I fear the same dynamic plays out in many arenas. Corruption is endemic to capitalism.
Pretty obvious really.
The Devils Tic Tacs, I shall remember that.
Nice guy, trying to undo the systemic harm psychiatry has done one stitch at a time.
That’s amazing. Let’s wait and see if it gets implemented.
Comprehensive and damning.
Thank you.
Great article. Can we have English versions of the complaint letter and response.
Frued, Kierkegaard? Eek NO!
Give me Tove Jansson any day (that Moomintroll stories for you less literary tupes)
Nice interview. I find the new sponsorship trend distressing.
Pretty damning report then.
“As a boy who was abandoned by my parents at an early age… I was homeless sleeping in the rain under a tree with bugs crawling all over me … sleeping in the dugout of the high school baseball field.”
My town is filling up with homeless people again. They will all have similar stories.
Any kind of decent response requires defiance and mercy.
Thanks for the article
But at Sami Timimi’s clinics this is a standard outcome with no drugs and no diagnosis. If Sami is not lying your argument does not stand.
Brilliant article.
I would like to see a similar article about adult ADHD which seems to be all the rage where I live, especially amongst middle-class professionals for some reason.
But they are just prisons. Why expect any better from them?
Amphetamine type drugs help all people concentrate. That does not mean ADHD is real. The causes of intention are numerous and a rag bag diagnosis like ADHD distracts (ho ho) from identifying and addressing them.
Distractability is real. ADHD has no validity as a scientific or meducal concept.
Tell it like it is.
A strong relationship makes life more meaningful – No shit Sherlock!
Well done.
Campaigning works.
We need more campaigners.
We do. I once got interviewed by researchers looking into harms caused by therapists but that was one study where as there are countless books and films on the successes of therapy.
In the end he names the true elephant in the room, corporatist, managerialused, profit driven medicine. Healy got sacked because his employer wanted him to prescribe more drugs and add more diagnosis and stick to the manual.
We are all cogs in a machine now and Prozac is the drug that number us to the drudgery.
I had to loose weight fast to preserve my already damaged health. I read On Eating by Susie Orbach, which is a short book that gives 5 simple rules for eating. I then used my diary and talked to a counsellor about what was happening. What I reflected on was why was I eating, especially cake, when I was not hungry? Usually I was angry. As I worked through these feelings it was easier to eat when hungry and stop when I had eaten enough.
I also did a crash diet but it was a one off for six weeks. Four years later I have not put the weight back on.
I think this is how, “Intuitive eating,” is meant to work but I realise for a lot of people things are a lot harder and more complex than they were for me.
There is something about this that all our favourite aunties used to know.
Horrific state sanctioned human rights abuses by profiteering private companies. Coming to the UK soon judging by reports of the UK psychiatric system I have heard of.
Well done for escaping.
This is brilliant. Your therapist laughed! Heresy, and absolutely delightful
As a study of Guardian science correspondents it confirms the hypothesis that they know little of science and tend to rewire the press release, maybe asking for a counter opinion but not examining it too closely.
Devastating article.
Basically most MH services have been cut while IAPT grew into a managerial style nightmare swallowing up huge budgets helping very few and making therapists miserable too.
We have increased used of sections, ie forced detention under mental health acts, while people witter on about anxiety, depression and nuridiversoty. The moderately distressed get inadequate pampering via IAPT while the severely distressed get tranquilizers and locked up.
The managers do very nicely, everyone else is miserable.
My diagnosis is a very weak left, or this wouldn’t happen.
I worked with a child diagnosed with ADHD and who was on Ritalin. It took me a week to work out when a friend of his played up he did it more and that the young mainly female teachers didn’t know how to relate to a class of working class boys.
No one was interested.
Yo to being unruly and ungovernable.
Thanks for that.
I have three contrasting experiences of grief:
1 I was 7, my mother died if cancer. No one told me she was going to die. My father, after breakfast told me she had died and sent me to school, he went to work. A part from the funeral, which I didn’t go to, she was not mentioned again.
2 In my early 30’s the AIDS crisis hit. I would go on Gay Mens holidays, meet beautiful gay men, fall in love and they would, in the next two years, die. We all knew what was happening, we discussed it all the time. People organised there funerals, friends made sure there wishes were carried out. We organised public grief rituals at every event we put on. Men howled in each other’s arms, cried, talked, hugged each other, got out old photograph albums and shared stories of their dead loved ones.
3 a relationship with an unfaithful lover ended messily. I was overcome by rage, mainly towards other people disconnected from that situation strangely enough,(my father for one). My feelings were only relieved by screaming. My friends tried to understand but had neither the capacity, time or level of concern I would have needed to soothe my distress. Eventually I developed the worst cough I have ever had and after that post viral fatigue, both of which shut me feelings down but neither made living very easy.
Grief is never just individual, it is always a social process and never a medical one no matter what the doctors may say.
That’s why I recommended the book Strategy and Soul. It is a story of beating corrupt government and corrupt regulators using smart direct action strategy.
This is basic strategy for leveraging beaurocratic systems and very good advice. Often those systems ate impervious to change due to vested interests and inertia so I would advice also looking at direct action campaign strategy and movement building strategy. A good place to start is Strategy and Soul by Daniel Hunter. I used some of his techniques very effectively in a Campaign a few years ago.
I think you are saying work and school is often boring, which many of us know already, and to see the signs of our boredom as a disorder fits the boss very well.
Your suggestion that Aftab and co get good results from antidepressants because he and some other psychiatrists are good at forming “therapeutic alliances,” and the results have little to do with the drug has a certain appeal as he is charming and erudite.
His inability to answer his critics with reasoned argument is another matter entirely.
Same as everyday life imho
I saw a video with Ritts on a left wing youtube channel. I was appalled by the inaccuracies of her arguments so I am glad to see this here.
All of that makes sense to me due to the shame that comes after lashing out and after drinking/drugging binges. It also raises raises questions about comparative risk of a “depression,” diagnosis, when psychiatry so often tells us that “depression, ” is a risk of suicide which is why antidepressants are needed, when plainly they increase the risk of suicide and other states of mind increase the risk more than this diagnosis. Also, suicide after failing rehab make a sense to me due to the feelings of shame and that raises questions as to whether rehab is the best firm of treatment, but as it is a profitable industry it, like psychiatry will be hard to challenge.
