Some them might not know yet why we don’t want to take these drugs. The vast majority of the people I know had never heard of the side effects untl I told them about them, and it seems most people have been thoroughly brainwashed to think that the only reason we don’t take these drugs is because we don’t have insight. But as I am discovering more and more unfortunately, many people still want to force us to take these horrible meds even when they know about the side efects as you can read about in this thread….
I do take too much for granted. It never occurred to me that people wouldn’t have access to the internet and email. Sorry about that.
You are very brave to be a psychiatric survivor and work at any kind of hospital, but especially at a mental hospital. I have such a ptsd reaction to the psychiatric industry that I won’t even visit sick relatives at the hospital. If I can at all help it, I don’t plan on ever stepping foot inside any hospital or emergency room ever again for the rest of my life.
“Only because we think they are not fit to make up their own minds.”
It’s the same rationale they use for forced drugging.
It’s discrimination, plain and simple, but they cloak it in euphemisms.
How are they reading this then?
If everyone reading this would email their elected officials and the ACLU, it would be a huge step in the right direction.
And whenever I hear or read comments from people advocating medications for the mentally ill I always make a point of informing them about the horrible side effects of the psych meds. I make it clear that main reason people stop taking their meds is because they make them feel horrible, not because they lack insight. I run into a lot of people who have been skillfully taught by the government and the media that the only reason we stop taking the meds is because we lack insight.
That there is nothing that they “don’t understand” about the side effects and the human rights abuses is a chilling thought.
I am so used to being called a “consumer” by them that I don’t know how else to refer to myself, but I put it in quotes because I am not comfortable with it.
I emailed both senators, and they sent a form letter email in response that said nothing of any significance,, and my guess is that they will still approve her, but at least I tried.
And yes, always put it in your own words, be nice and courteous.
If every mental health “consumer” would do this, maybe they would have to listen to us.
I also write emails about how I think AOT is unconstitutional to the ACLU. Everyone, take some time and write a nice, courteous letter to ACLU about this. Let them know how you feel about it.
There have been so many people screwed over by the mental health system that if we would stop fighting each other and unite into one politically active organization we might get something accomplished.
I noticed that even my therapist at the s.m.i. clinic I attended kept insisting that the neuroleptic drugs were to re-balance my brain chemistry. And get this… she didn’t even have her master’s degree yet in counseling psychology. All she had was a bachelor’s degree in a non-scientific field of study: English. And here she was telling me about my brain chemistry.
“If you receive a liver transplant, you are still there; but if you receive a brain transplant, you are gone.”
I love that quote.
Neuroleptics damage the part of our body that makes us who we are as a person.
I now stay as far away from psychiatry as possible.
Thank you for all you have done for us.
We have a local “crisis” phone number, and their web page says things like they can send someone to meet us wherever we are at and get us somewhere safe. It sounds wonderful. What it really means is that if you call them, they will send out the f’ing cops to your house to arrest you and take you to a psych ward. But most people don’t realize it until it is too late to stop what comes next… forced drugging.
I used to think they were ignorant about the side effects and withdrawal symptoms, but now I think they know all too well about them, and keep it a secret from us, because they don’t care about our physical health, and because they know the withdrawal symptoms will make most of us crawl back to them and ask for more “help” from them, and get back on our meds. The side effects can be used to tell us our mental illness is getting worse, so we need more meds to deal with more symptoms.
I agree with you about them not being drawn at random from parent-based support organizations. They’re the main ones who get us on forced drugging to begin with.
This is why there needs to be a Psychiatric Miranda Warning. If this person had kept silent she could’ve avoided this nightmare.
Old Head has a point. It’s not that they don’t know, it’s that they don’t care.
We need to attack them at their weakest point: their whole system is set up on subjective diagnosis based upon what we say to them. Get the word out there to people to stop talking to psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. Promote a Psychiatric Miranda Warning and get the general public to realize that talking to them is not in their best interest.
Yeah, most guys don’t want to grow breasts, and I’m thankful for this lawsuit to stick it to the drug company, but where is the lawsuit for metabolic syndrome (diabetes and cardiovascular disease caused by all neuroleptic drugs)? Growing breasts would be embarrassing, but metabolic syndrome is quite deadly. And yes, these people need jail time, not just fines.
I wish them success and I hope someday I can be open about it without fear.
If there is one of those groups in my area, I will try to attend some of the meetings secretly. I won’t tell my parents or cousins about it. It would be nice to talk to some people who understood me again, kind of like when I used to attend group therapy sessions.
But thanks for taking the lead on this and getting the message out there for voice hearers everywhere. Maybe someday there will be acceptance.
This is just me and my opinion only, but I am personallly afraid to tell anyone that I hear voices ever again after what happened to me. It is one of the main criteria they use to diagnose people with schizophrenia and then justify forced drugging.
I’m conflicted. On the one hand I long for the day when people can openly “come out of the closet” and openly admit to hearing voices and doesn’t have to fear being locked up and forced to take drugs against their will, but on the other hand I don’t think we’re there yet as a society, and the risks of “coming out” about voices are too great for me.
I don’t even tell my parents about hearing voices anymore. They were the ones who were instrumental in getting me locked up the first time, and while I think they know better now, and they know how horrible the drugs were for me, I don’t want to push it with them. As far as they know, I’m no longer hearing voices, and I plan to keep it that way until I move out of their house.
That’s very interesting. I’m going to look into it.
Very interesting Buzzfeed story. They took away her freedom all based on what she said to them. That is the message we all need to get out there: be careful what you tell them because they are not on your side and everything you say can and will be used against you. They rely on what you say to take your freedom away and to force you to take drugs. There needs to be a “Psychiatric Miranda warning” campaign to get that idea out into the public realm that they are so unscientific and so subjective that they rely on what we say to them to then match it up to their DSM diagnosis.
