I carry articles like this in my phone…as I age (& female), I’m aware of my increasing vulnerability for cavalier/sloppy/’defacto’ prescribing of these drugs to seniors…. who insist on autonomy & informed consent, & are instead infantilized and/or characterized as ‘oppositional, defiant’ or irrational (dementia, loss of capacity)…
Good article.
Others like it create little interest in the general public. They seem to continue to think that if SO many people are ‘on’ these drugs, they must be good….and interpret sedation, simple & complex, as victory.
Comfortably numb indeed.
I don’t know how to pierce that deflector shield because “addiction” doesn’t affect their rationale…as many INSIST on ‘clean’ food and products for themselves, their families, their PETS.
No sugar, sodium, PFAS, red dyes, etc….but changing your brain on a cellular level…No guarantees! Is all good.
Aspie63-famliar with that scenario as I also carried ‘Unspecified & NOS’…
If you’ve never read DR. Leonard Sax on the topic (WSJ-2013), you might enjoy this.
Funny, pithy, scalding critique in human terms.
A sample….
“Over the past two decades, American culture has made almost any deviation from a continual smiley face into a psychopathology, especially for children.”
I believe that this article clearly explains the paradox regarding people’s access & exposure to rhetoric labeled by authors/sources as “evidence-based, scientific, & clinical”, & how it offers an easy conclusion/”remedy”…giving our culturally groomed trust to anyone (especially) writing a prescription for….psych drugs.
I was one of those people in 2004 (the bipolar gold-rush) & paid a terrible price, finally clawing back my identity & health-body & soul- developing an expanded warrior-like perspective of the world, that has protected me from other forms of gaslighting & auto-pilot trust.
No paranoia here-I KNOW there are entities that don’t have my well-being as a priority…& have learned to ACT against them…& sometimes I still lose.
Without enormous resources for healthcare, folks will often turn to what is seemingly expedient, as getting back to ‘work’ is paramount in global culture.
Grooming/marketing by the psych-industry, catastrophizing life forward…without THEM (OhNo!)…is the cynical double-speak that simultaneously encourages a trusting bond (WE understand you) & strips you of sober, independent assessment of the relationship…& yourself. It encourages an approval & brand of self-pity that makes the industry’s ‘rescue’ all the more emotionally appealing. It is, after all, what they do-spin it.
Sanctified/approved-by-‘experts’ addiction is OK now.
ALL drug addiction turns people into permanent victims….the industry sponsors the faux ‘fight’ against stigma, positioning itself as the client’s champion (THEY don’t understand you; WE do).
The client is told over & over they will fail (or suicide) without this ‘relationship’ (drugs).
And THAT is the definition of a self-fullfilling prophecy, as withdrawal CAN kill.
Psychiatry’s business model is genius; defining their customers (everybody, per the DSM), AND supplying the culturally-accepted ‘fix’ FOR LIFE (drugs)…..& positioning themselves as the ONLY authority accepted by the courts.
Yikes.
All this for alot of transitional distress AND profound human suffering.
Defining EVERTHING as profound, acute, chronic, LIFE-LONG illness has reaped trillion$.
I believe a ‘seige mentality’ has been successfully adopted/marketed to generations post WW II…Yeah, life was difficult AND different for every generation…it’s not a contest.
But if you lack perspective-HISTORY-you think it’s worse for you. And schools don’t teach history anymore. Some are prohibited.
Double Yikes, Florida!
Perspective…..Ask Ukranians stuck in Kiev, or Ugandans, or women in Iran, or……
Ms. Mangicaro, I thought your article was very well presented.
I would like to learn more about your work.
I also wrote for MIA-2019 (“Full Moral Status”, Part 1 & 2) and Dr. Healy’s RxISK website-2018 (“A Unicorn: Changing a Medical Record”, Part 1-4) regarding my forcing [blackmailing=”It’s in EVERYBODY’S best interest…considering the unfortunate anaphylaxis (!)…”] a rare vacation of a “lifelong” bipolar diagnosis & “forever” SMI certification…without an attorney (on MY side)…and in writing; 2.5 years of a tortuous, medically-guided withdrawal (CMO/VP of the state MH contractor, as his only client) followed by ‘good luck, good bye, go away’.
The ACTUAL recovery and re-entry back into life was my own, personal science experiment that took 5 additional years. I could only find 1 other person who shared my path. They did not want contact-Understood.
Medical folks (outside of Psych) kept a nervous, BIG distance…. or pointed me back to my former assailants.
The aftermath left me with a subcortical focal lesion (brain damage) including 3 years of reported, documented seizures…among other ‘scars’. It’s been a long road of research & education regarding the industry, self-tailored support & applied recovery process-body & soul- but I’m there.
I was connected with some individuals by the late, great Paula Caplan, PhD (& MIA contributor among so many other accomplishments) to help navigate aspects of the psychiatric bureaucracy with tactics & strategies that could possibly help them towards effective self-advocacy, SAFETY & possible self-extraction.
I admire your hard work & advocacy for others. I would like to learn & contribute. Thank you. [email protected]
This was a near-perfect assessment of the history, moving parts, motivations, & repeated failures of psychiatry…underscored by their untroubled eagerness to sacrifice real people with no acknowledgement of…& no legal accountability regarding, the massive scope of damages as a result of their behaviors.
The lack of apparent insight by the self-appointed ‘experts’ in human behavior is perfect, bitter irony.
The development of a solid, perpetual business model and ‘standing’ as a medical entity remains the primary driver & goal. Put simply, money and respect from the medical community….
I’ve never felt so re-assured….that this view, this concise, valid view (as a targeted, exploited, damaged former ‘client’) is relentlessly moving towards the front of the line…
.
I remain fearful of the authority/hall pass that our social culture, medical community, & most importantly, the judiciary give them to continue to fail….knowing changes that prioritize safety & compassion are not on the table.
I carry my documents vacating the ‘life-long’ diagnosis dropped on me by the DSM-IV, in my phone, should the unthinkable occur….like a Jew in occupied Poland, trying to safely go about my business…and terrified of a situational, subjective judgement….sharply going left, into a ‘life-long’ ditch.
I want them to know I’m (with Sun Tzu’s support) prepared to effectively counter, protecting myself from what I know they will bring…
What a world.
Please read Dr. Paula Caplan’s excellent article first published in Aporia (2014) exposing Frances’ FCOI (financial conflict of interest) regarding leading the DSM IV task force (and on the DSM III team. Then read Frances’ rebuttal in the oh-so-scientific HuffPost. The 2nd-grade name-calling by him reveals Frances’ degree of ‘butt-hurt’. Duke University still embraces this guy…a proud stance.
The irony massively bypasses Allen in his own 1st paragraph…..claiming Paula’s ostensible proposal for a ‘Delusional Dominating Personality Disorder’ to be included….look in the mirror, chief….& there you are! (It’s science!!!) was the origin of her ‘hit piece’ of facts, not opinion or conjecture.
THEN he was snubbed by the equally petty, dangerous DSM 5 gods. He attacked THEM in his transparently vindictive and more importantly, successfully monetized “Saving Normal”, saying he WAS a LITTLE sorry for the devastation brought by the IV….but-‘look over THERE, not my fault!!’
A review in Psychology Today (2014) by Helene Guldberg states “He is keenly aware of the risks of diagnostic inflation ‘because of painful first-hand experience”(!!!)…describing the explosion of adult bipolar diagnoses tripling and X 40 for children (Time magazine cover story 2002 “Young & Bipolar”), ONLY in the U.S., not western Europe…or anywhere else.
I was slam-dunked into a lifetime bipolar diagnosis in 2004, during the cresting Bipolar Gold Rush. I was drugged immediately & aggressively for 9 years, my complaint was insomnia caused by pending financial worries. I was employed, bills current, with great new insurance. Uh oh. Bankruptcy & homelessness followed, driven by side-effects, body & soul.
(My diagnosing doc was receiving $65,000+ in the 1st year of ACA OPEN DATA-& PROPUBLICA “Dollars for Docs” reporting.)
After critical health damages & a sloppy anaphylaxis ‘event’, I blackmailed (quietly, politely) for my guided withdrawal-2.5 years- & the vacation of the “lifetime” diagnosis…IN WRITING….It was followed by 3 years/19 seizures/subcortical focal lesion, only caused by….wait for it….MS or antipsychotics.
I am MS-free.
I wrote for Risk.org & MIA about this self-rescue.
Paula Caplan contacted me & encouraged me. We stayed in contact until….and now she’s gone.
.
I ALSO contacted ALLEN FRANCES, ensuring that he would read it by stating it’s publication “describing his impact on my life”.
He responded, THANKING ME for what he perceived as gratitude & a compliment.
I’m still waiting for his comparative notes describing his “painful first-hand experience”. I want to commiserate.
Dr. Sherman, good article.
Paula Caplan, PhD was also a brilliant & compassionate advocate for women when they are targeted & exploited by false diagnoses generated by a patriarchy relentlessly seeking control & credibility-nullification of females…by any means necessary…but usually gaslighting & drugs.
She kindly reached out to me personally when I started to report my experience. The validation & gentleness fueled my road to well-being & re-establishing my power & dignity.
I’m also a ‘senior’ woman-who self-rescued from a decade of the bipolar-gold-rush ‘effect’ on the culture & population in the U.S, post Allen Frances’ DSM IV leadership. You know….the guy who monetized his corruption with the best-seller “Saving Normal…”, his oh-so-sincere mea culpa. Paula quit his (DSM) task force, excoriated & exposed him…He claimed he did nothing wrong (documented financial conflict of interest) pointing to others for the IV tragedy. He was hurt the APA wouldn’t ask him back to ruin the DSM 5. They accomplished that without him….it’s called a deep bench. He’s firmly ensconced at Duke. Eeeuw- Now Duke lacks credibility. He taints by association.
It took me 2.5 years of doctor guided withdrawal by the CMO/VP of Arizona’s Behavioral Health Mgmt contractor (2014-2016). I still had to contend with 3 more years of seizures with no effective medical assistance-a subcortical focal lesion courtesy of anti-psychotic use. Doctors wouldn’t even discuss PNES-stress induced-with me…they just wanted me to go away quietly, age faster, and die.
Cost & liability containment Uber Alles.
I am thriving in the 3rd chapter of my life; moving back to Florida after 16 years, living on the water, surrounded by healing nature, and opening my new business. My health has returned robustly, body and soul, with ALOT of strategic care…& I am full of joy & vitality for my spectacular 3rd act in life. My resilience has astonished me…
If u want to compare notes or validation, please consider my essays on MIA “Full Moral Status” Parts 1 & 2-Feb 2019…and RxISK.org, “Changing a Medical Record” Parts 1-4, July 2018, Dr. David Healy’s website-
Senior females (especially) can support each other pro-actively.
I wish you very well indeed.
I was withdrawn off 9 years of drugs by the community Clinic Director (soon-to-be CMO) of Arizona’s Medicaid behavioral health system following a second Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, Risperdal nerve damage to my eyes (!), followed by anaphylaxis, just 2 weeks later, caused by a prescriber.
I was severely effed up (again), body & soul.
One of my then on-board drugs was “the least harmful drug”, Lithium, as I fought to stabilize the damages, INCLUDING a subcortical brain lesion. I had reported THAT earlier to an NP, describing the idiosyncratic symptoms that even after 9 years of drug pollution, was new, scary,…. & ignored. Those symptoms clearly pointed to MS or a lesion…caused by antipsychotics. I don’t have MS.
I had taken Lithium twice, both times I had toxic reactions to what ‘they’ said were low range doses…so it was “impossible” to blame lithium. I was angrily told to stop saying “toxic”…as I drooled, staggering down the hall, trailing my hand on the wall for guidance. My head lolled to
the left side, & I gulped for breath like a goldfish….yet the prescriber ‘wasn’t quite sure’ and called an observer for a second opinion.
Later, thru the immediate chaos & ‘fog of war’ in my poor brain & body, the CMO was firm & insistent that I stop the Lithium ASAP. He told me about a client who stayed on it, requiring dialysis. Ironically, I was reluctant to do it, so afraid of additional, immediate bad reactions piling on & speeding up my inevitable, pending death…in an adult diaper.
I mean, at that point I only had 2 hours of upright function a day…for 5 months. I wasn’t looking for additional challenges…just what was in front of me.
This was 2013, ten years ago. I was deep in damage control, heard him, put it on my long priority list. When I finally titrated & stopped, I was relieved but I never stopped worrying.
After completely withdrawing off of everything…..& having their lifetime sentence removed (bipolar-for-life) in writing…..
I watch my GFR numbers & kidney/liver functions like a hawk. I have my heart inspected annually, as lithium caused morning palpitations…& Geodon=bradycardia and hospitalization.. My current GFR (at 71 yo is 80-85)…it’s hard to stop worrying…as I plan to live decades more.
After all, the amount of Depakote poured down my throat also delivered terrifying kidney labs.
I have sympathy-for-the-Devil/OOPS,…industry….burdened with this depressing science and damning facts.
Good Grief…this is an episode of “Election Deniers & Psychiatric Alternative Facts In Space” streaming on the R/Q/APA/Pharma network.
It’s dying…let it die quicker so fewer people are recruited, hurt, or killed.
This is cool, clear, purified water for my past, present, & future.
It is calming to know this exists…somehow, somewhere in the world.
I hold it close in my battle-weary, but eternally optimistic thoughts.
Dr. Levine’s byline always gets me excited for ‘numbers-don’t-lie’ + humanity-centric, quality pushback.
Let me add my gratitude to yet another concise, powerful, & accurate smackdown of psychiatry’s apologists, lobbyists, and parasites.
I read PsychTimes to stay informed regarding their constant, mewling, petulant, ultimately dangerous pushback against de-legitimazation…by science & damaged customers. I am familiar with the 2 writers & their difficulty hitting just-the-right-tone in their pushback to J. Moncrieff and her associates.
As Levine states, sometimes these guys act as if they ‘accept’ tiny admonishments (to illustrate their ‘open mind’), often they flail hysterically at critics.
Ironically, as a female, I am profoundly familiar with THEIR definition of ‘hysteria’.
Once again Dr. Levine nails the landing.
Thx…again.
This is a terrific article, so well articulated. Thanks for sharing it.
You’re not alone.
NEVER ever ‘accept’ the usual responses: ‘your reaction is uncommon, rare, emotional, treatment-resistant…and ‘are u sure?’ (My fave)
The bias can be universal…especially if you’re female.
Excellent article, Dr. Holzman.
The language surrounding psychiatry & psychology has become an assimilation and marketing exercise that blurs & softens experiences into a large, more palatable blob.
‘Bipolar’ was transformed during aggressive marketing following the publication of the infamous DSM-IV from a diagnosis to a verb to a slur, used with specious ‘authority’ by medical folks and the rest of the culture, at will.
‘Amazing’, in a more minor sense, is a parallel; if everything is ‘amazing’, nothing is.
Allow me to respectfully disagree regarding “medical reversals”.
These guys couldn’t throw their ‘evidence-based’ principles’ and ‘lifelong diagnosis’ overboard fast enough, in my case.
I wrote the APA, wondering why they weren’t trumpeting the medical breakthru!!…ANAPHYLAXIS CURED BIPOLAR DISORDER!!!
They seemed un-amused.
I received a “medical reversal” because the clinic director was ultimately responsible for his NP plunging me into anaphylaxis…after my documented report of a first ADR. He continued the drug, leaving me in a terrible position; stop it myself and deal with the ALREADY frightening side effect(s), or continue, knowing exactly what anaphylaxis could bring.
I stopped for a few days, still suffering from the FIRST ADR. I was ‘decomp-ing’ dramatically. I took one for relief and woke up with my head the size of a basketball & my eyes protruding from their sockets.
Uh oh. ER run. Mega Cortisone injected, oral for weeks…AND my hospital records.
Ultimately, a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting resulted in the director’s (& CEO’s approved) capitulation to my quiet terms (after 9 years of horror)…doctor-guided withdrawal of all drugs (took 2.5 harrowing years) AND vacation, IN WRITING of the B.S. bipolar label.
There was a ‘more important’ event in the works ‘offstage’…the director was poised to ascend to the CMO/VP downtown office (and DID). He/they needed me to be quiet, no lawyers, no exposure….it was the smart play.
Anaphylaxis could not be dismissed in the usual way…as a ‘worsening of ‘my’ mental illness’….
A problem for the recipients of the second largest MH management budget in the U.S. at the time. Lotsa money.
And his career arc. Mo’ money.
I got everything I requested…(AND 19 seizures for the following three years…a subcortical focal lesion.)
I worked hard to recover, with no help; It’s done & life is terrific. But I carry my paperwork in my phone…just in case.
I keep telling this story as I want folks to know how fragile the industry’s own commitment to their ‘science’ ideology really is…I never threatened a lawsuit (it was implied, in their minds) but if it had happened, it would have been a minor settlement with non-disclosure clauses, in a secondary demographic market.
‘Just don’t rock the boat, Ms. Hartmann, we’ll get you out…..CAREERS are at stake!’
I walked behind the curtain, saw who they really were, took back my life….& believe in a certain kind of ‘justice’.
I’ve been patient.
It’s coming quickly now….with a modest but documented shove in the back by me.
Ms. Byron, Please see….
RxISK.org
“A Unicorn: Changing a Medical Record” Parts 1-4
By Krista Hartmann. July 30, 2018 |
This is a detailed narrative of how events transpired. It includes more granularity of my personal path thru the quicksand to the ‘Exit’ sign.
Madinamerica.com
“Full Moral Status’ for Psychiatric Clients: How I Fought Back”
Parts 1 & 2
By Krista Hartmann -February 1, 2019
This is a similar, but much more edited version. It includes a more detailed outline for safer involvement in the industry, should you find yourself stuck there.
Neither article included my seizure information, following withdrawal. It was occurring as I was engaged in writing & waaay too much for me to comment on…while scrambling for help.
It was massively heavy lifting trying to ‘educated’ my primary, neuro’s,, and bigger specialists (!) regarding studies (primarily Ho/Andreason) regarding measurable brain-changes from the drugs…AND…the microraphy I had reported to prescribers & the only 2 causes, according to Mayo, John’s Hopkins, & NIH….Muscular Sclerosis OR antipsychotic/psychotropic drug exposure. I didn”t/don’t have MS.
Once they hear ‘bipolar disorder’ REGARDLESS of my changed paperwork, the ‘mentally ill’ goggles went on. They couldn’t separate that label from my detailed, relevant reporting…even though I had gotten to an ER during the FIRST one & was documented.
ALSO, as most folks know, doctors tend to wander off when presented with an unknown…rather than say “I don’t know…”.
Depending on how good your insurance is, testing will stop (& their interest) if they have to advocate for 2nd or 3rd tier tests. By then, I was on Medicaid.
I was so so relieved they saw no TUMOR, but weren’t looking for a subcortical focal lesion….which is what causes micrography.
Sigh.
Mr. Manry, I was struck by your remarks regarding bitterness. I had a very pointed convo with myself in the throes of 3 years of 19 seizures FOLLOWING guided titration/withdrawal that took 2.5 years…after 9 years of drugging.
I feared bitterness becoming the constant of the days I had left.
I declared I wouldn’t give them 1 more minute of my time left…unless it was carefully compartmentalized and purposeful….Outrage…different for me than anger. And a side-event. But it’s productive and feels good-controlled. It doesn’t run the rest of my life.
It took awhile.
I also explored legal rep…. as psychiatry had ‘officially’ restored my credibility IN WRITING…they vacated my ‘lifelong’ bipolar diagnosis AND withdrew me off their drugs-kinda rare. I have found most folks haven’t had ‘the’ convo with an attorney’s office or attorney themselves, on this topic. I have. And heavily researched another like me who filed suit …with similar documents.
Hard evidence is NOT the only criteria.
I wish you good luck.
I am not a Christian, but THIS helped me…
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting”.
Euripides.
I got there and know I’m lucky.
But I certainly haven’t forgotten…or have any intention of forgiving. They earned my enmity and a reckoning is coming.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold”…is something I see sooner, rather than later, for MY former tormentors.
Shining a clear, cold, factual light on them will be a fine day..and then, back to the beach & a great lunch.
Cults…an agenda, proselytizing, recruitment, control-with fear.
Yup, no question.
The irony surrounding psychiatry’s hatred of Scientology is hilarious. Hubbard’s folks do it without the drugs…they get their money more directly…with no business partner (pharma).
The agenda, ‘pitch’, recruitment-(‘something wrong with u, we alone can fix’), fear campaign (NEVER LEAVE US-bad things will happen) illustrates they are twins separated-at-birth.
I’m shocked (!! Oh yes indeed) that the psychiatric industry has not ‘developed’ insight regarding these parallel business models…considering how much import regarding MY ‘appropriate’ insight (sedated compliance) was underscored for 11 years.
Thanks to behavioral health professional’s troubling behaviors, I got a Master’s degree in insight, thanks. And paid my tab in full.
Excellent article….I believe now is the time to flood media with facts (again) regarding the specious messaging, self-defined expertise & presumed legitimacy of the dangerous Pharma/Psych industry.
