health differentials are reduced when active social movements emerge, so yes, group protest as therapy. Forget walking and mindfulness, marches and sit in’s keep people healthy.
I want to know how it got through the peer review process to get published?
I am now wondering how many other articles the journal publishes that are as flimsy as this one?
except that as a poofy woofter homosexulist I didn’t define my experience by a psychiatric label or definition. Autism is a Dr’s definition.
Nuerodiverstiy sounds like science but has not scientific basis.
Behavioural diversity I can understand.
Queer Freaks I can understand.
Nuerodiversity is still something that I don’t know what it refers to. Maybe i’ll look it up?
Whether anyone classes Timimi as sane is another matter. He does link to a debate between him and an autistic advocate early on in the article.
Maybe someone answering Timimi would provide balance?
Or maybe an article from someone who de diagnosed themselves from the diagnosis?
As it happens I looked up the symptoms of Aspergers and such like on google this very evening.
I found a prestigious UK site and looked up it up. What I found was a list of vague symptoms that could apply to almost anyone and a lot of circular logic.
Controversial though init, as a lot of people with the diagnosis like it and get really narked if you say it has no validity.
I agree institutionalisation plays a part in creating chronic patients.
I have no convincing evidence to counter the arguments that Whittaker et al have proposed that psyche drugs are harmful and stop recovery in most people.
I would welcome an article on learned helplessness and institutionalisation caused by psychiatry. I would not want to share this one because it conflates those ideas with an investigation into the effect of psychiatric drugs.
I would welcome an article on the psychological damage of psyche drugs based on psychological theories and challenging biochemical ideas, eg the nocebo theory, but I would need more evidence for me to take it seriously and for it to be one I would share.
There are non psychiatric drugs that cause psychological harm. I was prescribed one for asthma and having read the potential side effects I decided not to take it. I have a friend who was prescribed another drug that is an antibiotic that affected her state of mind badly, it is a known effect of this drug. Therefore you argument that psychiatric drugs do not cause mental distress seems unlikely and unproved.
You would need to compare those who suffer un drugged forced idleness to those who are drugged into placidity to make this case and also look at the short term effects of those drugs on people. As I understand they stimulate appetite which would account for some of the biological changes experienced by people taking these drugs.
It’s GP’s that prescribe these the most. They need to be the subject of targeted campaigns at their professional bodies.
Well that was comprehensive. I kind of want to throw it at the Royal College of Trick Cyclists, or anyone else who thinks these drugs are the best things since sliced bread and say, “Take that, you drug pushing idiots.”
I wait to see if there is a rebuttal from someone who should know better.
I have just had the second ADHD post in my facebook feed from friends this week.
Freeky.
I may have to cut then out of my friends lists if they do it again.
I have posted this article on the ADHD ACTION website though. I hope she doesnt’ try and message me again. I’m not up to a polite convo with an angry Big Pharma shill (OK, I’m making that one up. I have no idea why the women behind this loves her diagnosis and is proselytising to wildly)
Thanks Frank. The Michelle case was a mess. Bullying someone by text or in some other online manner, who then kills themselves, should be a crime. That was not happening here but that was what the prosecution was alleging. The whole situation was a mess and legally what happened was appaling. However I dont’ think it is the same as standing by and being a witness to someone who want to end thier life.
And that was my point.
Most though, and not all. If it was all then Dignitas would not exist.
I am still thinking this all over and am not plonking for one camp or the other as I stated above.
Frank wrote about Szasz, a professional, not a friend or family member, which was your point.
Here in the UK mental, someone in my local bin set fire to themselves and the room they were in and died. There is an enquirey but I doubt anything will happen to anyone.
I can understand your concerns about professionals trying to restrain people who are suicidal but I think the answer to that is to end forced treatment. Indeed I doubt the problem you raise there will not end until forced treatment end.
Actually I think sometimes offering understanding does change minds, and sometimes it doesn’t. However I doubt that neither you are I are going to scout the internet to find evidence of our claims.
I’m still interested in news stories of those who were prosecuted for being witnesses to those who killed themselves.
I have saw the letters on two days ago.
The goal would be let the person know that you cared about them and you would miss them but to be open to listening to what they have to say. The effect is that often people change their minds. That for those who care about them is a pleasant out come as they still want their company.
I have never heard of people being persecuted for non intervening witnesses. Could you put up a link to a news story about that?
There is no law against suicide. The majority of the UK, where I live, are not religious.
There are suicide prevention strategies which have some sensible ideas like making it harder to jump in front of trains. There are suicide prevention strategies that ignore that poverty and bullying at work are big drivers of suicide.
There are laws against helping people kill themselves in most, but not all countries.
I am in the UK and I have a friend who contacted Dignitas, that Swiss assisted dying organisation. He has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. A few years ago they offered to kill him at a discounted rate.
He didn’t take up the offer, is slowly reducing his psyche drugs, gets therapy sometimes, and is now hopeful of a pleasant future.
He still gets letter from Dignitas, which makes money from killing people. I think he asked them to take him off their database and so far they have not. Perhaps the death business is profit driven, just like psychiatry?
I think offering suicide to unhappy people when thier lives could be transfromed by proper social provision, better benerfits and taxing the billionaires until the pips squeak is in most cases immoral, espcially when people make money out of it.
The most anyone can offer anyone who wants to kill themselves is to try to understand why, often that will be enough for them to change their mind, though sometimes it isn’t.
Here is a link to their philosophy. They say they are separatist. Pam Jenkinson who runs it has always said the mental health professionals will try to take over if you let them in http://www.wokinghammentalhealth.org.uk/philosophy.htm
That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, it takes a lot of organising for things to change though. It takes a mass movement with clear aims. Bernie Sanders did well, though obviously not well enough, in the primaries against Clinton. The support for this kind of change is there, but not well organised.
He makes the point that our state of mind is a reflection of social conditions. Or in other words:
My Condition is Due to the State I Live In.
Psychiatry is the handmaiden of the oppressive nature of the state.
I know an independent mental health centre where professionals are not allowed in unless they are invited. The person who started it said they would take over if there allowed in.
I think that is the only way. Keep the professionals out and keep survivors in charge.
I am not actively involved in this struggle in a big way these days. When I was I thought that support services that were named as being run by antipsychiatry organisations would be a good tactic. If peer run orgs said they were providing services because psychiatry was dangerous it would have an impact.
