I was about to type, “Patient,” in a post above but your post prompted me to reconsider. Instead I used the word, “Detainee.”
I know a women who was sectioned, tried to escape and was threatened with Electroshock to keep her quiet and was told, “It happens all the time you know.” So it was used as bullying by staff to keep a detainee quiet.
Great article. If only there was an effective movement using direct action to make use of it.
I think availability of methods to commit suicide are an important factor in reducing the incidence. The availability of certain drugs and of firearms are two things to consider on both a societal and household level.
I can’t find information on where restricting which drugs are sold over the counter by country related to suicide rate but it would be interesting to investigate. I have not looked up how the availability of guns is correlated to suicide rate either but as the gun violence rate is related to availability of guns I suspect suicide rates are also related.
I had a nightmare lastnight in which I thought people were in my room trying to abduct me. I tried, and may have succeeded in shouting out, “HELP.”
I hope I didn’t disturb the neighbours.
I think one of the triggers was reading the comments on this article. It bought home to me the trauma of forced hospitalisation.
I have often sat with people who are psychiatric patients and within an hour they will tell me about thier truamatic histories. I ask them if the services know about this and they say no. I ask them how long they have been in services and they say 10 – 20 – 30 years. I ask why they do not tell the services and they say in so many words they do not trust them and they are not worth telling.
So I completly agree with you about how service users so often see staff, and quite rightly so in my opinion, as untrustworthy
My step mum is a sick in the head drunk.
I’m pretty mad at her (though in one of those confused, I’m sorry for her, she had a hard life, I don’t want to make her life worse, how much did I deserve all her abusive comments and being the victim of her soap opera of a life, way).
Does she have a disease? Only in a metaphorical way:
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
Timimi is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has published on Mad in America. Timimi, Cabe and Gardener write that people’s individual experiences and those of them around them need to be taken into account when offering help and that a diagnosis of autism is a distraction from that. I believe there arguent is also that late capitalism demands people who have good customer service skills and those are often more feminine ways of being. Therefore boys behaviour, which in previous generations would have been fine in the workplace, are now medicalised.
Interesting argument, I like it, many will take issue with it.
OMG – I just watched the vid. Horror movie meets early public health HIV AIDS add.
AUTISM = DEATH
AUTISM IS THE CREEPY MONSTER OF YOUR DREAMS.
If this is what Autism and Mental Health Awarness Month is about I wanna see that blockbuster movie now. Gotta be better than the last X-men movie.
Did they really raise huge ammounts of money and say they were supporting people with autism? Surely they are a front for some wild neo-fascist, kill all people with learning disabilities, fringe group?
Or am I wrong?
My guess is that this is psychiatry trying to counter the critics it is having and criticing the study for sloppy science is a way of fighting that.
Neurodiversity is an interesting social movement however I have yet to see any data to back up the theory. If you have any please share.
I do however think that people with different personalities should not be give medical labels or offered medical treatment.
This isn’t medcine, this is mass poisoning of children and young people.
“……….a cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines at age 13…….”
How common is this?
At this point I ask why not add a horse tranquiliser?
These people, these so called doctors, are but legalised drug pushers.
I have a less jaudiced view of therapy and counselling though I have also experienced harmful practices too. I think that good practice is found inside and outside the mental health system and while there are varied prctices it has some simple principles shared by many other disciplines. I think these principles are:
1 caring for someone
2 trying to understand someone
3 offering encouragement
I think they are also found in community work, self help groups and from good freinds as well as other places.
Peter Breggin asked his clients what it was that he did that helped and they said he cared for them until they felt they could care for themselves. That doesn’t sound like a value that is only held by therapists or counsellors, it is how we often act towards friends who are in distress such as when they are grieving after the death of someone close. Bad therapy is where the thearpist thinks they know what is best for you and that sounds like what you have experienced from the metal health system.
Dorothy Rowe, writer and retired thearpist, was once part of a debating team that proposed the motins that Thearpy has caused more harm than good, and Jeffrey Masson wrote a book called Against Therapy, so I suspect you will have many supporters in your views. It is a debate that I think is well worth having though.
Thanks for telling us about your experience of the Sunrise Centre and of cults in general.
I have a freind who is a cult survivor, mainly of religious and New Age cults. They damaged her quite considerably both emotionaly and finacially.
I agree that one sucees story is not sufficient evidence of effectivness. I also agree that no programem should say, “You have to keep coming back.” Effective help, of any kind, leaves people feeling better and should be open to someone coming back if they want to and eventually they should leave the person moving on and not needing the programme.
Often cults will offer something that is helpful, such as the calming down found in meditation and other religious and New Age practices, or the expression of emotion and telling of ones story to someone who listens, as found in therapy cults. Often this then ceases to help and the cult blames the person for not trying hard enough or doing the practice sufficiently. I do not think RC blames people if it does not work as they tend to be at the happy clappy end of cult behaviour, but they do stress that people should keep on with the practice of RC and stress, “Discharge,” ie expressing hurt emotions, as a route to cure. Expressing hurt emotions (having a good cry, shouting at the TV when Trump says something idiotic etc etc) is something we all do and often we feel better afterwards but it not the only thing that helps us deal with difficult situations and neither is encouraging someone to express emotion the only thing we do when trying to help someone in distress, though sitting with someone in distress and offering comfort is part of what we might do when appropriate.
So expressing distressing emotion to someone who is listening is the hook RC has that pulls people in and it can be useful at times for some people. The push to keep repeating it as the cure, the waccy practices and the exagerated believes are the rubbish that goes along with it are what I see as the dangerous part of RC. RC people often say that groups that have progressed in society, such as women, have done so due to discharging distress and this has allowed them to achieve things. This is partly coopting consciosness raising practices which both the women’s liberation movement, the LGBT liberation movement and Paolo Friere’s work with landless peasants in Brazil stressed but is also rubbish. Women got the vote due to effective political organising and yes people may have had a good old rant and a cry when doing this but it wasn’t the only way political solidarity emerged. Political groups that engage in consciousness raising then go onto put together practical programmes such as founding LGBT phonelines, women organising pregnancy testing centres, peasants setting up trade unions or health centres. RC’ers just do more counselling. Whether their personal lives are better is a moot point and open to debate and personal annecdote but it isn’t changing the world.
I gained from some of my time with them, I learnt some listening skills I also cringed at some of what I experienced, and am unlikely to engage with them agian. I don’t think they did me serious harm though I have seen some RC’ers with fixed grins that are just creepy.
I am also concerned that the founder, Harvey Jackins, who is now dead, was accused of rape and sexual assault by a number of his women clients, and that the organisation had no proper investigation or democratic structure to deal with such complaints. Tim Jackins, his son, now runs the organisation. While not everyone involved in RC may know of this scandal I would be very suspicious of anyone who did know who continued to be involved.
thanks for clearing that up.
I didn’t read the first two paragraphes clearly enough. I apologise.
However I share your concerns that current chair of the ISPS executive committee should contribute to such an article.
I looked up ISPS – the International Society for Psychologial and Social approaches to Psychosis.
There websites states, “ISPS is an international organization promoting psychotherapy and psychological treatments for persons with psychosis (a term which includes persons diagnosed with “schizophrenia”).”
Having found out what the organisation is I am left wondering what this crock of drug poisoning shit that the article you review was published in thier journal? It sounds more like drug company marketing blurb than anything to do with psychological or social approachs to helping people in distress.
well that was interesting. Moral of story: don’t try dating when traquilised as no one likes an responsive robot.
I expect there will be no replies from the author to what I am raising as there were no replies to the previos article on the Sunrise Centre that also raised concerns about RC.
I knew a good worker who was part of a very small group that did theatre based consultancy to help service users get more of what they wante (we put on plays about how bad psychiatry is, they watched and then discussed them. The service users grew in confidence and supported each other better as a result). I wrote a stinking letter about her employer to the local paper explaining how badly a freind was being treated. She resigned as she felt personally attacked.
You can’t run with the hare and the houds, as Dr Ragins is finding out.
thanks Richard.
I think you can learn a lot from RC, specifically how to improve you ability to listen to people and how to sit with people in distress in a useful way but I also think there is a whole wierd philosophy and ways of working that risk being open to not being scrutinsed, are hierachical and open to abuse.
I really want programmes for people who want support in coming of psychiatric drugs. I especially want to see them run by people who are actively criticising psychiatry. I think group work is important. I think there are many models for learning and practicing those skills. RC is one I have reservations about.
I agree.
I like the UK psychiatrists statement that psychiatric diagnsosis is potentially damanging and that there are already alternatives such as psychological formulation. Which sounds a bit like gobblebegook until you realise that psychological formulation means asking someone what thier problems is, what might have caused it and what might help? Which is no more than most of us can do most of the time.
thanks for the correction.