This is the first, thrilling time I have felt seismic movement in the fight…there’s a palpable ripple in the force field of conventional marketing, social, & the confluence of post-covid Gen Z curiosity towards options to addressing mental distress.
Michael Jeffrey Jordan said “You either win or you learn”.
Mr. Whitaker and so many other fighters are on the edge of winning.
The industry’s startling “We never said ‘chemical-imbalance’ pushback is a pure gift.
I didn’t think I’d live to see this. I wish Paula Caplan was here for it.
Carpe omnia.
Mr. Whitaker,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart & soul.
Humbly, I would be honored to join/help the suit, give a deposition, bring my 10 years of medical records, including hospitalizations & ER’s, correspondence, 9 months of texts with my ‘exit doctor’,..including his text request for a date (before I left his service) that I preserved, (he’s still the CMO/VP in a major SW city), and medical history of micrography & 19 seizures post 2 1/2 years of guided withdrawal. All those records given to me (my request) as I ran for my life out the door.
I’m the one who got them to remove my lifetime diagnosis-they had no problem jettisoning the 11 years of dogma to avoid a possible (minor settlement) lawsuit regarding anaphylaxis they had caused. I never mentioned one, but…. I ‘negotiated’ for myself. So they called me ‘cured’ (!) of lifetime bipolar 1 and an Arizona SMI certification plus permanent disability.
Who knew anaphylaxis was apparently ‘a cure’ for a bipolar disorder? A miracle!!…they kept it quiet, but it’s ‘on-the-record’ as I have ALL the paperwork.
I sent an email to the APA asking why this wasn’t ground breaking news?
The other person I found that paralleled my timeline and diagnosis removal sued for $35 million (K.C & Chicago) but reportedly was thwarted by statute of limitations. If your disabled/drugged by the defendant during those years, it seems inequitable…
Anything I can do. Anything at all. Or nothing, I’m just a grateful past target.
(I wrote for MIA 2019-“Full Moral Status”, 2 parts. RxISK.org 2018 “The Unicorn: Changing a Diagnosis”, 4-parts)
I was diagnosed bipolar 1 in 2004/Florida with great, private insurance. Was told ‘it’ was an SMI. Became bankrupt & homeless from side effects.
Relocated to Arizona (2006] where indifferent family lived. Was reduced to Medicaid/State behavioral health management contractors.
Drugs were changed 13 times in first 9 months. Landed in ER, admitted to medical floor with bradycardia (heart slowing to fail), doc told my brother (RN) I would not survive. I also had acute akathisia & malnutrition (anorexia).
When released 10 days later, I expressed outrage to prescribers as I had called to report for help. The guy laughed, said I didn’t say “urgent”.
A marraige counselor then designated me ‘SMI’, said better quality of care, different clinic.
Below is ARIZONA’S statutory definition of SMI certification, ostensibly client reviewed every 3 months. BH management gets additional federal revenue for your head count.
This is not complete…but you’ll get the picture….
“Inability to live in an independent or family setting without supervision-neglect or disruption of ability to attend to basic needs…
housing, food, and clothing must be provided by others…
…unable to attend to basic needs of hygiene, grooming, nutrition, medical and dental”.
“DTS/DTO, seriously disruptive to community…regularly engages in assaultive behavior…has been arrested, incarcerated, hospitalized…because of dangerous behavior…
…severe disruption of daily life due to frequent thoughts of death, suicide, or self-harm…”
“Frequently in trouble at work…unable to work…or meet appropriate responsibilities”.
“Co-morbidities…like mental retardation, substance dependence…Chronic factors such as social isolation…poverty.
I was never reviewed in 7 years.
And here are the FACTS….
I worked as part of a management team at a large, successful animal rescue…for almost 8 years during this time…running systems, programs, intakes, & donations.
I PAID OFF my condo & wrote a TOTAL check for a new, modest car.
I lived alone with a pet, managing my own finances…and everything else.
No smoking, drinking. Completely med compliant, appointment present.
SMI, my a**.
Bottom line, I was a revenue stream and no matter how I behaved and lived…it would never be enough.
I’m the girl who made them rescind my diagnosis AND @ certification in writing.
The case workers would have gladly traded for my life…without the drugs, of course.
I strongly believe that NOW is the moment in time to bear down on the treacherous ideology of Pharma and the APA. I trust Mr. Whitaker, et al to continue his impressive efforts.
In addition, pressuring the AMA’ s ‘only-as-convenient’, slightly nervous, slightly distancing, often awkward embrace of psychiatry is necessary. They don’t have to divorce, they have to pressure psychiatry to reform…finally.
Saying the quiet part out loud.
As a scarred, 11 year ‘veteran’ of the psychiatric ‘conflict’, I’ve been present at too many cringe-y Primary (or specialist) appointments and (of course) ER’s with doctors who dance around or flatly disparage the results of my psych ‘care’ and the clear, quantifiable damages that have resulted.
They have looked around, lowered their voices, leaned in and whispered criticism of them & encouragement & sympathy to me.
They have called me at home after ER discharge, to help me get better services.
They have made eye-rolling, sour faces when I report my reasons for the akathisia, bradycardia, Parkinson symptoms, stutter, drooling, ocular nerve damages, alarming liver & kidney labs, severe thyroid fluctuations, enormous hair loss, gulping for air, stress eczema, 90 lb weight-gain, panic attacks, and the ever-present stagger.
Oh, and the seizures.
NOW is the time to Stand & Deliver…ON THE RECORD…for the next client.
Moving the needle with the AMA will take some doing but the financial & credibility blowback could erode faster now….& sooner-rather-than-later accelerate their ‘come-to-Jesus’ moment…I pray.
Their acceptance of this segment of their ‘membership’ requires accountability…finally.
Get on board NOW.
Mr. & Mrs. Stence, I was gutted reading your story. Your despair & love is bottomless.
I want you to be aware that it went very badly for me for 11 years & then I found a crack in the prison wall.
I capitalized on a gross medical error (that severly debilitated me-yet again), made quiet demands, 2 ¹/² years of guided withdrawal followed by 3 years of seizures (no ‘guidance’ this time) and I’m free-IN WRITING-of the diagnosis, drugs, & them.
My point is their shattering depths of willful venality.
I never mentioned attornies or a lawsuit….YET…they capitulated to everything I wanted…guided withdrawal and vacation of the ‘lifetime’ label in writing. What happened to ‘evidence-based’ (their fave) science?
They quietly directed their BH Management company’s CMO to take me as his only client until I was ‘safe’….jettisoning their absolutes of a ‘lifetime’ diagnosis, ‘forever’ state SMI certification, drugged to the grave, and delivering my ‘freedom’ paperwork.
Final words from them…”Don’t dwell on this, be in the moment! Good luck & goodbye”.
MY response was a sweaty, crumpled copy of William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus”….
“…..I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul”.
The moment overwhelmed me. I had no words of my own
In 2018-2019 I wrote about it in an attempt to give some hope to people with ‘lifetime’ sentences. The message was/is that these mf’s will negotiate their ‘absolute scientific principles’……when they’re facing even minor cost & liability containment ‘i$$ues’.
My essays are heavy with facts/research, verbs & irony.
If your interested…a sliver of light in the future perhaps…
Re: The period following the Allen Frances-led DSM-IV publication (1995) intentionally expanding bipolar ‘symptoms’ at pharma’s direction, and begat the explosion of false (“over”) diagnoses in the U.S that has gone un-abated……David Healy’s (RxISK.org) article for PLoS One in 2006 nailed this topic. “Selling Bipolar Disorder: The Latest Mania” made me weep when I found it during my fight out of the psychiatric industry in 2013. And yes, David Healy is controversial. He was absolutely correct on this topic.
THIS article was my ‘gateway’ to the truth. I was energized, comforted, & validated when I found the community of professionals pushing back hard on the calamity I had escaped…Paula Caplan, Gary Greenberg, James Davies, Robert Whitaker, Marcia Angell, et al.
It is discouraging to find this (& other) genteel, carefully worded, mild rebuke(s) to psychiatric corruption pop up here and there, over the years…from folks who are in a position to instigate meaningful change.
And by ‘change’ I mean to purposefully eliminate targeted, exploitive, for-profit misery & death in psychiatry and the growing acceptance for daily, infinite ‘sedation’.
The American public has never been more aware of, and inve$ted in, good-health practices, yet drop a ‘zanny-bar’ at the first twinge of anxiety. The definition of ‘anxiety’ has been expanded much like ‘bipolar’ was at the early 2000’s….normalized and easily smothered by drugs…oops, sorry…medication..
This is yet another of pharma’s ‘long-game’ tactics in action: billions of tax-payer dollars being thrown at ‘mental health services’ to ‘fix’ gun violence is another…
Uber-profitable & effective.
Meanwhile THESE articles are wispy, thought-balloons…that could have, should have been a loud, insistent call for specific action by authors with an established platform & megaphone (Insel redux)….targeting legislators & bigger media-influencers.
But no.
As a former client for 11 years with the “lifetime” diagnosis of bipolar (Dr. was on Seroquel/AstraZeneca payroll, my 1st scrip-ACA/ProPublica reporting) the ‘borderline’ tag came into the convo in my 2nd year of CMO-guided titration/withdrawal of the antipsychotic/benzo/’mood stabilizer’ (hahahaha) ‘treatment’.
This rare, momentous process was driven by the threat of a lawsuit (unspoken) for yet another (9 years of ER’s) life-threatening ADR-Anaphylaxis (!) as it could NOT be ‘attributed’ to my “worsening mental illness”…and I was alarmingly (!) organized & credible regarding the history of drug damages & specious origin of diagnosis..My health was rapidly failing & I knew I was close to institutionalization. I had nothing to lose, everything (health, freedom, joy) to gain.
It was my last, best shot & I took it, knowing “If u come for the King, u best not miss”. “Denial” of ‘my’ diagnosis would only energize my keepers to characterize me as ‘decompensating’…as MIA readers know what that would bring.
It went like this 2 years into withdrawal….”Well Dr., do u think I’m bipolar?”
THE question asked out loud.
Loooong pause, tenting of fingers, frowning at the floor, imaginary line drawn on desk, short ‘continuum’ speech…”You’re slightly depressed.”
Pause, pause…then he said…”What about ‘borderline’, Krista?”
I abruptly stopped my internal celebration…then came the shock, realizing he was asking if I would accept ANOTHER, murkier mental illness…. please.
WTF?
I actually had to turn him down, ‘No, no thanks’….never to be spoken of again. Onward & OUT.
It was surreal, pitiful & frightening….
Ms. Spencer, I LIVE for your insight & Comments. The “..Allen Frances-y..” descriptor made my day. I’m going to steal it in the future-with credit. Big smile & thanks.
As appealing as it is to pile on ANY article describing benzos as the extremely dangerous & ubiquitous class of drugs they are, I gotta agree with another Commenter who views this ‘study’ with suspicion.
Over 90 million users and a 1207 sample of self-responding reporters (THEIR descriptor) from social….nah, there are more legitimate studies that underscore the horrors of these pills.
My battle-tested radar was pricked. I completely trust my ‘gut’; a decade of carefully documented (mine AND their’s) records, memories of the body & soul hell that activate when tapped, & the relentless Trojan horse messaging by the enemy-psychiatry…& their owners-pharma.
Nope.
Mr. Whitaker, please know your work has sustained me thru the darkness of a diagnoses, decade of ‘woe’, & difficult but brilliant re-entry into MY life.
Thank you for never abandoning me, folks like me, & this topic.
I’m so grateful.
As always, Dr. Moncrieff’s constant, persistent, clear voice gives me something that supports/parallels my experience…& gives me hope.
Over a decade of being deftly ‘removed’ from my life by the diagnosis, smothering, damaging prison of drugs, & instant, permanent loss of credibility on any topic…I was able to blackmail my way to ‘safe’ withdrawal and removal of the ‘lifelong’ slander & SMI forehead tattoo…as a result of the prescriber’s mechanical error that couldn’t be placed at my ‘diseased’ feet.
I was a deviant…
A single, childless female (who wasn’t in desperate pursuit of a ‘remedy’) in my 50’s, living a creative, diverse path. I had all the ‘appropriately’ coveted stuff; beach house, nice car, good credit, great insurance…until I had a patch of insomnia regarding a business closure.
HERE was an apparent ‘opportunity’ to ‘fix’ me which dovetailed beautifully with the Allen France$-led DSM-IV’s expansion of bipolar symptoms/diagnoses.
The ‘professionals’ were convinced that my lack of a husband, children, career-in-a-cubicle, & substance-abusing parents = me being inevitably doomed-by my OWN hand, of course. THEY would ‘save’ me….How could I possibly be REALLY happy? I must be in denial.
Of course I became a revenue & job creator for THEIR industry (Good girl!) AND successfully tranquillized/culled from the mainstream, so as not to infect others (women).
The idea of being content and single was unfathomable to EVERY psych, psychologist, case-social worker and other industry parasites. Most were women.
I was quietly deemed aberrant, delusional because I wasn’t lonely & enjoyed my own company…endlessly. So sad & clearly fatal without forced stupification.
I am free now, but I carry my ‘change of diagnoses’ paperwork in my phone (NOS Anxiety…hahahahaha)…in case of a records leak or worse…my ‘papers’…like a Jew in 1940’s Nazi-land.
As one new, ‘modern’ primary doctor responded when I ‘shared’….”That’s impossible”.
After 9 tortuous years of being buried by psychotropic drugs and all the quantifiable (and invisible) misery it brought, I developed micrography.
I was left to research this myself and discovered that the cause was either 1) muscular sclerosis or 2) antipsychotics….that begat BRAIN LESIONS (yes, I’m shouting this).
The prescriber couldn’t have dismissed it fast enough…as I described my handwriting at my mgmt job of 7 years….becoming so infinitessimally small…I could not tell you what I had written.
I soon developed TD in BOTH eyes-the specialist said he could either cut my eyelid nerves, rendering me unable to open my eyes….BUT NOT TO DESPAIR…I could duct tape them open!!!
To my FOREHEAD. I was astonished that they thought this was a ‘good’ solution.
This was followed by a Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR (my second) and anaphylaxis caused by Lamictal being thrown in the stew.
My brain was passed the saturation point…it was done with ALL of it.
I blackmailed my way to 2 1/2 years of guided (the CMO of the managed care BH company) titration & withdrawal with a written change of ‘my’ LIFETIME BD diagnoses. It seemed NOW I was merely NOS Anxious.
Well no sh*t.
It was astounding how quickly they abandoned the most fundamental psychiatric principles of 1) Evidence-based, bio caused mental illness AND 2) BD is LIFETIME.
Just get her OUT of here.
Cost & liability containment trumps everything.
AFTER withdrawal I had 3 years of 29 seizures ending up at Barrow Neurological Institite in Phoenix (there’s a ‘clue’ to my location/treatment here) where they delicately side-stepped implicating their ‘bretheren’ from med school.
“Good luck and call us if they continue!”
What for?
If you withdraw, buckle up.
But it’s worth every horrifying second.
Nailed it Ms. Spencer.
Psychiatry is relentless regarding proof of their ‘legitimacy’, especially to other medical professionals. Their use of ‘evidence- based’ a minimum of 3 times in every sentence tells us so….like Fredo in the boathouse declaring “Im smart!…not dumb like everybody says!”.
Cringe-y …..& desperate to prove something at client’s expense.
Step away from the prescription pad & the DSM & we’ll talk about the rest.
Strategy & tactics
My point: Money talks…and gets ACCESS.
It’s where change starts.
Consistent, carefully crafted messaging and targeting certain lawmakers appropriately can affect $ and votes.
See last post.
So far ‘wanting’ change changes nothing.
Follow the $. They will follow.
I.e.cox: My initial comment agrees with your points.
My modest conclusion was addressing the grassroots, organizational, long-game regarding pushback against the power of culturally supported Big Corporate $ that historically has protection from Congress…auto industry safety-THANKS Ralph Nader, Jeffrey Wigand-tobacco, alcohol/hospitality industry lobby-MADD mother’s legislation & settlements…. the gun lobby & legal action regarding Alex Jones AND Remington settlements-Sandyhook parents…recognition of post-partum behaviors in women, disability access laws, Title 9 equality, rape laws/husband’s ‘rights’, child-marraige (U.S.), etc, etc. Oh yeah…& sexual-predator clergy & medical professionals everywhere who are protected by virtue of assumptive character traits AND powerful lobbies…slow change.
My point is these legislative changes, however modest and s-l-o-w in some cases, are effective because organizer’s goals were 2-pronged….1) carefully crafted (consistent & relentless) messaging effects voter’s donations & votes, eventually. 2) THAT gets politicians attention most effectively. And change CAN result.
NONE of this came quick & easy. Reforming psychiatry so far has been alot of ‘cathartic’ howling among the converted…who are characterized EFFECTIVELY by the industry as irrational, dangerous, & incompetent. ‘How sad’.
Public messaging is a complex strategy requiring (a) unified goals.
Mine is safety in the system that EXISTS NOW…and then carefully carving out the tumors that created/sustain the dangers & misinformation.
And appearances count alot to the public. When shooters in suburban white schools are frequent headlines, there was the horrible, unfortunate awareness of danger in real-time, ‘ordinary’ lives. Galvanizing and holding that potential threat awareness is what motivates campaign donations….and, ‘magically’, politicians responsiveness.
Yeah, a flawed system…but it’s worked for other righteous causes against cultural resistance, massive corporate $, & ignorance on a topic that most don’t think applies to them & theirs.
We know differently.
Changing how a culture thinks about ‘mental health & mental illness’ is as hard as 2nd Amendment ‘feelings’.
Pharma has owned the topic, owned the ‘authority’, owns the messaging, & owns the current politicians.
(#1)-“One explanation is that the prescribers, too, are unaware of adverse effects, how to distinguish between withdrawal and relapse, and how psychiatric medications work.”
This statement is insulting and obscene.
How did they qualify for a prescription pad? All they have to do is read the side of the box.
That’s like saying a radiologist isn’t aware of the dangers of radiation exposure….
I sat in waiting rooms and ‘group’ for 10 years and ‘adverse effects’ were the main event…nobody was spared. By year 9, I was a staggering, drooling, head lolling, air gulping, glassy-eyed, balding wreck dragging 85 extra pounds around and trailing my hand along hallways to stay upright. At my 10 minute med-checks, Stevie Wonder would have noticed.
If Pharma told/paid them to prescribing cat urine, they wouldn’t think twice.
#2-Justifying oneself to a ‘mentally ill’ patient is NOT what psychiatry does. They don’t have to. I was NEVER more stigmatized than in those offices. My cat’s vet had more compassion & concern.
But technically speaking……
Not knowing how psych meds ‘work’ or concern about thei client’s welfare speaks to the continuing, decades long, official, evidence-based, APA policy of….
‘So f*cking what?’
Most everyone knows this. And nobody uses it as a criteria to choose an elected official that might change this….but count researching the best large-screen-tv value as time well-spent.
I was a Democrat. I assumed they would ‘more likely than not’ champion some pushback or reform for Pharma $. Then I found Schumer’s name at the top.
The best candidate for reform was Warren.
On the purity scale, she had the highest marks and best messaging loudly & consistently against Pharma in committee…& the other ‘GE’s of the country.
Unless & until we organize effectively, vote with this agenda front-of-mind, and come armed with facts (easy)…these articles overstating the obvious to special interest groups (us) is an exercise in futility.
(#1)-“One explanation is that the prescribers, too, are unaware of adverse effects, how to distinguish between withdrawal and relapse, and how psychiatric medications work. However, another explanation (#2)-is that prescribers may feel that sharing psychiatric medication risks may deter patients from taking it or negatively affect outcomes.”
Gosh, those well-meaning, befuddled prescribers….
This article is the apex of cynicism regarding the industry’s possible ‘reasons’ why they don’t practice fundamental informed consent when drenching clients in dangerous drugs, knowingly placing clients in harm’s way & chemically co-ercing compliance.
This topic has been exposed, examined, & condemned by ETHICAL medical professionals for decades…as CLIENTS (stripped of credibility by diagnoses) have shouted it from the rooftops.
Here’s the ‘answer’ to the disingenuous “Gee, how could this be occurring…?”
Full Moral Status is canceled by ANY mental health diagnoses. FULL STOP.
It creates an unobstructed ‘lifetime’ revenue stream with a reduction of cost & liability…(“we know what’s best for u”) from clients who have had credibility nullified by the culture & the with the court’s (!) blessings…an All-Access pass for psychiatry, no apologies necessary.
All this wide-eyed ‘questioning’ is easily answered by the AMA’s UN-willingness to clean it’s own house….and the APA will NEVER bite the ‘hand’-Pharma’s-that feeds them.
I thought we learned how this kind of cultural & financial power works with the Catholic church, enabling sexual predators…rarely charged or punished by the legal system…and continues.
Our culture sweeps the “mentally ill” off the table, into a white noise bin while sanctimoniously parroting pharma’s mkting…”No stigma, get help” The “help” is drugs, of course. It turns internet, PRESCRIBING ‘therapists’ into friends with ‘likes’.