Some think that the most dangerous thing that the Black Panthers did was to run breakfast programmes for school children. Implicit in that action was the idea that the state is starving black children. They didn’t have to mount protests to show what they meant. This was a big threat to the white government. Perhaps peer support got coopted because it was a threat?
Well done in breaking free and taking this to court and especially well done on acting as your own lawyer.
“Since the summary and technical judgment, it has come out that the defendant psychiatrist’s legal defence has been paid for in whole (or at bare minimum, in part) with taxpayer money. I have not received any taxpayer money to fund the plaintiff’s side.” I think this is worth investigating more and seeing if it contravenes any human rights or other legislation and taking up with your politicians as this seems a hugely important issue an seems to me to be contrary to natural justice.
I think psychiatry is a mixed bag. While I realise this is rubbish as a figure it lets you know how I feel about things: I think psychiatry is 80% harmful and 20% useful. The useful things are listening, talking, understanding, encouraging, providing sanctuary and even drugging people into some semblance of peace when nothing else is available. None of that needs to be provided for by psychiatry and often isn’t.
For myself I usually the functions of psychiatry are to be the drug delivery agent of Big Pharma and to make sure no one thinks about why people are distressed.
If on a societal level, ie the powers that be were held to account, thought about why people were distressed then the powers that be would have to have a lot less power as poverty, racism, sexism, violence and sexual assault are at the bottom of so much mental distress. Plainly the powers that be would not welcome that, so yes I agree psychiatry on the whole is about social control.
So I suspect our positions are not too far apart. I am saying it is politically sensible to acknowledge that a lot of people do, and will always need support.
I almost entirely agree with your excellent sentiments, especially, ” the collective trauma of living under a corporate dictatorship,” however human distress is universal and societies need systems of care to address this. It doesn’t need to be psychiatry but I suspect most societies needs something that is organised to help address the needs of the severely distressed.
I know someone who was held in a private psychiatric institution in the UK and who had to run away to get out. She indicated that this was so the institution could make money out of her so thanks for the link.
I am now!
The power holders never want to know what the oppressed really experience. Is it not always so?
“psychiatric illness can best be viewed as a biologically based socio-cultural expression.”
Not in my book. First I’m not keen on the term, “Psychiatric illness.” Second, the biologically based bit is a red herring and a dangerous one at that. If this drug don’t work, try that one, etc etc etc. Forget the biology.
The only thing that is good about ecstasy is that is it about as dangerous as horse riding, according to Proff Nutt, and therefore a whole lot safer than other psyche drugs.
Personally I’d prefer a good friend to drugs any day.
Nuff said.
I think it is important that Sir Robin has his voice on MIA. He has interesting things to say about the research and how his opinions have changed over the years. What I wonder is whether and how much he has listened to service users/survivors of psychiatry?
In the UK if a patient wants to reduce their drugs their requests are usually ignored the staff.
“Like insulin for diabetes,” is often said to patients by staff.
The psychiatrists I hear about seem to know anything about drug reduction or dopamine super sensitivity.
Maybe Robin will let them know his opinions soon?
I’m not holding my breath
They don’t provide any evidence that stopping antidepressants have negative effects on mothers or children. They just blandly stated it. They have not provided studies on to show the relative benefits of staying on or stopping the drugs, or of providing other kinds of help.
My favourite writer on, “Mental Health,” is the former clinical psychologist Dorothy Rowe who confessed in a letter to me to being an anarchist.
banner drops at pharmacies anyone?
“……C4 complement gene. I immediately sent a letter to the editor complete with key research papers documenting that this finding was also observed in chronic stress. ”
My C4 must be all over the place then (I have no schizoblahblah diagnosis)
Might you not have been helped if you a Dr gave you a different diagnosis and the same pill?
Have you had biological and DNA tests to show any genetic or biological abnormalities? You may have them but without tests you have no proof.
Those negative effects are at appallingly high rates.
Interesting. The biggest effects seems to be in the elderly.
Sounds like a computer aided version of what gestalt therapist do and which the hearing voices network developed and called Voice Dialogue.
Me, I like drawing things with crayons and using that to develop dialogues.
But hey, each to their own.
The author writes: “….an extraordinary level of arrogance, condescension and even narcissism.”
Nothing extraordinary there, those are the character traits displayed by the most memorable psychiatrists I have met.
Money makes the world go round.
I think you’ll find that is the true explanation of these rather depressing findings (quick someone, give me a Prozac prescription to cope).
we have everyday problems being psychiatrised in the UK too, but with an NHS.
I read a bit of propaganda recently from a particularly bad anti-stigma campaign that said, “We all have mental health.”
Yuk is my response. We all have states of mind but why bring medicine into it?
Interesting point of view there. Dementia as a social construct, if I am not mistaken.
I have never heard of forced catherisation before. It sounds very degrading. The whole experiences that you two describe sound like police state activities. Very shocking indeed.
There is an Prison Abolition movement. Maybe we should work with them as allies?
That is a very pull your socks up or shut up attitude.
I find that people don’t do things, including writing, for all sorts of reasons.
As an example, I sometimes teach voice work. I have worked with people who mumble. I found more than once that they would start talking more clearly once they had talked over some trauma. I did allsorts of technical work with someone who was really hard to understand. It helped a bit, but not a lot. For some reason we started talking about how we had both seen our fathers try to strangle our mothers. His voice grew clear and easy to understand.
If you have faith in a professional you may well do what they say. If they say you will never write a book and you have faith in them you may well believe them and act appropriately. It is the opposite of the placebo effect.
“…….likening their admission experiences to imprisonment.”
That’s because it was.
Really interesting article.
So psychiatry is muscling in on the criminal justice system is it?
This makes Frances assertion that a whole load of prisoners should be in psychiatric hands seem like him and his colleagues just touting for extra business and not being about caring for people at all.
I knew Jean. I think she killed herself for a variety of reasons. One big one was that she hated psychiatric drugs that she was forced to take and she hated the ward she was put on when she had breakdowns. She saw no escape.
The doctors knew she hated the drugs but could not imagine any other way of treating her.
I feel slighly guilty as I started Speak Out Against Psychiatry and I think that raised her hopes of getting off the drugs and freeing herself of psychiatry. I am no longer involved in anti-psychiatry campaigning but if I was I would make sure that setting up good advocacy, drug withdrawal help and social support was at the heart of it.