My argument still stands though
I like the sound of the centre and it’s mission to help people come off psychiatric drugs. I do think that services such as these are essential for this movement to flourish. However I am suspicious of Re-evaluation Counseling. I am all in favour of effective self help therapy and other methods but Harvey Jackins, the founder of Re-evaluation Counseling was a sex pest and the techniques of Re-evaluation Counseling lend themselves to wierd and waccy methods. I wish the author good luck but I would love to hear user expereinces of this project.
While the old concerns about Re-evaluation Counseling may not be relevant to this organisation they do concern me sufficiently to post an old Mind Freedom article about it, in which they call it a cult http://old.freedomofmind.com/Info/infoDet.php?id=450
I’d appreciate it if Robert Whittiker could comment on the studies D S Goel, MD mentions as he seems to have the best grasp of such things.
Annecdotaly I know a family who want thier adult son medicated with clozapine and he wants to come off it. He tells me of all the things that drive him mad. He tells me the services know nothing of these things. Same old story I’ve heard many time from other people. He is applying to the Open Dialogue programme in London where he hopes his traumas will be taken seriously and the drugs will be prescribed in a way that takes his wishes into account, which is what seems to be happening on these new Norwiegian wards.
I went to the London conference on Open Dialogue. It was a very friendly affair.
I spoke to all sorts of people including a nurse who had trained in Open Dialogue and was doing that work three days a week. He liked his doing the work. He also did two days doing other work, which is what the majority of his colleagues does, and he hates it.
He found out I was from Reading. He said the person who was his best man at his wedding was there, in Prospect Park Hospital, the local psychiatric hospital. He knows how inadaquate, damaging and bad his friends treatment is and is powerless to do anything, though he talks to his freind on the phone and internet quite often (his friend does not want to see him face to face often as it reminds him of the life he has lost).
I wonder if Dr Ragins has any advice to that might be of any solace to the nurse who has for three days a week found a way of helping people in distress that uses few drugs and on the whole is democratic but for the rest of the week has to give out drugs, fill in forms and on the whole ignore people, some of whom are forced to be on wards where they do not want to be? Leave his job? Go part time on the Open Dialogue work and get a part time job on to compensate the loss of earnings? Found a militant anti-psychiatry campaign? Start using the drugs to slow some of his psychiatrist colleagues down?
We are all but customers now. Customers to be sold expensive crap by sales people (or Dr’s as we used to call them)
I think a lot of good workers leave due to frustration and being ground down.
I think the essential skills on top of those of being caring and understanding of clients are those of being a community worker, trade union activist and political activist. At the very low level of being caring to clients those skills maybe needed if the dehumanising effect of working for psychiatric services are to b countered.
Consider when the author says, “focus on building protective factors (e.g. safe housing, money for necessities and emergencies..” and then consider what that means in the age of Trump? Housing shortages and homelessness with low wages and precarious work patterns mean safe housing and money for necessities and emergencies are not avaialable for a lot of poeple and poverty is the biggest risk factor for getting a diagnosis for mental illness.
Being a part of fighting back against what I shall call the stinking rich is an essential part of being a good worker who supports those who are mentally distressed.
Or publishing articles like this.
Resignation is often a weak tactic. People are merely politly ignored while those in power carry on.
“Specifically, mental disorder is a biological disturbance of brain function, presumed to be at the level of neurotransmitters and caused by genetic disorders. Thus, the treatment of all mental disorder, as a physical disorder of the brain, is necessarily physical in nature: chemicals to correct a chemical imbalance, you could say, or if that fails, electrical currents to induce seizures, implanted electrodes, powerful magnetic fields, hyperthermia and, in the extreme, neurosurgery to disconnect parts of the brain.
This is the standard view of psychiatry as it is taught in all medical schools in the world and adopted by all major professional psychiatric bodies throughout the world.”
And that has to change.
“The only appropriate training is to have lived it yourself (psychosis) but good luck if you lived it yourself getting certified by the deeply entrenched education mafia as being qualified.”
I think there are records and personal experiences of people being helped by those who have not been through the kind of distress that gets labelled as psychosis. However I recently went to a conference on Peer Supported Open Dialogue where it was said that the peer supporters, who were trained and integral parts of the teams, often said the most helpful things to the clients as they had indeed been through it themselves. I suspect there position of training people who have been through psychosis and of employing them as equals is unusual. It does give me hope though.
As a gay men I find the company of other supportive gay men means a lot more to me than anyone else, no matter how much they try to understand, but I wouldn’t completely right off non gay people when they offer support to me. I think it is likely to be the same for madness
When I was involved in anti-psychiatry campaigning, and not just posting comments on websites, I ended up thinking we needed to create some alternative services. These being:
1 advocacy for people trapped by psychiatry, especiallly those forced to take drugs they didn’t want
2 support services such as counselling and psychiatry free open dialogue type help
3 drug reduction and withdrawal services
I thought that doing that and publisising them as necersarry because psychiatry was harmful would make a powerful statement. I also found the quite a few people in the organisation I was working with were in need of these services. They were prone to crisis and forced to take damaging drugs by services.
I have a concern about the first sentence of the article:
“By law people can now be forced to take medication once they’ve been discharged and are living back in the community, if they have had several hospital admissions for psychosis.”
I think this refers to community treatment orders. I think the law is slightly more complicated than that. You maybe discharged with a conditions. One condition might be that you take the drugs. You might decide to not follow the conditions. The mind website has the following if you decide not to follow the conditions of a CTO:
“What happens if I don’t follow the conditions?
If you don’t follow the conditions, your responsible clinician may:
change the conditions or the support you receive if there is a problem with them, or
return you to hospital
You cannot be recalled just because you don’t agree to medical treatment. As long as you have capacity to consent to treatment, you can only be given treatment if you consent to it. But there are different rules if you are recalled to hospital or do not have capacity. (See our page on recall to hospital to find out more.)” http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/community-treatment-orders-ctos/conditions#.WNQ83vnyg1N
The page on recall to hospital says:
“When can I be recalled to hospital?
You can be recalled to any hospital if your responsible clinician thinks that:
you need medical treatment in hospital for your mental disorder, and
there would be risk of harm to your health or safety or to others if you are not recalled
You can only be recalled if you meet both criteria. For example, you cannot be recalled just because you stop taking your medication. But if you stop taking your medication, and your responsible clinician thinks that you will get unwell, they can recall you.” http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/community-treatment-orders-ctos/recall-to-hospital/#.WNQ-M_nyg1M
So if I am right then the law is slightly more complex and subtle, though still bad, than the article says.
I have little experience around this and there will be people who know more than me. I would however advise talking to an advocate if you are on a CTO and want to come off or reduce medication. Please do not just accept what the Dr’s say and give up.
“He felt treated like a second class citizen by most of the mental health staff he had come across.”
He was.
I encourage the author to try to get this published widely.
People need to know how dangerous these drugs are.
If only the psych survivor movement were as kick ass as ACTUP there would be mass invasions of the FDA and such like.
Darlin, I eat a mainly fruit and veg diet and have done for years. I’m more of a going to bed for years at a time guy than an ADHD one.
One Australian study – how big? How well designed? How big an effect? And was it measured against poverty or other factors.
well that’s what I believe but I’m open to other opinions. I haven’t read the authors other blogs for a while and might take another look at them.
most of this I agree with however it says that for a minority of distressed people have brain disorders and are mentally ill. I know of no evidence for that.
Great piece that basically says psychiatry is a fraud
I agree with your statement as the story seemed to have little proof to link between nutritional suppliments and behaviour.
The way I read it the improvement came when the drugs were carefully withdrawn, which was at the same time as the micronutrients were added to his diet. So it is impossible to know what was more important.
I think nutrition is worth investigating but this story as I read it has no evicence that shows any effect. At the very least nutrients will do a whole lot less harm than drugs though.
As far as I know the story on what to eat is pretty simple: eat a varied diet, mainly plant based, don’t over do the refined sugar or fats. There is some evidence that some people do better with dietry suplimentation but maybe that reflects the poor nature of people’s diets with cheap fat and sugar being at the core of so many people’s eating habits these days? To my mind that is probably about the influence of Big Agribusiness and the food industry and supermarkets.
I think behaviour that gets labelled ADHD has a whole host of causes. Some children have a lot of challanges. Some don’t fit in with school. Some children, especially boys, can be difficult to parent, or a right handful, as we say in the UK, but they then calm down as they grow up. That may have happened here and to my mind is just as convincing on the evidence given as any micronutrient theory.
