If they got rid of the words “mental illness” and called it “deviations in brain functioning that impact on consciousness and thought”, could it then be studied scientifically? Or is that area of study already taken up by neurology? They (psychiatry?) did change “dementia praecox” to “schizophrenia” … early onset dementia does exist (probably mostly due to irreversible damage from toxic substances). A strange profession psychiatry, and to call it a medical profession I suppose is only because they monitor blood from time to time and manage side-effects from their drugs.
“Bemme and Kirmayer emphasize epistemic pluralism, interdisciplinarity, self-reflection, and power-sharing to move beyond the divide in GMH and toward collaboration. “GMH today is many things,” they write.”
Sure, let’s expand the mental health industry sensibly, and not get too much in each others way. Plenty of opportunities.
I would use the term “physical distancing”, it better describes the situation.
Monitoring if your foot twitches while you sleep will become standard, AI and movement sensors are perfect for that.
Temporary measures generally become permanent, if recent history is anything to go by.
Quote from Pies: “It may seem odd to attribute “immorality” to a narrative concerning the earth’s climate, but if befouling the planet’s ecosystems and polluting our air and oceans is not immoral, I am not sure what is.”
Who has promoted the widespread use of plastic products in order to increase profits? Yes of-course, it must be the mentally ill. I can’t find anything in the article where Pies berates the oil industry.
If you were to substitute the earth’s climate, in his quote, with the human brain, the same thing could be said for psychotropics. He’s basically admitting to his own immorality.
Can websites see where you came from?
Yes it can due to analytics which the other guys mentioned but a website can also check your cookies to see your history. They use your browsing habits for marketing purposes.
Quarantine is from the 14th or 15th century. The crew of ships that came into harbor, were to stay on their ship for 40 days. Quarenta means 40. 40 days isolation. Luckily for them, there was no TV.
It’s true, that a chemical imbalance doesn’t cause “mental illness”. Psychiatrists today claim they never made that assertion. Which is of-course, false. For the more “severe” psychotic illnesses, many now claim it’s due to excessive synaptic pruning in the frontal lobes in late adolescence, early adulthood. A kind of early-onset dementia. I don’t buy that either. Whether or not it has any validity, further deterioration of the connections in the frontal lobe through antipsychotics makes no sense, whichever way you look at it. It does explain the 7-fold increase in chronicity since the advent of neuroleptics in the 50’s. It only makes sense from a monetary perspective, which is in no way beneficial to the “patient”.
“It was a knowledgeable friend who said “You need medication” – he was right.”
Did he give any indication as to which medication, at what dosage? And, for how long?
Where are you going to sleep tonight? Most people (so far) don’t give it a second thought … I’m quite certain the “policy makers” don’t.
“l see too many people, including many who are identified with the survivor movement and are, legitimately, survivors of horrendous psychiatric violence, using psychiatric drugs.”
Most likely they still use these psychiatric drugs because it’s too difficult to come off them. It shouldn’t be used as an argument for someone to start on, and then indefinitely stay on, for example, an antipsychotic. And it’s irrelevant whether or not these users of psychiatric drugs were abused in other ways. At least for the person that is being coerced into starting these drugs.
This excerpt is not really very realistic at arguing it’s paradox. The corona virus doesn’t mean years of isolation, at least I hope not …
We need to be asking “Which outcome measures are important?” and “What do we aim for with our mental health care?”
Surprisingly, maybe, it’s the same you would wish for yourself. These people are not so different.
I find Ricky Gervais’ performance at the Golden Globes interesting, to say the least. I won’t go so far as to say his performance has any real value, though.
A bit like the downfall of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.
Charlie Nemeroff, willing to pimp himself for the right price. I would hazard a guess, most psychiatrists would do the same, given the opportunity. I’ve never come across a psychiatrist that doesn’t lie on a continual basis, and I’ve crossed paths with quite a few.
I would also like to mention this psychiatrist had his own hobby (fetish). He would lay you down and with some magic balls he had, identify points in your head and pierce you with a piece of metal there, give you a magnet and tell you to stimulate the metal. There was also a Chinese (witch) doctor there who once gave me a potion of crushed scorpions that he said would be helpful. None of it did anything. Needless to say, psychotropic medication was standard and not discussed.