What individuals decide is up to them. What doctors and particularly psychiatrists decide is of legitimate public intetest. You can’t lock people up, force drugs and ECT on them, diagnose them with illnesses that may prevent them from getting employment and stop there physical illnesses being investigated and treated, psychiatrists can.
Masson is a giant in the world of investigative journalism. It is so good to hear from him again.
I am not a maths genius or an expert in experimental design but if the overall benefit of antidepressants is slightly better than placebo (but not to a clinically significant degree) but 16% show a much bigger improvement then by reason are there not a similar proportion of people significantly harmed? Would that not have to be the case to balance out the figure? If so does this not need investigating to find the true risks and benefits if these drugs?
As someone who has studied non violent direct action campaign strategy I think a class action would make perfect sense.
What is needed however is an organisation to take it on and develop a strategy alongside that to organise those harmed by antidepressants and others interested in the issue to push the issue in other ways.
I am reading Scull’s latest book. It is an indictment of psychiatry and gives an excellent explanation of why a patients liberation movement was, and still is, needed.
A class action would be strategically very clever. It would get lots of news coverage and put the APA on the defensive and highlight links with Big Pharma.
You ask some good questions. The very distressed people you write about are often going through a crisis. Once they calm down they are usually discharged into the community with little support and at that time the interventions described in the article would come in use, as I have witnessed.
I also think some people in extreme distress, such you describe, would fit into the system described in this video https://youtu.be/JV4NTEp8S2Q
Nah, it’s drugs ECT or psycho social interventions and it’s easy to find the outcomes, they are measured and published by governments.
If you ask non psychiatric patients about there treatment they will moan about how few staff are employed but mainly they sing the praises of the doctors and nurses caring for them.
“Treatment resistant” is a euphemism for, “will not do what I say,” and should be a banned phrase. Try reading up on Open Dialogue which is usually effective and doesn’t really have any “Treatment resistance.”
Yup, if you tell people there anxiety is a MH problem and not due to some frightening circumstances they tend to dwell on it and feel worse instead of figuring out the causes and if possible addressing them.
Yo, Mark – an antidepressant survivor and skilled, spirited researcher. Great combination.
Joanna’s work is always good.
Nice team I say.
The paper gives evidence which can be used by strategists to oppose psychiatry. It is strategic campaigns that have the impact.
Psychiatrists: they really don’t know what they are doing do they. They are prison wardens and probation officers with added tranquilizers. When they kill people there is about as much fuss as when people die in prison.
UK therapy is being outsourced to charities. They now compete for a slice of the pie which means there critical voice is weakened an overall services are cut.
:These are powerful stories that people take to be real malfunctions within themselves so they become self limiting self full-filling prophesies and everyone around them can also often see the person as mentally ill – all behaviour becomes viewed in this way.”
I met someone who was doing that today. He had completely swallowed the various diagnosis put on him by the system and was now seeing all his problems through that lens. He said talking therapies will give him a bit more therapy and then he will train for a job
He has been saying it for years.
I wonder if you have read Adorono? He wrote that women will come to fear there social worker more than there drunken husband. He saw therapy as adjusting people to a sick society.
I don’t entirely agree but it is seems a good place to start an investigation.
The thing about seeing a GP being as good as a few weeks IAPT treatment implies any friendly contact is helpful – duh, like we didn’t know that!
Late capitalism can be a lonely place and IAPT is no cure for that.
” a rebellious, promiscuous, pot-smoking teenager who didn’t know how to lie.” Sounds pretty normal to me! The beat poets made careers out of such lives, although it m7st he said, they were mainly men and therefore given more leeway than women.
However: “Self-care is how you take your power back,” is patronizing rubbish. The institutions have turned from tranquilizer dominated prisons to tranquilizer dominated prisons run by the soft police.
A depressing read/listen and an accurate summation of psychiatries miserable and destructive history. What Scull misses is the way capitalism and psychiatry are entwined. Psychiatry started out as do goody doctors taking charge of the extremely mentally distressed and became a business opportunity which they ruthlessly exploited as asylums fitted in with the development of industrial capitalism, it provided a way to remove disruptive non criminals from the bussiness dominated society. From that logic sterilisation, lobotomy and ultimately death camps evolved. Scull also misses the emiseration that capitalism causes and the way the rhetoric of Mental Health individualises distress and distracts from its social causes. The mental health industry is a core way capitalism continues, it’s ideology is part of the way modern capitalism is maintained, we are all sick in the head now, not miserable because of the poverty of everyday life.
Your experiences with this woman reminded me of a friend who was in a long term relationship with a man who was running a tiny psychotherapy cult. That story is long, complex and fraught but the multiple family members being involved in your account in the way the therapy was adminstered and what you are calling boundary violations made me think of the experiences of people who have escaped psychotherapy cults.
I’d like to read more of your work. You write well and your life is very interesting.
I think mass drugging with Prozac egg took off in the 80’s as neoliberalism took hold and ADHD, nuerodiversity etc took off in the wake of the 2008 crash. This analysis goes along with the idea that psychiatry’s main function is to distract from the causes of distress.
Actually the hearing voices network has opinions and some psychiatrists listen to them.
How about Chronic Misery? Or being, ” A right miserable bastard,”? Seems about as valid as and dsm diagnosis to me.
An utterly brilliant podcast. Thanks.
Your description of home treatment teams is all too familiar. However I believe Pat Bracken’s team was different. I hope so anyway.
IAPT is a business selling snake oil. The therapists hate delivering it as they can’t do a proper job, some are off sick with depression – lol – the good ones leave and go private. The assessment interviews are gruelling and pointless apart from IAPT providers gathering data to use for there next grant application. I met a guy who worked doing admin for them, he did a bit of research for his own interest and found out they got loads of returnees, which basically showed the treatment length is arbitrary and insufficient, the manager didn’t want to know as it would upset the business modle. They screen out the very distressed leaving the mild to moderate but there is evidence that these folk will get better in six months anyway.
IAPT is one of the worst examples of marketised, tick box medicine ever imho.
Wow – pretty damning.
I was a member of a mental healthday centre and a lot of the members, myself included, had experienced sexual assault and family violence. This is routinely ignored by psychiatric staff. Day centre members had no reason to lie. My experience is backed up by research. While Satanic Ritual Abuse may well have been wildly exaggerated the horrors that my friends and fellow day centre members are not.
“Dr. Aftab’s contentions in this quote are essentially unproven – and probably unprovable – platitudes.”
