was in spite of my “mental wellness” team. My moods have stabilized and I’m starting a freelance career…despite psychiatry’s best efforts to keep me helpless and dependent.
Dr. Oz has some “sciency” shticks. Mostly not related to psychiatry. Perhaps the medical premises are sound, but his demonstrations are not.
He’ll fill telephone booths with balloons and have guests get in to pop them and other bizarre “visuals” that have little if any bearing on the medical point he’s trying to make. But the audience eats it up.
Oldhead, how do you account for conservative churches who are embracing the “science” of psychiatry more and more? They still don’t believe in evolution and other stuff that scientists teach.
Yet despite their lip service to the concept of human souls they don’t believe in them it seems. Or maybe normals (like them) have souls but the “mentally ill” do not.
Most people on psych drugs are dependent on disability. They crippled me; I still can’t work full time.
My guess is Brennan lives off government hand outs and goes to “clubhouse” or “day treatment” in lieu of a job. Why she thinks her Fix makes her less of a burden is beyond me!
None of these “Proud Bipolars and Schizos” ever reads a word of those they disagree with. Or even the APA journal articles written by the gods they fawn over. Why bother when drug brochures and TV give us all the facts we need?
Bipolar Burbler brags about how ignorant she is, posting that she refuses to read Anatomy of an Epidemic. One finds this mind set in cult members’ fear over reading contraband literature.
Btw, I’m not a Flat Earther but I’m not afraid to read what they publish (good for yucks) or trying to ban it. If I were afraid what they said was true I would be!
The biggest threat to Psychiatry is not the anti-psychiatry movement. (Is there such an animal?) The biggest threat to Psychiatry’s might is the Truth.
To damage you “for your own good.” Lewis was critiquing forcibly rehabilitating “sick” criminals in an essay. I believe it’s in the collection called God in the Dock.
Psychiatry has taken it a step further and is treating innocent people like the “sick” criminals they are “rehabilitating” due to superficial traits we may share. Creepy, dangerous stuff!
In That Hideous Strength, Dr. Frost acts like the perfect shrink. Cold, emotionally detached from his own and others’ humanity. Brutal in his efforts to control others.
In one memorable passage, Dr. Frost argues with the protagonist that free will and souls do not exist. Just chemical reactions. Sound familiar? 😀
Does the Power Threat Meaning Framework bear any semblance to William Glasser’s Reality Therapy/Choice Theory? I found his books much more readable. If you want this movement to catch on making the language more accessible is a must.
Since you’re the doctor, you can reduce your own prescriptions of mind altering drugs by 100% any time you choose and tell patients the TRUTH that there is no known organic cause for insanity. As far as Great Britain as a whole, you’ll need approval from Sir Simon first for your 90% reduction plan. Unduly optimistic…even Utopian….
Btw, Steve, MacFarlane never did answer your question as to whether he tells patients they have “brain chemistry imbalances” when he prescribes them drugs. Most MI professionals are very vocal about this spreading this myth. No prominent psychiatrists (aside from a few mavericks) care to correct this view.
“Mania” is simply a pseudo-pathological term for partying too hard. Patty Duke and Carry Fisher didn’t need shocks/drugs/labels. Just not getting sloshed multiple times a week and bedding strangers.
Unless you’re referring to a high induced by a Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. That’s iatrogenic.
For Dr. MacFarlane they don’t. When he prescribes pills for his patients HE never suffers extreme weight gain, cognitive problems, suicidal thoughts, etc. For HIM they work perfectly. And “diagnosing” someone as incurably insane doesn’t lead to people treating HIM like a monster.
It’s reasonable to be ashamed of being called a dangerous madman or madwoman. I do not tell people about my defamatory “diagnosis” because of this. SMI is publicly understood to be a state not just of poor judgment, but moral turpitude.
As far as “pill shaming” and “diagnosis shaming,” who dishes out the pills and defamatory labels? The real shame is not on those “helped” by psychiatry!
Sorry about your son’s painful experience–and yours, Rossa.
My “psychotic” episode came about from not sleeping for 3 weeks while on Anafranil. It made me trip out like a bad acid from the 60’s.
The doctor insisted it was my fault and labeled me Schizo-affective. This led to getting kicked out of college and ruined my relationship with my mother. She always was over protective and had a sick “need to be needed.”
Psychiatry was the real villain but Mom took advantage of the situation. Between her and the MI System for 25 years! Like Ulysses between Charybdis and Scylla. 🙁
There really should be an e book about that–written for psych survivors. Faking Normal. Part humor, part practical tips about being out in public without freaking out people and getting locked up again.
I hear dialogue in my head–from the fictions I write. This leads to “inappropriate” laughter. Carrying a comic book or wearing head phones might make people less scared. Non-writers have no idea what the process of writing is like and assume you’re insane if you have a rich inner life that doesn’t rely on TV and other pop culture.
I always pick up my psych drugs a day or two after receiving a text from my pharmacy. I also have a “mental health center” I tell doctors I attend. I missed my second appointment and they told me I couldn’t apply for the next 6 months. I said, “Okay,” and never called back. 😀
Sandra means well, but fails to account for those of us who went psychotic from an SSRI, as well as those who aren’t helped and may get more out of touch from reality from taking neuroleptics. I’m sure she has read about tardive psychosis. I congratulate her on her honesty and referring to these drugs by their proper titles “neuroleptics” since they aren’t always antipsychotic.
How many people diagnosed with schizophrenia–like Will Hall–would recover undrugged? is the question she and others should be asking.
Reminds me of the fables told by Aesop and Foucalt where a predator–a fox or cat–tells a smaller creature like a bird or mouse that all animals are equal now. “Come down from your perch in that tree and let me tell you about it.”
Another thing, psychiatrists have always been vocal about “No cures; only treatment for mental illness.” In that respect, Dr. Goetzche is only saying what they have said all along.
Telling people they can recover from depression and other problems would make some angry. Others might find it hopeful and empowering.
The people who will really be angry with you, should you choose to denounce “antidepressants” as safe and effective, Dr. MacFarlane, are your colleagues and many other professionals making a fortune off of “mental illness.” Your fears are rational, and I admit to being a coward myself. At least you can’t be locked up without committing a crime.
What good is a superior intellect with no conscience? It only makes one more of a menace to society than a nasty guy with an IQ of 75 who mops floors for a living. At least he’s less capable of hurting people.
Don’t pathologize it. It’s a moral issue–not organic. They are liars. And in the case of the “silver backs” as Dr. Gotzche calls them, they are brutes who don’t care about other people. They seared their consciences since they got in the way of career advancement.
And they go on the air telling everyone how dangerous we are–how we lack empathy and moral consciences. Disgusting!
As far as “depression does not exist” I would have to disagree, Dr. MacFarlane. We are on the same page there.
I have had fits of prolonged unhappiness since I was 7. Partly school problems. I had behavioral issues and was put in a class where I was yelled at for knowing more than other kids. (A foretaste of my adult life as a career mental patient!)
Because I couldn’t verbalize my distress–smart though I was–I became so gloomy I willed myself into developing influenza for 3 weeks in a row. I wasn’t learning jack at school anyhow.
If someone is depressed they may have something bad in their life they need to deal with. An emotionally abusive relationship–a job they hate. Maybe it’s something they can’t change but need to come to terms with. They may also be anemic or have thyroid problems.
I’m not anti-therapy. If someone is discouraged or sad, yelling at them can be very cruel. Love, support, and hope can cure depression along with proper diet, sleep, and exercise.
An SMI diagnosis leads to rejection, isolation and hopelessness. It got me kicked out of college and prevented me from ever marrying or having a family. I live in crushing poverty since I can’t drive or get a job. Pretty depressing!
Phoenix, you were right that I don’t know what it’s like to have a child “out of it.” I feel bad about what I put my own family/friends through. Part of it was grief over my lost life; part being under the influence of drugs 24/7.
I didn’t start out “psychotic” but depressed and very anxious. (Later psychologists said I had PTSD, for what it’s worth.) Anafranil ,made me loonier than Minnesota in the spring. And all my earthly hopes and dreams were cheerfully crushed by Dr. M. my shrink when he told my mom I was “schizophrenic” but it COULDN’T be the Anafranil since it NEVER had that effect on anyone.
Later they fed us the BS that it was my fault. I must be a defective or that life nourishing, wholesome goodness would never have made me loopy. Therefore since my illness had been “unmasked” I must attone for my sin of being SMI with endless doses of cocktails, infantilizing “clubhouses” and other crap. Here’s the question nobody asked: Since Anafranil unmasked my MI and all psychiatry offers are treatments to remask the alleged brain disease, why not just take me off the d___ed drugs?
Hence my premise that when folks (mostly shrinks, though some frightened psych patients also do it) yell #pillshaming they are really honoring the pills at the expense of those disabled by them. Also my complaint of #patientshaming.
Off my whole cocktail and no longer manic or depressed. No thanks to any medical professionals I know. 🙁
Personally, I mean. Dr. Peter Breggin’s advice has been very helpful. I love that man.
What if taking the SSRIs leads to accusations of malingering when they don’t have the desired effect?
For my part, I found the notion that psychiatric drugs don’t work to be an immense relief. An end to shame.
I was not hopelessly insane/morally defective after all. And my prolonged depression (10+ years) was caused by the pills that were supposed to help me.
I admit I have never been force sedated. But I am not the anti-authority type Bruce Levine writes about. I love his writings! But the notion that all of us labelled “mentally ill” are rebels/James Dean wanna be’s is a misnomer.
Always was praised for being the “perfect patient,” for submitting to the medical authorities like I had to other authorities. A lamb led to the slaughterhouse.
Not till after 4 years of careful research and moral evaluation did I screw up my courage to leave. I decided if a Christian slave could run to Canada with a clear conscience, I could flee a system that crippled and killed those it pretended to heal.
Reminds me of an episode of Family Guy where the taking dog recommends his “chill pills” to mellow out the fighting family members. Everyone gets mellow and sings “Kum Bayah.” Then the dog announces the “pills” were tic tacs.
A lot of us psych survivors have joined the forum Inner Compass. Many of us don’t feel totally at home here due to the preponderance of MDs, PhDs, and other “experts” crying for “moderation.” Whatever that means.
Maybe those of you supporters rejecting the psychiatric narrative could start your own forum as opposed to NAMI?
My own mom has used my “diagnosis” to keep me dependent and even been emotionally abusive. Not as bad as some. She honestly believes the Chemical Imbalance Myth and takes SSRIs though. I guess she’s obeying the Golden Rule.
Not all NAMI members are created equal. A friend who supported my efforts to come off psych drugs used to belong. After psychiatry killed her sister at 49 she got sick of it.
I told her about Dr. Pies’s snarky article about how the “chemical imbalance was just a metaphor” ha ha ha! Why aren’t you all laughing? Laurel was furious.
Acceptance by whom? Not mainstream society, that’s certain.
As far as “greater services,” I’m sick of baby sitters (Day Treatment, Clubhouse, and other crap) that treat adults of average/above average IQs like MMR preschoolers!
If anyone is dumb enough to want to be segregated and infantilized, I guess it’s their funeral. But they deserve the facts ahead of time.
I went to see a new shrink with a “diagnosis” of “schizo-effective disorder.” With a few strokes of his pen this wizard transformed my disease to a new one–“bipolar 2.”
Say I went to a cancer doctor with leukemia. Could she turn leukemia into melanoma on the spur of the moment without even running any tests? But–oh, yeah–there were no tests to prove I had “schizo-effective” to begin with.
My distress did not originate with psychiatry but being bullied/sexually harassed nonstop through high school. I had emotional problems. Being too scared to leave your dorm room is a real problem!
I agree with Registeredforthissite. My existence is far from idyllic but my “cocktail” and the babysitting/put downs I endured at the hands of the community “mental wellness” center were a torment and made me long to die. Left the system/drugs/label. No more suicidal thoughts. Wow!
I agree with Registeredforthissite. My existence is far from idyllic but my “cocktail” and the babysitting/put downs I endured at the hands of the community “mental wellness” center were a torment and made me long to die. Left the system/drugs/label. No more suicidal thoughts. Wow!
Dr. MacFarlane, I read your post. With all due respect, psychiatrists as a whole seem happy with shaming patients to defend the integrity of the precious pills they dish out to as many folks as possible. I suffered shame for many years on these happy pills. Why?
They were “safe and affective” so I was faking any problems they caused–seizures, fatigue, depression. Moreover I must be malingering since none of these magical treatments helped me live a happy, productive life.
Pills don’t feel shame. Patients do.
Psychiatrists bad mouth the gullible folks who came in desperation, to their families, “Rachel is obviously not taking her ‘meds’ or she would feel wonderful and act normal.” “Haldol never causes seizures. She’s faking it.” “Risperdol doesn’t cause weight gain!” “Antidepressants restore the chemical imbalance in the brain, so Rachel isn’t trying hard enough. Being maligned as bipolar so she can’t find work/housing/relationships has nothing to do with her unhappiness.”
Research should be done on how many cases of “bipolar” are created by reactions to the use of SSRIs for depression, obsessive thinking, or off label uses like bed wetting. But it might lead to #pillshaming. We can’t have that.
It’s okay to shame patients. #Pillshaming is the unpardonable sin!
You got that right. Hence the shrinks and countless others working for psychiatry and Big Pharma is dedicated to preserve the status quo regardless of the cost–to others.
Rape results in 00.01% of all pregnancies. I see why there might be an exception for victims of rape. But how that justifies killing any of the other 99.99% of babies is beyond me.
“Marijuana can have medicinal benefits for women with advanced breast cancer. Ergo we should legalize recreational drug use and all become pot heads.”
A lot more men are militant abortionists than women. This makes sense since it’s cheaper to pay for an abortion than make child support payments. Just ask ex-congressman Tim Murphy.
I’m not a misandrist. As a writer I taught myself to write from the POV of a male character. This helped me understand men better and overcome my fear. For a long time guys scared me. Seriously.
Mental illness is an oxymoron. Note the distinction you yourself make, Dr. Williams, between “mental” illness and brain illness.
Legitimate brain problems–like PANDAS–are physical illnesses requiring neurology. A legitimate medical science.
“Mental illnesses” are bizarre states of mind from emotional traumas. Anything psychiatry does will only make things worse in the long run, since they don’t care about the souls of those they “treat.”
Neurologists are legitimate doctors. Psychiatrists are bureaucratis and drug pushers.
Think of the psych ward as Hogan’s Heroes. Dr. Klink and Nurse Schulz.
Butter up Dr. Klink. He’s dumb enough he’ll attribute your over-the-top kissing up to good insight. Thanks to his own hyper-inflated ego he’ll believe any of your compliments.
Nurse Schulz knows “nothink.” He honestly thinks electric shocks are good for people since he saw it in a training video. The fact that real life is totally different never registers.
So could a life coach. Or anyone who actually cared. (Not all Certified therapists do.)
Tony Robbins swears he’s stopped people from committing suicide. Someone was angry at his heresy, saying that only “mentally ill” people thought of suicide. And the only way to prevent this was to lock them up, stigmatize them, and damage their brains with drugs and shocks.
My guess is Robbins is better medicine than a shrink any day. If I’m depressed again, I’ll listen to his free motivational pap instead of telling a shrink or any legitimate medical professional. Beats a trip to the psychiatric jail!
How unconditional is your therapist’s love for you? There’s a good question.
Someone who pretends to care about you for $50-100 an hour.
I remember crying to myself in pain/loneliness once as I realized only one person was willing to talk to me and treat me kindly. And she had to be paid to do this. 🙁
I guess this is meant to be a light, humorous article to keep up our spirits. But it just makes me more determined to stay as far away from everything called “mental health” as possible. That’s just how I’m feeling now though.
And I’m careful to act Normal whenever I go out in public.
Yes, but admitting depression is only prolonged sadness/emotional suffering and not an honest-to-gosh brain disease would ruin psychiatrists’ credibility as REAL DOCTORS, dang it! 😛
My guess is a major cause of what’s called post partum depression comes from malnutrition. That’s a real physical condition requiring iron or B12. Not uppers!
Maybe they consider these pro-pharma ravings “the other side” of the story because a “crazy” is allowed to talk. Mostly it’s shrinks and NAMI mommies and other “sane” folk praising the drugs. The “sane” are one side. The “insane” on the other. As long as all say the same thing the media love to let the “other side” talk.
Psychotherapy is no longer about helping those dubbed SMI. (If it ever was.) All therapists at the community centers did was tell me how “meds” would fix my brain/life problems and tell me I was a pathetic “mentally ill” loser who would never amount to spit. Very uplifting! 😛
Then occasionally they’d say, “You’re not your illness.” Or tell me being “bipolar” gave you awesome super powers and tell me to read Kay Redfield Jamison’s marvelous fantasy novel of alternate history. Make up your freaking minds!
My younger sister is only 4′ 9″ but it’s not too bad. 1. She’s a woman. 2. She’s slender and cute.
I’m 5’4″ almost average for a woman but narrowly escaped an eating disorder. From age 10 on up everyone kept telling me I was fat and ugly.
You can never be too thin or rich. The only way I could be worthy of love was to starve myself till I was small, beautiful and feminine.
My curves were sexy–but ugly sexy. They made guys lust after me brutally and want to rape me. If I didn’t have big, gross breasts and thighs the bullying would stop.
Then in college I would go days without eating. No bullying, but I was ignored; no guy wanted to date me. I wasn’t slender and perky. 🙁 I realized I was fated to be alone forever at 20.
It’s funny how people talk about pill shaming. They see the pills as an extension of themselves–like they have no personality/conscience/soul without them. Part of what made me grow to hate the drugs was not just how stupid and awful they made me feel but how the “experts” around me told me I would be a murderous sociopath/rabid dog without them. I found the whole idea dehumanizing and good for producing existential angst that frequently led to contemplating suicide.
Hmm. If we lie all the time how do they know we weren’t lying when we described the symptoms they used to convict us of the crimes of bipolar or schizophrenia?
Interesting how they take us at our word for the B.S. questionnaires, then use these “tests” to discredit anything we tell them in the future.
Hey, these magical medicines can do no harm. So obviously they can’t hurt the environment. We’ll just have some really happy frogs, fish, insects, etc. Everything is awesome! 😛
I have forgiven them. But there were no warm fuzzies involved. That idea–that forgiving means feeling good–is a bunch of balognie. It made me feel worse for a while. Eventually relief came. Shaming a victim for not immediately experiencing tender sweet feelings toward her abuser is insensitive and itself abusive.
I can believe it. It must also be hard for unusually short men to find women. A lot of (silly) women I know won’t date a guy under 5′ 9″ no matter how wonderful, clever, charming, handsome or rich he is. I didn’t care, myself. As long as his legs were long enough to reach the ground. 🙂
I agree they themselves are the most emotionally abusive. But they encourage others in the life of the designated scapegoat of society to view the scapegoat with fear and loathing. The psych system’s role is similar to the one a “narcissist” plays in a dysfunctional family drama.
Candy can save the life of a diabetic going into shock. But follow this analogy and you’ll realize type 2 diabetes usually is related to an unnatural diet high in refined sugars and other stuff.
I continued taking psych drugs for more than a year after making the decision to quit. In my case going cold turkey might have killed me from the shock my system would have gone through.
Thanks Eric. I was bullied too. Moved to a new town between my Freshman and Sophomore years of high school. (After 2 months of having to live with grandparents since we were homeless.)
Shortly after starting school the bullying began. Mostly in the form of sexual harassment. I would come home from school crying. My grandma often dropped in for a visit.
She told me it was my Christian duty to forgive my tormenters–to love them–with warm fuzzies and butterflies and all that crap. How could I feel sweet wonderful stuff when the sight of them made me want to puke?
Grandma told me unless I felt good vibes toward them–meaning I had forgiven them–I wouldn’t go to Heaven when I died. Thanks, Grandma!
That’s the much vaunted placebo effect! Still works on my family.
I recently visited my parents since my brother was there with my nephews and niece. Around evening I’d say, “Need to take my ‘meds’,’ and pop a bunch of supplements I’m forced to take because of my ruined gut. No one was any the wiser.
When we “mentally ill” don’t take our pills, those around us can get pretty paranoid–dare I say psychotic? Take your “meds” to prevent their going crazy!
Group paranoia is the real phenomena at work here. Like ye olde witch hunts. Hanging/burning harmless old ladies may not cure the outbreak of plague, end the drought, or make the cows lactate, but it makes us feel warm and secure. At least SOMETHING is being done.
At age 15 I developed an overwhelming intense fear of being in public. I was so intensely afraid of doing or saying the WRONG THING that I clammed up and quit talking in high school. During a typical day I barely spoke a dozen words.
I still get nervous in public. After 25 years in the MI System I feel like a freak though my “symptoms” are gone.
(Sicker than a dog because I can’t process food any more. I believe long term SSRI use is responsible for my ruined digestive system. People assume my chronic illness is physical–and it is, though it was caused by drugs used to treat the “illness” created by the SSRI used to help my nerves when I went out in public!)
I became badly frightened after I started laughing in public. For no apparent reason as far as those around me could see. The reason was very obvious to me though. I was running through amusing bits of dialogue in the novel I’m working on. Very “mentally ill.”
This diagnosis comes from none other than the Mental Health Czar herself. She talks about a woman she saw. She knew she was severely mentally ill. How?
1. Poor clothing choice. She wore a trench coat that needed ironing.
2. She wrote in a notebook. The PAPER kind. Horrors! Why couldn’t she text on her smartphone like a normal person?
3. She laughed to herself for no reason the self appointed Meddler could discern. Maybe the stalked individual thought the Czar looked like a bug eyed idiot. 😛
The MH Czar yearns to “help” this literary lady become integrated. Though the MI System has a poor track record at integration. Segregation was the word I think Katz actually meant. 😀
Slaying_the_Dragon, there were slaves who felt they needed their masters to “take care of them.” These condescending jerks told their chattel over and over how helpless and stupid they were, how they were not as smart or resourceful as “normal” aka white people and needed to be cared for.
Abuse comes with slavery. Emotional even if no whips and chains are involved.
Psychiatry is not only emotionally abusive in its own right but it encourages this abuse in family, coworkers, friends–while you still have some–and society at large. Then they marvel at how all “bipolars” and “schizos” suffer from low self esteem. Must be a symptom of the “illness” right? 😛
How will having 6 orderlies dog pile on top of them and inject them with a mega-dose of stupifying Haldol make them feel more secure? Never had to be forced but that stuff gave me seizures!
If they are dangerous they certainly should be locked up. There’s no drug known to science that can transform Timothy McVeigh into Gandhi.
Szazs talked about murderers who committed crimes out of obedience to “God” or space aliens. He suspected they heard these voices because they wanted to murder and needed an excuse.
Why obey some voice telling you to commit murder anyhow? “Just following orders” is a lousy excuse whether they come from a colonel or an imaginary voice in your head.
My drugs caused me to hear voices telling me to rip off my clothes and run around swearing…never acted on it. And none of the drugs helped–they were the cause of this nightmare!
At least I don’t have to pay for them. My Medicaid bills the credulous tax payers. They are happy to keep those like me crippled and sick since they think we’re all murderous freaks unworthy of life.
They deserve to lose their money. Their stupidity and selfish cruelty sicken me!
Whips WERE considered a valid form of treatment for the “mental illness” known as drapetomania. Shrinks aren’t about to put that diagnosis in the DSM6 for obvious reasons.
Many people–especially those in the MI System are anti-literate. Meaning they refuse to read much of anything. Manuals on home repair or car maintenance, cookbooks, show synopses on TV. Maybe magazine articles about celebrities, useless “self help” books, and frothy boring romance novels.
The friend of mine who refused to read Anatomy of an Epidemic–choosing to laugh at me for believing it instead–mentioned later that she never read except to relax. She wasn’t interested in learning anything. Popular Amish romances and other fluff. She wasn’t even on psych drugs. Some folks enjoy being ignorant.
Hobbes: Is being ignorant a constitutional right?
Calvin: I don’t know. And I refuse to find out!
I was on Latuda for a week. It made me ANGRY all the time for no reason. This scared me so much I got my case worker who saw my odd behavior to set me a special appointment with my shrink.
When I told her about my overwhelming unfocused anger she offered to double the dose! What???
Luckily I talked her into switching me back to abilify. The pills were easier to cut when I started my taper. 😀
That’s because the MI System isn’t just about drug dealing. They also have a bunch of “helpers” on the gravy train. A hierarchy–with the center’s manager and godlike shrink at the top descending down to the case managers who babysit us through demeaning “classes” that would insult the intelligence of five year olds and pay visits for no apparent reason. Often they skip visits or show up 4 hours late so you spend all day at home several times a week sometimes. Not like we have lives after all. If we do that’s proof our “illness”is flaring up. 😛
The very word “mental illness” is ambiguous and the way believers use it is inconsistent and crazy.
They call it a mental illness but claim it is a brain illness. Why not call it that? Oh, yes. That might cause more confusion since the populace would conflate said “illnesses” with legitimate brain disorders like cancer/ epilepsy/ALS. (No one with a legitimate brain illness can be legally locked up and treated against their will.)
Then those whiny articles and cartoons that speculate, “What if we treated physical illnesses like mental illnesses?” Uh, when they ask that question don’t they realize they’re making a distinction between the two? In which case their claim that “mental illness” is a brain disease doesn’t fly since that would make it a physical illness after all.
I sympathize with mom too. My own conduct was far from saintly. For a few years I fully embraced my role of Madwoman. Pretty hard on everyone around me.
Belief in your diagnosis of incurable insanity can lead to that. I finally decided to act “as if” I were not bipolar. It took a while to realize this never was true, but rejecting it on a personal level made me easier to deal with.
I still take legitimate medicines like thyroid supplements for my underactive thyroid. And usually antibiotics like penicillin for severe infections.
In a bit of a bind. I am not attending a “mental health” center but I say I am to doctors treating me for a real medical problem–a malabsorption disorder probably triggered by decades of SSRI use. I just give them the name of a local center, saying I’m not troubled by bipolar symptoms now that they are perfectly under control thanks to my effective treatments. Then I say a little prayer they will take my word and not call them. I remember the rule of effective lying. Provide the bare minimum of details! Scary how even doctors are gullible enough to think my peace of mind and clear thinking result from these drugs when the reverse is true.
Unlike you, Dr. Breggin, many doctors welcome this snitching. Even if they find the accompanying sheet slightly insulting.
I figured something like this was going on before reading this. My CVS refills will run out soon. I got my brain drugs from a GP during my taper–plus I had to deceive my parents. 🙁 Till they do I pick them up at the pharmacy a day or two after they inform me through text of my automatic refill. I live alone. Every two or three months I throw a bunch of bottles of drugs away at the bottom of my garbage.
This crap is bad for the environment. Many disposal warnings acknowledge as much–albeit subtly. Don’t flush expired “meds” down the toilet. You might damage the ecosystem of micro organisms living the sewer. But don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe for your own consumption. (We value you less than what grows in the sewer.)
Rossa, I love you. Your genuine interest in your son’s well being is evident. A good parent wants their kid to spread wings and become independent–not crippled by stupifying drugs and an infantilizing “support” group that only controls and holds back.
A lot of parents get so exasperated by the outlandish behavior of these kids that they would rather turn the kid into a helpless drooling houseplant who won’t get in trouble and embarrass them. You point out the kid could likely recover undrugged and they don’t seem to care. Ruining the adult child’s prospects of a good life doesn’t matter. The drugs work RIGHT NOW (too tired and sick to do or say annoying stuff) and a diminished zombie child doesn’t bug them for some reason.
My own mom wanted to help me. But to this day she swears my “meds” work because they have made me too sedated to do or say stuff that annoyed her. If she’s annoyed that proves I’m getting “sick” again.
Unbeknownst to her after 25 years of psych drugs I tapered off my cocktail successfully. Been drug free for over 6 months. Unfortunately my digestion is totally destroyed; I may have Crohns now.
Mom doesn’t notice any difference. When I snapped out of my decade long depression though she got irritated and yelled at me for being “too cheerful.” No I was far from manic.
I no longer live with her. That helps. Sadly at 44 I am too old to make new friends and extreme pain/weakness makes it hard to get around. The bus system is horrible here. I wasn’t allowed to get my drivers license. So I’m pretty isolated.
Telling a shrink you are depressed is like confessing to witchcraft before the Spanish Inquisition. Shrinks should be made to mirandize every person who walks through their door.
To play devil’s advocate–and to many of us Pies is closely associated with the devil–the other side would argue that no one says “Congratulations on testing positive for cancer!” Or “I love you for having tuberculosis,” either.
It’s worth noting that no one blames violent crimes on having leukemia. Or cites heart disease as a motive for mass shootings.
Why is psychiatry the only medical specialty with a movement opposing it? Maybe because no other specialty has experts on television maligning the characters of their patients.
Her depression was “treated.” How can people claim it wasn’t? Are they just ignorant of what happened?
If a woman consumes 10,000 calories a day and is obese would you tell her the problem is her low caloric intake? About as stupid as psychiatry’s claims that drugs will solve every emotional pain and eliminate crime. All we need to be peaceful, model citizens is…drugs, DRUGS, and MORE DRUGS!!!
Whether planned or not, drugging us till we look unsightly and have trouble picking up on normal social cues and isolating us from the mainstream community in adult daycare makes reintegration next to impossible.
Pretentious social workers/psych therapists/shrinks claim to be anxious to integrate us. Funny. Looks like isolation and segregation to me!
Good point. Psychiatrists want to be seen as doctors of the body, using pills and surgery like electroshock. Yet almost all of the “diseases” they treat (excluding TBI and a few other real brain problems) are perceived as moral failings by our society.
Clergy are more honest about their role. And they can’t legally force you to see them or attend their institutions nowadays.
The current state of Psychiatry reminds me of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. Shrinks are sort of like the straighteners whom people regularly see to help them become better behaved.
Yet–for those labeled SMI–they also act like the legal system in Erewhon where people are executed or sentenced to life in prison for “crimes” like being swindled out of life savings, contracting TB, or losing a spouse. (Better not grieve for more than 14 days if that happens. Right, Dr. Shrinkenstein?)
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.”
Accepting responsibility for what you have done wrong never hurt anyone. (This does not mean people who have been raped/abused deserved it.) Nor is apologizing and trying to set right the damage you have done in interpersonal relationships. Sobriety leads to a higher quality life.
You can do this without AA though. If your local chapter is abusive you’re better off doing it alone. My friend has quit drinking. She has other issues, but goes to AA meetings and hasn’t drunk booze in 25+ years.
The idea of personal accountability and moral reformation actually runs counter to the bio-determinism and learned helplessness of psychiatry’s racket with mind altering drugs much worse than any hooch. Replacing one drug with another and pretending it’s “medicine” like penicillin or insulin when actually it is more like LSD or speed is morally reprehensible.
Psychiatrists should form PA. “Sobriety” would mean no longer lying all the time, removing the labels of all those they damaged, and paying for their multiple health problems from the iatrogenic damage the “doctor” inflicted on them, using their 7 digit paychecks. Maybe finding real jobs where they do something useful instead of crippling and killing people.
Can you function in society in a civilized manner, Liberalminority?
I was too sad to function once. Psychiatry made it ten times worse.
I escaped the madhouse without walls, went off my uppers and downers gradually (Not fast!) and can think straight. I feel human again.
My sadness is better. I’m figuring how to bootstrap my way into a community now. And got over my “social anxiety” despite the best efforts of the System to keep me segregated and disabled.
Leaving psychiatry was all it took to function again. No mind-altering drugs. No defamatory label. No problem . 🙂
Dr. Hassaman you are not an actively bad man who kicks puppies and tortures people for kicks. You’re a weak, timid man who supports the status quo because acknowledging to yourself that you are crippling and killing us might force you to sacrifice your prestigious career and even oppose the Powers that Be.
I know how risky that would be. Perhaps you’re too scared. I understand why it’s easy to go with the flow since you aren’t the one sickening and dying from experimental drugs of dubious benefit. Or being segregated because someone told society you were a public menace.
I am grieving the life I lost to your profession. My religion says I should forgive those who wrong me and pray for those who injure me. I am not out for revenge. (Though I do wish to end psychiatry as an institution since it destroys souls. Not just the souls of “consumers” either.)
But I wish you would realize you are hurting people. We are human beings like you–not a collection of diseases. Does it trouble you that your patients deteriorate instead of recovering? That we die in our early fifties on average?
It’s better to suffer evil than inflict it. I wouldn’t trade places with you–you are worse off than I ever was.
As worshipful as the NAMI mommies are of eugenics to brand their children monster/genetic throwbacks you wonder why these people were allowed to have children. Unfit parents who make the Scapegoat’s life a living Hell.
Aren’t they the carriers of the “monster genes?” Shouldn’t the Golden Child–favored kid of Family Drama Queen–and Winged Monkeys get sterilized since they might produce “bad seed” too?
Force feeding or tricking them into swallowing slow acting toxins and publicly defaming them on national television for the shrinks’ own wealth, power and glory is not what I call help.
But “Doctor Houlihan” we all “know” odd behaviors or painful emotions are solely due to brain disorders of the genetically unfit. Your Ministry of Truth says so.
And psychiatrists claim to know everything about the human brain. They can figure out your exact chemical imbalance just by looking in your eyes and filling out a questionaire.
Oh, yes. That’s just a metaphor. You “well-informed doctors” can’t help it if everyone takes it seriously. You’re not to blame just because you spout this bovine excrement on every media network available.
Brett Deacon, if instead of calling them diagnoses they referred to them as negative behavioral patterns it might help people. And they would not be hopeless.
Of course accepting offers of help would be strictly voluntary. We have the right to make bad life choices and be unhappy as adults. Really.
Of course this is outside the realm of hard science and would diminish their authority as “real scientists/doctors.”
Sounds a lot like Patty Duke’s story. My mom was all excited and texted me the story. I guess she thought I would find a famous singer coming out as hopelessly insane inspirational. Weird how people think that way.
Prepare to see Mariah blow up to the size of a small whale. Crappy cocktails. 😛
Our “symptoms” are usually nothing alike either. I am supposedly “bipolar” but am an ascetic. Not some irresponsible, out-of-control party animal like everyone thinks when they hear “bipolar.”
“My evul bipolar ex cheated all the time, drank like a fish, was violent sometimes, forced us into bankruptcy and only cared about herself. Ergo everyone with a ‘bipolar’ label must be a drunken, abusive, cheating, selfish bum.”
A bunch of nonsense. But without the “bipolar” label there would be no link between the spouse who behaved badly and people like me with consciences. And shrinks encourage this bigotry since it helps their professional authority.
I also am supposed to be “Borderline” but am nothing at all like the “typical” Marilyn Monroe character a “borderline” is supposed to be. Moral judgments (often unfounded) and stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies. Glorified insults passing as a science.
There are pay offs to accepting your role of the “hopeless bipolar.”
Besides fear of being locked up and more drugged or shocked, there are some benefits.
1. You can reject all responsibility for your behavior. “Not my fault! The Bipolar made me do it.” If a friend or loved one complains, whine how you can’t help yourself. You’re not the one acting like a jerk; it’s your illness taking over.
Forget self control. As a professional “Bipolar” it’s your civic duty to cut loose with mood swings, public temper tantrums and other out-of-control behavior. It’s also a great excuse for becoming a party animal. “Just my old mania acting up. Heh heh.”
2. It’s a great way for gaining attention. Endless opportunities for self dramatization. If you’re an actor–tell-all books and documentaries can only help your career. Regale the audience with long winded melodramatic descriptions of your insanity–ending with you seeing the light and tearfully converting to the Church of Psychiatry.
3. You don’t have to grow up but can be an infant forever. Forget marriage, family, career. You don’t have to do crap but lounge around taking pills and watching TV 16 hours a day to rot whatever brain cells those “safe and effective treatments” left.
Lest I seem too harsh, I myself plead guilty to the first two. I never planned on being a professional junkie/bum/outcast but was seduced into the role with promises that the right pills would make me functional enough to be almost normal.
The years went on. I got worse instead of better–like everyone around me. When I acknowledged the Truth I was so upset I came closer to suicide than ever before.
I have not so I am asking. I went off much faster than they recommend on Surviving Antidepressants. I did not have a psychotic break despite dire prophecies.
My problem is not withdrawal but a demolished gut. Those poisons wiped out my digestive system. Glad I’m off–for me that ended my depression.
Which is probably what psychiatrists want. As Bob Whitaker points out in Anatomy of an Epidemic, if they actually discovered organic or chemical anomalies in the brains of the “mentally ill” psychiatrists would be out of a job. Neurologists–real scientists–could take over, since they don’t go around spewing fluff about how neurology is “more of an art than a science.”
I love art. But who wants Picasso trying to sculpt your brain into an exhibition for the gallery?
If a creepy date calls me a “fat bitch” should that be my current diagnosis?
It lacked syllables and air of “scientific” respectability–plus the guy wore jeans instead of a white lab coat and stethoscope. Guess that means I don’t need to self identify as a fat bitch to avoid being labeled as anosognosiac. 😛
April Fools Day originated as an atheist’s holiday. In France, after the Revolution everyone celebrated the New Year on that day. After it was safe to practice religion openly again the French reverted to the Gregorian Calendar except the militant atheists who persisted on celebrating it on April 1.
I had some fun before I left Daycare Treatment. I suggested a class where we looked at pie charts of neuro-chemicals in a “normal” brain as opposed to those of “schizophrenics” and “bipolars.” Tee hee!
The case worker thought it was a great idea and promised to ask the resident psychiatrist for these. 😀
Actually it’s easier to limit your work hours in the gig economy. My brother has a “real job” and works 12-13 hour days, 6 days a week most of the time.
I think it’s unfair–even cruel–to label those on the spectrum as lacking empathy. And it’s just not true! A lot of them are kindly people with high moral values. They just have a hard time relating to others now and then. That’s not unkindness or inability to love but social awkwardness or being preoccupied.
Maybe atypical is a better word. “Abnormal” sounds different in a negative way. I consider myself to be an atypical eccentric. In my early twenties I wondered if I had Aspergers. I acted a little like someone on he spectrum according to my psychotherapist sister in law. Now–off my drugs–I can pick up on social cues more readily and blend in. I don’t like sticking out like a sore thumb.
Or you can refuse to write a rebuttal to Twilah’s piece. That is your choice.
Her analogy to deaf communities is a good one, I think. Many deaf people don’t view themselves as disabled. They have their own subculture with its own language, stories, plays and literature. A culture unique to the deaf.
They have the right to try to integrate themselves into mainstream society or not. Those on the Spectrum face a similar choice. Twilah chooses integration–but she doesn’t condemn anyone for choosing the other.
It makes sense we don’t know what causes autism. Now that I have read enough of Dr. Breggin’s writings it’s obvious how woefully ignorant even our smartest scientists are of the human brain.
That’s why I say–even assuming a chemical imbalance existed–until there was actual proof that chemical X caused psychosis/depression–shrinks have no business messing around in our heads!
“You must have cancer. As an Expert I don’t need to run tests. I’m going to put you under and remove random bodily organs for a few hours. Then force you to have daily rounds of chemo for the rest of your life.” Ha ha. Who would like to have that joker as a family doctor?
I do think some social network for anxious, unhappy, and detached people should be in place. The lack of plain old TLC and compassion has led to psychiatry’s vast expansion. Interesting that Madhouses began around the Industrial Revolution when people started ignoring neighbors in distress. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the protagonist “loses it” twice. Both times he is not locked up or labeled but comes out of it. In The Last Man, one of the main characters loses it when a young woman “friend-zones” him but his friends love him back to sanity.
There is a need Psychiatry is supposed to fill–but cannot. If I need food and only get meth, I may miss the food less for a while. But I will miss the nourishment soon enough.
I am all for abolishing psychiatry–though I believe destroying the Big Pharma industry will hurt America–perhaps the Western World–severely in the economic area. The price is necessary however.
First abolish involuntary psychiatry, then false advertising. Psychiatry will collapse on its own if stripped of authority and credibility. Sadly many long term psych “patients” can’t or won’t grow up after decades in the system. Most of my old friends fall into this category.
We may need homes for these people like Szazs recommended. Not state “hospitals” but more like halfway houses only long term. Taking drugs would not be a requirement for living there.
An economic system of cronyism that sustains itself in a circular fashion by producing unnecessary and harmful products, then bribing bureaucrats to force able citizens to buy said products that put them out of work and lead to other medical problems (costing tax payers as well as disabled victims) is unsustainable. We need to produce more useful things that don’t need Big Brother interference to sell.
I believe Capitalism is a useful tool for producing food/clothes/etc. to provide for everybody including the few who honestly can’t work. (Not artificially crippled by Pharmapsychiatry with its bosom buddy Corrupt Bureaucracy.) What we have now is a grotesque mockery of the system. Selfishness and greed are at the root of Capitalism’s downfall in the West.
Unlike many other commenters I agree with you politically and am openly religious. But because of my disgust with Tim Murphy and other “business as usual” Republicans I’m thinking of going Libertarian.
My brain is recovering well. But my gut has paid a heavy price for 23 years of SSRIs. I take large amounts of supplements, iron infusions and have almost the energy I had before this digestive problem began–a year before my taper started.
And Scientologists too. Lucky for Big Pharma and Psychiatry the Church of Scientology exists or they would have had to invent it for their Two Minutes of Hate. Big Brother loves you!
In high school I was bullied/sexually harassed nearly every day. At one point I felt so helpless I fantasized taking a butcher knife to school and going stabby stabby on the guys who tore me down daily. It was horrific.
I didn’t because I knew it was wrong. Often I thought about suicide to escape school. When I dropped out the relief was overwhelming.
Got my high school diploma and went to college, but the taunts followed me everywhere even in my new, friendlier environment. Kept reliving events from high school. Then I wound up at the shrinks.
Bullies are never “diagnosed” as hopelessly insane. Just their victims. Bullying is a sign of good mental health in America I guess.
How would you define Autism Au Valencia? I thought it was like Dyslexia perhaps. Only instead of trouble processing the written word the person with Autism has trouble processing the world around them–especially human interactions?
I dated two men on the Spectrum. They seemed like really smart, fun guys but very socially awkward. (One was abusive, but lots of “normals” abuse others.)
For that matter what is a “Mental Illness?” Corner a shrink with this question and I’m sure he would need more than a minute to explain. Even more if he weren’t allowed to babble the usual tripe about unproven “chemical imbalances.”
As a child I thought mentally ill people were unusually evil and eccentric villains. Psychiatrists actively promote this idea–using obscurantism to help the bologna pass for steak and make themselves sound like honest-to-gosh scientific ex-spurts.
“Are the ‘mentally ill’ cognitively impaired with low IQs?”
No. Any lowering in our IQs comes from the drugs and shocks.
“Are the ‘mentally ill’ criminals?”
No. The reason people wanted the Cures Act passed is they needed a loophole to lock up law abiding citizens. We already have places for law breakers.
“Are the “mentally ill” morally depraved?
This last comes closest to the Mythical Type of the Insane. In the Victorian times they realized many “mad” people were harmless. In this respect things have worsened for those of us who go nuts. We can no more reintegrate ourselves into society afterwards than a Victorian prostitute could become a respectable socialite.
Oldhead calls psychiatric labels hate speech. I call them moral judgments. Unlike an annoying street preacher who says, “REPENT!” psychiatrists say you can’t become better. There can be no repentance or change since “Evil” is engraved on the DNA and brain chemicals of the “mentally ill” and taking crippling drugs is the only atonement possible for the crime of your existence. I was very suicidal when I thought I was hopelessly insane/evil btw.
There is no known biological cause of depression/bipolar/schizophrenia. They assume one exists because even the best medical scientists are ignorant of our complex brains–therefore it can’t be DISPROVED.
Because of this there are no physical tests to prove anyone has said conditions. Just a questionnaire of behaviors/thoughts/feelings that are criminal or obnoxious behaviors, poor lifestyle choices, painful emotions, or things psychiatrists can’t stand. For a while they wanted to have cat lovers declared mentally ill.
If anyone wants to don a “Kick me I’m bipolar!” tee shirt and go out to get their butt kicked, that’s their privilege. Excuse me if I forego the honor.
There is no healing in psychiatry. Period. At the very best these drugs are emotional pain killers like injecting a broken leg with morphine indefinitely and not setting it.
If psychiatry is an art it must be like the artistic sculpture created by the hero in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A big pile of rotting garbage heaped up to the ceiling of our living room.
Dr. Asperger and others like him warned the public of the menace of “unfit sociopaths” roaming the streets. Yet no one tried to remove the real monsters from the streets. Dr. Asperger and his associates!
Indiana. No real anti-psychiatry movement except maybe up in Fort Wayne.
On the plus side we get a D- according to NAMI’s scale. Hence fewer offers of “deadly” help.
Stinks to be single here–unless you enjoy being alone every evening. Gave up the dating farce long ago. (Guys just want cheap alternatives to hookers. If you’re over forty they remind you how you’ve lost all value and should be grateful to be used and tossed like a wad of toilet paper.) No thanks Bozo! 😛
Looks like I have a serious medical condition. Had a mild form for years it seems. But everyone thought it was depression–including me. No longer crazy because of mind altering drugs I know I’m sick as a dog. Some Malabsorption Disorder. Maybe Crohns. I have the right symptoms.
I believe I am suffering from Crohn’s disease or something at least as nasty. Thank God I’m off my brain drugs and not wasting valuable energy at “day treatment” now. Ironically coming off my SSRI was all it took to end a 10+ year bout with depression. 😀
There are actually TV shows where psychiatrists talk to “patients” to help them instead of going through four an hour as fast as Doc Pillshill can pass out prescriptions. One fictitious shrink told the hero of the hours it took to do the tests to figure out the right diagnosis and the exact course of treatment.
Whoever wrote that script was delusional and more out of touch with reality than any psych victim I have ever met.
L.M. Montgomery describes an altered state of mind shrinks would call mania or psychotic mania in her Emily books. Emily Starr calls it “the flash”– a burst of ecstatic joy and energy that helps her to write.
Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon would both receive lovely psych labels now. Anne “laughed and cried far too easily.” Clearly Bipolar 1. 😛
Off my “meds” I am experiencing the “flash” again. It’s beautiful. Poor physical health and poverty can’t take it away.
I’m not spending too much, getting drunk, or sleeping with strangers. My “flash” helps me write stories and understand people better.
Why should the straighteners steal my joy? Never again!
I’m not mad any more, but I’ll never be normal. 24 years of isolation mixed with segregated groups for “my kind” didn’t help in that respect anyhow.
Unlike most people my age I long desperately to fit into mainstream society. It’s NOT okay by society’s standards to be different in certain ways.
1. Extroversion–Good MH. Introversion–MI.
2. Optimism (naivete)–Good MH. Pessimism–MI.
3. Interest in TV/pop culture–Good MH. Reading “too much”–MI.
4. Super short attention span–Good MH. Rich inner life–MI.
5. Capable of endless small talk–Good MH. Keeping quiet or saying something meaningful–MI.
6. Pragmatic philistine–Good MH. Artsy idealist–MI.
7. Materialist–Good MH. Philosopher–MI.
8. Insensitive boor–Good MH. Sensitive empath–MI.
9. Intelligence in STEM subjects or marketing techniques–Good MH. Intelligence in discovering/depictng truth or beauty–(Unless you can makes LOTS of money with a product)–MI.
10. Dog person–Good MH. Cat person–MI.
11. Bored with life–Good MH. Keen sense of humor–MI. Wicked sense of humor that mocks psychiatry–SMI.
Groan! My mom’s on that crap. She says she needs it because her nerves get bad when she goes off.
Risky as it is I am “coming out” as non-compliant in August. Too many loved ones are on these poisons. If they see my improvement maybe they’ll realize they’re trapped in “The Matrix.”
I escaped with minimal TD damage. I have ticks like pill rolling that won’t go away, but I can hide them in public by keeping my hands clasped or hidden.
A beautiful, intelligent, funny friend of mine suddenly got horrible, disfiguring TD. She couldn’t think straight anymore either.
This motivated me to continue my taper. The whole thing scared me since I had been told repeatedly I would run around like a rabid dog, unable to talk and biting people without my “meds.”
It’s like arguing that a drug isn’t to blame for purple extremities but lack of circulation (that coincidentally occurs in those on the drug.) For those who have had hands or feet amputated the question is almost laughably irrelevant.
Ironic how after 25 years of drugs I am worse off physically with a legitimate chemical imbalance created by psychiatry. Yet my depression and suicidal desires are gone.
And I get along with people. My neighbors would laugh in disbelief if you told them I’m “crazy.” I talked to an old pro-psychiatry friend who thinks I am on “meds.” She was surprised at how much better I sound.
I would like to try that. Unlike Bob Whitaker’s wonderful books, this would focus exclusively on those with “Bipolar” diagnoses allegedly “unmasked” by SSRIs prescribed for depression or an off label purpose.
I didn’t till now Bruce. I have always seen the left as more authoritarian than the right.
They encourage sexual satiety and drugs like Aldous Huxley’s dystopia to keep the populace happy and dumb. The right pushes drugs because they are profitable.
I am leaving the GOP for the Libertarian party myself. The only two congress members to vote against the “Cures” act were libertarians.
Why uh–Congressman Tim Murphy. And getting reelected. 1000% pro-choice! Or was that 1000% pro-life? (Darn those incompetent PR managers for not keeping him informed!)
I get less than you do. $770 a month. No way I could afford rent payments–especially since they usually demand proof that you earn $1250 a month to rent a $500 apartment. Because of poor cable wiring I pay through the nose for internet. I may be eligible for food stamps, but keep getting the run around. $16 a month doesn’t seem worth the quarterly hoop jumping. Food banks are easier and you get more.
My parents will probably leave their homestead to me. We were pretty stressed out by having to live together in a single wide for 11 months.
I may move out to the homestead again. If:
1. I can get a license and car.
2. Get an apartment fixed up in the garage.
3. Get my parents to come to terms with the idea that I never was hopelessly insane. They don’t know I’m off my “meds” and are amazed at how well I am doing.
My biggest need is $$$. Since I may never be able to work more than 20 hours a week from iatrogenic damage, unsexy writing projects seem my best bet. Like newsletters for software companies. That will take some time….
Being labeled “severely mentally ill” and disabled with a bunch of drugs is a great way to keep anyone in poor “financial health” since it renders them unemployable!
Religious beliefs can all be diagnosed as “mental illness” symptoms. So can creativity and a sense of humor.
2/3 of all psychiatrists are atheists. Aside from Laing I know of none who produced works of art. As a whole they are humorless and emotionally detached. Since they view themselves as perfectly sane they view religious people, artists, people who laugh and show empathy as Severely Mentally Ill.
Ailurophobia and collecting human brains for a hobby are signs of Sound Mental Health. Ask our good friend Dr. Torrey. 😀
Medical care is very useful. But because of psychiatry’s influence the whole discipline is hopelessly corrupt and dangerous to navigate with an SMI label.
Sad that so many of us are afraid to see MDs. And it’s not “paranoia”–our fears are legitimate. If you know someone who lies whenever convenient and still trust him there is something wrong with you.
My Bipolar Disorder–like many others–was created by my shrink for big profits. He put me on an SSRI drug that made me higher than a kite and kept me awake for 3 weeks straight.
All needed to cure this “disorder” was to quit the drug and catch upon sleep. Instead they blamed ME for the drug’s reaction and put me on a cocktail.
I wonder how many people would not be labeled “bipolar” without this kind of drug reaction.
What they need are safe places to taper off those demonic neuro-toxins.
I remember envying heroin addicts while I tapered off my Effexor. There are half way houses for them to dry out and get support. And they CHOSE to use a mind altering substance knowing the risks.
Shrinks are dealers disguised as doctors who sell heroin disguised as penicillin. Yes–I know the analogy breaks down at the end of that sentence. But they sold us mind altering, addictive drugs claiming they were life-saving medicines! Horrible people! No sense of shame or conscience. No empathy for the victims they directly create with drugs and labels–or even those who die in mass shootings.
Here’s a question. If a doctor knowingly puts a “bipolar” on SSRIs knowing they make him loopy and apt to act out why isn’t he held criminally responsible when a mass shooting occurs?
There are shrinks who might (reluctantly) support this concession when you quote their own works against them. When a mass shooting happens investigate the shrink “treating” the shooter. If he is known to have dismissed warning signs and/or put someone with known sensitivities to SSRI’s on a large dose or experimented without proper monitoring, let him be tried for 3rd degree murder of all those slain in the shooting. Or an accessory to murder.
Vitamins B12, D3, Fish Oil (itching all the time! cornea kept tearing off from dry eyes for a while), Vegan Iron supplement, Magnesium. Probably need calcium and potassium since my body is absorbing almost none of the micro nutrients I consume.
It seems to be processing carbohydrates, fat, and protein fine. Just not the other stuff. In horrible pain nearly all the time. At 44 I walk like a woman twice my age.
I live in New Albany, Indiana. The bus system here is a joke. Too poor to own a car and long walks are misery. Needless to say, I stay home a lot in my HUD efficiency. I tell everyone who asks that I have Fibromyalgia. They believe me because I don’t act “crazy” and my pain is obvious.
Chaya I am off my drugs now, but feel sick all the time. My body can’t absorb minerals, vitamins, or water very well. I’m very anemic with 10.3 hemoglobin levels.
Do you think you or someone you know could help me?
I believe I have Malabsorption Syndrome after more than 20 years on SSRI’s. I seem to have all the symptoms.
My doctor notes things like heart arrhythmia, digestive problems, etc. but is close-mouthed when I ask her why these things are happening. This makes me very cynical of the medical profession as a whole.
Being labeled “severely mentally ill” is a great way to ruin relationships.
The drugs make you loonier than Minnesota in the spring. Your loving family sees it and calls the “doctor” in distress.
“The meds have been proven 100% safe and effective,” he parrots. “X must be skipping doses on the sly or there would be no problems.”
They accuse you of skipping the “meds” since that’s the only possible explanation you’re worse than ever. With tears in your eyes, you protest. You take these pills religiously. But to no avail.
Then you contemplate suicide. Must be your “mental illness” to blame since multiple mini-seizures, having your nearest and dearest turn on you, an inability to read or enjoy anything, and profound social isolation could never lead to despair. 😛
If “psychotics” are peaceful weirdos talking to little purple men in the walls let them. But I know people who use their labels of “bipolar” or “schizophrenia” as an excuse to act like jerks–even abusers.
On the other hand once you have such a label you are certain to be ostracized and emotionally abused (or worse) yourself.
We need to judge people on the content of their character–not psychiatric labels!
A lot of clergymen and others want nothing to do with “SMIs” and hand us over to our psych masters because they don’t care about us at all.
Plain old selfishness. But we can PRETEND we’re dripping with compassion.
Oooh. I got this annoying nut job the ‘help” she needs so I can ignore her pain. Plus, since she’s crazy, her sobs of grief and moans of anguish are just her illness talking. Ha ha. Listen to the crazy.
Look at me! I’m a big shot hero because I got her locked up and drugged. I deserve a Nobel Prize for my humanitarian work.
You hit Dr. K. over the head with a sledge hammer and he’s out cold for three days.
The sledge hammer is not actually to blame for any brain damage. That’s because Dr.K. loafed around in bed for three days not doing anything.
Tsk tsk, Dr.K. Why were you foolish enough to be around Slaying_the_Dragon in the first place? Don’t you realize that by your needy and naive behavior you were BEGGING him to hit your head with a sledge hammer?
No more whining about your head ache. Up and at ’em.
Szazs and Glasser never did counseling on anyone against their will. If your therapist is a butt hole and you can’t fire her/him it’s not a therapeutic relationship.
Never forget leeches and bloodletting were once considered a valid modality of treatment for cholera patients. “Dr.” Benjamin Rush claimed blood letting was a great way to treat “mental illness” since it made people passive and quiet.
We probably should keep political discussions to a minimum. Right now there can be no immediate political solution since all elephants and donkeys alike are feeding at the trough of Big Pharma and can’t wait to throw us under the bus for their bribes.
The author of The Broken Brain published a paper (not widely publicized *cough cough*) demonstrating that “bipolar brain deterioration” is caused by the multiple drugs these folks are forced to take.
“Animals in these studies probably did nothing but lie around for years due to heavy sedation.”
Uh, don’t most lab animals lead sedentary, less enriching lives than their wild counterparts? Lab rats generally eat and lie around the cage all day when not being put through a maze or something.
My group experiences were also insulting and degrading. I began having nightmares that I was forced to attend 2nd grade as a woman in her 30’s or 40’s. I would ask the teacher when I would be allowed to graduate; she would tell me I was too dumb to ever get out.
Before I kissed the Crazy Making System good bye I started having dreams of escaping this dystopian 2nd grade setting.
I was too unruly, hyper-sensitive, and weird as a kid. So I had to attend an SBD school for developmentally delayed kids. BAD IDEA! I first got depressed in the second grade–hated that school! I got yelled at for reading too much and talking about things the others couldn’t understand.
My IQ is above average, btw. Even on drugs it was. Being forced to watch Despicable Me, The Smurfs, and play Ring Around the Rosie in public (traffic passed by so everyone could see us acting like morons) sounds funny. But it was very humiliating. I think that’s what Day Treatment is about. Breaking spirits and public degradation.
Kind of a waste of time. IF I beat a guy senseless with a baseball bat AND cause his body temp to rise above 105 degrees for 24 hours, then let him go, it’s a safe bet he will be brain damaged.
Which hurt him more, multiple blows to his cranium or elevated body temp? Who cares!
I really want to do a study on how many people labeled “bipolar” got that way from a bad reaction to an SSRI. My guess is the pharma-psychiatry guild wants to keep quiet about this. I doubt they have done any research on this since they know at the bottoms of their filthy little hearts it would make their industry look bad.
I like Sera’s quote, because she points out “stigma” is just like racism and other forms of singling others out to treat badly.
When NAMI talks about “stigma” they make it sound likes it’s maybe not okay, but still a natural and legitimate response to the “mentally ill.” It’s only bad because it causes “pill shaming” and cuts into their profits.
Yep. “It COULDN’T be the blessed medication’s fault. If you weren’t a defective with a messed up brain it wouldn’t have made you loony!”
Like justifying stomping on someone’s leg and breaking it. “Well, if your stupid femur weren’t so brittle, it wouldn’t have broken when I jumped on it repeatedly.”
I believe that there might possibly be SOME benefit to using small amounts of neuroleptics for 2-4 weeks. Like pain-killer. Not insulin!
No psychiatrists are open to this idea however. So folks in emotional crisis just need to hide till they feel better. Disgusting how we punish the weak and suffering!
I had a numinous experience somewhat like yours when I was slightly psychotic from effexor withdrawal. It was definitely a hallucination, but I believe God used it to get through to me.
The only message I received was a personal one. He pronounced me clean–no longer unclean. Till then the word “bipolar 2” had integrated itself into my soul like some evil magician’s spell. This had made it impossible for me to overcome my mood swings and depression.
The voice left. I knew I wouldn’t hear Him long; He warned me there would soon be troughs, but I was through the worst and was not a slave to fear anymore. The voice was too overwhelming for me to function in the “real world.” In a day or two it left. It was for the best.
My years in the MI System made me shrewd enough to keep the whole thing a secret. Especially from medical professionals or any shrinks I accidentally run into. What they don’t know won’t hurt me! 🙂
Agree or disagree with the NRA. But a big difference between that group and Big Pharma is all the money comes from individual members. Some are rich. Most are not, like my Dad who uses his gun to cut his retirement grocery bill. But the NRA is grass roots–not a corporation.
What about those who were earning livings until psychiatry interfered and made them unemployable? I wasn’t self supporting, but I was a full time college student with a part time job at the library till I was dumb enough to go on Anafranil.
Psychiatry “helps” people in one way by banishing them from the workplace. Disabling people who would gladly support themselves otherwise, forcing tax payers to shell out $$$$$ for the drugs and other crap the shrinks provide. The shrinks are bigger drains on our economy than any welfare recipients.
Their greed is insatiable too. How many crippled young people are enough Dr. Quackenbush? 20%? 25%? 33%?
When shrinks rave about all the “mentally ill” not getting the “help” they–the young people–need they are actually filling everyone in on their business goals over the next 5 years. Cha-ching!
Psychiatric “diagnoses” are character defamation. They take annoying, odd, or bad behaviors and tell the community that this is the entire identity of the diagnosed–that they are hopelessly and irredeemably evil.
Just for good measure they add behaviors the person has never been guilty of. If you are “schizophrenic” you must be dangerously violent. “Bipolars” are all promiscuous. Whether you have ever been violent or promiscuous is irrelevant. You will surely become that way if you aren’t already.
The term “stigma” comes from the practice of punishing law breakers and runaway slaves by cutting or branding their bodies to show the community “This is an object of disgrace. Treat it accordingly.”
Back in ancient times, the people who carried out these sentences never pretended to be confused or upset when their victims became outcasts. Nor did they have the chutzpah/stupidity to whine that they were the only ones who really suffered when they branded or cut marks in other people.
Either shrinks are dumber than coleslaw or pathological liars. Either way, why does anyone believe their whiny nonsense? It’s not like they suffer anything but wealth and prestige.
Joanna some people have very low IQs. Mentally they never age beyond say–age 8. Are you saying people disconnected with reality fall into this category?
Sadly I have to agree. But these people are much less common than everyone thinks. And–just like we would want to improve the cognitive abilities of an adult with developmental delays–we should strive to bring the “dreamer” back to reality. Pills are not the answer, since they will turn a brief stroll down La la Lane into a life long residency in the Twilight Zone. 70% recovery beats 0.
A major problem, Joanna is we have a one-size-fits-all solution for those labeled SMI. No real distinctions are made between the violent and nonviolent, the out-of-touch and the eccentrics (who probably don’t need any help at all), the anxious and the angry. The examples you describe only fit maybe 5% of the “mentally ill” at the very most.
Something no one mentions is the mass shooters usually had histories of violent crimes. But no one takes little things like that into consideration when drafting crappy legislation.
I heard that Open Dialogue has been hijacked by mainstream psychiatry in many places. Probably not everywhere in America, but this presents a real problem.
Wouldn’t “thought-divergent” be a better term? Folks on the autistic spectrum think differently as do others who aren’t on it. Like me.
Maybe brain chemistry/structure are behind this. But as Peter Breggin points out we’re very ignorant about the human brain. Figuring out how to understand each other’s thoughts is more productive than focusing on alleged neurological differences too.
I agree. Studying the origins of psychiatry and how it has been used as a means of social control would be great.
I prefer the term “mad” to”mentally ill” because it’s not a pretentious pseudo-scientific term. There are bizarre, extreme states of mind. These are not brain diseases though–as everyone thinks of when they hear”mental illness.”
The groups I attended semi-voluntarily were so defeatist and demoralizing that I had to leave to overcome my depression.
Lonelier than ever, but no longer going through the drivel of “you’ll never get better–just give up.”
This seems to run counter to the myth of the happy productive lives we’ll lead if we swallow our safe and effective pills. When I asked why we weren’t getting better everybody got angry. This was long before I discovered the truth about psych drugs too.
When I point out how people go downhill and become more cognitively impaired then ever people act shocked. Is it normal for people to stare vacantly into space, not be able to smile or weep, lose the ability to follow a page of sustained prose, develop drug addictions and binge eating disorders?
Had some people on this site tell me I’m a meany for “insulting” people victimized by shrinks somehow cause they’re better off lobotomized. Denial is more than a river in Egypt.
I have had a good experience with Zoloft. It brought me out of my depression. But the benefits were short term. My life was no better. My family treated me poorly–in a way they never did till my shrink told them I was hopelessly insane.
The reason I get angry when people insist these things work is this hurts “consumers” when they aren’t magically transformed into walking smiley faces from pill popping.
They talk about “pill shaming.” How about patient shaming?
You take the drugs religiously–exactly as prescribed. But your depression continues. Or it worsens. Or you become floridly psychotic.
Your parents or partner run to your shrink in desperation. He smiles, and (I assume) lies through his teeth. “The meds have been overwhelmingly proven to be safe and effective. Obviously your child/partner isn’t taking them exactly as prescribed or everything would be fine.”
They accuse you of “non compliance” despite your tearful protestations. When you complain they aren’t working they laugh at you.
Your therapist either accuses you of “non compliance” too, or says you just aren’t working hard enough. Since the drugs have thoroughly straightened out your thought processes you have NO EXCUSE to keep making bad choices–like lying in bed half the day from drug-induced fatigue.
Actually doing something to help the “crazy”–little stuff like words of encouragement, letting them know you still love and accept them, helping them financially since they’re forced to live in crushing poverty–these are totally unnecessary.
All the supporters of psychiatry I know are cold, unloving, and selfish. If they cram pills down your throat they can throw you on the scrap heap and go on their merry way. Their conscience is totally appeased. “I made her take her ‘meds.’ That’s all that’s needed.”
Let her rot. If she commits suicide, who cares? It’s nobody’s fault after all.
A question I bet no one has been allowed to ask publicly. How many people has James Baldwin helped taper off SSRIs?
None of the shrinks I know ever did that. They told me I was stuck taking drugs till I died. No wonder I wanted to die.
Another thing. Who runs the Mental Elf? My guess is it’s probably psychiatric professionals and/or “concerned loved” ones with one or two token SMI’s to laud the “life-saving medications.”
They only confuse the issue by calling it a brain disease. None of the bigwig shrinks believe in morality. They never talk about it in their books or papers.
I view “madness” as a condition but it would almost always be temporary if psychiatrists would bug off and let us recover.
So “Mad Studies” would be like “Migraine Studies”–putting migraine sufferers into a category different from others just because they had a bad headache 10 years ago. And no, there is no known biological reason for it. It’s not an illness or disease. But it’s terrifying, I can assure you.
Craig I have always felt condemned when these “magical” pills did not work. People yelled at me when I seized, gained weight, couldn’t smile. These were actually proofs of my “compliance.”
I’m off the damned drugs. No one can even tell. They seem amazed that I can smile and have lost forty pounds.
Refusing to consider myself mentally ill helps me act more responsibly.
How is considering yourself hopelessly insane supposed to help you behave yourself? It teaches that you can’t help yourself and if you keep pill popping all your problems will resolve themselves or be resolved by the Keepers of the Mad enabling you. Isn’t learned helplessness the proper term?
1. Non-coercive counseling. Choice theory and Finnish Dialogue are good.
2. Hearing Voices support groups.
3. 12 step programs like EA.
4. Journaling, writing and other art forms.
5. Nutritional supplements–especially if emotional problems are caused by a deficiency.
6. Exercise minus Zoloft. Seriously. Zoloft makes exercise less effective at helping depression.
7. Figuring out how your life stinks and fixing it or coping more effectively.
8. Sleeping at least 7 hours a night but less than 9.
9. Figuring out how to taper off your SSRIs. These cause depression and prolong episodes. My bouts of depression used to last a week.Thanks to the miracle of SSRIs I had a single episode of low grade depression for well over 10 years.
10. Doing nothing at all. Sometimes a safe space is necessary, but it’s not supposed to be a “treatment center.” Just 3 hots and a cot, the ability to exercise, peace and quiet, and a few sympathetic ears to vent to.
With the “safe and effective treatments” psychiatry provides “schizophrenics” have a 16% recovery rate. Without any treatment the number is 70%.
I was reading an article in a religious magazine yesterday about benefits of sadness–it causes us to be more empathetic and thoughtful for example.
The writer hurriedly made the proviso that sadness was different from “real clinical depression which science has proven to be a chemical imbalance in the brain. If you have that be sure to get ‘help.'”
How do you distinguish between the two? There is no test to measure brain chemistry.
I felt sick and quit reading the article. Naive simpleton! Folks like him LOVE psychiatry since it absolves them from doing squat to help the hurting in their church.
No Rev. Dork, you think you’re humane and scientific, but actually you’re neither. And if you chose to know anything but what you see on television you wouldn’t make such an easy mark for the Rx drug industry!
Thanks to Joanna Moncrieff I found out about tardive psychosis. I kept telling people the mega doses of Haldol I took made me psychotic, but no one listened. Years after the fact I feel almost vindicated. The shrinks were gas lighting me.
As I said in an earlier comment, Cat, it’s much easier to convince people that psychiatry is full of corrupt practitioners than that the system itself is inherently corrupt.
Number 16. Throw away “mental health diagnoses.” They enable bigots and cause undue pessimism in the labeled and the labeled’s family members. This would also minimize the need for financial support of any kind since they could find employment more easily.
Number 17. Do away with Day Treatment. The whole thing is infantilizing and a huge time sink. Involvement with a “mental wellness” center is a form of segregation. Ditto for “clubhouses.” If someone needs help reintegrating into society they can make a plan with help from a counselor–or better yet a peer manager. Volunteering, groups like EA or AA, clubs, etc. I find I get along better with people I meet this way, since we have more in common than being randomly lumped together as “mentally ill.”
Yes, I’m Feelindiscouraged. Not trying to raise up a sock puppet army, but my short term memory is poor. Hence pass word problems and multiple accounts. Plus Feelindiscouraged was a negative moniker.
Szazs looked at “psychiatry” as inherently coercive because it’s based on lies. Honest–sometimes brutally–he did not care for liars.
He counseled people by encouraging them to be honest with themselves and not to build their lives on a lie.
I liked his idea that a man who hears a voice telling him to kill his wife and obeys that voice actually deceived himself. He caused himself to hear a voice because his marriage was unhappy and he didn’t like alimony. Of course he could just be lying to the court too; he never heard any voice, but wanted a lighter sentence.
There are some rare cases of “religious zealots” who act like Joanna’s example. I have never met one personally–because they are RARE. Talking to a clergy member who would tell them how wrong this behavior is might help more than psychiatry.
Actually all of her examples are extremely rare. Maybe 1 out of 1000 get inducted into the “mental illness” hall of fame start out this way.
Most enter through one of two doors. They act very eccentrically–freak people out–and get “treated.” Others start out with real problems. Emotional problems, not organic. They seek out a shrink in desperation and receive “help” in the form of lies, neurotoxins, lies, imprisonment, and more lies.
The freakish extremes need help. But I wish Joanna Moncrieff and others would acknowledge that most do not fall into this category.
For those who physically assault others or commit arson there’s the legal system. Many “symptoms” in the DSM are actually crimes. Or simply rude behaviors.
Prosecute the offender as a criminal or treat them like you would a less eccentric boor. They will be better treated as ex-felons than “bipolars” or “schizophrenics” so you can’t argue inhumanity.
Both their behavioral patterns were hurting not just them but those around them.
I love poetry. I am deeply religious. But my religion teaches me to love my enemies–forgive the psychiatrists and others who have wronged me. I wish I could!
It never has caused me to hold a knife to someone’s throat screaming at them to repent. I know these things happen, and they baffle me. For me, my faith has been a center of sanity in the craziness of the psychiatric system.
Poetry also helps me. There is actually a field called poetry therapy that helps people get a grip on emotional pain through writing poems.
I feel a lot better since getting off drugs and relocating. I’m building a writers portfolio and hope to (finally) get off SSI.
Still pretty sick. If I had taken large amounts of heroin or meth for 20+ years my health would be poor too. Not proof of a meth deficiency. 🙂
Nearly all my problems are physical. That throws everybody off since they “know” non-compliance means psychotic mania or suicidal depression. Not severe anemia, allergies, and exhaustion.
The anemia actually started before my taper. I believe long term SSRI use has damaged my digestive system. Of course no doctor dares to say this. Did I mention I distrust the medical profession?
What you recommend almost worked for me Joanna. A small amount of the neuroleptic Stellazine helped me overcome my intense anxiety in college after years of bullying in high school. After a month I really didn’t need it any more. I was making friends and doing much better.
My shrink disagreed and fed me the “chemical imbalance” lie. Two years later I had sexual thoughts I wanted to suppress and he gave me Anafranil. It caused psychotic mania–which he swore was impossible. I wonder if I will ever have a life now. 🙁
Interesting talk about “outpacing science.” Isn’t that what psychiatry is all about?
Claiming to know what they don’t know: We know what causes psychosis and depression!
Claiming to know what can’t be known: 80% of suicides would not have occurred if psychiatry had intervened sooner.
Claiming to know what is false (usually knowing it is false): We know that SSRI’s correct chemical imbalances in the brain and they ALWAYS are 100% safe and effective! 😛
Threatening people with knives is illegal regardless of motivation. That first example Joanna presents might benefit from a serious talk with a clergy member who would point out how unChristlike and unBiblical his behaviors are.
PTSD is caused by emotional trauma. Not genetic inferiority or being an evolutionary throwback–the key premise to psychiatry (a field of eugenics.)
I’m glad you found these drugs helpful. They have some short term benefits as emotional pain killers. I felt better when I first took Stelazine in small amounts of 3 mg twice a day. If I had been told the truth–this will take the edge off your overwhelming anxiety–and taken off after say a month when my social issues had resolved it would have been a good thing not a bad. Like morphine for a broken leg.
For psychiatrists and employees of the MI System yes. But many family members, grateful consumers, and ordinary folks outside must have different motivations to buy into the “mental illness” paradigm pharma-psychiatry pushes.
Keeping junior from annoying or embarrassing us. Letting me off the hook for irresponsible behaviors. The cute commercials would NEVER endorse a product that hurts/kills people. Etc.
Stevie, I agree what they call “mental illness” has no biological explanation. Basically it’s unhappy people coping with horrible situations by letting their imaginations work overtime.
Why, then, the emphasis that “mental illness” is a brain disease? All the mainstream resources insist it’s bad biology–not human suffering–at work.
My assigned function has been to shut up and take my “meds” from age 20. They went out of their way to discourage me from doing anything useful or productive.
The last thing a rape survivor needs is shaming for their negative feelings. A lot do experience self hatred. Sexual harassment–not as bad as rape–caused me years of self loathing and body issues. Almost developed an eating disorder.
Why are you siding with rapists? They claim rape is no big deal and never hurt anybody. That it’s good–even enjoyable–for the victim.
Had a GP argue that discrimination against the “mentally ill” doesn’t exist. Really.
This naive simpleton also claimed that fruit was “carbohydrate free” and metformin would help me lose weight since 2 pounds a week wasn’t fast enough. He wrote me a prescription for it which I never filled. I do not have diabetes.
After years of having others tell me what to do I struggle to tell myself now.
But I keep my apartment clean and take care of myself without a mental “health” center. May have a couple writing gigs soon; building my portfolio. Pretty lonely. From what I hear it’s typical.
My condolences, Mescelle! As if a broken foot and arthritis weren’t bad enough those quacks put you on addictive drugs and played mind games with you.
I remember how frightening it was when my first shrink claimed Anafranil NEVER caused insomnia, hallucinations or mania. Either he was ignorant and too lazy to check his pill manual for side effects–all the things
I described were listed. Or maybe he was just gas lighting. How many shrinks are into this kind of emotional abuse?
Glad I’m not a man. It must be tough being shamed when you cry or show vulnerability. Risking people laughing at you for writing poetry, admiring sunsets, or playing the violin. Having to play sports even if you lack the desire or natural ability.
Hard being female too. But it’s not all “skittles and beer” for guys either.
You don’t know my situation. I’m getting off SSI despite overwhelming odds and fighting psychiatry with no assistance from the morons around me. If I fight too openly I risk being locked up, drugged, and shocked.
Everyone I talk to believes everything they see on TV about psychiatry is true. And the Cures Act is the most wonderful thing ever!
Gonna cost those idiots. I’m one of the very few to escape. If they had their way I’d be permanently disabled and dependent.
Glad you’re not a clueless sheeple MJMS. Most are happy with bureacrats like Tim Murphy locking up and disabling people since they think we’ll eat them otherwise.
And no I’m not JUST feeling sorry for myself. Too angry to be depressed. Doing online activism as a writer.
Everyone knows consuming massive quantities of opium for 20 or 30 years never hurt anyone. How alarmist to think they are any more dangerous than gumdrops! 😀
Those Benzo buddies are a bunch of radical conspiracy theorists no doubt.
No one deserves to be imprisoned or tortured for religious beliefs. It goes against the 1st Amendment.
The danger with psychiatry is that it’s in bed with our legal system, but there is nothing judicial about it. If they did their cruel, pointless experiments on convicted criminals,calling it punishment, they would be called out for their cruel and unusual punishments. Only because they put on faces of smooth-faced hypocrites–claiming to fix what’s not broken and “cure” people they disapprove of for X reason–does our society grant them immunity.
Evil will always defeat good–because good is stupid. ~Mel Brooks’s Space Balls
People love the idea that pills are the answer to all their personal problems. This lets them abdicate all responsibility for bad life choices. They don’t have to do squat to improve themselves when the friendly neighborhood dealer in a lab coat can hand out fists of happy pills.
This also lets them bum around watching TV and going to “clubhouses” where they can be treated like kids with really low IQs instead of working. No financial responsibilities!
Some folks like the system because they enjoy a lifelong adolescence!
I’m very angry Cal! I notice that while everyone takes pains not to offend or victimize ethnic minorities and other groups few even think of the disabled–or those who think differently–however you choose to view Autism.
Probably because this is a nation of bullies. If an oppressed group can band together, make enough noise and pay for great media PR, people will respect them. Those who can’t are in trouble.
It’s worth noting that “normal” is not always “typical.”
Klerman’s accusation seems off. “If a drug makes you feel good it must be bad.” Most shrinks work on the opposite premise. “The worse a drug makes you feel the better it is for you.” No doubt it builds character. 😀
Psychiatry is Calvinism for Atheists. I’m not referring to asceticism.
Instead of a sovereign God who forces us to be good or evil, we have sovereign genes and neurological conditions. No room for free will in either case.
With my bipolar label–an SMI–they would have locked me up before you can say “Sigmund Freud” if they had known what I was about.
Oddly no one saw any difference. This happens a lot–probably because people have preconceived notions of how “non-compliant” mental patients will act. When we don’t they assume we are “good;” even experts are easily fooled.
I continued going to the Mental Illness Center and having sessions with my clueless therapist for a few months. She talked about how I should only date my own kind (other “bipolars”) and regaled me with cautionary tales about The Naughty Patient Who Lacked Insight, Quit His Meds and Decompensated Ever After.
I realized the truth behind these anecdotes: a guy feels worse on his drugs than before, cold turkeys without researching, has horrible DTs, gets locked up where his original drugs are doubled and tripled so he’s more disabled than before. As Paul Harvey used to say, “And now you know the rest of the story.”
If you’re a consumer you must suffer from the disease of consumption. Ha ha!
Consumed is a better term. That’s what the treatments do to people. Only instead of wasting away we swell up like balloons. Malnourished the whole time.
Not all psychiatrists are EVUL. No one is bad for badness sake. Even sadists are motivated by power/twisted sexual desire rather than Doing the Wrong Thing.
When I read the horror stories here I realize how well off I have been.
Some actually do care about people and imagine they are helping those they lock up/drug/or shock. How willful this blindness is I cannot say. I’m only human, not omniscient.
The problem is the psychiatric relationship is unhealthy and lends itself to abuse. Not all antebellum slave owners acted like Simon Le Gree; nor have all husbands in misogynist societies beaten their wives. That doesn’t mean slavery or denying full citizenship to women are good things though.
Many don’t realize the drugs are themselves exquisite torture. If they saw us in thumb screws, on a rack, or being burned by cigars more would sympathize with us. But since our suffering is invisible, no one–except psychiatrists and us–sees it for what it is.
I no longer have my original symptoms. Out of curiousity I have taken an online test for “bipolar” a couple times over the last two years. I definitely would not qualify as “bipolar”–except I did a long time ago once upon a time. That one question sets at naught all the progress I’ve made in emotional maturity.
If I had a real medical problem like cancer and it went into remission would the doctors say, “You tested positive for cancer ten years ago. Therefore you will always be regarded as cancerous and forced to take chemo and radiation till you die”?
I believe Bonnie works in psychology, Pat. Note she’s a Ph.D. Not an MD.
Psycho-therapy can also be abusive. But, umlike mainstream psychiatry, it doesn’t have to be. Especially if no demeaning psych labels are involved.
I view “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” as moral judgments. Not medical diagnoses. My own “bipolar” label helped me just like Jean Valjean’s “papers” helped him in Les Miserables.
“Once a bipolar, always a bipolar,” sneers Dr. Jalvert the shrink.
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a humorous story about that. He wrote more than horror.
A con-man, who plagiarizes for a living, digs up old books by Milton, Shakespeare and others. No one likes the pieces under the name of an unknown. That’s a very old problem.
Oldhead, I would be a good candidate to take on the religious right. Churches think they are being kind when they lock up “mentally ill” people and drug/shock them–not to mention scientific.
NRA members would be in this group.
They should be reminded that religion (The God Delusion) and a zeal for the 2nd Ammendment are both considered severe mental illnesses by many.
Also, more people receiving psychiatric “services” means more forced to live on disability–receiving expensive drugs–with tax payers footing the bill. And the drugs are really the same as you buy on the street.
That’s a hasty generalization, Steve. Like saying, “All men hate intelligent, successful, witty women.” As a woman, I disagree with that blanket statement.
“All women like bad-boy, alpha jerks,” is also silly. If that were true why do so many of us laugh at the Disney villain Gaston?
More Jews than psychiatric patients were murdered during the Holocaust. Probably because there were fewer accused of “mental illness” back then. No SSRIs to set off bizarre episodes and create crops of “bipolars” to harvest.
Few know they did come for the “mentally ill” first though.
I prefer the term counseling to therapy. Steve is right. The role is one of empathy rather than scientific detachment. A good counselor is an educator, not a medical specialist. However intimate friendships outside the office and romances are bad ideas as well as unethical/illegal since they ruin the proper relationship of counselor and counselee.
I am not against counseling–between consenting adults. I think Szazs said that. Forcing “counseling” on an unwilling person is emotional abuse no matter how kind your intentions. Glasser got around that by counseling family members on how they could change their own behaviors to help struggling adult kids or partners. Imagine that!
Much Madness is divinest Sense–
To a discerning Eye–
Much Sense–the starkest Madness–
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail–
Assent–and you are sane–
Demur–you’re straightway dangerous–
And handled with a Chain–
FeelinDiscouraged here–using another account due to poor password recollection!
I am pretty upset–more sad than angry–at something I saw on GoFundMe. A boy of 15 or 16 was being bullied unmercifully. He began having homicidal fantasies of murdering his tormenters. Refusing to act on them, he decided he was “mentally ill” and sought out “help” from his friendly neighborhood mental illness maker.
He submitted to being locked up and drugged–because he didn’t want to do what was wrong! Much more moral than the “sane” folks around him.
The GoFundMe account is to pay his torture bills–I mean medical bills.
Let’s see. Now the poor kid will go back to school. The bullies will be 10 x as nasty because the shrinks proved the bullies were right! He’s a crazy who deserves to be picked on. His drugs will bring down his GPA and probably all hopes of college or having a family.
Interesting to note how psychiatry considers bullies sane and normal! Since they’re happy hurting others, it may be “bad behavior” but it’s not “mental illness.” So they get off scott free.
Because it has no sense of justice–even if it continued to exist–decoupling psychiatry from the legal sytem would be a huge step forward!
Dahlia, I appreciate your problem. It’s much easier to convince people that psychiatry is full of abusers than that the whole thing is a pseudo-science.
My goal is not to “burn down the club” but discredit it.
Psychiatry does not fill a need, but it pretends to fill a very real need. Ending overwhelming emotional pain.
I sought out psychiatry due to anxiety, unending sadness, and emotional trauma due to years of bullying and sexual harrassment in high school.
How was I “helped”? They frightened me by telling me I was hopelessly insane, emphasized how I should give up on a fulfilling life, encouraged those around me to treat me horribly, and gave me massive doses of drugs to disable/sicken me.
In other words–more anxiety, unending sadness, and emotional trauma. Thanks a lot shrinks!
Oddly enough this article gives me some relief. Why? Because it makes me feel justified. After being put on 10 mg of Haldol, then Stellazine I developed a really annoying case of OCD that made people hate to be around me (in addition to mini-seizures and eyes rolling back in my head.) For years, shrinks insisted that I should be on that stuff. When they allowed me to go off the older antipsychotics the OCD symptoms were greatly reduced. Now I’m off antipsychotics completely. 🙂
Unfortunately I was kicked out of college first because my dorm mom claimed I wasn’t meds compliant. Little did she know! I felt I had to let her know about my diagnosis because I couldn’t control the seizures or conceal them all the time (obviously.)
Those shrinks can claim my OCD was caused by my “illness.” What they can’t explain is why I didn’t have those symptoms before and don’t have them now. No wonder they worry about us going off our “meds.”
Alex, thanks for your response. I just realized something. My dad has done his share of marital counseling as a preacher; he often says love isn’t a feeling, but an act of the will. If that is true, maybe hate is too. In which case, just because I’m very angry and have negative feelings about someone–or actually what they did to me–that doesn’t mean I hate him/her. That is a relief, because I don’t see how anyone could go through what I’ve gone through and am going through in wd and go around with a smiley face and good vibes all the time. Unless you were a masochist perhaps.
I know it’s wrong, but I am full of anger that I can’t seem to get rid of. I know hate is wrong, but I really cannot forgive my persecutors, let alone love them it seems. This is contrary to my religious beliefs, but there you have it.
This bothers me more than what they have done (and still may do) to me.
Psychiatric labels are no more valid. At least the Myers Briggs categories don’t label some people as “sick and dangerous.” No one has ever been discriminated against or imprisoned for being INFJ like I am supposed to be. However everybody hates you once they find out about your bipolar or borderline personality disorder diagnosis! That’s the main reason I hate shrinks–besides their lying to us about the drugs they peddle.
On the positive side, I printed out a summary of the Murphy Bill for my parents today. They were horrified when they read about the loss of liberty and other rights it would entail for people like me. My parents actually want me well. Not like some others.
A remote rural area, over a hundred miles away from a psychiatric hospital or ward. No shrinks here either. And no one knows my history.
Report comment
They prefer not to see us as human beings. They WILL not listen to our pleas for mercy or how their precious pills–which grant them status as Real Doctors–have maimed and killed countless millions.
Instead, they chalk up our laments to proof of how hopelessly sick and crazy we are. Blame the iatrogenic damage from their professional treatments on defective genes/brain chemistry. Both assumed rather than proven to exist.
Which made staying in the “mental health” system life under a medical dictatorship. Rather than negotiate I fled.
Report comment
Joshua–you might be interested in this list of anti-psychiatry principles and demands. It was created by a group of psychiatric survivors calling themselves Anti-Psychiatry Rising.
WE BELIEVE
1. That psychiatry is a tool of social control which enforces conformity to the prevailing social order.
2. That “mental illness” is a semantically absurd concept which falsely conflates the abstraction known as the mind with the physical brain to mislead people into believing they have literal diseases.
3. That the psychiatric system cannot be reformed but must be abolished.
WE DEMAND
1. An end to all forced psychiatric procedures and “treatments,” included but not limited to incarceration, solitary confinement, physical restraints, drugging, and electroshock.
2. An end to all state support for psychiatry, including but not limited to the use of psychiatric testimony in legal proceedings; psychiatric screenings in schools, prisons, and workplaces; licensing of psychiatrists; and the use of public monies to support psychiatric programs or research.
WE ASSERT
And plan to exercise–our right as an oppressed class to fundamental human rights and self-determination.
Report comment
I’m sorry KateL.
In a similar situation.
On drugs for 25 years. Off for 5.
Feels like I have a moderate case of chronic fatigue syndrome most days. It was worse during withdrawal, but my energy levels are still low. Under 50 but feel at least 75.
Report comment
Thank you, Antonia. The irony is I went through the system because I hated myself and wanted to become more normal. The experts made me more abnormal than ever and gave me a badge of shame.
Now I come across as a socially awkward but sweet and deep woman in midlife with multiple health issues. The latter puzzle people more than anything else about me. I also think I’ve suffered neurological damage due to extremely poor short term memory and not seeing things around me. (Worse than before I took the pills. Going off helps me appreciate my loss in cognitive function more.)
Report comment
Maybe follow the Golden Rule? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
But running a society based on that premise has never been tried before. And I don’t think there is any law to make people kinder or more compassionate. Any more than there’s a kind of medical treatment. (The legal and medical tyrants trying to enforce morality by brute force are light years from practicing their own rules. No better than self-styled theocrats when it comes down to it.)
Report comment
Yep. Are they really that lacking in awareness of how this harms relationships just like the system’s drugs harm us physically?
Report comment
I too am a Christian. I found a deliverance more helpful than years of so-called therapy.
Report comment
I find single womanhood doable–as long as I don’t date. Lol
Dating apps stink.
Report comment
Thank you, Sam.
Violating the conscience is a form of emotional abuse.
Report comment
Psychiatry hurts people. Not just physically but the soul.
Ironic how the would-be-healers claim that afflicted part does not exist but go on to damage it by assaulting the organ they associate with the soul.
Some old school psychiatrists helped people feel better through talking and listening. But I have found a way to get this help through friends and pastoral counseling.
Just like I can get help for my underactive thyroid, anemia, B12 deficiency without “mental health.” These are physical problems known to cause depression and fatigue.
Report comment
Psychiatry is a liar. Mental illness is its Big Lie.
The best weapon against any lie is the truth.
Report comment
Thanks Rosalee.
Report comment
Just like corn syrup for diabetes. Lol
Report comment
Hope you had a merry Christmas too, Bippyone.
I guess the psychiatrist who “helped” you did not like feminism.
Julie Greene once told me how psychiatrists decide how normal something is. Do they agree with/do it themselves? If they do, it is healthy and normal.
Report comment
Thank you, Rebel.
Report comment
Thanks KS.
Report comment
Existential has different meanings.
It can mean physical–or wiping out all or nearly most of humanity like that cheerful family flick The Road. (Lol)
Or it can mean a profound threat to more than mere corporeal existence. And often of the individual. The existential angst of Franz Kafka’s works for instance.
Psychiatry brought on a profound crisis of the latter with me. It conflicted with my former life philosophy that I was a unique human being who had a soul and free will. Psychiatry told me that, “No. You are just a bunch of random chemicals firing in a skull. And yours aren’t even firing correctly or the chemical balance is off. So you are subhuman at your innermost being.”
And these same Lab Coats whine about stigma. How “It isn’t fair that the mentally ill are discriminated against, scapegoated, and seen as subhuman monsters.” They write books and articles lamenting this.
Then you read between the lines. They really don’t give a rip about those who suffer from the “stigma” they create by their dehumanizing quackery. (Even NAMI owns that the “bio model” is counter productive in changing public perception for the better.) Lab Coats really just are worried about how their “stigma” may bite them when people are too afraid of having their lives and relationships destroyed to “get the help they need.”
That shrink’s yacht won’t pay for itself. Lower stigma folks. Just the right level. Enough to encourage unlimited involuntary “treatments” but not enough to discourage voluntary consumers either.
Report comment
Been thinking about the Murphy Bill. How in 2017 D.J. Jaffe and Torrey conducted a media blitz ranting about all those “untreated mentally ill mass shooters.” Every other day it seemed some new “mentally ill” mass shooting occurred.
How “safe and effective treatments” were touted as necessary for the greater good. Not necessarily to help the “mentally ill” but for all they might come in contact with because they were such monsters when left untreated. Otherwise they were “almost as safe as regular people.”
Know why I stayed on those drugs that destroyed my ability to think, feel, or live independently for decades? Lots of guilting from places like NAMI. “If you don’t take you’re cocktail you are being selfish. And you might kill someone like Andrea Yates did drowning her children.”
I know the role psych drugs played with Yates and the mass shootings. But the narrative put profits above facts or the health of those trapped in the mental system.
Report comment
Congressman Tim Murphy loved to use them.
Report comment
FWIW, Jan, not everyone who reads MIA is a psychiatric survivor. Of course those who have never been on the receiving end of psychiatric abuse do not share our lived experience.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
I remember back in 2017 when D.J. Jaffe and “Doc” Torrey were plugging away at the narrative of the mass shootings. With the help of the MSM who relied upon Big pHarma sponsorship.
The reason they called for the passage of Murphy’s Bill? Public health and safety. The “severely mentally ill” had no right to run around at large without their medication because–according to respected doctors such as Torrey, Pies, and countless others–they were putting others at risk.
Yes, they were–nearly all–out of their minds on these “safe, effective treatments” when they committed these mass killings. But the doctors didn’t care to share this because they had a product to promote. The last thing they wanted was to “pill shame” the psychiatric profession by drawing attention to the role SSRI’s play in violent or disinhibited behaviors or the dulling of emotions such as empathy or guilt that can prevent murders.
I believed the lying narrative for years. I believed the medical experts who lied to me and obeyed them. Out of fear of brining grief to my friends/family/innocent bystanders I took my cocktail religiously. I knew it was shortening my life and disabling me. Yet I took it as an act of duty and sacrifice for those around me.
Sadly this sacrifice was not only unnecessary, but the soul killing drugs made me a worse person–not better–to be around. Furthermore, it ruined my ability to care for myself. I’m slightly better, but had to rely on others because the drugs reduced me to a state of childish dependence for a quarter century of my life,
The men and women I looked to for controlling my “illness” did not care about people like me and had no qualms about lying through their teeth or knowingly poisoning us (psychiatric drugs are a “slow kill”) to further their careers and get free cruises and other goodies from Big pHarma.
Report comment
Since going off mind altering drugs that cause mood swings and rejecting my “bipolar” label I am acting normally again. Learned normal social skills in my forties. Been in the system for 25 years.
Psychiatry drove me crazy. Leaving restored my senses.
“Mental health” exists solely to drive sane people crazy or prevent the crazy from ever returning to reality. Big profits in keeping people insane and helpless.
Report comment
“You are nothing without me. You can’t make it on your own. You’re not smart enough to care for yourself and no one but a professional–like me–can stand to be around you.”
Shrinks act and talk a lot like domestic abusers.
Report comment
Dr. Gotzche, thank you for this article.
I loved your book Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime: How Big Pharma has Corrupted Health Care.
Do you think that book played a role in Big Pharma’s concentrated efforts to get you banned–along with Kelly Brogan and others–from Big Tech platforms?
Report comment
I got around that by relocating. I tell everyone–including my HUD apartment manager–that I get SSI for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and an eye condition. Both real and iatrogenic in origin.
Feeling well enough to look for work so I won’t have to worry about a reevaluation by the System. I will move back to my parents’ homestead in the near future too.
I wish David–described in the article–had waited another year. It took me two years after tapering off sertraline before I could feel good things again.
In my late forties I experience more carnal desire than I did twenty-five years ago. Everything has been restored emotionally. Maybe cognitively. Though I struggle to organize and don’t know if biology or frontal lobe damage is to blame. But my amygdala is up and running again.
I love music now. And I’ve become an excellent singer at church now that I have heart to put into it. And I know how to maneuver social situations too.
Report comment
I have read a number of articles about teens and even middle schoolers committing suicide and leaving notes or telling loved ones it was because of the lockdown beforehand. Yet there are no more suicides than usual since March of last year.
Glory be! The suicides for other causes must have dropped. As the writer has noted suicides can also be from political unrest, economic problems, and domestic abuse. Ergo we can assume all three of these factors are no longer the problems they once were.
Thank you, Lancet Psychiatry. I won’t forget this report in the future.
Report comment
Good point.
Report comment
Yes. OH frequently has vented this to me in our correspondence.
Report comment
Well said!
Now that I left my old community I’m doing better.
My undrugged personality is nicer and I can understand social cues at last.
My neighbors think I’m only disabled due to my autoimmune disease. (I really have one thanks to 25 years on drugs.) They treat me like a normal human. The whole experience is overwhelmingly sweet.
Report comment
The “nocebo” effect. What happened to me after 3 weeks on a drug that kept me from sleeping. And a rushed trip to a psych ward where they convinced me it was not the pills but my brain to blame. My new identity as a schizoaffective was born.
Report comment
YouTube
Report comment
Sorry about your experience Ekaterina.
It wasn’t just your chocolate or face creams that were taken. It was your peace of mind and security.
I had a lot of my nicer clothing stolen during a visit years ago. This stuff happens all the time in psych wards.
Years of these figurative slaps in the face led me to flee the System when an opportunity arose.
Report comment
For that matter did the nurse–who gets a lot more than the pittance her charges have to survive on–DESERVE those things? Does the nurse deserve to rob much poorer people? Does she deserve to rule the most socially vulnerable. Those with no credibility or hope of redress when wronged?
If you’re searching for a bad guy to condemn, please consider those running the place and abusing their positions.
Report comment
Had to recover from 24 years in the system by hiding in my parents’ back room for a year to withdraw. A remote, rural area.
Every afternoon I lowered my aching, trembling body into bed so I would have the strength to eat dinner. Drug withdrawals. My parents had no idea why I was so horribly ill on a physical level.
I also had to cope with painful thoughts. I can never have a family now. I’m forced to live on less than $10,000 a year. In chronic pain thanks to long term drug damage.
All so some controlling bureaucrat can present himself as a “real doctor” and earn $300,000 a year instead of a piddling $100,000. Sigh.
I have forgiven the individuals responsible. But what they did was wrong.
Report comment
Drugs don’t stop child abuse.
I used to teach Sunday school and was asked to stop because women found out about my “diagnosis.” So hurtful and unjust.
Maybe people should be judged on the content of their character–what they actually DO–instead of what some quack in a lab coat says after talking to them and looking at files for 10 minutes.
Report comment
I saw him in an interview with a renowned journalist back in 2017. He was talking about how the “mentally ill” should be psychiatrized since “they will just wind up in institutions otherwise.”
Makes me wonder if he knew how the standard “treatments” work by crippling and removing the labeled from mainstream society and “functional” people. By ruining our ability to function properly and causing us ticks, massive weight gain, and flattened facial expressions to aid in segregation.
Very callous dismissal of human beings. Utilitarian and light years away from compassion.
Not here to bash Jaffe, but point out how this ugly attitude has infected (metaphorically) so many faucets of society. Jaffe is dead, but utilitarianism remains alive and well. Along with the bioreductionist model–which dehumanizes everyone.
The “mentally ill” are viewed as malfunctioning robots (actually read an article in Psychology Today calling someone that because of her unusually cruel behaviors) but everyone else–by default–is just a well functioning robot. Psychiatry dehumanizes us all. Including the “normals.”
Report comment
Psychology is a branch of the humanities. This should not be viewed as a bad thing.
The sciences are a worthy field. So are the arts, the humanities, and philosophy.
A fish is not a bird. This is not to the detriment of aquatic life.
Report comment
Sam, what you describe in the second paragraph is a fallacy. Guilt by association.
Similar to linking RW to the Church of Scientology. Though he has no connections nor endorse it in any of his writings.
Report comment
Do you think that’s why Dr. Pies so freely admits to the “chemical imbalance metaphor” in many articles?
He and his fellow quacks can laugh up their sleeves at everyone else’s gullibility, but also vent their indignation that the public think they’re stupid enough to believe their own BS. And they won’t be called out for it this way.
Report comment
Dr. Lies! Bwahahaha.
That’s good, Sam.
Psychiatry is really more of a lie than a science.
Report comment
I reach out to someone by phone every day.
Report comment
If a priest thinks your confession warrants kidnapping you, locking you up for days/weeks/months and plying you with psychological torture including the pharmaceutical variety he will go to prison. A shrink will be handsomely rewarded.
Report comment
Like a Gilbert and Sullivan opera where a young man is scheduled for execution as the penalty for threatening suicide.
Report comment
Why would he need a list for the “SMI”? Last I heard Biden wanted to abolish the second amendment and remove all guns. Rendering such a list superfluous.
Report comment
You got that right. Nobody has the right to kill.
Including doctors in the name of “treatment” or “mercy.”
I too miss Julie.
A lot.
Report comment
A bit confusing Dr. Caplan. “Mentally ill” and developmentally delayed are not the same thing. As someone with an above average IQ I found being conflated with the second frustrating. Nothing wrong with not being too smart, but I got sick of being lumped in with them all the time. We are NOT all alike. The case workers often hated those like me because they couldn’t handle anyone not significantly below themselves in cognitive abilities. Julie Green often complained to me about similar things.
Glad I’m out of that situation.
But, like the DD people, those labeled “mentally ill” seem to get a great deal of not being held morally accountable. Severe “treatments” rather than overt punishment. But it’s not any better. Especially since they can “treat” or punish you for crimes you may commit in the future.
Report comment
Mainstream psychiatry is cancer. A blight on the medical field.
The perfect excuse to ignore–not just the patient’s legitimate grief or trauma–but real physical ailments that could be treated or cured but the doctor is too busy to bother with.
The question is not whether psychiatry can be reformed, but whether Western medicine can be reformed. Doctors are so authoritarian now I hate seeing one.
Report comment
There are a few other situations I’d see a doctor for. A really bad infection that won’t go away for example.
But your comment reminds me that setting a broken leg (or other bone) is the one thing the Christian Science cult allows its members to get help for.
Report comment
A lot of people say dumb things thinking they’ll make us feel better but do the opposite.
I remember an old Schwartzenegger picture where he body slams his comic relief and shouts, “Stop trying to cheer me up!!!”
Report comment
I was repeatedly told in NAMI and day treatment and clubhouse that if I ever went off my “meds” I would either kill myself or someone else or both. Therefore it was my moral obligation to take the drugs even though they made me ill and I realized they would kill me prematurely.
Sad to realize the drugs were making me harder to live with and ruining my ability to perform ADLs and basic hygiene. Years and years of being lied to and about to my nearest and dearest. 🙁
Report comment
Szasz made the comparison of a kindly, well meaning shrink handing out drugs for unhappiness in the sincere belief it will help people to an 18th century physician using blood letting on cholera sufferers.
Good intentions can kill in medicine if the premise is unfounded.
Psychiatry needs to go the way of leeches and bloodletting. The ideology is cancer to the medical system regardless of sincere, well intentioned people.
Report comment
Psychiatrists are less moral than meth dealers.
I’m talking about mainstream shrinks respected by the APA establishment. Not outliers or mavericks like Breggin and those who write for MIA.
Report comment
Yep. Psychiatry justifies and rationalizes the damage it does to the public by saying “Their genes make them intrinsically different from you. They don’t have thoughts or feelings like real people.”
As they watch the cognitive deterioration caused by their “safe and effective treatments” they sooth their consciences by saying, “They were only fit for asylums. If I hadn’t dumbed and numbed them out these defectives MIGHT have broken the law or even hurt someone.”
Report comment
I already have read enough of your writings to know you don’t support TAC or involuntary confinements to psych wards David.
I believe you were the one who got Bob Whitaker to research the efficacy of psychiatric drugs weren’t you? We survivors owe you–as well as he–a debt of gratitude.
Report comment
And, as Peter Breggin says in his videos, we know very little about the human brain too. Mainstream psychiatry would have us believe our brain chemistry consists of only two chemicals. Serotonin and dopamine. To be “tweaked” with those “life saving meds” they hand out like office mints. (At least they won’t force feed you their stale office candy if you decline.)
Report comment
Hi David. I really appreciate what you are trying to do.
Here’s the problem I see with the concept of Mad Pride and why I find it hard to incorporate into the anti psychiatry/critical psychiatry narrative.
First of all let’s look at the archetypes (AKA “diagnoses”) of “severe mental illnesses.” The two most notorious are “Bipolar” and “Schizophrenia.” I’ll describe them–though I don’t believe in them–as I would Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.
“Bipolar symptoms” include behaviors like cheating on your partner, petty theft for fun, verbal and even physical abuse, chasing someone with a knife, lying all the time, drowning your children, killing sprees like Ted Bundy, and mass shootings. All these behaviors have been attributed to “bipolar” by psychiatrists respected in their fields.
“Schizophrenic symptoms” include selfish coldness, hating humanity, violent crimes, killing sprees, and (of course) mass shootings.
By calling myself “mentally ill” or owning my designated role I’ll be living down to the reputation forced upon me by uncaring shrinks. If I’m not guilty of any of the behaviors listed above it’s a form of libelous slander to call me by one of the two “SMI” designations.
The LGBT community found acceptance because, after the sixties, people became more accepting of different expressions of sexuality. They have no problem accepting gays because they’re just like everyone else. Law abiding citizens with no reputation for harming others.
But because of its associations with violent crimes and other bad behaviors “severe mental illness” will never be accepted unless those labeled with it advertise the restraints they wear. Usually chemical. I often tried this in my years as a NAMI activist/mascot. “Look. We’re not bad. We aren’t serial killers or violent. We take our meds! Please accept and like us. We’ll be good and always take our meds even if they make us horribly ill, rot our brains, and kill us before age 53.” 🙁
I guess you can attempt to redefine what “severe mental illnesses” are and explain that even without drugs, shocks, confinement we can be law abiding, non violent citizens. But in the end shrinks define what “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” mean.
And as OH has pointed out there are no biomarkers. These are not legitimate illnesses or disabilities like your paralysis is David. The disabilities many of us share were inflicted by psychiatric remedies. Not problems we were born with.
The reason “born this way” won’t work with survivors is people will still avoid us. In fact it’s worse since they write you off as hopeless. NAMI has been trying this for years. Though for much of the time they’ve known it doesn’t work.
It’s especially problematic if you want the right to live drug free. As many here do. Society views the decision of the “severe mentally ill” to go without their “meds” as so dangerously irresponsible as to be criminal. To their way of thinking by going off your cocktail you run the risk of killing loved ones, cheating on your spouse, violently assaulting strangers, or the ever popular mass shooting spree. Not just your life at risk but all you come in contact with.
The ONLY reason I stayed on my cocktail for 23 years was a sense of obligation to all around me. I knew those pills were harming me and making it hard to function cognitively. But doctors I implicitly trusted assured me I would morph into Ms. Hyde without them and I felt it was wrong to take that risk.
But if you can find ways to work around this narrative–that the “severely mentally ill” are not just rude and inconsiderate but dangerous*–more power to you David Oak. I wish you and the Mad Pride movement well, though I respectfully disagree on its efficacy at ending involuntary and inhumane psychiatric treatment.
* We’re usually depicted as dangerous but not quite self aware enough to be evil, like house pets with rabies.
Report comment
I continued taking Effexor in gradually tapering doses for well over a year. Hard drug to go off!
Report comment
They aren’t Jesus. But they love to play God and take on the role of Messiah.
Only instead of offering themselves up to be crucified, they expect us to allow ourselves to be. Voluntary would be nice–but not essential. Actually that makes us martyrs…or is that unwitting test subjects?
“You need to suck it up. We all have to make sacrifices,” says the doctor making a 7 digit income off those like you, driving his luxury car off to one of his million dollar mansions. After successfully destroying your livelihood, adult independence, ability to feel happy, and all your ability to have ordinary human relationships. Ain’t doctors swell?
Report comment
Hugs Aunty!
From across the Pond.
Report comment
Lol.
Been off mine for three.
My blind obedience and worshipful submission to these unreliable cons playing god, made me a permanent burden to society. And especially the people I cared about.
It wasn’t in the best interest of me as an individual or the collective either. Unless you count morally (but not financially) bankrupt collectives like Big Pharma or the APA. It stinks to struggle with ADLs and only have $700 a month to live on.
I never wanted that lifestyle for myself nor did my parents. We thought I was getting helped by all the “meds” they claimed were keeping me from losing all cognitive skills and becoming violent. Just the opposite.
Now I hope to support myself as a “creative” like many survivors and even the few “consumers” who get off SSI. Struggling to “adult” in my forties when I’m much frailer than most my age. But at least my mind is coming back. My IQ has gone up nearly 20 points.
My dad is pretty angry and sad too. Occasionally he’ll commiserate with me over the life I lost. Mom is okay with my choice to leave “mental health” but insists the drugs used to help me. Claiming I acted weird at one point when I was fully compliant and took them religiously. (She doesn’t see the fallacy here.)
Report comment
Hmm. The Experts kept telling my fellow “consumers” and me it was imperative to take drugs that crippled us, damaged our health, and sent many of us into a non stop depression. Why? For the greater good of society.
Does that count as individualism? It’s what the “mental health” center preached to us at every session.
Report comment
“Mental illness” is not a social construct so much as an etiological one.
A phrase which makes no sense when viewed too carefully.
How does “mental illness” differ from neurological or brain illness? is a question to ask. How William Glasser got me to reconsider the hopeless “disease” I’d been repeatedly told I had.
Report comment
Because they’ve chosen to write off these suffering people as either beyond help or not worth helping. (By help I mean ordinary human help or TLC which you stop receiving once labeled SMI.)
The “medicines” often have the desired effect of turning intelligent but suffering people into docile, childish creatures. Incapable of independent living or any quality of life most adults prefer yet easy to “take care of” or control.
Like severing someone’s spinal cord so they’ll obey the caretaker ordering them to a lifetime of bedrest.
Or cutting off a songbird’s wings and severing the vocal cords so it won’t fly away or annoy its keepers by singing. The songbird is unhappy but what it wants doesn’t matter.
Report comment
Yes. I mustn’t live in the past or might-have-been but what is.
Report comment
Once I discovered the hoax about the “chemical imbalance” I look back on what I’ve been through with anger.
The drugs which were supposed to prevent cognitive deterioration (according to my doctor) did the opposite.
I frequently beat up on myself for my inability to find gainful employment, have decent human relationships or keep my house clean. Now I can do all the three.
They were forcing us to hobble around with our feet in fetters and ridiculing us for not running laps like they could. (Clubhouse/Day Treatment/NAMI) Disabling us while pretending to help us.
NAMI
National
Advocates for
Munchausens-by-proxy
Iatrogenics
Report comment
The notion that I was hopelessly insane almost drove me to suicide.
Psychiatrists see only “bipolars” and “schizophrenics.” I see human beings.
Psychiatry exists to make a distinction between the “normals” with full rights as citizens and human beings and the “severely mentally ill” creatures who can be viewed as incompetent idiots (regardless of demonstrated cognitive abilities) or dangerous criminal masterminds (regardless of the content of our character.) Or both. Whichever psychiatrists–and any “normals” who know how to exploit us–find convenient.
Report comment
I was referring to the article RW critiques.
Report comment
Such a poorly written, shoddy piece of “journalism.”
Report comment
Dr. Goetzhe wrote a book comparing Big Pharma to organized crime. And Psychiatry is their right arm. If not merely the right hand side of this underground dystopia.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
A big problem is all or almost all the media rely on Big Pharma ad revenue for the magazine or channel to stay afloat.
“Always the patient’s fault.” Should be the motto for the American Psychiatric Association.
I strongly recommend the site Surviving Antidepressants for those who need help coming off and can’t get it. I cold turkeyed off Lamictal since I couldn’t cut the tablets. But I only took it for 13 days after being hospitalized.
Personally I found Abilify was a snap to come off. Went from 20 mg to 15 mg. Then 15-10; 10-7.5; 7.5-5; 5-2.5; 2.5-0. 2 weeks between each gradation. 10 weeks with only a few headaches. But Effexor was another thing altogether. Took me 13 months to come off 150 mg.
No more suicidal thoughts or melt downs since. The pills were holding me back.
Report comment
I’m more at risk for dying if I contract Covid-19 due to my autoimmune disease caused by years on SSRIs.
Why is it surprising that STIMULANTS which wear the body down by artificially boosting energy levels make kids more prone to infection and poor prognosis from the infection?
Does forcing a child to drink 5 cups of coffee and a 6 pack of Mountain Dew every flu season make them less at risk for infection?
Report comment
I do NOT defend that by any means Oldhead.
Our opponents would (probably) argue that it’s different because it’s not punishment, but “help.”
Peter Breggin points out how calling random brain damage, pharmaceutical torture (that is a thing) and imprisonment “treatment” instead of punishment enables psychiatrists to treat law abiding citizens worse than convicted felons.
Would D.J. Jaffe have given the cootie treatment and avoided eye contact with some cancer victim he was trying to organize a fund raiser for? Interesting how the pro-psych force can rationalize what they do so easily.
“I have the right to force these drugs on Blanche.” TAC Dude
“Blanche doesn’t like them. She says they upset her stomach and give her terrors. I see her seize on them.” Friend of Blanche
“Blanche is ‘mentally ill’ so if she doesn’t like them that’s just her illness talking. Lol. If she seizes or throws up she’s faking it for attention.” TAC Dude
Report comment
That’s why I frequently compare psychiatrists to Dr. Farid Fata. He sold lengthy rounds of chemo to people without cancer. Killing some and crippling even more. Because of his gutless professional colleagues he got away with it for a very long time. The whole story makes me despise the medical profession.
Report comment
His death brings me sorrow. Leukemia is an awful way to go.
Sadly it won’t undo the harmful policies passed through his activism. He was more of an advocate for annoyed family members and psychiatrists who made a killing off crippling and defaming through quack treatments than the “consumers” themselves.
What Briana describes in her encounter with him, his refusal to make eye contact or acknowledge her humanity is what I remember during my 25 years in psychiatry. Numbed and dumbed down as I was, I felt it keenly.
In dehumanizing others they dehumanize themselves.
It’s sobering that Jaffe will never have another chance to make amends to those he–more or less–unwittingly harmed. To undo his TAC policies is up to others.
Rest in peace Jaffe. May Heaven have mercy on your soul.
Report comment
Thanks.
I don’t consider myself an anti vaxxer though. At least not as far as the basic MMR shots go. Even polio shots are still a good idea.
These shots are highly effective. And the polio one saves children’s lives.
My brother and I had all four as children. But I got my Chicken Pox immunity the old fashioned way.
Dedicating my time to trying to help keep local small businesses afloat. Pam Popper’s gives some tips on how we can do this. I highly recommend looking up her interview with Peter Breggin on YouTube.
A lot of people are desperately afraid they will lose their homes or be unable to scrape enough beans and rice together to feed their children. I visit a cafe near me and promised the owner’s daughter working behind the cash register that if another lockdown takes place I will still get carry out there regularly.
She thanked me profusely.
Report comment
I agree Steve.
I wish the best for all here.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
Report comment
Just thought I’d mention that Pies’s article has been “misplaced.” A computer glitch I’m sure. Not like there was too much traffic from this site to the shrinks’ dirty little secret conflicting with those cute commercials.
Report comment
Sorry KateL.
This whole thing is a nightmare.
Report comment
KS, so you believe this is temporary?
I understand where you are coming from. I only wish I shared your optimism. Google “social distancing is permanent” and see all the articles that pop up and read a few.
Report comment
I’m resigned to dying in the next year or two.
Things are unsustainable. They won’t get better, just worse.
The hope of death in the near future is all that sustains me now. Soon this nightmare apocalypse will be behind me.
Report comment
Big Pharma is making money faster than ever as small businesses are forced to close. Not big chain stores though. This isn’t about preventing infection since more stores mean more distancing. It’s about cronyism and lobbying.
Report comment
My elderly friend is in isolation and may fall and break her hip. If so I guess they’ll find her body before it decomposes too badly.
Report comment
Okay. You want to spend the rest of your life in isolation? Because that’s what all the experts recommend. Utter isolation at home alone for everyone forever.
The only plan out there!
Sounds like a quality life and very healthy too.
Nobody work or see friends or family ever again. Stay locked at home for 50-60 years till you die. WONDERFUL.
Funny how a lifetime of permanent isolation is healthy now. Not like any of us have social needs after all.
This will never end. Get used to permanent house arrest. Years and decades.
The New Normal means you can never have coffee with friends again. I prefer death from this alleged plague myself. The rest of you can enjoy this nightmare dystopia. Funny how I’m the only person who finds it depressing. Crazy me to want friends and fresh air instead of spending the last years of my life locked alone in a room eating beans.
Weird how everyone but me suddenly loves endless isolation, wants it to last forever and enjoys dying alone. Cause you will die even without the Covid. Utterly ALONE IN ISOLATION.
Wish I enjoyed loneliness and hated companionship like the rest of you cranks. Everyone else loves being cut off alone FOREVER.
THIS WILL NEVER EVER END.
Why is Covid death so scary? As the last person with human needs or emotions I wish it or something else would kill me.
Dr. Fauci says we’ll probably never have a vaccine and should never be allowed out of our houses till the virus completely vanishes which he is pretty certain it won’t. Ergo permanent lockdown forever according to the Experts.
Report comment
And who ordered the months of social isolation?
Oh yes. The Scientific Ex-Spurts suddenly decided isolating is not only healthy but praiseworthy. If you don’t enjoy it, it’s your fault and they will force drugs on you while forcing even more isolation on you.
Glad I live in the country. Like many labeled SMI I’m no stranger to loneliness. If I avoid thinking about the future I’m okay.
Curious how many other survivors are holding up. Like everyone else is caving in but we’ve already been through this crap. Same old, same old.
I wish these controlling Science Ex-Spurts would experiment on themselves. At least they’re too busy to hunt down every single depressed person now. Easier to escape their notice.
Report comment
“If someone has committed a heinous crime let them pay their debt to society.”
Well said Caroline. We already have the legal system to punish all of us for law breaking.
But psychiatry has the authority to punish regardless of our behavior. The unquestioned absolute authority to inflict cruel and unusual punishment (without limit) on even the most mild mannered law abiding saints–more sinned against than sinning. Just because some Expert deems them biologically unfit for basic human rights or simple kindness and decency.
Psychiatry punishes the “biologically unfit” for the crime of existing. 🙁
Because of this pseudo science our culture chooses to judge us on the word of some Ex-Spurt Sciencey Dude–who just flipped through old notes without talking to us. Not the content of our character.
Report comment
After i got labeled I hated myself. Everyone treated me like a monster.
The drugs killed all my ability to experience positive emotions and caused daily seizures. Everyone blamed my desire for suicide on my “illness.”
When they say, “You’re not your illness” it’s pretty laughable. In their eyes all “consumers” are walking diseases.
Report comment
I will.
Report comment
Have a respected medical professional prescribe them. My mistake. And countless others.
Report comment
What scares me far worse than the thought of death itself–or even the deaths of my beloved Boomer parents–is losing touch with our humanity. If I see someone in need who can’t be helped otherwise I’ll gladly expose myself and stay in quarantine later.
Report comment
It takes time.
I chose to forgive the people who injured me. But it took a long time.
If you don’t want to or feel you can’t I sympathize.
Part of forgiving meant acknowledging the wrongs done me. I’d always been taught nice girls don’t get angry or remember wrongs. My grandma told me we automatically forget bad treatment because girls are naturally sweet–made up of sugar and spice and all things nice. 😛 Nope.
Report comment
My thoughts exactly Willoweed.
My odd behaviors and personality changes were similar to those of an alcoholic. My mom mentioned this but we never put two and two together.
Took me over twenty years to find stuff online saying the drugs I took were anything but life saving and essential. Or telling how to go off them without melting down. Ages 20 to 44 in psychiatry.
Report comment
I’m better now.
Made real progress emotionally, cognitively, and finally physically.
I get along with people now. Smiling easily. I shower every day and keep up on household chores. And I am finishing writing projects since the first time in my teens.
I attribute these changes to going off drugs and rejecting the role society assigned me of madwoman.
Report comment
I’ve heard of kids “inheriting” trauma.
It’s not to be confused with abuse. If anything the mother may strive to protect her children from the horrors she went through. Unfortunately this can backfire however kind and noble the intentions.
For example the children of Holocaust survivors and those who were molested as children.
You can’t fault the parent anymore than you can of unwittingly giving the child a cold. It just happens. The right kind of family therapy might help the parent. Such as Choice Theory by William Glasser. He only counseled adults. If the children acted out he would advise the parents on how to show love while preparing the child for life.
Report comment
Being told you have an incurable brain disease that will keep you depressed forever is depressing.
Since (many believe) depression exists as a feeling, hopelessness will make the feeling worse. Plus the drugs make you sluggish and apathetic which can also cause “low grade” depression.
Report comment
Bingo!
But I still like this article. Reminds me of when I had no identity aside from “mentally ill.”
Report comment
Yeah. Fine line between whacking myself over the head for everything that goes wrong and blaming others.
I dated a man also labeled “bipolar” though we had little else in common. One day I realized how we kept apologizing to each other in an excessive, compulsive manner.
“Nobody’s fault, it’s a brain disease” translates to “everything that goes wrong is the fault of the person with the presupposed brain disease.” One of Psychiatry’s paradoxes.
Report comment
False dilemma. Reminds me of the story of how the disciples asked Jesus, “Did this man sin or did his parents so that he was born blind”?
Neither Mom nor I behaved perfectly through my existential journey into madness. Exacerbated and greatly prolonged courtesy of Big Pharma Psychiatry.
I gladly brought her to NAMI because she kept blaming herself for my weird behaviors under the influence of mind altering drugs and my new diagnostic identity.
Looking back, I’m more upset at how my crazy behaviors impacted my friends and family who stayed with me through the quarter century ordeal. I was a drug addict and none of us even knew.
Report comment
Let me try. Here’s a disorder I’ve observed first hand.
1. Prolonged use of mind altering drugs and/or electroshocks to alter moods and thoughts.
2. The treatments entail distress and poor concentration.
3. The treatments cause pain, cognitive decline, and numerous other health issues.
I’ve now “proven” that Psychiatry is a disease.
Report comment
Faking Stockholm Syndrome is the wisest course of action in that scenario.
Report comment
If you are on good terms with family members the Mental System will try to create division quite often. Happened to me and others.
They only wanted me to date other “consumers” and discouraged socializing with non-consumers. Not sure what the motives were. But cutting you off from friends is what cults do.
Report comment
I_e_cox I agree with you. This whole scenario with:
1. Expert Doctor Monarchs who must never be questioned even when they contradict each other.
2. The Doctors/Demagogues who inflict their will over us all in the name of “our own good” or “for the public” who are never held accountable for bad advice.
3. It doesn’t matter if it ruins your career, your hopes of a family, renders you homeless, depresses you, or injures your physical health from months/years of isolation and stress. Don’t you ever dare quit distancing till Experts say you can. Maybe before you die.
4. Because obedience is all that matters the Experts are happy to throw you a bone every month or two so you won’t starve (hopefully.) Quit taking care of yourself. Self reliance is evil and wrong. Only eat what the Demagogue/Doctors feed you.
1. Never question a psychiatrist. Ever. This shows “poor insight” and doctors don’t make mistakes or lie.
2. Being forced to take drugs that make you miserable, tired and stupid is for your own good. And you owe it to society to be good pill popper or you endanger them by morphing into a mass shooter or something through non compliance.
3. It doesn’t matter if you feel horrible and can no longer read, work, get along with others, or attend to basic hygiene. It doesn’t matter if the pills give you grand mal seizures, heart palpitations, spasms, make you vomit uncontrollably for days on end, or put you into a coma. You must be “meds compliant” till you die. Doctor’s orders.
4. Because compliance is all that matters, once the “meds” have incapacitated you the Experts will sign a paper so their cronies in Washington will give you a pittance every month to scrape by on. The flunkies at the Mental Illness Center chastise you for wanting to be able to care for yourself. Shame on you for wanting to work. Besides that’s unrealistic cause you’re crazy. Lol.
De ja vu. 😛
Report comment
You’re welcome.
Report comment
“Rejected the idea that insanity reduced people to animals…” Did it though?
The whole notion of “mental illness” is that those marked by psychiatrists are not fully human. Incapable of higher reasoning and completely amoral. Just like animals.
The “treated” are viewed as pets. The “untreated” as rabid dogs–either to be captured and rendered docile (helpless) or shot.
Report comment
It’s paradoxical that the notion of “mental illness” discourages trying to better yourself. Just the opposite of what AA is supposed to preach.
Being told how hopeless I was as a “bipolar” led to my relinquishing self control. (Not alcohol but a psych drug that sent me on the bad trip that ruined my life.)
It’s also disgusting how opportunists are using the notion of “alcoholism is a disease” to push far deadlier and more addictive drugs on the person as a “treatment” for drinking wine or beer.
Report comment
Since souls are immaterial the thought of healing them with drugs or surgery is ridiculous. If you believe in souls. Either way, “psychiatry” should go the way of mesmerism. It claims to heal what doesn’t exist (materially) by material means of drugs and brain mutilation.
Report comment
I recommend saying, “False dilemma fallacy!” Then repeat your original statement or question. It should be apparent to onlookers that they’ve resorted to red herrings to avoid the real issue.
Report comment
Susan, both Richard and OH agree with many of the points you have made.
Respectfully questioning is not the same as insulting. Please don’t take it personally.
Report comment
“There’s nothing also to say that a Qualified Doctor, is any better than a Library Assistant at helping a person get through Emotional Distress.”
Correct.
Doctors are great at dealing with ruptured appendixes or inflamed adenoids or broken limbs. But if you feel sad or lonely you should phone a friend.
Asking a GP for help with emotional pain is like asking one for advice on roof repair. Not their field.
Report comment
“So the obvious question is how hunting can safeguard the rights of its targeted subjects while its task remains to precisely turn them into venison jerky and sausage.”
Sorry. Couldn’t resist. 😀
Report comment
It’s been a real struggle to me not to hate humanity.
Unlike Frankenstein’s monster I used to be a human being till They damaged me beyond hope of recover and dishonored me forever in the eyes of all Humanity.
Shrinks have harmed me–while causing suffering–by pretending their cruel, pointless experiments fixed known brain abnormalities. Apparently many were laughing up their sleeves when they talked about the “scientifically proven chemical imbalance.”
But they couldn’t have done it without help from all the “normals” applauding the cruel damage. I know this was ignorance (except for a few like Pete Earley.) But if your kid were getting worse instead of better every time the doctor put him on something to “treat” the problem which wasn’t bad till after the doctor “helped” it would make sense to try figure out what was wrong.
They don’t know because they don’t care. Sticking a “loved one” in a psych ward to be drugged and shocked indefinitely is easier than doing a little research to look for ways of actually helping people. Happier handing you over to the tender mercies of the experts. Then they can ignore the relative forever. Almost as good as locking them in the old asylums.
Report comment
You’re welcome.
I wish you well.
Report comment
Lots of people have no choice Dr. Monk. Do you really think there are no social or legal repercussions to such a decision? It’s almost never an informed one.
After a break down following 3 weeks of sleeplessness from a bad reaction to the drug Anafranil my shrink cheerfully told Mom it wasn’t HIS fault her daughter had schizophrenia. Joyfully ruined my life causing everyone to write me off as a psycho killer.
Put me on 10 mg of Haldol. Hell between my ears. Seizures, constant dry mouth, tardive psychosis, eyes rolling back. All attributed to my illness.
Psychiatrists go around telling how those they diagnose are all would-be mass shooters. Through guilt by diagnosis/association they claim we’re morally defective in some intrinsic way no other human beings are. Only drugs can save us from becoming violent, suicide, cheating on our spouses, lying, stealing. All “symptoms” in various DSM categories known as “mental illnesses.” Whether we actually DO any of the above is irrelevant. The doctor has pronounced us morally diseased so we’re automatically worse than felons.
(I don’t know you personally Dr. Theolonius. But prominent members of your profession have gone on national television to warn society of the monsters posing as humans in their midst. Also known as “schizophrenics” and “bipolars.” You aren’t directly responsible for what Dr. Fuller Torrey says. But you must be aware of it.)
I was repeatedly told for 25 years that I had a brain disease with a known biomarker. That it had already been proven my “illness” came from a chemical imbalance in my broken brain. Not for two decades did I read William Glasser and then articles by the President of the APA declaring otherwise.
Had to relocate and start over where no one knows me while slowly tapering. No help from any doctor. I knew better than to ask for any.
For years I took the XXXX pills though they doubled my weight, made me seize, vomit, lose teeth, grow so tired I couldn’t keep up with simple ADLs like bathing regularly. They made me miserable and numb. Yet I took them conscientiously. Not for myself but for my loved ones. I didn’t want to hurt them or be a burden.
Because of my wrecked body…real doctors who don’t know all my psychiatric history have diagnosed me with IBD and other autoimmune diseases…I still can’t work. All iatrogenic I firmly believe. More of a burden then ever from trying to do the right thing as a “conscientious consumer with excellent insight.”
Obeying the rules doesn’t work in a corrupt system.
I wish I’d broken an actual law instead of seeing a shrink. That would have had fewer legal repercussions. Seriously. Criminals have more rights in our society than law abiding citizens labeled as “severely mentally ill.” Once you get that label how you behave–the content of your character–is completely irrelevant. Everyone expects the worst of you. Especially if they know you’re “off your meds”
Been off mine for nearly 3 years. Doing better in many ways. No melt down despite lockdown stress. My parents acknowledge I wasn’t crazy after all. I’m an embarrassment to the psychiatric profession. And doctors in general who remain thick as thieves and will carry the banner for men like Farid Fata.
Not anti-medicine but I don’t trust doctors. Buy the used car but don’t believe a word the salesman says.
Report comment
Too much censorship can backfire. Hence the growth of the FlatEarther movement. I view it as too ridiculous to be worth censoring–even if I believed in denying them a platform. But I have more respect for people’s intelligence than Big Bro Mark.
Because of this heavy handedness more people are getting angry and distrustful of PolitiFact. Great at spinning. Though if you read the entire article PolitiFact puts out you’ll see they call things “fake news” based on technicalities. Often hearsay from an anonymous source.
More of us are leaving. Too angry to wait to be banned. Hopefully this will cause FB to become the next Yelp or Tumblr.
Report comment
Yep. Sili-Con Valley for one.
Been on FaceBook and repeatedly get censored for posting anything remotely hopeful. Got threatened with invisibility. Planning on transferring my followers to a new platform where many of them are already located.
Mild depression keeps people passive so they put up less resistance to sales ads posted on sites.
I have no problem–in theory–with Zuckerberg doubling his wealth. But it looks like he’s willing to cause a worldwide depression impoverishing nearly everyone else to achieve this end. I have a problem with that.
Report comment
I avoid psych wards but if I ever get taken i’ll be sure to leave my cell behind.
Report comment
Yep. The whole concept itself is very elastic.
On the one hand you have the trope of the helpless “mentally ill.” The poor Village Idiot who wanders the street muttering to himself and is mentally a five-year-old.
On the other you have the trope of the “psycho killer.” The EVIL madman–sometimes with fits of brilliance in finding ways to do random acts of evil. Such as Hannibal Lector or Norman Bates. The scary creeper society needs protection from.
Psychiatrists use the second trope in calls to action against mass shootings and the first when trying to sound compassionate. They flip flop between calling a “case” or human being “cognitively impaired” regardless of how coherently the “case” can defend herself/himself. And warning the public of how dangerously “unstable” this person will be if they don’t have their way with them.
This two fold approach is useful for those who can’t see through it. By calling the person evil the psychiatrist alienates them from everyone–rendering the non-labeled more agreeable to subject the former friend or loved one to dubious treatments that cause obvious suffering. And depicting the person as incompetent and dumb makes the psychiatrist look benevolent and humane. Rendering him more trustworthy so family members feel safe delivering the relative into his allegedly tender mercies.
Report comment
Yes, but without depicting all the “severely mentally ill” as dangerous they couldn’t readily turn them into cash cows to milk–uh, I mean get them the Treatment they need. 😛
Report comment
Don Karp that’s why I’m so miserable.
Sorry, I have no reason to trust any doctors. Especially bureaucrats with degrees in medicine.
I would rather take my chances with the Bubonic Plague itself than let these micro-managing control freaks ruin the world. THEY are what really scare me. Not the Covid-19. Even if it had 70% fatality rates like many of the ignorant imagine.
No, I realize Dr. Fauci never said this. All a bunch of hysterical pearl clutching from watching the News on TV. But this insane fear encourages compliance to the lockdown.
This is supposed to be for the greater good and save countless lives. These people aren’t dead yet and won’t die–in this segment of the multiverse–if we all hunker down and OBEY the Medical Experts. They’re doctors after all. They don’t make mistakes and only want to save lives.
If lots of people die it will be in spite of lockdown. Or because we didn’t follow it strictly enough they’ll say. If mortality rates drop it will be because of the lockdown.
This whole scenario is all too familiar to me. Very depressing. And it may never end.
Report comment
Let me get this straight.
The Royal College of Psychiatry admits to being corrupt and racist and DEMANDS MONEY to quit being racist?
You can’t see, but I assure you my eyes are rolling.
Report comment
I got so sick of being told how much I needed to love myself during all those years of adult preschool. AKA “day treatment” and “clubhouse.”
Made me want to burst into song, “I love me. I love me so./I took myself to a movie show./I put both arms around my waist./I got so fresh I slapped my face!”
I actually did during one incredibly dull session. 😀
Like C.S. Lewis I find the reverse is true. I must love my neighbor before I can love myself as my neighbor.
Report comment
Yes.
The entire premise of Pharma-psychiatry is that SCIENCE has proven people feel down or have weird thoughts only because of bad brain chemistry. And they have the pills to adjust it so you’ll feel normal again.
A giant hoax. And even the non medical people who spread this lie know it’s a hoax. Pete Earley admits as much on his blog–justifying this deception by saying the drugs work. Meaning they turn “loved ones” into passive, sickly zombies who won’t annoy relatives.
I was hoping this article would share more details on how ignorant or knowledgeable your friendly neighborhood shrink is. It doesn’t.
Report comment
And it’s turning us into misanthropes too.
A blogger I follow is worried about how his alleged brain disease is flaring up. Being forced to stay unemployed and at home all day has nothing to do with it. He thinks.
Of course, like me, he’s dealt with “sadness shaming.” Our shallow culture can no longer handle anyone the least bit glum or serious. So it’s either a disease we must cure immediately or a shameful sin we must repent of so we can grin ear to ear perpetually like we’re s’posed to. 😛
Now that I no longer see my depression as a disease I no longer struggle with it for days or weeks at a time. If I feel blue I ask myself, “What can I do to feel better?” It never lasts more than a day or two. Amazing how changing that mindset helped me cope with it successfully.
Report comment
They’re much better at concealing what their intentions. To be fair–most neighborhood shrinks believe they help people.
“Life saving medications. They are just like insulin for diabetes.”
But nobody gets better even if we take them faithfully. Our bodies and brains fail rapidly. And no one cares but us.
And maybe our loved ones. If “mental health” fails to alienate them. They don’t like family members offering real emotional support and love to us.
Report comment
Monism supports their profession though. If the mind weren’t the brain they couldn’t prescribe pills and show what Real Doctors they are.
Report comment
NAMI actually had a bunch of people slip in to do that? Okay. When I first read I thought it was gaslighting. Now it looks like was just an advertisement. “This is what having ‘schizophrenia’ feels like.”
I didn’t know NAMI was supposed to be a patient’s advocacy group. I belonged to it (as a mascot) for some years. It was supposed to be about helping us and reducing the discrimination or stigma NAMI created with other ad campaigns to begin with.
They liked to hear the voices of “high functioning” people like me. As long as I praised my life saving medications and the benevolent doctors who could do no wrong.
Report comment
I disagree with you Sera. The Harvard guy is not really attractive.
😉
Report comment
Check out Vernon Coleman’s blog. https://vernoncoleman.com He is an outside the box thinker. Argues that modern meat is unsafe to consume, criticizes the lockdown, and condemns modern medicine for pushing SSRI’s on everyone they can.
He left medicine (MD) to write books a while back. Reminds me of Peter Breggin a little. Same generation. I wonder if he’d write for MIA.
Report comment
Covid-19 is being used for two things. Selling a vaccine that’s probably just a placebo. And propaganda.
They say they should have it out in a year so we should just stay home till then. Really? AIDS has been around for well over 30 years and there’s no vaccine for that virus yet. I’m sure Gates and Big Pharma will be handsomely paid after keeping the populace isolated and fearful for months on end.
It also makes great propaganda for Big Brother rising up from the depths of the sea. Every great tyrant knows the best populace is a divided one where everyone distrusts and fears their neighbor. Hysterical fear of a possible infection with a small chance of dying is a great way to turn us all against each other. A bunch of selfish, cowardly misanthropes with no social support except the evening news and “social” media is very easy to control.
I’ve already promised myself if I see an elderly person passing out from the stupid mask at WalMart I’m going to help them. Yeah, I know it means exposing myself. So?
Better to die from the virus (unlikely as that is) than live on as one of those caricatures who beats up little old ladies for coming within five feet (the old lady is way more apt to die than a 30 year old if she’s infected.) Or one of those killjoy “karens” who drives around looking for children to scream “I hope you all get Covid-19 and die!” at because they’re playing in the park. A school teacher was doing this. 😛 Or one of those people who doesn’t know their grandma died till six months after since they never made phone calls and rejoiced at the pandemic since they had an excuse to quit visiting her nursing home. Or–speaking of the medical profession–that doctor near me in Louisville who assaulted a teenage girl (choking her) for the horrible crime of enjoying a sunset in the park.
None of these behaviors are rational. If you’re so worried over infection why run toward the person for further contact as you try to punch or throttle them? These activities require touching the person. If you’re worried over their safety why scream how you hope they die?
Covid-19 offers a great excuse to act like selfish jerks. Many are taking advantage of the situation.
If this were the next Bubonic Plague (it isn’t) it still wouldn’t justify these behaviors. There are fates far worse than death. Like losing our humanity.
Report comment
Another idea for psychiatrists.
Quit lying.
Quit telling “consumers”–or using mouthpieces like NAMI to tell them–that Science has proven they have a “broken” brain proven to be caused entirely by a “chemical imbalance” and faulty genes already discovered.
Quit telling people experiencing a bad trip caused by the mind altering drugs you push that it’s all their fault. Those drugs never have that effect on anyone. Unless they’re crazy to start with or lying about taking them “exactly as prescribed.”
Quit telling family members “Drug X never does that to anyone. It’s all John’s illness causing him to sleep 12 hours a day, not cry or smile, silently pace for hours at a time, have mini seizures while his eyes roll back in his head. If he would just take his ‘meds’ exactly as prescribed he wouldn’t bother you with these symptoms. Obviously he’s not really taking them.” (Any search for drug side effects can help us catch you in this deception anyhow.)
Quit lying to the public about how your Science has the infallible ability to weed out serial killers, mass shooters and all other criminal types in our midst with laundry lists of personality traits that lump groups of random individuals together as guilty or “sick” by association. Is red your favorite color? So was Jeffrey Dahmers’!
Quit lying to the public about how you want to end “stigma.” You don’t. “Stigma” or slander is the best advertising technique to sell your product as Fuller Torrey, Tim Murphy, and countless others know.
Yes. Telling the truth is pretty essential to morality. Especially when people’s reputations, health, and lives are at stake.
Quit lying.
Report comment
I keep thinking of that movie The Minority Report.
Psychiatry is our society’s pre crime division. But unlike the movie, no one holds them accountable for their mistakes. And those they accuse get punished anyhow.
All by pretending the treatments are restorative rather than punitive in nature. And they’re doctors. Not penal enforcers of unwritten rules they can change on a whim. 0 accountability and 100% immunity.
Why not just make suicide illegal and say all unsuccessful attempts will be punished by imprisonment, pharmaceutical torture, possible brain mutilation, and public defamation? The only difference between this scenario and the way things actually are is the Pre-Crime Psych(ic) enforcers are allowed to pose as medical healers. Psychiatry’s got nothing to do with healing people.
Report comment
Doing fine despite the lockdown and Covid19 fear.
I say fear because I have had no direct encounters. My sister’s roommates caught it and recovered without hospital care. She tested negative. My rural community has no cases yet. A family friend in a city caught it and got better. As did my 89 year old great aunt.
The lockdown itself is stressful. But I’m okay.
Before stuff started opening I used Skype and Zoom to visit along with letters and phone calls. Way better than social media for human connection.
Now we go to church–with S.D. in place–and I visit my neighbors in the open air.
Since going off my psych drugs I’ve developed an emotional resiliency I never had before. Violating Expert orders was the scariest thing I’ve ever done.
But I ignored the Experts after doing a lot of homework. According to them I should be acting like Eric Harris/Ted Bundie/Norman Bates/a rabid dog. Or at least unable to talk coherently or care for myself or get along with people I meet. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
No more mood swings, better at reading social cues, normal heart rate, improved hygiene and home maintenance. All these horrible things happened after I fled the mental illness makers.
Stories like mine are an embarrassment to the APA and the AMA too. Psychiatry is cancer on western medicine. Not to mention the legal system–which now has a way to bypass due process and punish the innocent.
Report comment
Don’t forget those branded at hopelessly “severe mental” cases to help cover some doctor’s butt because he refuses to acknowledge that his precious SSRI’s can drive people crackers.
Heaven forbid he let you go off the drugs so you can function again after catching up on sleep after he kept you awake for 3 weeks in a row. Better label you a “bipolar” menace to society so everyone will shun you till you die. And Dr. Quackenbush can bill your insurance for 3-6 drugs instead of just 1. Including the very drug he KNOWS caused the problem. 😛
I imagine these un-healers cackling with glee and sipping champagne to celebrate every time they ruin some young life this way. Cha-ching! Souls for cash.
I’d say “Shame on them.” But they are as shameless as they are remorseless for all the people they’ve harmed and killed.
Report comment
By that paradigm “mental illness” would still not exist.
What you describe are nutritional deficiencies that sometimes cause bizarre thoughts.
I suffer severe malabsorption myself. Thanks to years of “help” from psychiatry.
Report comment
Lol. Yep.
I’m sure shrinks aren’t happy at how Peter Breggin pointed out what the “Violence Initiative” was really about either.
Report comment
Charles Ponzi could have argued that he never asked for marks, they were just waiting for him.
Report comment
Do you mean like a class action suit against psychiatrist/s on behalf of a bunch of people diagnosed “bipolar 2” after a bad drug reaction?
Report comment
I remember how Julie Greene emphasized that the whole point to psychiatry was eugenics. It is based upon the philosophy of social darwinism.
I admit I was slightly skeptical. Eugenics?
Not sure the mainstream shrink at your friendly neighborhood mental illness center knows. Probably clueless. Most of mine were friendly and tried to keep me from suffering too much.
But I believe there’s an inner circle at the top–the guys who invent new “diseases” and make guest appearances on national TV warning Joe Schmoe how evil and dangerous all the “untreated mentally ill” are. They know what they’re doing and show no pity.
The whole premise to psychiatry is certain groups of people are “defective criminal types.” This grew popular in the 19th century. According to eugenicists these “defectives” need to be weeded out from society and prevented from breeding more “inferior stock.” Regardless of the content of their characters and actual behaviors “blood will tell” and these Men of Science must weed out the defectives.
This demonizing of those they claim to help is necessary for psychiatrists since if others saw them as ordinary people they would call them out on the inhumanity of the cruel, pointless experiments they persist in inflicting on hapless test subjects.
This defamation campaign has proven highly effective. Stigma is a shrink’s best friend. They WANT to turn our families and friends and everyone including other doctors against us.
Most people don’t think this through. But they believe the SCIENCE. In their defense many think they’re helpful telling us to take drugs. But thinking we’re all dangerous monsters makes them avoid us. (Duh.) And my guess is doctors don’t care about the quality or quantity of our lives. They have similar attitudes about the disabled and elderly but the notion that we’re all would-be-mass-shooters rendered temporarily harmless via SCIENTIFIC MAGIC makes them treat us worse.
When I moved I managed to not get “bipolar” on most medical records. Just “depression” and all those physical problems inflicted by psychiatry. Amazing how helpful and nice doctors are now.
Report comment
Lisa is bleeding? Where? Her heart is racing so hard it hurts?
WTH??? 🙁 This crap is killing people like Lisa.
Assuming she wants this drug I still worry about her health. But my guess is she’s not taking with with informed consent. Just told she has to take this miracle pill NO MATTER WHAT.
If Lisa tells her shrink or doctor how horrible it makes her feel–assuming her body can’t adapt–they may change her to something that makes her feel less horrible (for a while.) Or just threaten her with horrible things that will happen if she ever dares to go off. It’s a coin toss.
Pernicious anemia, IBD and other autoimmune problems. Including abnormal bleeding. My heart beat was very erratic till I finally disobeyed my quack. It may have saved my life.
Report comment
“Antidepressants” have already had studies showing they lower inhibitions and empathy.
Yet prominent psychiatrists urge that still more people be put on these drugs to lower mass killings. Arguing that people murder others because of low self esteem. I dunno. How about not thinking about future consequences (low inhibitions) and not caring about others (lack of empathy)?
Astounding ignorance as to how human beings think or what motivates us. Pseudo science combined with a view of humanity less complex or nuanced than a comic book.
These mind altering drugs do not transform a bunch of Mr. Hyde’s into Dr. Jekyll’s anymore than heroin does. NAMI propaganda notwithstanding.
Report comment
I know shrinks get angry when anyone without an MD insults someone by calling them “sick” with “a lot of mental problems.”
Leave the name calling and insults to the Experts please.
Report comment
Labeling too.
Report comment
Yes. NAMI is behind the police brutality toward the “mentally ill.”
Doesn’t require much brain power to see how convincing armed enforcers that others are monsters will lead to more shootings and brutality of these people. But NAMI wants to make the world’s largest omelet and are more than happy to break countless numbers of eggs to achieve this end.
I avoid all things “mental health” now. If I know someone works for “mental health” I will cross over to the other side of the street to avoid them if I can. They think they’re kind when they lock you up and destroy you with drugs, shocks and other random brain damage.
They deny the humanity of their “compassion” objects. Zero empathy because of this denial. All our suffering is written off as fake just like we’re “fake people” in their eyes–without real thoughts or feelings. Only walking brain diseases.
Delusional and dangerous. Lacking insight into their own motivations.
Report comment
Sadly psychiatrists are already planning on setting up their own police. My guess is if you end the current police system, “mental health” will take over completely as far as those already labeled are concerned. 🙁
Defund psychiatry. Its propaganda is behind police hatred and fear of the “mentally ill.”
Report comment
This may surprise you OH, but many would not see the sarcasm. A lot of NAMI mommies actually tell themselves that.
I wonder how many killed themselves because they had been persuaded of that. It nearly drove me to suicide. 🙁
Unlike brain cancer or epilepsy, “mental illness” means you are hopelessly evil. Like hyper calvinism–only it’s just a minority of genetic throw backs or “criminal types” who are depraved. With no hope of redemption for any of them.
Report comment
It’s worth noting Bernie Madoff’s clients sought out his advice voluntarily.
Report comment
Very interesting!
“Mental illness” stigma is actually based on character traits that are ascribed to one by a “medical expert” regardless of personal conduct or moral integrity.
Report comment
Yep. And Dr. Josef Mengele was a fully certified physician with an MD from an accredited university.
Report comment
Steve I imagine a couple shrinks discussing this.
“So Bob, how long do you think you’d grieve if your wife died?”
“I dunno Bill. It took me less than a week to get over her leaving me. Too many hangovers from partying.”
Both laugh.
“I can’t imagine grieving more than a week for mine. Ten days tops.”
“I never grieve over losing anyone. Emotional attachment is a sure sign of mental illness. My dog died today. No big deal. I did what any sane person would. Put the carcass out with the weekly trash and added ‘visit the pound’ on my things to do list.”
“Let’s say fourteen days tops. I can’t imagine loving anyone so much you grieve them that long unless you’re severely mentally ill.”
Report comment
No word about the role all those “safe and effective treatments” play at wearing down the immunity, causing diabetes, heart or breathing issues. Guess that would be pill shaming. 😛
Report comment
You got that right!
I actually prefer A Beautiful Mind’s depiction of someone labeled “mentally ill” despite its flagrant inaccuracies and NAMI approved message. At least it doesn’t show Nash turning into a comic book villain from going off his neuroleptics.
Report comment
70% of those labeled “schizophrenic” used to get back on their feet or “recover” before pharma psychiatry.
Now it’s below 16% and only because they really lowered the bar for what counts as a decent life. And the life expectancy post diagnosis is roughly cut in half.
But the “mental health” industry likes it fine. More treatments to sell and more long term “consumers.”
Pretty annoying when two thirds of your buyers find they can lead better lives drug free and you need to drum up new ones. At that rate how are you going to expand your turf?
Report comment
I will. Normally insomnia is not a problem for me.
It’s a sporadic thing that comes once or twice a year and only lasts a few days.
Report comment
It’s always good for children to transform–if not reject–the names the playground bully calls them.
Report comment
Makes me wonder if this was what the whole pandemic was started for.
To drive as many crazy as possible and sell more psych drugs. And finally an overpriced vaccine.
Report comment
Frank, I’m not sure what OTC drugs are available in Britain. Over here it varies from state to state. But I’ve used adult cough syrup for one or two nights to break an insomnia cycle.
There are a number of sleeping pills here I could buy at Walmart. I try to avoid shrinks. If I see someone I know works for mental health I’ll do all I can to stay out of their way. They’re a danger to my health, my freedom, and my life itself.
Report comment
Something I see as a potential problem for prescription cannabis is psychiatry’s long track record of blaming everything it does on the consumers’ alleged brain disorder. AKA the consumer him/herself.
A lot of young people labeled “schizophrenic” for life simply got locked up during a bad trip. As a sort of ironic and excessive punishment (called treatment) they’re forced to take massive quantities of mind altering drugs to make them miserable till they die prematurely.
I only took what Dr. M gave me. A “therapeutic” dose of the SSRI Anafranil. Yet my three weeks of sleeplessness and hallucinations were all blamed on me. Dr. M swore up and down that “They never have that effect on anyone!”
Is this merely a clever attempt to create more “schizophrenia diagnoses” by encouraging use of a drug that can cause vivid hallucinations?
For those of you who like MJ, my argument is with psychiatrists prescribing it and interpreting all the temporary effects as symptoms of a life long brain disorder–which requires crippling drugs and a life in segregation to maintain.
Drugs that cause real disabilities and segregation from mainstream society are psychiatry’s gifts. 🙁
Report comment
After I got halfway through my taper off my 150 mg of Effexor, my suicidal thoughts went away.
They have never returned. 🙂
Report comment
Why Being Punished for Existing is a Human Right.”
Title fixed.
Report comment
My family is lower middle class. Not rich.
I’m too damaged to work now. Iatrogenic disease thanks to psychiatric treatment.
But I escaped because I managed to sneak off to another county and my parents let me stay for a while.
Better to have a middle class or poor family that loves you when it comes to escaping psychiatry. Evan Durst’s family used its wealth to hound him. Just like rich people would pay tidy sums to asylum keepers for locking up annoying relations in Victorian times.
Report comment
The great novelist Jane Austen had to get her brother to sign her publishing contracts for her since she was an unmarried woman. (No hubby to sign for her.)
Nowadays a woman can be placed in a similar situation. Not because of her gender but alleged “mental illness.”
It makes no difference how rationally you behave nor how reasonable your arguments. Your label will cover it all.
Report comment
Well, if they’re talking about the Fear–rather than the virus itself–it’s entirely psychological. The Fear seems to be killing large numbers of people as they commit suicide and develop stress related illnesses.
Even though it’s contagious your odds of dying from it are slim. Not arguing the lock down here but pointing out how ridiculous the Fear is. Caution is smart; hysteria is not.
This reminds me of The Bird Box. Only the monsters aren’t Out There. They’re in our screens.
Way easier to avoid.
Don’t watch TV and moderate other media. Read more literary classics and talk to real people through Skype/Zoom/or the phone. Write letters. I hear physical stationary is making a comeback now. It gives a sense of physical contact that e mails don’t.
Report comment
Me neither. Individuals can turn over new leaves, but they have to renounce wrong doing.
As OH has pointed out we already have a penal system for violent criminals. For the unhappy I think we need better social networks. Not an alternative to psychiatry, but something originally there which psychiatry has done its best to supplant.
Report comment
Bingo.
Report comment
Thanks for this piece, Maria. As you point out it’s not just our health and economy at risk, but our relationships and human networking.