Pharma’s business model is brilliant and playing the long game. Only downside is not killing the ‘host’, as all effective parasites instinctively know. It’s a tricky balance as we saw with Oxycontin. And barely moved the population’s awareness meter. But the TV series was good!
Psychiatry won’t protect the ‘marks’….the powerful, overarching medical paradigm won’t censor their own.
And states continue to block public access to complaints & charges regarding malpractice & ‘mistakes’…the latter #3 in U.S. cause-of-death.
Nothing new here. Just more suffering & damage & death.
I went to a shrink with great insurance, insomnia caused by impending financial problems.
I was diagnosed with lifelong bipolar 1, convinced I needed immediate, immersive ‘counseling’, checked into a hospital, dosed with Seroquel (& more) before sundown.
I had a Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR-monitered all nite, told in the morning “We caught you just in time, that was your mental illness careening into a ditch. We saved your life”.
Dr. was receiving $65,000 a year from Astra Zeneca/Seroquel.
9 years later I am free..with a changed diagnosis in writing, healed brain lesion, and a new life.
And compartmentalized, undying, justifiable outrage.
My patience will be rewarded soon… as I publish. Can’t wait.
Forget forgiveness.
Hey there Dr. Levine, I liked your article very much. I’m a simple girl.
I’m someone who blackmailed my captors to withdraw me ‘safely’ & change their ‘lifelong (9 years & counting), acute, chronic’ bipolar 1 diagnoses…and their nasty little SMI certification.
They had carelessly plunged me into anaphylaxis and knew that I knew…THIS TIME a lethal side-effect couldn’t be blamed as a symptom of MY “worsening mental illness”.
Quietly, privately they offered their CMO (BH managed care) to guide me thru 2 years of withdrawal as his only client, a brain lesion, & 3 additional years of 29 seizures.
All that to avoid a possible, relatively minor lawsuit…that I never had to mention. They also had to agree to change the ‘lifelong’ diagnoses..I am now officially NOS Anxious…no sh*t.
So here it is…they were willing to jettison all the absolutes of their industry…diagnoses & damaging ‘treatment’…with no apology or ‘WTF just happened here?’ convo…if I would quietly go age (gratefully) somewhere far away from them.
My book is almost finished…I began writing about this in 2018 on another site, published here as “Full Moral Status” in 2019. Paula Caplan encouraged me long-distance.
I have joyously reclaimed, rebuilt, & relocated my life at 71…with an abundance of purpose…primarily to laugh.
Oh, & I reached out to Allen Frances & invited him to read the effect he had had on my life-(the 2004 diagnosis spawned by his DSM-IV.) He replied “You’re welcome and I look forward to reading it”.
Bless his disgraceful heart.
Keep writing…it’s encouraging and interesting for many.
I applaud Ms. Sonntag’s dedicated work to expose the grift that is the psychiatric industry. ANY form it takes to effectively reach more eyes & ears should be applauded.
This article was powerful in it’s concise articulation of the complexity of this topic and the muffled cries for help from the targeted individuals being snuffed out by simple, hideous greed.
As someone who was drugged into the system for 11 years and was able to mount a chaotic/careful/successful repudiation of my “lifelong diagnosis & drugs-for-life” fate (with on-the-record, exit documentation), I have just re-started my life at 70 years old…clear-headed, re-formed, & holding tightly to my seemingly restored good health-body & soul-that I have re-crafted step-by-step for 6 years.
Last week I landed (back) in my former home state (scene of the original ‘crime’), eager to begin an exciting 3rd act.
Those 2 diagnosticians have so far ignored my emailed invitations for a ‘Come-to-Jesus’ dialogue with a former client, the result of their “lifelong” condemnation…& my ‘exonerating’ documentation from much bigger MD ‘fish’ (Titles, education, APA recognition-things that matter in their ‘pond’) that underscores the terrible, damaging, nearly fatal result of their & their industry’s hubris and greed.
Why wouldn’t a professional in behavioral health take this rare opportunity to develop some personal & professional insight & humility that could have the effect of delivering improved, SAFER ‘treatment’?
Perhaps it’s the $-including the psychiatrist’s $65,000+/annually from pharma-publicly reported by the federal Sunshine Law-or legal liability issues?
I’m aware-as are their attornies-any statute of limitations has long expired.
And yet they avoid a rare opportunity to learn and develop improved behaviors…a popular CBT raison d’etre…the emptiest of rhetoric applied relentlessly to clients entombed in all those drugs.
“First do no harm” is the acid poured into the gaping, oozing wound they created…I bequeath it to them both…a deep, permanent scar, visible to me when I view them in my carefully managed memory files.
It’s no longer mine. It’s all their’s…my gift…& I know they can’t bear to look at what it says about them.
They fear my living truth, my victory over evil…their professional legacy & personal tragedy.
This won’t reach an audience that can effect change. It must be sent to the mailboxes of politicians on the ‘pharma favored’ donors list (almost everyone) & brought up in live town halls for the media to report….over & over & over again.
See how many anti-vaxxers & their families who take other drugs part of THIS scandal object on ‘safety’ and ‘freedom’ grounds.
Crickets.
I am gobsmacked by Stewart-Johnson’s strength & stamina during this psychiatric onslaught.
On a much, much smaller scale, I made a stand that was all-or-nothing and succeeded in purging my life and disintegrating brain & body from an 11-year assault by psychiatry. No children were chips in that poker game, thank god.
In my small way, I exposed how lightening-quick the industry was prepared to jettison their ‘evidence-based’, absolutist diagnoses & profitable treatments-for-life….if challenged by a (minor but possibly noisy) legal action…in my case-anaphylaxis.
My veiled threat citing ER documented dangerous care (over my objections during prescribing, noting a recent, REPORTED initial severe drug reaction) by behavioral management contractors of the state of Arizona was a problem for them. It couldn’t be blamed on ‘my worsening mental illness’ as damage from drugs had been characterized in the past 11 years.
Anaphylaxis was their kryptonite; observed, documented, & treated by objective professionals…AFTER ALERTING THE PRESCRIBING CLINIC-receiving instructions FROM THEM to rush to an ER.
The observable fact that my head swelled to twice it’s size, eyes bugging out wasn’t ANYWHERE in the DSM IV (or 5) as symptomatic of Bipolar 1 Disorder…or ANY mental illness…of course.
Oops.
While my brain & body were incapacitated for 22 hours a day for the following months (and already suffering from measurable brain lesions), I struggled to present a compelling timeline of damages of over a decade, offering the clinic director MY terms…a guided withdrawal by a DOCTOR (NOT a PA or MA carousel) for the entire journey, removal of THEIR BD diagnosis AND state certification of SMI-another revenue stream from the feds to the BH contractor…a contract so large (#2 in the U.S) that it was viewed as PROOF that Arizona was effective & enlightened in it’s approach to mental health!!
It took over 2 excruciating years to ‘withdraw, (& addressing the statute of limitations for a lawsuit) followed by three terrifying years of seizures…and now it’s over.
I’m free to flourish in my third act of life. I’m changed & grateful for the astonishing survival force that drove my messy, loud, outraged ‘self-rescue’.
I am ALWAYS vigilant, ready to (hopefully) anticipate & effectively repel any incoming nibbles, red-flags, or assaults by the psychiatric industry. As I age, the cultural biases quickly multiply.
They have no credibility other than as a massively profitable addiction/death machine, like Exxon. The biggest danger is their poisonous, symbiotic relationship with the U.S. judiciary.
BTW-the Sony PX-333 is a terrific little recorder..Arizona being a ‘single consent state.
Paula Caplan was an astonishing woman who embraced my fledgling attempts at writing about my self-rescue from a diagnostic entombment courtesy of the DSM-IV task force she had renounced. When she famously eviscerated Task Force leader Allen Frances, I swooned, pledging my love. She was ridiculously modest and down to earth.
I shamelessly fan-girled. She not only took me seriously but connected me with folks she thought I could assist maneuver thru the system. I wanted so much to be the person she thought I was.
It meant the world to me at a time I was working hard to rebuild & redefine myself after my battle…..in my late 60’s.
She was a dynamo, always involved with her important work. I think it will please her to know I built a little swagger and boldness back as a consequence of her acknowledgement. I desperately needed to find it again.
I’m weeping…her warmth & generosity to a stranger changed me, enriched me, healed me.
I’m so grateful.
He was directly responsible for me losing 15 years of my life to a false diagnosis of bipolar 1 in 2004, becoming bankrupt & homeless, with quantifiable, documented iatrogenic damages…body & soul…that included 19 seizures POST a guided psychotropic drug withdrawal (for 2+ years). I achieved rare vacation of the ‘LIFELONG, chronic, acute’ mental illness label he had crafted so effectively vis a vis his leadership of DSM-IV. Oh, & the nerve damages in both eyes from Rispedal finally left me 3 years after dosing.
I contacted him thru social media as my MIA 2-part essay “Full Moral Status…” was published, alerting him to his ‘profound effect’ he had on my life.
He perceived that carefully worded sentence as a compliment (!)…responding with a ‘you’re welcome’ and pledging to read it.
Any reader who is uncertain of France’s participation-trophy contributions to the welfare of mankind should read another more credible & distinguished MIA contributor’s essay, the scathing takedown of Allen by Paula Caplan, PhD entitled “Diagnosisgate: Conflict of Interest at the Top of Psychiatry”.
Nailed it …and then some.
And Allen (I know you are reading these comments)…I’ll never forgive you.
“Saving Normal” didn’t ‘save’ you & your forever stained legacy….it just expanded (once again) your bank account…you know…the usual result of your involvement in the psychiatric industry.
“At its extreme limit, financial conflicts of interest may result in inappropriate prescribing of medications and the creation of diagnostic constructs to develop markets for new drugs”.
No, not ‘…extreme limit(s)’….it’s SOP.
Following the DSM-IV’s wide expansion of symptoms for bipolar disorder that tripled the number of adult diagnoses in the U.S. and X40 for pediatric diagnoses (!) conveniently coinciding with new drug approval and ‘rebranding’ of old ones….I made an appointment with a psychiatrist during this ‘gold rush’ for the industry.
I had just closed a business, had a new job (with good insurance), my bills were current but teetering….causing stress & insomnia.
15 minutes into my appointment I was pronounced bipolar 1 and drugged with Astra Zeneca’s Seroquel, an antipsychotic (+ other drugs, of course) resulting in a Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR requiring an all-night monitoring of my vital signs in hospital.
And there she was in 2014… listed in Pro Publica’s ” Dollars for Docs” user-friendly tool to identify graft. Her largest donor…Astra Zeneca, makers of Seroquel who contributed towards her $65,000 annual haul from pharma….a nice, new E-class Benz every year.
I became bankrupt and homeless as a result of the ongoing side effects of a relentless cascade of drugs, from private to state-funded prescribers, coast to coast, for 11 harrowing years…a compliant revenue stream & job creator.
The inscription over the gates to this psychiatric netherworld, paid for by pharmacy & their field-reps, the APA….
“Once drugged, always drugged”.
The periodic hand-wringing articles and lip-service that pop up from members lamenting the continuing APPEARANCE of corruption are an exercise in disingenuous cynicism and fool no one.
I was drugged for 9 years (2004-2013) resulting in measurable mid-cortex brain lesions (antipsychotics) among the usual laundry list of quantifiable & visually observed damages. I had 2.5 years of doctor (psychiatrist) guided withdrawal & full vacation of ‘my’ bipolar 1 false diagnosis in writing (‘clean’ 1/2016), followed by 3 years (2016-2019) of 19 seizures…the first documented by the ER. I thought it was a stroke.
My PCP suggested I could ‘see someone’, a THERAPIST, as if I was still, really mentally ill. Walk back into the propeller. Just great.
I bullied him until producing cardio, neuro, & bigger brain specialist referrals.
I KNEW what it was. Me dragging all the clinical data (primarily Ho/Andreason) that would get them up to speed. The neuro & bigger brain guys (Barrow Neurological, Phoenix) were polite but sooo uncomfortable with this topic (psychiatry & neuroleptics) and what was happening to me. They suggested without witnessing one, it would be impossible to comment further. Cowards.
Specialists are upset when they are stumped but suspicious. They were NOT going to put a toe over the bright white line among all medical specialists…poor form among docs…and possible liability issues. Cover your own ass.
I was on my own. The seizures finally stopped with a careful plan of health, CBD, patience, acceptance, a little despair (I thought I was done with despair). Or just dumb luck.
The acceptance of my (then) reality with ZERO support from ALL medicine and ‘friends’ was f*cked up but necessary at the time to maintain what I COULD still do & enjoy. ‘Resisting’ or ‘fighting’ seizures is a non-starter.
And now I’m OK. But I’m hypervigilant regarding ANY affect on my poor brain & my new doctors all must convince me if anything might interfere. And I give zero f*cks if they view me as ‘crazy’. Walk (stagger) in my shoes. Your professional peers left me like this.
I’m exhausted on this topic with the medical community…while some shake their heads sympathetically & murmer condolences. F*ck them too.
As I age, I still monitor my labs & periodic test results, holding on tight to the now spectacular good health I currently enjoy.
But it was 15 years of horror, fear, and despair…and it brought changes.
I’m tremendously strong & effective and also vulnerable as a baby…like most.
But real good to KNOW what I endured…it makes my 3rd act very busy & full of purpose.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty & well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, & loudly proclaiming “WOW! What a ride!”
Ms. Honig, I am gobsmacked by your profound & complete understanding of this issue.
As someone who survived 2.5 years of doctor (psych) guided titration & withdrawal following 9 years of aggressive dosing with the full spectrum of bipolar ‘treatment’, you nailed every tiny, nuanced detail…including the terrible challenges I faced alone after I was officially ‘finished’ with withdrawal.
It was clearly not finished with ME as I experienced a terrible sequence of 19 seizures over the ensuing 3.5 years, among other ‘effects’ that made ‘re-entry’ into life almost impossible.
I was open & fully documented when informing the ensuing doctors (primary, cardio, neurologist, specialist-Barrows Institute), bringing all relevant studies addressing the damages they should look for (including Ho-Andreason). The discomfort & at times thinly-veiled resentment mixed with bias regarding my credibility (the VACATED bipolar diagnosis-in writing) was heavy in the air. My ‘complaints’ were discredited as probably ‘imagined’ or Munchausens.
And then there’s the difficulty of ANY doctor uttering “I don’t know”….followed by “let’s find out”…especially with insurance restraints. Wasn’t their specialty. They all lost interest.
Mercifully, the seizures just stopped one day.
I’m thriving now. I trust myself for protection going forward into my third act in life. The heartbreak of those 15 years is over. My outrage is compartmentalized, never forgotten. Rather than an impediment, I see it as armor against the cavalier medical industry that is saturated by FCOI-financial conflict of interest.
My diagnosing doctor was listed by ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs”- the ACA Sunshine Law listing-as a happy recipient of $65,000 + annually from pharma for many years…a nice E-class Benz.
Thank you so much for championing this awful subject. I desperately hope these essays will give clients trapped by psychiatry some hope in the dungeon of despair carefully constructed around them.
Outrage saved me…and a physical will that wouldn’t die….despite psychiatry’s very best efforts.
Dr. Timimi, Such a powerful chapter…
The last paragraph of “Scientism” was galvanizing for me.
The Covid observations are massively helpful sorting out the lessons of this year.
He’ll, the entire essay/chapter is breathtaking.
Many thanks.
Miranda, My ‘lived’ experience & subsequent research informed me that pharma rep relationships (grooming) include generous samples, helping prime the pump for prescribing. I experienced it first-hand.
Pharma in-house sychological assessments of what particular doctor’s are most likely to be influenced by, i.e…theatre or sporting event tickets, fine dining, travel, or cash (characterized as ‘consulting’ or ‘research’ fees)..are done with trained input from field reps.
Also, sub-contracting data collectors who purchase (legally!) pharmacy prescribing metrics, measuring the efficacy of inducements…high prescription writers are rewarded, low output offices are targeted with different strategies….or pressured.
No detail is overlooked and resulted in the massive boom in psych-drug sales (#1) since the late 90’s/early aughts following the infamous DSM-IV.
They ‘create’ a demand using prescribers as willing customer ‘influencers.
The fact that ‘trust’ is inherent in the sensitive patient/doctor relationship is, of course, massively beneficial to all but the client.
Oh well.
Mr. Sears,
I have found advising clients to simply research their prescribers on ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” can shine a light when attempting to understand the questions that begin with “Why THAT (debilitating, ineffective, damaging, inappropriate, etc) drug?”
It provides crystal-clear clarity & can help arm a client or advocates with fundamental tools when dealing with the DTO- dangerous behaviors to others-of ‘behavioral specialists’.
The ‘influence’ (open greed) is real…& despite the occasional tepid ‘acknowledgements’ by the APA posing as insight…the industry has NO plans to curb it.
Mr. Sears,
I have found advising clients to simply research their prescribers on ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” can shine a light when attempting to understand the questions that begin with “Why THAT (debilitating, ineffective, damaging, inappropriate, etc) drug?”
It provides crystal-clear clarity & can help arm a client or advocates with fundamental tools when dealing with the dangerous behaviors of behavioral specialists.
The ‘influence’ is real…& despite the occasional tepid ‘acknowledgements’ by the APA…the industry has NO plans to curb it.
After 11 years of the usual toxic combo-platter that always included an antipsychotic…& a massive screwup involving anaphylaxis that they made believe didn’t happen…. (ER says otherwise)…
I blackmailed-sorry…negotiated doctor-guided withdrawal that took 2.5 years fraught with anxiety spikes that were compounded by my real paranoia regarding ‘our’ deal. I had his word he would deliver paperwork nullifying my ‘lifelong’ bipolar diagnosis & SMI certification. He did…after asking me out for a date by text (!) that I still have. Dumb & additionally damning.
He had never withdrawn anybody before. He tried to keep me on a tiny bit of TOPAMAX at the end for HIS need of ‘reassurance’.
Are u kidding me?
I had 1 seizure the first year, 3 the second, 15 the third, & then it was over.
And lesions that cleared up.
Quality CBD might have helped.
My brain had taken a sustained beating. It had to work s&#t out. We’re O.K. now.
At the 8 year mark, being saturated in the toxic sludge that was bipolar treatment, I developed spasms in my left eye. I couldn’t keep it open to see effectively. It was the Risperdal & they abruptly ended it, substituting another terrible drug…..y’all know-the usual.
See…all fixed!!
With the ensuing withdrawals, rebound, & adjustment to the NEW drug’s side effects…(y’all know-the usual)…I went to an eye specialist who was unfamiliar with & frightened by any convo about psyche drugs, the usual medical reaction from outside the cult. (Liability issues)
I went home outraged and terrified for my future independence.
Not long afterwards, I was sloppily put into anaphylaxis, resulting in the OTHER eye spasm-ing. In desperation, I went to another specialist. THAT guy said the only remedy to my ‘nerve damage’ was to surgically sever the nerves, shutting my eyes permanently, just say the word.
He hurriedly added “Don’t worry, you can tape them open to your forehead”. I started to panic.
I knew when I relayed this terrible result from the drugs to the genius prescribing-PA, he would simply offer another drug…the only response to everything discussed with him.
After 7 months it resolved, but I continue 8 years later, to use eyedrops as the left eye always feels as if there are shards of floating glass under the lid.
It’s going well, don’t you think?
The antipsychotics also begat micrography, the tiniest writing imaginable, completly illegible-caused by brain lesions. That finally resolved also, after I was ‘clean’ for 6 months.
No big deal, right?
PS. I just LOVE these academic discussions regarding the client’s suffering caused by their fellow prescriber’s.
‘Lets investigate who’s profiting & proclaim our shock…let’s acknowledge the ‘problems’ we cause and dither about metrics & data…..lets scold Pharma about those effective marketing ads!’
And the statements regarding the ‘tapering’ by prescribers when the drugs go bad. NO ONE does that…Yet they preach constantly to NEVER stop the drugs because of the terrible consequences.
Ummm, we notice the contradiction & hypocrisy…..Jesus, pick a side.
I watched an ad on TD last week. Two women figures appear and one talks about TD as if it’s no big deal because “It has a name!” as the voice-over lists awful side-effects. The figure cheerfully states there is a drug for that now!
The other, silent figure is her ‘afflicted’ sister, perched on the couch like a Labrador….apparently the ‘mentally ill’ subject AND struck mute regarding HER suffering.
During the 1st year of my 2-year drug withdrawal and nullification of a ‘lifelong’ bipolar & SMI designation following 11 years of anguish, pain, & loss…..my exit-doc stated…..
This is obscene. Western psychiatry (Pharma & it’s sales rep APA) are stoked.
Don’t the Iranians have enough misery without sedation, major organ harm, & artificially introduced psychosis?
Apparently not…when there’s a buck to be made.
Hello Dr. Caplan,
Your essays are full of tenderness towards suffering that is the alpha & omega in an ideal response. It feels like the proverbial ‘safe place’ where honesty will NOT produce the recoil, fear, & smothering of a reaction to calamity and exhaustion that the culture supports as ‘best practices’.