I have read some of Aftab’s work before and it mainly, perhaps entirely, consists of unproven platitudes, some of them dis-proven and roundly so. It doesn’t stop him pontificating like he is some kind of expert though, and probably getting a nice little fee for doing so.
The full story of the abuse you suffered, and which the so called therapists went onto do to others, reminded me of a hypnotherapist I know who has been accused of sexual assaulting two men I know. The accusations are that he used his hypnotherapy skills, possibly with drugs of some sort, to gain unwanted sexual access to handsome younger men.
I doubt these stories are the only ones, there will be others.
A few years later lots of the IAPT therapists are off sick due to stress and anxiety due to impossible case loads and trying to fulfill overly managerial targets. They ache to do real work and help people but the contracts, which are nice little earners for senior managers, prevent that.
It is a rubbish programme that fits nicely into the political and philosophical believes of the era. It looks like the government is providing help while conditions of life for many deteriorate. A psychological sticking plaster for a horrid age.
In other words, lets pretend Schizophrenia etc exists because it works for the Doctors, who get paid quite nicely, and lets ignore what everyone else says, including the patients.
This is my non peer reviewed opinion:
We had a growing number of people diagnosed with Depression and on pills since 1980, ie when Thatcher and Reagon got in power, decimated the unions, started selling off public services and reducing workers rights. This resulted in growing inequality. The encouragement to label misery as an illness and get the pills did two things:
1 provide product for Big Pharma, paid for out of health insurance.
2 distract people from the societal causes of their misery.
The depression market if just about saturated but after the crash on 2008 another means was needed to individualise misery and distract from societal causes and all the varieties of Nuerodiversity does that very well. What if you are anxious, a bit out of the ordinary (and ordinary is becoming ever more closely defined) and struggle at work? Maybe it is not because work is a badly paid living Hell with ever rising cost of living but rather an inherent, possible inherited, may genetic disorder that results in you being anxious, not able to concentrate and throwing wobbles (now called Melt Downs). Great explanation that lets the boss and the state off the hook and slows down unions and community groups organizing and fighting back if you ask me.
Well that’s my two pennyworth worth for the evening.
Personally I have diagnosed myself with Moody Cow Disorder and I expect Reasonable Adjustments under UK disability legislation. I find it a very helpful diagnosis when I question the validity of ADHD, Autism and Nuerodiversity with people who identify as such. My condition is every bit as real as theirs and I am just as offended by people questioning it’s validity as they are when I question the validity of their diagnosis. I don’t think anyone who does not have this diagnosis should in anyway comment or draw it into question – qed get out of jail free card init?
about 12 years ago I wrote a play which deconstructs psychiatry. The play is called Mental, it has a scene about ADHD and rips the construct apart in a knock about comedy manner. Now I find people writing scholarly articles about it which are much more learned, but mine version is funnier.
Scene 5: PSYCHIATRY IS EVERYWHERE!
Suzannah: My daughter had a problem with an educational psychologist you know. They’re a kind of therapist. The special educational needs coordinator at her school sent her to see one.
Mark: What did they say it was, ADHD?
John: Or was it Sadburgers, sorry, Aspergers.
Mark: Oi, don’t’ be rude.
John: Just because you’re a bit of train spotter does not mean you’ve got a disorder. Just a bit annoying, unless you like trains that is. Personally I think a diagnosis of Aspergers is about as useful as knowing what star sign someone is.
Suzannah: What’s your star sign John? Are you a fire sign?
John: As it happens, I’m Sagittarius.
Suzannah: Ah, that explains it.
John: Well Suzannah, I’m not really into Astrology, but it’s a lot less dangerous than a psychiatric diagnosis.
Mark: Tell us about your daughter then Suzannah.
Suzannah: They said she had ADHD.
John returns to the Tourettes syndrome symptoms.
John: Idiots.
Suzannah and Mark look odd at him as if he might have ADHD.
Suzannah: The school. The special educational needs coordinator and the educational psychologist wanted to put her on Ritalin.
John: Idiots! Ritalin’s all over schools these days, just like head lice.
Suzannah: I know, people end up on it for life sometimes. And it makes the children look really drugged up. My daughter kept playing up and getting into trouble, but she hated her teacher and was getting bullied by the other children in her class.
Suzannah and Mark sit down and start acting out naughty school children. Mark pulls Suzannah’s hair, she makes as if to hit him, looks at John and sits down.
He barks it out like a teacher shouting out orders.
Mark and Suzannah start sticking tongues out at each other and acting like naughty children, throwing things at each other, getting up and looking at John like he is the teacher.
John: Attention Deficit.
Mark speaks an aside to Suzannah.
Mark: Thinks he knows it all.
Suzannah: Oi, Sir, is you gay?
John: Now, now, Suzannah, get on with your work
Mark giggles, gets up and pushes Suzannah in a bullying way, John looks at Mark.
John: Oi you, stop talking to your mate and pay attention boy. Attention Deficit – not paying attention. Well that’s not a disorder.
Mark gets up and sneaks behind John, Suzannah stands up and follows him.
John: Hyperactivity.
Mark stands on a chair and makes like a monkey.
John: Right, you, Mark, sit down, over there. And you, Suzannah, sit down, over there. And get on with your work.
John: To audience Hyperactivity: Not sitting still, running around. Well that’s not a disorder. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, its pants. ADHD, yes, ADHD it’s pants. What does ADHD mean? It’s the doctors medicalizing a particular distress. What kind of distress? Well in this case naughty boys.
Suzannah: And a few girls.
They start acting like naughty kids in school. Throwing things, getting up from the table and looking at John like he is the teacher.
Mark: But mainly boys.
John: And what do Dr’s do with naughty boys?
Suzannah scowls at John.
John: And girls. Give them drugs. In this case Ritalin.
John: Is there something you two would like to share with the rest of the class?
They calm down, lean over table and get on with work.
John: Ritalin has almost the same effect as cocaine. Or speed. But for some reason it slows kids down, probably because it’s poisoned their brains.
Mark: He raises his hand. Sir, the headmaster won’t let me in school unless I’ve taken my Ritalin.
John: Yes, well the less said about that sadistic idiot the better.
Mark: I’m telling on you Sir. I’ll tell the headmaster you called him a sadistic idiot.
John: Get on with your work Mark.