Can you imagine if they had to watch something like this before deciding?
Tell us about their response. I’d like to know what they said.
This is all too common. My regular doctor rarely takes my concerns seriously because he considers me to be a non-compliant schizophrenic. He sees my issues as hallucinations. switching doctors does little because my medical record will forever have the words paranoid schizophrenia in it.
If I could go backin time and tell myself to keep my mouth shut around psychiatrists I would.
That is the biggest awakening when I finally realized that they were lying to me! When I finally realized that they did not have my best interests in mind, and that they did not care if the meds damaged me more than the psychosis ever does.
Some people never come to this realization. It is almost like the beginning of the movie called The Matrix when he suddenly realizes what is really going on.
When any drug has side effects, these side effects should be thoroughly explained to the patient, and then the person should be asked if they want to take meds.
I wasn’t on clozapine, they put me on geodon. But they never even mentioned side effects.
That is all I want. Give me a choice and let me know the consequences I might experience.
I know this will never happen, but wouldn’t it be nice if they had to show youtube videos of people with akathisia and tardive dyskinesia BEFORE they ask the personto decide whether they want take the meds.
I would be willing to try anything. I think I would have a difficult time finding a doctor of any kind around here who would prescribe anything other than antipsychotics for me. Can you at least give us a hint at what kind of niacin you use, and about how much?
Mepat, what you VOLUNTARILY wish to do to your body is your business. What I object to is when they forced me by court order to take Geodon which caused me to develop akathisia and tardive dyskinesia, and started causing my blood sugar levels to rise. I am fine with informed consent, if the person was truly informed about all the possible side effects of these very dangerous drugs, and if the person has the right to say no, they do not want to take them. I am pro-choice. The problem is that the current configuration of psychiatry is most certainly not pro-choice when it comes to antipsychotic medications.
I have found CBT to be very helpful with the voices and with delusional thoughts but my therapist had said that she had been told to not bother using it with schizophrenics. They’re told only drugs work on schizos. Not true.
So, I ended up buying CBT textbooks and reading them on my own. I also bought DBT textbooks, Mindfulness textbooks, and ACT textbooks and they have all been helpful for me.
So if your therapist won’t help you, go buy the books and help yourself.
The sad thing is I think they KNOW they are doing harm to their patients, but because we are mentally ill we are sub-human to them, and so they don’t care about us. “to do no harm” does not apply to psychiatry. “To prevent mentally ill people from possibly doing something bad in the future even if it ultimately kills the patient” is their true intent. We are being punished for our thoughts, and punished for things we haven’t even done yet, and probably never would do in the future. Can you imagine the uproar if the government singled out a group of people and punished them because they might break some law in the future? Yet it happens everyday, and most people don’t care.
The sad truth is that both psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and psychologists are so fully indoctrinated that schizophrenics and their families will never hear any option other than taking antipsychotic meds for the rest of their lives. Even though I was experiencing severe side effects from Geodon, I made the assumption that what they were telling my parents and me was correct and that they had my best interest in mind. It wasn’t until I ended up in the emergency room from the side effects that I first heard anyone say that what I was experiencing was caused by the meds. And she was just a regular nurse. I would also sadly have to point out that my ordinary doctor never warned me about any of the psych meds I was on. He didn’t prescribe them for me since they were prescribed by the psych nurse at the clinic, and he simply didn’t seem to care nor want to intervene with what the psych nurse was doing to me. So, you can’t expect any help from your family doctor. The ultimate weapon against them is the internet where you can enter Geodon and get all sorts of responses from various people who’ve had horrible side effects from it. I encourage everyone who has ever suffered from any psych meds to be vocal about it and warn others about your experience with the drugs. If everyone who has been hurt by psych meds would post their experience on various sites on the internet we could overwhelm psychiatry’s lies.
I agree. I think the Miranda warning for psych holds is something we might be able to win. They would have to explain why the mentally ill– who have not yet broken any law– were not at least entitled to the same constitutional right against self-incrimination as someone who had just been caught breaking a law.
We could piggyback onto the ACLU’s campaign to tell people to keep their mouths shut when anyone is questioning you and trying to take your freedom away.
And OMG every f*ing thing I said about hearing voices and everything I said about delusions about people following me, etc., they wrote it all down and quoted in right back to use against me in the kangaroo hearing for Assisted Outpatient Treatment. If we could only get the word out about keeping you mouth shut and not telling them the very words they need to diagnose us and take away our freedoms, maybe it would save someone from what I went through.
Very interesting. I was bullied relentlessly as a kid and way into high school, too. That was my main trauma.
I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, not due to mania, but due to auditory hallucinations and persecutory delusional thoughts. They hospitalized me and started me on anti-psychotics. I was a very physically healthy young person at that point, but after that I never felt so horrible in my entire life up to that point,it was about to get even worse. The side effects of the meds increased as they kept increasing my dosage. Akathisia began but I had no idea what it was. At that point I was already released from the hospital and was attending a s.m.i. clinic, as I had turned 18, and was legally an adult. The psychiatric nurse was still treating me like a child at that point and talking about me to my parents. They sent out what they called a case manager who was supposed to get me all sorts of “services” which is how they suckered me into the system. What a joke! Their “services” were mainly about making sure I continued to take my meds, and don’t worry about the obvious side effects because they said those weren’t really side effects from the meds, those were just new worsening symptoms of schizophrenia getting worse, so that meant I needed a higher dosage of the same damned meds, and some more meds too. I felt worse and worse, and yet I still heard voices that the meds were supposed to stop. Eventually new symptoms appeared that would strip away what little was left of my social dignity. Involuntary movements that at first I didn’t even notice. My parents noticed them first. It was the early stages of Tardive Dyskinesia. My f*ing case manager told my parents again, it was just another symptom of the disease schizophrenia. He said most of the clients with schizophrenia he deals with eventually develop these symptoms. (of course he didn’t mention that all of his clients were taking these meds). The symptoms got worse and I ended up in the emergency room where for the first time I was told by a regular nurse that I was experiencing both akathisia, tardive dyskinesia, and elevated blood sugar, and that all of these were side effects from the meds. (poof! mind blown!)