I like the altrnative to drugs aspect of the piece but I also find the publishing of trade marked product a bit worrying. There are other blogs about diet on this site that I find more convincing.
I’m glad that they boy is doing well and has escaped the dead hand of psychaitry.
It could be that just withdrawing your son from all the drugs and a bit of additional attention was what helped.
Or it could be the nutrients. I would want more evidence to say it was.
Either way the drug companies are making a killing.
I’m not sure what your point is Rossa. From what I can understand some people want gender free pronouns. Proff Peterson does not like that. It sounds like the gender free people are promoting freedom of speach and the Proff thinks it has gone too far. None of that debate seems to me to be about, “the regressive-left currently engages in social control by trying to shut all free speech and engage in thought-control through authoritarian political means.” It sounds more like politics as normal. It might be irritating if you are on either side of the debate but hardly authoritarian as there are few sanctions in place for what to me seems a quite mile demand – that people be called what they want to be called.
eek – at least in the UK Dr’s are free – at the moment
I think that depends on how you define self help. All those books repeat themselves endlessly and offer trite advice as if they were pearls of wisdom.
A book giving basic advice on how to withdraw from psyche drugs in a safe a manner as possible published under the name of Pschiatric Survivor Press would be something else.
I think community workers are also worth reaching out to so I add them to the list that Phil has generated as potential allies. They often have contact with distressed people and see the outcome of people taking psyche drugs or being in contact with psychiatry. The alternatives of social support are natural to them.
I think the development of alternatives (counselling, therapy, Open Dialogue type work, sancturies, drug withdrawel services and advocacy groups) under anti-psychiatry names are something I would like to see. So often these services are seen as complimentary to psychiatry but organising them and saying we are providing them because psychaitry is damaging would be powerful statement. One of the most powerful things the Black Panthers did was provide breakfast for children in schools. A breakfast club is not radical, one done under that name was. A self help group for people who are distressed is not a powerful symbol, one done under the name of Speak Out Against Psychiatry would be.
At least this discussion bought the revolutionaries out, though I am a bit of a lazy anarchist these days….
I think, though I have not checked, that more women and up psychiatrised then men and more boys than girls.
Women have less power than men and might therefore be more likely to be distressed but boys behaviour is less likely to fit into job roles these days.
Well that’s the theory. I’m not too attached to it, but I find it interesting
I think you have been very lucky when you decided to be open about your expereinces of psychiatric oppression. While I think that this can sometimes be the way oppression ends, though it is only one tactic, I also think that people often need support in order to do it.
There are risks to being open about a history of psychiatric abuse, sometimes serious risks. Risks of loosing a job for example and this can have serious economic consequences.
Rather than urging people to be out I would urge people to consider the consequences and do so if they think it useful and a risk worth taking but not if they think it isn’t. I would also encourage people to take part in and set up of supportive institutions, such as the Hearing Voices Network, or preferably more radical organisations, that can give support to those who want to take this step. Jaqui Dillon is a member of the Hearing Voices Network and very out about her psychiatric survivor history. She has a lot of support and I suspect a lot of her income is from self employment.
I do not think this is a tactic for everyone. I think that the LGBT liberation movement was quite strong with many other tactics, including direct action, when it adopted coming out as a strategy where as the psychiatric survivor movement seems fairly weak at the moment.
I think it is more complicated. I think labour, and specifically trade unions, have not adapted to the new conditions.
For example I know a teacher who was bullied at work. Bullying of teachers is now endemic in the UK due to the constant monitoring of pupils and teachers and the league tables and comptetion between schools which has turned many heads into petty tyrants. Meanwhile unions reps are distant. They will help you in your harrasement case against the boss but they don’t bring teachers together to talk over what it is like being a teacher now and encourage them to support each other in resisting the petty beurocracy. My freind went off work with stress and gets prescribed drugs, luckily not anti-depressants as they make her ill, but beta blockers to deal with her racing heart.
I think labour lost in the 70’s. Work becomes more stressful, as did the rest of life. Unions and other labour organisations have not regrouped and come up with new strategies and inequality got ever worse.
Paolo Friere outlined a way of working that involved getting marginlised groups together to ask the three basic questions:
1 what is life like round here?
2 how do you feel about that?
3 what shall we do about it?
Although more broad strategies are also needed I think that to regroup trade unions and other left groups need to do a lot of the kind of work that Friere outlined. Without that basic work when people feel distressed they fall into the hands of psychiatry and psyche drug prescribing GP’s.
I can see how anti-stigma campaigns do fall into the analysis that you wrote in your blog. The anti-stigama campaigns say it is OK to be distressed, just go to the GP. The GP prescribes drugs and maybe six weeks CBT when what you realy need is solidarity at work and a better place to live with lower rents. Sp the anti-stigma campaigns may help stop the distress turning into organised rebellion.
Sorry my reply is terse. I feel you deserve a fuller response than the one I have given but I hope my meanings are clear.
“dialogic, relational and peer approach are the most democratic and non-violating ways I have found to respond.”
Who is to pay for these?
Either people campaign for the state to pay or money is found for independant groups to provide.
Current power structures want drugging and incarceration as it makes money for the rich.
Have you got the figures on that?
I generally trust Timimi but I have not checked on that. Though I maybe remembering what he wrote wrongly. He writes on ADHD and Austism, which I believe diagnosis which are disproportionately given to boys.
I find this quote interesting: “Capitalism needs psychiatry to impose social control because it fears working-class revolt. The greater the threat, the greater the need for repression.”
Bio-psychiatry and mass drugging took off after Reagan and Thatcher were elected. Market regulation was reduced, state assets sold off, unions systematically reduced in power.
There was a battle between capital and labour in the 1970’s and labour lost. So bio-psychiatry rose as the corporations had more power but under this analysis maybe more psychiatry is needed by capital to keep the working class from rebelling against the sale of state, ie shared, assests, cutting of benefits and growing inequality?
That point, about the job readiness thing, is elucidated by Sami Timimi in The Myth of Autism. He writes that it is boys who get dispropportiontely more psychiatric diagnosis than girls as boys traditional behaviour does not fit in with the current job market of late capitalism. A lot of jobs these days are service sector: call centres and sales for example. The job role requires people to form quick relationships. These are typically seen as feminine attributes so noisy and naughty boys are given diagnosis of ADHD and obsessive ones, which in the UK we might call Train Spotters, are given the diagnosis of Autism.
I think all of those are well worth investigating.
Are you saying that the state uses psychiatry to keep dissent under control?
If so I can only agree though I also think those harmed by abuses of power, those who are distressed, are detained, druged and the causes of thier distress ignored. It has always been like that as long as psychiatry has existed.
Thanks for the book list.
They all sound very interesting.
You wrote, “the regressive-left currently engages in social control by trying to shut all free speech and engage in thought-control through authoritarian political means.”
Could you give some examples of this?
When I think of, “authoritarian political means,” I think of military dictatorships locking people up without trail or, “Dissapearing,” people or of torture. While many consider what happened at Gauntanomo, or indeed in USA prisons where solitary confinement is frequently used, as torture I somehow think this is not the sort of thing you are on about.
So could you please explain your terms?
Regards John Hoggett
Or they gave up adn went home for tea thinking there were more important things to do.
I do not think you have prooved anything.
You have a theory that, “schizophrenia can be caused by the central nervous system and the chemistry with the firing of nerves to and from the brain.”
Until you offer some proof, preferably from peer reviewed journals, you have prooved nothing.
Proof would be observations of those phenonema in those who have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and those without. You have not offered any studies on that. Therefore you have prooved nothing.
You have a theory that is no more scientifically valid that that of demonic posession.
I disagree with this statement, ” For many people there is a biological component to the mental health challenges that are experienced.”
I do not think I am not an utter fool.
I maybe misguided or lacking information. If you have any information that says, “For many people there is a biological component to the mental health challenges that are experienced,” Please post here so I learn something.
If not please apologise for calling people with different viewpoints form you utter fools.
I am interested that you site Paolo Friere. I have recently been reading some training manuals based on Friere’s work and noticed how often the word, “Dialogue,” was used. I thought there was a connection to the work done by Open Dialogue practitioners so it is intersting to see you making that link.
Dat’s Capitalism!
Kerchung
All the way to the bank
Pretty damning of any campaigns to promote psychiatry then.
Eek, your neighbours are not getting invited to any gay party I host anytime soon.
Screening + Big Pharma promotion init?
Torrey Fuller of the Treatment Advocacy Centre pushed this theory so it is good to see it debunked along with corrlating mental distress to poverty, overcrowding and other social factors.