All the “normals” are acting crazy now. Look at the videos going viral of screaming at teens at the beach, some doctor trying to choke a girl for not social distancing. How would choking a contagious person lower your own exposure???
Some school teacher screaming at children on a swing set, “I hope you all get sick and die.” Such compassion and dedication to saving lives. 😛
Crazy behaviors from otherwise “normal” people. Wonder how much sooner they’d have lost it in the psych system
This is not a war. A plague would be a stretcher, but more accurate. Similar hysteria occurred during the Spanish Flu Epidemic. The plagues were even worse.
And, despite higher mortality rates, there was less isolation. No internet to render “staying home” so widely accessible. During a war we can do active things and bond with fellow soldiers or our communities. Even those on the home front–like Rosie the Riveter. Instead we’re called to isolation and passivity. Way more stressful.
I feel no satisfaction at “normals” driven mad by medical bureaucrats. Only anger and frustration and sorrow. I put no faith in a doctor simply because he is a doctor after my experiences with psychiatry. A field totally approved as a legitimate specialty by the AMA. Fleeing it may have saved my life.
Some of my negative emotions might be considered “PTSD”? I don’t know. This pandemic reminds me so much of “mental health” with its gas lighting.
Who knows though? Maybe we outcasts who have survived it can help people through this traumatic event.
Report comment
Drugs that keep you from breathing normally can make you more likely to die if you catch a disease that makes it hard to breathe. Wow.
Report comment
I was talking to a friend last night about this movement. Her cousin/friend hears voices. The drugs bring some relief but wear off. She frequently quits them and those around her blame the return of her voices on “non compliance.” As someone who fully “complied” religiously from 1992-2016 I know why she goes off the drugs (they make life miserable) and they really don’t stop the voices long term for most.
I went to Day Treatment. A lot of the “rebel” types would stop drugs cold turkey–frequently drink or use street drugs and act weird so they’d get locked up again. But there were many others who swore by their “meds” yet found no long term relief. “Despite” faithful obedience of swallowing the vile stuff they’d hear the same voices after a month or two. The smart ones learned not to complain. Doctors didn’t like it and would just lock you up again and put you on more drugs that made you feel worse.
Woe to you if the Sacred Neuroleptics did not quell the voices or amplified them. Telling this to anyone in “mental health” was blasphemy. It was either dismissed as an unfortunate fluke–your fault for being “resistant” or you were accused of lying to get out of taking these life saving pills that “never had that affect on anyone.” They also claimed Haldol doesn’t cause seizures and Risperdol doesn’t cause weight gain. Grrr.
Posting this article on FB where my friend and her cousin can read it. Thanks for writing it Kermit!
Report comment
😀
Report comment
Boans, it’s horrible how alone you are. 🙁
Are you able to Skype, friend?
Report comment
Psychiatric “diagnoses” are glorified name calling. As scientific as insults by the playground bully.
A lot of shrinks get upset at people joking about feeling “bipolar” or complaining about a “schizophrenic” coworker. They complain that only They–the leading medical experts have the right to call people these things.
Reminds me of some skit I saw on TV where a bully on the schoolyard yells at his toady that only he (the bully) has the right to call the other kids “stupid idiots.”
You COULD argue that names like “smelly poo poo head,” “dummy,” “slowpoke” and “ugly” are scientifically valid. Some people are dumber, slower, and uglier than others….Not sure how such names will help. But Bullies don’t want to help. Only show their supremacy and lord it over the other children.
Report comment
Sadly psychiatry enables abusers. Usually by accident. But since they make snap judgments about moral character (diagnosing) they focus almost entirely on externals. If the abuser dresses well and is a smooth talker they’ll see him or her as the “normal” one as opposed to the nervous, unkempt victim.
They’ll label the victim as dangerous and give the well dressed abuser full power of attorney. Survival of the fittest is the law of psychiatry.
Report comment
Why wasn’t Bailey locked up, drugged and shocked? Sounds like that psychiatrist had a severe mental illness.
Next time a psychiatrist complains about high suicide rates in their profession offer condolences before reminding them that according to their profession only the severely mentally ill ever think of suicide.
Apparently they’re too afraid of stigma. I for one, don’t want them killing themselves but getting the treatment they DESERVE.
Report comment
Psychiatry never calls those they claim to fix patients either.
This is worth noting. Even they realize they aren’t doctors who heal people.
They call us “consumers” or useless mouths for them to fill with whatever. Mouths and bellies with no human being attached.
So tell me, Sam, are you familiar with the old anti psychiatry movement?
Report comment
Don’t forget the former small business owners. 🙁
Report comment
Precisely.
The DSM gives psychiatrists the right to treat harmless eccentrics and sufferers of Lyme Disease the same as pedophiles.
They spread the word on TV, newspapers, social media about how “The reason this man kidnapped and murdered all those children is because he was a bipolar.” Doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together and decide all “bipolars” are serial killers.
Report comment
The Democrats are as pro psychiatry as the Republicans. No one on either side stood against the Murphy Bill.
How about judging people on the content of their character? Not the pseudo scientific insults of some shrink?
Report comment
Interesting how he brings up psychiatry’s power to punish people for being sex offenders without taking any actual crimes into account. Who gives a rip about what you actually DID? Lol.
The shrink says you’re a monster. The public will believe him.
Why I got kicked out of college.
Punish innocent people for crimes they might commit in the future. Great way to rehabilitate ’em.
The “sex offender” analogy sickens me. “Mental health” frequently lumps harmless eccentrics and the suffering in with perverts and murderers. I don’t think this is an accident either.
Scaring the public and whipping them into a frenzy against the alleged monsters in their midst is great PR for psychiatry as Torrey and Murphy know.
Label a law abiding citizen as “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” and you can treat them worse than a convicted murderer. My label ruined my life. No apologies coming from any of Kriegman’s colleagues.
I loathe psychiatry.
He doesn’t address any of us. Speaks over us to his esteemed colleagues and peers. Appears to think MIA is a respected site for scholarly articles endorsed by the APA.
Kriegman is in for a rude awakening.
Report comment
Subhumans like us.
Of course.
Report comment
Subhumans like us.
Expert mentalists frequently write articles about us without us.
As Oldhead once posted:
Who the XXXX is we?
Who the XXXX are they?
I laughed so hard I almost choked on my coffee.
Report comment
I refuse to visit any counselor tied to “mental health.” I don’t need being repeatedly told how sick and crazy I am, how deluded I am for having dreams like “normal” people and why I should only date people as “defective” as myself. Since normal, healthy humans wouldn’t understand me.
Report comment
You can’t contradict the Shrink because he calls you crazy. What would a crazy person know about anything?
Circular reasoning.
Report comment
A woman who drowns her baby used to be called a murderer. Novelists write novels. Painters paint pictures. Murderers commit murders. But people like a neat explanation to make themselves feel secure and build their egos for being “normal.”
Saying, “A woman only drowns her baby because she is ‘bipolar,'” is a way of imposing guilt by association on a lot of law abiding citizens. This made me suicidal after my “diagnosis” since I believed my shrink that I was a monster. 🙁
A bunch of women at church took up a petition to stop me from teaching Sunday school once they found out about my label. I obeyed my stupid shrink and got treated like a pariah.
Relocated where no one knows my dirty secret. I’m physically damaged, so i tell people that’s my disability and why I can’t work and never had a family. Amazing how nice they are to me.
Tapering off the drugs helped me pick up on social cues and nuances. This Covid 19 scare is making “normal” people act nutty and ruining everyone’s social skills. The great equalizer.
I obey the law. But Covid 19 doesn’t scare me the way it does so many. I faced the idea that I was hopelessly insane from a genetic brain defect at twenty and proved the experts wrong.
This illness doesn’t scare me as much as the threat of hopeless insanity shrinks held over my head to keep me in line. Even dying from it scares me less. At 60% infection rates and maybe 5% mortality with my autoimmune issues, I’m more apt to catch it than die from it.
It is what it is. 🙂
All those “normals” sure are acting “crazy and paranoid.” Violent too. Proof that sanity is all relative and no one is immune to craziness.
Report comment
It still humors the hysterical soccer moms. You don’t want them ticked off. 🙂
Report comment
Yes Oldhead. Julie repeatedly told me that too.
i started 6 mg of Stelazine in spring 1992. My life didn’t fall apart till fall of 1993 when they labeled me “Schizoaffective” which my dorm mom kicked me out over. Said I was dangerous and frightened the other girls.
I’m not a murderer and it’s wrong for psychiatry to treat me as a violent criminal. They are punitive, not restorative in nature.
In claiming to be merciful rather than just to violent criminals–as an excuse to treat the law abiding like dangerous criminals–the mental illness system acts in ways contrary to both. Psychiatry is neither justice nor mercy.
Report comment
It can help protect others if you keep sneezing and coughing without covering your mouth.
For me it’s more an act of humoring hysterical soccer moms than virtue signaling.
OH NO! You might get infected, get sick and die! I miss the days before the pandemic when nobody ever died. Lol
Report comment
The man would be offended at what I said about him because it’s true and would hurt his inflated image of the compassionate benefactor he imagines himself to be. As devoid of self awareness as he is compassion.
Report comment
All of mine were voluntary. The drugs kept me from thinking straight but they told me I needed them and my loopiness was all my (illness’s) fault. I kept wanting to kill myself because I believed I was an evil monster and dangerous to others so suicide was the ultimate act of self sacrifice and love. The only noble thing a monster like me could do.
Now that I decided shrinks are full of it I’m no longer suicidal. Just angry.
Report comment
Yep. He became an activist after his annoying sister-in-law Blanche–whoops Rose–moved in with them. Finally he got her taken away so she’d get the help she needed.
Just like a certain play by Tennessee Williams. “Stellaaaazine!”
I hope I didn’t give anyone insomnia for a week with a mental image of Deej with his shirt off. Lol.
Report comment
I daresay Jaffe would not appreciate being locked up for days or weeks then released on a bunch of drugs that made him ill and a badge of shame that made everyone treat him like Jean Valjean at the opening of Les Miserables.
His argument would probably be: “Of course not. But I’m not mentally ill. Pain hurts me.”
Report comment
In that case the therapist should help the abuse victim form an escape plan. Including a list of resources she/he could use.
Report comment
“Don’t dwell on the past.” My damaged CNS, brain, and other organs won’t let me move on as though nothing happened. 🙁
Report comment
Which makes you wonder why they bother consulting us at all. Even for ten minutes.
Probably for the same reason they buy malpractice insurance. Keeping up appearances.
Report comment
I’d have had a better experience if I’d sought help at a meth lab.
Report comment
Thanks Dr. Eric.
Love your new spin on the old (inaccurate) trope of “What if we treated physical illnesses like ‘mental illnesses’?”
Assume Dr. Diatram’s patient manages to recover. She’ll take all the credit and force him to spend the rest of his life surrounded by ice packs, giving himself daily morphine injections, and popping beta blockers. 🙂
Report comment
Well said OH.
Judging from the article Dr. Tasch believes the narrative though she means well and might let some “asymptomatic” people leave the system at their discretion.
I knew better than to argue with my shrink. AKA psychiatric blasphemy.
The psychiatrists get paid for keeping us sick with drugs, emotionally abusive brainwashing, and shocks.
My parents were shocked at how much crazier I acted the longer I stayed in the MI System. Now I’m emotionally stable but in chronic pain much of the time. IBD, fingerprint-map-dot-eye dystrophy, and probably ME.
At least I can clean my apartment now. Still forced to live on SSI.
Shrinks told me if I was “good” I could enjoy a career and even maybe get married. Bunch of rubbish. Doubtful any of them believed their malarkey. 🙁
Report comment
Sitting alone at home all day can lead to messed up thinking. Especially visiting certain sites online. Speaking from personal experience.
Report comment
I loved Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH as a child.
(At 8 I disliked Don Bluth’s film because of the liberties it took. The book was thought provoking and I read about finely nuanced issues regarding self reliance, morality, and responsibilities that come with becoming sapient. Not Disney lite on speed.)
Unbeknownst to me there really was a place called NIMH. But instead of making rodents as intelligent as humans they’ve dedicated themselves to making humans as dumb as rodents. The fact that we can still read and write is proof that their methods need perfecting.
Report comment
And I was repeatedly warned of cognitive decline and “deterioration” if I failed to do exactly as my psychiatrist ordered. Counselors and case workers at the local Mental Illness Centers I dutifully attended. Support groups like NAMI. All the literature and TV shows…mainstream literature of course. All warned how dumb/crazy/helpless/dangerous I’d become unless I took my “meds” religiously.
I pointed out how since starting my “therapeutic” doses of Haldol/Risperdol/Zoloft/Xanax/Celexa/Pick-your-neuropoison I could no longer take full time course loads at college or work full-time at my summer job or get by with less than 11 hours sleep. They would tell me it was all my “illness” which began at exactly the same time I sought “help” for social anxiety and had a horrible reaction to the SSRI. All entirely by coincidence. 😛 SMH
Report comment
TBI and Lyme’s Disease are real brain problems. But not mental.
I am sure I have real brain problems now along with several other medical problems. All iatrogenic.
Report comment
It is 100% hereditary too. The reason it’s not only just but compassionate for society–led by the shrinks–to treat the “mentally ill” like pieces of garbage is we’re subhuman genetic throwbacks/monsters. Not really human like the “normals” and the shrinks.
Must have mutated their DNA. Kind of like green, radioactive sludge in those old Saturday morning cartoons. Real SCIENCE folks!
Report comment
I have vented on this site about sadness shaming. Hence the insistence that DEPRESSION IS A DISEASE. They wouldn’t have to justify it by calling it purely biological (and beyond our control) if we weren’t pressured to grin ear to ear all the time like the Cheshire cat. Why not let me feel glum? Really. Feeling blue is not a crime, but to hear some people it’s worse than being a bank robber.
And regarding loneliness I am sick and tired of well meaning articles lecturing on how the only reason you get lonely is you’re not full enough of self worth. That’s just dumb. Loneliness is not synonymous with low self esteem (though even that’s not a crime) and scheduling a make out session with your mirror isn’t the answer. 😛
Report comment
Something more immediate also related to this Covid19 is the relentless pushing labels and drugs on people who feel lonely and desperate from physical isolation and job loss.
Psychiatry continues to do its dirty work and remains fully operational when everything else but Covid19 services are shut down.
Report comment
Nagging someone to come off her or his drugs without a support system or decent tapering advice is a bad thing.
Even though I wish everyone could live drug free I know many won’t since going off is painful and demanding. And you need to do your homework and find a place you can hide if you’re a busy long term psych consomme.
(Psychiatric Consomme. My new word instead of their word “Consumer.” Never did like it even when I was one.)
A friend of mine is in AOT because she didn’t call me for information and just went cold turkey during lockdown before freaking out in her apartment and going to the psych ward. Again.
Report comment
Some of us are disabled. Either with legitimate physical problems doctors brushed off as “severe mental illness.” Or crippled by the “treatments.” Drugs, shocks, and psycho-surgeries….
But I agree with you about “mad” not being a real thing. David Oaks kind of goes into that.
Report comment
Well when you consider how so many shrinks aspire to become AI, it seems you could easily replace them with software apps and do just as well.
Report comment
So sorry about Abraham’s death, Mr. McNeill. Your son’s fears were rational and justified. He didn’t want to be slowly tortured to death. That’s what psychiatry was doing to him.
I consider myself disabled. But not from any “mental illness.” I no longer exhibit any of the required traits after 30 months off my drugs. My disabilities are multiple autoimmune disorders and poor concentration/executive function. I blame these on the “cure” for the unprovable brain disease men cooked up and voted into existence to prove how they were Real Doctors. I didn’t know what pain was until they “helped” me.
If I were going to be harmed again like your son I would want to do what he did too. Psychiatric treatments are a fate worse than death. They ruin your health, your ability to earn a living and all hope of having a family. They cut your years in half and destroy your bodily organs.
Report comment
Vaccinations against viruses are very ineffective according to doctors themselves.
I read that if they come out with a vaccine for Covid19 it will only be 40-50% effective. I guess that’s better than nothing. But it’s not a magical panacea to save us all.
Yet, what do you want to bet that if they come out with one the medical establishment will be lauded and the nanny state will finally let us leave our own homes?
Covid19 is finally showing non psychiatrized people what tyrants doctors can be. All “for your own good” of course.
I’m hoping we can use public distrust to turn sympathies against the Granddaddy of Control Freak Medical Science. Psychiatry. By Medical Science I mean manipulating brains to render you “docile and child-like.” As opposed to independent and functioning.
Report comment
I struggle to trust any doctors. Not anti medicine. But anti liars.
The fact that the entire AMA continues to enable and even applaud the damages psychiatry forces upon it’s guinea pigs makes me angry at the entire medical community.
They know the drugs cause excessive weight gain, kidney failure, severe GI problems, heart arhythmia, diabetes and extensive damage to the brain and CNS yet they support business as usual and often push these drugs on their own patients for kickbacks or just to avoid looking into legitimate medical complaints.
Phooey on doctors. Despite their smarts and education they lie all the time. Worse than used car salesmen. I don’t trust any of them further than I can throw a piano.
Report comment
???
Report comment
Shrinks express sorrow at the “stigma” their test subjects experience in being denied housing, jobs they could perform despite being drugged up and having family and friends reject them.
Yet they refuse to accept any responsibility for the situation and love to go on national TV to tell the world how dangerous/stupid/evil all their “patients” are. As Paula Capplan points out if I tell someone you have tuberculosis and they avoid you does it make sense for me to express outrage over how they treat you?
Report comment
John, what precautions did South Korea and the UK take regarding nursing homes, other institutions and among the homeless populations?
Report comment
I’ve noticed nobody proposed taking any action to lower the numbers in nursing homes during the epidemic or find housing for the homeless. Both sides of the political aisle are happy to let the status quo continue in those areas.
Aside from “nice guys” who were proposing locking up all the homeless in warehouse style asylums where the virus could still run rampant. Pure benevolence and altruism. Of course.
Isn’t it swell to have a bunch of bureaucrats/doctors running everything now?
My great-aunt has the virus. Got it at her nursing home. No efforts were taken to separate the infected from the rest.
“Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on. That is–badly.” George Orwell. Animal Farm.
Report comment
FWIW, more people than ever will be aware of the dangers of letting medical professionals grow too big for their lab coats and not holding them accountable.
It looks like the Covid-19 may be easier to contain than many feared. But the Experts are very reluctant to admit they made a mistake.
Epidemiologists are intelligent and know their stuff. But this virus was “novel” meaning something no one was familiar with. Baffling even to the experts. Hey, I’m fine with that. They know more than I do after all.
But rather than admitting. “Okay. We may need less draconian measures than we at first assumed. Yay! Let’s loosen up a little but wear your masks and wash your hands a lot and only visit outdoors for now. Here are the symptoms to look for if someone is contagious,” many insist on giving doom and gloom prophecies.
Hmm. Medical experts who would rather ruin people’s lives than admit they made honest mistakes or don’t know everything or give up unquestioned powers bestowed on them….This narrative rings a bell with me. And I bet many other survivors feel the same.
Glad I live in Indiana. Things are looking up. And I plan on lying lower than the government demands–this month–since the last batch of Medical Experts I trusted implicitly “helped” by destroying my autoimmune system.
My main source of stress has been “PTSD.” Fear of meddling (maybe less than honest) doctors taking over the world and destroying everything.
A lot of doctors seem to think now that human beings don’t need sunlight, fresh air, human companionship, or food to live. And can do just fine for another two years without them. Just like the shrinks assumed we didn’t need anything but our “meds” to lead a great life. Career, family, friendship, love, purpose in living, the amygdala, pancreas, kidneys, heart, frontal lobes, CNS, GI tract…all non-essentials for the “severely mentally ill.” Keep taking your “meds” no matter what!
(Food is hyperbole at this point. But if we keep total lockdown for 18-24 months like some experts recommend we can expect more and more empty shelves at the grocery stores and food banks when we’re allowed to go there.)
More people will realize how horrible SSRI drugs are and how they’re used to blame people who suffer from legitimate stressors as the opportunistic shrinks seize this opportunity to push their poisons. Dare we hope people will finally realize sorrow and loneliness are not brain diseases?
Report comment
Anasognosia is psychospeak for heresy.
Not to be confused with actual brain injury. Unless you mean the injuries inflicted by psychiatrists themselves.
Report comment
Watch them. 🙂
Report comment
I agree. A better term might be emotional problems from poor nutrition.
I suffer from this thanks to years of psychiatric drugs messing up my insides. Now I require a B12 shot every month and an iron infusion every winter. Officially diagnosed with pernicious anemia and inflammatory bowel disease.
Report comment
Yep. It’s not about helping people like you lead a happy, productive life.
It’s about keeping you forever as a life long consumer. We’re just so many geese laying golden eggs for them. All about Them.
Report comment
A public apology would be the best legacy Frances could leave at this point.
And maybe telling the public that those his profession branded “SMI” are not a bunch of would be psycho murderers waiting to go stabby stabby in the shower or licking their lips at the thought of cannibalism.
That was Julie Greene’s biggest offense against psychiatry. Branding all they claim to help subhuman monsters. Their drugs work well at making us look and act grotesque too. (I wonder if any psychiatrists realize this?)
Report comment
Your videos are very informative. I highly recommend them.
Report comment
So do you think the rest of us should be forcibly locked up and drugged? That’s what Allen Frances and all the members of the APA do and they use the DSM as an excuse.
If others want to use their labels and take psych drugs that’s one thing. But it’s forcing these on law abiding citizens against our will that we have a problem with.
The drugs made me hear voices and act weird. My label almost drove me to suicide. It’s very easy for William to get what he wants. Not so with the rest of us.
And my heart almost gave out. I might be dead if I hadn’t escaped. No suicide attempts despite the Covid19 stress either. My parents and siblings are amazed and pleased at my improvement.
Report comment
As Whitaker explained above this article was not to validate psychiatry but to prove how it is political rather than medicinal. It also shows how large quantities of money are recycled through Big Pharma/APA/Washington.
But Anomie makes a great point about the APA calling the kettle black. And why do we need Lee and her colleagues to make decisions about how to vote?
They were slowly killing me for years with their “treatments” and my immune system that they damaged renders me more apt to die from Covid 19 even though I’m under fifty. My heart beats have finally stabilized thanks to defying Standard Treatment.
How dare these pearl clutching hypocrites use people like us–already damaged by THEIR profession–for virtue signalling to further their own careers?
It also shows how stupid our society is. It’s no longer enough to look at a person’s behavior and say, “He’s an abuser because he beats his wife and kids. She’s an arrogant, self-centered woman because she lies all the time to gain attention. He is a cruel sadist because he tortures small animals.”
Nope. That’s not good enough. Now we have to label the abuser as having “bipolar with intermittent explosive disorder” the liar as “narcissistic” and the guy who tortures animals is a “sociopath.”
Dr. Obvious to the rescue. Sad how some kind hearted abuse victims will stay with the abuser because the shrink says he’s sick instead of calling him out on his bad behaviors.
I remember urging this woman to leave her abusive husband. “But the poor dear has bipolar. I can’t leave him.” Another woman and I both urged her to leave since this did not give him the right to harm her. (Ironically we both were labelled “bipolar” yet shrinks say we’re all alike.)
Why judge people on the content of their characters? We have shrinks to brand them with pseudo scientific “diagnoses” instead.
And Heaven help you if you ever have a bad reaction to one of their drugs or run afoul of a psychiatrist. They’ll turn your nearest and dearest against you so you wind up leading the life of Richard Kimball.
By calling guilty people “sick” shrinks gain the right to punish the innocent for crimes they never have or will commit–by calling them “sick” too.
And only THEY have the power to do so. With no objective standards for anyone to hold them to.
I wish they would “diagnose” the most powerful man in the free world. Know why? It would show everyone how much undisputed power the APA has and how potentially dangerous they really are.
As well as the slush fund from the White House I wonder how much this fear of people wising up played a role in Lieberman’s behavior. Last time I checked he was not a Republican.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
Well said RW.
Report comment
Why do we need Lee or any “doctors” to tell us this stuff? That’s the big question.
Report comment
Shrinks are certainly not letting the Covid 19 emergency go to waste.
And when they act concerned about the possible lives lost I call BS on their fake compassion. Thanks to their “safe and effective treatments” I have an autoimmune disease and am as likely to die from Covid 19 as my Boomer parents.
And psych drugs make you more likely to die from it.
So sick of the pearl clutching virtue signallers. 0 regard for the lives of people like us. Phony as a bundle of three dollar bills.
A nation of lonely, depressed, alienated people is a psychiatrist’s ultimate fantasy. My guess is the APA is tickled pink at all the human misery now. Ghoulish and typical as we know too well.
Report comment
Yes but these “untreated mental illnesses” do cause suffering which psychiatry can alleviate.
Psychiatry alleviates the suffering of the families who are embarrassed by the person’s odd behaviors and don’t want to look like bad guys by simply not inviting him to parties. So getting Johnny shot up with 15 mg of Haldol a day will make him quiet and inactive. No more suffering.
Psychiatry also alleviates suffering of the mainstream public by use of the placebo effect. Every time a mass shooting occurs some prominent shrink tells the public that of course only the “mentally ill” murder people like that and give him even more unquestioned authority and he will stop violent crimes forever by giving all the “mentally ill” people the “treatment” they so richly deserve for the crimes of a few they may have nothing in common with. Other than a shrink’s badge of shame.
Psychiatry alleviates the suffering of psychiatrists themselves. It stunk being the “Cinderella” of medicines. Now, thanks to drugs, shocks, and other forms of brain mutilation in the works they can show what honest-to-gosh-real-doctors they are.
When they praise psychiatry as highly effective this is what they really mean.
Report comment
Thanks for sharing this Leah.
I’m going to post a link to this article on Facebook.
I suggest cloth masks. You can make them yourself with a YouTube video. Or just wrap a bandanna or scarf around your nose and mouth. That way we can reuse them and save the disposable kinds for medical facilities.
Report comment
I’ve been using this time to instill distrust of the medical profession in the hearts of people using social media. Nothing blatant or out there. Just subtle little seeds of doubt and skepticism. A lot of people are open to the idea that doctors don’t have our best interests at heart right now.
My years as a psychiatric guinea pig while other doctors watched on smiling in approval, seeing the damage psychiatrists did to me have made me distrust and despise the entire American medical system. Not anti medicine. Anti doctors.
Just because someone is a doctor does not make them honest. All it means is if they decide to harm you they have superior training and smarts to do it without getting caught. And the other doctors cover for the crooked ones so they’re guilty in their own fashion. And of course the shrinks.
What kind of people do this? These doctors must know lithium destroys kidneys, neuroleptics ruin your brain and CNS, and SSRI drugs make your weight double and mess up your heart and gut. But they remain silent. Heaven forbid they save lives at the cost of “meds compliance.” 😛
Dr. Fauci has been caught changing his story. It was a minor lie about face masks not being helpful. To save masks for doctors he explained later.
But this has hurt public trust. Suddenly people are open to the idea that doctors tell lies and have their own agenda rather than the best interest of the public at heart.
I’m teaching some online friends the truth about psychiatrists right now. Many are open to this idea.
Report comment
As Peter Breggin points out the reason they treat people that way with inpunity is because they claim to be “healing” them. Even if people could be persuaded it wasn’t “just your illness talking” they would see such bad experiences as a necessary evil in “getting them the treatments they deserve.”
The very word DESERVE speaks volumes. You can say a poor person deserves help. You can also say a horrible person deserves to suffer. We need to ask people making this argument what context of this word they are using.
Help the mainstream gain some insight into their own hearts.
Report comment
I’m working on something. I’d rather not discuss it here for reasons.
Report comment
Robert Nikkel, if you’re using your infiltration to save lives like Schindler did, God bless you.
I wish I knew more psychiatrists willing to criticize the damage their profession is doing. Aside from the writers here I don’t know any (personally) willing to question the way things are.
All mental centers I have gone to insist the only way to not kill yourself or those around you is take your “meds” without fail NO MATTER WHAT. Till you die prematurely despite the horrible way you feel. What I personally have seen and experienced after 26 years in the mental system.
They made me live in terror of my own mind for the whole time. Their message is what I hear preached on television, social media outlets and just about everywhere to this day.
But my view and experience are limited. I don’t know every doctor or psychiatrist in the world. I’m glad to know such men and women exist and wish they were more vocal.
Report comment
I’m sharing it with online friends. Off of social media.
Report comment
To all potential accusations of being “anti medicine” or “anti science” I say, “No. I’m pro accountability.”
It’s not science or medicine we fight against but corruption, lies, and contempt for human rights found in the practitioners.
History contains many famous serial killers who practiced medicine with a license.
If I wanted to have a daycare investigated because it looked like it was run by predators would that make me anti-childcare? Give me a break.
Doctors lie too. You can be a “good” doctor in that you’re smart and knowledgeable with a state license. and still be a lousy human being.
Report comment
Ironic way of “curing” homosexuality. Kind of like “curing” “mental illness” by destroying the brain and CNS.
Oh, wait….
Report comment
I think I was unusually sensitive to SSRI drugs. Had an extreme reaction to Anafranil. High as a kite and sleepless for three weeks. The whole time I took it.
My “high” from Zoloft was milder and zapped me out of my depression. The depression was caused by getting kicked out of college, rejected by friends, having all my hopes and dreams dashed at age 20 and annoying my family by my drug addled behavior.
Report comment
Good point OH.
Instead of “depressed” I say gloomy now.
Instead of “paranoid” extremely suspicious.
Report comment
Their flocks are “defective.” Not sinful. Sin does not sound scientific. You can’t attone for bad DNA.
Not sure I’d call psychiatrists priests. More like tiny deities of their secular cult. (Yes. Some secular groups count as cults. I heard speculation that MLM can count.)
Because it exists in your core being you cannot repent and reform. You are the cancer to be eliminated or frozen so it won’t spread.
There can be no propitiation or sufficient penance when your existence itself is a sin.
I believe that’s why I couldn’t kick my suicidal urges after my diagnosis as “SMI.” Rejecting it gave me a new lease on life.
Report comment
I feel for psychiatrists with consciences. I feel for their “patients” more though. Psychiatrists can always go rogue or choose a new specialty or become technical writers. They choose to stay in the field. No one court orders them to practice against their will.
Report comment
Robert Nikkel if you want to help people you could see yourself as a secret infiltrator into the System. Then dedicate yourself to using your influence by kissing up and bribing the right people to save human beings who will otherwise be killed.
Remember Oskar Schindler from Schindler’s List? 😉
Report comment
We could easily replace all shrinks and mental illness centers with kiosks where vending machines print out a diagnostic label and others dispense the appropriate drugs. But then who would malign us on national TV and write defamatory articles to the Boston Globe?
Report comment
Well said I-e-cox!
Report comment
Bringing back old Victorian “lunatic” asylums seems to be the ultimate wet dream for psychiatrists I noticed. My guess is they’ll be able to collect more revenue for the millions they hope to cram in there after gas lighting them with SSRIs to make them hallucinate so they can label them “bipolar.”
I believe there is a Batman villain who runs an asylum where he puts his victims after driving them hopelessly insane with toxic nerve gas. Psychiatry is the only medical field that so closely resembles a comic book.
Dr Arkham: But Batman, they were already severely mentally ill. My toxic nerve gas just unmasked the symptoms
Report comment
You mean the people who actually want the “mentally ill” to lead decent.lives and not die prematurely? I agree Nancy.
Take the message to those who want fewer people forced into disability and in asylums. Not swelling the ranks of the “SMI” so at least a third of the population is on a cocktail of poly pharma. Like the ancient Roman slave population. Or bringing back the Victorian asylums.
Report comment
That still doesn’t excuse condemning trusting patients to a slow horrible death. And they make out like bandits.
Like my friend’s psychiatrist who partied on a Caribbean cruise after basically sentencing her to death at age 29. Dr. C seemed perfectly happy with zero regrets when she came back and found Karen dead. Plenty new cash cows where she came from.
I realized then they don’t care if we die. Literally. As long as we die “with our rights off” they’re chill with us dropping like flies.
Report comment
According to psychiatric records there used to be a 70% recovery rate for “schizophrenics” too. And they didn’t die twenty to thirty years prematurely either.
Yet psychiatric professionals keep telling us how much better things are now. I guess they must mean the income and prestige that they experience. All that really matters of course. 😛
Report comment
Just read an article in a journal of neuro-science how they think they found a bio marker for depression. Is this a real neurological condition they plan on actually fixing?
Heck no! Just an excuse to dole out more of the same poison that damages neuron receptors. Only now they’re hopeful for an excuse to force happy people to take the same old crap they’ve been handing out with for 30 years.
“We don’t know how SSRIs work. We just know that they always do. Because the consumers tell us so. If they don’t say the meds are working we keep them locked up till they do.”
How can anyone be that dumb? “Depression is the leading cause of disability.” Yet in order to get that disability check approved you need proof that you’re taking standard “treatments.” Hence SSRI drugs do not prevent disability from depression.
How can respected neuro scientists mix up cause and effect so thoroughly?
Report comment
At least he acknowledges it to be a metaphor. Unlike mainstream psychiatry.
Report comment
Since organizations/institutions are defined entirely by what they do, one cannot separate the who they are from what they do as one can individuals.
So I can forgive the psychiatrist who ruined my life–if he wants my forgiveness. But in order to forgive him I must acknowledge that he hurt me. I was wronged.
No debt means forgiveness is impossible.
The institution of psychiatry is all about punishing the weak while pretending to be merciful. It has dedicated itself to lies and punishment of the unfortunate. (Occasionally letting criminals off easily or pretending to. Part of their illusion.)
Deceit and senseless cruelty are evil. While I agree psychiatrists are human beings and some are kind and don’t abuse their powers as much as they could…most are not monsters…but they belong to the APA which demands deceit and cruelty in order to belong.
Some self deceive (I’m not hurting them. The drugs are good for them since they’d only wind up in asylums anyhow. They don’t have feelings like normal humans do. They’re all defectives, so it’s okay to inflict brain damage on them.) The prominent ones talk out of both sides of their mouths and keep changing the narrative through television interviews and books published.
The rest go rogue–like the psychiatrists blogging for MIA–or find another line of work. Or commit suicide because they can’t live with the guilt.
Angry as I am, I would rather a psychiatrist come clean and accept the forgiveness of anyone willing to give it rather than destroying himself. Suicide is a tragedy for anyone.
Report comment
They keep talking about “non organic causes” too. Not just real doctors but shrinks.
A shrink will seldom admit to a patient suffering something medically proven like Lyme’s Disease or Crohns. But they do acknowledge these diseases exist and let other doctors treat them. In turn the doctors refer the “non organic causes” to them.
Hmm. “Non organic” causes. And yet they kept arguiing at NAMI how “mental illness is a real brain disease” and “an illness like any other” and “your meds are just like insulin for diabetes” and “science has proven that ‘mental illness’ is caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain.”
All those arguments sound like organic causes are to blame. Is the human brain not a real organ?
Or psychiatry just has a bunch of drugs and shocks to sell and since these remedies only operate organically they claim the brain is to blame even as they call the disorders they treat “brain illnesses.”
Needless to say this is a secret embarrassment to the psychiatric community.
Google “Why We Still Use ‘Organic Causes’ + psychiatry online” for an insider look at what psychiatry doesn’t broadcast to the public. They’re pretty mad at real doctors for making a distinction in the ICD-10, feigning concern about how this will contribute to “stigma.”
The only “stigma” shrinks worry about is the stigma against themselves as the poor little Cinderella they see themselves to be. They are the real victims and nobody gives them the respect they feel they are due.
Their “consumers” are so beneath consideration (subhuman monsters as they believe them to be) that they don’t even consider, let alone care, that discrimination ruins their lives.
No concern about those they harm. It’s all about them. And if they hurt their hands beating someone else they burst into tears about their own injury.
Report comment
Yep. Seeing a psychiatrist is a sure way to get screwed.
Pardon my naughtiness.
Report comment
If a friend of mine were being battered by her husband and he was threatening to kill her would it be reasonable for her to sit down and speak in an articulate and reasonable manner about how it hurt when he bloodied her nose and blacked her eyes?
Even if he promised to change she should look for a shelter. What if he argued that battery was actually good for her and an act of compassion on his part because women can’t function properly without a little external “help”? No apologies or admission of harm.
Psychiatry would be like the latter. No apologies. No admission of wrongdoing. Just blaming the victim. If the drugs harm them it’s their fault for “resisting” treatments with their bad physiology. If destruction of your brain with ECT doesn’t make you happy, it’s your fault for having Borderline Personality Disorder.
Your kneecaps shattered when I hit them with a baseball bat? Well if you weren’t so frail like a china doll that wouldn’t have happened.
You almost bled to death from the knife wound? Well, you shoulda thought of that before you had flesh so soft and stab worthy.
Report comment
Drug dealers call a spade a spade. They don’t pretend to be doctors or say their meth is just like insulin for diabetes.
So I respect them more than psychiatrists.
Report comment
Would you mind posting a link to your art website Someone Else?
I used to paint before psychiatry. I used to sew clothes I designed for myself and be very creative.
Now I’m writing more and painting again.
Report comment
K
Report comment
The truth is it’s only recently that mortality rates for the “SMI” have been higher. Since all those safe and effective treatments came out. (SAFE for doctors to prescribe and EFFECTIVE at making them and their Pharma cronies very rich.) And any hope of recovery has gone out the window too.
I refer you to Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic to look at the elephant in the living room.
Psychiatrists, medical professionals, mentalists, and many others don’t care if they kill us. They don’t care if we seize, lose brain function, can no longer live independently or walk, experience nerve damage and (mercifully) die at 52. All in a day’s work for them.
I realized how shrinks were okay with our dying when I lost a good friend at age 29. Her shrink gave her a drug that gave her grand mal seizures and threatened her not to go off it. My friend died that weekend while that shrink went off to party on a Caribbean cruise.
None of the NAMI mommies (we both volunteered there) gave a damn that she died either. That’s when I realized NAMI isn’t about helping people. It’s about selling drugs. The only non-professionals they actually help are parents and spouses who despise their “loved ones” so much they want them to lose all cognitive function, the ability to live independently, and die early.
Another friend left NAMI after she saw how chill they were with her “schizophrenic” sister being drugged on a poly-pharma regimen till all her organs failed at 49. If an eccentric adult relative embarrasses them so much they can always cut them off.
But…no…it’s all about control. And the praise they get about how “kind” they are to their burdensome “SMI” accessories.
Forcing us to take the drugs they worship means more to them than anything. Including our recovery, quality of life, or even survival itself.
Just saw a commercial advertising another drug to treat the tardive dyskinesia shrinks have denied for decades. Of course coming off that “medication” is unthinkable since you “need” that mega dose of Haldol to treat the “bipolar” your shrink created by giving you an SSRI you had a reaction to and blaming it all on you. Horrible people with no conscience or empathy!
We are only objects for them to get rich by performing cruel, pointless experiments on.
They don’t serve us, but the public by providing a sense of security and “protecting” everybody from the monsters they create through torture and brain/nerve damage. They don’t give a damn about the well being of their human lab rats!
Report comment
Yes. What I have found.
Report comment
The concept of SMI is far harder to grasp than the concept of Santa Claus.
Is it violent behaviors? Stupidity? It depends.
If they want to pretend to be nice they treat you like you’re MMR. If they want to alarm your family or turn the public against those like you, they say “mental illness” is all about acting like Norman Bates or Mike Meyers or one of those other Hollywood pictures inspired by shrinks.
You find this in other forms of discrimination.
Let me quote an MRA/incel: All women are independent, needy, career obsessed, gold digging, picky whores.
Note the contradictory aspects to the image he created? That’s how shrinks describe the “mentally ill.”
“Dangerous, helpless, childish, cunning, irrational, diabolically clever, illogical, manipulative, detached, needy, unemotional, hysterical, arrogant would-be mass shooters. With low self esteem.”
Report comment
Realistically speaking, death isn’t going away either.
Yet we still fight against Asrael.
I recommend Robert watch the old Jimmy Stewart movie. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
Report comment
Besides limiting crime to more destructive behaviors society only publicizes “Mental illness” linked to the most destructive behaviors.
Psychiatry pretends to be merciful in how it punishes or “helps” the “SMI” criminal as a means to an end. That end? Legal impunity to inflict life long punishment on the innocent by accusing them of the potential to commit crimes.
Psychiatry is a legal force. Their treatments are cruel and unusual punishments inflicted on those guilty of having been deemed unfit to survive.
There’s an article from a few months back about a prominent shrink requesting special police who will answer to him alone. Pretty chilling.
Report comment
What are you hoping for Robert Nikkel? I applaud your hard work and sincerity, but am not sure what you intend to accomplish in the way of helping people.
Psychiatry will abuse since it’s profitable and asking shrinks nicely to please quit destroying our lives isn’t working. Why should they? They have no reason to.
My real hope is grass roots education of people who are not invested in “mental illness.” Ex-NAMI members who watched the psych system kill family members. (Not hyperbole.) Faith groups who reject the philosophy intrinsic to psychiatry of monism. Others who have seen the devastating consequences of long term SSRI use.
People who desperately long to escape the Madhouse Without Walls but don’t see a way. They need help escaping an abusive system.
Not asking, very politely, to please be a little less harmed. Pretty please. 🙁
I was surprised at how much support I got in my choice to leave psychiatry. I showed loved ones the evidence of cognitive decline created by the treatments and the lack of evidence for any pathology corrected by the same. A lot of people want to get better. A lot of friends and family are upset too at what shrinks think is acceptable quality of life. Including very early deaths.
If we must embrace lost causes, I prefer hopeless abolitionist to hopeless reformer. If success is impossible let us aim high!
Even if I never slay the Dragon at least I can help some people escape being burned or eaten by it.
Report comment
Mental workers have been known to “diagnose” people in notes with things like “worthless piece of sh*t.”
Read an article in a medical journal by a psych nurse joking about it.
They talk a good game to SOUND kind and polite in public. But even then they try to scare the public by explaining how dangerous these Subhuman Others are.
So House is not far fetched.
Report comment
They are anti psyche. They try to commit psychocide, but that’s not possible. So they strive to mutilate into a grotesque new form.
Don’t be afraid of those who can kill the body but do nothing to the soul.
They have damaged me physically but I make a conscious effort to forgive them every day. I believe all will be made right eventually.
If any psychiatrist apologizes I will accept it and offer my forgiveness. Better to suffer evil than to do evil. They are to be pitied.
They’ve mutilated their own souls far more than any of their victims.
Report comment
They are anti psyche. They try to commit psychocide, but that’s not possible. So they strive to mutilate into a grotesque new form.
Don’t be afraid of those who can kill the body but do nothing to the soul.
They have damaged me physically but I make a conscious effort to forgive them every day. I believe all will be made right eventually.
If any psychiatrist apologizes I will accept it and offer my forgiveness. Better to suffer evil than to do evil. They are to be pitied.
They’ve mutilated their own souls far more than any of their victims.
Report comment
You can’t bill Medicaid for drugs to inject into a corpse. The real reason the APA opposes euthenasia.
Report comment
Yep. The Golden Rule is never followed where “mental health” is concerned.
Psychiatric labels and drugs are for losers. Not suited for Real People like the mental workers.
THEY don’t want drugs, shocks, job loss, segregation. They want emotional support and understanding.
I notice suicidal shrinks attribute their own despair to misfortunes and stress. Not inferior genes or defective brains.
Hypocrisy thy name is Psychiatry.
Report comment
Fr. John thank you for this article. Ironically the damage to my soul that drove me “mad” occurred through a rupture in my church.
Spiritual abuse by adults when you are a sensitive child can be very traumatic. Something the secular mentalists claiming to help me never acknowledged. Especially since “mental health” chalks nearly everything up to biology nowadays.
Some find closure by ditching religion altogether. I only found true healing for my psyche by realizing the lies and false doctrine crammed down my throat and the disgust I felt at hypocrites. I have forgiven them, but am no more anti-religion than I am anti-science simply because medical quackery exists.
It is ironic how psychiatrists deny souls exist. They claim to fix “broken brains” but we already have the field of neurology. It’s interesting how psychiatrists and doctors talk about “non organic” causes of complaints. Many pro psychiatry groups like NAMI argue “What if we treated mental illnesses like physical illnesses?”
Hmm. If the disease is NOT organic or physical (as their language implies) why do they only offer physical remedies for bodily organs?
A lot of psych apologists like Jaffe argue that “It must be in the brain because nothing else exists.” Let’s ignore the a priori assumption of monism that the majority of the world’s people disagree with. Let’s assume all odd and erratic behaviors do originate in the brain. Some do–usually through brain trauma. (Others through liver failure, thyroid issues, etc.)
That still does not justify random acts of brain damage through coercing someone into long term use of mind altering drugs or mutilating the brain through shocks and other “psycho” surgeries. It’s like arguing for treating restless leg syndrome by severing someone’s spinal cord. Annoying as this neurological problem is, most of us would rather be able to walk.
Report comment
Don’t forget the guy who lives all alone in the outback. He wears nothing but a poncho from a square of tent canvas with a leather strap holding it together. Eats nothing but insects and honey he finds in the wild.
Every now and then he wanders into town yelling, “Repent!”
We don’t need to manipulate King Herod into cutting his head off anymore. Thanks to the miracles of modern medicine we can make this prophet as good as dead. Locked up forever and silenced.
Report comment
And because they are “mentally ill” and “defective” they will be given low priority as far as medical treatment goes. Along with the elderly.
At least that’s what my brother reports from his home in Massachusetts. As far as the elderly goes. Though that usually includes the disabled.
I am disabled. At first it was a GI issue and symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Now I am experiencing symptoms associated with conditions like MS. Pretty scary. And they’re the long term effects of psychiatric drugs. I have no doubt of that. Nor do I doubt that any doctor will deny this ugly truth.
Makes me skeptical about this Covid 19 thing altogether, knowing that doctors lie whenever convenient. Could this be a ploy by Big Pharma to make billions with a vaccine with little real value? I am sure the disease is real, it’s very contagious, and kills people. But I also think the mortality rates are inflated. How much I have no idea.
I recommend practicing social distancing as they advise. But, because of my experiences with the medical system, I am very skeptical of anything that receives this much publicity on television. Especially a lot of experts–in politics and showmanship more than medicine–spouting off SCIENCE STUFF.
Dr. Fauci and other high ranking, celebrity shock docs have been found making faulty predictions of mortality rates–if not deliberately skewing the numbers. Incompetence at best.
He also has made some stupid statements about how unless the infection rate from the virus falls to 0 we can not end the lockdown for anyone.
Fauci claims we should all stay locked up for at least a year. Homelessness and starvation don’t exist in his Reality it seems. Finally his medical brethren and the Big Pharma messiahs will provide our salvation in vaccine form.
Of course once the vaccine comes out, any infections or deaths from Covid 19 in the vaccinated won’t count. Just like all the times you catch the flu after getting vaccinated at work. Or get depressed on an SSRI.
No vaccine is 100% effective. Especially regarding as far as viruses go. But that doesn’t matter because the AMA and Big Pharma will be Heroes and cash in on the illusion of security.
Just like shrinks who claim to save the world from the mythical monsters they create.
Actually fortune telling and sooth saying fall into the realm of mysticism. Not science. So beware of doctors giving numbers to hypothetical scenarios with high levels of assurance.
Like the movie 101 Cloverfield Lane we have no choice but to trust those claiming to help us. For now.
(And if you see the movie, you’ll know that while John Goodman is the bad guy there really is something out there. So please keep social distancing. And wash your hands.)
Report comment
Hi Caroline.
I am less lonely practicing social distancing than I was in certain situations. Like being surrounded by people who regard me as an ogre. AKA severely mentally ill.
You can be very alone in a crowd.
Psychiatry robbed my life of meaning too. Here’s a link to check out. Copy and paste if you can’t click. https://lookingupliving.wordpress.com/2019/08/21/the-cult/
I want to read your book. Nobody in mainstream churches I have attended knows the truth about the “chemical imbalances” or how psychiatric drugs really work. Or even how they test you for a “severe mental illness.”
People are being maimed, segregated,, forced to live in poverty and dying young. They could know–if they cared to. 🙁
Report comment
Guilt can lead to suicide too, Madmom.
It’s either denial (I am actually helping them feel better, they aren’t fully human, they’re only fit for asylums anyhow) searing the conscience like the Big Baddies do (the kind who demonize their “mistakes” or victims on major media outlets), or succumb to guilt and have a breakdown. Or kill yourself. Maybe both.
Report comment
Dr. Abram Hoffer cured “schizophrenics” with mega doses of B and C vitamins. Of course it wasn’t really “mental illness” they suffered from but a severe nutritional deficiency that caused hallucinations and other bizarre thoughts. Kind of like Pellagra.
Dr. Hoffer should have come up with another word for it. But he actually helped people. Mom talked about taking me to his clinic in Canada back in the early nineties after my diagnosis. But it didn’t work out. Unbeknownst to us both, just going off the “meds” would have alleviated a lot of my problems. 20 20 hindsight. 🙁
Report comment
They are pro-truth Sam. Pro-human. Pro-love.
Report comment
I can only speak for myself, but it wasn’t anything so grand or lofty for me.
I sank under the weight of years of bullying and two periods of homelessness as a child. Got so depressed and anxious I sought help from a shrink as a friend suggested.
Went on Anafranil for three weeks and snapped. Got put on a cocktail till I escaped after 22 years. Not sure I can ever quit grieving. The damage is real.
Stories like those of Mad Mom’s daughter don’t cheer me up. (Nor should they.) But they remind me not to wallow in self pity. Many are worse off than I.
Iatrogenic brain damage is the remedy. The only treatment Psychiatry offers. Its answer for everything.
Report comment
Psychiatry helps people by ruining their jobs, relationships, and isolating them. Their treatments consist of branding the unhappy/lonely as hopelessly insane menaces to others. And now they push disabling drugs to keep them from functioning or looking normal for mainstream society. (Adds to the credibility of how inferior the Others are.)
Somehow they think what harms themselves and the “normals” helps the “mentally ill.” 😛
Report comment
Yep. The double standard psychiatry promotes.
Black and white thinking as they shove everybody into neat, little boxes. The “healthy normal” people who have the right to feel sad or frightened or lonely. Versus the “mentally ill” whose feelings are only symptoms of the disease they have instead of a personality–according to shrinks.
Report comment
Yeah. So what if you take their brain drugs religiously? It’s still your fault for resisting the treatment. 😛
Report comment
It isn’t meant to be read by “consumers” judging from tone and subject matter. 😛
BTW, if you can understand it you must be “non-compliant.” Why aren’t you taking your “meds” you naughty kid? 😀
Tsk tsk.
Report comment
They have ignored many inconvenient things. Like “consumers” dying 25 years prematurely. Diminished quality of life among those they “help” and brain damage proven to be caused by their treatments according to a member of the APA.
They also refuse to listen when anyone complains that the seizures, depression, hallucinations or thoughts of violence didn’t start till after they got put on the magical pills handed out like office candy. I knew better than to ask my shrink for help.
I ran away. And will do whatever it takes to keep away from the mental illness makers.
Report comment
I heartily agree Patrick.
Drugs or blame the parents. Nice example of a false dilemma.
Report comment
Body, soul and spirit. Mental and emotional are different sides to the soul.
In claiming to help the body with (short term) emotional pain killers, psychiatry harms all of the above.
Glad you are finding wellness, Laurel. I’m forty-six and struggling to heal my body after 26 years on drugs. 22 years were poly. Drug free for 2 and 1/2.
Report comment
A lot more would get rid of those devices if the government (across the pond) actually threatened to track them. Chalk it up to Yankee paranoia. A lot of people are AFRAID to give up their guns because the first thought that comes to their heads is Government Take Over.
A big fuss in the mid west. We are afraid of getting infected and dying. But we don’t automatically trust the feds either.
Convincing others not involved in the psych system that the “Mentals” could be coming for them next–to take away their health, freedom, businesses, family–is way more hopeful than trying to reason with those in the psych system. Whose income depends on refusing to acknowledge the damage they do.
A working title for a new dystopian series. Medocracy. “Don’t be afraid. We’re the Healers. We only want to help you.”
Report comment
If psych hospitals become harbingers of contagion they will lock people up indefinitely. Turn the wards into those asylums that make psychiatrists teary eyed with nostalgia.
Worried that homeless rates will skyrocket thanks to businesses shutting down. And large numbers of homeless people will be another excuse to set up more long care asylums. 🙁
Report comment
In America there have been 143,000 cases severe enough to be diagnosed. The asymptomatic do not count. 2,500 deaths out of those. If you have a calculator you can crunch the numbers.
Italy is far worse. The worst as far as fatalities go. With 7% of recorded cases dying.
Please read my comment below. I believe social distancing is a necessary evil after all. But with proper medical care the death rates can be kept very low.
The idea is that with fewer cases there will be more medical resources for those who do get sick.
Report comment
Yes. Silencing dissenters was what the USSR did.
No one had any motive for silencing me. Unless you count not acknowledging that the psych drugs were responsible for turning my “neurosis” into full blown “psychosis” with hallucinations that terrified me.
But they insisted that “they never have that effect on anyone” despite label warnings. Can’t have pill shaming after all.
Still no belief in what I say. I’m very nervous around doctors because of this.
Report comment
Depression and anxiety are different things. Gratitude can fix discontentment or depression because it helps you appreciate what you have. But we get anxious that these things we are grateful for may be lost.
The cure for anxiety is hope.
Report comment
I survived. I am not a myth.
Nowhere have I seen any of us calling ourselves glorified heroes on this site. Nor do we feel heroic.
Report comment
I take back what I said above. But doctors have told some whoppers. To and about me.
Liars are not believed, forsooth.
Even when liars tell the truth.
Report comment
Actually they are being “put in a cage” by the powers that be. Forced to stay at home in isolation.
Our “old normal.” And they are cracking already.
Report comment
Evil tends to be short sighted.
And there are few things as evil as crippling children and adults while pretending to cure them. Telling them powerful, mind altering drugs are “just like insulin” for the diabetes they never had.
Psychiatrists are ruining Western Civilization by making it go bankrupt supporting those they themselves have disabled. They expect to get way more money than all the disability checks combined for the benefit they add to society by disabling people. Not that they care.
Remember The Lorax by Dr. Seuss? The POV character never meant to destroy all the Truffula trees. His business was based on them after all.
That’s how psychiatrists and pharma CEO’s are. They don’t plan on destroying everything since they enjoy sipping champagne on their yachts.
But they insist on chopping down children who won’t grow back. There’s a reason Gen Y has so few workers in it. Check how many young people “use” mental services.
Generation Rx. They’re worse off than my generation where losers like me were exceptions. Why else are many college kids so incoherent in debates? Why else this utter lack of emotional resilience and surge in obesity?
Cognitive decline, loss of inhibition, obesity…all minor side effects. Proven to come from the “safe and effective” treatments often forced upon the public. Courtesy of the Mental Illness makers. 😛
Report comment
I wish they would judge us on our behaviors. The content of our character. Not what some “expert” who asks us ten perfunctory questions determines after less than fifteen minutes.
Roger Elliot was a nervous, awkward young man. But that doesn’t mean all nervous, awkward people deserve punishment for what he did.
Psychiatry finds a few arbitrary behaviors and quirks that may annoy relatives but are perfectly harmless. Or social anxiety which I had and they “helped” by bringing shame, dishonor and the ultimate social degradation upon me.
Isolated me by causing family and friends to reject me in disgust and horror. They created artificial disability from drug “side effects” they blamed on the alleged brain disease. That’s how they helped me along with countless others.
Comfort the comfortable by afflicting the afflicted. Should be the motto of the APA. 😛
Report comment
Isolation has long been known to produce odd mental states.
These findings don’t surprise me.
Report comment
10 should scare everyone. I guess the rationale behind the “MH” article is that doctors are in short supply and (maybe) all those “mentally ill” won’t observe proper social distancing and will require more lock ups.
In America it’s mostly the right wing who’s afraid. But even they tend to be in awe of SCIENCE.
My brother works for Big Pharma. THE DISEASE KILLS PEOPLE. IF MOM OR DAD LEAVE THE PROPERTY THEY WILL DIE!!!
He gives much worse death rates than those I read in other places. I read that even frail octogenarians in nursing homes are more apt to beat the bug than die. 90% survival odds in worst case scenarios.
Joel assures me that there is at least a 15% chance that Mom and Dad will die if infected. Both are under seventy and have health issues. So some precautions make sense.
But locking us up for six months? I don’t see that as sustainable. Yet Joel assures me it’s absolutely necessary or PEOPLE WILL DIE.
People die every day. This is not the Bubonic Plague. And it’s not even the Spanish Flu. People didn’t hide at home during that epidemic as I recall. Now we have better sanitation and nutrition.
But we won’t if the economy collapses and hundreds of thousands become homeless while starving on the streets. 🙁
IMHO this is a scare tactic as a bid for power by Big Pharma/Big Government. Since Joel only hears what Big Pharma says, working 13 hours a day all week from home, he is brainwashed. For all practical purposes.
Report comment
Are they in control of their actions or are they unaccountable?
I agree that the stance is inconsistent.
House arrest might be a good alternative. Not just for people with SMI diagnoses, but more non violent criminals.
Report comment
Lobbying AKA legal bribery must be abolished!
Cronyism=corruption.
Report comment
Syrena Clark, even when I believed in psychiatry, I disliked the “educational” narrative that “all schizophrenics” act like something out of a horror movie. Murder is a moral issue. Not a cognitive one.
If people choose to take the pills and see therapists or whatever, cool. It’s their choice. Provided it’s an informed one.
But whether you are in the system or out–getting treated like a monster or shot is horrible. No human being deserves to be treated that way.
All the “education” foisted on the public only leads to more paranoia among people like the police. Like soldiers they have finely tuned “fight or flight” mechanisms. Scaring them with stories of how evuuullll “severely mentally ill” people are will not end the shootings.
I had the police called on me during a bad trip from a drug reaction combined with stress. No guns were pulled. They called the paramedics before I passed out.
They thought I was having a bad drug trip. Actually I was. All psychiatric.
That was an odd experience and I had seen my shrink that day who told me I was “depressed” though I explained I was loopy instead. But not listening to me was par for the course with most of them.
As far as violence goes, preventing that by force is what police are for. I don’t see why “educating” police about the “mentally ill” is necessary or helpful. Let them deal with each situation as needful.
Telling them someone is freaking out on a bad drug trip but seems harmless might be better if they are told anything at all. It may have been why they were so nice to me. Of course I was in a passive, trance like state but if they had pulled guns on me I’m not sure how I would have behaved.
Report comment
Sam, you think doctors love to “diagnose” everything as mental so they can ignore real medical problems and throw drugs at phony ailments with no biomarker? (Incapable of DISPROVING. Hence they get off Scot free since they can never be accused of a misdiagnosis.)
They love to throw SSRI’s at everything. Stomach cancer. Lyme disease. TBI. Crohn’s. Arthritis. Yeast infections along with all things female. 😛
Beats having to be professionally competent and solve real issues doesn’t it?
Report comment
Yes. I’m bitter and mean as that post revealed. Too much time alone.
I’m used to being isolated but it only took a little extra to break my reserves.
If it weren’t for others I’d be exposing, I would choose to infect myself with the XXXX virus and get it over with. After what I’ve been through death’s not that scary. Once you are dead there’s nothing more human beings can do to you.
I’m not suicidal BTW. Just stir crazy.
Report comment
I wouldn’t argue this in court. A good lawyer would dig up dirt on the “medical expert” which usually is not hard to do and undermine his credibility so the judge would drop him.
Report comment
Dr. Biswas probably labeled the man herself. And drugged him too.
Someone in her field told the police he was dangerous and should be feared as a vicious, murderous psycho killer. Then acts shocked when they shoot him–using the information about him that her industry provided.
I love to think of some of the “lock them up” commenters getting dragged into the psych system. They get no pity from me when they do. They deserve none. I hope they wind up in one of “Doc” Drew’s new asylums since they thought it was good enough for the Others they loathed.
Hitler would never have risen to power if the Germans had not elected him and applauded when he blamed the Jews for all that was wrong with Germany. Cotton Mather only was able to hang a bunch of “witches” because the other Puritans mindlessly accepted what he said. They thought killing them might help the crops grow better and end the plague.
I recommend Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s essay on “stupidity.” Not what is usually meant by that word.
Report comment
I’m pretty sure my serotonin is too low. That’s what SSRI drugs actually do. The “high” is temporary and your body quits producing enough thanks to disrupting the way your body recycles it.
I’m going to go on tryptophan. And exercise.
Report comment
And people with poor fashion sense, or those who laugh in public, or write in a journal are abnormal. Therefore “mentally ill” and dangerous. According to our current Mental Illness Czar.
Report comment
It’s a great shell and nuts game. Pretend the mind altering drugs are medicine. When the mark goes insane, blame them for having an inferior brain and DNA.
The mark is spell bound and isn’t sure what’s real. They know they’re screwed up mentally and trust the doctor. Normally a logical decision.
If they stay on the “meds” they act crazy. If they go off–almost always cold turkey–they act crazy from withdrawals. The family doesn’t know what to think. The shrink tells them, “The family member you loved is gone forever. Lol. Make sure she takes her medicine. They never do. Remember if she acts weird she’s lying.”
My family was never fully deceived since they knew I was obedient–wanting to “get well” and quit being a burden and bother. They knew I took those things dutifully–though they bought me a pill chest since the doctor said “Okay. Maybe she’s not lying. They forget all the time too. That illness makes them lazy and irresponsible.”
The whole time my conservative, teetotaler, anti-marijuana, “just say know” family, college, church were urging me to become a drug addict and then yelling at me for acting like one. I was the only person willing to do any research or read articles in the APA journal. None of my loved ones read anything I show them.
But they never disowned me and accepted my decision to come off once I revealed how I had done it nearly two years after the fact. Most families are NOT that supportive. So I’ll always owe them for that. And they’ve suffered too from having an unwitting junkie for a daughter all these years. 🙁
Idea for a meme.
“Just remember Batman. If the citizens of Gotham weren’t mentally ill to begin with they never would have had that reaction to my toxic nerve gas.” Dr. Arkham aka Scarecrow
Report comment
One of these days I’m writing a book that cites works by characters like Torrey, Pies, etc.–making them accessible to mainstream public who actually want to help people and restore them to health and sanity.
Trying to reason with those who benefit from afflicting us and driving us crazy is a waste of time. No more discussions. Like trying to “work something out” with an abusive spouse.
If we go back or remain the beatings will continue.
“Mental illness” is not a social construct. It’s an iatrogenic one. Created by psychiatrists. Sometimes knowingly.
Over 95% of all SMI cases were perfectly sane until they got put on a drug for being sad because the family dog died or were nervous over exams. Then they went bonkers and got branded by their shrink.
Report comment
Psychiatry=police state.
Anthony, if possible, I advise you to leave Australia. From what I have read it’s psycho-state is far worse than ours.
The fact that our health care is still partially privatized comes in handy since you can relocate to another state if ordered to be drugged or shocked without consent and they can’t legally kidnap you there. Or–if not state ordered–relocate to another community where no one knows your past and provide scant details for the hospital/doctors you see there.
When you have to see a doctor he won’t automatically have access to the records of another system. You’ll also receive better care for kidney damage, IBD and other cruelties the shrinks have inflicted on you. It’s like they don’t care if you die if you have an SMI label.
Report comment
“Normal” people don’t commit violent crimes.
That’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
Report comment
“further deterioration of the connections in the frontal lobe.. makes no sense….”
Bingo!
Report comment
Ironic. Stigma and loss of income is what I got from seeking “mental health.”
I am wondering how all those who attend community mental centers are doing. I’m sure the already marginalized “consumers” miss the time spent with the few friends they have. Especially since so many live alone. 🙁
Calling a friend who’s still in the “mental illness system.” Hard to leave as I know too well.
Report comment
Thank you for this article Dr. K. You left out how television–also a great tool of stupidification was utilized by psychiatry to sell themselves. Nearly all the drug commercials you see on TV now are psychiatric. The police and hospital dramas on the idiot box push the narrative of “mental illness” as well.
Few non-professionals read journal articles or books by Torrey/Jaffe, Lieberman, Pies or the rest. Otherwise they might see through the charade and discover how inhumane their treatments are.
Torrey actually boasted in his underground work Shrinks about how he drove a number of “asymptomatic schizophrenics” crazy by drugging them without knowledge or consent. When reprimanded he joked about how causing “schizophrenics” to go out of their minds was no big deal.
It’s actually lucky for these guys that their books are not widely read. I think they want their articles and books to remain an inside job–read and reviewed by approving peers–and never see the light of day. Those who practice evil love darkness.
Report comment
Yep. Psychiatry is magic. Literally.
Report comment
“Freud and other fathers of psychiatry may have been evil, but they were not stupid.”
Freud was one perv who loved to “project.” Especially on the young wives he saw. He would explain to these vulnerable, trusting women what their dreams “really” meant.
Report comment
Been on at least one psych drug from age 18 to 44.
Off now since 08/31/17.
My mind is clearer despite brain damage and spaciness. But my body is a wreck. I can no longer digest food normally.
At 46 I am forced to live with relatives because my SSI check won’t cover rent and no HUD anywhere. Exhausted from malnutrition since my body won’t absorb vitamins or minerals so I remain unemployed despite recent job openings that won’t be there once this scare is over.
I don’t know what I will do when my parents are gone.
Report comment
After seeing how doctors behave, I say we owe used car sales people and lawyers an apology.
Report comment
I remember The Wizard of Oz where the humbug says, “I’m a very good man, but a very bad wizard.”
My guess is there are a number of psychiatrists who could say, “I’m a very good person, but a very bad doctor.” Assuming they are well meaning but clueless makes it easier to forgive the damage.
Like Dorothy and her friends I’m still very angry at their deception. And–unlike Oz–they continue to keep the up charade.
Psychiatry means never having to say you’re sorry.
Report comment
FWIW psychiatry puts a great deal of emphasis on how powerless you are.
Being told I had an incurable brain disease that would surely drive me mad without unquestioning obedience made me feel helpless and hopeless. Truly horrific.
The exact opposite of 12 Steps in many ways.
Report comment
Your mind came back but not your body. Not uncommon Laurie. Check out the archives for beyondmeds.com and read Monica’s story.
“This caused my family to believe I didn’t care enough about THEM to seek ‘treatment.'”
I read lines like this and feel sick. God bless you, Laurie, it’s not at you but how selfishly many families of the “mentally ill” behave.
It’s all about them–though you’re the one in torment. And they take the word of a stranger in a lab coat over the family member they should know and love. 🙁
Doctors are known to make mistakes, but they refuse to consider this. Too inconvenient.
Report comment
Their faux compassion fools no one. Except maybe themselves.
Basically they believe that all murders in the world are committed only by a mass of inferior beings called the “mentally ill” and they want these people to be drugged, locked up, or both for their own good. I despise hypocrisy.
Crippling and labeling certain individuals is a public service psychiatry performs.
1. It provides a sense of moral superiority to all the “normal” as well as a sense of optimism about the innate goodness of humanity. All normal people are sweet and kind. The only ones capable of doing evil are those with “schizophrenia” or “bipolar.”
2. It provides a sense of security. After every mass shooting the Experts point out the shooter was labeled or label him posthumously. They skillfully evade the questions as to whether or not he was “medicated.” They keep silent and nobody ever asks the question.
I remember reading about Andrea Yates in a NAMI newsletter. They said her “bipolar” was why she drowned her kids. No mention of the psychiatric “care” she was receiving as I recall. NAMI wanted to let her get off on the grounds of her alleged brain disease.
I found the whole thing confusing and resented letting a murderer get off scott free on the grounds that she had a “mental illness.” Didn’t NAMI know that would make us all look bad and feed the flames of “stigma”? Now I realize they were just using her case as a promotional gimmick. And it was really due to involuntary intoxication. I discovered this after I finally gave the NAMI cult the finger.
The only reason I remained obedient to my psychiatrist as long as I did was out of the belief that I would otherwise harm innocent people. For their sake. Not because the drugs made me feel so darn good or helped me function.
Now that I know the truth I’m very angry. Not just for my own sake either.
Report comment
She seemed to be blaming it on him not being forcibly drugged. Though most (not all) people truly out of their gourd are indeed drugged. Shrinks twist the facts to suit their agenda.
Briswais fails to say whether drugs were in his system–making me suspect he was “medicated” and refuses to consider whether her demonization of people like him played any role.
Calling people dangerous does not end discrimination. But it is great PR for forced psychiatry.
Then when there’s the predictable decline in voluntary “consumers” these same shrinks will have a giant pity party about how “stigma” is hurting their own careers. “Poor me. I only make a 6 digit income instead of a 7. Only we psychiatrists suffer from the pain of ‘stigma.’ We are SO oppressed. And no one has offered to officially crown us sovereign monarchs yet.”
Google “stigma + psychiatrist” and log onto a psychiatric professional site sometime. Quite a lack of insight in these virtual sob fests. Laughable in fact–on my good days. 😀
Yet they use this same “stigma” as a marketing ploy whenever convenient. Making me question their intelligence as well as whether or not they possess a shred of conscience.
Report comment
Psychology will always treat its “consumers” like objects because of unquestioning acceptance of psychiatry’s bio bio bio model. Hence objectification is inevitable. My therapists encouraged me to feel helpless and accept a horrible life with no purpose, happiness, or love. I’m through with all of that.
Report comment
Psychiatry flourished under the USSR. “Sluggish Schizophrenia” was the diagnosis for would-be defectors.
Report comment
Worse still it depends on ad money from various “mental health” touting sponsors. Like nearly all media outlets.
Report comment
A burning sensation without a flame to my hand. It’s “weird” because there is no visible cause. Like neuropathy.
Report comment
I was afraid I would go insane and kill innocent people if I did not do exactly as I was told. They were wrong.
Despite my physical pain my soul is free at last! 🙂
Report comment
I suffer many of the above. IBS, chronic pain, artaxia, weird burning sensations on occasion. All of these came 20 years after my diagnosis of bipolar 2 after a bad reaction to Anafranil which the psychiatrist blamed on my unmasked illness.
Antidepressants are proven to mess up your digestion and heart rhythm. And significant nerve damage is normal. None of these were a problem before-though I did feel depressed and anxious. Those are easier to control now.
Report comment
My Haldol made me miserable because I couldn’t think straight. I almost committed suicide because of it.
A mental ball and chain. And the APA argues it’s justifiable to hobble people for life because they once had a sprained ankle.
Report comment
I have witnessed cognitive decline, premature death, homelessness, and suicidal desires in countless people fully drugged according to psychiatrist’s specific orders. Yet they pretend all these people are perfectly happy and lead great lives. I guess if you wind up homeless, suffer IQ loss by 40 points, and kill yourself while “compliant” it doesn’t count. Sick of psychiatry’s denial of its botched experiments on unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs.
I bet the police shot the man because they had listened to shrinks like Biswas tell what dangerous monsters all those she treats are. Calling innocent people dangerous murderers is not compassion. Claiming it will end bigotry is ludicrous. And I find it hard to believe those like Biswas want to–even on a conscious level.
Report comment
I have witnessed cognitive decline, premature death, homelessness, and suicidal desires in countless people fully drugged according to psychiatrist’s specific orders.
Yet psychiatrists and the media pretend all these people are perfectly happy and lead great lives. I guess if you wind up homeless, suffer IQ loss by 40 points, and kill yourself while “compliant” it doesn’t count. Sick of psychiatry’s denial of its botched experiments on unwitting or unwilling human guinea pigs.
I bet the police shot the man because they had listened to shrinks like Biswas tell what dangerous monsters all those she treats are. Calling innocent people dangerous murderers is not compassion. Claiming it will end bigotry is ludicrous. And I find it hard to believe those like Biswas want to–even on a conscious level.
Sickening and sad how folks believe what TV and propaganda puff pieces say more than what they perceive with their own senses. 🙁
Report comment
Someone here at MIA really needs to do a piece on how people can be “compliant” or on AOT and still wind up homeless. RW has done a great job showing how psych drugs severely reduce chances for employment–especially gainful. It seems an inability to pay rent should be admitted to play a role in homelessness. Funny how drugging people is supposed to magically create shelters for them.
I call BS on this celebrity shock doc’s claim that “all mentally ill people enjoy being homeless” and drugs will fix it. And asylums are more cost effective than HUD. If he is put in charge of them we know who stands to come out ahead financially. Not the tax payers. Definitely not the people struggling to survive because his profession maimed them.
Report comment
Longer duration of going untreated does have worse outcomes-for psychiaytrists.
Fewer pills=no lavish vacations called education, and no token gifts like fruit baskets woven from gold wires or diamond studded fountain pens.
Your psychiatrist’s new 80 foot yacht won’t pay for itself.
Report comment
Reverse pill shaming is a thing.
Popular with psychiatrists.
Report comment
I have been pretty depressed lately. Not getting much done.
My depression is a symptom of pernicious anemia. A physical (real) illness. Anemia can be treated with iron supplements and infusions. By a real doctor.
Report comment
Love this article Megan. It offers a new spin on “What if we treated ‘mental illnesses’ like physical illnesses?” Ignoring that “mental illnesses” are supposed to be brain diseases (physical) and rendering the analogy nonsensical. But the doctors who claim to fix these alleged brain diseases act like no others.
My own pet peeve is how our culture practices “sadness shaming.” Like there’s something disgraceful about not grinning like the Cheshire Cat 24/7. It really irritates me.
My peeve is not that people find their own sadness/depression intolerable (understandable) but those around them do. No matter how much cause you have to feel gloomy friends and neighbors nag you to hurry up and see a doctor to take some medicine cause unhappiness is a disease.
If you express reluctance or argue your sorrow/grief is reasonable since you lost your job, your kid disowned you, your spouse left or beats you, you have cancer, your dog died, your house burnt down it’s always…”Oh no. You must have depression.” Then, if you still decline they get mad at you. Accuse you of being too proud to get “help.”
Like being sad is a crime. Ironically once you say you’re getting “helped” you can quit smiling altogether and act gloomy all the time and quit bathing or going out. But say you’re taking your “meds” and everyone applauds. Never mind it isn’t working or maybe you feel like Riley in Inside Out once she lost Joy and Sadness.
Reverse pill shaming. You must take drugs–even if they make you feel 10 x worse–as penance for the sin of unhappiness.
I wonder if having to pose as Happy Stepford Robots is behind the loneliness epidemic. Phoniness can be VERY alienating.
Report comment
Ironic how according to psychiatrists “black and white thinking” is a sure sign of one of those pesky things they label “personality disorders.”
And a sure symptom of “schizophrenia” is the inability to distinguish between the metaphorical/abstract and the concrete/literal.
But my apologies to any any well informed psychiatrist reading this. I acknowledge that you never made that mistake but only cited the “chemical imbalance metaphor” in order to dupe prospective customers and the public.
Hmm.
1. Lying without remorse for self gain.
2. The belief that might makes right. The rules do not apply to you.
3. No regret or remorse for the people you have hurt.
4. Convincing someone they are worthless, inferior, insane.
5. Self pity when called into account for how you have harmed others.
6. Extending cordiality, respect, and regard toward some–but exhibiting harshness, cruelty, and inhumanity to those in a group you regard as weaker and less than human.
Now what “mental illness” would these be “symptoms” of?
Anyone want to take a guess?
😀
Report comment
Remember that line from Jerry MacGuire? “Show me the money!”
Show me the disease!
The fact that recovery can occur without medical treatment should really make us question the bio model.
For the sake of argument, even if psychosis is linked to a brain disease–until scientists can produce a bio marker they don’t know what’s wrong and can’t fix it. Assuming improved brain function is what they are after.
Report comment
Actually the Georgians (early 19th century Britain) had a better way of viewing extreme states than 21st century psychiatrists IMNHO.
Today’s APA composes lists of arbitrary traits their elite group deemed unacceptable and votes into existence.
In Georgian England, madness was as madness did. “Diagnosis” was composed solely of behaviors. Way more honest than our system. Once the extreme behaviors stopped you were no longer considered mad. And you had to be very weird to be considered mad.
Ordinary “consumers” you regularly meet at NAMI or mental centers would be too rational to qualify in that era. Even those visibly muddled by the ball and chain treatments of today.
A certain Shaun S. commented here that psychiatry needs to distinguish between the consenting and nonconsentual “consumers.” I heartily agree with him on that.
But I think it is far more important to distinguish between the dangerous and the harmless.
The pop culture narrative (touted by celebrity docs–experts in showmanship and propaganda) is that all the treated are harmless and safe to be around.
All the undrugged are dangerous and a public menace. Black and white thinking to put real, complex human beings into little boxes where the Benevolent All Knowing Psychiatrist will keep them forever. Amen.
The evidence (statistics, long term studies, empirical) tells another story.
All people deserve to be judged on the content of their character. Not the claims of some bureaucrat in a lab coat who doesn’t know them from Adam.
Harmless eccentrics, trauma victims, and those with head injuries should not be categorized with violent criminals. In claiming to be merciful to the latter psychiatric law proves itself neither merciful nor just to the former.
Report comment
A word of encouragement.
Charlotte Perkins was cured from her “hysteria” by rejecting her role as a madwoman and made a new life for herself doing work that brought her satisfaction.
This is the cure I’m trying now. Sadly my body is damaged and I have real disabilities.
But I’m no longer acting like a “bipolar” because I relocated and went off the “meds” that caused my mood swings to start with.
Report comment
You can read “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins online for free at Gutenberg or in downloadable PDF format.
How the Experts try to “help” the POV character:
1. They cut her off from everybody.
2. They prevent her from working.
3. They encourage her in idleness–tell her to lie in bed all day thinking about how insane she is.
4. They patronize her–treating an intelligent, rational adult like a child or developmentally delayed person.
5. Sensory deprivation.
6. When she complains of depression and how intolerable the situation is, her doctor husband tells her, “That’s just your illness talking.”
But things have changed now they say.
Here’s how:
1. They brand you with a new “mentally ill” identity so you get cut off from friends and family.
2. They actively discourage you from working. The drugs and discrimination play a role. (Never ask for reasonable accommodations for you “mental illness”! They kept telling me to do that. Bad advice and I think they knew it.)
3. They only encourage “peer” activities. Weekly “groups” at the mental illness center and NAMI meetings to discuss your “symptoms” and talk about how hopelessly crazy you are.
4. They patronize you. Treating you like a child or developmentally delayed person even though you’re an intelligent, rational adult.
5. They put you on drugs that dull your senses.
6. When you complain of depression and how intolerable your life situation is, the Experts say, “That’s just your mental illness talking.”
Yep. Things are so much better now. 😛
*Snark.*
Report comment
The meanest psychiatrist I ever had happened to be a woman.
It’s not just a male/female thing.
Report comment
You know how you feel better than anyone else.
A lot of us here–including the anti-psych crowd–are not against the use of SSRI’s or whatever. It’s coercive psychiatry we oppose. Involuntary. Obviously not your situation.
Glad you have a doctor willing to work with you. 🙂
Report comment
My ex had a therapist try to seduce him. When Michael said “No” the therapist warned him not to tell anybody because “No one will believe you since you’re mentally ill.”
This is an even bigger problem with women–though horrible for anybody. Julie Greene told me how having a counselor proposition her almost drove her to suicide.
As long as the policy is #believenomentallyill there will be a gross power imbalance leaving clients/consumers/patients with no recourse when the authority figure takes advantage of them.
Solution? Don’t see any counselor who uses the labels. Either rogue practitioners or uncertified or those who belong to the Choice Theory/Reality Therapy school or something similar.
Even counselors who mean well often treat you as “less than” if they believe you are hopeless and not quite human. For example a counselor I talked to automatically sided against a woman whose family refused to let her see her grandchildren. He didn’t know her from Adam but said, “She probably was unstable or they (the “normals”) would not have treated her this way.” Troubling how his education made him automatically make these assumptions. That the “mentally ill” are intrinsically subhuman and the “normals” they interact with are never at fault.
Check the NAMI site sometime. You can scan the forums without joining. A lot of complaining from parents, spouses, etc. about how horrible their “loved ones” act. How abusive the thirty year old son they force to live in the garage behaves. (If only he would take his meds.) Yet not a word of complaint from the “loved” one about how the caretakers abuse them.
We know that caretaker abuse is a real thing. My guess is either they are too brow beaten to notice emotional abuse–and may feel they deserve physical abuse as well. Or the moderator censors the posts of more than “pill shaming” thought crimes.
“Remember mental illness is nobody’s fault” could be translated “Remember everything bad that happens is the mentally ill person’s fault.” If you interact with most “SMI’s” who are conscientious patients with good insight you’ll notice how fearful they look. How they apologize for EVERYTHING.
Not saying this is a conscious thing on shrinks’ part. But telling you that you are walking disease. (Your mind or soul is a cancer and you are hopelessly “ill” meaning evil.) That everything wrong in every relationship is YOUR fault as the “crazy” person is why so many of us get into abusive relationships.
A few decide, “Hey, since everyone tells me I’m evil/crazy just like a serial killer why not act out on my anger? Not my fault after all.” So they become abusive and use the label as an excuse. Few do this but psychiatry encourages well meaning spouses to stay with abusers. “Mrs. X your husband can’t help his abuse. His scientifically proven brain disease means he can’t be held responsible for body slamming you against the wall and smashing the sculptor you worked on for ten years. Making him take his medicines will turn him into the sweet guy you dated.”
But usually the shrinks will enable abusive “normals” with “crazy” spouses. We all know how that goes. And therapists will always side with the abuser as long as he or she is “normal.” Since only “sick” people hurt others after all.
I almost married a man who treated me badly. When things didn’t go his way he told me how crazy I was and used my “bipolar” against me. I felt lucky any man would deign to be with me and let him treat me that way till he threatened my dad and sister.
I quit dating forever once I realized the only kind of men I can attract are abusers thanks to my training at the mental illness centers for 20 years. I always felt ugly and awkward since my teens. Then the shrink told me I was a crazy psycho too.
“But no” says Dr. Quackenbush. “I don’t like the words ‘crazy’ or ‘psycho’ since they undermine the validity of the branch of hard medical science which I practice.” All about HIS career. Of course.
But he knows “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” mean dangerous/murderous/evil. They are moral judgments and if he doesn’t know that he’s the only one who hasn’t caught on.
Maybe we should just look at behaviors themselves. “Bipolar” is basically meaningless. Breaking a nose, screaming vile names, locking someone in a room…you don’t need a shrink’s diagnosis to know these behaviors are unacceptable.
And if your partner acts that way you don’t need a shrink to diagnose YOU because you’re depressed or anxious! Get out of dodge. Find a way to escape the abuser. You need all your mental faculties–and your anxiety to escape. Fight or flight is a normal response to emotional games or threats of physical harm.
Calling it a disease is an insult and dismisses how horrible your situation is.
The more “educated” in psychiatry a counselor–or just about anybody is–the worse they treat those branded “severely mentally ill.” That’s why I will never see anyone who believes in the DSM again.
I received some helpful advice in interviews with Will Hall during withdrawal. He’s uncertified by any of the mental illness factories. That only added to his value in my opinion.
Report comment
Thanks for your kind words Bradford. 🙂
Part of it’s not withdrawal nor my TBI or other residual damage. Nor even shame.
It’s grief I have never been able to process till now. Too old and damaged to do a lot of things. But there’s still much I can do.
Someday I will be able to go through an entire 24 hours without crying.
Report comment
“Meds” cut your life expectancy by 25-30 years.
I felt inferior. My shrink said, “No Rachel. You don’t have an inferiority complex. According to my DSM you really are inferior.” 😀
Actually trauma by itself could have been overcome. Psychiatry ruined my life in every way imaginable.
No friends. Too sick and old for a family or career. Living in poverty and isolation. Too sick to leave my room some days.
I sit alone awaiting the sweet release of death. Beyond any hope of improvement in this world.
It’s too late and I’m too damaged for anything good. I’ll spend the rest of my days holed up alone in some relative’s spare bedroom like my “schizophrenic” great aunt who also gave up on life after Psychiatry had its way with her.
Nowhere to get rid of her shame. She lived out her days closeted away-a desolate woman cut down in her teens.
Report comment
AOT is very real and prominent psychiatrists promote it.
I only escaped because of my years of compliance.
Report comment
Dr. Hall, I applaud your courage in writing this article. We are hard on members of your profession here at MIA. But if you will take the time and trouble to read through some of our heart breaking stories you may understand why.
I assume you mean well and want to help people. But here are some problems with the system you are working with. Not just the mind altering drugs used to treat distressing thoughts and feelings.
But psychiatry attempts to use the Linnaean System to categorize human suffering and bad behaviors. It’s really like mapping constellations in the sky. No–not all “mad” behaviors are just social constructs. The stars in the sky are very real. But human beings are the ones drawing the lines between the stars to make pictures of hunters, bears, princesses, etc.
Those of us labeled do not find them conducive to reintegration. They harm our relationships, prevent us from gainful employment, and can cause homelessness from lack of income and discrimination from landlords. (Not enough HUD for everyone categorized as SMI anymore.)
For starters, do you have any idea how horrible it is to have your friends and family turn from you in disgust and loathing because you have been categorized as a monster by a respected professional?
Ironically the more “pro psychiatry” a group is the worse they treat someone classified as “severely mentally ill.” It did not help that my “meds” caused seizures, ridiculous weight gain, and made me act weirder than ever due to hindering my thought processes. These helpful pro psych people insisted the weight gain was all my fault and everything else was proof that I was “noncompliant” when the exact opposite is true.
And how is labeling someone “schizophrenic” or “bipolar” for life supposed to motivate them to change? It’s great for aiding “meds compliance” and “insight.” But neither equals improved life–either in quality or quantity.
I no longer act bipolar. But no doctor would ever pronounce me cured because the DSM 5 states that that is impossible. They label me based on certain “symptoms” yet when these symptoms are gone they refuse to acknowledge a misdiagnosis or pronounce me cured. This happens all the time for those who escape the system.
All my psychotic mania was caused by a reaction to Anafranil. Most doctors argue “Well it just unmasked the illness already there.” Guess what? I remasked it by going off the crap that caused it to begin with.
Since all psychiatry offers is “controlling the symptoms” shouldn’t we try what works instead of rigid, mindless adherence to status quo that isn’t helping people?
Even in the Victorian days psychiatrists distinguished between the harmless and the violent “lunatics.” Yet now they lump harmless, but lonely eccentrics into the same category as serial killers regardless of any history of violence or current behaviors.
Ironically, by treating dangerous criminals as though they were sick, members of forensic psychiatry treat law abiding citizens as though they were dangerous criminals by calling them sick–and encourage our communities to do likewise.
Don’t we deserve to be judged on the content of our character rather than because we once scored 6 out of 9 random emotional/cognitive traits on an arbitrary chart decades ago?
Even those of us who choose to remain consumers are greatly upset at how those like Tim Murphy, Fuller Torrey and others scapegoat us for all society’s evils. Even if we continue taking our drugs our neighbors will view us as would-be-killers. How is such education of the public helpful to anyone but those seeking to further their careers in politics/psychiatry?
When we “deteriorate” so we can no longer maintain basic levels of self care let alone hold down a job our pro psychiatry neighbors will often blame us for “non compliance.” Or–at best cluck their tongues. Saying, “It’s just the disease.”
I did indeed go through a rough patch at 20. I could have used some real help from someone who cared. Instead I got psychiatry. 🙁
I have indeed been properly punished for my depression and anxiety. Because mainstream psychiatric treatments are punitive rather than restorative in nature.
Still alive. But it’s not a good life.
I won’t blame you for what men like Torrey and Murphy have done in “educating” the public to further their careers. That would be unjust. But it is also unjust for law abiding citizens to be blamed for the crimes of every serial killer and mass shooter who happens to be diagnosed bipolar or paranoid schizophrenic regardless of the individual’s behavior.
Report comment
Psychiatric treatments ARE injury. And nothing else. Unless you include punishment.
Report comment
Thank you Dr. Moncrieff.
I really enjoyed your book The Bitterest Pills.
I felt vindicated–though privately– on learning that I wasn’t lying or delusional when I kept telling my psychiatrist that the Haldol made my psychotic symptoms worse. In addition to the seizures. He maintained that neuroleptics “never did that” and insinuated to my poor parents–also traumatized–that I was faking the “spells” I experienced at least once a day on that horrible stuff.
🙁
Report comment
We already have psychology.
Report comment
They obviously believe their test subjects are crazy. But they want to replace “crazy” with a more medical-sounding term to prove what Real Doctors they are.
Report comment
Maybe the function of a doctor, after all, is to facilitate healing–instead of defaming, terrorizing, and neurologically mutilating the “patient.”
Report comment
Hear hear.
How many are organically damaged and psychologically traumatized by shrinks? I’m struggling with TBI and ME inflicted on me by lying “mental health.” I am also grieving the life I will never have, isolation and poverty. I owe it all to the Mental Illness System.
I don’t want an institution. Those places scare me more than death itself.
A living Hell with doctors striving to abandon their humanity and take on the role of devils. May God have mercy on their own psyches.
Ariel Castro’s victims had a lot of problems. But no one suggested giving Castro permanent guardianship of them!
Why are articles at MIA arguing that our abusers have our best interests at heart and will take good care of us?
Report comment
Even during my taper I had fewer emotional problems.
Suffering a lot of physical pain now. But no longer suicidal. No meltdowns.
No therapist or groups. All they ever did was remind me how hopeless I was anyhow.
Report comment
Gas ovens would be a cheaper and more humane way of killing us. But less profitable.
Report comment
It is pretty scary. The ONLY reason shrinks aren’t arguing for the humane practice of putting us to sleep–our alleged agsognosia means they can assume we want whatever they want–is that they can’t prescribe drugs to a corpse.
The real reason shrinks are praising asylums now? They know more people with soft diagnoses will be going off their drugs or dying. Fewer will replace them. Asylum franchises can rake in way more profits than letting them live in less restrictive environments. Though the latter costs the public less.
Report comment
Dr. Moncrieff things are worse today–in a number of ways.
There are a number of problems with locking up people who have committed no crimes. Few of the people locked up were violent and failure to separate them from the harmless reminds me of the prison system William Wiberforce decried.
Not all were inhumane. But those that were seldom were held accountable.
Recovery from bizarre mental states was acknowledged to exist. Now it is not. This is used as an excuse for endless druggings–and proof of how necessary the pharma-psychiatrist is.
Nowadays we have the asylum without walls. This sounds better. But because they are able to “incarcerate” much greater numbers in the system and fewer are able to leave (numbers not percentages) there is a lot more suffering.
Psychiatry causes segregation as well as disability. While HIPAA may keep them from blabbing your label to the community, they will tell your loved ones. You need a go between. Sadly you are excluded a lot. And when included they talk over you. My mental illness team–as I call them–kept telling my parents how hopeless I was.
How I could never function normally and would be sure to be naughty and must be forced to take my “meds” regardless of how I complained. And if I didn’t recover they could be sure it was only because I was spitting them out on the sly.
I completed a four year degree in just eight years. I’m surprised I could do it at all. When I complained how I couldn’t concentrate they would tell me: A. It’s just your illness. Not the medicine! B. Sometimes the meds do that. It stinks but it’s necessary since horrible things will happen if you don’t take it religiously.
I took my drugs religiously for 24 years. Nobody believed I was taking them–except my family and a few others. Why? Because I deteriorated and wanted to kill myself.
My mental illness team kept promising me bad stuff would happen if I went off my “meds.” And occasionally mentioned good things might happen if I were really, really good. Showing insight and unquestioning compliance. A whole lot of stick with just a bit of carrot. Best way to keep us dumb beasts under control. 😛
When I told them how the “antipsychotics” caused disjointed thinking and psychotic symptoms and the “antidepressants” made me miserable and anhedonic–they told me that was proof of my illness. I was too crazy to know how they were helping me.
Which begs the question–if these drugs make crazy people sane why do these now sane people go off of them? Shouldn’t having these miraculous sanity inducers prevent noncompliance? Going nuts is no fun I can tell you. My true insanity was all drug induced. And the gaslighting my mental illness team dished out did not help.
It should be called the Mental Illness System. They don’t want you to recover. If you’re sane going in it won’t last long.
My parents–unlike many–stuck with me through my unlovable craziness. Despite the mental illness team’s efforts to cut me off from family and friends. I have had a couple good “normal” friends who stuck with me too. Thank God for their unconditional love. 🙂
They believed when I said I took my “meds” and were as upset as I was when I got worse “despite” Psych Magic. The whole thing was very frustrating for all of us.
I’m sorry for the suffering I caused them now. I never wanted to be a drug addict.
Very angry at being lied to and about! Struggling to forgive those who damaged me and really altered my life. (Some might say ruined but I refuse to think that way.)
Report comment
“Delusions” are what William Glasser referred to as “creative symptoming.”
They’re acts of creativity. Which is why art therapy can sometimes be helpful.
Find other ways to express creativity and you won’t need “hallucinations” and “delusions” anymore.
Or help someone figure out how the “delusion” is helping him or her. Szasz referred to erroneous, odd beliefs–Bertrand Russell’s man who thinks he’s a poached egg and wants toast to sit on–as lies people believe.
The truth is far more complicated than psychiatry would have us believe. And far more interesting. 🙂
Report comment
I met a man my dad was trying to help when I was fourteen. He had ambition based delusions.
“Willie” would go through periods of believing he was the Chosen One called to save the world be becoming President in 1988. Alternating with periods of intense despair and suicidal depression.
We thought the drugs helped him because he became subdued and less annoying after every hospitalization for a month or two. But he still got depressed since he was lonely and his life stunk.
Report comment
Grosse Luge.
Tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it….
Report comment
The problem with commenting on this is where to start?
“Evidence based medicine.” How about any proof that the drugs work at all?
By “work” I mean helping at thinking clearly, living independently, getting along with others, not dying prematurely or going through cognitive decline or suddenly becoming morbidly obese. No one in the mental illness system leads a high quality or longer life that I can tell.
Yet numerous doctors claim that there’s no disputing what they see every day. THE MEDICATIONS WORK!!!
How do they know this? Don’t they see the damage these drugs do to people long term? They must know these are slowly killing people.
I have had NP’s who honestly seem to care diagnose me with mysterious ailments. Pernicious anemia, severe vitamin deficiencies, microscopic colitis, heart arrythmia, fatty liver, uncontrollable recurring yeast infections. But when I ask what’s behind them they grow silent and look weird. Yeah…they know.
Funny how no doctor gets freaked out because I’m losing weight and my heart is normal again. These should be perceived as sure signs of “non compliance.” So there must be some ignorance involved too.
Mom blabbed to her FNP that her daughter didn’t believe in “antidepressants” and had gone off of them. The nurse expressed horror and assured Mom that I would be sure to have a manic episode. With a straight face.
Lucky for me Mom laughed at her. She’s been living with me and notices my moods are stable without drugs. 🙂
And I thought SSRI’s were supposed to fix depression. Not mania. Neuroleptics are supposed to do that. Doctors need to work more closely with the Big Pharma propagandists to fill up the plot holes in their epic fantasy known as Mental Health.
Yes. We should leave our echo chamber. But my stomach is already upset. Thanks to decades on SSRI’s that “work” at messing up my digestion.
It’s pointless to argue with people that are living in a fairy tale. The medical student with “mental issues” may wonder why her magical meds aren’t working when she turns thirty-five and can no longer hold down a job because of cognitive decline and failing bodily systems. And everyone tells her how great her quality of life is–evidence to the contrary.
Funny how extremely hostile “grateful consumers” can get at having the truth pointed out. I felt relief. Then anger at the people who had gaslighted and slandered me for twenty-five years. Not people who told me the (unpleasant) truth. I never was proud or happy of being “mentally ill” though. Some wear it like a badge of honor for reasons I can’t fathom.
They’re invested in the System and make lots of money off it. So of course they want to preserve the status quo.
Report comment
Now they have the HUD ghetto and homeless centers and the streets.
I believe there is a link between psychiatry and homelessness. Long term use of mind altering, addictive drugs can really destroy your ability to hold down a job.
And I have known a number of ideal “consumers” who wandered the streets due to shortage of HUD housing. Driving people crazy with SSRI’s and benzos who were only mildly depressed before getting “helped” and making short term problems life long drove up the numbers.
I also met people who wanted homes and perhaps needed them because their brains and CNS were too messed up for independent living. 🙁
Lobotomies are about keeping people childish and docile. Not independent! This includes the chemical kind.
Report comment
Well said!
Report comment
Nothing but Angels of Death in the medical field now. Why should we trust any of them?
Report comment
Just another effort to lend pseudo credibility to everybody’s favorite pseudo science.
Why do shrinks even bother? Not like they’ll ever be held accountable by anyone anyhow. Certainly not by their partners in crime. AKA other doctors.
The fault is not with western medicine but the crooks in charge.
Report comment
I heartily agree with you here RR.
Report comment
Yes. The very act of aggressively pursuing large numbers of POC to force treatments upon could be viewed as racist. Check Breggin’s YouTube videos on The Violence Initiative.
Psychiatry already displays its inherent bias against the disabled in the way it targets them. Especially those who already have cognitive problems.
The Mental Center I once attended “served” people with Down Syndrome, Spina Biffada, and TBI. How? With lessons on life skills and lots of drugs to render them almost impossible to learn.
Google Karl Binding. A head honcho in German psychiatry who gave Hitler a lot of his ideas. He wrote propaganda such as Lebensunwertes Leben.
Psychiatry is inextricably bound to social darwinism and eugenics. Racism must be covert but they still justify mutilating, imprisoning and imposing often fatal treatments on the disabled who–according to their judgment–do not have lives worth living.
The only real reason shrinks don’t advocate for euthenasia now (I suspect) is keeping people alive to drug indefinitely is how they make money. Fuller Torrey probably knows that the jig is up. So like others he has determined to cash in on opening a chain of asylums since it’s growing impossible to claim that these wonder drugs they push help with quality of life or independence.
If the APA starts promoting euthanasia at the same time a mysterious new soap or protein supplement shows up on the market we’ll know why.
Report comment
BTW, people die of metabolic disorders and other problems in mental wards all the time. A faulty assumption that she would be alive if she had gone to one instead of an honestly named jail.
Julie hated and feared psych wards and every profession linked to “mental health” after almost dying on a ward because they restricted her to one liter of water a day. The argument being dangers of water intoxication.
Report comment
Metabolic disorder. Sounds like the one Julie suffered from. Iatrogenic of course.
Report comment
Yep. It doesn’t help that the psych treatments cause so many additional health problems either.
Even militant psychiatry apologist “Natasha Tracie” at Bipolar Burble has complained of how doctors dismiss her real health problems after learning of her “bipolar” label.
My guess is most doctors simply don’t care if those psychiatry has written off as “defective” die. Our culture has less mercy on the disabled (especially mentally) than convicted felons considered sane.
Report comment
Psychiatry is the shadow government. Only instead of lurking quietly in the shadows it disguises itself as medicine.
Report comment
“I am not sure what would make a journalist NOT want to expose the human rights issues.”
Employment. Whether a reporter for a magazine or website or a TV newscaster they work for whoever sponsors the publication or show.
(I bet Bob Whitaker could share some tales of lost job opportunities despite the success of Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic. Glad he won the Man Booker Award.)
Banning Big Pharma ads would help immensely. Most news is all a bunch of commercialized propaganda. Used to sell drugs and psych ideology. No concern for truth at all!
I’m trying to contact private YouTube journalists who are open minded enough to look up out of The Box. They don’t get funded by Big Pharma companies either because of how small they are despite their big followings.
Report comment
The food was fine. Our chefs can do no wrong. You only got food poisoning because of your defective digestive system.
Report comment
Funny how no one talks about “sadness shaming.” Why do we need to go around grinning like the Cheshire Cat all the time for crying out loud?
And the “depression is a disease” is no help. It’s just a ploy to obligate you to take the “meds” and pretend they make you happy even when they make smiling nonstop more difficult than ever and you feel too numb to enjoy anything. And the original problem making you depressed is as bad or worse than ever.
People will quit yelling at you for being unhappy if you tell them you’re taking psychiatric drugs. That’s the only benefit I experienced long term.
One of the early Simpsons episodes showed Lisa going through the blues. In the end she pulls out of her funk when her mother, Marge, tells her the family will be there for her no matter how she feels and she doesn’t have to fake a smile anymore. Lisa smiles and tells her mom that this time it’s real.
Maybe once we quit treating the blues like leprosy fewer people will be depressed?
Report comment
I take Colestipol from time to time. Sometimes it’s the only thing that works.
Probiotics don’t cut the mustard all the time. My digestion is SO MESSED UP.
Report comment
Bread has been around for centuries. Only the rich ate meat every day.
Report comment
Not defending or praising Trump but pointing out the toadying hypocrisy and double dealing intrinsic to psychiatry. A political branch rather than a medical one.
Report comment
Funny how these very shrinks who condemn Donald Trump and want to “diagnose” him are more than happy to curry favor and kiss up to him when it serves their purposes. Such as siphoning more tax dollars to open new AOT programs to indirectly sell more drugs and psycho surgeries or open a franchise of lunatic asylums.
Dr. Drew, Dr. Torrey, etc. What a bunch of back-stabbing phonies! As all of us who have had dealings with this profession know.
Biederman went on the air saying it was an insult to “bipolars” to call Donald Trump one. Before you applaud him too hard remember he called Trump worse than Hitler too.
So definitely not a complement to anyone he labels. More like a back handed insult. I guess Biederman gave up hope of cashing in on the mass shootings like others have done.
Report comment
Amen!
The “medicine” drives sane people nuts and ensures people going through a rough patch never come out of it.
It makes me so angry how they lie to well meaning family and neighbors to cripple people and turn functional people into hopeless lunatics/village idiots. That’s what psychiatric “treatments” do after all.
I remember Mom and Dad crying and getting upset at how my “treatments” weren’t helping me as I took them religiously. They had no positive effects except when I took 10 mg of Haldol and could no longer voice my misery though I seized every day.
When I say the treatments don’t “work” I mean as the shrinks promised. Helping us to lead meaningful, productive lives and get along with others.
They don’t work for any of the above. Nor do they prevent crime nor suicide.
The only way psychiatric treatments successfully work is at making shrinks and pharmaceutical makers filthy rich and providing the former a professional status no legitimate doctors enjoy–along with unquestioned legal powers.
Report comment
So Dr. Hickling is worried. HE knows what’s best for those “psychotic” Jamaicans who don’t know any better and are afraid to come to people like him for help because they associate his institution with the master/slave relationship.
How is Dr. Hickling any different? There’s the real question.
“Those ignorant, potentially dangerous, mentally incompetent defectives need a White Knight to take care of them.” That sums up all Western “mental health” in a nutshell.
The symbols for psychiatry since the Industrial era have been whips and chains. Traditional treatments of all written off as hopelessly mad. A casual perusal of Victorian Gothic literature will furnish plenty of references.
Then shrinks realized scars from lashings and and chain cuffs made their profession look brutal. So they figured out new ways to torture and harm without leaving any visible marks.
Report comment
Were the people medicated?
That might account for struggling with such dense, sustained prose.
I got a BA on a cocktail. Like running laps with a ball and chain.
Report comment
Psychiatry’s “diagnoses” are moral accusations. Its punitive treatments are torture.
Once you realize your accuser/torturer for what he is you don’t need his validation.
Who needs moral validation from Josef Mengele?
Report comment
Lesson number 1. Never share any emotions with a shrink you have to see. They don’t understand human feelings, thoughts, or behaviors.
Report comment
Good points Sam.
Report comment
Psychiatry causes alienation, rejection, loneliness.
Like any other cult they cut you off from friends ASAP.
Report comment
And carve up your face into a grotesque parody to prove they’re correct in this analysis.
Report comment
In America thanks to HIPPA red tape, you can simply relocate and not inform your new doctor about your all “diagnoses.” Changing states is best, thanks to different health systems–but just changing hospital systems will do. For example, seeing a doctor in a nearby county or city.
Report comment
No, they don’t.
Report comment
The “deep pit”? Do you mean being found out eventually?
Their big mistake was targeting too many people. If they had been content with just a modest number of “lunatics” in their asylums without walls they would have gotten away with it indefinitely.
But by drugging over 20% of the population for decades, it’s impossible to ignore the long term results of the pills they hand out like office mints. Ruining the lives of 2-5% of the populace wasn’t good enough for them.
Now the cat is clawing it’s way out of the bag.
Report comment
This kind of thing happens a lot in idealistic organizations as well as businesses.
And there’s always the concern. “If I air our dirty laundry it will make our group and all we stand for look bad.”
Sadly the truth will come out sooner or later. And the longer you pile up the dirty laundry and let it mildew the bigger the mess will be.
Report comment
How is labeling moody teenagers “Bipolar” going to help them become emotionally stable adults?
How is labeling a woman who has made poor relationship choices “Borderline Personality Disorder” supposed to help her make better decisions in the future?
Don’t psychiatrists realize people can change, grow and improve?
Unless you get “helped” by them so your brain quits forming normal synapses and everyone in your community shuns you thanks to the self-fulfilling prophecies these psychics/pseudo-scientists make all the time.
Report comment
Instead of “mad” or “crazy” Bruce might say “outside the mainstream” or “unusually passionate.” Or “very zealous.”
Kind of like Szasz’s explanation of the link between “genius” and “madness.” Both are unusual and extreme ways of thinking and behavior.
St. Francis of Assisi was different. So is your eccentric aunt who plays the mandolin for a living. So was Ted Bundy. So was John Dewey, Albert Einstein, Robert Fulton, Mother Theresa, Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey Dahmer, Joan of Arc, Emily Dickinson, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, a bunch of serial killers I don’t like reading about, you get the picture…
Different is not a disease.
Report comment
Funny how so many psychiatrists have it in for their own family members.
It’s like they hate a certain parent or sibling so much that simply having that person “put away” to rot and die prematurely isn’t good enough. They have to hunt down others with similar characteristics to “help.”
Denial of their hatred and harm done to the “loved one” mixed with a subconscious desire for revenge perhaps. Eccentric family members can be embarrassing.
Of course some socially awkward people strive to look “normal” to please others and it results in break downs–which only make them weirder than ever. Bringing MORE embarrassment to the image conscious family. Hopeless cycle. And the designated freak bears the brunt of it.
Report comment
We also need an escape system set up to save those whose well being and lives are threatened by those claiming to “save them from themselves.”
Dismantling a big system takes time. Saving one human life at a time is much easier.
Harriet Tubman didn’t sit around waiting for the Civil War to be won.
Report comment
My heart goes out to you, Robert Nikkel.
You mean well and want to help people. But you are working with a morally and cognitively bankrupt system–corrupt at its core. (Not all individuals within it are that way. Including psychiatrists. The system itself is based on a lie.)
Knowing what you know must make it that much more frustrating. Corinna West has expressed similar frustrations trying to work with groups like NAMI.
Report comment
I got a “real diagnosis” from a case manager with a BS in physical education. Stuff that’s not ‘sposed to happen is par for the course in “mental health.”
It’s a Kafkaesque bureaucracy based an a network of incongruous lies. So of course nothing in the Mental System makes sense.
Report comment
Why do psychiatrists buy malpractice insurance? For the same reason.
Because going to medical school and buying insurance for malpractice are what honest-to-gosh doctors do.
Report comment
Ms. Davis is innocent and means well.
This piece reads like it belongs in another publication. But this is not meant to be an anti-psychiatry site after all.
I wouldn’t call this piece “critical” either. But helping people in poverty is a good thing. I agree with that.
I just don’t like how psychiatry does it. Way worse than ineffective. And kindly people (psychologists, therapists, peer support workers, case managers) who team up with psychiatrists burn out quickly if they are trying to make a difference.
It’s like trying to bale out a leaky boat while the quacks keep drilling more holes in the bottom. The epitome of futility.
Report comment
I have nothing against Ms. Davis personally.
Most of us here only want one thing from “mental health.” To be left alone!
Their “services” lower self image, teach helplessness, prevent gainful employment and isolate from the community. Their treatments cause physical and mental disabilities.
It makes sense that the Mental Illness System is targeting POC. (Watch Breggin’s videos on the Violence Initiative.) Many minority communities are distrustful of Mental Centers.
An African American friend of mine commented on how many white women she works with pop psych pills all the time, talking about their “bipolar” and “chronic depression.” It looks like so many have these labels they can actually find work now–as long as their CNS and brains hold out.
“Mental health” creates poverty. Lots of us grew up middle or upper middle class and are forced to subsist on $775 a month thanks to psychiatry’s “help.”
Almost three years off my drugs and finally found a job. For the first time as an adult. (I went on psych drugs at 18. “Therapeutic” amounts at 20 after getting labeled.)
Can’t wait to go off my “benefits.” I HATED going on them. Never wanted to be a bum.
Psychiatry forced me to. They lied to me–saying my only hope for gainful employment was unquestioning obedience/”med” compliance. Basically shrinks forced me to violate my conscience by tricking me into going on mind altering drugs (against my principles) and mooch off the public.
I kept asking, “Hey, if these treatments ‘work’ how come we can’t get jobs and act like freaking grown ups?” These questions would throw the idiots leading day treatment sessions into fits of rage. (Not all case workers acted that way. The idiots were those who threw tantrums at my innocent questions.)
But “work” doesn’t mean independence, health, or productivity to shrinks. It’s all about docility and childish dependence.
The welfare workers make you feel like a piece of trash at those bureaucratic offices. Far more dehumanizing and humiliating than hand outs from locally run charities.
Report comment
How many cases of “bipolar” came from a reaction to an SSRI?
I really am curious.
Report comment
*Hopelessly INSANE. Typo there.
Report comment
A loose summary of Kendler’s article.
People are beginning to wise up and we don’t have any scientific proof yet. (And whatever we may dig up may not exonerate us.)
We can’t be held responsible for our behaviors over the years due to how excited we were—at earning $800 an hour instead of a measly $200 and gaining the status of honest-to-gosh real doctors.
So hurry up. We need a coherent narrative. It doesn’t help that all our stories published on various sites and online magazines (which the public can access) contradict each other. Doesn’t look like Real Science at all!
Let’s synchronize our lies.
Report comment
Been called worse things than “deluded” by shrinks after the SSRI I took exactly as prescribed kept me awake for 21 days straight and sent me into a full blown psychotic mania. Can’t have pill shaming. Better gaslight the patient instead.
I started out with depression and anxiety. Wound up labeled Bipolar 2 and on a cocktail. Off the cocktail and finally stabilized after 20 years though my body is a wreck. Lost a huge chunk of my life and forced to start over with broken health, no work history, no savings and no friends at 46. Will never have a family and live in fear someone will discover my dirty secret (of being harmed) and believe my abusers. Not me.
Report comment
Plagued by flashbacks. It started shortly after completing my taper. Gotten worse over the two years following.
Not sure what my problem is. Too much free time alone to brood and ruminate probably.
Report comment
They’re not looking rational nor humane.
A lot of psychiatric sites and mags complain about how media depicts them.
They also worry about “stigma” of their patients–because the shame associated with being treated is bad for business. And those inconsiderate patients keep dying in their fifties. Tsk tsk.
Report comment
Do you mean greater hearing sensitivity?
I never heard that theory. They also can lead to tardive psychosis according to Joanna Moncrieff.
Report comment
My question is what if (hypothetically) psychiatrists were to discover a physical cause for the emotional/cognitive problems associated with “bipolar” or “schizophrenia”? What are the odds that their hit and miss (miss and miss?) treatment with mind altering drugs would be a good thing? Isn’t it more than likely that it would be proven they were doing something to exacerbate the real problem? In addition to creating a slew of new ones. (Like Diabetes 2. I was one of only 3 out of the 15 members of my day treatment group without diabetes. One of a minority with all my chompers too. We were all morbidly obese except for one member I knew was “non-compliant” but refused to snitch on.)
The way psychiatrists go about their model is like a surgeon assuming there is something wrong because your stomach hurts. With no scans or other tests, he does intensive surgery removing random bits of your digestive system–a bit of a colon here, your small intestine there, a fourth of your stomach, and maybe sever some muscles in the lower part of your esophagus just to be sure…what are the odds of this actually helping the patient?
I’m very angry at being lied to. They kept telling me they were fixing a complaint SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN TO RESIDE IN MY BRAIN.
I did not fare well on the drugs either.
Report comment
Being told you are hopelessly sane is far from comforting!
It made me frightened–and then despondent.
Now I’m angry at the hoax pulled on me.
I’d chalk it up to cluelessness on psychiatrists’ part but they are good at figuring people out in order to manipulate them into doing what will benefit their careers. Survivors as well as the non-consuming masses.
Kind of like my ex. He was a little awkward so I thought maybe he didn’t mean to insult me. Then he started emotionally abusing me.
Can’t blame it all on ignorance.
Report comment
My guess is psycho-social explanations for weird behaviors associated with “mental illness” lead to less discrimination because they humanize the other.
From what one sees on the media the “mentally ill” have no feelings or motivations. Aside from the “mental illness” itself.
A headline I read after the mass shooting in Los Vegas. “We Discovered the Motivation for the Mass Shooter: He was Mentally Ill.” 😛
Report comment
I still can’t work very easily. Trying for a full time job in customer service because sharing a single wide with my mother is more stressful/depressing than trying to work forty hour weeks. If I do little but sleep and eat and work I can make it work. Maybe.
Even though I’m still pretty sickly after 30 months off the drugs (the chronic illness started at least six years ago while I was fully compliant though I hurt more now) I’m glad I went off. I did stuff on the drugs I wasn’t proud of. I feel ashamed and apologetic but angry too. They kept telling me the “meds” made me a better more moral person and without them I’d turn into an evil monster. Involuntary intoxication. Some believed the nonsense they told me. But many of the doctors did not. I have no respect for those professionals.
I strongly regret seeing a shrink. I wanted to do the right thing. By taking my “meds” religiously for 22 years I thought I wouldn’t burden my family or friends. It was supposed to be the mature and responsible thing to do.
Instead I’m forced to rely on my aging parents at 46 since I can’t hold down a job now. Never have known gainful employment as an adult though I worked full time at 17 before I left for college a year early.
My life was ruined at 20 when I took Anafranil for intrusive thoughts and couldn’t sleep for three weeks. I keep having flashbacks and ruminating. The years 1993-2017 are just an ugly blur. I don’t know who I am anymore or what I’ve done. The only good thing is I was too numb to appreciate the horrors of what I was put through because I trusted a member of a respected medical profession. I still relive the horror of having my nearest and dearest turn on me because my psychiatrist told them I was hopelessly crazy. And I acted crazy because the drugs messed up my thoughts and I believed he was right. I couldn’t stop thinking of ways to kill myself and make the world a better place so my family could be free and remember who I was before I turned into a psycho freak. 🙁
I would have done better getting help from Walter White instead. His “medicine” is just as safe and effective and he never labels his clients. And their teeth stay in better shape too. Lol. (But seriously if you ever visit a mental center look at how many people are toothless in their early thirties. Shrinks love to blame this on how lazy they are, along with morbid obesity and poor hygiene–dehumanizing “consumers” makes the Experts look good.)
Dr. M tricked me into taking a bunch of mind altering drugs by calling them medicine like insulin. And he scared me by driving me insane with Anafranil first and attributing the hallucinations to my broken brain. Though I never had such visions before or since. Gaslighting is a shrink’s best friend. Almost as good as stigma.
Report comment
It may have been a temporary thing. Sometimes it is.
Report comment
I won’t deny the role the drugs play. But the “diagnosis” itself can be alienating.
What do all shooters have in common? Isolated loners.
How do the shrinks plan on preventing people from becoming shooters?
1. Drug away their impulse control and empathy.
2. Label these people in order to alienate their family and any friends they may have.
Shut off empathy and isolate them. Couldn’t do a better job creating mass shooters if they were making a conscious effort.
Report comment
People talk about “pill shaming” which is actually shaming those who take or prescribe psych drugs. (I try to avoid the former since it’s victim blaming.)
What they don’t acknowledge is reality shaming. How they heap scorn on the heads of those who honestly say, “My life is not better. My pills do not help me think clearly or get along with others. Taking them has not made me a kinder more responsible person. After going on them I can no longer function independently.” Even though it’s the truth.
I often hated myself because “In spite of” all these wonderfully “safe and effective treatments” I was not getting better. Must be my fault right? That–plus the numbness–led to my obsession with suicide.
It was a relief when I read William Glasser’s Warning: Psychiatry can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health. Up till then I felt guilty that my drugs weren’t “working.”
By working I meant as promised to me. Greater independence and better relationships and employment. Not passivity and childish dependence which is what they’re really meant for.
Report comment
Joanna we do not have the right to refuse ECT in America.
Yes, Steve, it’s weird how TV shapes our perception of reality so believe what we see on the tube more than what we see in the real world around us. I saw a crime show last year where a “schizophrenic” was accused of murdering his therapist. He was not the murderer (for a change) but could only speak “word salad” when asked who he had seen murder her.
He agreed to be injected with “medicine.” Within five seconds he sat up and began to speak coherently. I sat and thought “I have never experienced enhanced clarity or cognitive ability. Nor have I witnessed it in anyone else.”
It’s scary how gullible we have become. They put anything on TV and people believe it. Even if they know it’s fiction.
Mom has seen me recover without “meds.” She knows my allegedly “schizophrenic” great aunt did fairly well without any “meds.” I blame her reclusive life on ECT and the trauma and shame of being locked up and labeled.
Yet Mom firmly believes these “meds” are helpful. She feels low spirited or blah and goes to the doctor complaining of unhappiness. (A bad idea. Never complain of emotional pain to any GP you have to see. Unless it’s physical pain from a real disease your doctor is not equipped to deal with it anyhow.)
Mom is sickly and worn out from over a decade on multiple SSRI drugs. She is at loose ends because it’s hard facing retirement and she has nothing to do. She just sits in a chair watching TV. She complains of boredom and unhappiness and gets more “medicine” instead of asking “What can I change to feel better?”
But the TV tells her drugs are all she needs to feel happy again. I expressed concern telling her she may have early Alzheimers or other dementia. Mom agreed. She expressed concern before we moved.
I told her there were steps she could take to reverse it at this stage. Physical exercise–she’s too drugged and apathetic to do much. Learn a new language or how to play a musical instrument. Read books. (She never reads now.) She shrugged and said, “They have medicine to fix Alzheimers now. I saw it on a commercial,” sighed and went back to staring at the tube.
BTW, I notice how people who work in “mental health” pushed TV on us almost as much as “medicine.”
I hope I can get my own place soon. It’s depressing watching Mom make self destructive choices and be powerless to stop.
Report comment
Edward Bernays. Nephew of Sigmund Freud. First generation American.
It’s mostly because of his slick techniques promoting cigarettes as slimming and soothing to the throat, that smoking became popular among women in the thirties. He also spread the notion that drinking out of anything but disposable Dixie cups was unsanitary.
Joseph Goebbels studied Bernays’s techniques and used them to help Hitler rise to power. This cannot be blamed on Bernays. But what he promoted wasn’t benign either.
And consciously manipulating people–often with lies–is wrong. Even if you try to use it for good. Like the Ring of Power Tolkien wrote about.
Report comment
Precisely Sam.
The very term “humanizing mental healthcare” shows that mental “health” is dehumanizing to begin with.
America finally has a state church just like Sweden, England and others. The Church of Psychiatry.
Join their membership and you’ll never be able to leave.
Report comment
Blaming the “severely mentally ill” and promising to punish (aka treat) an entire group for the crimes of a tiny minority doesn’t make anyone safer. But it provides the illusion of safety, making the public feel more secure. Just like many taking SSRI drugs have the illusion of feeling better.
Placebo effect. It’s not just a pill.
Masters of illusion.
Report comment
Never forget that the father of psychiatry’s nephew was the father of propaganda.
Report comment
Sounds like a (thinly) veiled threat.
People like us–who recover after leaving–embarrass psychiatrists. We’re a much bigger threat to their institution than the Scientologists. 🙂
Most of these guys aren’t sadists. By and large shrinks are tickled pink with a modest degree of recovery. Too modest for most people’s taste.
Then they can parade you around at various groups and conventions as a success story. As long as you give all the glory and honor to them and praise their treatments.
Report comment
In the story of David and Goliath, the young lad turns down King Saul’s offer of full body armor before taking on this seasoned warrior who’s at least 9’6″ while David was probably under five feet. (Typical height back then.)
David knew he was already facing impossible odds so he went out with only the rocks and the sling he used for killing wolves and bears while looking after the sheep on his own.
We can’t beat them with massive campaigns or television/magazine ads or support from the cowardly or corrupt AMA. Our only hope is the unconventional.
As Gandalf said to Borimir in The Lord of the Rings, “Our only hope lies in foolishness.”
Report comment
There is indeed more evidence for ME than any of the “mental illnesses” Shorter accepts as gospel. Yet he mocks the one and promotes the other.
Highly inconsistent. But this is psychiatry after all.
Report comment
The book actually received a negative review from the NYT in 1991. Pretty ironic.
The reviewer complains that the last third of the book veers off into a diatribe against diseases that Shorter claims are purely imaginary. Such as allegies, temporomandibular joint disease, yeast infections…I kid you not.
Shorter reluctantly admits the first two exist but maintains they are most cases are cooked up by coffee sipping housewives with too much time on their hands. Serves ’em right for not vacuuming enough.
Report comment
A way for people who are being tortured to escape is also needed.
Kind of like how they helped smuggle out the aristocrats in 17th century France. Or the antebellum underground railroad.
Report comment
If we could do these three things I would be ecstatically happy.
1. Ban cronyism. This would solve so many problems besides the psychiatric one.
2. Ban involuntary treatment. I call it treatment because torture is a form of “punitive treatment.”
3. Make it illegal to advertise psychiatric drugs on TV.
Report comment
I meant never to see a shrink. But maybe using the word “doctor” through you off. 😀
Our only course of action is the one taken for dealing with corrupt judges. Make the public hate them. Troll psychiatric sites and you’ll find this is the stuff that composes their worst nightmares.
I’m starting a satire site dedicated to revealing the ugly side of psychiatry. It will be labeled satire, but will contain links to real psychiatric articles I will draw on for inspiration.
Report comment
Be sure to mention Shorter’s book A History of the Bodies of Women and his lecture to a group of people suffering from ME where he told them it was only hypochondria and compared them to swooning Victorian ingenues. Sounds like someone is still living in the 19th century and it isn’t the patients!
Edward Shorter denies that ME and most other autoimmune diseases exist. He claims these are all fashionable maladies dreamed up by hysterical females whilst they sip tea during afternoon calls.
And then pull out the smelling salts. Before collapsing on the fainting couch. 😀
Maybe he thinks blood letting and cauterization are underrated modalities of treatment that should be brought back. Lol.
At least Shorter has moved beyond the Four Humors.
By the way, don’t quote me. I’m indulging a satirical impulse. But mocking this guy is not hard to do.
Google “An Open Letter to Dr. Koroshetz occupy me” for details.
He denies ME because “it lacks scientific evidence” but promotes the concept of “mental illness” despite the lack of biomarkers not created by psychiatrists themselves.
My guess is Shorter loves to hand out Zoloft or Xanax as quickly as possible instead of searching for actual maladies.
And his attitude shows how inconsistent the concept of “mental illness” is. If it’s a real brain disease why don’t they treat it as such? Even Shorter views it as different from a physical disease. And yet they tout the notion that it’s a physical illness in the brain just like any other. The way they treat people they claim “suffer” from the alleged brain disease aren’t treated like real patients at all. Last time I checked the brain was a physical organ. Not a mental one.
Report comment
Without all the “Loris” running around psychiatry would have died long ago.
Report comment
Well at least he isn’t promoting a new school of psychiatry OH. 🙂
Report comment
Also nervous puppies. Lol.
Report comment
Check out marci.mindpuck.cc
It shows up on Google.
A lawyer is interested. Please pass around this info to veterans, civil rights, and mental health groups.
Share it on libertarian and humanitarian groups. It isn’t just about Marci. This is about everyone’s right to due process and protection of life, liberty and freedom from torture.
Report comment
Just kidding. Sort of.
Someone needs to write an article or two about stuff this guy has written and said in the past.
A friend of mine–an older woman named June–had severe stomach pains a while back. So bad she couldn’t eat. Her energy went down and she couldn’t get out of bed–for obvious reasons.
Her family doctor told her she didn’t have stomach issues. (I don’t know what tests he ran. I assume at least one or two.) He said she had a chemical imbalance in her brain making her think her stomach was bad when it was fine. He urged her to take SSRIs to fix the alleged disorder.
June asked if she was crazy. He told her emphatically she was not but mentally ill instead. Which is really only the polite, medical-sounding term for crazy.
June is still alive. I guess the placebo effect gave her the gumption to ignore the pain and eat anyhow. Her digestion is still very bad. And tinkering with serotonin levels is bad for the GI even if your gut is sound to begin with.
“But I know Dr. X. He’s a good, kind man and would never lie to me.”
I don’t know about that. But he probably is ignorant about psychiatry like most real doctors are now. A lot actually believe in the chemical imbalance.
A doctor I saw a while back said I was ridiculous to want my Bipolar 2 diagnosis reevaluated. He gave me the old “But you wouldn’t have had a psychotic episode if you weren’t mentally ill to begin with” crap. Told me I needed all of my cocktail or vague horrible things would happen to me. Unbeknownst to him I had tapered off everything but my Effexor and should have been full blown manic. Nope. 😀
He also claimed that nobody discriminated against others for having a diagnosis of bipolar or schizophrenia. He urged me to lose as much weight as possible. Told a woman in her mid-forties who had been at least slightly overweight all her life to lose 230 pounds in as little time as possible. He said I needed to weigh 120 pounds with no regard for bone structure.
When I lost “only” ten pounds in two months he urged me to take metformin–claiming it would suppress my appetite. Told me to go on a carb free diet with lots of protein and animal fat and nothing but vegetables and fruit. Didn’t know fruits have carbohydrates it seems.
I found this character’s medical know-how pretty underwhelming to put it mildly. It’s because of doctors like him that psychiatry continues to flourish I guess. None of them bother reading articles in journals to keep abreast with things, but trust the experts and prescribe whatever that cute pharma rep recommends.
Like metformin! 😛
Report comment
The lazy way. I googled Edward Shorter gynecology book.
Do you want to do a book review? 🙂
Report comment
Shorter ticked off a lot of people by speaking at a convention for those suffering from ME or myalgic encephalomyalitis at the National Institute of Health in the University of Toronto.
He ridiculed people suffering from chronic illness, comparing them to Victorian women luxuriating on beds of pillows simply to be fashionable. Real piece of work.
Yet Shorter supports psychiatry despite lack of evidence that those brain diseases called “mental” actually exist or that the pills he promotes save lives. His mockery of ME sufferers probably comes from the link between autoimmune conditions and psychiatric treatments.
Report comment
Most people arguing that “mental illness” kills are actually talking about suicide.
Guess what? People in “treatment” kill themselves all the time.
But if they commit suicide off the drugs everyone blames their non-compliance. If they commit suicide on the drugs everyone ignores the fact. Or hems and haws claiming it’s “in spite of the finest medical care.”
I don’t despise Rick Warren the way Pacific Dawn does. But his line of reasoning is severely flawed. He and others need to have their faulty logic pointed out to them.
(Rick probably embraces the idea of depression as brain disease so he doesn’t have to worry about his son being in Hell for the sin of suicide. I can’t blame him there. He probably also feels guilty because his highly public ministry caused a lot of stress on Matt who was an introvert in a church that teaches “Jesus was an extrovert.” See Quiet by Susan Cain where she describes a visit to the Saddleback megachurch.)
Report comment
I got so fed up with being forced to undergo “mindlessness therapy.”
Yes, I know mindfulness is not supposed to be forced. But this is “mental health” we’re talking about.
The whole thing was insulting. But everything in day treatment was to some extent.
Report comment
Use the “cures” to create lifelong “patients” and also the biomarkers to prove how valid the hopeless prognosis is.
Report comment
A History of Women’s Bodies.
Report comment
Please read Shorter’s masterpiece about gynecology. He barely admitted allergies exist and goes off into a diatribe against female hypochondriacs toward the end.
My guess is he hopes this book of his will be forgotten. Several critics have accused him of misogynistic views. Many conscientious physicians are embarrassed by it.
Someone needs to drag up this forgotten masterpiece of his and ask why Shorter believes in random brain damage to cure unproven brain disorders but not allergies or yeast infections.
Report comment
Shorter started out as a gynecologist it seems and got in trouble for claiming his female patients didn’t suffer from allergies, yeast infections, or other real physical diseases. He reluctantly admitted that allergies exist but hysterical women folk seldom suffered from them and probably took to handing out “antidepressants” to everyone who came in.
You know how them women folk be. Wink wink. 😛 His career change speaks for itself.
Report comment
Google the New York Times review of Edward Shorter’s book. 1991. It makes him look like a raving misogynist.
He claims that women are hysterical hypochondriacs who imagine yeast infections, temporomandibular joint syndrome, allergies, and all other chronic illnesses. Wow, this work has not aged well.
No wonder he loves psych drugs so much. Great way to dismiss the medical needs of women who come to him for help.
Lucky for stuff shirts who hide behind stethoscopes and only get read by other academic stuff shirts this bovine excrement goes unnoticed. They get the glory of having a book published–proving professional expertise–but no popular audience reads it or holds them accountable for their views. Much stupidity that street smart folks would get but the Mutual Admiration Academia let slide. Because of intellectual “inbreeding.”
Medicine and other sciences should be studied more by the common people. We can no longer assume doctors have our best interests at heart.
Never see a doctor unless you know you can sue him for malpractice. They are that corrupt. We owe lawyers an apology.
Report comment
Is anyone on Twitter?
It’s a little late, but maybe we could give Eddie a good trolling.
His fellow physicians are embarrassed by some of what he’s written. Dig up some of his worst experiments. Post a link to those along with a quote from his article trashing Bonnie.
Point out how he probably had it in for her as a successful female academic who wrote better books than himself.
Report comment
Arsenic and cyanide are both safe and effective.
They are highly effective at poisoning my husband and perfectly safe for me when I put them in his coffee.
(Just kidding. I’m single.)
But remember this when psychiatrists talk about how safe and effective their drugs are.
Report comment
“A priori assumption of materialism bio-psychiatry is built upon.”
Basically a denial of free will. You can also see this in the unethical experiments performed by behaviorists like B.F. Skinner.
Behaviorism is psychology I realize. So no, it’s not just psychiatry at fault.
(Interesting side note. One of the characters in The Simpsons–Principal Seymour Skinner–was named after the founder of behaviorism.)
Report comment
But don’t you agree it would be great for business? Assuming someone has no conscience of course.
Trigger “schizophrenia” in trusting patients and then use said disorder to prescribe more of the drug that caused the episode indefinitely.
Report comment
I do not relish the idea of shrinks using “shrooms” on consumers. Though I doubt they will till Pfizer or Lilly puts them in pill form. This is needed to preserve the image of the shrinks as the real-honest-to-gosh-doctors they crave to be seen as.
Getting people to use hallucinagens through trickery or force would be a great way to manufacture more “schizophrenics.” AKA cash cows to milk. Or rather bleed till they expire.
“Yeah but if you weren’t ‘schizophrenic’ to begin with that LSD would never have had that effect on you.” Thus spake Dr. Quackenbush. This gives him the legal authority to force you to injest “therapeutic” or massive quantities of more LSD’s and probably “anti-depressant$,” neuroleptic$, “mood $tabilizer$,” and maybe $edative$ and other crap at hi$ di$cretion.
I do not share the author’s enthusiasm for yet another mind altering drug. Especially since “mental health” will likely foist it on the public as “life saving medicine,” “like penicillin,” “just like insulin for diabetes.” And other nonsense we already have been spoon fed by commercials/NAMI/psychiatrists. They all sound alike because they’re reading the same script.
Please don’t take my criticisms personally Shariq. I’m sure you are honest and sincere in your desire to help distressed people.
It’s others I take issue with. I don’t like liars. Or bullies.
Report comment
From ages 18 to 44 I was on at least one psychotropic drug. Like you I started out with social anxiety and got worse after getting “helped.”
Stories like ours are the norm.
Report comment
Oldhead, Sanders is definitely the least of the choice of evils though.
I would advise homeless people to do whatever it takes to leave California. There are fewer homeless people in cities where I live–which means more community resources for those we do have. More HUD housing–and cheaper regular housing. More available jobs.
And no laws–like the one recently passed in California rendering it impossible for gig workers to make a living in most cases. You can earn a living as a freelancer where I live and rent an apartment for $500 a month.
Come to Indiana where the cost of living is only about 40% of what it is out West. Where even I could find a job. Where you actually have a chance to bootstrap your way out of financial dependence on the “mental illness” system!
BTW, I agree that the only disabilities the “mentally ill” suffer from are those inflicted on them by the “doctors.”
Report comment
Puts the lie to psychiatry’s promise to cure us of all our moral failings. I bought into the bill of goods years ago. They did not make me more moral–in fact my family complained of my increased selfishness.
Psychiatrists claim their magical/scientific pills will end mass shootings, adultery, murder, theft, drunkenness, violence. How will they do this? By causing the frontal cortex and amygdala to wither away. The parts of our brains responsible for impulse control, empathy, and responsible adult behaviors.
This makes no sense at all. But–to my knowledge–no one ever asks shrinks why destroying the frontal lobes and amygdala cause improved morality.
Overriding natural brain functions does not improve cognitive function, nor does it stimulate the conscience. Mind altering drugs have been known to do the exact opposite in fact. Shrinks get around this by claiming these are not regular drugs but life-saving medications that only protect and heal and are safer than aspirin.
And if you get crazy they will blame a brain disease they can’t prove but assume must exist because #pillshaming. Or claim–as they always did for me–that you are cheeking the pills on the sly or faking the seizures and other real problems Ye Precious Pills caused.
Report comment
Ugh!
One of my best friends is deteriorating mentally, but is not getting locked up like your friend, Bradford.
She is afraid to leave the system after 30+ years. And is worse for the wear–even for a woman of 60. I’m worried she has early stage dementia.
She has big shelf-loads of books that she no longer reads. A “good cocktail” will do that to you if you give it time.
Report comment
And that woman is perfectly sane by psychiatric standards. Food for thought.
Report comment
Health Ranger.
The MI system is cancer–eating America alive.
Poetic justice. People are happy to see the “mentally ill” tormented and isolated as they die prematurely. They refused to even look at the pills causing our torments.
Now, due to denial that they were promoting the poisoning of their “MI” neighbors they’ve been deceied themselves into taking SSRI’s. Hey, it shut Johnny up. So it must be good for your brain, right?
You were happy when they came for your annoying neighbor.
You laughed as you saw him cry out in torment.
You called for them to lock him away.
Now they have come to destroy your brain.
And no one is left to help you.
Have fun, Normals.
Report comment
I’ll play devil’s advocate.
Do drugs called “antidepressants” ever make people feel good? Yes they do.
I enjoyed two SSRIs when I first went on them.
I took Anafranil back in 1993 because of intrusive thoughts brought on by anxiety. It felt good at first–but like a horror movie it soon turned scary. The buzz turned into full blown hallucinations and I didn’t sleep the whole 3 weeks I took it.
After getting put on massive amounts of neuroleptics and kicked out of college because of seizures and other stuff, I became suicidal in 1994. They put me on Zoloft. It too gave me a buzz–but mild enough I could control it.
I didn’t need a buzz, but friendships and a purpose in life.
So, if someone says, “These antidepressants make me feel great. They ended my depression,” I agree with them. They are probably right.
Any “upper” from a street dealer could have similar benefits though.
Report comment
I predict Gaga’s career will take a nosedive in a couple years. Maybe sooner. Her weight will go up markedly. Everything she experiences health wise or cognitively will be chalked up to her “illness” and used to prescribe more pills.
Eventually–like Carrie Fisher and Patty Duke–her principle gigs will come from entertaining shrinks and Big Pharma people at psychiatric conferences and “educating” the public on various PSA commercials, etc. Her only real identity will be the “Good Consumer” who talks about her disease all the time and has no real life apart from psychiatry.
I wonder how Mariah Carey’s career is going. She’s better off than Brittany because she does what they want, but a career as a public performer requires lots of energy that the pills don’t leave. Especially emotional energy.
I’m no fan of Scientology, but neither Tom Cruise nor John Travolta promotes their cult as much as the devoutly “SMI” celebrities.
Report comment
Will Gaga read it?
My problem with talking to people about my problems with psychiatry is none of them read anything. They are happy to get all their information off TV programs and commercials and brochures put out by drug companies. Not unbiased sources. “But doctors know best.”
A couple friends laughed at me when I talked about Anatomy of an Epidemic. They said RW only was interested in making money. SMH. If Bob Whitaker is reading this I bet he’s having a hearty chuckle.
Lots of people who never read books also have some idea that all authors are multi-millionaires or billionaires and J.K. Rowlings’ success is the norm. Even well-known authors have other jobs or supplement book sales with speaking/teaching/coaching/consulting/editing/etc.
If making gobs of money is your only goal and you aren’t hindered by a conscience the best route would be writing ad copy for Big Pharma. Especially ghost writing articles under the name of prominent APA members!
Report comment
“In reality it wasn’t about Bill’s quality of life at all but other people’s annoyance at him.”
That sums up what psychiatry is all about. And it didn’t even help with that in my case. The more drug addled I became the weirder I acted (low inhibitions, lower empathy, lower cognitive ability.)
From my days in the NAMI cult I collected some Lilly paraphernalia. Living in the country now. Gonna get out the big drum can and have myself a Lilly roast! 😛
Report comment
Trump honestly believes that psychiatry prevents crimes just like Obama did. Just like 95% of the population does. Excluding shrinks.
Sometimes I wonder if uber-shrinks like Pinsky/Torrey/Murphy want mass shootings so they can use them to advance their careers. So they hand out more drugs knowing they cause violent crimes and rub their hands gleefully at every shooting that occurs. “Waste no emergency.”
Report comment
In Peterson’s defense he is a user. Not a dealer.
(His field is psychology. He lectures about human behavior rather than biology. Probably ignorant what SSRI’s do like most non-scientists.)
What really riles me up are psychiatrists who pass out their drugs like office mints. And–despite complaining of suicidal depression–refuse to take any. This blatant hypocrisy sickens me. Not just hurting people through well-meaning ignorance, but callous deception. I have only contempt for such people.
Report comment
My mother and sister-in-law swear by theirs. Doctors prescribe them. Doctors never make mistakes or lie.
At least they enjoy some placebo effect.
Mom has become like a zombie after ten years on at least one SSRI. Complains of feeling “meh” and joyless.
My sister-in-law breaks down into tears she can’t control from time to time. I have seen Jordan Peterson go through a similar break down.
Truly sad.
Report comment
Paranoia huh? That can be a symptom of Schizophrenia. Those psychiatrists should know they have a lot of safe and effective treatments for that. 😀
Report comment
Psychiatry. That Artful Science.
Report comment
Ashley Bobak is not responding to any comments.
This is a short article. Obviously it can’t go into detail due to brevity.
But it fails to distinguish between voluntary or involuntary asylums. A very big difference.
Is Bobak advocating for the type of Soteria House that Loren Mosier ran till the APA cut his funding? Or the chain of asylums old “Doc” Drew wants to start?
Either way, count me out. I will never trust a shrink again after what I have experienced.
Report comment
Releasing a wrongfully accused prisoner after a number of years would also produce similar problems. Lack of employment history, etc.
If he has been manhandled routinely in prison by the guards so he suffered extensive TBI and nerve damage it will be still worse. Yet no one would oppose his release and pretend it was an act of kindness!
Report comment
The “mental health” system makes reintegration into mainstream society impossible.
I have never been in a true asylum myself–or the modern version called the state mental hospital. But once people in your community know your status as a “severely mentally ill” individual they treat you worse than a felon.
I find the whole concept of mental illness intellectually problematic.
Is it poor cognitive skills? No. That’s called “developmental delay” or whatever the popular term is now. It seems–according to prominent experts on mental illness–that it is bad behaviors impossible to overcome without their help.
“Symptoms” of “bipolar” include rage, pride, lust, and greed. Traditionally called sins. According to psychiatrists certain people have no agency and can never change. This dates back to the Victorian concept of “criminal types” who could be labeled defective by low foreheads and hairy hands and skull size. Assuming you were white. Everybody else was automatically judged defective.
Many here can testify to how wrong these alleged experts are.
Somehow it’s innately biological AND a moral defect at the same time. How can this be? It leads to being treated worse than a convicted felon. Rather than judging you on the content of your character people will judge you on what some shrink who talked to you for fifteen minutes decided. And your bad drug reactions.
So there’s the prejudice (premature judgments with no regard to actual behavior.) Prominent psychiatrists go to great lengths to promote this.
People can change their behaviors without medical help. Human beings have been doing it for ages. But everyone assuming the worst of you makes change impossible till you relocate and start over.
The drugs and shocks make gainful employment–needed for housing usually–difficult if not impossible. Suffering from GI issues myself. At least it’s a great excuse to my neighbors for why I’m on disability.
So the bigotry and brain damage passed off on the public as “safe and effective treatment” are why releasing those in the asylum wasn’t much of a success.
Report comment
The father of modern propaganda was the nephew of the father of psychiatry.
(Bernays and Freud.)
Coincidence? Not hinting at a conspiracy but rather a family resemblance.
Report comment
So you live up there?
I visit S. Bend a couple times a year to visit friends. Maybe we could drink coffee together sometime.
Interesting to meet someone here in person.
Report comment
You got that right!
Report comment
Second lieutenant?
That’s just a position in the military.
Does it also mean toadie or boot lick?
Report comment
My guess is this may gain a following in the Mad Pride Movement.
It’s biggest opponents will come from within the APA among the head honchos determined to preserve the status quo. At any cost.
Report comment
Hi Jane. Thanks for your story.
Just finished reading the 01/24 article here at MIA about Drew Pinsky’s views on homelessness. Reread yours.
We need more stories like this You put the lie to Pinsky’s BS statements about how all “mentally ill” people enjoy being homeless.
You tell why it’s difficult if not impossible to bootstrap your way out of poverty once psychiatry has “helped” you.
The proper term for stigma is segregation. Psychiatry’s primary function has always been to separate the “unfit” from mainstream society via labels or incarceration. Making getting hired difficult.
Once diagnosed SMI you are subjected to treatments designed to render you childish and docile. Not independent or level headed. Even if you escape these brutal regimens of drugs/shocks/brain mutilations the damage is real. Whatever health issues you may have had are far worse than before.
And SSI for the disabled punishes you for trying to better yourself by cutting you off at the knees.
With the high housing costs in California it’s no wonder homelessness is a problem.
Report comment
Bwahahaha! Good one.
Dr. Phil is too behavior oriented. Jerry Springer II.
Dr. Oz would be a better proponent of the bio bio bio model. And he uses cool gimmicks.
He could fill a telephone booth with black balloons and say, “These are gloomy thoughts filling your brain.” Takes a knitting needle: “This is shock therapy.” Pops all the balloons in the booth. “See how shocks can save your life by killing those gloomy brain cells.”
Torrey would smack his head. “Brilliant! Sheer genius! How come I never thought of that?”
Report comment
Yes they’ve got a new med out for USD. Side effects include dizziness, dry mouth, and forgetting to wear pants.
Report comment
I have a question for Michael and Leah.
According to NAMI (not an anti psychiatry organization) only 20% of the homeless are supposed to be “mentally ill.” That still is a significant minority.
Are any of them undergoing AOT while homeless? This is an important question to ask for sites that want to get at the truth.
I got angry at “Dr.” Drew’s assertion that the “mentally ill” all enjoy being homeless. Apparently he would have all believe these subhumans among the “normal” are not only too stupid to take the “meds” that restore their powers of reason, but enjoy exposure to the elements and threats of bodily harm.
I have sat up nights with a weeping friend who feared homelessness thanks to HUD inspections. Her executive functioning so damaged she couldn’t straighten her room properly. (As I couldn’t till recently. I finally shower regularly too. Restore normal brain function my foot!)
“Doc” Drew’s statements that all the “mentally ill” love being homeless is as insulting as it is stupid. I doubt he discussed homelessness or anything else with anyone he treated.
The man just wants to make a killing running a chain of asylums and is eager for warm bodies to cram into them. Psychiatry is the only branch of medicine easier to succeed in than day time talk shows.
Report comment
“Scripted lines”? Nobody writes my comments but me.
Just a fantasy for any of us. Of course. Like getting back the lives they ruined.
Preventing them from locking up, crippling, and killing more people would be enough for me.
My body is inflamed and my brain damaged from the treatments. My heart was going bad before I escaped. Psychiatry was killing me. As it has countless others. My “bipolar 2” was created by a drug reaction no one acknowledges.
What’s left to improve about psychiatry? They get 6 or 7 digit salaries and never have to worry about lawsuits. The Professional House is in great shape. No one is about to burn it down. Like the pigs at the end of Animal Farm. They get what they want and that’s all that matters.
Lots of people come here to mock the suffering. “Psychiatry is not going anywhere!”
My response? Doing right is more important than winning.
It’s better to lose fighting for what’s right than win by joining the forces of evil. If Hitler had won World War II do you think opposing him would still have been worthwhile? (It cost Dietrich Bonhoeffer his life.) I say Yes.
Report comment
Make the monster an absolute monarch. He promises to save the kingdom if they feed him fresh meat every day. Cure the overpopulation problem.
Report comment
Yep. All those people on the streets now in 2020 were released back in the 1960’s.
Real math folks.
Report comment
Assuming–for the sake of argument–psychiatrists do know more about human brains now…that does NOT guarantee they will refrain from abuse. By that logic all Josef Mengele needed were more lessons in human anatomy. 😛
The idea that giving anyone absolute power with no repercussions for anyone they harm somehow benefits those at their mercy is ludicrous.
Report comment
I am visiting Marci by phone a few times a week.
She is in need of toothpaste and shampoo. Small amounts of cash (1 and 5 dollar bills) and paperbacks are also welcome.
Her address is:
Marci Webber
CRMHC (B-S)
4200 N. Oak Park Av
Chicago, IL 60634
Report comment
My question is: What if a family member gets sick of a “mentally ill” person and makes an appeal for involuntary euthanasia? If the “loved” one cries “I want to live!” they can chalk it up to lack of insight.
The Scapegoat is irrational and can’t appreciate how subhuman they are. That their life is unworthy of living as the Germans put it. 🙁
i worry that abusive families and doctors may be allowed to euthanize troublesome members someday. At their own discretion of course. (“Loved” one be damned.)
It’s all about control. Drugs cut life expectancy in half. As Jaffe and Earley well know.
They also know the Chemical Imbalance is a lie but gladly foist it on the public and cram those drugs down family members’ throat. They know they don’t protect or heal but push them anyhow. Defectives are only fit to be locked up. Crippling them and having them die prematurely is convenient for devoted dads like Earley. Or loving brothers-in-law like Stanley–uh–I mean Jaffe.
So Earley admits his book is a work of fiction, hmmm? i daresay there’s professional envy involved.
I bet I know who really wrote the letter he published on his site.
It speaks volumes about Earley’s character that he accused his son of attempted homicide when attempted suicide would also have gotten him hospitalized. Kevin got treated far worse. But the homicide lie was more dramatic. Priorities.
Report comment
I read an article in the UK Guardian by Edward Bullmore. Glad he’s taking his colleagues to task.
Psychiatry’s standard treatments cause inflammation. If there’s any validity to Bullmore’s hypothesis, what his colleagues are doing is exacerbating the original complaint.
Report comment
i was repeatedly told
1. The drugs were correcting a chemical imbalance in my brain.
2. That they were neuro-protectors to prevent decline.
3. And they were needed to prevent me from hurting myself and others.
4. And they were my only hope for independent living and gainful employment.
All lies I found out. Doubtful any shrinks believe them. Except number 3.
The real justification behind psychiatry is what I saw in an interview between Stossel and Jaffe. Jaffe told him, “These people will only wind up in institutions anyway.”
Writing his fellow men and women off as garbage has been the life mission of D.J. Jaffe.
In the sight of Heaven Jaffe may be judged far less worthy than those HE judges unfit to exist.
Report comment
Shrinks consider that an improvement because making people look scary proves how necessary their profession is. It also helps segregate the “mentally ill” from the mainstream and promotes stigma.
Many a well informed shrink loves stigma, segregation, and visible nerve damage. Great PR for his quackery.
Report comment
Yes. Suicide has been going on long before psychiatric drugs/shocks–or even psychiatry itself existed.
I do think psychiatry has caused suicide rates to skyrocket. I wasn’t suicidal till the shrinks punished me for my reaction to Anafranil at age 20. 10 mg Haldol that caused seizures and tardive psychosis. My shrink told my friends and family the only reason I experienced these problems was non-compliance. Took the pills religiously but my failure to improve was seen as evidence of my naughtiness. My tearful protests were to no avail. I got kicked out of college.
I couldn’t talk normally, or enjoy anything. I was told no man could ever love a schizophrenic and I would die a virgin like my great aunt. Everyone yelled at me all the time. After a year I decided we’d all be better off if I died. God wouldn’t answer my prayers for cancer so I felt suicide was necessary.
Report comment
No big bucks involved in that case either.
Interesting how doctors accused Semmelweis of mental illness to discredit him.
Report comment
Mainstream psychiatry hearts stigma.
Report comment
Hugs!
Report comment
Uneasy rests the head that wears the crown.
Report comment
The question is: does “schizophrenia” exist?
Weird thoughts and hallucinations exist. But there are no known bio-markers to distinguish a “schizophrenic” brain–except for those caused by iatrogenic damage.
I read about how William Glasser “cured” people diagnosed as SMI. He called what they experienced “creative symptoms” since they’re creative mind games to cope with pain.
Report comment
I thought this article would be about the link between “mental health” and disability related poverty which RW touched on in his Anatomy of an Epidemic. Mildly disappointed.
I’m happy for Ms. Davis btw.
Like many here I didn’t grow up poor. All those wonderful “treatments” sentenced us to lives of poverty. 3 years off my cocktail I can finally clean my room again after 20 years. Thanks for the systemic damage “mental health.”
I hope and pray I can earn enough with online gigs to save myself from homelessness soon. My parents are frail and elderly. They may have to sell the house soon.
I can’t drive due to neuroleptic seizures that prevented my drivers license when young. Never had a family of my own. Almost no friends. In horrible pain every day with symptoms like Crohns and Lyme Disease that seem to baffle doctors.
They get very mysterious and won’t venture guesses on the causes of the disorders they diagnose. My CNS, GI, and executive function are wrecked from long term druggings.
Very angry. I weep inconsolably almost every night holding my cat–mourning the life psychiatrists stole from me.
If you don’t want to wind up sick, lonely and poor stay far away from shrinks!!!
Report comment
Hmm. Notice how astronomers don’t get their panties in a wad because Flat Earthers exist.
The Church of Psychiatry knows they’ve got the Good Stuff. They don’t take kindly to any one invading their turf.
I got suspicious of NAMI when I realized they were censoring what we could read or listen to. They canceled a speaker who got better off her drugs and wouldn’t tell us why. I found out from the grapevine. Then I realized the people running the show–the “normals”–were also listening in on our conversations.
They knew the truth would set us free. And it scared them.
The more hysterical rants I hear demonizing the anti-vax crowd the more distrustful of the flu vaccine I become too. 😛
Report comment
Who is free of the medical model Dr. Blatt?
I’m certainly not. As long as I live my “diagnosis” will hang over my head. No one with the label of schizophrenia or bipolar can see a medical specialist without the threat of being found out.