When I was first escorted into a psych hospital for a prolonged stay many years ago, my mother asked why a lady sitting nearby had such uncontrolled movements in her legs. The psychiatrists response was: “Oh, don’t pay that any mind, they don’t even notice it”. I wonder what this shrink would say about parkinson?
Tardive Dyskinesia, known by informed psychiatrists as the “Jitterbug Syndrome”.
If DUP doesn’t predict outcome, because when in treatment the course is the same, I can only conclude that the treatment is not effective, and probably becomes the main cause of bad outcomes in the longer run.
“The evidence for degeneration in brain function is inconclusive, with recent research showing that antipsychotics themselves can cause brain changes.”
This was known in the 50s after haldol was beginning to be used. If tardive dyskenesia doesn’t hint at “brain change”, what causes it? A swarm of invisible ants biting you, causing the movement disorder?
Psychotropics can do “wondrous” things …
If he gives a talk, and someone in the audience interrupts him and reacts emotionally, he will get into a state and threaten to leave. “I’ve put a lot of effort into my presentation …”. As I said, an academic.
There is no such thing as a weird burning sensation. If I put a flame to your hand, there is no mistaking it.
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I meant to say “seemingly bizarre finding” given the argument from the Globe article that staying on your meds is “fundemental”.
Interesting they compare “psychotic illness” treatment to treating heart failure or liver disease.
According to this now “infamous study” on duration of antipsychotic treatment and risk of death, an interesting find is that if you treat a “schizophrenic” with neuroleptics for less than 6 months, he / she has the lowest risk of death. Unfortunately, it’s not explained why that may be so.
How would you compare such a bizarre finding to treating heart failure or liver disease?
Jim van Os finds the label (schizophrenia) unhelpful, he sees it as mainly a prognostic label, an educated guess on how the person so labelled will progress. He’s not against the concept as far as I can tell, he believes psychosis susceptibility has been proven through science (he shows a graph with a slope, from not susceptible to highly susceptible, and some genetic graphs showing at risk schizophrenia alleles). As far as I can tell, according to what I’ve read and heard from him, a person with schizophrenia is just someone with a very high susceptibility to psychosis and with a bad course. You can only be sure at the end, though. But, it’s unhelpful to the patient to label him at the start of the course, it may change. The patient could develop different symptoms and become, for example, bipolar, or anything else in the DSM. van Os is a psychiatrist, after all.
Evidence-based research finds both mood and metabolic disorders, in addition to chemical treatment, are successfully managed by cognitive behavioral change, nutrition, and PHYSICAL exercise.
Could you provide some studies which support this? Apply it to obesity. Can you show that changing your behavior, nutrition and physical exercise are not (as) effective without some form of chemical treatment? With chemicals, I mean psychotropics, which is what your comment seems to be about.
“It’s true identifying the appropriate psychotropic and dosage is trial and error; however, this challenge does not negate the fact that when a chemical treatment is discovered, it is extremely effective.”
Let’s take a popular antipsychotic like olanzapine as an example. It seems to work on over 20 chemical neurotransmitters at differing affinities. If the main therapeutic action is supposed to be dopamine d2 blockade, why would you want, for example, histamine h1 and serotonin 5ht2a saturation at sub-therapeutic doses? What do you do, if over time, the brain compensated for the d2 blockade? Up the dosage? What effect would that have on the other chemical neurotransmitters? What long term effects do saturating certain chemical neurotransmitters have? Can the brain recover from that, if, for some other more pressing health reason, you are advised to stop the drug?
If a chemical treatment is discovered, it’s per definition effective (at least for the target symptom). It’s very unlikely to cure anything, however. And the statement doesn’t say anything about existing psychotropic medication.
The decade of the brain indeed. They know the drugs don’t work (to put it mildly), which leaves me to conclude these brain scientists are mainly looking at the side-effects. How do certain chemicals in the brain affect human functioning. There are 1000’s of articles that look into these effects. With the medication for “schizophrenia” they always begin with “a devastating disease affecting 1% of the population …” and then begin to explore the negative effects of the drug, and conclude somehow a “schizophrenic” benefits.
Guinea Pigs.
I recommend a pause of 15 minutes, unless the patient insists on a prescription. Then it’s their problem.
I suppose it depends on what the treatment involves.