And nothing will change until poeple start invading chemists to hang banners.
Or similar actions
Oh dear, what now?
Letters to the popular press?
A small protest outside the journals offices to get on the national tv news?
Something to undermine the credibility of the journal with the public and GP’s is surely called for.
Hopefully that will include psychiatry survivors in the general anti-trump movement
I think the job description angle is really interesting. If we wrote one out for a state president and then compared it to Trump where would he fall down? You have listed some ways. Just writing those up in a public blog or article would be a good exercise in itself and also challenge the psychiatric diagnosis angle.
I am not familiar with the USA situation but here in the UK over the last 35 or so years the unions have been systematically weakened, work has gone abroad due to globalization, tech has reduced skilled work resulting in lots of low paid jobs, some high paid jobs and few medium paid jobs of skilled working class and lower middle class jobs, there has been a bubble in property prices and a reduction in what people have to spend on other things apart from rent and mortgages.
So we have a weak working class and progressive middle class all whom have lost out economically. That makes scapegoating easy. A strong working class tends to stick together and not blame immigrants, the mad, people of colour, people of non Christian religions, women etc etc.
Rebuilding working class solidarity and institutions is an important part of what needs to be done, but it is slow, longterm work.
Hurrah for this article. I posted on my facebook page this:
“Saying Trump is mentally ill gives service users a bad name.
He is a very greedy, power crazed, nasty man. I don’t need any fake medical language to tell me that.”
Psychiatric diagnosis lack validity but some people like having a diagnosis.
I quite like that so many have signed the petition or that professionals are saying he is mad as it shows widespread opposition to Trump but it also colludes with psychiatry.
Why he got in is worth looking at. Of course people liked his nasty side but also the working class are weak and disorganized. If they were organised and strong they would likely see what he was promising were lies and he would not have got into power.
Eek – this is full of horror stories of bad employment practice, poor workers rights and an economy based on debt designed to discipline the working class and enrich the 1%.
“……a clinical director of a mental health clinic and monstrously abusive …….. to his clients.”
“The director of the Mental Health Division…. fear of his well-known rage attacks.”
“We are an at-will employer which means we can dismiss you at will without explanation.”
“I’m still living in poverty despite my hard-earned education. I will work until my dying day paying for my education at minimum wage”
Lets just take a few seconds to remember that poverty is one of the biggest causes of mental distress (which then gets labelled as mental illness).
Lets then remember that Trump wants to cut, “Red Tape,” and regulation, and that will include workers rights.
Lets remember that inequality goes along with high rates of, “mental illness.”
Lets remember that inequality goes with low union membership which is pretty obvious as when you weaken the power of the working class the rich will just make sure they get even richer at everybody else expense.
Maybe it’s time to get a little angry?
Wow, what a load of big words to say:
1 calm down
2 think things over
3 try to talk to someone about things
4 do things differently if you can face that
The way it is presented is making helping people an even more professional, experts only activity. Not a way to go I am in favour of. Also, miserable adolescents get miserable for reasons. They have hard lives and need help in dealing with that.
Never mind, just bung a bit of psudoscience at em and say they have sick minds and then we don’t have to think about all that.
Still, it;s better than drugging them up with suicide inducing, penis numbing, prozac.
Hey ho
I just skimmed this article and will read in depth later.
This film sounds appalling, sensationalist, tosh.
Thanks for the warning.
So when are the protests in chemists, Dr’s surgeries and schools going to start.
This is enough with the journalism. Time to take the kid gloves off and organise
I think it is a pity you are passing on a chance to see Ms Wax.
A few disruptive questions, hisses and boos from the audience would liven up this turgid show.
A banner saying DRUG PUSHER in the lobby of the venue would make look fab in the local press.
Years ago I read an autobiography by Wax. In it she portrayed her parents as horrid.
That was before she trained as a clinical psychologist and got the mental health bug.
This is what she said in a Guardian interview:
“Fans of Wax will be familiar with her parents. From her earliest days as a comic, they were great source material. Her Jewish parents had fled Austria and Hitler and found safety in the US – her dad became a wealthy sausage manufacturer, her mother a depressive beauty with a fine brain (she spoke nine languages) and a frigid soul. That’s the way she told it, anyway. Her act was fuelled by anger at the parents who dismissed their only child as an ungainly loser.
Wax tells me a story about when the family dog died to illustrate her relationship with her mother. “I was away at school and she went and got a replica of the dog. He was 150 in dog years when he died and when I came home there was a puppy. She didn’t mention he died.”
She sounds a nightmare, I say. “She is a nightmare. Yep.” Wax pauses.”No. Not a nightmare any more. She’s sweet now.” Is she senile? “Senile, yeah.” Wax says that her mother barely recognises her when she visits.” https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/mar/25/broadcasting.comment
Here is an interview with Wax on Dutch tv about her parents. Having watched it, why does she or anyone need any genetic explanation for Ms Wax’s depression? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SUmVjG_UWY
Depression can be seen as a belief in the just world fallacy ie that good things happen to good people and that bad things happen to bad people. It is a pity that Wax does not mention this, and how her family history has effected her, in her talks on mental health.
However her talks to confirm that psychiatry has two main functions:
1 to be the drug delivery agent of big pharma
2 to make sure no one asks why someone is distressed
it could be that some people recover from psyche drugs and some don’t.
People who have had strokes sometimes totally recover. Some get some functioning back and some very little.
There probably needs to be more research on this to find out how often people recover.
indeed
how can the cash cows justify themselves otherwise?
this is really interesting. There are short and long NICE guidelines. We were made to look at them for a peer support course I went on.
Not only are the diagnostic categories scientifically invalid but psychologists ignore the guidlines do what they think works best.
NICE guidelines have taken huge amounts of money to produce and distribute. Even without psychologists doing what they think is best, which is really what they prefer and have had some training in, people generally do not get what the guidelines say they should, they get whatever their local trust and psychiatrist is doling out and can afford that month.
It’s all a bureaucratic sham.
Wow, that’s really comprehensive
great article. Thanks for the analysis
I met a friend at the weekend who had upped his tranquilisers due to government induced stress (he is being transferred from one benefit to another).
He has a physical health condition that causes him chronic pain and takes pain killers for that.
I wonder whether the benzos are contributing to his pain levels and general bad health?
Apart from that this article just confirms to me that psychiatry needs to end. It is the drug delivery agent for Big Pharma and it tries to make sure no one thinks about why someone is distressed.
Those pesky drug companies, I dunno, it’s enough to get you questioning deregulated free market capitalism!
Old news, good to see it in a mainstream journal though
I knew someone who had a diagnosis of bipolar who had ECT in the past and who was on lithium, an antidepressant, a daytime benzo and sleeping pills.
She had Chronic Fatigue and also had fallen over several times and walked with a frame to prevent further falls. No one linked the falls to the benzo’s or other drugs.
She thought all this was fine until her kidneys started to fail. Even then she was convinced that her decades without a manic episode was due to all the drugs she was taking when it was probably because she had divorced her appalling husband sometime after the original manic episode.
Thanks for the links, I found The Benzodiazepine Medical Disaster to be a great film. https://vimeo.com/188181193
interesting point.
I was about to type, “Patient,” in a post above but your post prompted me to reconsider. Instead I used the word, “Detainee.”
I know a women who was sectioned, tried to escape and was threatened with Electroshock to keep her quiet and was told, “It happens all the time you know.” So it was used as bullying by staff to keep a detainee quiet.
Great article. If only there was an effective movement using direct action to make use of it.
I think availability of methods to commit suicide are an important factor in reducing the incidence. The availability of certain drugs and of firearms are two things to consider on both a societal and household level.
I can’t find information on where restricting which drugs are sold over the counter by country related to suicide rate but it would be interesting to investigate. I have not looked up how the availability of guns is correlated to suicide rate either but as the gun violence rate is related to availability of guns I suspect suicide rates are also related.
I had a nightmare lastnight in which I thought people were in my room trying to abduct me. I tried, and may have succeeded in shouting out, “HELP.”
I hope I didn’t disturb the neighbours.
I think one of the triggers was reading the comments on this article. It bought home to me the trauma of forced hospitalisation.
I have often sat with people who are psychiatric patients and within an hour they will tell me about thier truamatic histories. I ask them if the services know about this and they say no. I ask them how long they have been in services and they say 10 – 20 – 30 years. I ask why they do not tell the services and they say in so many words they do not trust them and they are not worth telling.
So I completly agree with you about how service users so often see staff, and quite rightly so in my opinion, as untrustworthy
My step mum is a sick in the head drunk.