Suzannah: My mum likes me to have Ritalin. When she runs out of money she takes my Ritalin off me and sells it to her mates down the pub.
John: Now I think that is the better option. Drug free children, adults taking responsibility for their drug taking, stimulates the local economy; it’s all good! Imagine if what happens in school happened at work. You have your annual review, your appraisal, whatever. Just you and your manager in a little cubicle, and she says:
Suzannah and Mark sit at table opposite each other. Suzannah as manager, Mark as employee.
Suzannah: Now Mark, I’m afraid you’ve not been hitting your targets.
Mark: Ah, sorry.
Suzannah: I’ve been noticing that you’ve been finding it hard to concentrate. We’ve paid for you to have extra tuition on your computer and it hasn’t helped; you keep making spelling mistakes, which, as I am sure you are aware, is not acceptable in this line of work.
Mark: Sorry.
Suzannah: Also, Sally, the manager in sales says you’ve been wandering in there and talking to John and Sarah. Sally’s put in a complaint about you distracting them from their work.
Mark: Oh.
Suzannah: I’m going to recommend a referral to the occupational health team for a psychological assessment.
John: Next thing you know they won’t let you back into work unless you’re on class B drugs.
Mark pretends to pick up a phone.
Mark: Hello, is that Unison? My line manager is refusing to let me into the office unless I take Ritalin. I agree. It’s an abuse of my human rights. What can I do?
John: There’d be an outcry!
Suzannah: Unless you’re a kid of course, when a doctor can give you a dodgy diagnosis and force you to take class B drugs, possibly for the rest of your life.
John: Mind you, some people like that!
Suzannah: My daughter doesn’t pay attention and plays up when she’s bored or angry.
Mark: I wonder if lot of kids diagnosed with ADHD are like that?
John: Hey, lets not look at that, just in case someone starts to wonder why the kids are so bored and angry at the world.
Scene 6: CAPITALISM MAKES YOU SICK
………….
wow – this interview is just so damning of psychatry and Big Pharma. I especially like the explicit links to class and racism that occur repeatedly through the article.
It sounds fascinating, both as a garden and a recovery centre.
Ah yes, object and you are drugged up, object more and you are put in seclusion, do it again and you are threatened with ect. If it wasn’t banned they would give the persistent objectors labotomies.
same as it ever was, from the early days of psychiatry in the 1800’s doctors have fought off any challange to there hegenomy despite there being no proof that they help anyone.
40 years ago I knew a woman who fled a very violent man. She had a breakdown and the people who gave her sanctury called the services as they did not know what to do. She was sectioned, detained, seperated from her kids and drugged up. The hospital had no interest in the reason for her breakdown. When she calmed down she was sent back to her very violent husband. Luckily her friends once again helped her escape, this time with better preparation and she went very quickly into a womens refuge.
I doubt my friends story or the story in the blog is unusual.
Fightin talk – I want more of that
I partly agree, but I also think it is a fine piece of working class writing showing what life at the bottom is like and how the state oppresses the poor – and you don’t get much of that in mainstream media. As such it is one of the best pieces on the site imho.
Thanks for raising this important issue. In the early 90’s I met a man who had suffered, “electric shock “therapy.” He said don’t ever do it. I had no intention of doing any such thing.
Your school and psychiatrist were evil. People deserve compensation for these sorts of harms. Sadly that is unlikely to happen.
Nice analysis of an excellent article. I also think James Davies thinks that capitalism can be reformed, or maybe a revolution instigated, by professionals taking action where as I think it probably has to be from the working class, and that includes service user/survivors of psychiatry leading.
This is a tragic, gruelling story. That it is happening to thousands more, many living in poverty is a scandal. It deserves a mass direct action campaign
When the occupations of psychiatrists offices start wake me up.
I find it weird to see the UN saying something I have been banging on about for nearly 30 years. I shall take this article to my local Crisis House, where all psychiatrists and social workers are banned without prior consent of the people who run it.
it is weird to hear what I have been banging on about and putting into practice, in small ways, for decades, spoken about by someone from WHO
Wow – corruption always seems to go with bullying. I admire your persistence. Keep it up.
The corruption seems endemic.
Your experiences are horrible, you have my sympathy. However I think the original comment was aimed at psychiatrists and researchers who make very good livings poisoning people or doing useless research while people like you are ignored, shunned or locked up and drugged.
I personally would like all the money these people get taken back and given to you and people who support people like you.
Time to read Brave New World again I fear.
These are brilliant articles showing how drug policy is used by politicians to garner votes while the real causes and solutions to problenatic drug use are ignored.
Great interview. It covers a lot of stuff.
Your view is the one I like the most:
Follow the money, as ever, is the motto here.
Peterson has made a small fortune peddling his strict Daddy self help rubbish and he and his publisher needed another book to consolidate his fortune. The benzo story added to the drama and as in all his mutterings there is no coherence, just what passes for intelligent thought.
“Stopping medications is an important part of the job of a psychiatrist, yet it has received relatively little attention,” or just not prescribe them in the first place.
Or better still resign and retrain as a gardener or a flower arranger or something that doesn’t actually harm people.
Excellent article.
I am very glad the support groups exist and congratulate them for developing there skilled work and for John Reeds excellent assessment of the situation.
The situation is however likely to continue until direct action campaigns from survivors emerge.
Out of the support groups, onto the streets.
I think this article ultimately points to either anarchism or communism as self reliance is an ideal that is promoted by and benefits rampant capitalism.
A better question would be:
Why is there not a direct action campaign against Electro Covulsive Torture?
Geart but horrific article though.
Blunt, condemning and a breath of fresh air from what is often a mealy mouthed medical establishment, even when they know how bad things are.
The outcomes of those in care are not good in the UK. I imagine they are worse in the USA.
This is disgusting: it is like charging prisoners for upkeep, education and any help they get while they are in prison and expecting them to pay it back when they leave out of any earnings they get.
Why not have kidnappers who forcibly drug the people they kidnap demand money from there victims for upkeep too?
I fear the same dynamic plays out in many arenas. Corruption is endemic to capitalism.
Pretty obvious really.
The Devils Tic Tacs, I shall remember that.
Nice guy, trying to undo the systemic harm psychiatry has done one stitch at a time.
That’s amazing. Let’s wait and see if it gets implemented.
Comprehensive and damning.
Thank you.
Great article. Can we have English versions of the complaint letter and response.
Frued, Kierkegaard? Eek NO!