I got way off track. The main problem I have is with forced treatment of any kind. If I break the law, fine take me to court, convict me with a jury trial, and then sentence me to a prison term. But don’t punish me for my thoughts, and take away my freedom just in case I might do somehting illegal in the future. That’s not fair. And I value my freedom too much to ever do anything violent. And I have never been violent and probably never will be. Most schizophrenics are not violent.
I’m still off track here… what I wanted to say is that you were drawing a distinction between short term need for drugs for things like bipolar mania and long term institutionalization for schizophrenia. If I had continued taking those horrible meds I would have needed to be institutionalized forever. The anti-psychotic meds eventually lead to the typical behaviors seen in institutionalized schizophrenics. The meds do more damage to their brains than schizophrenia ever could. Just compare an untreated schizophrenic homeless person to one who has been medicated in a hospital setting for many years. The one out on the streets still has his wits about him. He gets money from begging, he buys food, and finds a place to sleep for the night, etc. Huge difference. Being homeless is not ideal, but I would choose it over spending the rest of my life in a hospital.
Fortunately, I still have my family to help me, and I’ve learned how to cope with my problems, and I learned a very powerful lesson: NEVER TELL ANYONE IN A POSITION OF AUTHORITY THAT I HEAR VOICES AND HAVE DELUSIONAL THOUGHTS. There should be a Miranda warning rquirement for the psychiatric community because just like cops, only with fewer constitutional protections, they can take away our freedoms.
I think it helps some people like me. It is a big part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which is an offshoot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
It’s definitely not for everyone, though.
One of the reasons I like it is because I can do it on my own without the need for a therapist.
I agree. I’m not religious, but I see them as an ally.
Interesting about doctors being no longer willing to prescribe BZ meds. The s.m.i. clinic I use to attend had printed sign on the front entry window saying that they would no longer write prescriptions for BZ meds.
If only they feared anti-psychotic meds as much as BZ meds.
Thank you for sharing your story. This quote could be applied to most of the public psychiatric hospitals in the United States, and yet the media never covers this: “Remember this is happening right now, not ten years ago, or before the so-called reforms. Nothing is getting better. Things are worse than ever, And when you are a patient in these hospitals, you have no help, no recourse, anything and everything can be done to you and you have no way to refuse or say “no”. No one will help you, or offer assistance. They can just grab you and seclude you or restrain you without your having the power to stop them or any recourse to make them pause and reconsider. You are powerless to stop anything…And so they get away with it every time. And once it is done, who will fight for you? What lawyer will take your case if the guards hurt your shoulder rotator cuff, or bruise you up, or degrade or humiliate you? No one….so you are deprived of your human and civil rights, completely, but the hospital knows that no one cares enough to fight for you, so they get away with it each and every time, and they know this when they do it. They have nothing to worry about,….You are just another mental patient, a nobody, a nothing.”
Ultimately, a group of us need to organize and get the ACLU to bring this matter up to the Supreme Court. What they are doing to us deprives us of our right to due process.
I would like to think so, but it is probably just wishful thinking. My first psychotic break was in high school and it would have been difficult to hide, even if I had known then what I know now. But I will say this, the more details I told them, the more they wrote down, and it was later turned right back around and used against me for AOT. If I could have just kept my mouth shut as much as possible, they would have had far less of my own words to use against me. I gave them everything they needed to get the judge who was already leaning in their favor to do what he did to me. I was my own worst enemy.
Sadly it is often too late, but I always tell people to NEVER tell any psychiatrist or anyone in that field, or even a doctor, or anyone in authority who could take away your freedom about hearing voices, and any other hallucinations and/or delusional thoughts. Most of the time by the time they get to the point where they are seeking out information on the internet, it is already too late and they have already become a victim of psychiatry.
Sadly, as I know, the label of schizophrenic stays with you forever.
I completely relate to one of the patients in this article lying about no longer hearing voices. In my case I was tryiing to get off Assisted Outpatient Treatment. I stopped talking to my therapist about my delusional thoughts. Stopped talking about hallucinations. Filled up the hour talking about dating issues, which semed to really please her. In essence I started to act normal again.
Since there is no test, they go off what you tell them. That is their only weakness. And your only advantage.
If only we could warn every one out there how much trouble will come from telling the wrong people about what is going on in your head. BEFORE they make the mistake of trusting and confiding in the wrong people.
That’s where these forums can be so useful, allowing people to talk about it while remaining anonymous.
And wouldn’t it be nice if there were more people in the field of mental health who could be trusted?
During my adventure through the Assisted Outpatient Treatment phase I was assigned a few peers who were supposed to help me. I very quickly learned that their main goal was to check in on me and make sure I was compliant with taking my meds faithfully and to see if I was in need of a trip to the E.R. if I sounded too delusional. There was only one who I trusted, and he talked to me about all sorts of things. They removed him from program.
Anyways, if I could go back in time, I would have never told them about the voices or the delusions. I would have never been labeled schizophrenic. I would never have been put on AOT. My life would have been a lot simpler and easier.
They like to say that this sort of thing may have happened in the long ago past, but no longer occurs in the modern age of psychiatry. Well, threre goes that notion right out the winow.