“It is reasonable to assume,” write the authors, “that the number of people in England receiving ECT annually within NHS Trusts had continued its steady decline until around 2006 (to a low of about 1,300), but then increased and stabilized for a few years at about double that number.”
My guess is that the rise corresponded with the outfall from the 2008 crash: lots of depressed people, a series of right wing governments who cut benefits and also services, including mental health services. This lead to a rise in mental health diagnosis due to rising inequality and poverty but less psychological help available due to the cuts.
I suspect this is true but I’d like a bit more epidemiology to prove it. There other people apart from those who are diagnosed with bipolar and schizophrenia who don’t get much exercise, smoke lots and eat a lot of cake. I’d like comparison with them in terms of mortality.
Yes, I did not experience much violence as a child but I have listened to those in the mental health system who have. Their histories were ignored by psychiatry and their distress drugged.
I think that depends on what the individual peer and the organisation that employs them.
Peer support where I live does just what the employer tells them.
I would not be employed as a peer at my local day centre as I would be doing pretty much what PatH1980 suggests.
I can’t wait for that one
Funnily enough I was at a talk about strategy last night. It was given by George Lakey, who was promoting his new book Viking Economics, about how the 1% were beaten back in the 1930’s in the Nordic countries leading to social democracy.
He said when loosing to the forces of reaction it is always tempting to go on the defensive to try to maintain what has already been won. He said this is a mistake. He said when under attack create a bigger vision and use that to draw in others and then go for it big time with well thought out tactics.
I agree that money and corruption is a problem, esp in the USA. I agree with joining with other movements.
I think the message is out there that Big Pharma is dangerous, that psychiatry is nasty, that profit driven healthcare is dishonest and not fair. Social Entrepunership and what is happening in Masschutus shows us what is possible but the 1% rules the rest of the country (and the world) and will do so until people fight back in well thought out campaigns.
What is needed is organising this movement in some kind of structure and then a strategy that involves direct action.
Mainly I think it is time to take the messages of Robert Whitaker and others and turn them into smart campaigns using direct action tactics: a hearing voices group at the AGM of some insurance company, die in’s at Big Pharma offices to protest the mass poisoning that is Prozac and ritalin and olanzapine, hammers to ECT machines in hospitals to stop shock, Open Dialogue meetings in the lobby’s of hospitals to get more less lock up and drugs and more social support.
Without well thought out campaigns with some kind of dramatic actions and mass organisation this struggle will go nowhere. I say that because other struggles got successful when they too took that road.
give in, stop trying, be miserable
exercise, esp in groups (eg walking groups, going to the gyn, green gym – alias bramble bashing and other conservation activities)
Kirsch’s work implies that anything that inspires hope, prescribed by someone you have faith in, especially if they are interested in you, your life and how you see things, is likely to be helpful. So that could be therapists, friends, counselors, alternative health practitioners such as homeopaths and acupuncturists
My friend’s cat over grooms her fur. She was offered prozac type drugs for the cat.
The answer, as in any social movement, is to expand the protests, draw in more people and go on the offensive.
“slightly-but-not-quite psychotic”
Probably most of us after a few pints
Or a bad day at work
I once heard someone talk about how in one small part of Rural Denmark (now I maybe wrong on the country) the community had designed an addiction service that involved family and other networks. It sounded like a variation on Open Dialogue, where family and other important people are invited to conversations with trained staff (therapists, social workers, psychiatrists etc) and those conversations might happen every day for a week or so and then tail off. Central to this model is the idea that someone needs social support and that all treatment decisions are made by discussion with all relevant parties.
Drugs could still be prescribed in this model and attendance at meetings would be entirely voluntary. People who have been through addiction and come out the other side would probably have useful things to say as the skilled and trained helpers.
I am interested in this model as families and communities often struggle as to what to do when someone turns to drugs and I think they need support too.
Peers and Peer Support: He who pays the piper plays the tune.
Nuff said.
Or to put it less cryptically: peer support, trained or untrained, run by psychiatric survivors and their allies and from an anti-psychiatry ideology is what I want to see. Most of the rest is co-opted nonsense which at it’s best gives service users a much needed step back into paid employment.
There are of course a few exceptions, such as peer supported Open Dialogue in the UK, but they are rare.
I hope you find the time to reply as I would enjoy reading it
I think this is a really interesting article. I’d like to see some other studies comparing different cultures incidences of psychotic diagnosis and see them related to their histories.
Eric tied the high level in post war Germany to war trauma. I’d like to know if other countries that have suffered recent wars have high levels of psychotic diagnosis.
If anyone knows of such studies please let me know.
Indeed, I know a few people whose live experiences and skills have been disbelieved by psychiatric staff.
I already do connect anti-psychiatry with neo-communist ideas. Or more usually anarchist ideas.
I find anarchists the most sympathetic to these ideas.
However I’ll work with anyone.
I have seen many professionals who work in the system who blog and comment on this site not get a hard time from people who have been harmed by psychiatry.
Personally I think that those who have been harmed by psychiatry have a right shout down anyone who they disagree with.
The comments are moderated, as I know only two well, having had a few removed in my time.
If you feel the way comments are moderated should be changed I suggest you take it up with the people who run the site.
Might this not have caused brain damage that caused chronic pain? I can imagine mechanisms that might cause this.
We have no idea why the Dr’s concluded that it was mental illness, whatever that is? All I can assume is that they could find no physical cause and therefore assumed it was psychological in origin. I think that is an easy way out for the Dr. Much better that they say they have found no cause.
I hear people with mental health diagnosis sometimes have physical symptoms dismissed as being psychological in origin with no or little evidence.
I also know someone with long term chronic pain caused by real physical disease who learnt to deal with it largely by psychological and behavioural methods. So these things are often complex.
If you give Dr’s the power to take away someone’s rights and force drugs on them they do not want and to ignore them, which is what happens in most wards, then why would you expect what you offer to be examined by anyone outside your organisation?
The law has given you the impression psychiatrists can do what they want. Why would they comply with people who call you to account?
this will not stop until a popular campaign using direct action emerges
If I post what I think needs to be done again I shall probably be banned.
Enough of the comments, where is the action?
Where is the organising?
Where are the banner drops, invasions of pharmacies, Dr’s offices, Big Pharma offices, MP’s offices and schools?
Where is the publically organised outrage?
Breggin and co gives the info. Nothing will change until people get of thier arses and take action.