Give me Tove Jansson any day (that Moomintroll stories for you less literary tupes)
Nice interview. I find the new sponsorship trend distressing.
Pretty damning report then.
“As a boy who was abandoned by my parents at an early age… I was homeless sleeping in the rain under a tree with bugs crawling all over me … sleeping in the dugout of the high school baseball field.”
My town is filling up with homeless people again. They will all have similar stories.
Any kind of decent response requires defiance and mercy.
Thanks for the article
But at Sami Timimi’s clinics this is a standard outcome with no drugs and no diagnosis. If Sami is not lying your argument does not stand.
Brilliant article.
I would like to see a similar article about adult ADHD which seems to be all the rage where I live, especially amongst middle-class professionals for some reason.
But they are just prisons. Why expect any better from them?
Amphetamine type drugs help all people concentrate. That does not mean ADHD is real. The causes of intention are numerous and a rag bag diagnosis like ADHD distracts (ho ho) from identifying and addressing them.
Distractability is real. ADHD has no validity as a scientific or meducal concept.
Tell it like it is.
A strong relationship makes life more meaningful – No shit Sherlock!
Well done.
Campaigning works.
We need more campaigners.
We do. I once got interviewed by researchers looking into harms caused by therapists but that was one study where as there are countless books and films on the successes of therapy.
In the end he names the true elephant in the room, corporatist, managerialused, profit driven medicine. Healy got sacked because his employer wanted him to prescribe more drugs and add more diagnosis and stick to the manual.
We are all cogs in a machine now and Prozac is the drug that number us to the drudgery.
I had to loose weight fast to preserve my already damaged health. I read On Eating by Susie Orbach, which is a short book that gives 5 simple rules for eating. I then used my diary and talked to a counsellor about what was happening. What I reflected on was why was I eating, especially cake, when I was not hungry? Usually I was angry. As I worked through these feelings it was easier to eat when hungry and stop when I had eaten enough.
I also did a crash diet but it was a one off for six weeks. Four years later I have not put the weight back on.
I think this is how, “Intuitive eating,” is meant to work but I realise for a lot of people things are a lot harder and more complex than they were for me.
There is something about this that all our favourite aunties used to know.
Horrific state sanctioned human rights abuses by profiteering private companies. Coming to the UK soon judging by reports of the UK psychiatric system I have heard of.
Well done for escaping.
This is brilliant. Your therapist laughed! Heresy, and absolutely delightful
As a study of Guardian science correspondents it confirms the hypothesis that they know little of science and tend to rewire the press release, maybe asking for a counter opinion but not examining it too closely.
Devastating article.
Basically most MH services have been cut while IAPT grew into a managerial style nightmare swallowing up huge budgets helping very few and making therapists miserable too.
We have increased used of sections, ie forced detention under mental health acts, while people witter on about anxiety, depression and nuridiversoty. The moderately distressed get inadequate pampering via IAPT while the severely distressed get tranquilizers and locked up.
The managers do very nicely, everyone else is miserable.
My diagnosis is a very weak left, or this wouldn’t happen.
I worked with a child diagnosed with ADHD and who was on Ritalin. It took me a week to work out when a friend of his played up he did it more and that the young mainly female teachers didn’t know how to relate to a class of working class boys.
No one was interested.
Yo to being unruly and ungovernable.
Thanks for that.
I have three contrasting experiences of grief:
1 I was 7, my mother died if cancer. No one told me she was going to die. My father, after breakfast told me she had died and sent me to school, he went to work. A part from the funeral, which I didn’t go to, she was not mentioned again.
2 In my early 30’s the AIDS crisis hit. I would go on Gay Mens holidays, meet beautiful gay men, fall in love and they would, in the next two years, die. We all knew what was happening, we discussed it all the time. People organised there funerals, friends made sure there wishes were carried out. We organised public grief rituals at every event we put on. Men howled in each other’s arms, cried, talked, hugged each other, got out old photograph albums and shared stories of their dead loved ones.
3 a relationship with an unfaithful lover ended messily. I was overcome by rage, mainly towards other people disconnected from that situation strangely enough,(my father for one). My feelings were only relieved by screaming. My friends tried to understand but had neither the capacity, time or level of concern I would have needed to soothe my distress. Eventually I developed the worst cough I have ever had and after that post viral fatigue, both of which shut me feelings down but neither made living very easy.
Grief is never just individual, it is always a social process and never a medical one no matter what the doctors may say.
That’s why I recommended the book Strategy and Soul. It is a story of beating corrupt government and corrupt regulators using smart direct action strategy.
This is basic strategy for leveraging beaurocratic systems and very good advice. Often those systems ate impervious to change due to vested interests and inertia so I would advice also looking at direct action campaign strategy and movement building strategy. A good place to start is Strategy and Soul by Daniel Hunter. I used some of his techniques very effectively in a Campaign a few years ago.
http://www.strategyandsoul.org/Strategy_%26_Soul/Home.html
I think you are saying work and school is often boring, which many of us know already, and to see the signs of our boredom as a disorder fits the boss very well.
Your suggestion that Aftab and co get good results from antidepressants because he and some other psychiatrists are good at forming “therapeutic alliances,” and the results have little to do with the drug has a certain appeal as he is charming and erudite.
His inability to answer his critics with reasoned argument is another matter entirely.
Same as everyday life imho
I saw a video with Ritts on a left wing youtube channel. I was appalled by the inaccuracies of her arguments so I am glad to see this here.
Here is the vid for those that want to see it.
https://youtu.be/fxqI83pUzi4
All of that makes sense to me due to the shame that comes after lashing out and after drinking/drugging binges. It also raises raises questions about comparative risk of a “depression,” diagnosis, when psychiatry so often tells us that “depression, ” is a risk of suicide which is why antidepressants are needed, when plainly they increase the risk of suicide and other states of mind increase the risk more than this diagnosis. Also, suicide after failing rehab make a sense to me due to the feelings of shame and that raises questions as to whether rehab is the best firm of treatment, but as it is a profitable industry it, like psychiatry will be hard to challenge.
What individuals decide is up to them. What doctors and particularly psychiatrists decide is of legitimate public intetest. You can’t lock people up, force drugs and ECT on them, diagnose them with illnesses that may prevent them from getting employment and stop there physical illnesses being investigated and treated, psychiatrists can.
Masson is a giant in the world of investigative journalism. It is so good to hear from him again.