They still see us as less than human and therefore we have no human rights to violate. They worry about our rights as much as they do the rights of lab rats.
No, I take that back. Lab rats have powerful, vocal, well-funded groups like PETA on their side. Who do we have on our side?
(crickets chirping)
I agree with you. I have often wondered why opioids weren’t used during the first psychotic break to calm me down in the hospital without all the restless side effects of anti-psychotic medication, and then remove me from them before I got too adicted to them. The withdrawals would have been mild in comparison to Geodon. And no movement disorder.
I remember the outpatient clinic was called a “wellness” center. I often thought about the irony of its name.
quote “While many of the 20 said they thought antipsychotics were helpful during the acute phase of treatment, long-term use was “considered to compromise the contribution of individual effort in recovery,” and was “perceived to reduce likelihood of functional recovery,” the researchers reported.”
that is what I have heard that anti-psychotics were only meant to be used temporarily, just long enough to rduce the positive symptoms and then stop using them and follow up with talk therapy.
But now all psychiatrists want to do is drug them for the rest of their lives.
This is the first time I have heard of the term latrogenic. Very interesting.
I agree with you about the fact that many of the psychology and psychiatry students are ONLY exposed to the medical model and are quite ignorant about the idea that patients could possibly do better without the meds. And yes, I think most of them either have no clue about the long term effects of the meds, or they wrongly assume that the patient would be even worse off without the meds.
Sadly, with some of them, they know and don’t care. My former psychologist knew I was experiencing akathisia and chose to say it was just another symptom of schizophrenia.
This is the ultimate weapon. We need to make them legally pay for this– by both money and some time in jail.
We need to start using the courts against them. We need to start costing them money. That is the only thing they undrstand.
This is so shocking. I wish more people knew about this.
Once again, it all depends on what kind of attorney you get to defend you in court.
The system is broken.
Very interesting. Mindfulness is one of the main tools i use to deal with my hallucinations and delusional thoughts.
And yes, the withdrawals from psych meds are often mistaken for psychotic symptoms.
Anti-psychotic drugs are like drug induced Parkinson’s symptoms. Imagine giving drug induced Parkinson’s disease to a young person, and not really caring what the long term efects will be? This country is going to have a huge jump in early onset dementia patients once all the masses of people who have been prescribed anti-psychotics start aging.
I find this part of it really applied in my situation: “I understand that the drug I am about to take cannot restore any of my physical or psychological functions “back to normal.” Rather, the drug is expected to produce many new mental and physical symptoms, which might help make my original complaints seem less disturbing for a while.”
When I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia I was hearing voices and had delusional thinking that was so extreme that I ended up being hospitalized. My guess is that the severity of the hallucinations and delusions would have diminished on their own without any drugs anyways, but unfortunately, they forced me to take drugs, and what I noticed is that my original symptoms of schizophrenia paled in comparison to the side effect symptoms of the meds: akathisia and tardive dyskinesia.
This is a great point. They’re not all about trying to help us. They get behind laws that take away our human rights. The right to decide whether we want to take drugs with horrible side effects. These laws are unconstitutional. Where is the ACLU on this? We need to start challenging these laws in court.
The only thing that made the s.m.i. clinic back down in my case was an attorney my parents hired for me. This is their Achilles’s heel: what they are doing to us is ultimately unconstitutional.
This is really no different than a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. This is my body and I should have the right to decide whether or not I want to put toxic drugs with harmful side effects in it or not.
We need to get a class action lawsuit going.
To Micheal C., speaking for myself after having experienced Assisted Outpatient Treatment which is really forced drugging with geodon in my case, and knowing that they pushed for a law that now increases the incentives for states to use forced drugging for people like me, yes that is what NAMI wants for us.
I feel that I have the human right to say no to a drug that caused me to have akathisia and tardive dyskinesia.
I’m new to this website but I’m going to tell everyone I know about it. The more we get this info out the better.
Oh wow, I just went to that link and read it. They were saying that about me at the s.m.i. clinic. They were completely misusing that term.
It took me so long to realize that the psychiatric community in general was not doing what was in my best interest when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and subjected to forced drugging. My well meaning but hopelesly misguided parents thought they were helping me by pursuing the euphemistically shrouded term Assisted Outpatient Treatment. When I complained to them about my symptoms what I now know were the side effects of the meds– akathisia and tardive dyskinesia– my parents were told that these were all just manisfestations of the brain disease Schizophrenia. They attended a local support group aranged by NAMI that was adamant that I must always take my meds or else the brain disease schizophrenia would continue to progress and I would get even worse. And they made it clear to my parents that I was not to be listened to or taken seriously at all because I was crazy after all. After the psych nurse at the cheap s.m.i. clinic I attended increased my dosage of geodon to the max, I ended in the E.R., and a regular nurse told me what I was experienced was caused by the meds. I then started to research the side effects of geodon online and found so many people who were experiencing the same thing. After a lot of discussion, my family finally decided to help me get off the meds. They ended up hiring a private attorney and the local s.m.i. clinic didn’t want to pursue it in court against a real private attorney, so they dropped me from assisted outpatient treatment. And then I had to go to a private psychiatrist who helped me taper down off the meds. I still got withdrawals, but now I am finally free from the horrible meds. I am still mentally ill, but I know how to cope with it now without resorting to drugs. They need to remember that there was a time before all these meds, and many people who had schizophrenia survived the disease back then without the meds.