Julie Greene was terrified her past would bite her in the butt if a doctor realized the full extent of her kidney damage. (That it had occurred from “therapeutic” lithium levels used as standard treatment for an illness like no other.)
I’m sure you are a kindly, well-meaning doctor. My rant is not meant as an insult to you.
It would be great if more doctors like you existed. But EVERY medical specialist I know personally either believes the medical model–sadness and all negative emotions as well as the rarer extreme states are indisputably brain diseases–or cheerfully lies to the public.
Dr. Blatt, as a medical practitioner, you see things the rest of us don’t. Which would you say it is? Honest ignorance, deception (reluctance to blow the whistle and a desire for pharmaceutical perks) or a combination?
It’s troubling to think how most doctors go along with this. Whether it’s because they’re incompetent, cowardly or corrupt this keeps most survivors from trusting them. 🙁
Report comment
Way to hide that embarrassing truth…that people in developing nations recover from what they would call “severe mental illness.”
Shrinks are scared Westerners abroad will discover this. The solution? More chemically crippled brains all over the globe to “prove” how hopeless their test subjects are.
Report comment
Or pretended to treat non-existent heart diseases and prescribed pills to damage the hearts of your patients. Then sold more drugs to treat the damage you caused which caused more damage in other vital organs.
Now all that’s needed is more effective marketing for replacing those pesky patients who keep dying.
Report comment
Lieberman makes himself still richer by turning even more people into penniless cripples. Who slowly die.
People like him deserve the reward Farid Fata got.
Report comment
To induce a proper sense of Stockholm Syndrome. Uh–insight I mean.
Report comment
The mother strove to turn her son into a murderous lunatic and succeeded.
Why do these women enjoy having adult children living in their basements for crying out loud? Most parents view that as a bad thing.
Why are they so upset at adult offspring moving out, getting jobs and having relationships? Most parents WANT grandchildren. NAMI mommies would love to sterilize their young. (At least those they designate the Scapegoat.)
NAMI mommies are way nuttier than the offspring they claim to want to help. At least till the “doctor” these gaslighting drama mamas hire succeeds in destroying the son/daughter’s brain and CNS.
The shrink never seems to care–if he notices–what pieces of work the “loved ones” are. Probably because they pay the bill.
Why not let the poor offspring have a life? Instead they force them onto welfare and prevent them from getting jobs. And Heaven help the “kid” if they ever fall in love with anyone! More drama, screams and hysterics from their “normal” NAMI mommy dearest.
Report comment
I would like to ask Rick Warren if the “mentally ill” have souls like real people.
Since he denies us free agency and claims we have no moral accountability for our actions this is worth asking.
Report comment
Would dearly love to find a way to spike the food supply of a couple dozen shrinks with SSRI drugs in therapeutic doses. My guess is out of 30 approximately 5 would develop psychotic mania within a week or two.
When they find out, remind them that according to their alleged science this reaction means they were Bipolar all along. The drugs just unmasked that condition. Then tell them they’ll have to take cocktails for the rest of their lives. Watch them wriggle out of that. Record the whole thing for social media.
It would have to be publicly recorded to work. They never play by their own rules. (Whining how lack of government funds is forcing them to commit suicide instead of getting “diagnosed” and “hospitalized” and “treated” for suicidal desires like the rest of us.)
Public exposure of the profession’s bovine excrement would be great.
Report comment
You got that right.
There’s plenty of spraying pretty fragrances around. Scented like vanilla, flowers, fruit. But the stench is overpowering. What we need is a good flush.
Report comment
Consider that mainstream psychiatry is about destroying the health and cognitive function of those it “helps.” Psychiatry fills the human heart with existential angst and self loathing.
Psychiatry prevented me–and countless others–from marriage, a career, family, or friendships with any but a few other outcasts. 🙁
Is it any wonder so many of those with psychiatric labels kill themselves?
Report comment
I suspect “Compassionate Personality Disorder” will make it into the DSM-6.
Report comment
As Szazs pointed out they used to “bleed” cholera victims through the best of intentions.
Report comment
I’ll know the apologies are real if they follow through and change their behaviors. Like anyone’s apology.
But–like my abusive ex–I still won’t go back to the relationship. Nope. Good luck, becoming a better person without me Dr. Quackenbush.
Report comment
All I can say in Dr. K’s defense is maybe all his clients are newbies to psychiatry who have never taken SSRIs for more than 6-12 months.
Or maybe they know that psychiatrists will always laugh at how horrible they feel–say it’s imaginary and/or they’re faking it for attention. Like the seizures I had on Haldol. 😛 After that I quit sharing anything negative about ye precious pills.
(Your mainstream shrink would rather hear you insult his own mother than the pills he prescribes. Like his whole sense of self worth is wrapped up in those things.)
Dr. K is obviously not a mainstream psychiatrist. That’s why so many here–including myself–get upset and angry at his casual dismissal of our suffering. We expect it of the dangerous quacks working in community mental illness centers. But we hope for better from mavericks like him.
Very disappointing! 🙁
Report comment
The vast majority of absolute monarchs remain unconvinced of democracy too I bet.
Report comment
Close was nice enough to force her sister to wear a T-shirt saying ‘Schizophrenic” out in public and actually touched her. With people watching and everything.
A lot of heroism and self sacrifice on Glen’s part. 😛 Ugh.
Report comment
My struggles are PHYSICAL in nature Dr. K. Off my SSRI drugs I’m no longer suicidal. On them, I thought of it every month at least.
My emotions are pretty stable considering I struggle to have fewer than a dozen bowel movements a day. 🙂
Report comment
I think what most people consider prolonged withdrawal symptoms are simply damage from long term drug use. Before starting my taper I had been diagnosed with pernicious anemia and heart arrythmia. I also was experiencing Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Though the diagnosis was pretty recent.
Going off seemed to exacerbate autoimmune problems. Not sure why. My pain threshold is lower for one thing. (Psych drugs numb physical pain too.) And my stomach acid levels are different. Was on the stuff 24 years.
Report comment
There are young people who start acting oddly. For whatever reason.
Mom has always been worried about looking Normal and Blending in. It bugged me how looking good was more important than being good on the inside.
I was a weird child. Too eccentric and imaginative. Used to throw ugly tantrums and they drove my folks nuts since everyone at church condemned them for not punishing me severely enough.
Before kindergarten my folks took me to an educational center that ran tests. I drew a woman as they requested. The skirt was “too long” according to them.
They asked me why I disliked preschool. I used a big word when I told them. “Responsibilities.” Tongue clucking and note taking.
They told my parents it was their fault I was messed up. Using big words I obviously didn’t know because they forced me to. Drawing women wearing long skirts meant my parents made me feel ashamed of my legs.
My mom was very upset. She has told me since she always knew there was something wrong and weird about me. The center blamed my environment. The bio-model blamed heredity which she claimed came from Dad’s side too.
Why is being Weird the unpardonable sin? Lots of “normal” people do rotten things all the time. But if their cruel, selfish behaviors are socially appropriate and NORMAL everyone is fine with that.
Report comment
Yes Bcharris.
It’s also worth noting that psychotropics work mainly by lowering energy levels.
Report comment
Thank you for this article Dr. Hahn. Nice to have more specialists of legitimate sciences writing for MIA.
With the many adults involved in the life of today’s child there are plenty of potential abusers other than the parents.
My brother and I were emotionally abused by a teacher we both had different years. My parents never found out till we were teens. We thought our folks approved of Mrs. I’s behaviors and teachings. They had no idea and were upset when we told them.
SomeoneElse and others here could share how their children were abused without their knowledge or consent. So blaming the mom or parents is a gross oversimplification. Often unjust.
Though this article points out the problem was less common than represented. Psychiatrists are misrepresenting their own history even as they misrepresent what they know about the human brain.
Report comment
People who abuse street drugs have high drop out rates too.
The only surprising thing about this is that anyone regards it as surprising.
I’m sure Dr. Goetzhe could foresee the outcome–well informed AND MORAL doctor that he is. Unlike many.
Report comment
Sounds fishy to me. 😛
Cod liver oil has been around a long time. You don’t need a doctor to administer it.
Report comment
You will be missed Dr. Bonnie.
Report comment
Well, furies, the withdrawals can make you feel like you’re dying.
Glad to see more articles like this. And commenters willing to speak the truth. Despite the gas lighting.
Like the writer I had digestive problems when young. Shrinks messed my gut up royally.
Wonder when a shrink will show up to scream “pill shamers” at those managing to survive without their next fix from dealers like him. 🙂
Report comment
I wouldn’t know. No TV.
🙂
Report comment
Nobody seems to acknowledge that large numbers of people attempt suicide while religiously adhering to the drug regimen–exactly as prescribed by the doctor.
While taking my cocktail exactly as prescribed by my shrink I frequently was suicidal and would be hospitalized 1-3 times every year.
Off my drugs for 30 months and despite my poverty and sickness (iatrogenic digestive system damage) I have regained the will to live. But no one wants to hear stories like mine.
Report comment
Psychic psychiatry….
Report comment
The APA will only strip Open Dialogue of all meaning and value by incorporating the bio model. Just as they have CBT and meditation.
My guess is they’ll turn it into a gripe session where the “SMI” person’s family is encouraged to gang up on him or her. “Keva you need to own up to being the schizophrenic in this family. Why won’t you just admit you’re the problem and take your meds?”
Report comment
“We give those pesky kids fistfuls of uppers and downers. Yet their mood swings persist. Must be their defective genes,” says our educational system.
Report comment
Not with a single lethal injection though.
A prolonged death over the course of many years via 3-10 various neuroleptics/serotonin inhibitors/tranquilizers.
That’s the only humane course to take. Motivated purely by compa$$ion. 😀
Report comment
“Researchers Fail to Predict Responses to Random Brain Damage.”
How’s that? 🙂
Report comment
And if the treatment causes the kneecaps to disintegrate that’s just too bad.
They shoulda thought of that before they had knee troubles.
Report comment
My mental illness team told me logical thinking was impossible for my kind and I needed to rely on everyone else to do my thinking for me. Around that time I really “lost it.” Ain’t insight grand?
Report comment
A lot of doctors chalk them up to fake diseases. Anything to prescribe more SSRIs and get rewarded with warm doughnuts and views up Barbie’s miniskirt.
That’s why most of us survivors distrust doctors. If we even continue to believe in allopathic medicine.
Report comment
i prefer to read this as Peter Breggin saying no one is “saner” than anyone else. Especially the shrinks.
Report comment
So Dr. K…how would you classify real physical disorders created by fake meds to treat fake diseases? Funny how these real diseases are ignored or minimized if the doctor knows you’re being treated for a fake disease.
Report comment
My anemia and thyroid problem kept getting used as an excuse to boost my SSRI dose. Now I smile and say I feel perfectly happy but just a little sluggish. Could they please just check my hemoglobin and thyroid levels?
Report comment
Is that a reality show Down Under?
Report comment
I understand the frustration many here feel. Like others I share a small living space as the only alternative to homelessness and am still too messed up for a regular job. Autoimmune diseases and trouble concentrating, remembering or organizing.
Plus the MI System strongly discouraged me from finding work–partly by requiring long hours in “day treatment” and “clubhouse.” So my work history is very poor.
Others of you are worse off. Living under a bridge or abandoned warehouse. Maybe forced into AOT or locked up or forced to live with abusers. Maybe you don’t even get disability to live off.
Melissa’s cards are not a solution to problems like homelessness. Houses of cards are for shrinks to construct. 😉 Nor do they free the imprisoned nor end the pharmacological torture. But these problems are things even the greatest medical and legal experts struggle with. Dr. Goezhe, Dr. Breggin, Jim Gottstein….
At least Melissa is trying to bring the teeniest ray of comfort into the lives of those who exist just to serve as scapegoats for all that’s wrong with humanity today. Letting them know that someone still sees them as Human Beings instead of monsters or garbage.
I’m trying to do more of that myself. Maybe volunteer for a warmline for survivors.
There are other contributors here far worthier of our ire. One of them is a mainstream psychiatrist who posted a mocking comment on a young man’s memorial page a while back. It makes more sense to get angry at people like him.
Report comment
It’s better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness. ~Confucius
Report comment
I agree with you about the peer movement John.
Report comment
Of course the idea that mindlessness meditation–as Julie used to call it–or counseling can benefit purely neurological disorders flies in the face of the bio-bio-bio model narrative psychiatrists have written.
They struggle with the narrative when they wax eloquent upon how the internet spreads agosognosia. Yet claim this lack of “insight” is completely genetic in origin.
Respected psychiatrists seem to be arguing that genes can be altered through reading internet articles they disagree with. Lol
Report comment
Why many find “mental health”=depression. You get your entire identity out of popping pills and attending “groups” to reinforce how sick/crazy/helpless you are.
Normal things that give most a sense of life purpose–career and family–are strongly discouraged.
Report comment
Hugs John.
Report comment
I try to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Not being a shrink i can’t read people’s minds.
Report comment
I was indeed mad to think my psychiatrist had any solutions to my real life problems.
Should have bought my “meds” from that guy on the street corner. No defamatory label and you can go off with no legal repercussions.
Report comment
In defense of all these do-gooders most believe in the chemical imbalance myth.
My mom thought I would die without my “meds.” Seriously.
Report comment
Precisely.
There’s way more to our neurochemical makeup than dopamine and serotonin despite what NAMI would have us believe. Most of the chemicals in the human brain remain unclassified by science.
If they don’t even know what they’re trying to fix how can they fix it?
Report comment
Is that so?
I keep hearing shrinks tell everyone–not just us–how their treatments are 100% safe and effective. They prevent murder, adultery, homelessness, drunkenness, theft, suicide, etc. And they’re “safer than aspirin.” “Just like insulin for diabetes.”
So they admit to each other that all their medical help is worthless? A pack of lying scoundrels.
Shrinks whining about how the geese laying their golden eggs squawk too much.They’re the ungrateful ones IMHO.
Report comment
Yep. Replace all psychiatrists with kiosks containing computers. You can take the test for “mental illness” with in the multiple choice quiz already used by shrinks.
Print up the new diagnostic label/s on a receipt. Then run your Medicaid/Medicare/insurance cared through various vending machines that will dispense 7-30 days worth of pills.
The machines won’t make you wait 2 hours extra for a 10 minute office visit. They don’t play golf.
Report comment
Sounds like how Mom’s GP takes her off her “antidepressants.”
Poor Mom acts like a zombie most of the time. 16 hours of TV a day. Can only discuss pop trivia and gets irritated at anything “for eggheads.”
At 69 she takes Wellbutrin and Celexa. But doctors prescribe it so it must be good for her. (She assumes.)
Report comment
That was very kind of you Melissa. Thank you for taking the time and trouble for showing love to people our culture wants to forget.
Some of the most judgmental, unloving attitudes toward the “mentally ill” come from the experts who diagnose them.
I’ll have to visit your blog. It’s a struggle to keep positive.
Report comment
Glad you’re doing better, Will.
I understand why you choose to take a small dose of neuroleptics in your circumstances.
What you needed help with was the real disease of malaria. Not a slough of iatrogenic problems added to the mix. 🙁
It was hard for me to taper off my cocktail. I receive a disability check and live with relatives. Not a feasible option for many.
Circumstances may change. Till then, minimalist psych pills sound like they’re working for you. Good luck.
Report comment
Or that a bad reaction to an SSRI can get you labeled bipolar, thus destroying all hopes for a decent life.
Report comment
Glad your suffering ended before your life did.
The worst thing about psychiatric “remedies” is they cause exquisite suffering no onlooker can see. Even kind hearted people can’t appreciate the Hell that’s between your ears.
My mother would tearfully ask my shrink why I paced, jerked uncontrollably, had mini seizures, couldn’t carry on a conversation, concentrate or smile. “She never was like this.”
“Doc” M covered his butt with judicious victim blaming and gas lighting. Of course.
Report comment
The best course of treatment for hopelessness, sadness, and despair?
Faith, hope, and love.
Report comment
Most serial killers live in their own homes, hold down jobs, and even have families.
I also object to “Doc” Drew’s nonsense that “All the ‘mentally ill’ people enjoy being homeless.”
It reminds me of how racists say “People of ethnic group X enjoy living in the high crime district.”
I am afraid of homelessness for crying out loud! Been having nightmares about it. Lots of “consumers” are. A friend of mine kept begging to be sent to a “home” because her frontal lobes were too messed up on her cocktail to keep the Marine-style level of cleanliness and order that HUD demands and most people would find challenging.
It’s safe to assume Drew wants nothing but state hospitals. Basically prisons rife with every abuse imaginable–including rape.
WTH is wrong with Drew? It’s a safe bet HE never talked to them or any of his victims. Can’t humanize ’em since that would be unprofessional.
Report comment
How to be a respected psychiatrist.
It’s essential to wear a nice lab coat, have clean finger nails, never raise your voice (you can scare people into submission without shouting.)
Flash your MD around. From the only medical field that accepts people who swoon at the sight of blood.
Forget losers like Louis Pasteur and Alexander Fleming. Song and dance numbers outweigh facts. Make like P.T. Barnum.
Remember a happy mark won’t give much repeat business. Give them something highly addictive with as many side effects as possible. With luck you’ll get to sell 3 drugs for every original drug you put them on. 😀 That’s a cocktail of 9 meds for your average Bipolar case. Cha ching!
Remember–only do horrible things in socially appropriate ways.
Report comment
A lot of shrinks would qualify. That’s why.
It’s worth noting how the high ranking psychiatrists praised the way SSRIs kill empathy.
See http://www.madinamerica.com/2019/07/antidepressants-blunt-ability-feel-empathy/
Report comment
Do you suffer akathasia Dragon Slayer? 🙁
Report comment
Can the phone number here still be used?
Report comment
Precisely Boans!
What’s to prevent shrinks from involuntarily euthanizing the “SMI”?
We already have no say in what they do to us. And they ignore the damage their “safe and effective” treatments have on those they regard as lab rats.
It’s only lack of insight preventing Ms. Smith from appreciating her subhuman condition and that she has Lebensunwertes Leben (a life unworthy of life.) Therefore kindly, wise Dr. X will kill her despite her protests.
Report comment
Western psychiatry should be viewed as a punitive branch of government rather than a branch of medicine.
Report comment
Reporting scientific studies is problematic when these studies are skewed and sometimes falsified.
Report comment
Psychiatry serves as a Procrustean bed for western society.
Report comment
My beliefs kept me from suicide too, Rconrad. Hugs!
Sadly Zel’s reason for ending his life was the damage inflicted on him by psychiatry.
Report comment
So does Jaffe advocate telling police to not be afraid of shooting anyone accused of being “MI”? If not, this is still the result. Not that he would care.
Are the folks running NAMI that dumb or do they want to get their loved ones shot if the drugs don’t work fast enough. 25 years is a long wait for an annoying “loved one” to die.
I’ll never forget a commenter here who supported AOT and said she was glad her “mentally ill” daughter would die young and didn’t care her life was ruined by the drugs because she was happy forcing her to live hopelessly dependent in her basement forever.
Why isn’t that woman considered a menace? She’s the one with messed up thinking. Her “crazy” daughter wasn’t the one saying that crap about her.
Isn’t wanting your adult offspring to be crippled, unemployed and living in your basement forever pretty bizarre? But that’s the ultimate NAMI mommy wet dream. Creepy.
Report comment
Leaving psychiatry is indeed the only healthy response to this brutal regime. Never argue with anyone whose 7 digit income depends on writing off your complaints as delusions.
Have a happy new year, Ekaterina. 🙂
Report comment
I’m wondering about a class action suit levied by people labeled “bipolar 2” after a reaction to an SSRI.
This is not to shame the victims but exonerate them. And shed light on the implicit deceit of psychiatry.
Report comment
I found work recently. The economy is better now.
But I couldn’t keep the entry-level job due to old age and long term damage causing my autoimmune disease.
Creative freelancing will allow me to “come out” as a survivor more easily. I have made a vow to do so in 2024.
Leaving California would help those folks a lot. Housing is way more affordable in my state. $20,000 here goes further than $50,000 in the Sunshine State.
Report comment
Jaffe is not a doctor. Why does he get a platform? 😛
Propagandist and boot-licker don’t count.
Psychiatry should be called out on its hypocritical double standard this way.
Report comment
An institution is four walls. Pinsky should have this pointed out to him.
They are very wrong to say all the homeless enjoy being that way. Krista didn’t choose homelessness. Nor did Julie Greene or me. Yet we nearly wound up that way because psychiatry prevented us from gainful employment.
By deliberate crippling with their cruel, pointless experiments. And promoting bigotry as Pinsky is doing. How is one supposed to find/keep a job when Pinsky and his ilk are out to sabotage all efforts and terrify neighborhoods to promote NIMBY even after finding jobs?
Report comment
HUD costs less due to fewer staff.
Of course letting these people become gainfully employed so they can afford their own housing is not an option.
I was gainfully employed at 17. Went to college and took a full course load and PT work at the campus library. Then I saw a shrink, took his pills and stayed awake for 21 days. Labels, more drugs than ever, unemployment…
Struggling to work with a chronic illness from home.
I still think psychiatry is exacerbating–if not causing–the homelessness epidemic. And benefits are being cut because almost 30% of the population is iatrogenically crippled/barred from working thanks to “Doctor” Drew’s colleagues. All the mental workers swore up and down if I took my “meds” religiously I could find gainful employment and maybe even get married.
But it all depended on unquestioning obedience and taking whatever drugs my shrinks dished out. Even if they caused seizures, uncontrollable vomiting, heart problems, strokes, etc. 😛
There are more jobs now. Sadly though, my autoimmune condition from 25 years on drugs makes many of these impossible. I can no longer work as a cashier due to bodily weakness and chronic pain.
Report comment
Merry Christmas RR. 🙂
Report comment
I was the model mental patient for 22 years.
What did I get for it? Alienation. Segregation. Dire poverty. Banned from gainful employment. Massive weight gain (more than 100% body mass.) Autoimmune disease. Heart problems.
That’s how the mentalists reward you for the insight they praise. And they assume you’re stupid and warn your family that you won’t take your “meds” since “they never do.”
Of course my “insight” and reputation as a “good consumer” helped me escape once I figured out I’d been had. The real advantage to compliance.
Report comment
Never underestimate the placebo effect.
Of course there is more than that at work. A lot of drugs bring people out of depression by producing a mild euphoria.
I experienced this with my first time on Zoloft. But my depression came from being labeled “schizo-affective” after a bad trip on Anafranil. I got kicked out of college thanks to my label. 10 mg Haldol destroyed my ability to socialize/enjoy anything/smile.
Mental services blamed my suicidal misery on my brain. Not being labeled hopelessly defective or drugged out on seizure causing neuroleptics.
In the hospital someone told me I wasn’t a monster and listened while I sobbed out the year of pain I had been through. The Zoloft gave me a speedy lift. I got released for Thanksgiving.
I went back to another college too. Full time.
The relief lasted a month or so.
Report comment
Remember The Lorax by Dr. Seuss?
My guess is those pushing MI System don’t want to wreck society since an end to Western Civilization would mean no more yacht parties.
But–like the Onceler in the picture book–their greed has made them very short sighted. And instead of trees they’re chopping down young human lives just as fast as they please.
Report comment
I struggle with the urge to go full misanthrope myself.
In my phone talks with Julie Greene she told me that distrust–even hatred–for most of humanity is common to psychiatric survivors.
It comes from being cast out of society so only a few fellow outcasts will still speak to you. Of being blamed for every violent crime committed. Of trembling every time you hear of a mass shooting since you know people will blame duly appointed scapegoats for society, known as the “mentally ill” for the actions of those you have no control over.
if it were seen as punishing a group for the crimes of a single individual, people would be forced to acknowledge the injustice. But call life long imprisonment/mutilation/druggings “treatment” and dismiss those forced to suffer. They can take pride in their benevolence and only need to fear dislocated shoulders from patting their own backs.
But we who survive the System are not fooled. We see through this faux compassion for what it is. Cold indifference to the suffering of their fellow human beings. Projecting the murder and madness in their own hearts onto the designated Other. 🙁
Every morning I feel what has been inflicted on my body. I make a conscious choice for forgiveness and love. Not easy and the damage remains. But my psyche is noticeably better.
I only know what goes on in the hearts of the scapegoating “sane” because I too am guilty of this behavior. i truly am one of them–acknowledged or not.
Report comment
Ironic that he calls NOT locking up and slowly poisoning innocent people genocide.
Psychiatry is genocide of those the experts deem unworthy and unfit. Social Darwinism at its ugliest.
Report comment
If a “consumer’s” intelligence is not significantly below average this indicates a need to increase “medications.”
I suspect this is how many shrinks reason.
Report comment
My question is how many homeless people are receiving the best of psychiatric treatment even when the sidewalk is their pillow night after night?
Just like mass shooters in psychiatric care while they plot out their murder/suicides. A whole herd of elephants in the living room.
Report comment
Drug addiction is standard treatment for psychiatry. Homelessness/disability and violent crime are greatly exacerbated by “mental health.”
Leah, someone needs to write an article–or book–about how psychiatry creates homelessness. The involuntary kind.
Report comment
It looks like the movie Unsane takes a more realistic look at psychiatry than Joker.
The funny part of Unsane is how it’s viewed as some sort of unusual scandal the psych hospital locks people up as long as insurance covers it. And gets shut down when this Unusual Scandal comes to light.
Bwahahaha! 😀
Naive screenplay writers.
Report comment
I was referring to family doctors. Not shrinks.
I lied to a former GP about how helpful I found the cocktail I no longer took.
He solemnly warned me of the dangers of going manic if I stopped taking my “meds.” Many others have too.
i know they were 100% wrong. But no way will I tell them!
Are they all that deceitful? Or ignorant?
It’s doubtful they know anyone who came off the pills and dared to tell them the story.
Report comment
I have said some harsh things about real doctors on this site.
In justice to those GPs and FNPs, they lead such busy lives that aside from maybe a few trade articles to stay current, none have time to sift through all the propaganda/marketing campaigns disguised as medical science.
The truth can’t keep pace with all the lies the enemy grinds out. Truly sad. 🙁
Report comment
Amazing. That they admitted her “meds” weren’t working. 🙁
Report comment
“In other words, the conservatee has to prove he or she has been handling the very responsibilities or freedoms that the conservatorship has limited their ability to engage in.”
This sums up the Mental System as a whole, actually.
Strap a ball and chain to our ankles and mock our inability to run laps.
Report comment
And one of the men holding her prisoner assures us she is fine.
But won’t let the prisoner speak for herself.
Report comment
Yes, Anomie. Survival of the Fittest as the standard can be brutal to those judged unfit. Weakness is viewed as the ultimate crime–worse than robbery or murder.
Report comment
Thank you for your directness and honesty Richard.
I’m not sure which of the 10 Commandments you refer to supports slavery. The one against coveting perhaps?
BTW, you have your own reasons for rejecting organized religion. This is not an apologetics site so I will not debate you.
Since you don’t believe in it, the cognitive dissonance you experienced with psychiatry is purely biological and moral. Not theological like my own.
Blind and uncritical thinking bring trouble wherever they occur. I agree.
As someone with nothing to gain by helping us survivors I applaud you in supporting our movement.
Report comment
Do you mean even those who see a shrink willingly should be allowed to “fire” him or her at will and leave the mental system should we so desire?
If so, I agree.
Report comment
Psychiatry=projection.
Physicians, heal yourselves.
Report comment
Alcoholics Anonymous is such a group–or at least it was.
Report comment
That’s a good question Richard.
A major difference between “original sin” and “mental illness” is the playing field is level. We’re ALL sinners. And genetic defects–though they exist–don’t make anyone inherently better than another.
Whereas psychiatrists believe the majority are born sane. Such as themselves.
Furthermore the doctrine of “original sin” goes along with the doctrine that all human beings are special beings who bear the divine breath within. And have basic rights to life and liberty by nature of our common humanity. Regardless of intelligence, strength or beauty.
Report comment
Psychiatry is a school of anti-thought.
Monism is the philosophy psychiatry is founded upon. Monists believe we don’t have thoughts. What we call thoughts are merely random chemical reactions in our skulls.
Report comment
Psychiatrists ignored me whenever I said anything negative about the pills they put me on. Either I was lying or it was my “illness” which (quite coincidentally) had never manifested in that form before I took their “100% safe, effective life-saving medicine.”
Liar or inherent defectiveness. Can’t pill shame.
So I decided two can play at this game. I lied and flattered shamelessly. As long as you kiss up and praise ye precious pills they’ll believe anything you say. It shows “good insight.” LOL
Arrogant people are highly susceptible to flattery. Remember Colonel Klink in Hogan’s Heroes?
It helped me escape.
They hate the truth so you feed them the lies they prefer.
Oh, they’ll easily believe you are “symptom” free. AKA no depression. Regardless of how you feel.
What highly scientific method do they use to figure out your depression levels? Blood tests? Brain scans? Spinal taps?
Nope.
A quiz with 0-5 for negative feelings. They throw some physical symptoms that could be caused by real health issues, but it’s a trap. Just put 0 on everything and three 1’s so they won’t get suspicious.
My joys and sorrows are my own business. I’l deal with them as I see fit. And calling my real life sorrows or griefs mere symptoms of some (unproven) brain disease is insulting the way I see it.
Report comment
These are actually quite rare.
The teen talking to non-existent people. The man going around calling himself Moses or Gandhi. The woman who imagines the CIA is spying on her.
Very few people in the MI System I met ever experienced this pre-drugs.
Most were nervous and unhappy from crap in their lives. Till the psych treatments sent them over the edge.
Or they got a plea deal for shop lifting or assault.
Or had a drinking problem that AA used to help with. Now they’re addicted to stuff far worse than booze.
Report comment
And self-satisfaction…
Report comment
Some shrinks don’t know what laughter is–so naturally they find it disturbing.
Report comment
That is the main reason I chose to come off my drugs. Despite the suffering my withdrawal caused.
I was brought up a teetotaler, non-smoker, “just say no” kid. if these drugs were the same as street drugs how could I continue to take them?
BTW, a lot of little old ladies on SSRI’s would be irate if they could be convinced they’d been tricked into taking addictive, mind altering drugs by that nice-seeming doctor they trusted.
Report comment
He’s certainly cruel and deceitful.
He knows his “science” is a fraud and hurts people but chooses to ignore his conscience to advance his career.
Report comment
Dr. Ronald Pies did in a couple articles published in the APA journal.
He was very indignant that anyone thought members of his profession were ignorant enough to believe the lies they told those who trusted them. 😀
Report comment
‘”Far away from the from the eloquent critiques from Mad in America, one is as likely to have a patient REQUESTING to be diagnosed or start a new medication.”
Dr. T.N. Tampiyappa
“The Matrix: Disentangling Antipsychiatry”
MIA 12/19
I have heard other psychiatrists say this. Though my label almost made me commit suicide before I decided to live above it.
FWIW I have known some people who enjoyed being able to turn over adult responsibilities to the mental system.
Report comment
Do they even want to make valid scientific discoveries?
Assume–for the sake of argument–they discover more about the chemicals of our brains and classify more. Then they discover all the “safe and effective” treatments they based their careers on have done the exact opposite of what they were supposed to.
It’s safe to assume psychiatry would not come out smelling like roses in this scenario. So my guess is they would promptly skew or suppress the results.
The research is entirely for show.
Report comment
I wouldn’t call Torrey a “hater.”
His evil is the icy sort rather than the fiery sort.
Most of his victims are strangers to him. He doesn’t hate; he is coldly indifferent to the sufferings of his fellow human beings. Whom he perceives solely as means to the end of his own prestige.
He only actively hates those like Breggin and RW who get in the way of his money, fame and power.
His evil is decidedly banal.
Report comment
Julie Greene had a dream of consulting to help people going through extreme states see it through and avoid the mental system entirely. Or leave the system after getting sucked in.
I really would like to see her ebook “Life Without Lithium” get published.
One of her brothers came over to the anti psychiatry side. Maybe he would be agreeable to getting it published as Julie wished.
Report comment
As an orthodox Christian who attends a Church of Christ assembly based on the Bible and fundamentalist notions, I struggled with the incompatibility of my religious faith and psychiatry.
Yes, brain illnesses exist. Meningitis, epilepsy, dementia, brain cancer, ALS, traumatic brain damage. These cause cognitive problems–along with other issues like motor impairment.
But what psychiatrists–especially the high ranking kind–love to warn the public against are not people with cognitive problems. (Torrey doesn’t go on national TV to warn the populace about how dangerous all people with Down Syndrome are. Notice that?)
Basically “mental illness” refers to moral issues. If a young man goes berzerk with a gun or knife or homemade bomb he isn’t cognitively impaired. Often these murderers show great ingenuity in gaining or constructing these weapons.
The problem is moral–not cognitive in nature. The idea that any pill can cure moral problems by strengthening the conscience and rekindling love for your neighbor is ludicrous.
My religion promises help in overcoming moral problems (AKA sins) through traditional means laid out in our scriptures. But when well meaning church members urged me to get “help” and take my “meds” I wondered what good our church was. Did “mentally ill’ people like me not have souls since the Atonement was insufficient for our redemption?
No one else pondered these questions. Then I discovered most shrinks–especially the high ranking members of the APA–don’t believe in souls. They are actually monists or materialists.
My dad is a retired preacher with a graduate degree in theology. I read him Dr. Pies’s article arguing both against the chemical imbalance “metaphor” and in for hard core materialism. This turned my dad against psychiatry–realizing it was actually a rival religion sneaking into churches by posing as a branch of medicine.
Report comment
LOL
😀
Report comment
I would like to write a piece about how psychiatry causes homelessness.
Not “mental illness” but psychiatry and its brain damaging treatments and public degradation.
Report comment
I believe this.
Chaya, knowing this, why are there some people begging for labels? (Never wanted one myself.)
Report comment
Psychiatry is killing western medicine.
Report comment
For my part I value good counseling, but cannot afford anything outside the MH system and so many are 100% pro pharmakiah as well as telling me how hopeless my “bipolar’ status makes me. Afraid to see any and tired of the depressing messages.
Report comment
What is “mental health” supposed to be?
The DSM is full of odd thoughts and behaviors but most shrinks would be hard put to define what a “mentally healthy” person is supposed to act, think and feel like.
William Glasser wrote about it, but he was a rogue the APA would love to forget. Glasser rejected the notion of labels and long term drugs or shocks as helpful.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
With all due respect Dr. T, I don’t have the power to vote anyone off the Island since I lost all citizenship rights after getting labeled. (The label itself made me suicidal while i believed it.)
You might say I have fled the island no longer feeling safe there.
I have no doubt the pills help some by numbing their emotional pain.
i sought out psychiatry willingly but had no idea i would be labeled ‘bipolar’ because the SSRI would keep me awake for 3 weeks straight. On a cocktail for 22 years and kicked out of college. No career or family or friends in my late forties thanks to being labeled and drugged so heavily I slept 10-12 hours a day. (And too numb to pick up on social cues and nuances I ordinarily could.)
You could argue I came willingly but so could the victims of Farid Fata who willingly took lengthy chemo treatments because he told them they had leukemia. And they didn’t.
Unlike you Dr. T., my psychiatrists told me I had a chemical imbalance in my brain their drugs would rectify and I would probably harm myself or others without the cocktail i must take. Most denied what i experienced–my tonic seizures (minor side effect)–and blamed my weight gain on nutritional ignorance and gluttony. Then marveled at my depression and low self esteem. Fancy that. *Eye roll.*
When I read William Glasser i was so relieved to know i was not a monster and it was not my fault the drugs made me feel awful instead of helping me live independently and get along with others outside the MI ghetto.
Nowhere but MIA to share stories like mine it seems. And there are plenty.
Thank you for acknowledging people like us exist and shouldn’t be locked up for what others have put us through.
Report comment
Surely that is a tired rehash of ad hominem attacks from the Church of Psychiatry.
Saying people aren’t suffering from what they have inflicted on us under the guise of medicine.
Report comment
They do a great job at concealing their dislike. I no longer trust the medical profession because of this collusion.
Like a city run by a crooked police force. It may be just 5% of the police breaking the law they claim to uphold. But they couldn’t do it without all the rest supporting and covering for their corrupt buddies.
Report comment
Ugh.
Glad to see you here Boans. You haven’t commented for a while.
Report comment
Their pills destroy grey matter and cause brain shrinkage according to studies done–but not brought up–by Dr. Nancy Andreason. Prominent p-doctor and author of The Broken Brain.
Report comment
I agree Alex.
The best treatment for prolonged stress would be good nutrition, proper exercise, enough sleep, plenty of water, and people who loved you.
Kind of how I’m curing the damage done by those I’d thought were helping me.
Report comment
I admit I know little about these studies. But even if accurate, they do not justify psychiatric drugs/shocks any more than Brittle Bone Disease justifies taking a crow bar to the legs of a sufferer.
Report comment
You mean shrinks will start treating folks with brain cancer, Lyme disease, and epilepsy like wanted criminals?
Report comment
If ‘bad mental health policy’ means denial of due process, segregating and gas lighting select individuals, and slowly crippling and killing the weakest–including newborns–I agree.
But it probably means the laws are not draconian enough and we aren’t dying fast enough in large enough numbers to suit the powers that be.
Report comment
No you don’t deserve what you’ve been through. My condolences.
If he’s a violent criminal he should be locked up. Why is he roaming free?
Report comment
Tie a pretty pink ribbon on torture and call it compassion.
A friend of mine left NAMI and urged me to leave “mental health” when her sister died at 49 and she saw my rapid decline. My heart is finally beating regularly again.
My family agrees the drugs did not help me. Many people are upset at the cruel, pointless experiments performed on their loved ones. Families that actually love each other. Even the sensitive types having a rough time.
How anyone could knowingly force a child to take drugs they know are crippling and slowly killing them is beyond me. At least my parents believed the chemical imbalance lie and were sincere though misguided. (By evil guides.) You can’t make such a defense in Pete Earley’s behalf. On his blog he unapologetically acknowledges this is false but claims it’s necessary to promote it to ensure “meds compliance.”
Google “Pete Earley chemical imbalance metaphor.” His blog will likely turn up with the article I’m thinking of.
Neither truth nor love.
Report comment
How about health concerns linked to the iatrogenic damage caused by psychiatry?
Report comment
I can finally read this without being blinded by tears.
Julie Greene was a true friend. We never actually met but talked on the phone a lot. As well as texting and emails.
She encouraged me to come off my “meds.” Gave me great advice for my own writing, job hunting and reintegration. (Hard for those who spent all their adult lives in the MI system.)
Sad she died so young, but she outlived the average psychiatrized person by ten years. There’s no doubt fleeing the system prolonged her life.
And she died at her own place with Puzzle. Not in an institution as she feared.
I find comfort in that thought.
Report comment
Still a few Peter Breggins out there.
Long before I heard about Robert Whitaker, I learned the truth about psychiatry from rogue psychiatrists–like William Glasser and Terry Lynch.
Far from upsetting me, the idea that the pills were not fixing my brain but harming it, was a great relief. I had often felt frustrated and depressed that my effective, neuro-protective pills weren’t helping me lead a happy, productive life like the MH people kept promising. No one else at the MH center seemed that “functional” either.
Report comment
We need a fact checking site dedicated entirely to medical news.
Report comment
Prolonged stress has been shown to reduce gray matter in human brains. Sort of a negative form of neuroplasticity.
Report comment
Actually these treatments are safe and effective.
100% safe for psychiatrists who prescribe them and effective at helping them earn 6 or 7 digit incomes.
Report comment
Opponents would argue “cause does not automatically mean correlation.”
But the fact that there are larger numbers of young people taking these drugs than ever and rates of joblessness due to emotional problems have skyrocketed should make anyone reconsider how effective these drugs are at helping people lead independent, meaningful lives.
Psychiatry has been compared to a dragon on this site.
I believe it is a Minotaur. An unnatural, hybridized monster lurking in a twisted maze of hopeless complexity. It prowls the darkness, devouring the young who have been placed there by the state. A convenient sacrifice to maintain tyranny.
Unlike its Greek counterpart, our minotaur is not satisfied with 14 young people. Every year its appetite grows as it devours larger numbers of our young–and bellows for more.
It is insatiable. Unless we find a Theseus, it will devour our future!
Report comment
Whoever is not against us is for us.
I am grateful for anyone trying to help, including the writer of this piece. At least he tells those who come to him the truth about the drugs he prescribes and it sounds as though he only supports consenting consumers.
Report comment
Psychiatry is chalk full of euphemisms and oxymorons.
Examples of oxymorons:
“Integrate” means isolate or segregate
“Diagnose” means perform degradation ceremony
“Serve” means rule
“Insight” means breaking point
“Hospitalization” means imprisonment for no legal reason
“Assisted outpatient treatment” means pharmacological torture
“Mental health” means gas lighting
Report comment
It’s not just young women’s sense of self “antidepressants” shape. In a little over a year on a cocktail I went from 175 to 250. 🙁
Report comment
‘Life imprisonment, without possibility of parole and pharmacological torture.”
Yes. Pharmacological torture is a thing. Which explains why the UN publicly condemned psychiatry’s standard treatments.
Report comment
Psychiatry’s primary function for any but “soft diagnoses” is punitive. Whether you commit any crime or not they’ll treat you like a criminal and punish you for existing.
We already have a legal system to deal with people who actually commit crimes.
Tom Cruise has gone on record against psychiatry. (No, I don’t want him for a celebrity spokesperson!) Funny how he never has connected the Pre-Crime Unit in The Minority Report with Psychiatry.
Only instead of predicting real crimes and preventing them, these would be Pre-Crime Police get violent criminals released for “good insight” and “meds compliance” like Eric Harris, Devin Kelley and countless others. As well as locking up peaceful, law-abiding citizens indefinitely. Because they MIGHT commit crimes someday you see. Due process be hanged.
We already have a police force and psychics with better track records than shrinks.
Report comment
“Insanity Providers” is a more accurate term for what they actually do.
“How Mental Health Professionals View the Rights of those They Shamed, Scapegoated and Damaged”?
Oh wait. It’s “service users.”
They deserved to be harmed. They wanted to be harmed. We harmed them for their own good.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
In Anatomy of an Epidemic, RW implies that psychiatry faced extinction back in the 60’s. We have counselors to help adults make better life choices as well as neurologists to treat real brain disorders and other specialties for medical problems that get labeled “SMI” by psychiatrists.
Why do we need psychiatrists when we already have yoga and meditation classes at the local YMCA and fitness trainers? There are also a few counselors who belong to the Choice Theory/Reality Therapy school of thought founded by William Glasser or the kind founded by Peter Breggin.
I’m not anti-therapy or counseling or whatever you choose to call it. Szasz himself practiced counseling “between consenting adults” if my fellow APs care to remember.
The APA has chosen to put not just profit but personal egos above the health and lives of those who trusted them. Proving they were honest-to-gosh doctors practicing a legitimate medical specialty, required real medicines, diagnoses, and surgeries.
Never mind that the “medicines” were addictive mind altering drugs similar to the street kind. Never mind their “diagnoses” had only the “expert’s” say so with no objective tests and consisted of insulting laundry lists of character traits which shrinks wrongly claim are lifelong. Never mind the psycho surgeries (SOME of the surgeons do resemble Norman Bates come to think of it) are only random acts of brain damage any semi-literate thug could perform with an icepick or wooden baseball bat. They proved they are Real Doctors. Which is all that counts.
The only thing I admire the APA for is their clever marketing techniques mixed with ingeniously packaged propaganda that would make Big Brother green with envy. Master Illusionists.
Report comment
As far as “Hysteria” and “BPD” go I also recommend They Call You Crazy by Paula DeCappa.
Report comment
I find your fourth paragraph interesting Dr. T. As a layperson i wouldn’t guess other specialists feel that way about psychiatry. They certainly hide it well from the public. Why is that?
i applaud your honesty in telling those who come to you for help that your pills restore nothing, but sometimes kill emotional pain.
As far as needing the drugs to kill the pain, how much of the pain was caused by social rejection/isolation and enforced idleness and poverty from getting the diagnosis and drugs to begin with? My SMI label nearly drove me to suicide since everyone turned on me.
Fled to where no one knows about it and I tapered off the soul killing drugs. Still on disability because of my Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Official diagnosis. I believe this is from long term SSRI use.
But I’m able to make friends, since I can understand social cues for the first time in my adult life. I am finally able to lose weight, shower regularly, and keep a clean house. People don’t shun me, or patronize me for a physical disability. For the first time in decades i feel like a human being again. 🙂
And i hope to start a tutoring business preparing high schoolers for SAT and ACT tests. The pay could help me earn a living working part time since my habits are frugal.
I never wanted to be unemployed forever. Many people in the system hate the enforced idleness, social isolation, and poverty. Do you think they knew what they were signing up for when they begged for a diagnosis and pills?
And yes–many do beg for these. You are perfectly right. Few of the fellow “consumers” could conceive that the drugs and labels played a role in the unemployment and alienation they often lamented.
Report comment
Too little too late.
Report comment
Had more than one mental worker tell me that.
If she had said all people of an ethnic minority were alike and should only date each other that would be racist.
Had a number of workers try to set me up with guys I didn’t like or enjoy being around. Guys with really poor cognitive skills (couldn’t read) and physically abusive. But “we’re all alike” you know. 😛
Report comment
I’m glad of that Bippyone.
Report comment
Allan Frances and others have been trying to cushion the fall for themselves.
And also remove a few cards to steady the structure. But the whole house is bound to fall anyhow.
Report comment
I told my last therapist I was glad the drugs wiped out my sex drive since my label, rolls of fat, and drug altered personality rendered me undateable.
She acted shocked. “Well–uh–why not ask Dr. X to change it?”
Me: “To what? You know an SSRI is a standard part of treatment for Bipolar cases.”
That shocked her as much as the news that the drugs killed my mojo and the “stigma” rendered me unattractive. She kept telling me to date “bipolars.” Said only one of those could understand someone like me. We’re all alike you know. 😛
None of the guys I went to group with was that bright or had anything in common with me. Besides being labeled SMI.
And the labels are so subjective and elastic they’re only meaningful as a legal status–depriving you of your rights as a citizen. Granting the psych system absolute, unquestioned authority over you.
Report comment
However, psychiatry is not satire.
Satire requires the ability to spot absurdities your average shrink does not possess.
Report comment
“Measuring How Wolves View Sheep’s Rights.”
Report comment
Since when has any tyrant VOLUNTARILY yielded his throne?
I wish this excellent site would focus more on reaching the mainstream. Those who don’t have a vested interest in keeping us segregated and ill.
Report comment
Why do they need legitimate tests when their fake ones bolster their credibility so nicely?
If they did find bio markers they would conceal them. Why? It would show how counter productive their brain destroying “treatments” are–doing the exact opposite of what their test subjects needed. Like bleeding cholera victims.
And then they could no longer tout their quack remedies. The whole field would be swallowed up by the real brain specialists–the neurologists.
Hence anything that doesn’t support the efficacy of their “treatments” (AKA any legitimate study) will be suppressed. Or spun beyond recognition to support their preconceived notions.
Report comment
I’m sorry Steven is gone.
From what I heard his cancer had spread into the bone rendering radiation unlikely to help him. 🙁
it was brave of him to work for a tyrant in the hope of bettering the lives of some of the victims.
Report comment
And furnish the dysfunctional family with a ready scapegoat. Designated by the high priest of the Church of Psychiatry.
Report comment
Psychiatry attaches balls and chains to those who struggle, then mocks them for the inability to run laps.
Report comment
I don’t see “service users rights'” ever happening. Especially when few “service users” are voluntary.
Report comment
And who will stop psychiatrists with grandiose thoughts who think they will achieve great things via poly-pharma, shocks, and psycho-surgery? That worries many here.
Lobotomies are making a comeback. But they say not to worry because it’s different. They mutilate your brain with lazars now–so that makes it okay.
BTW, people in mental “health” repeatedly called me delusional for pursuing a college degree and trying to start a career though my shrinks assured me my “meds” would make such a thing possible by rendering me independent and productive. I’m pretty sure the psych doctors themselves thought it was baloney but fed it to me to ensure “compliance” and yacht payments.
Does it count as harm to others if controlling family members get embarrassed by eccentricities and have the “loved” one committed instead of setting boundaries like reasonable people (not control freaks) would?
Report comment
Psychiatry has been compared to the creations of Orwell and Kafka on this site.
John Carpenter and Lovecraft also come to mind….
Report comment
I have failed at life thanks to psychiatry.
Completely alone thanks to the quacks. Nothing good can ever happen to me again.
I hate them. I hate all the simpletons who turn on their fellow humans just because shrinks tell them to.
Psychiatry has turned me into a full blown misanthrope. What those quacks live to do is ruin your life and make everyone turn on you.
Psychiatry is cancer.
Report comment
Hey! I liked Alice in Wonderland.
Please quit insulting it.
Report comment
Some here ask what psychiatry is good for.
You know one group they really help no one here mentions? Lazy hacks writing for Hollywood and publishing houses.
Without the grossly simplified view of humanity–portraying people as stereotypes and tropes instead of complex individuals–Grade D novelists and screen writers can grind out a bunch of material with minimal effort.
Why did that man murder those children?
Because he was mentally ill.
Yeah. But what was his motivation?
Mental illness.
Why did that woman cheat on her husband?
Mental illness.
Why did that man torture a puppy?
Mental illness.
Why did that character commit suicide? Did something bad happen offstage?
Nope. Mental illness.
Why did he rob a bank?
Mental illness. People don’t rob banks for money after all.
😀
Report comment
The APA can’t stand Peter Breggin either.
He’s the Conscience of Psychiatry after all. I’m sure every hardened killer views the conscience as his number 1 enemy to destroy. Hence psychiatry’s hatred for Breggin.
Report comment
My mom takes the idea that I “lost it” through trauma very personally.
She was determined to be the “perfect mother” when I was born and failed. She is not a bad woman and wasn’t abusive till psychiatrists told her I was defective when i was twenty.
But Mom could not protect me from the three times our family faced homelessness thanks to our idealistic, improvident father’s vocation. (A lot like the great Bronson Alcott.)
Mom’s crazy-making efforts to shelter me–my over sensitive, high strung personality worried her–backfired. She kept moving me from school to school to get me the “help” I needed so I wound up in SBD for a year where the teacher got frustrated by how smart I was. They were only equipped to deal with MMR kids.
After 2 months of homelessness in my teens we found a new place and I enrolled in a new school in a new city as a high school sophomore.
Had some highly sexualized bullying which traumatized me more than it would most girls due to my super modest, old fashioned background. Suffered severe anxiety in college which I saw a shrink for. He put me on an SSRI which drove me loopy.
Just one thing led to another and snow balled. I don’t blame Mom. But she does get defensive, saying there has always been “something wrong” with me.
She feels guilt at the idea she played a (minor) role in my suffering by encouraging my “meds compliance.” And she finds it hard to believe experts in pretty white coats and TV drug ads could deceive people.
i love Mom and find her ignorance easier to forgive than the malicious lies told by “well-informed” quacks.
Report comment
A good counselor should look out for abuse and help victims to escape instead of labeling them “SMI” and having the shrink put them on drugs.
All my counselors worked for “mental health” community centers. Hence their advice was nearly all worthless, based on the assumptions that 1. I needed my crippling, mind altering drugs to survive. 2. My accumulating list of pessimistic, defeatist labels proved how hopeless I was.
These are the only kind Medicaid covers. In theory I’m positive about ethical counselors or coaches who know what they’re doing and how people think. But that kind seldom works for your local mental center. Those who do burn out easily due to frustration at how “clients” never improve.
Report comment
Science doesn’t lie. But scientists and pseudo-scientists do. Especially if they get paid to lie.
Report comment
“Mental health” enables and encourages the abuser in human relationships.
One MI worker confided that few were ever “diagnosed” with “narcissism” or “sociopathy.” Those labels are not legitimate diseases but there are some evil people who don’t care how they hurt others. Psychiatrists almost never call them out.
Shrinks like that kind of people because they dress well and have excellent social skills. “MI” workers and serve as the abusers’ gullible patsies or sometimes willing accomplices. They despise the weak and suffering–loving to grind them into the ground with their heels.
The men who drew up the DSM have no idea how human beings think, feel or behave. You could probably get a better idea of human behaviors from a computer working entirely from algorithms.
Psychiatry’s mission: To afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable.
Report comment
What good is income security when it’s not enough to save you from homelessness? Even in the mid west.
And you can have your benefits revoked at any time through some bureaucratic bean counter’s carelessness.
A very few writers here have. Krista the ex-nurse for example. But it’s far harder than having a cancer diagnosis changed. You can actually prove someone has cancer.
“Schizophrenia” should be viewed as a legal designation rather than a medical one.
Report comment
Psychiatrists are not held to the standards of real doctors as you pointed out.
Yet they are granted legal powers no legitimate medical specialty has. And they are viewed as infallible mind readers and fortune tellers.
Shrinks think they are psychics. And western society shares their delusions.
Report comment
You’re not crazy. Who said you were crazy?
Yes, you’re completely irrational. Nothing you say should be taken seriously. You are definitely a danger if left untreated. Your complaints are all proofs of your psychotic lack of insight.
Innately defective yes. Lacking empathy. Potential serial killer without my help. Flawed at your core due to being born a genetic throwback.
All your thoughts and emotions are merely symptoms. Meaningless projections of your broken brain.
But you’re definitely not crazy!
Report comment
Don’t forget that:
1. The “mentally ill” are monsters
2. The “mentally ill” mean yes when they say no
3. Most of the “mentally ill” eventually relax and enjoy their “meds”
4. Normal people don’t get labeled and locked up
5. Psychiatrists are only guilty of minor wrong doing when they lie to and about their ‘consumers”
Psychiatry is bolstered by the cultural view that all psychiatrists are irreproachable gods and all they treat are dangerous AND irrational.
Report comment
Psychiatry creates disability and poverty.
It’s not just the disabling drugs causing the poverty but the discrimination from the labels and demonizing which shrinks actively promote on national TV.
Plus the drugs cause most of the “symptoms” attributed to “mental illness.” Flattened emotional expressions, irritable (common with brain damage), lowered empathy, disorganization.
Along with obesity and seizures–also iatrogenic in origin. It’s hard to “pass” when on these things. I can only now act in socially appropriate ways after spending most of my adulthood on a cocktail.
I feel like some fast talking con swindeled me with a shell and nuts game. A carnie would have been happy with my wallet. But Psychiatry took my being and would have tortured me till I died if permitted. I only put up with it out of fear of a repeat of the psychotic mania created by an SSRI which the quack blamed on ME.
Shrinks cause the amygdala and frontal lobes to shrivel up, then write papers and give lectures on how their “patients” are hopelessly antisocial, stupid and lazy. Genetically inferior defectives fit only to experiment on.
You damaged our brains, “doctors.” Now what’s YOUR excuse for your own moral impairments?
Report comment
So involuntary hospitalization is associated with lack of insight and poor med compliance.
Translation: If you argue with your psychiatrist and refuse his drugs he’ll probably lock you up.
Report comment
“ACT” or “Assisted Community Treatment” is a euphemism for Pharmacological Torture.
The definition of Pharmacological Torture is the use of drugs–including psychotropic–to punish a person. The aim is to force compliance by causing distress. This can be in the form of pain, anxiety, psychological disturbance (ironic huh?), immobilization, and/or disorientation.
Only with Psychiatry it doesn’t matter how “good” you are in some cases. They’re Hell bent on tormenting people till they die.
Report comment
Hugs=straight jackets.
Get Big Pharma to mass produce those. And get the marketing/propaganda agents to work.
Publish a bunch of articles on various sites and magazines. “Science Has Shown Therapeutic Value in Straight Jackets!” “Straight Jackets Now Proven Highly Effective for Depression and Anxiety!” “Straight Jackets Valid Modality of Treatment for ADHD!”
Real SCIENCE folks. 😀
Report comment
Scary!
In America at least our records don’t follow us. Yet.
I’m forced to use Medicaid. But i tell people I’m on disability for IBD. I actually have the diagnosis and see a GI and cancer specialist for it. (Can’t absorb iron and other nutrients.)
Ironically my condition was caused by long term psych drug use–though no one will admit it. My heart is better, no longer pre diabetic, and have lost 50+ pounds and still losing. In my forties. For the first time.
Report comment
That’s a great idea Frank.
Report comment
Okay. Point taken.
28 x 3 = 84
Still less than half the number.
Report comment
I think dr-reid-piz is a psychiatrist, Steve. Hence his decrying OUR lack of a medical background.
They “diagnose” us by our own admissions and drug us. When we tell them the drugs keep us from sleeping and cause terrifying hallucinations they joyfully tell our loved ones how hopelessly insane we are and that our lives are ruined. (No longer human.) Our fault when the pills cause that reaction.
Once they have damned us by our own words (usually) they make it so our words count for nothing. The only words that are to be taken seriously are those that show insight into our condition.
“Gee Dr. X, you’re so smart. Gee, these new pills make me feel great all the time. Yes I know I have Diagnosis X. It’s a bummer. Glad I have such a kind, smart doctor like you Dr. X.” All taken as proofs of how well we are doing.
Then we go home, depressed but too drugged to cry. Can’t stop suicidal thoughts. Barf our guts up or binge uncontrollably since we can’t feel full and sleep 12 hours in the HUD room we can’t clean. A happy, productive life according to psychiatry.
No other doctors blame patients for reactions to penicillin or anesthetic or pain pills. They immediately take them off.
Shrinks don’t seem to care if their “safe, effective treatments” cause grand mal seizures and heart attacks. Lost two friends that way. 🙁 Not like our lives count.
I know my GP diagnosed me with heart arrhythmia, IBD causing pernicious anemia, and prediabetes. All those real medical conditions are better now. And my weight is going down.
Psychiatry was slowly killing me. If it were anyone but the SMI being harmed this way psychiatrists would be treated like Farid Fata.
Report comment
No “patient” who knows what’s good for them ever complains about their pills. They never listen to anything we say unless it’s to praise them and their pills making us so dizzy we can’t walk, nauseated, unable to read, doubling our weight.
Psychiatrists for the most part hear what they want and attribute everything else to “lack of insight.”
Report comment
Hugs Francesca!
The only cure I could find for my “bipolar” was fleeing the MI System.
The drugs were actually causing my mood swings and hallucinations. Though I think “good insight” also plays a role.
William Glasser described “psychotic” hallucinations as “creative symptoms.” Of course mind altering drugs just add a new element to the mix.
We need to offer real, human help to those like you in need, Francesca.
Report comment
I have experienced a reasonable facsimile of Hell between my ears.
Courtesy of the Church of Psychiatry.
Report comment
Says Doc Karadzic went from psychiatry to New Age “quantum medicine.” LOL
Funny how shrinks so often turn to demagoguery too. Psychiatry is more about politics than medicine.
Read 1984. In the part where O’Brien tortures Smith he uses psychiatric jargon. Including “saving you from yourself” and warning him he needs to be made “sane.”
Report comment
Thank you Robert Whitaker and everyone else at MIA.
Without the support I found here (and also SA which I heard about through this site) I could not have come off my drugs due to the debilitating withdrawals after 25 years of being the “perfect consumer.”
The scariest decision I ever made. But worth it.
Report comment
Ah. That’s the bee you have in your bonnet, Oldhead. 🙂
Yes. I believe Itay Kander failed to put “mental health” in quotes. Not an anti psychiatry piece.
But I have read worse. Even on MIA.
Report comment
I notice a lot of good counselors–ignorant of how psych “treatments” work–get frustrated at how apathetic and helpless their “SMI” people remain. Not knowing the drugs aren’t supposed to make you independent and productive but childish and docile. Like a house pet rather than a grown up. Or a “mentally handicapped” person who wasn’t that way till Psychiatry had its way with them.
Report comment
The Placebo Effect can be highly effective. Depression is a mood based on beliefs after all.
I think that’s why so many people who accept their MI status turn on the messenger. You’re spoiling their placebo effects.
Report comment
The pills shut people up. The labels discredit whatever they can still say.
Report comment
Many of us who sought help got the exact opposite.
Gaslighting is the word. 🙁
“Just like insulin for diabetes.” “Antidepressants wouldn’t drive you psychotic if you weren’t already born defective.” “You’re just imagining or faking those seizures since Haldol never has that effect on anyone.”
Lie on top of lie.
Report comment
If by “capitalism” you mean selfishness and greed, then I am 100% opposed.
But these are attitudes. Not an economic system.
Great religious figures like St. Francis of Assisi, Mother Theresa of Calcutta, just about all Catholic saints, John Wesley, George Mueller, A.W. Toser embraced lives of voluntary poverty. The key word being VOLUNTARY.
Report comment
Bippyone the world is not well.
Everyone knows this. They need scapegoats badly to project their own darkness onto.
One reason psychiatry is so popular with the mainstream. By blaming all crimes on “mental illness” not only can they make the public feel secure from violent crimes but from the fact that they too have shadows that Dr. Quackenbush is ill equipped to save anyone from. He himself is overpowered by his own shadow.
Sorry about your son. I guess it’s good I never had kids. They would have been taken by the state and viewed as “bipolar” at birth most likely by virtue of being mine. 🙁
Report comment
Is this supposed to be a GOOD thing?
Now the kids will be drugged up and detained indefinitely once they get labeled “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” to justify it. It will also excuse inhumane conditions that would not be acceptable for the “normal” in America.
I call BS on this fake compassion. 😛
Report comment
And as our good friend Bob Whitaker has shown, there’s a definite link between poverty/unemployment and psychiatric “help.”
Report comment
Those homes can be very depressing. Unhappiness at living in one just shows you’re still with it.
Other studies have shown the only long term benefits from SSRI’s come from the placebo effect. So this is not news to MIA readers.
Report comment
Do you have a legal background PD?
If so, maybe you could offer advice here.
Report comment
Generalizations are what you’ll find between the covers of the DSM.
Psychiatry can only deal with generalities. Not individual people.
Hence “mental health’s” intrinsically authoritarian nature.
Report comment
I love this!
Mental illnesses are what psychiatrists call their fellow men and women.
Dehumanized as their victims are, the “mental health” professionals dehumanize themselves still more as they embrace the roles of devils.
The brain is not the soul. There is a part of us they cannot destroy–try as they may.
Report comment
Shrinks get major kickbacks from Big Pharma–often directly but always in the form of “little” gifts tallying up to $2,000-3,000 a year per company of tax free goodies.
No $$$$$$$ in lobotomies nowadays. If the APA changes its tune rest assured Big Pharma invented a fancy machine that does lazar lobotomies and is shelling out mega bucks for anyone morally bankrupt enough to shill them. Lucky for them that psychiatry exists.
Report comment
That’s why I’m not an anarchist.
Report comment
Yeah. According to Anatomy of an Epidemic, the psychiatrist who first used a drug to “treat” the “insane” praised it as a chemical lobotomy.
Now that lobotomies are no longer fashionable, but neuroleptics are most psychiatrists would like to forget that quote. Along with words like “drapetomania” and “hysterics.”
Report comment
“Transfer some of the powers of arrest…”
Yep. All about POWER for them. Broohahaha.
Every now and then a shrink comes here to complain that’s he’s not getting enough $$$$$$ from Uncle Sam yet–despite the billions more added to the mental illness regime every year. And they don’t have absolute authority as sovereign monarchs either but must answer to the President of the United States for their actions. 😀
I’m sure these tales of woe must bring tears to the eyes of anyone whose CNS is not too damaged to cry.
Report comment
Like Cotton Matther presiding over the Salem Witch Trials.
We know who the Others to fear are when the Witch Hunters point them out to us.
Report comment
I thought this was written by Bruce Levine from the title. I was wrong.
Good article Itay Kander. Though I’m not an anarchist, I believe in minimal government.
Report comment
Convincing people (and all around them) that they’re broken machines, incapable of rational thought, ethical behavior or responsible decisions can be dehumanizing and lead them to view themselves as mere objects.
Wow!
The authors were Castro, Diniz and Bernandes. Maybe Dr. Obvious was a ghost writer.
Report comment
Only my faith–which some call irrational–that all will be made right and those who do evil will not be allowed to continue forever keeps me going.
Forgiveness means determining to do your enemy good–if you can–and not seek personal revenge.
It does not mean:
Calling evil actions good.
Thinking your enemy is a great guy.
Feeling good about the damage done.
Report comment
Congratulations! 🙂
Report comment
“Please be normal.”
But understand “normal” is defined completely in negatives.
If the “loved one” doesn’t say embarrassing things or wear embarrassing clothes–but only those put out for him by his good/kind mommy, never goes places or expresses interest in girls (sure sign of SMI), never reads books or web articles the NAMI mommy disapproves of he is making progress.
By this definition the best progress would be a life long coma. Only he might not technically gain good insight since he can’t parrot back his disorder from his shrink.
NAMI thinks it’s an improvement when someone attending college on honors two weeks before can almost wash dishes–unassisted.
Not being able to smile or weep, speaking in slow, halting sentences, doubling your weight in a year, lifelong unemployment in a HUD ghetto or institution, alienation, sleeping 12 hours a day, seizures and dying before 53 are all “normal” things we should aim for by NAMI standards.
Yikes!
Report comment
NAMI sends folks to wakes of suicides?
Do you think they’re trying to cover for the role psych drugs play in so many?
Disgusting vultures! No shame at all. Anywhere to promote their cultish ideology.
Report comment
I was very angry when I found out I had been lied to. For years I lived in terror of not getting my “meds” refilled or having them suddenly “stop working” as the NAMI leaders and babysitters at the mental center repeatedly warned us.
Totally dependent on the drugs and all the “sane” people. I knew I was powerless to change my life or make any rational choices. Chalk it up to “good insight.”
They told me the “mentally ill” are helpless and stupid even on their “meds.” But evil when taken off.
You know what’s really evil?
Lying to trick someone into taking addictive, mind altering drugs is pretty darn evil. Worse than anything Walter White ever tried.
I read a post on Pete Earley’s blog where the Not-My-Father-of-the-Year said it was a no big deal lying about it. Apparently all the high ranking NAMI mommies are in on the hoax.
I have nothing good to say about that organization now. Though letting my young friend die from a neuroleptic grand mal seizure should have clued me in.
Report comment
“We can’t prove it but we know there must be brain problems. Where? How much? What kind?
“Who cares?
“We gotta cut or amputate something! Or at least throw some drugs at it.” 😛
Psychiatry in a nutshell.
Report comment
My suicidal urges melted away after I had lowered my effexor more than 50%.
Report comment
“The inmates are running the asylums.” And their treatments kill larger numbers of people than the “mentally ill” killers these self-anointed messiahs claim to be saving the world from.
Report comment
Richard and Noel are both right.
“Scientism” is pseudo science.
Genetics is legitimate science. Eugenics is scientism or fake science.
Report comment
Rosalee, I believe they act that way because they choose to. Unscientific and old fashioned of me I know.
IQ, height, bone size, hair color are hereditary traits. But good and evil are not.
Poor cognitive skills are not the same as greed, violence, or the burning desire to control others. As far as those traits go I guess not-so-bright underdogs can have them too. But they hurt far fewer people than intelligent, highly educated medical experts lacking conscience and compassion.
Most people with low intelligence I know are unusually sweet and kind. Their warm, generous hearts should put the smarties to shame.
Attributing wickedness to weakness and stupidity (aka bad genes) doesn’t cut it. Hitler did not start World War II because of weakness or stupidity.
Weakness is not a crime. But the APA has basically classified it as such.
Report comment
Removed for moderation.
Report comment
Psychiatry is older than pharma psychiatry.
Drugging large numbers of people outside institutions is a recent development. It didn’t take off till the eighties or nineties.
“Independent, PRODUCTIVE life” is more what I meant to say.
Report comment
Yes it would! Money could save me from homelessness.
Homelessness is poor quality life.
SSI does not cover rent. Even in my state. Living in a garage with no running water now.
My sister is allergic to penicillin but no doctor forces her to take it. That’s because she doesn’t deal with shrinks.
My shrinks never listened to anything negative. Just what they wanted to hear. And blamed my crazy, drug-induced thinking on me–or my “illness.”
A life on disability in a ghetto for the SMI is “what works” as far as shrinks are concerned. And dying in our early fifties. Read RW’s Mad in America and Anatomy of an Epidemic as far as viewing the majority of outcomes.
Would you want the rest of us forced to take what was killing us? That’s what this site is about.
Not about forcing happy consumers like you to quit.
Report comment
Murder is murder. Whether it occurs in camps or “hospitals.”
Report comment
Been thinking. We’re little fish being torn up by two sea monsters.
Turn these parties on each other. Here’s how.
See if the Democrats could “compromise” by not demanding gun restrictions on the condition that ALL gun owners be forced to take a battery of a dozen tests for mental illness by a psychiatrist or forfeit the right to bear arms.
Once 50% of the NRA has been labeled this will bite Sen. Cornyn and other politicians promoting RESPONSE in the butt.
I was hoping liberal Torrey or someone similar would try to use his pseudo medical authority to remove Trump. Turning half of America against the APA. But he knew it would tip his hand to how his faux science is just a political weapon.
Persuade Democrat lawmakers who aren’t “in the know” to force these tests. The NRA members–and many others–will soon discover how dangerous psychiatry is to the liberties of ALL Americans.
Report comment
Anyone consider a big thing behind all these mass killings, besides drugs, is a vicious contempt for human life?
Human lives do not matter in Western Culture.
“Mentally ill” loners gun down or knife the innocent who have done them no harm out of this contempt for their fellow humans. It helps make them feel big and important.
Psychiatrists and demagogues (IS there a difference?) have learned how to express their contempt for humanity in socially acceptable ways.
Like the lone shooters but smarter and successful.
Report comment
I thought it was about packing the asylums so “defectives” won’t breed. What the APA’s true agenda remains.
Report comment
Getting deprived of liberty–or sometimes life itself–is far worse than having your toys taken away.
Report comment
Paranoia of the masses.
Psychic psychiatrists claim they can foretell the future and read minds to weed out criminals BEFORE they break the law and punish them accordingly. The gullible herd is scared of the dangerous “crazies” and Dr. Shrinkenstein offers to save them from the monsters he creates.
“But it’s treatment–not punishment,” Norman Normal argues.
Ask Norm to take a cocktail and he’ll argue “I don’t need it. I’m not sick.’
Diagnose Norm with Agosognosia AND Schizophrenia. 🙂
Report comment
The drugs are meant to pacify and cripple would-be criminals. (SSRI drugs do a mighty bad job of that.) They are NOT meant to help anyone think clearly, live independently, nor add longevity. Shackles and muzzles–not health is what psychiatry offers.
Crippling and segregation is the work of Psychiatry! Punishing “defectives” for the crime of existence.
These drugs and labels force potential workers out of the work place, forcing us to live off the pittance doled out in smaller and smaller amounts to greater and greater numbers. There is a real lack of HUD. Regular housing is hopelessly expensive on less than $800 a month.
Institutions cost more. Yet Big Brother is intent on increasing the latter.
Report comment
If PTSD is proof of defective genetics what about veterans who lose a limb or two?
Well if they hadn’t had defective genes then stepping on that land mine wouldn’t have blown off their legs now, would it?
Eugenics is tied to the idea that all crimes–especially bizarre, violent ones–are committed by Criminal Types. The Poor Stock Lovecraft loved to rant about before WWII. Not just POC if you read up on eugenics.
All bad behaviors are hereditary. Hence it’s justifiable to injure/imprison/kill “defective criminal types” innocent of wrong doing.
Psych treatments DO KILL quite often. But as long as the intention was not to kill, it can’t be held against them legally.
Report comment
Yep. One of those “moderate” articles published to show MIA is not too anti psychiatry and (hopefully) score points with members of the APA and other big shots.
You can find pieces like this all over. Guardian, Psychology Today, etc. College sites too. Talk of “culture” could make it a shoe-in for the psychology department’s website.
Nothing distinctively MIA about it.
Report comment
Amen. My mom told me the other night she always knew there was Something Wrong with me.
My IQ was “too high” and I was “too imaginative.” Abnormally so.
If not for the Procrustean bed of pharma psychiatry who knows where i might have wound up? Hmm.
Friends and family…financial solvency…career…functional intestines…thank goodness my quack saved me from such horrible things!
🙁
Report comment
I’m glad you are happy Bippyone.
My health, reputation, and finances are wrecked thanks to psychiatry. Poverty/alienation/autoimmune diseases/messed up gut did NOT help my happiness.
All thanks to an SSRI allergy my shrink blamed me for. Always the consumer’s fault.
Report comment
Near the end of his biography of Virginia Woolf. My Madness Saved Me. Will have to look it up and email the reference to you OH.
Report comment
And I agree with Szazs that this absolute power corrupted the church and ruined the good it once did.
The founding fathers knew the dangers of a state church just like they did a monarchy. The Church of Psychiatry sneaked in by posing as something else entirely.
Report comment
This site is supposed to criticize psychiatry. Not condemn religion. But if Dr. K wants to compare psychiatry to religion I agree.
And if a church did what psychiatry does the law would come after them. Kidnapping apostates, locking them in the church basement for pharma torture and other psychological abuse till they recanted (gained “insight.”)
Psychiatry is more dangerous than any cult because they have legal powers no clergy nor doctors have. Accountable to no one–least of all those they claim to serve. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Report comment
Dr. K the pills don’t “work” in anything permanent. They aren’t supposed to. They make life worse and cause dependency.
They want drug addicts. Pure and simple. Healthy people=no $$$$$$$ for dealers.
I got fed up when They kept telling us how great our lives were when we were poor/segregated/really sick/morbidly obese/miserable.
The more “help” we got the faster we deteriorated.
Neither our quality nor quantity of life were better. When I found out certain psychiatrists like Glasser said the drugs messed up your thinking worse than ever I realized I would have to flee the MI System.
Report comment
I was just ribbing you OH. 😀
Report comment
Thanks for this article. I limit my own screen time Dr. Wedge.
Does “autism” exist? Is it bad or simply different?
If the kid can get along with others and learn what’s needed to “adult” why do they need a label?
Whether autism is real or not I would avoid getting my child “diagnosed.” A boy in Tasmania diagnosed as autistic with epilepsy wound up in the hospital for a seizure. A doctor–knowing he was dangerously allergic to neuroleptics–put him on massive doses that caused his brain to swell, killing him. The doctor said she would do the same thing over anyhow since he would have wound up in an institution. He was headed for college.
My guess is a big reason for all the autistic diagnoses is an excuse to sell more drugs. And–I suspect–legally off them (indirectly) like that creepy doctor down under did.
Report comment
Well some people seem proud of it. A little different than SMI labels that way.
Report comment
A lot of young people are proud of being called autistic I guess. Beats licking ice cream in Youtube videos for attention. Or eating Tide Pods. And as screen junkies they see limiting a toddler’s screen time as worse than starving or exposing to the elements.
I prefer fitting in and refuse to get an evaluation. Hate being viewed as a freak!
If I can act normally in public and “pass” that’s what counts. The System sucks at integration. Whether labels or pills.
Report comment
“Virtual autism” is not the same as the regular kind.
According to the article.
Report comment
I always acted ‘weird.” My parents took great pains to socialize me by reminding me to look people in the eye and observe other social cues and nuances. (May have led to my social phobias later.)
A friend suggested I get diagnosed with Aspergers to cancel out my Bipolar 2 “diagnosis.” I patiently explained to her that’s not how it works.
Report comment
High school bullying literally drove me crazy. Wound up in Charter Hospital for Children for 2 weeks. “Too sensitive” I guess.
Funny how victims of bullying are more apt to wind up labeled than bullies themselves. Maybe because shrinks automatically side with the Strong as part of psychiatry’s intrinsic social Darwinism. Weeding out the Unfit who lack proper levels of Gemute.
Report comment
Sadly, like the clergy, most psychologists prefer to go along with the tide of bio determinism/social Darwinism.
The fact that most work under shrinks at local mental illness centers does not help.
Report comment
State churches ARE tools of social control.
Report comment
I’m a Christian too.
I thought this site was for criticizing psychiatry. Not religion.
I agree with the premise that psychiatry is a religion/philosophy rather than a science. Dare I say the APA is our new State Church?
As far as KindRegards’s last sentence, even if a grateful consumer believes in psych drugs the “placebo effect” is pretty limited. Personal experience speaking. 🙂
Report comment
“Blue pill” was a pop culture reference. Have you seen The Matrix?
It means going along with the status quo and mindlessly accepting the mainstream narrative.
Report comment
Or that our distaste for psychiatry MUST be put in our heads by Scientologists.
A great example of a false dilemma.
Report comment
Nice article Dr. K.
But many religious people do NOT believe God automatically heals those who pray. I have been praying for healing from the harm my stay in the Church of Psychiatry created. Still sickly.
The Bible contains many examples of sick or disabled people–good people–who were not healed.
I think He may be saying, “My grace is sufficient for you.” At least my soul is better. 🙂
Report comment
And you call yourself a liberal OH? Tsk tsk.
😀
Alleviating loneliness is commendable but it’s not the government’s job. Actually what Sanders describes is increasing material goods–money, food, etc.
It still does not deal with isolation or alienation. These depend on community groups such as churches/senior centers, individuals who will visit shut ins, and the willingness of seniors to reach out to others in retirement instead of chilling in front of the tube 15 hours a day.
Report comment
5 or 6 digit salary.
Some art history graduates would disagree. 😀
Maybe you meant blue pill instead of collar.
Report comment
Psychology is a very soft science if not a branch of the humanities like history or anthropology.
Psychiatry is a pseudo science. Psychology has been poisoned by buying into its unduly pessimistic, brutal view of “defective criminal types.” AKA social Darwinism.
Report comment
Dr. Gnaulti what is “benign envy”?
Is it what used to be called emulation?
Not sure what you mean by “healthy pride” either.
Thinking one is inherently better than all others sounds like the mindset of the “successful” bio determinist.
Report comment
Caffeine used to be necessary for my writing.
I remember when I started on stelazine (6 mg) I lost my zest for life but could write more. Though the stuff was dryer. Like how Ritalin is supposed to work.
(May have spelled both wrong. Spell check doesn’t like them.)
Report comment
Back before the 19th century it was understood that love and care could “cure” someone who was out of it. Shakespeare had Cordelia love King Lear back from his madness. Mary Shelley had Victor Frankenstein’s friends nurse him back in Frankenstein as well as Prince’s Adrian’s in The Last Man.
Lucky for shrinks people don’t read much nowadays.
My “psychosis” was caused by the SSRI they had me on. After the drug induced episode they doped me up on 10 mg of Haldol and everyone at college shunned me.
Forced to live with my parents who found my zombie state hard to cope with and Mom took my psych label personally. Total alienation. It’s amazing I “came back” at all.
Report comment
All mass murderers are supposedly “mentally ill.’
Good and evil are unacceptable words now. By blaming a select group for all the vices of humanity, the mainstream absolves itself.
And it sounds so SCIENTIFIC. 😛
Report comment
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bipolar-disorder-diagnosis_n_880851
If the link doesn’t work copy and paste.
Of course this is just children. But it’s in the past ten years.
Psychiatry is the minotaur devouring our children. We need a Theseus.
Report comment
You COULD make a break for it by crossing state lines. If you really wanted to.
Others have.
If you earn over $9,000 a year writing online you could brush up on your Spanish and migrate to Argentina. I may do that.
No AOT for me right now. But all this talk of imprisoning and torturing (AKA treating) a bunch of us for the crimes of a few murderous individuals scares me.
Report comment
Ironically, bizarre ideas like Flat Earthism are flourishing. Why? Because people are growing skeptical of the media…including SCIENCE driven sites.
This dogmatism–refusing to even discuss the opposing viewpoint–shows intellectual laziness at best. Lack of evidence at worse.
This is why the anti-vaxxer movement is growing. Not despite–but because of the militant censorship. I’m for vaccines myself (except maybe the flu kind) but the means the medical establishment has taken to silence the voices has backfired. Even some of them are admitting it.
I agree with the anti-vaxxers that the bureaucrats running the medical system do NOT have our best interests at heart. Something a lot of people know or suspect to be true.
Report comment
Okay. So they also wrote the review for this site?
Report comment
Dr. Mengele would indeed be proud. 🙁
Report comment
Since these safe and effective treatments came out “bipolar” cases have gone up 3,900%.
It seems to this layperson (with no psychiatric career to protect) that nearly all “bipolar” cases are iatrogenic in origin. Stay away from shrinks and you won’t develop the mood swings associated with it.
Mine started and ended with my “treatment.”
Report comment
They’re finally forced to fess up because they can’t hide it any more.
Report comment
Who wrote this review?
Report comment
Yeah it is pro-“meds” Sera. I thought the same.
BTW, the Mental Illness System only seems broken to those who go to it for help. Psychiatry exists to create outcasts who will never be believed. To exonerate those who bully and abuse the scapegoats it appoints, enhancing the self esteem of the “normal.” And–above all–sell as many drugs as possible by whatever means possible and silence those damaged by the drugs.
Do you want to achieve these goals?
1. Become an outcast.
2. Never have anyone believe you.
3. Have the whole world bully you.
4. Spend life caught in an abusive situation where the law always sides with your abuser.
5. Have your human needs automatically ignored and dismissed by everyone.
6. “Volunteer” (more or less) to participate in terrifying experiments which should only exist in horror flicks.
If so be sure to seek out help at the nearest mental center.
Report comment
As RW stated in Anatomy of an Epidemic, “There is nothing SIDE about them.”
Report comment
I agree that psychiatry has got to go. The system is inherently flawed–because it is built on the faulty foundation of social darwinism and views human beings solely through the lens of biodeterminism.
Perhaps trying to eradicate psychiatry is unrealistic. But not as unrealistic is hoping psychiatrists will willingly forego their absolute authority just to be nice.
As Jimmy Stewart said in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington: The only causes worth fighting for are the lost ones.
Report comment
Please consider addressing the mainstream, Indigo. They do not have an ax to grind in keeping the MI System intact.
Since more people are experiencing emotional pain now–and pharma-psychiatry’s overwhelming appetite for more “consumers” knows no bounds–psychiatry is effecting us more than ever.
It is everyone’s concern now. Not just a handful of unusual criminals, people who think they’re Napoleon, and catatonics.
Anyone could get psychiatrized. People need to know the truth.
Report comment
I don’t think Dr. Josef Mengele would have taken kindly to his former patients’ complaints if he had been offered tenure for his scientific endeavors.
While he was never punished for his crimes against humanity at least he was forced to quit hurting people. 🙁
Report comment
Or even “critical” consumers.
Report comment
“I see a need for more paying gigs outside of the ‘mental health’ sickness system itself.”
Great point Frank!
Report comment
Punish all awkward misfits for crimes they have yet to commit on one quack’s say so.
Due process be damned.
Report comment
I am very hopeful now.
Report comment
Many of us here refuse to consume. We have suffered enough at the hands of those claiming to want to help us through random iatrogenic damage. All we ask from “mental health” is to be left alone. (Though public exoneration would be nice.)
Report comment
Screaming, “Witch!!!” at too many people brought the Salem Witch Trials to a close.
In its insatiable greed for more cash cows to milk the Mental Illness Dairy may have overreached itself.
Report comment
Good for you.
Leaving your family is not just necessary for you but it provides an opportunity for them to face what’s wrong with themselves. Whether they change and grow is up to them. Out of your hands now.
Report comment
Torrey has been promoting more institutions. When not touting AOT.
I think he’s talking out both sides of his mouth and hoping no one notices.
There is less HUD now which costs less than institutionalizing people. But thanks to all the scapegoating Torrey and others have built careers on, people want to round up all the “mentally ill” and lock them away to rot.
A lot of people will commit suicide if this happens. And my guess is when the asylums overflow the “doctors” will take a page from Hitler’s finest and kill people through “natural causes” like starvation, exposure to extreme temperatures, refusing insulin for the diabetes their profession already inflicted. Humane isn’t it?
Report comment
It’s such a good thing NO ONE in the psychiatric system EVER commits suicide.
That’s why we must label, disable and segregate even larger numbers of people. Nothing like poverty and isolation for suicide prevention. 😛
Report comment
All “mentally ill” people aren’t on the streets. Where did he get this BS?
The streets OR institutions. Nice example of a false dilemma.
I’d wager few MIA readers live in either situation.
Report comment
Forget disinheriting.
Many would be overjoyed simply to have abusive, controlling relatives leave them alone.
Report comment
Maybe use their medical knowledge to undo the damage of orthodox colleagues.
Report comment
Still healing from the marvels which psychiatry hath wrought. No metaphor.
I could more fully appreciate the genre of body horror–if my stomach weren’t so weak. LOL
Report comment
“Voc rehab” is a joke.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
Yeah. Mom thought the Haldol helped me more because it kept me from saying stuff that bugged her. A less potent drug let me talk on and on about how miserable I was I would never have a life. Too numb to turn my mouth off.
Report comment
K
Report comment
I think when PD uses the words “recovery” or “healing” they’re not referring to recovery from pneumonia nor healing a broken leg. More like buzzwords of certain groups they dislike.
Report comment
I’m all for better diet and nutrition myself. You can test for deficiencies in iron and B12 and other stuff.
Long term psychiatry messed up my gut so I need supplements. B12 shots every month and iron infusions every winter.
Counterproductive to helping anemia or vitamin deficiencies.
Report comment
I’m grateful to RW for his research and writings. But long before he came along we had MDs like William Glasser, Peter Breggin, and Szazs calling out the quacks.
“Are you a doctor? No? Then you have no business criticizing Toxic Psychiatry.” Say that at a NAMI convention. I dare you. 😀
Report comment
I thought you weren’t supposed to carry a firearm if you are “mentally ill.”
If you believe Psychiatry is true you should force suicidal cops into desk jobs.
This is not just wrong but stupid. I wonder how many “well-informed” shrinks are behind this. Something tells me they are cringing if they are aware of it.
But maybe this is a calculated move to cause police to go “postal.” More free publicity and more guest spots on TV shows to stir up mass hysteria about how “all them untreated crazies” are a menace but Old Doc Pillshill has the cure for murder if only the tax-payers will fork over the additional $$$$$$$ he feels entitled to.
By “broken system” Doc Pillshill means less buck for his bangs.
Report comment
“Being Labeled With ‘Common Mental Disorder’ Ensures Loneliness.”
That was MUCH more accurate. Stay as far away from shrinks as possible. They will ruin your life in every way imaginable.
39 out of 40 cases of “Bipolar” would not occur without “help” from pharma-psychiatry. And they always blame the patient for bad reactions. My sister is allergic to penicillin but has never been punished for it.
Shrinks are different though since they write their victims off as crazy, thereby evading accountability to anyone. Psychiatry means never saying you’re sorry.
Report comment
More people are on drugs than ever. If drugs are so good why are they complaining since 20% of the population is on them?
40 years ago almost none of these drugs existed. And fewer people lived on disability or committed mass shootings.
BTW my drugs never made me feel better. They made me sick and miserable while I willingly took them for 24 years. Not because I enjoyed it! That’s the real reason people go off them. They ruin your ability to think at all. Because the doctors warned me I might kill someone and I was trying to do the right thing. Unlike them.
What do shrinks plan on doing with more tax money? Slicker marketing, and more lavish summer homes and yachts while they force their victims to live on disability in the MI ghettos or locked away in institutions. (Because they created Hell between their ears.)
Homelessness bugs them since they can’t bill the state for empty warehouses and bridges the way they can “homes.”
Report comment
Precisely!
We don’t need psychiatry since the penal system already exists. And convicted felons have more rights than mental “patients” in our culture.
Report comment
I was in a fowl temper when I wrote that.
For what it’s worth I have sought reconciliation with Kimmy and others. My own actions were often far from saintly. None of us knew the drugs were making it hard for me to behave.
Report comment
As far as protecting the public we already have the penal system. This is understood to be punishment so it’s limited to an acceptable degree. But because psychiatry pretends to be medicine instead of a punitive system they get away with all kinds of BS the legal system never could.
Such as denial of due process. Cruel and unusual punishments. Extended, indefinite imprisonments based solely on the whim of the warden. And treating harmless eccentrics, those with TBI, and unhappy loners exactly the same way as violent criminals.
Report comment
Never been to a psychiatric court hearing. But this Monty Python skit looks about as scientifically reliable as one. LOL
Report comment
“Terrorists and paedophiles.” You forgot mass shooters.
Only shrinks claim to be able to discover these people BEFORE they actually commit crimes of rape or murder. Psychic psychiatry. Then they have the right to inflict cruel, unusual punishments on them. Due process?
“Darn it Jim, I’m a doctor. Not a judge and jury!”
I thought the belief that you can read minds or see into the future was a symptom of “severe mental illness” but every good tyrant is above his own laws.
Report comment
I am depressed. My health is poor from long term drug use. Too sick and old to start over.
And I’m lonely. My past will haunt me forever and the shame of being accused for violent crimes I never committed. (What an SMI label is all about.) So close friendships are impossible.
No “mental illness” required. My life just stinks.
I have the right to be depressed for crying out loud!
Report comment
Yep. If you’re surrounded by jerks unhappiness is a healthy response.
People used to drink to cope with the jerks in their lives.
Report comment
So sick I could barely get up today thanks to years on a “cocktail.”
I’m afraid to tell people at my church why I’m sick, broke, and alone since they’ll treat me horribly. I got kicked out of a religious college since the dorm mom blamed me for acting weird and having seizures on 10 mg of Haldol.
“If Rachel were only taking her meds she would be great with a smile on her face, friendly, happy, improved hygiene. And they never, ever cause seizures.” That was Kimmy’s excuse for booting me off campus.
In vain I protested that I was taking them exactly as prescribed. No one believed me. Know why? No one cared as long as they had an excuse to get rid of me.
Recycle plastic, but people can be thrown away since they are biodegradable and make great compost.
Those like Kimmy are more than happy to throw everyone like me under a bus since all they want are pretty, rich couples with kids and their own homes.
They don’t give a damn if “crazies” lose jobs, can’t think straight, lose everyone they love, get horribly sick and die on the streets. Psychiatric nurses and psycho-therapists are rich and respectable and bring money into the church by touting the lie. If they believe it, their ignorance is appalling. Apparently they don’t read any articles from the journals of their profession.
And when people take their very bad advice and go on SSRI Drugs because the family cat died and can’t sleep for 3 weeks/have an “episode” and wind up labeled Bipolar and on a cocktail of 6 drugs, unable to work or interact normally in polite society these same people will warn them to stay away from the nursery, gossip about how crazy they are at lady’s luncheons the “bipolar” is no longer invited to, and calculate how best to freeze her out so she’ll leave. 🙁
Their love is as phony as the science of psychiatry. I call BS on it! 😛
Report comment
Elizabeth it’s funny how many churches teach the members that psychiatry is the cure for emotional pain and host NAMI in the church basement. One mega church I attended had the nurse and counselor from the local mental illness center get up and preach the Gospel of Psychiatry. How Science has proven we have chemical imbalances in our brains to cause depression etc. and only “meds” can save us.
Why has organized religion sold out to psychiatry? A little online research could show the “chemical imbalance” is a filthy lie, yet they promote this from the pulpits more than Jesus and urge members to see a psychiatrist if they’re sad because their puppy died. I saw this at a megachurch and wanted to puke.
What is your opinion?
Report comment
Thanks for your story Ruth.
I love the title. “Mental health” exists–it sometimes seems–in order to make temporary distress perpetual and permanent.
Report comment
What if words don’t accurately reflect reality?
Report comment
Depression is a feeling, though it may come from anemia or another deficiency or thyroid problems. A symptom of health problems (sometimes.) NOT a disease in itself.
Report comment
As long as they don’t force people to attend.
As Szazs (himself a counselor) said, sessions should only occur between consenting adults.
Report comment
I’d be apt to hire a financial coach with a degree in accounting.
Usually you read their blog/book and decide to hire them based on that. If it’s practical stuff–making a career change, time management, organizing your house, managing your finances–they have little in common with “therapists.”
Health and fitness coaches or weight loss coaches are just personal trainers like you meet at the gym.
The kind most like psychologists are life coaches who specialize in feeling better and relationships. They aren’t directly in cahoots with shrinks but love to refer people they think may be “mentally ill” to community clinics. So that’s risky if you escaped.
The worst kind of all, IMHO, are the dating coaches.
Report comment
John you have my deepest sympathies.
I read your comments–and many others’ like them–and feel sad, as well as frustrated, that I can’t offer any help or advice.
Others here feel likewise. We need a way to help more people escape the mental system.
Report comment
Psychiatric treatments = iatrogenic harms.
If they don’t harm they don’t work. Period.
Report comment
My biggest complaint about life coaches is how expensive they are. Assuming their advice is good.
Report comment
I love sugar even more.
🙁
Report comment
You’re right Anomie. I recommend Peter Breggin’s videos on the “Violence Initiative.” While shrinks are afraid to openly link their eugenics theory to race nowadays they have been taking great pains to target the young men in predomnately non-white neighborhoods. Even tricked members of the NAACP into going along with it. Disgusting.
Report comment
Not a veteran myself, and I’ve been exploited. I agree.
Report comment
Depends on your definition of “work.”
If by work you mean crime prevention, suicide prevention, helping people feel better, think clearly, live independently, have better relationships, maintain gainful employment, or add to the quantity or quality of life for those “helped”….no they don’t work.
But they do work for achieving the number one (and only real) priority for “Doc” Torrey and his fellow quacks. It gives them something to prescribe to maintain their respectable image of honest-to-gosh Real Doctors.
You say that other stuff is important to you? Pish tosh. You’re a “defective” according to those who ruined your reputation, brain and CNS. What you want doesn’t count as long as ghouls like old “Doc” Torrey can win more awards.
Report comment
It seems to sciencey types like these that if you can’t scrape off a piece of something and scan it under a microscope it does not exist.
I read some article by monist psychiatric types (are there any other kinds?) mocking the idea that souls are “separate substances” from the brain. (Souls–if they exist–are immaterial. Not SUBSTANCE at all.)
I won’t accuse those guys of a straw man fallacy since they actually seem to think that dualists believe souls are ectoplasmic goo saturating the human brain.
That’s what happens when you get all your philosophy lessons from pop culture. Shrinks owe more to Ghost Busters than they realize. 😀
Report comment
A lot of people are desperate. Our culture thinks sadness is a disease. Instead of asking, “How can I change my life to end my sadness?” they opt for the easy solution.
My SSRI/SNRI use never ended my depression. Still lonely and hurting physically from the years of damage and social alienation. But I can process my feelings again. That’s something.
Report comment
Violent people often lack self control.
So…mind altering drugs and brain damage will only worsen that particular issue.
Report comment
Thank you for this provocative piece, Michael.
Report comment
So people who were abused as children are more likely to commit violent crimes? Funny how upset folks would get if we suggested punishing survivors of child abuse as though they were violent criminals regardless of their behavior. Yet this is what happens in “mental health.”
Torrey conveniently ignores this since it would draw attention to the fact that his profession exists to punish the weak. Primarily abuse victims.
Psychiatry’s function is penal; not medical. Only they punish for crimes the accused MIGHT COMMIT in the future (according to themselves.)
By treating the law abiding who exhibit signs of emotional trauma as if they’re violent criminals psychiatry punishes the unlucky. Just like the courts of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon.
TAC is the law of the jungle. No justice since they don’t punish for actual crimes–but the mere existence of those they brand “defective.” No mercy either.
Eugenics lives.
Report comment
And kidney disease.
If the idea of a life on dialysis saddens you that must be a BRAIN DISEASE. Be sure to seek out help for these bizarre, irrational feelings of sadness proving there’s something wrong with you for feeling bad. 😛 You actually find this crap on med sites.
Remember those drugs tax your endocrine system. The irony!
Report comment
My SSRI drugs made me feel guilty for not improving.
I believed what I had been told. That I was being helped with these safe and effective medications. Yet I couldn’t find work or get along with people. The constant exhaustion and inability to think straight or process human emotions (which hadn’t existed prior to the cocktail) were all my fault according to my counselor and other folks running the mental illness system.
Report comment
You are right Cindy. My dad has neuropathy and the doctors ruled out Parkinsons and about everything else.
They admit they don’t know and put him on anti-inflammatories and pain killers for PRN use.
Psychiatry is the worst though.
Report comment
And before “Doctor” Freeman there were parents and husbands eager to lock up their family members in madhouses. Ensuring that they would never get over the episode and–if not already crazy–would soon become that way.
Thank God my mom was not a “NAMI mommy” and actually wanted me to lead an independent, happy life.
We had one commenter here saying she would never let her beloved daughter read MIA. She censored her reading material. She further stated she didn’t care if her daughter suffered and died prematurely. If she could get the treatment the NAMI mommy wanted her to get the “good” mother would be happy.
It’s easy to see why the daughter had emotional problems with a piece of work like that controlling her every move. That’smother love. 😛
Look up Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Not all members of NAMI act that way by any means. But getting a spouse or child labeled mentally ill and incapacitated with drugs is so easy to do in our society. And there are a few horrible people, eager to control others and gain attention as the saintly parent/wife/husband of a crazy sicko, who know how to milk the system.
Sadly these eager beavers usually end up running NAMI. Those who sincerely love the members they are told to write off as hopeless are apt to encourage the loved ones to succeed apart from the MI System. And they have lives too.
A friend of mine left NAMI in disappointment after psychiatry killed her sister with lethal “side effects.” NAMI didn’t care since she died with her rights OFF.
Report comment
Blaming the victim for a “broken brain” and “defective” biology is all psychiatry has to offer.
Once they have discredited you as SMI and drugged you out of your gourd you can look forward to even more outrageous violations from the folks pretending to “help.” And all the so-called normal folk walking around. Sad.
The APA claims, you wouldn’t be overwhelmed by emotional pain if you weren’t a genetically inferior defective to start with. Crushing down the already suffering is what psychiatry is there for. Enabling abusers.
Report comment
Congratulations Derek. Glad you’re doing well now.
A lot of our veterans are exploited by the MI System. The whole thing is shameful.
Report comment
“If the government doesn’t run your business…”
Report comment
I admire Marci’s sense of responsibility too, Julie.
Congratulations on getting off SSI after age 60. 🙂 Hard to do.
Report comment
Depends on where you work. If the government doesn’t run your profession–like public school teacher–you don’t rely on Uncle Sam. He relies on you.
Report comment
Psychologists exist to enable psychiatry now. For the most part. With a few exceptions they have sold out to the bio-bio-bio model. Why I want nothing to do with any.
Suggesting that it’s possible to take too many drugs would be “pill shaming.” Can’t have that.
Yes suicides and crimes occur. But acknowledging pills were at fault might cause (GASP!) non-compliance. And undermine the credibility of psychiatrists as honest-to-gosh-specialists and Real Doctors. Which would be a tragedy. 😛
Report comment
The judges haven’t any idea how psychiatry “works” or they wouldn’t allow any of these purveyers of bovine excrement a say in this matter. They probably believe in the “chemical imbalance” thanks to all the propaganda.
No other doctors have this legal authority. Yet we have psychiatrists complaining how “handcuffed” they are and how frightened they are at losing the prestigious legal powers they feel entitled to.
“It’s not easy being a Dark Lord but someone’s got to do it.” Proposed motto for the American Psychiatric Association.
Report comment
“Deliberate creation and management of a huge underclass!
Psychiatry exists to create scapegoats for society.
They differ from the KKK, neo-Nazis and similar groups in that they create the group to be persecuted. By drugs and labels these mad scientists impose an alienated life of sickness and isolation on their test subjects. They induce insanity with their mind altering drugs and then label the victim as SMI to ensure everyone will hate and reject them forever.
There have been madhouses since before the Industrial Revolution but the people often got better. Now pharma psychiatry ensures no one does.
At least 95% of all the SMI would not have gone nuts if they had avoided those morally bankrupt liars to start with. Modern psychiatry exists to ensure permanent alienation from the rest of humanity and altered mental states/cognitive decline from iatrogenic brain damage.
Isolation, confinement, degradation, urging a sense of futility, and pharmacological manipulation all constitute psychological torture. Used for deliberately breaking those already emotionally healthy and sane.
Yet these are standard treatments which our mental system uses on those already distressed and it claims these methods to be restorative and healing. Somehow. The SMI are not real human beings (according to shrinks) and torture is good for “defectives.”
Report comment
The pills (aka drug dealing “doctors”) can do no wrong. Ever.
Report comment
How is that kind of place better than prison?
Report comment
Wow!
Surprised popular entertainment would put that out.
But it’s not TV so they don’t have pharmaceutical sponsors to kiss up to.
Report comment
Dr. Malice accused her of narcissism too.
Pot “diagnoses” kettle.
Report comment
Should have my e-book on Kindle Monday.
Psyched! Five flash fictions about the mental system.
Report comment
Good point.
Capsules and tablets feel no shame.
The phrase is as nonsensical as “mental illness” which is allegedly a brain disease but different (somehow) from physical illnesses according to NAMI and similar groups.
Report comment
You can fire a life coach at any time.
Most just give you advice on finances or finding a job or time management. Less prone to abuse than others since they aren’t involved with “mental health.” Therefore easier to sue if they take advantage of you.
Some are charlatans who prey on the desperate. Dating coaches are the WORST I hear.
Report comment
I dislike the term “pill shaming.” This is a favorite buzz phrase of psychiatrists more interested in covering their own butts than helping those coming to them for help. (Voluntarily or otherwise.)
How about “shaming people who choose to take pills”?
Report comment
My dad has worried i have Lyme Disease. I explained how psychiatric “remedies” damage the brain and CNS. Especially long term.
I think this comforted him. He is surprised I can function off the “meds” the experts swore I needed for the rest of my life.
Report comment
Educating the public is the real answer.
It’s better to light a single candle than curse the darkness. ~Confucious
Report comment
Anger (expressed in acceptably passive aggressive ways) and disgust for fellow humans. But not even those emotions are “healthy” unless you’re one of the shrinks.
Report comment
Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff went to prison for fooling people.
So did Farid Fata who has a LOT in common with psychiatrists though his specialty was different.
There are already laws against scams.
If I gave someone rat poison to put in his coffee in place of sugar do you think the courts would buy it if I argued, “But he chose to drink the stuff”?
Report comment
OH has a good point.
Say “No” quickly and then call them out on the Red Herring.
Report comment
“Like insulin for diabetes.”
Sounds familiar.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
Kitty never chose to share any of her own psychiatric experiences. And as far as my GAS LIGHTING Abena and Serena neither of them are here to speak for themselves.
Report comment
Or free Caribbean cruises sponsored by pharmaceutical companies with evening musicals featuring various pills as characters.
Report comment
Yep.
Well only a biologically defective specimen would get really sad or angry at being abused according to the APA Journal. Thus they rationalize their cruel, pointless experiments on fellow human beings.
Only the strong are worthy of life according to these “doctors” accountable to no one. Least of all their patients. Social Darwinism at its finest.
Report comment
The pills are never to blame. Always the patient’s fault.
-Psychiatry in a nutshell.
Report comment
Well said Alex.
Report comment
All good questions, Julie.
It’s hard enough to find employment or housing if you have a psychiatric history. This is more than the loss of second amendment rights.
It’s like putting the names of people on a sex offender list though they have never been convicted. Just because someone said they look like one. A gross injustice disguised as medical care.
Report comment
There are already laws against “disorderly conduct.”
Report comment
“Cult” is a subjective term. But psychiatrists seem fine with controlling religious groups that encourage “meds compliance.”
Report comment
Abolish involuntary hospitalization AND false advertising and lies–telling patients they have a “chemical imbalance” the “meds” will fix and claiming it’s the defective patient’s fault if the SSRI drugs drive them nuts.
Using a stethoscope to betray patients’ trust makes consent impossible.
Report comment
You are an exception. So am I and many others here.
Most don’t get better. They stay in the system, deteriorate and die. 🙁
We need more exceptions.
Report comment
People–and therefore all social groups–are inherently dysfunctional.
Report comment
“Please be normal like us.”
Which is highly ironic considering segregation and mind altering drugs do the exact opposite of normalizing people.
It’s nobody’s fault. Except the crazy person’s of course.
Report comment
When I belonged to NAMI I made a $3 contribution to the membership every year. Real, “normal” members who ran the show paid $25 as I recall.
I’m now contributing this money to MIA instead.
Report comment
Trading wisdom for power?
Interesting and understandable with human nature being what it is. Truth can be mortifying. Power gratifies the ego.
Our society worships the powerful and ignores the wise. This has always been a problem. But it has reached frightening extremes.
Report comment
Well said!
Especially that last paragraph.
Report comment
At least they admit the drugs don’t prevent suicide.
Report comment
Precisely Rosalee.
I want to abolish psychiatry, but it’s not going to topple all at once.
Too many people believe in it. Those outside believe in the “chemical imbalance” myth.
Those inside rationalize it by saying, “Those people must be innately defective to act weird from grief or trauma or freak out on the mild drug I gave. They’re unfit for polite society and would only be institutionalized without my help.”
Report comment
Ask, “What religion do you practice?”
Most would go, “Huh? What’s my religion got to do with it?”
Say, “Nothing. But you’re the one who brought it up.”
Report comment
This zapped ex-NAMI member agrees Dr. K.
At least I survived to tell the tale.
Report comment
RW, for what it’s worth, I want to say “Thank you.”
You owed us nothing. But you have risked your own career as a medical journalist to help people like us. The ultimate underdogs of Western society.
And you have given us this site to visit and support each other. Not to mention your books. Got my dad reading Anatomy of an Epidemic. i doubt i could have escaped the system without MIA.
So thank you once again.
And–if someone calls you a Scientologist on social media–remember to call them out on the Reductio ad Absurdium Fallacy.
Report comment
The rants by popular high ranking psychiatrists show how threatened they feel.
The articles published in those journals few read are obvious attempts at legal cushioning. The inner circle knows the jig is up.
We have reason to be hopeful. No lie lasts forever.
Report comment
In order to forgive someone you have to admit they wronged you.
It’s impossible to forgive those who can do no wrong. So acknowledging the evils of psychiatry as a practice is necessary before we can offer forgiveness.
And unless they can own up to the harm done they cannot receive our forgiveness however willing we are to offer it. But that’s their choice.
Report comment
Rosemary Kennedy had a legitimate brain disorder. Psychiatry certainly “fixed” her.
If a child is born without legs that does not justify amputating arms.
Show the brain disorder first! Till then it’s just random acts of destruction.
Report comment
Not forgiving and cherishing hatred for your fellow human beings has long been understood as a way to give the devil a foothold in your life. It’s all related.
Ever read The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom? A great story of overcoming evil when all seems lost.
Report comment
Canadian Health Research Science Foundation.
Cited by Bruce near the end of the article.
Report comment
My guess is the inner circle of NAMI is well aware of CHRSF. But ensuring “meds compliance” is more important than ending “stigma.”
Report comment
Two more reasons psychiatry lives on.
11. It offers fast and easy solutions for shutting up people you don’t like. Either literally–through 72 hour holds–or large doses of neuroleptics. Hey, Willy finally shut his pie hole. So we can assume he feels better. Go drool in the corner and leave us alone Willy. Aren’t we humane?
12. Everybody loves a scapegoat to hate. “Symptoms” of “mental illnesses” are extreme behaviors of what everybody does. By branding others innately depraved and beyond redemption they deny they–or their “normal” people can do anything really bad. And it does wonders for the self esteem. If you’re undiagnosed.
Report comment
I have my own theory. But it’s too weird to post here.
Report comment
Reduction ad Absurdium.
“Hitler was a vegan. So if you don’t eat meat you must support genocide like Hitler.”
The stupidity of this “argument” deserves to be called out.
Reductio ad Scientologium.
Report comment
Yes. Bernie Madoff accomplished exactly what he designed to do as well.
Report comment
My thoughts exactly Boans!
Abena needed an endocrinologist. Not a shrink.
Why not fix the liver?
Report comment
Side effects include death.
Report comment
Dr. K was indulging in satire.
Report comment
Yes. I was already thinking what you posted Lauren.
Long term drug use damages brains and other organs, Funny how almost no doctors acknowledge this of psych drugs.
Report comment
I just celebrated my 46th birthday. Sad for your mother Leah. And my own friends who died young from “standard care.” Not suicide either. Side effects.
Off my drugs for 2 years. Can finally keep my room clean, shower regularly and half way through my first written novel. My heart is beating normally, I sleep less than 12 hours a day, and I have lost over 40 pounds. I can enjoy music and the beautiful scenery where I live for the first time since 1992.
No mood swings or thoughts of suicide anymore.
I owe it all to non compliance.
But MIA is one of the few places anyone will hear stories like mine.
Report comment
These are good questions Kitty.
(For my part the “antidepressants” caused my psychosis. The massive quantities of Haldol used to help caused seizures and worsened the psychosis causing terror to me and all around me. I got kicked out of school. Still forced to live on SSI thanks to years of iatrogenic damage.)
It’s good these drugs managed to shut off the right parts of the brains in both instances. This is not always the case. It’s troubling they were the only answer for people with a damaged liver and brain, since they only make those physical problems worse.
I wonder if dialysis might have helped Abena. A damaged liver causes the body to fill with toxins. She needed to have these filtered out of her somehow.
As far as the third example the use of pot and emotional trauma may be to blame. Does your friend trust you enough to tell you what’s going on in her head?
Kindred Spirit, you have Lyme Disease. What’s your take on using drugs to calm two already physically disabled people?
Too bad only those drugs work at calming Serene. There is a reason she hates taking them. They cause a peculiar suffering of their own invisible to spectators. And they correct nothing–biologically speaking.
Neurologists might be able to come up with solutions other than destroying what brain tissue she has left. Sadly they have abdicated cases like hers to psychiatrists.
Report comment
It sure doesn’t work at crime prevention either.
Report comment
Leah, they don’t care if we die. As long as we die compliant.
My friend didn’t want to die. But her shrink made her take a drug that killed her. 🙁
Two years off the “meds” I realize my heart is beating normally again. I believe doctors knew this was so but feared ramifications if they told me my “meds” were slowly killing me.
Report comment
Why did patients want MyCite? If they forget pills they want to take there are pill boxes.
So MyCite can monitor heart rate and sleep patterns?
In my imagination I see someone watching a monitor. “Dr. Q, Ms. X hasn’t slept at all in three weeks.”
Dr. Q, “Later. Got an office visit with Bambi. That new pharma rep.”
Monitor “Ms. X’s heart beats are off the charts. Her breathing patterns are erratic.”
Dr. Q, “Let her ride it out. I’ve got a Caribbean cruise to plan.”
Monitor “Ms. X didn’t take her Abilify at all the last twenty-four hours.”
Dr. Q, “Get the police out there immediately!”
Monitor, “Turns out she’s dead.”
Dr. Q. “At least she DIED WITH HER RIGHTS OFF.”
Report comment
Bingo!
I’m sure OH will agree.
Report comment
That’s like saying Dr. Fata’s chemo treatments worked. From his perspective they worked fine at making him lots of money.
But a lot of us were told we could live happy, productive lives if we took our “meds.” Even many NAMI parents were fooled. Then when you spend year after year in “day treatment” and still can’t take care of yourself or think straight or watch your 35 year old son forced to live in your basement–so zoned out he can barely make a sandwich or wash dishes unassisted–you ask HOW IS THIS AN IMPROVEMENT?
This is not what we were promised. Not what we signed up for.
So yes it has failed those who needed help. Like Bernie Madoff’s retirement plan.
Psychiatry is NOT help, but exploitation of the sad and lonely.
Psychiatry is anti-help.
Report comment
I realize that.
But in America they are really touting the “Alcoholism is a disease” on every station to sell “medicines” worse than booze.
They have infiltrated AA urging people to get “meds.” Shrinks will serve as their Higher Power now–or the drugs they push. Shame on them.
Report comment
Stigma against “mental illness” is pervasive in America and is perpetuated by the American Psychiatric Association.
Why is there an anti-psychiatry movement? Because no other branch of medicine has so little regard for the health, well being, or lives of those it “treats.” No other branch can vote illnesses in and out of existence. No other branch claims powers of mind reading and fortune telling. In short, no other branch of medicine has 0 grounding in known science, 0 cures, and premature deaths of all its patients by 25 years.
All other medical branches have patients instead of “consumers” too. This choice of wording on the part of psychiatrists themselves is significant.
If orthopedists acted like psychiatrists they would amputate legs to cure sprained ankles. Pediatricians would euthanize children with head colds. And dermatologists would amputate noses to cure pimples.
Psychiatry has wasted no time in transforming itself from Cinderella to the Wicked Stepmother. They’re very defensive about their origins. And they take it out on the hapless soul whose only crime was trusting a liar with no empathy or conscience.
Report comment
That sounds good in theory Jill. But it seems the integration of “mental health” into primary care just means more GP’s handing out SSRI drugs.
Do you think the high numbers of young adults on psych drugs could be a factor in the lack of emotional resiliency on campuses?
Report comment
That sounds nice.
I was in a thing called semi-care a couple times. The doors were unlocked during the day. In theory you could leave, but there would be consequences without a psychiatrist’s okay.
Report comment
So you can be a teetotaler AND an alcoholic? Why not?
I heard you don’t need mood swings to count as “bipolar” now. All you need is depression on occasion and 5 or 6 mix and match traits assigned you at random from a shrink’s laundry list.
And mental illness is different from physical illness but it’s still really a brain disease according to NAMI. So strokes and brain cancer aren’t really physical in nature I guess.
Double plus ungood.
Report comment
Eric, I’m by no means anti-counseling. But those in the system can only afford “standard treatment.”
Pill pushing “therapy” sessions at community centers. Where the “treatment team” combines brain damaging drugs with repeated messages of hopelessness.
I wish you well though.
Report comment
To claim that human beings are pure and innocent creatures incapable of wronging others and only a defective minority murders because of bad genetics is ridiculous. It shows a true lack of insight into humanity as a whole.
These shooters are lonely young men living in isolation. Usually on psych drugs.
Yet the solution offered is only larger numbers of people locked up or at least isolated and disabled through drugs. Unable to work or maintain human relationships, these lonely people will sit brooding at home all day, like young Raskolnikov–Dostoyevsky’s protagonist in Crime and Punishment.
Finally Raskolnikov murdered the pawn broker. Yet take heart gun control activists. At least he did not obtain a fire arm, but used an axe instead.
Report comment
The human spirit is a tough thing to kill. But psychiatrists deserve an “E” for effort.
LOL
Report comment
“It’s just too profitable.” For the physicians. Not those they doom to a lifetime of poverty as accidental addicts dependent on them for our next fix.
It’s especially cringe inducing that the person saying this specializes in children’s health. Dr. Pennywise I presume.
Report comment
That would include all of us branded “SMI” and written off as hopeless.
Report comment
If it makes you feel better Krista the massive damage in psychiatry’s wake is restoring your credibility.
Many KNOW you are telling the truth but feign skepticism or disbelief. Afraid of betraying the Brotherhood I guess. This going along with whatever psychiatrists say though they know it’s harming people and not helping will kill Western Medicine.
All the evil “doctors” need is for the good doctors to do nothing.
Have you heard of Farid Fata the cancer doctor who deliberately misdiagnosed healthy people with leukemia to sell endless rounds of chemo? Killing some and crippling others? Other doctors knew. But it took a long time till one finally blew the whistle.
Scary how morally bankrupt the medical profession is now.
Report comment
I’m not saying the pre Pharma kind was better Oldhead. But surely you agree the newer model is more dangerous and has done more harm.
People used to look at psychiatry with skepticism. They laughed at the bearded old man asking you for graphic dream descriptions. (Preferably dreams of nudity.)
Then in the early nineties it all changed. They told us scientists had discovered why people acted weird and felt prolonged emotional pain. AND luckily they now had magic bullets to fix your brain. “Just like insulin for diabetes.”
The “chemical imbalance” legend is believed by nearly everyone I meet offline. A lie impossible to disprove because people prefer sound bites and TV medical/police procedural dramas to wading through hundreds of articles and dozens of books like I did.
Report comment
Honestly Bcharris I think psychiatrists don’t WANT to find biomarkers for the “illnesses” they presuppose. If they did they might find the methods used have been worsening the damage As Whitaker pointed out psychiatry would become obsolete since the neurologists would take over. Doctors who specialize in the brain rather than the imagination.
Report comment
Orwellian Double-Speak. Went through this myself.
I remember a part of Animal Farm where the pigs ask for the other animals to labor 7 days a week to rebuild the windmill. The labor will be completely voluntary. But if you don’t volunteer your rations will be cut.
Report comment
They don’t actually.
Psychiatry did NOT help me fit in at all.
Segregation in the HUD ghetto is the exact opposite of fitting in!
More like whittling at a square peg till its a tiny splinter that won’t fit into anything at all and is completely useless and unwanted so they toss it out with the trash.
Putting blue dye into brown eyes only blinds them. It does not change the color.
Report comment
“Treating it as ~mental illness~ does not help. It is just a way of taking away the party’s personhood.”
Well said.
It’s also a great excuse to treat all with SMI labels like criminals regardless of innocence.
Report comment
Suffering from an autoimmune eye disorder.
I first misread that Pies’s quote as “Ultimately the BPSM will allow us to provide HOSTILE, comprehensive care.”
Yep. Wanting to stay alive is pretty self serving of us.
Naughty, naughty you waskawy anti-psychiatrists! 😀
Report comment
Bippyone, many people here want to ban INVOLUNTARY psychiatry.
If you are happy with your role as a psychiatric consumer, cool!
Many of us are not.
Report comment
As a firm believer in the supernatural world I call it a soul.
It is not a “separate substance from the brain” as one monist described this belief. The soul is not a substance at all.
This belief cannot be proven scientifically. Neither can psychiatry’s dogma that their drugs “work.”
Report comment
Wow.
You and I are on the same page here RR.
Report comment
Bwahahaha. You got that right.
Report comment
Bingo.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
What do you propose “Outside the text box”?
Like many survivors I’m frequently housebound from iatrogenic damage. And the draconian laws in America make it unwise to “come out” as a psychiatric survivor.
I have my plans. But I prefer not to discuss them here.
Report comment
C.S. Lewis addressed this in his book Miracles. He claims human consciousness is itself evidence of something beyond matter.
Report comment
Yep. People into self mutilation. So seeking psychiatry would be a sign of self harm.
Report comment
I differ from you Ekaterina in that I don’t consider myself mad anymore. It never was a lifelong condition–with a few exceptions–till psychiatry came along.
Read hagiographies like that of Francis of Assisi. Or King Lear. Or MacBeth where Lady MacBeth was not born mad but experienced extreme guilt. Or the novel The Last Man by Mary Shelley where a main character “loses” it but is nursed back to health by his loving friends (bad diet) and is recognized as sane enough to be elected to Parliament.
Psychiatry ensured these bizarre emotional states would become lifelong. First by locking people away in a hostile environment. Later by the drugs they punish you for having a bad reaction to.
Report comment
William Glasser’s “Choice Theory/Reality Therapy” encouraged people to make helpful changes in their outward circumstances as well.
For example, finding a new job or starting to date again or calling your mother regularly.
Some outward things can’t be immediately changed. So these must be coped with.
I love the AA “Serenity Prayer.”
Report comment
Very astute of Dr, Plomin to skirt the issues of differences between male and female chromosomes. It looks as though he evades the issue of possible racial differences altogether.
Something left out of this nature/nurture debate is how our choices shape our personality as we grow and age.
Report comment
It was my own weak grasp of science that made me fall for psychiatry’s lies when young.
Report comment
So you haven’t heard of Tim Murphy, Fuller Torrey, or countless others who have written articles and gone on national television demonizing the “severely mentally ill”?
Many who willingly take psych pills are upset about being called killers. But maybe it’s different over the pond.
I refer you to RW’s most recent article.
Report comment
Coincidentally these also create the “mentally ill.”
Report comment
A low view of humanity is behind these mass shootings. And a ridiculous craving for notoriety.
Sadly there is no easy answer for these problems.
Report comment
I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound hostile.
Report comment
We are not doing these tests. The establishment is.
Report comment
Exactly Oldhead. Madness is an extreme emotional state. Not a lifelong disease.
Report comment
Steve, since coming off my Effexor I get along better with all around me. It killed my ability to feel for others.
Now I find it easier to not envy those with better lives than mine. And it’s not just fear or will power preventing my suicide.
I want to live again.
All along I took the drugs out of obligation to those around me. If it had only been my life at stake I would have gone off them. But I feared hurting others if “untreated.” Pretty ironic.
Report comment
Please do.
Report comment
All head honcho shrinks know it’s safe to scapegoat us for every bizarre crime that happens. They know we aren’t dangerous. So they keep doing it.
Report comment
Why indeed–assuming our brains were deformed–would they subject it to drugs that damage already healthy brains? Some use the chemotherapy analogy. But you have to prove the cancer exists first and it’s acknowledged to be a desperate remedy not to be performed indefinitely over 20-30 years.
However, this makes sense when you realize psychiatry is not about saving lives, healing brains nor helping people lead higher quality lives.
It’s really about segregating and crippling the “unfit.” Barring us from participating in the marketplace–which is linked to eugenics according to an article I read. And preventing us from reproducing since the drugs render us grotesque to behold and often cause impotence/frigidity.
They pretend their victims are dangerous in order to justify crippling them. Not about health or independence/ but creating docility, helplessness, and stupidity. Psychiatry’s real function.
Thieves who only break in to steal and kill.
Report comment
Then why do they reassure patients that these pills have no effect on those who aren’t “mentally ill”?
Oh that’s right. They’re a bunch of liars.
Report comment
You’re right.
The “severely mentally ill” are supposed to be subhuman and dangerous. So it’s okay to perform cruel, pointless experiments since they say our brains are already broken and we’re only fit for institutions anyhow. (According to Jaffe in a Youtube video I saw.)
In the sight of God those like him may be far less worthy of life than the “defectives” whom they judge fit only to be crippled or killed and tossed into the dust heap. 🙁
Report comment
You would think hospital staff would be prepared for spilled bodily fluids. But this is a psych ward we’re discussing.
Report comment
Normal people explain depression as the natural expression of depressing experiences.
Or they did before shrinks and Big Pharma poisoned our thinking with ads everywhere saying the slightest uncomfortable emotion is a disease required massive amounts of emotional pain killers.
Report comment
Pushing the negative does indeed have the opposite consequence.
The “mentally ill” have already been identified as dangerous by men claiming to be experts on millions they have never even met.
I prefer “Innocent until proven guilty” myself. And I don’t call myself “mentally ill.
According to Expert Shrinks “bipolar” and “schizophrenic” are synonymous with violent murderous monster. Why identify as “violent murderous monster”? That’s Torrey’s slanderous accusation. He doesn’t know any of us from Adam.
And funny how no one asks shrinks to prove they are not dangerous.
Report comment
“It helps to be specific Oldhead and not speak in tongues.”
My thoughts exactly Frank.
Report comment
I am also a Christian. A lot of sincere, well meaning people at church are being lied to and encouraging members to be harmed.
Visited a large church with a friend one Sunday and two prominent members got up to tell us “the truth” about the “brain disease.” One a nurse and the other a therapist at the local mental center.
Were they both that ill informed?
Report comment
“Sanism” is a word I have heard used.
Report comment
Sorrow, happiness, fear and anger could be called labels or categories. Words to describe these things have been around as long as humanity.
What psychiatry–wrongly–does is try to quantify the unquantifiable. Like trying to put love under a microscope. Or assign numerical values to the Seven Deadly Sins in order to use them in mathematical equations.
Report comment
I thoroughly believed my drug induced episode was proof of my hereditary brain disease. Doctors don’t lie and medicines are only helpful I had been taught as a kid.
The anafranil was terrifying. I was so scared of experiencing it that I did whatever the quacks told me afraid it would happen again. It did. Repeatedly. They told me it was all my brain disease at fault. NOT the medications.
I went back since I knew hallucinations/etc. weren’t normal. But I lacked insight into the moral bankruptcy of the gas lighting dealers who call themselves doctors.
I have more faith in the word of a used car salesman or a carnival barker than a psychiatrist.
The Swindle of the Century.
Report comment
Maybe we should replace “health treatment” with “control.”
Mental control system.
Report comment
The hyper positivity which opposes thought or poetry really bothers me too.
The perfect theme song for today would be “Everything is Awesome.”
Report comment
Why almost no one in “mental health” can read a book, hold down a job, or have a relationship.
And some guy called “Alexander” on the site yells at the doctor with ye olde “just like insulin for diabetes” propaganda.
I was afraid of leaving too much personal info or I would have responded that:
A. Psych drugs correct nothing. At best they’re emotional pain killers.
B. According to shrinks these drugs are harmless and have no effect on anyone “normal.” So this proves that’s a lie too.
No one listens anyhow. Reading a short article from the APA Journal is too hard I guess. SMH. Hopeless trying to reason with the public.
Report comment
As far as I can tell the only chance no one is given is of refusing these drugs.
I heartily agree with you that the vast majority of those in the psychiatric system are harmless eccentrics who do not deserve to be demonized.
🙁
Report comment
Mad can also mean angry. An intense emotional state. Not a disease.
Report comment
Well, according to Robert Whitaker and others, this is meant to be a critical psychiatry site. Not an anti psychiatry site.
Hence the differing points of view.
We just agree to disagree politely.
Report comment
Yes. Psychiatry is great at making you question your own sanity.
Feeding you drugs to cause bizarre sensations and claiming “they never have that effect.” Either you’re lying or crazy.
Telling your family you obviously are lying about taking your “meds” since if you were “compliant” all your problems would magically vanish. All the time you take them religiously though they make you feel horrible.
And the shrink blames your cognitive problems, sleeping too much, mood swings, annoying habits you’re too stupified to control on you. Either you’re 1. Lying about your “meds.” 2. Faking the seizures, dizziness, etc. since the “meds NEVER do that.” 3. It’s just your inherint defectiveness showing through. Requiring more pun–uh–treatments in the form of doubling the drugs making you sick and imprisonment.
Came to a point I started lying all the time–since I couldn’t tell what was real anymore. And no one believed me anyhow. Psychiatry=insanity. It exists to gain life long guinea pigs to exploit. To gas light and drive people insane.
Shrink: You know if you weren’t totally insane you wouldn’t be coming to me for help.
Me: Took the words out of my mouth Doc.
Report comment
I actually prefer the term “madness.”
1. It’s perceived as a emotional state. Not an inherited moral inferiority.
2. Classical writers saw it as temporary.
3. It lacks the pseudo scientific pretensions of modern psychiatry.
Many of us are life long cripples and we owe it all to the quackery of psychiatry. Like severing someone’s spinal cord to cure restless leg syndrome. 🙁
Report comment
How about leeches and blood letting as valid modalities of treatment? LOL.
Report comment
I read the WRAP book myself. A lot of the ideas are good and can be used as life coping techniques apart from the “mental health” setting.
Resiliency is indeed essential to doing life.
Report comment
The “lunatics” back in 1930’s Germany and Austria were much fewer in number. We owe the vast expansion of the disabled “mentally ill” to Pharma-psychiatry chicanery and their unsafe, ineffective treatments. (Unless you mean effective at crippling and killing.)
Thanks to the vast numbers of people like us they have deceived and the internet they don’t fully own like TV or radio more of us are discovering the truth.
Report comment
Sending people to cardiologists is one of those inconvenient little side effects Jan. 🙁
Report comment
So the bio-medical model increases self blame and stigma. Ironic, since according to NAMI and all those other groups it’s supposed to do the reverse.
I found rejecting the bio-medical explanation empowering. As soon as I read William Glasser’s book Warning: Psychiatry can be Hazardous… I felt a sense of hope and joy I never had before. And I quit hating myself. I could change my life after all! 🙂
Report comment
Depression also can be a symptom of anemia, low thyroid levels, and digestive problems. None of these need psychiatry. Especially the last which the “go to cure” of quackery will only make ten fold worse.
I know a woman with stomach problems who had so much trouble eating she got weak and lay in bed. Her doctor told her it was all a chemical imbalance in her brain and put her on an SSRI which messes the stomach up even more. Filthy liar. Or incompetent idiot at best. Some really are that “uninformed” to use Pies’s term.
Report comment
Bippyone I would not advise you or your loved ones to just quit taking your pills cold turkey. Especially SSRI drugs or benzoes. Took me over a year to get off Effexor.
I can think more clearly and socialize with ease I never possessed before as an adult. But I still developed a couple autoimmune disorders that may clear up in another year or two.
Report comment
On this site a pop up video appeared stating, “Opioid addiction is a DISEASE. Let us give you the help you need to recover. You can’t beat it alone.”
Translation: Let us sell you a drug at least as bad for you as the one you’re already struggling with.
Oh the irony.
Report comment
Oldhead, yes abuse in the form of “asylums” has been around since the 18th century.
But thanks to it’s associations with the AMA psychiatry has been able to deceive many more people since the 1980’s. Far greater numbers suffer under it.
And, before psychiatry “proved” that “mental illness” was a life sentence and poor life choices young people made meant they should be written off as hopeless has not improved things. If you read Shakespeare or Mary Shelley you’ll see that the “mad” got better all the time.
It may not be more cruel, but it is far more dangerous. A kitten may be as angry as a tiger but it can’t inflict the damage a tiger can.
Report comment
Well OH, I think if someone is in psychiatric “treatment” and goes on a killing spree his shrink should be held accountable for the murders. Just like Timothy McVeigh’s accomplice.
Right now shrinks always pretend these killers weren’t “being helped” when they know they actually were. Putting them on trial would draw attention to how worthless said “treatments” are at crime prevention.
Absolute power and zero responsibility. No other medical profession has legal authority. Especially the kind that can overrule a judge’s.
Report comment
“Scapegoating” is a term I agree with.
Report comment
Violent people are more prone to strokes I believe.
Treat all stroke victims worse than convicted felons. (Being facetious.)
Actually a stroke is a proven brain disorder. Maybe it should be re-classified as a “mental illness.” Proving how stupid the term is.
“All mental illnesses are really brain diseases.”
“What if we treated physical illnesses like mental illnesses?”
I thought the brain was a physical organ.
Report comment
No they don’t Steve. Psychiatric drugs do not set what is crooked straight. 🙁
Report comment
Yep Kind of what I’ve been doing. Though not consciously 12 stepping or joined to any group.
Report comment
“Antidepressants” ruined my own life. I hate those drugs.
Report comment
My cocktail was causing my mood swings till my body wore down after more than 20 years on the stuff.
I have had some troubling experiences with being forced into mindlessness meditation. For two hour sessions every week. Almost drove me nuts. Everyone else fell asleep or didn’t care.
If you like and benefit from voluntary mindfulness meditation that’s fine. I was forced to do it and hated it.
Report comment
I’m not offended Oldhead. 🙂
Report comment
*having my label REMOVED
Report comment
In Brave New World the elite stayed in power by use of the carrot. In 1984 it was the stick.
In our world the “soft diagnoses” and “normals” live in Huxley’s future and may enjoy “soma.” But fall out of line, be unlucky, or get sick from the “soma” and you’ll find you’re in 1984 and Big Brother owns you.
The scene where O’Brien “cures” Smith of his “insanity” by shocking him into thinking as told is SO psychiatric.
Like how they force the “non compliants” into the “insight” of the Chemical Imbalance lie they know is not true. It’s not about curing delusions to trick someone into believing a lie nor about restoring cognitive function through 3-6 brain drugs. It’s about power and being someone else’s god.
Report comment
Some of the behaviors associated with “severe mental illnesses” are wrong.
Maybe just say the behavior is wrong instead of labeling the person as irredeemably “mentally ill” which is just a moral judgment disguised as a scientific pronouncement.
Report comment
Friend,do you want to wind up homeless or institutionalized, friendless and broke? Do you want to suffer dozens of bizarre health problems, gain over 100 pounds and die before your mid fifties? Do you want to be socially isolated or segregated in a setting reminiscent of Kindergarten no one ever outgrows?
Be sure to call Dr. Bernie S. Gas at 555-555-5555. As a licensed psychiatrist with decades of experience in putting people on various medications and diagnosing them with terms that would be an insult coming from anyone but a real doctor I have just what you need to achieve these goals.
Call Dr. Gas MD at 555-5555. Don’t let stigma scare you away from the life that I deserve.
Report comment
I will. Finding a way to earn a livelihood comes first since publicly sharing my story will likely cause me to lose SSI.
Having my label would be nice–if possible–since it would restore my legal rights. Once you are “diagnosed” something like “schizophrenic” or “bipolar” you’re no longer a citizen and can have your rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness stripped from you at ANY time based on the word of some guy in a lab coat who doesn’t know you from Adam.
I knew better than to ask my shrink for my freedom, nice as she was as a person.
Report comment
Painful emotions perhaps?
I used to struggle with the concept of “mental illness” when I believed it. Here’s why.
There are real brain diseases. Traumatic brain injury, dementia, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, tumors, etc. These cause problems thinking and/or physical problems since the brain controls bodily functions.
But take someone like Ted Bundie. He was clever and resourceful at the crimes he committed. Not cognitive problems but moral.
Many shrinks say he must have been “bipolar” just like your eccentric, sweet Aunt Betty, or your mom who happened to have a really bad SSRI reaction that almost killed her thereby “unmasking” her “disease” (Can’t pill shame so it must be her fault.) According to many shrinks these law abiding women are exactly like the notorious serial killer and deserve to be treated like criminals.
There is also the etymological trouble in the oxymoron “mental illness” itself….
Report comment
Bingo!
Psychiatry is popular because it reassures the general population of their innate goodness.
Report comment
Precisely. Demonizing the “SMI” is great PR for psychiatry in keeping its “customer base”, but it backfires since it helps them keep their “life long consumer” stable but make us hard to replace when our painful, stunted lives are tragically cut short.
Psychiatry is NOT about helping those they label to lead productive, high quality lives. It’s about crippling those they view as threats somehow. The “help” offered is on par with how JFK’s embarrassing sister was “helped” by a doctor damaging her brain till she couldn’t walk or talk again. 🙁
Report comment
Actually getting drunk at a bar every night and sharing your pain with fellow barflies is at least as successful in coping with life as going to a mental illness center.
Look at things like gainful employment and ability to hold relationships together at people who go to those centers. As someone who would never have taken mind altering drugs willingly I’m angry at being lied too. Many of us here are.
Over and over I was told, “Your only hope for a productive life–a job and good relationships is to accept you’re hopelessly evil (SMI means this) and take your meds.”
Getting along better with my family since my conscience and empathy are awake once more. And rejecting my label helped alter behaviors associated with that. My parents are amazed. Dad is angry too and sad I was swindled out of years of life and am forced to live in extreme poverty since the drugs and label prevented gainful employment.
I find solace in music, poetry, the beautiful scenery, friendships (now that I can get along with others), and my faith.
Sadly my system is really messed up after 25 years on drugs. Heart problems and 2 autoimmune diseases started before I came off. Benign side effects of my “treatments” I guess. Lol.
Report comment
They preyed upon my fear of madness for 20 years after I went nuts on Anafranil and they blamed me for it. Like those slick carny style medicine men in the 19th century.
Report comment
My condolences Eric.
Judging from your narrative alone you sound normal in that you’re reasonably angry at being treated in a shameful fashion like a criminal when you have done nothing wrong. The only thing they were punishing you for was being put in harm’s way by your shrink.
So they handcuffed you and locked you up for the crime of BEING POISONED by your alleged doctor.
Psychiatry is insanity.
Drugs never helped me either. Voices like yours deserve to be heard. You’re not alone.
Report comment
I won’t say ALL shrinks conspire with abusive partners and parents to gas light those they abuse. Often, though, shrinks don’t ask any questions about current living situations. Just ask how you feel. They can “diagnose” you in less than 15 minutes and never talk to you for more than 10 minutes afterwards. Gives them just enough time to write more prescriptions.
If you don’t feel great or annoy others by “odd” behaviors–even if they lie about it–the shrink assumes it must be a brain problem. Since they automatically assume all emotional pain or quirkiness is proof of a brain disease.
Got a broken leg? Here’s a sledge hammer. It will fix it. A sledge hammer is their only tool, so by golly they’ve got to use it. How else can they bill your insurance? 😀
Unwittingly though it usually is, they enable abusers. The snappy dressers with proper grooming who smile nicely, have firm handshakes, and know how to charm the socks off everybody. A great looking front is proof of sound “mental health” as far as psychiatrists are concerned. 0 insight into how human beings think or feel or what motivates their fellow human beings.
Report comment
Don’t forget victims of bullying.
Bullies are healthy, well adjusted members in this society so they don’t need “mental treatments.” Just “diagnose” those they bully as “schizophrenic” and “bipolar” in order to drug and lock them away.
Report comment
Bingo.
Report comment
Yes. That does sound better.
Report comment
We human beings are very good at deceiving ourselves, when ignoring certain problems has immediate pay offs for us. Especially when others sustain all the damage from these problems.
Read “The Banality of Evil.” Evil is not inherently sexy, spectacular or mind blowing. Most people behind atrocities are not sadists with maniacal laughs but calm, methodical people who just don’t care.
They willingly serve as little cogs in the Big Machine instead of becoming monkey wrenches to stop It. Understandable since the monkey wrench will be bent out of shape and the little cog can work safely. Until the machine stops.
Report comment
Lol.
Report comment
Probably because it’s one of those things he and I agree on.
By bio psychiatry I mean as distinct from the talking on a sofa kind. Or Freudian psycho analysis.
I don’t agree with psycho analysis either. But bio psychiatry has hoodwinked a lot more people by posing as a legitimate branch of medicine.
Report comment
* here
Report comment
My guess is the military is desperate for volunteers and more youngsters are labeled now than ever.
Report comment
David Joslin, as an American, I thank you for risking your life to preserve ours. It’s shameful how psychiatry exploits veterans.
Report comment
“The faux outrage when a president from the ‘opposing’ party does something your own party previously practiced is vomit inducing.”
Well said.
Report comment
🙂
Report comment
Anyone hear read Erewhon by Samuel Butler?
A make believe land where they treat the criminals kindly–as though they suffered sickness–and punished the people with real health problems and also the poor and grieving like criminals. It was written over a hundred years ago so Butler wasn’t trying to depict our current “mental system” but it’s really weird how it resembles psychiatry’s role of absolving violent criminals (sort of) by punishing the innocent who suffer.
Butler meant it as a critique of Social Darwinism as I recall.
Report comment
The Next Hitler, yes. Anti-Christ is a religious term and therefore a “symptom” of “mental illness.”
Report comment
Someone Else this is attributable to the “pay per click” system of online journalism. Sensational headlines get more clicks. Conservative sites also are guilty of this.
Report comment
Psychiatry=materialistic monism.
To them all people are machines. All belief in the supernatural is a symptom of defective machinery.
Self-styled Christians go along with this because they have no compassion for the “SMI” so they just don’t care if we die. And they think they’re normal so it’s not their problem and not worth researching.
“If you did it not for the least of these you did it not for Me.” 🙁
Report comment
A lot of democrats own those places too. The chapter of NAMI I once belonged to was full of democrats
Every mental center I went to told us to vote democrat so we could be taken care of. Great trick for harvesting votes.
And a bunch of prominent shrinks wanted to “diagnose” Trump. Which is ironic.
Torrey opposed it. Probably he knew this would tip the hand to the public how much power the APA has with 0 accountability. Least of all to their patient/victims.
Both sides are over eager to throw us under the bus since abusing us looks like compassion to the outsider.
Report comment
Great idea MM. Along with banning involuntary treatments.
People get all their “science” off commercials now. Too lazy to read articles from the APA Journal for crying out loud.
Even if they’re not drugged out of their gourds people believe everything on TV or in drug brochures now. Scary how unapologetically stupid everyone is. SMH
Report comment
My question is how much revenue do Vox and the other rags get per year from ads for psych drugs?
If Cooper is on anything they haven’t made him a kinder, better person. Nor have they made him more conscientious in his research.
Report comment
Coming off my Effexor ended my desire to commit suicide. I actually care about things again.
And leaving psychiatry has helped reaffirm the faith of my childhood which I could never reconcile with the a priori assumption of materialism bio-psychiatry is built upon.
Report comment
Actually as a kid, I had adults telling me to stuff my anger because Real Girls were always sweet and passive and might weep softly on occasion (like Cinderella) but never got angry. Nearly all were women as I recall.
My mom, my grandma, teachers, family friends. “Nice girls don’t get angry.”
Report comment
They also pathologize sadness and fear.
Got to be happy 100% of the time. But not TOO happy. Or that means you’re “manic.” Lol.
Report comment
7. Pharma has been tied to psychiatry in unholy matrimony and using their lies about a “chemical imbalance” to prescribe drugs to create all the symptoms of “mental illness” in hitherto normal, sane individuals.
Report comment
How about blaming the shooter?
Note how we don’t hold all members of other groups accountable of the crimes of individuals? But when people blame all the “SMI” for the crimes of an individual that’s supposed to be compassion as opposed to discrimination.
We need to judge people on the content of character. NOT on the word of some character who calls himself a doctor and slanders millions he never even met.
Report comment
Like that Russian short story where the shrink comes to town and locks up everybody. Finally he decides he must be insane too. (Unlike most shrinks thinking Everyone But Me.)
Kind of like that episode of The Andy Griffith Show where Barney Fife puts every citizen in Maybury in jail.
Report comment
Which I am doing. 🙂 Free at last!
Report comment
The Donald is known for proposing impractical solutions.
Good luck rounding up 20-25% of the population to imprison them and pay the required jailers/security guards at tax payer expense. (The remaining tax payers.)
He ran primarily on the economic platform. Long term institutionalization is actually costlier than the semi-institutionalized HUD form where round-the-clock “care givers” are not required. My guess is Torrey wants a vast expansion of the latter instead.
Imprisoning large numbers of law abiding citizens without due process will also alienate many Republicans I know who believe in psychiatry’s bogus cures but draw the line at having friends and family locked up. My own family will leave the GOP if this happens. Turn Libertarian perhaps.
The big problem is these mass shooters nearly all get their guns illegally. There are any number of Red Flag laws no one is bothering to enforce. (My dad has to go through a LOT of red tape to buy a squirrel rifle despite no mental label or legal record.)
Buckling down on enforcing laws that already exist to prevent illegal gun sales is the obvious solution both parties should be able to work together on. But it doesn’t sound as “sexy” as passing new laws no one will bother enforcing and showing faux compassion for the “mentally ill” bogey men who need to be crippled and imprisoned “for their own good.”
Take comfort in the ineptitude of our bloated, bureaucratic machine. Like a 10 foot insect it’s pretty scary to look at but the size of its massive exoskeleton makes it hard to chase people. 🙂
Report comment
“Recovery” has so many different meanings attached. Many anti-psychiatry people oppose it.
On the other hand militant pro-psych people oppose the idea too. Such as our “mental health” czar who also complained SAHMSA is too soft on the psychiatrized.
I went to a “Mental Illness” Center for many years. Repeatedly they told us we would be “depressed” forever and would never recover from our “illnesses” that were created by the alleged “treatments” they warned us never to quit taking or our heads would explode or a comet would collide with earth or something.
Report comment
“1,000,000 untreated mentally ill people are running around.” Where did Torrey get this number? Is he going to archives or names listed on computer records somewhere and tallying up everyone who disappeared without a record of dying? (A pretty Orwellian scenario in itself.)
Or does he just know somehow in that magical clairvoyant way those Real Scientists have that 1,000,000 people are in need of being “diagnosed” and “treated”?
He also knows that 500,000 fewer murders will occur if he has his way. How can you provide numbers for things that never happen? Is he traveling through the Multiverse in his spare time?
Real Science Fiction folks! 😀
Report comment
Not an excuse. Josef Mengele never subjected himself to any of the experiments he performed on children.
Report comment
Depriving law abiding citizens of due process before imprisonment is unconstitutional.
Funny how many supporters of the Second Amendment aren’t bothered by this threat to basic liberties.
Report comment
In order to win presidential nominations you must be arrogant and loud.
America can’t handle thoughtful, discerning candidates who only speak when they have something sensible to say. No way Coolidge or Lincoln would be considered now.
Report comment
Don’t forget psychiatry creates social inequalities by permanently altering the brain.
Report comment
Hi Boans. Hope all is okay.
Concealed anger–passive aggressive revenge committed by smiling pretty bureaucrats–is the WORST.
Report comment
Psychiatry generates its own astounding form of isolation in the form of disabling drugs and psycho surgeries and labels to tell communities who to shun and segregate. 🙁
And the fact that the government not only allows but helps maintain psychiatric tyranny over vast swaths of the population–forcing them into extreme poverty, alienation, and premature death–is troubling.
You acknowledge drugs are not long term solutions. I agree and applaud this statement. But psychiatry does not. They are the sole tool “mental health” centers say is absolutely essential. All other services are disposable. But life long drugging–the more the better–is essential according to all community centers I have attended.
Maybe you live where counseling is not subordinate to druggings and is not just telling you repeatedly how hopelessly sick and crazy you are and don’t forget your “meds.” I speak solely from what I see and have experienced in my state and communities.
I agree when people say we don’t need a “replacement for psychiatry” because psychiatry has itself replaced everything I enjoyed when seen as a human being and not an SSI. It has replaced my hope of a career with $780 a month to serve as a lab rat. It replaced my friends with therapists and my hopes for a family with casual acquaintances passing through “day treatment” like me.
After my Haldol induced seizures and odd behaviors due to grief I couldn’t process and label of SMI caused everyone to turn on me I first thought of suicide. Now that I’m free I can mourn, enjoy friendships again, can write and learn marketable skills. Guess what? No longer suicidal.
Hope and love cured me. 2 things not to be found anywhere near any psych center I have been in.
Report comment
Someone Else is there somewhere online people can view your art?
I would love to see your paintings. 🙂
Report comment
Only if the SBC subordinates itself to Psychiatry and implements its “SCIENCE” into church doctrine. But considering how everyone at a Southern Baptist church I attended mindlessly swallowed anything psychiatrists put out (pun intended) I can see it happen.
Very disheartening. A few individuals from churches have offered me emotional support. But no church body I attended has ever taken a stand against this pseudo science that destroys lives.
Chalk it up to ignorance and apathy.
Report comment
Yep. Even websites offering counseling to those who lost family members urge people to consider “medication. Grief is a disease! So is fleeing an abuser, extreme poverty, or any emotional pain or discomfort.
Much of it is well meaning ignorance thanks to the propaganda put out by slimy pharma-psychiatry merchants. Everybody believes them because TV commercials never lie. *Eye roll.*
Part of the overwhelming success of these drugs is the also due to 0 tolerance for pain in our culture. People think if they aren’t ecstatically HAPPY 100% of the time something is wrong with them. Many love the “diagnosis” of depressive disorder because of it. “Please excuse Janie for not smiling and laughing all the time today. She can’t help being sad. It’s because she has an honest-to-goodness brain disease.”
Why do we need written notes from a doctor to excuse feeling down in the dumps? Oh yes. Because everyone around us is self absorbed and tears of grief annoy them and prevent them from enjoying themselves.
🙁 And telling someone “Shut up and take your meds. And kindly go rot in a corner somewhere you won’t bug us” shows you care and you don’t have to do squat to help them afterward. “Mental health experts” are there for that after all.
Report comment
It speaks volumes about that Artful Science that psychiatric researchers view a lack of empathy as a positive thing. 😛
Report comment
No one argued with Hitler as I recall.
A big challenge we face is most people view these damaging drugs as “safe” and “healing” and firmly believe they correct brain abnormalities and save the lives of all who take them.
That is a BIG problem. Even those who wish the “mentally ill” well think they’re saving the lives of the “SMI” with AOT. Not to mention other lives if they go on killing sprees.
I managed to convince my family with carefully chosen arguments and an article by Dr. Pies from the APA Journal. That is a damning piece of evidence. It convinces many–if they aren’t too busy to read it.
Report comment
Julie is being funny.
In a society where the heart was viewed as the center of the soul maybe we would have shrinks figuring out ways to cause heart damage to “save” their patients from themselves.
It’s really no dumber than what they do to healthy brains. (Assuming they aren’t healthy, you still need to know the problem before randomly damaging healthy tissue. Neuro surgeons want to make sure they know where the tumor is located–not to mention knowing whether or not one exists.) 😛
Report comment
Ugh! That sounds horrible Njinsky.
Report comment
“Welfare does not exist for the needs of the poor, it exists to put the poor through ritual humiliations….”
TRUTH!
And through crippling and ostracizing all those the shrinks have branded hopelessly insane, “mental health” ensures their victims will live in shame and poverty forever!
Report comment
I agree. The love of many has grown cold.
As Bcharris says up above, murdering a bunch of people is not caused by a cognitive defect but a moral one. I know a lot of people with low IQs but far higher morals than geniuses with multiple graduate degrees.
I have always had a philosophical issue with the concept of “mental illness” because many of the “symptoms” are simply acting like a jerk. So, it’s not stupidity–associated with real brain disorders–they’re referring to.
Report comment
It really seems to boost the egos of the “Normals” though.
I noticed–when drinking psychiatry’s kool-aid that most trolls on sites to support the “mentally ill” were pretty proud of how “normal” they were. Lol.
Report comment
I had my first break down at 14 when an older woman who had befriended me betrayed my family and caused us to be homeless for a summer.
She was the wife of a prominent elder at church. Dad was the preacher. She manipulated her husband into forcing him to resign with no place to go.
Psychiatry=Rejection. That’s all I got from it. Worse than Dr. Frankenstein since they take sweet, gentle people who were normal to begin with and transform them into monsters so they can play the Hero by blaming those they have already tortured and maimed. 🙁
Psychiatry caused humanity as a whole to reject me. I curse the day I ever sought help from the quack who called himself a “soul doctor.” All he gave me were mind altering drugs to destroy my body and a label to make everyone turn on me, finishing the destruction of my soul.
No mercy. No justice. Just drugs and lies, lies, lies…
Report comment
Trying to turn something unquantifiable into tidy facts and figures.
Gone is the day of the Renaissance polymath who wrote beautiful poetry, painted, fenced, and made scientific discoveries.
Today’s scientists and pseudo scientists can’t even enjoy art. Let alone make any.
Report comment
And once “mental health” has its claws in you any community support you had before is terminated.
I had a dorm mom tell my friends at college not to talk to me. Only “mental health experts” were qualified to do so. It was dangerous for anyone else.
Horrible to have your nearest and dearest turn on you because some quack tells them you’re hopelessly insane. And urges them to make sure you keep taking drugs to make you act insane. “And if she has any problems she is lying about taking her ‘meds’ like They all do or she’s faking the seizures and pacing.” 🙁
Finally vindicated after 25 years thank God. At least my father finally believes me. He knows I’m not a monster after all.
Report comment
There are forms of non-violent hatred. But you’re right.
Murder requires hatred as well as anger.
Report comment
I know. If it were a big organization like NAMI putting it out I’d be more upset.
Plus no one has to wear that thing in public. 😀
Report comment
In some cases for unusually cruel murders they’ll “diagnose” the person after the crime is committed.
I remember a TV interview.
Interviewer: So Dr. X, why did that mother drown her preschoolers?
Shrink: Because she is bipolar.
Interviewer: How do you know she is bipolar?
Shrink: Because only a bipolar could do such a thing.
This says nothing about her motives. She was a profoundly selfish, unloving woman who wanted a fresh start on life and new boyfriend. Her children got in the way.
But the obvious explanation doesn’t sound scientific enough. Plus it scares people since we all are guilty of selfishness from time to time or neglecting those who need us.
By claiming only a special category of people called the “mentally ill” are capable of such actions and special scientists can weed out these Others from polite society it produces a sense of security for those not accused of being born evil. And it must boost their egos too.