I considered suicide once. It was a logical option to the last, worst assault by psychiatry. I wasn’t alarmed when I added it to my ‘options’ list….it had a calming effect. If I didn’t make it out…..MY choice. I knew institutionalization awaited; a diaper, wheelchair, & staring out a barred window…and waiting for the drugs to finish what they had started.
You’re the only person I would ever admit that to…knowing what it signals to the industry.
As I am still a big fan of irony, the thing that was supposed to help me ‘fix’ my financial stress & resultant insomnia with a damning label and drugs, led me in the most direct way to the brink…but not before they sucked every dollar from my private insurance, then Medicaid & Medicare-state & federal….& on to the next carcass.
Sometimes a parasite fails at keeping the ‘host’ viable.
Well done, APA.
Paula, you are a rare and valued treasure. Thanks.
Following 11 years of being labeled (“oft-contested”), 2 years of titration & withdrawal, & 4 of concerted self-care & self-rehab…my brain is firing on all twelve cylinders with what feels like a turbo-boost as if making up for lost time.
I am relieved, delighted, & amazed.
Were it not for the ‘pesky’ 19 seizures that littered the path to this moment…it would have been a perfect recovery.
Apparently my price for a ticket out. Paid in full.
During most of my unfortunate 11 years inside the beast, I was careful not to say “I’m not mentally ill, there’s been a mistake”.
The “Bring out your dead” scene in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” (1979) would flash in my drug-addled head…as a cart made the morning rounds in the ancient village collecting bodies from huts, an old man is thrown on the pile, loudly objecting, “But I’m not dead yet!” to no avail…and the cart moves on, the attendants hearing but ignoring & doing nothing.
Funny then, funny now….but not if you’re ‘the guy’.
Not until my keepers made several serious medication errors (again), rendering me quantifiably brain-damaged (lesions), with an NMS ADR & in anaphylaxis (independant ER records=Uh-oh) was I able to get the cart to slow down…the operators responding to a carefully phrased “I don’t belong here”…sans histrionics, a concisely prepared ‘presentation’ of ALL my ER visits to address physical, grotesque, side-effects while (fully) owning a home & car, employed for 7 years on a management team, & being their ‘compliancy’ poster child. What a good girl.
I totally seized my moment…..as a real, credible threat to their local kingdom.
Had I agitated for my ’cause’ earlier, it would have only strengthened their resolve to keep me chained to them forever…’denial’ psychosis being added to my file.
After quietly blackmailing them successfully, achieving guided withdrawal and a vacated “lifelong” bipolar diagnosis, I asked a supervisor to find the SMI certification (seperate & eternally damning in my state) that had been their response 8 years earlier after a week of hospitalization (regular hospital, major heart, nervous system problems-antipsychotic +++ cocktail)…They declared it meant ‘my mental illness’ (!) was worsening so the SMI (more, heavier drugs) ensured an even quieter client & additional federal funds for them…an easy ‘medical’ conclusion..
The supervisor’s reply after finally unearthing the file……..”Um (cough, pause), er….We don’t do things like that anymore”.
Really.
It was both a rare & massivly uncomfortable acknowledgement…and a horrible validation….a moment I’ll never forget.
The ‘exit’ psychiatrist advised me to “Live in the present, don’t dwell on the past”. Translation; Don’t sue us.
I gave him a copy of the poem “Invictus”…and peeled out of the car park.
Due to my unfortunate, past ‘relationship’ with the industry (Bipolar 1/SMI) and the 6 years of subsequent research while recovering following my self-rescue, here is what I can offer…
“Overdiagnoses” are a result of financial manipulation by Pharma, the trickle down of billions to the APA ($30 million { , _} annually), publishers of the DSM-molding criteria to new and ‘rebranded’ {off-label} product, ‘research and consulting’ graft to psychiatrists to diagnose appropriate to the new drugs hitting the market (ProPublica “Dollars for Docs”).
Psych comprises #1 or #2 (fluctuation over a decade) positions of receiving sheer amount of $ compared to any med specialty), and Big Insurance who happily, successfully herd any client towards ‘pit stop’ psychiatry (drugs), effectively nullifying qualified therapy as an option for most.
All of this is easily achieved as Pharma is the #3 contributor to The Hill, following ‘Energy’ and Wall Street. Big insurance is happy to collude. And EVERYBODY sucks the teat of government programs, Medicaid and Medicare.
The poor and the old are especially targeted and drowned in psychotropics-sedation-increased mortality as a result of under representation. Clean-up on aisle 1…or the non-voting constituency. Who cares?
The judiciary requires ‘definitive’, ‘authoritative’ language to deal with DTS/DTO…and folks who are just different. Never mind that psychiatry is a self-annointed authority. Courts do not like ‘loose threads’ and, like medicine, loathes the sentence “I don’t know”.
Psychiatry is grateful for the ‘legitimacy’ bestowed by the ultimate authority, the courts.
Perfect symbiosis.
Life goes on and it is good for these guys.
Commerce, retail, marketing. Define your market, label (legally!) as ‘lifelong’, rule with a gloved fist. (“Isn’t stigma awful? Fight Stigma!”).. with fear of death-suicide-for non-compliance.
The definition of a cult is… agenda, proselytize, recruit….and rule with fear. Done and done.
The falsely generated (thanks Allen France$!) bipolar ‘epidemic’ following the 1995 DSM IV is textbook Harvard biz school 101.
See Time magazine’s cover story (2002) “Young and Bipolar” detailing the U.S. pediatric bipolar explosion of bipolar diagnoses from 40,000 to 800,000!!! following publication. Adult diagnoses tripled…only in the U.S., not Western Europe. And people wanted the pills as they weren’t informed about the probable consequences. Hell, the INDUSTRY wasn’t sure about short-term, long-term prognosis…too busy counting cash. The FDA also has a $ymbiotic relationship with them.
My diagnosing doctor gave me a 20-minute assessment before labeling and drugging me-for-life (presenting with insomnia from financial stress..and GREAT insurance). She gave me a combo-platter of drugs that day featuring Seroquel, off-label (at that time-schizophrenia scrip).
I was in the hospital by nightfall with Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, paralyzed for 8 hours. When I was told to ‘shake it off’…she. gave. me. more.
She was taking $65,000 a year from Pharma (“Dollars for Docs” listing), her biggest donor was Astra Zeneca, makers of…wait for it…Seroquel. Chemo for a cold.
IWhelp, it went down from there…. for 11 years, passed around the industry, ending up in state/Medicaid clinics. No Bueno for me.
Check it out…..
“Bipolar Disorder: The Shift to Overdiagnosis” U.S. National Library of Medicine 2012
“Some Conditions Misdiagnosed a Bipolar Disorder” Amy Norton Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 2016
“Overdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder: A Critical Analysis of the Literature” U.S. National Library of Medicine 2013
“The Increasing Frequency of Mania and Bipolar Disorder ;Causes and Potential Negative Impact” NIH 2012
My 2 faves…
“The Latest Mania: Selling Bipolar Disorder” David Healy PLoS Med 2006 **** CRYSTAL CLARITY of the hustle***
….and for some alarming, black humor that speaks to the industry as a whole…
“UNPECIFIED MENTAL DISORDER? THAT’S CRAZY: PSYCHIATRY’S DIAGNOSTIC BIBLE HAS BROADENED THE DEFINITION OF MENTAL ILLNESS TO ABSURDITY’ Leonard Sax, Wall Street Journal 2015.
BTW…my ‘exit’ diagnosis was.’.UNSPECIFIED ANXIETY’…I am a huge fan of irony.
Bruce McEwen, PhD, “The Hostage Brain” introducing me to the term/concept ALLOSTATIC LOAD.
It is important in this discussion. I hope you check it out..
pkolpin, Thank you for your thoughtful response.
I reference ‘lizard brain’ as fight, flee, or freeze which is not entirely, biologically accurate…but you get the idea.
I don’t know if you are aware of the work of Bruce McEwen (“The Hostage Brain”)and associates on the “allostatic load” that all people carry and the manifestations that result.
I find it a simple, clear explanation of how life affects the brain and body which may result in changes in it’s ability to maintain homeostasis.
I am very comfortable with this narrative regarding physiological response to stress and trauma…we all have some or a lot.
Allostatic load nullifies the APA, their DSM, and pharma marketing for relentless sedation (psychotropics). It’s a big problem for them.
pkolpin, Actiivism is great, all for it…BUT…please know without credibility (stripped at diagnosis) you don’t have an effective voice with anyone-ANYONE…and your drugged (“Once drugged, always drugged”). My leverage was cold-blooded…economics…the industry recognized it as the blackmail/business move that it was.
I am one of two known clients who were diagnosed (2004) following the bipolar gold-rush following Allen Frances’ piloted DSM IV (1995) expansion of criteria for bipolar. (see the cover of Time mag 2002 “Young and Bipolar” and everywhere else in the lexicon and media) AND reversed, changed, vacated the LIFELONG DIAGNOSIS. A Navy jet pilot, United pilot, Harvard grad. He sued for 35 million, so far No Bueno.
RxISK.org (Dr. David Healy) 4/26/2020 “Starship Corona: Captain’s Log” also addresses some of the topics you have mentioned vis a vis psychotropic drug use, with an alarming connection to what’s occurring right now.
Dr. Healy also wrote MY gateway essay ” The Latest Mania; Selling Bipolar Disorder” PLOS Med 2006 …. I was both shattered and massively relieved when I read it in 2013. This guy had nailed the simple line from A to B and the horrific results…in 2006. Sigh.
It was all business, not personal. That turned out to be the key for my negotiation out.
I also recommend Gary Greenberg’s scorching, sarcastic, and factual “The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmasking of Psychiatry” 2013.
I will also point you to my 4-part essay in 2018 “A Unicorn: Changing a Diagnosis” RxISK.org, explaining with minimum editorializing and personal drama (just the timeline of some major events) and ironic humor (I hope), the oh-so-easy-and quick-entrapment; one day I was living the dream in my custom beach house, employed, bills current, great insurance, no DTS/DTO…the next day I was bipolar 1 for life and in a hospital, drugged to the floor (on a plastic sheet) and paralyzed…soon to be homeless and bankrupt, couch surfing at 54 years old…not pretty. I was in shock for years.
There’s a Kubler-Ross arc, not necessarily in the order that most equate with it. Acceptance often comes first as your terrorized, physically crippled immediately, and whispered soothing reassurances (‘We’ve got this’) are relentless. Your brain is alien to you. In that state, you’ll accept a hand from the Devil himself. And they’re already aware of your pliability with the drugs,..your neurotransmissions are deliberately re-routed and blunted.
I avoid the emotional blow-by-blow of each poison pill for 11 yeas and it’s damage, and emphasize the philosophy and politics that I stumbled against, drugged to my eyeballs…resulting in quantifiable brain damage but somehow absorbing and questioning more and more frantically as I spiraled down every year.
My outrage, sturdy DNA and ‘I won’t die in this dump’ mentality drove me to listen to my lizard brain and Sun Tzu “The Art of War”, MY bible, my salvation. Channeling an attorney’s dispassionate frame of mind was key. Facts, THEIR handbooks, statutes, contemporaneous notes (a parallel file)…and legal (in my state) tape recordings. Whoops.
It was business, not personal.
I also contributed a 2-part essay here-MIA, 2019 “”Full Moral Status; part 2 addresses SAFETY and strategy to achieve it while your in there. pinballing on the drugs.
Moral outrage isn’t effective for me; it simmers way back in my head. I am an alpha predator to their soft underbelly, I figured out the code. Cold, calculated EFFECTIVE ACTION plans interests me. VERBS.
I have my clinical records for 10 years and TEXTS with my exit doctor (3 years, now the VP/CMO). He asked me out for a date…in a text…a month before I was to be ‘released’ with the papers….talk about blackmail.
And I reported it to my old therapist at the time.
It will be the ‘big finish’ to the narrative…starting the little book (with names) after I move. Already have a publisher. Delicious.
I am patient, THEY taught me that.
Revenge is a dish best served cold, indeed.
All the rest of the dialogue about how amoral, evil, destructive, greedy they all are is…. ‘yeah, I know’.
Willoweed, been where your at. You might want to read these as they might more fully inform what you’re experiencing from a ‘fellow traveler’ who needed a bigger picture and more informed Iintel on the entombment that lasted 14 years …or ‘How did that happen to ME’?
I’m out, with guided withdrawal (with ‘aftershocks’), an official, DOCUMENTED VACATED “lifelong SMI diagnosis”, and am doing really, really well. (“A Unicorn: Changing a Diagnosis” RxISK.org 2018 and “Full Moral Status” MIA 2019).
I’ve done some peer counseling regarding how to effectively ‘fight the power’ with SAFETY within the industry, the first principle.
After 5 years of research and healing, these are some enlightening, supportive, and validating writing….
“The Latest Mania: Selling Bipolar Disorder” David Healy PLOS Med, 2006… also NIH.
Nailed it and made my weep…my story.
“The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry” Gary Greenberg 2013.
Nailed it with snarky black humor.
“Cracked: The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry” James Davies 2013.
A UK version of nailing it.
BTW, I found it very tricky to ‘assess’ other’s emotional challenges. I listened to what they wanted, contrasted with the ‘listeners’ in the industry. I found that sharing my strategy and tactics to assert my rights and insistence on TRANSPARENCY and SAFETY per THE INDUSTRY’S OWN RULES, STATUTES, AND LANGUAGE was paramount…and possibly first steps to regain their confidence and ultimately, they’re power.
I found not everybody can or wants to get out, but they’re aware of the danger and their lack of a voice. They need some coaching (I certainly did)…as they’re drugged and their ‘caretakers’ ostensibly are not. Big handicap when you’re negotiating safe care for your brain.
If they were ‘game’ to make a calculated run for it, I gave them resources and tactics that worked for me to achieve my freedom, a changed ‘diagnosis’ (Anxiety!) and the fantastic rest of my life…Their choice to use, modify, or discard.
Mr. Whitaker, Many thanks & kudos for this essay. It’s comprehensive and digestible form is helpful to me as I continue to research and write.
It’s also personally familiar and articulates the health disaster, body & soul, that was my experience embedded in the industry.
Thx again for this valuable presentation.
Pkolpin, I am touched by your comments, but my experience in private and especially public (Medicaid) funded ‘care’ has been that variations of my core story are ubiquitous, not at all rare. The WTF awareness-creep is slightly different, often slower to manifest in private care. The heavy-handed crudeness of the ‘brain-care’ in community clinics is immediately alarming.
Medicaid is eyeball-deep in these clients, AKA revenue-streams, who have no voice, no way out.
My biggest detour in that path was my poor cognitive function following a 2nd NMS/paralysis, the anaphylaxis followed. My fear & outrage fueled a strategy out that targeted their Achilles Heel…cost and liability containment. I was able to parlay it into a safe exit.
Corporate was completly untroubled to instantly jettison their Absolute, Inviolate, Principles of “life-long” SMI along with every other ‘evidence-based’, biomedical pronouncements of a decade…no problem…to keep the anaphylaxis event and me quiet…defining cynicism and venality for all time.
I gave zero f*%cks about retribution in that moment… as long as I got out safe & alive…and documented.
I did and am moving quickly towards a fantastic third act in my life.
Thx for your well-wishes…the future is bright.
Aerial Ballet, Gosh, I don’t know about a “deeper response”, but…
“It seems a little convoluted to keep going back there for help and then bitching about what you get there” stopped me cold.
I made an appointment with my great insurance for insomnia caused by money stress. No DTS/DTO. Current in my bills. In 20 minutes I was told I was SMI for-life and given 3 drugs to take that evening, one being Seroquel. I my first Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR and hospitalized with paralysis for 8 hours.
They told my freaked-out, terrified self that “…we caught you just in time, your mental illness caused that reaction, never stop the meds”…remember, I’m drugged to my eyeballs-my thoughts are not my own now, heavily sedated, and terrified and ashamed…in a hospital.
I thought that appointment was going to be a 30-minute version of “You’re fine, just sleep-deprived, here’s some temazepam”…WTF.
For the next eleven years, peering through the blunting, sedation, and a cacophony of dangerous side effects (A to Z with attendant hospitalizations-NEVER for behaviors) and realizing through the fog I’ve been gamed,..your “….can’t a person just get up and walk out of the institution (of psychiatry)” seems strikingly uninformed.
“It seems a little convoluted to keep going back there for help and then bitching about what you get there” informs me you know nothing about the industry; manipulating drugged, addicted, folks is easy. And FEAR begins day one; fear of them, fear of losing support from loved ones, fear of losing yourself.
And they LEGALLY owned my identity in the U.S. court system. Anything negative that I bumped up against for the rest of my life would be viewed through SMI goggles. Disastrous.
With a diagnosis, your credibility instantly flies out the window notwithstanding the industry’s “We support a patient’s ability to self-advocate”…yeah, until you start.
Knowing the tremendous damages that stopping these drugs do…, rebound, withdrawal, seizure, coma, death…and the very real prospect that withdrawal can send you into behaviors that WILL NOT help your case, only make you look ‘worse’…it’s dead if you continue, dead if you stop…and REALLY DEAD if you fail cause you’ll be bombed so hard with more, bigger, stronger drugs, institutionalization in a diaper will be your final destination…’for your own good’, of course.
Plato’s Noble Lie runs throughout this universal narrative…and cash, of course.
One more thing…when you’ve been poisoned that long, that hard for years, with a relentless narrative insisting that it’s YOU…Well, the secret terror I held inside was, after all that brain damage (I had lesions), swimming in a cesspool of drugs…was there any ‘THERE” left of my mind, personality, or intellect…without the drugs. As existential as that sounds, I have met others who talk about that private, profound fear also.
I am the one that got away…my “lifelong diagnosis” was changed in 2016 to…wait for it…NOS Anxiety (no sh*t) following a sloppy psychotropic prescribing causing anaphylaxis (yikes).
I blackmailed my way out, getting a doctor’s guidance for titration and withdrawal. It took almost 3 years, but I have the Mf*%ing paperwork-part of the deal…followed by 19 seizures that finally stopped in 2019.
Yeah…just get up and walk out…thanks for that nugget.
Dr. Caplan’s “Diagnosisgate…” stands as the definitive disembowelment of Frances.
The reverance (still!) that publishers continue to display towards his every utterance informs me they are specious amateurs doing no homework on psychiatry & the murderous malignancy he unleashed.
His desperate attempts to erase his black history with ‘academic’ musings that strain to keep him in the public (& industry’s) eye, positioning himself as a ‘chastened-but-proud’ public servant, is simply the thinly-disguised plea to whitewash his unforgivable history….
a pathetic, old f*#k-up.
Hubris won’t allow him to go quietly & stop compounding the tragedies that define his career.
Allen, you’ve helped no one and left a legacy of unspeakable pain, suffering, & death.
It was your gift to me vis a` vis DSM IV. You owe me 15 years of my life with the excellent health that was taken from me…per your directives.
“Although the researchers don’t mention it, iatrogenic harm caused by psychiatric medications could also be an explanation, as the drugs lead to weight gain, metabolic syndrome, and cardiac problems, among other adverse effects.”
This is tacked on at the end of the article, almost as an afterthought.
Alcohol, tobacco, poor diet, and drug abuse mortality stats are very high.
When the industry adds them to an individual’s allostatic load after psychiatric dosing, it’s a combo-platter that can be ‘interpreted’ in an infinite variety of self-serving ways. It’s too easy and nobody’s asking us.
My favorite writer, David Mamet: “People may or may not say what they mean but they always say something designed to get what they want.” Psychiatric ‘studies’ 101.
For every reader of this website, his 1987 “House of Games” film is essential. I saw it before I was labeled.
A psychiatrist enmeshed with a professional con-artist…(I know). The ‘attraction’ is mutual (for very different reasons), and disturbing as boundaries are crossed and blurred, with an astonishing (yet not) ending.
Things aren’t what they seem, it’s all sleight-of-hand, some hidden, some obvious (no).
A perfect metaphor for my experience with psychiatrists, the industry, and their diminishing, desperate fist holding power and ruining lives.
A huge step forward…I hope.
I carry articles like this in my phone…as I age (& female), I’m aware of my increasing vulnerability for cavalier/sloppy/’defacto’ prescribing of these drugs to seniors…. who insist on autonomy & informed consent, & are instead infantilized and/or characterized as ‘oppositional, defiant’ or irrational (dementia, loss of capacity)…
Already seen that movie.
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Good article.
Others like it create little interest in the general public. They seem to continue to think that if SO many people are ‘on’ these drugs, they must be good….and interpret sedation, simple & complex, as victory.
Comfortably numb indeed.
I don’t know how to pierce that deflector shield because “addiction” doesn’t affect their rationale…as many INSIST on ‘clean’ food and products for themselves, their families, their PETS.
No sugar, sodium, PFAS, red dyes, etc….but changing your brain on a cellular level…No guarantees! Is all good.
I wanna give up on them sometimes.
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Aspie63-famliar with that scenario as I also carried ‘Unspecified & NOS’…
If you’ve never read DR. Leonard Sax on the topic (WSJ-2013), you might enjoy this.