Yes, I get the types that have increased CBD levels, and I find them very helpful…
https://www.leafbuyer.com/blog/most-popular-cbd-strains-oregon/
Some them might not know yet why we don’t want to take these drugs. The vast majority of the people I know had never heard of the side effects untl I told them about them, and it seems most people have been thoroughly brainwashed to think that the only reason we don’t take these drugs is because we don’t have insight. But as I am discovering more and more unfortunately, many people still want to force us to take these horrible meds even when they know about the side efects as you can read about in this thread….
https://www.madinamerica.com/forums/topic/mother-accidentally-takes-her-sons-antipsychotic-pill-by-mistake/
I do take too much for granted. It never occurred to me that people wouldn’t have access to the internet and email. Sorry about that.
You are very brave to be a psychiatric survivor and work at any kind of hospital, but especially at a mental hospital. I have such a ptsd reaction to the psychiatric industry that I won’t even visit sick relatives at the hospital. If I can at all help it, I don’t plan on ever stepping foot inside any hospital or emergency room ever again for the rest of my life.
“Only because we think they are not fit to make up their own minds.”
It’s the same rationale they use for forced drugging.
It’s discrimination, plain and simple, but they cloak it in euphemisms.
How are they reading this then?
If everyone reading this would email their elected officials and the ACLU, it would be a huge step in the right direction.
And whenever I hear or read comments from people advocating medications for the mentally ill I always make a point of informing them about the horrible side effects of the psych meds. I make it clear that main reason people stop taking their meds is because they make them feel horrible, not because they lack insight. I run into a lot of people who have been skillfully taught by the government and the media that the only reason we stop taking the meds is because we lack insight.
That there is nothing that they “don’t understand” about the side effects and the human rights abuses is a chilling thought.
I am so used to being called a “consumer” by them that I don’t know how else to refer to myself, but I put it in quotes because I am not comfortable with it.
I emailed both senators, and they sent a form letter email in response that said nothing of any significance,, and my guess is that they will still approve her, but at least I tried.
And yes, always put it in your own words, be nice and courteous.
If every mental health “consumer” would do this, maybe they would have to listen to us.
I also write emails about how I think AOT is unconstitutional to the ACLU. Everyone, take some time and write a nice, courteous letter to ACLU about this. Let them know how you feel about it.
There have been so many people screwed over by the mental health system that if we would stop fighting each other and unite into one politically active organization we might get something accomplished.
I noticed that even my therapist at the s.m.i. clinic I attended kept insisting that the neuroleptic drugs were to re-balance my brain chemistry. And get this… she didn’t even have her master’s degree yet in counseling psychology. All she had was a bachelor’s degree in a non-scientific field of study: English. And here she was telling me about my brain chemistry.
“If you receive a liver transplant, you are still there; but if you receive a brain transplant, you are gone.”
I love that quote.
Neuroleptics damage the part of our body that makes us who we are as a person.
I now stay as far away from psychiatry as possible.
Thank you for all you have done for us.
We have a local “crisis” phone number, and their web page says things like they can send someone to meet us wherever we are at and get us somewhere safe. It sounds wonderful. What it really means is that if you call them, they will send out the f’ing cops to your house to arrest you and take you to a psych ward. But most people don’t realize it until it is too late to stop what comes next… forced drugging.
I used to think they were ignorant about the side effects and withdrawal symptoms, but now I think they know all too well about them, and keep it a secret from us, because they don’t care about our physical health, and because they know the withdrawal symptoms will make most of us crawl back to them and ask for more “help” from them, and get back on our meds. The side effects can be used to tell us our mental illness is getting worse, so we need more meds to deal with more symptoms.
I agree with you about them not being drawn at random from parent-based support organizations. They’re the main ones who get us on forced drugging to begin with.
This is why there needs to be a Psychiatric Miranda Warning. If this person had kept silent she could’ve avoided this nightmare.
Old Head has a point. It’s not that they don’t know, it’s that they don’t care.
We need to attack them at their weakest point: their whole system is set up on subjective diagnosis based upon what we say to them. Get the word out there to people to stop talking to psychiatrists, psychologists, etc. Promote a Psychiatric Miranda Warning and get the general public to realize that talking to them is not in their best interest.
Yeah, most guys don’t want to grow breasts, and I’m thankful for this lawsuit to stick it to the drug company, but where is the lawsuit for metabolic syndrome (diabetes and cardiovascular disease caused by all neuroleptic drugs)? Growing breasts would be embarrassing, but metabolic syndrome is quite deadly. And yes, these people need jail time, not just fines.
I wish them success and I hope someday I can be open about it without fear.
If there is one of those groups in my area, I will try to attend some of the meetings secretly. I won’t tell my parents or cousins about it. It would be nice to talk to some people who understood me again, kind of like when I used to attend group therapy sessions.
But thanks for taking the lead on this and getting the message out there for voice hearers everywhere. Maybe someday there will be acceptance.
This is just me and my opinion only, but I am personallly afraid to tell anyone that I hear voices ever again after what happened to me. It is one of the main criteria they use to diagnose people with schizophrenia and then justify forced drugging.
I’m conflicted. On the one hand I long for the day when people can openly “come out of the closet” and openly admit to hearing voices and doesn’t have to fear being locked up and forced to take drugs against their will, but on the other hand I don’t think we’re there yet as a society, and the risks of “coming out” about voices are too great for me.
I don’t even tell my parents about hearing voices anymore. They were the ones who were instrumental in getting me locked up the first time, and while I think they know better now, and they know how horrible the drugs were for me, I don’t want to push it with them. As far as they know, I’m no longer hearing voices, and I plan to keep it that way until I move out of their house.
That’s very interesting. I’m going to look into it.
Very interesting Buzzfeed story. They took away her freedom all based on what she said to them. That is the message we all need to get out there: be careful what you tell them because they are not on your side and everything you say can and will be used against you. They rely on what you say to take your freedom away and to force you to take drugs. There needs to be a “Psychiatric Miranda warning” campaign to get that idea out into the public realm that they are so unscientific and so subjective that they rely on what we say to them to then match it up to their DSM diagnosis.