I’m pretty mad at her (though in one of those confused, I’m sorry for her, she had a hard life, I don’t want to make her life worse, how much did I deserve all her abusive comments and being the victim of her soap opera of a life, way).
Does she have a disease? Only in a metaphorical way:
O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.
William Blake – Sick Rose – init?
“Silence equals death; psychiatry kills” Nice slogan.
Sami Timimi and two people who were diagnosed with autism, but who later de diagnosed themselves wrote a book called The Myth of Autism: medicalising men and boys sociall and emotional competance https://he.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-myth-of-autism-sami-timimi/?sf1=barcode&st1=9780230545267
They also wrote a paper for the BMJ saying autism is not a scientifically valid or clinically useful diagnosis http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/03/autism-not-scientifically-valid-or-clinically-useful-diagnosis
Timimi is a child and adolescent psychiatrist who has published on Mad in America. Timimi, Cabe and Gardener write that people’s individual experiences and those of them around them need to be taken into account when offering help and that a diagnosis of autism is a distraction from that. I believe there arguent is also that late capitalism demands people who have good customer service skills and those are often more feminine ways of being. Therefore boys behaviour, which in previous generations would have been fine in the workplace, are now medicalised.
Interesting argument, I like it, many will take issue with it.
OMG – I just watched the vid. Horror movie meets early public health HIV AIDS add.
AUTISM = DEATH
AUTISM IS THE CREEPY MONSTER OF YOUR DREAMS.
If this is what Autism and Mental Health Awarness Month is about I wanna see that blockbuster movie now. Gotta be better than the last X-men movie.
Did they really raise huge ammounts of money and say they were supporting people with autism? Surely they are a front for some wild neo-fascist, kill all people with learning disabilities, fringe group?
Or am I wrong?
My guess is that this is psychiatry trying to counter the critics it is having and criticing the study for sloppy science is a way of fighting that.
Neurodiversity is an interesting social movement however I have yet to see any data to back up the theory. If you have any please share.
I do however think that people with different personalities should not be give medical labels or offered medical treatment.
This isn’t medcine, this is mass poisoning of children and young people.
“……….a cocktail of antidepressants, antipsychotics, and benzodiazepines at age 13…….”
How common is this?
At this point I ask why not add a horse tranquiliser?
These people, these so called doctors, are but legalised drug pushers.
I have a less jaudiced view of therapy and counselling though I have also experienced harmful practices too. I think that good practice is found inside and outside the mental health system and while there are varied prctices it has some simple principles shared by many other disciplines. I think these principles are:
1 caring for someone
2 trying to understand someone
3 offering encouragement
I think they are also found in community work, self help groups and from good freinds as well as other places.
Peter Breggin asked his clients what it was that he did that helped and they said he cared for them until they felt they could care for themselves. That doesn’t sound like a value that is only held by therapists or counsellors, it is how we often act towards friends who are in distress such as when they are grieving after the death of someone close. Bad therapy is where the thearpist thinks they know what is best for you and that sounds like what you have experienced from the metal health system.
Dorothy Rowe, writer and retired thearpist, was once part of a debating team that proposed the motins that Thearpy has caused more harm than good, and Jeffrey Masson wrote a book called Against Therapy, so I suspect you will have many supporters in your views. It is a debate that I think is well worth having though.
Thanks for telling us about your experience of the Sunrise Centre and of cults in general.
I have a freind who is a cult survivor, mainly of religious and New Age cults. They damaged her quite considerably both emotionaly and finacially.
I agree that one sucees story is not sufficient evidence of effectivness. I also agree that no programem should say, “You have to keep coming back.” Effective help, of any kind, leaves people feeling better and should be open to someone coming back if they want to and eventually they should leave the person moving on and not needing the programme.
Often cults will offer something that is helpful, such as the calming down found in meditation and other religious and New Age practices, or the expression of emotion and telling of ones story to someone who listens, as found in therapy cults. Often this then ceases to help and the cult blames the person for not trying hard enough or doing the practice sufficiently. I do not think RC blames people if it does not work as they tend to be at the happy clappy end of cult behaviour, but they do stress that people should keep on with the practice of RC and stress, “Discharge,” ie expressing hurt emotions, as a route to cure. Expressing hurt emotions (having a good cry, shouting at the TV when Trump says something idiotic etc etc) is something we all do and often we feel better afterwards but it not the only thing that helps us deal with difficult situations and neither is encouraging someone to express emotion the only thing we do when trying to help someone in distress, though sitting with someone in distress and offering comfort is part of what we might do when appropriate.
So expressing distressing emotion to someone who is listening is the hook RC has that pulls people in and it can be useful at times for some people. The push to keep repeating it as the cure, the waccy practices and the exagerated believes are the rubbish that goes along with it are what I see as the dangerous part of RC. RC people often say that groups that have progressed in society, such as women, have done so due to discharging distress and this has allowed them to achieve things. This is partly coopting consciosness raising practices which both the women’s liberation movement, the LGBT liberation movement and Paolo Friere’s work with landless peasants in Brazil stressed but is also rubbish. Women got the vote due to effective political organising and yes people may have had a good old rant and a cry when doing this but it wasn’t the only way political solidarity emerged. Political groups that engage in consciousness raising then go onto put together practical programmes such as founding LGBT phonelines, women organising pregnancy testing centres, peasants setting up trade unions or health centres. RC’ers just do more counselling. Whether their personal lives are better is a moot point and open to debate and personal annecdote but it isn’t changing the world.
I gained from some of my time with them, I learnt some listening skills I also cringed at some of what I experienced, and am unlikely to engage with them agian. I don’t think they did me serious harm though I have seen some RC’ers with fixed grins that are just creepy.
I am also concerned that the founder, Harvey Jackins, who is now dead, was accused of rape and sexual assault by a number of his women clients, and that the organisation had no proper investigation or democratic structure to deal with such complaints. Tim Jackins, his son, now runs the organisation. While not everyone involved in RC may know of this scandal I would be very suspicious of anyone who did know who continued to be involved.
thanks for clearing that up.
I didn’t read the first two paragraphes clearly enough. I apologise.
However I share your concerns that current chair of the ISPS executive committee should contribute to such an article.
I looked up ISPS – the International Society for Psychologial and Social approaches to Psychosis.
There websites states, “ISPS is an international organization promoting psychotherapy and psychological treatments for persons with psychosis (a term which includes persons diagnosed with “schizophrenia”).”
Having found out what the organisation is I am left wondering what this crock of drug poisoning shit that the article you review was published in thier journal? It sounds more like drug company marketing blurb than anything to do with psychological or social approachs to helping people in distress.
well that was interesting. Moral of story: don’t try dating when traquilised as no one likes an responsive robot.
I expect there will be no replies from the author to what I am raising as there were no replies to the previos article on the Sunrise Centre that also raised concerns about RC.
I knew a good worker who was part of a very small group that did theatre based consultancy to help service users get more of what they wante (we put on plays about how bad psychiatry is, they watched and then discussed them. The service users grew in confidence and supported each other better as a result). I wrote a stinking letter about her employer to the local paper explaining how badly a freind was being treated. She resigned as she felt personally attacked.
You can’t run with the hare and the houds, as Dr Ragins is finding out.
thanks Richard.
I think you can learn a lot from RC, specifically how to improve you ability to listen to people and how to sit with people in distress in a useful way but I also think there is a whole wierd philosophy and ways of working that risk being open to not being scrutinsed, are hierachical and open to abuse.
I really want programmes for people who want support in coming of psychiatric drugs. I especially want to see them run by people who are actively criticising psychiatry. I think group work is important. I think there are many models for learning and practicing those skills. RC is one I have reservations about.
I agree.
I like the UK psychiatrists statement that psychiatric diagnsosis is potentially damanging and that there are already alternatives such as psychological formulation. Which sounds a bit like gobblebegook until you realise that psychological formulation means asking someone what thier problems is, what might have caused it and what might help? Which is no more than most of us can do most of the time.
thanks for the correction.
My argument still stands though
I like the sound of the centre and it’s mission to help people come off psychiatric drugs. I do think that services such as these are essential for this movement to flourish. However I am suspicious of Re-evaluation Counseling. I am all in favour of effective self help therapy and other methods but Harvey Jackins, the founder of Re-evaluation Counseling was a sex pest and the techniques of Re-evaluation Counseling lend themselves to wierd and waccy methods. I wish the author good luck but I would love to hear user expereinces of this project.
While the old concerns about Re-evaluation Counseling may not be relevant to this organisation they do concern me sufficiently to post an old Mind Freedom article about it, in which they call it a cult http://old.freedomofmind.com/Info/infoDet.php?id=450
I’d appreciate it if Robert Whittiker could comment on the studies D S Goel, MD mentions as he seems to have the best grasp of such things.