Funny, pithy, scalding critique in human terms.
A sample….
“Over the past two decades, American culture has made almost any deviation from a continual smiley face into a psychopathology, especially for children.”
https://www.leonardsax.com/unspecified-mental-disorder-thats-crazy/
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I believe that this article clearly explains the paradox regarding people’s access & exposure to rhetoric labeled by authors/sources as “evidence-based, scientific, & clinical”, & how it offers an easy conclusion/”remedy”…giving our culturally groomed trust to anyone (especially) writing a prescription for….psych drugs.
I was one of those people in 2004 (the bipolar gold-rush) & paid a terrible price, finally clawing back my identity & health-body & soul- developing an expanded warrior-like perspective of the world, that has protected me from other forms of gaslighting & auto-pilot trust.
No paranoia here-I KNOW there are entities that don’t have my well-being as a priority…& have learned to ACT against them…& sometimes I still lose.
Without enormous resources for healthcare, folks will often turn to what is seemingly expedient, as getting back to ‘work’ is paramount in global culture.
Grooming/marketing by the psych-industry, catastrophizing life forward…without THEM (OhNo!)…is the cynical double-speak that simultaneously encourages a trusting bond (WE understand you) & strips you of sober, independent assessment of the relationship…& yourself. It encourages an approval & brand of self-pity that makes the industry’s ‘rescue’ all the more emotionally appealing. It is, after all, what they do-spin it.
Sanctified/approved-by-‘experts’ addiction is OK now.
ALL drug addiction turns people into permanent victims….the industry sponsors the faux ‘fight’ against stigma, positioning itself as the client’s champion (THEY don’t understand you; WE do).
The client is told over & over they will fail (or suicide) without this ‘relationship’ (drugs).
And THAT is the definition of a self-fullfilling prophecy, as withdrawal CAN kill.
Psychiatry’s business model is genius; defining their customers (everybody, per the DSM), AND supplying the culturally-accepted ‘fix’ FOR LIFE (drugs)…..& positioning themselves as the ONLY authority accepted by the courts.
Yikes.
All this for alot of transitional distress AND profound human suffering.
Defining EVERTHING as profound, acute, chronic, LIFE-LONG illness has reaped trillion$.
I believe a ‘seige mentality’ has been successfully adopted/marketed to generations post WW II…Yeah, life was difficult AND different for every generation…it’s not a contest.
But if you lack perspective-HISTORY-you think it’s worse for you. And schools don’t teach history anymore. Some are prohibited.
Double Yikes, Florida!
Perspective…..Ask Ukranians stuck in Kiev, or Ugandans, or women in Iran, or……
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Amen. They are a Judas Goat, guiding trusting people to addiction & premature death…for a buck.
An unforgivable, disgraceful exercise in ‘grooming’.
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Ms. Mangicaro, I thought your article was very well presented.
I would like to learn more about your work.
I also wrote for MIA-2019 (“Full Moral Status”, Part 1 & 2) and Dr. Healy’s RxISK website-2018 (“A Unicorn: Changing a Medical Record”, Part 1-4) regarding my forcing [blackmailing=”It’s in EVERYBODY’S best interest…considering the unfortunate anaphylaxis (!)…”] a rare vacation of a “lifelong” bipolar diagnosis & “forever” SMI certification…without an attorney (on MY side)…and in writing; 2.5 years of a tortuous, medically-guided withdrawal (CMO/VP of the state MH contractor, as his only client) followed by ‘good luck, good bye, go away’.
The ACTUAL recovery and re-entry back into life was my own, personal science experiment that took 5 additional years. I could only find 1 other person who shared my path. They did not want contact-Understood.
Medical folks (outside of Psych) kept a nervous, BIG distance…. or pointed me back to my former assailants.
The aftermath left me with a subcortical focal lesion (brain damage) including 3 years of reported, documented seizures…among other ‘scars’. It’s been a long road of research & education regarding the industry, self-tailored support & applied recovery process-body & soul- but I’m there.
I was connected with some individuals by the late, great Paula Caplan, PhD (& MIA contributor among so many other accomplishments) to help navigate aspects of the psychiatric bureaucracy with tactics & strategies that could possibly help them towards effective self-advocacy, SAFETY & possible self-extraction.
I admire your hard work & advocacy for others. I would like to learn & contribute. Thank you.
[email protected]
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This was a near-perfect assessment of the history, moving parts, motivations, & repeated failures of psychiatry…underscored by their untroubled eagerness to sacrifice real people with no acknowledgement of…& no legal accountability regarding, the massive scope of damages as a result of their behaviors.
The lack of apparent insight by the self-appointed ‘experts’ in human behavior is perfect, bitter irony.
The development of a solid, perpetual business model and ‘standing’ as a medical entity remains the primary driver & goal. Put simply, money and respect from the medical community….
I’ve never felt so re-assured….that this view, this concise, valid view (as a targeted, exploited, damaged former ‘client’) is relentlessly moving towards the front of the line…
.
I remain fearful of the authority/hall pass that our social culture, medical community, & most importantly, the judiciary give them to continue to fail….knowing changes that prioritize safety & compassion are not on the table.
I carry my documents vacating the ‘life-long’ diagnosis dropped on me by the DSM-IV, in my phone, should the unthinkable occur….like a Jew in occupied Poland, trying to safely go about my business…and terrified of a situational, subjective judgement….sharply going left, into a ‘life-long’ ditch.
I want them to know I’m (with Sun Tzu’s support) prepared to effectively counter, protecting myself from what I know they will bring…
What a world.
Excellent interview.
Thanks.
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Have to disagree about Frances.
Please read Dr. Paula Caplan’s excellent article first published in Aporia (2014) exposing Frances’ FCOI (financial conflict of interest) regarding leading the DSM IV task force (and on the DSM III team. Then read Frances’ rebuttal in the oh-so-scientific HuffPost. The 2nd-grade name-calling by him reveals Frances’ degree of ‘butt-hurt’. Duke University still embraces this guy…a proud stance.
The irony massively bypasses Allen in his own 1st paragraph…..claiming Paula’s ostensible proposal for a ‘Delusional Dominating Personality Disorder’ to be included….look in the mirror, chief….& there you are! (It’s science!!!) was the origin of her ‘hit piece’ of facts, not opinion or conjecture.
THEN he was snubbed by the equally petty, dangerous DSM 5 gods. He attacked THEM in his transparently vindictive and more importantly, successfully monetized “Saving Normal”, saying he WAS a LITTLE sorry for the devastation brought by the IV….but-‘look over THERE, not my fault!!’
A review in Psychology Today (2014) by Helene Guldberg states “He is keenly aware of the risks of diagnostic inflation ‘because of painful first-hand experience”(!!!)…describing the explosion of adult bipolar diagnoses tripling and X 40 for children (Time magazine cover story 2002 “Young & Bipolar”), ONLY in the U.S., not western Europe…or anywhere else.
I was slam-dunked into a lifetime bipolar diagnosis in 2004, during the cresting Bipolar Gold Rush. I was drugged immediately & aggressively for 9 years, my complaint was insomnia caused by pending financial worries. I was employed, bills current, with great new insurance. Uh oh. Bankruptcy & homelessness followed, driven by side-effects, body & soul.
(My diagnosing doc was receiving $65,000+ in the 1st year of ACA OPEN DATA-& PROPUBLICA “Dollars for Docs” reporting.)
After critical health damages & a sloppy anaphylaxis ‘event’, I blackmailed (quietly, politely) for my guided withdrawal-2.5 years- & the vacation of the “lifetime” diagnosis…IN WRITING….It was followed by 3 years/19 seizures/subcortical focal lesion, only caused by….wait for it….MS or antipsychotics.
I am MS-free.
I wrote for Risk.org & MIA about this self-rescue.
Paula Caplan contacted me & encouraged me. We stayed in contact until….and now she’s gone.
.
I ALSO contacted ALLEN FRANCES, ensuring that he would read it by stating it’s publication “describing his impact on my life”.
He responded, THANKING ME for what he perceived as gratitude & a compliment.
I’m still waiting for his comparative notes describing his “painful first-hand experience”. I want to commiserate.
Paula, I rest my (your) case…and God Bless.
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Dr. Levine, thank you. Well done.
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Dr. Sherman, good article.
Paula Caplan, PhD was also a brilliant & compassionate advocate for women when they are targeted & exploited by false diagnoses generated by a patriarchy relentlessly seeking control & credibility-nullification of females…by any means necessary…but usually gaslighting & drugs.
She kindly reached out to me personally when I started to report my experience. The validation & gentleness fueled my road to well-being & re-establishing my power & dignity.
I’m also a ‘senior’ woman-who self-rescued from a decade of the bipolar-gold-rush ‘effect’ on the culture & population in the U.S, post Allen Frances’ DSM IV leadership. You know….the guy who monetized his corruption with the best-seller “Saving Normal…”, his oh-so-sincere mea culpa. Paula quit his (DSM) task force, excoriated & exposed him…He claimed he did nothing wrong (documented financial conflict of interest) pointing to others for the IV tragedy. He was hurt the APA wouldn’t ask him back to ruin the DSM 5. They accomplished that without him….it’s called a deep bench. He’s firmly ensconced at Duke. Eeeuw- Now Duke lacks credibility. He taints by association.
It took me 2.5 years of doctor guided withdrawal by the CMO/VP of Arizona’s Behavioral Health Mgmt contractor (2014-2016). I still had to contend with 3 more years of seizures with no effective medical assistance-a subcortical focal lesion courtesy of anti-psychotic use. Doctors wouldn’t even discuss PNES-stress induced-with me…they just wanted me to go away quietly, age faster, and die.
Cost & liability containment Uber Alles.
I am thriving in the 3rd chapter of my life; moving back to Florida after 16 years, living on the water, surrounded by healing nature, and opening my new business. My health has returned robustly, body and soul, with ALOT of strategic care…& I am full of joy & vitality for my spectacular 3rd act in life. My resilience has astonished me…
If u want to compare notes or validation, please consider my essays on MIA “Full Moral Status” Parts 1 & 2-Feb 2019…and RxISK.org, “Changing a Medical Record” Parts 1-4, July 2018, Dr. David Healy’s website-
Senior females (especially) can support each other pro-actively.
I wish you very well indeed.
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I was withdrawn off 9 years of drugs by the community Clinic Director (soon-to-be CMO) of Arizona’s Medicaid behavioral health system following a second Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, Risperdal nerve damage to my eyes (!), followed by anaphylaxis, just 2 weeks later, caused by a prescriber.
I was severely effed up (again), body & soul.
One of my then on-board drugs was “the least harmful drug”, Lithium, as I fought to stabilize the damages, INCLUDING a subcortical brain lesion. I had reported THAT earlier to an NP, describing the idiosyncratic symptoms that even after 9 years of drug pollution, was new, scary,…. & ignored. Those symptoms clearly pointed to MS or a lesion…caused by antipsychotics. I don’t have MS.
I had taken Lithium twice, both times I had toxic reactions to what ‘they’ said were low range doses…so it was “impossible” to blame lithium. I was angrily told to stop saying “toxic”…as I drooled, staggering down the hall, trailing my hand on the wall for guidance. My head lolled to
the left side, & I gulped for breath like a goldfish….yet the prescriber ‘wasn’t quite sure’ and called an observer for a second opinion.
Later, thru the immediate chaos & ‘fog of war’ in my poor brain & body, the CMO was firm & insistent that I stop the Lithium ASAP. He told me about a client who stayed on it, requiring dialysis. Ironically, I was reluctant to do it, so afraid of additional, immediate bad reactions piling on & speeding up my inevitable, pending death…in an adult diaper.
I mean, at that point I only had 2 hours of upright function a day…for 5 months. I wasn’t looking for additional challenges…just what was in front of me.
This was 2013, ten years ago. I was deep in damage control, heard him, put it on my long priority list. When I finally titrated & stopped, I was relieved but I never stopped worrying.
After completely withdrawing off of everything…..& having their lifetime sentence removed (bipolar-for-life) in writing…..
I watch my GFR numbers & kidney/liver functions like a hawk. I have my heart inspected annually, as lithium caused morning palpitations…& Geodon=bradycardia and hospitalization.. My current GFR (at 71 yo is 80-85)…it’s hard to stop worrying…as I plan to live decades more.
After all, the amount of Depakote poured down my throat also delivered terrifying kidney labs.
I have sympathy-for-the-Devil/OOPS,…industry….burdened with this depressing science and damning facts.
It must be hard for you.
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Good Grief…this is an episode of “Election Deniers & Psychiatric Alternative Facts In Space” streaming on the R/Q/APA/Pharma network.
It’s dying…let it die quicker so fewer people are recruited, hurt, or killed.
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This is cool, clear, purified water for my past, present, & future.
It is calming to know this exists…somehow, somewhere in the world.
I hold it close in my battle-weary, but eternally optimistic thoughts.
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Dr. Levine’s byline always gets me excited for ‘numbers-don’t-lie’ + humanity-centric, quality pushback.
Let me add my gratitude to yet another concise, powerful, & accurate smackdown of psychiatry’s apologists, lobbyists, and parasites.
I read PsychTimes to stay informed regarding their constant, mewling, petulant, ultimately dangerous pushback against de-legitimazation…by science & damaged customers. I am familiar with the 2 writers & their difficulty hitting just-the-right-tone in their pushback to J. Moncrieff and her associates.
As Levine states, sometimes these guys act as if they ‘accept’ tiny admonishments (to illustrate their ‘open mind’), often they flail hysterically at critics.
Ironically, as a female, I am profoundly familiar with THEIR definition of ‘hysteria’.
Once again Dr. Levine nails the landing.
Thx…again.
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This is a terrific article, so well articulated. Thanks for sharing it.
You’re not alone.
NEVER ever ‘accept’ the usual responses: ‘your reaction is uncommon, rare, emotional, treatment-resistant…and ‘are u sure?’ (My fave)
The bias can be universal…especially if you’re female.
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Excellent article, Dr. Holzman.
The language surrounding psychiatry & psychology has become an assimilation and marketing exercise that blurs & softens experiences into a large, more palatable blob.
‘Bipolar’ was transformed during aggressive marketing following the publication of the infamous DSM-IV from a diagnosis to a verb to a slur, used with specious ‘authority’ by medical folks and the rest of the culture, at will.
‘Amazing’, in a more minor sense, is a parallel; if everything is ‘amazing’, nothing is.
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Thx for this important article.
Allow me to respectfully disagree regarding “medical reversals”.
These guys couldn’t throw their ‘evidence-based’ principles’ and ‘lifelong diagnosis’ overboard fast enough, in my case.
I wrote the APA, wondering why they weren’t trumpeting the medical breakthru!!…ANAPHYLAXIS CURED BIPOLAR DISORDER!!!
They seemed un-amused.
I received a “medical reversal” because the clinic director was ultimately responsible for his NP plunging me into anaphylaxis…after my documented report of a first ADR. He continued the drug, leaving me in a terrible position; stop it myself and deal with the ALREADY frightening side effect(s), or continue, knowing exactly what anaphylaxis could bring.
I stopped for a few days, still suffering from the FIRST ADR. I was ‘decomp-ing’ dramatically. I took one for relief and woke up with my head the size of a basketball & my eyes protruding from their sockets.
Uh oh. ER run. Mega Cortisone injected, oral for weeks…AND my hospital records.
Ultimately, a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting resulted in the director’s (& CEO’s approved) capitulation to my quiet terms (after 9 years of horror)…doctor-guided withdrawal of all drugs (took 2.5 harrowing years) AND vacation, IN WRITING of the B.S. bipolar label.
There was a ‘more important’ event in the works ‘offstage’…the director was poised to ascend to the CMO/VP downtown office (and DID). He/they needed me to be quiet, no lawyers, no exposure….it was the smart play.
Anaphylaxis could not be dismissed in the usual way…as a ‘worsening of ‘my’ mental illness’….
A problem for the recipients of the second largest MH management budget in the U.S. at the time. Lotsa money.
And his career arc. Mo’ money.
I got everything I requested…(AND 19 seizures for the following three years…a subcortical focal lesion.)
I worked hard to recover, with no help; It’s done & life is terrific. But I carry my paperwork in my phone…just in case.
I keep telling this story as I want folks to know how fragile the industry’s own commitment to their ‘science’ ideology really is…I never threatened a lawsuit (it was implied, in their minds) but if it had happened, it would have been a minor settlement with non-disclosure clauses, in a secondary demographic market.
‘Just don’t rock the boat, Ms. Hartmann, we’ll get you out…..CAREERS are at stake!’
I walked behind the curtain, saw who they really were, took back my life….& believe in a certain kind of ‘justice’.
I’ve been patient.
It’s coming quickly now….with a modest but documented shove in the back by me.
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Ms. Byron, Please see….
RxISK.org
“A Unicorn: Changing a Medical Record” Parts 1-4
By Krista Hartmann. July 30, 2018 |
This is a detailed narrative of how events transpired. It includes more granularity of my personal path thru the quicksand to the ‘Exit’ sign.
Madinamerica.com
“Full Moral Status’ for Psychiatric Clients: How I Fought Back”
Parts 1 & 2
By Krista Hartmann -February 1, 2019
This is a similar, but much more edited version. It includes a more detailed outline for safer involvement in the industry, should you find yourself stuck there.
Neither article included my seizure information, following withdrawal. It was occurring as I was engaged in writing & waaay too much for me to comment on…while scrambling for help.
It was massively heavy lifting trying to ‘educated’ my primary, neuro’s,, and bigger specialists (!) regarding studies (primarily Ho/Andreason) regarding measurable brain-changes from the drugs…AND…the microraphy I had reported to prescribers & the only 2 causes, according to Mayo, John’s Hopkins, & NIH….Muscular Sclerosis OR antipsychotic/psychotropic drug exposure. I didn”t/don’t have MS.
Once they hear ‘bipolar disorder’ REGARDLESS of my changed paperwork, the ‘mentally ill’ goggles went on. They couldn’t separate that label from my detailed, relevant reporting…even though I had gotten to an ER during the FIRST one & was documented.
ALSO, as most folks know, doctors tend to wander off when presented with an unknown…rather than say “I don’t know…”.
Depending on how good your insurance is, testing will stop (& their interest) if they have to advocate for 2nd or 3rd tier tests. By then, I was on Medicaid.
I was so so relieved they saw no TUMOR, but weren’t looking for a subcortical focal lesion….which is what causes micrography.
Sigh.
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Mr. Manry, I was struck by your remarks regarding bitterness. I had a very pointed convo with myself in the throes of 3 years of 19 seizures FOLLOWING guided titration/withdrawal that took 2.5 years…after 9 years of drugging.
I feared bitterness becoming the constant of the days I had left.
I declared I wouldn’t give them 1 more minute of my time left…unless it was carefully compartmentalized and purposeful….Outrage…different for me than anger. And a side-event. But it’s productive and feels good-controlled. It doesn’t run the rest of my life.
It took awhile.
I also explored legal rep…. as psychiatry had ‘officially’ restored my credibility IN WRITING…they vacated my ‘lifelong’ bipolar diagnosis AND withdrew me off their drugs-kinda rare. I have found most folks haven’t had ‘the’ convo with an attorney’s office or attorney themselves, on this topic. I have. And heavily researched another like me who filed suit …with similar documents.
Hard evidence is NOT the only criteria.
I wish you good luck.
I am not a Christian, but THIS helped me…
“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting”.
Euripides.
I got there and know I’m lucky.
But I certainly haven’t forgotten…or have any intention of forgiving. They earned my enmity and a reckoning is coming.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold”…is something I see sooner, rather than later, for MY former tormentors.
Shining a clear, cold, factual light on them will be a fine day..and then, back to the beach & a great lunch.
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Mr. Scott, thx for the well-presented article.
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Cults…an agenda, proselytizing, recruitment, control-with fear.
Yup, no question.
The irony surrounding psychiatry’s hatred of Scientology is hilarious. Hubbard’s folks do it without the drugs…they get their money more directly…with no business partner (pharma).
The agenda, ‘pitch’, recruitment-(‘something wrong with u, we alone can fix’), fear campaign (NEVER LEAVE US-bad things will happen) illustrates they are twins separated-at-birth.
I’m shocked (!! Oh yes indeed) that the psychiatric industry has not ‘developed’ insight regarding these parallel business models…considering how much import regarding MY ‘appropriate’ insight (sedated compliance) was underscored for 11 years.
Thanks to behavioral health professional’s troubling behaviors, I got a Master’s degree in insight, thanks. And paid my tab in full.
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Excellent article….I believe now is the time to flood media with facts (again) regarding the specious messaging, self-defined expertise & presumed legitimacy of the dangerous Pharma/Psych industry.
This is the first, thrilling time I have felt seismic movement in the fight…there’s a palpable ripple in the force field of conventional marketing, social, & the confluence of post-covid Gen Z curiosity towards options to addressing mental distress.
Michael Jeffrey Jordan said “You either win or you learn”.
Mr. Whitaker and so many other fighters are on the edge of winning.