Can you imagine if they had to watch something like this before deciding?
https://www.madinamerica.com/forums/topic/akathisia-and-tardive-dyskinesia-from-anti-psychotic-meds/
Tell us about their response. I’d like to know what they said.
This is all too common. My regular doctor rarely takes my concerns seriously because he considers me to be a non-compliant schizophrenic. He sees my issues as hallucinations. switching doctors does little because my medical record will forever have the words paranoid schizophrenia in it.
If I could go backin time and tell myself to keep my mouth shut around psychiatrists I would.
That is the biggest awakening when I finally realized that they were lying to me! When I finally realized that they did not have my best interests in mind, and that they did not care if the meds damaged me more than the psychosis ever does.
Some people never come to this realization. It is almost like the beginning of the movie called The Matrix when he suddenly realizes what is really going on.
When any drug has side effects, these side effects should be thoroughly explained to the patient, and then the person should be asked if they want to take meds.
I wasn’t on clozapine, they put me on geodon. But they never even mentioned side effects.
That is all I want. Give me a choice and let me know the consequences I might experience.
I know this will never happen, but wouldn’t it be nice if they had to show youtube videos of people with akathisia and tardive dyskinesia BEFORE they ask the personto decide whether they want take the meds.
I would be willing to try anything. I think I would have a difficult time finding a doctor of any kind around here who would prescribe anything other than antipsychotics for me. Can you at least give us a hint at what kind of niacin you use, and about how much?
Mepat, what you VOLUNTARILY wish to do to your body is your business. What I object to is when they forced me by court order to take Geodon which caused me to develop akathisia and tardive dyskinesia, and started causing my blood sugar levels to rise. I am fine with informed consent, if the person was truly informed about all the possible side effects of these very dangerous drugs, and if the person has the right to say no, they do not want to take them. I am pro-choice. The problem is that the current configuration of psychiatry is most certainly not pro-choice when it comes to antipsychotic medications.
I have found CBT to be very helpful with the voices and with delusional thoughts but my therapist had said that she had been told to not bother using it with schizophrenics. They’re told only drugs work on schizos. Not true.
So, I ended up buying CBT textbooks and reading them on my own. I also bought DBT textbooks, Mindfulness textbooks, and ACT textbooks and they have all been helpful for me.
So if your therapist won’t help you, go buy the books and help yourself.
The sad thing is I think they KNOW they are doing harm to their patients, but because we are mentally ill we are sub-human to them, and so they don’t care about us. “to do no harm” does not apply to psychiatry. “To prevent mentally ill people from possibly doing something bad in the future even if it ultimately kills the patient” is their true intent. We are being punished for our thoughts, and punished for things we haven’t even done yet, and probably never would do in the future. Can you imagine the uproar if the government singled out a group of people and punished them because they might break some law in the future? Yet it happens everyday, and most people don’t care.
The sad truth is that both psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, and psychologists are so fully indoctrinated that schizophrenics and their families will never hear any option other than taking antipsychotic meds for the rest of their lives. Even though I was experiencing severe side effects from Geodon, I made the assumption that what they were telling my parents and me was correct and that they had my best interest in mind. It wasn’t until I ended up in the emergency room from the side effects that I first heard anyone say that what I was experiencing was caused by the meds. And she was just a regular nurse. I would also sadly have to point out that my ordinary doctor never warned me about any of the psych meds I was on. He didn’t prescribe them for me since they were prescribed by the psych nurse at the clinic, and he simply didn’t seem to care nor want to intervene with what the psych nurse was doing to me. So, you can’t expect any help from your family doctor. The ultimate weapon against them is the internet where you can enter Geodon and get all sorts of responses from various people who’ve had horrible side effects from it. I encourage everyone who has ever suffered from any psych meds to be vocal about it and warn others about your experience with the drugs. If everyone who has been hurt by psych meds would post their experience on various sites on the internet we could overwhelm psychiatry’s lies.
I agree. I think the Miranda warning for psych holds is something we might be able to win. They would have to explain why the mentally ill– who have not yet broken any law– were not at least entitled to the same constitutional right against self-incrimination as someone who had just been caught breaking a law.
We could piggyback onto the ACLU’s campaign to tell people to keep their mouths shut when anyone is questioning you and trying to take your freedom away.
And OMG every f*ing thing I said about hearing voices and everything I said about delusions about people following me, etc., they wrote it all down and quoted in right back to use against me in the kangaroo hearing for Assisted Outpatient Treatment. If we could only get the word out about keeping you mouth shut and not telling them the very words they need to diagnose us and take away our freedoms, maybe it would save someone from what I went through.
Very interesting. I was bullied relentlessly as a kid and way into high school, too. That was my main trauma.
I was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, not due to mania, but due to auditory hallucinations and persecutory delusional thoughts. They hospitalized me and started me on anti-psychotics. I was a very physically healthy young person at that point, but after that I never felt so horrible in my entire life up to that point,it was about to get even worse. The side effects of the meds increased as they kept increasing my dosage. Akathisia began but I had no idea what it was. At that point I was already released from the hospital and was attending a s.m.i. clinic, as I had turned 18, and was legally an adult. The psychiatric nurse was still treating me like a child at that point and talking about me to my parents. They sent out what they called a case manager who was supposed to get me all sorts of “services” which is how they suckered me into the system. What a joke! Their “services” were mainly about making sure I continued to take my meds, and don’t worry about the obvious side effects because they said those weren’t really side effects from the meds, those were just new worsening symptoms of schizophrenia getting worse, so that meant I needed a higher dosage of the same damned meds, and some more meds too. I felt worse and worse, and yet I still heard voices that the meds were supposed to stop. Eventually new symptoms appeared that would strip away what little was left of my social dignity. Involuntary movements that at first I didn’t even notice. My parents noticed them first. It was the early stages of Tardive Dyskinesia. My f*ing case manager told my parents again, it was just another symptom of the disease schizophrenia. He said most of the clients with schizophrenia he deals with eventually develop these symptoms. (of course he didn’t mention that all of his clients were taking these meds). The symptoms got worse and I ended up in the emergency room where for the first time I was told by a regular nurse that I was experiencing both akathisia, tardive dyskinesia, and elevated blood sugar, and that all of these were side effects from the meds. (poof! mind blown!)