Current treatment guidelines only work to sedate and if prolonged only make things worse.
No, that’s a real ice-cream cone he’s sitting on. I’m certain of it.
A dog’s view of Pavlov (one of the “fathers” of psychology):
“I think that psychology is completely bankrupt and needs to be done away with.”
It never had any real value to begin with.
I’m off to the clubhouse, just ran out of ginger beer … did I mention I (almost) have a PhD …
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A strategy, for the one being coerced to take the poison, (partially) effective about 10% of the time in the new and “radical” collaborative approach … I think something similar has existed for about 30 years in Finland with better results??
“Over one-third of those engaged in co-production reported that they had recently decreased or discontinued psychotropic medication prescriptions compared to approximately a fifth of participants enrolled in traditional supports.”
So, that’s (over) 33% compared to (about) 20%, a difference of 13% give or take, for those who find the sentence above a bit unclear.
Doesn’t co-production just boil down to “I’d rather not take that stuff, I hear it’s poisonous”.
“Instead, the study provides a snapshot of how much the mothers used in the perinatal period, in the weeks before giving birth.”
It could even be just a few days or less … the half-life of paracetamol is a few hours.
But, of-course, by the time they are 5, while their brains are still developing, you can give them amphetamines and blame the mother for having taken a few paracetamol in the last days of pregnancy.
The narrative is falling apart …
If a psychiatrist prescribes a bezodiazepine indefinitely, in addition to an antipsychotic, my advice would be, at the least, to find another prescriber as quickly as possible.
“Traumatic experiences have been shown repeatedly to be directly associated with: autoimmune disease, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity, adolescent obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, and Alzheimer’s.”
I’m afraid this a bit misleading, and plays into the hands of the psychotropic drug pushers who deny their “medication” is harmful. Being poly-drugged with antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants , lead to all of the somatic illnesses you mention.
It’s strange that trauma has been shown to be directly related, but psychotropic drugging hasn’t. You say directly, which leaves me to conclude that any psychiatric drug intervention is not relevant.
In the article you mention:
“The authors found that ACE-related health risks, namely mental illness, social problems and prescription medication use, accounted for about 30 percent of the 50 percent greater risk of death seen in this population.”
To me, that suggests medication has a direct role to play.
Most priests deny they are intricately involved in sexual abuse of children as well. From what’s known, it’s at least 8% of the clergy who are actively abusing children, and the rest are complicit by failing to report it openly.
Bono, from U2, makes a lot of money pretending he cares about poverty in Africa (do they know I’m living it up at Christmas Time). He hates taxes … but, unlike the rest of us, gets top-dollar advice.
“Her passionate belief in both the creative spirit within everyone and the importance of choice, along with her love and interest in the human being has taken her also into prisons where she has volunteered for many years offering soul support through Alternatives to Violence work and watercolor painting.”
That is something I respect, although I’m not aware of any country that won’t use violence if they believe it’s beneficial to them whilst commanding public opinion. The arms trade is very profitable. As is the pharma industry, another form of violence.
Keep making noise, and hope some (in whichever country) with enough influence begin to listen.
I was joking Steve.
“Since medications are started when symptoms re-appear or get worse, it is obvious that the results would be even more favorable for antipsychotic treatment if this bias could be eliminated.”
Most psychiatrists delight in these sorts of studies, even if they are highly questionable, for want of a better description.
It’s tragic, the situation in old age homes, a high proportion being on haldol.
The legend of the goat and it’s association with demonic activity is very complex. According to local folklore, somewhere in the suburbs of Paris in the mid 19th century, a French nobleman was observed, in what seemed, to the untrained eye, to be performing unsavory acts with several goats in a barn. The local parish was called in to investigate, and came to the conclusion that the peasants were very much mistaken, what they witnessed was in fact a manifestation of Baphomet. The nobleman was, in fact, in a life or death struggle with the devil himself.
“Yet there was no reduction for those with an undergraduate, graduate, or professional education, possibly because they would not directly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.”
Very astute observation, I would go further and hazard a guess that it may well negatively impact them, considering the pool boy, gardener and housekeeper would, on aggregate, cost significantly more.
I should add that these percentages are most likely higher in favor of antipsychotic injections and antipsychotics in general, because everyone knows that antipsychotics are not generally taken when a person is not actively psychotic. Maintenance treatment is a myth propagated by the antipsychiatry movement.