Breggin and co will not organise the masses, they will not lead ACT UP type campaigns. It us up to us.
Comment removed for moderation
And yet UK GP’s are pleased by the increase in prescribing over the last ten years as they say the drugs are effective. They also say that there are withdrawal effects but these can be managed by coming off them slowly over a couple of months which is completely counter to what many ssri withdrwal support groups report.
Meanwhile, in another land, I see no epidemiology that shows a reduction in days off work for depression as a result of all these extra drugs being prescribed.
Big disconect going on here. I largely blame Time to Change, the UK big funded anti stigma campaign. Disease like any other init? Bound to drive up prescriptions, especially with a depression and austerity policies putting the majority of the population under financial stress.
I love John Read’s work by the way.
Nice article. I hope we get a report of the congress.
Brilliant plan.
Even better if Dr’s didn’t start people on these drugs.
I wonder if patients experiecing withdrawal problems can sue thier GP’s?
Indeed
I agree with the gist of your argument but I still think that the practical points outlined in the article can be fought for by those who seek reform and those that seek abolition.
It would all depend on who was leading a perticular campaign as to what the overall aim was but I would hope that both camps would cooperate on any campaign that led to less forced treatment, less drugging, less ECT and more humane compassion.
I think if the label, “Mad,” or, “Mentally Ill,” is applied to someone it gives clinicians license to do anything they want.
I was offered this. I turned it down. I had to go through so many hoops to get the offer too.
They do it because health care in the UK is increasingly marketised. Providers compete to provide packages of healthcare. This one looks good on outcomes, if you measure them in the right way, just like the drugs do if you run the tests yourself.
Gosh no, what LGBT youth need are other LGBT people who then treat them well.
Who would have thought it?
Not prozac or anything psychiatry can provide then?
I suspect that once people are labelled as mad psychiatry can get away with anything.
Yes, there is a risk of agranulosis, a severe and dangerous lowering of the white blood cell count.
I know of one person who had this, was taken off the drug suddenly because of concerns about her health and who then became psychotic and very distressed.
If I am reading this right those are really high rates of serious harm.
This needs to get serious press.
Arrogance has been my experience when talking to psychiatrist and appalled that anyone should challange them no matter how small the challange is
I am just re reading your book, Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, and am struck by the section on form filling and how that effects the experience of inmates in hosptals. Whether there were drugs or not hospitals as they stand would still be a kind of soft prison with observations and locked wards and not a lot of getting to know and support people in distress.
Today I performed at a Mental Health Arts Festival and afterwards someone said they were really glad I had written about psychiatric oppression in the programme notes.
the link didn’t work for me. Can you check it is right?
drugs for HIV came along quite quick due to mass protest by ACTUP
That sounds like a strategic answer not a sience or ethics based one. That is, strategically psychiatry is likely to be weakened by the use of critical psychiatry arguments and allieing to critical psychiatrists and other respected professionals.
Where as I takea an anti-psychiatry viewpoint and am willing to seek allies from critical psychiatrists and other respected proffessionals. Oddly my position partly comes from reading Mad in America which details the history of USA psychiatry and from which I came to the conclusion that psychiatry has always done more harm than good, it is not just a modern phenoma.
I read your post but cannot see how it relates to the article. At the moment it reads to me like you are posting about a personal bugbear that may or may not relate to it.
Timimi runs a child and adolescent clinic where many children who would at other clinics get a diagnosis of ADHD are helped. His clinic on the whole is drug free and diagnosis free. It also has far better outcomes than most other CAMH’s clinics.
Some of the clients come from other clinics and are on drugs and have diagnosis. Most of those, once they have heard the benefits and downside of diagnosis and drugs decide to drop them, though some decide to keep them. I therefore think that if no diagnosis, no medication and lots of conversation are all needed to help a child then that is between the parent, the child and doctor. However this was not the main point of the article.
I can see your personal experience and opinions are counter to Timimi’s practice however the article on the whole is not about that, it is about scientific outcomes of a variety of studies. Could you therefore go back to the article and copy and paste bits of it and then tell me how your post relates to the article? That way I and perhaps others might be able to debate with you.
Here are the lyrics from the song in the article:
“I took pills for my depression
just to smother my emotions.
Doctors said that I would need them,
but I learned to cry without them.
So I stopped taking the tablets,
then I let my feelings rise up
for my mother when she passed on,
for my marriage when he quit me,
left me as a single mother,
with a hard job and no weekends.
Now I weep without taking pills,
yet I still feel very angry,
and the fury seems well-founded,
but the feelings will not hurt me.”
I suspect there is a difference between Bonnies’ ideas and Julie as Julie is anti therapy and Bonnie is, amongst other things, a therapist.
I wonder if either of the two of you could elucidate on this further?
I read Masson’s book Against Therapy and while I have some sympathy with his views. After all Soteria House was set up by a psychaitrist, run by carefully chosen people who had n training and who got to talk to a social worker about what was going on once a week yet they had brilliant outcomes.
David Smail wrote an essay comparing therapists and prostitutes. He wrote that prostitutes sold sex and therapists sold love – or something near it.
I am not against therapy myself but niether do I put therapists on pedastals.
“…..details that were unnecessary for my treatment”
I see no treatment in this report. This is forced imprisonment with no due process and as such illegal.
It must be hard to be at the coal face and see all this cruelty meterred out to tramatised people.
I congratulate you for carrying on.
I have witnessed it myself as a friend of people who are persecuted by psychiatry – because that is what it is, a kind of persecution.
This is big. Lets hope it gets lots of publicity and follow up.
What he is actually saying is, “My condition due to the State I’m in.”
Joy is an empty headed numpty – I wonder what skill level Martin Freed has in programming if this is all he can manage?
Lets hope I don’t get moderated for making an ad hominim attack on a computer programme!
health differentials are reduced when active social movements emerge, so yes, group protest as therapy. Forget walking and mindfulness, marches and sit in’s keep people healthy.
I want to know how it got through the peer review process to get published?
I am now wondering how many other articles the journal publishes that are as flimsy as this one?
except that as a poofy woofter homosexulist I didn’t define my experience by a psychiatric label or definition. Autism is a Dr’s definition.
Nuerodiverstiy sounds like science but has not scientific basis.
Behavioural diversity I can understand.
Queer Freaks I can understand.
Nuerodiversity is still something that I don’t know what it refers to. Maybe i’ll look it up?