I got way off track. The main problem I have is with forced treatment of any kind. If I break the law, fine take me to court, convict me with a jury trial, and then sentence me to a prison term. But don’t punish me for my thoughts, and take away my freedom just in case I might do somehting illegal in the future. That’s not fair. And I value my freedom too much to ever do anything violent. And I have never been violent and probably never will be. Most schizophrenics are not violent.
I’m still off track here… what I wanted to say is that you were drawing a distinction between short term need for drugs for things like bipolar mania and long term institutionalization for schizophrenia. If I had continued taking those horrible meds I would have needed to be institutionalized forever. The anti-psychotic meds eventually lead to the typical behaviors seen in institutionalized schizophrenics. The meds do more damage to their brains than schizophrenia ever could. Just compare an untreated schizophrenic homeless person to one who has been medicated in a hospital setting for many years. The one out on the streets still has his wits about him. He gets money from begging, he buys food, and finds a place to sleep for the night, etc. Huge difference. Being homeless is not ideal, but I would choose it over spending the rest of my life in a hospital.
Fortunately, I still have my family to help me, and I’ve learned how to cope with my problems, and I learned a very powerful lesson: NEVER TELL ANYONE IN A POSITION OF AUTHORITY THAT I HEAR VOICES AND HAVE DELUSIONAL THOUGHTS. There should be a Miranda warning rquirement for the psychiatric community because just like cops, only with fewer constitutional protections, they can take away our freedoms.
I think it helps some people like me. It is a big part of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) which is an offshoot of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT).
It’s definitely not for everyone, though.
One of the reasons I like it is because I can do it on my own without the need for a therapist.
I agree. I’m not religious, but I see them as an ally.
Interesting about doctors being no longer willing to prescribe BZ meds. The s.m.i. clinic I use to attend had printed sign on the front entry window saying that they would no longer write prescriptions for BZ meds.
If only they feared anti-psychotic meds as much as BZ meds.
Thank you for sharing your story. This quote could be applied to most of the public psychiatric hospitals in the United States, and yet the media never covers this: “Remember this is happening right now, not ten years ago, or before the so-called reforms. Nothing is getting better. Things are worse than ever, And when you are a patient in these hospitals, you have no help, no recourse, anything and everything can be done to you and you have no way to refuse or say “no”. No one will help you, or offer assistance. They can just grab you and seclude you or restrain you without your having the power to stop them or any recourse to make them pause and reconsider. You are powerless to stop anything…And so they get away with it every time. And once it is done, who will fight for you? What lawyer will take your case if the guards hurt your shoulder rotator cuff, or bruise you up, or degrade or humiliate you? No one….so you are deprived of your human and civil rights, completely, but the hospital knows that no one cares enough to fight for you, so they get away with it each and every time, and they know this when they do it. They have nothing to worry about,….You are just another mental patient, a nobody, a nothing.”
Ultimately, a group of us need to organize and get the ACLU to bring this matter up to the Supreme Court. What they are doing to us deprives us of our right to due process.
I would like to think so, but it is probably just wishful thinking. My first psychotic break was in high school and it would have been difficult to hide, even if I had known then what I know now. But I will say this, the more details I told them, the more they wrote down, and it was later turned right back around and used against me for AOT. If I could have just kept my mouth shut as much as possible, they would have had far less of my own words to use against me. I gave them everything they needed to get the judge who was already leaning in their favor to do what he did to me. I was my own worst enemy.
Sadly it is often too late, but I always tell people to NEVER tell any psychiatrist or anyone in that field, or even a doctor, or anyone in authority who could take away your freedom about hearing voices, and any other hallucinations and/or delusional thoughts. Most of the time by the time they get to the point where they are seeking out information on the internet, it is already too late and they have already become a victim of psychiatry.
Sadly, as I know, the label of schizophrenic stays with you forever.
I completely relate to one of the patients in this article lying about no longer hearing voices. In my case I was tryiing to get off Assisted Outpatient Treatment. I stopped talking to my therapist about my delusional thoughts. Stopped talking about hallucinations. Filled up the hour talking about dating issues, which semed to really please her. In essence I started to act normal again.
Since there is no test, they go off what you tell them. That is their only weakness. And your only advantage.
If only we could warn every one out there how much trouble will come from telling the wrong people about what is going on in your head. BEFORE they make the mistake of trusting and confiding in the wrong people.
That’s where these forums can be so useful, allowing people to talk about it while remaining anonymous.
And wouldn’t it be nice if there were more people in the field of mental health who could be trusted?
During my adventure through the Assisted Outpatient Treatment phase I was assigned a few peers who were supposed to help me. I very quickly learned that their main goal was to check in on me and make sure I was compliant with taking my meds faithfully and to see if I was in need of a trip to the E.R. if I sounded too delusional. There was only one who I trusted, and he talked to me about all sorts of things. They removed him from program.