Well, according to studies, if the injection is a placebo and not an active drug, your chance of early death is 50% higher. Amazingly, these studies also find that an injection protects you from early death by as much as 30% when compared to swallowing a pill. Might have something to do with the size of the pills, experts are working on it … it’s quite possible all medication will be administered by needle in the future. The relatively large surface area of the buttocks may also be a protective factor …
Goats have the unfortunate status of being linked to the devil. There’s also the scapegoat … maybe there’s a connection.
It’s very misleading for someone to say they know what your real problem is, and offer a solution. Think about it …
“I believe that a good therapist should be so helpful on the first visit that you feel eager to return for the next session and that you should be drug-free enough to enjoy and benefit from the help.”
Better yet, after the first session, you find there is no need to make any further appointments with the “good therapist”. Am I right?
There is no good and bad, if someone ever tells you that, they are lying.
“Patients have the right to have influence in their own life”. It’s not been scientifically proven. Therefore, should be disregarded.
Smoking grass (in moderation if need be) is also therapeutic. The spirit herb.
Herbs good way to make money … spice trade very lucrative short time ago … queen England likes her tea, not so happy with Chinese and Indians, make too much trouble. Curry good too … naughty people say she no good, money always good for health. Queen UK live very long time, is proof.
“I am writing you this public letter to ask for your help. I’m working to decrease daily veteran suicides by 25% to 50%, from 20 a day to 10-to-15 per day.”
It’s a bit like reducing your daily intake of sugar.
He pronounces “antipsychotics” as “an die saikau diks”. Why can’t some people learn to pronounce words correctly in more than one language? A sheltered existence? Brain damage? Fear of other cultures? Lack of time?
Here’s his talk from 2015. “I’m not against the use of antipsychotics …”, bla bla … but reducing doses is only for first episode patients, the ones who take it for longer are basically f***d. Sorry, didn’t we warn you about that? (twitches his eye and grins sheepishly) No? But I can talk endlessly about our biological hypotheses … did I mention I know where the hypothalamus is … and better treatment is just around the corner … did I mention glutamate? It seems the brain needs it to keep it’s cells alive … could be a promising target treatment …
My advice, be patient, and take your time.
With an odds ration of 3.5 to 1 (from a drug withdrawal study) for a better outcome if you don’t take your psychiatrists advice, can we safely conclude that seeking help from a psychiatrist is bad for your health?
Wunderink has since changed his tune (he likes pharmaceutical money after all, and doesn’t want to lose his friends in the mental health scam), writing that the sooner you begin drugging children (in the predromal phase) with neuroleptics, the better the outcome. He didn’t do a study, it was just his musings (mental masturbation), paid for by some pharma company.
Also, the subjects in the study had all been drugged (and possibly indoctrinated, depending on your definition) for at least 6 months before they were split into the two groups.
“In a randomised trial comparing maintenance antipsychotic treatment to a supported reduction in people with a first episode of psychosis, only 29% of people overall recovered by 7-year follow-up—and of those who were allocated to antipsychotic maintenance treatment, less than 20% recovered.”
I’m not sure if the author of this piece intentionally tried to obscure the outcome of the Wunderink study in the quote above … Recovery was 40% for dose reduction, vs 17% for maintenance. Just to be clear on that. There’s also the question of properly interpreting “symptomatic recovery” in a way that doesn’t skew the results. Psychiatrists tend to be a little biased in that respect.
I partially read a history book on asylums and psychiatry for a whole country (which was from about 1850 onwards). There was a gradual rise of the asylum population from about 1 per thousand (around 1850) to about 3 per thousand in the first half of the 20th century. Slightly over half (~= 60%) had some sort of psychotic illness. The highest proportion were in the larger cities (up to 0,4%). Not sure what the average stay was before being released or transferred. The goal seemed to be recovery.
They don’t answer the question as to why chronicity is so much higher today, they emphasize that is the role for, or responsibility of, psychiatry to answer.
The question remains, if about 1% today are diagnosed schizophrenic, the most serious of mental illnesses, why weren’t the asylum populations 100 years ago much larger for the psychotic illnesses?
Why are prescriptions of antipsychotics so high today, about 2,5% of the adult population?