“I thank Gawd I ain’t a lunatic.” (Dialogue from a Flannery O’Connor short story “Revelation.” The woman saying it is at the bottom of the Social Ladder.)
Report comment
I’m glad since it won’t help change people’s minds.
Report comment
And–according to psychiatry’s narrative the “severely mentally ill” have been around forever. Their “safe and effective medications” were–for the most part–non-existent till recently.
Yet though these magical snake oil elixirs are everywhere now and the “SMI” have always been around (according to shrinks) mass shootings occur more than back in the 80’s. Amazing how no one asks these head honcho shrinks WHY this is.
Report comment
Precisely!
This is not poor cognitive skills we’re talking about, but extreme anger.
Extreme emotions can make people do bizarre things.
Report comment
His views are believed by many and need to be addressed.
He has not called names nor made personal attacks on any of us. He posted a link to an article we disagree with. That’s all.
Report comment
Check this out.
There is a T-shirt on Amazon bearing the slogan “Bipolar. Heavily medicated for your protection.”
It’s recommended as a funny gift for “loved ones.” Nothing says “I love you” like calling someone psycho killer.
Not funny! Even if you take psych drugs by choice this is nothing to joke about and fuels the hysterical paranoia of all with psych labels.
Report comment
There is stuff to laugh at and educate us online. Without the internet I would still be in bondage to “mental health.” A lot of shrinks hate public access to the internet for this reason.
One said the internet caused “agosognosia.” Then he had to backtrack and dance around since devout eugenicist that he was he firmly believed only “biological defectives go crazy” and reading something online can’t alter DNA.
The internet has brought to light a lot of ugly truths the psychiatrists longed to keep hidden. More and more are finding out now that that Artful “Science” is based entirely on a lie dreamed up by ad marketers. And its “treatments” nothing but random acts of brain damage.
Report comment
Good reason to quit social media. So bad grammar = “schizophrenia”?
The Stupid keeps rising. 😛
Report comment
Thank you for your kind words DS. But at 46 I’m too old. It’s already too late.
Report comment
Well said!
Report comment
Sometimes I suspect that too PD.
Plus more gruesome publicized murders means more power and authority for the members of the APA. Probably rubbing hands with glee every time a shooting occurs like Tim Murphy the Merciless did and using it to sell themselves as saviors of humanity.
I’m sure Torrey doesn’t want these to end. No crime sprees means no reason to demand his victims be handed over for cruel, pointless experiments.
“So what if all my test subjects and a few hundred other people die in the process? As long as I get the glory and honor I deserve as a legitimate Scientist. Real SCIENCE folks!”
Report comment
Defamation of character by accusing the innocent of violent crimes they never committed.
Report comment
Know something all mass shooters have in common? They are very, very angry.
We all get angry. But we–as a society–used to control our anger better and realized murder was unacceptable.
Sadly SSRI drugs lower empathy and many atypical neuroleptics such as abilify harm the brain centers linked to impulse control. Empathy and self control are essential for preventing murder.
No drug can stimulate the conscience or help us love our fellow human beings.
One solution would be taking someone seriously when he posts threats on social media about killing people. A lot of the killers crave notoriety and have done this.
Report comment
My sister has a really bad reaction to penicillin, but no one punished her for that. Probably because real doctors prescribe it.
Psychiatry refuses to admit their drugs ever hurt anyone. They are above the law. Better to brand everyone they make deathly sick as hopelessly insane and punish them by tripling the drugs. And upping the dose of the drug that drove them bonkers. That’ll learn ’em.
Report comment
Randall, there is a lot of irrational violence. But anger, like other extreme emotions, causes irrational behaviors including violence.
A lot of those labeled “mentally ill” do not act this way. I got my label of “bipolar 2” because I sought help for depression and had a bad reaction to the drug Anafranil. I have been iatrogenically damaged by decades on a cocktail.
I have broken no laws. I don’t ask for the right to bear arms.
Just live peacefully in the community where I sought refuge and am slowly healing after 23 years on the same class of drugs that harmed me. Do people like me deserve to be segregated? Do we deserve to be treated worse than felons? We are not all criminals.
I have struggled with guilt for living on disability. I have a strong work ethic. I volunteered regularly even when I couldn’t find a job. We are not all lazy.
I have a number of health problems linked to decades on a cocktail. The segregation, isolation, and extreme poverty with the constant threat of homelessness is horrible. I have done nothing to deserve this. All I did was seek out help for anxiety and depression. And religiously obeyed my doctor’s orders even as my brain and body fell apart. We are not all lazy or irresponsible idiots who refuse our “meds.”
(It took me years to come off mine because I felt I owed it to society. How I decided to come off them is a long story.)
I will never have a family now and am overcome with grief. The “mentally ill” aren’t allowed to marry due to financial penalties and I chose celibacy rather than promiscuity like the “mental health” staff encouraged. We are not all hedonists.
We are not monsters just because we had a rough time long ago or even a simple drug reaction. The vast majority of us are in this situation.
Report comment
Famous Shrink: All the mentally ill are murderous monsters who should be locked up or neurologically crippled to keep them from hurting you. And, by the way, we need to end stigma by educating the public on how dangerous these creatures are.
You don’t hear cardiologists going on TV and telling everyone how evil heart patients are. Or gastroeneterologists warning how everyone with Colitis is a menace to society. Only psychiatrists do this.
And that “Doctor” Torrey, is why there is an anti-psychiatry movement. No one but a psychiatrist demonizes all those he claims to help and maligns their character simply because they made the horrible mistake of seeking “help” from his profession.
Shame on Torrey for his defamation of law abiding citizens.
As far as Obama and Trump go, chalk it up to ignorance. Like 90% of the public.
But Torrey knows it is a lie. He has been quoted as saying he knows the drugs aren’t that effective in Anne Harrington’s book. Yet he goes on the air saying these things and writing slanderous articles. Hence he is truly reprehensible. 🙁
Report comment
My condolences Nita.
This is why I would never advise an abused wife with kids to seek out psych “help.” A psych label will just make the courts award custody to the abusive dad.
Sites where abuse victims are urged to get “help” for “clinical depression/anxiety” when their sorrow and fear are justified and the abuser will be the one who benefits…these advisors mean well…but their foolishness hurts many. Makes me want to rip out my hair!
Report comment
I would say that defending SSRI drugs and then blaming the patients for not being able to think straight of feel better causes stigma. Pretending these drugs are magic bullets (denying any painful effects they produce) that would make “crazies” normal if they weren’t refusing to take them is as stigmatizing as it gets!
Report comment
She was taking X when she killed herself.
Solution?
Prevent suicidal despair by putting even more people on drug X.
Those spreading this message are ignorant of the facts (drug X was tried and found wanting.) Or very stupid. Or liars with no regard for their fellow humans.
Report comment
I remember some shrinks lecturing us at NAMI, “The problem with the mentally ill people is they’re totally ignorant of nutrition and have no self control.”
Report comment
“Life is great. You’re just depressed because you’re a ‘mentally ill’ loon. And if our ‘meds’ don’t make you feel great you’re a severely mentally ill liar.”
Ain’t pharma-psychiatry grand? 😛
Report comment
My mom has always fretted, fussed and obsessed over What Others Think of Us.
I believe that’s why she feels the SSRI drugs help her “nerves.” Blunting her ability to care helped her for a while. Though now she is very ill with IBS and tired all the time. Can’t read more than a page at a time and passively watches TV all day.
Report comment
Yes. Case workers are often kind but clueless. One was leading group and tried to pronounce SSRIs phonetically. Bless his heart.
Report comment
My counselors were (mostly) kind and well meaning. But because they believed I was a hopeless “SMI” their advice was useless when not actually depressing.
Report comment
A leftist on FB was complaining about America. One of his top complaints was not enough being spent on “mental health.”
I wish the government would confiscate the multi billions Big Pharma companies have made and give $500,000 apiece to everyone crippled by their psych drugs. If it bankrupted them so they could no longer hurt people, so much the better. Of course that ain’t gonna happen. 🙁
Report comment
I agree with you there Alex.
Report comment
Real doctors heal. They don’t make a living lying about problems to patients to sell them mind altering drugs or perform random acts of violence on vital organs by pretending its surgery. (And slandering their patients on national TV.)
Report comment
Ironically I could perform constructive work before psychiatry had its way with me.
A bunch of physical, autoimmune disorders now. Map-fingerprint eye distrophy and inflammatory bowel disease. As well as CNS damage and heart arrhythmia.
Report comment
Nearly all the kids in foster care wind up on psych drugs PD. Read Anatomy of an Epidemic.
CPS puts kids in foster homes.
Report comment
Something you never hear about is “non compliance shaming.”
There are dozens–no hundreds of websites and mags where people can praise their pills, shots, shocks. NOWHERE but MIA and a couple private sites are available for those of us who know we have been damaged.
Weird how happy consumers keep logging in here to yell at us instead of going to one of the countless other sites to tell how happy and productive their “meds” have made them and how they found salvation in psychiatry alone.
Report comment
Ironically, Bonnie, your resistance to psychiatry has been likened to eugenics by a grateful consumer who stirred up trouble because of your scholarship. I get so frustrated with battling mindsets that assume brain chemical imbalances are a PROVEN FACT and nothing I say or show convinces them.
I just want to rip my hair out at such willful ignorance. Why is reading an article from the APA journal or this resource or listening to me talk about Anatomy of an Epidemic too hard for my friends? Why this resistance to learning anything not approved by the boobtube? 🙁
Report comment
The big wigs running the APA and inventing “illnesses” for the DSM have an astounding lack of empathy or compassion. And they have diagnosed themselves as Sane. 😀
Report comment
The vast majority of the public–and even many non-celebrity psychiatrists–believe that Oldhead.
Report comment
And yet SSRI and SNRI drugs are supposed to prevent violent crimes according to prominent shrinks. 🙁
Report comment
Laws are always legal. But they can be very immoral.
Read “Civil Disobedience” by Thoreau.
Report comment
I misread the New York Times book review.
Dr. Harrington said psychiatrists should focus on people who are totally “out of it” and leave depressed people and squirming children alone. It went on to say these people are already in institutions or prisons. Dr. Harrington does NOT recommend putting them there.
Report comment
Thank you for this review Sandra Steingard. I ran into a copy of Anne Harrington’s book when visiting the library of another town and could only skim it.
When she talks about a “sympathetic view” of psychiatry I ask myself “Sympathetic towards whom?”
I am one of those who derived more harm than good from standard psychiatric treatments. Not psychotic till I took Anafranil for 3 weeks. Got diagnosed “Bipolar 2” and put on 3-4 drugs as a consequence.
After 20 years I became chronically ill. Finally went off the drugs in secret with only online support. Forced to live on SSI even now thanks to IBD and nerve damage from long term drug use.
It troubles me that Dr. Harrington wants to lock up swaths of people in institutions. Doc Torrey, our old friend, has gone on record saying we need to build more institutions. So is he admitting his magical pills are NOT 100% safe and effective after all?
A lot of us have suffered long term iatrogenic damage already from drugs that drove us crazier than before we took them. Now they want to simply lock us up and throw away the key? 🙁
Report comment
Arguing with psychiatrists and “mental health” professionals is indeed futile.
While I agree with Bob Nickel that these changes would be an improvement, I also agree with Oldhead. The “MH System” is too invested in preserving its own money and power to reason with survivors.
Rather than waste time and energy debating shrinks, we need to win over the kind but deceived people who honestly think psychiatry helps its victims. A lot of people I know fall in this category.
Report comment
It was a joke PD.
I was writing in the fictitious persona of Dr. B.S. Gas, professor of psychiatry at Windy Way University.
Report comment
Creating trauma and calling it care. Sounds right.
Lol.
Report comment
Let me clarify. By “always” I meant generally and from the beginning. Ever since Francis Galton cooked up his theory that crimes were due to “bad breeding” and certain families of “moral degenerates” were less than human.
After World War II killing/sterilizing the unfit became unpopular. Even among psychiatrists.
Recently they found they can transform people into cash cows through the drug induced “bipolar” epidemic. Since they can’t milk dead cows they oppose suicide–assisted or otherwise.
My fear is since shrinks are notorious for forcing their own will on patients that euthanasia–once permitted–would NOT be truly voluntary. They can force AOT on people after all.
Why not say, “Your honor, Erma Jones thinks she wants to live. This is only due to lack of insight into the severity of her condition. The only humane thing to do is permanently fix her schizoaffective/BPD/agosognosia by mercy killing. If she screams and pleads for her life remember it’s just her illness talking.”
For now, in America, they find it more profitable to slowly destroy our brains and other organs.
Report comment
Precisely. I can’t afford Dr. Kelly’s expensive diet of wild salmon, grass fed beef and organic veggies. Let alone pay for office visits.
Glad for those she has helped. Maybe they’re depressed wives of millionaires.
Report comment
Very good Bob!
For number 2 I wish people would acknowledge the drugs the person is forced to take on AOC can make them weirder than ever. Abilify has 4 warnings about “odd behaviors” as a potential side effect and has been linked to an increase in poor impulse control.
Yet Abilify seems to be a favorite for AOT. How is this supposed to help people act responsibly and obey the law?
Report comment
People are killed by orderlies in psych wards too. Sera Davidow has written articles about that.
NAMI makes another public statement linking violence and felonies to psych labels. Great PR. For NAMI.
Report comment
Thank you Njinsky. 🙂 Actually the Parkinsonism is gone. Got off the drugs in time.
My big problem now is microscopic colitis linked to a wider auto-immune disorder. There is a lot of that in our society you’ll notice. Also terrible short term memory and other things linked to the CNS. My dad is begging me to get tested for Lymes though i think it’s not that.
The reason I said such harsh stuff about Torrey is because he strongly supports “medications” to prevent crimes or just odd behaviors on the one hand. But in a book called Mind Fixers by Anne Harrington he goes on record as saying the only real help for “schizophrenics” is institutionalization. Either his memory is failing or he is talking out of both sides of his mouth.
Report comment
Drugs did NOT make me passably acceptable to people.
Doubling body weight, tics, inability to observe social cues or hold a job…not passably acceptable in our society. So that in itself is a bald faced lie.
Report comment
The American Psychiatric Association is against AA too PacificDawn. They oppose it on the grounds of how unscientific it is. 😉
Report comment
…As medical professionals, we cannot afford to view our patients’ afflictions in emotional or humanizing terms. Nor can we afford the luxury of supposing that the only treatment we offer causes permanent incapacity and premature cessation of physiological vitality.
The best evidence suggests that focusing solely on the modality of treatment (whether pharmaceutical agents, ECT, or a synergistic combination of both with compliance enforcing therapy) is more important than the outcomes themselves.
Needless to say, we must take precautions against plunging heedlessly into the maze of spontaneous eclecticism in our modalities. If we recommend therapy or treatment for actual (physical) diseases we may undermine the credibility of our science.
We must allow ourselves to be guided by studies designed to prove the effectiveness of the treatments we offer and the evidence carefully selected to support the same….
It is time to consign this “chemical imbalance” metaphor to the dunghill of vicious cartoons. As medical practitioners of a legitimate science it is an outrage that people actually think we believe the nonsense which we publicly promote.
~from “Professional Outrage of a Well-Informed Liar”
Don’t bother searching the archives of the APA Journal. This is a satire.
Report comment
Thank you for this story Lee. What you experienced sounds like what they used to call “negative self talk.” Till throwing pills at every sorrow became the rage.
Did you know William Glasser (who rejected mainstream psychiatry) considered voice hearing and hallucinations as subconscious acts of creativity?
Your art is beautiful. I wish you success in your future career.
Report comment
Some politicians hire “hatchet men” to slander opponents. We have that going on with the APA letting drug commercials, “mental health” centers, and NAMI do its dirty work.
Report comment
Precisely!
In defense of Pies he himself never spread the lies. (To my knowledge.) But he was more than happy to let others do so.
Report comment
Removed for Moderation
Report comment
Thanks for the info Wallenfan.
Report comment
“Show me the biomarker!” should be the rallying cry of survivors.
Assuming–for the sake of argument–that a pre-“treatment” brain abnormality existed, until they knew what it was how can they claim the drugs corrected it?
Report comment
Ever notice how a lot of articles from psychiatrists’ journals contain literary allusions and quotes from poets? To my knowledge they are the only medical specialty that does this regularly.
Pies is really ticked off at all the people claiming psychiatrists actually believe in the chemical imbalance.
Kudos to all his tireless efforts at putting out PSA’s and going on speaking tours to educate the public so they know better and how he used professional influence to stop NAMI from printing misleading brochures. Lol.
Report comment
“Theses drugs improve people’s lives.”
Shrinks’ for example. They earn $250,000 per year (or more) and professional glory by defaming people, making them die 25 years prematurely and forcing them to live in poverty and segregation.
What psych drug was Jill Kesti taking to keep her awake for 3 weeks? Mine was Anafranil. And shrinks pretend the psychosis was caused by noncompliance since “the meds never have that effect on anyone.” And after 3 weeks of no sleep I had bizarre notions of running around naked and screaming obscenities I could barely repress. MEDS COMPLIANT THE WHOLE XXXX TIME!
I tearfully told my parents how I couldn’t think straight on massive quantities of drugs, though I took them faithfully. The good doctor would kindly gas light me. “Those medications are 100% effective on anyone who takes them exactly as prescribed. And Haldol doesn’t cause seizures. Your daughter is obviously non compliant and lying like They all do.”
After years in the system I took to saying stuff that wasn’t true. Mom wondered at it since I had always been scrupulously honest.
Shrinks had turned me into a drug addict. Which explains my personality change. And due to their gas lighting I could no longer tell truth from reality.
Thank God I kept from killing myself and am mentally the woman I used to be. Only older and horribly sick with IBD which I blame on 2 decades of SSRI drugs.
Report comment
Lots of places like that in my state. I don’t mean to brag but NAMI gave us a D- in our mental illness system. It’s hard to get better than that in America. 🙂
Report comment
And the McCarthy era.
Psychiatrist: Do you have schizophrenia?
Accused: Yes.
Psychiatrist: You admit it. I sentence you to 12 mg Haldol a day for life.
Psychiatrist: Do you have schizophrenia?
Accused: No.
Psychiatrist: Schizophrenics lack insight so you must be a schizophrenic with agosognosia. I sentence you to 15 mg Haldol a day for life. Strictly voluntary, but if non compliant we have far less pleasant ways of dealing with your kind.
Heads the shrink wins. Tails you lose.
Report comment
K
Report comment
I would do everything in my power to prevent someone from suicide, aside from seeking psych “help.” That would make them far more likely to kill themselves. Some even do it while locked up.
It’s extremely hypocritical for shrinks to oppose suicide under the guise of “compassion” when the profession has always been about involuntary euthanasia and sterilization of those they deem “unfit.” Their “treatments” are nothing but a slow, agonizing death sentence. After 25 years of “help” I can barely leave my house most days.
Now some shrinks support “assisted suicide.” Totally voluntary–but we all know for those labeled “SMI” the word voluntary means absolutely nothing for us.
If someone really wants to destroy him or herself they don’t need a doctor to do it. Ending a life is way too easy. I think that’s why Szazs mocked Jack the Dripper Kavorkian.
Report comment
Pshaw!
The “good doctor” Torrey says! Who are you mere mortal human to question this self appointed deity?
Not like psychiatrists would ever knowingly deceive patients or the public after all. 😛 Psychiatry is the only medical specialty that publicly maligns the character of its patients on national television.
Torrey’s sole goal in appearing on TV is the CREATION of stigma against those his profession has damaged. Ending it is the last thing his ilk would want.
Far worse than Farid Fata. He lied to patients, crippled and killed them. But at least he didn’t gas light them and go on TV accusing them of murders never committed and urge the public to segregate and imprison them.
Seems Torrey knows his BS can no longer be hidden. Too obvious his poisons are not magic cure-alls. So he is now running around urging to have all the “SMI” locked up forever. Seriously.
Wish we had surveys on how many folks labeled “SMI” started out normal and rational till psychiatry got its claws on them.
Report comment
I’m sure he was suffering. But there are laws against public nudity for a reason.
If some women or children had run across a naked man screaming at the moon in twilight they would also have suffered.
Not sure what to do in cases like that. He probably would fare better being tried for the crime of indecent exposure by a real court for human beings.
Report comment
K
Report comment
K
Report comment
Back off Torrey.
I’ll sick my cat on you. Bwahahaha! 😀
Report comment
Neither justice nor mercy from the Mental Illness System that promises both.
Report comment
Bingo.
Just think. Destruction of higher reasoning functions does not lead to a reformed moral character.
Report comment
I have a friend who works as a speech pathologist. Largely with those suffering from TBI.
She told me 90% of those who suffer extensive brain damage become far nastier and harder to live with. (I believe individual choice plays a role too but we’re discussing generalities.) When people are drunk or high on heroine or meth they don’t turn from evil killers to sweet, gentle little lambs.
Yet shrinks like Torrey claim that the way to prevent crime is to force everyone his profession has written off as hopeless and subhuman to partake of “treatments” consisting of—traumatic brain injury and mind altering drugs. Despicable. And–even those who choose to take those drugs he lies about suffer from the public defamation. Muzzled or not, no one wants to hang with Hannibal Lector
Lying all the time, zero empathy for those harmed, a profound hubris setting himself over those he has branded subhuman–these are all personality traits Torrey has displayed. Why have we made men like him the moral guardians of our society?
Report comment
Well said!
Report comment
It was a relief to me when I found the Biomedical model had no basis. That people like me were not monsters after all and the drugs really were messing up my thinking. (Not imagining it or faking the Parkinsons and seizures.)
Like that scene in T.S. Eliot’s The Cocktail Party where the woman is glad to know things are (partly) her fault because she can change them after all.
Psych “diagnoses” are unduly pessimistic and lead to us being treated worse than convicted felons. But they help shrinks and groups like NAMI make money and maintain political clout. So they will keep promoting them unless forced to stop.
Report comment
Not interested in dating now. Trying to pick up the shards of my life. My body is slower to heal than my soul oddly enough.
Looking for work. Too old for kids so I’ve lost all romantic interest.
I don’t think Melissa meant to give me callous BS. She honestly believed there was some invisible bond between everyone labeled “bipolar” so only we can understand each other. Well–it does sound like BS now that I think of it. 😀
Almost married a fellow “bipolar” I had little in common with. He had the mind of an 8 year old and wanted a mother.
Maybe try POF or OKCupid? Wait till they really know you before sharing your story.
Report comment
I sought out psychiatric help because of some rough experiences. An awkward loner in my teens. Had felt there was something bad/wrong with me for a long time.
My dad was a clergyman who couldn’t keep a church for long. How long he stayed depended on how well his family members–as well as he–performed for the “right” people. Appearance was EVERYTHING. And we were watched ALL the time. I felt woefully inadequate.
2 years of sexualized bullying in high school made my anxiety worse than ever. (And made me loathe my body.)
Depressed and anxious as a college freshman I was afraid to leave my dorm room. Dr. M gave me Stelazine which took the edge off my anxiety. Unfortunately it made me sluggish, numb and the good effects wore off.
I mentioned I had negative thoughts that wouldn’t leave on a visit later. Dr. M put me on Anafranil. No sleep for 3 weeks. 23 years in the MH System as punishment for my bad reaction to a drug he put me on. (My sister is allergic to penicillin but no one suggested she be shamed and segregated forever.)
I would have told young me to 1. Get a driver’s license despite Mom’s protests. Can’t go car free in Indiana. 2. Drop out of the university and get a clerical job after a year at business school. A 4 year degree was my parents’ dream. Not mine. And they were dead wrong when they said it would help me find work. No MI history and a good work history are the ticket. I held several jobs in my teens and had a reputation as a conscientious worker. All ruined at age 20.
Report comment
Fewer Americans are choosing to become psychiatrists. Not sure why; it’s complicated.
Psychiatrists tend toward arrogance because their authority is absolute and goes unchallenged in our courts.
Report comment
Lol. 😀 The real reason “mentally ill” often choose to only date each other is the reason lepers in leper colonies do. No one else will dare touch these social outcasts.
Not bashing those called SMI. Discrimination is real.
Report comment
Psychiatrists have a vested interest in keeping everybody their profession “diagnoses” “medicated” till they die alone, crippled, and miserable in a HUD slum or institution before their fifty-third birthday. Why? So these professionals can enjoy the glory and honor of Real Scientists and honest-to-gosh doctors and live lavish lifestyles on seven digit incomes.
It’s obvious who benefits the most from neuroleptics.
And the bare idea of survivors who escape and lead good lives despite mainstream psychiatry’s best efforts must stick in their craw.
Report comment
Loved your essay Phoebe. I’m checking out your art site.
I find caffeine helped me create in the past. Now I have one cup mixed with half decaf each morning. Off psych drugs now I find more caffeine too stimulating. Used to drink 5-10 cups a day on “meds.” And still slept 10-12 hours out of 24.
Report comment
Tiff how does your son seem better? Are his odd behaviors and words lessened? Maybe his anxiety is better. I had short term benefits on the drug Stelazine at 6 mg for a few months.
I seemed better on psych “meds” to those around me because I was too tired/deadened to do or say anything weird. But i could never build an adult life for myself, wound up with OCD, couldn’t get along with others due to emotional numbness, have not been gainfully employed since my teens and was in low grade depression non-stop for over 15 years. Frequently suicidal.
I went off my “meds” without my family’s knowledge. Asked forgiveness rather than permission. Mom was shocked at how improved I am now, but my organizational skills and short term memory are horrible and may not improve much. Still, my OCD is gone along with extreme depression. I get along better with people when not exhausted from the iatrogenic disease I developed and am motivated to keep my room clean (despite aforementioned fatigue.)
Mom swears I used to need the “meds” though I was fully compliant during my freakiest episodes. The numbing out would make me do dumb things I never did before. Short term effects were way better than long term.
Report comment
Tardive psychosis came with my experience on neuroleptics. i didn’t know that was a thing for decades. Doctors told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and it was just my “illness” talking when I tearfully told everyone ‘Antipsychotics make me psychotic.”
Report comment
People have the right to act stupid and make mistakes.
A major mistake a lot of moms make is protecting kids from taking risks/making dumb mistakes. How else can they learn and grow up?
Report comment
Bwahahaha! 😀
Discontinuation of beatings improves health too.
Report comment
Yes. What “schizophrenics” have in common is being drugged up with neuroleptics.
No neuroleptics = no cognitive impairment.
As Peter Breggin says shutting down the brain is how these drugs work.
Report comment
Thank you Dr. Paula.
Trying to fit human beings into neat little pigeon holes is actually what we call stereotyping. “All women love to knit.” Part of the problem with racism/sexism/other prejudice is it claims everyone in Group X is alike–lumping diverse individuals into a blanket category and subtly dehumanizing them in the process.
Report comment
The only significant thing about this piece of news is that Psychiatry Research admits what most familiar with the System have known forever.
It’s worth noting that 2 people can have the same “diagnosis” with no traits in common. Yet shrinks say we are all alike and should be subjected to the same “treatment” and psycho-therapists have told me I should only date others with my label. Since being called “bipolar 2” is way more important than life philosophy/religion, common interests, personal connection and life goals.
We’re all alike after all. 😛 Grrr!
Report comment
I think Matthew Warren was an introvert. Just a theory.
Saddleback is really into group activities and Rick has gone on record saying “Jesus was an extrovert.” I refer you to an analysis of that mega-church in Quiet by Susan Cain.
As a preacher’s daughter I got tired of being in the public eye and the constant criticism. I also need my downtime and the pressure–even as a child of nine–led to a couple break downs.
Report comment
“I don’t have data for this, but…suicide risk is greater for those undergoing psychotherapy….”
Well publishing articles based on such data would be unethical anyhow
Report comment
Thanks for pointing this out Hobbes. 🙂
Report comment
Became suicidal after being drugged up on 10 mg of Haldol and labeled SMI got me kicked out of college and my zoned out behaviors infuriated my long suffering family. Was put on Zoloft and a “mood stabilizer” in the psych ward.
After 22 years on a “cocktail” I tapered off over 13 months. I have the will to live again, sickly as I am thanks to a ruined digestion. Never suicidal.
Just an anecdote. But the psych community loves anecdotes and uses them all the time. They just don’t like mine because it won’t sell their pills.
Report comment
My nightmare with anafranil.
No one listened to me either. 🙁
Report comment
Sorry. I agree I should have used scare quotes.
Report comment
A sure fire proof of good insight is when a shrink holds up four fingers and insists you see five. By means of their safe and effective treatments you wind up screaming that you do indeed see five. And you do. Thus they restore their vic–uh–patients to sanity.
I never knew what insanity truly was till I sought “help” from a shrink. His methods created my madness.
Report comment
So in the case of that man, he was using his “mental illness” label to hurt others as opposed to having others use it to hurt him?
Sounds plausible. I have seen cases of that, though they’re fewer than most people admit.
Report comment
Not to worry Steve!
The Mental Illness Centers help with weight gain of 100+ pounds by mocking everybody for how fat they are in day treatment. Some scrawny little case worker with full gym membership who doesn’t take the neurotoxins they’re forced to, lectures “clients” for more than an hour at a time about how “mentally ill” people have no self control.
Also had a joker who ran the “Club House” ridicule us for sleeping to much and being too thirsty. Accused us of dipsomania because our mouths were dry. 😛
Report comment
I relocated. I promised to find a new “mental health” center and then didn’t.
Off my bipolar inducers now. Building my health up and looking for work after 25 years in the Madhouse Without Walls!
No one knows I’m supposed to be an “unmedicated bipolar” since I don’t act the part, not being on the drugs that caused my psychosis/mood swings anymore.
Report comment
Good point!
Robert Whitaker comes to this same conclusion.
Psych drugs can help short term, but long term they will destroy you.
Report comment
Tardive psychosis is real.
Mine was iatrogenically caused by massive quantities of Haldol and Stelazine. Along with Parkinsonism, mini-seizures, and OCD I had not exhibited before taking psychiatric drugs.
I started out depressed and anxious because I feared social rejection. Psychiatry made my fears come true and almost drove me to suicide.
My tale is all too typical.
Report comment
I agree with Rosalee, Bob. I would welcome a continuation of this essay.
Glad you went through with your decision to make a career change. You sound like you are good at working with people. As a former engineer you have a lot to offer adults in remedial education.
Report comment
Njinsky I know it wasn’t a movie. I wish it were.
Totally stupid. And, as others have pointed out, beating someone over the head with a wooden ball bat can have similar benefits.
I remember reading a report by Dr. Abrams about how some institutionalized people were cured of “schizophrenia” by accidentally spilling boiling water on themselves. The only reason psychiatrists have not tried boiling water is it would be hard to cook up some sciencey sounding gobbledy-gook to establish how they ARE SO REAL DOCTORS! 😛
Report comment
What I had in common with other “bipolars” were the problems created by those claiming to help us. Extreme poverty/unemployment, obesity, excessive thirst, sleeping all the time or not enough, relationship problems because our relatives learned we were “psychotic monsters,” and the ever present threat of homelessness (thanks to the extreme poverty, unemployment, and relatives’ shunning.)
All caused by the stigmatizing lables and drugs handed out so freely by the Mental Illness Center.
Report comment
My condolences Ted.
Report comment
PD, I don’t subscribe or write to NAMI, BipolarHope, Wellness Place, etc. Just pointing out to those who want to sing the praises of their psych remedies that there are dozens if not hundreds of other sites on the internet that allow them to do so.
Report comment
Never heard of a school of psychiatry called “critical.” It refers to a way of perceiving psychiatry versus “anti” or “pro/mainstream.”
Yes “therapists” who exist solely for the purpose of forcing kids to repress abuse memories are pretty evil, though I have not actually met any.
My mom’s counselor did the exact opposite and helped her remember stuff she had buried and deal with it. Encouraged her to get her 4 year degree in education and pursue a career as a teacher. A great “treatment” for depression before the bio-model took over.
Now all they do is throw pills at everything. Counselors provide no advice to those branded SMI beyond “take your meds and accept how hopeless your life will always be.” Because of this wide-spread sell out I avoid counseling and urge others to do likewise. Especially at those “Mental Health” Indoctrination Centers. 😛
Report comment
Oh brother.
Maybe the devil wanted to see Gene tormented through shock therapy. *Eye roll.*
A lot of supposedly religious folk will sell out to pseudo science when it fits their purposes. Like when some church goers argued eugenics to exploit other ethnic groups. Since eugenics presupposes evolution–not arguing that here–but the 19th century church did not, they decided God created whites in His own image. But other people evolved from apes. (Nowadays scientists say “a common ancestor.” I’m talking about Victorian science.)
Report comment
Pills don’t feel shame. People do.
When a shrink–or at least as often a Big Pharma marketing huckster–points a finger at someone putting down someone being harmed by their quackery they have four fingers pointing back at themselves!
Psychiatry is nothing but SHAME if you take away the trappings of drugs and psycho-surgery.
Report comment
IMO the lies mean it’s not truly voluntary.
Were Dr. Farid Fata’s patients voluntary victims when he subjected them to numerous rounds of chemo under the pretext that they had leukemia? If a doctor sells heroine to his patients by telling them they have diabetes and it’s insulin are they voluntary?
The only excuse I can give for psychiatrists is that SOME–not sure how many–actually believe the lies they promote about the “chemical imbalance.” According to Dr. Pies they are uninformed. Tsk tsk. So bad to accuse his profession of ignorance. He’s proud of what a well-informed, professionally competent charlatan he is. 😀
Report comment
Hey Someone Else.
I thought of your story as soon as I read the title to this. 🙂
Like you I started out with a mild problem. Anxiety and depression instead of smoking. Got “help” and went completely bonkers. The quacks pretended to be surprised.
Psychiatry is never having to say you’re sorry.
Report comment
Absorbed my own mother’s fears.
She loved us dearly and meant well. But as an intuitive child I picked up on her pain. (Her own childhood.) Along with the community politics associated with Dad’s career.
Report comment
Psychiatry: the science of shutting down thought
I understand Doc Pies wants a new name to rebrand their image. Maybe trade in “psychiatrists” for “anticogitationists”?
Report comment
Great point!
Report comment
I have been shamed numerous times for not taking my “medicine.” Ironically this was when I took them religiously. They were like food or oxygen to me….I thought.
Then I would be consumed with self loathing and suicidal longings. The pills were magic. So it must be my fault I couldn’t think straight, gained 60 pounds in 3 months, couldn’t study or understand social cues anymore.
Tapered off them. Lo and behold my head didn’t spontaneously combust from all those imbalanced chemicals reacting. And gravity still exists. My folks didn’t know about it for over 32 months. And I was living with them too. They were kind of surprised.
Yep. Psychiatrists were wrong after all.
Report comment
I think Francis 3 has a good idea.
This is supposed to be a Critical Psychiatry site as opposed to Anti Psychiatry.
Get a bunch of anecdotes together for a just and balanced view of the psych treatments. Both sides though.
Report comment
How about avoiding homelessness or an institution?
Taking my “meds” did not help me with either.
Now I can finally work again. My own anecdote.
Report comment
There are places like BipolarHope, NAMI, WellnessPlace, etc. where you can do that.
Why do you call them psychological instead of neurological BTW? What’s the difference? And if there isn’t one why is the terminology different?
Report comment
Requiring Big Pharma to shell out $1,000,000 to maintain each of the “mentally ill” brain trauma victims they have created would be a very good thing. Especially since it might force these unaccountable corporations to downsize and focus on medicines that help people. Instead of crippling and killing the formerly healthy. And ban the drug ads
Report comment
Twitter has really gone downhill.
A great tool for stirring up angry mobs with minimum appeal to reason. Perfect for a “science” consisting of nothing but political propaganda and marketing campaigns.
Report comment
A lot of us don’t WANT to become homeless PF.
If you enjoy sleeping under bridges and dumpster diving for meals go for it. But you don’t speak for everybody.
I will pass. Got a job now. And I am grateful to be able to work so I can avoid institutions or life in the streets.
Report comment
Not Stockholm Syndrome for all of us.
I honestly believed the lies NAMI pushes. That my “mental illness” was caused by a proven chemical imbalance.
When I found out the truth I was devastated. But instead of “killing the messenger” I planned a suicide. The plan was really an effective one. If a dear friend hadn’t stopped me I almost surely would be dead.
Report comment
There are plenty of ex-smokers who act pretty self righteous toward those struggling to quit. And formerly obese people sneering at those who can’t lose or are too busy with other stuff to do 24 hours of step aerobics a week.
Report comment
Trauma Inflicting Coercion.
Appropriately called TIC. And they’ll have tics aplenty along with seizures, tardive psychosis, morbid obesity, akathisia, and diminished IQ. All children being groomed for lives of isolation and physician induced disability so these Dr. Mengele wanna be’s can try cruel pointless experiments on them.
Pardon me while I go off and cry.
Report comment
So Oldhead you never had a shrink say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with you. You look perfectly healthy. But your behaviors/thoughts/mannerisms/tone of voice bug me. So I’m going to lock you up and experiment on you with a bunch of mind altering drugs. Been ‘tested’ by the place that manufactured them. No conflict of interest there.
“Nobody knows what the long term results of these drugs are. Or even how they work. But I’m sure they work cause Yolanda, that hot babe of a Pharma rep offered me warm doughnuts–and further…office calls–if I try this out on a lucky consumer.
“So how bout it? You don’t want poor old Doc Quackenbush to go doughnutless would you?” 😀
Report comment
I’m leery too Frank.
Know what would make me celebrate? A bill requiring the bureacrats and Rx drug dealers to leave our kids alone.
Never trust the Mental Illness makers. Especially when Big Brother has got their back.
Report comment
There’s a thing called the Sunken Cost Fallacy. After a heavy investment–be it money, time, effort–people prefer to keep investing in it though common sense would be to cut their losses and bail out.
I think that’s at work among the “consumers” who get angry at the messenger. Perfectly normal human reaction.
Report comment
I agree KS.
Many of us who have been damaged by these poisons–and know it–are shamed ALL the freaking time. I was shamed for a bad reaction to Anafranil and given the label “bipolar” for life. Psychiatrists love to punish their test subjects for suffering too visibly.
No offense toward Sera Davidow, but I wish our feelings (and ruined reputations and blighted lives) were taken into account more often. I don’t perceive this article itself as guilty in that respect though.
Report comment
It’s harder than quitting booze or cigarettes. Harder than quitting heroine even. Because your “dealer” has the legal ability to hunt you down, lock you up, and torture you for “just saying no.”
The courts defer to the dealers and their mobster cronies (Pfizer, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, etc.) buy all our politicians. Sickening!
Report comment
“Pill shaming” is as absurd an etiological construct as “mental illness.” Pills feel no shame.
People who have been tricked or forced into taking them do. They have already been hurt, and the truth can be very traumatic, causing them to “kill the messenger.”
Those who squeal loudest about “pill shaming” are usually the Patient Shamers. Psychiatric bigwigs blame everything on their victims in order to exonerate their precious pills. Shame on them!
Report comment
Franarchist I have to agree with you there. The key word being GOOD counseling. And consensual. Any other kind is abusive.
Report comment
How about “mental hygiene”? The very sound of that is creepy.
There’s a reason they don’t call those indoctrination camps “mental hygiene centers.” 🙂
Report comment
That too. 😉
Report comment
The virtual conference sounds good Eric. Count me in.
Report comment
In lieu of the term “mentally ill” I suggest the term “psychiatrized.” This term could include grateful “consumers” as well as escaped survivors and everyone in between.
Report comment
Who will rehabilitate Ted Bundy?
Dr. Josef Mengele at your service.
Physician, heal thyself.
Report comment
I was an ideal patient for years. Took my drugs believing they corrected a brain anomaly that would make me do evil things if left unchecked.
No one ever asked me what “diagnosis” I preferred.
I am finally overcoming challenges and changing in my mid forties, but only because I left psychiatry.
Report comment
And yet “diagnoses” ARE lifelong. NAMI and psychiatrists routinely tell people they know why they’re “defective.”
Realizing you were lied to all your adult life and cheated out of everything for no good reason is unavoidably hurtful. 🙁 Stopping the lies may spare others our suffering.
They get you fired from jobs, denied housing, denied custody of kids, and kicked out of college.
They allow harmless law-abiding citizens to be lumped into the same category as serial killers.
My label made me want to kill myself. Rejecting it gave me the will to live.
Report comment
Njinsky, teaching people who “know” what is false is harder than starting from scratch.
Is that what you’re saying? If so, I agree.
Report comment
I prefer the term “emotional distress.” Dr. William Glasser called bizarre mental states “creative symptoming.”
Have you read any books by him Mad in Canada? I recommend Choice Theory. The neat thing about Reality Therapy/Choice Theory is you wouldn’t have to get your son to go. You could learn how to draw him back to the real world using methods Glasser employed.
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
Robert Whitaker covers that in his books Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America. Interesting stories.
Report comment
You think the government will stop psychiatry and save kids from abusive parents who use psychiatry to drug them?
Ever heard of Justine Pellegier? Other parents here could tell of the fights they had getting their kids out of institutions with shocks and drugs.
Psychiatry IS the state.
Report comment
MIC speaking as a “mentally ill” adult child sometimes I pity my parents more than myself.
Off my drugs which never helped and made me crazier than before, I still can’t work. My SSI won’t pay for housing so I have to live with my retired parents. In my mid-forties and have the symptoms of bad Crohn’s Disease. Iatrogenic damage on my digestive system.
It’s rough on my parents. Having me here depresses Mom. Sometimes I feel guilty for just existing.
The reason I took the drugs that have crippled me and kept me from gainful employment as an adult is it pleased my folks. Mom repeatedly told me how my “meds” made me more pleasant to be around so they must work. 🙁
Looking back she disliked me talking. The solution was never talk unless she speaks to me and she picks the topic. I do this and she thinks I don’t need “meds” though she still threatens to send me to a “home” when I misplace things. (TBI is to blame.)
Report comment
Hugs Njinsky.
We need less emotional PSAs perhaps. But the pro psych side has plenty of emotional stuff too. Crime dramas. A lot of NAMI stuff. Books like Crazy. And don’t forget the way Tim Murphy exploited those grieving families to get what he wanted.
Report comment
Well conditions like anemia, thyroid disease, Lyme’s disease, traumatic brain injury, etc. can cause depression and problems thinking straight.
BUT we don’t see psychiatrists to treat these problems. We see nutritionists, endocrinologists, neurologists, and so on. The best way to get TBI (and other physical problems) is to see a shrink. As Peter Breggin says, “That’s how it WORKS.”
Report comment
Ironically the bio model can increase prejudice toward those labeled “mentally ill.”
Once my dorm mom found out I was supposed to be “schizo affective” she grew hostile to me. I was horribly depressed and had drug induced seizures. My mom had a similar reaction. Cause TV shows depicted how wonderful psychiatry is.
Everyone blamed my grief/loneliness/seizures on not being compliant. Because “meds” magically fix everything. So if your suffering annoys others you must be a naughty patient who deserves to be punished.
Report comment
Dr. K was being sarcastic.
His writings make it clear he opposes sedation, blaming problems on a fictitious plague, or scams. That last word is a give away. 🙂
Report comment
It’s especially bad if the community knows you’re supposed to be “mentally ill.”
Another reason to dislike HUD ghettos.
Report comment
The Law cannot save.
Report comment
Good point.
Report comment
“…I would add that MIA shouldn’t have research or science departments; you can’t beat something by joining it — by doing so, you’re legitimizing it.”
A lot of us survivors agree Dr. K.
Report comment
“Mental illness” is not a social construct but an etiological one. 🙂
Report comment
Our society has no patience with the unhappy.
There’s a real stigma against unhappiness. Unless you get an official “diagnosis” and take pills for it. Then you can explain your blues by saying “I have a real brain disease causing my depression. I take drug/s X for it.” Then everyone is expected to show sympathy.
My response? Who the heck says you have to grin ear to ear all the time? We have the right to feel unhappy.
Report comment
The poem Ecclesiastes was written over 2 millennia ago. Nothing new under the sun.
Report comment
Thank you Dr. Caplan. I like your analogy of psych labels as constellations in the sky in They Call You Crazy.
I see them as libelous slander. Moral judgments against people. Psychiatrists go on TV saying things like, “That mother murdered her two sons because her bipolar made her do it.”
Great plug for his profession. But it’s a slam against everyone he and others have labeled who do NOT murder small children.
This used to really bug me, even when I thought psychiatry was real medicine and followed their orders exactly as told. No other medical specialty regularly badmouths its patients. You don’t hear cardiologists telling how those with heart disease are violent. Nor osteopaths saying those with bone cancer are deceitful.
Report comment
Yes Steve Spiegel. But they sell more pills by denying our humanity.
Report comment
Gabrielle Glazier.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/
The a priori assumption being that psychiatry is rational. To my knowledge there are no surveys or papers proving that alcoholics put on SSRI drugs fair better than those who don’t. (If there are she should have cited them. Citing the psych “expert” was apparently sufficient for Gabby.)
But don’t question Real Science folks.
Report comment
Bcharris I don’t ascribe my vitamin deficiencies to my emotional problems as a teen, but they are the result of iatrogenic Crohn’s Disease symptoms from decades of using them in good faith.
Report comment
Psychiatry is the perfect religion for the control freak materialist.
Report comment
“Sick” is a synonym for evil as far as psychiatry goes.
“Why did that man murder that kindergarten class?” With the understanding that his ex taught the class.
The normal person says the man was evil.
The mainstream shrink says he was “sick.” Then he calls a bunch of law abiding citizens “sick” as well so he has an excuse to treat them like criminals.
Report comment
Lauren, your story is a lot like mine.
Went on Anafranil in 1994. Had persistent thoughts I hated and was very nervous.
Anafranil kept me awake for 3 weeks. I hallucinated for the first time. Dr. M blamed it on me, claiming Anafranil never had that effect on anyone.
Ruined my life. Escaped “mental health” at 43. Living with my elderly parents after 2 years. Too damaged to work.
Report comment
So PacificDawn are you an attorney? Or someone else in the legal field?
Report comment
I was using “psychic” in the pejorative sense. Like the con artists who advertise on daytime TV.
Psychiatrists claim the ability to read minds (can tell what the thoughts of patients are) and predict the future (will he commit a violent crime or not.)
Report comment
There are a number of us who were turned into “ne’re do wells” through psych treatments. Psychiatric drugs, labels, and hospitalizations ruined all my hope for gainful employment.
Crippling and defamation is a great way to ruin a life. 🙁
Report comment
Rick’s Hope4MentalHealth circle is disingenuous.
The five Scriptures have nothing to do with psychiatry. Ignorant or dishonest.
The Five “Truths” of the circle should read:
1. I’m upset. vs You’re sick and crazy.
2. I need hope. vs You need a counselor to tell you to give up on life.
3. I need love. vs You need to be segregated.
4. I need help with obvious life problems. (Poverty, physical issues, abuse.) vs You need drugs and probably shocks too.
5. I’m unhappy. vs You are a disease.
That’s what Psychiatry is really about. Rick doesn’t mention this. Perhaps he wants to offer real help, but why not just give it instead of promoting drugs and segregation?
Psychiatry did NOT save your son Rick. Why push it as the magic cure to everybody else?
Report comment
I agree.
It’s not an either/or thing.
A lot of the abolitionists worked the Underground Railroad before slavery was finally outlawed. We need a similar support system to help people being destroyed by psychiatry.
Report comment
Murphy is a psychiatrist. Not someone who talks to his objects of “compassion.” Just a provider of drugs and shocks.
He transitioned easily into politics since he already had professional experience as a lying, controlling bureaucrat.
Report comment
Lawrence left out propagandists, professional psychics, and cult leaders.
Report comment
Queen of Swords, we need to help each other on a personal level. Not just political.
Activism is hard to do when you’re housebound from iatrogenic damage, ostracized thanks to your “diagnosis” or on the verge of homelessness.
Survivors like you are human beings. Not lab rats or political pawns.
Rant over.
Report comment
Been reading about Maiti Girtanner who wound up disabled after being tortured by a doctor in an interment camp. She never could pursue a career as a musician.
Those of us who have been “treated” for more than 8 years struggle with real disabilities–inflicted by respected professionals we often trusted. 🙁
Report comment
Psych drugs do not fix bad behaviors. Interesting this creeper was getting “help” the whole time he was doing this. Yet shrinks claim they are messianic figures that can transform mass shooters into Gandhi.
Report comment
A lot of states that can’t pass this could get around it by framing this as “treatment.” You can get away with any torture if you claim it’s for the Greater Good. (Like a shrink’s yacht payment and a drug CEO’s summer home.)
Report comment
Ugh! I’d rather squeeze a raisin anytime.
Report comment
Since shrinks are within their rights to imprison, damage and kill at their discretion we need a legislative overhaul. Changing the unjust law is essential.
Report comment
I take a monthly shots of B12. Low on B12, B6, iron, D3 and about everything to a lesser degree.
Report comment
Probably because burnout is the same as depression. Overwhelming feelings of sadness.
Report comment
Yes. Sadly there is a dearth of accurate information. I believe 90% of America’s population thinks all “mental illnesses” are caused by chemical imbalances proven to exist in people’s brains. Because NAMI and other educational orgs tell them so.
Report comment
I was drinking 2 quarts of coffee a day for a while. The only thing that made me feel alive. Now I drink one cup diluted with decaf and often get jittery.
i also lost all interest in diet soda pop since going drug free.
Report comment
More people involuntarily forced onto disability through the crippling effects of long term drugs may not be the (stated) intention of those supporting more “mental health.” But that is the practical result.
Spending more money to keep more people from gainful employment. Keeping them OUT of the workforce and forced to live on public assistance. A colossal waste of money. And human lives.
Report comment
Just read an article bashing AA as unscientific. The argument is alcoholics are people with the “brain disease” of depression which SCIENCE proves drugs called “antidepressants” can fix.
Like saying you can cure alcoholism by taking crack. Woo hoo!
As long as the quacks get paid. 😛
Report comment
In NAMI it was squeezing a raisin. (Then smelling and eating it.) Bwahahaha! 😀
Report comment
The Perfect Person is high in extrovertism. High in conscientiousness. Middle ground in agreeableness. Very low in ability to feel negative emotions. And a 0 in openness.
The Perfect Citizen.
Report comment
Don’t forget fortune telling. “Mental health” clairvoyants claim they can foresee crime sprees before they happen.
Yes, some psychics give tips to police officers in solving cases. But the only psychics judges themselves listen to are the self-styled prophets who can allegedly foretell the future of someone they never met at a hearing. And no one holds them accountable if murder/suicide occurs under treatment they impose either.
Report comment
Ad hoc fallacy.
Report comment
That’s why getting drunk or high are called “self medicating.” Alcohol and street drugs are no more dangerous or counterproductive than psych drugs. And if your bar tender or dealer locked you up to force his wares on you he would do serious time.
Report comment
Allow me to pour sugar in the engine please. I’m the expert.
The engine was already broken so whatever happens is your car’s fault not mine. It happened DESPITE my brilliant auto repair skills. Quit sugar shaming!
Report comment
Elizabeth I’m so thankful your son’s story has a happy ending.
I think the reason the suicide rate is so high among psychiatrists is many still have consciences.
This denial of the damage psychiatric drugs do is appalling. Patient shaming must stop!
Report comment
Label a bunch of shy, awkward , unhappy kids hopelessly defective.
Force them to take a cocktail of mind altering drugs.
Publicly parade them in front of others. Tell them how sick and crazy these kids are in order to lessen “stigma” through “education.”
Good golly, what could possibly go wrong with this plan?
It IS the perfect plan. Assuming the plan is grooming a criminal class through the educational system.
Report comment
Psychiatry is the penal system which exists solely to punish the suffering. Not the bullies but the bullied. Not abusive parents or spouses but battered kids and spouses.
If you suffered TBI, Lyme Disease, recent emotional trauma (like rape or homelessness) or a bad reaction to the SSRIs they hand out more freely than office mints don’t worry.
The mental illness makers will hunt you down and punish you good. Ensuring a lifetime of every abuse imaginable. 🙁
Report comment
I like this article Sera. Great insight into why folks want others on these “meds” though not the “insight” shrinks commend.
Report comment
Punishing law abiding citizens for crimes they MAY commit. Sadly, taking these drugs will not gain the “consumers” acceptance but worsen it as they create “positive symptoms” that never existed before taking the drugs.
My parents are taking my decision well because 1. They see I’m doing better drug free and enjoy better emotional stability off the cocktail supposed to “treat” the mood swings it caused. 2. They actually want what’s best for me. Not all family members do though. 🙁
Report comment
Szazs was not some cuddly, warm teddy bear you could hug. BUT he wouldn’t lock you up, drug you, or accuse you of crimes you never committed (diagnosing.)
Yes, he lacked mercy. But I appreciate his justice and rigorous honesty. Most shrinks pretend to be nice but are unmerciful, unjust, and phony as the house in Leave it to Beaver.
Report comment
Just in Oregon mind you.
Report comment
I guess Steve means Szazs acknowledges depression can be a symptom of a physical disorder like anemia or hypothyroidism. But we treat those with iron and thyroid supplements. Not SSRIs.
Report comment
Thinking people do.
Report comment
There is a religious group called CAPA. In America. Christians Against Psychiatric Abuse. Pentecostal. NOT affiliated with Scientology.
Most churches believe in psychiatry because they can’t believe doctors and pretty TV commercials could lie so flagrantly.
They also embrace psychiatry because it allows them to ignore the emotional needs of rejects.
They can look on them and say, “Be warm, be comforted, and take your ‘meds.’ Am I my brother’s keeper? Of course not. We have psychiatrists who serve that role.”
Report comment
Sodium nitroprusside. Hypotension, headaches, dizziness and a host of heart problems. Minor side effects for us crazies according to the APA.
It also causes restlessness and anxiety. Which they will either 1. Accuse the “patient” of faking. 2. Attribute it to the original malady they presuppose exists. Always the patient’s fault. Shame patients. Not pills.
Report comment
They need to treat themselves for antisocial behaviors.
Report comment
Many weak vulnerable individuals are incapable of protecting themselves. Against psychiatrists bent on locking them up, segregating them, and inflicting bodily damage through drugs and “surgery” for the purpose of destroying neuro function.
The treatments don’t heal or restore balance. All they do is impede cognitive function. Otherwise they would raise IQs instead of lowering them.
It’s not about helping people live longer. Nor restoring independence or productivity. It’s about rendering “patients” docile and passive to the point of helplessness. That way they can stuff us away in institutions or “mental health” ghettos.
🙁
Report comment
I remember a “mixed” NAMI chapter. “Loved ones” and “consumers” in one room. One woman would tearfully bemoan her “sick” son and his refusal of “treatments.”
His symptoms? He would dress up like Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean. Also deride the political party his mom and her friends belonged to. And he refused to look for work or move out.
Obviously he was acting rudely and irresponsibly. He probably enjoyed watching his mom clutch her pearls at his weird public behaviors. She needed to give him an ultimatum.
If “Jack” ever got the alleged help his mom wanted him to she will enjoy having him live in her basement unemployed forever. Or institutionalized. But as long as they are on drugs it’s okay if they can’t keep a job, live independently, clean their room, or string a coherent sentence together. It’s also okay to have horrible health problems and die prematurely.
If a psychiatrized person commits a violent crime or suicide while “compliant” it’s ALWAYS in spite of the high quality care received. If they have gone off these decisions are always attributed to lack of compliance.
Does it make sense? Nope. That’s NAMI. 😛
Report comment
$90,000,000 is just the tip of the iceberg. The MIS is geared to keep people messed up so they never function as adult human beings. Those places are run on tax dollars.
And thanks to segregating psychiatric labels plus all the “safe and effective” damage they endure, the human beings used as lab rats are forced to live on tax payer expense. With government run housing or institutions due to the housing shortage. And since they’re forced out of the workplace there are fewer tax dollars going in as well.
For all the goods and services paid by taxes my guess is the psychiatric bill could easily top $1,000,000,000 in one year. Abolishing psychiatry would be a boon to the economy.
Report comment
You can stand up for yourself without being violent. But I agree psychiatry enables abusers. Sometimes through cluelessness.
Report comment
There are a few counselors I wouldn’t mind seeing. But since they’re not affiliated with the MIS (Mental Illness System) Medicaid wouldn’t cover them.
Unless you get a decent one you’re better off without. I’ll see a clergy member instead. Or an older friend. No fee to talk to them!
Report comment
“You are completely screwed!” says the Quack.
He should know. He’s the one who screwed you.
An American idiom, Niels. “Screw” can mean mess someone up or cheat them.
Report comment
He knows that ECT can be forced, if he’s a shrink. So that makes him a liar.
The Science of Lies.
Report comment
Get churches and other nonprofits to shut their doors to NAMI.
Report comment
The psychiatric system is funded largely by tax dollars since few of their “consumers” are capable of gainful employment. Hence most of us have no real say in our treatment. You get what you pay for.
Persuading the public footing the shrinks’ actual bill of the damage psychiatry has created would be a worthwhile endeavor.
More so then begging the shrinks to please be nice to us. (Bwahahaha!) Shrinks are paid to drug, shock, and convince the public they’re being saved from “mentally ill” monsters. Not likely to stop voluntarily.
Report comment
Glasser referred to “psychosis” and extreme states like depression and EDs as “creative symptoming.” Often the person is creative and has unusual thoughts as a coping mechanism or escape device according to him.
That’s why art can help. You don’t need a “therapist” either.
I’m doing creative writing and graphic art. A lot of my annoying tics have gone away.
Report comment
You got that right Jeffrey!
Never wanted to be a lab rat for a career. Not my choice.
The APA claims their pills turn bad people good and irresponsible people productive. Yet their magic wonder drugs work by shrinking the frontal cortex (impulse control) and amygdala (altruistic behaviors.) How’s that supposed to work?
Report comment
Megan sounds perfectly credible to us.
Report comment
I agree with Oldhead.
Report comment
Psychiatry is the only branch of accepted medicine to regularly demonize its “patients.”
You won’t find cardiologists going on 60 Minutes to terrify the public with tales of all those monsters with heart disease who should be locked up and subjected to cruel, pointless experiments to protect the public.
I know pro psychiatry friends who got angry at Murphy for maligning them. Basically called them murderers.
Report comment
Nope. The Mental Illness Guy is actually Snidely Whiplash disguised as Dudley Do-Right.
Report comment
I guess it’s becoming harder to conceal the damage done by these drugs.
Too little too late.
Report comment
Psychiatry is an ideal religion for do-gooder materialists.
I have an idea for a book called The Gospel According to Psychiatry targeted to a religious audience. A lot of church goers don’t realize that psychiatry is based on the assumption of bio-determinism and that souls do not exist.
Report comment
So do you believe in the chemical imbalance myth RR? (The APA does not.) I ask this because you left this as part of the quote from me you take issue wiih.
If they don’t know WHAT the pathology is how can they correct it–assuming the a priori assumption is true? They are likely exacerbating the original complaint and/or adding new ones.
Lyme disease, anemia, Hashimoto’s are indeed physical problems that cause messed up thinking. None are treated by shrinks.
Report comment
Nothing like some nice grape kool-aid to wash down the psychiatric cocktail. Not cyanide exactly. (Much slower acting.)
Report comment
I THINK the writer was being satirical. But it was hard to tell.
Report comment
Removed for moderation.
Report comment
Psychiatrists sneer at the idea that “mental illness is a social construct.”
It might more accurately be called an etiological one.
If it is indeed a brain disease–as they preach–why not call it a physical illness? (Like brain cancer or epilepsy.) Or simply an illness?
Report comment
Ironically I was drinking their kool-aid at the time.
Report comment
“Yer a Psychiatrist Harry: learning psychiatric concepts through the fictional worlds of Harry Potter and Game of Thrones.”
Real science folks!~Fuller Torrey
Report comment
Including self hatred because you believe you’re a “violent, dangerous defective SMI.” (All terms used by psychiatrists to describe their charges.)
At least that’s over. Thank God for agosognosia!
Report comment
Those of us who’ve suffered are dismissed all the time. MIA is one of the few places we can share our experiences.
Have you ever read Robert Whittaker? Anatomy of an Epidemic is an eye opener. Also the works of William Glasser, Terry Lynch, Joanna Moncrieff, and Peter Breggin. All the latter are certified psychiatrists.
Report comment
I remember reading Touched by Fire and thinking how odd it was that most famous “bipolars” who accomplished stuff were “untreated.”
I mentioned this in group. The leader got nasty but never explained why. 🙂
Report comment
Sounds like Catani and Mazzarello are more concerned about making money than learning, discovering,making art, or doing science. At least Leonardo is dead so they can’t hurt him.
Why not “diagnose” a dead man? Psychiatrists have no physical markers for locating any of the diseases they invent. My guess is the APA frowns on “armchair diagnosing” since that will let the cat out of the bag about what frauds they are.
Report comment
ECT is effective in adults because it causes massive brain damage rendering them childish and easy to control. It’s also wonderful because it’s a sort of surgery (destructive) showing that psychiatrists are really honest-to-gosh medical doctors after all.
Report comment
I haven’t been “heard, respected, or helped” by many working for “mental health” since I was labeled. Those working for centers adopt a certain attitude toward the “SMIs” in their care.
This attitude is one of condescension to inferiors. I imagine ethnic minorities get a double or triple dose of this smug, patronizing treatment.
Report comment
I have forgiven the men who lied to me and damaged my life. But I will not claim they did me a favor. Nor stop fighting the institution of abuse which treats law abiding citizens the same as sadistic serial killers and punishes people for grief, Lyme Disease, or entering the Foster system.
Quit punishing those who suffer Psychiatry! Quit mutilating grieving widows, battered wives and the elderly by frying their brains. Quit forcibly drugging abuse victims, people with head trauma or digestive problems, and children who squirm in class.
Report comment
Jennifer maybe you should relocate. You aren’t dependent on your parents. I’m not sure why they were concerned. Because you were “too” exuberant I guess.
If you were paying your bills and all the stuff adults are supposed to do they were misguided to even worry. Let alone have you locked up.
Report comment
The intense anger I experienced at those who lied to and about me frightened me at first. But it cured my depression.
Report comment
My parents–and others–were frustrated at the profound malaise I showed. Laziness they called it. But they wondered why the “meds” didn’t fix it.
Most “NAMI mommies” are themselves hapless victims drawn in and deceived by those frauds called psychiatrists.
They wonder why their adult kids become less able to care for themselves the more “treatment” they receive. Often they wind up burying the offspring they truly wanted to help lead an independent, quality life. 🙁
I can’t post links here, but on BeyondMeds.com archives Monica addresses how NAMI deceives everybody. Including family members who believe they’re helping.
They’re merely misguided. It’s the well-informed liars, with no compassion or moral compass, who deserve the blame.
Report comment
Mom admitted it was smart to conceal it from her til after the fact. She acknowledged she would have worried too much.
Report comment
Was that a grateful consumer praising the EC they had undergone? Wow.
I believe others have praised it after surviving it. Stockholm Syndrome perhaps. Or the Sunken Cost Fallacy.
The APA doesn’t list Stockholm Syndrome or Munchausen’s by Proxy for good reason.
To shrinks, Stockholm Syndrome is just “good insight.” Munchausen’s by Proxy makes you a “concerned caregiver.”
Report comment
I’m very glad you don’t agree with killing sprees.
Report comment
No, I don’t believe in mental illness. I was talking about friendship. Friendship is essential.
If you can’t tell friendship from psycho-therapy you must have it rough. I love my friends and family.
I haven’t had “therapy” in years.
Report comment
Michael Cornwall, is the FDA getting some kind of sweetheart deal from this? I smell cronyism.
The Food and Drug Administration has proven worse than useless lately.
Report comment
NeuroStigma is my pet name for that mafia.
Report comment
The reason I haven’t commented more is I haven’t experienced shocks.
But they ARE brutal. Random acts of brain damage. Like all the “help” shrinks offer.
They differ from neurologists in that their sole purpose is to destroy healthy brain tissue to make people dumb and helpless. It’s not about saving lives or improving the quality but turning us all into domestic animals.
Report comment
This is electrical shock we’re discussing–not drugs or counseling.
And it is not the same as corporal punishment. If EC were viewed as punishment it might be banned for being cruel and unusual. But since it’s viewed as medical treatment you have can’t make the same legal arguments against it.
Report comment
How about pride that you survived being lied to and about? Being tricked or forced to abuse mind altering drugs under the pretext they would “correct your brain chemistry”? Possibly brain shocks, imprisonment, and poverty?
That you figured out you were being conned and managed to go off a bunch of drugs as addictive as heroine with no help at all except an online community.
Psychiatric survivor pride!
Report comment
I can’t remember the name of the shrink who put me on 10 mg of Haldol. Caused some terrifying seizures with eyes rolling back and tardive psychosis. (Yes, that’s a thing.)
The “doctor” told my parents Haldol never, ever caused that kind of thing. Either I was faking it or it was my “schizo effective disorder” to blame. Looking back some of the orderlies–who treated me kindly because I gave them no problems and nicely pulled my pants down for the injection–reassured me the Parkinsonism, eye rolling, mini seizures were common and happened all the time. Hmm..either the shrink was pulling a fast one or knew less than the CNAs and orderlies. Take your pick. 😛
Report comment
I bet at least 90% of all psychiatrized folk would show marked improvement if taken off all their drugs. Most of us weren’t that out of it till the quacks got hold of us.
Report comment
What is “mental illness”?
A question the APA has never even asked itself is “What is sanity?”
To my knowledge they have never written a profile of the ‘Mentally Healthy Ideal” they cherish. It would probably stir up controversy if they did. Each would want the MHI prototype to be an image of himself. 🙂
Report comment
As someone labeled Bipolar 2 I believe all my “manic symptoms” were iatrogenically created by shrinks. I started out depressed and anxious. They helped by causing full blown psychotic mania with drugs like Anafranil.
They said i would need a bunch of drugs forever. That my reaction to Anafranil proved I was “defective” and I deserved a life of agony/premature death as punishment.
Got off their neuro-poisons. No more mood swings. My family is amazed. We realize now that mainstream shrinks are full of it. 😛
Full of themselves. Which is kind of the same thing. 😀
Report comment
Great point Frank.
Report comment
Thanks Annette.
Like you I see myself as spiritually well. Coming off my psych drugs was a necessary part of the healing of my soul.
Report comment
A therapist/counselor is like a spouse. An abusive one is far worse than none at all.
I quit seeing one when I realized the sessions were pointless. I kept talking about my problems in a loop like a hamster’s wheel. It did not help they were all in the pay of the “Mental Illness” System and basically just parroted stuff like “A disease like any other” and “be sure to take your meds.” In essence remind me I was hopelessly diseased at my innermost core and I should give up all hopes for my future. More depressing than a therapy session with my cat. 😛
Many do benefit. I did at one time–but the good stopped after I was diagnosed SMI. The label made them write me off as hopeless.
Report comment
Szazs decried “psycho-therapy.” My guess is he was a play it by ear counselor with methods/philosophy similar to Bruce Levine.
Report comment
If cigarettes, cold medicine, and nutrasweet can cause birth defects it’s a safe bet that psych drugs do.
My own theory on the “autism” epidemic is too much screen time too early in life. And “diagnosing” is extremely profitable. I believe they’re drugging the “aspies” now from commercials/news clips I have seen. (Is there a difference?)
Report comment
Also the article published here about how the latest scientific research shows no difference between the “schizophrenic” brain or the “autistic” compared to the normal.
Report comment
I agree with you–assuming ED enjoyed her reclusive lifestyle. From what I have read she willingly chose it. Her sister was also considered a failure (unmarried back then) and enjoyed an active social life.
Report comment
And Szazs practiced counseling “on consenting adults” as he described it.
Report comment
So sorry Alan!
Would it be possible to take your son out of Canada permanently? I escaped the System by relocating. Not hard to do in the States.
Report comment
Psychiatry creates insanity through the drugs it tricks or forces people to take.
When I saw Dr. M at 20 I was depressed and anxious. Thanks to the Anafranil he prescribed I went 3 weeks without sleep and had a terrifying break from reality. The experience was so scary I did anything shrinks told me after that to prevent the very breakdown THEY had caused.
Gaslighting is what psychiatrists do.
Report comment
He shouldn’t have gone on a murderous rampage.
Interesting they call him a “madman.” He was mad–or angry at the loneliness and rejection he kept experiencing.
Eliot Rogers could have used some help. Not from being locked up and tortured but simply someone willing to reach out to him with compassion. One true friend might have made the difference. 🙁
Report comment
Yep. Captain Obvious to the rescue! 😀
Report comment
Yes it is very pro pharma-psychiatry.
Articles like this completely ignore those of us who experience terror AND dry mouth etc thanks to taking the drugs. You complain to the quack. “How come I’m loonier than ever?’ He tells you the “meds” never ever do that and yells at you for “non compliance” though you take the drugs that mess up your thoughts and cause seizures. All you did was “pill shame” by honestly telling how they effect you.
Psychiatry is gas lighting. Pure and simple. They made me question my sanity until I totally lost it.
Report comment
Psychiatry exists to “other” individuals by labeling them “schizophrenics” so their communities will segregate them and help psychiatrists sell mind altering drugs by force.
Report comment
I have two friends killed by standard psychiatric “treatments.” If either had known about the survivors’ movement she might not have died. 🙁
Psychiatry has messed up my digestive system. I’m glad I escaped when I did. It was killing me too.
Btw, someone should ask shrinks who mock the idea that “mental illness is just a social construct” why drapetomania never made it into the DSM. Benjamin Rush firmly believed in it.
Report comment
Mad is a synonym for angry.
Nobody is angry all the time. So I consider myself Mad No More. Despite psychiatry’s best efforts to keep me in the role of madwoman for life.
Report comment
I firmly believe my thinking was messed up. (It still is a little.)
By putting me on mind altering drugs and telling me I could never change, the “mental health” system was the opposite of helpful.
I’m so thankful I have a soul again. I am a human being after all!
Report comment
My “meds” caused mood swings. Much more stable emotionally off them.
Glad I have more control over my emotions since the temptation to let bitterness and gloom take over is powerful right now. Part of grief at my wasted life I guess.
Report comment
Love without deeds is worthless.
Report comment
And the doctors, lawyers, professors, students, statesmen, journalists, clergy and bankers who don’t toe the line will pay for it.
Report comment
It doesn’t help that bribery of politicians is perfectly legal.
End cronyism by making it an impeachable offense for any politician to accept money from lobbyists. Better yet, ban lobbying groups.
Report comment
Sounds a little like my great aunt.
Part of it wasn’t just brain damage from the shocks but the humiliation and trauma of her ordeal in the institution. At least she had grandpa and grandma to save her from being locked up or dying on the streets.
Sweet lady. But very sad and crushed.
Report comment
Thanks Dr. Moncrieff.
It’s safe to say most shrinks are not Platonic philosophers. Yet mainstream psychiatry has subscribed to a dichotomous notion of the flawed versus the ideal real.
The unaltered sufferer is the “flaw.” The mad scientist sees himself as a godlike creator of the ideal as he alternately fries, cuts up, or chemically damages the brain of his hapless test subject.
It’s indeed odd how they think taking away people’s ability to work, have relationships, or live independently is an improvement. But acknowledging the damage would force them to accept responsibility. What’s a god to do? Blame the victim of course.
Report comment
It’s like the ending to Alonzo’s Oil. The source of injury was discovered by the detective work of a non medical amateur (me.) And removed.
But the damage is real. And not all reversible.
I’m grieving that I’ll never have a family. And all a tragic hoax!
At least I can appreciate things like music, beautiful scenery, and human interactions again. Not dead inside.
Sadly I long for companionship more than ever. But am a childless old spinster with no friends in a small rural community. Struggling financially in isolation, I weep almost every evening. Things look pretty bleak.
A lot of folks have it worse.
But this thought makes me sadder still.
Report comment
My condolences Ann. “Antidepressants” ruined my own life.
Anafranil triggered psychotic mania in me back in 1993. Couldn’t sleep for three weeks. Was called “bipolar” for having the audacity to get sick on a psychotropic drug prescribed by a doctor who didn’t care my life was ruined.
25 years on a “cocktail” including the same class of drug that caused the problems.
Report comment
Removed for moderation.
Report comment
“Please don’t imply that I have ever equated psychiatry with chattel slavery….”
I wasn’t. Actually I was reaffirming what you had already posted.
Report comment
I call them Mental Illness Centers since they exist to create mental illnesses and drive the consumed insane.
Report comment
Yes.
The truth is the “medicines” given/forced on people correct nothing. There is no pathology to correct. The chemical imbalance is a filthy lie. And the only way to think straight is to flee the SMI Lobotomizing Machine.
Report comment
“How many $ have you won for your clients?”
Steve McCrea is not a lawyer.
Report comment
Cool Don.
Glad you’re using social media to make a difference.
I may join your Facebook group.
Report comment
You might wonder why they don’t give us an extra $300 a month to rent an apartment. It would save the bureaucracy money. But it’s really all about segregating the “crazies” from the “normals” just like doing all they can to prevent us from becoming gainfully employed. The Vocational Rehab is a crock of bull. Their real job is to keep you from getting “uppity.” They told me I was “delusional” for wanting to work for the local newspaper even though I had a BA in English and writing experience.
Report comment
Or who have been too damaged to earn a livelihood by the liars pretending to help us.
Report comment
“It’s going to the providers.” You got that right, Corinna. 😉
Report comment
Demanding financial compensation for crippling and defaming is not incompatible with capitalism OH. Extreme medical malpractice and libelous slander by calling law abiding citizens a menace to society.
As far as chattel slavery goes, it was not psychiatry. Szazs himself took care to point out they were different.
Psychiatry can also be compared to a cult, a snake oil selling medicine man, a drug dealer on the streets, Dr. Fata who pretended healthy folks had cancer before crippling them with chemo, an abusive partner, and the Holocaust.
Report comment
Psychiatry itself is an alternative–to community support, holding criminals responsible for their behaviors, eating right, and legitimate medical care for Lyme’s Disease and countless other ailments doctors ignore in order to sell SSRIs.
A big reason communities push psychiatry is it helps them write off the suffering and annoying folks. Then they can pat themselves on the back for ignoring the outcast since “I’m not a professional. Only licensed professionals should talk to bipolar freaks like Mary.”
Report comment
“….it’s (anger) probably best tied to stories of actual physical or emotional abuse.”
Okay. So is anger justified after being lied to and about? Being called hopelessly insane and drugged out of my gourd and having my system wrecked so I can’t leave the house some days thanks to 25 years on a cocktail?
Would you say Dr. Farid Fata’s victims were justified in their anger?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farid_Fata
Google the name and read the horror stories of those he crippled and killed for dollars. That is the psychiatric racket. Only it’s legal when shrinks do it. 🙁
Report comment
Well, in Robert’s defense, part of MIA’s readership wants a new form of psychiatry, believing it can be rehabilitated. We disagree, but we are “radicals” even here.
Report comment
Cronyism.
Report comment
A lot of ex slaves were terrorized or murdered by the “night riders.” Or continued working on the same plantations “voluntarily” since they had nowhere to go.
You could call share cropping a kind of halfway house.
Report comment
This is as stupid as letting car manufacturers conduct all the safety tests on the cars they put out to market and not having anyone else hold them accountable. Conflict of interest should be obvious.
Time for Big Pharma to recuse themselves from judging products safe. But, since they won’t, they must be forced to.
Report comment
Never took lithium. Sounds nasty. I’m posting this article to Facebook and tagging the friend whose cousin swears he can’t live without lithium. At least W is benefiting from the placebo effect. 🙁
Report comment
Actually the myth of mental illness is tough to define.
For example the myth of Santa Claus is a magical man in red with a white beard and big belly flying to different homes on Christmas Eve with gifts for kids.
The myth of mental illness is more nebulous. Is it cognitive impairment? Or moral impairment? Or chronic unhappiness/distress? “It” is supposed to be a chemical imbalance in your brain.
Touched by Fire gives the idea that the “mentally ill” are geniuses. So not cognitive impairment.
Chronic unhappiness or distress? Why is that supposed to be a disease?
The public likes the idea that bizarre or vicious crimes are all “symptoms” of the mythical disease. But then Dr. Torrey says not to confuse bad behaviors with illnesses. So looks like it’s not moral impairment either.
And the chemical imbalance does not exist either. Dr. Pies is livid anyone would think he was ignorant enough to believe the lies he refuses to correct.
So mental illness
Report comment
How would demons fit in with a Pollyanna worldview?
I sought out a deliverance minister myself once. (Protestant exorcist.) My choice. Those who reject the supernatural and the Christian worldview would say it was all hypnosis or I was susceptible to the power of suggestion. That’s okay. I would not force it on anyone. It doesn’t work if you’re unwilling.
He treated me more respectfully than any shrink I have ever known. He did it all for free too.
It helped end my suicidal desires and depression eventually. I learned techniques from him that helped me finally banish the Evil Voices for good. Coming off the drugs helped me too.
If you don’t like or believe in that, that’s okay. I WOULD oppose forcing this on anyone the way shrinks do. Only consenting adults.
The government does not finance exorcists the way it does shrinks either.
Report comment
Psychiatry used to be the Cinderella of medicines, they say.
Now it has morphed into the Wicked Stepmother.
Report comment
The psychiatrists portray themselves as serving two functions.
A. Healers of diseased people. The “mildly mentally ill” or the “severe cases” if they have good insight and take 10 drugs at a time without question.
B. Saviors of the “normal” folk from the dangerous “SMI” ogres running around. If they are given full control of society and allowed to reign as absolute monarchs they will rid the world of crime.
Report comment
Yes indeed.
Report comment
“Bipolar” is more lucrative than “schizophrenia.” For Dr. Quackenbush and his twin brother Mr. Quackenbush the CEO of Phake–the major pharmaceutical company.
“Schizophrenia” usually only requires one drug. Though they tend to add on more. (It’s shrinks we’re talking about!) “Bipolar” requires at least 3 drugs. An SSRI, a neuroleptic, and a sedative. Though they may do 5 or 6 or more.
If you could force or con someone into buying 3 drugs or 1 which would you choose? (Assuming you didn’t have a conscience.)
Report comment
Not anti-allopathy. BUT…when we consider how every medicine works by overriding basic bodily systems (except for supplements) shouldn’t more doctors practice minimalism in how they prescribe things?
At least with antibiotics you only take them for 10 days. But when it comes to long term drugs, physicians should be especially careful.
Report comment
Sam, my family has been more supportive than most. My parents are realizing psychiatry did not help me and are surprised how much better I’m doing now.
Julie’s parents also were in her corner. Have you read her most recent article published here?
Report comment
Thanks Steve.
A lot of homeless people wind up that way BECAUSE of psychiatry. They can’t find employment due to work gaps from “treatments” and the drugs causing real disability. And their friends/family want nothing to do with them thanks to the label or are so emotionally abusive they prefer the streets.
Report comment
Ye Olde Scapegoat!
It enhances the self esteem of the “undiagnosed” by tearing a minority down. Similar to how racism “works” for non minorities.
Ever read “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson? *Spoiler.* Readers wondered why the people of the nameless community want to kill a random person. Sacrifice to some corn god? Literal witch hunt? My guess is the town needs someone to pick on every year. And–until she “wins” the draw–the woman stoned thought it was okay too.
Psychiatry is our real Lottery. It defines our nation more than Power Ball.
Report comment
Yes, wandering down aisles and talking to yourself or other “odd” behaviors are perfectly legal. Psychiatrists like Torrey and “concerned” PR guys like Jaffe are responsible for the irrational fear of harmless eccentrics.
Ideally a friend or family member would have talked to your brother. Likely he would have found them less intimidating than a police officer.
EVEN if he had reacted aggressively they would have realized he was beside himself and not pressed charges.
Report comment
And the “treatments” cause grotesque tics, double our body weight, and give us faces like masks. Also helping to set us apart.
Report comment
I am no longer suicidal. (Long story.) But if I knew a woman close by who was I would ask her to stay with me and offer her moral support till the desire passed.
Report comment
I’m NOT embracing stereotypes. But I have known mothers beside themselves because their “kids” of 17 or 18 lose touch with reality and talk to people who aren’t there.
You would maybe tell her to wait it out till the kid snaps out of it. But if his/her bizarre behaviors keep everyone up all night and those around her urge her to get “help” saying he will never get better otherwise, what do you think the stressed out, sleep deprived woman will choose?
Report comment
They should have seen that the ex-slaves were given more than the clothes on their backs after being set free. “5 Acres and a Mule” would have been great if it had materialized.
Report comment
Hmmmm.
Report comment
Thanks. But the original quote comes from Simon. 🙂
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
Let me play devil’s advocate OH.
Would the anti-psychiatry folks like those who are severely out of it (“mentally ill”) wandering around homeless muttering to themselves? Unable to meet their basic needs? Even–in rare instances–pushing people in the paths of oncoming subways? (There was talk of this happening in NYC.)
Would they like folks so unhappy they can’t–or believe they can’t–get out of bed not be able to talk to anyone or get over their overwhelming sadness?
Anti-psychiatry people need to be able to answer questions like this. Rest assured people will ask them.
Report comment
“Lumping an individual person…into a clustered group of diverse behavioral symptoms is badly motivated and asking for–perhaps even INTENDING–bad outcomes.”
It probably is intentional. Helpless and dependent lifelong consumers is a great business model.
Report comment
An insult to all PEOPLE labeled MI.
Not sure I understand what you’re saying either.
Does someone who experienced a bad reaction to anafranil deserve to be lumped in with child molesters and serial killers? Once women in my church found out about my “diagnosis” they tried to make me quit teaching Sunday school. Since the “severely mentally ill” hurt children according to shrinks.
Report comment
Well said.
Ban coercive psychiatry. Both involuntary “treatments” and lying to the public.
Report comment
Saying “mental illness” is a myth IS dangerous. To psychiatrists.
No absolute monarch likes being deposed. Plus–once the truth comes out–a lot of people will be very angry at the liars who stole away health, earning potential, and killed people. (Not counting suicide. Psychiatric drugs KILL.)
Remember how angry people were at Dr. Farid Fata?
Report comment
Seeking help from psychiatry is the old tale of selling your soul to the devil.
If you look at recent photos of “Doc” Torrey he looks a lot like my idea of Mephistopheles.
Report comment
The solution to abusive counselors is simple. Allow the person being counseled to fire them at any time without having to give a reason.
IN THEORY we could do this at the Mental Illness Centers I attended. But in actuality this was discouraged or even punished in the underhanded ways centers have.
Report comment
I hear voices–but it’s by choice. I write fiction and work out bits of dialogue between writing sessions.
That man might have benefited from the Hearing Voices Movement. Psychiatry obviously wasn’t helping him if he’d been in “treatment” since he was a child.
Report comment
Child molesting is a crime. There’s the legal system for folks who do this stuff.
And by calling those monsters “mentally ill” shrinks insult all the other people they “treat.”
I prefer to call psychiatric labels defamation of character.Once a law abiding citizen receives one he or she is treated worse than a convicted felon. In many ways.
Report comment
I disagree with this article that labeling ANYONE hopelessly insane and chemical lobotomies will help them.
Btw, I highly recommend Peter Breggins’s Youtube videos on “The Violence Initiative.” A very underhanded attempt to lower birth rates among POC (eugenics) by aggressively “treating” young African American men. Our good friend the APA is behind this creepiness. And almost no one is holding them accountable.
Report comment
Darkness of skin, the presence of boobs, poor fashion sense, liking cats when the shrink’s a dog person..All signs of serious mental illness. 😛
Report comment
I’m what. Lol.
Report comment
Oldhead has been sick. So is it all because he has “subsumed reactionary political views and is unable to come to a strong anti-psychiatry anti-psychotherapy anti-recovery movement position”?
I’m opposed to psychiatry because it hurts people.
Report comment
I have had two friends die directly from psychiatric drugs. As prescribed.
One had seizures from a neuroleptic, hit her head during a grand mal, and died at 29.
The other had been on a cocktail for years. Suddenly her decline accelerated. She went to a nursing home. Took to bed and all her organs began to shut down. Died at 49.
Report comment
Actually, according to doctrine, you can’t go to Hell unless you are dead.
Report comment
Good points Dragon Slayer.
Right now there can be no legal justice since shrinks are breaking no laws when they cripple, defame, and kill. Changing the laws by discrediting psychiatry as a legitimate medical branch is essential.
Report comment
They should have put more effort into skewing or spinning the results. 😀
Report comment
But people who use cocaine buy it on the street. They aren’t deceived into thinking they need it like a diabetic needs insulin.
Even if you’re okay, there’s a risk of an SSRI triggering an episode of “psychotic mania.” That can get you labeled “Bipolar” and put you at the bottom of the totem pole so you can never climb up again. 🙁
Report comment
A doctor who falsely diagnosed patients with cancer to sell them numerous rounds of chemo would disable people. This does NOT prove they had cancer to begin with.
Nor does destroying people’s brains and other organs with drugs, shocks, lobotomies, etc. prove they had a disease to begin with.
I guess “doctor” Pies is not used to debating. Petty tyrants who rule with an iron fist have a hard time talking to their serfs as equals and are unaccustomed to making a rational defense of their tyranny.
It must stink to have to give an account to others when you’re used to playing god. 😛
Report comment
Professional Outrage of a Well Informed Liar.
Shrinks make lousy philosophers. Name calling, strawman arguments, and accusing the opposition of wanting to kill you does not a sound argument make. Pies sounds–dare I say it?–downright paranoid. Guilt is making him go Lady MacBeth it seems.
Where are these death threats or rants? Maybe on the dark net. But certainly not here, nor MadBlogger or AuntiePsychiatry.
The wicked flee when no man pursueth….
Report comment
Apparently they didn’t destroy enough of our brain cells.
Report comment
Glad to hear that Shaun.
It stinks not being believed. Oddly enough I took to telling crazy stories after a few years of “treatment.” I guess I decided no one believed me anyhow so I told a lot of over the top stories. More dramatic at least.
The weird thing is I had always been scrupulously honest before. I couldn’t tell truth from falsehood at one point. 🙁
Not being believed by anyone drove me crazy.
Report comment
For the record the Soviet Union did not abolish psychiatry.
Ever heard of “sluggish schizophrenia”?
Report comment
I feel sorry for survivors who are still duped too.
Report comment
Sorry Sam. I guess I misunderstood you.
What I presented was not a Strawman argument though. Many argue in favor of drugs, shocks, etc. on the grounds that the brain must be at fault. You can find such an argument made by Jaffe in his review of Anatomy of an Epidemic.
Report comment
Sam, are you defending random acts of brain damage?
Brittle Bone Syndrome causes skeletal problems. That does NOT justify taking a crowbar to the limbs of the afflicted.
Damaging the brain further will NOT reverse neural atrophy from trauma!
Report comment
Sam, I’d say only a few here do. I don’t and many others don’t.
Reducing it all to class warfare is a gross oversimplification of views expressed, even for most commenters who espouse socialism. Not all of us are socialists either.
(Of course the bizarre comments stand out of the crowd.)
Report comment
I had problems before I got psychiatrized.
I’m against class warfare and covetousness.
Emotional suffering is real enough. But since there is no KNOWN link to brain problems how can psychiatrists fix it? How can random acts of brain damage help anyone?
If you read Anatomy of an Epidemic it’s not some massive conspiracy. Or it didn’t start out that way. Drug companies found they could make big buck$ selling fake remedies for coping problems and trauma.
Psychiatrists were desperate for enhanced status and prestige. They were mostly ignorant of how their prescriptions worked. At first.
Now there are a lot of cover ups. Big Pharma makes more money than any other industry in America. And a hefty chunk comes from drugs no one needs.
Report comment
I meant we don’t hear about the “treatment” they went through.
We always hear about the shooter’s “mental illness” even if a shrink has to “diagnose” him posthumously.
These experts always go on TV to demonize those they say they’re “helping.” By attributing murders to “mental illness” they’re implying all those they label are would-be murderers. Character assassination is an act of compassion for shrinks.
This idiocy leads to a lot of circular reasoning.
So, Dr. Quackenbush, why did the mother murder her two preschoolers?
Simple. She had Bipolar.
How do you now she had Bipolar, Doctor?
Because only a person with Bipolar would murder two small children.
Report comment
“Politicians love it when their constituents are quarreling among themselves.”
Good point Mental!
Report comment
It certainly isn’t.
I’m in a lot of physical discomfort now. My digestive system is screwed up. Hard to be charitable or just (online or off) at times.
But I’m better off than a lot of others commenting here. We survivors need to quit victim blaming whether we agree or not.
Report comment
Steve, I think there’s a time and place for the emotion of guilt like other negative feelings. Like anger it can be channeled to make us more sympathetic and conscientious individuals.
Mine was exaggerated as a young adult–leading to a few melt downs. I sought psychiatry out to cure my violent and sexual thoughts. Anger and lust. It replaced guilt with shame. You don’t DO bad things; you’re just a hopelessly bad person who deserves to be flung on the garbage heap. Existence was now a sin.
Selective bio-calvinism. Only a few are totally depraved due to bad genes/broken brains. There’s no redemption for them, just shunning and torture from the rest of us genetically superior saints. 😛
Bovine excrement!
Report comment
When you stop recovering you die. That’s how it works.
What if psychiatry makes someone sick and they are bedfast or homebound so taking care of basic needs is a fight?
I’m recovering from psych damage like many here are. Sorry us getting over ECT and drugging makes you angry, PacificDawn.
Denying “mental illness” is one thing. I don’t believe in it either. But you claim none of us are hurting or in pain. I find this callous dismissal of yours annoying–even infuriating.
Glad you’re not hurting. But many here are.
Report comment
Watched the video. That was a very weird statement by Warren. “The moment I had feared since he was born.” ?????
Did he think as he held his newborn, “Oh no. He’s gonna kill himself some day”?
Is he claiming to be psychic? Or maybe his weird idea caused a self-fulfilling prophecy. Or maybe he was just being a drama queen and made an over the top statement that popped into his head during the interview.
Rick Warren is nuts. He’s now embraced quantum mysticism. Which is to quantum physics what psychiatry is to neurology.
Report comment
And if someone goes on a murder spree while under psychiatric “treatments” we never hear about it. Since it’s always “in spite of” and shrinks can do no wrong. And the media has too many drug ads to “pill shame.”
Report comment
Thanks for this article Julie.
My grandpa urged me to go off at least some of my “meds.” My parents and I shook our heads. Didn’t he know that “science had proven crazy behaviors are chemical imbalances in the brain”?
Grandpa knew what he was talking about. He hadn’t been deceived by the shrinks’ cock and bull story.
You were right, Grandpa!
Report comment
Inside story.
Report comment
On the other hand if a scientist/doctor gets paid by a pharmaceutical company this presents a conflict of interest dilletantes don’t have. 🙂
Report comment
Not being able to sell company products may just mean you know they’re junk (or harmful) and you have a conscience. NOT a character disorder!
Report comment
Matt Stevenson was a wonderful human being. His death was a tragedy. The last thing I want is to disrespect his memory, Emily.
Report comment
The DSM is a book of fancy-pants insults.
They’re polysyllabic to make shrinks sound like the medical experts they long to be revered as. But they’re really as scientific as the insults of a playground bully who ridicules smaller, weaker children to puff up his own ego. He teaches other kids to call the weak outcast “stupid,” “dummy,” “loser,” “slow poke,” “retard,” “wimp.”
Psychiatry. The profession for overgrown bullies in lab coats.
Report comment
Matt might not have killed himself if he had given psychiatry the finger. Thus invalidating the gloomy, hopeless labels that made him hate himself and wish himself out of existence.
I’m not some DSM label. I’m a human being!
Rejecting psychiatry’s lies and drugs cured my desire to kill myself.
Report comment
I corresponded with Matt and was grieved at his death. 🙁
That was the equivalent of tap-dancing on a fresh grave during the burial ceremony.
And psychiatrists go around saying their patients have no empathy. Ha!
Dr. Pot diagnoses Kettle.
Report comment
I think it is OH.
Psychiatry would have killed my soul decades ago. But souls are immortal and cannot be murdered. Just corrupted when we make ethical compromises.
Report comment
There’s more to life than money, Oldhead.
Report comment
Bingo and Uno are the staples of “Day Treatment.”
The dumber an activity is the better. 😛
Report comment
All about him. Too many groups like that.
Report comment
Will have to read the actual article.
What do you find anti-woman about it, Judi?
Report comment
Without SSRI’s there would be no “bipolar” epidemic. Therefore shrinks and Big Pharma are determined to push them everywhere.
More “bipolars” means more people you can legally force feed 3-6 drugs instead of just 1. Who cares about the lives ruined and dreams crushed? Cha ching! $$$$$
Report comment
OH, the fact so many homeless people have psychiatric labels is confusing the cause and effect, IMO.
It’s hard to find a job when brain damaged from drugs and psycho surgery. Plus not having a job makes you less marketable–and explaining long periods of unemployment as “I was in psychiatric treatment” is not a good idea.
Not saying group homes are good. But my friend has been drugged and treated like a child so many years she can’t care for herself. Szazs realized this was a problem psychiatry itself creates.
Report comment
Hi Sandy.
Here’s a quote for you.
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” Maya Angelou.
You were right to point out how people like people like Teresa Sheehan are treated whether “mental illness” exists or not.
Report comment
Yep. If you got to know them, their own lives were pretty messed up. Worse than the “consumers'” often.:)
Report comment
Trump is a hothead.
Despite talk of more institutions, in Indiana at least, they are shutting down more state hospitals. My brainwashed friend–a proud “mental patient” was upset when she told me this.
I think this is a good thing–in some respects. But it may lead to homelessness too.
Report comment
i wasn’t referring to an economics system. A much broader view of the cosmos. And humanity.
There’s more to the universe than money after all. People were here before currency. 🙂
Report comment
Like Julie everyone turned on me after my SMI labeling. Being on 10 mg of Haldol didn’t clarify my thinking either.
Who told everyone I was a dangerous monster? The psychiatrist. His “treatments” got me kicked out of college.
What Cotton Mather was to the Salem witch trials,
McCarthy to the 1960’s,
Robespierre to the Reign of Terror,
That’s what the APA is to our age. Telling the population what enemies to hate and fear.
Report comment
Laura overcame severe psychiatric “treatment.”
Report comment
The exponentially larger percentage of the population in psychiatry’s grip is what Julie is referring to.
Report comment
Yes Steve. “Moral materialism” refers to consumerism and greed. “Philosophical materialism” is basically monism which psychiatrists subscribe to.
Many non psychiatrists do not. I don’t, and was surprised to find this is an a priori position of psychiatrists. Minds do not exist, according to Pies, Jaffe, Torrey and the rest. I had always thought, till recently, they had an actual pathology to work with. Wondered why they never used blood work or spinal taps to check the chemical levels in our brains.
Report comment
Hence the smashing of china. 🙂
Report comment
Don’t forget “drapetomania.”
Report comment
Yes. Peer run would be better. Nothing about us without us.
Report comment
No. That would be moral materialism, not philosophical materialism. There’s a difference, as G.K. Chesterton pointed out in Orthodoxy.
Report comment
If it’s peer run, that’s a horse of a different color. Never attended one of those.
Report comment
I agree Someone Else.
Report comment
Well said Sylvain.
It’s troubling too, that Big Pharma is so tightly coupled with the massive bureaucratic government. It owns all our politicians thanks to legal bribes called “campaign contributions” from the lobbyists representing these corrupt businesses.
Report comment
I agree DS. Psychiatry is a natural outgrowth of the philosophy of materialism. It emerged about the same time materialism became widely accepted by intellectuals in the late 18th century.
All bad behaviors stem–not from bad choices–but bad biology. Moreover, using the bio deterministic premise, the psychiatrist believes he can predict suicide and crimes before they happen through “symptoms.” These are composed not just of bad behaviors, but harmless quirks, expressions of emotional suffering, and what could be considered strengths in the mainstream population. To a non psychiatrist.
Report comment
The whole concept of “Mental Health Day Treatment” is profoundly insulting.
“You’re all alike.” Despite what those godlike shrinks said we were vastly different people thrown together with no common traits except being drugged out of our gourds and segregated from everyone else.
The “classes” were dull and so stupid they would insult anyone who wasn’t too sunk in their own self worth to get upset at being talked to like an 8 year old at age 38. 😛
Btw, that’s my experience. I’m not trying to bash Cody or anyone else in that circumstance. I’m mad at the folks who run those centers/groups. And that’s always been a patronizing “Normal telling us how hopelessly sick and crazy were. In my experience.
Report comment
Stephen, on some level I sort of chose the scapegoat role. I have always had poor coping skills and been too sensitive and cried too easily.
I wish I had been made of tougher stuff like my siblings. One thing this society frowns on, it’s sensitivity. Be a steel bowl, cause they smash the china dishes.
Report comment
Example of the Art of Dialogue
Kid: Please quit hitting me.
Bully: No! Stand still or I’ll hit you harder dummy.
Kid: Okay.
Note the treatment modality. He diagnosed the smaller kid as suffering from Dummy Disorder. The treatment the bully elected to use was punching him.
Trying to leave would mean he was treatment resistant.
Report comment
Bob, thank you for Mad In America. Thank you Laura Delano, if you’re reading.
I have a story similar to Laura’s, but I was in the System for 23 years. I already read Glasser where I discovered psych treatments are no different than street drugs. But without sites like MIA I never could have gone drug free and escaped the System.
Report comment
Since going off my SSRI I find I can experience happiness again. Who knew? 🙂
Report comment
John, I can’t speak from personal experience. But I imagine court ordered/involuntary would be far worse than my “voluntary” role as a deceived patient. Abusers don’t like it when things don’t go their way. If you are “ungrateful” and “non-compliant” they will take it out on your butt. Which belongs to them.
“Your soul belongs to Jesus. Your a** belongs to me.” Could have been spoken by a shrink. They don’t want your soul since most are materialists and if they believed in souls would assume the SMI don’t have them like Real People. But they do own your butt quite literally and can get 6 toughs to wrestle you to the ground and inject you with maddening neuro-toxins.
I had always been a willing patient till my escape. By “willing” I mean I acted on the deception presented as medical information.
But I knew from the beginning if I were naughty there would be severe punishments. 😛 I mean “treatments.”
Report comment
“A bumper-sticker phrase that saves time.” Or just a bald lie to trick folks into taking drugs and forcing others–including small children–to take them.
Sickening! Why should anyone trust a doctor who routinely practices this level of deception on his patients and the public? Would you even buy a used car from this character?
Report comment
Do you spontaneously burst into musical numbers? And cause those around you to have hallucinatory experiences in cartoon settings? 😀
Report comment
Neurological issues are indeed an effect of the drugs. Though the word “side” is inaccurate.
As Peter Breggin says, “That’s how they work.”
If they aren’t damaging your brain, liver, kidneys, gut, etc. they aren’t working.
Report comment
Does anyone have any idea how many Big Pharma ads the New Yorker contains per issue?
Report comment
The bio medical model “helps” by cutting you off from friends, family, and mainstream society as a whole. Like a cult.
This helps explain the animosity between Psychiatry and Scientology. 😀
Report comment
Good point Gerard!
Assuming there was something wrong with someone’s brain–since they have no idea what the problem is–all bio psychiatry consists of is lots of mind altering drugs and other forms of random brain damage. It’s not “like insulin for diabetes.” They have no idea how they’re screwing with the human neuro chemistry. It’s not like removing cancer from the brain the way a neuro surgeon would.
Know why I’m radical? I’m very angry at being lied to. By NAMI, the psychiatrists, everyone in the Mental Illness System. They also lie about us, and slander the character of their patients. No other medical specialty does that. 🙁
I read that article by Doc Pies in the APA Journal. The cold-blooded fraud and his fellow cons seem to be laughing up their sleeves at the “uninformed” public they pulled one over on. Disgusting!
Escaped this grotesque hoax after 25 years. Living in poverty, crippled from the fake “medicines.” I feel like one of Dr. Farid Fata’s victims. But no one will listen to people like us. So the inhumane barbarism continues!
It’s just destroying normal brain functions. They could achieve similar benefits with baseball bats, icepicks, and street drugs like heroin and meth. Only that would not LOOK like real medicine. It wouldn’t LOOK scientific. PR is all that counts after all. 😛
Report comment
They did effect me. The SSRI known as Anafranil kept me awake for 3 weeks in a row. Brought on psychotic mania–for which Dr. M blamed me.
#patientshaming is my rebuttal to #pillshaming. The latter hash tag is just the psych establishment’s attempt to cover its naked rump with a kleenex. Not hard to see through.
Report comment
I have had acquaintances tell about police breaking into their homes with guns drawn though they weren’t breaking the law or violent. Why? Suicide calls.
As dumb as it gets. Reminds me of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera where a man is going to be executed for attempted suicide. Dumb, dumber, dumbest….
Report comment
Because that way they can dismiss worsening of hallucinations, depression and cognitive decline in those they treat. And bill them for “meds” until they die.
Report comment
A major problem in researching recovery narratives is many recovering survivors have gone underground.
They are afraid–understandably–of being yanked back into the system. After recovering not just from the original trauma but the trauma disguised as “treatments” by those they naively trusted.
Report comment
TRUTH is what Oldhead and I support. It’s what the Inner Circle of the APA fears.
TRUTH will destroy bio-psychiatry since it is based on a lie.
Report comment
MLK’s critics accused him of being a trouble maker due to his “radical extremism.”
So middle-ground and radical are in the eye of the beholder.
Report comment
Remember the “Angel of death” Dr. Farid Fata?
I’m not against everything he did. Just lying to patients about having leukemia to sell them unnecessary cancer treatments and make them bald, toothless, and homebound. (If they survived.)
Tut tut. Pretty extreme of me.
Btw, psychiatrists who do not tout the bio-model exist, but they’re an anomaly. I do not know a single one in person. Most write for this site.
Where I live even GPs don’t criticize the bio model. That would be “extreme.” So they watch us get horribly sick from the drugs and die young. Yay for the “middle ground” heroes.
I think I’ll write a book about reasonable folks who went with the flow and never offended (the powerful.) How about Portraits in Moderation? Courage is SO extreme and radical. 😀
Report comment
I prefer living in a Red State BECAUSE of the lack of “help.”
“If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” Henry David Thoreau.
Report comment
To all you Trekkies:
“Darn it Jim! I’m a doctor. Not an economist.”
Report comment
I thought psychiatrists like to paint their critics as “science denying, flat earther Scientologists.” Lol.
Have actually read some articles using this over-the-top language. And they accuse “moderate” nice guys of it too. Like you Ron.
Might as well defend ourselves with a strong offense. Unlike many with jobs in the system, those opposing psychiatry have nothing to lose.
They have destroyed our reputations, careers, and everything for the crime of asking for help. Now we make our living as digital nomads in the shadows. Why beg for mercy from those who think they own our souls? Give us FREEDOM instead!
To our psychiatric overlords: Even a cornered rat will fight back. Even if you kill it you may not walk away with your nose intact!
Report comment
From this Rachel–across the Pond–hello Ray.
I was not helped by my “medicines.” They exacerbated my depression and caused some psychosis I had not experienced before. Going off them has helped “cure” my mental problems.
No doctor will hear stories like mine. Just those that reaffirm their foregone conclusions. “We don’t know how the treatments work. We just know they do. If a patient says they’re not feeling better we know they’re delusional. Or they ‘resist’ our treatments and need the severe kind.”
There are many others doctors will not hear. And they try to sweep it under the rug, “Oh, I guess you never were mentally ill in the first place.” How many others would get better if they escaped? That frightens psychiatrists. So they never ask.
How to get out of the revolving door? If you ride the darn thing in circles you will never get anywhere. So quit riding it.
My solution.
Report comment
They know enough science to realize how bogus the “medicine” they foist on others is. It makes sense to be afraid when Truth itself is the enemy.
Report comment
Maybe they assume MLK was “middle ground” because he encouraged pacifism. The two are NOT the same. Tyrants have a long history of regarding pacifists as enemies of the state. And not without reason. 🙂
Report comment
No Community Mental Illness Center within over 50 miles of where I live. I think that’s great.
Report comment
If a psychiatrist pets puppies or feeds kitties good for him.
But those are him acting as a human being. Not a “doctor.”
Psychiatry as a branch of science is not about healing but destruction of the brain and other body parts. And defamation of character without due process.
I’m not against everything X does. Just everything Dr. X does to his “patients” with drugs, labels, shocks and any other brain damaging surgeries. Quite likely Dr. X acts out of ignorance rather than cruelty. But the damage is real.
Report comment
KS, if you’re not feeling well today, my condolences.
May you get well soon.
Report comment
I have suffered myself and continue to do so. Your words come across as harsh and unkind.
Whose suffering have I dismissed? I have described my own experiences. If you and others can’t find a “silver lining” I don’t wish to shame you.
I do wish to end the injustice of psychiatry, but that will not undo the damage causing my body to ache head to toe on days like to day when I’m home bound. It won’t help me find a decent place to rent.
Please think of that when you accuse me of “meanness” and get hostile to others who try to make sense of or transcend their pain.
Report comment
Hi May May.
Glad you are feeling better. And you found a psychiatrist willing to work with you and listen to you when the prescriptions aren’t helping. 🙂
Report comment
Well it’s better than suffering and not learning anything, isn’t it? Of course suffering stinks, but it’s part of being alive.
Viewing my suffering as an end to something positive at the end of the story helped end my depression during withdrawals.
Report comment
Look at it this way, Ron.
I have nothing against psychiatrists as men or women. It’s the role they play that terrifies me.
I’m angry that I was lied to and about for 25 years. I now suffer from myalgic encephalomyelitis thanks to this deceptive quackery.
I love myself unconditionally, but hate the bad stuff I do because of this healthy self love. I guess I can say the same about psychiatrists.
But however kindly they are or benign their intentions the science is flawed. And people need to know.
Report comment
Trying to treat depression by altering the brain chemistry…isn’t that what alcoholics already do? The big difference between an alcoholic and a “meds compliant consumer” is one regularly visits the bartender. The other sees a guy who claims the soul is an organ and the drugs he pushes will save it.
If a bartender were found to be kidnapping former customers and forcing them to drink copious amounts of Scotch or whiskey he would get in big trouble. And he can’t bill Medicaid for the booze.
Report comment
I bet you listen to those you try to help too.
If one said, “Hey, since trying this herb you recommended I can’t sleep and feel nervous all the time,” you wouldn’t double the dosage. (Then forcibly inject it when he/she demurs.)
Report comment
White supremecists do a lot of what Freud called projecting.
I think projecting may be behind some of the over-the-top articles posted by elite shrinks on the APA Journal about the “vast underground anti-psychiatry conspiracy.” If they weren’t shrinks–and therefore the epitome of cool reason and sanity–you might call this paranoia. 😀
Report comment
As RW points out in Anatomy of an Epidemic we already have brain doctors–neurologists. We already have folks who help with philosophy called psychologists.
Psychiatrists attempt to treat “disordered” souls with mind altering drugs. Even as far back as Shakespeare and Hawthorne people realized this was something doctors could not do.
Part of how I convinced my religious parents it was okay to go off the drugs a psychiatrist prescribed was reading Dr. Pies’ piece about how dumb people were to think psychiatrists actually believe in chemical imbalances. He also harps about the philosophy of materialism and the a priori assumption of monalism. (Must be the brain because minds/souls don’t exist.)
My dad is a retired clergyman and theologian. When he read the article he actually snorted.
Mom has opted out of going on more drugs for her depression. I’d like to think this canary has been of some use to the coal miners. 🙂
Report comment
Is there a “medication” for cowardice? Cowardice is to fear what depression is to sadness.
But cowardice benefits psychiatry since they can use it to force “insight” admissions and threaten the “non compliant.” So I doubt we’ll see any anti cowardice pills soon.
Cowardice also motivates reporters to stick to “middle ground” position and not offend the all powerful Experts though they know innocent lives are being destroyed.
Report comment
Sadly many continue to suffer in the meantime Dragon Slayer.
A support system for going off these neuro toxins is nice. But good luck finding one in most areas.
My only support system was the virtual community: Surviving Antidepressants. The folks there know more about SSRI withdrawal than most doctors. Because they actually help people go off. Hard to be good at something you refuse to even permit.
Report comment
John your suffering is obvious. I wish there was something we here could do to help you.
We need an underground system to help people escape psychiatric torture!
Report comment
I agree PacificDawn.
Get rid of the licensing of psychotherapists. But above all quit enabling child abuse by means of “mental health!”
Report comment
Life coaching is NOT therapy.
Life coaches can make over $200 an hour. They don’t work for Mental Illness Centers and generally look down their noses at everyone in that system. No way folks like us could afford them.
They have a rule not to work with the “mentally ill” either and will usually refuse services to anyone with a label–I hear.
Of course there are a wide range of coaches. Career coaches can be helpful if you want to think over employment options. Finance coaches can help figure a way to get out of debt. One coach I actually hired was a “blogging coach” just starting out. It was nothing like psycho therapy.
If you don’t like a coach you can say, “Forget you!” and fire him/her. Not so easy with “therapists” at community centers. I fired my last one and everyone responded with gas lighting. “You must have imagined she said that since she’s ‘normal’ and you’re nuts.” A lot of pressure and nags.
But I put off getting a new one till I carried out my escape plan. Then I ran.
Report comment
So you believe Rick Warren pulled the trigger to stage Matt’s murder? Why???
Btw, his cognitive dissonance is astounding. “My son despaired of life on these ‘safe and effective meds.’ Since they did NOT help him I want to force them on everyone since I’m sure they’ll save their lives.”
But idiocy and first degree murder are very different. Rick Warren is now dabbling in Quantum Mysticism. A movement physicists laugh at.
Report comment
There are people who swear, “I don’t care how they work. All I know is my ‘meds’ have saved my soul. Life is not worth living without Drug X.”
The majority of psych “consumers” love their drugs and labels. Especially those with “soft” labels like depression.
Try to ban psychiatry entirely all at once and you’ll fight a bunch of those people. Banning it at all is hard enough.
Report comment
I think I see your point DS.
If we can ban involuntary psych “treatments” and ban false advertising along with educating the public, psychiatry may be destroyed since we’ll cut it off at the knees.
Right now many grateful “consumers” will attack our movement along with the entire medical profession (all doctors) every branch of government and nearly everyone else.
Report comment
Good point Dragon Slayer.
Report comment
Yes. It’s all about THEM and their bloated, Jabba-the Hut sized egos.
Report comment
Congratulations, Bippyone!
Glad you feel better.
Report comment
Szazs himself practiced counseling on “consenting adults.”
Of course the problem with counselors assigned by your “mental illness” center is they are paid to keep you drugged and in the system. Keeping people miserable and helpless is their bread and butter.
Report comment
With my SMI label I knew better than to let any psychiatrist or even real doctor (Medicaid only covers the go-with-the-flow kind) in on it.
Hell no! They won’t let us go.
And shrinks can have no idea how many of us succeed DESPITE their best efforts.
Report comment
Should read Psychiatrists Insult Drug Free Programs and Patients.
No science involved. Just name calling and insults.
Report comment
The majority of the “mentally ill” would spontaneously recover if properly tapered off the psych brain drugs. With no other help. This is obvious since “recovery” has plummeted from 70% to 10% since psychiatry started pushing their cursed brain drugs everywhere.
Would you prefer 10% (with Parkinsonism, seizures, brain damage, premature death) or 70% in seeking medical options? If you were a “doctor” who made big bucks from repeat customers you would prefer the former. But patients feel differently.
Remember the lying cancer specialist who told people they had leukemia to sell them lots of chemo? Psychiatry is a branch of “medicine” composed entirely of Farid Fatas.
Report comment
“What dreams may come….”
Hell between my ears!
Report comment
I like it!
Report comment
“If two men agree on everything one of them is unnecessary.”
Abraham Lincoln.
Report comment
In The Screwtape Letters Lewis’s unreliable POV character talks about how they long for the day of the “materialist magician.”
Materialst Magician sounds like psychiatrist to me. Their DSM is spells and curses. They rely on potions and amulets. (Placebos.) Instead of summoning spirits they work with “chemical imbalances” they know don’t exist and laugh up their sleeves about.
Report comment
Articles like this make me more anti psychiatry than ever.
I plan on taking the message public when the time is right. But it will be for regular people. No sense wasting time on psychiatrists who have a vested interest in preserving the status quo.
A lot of the “mentally ill” and many others would like to know the truth if I can persuade them.
Report comment
What the article does not say, OH, is if these psychiatrists did any research or worked with alternative programs.
My guess is they don’t even bother attending these programs or talking to those pronounced recovered.
This is just name calling and fear mongering. And some idle speculation. What psychiatry is all about.
The Science of Lies.
Report comment
Yes. No legitimate medical branch defames its patients this way. That’s why there is no anti-cardiology movement or anti-gynecology movement.
Without “stigma” they would lose their real power and they know it.
Report comment
And saying “hey, these pills make me feel worse, not better,” is also a lack of insight and denial.
These people lack insight into the fact they don’t give a rip about their “patients.” And they deny they’re crippling and killing people.
Being perceived as Real Doctors is more important to them than anything else in the universe.
Report comment
Their “science” is based on the lie of chemical imbalances. They know it’s a lie, yet they promote it.
Report comment
By “best for the patient’s illness” I take it they mean most effective at prolonging it. 😛
Report comment
Extreme states.
I have experienced a couple after taking psych drugs myself.
Report comment
Sorry John.
I wasn’t trying to insult you.
I understand you are going through a rough patch. Wish I could help you.
Report comment
“Mental” could mean “imaginary.”
How about using the term “Imaginary illnesses” instead?
Do Imaginary Illnesses really exist? Only if you really believe, boys and girls.
Report comment
*Hugs!*
Report comment
Members of my family told me the stellazine i took made me act “normal” and more fun to be around.
I continued taking it to make them happy. I wasn’t the only one fooled.
How do you account for this “second hand spell-binding” DS?
Report comment
The Middle Grounder looks at the evidence presented on the damage done by psychiatry.
“Yes. Those medications seem to not help people. They shorten lives and destroy bodily organs. But why adopt such a crusading, militant tone? Why this irrational movement of zealots out to destroy psychiatry?
“Just because your life has been destroyed is no reason to get all radical and try to stop those who harmed you from hurting others.”
What is wrong with those people? Their “moderation” comes across as cowardly and cold blooded.
Report comment
What is DBT precisely?
I guess I never experienced it; I don’t even know what the letters stand for.
None of my “therapists” followed any real theory. Some helped a little–or would have if I hadn’t been drugged and labeled. Many just repeated, “Take your meds. Realize you’ll always be insane. Take your meds. Don’t follow your dreams, or have dreams. Take your meds….”
Report comment
The true enemies of science are those who use “anti science” and “X denier” as political buzzwords to silence dissent. How is that any better than prosecuting Galileo for his theory of the heliocentric universe?
“Geocentric Denier!”
Report comment
Krista from where I am now, I find your advice helpful as well as motivating.
But I don’t think Katel is coming from the same place you and I are at. There was a time reading something like that stirring comment would have made me gloomier than before.
Report comment
I agree there’s too much emphasis on “twu wuv.”
Whether pornography or sweet, cheesy rom coms.
A lot of worse people than Peter Breggin to attack though.
Report comment
Yes.
And I bear the physical damage from the past to this day.
Report comment
The psychiatry you and I know is not about love. But Dr. Breggin opposes the psychiatry we know.
That’s why the APA and others have it in for him.
Report comment
Abby says “Hi” too.
My cat has been shunned by other kitties. Her own litter mates drove her away from the barn where she used to live. Abby is a sweetheart and tends to walk away from fights with other cats.
She lives with me now. We’re both happy with the arrangement. 🙂
Report comment
Like anger, self pity can be justified.
Report comment
Steve, I think there’s more than economics at play in our culture’s embrace of bio-psychiatry. A lot of us are selfish pigs.
Thanks to the concept of Mental Health we don’t have to pat someone on the back. “Sorry you’re feeling depressed. Let’s discuss it over coffee. Then, if you feel like it have dinner with my family and we’ll watch a movie together.”
Now we say, “Your depression is a disease like TB or leprosy. Please see a doctor and take meds to fix it. I’m not equipped to deal with you since I’m not a certified professional. And please stay away from my kids in the future.”
Report comment
Barbara i haven’t experienced what you have. But I have heard enough stories like yours to say what you describe sounds perfectly normal.
I’m sorry for your double loss.
Report comment
On the positive side, my “diagnosis” cured me of perfectionism. I no longer had to play the role of Perfect since I had been assigned the one of Madwoman.
My parents were not perfect, but the real abuse came from bizarre, controlling adults at church. Like sometimes good parents discover their kids are being molested. (Someone Else’s situation.) Church can be a very good thing. Like an extended family. If a family turns dysfunctional though, you need to set some boundaries. Now, as an adult, I can finally. 🙂
My family was more accepting of my choice to leave psychiatry than I dared hope. Going was my idea (originally) to “fix” the problem that I was too smart, interested in abstract ideas, and bored by pop culture. 😛
Report comment
I have felt, since my mid teens, like I was an embarrassment to my family.
As a preacher’s daughter I was in the public eye–on a small scale. Instead of open rebellion I became obsessed with winning approval by being as thin as possible, wearing the appropriate amount of makeup, earning good grades but not showing off my intelligence in public (unfeminine.) Not to mention currying favor with high ranking, wealthy parishioners and kissing the butts of the nastiest elders’ wives who would make trouble for Dad otherwise.
Sadly I could never say the Right Thing all the time. Mom would take me aside often and harp on my social inadequacies and failings. Nothing was good enough!
I learned it wasn’t about Jesus or holy living but looking good and keeping up appearances. And kissing up to the “right people.” 😛
I took after Dad. I read a lot, was interested in ideas instead of things, and couldn’t figure out what came naturally to other girls. Like talking for hour after hour about nothing. Or expressing interest in a guy without actually telling him. Or keeping abreast the latest fashion trends and pop culture.
At 15, after a prolonged period of homelessness I felt responsible for, I decided to go quiet and try to become invisible. Since everything I said or did was wrong and brought shame upon my family.
As the new girl I made an easy target. Serious, bookish, and quiet. A group of the nastiest male students would describe graphic sex acts to me in the halls. Try as I would to conceal my distress and ignore them–which everyone told me to do–my face would look weird and my body would tremble. The sight of my emotional pain brought them exquisite delight. But none of them were “diagnosed SMI.”
According to the APA that kind of bullying is healthy and normal. Lol. (Maybe the psychiatrists who write the DSM identify with school bullies. Or enjoyed bullying weaker kids when in high school themselves.)
This led to severe social anxiety at 18. Too afraid to leave my college dorm room.
I readily believed I was SMI when told, unhappy as the diagnosis made me. What else could it be? I “knew” there was something terribly wrong with me since I couldn’t win the love and approval of all I met.
It relieved my family a little–shameful and scandalous as the label was. At least they understood why I couldn’t play the stupid social games to perfection! (Ever tried social hobnobbing and butt kissing while drugged out of your gourd? It’s a bummer!)
Report comment
I agree.
Report comment
Dr. Fred, I sense you want to make reparations for what you have done. Perhaps your conscience troubles you. 🙁
I never had you “treat” me but as a member of a group wronged by members of your profession I want to offer you my forgiveness, even as I hope to be forgiven for my trespasses.
God bless.
Report comment
FWIW, Dr. Peter Breggin was threatened with the loss of his license by NAMI.
So…even if a psychiatrist is reprimanded it could just as easily be for doing the right thing as something unusually bad (and not covering it up cleverly.)
Report comment
Seems like our society as a whole assigns the blame to the one who’s “too” emotional, speaks unpleasant truths, or is weaker than the rest. These are usually those who “lose it” from stress and get punished for it by shrinks and others. 🙁
Report comment
Crappy thoughts can bring the pain back. I need to be careful. Seriously. Ugly thoughts make me hurt all over.
Report comment
Why do you say that Salimur?
Being diagnosed made me despair of salvation actually. Like I was irredeemable.
If not soulless.
Report comment
And best wishes to you Both Sides.
May you fare better than most survivors on this site have.
Report comment
Reminds me of the movement to rename “schizophrenia” to end “stigma” branding these people hopelessly insane has caused.
Don’t call them “schizophrenics.” Call them “crazy psycho creepers.”
Report comment
Don’t worry Frank. The super awesome research team is working really hard at rearranging the chairs on the Titanic’s deck. 😀
Report comment
No #hammershaming please.
Report comment
Well, part of our focus on the role of psychiatry is that that’s what this site is about. If this were a site about abusive parents/partners/religious cults there would be more conversation about THAT. 🙂
Report comment
I understood neuro plasticity to be a form of healing.
Btw Sam, many here have suffered horribly from the MH system. But I haven’t heard any regulars say their lives were idyllic before. Julie Greene was in an abusive relationship which caused a lot of other problems leading to the ED she sought help for. Frank admits he had an “episode” due to stressful crap in his life. KS was abused as a child by her parents and others. I moved around a lot and struggled with attachment issues since I gave up trying to make new friends in my teens. Betrayal by an older woman friend who got my dad fired and my family evicted for petty reasons. Two prolonged periods we were forced to stay with relatives since Dad couldn’t keep work due to his lofty idealism. Two years of sexual harassment in high school and the teachers laughed when I told them. Went off to college but was scared of people….stuff adds up.
Report comment
And many who chose unwittingly, but were sucked down into the system.
It’s like joining a neighborhood gang. Easy in. The only way out is a casket for some.
Report comment
Let the guilty off easy by punishing the innocent. (Assume all “bipolars” and “schizophrenics” are guilty of horrible crimes they will commit if they roam at large. “Untreated.”)
Lock up the innocent eccentrics in a warehouse with violent rapists, serial killers, and child molesters. All “bipolars” are exactly alike after all. Then tell yourself what a benevolent good guy you are while you pocket what Big Pharma paid you.
Report comment
When I read this I thought, Folks will accuse this writer of victim blaming.
But there really are people who love these labels. Even “hard” ones. Kay Redfield Jamison built a career on being “bipolar.” It’s her personal brand.
I read a Xojane article where the writer describes how happy she is to know she’s depressed. Which makes you laugh if you think too hard.
I have also known (a very few) nasty individuals who used “mental illness” as an excuse for abusing spouses, partners, and kids. And seen reports of serial killers who were glad to use the insanity defense to escape full legal penalties.
Report comment
Not just guns. The “MI” already have no Second Amendment rights. A lot of do-gooders want us all locked up in institutions. At least the “severe” cases. “Softies” described in this article who like to talk about the “brain disease called depression” will probably be left to lead almost normal lives and praise the miraculous SSRI drugs. Assuming they don’t have a reaction like I did and wind up labeled “bipolar.”
Report comment
Yes. These poor oppressed psychiatrists are the only ones actually affected by the diagnoses they hand out. Alas!
We lowly SMI scum can’t appreciate how ONLY these poor professionals endure the stigma. Not even their $100,000 a year can compensate for the bigotry they alone must endure.
For those of you not forced to take neuroleptics I’m sure what they suffer brings tears to your eyes. *Sniff.*
Report comment
Even if you take the drugs that make you suffer you’ll still get punished. Shrinks have angry tantrums when you have the audacity to sieze or fall over or have heart failure or diabetes while faithfully taking their poisons. If you don’t magically improve on massive quantities of drugs you must be #pillshaming. 😛 Like forcing people to wear balls and chains while making them simultaneously run laps.
They’ll lie to your friends and family. “If she would only take her ‘meds’ she would get better. They NEVER cause people’s eyes to role back in their heads. She’s crazy or lying and faking it.”
Cause gas lighting is what they do best. Can’t win for losing.
Report comment
Tacking on the words (mental illness) won’t either.
Report comment
Know what kind of person grins all the time? A corpse.
Report comment
Shrinks talk about the stigma of “mental illness.”
Americans–and the Western world–stigmatize sadness. It’s viewed as shameful. Stupid to need a permission slip from a doctor to excuse not grinning ear to ear 24/7! 😛 Why the heck do we have to PRETEND we’re happy all the time?
During the Black Death folks were miserable, but they weren’t shamed for it or forced to fake a stupid grin when weeping was called for.
Report comment
Some people don’t have feet. An unusually large % of folks labeled SMI lost limbs to Diabetes 2.
Report comment
So Bcharris, do you recommend a paleo or vegan diet for maximum health? Or maybe pescovegetarian?
Yes John, the “mentally ill” eat a lot of junk food along with guzzling quarts of coffee and chain smoking in a desperate attempt to counteract the horrible feeling those drugs create.
Now I drink a cup of coffee a day. More makes me overstimulated. I’ve lost 11% of my body weight and hope to lose more.
Report comment
Hi BothSides.
Sorry about your situation. I realize you–and many other case workers–are not medical professionals and if you spread misinformation it’s because you’re also deceived.
While I was working out a MH escape plan I remember a worker at day treatment telling us to eat right, exercise, and always take our “meds.” I thought how sad it was he honestly wanted to help us. But taking the “meds” was the opposite of healthy and would undermine the benefits of the first two.
No one was a winner there!
Report comment
Szazs would agree that many embrace the role of madman or madwoman.
I hated mine, but never questioned it. I felt there was something wrong with me. Everyone expected me to be someone I wasn’t. Sweet, soft-spoken, fine-boned, slender, blonde, never angry only gentle tears under the worst circumstances, smiling nearly always. The Perfect Preacher’s Daughter.
At 20, after I was labeled “Schizo affective” thanks to a bad reaction to Anafranil I hated myself. Couldn’t quit thinking of ways to kill myself.
They told me no one could ever love a crazy freak like me. Also I could never even earn an independent living since no one hired SMIs. Not like I could work full time. 🙁
I did Number 1 on the list. But as a consolation prize. I really believed I was a sick, crazy monster.
It was a relief to realize I wasn’t hopelessly insane. But at 45 my life is mostly over. Not sure there’s much of anything worth saving. 😛
Report comment
Thanks Dr. Double. I think Oldhead would agree.
But it does challenge the current model.
Report comment
Assuming a psychiatrist repents and wants to become good.
Report comment
Janebeth, are you in a situation where you could adopt another kitty? Pounds are always desperate to find homes for adult cats who make excellent pets if given the chance.
My dad adopted a stray, but couldn’t keep her because the other house cats bullied her when her leg was damaged and she couldn’t live outdoors. So Dad gave Abby to me and visits her regularly. Everybody is happy now.
Abby is so happy someone loves her at last. 🙂 So am I.
Report comment
I lost it all before I started at age 20.
Starting over at 45. Kind of the reverse of you Jane.
My goal is to be earning enough to go off all benefits in another 3 years. Feeling well enough to work part time from home. I can also keep a decent home–even by HUD standards. And find social groups outside the MH ghetto.
My health is slightly improved after being drug free for 19 months. My mysterious heart arrhythmia righted itself and I’m no longer borderline diabetic. Could be MUCH worse.
Report comment
Let me play devil’s advocate DS.
Speaking from personal experience when I first took a tiny amount of the neuroleptic Stellazine I had been suffering severe social anxiety as a college freshman. It shut down the part of my brain used for tensing up so I made friends and could stay on campus.
Looking back though, alcohol would also have had similar benefits. “Exposure therapy” would have been the real answer to my problems.
Report comment
Like how Szazs described “mental illness” as a role people play. Educators know it’s harmful to label a kid “stupid,” “liar,” “lazy,” or “worthless.” But somehow they think these names help them.
Report comment
At least some cases of “high functioning” autism could be attributed to extreme awkwardness. Asperger’s for instance.
Report comment
🙂
Report comment
Yes. To her credit Kelly Brogan is using her medical license and knowledge to undo the damage psychiatrists have done and helping unhappy women–often with nutritional deficiencies–to avoid the SSRI/SNRI gauntlet offered by psych ex-spurts.
Get medical training in neurology, a legitimate branch of medicine that actually does deal with the brain. Or, if you actually like people, become a counselor like Peter Breggin and other old school “psychiatrists.”
Report comment
Some people have a high alcohol tolerance and can drink a great deal with little to no impairment. Maybe you have a high benzo tolerance.
Report comment
I believe you. So can Peter Breggin, RW, and countless others.
But hard evidence is no match for propaganda like Big Pharma ads, TV shows, and catchy soundbites. People believe what is simple and easy to understand. If an idea is too complex they dismiss it as “paranoid conspiracy theory.” Why bother trying to understand the whole truth when little lies are easier to grasp?
Sadly even credentials, research, and platforms aren’t convincing people. Probably because off this site many do not read books. They get all their info off TV shows, medical leaflets, local NAMI groups, and word of mouth from family doctors.
Pretty sad.
Report comment
Also giving people these life long badges of shame (“schizophrenia” and “bipolar”) for having temporary break downs is the exact opposite of helpful. Along with the crippling drugs.
But that’s assuming psychiatrists wanted us to lead healthy, productive, independent lives.
Report comment
I’m sure you don’t dismiss what patients say, I mean. Sorry. I appreciate what you have done and are trying even if I don’t agree with all you say here.
Report comment
Seriously, I predict this getting angry and fighting those asking them for humane treatment will blow up in these psychiatric head honchos’ butts. Or faces…whichever.
Saying you oppose human rights is not the best PR. No other (legitimate) medical branch could get away with it.
And that Dr. Torrey is why there’s an anti-psychiatry movement. Cardiologists aren’t actively opposing human rights for heart patients. 🙂
Report comment
“Great Scott! What’s the world coming to? Must psychiatrists treat their test subjects humanely? How outrageous!
“What’s next? Cancer patients claiming the right to refuse unlimited rounds of chemo on the spurious grounds the cancer specialist can’t prove they have leukemia?
“By George, this is unsettling! How’s an honest-to-gosh science guy in a lab coat supposed to make monthly yacht payments with all this nonsense about human rights, ethics and other anti-science stuff?
‘Pardon me while I go puff up like a blowfish.”
Thus spake Dr. Ariel Castle at an APA awards banquet.
Report comment
Dr. Joanna you can never fully appreciate the torment these drugs cause if you haven’t taken any. Emotionally versus chemical reactions. I hope you listen to what your patients say and don’t dismiss it, but I’m sure you don’t.
Haldol (10 mg) caused me seizures, Parkinsonism, and worsened my OCD and caused full blown psychosis during my fits. No one believed me. 🙁 The doctors told my parents I was lying and if I took those drugs (I did! I did!) everything would be fine.
It’s over…thank You God! But being drugged for 25 years–on a cocktail between 1994-2016–has left its mark. My life never will be a good one even if it is a few years longer.
Report comment
I’m so sorry Janebeth!
I wish I could meet you in person and hug you.
Sad we survivors are spread out so far apart and only meet virtually in many cases.
Report comment
No they are not.
Most shrinks realize “bipolar 2” cases brought on by SSRI/SNRI reactions would go away if they just let you go off the poison and recover. But that would be pill shaming.
So they exact revenge on you for daring to have a reaction to the “meds” which can do no wrong and they have gone on record calling “safer than aspirin.”
My sister is allergic to penicillin but no doctor spread nasty rumors about her and forced her to take a “cocktail” of benadryl, advil, and double the original amount of penicillin till she died. Yet that’s exactly how psychiatry works.
Praise the pills by blaming the vic–uh–patient. 😛
Report comment
I missed that part about the therapist. Surprised one would admit those “lifesaving medicines” could hurt you. My guess is she or he runs an independent practice. Am I correct Jane?
The depression lifting near the end of the taper is what I experienced too in coming off Effexor after 23 years on SSRI’s and 25+ years on one psych drug or another. But mostly “cocktails.”
Report comment
My condolences Jane.
Your story is a great example of the “patient shaming” psychiatry routinely practices. “Our pills are magic. Yet you gained a bunch of weight, can’t hold a job, make friends, or even clean your living space. What’s wrong with you? It can’t be the fault of the stuff we prescribe. You’re just not trying. Let me double your medication.”
Report comment
Okay. I looked up the word “infloresence.” It means the entire head of a flower. A flower shaped like a caterpillar.
Report comment
“In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.”~Blaise Pascal.
Report comment
Orders which are illogical and wrong.
Report comment
Both are based on what cannot be scientifically proven and promise to cure the dark side of human nature. Many people “choose” to follow psychiatrists’ orders despite the sickness and misery it produces out of fear the “mental illness” will make them do horrible things otherwise. Even harm other people.
FWIW my religious faith stopped me from suicide. Not any “help” from my (mostly) well-meaning but clueless psychiatrists.
Dumping my faith in psychiatry has given me a new lease on my original faith in the Man of Galilee.
Report comment
Faith is not about the irrational but the invisible. Not all faith can even be called religious.
I have faith a country named China exists though I have never visited there. I have faith the food I eat is not poisoned though I can’t run lab tests on it. I have faith that the earth is a sphere and revolves around the sun. Yet I have never been to outer space.
Report comment
Science is easy to fake and turn into propaganda.
Huxley understood this better than Orwell.
Report comment
Actually that ratio would favor men. 🙂
Report comment
Scientology is a FRINGE religion. Not mainstream.
Psychiatry apologists never call dissidents Methodists or Southern Baptists.
Report comment
Don’t forget the psycho therapist and psychiatric RN who work in the MH Center and are married to elders. They make comfy incomes. They tithe too. 😛
Report comment
A lot of religious people are scrupulously honest too. Because of their kindly, simple hearts they don’t believe nice Dr. Brown could tell outrageous lies and sell mind altering drugs by comparing them to “insulin for diabetes.”
Report comment
Does anyone actually read MH?
I bet if it reached a general audience the shrinks would censor articles like the one Noel cites.
Report comment
Mainstream psychiatrists claim to have the answers though.
Report comment
The answer to the mystery?
They can’t know. So…to be safe..they assume all visitors are diseased, the drugs help (though they say they don’t know WHY) and the physical disease actually exists in the brain. Since–they assume–minds do not.
Report comment
I believe it’s a caterpillar shaped hole.
Report comment
Different things cause it. In the case of one mother I know her extreme perfectionism played a role.
Counseling, coaching, or just a lot of talk with helpful friends would have been a benefit. Perfectionism can really make us miserable.
Having my life wrecked by psychiatry actually “cured” me of this problem. Still pretty brutal.
Report comment
Nearly all traits associated with “schizophrenia” are highly unflattering. So whatever the name is it will be insulting and cause discrimination in all who take it seriously.
Report comment
Would make a great comedy sketch.
Psychiatrists have determined the term Schizophrenia to be stigmatizing. So they’re replacing it with the alternative diagnosis Crazy Creepy Psycho Disorder.
Report comment
Well said, Salimur.
Report comment
Yes. When a woman is lactating she’s very vulnerable to micro nutrient deficiencies.
Also the situation of bringing a newborn home is very stressful.
In the old days this was helped by having an older woman–mother, sister, sister-in-law help out while she adjusted to motherhood. However, even back then, new mothers would stress out. Like a lot of Weir Mitchell’s victims. Anyone read “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins?
Report comment
Yes JanCarol. The closest thing to voluntary patients psychiatrists have are people desperate to end their unhappiness–but unwilling or unable to make necessary life changes or simply deal with negative circumstances. So desperate that–though the doctor or psychiatrist tells them the drugs fix no known brain problem but may make you feel better before giving them. Silly how many would think it scandalous to get pills or injections from street dealers to feel good, but if a man’s a doctor it’s okay. (Doctors have dealt illegally with drugs too. Further complicating things.)
I don’t believe in mind altering drugs to feel good and am angry at being lied too despite no “involuntary” imprisonments or AOT sentences. I did what I thought was the responsible thing to do–not just for me but those around me. As a result my finances, relationships, and health are ruined. And I’m forced to mooch off my aging parents who aren’t happy about the “help” I was given either.
Report comment
I cured mine by escaping. For the first time in my adult life I can control my own thoughts and emotions. Pretty scary and exhilarating!
Report comment
Okay. It’s a cow tranquilizer. Lol. 😀
Report comment
To be fair no psychiatrist ever told me that Steve.
But numerous workers at the Mental Centers where these professionals work did. Countless supportive family members–the real brains–told us this at NAMI. Pete Earley admits this is a falsehood on his blog–can’t do links here–but says if it makes people take their “meds” it’s okay to lie.
Yes the insulin is actually heroin. We can’t prove you have diabetes.But don’t you dare stop taking the white stuff. For rea$on$. 😛
Report comment
“Outside the body” is a metaphor since souls don’t occupy space and are not substances. Independent of is what I believe.
I have read monist psychiatrists ridiculing the “idea that the mind is a separate substance in the brain.” Perhaps they think the concept of mind or soul we hold is ectoplasm similar to the glowing slime in Ghost Busters?
May not be a Strawman Fallacy. Psyches are incomprehensible to these psychiatrists.
Even atheists like Szazs believed in the power of mind over brain.
Report comment
It does get better. Remember that. 🙂
Report comment
Dr. Coleman, if you want to help people with legitimate medical problems causing gloom or weird thoughts/behaviors I am all for it. 🙂
That, however, is not psychiatry. You don’t visit psychiatrists for anemia, thyroid disease, Lyme’s disease, or brain tumors though they’ll gladly label you with “Clinical Depression,” “Schizophrenia,” or “Bipolar” if you do.
Report comment
My condolences Lcostanzo. No one should be put through that nightmare.
Report comment
Or the kid is “too” smart and the teacher is boring.
Report comment
K
Report comment
Do you disagree with the article? You should notify the site if you have additional information or know the source to be unreliable.
Report comment
You misunderstood me DJ666. Psychiatric drug addict. All my drugs were prescription and coerced.
SSRI’s are highly addictive.
Since “DJ666” is plugging this new wonder drug, let me plug the site SurvivingAntidepressants.com. It helped me–and countless others come off those highly addictive toxins. Effexor has been compared to heroin by someone who took both and she said it was harder to come off of.
I might not have made it without my friends at the online community and the advice they gave. No doctor could give this advice because they refuse to take people off–with a few rare exceptions. (And if you suffer withdrawal they blame you and put you on more drugs.)
The people running this site are all volunteers working out of the generosity of their hearts. They do not get paid for these services.
And they are not paying ME to sell anything either. 🙂
Report comment
Psychiatrists already use drugs to rape patients. I can see this happening.
Yes, it is illegal. But who will listen to a “crazy” person?
“Mental health” = extreme power imbalance. Fraught with abuse as is common with absolute, unquestioned authority.
Report comment
Two part poll for people officially “diagnosed” with “Bipolar 2.”
1. Did your psychiatrist claim an SSRI unmasked the “symptoms” you never had before using it?
A. Yes
B. No
2. What did the psychiatrist prescribe the SSRI for?
A. Depression
B. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
C. Other
Report comment
Moral injury–unlike physical or emotional–can only be done with the consent of the injured. Lack of moral backbone–as Madmom says is the big problem leading to “moral injury.” Do what is right and you won’t damage your conscience.
Btw, when I hear high ranking shrinks enjoying wealth, power, and fame whimpering how stigma really only effects them i laugh out loud. Like some Grand Wizard saying any opposition to the KKK is racist. And it’s all directed at him personally. Bwahahaha!
Report comment
Well if I conduct it for journalistic purposes OH, I don’t need to follow scientific research guidelines. Polls don’t require doctorates come to think of it. They conduct them on the 6:00 news all the time.
And it’s not just feelings but the “diagnosis” of a “medical expert.” You need the legally valid psychiatric label of Bipolar 2 to take it. Is it scientifically valid? No. Is it socially valid? Many here say “mental illness” is a social construct. It can really alter your life.
Report comment
I too have struggled with misanthropy Lcostanzo. Many survivors do–long after withdrawal has ended.
My solution? Unconditional love. Still a work in progress.
Realize in rejecting the “mentally ill” the undiagnosed seek justification for their own failings. In rejecting us they are rejecting the dark, ugly sides of themselves they refuse to own. They are not so much EVIL or delighting in cruelty as foolish and careless of others.
Plus it’s impossible for “outsiders” to fully understand the agony psych drugs cause us. My best friend was shocked when I told her how dead and miserable I felt under the influence. For some reason I seldom complained about THAT, though I whine a lot.
Probably knew no one would listen; just one of those things I had to put up with. Plus I didn’t want to hurt anyone and feared I would if undrugged.
Report comment
Does bad faith mean bald-faced liars?
Psychiatry has indeed overreached itself by telling 20% or more Americans they have brain diseases rendering them hopelessly insane “without treatment.”
Like the McCarthy hearings, the Salem witch trials, and the Reign of Terror in 18th century France–we have reason to hope that this cruelty and mass paranoia will collapse under its own weight. How many psychiatrized people are enough? Just like there were endless “commies” and witches and traitors the APA refuses to say, “This far and no farther.” More and more “consumers.” Never enough for the bottomless pit of Pharma Psychiatry.
McCarthy had his breakdown on live TV. Citizen Robespierre finally had his own date with Madame Guillotine.
Soon, the members of the APA will be reminded that they too are but men and not God.
Report comment
The Bonker’s Institute? Great site. 🙂
Also loneliness.
It’s worth noting psychiatric “help” leads to poverty, poor health, and segregation. It forces you out of the workforce and estranges you from your nearest and dearest. And doubles your aging speed. I don’t look it, but healthwise I have the body of a 75 year old. I’m 45 and took at least one psych drug for over 25 years.
Report comment
Side effects include spontaneous combustion of the head, stomach acid eating its way through internal organs, and behaviors associated with rabies. Should any of these occur, contact your doctor immediately. Especially the first.
Report comment
You sound depressed Steve. Here. Snort some horse tranquilizers.
Lol. 😀
Report comment
“Blood” them? I’m not familiar with this term. Perhaps because I live over the Pond.
What does it mean Fiachra?
Report comment
What does “anti science” mean? Luddites who reject post-Industrial technology? Christian Science members who believe the physical universe is an illusion? Or simply a fellow scientist with a theory another rejects as unscientific and leads to a struggle between them and their followers–based more on egos than mere difference of reasoning patterns?
It’s a highly elastic term meaning whatever the scientist or pseudo scientist wants it to mean. (Like “dummy.) It saves time and energy needed to present a rational argument.
Report comment
“Anti science” is a politically charged label rather than a summation of any actual beliefs held.
Report comment
I remember an earlier article by Phil Hickey about psychiatry’s attempt to rebrand itself. Ronald Pies’ brain-child.
The name psychiatrist is pretty absurd considering the discipline is based on the a priori assumption that souls (psyches) do not exist. 😀
Report comment
If a shrink says he’s God he may get elected president of the APA.
Report comment
Plus psychiatry is an easy way to get rid of or brush off members who suffer extreme pain. Instead of hours of pastoral counseling to a depressed member going through divorce/job loss/loneliness, you can tell them to shut up and take their meds. Then pat yourself on the back for being a good Christian. 😛
Report comment
Delusional is in the eye of the beholder Dr. K.
So, why do you suppose mainstream religions have embraced psychiatry instead of regarding it as a threat? Most Christian preachers wouldn’t urge members to convert to Buddhism for example.
Yet I have heard preachers urge people to seek “help” from psychiatry. Directly from the pulpit.
Report comment
Yes. That presents its own problem.
Report comment
Short term use for 4-6 weeks may be okay. These pills correct nothing but if someone is really stressed they can help them chill. Not as addictive as Xanax.
A short term remedy at best though. Like using sleeping pills to break an insomnia cycle.
And, I know, OH it would only be a consenting, informed individual over 18. Wouldn’t need a psychiatrist for this. No lies about “broken brains” or “chemical imbalances.”
Report comment
I remember one physically violent guy who was angry at being there. He really wanted to hurt the staff but could have hurt anyone in his way if allowed to go on a rampage.
His anger was justified but so overpowering he might have hurt someone. I have been very angry/irrational at times when my cocktail was highest. Now I can control it better.
Report comment
I’m deeply concerned how many people urge battered wives not “to be afraid to get help from a psychiatrist for the disease of depression.”
I urged a woman in one forum not to take SSRIs since she needs her wits about her to escape. Plus she may get a harder diagnosis (like bipolar) and wind up unable to work, and losing custody rights to her husband. Plus the court will be biased against her due to her label. Egregious and unjust as that is. 🙁
Report comment
Labeling someone “schizophrenic” is a great way to ensure that they never marry.
Even if they find a fellow outcast compatible the drugs make it hard to make relationships work. And the government will punish you by docking your income by more than a third. Great way to discourage “criminal types” from breeding.
Eugenics is alive and well folks. 😛
Report comment
I love you CAFEEO. 🙁 Wish I could help.
We really need a support forum for survivers continuing to suffer iatrogenic illness, economic, and social problems.
Report comment
I always wanted to marry because of my parents’ happy, respectful union.
When I was labeled SMI at 20 I realized I would probably frighten all but abusive creepers away. Good guys shun “schizos” after all. 🙁 For years I was inconsolable.
Report comment
A search engine. But they also have a bunch of other services like Google Docs and gmail.
I hope the monopoly will be broken up if they censor enough people. There virtual empire is already threatened by “vertical search engines.” If I were tech savvy I would be designing a search engine that would allow users to block out sites they dislike and vote “up” on those they do. 🙂
Report comment
I agree with you there Someone Else.
Report comment
My condolences Theresa.
Tell the shrinks what they want to hear. They are holding your son hostage till their demands are met. This will make them relax their guard till you can help your son escape the Hell between his ears.
Report comment
Or once you have the audacity to complain about a drug causing seizures, heart arrhythmia, your weight doubling over a few months, uncontrollable vomiting, hallucinations you didn’t experience before, horrible depression, etc.
I never knew to what to complain about in the “side effect” department since most would deny it or shrug it off as no big deal even if it was listed on the thing the pills came with saying you should report. I learned early on reporting problems was futile and kept my mouth shut about anything negative. Shrinks only hear what they want and dismiss anything negative as delusions/poor insight/agosognosia/personality disorder/fill in the BS. Or they think your premature death by multiple strokes, seizures, or heart attacks is a risk they’re willing to take for Big Pharma kickbacks.
How dare you pill shame! Shame on YOU!
Report comment
The society had “good insight” too. Never questioned what they were told. 🙂
Report comment
With any luck they can trigger psychotic mania in a victim.
“Gotcha! Now you’re ‘bipolar 2’ and your a** is mine!”
Report comment
I put those in quotes. That’s what their shrinks called them.
Report comment
It’s perfectly legal for shrinks to kill patients in the US if they do it by “standard treatment.” Lost two friends to that. Not suicides. Not mistakes. “Standard treatment side effects.” 🙁
(By mistakes I mean bungling the dosage or forgetting allergic reactions. Karen’s shrink knew she was seizing on her drug and thought that was acceptable for her. By her I mean the shrink. Plenty more where Karen came from.)
Report comment
After they delete this comment they won’t have a record when they come for print books. Big Brother is way less efficient than Orwell imagined. 🙂
Report comment
I collect print books and write in paper notebooks before publishing online. Including blogposts. 😉
Report comment
Labels exist Oldhead. Biologically valid or not.
I want to show the public how even using drugs for “soft diagnoses” like depression/anxiety can ruin your life with a Bipolar 2 label rendering you a degraded non-person in the public’s eye. And a non-citizen with no legal rights at all.
Knowledge of neurobiology can come in useful in revealing and repairing damage done by psychiatry so don’t poo poo that.
I would survey those already labeled by psychiatrists as Bipolar 2 to discover how many were fine till a shrink messed with their brains.
Report comment
Just giving the devil his due OH.
Please read it in context.
Report comment
Btw, my parents roll their eyes at news about “antidepressants” now. Mom said she was surprised how much better I am off of them.
And the horse tranquilizers creep many out. More skepticism is occurring even though there are few true “anti psych” people are around. Dr. Phil yelled at a mom for putting her kids on ten drugs apiece through three different doctors.
Report comment
🙂
Okay. Not attacking you Alex.
So, you’re not protesting his earning a livelihood so much as overpricing it?
Btw, I wish someone would do a survey on people diagnosed with Bipolar 2 to find out how many cases were triggered (“unmasked” the mental illness makers call it) through SSRI use for depression or some off label purpose. Do you need to be a professional to conduct one?
Report comment
Sadly researchers do Alex. We all have to eat.
If my writing never pays–the interesting stuff probably won’t–I will have to find another way to earn a livelihood. Using up time and energy that could be used for writing.
Don’t you charge something for the services you offer?
The laborer is worthy of his hire.
Report comment
Dr. Horowitz, I want to learn more about neurobiology. Are there any open courses you would recommend? (MOW)
Report comment
I only had one psychiatrist I could call truly evil. On the other hand–out of more than a dozen–only two or maybe three talked to me like a human being. They will only listen to you (generally speaking) if you say what they want to hear.
If you say, “Gee doctor you’re so intelligent. These medicines you prescribed make me feel great. This Zoloft is a life saver.” That they will listen to and use as evidence that what they’re doing works.
If a “consumer” says, “This Haldol is giving me seizures and while I seize I have terrifying hallucinations.” “I haven’t been able to sleep since you put me on Anafranil two weeks ago.” “My depression is worse than ever on Prozac. Can’t quit thinking of suicide.” Well all those patients are clearly delusional and should not be taken seriously. Except you should lock up the third. That will teach him to be treatment resistant! 😀
Report comment
Are they dumb enough to think these help undeveloped brains? Or do they just not care they’re poisoning the next generation?
Report comment
Thanks Jinkinson!
Dr. Breggin calls this deception “bungling.” A charitable term for of the harms the APA Inner Circle perpetrates by lying to us all.
Report comment
Things are certainly different now. Even though most guys don’t find obesity attractive they are happy with healthy looking women. Glad that part of the eighties is over! 🙂
Report comment
Depends on how far you get into it. But my late depression is because it stems from bitterness and lack of faith as well as ingratitude. I had a friend lie in bed and refuse to get up or let his family know he was alive because he was bitter at how his life had turned out. Anger turned inward.
Report comment
Depression is a feeling. Not a disease!
Yes, I have been depressed and have been very much so lately.
But it comes and goes like any other feeling. My life sucks– largely because of psychiatry. I have a right to feel very sad.
Not sure it will ever go away for long. Because–oh yeah. My life stinks and will never get better!
Psychiatrists only make your problems 10x worse and pretend your rotten life situation is irrelevant. That’s why these guys are worse than useless in solving any problems. Physical, social, or spiritual. Worthless physicians.
Report comment
Jonathan, I was always dieting in my teens. Anorexic eighties.
My mom, my aunt and every other female friend told me it was impossible to be too thin. All the boys wanted us to look like Callista Flockhart or Kate Moss.
I went off to college desperate to find a husband. I wasn’t fat but far from that lean and hungry supermodel all guys demanded. In my religious subculture you only have a narrow window of time to marry if you’re female. Between 18 and 22. On your 23rd birthday you’e well past your prime since all the guys are taken and you might as well be 46. The colleges are 70% female and female curves make guys think you’re a slut I suppose.
I never could become thin and pretty enough. But I’m sure all those laxatives and crash diets and 3 day fasts for the beautiful body my rotten genes denied me messed me up long before I started SSRIs at 21.
Morbidly obese now, hopelessly alone and middle aged I stay at home and cry with my cat. Still less depressed than on those darn drugs. Tears feel better than that undead zombie state psychiatrists call “good mental health.”
Report comment
Fatal Attraction meets One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
My dad frequently remarked on how nutty everyone running the System was. The “crazy’s” were too drugged up to think straight. The real nuts were the sanists running the thing. 😛
The woman who got me diagnosed BPDS actually fits the “symptoms” better than me. But because she slept with a different guy every month or so and never bonded with any she thought she was emotionally sound. 😛
Report comment
Congratulations Madmom. Your daughter is blessed to have you helping her.