Annecdotaly I know a family who want thier adult son medicated with clozapine and he wants to come off it. He tells me of all the things that drive him mad. He tells me the services know nothing of these things. Same old story I’ve heard many time from other people. He is applying to the Open Dialogue programme in London where he hopes his traumas will be taken seriously and the drugs will be prescribed in a way that takes his wishes into account, which is what seems to be happening on these new Norwiegian wards.
I went to the London conference on Open Dialogue. It was a very friendly affair.
I spoke to all sorts of people including a nurse who had trained in Open Dialogue and was doing that work three days a week. He liked his doing the work. He also did two days doing other work, which is what the majority of his colleagues does, and he hates it.
He found out I was from Reading. He said the person who was his best man at his wedding was there, in Prospect Park Hospital, the local psychiatric hospital. He knows how inadaquate, damaging and bad his friends treatment is and is powerless to do anything, though he talks to his freind on the phone and internet quite often (his friend does not want to see him face to face often as it reminds him of the life he has lost).
I wonder if Dr Ragins has any advice to that might be of any solace to the nurse who has for three days a week found a way of helping people in distress that uses few drugs and on the whole is democratic but for the rest of the week has to give out drugs, fill in forms and on the whole ignore people, some of whom are forced to be on wards where they do not want to be? Leave his job? Go part time on the Open Dialogue work and get a part time job on to compensate the loss of earnings? Found a militant anti-psychiatry campaign? Start using the drugs to slow some of his psychiatrist colleagues down?
We are all but customers now. Customers to be sold expensive crap by sales people (or Dr’s as we used to call them)
I think a lot of good workers leave due to frustration and being ground down.
I think the essential skills on top of those of being caring and understanding of clients are those of being a community worker, trade union activist and political activist. At the very low level of being caring to clients those skills maybe needed if the dehumanising effect of working for psychiatric services are to b countered.
Consider when the author says, “focus on building protective factors (e.g. safe housing, money for necessities and emergencies..” and then consider what that means in the age of Trump? Housing shortages and homelessness with low wages and precarious work patterns mean safe housing and money for necessities and emergencies are not avaialable for a lot of poeple and poverty is the biggest risk factor for getting a diagnosis for mental illness.
Being a part of fighting back against what I shall call the stinking rich is an essential part of being a good worker who supports those who are mentally distressed.
Or publishing articles like this.
Resignation is often a weak tactic. People are merely politly ignored while those in power carry on.
“Specifically, mental disorder is a biological disturbance of brain function, presumed to be at the level of neurotransmitters and caused by genetic disorders. Thus, the treatment of all mental disorder, as a physical disorder of the brain, is necessarily physical in nature: chemicals to correct a chemical imbalance, you could say, or if that fails, electrical currents to induce seizures, implanted electrodes, powerful magnetic fields, hyperthermia and, in the extreme, neurosurgery to disconnect parts of the brain.
This is the standard view of psychiatry as it is taught in all medical schools in the world and adopted by all major professional psychiatric bodies throughout the world.”
And that has to change.
“The only appropriate training is to have lived it yourself (psychosis) but good luck if you lived it yourself getting certified by the deeply entrenched education mafia as being qualified.”
I think there are records and personal experiences of people being helped by those who have not been through the kind of distress that gets labelled as psychosis. However I recently went to a conference on Peer Supported Open Dialogue where it was said that the peer supporters, who were trained and integral parts of the teams, often said the most helpful things to the clients as they had indeed been through it themselves. I suspect there position of training people who have been through psychosis and of employing them as equals is unusual. It does give me hope though.
As a gay men I find the company of other supportive gay men means a lot more to me than anyone else, no matter how much they try to understand, but I wouldn’t completely right off non gay people when they offer support to me. I think it is likely to be the same for madness
When I was involved in anti-psychiatry campaigning, and not just posting comments on websites, I ended up thinking we needed to create some alternative services. These being:
1 advocacy for people trapped by psychiatry, especiallly those forced to take drugs they didn’t want
2 support services such as counselling and psychiatry free open dialogue type help
3 drug reduction and withdrawal services
I thought that doing that and publisising them as necersarry because psychiatry was harmful would make a powerful statement. I also found the quite a few people in the organisation I was working with were in need of these services. They were prone to crisis and forced to take damaging drugs by services.
I have a concern about the first sentence of the article:
“By law people can now be forced to take medication once they’ve been discharged and are living back in the community, if they have had several hospital admissions for psychosis.”
I think this refers to community treatment orders. I think the law is slightly more complicated than that. You maybe discharged with a conditions. One condition might be that you take the drugs. You might decide to not follow the conditions. The mind website has the following if you decide not to follow the conditions of a CTO:
“What happens if I don’t follow the conditions?
If you don’t follow the conditions, your responsible clinician may:
change the conditions or the support you receive if there is a problem with them, or
return you to hospital
You cannot be recalled just because you don’t agree to medical treatment. As long as you have capacity to consent to treatment, you can only be given treatment if you consent to it. But there are different rules if you are recalled to hospital or do not have capacity. (See our page on recall to hospital to find out more.)”
http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/community-treatment-orders-ctos/conditions#.WNQ83vnyg1N
The page on recall to hospital says:
“When can I be recalled to hospital?
You can be recalled to any hospital if your responsible clinician thinks that:
you need medical treatment in hospital for your mental disorder, and
there would be risk of harm to your health or safety or to others if you are not recalled
You can only be recalled if you meet both criteria. For example, you cannot be recalled just because you stop taking your medication. But if you stop taking your medication, and your responsible clinician thinks that you will get unwell, they can recall you.”
http://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/legal-rights/community-treatment-orders-ctos/recall-to-hospital/#.WNQ-M_nyg1M
So if I am right then the law is slightly more complex and subtle, though still bad, than the article says.
I have little experience around this and there will be people who know more than me. I would however advise talking to an advocate if you are on a CTO and want to come off or reduce medication. Please do not just accept what the Dr’s say and give up.
“He felt treated like a second class citizen by most of the mental health staff he had come across.”
He was.
I encourage the author to try to get this published widely.
People need to know how dangerous these drugs are.
If only the psych survivor movement were as kick ass as ACTUP there would be mass invasions of the FDA and such like.
Darlin, I eat a mainly fruit and veg diet and have done for years. I’m more of a going to bed for years at a time guy than an ADHD one.
One Australian study – how big? How well designed? How big an effect? And was it measured against poverty or other factors.
well that’s what I believe but I’m open to other opinions. I haven’t read the authors other blogs for a while and might take another look at them.
Mabye I will enrole on thier free course? http://education.madinamerica.com/p/nutrition-mental-health
most of this I agree with however it says that for a minority of distressed people have brain disorders and are mentally ill. I know of no evidence for that.
Great piece that basically says psychiatry is a fraud
I agree with your statement as the story seemed to have little proof to link between nutritional suppliments and behaviour.
The way I read it the improvement came when the drugs were carefully withdrawn, which was at the same time as the micronutrients were added to his diet. So it is impossible to know what was more important.
I think nutrition is worth investigating but this story as I read it has no evicence that shows any effect. At the very least nutrients will do a whole lot less harm than drugs though.
As far as I know the story on what to eat is pretty simple: eat a varied diet, mainly plant based, don’t over do the refined sugar or fats. There is some evidence that some people do better with dietry suplimentation but maybe that reflects the poor nature of people’s diets with cheap fat and sugar being at the core of so many people’s eating habits these days? To my mind that is probably about the influence of Big Agribusiness and the food industry and supermarkets.
I think behaviour that gets labelled ADHD has a whole host of causes. Some children have a lot of challanges. Some don’t fit in with school. Some children, especially boys, can be difficult to parent, or a right handful, as we say in the UK, but they then calm down as they grow up. That may have happened here and to my mind is just as convincing on the evidence given as any micronutrient theory.
I like the altrnative to drugs aspect of the piece but I also find the publishing of trade marked product a bit worrying. There are other blogs about diet on this site that I find more convincing.
I’m glad that they boy is doing well and has escaped the dead hand of psychaitry.
It could be that just withdrawing your son from all the drugs and a bit of additional attention was what helped.
Or it could be the nutrients. I would want more evidence to say it was.
Either way the drug companies are making a killing.
I’m not sure what your point is Rossa. From what I can understand some people want gender free pronouns. Proff Peterson does not like that. It sounds like the gender free people are promoting freedom of speach and the Proff thinks it has gone too far. None of that debate seems to me to be about, “the regressive-left currently engages in social control by trying to shut all free speech and engage in thought-control through authoritarian political means.” It sounds more like politics as normal. It might be irritating if you are on either side of the debate but hardly authoritarian as there are few sanctions in place for what to me seems a quite mile demand – that people be called what they want to be called.