The industry’s startling “We never said ‘chemical-imbalance’ pushback is a pure gift.
I didn’t think I’d live to see this. I wish Paula Caplan was here for it.
Carpe omnia.
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Mr. Whitaker,
Thank you from the bottom of my heart & soul.
Humbly, I would be honored to join/help the suit, give a deposition, bring my 10 years of medical records, including hospitalizations & ER’s, correspondence, 9 months of texts with my ‘exit doctor’,..including his text request for a date (before I left his service) that I preserved, (he’s still the CMO/VP in a major SW city), and medical history of micrography & 19 seizures post 2 1/2 years of guided withdrawal. All those records given to me (my request) as I ran for my life out the door.
I’m the one who got them to remove my lifetime diagnosis-they had no problem jettisoning the 11 years of dogma to avoid a possible (minor settlement) lawsuit regarding anaphylaxis they had caused. I never mentioned one, but…. I ‘negotiated’ for myself. So they called me ‘cured’ (!) of lifetime bipolar 1 and an Arizona SMI certification plus permanent disability.
Who knew anaphylaxis was apparently ‘a cure’ for a bipolar disorder? A miracle!!…they kept it quiet, but it’s ‘on-the-record’ as I have ALL the paperwork.
I sent an email to the APA asking why this wasn’t ground breaking news?
The other person I found that paralleled my timeline and diagnosis removal sued for $35 million (K.C & Chicago) but reportedly was thwarted by statute of limitations. If your disabled/drugged by the defendant during those years, it seems inequitable…
Anything I can do. Anything at all. Or nothing, I’m just a grateful past target.
(I wrote for MIA 2019-“Full Moral Status”, 2 parts. RxISK.org 2018 “The Unicorn: Changing a Diagnosis”, 4-parts)
So stoked.
To the APA & Pharma…..
Suck it.
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I was diagnosed bipolar 1 in 2004/Florida with great, private insurance. Was told ‘it’ was an SMI. Became bankrupt & homeless from side effects.
Relocated to Arizona (2006] where indifferent family lived. Was reduced to Medicaid/State behavioral health management contractors.
Drugs were changed 13 times in first 9 months. Landed in ER, admitted to medical floor with bradycardia (heart slowing to fail), doc told my brother (RN) I would not survive. I also had acute akathisia & malnutrition (anorexia).
When released 10 days later, I expressed outrage to prescribers as I had called to report for help. The guy laughed, said I didn’t say “urgent”.
A marraige counselor then designated me ‘SMI’, said better quality of care, different clinic.
Below is ARIZONA’S statutory definition of SMI certification, ostensibly client reviewed every 3 months. BH management gets additional federal revenue for your head count.
This is not complete…but you’ll get the picture….
“Inability to live in an independent or family setting without supervision-neglect or disruption of ability to attend to basic needs…
housing, food, and clothing must be provided by others…
…unable to attend to basic needs of hygiene, grooming, nutrition, medical and dental”.
“DTS/DTO, seriously disruptive to community…regularly engages in assaultive behavior…has been arrested, incarcerated, hospitalized…because of dangerous behavior…
…severe disruption of daily life due to frequent thoughts of death, suicide, or self-harm…”
“Frequently in trouble at work…unable to work…or meet appropriate responsibilities”.
“Co-morbidities…like mental retardation, substance dependence…Chronic factors such as social isolation…poverty.
I was never reviewed in 7 years.
And here are the FACTS….
I worked as part of a management team at a large, successful animal rescue…for almost 8 years during this time…running systems, programs, intakes, & donations.
I PAID OFF my condo & wrote a TOTAL check for a new, modest car.
I lived alone with a pet, managing my own finances…and everything else.
No smoking, drinking. Completely med compliant, appointment present.
SMI, my a**.
Bottom line, I was a revenue stream and no matter how I behaved and lived…it would never be enough.
I’m the girl who made them rescind my diagnosis AND @ certification in writing.
The case workers would have gladly traded for my life…without the drugs, of course.
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I strongly believe that NOW is the moment in time to bear down on the treacherous ideology of Pharma and the APA. I trust Mr. Whitaker, et al to continue his impressive efforts.
In addition, pressuring the AMA’ s ‘only-as-convenient’, slightly nervous, slightly distancing, often awkward embrace of psychiatry is necessary. They don’t have to divorce, they have to pressure psychiatry to reform…finally.
Saying the quiet part out loud.
As a scarred, 11 year ‘veteran’ of the psychiatric ‘conflict’, I’ve been present at too many cringe-y Primary (or specialist) appointments and (of course) ER’s with doctors who dance around or flatly disparage the results of my psych ‘care’ and the clear, quantifiable damages that have resulted.
They have looked around, lowered their voices, leaned in and whispered criticism of them & encouragement & sympathy to me.
They have called me at home after ER discharge, to help me get better services.
They have made eye-rolling, sour faces when I report my reasons for the akathisia, bradycardia, Parkinson symptoms, stutter, drooling, ocular nerve damages, alarming liver & kidney labs, severe thyroid fluctuations, enormous hair loss, gulping for air, stress eczema, 90 lb weight-gain, panic attacks, and the ever-present stagger.
Oh, and the seizures.
NOW is the time to Stand & Deliver…ON THE RECORD…for the next client.
Moving the needle with the AMA will take some doing but the financial & credibility blowback could erode faster now….& sooner-rather-than-later accelerate their ‘come-to-Jesus’ moment…I pray.
Their acceptance of this segment of their ‘membership’ requires accountability…finally.
Get on board NOW.
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Mr. & Mrs. Stence, I was gutted reading your story. Your despair & love is bottomless.
I want you to be aware that it went very badly for me for 11 years & then I found a crack in the prison wall.
I capitalized on a gross medical error (that severly debilitated me-yet again), made quiet demands, 2 ¹/² years of guided withdrawal followed by 3 years of seizures (no ‘guidance’ this time) and I’m free-IN WRITING-of the diagnosis, drugs, & them.
My point is their shattering depths of willful venality.
I never mentioned attornies or a lawsuit….YET…they capitulated to everything I wanted…guided withdrawal and vacation of the ‘lifetime’ label in writing. What happened to ‘evidence-based’ (their fave) science?
They quietly directed their BH Management company’s CMO to take me as his only client until I was ‘safe’….jettisoning their absolutes of a ‘lifetime’ diagnosis, ‘forever’ state SMI certification, drugged to the grave, and delivering my ‘freedom’ paperwork.
Final words from them…”Don’t dwell on this, be in the moment! Good luck & goodbye”.
MY response was a sweaty, crumpled copy of William Ernest Henley’s “Invictus”….
“…..I am the master of my fate
I am the captain of my soul”.
The moment overwhelmed me. I had no words of my own
In 2018-2019 I wrote about it in an attempt to give some hope to people with ‘lifetime’ sentences. The message was/is that these mf’s will negotiate their ‘absolute scientific principles’……when they’re facing even minor cost & liability containment ‘i$$ues’.
My essays are heavy with facts/research, verbs & irony.
If your interested…a sliver of light in the future perhaps…
https://rxisk.org/a-unicorn-changing-a-medical-record/ 4-Part. 2018
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/02/full-moral-status-how-i-fought-back/ 2-Part
…with respect & peace.
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Re: The period following the Allen Frances-led DSM-IV publication (1995) intentionally expanding bipolar ‘symptoms’ at pharma’s direction, and begat the explosion of false (“over”) diagnoses in the U.S that has gone un-abated……David Healy’s (RxISK.org) article for PLoS One in 2006 nailed this topic. “Selling Bipolar Disorder: The Latest Mania” made me weep when I found it during my fight out of the psychiatric industry in 2013. And yes, David Healy is controversial. He was absolutely correct on this topic.
THIS article was my ‘gateway’ to the truth. I was energized, comforted, & validated when I found the community of professionals pushing back hard on the calamity I had escaped…Paula Caplan, Gary Greenberg, James Davies, Robert Whitaker, Marcia Angell, et al.
It is discouraging to find this (& other) genteel, carefully worded, mild rebuke(s) to psychiatric corruption pop up here and there, over the years…from folks who are in a position to instigate meaningful change.
And by ‘change’ I mean to purposefully eliminate targeted, exploitive, for-profit misery & death in psychiatry and the growing acceptance for daily, infinite ‘sedation’.
The American public has never been more aware of, and inve$ted in, good-health practices, yet drop a ‘zanny-bar’ at the first twinge of anxiety. The definition of ‘anxiety’ has been expanded much like ‘bipolar’ was at the early 2000’s….normalized and easily smothered by drugs…oops, sorry…medication..
This is yet another of pharma’s ‘long-game’ tactics in action: billions of tax-payer dollars being thrown at ‘mental health services’ to ‘fix’ gun violence is another…
Uber-profitable & effective.
Meanwhile THESE articles are wispy, thought-balloons…that could have, should have been a loud, insistent call for specific action by authors with an established platform & megaphone (Insel redux)….targeting legislators & bigger media-influencers.
But no.
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As a former client for 11 years with the “lifetime” diagnosis of bipolar (Dr. was on Seroquel/AstraZeneca payroll, my 1st scrip-ACA/ProPublica reporting) the ‘borderline’ tag came into the convo in my 2nd year of CMO-guided titration/withdrawal of the antipsychotic/benzo/’mood stabilizer’ (hahahaha) ‘treatment’.
This rare, momentous process was driven by the threat of a lawsuit (unspoken) for yet another (9 years of ER’s) life-threatening ADR-Anaphylaxis (!) as it could NOT be ‘attributed’ to my “worsening mental illness”…and I was alarmingly (!) organized & credible regarding the history of drug damages & specious origin of diagnosis..My health was rapidly failing & I knew I was close to institutionalization. I had nothing to lose, everything (health, freedom, joy) to gain.
It was my last, best shot & I took it, knowing “If u come for the King, u best not miss”. “Denial” of ‘my’ diagnosis would only energize my keepers to characterize me as ‘decompensating’…as MIA readers know what that would bring.
It went like this 2 years into withdrawal….”Well Dr., do u think I’m bipolar?”
THE question asked out loud.
Loooong pause, tenting of fingers, frowning at the floor, imaginary line drawn on desk, short ‘continuum’ speech…”You’re slightly depressed.”
Pause, pause…then he said…”What about ‘borderline’, Krista?”
I abruptly stopped my internal celebration…then came the shock, realizing he was asking if I would accept ANOTHER, murkier mental illness…. please.
WTF?
I actually had to turn him down, ‘No, no thanks’….never to be spoken of again. Onward & OUT.
It was surreal, pitiful & frightening….
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Ms. Spencer, I LIVE for your insight & Comments. The “..Allen Frances-y..” descriptor made my day. I’m going to steal it in the future-with credit. Big smile & thanks.
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As appealing as it is to pile on ANY article describing benzos as the extremely dangerous & ubiquitous class of drugs they are, I gotta agree with another Commenter who views this ‘study’ with suspicion.
Over 90 million users and a 1207 sample of self-responding reporters (THEIR descriptor) from social….nah, there are more legitimate studies that underscore the horrors of these pills.
My battle-tested radar was pricked. I completely trust my ‘gut’; a decade of carefully documented (mine AND their’s) records, memories of the body & soul hell that activate when tapped, & the relentless Trojan horse messaging by the enemy-psychiatry…& their owners-pharma.
Nope.
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Mr. Whitaker, please know your work has sustained me thru the darkness of a diagnoses, decade of ‘woe’, & difficult but brilliant re-entry into MY life.
Thank you for never abandoning me, folks like me, & this topic.
I’m so grateful.
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As always, Dr. Moncrieff’s constant, persistent, clear voice gives me something that supports/parallels my experience…& gives me hope.
Over a decade of being deftly ‘removed’ from my life by the diagnosis, smothering, damaging prison of drugs, & instant, permanent loss of credibility on any topic…I was able to blackmail my way to ‘safe’ withdrawal and removal of the ‘lifelong’ slander & SMI forehead tattoo…as a result of the prescriber’s mechanical error that couldn’t be placed at my ‘diseased’ feet.
I was a deviant…
A single, childless female (who wasn’t in desperate pursuit of a ‘remedy’) in my 50’s, living a creative, diverse path. I had all the ‘appropriately’ coveted stuff; beach house, nice car, good credit, great insurance…until I had a patch of insomnia regarding a business closure.
HERE was an apparent ‘opportunity’ to ‘fix’ me which dovetailed beautifully with the Allen France$-led DSM-IV’s expansion of bipolar symptoms/diagnoses.
The ‘professionals’ were convinced that my lack of a husband, children, career-in-a-cubicle, & substance-abusing parents = me being inevitably doomed-by my OWN hand, of course. THEY would ‘save’ me….How could I possibly be REALLY happy? I must be in denial.
Of course I became a revenue & job creator for THEIR industry (Good girl!) AND successfully tranquillized/culled from the mainstream, so as not to infect others (women).
The idea of being content and single was unfathomable to EVERY psych, psychologist, case-social worker and other industry parasites. Most were women.
I was quietly deemed aberrant, delusional because I wasn’t lonely & enjoyed my own company…endlessly. So sad & clearly fatal without forced stupification.
I am free now, but I carry my ‘change of diagnoses’ paperwork in my phone (NOS Anxiety…hahahahaha)…in case of a records leak or worse…my ‘papers’…like a Jew in 1940’s Nazi-land.
As one new, ‘modern’ primary doctor responded when I ‘shared’….”That’s impossible”.
Uh oh.
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After 9 tortuous years of being buried by psychotropic drugs and all the quantifiable (and invisible) misery it brought, I developed micrography.
I was left to research this myself and discovered that the cause was either 1) muscular sclerosis or 2) antipsychotics….that begat BRAIN LESIONS (yes, I’m shouting this).
The prescriber couldn’t have dismissed it fast enough…as I described my handwriting at my mgmt job of 7 years….becoming so infinitessimally small…I could not tell you what I had written.
I soon developed TD in BOTH eyes-the specialist said he could either cut my eyelid nerves, rendering me unable to open my eyes….BUT NOT TO DESPAIR…I could duct tape them open!!!
To my FOREHEAD. I was astonished that they thought this was a ‘good’ solution.
This was followed by a Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR (my second) and anaphylaxis caused by Lamictal being thrown in the stew.
My brain was passed the saturation point…it was done with ALL of it.
I blackmailed my way to 2 1/2 years of guided (the CMO of the managed care BH company) titration & withdrawal with a written change of ‘my’ LIFETIME BD diagnoses. It seemed NOW I was merely NOS Anxious.
Well no sh*t.
It was astounding how quickly they abandoned the most fundamental psychiatric principles of 1) Evidence-based, bio caused mental illness AND 2) BD is LIFETIME.
Just get her OUT of here.
Cost & liability containment trumps everything.
AFTER withdrawal I had 3 years of 29 seizures ending up at Barrow Neurological Institite in Phoenix (there’s a ‘clue’ to my location/treatment here) where they delicately side-stepped implicating their ‘bretheren’ from med school.
“Good luck and call us if they continue!”
What for?
If you withdraw, buckle up.
But it’s worth every horrifying second.
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Nailed it Ms. Spencer.
Psychiatry is relentless regarding proof of their ‘legitimacy’, especially to other medical professionals. Their use of ‘evidence- based’ a minimum of 3 times in every sentence tells us so….like Fredo in the boathouse declaring “Im smart!…not dumb like everybody says!”.
Cringe-y …..& desperate to prove something at client’s expense.
Step away from the prescription pad & the DSM & we’ll talk about the rest.
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As always, thank you PLoS ONE.
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Strategy & tactics
My point: Money talks…and gets ACCESS.
It’s where change starts.
Consistent, carefully crafted messaging and targeting certain lawmakers appropriately can affect $ and votes.
See last post.
So far ‘wanting’ change changes nothing.
Follow the $. They will follow.
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I.e.cox: My initial comment agrees with your points.
My modest conclusion was addressing the grassroots, organizational, long-game regarding pushback against the power of culturally supported Big Corporate $ that historically has protection from Congress…auto industry safety-THANKS Ralph Nader, Jeffrey Wigand-tobacco, alcohol/hospitality industry lobby-MADD mother’s legislation & settlements…. the gun lobby & legal action regarding Alex Jones AND Remington settlements-Sandyhook parents…recognition of post-partum behaviors in women, disability access laws, Title 9 equality, rape laws/husband’s ‘rights’, child-marraige (U.S.), etc, etc. Oh yeah…& sexual-predator clergy & medical professionals everywhere who are protected by virtue of assumptive character traits AND powerful lobbies…slow change.
My point is these legislative changes, however modest and s-l-o-w in some cases, are effective because organizer’s goals were 2-pronged….1) carefully crafted (consistent & relentless) messaging effects voter’s donations & votes, eventually. 2) THAT gets politicians attention most effectively. And change CAN result.
NONE of this came quick & easy. Reforming psychiatry so far has been alot of ‘cathartic’ howling among the converted…who are characterized EFFECTIVELY by the industry as irrational, dangerous, & incompetent. ‘How sad’.
Public messaging is a complex strategy requiring (a) unified goals.
Mine is safety in the system that EXISTS NOW…and then carefully carving out the tumors that created/sustain the dangers & misinformation.
And appearances count alot to the public. When shooters in suburban white schools are frequent headlines, there was the horrible, unfortunate awareness of danger in real-time, ‘ordinary’ lives. Galvanizing and holding that potential threat awareness is what motivates campaign donations….and, ‘magically’, politicians responsiveness.
Yeah, a flawed system…but it’s worked for other righteous causes against cultural resistance, massive corporate $, & ignorance on a topic that most don’t think applies to them & theirs.
We know differently.
Changing how a culture thinks about ‘mental health & mental illness’ is as hard as 2nd Amendment ‘feelings’.
Pharma has owned the topic, owned the ‘authority’, owns the messaging, & owns the current politicians.
It can change.
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(#1)-“One explanation is that the prescribers, too, are unaware of adverse effects, how to distinguish between withdrawal and relapse, and how psychiatric medications work.”
This statement is insulting and obscene.
How did they qualify for a prescription pad? All they have to do is read the side of the box.
That’s like saying a radiologist isn’t aware of the dangers of radiation exposure….
I sat in waiting rooms and ‘group’ for 10 years and ‘adverse effects’ were the main event…nobody was spared. By year 9, I was a staggering, drooling, head lolling, air gulping, glassy-eyed, balding wreck dragging 85 extra pounds around and trailing my hand along hallways to stay upright. At my 10 minute med-checks, Stevie Wonder would have noticed.
If Pharma told/paid them to prescribing cat urine, they wouldn’t think twice.
#2-Justifying oneself to a ‘mentally ill’ patient is NOT what psychiatry does. They don’t have to. I was NEVER more stigmatized than in those offices. My cat’s vet had more compassion & concern.
But technically speaking……
Not knowing how psych meds ‘work’ or concern about thei client’s welfare speaks to the continuing, decades long, official, evidence-based, APA policy of….
‘So f*cking what?’
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Most everyone knows this. And nobody uses it as a criteria to choose an elected official that might change this….but count researching the best large-screen-tv value as time well-spent.
I was a Democrat. I assumed they would ‘more likely than not’ champion some pushback or reform for Pharma $. Then I found Schumer’s name at the top.
The best candidate for reform was Warren.
On the purity scale, she had the highest marks and best messaging loudly & consistently against Pharma in committee…& the other ‘GE’s of the country.
Unless & until we organize effectively, vote with this agenda front-of-mind, and come armed with facts (easy)…these articles overstating the obvious to special interest groups (us) is an exercise in futility.
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(#1)-“One explanation is that the prescribers, too, are unaware of adverse effects, how to distinguish between withdrawal and relapse, and how psychiatric medications work. However, another explanation (#2)-is that prescribers may feel that sharing psychiatric medication risks may deter patients from taking it or negatively affect outcomes.”
Gosh, those well-meaning, befuddled prescribers….
This article is the apex of cynicism regarding the industry’s possible ‘reasons’ why they don’t practice fundamental informed consent when drenching clients in dangerous drugs, knowingly placing clients in harm’s way & chemically co-ercing compliance.
This topic has been exposed, examined, & condemned by ETHICAL medical professionals for decades…as CLIENTS (stripped of credibility by diagnoses) have shouted it from the rooftops.
Here’s the ‘answer’ to the disingenuous “Gee, how could this be occurring…?”
Full Moral Status is canceled by ANY mental health diagnoses. FULL STOP.
It creates an unobstructed ‘lifetime’ revenue stream with a reduction of cost & liability…(“we know what’s best for u”) from clients who have had credibility nullified by the culture & the with the court’s (!) blessings…an All-Access pass for psychiatry, no apologies necessary.
All this wide-eyed ‘questioning’ is easily answered by the AMA’s UN-willingness to clean it’s own house….and the APA will NEVER bite the ‘hand’-Pharma’s-that feeds them.
I thought we learned how this kind of cultural & financial power works with the Catholic church, enabling sexual predators…rarely charged or punished by the legal system…and continues.
Our culture sweeps the “mentally ill” off the table, into a white noise bin while sanctimoniously parroting pharma’s mkting…”No stigma, get help” The “help” is drugs, of course. It turns internet, PRESCRIBING ‘therapists’ into friends with ‘likes’.