I am not a maths genius or an expert in experimental design but if the overall benefit of antidepressants is slightly better than placebo (but not to a clinically significant degree) but 16% show a much bigger improvement then by reason are there not a similar proportion of people significantly harmed? Would that not have to be the case to balance out the figure? If so does this not need investigating to find the true risks and benefits if these drugs?
As someone who has studied non violent direct action campaign strategy I think a class action would make perfect sense.
What is needed however is an organisation to take it on and develop a strategy alongside that to organise those harmed by antidepressants and others interested in the issue to push the issue in other ways.
I am reading Scull’s latest book. It is an indictment of psychiatry and gives an excellent explanation of why a patients liberation movement was, and still is, needed.
A class action would be strategically very clever. It would get lots of news coverage and put the APA on the defensive and highlight links with Big Pharma.
You ask some good questions. The very distressed people you write about are often going through a crisis. Once they calm down they are usually discharged into the community with little support and at that time the interventions described in the article would come in use, as I have witnessed.
I also think some people in extreme distress, such you describe, would fit into the system described in this video https://youtu.be/JV4NTEp8S2Q
You might want to try contacting Lumpen journal in the UK. They might publish some of your stuff. https://www.theclassworkproject.com/lumpen
Nah, it’s drugs ECT or psycho social interventions and it’s easy to find the outcomes, they are measured and published by governments.
If you ask non psychiatric patients about there treatment they will moan about how few staff are employed but mainly they sing the praises of the doctors and nurses caring for them.
“Treatment resistant” is a euphemism for, “will not do what I say,” and should be a banned phrase. Try reading up on Open Dialogue which is usually effective and doesn’t really have any “Treatment resistance.”
Yup, if you tell people there anxiety is a MH problem and not due to some frightening circumstances they tend to dwell on it and feel worse instead of figuring out the causes and if possible addressing them.
Yo, Mark – an antidepressant survivor and skilled, spirited researcher. Great combination.
Joanna’s work is always good.
Nice team I say.
The paper gives evidence which can be used by strategists to oppose psychiatry. It is strategic campaigns that have the impact.
Psychiatrists: they really don’t know what they are doing do they. They are prison wardens and probation officers with added tranquilizers. When they kill people there is about as much fuss as when people die in prison.
UK therapy is being outsourced to charities. They now compete for a slice of the pie which means there critical voice is weakened an overall services are cut.
:These are powerful stories that people take to be real malfunctions within themselves so they become self limiting self full-filling prophesies and everyone around them can also often see the person as mentally ill – all behaviour becomes viewed in this way.”
I met someone who was doing that today. He had completely swallowed the various diagnosis put on him by the system and was now seeing all his problems through that lens. He said talking therapies will give him a bit more therapy and then he will train for a job
He has been saying it for years.
I wonder if you have read Adorono? He wrote that women will come to fear there social worker more than there drunken husband. He saw therapy as adjusting people to a sick society.
I don’t entirely agree but it is seems a good place to start an investigation.
The thing about seeing a GP being as good as a few weeks IAPT treatment implies any friendly contact is helpful – duh, like we didn’t know that!
Late capitalism can be a lonely place and IAPT is no cure for that.
” a rebellious, promiscuous, pot-smoking teenager who didn’t know how to lie.” Sounds pretty normal to me! The beat poets made careers out of such lives, although it m7st he said, they were mainly men and therefore given more leeway than women.
However: “Self-care is how you take your power back,” is patronizing rubbish. The institutions have turned from tranquilizer dominated prisons to tranquilizer dominated prisons run by the soft police.
A depressing read/listen and an accurate summation of psychiatries miserable and destructive history. What Scull misses is the way capitalism and psychiatry are entwined. Psychiatry started out as do goody doctors taking charge of the extremely mentally distressed and became a business opportunity which they ruthlessly exploited as asylums fitted in with the development of industrial capitalism, it provided a way to remove disruptive non criminals from the bussiness dominated society. From that logic sterilisation, lobotomy and ultimately death camps evolved. Scull also misses the emiseration that capitalism causes and the way the rhetoric of Mental Health individualises distress and distracts from its social causes. The mental health industry is a core way capitalism continues, it’s ideology is part of the way modern capitalism is maintained, we are all sick in the head now, not miserable because of the poverty of everyday life.
Your experiences with this woman reminded me of a friend who was in a long term relationship with a man who was running a tiny psychotherapy cult. That story is long, complex and fraught but the multiple family members being involved in your account in the way the therapy was adminstered and what you are calling boundary violations made me think of the experiences of people who have escaped psychotherapy cults.
I’d like to read more of your work. You write well and your life is very interesting.
I think mass drugging with Prozac egg took off in the 80’s as neoliberalism took hold and ADHD, nuerodiversity etc took off in the wake of the 2008 crash. This analysis goes along with the idea that psychiatry’s main function is to distract from the causes of distress.
Actually the hearing voices network has opinions and some psychiatrists listen to them.
How about Chronic Misery? Or being, ” A right miserable bastard,”? Seems about as valid as and dsm diagnosis to me.
An utterly brilliant podcast. Thanks.
Your description of home treatment teams is all too familiar. However I believe Pat Bracken’s team was different. I hope so anyway.
IAPT is a business selling snake oil. The therapists hate delivering it as they can’t do a proper job, some are off sick with depression – lol – the good ones leave and go private. The assessment interviews are gruelling and pointless apart from IAPT providers gathering data to use for there next grant application. I met a guy who worked doing admin for them, he did a bit of research for his own interest and found out they got loads of returnees, which basically showed the treatment length is arbitrary and insufficient, the manager didn’t want to know as it would upset the business modle. They screen out the very distressed leaving the mild to moderate but there is evidence that these folk will get better in six months anyway.
IAPT is one of the worst examples of marketised, tick box medicine ever imho.
Wow – pretty damning.
I was a member of a mental healthday centre and a lot of the members, myself included, had experienced sexual assault and family violence. This is routinely ignored by psychiatric staff. Day centre members had no reason to lie. My experience is backed up by research. While Satanic Ritual Abuse may well have been wildly exaggerated the horrors that my friends and fellow day centre members are not.
“Dr. Aftab’s contentions in this quote are essentially unproven – and probably unprovable – platitudes.”