A possible answer is the neuroleptics themselves. Recent studies (on haldol, clozapine and olanzapine) suggest they increase hypofrontality. The most debilitating aspect of “schizophrenia” is cognitive impairment.
Yes, I agree, a psychotic break is by it’s nature unpredictable. Antipsychotics, however, increase the biological vulnerability for psychosis, especially evident if one stops abruptly. It’s not been studied, as far as I know, how quickly the brain adapts to antipsychotics.
If your on an antipsychotic for more than a year or two, you will find increasingly less psychiatrists willing to help you come off them.
“Western, Education, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD)”, I had to laugh at that one.
Weird does have a supernatural root, like Dang Ki, I suppose.
The “spiritual” infestation of Weird Psychiatry is in the form of chemicals, a sort of demonic possession.
A “psychotic break” is a natural “protective” response of the brain to a build-up (over time) of stress. It could be biological (gradual poisoning), or it could be the environment. What antipsychotics (and as an extension, psychiatrists) do, is to maintain and increase the level of stress over time. Fear and submission keep the “patient” in line most of the time. A bit like slavery.
I wasn’t aware homosexuality was criminalized in 2013. Hindu text seem to have been very open-minded on sexuality.
The science of psychiatry:
We’ve compared administration of 20mg Haldol over 2 years with 5mg Olanzapine, and have come to the confident conclusion that atypical antipsychotics are neuroprotective.
It could be seen as an improvement I suppose … I don’t see it that way.
Be a bit more assertive, and tell the truth, things have not gotten better.
“Long Term Institutions basically don’t exist”. You need to study history and look for credible sources. Institutions catered for, maximum, 0,3% of the population. The modern “institution” is living in the street and jail.
“I wouldn’t want to do it. It would be hard for me emotionally. I prefer to be alone with my books and my writing.”
I was told my motor was eaten by snakes … I’m waiting for the bill.
“Adding something to psychiatry” also doesn’t register (with me) as something that would be desirable.
“despite billions of dollars of research investment” … most (if not all) of that money is profit driven in order to approve, market and sell psychotropics. Or did I miss something?
If you wish a career in mainstream journalism, especially today, what you are allowed to write about and investigate is dictated to you. If you wish to keep your job, that’s the bottom line. It follows, logically, that mainstream journalism is propaganda. The only “human rights” the vast majority of journalists are protecting are their own.
What’s your point?
Never a Frown with Golden Brown.
Isn’t this what they teach in kindergarten? Yes, another German word …
I very much like the adult approach when you introduce drugs.
Expanding the market of neuropsychiatric drugs, is what it’s all about. But can these low-income countries afford them, is the question most bio-psychiatrists are keen to find out.
Why not come clean, and admit biomedical psychiatry is a modern, insidious form of eugenics.
I’m finding that a lot the so-called “biomedical models” are an artefact of the drug treatments.
“Authors make the critical distinction between loneliness and time alone” …
I’m glad they are still able to do that …
“the burgeoning field of global mental health”, Oh dear.
On topic, what I learned about “community mental health services” (I assume peer support is part of that) is that they try to scare you into being med-compliant, while telling you at the same time how corrupt the system (they are a part of) is. They don’t live up to any of their promises with REAL things, like help with housing, finances etc. The most useless bunch I ever came across. I gave up on them after some months.
I don’t wish to be off-topic, but I was wondering about Will’s “Maastricht Antipsychotic World Survey”. I believe it started around the beginning of 2018. You can join a mailing list if you want to be informed of the survey results, which I did, but have no idea how to access the results. Are they publicly available anywhere?
“We know a lot, but we’ve not been able to apply it.”
Yes, of-course, the age-old excuse / problem. Have a look at the mid to late 19th / early 20th century, you will find that recovery was much more common than today. Any statistic you can mention, it’s worse today. Unless transforming into a vegetable is somehow an improvement …
“too much school …”. It’s more accurately described as “excessive synaptic pruning during the schooling phase”.
This is the song they play for psychiatrists at their graduation ceremony:
It’s called “riding the gravy train (with an exceptionally evil twist)”.
I confide in Alfred (sometimes) … although I pay for his keep.