There is one blog was by someone directly effected https://www.madinamerica.com/provider-directory/102906/autistic-self-advocacy-network-los-angeles-chapter/
Whether anyone classes Timimi as sane is another matter. He does link to a debate between him and an autistic advocate early on in the article.
Maybe someone answering Timimi would provide balance?
Or maybe an article from someone who de diagnosed themselves from the diagnosis?
As it happens I looked up the symptoms of Aspergers and such like on google this very evening.
I found a prestigious UK site and looked up it up. What I found was a list of vague symptoms that could apply to almost anyone and a lot of circular logic.
Controversial though init, as a lot of people with the diagnosis like it and get really narked if you say it has no validity.
I agree institutionalisation plays a part in creating chronic patients.
I have no convincing evidence to counter the arguments that Whittaker et al have proposed that psyche drugs are harmful and stop recovery in most people.
I would welcome an article on learned helplessness and institutionalisation caused by psychiatry. I would not want to share this one because it conflates those ideas with an investigation into the effect of psychiatric drugs.
I would welcome an article on the psychological damage of psyche drugs based on psychological theories and challenging biochemical ideas, eg the nocebo theory, but I would need more evidence for me to take it seriously and for it to be one I would share.
There are non psychiatric drugs that cause psychological harm. I was prescribed one for asthma and having read the potential side effects I decided not to take it. I have a friend who was prescribed another drug that is an antibiotic that affected her state of mind badly, it is a known effect of this drug. Therefore you argument that psychiatric drugs do not cause mental distress seems unlikely and unproved.
You would need to compare those who suffer un drugged forced idleness to those who are drugged into placidity to make this case and also look at the short term effects of those drugs on people. As I understand they stimulate appetite which would account for some of the biological changes experienced by people taking these drugs.
It’s GP’s that prescribe these the most. They need to be the subject of targeted campaigns at their professional bodies.
Well that was comprehensive. I kind of want to throw it at the Royal College of Trick Cyclists, or anyone else who thinks these drugs are the best things since sliced bread and say, “Take that, you drug pushing idiots.”
I wait to see if there is a rebuttal from someone who should know better.
I have just had the second ADHD post in my facebook feed from friends this week.
Freeky.
I may have to cut then out of my friends lists if they do it again.
I have posted this article on the ADHD ACTION website though. I hope she doesnt’ try and message me again. I’m not up to a polite convo with an angry Big Pharma shill (OK, I’m making that one up. I have no idea why the women behind this loves her diagnosis and is proselytising to wildly)
Unfortunately the ADHD lobby, and in this case I really do mean lobby, is growing https://www.politicshome.com/news/uk/health-and-care/illnesstreatments/house/house-magazine/92916/jo-platt-failure-understand-and
The thread above is closed so I will reply here.
Thanks Frank. The Michelle case was a mess. Bullying someone by text or in some other online manner, who then kills themselves, should be a crime. That was not happening here but that was what the prosecution was alleging. The whole situation was a mess and legally what happened was appaling. However I dont’ think it is the same as standing by and being a witness to someone who want to end thier life.
And that was my point.
Most though, and not all. If it was all then Dignitas would not exist.
I am still thinking this all over and am not plonking for one camp or the other as I stated above.
Frank wrote about Szasz, a professional, not a friend or family member, which was your point.
Here in the UK mental, someone in my local bin set fire to themselves and the room they were in and died. There is an enquirey but I doubt anything will happen to anyone.
I can understand your concerns about professionals trying to restrain people who are suicidal but I think the answer to that is to end forced treatment. Indeed I doubt the problem you raise there will not end until forced treatment end.
Actually I think sometimes offering understanding does change minds, and sometimes it doesn’t. However I doubt that neither you are I are going to scout the internet to find evidence of our claims.
I’m still interested in news stories of those who were prosecuted for being witnesses to those who killed themselves.
I have saw the letters on two days ago.
The goal would be let the person know that you cared about them and you would miss them but to be open to listening to what they have to say. The effect is that often people change their minds. That for those who care about them is a pleasant out come as they still want their company.
I have never heard of people being persecuted for non intervening witnesses. Could you put up a link to a news story about that?
There is no law against suicide. The majority of the UK, where I live, are not religious.
There are suicide prevention strategies which have some sensible ideas like making it harder to jump in front of trains. There are suicide prevention strategies that ignore that poverty and bullying at work are big drivers of suicide.
There are laws against helping people kill themselves in most, but not all countries.
I am in the UK and I have a friend who contacted Dignitas, that Swiss assisted dying organisation. He has a diagnosis of schizophrenia. A few years ago they offered to kill him at a discounted rate.
He didn’t take up the offer, is slowly reducing his psyche drugs, gets therapy sometimes, and is now hopeful of a pleasant future.
He still gets letter from Dignitas, which makes money from killing people. I think he asked them to take him off their database and so far they have not. Perhaps the death business is profit driven, just like psychiatry?
Disability organisations in the UK oppose assited dying for a host of reasons. Here is an article about it https://www.scope.org.uk/media/why-we-oppose-assisted-dying-bill.
I am undecided on the issue of assisted dying.
I think offering suicide to unhappy people when thier lives could be transfromed by proper social provision, better benerfits and taxing the billionaires until the pips squeak is in most cases immoral, espcially when people make money out of it.
The most anyone can offer anyone who wants to kill themselves is to try to understand why, often that will be enough for them to change their mind, though sometimes it isn’t.
Here is a link to their philosophy. They say they are separatist. Pam Jenkinson who runs it has always said the mental health professionals will try to take over if you let them in http://www.wokinghammentalhealth.org.uk/philosophy.htm
That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, it takes a lot of organising for things to change though. It takes a mass movement with clear aims. Bernie Sanders did well, though obviously not well enough, in the primaries against Clinton. The support for this kind of change is there, but not well organised.
He makes the point that our state of mind is a reflection of social conditions. Or in other words:
My Condition is Due to the State I Live In.
Psychiatry is the handmaiden of the oppressive nature of the state.
I know an independent mental health centre where professionals are not allowed in unless they are invited. The person who started it said they would take over if there allowed in.
I think that is the only way. Keep the professionals out and keep survivors in charge.
I am not actively involved in this struggle in a big way these days. When I was I thought that support services that were named as being run by antipsychiatry organisations would be a good tactic. If peer run orgs said they were providing services because psychiatry was dangerous it would have an impact.