Was in the System for 25 years. Mom almost took me to Canada to see Dr. Abrams but couldn’t. She and I kept telling the doctors I hadn’t been so out of it till the Anafranil kept me awake 3 weeks. No one listened. Till they told us it proved I was crazy by “unmasking” some brain disease that couldn’t show on MRIs.
Finally off drugs for 18 months. Mom is happy. She gave up years ago. I did till I read RW and others.
Report comment
“I’ll see you at the malls!” While the others held her back from physically assaulting a “patient.” Sounds like one emotionally stable woman with great interpersonal skills. The epitome of reason and a bastion of sanity. 😀
Bwahahaha!
Report comment
I wish you well in your efforts Mr. Mattila.
Report comment
The best situation for a psych test subject to be in is where they thoroughly deceive the deceitful abuser. Kiss up to them. Never complain about “side effects” since they don’t care and are capable of doubling or tripling the drug making you deathly ill as an act of petty revenge. Absolute power does that to people.
Flatter them nonstop. Like a rape survivor I heard who tricked her captor into thinking his kidnap and rape had made her fall in love with him. He took a shower and she escaped. Pretty stupid to think his cruelty would win her undying love and loyalty. But a surprisingly large number of power-crazed people think that way.
Report comment
They don’t care if they kill us. Literally.
A friend of mine watched how shrinks drugged her sister to death and encouraged me to flee the system afterward. 🙁 They kill people. They treat us worse than lab animals.
Report comment
I knew better than to ask my shrink’s permission to go off my cocktail. I ran away instead.
If they set all of us loose how could they make yacht payments?
Report comment
You’re not a prisoner; not a patient. Your ass belongs to them and they know it.
Report comment
The big problem with psychology is its association with corrupt drug dealing/brain mutilating psychiatry. If a psychologist or counselor wants to help people they have to start their own practice. Work at the mental illness center and you have to tell folks to remember they’ll always be “bipolar” or “schizophrenic” and promote the drugs the shrink prescribed. Then yell at the “client” for not trying harder or skipping “meds” on the sly (though you lack proof) when they deteriorate on the 3-6 mind altering drugs Dr. Frankenstein has them on.
Btw, Eric Maisel, I know you reject the bio model and work independently. Probably for the reason I describe. Please don’t take this personally. 🙂
Report comment
Like the priesthood, psycho therapy has a number of sex predators. Only no one believes those preyed upon by the corrupt therapists. (Which is why they do it.)
Report comment
Psychiatry is frozen in the 18th century. Kind of an undead hybrid of phrenology and mesmerism.
Report comment
Going through life with a medicine head is pretty disabling.
If someone were forced to go through life on “therapeutic” levels of Nyquil that kept them from thinking straight that would likely ruin relationships, prevent gainful employment and lead to early death.. Just call the narcotic syrup life saving medicine, claim it saves the lives of those you keep doped up, or prevents them from killing others (because you say it does.)
Psychiatry in a nutshell. The only disability I had was the one they gave me.
Report comment
Definitely.
Report comment
Wow! Sorry Fred.
What was Dr. Gestapo mad about? That you managed to escape and he would make you pay for doing so well?
I have to see MDs for physical problems caused by the years on drugs. I have a “mental health” center I say I go to but don’t. Getting rid of my label is very important to me.
Even here people laugh it off as no big deal. But until I get my “diagnosis” changed I’m not safe around any doctor and can be institutionalized if ever discovered. Being denied the rights of citizenship and possibly locked up without due process is no joke.
Report comment
Anesthetics are used short term for surgeries. Not for a lifetime. Big difference.
Most people don’t want to sleep their lives away. And most wouldn’t take this crap if they weren’t deceived by drug companies, social workers, and doctors they think they can trust.
These people will not get accurate information from traditional sources. 🙁
Report comment
I saw a man inhale a permanent marker. It seemed to make him very happy. The next antidepressant has arrived!
Report comment
I’m sure the APA is tinkled pink. More folks taking horse tranquilizers=more psychotic breaks. Which means more bogus claims the drug “unmasked” a condition they couldn’t find before. How convenient–for shrinks! Because the drug’s so addictive psych doctors can fool people into thinking they “need” their “medicine” to fix the imbalanced brain chemistry (well informed) shrinks secretly laugh at.
Just like Anafranil messed my life up. At 45 I feel like a woman of 75.
When do you think Big Pharma will alter adhesives (slightly) to sell as inhalants for the desperately unhappy?
I was taught not to abuse mind altering drugs as a kid. The “mental illness” makers told me repeatedly these were different–non addictive brain fixers. Turned me into an unwitting drug addict.
Report comment
Lots of street drugs can alleviate depression for a little while. So can huffing rubber cement in a bag. But you can’t bill insurance companies for model airplane glue–gosh darn it! 😀
Report comment
Lol. Yes. 😀
Report comment
Did the patient want to die? Maybe. In this case.
Think about it. They can try pointless, brain damaging regimens of drugs and psycho surgery on “patients” against their will–often killing them as a side effect of Standard Care. All against their will since the “SMI” don’t know what’s good for ’em and “no” means “yes.”
Why not extend this same line of reasoning to euthanasia?
“Yes, Mrs. Mable says she wants to live. But as a Paranoid Schizophrenic she’s delusional when she thinks her life has meaning. Better do the humane thing and put the poor sicko down immediately. Aren’t we humane?” 😛
Report comment
I believe Szazs would argue she had a right to kill herself but the doctors shouldn’t get involved. After all you don’t need a medical degree to end a life.
Kind of pompous of doctors actually.
I refrained from suicide as a matter of conscience. I owe psychiatry NOTHING in that respect.
Report comment
Thanks for sharing, Nic. Dr. Brogan has written a book supporting this. A Mind of Your Own.
It’s worth noting psychiatrists who work at “mental health” centers do not treat thyroid conditions or other endocrine problems nor nutrient deficiencies. I suffer anemia and thyroid problems but seek help elsewhere. The same with proven brain issues like Lyme disease.
SOME psych doctors may check people with depression for thyroid levels or the other conditions you mention. I have been to a number of health centers and clinics and not one ever mentioned checking for these. Even GPs frequently overlook these concerns if you bear an SMI label. 🙁
Report comment
My pernicious anemia causes depression. But this is a gut problem, not a brain disease, which would be a physical illness instead of mental.
Ironically my malabsorption comes from long term use of “antidepressants” it seems.
Report comment
The function of the family is the same as friendship or other relationships. Love. 🙂
Report comment
Of course for real brain disorders you go to a neurologist. Not a “soul doctor” who denies souls exist.
My gut flora is very messed up thanks to 23 years on one SSRI or another. I needed those pills like a kick in the head. Or stomach.
Report comment
Varun your story about the effects of the drugs you had been told to take–how they killed your ability to smile and act human–got you accused of “non compliance” made me want to cry.
Been there. Done that. Kept getting accused of going “off my meds” in college when I kept having Parkinsonism and mini seizures from 10 mg of Haldol. The psychiatrist claimed they never did that. My dorm mom told the guidance center I wasn’t taking them or I wouldn’t have the problems the Haldol was creating! This got me kicked off campus.
Funny thing is, now that I have tapered off the 3 drugs I was prescribed for “bipolar 2” no one knows I’m off when I visit a doctor. They often say, “Wow. Your ‘meds’ must really be working well. No flat affect; you’re smiling. Emotionally stable. No longer depressed or suicidal despite your health problems.”
I smile and say the “meds” are working fine. The Placebo Effect cuts both ways. 😀
Report comment
Varun is not where we are OH. Can’t expect him to know the lingo.
As KS points out he has a valid story to tell. It’s worth the read.
Report comment
Wow!
I had a couple times I experienced a weird, mild tingling sensation in my skull during withdrawal. But from the brain zaps you describe sound like something different. I was lucky that way. Also never suffered from insomnia, believe it or not.
Report comment
I don’t think it’s a conspiracy. At least not one run by human beings. The Big Pharma companies want as much money as possible and–like greedy, selfish people often are–have no forethought and refuse to think more than a decade or two ahead.
Like the Washington demagogues who refuse to think beyond winning the next election. Or the NAMI mommy who just wants her “crazy” kid to shut up for the short term, though she should know it will keep him from adult independence–likely forcing him to live in her basement in his forties.
“Do you want it done right or do you want it done fast?” Pharma psychiatry offers fast fixes and easy answers. Forget the long term results! This is America.
Report comment
In defense of Sheriff Steve, he is the most fair minded and just moderator MIA has had that I remember. Wish you wouldn’t call names. Especially names like that.
You aren’t a psychiatrist, so the names won’t stick like a psych “diagnosis” but we survivors know words have power.
Report comment
To quote Thoreau:
If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.
Report comment
Yep. After 3 weeks on maybe 8 hours sleep thanks to Anafranil I was finally allowed to cold turkey off it.
I needed sleep and still couldn’t think straight. The good “doctor” cheerfully told Mom and me I had classic schizophrenia since the “medicine never did that to anyone.” Hearing that sent me into full blown psychosis.
My old life ended then.
Report comment
Cat, if you want to contact me, my blog is lookingupliving.wordpress.com. A religious site–not about psychiatry. (Except a couple pieces.)
Like you, I’m a libertarian Gen X-er who’s mad at all the bovine excrement we’re being fed. By Big Pharma and others. Dialogue with the “mental illness” makers is pointless.
“Let’s compromise and do things my way. Bend over, grab your ankles and I promise when I hit it won’t hurt VERY much.”
Report comment
B-b-b-but, Bcharis if they did that it would be “pill shaming.” Pointing out how Ritalin and SSRI drugs cause psychosis might discourage “meds compliance” and lower numbers of folks diagnosed with Bipolar 2. Which would be a tragedy. 😛
Report comment
Ellie is hallucinating too. Bring on the neuroleptics!
Am I the only one to question how counseling does anyone any good if painful emotions are reduced to a brain disease? If pills are the only cure for sadness why bother talking about it since the sadness is just an irrational symptom of a disease and should be ignored like delusions or hallucinations?
I was depressed as a 7 year old. Not a brain disease. Lousy learning environment. Kept getting yelled at for knowing more than my cognitively disabled peers. SBD class for behavioral issues no amount of punishment could cure. I was a wicked child. 🙁
Report comment
Don’t forget the psych ex-spurts. Can’t risk offending those either. Cause old “Doc” Torrey and his puppet Jaffe might call us mean names like “anti-psychiatry” and “scientologists” and “flat earthers.” Can’t risk offending these “Real Scientists.”
If we make nice and kiss the butts of all the members of the APA maybe we can peacefully dialogue–before they lock us up and drug or shock us to death. Lol.
Let’s see how long either of these comments stays up.
Report comment
Cool!
We anti psychiatry folks need to think outside the box. Social media has been doing a lot of censoring lately. Kicked the anti-vaxxers off Facebook. I’m starting to become an anti-vaxxer myself since the massive propaganda and censoring is a sign there’s something weird going on the vaccine pushers want to hide.
Report comment
It will destroy Western Civilization. My 12 year old nephew was put on Zoloft for his fixation on tidiness and anxiety. Now he’s failing every subject and is indifferent to everything. His parents shrug it off as a minor “side effect of the medication.” I kid you not. How is that an improvement?
I see the boy’s being groomed for a future as a professional mental patient. Ugh. 🙁
Report comment
Why are they coming after the young “intelligencia” SE? Afraid all that intelligence and creativity will disrupt the learning process?
The world pharma-psychiatry wants to create sounds more and more like the dystopia Kurt Vonnegut depicted in “Harrison Bergeron.”
My own IQ went up almost 20 points after my taper btw. But I didn’t start the drugs till I was over 18 and my brain had almost matured.
Report comment
Entertainment causes people to turn on the set. No two way TV’s yet, so they have to lure folks in. Once people are set up for hours of passive, mindless entertainment they’re ready to be mystified and confused.
I don’t think it’s all a conscious effort to make people stupid, but it has that effect sadly. Every time I have been in a psych ward there is a set blaring for 12-14 hours a day. Despite the proven fact excessive TV causes depression. My guess is the staff does it to stupify everyone further (in case the drugs left a few brain cells alive.) You see this in day cares and nursing homes too.
The idea that “bad things only happen to bad people” has been around since ancient times. Harold Kushner talks about this in Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. He speculates people like this idea since it gives them a sense of control and safety. “If I’m really good I won’t go bankrupt, my spouse won’t leave, and I won’t get cancer.” Of course this backfires if tragedy strikes despite how “good” the person was.
Report comment
A major problem JClaude is people think psychiatry=help. Many “looneys” go around saying it saved their lives and souls. I have known people with lives obviously ruined by drugs and labels. Poverty, shunned by family, horribly sick, barely able to function outside institutions…yet they swear psychiatry is their savior.
I think this is due to spell-binding, being fed constant propaganda till it outweighs your real experience–like a cult, and the sunken cost fallacy.
Report comment
That has yet to happen in America.
Report comment
Someone is mad.
Report comment
I call it the Madhouse Without Walls.
With so many career “consumers”, institutionalizing all of them is not as financially expedient as letting them wander the community, crippled and shamed.
Report comment
William I highly recommend Surviving Antidepressants for doing the taper.
Survivingantidepressants.com helped me a lot in coming off my cocktail. Especially Effexor. That one can be a bear. 🙂
Report comment
I do OH.
Yeah-I-Survived my only problem is $770 isn’t enough for a regular apartment and there’s a stigma with not working.
Every social situation I’m in I get asked, “What do you do for a living?”
One church I attended I sort of lied. Told them I get SSI for Fibromyalgia. (They said some horrible things about “crazies” later. I was right to lie.) The preacher’s wife kept demanding why I didn’t substitute teach, work in daycare, work in fast food, be a cashier. Just because moving is agony and it hurts to stand more than 60 minutes at a time is no excuse for not flipping burgers 40 hours a week it seems! 😛
Report comment
Couldn’t have said it better myself Sylvain!
I’m in that middle ground. I have never been locked up “involuntarily” if you can call being thoroughly deceived that my brain would deteriorate without the “treatment” offered voluntary. Is a diabetic taking heroine because the doctor they trust called it “insulin” a willing junkie? (Food for thought.)
Many like me are too disabled to work after years of psychiatry and need the meager handouts to live. I would have left the System earlier but a poor work history, discrimination, and symptoms like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome still keep me from gainful employment. My heart and other organs were “mysteriously” giving out. None of the doctors would tell me why or what to do about it. I think they knew. 🙁 Escaped just in time!
Report comment
I knew a man called Dave who believed God was telling him to become President of the USA in 1988. Dave was treated badly by all but my Dad and one or two others. To keep from feeling like a loser Dave NEEDED to hear voices telling him he was special and would be President someday. The reality would be too painful to face. So he had “delusions” and lived in denial of reality.
Nowadays there are doctors who desperately NEED electro shocks to work because this will prove their medical specialty is legitimate and this “surgery” shows they’re more than glorified drug dealers. Plus they hate the idea that all they do is cause random acts of brain damage for “help.” The reality is too painful to face. So they have “delusions” that they’re helping their victims and live in denial of reality.
Yet Dave was crazy and the doctors are considered sane.
Report comment
Well said Sylvaine!
I hope it stays up.
Report comment
Psychiatry also provides the illusion of safety by blaming all violent crimes and shooting sprees on the “genetically defective criminal types.” The high ranking shrinks promise to save the public by “helping” those they’ve scapegoated.
Because they have thoroughly dehumanized us all in the public’s eye, everyone is happy to have the “monsters” locked up and put through cruel, pointless experiments. Even those who have never committed misdemeanors are treated worse than “sane” convicted felons.
If we must have psychiatry it should be kept separate from the government. When the government has the power to lock up and torture without due process only evil can come of it.
Report comment
I agree Truth. Those drugs create Hell between the ears!
But there’s nothing more depressing than being told you’re hopelessly and irredeemably insane.
Report comment
More “mental health.” Ugh.
Report comment
Bruce, the article you cite and link to mentions “shift in responsibility” under the part about the willingness to inflict pain.
This is why psychiatry is inherently cruel to its “patients.” The psychiatrist is not responsible to those he diagnoses as “severely mentally ill” but to Society as a whole. He is no more working for us than a prison guard is working for prisoners or an exterminator is working for the rodents he kills.
Report comment
I have symptoms of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome myself. Every so often I need iron infusions and B 12 injections thanks to years of psychiatry. My body can’t process micro nutrients anymore. At least my heart arrhythmia has stabilized.
$770 a month is not enough to rent anything but HUD. (A lot of those are slums.) Even in Indiana.
Report comment
Never heard of the psych diagnosis “Walking Wounded.” Did it make the DSM 5? One of the personality disorders perhaps?
Report comment
Lol. Yes.
But I don’t think NAMI would allow comments like these.
Report comment
You never talk to people who feel they have been harmed, only helped Don?
You accuse Dr. Breggin of knowing omission? I know I would feel safe enough with someone like him to share things most psychiatrists laugh off or blame on the “patient.”
I was accused of faking seizures, tardive psychosis, etc. Learned early on to keep “side effects” to myself. Even if they were supposed to be reported no one wanted to hear them or would listen to one of us.
Never had shocks but they sound horrid. Weird how seizures–by drugs or psycho-surgery are supposed to be good for the SMi but not Real People who count.
Lebensunwertes Leben.
Report comment
Pharma-psychiatry owns the media. Nowhere in any mainstream media outlet will anyone criticize Psychiatry. In fact they go to great lengths to hide negative stories.
Plenty of sites for folks to gush about the “help” they have received though.
Report comment
Well said KS!
Report comment
I agree Anonymous2016!
Report comment
Sorry KS. You needed and deserved info that wasn’t there.
But what about people like the blogger at Bipolar Burble who get mad at us, and want to have us all locked up because she’s scared of having her “meds” taken away? People throwing tantrums for shocks, drugs and labels?
Report comment
Personal accountability is why I took the damn drugs Dr. K.
They assured me I was bipolar and my only hope for gainful employment, successful relationships, and living outside an institution depended on compliance. Furthermore I might murder someone if “untreated.”
My family assured me I was “better” and they could stand to be around me now. So, the drugs made me miserable and sick, but I took them as an act of self sacrifice for those around me.
I feel bad about living with my parents and mooching off the tax payers. But my family and the tax paying public wanted me crippled. So it’s their tough luck. By all rights Big Pharma should pay everyone in my situation $1,000,000 for malpractice and false advertising. They won’t though.
Report comment
Ban involuntary psycho-surgery and drugs. If someone wants their brain damaged and ignores information put out that all ECT and drugs are is brain damage, it’s their brains being mutilated.
Sad. But Dr. K’s article would apply to people seeking easy answers for problems with living.
Report comment
What about the involuntary “patients”? What about those who can no longer read, talk, or walk from brain damage? What about those who can’t remember family members? Time for them to have their say!
Report comment
I withdrew by fleeing. No medical help at all. In the USA involuntary shock is standard care. If the authorities knew where I was I could be dragged back. My body can no longer process food properly so I need iron infusions regularly.
The drugs did not help me. They amplified the voices, killed all pleasure, made my weight double, and caused seizures. But no one listens to stories like mine or countless others. Time for OUR voices to be heard!
It’s good you think what they did to you was helpful Bippy. Many of us are not pleased and MIA is one of the few places we can express less than worshipful sentiments toward psychiatry’s random acts of brain damage.
I guess if they damage the right part of the brain the “patient” will stop thinking painful thoughts. And lobotomies are making a comeback according to Live Science August 14, 2018. But it’s “better” because it’s done with lazars so it looks more scientific.
While lobotomies were hip and trendy they compared psych drugs to lobotomies. Nowadays people call that “pill shaming.” Yet the principles remain the same. Where would psychiatry be without its public relations team?
I’m angry they lied to me about a “metaphor” the inner circle tries to pass off as a joke. The Chemical Imbalance Legend is not funny Dr. Pies!
Report comment
Transportation is the real issue. I will have to make any plans while visiting friends in another city. I live out in an isolated rural area 5 miles from the nearest town of 1400 people. I can’t drive.
I depend on my folks to get everywhere. Was not allowed to get a license at 16 and Mom used my “diagnosis” later as a reason for me never to drive.
Report comment
But if vampires don’t exist what will Buffy and Van Helsing kill?
Seriously the fact that you can make diseases magically disappear or transform them into something else lends credit to the notion that “mental illness” is indeed a social construct. Can doctors vote cancers into existence? Or turn melanoma into liver disease with a stroke of the pen?
There are groups of writers, educators and editors that assemble to vote on expressions and rules of grammar for proper writing. What I read in They Call You Crazy reminded me of those groups.
But everyone acknowledges the language experts’ efforts are social and artistic–not hard science. And they don’t have the power to lock you up, publicly shame you, or operate on your tongue for bad grammar.
Report comment
Do these “scientists” have any theory of how ECT is supposed to help people? Or is it just “We don’t know how it works but we know it does (because we really want it to and it shows we’re more than drug dealers)”?
They seem SHOCKED at the idea that brain damage occurs or claim it’s minimal. Get real. No brain damage means it’s not working.
Psychiatry “helps” people in emotional distress by shutting off or destroying random parts of the brain. Nothing has changed since they started drilling holes in people’s heads or ice pick lobotomies. Just better PR and bribing the right people. 😛 And they’re crippling and killing a lot of people who would have been safe from their cruelty a few years ago.
Report comment
No Bippyone.
I was referring to the woman Peter Breggin mentions at the end of his article. Sorry about the mess your family is in.
I’ve escaped psychiatry but an forced to live in the boonies with my grouchy, critical mother. At 45 she treats me like I am 12. Totally isolated except for her and Dad. Suffering from 25 years on a cocktail so working–even part time is difficult. Plus there’s no ride to work and Mom discourages all efforts to find employment with her put downs.
No housing anywhere. $770 a month is not enough for rent even in my state. Plus if HUD opens Mom insists it must be within less than 25 miles of her and Dad. Now and then she says I should go to a “home” but there are none available. (Thank goodness.)
I have heard of women like me who made remarkable improvements when the mommy they “couldn’t live without” died. I think of this and feel guilty. Hopefully I can escape before then.
Report comment
Anyone want to hazard a guess why that woman gave a glowing recommendation of ECT and then gave Peter Breggin that note? It sounds suspiciously like an abuse situation. As if she were afraid of someone she knew was watching her and–perhaps–had put her up to saying what she did.
Report comment
It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. ~John Stuart Mill
Like the witch Circe, Psychiatry lures us in with promises of a happy life if we drink the potion. The desperate among us do so and are transformed into pigs.
Report comment
Thanks DS.
Report comment
Thanks. Leaving psychiatry, disowning the labels assigned me and going drug free has helped a lot. My body is a wreck. I feel like a woman of 75 instead of 45. But my soul is no longer asleep. Great to have my mind back!
Report comment
Thanks Bradford. I already have a hope that will not disappoint.
Report comment
Stealing from the “consumers'” already meager checks happens all the time in the Mental Illness Factory. Not supposed to anymore than rape or physical beatings, but it does because no one believes the victims–or at least not till there are a lot of them and a truckload of evidence impossible to ignore or hide.
Had it happen to me. The old lady running the boarding home I was stuck in stole the $50 a month I needed to buy personal items like shampoo and toothpaste.
One place in South Bend was so corrupt they not only stole from “consumers” but fudged on government payments too. You don’t steal from Uncle Sam without consequences. They shut Madison Center down. Huzzah! 😀
(The new place is less corrupt.)
Report comment
Chill
Report comment
For Dragon Slayer or anyone else, what books do you recommend for learning the history of modern psychiatry? RW’s books are great but focus primarily on modern Pharma-psychiatry in the last 30-50 years.
From my readings “asylums” began as an industry around the time of the Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution. I think the former played a really big role in the obsession with the sane vs insane dichotomy of “mental health.”
Report comment
I’m curious Sam. Do you feel you have sought to “medicate” your distress and now regret it? Are you upset the wife you speak for has chosen to do so? Or something else entirely?
Report comment
That’s why I will never have children Mark. Nothing like an SMI label to destroy all your dreams and hopes for this life.
This is already happening. Crippling 20-25% of the next generation before puberty is almost as effective as sterilization. Birth rates in developed countries are in steep decline. In Europe there are actually programs and incentives encouraging folks to have kids.
I don’t see it as a conscious effort, but short sighted greed and not giving a rip about the people harmed. Western civilization is doomed–in large part thanks to the “doctors” who gladly sell poisons to trusting patients in exchange for warm doughnuts and free peeks up Yolanda, the hot pharma rep’s mini skirt. 😛
Report comment
Knowledge puffs up. Love builds up.
Doctors are no more loving than the rest of us.
And the fact that they’re smarter and know more than the average person makes them that much more dangerous when they turn evil.
Report comment
Two of my friends (at least) were killed by psychiatry. Not suicide because of the misery it created. Not malpractice. “Side effects” from standard care.
Karen was 29 and died from a grand mal seizure caused by a neuroleptic her shrink refused to take her off. Donna was 49; doctors weren’t sure what to put on her death certificate. She was on half a dozen drugs; a bunch of her organs shut down at once.
Report comment
You’re right. It’s not helpful MM. NAMI has been trying the “Be nice to us; we’re different” for years. Of course with NAMI it’s more like, “Please don’t hate us because we’re defective. If we swallow all these gosh awful pills we’re almost safe to be around.”
The Mad Pride or Neuro-diversity movement tries to put a positive spin on Crazy but the notions of life long madness can never be viewed as a positive. And Kay Redfield Jamison and others have sort of been trying to prove that because an occasional “mad genius” emerges maybe society shouldn’t ostracize some members for crimes they never actually committed.
Report comment
About the “inflicting pain,” I imagine there are a few cases of doctors turning to sadism. Psychiatry would be an ideal specialty for them since no one will believe people with SMI labels.
The whole thing is scary. #Notallshrinks But the psych system is a hotbed for this cruelty. Psychiatric medicine is Absolute Power. And you know how the saying goes.
Report comment
Charles Ponzi and Bernie Madoff’s marks were naive and gullible but they did not deserve to be robbed blind. Nor do those deceived by shrinks deserve to have their lives ruined.
Report comment
Another thing Dr. K doesn’t mention is the bizarre mindset in America that not being happy ALL THE TIME is shameful if not wicked. As if people need a medical excuse for not grinning like the Joker in Batman 24/7.
Why is this? It’s very stupid.
One example is Bella Depaulo’s impassioned argument that singles were every bit as happy as married people. A question we should ask both Dr. Depaulo and the folks conducting the survey she refuted is: who cares?
Seriously.
Maybe we need to assert our right to unhappiness. 😉
Report comment
If your dealer wears a lab coat it doesn’t count as drug addiction. (Woohoo!)
Report comment
Good point.
In our society astrologers don’t collude with judges to get someone innocent locked up. “He’s a libra and therefore dangerous to himself and others.”
Prominent astrologers don’t go on TV to warn everyone about how virgos may go on killing sprees unless force fed this magical elixir astrologers sell. (Sugar water, rubbing alcohol and meth. Yummy!)
Report comment
So Dr. K, if someone fed me a capsule of cianide saying it was a vitamin and I swallowed it would you say I voluntarily chose suicide when I was lied to?
There is some truth to what you say, but it borders on victim blaming.
Yes, calling depression and anxiety brain diseases instead of making better ife choices is tempting. BUT…everywhere you go people post or say stuff like “Depression and anxiety are real.” Meaning they are brain diseases. For some reason calling them painful emotions gets people mad. (Aren’t feelings real?)
Report comment
The church I attend advocates for psychiatry. Tells us how “science has discovered that mental illnesses are caused by chemical imbalances in the brain.” Have gone on record saying it’s cruel to tell people to trust Jesus when Prozac is needed to save them.
It should be obvious even to non-religious types that it’s all a sell out. Helps the other members pass the buck and ignore the suffering. “Don’t talk to me. I’m not a licensed professional and might make you crazier.” Having the poor/awkward/unmarried get SMI labels makes a great excuse to give them the cootie treatment too.
No more annoying people to spoil our country club atmosphere. Not enough green stuff to plunk in the offering plate. 😛
Churches selling out to psychiatry are basically saying “Souls don’t exist. Or at least the mentally ill don’t have any. Jesus can’t save you if you’re mentally ill. You’re unredeemable or a nuisance (no real difference) so please stay at the county home where you belong and quit bothering us.”
My dad used to bring a van load of people from a county home where people too brain damaged from shocks/drugs to care for themselves lived. People went to great lengths to stop him from bringing them. Did I mention the church was really pro-psychiatry? Compassion and psychiatry aren’t synonymous. But the latter makes a cheap and easy substitute for the former!
I believe this passing the buck to psychiatry will kill a lot of churches. Why bother with attending when you can bypass the church and go straight to the MH Center for salvation? Can’t even mourn it since the church was already dead. A corpse with a lot of riger mortis. (Saddle Back.)
Report comment
A friend of mine in her 70’s had stomach pain, couldn’t eat and became so weak she couldn’t get out of bed.
In the hospital a doctor she trusts told her she had a chemical imbalance in her brain and “antidepressants” would fix everything. She’s pretty frail but got out of bed. (Placebo effect? Being fed in the hospital?)
It’s a safe bet she has gut issues, but her lazy, lying MD chose to put her on psych drugs instead. Creep!
June believed him because she’s scrupulously honest and would never endanger someone for bucks.
Why are most MDs monsters nowadays? They know the chemical imbalance is a myth so that makes them filthy liars when they spread it as gospel truth.
Report comment
The intolerance of emotional pain cuts both ways Dr. K. In the old days people would support grieving widows and provide companionship for the unhappy.
Now they tell you to see a psychiatrist and take some “meds.” It sounds nicer than “bug off.”
Something you neglected to mention was the ubiquitous psych drug commercials. Despite what I have told family members they find it hard to believe the pills aren’t helpful (except for quieting folks to stuff in institutions.) Cause the dancing pill commercials are so cute! And Dr. Phil says….
Report comment
So Edith Sheffer addresses the “severe cases”? I guess I will read the book.
My BFFL is an educator and has been encouraging me to get diagnosed with autism. She believes it will automatically cancel out my “bipolar” label. But that goes contrary to what I see.
Even if it were valid I don’t need another XXXX label! People are cruel and hateful to everyone the least bit different. All you have to do is wear ugly paisley slacks, bite your nails too much, talk too much or too little, not be organized 100% of the time, or say something clever/creative. Bingo! You’re crazy and worse than Jeffrey Damer with leprosy in the eyes of the “Normals” who act, dress, and talk like everyone else.
Report comment
KS my over-the-top statement was not meant to be scientific. Memories do change. My own are far from accurate and change as I reinterpret my past.
But cavalier dismissal of actual abuse is a real problem in the “mental” system. An SMI labeled victim makes a great mark for an abuser.
Report comment
“There’s no such thing as repressed memories. Or implanted. Just hallucinations and delusions of the severely mentally ill.” That’s a popular cultural narrative now.
Report comment
She had no formal training FWIW, Fiachra.
Report comment
In America the media is terrified of losing drug company sponsors.This shows not just in the news but on crime and medical dramas. Murderers are always “untreated bipolars” I notice.
Report comment
“It looks like you have no idea what mindfulness therapy is.”
Not sure the perky worker who forced us to hum and empty our brains for 2 hour sessions did either. Ugh! Torture. You had to be REALLY “medicated” to sit through one of those. Most just took naps.
I referred to them as mindlessness exercises. Relaxed and dumb as possible is what mental health wants for all the clients. 😛 They love to force you to watch lots of TV too. They play it 16 hours per day in every psych ward I’ve visited.
Of course forced therapy only “works” if inflicting pain is the end goal.
Report comment
Dragon Slayer what would you say to parents like MellowMack? What about those classified as “autistic” who can’t talk or take care of basic needs for themselves?
Some of us can call ourselves socially awkward or eccentric but others have real problems learning and holding down jobs. How do you explain that?
Report comment
Religions have been banned in the past.
Of course then it was practiced underground. Are you saying this would happen with psychiatry Mark?
For what it’s worth Szazs said people demanding drugs and brain mutilations had the right to pay for them.
Report comment
As a former voluntary patient the idea of chaining someone going willingly is stupid. It’s like they want to humiliate you as much as possible.
Police give rides to non arrested people all the time. A bunch of balogna sauce!
If you’re desperate enough to seek help at the funny farm better get a family member to drive you or take a cab. Or–better still–avoid those places altogether.
Report comment
Lovable but eccentric Aunt Betty, Debbie the depressed stay at home mom, Ted Bundy the serial killer…what’s the difference to Pharma-psychiatry?
Report comment
Handcuffs and fetters are standard in these transportations. Even if the hospitalization is requested by the “mentally ill.” I should know. 😛
Hard to swim with those on assuming the back doors didn’t automatically lock from the inside.
Report comment
Very interesting!
Report comment
Thank you Ann and Hugh. The title of this article made me smack my head. (It’s the shrink who decides of course.)
But it offered insight for those of us who are not therapists about the frustration you may feel when “consumers” insist drugs and more drugs are the answer. I even read an article by a “bipolar” woman bad mouthing her “evil psychiatrist” because he was holding out on her and not giving her the “good stuff.” She hunted till she found one who gave her massive quantities of what she insisted she needs to feel good. This is one of those (rare) cases I feel more sympathy for the shrink than the “consumer.”
In her defense she has received a miseducation through TV commercials and NAMI that psych drugs will cure all your problems and save your soul.
As far as psychiatrists who oppose these drugs or “swear at them” yes, they exist. (Most write for this site!) But they are few and far between–greatly outnumbered by the pill pushers. Only the pill pushing kind work at centers, serve on the APA boards, or are asked to speak at NAMI conventions. During my years in the System I never met a single one who criticized the pill magic or offered to take me off or inform me of alternatives to drugs and shocks.
Report comment
Methinks Dr. Andreasen’s biggest fear is enough people will stop taking the drugs and recover to prove her profession is worse than useless in helping the broken among us.
Report comment
I prefer the term “emotional pain killers” for these drugs. A tiny amount of Stelazine helped me short term.
Unfortunately it deadened my ability to experience joy or feel affection. It also made me think psychiatry had all the answers. This led to an anafranil-inspired bout with psychotic mania and 3 weeks with no sleep. 😛
Down the rabbit hole for 25 years. Doing okay without any drugs now. Grieving over my wasted life though.
Report comment
My condolences. Your son no doubt has a learning disability, but it sounds so different from Anders’ experience that lumping them into the same category is doing both a disservice.
As Dr. Breggin has said the human brain is the biggest mystery in the known universe. Precious little is known about it.
Have you seen the short documentary “Autism is a World”? The young woman in that can’t talk but communicates through a machine like that Steven Hawkings used.
Report comment
The late nineties. Things have changed I know.
Report comment
Often it leads to discrimination and psych drugs.
25 years of psychiatric drugging has made me more “autistic” in my behaviors than before. Public rejection and TBI. All my life I have struggled to look “normal.” To this day I’d sacrifice my eye teeth to fit in and be like those around me.
Being yelled at as a kid for “being weird all the time” by my mom only increased my awkwardness. Ever tried focusing on NOT being weird in your pubic interactions? Great way to drive yourself nuts. 😀
Report comment
“It” is an extreme state labeled a disease by shrinks. Depression is real, but it is not a brain disease. And calling it that invalidates the experience and prevents any positive changes the unhappy person might make.
Report comment
You mean that “mental illness” is an oxymoron?
Yes that does cause confusion when I have brought this up. I pointed it out to David Healy on his blog. The experts hem and haw. “Yes. Well mental actually means the brain.” “Yes we should call ‘schizophrenia’ a physical illness; not a mental one.”
But getting shrinks to call extreme states physical illnesses will not automatically end the battle. Great for making folks ask questions though. If depression is caused by a brain disease why is it called a mental illness? We don’t call brain cancer a mental illness or see psychiatrists to treat it.
Report comment
Drugs and psych labels make gainful employment all but impossible. Not enough subsidized housing for all of psychiatry’s victims. And SSI payments will not cover rent in any state.
Hoping to bootstrap myself up now that I’m drug free and can write more easily and don’t need 12 hours of sleep per day. If not for my kind relatives I’d be homeless probably.
Report comment
Yes. It could also be a metaphor for mindless hyper consumerism. Noteworthy how homelessness expands even as psychiatry does. Also disability rates. As RW has already pointed out if the “treatments” helped people function and lead productive lives shouldn’t the reverse have occurred?
Before I found out about all the writings discrediting pharna-psychiatry I would sit in day treatment feeling confused. (More than just the drugs at work.) They told us how much our “meds” were helping us; how they made our lives so much better; and how these “meds” were saving our lives. I noticed how sick everyone was with legitimate ailments–but at a rate most folks did not. We still acted on impulse, had crazy thoughts, heard voices, and struggled making ordinary decisions. We couldn’t work or get along with other people. Most of us wanted to die and struggled with suicidal desires.
They told us how great things were and it made me angry. What was good enough for us would not have been good enough for “real people.” I knew our lives stunk but no one dared admit it.
Report comment
I agreed with Sylvain about scientific proofs and arguments. The proofs already exist thanks to writers like RW and many others along with obscure papers published by the APA itself.
It’s not more scientific research we need (unless it’s helping survivors heal from the damage shrinks have done to them.) What we need to work on is public relations and presenting anti-psychiatry in trendy, dumbed down ways so John and Jane Doh! can get it. Sadly we can’t get a platform on TV. Few people read anymore but they mindlessly consume countless hours of television. Maybe catchy tunes on Youtube videos?
Report comment
Convincing them our rights are being violated and we are being harmed would be a good first step. Many believe they are helping us by drugging, shocking and imprisoning us. (And saving their own lives too.)
Report comment
Stigma means “shame.” Who shamed us? Why the lord high stigmatizers themselves at the APA.
A true “stigma buster” would be publicly discrediting a shrink! You avoid stigma by shunning their “help.” Man do they lack insight into how human beings behave!
Report comment
The way society sees it Alex, is we are all mass murderers who will go on killing sprees without our chemical muzzles. They believe we are being helped–not hurt–because these drugs restore the chemical balances of our hopelessly defective brains.
Can you blame them for not wanting to be murdered?
(I know this is all bovine excrement promoted by the drug industry and shrinks. But I guess more than 95% of America’s population believes the “metaphor” Pies is laughing up his sleeves about is a scientifically established fact.)
Report comment
Well said Sylvain!
Many more would come to our aid or find the courage to leave the System if they realized there is no known brain disorder behind the emotional distress and therefore the pills cannot correct it.
Report comment
Psychiatry excels at covering its butt. Pulling the right strings is responsible for this no doubt.
Report comment
OH nobody knows wheels exist sadly.
It’s because of lying creeps like Lieberman stigma is the problem. TD and other marks of brain damage, morbid obesity, homelessness all come from “help” creeps like him have tricked or coerced the innocent into taking. He knows his profession is behind the rash of killing sprees. Everyone here knows he’s morally responsible for these deaths and is happy to have them continue since its great PR for his profession. That man has no conscience or empathy and is a menace to society.
Know why there’s an anti-psychiatry movement and no anti-cardiology movement? Because heart specialists don’t go on national TV and demonize folks with heart attacks. (Also they don’t cause heart attacks in a bunch of hitherto healthy people.) Real doctors don’t slander their patients!
Report comment
KumininExile, could you elaborate how homeless rates will cause psychiatry’s downfall? I don’t care how it happens, I long for its destruction. No one is safe from shrinks anymore. Not even toddlers!
I’ve noticed severe housing shortages for folks disabled and labeled by psychiatry. But I can’t see how this will bite shrinks in the butt. They can (indirectly) cause mass shooting sprees with their Hellish drugs, then use the drug induced violence for unlimited expansion of powers by lying to the public on TV. Nobody holds them accountable for anything.
Report comment
The idea is learning to control your OWN negative thoughts. Not letting someone else control them.
Like Thomas Szazs I only support counseling sessions between consenting adults. If it doesn’t work for you or you don’t want it they shouldn’t force you to have CBT.
Report comment
God, grant me the serenity…
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Also known as “The Serenity Prayer.”
Report comment
Not against CBT as long as it’s a good form and the counselor is ethical rather than abusive.
Fine line between accepting responsibility for your own actions and beating yourself up for others’ bad behavior. Reminds me of the 12 Step chant.
Report comment
Yep.
Report comment
Dr. Breggin thank you for your efforts to help us. Sadly when Toxic Psychiatry came out in 1993 I was already sucked down the psychiatric maelstrom which ruined my life. I never knew the book existed till recently.
I want to remind readers that while Dr. Breggin is not a survivor, he has nothing to gain by taking our part. It has almost been career suicide. If career advancement and prestige is all he’s after he’s doing it the wrong way. He didn’t have a dog in this fight–but chose to put himself on the line to help folks like us. Remember Oskar Schindler?
I will always be grateful to you Dr. Breggin. 🙂
Report comment
According to this article Anti-psychiatry isn’t what they aim for anyhow.
Report comment
Me too.
Report comment
Psychiatry’s business is producing mental patients.
The APA’s motto should be:
Driving everyone crazy. One case at a time.
Report comment
Hi Sandra. Did you also start out as a member of the “worried well” till psychiatric treatments drove you bat-sh*t crazy? That’s my story. The System never acknowledges this either. That would be “pill shaming.”
Report comment
A union for social workers won’t help prisoners of psychiatry. But I doubt it will hurt them more either.
Neither here nor there.
Report comment
My guess is “schizophrenics” in these studies get a little too stoned and hallucinate. They get locked up and put on psych drugs to make them “schizophrenic” till they die or escape.
Ironic how Psychiatry wants to use this same substance they have condemned in the past to “treat” the “illness” they accused it of causing. But we’re talking about Psychiatry here. 😀
Report comment
One of the best therapists I ever had–Kevin–told me he used a bunch of different methods and applied whichever fit the situation. He used CBT occasionally, but if the person was too down hearted he would try another technique.
I used the book “Feeling Good” by David Burns. But it’s not the same as having it forced on you by an emotionally abusive “therapist” or shrink.
Report comment
I take vitamins to compensate for damage caused by years of “med compliance.”
Report comment
I thought marijuana was supposed to trigger “schizophrenia.” There are psychiatric papers claiming as much.
The quacks can’t make up their minds.
Report comment
CBT can help in certain situations. But self blame should be avoided. Most people abused by psychiatry already blame themselves for everything. That’s why standard “mental health therapy” is ineffective.
Tell them, “Hey you’re not a defective monster. Your brain is not broken. You can think for yourself and not believe everything the ‘sane’ folks tell you. They have no right to treat you like dirt just because they call themselves ‘normal’!”
That would cure their depression in most cases. But it would make them leave the crazy house without walls. We can’t have that after all. 😛
Report comment
They’re slow to learn due to conflict of interest.
Report comment
Convincing insurance companies of psychiatry’s impotence and the harms it causes is also necessary. Convince the general public and the insurance folks will follow.
Report comment
The DSM forced to compete and Big Pharma banned from legal bribing in the form of “contributions” from their lobbies. Those two things would really defang the Monster Psychiatry.
Report comment
An unusually large number of psychiatrists kill themselves each year. Could they be suffering from”untreated mental illnesses”? *Gasp!*
More likely they can’t bear the torments of their guilty consciences over all the people they lied to and damaged. Like Shakespeare’s Lady MacBeth. Or the commandant depicted in Schindler’s List. (In real life he did lose it. Emotional pain is behind break downs. And guilt can be quite painful.)
Report comment
Me too
Report comment
The “mental health” system is working.
But if you actually want to help people you need to look for another job I’m afraid.
I’m finally getting my life together slowly. Learning to build a social network. Lose 200+ pounds. (Down 40 so far.) Rebuilding my shattered body, mourn my broken dreams and accept responsibility for my bad choices.
Hard to “adult” in your mid forties. If I hadn’t fled the crazy making system it would be impossible. It exists to keep people helpless and dependent.
Chronically ill from years on prescription drugs. Never gainfully employed. Never had a relationship. I owe it to the boon of modern psychiatry.
My life stinks. But I wouldn’t trade places with you Manuela.
It must be horrible to honestly want to help people who only get worse in every way possible. 🙁
Report comment
That’s why he’s called a shrink.
SHRINK.
This is your brain.
This is your brain on psychiatric drugs. Any questions?
Report comment
I was hungry, but instead of making dinner I took a phenthin. Shoot, instead of grocery shopping this week I’m just going to stock up on diet drugs. Since drugs are the cure for everything now. Why solve a problem when you can just numb it and continue the thing that caused the problem to make it even worse?
Report comment
Social interactions and relationships are the cure for loneliness. Not drugs to numb a normal, natural feeling in a bad situation!
Pharma-psychiatry’s “drugs for loneliness” plan is as stupid as saying appetite suppressants can cure world hunger.
Report comment
I agree SE. I like Kelly and the articles she writes.
I would have used the term SSRI myself. (Or SNRI.) Unfortunately most don’t know what these terms mean.
“Antidepressants” are really selective seretonin reuptake inhibitors. “Antipsychotics” are neuroleptics. “Mood stabilizers” are tranquilizers.
Report comment
Precisely!
It’s not who you are. It’s how you look.
My earliest “lesson” from adults before my first breakdown in 1984. I was not quite 11. 🙁
Report comment
It doesn’t matter how smart a person is or how many letters come after his or her name. If you know they lie whenever convenient they are not to be trusted. An honest janitor with a high school diploma is more credible than these well-informed liars.
Congratulations for standing up to them Dr. Gozche! Unlike most of us commenting here you stand to lose a lot for doing what is right. And nothing to gain in the material sense.
Report comment
Trotsky inspired Snowball in Orwell’s Animal Farm.
Report comment
Maybe if more of us loved people and used things to help them (remember Schindler’s List?) our loneliness would end. But people are selfish, greedy and unloving. Because no one cares about their “loved ones” our culture is glad to farm out unhappy people who are no longer useful to worthless quacks. That way–even if they suffer horribly and die–they won’t cramp our style.
Report comment
The writer lost me with the phrase “mental health.”
Psychiatry is the cause of my loneliness. If I had not been stupid and gullible enough to see a shrink back in 1992 I would be a much happier woman today with a family, friends, and career.
Today I have nothing. Broke–living on gov. assistance with relatives and in occasional HUD slums. So sick I hurt all over and can barely leave my room most days. Never married. Will never have kids.
I owe it all to trusting my shrink and “meds compliance.” 😛
I hate my life. Psychiatry can talk to my hand!
Report comment
I am lonely thanks to psychiatry. Too sick to get out much and fearful of being “found out.”
Psychiatry IS alienation and drugs. Those are its 2 components.
The drugs aren’t really about helping people survive Ramesh. About keeping them docile and childish so they’re easy to control.
Report comment
A drug to make you stop feeling lonely? Good grief!
Why not just get drunk all the time? A lot of people use alcohol to cope. About as safe and effective. And we know more about long term alcohol use.
Report comment
“Compliance” is all that matters in “mental health.” I remember a study NAMI conducted (need to look it up) where they determined successful treatments solely by how many continued to stay drugged. The quality of life was irrelevant since they didn’t record it.
You can be miserable, vomiting uncontrollably, unable to speak or move without difficulty, and obsessed with suicide. But if you’re “meds compliant” no one gives a rip. And they’ll dismiss any suicides as “in spite of” never “because of.”
How convenient! 😛
Report comment
I know plenty of people “on their meds” who act that way. I often was.
The Haldol and other crap made me too numb to speak often. But it did not make me more coherent or rational. Nor did it enhance my problem solving skills.
That’s how brain damage “helps.” 🙁
Report comment
Why should anyone in “mental health” want to change? They’re happy with the status quo. And when they finish slowly killing us they can get fresh meat through ads/propaganda disguised as news.
Report comment
National Association for Manufacturing Insanity. 😛
Report comment
The words health and independence draw attention to the fact that NAMI is dedicated to the exact opposites. Causing sickness and disability. Also premature death.
Report comment
Ds_Ghoste, my gut no longer functions. I can’t absorb micro nutrients after 23 years on one SSRI or another. Pretty sick all the time. It started 3 years before I went off, though I notice the pain more.
If the damage can’t be reversed at least the thing causing it has been stopped. My heart arrhythmia is better now. And I can lose weight again.
Report comment
Sounds great CatNight!
Of course I’m not Corinna. But how about National Association for Health and Independence? That would fight NAMI and SAMSA and similar groups since they create sickness and disabilities in people they view as threats. That’s how “mental health” actually works after all.
Report comment
I bet insecticide wouldn’t help them either.
But keep giving out SSRI’s as much as possible doctors. Keep a big dish to hand out to visitors like office mints. With any luck you can induce psychotic mania, label them Bipolar 2 and force feed them 3-6 drugs instead of 1 every day till they die.
Cha ching!
Report comment
I admire what you’re trying to do Corinna. But I quit working with groups like that long ago.
NAMI stands for Never Achieve My Independence. 🙁
Report comment
Churchill too. 🙂
Report comment
Use the colon and capital P. Emoji face with the tongue sticking out. Like so. 😛
Report comment
Tolstoy would fit that category. So would Martin Luther King.
MLK attempted suicide at age 12. Few people know this. Thank God there was no psychiatric “help” to ruin his life back then!
Report comment
You got that right OH. I didn’t take those XXXX drugs for 25 years to become “docile and child-like” aka helpless. The quacks promised they would help me lead an independent, productive life outside an institution. A lot of my “SMI” friends are now begging for institutionalizing now, believe it or not. They can’t keep up on their ADLs needed to keep HUD thanks to long term brain and nerve damage. 🙁
I escaped just in time. (I hope.)
Report comment
Like the shamans for so-called primitive societies. The “diagnoses” of psychiatry are incantations and the “medicines” are talismans and elixirs. This belief system is called the Power-Threat narrative. It’s usually a religious system.
Because people believe in the hexes the medicine man places on his enemies they can actually die.
Report comment
Steve and Alex you both make good points. If my gut tells me something is off I don’t immediately ACT on it. I investigate. Like someone accusing someone of a crime. Innocent till proven guilty. But you carefully look at the evidence being submitted.
Report comment
Dysfunctional people are the norm.
Report comment
That’s what Samuel Butler was mocking in his novel Erewhon.
Report comment
Not in foster care thank goodness. Makes me angry to read about this after the crap psychiatry has put me through since age 18. Hard enough as an adult.
If I ever have the financial means I want to take in foster kids. That’s why I’m reading this. 🙂
Report comment
You got that right. Profitable for psychiatry and pharmacy companies, but bad for the economy as a whole. Crippling 20-25% of the next generation is very short sighted. But evil always is.
Plus the shrinks can pretend to be humanitarians and express surprise at all the horrible stuff that happens to their victims. “Ruh roh. Look what the schizophrenic disease did. Not my fault. It’s the disease that did it. But please don’t ask me to scan the ‘treatment naive’ since that would be unethical.” Unethical meaning “bad for my career.”
Report comment
Thanks for the article Steve.
Really disturbing to me. Not your fault; but the subject matter.
Report comment
Your final sentence packs a powerful punch. I said I was suicidal when I wasn’t. Why? People quit treating me so horribly–as they had since the quack told friends and family I was hopeless.
Without psychiatry I never would have done this to start with since I was viewed as a human being before.
Report comment
In The Jungle Books the monkeys tell Mowgli repeatedly “We are more intelligent and resourceful than any other animals in the jungle.”
When he looks incredulous they protest, “It’s true. It’s true. We all say it is and we should know.” 😀
Thus Pharma-psychiatry defends itself.
Report comment
If you ever pay a little visit to NAMI’s forums for “supportive family members” who run the whole show a lot of them whine about the “emotional abuse” they put up with from the “mentally ill” kids in their 30’s and 40’s. Boo hoo. Who crippled them and forced them to live in the basement to begin with?
The “mentally ill” never complain since they believe everything bad that happens is always their fault for being crazy.
Report comment
Verbose AND articulate? So is the priest using too many words or just the right amount of them?
Psychiatry is full of its own delusions. Despite the death and destruction in its wake these men persist in playing god with cruel, pointless experiments on those they deem unworthy of life. Szazs was right!
Report comment
Yes. Emotions are always a “symptom.” Meaning the “doctors” consider themselves to be androids or emotionless space aliens. (“I am a Vulcan. There is no pain.”)
Can’t get any saner than that. Bwahahaha!
Zombies is a great metaphor too. Soulless. Devoid of all emotions except the hunger for the brains of living creatures. Dr. Torrey I presume?
Report comment
Thanks Krista!
Not all psychiatrists are alike. Some choose this field because they dislike dealing with anyone who is not an inferior.
But the kind you dealt with would cave in to assertive behavior. Especially if they know you’re not afraid to sue them for malpractice. 😉
Report comment
Tell me how slowly poisoning someone over the course of 10-30 years is any kinder than quickly killing them in a gas oven.
Report comment
Or wearing an ugly paisley blouse/tie that embarrasses your family members. Pretty crazy huh? Personality Disorder no doubt. 😛
Report comment
Yes. A lot of ordinary GPs would fall into this category as well.
And most psychiatrists are not as remorseless or deceitful as members of the American Psychiatric Association and similar Inner Circle groups.
Report comment
They have completed premedical training however. How can they not know the history of the science behind their profession? Are they really that ignorant of what their prescriptions do? How they maim and kill people?
However kindly their intentions their ignorance and the damage they inflict (even if unwittingly) terrifies me. It should terrify us all. Damaging a patient through avoidable ignorance or neglect can still lead to a legitimate doctor being sued.
Report comment
Dr. “I-don’t-know-any-real-psychiatrist-who-promotes-the-chemical-imbalance-metaphor” Pies.
You know. That old rascal. 😀 Needs a better organized filing system to keep his lies organized.
Fooling all of the people all of the time is a tough act to pull. Lincoln said it was impossible. But what would Honest Abe know about successful mass deceptions?
Report comment
With all due respect Dr. K, I don’t think we really need professionals. Or at least we shouldn’t. Human love doesn’t require a PhD or MSW.
Report comment
I wish they would since that would go over like a lead balloon nowadays.
At least the 19th century folks were honest. “I don’t like this behavior so I’m going to punish those who do it even if it is legal.”
Everything in “mental health” is punishment for weird but legal thoughts/behaviors. If laws were broken there are already courts for criminals to be tried.
It’s not about sex so much now but little nit picky stuff. Sadness. Anxiety. Squirming in class. Liking anything authorities don’t. Liking art “too much.” Being too sensitive. Or independent. (That’s “toxic” now. Independent folks don’t consume enough.)
Report comment
Furthermore these same people will dismiss or demonize those suffering after years on these drugs–shaming them to exonerate the pills (and their morally bankrupt profession)–and ignore how many health problems we have including early onset dementia and premature death. Skew the surveys and use anecdotal evidence–but only the anecdotes that they want the public to hear.
Report comment
Been off thyroid medicine for 3 weeks. Couldn’t find a prescriber thanks to a Medicaid card glitch.
Lucky my cancer doctor was nice enough to write one. (No cancer, but pernicious anemia and other deficiencies thanks to decades on my psych cocktail. Iatrogenic disease is real!)
Report comment
In defense of the oppressors, Steve, they would be in a lot of hot water if the American Psychiatric Association ever made a PSA saying, “Heh heh. We goofed. Seems these things never fixed any brain problems, muddled people’s thoughts, destroyed inhibitions against suicide and violent crimes, and were addictive as street drugs too.”
A lot of people would be angry. A lot of us already are, but multiply that number by 20.
Report comment
I think psychiatrists must know this, but are reluctant to admit it. Demagogues rather than doctors.
A lot of people think it’s great now. But if asked how it works they would stammer out of ignorance or deceit.
Report comment
Coming off the cocktail of poisons helped me lose 40 pounds.
The only reason these folks have poor health is those damn treatments. My own health is permanently wrecked.
Report comment
Tsk tsk. How dare you “pill shame” Concerned Carer?
Shaming the victim–er–consumer for gaining weight on these toxins, having seizures, getting Parkinson’s and not benefiting is how psychiatry helps us. 😛
Report comment
My thoughts exactly Steve.
Report comment
Yes. I like the hagiography link you provided of the pious young man judged mentally ill by the Soviets.
Forgiving those who damaged my body and soul has proven necessary for my healing. Still not well enough to live independently.
No EC in my case. The 3-4 drugs over 20+ years was damaging enough. They did a great job deceiving me too.
Report comment
You’re not alone in your thinking Z. It really is a huge miscarriage of justice.
The “experts” are clueless and lack real insight into how human beings behave. The legal experts might have caught on if the shrinks weren’t deceived by your abusive ex and willing to pass the deception on.
Judges and lawyers need to learn not to believe anything these guys say. Mind reading and fortune telling is what psychiatrists actually claim to do. Psychics–not scientists.
The pre-crime division. IMO the rates of crime would plummet if psychiatry were banned and the legal system didn’t have these “experts” to give them consistently bad advice!
Report comment
I’m troubled by your implied endorsement of electro shocks Fr. John. They “work” by damaging the brain and (sometimes) destroying painful memories–along with things the victim wanted to remember.
I’m sure you don’t realize this though. I know psych nurses who don’t. (Got all their education from promotional videos of the ECT machine manufacturing company.)
Report comment
Long, slow, painful euthanasia. But yes.
Report comment
The “mental health” system reminds me of the novel A Wrinkle in Time. While visiting the planet Kamazotz the kids discover that they euthanize anyone who develops a head cold.
How psychiatry helps people upset and/or out of touch of reality by random brain damage ensuring they can never think straight again. 🙁
Report comment
What does DCF stand for Cat?
Report comment
I’m glad Cat.
At least she has a friend like you. Too bad it’s long distance.
Report comment
So sorry!
If you would like to e mail me offsite my address is lulivingnichols at gmail dot com. I don’t have all the answers, but I can tell you what keeps me from utter despair.
And I am not selling a product. Love can’t be sold because it’s priceless.
Report comment
I don’t know what’s behind your emotional pain LT. Mine stems from chronic loneliness, poverty, barrenness and the realization that nothing good will happen to me in this life. The idea that I need a disease to excuse my sorrows seems insulting to me.
I’m unhappy because my life sucks! No psych “diagnosis” necessary. And psychiatry is largely responsible for my failed life.
Report comment
I came to this conclusion after reading about Saddleback by Susan Cane. Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that won’t stop talking.
As a PK you could only form a whole bunch of “relationships” with folks you barely knew and couldn’t care about. I’m not a total introvert but I like depth to my relationships.
Living as a hermit now. Almost total isolation except for internet and phone. Go to church and pretend to love on total strangers who you know don’t care about you. Just as well. No one likes the real me. Had to play a role since I was a child. 😛
Report comment
Not calling Rick unloving, but I believe Matt had the “wrong” personality type. An introvert in a family of hyper extroverts. Very stressful.
Rick often said in sermons that all Christians should be 100% extroverted since Jesus was. (Jesus needed down time too. RW skipped over the parts where he went away to pray.)
Publicly embarrassing his son by calling him “mentally ill” in front of everyone may have played a role too. Loving after a fashion but devoid of gentleness, patience or empathy (trying to understand someone.) Being considered “MI” causes people to quit trying to understand your pain since it’s no longer supposed to make sense. Your tears just show your “meds” aren’t working and your “broken brain” is honking people off again.
Shut up and take your prozac! No one cares about you, nut job! See how NICE we are to crazies at Saddleback? 😀
Report comment
Psychiatrists believe only some biologically defective evolutionary throwbacks are “mentally ill.” These deserve whatever torments the shrinks throw at them. Total depravity of all humanity versus biological depravity of a select few. And the shrinks are all 100% sane–of course.
Report comment
Thank you Father John. I’m a Church of Christ Christian myself.
What you said echos my existential conflict with psychiatry. When I believed it was a proven fact I wondered how my faith could be true, since the blood of Jesus and the Holy Spirit were not sufficient to save me from my sinfulness without the pills. Now I realize it was all a lie.
The pills numbed my empathy, conscience, and impulse control while amplifying the voices of my inner demons. Off the stuff at last. Thank God I can pray again! I can feel love for those around me.
Report comment
I have gone low carb and grain free. For now the only sweets I consume are berries.
Report comment
Like you Stephen, I suffer from malnutrition–fat though I am. Have you tried building up your intestinal flora? I’m trying that now. Not sure how effective it will be. I’m sure I can’t undo decades of damage in one month.
Report comment
A lot of un-tenured academics are tutoring or running private courses online.
They do better financially than cobbling adjunct teaching jobs together. But they have to promote the heck out of it.
Report comment
“Assisted Outpatient Treatment.” Very euphemistic. 😛
Court ordered against your will.
Report comment
That was my next guess.
AOT stinks!
Report comment
My depression significantly lessened since coming off my “antidepressant.” But no shrink wants to hear stories like mine. My life is still not that great which makes my (somewhat) upbeat attitude more noteworthy.
Report comment
“DSM code.” I like that.
Psychiatry tries to categorize behaviors which are bad or self defeating or odd or simply ones they don’t happen to like into “diseases” like astrologers drawing lines between stars to come up with zodiac signs.
People are too complex to fit into the boxes shrinks try to stuff us into. The labels are worse than useless and do nothing to end the suffering. The only people these help are the shrinks in their endless quest for power and money making billing codes.
Report comment
And they quite likely will kill themselves anyhow. With psychiatry even if you “live” it’s not a good life!
Report comment
Actually psychiatry is the biggest cause of disability in developed countries. But I’m preaching to the choir here. 🙂
Report comment
“Dr. Rached” did not allow Bibles on her ward. She claimed there was too much religious mania, but no one else thought so. No one was calling himself Jesus or proclaiming prophetic messages at the time. Doc Rached was the jealous type who couldn’t share the spotlight with any other gods. Lol.
Report comment
Thanks Emmeline. Been noticing some glitches in the coding this week.
Report comment
Like Peter Breggin I started out wanting to teach English literature and write novels. He chose a career helping the psychiatrized. I “chose” a career as a “mental patient” unwittingly since I thought I was doing the responsible thing for myself and all around me.
There are fewer positions in academia now. I’ll see.
Today is one of the good days. Not hurting all over and coughing my head off. 🙂
Report comment
Maybe lithium helps take the edge off your emotional pain, Zmenard?
6 mg of stelazine helped quell my overwhelming anxiety as a college freshman. Unfortunately it killed my ability to feel joy and made me think the drugs actually helped to fix my brain. This had serious repercussions when I went requested help later and went bonkers on anafranil.
Report comment
Sera, a surprisingly large number of people commit suicide when locked up for it. I don’t have the information right now. I believe it can be found in the index of An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison.
If I had a suicidal friend I would keep an eye on her, call her, show her unconditional love and try to keep her spirits up. But you don’t find much love or hope in a psych ward. 🙁
Report comment
Medical records follow you everywhere. I could leave America…but….
Report comment
I did not notice that. I need to reread the article. 🙂
Krista, I refer you to the article recently published here by Eric Kuelker. “Why the ‘Psychological Injury Model’ Will Ultimately Triumph.” This explains how I–and many here–view the extreme states of mind/emotions psychiatrists refer to as “mental illnesses.”
Report comment
Zmenard your story is a great illustration of how psychiatry tends to side with the strong rather than the well behaved. Also why abused women should do what they can to avoid the Mental Illness System.
Your emotions are perfectly “normal” given your circumstances. Glad your shrink is one of the nice ones.
Report comment
Edith Wilson and other famous women mocked the suffragettes. They asked “Why do women want to vote?” Not all slaves wanted their freedom. (The Holocaust happened fast. Plus none of the Jews thought the Nazis were out to help them.)
In many respects the psychiatrized are like patronized women denied the status of adults or chattel slaves. Or even if freed African Americans were viewed as “childish” etc. for many generations.
Report comment
Getting “undiagnosed” makes it harder for them to pick us off. We become true citizens again–with due process and those other things the non-psyched take for granted.
Btw, a lot of ex-slaves still wanted freedom papers in the antebellum south. These came in handy when working on the Underground Railroad. Simply saying “Slavery is wrong,” wouldn’t help if the slavers had the legal right to capture a man and sell him as chattel again.
Report comment
Steve? I thought it was Krista. These comments are hard to figure out.
Organizing to fight psychiatry will be easier if we can come out of hiding.
Report comment
If I were accused of witchcraft in Salem–and convicted–merely saying women can’t fly around on broomsticks wouldn’t do the trick. I would need the conviction and witchcraft label overturned before returning to Salem. Until I have my “bipolar” label removed I will always live in some degree of fear and avoid doctors. I must live in the shadows and hide my past from all I meet.
Report comment
Not trying to insult you btw. Not your fault what many here have experienced.
Report comment
Harper West, I no longer see a counselor because I ceased to benefit. Plus they’re all linked to “mental health” and my Medicaid won’t cover.
Nevertheless I fully support psycho-therapy between consenting adults. Different from psychiatry. Szazs himself conducted sessions with adults.
Sometimes “therapy” turns to emotional abuse. Forcing someone to sit through verbal beatings and mind games can be eliminated by making it all voluntary.
In my MH center you were supposed to be able to leave a therapist at your discretion. Sadly this was just not true. 🙁
Report comment
Just because folks were trying to abolish slavery did not get rid of a need for the Underground Railroad OH. While the allies fought to win World War II people defied the Nazis to hide Jews and smuggle them out of occupied territory.
It’s easy to become so wrapped up in the Big Picture one overlooks the individual one could help right now.
Report comment
I follow a libertarian blog called “Economic Freedom.” Dan Mitchell, the blogger, has written a book called Cronyism. In it he decries the bribery and other dishonest tactics major corporations use to get Big Brother eating out of their hands. He doesn’t know much about psychiatry because he has never mentioned how the APA stays in power no matter how much damage they create.
Report comment
A lot of fast food places are being replaced by kiosks.
“Mental health” centers could easily be replaced by arcades of vending machines. Get a “diagnosis” and recommended drugs from an online app on the website owned by the franchise. Then hustle down to the center, swipe your Medicaid/insurance card and select the drug and dosage out of the proper machine. A week’s worth of drugs pop out in a box. Set for the week!
The APA wouldn’t like this of course. Machines lack the “human” touch. They’re not arrogant, spiteful or into sadism. 😀
Report comment
Psychiatrists are like drug lords or mob bosses. 🙂
You are free to consume Big Gino’s stuff as a client…or he will get 6 thugs to jump you, pound on you, and give you an overdose while you plead for mercy. That’s what happens to “clients” who say “No” to Big G. See?
Or you can escape like we did. Harder for some. I have not been in AOC. My reputation as a good consumer–with great “insight”–helped me conduct a low key escape.
Report comment
It is hard to reject “the concept and industry of psychiatry” if you are labeled a “hard” SMI and forced to endure AOC. Or even living in the twilight zone like I do–fearful to see a doctor for legitimate medical problems because of my ugly records.
I’m pretty sick after 25+ years on at least one “therapeutic” dose of a psych drug in my system. A cocktail for 22 years. Been drug free for 18 months, but my body is a wreck. I’m in chronic pain, tired all the time, and have breathing problems. And I’m pretty sad/angry at my wasted life. Sometimes I wonder why I escaped since it’s too late to do anything now. Too old to start over!
Look forward to your next post though.
Report comment
I’ll have to read it sometime Danzig.
Note to tech staff. The text seems to be set on permanent italics here.
Report comment
“Mental Hell Care.” Ha ha! That’s a good one Squash. 😀
Report comment
I prayed for a year that Tim Murphy would get kicked out of office. When it finally happened I thanked God with tears in my eyes!
Report comment
It’s a legal issue, OH. Without the “bipolar” label Krista no longer has to live in fear of being locked up without due process if she breaks her leg.
Report comment
About No. 1: Due to its associations with Silicon Valley, “spectrum” sounds nice and scientific. Wrong branch of science–since these people CLAIM to be experts on neuro-chemistry–not airwaves. But it sure sounds impressively scientific.
N. 3: It’s not about the “patient.” It never was. A psychiatrist helps his “patients” the way an exterminator helps termites.
Report comment
Me too! 🙂
Report comment
Nice personal story Caleb.
Very touching. 🙂
Report comment
About domestic abuse…
There are plenty of online forums where well meaning, STUPID people encourage abused wives to not be afraid to seek out “mental help” for the “diseases” of anxiety and depression.
What frustrates me is the women running the forum mean well–but believe the “chemical imbalance” is an established fact proven by cutting edge medical science. They’re clueless about how a “mental diagnosis” will harm those who seek to leave or divorce an abuser.
Wish I could get them to read Paula Capplan. But that would be more of a mental challenge than watching a Zoloft commercial. They just don’t wanna!
Report comment
Yes. There’s some ER drama (can’t remember the title) where the resident psychiatrist is a kindly older man. Equal parts psych therapist, neurologist, and wizard.
Not a Peter Breggin type, since he never challenges the “truths” of the pseudo science. More like a Dr. House but with the bedside manner of Dr. Kildare. Few of the cases are actually “mentally ill” but have some mysterious malady–neurological or otherwise–he struggles to solve.
In real life few shrinks can diagnose a case of Lyme Disease or other legitimate disorders. Too busy inflicting fresh brain trauma in hopes it will somehow produce a cure.
Like the old cartoons of Tom and Jerry or The Flintstones where one good whack to the head causes amnesia or a bizarre character change–but gets fixed by a second whack. Psychiatry–the “science” of cartoons! 😀
Report comment
For what it’s worth OH, Dr. Kuelker puts the lie to the notion that the drugs actually fix something and correct any brain problems instead of creating new ones. Because of this I’m posting this article on Facebook to educate my friends and family who believe psych drugs are “safe and effective meds.”
My argument against the a priori assumption of Psychiatry: “If the problem is not in the brain it doesn’t exist.”
“If what you say is true that still does not justify random acts of brain damage on those you consider already impaired.”
Osteogenesis Imperfecta is undoubtedly a disorder of the human skeleton. But it does not justify taking a crow bar to the limbs of someone suffering from it.
Report comment
OW should be required reading for marketing majors too.
Report comment
“…you add to the mix the toxic notions about d.i.d. currently going on in this culture like the movie Switch and its sequel Mr. Glass….”
?????
What I actually said was: “DID is a psych label. So of course I reject it.”
Report comment
Not all hurts come from physical violence. 🙁
Report comment
KS I was trying to be charitable to Sam. I don’t know him offline. DID is a psych label, so of course I reject it.
The abuse probably happened before he met her. Sam says as much. Is he further abusing her? (Deliberately.)
I can’t say. It is odd she never comes here and he never quotes her or makes her seem like a real individual.
Innocent till proven guilty. Though of course I disagree with the DID label.
Report comment
Sam, assuming you have been telling us the truth–likely you have–if your wife is ashamed of her experiences perhaps she wants them hushed. Maybe you should respect her wishes and not go public unless/until she feels differently.
It is odd she is never here. I’m sure it’s trauma you had nothing to do with. But you yourself say she doesn’t like talking about her extreme states or psychiatric experiences.
My mom has agreed to keep quiet about my “diagnosis.” Bless her!
Report comment
I’m a grouch due to iatrogenic illness/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome linked to long term psych drug use.
Report comment
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” The Importance of Being Ernest
Oscar Wilde was a poet and playwright. He wouldn’t have made it as a copywriter. 😛
Report comment
Thanks to America’s ubiquitous drug ads, Big Pharma owns our television air waves. Even the content of doctor shows/crime dramas/sit coms is full of psychiatric “facts.” 😛
Though real shrinks would laugh at most since they know you don’t need hours of rigorous testing to “diagnose” someone. I actually saw this on a crime drama episode. A fictional shrink said this. The writers didn’t do their homework.
Report comment
The thing is they often “diagnose” people who commit grotesque, horrible murders as SMI. No known pathology for “mental illness” so they can label anyone.
Bizarre crimes are proof of “mental illness” since “mentally ill” usually refers to extreme behaviors. This would inflate the crime stats of the “mentally ill.”
Ted Bundy was “bipolar” just like the harmless eccentric Aunt Betty everybody loves. Different=bad. Ergo murders like Bundy committed are proof of his “mental illness” since most people don’t do what he did.
We don’t need “mental health experts” to label criminals like Bundy. The penal system can function well without them.
Law abiding Aunt Betty will be better off too!
Report comment
We survivors have been told to “stay in our place” a good deal. By very arrogant people who think they have the right to treat us like children, trained animals, or inanimate objects. To be spoken ABOUT and over. Never directly to.
Sick of having our voices overpowered and others speak on our behalf!
About us without us.
Report comment
Tom Jackson’s family THOUGHT his odd thoughts were better because he quit talking. Not always true! My mom thought a mega dose of Haldol helped me since I was too zoned out to complain semi coherently about my ruined life.
Still angry and devastated. But I can control my speech now. Glad I’ll be dead soon since my body’s a wreck. Left psychiatry too late. At 45 there’s nothing to salvage.
My life is just a big awful waste. Countless people like me had a lot to offer that no one wanted. They preferred to throw us away like worthless garbage!
Are you “healthy” Western Society? Are you “normal” to write people off–to segregate and lock up the innocent so we slowly die from cruel, pointless experiments?
I hate your “health”! I spit upon your “normality”! You deserve to die Western Civilization–for you have no pity on the weak and vulnerable.
Report comment
Gas chambers were more humane in some respects. As opposed to slowly poisoning a “mentally ill” person to death over 20-30 years. Way less lucrative making soap out of our body fat though, then billing tax payers for the $$$$$$ of “safe effective poisons” to kill us with.
Report comment
Hey Dr. Coleman. Are you one of those rogue psychiatrists like Dr. K., Breggin, and a couple other writers here?
The ones called “mentally ill” aren’t the people running NAMI, btw. It’s the “mama grizzlies.” Not all NAMI mothers!
But SOME are horrible women/men who enjoy the attention they get as the parent of a sick, crazy child in their thirties or forties–forced to live in their folks’ basement or an institution thanks to being too drugged up to work.
Then everyone can say, “What a brave woman you are Pamela! I hope Bobby appreciates how lucky a bipolar like him is to have a mother like you who cares about him–sick as he is.” Bobby looks embarrassed despite his “meds” and Pamela basks in the public approval–eating it up.
Are there any animal mothers known for eating their young? I have heard of cats doing this.
Report comment
Psychiatry is a “science” of insults. Do cardiologists show up on 48 Hours to bad mouth heart patients and call them a menace to society? Do endocrinologists tell the public how most crimes are committed by people with kidney or thyroid problems?
That’s why there’s no anti cardiology or anti endocrinology movement “Dr.” Torrey. 😛
High ranking, prominent shrinks do nothing but malign those they say they want to help in PSA’s. They can dish it out but they can’t take it.
Report comment
I see what you’re saying Bradford. I didn’t get it at first though.
Report comment
I listen to the station for its music. 🙂
Report comment
“Anti-science, flaky, bizarre, deviant…” You forgot “scientologist.” Hee hee. 😀
Report comment
Hi Altostrata. Glad to see you here at MIA. 🙂
Report comment
Aside from NPR, 95% of music on the radio is brain dead now. 😛
Maybe more.
Report comment
Lenora I agree unhappy people need better social support systems.
Sadly, while NAMI and other “mental health” organizations provide some social support they take away others. Once people find out you’re supposed to be “SMI” they quit talking to you, shun your company, and tell you only a “therapist” or fellow “bipolar” can understand someone like you.
My dorm mom in college found out about my label and told the other girls to quit talking to me. She said only professionals were equipped to do so.
Report comment
Yep.
Report comment
Congratulations on beating the MI System Karey!
I wish you well.
Report comment
Because most abusers are socially adept, poised, self confident, with good self esteem. They never seek “help” from shrinks for themselves. When they drag “crazy loved ones” before these self appointed moral judges–the shrink glances at the distressed, disheveled abuse victim versus the smooth talking, well-dressed, smiling villain and promptly sides with the villain.
To be fair most shrinks who do this don’t even KNOW they’re aiding abusers. Just shows what horrible judges of character these quacks are. And how incompetent they are at protecting society from violent crimes. (Worse than useless in that regard.)
Report comment
My guess is these elderly people are taking all that crap because they’re in nursing homes. Disgusting. Doping them into premature senility makes them easier to stuff into cramped rooms and corridors that reek of urine with minimal staff. Ageism is real enough.
I had a good friend in her eighties who needed a walker. Concerned she might fall again, her adult kids convinced her to move into a home. I visited her a week later and she was full of good spirits. Sharp as a tack.
A month later she couldn’t talk. She was fearful and incoherent. Something rotten was going on. Probably after a doctor visited. It’s not about helping the residents but keeping them quiet and easy to subdue or abuse. Kind of like “treating” those our society has written off as hopelessly crazy. 😛
Report comment
Lol.
Report comment
MLK fought racism. So what he stood FOR was not racism but universal love and getting along together instead of fighting and driving people away based on their skin tone.
Racism is indeed a “black and white” issue. Bigotry or prejudice are not. All racism is a form of bigotry. Not all bigotry is racism though.
Report comment
Psychiatry is based on the assumption that all strange behaviors (including some Christians would otherwise call sins) are proof of a brain disease. A priori.
Churches have subscribed to materialism. They no longer believe in human souls it seems. It may explain the drop in membership since there’s nothing real to save.
Rick Warren–psychiatry promoter–is into Moral Therapeutic Deism. He also believes in Quantum Mysticism. Like psychiatry this is a pseudo-science but less socially respectable.
Report comment
A lot of people join these groups out of desperation since they’ve been deceived and thoroughly believe they need psychiatry to survive or keep their loved ones from going totally insane.
I hate NAMI as a tool of psychiatry. But when I look at the people making up its membership I feel more sorrow and grief than anger. These individuals are precious, wonderful human beings but the lies they have been taught are what I hate. Without the lies of pharma psychiatry NAMI would not exist. Hardwired into their ideology.
Report comment
You can also leave NAMI.
I left NAMI myself. It was not much of a privilege to be one of their subhuman drug mascots. We were only allowed to say a few words at public functions–in praise of the drugs. (I always wondered why they didn’t make us better.)
About us without us. Seems all the NAMI chapters in my state are based upon the bio–control-force model.
Report comment
Actually it’s “mental illness” they want us all to swallow. 😛
Report comment
I have been so deeply depressed I caught physical diseases. My first bout of depression at seven and a half led to mono.
I couldn’t figure why I was depressed. Looking back it makes sense. I was reading at the 6th grade level, but forced to attend an SBD school for daydreaming since I learned too quickly. The SBD teacher got angry at me for not being dumb enough to fit in.
Prelude to my life as a career “mental patient.” 😛
Report comment
The point of view “Stevie” expressed was different. But not respectful. To Matt or those of us who cared about him.
Report comment
I struggle with executive function problems more than ever after 25 years of brain damage. Lately I’ve developed ME symptoms making me get exhausted easily.
But I keep my place cleaner now. Despite exhaustion, organizational problems, and sometimes cramping from head to foot. Know why?
I actually CARE again! Same with my social interactions. I care about how other people feel.
Remember the Care Bears (back in the 80’s) and the villain they dealt with? Dr. Cold-Heart who always tried to freeze kids’ emotions so they numbed out and didn’t give a rip about anything? A man well ahead of his time. Lol.
Report comment
Many actually CONSIDER it a physical illness but call it “mental” instead.
Not trying to be rude, Shaun. 🙂 Just trying to clarify the point OH and I are making.
My degree is in English. I’m a stickler for proper grammar and semantics. Words are important.
Report comment
Depression is real. I have experienced it. But it’s an extreme feeling, not a brain disease.
Churchill experienced this. So did Lincoln.
The cure? Figure out if my thyroid levels are normal. Eat better. Sleep and exercise. If there’s a non physical reason for the depression–fix the problem or learn to live with it.
My mom’s counselor helped her overcome depression by helping her figure out she was disappointed at never finishing college. Mom got her BS in education and became an elementary teacher. Depression solved!
Report comment
Opened up a discussion about use of Finnish Dialogue to cure “schizophrenia” with my parents. Both were incredulous. “How can you cure a brain disease by talking?”
I tried explaining this would make sense if the problem were not organic in nature. As a preacher, Dad rejects the materialist view of humanity. It’s still hard for him to accept since it runs contrary to the mainstream media narrative spanning both sides of the spectrum.
Mom argued the brains of the “mentally ill” look different from normal people’s. I cited Dr. Andreason’s paper about how the structural changes were directly linked to the “meds” used to sedate the people. Also pointed out the people in that 90’s documentary we watched would all be undergoing “treatment” as a matter of course since psychiatrists were doing the research.
(Leaving someone “treatment naive” was unethical. They might recover and show your “science” was a bunch of poppycock, depriving poor shrinks of needed income for yacht payments.)
Sad how Mom is letting her mind go in retirement. I blame the SSRI, but the 12-15 hours of TV she consumes daily is even more to blame.
The internet can be addictive too, but it can engage the mind more if properly used. It’s interactive in a way TV cannot be.
Report comment
If it’s a brain disease–as many still postulate–why isn’t it a PHYSICAL illness? The brain is a physical organ after all Shaun.
Report comment
I knew some nice individual psychiatrists. They were nice since I never questioned them and always did exactly as told. 😉
Nevertheless psychiatry is a fake science. As Szazs noted, a lot of kindly, well meaning doctors applied leeches and opened the veins of people with cholera over a hundred fifty years ago. Good intentions notwithstanding, people died from it.
Report comment
I found out recently that MLK suffered horrible depression all his life. Especially in his teens. At 12 or 13 he tried to kill himself.
He survived the fall and overcame his gloom to do great things.
Just think what would have happened if he’d had access to psychiatric “care”? The Civil Rights movement might never have gotten off the ground.
Btw, surprised no one here has mentioned the Violence Initiative which is rife with covert racism. But–since it’s disguised as medical help for poor youth–the psych bureaucrats get away with it. Check out Peter Breggins’s videos on this. Eugenics is alive and well thanks to psychiatry.
Report comment
Cronyism is the word.
Ban legal bribery under the guise of “contributions” by lobbyists!
No society where bribery is standard can provide equal justice for all its citizens.
Report comment
You and I think alike here, Cat.
Shocked my parents by “coming out” as a Libertarian. Less is more when t comes to government.
Legalize all drugs and we can end psychiatry altogether. Let “mentally ill” people pick their drugs off the shelf and buy them over the counter. That’s what they do in many Latin American counties like Uruguay.
Btw, I don’t even drink wine. Personally opposed to mind altering drugs. Once I found out that’s all psych drugs are I felt it was my moral duty to go off them.
But people have the right to make their own choices. Including bad ones.
Report comment
I generally say African American or Afro-American in public since it’s considered polite now.
I am white, but I admired MLK since reading about him at age 7. How he turned the other cheek and fought hatred with love and overcame evil with good.
He’s a great role model for all people dealing with injustice and senseless cruelties from the world around us.
If he were Roman Catholic he might have been canonized.
Report comment
You’ve heard of the site Depressionisreal.com?
We need one called Iatrogenicillnessisreal.com.
Report comment
9 out of 7 people reported feeling better on the awesome new antidepressant Zombify!
(Should Zombify lose it’s effectiveness there’s the new atypical antipsychotic Xacerbate!)
Here’s a commercial for Zombify. As put out by the pharmaceutical company Pfaker.
Before taking Zombify I was a 125 pound wife and mom trying to maintain the perfect work-life balance between family and my full time career in education. Very depressed.
Now, thanks to Zombify, I’m a 250 pound divorcee, barely able to get out of bed in the morning. I live on disability since even a part time job’s too exhausting. My husband won the custody battle when the judge found out about my bipolar 2 disorder. I have heart problems, diabetes, and cholesterol levels double what most women my age have.
I’m more depressed than ever and can’t stop thinking of ways to kill myself. But think how much worse I’d feel without this life-saving wonder medication.
Zombify changed my life! Let it change yours. 😀
Report comment
I love Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television by Jerry Mander.
A must read underground classic for thinking people. Ironically it didn’t sell very well because Mander refused to promote it on TV like Marie Winn did for The Plug-In Drug.
Report comment
What if a scientist uses a word that doesn’t mean anything? Like “mental illness.” If it’s a brain disease that would make it a PHYSICAL illness. In which case–there are already brain specialists. Neurologists. Psychiatrist means “soul doctor.” Pretty ironic.
Words matter.
Report comment
No CURE s the wrong word. But save lives/make you a great marriage partner/enjoy a career/and become a kind, caring, morally upright person. All by taking their magical pills.
They did the exact opposite for me. Have all the symptoms of Chronic Fatigue and live in poverty and isolation. I’m alive, but it’s not a good life. I owe it all to those lying monsters who drove me crazy, then sold me cocktails till I broke away. Too sick and old for it to help.
I wouldn’t need HUD or other hand outs if I hadn’t been crippled by those remorseless, cold-blooded drug dealers who pose as doctors. Never wanted to be a welfare case. Everyone in the MI System thinks living on subsistence hand outs is great. NO IT’S NOT!!!
Living in a garage now. No water or toilet. Keeping (somewhat) warm with a heater. Ugh!
I owe it all to psychiatry! 😛
Report comment
Dr. Quackenbush says your sense of humor is inflamed–probably from a bad infection of the imagination. The solution is putting you on an IV drip of snake oil immediately! 😀
Report comment
7 out of 10 survey results are made up on the spot. 😀
Report comment
Had a fellow patient wake me up one night asking to get in bed with me. (!!!) 😛
So groggy I couldn’t figure out what he wanted at first. When I did I popped out of bed and told a male staff member. Happily he believed me though the patient denied it.
The next day he apologized after his wife finished visiting him. I told him he was forgiven, but please not to try anything like that again!
Report comment
Shuan, what if the mania was CAUSED by the drugs?
I didn’t enjoy that at all. Dr. M told my mom Anafranil never had that effect on anyone. It terrified me, but all he did was threaten us and say, “Don’t you dare go off your medication.” 21 days of no sleep stinks.
Psychiatry creates more problems than it solves from what I see.
I turned to a deliverance minister to drive my voices away. It worked. The drugs just amplified them. The preacher treated me more respectfully than any shrink I’ve met. And he spent 8 hours working with me–for free.
Of course a deliverance wouldn’t work for agnostics or members of other religions. But psychiatry claims to cure everyone–even though it often makes folks worse. Especially long term.
Report comment
FWIW, we need fewer girls in the MI System. Not more boys.
This is an obvious ploy by the APA to drum up more “consumers” for the crap they aggressively hawk in a way that would make a used car salesman cringe.
Neurotoxins, adult kindergarten, and never-ending angst sessions they call “therapy.” NO ONE needs this stuff.
And they’re kids too. Convince the gullible mama that her son squirms in class, likes sports, and dislikes her smothering ways because he’s SMI and needs “treatment” before puberty and cha ching! Another cash cow for life.
Man am I angry!
Report comment
We need to agree to disagree as a society. Just because someone holds different opinions from me does not make him or her less of a human being.
I can be wrong and still be an okay person. Lol. 😉
Locking law abiding citizens up for “wrong opinions” sets the stage for a very oppressive totalitarian regime!
Report comment
Remember the good people and be sure to thank them. This helped boost my morale during my stays. (Never was involuntary–unless you count the fact that I was deceived into thinking I needed THEIR help.)
Report comment
How much TV do people watch in Finland? Seriously.
I believe all the mindless, passive viewing leads to isolation even if you’re around someone most of the day.
My retired mom–I’m forced to share a place due to poverty–screams at me for talking during the “important parts” of her show. All the parts are important and all the shows are her favorite. Has gotten irritated when Dad and I talked interrupting a skin cream commercial.
She’s not depressed though. Just doesn’t give a rip about anything or anyone not on the blasted screen. Quit reading and has no hobbies.
I stay in another room except for dinner. Even then Dad and I have to be quiet so she can hear the news. Has it on full blast though it’s making her deaf.
Report comment
Curses from the DSM book of incantations aka “diagnoses.” The magical potions are their SSRI’s, neuroleptics, and tranquilizers. The amulet of ultimate power would be the electroshock machine!
(BTW, the ancient religions frequently had mind altering drugs for religious ceremonies.)
Report comment
My brain is “different” too. I have a different way of thinking than many–causing it to form a different shape thanks to neuroplasticity. Starting a successful business before age 22 requires an atypical style of thinking. (Or more would do it.)
Trauma does cause brain damage as well as drugs. Years of drugging and shaming/segregation in the MI System can really mess anyone up. But it sounds like you’ve been keeping your brain active even while drugged Abrianna. 🙂 This helped me a lot, along with other survivors.
Remember you’re not alone. There are many worse off than either of us.
Report comment
Wish my first shrink had proposed psychedelic drugs. My parents would not have become so enamored with them. Mom wouldn’t have kept shrieking, “Rachel, shut up and take your LSD.”
See, fun drugs are naughty. If they make you feel lousy and the dealer wears a pretty white coat they’re good for you.
Fun=naughty drugs
Feeling like crap=life saving meds
Very strict home. No booze ever! Yet my folks wanted me to take mind altering drugs due to the faux respectability. Sigh.
Report comment
The reason patients cherish grandiose, unreal views of themselves is coping with a horrible reality. Escapism. Make reality better, show the person respect, treat them as an equal and they may return to consensus reality sans coercion.
And the shrinks have no scruples about lying to patients whenever convenient. I call BS on this hypocrisy. We know they’ll say anything to cram those XXXX neuro-toxins down a hapless consumed’s throat or stick them in the butt. Whatever. Long as they get paid.
Time to go sicken some people. Cha-ching!
Report comment
KS, I heartily agree. For the second class of victims though certain levels of abuse are standard “care” and therefore acceptable. They have less legal recourse because of this. Like children, the “MI” will not be believed so they make easy prey.
A lot of friends who think psychiatry is great still find horror stories of rape, physical blows, and theft believable. It stands to reason. These people are kindly but think “meds” work and chemical imbalances are scientifically proven facts. Can’t convince them to read anything to the contrary. 🙁
Report comment
Daycares have to be careful screening out pedophiles since they want to work there. Likewise heartless sadists thrive on settings like locked mental wards.
Unfortunately the brutality of the latter qualifies as “standard care” most often.
Report comment
The_Cat I’m a naturally vindictive person. Like you I thirst for justice and have revenge fantasies when it’s not immediate.
During my withdrawals from Effexor I was so sick I needed a nap every afternoon. I would call out to God quietly, reminding Him of His promises to avenge the poor, the weak and defenseless.
As I let go of my right to vengeance–asking merely for the damage they inflicted to end–my physical and emotional pain lessened. I survived another day by His grace.
He will hold the shrinks accountable even if no human court ever does. He laughs at their delusions of grandeur that make them play Him.
Remind them they are but men, oh God!
Report comment
Non physical ideas. The “mental illness” exists as an idea in the imagination of the shrink. Physician heal thyself!
Report comment
Psychiatry is rooted in eugenics. Not just racism (that part is underground now) but the idea that some people are of “Criminal Stock” and must be eliminated fro the gene pool and monitored for crimes they are sure to commit.
The concept of “mental illness” is not so much cognitive impairment as what could be called moral defects or bad habits. (According to shrinks’ bias of course.)
They see the “SMI” as born evil. The psychiatrist is the doctor of society rather than the individuals he “treats.” It’s not about helping THEM at all. They’re cancer he tries to remove from the body of society at large. They’re the roaches and he views himself as the exterminator.
Dirty Harry in a lab coat. “You’re the disease. I’m the cure. Do ya feel lucky punk?”
Report comment
Hmm. Are you a professional irridologist? If not, how dare you criticize that respectable branch of medicine?
Lol. 😀
Report comment
I felt my family and humanity hated me. But I couldn’t blame them.
I hated myself more.
Psychiatry turned me–as it has countless others–into a monster.
Report comment
Well said LT.
Labels are NOT love. 🙁
Love delights not in wrong doing
But rejoices with the truth.
Report comment
Our “No Child Left Undrugged” policy. 😛
Report comment
I think it’s because American MI specialists only see it as a supplement to their safe, effective poisons.
Trust it to American medical bureaucrats to ruin a thing. 😛
Report comment
The Mental Illness System strongly encouraged us to do nothing but sit in front of the tube and drool between visits to the center. (As well as cook, clean apt, sleep.) They only expected us to talk to each other.
Excessive TV is known to cause depression and cognitive decline. Yet they think 16 hours a day is good for you and keep it on nonstop in psych wards for some reason.
When I volunteered at the Humane Society, read books, went to community plays and art galleries all the Center’s workers were surprised. A few were gratified. Many seemed displeased that I “didn’t know my place.”
Report comment
But if they were drug free they might get well and quit consuming services Oldhead. 😛
Report comment
Revolving door nuthouse.
Know how I helped myself get over depression, quit sleeping 12 hours a day, maintain ADL’s, get along better socially and lose over 40 pounds Jessica?
I disobeyed all my shrink’s orders. Quit “day treatment,” “therapy,” and tapered off my highly addictive brain drugs he said I’d die without. Been off them for almost a year and a half. My heart arrhythmia s gone. Is that a danger sign? Lol.
I’m naming this the Charlotte Perkins Therapy. Ever read “The Yellow Wall-Paper”? That’s how she got better. Disobeying her quack’s dangerous orders. 🙂
“Time to go heal people” indeed! “Time to go sicken people” is more accurate.
Report comment
Yes. Psychiatric treatment is gas lighting at its finest.
If you aren’t crazy when you go in, don’t worry. You will be.
Report comment
Devil’s advocate here.
Our opponents would say “Mental illness is actually a brain disease and these drugs have been proven highly effective in treating the symptoms though we don’t know why yet.”
A priori.
Of course there is the semantic problem that brain diseases are physical in nature–not mental–that RoboHugs and other “consumer” sites can’t seem to GET. But you see my point.
Report comment
They spend a lot of money crippling people (and keeping them unemployed!) 😛
Report comment
The first step to ending psychiatric abuse is obvious. Lobbying must die.
Just say not to cronyism!
Report comment
Yes. We’re opposed to an evil institution.
Not Snidely Whiplash style villains.
Report comment
“Whatever else I personally think of modern psychiatry, what I truly believe is we still know very little about the mind/brain complex and need more unbiased research, full stop.”
Well said!
Report comment
Luv ya Cat. But calling those who’re still shell shocked “snowflakes” is not helping matters.
We need to deal with one another kindly and gently here.
Abrianna had NO idea she was hurting people’s feelings. Please remember this. Her words hurt many, but it’s like someone who accidentally sticks their foot out too far and causes you to fall. As opposed to deliberately tripping people.
To Abrianna, I hope you’ll forgive us for judging you unfairly. You had no idea how people here feel about psych labels. Particularly the “personality disorders” can of worms. My biggest problem is it’s horrible to write anyone off as hopeless and irredeemable. No human can read minds or see the future. But when people assign personality disorders that’s what they’re pretending to do. Sometimes these become vicious self fulfilling prophecies, making reformation more difficult than ever.
Report comment
That is true OH. But we must be just and not make our opponents out to be nastier than they are. Most are ignorant of the damage they do and actually think they’re helping people. (Those in the “Inner Circle”–presidents and high ranking APA officials, shrinks turned bureaucrats, famous pro bio-bio-bio model writers–are another matter.)
Report comment
Lol. Writing a Twilight Zone type flash fiction about a shrink who would qualify as a sociopath. But no one’s brave enough to tell him.
Over the top villain. But hey–it’s a creepy pasta after all.
Report comment
Watch their behaviors. See if they have committed violent crimes in the past. If they’re “acting out” or threatening others take action.
Not locking up people at all would be the best
Report comment
I fled an abusive guy myself. Didn’t need a shrink to “diagnose” him either. I just checked his zodiac sign and realized he did horrible things because of the Sign he was born under. Lol. 😉
I also read his fortune cookie and it said, “You will hurt the people you love.”
Using the exact sciences of fortune cookies and astrology I realized he was abusive. Couldn’t have figured it out by watching the way he kicked puppies. I needed science to help me out.
Report comment
Sam, MIA’s editors should reevaluate their guidelines and notify writers of how others will respond to certain topics.
Report comment
No one says such things.
Where has anyone here said “Everything s sunshine and lollipops”? Or “Cruel, violent folks have the right to hurt others”?
Report comment
I know it was unintentional but please understand you have hurt them also.
Report comment
It’s not about DRUG ADDICTS!. SMH. 🙁
Report comment
My sister’s disability–skeletal deformities–have required numerous, painful surgeries. While she has a high pain threshold and has done a lot with her life she makes a lousy nurse if you’re sick or in pain. Maybe Cat’s boot-strap philosophy helps him maintain a positive outlook, but renders him less sensitive to others than he should be.
Glad Cat’s not hurt by the talk about “personality disorders.” I’m not myself–exactly. But I understand why others are. That seems to be a hot button topic for this site. Hope the editors take note of this.
Report comment
I don’t consider psychiatry or drug addiction good as institutions.
As far as individuals–I try to look for the good in others. Most of the shrinks I have known strike me as good natured but detached. If you went along with everything they said, and didn’t ask questions they were pretty nice. Only one was truly evil, and her patients had no defense against her abuse.
But even if they mean well the treatments still have done many grave harm.
In the old days they used to treat cholera patients with blood letting.
Report comment
It happens often enough however. I got my own delightful BPD label from a case worker, btw. Not supposed to be that way. She thought my desires for emotional connection and monogamy were unhealthy, swinger that she was. 😛
Have you ever asked yourself how labeling someone BPD or a narcissist will help them? Or even the victims of abuse–if they’re abusive.
I had a wonderful friend named Gladys who refused to leave her cruel, abusive husband. Why? He had been “diagnosed” “bipolar.” Gladys felt it would be cruel to leave the “poor, sick” man. Countless folks also labeled SMI begged her to consider his abusive behavior. Not his “mental illness.”
“Bipolar” was irrelevant. Kenny was cruel, selfish, and bad tempered. In Gladys’s case her kind heart combined with pseudo-scientific lies was her undoing.
Report comment
Years on drugs have ruined my chances at health and independence. But you’re still young.
If you want to change the system devise an escape plan.
Harriet Tubman’s first step in her personal war on slavery was escaping the plantation.
Report comment
Ugh! This kind of thing needs to stop.
Report comment
The only difference between a “personality disordered” person and anyone else is a shrink (or messed up case worker with a BS in PE) labeled them for any reason whatever. Didn’t like their attitude/voice/hairstyle/labeler going through a divorce or not enough protein for breakfast.
Why not just say, “My roommate was violent and bullied me?” For crying out loud.
Report comment
She was violent. They were wrong to force you to share a room with her.
Report comment
Most of us here have in fact. Not as bad as the kind you were in necessarily.
They should protect the harmless from the violent. But why lock up anyone who is harmless?
If someone is a menace to others there are jails and prisons. I try to stay as far away from anything related to “mental health” as possible.
Report comment
KS never denied abuse between prisoners. I was threatened by violent men in a halfway house myself.
But I judge people on the content of their character. Not some bogus, arbitrary insult by a demagogue/quack.
Report comment
Do you realize you said “personality disorders” instead of “people having personality disorders”?
Report comment
Women don’t all love romance novels either. I only watch Hallmark specials for yuks.
Report comment
Yes Survivingthesystem.
See your shrink to adjust your poisons every 3 months. (Always upping the dose. Never lowering it.)
Go to Preschool for Grown-Ups (AKA day treatment or clubhouse) 3 times a week for lectures on how messed up you are and how you BETTER TAKE your “MEDS.”
Once or twice a month a fruitless visit with a therapist. Some want to help and get frustrated. Telling folks how broken and hopeless they are and filling them with neurotoxins.
But the psycho-therapist is a tool of the system. Questioning orders can get you fired. Better yell at the consumed for not trying hard enough–if you know they’re poison compliant.
Like asking someone to run laps with a ball and chain under the belief these devices help them walk upright. Stupid stuff!
Report comment
Been wondering if non-certified folks outside the MI System could learn these techniques and use them. You don’t NEED a PhD in psychology or MSW to listen or show compassion.
(Of course you can’t enroll as a student I realize.)
Report comment
Not enough $$$$$$ generated by Open Dialogue. That’s all mainstream Psychiatry cares about.
Plus why do they want folks to become happy, productive non-consumers?
Report comment
Yes, OH. I agree the editors are the ones at fault here.
Report comment
CV, I’m confused.
Are you debating those who conducted this survey or the MIA authors who are criticizing it? (Those who conducted the original survey are probably not reading this.)
Report comment
Why don’t you simply call them violent or abusive Abrianna? Isn’t that the whole point? How they bullied you and others?
Report comment
“Forcible rehabs.” Good point there.
Stupid and pointless. I have visited open AA meetings with a friend (and was a member of another 12 step program once) The man leading the group grumbled afterward to me about judges forcing people to attend these meetings as punishment for DUI’s.
“Waste of their time and ours!” he said.
You can’t force someone to become a better person against their will.
Report comment
There is a lot of polarization in America today.
MIA spans both sides of the political spectrum though. Especially those of us opposed to psychiatry.
Report comment
Tried to help people see eye to eye and failed it seems.
Report comment
Agreed!
Report comment
Its NOT a silly overreaction. But the horrible stigma came from a shrink. Not the writer.
Those labels are spurious and stupid. I got mine for thinking of suicide after a man I loved dumped me for no known reason. (And my mom had been telling me for years I was unlovable and no man would want a bipolar/schizo/fatty like me.) Didn’t get mine from a shrink either, but a case manager with a BS in phys ed who fit the “type” way better than I ever did.
I hate break ups but they quit making me suicidal some time ago. The label lasts though. Believe me, I empathize with you. Your anger and pain are legitimate.
I only ask you to remember Abrianna did not label you. Some quack playing god did.
Report comment
It is an insult. But not intentional. Consider it a stray bullet.
Abrianna doesn’t know any better and believes in her own label. Takes time for people to come around. Plus she doesn’t know any of us from Adam. You know you’re not whatever the shrinks called you. So do I and the majority of others here.
Weird how I no longer act “bipolar 2” and no one knows I am supposed to be that way. But when I read articles or see crap on TV about “mental health issues” my heart races and my stomach churns.
Report comment
Sorry you went through all that. Hope your nightmare ends pretty soon.
There are a few online resources if you choose to go off your drugs. But now may not be a good time for you. Your decision.
SurvivingAntidepressants.com
Innercompass.com
Mindfreedom.org
Also a class on tapering has been offered here at MIA not too long ago.
Report comment
Or maybe the harmless vs the violent? 🙂
Report comment
Great point Cat!
Weird how I don’t have such an automatic knee jerk reaction when I hear the term “bipolar killer” on TV. I used to–especially when I believed it applied to me.
But it still scares me people will discover my painful past.
Takes time to emotionally distance yourself I think.
Report comment
Cat, I believe KS acknowledges there are plenty of horrible characters in psych wards. I have met my share. Many of those opted for “treatment” over a legitimate prison.
My problem–and perhaps KS’s problem–is legitimizing these labels.
The author meant no harm however. She’s a newcomer and doesn’t understand why people are upset.
I respectfully disagree, but I’m not angry myself.
Report comment
Abrianna I really want to hear the backstory. What led to your suicidal meltdown? That didn’t come out of nowhere.
Could you sum it up in comment form? It really deserves an essay of its own.
Report comment
Well said!
Get out of the system, Abrianna. For the sake of your career, health, marriage, and sanity. Their chief goal is to keep you insane.
Report comment
Abrianna I agree that if they’re going to lock people up they should at least separate the violent from the peaceful. Even the prison systems do this. Not all “psychotic” people are violent. I never was–just very frightened.
Report comment
Would be better to call them nasty, violent people. “Personality disorders” are just labels to ensure “patients” they dislike get treated worse.
Please focus on the bad behaviors. Not the bogus labels. Shrinks are notoriously poor judges of character. 🙂
Report comment
Who said Breggin was a liar or Szazs cold blooded? Truth and love are actually conjoined twins who’ll die if taken apart. They just emphasize one more than the other.
Szazs has written some witty stuff on par with Mark Twain. Not a sci fi space alien or android! And the favorite butt of his wit were the quacks who loved to deceive people at the expense of others’ liberty, well-being and life itself.
Breggin spoke the truth when it got him into trouble. Wish I had read Toxic Psychiatry the year it came out. It could have saved me years of heart ache and misery.
Report comment
You said it CC!
Report comment
Love AND truth. Breggin is one side of the coin; Szazs is the other. 🙂
Report comment
Probably why Finnish Dialogue Therapy is so effective, Shaun.
Report comment
John Christine could you write a personal experience essay for MIA? Sounds like you have a gripping story. One that would resonate with many of us.
Report comment
I’m in favor of restrictions on pharmaceutical crimes. But as long as government officials stand to benefit there will be none. The FDA has proven worse than useless in the recent ECT hearings.
Get rid of Big Pharma lobbyists AND lying commercials. Not an either/or proposition. Though ending legal bribes will probably lead to the latter. Crooks aren’t into evil for evil’s sake the way altruists are into goodness for goodness’s sake.
Report comment
If she did go drug free it would probably end her position as a peer specialist and might get her involuntarily committed. So–if she chooses to leave–she will probably not announce it in that kind of setting.
Surprised they allowed you to make this presentation. But the low-key method you used helped. Congratulations on using the term “drugs.” They aren’t medicines the way insulin, thyroxin, or antibiotics are. The first two are to be taken long term but replace real deficiencies in the body. Antibiotics are only prescribed short term.
Zoloft replaces nothing, kills nothing known to be harmful, yet is prescribed for a lifetime. It’s destroying my 12 year old nephew’s brain. 🙁
For me, just going off my drugs wasn’t enough. Had to leave the “mental health” setting. Being told how sick, helpless, hopeless, and dependent you are–day after day–year after year–can be depressing.
Report comment
Not necessarily harm them. Just turn them into helpless drug addicts good for nothing but Consuming psych drugs till they die 30 years prematurely.
Most shrinks aren’t Snidely Whiplash types, but they just prefer their prestigious, cushy jobs to acknowledging, “Hey these drugs–the only thing I can actually do is prescribe them–are harming patients. Making many crazier than they ever were to start with. Causing all of them horrible, scary health problems, brain shrinkage, and nerve damage. Diminished quality AND quantity of life. Why am I even here?”
(All bets are off for the high ranking creepers on the Inner Circle. You know. The “well informed” ones.)
Once you let yourself ask this question you’re faced with the ugly task of leaving the field for training in a different specialty where lawsuits can occur or talk therapy that pays 1/4 or less what filling out a dozen prescriptions for 4 patients in one hour would. Your pesky conscience may turn you into a whistle blower. If their’s one thing psychiatry hates more than those it “helps” it’s a conscience.
Yet Psychiatry says it’s guarding society from sociopaths and psychopaths. Ha ha.
Report comment
Come to think of it–it’s not so much passivity as conformity required of girls. The two are evil twins though.
Report comment
Surprised this was published on MIA. It reads like an article from NAMI or Psychology Today.
Who says “boys need more help because they won’t accept passive roles and ask for quarts of happy pills to smile ALL the time?”
More like “Why do girls accept passive roles for mental illness promoters and ask for/take quarts of happy pills to smile 100% of the time?” That’s the real problem
Saw an article on Xojane explaining how happy the writer was for her “depression diagnosis.” Somehow she felt guilty for not being HAPPY 100% of the time and not grinning like the Cheshire cat 24/7. Why was she ashamed of a simple feeling? Like being unhappy was a crime or something?
She admitted the SSRI’s didn’t help all the time. But she seemed to see the “diagnosis” as a note from her doctor. “Please excuse Jane from smiling all day today. She has depression–a real honest-to-gosh BRAIN DISEASE. She has the right to look unhappy now and then.”
Why is this a thing? Why this sadness shaming?
If Jane is sad all the time and wants to feel better that’s one thing. But why does she have to fake exuberance and joy? That may be causing her depression. Partly caused mine.
I was thoughtful, pensive, and occasionally melancholy as a young girl. Not only was this seen as NOT GOOD, but this led to bullying in high school/social phobia/then full blown depression.
The teachers/counselors didn’t do much to teach me social self defense or emotional resilience. Just “self esteem affirmations” I couldn’t believe. Then drugs. Always my “problem” for not fitting in. Like they want us all to be vapid, shallow morons.
Be yourself. As long as you’re “mentally healthy” like everyone else. 😛
Report comment
Psychiatry was a strong right arm of the Soviet Union.
Smaller government is the answer. Not a bigger totalitarian state which would only appropriate psychiatry for the new regime.
If we got rid of the FDA and abolished cronyism and bribery (lobbying) Big Pharma would lose its legal clout and the government would lose the incentive to push travesties like the “Cures Act” through.
Report comment
This is good. In middle school a nasty boy kept calling me ugly and hid his face pointedly whenever I entered. One day I said, “Thank you for sparing me the sight of your face Chad.” He quit trying that!
Do you think teaching victims of bullying to do stand up comedy instead of karate might be a good idea?
Report comment
Thanks Sam. I have read these comments from you before and appreciate you are not speaking OVER your wife. Most SO’s who do are not on this site.
Every now and then a controlling (possibly abusive) relative does show up. Like that one woman who censored her adult daughter’s reading material–wouldn’t let her online without watching over her shoulder it seems–and said she didn’t care if the “meds” killed her daughter in her forties or fifties. Ick!
Most of us know you aren’t anything like “Kate.” Glad for your wife and you as well. Most “Kates” are very unhappy people. No wonder their SO’s are so crazy to start with.
My own parents played a more ambiguous role in my psychiatrization. Most do. Other SO’s know the loved ones are being hurt, losing all ability to function but can’t stop it.
I know you’re not a “Kate.” Many others do too. But I hope you’ll be charitable and patient to those whose suffering makes them uncharitable and impatient with kindly SO’s like you who only want to love and heal.
Report comment
Maybe show the kids kindness and compassion instead of brain damage and torture…but that would be just plain nutty.
As Breggin points out in an article from years back, if they were doing this as a form of punishment for actual crimes committed, a bunch of human rights groups would be breathing down their necks but torturing/crippling/killing (through negligence) the innocent are all acceptable. They’re only “treating” “useless eaters” and “defectives” after all.
Report comment
And how can they determine numbers of stuff that might have been so but isn’t?
Great science fiction. But don’t confuse the figures pulled out of thin air with science.
If people read these statistics and know the “chemical imbalance” myth is BS I guess that’s informed consent. If they want to try anyhow they must be desperate and at least they have all the facts.
Like most survivors here I was lied to.
A positive and more accurate word for these drugs is “emotional pain killers.”
Report comment
In my case the cocktail prevented me from working. 90% of “med compliant” people can’t maintain gainful employment. As far as the woman you cited Craig, it may be the placebo effect. If she suddenly quit her neuroleptic she probably would suffer withdrawals. And as a peer support specialist being “naughty” would definitely lead to her getting fired. Not just that her “meds” are working but she needs to toe the line.
Report comment
“Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”
Psychiatry is about comforting the comfortable and afflicting the afflicted. The perfect “science” for grown-up bullies who loved to name call on the playground and torture the weak. Just like the names bullies gave their victims stuck through school the “diagnostic” insults last through life.
Report comment
It wasn’t always this way. Most churches support psychiatry because they believe in the “chemical imbalance” psychiatrists themselves laugh at. I think they bought into it during the 90’s when the “bio-bio-bio model” took over and NAMI spread its propaganda all over the place.
In the old days many places told you depression was a sin. So, while they wouldn’t force “meds” on you they would lecture you on your sinfulness if you weren’t smiling all the time. Kind of led to the outbreak of psych marketing.
Report comment
I wish you well in setting up your practice Shaun.
Report comment
Good point Red Squirrel.
Assuming there is a biological cause to emotional/cognitive problems (such as head trauma or Lyme’s) psychiatry is still not a good answer. All they offer is further brain damage and abnormalities.
Report comment
Not just “mania.” Sounds like he was a jerk.
Report comment
As someone diagnosed “Bipolar 2” whose mood swings started from an SSRI reaction and stopped 24 years later when I finished going off I strongly agree. From R. Whitaker’s writings and comments here and elsewhere I wonder how many cases of “Bipolar” were iatrogenic snafus the shrinks refuse to own up to.
Report comment
A lot of stalkers love their objects. But it’s unwholesome. If these guys continue their pursuit–after being told their infatuation is unreturned–they can get locked up.
Report comment
Not uninformed or “delusional.” The proper word is liar.
Report comment
Abuse victims do have a hard time “accepting love” because they can’t trust anyone. Peter Breggin would say deal with them kindly instead of further cruelty and punishment for weakness. All standard “treatments” of psychiatry.
I know that’s not activism. But this is NOT an anti-psychiatry site for activism or support. So complaining that it isn’t is like finding fault with a grocery store for not selling nails. But produce here and get your nails at the hardware store.
Report comment
Danzig, I can read Greek mythology and understand the human mind better than the average shrink’s spiels. Though articles in the APA journal are great if you want to write a novel with an unreliable POV narrator. 😀
Report comment
Psychiatrists cannot pretend to believe something they know is false.
Hmm….Does that include telling the “consumer” that their distressed states are known to be caused by chemical imbalances in the brain? And that’s okay since psychiatry has a bunch of “safe and effective treatments” which are magic bullets “just like insulin for diabetes”?
Report comment
“Mental health treatment” is the perfect passive aggressive revenge scheme for that annoying relative you can’t stand. Or maybe you are just jealous of them.
You can ruin their life and come out smelling like a rose. The Long Suffering Saint. And everyone will tell you how LUCKY the “crazy” relative is to have someone like you in their life.
Report comment
Psychiatry destroyed all the love in my life. When they labeled me “hard core” my friends shunned me. This was after “psych education” by the way. Telling people “Mental illness is real. They’re crazy and hopeless,” is great at selling (involuntary) “treatment” but it causes ostracism and cruelty.
My relationship with my mom got really bad. The doctor assured her the “meds” were highly effective and if I acted weird, had seizures, or lazy/apathetic I must not be taking them properly. They made me horribly numb. I felt everyone in the world hated me. I wondered if I had a soul like other people. And all the drugs did was make me hard to live with. I still act stupidly from TBI after going off.
I may love others but no one will ever love me again. Except my cat.
I wonder how many other survivors have turned misanthropic. Occasionally I meet people in casual situations but I don’t trust them or share much beyond casual small-talk.
People aren’t all mean or nasty–just around me and those like me. I bring out the worst in all I meet. Like a curse.
Report comment
Or it’s run by a bunch of liars who don’t care if they hurt people.
Report comment
Drug companies should not be allowed to fund research studies regarding safety or effectiveness. Period.
If a car manufacturing company funded a research project “proving” short cuts and cheap safety devices worked best a lot of eyebrows would be raised.
Report comment
And if you get worse instead of better they accuse you of “pill shaming.” Defend pills by shaming patients for becoming disabled or dying.
I’m not out for shaming gel capsules or tablets. Those who should be shamed are the lying hucksters who hurt people and call them crazy for suffering. Too bad they’re shameless.
Remember Dr. Farid Fata, the cancer specialist? If he’d gone into psychiatry he would have gotten away with it. 😛
Report comment
“Madness” is not only elastic and subjective but qualitative rather than quantitative. Impossible to measure in facts or figures. Like beauty, happiness or a life well lived.
I see it as a state of mind rather than a group of people. It can also mean angry. Though no one thinks certain people are born angry with brains forcing them to be angry all the time.
Report comment
Stephen Gilbert, Julie has a psych “diagnosis.” If you don’t, that might account for better care from Medicare.
Report comment
Soft sciences used to be labeled humanities in academia. Nothing wrong with them, but when a humanities specialist poses as something they’re not…say an anthropologist claiming to be a heart surgeon..then you have some problems.
Report comment
Agreed. A lot of unlabeled people do things that puzzle onlookers from time to time, though the people have perfectly sound reasons for doing them. A common plot for sit com episodes.
Report comment
Human beings are complex. All of us have mysterious behaviors with layers of motivation.
Pop culture and psychiatry actually don’t view the extreme states called mental illness as complex or mysterious.
“Why did that man go on a shooting spree?”
“He was mentally ill.”
Assuming that were a thing that STILL is not a motivation. It allows them to dismiss anything that led to that decision. Calling him a misanthrope or nihilist would explain this behavior better. Since hatred of humanity and belief that chaos is the ultimate good actually have motivated the shooters behind Columbine and other places.
“What was his motive in killing them?”
“Simple. He was a Villain.”
Villains do villainy stuff. The “mentally ill” do “mentally ill” stuff.
Report comment
More of a philosophy like Stoicism.
Report comment
K
Report comment
Coming off mine ended my suicidal depression. Lots of others say the same.
Report comment
Good point!
Messed up brains can alter human behavior. But they’re not the only explanation.
(Assuming you did have a messed up brain, shocks or long term drug use would not correct the problem, but make it worse.)
Report comment
Lack of discernment and intellectual laziness.
Different than just being short changed in raw intelligence. Had a couple friends laugh at me for reading Anatomy of an Epidemic–dismissing the book without even reading the back blurb.
Cookbooks and sweet romance novels make up the bulk of their reading. Though most down time was spent watching TV. SMH.
Report comment
You don’t find groups like Heaven’s Gate allowed to make pitches in mainstream churches though. Heard two specialists from a Mental Illness Center give a promotional speech at a mega church I visited. 🙁
Report comment
It was not my intent.
However coming out as a “survivor” would not be playing it safe.
The concept of being dangerous and unstable is not comparable to having skin of a different color. The color of your skin does not show the content of your character.
However “mentally ill” means someone with character flaws they can’t help/be held accountable for because of defective brains. “Mental illness” is itself a moral judgment. An unjust, arbitrary one. But as long as psychiatrists go unquestioned and unchallenged….
Report comment
It works in many cases. “We’re a minority group that has been treated unjustly. Give us our rights.”
But RR pointed out this can’t work with the notion of the “mentally ill” as an oppressed/separate people. Many of the psychiatrized just want to fit in and be accepted by the mainstream. Talking about your “diagnosis” identity is counterproductive. The fact that it isn’t true makes it more confusing and therefore worse.
Report comment
So much for “no stupid questions.”
I know most atheists do NOT act like him.
Report comment
Using identity politics won’t work here. “Mentally ill” are perceived as mass shooters or stealthy villains who cannibalize their victims. These behaviors will never be socially accepted–nor should they.
Report comment
In educating mainstream people regarding psychiatric abuse this would be a good idea. Instead of othering folks as “mad” and not quite human it would point out how psychiatry could happen to ANYONE. No matter how well-behaved, intelligent, educated, or conscientious you are. Once the shrinks have got you by the frontal lobes you’re dead meat.
Report comment
For what it’s worth Dawkins is himself very pro-psychiatry.
“If science has difficulty explaining something, there sure as XXXX is no one else who is going to explain it.” To an arrogant scientist’s liking that is. Tough to admit anyone might know something he doesn’t. 🙂
Report comment
Sam, I like you. Can’t speak for everyone but others on MIA like or at least don’t hate you.
The reason many here dislike SO’s is they abused them, then used psychiatry to cover their butts.
While covering for abusers is not NAMI’s official position, it’s “Nobody’s fault except the ‘defectives’ for being born” attitude makes it attractive for those who wish to abuse spouses, adult children, and elderly parents with impunity. Not all SO’s at NAMI are that way of course!
Glad you and other SO’s here want to help. Sometimes people will listen to you because you’re “normal.” Often shrinks will dismiss even you or threaten you since you lack proper deference to these gods of the madhouse.
My mom wanted to help long ago. But the “treatments” only made things worse. So she decided I was hopeless long ago.
Report comment
I want to see a BIOLOGICAL cure for the damage shrinks have inflicted on me. Real, BIOLOGICAL damage no doctor is willing to help me with because of the unearned worship they pay psychiatry.
Report comment
Sometimes, yes Steve. But in my–and many other cases–the poverty, unemployment, unsafe housing, and homelessness are created by psychiatric interference. Just like the “bipolar” brains they create that were apparently normal before their “help.” 😛
I was doing well as a college student. Making friends, preparing for a career as a librarian. Sought out psychiatry at the recommendation of a therapist for the anxiety plaguing me. Bad social experiences in my past made me afraid of looking bad.
(I blamed myself for my family’s homelessness since the woman who got Dad fired had been sort of a friend/mentor. I struggled hard after that to avoid talking unless what I said was perfectly acceptable and not weird. Bullying in the new high school made me more convinced of my freakishness.)
The shrink put me on Anafranil, saying it would stop my obsessive thoughts. It didn’t. It kept me awake for 21 days straight causing psychotic mania. Angry at my audacity in having a bad reaction to this drug the Lord High Executioners of Psychiatry sentenced me to death by slow, prolonged poisoning. Not much kinder than the gas chambers imho.
Finally I escaped. But I still can’t think straight, am in constant pain and tired all the time. It ruined my life.
The moral boys and girls? Never ask for help. People are evil and devour the weak. If someone says he wants to help you because of compassion or empathy he’s a filthy liar.
Report comment
I have lived in a mixed gender halfway house, OH. I agree. Some of the scarier guys threatened me. The violent ones had embraced the MI label to avoid jail time.
Report comment
They’re wrong.
You are your “diagnosis”. And nothing but a walking disease.
They want it that way. To segregate you and make money off their Mental Illness Centers harvesting brain disorders created by their drugs.
No psychiatry. No stigma. 🙂
Report comment
Well said Stephen!
Report comment
I always perceived Dostoevsky’s figure as a Forrest Gump character. Cognitive impairment with saintly character and flashes of supernatural wisdom on occasion. The Idiot has health issues rendering him impotent as I recall. But Forrest Gump is not the same as Norman Bates.
Report comment
I agree Frank. My remark was meant to be funny.
A lot of Kay Redfield Jamison’s writings seem to be along the lines of “the ‘mentally ill’ have awesome super powers. But going off ‘meds’ is our kryptonite.” Would make a great comic book series. Lol.
Report comment
Allies OR enemies? Who says people can’t be both?
It’s the people we like the most
Who can make us feel saddest.
It’s the people we care for the most–most likely–
Who manage to make us feel baddest.
~Fred Rogers
Report comment
Precisely. Compassion it ain’t!
Report comment
“Schizophrenics” are types or tropes rather than actual people who are way too complex for the lazy hacks writing for TV and movies to bother with. 😛
Part of the reason pop culture loves psychiatric “diagnoses.” It allows us to separate humanity into neat little boxes. The biggest box has the Sane and Normal people. Then the SMI and soft diagnoses.
Kind of like the Caste System in other cultures.
Report comment
Sam, my chief problem with counseling is that it sold out to psychiatry. If anyone wants to see one make sure not to get her or him at a Mental Illness Center.
Better off seeing an independent one–even if uncertified. Psychiatry has contaminated talking “therapy” like it has injured legitimate medical science.
Szazs said he only worked with consenting adults. This is important. If they won’t let you fire a therapist for bad behavior or personality conflicts, it’s not counseling but a hostage situation.
Once an ordinary counselor knows you’re labeled hopeless (SMI) they’ll do little but remind you of how hopeless your alleged brain disease makes you and how YOU HAD BETTER NOT GO OFF YOUR MEDS TILL YOU DIE!!!
Had a woman scream this at me when she found out I had been reading stuff by Dr. Abrams. Mom had started it since she saw how mega-doses of Haldol and Stelazine caused me intense suffering and talked about visiting Canada.
I guess Dee didn’t give a rip. I left her office thinking of the one way out of taking my “meds.” Suicide. Thanks Dee. 😛
Report comment
Cool! Like real-life comic book superheroes.
The Mad-Men.
Report comment
A small but very vocal minority. And they’re rewarded with a big platform and $$$$$$. Dr. Kay Jamison Redfield who wrote amusing works of spec fiction like Touched by Fire. And Patti Duke who earned a tidy sum as a poster child for pharm-psychiatry.
Interesting both were treated mainly with lithium. That stuff will ruin your kidneys but it seems to cause less brain damage than a “cocktail” of 3 drugs or more used on most people now.
Report comment
Yep. The original Dr. Doolittle.
He lived a productive life though and was no longer called “mad.”
Report comment
“You must be imagining things to be sure.”
Do you think GLT could be the latest form of counseling? (Gas Lighting Therapy.) Nothing like having your client question their sanity or even losing it occasionally to promote good insight and treatment compliance. 😀
Report comment
If you’re trapped in the system you can counteract these effects a little by reading, playing chess, Sudoku puzzles, physical exercise, journaling, etc. Sometimes the keepers applaud this. Sometimes they view you as a troublemaker since you won’t sit quietly in front of the tube 16 hours a day like everyone else.
Report comment
You don’t know my friend or her family yet you automatically question her integrity. (Stability you call it. Hurting children shows a lack of moral integrity as well as emotional control.)
The reason he gave her is he didn’t trust a mentally ill woman. He gave her diagnosis for his official reason.
I have been expelled from college, had a bunch of gossips try to prevent my teaching Sunday school, been fired from a job, and denied housing just because they heard my “diagnosis.” My behaviors had been acceptable till then and hadn’t changed. My label was the deciding factor.
My friend’s son-in-law was a jerk, according to our case worker. She was SANE so maybe you’ll respect her view on the matter. Everyone listened to the son-in-law and let him have his way since he was a SANE jerk.
Report comment
RW remarked on this in Anatomy of an Epidemic. Long term drug use can cause dementia–especially in the younger folks. And your brain doesn’t care if they’re prescription.
Report comment
Shaun, my friend loved the MI clinic because psychiatry had ruined her reputation in the community. Her son in law refused to let his kids see their “crazy Grandma.” (Someone at the clinic labeled her crazy to start with.) Only fellow outcasts acknowledged her humanity.
During the Jim Crow laws in the south even where not officially segregated many African Americans preferred isolating in their own communities. (As a way to avoid being murdered by racists.) The larger community treated them with condescension and/or abuse, then argued that “they like staying in their own neighborhoods.”
Report comment
I agree with you there Cat.
But this article is not about improving the community but–assuming it’s already intact and functional–reintroducing someone to it under the new SMI identity psychiatrists have branded them with. A ceremony of public degradation.
The scapegoat is forever shamed and degraded in the eyes of the community. They will never accept him or her back no matter how they behave or obey the law. 🙁
What horrible thing did this person do to deserve this? Often nothing at all.
Report comment
I see you’ve been reading Goerzhe’s Toxic Psychiatry too, OH.
Report comment
Great idea!
Report comment
Ditto for mass shootings.
Report comment
Who needs a sex drive when you’ weigh over 300 pounds as a minor side effect?
Report comment
Birdbox is just working with the “facts” the shrinks provide on shows like 60 Minutes.
Report comment
Thanks Julie!
Report comment
Good idea KS. Though even Community College classes can be expensive unless it’s non-credit or a life enrichment course.
Also toast masters, the local Y, art centers, library activities, volunteer organizations, and groups you can find using the app Meetup. When I lived near Notre Dame U. they offered free lectures to the public sometimes.
A local chapter of EA might help you improve your current relationships while making new friends too.
To any consumers reading this neither KS nor I want to victim blame. We’re mad at those who exploit and hurt you. I used to be a “shuffling zombie” myself.
Report comment
No offense to the writer, but the information presented makes me sick to my stomach. Even if the intentions are benevolent.
Reintroducing the person to the community under their new identity of life mental patient. Hopelessly insane, dangerous idiot no one need ever talk to again.
No. Please no! The person has been through enough. Why do you want to torment them further with public humiliation? 🙁 Can’t you see that that’s what this is? That everyone will treat them like a moron, a monster, or alternate between the two extremes from now on?
Reminds me of the opening of The Scarlet Letter where they force Hester to come out wearing her bright red A for all the town folk to gawk at.
But they called it punishment. Not therapy or ending stigma.
Report comment
But Frank, the Pre-Crime Division in the movie actually prevented crimes. 😉
Report comment
Shaun, I agree that MH centers provide a place of acceptance many consumers lack outside. The problem is the diagnosis and mind numbing drugs ruin other relationships.
Too sensitive and high strung I always struggled to master social situations. When Dad kept getting fired I blamed my own lack of social skills for our bouts of homelessness and withdrew–afraid of saying the “wrong thing” as I always did. 🙁
Drugs took the edge off my anxiety created by constant worries over winning everyone’s approval by acting and talking perfectly. They also hampered my social skills the way being perpetually drunk might.
Now that I’m off I can sense vibes and non verbal cues better. Read people. My sister-in-law thought I had Aspergers–I acted like I did. But screwed up as my thoughts are from anemia and vitamin deficiencies I no longer have enough “symptoms” to qualify for the spectrum.
Maybe give folks lists of social events and gatherings? I joined Friends of the Library, volunteered and was active in my local church while a career mental patient. One center in a small town was fine with this–though surprised at my desire to give back and socialize with those outside the MI sphere. Another, corrupt and enormous center in S. Bend would get angry and “punish” us in subtle under-handed ways for not staying in the ghetto where they wanted us to stay. Almost like a cult.
Report comment
When higher education for the blind became popular thanks to Braille you could see a similar phenomenon. Often the students became teachers because there was no place for them outside the Perkins Institute or wherever. Few careers for the visually impaired back then too aside from caning and teaching other blind people.
Report comment
A little like Psychiatry posing as our official Pre-Crime Division. Anyone else seen The Minority Report?
Sooth saying is more of an art than a science.
Report comment
I have known a woman who lost all her friends and family after her “diagnosis.” Could no longer earn a living but squeaked by in extreme poverty on SSDI. Suffered Diabetes and countless other health problems. Was a revolving door patient to the psych ward for overwhelming suicidal desires.
Yet she insisted her life had improved thanks to psychiatry and its magical pills. Furthermore she went out of her way to recruit others to join our “joyful” community of sickly, impoverished outcasts.
Anyone heard of the Sunken Cost Fallacy? How many psychiatric “cures” are owed to this?
Report comment
Ironically my stomach was already messed up due to intense stress and constant low calorie diets as an adolescent to earn love and acceptance by looking like Kate Moss or Calista Flockhart. Lol.
“You can never be too thin or too rich girls!” What all our mothers kept telling us.
Despite going 2 or 3 days at a time on little but iceberg lettuce, I never became thin, lovely and lovable. Just messed up my digestive system.
Report comment
Thanks Stephen.
It is important people stay on their “meds.” Otherwise they might get better and leave the system, forcing poor “Doc” Andreason and countless others to find real jobs.
Report comment
And next time a psychiatrist posting here mocks the idea that “mental illness” is a social construct we should ask him some questions.
“Hey ‘Doctor’ could you tell us about Drapetomania? What modality of treatment would you employ for this disorder? Is it classified as a personality disorder in the DSM5? How come it only afflicts African Americans?”
“Hey ‘Doctor,’ there is some disagreement on the origins of the ‘mental illness’ known as Hysterics. Is it entirely neurological or does a wandering womb play a prominent role? Would you advocate the Weir Mitchell cure as a form of therapy in combination with medications and/or ECT for women thus afflicted?”
Legitimate diagnoses agreed upon by psych experts. Till overt racism and sexism were no longer socially acceptable. (Not referring to the covert forms.)
Report comment
I’m going on a regimen Rosalee. 2 Tbs of apple cider vinegar (with the “mother”) and slices of fresh lemon mixed with hot water after getting up each morning. Half an hour later 2 Tbs of EV coconut oil chased down by almond milk. Half an hour later breakfast with kombucha and a probiotic tablet. Before bedtime a charcoal tablet.
No refined sugars, dairy, or gluten for the month. No caffeine except the kombucha tea. Dairy tends to “set off” my system if I’m not okay just like gluten–though when my health is good and I’m not stressed out I can digest moderate amounts of these foods. I plan on eating fermented veggies every day instead of yogurt or kefir.
Report comment
Roberta I was expecting another tragic story here. MIA contains many.
I’m so glad my expectations were wrong and your family had a happy ending. Like other happy endings on this site, you owe it to disobeying psychiatric orders. Congratulations! 🙂
Happy for you, your dad, and other family members.
Did you know research is showing that there are effective treatments for early stage dementia? Proper nutrition, rest, physical exercise, and lots of mental exercises. There are no drugs to fix these problems, but solutions exist. We need to stop looking for magic in a drugstore bottle.
Report comment
When I attended Day Treatment or Clubhouse the folks running the show kept trying to fix me up with guys based SOLELY on our “diagnoses.” Nothing against the men. Often they were nice human beings–sometimes nice looking. But we had nothing in common!
“You guys are both ‘bipolars.’ You should get together. You have so much in common. Only you can understand people like you.”
Yeah, we’re all alike. If someone said this about members of an ethnic minority he’d be (rightly) called a bigot. But it’s okay to tell psychiatrized people this crap.
I vented before about how “bipolar” applies to so many types of people and behaviors the label is about as useless as terms like “dummy,” “stupid,” or “ugly.”
Ted Bundy the serial killer has been classified as “bipolar.” So has your fun, eccentric Aunt Betty. So has your overachieving neighbor across the street who struggled to be the perfect wife/mother/CEO and snapped from an SSRI reaction. So has the battered twelve year old boy trapped in foster care. All alike my foot! 😛
Report comment
At least no one takes the term “cracked” literally. Though if they tried to treat you for a fractured skull they would stop once they discovered your cranium was intact.
Report comment
Bcharris, my gut is very unhealthy and it’s messing up my absorption of micro-nutrients. And ability to think straight. Off my SSRI drugs after 20+ years but they wiped out my intestines’ natural ecosystem. What should I do?
Report comment
As long as too much organizing isn’t necessary. A total lack of the executive function can be a pain in housekeeping. Trust me. 😛
Plus Perfect Housewives smile nonstop. If they have lobotomies they’ll also need lots of botox.
Report comment
Our standards of high cleanliness are responsible for all these autoimmune diseases and allergies. Some respected professionals have conducted studies in support of this. One famous doctor has even linked the high rates in childhood leukemia to lack of exposure to viruses and bacteria.
Remember what killed the Martians in War of the Worlds?
Report comment
Glad you can see that Shaun F. Counselors notice stuff like that more than psychiatrists do,
Have you ever read People of the Lie? Written by a counseling psychiatrist in the 80’s before that kind of thing was all but phased out. Interesting ideas, but I disagree that evil can be reduced to a science anymore than a sonnet or Plato’s Dialogues.
I also am against one human being capable of labeing another “evil.” The author acknowledges the danger of this. My question is how it would help anyone–even their victims? If someone is suffering abuse helping them to escape should be enough.
I don’t see “Evil” making the DSM 6 however. It sounds like a moral judgment; not sciency enough.
Report comment
Remember kids, the important thing is just to be yourself. Unless you have a “mental illness.”
Then you need a lobotomy. We can’t fix your social skills or make people like you, but we can make sure you’re not smarter or more talented than they are.
Ta da! Normal!!!
Report comment
Exactly Steve. My point was a period of irrational thoughts and extreme sensations should not be forced on us as a life identity.
I appreciate “Mad Pride” is not trying to force labels on others. But, like OH, I don’t think it’s a good idea. Their choice though.
Report comment
Convince the public the shrinks are the (indirect) cause of mass shootings, enormous numbers on disability and a waste of tax dollars and the battle is half won.
Dialogue with unrepentant shrinks is useless. “Please Mr. Beater, quit hitting your wife. She’s here to tell you how bad it makes her feel.”
What we need to focus on is reeducating real people. Those who want to help us.
OH you say the drugs “work” since all People want is to make others quiet and dependent. Not EVERYONE.
Have you read Anatomy lately? Folks took those neurotoxins believing they would cure their unhappiness or keep them from running around biting like rabid dogs. Not all mothers of the “mentally ill” are NAMI mommies. A lot of these women never wanted their sons or daughters to turn into drooling houseplants who couldn’t think straight and had to live in their basements till the kid dies from the drugs’ eventual toll. Reaching these folks would be great.
A good friend who encouraged my withdrawal lost a sister to psychiatry. I told her about Pies’ self-congratulatory article about the “harmless metaphor” and she was very angry. L started out as a NAMI member who introduced me to the group. We finally left when it became obvious they didn’t care about ANYTHING but drugs. Not crime prevention, saving lives, improving quality of life…none of these mattered .1% as much as forcing “meds” down as many throats as possible.
If a group juxtaposed against NAMI were formed, those who lost loved ones to psychiatry should be allowed to join. Or watched loved ones damaged beyond recognition like that British doctor who comments here. I know L would love to join. Or Sam Ruck.
Not saying shrinks aren’t people. Just the roles they take on make it impossible to act like real people around their test subjects. If you perceive someone as a thing to be fixed or broken into splinters you won’t take what it says seriously.
Report comment
Good point. My own were always distressing, even the bizarre highs many others enjoy. One acquaintance used his “manic” states to fight low self esteem that made him suicidal.
They’d drug the mania away and he’d talk about killing himself. He’d quit cold turkey, get DT’s, and everyone would say, “It’s Dave’s fault cause he’s a crazy idiot who won’t take his ‘meds.'”
Watching Dave’s suffering made me the “perfect patient” for over 20 years.
Guess what? Everyone still treats you horribly.
I have more emotional stability now than ever before in my adult life. Too bad about my body.
Report comment
How about “sad pride” or “frightened pride”? Mental states change not just daily but hourly. Unless something horrible is going on. Why turn something not just very negative and immaterial but transitory by its nature into your core identity?
I don’t fit my “diagnosis” anymore. Not moody or depressed though my executive function is permanently damaged making me do stupid things so I can’t find work. Cashier/sales associate/server/stocker are the jobs available and I can’t even figure out how to organize my room.
Report comment
Wish I had a life, Igor. Not (entirely) joking.
The accurate word for the drugs is neuroleptics though in your case they helped silence the voices. In others’ they are ineffective or amplify them.
Sorry you have been through that crap. I understand your complaints about the controlling, heavy-handed way the experts treat other human beings. A lot of folks who choose to remain consumers still hate the condescending emotional abuse they receive.
Hope things get better soon. In too much physical pain to concentrate today, but someone has posted links to studies here about the link between psych drugs and brain deterioration a psychiatrist conducted. Fww, prolonged stress can lead to loss of brain matter as well.
Report comment
During the Middle Ages people treated the “mad” differently. They were more the harmless buffoon. Kids would laugh at them and throw dirt at them, but if they were harmless folks would let them go their merry way till they snapped out of it.
I wish you had commented on that period Ekaterina.
St Frances of Assisi went mad for a while. He went to be alone in a cave and did a lot of manual labor trying to rebuild a crumbling chapel single-handedly. While he was never the “normal” Freud or other shrinks would approve of, he led a happy, productive life with many meaningful relationships once he sorted things out.
What is worth noting is no one was surprised at how his madness resolved itself once Frances sorted out his calling. Everyone welcomed him back to the village. Even at his nuttiest, no one tried to lock him up.
One conclusion is psychiary creates insanity in many otherwise normal people and prevents all its victims from ever returning to reason.
I no longer consider myself mad. Most of my insanity was created by the psychiatrist I saw.
I don’t consider “madness” as the same thing as “mental illness” but a bizarre state of mind and inability to perceive reality.
Report comment
Our opponents would argue that psychiatry no longer supports slavery or DIRECT euthanasia of the unfit. Trying a bunch of cruel and pointless experiments that (allegedly) shorten your patient’s life or kill them doesn’t count unless they can prove you were trying to murder them. Not like anyone cares if they off their victims anyhow. But force feeding them drugs the torturers can bill the public for is way more profitable than turning the bodies into green cookies or soap. 😛
Report comment
Are there medical guidelines outside psychiatry applying to all medical specialties?
Lying to police is iilegal. Telling them a murder wouldn’t happen was a lie.
Report comment
The shrink would be locked up for Manslaughter. The test subject is already screwed. At least they could keep others from being harmed.
Shrinks tell everyone their drugs make murderers safe to be around. If someone is on AOT and kills someone punish the shrink.
But what shrink wants to prevent mass murders when they’re great PR? Mass shooting sprees are great for devils like Torrey to spread their lies. The APA probably throws a party every time a Sandy Hook happens, damn them.
Will the real monster stand up?
Report comment
You could also use the analogies of abusive cults, violent spouses, and Orwell’s Big Brother.
The Dark Lord Sauron might be stretching it though….
Report comment
Pointing out the hypocrisy or hidden abuse going on in a church is a great way to get in trouble. I grew up as a preacher’s daughter so I know.
Not all churches do this. But some are about hiding ugly family secrets–wife beating. Emotional abuse of children. Secret drinking binges when everyone’s supposed to be a teetotaler. Affairs. “Everyone” knows these things go on, but you aren’t allowed to say it out loud. Just smile big and say things are perfect and you feel so blessed.
Report comment
I think Maradel was talking about “voluntary” seekers Frank.
If the person doesn’t want help he or she must not need it. No means no.
Report comment
I don’t agree with everything Szazs says either. Nor does OH. OH disagrees with Szazs’s libertarianism. I disagree with Szazs’s anti-religious stance.
I’m glad you have read some of his writings and can form your own opinions Maradel.
Report comment
If the state is our parent it’s one with Munchausen’s by Proxy. 😀
Report comment
Maybe KS meant someone who murdered exes. You know. 🙂
Had an ex boyfriend make veiled death threats against my dad. I had been thinking of getting back with him. That was a deal breaker.
Haven’t heard from him in 3 years. So there was a happy ending–for me.
Erik is looking for some new woman to mess with. Never date a man who calls himself an “incel” women!
Report comment
“People who are experiencing emotional pain/psychic pain need understanding, support and help.”
I agree Maradel. But the best way to block yourself from understanding, support and help is to seek out a psychiatrist. I did that. In return they damaged my brain, CNS and reputation.
Bio-reductionism is not understanding.
Segregation is not support.
Destructive mind-altering drugs are not help.
🙁
Report comment
I only became a vaccine skeptic after my eyes were opened to the corruption of psychiatry and the fraud rotting all Western medicine. Some vaccines have helped us greatly. Smallpox and polio for example. But the flu?
I notice flu rates are as high as ever. Of course this is because the vaccines only protect against a few of the most common. And the flu virus mutates rapidly.
Despite the mandatory flu vaccines I hear all these PSA’s by doctors worried about the “unvaccinated” since flu rates are higher than ever. So, despite more vaccines than ever experts attribute high flu infection rates to a lack of vaccines….Sound familiar?
The Spanish flu epidemic killed a lot of people back in 1912. Flu epidemics like this are a rare phenomenon. And we have not had such a fatal epidemic since. Could it be that back in 1912 folks had poorer sanitation and nutrition? While that might be true, telling kids to wash their hands and eat more veggies wouldn’t let “non-profits” collect tax dollars by forcing parents to buy these treatments.
Maybe I am unduly suspicious. I think the claims of damage from flu vaccines are exaggerated by many–that they’re more ineffective than harmful to the vast majority. But if flu vaccines are so great why aren’t flu infections down now? More people than ever receive these injections. Like claiming all the mass shootings that weren’t a problem before the 90’s are due to the lack of drugs that weren’t around before the 1980’s. Lucky for experts Americans are so gullible and anti-literate.
Report comment
Happy New Year from me and the cats. Need to go home to see Abby again soon.
Report comment
Just thought of something OH. Psychiatry itself is an alternative or substitute. For human friendship and self improvement. Counterfeit of course. But people seek it out voluntarily for a reason.
Report comment
Foxes would eat the hens. But we could save on expensive guard uniforms for them.
Report comment
8. Don’t mock your child, call their pain “symptoms” or call them crazy when they weep over their shattered lives. Don’t tell them they’re mentally incompetent, helpless and utterly dependent on you. Don’t keep reminding them how unlovable a “schizo” or “bipolar” is and how no one but you would be willing to put up with them. That they should be grateful they aren’t homeless or sent to an institution. 🙁
Report comment
No KS, not just the psych system. But this pseudo-science invented solely to destroy/sterilize “criminal types” has infected all the legitimate medical branches as well.
Psychiatry is the cancer of medicine.
Report comment
Judi, there are many in my situation who started out taking an SSRI for depression or some off label use and wound up labeled “bipolar.” (I want to write a book about this atrocity.)
Big Pharma and the APA are too big to fight. How about a couple hundred individual lawsuits against shrinks who drove depressed people bonkers–lying about the drug the whole time? And try to publicize the legal suits.
Shrinks should also be held legally responsible every time someone under their care murders others and they mislead the police, claiming the “meds compliant” person is not a threat. This happened in Florida. If they know there is a small chance the person may try this can’t they at least keep an eye on him or lock him up for observation while they drug him? Manslaughter 1 sounds appropriate.
Report comment
Steve I’m afraid to see doctors now. At least if I’m uninsured shrinks have no financial benefit for locking me up or AOT. I suggest all who bear psych labels get rid of insurance, pay the fine, and go to the ER only for a broken leg or something. And pick a mental illness center nearby to brag about your awesome doc who gives you meds that work perfectly.
Report comment
“…psychiatric ‘care’ defines itself as in the service of patients.” This makes it a system of hypocrisy and deceit.
Report comment
Has anyone else read Erewhon by Samuel Butler?
It’s about a country where criminals are treated like they have a sickness and the sick, poor and grieving widows are punished like criminals.
Butler was mocking the double standards of classist Victorian society in how–for example–it harshly punished prostitutes but let off the men who hired them with a scolding. But reading it now makes it sound a lot like modern psychiatry.
He was poking fun at social Darwinism. This does play a big role in psychiatry.
Report comment
JClaude, unlike some here, I’m a discouraged conformist. An outside the box thinker–too sensitive and imaginative–i have struggled to fit the box to end my loneliness. By fitting in I might have found love and acceptance.
Psychiatry did NOT make me normal. It turned me into a freak. A hideous monster. It told those around me their treatment of me didn’t matter since all my tears and suffering were manipulative symptoms of my brain disease and proved my inferiority. My seizures, contortions, and eye rolling proved I wasn’t taking my “meds” as prescribed they claimed. My mom took to verbal and emotional abuse till I wanted to kill myself.
What crime against humanity had I committed? Seeing a psychiatrist and having a bad reaction to the drug Anafranil he gave.
My sister is allergic to penicillin but was never punished for it.
Report comment
What it doesn’t understand. And what doctors are just too lazy to figure out.
Report comment
Simple. Shrinks are incompetent morons who chose psychiatry because they couldn’t pass the exams for legitimate branches of medicine. 😀
Take that Sir Giles Wellesley! 😛 Yes, I’m “bashing” psychiatry and laughing at clowns like you!
Report comment
More importantly it would reveal psychiatry as a penal system of punishing law abiding citizens for painful emotions, sustained abuse, and behaviors judged “odd.” Not a branch of medicine.
Not about helping the subjects at all. It’s true role–only alluded to by people like Torrey–is protecting society by crippling and imprisoning everyone these self appointed prophets deem threats to it.
Report comment
Psychiatric “treatments” would not be forced upon “sane” criminals. They would be considered cruel and unusual punishments.
Report comment
Yes, SE. And the “peak” people are the one’s most apt to get labeled crazy since they see things differently then others, are “too sensitive” and aren’t happy all the time. Sounds “Bipolar 2” to me.
Report comment
A straw man argument and false dilemma fallacy.
Report comment
25 years in the Mental Illness System and the only model ever presented was the bio-medical model. They told us we had brain diseases proven by science to exist. This settled science had also proven life-saving medicines would save our brains from deteriorating by restoring the proper chemical balance to our brains.
All the while psychiatrists were laughing up their sleeves–not just at their victims–but the gullible public. While expressing private indignation that anyone thinks psychiatrists are ignorant enough to believe their own lies, Dr. Ronald Pies has yet to put out any PSA’s setting the public straight.
This chem. imbalance bovine excrement is taught everywhere as the gospel truth. (Btw, Pete Earley and other NAMI bigwigs know it’s a lie, yet do their best to promote it. For shame, Pete!)
I finally convinced my dad of the truth. He endorsed my coming off the drugs. He never wanted me damaged body and soul. He thought the doctors would help me.
So did I. That’s why I took the pills for over two decades though they made me miserable, stupid, and so horribly sick I’ll never recover. The moral? Never believe anything your doctor tells you.
Report comment
My best wishes Dr. Goetzhe.
May you fare better than poor Semmelweis!
Report comment
Ironically Rosalee, many believe that these labels help people. That if only we could end “stigma” exacerbated or caused by these labels all would be well.
I’m supposed to be “bipolar” but no longer meet the criteria. They get around this by using the last question: Have you ever been diagnosed as bipolar in the past? If the answer is “yes” your current behaviors and mental state don’t amount to a hill of beans.
People change and grow. Psychiatry won’t admit this and therefore is dedicated to causing its subjects to deteriorate.
Report comment
Enormous drug companies should not be in charge of all the research determining the safety of the products they wish to sell. If an American judge were accused of a crime he would not be allowed to preside over his own trial. The former scenario is just as dumb.
Report comment
“The systems are satanic….”
Well Satan is known as the father of lies!
Report comment
Okay. Why does ECT advocate Torrey hate and fear cats so much? 😀
Report comment
Cats make horrible passengers. Helped Mom move 3 of the cats from one end of Indiana to another. A 5 hour trip.
The big one lay in the bottom of her carrier looking sick the whole time. Occasionally she would howl like only a distressed cat can.
The other two “sang a duet” the whole trip. “Meow!” said Lilly. “Mow!” said Foxy. Normally they hate each other.
When we got them to the new home they calmed down and were able to enjoy exploring. But all three were hoarse for a while.
Report comment
Steve, as someone who makes mean chocolate chip cookies from scratch I’d say “diagnosing” is way easier. If my cookies taste like crap people can spit them out and refuse to eat them. No such luck with what the quacks cook up so they have no standards at all.
Report comment
The FDA is worse than useless and must be eliminated.
No more cronyism!
Report comment
I struggle with poor concentration–though making myself read short stories, essays, novellas is helping.
What’s worse is BAD short term memory, non-existent organizational skills. Seriously, I can’t organize a dresser drawer. My coordination is poor so I keep knocking stuff over. Mom keeps yelling at me for my carelessness, telling me I’ll need to go to a home when she dies. 45 is too late she says.
Report comment
Most of today’s “mentally ill” have real physical problems related to involuntary drug use for years on end. TBI is a legitimate brain disorder created by the shrinks pretending to fix a problem that never existed till they rushed in.
Where angels feared to tread. 😛
Report comment
The whole thing is pretty incestuous. Dr. Pills (renowned pharmacologist) cites Dr. Shill (renowned psychiatrist) who cites Dr. Pills in his major works also. The very companies producing the drugs run the tests proving their safety and effectiveness.
Mutual butt kissing. Like the Snake Around the World of Norse mythology but replace it with a giant tapeworm enjoying its own tail. Yummy.
Report comment
Good point Steve. My parents were good and kind but couldn’t protect me from others who weren’t.
Report comment
Psychiatrists are supposedly doctors not judges. Shrinks who come here defending their right to serve as the judge/jury/witnesses in cases where they can not be held accountable should be asked why they demand the powers of government officials that real doctors don’t have. Likewise the FDA is not the executive, judicial, nor legislative branch but a petty bureaucratic office.
They abuse these unlawful powers to punish people for UNHAPPINESS! They’re treating unhappy folks worse than convicted murderers or pedophiles.
Depression is a soft diagnosis too so this should scare us all. If you’re unhappy stay as far away from shrinks as possible for they have the legal right to perform unlimited acts of brain damage on you to the point of death–if they see fit. Judge/jury/torturer/executioner rolled into one. A menace to freedom.
Report comment
Psychiatry can ruin your sex life. Even if the drugs don’t the “diagnosis” will.
Report comment
Your average layman imagines psychiatrists have an intimate knowledge of the human brain no human being has yet. I actually saw this on the series Longmeyer. Someone has been obtaining psych drugs illegally for PTSD veterans lacking insurance? Insight? Maybe both?