I have read some of Aftab’s work before and it mainly, perhaps entirely, consists of unproven platitudes, some of them dis-proven and roundly so. It doesn’t stop him pontificating like he is some kind of expert though, and probably getting a nice little fee for doing so.
The full story of the abuse you suffered, and which the so called therapists went onto do to others, reminded me of a hypnotherapist I know who has been accused of sexual assaulting two men I know. The accusations are that he used his hypnotherapy skills, possibly with drugs of some sort, to gain unwanted sexual access to handsome younger men.
I doubt these stories are the only ones, there will be others.
A few years later lots of the IAPT therapists are off sick due to stress and anxiety due to impossible case loads and trying to fulfill overly managerial targets. They ache to do real work and help people but the contracts, which are nice little earners for senior managers, prevent that.
It is a rubbish programme that fits nicely into the political and philosophical believes of the era. It looks like the government is providing help while conditions of life for many deteriorate. A psychological sticking plaster for a horrid age.
In other words, lets pretend Schizophrenia etc exists because it works for the Doctors, who get paid quite nicely, and lets ignore what everyone else says, including the patients.
This is my non peer reviewed opinion:
We had a growing number of people diagnosed with Depression and on pills since 1980, ie when Thatcher and Reagon got in power, decimated the unions, started selling off public services and reducing workers rights. This resulted in growing inequality. The encouragement to label misery as an illness and get the pills did two things:
1 provide product for Big Pharma, paid for out of health insurance.
2 distract people from the societal causes of their misery.
The depression market if just about saturated but after the crash on 2008 another means was needed to individualise misery and distract from societal causes and all the varieties of Nuerodiversity does that very well. What if you are anxious, a bit out of the ordinary (and ordinary is becoming ever more closely defined) and struggle at work? Maybe it is not because work is a badly paid living Hell with ever rising cost of living but rather an inherent, possible inherited, may genetic disorder that results in you being anxious, not able to concentrate and throwing wobbles (now called Melt Downs). Great explanation that lets the boss and the state off the hook and slows down unions and community groups organizing and fighting back if you ask me.
Well that’s my two pennyworth worth for the evening.
Personally I have diagnosed myself with Moody Cow Disorder and I expect Reasonable Adjustments under UK disability legislation. I find it a very helpful diagnosis when I question the validity of ADHD, Autism and Nuerodiversity with people who identify as such. My condition is every bit as real as theirs and I am just as offended by people questioning it’s validity as they are when I question the validity of their diagnosis. I don’t think anyone who does not have this diagnosis should in anyway comment or draw it into question – qed get out of jail free card init?
about 12 years ago I wrote a play which deconstructs psychiatry. The play is called Mental, it has a scene about ADHD and rips the construct apart in a knock about comedy manner. Now I find people writing scholarly articles about it which are much more learned, but mine version is funnier.
Scene 5: PSYCHIATRY IS EVERYWHERE!
Suzannah: My daughter had a problem with an educational psychologist you know. They’re a kind of therapist. The special educational needs coordinator at her school sent her to see one.
Mark: What did they say it was, ADHD?
John: Or was it Sadburgers, sorry, Aspergers.
Mark: Oi, don’t’ be rude.
John: Just because you’re a bit of train spotter does not mean you’ve got a disorder. Just a bit annoying, unless you like trains that is. Personally I think a diagnosis of Aspergers is about as useful as knowing what star sign someone is.
Suzannah: What’s your star sign John? Are you a fire sign?
John: As it happens, I’m Sagittarius.
Suzannah: Ah, that explains it.
John: Well Suzannah, I’m not really into Astrology, but it’s a lot less dangerous than a psychiatric diagnosis.
Mark: Tell us about your daughter then Suzannah.
Suzannah: They said she had ADHD.
John returns to the Tourettes syndrome symptoms.
John: Idiots.
Suzannah and Mark look odd at him as if he might have ADHD.
Suzannah: The school. The special educational needs coordinator and the educational psychologist wanted to put her on Ritalin.
John: Idiots! Ritalin’s all over schools these days, just like head lice.
Suzannah: I know, people end up on it for life sometimes. And it makes the children look really drugged up. My daughter kept playing up and getting into trouble, but she hated her teacher and was getting bullied by the other children in her class.
Suzannah and Mark sit down and start acting out naughty school children. Mark pulls Suzannah’s hair, she makes as if to hit him, looks at John and sits down.
John: ADHD, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
He barks it out like a teacher shouting out orders.
Mark and Suzannah start sticking tongues out at each other and acting like naughty children, throwing things at each other, getting up and looking at John like he is the teacher.
John: Attention Deficit.
Mark speaks an aside to Suzannah.
Mark: Thinks he knows it all.
Suzannah: Oi, Sir, is you gay?
John: Now, now, Suzannah, get on with your work
Mark giggles, gets up and pushes Suzannah in a bullying way, John looks at Mark.
John: Oi you, stop talking to your mate and pay attention boy. Attention Deficit – not paying attention. Well that’s not a disorder.
Mark gets up and sneaks behind John, Suzannah stands up and follows him.
John: Hyperactivity.
Mark stands on a chair and makes like a monkey.
John: Right, you, Mark, sit down, over there. And you, Suzannah, sit down, over there. And get on with your work.
John: To audience Hyperactivity: Not sitting still, running around. Well that’s not a disorder. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, its pants. ADHD, yes, ADHD it’s pants. What does ADHD mean? It’s the doctors medicalizing a particular distress. What kind of distress? Well in this case naughty boys.
Suzannah: And a few girls.
They start acting like naughty kids in school. Throwing things, getting up from the table and looking at John like he is the teacher.
Mark: But mainly boys.
John: And what do Dr’s do with naughty boys?
Suzannah scowls at John.
John: And girls. Give them drugs. In this case Ritalin.
Mark and Suzannah speak in a speedy way.
Mark: I’ve got ADHD me.
Suzannah: I’ve got ABCD me.
Mark: I’ve got HIJK me.
Suzannah: I’ve got ICUP me.
The giggle, John gives them a dirty look.
John: Is there something you two would like to share with the rest of the class?
They calm down, lean over table and get on with work.
John: Ritalin has almost the same effect as cocaine. Or speed. But for some reason it slows kids down, probably because it’s poisoned their brains.
Mark: He raises his hand. Sir, the headmaster won’t let me in school unless I’ve taken my Ritalin.
John: Yes, well the less said about that sadistic idiot the better.