Some think that the most dangerous thing that the Black Panthers did was to run breakfast programmes for school children. Implicit in that action was the idea that the state is starving black children. They didn’t have to mount protests to show what they meant. This was a big threat to the white government. Perhaps peer support got coopted because it was a threat?
Well done in breaking free and taking this to court and especially well done on acting as your own lawyer.
“Since the summary and technical judgment, it has come out that the defendant psychiatrist’s legal defence has been paid for in whole (or at bare minimum, in part) with taxpayer money. I have not received any taxpayer money to fund the plaintiff’s side.” I think this is worth investigating more and seeing if it contravenes any human rights or other legislation and taking up with your politicians as this seems a hugely important issue an seems to me to be contrary to natural justice.
I think psychiatry is a mixed bag. While I realise this is rubbish as a figure it lets you know how I feel about things: I think psychiatry is 80% harmful and 20% useful. The useful things are listening, talking, understanding, encouraging, providing sanctuary and even drugging people into some semblance of peace when nothing else is available. None of that needs to be provided for by psychiatry and often isn’t.
For myself I usually the functions of psychiatry are to be the drug delivery agent of Big Pharma and to make sure no one thinks about why people are distressed.
If on a societal level, ie the powers that be were held to account, thought about why people were distressed then the powers that be would have to have a lot less power as poverty, racism, sexism, violence and sexual assault are at the bottom of so much mental distress. Plainly the powers that be would not welcome that, so yes I agree psychiatry on the whole is about social control.
So I suspect our positions are not too far apart. I am saying it is politically sensible to acknowledge that a lot of people do, and will always need support.
I almost entirely agree with your excellent sentiments, especially, ” the collective trauma of living under a corporate dictatorship,” however human distress is universal and societies need systems of care to address this. It doesn’t need to be psychiatry but I suspect most societies needs something that is organised to help address the needs of the severely distressed.
I know someone who was held in a private psychiatric institution in the UK and who had to run away to get out. She indicated that this was so the institution could make money out of her so thanks for the link.
I am now!
The power holders never want to know what the oppressed really experience. Is it not always so?
Treated her children appallingly though.
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/05/24/arts/sunday-view-melanie-klein-she-shrunk-her-kids.html?pagewanted=all
“psychiatric illness can best be viewed as a biologically based socio-cultural expression.”
Not in my book. First I’m not keen on the term, “Psychiatric illness.” Second, the biologically based bit is a red herring and a dangerous one at that. If this drug don’t work, try that one, etc etc etc. Forget the biology.
The only thing that is good about ecstasy is that is it about as dangerous as horse riding, according to Proff Nutt, and therefore a whole lot safer than other psyche drugs.
Personally I’d prefer a good friend to drugs any day.
Nuff said.
I think it is important that Sir Robin has his voice on MIA. He has interesting things to say about the research and how his opinions have changed over the years. What I wonder is whether and how much he has listened to service users/survivors of psychiatry?
In the UK if a patient wants to reduce their drugs their requests are usually ignored the staff.
“Like insulin for diabetes,” is often said to patients by staff.
The psychiatrists I hear about seem to know anything about drug reduction or dopamine super sensitivity.
Maybe Robin will let them know his opinions soon?
I’m not holding my breath
They don’t provide any evidence that stopping antidepressants have negative effects on mothers or children. They just blandly stated it. They have not provided studies on to show the relative benefits of staying on or stopping the drugs, or of providing other kinds of help.
My favourite writer on, “Mental Health,” is the former clinical psychologist Dorothy Rowe who confessed in a letter to me to being an anarchist.
banner drops at pharmacies anyone?
“……C4 complement gene. I immediately sent a letter to the editor complete with key research papers documenting that this finding was also observed in chronic stress. ”
My C4 must be all over the place then (I have no schizoblahblah diagnosis)
Might you not have been helped if you a Dr gave you a different diagnosis and the same pill?
Have you had biological and DNA tests to show any genetic or biological abnormalities? You may have them but without tests you have no proof.
Those negative effects are at appallingly high rates.
Interesting. The biggest effects seems to be in the elderly.
Sounds like a computer aided version of what gestalt therapist do and which the hearing voices network developed and called Voice Dialogue.
Me, I like drawing things with crayons and using that to develop dialogues.
But hey, each to their own.
The author writes: “….an extraordinary level of arrogance, condescension and even narcissism.”
Nothing extraordinary there, those are the character traits displayed by the most memorable psychiatrists I have met.
Money makes the world go round.
I think you’ll find that is the true explanation of these rather depressing findings (quick someone, give me a Prozac prescription to cope).
we have everyday problems being psychiatrised in the UK too, but with an NHS.
I read a bit of propaganda recently from a particularly bad anti-stigma campaign that said, “We all have mental health.”
Yuk is my response. We all have states of mind but why bring medicine into it?
Interesting point of view there. Dementia as a social construct, if I am not mistaken.
I have never heard of forced catherisation before. It sounds very degrading. The whole experiences that you two describe sound like police state activities. Very shocking indeed.
There is an Prison Abolition movement. Maybe we should work with them as allies?
That is a very pull your socks up or shut up attitude.
I find that people don’t do things, including writing, for all sorts of reasons.
As an example, I sometimes teach voice work. I have worked with people who mumble. I found more than once that they would start talking more clearly once they had talked over some trauma. I did allsorts of technical work with someone who was really hard to understand. It helped a bit, but not a lot. For some reason we started talking about how we had both seen our fathers try to strangle our mothers. His voice grew clear and easy to understand.
If you have faith in a professional you may well do what they say. If they say you will never write a book and you have faith in them you may well believe them and act appropriately. It is the opposite of the placebo effect.
“…….likening their admission experiences to imprisonment.”
That’s because it was.
Really interesting article.
So psychiatry is muscling in on the criminal justice system is it?
This makes Frances assertion that a whole load of prisoners should be in psychiatric hands seem like him and his colleagues just touting for extra business and not being about caring for people at all.
I knew Jean. I think she killed herself for a variety of reasons. One big one was that she hated psychiatric drugs that she was forced to take and she hated the ward she was put on when she had breakdowns. She saw no escape.
The doctors knew she hated the drugs but could not imagine any other way of treating her.