Lies, damn lies, and lying statisticians …
“It’s very, very difficult to identify long-term effects of the drug…There are a lot of epidemiological studies that get done, these have become very popular, but they’re also in general very bad.”
Yes, some of the larger and more prominent ones tend to show the opposite of reality. Take the Fin11 study (and most similar studies from Scandinavia). If they find a relative risk (RR) of 0,8 for those on antipsychotic treatment vs. those not on them, but they leave out 2/3 of fatalities in the drug group, you could just say the study had a bad design and completely ignore it and move on. However, if you include the > 60% left out (improving the study design), you go from a RR of 0,8 to a RR > 2,0. Imagine that …
(oo)
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He’s also compared Soviet Russia to Secular Humanism …
The power that psychology wishes to (re) gain, in challenging the diagnostic method of psychiatry, is just that, a power struggle.
They are (essentially) competitors in the same market.
WiFi (which affects EEG) seems to trigger an oxidative-stress type response (heightened anxiety). I’m going back to my underground cave to collect my thoughts …
“The Power Threat Meaning Framework for considering emotional suffering could offer an infinitely more hopeful and respectful way of responding to eating distress than the traditional illness narrative imposed by psychiatry.”
If someone was selling a product, and stated it was (possibly) “infinitely” better than the competition, what would your first reaction (thought) be?
“I further believe OBEs within the healthy population, where there is no history of clinical pathology, should be fully respected by society and treated as non- pathological.”
Are you including DSM diagnoses when you say “clinical pathology”? As far as I know, there are no clinical tests for “psychosis”. Or are you saying OBEs are only valid (and therefore should be respected) for people who have never had any clinically diagnosable disease?
Getting a label like schizophrenia is a form of divination, it’s a prognostic label, nothing else. Being prescribed antipsychotics for life just enforces chronicity, they also protect the professional credibility of the diagnostic system and the psychiatrist.
I’m not really interested in “divorce court”.
As Peterson would say, “it depends on your definition of right-wing”. Most likely he will “spin” his ordeal in such a way so as to do the least harm to his brand.
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If they got rid of the words “mental illness” and called it “deviations in brain functioning that impact on consciousness and thought”, could it then be studied scientifically? Or is that area of study already taken up by neurology? They (psychiatry?) did change “dementia praecox” to “schizophrenia” … early onset dementia does exist (probably mostly due to irreversible damage from toxic substances). A strange profession psychiatry, and to call it a medical profession I suppose is only because they monitor blood from time to time and manage side-effects from their drugs.
“Bemme and Kirmayer emphasize epistemic pluralism, interdisciplinarity, self-reflection, and power-sharing to move beyond the divide in GMH and toward collaboration. “GMH today is many things,” they write.”
Sure, let’s expand the mental health industry sensibly, and not get too much in each others way. Plenty of opportunities.
I would use the term “physical distancing”, it better describes the situation.
Monitoring if your foot twitches while you sleep will become standard, AI and movement sensors are perfect for that.
Temporary measures generally become permanent, if recent history is anything to go by.
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For your book:
https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/couch-crisis/have-we-entered-age-immoronic
Quote from Pies: “It may seem odd to attribute “immorality” to a narrative concerning the earth’s climate, but if befouling the planet’s ecosystems and polluting our air and oceans is not immoral, I am not sure what is.”
Who has promoted the widespread use of plastic products in order to increase profits? Yes of-course, it must be the mentally ill. I can’t find anything in the article where Pies berates the oil industry.
If you were to substitute the earth’s climate, in his quote, with the human brain, the same thing could be said for psychotropics. He’s basically admitting to his own immorality.
Can websites see where you came from?
Yes it can due to analytics which the other guys mentioned but a website can also check your cookies to see your history. They use your browsing habits for marketing purposes.
Quarantine is from the 14th or 15th century. The crew of ships that came into harbor, were to stay on their ship for 40 days. Quarenta means 40. 40 days isolation. Luckily for them, there was no TV.
It’s true, that a chemical imbalance doesn’t cause “mental illness”. Psychiatrists today claim they never made that assertion. Which is of-course, false. For the more “severe” psychotic illnesses, many now claim it’s due to excessive synaptic pruning in the frontal lobes in late adolescence, early adulthood. A kind of early-onset dementia. I don’t buy that either. Whether or not it has any validity, further deterioration of the connections in the frontal lobe through antipsychotics makes no sense, whichever way you look at it. It does explain the 7-fold increase in chronicity since the advent of neuroleptics in the 50’s. It only makes sense from a monetary perspective, which is in no way beneficial to the “patient”.