Anyways, if I could go back in time, I would have never told them about the voices or the delusions. I would have never been labeled schizophrenic. I would never have been put on AOT. My life would have been a lot simpler and easier.
They like to say that this sort of thing may have happened in the long ago past, but no longer occurs in the modern age of psychiatry. Well, threre goes that notion right out the winow.
They still see us as less than human and therefore we have no human rights to violate. They worry about our rights as much as they do the rights of lab rats.
No, I take that back. Lab rats have powerful, vocal, well-funded groups like PETA on their side. Who do we have on our side?
(crickets chirping)
I agree with you. I have often wondered why opioids weren’t used during the first psychotic break to calm me down in the hospital without all the restless side effects of anti-psychotic medication, and then remove me from them before I got too adicted to them. The withdrawals would have been mild in comparison to Geodon. And no movement disorder.
I remember the outpatient clinic was called a “wellness” center. I often thought about the irony of its name.
quote “While many of the 20 said they thought antipsychotics were helpful during the acute phase of treatment, long-term use was “considered to compromise the contribution of individual effort in recovery,” and was “perceived to reduce likelihood of functional recovery,” the researchers reported.”
that is what I have heard that anti-psychotics were only meant to be used temporarily, just long enough to rduce the positive symptoms and then stop using them and follow up with talk therapy.
But now all psychiatrists want to do is drug them for the rest of their lives.
This is the first time I have heard of the term latrogenic. Very interesting.
I agree with you about the fact that many of the psychology and psychiatry students are ONLY exposed to the medical model and are quite ignorant about the idea that patients could possibly do better without the meds. And yes, I think most of them either have no clue about the long term effects of the meds, or they wrongly assume that the patient would be even worse off without the meds.
Sadly, with some of them, they know and don’t care. My former psychologist knew I was experiencing akathisia and chose to say it was just another symptom of schizophrenia.
This is the ultimate weapon. We need to make them legally pay for this– by both money and some time in jail.
We need to start using the courts against them. We need to start costing them money. That is the only thing they undrstand.
This is so shocking. I wish more people knew about this.
Once again, it all depends on what kind of attorney you get to defend you in court.
The system is broken.
Very interesting. Mindfulness is one of the main tools i use to deal with my hallucinations and delusional thoughts.
And yes, the withdrawals from psych meds are often mistaken for psychotic symptoms.
Anti-psychotic drugs are like drug induced Parkinson’s symptoms. Imagine giving drug induced Parkinson’s disease to a young person, and not really caring what the long term efects will be? This country is going to have a huge jump in early onset dementia patients once all the masses of people who have been prescribed anti-psychotics start aging.
I find this part of it really applied in my situation: “I understand that the drug I am about to take cannot restore any of my physical or psychological functions “back to normal.” Rather, the drug is expected to produce many new mental and physical symptoms, which might help make my original complaints seem less disturbing for a while.”
When I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia I was hearing voices and had delusional thinking that was so extreme that I ended up being hospitalized. My guess is that the severity of the hallucinations and delusions would have diminished on their own without any drugs anyways, but unfortunately, they forced me to take drugs, and what I noticed is that my original symptoms of schizophrenia paled in comparison to the side effect symptoms of the meds: akathisia and tardive dyskinesia.
This is a great point. They’re not all about trying to help us. They get behind laws that take away our human rights. The right to decide whether we want to take drugs with horrible side effects. These laws are unconstitutional. Where is the ACLU on this? We need to start challenging these laws in court.
The only thing that made the s.m.i. clinic back down in my case was an attorney my parents hired for me. This is their Achilles’s heel: what they are doing to us is ultimately unconstitutional.
This is really no different than a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. This is my body and I should have the right to decide whether or not I want to put toxic drugs with harmful side effects in it or not.
We need to get a class action lawsuit going.
To Micheal C., speaking for myself after having experienced Assisted Outpatient Treatment which is really forced drugging with geodon in my case, and knowing that they pushed for a law that now increases the incentives for states to use forced drugging for people like me, yes that is what NAMI wants for us.
I feel that I have the human right to say no to a drug that caused me to have akathisia and tardive dyskinesia.
I’m new to this website but I’m going to tell everyone I know about it. The more we get this info out the better.
Oh wow, I just went to that link and read it. They were saying that about me at the s.m.i. clinic. They were completely misusing that term.
It took me so long to realize that the psychiatric community in general was not doing what was in my best interest when I was diagnosed with schizophrenia and subjected to forced drugging. My well meaning but hopelesly misguided parents thought they were helping me by pursuing the euphemistically shrouded term Assisted Outpatient Treatment. When I complained to them about my symptoms what I now know were the side effects of the meds– akathisia and tardive dyskinesia– my parents were told that these were all just manisfestations of the brain disease Schizophrenia. They attended a local support group aranged by NAMI that was adamant that I must always take my meds or else the brain disease schizophrenia would continue to progress and I would get even worse. And they made it clear to my parents that I was not to be listened to or taken seriously at all because I was crazy after all. After the psych nurse at the cheap s.m.i. clinic I attended increased my dosage of geodon to the max, I ended in the E.R., and a regular nurse told me what I was experienced was caused by the meds. I then started to research the side effects of geodon online and found so many people who were experiencing the same thing. After a lot of discussion, my family finally decided to help me get off the meds. They ended up hiring a private attorney and the local s.m.i. clinic didn’t want to pursue it in court against a real private attorney, so they dropped me from assisted outpatient treatment. And then I had to go to a private psychiatrist who helped me taper down off the meds. I still got withdrawals, but now I am finally free from the horrible meds. I am still mentally ill, but I know how to cope with it now without resorting to drugs. They need to remember that there was a time before all these meds, and many people who had schizophrenia survived the disease back then without the meds.