I feel slighly guilty as I started Speak Out Against Psychiatry and I think that raised her hopes of getting off the drugs and freeing herself of psychiatry. I am no longer involved in anti-psychiatry campaigning but if I was I would make sure that setting up good advocacy, drug withdrawal help and social support was at the heart of it.
“It is reasonable to assume,” write the authors, “that the number of people in England receiving ECT annually within NHS Trusts had continued its steady decline until around 2006 (to a low of about 1,300), but then increased and stabilized for a few years at about double that number.”
My guess is that the rise corresponded with the outfall from the 2008 crash: lots of depressed people, a series of right wing governments who cut benefits and also services, including mental health services. This lead to a rise in mental health diagnosis due to rising inequality and poverty but less psychological help available due to the cuts.
I suspect this is true but I’d like a bit more epidemiology to prove it. There other people apart from those who are diagnosed with bipolar and schizophrenia who don’t get much exercise, smoke lots and eat a lot of cake. I’d like comparison with them in terms of mortality.
Yes, I did not experience much violence as a child but I have listened to those in the mental health system who have. Their histories were ignored by psychiatry and their distress drugged.
I think that depends on what the individual peer and the organisation that employs them.
Peer support where I live does just what the employer tells them.
I would not be employed as a peer at my local day centre as I would be doing pretty much what PatH1980 suggests.
I can’t wait for that one
Funnily enough I was at a talk about strategy last night. It was given by George Lakey, who was promoting his new book Viking Economics, about how the 1% were beaten back in the 1930’s in the Nordic countries leading to social democracy.
He said when loosing to the forces of reaction it is always tempting to go on the defensive to try to maintain what has already been won. He said this is a mistake. He said when under attack create a bigger vision and use that to draw in others and then go for it big time with well thought out tactics.
I agree that money and corruption is a problem, esp in the USA. I agree with joining with other movements.
I think the message is out there that Big Pharma is dangerous, that psychiatry is nasty, that profit driven healthcare is dishonest and not fair. Social Entrepunership and what is happening in Masschutus shows us what is possible but the 1% rules the rest of the country (and the world) and will do so until people fight back in well thought out campaigns.
What is needed is organising this movement in some kind of structure and then a strategy that involves direct action.
Mainly I think it is time to take the messages of Robert Whitaker and others and turn them into smart campaigns using direct action tactics: a hearing voices group at the AGM of some insurance company, die in’s at Big Pharma offices to protest the mass poisoning that is Prozac and ritalin and olanzapine, hammers to ECT machines in hospitals to stop shock, Open Dialogue meetings in the lobby’s of hospitals to get more less lock up and drugs and more social support.
Without well thought out campaigns with some kind of dramatic actions and mass organisation this struggle will go nowhere. I say that because other struggles got successful when they too took that road.
Here is a George Lakey piece on campaigns https://wagingnonviolence.org/feature/election-campaigns-one-off-protests/
give in, stop trying, be miserable
exercise, esp in groups (eg walking groups, going to the gyn, green gym – alias bramble bashing and other conservation activities)
Kirsch’s work implies that anything that inspires hope, prescribed by someone you have faith in, especially if they are interested in you, your life and how you see things, is likely to be helpful. So that could be therapists, friends, counselors, alternative health practitioners such as homeopaths and acupuncturists
My friend’s cat over grooms her fur. She was offered prozac type drugs for the cat.
Eek.
Please keep us updated on this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6AhepWgYg4
These are great
Probably need stronger unions then
The answer, as in any social movement, is to expand the protests, draw in more people and go on the offensive.
“slightly-but-not-quite psychotic”
Probably most of us after a few pints
Or a bad day at work
I once heard someone talk about how in one small part of Rural Denmark (now I maybe wrong on the country) the community had designed an addiction service that involved family and other networks. It sounded like a variation on Open Dialogue, where family and other important people are invited to conversations with trained staff (therapists, social workers, psychiatrists etc) and those conversations might happen every day for a week or so and then tail off. Central to this model is the idea that someone needs social support and that all treatment decisions are made by discussion with all relevant parties.
Drugs could still be prescribed in this model and attendance at meetings would be entirely voluntary. People who have been through addiction and come out the other side would probably have useful things to say as the skilled and trained helpers.
I am interested in this model as families and communities often struggle as to what to do when someone turns to drugs and I think they need support too.
Peers and Peer Support: He who pays the piper plays the tune.
Nuff said.
Or to put it less cryptically: peer support, trained or untrained, run by psychiatric survivors and their allies and from an anti-psychiatry ideology is what I want to see. Most of the rest is co-opted nonsense which at it’s best gives service users a much needed step back into paid employment.
There are of course a few exceptions, such as peer supported Open Dialogue in the UK, but they are rare.
I hope you find the time to reply as I would enjoy reading it
I think this is a really interesting article. I’d like to see some other studies comparing different cultures incidences of psychotic diagnosis and see them related to their histories.
Eric tied the high level in post war Germany to war trauma. I’d like to know if other countries that have suffered recent wars have high levels of psychotic diagnosis.
If anyone knows of such studies please let me know.
Indeed, I know a few people whose live experiences and skills have been disbelieved by psychiatric staff.
I already do connect anti-psychiatry with neo-communist ideas. Or more usually anarchist ideas.
I find anarchists the most sympathetic to these ideas.
However I’ll work with anyone.
I have seen many professionals who work in the system who blog and comment on this site not get a hard time from people who have been harmed by psychiatry.
Personally I think that those who have been harmed by psychiatry have a right shout down anyone who they disagree with.
The comments are moderated, as I know only two well, having had a few removed in my time.
If you feel the way comments are moderated should be changed I suggest you take it up with the people who run the site.
Disabled people in the UK protest against assited dying.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/09/legalising-assisted-dying-dangerous-for-disabled-not-compassionate
Might this not have caused brain damage that caused chronic pain? I can imagine mechanisms that might cause this.
We have no idea why the Dr’s concluded that it was mental illness, whatever that is? All I can assume is that they could find no physical cause and therefore assumed it was psychological in origin. I think that is an easy way out for the Dr. Much better that they say they have found no cause.
I hear people with mental health diagnosis sometimes have physical symptoms dismissed as being psychological in origin with no or little evidence.
I also know someone with long term chronic pain caused by real physical disease who learnt to deal with it largely by psychological and behavioural methods. So these things are often complex.
If you give Dr’s the power to take away someone’s rights and force drugs on them they do not want and to ignore them, which is what happens in most wards, then why would you expect what you offer to be examined by anyone outside your organisation?