“It was a knowledgeable friend who said “You need medication” – he was right.”
Did he give any indication as to which medication, at what dosage? And, for how long?
Where are you going to sleep tonight? Most people (so far) don’t give it a second thought … I’m quite certain the “policy makers” don’t.
“l see too many people, including many who are identified with the survivor movement and are, legitimately, survivors of horrendous psychiatric violence, using psychiatric drugs.”
Most likely they still use these psychiatric drugs because it’s too difficult to come off them. It shouldn’t be used as an argument for someone to start on, and then indefinitely stay on, for example, an antipsychotic. And it’s irrelevant whether or not these users of psychiatric drugs were abused in other ways. At least for the person that is being coerced into starting these drugs.
This excerpt is not really very realistic at arguing it’s paradox. The corona virus doesn’t mean years of isolation, at least I hope not …
We need to be asking “Which outcome measures are important?” and “What do we aim for with our mental health care?”
Surprisingly, maybe, it’s the same you would wish for yourself. These people are not so different.
I find Ricky Gervais’ performance at the Golden Globes interesting, to say the least. I won’t go so far as to say his performance has any real value, though.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR6UeVptzRg
A bit like the downfall of the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.
Charlie Nemeroff, willing to pimp himself for the right price. I would hazard a guess, most psychiatrists would do the same, given the opportunity. I’ve never come across a psychiatrist that doesn’t lie on a continual basis, and I’ve crossed paths with quite a few.
I would also like to mention this psychiatrist had his own hobby (fetish). He would lay you down and with some magic balls he had, identify points in your head and pierce you with a piece of metal there, give you a magnet and tell you to stimulate the metal. There was also a Chinese (witch) doctor there who once gave me a potion of crushed scorpions that he said would be helpful. None of it did anything. Needless to say, psychotropic medication was standard and not discussed.
When I was first escorted into a psych hospital for a prolonged stay many years ago, my mother asked why a lady sitting nearby had such uncontrolled movements in her legs. The psychiatrists response was: “Oh, don’t pay that any mind, they don’t even notice it”. I wonder what this shrink would say about parkinson?
Tardive Dyskinesia, known by informed psychiatrists as the “Jitterbug Syndrome”.
If DUP doesn’t predict outcome, because when in treatment the course is the same, I can only conclude that the treatment is not effective, and probably becomes the main cause of bad outcomes in the longer run.
“The evidence for degeneration in brain function is inconclusive, with recent research showing that antipsychotics themselves can cause brain changes.”
This was known in the 50s after haldol was beginning to be used. If tardive dyskenesia doesn’t hint at “brain change”, what causes it? A swarm of invisible ants biting you, causing the movement disorder?
Psychotropics can do “wondrous” things …
If he gives a talk, and someone in the audience interrupts him and reacts emotionally, he will get into a state and threaten to leave. “I’ve put a lot of effort into my presentation …”. As I said, an academic.
There is no such thing as a weird burning sensation. If I put a flame to your hand, there is no mistaking it.
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I meant to say “seemingly bizarre finding” given the argument from the Globe article that staying on your meds is “fundemental”.
Interesting they compare “psychotic illness” treatment to treating heart failure or liver disease.
https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/11-year-follow-up-of-mortality-in-patients-with-a-Tiihonen-Lönnqvist/71ab15c16a5ebea862a110daac4236df6e73633c/figure/1
According to this now “infamous study” on duration of antipsychotic treatment and risk of death, an interesting find is that if you treat a “schizophrenic” with neuroleptics for less than 6 months, he / she has the lowest risk of death. Unfortunately, it’s not explained why that may be so.
How would you compare such a bizarre finding to treating heart failure or liver disease?
Jim van Os finds the label (schizophrenia) unhelpful, he sees it as mainly a prognostic label, an educated guess on how the person so labelled will progress. He’s not against the concept as far as I can tell, he believes psychosis susceptibility has been proven through science (he shows a graph with a slope, from not susceptible to highly susceptible, and some genetic graphs showing at risk schizophrenia alleles). As far as I can tell, according to what I’ve read and heard from him, a person with schizophrenia is just someone with a very high susceptibility to psychosis and with a bad course. You can only be sure at the end, though. But, it’s unhelpful to the patient to label him at the start of the course, it may change. The patient could develop different symptoms and become, for example, bipolar, or anything else in the DSM. van Os is a psychiatrist, after all.