Pharma’s business model is brilliant and playing the long game. Only downside is not killing the ‘host’, as all effective parasites instinctively know. It’s a tricky balance as we saw with Oxycontin. And barely moved the population’s awareness meter. But the TV series was good!
Psychiatry won’t protect the ‘marks’….the powerful, overarching medical paradigm won’t censor their own.
And states continue to block public access to complaints & charges regarding malpractice & ‘mistakes’…the latter #3 in U.S. cause-of-death.
Nothing new here. Just more suffering & damage & death.
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I went to a shrink with great insurance, insomnia caused by impending financial problems.
I was diagnosed with lifelong bipolar 1, convinced I needed immediate, immersive ‘counseling’, checked into a hospital, dosed with Seroquel (& more) before sundown.
I had a Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR-monitered all nite, told in the morning “We caught you just in time, that was your mental illness careening into a ditch. We saved your life”.
Dr. was receiving $65,000 a year from Astra Zeneca/Seroquel.
9 years later I am free..with a changed diagnosis in writing, healed brain lesion, and a new life.
And compartmentalized, undying, justifiable outrage.
My patience will be rewarded soon… as I publish. Can’t wait.
Forget forgiveness.
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Hey there Dr. Levine, I liked your article very much. I’m a simple girl.
I’m someone who blackmailed my captors to withdraw me ‘safely’ & change their ‘lifelong (9 years & counting), acute, chronic’ bipolar 1 diagnoses…and their nasty little SMI certification.
They had carelessly plunged me into anaphylaxis and knew that I knew…THIS TIME a lethal side-effect couldn’t be blamed as a symptom of MY “worsening mental illness”.
Quietly, privately they offered their CMO (BH managed care) to guide me thru 2 years of withdrawal as his only client, a brain lesion, & 3 additional years of 29 seizures.
All that to avoid a possible, relatively minor lawsuit…that I never had to mention. They also had to agree to change the ‘lifelong’ diagnoses..I am now officially NOS Anxious…no sh*t.
So here it is…they were willing to jettison all the absolutes of their industry…diagnoses & damaging ‘treatment’…with no apology or ‘WTF just happened here?’ convo…if I would quietly go age (gratefully) somewhere far away from them.
My book is almost finished…I began writing about this in 2018 on another site, published here as “Full Moral Status” in 2019. Paula Caplan encouraged me long-distance.
I have joyously reclaimed, rebuilt, & relocated my life at 71…with an abundance of purpose…primarily to laugh.
Oh, & I reached out to Allen Frances & invited him to read the effect he had had on my life-(the 2004 diagnosis spawned by his DSM-IV.) He replied “You’re welcome and I look forward to reading it”.
Bless his disgraceful heart.
Keep writing…it’s encouraging and interesting for many.
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https://photos.app.goo.gl/H4RcAaUzXsKxQYySA
My contribution to degenerative art.
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I applaud Ms. Sonntag’s dedicated work to expose the grift that is the psychiatric industry. ANY form it takes to effectively reach more eyes & ears should be applauded.
This article was powerful in it’s concise articulation of the complexity of this topic and the muffled cries for help from the targeted individuals being snuffed out by simple, hideous greed.
As someone who was drugged into the system for 11 years and was able to mount a chaotic/careful/successful repudiation of my “lifelong diagnosis & drugs-for-life” fate (with on-the-record, exit documentation), I have just re-started my life at 70 years old…clear-headed, re-formed, & holding tightly to my seemingly restored good health-body & soul-that I have re-crafted step-by-step for 6 years.
Last week I landed (back) in my former home state (scene of the original ‘crime’), eager to begin an exciting 3rd act.
Those 2 diagnosticians have so far ignored my emailed invitations for a ‘Come-to-Jesus’ dialogue with a former client, the result of their “lifelong” condemnation…& my ‘exonerating’ documentation from much bigger MD ‘fish’ (Titles, education, APA recognition-things that matter in their ‘pond’) that underscores the terrible, damaging, nearly fatal result of their & their industry’s hubris and greed.
Why wouldn’t a professional in behavioral health take this rare opportunity to develop some personal & professional insight & humility that could have the effect of delivering improved, SAFER ‘treatment’?
Perhaps it’s the $-including the psychiatrist’s $65,000+/annually from pharma-publicly reported by the federal Sunshine Law-or legal liability issues?
I’m aware-as are their attornies-any statute of limitations has long expired.
And yet they avoid a rare opportunity to learn and develop improved behaviors…a popular CBT raison d’etre…the emptiest of rhetoric applied relentlessly to clients entombed in all those drugs.
“First do no harm” is the acid poured into the gaping, oozing wound they created…I bequeath it to them both…a deep, permanent scar, visible to me when I view them in my carefully managed memory files.
It’s no longer mine. It’s all their’s…my gift…& I know they can’t bear to look at what it says about them.
They fear my living truth, my victory over evil…their professional legacy & personal tragedy.
Keep writing Ms. Sonntag.
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This is both hilarious & tragic.
They need research to explain sedation & flat affect?
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This won’t reach an audience that can effect change. It must be sent to the mailboxes of politicians on the ‘pharma favored’ donors list (almost everyone) & brought up in live town halls for the media to report….over & over & over again.
See how many anti-vaxxers & their families who take other drugs part of THIS scandal object on ‘safety’ and ‘freedom’ grounds.
Crickets.
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I am gobsmacked by Stewart-Johnson’s strength & stamina during this psychiatric onslaught.
On a much, much smaller scale, I made a stand that was all-or-nothing and succeeded in purging my life and disintegrating brain & body from an 11-year assault by psychiatry. No children were chips in that poker game, thank god.
In my small way, I exposed how lightening-quick the industry was prepared to jettison their ‘evidence-based’, absolutist diagnoses & profitable treatments-for-life….if challenged by a (minor but possibly noisy) legal action…in my case-anaphylaxis.
My veiled threat citing ER documented dangerous care (over my objections during prescribing, noting a recent, REPORTED initial severe drug reaction) by behavioral management contractors of the state of Arizona was a problem for them. It couldn’t be blamed on ‘my worsening mental illness’ as damage from drugs had been characterized in the past 11 years.
Anaphylaxis was their kryptonite; observed, documented, & treated by objective professionals…AFTER ALERTING THE PRESCRIBING CLINIC-receiving instructions FROM THEM to rush to an ER.
The observable fact that my head swelled to twice it’s size, eyes bugging out wasn’t ANYWHERE in the DSM IV (or 5) as symptomatic of Bipolar 1 Disorder…or ANY mental illness…of course.
Oops.
While my brain & body were incapacitated for 22 hours a day for the following months (and already suffering from measurable brain lesions), I struggled to present a compelling timeline of damages of over a decade, offering the clinic director MY terms…a guided withdrawal by a DOCTOR (NOT a PA or MA carousel) for the entire journey, removal of THEIR BD diagnosis AND state certification of SMI-another revenue stream from the feds to the BH contractor…a contract so large (#2 in the U.S) that it was viewed as PROOF that Arizona was effective & enlightened in it’s approach to mental health!!
It took over 2 excruciating years to ‘withdraw, (& addressing the statute of limitations for a lawsuit) followed by three terrifying years of seizures…and now it’s over.
I’m free to flourish in my third act of life. I’m changed & grateful for the astonishing survival force that drove my messy, loud, outraged ‘self-rescue’.
I am ALWAYS vigilant, ready to (hopefully) anticipate & effectively repel any incoming nibbles, red-flags, or assaults by the psychiatric industry. As I age, the cultural biases quickly multiply.
They have no credibility other than as a massively profitable addiction/death machine, like Exxon. The biggest danger is their poisonous, symbiotic relationship with the U.S. judiciary.
BTW-the Sony PX-333 is a terrific little recorder..Arizona being a ‘single consent state.
Take care out there.
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Paula Caplan was an astonishing woman who embraced my fledgling attempts at writing about my self-rescue from a diagnostic entombment courtesy of the DSM-IV task force she had renounced. When she famously eviscerated Task Force leader Allen Frances, I swooned, pledging my love. She was ridiculously modest and down to earth.
I shamelessly fan-girled. She not only took me seriously but connected me with folks she thought I could assist maneuver thru the system. I wanted so much to be the person she thought I was.
It meant the world to me at a time I was working hard to rebuild & redefine myself after my battle…..in my late 60’s.
She was a dynamo, always involved with her important work. I think it will please her to know I built a little swagger and boldness back as a consequence of her acknowledgement. I desperately needed to find it again.
I’m weeping…her warmth & generosity to a stranger changed me, enriched me, healed me.
I’m so grateful.
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THIS guy…
He was directly responsible for me losing 15 years of my life to a false diagnosis of bipolar 1 in 2004, becoming bankrupt & homeless, with quantifiable, documented iatrogenic damages…body & soul…that included 19 seizures POST a guided psychotropic drug withdrawal (for 2+ years). I achieved rare vacation of the ‘LIFELONG, chronic, acute’ mental illness label he had crafted so effectively vis a vis his leadership of DSM-IV. Oh, & the nerve damages in both eyes from Rispedal finally left me 3 years after dosing.
I contacted him thru social media as my MIA 2-part essay “Full Moral Status…” was published, alerting him to his ‘profound effect’ he had on my life.
He perceived that carefully worded sentence as a compliment (!)…responding with a ‘you’re welcome’ and pledging to read it.
Any reader who is uncertain of France’s participation-trophy contributions to the welfare of mankind should read another more credible & distinguished MIA contributor’s essay, the scathing takedown of Allen by Paula Caplan, PhD entitled “Diagnosisgate: Conflict of Interest at the Top of Psychiatry”.
Nailed it …and then some.
And Allen (I know you are reading these comments)…I’ll never forgive you.
“Saving Normal” didn’t ‘save’ you & your forever stained legacy….it just expanded (once again) your bank account…you know…the usual result of your involvement in the psychiatric industry.
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“At its extreme limit, financial conflicts of interest may result in inappropriate prescribing of medications and the creation of diagnostic constructs to develop markets for new drugs”.
No, not ‘…extreme limit(s)’….it’s SOP.
Following the DSM-IV’s wide expansion of symptoms for bipolar disorder that tripled the number of adult diagnoses in the U.S. and X40 for pediatric diagnoses (!) conveniently coinciding with new drug approval and ‘rebranding’ of old ones….I made an appointment with a psychiatrist during this ‘gold rush’ for the industry.
I had just closed a business, had a new job (with good insurance), my bills were current but teetering….causing stress & insomnia.
15 minutes into my appointment I was pronounced bipolar 1 and drugged with Astra Zeneca’s Seroquel, an antipsychotic (+ other drugs, of course) resulting in a Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR requiring an all-night monitoring of my vital signs in hospital.
And there she was in 2014… listed in Pro Publica’s ” Dollars for Docs” user-friendly tool to identify graft. Her largest donor…Astra Zeneca, makers of Seroquel who contributed towards her $65,000 annual haul from pharma….a nice, new E-class Benz every year.
I became bankrupt and homeless as a result of the ongoing side effects of a relentless cascade of drugs, from private to state-funded prescribers, coast to coast, for 11 harrowing years…a compliant revenue stream & job creator.
The inscription over the gates to this psychiatric netherworld, paid for by pharmacy & their field-reps, the APA….
“Once drugged, always drugged”.
The periodic hand-wringing articles and lip-service that pop up from members lamenting the continuing APPEARANCE of corruption are an exercise in disingenuous cynicism and fool no one.
Ms. Logan’s article isn’t nearly angry enough.
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I was drugged for 9 years (2004-2013) resulting in measurable mid-cortex brain lesions (antipsychotics) among the usual laundry list of quantifiable & visually observed damages. I had 2.5 years of doctor (psychiatrist) guided withdrawal & full vacation of ‘my’ bipolar 1 false diagnosis in writing (‘clean’ 1/2016), followed by 3 years (2016-2019) of 19 seizures…the first documented by the ER. I thought it was a stroke.
My PCP suggested I could ‘see someone’, a THERAPIST, as if I was still, really mentally ill. Walk back into the propeller. Just great.
I bullied him until producing cardio, neuro, & bigger brain specialist referrals.
I KNEW what it was. Me dragging all the clinical data (primarily Ho/Andreason) that would get them up to speed. The neuro & bigger brain guys (Barrow Neurological, Phoenix) were polite but sooo uncomfortable with this topic (psychiatry & neuroleptics) and what was happening to me. They suggested without witnessing one, it would be impossible to comment further. Cowards.
Specialists are upset when they are stumped but suspicious. They were NOT going to put a toe over the bright white line among all medical specialists…poor form among docs…and possible liability issues. Cover your own ass.
I was on my own. The seizures finally stopped with a careful plan of health, CBD, patience, acceptance, a little despair (I thought I was done with despair). Or just dumb luck.
The acceptance of my (then) reality with ZERO support from ALL medicine and ‘friends’ was f*cked up but necessary at the time to maintain what I COULD still do & enjoy. ‘Resisting’ or ‘fighting’ seizures is a non-starter.
And now I’m OK. But I’m hypervigilant regarding ANY affect on my poor brain & my new doctors all must convince me if anything might interfere. And I give zero f*cks if they view me as ‘crazy’. Walk (stagger) in my shoes. Your professional peers left me like this.
I’m exhausted on this topic with the medical community…while some shake their heads sympathetically & murmer condolences. F*ck them too.
As I age, I still monitor my labs & periodic test results, holding on tight to the now spectacular good health I currently enjoy.
But it was 15 years of horror, fear, and despair…and it brought changes.
I’m tremendously strong & effective and also vulnerable as a baby…like most.
But real good to KNOW what I endured…it makes my 3rd act very busy & full of purpose.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty & well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, & loudly proclaiming “WOW! What a ride!”
Hunter Thompson
Yeah, THAT.
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Ms. Honig, I am gobsmacked by your profound & complete understanding of this issue.
As someone who survived 2.5 years of doctor (psych) guided titration & withdrawal following 9 years of aggressive dosing with the full spectrum of bipolar ‘treatment’, you nailed every tiny, nuanced detail…including the terrible challenges I faced alone after I was officially ‘finished’ with withdrawal.
It was clearly not finished with ME as I experienced a terrible sequence of 19 seizures over the ensuing 3.5 years, among other ‘effects’ that made ‘re-entry’ into life almost impossible.
I was open & fully documented when informing the ensuing doctors (primary, cardio, neurologist, specialist-Barrows Institute), bringing all relevant studies addressing the damages they should look for (including Ho-Andreason). The discomfort & at times thinly-veiled resentment mixed with bias regarding my credibility (the VACATED bipolar diagnosis-in writing) was heavy in the air. My ‘complaints’ were discredited as probably ‘imagined’ or Munchausens.
And then there’s the difficulty of ANY doctor uttering “I don’t know”….followed by “let’s find out”…especially with insurance restraints. Wasn’t their specialty. They all lost interest.
Mercifully, the seizures just stopped one day.
I’m thriving now. I trust myself for protection going forward into my third act in life. The heartbreak of those 15 years is over. My outrage is compartmentalized, never forgotten. Rather than an impediment, I see it as armor against the cavalier medical industry that is saturated by FCOI-financial conflict of interest.
My diagnosing doctor was listed by ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs”- the ACA Sunshine Law listing-as a happy recipient of $65,000 + annually from pharma for many years…a nice E-class Benz.
Thank you so much for championing this awful subject. I desperately hope these essays will give clients trapped by psychiatry some hope in the dungeon of despair carefully constructed around them.
Outrage saved me…and a physical will that wouldn’t die….despite psychiatry’s very best efforts.
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Dr. Timimi, Such a powerful chapter…
The last paragraph of “Scientism” was galvanizing for me.
The Covid observations are massively helpful sorting out the lessons of this year.
He’ll, the entire essay/chapter is breathtaking.
Many thanks.
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Miranda, My ‘lived’ experience & subsequent research informed me that pharma rep relationships (grooming) include generous samples, helping prime the pump for prescribing. I experienced it first-hand.
Pharma in-house sychological assessments of what particular doctor’s are most likely to be influenced by, i.e…theatre or sporting event tickets, fine dining, travel, or cash (characterized as ‘consulting’ or ‘research’ fees)..are done with trained input from field reps.
Also, sub-contracting data collectors who purchase (legally!) pharmacy prescribing metrics, measuring the efficacy of inducements…high prescription writers are rewarded, low output offices are targeted with different strategies….or pressured.
No detail is overlooked and resulted in the massive boom in psych-drug sales (#1) since the late 90’s/early aughts following the infamous DSM-IV.
They ‘create’ a demand using prescribers as willing customer ‘influencers.
The fact that ‘trust’ is inherent in the sensitive patient/doctor relationship is, of course, massively beneficial to all but the client.
Oh well.
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Mr. Sears,
I have found advising clients to simply research their prescribers on ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” can shine a light when attempting to understand the questions that begin with “Why THAT (debilitating, ineffective, damaging, inappropriate, etc) drug?”
It provides crystal-clear clarity & can help arm a client or advocates with fundamental tools when dealing with the DTO- dangerous behaviors to others-of ‘behavioral specialists’.
The ‘influence’ (open greed) is real…& despite the occasional tepid ‘acknowledgements’ by the APA posing as insight…the industry has NO plans to curb it.
Why should they?
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Mr. Sears,
I have found advising clients to simply research their prescribers on ProPublica’s “Dollars for Docs” can shine a light when attempting to understand the questions that begin with “Why THAT (debilitating, ineffective, damaging, inappropriate, etc) drug?”
It provides crystal-clear clarity & can help arm a client or advocates with fundamental tools when dealing with the dangerous behaviors of behavioral specialists.
The ‘influence’ is real…& despite the occasional tepid ‘acknowledgements’ by the APA…the industry has NO plans to curb it.
Why should they? (Duplicate)
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After 11 years of the usual toxic combo-platter that always included an antipsychotic…& a massive screwup involving anaphylaxis that they made believe didn’t happen…. (ER says otherwise)…
I blackmailed-sorry…negotiated doctor-guided withdrawal that took 2.5 years fraught with anxiety spikes that were compounded by my real paranoia regarding ‘our’ deal. I had his word he would deliver paperwork nullifying my ‘lifelong’ bipolar diagnosis & SMI certification. He did…after asking me out for a date by text (!) that I still have. Dumb & additionally damning.
He had never withdrawn anybody before. He tried to keep me on a tiny bit of TOPAMAX at the end for HIS need of ‘reassurance’.
Are u kidding me?
I had 1 seizure the first year, 3 the second, 15 the third, & then it was over.
And lesions that cleared up.
Quality CBD might have helped.
My brain had taken a sustained beating. It had to work s&#t out. We’re O.K. now.
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“Psychotherapy Effective Where Medication Fails, Study Finds”
And water is wet.
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At the 8 year mark, being saturated in the toxic sludge that was bipolar treatment, I developed spasms in my left eye. I couldn’t keep it open to see effectively. It was the Risperdal & they abruptly ended it, substituting another terrible drug…..y’all know-the usual.
See…all fixed!!
With the ensuing withdrawals, rebound, & adjustment to the NEW drug’s side effects…(y’all know-the usual)…I went to an eye specialist who was unfamiliar with & frightened by any convo about psyche drugs, the usual medical reaction from outside the cult. (Liability issues)
I went home outraged and terrified for my future independence.
Not long afterwards, I was sloppily put into anaphylaxis, resulting in the OTHER eye spasm-ing. In desperation, I went to another specialist. THAT guy said the only remedy to my ‘nerve damage’ was to surgically sever the nerves, shutting my eyes permanently, just say the word.
He hurriedly added “Don’t worry, you can tape them open to your forehead”. I started to panic.
I knew when I relayed this terrible result from the drugs to the genius prescribing-PA, he would simply offer another drug…the only response to everything discussed with him.
After 7 months it resolved, but I continue 8 years later, to use eyedrops as the left eye always feels as if there are shards of floating glass under the lid.
It’s going well, don’t you think?
The antipsychotics also begat micrography, the tiniest writing imaginable, completly illegible-caused by brain lesions. That finally resolved also, after I was ‘clean’ for 6 months.
No big deal, right?
PS. I just LOVE these academic discussions regarding the client’s suffering caused by their fellow prescriber’s.
‘Lets investigate who’s profiting & proclaim our shock…let’s acknowledge the ‘problems’ we cause and dither about metrics & data…..lets scold Pharma about those effective marketing ads!’
And the statements regarding the ‘tapering’ by prescribers when the drugs go bad. NO ONE does that…Yet they preach constantly to NEVER stop the drugs because of the terrible consequences.
Ummm, we notice the contradiction & hypocrisy…..Jesus, pick a side.
I watched an ad on TD last week. Two women figures appear and one talks about TD as if it’s no big deal because “It has a name!” as the voice-over lists awful side-effects. The figure cheerfully states there is a drug for that now!
The other, silent figure is her ‘afflicted’ sister, perched on the couch like a Labrador….apparently the ‘mentally ill’ subject AND struck mute regarding HER suffering.