I somehow think this vid is relevant. It is called: George Monbiot on Neoliberalism: “A self-serving racket.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuMntvVwwWM
eek – at least in the UK Dr’s are free – at the moment
I think that depends on how you define self help. All those books repeat themselves endlessly and offer trite advice as if they were pearls of wisdom.
A book giving basic advice on how to withdraw from psyche drugs in a safe a manner as possible published under the name of Pschiatric Survivor Press would be something else.
I think community workers are also worth reaching out to so I add them to the list that Phil has generated as potential allies. They often have contact with distressed people and see the outcome of people taking psyche drugs or being in contact with psychiatry. The alternatives of social support are natural to them.
I think the development of alternatives (counselling, therapy, Open Dialogue type work, sancturies, drug withdrawel services and advocacy groups) under anti-psychiatry names are something I would like to see. So often these services are seen as complimentary to psychiatry but organising them and saying we are providing them because psychaitry is damaging would be powerful statement. One of the most powerful things the Black Panthers did was provide breakfast for children in schools. A breakfast club is not radical, one done under that name was. A self help group for people who are distressed is not a powerful symbol, one done under the name of Speak Out Against Psychiatry would be.
Same as the rest of his appointees then. Big business stooges one and all https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/30/donald-trump-george-monbiot-misinformation
Eek, and I thought we had reached peak benzo idiocy a few decades ago.
Guess not, esp judging from all those dead celebraties who died on prescription drugs (Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger, Amy Winehouse…..)
http://www.drugrehabadvisor.com/drug-rehab-advisor/benzodiazepines-anti-anxiety-meds-killing-celebrities/
At least this discussion bought the revolutionaries out, though I am a bit of a lazy anarchist these days….
I think, though I have not checked, that more women and up psychiatrised then men and more boys than girls.
Women have less power than men and might therefore be more likely to be distressed but boys behaviour is less likely to fit into job roles these days.
Well that’s the theory. I’m not too attached to it, but I find it interesting
I think you have been very lucky when you decided to be open about your expereinces of psychiatric oppression. While I think that this can sometimes be the way oppression ends, though it is only one tactic, I also think that people often need support in order to do it.
There are risks to being open about a history of psychiatric abuse, sometimes serious risks. Risks of loosing a job for example and this can have serious economic consequences.
Rather than urging people to be out I would urge people to consider the consequences and do so if they think it useful and a risk worth taking but not if they think it isn’t. I would also encourage people to take part in and set up of supportive institutions, such as the Hearing Voices Network, or preferably more radical organisations, that can give support to those who want to take this step. Jaqui Dillon is a member of the Hearing Voices Network and very out about her psychiatric survivor history. She has a lot of support and I suspect a lot of her income is from self employment.
I do not think this is a tactic for everyone. I think that the LGBT liberation movement was quite strong with many other tactics, including direct action, when it adopted coming out as a strategy where as the psychiatric survivor movement seems fairly weak at the moment.
I think it is more complicated. I think labour, and specifically trade unions, have not adapted to the new conditions.
For example I know a teacher who was bullied at work. Bullying of teachers is now endemic in the UK due to the constant monitoring of pupils and teachers and the league tables and comptetion between schools which has turned many heads into petty tyrants. Meanwhile unions reps are distant. They will help you in your harrasement case against the boss but they don’t bring teachers together to talk over what it is like being a teacher now and encourage them to support each other in resisting the petty beurocracy. My freind went off work with stress and gets prescribed drugs, luckily not anti-depressants as they make her ill, but beta blockers to deal with her racing heart.
I think labour lost in the 70’s. Work becomes more stressful, as did the rest of life. Unions and other labour organisations have not regrouped and come up with new strategies and inequality got ever worse.
Paolo Friere outlined a way of working that involved getting marginlised groups together to ask the three basic questions:
1 what is life like round here?
2 how do you feel about that?
3 what shall we do about it?
Although more broad strategies are also needed I think that to regroup trade unions and other left groups need to do a lot of the kind of work that Friere outlined. Without that basic work when people feel distressed they fall into the hands of psychiatry and psyche drug prescribing GP’s.
I can see how anti-stigma campaigns do fall into the analysis that you wrote in your blog. The anti-stigama campaigns say it is OK to be distressed, just go to the GP. The GP prescribes drugs and maybe six weeks CBT when what you realy need is solidarity at work and a better place to live with lower rents. Sp the anti-stigma campaigns may help stop the distress turning into organised rebellion.
I find it interesting that shortly before this blog was published another was published about Open Dialogue and social justice where Friere’s name was used. But then mental distress is so often the outcome of the abuse of power https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/03/aliveness-social-justice-principles-practice-open-dialogue/
Sorry my reply is terse. I feel you deserve a fuller response than the one I have given but I hope my meanings are clear.
“dialogic, relational and peer approach are the most democratic and non-violating ways I have found to respond.”
Who is to pay for these?
Either people campaign for the state to pay or money is found for independant groups to provide.
Current power structures want drugging and incarceration as it makes money for the rich.
Have you got the figures on that?
I generally trust Timimi but I have not checked on that. Though I maybe remembering what he wrote wrongly. He writes on ADHD and Austism, which I believe diagnosis which are disproportionately given to boys.
I tried to look it up and found more behaviour disorders amongst boys but found the rest of the article hard to interpret https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2807642/
I find this quote interesting: “Capitalism needs psychiatry to impose social control because it fears working-class revolt. The greater the threat, the greater the need for repression.”
Bio-psychiatry and mass drugging took off after Reagan and Thatcher were elected. Market regulation was reduced, state assets sold off, unions systematically reduced in power.
There was a battle between capital and labour in the 1970’s and labour lost. So bio-psychiatry rose as the corporations had more power but under this analysis maybe more psychiatry is needed by capital to keep the working class from rebelling against the sale of state, ie shared, assests, cutting of benefits and growing inequality?
That point, about the job readiness thing, is elucidated by Sami Timimi in The Myth of Autism. He writes that it is boys who get dispropportiontely more psychiatric diagnosis than girls as boys traditional behaviour does not fit in with the current job market of late capitalism. A lot of jobs these days are service sector: call centres and sales for example. The job role requires people to form quick relationships. These are typically seen as feminine attributes so noisy and naughty boys are given diagnosis of ADHD and obsessive ones, which in the UK we might call Train Spotters, are given the diagnosis of Autism.
https://he.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-myth-of-autism-sami-timimi/?sf1=barcode&st1=9780230545267
I think all of those are well worth investigating.
Are you saying that the state uses psychiatry to keep dissent under control?
If so I can only agree though I also think those harmed by abuses of power, those who are distressed, are detained, druged and the causes of thier distress ignored. It has always been like that as long as psychiatry has existed.
Thanks for the book list.
They all sound very interesting.
You wrote, “the regressive-left currently engages in social control by trying to shut all free speech and engage in thought-control through authoritarian political means.”
Could you give some examples of this?
When I think of, “authoritarian political means,” I think of military dictatorships locking people up without trail or, “Dissapearing,” people or of torture. While many consider what happened at Gauntanomo, or indeed in USA prisons where solitary confinement is frequently used, as torture I somehow think this is not the sort of thing you are on about.
So could you please explain your terms?
Regards John Hoggett
Or they gave up adn went home for tea thinking there were more important things to do.
I do not think you have prooved anything.
You have a theory that, “schizophrenia can be caused by the central nervous system and the chemistry with the firing of nerves to and from the brain.”
Until you offer some proof, preferably from peer reviewed journals, you have prooved nothing.
Proof would be observations of those phenonema in those who have a diagnosis of schizophrenia and those without. You have not offered any studies on that. Therefore you have prooved nothing.
You have a theory that is no more scientifically valid that that of demonic posession.
I disagree with this statement, ” For many people there is a biological component to the mental health challenges that are experienced.”
I do not think I am not an utter fool.
I maybe misguided or lacking information. If you have any information that says, “For many people there is a biological component to the mental health challenges that are experienced,” Please post here so I learn something.
If not please apologise for calling people with different viewpoints form you utter fools.
I am interested that you site Paolo Friere. I have recently been reading some training manuals based on Friere’s work and noticed how often the word, “Dialogue,” was used. I thought there was a connection to the work done by Open Dialogue practitioners so it is intersting to see you making that link.
Dat’s Capitalism!
Kerchung
All the way to the bank
Pretty damning of any campaigns to promote psychiatry then.
Eek, your neighbours are not getting invited to any gay party I host anytime soon.