Anyhow the psychiatrist bitterly laments how people are getting these drugs underground for their crazy relatives. Says, “How can they get the proper care they need without the hours of painstaking tests including body scans and blood work to provide the exact medicine necessary to stabilize their brain chemistry and restore equilibrium?”
Hmm. Where were my hours of painstaking tests including scans and blood work? All I got was a BS questionnaire similar to the kind found in tabloid magazines. Gosh darn it, do I feel cheated.
😀 Bwahahaha!!!
Report comment
My cats can tell when I’m having a rough time physically or emotionally. They’ll curl up next to me with a solemn look in their big eyes like they know something is wrong.
Cats can be just as loyal as dogs–but you have to earn their devotion.
Report comment
Okay. Chalk it up to my not knowing. 🙂
Report comment
Furthermore if you’re hopeless and the only thing wrong with you is a defective brain why waste your time learning better life choices or coping skills? That’s what confused me. You don’t teach life skills to lab rats.
Those “therapists” and other flunkies must know it isn’t working but they go along with it for a paycheck. Looks like more MI Centers are downsizing these services since drugs and shocks are all people need.
“Are you a doctor? Did you go to medical school?”
“Are you a con artist? Did you go to swindling school?”
Psychiatry is for people who can’t make it in real medicine and pass out at the sight of blood. Hey, let them enter the field with a 0% success rate since they’ll do the least damage there. Most of what the APA does is propaganda/slick marketing as any perusal of the journal will show. Hence their dependence on characters like Jaffe and Earley. Neither of those guys has a medical degree but psychiatry owes them big time. They play “Squealer” to psychiatry’s “Comrade Napoleon.” (Orwell’s Animal Farm.)
Report comment
Answering back to nasty voices who put you down by questioning the validity and telling yourself the truth. As well as the voices–whatever they may be.
Also a form of coping with “negative self talk” which can be the same thing.
Report comment
Kitties are low maintenance. Great for the chronically ill. I had to find a home for my pet cockatiel after more than a decade. My ears have become hypersensitive since going off drugs. (The drugs dulled my senses more than normal.) Poor Pearly’s shrieks became unbearable. He needs someone who is okay with them.
My folks found a kitty but there’s no room for her in their single wide. The other 3 cats don’t like her. So Abby is living with me now. She doesn’t need walks like a dog and is much quieter than a song bird but warm-blooded and affectionate–unlike a fish. Great pet.
Report comment
Good point LS!
Report comment
Do they even consult folks who hear voices for the model? Somehow I doubt it.
“About Them Without Them” should be the motto of mental “health.”
Report comment
I agree with Rosalee. I am anti-psychiatry but believe good CAN come from counseling sessions between consenting adults. Of course the thing must be perceived as a partnership of equals. If the counseled person can’t fire the counselor it’s unequal and tends toward abuse.
Mindfreedom has a list of therapists/counselors/coaches not associated with psychiatry. I recommend Will Hall since I have had a few sessions with him. Nice guy and great listener!
Try googling Choice Theory Reality Therapy. Also William Glasser Institute. Counselors who subscribe to this school reject psychiatric labels or “remedies.”
If you want to flee the Mental Illness System avoid psycho-therapists who work for these community centers. They told me how hopeless, helpless and crazy I was for 20 years. My depression is gone now that I left this negativity disguised as therapy. If you have an SMI label they tend to be worse than useless with all their negative self-fulfilling prophecies.
If you’re not ready that’s okay too, Anja. I understand. Took me 4 years to make my escape. Scary as heck.
Report comment
Love you Kate. Please don’t think this way. I don’t want you locked up or dead.
Report comment
Fair enough Frank. If a fat bald 59 year old CEO finds a hot 18 year old blonde to marry they deserve each other. If Mr. Money-Bags is smart the gardeners will all look like Quasi Modo. 😉
Report comment
Neuroplasticity runs counter to the premise of psychiatry doesn’t it? The idea we can reshape our brains without drugs or surgery?
Report comment
Dad did give folks like me an exception clause. My sister never married. unlike me she seems to prefer this. He attributes it to her unusual genetic syndrome with bad joint problems and really small stature. (Most adults are 60″ or less.) So we’re both off the hook.
It’s hard trying to find a guy in your late teens or early twenties who won’t get scared if you’re too smart and literate. In our subculture you have to find a man to marry before graduating from college. Or consign yourself to spinsterhood. Lol.
Sick of playing “The Game” anyhow. Mom frequently cried and had a breakdown during my childhood trying to be the Perfect Susie Homemaker and impress the other Stepford Wives. I was an abysmal failure as a Perfect Child reflecting her Perfect Mothering skills.
A lot of my friends had eating disorders striving to please our moms with our Perfect Bodies. Slim and chaste. No ugly fat or naughty curves.
Stinks to be the outcast but knowing you’ll never measure up provides closure.
Report comment
Ever read Single at Heart by Bella Depaulo Julie?
My singleness was not totally a choice. But better alone than trapped in an abusive marriage like my aunt or many other people.
I enjoy my space to be honest. If I were to marry this late it would be tough to adapt.
Report comment
According to William Glasser hearing voices is “creative symptoming” or the imagination run amok to cope with emotional pain. Thomas Szazs referred to it as “believing a lie.”
The way I choose to deal with them is a little like Will Hall’s method. But significantly different.
It’s not scientific but it works for me. I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone. Not fully effective til I went off the pills though.
Report comment
Drapetomania was a legitimate diagnosis back then. Meaning mainstream psychiatry accepted it as a “thing.” A black person who longed to be free MUST be insane. The treatment modality was beating the runaway unconscious.
And remember Weir Mitchell’s cure? “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is valuable not just for feminists but psychiatric survivors. The crap the POV character suffers in this story is similar to how “Mental Health Centers” help people today.
1. Enforced idleness.
2. Keep reminding them how crazy they are. To focus on NOT going insane.
3. Infantalizing.. Call them “kids” and belittle them like Ricky Ricardo on steroids. Laughingly tell them what helpless little geese that they are.
4. Remind them how hopeless their “brain diseases” are.
5. Instill proper gratitude in them by telling them how they could never make it without “help” from the System.
6. Cut them off from loved ones. The drugs are a big help with this. If any family members dare to ask why the patient is worse since starting Drug X tell them it just means the loved one is hopelessly insane. They should leave them alone so experts like you can save them. They’re hopeless (dangerous and toxic too) so abandon them to a life in the Madhouse Without Walls.
In a matter of months it won’t matter how emotionally stable they were to start with. They’ll be battier than the old church belfry.
Congratulations! They never would have made it without your care. 😀
Report comment
Here’s an idea to minimize medical corruption. Doctors can only bill patients if they fix the complaint. This was the tradition in many Asian cultures and may be that way today.
All doctors would work “on spec” like freelance journalists. Since shrinks’ owe nearly all success to the placebo effect and have a lot of dissatisfied customers who go crazy only after taking their damned “safe and effective treatments” the specialty would go bankrupt. Doctors are supposed to make people better. Not cripple and kill them for the crimes of unhappiness or being bullied.
Report comment
I know my brain is damaged. It’s scary but I have almost no executive function skills now. Seriously.
If I get my own place far enough away from my folks I plan on being minimalist. The only way I can keep a clean, orderly home is to keep as few items to organize as possible.
Report comment
What if a doctor thinks I should get my arm amputated for a sprained wrist? I object to his brilliant solution and he locks me up and amputates it against my will on the grounds that I must have agosognosia?
For the record I have never been through shock treatments. But those who have had their brains mutilated for no clear purpose–such as removing a cancerous tumor through neurosurgery–deserve to be heard.
They have to suffer the long term trauma of brain damage as opposed to the shrinks or ECT machine vendors whose only concerns after these procedures are finding luxury tax loopholes on their new yachts. Most likely the shrink who shocked Mrs. Smith won’t have to listen to her as she struggles to remember her grandchildren’s names, can no longer perform basic organizational tasks, play the piano or–in some cases–read.
The benefits of ECT are pretty one-sided.
Report comment
To both Sam and OH, a lot of folks on sites I follow accuse singles of selfishness. My dad once said that selfishness causes the higher levels of singleness. Then he looked at me and sadly said, “Except in cases like yours.”
Single/selfish are not synonyms. Gold diggers are selfish. So are men who marry women they treat like pets because they make great arm candy. Being a wife and mother doesn’t kill all possibility for selfishness, but drives it underground. Like the “NAMI mommies” condemned here–and they can cause more damage than selfish childless singles would.
Mother Theresa was not perfect. But she wasn’t single for selfish reasons. She deeply loved like many other spinsters.
So lumping all marrieds into the mature/loving/sacrificing good guys and singles into immature/cold/selfish bad is a gross generalization. Like other arbitrary categorizations we psych survivors have endured. 😉
Report comment
Loving your wife and not considering her crazy make you different. But different can be a good thing if the Mainstream is wrong in what they’re doing.
Report comment
Thanks Sam. 45 now. The odds are small.
Didn’t help that I ballooned up to 350 pounds from 170 on my cocktail over the years. Everyone blamed me of course.
Now my family and acquaintances are mystified at my mysterious weight loss when most women gain. Hee hee.
Report comment
Brw, Mark, Jesus referred to Himself as the Great Physician to heal us from our sins. I never left the church but often puzzled over what behaviors were sins (willful) versus symptoms. Now I believe they were all willful but many were harmless eccentricities that annoyed people–neither illegal nor immoral. A lot of sinful behaviors are considered respectable and therefore “mentally healthy.” Remember the people Jesus really got mad at?
A lot of church goers should puzzle over why after 2000 years a bunch of people need drugs for salvation. (My dad has.) Only nobody thinks about deep issues now. Churches I go to are filled with super loud shallow, meaningless songs and the messages are often shallow too. I heard one preacher say people were complaining over a book’s doctrine. But he read it and found it sound…because it made him FEEL GOOD. That explains why church goers fall for anything advertised by pastel cartoon commercials of dancing pills, smiling picnickers and lemonade. No discernment or depth of thought anywhere.
Report comment
Got mine because I thought I had found “The One” but he dropped me for no given reason. Mom had been telling me since I was labelled SMI at age 20 no man could ever love a crazy woman. When David dropped me like that I blamed myself and made plans to kill myself since I was an unlovable monster unfit to live.
It wasn’t David’s rejection behind my overwhelming desire to end my life but humanity’s rejection. Now I live alone, shunning humanity. I wish I weren’t a misanthrope but I hate people. My guess is this is typical for psych survivors who have had the trauma of seeing humanity at its ugliest. 🙁
Men no longer reject me. The secret is…never date.
Report comment
My experience is different from many here. But I started hearing evil voices at age 9. My family was homeless and I blamed myself for offending Dad’s employers I was expected to kiss up to. (I was an ornery kid who knew stuff I shouldn’t. My folks were always being blamed for not keeping me under control and punishing me severely enough.) After a year or two I willed my inner bullies away. But at 14 we were homeless for several months again. Bullying/sexual harassment in my new high school drove me bonkers again.
Anyhow, after a bad reaction on Anafranil keeping me awake for 21 days straight the voices came back. The drugs made them worse–like I could no longer push them away or filter them. The neuroleptics destroyed my ability to control my feelings or imagination.
Off the crap finally! I have processed my painful feelings finally. No “therapist” necessary. The drugs did NOT make the voices leave–they amplified them and weakened me so I couldn’t fight them like I normally could have.
Report comment
“Art reflecting extreme experiences” perhaps?
Report comment
My case worker diagnosed me with BPD. (She actually fits the “type” better than I do.)
“What?!” you say. “Case workers can’t ‘diagnose’ you.”
Guess again! 😛
Shrinks get mad at kids on Tumblr “diagnosing” themselves. They also fly into an impotent rage at people using “bipolar” or “schizo” as persona insults to folks you disagree with or don’t like. They also get mad at people they haven’t officially labeled for joking about “having a bipolar day.” Meaning moody/irritable/silly.
As the head bully on the playground only THEY get to dish out the insults. Bwahahaha!
“Only I get to call him a stupid poo poo pee pee head.”
So far there is no diagnosis of “Stupid poo poo pee pee head” in the DSM. (i think that would be a personality disorder.) Maybe the DSM 6 will have it.
Report comment
Anja, since tapering off my drugs I no longer have mood swings or suicidal thoughts. (Sadly the brain damage is real. Very poor short term memory and executive function.)
In Anatomy of an Epidemic Robert Whitaker talks about SSRI drugs triggering “bipolar” mood swings. But he didn’t do research on people curing the roller coaster simply by getting off. I’m not the only person who succeeded–by any means. 🙂
I do not recommend going cold turkey. Slow and steady is best. I highly recommend Surviving Antidepressants. Not sure how long you have been on psych drugs. But IF you decide to go off a good rule of thumb is one year for every ten spent taking them. If you’ve been on your cocktail for a decade or less–give yourself a year to gently taper.
Report comment
“I never met a dog I didn’t like!”
Uh…what is that supposed to mean? You don’t perform shocks on Fido? Very good.
But doesn’t Jane Doe or John Doe have as much value as Fido?
Report comment
The women urging the battered wives to see shrinks denounced the Patriarchy themselves. Totally clueless how a psychiatric diagnosis can effect a divorce case–especially if custody is an issue.
If you’re fearful of the husband you’re forced to live with why do you need “Major Depression Disorder” to explain your misery for crying out loud? I encouraged one woman to quit her SSRI’s–warning her they could cause mania and get her the hard label of “bipolar 2” as well as interfering with her ability to think and plan the necessary escape instead of popping pills. She followed my advice and quit seeing the quack–putting her fight-or-flight response into escaping her cruel husband. 🙂
Leaving one abuser for a network of abusers is a bad idea. But they were naive and thought “doctors” are all good guys and saviors.
Report comment
I’m good friends with an interesting woman who suffers Lyme disease. I suffer a lot of what she does since brain and nerve damage are a reality for us both. Hers caused by a virus. Mine is iatrogenic.
Report comment
My pills work as a placebo for my parents. I pop supplements from time to time and they think I’m compliant since they believe if I quit taking my “meds” I’d wind up at MacDonalds in my underwear in the wee hours of the morning.
(We knew a “bipolar” man this happened too, but he went cold turkey. Dad–his clergy–talked to the shrink who told him that was D’s “illness” and all would be fine if D weren’t a crazy fool who refused to take his “meds.” That frightened me so much I was the Perfect Patient for over 20 years.)
Report comment
To quote Thoreau:
“If I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?”
😀
Report comment
SSRIs “work” by blocking your natural inhibitors. If someone already acts out an SSRI will make it way worse then say a neuroleptic or something like Valium.
I’m speaking entirely from the point of view of family members. Not the person forced to live in the personal Hell these drugs often create, but no one around can fully appreciate.
My uncle has been a jerk since a traumatic brain injury he barely survived years ago. I talked my aunt out of putting him on an SSRI. Part of the reason Uncle B acts so badly is his filters don’t work. Totally disinhibited would NOT be an improvement.
Report comment
Niki, you obviously loved your daughter. She was lucky to have you for a mother during her short life.
You couldn’t save her from those who slated her out for destruction. But knowing you loved her must have been some consolation for poor Lucie even as she suffered.
Report comment
“Psychiatry Changes Lives”
They punish you when you don’t obey, and they punish you when you do;
They label you “borderline personality disorder” when you are sexually active;
They label you “disassociative” when you aren’t.
When you smile they tell you you’re “manic”–
When you don’t smile–or can’t–they say you have a “flattened affect.”
When you cry because they ruined your life they say you need massive doses of the drugs damaging you–or ECT.
When you gain massive amounts of weight on their drugs they say you’re too dumb to eat properly.
They take notes of your poor organizational skills after destroying your frontal lobes.
They take notes of your poor interpersonal skills after destroying your amygdala.
When the community shuns you, they lament how Ignorance causes Stigma–
Because Stigma can be bad for drumming up business–but great for enforcing AOT.
Then the high ranking bigwigs show up on national television to say how YOU have no conscience or empathy and lie all the time.
Being a psychiatrist means turning violent criminals loose on the public (They’re “meds” compliant!) Demonizing the “patients” like no other medical specialist would.
An aversion to the truth.
Crippling and killing the innocent through pointless experiments.
The Thief who only breaks in to kill and destroy.
People of the Lie.
Report comment
Not just a habit or tic. I itch like crazy sometimes. Really dry skin and eyes too.
During my Effexor taper till I had been off 6 months I kept having horrible nose and throat infections. Couldn’t quit coughing between infections either.
Glad to be told it’s normal. I HATED it when shrinks told me seizures/uncontrollable eye rolling/gaining 60 pounds in 3 months on a restrictive diet shouldn’t happen. Really?
Turned out these problems are common when on Haldol and Risperdol. But shrinks lie–all the time!
Don’t pill shame. They never do that. Must be YOUR fault. 😛
Report comment
A question for anyone to answer. Are SSRI’s antihistamines? If so, would that explain why I’m allergic to practically everything now?
Report comment
Convincing someone they’re going insane can really terrify them. No wonder “insight” is considered important by shrinks.
Dr. Rush practiced blood letting. Maybe they’ll invent some fancy machine to suck large amounts of blood out of the “mentally ill’s” jugulars. Then we’ll hear the APA touting the benefits of bleeding. “But not like the old days!” 😀
Uh huh. Nice lipstick, but it’s still a pig.
Report comment
Regardless of what its critics say, we psychiatrists have conclusively proven that ECT can be invaluable in producing chuckles among ourselves.
Thus spake Dr. Quackenbush.
Report comment
Science does not hold all the answers to life’s problems Psyche. I agree with you there. I’ve seen TED talks about managers who hire humanities majors to solve the tech company’s problems because STEM majors tend to be narrow minded and only thinking in the box. When it comes to getting people to work together or improve morale STEM experts have no advantage.
Report comment
I wish I had read Toxic Psychiatry when it came out the year Dr. M gas lighted me. 🙁 I was clueless anyone but Scientologists opposed psychiatry. And a few “crazies” who thought their hallucinations were real so they wouldn’t take their “meds.”
Report comment
I second LS and strongly suggest Anja read Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker. There is no known physical cause of depression or bipolar so the drugs cannot resolve anything. Some find them useful as emotional pain killers. I found them way more useful as joy killers though. They blunt the emotions–good and bad–as well as dulling the cognitive processes including social skills and executive functions.
Report comment
For what it’s worth Anja, putting “bipolar” cases on SSRI’s is standard treatment for many psychiatrists. They generally make it a cocktail, adding neuroleptics and “mood stabilizers” to the former.
I had a horrible reaction to the SSRI Anafranil so I was sleepless for 21 days and went bonkers. They said I was “Bipolar 2” but after tapering off the drugs I took for 25 years I don’t have mood swings or thoughts of suicide. There are many out there like us.
Since you believe in psychiatric remedies please take your pills as prescribed. A pill box can really be a life saver (literally.) You don’t want to take more than the psychiatrist prescribes. In my experience, they are not minimalist in their prescriptions.
I wish you well, Anja.
Report comment
By “freakish” I meant unnaturally. Being a phony.
I realize the rest of what I said about “stupid, insensitive, selfish….” contradicts this. But I have had nurses and social workers in psych wards–later case managers in centers and clubhouses–who lectured us on how crazy we were for not being happy as they were. If they were on disabling drugs and segregated in crushing poverty they might not grin ear to ear either.
“How come you’re not smiling all the time like my super awesome hubby and kids and I did during our Caribbean vacation?” Save it for Facebook Missy! 😛
Covetousness is a sin. So’s arrogance and mocking the suffering.
Report comment
Psychiatry was started as a means for abusers to silence their victims. Today it’s the same smelly pig beneath new makeup.
Report comment
Dr. Mengele I presume.
Report comment
Our society has a big problem with Sadness Shaming. Like we need an excuse not to be ecstatically overjoyed 24/7.
Doctors love selling pills for the “disease” of unhappiness. But SSRI’s are a smashing success only because people have no tolerance for painful emotions and think sadness is sinful. (I was told this in church. Now they say, “Depression is a sin unless you have the mental illness bipolar. Which is really a physical illness you’re born with and can’t help without ‘meds.'”)
We have a right to unhappiness! If you’re freakishly happy all the time you must be stupid, insensitive, selfish, sheltered, or a combination of the above.
Happy happy joy joy. 😛 Please pass the Soma.
Report comment
Sorry Marion. I was unduly harsh. Apparently you weren’t even defending treatments (coercive at least.)
I still doubt they’ll publish comments from “ungrateful consumers” like me.
Don’t kill the messenger. 🙂
Report comment
The problem, Marion, is that would involve paying tribute to the “psychiatric experts.” As a survivor of psychiatry’s drugs and mind games I refuse to acknowledge it as a legitimate branch of medicine. Societal control is its true function.
I’m sure they have no interest in anything “crazies” say unless its telling how
“Psychiatry saved my life! Now I no longer go on drinking binges and wake up with strangers in my bed. I get along with everybody, have a wonderful career, a happy, affectionate marriage and am a pillar of the community.”
The truth is the exact opposite happened. Never a party animal, I’m a lonely virgin at 45, my health is ruined, and 25 years of psych drugs/labels destroyed all chances of gainful employment after my teens. I’ve no interest in more effective mind altering drugs to perhaps stop my heart from beating or mess up my thinking again.
There can be no dialogue with those determined to use us as subhuman test subjects. Who dismiss anything but mindless hymns of praise to their guild as proof of Severe Mental Illness and would lock us all up for drugs and shock if possible.
If you’re trying to foist more brain drugs on gullible consumers this is the wrong place, btw. Most of us are fighting or have fought like mad to get OFF those things. Like trying to sell handcuffs to someone kidnapped and forced to wear them for 20 or 30 years.
Psychiatric drug promotions are NOT welcome here.
Report comment
Forgiveness is impossible if a person is not responsible for bad behaviors. This helps explain the conflicted views of “mentally ill” people our society holds.
They’re not to blame for horrible behaviors and crimes because their existence itself is viewed as a crime. Hence the stigma since they can never be anything but deviant/criminal/insane.
In a survey people said they’d rather have a convicted felon as a neighbor than a “severely mentally ill” person. Why? The answer was “Felons can change.” If wickedness is hard wired into your brain and DNA you will always be a menace and a nuisance.
Report comment
“I don’t believe genes have nothing to do with it,” is a double negative. But, given the context, it’s correctly used.
Littleturtle believes genes have something–if only a little–to do with “mental illness.” I don’t believe in it myself since the very term “mental illness” means existing in one’s mind rather than the physical world. Brain problems can cause weird thoughts and feelings. But those are physical illnesses since the brain is a physical organ. TBI, epilepsy, brain cancer, Parkinsons, and Lou Gehrigs are brain diseases as opposed to “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” which are “mental illnesses.”
Report comment
As far as mental states go, we do not stay in one mental state all the time. Our thoughts change as we age and we can alter them with enough effort.
Our brains are living organs continually being reconfigured through our thoughts. Not blocks of rock shrinks can chisel into whatever hideous forms THEY think best.
(Many of them seem to have minds of concrete. All mixed up and permanently set. Heh heh.)
Report comment
Yep. I never smiled “enough” as a kid. Couldn’t be the Perfect Preacher’s Daughter. Smiling non-stop, fastidious, perfectly organized, obedient, no sense of humor, unimaginative, good grades but not too smart. (Brains aren’t considered girly after puberty.)
After going on my cocktail I could barely smile at all. Then got scolded for my “flattened affect.”
Report comment
Those gosh darn treatment resistant consumers!
Double–no triple the dose. Make it 3 drugs instead of one. Tell their family and friends they’re incompetent, dangerous “bipolars” or “schizos.”
If they persist in unhappiness, fry their brains out. That’ll learn ’em!
Report comment
You mean “antidepressants” work?
Report comment
Effexor is a bear to come off too.
Report comment
Me too. Anafranil kept me awake for 21 days straight, driving me into a psychotic mania. The shrinks NEVER let me go off them after that. Told me it was my fault for being SMI and gave me more drugs than ever. (Finally I fled the crazy makers with their drugs that were making nuts all along.)
But admitting this publicly would be “pill shaming.” Psychiatry would rather shame its victims.
Report comment
Ugh! 😛
Report comment
Some would sneer that they don’t want to help anyone but themselves and Big Pharma and Washington cronies. But I find that hard to believe of ALL everyday shrinks. (Not talking about the APA bigwigs who lie as a rule and have no conscience.)
Many actually think they’re helping people even as they slowly poison them or fry their brains. How can this be? It takes some intelligence to make it through medical school. Are they idiots or monsters? Or just plain crazy themselves?
I believe in craziness. Not the “mental illness but it’s really a physical brain illness” nonsense. But if we people are stressed out, lonely, or troubled by guilty consciences we can persuade ourselves into believing all sorts of nonsense. If the lies we believe correspond to mainstream society we aren’t certifiable.
In order to live with themselves, psychiatrists MUST cling to the belief they are helping. Not hurting people. Amazing the mental contortions they can perform to maintain their riches, prestige, and legal authority.
Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, the pride of life….
Report comment
I have to agree. There are studies–but they’re very skewed and conducted by folks who should recuse themselves from such research the way judges won’t preside over cases where they have vested interests.
At the same time, I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings. We need to show compassion to the deceived.
For the deceivers it’s another matter. “Shame patients. Praise pills,” is the mantra of today’s shrink.
If someone says, “My meds give my life meaning and hope,” I sigh with pity. If you live to consume drugs and all your hopes are in the latest pill, you must have one sad life. My hope is you’ll discover the truth and be set free.
They don’t believe in themselves, so the capsule or tablet is the lucky talisman given by the witch doctor (shrink.) Incidentally the witch doctor has taught them not to believe in themselves but be totally dependent on him and believe all he says without question.
Report comment
Jan, my cardiac issues started long before the taper. Those drugs damage the human heart. Doctors must know this.
My lengthy cardiac test revealed bad arrhythmia. An MA gave me the news and hung up immediately. No comments from her or the FNP who ordered the complicated test. 🙁
Report comment
By “work” perhaps the ex-spurts mean, “help us maintain our prestige as a legitimate medical specialty/protectors of the public/saviors of the suffering mad.” Or maybe, “Help us earn a comfortable living where we rake in more per day than the test subjects we crippled get to live on per month.”
Yep. They certainly Work in both respects.
Report comment
Placebo trials have done nothing to stop the epidemic of psych drug use due to the public’s gullibility, slick marketing/media control, and suppression of evidence by authorities.
Report comment
The opiate of the masses in 21st century America is opium. OK, just drugs as addictive as opium. And the dealers have the legal authority to force you to buy AND consume their wares, and lock you up if you “just say no.”
Report comment
I think they believe destroying skills, obliterating memories of loved ones, destroying independence so someone like my great aunt lived out her life as a hollow shell of a human being is no big deal. Cause the “mentally ill” are all just dangerous mass murderers lacking empathy, conscience, or life skills anyhow.
Famous shrinks go on national TV to tell the public how their patients are a bunch of dangerous monsters. No other medical specialty publicly maligns the character of its patients. (That’s why there are anti-psychiatry people, “Doc” Torrey!)
They’d wind up in institutions and probably murder strangers for a hobby without being helpfully crippled by shrinks. Not like they’re maiming real people or destroying lives that count after all.
Report comment
I believe Emily Dickinson wrote her love poems to a highly idealized lover who may or may not have been based on a real human being. If they had “medicated” her they might not have helped her socially, but would likely have cured her massive poetry output. Ditto for Van Gogh’s paintings.
Report comment
There are pockets of Old School Mormons who force teenage girls to marry middle aged polygamists. You never hear Psychiatry decry this. Probably because those who escape provide fresh meat to devour like abuse victims looking for help do.
Report comment
Assuming life has a point, psychiatry is still the worst place to look for it.
Report comment
Lobotomies are making a comeback, believe it or not. “Treatment” for “OCD.” Despite there being behavior modification ways of dealing with these obsessions just like phobias.
They use fancy machines to destroy the sections of the brain that light up when you think of what you obsess over. Ice picks aren’t used anymore for the same reason EC machines are used instead of wooden baseball bats.
A couple thoughts:
1. More profit in expensive machines than pills now. Hence the comeback of shocking people.
2. Using pricey medical-seeming machines looks more professional than ice picks or wooden bats.
Report comment
Psychiatry is about deciding what we should be “allowed to see.” Quit talking like a shrink, OH. 😀
Report comment
If there is no brain damage the ECT machine is not doing its job. Destroying or overriding natural brain functions is how mainstream psychiatry works. Just like botox injections work by paralyzing muscles.
Report comment
The women were ignorant and uninformed. Never read Paula Capalla or others. Just got all their info off TV. That’s the real problem.
Report comment
Thank you MLP. The fair ends in the summer, so fair has nothing to do with life. Lol.
I had a rough time in my teens due to my negative attitude. Can’t blame that on psychiatry. Though if I hadn’t sought out psychiatric help, as I was counseled to do, I probably could have straightened out my messed up thinking a lot faster.
I don’t envy rich people. My problem with Big Pharma CEO’s, marketing specialists, and sales reps is not the money they make, but the deceitful means they use…with no regard for human lives. If they earned big bucks by helping people or even entertaining a lot of people I’d congratulate them on their good fortune.
I would be happy on $1,500 a month myself. Especially since I could go off disability. I never wanted to live off well-fare. But the drugs, label, and busy work invented by the centers to keep us in line have kept me from employment.
Report comment
I think most “mental health” folks use the procedures with these 3 directives in mind.
1. Making money.
2. Making the subject quiet, docile, and easy to control.
3. Making the subject feel less suicidal–as long as it doesn’t violate either of the first two directives.
Report comment
Psychiatry still adheres to the concept of hereditary “criminal types.” Hence the justification for AOT since the “born criminals” will probably murder unless they cripple them first.
In ancient China they punished certain people by forcing them to wear a yoke around the neck which prevented free use of the arms and head. Humiliated and crippled, the person wandered about living off hand outs from those who didn’t spit in his face, waiting to die.
This is an analogy for what psychiatry does, only it pretends to be helping those it punishes for being genetically criminal types. (According to the arbitrary standards they vote into existence.)
The officials in ancient China never pretended to be helping those they afflicted. Modern psychiatrists show more chutzpah and less insight than they did.
Report comment
Remember don’t run away unless Simon Legree gives his okay first. 😛
Legree wouldn’t and your shrink won’t. Too much money and power at stake.
Report comment
Adults who don’t believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny still buy gifts and candy for kids. But if they realized Childhood Bipolar was fake they would not just quit buying drugs but want to lock up the quacks responsible.
Report comment
The cure is obvious. Make everybody stupid and boring.
Ah! The bliss of a certifiably “sane” and normal world of conformists.
Ever read “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut? A Dystopia where the authorities put “handicaps” on those deemed too smart so they can’t think as clearly. Just like shrinks “help” folks by dumbing down, numbing, and keeping them in a low grade depression.
(A psych worker told me they actually aim for low grade depression since happiness often leads to mania.)
Report comment
Don’t forget smokes! A really large percentage of psych users still smoke.
Report comment
I don’t advocate non compliance either, assuming you have a choice. I didn’t. No way my Medicaid funded conventionally minded psychiatrist would let a “severe” case go off any of the 3 drugs recommended for the “bipolar” whose “symptoms” I don’t even have.
As Monica in the BeyondMeds site said make sure to educate yourself first! I waited over a year till I felt confidant to start my taper. Effexor was the worst as far as withdrawals go.
Report comment
In which case Mom will do better with SA than she would most doctors. Assuming they’d work with her. Most will if they’re not shrinks and you’re not labeled SMI.
Report comment
Living in a cave is far fetched. But sustainable building structures and off grid living could be done–even for the chronically ill.
In my state, the best kind of alternative house materials would be cordwood, cement, and recycled materials. I could build a 400 square ft. house for $7000 or less. Heat it with a wood burning stove made from an oil drum.
Recycle pop and beer cans to make solar panels for alternative energy.
Report comment
I love SA. They may have saved my life. They definitely saved me from returning to the Funny Farm. 🙂
Report comment
I know you’re kidding KS. But intentional communities of psych survivors is not a bad idea.
Report comment
Neesa, my hat goes off to you. I have taken a “cocktail” of 3-4 psych drugs for almost 22 years. No way I could do what you do on yours.
In my own case I knew my psychiatrist would not let me do what I wanted. Which was go off my drugs altogether. So, when my parents took up homesteading in retirement I left with them and tapered off my drugs–one after another–for 16 months. I should have allowed myself at least 2 years.
No one knows about my SMI diagnosis except my parents and they’re coming around. I tell folks I meet I’m recovering from CFIDS and am living with my folks on disability.
My own mom has gone on Cymbalta and Celexa. At least her doctor took her off the latter. (Way too fast!) I noticed how sluggish and apathetic she has become. Dr. Goetzhe says people over 65 taking psychotropics have a very high mortality rate. I need to tell her I’m off mine and offer her advice on coming off Cymbalta.
Her diagnosis, Major Depression, is a soft one. No legal problems for her being “naughty.”
Report comment
No. When I’m not too exhausted from Candida infections I can feel joy again. Even my painful sensations–like guilt and sadness for other people–make me more fun to be around. Owning responsibility and empathy are good qualities psychiatry put to sleep in me.
My dad has cancer. I know he’ll be glad to find out I’m not hopelessly insane after all. And I don’t need drugs to function. They prevented me from loving others as fully as possible.
(I had him read the Pies article where the not-so-good “doctor” laughs up his sleeves at the “metaphor” his minions in marketing have foisted on the gullible public. Dad was miffed, criticizing the piece for its philosophy of monism and the idea lying to sell pills is justified.)
Maybe the pain and exhaustion are my body’s attempt to heal itself. But I can only fully feel them now. Most folks on cocktails can only function at what the ME/FM/CFDS sufferers call a level 50 on the “energy envelope” spectrum. So I wasn’t capable of a full time job since age 24 after three years on my cocktail and six on at least one psych drug.
Report comment
A lot of “Bipolar symptoms” are brain damage created by the shrinks. So there’s a reason doctors confuse the two. Lyme virus causes natural brain damage–just like psychiatric treatments.
Report comment
Biederman thinks he’s a god and NAMI is his coven of worshippers.
He needs an offering of human brains!
Imagine The Temple of Doom, but instead of ripping out a heart they saw the guy’s skull open and rip out his brain to offer it up to the Bieder Man.
Report comment
Know the best way to destroy all hopes of belonging? Seek out “help” from your local psych dealer. 🙁
Report comment
Maybe they could use all the morbidly obese “severely mentally ill” to reenact Soylent Green. Fattening ’em up like so many cattle with their funky “meds.”
Report comment
I’m no longer in withdrawals but seem to have developed a heck of an autoimmune disorder.
Pretty discouraging. A recent round of antibiotics has made me sicker than ever.
Everyone recommends a special diet. Alkaline, low carb, grain free…. Stupid. Nothing works. Can’t afford expensive, weird foods. Can barely keep my personal living space clean. Need almost 12 hours bed rest to function at all.
Report comment
Funny. You don’t hear parents ask kids, “Did you take your uppers?”
When I was tricked into going on drugs that messed up my thinking, I contemplated how odd it was my thoughts would get screwed up without mind alterations–how pills could fix my thinking so it would CAUSE sobriety and clear headed thinking. Afterwards I discovered they were no different than street drugs and grew very incensed at the deception pushed on me.
I didn’t become psychotic till I went on an SSRI either. Neesa is lucky. At least as many of us started out nervous and unhappy till we took psych drugs and went nuts. It kept me from having a career and triggered an autoimmune disease I can’t recover from.
Report comment
Probably hasn’t heard about those reports establishing brain deterioration of the “mentally ill” is caused by the “treatments.” A mainstream psychiatrist conducted and published these reports, but you won’t see them on TV or NAMI pamphlets. So many are ignorant of them.
Report comment
Well said, OH.
Report comment
Haldol is nasty too.
Report comment
KS, one of my incentives for going off my drugs was having my “supply” cut off suddenly a few times by gaffes from incompetent shrinks and pharmacy workers. Now i don’t have to worry about sudden drug withdrawal. 🙂
Report comment
Does inglorious Bastards have all the villains’ faces miraculously melt off their skulls?
Report comment
“‘I hear yours'” I said.
Bwahahaha! 😀
Report comment
OH, the Pre-Trib Rapture, Premillinneal eschatological view–which I do not share–is that by supporting the nation of Israel they will hasten Christ’s Second Coming.
Israel will be attacked by all the other nations in the world, but they’ll all be miraculously destroyed like the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Israel will be the last man standing. Tim LaHaye wrote 12 books about the End Times–each about as thick as a Bible.
This is really off topic. If it gets censored I’ll know why.
As a born pessimist, I’m Post-Tribulation.
Report comment
I understood your meaning but the words “allowed to believe” did look odd in print.
Report comment
“An affinity for intolerance towards eccentricities and unconventional behavior.”
Yep. Don’t forget an affinity for big bucks from the Pharma Psych racket.
Report comment
Yep. The False Dilemma Fallacy. Also the Ad Hominem Fallacy.
Report comment
But if Tom’s control had taken the form of him forcing psychiatry down Katie’s throat against her will he would have been lauded as a loving, long suffering husband who lived to help his sick crazy wife. 😛
Double standard.
Report comment
Our society can’t handle negative emotions. Everything is Awesome!!! Happy Happy Joy Joy!!!
Remember the Pixar flick Inside Out where the anthropomorphic emotion Joy wants to suppress all the negative emotions–especially Sadness? Her efforts to make the girl HAPPY 100% of the time almost ruin her life.
Report comment
They’re being pushed by other women. That’s my point. Not patriarchs.
Women who know they’re being abused yet stupidly urge them to get labeled insane. Great way to get the abusive dad full custody! 😛
Report comment
Interesting. What book are you reading Jan? I just finished Anatomy for the third time.
Report comment
A lot of emotional problems can be linked to the gut. When I started freaking out in my teens I suffered something like IBS.
In a hospital setting they could closely monitor his “gut activity” if they chose to do so.
Report comment
CCHR has some supporters who aren’t Scientologists. Szazs for example wrote articles for them. He was an atheist. Not a worshipper of UFOs.
They have confronted human rights violations. Not advocating joining Scientology. Sadly no one else is willing to do this. All mainstream orthodox religions are drinking the kool aid since they’re awed by “medical science.” And they watch TV instead of reading books.
Weird how pro psych people are fine with Moonies, JWs, Mormons, and other cults. They never bad mouth them. Next time some pro psych person asks “Are you a Scientologist?” say, “No. Are you a Moonie?” and see what happens. 😀
Report comment
Medicine is corrupt now. I think psychiatry has played a role in corrupting the legitimate branches.
Report comment
I wish no one took those drugs. But blaming it on the “Patriarchy Conspiracy” isn’t accurate since women are more apt to see shrinks voluntarily and urge others to do so.
I have come across forums where women were urging wives of abusive husbands not to be afraid to seek out “treatment” since “Depression is a real brain disease. I seed it on TV!” Ugh.
Of course the regulars at MIA know what happens when battered wives seek out “help” from a shrink. They need to figure out an escape plan. Not pop pills.
Unhappiness and nervousness over abuse is a healthy reaction to an unhealthy situation.
Report comment
Leaky gut and candida tend to travel together. Kill off the excess candida. Certain levels are needed for your body and antibiotics often get them too low. Then you can replenish your gut with sauerkraut, kim chee, kefir, yogurt, or kambuchi.
When your intestines have tiny holes the bacteria gets into your blood stream causing autoimmune problems and over-growths in other parts of your body.
Report comment
Peter Breggin annoyed some anti psychiatry purists by saying the problem behind psych abuse is a lack of love. It’s not just found in the “mentally ill” though they may feel the social lack more than the majority. Honestly the folks in the system are no nastier–generally–than the folks outside.
I guess this makes me sound like an air head. I don’t care. Psychiatry is a denial of our humanity. Not just our reason but our ability to love and be loved. Love is the answer to a system of coldness and calculation. Love will vanquish psychiatry.
The foolish and the weak….
Report comment
Yeah. That’s my plan. Going on a diet first to fix my candida which became a problem over 2 years ago after starting my taper. Weird how many of us coming off the drugs after decades have problems with our systems being out of whack struggling to function without the toxins. (My heart arrhythmia is better now.)
Eventually I want to write a series of short novels I can promote without a massive offline book tour. And use my artistic talents to design covers for other writers of fiction. You can earn two or three times as much selling services to other authors as selling your own books I hear.
Report comment
Yes. Have you read Anatomy of an Epidemic? Whitaker sums it up nicely.
Like others, I started out depressed and anxious. The SSRI Anafranil triggered a psychotic manic episode when I was 20.
I spent the next quarter century paying for it. Unlike some with “bipolar” diagnoses, the mood swings ceased (along with suicidal depression) once I got off my cocktail. My physical health has taken a beating though. Often I feel like a woman of 70 instead of 45.
Still, many are worse off than I am. I have much to be grateful for. I’m still alive and able to think again! I can’t describe the joy of thinking my own thoughts and feeling my own emotions even on days I can’t leave the house. 🙂
About income inequality. It stinks to live on $770 a month because you can’t work and haven’t been gainfully employed since your teens. I never wanted to be a career mental patient/consumer/whatever. Pretty tragic.
Report comment
Oldhead commented above: “Littleturtle has always been a sympathetic participant and I don’t want them to get caught in the crossfire.”
He does not want to take you down Littleturtle. He hates the System. Not people like you.
My religion teaches hating people is wrong and I must forgive and love even those who wish me harm. However it’s right for me to escape abusive situations whenever possible. I don’t hate psychiatrists–let alone those who feel they are helping them. (Psychiatry as an institution however….)
Report comment
You’re right Steve. Racism aside, eugenics was based on the idea that not only attributes like physical beauty, strength and intelligence were hereditary but what we call moral behaviors as well. They were obsessed with weeding out the “criminal classes”–often dark skinned people. But not always. They disliked “degenerate” white families too.
In most cases sterilizing the “mentally ill” without consent is not allowed. Though Pete Earley advocates for forced sterilization and abortions performed on “severely mentally ill” women I hear. Forcing them to take drugs that will likely deform the baby or cause a miscarriage is the only option he sees after all.
People here have advocated for physician assisted suicide. My response? Be careful what you wish for. They love to force “treatment” on their subjects “in their best interest.” No consent needed. Right now pills and shocks are too lucrative. Methinks that’s why Dr. Pies and others oppose a subject’s “right to die.” You don’t need a doctor for suicide. Ending a life is much easier than preserving it.
While killing patients makes them look less than humane and drugs/other brain trauma generates more $$$$$$, shrinks get away with all the deaths and disabilities happening to the test subjects on the grounds they tell the public the subjects are a bunch of depraved monsters libel to go on killing frenzies without “treatment.” Thanks to their PR campaign to demonize those they wish to help, nobody cares how many “SMI” folks die under psychiatry.
That slimy Pharma shill, Jaffe appeared on John Stossel telling him they needed to drug more people to prevent random crime sprees. Stigma–in moderation–is a great publicity tool for psychiatry. Though it can bite them in the butt since people become afraid to get “help.” 😛 Wonder why!
(Many of Jaffe’s killers were actually on drugs during these episodes–including the kind from your friendly neighborhood drug dealing shrink. 1 in 1,000 get this bad. But about 20% of the adult population is taking SSRIs at any given time. You do the math.)
Report comment
Both. Your view of society was much broader. Social models differ according to size much like physical designs which cannot always be directly scaled.
Report comment
Unlike some on the anti-psychiatry side I’m not opposed to therapy–or whatever you choose to call it. Szasz himself was a counselor of consenting adults. My one complaint about counselors is most work in “mental health” centers or refer people to psychiatrists routinely.
And if someone is unhappy with a counselor they have the right to stop seeing them. I fired mine though everyone at the center was upset and told me I must have imagined her saying what she actually said. 😛 Gas lighting is found to be therapeutic I guess. Lol.
Report comment
I agree Kindredspirit. My dad once told me, “It’s no good winning an argument if you lose a friend.”
Report comment
Benzos are hard to come off of too. Some people never are able to ride out the stress from withdrawals.
I have friends who choose to remain in the System. I wish they could leave but it’s difficult and dangerous too. If they catch you trying to “escape” they’ll drag you back to the loony bin, drug you more than ever, and attribute your worsened state to decompensation.
I understand why they choose to remain. It took me 4 years to make a break for it.
Report comment
Activism and healing are different things. I have sought out my own path of inner healing with little or no help from other human beings. (Unfortunately my body got messed up from the physical strain of withdrawal and I’ve been battling infections ever since.)
We really need a support forum for people leaving psychiatry. Since not everyone at MIA pursues the same goals of activism this is more of a dialogue tool than a place for healing or social activism.
Report comment
I do look at myself Littleturtle. Which is easier to do off drugs
Innocent people will be hurt I fear. But this is already happening all the time.
Accepting that I wasted years of my life and permanently damaged my health because of a hoax was traumatizing.
I believe Valium helps you feel better. Oldhead and others would say you should be able to take it without a prescription.
Gandhi knew what he was talking about when he said, “Be the change.”
I’m curious why having us believe you are incurably “mentally ill” is important to you. I was relieved at the thought I could get better off my drugs. But others feel very differently.
Would you like to share why you feel this way, Littleturtle?
Report comment
I agree. I was speaking in generalities.
There are a few rich people like Brittany Spears, Patty Duke, and Hemingway. MANY (not all) of these were forced into “treatment” by embarrassed relatives.
I sought it out myself. I was “deep”, sensitive and high strung. Not popular character traits in this era.
Being bullied throughout high school and the social pressure of being a preacher’s daughter who kept getting nagged for my “weird” behaviors, I strove to normalize myself with psychiatry. Unfortunately I got weirder than ever.
I have decided as long as it’s moral and legal I don’t care how eccentrically I behave. My family seems happier too.
Report comment
MLP I feel sorry for you. You want to do what’s right, but are struggling to come to terms with your own responsibility.
I wish you well and hope you will do the right thing no matter how difficult it may be. 🙂
Report comment
Lol. I have always thought the transcranial thing sounded quackish. But I thought maybe it wouldn’t hurt people since it’s just running a big magnet over your brain….Sounds like I didn’t understand the procedure.
Report comment
As far as motives go the human heart is a dark and twisted labyrinth. Speaking entirely from my own experience, I’m good at rationalizing behaviors I know are wrong to quell my conscience.
Report comment
So the solution to trauma is further trauma?
Prolonged emotional stress has been proven to cause brain damage in kids. But that does not justify more brain damage performed by a “doctor”!
Do you fix brittle bone disorder by smashing someone’s legs?
And arguing the victim quit annoying you or complaining does not prove things are better. Removing the tongue or vocal cords could achieve that benefit!
Report comment
Most of my problems are caused by candida. If I can cure this horrible infection plaguing me since I began the taper in March of 2016 I will feel much better and be able to work 20-25 hours a week from home. Enough to afford my own place in Indiana. No more HUD slums or sponging off relatives. 🙂
Report comment
I have a lot of those symptoms. I still can’t work after 15 months drug free. So I tell folks who inquire I suffer from CFS. Way less stigma there than any mental labels. And honestly I no longer have the “symptoms” of my so-called life long mental disorders since tapering off the drugs and rejecting my label. The cocktail was causing my mood swings, my label gave me a reputation to live down to, and my self loathing (insight) led me to act the role of madwoman.
Report comment
Yes, but it wouldn’t LOOK like a medical procedure. That’s what counts. 😀
Report comment
Psychiatrists were around before Hitler and gave him a lot of his big ideas.
Report comment
You forget abusive family members too. I’m lucky mine loved me enough to help me escape and give me a place to recover from years of traumatic brain injury.
Gas lighting occurs. Psychiatrists, as a whole, tend to side with abusers since they know how to smile and put on a great front. And they often foot the bill.
The same family members who have the legal right to shock the subject I might add.
Report comment
What good are the elderly? Who gives a rip about them?
The reason shrinks get away with maiming and killing patients in the name of standard care is they have persuaded society that the test subjects are all useless eaters who should be thankful to be chemically lobotomized or shocked instead of killed.
Report comment
A Life Unworthy of Living in other words.
“Lebensunwertes Leben.” Sigh. 🙁
Report comment
Have you considered the benefits of beating a patient unconscious with a wooden mallet? The effects of random brain damage would be much the same. Destroying healthy brain tissue is what it’s all about.
I can’t read your mind so I’ll assume you’re sincere and well meaning. But don’t you realize random acts of destruction are what you advocate?
A surgeon at least would KNOW what he or she wanted to cut away, which is why folks with real brain disorders see neurologists, not psych doctors. Like slicing someone’s vein open because they MAY have bad blood though you can’t prove it. Cholera victims frequently died from blood-letting regardless of the sincerity of the “leech” who did it.
Report comment
Thanks for clarifying, Ebl. My condolences. Obviously you’re not pro psychiatry either.
I have lost two friends to psychiatric treatments myself. Not suicide influenced by suffering from treatments, but the drugs themselves killed them. A friend of mine left NAMI (family members) after they let her sister be slowly drugged to death at 49. L. wanted to help her beloved sister–not kill her.
Report comment
Yes. As Peter Breggin says, the reason shrinks get away with all the damage they do is they inflict it on those viewed as society’s ogres. Fortunately for them (the shrinks) only they have the magical power to spot ogres from Real People.
Society’s expendable members often include the disabled, foster kids, the elderly, and those already suffering TBI. Like a pack of ravenous wolves picking off the stragglers and weakest members of the flock. So moves the APA.
Report comment
If thy patient’s right frontal lobe offend thee, cut it off.
Report comment
Wow! That looks like a Monty Python sketch without punchlines or songs.
Report comment
Turning lots of kids into brain damaged drug addicts is also unwise. But evil tends to be short sighted.
Report comment
Ebi, are you talking about helping those harmed by psychiatry? There is real iatrogenic damage psychiatric survivors face.
Report comment
A lot of people not involved in the MI System confuse psychiatrists with psychologists. They’re mentally frozen in the 1960’s.
I have a hard time explaining to the (lucky) uninitiated that the two are totally different. Shrinks often make small talk but it’s no more relevant to the course of action they take than a kidney specialist’s would be. On the other hand, the kidney specialist who started randomly prescribing drugs and surgeries without running tests would be viewed with suspicion.
Report comment
I’m an abolitionist, but I see where you’re coming from CC.
You’re wrongfully imprisoned for a crime you haven’t committed. Should you ask for more humane treatment at the hands of the jailers? Or hold out for being released? A lot of us circumnavigate the system by escaping.
It’s hard persuading people the drugs don’t work–that is helping otherwise dangerous lunatics to lead happy, productive lives. Or that the “diagnoses” are themselves the stigmata branded on innocent citizens by self appointed moral judges/priests/prophets. Aka shrinks.
On the other hand if people find out about sexual abuse, physical abuse, or starvation and other deprivations forced on the imprisoned they will sometimes speak out against it. Many pro psychiatry friends agree when I tell them rape is common in psych settings.
Report comment
Sorry OH. 🙁
Report comment
Don’t forget those abused by partners or guardians. If a wife or teen looks stressed and out of it while the abuser is well dressed and knows what to say the shrink will blame everything on the abuse victim.
“Nobody’s fault. Just the crazy with the messed up brain. Their fault always. But we’re not ‘blaming’ cause we write them off as hopeless so they can let us take care of them like five year olds till they die. See how nice we are!” 😛
Report comment
Yes. Thoreau once said his biggest life regret was that he had behaved so well. My biggest regret is trusting and obeying my doctors. I despise not just psychiatry but legitimate medical professionals now. They know this is going on but are fine with people being maimed and killed. Shame on the medical profession!
Report comment
Call the emperor naked and he’ll make sure you pay for it.
Report comment
I agree Frank. What I’m talking about would not be psychiatry but a way people “out of it” could hide till they could think straight again. Not medicine but help. A way of escape from psychiatry if you like.
I know this is semantics but the underground railroad WAS an alternative to slavery. So we need an alternative to offer those who suffer or psychiatry will devour them.
Report comment
With all respect, OH, not everyone’s experience with psychiatry is the same as yours. I’m not saying psychiatry meets legitimate needs; rather there are legitimate needs people seek out psychiatric “help” for and wind up worse off than ever.
From what you have said, I think you had a “bad trip” and got locked up for that when all you needed to do was ride it out.
But there are others like me who were depressed and anxious. Often the SSRI made them label us incurably evil deviants. (A shell and nut game. Ha ha! You wouldn’t have gone crazy on that life saving medicine if you weren’t EVIIILLLL to begin with.)
Still others were freaking out in extreme states and bothering family members who worried at the ravings of their loved ones. Yes, we know drugs ruin all chance for full recovery but they see the tranquilizing effect sometimes produced and imagine it proves they’re being “helped.”
A few are dangerous, eccentric criminals. For this last category we have the penal system of course.
All the first three groups need places to crash while they get their heads together. The third and–maybe second group–need moral support. I realize psychiatry does exactly the opposite–alienating those around you, ruining your ability to think straight. But people think they’ll get help there. Or they wouldn’t go voluntarily. Many do–including those in extreme states.
Report comment
Any evidence–even the “hard” kind–is suppressed by the propaganda machine controlled by Pharma-Psychiatry. It’s hard to say neuroleptics cause OR prevent suicide.
We’re dealing with what MIGHT have been. Not what actually has happened or is happening.
But neuroleptics do make life unbearable. They motivated me to contemplate suicide, but I decided it was immoral. That’s what saved my life. Not the devil drugs!
Report comment
According to Viktor Frankl, some of the folks running the concentration camp took compassion on him. Not all antebellum slave owners were Simon Legree. This still doesn’t justify the corrupt systems.
Report comment
Good points.
Report comment
I agree. A series of unhealthy human relationships in which what OH stated occurs.
Report comment
Hello. I’ll be praying for you.
Off the drugs for well over a year, but struggling with weird physical problems. Occasionally I break down and see a doctor but they’re baffled. Plus my records read my “mental” history so I’m scared they’ll discover I’m a naughty runaway.
Can’t absorb micro nutrients very well. Now I have spells of horrible itching and break out in welts.
Hoping an alkalized diet will offer relief. My system is undoubtedly inflamed and out of balance.
Report comment
There are no genuine quick fixes. There are stop gap measures–which psychiatry can offer many.
Then there are slow fixes that actually work.
Report comment
Assuming the person actually had that syndrome that still wouldn’t justify the “treatment” with a crowbar.
Report comment
Psych drugs like neuroleptics can sometimes calm people down if they’re upset. But if people are sleeping in their own feces or ranting in the street they can be helped without drugs at all. They did this a lot back in the 19th century and long before by showing the “mad” person TLC and helping them rest and eat properly. (For my part, I was nervous and depressed till psych drugs made me rip snorting crazy.)
In the old days there were few life long madmen or madwomen because “madness” was understood to be a state of mind that was usually transient in nature. Not a life sentence. A lot fewer people became career mental patients. Then the Victorian asylum keepers found they could make big profits in locking up “crazy” relatives and keeping them insane with cruel treatment.
For a bird’s eye view of the evolution of modern psychiatry and its inflexible bio-model, I recommend Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker.
I do agree gentleness, dignity, and respect are good treatments for human distress.
Report comment
For my part I was thinking about the kind we hear about most often where underage girls/boys are farmed out by pimps who take all their earnings. The kind called sex trafficking similar to slavery rather than voluntary.
As far as “therapy” goes I’m not opposed to it either. But it should be voluntary. A lot of today’s counselors aren’t paid directly by the consumed but the state pays them (sometimes) for coercing people to visit them. They can no more be said to work FOR the “client” than a prison guard or jailer works FOR the imprisoned.
Report comment
I think OH was talking about therapists since he was referring to Will Hall’s lament as a practicing counselor.
Report comment
My sympathies Stopbenzos. It sounds like what I hear people with invisible disabilities like lupus go through.
Report comment
One thing I like about most Law and Order episodes, they don’t always wind things up with “the schizophrenic did it.”
Of course as many here would agree, categorizing someone as permanently “schizophrenic” is itself problematic and dehumanizing. As angry as I am about NAMI influencing Ron Howard to insert a pro drug message in A Beautiful Mind (not to mention they fudged on many important facts) it was refreshing to see a sympathetic portrayal of someone written off as “crazy” and hopeless.
When I found later that John Nash recovered because he did not take drugs for more than a few months I was ticked!
Report comment
Good point. Wittingly or unwittingly bio-psychiatrists enable abusers.
Report comment
Will Hall I appreciate the help you have given to countless people including me. You may need a sabbatical soon. Or maybe look into a career shift if not change. Your friend Daniel Mackler quit therapy due to burn out. Take care of yourself or you won’t be able to help others. 🙂
Report comment
If we have left the system how can we be part of it? I’m a survivor–not a user or “consumer” any longer. I’m struggling to forgive those who damaged me with mind games, defaming me to my loved ones, and tricking me into dangerous addictive drugs I never would have taken if they’d been truthful.
I left an abusive boyfriend who threatened my family. I forgave him. I pity him and hope he can get over his issues. But our relationship is through. The same applies to psych workers.
Report comment
OH, you’re not the first survivor I heard compare “therapy” to prostitution. Only with prostitution the power dynamics are reversed with the “john” calling all the shots.
Report comment
A psychiatrist is like a man who takes a crowbar to another person’s shins. “If your bones weren’t defective they wouldn’t have splintered.”
The legal system punishes crimes. Psychiatry punishes weakness.
Report comment
Jerks will be jerks. Without the power dynamics the men couldn’t get away with it so readily though.
Not only does a shrink or counselor have substantial power the consumed lacks, but by virtue of psychiatric labels the victim is stripped of all credibility and has no voice that an employee would have if an employer sexually harassed her.
Report comment
Thanks for giving me insomnia for the next week, Frank.
Lol. 😀
Seriously though, good point.
Report comment
Thanks for the great article, John. If I had a suicidal friend or acquaintance I’d be hard put knowing what to do. I’m no fan of the bio model since it almost ruined my life.
I would prefer to set up a “watch” with a couple other people to give comfort and hope to the sufferer. Kind of like they did for President Lincoln when his “blue pills” made of mercury didn’t cure his sadness.
Medicalizing human distress makes people take it less seriously. One of those counter intuitive truths we seldom acknowledge. Instead of saying “Joe is sad because he lost his job,” folks say, “Joe’s depressed because he’s nuts and has a screwed up brain.” Depression and anxiety are real. But by brushing them off as brain diseases we teach Joe he doesn’t need to find a new job. Unemployment isn’t the problem. He is. Then marvel when Joe’s depression worsens.
Be forewarned some here may object to your terminology and lack of quotes bracketing terms like “Mental Illness.”
Report comment
College is not that sound a financial investment anymore. Even when I attended. I might have done better to take a year off. But Mom insisted I needed a degree to amount to anything. It was totally worthless. Any benefits were more than offset by my psych label and drug created disability.
Report comment
Not much. I should know.
Report comment
Philosophical questions are a sure symptom of “mental illness.”
Just like writing poetry, dressing oddly, enjoying the wrong sorts of books or movies, enjoying life, hating life, enjoying sex, not having sex, voting for the wrong political party, dating people your shrink/therapist wouldn’t, and practicing the wrong religion (worshiping any god but your shrink.)
Report comment
Enough to promote a drug though. Especially a psych drug they can blame on gas lighted “patients” afterward.
Report comment
They could understand. But they didn’t wanna… 😛
Report comment
I didn’t see it that way till you pointed it out LS. 🙁
Report comment
Never had a therapist try to seduce me Steve. But two of them did seem to use me for emotional support in nonsexual ways. One needed help with her marriage; the other had issues with her dad.
Report comment
In the case Will talked about it wasn’t just the inappropriate sex. But once it was found out the man blamed it on the eeeevul “borderline” herself.
Should have asked Dr. Sane McFeely what his excuse was since he claimed to be “mentally healthy.” Forcing folks like him to take a barrage of psych tests when caught in the Act would cut back on a lot of this crap.
When police get caught committing crimes they fare poorly in prison. I wonder how “mental health” enforcers would fare in the hellish system they have enforced.
Report comment
Will is not anti-psychiatry. I agree with you there Oldhead.
But he isn’t certified to work in the traditional “mental health” system. He chose to opt out. And he talked me through some rough spots when I was coming off my SSRI.
Call him mistaken–if you like–but his intentions are good. He sincerely tries to help others rather than appear at “hearings” to lock people up. 🙂
Report comment
I think the reason so many shrinks kill themselves is they can’t totally destroy their consciences or make amends for what they have done. 🙁
Report comment
Yes. They also push this pro-drug message on TV shows like Law and Order where a paranoid schizophrenic is injected with neuroleptics and starts speaking rationally in less than 10 seconds.
Quite the opposite of my experience!
Report comment
Horrible crap! My grades plummeted. I got kicked out of college.
The administrators said the seizures proved I was lying about taking my “meds.” Since they fix everything. 😛
I complained to the shrinks. They blamed it on the “illness” not the bogus cure they were pushing.
Report comment
Thanks George. I do feel sorry for Warren. Questioning the benefits of the help he insisted his son get may be too painful for him.
Glad you’re willing to look “outside the box” and let Martha speak for herself through her writings.
Report comment
Yep. Use the brave men and women who risked their lives defending us as guinea pigs. Or pieces of chewing gum. Chew till the flavor’s gone. Then toss ’em. Sickening.
Report comment
Sorry about the loss of your daughter George. Been on drugs since age 18 in the spring of 92, but it was a tiny amount. I took an SSRI anafranil in the fall of 93 and stayed awake for 3 weeks straight. Went bonkers, but the psych doctors refused to acknowledge the drug was responsible. Got labeled “bipolar” and believed I was a monster. I threw self control to the winds–due partly to “good insight”–but also the inability to control my thoughts or feelings on the drug cocktail. Went from depressed to full blown insane.
I wondered if I had a soul. No one understood my existential crisis when I tried to tell them. Even religious people. If I needed a drug not to commit heinous crimes against humanity how could I be a true human being?
Turns out the drugs were making me crazier. And believing I was hopelessly insane made me want to cleanse the world of the monstrous blight that was me. Off the drugs now. And I have rejected my label. I am a fully sentient, ensouled human being. Not a machine or trained animal.
And I have a stronger conscience than a lot of prominent “soul doctors” I know.
Report comment
Rick Warren wouldn’t use those words. He’d say nonsense like, “Despite the best psychiatric care my son killed himself.” But if his son had died outside the psych system it would be, “If only my son had remained ‘meds’ compliant he’d be alive.” No one calls folks like that out on this double standard of thinking. You find it in NAMI forums all the time.
I guess we should feel sorry for him, but someone should (gently) ask him, “Rick, if psychiatry couldn’t save your son why are you so determined to force it on others?” My guess is Matt Warren was quiet and shy in a family/megachurch that worships extroverted behavior. His introvert tendencies and failure to conform led to a label of chronic depression.
Lately Rick Warren has embraced the pseudo science of quantum mysticism. Quantum mysticism is to quantum physics what astrology is to astronomy. Or psychiatry to neurology.
Report comment
The studies are conducted mainly by drug companies and members of the psychiatric establishment. Would they even conduct such a study? And, if the results were unfavorable, would they publish them?
James Holmes–the Batman movie shooter–murdered a bunch of people because he had been told he was incurably insane or “bipolar.” Of course mass murder was his (bad) choice. Suicide wasn’t dramatic enough for him perhaps.
Since rejecting my own label I’m no longer suicidal. But when I was told my life was over at 20–no one could ever love me and I might never have a job, that I would have to take massive quantities of Haldol that made me seize and unable to enjoy anything…I wanted to die.
Glad I resisted the urge. 25 years later I’m free.
Report comment
Have you heard about the Violence Initiative? Peter Breggin has posted videos about this on Youtube.
This crap is still going on. But the racism is covert now.
The APA actually got members of the NAACP to give them a platform. Don’t know how.
Report comment
Thank you Ken.
It doesn’t help that many of us are so trusting of authority figures. And that is how we view doctors.
Until I read the works of William Glasser I had no idea psychiatry was ungrounded in known science. Seriously. I majored in liberal arts and left science/medicine to the experts like most do.
Still trying to persuade my parents. My brother works for Pfizer so there’s a real conflict of interest there.
My dad’s a retired preacher. Well read and intelligent. I showed him an article by Dr. Ronald Pies published in the APA Journal. Dad was upset by the philosophy of monism underlying the premise of the article. This runs counter to the doctrine of many orthodox faiths.
Now they realize the Chemical Imbalance is an urban legend and characters like Pies are laughing up their sleeves at the “uninformed” public they have deceived. For our own good of course.
Report comment
Dr. Blatt, I firmly believe the cause for the increase of depression and other extreme states comes largely from loneliness and lack of community. One of the places people used to find unconditional love was through churches/synagogues/etc.
I notice the churches I have attended the last few years have been heavily pushing psychiatry. On the one hand I want to commend their desire to help people. But I also get irritated because they seem to be using it as a way to tell those who are suffering to bug off.
Instead of asking Dave to join you for a cup of coffee while he grieves his recent divorce or job loss you tell him you’re not qualified to help him. He needs a certified therapist instead. Oh, and is he taking his “meds?”
If he’s not he deserves to be severely punished by being locked up, then shunned by everyone at church on his release. This is not good for anyone. The “meds” are only half the reason so few people with labels lead good lives.
Report comment
You said it.
Report comment
“‘Flakes of infinity’ are fine and dandy, up to a point….”
Bwahahaha! Love it Frank. 😀
If you’re already too prone to naval gazing–like a lot of “depressed” people including me–you really need to get out and DO something. Look outward; not inward.
Report comment
Hi Jan. Rachel from the Land of Corn and James Whitcomb Riley. I lost access to my old email account with your address. My new one is r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com.
Report comment
I actually practice my own form of meditation. Alone. Not in a group with someone reading from a script.
Report comment
“Well, let’s get them out of the system then so they can start.”
I heartily agree. Working for the local “mental health” center and trying to help people is as absurd as trying to run an AA group in the local bar.
Report comment
Why should they regulate it? They’re getting massive $$$$$ from it themselves. Bribery in the guise of “token gifts” worth monthly salaries and campaign contributions. Big Pharma owns the APA.
Cronyism at its finest. And both sides of the aisle are guilty. The only two Congress members to vote against the Curse Act were libertarian outsiders.
Report comment
Poor Emilia! I saw her kind of “success” story every day at the center for years. And “enjoyed” it in my own life.
Everyone who worked at the center told us we should be happy to be segregated, dependent on meager hand outs, horribly sick, and unable to smile or weep. Would they consider this desirable for themselves? I think not.
Those pretty cartoons with dancing pills and lemonade are a bunch of bovine excrement.
Report comment
Like forcing someone to love you. It doesn’t work.
Report comment
No. I avoid TV by staying in my room a lot. Looks typical. The woman looks like a success story for SSRI’s. Totally calm and blah.
I know women like that. They are too pain free now. Some are couch potatoes since reading and going on walks are too much work. Others fly into crying fits between “meh” days when the drug is “working.”
Mine had sent me into a moderate/severe depression for the last decade I took it. No longer depressed enough for suicide. Thanks to quitting my “life saving meds.”
Report comment
I read the article. The writer’s conclusion makes no sense.
A. Children like Gabriel are being harmed by psych drugs.
B. Please make sure they get their “mental health needs” met. (Keep them well drugged.)
Not sure how B follows A…. 😛
Report comment
William Glasser, the first writer I read who condemned mainstream psychiatry’s coercion and brain drugs, had a lot to say about the educational system. In addition to inventing Choice Theory/Reality Therapy, he came up with a different educational process to help kids learn by letting them pick out reading materials about what interests them. A bit like Maria Montessori in his approach.
Report comment
Madmom was just saying she wishes she could opt out more easily. If you have a lower pain threshold and don’t want to be awake during a colonoscopy, that would be your call.
Don’t think I would want to be awake for mine either, Artanis12. 😉
Report comment
The major problem is presenting rational arguments to irrational people. “Yeah, but the lady in the cartoon Zoloft commercials looks so happy! I know that stuff must help people.”
I tried telling my friends. Instead of doing any research they laughed at me, saying RW just wrote his books for big bucks. Reading is a waste of time, they think. They work hard and chill in front of the tube when not working.
People don’t say this of course. But the brainwashing is real. I don’t own a TV and I bet a lot of the survivors here don’t either since it’s full of psych propaganda. Enough of my brain cells have already been killed.
BTW, if Bob Whitaker wanted $$$$$$ he did a poor job of it. The awards he won are great but they’re prizes. Not guaranteed. He could earn serious money writing for TV or ad copy for Big Pharma. Or combine the genres, writing cartoon drug commercials for the magical new “antidepressant” Zombify. And the atypical “antipsychotic” to help it work Xacerbate.
Report comment
In the MI System they kept encouraging us to numb our pain–with drugs and crap like “mindlessness” meditation. That’s like encouraging an abused wife to be perpetually drunk or high to cope with her creeper husband instead of seeking out a woman’s shelter.
Thank God my parents have provided a place to crash! I didn’t need more “meds” or mind emptying but to get away from that abusive system. Emotional abuse from the segregation, gas-lighting, and constant put downs no one else saw as insults. Physical abuse from the constant fear of being locked up and rendered truly disabled from the cocktails of drugs.
Many here talk about changing the system. But even as individuals, numbing ourselves into a coma instead of doing something to solve the problem is a bad idea. The system is made up of individuals.
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Keep wisdom alive! Psychiatry is the death of her.
Report comment
“How did violence even make its way into your consciousness here…?”
Violence is intrinsically linked to psychiatry. The psychiatrist frightens the mainstream audience with tales of dangerous crazies running amok committing random acts of violence like some apocalyptic horror flick.
The self appointed white knight will protect the public by rounding up everyone he thinks may commit a crime in the future. Yes, force will be required–even violence. But it’s for the greater good.
And it won’t hurt the crazies…much. Not like their kind have feelings anyhow. 🙁
Report comment
So, I think Out is saying that they can’t trust themselves to express anger over this in public? Correct me if I’m wrong Out. I have similar emotional problems linked–I believe–to TBI from a quarter century on the drugs. It’s one thing to be angry over ruined lives and needless deaths. But frothing at the mouth and hysterical or passionate weeping is another. Because they automatically assume you are unstable and dangerous (Dr. Quackenbush told them you are a cold-blooded killer) any display of intense negative emotions is suspect. Best talk about it calmly and clinically detached for an air of “scientific” credibility. Like Mr. Spock.
Report comment
Going to educate my parents. My mom is 68 and taking celexa. I love her and maybe knowing I came off my cocktail despite the severity of my “diagnosis” might give her the courage. Her doctor took her off cymbalta but Mom was pretty sick and confused since the GP didn’t know much about tapering and had her take pills every other day. 😛
A lot of uneducated, untrained survivors would know better than that. That’s why survivingantidepressants.com is so trafficked.
Been off all psych drugs since September of last year. For over a year I took nothing but Effexor. According to psychiatric experts I should have been floridly psychotic and manic, but I was quite calm the whole time with only one brief melt down due to severe autoimmune symptoms like FM. Living in a single wide with my parents too, so it was stressful.
Still extremely absent minded, disorganized, with poor social skills. My frontal lobes are badly damaged I fear. Segregation with eccentrics/isolation for my whole adult life deserves some credit for the last.
Anyhow I did not go nuts, murder myself or others, wind up at local eateries in my skivvies, or tell my parents I was actually the princess of another planet…the usual stuff we’re all s’posed to do cause shrinks say we should. Tired of obeying those quacks.
Staying sane is my ultimate act of defiance to those lying oligarchs. Gainful employment and marriage would be others. (At the center they kept threatening us not to marry. Or even date any “healthy” people.)
If any militant psych docs are reading I’m sorry I didn’t lose it to prove what omniscient god like beings you are. Oh wait! I’m not. Medicate yourselves.
Report comment
How about the attitude of the one giving the “diagnoses” and warning the public that the SMI are dangerous monsters who deserve “treatment” for crimes they may commit otherwise?
Report comment
The folk in NYC are colder than their winters from what I experienced.
My sister’s college choir was singing at Philharmonic Hall. We were walking there very rapidly when my trick ankle turned.
I yelled from the pain and collapsed. Lucky the people didn’t walk straight over me. No wonder so many crimes occur there.
Report comment
So sorry Young Onset Dementia. 🙁
Report comment
“And could we please stop these wonderful, enjoyable shock treatments? They’re so helpful and bring so much happiness into my life I may die of happiness overload soon.
“Doctor dearest I’ll never stray again.”
They let you out, shut the door, and you smile and wave goodbye–with your middle finger slightly lifted.
Report comment
Good point Littleturtle!
In her blog Julie Greene calls therapy “friendship prostitution.”
Report comment
FWIW, Szazs was himself a psychiatrist. If Breggin were starting his career he probably would go for a Ph.D. in psychology, since he is a counselor who only uses his medical knowledge to undo damage done by others. Nowadays, counseling psychiatrists, are very few in number.
Counseling/coaching/training can itself become counterproductive if you don’t make changes needed to reach your goal.
And don’t get me started on how “therapy” or counseling has been corrupted by its reliance on psychiatry. I steer clear of community mental illness centers now. When I hear others urging unhappy people not to be afraid to seek out “treatment” I feel like screaming and ripping out my hair.
Report comment
“Plastic legoland of love…” brought a smile to my lips. It conjured up visions of marketable sentiment. “Sweet” romance novels, Hallmark holiday movies, a lot of greeting cards, Valentine’s day merch, and the wedding venue industry. 😀
Report comment
If I went out and convinced the public that a bunch of people were suffering from contagious diseases and they held them off at arm’s length, whose fault is that? If I became morally indignant, yelling at them for being mean to those with leprosy and TB that would prove that I was A. Clueless about human behaviors or B. cynically laughing up my sleeves at those I had played for fools while pretending to be the White Knight.
I borrowed this analogy from Paula Cappla’s excellent book So They Call You Crazy.
Report comment
Congratulations on your marriage Tim. I’m not sure I understand how your “schizophrenia” helped you get together though.
I noticed you only took half the trilifon your psychiatrist prescribed. Not a bad idea since most are not minimalist in prescriptions.
Report comment
Ugh! Chlorpromazine sounds nasty Lametoor. I don’t think I’ve ever taken it.
Sorry you–or anyone else–has been forced to take the stuff.
Report comment
Oldhead there is some dispute as to whether dinosaurs were true reptiles. Due to their massive size, many scientists speculate they were warm blooded.
Report comment
I see your point, Truthisbest. Psychiatry doesn’t CLAIM to be punitive–though they have a lot of clout in the legal system legitimate doctors don’t. Nevertheless the way they operate is understood–if not admitted–to be a form of punishment. For drinking too much, irresponsible behavior, bugging people by threatening suicide, or dressing oddly so you embarrass relatives.
After they “help” you, you are treated worse than a registered felon in many ways. Even if you have broken no laws. So psychiatric “treatment” should be regarded as a form of punishment–not medicine. When they have broken/brainwashed people (or been fooled themselves) they declare the broken one “in recovery.” Though now their patient/victim must recover from the “treatment.”
Psychiatry is not about punishing evil doers but the weak and suffering. Those they judge “unfit.” If a well-dressed, confident, strong (but abusive) person drags in a victimized spouse or child dressing and acting oddly because of the nightmare they live in, guess who the mainstream shrink automatically sides with? The strong and confident person. Social Darwinism at its finest!
Most shrinks don’t do this because they are evil. They just lack insight. Oh the irony!
Report comment
JA, I read and viewed everything on your site. It made me want to cry.
I hope your prognosis is wrong and you get better. 🙁
Your daughter needs a new doctor. Soon!
Report comment
Ever saw that Simpsons Halloween episode where Ned Flanders is the supreme overlord and re-neducates the Simpsons?
First they’re put in machines stretching their faces into giant grins.
Then Ned says:
“Okely dokely. There are three things that always cheer you up when you’re feeling down. Puppies, a glass of warm milk, and a complete frontal lobotomy!”
Okely dokely do! 😀
Report comment
Ativan and similar drugs mess up your appetite too. Usually they make you blow up like a blimp overnight. Sometimes they cause loss of appetite at first though.
Being scared by your surroundings also makes you too sick to eat. And note how he credits the random brain damage with her eating again? It may have been she would have eaten again without having her brain assaulted.
Never been shocked myself. But I’ll take the words of those who have survived the ordeal over those who get paid handsomely to perform it. These scientists rhapsodize over how docile and (mindlessly) obedient the subject becomes, and let the released subject enjoy the brain damage at their leisure for the following decades.
Report comment
Mad scientists is a great job title for them. 😀
They claim to treat the mad after all. Lol.
Report comment
I know this sounds weird, but believing in my diagnostic label made me act crazier than ever. I would study the symptoms of said “illness” and–not fully consciously–excuse these bizarre, out of control behaviors on the grounds that I couldn’t control myself.
My frequent reason for thinking of killing myself was a fear of morphing into a monster because I couldn’t get my “meds” or they quit working. Like the end of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde where the poor doctor sits alone in his office all the time mixing and drinking the formula to keep his dark side at bay. Psychiatry has taken the premise of a dark fantasy novel and passed it off as hard science.
Report comment
Someone Else, I like your comments.
If you would like to correspond, my email is r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com.
Report comment
To quote Peter Breggin, “That’s how it works.”
Report comment
This isn’t just found in businesses. Day Treatment at the “Mental Health” Centers is nothing but a grin fest. Since you can’t smile easily drugged up they keep cajoling you to SMILE like Barney the Dinosaur on steroids. Then they chide you for your “flat affect” the drugs have caused.
One day I had a bad headache from withdrawal since they hadn’t gotten one of my drugs to me for 3 days. I looked gloomy and explained I felt awful from lack of “meds.” The case worker insisted I had Low Self Esteem and had everyone write down positive things about me and me write 20 nice things about myself. Lol. Still had a headache.
Report comment
You’re not the only person NAMI has silenced Cheri.
The friend who introduced me to the group left in disgust when those “safe and effective treatments” slowly killed her sister. And NAMI did nothing.
My condolences. It sounds like your mother grew more psychotic due to her experiences–directly or indirectly linked to psychiatry.
Report comment
Sad! I have not officially been sterilized. No need since no guy would want a “crazy” woman for a good relationship. Just an abusive one.
Still a virgin at 45. Glad the drugs have rendered some parts permanently numb since i will die that way.
Report comment
“Mental health” spoils lots of stuff by coercion.
Report comment
Yes. Just like stopping the holocaust and ending slavery.
Interesting how Szazs emphasized truth while Breggin has emphasized love. These are the weapons against Psychiatry–a pseudo-science built on lies and selfish exploitation.
Report comment
Sorry Steve. 🙁
There is inner pain so bad that physical pain can actually be a relief.
Report comment
The inventor of Thorazine called it a “chemical lobotomy” but he saw it as a good thing. Lobotomies were still acceptable back then.
Report comment
For my part, my problems really did start in my teens–maybe before–when some family friends betrayed my dad, causing him to lose his job and our whole family to become homeless.
About 14 or 15 I was so upset with multiple moves and betrayals of adult friends that I made a semi-conscious decision to keep to myself and avoid emotional closeness. I remember things went downhill from there.
For those who feel Dr. Breggin was wrong about your case, maybe he is. You’re the best judge of how things are in your interpersonal relationships. But in my case his essay hit the mark. I’m striving to love boldly now.
Report comment
Sounds like you have read The Four Loves too, Dragon Slayer. Good book!
Report comment
Sex is not automatically love. Even between consenting adults.
Report comment
Actually Peter Breggin means those in distress aren’t receiving enough love. He’s NOT accusing us of being incapable of love. (Like mainstream shrinks often do.)
And folks certainly aren’t loving in their behaviors now. Especially toward those labelled “SMI.”
Report comment
Here’s an idea. Sell insecticide in syrup form, calling it Xovify or Zovu.
Have some high ranking shrink with lots of charisma (and a dog and pony) go on the road. Call it liquid love. Guaranteed to help all your relationships, save your marriage, and help you make friends!
How does it work? The placebo effect. Or blame the patient by saying they weren’t taking it properly or it must be their pesky bad biology at fault. Not the miraculous, magical elixir of love aka Zovu.
Quit pill shaming you crazy!
Report comment
I wonder how accurate any of these statistics are.
They decide the hearing of voices is better when a patient tells them it is. But patients may be fearful of further experiments and just want to go home so they lie.
I remember friends in Day Treatment whispering that the voices were bugging them again. I suggested they tell the case worker in charge who could help them see the shrink soon. They would shake their head and whisper “no” then beg me not to tell. I didn’t since I was starting to realize how pointless the “meds” were.
The case workers gushed about how our miracle drugs “cured” our problems–not knowing that after a month or two on new drugs the hallucinations/delusions were BACK. Because the consumers never said so. Many realized the whole “treatment” regimen was hopeless. 🙁
Report comment
I agree Edchilde!
If they find a problem in the brain causing distress they would have some idea of what they were doing.
But psychiatry’s “treatments” are more about making people docile and submissive. Not healthy or independent. They rationalize this by saying the “mentally ill” are vicious monsters who would all go on killing sprees if they weren’t perpetually disabled.
Psychiatry is the only medical branch dedicated to crippling and defaming its patients. (And sterilizing and killing when society permits it.)
Report comment
Or tardive psychosis or akathisia. And they “work” by destroying the brain.
Report comment
She said that it is important for people to continue to take the drugs. Know why?
She prefers the destruction of our brains and lives to the loss of her job. That’s why.
Report comment
If anyone finds meditation helpful, good.
I was forced to practice “mindfulness” for 2 hours at a time for months in day treatment. Ugh.
Telling us to empty our brains repeatedly. Boring as all get out. My brain already wasn’t functioning well and they wanted me to shut it off still more.
I jokingly called it mindlessness meditation. All about keeping us quiet, pacified, and subdued.
I heard later that that was really a bad way to teach mindfulness. The woman was a caseworker, untrained in the meditation field.
Report comment
Steve, Dr. Breggin has said abusive families and trauma cause the “break” which causes people to be psychiatrized. He does not demean us. Quite the contrary.
And I don’t think “trauma informed” will ever be as lucrative as the “bio model” Oldhead. How can you put compassion in capsule form and sell it for $100 a pop?
Report comment
Not murder.
Involuntary euthanasia. The patients lacked insight into the fact that their lives were not worthy of being lived.
Alas! What’s a doctor/god to do with these misbegotten wretches?
With such poor, delusional creatures the only humane course of action is too put them out of their misery.
Your mask keeps slipping Psychiatry.
Report comment
Eric I am truly sorry your friend felt this was the only course of action for her. Your kindness was probably one of the few rays of sunshine in her sorrowful life.
It’s hard to lose a friend at such an early age. 🙁
Report comment
A lot of the attention seeking on social media stems from loneliness. Not so much low self esteem as a lack of real connection with people who care.
Report comment
I love Dr. Breggin. Lol. And by staying in the field he has helped many he couldn’t have otherwise.
Psychiatry’s toxic “treatments” could warrant a new branch of medicine in its own right–treating withdrawal, TBI, and a myriad of real medical disorders created by mainstream psychiatrists.
But good point, Oldhead. Love is not a physical medicine to be used by doctors. Not that I see mainstream psychiatry adopting it any time soon. 🙂
Report comment
IF that is true they’re worse off than those they hurt. I wouldn’t trade places with any of them.
Most are more or less ignorant of the harm they cause. We must remember this to keep ourselves charitable.
Report comment
Too many control freaks. Too little love.
“There is a problem in this person, how do we fix it?” Could also be rephrased, “This is a problem–not a person–how do we ‘fix’ it to make it more docile and compliant?”
Report comment
Remember the old song, “Can’t Buy Me Love”?
Report comment
“ECT doesn’t do that.”
I never had my brain shocked but they kept telling me, “Drug X doesn’t do that.” Then it turned out it did.
I take the word of someone like you, Jane, who survived ECT over some perky psych nurse who watched a promotional video on how great shocks are now and rhapsodizes on its joys. She might think differently after getting shocked herself.
I can’t read the minds of those who drugged me. But the effect of causing me to question my own sanity was that of gas lighting.
Exonerate treatments by shaming patients.
Report comment
He probably would fare better in a third world country. Much higher recovery rate.
Report comment
And WTH was he still living with his abusers? Psychiatry is great at aiding abusive family members it seems. Dates back to the Victorian madhouses.
The more things change the more they stay the same. Sigh.
TLC is what he really needs. But justice, and maybe vitamins are good too. Plus justice would deter abuse and reduce these “psychotic” cases.
Report comment
🙂
Report comment
With all their drug company sponsors why should they observe it?
The few journalists who criticize psych drugs are on Youtube instead of MSNBC, C-Span, or FOX. Big Pharma owns TV and this is evident in the shows–not just the countless drug commercials.
Report comment
Thanks Oldhead!
Report comment
What Hurford failed to take into account–since doing so would mean questioning the lies she has based her life on–is the teen was having severe withdrawals thanks to not being able to get his neuroleptic fix sooner.
Of course she thinks addictive, mind altering drugs are all “safe and effective life saving medications.” The kid’s not the only one with delusions. 😛
Glad meetings like this are possible now so shrinks are actually held accountable for their actions, albeit to a very tiny degree.
Report comment
I’m no longer “mad.” The whole idea of “madness” is you can and should snap out of it. Even in Mary Shelley’s novels–Frankenstein and The Last Man–characters went nuts and became normal. Their buddies nursed them back to health with TLC and good food since they hadn’t been feeding themselves.
Not a life sentence requiring drugs, imprisonment, lobotomies or shocks. Self identifying as mad is like calling myself infatuated since I had a crush once at fifteen.
The madness was created by a drug for “worried wellness.” Without psychiatry I wouldn’t have gone nuts. And thanks to my cocktail I never fully recovered till August 2017.
I’m not mad. I’m a survivor. And far more rational than many “normals” who believe everything on TV and never crack a book.
Report comment
You said it.
Report comment
Yes. Fighting can lead to more drugs, longer stays, and shocks.
If you can quietly “tongue” or “cheek” without arousing suspicions that’s good. But otherwise take it. And never question anything told you–especially by the shrink.
It’s like being kidnapped and held hostage by bad guys with all the power on their side. They’re the ones calling the shots so you play by their rules till you can escape.
Report comment
Real Informed Consent would scare prospective “consumers” away and spell the end of psychiatry.
“If you want I can give you a drug to mess with your brain functions and cause TBI. It may work by fooling you or MAYBE sabotaging the part of your brain used to process (bad) emotions, but there’s a greater chance it will do the exact opposite or even turn you into a monster, alienating those around you. It’s mostly miss with an occasional hit that obliterates way more than you wanted. It will also wreak massive damage on every other organ in your body. Oh, and if you don’t already suffer low self esteem this will take care of that when your weight doubles in less than a year.
“In addition to random acts of brain damage I can assign you a stigmatizing label to ruin your chances of marriage, gainful employment, higher education, or renting anything outside a HUD ghetto. It will also cause doctors to laugh at you if you have a heart attack, stroke, or cancer–not to mention akathisia, and other iatrogenic damage caused by this treatment. Of course we won’t shame the pills. We shame patients instead. Blaming it all on you…that is your horrible illness causing you to suffer.
“Nobody’s fault. At least not mine.
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Well, yes you are doc. That’s what you aspired to be, after all.
Report comment
“Side effects include death.”
Report comment
Good point. RW has already pointed this out.
Also, if more psych drugs were the answer to mass shootings, why were these shootings not a “thing” till the 90’s? Back in the 60’s all they had were thorzine and a few other drugs they seldom gave unless you were totally out of it and maybe violent. Shouldn’t 0 psych drugs mean more mass shootings than today if they were the answer?
Report comment
I’m moving to a city where family doesn’t live and no longer stay at my brother’s house.
They’re not always that bad. The sad thing is with my MI “diagnosis” many folks view me as having symptoms instead of feelings. I had the same way of viewing my emotions till recently. All symptoms of my disease where most people have feelings and souls. They scared me so when I felt anything “too” strongly I would run to my psychiatrist for help numbing out the sadness/depression or the joy/mania.
Latuda made me very angry for no reason. When I told my shrink she tried to double the dose!!! Thank God my case worker managed to talk her out of it since my behavior was weird enough to scare her too.
Report comment
Support system is what is meant Oldhead.
I wish I had one but aside from my parents, the cats and occasional phone calls I go 3 or 4 days sometimes with no social support offline. Very lonely.
Report comment
Mad is actually less of an insult since it was understood to be a (sometimes) temporary condition. “Mental illness” means the person is hopelessly evil and stupid. They have sinned the unpardonable sin of bad DNA and must pay for it with imprisonments, segregation, drugs, and shocks until they die.
“Mad” is more a state of mind understood to be subjective and elastic like beautiful or obscene. “Mentally Ill” is meant to refer to biological inferiors who are evil/stupid/childish/geniuses.
Does the concept of “mental illness” make sense? (It never did to me even when I believed and struggled to understand this pseudoscience pushed as fact.) Who cares as long as it helps the “experts” hold total, absolute authority over those they accuse so everyone else can imagine they’re safe.
Report comment
I agree with both Steves.
Report comment
My guess is Google is taking slush funds from Big Pharma for stacking the algorithms.
Report comment
And yet most “Mental Health” Centers claim to be non-profits.
As Dr. Goezhe once pointed out, folks in the psych system are “consumed” rather than “consumers” as they’re inaccurately called.
Report comment
I keep praying the Serenity Prayer. If we refuse to take responsibility for our own actions we become passive and lazy. But if we assume responsibility for others (esp. adults) we can enable abuse or become manipulative and emotionally abusive ourselves.
A lot of women who join NAMI honestly want to help their adult kids. They think “meds” will solve everything and they sometimes make the kid quiet. Couple the drugs with coercion–constant nags and put downs that are the emotional equivalent of water boarding.
Then, ten or twenty years later the “kid” is still unemployed, can barely make a sandwich without help, has doubled in weight, has more health problems than the parents, and lives in their basement unable to keep their room clean thanks to the funky cocktail. And they are often weirder than ever. (The shrink blames the progression of alleged disease.)
Sad story. Hard on everybody. The mom only thought she was helping. Now the “kid” is hopelessly stunted and can never adult. Nobody is happy–not even Mama!
{Those last 3 paragraphs are an example of how assuming responsibilities for other people can spoil lives.}
Report comment
Did you finally get better, BL? Sounds like paralysis–only worse.
Report comment
It is a bad habit I wish I could stop. When it’s really bad I have scratched bald spots into my head. I try to stop but can’t. Wish they could understand but they think reminding me often enough should help. (Usually they don’t yell, but it does irritate them.)
Sad how family members turn on the “mentally ill” member they used to love. Thanks for alienating my nearest and dearest psychiatry. You helped a lot. 😛
Report comment
Danzig I see where you’re coming from. By Apollonian you are referring to a type of being that is all head and no heart.
(For example vampires are Apollonian monsters while werewolves are Dionysian.)
The drugs and shocks can make you feel like a prisoner in your own body. Death in life reality.
Report comment
Btw, Dr. Goetzhe I consider you a hero, but it’s because you stuck your neck out for the voiceless though you probably knew something like this might happen. Actions not biology.
Report comment
I was a little nuts. I went to a shrink who drove me loonier than Minnesota in the spring with his quack remedies he knew nothing about.
The same drugs that drove me crazy kept me in a low grade state of madness for 25 years.
I left the MI System, tapered off my crazy making drugs and am struggling to make a place for myself in the real world. I’m a Survivor. No longer crazy despite the system’s best efforts to keep me that way.
Wrestling with anger, shame, guilt, and bitterness. As Noel points out it’s my fault too. If I hadn’t been such a thin-skinned wimp I never would have seen that shrink. I see my wasted life as a sort of punishment for failure to forgive promptly enough and not being sweet enough to fit in. That’s why my siblings never went nuts. No skin; no spine. Serves me right.
Report comment
Maybe if they give drugs that alter body chemistry enough to produce a nasty body odor they can claim it proves the validity of the diagnosis they also thoughtfully provide.
Report comment
The first term that came to me as I read this story was “gas lighting.”
Acknowledging these pills cause these torments would be unprofessional and unethical. That would be “pill shaming.” Pills can never hurt anyone unless they deserve it (unmasking mental illness.)
“The meds never do that….”
They said when Anafranil kept me awake for 3 weeks in a row sending me into a psychotic mania I never experienced before or since.
They said when Risperdol made me gain 60 pounds in 3 months.
They said when Haldol made me seize with eyes rolling back into my head.
Escaped after wising up but it took 25 years and the damage is done. Pill rolling and mindless scratching. Could be worse. But my relatives scream at me for them when I stress out on visits. Stress makes it worse but they think it’s my “illness” and yelling at me will help since they believe I take my “meds” or they’d attribute my tics to being naughty. Everyone assumes seizures, tics, etc. come because you aren’t taking your “meds.” (Must be great to be that stupid since it means they never took these poisons.)
Horribly dishonest, manipulative, utterly lacking in compassion/empathy for those they hurt. The people who exhibit these behaviors the most love to “diagnose” them in others. Projection. Freud was right about some things.
Report comment
All the smarts and education don’t matter to a hill of beans if a doctor lies all the time and doesn’t give a rip about his patients.
Dr. Mengele was a highly educated, licensed medical professional. He used it all to harm people in hopes of furthering his prestigious career. Stupidity and ignorance were not the issues with him.
Report comment
I find this piece interesting. But the way it refers to “psychiatric users” in the third person makes me wonder if the writer is talking to users/survivors at all.
Of course the way to flee stigma is to flee psychiatry–the enforcement of life long insanity. No psychiatrist means no “diagnosis” and no “diagnosis” means no stigma.
Report comment
I thought internalized stigma was “good insight” a laudable thing in the SMI, leading them to mindlessly swallow anything the shrink provides. Pun intended.
Report comment
Great actions make a hero. Not great genes.
A lot of heroes are little, ordinary people who rise to the occasion. Often fearfully and reluctantly. But it’s the right thing…and someone’s got to do it!
Report comment
You don’t need great genes to be a hero. 🙂
Report comment
Removed for moderation.
Report comment
You’re not alone Anna. They numbed my pain AND my empathy too. A trade off many of us would not have considered worth it if we had known.
You have my condolences. I hope things get better for you soon. They will improve but it takes time.
Remember you have a right to grieve. Sorrow is not a brain disease, but part of being human.
Report comment
Good luck on your class, Chaya. Keep us all posted. 🙂
Report comment
Good point Out! And often physical/neurological damage from years or decades of “safe effective treatments.”
Julie Greene addresses these issues in her blog.
Report comment
If you can’t stand bullying stay far away from anything labeled “mental health.” A great way to ensure a lifetime of bullying and physical assaults.
I was an idiot to reach out for help. People only pretend to care to exploit others like livestock they want to fatten and eat.
The moral boys and girls is hide your negative emotions and never cry in front of people. Especially guys in white coats. Act tough, never tender, never gentle, never kind. Only the SMI want to love or be loved after all.
Report comment
Brain damage is actually the desired effect. As Dr. Breggin might say that’s how ECT works.
Report comment
It’s a coin toss how your body, brain, and CNS will react if you come off psych drugs.
But guess what? It’s a coin toss how your system will react if you go ON them to begin with.
If you get horribly sick, disabled or killed from going on them that’s okay. That’s an acceptable risk from standard care.
If you get horribly sick, disabled, or killed from going off the drugs that’s a horrible tragedy. Your local NAMI chapter will probably lecture others about how only wrong headed fools disobey “doctors.'”
Because $$$$. Love things and use people is the New Golden Rule adhered to by mainstream psychiatry. 🙁
Report comment
Sounds very weird. But this is the “mental health” system we’re talking about after all.
Is there a higher amount of therapist abuse involved with ED “treatment” Julie? You have had some really bad experiences.
Report comment
Psychiatry is a religious cult.
Instead of Original Sin, the priests of Psychiatry teach you you are guilty of moral defectiveness encoded in your DNA. As penance you must take massive quantities of drugs even if they ruin your reading ability, make you vomit everything you eat and seize every day. Stricter forms of penance include sequestration in the cell they provide and mortification of your gray matter via ECT and other bizarre surgeries.
Black and white thinking occurs when psychiatrists neatly divide the world into the MI and the normal telling the latter the former are defective/murderous and deserve to suffer for being born.
Psychiatry destroys all hope of an adult life. Mothers/fathers who don’t want kids to be permanent adolescents in their basements forever should think twice before getting them psych treatment. When shrinks have had their way with the kid he will wind up institutionalized or dependent on you forever. (A few live in HUD slums if they’re lucky. Or live under bridges since they’re too messed up to work just like the voluntary drug addicts.)
Report comment
Why do so many people willingly seek out psychiatric “help” Oldhead?
A lot of us had emotional problems to start with. Many felt there was something “wrong” with us because we were awkward or too smart or fashion impaired. I had repeatedly been criticized and bullied as a teen for my lack of social skills, or the “wrong” body. Built like a big, ugly plough horse instead of a dainty figurine.
Psychiatry offered easy but false answers in capsule form. Now I’m the fattest, ugliest woman alive with fewer social graces than the characters in Big Bang Theory. Cocktails bloated my body into a gross cartoon and public ostracism through my shrink “educating” my friends/family got me thrown out of college and segregated.
We would have been better off trying street drugs of course. We are more alienated and damaged than ever kudos to the quacks. But there you have it.
Report comment
Not so much wolves as snakes in the grass.
Report comment
Jaffe and Pete Earley are neither one MDs yet they scream at Bob Whittaker for daring to write about people ruined or killed by psych drugs.
Earley has a son he got angry at because the boy was unhappy and hungry for assurance of his father’s love. He pretended his son was trying to murder him to get him “helped.” (Accusing him of attempted suicide wasn’t dramatic enough I guess.) Apparently Kevin is the designated scapegoat everyone in the family picks on.
As far as Jaffe’s family drama it reads like a Tennessee Williams play. “Stelazine!!!” Yeah. That play.
Based solely on the way they treated these unwanted, despised family members, these scoundrels–a writer of sleazy marketing ads and a hack journalist–claim to be experts. Almost on level with the shrinks themselves.
Report comment
Looks even nastier than NAMI. The commercial is sickening!
Some demonic voice boasts about ruining the parents’ lives and destroying the family. The parents and a bunch of other folks claim they will conquer It.
The autistic member never appears. This creepy ad makes the viewer assume the “defective” member is Damien from The Omen who needs to be conquered somehow. By the Normal members banding together they can banish the demonic autistic to the Realms of Outer Darkness from whence he/she came. ICK!!!
Report comment
I might be able to. But I prefer to overcompensate by observing/analyzing social cues and behaving as normally as I can.
People shouldn’t be mean and nasty. But they are. They get no fodder from me!
Report comment
What about people who can’t talk or do other things we take for granted? I’m not ruling out what you say Dragon Slayer, but I find it confusing.
Report comment
TRM123, is this a family member you’re talking about? I’m so sorry! 🙁
Report comment
Oh yeah. Hard to remember. Allegedly they are.
Report comment
Not always the case. Just like child molesters may not be family members but teachers/clergy/baby sitters. My brother and I both had a Sunday school teacher tell us we would go to Hell if we cried. She taught the pre-schoolers.
More traumatizing than it sounds. J did better because he was a sweet, sunny boy everybody liked. I was a naughty child who day dreamed and asked questions Mrs. X couldn’t answer. J also has a lot of emotional resiliency I lacked.
Mom and Dad were upset and angry when we told them years later. We didn’t before since we thought it was okay for Mrs. X to say that stuff. They were mystified when we both brooded over Hell, obsessed over being wicked, and stayed awake at night crying.
“NAMI mommies” are all too real however. Not to be confused with loving family members who seek out NAMI in desperation to help suffering family members and watch aghast as they decline in every way possible and die young. A friend of mine left NAMI in disgust when they let her sister die. I told her I was leaving psychiatry. She said, “Thank God!” Donna, her sister and my friend, had died just a few years ago.
(Hey, Donna was “meds compliant” when she died at 49 so who cares how she suffered and curled up and died? NAMI doesn’t give a rip if consumers live or die as long as they consume. They were also happy to let another friend of mine die of a grand mal seizure brought on by a neuroleptic at the ripe age of 29. Blood on YOUR hands NAMI!)
Report comment
Torrey, Lieberman, or Biederman. Though that last guy prefers to prey on kids.
Report comment
Paula says they vote labels into existence by screaming and yelling.
Al refutes her. How? He yells and screams (and cries a little) to the Huff Po.
Report comment
Sorry Bradford. Been there. Done that. 🙁
Report comment
Do junk food companies fat shame? Do tobacco companies bad mouth people with throat cancer?
In that respect psychiatry is nastier than either of those industries.
Report comment
You described the course of my “disease” TRM 123.
No more mood swings. But my brain is horribly damaged. Shrunken frontal lobes. I struggle to clean my room. Not sure I can ever hold down a job. I am indeed disabled thanks to psychiatry.
Not exactly depressed. But few would envy my isolated life in poverty. Forced to live with elderly parents thanks to roaches over running the HUD slum I occupied.
Never was a “Patty Duke bipolar.” I’m a teetotaler virgin in my 40’s. I was a model teenager who religiously observed curfew and strove for good grades. Never partied. Graduated from high school a year early with the highest average.
Psychiatry did not make me “marriage material” to quote Patty. Sad since I have a capacity for love and loyalty no one wants. Leprosy does not make for good marriage prospects. 🙁
Report comment
Rats are generally the first to jump ship. But if rats are running the vessel I’m not sure who would jump first.
Report comment
Still waiting for a PSA from Dr. Pies undeceiving the public about the chemical imbalance lie touted on commercials, thus proving how well-informed he is. Lol.
The con man’s pretty angry folks think he’s dumb enough to believe the lies he promotes. Check that. His limbic system is hyperactive.
But alas! Undeceiving the public might result in massive outbreaks of agnosognosia. Which might undermine the unquestioned credibility of his profession. Which would be a tragedy.
Report comment
Colon and capital P. Like so 😛
Stigma is a great indirect marketing tool. Frank did a great job saying anything I could have said further about that.
Report comment
So you think AF is playing “good cop” in an informal drama to make psychiatry look more legitimate?
Report comment
The NAMI chapter I belonged to up north monitored our speech. If you were a consumer you could never say “my pills aren’t working” though you MIGHT quietly mention you couldn’t stop puking your guts up or having grand mal seizures or erratic heart beats. Minor side effects.
We also weren’t allowed to complain about the insulting way the real members treated us or question the lack of materials they presented us with when we wished to educate ourselves. They provided family members with 3 times the materials they gave us. And ours was written on a 3rd grade level. They assumed we were a bunch of dummies, but we weren’t. Massive drug doses notwithstanding.
Always found the concept of “mental illness” confusing. Is it cognitive impairment? Not according to Kay Redfield Jamison and the countless psych professionals who tout her writings. Is it evil behaviors? NAMI argues against this with its “stigma” alerts.
Essentially the “Mental Illness” Makers vary both tropes as they see fit. Alternate between the stupid consumer who must be damaged for their own good and the murderous SMI boogeymen to frighten the public with in order to enforce “compliance” and cut the victim off from friends. Great way to control someone, as any abuser knows.
Report comment
They wouldn’t know the person was “mentally ill” if a “friend” or neighbor hadn’t told them. Notice how all the crime dramas now talk about how the “mental illness” made the criminal perform a series of disgusting murders?
Because only genetically defective folks of the criminal classes are capable of crime. (Not social Darwinism cause we call white folks evolutionary throwbacks too.)
Gee! Why d’ya think there’s all this stigma?
Report comment
A lot of psych wards have idiot boxes blaring 16 hours a day. Excess television is bad for depression too.
Report comment
Talk to your friend yourself. If they know you care that will help them choose to live more than being locked up and drugged.
Report comment
Facebook isn’t necessarily tragic so much as frothy. Great way to arouse envy in your “friends” and relatives.
Report comment
So, Dr. Hickey, do you think Dr. Frances has indeed seen the error of his ways? Or is he just talking out of both sides of his mouth?
He criticized the concept of mental illness in the past and changed his mind for a prestigious post afterward.
He is still shirking his own responsibility in this mega-scam. Just a little cog following orders….
Report comment
Don’t be afraid to be yourself. “You are special” everybody tells kids.
As long as you’re special exactly like everyone else. Be special like Miley Cyrus or Kim Kardashian. Not like “Crazy” Betty who lives with 3 cats, collects salt shakers, reads Hispanic surrealists, doesn’t own a TV, and plays the mandolin for a living. That’s “severe mental illnesses” because she’s not glamorous or rich. Bad weird. Not good special.
Report comment
Yes, but without stigma people wouldn’t be encouraged to seek out treatment. Stigma is a great marketing tool!
Better than animated shorts with dancing pills and lemonade. 😛
Report comment
“I’ve actually tried very hard to blend in with the crowd….” Sigh. Me too.
I thought psychiatry would make me normal. It just made me weirder than ever and encouraged my friends and family to shun me.
Psychiatry helps us in two basic ways. Random acts of violence on our brains (and other vital organs) and isolating or segregating us from the mainstream community.
Destroying our brains and public shunning. What’s not to like?
Report comment
Nothing. Nothing is inherently wrong with shaving half your head and wearing a plaid shirt with polka dot pants either. But you should expect funny looks from people. And it will give sanist critics plenty of fodder if you denounce psychiatry in public.
Report comment
Winking at routine corruption in the practice makes all doctors suspect. They see people getting sick and dying on these “safe and effective” poisons but refuse to speak up. Heroes they ain’t.
Report comment
“Antipsychotics” cause hallucinations and “antidepressants” cause depression. Pretty Orwellian.
Report comment
In the words of Homer Simpson, “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.”
Calling these experts stupid is actually charitable.
Report comment
The secret to being an academic big wig of the APA or NIMH is to say unclear and unproven things. But hide the lack of substance by raising the fog index to at least a level 17. That way you’ll sound so darn smart people will assume you know your stuff and won’t challenge it even if they can wade through. This kind of thing really helps the APA look like they know stuff.
Report comment
Their heads were puffed up enough to begin with.
Psychiatrists suffer from inflammation of the ego. A lil’ metaphor of my own.
Report comment
The lying con man deserves the shame. Not his trusting marks!
Report comment
So sorry! There are some ways to delay and even sometimes reverse dementia.
Eat right, sleep enough, get physical exercise, journal, play games like Solitaire or the kids’ game Memory, memorize songs or quotes.
Other brain boosters include learning a new language, learn to play an instrument, read books, and eat fatty fish. Like sardines and salmon. And limit TV to two hours a day.
Report comment
My pain is created by the “meds” for an unsubstantiated illness. Getting better now, very slowly. I prefer magnesium, potassium, and vitamin B12 to pain killers. My body is deficient in those (medical tests) so supplements treat the problem not just the pain itself.
Report comment
Dr. Frost from That Hideous Strength is the perfect shrink. Remember his famous soliloquy about how all our thoughts, feelings, and choices are nothing but random brain chemicals? Lewis was ahead of his time.
Report comment
I love Szazs’s ability to cut through the bovine excrement. Some of his essays vie with Mark Twain’s writing style for biting humor.
Many Catholic kids leave the church. I got the idea from his commenting on the guilt viewing the cross brings. (Not my experience.) I imagined some pious granny dragging young Thomas to church against his will. Like many hypothetical scenarios it was wrong.
Report comment
I’m neither. And if I make 60 that’s a lot younger than most Americans.
Report comment
They really hate it when people get well and lead healthy productive lives in society. The ultimate form of “pill shaming” and “diagnosis shaming.” Health and sanity are what really honk off psychiatrists. 🙂
Report comment
No he didn’t. Folks watch and assume he’s “off his meds.” 😛
Report comment
Hi Oldhead! Wondered when you’d show.
The problem with fighting “stigma” is that it involves “educating” the public on “mental illnesses” which are themselves stereotypes.
Like fighting sexism by dressing like Wilma Flintstone and showing up at educational venues.
“Womanhood consists of 7 symptoms. Being completely passive. Flirting with every man you meet. Sneaking behind your husband’s back. Wasting his hard earned money on dresses. Swooning over celebrities. Crying to get what you want. Playing dumb.
“If you don’t like these seven behaviors you are guilty of stigmatizing women. Waaaah!
“We can’t help it we’re stupid, helpless, and sneaky. Not my fault. I’m just a girl! Tee hee!”
The analogy breaks down of course. Women existed long before biologists. And we have identities other than those of the Superficial Airhead.
Report comment
That’s okay Kindredspirit. A lot of my escape was made possible by luck. That’s just plain wrong!
I wish others could escape too. I know they would if possible.
Report comment
How I overcame “stigma?”
Relocated. Don’t call myself “mentally ill” and don’t act like the DSM says I “should.”
Report comment
May get hit by a truck and die at 45. No one knows. Speculation on my part. But ending my drug use is already paying off. My arrhythmia is stabilized and I’m no longer border diabetic.
I’m 45 and would only have 7 years left btw. Finally discovering myself minus “mental illness.”
Report comment
No “schizophrenic” displays all the “symptoms.” Carter, Glenn Close, and others play “mentally ill” characters. But instead of real people they portray lists of “symptoms.” All of them according to the DSM 5. And the “symptoms” are all that remain, leaving nothing but stereotypes.
Report comment
Good point.
Probably a gross exaggeration at best.
“Mental illness” is a great excuse for lazy screen writing and acting.
Report comment
That explains why my digestion has become so horrible now after going off of them. My brain seems okay, but my stomach is messed up. Off my psych pills but I swallow fistfuls of supplements now.
Report comment
Yes.
Remember Dr. Farid Fata? He paid $$$$ to the victims he maimed through unnecessary chemo treatments. He also went to prison.
Psychiatry is made up of Farid Fatas. The only branch of medicine with a 0% recovery rate that shortens people’s lives by 25 years.
Report comment
SSRI drugs can ruin your digestion. Anemia and low B vitamins can cause depression.
Report comment
Has Robert Nikkel read Anatomy of an Epidemic?
The title is way too tentative. Of course I realize Nikkel wanted to get his article published and had to write for the editor and readership.
Sadly most believe these drugs are “neuroprotective” and dismiss all criticisms however cautiously they’re worded.
Report comment
More “bootstraps” than authoritarian. Authoritarians want to control people. “Bootstrappers” say people should be free even if they starve or hurt themselves by not managing their freedom properly.
Report comment
TBI can cause childish behavior. So can continual patronizing and put downs in an institution.
Few realize most folks with psychiatric “diagnoses” do have legitimate brain problems–along with countless other health issues. Long term druggings and shock cause brain injury.
Report comment
Szazs isn’t anyone’s friend now since he is dead. I take the good from the writings he left. And there’s a good bit of it. 🙂
Report comment
Exactly. See 2A above.
Report comment
Actually both. They shell out big bucks to drug unhappy or flamboyant people. Then they shell out big bucks to treat diabetes, heart disease, and other real medical problems they created. A win win for Big Pharma.
Report comment
I live with chronic pain and fatigue but opt out of pain killers. Overuse of these can really take a toll on you in the long run.
My own ME problem is iatrogenic. It’s my punishment for taking the short cut to happiness. I wanted to have a happy, productive life.
I was nervous and unhappy so I thought something was wrong with me since I wasn’t out going, upbeat, and vivacious all the time like other girls at college. Took anafranil and it ruined my life. Had a bad reaction and got blamed/punished for 25 years till I escaped.
On my trip through Psychiatric Neverland I got weirder than ever. The damn drugs made me withdrawn, suicidal, and moodier than ever. Never had a family or career. Probably never will.
Like Pinocchio taken in by the Fox and the Cat or Little Red Ridinghood by the Wolf I got suckered by con men posing as doctors. Worse than ordinary thieves since they won’t just steal your money, but your health, your reputation, and your sanity. That last is pretty ironic. 😛
Report comment
Dr. K, I’m off the drugs. But I still live on disability. Long term drug use has indeed disabled me.
Sad how many of us thought these drugs would EN-able us. Helping us to function better, form better relationships, find work. Like the snake oil selling medicine men from the 19th century with “Dr. Fortunano’s Miracle Elixir” that made folks feel great from whiskey and worse crap as “secret ingredients.” Mainstream psychiatry is a menace to society.
We need to do two things.
1. Educate the public. All the chronic sickness and disability are hard to hide. They escalate even as “mental health services” become more readily available and it’s getting hard for the quacks to fool everybody all the time.
2. Petition to change three things.
A. Ban legal bribery/chronyism aka “campaign contributions” by any but private individuals. Bribery creates conflict of interest and makes justice a commodity to be bought or sold. Why else do you think the Cures Bill passed unanimously? We have the finest elected officials money can buy. 😛
B. Ban involuntary confinement of law abiding citizens. If the person is guilty of violent crimes he/she is a criminal. Prison sentences are limited. Once you have paid your debt to society you can go free. With psychiatry your prison sentence is totally dependent on the whim of your warden who gets paid for cramming the prison. Neither merciful nor just!
C. Ban false advertising. No commercials for psych drugs. People will still be desperate for these poisons and need help tapering off even if they are able and willing to go drug free. If doctors must sell these toxins to desperate people they should call them neuroleptics, SSRI’s, and tranquilizers. Don’t lie about a “proven chemical imbalance.” Every regular here knows that’s a dirty lie and there are no tests to prove it. The APA secretly acknowledges this and are laughing up their sleeves at this “metaphor” they have foisted on the gullible public. Tell the patient they’re addictive and dangerous emotional pain killers that work by shutting down parts of the brain and central nervous system.
If I can ever earn a livelihood I am going to NOT buy insurance. The fine is less expensive if you’re poor anyhow. As an uninsured person they have less motive to imprison or drug/shock you since there’s no $$$$ to milk from your Medicaid/insurance.
I’m afraid of all doctors now because of their sneaky concealment of the damage and death they KNOW happens all the time. Not anti-science but medical professionals are unworthy of my trust because they lie.
Report comment
Dragonslayer is not the only one who veers off subject as we can see.
Report comment
You’re correct. We need to avoid side issues on this blog. I don’t think we should have to become members of a political party.
This is not supposed to be an anti-psychiatry site. It’s even less appropriate to use it to persuade someone over to your political ideology.
We need to remember the liberals voted for the Cures Act too.
Report comment
I can barely cook and keep my place clean and perform basic hygiene. I went to shrinks in good faith. Too damaged to ever work again it seems. Those liars told me the drugs would help me function.
Ideally those crippled by psychiatry wouldn’t live on tax dollars. Just pay us $1,000,000 apiece from Big Pharma and the wealthy Psych conglomerates. That would not only provide for our needs but bankrupt those Blights on western society rendering them impotent to hurt again. Plus their credibility would be shattered. Yay! 😀
A win win!
Report comment
“Mental illness” is the original sin. Psychiatrists are the high priests who provide absolution of this sin through confessions: owning the label they assign through the act of “insight,” and penance in the form of drugs, imprisonment, and shocks.
Not only are the shrinks granted priestly status but they are gods too. And you had better fawn all over them with their due offering of praise and gratitude for the damage they inflict.
The non labeled folks love psychiatry too. Know why? According to the gospel of psychiatry only some are capable of horrendous crimes. The “mentally ill” are the only ones who rape and murder according to television. Therefore everyone without a “diagnosis” is absolved of all sin, and also has someone they can sneer at, enhancing their self esteem and blaming all the evils committed on the “mentally ill” boogie men. 😛
Report comment
Also don’t forget: Big Doctor loves you.
Report comment
It’s okay to be isolated and lonely. As long as you are exactly like everyone else. A sign of Good Mental Hygiene.
Report comment
Don’t forget the lord high stigmatizers to label individuals and inform Society to give them the cootie treatment.
Report comment
Yep. 🙁
Report comment
Torrey hates cats as much as any pit bull. 😀
Report comment
Yes. Probably not “experts.”
The experts insult those they “help” all the time but they do so using polysyllabic Latin-based terms and speak of murder, abuse, and stupidity in matter-of-fact ways. These same experts get self-righteously angry at Hollywood’s sensationalized depictions of those they label, but have no qualms about showing up om TV to say essentially the same thing.
If anyone has time to kill try reading Images of Madness by Fleming and Manwell. Those guys are utterly clueless. They’re like a doctor misdiagnosing someone with tuberculosis or leprosy and demanding why everyone avoids them. Lol.
Report comment
Probably took their marching orders from NAMI/Big Pharma/Psychiatry. The evil conjoined triplets.
Report comment
Don’t shame pills. Shame those who poison their fellow human beings!
Report comment
Pretty witty. Definitely not as compassionate as say Peter Breggin or others.
He really had it in for religion. Someone must have dragged him to mass against his will as a kid.
Report comment
I know I’ll die young thanks to the psycho quacks. Instead of 52 I may see 59 or 60 though. Probably bought some time.
I’m losing weight in my 40’s. It’s finally possible. No insulin resistant diabetes for me! My heart is damaged. At least the arrhythmia won’t get any worse now.
Report comment
Yeah_I_Survived I hear you. The church has sold out to psychiatry. Partly because they’ve been taken in by the chemical imbalance myth. They think it’s the latest cutting edge medical treatment for crying out loud! Funny how they have no problems rejecting other stuff the Science Establishment teaches.
In justice they see someone labeled “bipolar” coming off his “meds” and freaking out. They think this means the drugs treat a real brain disease. But you can see the same thing in meth or heroin addicts who can’t get a fix. My folks have no idea I am off mine. They have this idea that if I quit my “meds” I’d froth around, show up at McDonalds in my birthday suit late at night, and assault random strangers–biting them perhaps. 😛
I don’t have the energy for any of that nonsense even if I were that out of it. Worn out but my emotions have stabilized. Like trading mood swings and suicidal thoughts for chronic fatigue syndrome. Got to tell my parents soon. I hate lying and Mom is on an SSRI that makes her act like a zombie.
When I was 14 we really did know a “bipolar” man who came to church. Frequently he would cold turkey off one or more drug (sometimes adding uppers) and had an episode where he wound up at Hardees in nothing but his boxers at 2 or 3 am. He had no idea how he got there. Remembering poor David made me scared to quit my cocktail. 🙁
Report comment
So sorry Streetphotobeing! 🙁
Report comment
If bizarre thoughts are caused by lack of micro nutrients the person will benefit from supplements like you recommend Bcharris. I suffer from lack of B12 and iron. I believe years on those safe and effective toxins has ruined my digestive system. Blood work shows the deficit but the doctor doesn’t know the cause. Or isn’t telling.
Report comment
Hello Dr. Johnson. Welcome to Mad In America.
Glad that you are speaking out against the practice of labeling victims of rape and other horrors defective and attributing their pain to inferior biology.
Report comment
Cruel and unusual punishment for crimes law abiding citizens MIGHT commit. That’s what psychiatry is all about.
Been on the drugs for 25 years. Off for over a year. Still horribly sick and in chronic pain. Can’t concentrate. Scared of institutionalization. Praying my parents outlive me. 🙁
Will I ever be able to care for myself? Why bother coming off since no one cares if the poisons kill us? I feel worse than ever now. Will things ever get better?
I took the drugs in good faith. When I complained of how messed up I felt and how I couldn’t think straight no one believed me.
Report comment
If you talk your problems to death and don’t do anything different counseling won’t work.
I believe once you have an SMI label the counselor or therapist will view you as hopeless and encourage you to view yourself as hopeless. Most counselors want to help folks but the power imbalance makes it hard as well as the inherent pessimism.
A lot of counselors get depressed since no one gets better (unless they flee the funny farm.) They get depressed themselves or quit caring. I feel sorry for the well-meaning ones who work at a community mental illness center.
A lot are mystified at how those they treat become more childish and impaired over the years “despite” the best neurotoxins available.
Report comment
I wish I had heard about it then Steve. 🙁 That was the year my life was destroyed.
Mom read a book by Dr. Abrams. She talked about taking me to Canada for vitamin shots. Just coming off the pills would have saved me.
Neither of us heard of Dr. Breggin till now. Just what TV and Big Pharma and shrinks wanted us to hear. 🙁
Report comment
*Sniff.* LavendarSage every time someone says a “I don’t believe in antidepressants,” a little gel capsule bursts into tears because of the shame it feels. 😀
Report comment
I read about a survey conducted that showed not only does exercise work better than Zoloft alone but better than Zoloft and exercise combined. Meaning, perhaps, exercise can be hindered by SSRI’s.
i feel better after 20-25 minutes low impact exercise but it hurts like crazy while I do it. I’m still messed up. 😛
Report comment
Yes. Thank you Street Photo. 🙂
Report comment
Yes. Captain Obvious to the rescue!
Maybe there will be some cutting edge scientific research to prove water is wet and it’s hard to see without light. Lol.
Report comment
Praise the pills by shaming patients. That’s how psychiatry works.
Did an SSRI make you psychotically manic? Your fault. You’re a bipolar monster who deserves to have your life ruined. The pills are safer than aspirin and never hurt anyone who wasn’t a crazy SMI already who deserves a lifetime of segregation on a disabling cocktail.
Psych docs whine about “pill shaming” but pills have no feelings. These same people have no qualms about shaming their patients/victims by calling them bipolar or schizophrenic and going on TV to tell the public how dangerous all “bipolars” and “schizophrenics” are. (There is no other medical profession that routinely maligns its patients on national television.)
It’s not pill shaming or patient shaming psychiatrists are worried about it seems, but the shaming of their own profession. Cruel, pointless experiments on trusting people and libelous slander are pretty shameful behaviors.
Report comment
K
Report comment
Psychiatry made me lose faith in God.
It sounds weird, but I felt like if I needed “meds” to keep me from doing what was wrong I must not have a soul. Ergo religion was fake and God too.
Went through a lot of existential angst. The shrinks were lying. The drugs made me a worse person morally. This makes sense. Since when did being high all the time cause a moral reformation?
No one at church even thinks it through. Someone needs to ask Rick Warren if the “mentally ill” have souls like real people. Wonder what the purpose driven psych drug pusher would say to that.
Report comment
How can they know anything about a procedure they refuse to oversee? There’s the question.
Report comment
Disfigurement, disability, death are a small price for us to pay for the advancement of “Science.” And Torrey’s glory and honor of course.
Report comment
A silver lining to a very dark cloud.
Report comment
This explains why I’m still feeling sick after coming off Effexor. Took it for 3 years and another counting the taper. Poor memory, coordination, and a lot of symptoms associated with fibromyalgia. At least the dizziness ad nausea are gone. 🙂
Report comment
Thank you for this thoughtful, well written article Bob.
Like many psych survivors I do not share your cautious optimism. But I believe psychiatry will collapse in the next 20 to 30 years under the weight of its own numerous deceptions and insatiable hunger for more people to “treat.” They want 25% of the population on at least one drug. (Some sources say 33%)
One sixth or seventh of adults forced onto disability is economically unsustainable. If nothing else psychiatry will die when Western Civilization goes into its death throws.
Report comment
Dr. Faust I presume. Torrey sold his soul to the devil.
Report comment
Yep. Collecting cat brains is the epitome of sanity. Bwahaha!
Report comment
They prefer to call it sanity or good mental hygiene rather than morality. That way they can condemn harmless eccentrics, dangerous criminals, and moral paragons (like Francis of Assisi or Joan of Arc) as hopelessly insane and a menace to society.
Sanity is much harder to define than morality. Not only can they absolve the insane of their “disease” they also can serve as a faux pre-crime division.
We don’t need Tom Cruise to advocate for us by praising Scientology while hopping up and down on the table. But he has made a great movie called The Minority Report which reminds me of how our culture perceives psychiatry.
Not just as punitive legal enforcers who tell judges what sentences to pass but actually able to prevent violent crimes from occurring. Only in the movie it actually worked.
Thinking you have psychic powers so you can foresee crimes before they occur is perfectly sane and normal. 😉
Report comment
Thanks Miss Penelope. I am not yet recovered fully. Probably never where I would have been. It will take another half dozen years to see how far I can recover. 🙂
Report comment
Not mental but soul sickness. Mind altering drugs to shut off or destroy brain functions will not heal the souls of the unloved and hurting.
No $$$ in TLC. Our utilitarian mentality is at fault. Loving things and using people. Should be the reverse.
Report comment
The Nazis were really big into “Gemut” claiming good social skills proved you were not of criminal stock. Murdering 9,000,000 innocent people is pretty criminal no matter how socially adept you are.
Report comment
And it still does not justify the “treatments” psychiatry offers since they do nothing to help stabilize GABA or any known imbalance in the body.
Report comment
Why is allowing others to leave his religion repulsive?
Report comment
I try to be. I forgive them with my head. But the pain they have caused will never go away. My life is ruined. Gassing me would have actually been less cruel. Not that I advocate murder.
1 year off my drugs. I’m still in Hell on earth. Not just physical pain and disability but isolation. I really can’t trust anyone now.
Report comment
My heart goes out to you. No support around here either.
I went off with online support from SA. I was already on disability. I stayed on my parents’ farm, getting my drugs from a GP for tapering and the placebo effect (on Mom.) I pretend to have Fibromyalgia to this day and many of my withdrawal symptoms are the same as FM.
Out in Indiana everyone touts the “chemical imbalance” myth like the latest, most up-to-date medical discovery. I have printed a copy of the article where Dr. Pies puts his foot in his mouth about this “metaphor.” Yet he goes on to argue how his “science” (of destroying random parts of the brain) is so darn effective.
Tell a lie often enough and you’ll believe it long after others wise up.
Report comment
I can’t argue with their experiences. In my case the neuroleptics caused psychotic symptoms I never had before. Tardive psychosis.
I would have petty seizures and my eyes would roll back while my limbs convulsed. I experienced nightmarish hallucinations, “thought salad,” and uncontrollable thoughts of hurting others I could not control so I would hide myself when these spells occurred.
All the doctor did was tell my parents I was crazy and/or lying. These drugs “never had that effect on anyone.” Yet his own MA’s told me similar reactions to 10 mg Haldol were frequent. Was the psych doctor really so clueless about the patients he treated?
I guess if painful thoughts occur shutting off part of the brain may be helpful. Like Novicain helps a tooth ache or extraction. If someone finds emotional Novicain helpful in killing unbearable pain and choose to go through life on it they must really feel awful. They have my support in staying on it; I am glad the right part of their brain is overridden or destroyed. They’re lucky. Many are not.
I got tired of the numbness my neuroleptic produced. My joyless existence soon became unbearable, but I stayed on it because I was told going off would destroy my brain/sanity. Deception is coercion.
Report comment
Let me play Devil’s Advocate by presenting a view I don’t hold but an argument opponents MIGHT make against Noel’s article.
Psychiatry is not linked to eugenics because it doesn’t assert the superiority of one race over the other and they seek to help not kill the disabled “mentally ill.”
Noel, or anyone else who cares to debate this anticipatory argument please do.
😉
Report comment
A lot of people don’t access the readily available knowledge online. Like articles published in the APA Journal. Following links I provide and reading pieces of under 500 words is too much work I guess.
Hey the drug commercials and ad brochures would never lie, now would they? 🙁
Report comment
Did they ever tell you to only date or socialize with other “mentally ill” people? They kept telling me that on the grounds that “no one can understand bipolars but other bipolars.”
Told me who to date from group, how to vote, what to eat, to watch more TV, what clothes to wear….Ugh.
Not just therapists who acted this way. (I had a few good ones but they kept leaving or getting fired for inadequate paperwork.) Caseworkers were generally the worst control freaks in the system.
Report comment
Those words and behaviors are Toxic.
Our society is very selfish and it’s hurting us all. Even the un-psychiatrized folks who appear normal because they’re inconspicuous.
Report comment
“No one I have removed or avoided has a mental health label.” Thanks for pointing this out. 🙂
Content of character is what counts.
Report comment
Most don’t. I keep reminding myself as I struggle to forgive them.
They never meant to ruin my life. I managed to survive. Some friends weren’t so lucky.
Still, it’s not a good life. 🙁
Report comment
I refuse to call these SSRI drugs “antidepressants.” My only full blown manic episode was caused by Anafranil. They put me on a cocktail of 3 or 4 drugs for 23 years as punishment for my audacious drug reaction. I was pill shaming by getting sick I guess.
I still pretend to take them around family and doctors. I also pretend to have FM since I have all the symptoms and every social function I get asked what I “do.” Once they hear I have FM they don’t ask about why I’m still single and childless. (Rural Indiana.)
Still have a poor quality life. Can’t work–even from home. Irritable a lot which scares me though I try to be sweet and kind. Frequently I break down crying. Glad I’m alone so much.
On the positives my heart arrhythmia is no worse. May be better. My blood sugar is normal. And I have lost 35 pounds and keep losing. At 45 I have a waist again after 25 years! Not normal but psych drugs are as abnormal as they come!
No longer quite as depressed or suicidal all the time and I can enjoy nature and music again a year after going off the pills to “fix” my unhappiness.
Report comment
Good article Enrico!
I fired a therapist who kept pressuring me to violate my conscience which would lead to guilt. After the third time I fired her. Everyone–the staff–insisted I must not have understood. They insisted I discuss it with her and them. I politely declined until I relocated and escaped Crazy.
I was nervous about possible gas lighting. She had never done that, but the MI System encourages that kind of thing since no one will take the word of a “crazy” over a respectable professional.
A friend had this same therapist and received the same pressuring. She got mad but kept her appointments cause that’s what the staff told her to do.
Report comment
“Not eating, not sleeping, having your fight-or-flight response activated every waking moment, fending off customized intrusive thoughts every day, and legitimately wanting to die” are all nasty. For me, these were created by the drugs I was told to take by a psychiatrist. Like many others.
If autistic people want the right to refuse drugs that make them feel worse instead of better they might still want to look into anti-psychiatry. Though this is NOT an anti-psychiatry site as Robert Whittaker has made clear.
Report comment
For what it’s worth, Van Gogh did not undergo psychiatric treatment, had a rough life and decided to kill himself anyhow.
The inconsistency of psychiatry’s advocates should be pointed out though. If someone commits suicide after leaving the system they argue that it happened “because” they left.
At least as many of the suicides committed by the “SMI” occur while they’re undergoing “treatments.” The psych advocates will conveniently say this was “in spite of” all the help the SMI received.
I did not become fully suicidal till after a year of 10 mg of Haldol and Stellazine that made me seize uncontrollably and killed all my positive emotions and crushed my ability to think straight. Being maligned and stigmatized in the eyes of all my family and friends as an evil, dangerous lunatic–kicked out of school–alienated like Gregor Sampsa did not help.
I say I have stayed alive in spite of the psychiatric “help” I endured. I received life saving help–but not from psychiatry. Hence I call myself a psychiatric survivor
Report comment
Don’t forget the “happy happy joy joy” culture that views not feeling AWESOME 100% of the time as a disease or else some shameful character defect. This is the only explanation I can think of for why people tout their chronic unhappiness as a “brain disease” as though they need an excuse for crying out loud.
“Please excuse Jane from being happy all the time. If you see her not grinning from ear to ear it’s her brain disease. Not her fault.
Dr. Smith.”
I read articles by people “diagnosed” with depression and wonder why they feel like they need a medical excuse for not feeling ecstatic all the time. As someone who can easily point out the negatives (accurately I might add) I say I don’t NEED a freakin’ brain disease to justify my ability to point out that the glass is half empty as well as half full!
Report comment
“Another psychiatric success story.” Reminds me of that article by Dr. Breggin about the brain being viewed as a cancer.
I guess total destruction of the brain would be a success if it was viewed as the enemy or “cancer” to begin with.
Report comment
“MLK didn’t deny space to white folks when he marched.”
No, he did not. But he wouldn’t have been pleased if they had taken over the show. Speaking over Dr. King and others who dealt with racism daily and silencing dissenters.
I’m not accusing Richard or others of this motive. They probably want to help. But this has happened numerous times in the past. NAMI only values the voices of “consumers” treated like trained animal mascots. SAMSAH, and DBSA likewise.
Good old Tim Murphy, Pete Earley, and Dr. Torrey have given heart rending speeches about “helping the severely mentally ill” even while defaming the objects of this dubious compassion. If any speak in their own defense they are silenced. We do not need more of this.
Report comment
Here’s a link to the article of a former peer specialist.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/02/outing-of-a-consumer/
Report comment
You have helped me a lot Julie.
A network of support would be nice. But it would be made up of volunteers. And it wouldn’t be (financially) profitable since the Mental Illness System would never fund it. Why pay to help your property escape?
It would have to be underground. Instead of Peer Support Specialists we would be Runaway Mentors to help others escape.
Report comment
Good point. There was a nice article published here by a woman who worked hard as a peer specialist for years. They paid her a minimum wage salary and held her in contempt–forcing her to tout the merits of psychiatry AND her SMI label like a trained animal. I need to dig up the article. It must be in the archives.
Report comment
Thank you for letting us know where you stand, Sascha. Or trying to.
You’re firmly committed to improving psychiatry rather than leaving or helping others to do so. Critical psychiatry seems to be your position.
This is a pretty elastic category. It could mean any one of a number of things to a broad spectrum of people. But it will probably make you more or less popular here.
Report comment
You may be confusing Madmom with Madincanada, Oldhead. Madincanada is pro-psychiatry and keeps referring to her son’s drugs as “meds.”
Report comment
Me too Bcharris.
Report comment
I took neuroleptics for 27 years with one short break before I moved and Dr. Rached took over.
Of course I wasn’t locked up the entire time.
Report comment
Donaldson wouldn’t admit to having a “mental illness” eh? Did they try water boarding to induce “insight”?
Report comment
Calling “lunatics” “treatable” sells more drugs. 🙂
Report comment
Jan I think I still can email you. Gonna try to send you info about something.
Report comment
For what it’s worth Oldhead, calling out trolls can backfire assuming they are trolling for attention as many do. Theoretically speaking. 🙂
Report comment
Why would Sir Simon want to change the Mental Health system at all? (Assuming it were possible.)
I have been accused of “demonizing” those poor psychiatrists, But this is just human nature. Psychiatrists are humans. Make a human being an absolute monarch and he won’t abdicate the throne any time soon.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Report comment
Thanks for your kind offer Keith!
Report comment
Oddly, I find that though my negative emotions have doubled or tripled in intensity I find them easier to control than when I took my drugs.
I feel intense anger but don’t act on it. The nastiest things I “do” are my unkind posts on sites like this. I have written some wickedly funny pieces mocking the “Lame Science.”
I feel intense sadness and often cry for an hour in the evening. But I no longer regard suicide as an option.
The drugs helped numb my pain–but not enough to make up for my stolen life. And they destroyed what emotional resilience I had to begin with. Even my mom realizes I’m doing better.
It would be nice to feel happy again though.
Report comment
Comment removed for moderation.
Report comment
He’s pretty good at it too. You have to read it carefully to know it’s an insult. I reread it twice.
Report comment
We really need to emphasize the worth of all human beings–on the grounds of their common humanity.
Yet I understand and appreciate Bonnie’s attempt at strengthening our movement through alliances with other minorities who have endured discrimination too.
Report comment
Congratulations on getting better Catherine!
Report comment
Well said, Paul Keith.
Report comment
I have nothing but negative emotions 98% of the time. (Went off my drug cocktail in 2016-17. Been off everything since August 31, 2017.) This makes me a joy to be around. Lol.
I try to avoid human contact out of compassion for others. Even if I control my temper and hide my irritability successfully I often have crying jags. This worries friends/family.
My physical suffering is very real. Coughing, itching, head aches, painful cramps all over, weakness. My body can’t absorb micro nutrients. Yogurt, saur kraut, probiotics are worthless. For a while my whole body was terribly dry and my left cornea kept ripping off. My folks thought I was faking it for attention till an ER doctor told them 95% of my upper cornea was missing.
My negativity troubles me. Is it realizing the crap I have been through? Or is my brain too damaged to feel joy now?
No one can tell me.
Report comment
That’s why I want to tear my hair out when I read articles urging abuse victims not to be afraid to seek out “help” from psychiatry. That way she can be totally discredited, lose hope of financial independence and forfeit custody rights to the abuser.
If stupidity were a crime these advisers would be doing life. Being depressed and anxious because your life is in danger is a healthy response to a bad situation. NOT a brain disease to be drugged or mocked.
Report comment
I see the link no longer works.
Report comment
Katherine who is your target audience?
Thorzine and other brain damaging techniques helped Danvers pack warm bodies in till they were overflowing. Ugh. No wonder things went downhill. I hate psych drugs more than ever.
I have been in some jam packed, depressing places that stunk of urine and stale cigarettes. I was another body to stuff in till I died. Thank God I escaped!
If you aren’t crazy when you enter they’ll take care of that. Horrible. 🙁
Report comment
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. The man would tell me I was too old and ugly to find anyone else. Abusers also tell their victims how stupid and helpless they are without the abuser to take care of them.
Psychiatrists tell you you’re so sick and crazy only paid professionals can deal with you. They malign you before the community too (also popular with abusers.) They frequently remind you how sick and helpless you are without their “help.”
I ghosted a forum of survivors venting how psych guys had hurt them. One trolling shrink posted a lengthy threat, reminding everyone how stupid, sick, and crazy they were. How they should go back on their brain drugs and submit to their shrinks immediately. They told him some nasty stuff I won’t repeat. 😀
I burst out laughing. The creep never posted after that.
You’re right Judi. People WILL realize how bogus the “remedies” are as well as the “diseases.” Psychiatry is undermining itself by its own overwhelming greed and inability to say “when.” That’s what brought the Salem witch hunts to a screeching halt.
Pointing at the governor’s wife and screaming she’s a witch is a major social blunder. Lol.
Report comment
Good point Steve. Sometimes large amounts of drugs can silence the loved one–allowing the family to assume they are “better” though the suffering is unbearable.
This happened to me. Mom insisted I needed more Haldol because it made me quiet, though jumbling my brain with drugs caused my “broken record” behaviors to begin with. I’m sorry I put them through it. Psychiatry screwed us all royally!
Report comment
Great for swindlers and emotional abusers. 😛
Reminds me of a Simpsons episode.
Homer: Lisa honey, just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.
Doh! 😀
Report comment
Don’t forget commercials!
Report comment
You weren’t the only one who couldn’t tell it was satire, Bradford. I couldn’t tell whether or not Coombs realizes Trump Derangement Syndrome is meant as a joke either. And I still can’t. No one I have heard use the term thinks that it’s in the DSM.
But it would be pretty funny if they did and got some shrinks to interview from opposing political sides. Watch the XXXX hit the fan and all the quacks dodge for cover as their beloved thesaurus of fancy-pants insults goes everywhere.
If Coombs wants to succeed as a humorist maybe he should read Mark Twain, Mencken, Thurber, and watch more Seinfeld stand up routines. There’s a dearth of humor today. We need more funny people.
Report comment
Trump is arrogant and loud. Both essential qualities in any presidential nominee nowadays. 🙂 If someone is soft spoken, modest, and wise he or she won’t get elected.
Neither “arrogant” nor “loud” is sciency enough. These are descriptive words a novelist, philosopher, or clergy member might use. Not good enough for psychiatry.
Not enough to judge someone’s bad deeds or character now. We have to tag at least a couple polysyllabic “diagnoses” onto him/her to impress people with how “sick” aka hopelessly evil/stupid the individual is and how super scientific we ourselves are.
Weird how a few think Trump Derangement Syndrome or Anxiety Disorder are “mental illnesses” when most people regard them as jokes. Shrinks haven’t voted these disorders into existence yet, therefore they don’t exist. And probably never will since they aren’t Latin based enough to sound sciency.
Not that “mental illnesses” are a social construct or anything. *Cough. Cough.* 😀
Report comment
Hmm. Your definition of empathy sounds a little different from mine, Michael. That’s okay.
Basically you’re talking about getting inside someone’s head to outmaneuver or manipulate them instead of offering TLC? Like a detective or criminal investigator?
I can see why these people would not help the suffering.
I have read literary critics who lost the joy of reading literature for its own sake and only enjoy picking it apart to support their theories. Some professions do that–not to art or literature–but people.
Report comment
In a true totalitarian system we would not be posting this. 🙂 Big Brother would not allow it.
Report comment
I think a lot of mysterious chronic pain conditions like FM and CFIDS may stem from malabsorption or poor diet. Lack of magnesium can cause a lot of symptoms linked to fibromyalgia. Iatrogenesis also may play a role. Many of these conditions were rare or non existent 50 years ago.
Report comment
A lot of us got angry at Dr. K. when he wrote an article claiming drugs aren’t responsible for helplessness among the psychiatrized but institutionalization was. Institutions and infantilizing can be disabling, but minimizing the harm drugs do upset us.
Dr. K. did explain that he believes brain damage occurs but not directly from long term drugging. Rather brain atrophy from being shut off so long. Not sure why that makes a difference, though I think there’s more than just an atrophy like couch potatoes get.
Report comment
Why do we think a totalitarian dictatorship is the answer?
Absolute Dictators and Pharmapsychiatry will just become best buddies in the end. Like the pigs and piggish humans at the end of Animal Farm.
Already we can see this happen with the bribes (lobbying) that got Murphy’s Law passed.
Report comment
I don’t get it.
Report comment
Lack of community or people caring about each other despite our cool toys.
Report comment
Yes, but if I choose not to buy liquor from a bartender he has no legal right to lock me up and have six thugs jump me to pour whiskey down my throat. And he doesn’t claim his scotch is insulin for diabetes.
Report comment
I heard you can get a more natural form of it at health food stores. A friend of mine swore he “needed” it and went to the doctor’s instead (for some reason.) W. threw a fit at the doctor’s so he wound up in the hospital.
Saying you wish you were dead around a doctor is a great idea if you want to get locked up. At least he’s benefiting from the placebo effect. It’s his lucky rabbit’s foot. Too bad he can’t believe in his own abilities but believes whole heartedly in his “bipolar” label. 🙁
Report comment
Isn’t Mary Jane sexist too?
Report comment
Coffee is a natural feel good drug. Much safer than any SSRI. And they take it away when they lock you up.
Report comment
K
Report comment
To quote Iago the Parrot from Aladdin: Why am I dying of not surprise?
😛
Report comment
Nope. My mind is affected but it’s a gut problem. A (real) physical illness.
The very term “mental illness” is tortured hermeneutics if you consider. And when a comic or article argues “What if we treated physical illnesses like mental illnesses?” the author is unwittingly pointing out that a difference exists.
Report comment
I keep hearing: Fat is ugly. Fat is unhealthy.
Guess what? So is cancer! Maybe we could lower cancer rates by yelling insults at folks with massive tumors and leukemia.
Eating right and exercising are factors within our control. Doctors need to focus more on those. Not saying we should pitch the scales but the genetic lottery plays a big role in our weight. Some research suggests by 50%.
And doctors who push psych drugs should keep their mouths shut if their patients grow morbidly obese. I have finally lost 35 pounds (from 350 to 315) only after getting off my “cocktail.”
Report comment
Ever heard of The Midnight Disease, a book by Alice Flaherty?
I was drinking the psych kool-aide when I read it but thought it weird she called hypergraphia (strong desire to write) a disease. Szazs mocked her pretentious nonsense as only he could. 🙂
Report comment
Reminds me of Hemingway’s story. He killed himself largely because ECT destroyed his brain so he could no longer write.
Report comment
I am very low in micro nutrients–especially iron, vitamin B12, and magnesium. This makes me feel very gloomy as you can guess.
My problem with malabsorption probably stems from decades on psych drugs. But no doctor will dare even speculate such a thing out loud. I found this in an article about SSRIs from the UK Guardian.
This won’t be put in a TED video any time soon!
Glad I am off and hope I can heal to some extent.
Report comment
Will Hall I want to thank you. That documentary you, Daniel Mackler, and others put out called A Meeting of the Minds gave me the courage to come off my drugs. I had hated how they made me think and feel for decades but feared morphing into Ms. Hyde without them.
I saw all of you allegedly “mentally ill” folks smiling without the glazed, emotionless faces I saw in day treatment and my own mirror every day.
(And for those who feel you need your meds, sorry. Not bashing you. But it is a side effect I have seen and experienced. They lied–or were ignorant–when they called my flat affect a “symptom” instead of a side effect.)
I also want to thank you, Will, for those coaching sessions where you gave me helpful advice on dealing with all the painful emotions as my numbness wore off after 25 years.
Report comment
Oldhead I will never take neuroleptics again. We need to call them that since sometimes they made me more “psychotic” with weird ideas and even hearing unreal things I never heard before taking them.
But let me play devil’s advocate. These drugs “work” by shutting down part of the brain like pain killers do. And your weed apparently did. If someone had painful thoughts they might be willing to override part of the brain to stop it.
They never worked that way for me–though 6 mg of stelazine took the edge off my anxiety so I found the courage to come out of my shell as a nervous college freshman. IF Dr. M had tapered me off the stuff after a month it might have turned out okay.
Unfortunately Dr. M. was clueless and knew less about the drugs he pushed than a pharma rep with only a high school education. He knew zilch about tapers. (In all justice few doctors do. Even the real kind.)
Report comment
Don’t forget lies Dragon Slayer. 🙂 Like escaping Plato’s Cave. Or the Matrix–by rejecting both pills. Lol.
Report comment
Look who’s delusional. The psych staff. Lol.
Talked to a psychiatric social worker about graduate school–how my over-protective mom didn’t want me to go. 20 minutes later she told my folks they “needed to cut the apron strings and let Rachel get her GED.” Someone wasn’t taking notes. 😀
Report comment
Never technically sterilized. Not necessary in my case. Sigh.
Psychiatric labels are a bear. Good luck getting treated like a human being ever again.
Report comment
There are people here I will never respond to again because of their insults. I’m all for answering questions but I draw the line at personal attacks when I try to be nice.
Other psychiatric apologists have been annoying but never acted this horribly. (Except GMYK.) If they harass me by posting insults under my comments two can play the moderator game.
Report comment
Hmm. I thought he got a job and moved out of his mama’s basement. Lol.
Report comment
Toxic is as toxic does. We used to have a guy named Give-Us-Your-King who showed up to mock us and tell us we should all be locked up and sterilized.
Judging from the comments here, GMYK’s legacy lives on. 🙁
Report comment
I’m all for this for willing volunteers who are fully informed about the risks.
Good luck on your project Dr. Campbell. Unlike many psych doctors you are interested in patient input–after diagnosis. I hope it helps people.
Report comment
Good point, Frank!
My problem with psych labels 1. They cause people to assume horrible stuff you have never done. Guilt by association. 2. It’s like calling someone a “liar” instead of saying “you lie.”
In an ordinary court of law you are tried for actions you have committed. Then you are only punished till you have paid your debt.
According to Mainstream Psychiatry you are the crime. You can never pay the debt for the sin of existence.
Like something out of Kafka.
Report comment
And all you literalists–who can’t figure out what metaphors, similes, or conceits–and who think my quotes sum up what I imagine RR was actually saying are 100% wrong. 😛
I was pointing out how most “diagnoses” are insults. And btw, some people ARE ugly, stupid, and fat. Not sure how a life long diagnosis can help.
Yes, obesity is a diagnosis. But if you lose weight the diagnosis changes. Unlike psych “diagnoses.”
Report comment
It depends on who you’re talking to! But I agree. 🙂
Report comment
I would rather go out for a cup of coffee with a BPD person than some self righteous sanist any day.
I don’t meet the criteria for BPD myself and got my diagnosis from a case worker. Not a doctor. Yes, that happens.
But some insecure, nasty folks need BPD bogey men to hate on. Even though others hate THEM for being “mentally ill.” They’re the kind I would want to avoid meeting.
Funny how this inner nastiness/lording it over others permeates circles like this. Like the problem of “colorism” Charles Chessnut described.
“I may have dark skin but it’s lighter than yours.” All the while society sneered down on them all.
I fled the system so that kind of fixed the problem.
Report comment
The drugs caused my problems. They turned my depression into full blown psychosis after keeping me awake for 21 days in a row.
I have friends in the system still. And they are much nicer than SOME commenters here!
Report comment
Removed for moderation
Report comment
She never had kids. Her life was over at 17.
She was a sweet woman. Her occasional looks of agony would melt a heart of stone.
Funny how Grandpa loved her. Many others did. You never met her, Vanilla, but you sound like you assume she deserved to be tortured.
Treating a harmless madwoman worse than a convicted felon. Real compassion!
She never hurt anyone the way the shrinks hurt her. But since they took responsibility for controlling others’ actions that makes them Super Sane! No diagnosis=perfectly sane (saintly.)
Report comment
Removed for moderation.
Report comment
Child beating can make kids tone down “bad behaviors.” This worked for the Victorians Dickens depicted so scathingly. Oliver Twist was a “good little boy” because Mr. Bumble beat him so much.
Torturing criminals might help them “be good.” Remember the premise to A Clockwork Orange? And most psych victims aren’t even criminals.
Not all changes from torture are good ones. My great aunt quit acting as flagrantly weird. But she was a broken woman who hid in a backroom at grandpa’s till she died. Often I saw a look of terror in her eyes. Grandpa hated psychiatry and warned me off my drugs. If he can see me now he is smiling. 🙂
I will forgive the men who ruined my life. But they did ruin it. Denying the damage they have done would make forgiveness impossible. How can you forgive someone who never hurt you?
Solzhenietzin and Viktor Frankl grew as a result of the atrocities they faced. But they were atrocities.
The establishment meant it for evil; God meant it for good.
Report comment
I’m very angry at the lying quacks who “help” alcoholics and other drug addicts by turning them onto the “good stuff” they push. Glorified dealers in lab coats!
These trusting souls have no idea there are trading one drug addiction for another.
Report comment
Gasp! Out, how can you DEMONIZE those poor oppressed psychiatrists? They’re the only group in Western Civilization who knows what it is to be persecuted or discriminated against. 😛
Sob!
As lowly “survivors” we can never appreciate the stigma and oppression they face all the time. Stigma affects them and no one else.
They live in voluntary poverty like members of a religious order to show love to others. They never take vacations either.
*Sarcasm. Like you couldn’t tell.*
Report comment
Funny. Everyone says, “Be yourself.” Unless they think you’re mentally ill. Then your Self is a disease to be destroyed if it kills you.
Psychiatry is popular with the mainstream because it helps them box the world into two neat categories: the good sane and the evil insane. Psychiatrists don’t like the words “good” or “evil” cause they don’t sound like real SCIENCE. But their “diagnoses” are really moral judgments. And bad ones.
Moral judgments used to be based on good or bad behaviors. Psych labels often have little or no bearing on moral conduct at all. Once they call you “schizophrenic” or “bipolar” everyone assumes you do stuff you quit doing long ago or never did to begin with.
According to psychiatrists “bipolars” are drunks, promiscuous, unpredictably violent, and have 0 empathy. Many folks these science guys brand “bipolar” are teetotalers, celibates, visit each other in the hospital, volunteer, and lavish love on the one creature–a cat or dog–we can love because psychiatry has segregated us.
A friend was dying of kidney failure. Two of us at the center offered our own kidneys since they wouldn’t put a worthless SMI on the transfer list. That very week Germanwings occurred and some psych doc got on TV to reduce “stigma” by telling the public how “bipolars” just are that way. No love or empathy is how they’re born. S’cuse me?
That idiot was full of it! Like some white guy claiming to want to eradicate racism by explaining how everyone of African descent is incurably evil because they were born inferior.
Hmm. No empathy…
You mean like deliberately driving a bunch of people insane without their knowledge or consent so you can write a book bragging about it?
You mean cheating on your wife with a younger woman but keeping it hushed because you’re a big shot congressman?
You mean routinely lying to patients and selling them mind altering drugs by calling them “life saving medications” they’ll die without?
Mother Theresa they ain’t!
But rest assured they are all perfectly good or sane because they say so. As medical experts on morally acceptable (sane) behaviors they have diagnosed themselves the epitome of Moral Rectitude. All that is sane and virtuous.