It is seriously f*<#ked up. What's new? Report comment
During the 1st year of my 2-year drug withdrawal and nullification of a ‘lifelong’ bipolar & SMI designation following 11 years of anguish, pain, & loss…..my exit-doc stated…..
“You have trust issues”.
I blurted….”Look where I am!”
He. Had. Nothing.
Context indeed.
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This is obscene. Western psychiatry (Pharma & it’s sales rep APA) are stoked.
Don’t the Iranians have enough misery without sedation, major organ harm, & artificially introduced psychosis?
Apparently not…when there’s a buck to be made.
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Hello Dr. Caplan,
Your essays are full of tenderness towards suffering that is the alpha & omega in an ideal response. It feels like the proverbial ‘safe place’ where honesty will NOT produce the recoil, fear, & smothering of a reaction to calamity and exhaustion that the culture supports as ‘best practices’.
I considered suicide once. It was a logical option to the last, worst assault by psychiatry. I wasn’t alarmed when I added it to my ‘options’ list….it had a calming effect. If I didn’t make it out…..MY choice. I knew institutionalization awaited; a diaper, wheelchair, & staring out a barred window…and waiting for the drugs to finish what they had started.
You’re the only person I would ever admit that to…knowing what it signals to the industry.
As I am still a big fan of irony, the thing that was supposed to help me ‘fix’ my financial stress & resultant insomnia with a damning label and drugs, led me in the most direct way to the brink…but not before they sucked every dollar from my private insurance, then Medicaid & Medicare-state & federal….& on to the next carcass.
Sometimes a parasite fails at keeping the ‘host’ viable.
Well done, APA.
Paula, you are a rare and valued treasure. Thanks.
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Following 11 years of being labeled (“oft-contested”), 2 years of titration & withdrawal, & 4 of concerted self-care & self-rehab…my brain is firing on all twelve cylinders with what feels like a turbo-boost as if making up for lost time.
I am relieved, delighted, & amazed.
Were it not for the ‘pesky’ 19 seizures that littered the path to this moment…it would have been a perfect recovery.
Apparently my price for a ticket out. Paid in full.
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During most of my unfortunate 11 years inside the beast, I was careful not to say “I’m not mentally ill, there’s been a mistake”.
The “Bring out your dead” scene in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian” (1979) would flash in my drug-addled head…as a cart made the morning rounds in the ancient village collecting bodies from huts, an old man is thrown on the pile, loudly objecting, “But I’m not dead yet!” to no avail…and the cart moves on, the attendants hearing but ignoring & doing nothing.
Funny then, funny now….but not if you’re ‘the guy’.
Not until my keepers made several serious medication errors (again), rendering me quantifiably brain-damaged (lesions), with an NMS ADR & in anaphylaxis (independant ER records=Uh-oh) was I able to get the cart to slow down…the operators responding to a carefully phrased “I don’t belong here”…sans histrionics, a concisely prepared ‘presentation’ of ALL my ER visits to address physical, grotesque, side-effects while (fully) owning a home & car, employed for 7 years on a management team, & being their ‘compliancy’ poster child. What a good girl.
I totally seized my moment…..as a real, credible threat to their local kingdom.
Had I agitated for my ’cause’ earlier, it would have only strengthened their resolve to keep me chained to them forever…’denial’ psychosis being added to my file.
After quietly blackmailing them successfully, achieving guided withdrawal and a vacated “lifelong” bipolar diagnosis, I asked a supervisor to find the SMI certification (seperate & eternally damning in my state) that had been their response 8 years earlier after a week of hospitalization (regular hospital, major heart, nervous system problems-antipsychotic +++ cocktail)…They declared it meant ‘my mental illness’ (!) was worsening so the SMI (more, heavier drugs) ensured an even quieter client & additional federal funds for them…an easy ‘medical’ conclusion..
The supervisor’s reply after finally unearthing the file……..”Um (cough, pause), er….We don’t do things like that anymore”.
Really.
It was both a rare & massivly uncomfortable acknowledgement…and a horrible validation….a moment I’ll never forget.
The ‘exit’ psychiatrist advised me to “Live in the present, don’t dwell on the past”. Translation; Don’t sue us.
I gave him a copy of the poem “Invictus”…and peeled out of the car park.
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Due to my unfortunate, past ‘relationship’ with the industry (Bipolar 1/SMI) and the 6 years of subsequent research while recovering following my self-rescue, here is what I can offer…
“Overdiagnoses” are a result of financial manipulation by Pharma, the trickle down of billions to the APA ($30 million { , _} annually), publishers of the DSM-molding criteria to new and ‘rebranded’ {off-label} product, ‘research and consulting’ graft to psychiatrists to diagnose appropriate to the new drugs hitting the market (ProPublica “Dollars for Docs”).
Psych comprises #1 or #2 (fluctuation over a decade) positions of receiving sheer amount of $ compared to any med specialty), and Big Insurance who happily, successfully herd any client towards ‘pit stop’ psychiatry (drugs), effectively nullifying qualified therapy as an option for most.
All of this is easily achieved as Pharma is the #3 contributor to The Hill, following ‘Energy’ and Wall Street. Big insurance is happy to collude. And EVERYBODY sucks the teat of government programs, Medicaid and Medicare.
The poor and the old are especially targeted and drowned in psychotropics-sedation-increased mortality as a result of under representation. Clean-up on aisle 1…or the non-voting constituency. Who cares?
The judiciary requires ‘definitive’, ‘authoritative’ language to deal with DTS/DTO…and folks who are just different. Never mind that psychiatry is a self-annointed authority. Courts do not like ‘loose threads’ and, like medicine, loathes the sentence “I don’t know”.
Psychiatry is grateful for the ‘legitimacy’ bestowed by the ultimate authority, the courts.
Perfect symbiosis.
Life goes on and it is good for these guys.
Commerce, retail, marketing. Define your market, label (legally!) as ‘lifelong’, rule with a gloved fist. (“Isn’t stigma awful? Fight Stigma!”).. with fear of death-suicide-for non-compliance.
The definition of a cult is… agenda, proselytize, recruit….and rule with fear. Done and done.
The falsely generated (thanks Allen France$!) bipolar ‘epidemic’ following the 1995 DSM IV is textbook Harvard biz school 101.
See Time magazine’s cover story (2002) “Young and Bipolar” detailing the U.S. pediatric bipolar explosion of bipolar diagnoses from 40,000 to 800,000!!! following publication. Adult diagnoses tripled…only in the U.S., not Western Europe. And people wanted the pills as they weren’t informed about the probable consequences. Hell, the INDUSTRY wasn’t sure about short-term, long-term prognosis…too busy counting cash. The FDA also has a $ymbiotic relationship with them.
My diagnosing doctor gave me a 20-minute assessment before labeling and drugging me-for-life (presenting with insomnia from financial stress..and GREAT insurance). She gave me a combo-platter of drugs that day featuring Seroquel, off-label (at that time-schizophrenia scrip).
I was in the hospital by nightfall with Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome, paralyzed for 8 hours. When I was told to ‘shake it off’…she. gave. me. more.
She was taking $65,000 a year from Pharma (“Dollars for Docs” listing), her biggest donor was Astra Zeneca, makers of…wait for it…Seroquel. Chemo for a cold.
IWhelp, it went down from there…. for 11 years, passed around the industry, ending up in state/Medicaid clinics. No Bueno for me.
Check it out…..
“Bipolar Disorder: The Shift to Overdiagnosis” U.S. National Library of Medicine 2012
“Some Conditions Misdiagnosed a Bipolar Disorder” Amy Norton Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 2016
“Overdiagnosis of Bipolar Disorder: A Critical Analysis of the Literature” U.S. National Library of Medicine 2013
“The Increasing Frequency of Mania and Bipolar Disorder ;Causes and Potential Negative Impact” NIH 2012
My 2 faves…
“The Latest Mania: Selling Bipolar Disorder” David Healy PLoS Med 2006 **** CRYSTAL CLARITY of the hustle***
….and for some alarming, black humor that speaks to the industry as a whole…
“UNPECIFIED MENTAL DISORDER? THAT’S CRAZY: PSYCHIATRY’S DIAGNOSTIC BIBLE HAS BROADENED THE DEFINITION OF MENTAL ILLNESS TO ABSURDITY’ Leonard Sax, Wall Street Journal 2015.
BTW…my ‘exit’ diagnosis was.’.UNSPECIFIED ANXIETY’…I am a huge fan of irony.
Bruce McEwen, PhD, “The Hostage Brain” introducing me to the term/concept ALLOSTATIC LOAD.
It is important in this discussion. I hope you check it out..
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pkolpin, Thank you for your thoughtful response.
I reference ‘lizard brain’ as fight, flee, or freeze which is not entirely, biologically accurate…but you get the idea.
I don’t know if you are aware of the work of Bruce McEwen (“The Hostage Brain”)and associates on the “allostatic load” that all people carry and the manifestations that result.
I find it a simple, clear explanation of how life affects the brain and body which may result in changes in it’s ability to maintain homeostasis.
I am very comfortable with this narrative regarding physiological response to stress and trauma…we all have some or a lot.
Allostatic load nullifies the APA, their DSM, and pharma marketing for relentless sedation (psychotropics). It’s a big problem for them.
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pkolpin, Actiivism is great, all for it…BUT…please know without credibility (stripped at diagnosis) you don’t have an effective voice with anyone-ANYONE…and your drugged (“Once drugged, always drugged”). My leverage was cold-blooded…economics…the industry recognized it as the blackmail/business move that it was.
I am one of two known clients who were diagnosed (2004) following the bipolar gold-rush following Allen Frances’ piloted DSM IV (1995) expansion of criteria for bipolar. (see the cover of Time mag 2002 “Young and Bipolar” and everywhere else in the lexicon and media) AND reversed, changed, vacated the LIFELONG DIAGNOSIS. A Navy jet pilot, United pilot, Harvard grad. He sued for 35 million, so far No Bueno.
RxISK.org (Dr. David Healy) 4/26/2020 “Starship Corona: Captain’s Log” also addresses some of the topics you have mentioned vis a vis psychotropic drug use, with an alarming connection to what’s occurring right now.
Dr. Healy also wrote MY gateway essay ” The Latest Mania; Selling Bipolar Disorder” PLOS Med 2006 …. I was both shattered and massively relieved when I read it in 2013. This guy had nailed the simple line from A to B and the horrific results…in 2006. Sigh.
It was all business, not personal. That turned out to be the key for my negotiation out.
I also recommend Gary Greenberg’s scorching, sarcastic, and factual “The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmasking of Psychiatry” 2013.
I will also point you to my 4-part essay in 2018 “A Unicorn: Changing a Diagnosis” RxISK.org, explaining with minimum editorializing and personal drama (just the timeline of some major events) and ironic humor (I hope), the oh-so-easy-and quick-entrapment; one day I was living the dream in my custom beach house, employed, bills current, great insurance, no DTS/DTO…the next day I was bipolar 1 for life and in a hospital, drugged to the floor (on a plastic sheet) and paralyzed…soon to be homeless and bankrupt, couch surfing at 54 years old…not pretty. I was in shock for years.
There’s a Kubler-Ross arc, not necessarily in the order that most equate with it. Acceptance often comes first as your terrorized, physically crippled immediately, and whispered soothing reassurances (‘We’ve got this’) are relentless. Your brain is alien to you. In that state, you’ll accept a hand from the Devil himself. And they’re already aware of your pliability with the drugs,..your neurotransmissions are deliberately re-routed and blunted.
I avoid the emotional blow-by-blow of each poison pill for 11 yeas and it’s damage, and emphasize the philosophy and politics that I stumbled against, drugged to my eyeballs…resulting in quantifiable brain damage but somehow absorbing and questioning more and more frantically as I spiraled down every year.
My outrage, sturdy DNA and ‘I won’t die in this dump’ mentality drove me to listen to my lizard brain and Sun Tzu “The Art of War”, MY bible, my salvation. Channeling an attorney’s dispassionate frame of mind was key. Facts, THEIR handbooks, statutes, contemporaneous notes (a parallel file)…and legal (in my state) tape recordings. Whoops.
It was business, not personal.
I also contributed a 2-part essay here-MIA, 2019 “”Full Moral Status; part 2 addresses SAFETY and strategy to achieve it while your in there. pinballing on the drugs.
Moral outrage isn’t effective for me; it simmers way back in my head. I am an alpha predator to their soft underbelly, I figured out the code. Cold, calculated EFFECTIVE ACTION plans interests me. VERBS.
I have my clinical records for 10 years and TEXTS with my exit doctor (3 years, now the VP/CMO). He asked me out for a date…in a text…a month before I was to be ‘released’ with the papers….talk about blackmail.
And I reported it to my old therapist at the time.
It will be the ‘big finish’ to the narrative…starting the little book (with names) after I move. Already have a publisher. Delicious.
I am patient, THEY taught me that.
Revenge is a dish best served cold, indeed.
All the rest of the dialogue about how amoral, evil, destructive, greedy they all are is…. ‘yeah, I know’.
Sorry, I DO go on.
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Willoweed, been where your at. You might want to read these as they might more fully inform what you’re experiencing from a ‘fellow traveler’ who needed a bigger picture and more informed Iintel on the entombment that lasted 14 years …or ‘How did that happen to ME’?
I’m out, with guided withdrawal (with ‘aftershocks’), an official, DOCUMENTED VACATED “lifelong SMI diagnosis”, and am doing really, really well. (“A Unicorn: Changing a Diagnosis” RxISK.org 2018 and “Full Moral Status” MIA 2019).
I’ve done some peer counseling regarding how to effectively ‘fight the power’ with SAFETY within the industry, the first principle.
After 5 years of research and healing, these are some enlightening, supportive, and validating writing….
“The Latest Mania: Selling Bipolar Disorder” David Healy PLOS Med, 2006… also NIH.
Nailed it and made my weep…my story.
“The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry” Gary Greenberg 2013.
Nailed it with snarky black humor.
“Cracked: The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry” James Davies 2013.
A UK version of nailing it.
BTW, I found it very tricky to ‘assess’ other’s emotional challenges. I listened to what they wanted, contrasted with the ‘listeners’ in the industry. I found that sharing my strategy and tactics to assert my rights and insistence on TRANSPARENCY and SAFETY per THE INDUSTRY’S OWN RULES, STATUTES, AND LANGUAGE was paramount…and possibly first steps to regain their confidence and ultimately, they’re power.
I found not everybody can or wants to get out, but they’re aware of the danger and their lack of a voice. They need some coaching (I certainly did)…as they’re drugged and their ‘caretakers’ ostensibly are not. Big handicap when you’re negotiating safe care for your brain.
If they were ‘game’ to make a calculated run for it, I gave them resources and tactics that worked for me to achieve my freedom, a changed ‘diagnosis’ (Anxiety!) and the fantastic rest of my life…Their choice to use, modify, or discard.
Good luck
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Mr. Whitaker, Many thanks & kudos for this essay. It’s comprehensive and digestible form is helpful to me as I continue to research and write.
It’s also personally familiar and articulates the health disaster, body & soul, that was my experience embedded in the industry.
Thx again for this valuable presentation.
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Pkolpin, I am touched by your comments, but my experience in private and especially public (Medicaid) funded ‘care’ has been that variations of my core story are ubiquitous, not at all rare. The WTF awareness-creep is slightly different, often slower to manifest in private care. The heavy-handed crudeness of the ‘brain-care’ in community clinics is immediately alarming.
Medicaid is eyeball-deep in these clients, AKA revenue-streams, who have no voice, no way out.
My biggest detour in that path was my poor cognitive function following a 2nd NMS/paralysis, the anaphylaxis followed. My fear & outrage fueled a strategy out that targeted their Achilles Heel…cost and liability containment. I was able to parlay it into a safe exit.
Corporate was completly untroubled to instantly jettison their Absolute, Inviolate, Principles of “life-long” SMI along with every other ‘evidence-based’, biomedical pronouncements of a decade…no problem…to keep the anaphylaxis event and me quiet…defining cynicism and venality for all time.
I gave zero f*%cks about retribution in that moment… as long as I got out safe & alive…and documented.
I did and am moving quickly towards a fantastic third act in my life.
Thx for your well-wishes…the future is bright.
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Aerial Ballet, Gosh, I don’t know about a “deeper response”, but…
“It seems a little convoluted to keep going back there for help and then bitching about what you get there” stopped me cold.
I made an appointment with my great insurance for insomnia caused by money stress. No DTS/DTO. Current in my bills. In 20 minutes I was told I was SMI for-life and given 3 drugs to take that evening, one being Seroquel. I my first Neuroleptic Malignant Syndrome ADR and hospitalized with paralysis for 8 hours.
They told my freaked-out, terrified self that “…we caught you just in time, your mental illness caused that reaction, never stop the meds”…remember, I’m drugged to my eyeballs-my thoughts are not my own now, heavily sedated, and terrified and ashamed…in a hospital.
I thought that appointment was going to be a 30-minute version of “You’re fine, just sleep-deprived, here’s some temazepam”…WTF.
For the next eleven years, peering through the blunting, sedation, and a cacophony of dangerous side effects (A to Z with attendant hospitalizations-NEVER for behaviors) and realizing through the fog I’ve been gamed,..your “….can’t a person just get up and walk out of the institution (of psychiatry)” seems strikingly uninformed.
“It seems a little convoluted to keep going back there for help and then bitching about what you get there” informs me you know nothing about the industry; manipulating drugged, addicted, folks is easy. And FEAR begins day one; fear of them, fear of losing support from loved ones, fear of losing yourself.
And they LEGALLY owned my identity in the U.S. court system. Anything negative that I bumped up against for the rest of my life would be viewed through SMI goggles. Disastrous.
With a diagnosis, your credibility instantly flies out the window notwithstanding the industry’s “We support a patient’s ability to self-advocate”…yeah, until you start.
Knowing the tremendous damages that stopping these drugs do…, rebound, withdrawal, seizure, coma, death…and the very real prospect that withdrawal can send you into behaviors that WILL NOT help your case, only make you look ‘worse’…it’s dead if you continue, dead if you stop…and REALLY DEAD if you fail cause you’ll be bombed so hard with more, bigger, stronger drugs, institutionalization in a diaper will be your final destination…’for your own good’, of course.
Plato’s Noble Lie runs throughout this universal narrative…and cash, of course.
One more thing…when you’ve been poisoned that long, that hard for years, with a relentless narrative insisting that it’s YOU…Well, the secret terror I held inside was, after all that brain damage (I had lesions), swimming in a cesspool of drugs…was there any ‘THERE” left of my mind, personality, or intellect…without the drugs. As existential as that sounds, I have met others who talk about that private, profound fear also.
I am the one that got away…my “lifelong diagnosis” was changed in 2016 to…wait for it…NOS Anxiety (no sh*t) following a sloppy psychotropic prescribing causing anaphylaxis (yikes).
I blackmailed my way out, getting a doctor’s guidance for titration and withdrawal. It took almost 3 years, but I have the Mf*%ing paperwork-part of the deal…followed by 19 seizures that finally stopped in 2019.
Yeah…just get up and walk out…thanks for that nugget.
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Dr. Caplan’s “Diagnosisgate…” stands as the definitive disembowelment of Frances.
The reverance (still!) that publishers continue to display towards his every utterance informs me they are specious amateurs doing no homework on psychiatry & the murderous malignancy he unleashed.
His desperate attempts to erase his black history with ‘academic’ musings that strain to keep him in the public (& industry’s) eye, positioning himself as a ‘chastened-but-proud’ public servant, is simply the thinly-disguised plea to whitewash his unforgivable history….
a pathetic, old f*#k-up.
Hubris won’t allow him to go quietly & stop compounding the tragedies that define his career.
Allen, you’ve helped no one and left a legacy of unspeakable pain, suffering, & death.
It was your gift to me vis a` vis DSM IV. You owe me 15 years of my life with the excellent health that was taken from me…per your directives.
Just shut up. Let THAT be your legacy.
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“Although the researchers don’t mention it, iatrogenic harm caused by psychiatric medications could also be an explanation, as the drugs lead to weight gain, metabolic syndrome, and cardiac problems, among other adverse effects.”
This is tacked on at the end of the article, almost as an afterthought.
Alcohol, tobacco, poor diet, and drug abuse mortality stats are very high.
When the industry adds them to an individual’s allostatic load after psychiatric dosing, it’s a combo-platter that can be ‘interpreted’ in an infinite variety of self-serving ways. It’s too easy and nobody’s asking us.
My favorite writer, David Mamet: “People may or may not say what they mean but they always say something designed to get what they want.” Psychiatric ‘studies’ 101.
For every reader of this website, his 1987 “House of Games” film is essential. I saw it before I was labeled.
A psychiatrist enmeshed with a professional con-artist…(I know). The ‘attraction’ is mutual (for very different reasons), and disturbing as boundaries are crossed and blurred, with an astonishing (yet not) ending.
Things aren’t what they seem, it’s all sleight-of-hand, some hidden, some obvious (no).
A perfect metaphor for my experience with psychiatrists, the industry, and their diminishing, desperate fist holding power and ruining lives.
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