The law has given you the impression psychiatrists can do what they want. Why would they comply with people who call you to account?
this will not stop until a popular campaign using direct action emerges
If I post what I think needs to be done again I shall probably be banned.
Enough of the comments, where is the action?
Where is the organising?
Where are the banner drops, invasions of pharmacies, Dr’s offices, Big Pharma offices, MP’s offices and schools?
Where is the publically organised outrage?
Breggin and co gives the info. Nothing will change until people get of thier arses and take action.
Breggin and co will not organise the masses, they will not lead ACT UP type campaigns. It us up to us.
Comment removed for moderation
And yet UK GP’s are pleased by the increase in prescribing over the last ten years as they say the drugs are effective. They also say that there are withdrawal effects but these can be managed by coming off them slowly over a couple of months which is completely counter to what many ssri withdrwal support groups report.
Meanwhile, in another land, I see no epidemiology that shows a reduction in days off work for depression as a result of all these extra drugs being prescribed.
Big disconect going on here. I largely blame Time to Change, the UK big funded anti stigma campaign. Disease like any other init? Bound to drive up prescriptions, especially with a depression and austerity policies putting the majority of the population under financial stress.
I love John Read’s work by the way.
Nice article. I hope we get a report of the congress.
Brilliant plan.
Even better if Dr’s didn’t start people on these drugs.
I wonder if patients experiecing withdrawal problems can sue thier GP’s?
Indeed
I agree with the gist of your argument but I still think that the practical points outlined in the article can be fought for by those who seek reform and those that seek abolition.
It would all depend on who was leading a perticular campaign as to what the overall aim was but I would hope that both camps would cooperate on any campaign that led to less forced treatment, less drugging, less ECT and more humane compassion.
I think if the label, “Mad,” or, “Mentally Ill,” is applied to someone it gives clinicians license to do anything they want.
I was offered this. I turned it down. I had to go through so many hoops to get the offer too.
They do it because health care in the UK is increasingly marketised. Providers compete to provide packages of healthcare. This one looks good on outcomes, if you measure them in the right way, just like the drugs do if you run the tests yourself.
Gosh no, what LGBT youth need are other LGBT people who then treat them well.
Who would have thought it?
Not prozac or anything psychiatry can provide then?
I suspect that once people are labelled as mad psychiatry can get away with anything.
Yes, there is a risk of agranulosis, a severe and dangerous lowering of the white blood cell count.
I know of one person who had this, was taken off the drug suddenly because of concerns about her health and who then became psychotic and very distressed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agranulocytosis
If I am reading this right those are really high rates of serious harm.
This needs to get serious press.
Arrogance has been my experience when talking to psychiatrist and appalled that anyone should challange them no matter how small the challange is
I am just re reading your book, Psychiatry and the Business of Madness, and am struck by the section on form filling and how that effects the experience of inmates in hosptals. Whether there were drugs or not hospitals as they stand would still be a kind of soft prison with observations and locked wards and not a lot of getting to know and support people in distress.
Today I performed at a Mental Health Arts Festival and afterwards someone said they were really glad I had written about psychiatric oppression in the programme notes.
the link didn’t work for me. Can you check it is right?
drugs for HIV came along quite quick due to mass protest by ACTUP
That sounds like a strategic answer not a sience or ethics based one. That is, strategically psychiatry is likely to be weakened by the use of critical psychiatry arguments and allieing to critical psychiatrists and other respected professionals.
Where as I takea an anti-psychiatry viewpoint and am willing to seek allies from critical psychiatrists and other respected proffessionals. Oddly my position partly comes from reading Mad in America which details the history of USA psychiatry and from which I came to the conclusion that psychiatry has always done more harm than good, it is not just a modern phenoma.
I read your post but cannot see how it relates to the article. At the moment it reads to me like you are posting about a personal bugbear that may or may not relate to it.
Timimi runs a child and adolescent clinic where many children who would at other clinics get a diagnosis of ADHD are helped. His clinic on the whole is drug free and diagnosis free. It also has far better outcomes than most other CAMH’s clinics.
Some of the clients come from other clinics and are on drugs and have diagnosis. Most of those, once they have heard the benefits and downside of diagnosis and drugs decide to drop them, though some decide to keep them. I therefore think that if no diagnosis, no medication and lots of conversation are all needed to help a child then that is between the parent, the child and doctor. However this was not the main point of the article.
I can see your personal experience and opinions are counter to Timimi’s practice however the article on the whole is not about that, it is about scientific outcomes of a variety of studies. Could you therefore go back to the article and copy and paste bits of it and then tell me how your post relates to the article? That way I and perhaps others might be able to debate with you.
Here are the lyrics from the song in the article:
“I took pills for my depression
just to smother my emotions.
Doctors said that I would need them,
but I learned to cry without them.
So I stopped taking the tablets,
then I let my feelings rise up
for my mother when she passed on,
for my marriage when he quit me,
left me as a single mother,
with a hard job and no weekends.
Now I weep without taking pills,
yet I still feel very angry,
and the fury seems well-founded,
but the feelings will not hurt me.”
I suspect there is a difference between Bonnies’ ideas and Julie as Julie is anti therapy and Bonnie is, amongst other things, a therapist.
I wonder if either of the two of you could elucidate on this further?
I read Masson’s book Against Therapy and while I have some sympathy with his views. After all Soteria House was set up by a psychaitrist, run by carefully chosen people who had n training and who got to talk to a social worker about what was going on once a week yet they had brilliant outcomes.
David Smail wrote an essay comparing therapists and prostitutes. He wrote that prostitutes sold sex and therapists sold love – or something near it.
I am not against therapy myself but niether do I put therapists on pedastals.
“…..details that were unnecessary for my treatment”
I see no treatment in this report. This is forced imprisonment with no due process and as such illegal.
It must be hard to be at the coal face and see all this cruelty meterred out to tramatised people.
I congratulate you for carrying on.
I have witnessed it myself as a friend of people who are persecuted by psychiatry – because that is what it is, a kind of persecution.
This is big. Lets hope it gets lots of publicity and follow up.
What he is actually saying is, “My condition due to the State I’m in.”
Joy is an empty headed numpty – I wonder what skill level Martin Freed has in programming if this is all he can manage?
Lets hope I don’t get moderated for making an ad hominim attack on a computer programme!