Bwa ha ha! 😀
Lest I be accused of DEMONIZING shrinks–only they’re allowed to malign entire groups of people they don’t even know–yes, not all are reincarnations of Josef Mengele.
Some actually want to help folks. The help they offer is like blood letting for cholera patients but that’s incompetence. Not evil.
It is noteworthy how the shrinks who rise to the top seem devoid of conscience though. The nicer ones don’t wind up leading the APA. And the APA sets the tone for psychiatric practices in America even though there can only be one Dr. Pies, Dr. Torrey, Dr. Lieberman. (Always a bright side.)
They also go on TV to lie to the public about the sick and stupid but very dangerous SMIs. Yeah, the “crazies” are dumb as a box of rocks AND diabolically clever at murdering people. Not sure how both characteristics can apply but the experts say they can. And they are never wrong.
Dr. Biederman is never wrong. He has diagnosed himself as practically God. Sounds like a down-to-earth, well-balanced individual. 😀
Report comment
Churches used to sneer at psychiatry. Now they unquestioningly preach about “scientifically proven chemical imbalances” during assembly.
Yay! The latest state-of-the-art proven scientific theories from the early 1990’s. And the APA didn’t buy it then. Pretty scientifically advanced of these churches huh? Hip and current like the trendy music they play.
If you point out the damage done you’re a meany and probably have secretly joined Scientology as well.
Many preachers honestly want to help those they think have brain diseases. BUT others just want annoying people–often hurt by other church members–to shut up and take psych drugs. Even if you do–I speak from experience–they’ll treat you worse than a convicted pedophile and do all in their power to freeze you out.
Way to go pro-psych church! Aren’t you a bunch of humanitarians? And scientific sounding too. Like the techno-babble from Star Trek. Don’t throw out your shoulders from hours of patting your own backs.
Rick Warren needs to ask himself, “Do the mentally ill have souls?” His treatment of those labeled SMI makes me wonder.
Report comment
The easiest way to gain notoriety as an unpopular teen is to go on a shooting spree. Wrong on so many levels!
Talking about them is unavoidable. But the news media insists on publicizing the name and face of the bullied turn bully everywhere. Wish they would stop.
Report comment
If you commit a crime it’s in your best interest to be tried as an ordinary criminal instead of opting for a shrink to declare you not responsible for your actions.
1. You will only be tried for crimes you have actually committed–not crimes you MIGHT commit in the future according to the clairvoyant shrink.
2. The sentence will be shorter.
3. They won’t forcibly drug or shock you. As punishment these are considered torture and our legal system would not allow them.
Report comment
Thank you Doctor. I wish there were more members of your profession like you.
Every MD I visit unquestioningly supports psychiatry. Why is this?
Are they afraid of challenging an accepted medical specialty? So ignorant they actually believe drug ads? Or a little bit of both?
They have found a lot of things wrong with me but refuse to speculate on the cause or advise a plan of treatment. Heart arrhythmia and malabsorption are my main health issues. Both caused by psych drugs used long term.
They will diagnose and refuse to answer any of my questions but send me home. Like they know something I don’t–or they hope I don’t.
Report comment
Ironically psych drugs cause inflammation. And long term SSRI use blocks your ability to absorb micronutrients according to research not widely publicized. It’s in the UK Guardian and the article also says the drugs are ineffective at best.
I keep eating yogurt/kimchi/saurkraut/kevita/other probiotic crap to no avail, Will need supplements forever. At least I’m off the drugs causing the damage.
Blood tests have revealed I’m low in iron, magnesium, B12, D3 and about everything else. The doctor wouldn’t hazard a guess as to WHY.
Report comment
Seek out psychiatric “help” and you’ll lose all friends, support, and guidance. You don’t need compassion just drugs cause crazies don’t have feelings. If you express pain you’re faking it and manipulative. 😛
My dorm mom told everyone in my dorm to shun me. Said only trained professionals should talk to something like me.
Psychiatry isn’t about healing people but vaccinating society against those they deem walking diseases–the “mentally ill.” Real doctors don’t appear on 48 Hours to demonize their patients.
Remember Dirty Harry? The way they see it we’re the disease and they’re the cure.
Do you feel lucky punk?
Report comment
The stigma is not just against those who reject pills but those who take them and get worse. By deteriorating you are showing how psychiatry does nothing but destroy, steal, and kill. The devout disciples of the Church of Psychiatry will not forgive you.
I gave psychiatry a try. I’m thankful to be alive after 25 years. 🙂
Report comment
Bwa ha ha ha!
Report comment
CC do you think they under-emphasize nutrition and supplements to offset drugs because they are reluctant to acknowledge the effects?
Report comment
Shirley McClain made a movie of herself shouting, “I am God!”
I am NOT God. Nor would I wish to be.
Report comment
Psych labels stick for life and people will live down to them. They caused Matt’s suicide.
Report comment
Vanilla your father was an abuser. Nuff said. I hope you got away from him.
It feels like I’m being throw human beings on a garbage heap by these “sanists.” Cause it seems THEY think THEY’RE “normal” and “mentally healthy.” If throwing people away and telling them they’re toxic and need to commit suicide is “sane” I hate their sanity.
I have a BPD label but I’d never do that to another person, “toxic” though I may be. 😛
Ostracism and solitary confinement work wonders on reforming people.
Report comment
I have a friend who does this with lithium. He swears by it.
I’ll say, “W. it hurts your kidneys.
W. says, “I drink a LOT of water.”
So basically he’s keeping the lithium from building up to effective (harmful) levels in his system. Long live the Placebo Effect! That’s what really works for him.
Report comment
Vanilla, the person called a “narcissist” is not, in my view, suffering from a disease. They often seem to gladly assume this role to control and hurt others. And they almost NEVER are diagnosed either RR. Their “mentally ill” kids are instead.
Because Mrs. Brown is a gas lighter. Usually she goes to NAMI and dramatizes about how her “mentally ill” kid emotionally abuses her. Boo hoo. Mrs. Brown doesn’t need a diagnosis but to acknowledge how evil her actions have been and the harm she does others. She never goes to a shrink though. Not on her own behalf. Nothing wrong with her after all. Everyone around her is sick and crazy.
And the shrink never diagnoses her either. Because he knows nothing about human beings or relationships but sees them as robots and chemistry experiments to control. Mrs. Brown is his kindred spirit so she must be the epitome of sanity.
I couldn’t make it through the entire comment by RR. It seemed to be accusing “Borderlines” of being horrible human beings who need to be avoided. I found it pretty traumatizing.
It seems that some people are completely oblivious to what some of us have gone through. And labeling abuse victims “incurably evil” so everyone can ostracize them doesn’t help! One of MIA’s writers killed himself because he never got over being labelled BPD.
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can kill the spirit!
Report comment
Toastmasters is recent. That happened 27 years ago when I was a nervous college freshman getting over years of sexual harassment from high school.
My phobia is gone but I’m terrified of people learning about my past. So I try to keep all relationships as surface as possible.
I no longer act “mentally ill” but at 45 I have no past. At least none that doesn’t embarrass me.
No family, no career history. I’ll have to stay in the shadows for the rest of my life.
I feel like Richard Kimball in The Fugitive. I know I’m innocent but the authorities assume my guilt and everyone assumes what they say is the gospel truth.
Keep running. And hold everyone at a distance.
Man am I lonely!
Report comment
That doesn’t tend to work. When he couldn’t help me with my crippling social phobia my therapist told me a shrink was my only option. 🙁
Looking back exposure therapy might have helped.
Report comment
Knowing what I know now about psychiatry I could not work for them in good conscience even if they offered me a bigger salary than the psych guy makes. And they don’t. 🙂
More like minimum wage for going around telling others, “Hello I’m Rachel and I am a severe mental illness–whoops! have a severe mental illness.”
This prestigious, lucrative post would have me encouraging others to be grateful consumers–obey orders without question even if they kill you–and fight “stigma” by telling the public about their assigned identity as a severe mental illness…carrier.
Report comment
Not sure what role inflammation and poor diet played before my ramble in Psychiatric Wonderland. Since coming off my drugs I suddenly have a lot of symptoms that come with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and I am sensitive or allergic to many things that never bothered me before.
Autoimmune problems?
Report comment
Thank you Megan!
How can you, or anyone, NOT personalize such cruel words and actions? 🙁
The thing your therapist should have told you was that your husband’s behavior was unacceptable. His deeds made him a bad person. No one deserves this treatment.
It’s safe to assume there are others your husband treats poorly–employees, fast food workers, and others “beneath” him. Sadly for you he vented all that was darkest and worst inside him on the one nearest him. His wife.
I hope things are better now.
Report comment
Some people do get clingy and manipulative–often from abuse and loneliness. They certainly need to change their behaviors. But the labels are cruel and hopeless.
If someone labeled BPD stops acting this way does she really deserve to wear it emblazoned on her shirt like Hester Pryn? She may be the victim of abuse rather than the abuser. Does she deserve to be shunned for life?
I was clingy because all my life I had been told no one could love me since I was fat, ugly, and later crazy.
If someone slips and break their leg break the other one. And never let the bones get set. Serves ’em right for being clumsy!
Report comment
Sadly many people promoting psychiatry won’t even bother reading the article, Julie. Even fewer will question it after reading it.
People in our society love to have “experts” think for them.
Report comment
Just the ones controlling the industry. Dr. Goetzhe calls them Silver backs like the head apes that run everything.
Report comment
Steve, even more than corruption in a medical industry I have found the public naivete discouraging. Glad some are waking up to smell the java.
“Evil will always defeat good. Because good is stupid.” Dark Helmet from Space Balls.
Report comment
Members of that profession have psychic powers you know.
They take part in our legal system. The Pre-Crime Unit. Lol.
Remember The Minority Report? Only instead of actually preventing murders from happening they just say they can and get innocent people locked up. Because these law abiding citizens MIGHT commit a crime someday.
They can also predict suicides with these awesome clairvoyant powers.
Real science folks! Fortune tellers, mind readers, and psychiatrists.
Report comment
In America more whites get “treated” because we urge each other not to be afraid to seek out “services.”
My African American friend says those in her subculture view psychiatry with suspicion. For what it’s worth, their churches and other social structures tend to help the poor and misfits.
White churches tend to shun “weirdos” without plenty of green for the offering plate. Not all though. The one I attend now treats me kindly and encourages a developmentally delayed man to attend.
Ideally churches would be interracial; not “black” or “white.” I’m hopeful that will happen soon. We need to unite.
Report comment
I’m glad you were able to find some relief Joshua. 🙂
Report comment
It’s generally NOT that the counselor laughs, “Broo ha ha! I will gas light this helpless individual and make sure she never recovers!”
More likely the counselor honestly wants to help, but even if he/she looks beyond the diagnostic label the client cannot because the new identity gets drilled into them through day treatment/clubhouse/NAMI meetings/case worker sessions/10 minute interviews with psychiatrist/controlling family members…The client lives down to this new identity. Yes, the drugs bring some relief–at least short term–for many. But they dull emotional pain by shutting down ordinary brain functions. This makes it harder to make intelligent, mature life choices.
The therapist sees the clients continue to do stupid, immature things and gets frustrated since he’she has a personal investment though it is primarily professional. The doctor at the center says the “meds” seem to be working. The client is compliant–perhaps even forcibly injected–so there can be no doubt.
Why isn’t the consumer happier or more productive? Why can’t they find gainful employment, make friends, or get along with family members?
Perhaps the therapist will say things like, “Only babies want a change.” It’s easy to imagine how this can happen. One of my therapists cried out in frustration, “You just aren’t trying hard enough! The medications can only do so much.” He was one of my favorites too.
You weren’t the only one confused and frustrated Kevin! 🙁
Report comment
Stephen, I’m “coming out” as a psych survivor. Right now I’m fighting to start a career in my mid-forties.
I’m fighting psychiatry with the Truth and educating the public.
Oldhead sneered at my talking point that, “Psych drugs do not work.” He said they work perfectly since all people want to do is keep us passive and stupid.
For abusive family members, the nasty shrinks, certain politicians, and others this is true.
But many are convinced these drugs are life saving medicines that are good for you and slow brain degeneration. Why else would loving family members encourage others to “take their meds” while watching in horror and amazement as they grow crazier, sicken and die? Why do so many of us take these poisons religiously–scared of missing a dose?
I didn’t WANT to take addictive drugs and rot my brain. Many family members love the “mentally ill” child or spouse. Even those who join NAMI often do so out of desperation. The friend who introduced me to NAMI left after her sister died and the organization seemed okay with it since she died “meds compliant.”
The truth needs to be known. Some people are already seeing how worse than useless psychiatric remedies are. Hard to deny what you see with your own eyes. People get worse–not better. Crazier, not sane or able to care for themselves.
People deserve to know the truth. I’m taking it to faith-based centers. I already have connections. And they are a form of social gathering folks still attend.
Report comment
Well Shaun there was a reason I attended day treatment regularly though not court ordered. Segregation is less painful than isolation. Thus lepers and other outcasts form communities.
I got tired of the put downs and depressing talk by the case workers running the show. Telling us we were hopeless. Calling us “kiddos” and acting surprised when I politely asked them not to.
Pretty lonely now. Trying to fix this.
I still can’t work so I tell folks I have Chronic Fatigue Disorder. This answers the question, “What do you do?” But they don’t treat me like a cross between Forrest Gump and Norman Bates.
Making friends at church, the library, and a local chapter of Toastmasters. As a human being–not a disease!
Report comment
Not my idea. There’s a movie by that name. 🙂
Report comment
Chaya, if they ran those tests they couldn’t sell as many drugs.
Report comment
Frankly RR, I find your remark insulting and i bet others do as well.
“He wouldn’t have called you an ugly, worthless moron if it didn’t apply to you.”
Getting “loved ones” labeled BPD is popular with some truly evil people. The wife MAKES her husband beat her before MAKING her shrink “diagnose” her as irredeemably “toxic.”
There are videos on Youtube popular with misogynists about EVIL women with Borderline Personality Disorder who should all kill themselves. Doesn’t sound like the wives are as evil as the normal husbands does it?
Report comment
Semantic nitpicking, but words have power.
A mental illness cannot exist in a literal sense. Your imagination cannot be inflamed nor your empathy infected.
Traumatic brain injuries are real and effect people’s behaviors. These are PHYSICAL though. Not mental in origin.
If they found a physical cause for hallucinations, bizarre beliefs, crippling fears, and extreme mood swings that would be a physical illness lodged in the brain (a physical organ.) Not a mental illness at all.
Report comment
Well “mental illness” really means idiosyncratic behavioral patterns. Say it’s a social construct. Social constructs are real–though not in the same way as brain tumors.
Report comment
Reminds me of a scene from a sit com.
“How do you sleep at night?”
“On piles of money with beautiful women.”
Report comment
And its a safe bet a lot of shrinks would be “diagnosed” with Narcissism, Sociopathy, and Psychopathy. 🙂
Report comment
Not going to attack biological psychiatry frontally? Okay, we won’t lobotomize it. Lol.
Sorry Mickey. Couldn’t resist cracking a funny.
“Biological psychiatry” is a redundant term since all psychiatry offers now are drugs and shocks which are nothing but biological. There are a few mavericks (who write for this site.) But the APA does not like them. A more accurate term would be mainstream psychiatry.
Report comment
To any Hindus or other believers in Karma I know this is an over-simplified version of this belief and it isn’t always used to beat up on those who are down-and-out.
Report comment
I was puzzled too. At first. Maybe that shows I’m used to the MI System where we got asked last of all. If we were even asked.
The order should be reversed. Due to spell binding, friends and family can notice odd or bad changes in psych drug users before they do.
The medical experts should come last of all. Despite their advanced degrees and superior knowledge of physiology/chemistry/etc. they tend to be timid. Upsetting the status quo is never a good career move for a guild related professional. The American Psychiatric Association is a guild.
The psychiatrist who prescribed the drug that wrecked my life was totally ignorant of the side effects. He refused to even peruse the pill manual where he could have found them. Not sure why people like him should have their input valued over those who have suffered tardive dyskinesia or watched loved ones grow rapidly worse under the influence of all those “safe and effective treatments.”
Report comment
Sadly Shaun, once folks in their lives find out they have an SMI diagnosis, they will have no support system outside the community center at all. 🙁
If they’re lucky, they’ll get away with a mild label like depression or anxiety disorder. My sister-in-law and mother are diagnosed with clinical depression and keep reminding me of how inferior I am with my “bipolar” label–which no longer fits and was drug induced to start with.
Report comment
Yes. But they won’t find it at the local mental illness center, sadly.
i don’t know anyone I hate enough to recommend those places to.
Report comment
Well said, Oldhead! Which is why I refuse to see any mainstream counselor again.
They may help “normal” folks sometimes, but once they know you have an SMI label they keep reminding you of the “fact” that you are hopelessly insane/incompetent. Depressing!
Report comment
Shrinks are agin’ life coaches–and other non-psychiatrists–labeling folks as well. They’re scared it will show how easy “diagnosing” someone else is.
It’s like “diagnosing” someone with ailments such as Stupid, Ugly, Slowpoke, and Weirdo. Just a bunch of fancy pants name calling. The DSM is a thesaurus of insults. “Scientific” of course. Lol.
Report comment
Many–maybe half–of the Psalms sound like the writer was “depressed” and “paranoid.” Jeremiah is one unhappy story. Job is pretty gloomy till the last chapter. And Ecclesiastes is a summary of existential angst that even the wealthy suffer.
Smiley religion is actually a modern invention linked to the Prosperity Gospel. Pray for health, wealth, and a soul-mate. If you are sickly, poor, or lonely it’s your own fault because your prayers weren’t good enough or blessings are withheld due to sin in your heart. More like the Hindu concept of Karma than anything in Judaism or Christianity.
On the positive side, there are more unhappy people than I realized. I am in a position to comfort them now. There’s a time and place for Sadness too.
Report comment
YIS, years ago I felt caught between a rock and a hard place. Even as a child of 7 I suffered from gloom for months at a time. I just was and am “too sensitive” to emotional pain. Sometimes this frightens me because it makes me vulnerable to cruelty. Animals are smart enough to hide their pain. I cried too easily and made an easy mark for bullies.
My religious subculture frequently condemned my low spirits. These were–they claimed–a lack of joy and proof of how great my sin was. Yep. Unhappiness is a sin. Telling someone this is sure to cheer them up.
Psychiatry offered a hope. If something was wrong with my brain this overwhelming guilt at my low spirits and not fitting in to the cookie cutter/Stepford wife role might be excused if not exactly fixed. Normalizing myself was what I really wanted.
Psychiatry “helped” by telling me I was a biologically defective monster. The Gospel of Psychiatry. The only “good news” is for the “normals” who can build their egos by mocking and maligning all the crazies.
Sadly, I’m more alone and miserable than ever. At 45 it’s too late to start over.
I won’t kill myself. But why am I alive?
Burnt out husk of a former human being.
Report comment
Little Turtle, I sort of agree with you.
Go to a regular doctor to get tested for anemia, thyroid problems, or even diabetes. (Blood sugar affects our thinking.)
Talk to a friend, trusted relative, clergy member, or life coach/guru type for possibly messed up thought patterns.
Go to social functions for the social part.
Notice who isn’t there and isn’t even missed? 🙂
Report comment
Community Mental Illness Center
(Manufacturing madness since 1991.)
We put the psycho back in psychiatry!
😀
Report comment
My therapists were a confused and confusing bunch. The messages they sent were mixed.
“You are hopelessly sick with a brain disease. This makes you helpless and powerless over your own actions. Your only hope is lots and lots of ‘medicines’ so you won’t think or do bad things.”
“You really should have a better self esteem. You need to take responsibility for your actions and act like an adult.”
“But always remember you are totally helpless. Your dreams will never come true because you’re rotten to the core with your diseased mind/soul which is actually a brain disease. Your only hope is to act like a child and always do exactly as you are told and never question doctor’s orders.”
“You need to think more clearly. Make better decisions since you are an adult.”
“Your brain is the enemy. Take some pills to kill it.”
Are you confused? Me too.
The more intelligent, open therapists–who cared–seemed to realize the conflicting messages they kept presenting and would get frustrated. 😛
Report comment
Sounds like psychiatry’s current push to end “pill shaming” by labeling those with bad reactions to drugs as hopelessly insane. Gas lighting at its finest!
Report comment
So beautiful to see this kind of thing.
At a forum for abuse survivors I suggested love–not psych “remedies”–were what depressed and traumatized people need. It was awkward since they didn’t want to seem mean. (Who wants to deny battered “mentally ill” wives love?) But they KNEW psychiatric drugs worked and the chemical imbalance was an undeniable proven scientific fact.
I got irritated and left the forum. But not before posting a link to Dr. Pies’s article about the harmless “metaphor” well informed psychiatrists like to use.
Report comment
Stephen Gilbert, rejecting the drug paradigm can be career suicide for a psychiatrist. Breggin almost had his license taken away and Kelley Brogan is maligned as a “hysterical” female. Sexism is alive and well in psychiatry–knotting it together with sanism helps.
Report comment
Didn’t say Breggin is INDIFFERENT to dollars. Just that he cares about people more. 🙂
I’m not indifferent to dollars myself.
Report comment
Poor nutrition and brain damage may play roles. But further damaging the brain and drugs that sap the body of nutrients are not the answer to either!
Another physical cause is known to be the psych drugs themselves. But that’s heresy in the Church of Psychiatry.
Report comment
You got that right!
Report comment
My Mom was not a “NAMI mommy.” I sought out psychiatry and made my Faustian pact because of guilt from my numerous imperfections.
Mom hated me for my diagnosis. She took advantage of it though to turn me into her project or doll. If I succeed in escaping she will be devastated. Tough.
Report comment
Hugs. You’re not the only one life has beaten down Josh!
Report comment
Got my BPD label when I grew suicidal over a break up and my mom repeating, “He couldn’t handle being with a bipolar like you.”
Unworthy of love!
I have given up on any sort of love or intimacy and shut myself away from humanity. Even friendships are impossible. 🙁
Eventually I hope to earn $18,000 a year writing from home. Then I can have a modest place without vermin swarming or my mom’s constant put downs and monitoring. I could own a car and drive quietly to buy my groceries, occasionally visit the library and attend a large church where I won’t be noticed much. They would only make fun of me for being an “old maid.” Better being invisible.
I have a lot of love to give–even now–but no one wants it or me. The only folks who want me around are emotionally abusive.
I have a few superficial acquaintances at church or the library but they’ll treat me with disgust or horror if they know my past. So I put up on a mask and never let ANYONE past my front porch. Most aren’t even allowed there. I dress to blend in and become inconspicuous.
Not into looking attractive. Lost cause. Don’t say anything but superficial nothings. Smile a lot but avoid laughter or tears. Act as much like everyone else as possible. Blend in like a chameleon.
Different is socially unacceptable. I would do almost anything to be like everyone else and fit in. Different is bad, wrong, unlovable, and ugly. Different is frightening.
I always say weird things when I open my mouth so I’m very guarded and careful when I talk. I don’t hate myself but everyone else would. So…I do my best to be fake. That’s what everybody likes.
Report comment
Recovery is psychiatry’s kryptonite. Every person who gets better by not “complying” and saying “no thanks” to being treated like a child makes them horribly threatened and angry.
This is why they go around slandering the “untreated” and forcing drugs and shocks on them. Mass shootings are wonderful–as far as they’re concerned. A boon for business.
People getting well, going on to lead productive lives, embarrass and even scare them. Much better to keep them maimed and useless and sometimes dangerous to others. Bizarre murders by the “mentally ill” are great PR for psychiatry.
Report comment
There was a myth about a king named Procrustes who forced every visitor to sleep in his bed of iron. The bed was the length of the perfect person according to Procrustes.
If the guest was “too tall” the host would chop off his lower extremities and he would bleed to death. If “too short” the king would put him on a rack and pull him asunder. By golly the guest would fit no matter what!
One day King Procrustes made the mistake of inviting the hero Theseus home. Theseus had brains as well as brawn. Hercules would have been happy just throttling the bad guy. But Theseus believed the punishment should fit the crime.
He made King Procrustes fit his own bed by adding 6 inches to his height.
You can probably see where I’m going with this. The psychiatrist is Procrustes; his iron bed is the DSM 5.
Psychiatrists should be forced to take tests for every last “illness” in their monstrous volume. Especially the Personality Disorder clusters.
Report comment
And lots of blood letting too. Surprised they don’t still view that as an effective modality of treatment since anemia keeps people passive and quiet. That’s what “treatments” are all about; recovery is not what psychiatrists want for us.
Report comment
Nope. We don’t feel pain since mental illness renders us incapable of suffering. Ergo if we weep or openly grieve we must be manipulative. They respond by diagnosing us with Borderline Personality Disorder.
If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?
Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice.
Report comment
There may well be biological causes for some extreme states. Vitamin therapy helps a minority of cases. But until they know WHAT causes the problem doctors cannot fix it.
If they actually found a neurological cause for “madness” it would be the death of psychiatry. Neurologists would take it from there. Shrinks would retire or get real jobs.
And psychiatry has ruined my social life. Lonely and isolated thanks to that pseudo-science.
Why is there an anti-psychiatry movement but not an anti-cardiology movement? Hmm.
Renowned cardiologists don’t make television appearances to demonize those with heart problems. 🙂
Report comment
Insight was a jab at a psychiatric term. The opposite of the so-called disease of “anosognosia” or disagreeing with the label your quack assigns you.
A consumer with Insight is helpless, subservient, childish, unquestioningly believes everything the shrink says and unquestioningly does everything they are told even if it kills them. And it has killed some friends of mine. One was 29.
Report comment
I’m not surprised more discoveries are being made. Nor am I opposed to research or “bashing” them Little Turtle.
It was probably a neurologist who discovered this. As far from psychiatry as an astronomer is from astrology.
Pretending to know things they don’t or even know to be falsehoods and committing random acts of violence on bodily organs under the guise of medical treatments–these are unconscionable.
Enough unbiased research would prove how much senseless damage psychiatry inflicts. There is proof that structural disorders in “bipolar” brains are caused by psychiatry. But these studies aren’t widely publicized.
Bring on the research. But stop the Lies.
Report comment
“Mental illness” is not viewed as a neurological issue nor a cognitive disability but incurable, irredeemable moral degeneracy. Don’t believe me? Look at the list of “symptoms.” Many are character flaws.
There are three major problems with medicalizing bad behaviors.
1. You write people off as hopelessly depraved and encourage them to quit trying to become better people. Saying, “Evil is hard wired into your DNA” may excuse nastiness on one level, but it teaches everyone that striving to become morally upright is impossible for the Designated Criminal Class.
2. Because “Mental Illnesses” are random clusters of thoughts/feelings/behaviors harmless cat ladies get labelled “bipolar” just like Ted Bundy though they are kindly, law-abiding, and have no significant traits in common with him. Pick 6 out of 11 and you’re “bipolar.” Ted Bundy and Aunt Betty may have just one trait in common, but according to Psych Experts they are exactly the same and should be punished–I mean treated–accordingly. This also understandably leads to “stigma.”
3. Since every illness requires medicine you try to solve character issues with mind altering drugs. How is that supposed to work? If mind bending drugs turned people into model citizens we wouldn’t have groups like AA or NA. Heroine addicts would never commit violent crimes. Wrong on so many levels!
Report comment
Some are bad men and bad wizards. I mean doctors.
“Real science folks!” 😛
Report comment
Learned Helplessness=Insight
Report comment
I have no ethical problems with counseling as long as it’s between consenting adults and free from abuse. Counseling does not help you if you bear the SMI label though since they view you as hopeless and remind you of the “fact.” Self fulfilling prophecy!
IMHO, a good life coach could probably do at least as much to help you through rough life choices. Which raises the question: Why get a doctorate or MSW with intensive certification when a 12 week course could work just as well?
Report comment
Chaya, psychiatry “works” by destroying its “consumers” according to Dr. Peter Breggin. Breggin knows medicine, but unlike most shrinks he cares about people more than dollars.
The drugs work by disabling the brain. Let’s assume–as Jaffe says in his review of Anatomy of an Epidemic–all odd thoughts, feelings, and behaviors stem from neurological problems. That still would not excuse what psychiatry does.
Take Brittle Bone Disease. We all know something is wrong with the bones. Does that justify taking a crowbar to that person’s limbs? That’s what psychiatry does to the brains and nervous systems of those they “help.”
Report comment
There need to be more local authorities supervising these projects too. Often they are funded by some bureaucrats who never even visit. They send a flunky or two. Everyone cleans up to hide the roaches and mold. The flunkies leave. Back to normal. Continue receiving fat checks for visiting the office 8 or 10 hours per week. 🙁
Report comment
Psychiatry is not based on reason. It appeals to people’s emotional needs for security, relief from guilt, chronic misery from life problems, and low self esteem…it DOES help all undiagnosed folks feel good about how “sane” they are. And it makes them feel safe because they can protect society from all the Evil SMI.
The answer? Ridicule shrinks. Make them into villains, buffoons or both. Online skits and ebook stories. Satirical/troll sites. Shrinks’ credibility is based on discrediting and demonizing others. Discredit and demonize them till they become laughing stocks and no one listens to their lies. Psych lies only have power if you believe in them. Like voodoo curses.
Report comment
You had Diabetes 2 and no one told you? Grr!
Report comment
I’m sorry. I know what it’s like to be full of out of control rage. Psychiatry was powerless to help me. I finally took things into my hands and did something odd by our society’s standards.
I got help from a clergy member and got the nasty stuff out of my life. Pretty grueling and scary. My choice though. The preacher did it for free. More respectful than any shrink I have dealt with.
This might not work for you though. And till I managed to go drug free it was still hard to keep my temper. Catch 22. 🙁
Report comment
I hear you, Joshua7.
Are you sure you definitely cannot control your rage? You may be right. But it’s worth asking yourself this question.
I feel my anger at least as intensely now off my drugs. BUT ironically I can harness it for good now–or at least keep from hurting others. (By hurting I mean saying cutting things, harsh criticisms, etc. Not violence.)
Report comment
Cocaine is actually more like ritallin.
Report comment
I was thinking about Lord Voltemort or the wizard from The Smurfs. Oz never transformed people into monsters. He was a carnie guy.
Report comment
Chalk it up to chronyism. As Roy Rogers said, “We have the finest politicians money can buy.”
Big Pharma has deep pockets.
Report comment
I won’t be readmitted because I no longer consume! 🙂
As long as I don’t act too weird/creepy in public and freak folks out or call some hotline: Boo hoo! I want to kill myself! I have a plan!
If I did either of the above it’s safe to assume I’d get sucked down the rabbit hole again.
Report comment
I had one good psychiatrist who wanted to help his patients. Dr. Guilley. My guess is he had been sold a bill of goods. Probably Dr. Pies would call him uninformed.
Dr. G. was very excited last time I saw him. He had discovered that by putting patients on the smallest amount of drugs possible they rapidly improved. I feel sorry for those like him. If and when they realize the truth they must really suffer from their consciences–though they are far less guilty than those in the know. The “well informed” guys.
Something tells me Dr. G. has left conventional psychiatry.
Report comment
Self reliance and family, friends, and community. Along with drugging you, psychiatry “helps” by alienating your nearest and dearest.
Like some evil wizard, the mainstream psychiatrist transforms you from a human being into a hideous monster that everyone recoils from in fear and loathing. He does this by means of incantations (“diagnoses” from the DSM) and potions (“meds.”)
We need to stand up to this Wizard. The Truth will break his evil spells!
Report comment
At the end of The Hiding Place, Corrie ten Boom signs a paper saying she was treated humanely in the Nazi concentration camp. She consoles herself with the knowledge that she will tell the truth later. And she did by writing this book.
Report comment
My solution? Say you get “treatment.” Then don’t. One good lie deserves another.
HUD housing is often a slum. They know they can cut corners on basic maintenance and still get government checks from piling warm bodies in. Because of impossible standards of cleanliness–even for many not on “cocktails” of disabling drugs–the slum lords can blackmail tenants into accepting horrible living conditions.
My place is swarming with vermin. I can’t even eat here anymore. It’s that bad. Management refuses to do squat and blames me for the problem. Only dirty folks attract roaches; so you must be dirty. My housekeeping is now a 5 out of 10. It used to be a 1, but this is the only place I’ve had this problem. When I was moving my stuff in I saw a big cockroach climbing the wall. So it was like this when I got here.
Report comment
Yes psychiatry has been thoroughly debunked and discredited…but no one off this site seems to know that. Everyone I talk to believes in the chemical imbalance “metaphor” without any question because they saw it on a drug commercial. And TV wouldn’t lie.
Googling articles by the American Psychiatric Association is way too HARD man! And you gotta read them too. They use those real big words. Double plus ungood!
Idiocracy meets Brave New World with a little 1984 thrown in if you get out of line by thinking too much.
Report comment
I think my nutrition was poor due to constant dieting in my teens. And 25 years of psychiatric drugs depleted it further. Neuroleptics rob the body of magnesium.
Report comment
I believed in Christian doctrine, but thanks to the drugs I couldn’t integrate them into my heart. My animal mind was dumbed down but functional. My soul–ability to love, dream, hope, pray–was in a coma. I wanted to kill myself since my soul felt dead already. 🙁
Thank God I got off those pills. They did not make me a kinder, more loving, generous person after all. Man, did they pull one over on me. Sucker that I was.
Report comment
Dr. Charlatan has written numerous scientific papers in support of the discipline of iridology. He is fully supported by the College of Iridologists where he earned his advanced degree. The journalists trust him because he is an expert in the field of Iridology and has many credentials and awards from the Center for Phrenologists, Iridologists, and Alchemists.
A little academic incest going on at this mutual admiration center? 😀
Report comment
A bunch of rich, powerful “doctors” afraid of becoming obsolete when the truth prevails. And a society of wooses who consider emotional pain not just intolerable but an aberration. Plus the shrinks can prevent mass shootings and suicide with their Psych Magic. They provide the sheep with a sense of security–unfounded though it is.
Ever read the play An Enemy of the People by Ibsen?
Report comment
I’m low in magnesium, iron, B12, D3, and other stuff. I don’t know if this caused my depression and anxiety–I was always trying starvation diets as a teen because adults told me no one could ever love a fatty.
Of course the “meds” sapped my body of nutrients too. Years on neuroleptics have really sapped away my magnesium and other good things. Oddly enough, the psych folks banned vitamins. Those are bad for you. Lol.
Report comment
Glad your nightmare ended so soon, Michelle. 🙂
I’m sometimes anemic too with low levels of B12, D3, and magnesium. I find monthly injections of B12 help immensely along with a daily magnesium capsule. Sometimes I take vegan iron supplements. Ferrous sulfate tablets upset my stomach.
Report comment
Bippyone, it’s highly inconsistent–and hypocritical–for psychiatrists and other MI “experts” to advocate for the “right to die” for those they brand hopelessly subhuman. Yet they force these same people to be locked up for threatening suicide. What gives?
My guess is they get paid if they assist the “patient” in the Happy Departure but if the victim takes things into their own hands they don’t.
There’s also the issue of control. I read how the communists locked up dissidents and tortured them and often killed them but took pains to prevent suicide.
“I’ll say when you had enough!”
(btw, I did not say ALL. But there are SOME who hold both positions, absurd and contradictory as they are.)
Report comment
Psychiatrists never take their own tests I suspect.
Notice the lack of those diagnosed with Narcissism, Sociopaths and Psychopaths receiving “treatment.” Psychiatry is about punishing harmless eccentrics to absolve the worst people of the horrible things they do with their manicured hands, faces clean shaven or carefully made up, and smooth voices they never raise because they never have to.
It’s okay to be evil if you observe social niceties and keep your nails clean. 😀
Report comment
I was a “good” consumer for over twenty years. They promised me that if I took my “meds” and did what the “experts” told me to without question I would become well enough for gainful employment and my personal relationships would improve. Instead my messed up thinking alienated friends and family and made working impossible. I couldn’t even clean my room!
When I found out the truth it made sense. Crack, meth, and heroine don’t make people better friends/employees/spouses/etc., but they do provide short term benefits by relieving emotional pain.
After being drug free for a year I’m keeping my apartment clean, making friends outside the MI System, and looking for part time work. And I blog more regularly too.
I’m very angry. I never would have taken street drugs to cope with my problems. By lying to me about a non-existent chemical imbalance they tricked me into going against my conscience and turned me into an addict.
A lot of other people would feel the same way if they knew and accepted it. They have the right to know too.
Like selling cocaine to a diabetic by pretending it’s insulin!
Report comment
Thank you for this informative article Dr. Ploderl and Dr. Hengartner.
When it comes to Pharma Psychiatry there is a lot of ignoring research that doesn’t support the popularly accepted theories. This is not the only branch of medicine/science where this occurs, but it may be the worst.
Report comment
And I started out depressed and anxious. The shrink put me on Anafranil and I didn’t sleep while I was on it. For 3 weeks.
Denied the drug was to blame. All my fault of course.
My sister had an allergic reaction to penicillin but no one punished her for it or labeled her a dangerous menace to society.
Report comment
“Bipolar 2” is the legend. I no longer have mood swings or ACT “bipolar” but it doesn’t matter.
“Once a thief always a thief,” says Jalvert in Les Miserables.
“Once a Bipolar always a Bipolar,” says the unmerciful shrink.
Report comment
“Binary distinctions between ‘service users’ and ‘professionals’…are often unhelpful….”
I read a YA novel back in the 90’s. Winter of Fire.
A race of slaves called the Quelled were forced to mine coal for the Chosen. But the Quelled and Chosen looked alike.
So…every Quelled child at age five would have his/her forehead marked with a red hot iron. This branding, creating a binary distinction, was not helpful to the Quelled. But the Chosen found it very helpful indeed.
Report comment
I am not sure I fit in either Frank. During a revolutionary war there is one side more or less happy with the way things are and the other wanting a change.
During the American Revolution there were the Tories as well as those who wished to kiss the Crown of England good bye.
I have nothing against the grateful consumers but they embrace the status quo and love the Way Things Are. What can they possibly have in common with our movement? They already have havens in NAMI, SAHMSA, and the DBSA. There’s a reason escapees of Ye Olde Madhouse don’t join these organizations.
Report comment
Glad we agree on this Shaun F! 🙂
Report comment
I dislike “day treatment” and “clubhouse” as much as the drugs. They have helped to segregate me from society and humiliate me in the eyes of the community. Often they would force us to volunteer and go on field trips while notifying everyone around that we were “special.”
The case workers told us we should only date within our groups because “normal” people couldn’t understand us. All SMI folks are exactly alike after all. Ha ha.
Never again!
Report comment
Omnipotent moral busybodies will go to great lengths to defend the ruined lives in their wake.
My parents have moved around a lot till my dad recently retired. My community mental illness centers kept asking why I moved with them despite my controlling, smothering mother.
Answer: I was afraid to be left to the tender mercies of the mental illness makers with no family to go to bat for me. Seriously.
Better to live with Fay Dunaway from Mommy Dearest than with the MI System. Ugh!
Mom became concerned when I came home and sobbed and wailed in the shower from the abusive, cult-like practices I endured in “day treatment.” Afterward I found out cults use this method called “The Breaking Point” where the Leader of a group will sick all the other members on the newbie or dissident to tear them down and “rebuild” them as the Leadership sees fit. 🙁
Report comment
A social worker or therapist told me they deliberately keep us in a state of “low grade depression” since that was easier than stabilizing us.
My view? They like us that way since we’re easier to control–between pesky fits of longing for death.
I had a job coach–“mental health” of course–laugh at me and call me delusional when I proposed working for the local paper. Yep. Can’t let those crazies get manic and uppity so they forget their place!
Report comment
Tsk. Tsk. Are you saying the honest-to-gosh, legitimate, hard science of psychiatry is only a social construct? How horrifying!
It’s perfectly legitimate. If Dr. Quackenbush thinks you have psychotic mania you are mentally ill. If he eats a high protein breakfast (Yolanda–the pharma rep hasn’t brought his warm doughnuts yet) or you don’t go to see him you are Sane. That’s all. 🙂
Report comment
Their “diagnoses” are really fancy pants insults like 5 year olds calling each other names.
Only instead of “stupid,” “dummy,” or “slowpoke” they call people “bipolar” or “schizophrenic.” Then all the other kids laugh at the insulted ones and don’t play with them.
Real SCIENCE folks.
Report comment
It’s called “common sense” because it defies hyper-educated interleckshuals so obsessed with their own thoughts and speculations they lose touch with reality. 😀
Too common for them cause they’re super geniuses. Lol.
Report comment
Loonier than Minnesota in the spring. Many shrinks could easily qualify as “Sociopaths,” “Narcissists,” and “Messiah Complexes” if they would subject themselves to “diagnosis.” But who will label a fellow shrink?
My case worker accused me of Borderline Personality Disorder. She actually meets more criteria for it than I do. Meets guys in AA or bars and moves them into her house three days later. 😛 At least she did when I knew her.
Report comment
Yes. Psychiatry is a great boon to abusive parents and partners.
Also, as I have ranted on this site before, shrinks make no distinction between Ted Bundy and the eccentric, kindly cat lady down the street. “Bipolars” are all alike after all!
Report comment
I agree.
Report comment
Social identity. You mean like injecting a bunch of youngsters with the virus for leprosy and forcing them off so they start their own colony? Better not to become lepers at all, IMHO.
Report comment
“We are not defective or even that different.”
Sadly public perception trumps reality.
The Masses need “Mental Illness” as a trope because it explains evil. “We’re all a bunch of humane, altruistic saints. Except for the Severely Mentally Ill. If we ‘fix’ them and lock them away somewhere our Society will be perfect. Violent crimes will cease. Cause only the Severely Mentally Ill ever hurt or kill people.” 😛
Report comment
They hurt the “mentally ill” for money. If they’re not dangerous the real question is: How much money can we make slowly poisoning this person to death? Will they endanger our racket?
Report comment
Doctors don’t care if we live or die. Why should judges?
Guilty until proven sane. And then still guilty. That damned diagnosis strips you of citizenship and humanity itself.
Report comment
For what it’s worth, the MI Center’s continual screw ups on my drugs so I kept going into withdrawal made me finally decide to come off them. No more physical dependency!
That wasn’t the ONLY factor. Heart and kidney problems played bigger roles. Plus I always hated the deadening effects. But it did give a sense of urgency since I couldn’t tell when the paper pushing flunkies of the Bureaucratic State would mess up again so I couldn’t get my fix for a week.
Report comment
ADHD only helps you live longer if not properly treated. 😀
Report comment
Why not give the kid Mountain Dew instead?
Or better yet, allow for periods of vigorous exercise throughout the day. Let the kid wiggle till the worms come out.
No money in exercise though. Plus doctors would make less $$$ from thinner children without Type 2 Diabetes!
Report comment
Misandry is not the answer to misogyny.
Report comment
Why can’t repeated blows to the head with a wooden mallet be anti-psychotic? Less brain function=less “crazy” thinking. Ta da! 😀
Report comment
Joining oppressors to become a minor oppressor yourself is a common social phenomenon. In Man’s Search For Meaning Frankl tells how the Nazi captors chose some of the prisoners to bully the others in exchange for food and cigarettes. Often they were meaner than the guards themselves who had nothing to prove.
Human nature I fear.
Report comment
The comments make me sick. I wish I knew they were all made by MGOW since that would be a favor to women. Most likely they “diagnosed” their exes to punish them. With or without a shrink. “My EVIL undiagnosed bipolar ex” is a forum rant staple these days. Both sexes.
Not enough to say, “My ex was a fat, stupid, ugly cow who wasted money.” Nope. Way cooler to say, “My ex was a narcissistic sociopath.” Makes you sound so Smart and Scientific and justified in treating the monster horribly.
Do you think we could post links to this guy on NAMI and other sites while extolling his “science”? Wonder how long before anyone would complain. Cause…”It’s real Science folks.” As “Dr.” Torrey says. The DSM 4 is a Real Psych Diagnostic Manual. His misogyny might make the NAMI mommies clutch their pearls. Lol.
Report comment
I don’t log on as much now. Oldhead’s not the only one who’s ticked.
And he is not locked up. MIA does not have that power.
Only shrinks who pretend to be soothsayers with the power to predict violent crimes before they occur can lock folks up sans due process. Like John Anderton in The Minority Report. Played by–irony of ironies–Tom Cruz. 🙂
Report comment
Bruce I know you well enough to know you’re no “Psych Head.”
But I think you may be a leetle too charitable.
I’m scared of doctors now. Since they all unquestioningly believe psychiatry’s lies they must either be liars with total disregard for their patients’ lives or dumber than a box of rocks. Do they spend 11 years in higher ed to mindlessly accept whatever they read off drug ad pamphlets?
My guess is they know–on some level–they are killing us very slowly but don’t care.
Report comment
To quote Homer Simpson: “Just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I don’t understand.” 😀
Report comment
Good Eric. I live out in the community. My pastor’s wife and others ask why I don’t work.
(There are job opportunities galore here. I actually found one as a cashier at Dollar Tree and almost fainted several times. Broke down crying twice. Finally quit.)
I tell people like the pastor’s wife that I have fibromyalgia. They don’t give you the cootie treatment for that.
Report comment
Glad you were smart enough to look beyond brain drugs for help, Kerstin. 🙂
Report comment
I managed to cure my clinical depression by leaving the Mental Illness Factory known as psychiatric treatment.
No longer depressed or pessimistic. After more than 15 years grappling with suicidal desires.
Finally hopeful and I feel happy sometimes. I owe it all to disobeying “doctors'” orders. 😀
Report comment
Fear of death…yes. We all have to figure out a way to move beyond it. But first we must face it.
Not sure those called “mentally ill” are in any more denial than the rest of society. Just the denial takes a less socially acceptable form.
Report comment
Thanks Julie. I will do so.
Have been putting off seeing a nephrologist. Don’t know what my GFR is. Nervous about the dialysis since they keep “mental health” weirdos nearby to monitor you for depression so they can cram pills down your throat on a moment’s notice.
Leave me alone! Unhappiness is not a disease you quacks. 😛
Report comment
Lack of support is horrible. My poor physical health and poverty forces me to live like a hermit. Still better than “day treatment.” Ugh.
Report comment
There is stigma. Stigma is a badge of shame causing discrimination.
The Lord High Stigmatizers brand people with a mark showing them to be incompetent/dangerous. They educate the public on how to deal with those Evil People they have branded.
Then they get on their moral high horse when prejudice ensues. Are they really that clueless?
Report comment
If “insight” causes someone to accept craziness and indulge in bizarre, out of control behaviors that could be a very bad thing–though they will more likely take their drugs. My psych drugs clouded my thoughts and feelings making me crazier than ever.
When around my friends they marvel at how well I’m doing. My secret?
1. Gradually tapered off my uppers and downers. Slow and steady wins the race.
2. Rejected my diagnosis. This helps me act normally. Surprising, huh?
Report comment
Shrinks are deluded and dangerous. Humor the madmen.
Report comment
“Bigotry is based on fear….”
And psychiatrists utilize that fear to promote themselves. They only whine about “stigma” when it makes unhappy people think twice before paying a visit to their friendly neighborhood “mental” illness maker.
Some have the audacity to claim that only THEY can know what “stigma” is. That it hurts them more than those they stigmatize.
Like a war criminal at the Nuremberg Trials crying that those condemning him were being anti-Semitic. Pretty dumb.
Report comment
Wish we could shame doctors who tell lies, and then shame patients to defend their precious pills/medical reputations.
That life-saving med would not have kept you awake for three weeks straight if you weren’t hopelessly insane to begin with. You deserve to be punished for the crime of “treatment resistance” by being put on 3-6 drugs and publicly humiliated until you die at 53 or younger!
Report comment
Well said, Alex!
Report comment
SSRIs can cause depression. Don’t forget the so called “antidepressants!”
Report comment
More of a Madeline L’Engle than a John Lennon myself. Not a rebel. A stickler for law and order till I discovered the System surrounding me, thanks to “Mental Health,” was rife with corruption.
Forced into the roll of societal outcast/madwoman by the cruel, careless “mental health system.” Serves me right to have my life destroyed at 20 because I was dumb enough to ask for help.
Full of grief at my blighted life. 🙁
Nothing wrong with my brain till those quacks messed with it. Why? To become filthy, stinking rich by forcing tax payers to pay them $2,400 a year for using me as a guinea pig. Plus the lavish trips to exotic islands/cruises and other kickbacks paid by Big Pharma companies while folks like me drop like flies.
Now my kidneys may be failing.
Report comment
I can see that happening. 17% of shrinks are atheists. These guys like to argue Darwin’s Law. I think Christian shrinks must leave their Christianity at home.
Dr. McSadist forbade all talk of God or quietly reading Bibles in the lobby. She locked people up in solitary because they were crying quietly with the head down. She said they were praying–proof of sickness.
Yet she claimed to be a “good Catholic.” If “good” means her religion never made her uncomfortable I would agree. But Christianity is supposed to afflict those comfortable with harming others.
Report comment
You could try what I did. Leave psychiatric “services” like “day treatment” and therapy if you aren’t court ordered. Ask nicely if you can get your “meds” through an MD instead of a shrink.
I moved to the middle of nowhere. Off my drugs altogether. Leaving infantilizing “day treatment/clubhouse” really helped my morale. If you feel down you don’t need to be told how hopeless, sick and crazy you are day after day. That was very depressing. Not enough drugs to numb that sorrow away.
Report comment
Sorry. Trying to be diplomatic and meet Amy where she is.
Report comment
Shaun F, a lot of folks need drugs to function because they’re addicted. Heroine addicts can become horribly sick if they suddenly can’t get a fix. That doesn’t prove heroine is a life saving medicine.
Addiction to prescription drugs is a major problem in our society. Doctors lying to patients is behind it. I’m angry to see little old ladies at church wax eloquent on how “antidepressants” helped them; they know because they feel bad without them. “Dr. Quackenbush told me my brain was sick. He’s a wonderful man who would never lie.”
Inexcusable and unconscionable! Like diagnosing patients with diabetes and selling them heroine by calling it insulin.
Remember Dr. Farid Fata? More doctors are like him than most people admit.
My mom is on two SSRIs and swears they help her “nerves” since she feels anxious when she misses a dose. Smokers make similar claims about cigarettes.
Report comment
Oldhead there are SOME individuals so “out of it” they can’t take care of basic needs. Is a nice place in the country run by compassionate non-psych people going to hurt them? Most likely the TLC will bring them back to reality. You can’t gain their consent because they can’t communicate. And yes these are a tiny minority. I have known only 2 or 3 in my life. Most folks at “hospitals” or psych centers are okay except they’re sickly from being drugged up and unhappy at how family/friends have cut them off due to their psych labels. 🙁
Otherwise only voluntary folks would stay at these places. That might pose a problem if too many folks crash there and refuse to go back to life again….
Report comment
SomeoneElse, the drugs and label Psych Services gave me caused me to become morally worse not better.
Despite the suffering withdrawal has caused (my iatrogenic sickness was already there; going off the numbing drugs just made it more noticeable) I get along better with everyone now. My conscience and empathy have reawakened.
Bet I’m not the only person made less moral by psychiatry! 🙁
Report comment
Don’t come around my place. I have 4 cats I’ll sick on you. 😀
Report comment
I am not insulting the writer of this piece. She has done a fine job of summing up the content of the article. Not fair to kill the messenger.
Psychiatry cured me of perfectionism by totally ruining my life. Damaged by years on drugs and publicly humiliated by my badge of shame, I live in poverty, isolation, and chronic pain.
Why would anyone want to ruin their career, health, alienate humanity, and die before 55? I wouldn’t recommend “mental health treatments” to my worst enemy.
Nuff said.
Report comment
I had at least 2 kind ones though. They meant well. Unfortunately their tools were flawed.
Report comment
https://www.livescience.com/1823-psychiatrists-religious-physicians.html
Interesting article.
Report comment
B-b-but…it makes him sound so much smarter than us. Like a real, freakin’, honest-to-gosh, sciencey Ex-Spurt.
He knows what the Limbic system is. He knows the parts of your brain.
He can’t fix it. But he can really change it. Not like the SMI need the thing anyhow!
Any change is an improvement. At least you’ll have sacrificed your brains to the Worthy Cause of SCIENCE.
Report comment
Hi Amy. Your comment near the end about how you fear missing a dose or missing a refill resonates with me.
The way psych patients are trained to view those pills as magical talismans is amazing. For years I felt the same way.
But, once you come off them you realize you had what you needed inside you all along. The “meds” aren’t responsible from your achievements. You are. You did it IN SPITE of the chemical ball and chain!
Glad you are coming off them while you’re still young. 🙂
Report comment
They can only “diagnose” us by words we say. How come they then use this same “diagnosis” to discredit our words ever afterward?
The drugs are all based on changing feelings anyhow. Assuming it’s consensual. So, if a “consumer” says “This pill makes me sad, sleepless, irritable, angry,” the shrink is an idiot to poo poo them.
They know how they feel better than you do, you quack!
Report comment
Speaking hypothetically, Frank. 🙂
Report comment
The nastiest shrink I ever endured was a female. Total sadist. I don’t use the term lightly. None of the others I knew would qualify.
I only saw her laughing after she had reduced a patient to tears. She seemed to derive a quasi-erotic pleasure from inflicting pain on her “patients.” Back in the 90s she told everyone how wonderful shocking people was–though she preferred to do it on unwilling people.
Even a judge was so shocked at Dr. McSadist’s cruelty he ordered her to stop shocking a family friend. Poor Jean finally went home.
Report comment
None of the psych staff risk being shot. Just fired. They must make great money.
Report comment
Dr. Robot, I presume. 😛
Report comment
It’s common in oppressive systems to single out certain members of the underdogs to groom as boot licking minions to the overlords by keeping those beneath THEM in line.
Often the minions will be nastier than the overlords themselves.
Report comment
Like Josef Mengele these “doctors” who try brutal, destructive experiments on children will never be put on trial in any human court. God will not let them off though.
Report comment
All they do is steal, destroy and kill.
Report comment
They lie ABOUT you too. Libelous slander called diagnosing.
Creeps.
Report comment
If he knew he was wrong and was truly sorry he would have changed your “diagnosis.”
I want my kidneys back.
My life sucks so much from crippling pain, poverty and horrible loneliness it’s a good thing I don’t have much time left. :'(
Report comment
Funny how many Christians prefer the idea of brain disease to sin. Gone totally materialist and bio determinist without even knowing.
I have a crabby uncle. His brain injury has taken his original nastiness and multiplied it by ten! I talked to a Christian friend. She said he must need “meds.”
I said, “Janice, what he’s doing is a sin. He acts that way by choice.”
Yet she insisted it was not sin, but a brain problem “meds” would easily fix. Sigh.
Throw out the communion wafers and wine. Bring on the soma and Dixie cups of water. Brave New World, here we come. 😛
Report comment
The Mental Illness System is a great big caregiver with the thing called “Munchausen’s by Proxy.” Get ’em sick and never let them recover.
Report comment
Here’s an idea. Dr. Pies is highly indignant about the nonsense going around about the chemical imbalance in the brain “metaphor.” He and other well-informed professionals find this view personally insulting.
The solution? Have Dr. Ronald Pies come out with a PSA to educate the public. This way he can save the credibility of the Psychiatric establishment and establish his own legacy as a “mental health” expert.
“It has come to my attention that many believe the myth promoted by the Pharmaceutical company ads on television. There is actually no chemical imbalance known to cause ‘schizophrenia’ or any other ‘mental illnesses.’ We don’t know what causes them to be honest. But we know what we’re doing helps ‘mental ilness’ since we have more folks with disabling ‘mental illnesses’ than ever…
“The truth is the ‘chemical imbalance in your brain’ was a harmless practical joke we cooked up during one of our annual conventions. We thought it would make a great gag to tell this story to a few ad executives. Unfortunately those low brows high jacked this amusing metaphor and misinformed the public. Tsk tsk. Very uneducated of them.”
Hey, Dr. Pies! We’re waiting!
Report comment
Tell a lie often enough and long enough and you will believe it. Even when those around you realize it’s a lie and you’re full of it. 😛
Report comment
Including the physical trauma created by long term druggings and shocks.
Report comment
It would be a loss to those Pharma/psych crooks. To the economy as a whole it would though. 🙂
Report comment
My dream is a network of survivor coaches. Job coaches, relationship coaches, fitness coaches, financial coaches, etc. to help people flee the Psych Crazy Makers and start life over after 30 or 40.
No good business model though. These fugitives would be penniless. And because of draconian laws it would have to be underground.
XXXX psychiatry and all its filthy lies!
Report comment
Komarek I can only work now because I fled the MI System. Not only did the drugs disable me (slept 10-12 hours a day) but the MI folks coerced me into Day Treatment and Case Manager BS to eat up 25 hours a week leaving me no time or energy to work.
They actively discouraged us from working or bettering ourselves. Told us we were sick, helpless and crazy and could never amount to crap.They tore down the smart ones and belittled me for hoping for financial independence. Called me delusional.
Can’t wait to tell Social Security I don’t need their XXXX hand outs now. Like they WANT us economically dependent.
Lived in several cities and towns. Not sure WHERE you live, but it must be far away. No way would the MI System here work with me to help folks, since they want us all crippled and dependent. So I stay as FAR AWAY from those people as possible. They would do all they could to sabotage my independence and drag me into their infantile Clubhouse grown up baby-sitting crap.
I’m actually a capitalist. But crippling and keeping people from employment is unsustainable long term even if the crooks behind it make $$$$ for another decade or two.
Why would they want their livestock to escape? Asking them for help would be suicide for my financial hopes!
Report comment
Might be diabetic. Lol.
And I was “good.” Till I found out the whole thing was based on a monstrous fraud.
Like Edmund from The Count of Monte Cristo I didn’t graduate. I escaped by playing dead. Wish I could find a small fortune now like he did.
Report comment
The need for love is legitimate. But if you expect to get this need met with an abusive spouse or institution you’re fishing in an empty well.
Report comment
Did Edmund Dantes graduate from the Bastille? What kind of degree did he need to become a count?
Being a “good mental patient” helped me, Lavendar Sage. Because I was responsible about taking my “meds” and obeying other orders–I don’t rebel for the heck of it–they let me go without bugging me when I moved away.
“Rachel, be sure to have your caseworker set you up with a new ‘mental health’ center.”
My CW was overbooked. She mentioned it once; I told her I had set things up myself. She said, “Great.”
I relocated. My folks think my “meds” are needed but hate Day Treatment and other crap. They let me get my pills from a GP nearby. I only took the stuff I needed to keep from whacking out while I tapered.
Have my own place now and a work from home company offering me a job that will pay better than my SSI if I work part time. Subbing/tutoring ESL came in handy after all, despite the MI folks’ efforts to make me attend “Day Treatment” or “Clubhouse” instead.
Off all my pills except for Levothyroxin now. Yay! Over 10 months. My kidneys may be failing. Glad I didn’t wait any longer.
Report comment
It is what people seek when they enter it and why they refuse to leave.
Like a woman who refuses to leave her abusive lover. He has cut her off from friends, isolating her from the world and making her dependent on him alone.
Every now and then he brings her flowers and candy. The rest of the time he’s a monster.
But she quit her job long ago. Economically, emotionally, and socially dependent she clings to the illusion of his love for her.
Something similar happens when you enter the MI System. You are segregated by your labels so your only relationships are with other MI members. Shrinks and therapists will frequently forbid your seeking gainful employment. Constant put downs and reminders of how sick and crazy you are undermine whatever shreds of dignity you still might have.
Psychiatry is an abusive relationship.
Report comment
Bwa ha ha! That’s good, Betterlife.
I’ll take your committee over the APA any day! Bet they make better conversationalists.
Report comment
Thank you, Knowledgeispower.
My dad has never read Szazs but he mentioned once in frustration that they wanted me to be their grateful slave and not get uppity.
The social workers/case workers/housing directors/clubhouse leaders/other flunkies of the MI System gave me more grief than the shrinks themselves as far as outright abuse. Shrinks and NP’s just give you your pills. If you don’t flip out they can’t even tell you’re tapering I found.
The interfering, nagging b*tches who micromanage your life are horrible! They either have no interpersonal skills or don’t waste them on the “mentally ill.”
Report comment
Alex, I love your “vampire” analogy.
They don’t just use people as cows to milk. Cows NEED milking after they calve.
They suck helpless, suffering victims dry of vital juices. Killing them by degrees and fattening themselves in the process.
Report comment
Someone Else I’m afraid I have kidney disease after 25 years on multiple drugs. I’m leery of doctors. Do you have any advice?
Report comment
Decoupling our judicial system and psychiatry is essential. Till we do so, the anti-psychiatry movement has no chance.
Report comment
Good article Corinna! I have given up on working in “The System.” I see more hope for the recovery model as an underground network.
Number 5 on your list is what I always hoped for in the “Mental Health” System and never found. Pretty angry when I found out the truth about the “meds” they push.
Often I was yelled at or belittled by caseworkers and social workers (occasionally therapists) for wanting to do stuff like marry, have a career, or go to graduate school. Despite my rigid “meds compliance” and “good insight” my uppity attitude frequently led to emotional abuse.
Have you experienced nastiness for teaching recovery?
Report comment
Littleturtle I am anti-psychiatry. However one of the reasons psychiatry came to power is a lack of compassion and emotional support in our communities and families. With its “diagnoses” psychiatry only breeds further loneliness and alienation.
So yes psychiatry does need a replacement. In a word–Love.
Report comment
Okay. My email address is r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com.
Report comment
You mean like the dysfunctional family with one kid (the SMI labeled one) who serves as the “scapegoat” while others play the “golden child” and “winged monkeys” and other roles assigned by the cold, selfish “narcissist” at the center creating the whole drama?
Report comment
Just going off processed sugar would help kids who are restless or anxious.
Report comment
Hip hip hurray!
Too bad they don’t shut down the countless others equally bad.
Report comment
“People need to get over this celebrity thing.”
You got that right, Oldhead!
Report comment
Or we could spoon feed him pharmapsychiatry propaganda till he goes on the road using the Scientology platform to promote psych drugs and make shrinks look guilty by association. Lol.
Actually that approach might be easier to pull off.
Report comment
More apt to be Pharmaceutical scammers in this case. The doctor prescribing could well be a GP.
Report comment
Dr. Moncrieff is probably busy. I would highly value her opinion if she could give it.
But a lot of laypeople here know about drugs. What do you guys think about the new drug to target Alzheimer’s? A friend of mine swears it has improved the cognitive abilities of a friend of ours suffering from the disease. (I haven’t seen or talked to the latter for a long time.)
That sounds exactly the opposite of how neuroleptic or antineurological pills help by dumbing you down and numbing you. Of course they said they have detected excess build ups in dementia victims’ brains. That might explain the ability to help them. If it’s true.
Report comment
I don’t so much view MIA as a movement in itself as a forum where 2-3 separate movements can dialogue.
There’s the Anti-Psychiatry Movement.
Then the Critical Psychiatry Movement which can be subdivided into the Moderates and Conservatives. The Moderates believe psych labels are empowering and psych meds can be life-saving, beneficial, nutritious and character building but no one should be forced to take them. The Conservatives oppose beatings and lack of hot meals and beds in psych wards/institutions but think things are otherwise fine.
Consider me anti-psychiatry. Do any other like-minded folks know why we can’t start our own website or forum? They aren’t that expensive to set up.
Report comment
In Western culture few true (non-iatrogenic) cases of madness exist. No more psych drugs would reduce “mental illness” rates by 90% or so.
Report comment
Well many of us are viewed as “crazies” already.
Report comment
Will remains uncertified despite earning graduate degrees. I think his advice on coming off psych drugs and personal non-compliance play a role in this decision.
Report comment
“All animals are equal. But some are more equal than others.”
Animal Farm by George Orwell.
Report comment
“It seems the movement is being too PC, too careful, too conservative.” I agree Stella.
Are you referring to the movement here or a larger one outside MIA?
I don’t defend, let alone advocate for Scientology. But they have far less credibility and power than Psychiatry. I don’t see courts calling in the inner circle of Scientologists for help making making decisions. Nor do Scientologists have any LEGAL right to lock someone up, inject them with toxic amounts of LSD and other drugs, damage their brains with electric volts, etc.
So Psychiatry is a much bigger threat than the kooky cult they go around accusing every doubter of joining.
Report comment
Yes, people here can be rough on those who say they need psych pills. No one has ever been banned from this site for saying this though.
And I’ll bet if one of those of us who are angry at psychiatry posted on Healthy Place, NAMI or some other popular site for the SMI:
“My drugs damaged my kidneys and heart along with diabetes that won’t respond to insulin. I’ll be dead soon thanks to treatment.”
“Thanks to psychiatry I went psychotic and had horrible mood swings causing me to squander my life savings and act bizarrely to those around me. Now my family has disowned me.”
“Thanks to psychiatric pills and labels–along with being forced to attend years of group therapy and day treatment–at 50 I have never been gainfully employed.”
“My psych drugs made me impotent. But that’s actually good. Because they also made me morbidly obese, caused disfiguring tics, along with poor communication skills from feeling numb. And no one wants to date a ‘bipolar-schizo.’ Might as well be given the Bob Barker treatment.”
“Thanks to psychiatric treatments I’m hideously disfigured by tardive dyskinesia and pace uncontrollably for half the day. I’m a miserable recluse and my emotional problems are worse than before.”
These people would be censored and booted off in no time flat! Can’t have pill shaming after all. Screw their lived experiences. 😛
Report comment
I agree, Frank. Diversity of race, economic class, background, experiences is not only good but inevitable.
But without unity in purpose we’ll achieve nothing. Like a rowboat with half rowing one way and half another. Unless emotional support is all we are after and unending healing.
How do you define “critical psychiatry” Emily?
I consider myself anti-psychiatry, though I believe folks should be allowed to make a choice as long as no deception is involved. For example, selling heroin to a diabetic by calling it insulin is not an informed choice on the diabetic’s part to use the drug.
I was lied to for years. Never involuntarily locked up. Always took my drugs. Had “good insight” by never questioning my “healers” or the stigmatizing labels they slapped on me. I was deceived and violated. Not a real choice at all!
Report comment
Was reading an article on maintaining kidney health. Ran across a section on kidney failure warning about how people needing dialysis may suffer depression and should “Not be afraid to seek out ‘treatment’ for it.” WTH?
If you already have kidney failure putting more crap in your body for them to filter out is as dumb as it gets. Because of their zeal to prescribe unnecessary drugs modern doctors are causing health problems and deaths even as folks come seeking help.
Report comment
Fiachra I agree depression is a mental process. Not an organic condition.
Report comment
Frank the pills most likely made her feel good for a while. A good buzz can end depression. Every heroine user can testify.
According to Peter Breggin this is actually a very bad thing. You’ll learn to rely on “meds” instead of making necessary life changes.
Report comment
Maybe in some cases madness is caused by poor nutrition. Unfortunately it’s not always the case. For some–like me–coming off our “meds” restored us to sanity.
Report comment
If I ever take my message “on the road” I won’t start out saying, “Mental illness does not exist,” since–yes it is a metaphor–people won’t know what the heck I am saying.
Is seeing and hearing unreal stuff normal and good? Or are those who hallucinate or feel so unhappy they can’t function just faking it?
Spouting off those five words makes sense to our inner circle here. But to the average Joe and Jane Q. Public it’s crazy talk. And they’ll most likely assume you say one of the two things I listed above.
Report comment
Your analogy fails where I’m concerned Chris. I’m a survivor. Not a psychiatrist–retired or otherwise.
Report comment
I believe Vincent liked hookers. He hung around with one named Rachel and gave her his severed ear wrapped in a linen as a gift.
Report comment
Lol. Yeah.
Collecting can be taken to counterproductive extremes. Sometimes therapy can be useful or even necessary in helping someone understand why vast amounts of STUFF are so important to them. Loneliness and insecurity are often issues.
Report comment
I feel negative emotions pretty strongly. But this can be a good thing.
Because I feel guilt I am less inclined to do what is wrong and will fix wrong stuff I have done.
Because I feel sorrow I can empathize with others in pain. Remember the character Sadness in Inside Out? Joy realizes Sadness is just as necessary as she is.
Report comment
I had been following a couple forums for people who had been spiritually abused.
(Both my brother and I were pretty frightened by a Sunday school teacher telling us we had to be good to avoid Hell. Being good meant not asking hard questions in Sunday school, crying, or ever disobeying a grown up. A bunch of other crap happened–as a preacher’s family we were frequently on the point of homelessness. Common in the Church of Christ.)
I got angry and left one forum when they were counseling battered wives to seek professional “help” for depression. Ugh. They meant well…but how could anyone be that stupid? Obviously they watched a couple SSRI commercials and think they know everything now.
Report comment
Many psychiatrists want to help their patients…but despite their sincerity and kind intentions the methods hurt people. Like a kindly, well-meaning doctor in the 18th century bleeding cholera victims in order to cure them.
The best psychiatrist I ever had, Dr. Guilley, seemed amazed at how much better his patients got when he lowered their “meds.” Apparently he was honest. It was the 90’s so perhaps he really believed in the chemical imbalance “metaphor.”
Report comment
The difference between “clinical” versus “healthy” depression?
One is diagnosed by a doctor. The other you keep quiet about.
Report comment
Like anything vitamins can be overdone.
At least these actually are supposed to exist in our bodies in some amount. Unlike lithium.
Psych drugs can actually deplete the body of vitamins ad minerals needed for health.
Report comment
Demagoguery and psychiatry are cut from the same bolt of cloth.
You can easily slide from one to the other. Case in point Tim Murphy.
Report comment
Unhappiness can be a great tool in prompting necessary life changes.
Take a woman in an emotionally abusive relationship. She feels depressed. She needs to realize why she is depressed and leave the guy.
What she does not need is being told she’s crazy and a bunch of drugs to numb her so she’ll let the abuse continue. Abuse victims blame themselves too readily to begin with. The last thing she needs is a psych label since her boyfriend will probably use it for gas lighting and other creepy stuff.
Report comment
Fibromyalgia. FM is probably iatrogenic in origin. Funny how it popped up out of nowhere now that we have pills for every ill. And the DSM folks keep inventing new ills for new pills.
Report comment
Chilling! 🙁
Report comment
Another idea. If we need a celebrity spokesperson why not Kanye West?
He has refused to play the role of crazy sicko assigned him by psychiatry.
A lot of people have noticed he got locked up and “treated” soon after insulting bigwigs in the pop music industry. I don’t think he’s a Scientologist either.
Report comment
Good. Finally they’re making one TINY half a baby step in the right direction. I haven’t visited their site in a while.
And I’m already worried about my kidneys. 🙁 So I think I’ll steer clear of their “help” just the same.
Report comment
*allegedly* dangerous
Psychiatry. The only medical branch to publicly malign the character of its patients.
Report comment
I tell my friends and neighbors I have FM if they ask what I “do.” Pretty sick physically. Trying to find a way to work from home. Have taken rides from two neighbors worried about me hobbling home. The way I walk reveals my pain.
People treat folks with FM more kindly than “bipolars” because FM and CFIDS aren’t associated with senseless murders and random acts of violence.
Report comment
“The faith shrinks have in quick chemical fixes.”
And the faith the vast majority (still) has in the shrinks.
Report comment
In defense of Dr. K, he did say “many (but not all).”
Report comment
Is Tom a high ranking leader in the Scientology cult or a clueless go-along?
Either one sounds bad, IMHO.
Report comment
Cool. The new video games seem to be a lot like those “Choose Your Own Adventure Books” that came out in the 80’s when I was a kid.
Auntie, I have less experience with illustrating than you. (Though unlike many I have continued to draw and paint after childhood.) Maybe we could cook up something like Undertale. I could do the story line/narrative and you could do the graphics?
Report comment
Szazs bashed psychiatry a good deal himself. Why did he sneer at anti-psychiatry? Sounds like he was essentially anti-psychiatry in all but the name.
His disdain for Jack “the Dripper” Kavorkian also puzzles me since he supported people’s right to commit suicide. Maybe he was disgusted by a doctor charging money for something any high schooler can do. Ending life is easy; no need for a professional. 🙁
Report comment
Thanks for trying Corinna. My guess is you were treated worse than the other peers because you dared to question the status quo.
Report comment
There are more rogue psychologists than shrinks though. This makes sense. Why waste time and effort on an MD when you can counsel with just an MSW or PhD?
Any therapist working at a community center has to go along with the bio-bio-bio model though.
Report comment
Ha ha! That’s what the MI System promised me. But even they couldn’t turn me into a Pollyanna.
Being socially ostracized, unable to have a family, start a career, and gaining over 100% of my body weight did not make me happy. Wow!
Report comment
Why NAMI and similar groups should be called out on their anti-stigma campaigns is they seem aware touting the bio-model–Please be nice to the severely mentally ill cause they can’t help it they have messed up brains–is not working. There was an article on their website 5 years ago (or more) acknowledging this.
Pete Earley and many others active in the movement are aware that the “chemical imbalance” is nonsense.
Surveys have shown that teaching people the “mentally ill” went bonkers due to crap that happened leads to viewing them more kindly. (More humanizing perhaps?)
However, ignoring these findings, NAMI soldiers on promoting the Broken Brain.
Report comment
We had a similar rule in my family of origin Steve. Dad told us once sternly, “It’s okay to say, ‘You lie.’ But don’t call someone else a liar. When you call someone a liar you’re saying it’s who they are. They’ll never change.”
Report comment
My dad’s a clergyman, Shuan. He has also been fighting the dark side of human nature.
I have a crazy idea of setting up an outreach program where teens would be encouraged to single out kids being bullied. Ending bullying may be impossible. But having a support network for these unhappy youngsters where they find unconditional love and acceptance might save them and prevent them from going bad and harming others. And they could grow up into decent adults too. 🙂
Report comment
Just trying to cheer up Littleturtle. Like Alex I took multiple drugs for over 20 years. But never more than 3 or 4 psych drugs at a time.
Went off my cocktail in 16 months. 9 months ago. Still sickly. Not just withdrawal but long term damage that had been building up before my taper. Exhaustion, bodily cramps, heart arrhythmia, kidney damage. The two areas blur over. Not sure which is which.
Report comment
It’s not that cut and dried. They lump sins/bad behaviors with harmless eccentricities and emotional trauma. But they they throw them all in the same garbage pail like Victorian jails where they threw debtors in with highwaymen and Jack-the-Ripper types.
Aunt Betty across the street, the weird but kindly lady with 4 house cats and a huge collection of Classic Coke bottles is diagnosed bipolar. Just like Ted Bundy. Ain’t psychiatry grand?
Report comment
You may not be able to. Seriously. If you have taken psych drugs long enough you may need a tiny amount to survive. Will Hall and Daniel Mackler address this in A Meeting of the Minds.
Be gentle with yourself.
Report comment
“Anti-stigma” campaigns cause inequality. You might get wet jumping into swimming pools. It’s hard to breathe without air.
Report comment
Among other things we should focus on reeducating the public and launching anti-propaganda campaigns.
The truth will set you free.
Report comment
Ted Bundy was supposed to be “bipolar.” Until I do something as horrible as he did I don’t deserve his label.
Report comment
If I didn’t know you Oldhead, I would think you were serious. People think that way.
Report comment
And when crimes, murders, and nastiness continued the psychiatrists could say, “Glory be! Somehow the SMI gene has spread despite the death of all who carried it.” Sane people are perfect angels who never do anything wrong dontchaknow.
Report comment
Murder never results in swift, certain, and severe punishment anymore. If you commit first degree murder you will probably be on death row for 10 years or more till sentenced. Regardless of who you killed.
Report comment
For those who like their pills and want to take them but forget there have always been pill boxes.
Report comment
“What is the effect of hundreds of microchips collecting in ones bowels?”
Who cares? We’re dealing with ogres–I mean schizophrenics. Not people.
Report comment
Good point, Steve and Richard!
Report comment
I appreciate what Cruise is trying to do. But his manner of delivery and unfortunate ties with a weird cult would hurt our movement more than his celebrity status could help it.
Report comment
Jumping on tables and yelling while denouncing psychiatry makes people view YOU as needing its services.
I saw that video of his (that even the Scientologists wanted taken down) in my kool-aid drinking days. I honestly thought he was “off his meds” or on some mind bendingly awesome street “meds.” I still think the latter might be true. 😀
Report comment
“As far as truth itself being a powerful weapon…people generally prefer fantasy to reality.”
Great point! For some reason I was happy to find out I wasn’t hopelessly insane and could come off the drugs that clogged my heart and mind.
Not sure why others get so angry at the good news. Maybe they enjoy being told what to do. And being absolved of difficult things–marriage, career, community involvement….
Report comment
I have suffered depression–extra strength sadness.
Try telling someone proud of their cool new scientific brain disease that depression is a feeling.
No it’s not! You’re saying depression doesn’t exist!
Sadness exists. Who says feelings don’t exist for crying out loud?
But they get vitriolic and may even make death threats if you point out depression is not a brain disease.
I have suffered from it. But there was stuff going on. Dark Night of the Soul. BD classroom where I kept getting shamed and punished for knowing too much. Homelessness. Friendlessness. Etc. I don’t need a “brain disease” to absolve me of unhappiness.
If you have a brain disorder causing depression, then depression is a symptom. Not the disease itself. I have experienced the symptom of depression from anemia and hypothyroidism.
Whining “I have depression” when you could see if you’re anemic, start exercising, find out WHY you are so unhappy is counterproductive. But it sells more SSRIs. That’s what counts. And folks often prefer popping pills to making difficult life changes.
Report comment
Basically I meant (in my experience) people told me to get the Heck away from them they didn’t want a crazy around. OR they abused me verbally and emotionally. My dad took to slapping and cuffing me after my diagnosis. He never did that before. Guess he thought that was necessary for dealing with the insane.
Report comment
Actually presenting it as a race issue is best. Black Lives Matter.
If every “mentally ill” person on this planet died tomorrow and the public was informed a collective cheer would go up.
“Yay! The cray crays are dead. No more crime, shootings, nasty relatives or parasites.”
Only our psychiatric overlords would mourn. Like dictators without subjects.
Report comment
I saw a video of his 10 years ago. He acted very bizarrely. Kept ranting about conspiracy theories and laughing at things that weren’t funny. Like someone on cocaine. The Scientology cult tried to suppress it since it was an embarrassment.
It’s pretty funny actually. But NOT a good case against psychiatry.
Report comment
My theory is that the patients saw each other as human individuals. The professionals mentally lumped them into the “Different Other” category.
Report comment
Power corrupts. Sad fact of human nature. Without their political clout and pseudo-credibility shrinks would be as harmless as irridologists.
Unlike racial differences a “mental illness” is not immediately apparent. If behaviors aren’t very eccentric police can’t tell. Calling police to check on a “mentally ill” “loved” one is a great way to get that person shot.
Report comment
A friend of mine quit his lithium for 10 years. Yet he kept saying he was “bipolar.” He’s in the System again.
Report comment
The biggest question is why no one else seems to make this connection. 25% of college students have diagnoses of “mental illnesses.”
Report comment
If you confessed to witchcraft they wouldn’t hang you. It showed you had insight into your condition. 😀
Report comment
Emotional pain killers is a better label. I benefited ages ago from a small dose of the neuroleptic Stelazine. If I had used the period of mild numbness to enhance social skills–then been taken off in 4 or 6 weeks it might have been a good thing.
Report comment
Those who aren’t emotionally abusive usually don’t give a rip about you.
Report comment
Working on a lexicon for Psychspeak.
Creativity: Mental disorder.
Sense of humor: Mental disorder.
Brain: Cancer. (2) Vestigial organ found in those we treat.
Personality: A collection of mental disorders.
Empathy: Obstacle to helping the mentally ill.
Report comment
We already have a label to find each other.
Psychiatric Survivors.
Report comment
Chris sounds like a disciple of Mary Baker Eddy in the above comment.
Report comment
We have one powerful weapon on our side. The Truth.
This is the real threat to Pharmapsychiatry. Not our ragtag band of social outcasts (many maimed from years of poly-drugging.)
Report comment
Good article Shannon. Be forewarned though. The title may get you in trouble.
“You didn’t even put the term ‘mental illness’ in quotes.”
Actually the term emotional well being would have worked. Being unjustly accused of crimes you haven’t committed is traumatic.
Seek out “help” from quacks and you can experience it more than ever.
Report comment
Besides atheists not doing well with AA’s model, devout religious folks also tend to “fail” to “work it.” I never could “do” OA.
If you’re into Oprah’s or Joel Osteen’s moral therapeutic deism, AA might be right for you.
Report comment
If you want to sell a picture book you target parents; not children. Young adult/tween entertainment would be a better time investment. Or market to the kids’ parents.
Parents have more say in the pills kids take than the kids do. A lot of parents know ADHD drugs are hurting their kids. For some reason they are easier to convince of this than that folks sicken on “bipolar meds” and psych drugs don’t prevent violent crimes.
Report comment
I found out later it does not, Oldhead. They were using it for their own advantage.
I kept doing what got me in trouble with Sunday school teachers as a child. Asking questions they couldn’t answer.
“If our meds are helping us, why aren’t we gainfully employed and getting along better in our communities?”
“If Keats, Dickens, Tolstoy, other folks diagnosed posthumously by Dr. Jamison did so well unmedicated how come our lives suck?”
“Why can’t they figure out a way to measure our brain chemistry to more accurately prescribe stuff to normalize it accordingly?”
One caseworker (not a psychotherapist Shaun!) had a screaming tirade at me. Nearly frothing at the mouth she accused me of not accepting the fact that I had a mental illness darn it!
This reduced me to tears. My firm belief in my brain disease led me to take my “meds” religiously but it made me desperately unhappy–even suicidal. I felt my suicide might be justifiable since at any time my meds could quit working or I might not be able to get new ones and I might become violently, murderously insane killing innocent people. At least suicide would only end my life even if it sent me to Hell.
Report comment
I should ask Auntie for illustrations for my YouTube musical.
Report comment
Love this article Dr. K.
I was thinking about my beloved girlhood novel Anne of Green Gables. Due to Anne Shirley’s mercurial temperament, impulsive behavior, and daydreaming she would have been a great candidate for psychiatry.
“You laugh and cry far too easily,” grumbles Marilla, her adoptive mom.
Yet Anne Shirley learns to act more responsibly as an adult than a young prepubescent. (Gasp!) Despite her tragic lack of life saving meds and diagnosis trail she has the audacity to lead a full and productive life.
How dare you #Pillshame Anne! 😛
Report comment
How about an addiction to cooking up new “diagnoses” for psych tomes?
Why 5 instead of 4 or 6? Well…if we used the number 6 we would have fewer diagnoses and therefore less business. But if we used the number 4 people might catch on to how bogus our “medical science” is and it would go the way of leeches and blood letting.
Report comment
Have you ever known you were more moral than the man supposedly protecting society from the likes of dangerous lunatics like yourself?
Report comment
Sorry you went through that Julie!
I experienced a couple brain zaps. I think. But all it felt like was static running through my head. Nothing horrible; just weird.
Report comment
I have had a doctor ( a real one) tell me unless I took a cocktail till I died I would surely run manic. Unbeknownst to him I was weening off my Effexor. Not taking my neuroleptic or other crap. So if I had manic tendencies everything would have already hit the fan.
He actually told me discrimination against the “mentally ill” does not exist. I told him about the stuff on every program. He laughed and said that nobody believes stuff on TV. I said, “You’re right. Only 98% of the population.” The naive fool laughed his head off. 😛
Report comment
If you spend 10 hours a day gaming, it has become a bad habit to be broken. Not a disease to be cured.
Alcoholism is a disease! Admit it or I can’t sell you the cure.
A friend of mine was an alcoholic. Then he quit drinking. Some folks find AA helpful but others–like Vern–quit without it.
Report comment
Dragon Slayer, I was sick and miserable coming off Effexor. As I lay down for my afternoon nap (I had pseudo CFIDS from withdrawal/long term druggings?) I would tell myself to keep doing it for my nephew Elijah. My brother has him on some drug. Xanax maybe. He’s still on it.
But I hope I can show my family that if “Crazy Rachel” can go off her “sanity creating meds” (lol) and do better than before, Elijah, my mom, and my sister-in-law can go off their mind benders too.
Report comment
That weird little neo-Nazi sounds like a member of the alt-right Eric. The phoenix sprung from the ashes of the KKK. Very racist and anti-Semitic but they’re okay with being gay. Think Breitbart.
Report comment
I am okay with folks voluntarily learning mindfulness and applying it to cope with stress and pain.
Personally I hate it. Being forced to go through 2 hours of this every week against your will leads to unpleasant associations.
Report comment
Rossa, one of my biggest problem with the bio bio bio model is–assuming odd or extreme thoughts/emotions are pathological–they still don’t know WHAT is causing them.
They pretend to know things no one does because smart as scientists are the human brain remains a mystery. All psychiatry offers is random acts of violence to something they know little about.
If they actually found an organic cause that would be the death of psychiatry as we know it. We have neurologists who could take over from there. They are the real brain experts.
Because of this psych doctors are all talk and no action when it comes to discoveries. Like 20 term career demagogues blabbing about budget balancing or deficit reduction to get reelected. Only psych doctors are even less motivated since they don’t want to go out of business.
Report comment
Well said Shaun!
Report comment
Opinions are a symptom of severe mental illness Corinna. They also show you may lack insight into your condition.
Report comment
Do you mean those who think their “diagnoses” are cool and sexy then get upset at the “stigma”, Oldhead?
Report comment
I have dealt with a large number of professionals who hated having me in groups or even talking to me. They preferred working with the developmentally delayed. These secretly hated me and would tear me down in “day treatment” to belittle me before others.
They also would sick everyone else on me to tear me apart. I found out this is standard practice in cults. They call it “breaking point.”
I came home one night–I lived with my folks. I was taking a shower and started screaming and weeping from the head games I’d endured at group that day. Mom was really worried and mentioned how I always seemed worse after Day Treatment.
I was warned to never tell anyone about these groups because of confidentiality. 🙁
Report comment
After my diagnosis it wasn’t just my psychiatrist and other MH professionals who refused to take me seriously. My family and the few friends who didn’t shun me quit listening to anything I said.
I no longer had thoughts or feelings. Just symptoms. It was okay to treat me like crap as long as I took my “meds.”
I no longer had a personality–just a disease. I was a disease.
You are your “illness.” It defines you in a way no literal illness can.
Report comment
I owe you an apology Shaun. Since you obviously don’t know anything about Jaffe beyond that review he wrote, you can’t be held responsible for the nastier stuff he has pulled.
Not least was launching an “anti-stigma campaign.” What was his plan?
Since only the “untreated severely mentally ill” go on shooting rampages–Jaffe claims–NAMI can prevent gun violence and stigma by telling the public that the SMI were ALMOST safe but only when drugged.
This is simply not true. Harmless madmen have been recorded throughout the centuries. Francis of Assisi was one for a while. Many–not all–shooters were receiving psychiatric care. And continually promoting the violent madman trope in the pubic consciousness will not end discrimination. They always assume you’re “off your meds” no matter how religiously you take them. After 22 years of strict “med compliance” I know.
About my comment above, I refer to the idea that aliens were talking through the TV as harmless because it only bothers the hallucinator. I knew one man who heard voices from the set telling him he was a wonderful guy who would become President and save the world. He enjoyed these voices.
Report comment
Unlike your son Rossa, I started out depressed and anxious after years of bullying and 2 months of homelessness in high school. Saw Dr. M who gave me the SSRI anafranil. Kept me awake for 3 weeks straight. I went bonkers. Might have recovered if allowed to sleep and get over the trauma. But by golly the shrinks weren’t about to let that happen!
Report comment
Honestly Vanilla I don’t swing that way. Lol.
Report comment
The label is filled with accusations of bad character traits you may be innocent of. 6 or 7 out of 10 subjective, elastic feelings, thoughts and habits. And if someone acts badly isn’t branding them hopelessly depraved a great way to kill hope of moral reformation?
Obviously you don’t watch TV. I only do with my parents. But every other drama contains a creepy “bipolar” stalking children, trying to murder the heroes, or something equally nice.
Maybe the label is sexy if you’re a guy. Some women prefer bad boy criminal types. (Personally I don’t.)
Report comment
“What is the difference between bipolar and schizophrenia?” Whatever your shrink says it is.
What is insight? Unquestioning acceptance of whatever your shrink tells you.
Report comment
Hmm. A doctor was sentenced to life in prison after knowingly misdiagnosing people with leukemia to sell them unnecessary chemo and other hazardous cancer treatments. Some were killed; others maimed for life.
Those who survived were angry. Gosh! Pretty weird huh?
You don’t suppose they were psychotic or something?
Before fleeing psychiatry my interactions reminded me of the end for Hunt for Red October. The bad guy (Joss Ackland) has been lying to the Americans about a Russian defecting to America with a submarine. Jack Ryan finds out the truth. Finally the American and Russian reps face off, lying through their teeth. The American slyly shows they have the goods on the bad guys (keeping up appearances.) Both continue to smile. The American says, “I really appreciate your candor.” The Russian says, “Allow me to return the complement.”
That’s the only kind of relationship we can have with psychiatrists. Lying through our teeth and wearing masks.
But they decided to base our relationship on a lie. They continue to lie to and about us.
Will I scream or act stupid? NO WAY. But knowing someone lies all the time makes me distrustful. And any respect I display is a facade colored with scarcely concealed irony and disdain.
Oh yes. I feel justified in lying to them as much as possible. Most think I’m a subhuman imbecile incapable of independent thought so they can’t pick up on how I despise them for their utter lack of character or conscience. If they were used car salesmen I wouldn’t buy from their lot!
Report comment
There’s a lack of a cohesive narrative. Definitely.
I see that as our biggest obstacle.
Report comment
I’m a sonnet. Lol.
Report comment
Yours sounds better than “bipolar” Vanilla. If you can find anyone willing to listen to such a lengthy exposition. Maybe cut it down to 25 words or less?
Report comment
75% of my patients say their meds work when I suggest ECT as an alternative method. The other 25% obviously suffer anosogonosia! I’m the expert. I know how they feel better than they do themselves. 😛
Report comment
Moody is less associated with cruel/criminal behavior.
My dad is called “moody.” He goes up and down. Thank God he never saw a shrink to “bipolarize” him! No career, no marriage, no kids. Great way to mess up your life forever! 😛
Report comment
25 years for me. Bad reaction to an SSRI. I’ll be paying till I die. 🙁
Report comment
I will have to read him sometime Alex.
I’m living near Louisville, Kentucky. Aside from New York City it’s the best place in the U.S. for playwrights.
Report comment
Sigh.
Report comment
Madness exists. Self deception. Harmless kinds like “Aliens are talking through my TV set.”
Rapists who convince themselves the girl wanted the rape and they were curing her of frigidity.
We also find this in “doctors” who ignore how sick and stupid long term druggings make those beneath them–deluding themselves into thinking it’s okay to live in segregated slums and die before 53.
Insanity cuts both ways.
Report comment
He doesn’t get angry, Oldhead. That would be a sign of “mental illness.”
But don’t expect him to forget about the jabs you took at him. 😀
Report comment
Thanks for clarifying, you aren’t Jaffe. But it makes little difference.
If someone said, “I’m not a member of the KKK, but read this piece by the Grand Wizard. This sums up my own views on race relations…” Well, he MIGHT be a racist. Even if he is not a member of the KKK or the leader himself.
Report comment
The 15% recover IN SPITE of all those “safe and effective ” tortures. I mean treatments.
Report comment
I have “come out” privately as “I have been diagnosed bipolar.” People are shocked since I don’t act that way.
And doesn’t the word “moody” work as well for ups and downs?
Report comment
This reads more like Deepak Chakra than psychiatry.
Not a bad thing, btw.
Report comment
So what makes Chris or anyone else “bipolar” while others are “normal”?
And “unipolar bipolar” is just plain stupid. Oxymoron that defies sense!
I’m supposed to be that. How is that different from “depression” for crying out loud? These words are as stupid as something from Orwell.
Report comment
Vanilla I can only speak about my own experience. Julie few withdrawal problems at all. Monica Cassani lay in bed for two years.
Report comment
I considered the low sex drive a positive thing. My diagnosis drove all the men away. Why want what I can never have? Thank God my libido is still barely existent. 🙂
Report comment
Why can’t they be both Steve? Social problems can lead to existential ones. And large amounts of existential angst can lead to a social crisis.
Report comment
How about calling it moodiness?
Report comment
Interesting to see the “bipolar” that makes them act like jerks is “not the real them” but the good characteristics are. Using “bipolar” to excuse bad behaviors will be tolerated by friends and family for a while. “Poor John can’t help it when he screams obscenities at me and smashes my antiques. His meds must need readjusting.” Eventually John’s wife will get sick of his crap and leave, claiming all “bipolars” are evil. I can see where she gets the idea, unjust as it is.
Report comment
Nor do I, Littleturtle. It’s not a racist epithet, but a moral judgment. A slam against one’s character. Like calling someone a liar, a jerk, a slut, or a thief.
Report comment
Are you undergoing AOT Chris? If so, my condolences.
Even if you are, they won’t force you to wear a T-shirt labeled BIPOLAR to march at NAMI “stigma busters.”
Report comment
Oldhead I have heard of folks misdiagnosed with cancer who discovered they were okay. Guess what? They became horribly depressed. Apparently cancer patient was integral to their identities now. They had no sense of who they were without their diagnosis. 🙁
Report comment
I appreciate what Chris is trying to do. During the Revolutionary War, the solders taunted the colonists with the song, “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” It involved a stupid hick who complained he couldn’t see the town because of all the people. When Washington accepted Cornwallis’s surrender, he had the American militia strike up the tune. “In your face Brits!”
I have always felt my label made me like Richard Kimball. Wrongfully accused of a crime I have not committed. Watch any one of a number of TV dramas and you’ll find a “bipolar” who runs around murdering people for the thrill of it.
I prefer not to don a T shirt with a picture of Anthony Perkins brandishing a butcher knife and the words “Proud Psycho” on the back. Better to be judged on the content of my character and not some badge of shame a creepy shrink slapped on me years ago.
“Once a thief always a thief!” says Inspector Jalvert in Les Miserables.
“Once a bipolar always a bipolar,” says Dr. Jalvert in Modern Psychiatry.
Report comment
The vast majority of us were driven bonkers by the drugs supposed to cure our suffering. A few were gaslighted like you Someone Else. Others took an SSRI for depression or some off label problem and were sucked down, down, down…into the Mental Illness Inferno.
Report comment
Yes. Reductionism is anti-religious at its heart. Most churches don’t realize how reductionist psychiatry is by its nature.
Because of how “spin” has created the myth of reductionism for madness and human behaviors I’m unusually skeptical about the claims for AI. Quite likely they are inflated too.
“I’m a robot who doesn’t have any feelings. Sometimes that makes me really sad,” says Bender on Futurama.
Report comment
Glad you’re feeling great Fred. My dad is younger than you and his sleep is poor. I sleep less but better now. Used to sleep 10 hours and wake up unrefreshed on my “cocktail.”
Report comment
#Patientshaming. Grr!
I’m not expressing anger at Lauren there.
Some are so invested in how “safe and effective” their pills are they’ll throw anyone under the bus to justify selling or taking them!
Those pharma shills should be called out on their cruelty. They’re not morbidly obese with failing kidneys.
Report comment
Cool Julie! What’s the theme?
Report comment
Some say Vincent suffered late stage syphilis or malnutrition from poverty.
He was pretty sensitive, high strung and given to melancholy thoughts. Things are worse today. No tolerance for those with low emotional pain thresholds. 🙁 No compassion or mercy on the weak. Just punishments and control!
If things had gone differently and he had learned how to deal with life’s troubles better things might have gone better.
Report comment
There are honest ways to pay the bills, Frank.
Sad how everyone wants money for being kind now. You shouldn’t nave to pay someone to listen to your pain.
Stay away from shrinks with their labels and drugs. Then you can make real friends and may not need a therapist.
Report comment
There’s also the issue of HONESTY. Being true about who we are. And not lying to others. 😀
Report comment
You got the quote wrong. Trump bragged–quite tastelessly–that many women came onto him because he was rich and famous. That is pretty disgusting though.
I’m sure you approve of Trump’s new mental health czar though. Right D.J.? Lol.
Report comment
Thank you for your commitment to HONESTY and professional integrity, D.J. Jaffe!
Report comment
Well now we know “Shaun F” is a fictional persona for none other than D.J. Jaffe. Not sure what he does for a living, but it looks like PR rather than therapy. Remember that when you read his claims about the haven of love and joy where he works.
The guy is completely ignorant of “minor side effects” like tooth loss and lowered cognitive functioning. That’s my charitable spin.
He wants more HUD ghettos to stuff people in. Pretty generous.
But some would like alternatives to these roach-infested slums. Is he aware that the MI system ensures you’ll never find gainful employment? Does he even care?
Tell a lie often enough and even you won’t know truth from fantasy. 🙁
Report comment
I prefer the word “mad” myself. But I see madness as a state of mind. Traditionally madness was seen as something you got over like a headache or fever. But that sounds pathological–and I don’t believe madness is biologically based.
Try reading literature like I Samuel where David pretends to be mad to scare a king away who might kill him. Later that same king hires David as a mercenary warrior. Apparently the king realized folks get over madness. In Don Quixote the hero goes mad. At the end he comes back to his senses. This happens in King Lear, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and The Lost Man.
It was only after the locking up and segregation of the mad started 200 years ago that recovery was viewed as impossible. The Keeper of the Madhouse hated losing the $$$ he got for warm bodies.
Now a bunch of folks profit from keeping others mad. HUD slumlords, therapists, caseworkers, social workers, Big Pharma CEO, drug reps, etc. Not just shrinks. And they won’t let you go NO MATTER WHAT.
Report comment
Thank you, T.D Jaffe.
Report comment
Why are the Pharma shills upset? Lauren sounds orthodox enough. Are they angry at Lauren because her kidneys are failing?
Report comment
Neuroleptics and “mood stabilizers” were easy peasy coming off of. Effexor was horrible. Not just withdrawal–the exhaustion and muscle cramps started a few years before. Long term effects of drug use. But the withdrawal exacerbated the symptoms.
Been off them for better than 9 months. There is progress, but painfully slow.
Plus I’m allergic to everything. SSRIs also serve as antihistamines. That’s why they won’t let you take cold syrup if you’re on one.
Report comment
Chris, you can call yourself whatever you like. But I have always seen my psych label as a moral judgment.
I don’t have mood swings, btw. Sick and irritable from drug withdrawals. Striving to be kind and thoughtful to those around me. Better off than your friend Monica was though! Yet my “bipolat” label remains etched in stone regardless of the content of my character.
Have you ever considered identifying as a spontaneous, sensitive eccentric? Less cootie treatment from that.
When I look at the “symptoms” to DSM labels I see three categories:
1. Unwanted feelings or thoughts bugging the one who has them. (Caused by abuse or other trauma, but psychiatry makes no allowance for that.)
2. Bad behaviors. The diagnosed may not mind them but others do.
3. Plain old quirkiness or eccentricities. These bother no one but meddling relatives and soulless killjoy shrinks.
Number 2 bothers me. I don’t run around cheating on my partner, going on drunken sprees, throwing money away, picking fights, or killing people. But when I call myself “bipolar” people assume that not only am I guilty of at least some of these behaviors but they are indelibly engraved in my character. This leads to prejudice and bigotry like racism. Only instead of judging us on the color of our skin they judge us on the label slapped on us by an “expert” who lies about pathological differences cutting us off from Normal Humanity.
If I were wrongfully accused of murder I wouldn’t self identify as a murderer. Nor will I self identify as a bipolar. Except under torture.
Report comment
My psych drugs opened my soul to demons. Mind altering drugs have been used throughout history to invoke the spirit world. So it makes sense. Deliverance helped me even before I went off my drugs.
If you want, I can direct you to a friend of mine who runs a ministry. We dated for a while.
My email is r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com.
Report comment
You may not consider the DSM as your model of care Shaun, but you speak out in favor of “treatments” that employ the bio-model.
Not quite the same of course. I guess that means you don’t prescribe the drugs yourself and maybe don’t offhandedly label all who walk through your doors.
Report comment
They believe what they write–unlike many shrinks who would never take their own “medicine.” Nevertheless it is a choice they make. I might make it too had things turned out differently.
Report comment
It’s especially annoying when they fail to show respect and gratitude for being locked up, drugged and maybe shocked. Pretty insane behavior.
Report comment
Can you say the word CONDESCENSION boys and girls? 😀
Report comment
“I don’t feel triggered, Oldhead.”
Reminds me of that Bill Murray movie.
“I don’t get angry, Bob,” says Dr. Leo Marvin. Then he tries to blow Bob up.
Report comment
Psych drugs don’t cause tooth loss?
Uh, not being able to salivate does cause dental damage. A lot of “mentally ill” folks are toothless even in their thirties. My teeth were great–genetics–but they went to pot as a minor side effect of my treatments.
And not being able to work can lead to homelessness too. Folks at the MI Center mostly live with aging parents/group homes/homeless centers/or HUD. Better than a 3 x 3 box you say? Yes, but not by much. Plus no one will rent to you if you live on SSI. Thanks for the stigma shrinks.
Most SMI’s are really just involuntary drug addicts. Including me. Pretty sickening. I never would have taken street drugs voluntarily. Thus the lies about how the pills were “medicine” curing the “chemical imbalance” and preventing brain damage.
I don’t like liars!
Report comment
Experts never get angry. That’s bad Mental Hygiene after all. Only the Mentally Ill beneath them lose control.
Report comment
Anafranil made me higher than a kite. Zoloft provided a warm, tingly, erotic glow for over a month. Ever heard of an SSRI triggering a manic episode? Great way for shrinks to bag more “bipolars.”
Report comment
So much for not subscribing to the DSM 5 manual!
Denial, denial, denial…
No one I ever met in the Center or Clubhouse was gainfully employed. Ditto for those at NAMI and other places. Robert Whitaker’s research supports what I also saw.
I got my BA IN SPITE of psychiatry. And all my case workers/social workers/treatment team flunkies/bureaucrats did their best to discourage me. Scared my college degree would make me uppity. Then they claimed my college degree as THEIR success story.
Like running a marathon with a ball and chain.
Report comment
It’s not as simple as an African American hating Whites because he was threatened by KKK members or a woman hating men because she was raped. When therapists and other mental illness professionals comment here and boast about their expertise, they’re choosing the role of the “Expert” lecturing the mentally/morally inferior.
I try to be just and charitable. Their desires to help are likely genuine. Even if they are as misguided as a 19th century doctor putting leaches on a cholera victim to purify his body of bad blood.
Nevertheless they come across like the ladies in “The Lovers of the Poor” by Maya Angelou.
Report comment
If you aren’t into “therapy” you shouldn’t be forced. We definitely agree there.
Frankly I think life coaches would be just as helpful. Plus they don’t work with the Disease Model.
Report comment
Disrespect for humanity too.
Report comment
Mr. Blobby looks like a character from a dream I had when I decided to go off my psych drugs. (Hadn’t tapered too much. But my agonized decision inspired this dream.)
I was at a long table with friends and family. Then somehow I escaped something holding me back.
I divided into two. One–the Real Me–looked at the other. I was thinner, had a healthy complexion, and could think and feel like a real person.
I looked back at the other. She was a bloated doll with grotesque, knobby features. Green, the color of poison or vomit. Occasionally foul-smelling toxic gasses leaked out of her. She WAS an inflatable doll.
The friends and family ignored me. They continued to treat the Doll like the real human being. Occasionally they seemed to hear my voice when I called to them. They would just scowl and turn back to the Doll.
They didn’t like her. But they hated me. So they chose the Doll despite her poisonous nature. 🙁
Report comment
Probably because Slater is so well off she doesn’t choose to escape. Safer and easier to keep taking her “meds” and sing their praises. Though even she seems to find that harder to do now. The same can be said for figures like Patty Duke, Carrie Fisher, and Kay Redfield Jamison.
Report comment
Yes. In his biography of V. Woolf My Madness Saved Me, Szazs scoffs at both genius and “mental illness” alike, saying there’s no correlation between creativity and madness. Granted “genius” is pretty subjective and elastic as a category. Like obscenity. “I know it when I see it.”
I take William Glasser’s position that creativity causes altered mental states such as hallucinations and the belief you can’t get out of bed. Not all creativity causes madness but all madness is more or less creative. That might be why art therapy helps people so much.
Report comment
Racism and psychiatry are intertwined. Both stem from eugenics–the belief in bio determinism. The idea that certain people are born morally defective. Punishing those born with the “wrong” color of skin is no longer acceptable. Hence the witch hunts for the “mentally ill” under the pretext of ending violent crime forever.
Report comment
Predicting suicide is impossible. Deal with it!
Report comment
Due to their alliance with psychiatry even well meaning psychotherapists who care about people are unable to do much. For one thing they encourage mindless, unquestioning “meds compliance” regardless of obvious deterioration since starting the drug. For another they are pessimistic and cynical. Understandable since the bio bio bio model makes true recovery impossible. Life long labels are also to blame.
The only way to get better? Run far away!
That’s my recovery story.
Report comment
Psychiatry serves two functions. Hope and security.
The hope is for desperately unhappy people and their family members. Hope that the next magical pill will solve all life’s problems, destroying all pain and maximizing pleasures associated with living.
The security is for those worried about crime and acts of violence. Psychiatrists assure the public that they can know–by scientifically verified magic–who will commit crimes and they can save these people from themselves and society from THEM.
Of course the hope and security are illusions. But when we critique or question psychiatry people get very angry. We popped the pretty soap bubble they based their lives around.
Report comment
Where is this “decrease” in drugs he laments? Of course I’m a Yank. On your side of the pond it may be different.
Report comment
I understand why you feel let down by Dr. Moncrieff. I have the unusual idea that suicide is a choice. While drugs, poverty and segregation (all givens with psychiatric involvement) cause horrible misery we still have a choice. Press on through the torture or end it. Understandably many choose the latter.
If it weren’t for her writings I never would have discovered tardive psychosis. Haldol and stelazine really were making me crazy! Up yours, you quacks who said it couldn’t be possible! You never took your own poison. I guess I know how it made me feel better than any of you did..mind reading psychics that you are!
Report comment
So sorry! 🙁
Report comment
Not sure if Oldhead had this in mind, but maybe you could write a rebuttal to Dr. Jamison’s Touched By Fire Julie. A bunch of mini-biographies of psychiatrized creatives and what became of their works after long term “treatments.”
I love My Madness Saved Me. But Virginia Woolf died before pharmapsychiatry emerged in all its dubious glory. Many say “meds” would have prevented her suicide. Countless suicides by folks doped up on psych drugs say otherwise.
Report comment
Shaun F your center must be radically different from any I have ever gone to.
I read an article by a therapist complaining about how childish and irresponsible his clients were. I wish I could find it. It was in Intellectual Takeout, but their archives are very hard to navigate.
He sees the problem many “ex-consumers” here do, but can’t add two and two together. He just face palms and wonders where the four came from.
Drugs aren’t about increasing independence, function and responsibility but making people passive and submissive. Hence childish and dependent. The Parent/Child relationship inherent in the system of MHCenterWorker/Consumer also causes this. Along with negative self fulfilling prophecies upon being “diagnosed.”
I always LOATHED my drugs. They made me feel horrible. But I believed my psychiatrists and took the pills in good faith. 25 years of taking neurotoxins religiously as penance for the sin of being “defective” with a hereditary brain disease that turned out to be a harmless little joke the APA decided to pass off as hard science. A little metaphor. A funny gag.
None of us are laughing!
Report comment
Check out ALLCAPA.com. I joined the group CAPA. Christians Against Psychiatric Abuse. The guy running that site believes pharmapsychiatry is destroying western civilization. I do too.
It’s not that hard to find evidence against the chemical imbalance myth. Just look at stuff the APA puts out.
Most people have no vested interest in doing research. That’s the only reason I can think of for why everyone still believes it.
Report comment
A question Julie. Does Lauren still believe what “no well informed psychiatrist” does? Does she think that SSRIs and other drugs are magic bullets or “medicines” for chemical imbalances?
Or is her approach more pragmatic? “These drugs make me feel better so I don’t care how they work. I’m gonna keep taking them no matter what.”
For the latter I shrug and say, “Kudos for your honesty!” Even though I have made a different choice.
Report comment
Szazs might get mad at me. But he was sometimes wrong.
A lot of what we call “mental illness” is immense unhappiness + creativity. “Hallucinations,” “delusions” of fantasy worlds, belief that you can’t get out of bed are all imagination gone bad.
You can be creative without these problems. But if you are unhappy enough the temptation to use your imagination to escape reality can be overwhelming.
The drugs work by killing the imagination–along with the rest of your brain and bodily organs.
Plus shrinks seem to have it in for creative, artsy types.
Report comment
Were you gaslighted Catnight?
Report comment
Dr. Lieberman’s army of anti-psychiatry idealogues is about as real as Emmanuel Goldstein and the Brotherhood in 1984. (Or the chemical imbalance.) He dreamed them up to scare people. At Bipolar Burble, the blogger is terrified of hordes of anti-psychiatry armies out to destroy her. She scheduled a 2 Minute Hate in some of her posts. “I love Big Doctor!” All perfectly rational of course. Mindlessly accepting whatever someone says and being afraid to think are signs of good insight and lead to meds compliance. 😀
B.B. is scared to read a word of anything Bob W. or others write. She might catch a bad case of the thought disease called anosognosia. “Mentally ill” folks don’t have paradigm shifts or Aha moments. Just a lot of scary symptoms.
Cult members also behave this way.
Report comment
Who cares if they kill “crazies”? We’re all mass murders waiting to happen according to everything the media spews out. So what if the drugs make us get sick and die?
Report comment
People should definitely not profit from creating others’ poor health! 🙁
Report comment
A truly free market wouldn’t force people to buy shoddy or harmful products. Or even quality, helpful products they prefer not to.
And such massive, wide-scale deception of the public should be punishable with prison sentences for the advertising execs. Like the one Bernie Madoff received. That kind of crooked!
Report comment
Psych drugs enrich a few but are costing middle class tax payers a lot. Almost $10,000 a year per “mentally ill” person who is too iatrogenically disabled for gainful employment and about ten times the amount for quacks who keep us from working and paying our share of taxes. Pharma-psychiatry is a drain on our economy!
Report comment
I’m talking about shrinks Oldhead. Only they’d say we don’t have emotions or thoughts. Just random chemical explosions in our heads.
Report comment
Those “somatic symptoms” could easily be caused by legitimate medical problems. But since you’re on a psych ward they’ll probably feed you neuroleptics/SSRIs/other crap instead! Then when your condition stays the same or worsens they’ll up your cocktail. Ugh.
Report comment
Are Vulcans mentally healthy? Wonder what the DSM composers would make of Mr. Spock.
Report comment
Frank was angry. I’m angry. But not at you. Or any individual per se.
I appreciate how you try to help people, Shaun. I would not want your job. The model you are forced to work with is a great way to keep people helpless and childishly dependent. Therefore it must be frustrating for you.
Report comment
Human beings are emotional. Frank is a human being.
If by emotional you mean raving hysterically, no he was not.
MI Experts can be pretty emotional. But since they don’t have to worry about being locked up, drugged, or shocked their emotions consist of getting angry and offended at their patients’ complaints at the way they are treated–the lack of these wretches’ gratitude, honor, respect–maybe veneration…Hey, is a little burnt incense too much to ask for?
Report comment
Shaun, my biggest problem with counseling is the way it sold out to the bio-bio-bio model. Most of my therapists would ask if I was “meds compliant” remind me to set “realistic” goals for myself and only to date other mental patients. My last counselor told me repeatedly to go out and fornicate before I got too old. I wasn’t the only patient she gave this advice to despite our religious beliefs and protests.
I fired her. Looking back, therapy had become counterproductive since I talked my problems to death instead of fixing them or learning to accept and cope. I’m not against (good) counseling though. At least the voluntary kind.
Many benefit. I did. For a time.
Report comment
Bcharris, I’m in terrible physical pain since tapering off my Effexor and Abilify. I’m allergic to a lot of stuff and itch from head to toe. Plus my whole body cramps continuously so I ache and tire very quickly from light housework and short walks.
What would you recommend?
Report comment
I have experienced severe psychosis twice, RR. Not sure my episodes would count since they were induced by a “medicine” to cure my sadness and nerves. They felt pretty real though!
Report comment
Judging from your above statement, E. Causes you are not one of those “many” I mention. I want to be just. Still, there are those who think the “severely mentally ill” don’t feel pain or bleed red like Normal People.
Report comment
Psychspeak is the language of today. Denying “mental illness” as a brain disease caused by chemical imbalances is double-plus-ungood.
Anosognosia is the ultimate thought crime.
Remember:
SICKNESS IS HEALTH
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS SANITY
“But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
Thank goodness Winston Smith developed insight into his condition. Who says 1984 does not have a happy ending? 😀
Report comment
I have a real problem with anyone wasting away in a psych ward. Odd how many realize it’s wrong for Suzannah who had a real brain disorder. A physical illness not the metaphorical “mental illness.” Yet they’re okay with “schizophrenics” like Frank and countless other human beings rotting away in wards or being segregated/marginalized/etc. should they be released. I guess the “mentally ill” don’t feel pain like Real People. If they claim they suffer they must have Borderline Personality Disorder since pretending to hurt is an obvious attempt at manipulation. 😛
Report comment
RR, I guess dreaming is a “mental illness” the wonder drug Anafranil cured me of. 21 days of NO REM I recall. Maybe 8 hours of light dozing altogether during this period of time.
I became loonier than Minnesota in the spring.
But I mustn’t #pillshame by saying SSRIs ever do anything negative. 😛 Far better to punish and shame those who have reactions to these miraculous life-saving “medications.” Let’s #patientshame instead!
Report comment
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison diagnoses “mentally ill” dead people for a living. 😀
Report comment
I heartily agree Kindredspirit.
Report comment
The Greek philosophers knew more about the human psyche than those quacks who deny souls exist. I would rather talk to a philosopher than a shrink myself.
Report comment
Everyone unquestioningly believes the chemical imbalance lie, Phil. People are dumber than a box of rocks. They swallow anything they see on commercials–literally. No one I talk to is willing to read more than a page of sustained prose. Too much work!
I blame TV. And a refusal to THINK. That’s what the “experts” are for.
I laugh at the shrinks. What are they so scared about? They grossly underestimate how stupid and gullible the doublethinking mass is. (Mass is collective. They can only function as a herd mind.) Maybe the shrinks should evaluate themselves since they sound downright “paranoid” from their rants.
Report comment
I have given up on those myself. Went off my drugs, but am in constant–almost crippling pain. Nonstop muscle cramps from head to toe, horrible itching and dryness, extreme sensitivity to certain noises, and exhaustion from the cramps.
Clear headed for the most part. I think I extended my life by a few years. (No longer in danger of diabetes. My heart is better. I’m losing weight which I couldn’t before.) Not that good a life though. Still can’t work and am lonely as nobody’s business. 🙁
Report comment
Maybe I should build a tiny house on wheels with stuff from the city dump. I am sickly and in pain most of the time now. Maybe in another year I will be well enough.
Report comment
Good point Oldhead!
Part of the reason folks love the idea that “depression” is a brain disease instead of plain old unhappiness is they get the status of an invalid. “Be nice to me. I’m not unhappy, but REALLY sick! My doctor said so.”
They don’t have to consider leaving an emotionally abusive relationship, take up exercising, figure out why they hate their job, or make new friends. Just pop a new pill for happiness.
Report comment
Read the book They Call You Crazy. A bunch of rich, white men voted a bunch of “mental diseases” that only women get into existence for the DSM5.
Report comment
Draptemania, melancholia and hysteria also predate the DSM manuals. Melancholia and hysteria were “treated” with blood-letting and cauterization. Lovely stuff!
Blood-letting and starving were considered effective treatment modalities since they made the patients quiet and easy to control. There is nothing new under the sun.
Report comment
If instead of Anthony and Kate, Joe the homeless guy and Mary the woman in the projects had killed themselves no one would know–let alone care.
Report comment
Tardive dyskinesia and death are minor side effects when you consider that his yacht won’t pay its own bills…Oh. You’re referring to the patients and not the psychiatrist himself.
Report comment
No. Where can we read about the Thud experiment?
Report comment
About your four points Eric:
1. Psychiatrists have unusual power and influence in the world.
2. My psychiatrist revealed his powers and clairvoyance to me. Mind reading and sooth saying are powers psychiatrists possess since they know who will commit crimes and can tell what patients think. We can be sure of this; they say it after all.
3. Psychiatrists have special plans for me as a career test subject for their Mengele-like experiments, and a societal scapegoat to blame for all violent crimes that occur. They also cherish similar plans for 20-25% of the population.
4. Psychiatrists run the world. People accept any bologna they serve on television or in court rooms without any question at all. They are in bed with government and you are condemned at their word since they are never wrong. Like Cotton Mather at the Salem witch trials.
Psychiatry produces and is itself insanity.
Report comment
The Tumblrites have some bizarre ideas. Don’t forget the Flat Earthers. But whatever reason people have for espousing beliefs in otherkin, therians, or a flat earth they aren’t considered “mental illnesses” for some reason. “Flat earth believer” doesn’t sound sciency enough for a psych “diagnosis” I guess.
Report comment
What about a shrink who thinks he’s god? Society believes his claims. He’s “sane.”
If you don’t worship this self-styled deity you have anosognosia.
Report comment
Dr. N has some pretty new lipstick. Coral didn’t go with the pig’s complexion; maybe candy pink will.
As far as the first principle goes, shrinks and everyone else at your mental illness center are 100% opposed to recovery since it’s bad for business.
By recovery I mean a productive, independent, satisfying life. Psychiatric “cures” guarantee none of the above!
Report comment
Yes. “Soul doctors” who don’t believe in souls. Would you see a cardiologist who claimed hearts don’t exist? 😛
Report comment
Hi Dr. Paula. I loved your book, They Call You Crazy. The part that sticks out in my mind is when you compare diagnoses of “mental illness” to constellations rather than actual illnesses.
Report comment
No one ever overstated any dangers to me, Dr. Duncan. Or stated them for that matter.
Report comment
Are psyches natural? That’s the real conundrum of psychiatry.
Report comment
Benzos are HORRIBLE but SSRIs deserve second place in Most Addictive Drug Class. Came off abilify in 10 weeks with just a few headaches, insomnia, and disorientation. Took me 13 months to taper off Effexor. So sick my Mom worried I might need a “group living” situation. I urged her to wait; I knew it would end. Still puny after 9 months living drug free.
Report comment
Akathasia must be horrible. I have seen friends with it. Not surprising it leads to suicide. Nasty stuff!
For me, the main thing that led to my suicidal desires was the diagnosis itself. It alienated me from humanity even as the mind altering drugs alienated me from my own psyche. It made everyone regard me with fear and loathing–which made me want to die.
Report comment
Sounds like what happened to me. Only I never attempted suicide. The dorm mom “educated” the others about how sick, crazy and dangerous I was. Never invited me to these meetings for some reason. She told them not to talk to me; only licensed professionals could talk to people like me. Then she kicked me out. Said my drug-induced Parkinson’s proved I wasn’t taking my “meds.”
I was “meds compliant” for over 20 years, btw. Big reason I’m so puny now.
Report comment
I thought your kind preferred living under bridges, GMYK. Lol. Not enough billy goats to bully huh?
Report comment
Neuroplasticity might produce a demand for brain coaches or trainers–kind of like a physical trainer at the gym. I really think psychologists have excessive amounts of formal education for what they do.
Report comment
Ms. Monique, I always felt the “meds” messed up my thinking. But no one believed me. My parents did at first Mom said, “Rachel never was this bad till she went on Anafranil.” The shrink said it was my fault I went crazy. If I weren’t mentally ill the life-giving medicine would never have hurt me.
When I read William Glasser, Terry Lynch, Bob Whitaker, and others I felt relief. I was right after all. it really was the pills making me crazy!
Some people get angry, insist that they are too bipolar, their pills are “salvation” and become quite hateful. (They often post these misspelled, ungrammatical rants in all caps.) I don’t understand that behavior at all. I never aspired to be a career mental patient myself.
Report comment
Part of our society’s infatuation with psychiatry is it enables us to shuffle off those who suffer onto the backs of “trained professionals.”
Before I got kicked out of college, the dorm mom told everyone in my unit to quit talking to me. She said only trained professionals should talk to people like me.
Report comment
It was better before the darned “treatments” existed. Before they came along 70% of all “schizophrenics” recovered. Now only 16% do. (My guess is the bar for recovery was lowered too.) Yet shrinks seem to think these odds warrant their so-called services.
Report comment
Yep. Shaming people for being sad does not lead them to happiness.
And psychiatry and its minions on the hotlines are there SO WE CAN NOT BE THERE for each other.
“Quit bugging me with your crap. Call the suicide hotline. Call someone who cares.”
Once a loved one has a “diagnosis” like “bipolar” or “schizophrenia” you have a great excuse to ditch that toxic person out of your life.
“Had to leave my wife. She was an evil, crazy bipolar!” Go to any number of forums and you’ll find this. It’s the EVIL bipolar’s fault. I’m normal, therefore I was a perfect saint who did no wrong in our relationship. Uh huh. 😛
Report comment
Why were they worried about being held accountable? Shrinks never are.
If they were, they would be tried for criminal negligence leading to mass homicides when a gunman under their care kills a bunch of people and they tell everyone his “meds” make him safe. They’re a menace to public safety when they do that!
Report comment
I drank ten cups of strong coffee a day on my psych drugs. It made me feel almost alive. The “cocktail” caused hypersomnia and would have kept me from working full time if anyone had hired me.
Report comment
I was ripe for psychiatry when I met my first shrink at 18. The real me was unacceptable and wrong. Psychiatry helped me crush the real Rachel down. I hoped they would normalize me. But all they did was destroy the good stuff (lowered my IQ, destroyed creative interests) and exacerbate the bad (more than doubled my weight, artificial autism.) Mom thought the “meds” were great because they subdued me so I stopped saying stuff that annoyed her. But she would yell at me for moving my legs too much and overeating. 🙁
Report comment
That’s the popular spin no doubt. Anthony Bourdain already wrestled with substance abuse problems. Psych “experts” would have just put him on other crap. Aside from patents, there’s no difference between their drugs and the street kind.
Take this drug, not that.
Report comment
Not much profit in vitamins compared to drugs.
Report comment
Many of them write articles condemning themselves by their own double speak and self contradictions. I’m trying to curate a bunch of stuff for the appendix of a book I plan on writing.
Report comment
Pat, I agree with you there. I want to open a new kind of place for those who are out of it. Like the Solteria Houses or the Moral Therapy homes the Quakers founded.
But it seems to me that change can be affected better from outside the System.
Report comment
Psychiatry creates poverty. Notice how almost no one in the “System” is gainfully employed?
Report comment
My real friends helped me through drug withdrawals. No way would I have trusted a “mental wellness center” therapist.
Report comment
There’s so little positive about being labeled “severely mentally ill” that it really is tempting to act out and say, “Hey, my broken brain made me do t. Don’t blame me.”
This only makes things worse for the one assigned the “Mad” role in the end.
Report comment
TV also plays a role. I have taught a number of Amish kids as a sub. (The Amish are a religious group in America that reject most technology that wasn’t around before the 20th century.) These kids have better attention spans than many adults. Limiting kids’ TV intake would “cure” short attention spans. Read The Plug-In Drug.
Report comment
The fake “peer specialist” might work. Don’t show any victims’ faces. Just the perps. They’re the villains who have no moral right to privacy. Not sure HIPPA covers them.
The very way they treat their peer specialists as “mentally ill” mascots and token “nutters” would be quite a show. Condescension at it’s finest. 😀
Report comment
Hmm. Sounds interesting. I’m game for this project.
It’s risky, of course. Any details Frank? What damning details would we reveal?
Report comment
I wonder how many of us survivors wind up as misanthropic recluses. I struggle not to be a misanthrope. Nothing like being branded “mentally ill” to get to see humanity at its ugliest.
Report comment
I’m a writer of fiction. That is a long range project actually.
The Other Mrs. Smith sounds like an excellent literary novel. I intend to read it. But urban fantasies and dystopias garner wider readership. And I like spec fiction too.
Writing a shorter work of 50 pages. “Children of the Lie.” Strongly critical of the psychiatric premise that all bizarre/unreal thoughts stem from organic defects. Should be out by July 4 on Kindle. Permafree.
Report comment
Congratulations on finding someone who loves you that much! Drop those fake “friends.” They can cause more harm than in-your-face enemies.
An open foe may prove a curse.
But a pretended friend is worse.
Report comment
We need a social media app for venting about the crap in our lives. i’m not entirely joking either.
Report comment
Frank, the irony is the early Christians were called anti-family, anti-patriot, and atheists. The first two were actually true. 🙂
Report comment
Steve it also helps to write people off or stereotype them negatively. Like astrological signs.
All leos are thus and so. Watch out for him!
To be considered bipolar you only need 6 out of 9 or 10 criteria. Two symptoms of bipolar are being out of control and promiscuous. Ergo she must be dangerously bad-tempered and a slut! She may be mild mannered and celibate but it doesn’t matter. Her psych label trumps character.
Report comment
Jclaude, I got the percentage of suicides from Manic Depressive Illness. K.R. Jamison & F.K. Goodwin. Pp. 774, 782. (Not an anti-psychiatry book.)
I will have to ask Julie Greene for her source. She’s a meticulous researcher, but doesn’t always footnote her blog posts.
Unless you are actually sick you don’t need a doctor for unhappiness. Medicine won’t bring you love, hope or a reason to live.
Would you call an auto mechanic to remove your tonsils?
Report comment
Some people take mega doses of two or three drugs supposed to cure depression. And they’re desperately unhappy and want to kill themselves. So much for that myth!
Report comment
And these pills feel shame too. Please have compassion on these poor tablets and capsules! 😀
Report comment
Anemia makes me tend toward depression. Vitamin deficiencies can screw up our thinking. So ruling those out is a good idea. Doctors prefer selling Prozac or Zoloft to checking your thyroid or iron levels. And the crap depletes our bodies of good stuff even more.
No, I’m not saying all bizarre mental states, uhappiness or social problems stem from vitamin/mineral deficiencies. But we do need stuff like iron, vitamin B12, and magnesium. These occur naturally in our bodies, unlike lithium, haldol, or ritallin. And taking a kid off refined sugar won’t kill him/her.
Report comment
About half the writers for MIA support psychiatry, though not stuff like AOT. A portion of the readership does too. I’m surprised at your surprise Oldhead.
Report comment
I have been really well off in my withdrawal. After 22 years on various SSRIs I tapered off Effexor over the course of a year. Was pretty sick with symptoms like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. Been off for more than 8 months now. Clear headed and the physical pain is bearable. Looking for at home employment.
Many who have taken these drugs for years become bed ridden when withdrawing. Monica who wrote the blog BeyondMeds barely left her bed for 2 years at the end of her taper. She was lucky enough to have a spouse and alternative healer around. If I had been that bad off I would have been sent to a home!
Report comment
In my more pessimistic moments I envision the DSM-VI. A series of volumes that fill an entire shelf. The DSM-10 will fill a warehouse. In that dystopia psychiatry and government will have fully merged and proclaimed psychiatry the new state religion of America. All other religions are mental illnesses. And at least 90% of the population will be diagnosed as mentally ill. The upper 10% will include the psychiatric overlords/priests and those who work for them.
Report comment
By the way, being locked up in a psych ward makes you 100 times as likely to kill yourself. So psychiatrizing someone isn’t the answer. Psychiatrists have actually reported a whopping 7-27% of those dubbed “bipolar” committing suicide in their hospitals. Once they are released to their shattered ruins of what was once a human life the numbers soar.
I became suicidal a year after my “diagnosis” because between the Hellish effects of the Haldol and the way my family treated me like a monster I felt life was unbearable. Dad took to slapping me and Mom was verbally abusive. They never were cruel till shrinks told them it was okay; I was defective anyhow.
Report comment
People into “clean eating” tend to be slim because they’re health conscious. Different from anorexia. Also different from the morbidly obese who usually eat “normal diets.”
Report comment
Have you considered producing the play yourself on internet radio? You would need voice actors–but much simpler than a video production.
Report comment
Maybe you should check out Bruce Levine’s blog. Saying the “mentally ill” must be biological defectives OR loafers is a false dilemma.
How about, they’re not able to do much–for now–because of emotional trauma?
Report comment
Because they are determined not to let people come off them. They want us on their drugs for life. Period.
Report comment
A lot of American churches have embraced materialism as a philosophy in practice if not in theory. Especially those made up of caucasians.
Report comment
Doubtful. Cheerful is good. Gloomy is evil.
Swallow pills to boost the happy chemicals and some more to suppress the gloomy chemicals.
Happy now?
No? That’s okay. As long as you’re “meds” compliant it’s okay to feel like a pile of crap. But if you felt like a pile of crap OFF your “meds” that would be a sure sign of your “mental illness” coming back.
If you commit suicide under psychiatric control that’s okay cause it’s unavoidable. But committing suicide while NOT under the authority of psychiatry is a tragedy.
We will loudly lament it at NAMI, while warning others of the dangers of disobeying their good, kind, all-knowing, benevolent psychiatrist. WHY you made this choice is irrelevant. The “mentally ill” don’t have motivations like the rest of us normal people. Unless you count “mental illness” itself as a motivation for suicide or villainy. (Like a Blaze article covering the Los Vegas shooter.)
Remember those cartoon villains off Rocky and Bullwinkle. Why? Because I’m evil. Nyah-ah-ah!
Why? Because I’m mentally ill. Broo-ha-ha-ha!
Report comment
All negative thoughts and feelings are random chemicals run awry in your brain. Alas. Pass the soma please.
Report comment
Dr. George I’m sorry for your loss. I too wish to end suicide, but while I agree with your ends I respectfully disagree with the means you recommend.
Loss of hope for a future and having everyone turn on me, almost drove me to suicide. Being labeled as incurably insane–kicked out of school, shunned by family and former friends, being told my dreams would never come true, enforced idleness and a meaningless existence–these made me think of suicide continually for over two decades.
Psychiatry was the CAUSE of these horrible things. What kept me alive was the belief that it was morally wrong to end a human life despite my loneliness and hopeless situation.
That’s why we need alternatives to psychiatry for lonely, desperate people. Drugs and stigmatizing labels only make the suffering 10 x worse and many people kill themselves while under psychiatric care.
You can’t end emotional pain with mind altering drugs and stigmatizing labels. Human compassion and love end where psychiatry begins. The most reviled and hated people I know are those branded SMI. I was one of these untouchables till I relocated to a new place and assumed a new identity like Richard Kimball.
Report comment
The alternatives were there inside me all the time. Psychiatry convinced me otherwise for a while, telling me I was diseased and so hopelessly insane I’d morph into a psycho killer or at least kill myself without them. Now I know I’m alive IN SPITE of their “treatment.” Not because of it.
Report comment
For me nearly all my withdrawal problems were physical. I had to spend eleven months in a single wide with my folks. Only one melt down when Dad accused me of being manipulative. He meant no harm but I have been told repeatedly how manipulative I am and how that’s part of my disease (hopeless to change) by mental illness professionals. Already sick and headachey. That sent me over the edge. My mom did some things that could be construed as emotional abuse. She was on happy pills. I blame them for her insensitivity. I used to have melt downs every week so nothing new there.
I suffered horrible pain, muscular weakness, nausea and dizziness. No brain zaps or weird mental states till I had lowered the Effexor from 150 mg to 15. Took SSRI of one kind or another from November of 1994 to July 2016 when I began my taper. My last dose was on August 31, 2017.
My aches and fatigue are better. I can work again–as long as it’s not physically demanding. But teaching, writing, coaching can be done full time I believe. Applying for a tutoring job this week. Never could find gainful employment under psychiatry’s thumb. 🙂
Going to get off government handouts. Just chump change anyhow and I felt it was used for the caseworkers/therapists to put me down. “You could never take care of yourself. Totally helpless without us. Tsk tsk.”
My only really bad problem is my body is suddenly all acidic for no reason I know of. Putting a teaspoon of baking soda in my daily supply of drinking water to alkalize it. Coming off my SSRI probably altered my physical chemistry somehow.
All in all I think I’m a success story.
Report comment
Some people’s minds may be located where booster shots are given. Lol.
Report comment
Satan is the father of lies. Psychiatry has his name all over it.
Report comment
Yeah-I-Survived, I’m angry and disappointed at how churches mindlessly swallow psychiatry’s lies (pun intended.) They say they have to believe what science has proven. Yet that doesn’t hold or they would fight climate change, teach evolution to their kids, and maybe close the door. Richard Dawkins is a real scientist after all and he says God is a delusion.
The three reasons churches espouse psychiatry.
1. They want to help the suffering, and think this will help. (Good motive. But if they really want to help they need to get more facts. None are willing to dig beneath the surface it seems.)
2. They are tired of unhappy or eccentric people/relatives and farm them out to the MI Center in desperation. (Bad motive. But understandable.)
3. Two of their prominent members make big money at the MI Center. And they tithe. When they ask to “educate” the congregation about how “safe and effective” psychiatry is, the preacher gladly lets them take over the worship service that day. More money for the center means more money for these women who TITHE. (Very bad motive.)
Report comment
There was second hand smoke with its dangers. But Big Tobacco never hired goons to grab innocent people off the street, lock them up, and tie them to chairs while shoving lit cigarettes in their mouths. So Big Pharma is even worse that way.
Report comment
My mom taught me early on that being “weird” is not okay! If you must indulge in odd behaviors do it behind closed doors where no one can see.
I’m not referring to sexual stuff, btw. Still a virgin at 44 thanks to psychiatry’s “diagnosis.” 😛
More like trying to translate Chaucer into modern English for kicks. Or reciting a play in my head out loud and laughing at the humor. Nothing immoral, illegal, or fattening. But it’s “weird” cause “normal” people don’t do it. Better keep it hushed or they’ll think you’re crazy. Shhhh!
Report comment
Americans have a lot more STUFF–mostly high quality–than citizens of other countries. But we’re often lonelier than poor people in South America or Africa. Loneliness leads to unhappiness.
Report comment
In your case this would not apply. But for every one of us escaping or trying to escape the system there are dozens if not hundreds of people desperate for drugs and MI labels. Check the net and you’ll see. Bipolar burble, NAMI, Healthy Place, the list goes on indefinitely.
Many of these sought out the “services” psychiatry offers and fly into hideous rages if you suggest they might be sane and deny that their shrink is a messiah and his drugs are the elixir of life. These are whom Dr. K is describing.
“What? I’m not crazy!!! Insults like that I take from no one! Grrrr!!!”
Report comment
We have the right to unhappiness. We need to fight for this right now.
A lot of people feel guilt and shame because they aren’t walking around with permanent grins attached to their faces. What gives? This is stupid.
Prolonged unhappiness is not fun. In the churches I grew up in people would yell at you for saying negative things. “Depression is a sin.” “If you walk with the LORD you are never unhappy.”
Telling a troubled soul God’s mad at them for feeling bad can be a real pick-me-up. (Not.)
Now they have discovered the “science” of psychiatry from drug brochures from the 90’s. “Depression is a sin. Unless you have a mental illness. Then, get help. And take your ‘meds’ or we don’t want you back. Your tears are spoiling our country club for yuppies atmosphere!” Pretty compassionate, huh?
And guess what? The drugs are about as helpful as being told how sinful you are for crying.
No one cares how you feel really. As long as you wear a permanent grin from ear to ear in public and say, “AWESOME!” every time they ask you how things are going, everyone is content and don’t ask for further details. If people cared depression would lessen automatically.
Maybe botox injections could work as “treatments” for depression. If you go around smiling like the Joker from Batman you’re not depressed. 😛
Report comment
Oldhead I doubt anyone will think Noel is proposing we give society a booster vaccine. Not sure WHERE the shot would be given. 😀
Report comment
SSRIs can also cause depression and suicide. Ironic.
My depression went away after I went off Effexor. 🙂
Report comment
A lot of unhappiness leading to psychiatry and/or suicide comes from dysfunctional families. But not always. My own did not.
My dad was betrayed by a bunch of family friends who used their influence at work to get him fired so we wound up homeless. And I was bullied and sexually harassed for two years straight. This led to extreme social phobia which led to my big mistake of seeking out psychiatric “help.”
Report comment
A great way to off a husband you disliked. Get a carton of cigarettes. Soak them for a couple hours i enough water to cover them. Add a few tablespoons of this to his coffee every morning. The beans would conceal the flavor. This really would work if he were a smoker.
Great idea for a murder mystery. Not recommending anyone do this!
Got the idea from Shirley Jackson.
Report comment
Churchill was a Debby Downer. Maybe he found his gloom helpful. Remember his speech about “nothing to promise but blood, sweat and tears”? Everybody loved it.
SSRIs would only have made him fatter. And ruined his ability to speak and write.
Can you imagine The Donald giving that kind of speech? Not that today’s populace could appreciate it.
Report comment
Neuroplasticity, from what I can tell seems to run counter to psychiatry’s claim that our brains can only be changed by external force. People change over their lifetimes. Psychiatry fails to account for this.
Report comment
Brett, I am not anti-psychology like some here are. I try not to hate psychiatrists, but they truly frighten me. And psychiatry–the practice itself–ruined my life.
Let me be clear; justice demands it. I have had two good shrinks who honestly cared about me as a person. One actually lowered my drugs till I felt like I was me again. He said I was no longer psychotic. Then we moved and I had to see Dr. Evil. I never saw her laugh except when she had reduced a patient to tears.
The next good psych doctor saw me after her. He seemed concerned at my pain and marveled out loud at how I was the only person he had ever seen with “delusions of inferiority.”
Kind but clueless. How could I not hate myself since I was a soulless, amoral monster unfit to associate with human beings? That’s what “severely mentally ill” means folks.
Most shrinks I have seen are in between. More like used car salesmen of dubious honesty than the commandant from Schindler’s List.
Speaking of Nazis, they were more complex than we realize. In Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor Frankel records how men running the camp sometimes practiced kindness despite their jobs. Most did not kick puppies for a hobby. And those who did had not started out that way. 🙁
Report comment
My truly disturbing behaviors did not begin till after I was drugged up and pronounced hopelessly insane Pat. Now I get along with my family again. They have no idea it’s due to quitting my psych drugs and rejecting my label.
I’m struggling with bitterness at being cheated out of life. At least I have my mind back.
Is it possible to start over at 45? I feel like just giving up. Not suicide, but giving the finger to humanity and becoming a recluse. Worn out old hag that I am. Like falling asleep at age 20. Then waking up 24 years later. But unlike Snow White or Sleeping Beauty I have aged while asleep. 🙁
Report comment
I never was violent. My experiences are not your son’s. Yet I can be locked up without due process at any time–despite a clean legal history!
The drugs damaged my heart and brain, ruined all my hopes of having a family or career. Never was crazy till Anafranil sent me over the edge. Most here are in my situation.
When I complained about Parkinsonism, weight gain, tardive psychosis, the doctors pretended they didn’t know what I was talking about. My GPA went down by 1.0. I could no longer write. My weight more than doubled, my heart developed arrhythmia, and my IQ went down 20 points. Not quite comatose but still…
My life has been Hell on earth thanks to psychiatry. Not insanity at work there.
Report comment
Churchill proves not all eugenicists are Nazis.
Report comment
You’re assuming shrinks want to leave their six or seven digit incomes and prestige. Most prefer not to. Plus they dislike acknowledging all the lives they have ruined. Cognitive dissonance.
Most prefer to view us as stupid, subhuman, and helpless. They view us as domestic animals. This makes it easier to justify the way they treat us. A social process called dehumanizing. Funny how you don’t perceive psychiatric dehumanization. Or maybe it just doesn’t bug you like it does me.
Not all slave owners were like Simon Legree, yet they patronized and manipulated their cheap sources of labor–telling them how stupid and helpless they would be on their own. Like chattel slavery and marriages where women had no property rights, psychiatry is an inherently abusive system.
The only reason they log onto this site is to justify disabling, defaming, and killing people. I have forgiven them for ruining my life. Sort of. But I don’t like or trust any of them.
Many here want revenge. I don’t. But I feel like shrinks are a lost cause. An abusive spouse begging his wife to come back alternating with threats and insults. Incapable of saying, “I was wrong.”
And who wants to waste time listening to domestic animals anyhow? That’s how they view us. One or two shrinks have trolled this site just to get kicks out of mocking our suffering. Creeps!
Till they can admit the damage they have created with their cruel pointless experiments on unwilling guinea pigs I would rather they stay as far away as possible!
Report comment
If I want healthy denial I’ll watch the Star Wars Trilogy IV through VI thank you very much.
Report comment
There really are sweatshops (CALLED sheltered workshops) where folks labeled SMI are put to work making seed packets for less than a dollar an hour. The owners are millionaires who get “mental health” centers to recommend these jobs as therapeutic for patients. The argument is by only earning $100 a month you can keep your benefits.
I worked in one after graduating from college. Ugh.
Report comment
Like the other networks FOX has too many major pharmaceutical companies sponsoring them to be any use. I’ve noticed many here don’t watch TV. Not hard to guess why.
Report comment
It’s an intellectual fallacy. Ad hominem. Most psychiatrists and their marketing flunkies are lousy debaters.
Report comment
If you enjoy your pills good, Pat. I’m talking about involuntary patients with emotionally abusive families.
Report comment
Some youtube commentators have criticized SSRIs. Most here won’t care for the side of the political fence they sit on. I would be happy for support from anyone. From Howard Stern and Rachel Maddow to Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingram.
I’m sort of thankful for Tom Cruze’s kindly intentions. But his affiliations with a certain cult and jumping on table tops while arguing kind of hurts his case.
If anyone asks, “Are you a scientologist?” say, “No. I’m an agnostic/Baptist/Methodist/Catholic/Orthodox Jew.” Make it sound conventional and boring as possible. Then ask, “Are you a Satanist?” When they ask why, reply, “I just thought you sounded like one. You were the one who brought up religion.” 😛
Report comment
For what it’s worth I took a “bipolar” test. My score was 7. According to the site I need to get checked since I have some of the “symptoms” of depression. How about if I don’t and say I did?
Frankly I don’t feel that unhappy. Just physically sick. Developed a bad case of candida with mouth moss, really bad psoriasis, and itching all over. Wish Bcharis would offer some advice. Keep having this problem since my Effexor went below 75 mg or half the original dose.
Btw, if “depression” were a brain disease as shrinks claim–unhappiness itself would be a symptom of the disorder. Not the other way around.
Report comment
But Steve, people don’t want reality. We need “mental illness” because it gives us the hope of happiness in a bottle. Plus it explains bizarre, evil behavior away as a diagnosis allowing “doctors” to prevent crimes before they happen. Just like Tom Cruze in The Minority Report. 😀
Report comment
Kanye is coming off most of his mandatory drugs. He posted it on Youtube. Highly unwise.
As rich as he is he could take it to court. I hope he does.
One of his “symptoms” was unusually vehement criticism of pop culture. Can’t have that. Almost as “mentally ill” as loving cats and preferring books to movies. Shudder!
Report comment
The heart damage from years of malnutrition played a key role too. And she took a large amount of thyroid medicine when her thyroid was normal.
Karen Carpenter died in the 70’s before pharma-psychiatry was such an item. A lot of psychiatrists talked to folks back then.
Report comment
Sorry about your iatrogenic problems RR. 🙁
Report comment
Psychiatry has ruined therapy for the most part. The only one I have been happy with lately is Will Hall. He offered great advice for answering back to negative self talk. Not even certified. Like that matters.
Report comment
Preventing violence with love Frank? How anti-SCIENCE of you! 😀
Report comment
Number two is foolish. Entering the psych system is the best way to ensure you never are gainfully employed again. How is “treatment” supposed to prevent lost wages since those labeled MI are nearly always unemployed for crying out loud?
“Less than half of all people with ‘mental illness’ receive help.” This is only a cross section of the population but 25% of all college students are getting “treated” for some kind of “mental illnesses.” Would 50% be an improvement? How about 90%?
If enough people are drugged out their gourds won’t they run out of people to run the asylum? And even if most live in HUD housing who the heck will foot the bills? Not just the pittance these involuntary addicts subsist on but the costly “services” forced upon them by over-priced enforcers, thought police, and drug lords?
The only good thing is with all the hostages Pharma-psychiatry has taken–many willingly–it will make it harder to monitor/control all of us.
Report comment
Yep. Looks like what Big Pharma concocts to cure “mental illnesses” Despondent. Now should we market this poisoned apple as an antidepressant, an antipsychotic, or a mood stabilizer? How about all the above?
All you Mama Grizzlies at NAMI need to check into getting a prescription of this for your unruly SMI grown kids. It can cure them of delusions, hallucinations, depression (or complaints which is all that matter) and all those other pesky symptoms that annoy you no end. Your kid will spend the rest of their life in a coma.
Ta da! No more annoying or embarrassing behaviors for you to deal with. 😀
Report comment
I got all my help online. Books, Peter Breggin’s book and videos, Surviving Antidepressants forum, and A Meeting of the Minds which I watched over and over to hype myself up through headaches, dizziness, nausea, etc.
One thing the video shows is most professionals have no idea what to do when we suffer severe withdrawal. We really stand just as good a chance of going it alone as getting medical help. And most shrinks will never give permission, let alone help. Bad business to let all your cash cows run away!
Report comment
Fibromyalgia is considered a physical problem. Maybe caused by malabsorption or iatrogenically induced. Yet I read an article encouraging MDs to hand out SSRIs on the grounds that digestive problems caused by serotonin level upsets in the stomach often occur with ME disorders. Grrr!
Then, if the patient goes bonkers on a bad SSRI trip tell them you unmasked a “bipolar illness.” Hot dog! Break out the champagne. Now you can force them to take 3-6 drugs even against their will.
CHA CHING! The sound of money for human souls.
Report comment
You’re posting under a pseudonym. Even if they read it–mental illness makers avoid this place usually–how will they know it’s you? They can shove their own perfectly balanced brains where the sun don’t shine! You’re safe here. 🙂
Report comment
Many disagreements on MIA stem from difference of experience. Some of us felt fine but got locked up by meddling family members. Others needed emotional help like I did.
I was afraid to leave my dorm room and took to sleeping non-stop from fear of facing other students. Sounds weird now. But ugly church politics and a whispering campaign against Dad led to our family’s homelessness after my freshman year of high school. As the new kid I decided not to try to fit in. After several moves I was sick of fighting my way into a new herd. Hard for teen girls anyhow. Like a lioness kicked out of her pride or a she-wolf banished from the pack.
The kids took to gossiping about me and bullying/sexual harassment every day. Finally got to college, but had social phobias without my family support to fall back on.
A more insightful therapist could have used exposure therapy to help me overcome this fear. Maybe let me take a semester off to do it. Getting sucked down the psych rabbit hole made me lose 4 years in getting the degree and wrecked all hopes of any career.
But Brian–bless his heart–thought psychiatry might have answers he didn’t.
Report comment
I had it badly on Haldol and Stellazine. Aside from some minor tics only fellow psych survivors could pick up on I escaped free from the disfiguring lip smacking and grimaces I saw other folks getting at day treatment. 🙁
Report comment
Not all folks with SMI labels are alike. One of the things I hate about these labels is they lead to prejudiced thinking. Assuming you know everything wrong with someone for some reason independent of the person. Shabby clothes, obesity, red hair, “wrong” color of skin, or “bipolar” diagnosis.
Report comment
Patients only have as much or more knowledge than doctors when they praise the pills. Otherwise they’re “delusional” and should be ignored. 😛
Report comment
Maddow and others believe in a direct correlation between “mental illness” and violence because the “expert” shrinks on television tell everybody how dangerous all the “untreated SMI” are. No other medical profession talks that way about those it wishes to help. Or claims to wish to help.
Report comment
Actually they should call it a “brain disease” (since that’s what psychiatry’s disciples mean) yet the term “mental illness”persists. On some level everyone must sense “mental illness” is not literal because they churn out articles and comics entitled, “What If We Treated Physical Illness Like Mental Illness?’ They don’t even realize that by posing that question they are acknowledging that there’s a difference. Since a brain tumor is a physical condition after all, not a “mental illness.”
Report comment
I borrowed this analogy from Miracles by C.S. Lewis. Read it at 17 before they messed with my brain. When I still had a future. 🙁
Report comment
In the old days, a lovesick young man might take to the woods singing weird ballads and claiming that the tree he embraced was the maiden who rejected him. He was recognized as “mad.”
If he quit acting that way, returned home, started talking rationally, and got on with his life, people would say he had “come to his senses” and was “in his right mind.” No psych drugs needed!
Report comment
For my part I have never known a person to become morally upright because of psych drugs. They numb empathy and shrivel the frontal lobes that provide impulse control.
Are you in favor of forcibly drugging folks like me to make us “better behaved”? While drugged I could not control my eating, socialize with people, or keep my apartment clean. Is that an improvement?
And all we have to go on that the people are safe to be around is the shrinks’ word. No proof that the drugs were helpful in preventing further crimes.
If you refuse to take your “meds” why do you keep extolling their virtues?
Report comment
Off since August 31, 2017. My taper began in March, 2016. Effexor took over a year. I went cold turkey off Lamictal after only 13 days of taking it. Abilify took 10 weeks to quit.
Effexor withdrawal lasted 13 months. Depression and suicidal thoughts vanished about halfway through my withdrawal. No mood swings or “weird” thoughts or melt downs. Except one time in the single wide I was sharing with my parents and Dad accused me of being manipulative. I got upset, yelled, and burst into tears. My folks begged me to get help. I realized I still had bad habits and was falling into old behavior patterns I no longer needed. I delayed my taper and called Will Hall for a session.
Haven’t been “manic” in 17 years. The SSRIs created it since I never had it before I started anafranil.
I itch all over and my skin is horribly dry. Congestion and cough most of the time. Chronic aches and muscle cramps and weakness. Headaches sometimes. Digestive problems. Hair loss, brittle nails, hoarse voice. Metallic taste in my mouth. Anemia and other deficiencies even doctors admit to. Sensitivity to loud noise in the morning. Like waking up with a hangover every day. Crying too often. Tired all the time.
This started before my taper. Long term drug effects. But my taper seemed to worsen the suffering. Probably stressed my system. It helped me lose weight though. It also kept me from developing diabetes like everyone else in day treatment and prevented further heart damage. My arrhythmia is better now. The doctor wonders why.
Report comment
Sorry RR. One of my replies was unduly harsh.
Still mourning my lost life. Man am I lonely! And I fear I can never let anyone close because of the ugliness behind me.
Report comment
Ever read articles about the Kung!? The exclamation point is part of the word–no English equivalent exists. They only work 15 hours a week hunting and gathering. At the end of a book called Off, the narrator and his wife find how to support their family working 30 hours a week combined.
Of course there are trade offs. The Kung! live in tents and move around, owning little but their loincloths and a very few primitive tools they hold as common property. The family in Off rejects cars, the internet, television and limits electricity. They also do a lot of work that doesn’t pay. Gardening, canning, sewing clothes, home carpentry.
If we wanted to be semi-luddites, grow our own food, shoot our own meat, mend all our clothes till the cloth falls apart–we could get by on less than $600 a month. Or less than 20 hour work weeks.
Report comment
How about calling them injured by lying quacks and segregated in the “mental health” ghetto? Not sure I will ever be gainfully employed due to long term iatrogenic damage.