Screening + Big Pharma promotion init?
Torrey Fuller of the Treatment Advocacy Centre pushed this theory so it is good to see it debunked along with corrlating mental distress to poverty, overcrowding and other social factors.
And nothing will change until poeple start invading chemists to hang banners.
Or similar actions
Oh dear, what now?
Letters to the popular press?
A small protest outside the journals offices to get on the national tv news?
Something to undermine the credibility of the journal with the public and GP’s is surely called for.
mindfulness can also make some people worse
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/jan/23/is-mindfulness-making-us-ill
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-science-behind-behavior/201604/the-little-known-downsides-mindfulness-practice
that doesn’t sound too different from my local day centre.
I just looked up The Mighty and from the one article I looked at it’s mental health coverage does indeed look like Big Pharma propaganda.
https://themighty.com/2017/02/best-tips-for-seeing-psychiatrist/
Hopefully that will include psychiatry survivors in the general anti-trump movement
I think the job description angle is really interesting. If we wrote one out for a state president and then compared it to Trump where would he fall down? You have listed some ways. Just writing those up in a public blog or article would be a good exercise in itself and also challenge the psychiatric diagnosis angle.
I am not familiar with the USA situation but here in the UK over the last 35 or so years the unions have been systematically weakened, work has gone abroad due to globalization, tech has reduced skilled work resulting in lots of low paid jobs, some high paid jobs and few medium paid jobs of skilled working class and lower middle class jobs, there has been a bubble in property prices and a reduction in what people have to spend on other things apart from rent and mortgages.
So we have a weak working class and progressive middle class all whom have lost out economically. That makes scapegoating easy. A strong working class tends to stick together and not blame immigrants, the mad, people of colour, people of non Christian religions, women etc etc.
Rebuilding working class solidarity and institutions is an important part of what needs to be done, but it is slow, longterm work.
Hurrah for this article. I posted on my facebook page this:
“Saying Trump is mentally ill gives service users a bad name.
He is a very greedy, power crazed, nasty man. I don’t need any fake medical language to tell me that.”
Psychiatric diagnosis lack validity but some people like having a diagnosis.
I quite like that so many have signed the petition or that professionals are saying he is mad as it shows widespread opposition to Trump but it also colludes with psychiatry.
Why he got in is worth looking at. Of course people liked his nasty side but also the working class are weak and disorganized. If they were organised and strong they would likely see what he was promising were lies and he would not have got into power.
Eek – this is full of horror stories of bad employment practice, poor workers rights and an economy based on debt designed to discipline the working class and enrich the 1%.
“……a clinical director of a mental health clinic and monstrously abusive …….. to his clients.”
“The director of the Mental Health Division…. fear of his well-known rage attacks.”
“We are an at-will employer which means we can dismiss you at will without explanation.”
“I’m still living in poverty despite my hard-earned education. I will work until my dying day paying for my education at minimum wage”
Lets just take a few seconds to remember that poverty is one of the biggest causes of mental distress (which then gets labelled as mental illness).
Lets then remember that Trump wants to cut, “Red Tape,” and regulation, and that will include workers rights.
Lets remember that inequality goes along with high rates of, “mental illness.”
Lets remember that inequality goes with low union membership which is pretty obvious as when you weaken the power of the working class the rich will just make sure they get even richer at everybody else expense.
Maybe it’s time to get a little angry?
Wow, what a load of big words to say:
1 calm down
2 think things over
3 try to talk to someone about things
4 do things differently if you can face that
The way it is presented is making helping people an even more professional, experts only activity. Not a way to go I am in favour of. Also, miserable adolescents get miserable for reasons. They have hard lives and need help in dealing with that.
Never mind, just bung a bit of psudoscience at em and say they have sick minds and then we don’t have to think about all that.
Still, it;s better than drugging them up with suicide inducing, penis numbing, prozac.
Hey ho
I just skimmed this article and will read in depth later.
This film sounds appalling, sensationalist, tosh.
Thanks for the warning.
So when are the protests in chemists, Dr’s surgeries and schools going to start.
This is enough with the journalism. Time to take the kid gloves off and organise
LOL
they are also effecting birds near sewage plants https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/21/prozac-may-be-harming-bird-populations-study-suggests
“Encourage appropriate professional help:” run, run for the hills. Especially if anyone suggests seeing a psychiatrist
well that’s this research money down the drain then https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/media/2014/brain-initiative-as-moonshot.shtml
As John Reid said about brain related mental health research, when it proves nothing: “Can we have the money back?”
these drugs are given out like smarties to elderly confused people round here.
is it not obvious that giving a tranquilizer to someone with COPD is not sensible?
This sounds like a case for diagnosis creep with ever widening criteria for depression.
Depression is not melancholia or lethargy or sadness or feeling unhappy.
Depression is feeling totally cut off from everything.
It is self hatred and total isolation.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/the-escape-from-depression-the-secrets-of-happiness-part-3-1344908.html
I think it is a pity you are passing on a chance to see Ms Wax.
A few disruptive questions, hisses and boos from the audience would liven up this turgid show.
A banner saying DRUG PUSHER in the lobby of the venue would make look fab in the local press.
Years ago I read an autobiography by Wax. In it she portrayed her parents as horrid.
That was before she trained as a clinical psychologist and got the mental health bug.
This is what she said in a Guardian interview:
“Fans of Wax will be familiar with her parents. From her earliest days as a comic, they were great source material. Her Jewish parents had fled Austria and Hitler and found safety in the US – her dad became a wealthy sausage manufacturer, her mother a depressive beauty with a fine brain (she spoke nine languages) and a frigid soul. That’s the way she told it, anyway. Her act was fuelled by anger at the parents who dismissed their only child as an ungainly loser.
Wax tells me a story about when the family dog died to illustrate her relationship with her mother. “I was away at school and she went and got a replica of the dog. He was 150 in dog years when he died and when I came home there was a puppy. She didn’t mention he died.”
She sounds a nightmare, I say. “She is a nightmare. Yep.” Wax pauses.”No. Not a nightmare any more. She’s sweet now.” Is she senile? “Senile, yeah.” Wax says that her mother barely recognises her when she visits.”
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2002/mar/25/broadcasting.comment
Here is an interview with Wax on Dutch tv about her parents. Having watched it, why does she or anyone need any genetic explanation for Ms Wax’s depression? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SUmVjG_UWY
Depression can be seen as a belief in the just world fallacy ie that good things happen to good people and that bad things happen to bad people. It is a pity that Wax does not mention this, and how her family history has effected her, in her talks on mental health.
However her talks to confirm that psychiatry has two main functions:
1 to be the drug delivery agent of big pharma
2 to make sure no one asks why someone is distressed
it could be that some people recover from psyche drugs and some don’t.
People who have had strokes sometimes totally recover. Some get some functioning back and some very little.
There probably needs to be more research on this to find out how often people recover.
indeed
how can the cash cows justify themselves otherwise?
this is really interesting. There are short and long NICE guidelines. We were made to look at them for a peer support course I went on.
Not only are the diagnostic categories scientifically invalid but psychologists ignore the guidlines do what they think works best.
NICE guidelines have taken huge amounts of money to produce and distribute. Even without psychologists doing what they think is best, which is really what they prefer and have had some training in, people generally do not get what the guidelines say they should, they get whatever their local trust and psychiatrist is doling out and can afford that month.
It’s all a bureaucratic sham.
Wow, that’s really comprehensive
great article. Thanks for the analysis
I met a friend at the weekend who had upped his tranquilisers due to government induced stress (he is being transferred from one benefit to another).
He has a physical health condition that causes him chronic pain and takes pain killers for that.
I wonder whether the benzos are contributing to his pain levels and general bad health?
Apart from that this article just confirms to me that psychiatry needs to end. It is the drug delivery agent for Big Pharma and it tries to make sure no one thinks about why someone is distressed.
This may have happened to UK soldiers too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-36361374
Those pesky drug companies, I dunno, it’s enough to get you questioning deregulated free market capitalism!
Old news, good to see it in a mainstream journal though
I knew someone who had a diagnosis of bipolar who had ECT in the past and who was on lithium, an antidepressant, a daytime benzo and sleeping pills.
She had Chronic Fatigue and also had fallen over several times and walked with a frame to prevent further falls. No one linked the falls to the benzo’s or other drugs.
She thought all this was fine until her kidneys started to fail. Even then she was convinced that her decades without a manic episode was due to all the drugs she was taking when it was probably because she had divorced her appalling husband sometime after the original manic episode.
Thanks for the links, I found The Benzodiazepine Medical Disaster to be a great film. https://vimeo.com/188181193