Mark: I’m telling on you Sir. I’ll tell the headmaster you called him a sadistic idiot.
John: Get on with your work Mark.
Suzannah: My mum likes me to have Ritalin. When she runs out of money she takes my Ritalin off me and sells it to her mates down the pub.
John: Now I think that is the better option. Drug free children, adults taking responsibility for their drug taking, stimulates the local economy; it’s all good! Imagine if what happens in school happened at work. You have your annual review, your appraisal, whatever. Just you and your manager in a little cubicle, and she says:
Suzannah and Mark sit at table opposite each other. Suzannah as manager, Mark as employee.
Suzannah: Now Mark, I’m afraid you’ve not been hitting your targets.
Mark: Ah, sorry.
Suzannah: I’ve been noticing that you’ve been finding it hard to concentrate. We’ve paid for you to have extra tuition on your computer and it hasn’t helped; you keep making spelling mistakes, which, as I am sure you are aware, is not acceptable in this line of work.
Mark: Sorry.
Suzannah: Also, Sally, the manager in sales says you’ve been wandering in there and talking to John and Sarah. Sally’s put in a complaint about you distracting them from their work.
Mark: Oh.
Suzannah: I’m going to recommend a referral to the occupational health team for a psychological assessment.
John: Next thing you know they won’t let you back into work unless you’re on class B drugs.
Mark pretends to pick up a phone.
Mark: Hello, is that Unison? My line manager is refusing to let me into the office unless I take Ritalin. I agree. It’s an abuse of my human rights. What can I do?
John: There’d be an outcry!
Suzannah: Unless you’re a kid of course, when a doctor can give you a dodgy diagnosis and force you to take class B drugs, possibly for the rest of your life.
John: Mind you, some people like that!
Suzannah: My daughter doesn’t pay attention and plays up when she’s bored or angry.
Mark: I wonder if lot of kids diagnosed with ADHD are like that?
John: Hey, lets not look at that, just in case someone starts to wonder why the kids are so bored and angry at the world.
Scene 6: CAPITALISM MAKES YOU SICK
………….
wow – this interview is just so damning of psychatry and Big Pharma. I especially like the explicit links to class and racism that occur repeatedly through the article.
The link to Redhall Walled Garden is not working. This one is though
https://www.greatbritishgardens.co.uk/scotland/item/redhall-walled-garden.html
It sounds fascinating, both as a garden and a recovery centre.
Ah yes, object and you are drugged up, object more and you are put in seclusion, do it again and you are threatened with ect. If it wasn’t banned they would give the persistent objectors labotomies.
same as it ever was, from the early days of psychiatry in the 1800’s doctors have fought off any challange to there hegenomy despite there being no proof that they help anyone.
40 years ago I knew a woman who fled a very violent man. She had a breakdown and the people who gave her sanctury called the services as they did not know what to do. She was sectioned, detained, seperated from her kids and drugged up. The hospital had no interest in the reason for her breakdown. When she calmed down she was sent back to her very violent husband. Luckily her friends once again helped her escape, this time with better preparation and she went very quickly into a womens refuge.
I doubt my friends story or the story in the blog is unusual.
Fightin talk – I want more of that
I partly agree, but I also think it is a fine piece of working class writing showing what life at the bottom is like and how the state oppresses the poor – and you don’t get much of that in mainstream media. As such it is one of the best pieces on the site imho.
It is a piece that would not be out of place in the UK Lumpen journal. https://www.theclassworkproject.com/lumpen
Thanks for raising this important issue. In the early 90’s I met a man who had suffered, “electric shock “therapy.” He said don’t ever do it. I had no intention of doing any such thing.
Your school and psychiatrist were evil. People deserve compensation for these sorts of harms. Sadly that is unlikely to happen.
Nice analysis of an excellent article. I also think James Davies thinks that capitalism can be reformed, or maybe a revolution instigated, by professionals taking action where as I think it probably has to be from the working class, and that includes service user/survivors of psychiatry leading.
This is a tragic, gruelling story. That it is happening to thousands more, many living in poverty is a scandal. It deserves a mass direct action campaign
When the occupations of psychiatrists offices start wake me up.
I find it weird to see the UN saying something I have been banging on about for nearly 30 years. I shall take this article to my local Crisis House, where all psychiatrists and social workers are banned without prior consent of the people who run it.
it is weird to hear what I have been banging on about and putting into practice, in small ways, for decades, spoken about by someone from WHO
Wow – corruption always seems to go with bullying. I admire your persistence. Keep it up.
The corruption seems endemic.
Your experiences are horrible, you have my sympathy. However I think the original comment was aimed at psychiatrists and researchers who make very good livings poisoning people or doing useless research while people like you are ignored, shunned or locked up and drugged.
I personally would like all the money these people get taken back and given to you and people who support people like you.
Time to read Brave New World again I fear.
These are brilliant articles showing how drug policy is used by politicians to garner votes while the real causes and solutions to problenatic drug use are ignored.
Great interview. It covers a lot of stuff.
Your view is the one I like the most:
Follow the money, as ever, is the motto here.
Peterson has made a small fortune peddling his strict Daddy self help rubbish and he and his publisher needed another book to consolidate his fortune. The benzo story added to the drama and as in all his mutterings there is no coherence, just what passes for intelligent thought.
“Stopping medications is an important part of the job of a psychiatrist, yet it has received relatively little attention,” or just not prescribe them in the first place.
Or better still resign and retrain as a gardener or a flower arranger or something that doesn’t actually harm people.
Excellent article.
I am very glad the support groups exist and congratulate them for developing there skilled work and for John Reeds excellent assessment of the situation.
The situation is however likely to continue until direct action campaigns from survivors emerge.
Out of the support groups, onto the streets.
I think this article ultimately points to either anarchism or communism as self reliance is an ideal that is promoted by and benefits rampant capitalism.
A better question would be:
Why is there not a direct action campaign against Electro Covulsive Torture?
Geart but horrific article though.
Blunt, condemning and a breath of fresh air from what is often a mealy mouthed medical establishment, even when they know how bad things are.
The outcomes of those in care are not good in the UK. I imagine they are worse in the USA.
This is disgusting: it is like charging prisoners for upkeep, education and any help they get while they are in prison and expecting them to pay it back when they leave out of any earnings they get.
Why not have kidnappers who forcibly drug the people they kidnap demand money from there victims for upkeep too?
Perverse or what?
When does the rebellion begin?