Wednesday, March 29, 2023

Comments by Svava Arnardóttir

Showing 9 of 9 comments.

  • Thank you for the great blog Chaya!

    You are doing what I’d like to do with my personal experience of psychiatric drugs and withdrawal. I think your article is both inspiring and thought provoking. I work in Iceland as an occupational therapist and have been looking into ways of using my personal experience for good. Reading your text gave me some ideas and hope. Good to hear that there are people like you out there!

    Best of luck,
    Svava.

  • Hello Lawrence!
    Thank you for your input and insight! I can’t definitively say as to why doctors push the biomedical model so much in Iceland considering that we have socialized medicine – but I can voice my thoughts on the matter. I believe we have picked up a number of things from the US and we sometimes can be considered a “mini”-United States in some aspects, for example the material that we watch on TV/movies and our diet. This includes our focus on the biomedical model and buying into medicine propaganda from others. I think the psychiatric medication focus also fits with our human interest where we keep looking for a “quick fix”.

    -Svava

  • Hello TRM 123, and thank you for your insightful response. I appreciate your comments.

    I think no matter the profession, we really need to approach people on an individual basis and focusing on their life story. The question of “what happened to you?” instead of “what is wrong with you?”. In my opinion, occupational therapists can be a very good resource as their studies generally view the topic of mental health based on holistic, client-centered approach.

    You ask about how a young person might move forward after tough experiences with the system. One way to move forward is to always voice our stories of recovery and promote hope at any given chance. Try to rebuild these broken dreams and foster the hope that the system might have taken away. This is something that we can all do as individuals and as a society. I also want to state the importance of giving the power back to the individual (empowerment), with informed concent, many different options, individual’s autonomy being respected at all times, our voices heard etc. etc.

    -Svava.