Report comment
Is being unmarried a symptom of bachelorhood?
Report comment
Yes. Involuntary euthenasia of the severely mentally ill.
If they cry out, “No I want to live, don’t kill me please,” while being led away remember this is a symptom of anosognosia. Your loved one is so mentally ill they don’t realize how worthless their life is.
Their “No” really means “Yes.” Humanity dictates that we end their suffering immediately.
Report comment
Now I head depression off at the pass. No therapist required!
Report comment
Many therapists were less than helpful. They “helped” me in three ways for the most part.
1. They kept reminding me I had an incurable brain disease. If I didn’t take the drugs that made me horribly sick, obese, and numb I would turn into Ms. Hyde and murder everyone. My duty was to take the “meds” even if they killed me slowly and painfully.
2. They reminded me to give up all hopes of career, family, or any semblance of a happy life. They also told me to only date “bipolars” since we were so weird we could only understand each other. I had nothing in common with the guys in group, btw. Nice guys but not on my level somehow. Most just watched TV all day. Just because you share the same label does not make you soul-mates! Ugh!!
3. When I had had enough of this I would contemplate curing my “illness” the only way I knew how. Stopping my brain and heart and other body organs entirely. They were nice enough to get me admitted to the nuthouse. Always mystified them since I had “good insight” and adhered to my “treatment.” Must need my “meds” adjusted since my soul wasn’t dead yet. 😛
Report comment
Glad I tip them when I do pay a visit. 🙂
Report comment
And experiencing sad things can make you sad too.
Report comment
A lot of this is exacerbated by psychiatry’s promise of a quick fix.
Joe Blow is trapped in an unhappy job with inadequate pay. Instead of figuring how to change his situation: get more training, find another job, work as a contractor–or how to cope with it better: stress management, living within his means with the envelope system–Joe asks his friend for advice. Jack tells Joe his girlfriend saw Dr. Quackenbush. The friendly neighborhood psychiatrist at the community center Mental Illnesses R Us.
Dr. Quackenbush tells Joe his anxiety and unhappiness are due to a brain disease. Joe’s stressful lifestyle has NOTHING to do with either. Joe starts taking a new SSRI. He loses the ability to sleep. After 3 weeks without sleep Joe starts talking to people in the corridors at work. People no one else can see or hear. This gets Joe a ticket to the inpatient ward of Mental Illnesses R Us.
Dr. Quackenbush swears up and down that the life-saving medication he gave Joe never has that effect on people unless they were evil/insane to begin with. He puts Joe on a double dose of the SSRI making him nuts along with a hefty dose of Haldol and Depakote and a benzo thrown in for good measure.
Like Gregor Sampsa in Kafka’s tale, Joe gets out of working by becoming a vermin. Only in this fairy tale there’s an evil wizard behind the transformation of man into roach.
Take a bow Dr. Quackenbush!
Report comment
Alcoholism and other bad habits have been called “mental illnesses.” This IS ridiculous, but no more so than what already exists. And a lot of people blame promiscuity on the already existing label of “bipolar.”
Btw, I have been accused of “Bipolar” and am still a virgin at 44. Put that in your pipe and smoke it APA!
Report comment
Jclaude I live in a new town. I explain my inability to work to friends as fibromyalgia. I really have many of the symptoms of ME. That is more believable than bipolar. No mood swings or suicidal thoughts. Just a lot of physical pain and exhaustion.
I still worry that I will come across as crazy to people. Weird I know. Due to physical weakness I cry too easily now. Tried to hold down a part time job at the Dollar Tree but wasn’t fast enough, broke down crying, gave too much change to a customer, and couldn’t do the housework needed to pass HUD inspections.
Report comment
“Odd since the ones who do the least productive labor are the ruling class.”
Like the ones inventing fake diseases to explain emotional trauma, eccentricities, and bad behaviors? Then using fake diseases to sell street drugs under respectable names calling them “meds”?
Report comment
These societies (less technically “advanced” than ours) have high recovery rates for those who lose touch with reality.
They do sometimes lock up family members in attics. But you have to be truly dangerous. The “harmless mad” can wander all over the village and people look out for them till (hopefully) they come back.
Report comment
SOME do, Oldhead. Szazs was aware of this. Virginia Woolf, Kay Redfield Jamison, Patty Duke, Carrie Fisher all used the “insane genius” role to their advantage.
Most of us here didn’t. I always hated the thought that I was incurably insane and had group leaders attack me in group or sick other group members on me. They do this kind of thing in cults, btw.
Report comment
Do you want it done fast or do you want it done right?
Hey, this is America. Home of fast food, high speed internet, and buy now pay later credit plans.
Fast fixes! Whether they work or not doesn’t matter.
Report comment
Speaking from personal experience Steve, depression can be addictive.
I have battled it since age seven. Ironically I learned my own good ways of coping. Then–at fourteen–my family was homeless for a couple months. In my new school I was bullied/sexually harassed for over two years. This threw everything out of whack.
I always was way too sensitive. Not emotionally resilient and strong like my siblings. In college I was still scared of people. Went to a shrink who gave me anafranil. Effected me like bad acid. Ruined my life. 🙁
Report comment
How did the police know Dontre Hamilton had a diagnosis of “schizophrenia” Sera? That doesn’t show like skin color. I’m sure his poverty (homeless!) played a role too.
Report comment
Julie Greene blogged about Roseanne’s ambien use. That does play a role since ambien probably breaks down inhibitions and may be indication of anxiety or unhappiness to add to the “mental illness” nonsense.
I know a woman who excused her husband’s abusive behavior saying, “He can’t help it. He’s bipolar.” Another woman excused her friend’s son cursing his mother in public so she had heart problems. “He can’t help it. He was off his ritalin.”
I argued with my friend a little too harshly. “He cussed her out because he was angry and disrespectful. Now Jan, what ‘medicine’ on earth can cure those bad behaviors?”
(I know he probably had a headache from withdrawal. But Jan believed the “meds” turned bad people into saints. When I demanded how pills can reform bad character she hemmed and hawed before admitting they really couldn’t.)
Now they probably will add racism as a “symptom” for “illnesses” already invented by shrinks. Like Bipolar, Schizophrenia, and maybe BPD as well. Not only does this provide a handy excuse for spewing nasty stuff, “I can’t help it I shouted racist epithets at the restaurant last night. My meds for my Bipolar need readjusting,” but it will make the “bipolars” (or whatever) automatically accused of racism.
Guilt by association. And shrinks will gladly use it as a marketing tool. Phooey!
Report comment
For all it’s emphasis on racial “diversity” Starbucks sells overpriced coffee as a status symbol for rich people. I don’t hate rich people.
But selling super expensive items just to help people show off their money bugs me a little. No wonder Starbucks employees dislike and fear the homeless.
Report comment
I am against lying. Especially calling mind altering drugs life saving medications.
Those Big Pharma ad people should be doing time with the shrinks and other drug dealers.
Report comment
Removed for moderation.
Report comment
Back just 100 years ago–or less–there were the harmless madmen/madwomen and the (very few) dangerous lunatics. But, salivating over all the repeat business they’re assured of for promoting their defamatory lies, shrinks tar all the SMI with the same brush and swear it’s permanent (no one said that 100 years ago.)
You never get better, you can only be muzzled chemically. In me power! Broohahaha!
And if you seem better you have anosognosia. Therefore you are doubly a menace and must be locked up for your own good. How dare you act normally when the “experts” have designated you insane for life?
Report comment
So in describing states of mind where people have odd beliefs (think they’re Gandhi or Eleanor Roosevelt) or see/hear nonexistent things you would use the term “extreme states” perhaps?
Report comment
Hmm. If I went to a doctor for IBS and he forced me to take something that disintegrated my bowels, despite my protests, he could be sued.
A lot of folks with FM and IBS don’t waste time with allopaths because modern medicine doesn’t provide many answers. Not against medicine in most cases. But in dealing with painful, chronic conditions you should figure better techniques than popping pain pills all the time.
Report comment
Assuming the mind and the brain are synonymous. Many of us do not.
A portion of the brain lights up when you think unhappy thoughts. Does the brain produce these thoughts out of nowhere? If thoughts emerged from random chemicals in our brains nobody’s thoughts would be relevant including the self-styled healers who “diagnose” those with the “wrong brain chemicals” which they infer from their materialist mindset and punish accordingly.
Report comment
Oldhead, I agree. Selling cocaine to trusting people by calling it penicillin is despicable.
Deceit removes informed consent or choice.
Report comment
What is your “diagnosis” RR?
Report comment
If people choose to murder because they hear a voice telling them to do it why are they obeying the freaking voice anyhow? “Just following orders” didn’t work as an excuse for the Nuremberg Trials.
Szazs argued that hallucinations are caused by lying to your subconscious. If a man hears a voice saying, “Murder your wife,” and obeys it, he must have desired widowhood. He dreamed up the voice to help him accomplish it. Just like a man coping with overwhelming feelings of inferiority decides he must be Abe Lincoln.
Report comment
Where is that article Dr. K? MIA or your personal site or somewhere else?
Report comment
If someone is so unhappy they can’t get up in the morning, yelling at them won’t work. Someone at MIA got offended when I chided a friend for taking to bed, not answering his phone, and marinating in self pity though (or maybe because) he knew it would upset his family.
Here’s the deal. This was a long term behavioral pattern. Warren was not in bed or contemplating suicide when I told him this. And he knows it upsets his family and friends when he does this.
Is it too much to speculate that–at some level–he wants them to suffer too? Misery loves company.
I’m no friend to Warren if I encourage him to behave selfishly. I’m friends with his cousin and sister and get angry at how he is treating them. They have gone through a month or more wondering if he was alive or dead. As have I.
Report comment
I dropped out of life for a year to withdraw. Survivingantidepressants helped me greatly. I lived with my retired parents in a single wide in the boonies. (Got away from those infantilizing “mental health” baby sitting workshops.) They never found out I was withdrawing because I didn’t act “crazy” just sick all the time. Mom thinks I have fibromyalgia.
Often I wished I were a heroin addict instead. Then I would receive support and praise for coming clean. Everyone I know offline drinks the psych koolaid and would want me locked up if they knew I “escaped.”
Report comment
Many–not ALL–therapists insist on the SMI paradigm for their clients though. If any of those have a clue they must be tormented by their consciences or not have any left–like the psychiatrists they serve.
Hard working for one of those “Mental Wellness” community centers. Your bread and butter depends on preserving the status quo.
Report comment
Psychic psychiatrists. They’re not delusional. Using hard science they can diagnose your brain without medical equipment. They can also read minds and predict murders before they happen.
Yes, those SSRI drugs are antihistamines. Came off mine after 23 years of taking them. Have symptoms of an autoimmune disease. Even many survivors sneer at this.
Glad I’m off. My mind is back but my body is a wreck!
Report comment
Screen door on a submarine! Guidance counselors in high school are supposed to help kids pick out colleges or apprenticeships. Now they probably hand out drugs like pez candies too.
“Hey Jimmy. You ever considered a career in mental health? No, not a psycho-therapist.
“You could be a lifelong mental patient/test subject for drugs. The pay isn’t great–for you anyhow. But it’s a necessary field. How else can poor Dr. Quackenbush make his yacht payments?”
Report comment
Yep!
I was reluctant to leave psychiatry because of this.
For 4 years I kept thinking, “Everybody believes these pills are saving my sanity and life. How could a small handful of weirdos be right and at least 95% of the population be wrong?
Report comment
Classrooms are way too big! Take the money that is blown on speed/counselors/child psych quacks for restless kids and spend it on more teachers and aides. A lot of bored, restless kids are that way because the lessons are BORING and they’re so smart the teacher gets frustrated with them.
I learned my lessons halfway through the class and got bored. I would daydream and the teacher would get mad. How dare I learn faster than the other kids?
After a semester of SBD classes I came down with mono and became very depressed. School was depressing. Trying to dumb me down to fit.
Later, when stuck in the MI System, I frequently had nightmares I had been sent back to second grade as a 30 something adult. When I asked if I could advance or graduate the Teacher would yell at me or laugh patronizingly.
Now the nightmares have ended. 🙂
Report comment
Hmm. Would they have drugged Dante?
Food for thought.
Report comment
Sam, many “normal” people indulge in the behaviors I listed above. Including shrinks–like the Angry Congressman Tim Murphy.
This has led to discussions and arguments among the experts about “bad behaviors” versus “mental illness.” They can’t figure it out–because there is no clear cut difference.
And hearing voices/visual hallucinations/and prolonged unhappiness aren’t sins by any stretch. It’s way more complicated than most religious folks or shrinks want to admit.
Report comment
Being labeled “severely mentally ill” is the ultimate shame. I loathe my damning label so much I would consent to have a limb amputated to get it removed. There are only three solutions once you get a label unless you enjoy public shame. (NAMI’s so called stigma busters.)
1. Relocate to where no one knows you and avoid doctors at all costs.
2. Shell out large sums of money and travel to the other side of the continent if necessary to become publicly exonerated as sane by a medical professional. You probably need a lawyer too because of records.
3. Suicide. It’s common for those in other cultures to kill themselves after public humiliation to “save face.” Since this goes against my religious beliefs the next best thing is withdrawing from all public life and becoming a recluse.
Sadly I may choose number 3. (Recluse option.) I score high in agreeableness and get along better with people than ever, but I refuse to undergo the public humiliation of being called “Bipolar.” It IS a SHAME I cannot bear! I would rather live in isolation forever than endure the scandal.
Anyone who pretends it’s no big deal must be an emotional masochist who enjoys being degraded and mocked. Or maybe they just are way less sensitive than most of us.
My mom turned on me. Alternating between excessive control and disgust/contempt for the shame I brought upon her, things never have been right between us since the doctor told her I was incurably insane at age 20. Both parents told me no one would ever love me because of my SMI. Mom tells me I should be grateful since no one but her could put up with me. Sigh.
Report comment
Something tells me you would like the works of Peter Breggin. Our society is crueler than ever to the disabled. Although mistreatment of any but the “mentally ill” and maybe the developmentally delayed is officially frowned upon.
Dad was teaching a class and mentioned forming movements to end discrimination. Not one student thought of the disabled.
Report comment
Talking to family and friends in a cruel way, cursing, ingratitude, rebellion, drunken orgies, overwhelming urges to lie or steal, physical or emotional abuse of spouse. These are supposedly “symptoms” of “mental illnesses.” And we’re supposed to go on murderous rampages if not drugged till we die.
Belief that I had a brain disease that would make me do these things troubled me greatly. I wondered if I had a soul. Because I was a morally bankrupt monster (I believed) killing myself seemed like an altruistic act–the only loving thing I could do for those around me.
Then I began to wonder. Despite my “diagnosis” I never did most of these things. This made me angry since by labeling a large, heterogeneous group of mostly innocent eccentrics and those drafted into the mental illness system through a bad drug reaction and branding us with the same label as depraved murderers on TV psychiatrists were insulting all who had committed no crimes at all.
Basically it’s like sending developmentally delayed teens and random strangers off the street to live in prison with Ted Bundie type killers and telling the local population that the prisoners were all serial killers. Guilt by association inflicted by the psychiatrists who imprisoned us. Shame on them!
Report comment
The label knocks confidence AND hope.
Report comment
Christianity has traditionally referred to sin as a spiritual disease. Not to be treated with physical remedies for obvious reasons.
Not all extreme states even count as sinful according to the Bible though. Nor vice versa. A lot of truly evil people are articulate and “with it.” Their conscience causes them no pain so it doesn’t drive them bananas.
Report comment
Good point.
I want nothing to do with the Alt-Right. Too left leaning economically and racist as all get-out.
Report comment
Great idea! But an official retraction/apology from marketing companies in addition would be better still.
Report comment
“You have to be careful with anger though. It is a very consuming emotion and can cloud the judgement.”
You got that right!
Report comment
If you check the archives of Beyondmeds.com, Eric, Monica records how she got her “bipolar” label removed and a few others have done the same.
Report comment
If another professional changes the diagnosis there will still be records–but you will be exonerated to an extent–and you can no longer be locked up without due process.
Report comment
I recovered from “bipolar” shortly after beginning my taper. Now I suffer physical problems. Chronic allergies and aches and pains for example. These come and go. In a couple years they probably won’t be bad enough to impact my life.
I’m well enough to work part time and keep my apartment clean. Never could on my XXXX cocktail! Struggling to “adult” in my mid forties. Exhilarating but discouraging too.
Report comment
Yes. Psycho came out long before the drugs came out.
Peter Breggin does have valid points about how the SSRIs may cause/exacerbate violent tendencies.
If I were to present the argument it would simply be that the drugs are not working at stopping killing sprees. The psych drugs taken escalate as do violent crimes. Is it causative? My guess would be no, or at least not entirely. But drugs do not work at moral rehabilitation of bad people.
Report comment
The Label seems like a good thing at first. “Hey, I can do whatever and no one has the right to hold me accountable cause I have a screwed up brain. Be nice to me everybody!”
Then you realize you no longer exist as a real person and no longer enjoy the rights of citizenship. You can neither love nor be loved. The drugs make the alienation worse and provide their own exquisite torments. And no one believes a word you say…you’re crazy after all.
Report comment
I think I’ll pass. Some folks enjoy being marginalized and segregated.
Takes all kinds. And I no longer have the “symptoms” of bipolar either.
The worst thing about the MI labels is they are lifelong. As if people are incapable of change.
Report comment
Murderers. Or murderers for no apparent motive.
The school shooters–who weren’t too out of it from SSRIs–had motives. They were sick of being bullied. They got mad and became bullies themselves.
Report comment
Bipolar should follow next. I heard that it’s become a more common label than schizophrenia thanks to iatrogenically induced mood swings.
Report comment
I had one for a while. Then my parents moved and I went too. My next shrink was truly evil. I don’t make the accusation lightly.
She had a sadistic streak. Loved electroshock–especially involuntary. And I never saw her laugh except a couple times when she had reduced a patient to tears.
I don’t care for the psychiatric institution, but Dr. R was–in all justice–the only Evil one I had the pain of being under.
Report comment
In which case you’re a menace to society–or rather their profession–if it comes to light. No matter how successful you may be or how many people you have helped, you must be locked up, drugged and shocked. For your own good. Plus there’s a 1% chance you MIGHT commit a violent crime in the future they think. So those orphans in Africa will have to find a new benefactor while the MI System sucks you back into a bleak life drugged up in abject poverty subsisting on government handouts. 😛
Report comment
A lot of unhappy people. And a perceived means of stopping bizarre/violent criminals.
Ever watched a police procedural drama? No one commits a crime because he’s mad at his cheating ex or wants the inheritance now.
No. It’s always some fancy-pants polysyllabic term from the DSM5 to magically explain what the SMI perp thinks and outwit the madman/woman before they torture the next innocent victim to death. 😛
Report comment
I’m a right winger myself. So is Slaying the Dragon. Communism and psychiatry can make very happy bedfellows. Ever heard of “Sluggish Schizophrenia”?
Taking Big Pharma advertisers to court for false advertising in their commercials would be great. As a whole a major pharmaceutical company is untouchable. But taking out a smaller advertising company or even individual writers might be doable.
And it would bring the Truth to public notice.
Report comment
RR, I’m angry that I was lied to and about for the best years of my life. I am grieving, to put it mildly. Like waking up from a semi-comatose state in my 40s after going under at 20.
If shrinks want to hawk their wares as emotional pain killers to consenting adults, that should be legal. They should also share the poor long term prognosis of depending on these drugs to cope with life. But they don’t. Or MOST don’t. And they pretend they will prevent further brain damage along with other high pressure fear tactics.
And they have the legal right to lock up their patients for rejecting their advice. No other medical specialty has this right. And they demonize those they claim to want to help on national television.
That’s why there’s an anti-psychiatry movement and no anti-oncology or anti-cardiology movement.
Report comment
A long time ago, the term Negro was considered a polite, respectful term for those of African ancestry. Like the word Black in the 70’s and now the word African American.
Let me play devil’s advocate though, Oldhead, since the opposition will probably bring this up. The Black rights advocates never argued that Africa did not exist. For that reason the survivors’movement will need different strategies from theirs.
I like the narratives on the site “I Got Better.”
Simple messages the sheeple who believe Big Pharma commercials and everything else on TV can grasp are what we need.
“Psych drugs don’t work.”
“Recovery is possible.”
“Psychiatry ruins all hopes of recovery.”
“Psychiatrize your kid; you’ll have a kid forever.”
“Psychiatry eats dreams.”
“A drug is a drug is a drug.”
Report comment
RR, okay. I didn’t realize the DSM5 listed things that weren’t classified as “mental illnesses.” An uncle of mine became an insufferable jerk after his head injury.
My aunt wanted to put him on SSRI’s. I talked her out of it. Uncle B’s nasty behaviors stem from a lack of “filters” or inhibition. The last thing he (or his wife) need are to break down what inhibitions he still has.
Report comment
I notice you were troubled by how your thoughts were different Eric. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Maybe you had been undergoing a paradigm shift and suddenly came to realize it while visiting your “hipster” acquaintance.
I plan on visiting a psychiatrist one last time–to get my stigmatizing “diagnosis” removed. My best bet is seeing one of the doctors who write here. A long trip to California or New England from my home in the midwest looks inevitable.
Report comment
Big Pharma doesn’t force people directly. They use their hatchet men–the psychiatrists for that.
Report comment
Sounds as bogus as arguing that, “SSRIs help people greatly and save lives. While they have been shown to cause suicidal thoughts there is no direct link to suicide established.”
So…suicidal thoughts don’t cause suicide. And if greater numbers of folks commit suicide on these drugs that’s just the mental illness at work. Quit pill shaming. 😛
Move along folks. Nothing but a few hundred corpses to see.
Report comment
The producer wouldn’t be joining the NRA.
Report comment
Isn’t ‘mental illness” supposed to be biological not mental?
Pretty darn confusing!
Report comment
Ditto for “bipolars.”
Report comment
My depression stemmed from loneliness and not fitting in. My anxiety stemmed from being bullied/sexually harassed and nearly homeless. (Complex story. An older woman who I thought was my friend got her husband to pressure the board to fire Dad and make our family homeless. Ugh.)
When shrinks told me these stemmed from being defective and hopelessly insane they were adding insult to injury by saying these traumas were no big deal. It was my fault for having a broken brain. Their treatment was and led to further bullying and extreme poverty resulting in homelessness.
Report comment
How are things going as a professional artist, SE? What mediums do you specialize in?
Report comment
After he discovers the specific gene that causes schizophrenia and maybe the bipolar gene too. Lol.
Report comment
You’re obviously new here. In many cases I would have modified my language. But I had listened to Warren’s complaints for hours at a time. You have not. His cousin and I both felt the same way. He was angry because his life had disappointed him (Me too!)
Some cases of depression require encouragement. Others may demand a little sternness.
Depression can be very addictive like heroine. And there is no known organic cause for depression either regardless of what the drug commercials on TV say. A brief perusal of articles–not just here–but in the American Psychiatric Journal and other sources will verify this. No well informed psychiatrists believe this.
I tried to keep Warren out of the hospital. I wanted him to feel better and lead a productive life. How cold-blooded and lacking in compassion.
Guess that was cruel of me. He was determined to get locked up and put back in the system. That’s what he got. Forced to go through Day Treatment babysitting and drugs.
I know what Warren is going through, because I have been there myself. Refusing to talk to family or friends in order to frighten them is pretty selfish imo.
Report comment
No known organic disorder differs from no organic disorder, RR. But if they don’t know WHAT the disorder is how can they fix it? Right now they don’t even know if it exists.
The reason many of us are angry is they diagnose people as hopelessly insane to the point of incompetence and keep our brains from functioning properly to make sure this prophecy comes true. Like paralyzing someone’s legs to “fix” restless leg syndrome.
Report comment
You got that right, Frank!
Report comment
An old fashioned term for a bad guy was “black hearted” man. Useful as a metaphor. But if a doctor pointed to a man and said, “That man is black hearted. Help me inject bleach into his upper left chest cavity to cure him and make him good” the doc would be taking the metaphor too literally.
Report comment
My manias never were pleasant–often frightening. They exhausted me but I couldn’t calm myself down. They were drug induced though.
Report comment
I call it defamation of character. But, call it what you like, there are extreme mental states where folks can’t function or understand the real world. Psychiatric drugs and pessimistic, life-long labels are the last things they need!
Report comment
Yet according to the DSM5 it too is a “mental illness.” Yes, really TBI is a disability but not a disease.
Report comment
In the title, Matt does put quotation marks around “Mental Illness” Oldhead.
Report comment
Rossa Forbes uses “mental” illness. I would use mental “illness.” It’s mental enough (imagination, feelings, and social constructs are mental.) The illness suggests brain disease. Things like traumatic brain injury, brain cancer, Alzheimers are brain diseases.
Yes, I’m aware no one can see what causes Alzheimers all you hecklers. Scientists are still very ignorant about the human brain. The idea that they can fix chemical imbalances–even if they exist–is therefore ludicrous. Like a 10 year old messing with his chemistry set in hopes of curing cancer. And it’s well known that drugs don’t restore cognitive function to dementia patients. They don’t help or heal–just destroy.
Report comment
It can get you full professorship if used correctly. My cocktail was a little too potent for graduate work.
Report comment
Eventually Mat, you will probably want to discard your label of “mentally ill.” Unless you’re talking to a doctor who could have you locked up of course.
A friend of mine got off his lithium. He did it all wrong though. He cold turkeyed after years taking it. And long after any withdrawal problems should have vanished he lay in bed wallowing in self pity and bitterness.
Finally he would get up for a little. Then back to bed. This went on for 10 years.
His nutrition went kaput. He told me he only ate a bag of chips and can of pop a day during one episode where he lay in bed for 3 months or so.
I told him, “Of course you feel awful. You are only eating crap and getting no exercise or communicating with anyone. Don’t you see this is actually a choice?” I also chided him for not talking to people who loved him–his sister, his cousin, and friends like me worried if he was still alive. I asked him if he realized how selfish this behavior was.
Last I heard he got out of the hospital where he got committed. Warren continued to insist he was bipolar. Naturally he had mood swings. (Like calling yourself stupid over and over.) He kept wailing how he wanted to die. I told him to avoid saying that in front of doctors if he didn’t want to be locked up.
My guess is he tried to set up an appointment with a psychiatrist to get the lithium he thought he needed. When he couldn’t get in, he started telling everyone he wanted to die. Sigh. You get the picture.
I wanted to date him at one point. Not anymore.
Report comment
We can choose to make ourselves dumber than we already are. Any good philosopher knows that. Szazs would agree I think.
Report comment
I lost mine too, Frank! Sort of. May need to relocate AGAIN to get fresh medical records so the doctors will treat me decently and companies will put me on insurance plans without funny looks.
Through withdrawal though my body’s still adjusting to being drug free after over 25 years of regularly “taking” some drug or other prescribed by a mental illness making quack. Got a part time job. Making plans for the future. Starting over in my mid-forties is bitter sweet. Glad I’m finally free; for a while I thought only death would free me.
Matt’s right about one thing (at least.) We need a common narrative or story as survivors. But we’re not only heterogeneous as a group, even as individuals our stories are confused.
I remember reading a book by Szazs ridiculing how writers like Virginia Woolf, Kay Redfield Jamison, and Alice Flaherty couldn’t keep their narratives straight, due to confused ideas about “mental illness” and the human mind as a whole, and self dramatizing behaviors. For example rhapsodizing on “mental illness” experiences for attention–even the negative kind.
Report comment
That’s a thought I had too Oldhead.
Report comment
A lot of “depression’s” victims have that problem.
Report comment
Some people aren’t smart enough to care for themselves. “Mental illness” is another matter.
“Severely Mentally Ill” people would be artificial fools, though mostly involuntary. Lowering people’s brain functions, infantilizing them, and degrading them in the eyes of society are a great way to prevent adult independence.
Report comment
In his novel That Hideous Strength C.S.Lewis invented some highly eccentric villains that would have done credit to the Batman movies.
Dr. Frost is one of the most memorable. He is cold and detached as he experiments on people. At a turning point of the book, he indoctrinates the naive young protagonist who is disillusioned with N.I.C.E.–the sneaky corporation Frost serves–and wants to leave.
Dr. Frost tells him that love, hope, affection, goodness, evil, despair do not exist. They are merely chemical reactions in our brains randomly occurring to make us do one thing or another.
During this speech Dr. Frost has no facial expressions and talks in an emotionless almost monotone voice. He acts like a rigid automaton throughout the book. I can’t remember what his specialty was but I think he was a psychiatrist.
Report comment
Not very scientific though. Like using a wooden ball bat instead of electroshock. Tsk tsk. Not all professional.
Report comment
Yes. But till we kill the dragon, pulling out its teeth and removing its fire breathing ability would help a lot.
Report comment
Wow! This wasn’t even directly physical–drugs, shocks, or surgical lobotomy. I’m not sure how or why it messed you up Eric, but I believe you. When I took large amounts of Haldol or Stellazine flickering lights drove me bonkers. I would have to lie alone in a dark room till my thoughts cleared.
Report comment
My stomach is pretty weak even now. But it probably sustained permanent damage after 23 years on SSRIs.
Report comment
Going off my SSRI cured my depression. Or–for you anti-psychiatry purists–my prolonged period of intense sadness lasting more than 10 years.
I’m happy to be alive now. 🙂
Report comment
For my part I found the message that antidepressants don’t work to be highly empowering. This message gave me a sense of hope! It was not my fault the drugs made me feel awful after all. They were no better than street drugs and long term use of those never helped anyone think straight or feel good. They told us that in the 80’s.
But some liars told us the psych drugs were medicine that would set everything straight in my brain since sadness was a brain disease. No way I would have taken them if I had known. Nor would my conservative parents have willingly forced their first born into the career of professional Junkie. 🙁
Been drug free since August 30. Celebrating my anniversary of Drug Free Living in a few months.
I found a job. I can keep my house clean with effort (never could on my drug cocktail.) And I am writing more. And I can enjoy novels in a way I haven’t since I was in my teens.
Like coming alive again. Just sad it took 25 years.
Report comment
My solution? Withdraw carefully by tapering and hiding out. If necessary fake an illness like FM or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. You will probably be very sick for a while.
And tell nobody!
I took vitamins at pill times to psych my folks out. To this day they don’t know. And they don’t know why I’m suddenly doing better either.
Report comment
Which is offensive Pat? The study and its conclusions or Dr. Joanna’s critique of it?
Report comment
Bonnie I know a nurse I met who could benefit from reading your novel. But until they put it out as a movie or comic book she won’t touch it. Too literary and thought provoking.
To the point, I want to start a grass roots faith based movement to “cure” young people of “depression.” This would prevent suicide, homicide, and wasted lives in bondage to psychiatry. I don’t believe I need “certification” or a masters to do this. My hope is I can teach others this process in a week or less so it can go from community to community.
When people realize a loving small group or family or neighborhood/small town can “cure” people without academic credentials or the occult knowledge integral to the wizards of psychiatry it will undermine psychiatry’s credibility as well as saving lives.
Where would you suggest I go for resources?
Report comment
“Mental Health Consumer” is the ultimate BS job. And it takes up 20 hours or more per week if you let it. If you sleep 12 out of 24 hours that’s a lot of time.
Report comment
Blood makes them pass out. Heh heh.
For some this is actually true.
Report comment
I wish he’d invent some flubber instead. Lol.
Report comment
Because he considers you a peon perhaps.
Dr. Goezhe in his book Psychiatry and Organized Denial does not appear to think highly of Nutt.
Dr. Nutt the psychiatrist. You cannot make this stuff up! 🙂
Report comment
Judi, a lot of depression probably is due to malnourishment as you say. If someone feels sad all the time for no apparent reason maybe they could try both. Anemia and thyroid problems frequently make me blue also. I see a real doctor for those. Homeopaths and nutritionists are also good. I am skeptical of most therapists because the mental illness system owns them. I steer clear of them myself. Talking my problems to death got old after 30 years.
Report comment
I doubt Onya takes any SSRIs. Dealers shouldn’t become addicts themselves after all.
Report comment
I benefited from a few visits with Will Hall in a way no “normal therapy” sessions ever did.
I think instead of “therapists” who would have to wade through the corruption/ineptitude of the Mental Illness System a bunch of coaches or consultants–those who flew over the cuckoo’s nest–could help people recover much better.
The idea that you need a PhD or MSW to help others emotionally is ridiculous to many of us here. Daniel Mackler and Bruce Levine (certified therapists) admit this and ridicule the concept.
Consultant sounds better than coach actually. Many folks escaping psychiatry tend to be dependent and clingy. The idea is to foster independence. Not enable it.
Consultants work on a short term basis opposed to coaches. And they aren’t expected to have certificates.
Maybe consultant for finding work or coming up with a career plan and coaches (short term) for social reintegrating yourself. Just throwing out ideas.
Report comment
Me too. He cares about his patients! A real “soul doctor” if any human being deserves the title.
Report comment
Thanks Rossa. Glad your son is better. (And you too of course!) My own mom is surprised and happy at my improvement. Had to figure it out on my own. Mom gave up on my getting better long ago, but staying where I was would have destroyed me. May resurrect my dream of a career as a librarian soon. 🙂 I thought that was dead forever.
Report comment
Doubt it’s any worse than neuroleptics. Lol.
The old chains in the attic!
I really wish the psychiatrists would differentiate between the dangerously violent and the harmless. Most fall into the latter category. “Med compliance” is not the significant factor but behavior. But they have “services” to sell the public…and us.
Report comment
As a diagnosee myself I realize we need to balance the needs of the psychiatrized individual against the needs of the family/community/society. We are not meant to be independent loners in isolation. Some Catholics choose this but it’s an ascetic lifestyle–penance for the sins of humanity. More of a sacrifice than an ordinary celibate makes.
Psychiatry did not help my relationships with others sadly. This effected not just me but those around me as well. I thought the pills would make me a kinder, better, more mature, rational person–that I owed it to those around me to sacrifice my own mind and body–even cutting my life short by 25 years–to make them happy.
In the end it made us all worse off. My family thought I had Asperger’s but now all the symptoms are gone. They’re pretty puzzled. I am overwhelmed at the sensations of empathy and affection I have. Not just anger and grief like at first. Learning social interactions at 44. Suffered from social phobia since 15. Got drugged up at 20. Trying to adult now. Sad I’m so late but glad my progress is speedy. Can keep a clean house and am starting a job soon. 🙂
Report comment
And if the screw cracks under the pressure it was despite your best efforts to help it. Alas.
Report comment
Brett Deacon, for number one, the quality of warm doughnuts the reps offer also plays a key role.
Report comment
Try the new state of the art sledge hammer our company just patented!
Our electric power sledge hammer waits in the wings should that fail. 🙂
Report comment
There was a psychiatrist who helped me a lot. The best I ever had and one of the only two who gave a rip about me as a person.
Dr. Guilley was his name. He frequently talked about my problems and took my side when Mom begged him to put me on Haldol again.
He seemed excited at his personal discovery that “less was more” and he could help unhappy people detached from reality by lowering their drugs. Unfortunately I moved with my folks and saw Dr “Rached” in the next town.
Is Dr. G. still in psychiatry? Something tells me he left the field. He honestly wanted to help folks. Pharma-psychiatry is a bad tool for that.
Report comment
Da da da duh!
Captain Obvious to the rescue!
Report comment
Why didn’t the NRA grasp the situation sooner?
In a word–selfishness.
Too busy defending their right to bear arms to care about the rights of others denied due process. The rights to life and liberty and blah, blah, blah. Stuff that crazies don’t need after all. “They’re not real people like us.”
As someone who has always supported the 2nd Amendment I’m hurt and angry.
Report comment
Even one political part questioning psychiatry is good. The “Cures Act” or Murphy’s Law went through almost unanimously. No one had any doubts that it was a good thing. Even the sick crazies would prosper. Who doesn’t want safe and effective treatments?
Who indeed? But we’re talking about psychiatry here. Lol.
Report comment
Another reason network news on television would want to praise drugs as a cure for short attention spans is one obvious solution for restless kids who can’t concentrate is ditching the boob tube!
Pitch the thing! Let the kids listen to the radio or read or learn to play musical instruments. Get the really restless ones outside engaging in physical play. Most “ADHD” kids are just healthy, energetic ones if you take them off the plug in drug and get them moving so all that pent up energy has somewhere to go.
Report comment
I made the argument on another site that even if fat is ugly and unhealthy (ugly is subjective, but if the majority of a society deems something ugly then I guess it is) it still does not make treating fat folks with cruelty right. Cancer is ugly and unhealthy but no one mocks those with cancer.
I am struggling to lose weight and it’s more difficult than a naturally slim person can imagine. I sigh and realize I never will weigh 120 pounds.
The genetic lottery plays a role. So do psych drugs. (Don’t go on those if you don’t want to be fat!) So do behavioral factors like exercise and eating right.
I am walking 2 miles a day now. And I will walk even more in the future. Maybe anaerobic exercise too. Changing my eating habits is essential since just dieting doesn’t work. Replacing fast food with batch cooking healthful, nourishing meals and organizing community potlucks are a few examples.
Report comment
Psychiatry isn’t just hurting the consumers–destroying their bodies and souls bit by bit–but it’s hurting their families and society as a whole with its inflated (often deceitful) claims about the safety and effectiveness of the products they sell.
Oddly enough I met two mothers with mad adult children. Not NAMI mommies, but well meaning women who loved their offspring and were wringing their hands in despair.
One had a son. “If only jr. would take his meds.” But the behaviors she described were not being out of it. Rather her son was an ungrateful brat. He refused to help out around the house and verbally abused her and his siblings. But she was convinced this was just his “sickness” and continued to beg him to take his pills.
(Neuroleptics can “help” people by making abusive loud mouths too tired and numb to be as mean. Still doesn’t make them think more clearly or fix character flaws. Duct tape could probably work just as well. Duct tape jr. to a chair so he can’t smash things or put holes in walls. Duct tape his mouth so he can’t verbally abuse family members. Ta da! Duct tape is a safe and effective modality of treatment.)
Telling the “mentally ill” person they are no longer responsible for their actions is bad for their characters in the long run. Besides ostracizing them from the community–both by labels and morbid obesity/uncontrollable tics/apathy/coldness from the drugs–the idea that “you can’t help yourself, you aren’t responsible for your actions, it all depends on those around you, you’re sick, if you keep “taking your meds” they have no right to complain. These can turn anyone into a jerk if they believe them. Plus emotional numbness and poor cognitive skills made me lazier and more selfish.
Communities don’t know what to do with these people. If their behaviors or suffering worsens there can be only one answer. They aren’t taking their “meds.” Exasperating for all. Devastating for the banished member.
As far as how the hyper-inflated claims of psychiatric treatments have harmed society and put the public at risk, Dr. Peter Breggin says all that I could say–only better. Read his article about the false security psychiatry provides enabling school shooters to run amok.
Report comment
If Dr. Pies becomes so angry and offended by the idea that members of his profession are uninformed enough to believe in the “chemical imbalance metaphor” why doesn’t he simply make a public announcement to enlighten the masses when “mental illness” makes the news? Say, after a major school shooting. He could find a ready audience as a well-respected psychiatrist elected president of the APA.
Report comment
I’m not against emotional “therapy” like many commenting here are. But do you really need an MSW or PhD in psychology to help people?
The whole business of “therapy” could easily be replaced with peer coaches. (No MI affiliations!) I found Will Hall’s counseling more effective than any “certified therapy” I ever experienced before. Will almost has his doctorate but chooses to remain uncertified. Not hard to guess why.
Report comment
An abusive “therapist” of any school is dangerous.
Report comment
Friendship therapy!
🙂
Report comment
My dad says one of the best ways to never find happiness is to make Finding Happiness your life goal. I agree with him more the older I get.
Report comment
There are pay offs to calling yourself mentally ill. Especially if you’re a celebrity like an actor or singer. The pills may make you morbidly obese and ruin your acting ability. But that’s okay.
Take it on the road! Shill psych drugs at various conventions and go on TV specials sponsored by Big Pharma. Likely you’ll earn more than you ever did as an ordinary actor.
Just like America’s favorite Identical Twin Cousins.
Report comment
Myths exist. Of course this is a philosophical argument grappling with the meaning of reality and language deconstruction rather than science.
Hence we can talk about Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Easter Bunny. They don’t literally exist but they “exist” as figures in popular imagination–even if we know they won’t bring us stuff.
Report comment
The Meanings of “Mania.” Only Jamison would leave out the quotation marks.
Report comment
I still consider his website a useful resource. Glad I’m not one of his victims though!
Not all the writers/readers of his blog support ECT.
His support of random brain damage by electrocuting an innocent person like a death row murderer is of course vile an STOOPID!
Report comment
“Treatment” for “mental illness” is a great way to ruin physical health. I would most likely have Diabetes if I had kept taking psychiatry’s brain drugs.
25 years. Finally I can lose weight in my forties. Contrary to the natural order of things. But drugs violate the natural order.
Lost 35 pounds after tapering off my Effexor.
Report comment
Sounds a little too much like Kay Redfield Jamison’s nonsense.
She’s the author of a humorous novel based on an alternate history. Touched by Fire is the name of that highly imaginative work.
Report comment
I think Streetphotobeing is a fellow American.
This side of the pond psychologists are a bunch of spineless sell outs to Pharma-psychiatry. The whole thing is revolting.
They even use churches to spread psychiatric propaganda. “Jesus can’t save all of us. The ‘severely mentally ill’ need Prozac instead!”
Glad things are a little better in the UK, Auntie Psychiatry.
Report comment
That said, I’m not as opposed to this idea as others at MIA.
Report comment
Your comment to Oldhead seemed patronizing, Danny. Like him, I wonder if you’re a psycho-therapist or social worker.
Report comment
Slave owners accused the abolitionists of great cruelty.
If you opposed slavery you hated African Americans according to the slavers.
#Slaveshaming no doubt. By opposing their Peculiar Institution you were being mean to the slaves needing their whips and chains.
Report comment
Goetzhe undermines the credibility of psychiatry. That’s what really rouses MacFarlane’s ire.
Report comment
What I described is NOT “pill shaming.” Rather the pills were defended and glorified by shaming HUMAN BEINGS #Patientshaming!
Report comment
Research should not be conducted by either psychiatrists or Big Pharma. Both have axes to grind. Both are unreliable.
We need disinterested scientists with nothing to gain from the experiments conducted.
Report comment
Sorry you’re so lonely Pat. 🙁
I’m kind of lonely too. Not telling people I’m supposedly bipolar helps immensely.
Maybe volunteering, joining a hobby club, or taking a cheap class at a community college or art center would help. If they ask why you don’t work tell them you have chronic fatigue syndrome. That doesn’t scare people like “mental illness” does.
I have joined a writing group and Toastmasters.
Thinking about enrolling in Public History at a university and volunteering at a couple museums to start a career as a grant writer/fundraiser.
Report comment
Psychiatry serves a couple purposes in our society. It fulfills a societal desire (not need) and poses as the answer to a couple legitimate problems it actually exacerbates.
One: It enhances the self esteem of “normals.” I may not be a success or a college degree, but at least I’m better than that “schizo” in the corner muttering to himself. Some “crazies” take to their assigned role too–to escape adult responsibilities, act like drama queens, and excuse bad behavior..to name a few.
Two: Many “crazies” actually think psychiatry is saving them. You talk to folks at Clubhouse, Day Treatment, or NAMI and none ever question that their lives would be infinitely worse or they’d be dead from spontaneous combustion of their imbalanced brain chemicals. (Heads blow up. Just like the Muppets!)
Three. Our society believes sane people never commit crimes. Therefore psychiatrists are better at protecting the public from violent crimes than the police/courts/and Armed Forces combined. Due to the awesome psychic powers they obtained in med school, shrinks can read minds and foretell crimes before they happen. Just like in The Minority Report. 😛
Report comment
If I had a suicidal friend I would do my best to talk him or her out of it.
A true friend can do a lot to prevent suicide. Tell someone you love them; they matter to you.
Hope and love are the suicide preventive measures.
Report comment
And they LIE! ALL. THE. TIME.
They deceive trusting people coming for help with crippling emotional pain. They deceive the public. And they commit libelous slander against those they first deceived by bad-mouthing them on national television.
Shame!
Report comment
I hate it! But his site offers alternative perspectives. At least Healy is more honest than most shrinks who claim they know the exact cause of madness and have magic bullets or life saving medicines that will fix everything.
Everyone I know offline believes this crap too.
Report comment
They think they’re saviors but they are fathers of lies!
Report comment
“Mental illness” actually is a contradiction in terms unless you mean it as a metaphor–an imaginary illness that exists only in the mind as opposed to the body. People use the term to mean brain disease or physical illness.
Some truly stupid articles have been written. “What Would Happen if We Treated Physical Illnesses Like Mental Illnesses?’
What indeed? Would we have renowned cardiologists warning the public of how heart attack victims were a menace to society on 48 Hours? Would cancer specialists force people to undergo endless rounds of chemo with no proof they had leukemia? Would ear, nose, and throat specialists amputate people’s noses and ears just because they looked “abnormal”? Would endocrinologists sell cocaine to diabetics claiming it was insulin?
But I digress. By the very wording of these articles the writers unwittingly acknowledge that there IS a difference between physical and mental illnesses. This would undermine their point if the American public weren’t so darn gullible!
Report comment
Steve, surveys show that viewing “mental illness” as caused by emotional distress lessens bigotry while the alleged biological explanation increases it.
NAMI published an article a few years ago acknowledging that educating people about the “chemical imbalance” does not decrease “stigma.” Many of the bigwigs–such as Pete Earley–know it’s a myth, but continue to use it. Without Big Pharma’s support NAMI really would be a nonprofit. 😛
Report comment
Working and being productive to society are impossible once you get “helped” by psychiatry. Being disabled by drugs and socially outcast because of their defamation of character (diagnoses) render both of these impossible.
Report comment
What discourages me most are the lazy, stupid people like Brennan. Semi-literate sheeple who enjoy loafing in front of TV and whining about the “mental illnesses” they promote for self dramatizing. Like Kay Redfield Jamison and Patty Duke to name a couple.
If they admitted they weren’t hopelessly incompetent and crazy they would have to grow up and take responsibility. Scary! Let the Nanny State supply the bottles, change their diapers and burp them.
My biggest beef is, like the fable of the crabs caught in a trap, these adult infants want to tear down those of us who wish to recover. Not enough to ruin their own lives but ours as well. Catty, spiteful, jealous so-and-so.
Had one troll on Dr. Healy’s site tell us to go to Hell, cause she had a “happy, productive life.” I told her most likely her “awesome” life was a dumbed down, numbed out state–unable to work, go to school, or do much of anything like housework or talking to others–in a ghetto of other mental patients since no one else wanted to be near her. Ms. Troll never responded. I guessed correctly. Ha.
I never aspired to be a mental patient. Apparently many LOVE the role.
Report comment
Glasser was against drugs or labeling. He encouraged leaving abusive situations and was not against unions. Maybe you have confused him with someone else.
Before I read Bob Whitaker, Glasser’s book Warning: Psychiatry Can Be Hazardous to Your Mental Health helped me realize that the “life saving medications” I had been conned into taking were the same stuff a street dealer sells. I was angry but empowered. Not hopelessly insane after all.
Report comment
Before the Civil War many slave owners accused abolitionists of not understanding or loving the folks who “needed” to be enslaved. MacFarlane’s accusation of you sounds similarly ridiculous, Phil.
Report comment
They’re resistant to making $200 instead of $800 an hour. Plus losing all the exotic vacations and gold wire fruit baskets Big Pharma heaps on them. That’s why. Poor babies. 🙁
Report comment
Quit inflicting mental illness on us and we can find our own darn housing!
The only employment I have ever found was in spite of my “mental wellness” team. My moods have stabilized and I’m starting a freelance career…despite psychiatry’s best efforts to keep me helpless and dependent.
Report comment
Hmm.
A certain part of a brain scan lights up when a person is unhappy. Ergo, everything psychiatrists say about depression and other stuff must be right.
I’m not sure what fallacy of thought this is. I’m pretty sure there is one related to this line of unreasoning. Need to look it up.
Report comment
Dr. Oz has some “sciency” shticks. Mostly not related to psychiatry. Perhaps the medical premises are sound, but his demonstrations are not.
He’ll fill telephone booths with balloons and have guests get in to pop them and other bizarre “visuals” that have little if any bearing on the medical point he’s trying to make. But the audience eats it up.
Baaaaaah!
Report comment
Oldhead, how do you account for conservative churches who are embracing the “science” of psychiatry more and more? They still don’t believe in evolution and other stuff that scientists teach.
Yet despite their lip service to the concept of human souls they don’t believe in them it seems. Or maybe normals (like them) have souls but the “mentally ill” do not.
Report comment
Good idea, Dragon Slayer. Share it with Auntie Psychiatry. 🙂
Report comment
Most people on psych drugs are dependent on disability. They crippled me; I still can’t work full time.
My guess is Brennan lives off government hand outs and goes to “clubhouse” or “day treatment” in lieu of a job. Why she thinks her Fix makes her less of a burden is beyond me!
None of these “Proud Bipolars and Schizos” ever reads a word of those they disagree with. Or even the APA journal articles written by the gods they fawn over. Why bother when drug brochures and TV give us all the facts we need?
Bipolar Burbler brags about how ignorant she is, posting that she refuses to read Anatomy of an Epidemic. One finds this mind set in cult members’ fear over reading contraband literature.
Btw, I’m not a Flat Earther but I’m not afraid to read what they publish (good for yucks) or trying to ban it. If I were afraid what they said was true I would be!
Report comment
What if your family, church, and friends want you locked up, shocked, and drugged?
Report comment
Ditto! Dehumanizing for all humans; not just those of us unjustly “pathologized.”
Report comment
The biggest threat to Psychiatry is not the anti-psychiatry movement. (Is there such an animal?) The biggest threat to Psychiatry’s might is the Truth.
Report comment
There’s a saying, “There is no bad publicity.”
Do you think your opponents’ zeal to discredit you may have back fired, Bonnie?
Report comment
To damage you “for your own good.” Lewis was critiquing forcibly rehabilitating “sick” criminals in an essay. I believe it’s in the collection called God in the Dock.
Psychiatry has taken it a step further and is treating innocent people like the “sick” criminals they are “rehabilitating” due to superficial traits we may share. Creepy, dangerous stuff!
In That Hideous Strength, Dr. Frost acts like the perfect shrink. Cold, emotionally detached from his own and others’ humanity. Brutal in his efforts to control others.
In one memorable passage, Dr. Frost argues with the protagonist that free will and souls do not exist. Just chemical reactions. Sound familiar? 😀
Report comment
Does the Power Threat Meaning Framework bear any semblance to William Glasser’s Reality Therapy/Choice Theory? I found his books much more readable. If you want this movement to catch on making the language more accessible is a must.
Report comment
Since you’re the doctor, you can reduce your own prescriptions of mind altering drugs by 100% any time you choose and tell patients the TRUTH that there is no known organic cause for insanity. As far as Great Britain as a whole, you’ll need approval from Sir Simon first for your 90% reduction plan. Unduly optimistic…even Utopian….
Btw, Steve, MacFarlane never did answer your question as to whether he tells patients they have “brain chemistry imbalances” when he prescribes them drugs. Most MI professionals are very vocal about this spreading this myth. No prominent psychiatrists (aside from a few mavericks) care to correct this view.
Report comment
Sorry Pat. 🙁
I don’t know why this feels like a kick in the face, but you have your reasons. Being left by everyone would be painful in itself.
You’re not the only one offended by this article judging from the comments below.
Report comment
“Mania” is simply a pseudo-pathological term for partying too hard. Patty Duke and Carry Fisher didn’t need shocks/drugs/labels. Just not getting sloshed multiple times a week and bedding strangers.
Unless you’re referring to a high induced by a Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor. That’s iatrogenic.
Report comment
Bruce Levine has made similar claims in his books, Phil. 🙂
Report comment
Patterns of distress can go away. But, that would mean fewer patients for life.
Report comment
Many people here, as elsewhere, are ignorant of psychiatry’s true origins, Oldhead. Maybe we need some essays written about that?
Report comment
Curious as to what MacFarlane and others mean when it comes to “moderate.” Sounds suspiciously like a code for business as usual.
“Stay with us, be good–not uppity–and we promise not to hit you too hard most of the time. Unless you provoke us.”
Report comment
They “work” on the same principals as LSD from what I have read. Street drug uppers could be just as effective at curing depression.
Report comment
For Dr. MacFarlane they don’t. When he prescribes pills for his patients HE never suffers extreme weight gain, cognitive problems, suicidal thoughts, etc. For HIM they work perfectly. And “diagnosing” someone as incurably insane doesn’t lead to people treating HIM like a monster.
Report comment
What can I say but, Baaaaaaah?
Report comment
Medical science based on lies helps no one but those profiting from selling the ineffective treatments.
Report comment
It’s reasonable to be ashamed of being called a dangerous madman or madwoman. I do not tell people about my defamatory “diagnosis” because of this. SMI is publicly understood to be a state not just of poor judgment, but moral turpitude.
As far as “pill shaming” and “diagnosis shaming,” who dishes out the pills and defamatory labels? The real shame is not on those “helped” by psychiatry!
Report comment
Sorry about your son’s painful experience–and yours, Rossa.
My “psychotic” episode came about from not sleeping for 3 weeks while on Anafranil. It made me trip out like a bad acid from the 60’s.
The doctor insisted it was my fault and labeled me Schizo-affective. This led to getting kicked out of college and ruined my relationship with my mother. She always was over protective and had a sick “need to be needed.”
Psychiatry was the real villain but Mom took advantage of the situation. Between her and the MI System for 25 years! Like Ulysses between Charybdis and Scylla. 🙁
Report comment
Does crippling and killing people while believing you are helping them constitute psychosis?
Report comment
Only if she wants a free vacation at Ye Olde Funny Farme!
Report comment
Bcharris, I could use a good homeopath right now. (Can’t trust any allopaths right now, since they all lie and cover each others’ butts.)
Low on money now, but next month I could do a consultation. Unusual expense came up, so i need most of my remaining income for groceries.
My email is r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com.
Report comment
Thank you, Sandra. I wish more people did.
Off my “cocktail” I no longer have mood swings.
Report comment
There really should be an e book about that–written for psych survivors. Faking Normal. Part humor, part practical tips about being out in public without freaking out people and getting locked up again.
I hear dialogue in my head–from the fictions I write. This leads to “inappropriate” laughter. Carrying a comic book or wearing head phones might make people less scared. Non-writers have no idea what the process of writing is like and assume you’re insane if you have a rich inner life that doesn’t rely on TV and other pop culture.
Report comment
I always pick up my psych drugs a day or two after receiving a text from my pharmacy. I also have a “mental health center” I tell doctors I attend. I missed my second appointment and they told me I couldn’t apply for the next 6 months. I said, “Okay,” and never called back. 😀
Sandra means well, but fails to account for those of us who went psychotic from an SSRI, as well as those who aren’t helped and may get more out of touch from reality from taking neuroleptics. I’m sure she has read about tardive psychosis. I congratulate her on her honesty and referring to these drugs by their proper titles “neuroleptics” since they aren’t always antipsychotic.
How many people diagnosed with schizophrenia–like Will Hall–would recover undrugged? is the question she and others should be asking.
Report comment
Reminds me of the fables told by Aesop and Foucalt where a predator–a fox or cat–tells a smaller creature like a bird or mouse that all animals are equal now. “Come down from your perch in that tree and let me tell you about it.”
Uh huh. Thanks, but no.
Report comment
Wessley hates passionate people. To a psychiatrist like him coldness and emotional detachment=sanity. 😛
Report comment
Another thing, psychiatrists have always been vocal about “No cures; only treatment for mental illness.” In that respect, Dr. Goetzche is only saying what they have said all along.
Telling people they can recover from depression and other problems would make some angry. Others might find it hopeful and empowering.
The people who will really be angry with you, should you choose to denounce “antidepressants” as safe and effective, Dr. MacFarlane, are your colleagues and many other professionals making a fortune off of “mental illness.” Your fears are rational, and I admit to being a coward myself. At least you can’t be locked up without committing a crime.
Report comment
What good is a superior intellect with no conscience? It only makes one more of a menace to society than a nasty guy with an IQ of 75 who mops floors for a living. At least he’s less capable of hurting people.
Report comment
Don’t pathologize it. It’s a moral issue–not organic. They are liars. And in the case of the “silver backs” as Dr. Gotzche calls them, they are brutes who don’t care about other people. They seared their consciences since they got in the way of career advancement.
And they go on the air telling everyone how dangerous we are–how we lack empathy and moral consciences. Disgusting!
Report comment
As far as “depression does not exist” I would have to disagree, Dr. MacFarlane. We are on the same page there.
I have had fits of prolonged unhappiness since I was 7. Partly school problems. I had behavioral issues and was put in a class where I was yelled at for knowing more than other kids. (A foretaste of my adult life as a career mental patient!)
Because I couldn’t verbalize my distress–smart though I was–I became so gloomy I willed myself into developing influenza for 3 weeks in a row. I wasn’t learning jack at school anyhow.
If someone is depressed they may have something bad in their life they need to deal with. An emotionally abusive relationship–a job they hate. Maybe it’s something they can’t change but need to come to terms with. They may also be anemic or have thyroid problems.
I’m not anti-therapy. If someone is discouraged or sad, yelling at them can be very cruel. Love, support, and hope can cure depression along with proper diet, sleep, and exercise.
An SMI diagnosis leads to rejection, isolation and hopelessness. It got me kicked out of college and prevented me from ever marrying or having a family. I live in crushing poverty since I can’t drive or get a job. Pretty depressing!
Report comment
Phoenix, you were right that I don’t know what it’s like to have a child “out of it.” I feel bad about what I put my own family/friends through. Part of it was grief over my lost life; part being under the influence of drugs 24/7.
I didn’t start out “psychotic” but depressed and very anxious. (Later psychologists said I had PTSD, for what it’s worth.) Anafranil ,made me loonier than Minnesota in the spring. And all my earthly hopes and dreams were cheerfully crushed by Dr. M. my shrink when he told my mom I was “schizophrenic” but it COULDN’T be the Anafranil since it NEVER had that effect on anyone.
Later they fed us the BS that it was my fault. I must be a defective or that life nourishing, wholesome goodness would never have made me loopy. Therefore since my illness had been “unmasked” I must attone for my sin of being SMI with endless doses of cocktails, infantilizing “clubhouses” and other crap. Here’s the question nobody asked: Since Anafranil unmasked my MI and all psychiatry offers are treatments to remask the alleged brain disease, why not just take me off the d___ed drugs?
Hence my premise that when folks (mostly shrinks, though some frightened psych patients also do it) yell #pillshaming they are really honoring the pills at the expense of those disabled by them. Also my complaint of #patientshaming.
Off my whole cocktail and no longer manic or depressed. No thanks to any medical professionals I know. 🙁
Personally, I mean. Dr. Peter Breggin’s advice has been very helpful. I love that man.
Report comment
What if taking the SSRIs leads to accusations of malingering when they don’t have the desired effect?
For my part, I found the notion that psychiatric drugs don’t work to be an immense relief. An end to shame.
I was not hopelessly insane/morally defective after all. And my prolonged depression (10+ years) was caused by the pills that were supposed to help me.
The truth will set you free!
Report comment
I admit I have never been force sedated. But I am not the anti-authority type Bruce Levine writes about. I love his writings! But the notion that all of us labelled “mentally ill” are rebels/James Dean wanna be’s is a misnomer.
Always was praised for being the “perfect patient,” for submitting to the medical authorities like I had to other authorities. A lamb led to the slaughterhouse.
Not till after 4 years of careful research and moral evaluation did I screw up my courage to leave. I decided if a Christian slave could run to Canada with a clear conscience, I could flee a system that crippled and killed those it pretended to heal.
Report comment
Reminds me of an episode of Family Guy where the taking dog recommends his “chill pills” to mellow out the fighting family members. Everyone gets mellow and sings “Kum Bayah.” Then the dog announces the “pills” were tic tacs.
Pandemonium ensues.
Report comment
A lot of us psych survivors have joined the forum Inner Compass. Many of us don’t feel totally at home here due to the preponderance of MDs, PhDs, and other “experts” crying for “moderation.” Whatever that means.
Maybe those of you supporters rejecting the psychiatric narrative could start your own forum as opposed to NAMI?
Report comment
My own mom has used my “diagnosis” to keep me dependent and even been emotionally abusive. Not as bad as some. She honestly believes the Chemical Imbalance Myth and takes SSRIs though. I guess she’s obeying the Golden Rule.
Report comment
Not all NAMI members are created equal. A friend who supported my efforts to come off psych drugs used to belong. After psychiatry killed her sister at 49 she got sick of it.
I told her about Dr. Pies’s snarky article about how the “chemical imbalance was just a metaphor” ha ha ha! Why aren’t you all laughing? Laurel was furious.
Report comment
“Current diagnostic labels tend to box us in to a static concept.”
I could not agree with you more on that point, Greggieboy.
Report comment
Acceptance by whom? Not mainstream society, that’s certain.
As far as “greater services,” I’m sick of baby sitters (Day Treatment, Clubhouse, and other crap) that treat adults of average/above average IQs like MMR preschoolers!
If anyone is dumb enough to want to be segregated and infantilized, I guess it’s their funeral. But they deserve the facts ahead of time.
Report comment
I went to see a new shrink with a “diagnosis” of “schizo-effective disorder.” With a few strokes of his pen this wizard transformed my disease to a new one–“bipolar 2.”
Say I went to a cancer doctor with leukemia. Could she turn leukemia into melanoma on the spur of the moment without even running any tests? But–oh, yeah–there were no tests to prove I had “schizo-effective” to begin with.
Report comment
Course not! Without their stigmatizing “diagnoses” psychiatrists would lose credibility and eventually social control.
Report comment
My distress did not originate with psychiatry but being bullied/sexually harassed nonstop through high school. I had emotional problems. Being too scared to leave your dorm room is a real problem!
Report comment
I agree with Registeredforthissite. My existence is far from idyllic but my “cocktail” and the babysitting/put downs I endured at the hands of the community “mental wellness” center were a torment and made me long to die. Left the system/drugs/label. No more suicidal thoughts. Wow!
Report comment
I agree with Registeredforthissite. My existence is far from idyllic but my “cocktail” and the babysitting/put downs I endured at the hands of the community “mental wellness” center were a torment and made me long to die. Left the system/drugs/label. No more suicidal thoughts. Wow!
Report comment
Dr. MacFarlane, I read your post. With all due respect, psychiatrists as a whole seem happy with shaming patients to defend the integrity of the precious pills they dish out to as many folks as possible. I suffered shame for many years on these happy pills. Why?
They were “safe and affective” so I was faking any problems they caused–seizures, fatigue, depression. Moreover I must be malingering since none of these magical treatments helped me live a happy, productive life.
Pills don’t feel shame. Patients do.
Psychiatrists bad mouth the gullible folks who came in desperation, to their families, “Rachel is obviously not taking her ‘meds’ or she would feel wonderful and act normal.” “Haldol never causes seizures. She’s faking it.” “Risperdol doesn’t cause weight gain!” “Antidepressants restore the chemical imbalance in the brain, so Rachel isn’t trying hard enough. Being maligned as bipolar so she can’t find work/housing/relationships has nothing to do with her unhappiness.”
Research should be done on how many cases of “bipolar” are created by reactions to the use of SSRIs for depression, obsessive thinking, or off label uses like bed wetting. But it might lead to #pillshaming. We can’t have that.
It’s okay to shame patients. #Pillshaming is the unpardonable sin!
Report comment
NAMI might claim otherwise but the “mama grizzlies” really go along with whatever the shrink says and defer to him since he’s the “expert.”
Report comment
I quit having mood swings associated with “bipolar” by coming off the fists full of uppers and downers the shrinks told me I needed.
Report comment
I’m sure that was not his only motivating factor or even primary. Perhaps not at all. Many little people do NOT kill themselves.
Report comment
How about alurophobia and obsessively collecting pickled human brains? 😀
Report comment
You got that right. Hence the shrinks and countless others working for psychiatry and Big Pharma is dedicated to preserve the status quo regardless of the cost–to others.
Report comment
Gabi is a woman, Richard. As am I.
Are you?
Report comment
Rape results in 00.01% of all pregnancies. I see why there might be an exception for victims of rape. But how that justifies killing any of the other 99.99% of babies is beyond me.
“Marijuana can have medicinal benefits for women with advanced breast cancer. Ergo we should legalize recreational drug use and all become pot heads.”
A lot more men are militant abortionists than women. This makes sense since it’s cheaper to pay for an abortion than make child support payments. Just ask ex-congressman Tim Murphy.
Report comment
Suicide is a choice. Often people make this choice out of desperation like fear or overwhelming unhappiness or physical pain.
Troye’s unhappiness may have stemmed from his unusual physique. Also his addictive behaviors. Not all little people make this choice.
The only way to stop suicide is to talk someone out of it. Offer them unconditional love and hope. Both of these are in scant supply in a psych ward.
Report comment
I’m not a misandrist. As a writer I taught myself to write from the POV of a male character. This helped me understand men better and overcome my fear. For a long time guys scared me. Seriously.
Report comment
Mental illness is an oxymoron. Note the distinction you yourself make, Dr. Williams, between “mental” illness and brain illness.
Legitimate brain problems–like PANDAS–are physical illnesses requiring neurology. A legitimate medical science.
“Mental illnesses” are bizarre states of mind from emotional traumas. Anything psychiatry does will only make things worse in the long run, since they don’t care about the souls of those they “treat.”
Neurologists are legitimate doctors. Psychiatrists are bureaucratis and drug pushers.
Report comment
Think of the psych ward as Hogan’s Heroes. Dr. Klink and Nurse Schulz.
Butter up Dr. Klink. He’s dumb enough he’ll attribute your over-the-top kissing up to good insight. Thanks to his own hyper-inflated ego he’ll believe any of your compliments.
Nurse Schulz knows “nothink.” He honestly thinks electric shocks are good for people since he saw it in a training video. The fact that real life is totally different never registers.
Report comment
So could a life coach. Or anyone who actually cared. (Not all Certified therapists do.)
Tony Robbins swears he’s stopped people from committing suicide. Someone was angry at his heresy, saying that only “mentally ill” people thought of suicide. And the only way to prevent this was to lock them up, stigmatize them, and damage their brains with drugs and shocks.
My guess is Robbins is better medicine than a shrink any day. If I’m depressed again, I’ll listen to his free motivational pap instead of telling a shrink or any legitimate medical professional. Beats a trip to the psychiatric jail!
Report comment
How unconditional is your therapist’s love for you? There’s a good question.
Someone who pretends to care about you for $50-100 an hour.
I remember crying to myself in pain/loneliness once as I realized only one person was willing to talk to me and treat me kindly. And she had to be paid to do this. 🙁
Report comment
Glad you made it out Eric! Are you still on AOC?
I guess this is meant to be a light, humorous article to keep up our spirits. But it just makes me more determined to stay as far away from everything called “mental health” as possible. That’s just how I’m feeling now though.
And I’m careful to act Normal whenever I go out in public.
Report comment
Yes, but admitting depression is only prolonged sadness/emotional suffering and not an honest-to-gosh brain disease would ruin psychiatrists’ credibility as REAL DOCTORS, dang it! 😛
Report comment
My guess is a major cause of what’s called post partum depression comes from malnutrition. That’s a real physical condition requiring iron or B12. Not uppers!
Report comment
Maybe they consider these pro-pharma ravings “the other side” of the story because a “crazy” is allowed to talk. Mostly it’s shrinks and NAMI mommies and other “sane” folk praising the drugs. The “sane” are one side. The “insane” on the other. As long as all say the same thing the media love to let the “other side” talk.
Report comment
Psychotherapy is no longer about helping those dubbed SMI. (If it ever was.) All therapists at the community centers did was tell me how “meds” would fix my brain/life problems and tell me I was a pathetic “mentally ill” loser who would never amount to spit. Very uplifting! 😛
Then occasionally they’d say, “You’re not your illness.” Or tell me being “bipolar” gave you awesome super powers and tell me to read Kay Redfield Jamison’s marvelous fantasy novel of alternate history. Make up your freaking minds!
Report comment
My younger sister is only 4′ 9″ but it’s not too bad. 1. She’s a woman. 2. She’s slender and cute.
I’m 5’4″ almost average for a woman but narrowly escaped an eating disorder. From age 10 on up everyone kept telling me I was fat and ugly.
You can never be too thin or rich. The only way I could be worthy of love was to starve myself till I was small, beautiful and feminine.
My curves were sexy–but ugly sexy. They made guys lust after me brutally and want to rape me. If I didn’t have big, gross breasts and thighs the bullying would stop.
Then in college I would go days without eating. No bullying, but I was ignored; no guy wanted to date me. I wasn’t slender and perky. 🙁 I realized I was fated to be alone forever at 20.
Report comment
It’s funny how people talk about pill shaming. They see the pills as an extension of themselves–like they have no personality/conscience/soul without them. Part of what made me grow to hate the drugs was not just how stupid and awful they made me feel but how the “experts” around me told me I would be a murderous sociopath/rabid dog without them. I found the whole idea dehumanizing and good for producing existential angst that frequently led to contemplating suicide.
Report comment
Hmm. If we lie all the time how do they know we weren’t lying when we described the symptoms they used to convict us of the crimes of bipolar or schizophrenia?
Interesting how they take us at our word for the B.S. questionnaires, then use these “tests” to discredit anything we tell them in the future.
Shrinks are not logicians!
Report comment
Hey, these magical medicines can do no harm. So obviously they can’t hurt the environment. We’ll just have some really happy frogs, fish, insects, etc. Everything is awesome! 😛
Report comment
I have forgiven them. But there were no warm fuzzies involved. That idea–that forgiving means feeling good–is a bunch of balognie. It made me feel worse for a while. Eventually relief came. Shaming a victim for not immediately experiencing tender sweet feelings toward her abuser is insensitive and itself abusive.
Report comment
I can believe it. It must also be hard for unusually short men to find women. A lot of (silly) women I know won’t date a guy under 5′ 9″ no matter how wonderful, clever, charming, handsome or rich he is. I didn’t care, myself. As long as his legs were long enough to reach the ground. 🙂
Report comment
I agree they themselves are the most emotionally abusive. But they encourage others in the life of the designated scapegoat of society to view the scapegoat with fear and loathing. The psych system’s role is similar to the one a “narcissist” plays in a dysfunctional family drama.
Report comment
Candy can save the life of a diabetic going into shock. But follow this analogy and you’ll realize type 2 diabetes usually is related to an unnatural diet high in refined sugars and other stuff.
I continued taking psych drugs for more than a year after making the decision to quit. In my case going cold turkey might have killed me from the shock my system would have gone through.
Report comment
Thanks Eric. I was bullied too. Moved to a new town between my Freshman and Sophomore years of high school. (After 2 months of having to live with grandparents since we were homeless.)
Shortly after starting school the bullying began. Mostly in the form of sexual harassment. I would come home from school crying. My grandma often dropped in for a visit.
She told me it was my Christian duty to forgive my tormenters–to love them–with warm fuzzies and butterflies and all that crap. How could I feel sweet wonderful stuff when the sight of them made me want to puke?
Grandma told me unless I felt good vibes toward them–meaning I had forgiven them–I wouldn’t go to Heaven when I died. Thanks, Grandma!
Report comment
That’s the much vaunted placebo effect! Still works on my family.
I recently visited my parents since my brother was there with my nephews and niece. Around evening I’d say, “Need to take my ‘meds’,’ and pop a bunch of supplements I’m forced to take because of my ruined gut. No one was any the wiser.
When we “mentally ill” don’t take our pills, those around us can get pretty paranoid–dare I say psychotic? Take your “meds” to prevent their going crazy!
Group paranoia is the real phenomena at work here. Like ye olde witch hunts. Hanging/burning harmless old ladies may not cure the outbreak of plague, end the drought, or make the cows lactate, but it makes us feel warm and secure. At least SOMETHING is being done.
Report comment
At age 15 I developed an overwhelming intense fear of being in public. I was so intensely afraid of doing or saying the WRONG THING that I clammed up and quit talking in high school. During a typical day I barely spoke a dozen words.
I still get nervous in public. After 25 years in the MI System I feel like a freak though my “symptoms” are gone.
(Sicker than a dog because I can’t process food any more. I believe long term SSRI use is responsible for my ruined digestive system. People assume my chronic illness is physical–and it is, though it was caused by drugs used to treat the “illness” created by the SSRI used to help my nerves when I went out in public!)
I became badly frightened after I started laughing in public. For no apparent reason as far as those around me could see. The reason was very obvious to me though. I was running through amusing bits of dialogue in the novel I’m working on. Very “mentally ill.”
This diagnosis comes from none other than the Mental Health Czar herself. She talks about a woman she saw. She knew she was severely mentally ill. How?
1. Poor clothing choice. She wore a trench coat that needed ironing.
2. She wrote in a notebook. The PAPER kind. Horrors! Why couldn’t she text on her smartphone like a normal person?
3. She laughed to herself for no reason the self appointed Meddler could discern. Maybe the stalked individual thought the Czar looked like a bug eyed idiot. 😛
The MH Czar yearns to “help” this literary lady become integrated. Though the MI System has a poor track record at integration. Segregation was the word I think Katz actually meant. 😀
Report comment
Glad you’re able to work, Pat. 🙂
Report comment
Heroine and LSD haven’t been credited with saving lives. But Big Pharma doesn’t endorse them. They view them as invading their turf!
Report comment
Stella, I’m curious what you mean by “Charlotte’s Web.” Do you find the book or movie/s inspirational? Or are you referring to something in the book?
Report comment
Slaying_the_Dragon, there were slaves who felt they needed their masters to “take care of them.” These condescending jerks told their chattel over and over how helpless and stupid they were, how they were not as smart or resourceful as “normal” aka white people and needed to be cared for.
Abuse comes with slavery. Emotional even if no whips and chains are involved.
Psychiatry is not only emotionally abusive in its own right but it encourages this abuse in family, coworkers, friends–while you still have some–and society at large. Then they marvel at how all “bipolars” and “schizos” suffer from low self esteem. Must be a symptom of the “illness” right? 😛
Report comment
How will having 6 orderlies dog pile on top of them and inject them with a mega-dose of stupifying Haldol make them feel more secure? Never had to be forced but that stuff gave me seizures!
If they are dangerous they certainly should be locked up. There’s no drug known to science that can transform Timothy McVeigh into Gandhi.
Report comment
Szazs talked about murderers who committed crimes out of obedience to “God” or space aliens. He suspected they heard these voices because they wanted to murder and needed an excuse.
Why obey some voice telling you to commit murder anyhow? “Just following orders” is a lousy excuse whether they come from a colonel or an imaginary voice in your head.
My drugs caused me to hear voices telling me to rip off my clothes and run around swearing…never acted on it. And none of the drugs helped–they were the cause of this nightmare!
Report comment
Are people threatening you with AOT or locking you up in a psych ward? Or do you hear disembodied voices threatening you, Pat?
Report comment
At least I don’t have to pay for them. My Medicaid bills the credulous tax payers. They are happy to keep those like me crippled and sick since they think we’re all murderous freaks unworthy of life.
They deserve to lose their money. Their stupidity and selfish cruelty sicken me!
Report comment
Whips WERE considered a valid form of treatment for the “mental illness” known as drapetomania. Shrinks aren’t about to put that diagnosis in the DSM6 for obvious reasons.
Report comment
Many people–especially those in the MI System are anti-literate. Meaning they refuse to read much of anything. Manuals on home repair or car maintenance, cookbooks, show synopses on TV. Maybe magazine articles about celebrities, useless “self help” books, and frothy boring romance novels.
The friend of mine who refused to read Anatomy of an Epidemic–choosing to laugh at me for believing it instead–mentioned later that she never read except to relax. She wasn’t interested in learning anything. Popular Amish romances and other fluff. She wasn’t even on psych drugs. Some folks enjoy being ignorant.
Hobbes: Is being ignorant a constitutional right?
Calvin: I don’t know. And I refuse to find out!
Report comment
I was on Latuda for a week. It made me ANGRY all the time for no reason. This scared me so much I got my case worker who saw my odd behavior to set me a special appointment with my shrink.
When I told her about my overwhelming unfocused anger she offered to double the dose! What???
Luckily I talked her into switching me back to abilify. The pills were easier to cut when I started my taper. 😀
Report comment
That’s because the MI System isn’t just about drug dealing. They also have a bunch of “helpers” on the gravy train. A hierarchy–with the center’s manager and godlike shrink at the top descending down to the case managers who babysit us through demeaning “classes” that would insult the intelligence of five year olds and pay visits for no apparent reason. Often they skip visits or show up 4 hours late so you spend all day at home several times a week sometimes. Not like we have lives after all. If we do that’s proof our “illness”is flaring up. 😛
Report comment
The very word “mental illness” is ambiguous and the way believers use it is inconsistent and crazy.
They call it a mental illness but claim it is a brain illness. Why not call it that? Oh, yes. That might cause more confusion since the populace would conflate said “illnesses” with legitimate brain disorders like cancer/ epilepsy/ALS. (No one with a legitimate brain illness can be legally locked up and treated against their will.)
Then those whiny articles and cartoons that speculate, “What if we treated physical illnesses like mental illnesses?” Uh, when they ask that question don’t they realize they’re making a distinction between the two? In which case their claim that “mental illness” is a brain disease doesn’t fly since that would make it a physical illness after all.
Report comment
I sympathize with mom too. My own conduct was far from saintly. For a few years I fully embraced my role of Madwoman. Pretty hard on everyone around me.
Belief in your diagnosis of incurable insanity can lead to that. I finally decided to act “as if” I were not bipolar. It took a while to realize this never was true, but rejecting it on a personal level made me easier to deal with.
Report comment
I still take legitimate medicines like thyroid supplements for my underactive thyroid. And usually antibiotics like penicillin for severe infections.
In a bit of a bind. I am not attending a “mental health” center but I say I am to doctors treating me for a real medical problem–a malabsorption disorder probably triggered by decades of SSRI use. I just give them the name of a local center, saying I’m not troubled by bipolar symptoms now that they are perfectly under control thanks to my effective treatments. Then I say a little prayer they will take my word and not call them. I remember the rule of effective lying. Provide the bare minimum of details! Scary how even doctors are gullible enough to think my peace of mind and clear thinking result from these drugs when the reverse is true.
Unlike you, Dr. Breggin, many doctors welcome this snitching. Even if they find the accompanying sheet slightly insulting.
I figured something like this was going on before reading this. My CVS refills will run out soon. I got my brain drugs from a GP during my taper–plus I had to deceive my parents. 🙁 Till they do I pick them up at the pharmacy a day or two after they inform me through text of my automatic refill. I live alone. Every two or three months I throw a bunch of bottles of drugs away at the bottom of my garbage.
This crap is bad for the environment. Many disposal warnings acknowledge as much–albeit subtly. Don’t flush expired “meds” down the toilet. You might damage the ecosystem of micro organisms living the sewer. But don’t worry. It’s perfectly safe for your own consumption. (We value you less than what grows in the sewer.)
Report comment
Rossa, I love you. Your genuine interest in your son’s well being is evident. A good parent wants their kid to spread wings and become independent–not crippled by stupifying drugs and an infantilizing “support” group that only controls and holds back.
A lot of parents get so exasperated by the outlandish behavior of these kids that they would rather turn the kid into a helpless drooling houseplant who won’t get in trouble and embarrass them. You point out the kid could likely recover undrugged and they don’t seem to care. Ruining the adult child’s prospects of a good life doesn’t matter. The drugs work RIGHT NOW (too tired and sick to do or say annoying stuff) and a diminished zombie child doesn’t bug them for some reason.
My own mom wanted to help me. But to this day she swears my “meds” work because they have made me too sedated to do or say stuff that annoyed her. If she’s annoyed that proves I’m getting “sick” again.
Unbeknownst to her after 25 years of psych drugs I tapered off my cocktail successfully. Been drug free for over 6 months. Unfortunately my digestion is totally destroyed; I may have Crohns now.
Mom doesn’t notice any difference. When I snapped out of my decade long depression though she got irritated and yelled at me for being “too cheerful.” No I was far from manic.
I no longer live with her. That helps. Sadly at 44 I am too old to make new friends and extreme pain/weakness makes it hard to get around. The bus system is horrible here. I wasn’t allowed to get my drivers license. So I’m pretty isolated.
Report comment
Telling a shrink you are depressed is like confessing to witchcraft before the Spanish Inquisition. Shrinks should be made to mirandize every person who walks through their door.
Report comment
As far as psychiatrists and the drugs they push are concerned 0.3 is an overwhelmingly large number.
Report comment
Ugh! Some may find MI helpful. It makes me angry and depressed.
I have hated it after being forced to participate in “mindfulness meditation” for 2 hours at a time every Monday for 6 stinking months!
Report comment
No such things as antidepressants for that matter.
Report comment
To play devil’s advocate–and to many of us Pies is closely associated with the devil–the other side would argue that no one says “Congratulations on testing positive for cancer!” Or “I love you for having tuberculosis,” either.
It’s worth noting that no one blames violent crimes on having leukemia. Or cites heart disease as a motive for mass shootings.
Why is psychiatry the only medical specialty with a movement opposing it? Maybe because no other specialty has experts on television maligning the characters of their patients.
Report comment
Her depression was “treated.” How can people claim it wasn’t? Are they just ignorant of what happened?
If a woman consumes 10,000 calories a day and is obese would you tell her the problem is her low caloric intake? About as stupid as psychiatry’s claims that drugs will solve every emotional pain and eliminate crime. All we need to be peaceful, model citizens is…drugs, DRUGS, and MORE DRUGS!!!
Report comment
What does CAMH gain from promoting shocks, Bonnie? To be honest I don’t know what the acronym stands for.
Report comment
I am not against counseling, but it became counterproductive for me at the end.
Report comment
Whether planned or not, drugging us till we look unsightly and have trouble picking up on normal social cues and isolating us from the mainstream community in adult daycare makes reintegration next to impossible.
Pretentious social workers/psych therapists/shrinks claim to be anxious to integrate us. Funny. Looks like isolation and segregation to me!
Report comment
That depends. How many articles are written by psychiatrists and their flunkies?
Report comment
Good point. Psychiatrists want to be seen as doctors of the body, using pills and surgery like electroshock. Yet almost all of the “diseases” they treat (excluding TBI and a few other real brain problems) are perceived as moral failings by our society.
Clergy are more honest about their role. And they can’t legally force you to see them or attend their institutions nowadays.
The current state of Psychiatry reminds me of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon. Shrinks are sort of like the straighteners whom people regularly see to help them become better behaved.
Yet–for those labeled SMI–they also act like the legal system in Erewhon where people are executed or sentenced to life in prison for “crimes” like being swindled out of life savings, contracting TB, or losing a spouse. (Better not grieve for more than 14 days if that happens. Right, Dr. Shrinkenstein?)
Report comment
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I can. And the wisdom to know the difference.”
Accepting responsibility for what you have done wrong never hurt anyone. (This does not mean people who have been raped/abused deserved it.) Nor is apologizing and trying to set right the damage you have done in interpersonal relationships. Sobriety leads to a higher quality life.
You can do this without AA though. If your local chapter is abusive you’re better off doing it alone. My friend has quit drinking. She has other issues, but goes to AA meetings and hasn’t drunk booze in 25+ years.
The idea of personal accountability and moral reformation actually runs counter to the bio-determinism and learned helplessness of psychiatry’s racket with mind altering drugs much worse than any hooch. Replacing one drug with another and pretending it’s “medicine” like penicillin or insulin when actually it is more like LSD or speed is morally reprehensible.
Psychiatrists should form PA. “Sobriety” would mean no longer lying all the time, removing the labels of all those they damaged, and paying for their multiple health problems from the iatrogenic damage the “doctor” inflicted on them, using their 7 digit paychecks. Maybe finding real jobs where they do something useful instead of crippling and killing people.
Report comment
Can you function in society in a civilized manner, Liberalminority?
I was too sad to function once. Psychiatry made it ten times worse.
I escaped the madhouse without walls, went off my uppers and downers gradually (Not fast!) and can think straight. I feel human again.
My sadness is better. I’m figuring how to bootstrap my way into a community now. And got over my “social anxiety” despite the best efforts of the System to keep me segregated and disabled.
Leaving psychiatry was all it took to function again. No mind-altering drugs. No defamatory label. No problem . 🙂
Report comment
Dr. Hassaman you are not an actively bad man who kicks puppies and tortures people for kicks. You’re a weak, timid man who supports the status quo because acknowledging to yourself that you are crippling and killing us might force you to sacrifice your prestigious career and even oppose the Powers that Be.
I know how risky that would be. Perhaps you’re too scared. I understand why it’s easy to go with the flow since you aren’t the one sickening and dying from experimental drugs of dubious benefit. Or being segregated because someone told society you were a public menace.
I am grieving the life I lost to your profession. My religion says I should forgive those who wrong me and pray for those who injure me. I am not out for revenge. (Though I do wish to end psychiatry as an institution since it destroys souls. Not just the souls of “consumers” either.)
But I wish you would realize you are hurting people. We are human beings like you–not a collection of diseases. Does it trouble you that your patients deteriorate instead of recovering? That we die in our early fifties on average?
It’s better to suffer evil than inflict it. I wouldn’t trade places with you–you are worse off than I ever was.
Your own soul is sick. May you find healing soon.
Report comment
It would be tragic. All those poor shrinks would have to get real jobs. 😛
Report comment
As worshipful as the NAMI mommies are of eugenics to brand their children monster/genetic throwbacks you wonder why these people were allowed to have children. Unfit parents who make the Scapegoat’s life a living Hell.
Aren’t they the carriers of the “monster genes?” Shouldn’t the Golden Child–favored kid of Family Drama Queen–and Winged Monkeys get sterilized since they might produce “bad seed” too?
Report comment
Force feeding or tricking them into swallowing slow acting toxins and publicly defaming them on national television for the shrinks’ own wealth, power and glory is not what I call help.
Report comment
But “Doctor Houlihan” we all “know” odd behaviors or painful emotions are solely due to brain disorders of the genetically unfit. Your Ministry of Truth says so.
And psychiatrists claim to know everything about the human brain. They can figure out your exact chemical imbalance just by looking in your eyes and filling out a questionaire.
Oh, yes. That’s just a metaphor. You “well-informed doctors” can’t help it if everyone takes it seriously. You’re not to blame just because you spout this bovine excrement on every media network available.
I hate liars.
Report comment
Sterilize yourself! You’re unfit to parent anyone, monster.
Report comment
Brett Deacon, if instead of calling them diagnoses they referred to them as negative behavioral patterns it might help people. And they would not be hopeless.
Of course accepting offers of help would be strictly voluntary. We have the right to make bad life choices and be unhappy as adults. Really.
Of course this is outside the realm of hard science and would diminish their authority as “real scientists/doctors.”
Report comment
Sounds a lot like Patty Duke’s story. My mom was all excited and texted me the story. I guess she thought I would find a famous singer coming out as hopelessly insane inspirational. Weird how people think that way.
Prepare to see Mariah blow up to the size of a small whale. Crappy cocktails. 😛
Report comment
Nothing. As long as you know it’s taking the edge off your emotional pain rather than fixing some known organic brain problem. Glad they are PRN.
Report comment
Our “symptoms” are usually nothing alike either. I am supposedly “bipolar” but am an ascetic. Not some irresponsible, out-of-control party animal like everyone thinks when they hear “bipolar.”
“My evul bipolar ex cheated all the time, drank like a fish, was violent sometimes, forced us into bankruptcy and only cared about herself. Ergo everyone with a ‘bipolar’ label must be a drunken, abusive, cheating, selfish bum.”
A bunch of nonsense. But without the “bipolar” label there would be no link between the spouse who behaved badly and people like me with consciences. And shrinks encourage this bigotry since it helps their professional authority.
I also am supposed to be “Borderline” but am nothing at all like the “typical” Marilyn Monroe character a “borderline” is supposed to be. Moral judgments (often unfounded) and stereotypes and self-fulfilling prophecies. Glorified insults passing as a science.
Report comment
Shards of unicorn horn are a valid modality of treatment too. Also pixie dust and mermaids’ scales.
Report comment
I applaud your success, Fiachra! 🙂
Report comment
The poet Natalie Goldberg is leery of social sciences because they box human beings into neat categories detracting from individuality.
Report comment
As long as the results are accurately reported and not skewed to support the researchers’ personal agenda.
Most people on the street believe the “schizo gene” was found decades ago and would be surprised at this study for that reason.
Report comment
No and no. Just pseudo scientific research to support a fake science.
Report comment
There are pay offs to accepting your role of the “hopeless bipolar.”
Besides fear of being locked up and more drugged or shocked, there are some benefits.
1. You can reject all responsibility for your behavior. “Not my fault! The Bipolar made me do it.” If a friend or loved one complains, whine how you can’t help yourself. You’re not the one acting like a jerk; it’s your illness taking over.
Forget self control. As a professional “Bipolar” it’s your civic duty to cut loose with mood swings, public temper tantrums and other out-of-control behavior. It’s also a great excuse for becoming a party animal. “Just my old mania acting up. Heh heh.”
2. It’s a great way for gaining attention. Endless opportunities for self dramatization. If you’re an actor–tell-all books and documentaries can only help your career. Regale the audience with long winded melodramatic descriptions of your insanity–ending with you seeing the light and tearfully converting to the Church of Psychiatry.
3. You don’t have to grow up but can be an infant forever. Forget marriage, family, career. You don’t have to do crap but lounge around taking pills and watching TV 16 hours a day to rot whatever brain cells those “safe and effective treatments” left.
Lest I seem too harsh, I myself plead guilty to the first two. I never planned on being a professional junkie/bum/outcast but was seduced into the role with promises that the right pills would make me functional enough to be almost normal.
The years went on. I got worse instead of better–like everyone around me. When I acknowledged the Truth I was so upset I came closer to suicide than ever before.
Report comment
Have you taken both benzos and SSRIs Elsa?
I have not so I am asking. I went off much faster than they recommend on Surviving Antidepressants. I did not have a psychotic break despite dire prophecies.
My problem is not withdrawal but a demolished gut. Those poisons wiped out my digestive system. Glad I’m off–for me that ended my depression.
Report comment
$$$$ covers a multitude of scientific sins.
Report comment
Why multiple diagnoses for one patient?
Simple. Revenge. 😛
Report comment
Which is probably what psychiatrists want. As Bob Whitaker points out in Anatomy of an Epidemic, if they actually discovered organic or chemical anomalies in the brains of the “mentally ill” psychiatrists would be out of a job. Neurologists–real scientists–could take over, since they don’t go around spewing fluff about how neurology is “more of an art than a science.”
I love art. But who wants Picasso trying to sculpt your brain into an exhibition for the gallery?
Report comment
“Do the researchers have an open mind?” Good point Steve.
Report comment
Cooking up hypotheses to support forgone conclusions sounds like rationalization.
The experiment says A but I want it to say X so I’ll hit it with a hammer repeatedly til the pieces all fit. Sigh.
Report comment
If a creepy date calls me a “fat bitch” should that be my current diagnosis?
It lacked syllables and air of “scientific” respectability–plus the guy wore jeans instead of a white lab coat and stethoscope. Guess that means I don’t need to self identify as a fat bitch to avoid being labeled as anosognosiac. 😛
Report comment
April Fools Day originated as an atheist’s holiday. In France, after the Revolution everyone celebrated the New Year on that day. After it was safe to practice religion openly again the French reverted to the Gregorian Calendar except the militant atheists who persisted on celebrating it on April 1.
Report comment
Some people enjoy being offended, Brett.
Report comment
My own psychotic experiences were terrifying. To those who find them enjoyable–cool. Many don’t. That why Hearing Voices exists.
Going off my psych drugs has all but eliminated them, btw.
No thanks to those Psychiatric Humbug Pillshils!
Report comment
I had some fun before I left Daycare Treatment. I suggested a class where we looked at pie charts of neuro-chemicals in a “normal” brain as opposed to those of “schizophrenics” and “bipolars.” Tee hee!
The case worker thought it was a great idea and promised to ask the resident psychiatrist for these. 😀
Report comment
The correct term is neuroleptic. Seroquel was very good at making my hair fall out.
Report comment
Women want the same things men do. Money, sex, and power.
Beauty and a youthful appearance guarantee sex. Combined with money, looking good is the ultimate source of worldly power.
Report comment
Actually it’s easier to limit your work hours in the gig economy. My brother has a “real job” and works 12-13 hour days, 6 days a week most of the time.
Report comment
I think it’s unfair–even cruel–to label those on the spectrum as lacking empathy. And it’s just not true! A lot of them are kindly people with high moral values. They just have a hard time relating to others now and then. That’s not unkindness or inability to love but social awkwardness or being preoccupied.
Report comment
Maybe atypical is a better word. “Abnormal” sounds different in a negative way. I consider myself to be an atypical eccentric. In my early twenties I wondered if I had Aspergers. I acted a little like someone on he spectrum according to my psychotherapist sister in law. Now–off my drugs–I can pick up on social cues more readily and blend in. I don’t like sticking out like a sore thumb.
Report comment
I didn’t buy this dress. My neurons made me do it!
Report comment
Or you can refuse to write a rebuttal to Twilah’s piece. That is your choice.
Her analogy to deaf communities is a good one, I think. Many deaf people don’t view themselves as disabled. They have their own subculture with its own language, stories, plays and literature. A culture unique to the deaf.
They have the right to try to integrate themselves into mainstream society or not. Those on the Spectrum face a similar choice. Twilah chooses integration–but she doesn’t condemn anyone for choosing the other.
Report comment
It makes sense we don’t know what causes autism. Now that I have read enough of Dr. Breggin’s writings it’s obvious how woefully ignorant even our smartest scientists are of the human brain.
That’s why I say–even assuming a chemical imbalance existed–until there was actual proof that chemical X caused psychosis/depression–shrinks have no business messing around in our heads!
“You must have cancer. As an Expert I don’t need to run tests. I’m going to put you under and remove random bodily organs for a few hours. Then force you to have daily rounds of chemo for the rest of your life.” Ha ha. Who would like to have that joker as a family doctor?
Report comment
Don’t feel that young anymore. But thanks. 😀
I do think some social network for anxious, unhappy, and detached people should be in place. The lack of plain old TLC and compassion has led to psychiatry’s vast expansion. Interesting that Madhouses began around the Industrial Revolution when people started ignoring neighbors in distress. (Correct me if I’m wrong.)
In Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein, the protagonist “loses it” twice. Both times he is not locked up or labeled but comes out of it. In The Last Man, one of the main characters loses it when a young woman “friend-zones” him but his friends love him back to sanity.
There is a need Psychiatry is supposed to fill–but cannot. If I need food and only get meth, I may miss the food less for a while. But I will miss the nourishment soon enough.
I am all for abolishing psychiatry–though I believe destroying the Big Pharma industry will hurt America–perhaps the Western World–severely in the economic area. The price is necessary however.
First abolish involuntary psychiatry, then false advertising. Psychiatry will collapse on its own if stripped of authority and credibility. Sadly many long term psych “patients” can’t or won’t grow up after decades in the system. Most of my old friends fall into this category.
We may need homes for these people like Szazs recommended. Not state “hospitals” but more like halfway houses only long term. Taking drugs would not be a requirement for living there.
An economic system of cronyism that sustains itself in a circular fashion by producing unnecessary and harmful products, then bribing bureaucrats to force able citizens to buy said products that put them out of work and lead to other medical problems (costing tax payers as well as disabled victims) is unsustainable. We need to produce more useful things that don’t need Big Brother interference to sell.
I believe Capitalism is a useful tool for producing food/clothes/etc. to provide for everybody including the few who honestly can’t work. (Not artificially crippled by Pharmapsychiatry with its bosom buddy Corrupt Bureaucracy.) What we have now is a grotesque mockery of the system. Selfishness and greed are at the root of Capitalism’s downfall in the West.
Unlike many other commenters I agree with you politically and am openly religious. But because of my disgust with Tim Murphy and other “business as usual” Republicans I’m thinking of going Libertarian.
Report comment
So sorry Monica.
My brain is recovering well. But my gut has paid a heavy price for 23 years of SSRIs. I take large amounts of supplements, iron infusions and have almost the energy I had before this digestive problem began–a year before my taper started.
Report comment
Szazs had some wry stuff to say about Siggy. He certainly was full of himself–and very devoted to his mommy. 🙂
Report comment
And Scientologists too. Lucky for Big Pharma and Psychiatry the Church of Scientology exists or they would have had to invent it for their Two Minutes of Hate. Big Brother loves you!
Report comment
SSRIs jack up your cortisol levels. Not only do you gain, but your weight is largely (pun intended) around your gut.
I finally am starting to have a waist again.
Report comment
A lot of mass shooters were bullied.
In high school I was bullied/sexually harassed nearly every day. At one point I felt so helpless I fantasized taking a butcher knife to school and going stabby stabby on the guys who tore me down daily. It was horrific.
I didn’t because I knew it was wrong. Often I thought about suicide to escape school. When I dropped out the relief was overwhelming.
Got my high school diploma and went to college, but the taunts followed me everywhere even in my new, friendlier environment. Kept reliving events from high school. Then I wound up at the shrinks.
Bullies are never “diagnosed” as hopelessly insane. Just their victims. Bullying is a sign of good mental health in America I guess.
Report comment
Good point.
Report comment
All science worth its salt is objective.
How would you define Autism Au Valencia? I thought it was like Dyslexia perhaps. Only instead of trouble processing the written word the person with Autism has trouble processing the world around them–especially human interactions?
I dated two men on the Spectrum. They seemed like really smart, fun guys but very socially awkward. (One was abusive, but lots of “normals” abuse others.)
I am asking because I am baffled myself.
Report comment
For that matter what is a “Mental Illness?” Corner a shrink with this question and I’m sure he would need more than a minute to explain. Even more if he weren’t allowed to babble the usual tripe about unproven “chemical imbalances.”
As a child I thought mentally ill people were unusually evil and eccentric villains. Psychiatrists actively promote this idea–using obscurantism to help the bologna pass for steak and make themselves sound like honest-to-gosh scientific ex-spurts.
“Are the ‘mentally ill’ cognitively impaired with low IQs?”
No. Any lowering in our IQs comes from the drugs and shocks.
“Are the ‘mentally ill’ criminals?”
No. The reason people wanted the Cures Act passed is they needed a loophole to lock up law abiding citizens. We already have places for law breakers.
“Are the “mentally ill” morally depraved?
This last comes closest to the Mythical Type of the Insane. In the Victorian times they realized many “mad” people were harmless. In this respect things have worsened for those of us who go nuts. We can no more reintegrate ourselves into society afterwards than a Victorian prostitute could become a respectable socialite.
Oldhead calls psychiatric labels hate speech. I call them moral judgments. Unlike an annoying street preacher who says, “REPENT!” psychiatrists say you can’t become better. There can be no repentance or change since “Evil” is engraved on the DNA and brain chemicals of the “mentally ill” and taking crippling drugs is the only atonement possible for the crime of your existence. I was very suicidal when I thought I was hopelessly insane/evil btw.
Report comment
There is no known biological cause of depression/bipolar/schizophrenia. They assume one exists because even the best medical scientists are ignorant of our complex brains–therefore it can’t be DISPROVED.
Because of this there are no physical tests to prove anyone has said conditions. Just a questionnaire of behaviors/thoughts/feelings that are criminal or obnoxious behaviors, poor lifestyle choices, painful emotions, or things psychiatrists can’t stand. For a while they wanted to have cat lovers declared mentally ill.
Report comment
If anyone wants to don a “Kick me I’m bipolar!” tee shirt and go out to get their butt kicked, that’s their privilege. Excuse me if I forego the honor.
Report comment
There is no healing in psychiatry. Period. At the very best these drugs are emotional pain killers like injecting a broken leg with morphine indefinitely and not setting it.
If psychiatry is an art it must be like the artistic sculpture created by the hero in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. A big pile of rotting garbage heaped up to the ceiling of our living room.
Report comment
Dr. Asperger and others like him warned the public of the menace of “unfit sociopaths” roaming the streets. Yet no one tried to remove the real monsters from the streets. Dr. Asperger and his associates!
Report comment
Indiana. No real anti-psychiatry movement except maybe up in Fort Wayne.
On the plus side we get a D- according to NAMI’s scale. Hence fewer offers of “deadly” help.
Stinks to be single here–unless you enjoy being alone every evening. Gave up the dating farce long ago. (Guys just want cheap alternatives to hookers. If you’re over forty they remind you how you’ve lost all value and should be grateful to be used and tossed like a wad of toilet paper.) No thanks Bozo! 😛
Looks like I have a serious medical condition. Had a mild form for years it seems. But everyone thought it was depression–including me. No longer crazy because of mind altering drugs I know I’m sick as a dog. Some Malabsorption Disorder. Maybe Crohns. I have the right symptoms.
Report comment
I believe I am suffering from Crohn’s disease or something at least as nasty. Thank God I’m off my brain drugs and not wasting valuable energy at “day treatment” now. Ironically coming off my SSRI was all it took to end a 10+ year bout with depression. 😀
Report comment
“Bipolar” is as well.
Report comment
There are actually TV shows where psychiatrists talk to “patients” to help them instead of going through four an hour as fast as Doc Pillshill can pass out prescriptions. One fictitious shrink told the hero of the hours it took to do the tests to figure out the right diagnosis and the exact course of treatment.
Whoever wrote that script was delusional and more out of touch with reality than any psych victim I have ever met.
Report comment
I’m sure you would Steve. Lol.
Report comment
L.M. Montgomery describes an altered state of mind shrinks would call mania or psychotic mania in her Emily books. Emily Starr calls it “the flash”– a burst of ecstatic joy and energy that helps her to write.
Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon would both receive lovely psych labels now. Anne “laughed and cried far too easily.” Clearly Bipolar 1. 😛
Off my “meds” I am experiencing the “flash” again. It’s beautiful. Poor physical health and poverty can’t take it away.
I’m not spending too much, getting drunk, or sleeping with strangers. My “flash” helps me write stories and understand people better.
Why should the straighteners steal my joy? Never again!
I’m not mad any more, but I’ll never be normal. 24 years of isolation mixed with segregated groups for “my kind” didn’t help in that respect anyhow.
I prefer the term eccentric.
Report comment
The two problems with psychiatry’s bio-model–the only one accepted by the mainstream now–is that it has no scientific basis and it doesn’t work. 🙂
Report comment
Unlike most people my age I long desperately to fit into mainstream society. It’s NOT okay by society’s standards to be different in certain ways.
1. Extroversion–Good MH. Introversion–MI.
2. Optimism (naivete)–Good MH. Pessimism–MI.
3. Interest in TV/pop culture–Good MH. Reading “too much”–MI.
4. Super short attention span–Good MH. Rich inner life–MI.
5. Capable of endless small talk–Good MH. Keeping quiet or saying something meaningful–MI.
6. Pragmatic philistine–Good MH. Artsy idealist–MI.
7. Materialist–Good MH. Philosopher–MI.
8. Insensitive boor–Good MH. Sensitive empath–MI.
9. Intelligence in STEM subjects or marketing techniques–Good MH. Intelligence in discovering/depictng truth or beauty–(Unless you can makes LOTS of money with a product)–MI.
10. Dog person–Good MH. Cat person–MI.
11. Bored with life–Good MH. Keen sense of humor–MI. Wicked sense of humor that mocks psychiatry–SMI.
Report comment
Hitler was kept higher than a kite by Dr. Morrell. He barely got 3 hours a night.
If drugs turn horrible madmen into sweet, tranquil Ghandi act-alikes how do you explain Hitler and the Nazis’ behavior?
Report comment
Groan! My mom’s on that crap. She says she needs it because her nerves get bad when she goes off.
Risky as it is I am “coming out” as non-compliant in August. Too many loved ones are on these poisons. If they see my improvement maybe they’ll realize they’re trapped in “The Matrix.”
Report comment
Psychiatric diagnosis is epistemic injustice.
Report comment
I escaped with minimal TD damage. I have ticks like pill rolling that won’t go away, but I can hide them in public by keeping my hands clasped or hidden.
A beautiful, intelligent, funny friend of mine suddenly got horrible, disfiguring TD. She couldn’t think straight anymore either.
This motivated me to continue my taper. The whole thing scared me since I had been told repeatedly I would run around like a rabid dog, unable to talk and biting people without my “meds.”
I escaped a month later.
Report comment
It’s like arguing that a drug isn’t to blame for purple extremities but lack of circulation (that coincidentally occurs in those on the drug.) For those who have had hands or feet amputated the question is almost laughably irrelevant.
Report comment
Ironic how after 25 years of drugs I am worse off physically with a legitimate chemical imbalance created by psychiatry. Yet my depression and suicidal desires are gone.
And I get along with people. My neighbors would laugh in disbelief if you told them I’m “crazy.” I talked to an old pro-psychiatry friend who thinks I am on “meds.” She was surprised at how much better I sound.
Report comment
Sleeping regular hours, proper exercise, fresh air, sound nutrition are all biological. But unlike psych drugs they don’t hurt people!
Report comment
Touche! No more iron infusions for me. Pesky stupid biology. 😀
Report comment
I would like to try that. Unlike Bob Whitaker’s wonderful books, this would focus exclusively on those with “Bipolar” diagnoses allegedly “unmasked” by SSRIs prescribed for depression or an off label purpose.
Blaming the Patient. How’s that for a title?
Report comment
My psych drugs shut down my empathy. Is that how they “work?”
I hurt more because I care again. There’s more to life than not feeling pain.
Report comment
I didn’t till now Bruce. I have always seen the left as more authoritarian than the right.
They encourage sexual satiety and drugs like Aldous Huxley’s dystopia to keep the populace happy and dumb. The right pushes drugs because they are profitable.
I am leaving the GOP for the Libertarian party myself. The only two congress members to vote against the “Cures” act were libertarians.
Report comment
Just like our elected officials in Washington.
What did Congressman Tim Murphy stand for?
Why uh–Congressman Tim Murphy. And getting reelected. 1000% pro-choice! Or was that 1000% pro-life? (Darn those incompetent PR managers for not keeping him informed!)
Report comment
I get less than you do. $770 a month. No way I could afford rent payments–especially since they usually demand proof that you earn $1250 a month to rent a $500 apartment. Because of poor cable wiring I pay through the nose for internet. I may be eligible for food stamps, but keep getting the run around. $16 a month doesn’t seem worth the quarterly hoop jumping. Food banks are easier and you get more.
My parents will probably leave their homestead to me. We were pretty stressed out by having to live together in a single wide for 11 months.
I may move out to the homestead again. If:
1. I can get a license and car.
2. Get an apartment fixed up in the garage.
3. Get my parents to come to terms with the idea that I never was hopelessly insane. They don’t know I’m off my “meds” and are amazed at how well I am doing.
My biggest need is $$$. Since I may never be able to work more than 20 hours a week from iatrogenic damage, unsexy writing projects seem my best bet. Like newsletters for software companies. That will take some time….
Report comment
Being labeled “severely mentally ill” and disabled with a bunch of drugs is a great way to keep anyone in poor “financial health” since it renders them unemployable!
Report comment
Religious beliefs can all be diagnosed as “mental illness” symptoms. So can creativity and a sense of humor.
2/3 of all psychiatrists are atheists. Aside from Laing I know of none who produced works of art. As a whole they are humorless and emotionally detached. Since they view themselves as perfectly sane they view religious people, artists, people who laugh and show empathy as Severely Mentally Ill.
Ailurophobia and collecting human brains for a hobby are signs of Sound Mental Health. Ask our good friend Dr. Torrey. 😀
Report comment
Medical care is very useful. But because of psychiatry’s influence the whole discipline is hopelessly corrupt and dangerous to navigate with an SMI label.
Sad that so many of us are afraid to see MDs. And it’s not “paranoia”–our fears are legitimate. If you know someone who lies whenever convenient and still trust him there is something wrong with you.
Report comment
My Bipolar Disorder–like many others–was created by my shrink for big profits. He put me on an SSRI drug that made me higher than a kite and kept me awake for 3 weeks straight.
All needed to cure this “disorder” was to quit the drug and catch upon sleep. Instead they blamed ME for the drug’s reaction and put me on a cocktail.
I wonder how many people would not be labeled “bipolar” without this kind of drug reaction.
Report comment
What they need are safe places to taper off those demonic neuro-toxins.
I remember envying heroin addicts while I tapered off my Effexor. There are half way houses for them to dry out and get support. And they CHOSE to use a mind altering substance knowing the risks.
Shrinks are dealers disguised as doctors who sell heroin disguised as penicillin. Yes–I know the analogy breaks down at the end of that sentence. But they sold us mind altering, addictive drugs claiming they were life-saving medicines! Horrible people! No sense of shame or conscience. No empathy for the victims they directly create with drugs and labels–or even those who die in mass shootings.
Here’s a question. If a doctor knowingly puts a “bipolar” on SSRIs knowing they make him loopy and apt to act out why isn’t he held criminally responsible when a mass shooting occurs?
There are shrinks who might (reluctantly) support this concession when you quote their own works against them. When a mass shooting happens investigate the shrink “treating” the shooter. If he is known to have dismissed warning signs and/or put someone with known sensitivities to SSRI’s on a large dose or experimented without proper monitoring, let him be tried for 3rd degree murder of all those slain in the shooting. Or an accessory to murder.
Report comment
If they took a stand they would probably get fired and replaced by other sheeple and drones. It wouldn’t help psychiatry’s victims anyhow.
Report comment
Thank you Steve. I distrust doctors but have to see a cancer specialist now due to severe anemia. (Not cancer.) I’m having iron infusions monthly.
Report comment
Vitamins B12, D3, Fish Oil (itching all the time! cornea kept tearing off from dry eyes for a while), Vegan Iron supplement, Magnesium. Probably need calcium and potassium since my body is absorbing almost none of the micro nutrients I consume.
It seems to be processing carbohydrates, fat, and protein fine. Just not the other stuff. In horrible pain nearly all the time. At 44 I walk like a woman twice my age.
I live in New Albany, Indiana. The bus system here is a joke. Too poor to own a car and long walks are misery. Needless to say, I stay home a lot in my HUD efficiency. I tell everyone who asks that I have Fibromyalgia. They believe me because I don’t act “crazy” and my pain is obvious.
Report comment
Chaya I am off my drugs now, but feel sick all the time. My body can’t absorb minerals, vitamins, or water very well. I’m very anemic with 10.3 hemoglobin levels.
Do you think you or someone you know could help me?
Report comment
I believe I have Malabsorption Syndrome after more than 20 years on SSRI’s. I seem to have all the symptoms.
My doctor notes things like heart arrhythmia, digestive problems, etc. but is close-mouthed when I ask her why these things are happening. This makes me very cynical of the medical profession as a whole.
And you thought lawyers were a dishonest bunch!
Report comment
Being labeled “severely mentally ill” is a great way to ruin relationships.
The drugs make you loonier than Minnesota in the spring. Your loving family sees it and calls the “doctor” in distress.
“The meds have been proven 100% safe and effective,” he parrots. “X must be skipping doses on the sly or there would be no problems.”
They accuse you of skipping the “meds” since that’s the only possible explanation you’re worse than ever. With tears in your eyes, you protest. You take these pills religiously. But to no avail.
Then you contemplate suicide. Must be your “mental illness” to blame since multiple mini-seizures, having your nearest and dearest turn on you, an inability to read or enjoy anything, and profound social isolation could never lead to despair. 😛
Report comment
If “psychotics” are peaceful weirdos talking to little purple men in the walls let them. But I know people who use their labels of “bipolar” or “schizophrenia” as an excuse to act like jerks–even abusers.
On the other hand once you have such a label you are certain to be ostracized and emotionally abused (or worse) yourself.
We need to judge people on the content of their character–not psychiatric labels!
Report comment
William Glasser also believed poor relationships caused most “creative symptoms” or “mental illness.”
Report comment
Are you surrounded by friends and loved ones? Can you look back at your life with satisfaction? Can you look forward with hope?
By calling yourself “mentally ill” you are treating yourself in an insensitive manner. I bet you have very good reasons to grieve. I do.
Just because our lives stink does not make us sick, crazy or subhuman.
Report comment
I have biologically based depression. Been suffering from it for a few days.
The biological bases are anemia, low Vitamin-B, and hormone fluctuations since I’m turning into an old hag. (Just after I got my life back.)
Report comment
Oh. I reread the comments. Uprising was the one who really got angry.
My bad.
Report comment
NIMH payed Insel with money they received from taxpayers. Sickening.
No compassion, honesty, or conscience in any of these bureaucrats.
Like C.S.Lewis said in his intro to The Screwtape Letters: “I prefer bats to bureaucrats.” Bats are warm blooded at least.
Report comment
I’m curious. Don’t give me your address, but what is your housing situation Sandra?
I’m forced to live in HUD. At least I can keep it clean off my cocktail now. 🙂
Report comment
Even real doctors are amoral, remorseless liars now. I trust them as far as I can throw a grand piano.
Not anti-science OR medicine. I just know nearly all doctors will poison you for a few warm doughnuts. 😛
Refusing to buy used cars from “Honest Eddy’s” lot does not make me a technophobe either.
Report comment
A lot of clergymen and others want nothing to do with “SMIs” and hand us over to our psych masters because they don’t care about us at all.
Plain old selfishness. But we can PRETEND we’re dripping with compassion.
Oooh. I got this annoying nut job the ‘help” she needs so I can ignore her pain. Plus, since she’s crazy, her sobs of grief and moans of anguish are just her illness talking. Ha ha. Listen to the crazy.
Look at me! I’m a big shot hero because I got her locked up and drugged. I deserve a Nobel Prize for my humanitarian work.
Report comment
So sorry for your loss David! The guilt must be overwhelming.
In your right (undrugged) mind you would not have done this.
Report comment
Dr. K this article seems to pose a false and unnecessary dichotomy.
Do drugs damage brains or does segregation and enforced idleness?
Hmm. How about both?
You see this as unduly pessimistic; I do not.
Recovery from brain injury happens all the time. Why else do stroke victims go through therapy?
Full recovery after 20-30 years is unlikely. But every bit counts.
Report comment
You hit Dr. K. over the head with a sledge hammer and he’s out cold for three days.
The sledge hammer is not actually to blame for any brain damage. That’s because Dr.K. loafed around in bed for three days not doing anything.
Tsk tsk, Dr.K. Why were you foolish enough to be around Slaying_the_Dragon in the first place? Don’t you realize that by your needy and naive behavior you were BEGGING him to hit your head with a sledge hammer?
No more whining about your head ache. Up and at ’em.
Report comment
Szazs and Glasser never did counseling on anyone against their will. If your therapist is a butt hole and you can’t fire her/him it’s not a therapeutic relationship.
Report comment
More $$$$ in pre$erving the $tatu$ quo.
Report comment
Maybe they avoided him from fear. I am in no hurry to inform “Mental Health” of my whereabouts.
Report comment
Never forget leeches and bloodletting were once considered a valid modality of treatment for cholera patients. “Dr.” Benjamin Rush claimed blood letting was a great way to treat “mental illness” since it made people passive and quiet.
Report comment
You got that right, Dr. K.
We probably should keep political discussions to a minimum. Right now there can be no immediate political solution since all elephants and donkeys alike are feeding at the trough of Big Pharma and can’t wait to throw us under the bus for their bribes.
Report comment
The author of The Broken Brain published a paper (not widely publicized *cough cough*) demonstrating that “bipolar brain deterioration” is caused by the multiple drugs these folks are forced to take.
Report comment
“Animals in these studies probably did nothing but lie around for years due to heavy sedation.”
Uh, don’t most lab animals lead sedentary, less enriching lives than their wild counterparts? Lab rats generally eat and lie around the cage all day when not being put through a maze or something.
Report comment
Have you changed your mind, Oldhead? Your comments above sounded different.
Nothing wrong with it if you have. 🙂
Report comment
My group experiences were also insulting and degrading. I began having nightmares that I was forced to attend 2nd grade as a woman in her 30’s or 40’s. I would ask the teacher when I would be allowed to graduate; she would tell me I was too dumb to ever get out.
Before I kissed the Crazy Making System good bye I started having dreams of escaping this dystopian 2nd grade setting.
I was too unruly, hyper-sensitive, and weird as a kid. So I had to attend an SBD school for developmentally delayed kids. BAD IDEA! I first got depressed in the second grade–hated that school! I got yelled at for reading too much and talking about things the others couldn’t understand.
My IQ is above average, btw. Even on drugs it was. Being forced to watch Despicable Me, The Smurfs, and play Ring Around the Rosie in public (traffic passed by so everyone could see us acting like morons) sounds funny. But it was very humiliating. I think that’s what Day Treatment is about. Breaking spirits and public degradation.
Report comment
Kind of a waste of time. IF I beat a guy senseless with a baseball bat AND cause his body temp to rise above 105 degrees for 24 hours, then let him go, it’s a safe bet he will be brain damaged.
Which hurt him more, multiple blows to his cranium or elevated body temp? Who cares!
Report comment
I really want to do a study on how many people labeled “bipolar” got that way from a bad reaction to an SSRI. My guess is the pharma-psychiatry guild wants to keep quiet about this. I doubt they have done any research on this since they know at the bottoms of their filthy little hearts it would make their industry look bad.
Report comment
I like Sera’s quote, because she points out “stigma” is just like racism and other forms of singling others out to treat badly.
When NAMI talks about “stigma” they make it sound likes it’s maybe not okay, but still a natural and legitimate response to the “mentally ill.” It’s only bad because it causes “pill shaming” and cuts into their profits.
Report comment
Yep. “It COULDN’T be the blessed medication’s fault. If you weren’t a defective with a messed up brain it wouldn’t have made you loony!”
Like justifying stomping on someone’s leg and breaking it. “Well, if your stupid femur weren’t so brittle, it wouldn’t have broken when I jumped on it repeatedly.”
Report comment
Bruce Levine has the same opinion.
I believe that there might possibly be SOME benefit to using small amounts of neuroleptics for 2-4 weeks. Like pain-killer. Not insulin!
No psychiatrists are open to this idea however. So folks in emotional crisis just need to hide till they feel better. Disgusting how we punish the weak and suffering!
Report comment
Are there any positive life changes you could make LittleTurtle? Volunteer, take up a hobby, join a walking group?
Report comment
Got off it just in time! Border line diabetes and heart arrhythmia. Both are better after 18 months. Losing 35 pounds helped.
Report comment
Wow Dr. Zuckerman!
I had a numinous experience somewhat like yours when I was slightly psychotic from effexor withdrawal. It was definitely a hallucination, but I believe God used it to get through to me.
The only message I received was a personal one. He pronounced me clean–no longer unclean. Till then the word “bipolar 2” had integrated itself into my soul like some evil magician’s spell. This had made it impossible for me to overcome my mood swings and depression.
The voice left. I knew I wouldn’t hear Him long; He warned me there would soon be troughs, but I was through the worst and was not a slave to fear anymore. The voice was too overwhelming for me to function in the “real world.” In a day or two it left. It was for the best.
My years in the MI System made me shrewd enough to keep the whole thing a secret. Especially from medical professionals or any shrinks I accidentally run into. What they don’t know won’t hurt me! 🙂
Report comment
Agree or disagree with the NRA. But a big difference between that group and Big Pharma is all the money comes from individual members. Some are rich. Most are not, like my Dad who uses his gun to cut his retirement grocery bill. But the NRA is grass roots–not a corporation.
Report comment
What about those who were earning livings until psychiatry interfered and made them unemployable? I wasn’t self supporting, but I was a full time college student with a part time job at the library till I was dumb enough to go on Anafranil.
Report comment
Psychiatry “helps” people in one way by banishing them from the workplace. Disabling people who would gladly support themselves otherwise, forcing tax payers to shell out $$$$$ for the drugs and other crap the shrinks provide. The shrinks are bigger drains on our economy than any welfare recipients.
Their greed is insatiable too. How many crippled young people are enough Dr. Quackenbush? 20%? 25%? 33%?
When shrinks rave about all the “mentally ill” not getting the “help” they–the young people–need they are actually filling everyone in on their business goals over the next 5 years. Cha-ching!
Report comment
Not enough apparently. Killing sprees are not a sign of passivity.
Report comment
There is no legitimate test for “chemical depression.” Unless you count a check the boxes thing that belongs on a site like quizme.
What kind of dog are you? What kind of movie is your life like? Do you have clinical depression? Real science folks!
If you make the mistake of seeing a shrink they will simply assume you must be “mentally ill” depressed. They sell more pills that way.
Report comment
Psychiatric “diagnoses” are character defamation. They take annoying, odd, or bad behaviors and tell the community that this is the entire identity of the diagnosed–that they are hopelessly and irredeemably evil.
Just for good measure they add behaviors the person has never been guilty of. If you are “schizophrenic” you must be dangerously violent. “Bipolars” are all promiscuous. Whether you have ever been violent or promiscuous is irrelevant. You will surely become that way if you aren’t already.
Report comment
The term “stigma” comes from the practice of punishing law breakers and runaway slaves by cutting or branding their bodies to show the community “This is an object of disgrace. Treat it accordingly.”
Back in ancient times, the people who carried out these sentences never pretended to be confused or upset when their victims became outcasts. Nor did they have the chutzpah/stupidity to whine that they were the only ones who really suffered when they branded or cut marks in other people.
Either shrinks are dumber than coleslaw or pathological liars. Either way, why does anyone believe their whiny nonsense? It’s not like they suffer anything but wealth and prestige.
Report comment
Great idea, Oldhead. Good selection of his writings for free.
Szazs had a low tolerance for fools–still less liars. Like Mark Twain that way. Because of his anti-lying policy most shrinks hate his guts.
Report comment
Log onto Psychiatric Survivors. Great site with info about Szazs and others.
Report comment
Joanna some people have very low IQs. Mentally they never age beyond say–age 8. Are you saying people disconnected with reality fall into this category?
Sadly I have to agree. But these people are much less common than everyone thinks. And–just like we would want to improve the cognitive abilities of an adult with developmental delays–we should strive to bring the “dreamer” back to reality. Pills are not the answer, since they will turn a brief stroll down La la Lane into a life long residency in the Twilight Zone. 70% recovery beats 0.
Report comment
A major problem, Joanna is we have a one-size-fits-all solution for those labeled SMI. No real distinctions are made between the violent and nonviolent, the out-of-touch and the eccentrics (who probably don’t need any help at all), the anxious and the angry. The examples you describe only fit maybe 5% of the “mentally ill” at the very most.
Something no one mentions is the mass shooters usually had histories of violent crimes. But no one takes little things like that into consideration when drafting crappy legislation.
Report comment
I heard that Open Dialogue has been hijacked by mainstream psychiatry in many places. Probably not everywhere in America, but this presents a real problem.
Report comment
Wouldn’t “thought-divergent” be a better term? Folks on the autistic spectrum think differently as do others who aren’t on it. Like me.
Maybe brain chemistry/structure are behind this. But as Peter Breggin points out we’re very ignorant about the human brain. Figuring out how to understand each other’s thoughts is more productive than focusing on alleged neurological differences too.
Report comment
I agree. Studying the origins of psychiatry and how it has been used as a means of social control would be great.
I prefer the term “mad” to”mentally ill” because it’s not a pretentious pseudo-scientific term. There are bizarre, extreme states of mind. These are not brain diseases though–as everyone thinks of when they hear”mental illness.”
Report comment
The groups I attended semi-voluntarily were so defeatist and demoralizing that I had to leave to overcome my depression.
Lonelier than ever, but no longer going through the drivel of “you’ll never get better–just give up.”
This seems to run counter to the myth of the happy productive lives we’ll lead if we swallow our safe and effective pills. When I asked why we weren’t getting better everybody got angry. This was long before I discovered the truth about psych drugs too.
When I point out how people go downhill and become more cognitively impaired then ever people act shocked. Is it normal for people to stare vacantly into space, not be able to smile or weep, lose the ability to follow a page of sustained prose, develop drug addictions and binge eating disorders?
Had some people on this site tell me I’m a meany for “insulting” people victimized by shrinks somehow cause they’re better off lobotomized. Denial is more than a river in Egypt.
Report comment
“Not evidence based.” I was right.
Hard to base something on what doesn’t exist!
Report comment
I have had a good experience with Zoloft. It brought me out of my depression. But the benefits were short term. My life was no better. My family treated me poorly–in a way they never did till my shrink told them I was hopelessly insane.
The reason I get angry when people insist these things work is this hurts “consumers” when they aren’t magically transformed into walking smiley faces from pill popping.
They talk about “pill shaming.” How about patient shaming?
You take the drugs religiously–exactly as prescribed. But your depression continues. Or it worsens. Or you become floridly psychotic.
Your parents or partner run to your shrink in desperation. He smiles, and (I assume) lies through his teeth. “The meds have been overwhelmingly proven to be safe and effective. Obviously your child/partner isn’t taking them exactly as prescribed or everything would be fine.”
They accuse you of “non compliance” despite your tearful protestations. When you complain they aren’t working they laugh at you.
Your therapist either accuses you of “non compliance” too, or says you just aren’t working hard enough. Since the drugs have thoroughly straightened out your thought processes you have NO EXCUSE to keep making bad choices–like lying in bed half the day from drug-induced fatigue.
Actually doing something to help the “crazy”–little stuff like words of encouragement, letting them know you still love and accept them, helping them financially since they’re forced to live in crushing poverty–these are totally unnecessary.
All the supporters of psychiatry I know are cold, unloving, and selfish. If they cram pills down your throat they can throw you on the scrap heap and go on their merry way. Their conscience is totally appeased. “I made her take her ‘meds.’ That’s all that’s needed.”
Let her rot. If she commits suicide, who cares? It’s nobody’s fault after all.
Report comment
A question I bet no one has been allowed to ask publicly. How many people has James Baldwin helped taper off SSRIs?
None of the shrinks I know ever did that. They told me I was stuck taking drugs till I died. No wonder I wanted to die.
Another thing. Who runs the Mental Elf? My guess is it’s probably psychiatric professionals and/or “concerned loved” ones with one or two token SMI’s to laud the “life-saving medications.”
Report comment
They only confuse the issue by calling it a brain disease. None of the bigwig shrinks believe in morality. They never talk about it in their books or papers.
Report comment
I view “madness” as a condition but it would almost always be temporary if psychiatrists would bug off and let us recover.
So “Mad Studies” would be like “Migraine Studies”–putting migraine sufferers into a category different from others just because they had a bad headache 10 years ago. And no, there is no known biological reason for it. It’s not an illness or disease. But it’s terrifying, I can assure you.
Report comment
The Mental “Health” Experts suffer from Procrustes Syndrome. Cookie cutter molds for humanity.
And if you don’t fit a “normal” mold we’ll drag out our DSM of ugly sick molds and force you into one–by stretching and cutting as much as necessary.
Report comment
Craig I have always felt condemned when these “magical” pills did not work. People yelled at me when I seized, gained weight, couldn’t smile. These were actually proofs of my “compliance.”
I’m off the damned drugs. No one can even tell. They seem amazed that I can smile and have lost forty pounds.
Refusing to consider myself mentally ill helps me act more responsibly.
How is considering yourself hopelessly insane supposed to help you behave yourself? It teaches that you can’t help yourself and if you keep pill popping all your problems will resolve themselves or be resolved by the Keepers of the Mad enabling you. Isn’t learned helplessness the proper term?
Report comment
Communities treat convicted ex-felons better than psychiatric patients. Why?
Because biological science has allegedly proven the “mentally ill” can never change.
Thanks pharma-psychiatry. You have really helped reduce the “stigma.” Like that was ever a goal to begin with.
Report comment
Here are some better things.
1. Non-coercive counseling. Choice theory and Finnish Dialogue are good.
2. Hearing Voices support groups.
3. 12 step programs like EA.
4. Journaling, writing and other art forms.
5. Nutritional supplements–especially if emotional problems are caused by a deficiency.
6. Exercise minus Zoloft. Seriously. Zoloft makes exercise less effective at helping depression.
7. Figuring out how your life stinks and fixing it or coping more effectively.
8. Sleeping at least 7 hours a night but less than 9.
9. Figuring out how to taper off your SSRIs. These cause depression and prolong episodes. My bouts of depression used to last a week.Thanks to the miracle of SSRIs I had a single episode of low grade depression for well over 10 years.
10. Doing nothing at all. Sometimes a safe space is necessary, but it’s not supposed to be a “treatment center.” Just 3 hots and a cot, the ability to exercise, peace and quiet, and a few sympathetic ears to vent to.
With the “safe and effective treatments” psychiatry provides “schizophrenics” have a 16% recovery rate. Without any treatment the number is 70%.
Which odds do you prefer?
Report comment
Not the best way to help.
But a great way to hand out drug brochures and info about the local mental illness factory that kindly allows them to use the facility after hours. 😛
Report comment
I was reading an article in a religious magazine yesterday about benefits of sadness–it causes us to be more empathetic and thoughtful for example.
The writer hurriedly made the proviso that sadness was different from “real clinical depression which science has proven to be a chemical imbalance in the brain. If you have that be sure to get ‘help.'”
How do you distinguish between the two? There is no test to measure brain chemistry.
I felt sick and quit reading the article. Naive simpleton! Folks like him LOVE psychiatry since it absolves them from doing squat to help the hurting in their church.
No Rev. Dork, you think you’re humane and scientific, but actually you’re neither. And if you chose to know anything but what you see on television you wouldn’t make such an easy mark for the Rx drug industry!
Report comment
Thanks to Joanna Moncrieff I found out about tardive psychosis. I kept telling people the mega doses of Haldol I took made me psychotic, but no one listened. Years after the fact I feel almost vindicated. The shrinks were gas lighting me.
Report comment
If by safer you mean less addictive Abilify is kind of safe. I took it for 7 years and tapered off in 8 weeks with only a few bad headaches.
Report comment
As I said in an earlier comment, Cat, it’s much easier to convince people that psychiatry is full of corrupt practitioners than that the system itself is inherently corrupt.
Report comment
Number 16. Throw away “mental health diagnoses.” They enable bigots and cause undue pessimism in the labeled and the labeled’s family members. This would also minimize the need for financial support of any kind since they could find employment more easily.
Number 17. Do away with Day Treatment. The whole thing is infantilizing and a huge time sink. Involvement with a “mental wellness” center is a form of segregation. Ditto for “clubhouses.” If someone needs help reintegrating into society they can make a plan with help from a counselor–or better yet a peer manager. Volunteering, groups like EA or AA, clubs, etc. I find I get along better with people I meet this way, since we have more in common than being randomly lumped together as “mentally ill.”
Report comment
Yes, I’m Feelindiscouraged. Not trying to raise up a sock puppet army, but my short term memory is poor. Hence pass word problems and multiple accounts. Plus Feelindiscouraged was a negative moniker.
Report comment
Szazs looked at “psychiatry” as inherently coercive because it’s based on lies. Honest–sometimes brutally–he did not care for liars.
He counseled people by encouraging them to be honest with themselves and not to build their lives on a lie.
I liked his idea that a man who hears a voice telling him to kill his wife and obeys that voice actually deceived himself. He caused himself to hear a voice because his marriage was unhappy and he didn’t like alimony. Of course he could just be lying to the court too; he never heard any voice, but wanted a lighter sentence.
Report comment
There are some rare cases of “religious zealots” who act like Joanna’s example. I have never met one personally–because they are RARE. Talking to a clergy member who would tell them how wrong this behavior is might help more than psychiatry.
Actually all of her examples are extremely rare. Maybe 1 out of 1000 get inducted into the “mental illness” hall of fame start out this way.
Most enter through one of two doors. They act very eccentrically–freak people out–and get “treated.” Others start out with real problems. Emotional problems, not organic. They seek out a shrink in desperation and receive “help” in the form of lies, neurotoxins, lies, imprisonment, and more lies.
The freakish extremes need help. But I wish Joanna Moncrieff and others would acknowledge that most do not fall into this category.
Report comment
For those who physically assault others or commit arson there’s the legal system. Many “symptoms” in the DSM are actually crimes. Or simply rude behaviors.
Prosecute the offender as a criminal or treat them like you would a less eccentric boor. They will be better treated as ex-felons than “bipolars” or “schizophrenics” so you can’t argue inhumanity.
Report comment
Both their behavioral patterns were hurting not just them but those around them.
I love poetry. I am deeply religious. But my religion teaches me to love my enemies–forgive the psychiatrists and others who have wronged me. I wish I could!
It never has caused me to hold a knife to someone’s throat screaming at them to repent. I know these things happen, and they baffle me. For me, my faith has been a center of sanity in the craziness of the psychiatric system.
Poetry also helps me. There is actually a field called poetry therapy that helps people get a grip on emotional pain through writing poems.
Report comment
My condolences.
I feel a lot better since getting off drugs and relocating. I’m building a writers portfolio and hope to (finally) get off SSI.
Still pretty sick. If I had taken large amounts of heroin or meth for 20+ years my health would be poor too. Not proof of a meth deficiency. 🙂
Nearly all my problems are physical. That throws everybody off since they “know” non-compliance means psychotic mania or suicidal depression. Not severe anemia, allergies, and exhaustion.
The anemia actually started before my taper. I believe long term SSRI use has damaged my digestive system. Of course no doctor dares to say this. Did I mention I distrust the medical profession?
Report comment
What you recommend almost worked for me Joanna. A small amount of the neuroleptic Stellazine helped me overcome my intense anxiety in college after years of bullying in high school. After a month I really didn’t need it any more. I was making friends and doing much better.
My shrink disagreed and fed me the “chemical imbalance” lie. Two years later I had sexual thoughts I wanted to suppress and he gave me Anafranil. It caused psychotic mania–which he swore was impossible. I wonder if I will ever have a life now. 🙁
Report comment
Interesting talk about “outpacing science.” Isn’t that what psychiatry is all about?
Claiming to know what they don’t know: We know what causes psychosis and depression!
Claiming to know what can’t be known: 80% of suicides would not have occurred if psychiatry had intervened sooner.
Claiming to know what is false (usually knowing it is false): We know that SSRI’s correct chemical imbalances in the brain and they ALWAYS are 100% safe and effective! 😛
Report comment
People who lie whenever convenient have no right to public trust or any powers at all!
Report comment
Threatening people with knives is illegal regardless of motivation. That first example Joanna presents might benefit from a serious talk with a clergy member who would point out how unChristlike and unBiblical his behaviors are.
Report comment
PTSD is caused by emotional trauma. Not genetic inferiority or being an evolutionary throwback–the key premise to psychiatry (a field of eugenics.)
I’m glad you found these drugs helpful. They have some short term benefits as emotional pain killers. I felt better when I first took Stelazine in small amounts of 3 mg twice a day. If I had been told the truth–this will take the edge off your overwhelming anxiety–and taken off after say a month when my social issues had resolved it would have been a good thing not a bad. Like morphine for a broken leg.
Report comment
I read an article saying that promoting the notion of the “broken brain” wasn’t decreasing stigma against psychiatric patients after all.
What’s noteworthy is the site where this was published. NAMI.org. The article is almost 10 years old.
Disgusting. 😛
Report comment
For psychiatrists and employees of the MI System yes. But many family members, grateful consumers, and ordinary folks outside must have different motivations to buy into the “mental illness” paradigm pharma-psychiatry pushes.
Keeping junior from annoying or embarrassing us. Letting me off the hook for irresponsible behaviors. The cute commercials would NEVER endorse a product that hurts/kills people. Etc.
Report comment
The “mental health” system certainly enables abusers–though sometimes unwittingly.
Report comment
Stevie, I agree what they call “mental illness” has no biological explanation. Basically it’s unhappy people coping with horrible situations by letting their imaginations work overtime.
Why, then, the emphasis that “mental illness” is a brain disease? All the mainstream resources insist it’s bad biology–not human suffering–at work.
Report comment
“Pies has dizzying intellect.” His ability to rationalize cruel, pointless experiments on his fellow humans is certainly breath taking. 🙂
Report comment
My assigned function has been to shut up and take my “meds” from age 20. They went out of their way to discourage me from doing anything useful or productive.
Report comment
Rape hurts people! Have you ever been raped?
The last thing a rape survivor needs is shaming for their negative feelings. A lot do experience self hatred. Sexual harassment–not as bad as rape–caused me years of self loathing and body issues. Almost developed an eating disorder.
Why are you siding with rapists? They claim rape is no big deal and never hurt anybody. That it’s good–even enjoyable–for the victim.
Report comment
The ultimate pain killers. 🙂
Here are more accurate names for drug classes. Diabetes inducers. Passivity enhancers. Thought inhibtors.
Report comment
Had a GP argue that discrimination against the “mentally ill” doesn’t exist. Really.
This naive simpleton also claimed that fruit was “carbohydrate free” and metformin would help me lose weight since 2 pounds a week wasn’t fast enough. He wrote me a prescription for it which I never filled. I do not have diabetes.
Quack quack!
Report comment
Well said Judi.
Report comment
Dr. K. I think I’m able. But it’s extremely hard!
After years of having others tell me what to do I struggle to tell myself now.
But I keep my apartment clean and take care of myself without a mental “health” center. May have a couple writing gigs soon; building my portfolio. Pretty lonely. From what I hear it’s typical.
Report comment
Best way to do that? Avoid your friendly neighborhood Mental Illness Factory (aka mental “health” center.)
Report comment
Too bad for a lot of people edchilde.
Report comment
My condolences, Mescelle! As if a broken foot and arthritis weren’t bad enough those quacks put you on addictive drugs and played mind games with you.
I remember how frightening it was when my first shrink claimed Anafranil NEVER caused insomnia, hallucinations or mania. Either he was ignorant and too lazy to check his pill manual for side effects–all the things
I described were listed. Or maybe he was just gas lighting. How many shrinks are into this kind of emotional abuse?
Report comment
Glad I’m not a man. It must be tough being shamed when you cry or show vulnerability. Risking people laughing at you for writing poetry, admiring sunsets, or playing the violin. Having to play sports even if you lack the desire or natural ability.
Hard being female too. But it’s not all “skittles and beer” for guys either.
Report comment
You don’t know my situation. I’m getting off SSI despite overwhelming odds and fighting psychiatry with no assistance from the morons around me. If I fight too openly I risk being locked up, drugged, and shocked.
Everyone I talk to believes everything they see on TV about psychiatry is true. And the Cures Act is the most wonderful thing ever!
Gonna cost those idiots. I’m one of the very few to escape. If they had their way I’d be permanently disabled and dependent.
Glad you’re not a clueless sheeple MJMS. Most are happy with bureacrats like Tim Murphy locking up and disabling people since they think we’ll eat them otherwise.
And no I’m not JUST feeling sorry for myself. Too angry to be depressed. Doing online activism as a writer.
Report comment
Yeah. Pretty silly.
Everyone knows consuming massive quantities of opium for 20 or 30 years never hurt anyone. How alarmist to think they are any more dangerous than gumdrops! 😀
Those Benzo buddies are a bunch of radical conspiracy theorists no doubt.
Report comment
No one deserves to be imprisoned or tortured for religious beliefs. It goes against the 1st Amendment.
The danger with psychiatry is that it’s in bed with our legal system, but there is nothing judicial about it. If they did their cruel, pointless experiments on convicted criminals,calling it punishment, they would be called out for their cruel and unusual punishments. Only because they put on faces of smooth-faced hypocrites–claiming to fix what’s not broken and “cure” people they disapprove of for X reason–does our society grant them immunity.
Report comment
How about “DSM Created Stigma”?
Report comment
Evil will always defeat good–because good is stupid. ~Mel Brooks’s Space Balls
People love the idea that pills are the answer to all their personal problems. This lets them abdicate all responsibility for bad life choices. They don’t have to do squat to improve themselves when the friendly neighborhood dealer in a lab coat can hand out fists of happy pills.
This also lets them bum around watching TV and going to “clubhouses” where they can be treated like kids with really low IQs instead of working. No financial responsibilities!
Some folks like the system because they enjoy a lifelong adolescence!
Report comment
I’m very angry Cal! I notice that while everyone takes pains not to offend or victimize ethnic minorities and other groups few even think of the disabled–or those who think differently–however you choose to view Autism.
Probably because this is a nation of bullies. If an oppressed group can band together, make enough noise and pay for great media PR, people will respect them. Those who can’t are in trouble.
It’s worth noting that “normal” is not always “typical.”
Report comment
At least I learned something. More than those “treating” me did.
Report comment
Slaying_the_Dragon, is John Hancock your other non de plume? I notice you share his political ideologies.
Report comment
Klerman’s accusation seems off. “If a drug makes you feel good it must be bad.” Most shrinks work on the opposite premise. “The worse a drug makes you feel the better it is for you.” No doubt it builds character. 😀
Psychiatry is Calvinism for Atheists. I’m not referring to asceticism.
Instead of a sovereign God who forces us to be good or evil, we have sovereign genes and neurological conditions. No room for free will in either case.
Report comment
With my bipolar label–an SMI–they would have locked me up before you can say “Sigmund Freud” if they had known what I was about.
Oddly no one saw any difference. This happens a lot–probably because people have preconceived notions of how “non-compliant” mental patients will act. When we don’t they assume we are “good;” even experts are easily fooled.
I continued going to the Mental Illness Center and having sessions with my clueless therapist for a few months. She talked about how I should only date my own kind (other “bipolars”) and regaled me with cautionary tales about The Naughty Patient Who Lacked Insight, Quit His Meds and Decompensated Ever After.
I realized the truth behind these anecdotes: a guy feels worse on his drugs than before, cold turkeys without researching, has horrible DTs, gets locked up where his original drugs are doubled and tripled so he’s more disabled than before. As Paul Harvey used to say, “And now you know the rest of the story.”
Report comment
If you’re a consumer you must suffer from the disease of consumption. Ha ha!
Consumed is a better term. That’s what the treatments do to people. Only instead of wasting away we swell up like balloons. Malnourished the whole time.
Report comment
Not all psychiatrists are EVUL. No one is bad for badness sake. Even sadists are motivated by power/twisted sexual desire rather than Doing the Wrong Thing.
When I read the horror stories here I realize how well off I have been.
Some actually do care about people and imagine they are helping those they lock up/drug/or shock. How willful this blindness is I cannot say. I’m only human, not omniscient.
The problem is the psychiatric relationship is unhealthy and lends itself to abuse. Not all antebellum slave owners acted like Simon Le Gree; nor have all husbands in misogynist societies beaten their wives. That doesn’t mean slavery or denying full citizenship to women are good things though.
Report comment
Ironically I experienced hope when I realized the drugs did not work.
Till then I had been feeling extreme shame and guilt. I was meds compliant after all. Why wasn’t I better?
My therapists would tell me the drugs were fixing what was wrong with me. It must be my fault I wasn’t doing better.
Of course they were themselves deceived. But I was the one who paid.
Report comment
My “bipolar diagnosis” would have ruined my sex life–or hope of one–even without SSRI assistance.
Report comment
Puzzle knows what makes you happy, Julie. She doesn’t want you upset or angry with her. The canine equivalent of a conscience.
Cats often act the same way. They love their owners too. But it shows differently. And felines are more likely to run away if mistreated.
Report comment
Yep. Some virtues are hip and trendy. Ditto for vices.
Racism is out for example. But just a few decades ago it was all the rage. Now “sanism” and ablism are.
Psychiatric “illnesses” consist in part of “symptoms” which are unpopular vices–and often virtues too.
Report comment
Many don’t realize the drugs are themselves exquisite torture. If they saw us in thumb screws, on a rack, or being burned by cigars more would sympathize with us. But since our suffering is invisible, no one–except psychiatrists and us–sees it for what it is.
Report comment
I no longer have my original symptoms. Out of curiousity I have taken an online test for “bipolar” a couple times over the last two years. I definitely would not qualify as “bipolar”–except I did a long time ago once upon a time. That one question sets at naught all the progress I’ve made in emotional maturity.
If I had a real medical problem like cancer and it went into remission would the doctors say, “You tested positive for cancer ten years ago. Therefore you will always be regarded as cancerous and forced to take chemo and radiation till you die”?
An “illness” like no other!
Report comment
I believe Bonnie works in psychology, Pat. Note she’s a Ph.D. Not an MD.
Psycho-therapy can also be abusive. But, umlike mainstream psychiatry, it doesn’t have to be. Especially if no demeaning psych labels are involved.
I view “bipolar” and “schizophrenia” as moral judgments. Not medical diagnoses. My own “bipolar” label helped me just like Jean Valjean’s “papers” helped him in Les Miserables.
“Once a bipolar, always a bipolar,” sneers Dr. Jalvert the shrink.
Report comment
Odd how more are seeing the light despite bogus “studies” like this.
They can’t suppress the truth forever. When it comes through, the reputations of companies like this will be shattered. As well they should be.
Report comment
Always shocked at how naive people are. “Ask your doctor to take you off your ‘meds.'” Uh huh.
Would you advise a battered wife to ask her creepy husband to help her pack and look for a new apartment? I don’t think so.
Once they have you “diagnosed” they own your soul. And they know it.
Report comment
Edgar Allan Poe wrote a humorous story about that. He wrote more than horror.
A con-man, who plagiarizes for a living, digs up old books by Milton, Shakespeare and others. No one likes the pieces under the name of an unknown. That’s a very old problem.
Report comment
Oldhead, I would be a good candidate to take on the religious right. Churches think they are being kind when they lock up “mentally ill” people and drug/shock them–not to mention scientific.
NRA members would be in this group.
They should be reminded that religion (The God Delusion) and a zeal for the 2nd Ammendment are both considered severe mental illnesses by many.
Also, more people receiving psychiatric “services” means more forced to live on disability–receiving expensive drugs–with tax payers footing the bill. And the drugs are really the same as you buy on the street.
Report comment
Like all emotional therapy, TM can be abusive.
I was forced to undergo it by a novice. Finally I refused on religious grounds.
Report comment
That’s a hasty generalization, Steve. Like saying, “All men hate intelligent, successful, witty women.” As a woman, I disagree with that blanket statement.
“All women like bad-boy, alpha jerks,” is also silly. If that were true why do so many of us laugh at the Disney villain Gaston?
Report comment
More Jews than psychiatric patients were murdered during the Holocaust. Probably because there were fewer accused of “mental illness” back then. No SSRIs to set off bizarre episodes and create crops of “bipolars” to harvest.
Few know they did come for the “mentally ill” first though.
Report comment
Pat, I like “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” by Simon and Garfunkel.
Report comment
And very good marketing and PR.
Report comment
I prefer the term counseling to therapy. Steve is right. The role is one of empathy rather than scientific detachment. A good counselor is an educator, not a medical specialist. However intimate friendships outside the office and romances are bad ideas as well as unethical/illegal since they ruin the proper relationship of counselor and counselee.
I am not against counseling–between consenting adults. I think Szazs said that. Forcing “counseling” on an unwilling person is emotional abuse no matter how kind your intentions. Glasser got around that by counseling family members on how they could change their own behaviors to help struggling adult kids or partners. Imagine that!
Report comment
Mainstream psychiatrists don’t. It violates their training.
Report comment
You got that right. Ever considered you weren’t the one with the problem?
Report comment
Much Madness is divinest Sense–
To a discerning Eye–
Much Sense–the starkest Madness–
‘Tis the Majority
In this, as all, prevail–
Assent–and you are sane–
Demur–you’re straightway dangerous–
And handled with a Chain–
Emily Dickinson
Report comment
Before I entered “mental health” I didn’t know what loneliness was.
Report comment
FeelinDiscouraged here–using another account due to poor password recollection!
I am pretty upset–more sad than angry–at something I saw on GoFundMe. A boy of 15 or 16 was being bullied unmercifully. He began having homicidal fantasies of murdering his tormenters. Refusing to act on them, he decided he was “mentally ill” and sought out “help” from his friendly neighborhood mental illness maker.
He submitted to being locked up and drugged–because he didn’t want to do what was wrong! Much more moral than the “sane” folks around him.
The GoFundMe account is to pay his torture bills–I mean medical bills.
Let’s see. Now the poor kid will go back to school. The bullies will be 10 x as nasty because the shrinks proved the bullies were right! He’s a crazy who deserves to be picked on. His drugs will bring down his GPA and probably all hopes of college or having a family.
Interesting to note how psychiatry considers bullies sane and normal! Since they’re happy hurting others, it may be “bad behavior” but it’s not “mental illness.” So they get off scott free.
Because it has no sense of justice–even if it continued to exist–decoupling psychiatry from the legal sytem would be a huge step forward!
Report comment
Dahlia, I appreciate your problem. It’s much easier to convince people that psychiatry is full of abusers than that the whole thing is a pseudo-science.
Report comment
My goal is not to “burn down the club” but discredit it.
Psychiatry does not fill a need, but it pretends to fill a very real need. Ending overwhelming emotional pain.
I sought out psychiatry due to anxiety, unending sadness, and emotional trauma due to years of bullying and sexual harrassment in high school.
How was I “helped”? They frightened me by telling me I was hopelessly insane, emphasized how I should give up on a fulfilling life, encouraged those around me to treat me horribly, and gave me massive doses of drugs to disable/sicken me.
In other words–more anxiety, unending sadness, and emotional trauma. Thanks a lot shrinks!
Report comment
Oddly enough this article gives me some relief. Why? Because it makes me feel justified. After being put on 10 mg of Haldol, then Stellazine I developed a really annoying case of OCD that made people hate to be around me (in addition to mini-seizures and eyes rolling back in my head.) For years, shrinks insisted that I should be on that stuff. When they allowed me to go off the older antipsychotics the OCD symptoms were greatly reduced. Now I’m off antipsychotics completely. 🙂
Unfortunately I was kicked out of college first because my dorm mom claimed I wasn’t meds compliant. Little did she know! I felt I had to let her know about my diagnosis because I couldn’t control the seizures or conceal them all the time (obviously.)
Those shrinks can claim my OCD was caused by my “illness.” What they can’t explain is why I didn’t have those symptoms before and don’t have them now. No wonder they worry about us going off our “meds.”
Report comment
Alex, thanks for your response. I just realized something. My dad has done his share of marital counseling as a preacher; he often says love isn’t a feeling, but an act of the will. If that is true, maybe hate is too. In which case, just because I’m very angry and have negative feelings about someone–or actually what they did to me–that doesn’t mean I hate him/her. That is a relief, because I don’t see how anyone could go through what I’ve gone through and am going through in wd and go around with a smiley face and good vibes all the time. Unless you were a masochist perhaps.
Report comment
I know it’s wrong, but I am full of anger that I can’t seem to get rid of. I know hate is wrong, but I really cannot forgive my persecutors, let alone love them it seems. This is contrary to my religious beliefs, but there you have it.
This bothers me more than what they have done (and still may do) to me.
Report comment
I had a nasty therapist who was a dead ringer for the evil fairy godmother in “Shrek II.” Ugh!
Report comment
Psychiatric labels are no more valid. At least the Myers Briggs categories don’t label some people as “sick and dangerous.” No one has ever been discriminated against or imprisoned for being INFJ like I am supposed to be. However everybody hates you once they find out about your bipolar or borderline personality disorder diagnosis! That’s the main reason I hate shrinks–besides their lying to us about the drugs they peddle.
Report comment
On the positive side, I printed out a summary of the Murphy Bill for my parents today. They were horrified when they read about the loss of liberty and other rights it would entail for people like me. My parents actually want me well. Not like some others.
Report comment