Evidence-based research finds both mood and metabolic disorders, in addition to chemical treatment, are successfully managed by cognitive behavioral change, nutrition, and PHYSICAL exercise.
Could you provide some studies which support this? Apply it to obesity. Can you show that changing your behavior, nutrition and physical exercise are not (as) effective without some form of chemical treatment? With chemicals, I mean psychotropics, which is what your comment seems to be about.
“It’s true identifying the appropriate psychotropic and dosage is trial and error; however, this challenge does not negate the fact that when a chemical treatment is discovered, it is extremely effective.”
Let’s take a popular antipsychotic like olanzapine as an example. It seems to work on over 20 chemical neurotransmitters at differing affinities. If the main therapeutic action is supposed to be dopamine d2 blockade, why would you want, for example, histamine h1 and serotonin 5ht2a saturation at sub-therapeutic doses? What do you do, if over time, the brain compensated for the d2 blockade? Up the dosage? What effect would that have on the other chemical neurotransmitters? What long term effects do saturating certain chemical neurotransmitters have? Can the brain recover from that, if, for some other more pressing health reason, you are advised to stop the drug?
If a chemical treatment is discovered, it’s per definition effective (at least for the target symptom). It’s very unlikely to cure anything, however. And the statement doesn’t say anything about existing psychotropic medication.
The decade of the brain indeed. They know the drugs don’t work (to put it mildly), which leaves me to conclude these brain scientists are mainly looking at the side-effects. How do certain chemicals in the brain affect human functioning. There are 1000’s of articles that look into these effects. With the medication for “schizophrenia” they always begin with “a devastating disease affecting 1% of the population …” and then begin to explore the negative effects of the drug, and conclude somehow a “schizophrenic” benefits.
Guinea Pigs.
I recommend a pause of 15 minutes, unless the patient insists on a prescription. Then it’s their problem.
I suppose it depends on what the treatment involves.
Current treatment guidelines only work to sedate and if prolonged only make things worse.
No, that’s a real ice-cream cone he’s sitting on. I’m certain of it.
A dog’s view of Pavlov (one of the “fathers” of psychology):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n9RVuqXGl0
“I think that psychology is completely bankrupt and needs to be done away with.”
It never had any real value to begin with.
I’m off to the clubhouse, just ran out of ginger beer … did I mention I (almost) have a PhD …
Removed for moderation.
A strategy, for the one being coerced to take the poison, (partially) effective about 10% of the time in the new and “radical” collaborative approach … I think something similar has existed for about 30 years in Finland with better results??
“Over one-third of those engaged in co-production reported that they had recently decreased or discontinued psychotropic medication prescriptions compared to approximately a fifth of participants enrolled in traditional supports.”
So, that’s (over) 33% compared to (about) 20%, a difference of 13% give or take, for those who find the sentence above a bit unclear.
Doesn’t co-production just boil down to “I’d rather not take that stuff, I hear it’s poisonous”.
“Instead, the study provides a snapshot of how much the mothers used in the perinatal period, in the weeks before giving birth.”
It could even be just a few days or less … the half-life of paracetamol is a few hours.
But, of-course, by the time they are 5, while their brains are still developing, you can give them amphetamines and blame the mother for having taken a few paracetamol in the last days of pregnancy.
The narrative is falling apart …
If a psychiatrist prescribes a bezodiazepine indefinitely, in addition to an antipsychotic, my advice would be, at the least, to find another prescriber as quickly as possible.
“Traumatic experiences have been shown repeatedly to be directly associated with: autoimmune disease, heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, obesity, adolescent obesity, drug and alcohol abuse, and Alzheimer’s.”
I’m afraid this a bit misleading, and plays into the hands of the psychotropic drug pushers who deny their “medication” is harmful. Being poly-drugged with antipsychotics, benzodiazepines and antidepressants , lead to all of the somatic illnesses you mention.
It’s strange that trauma has been shown to be directly related, but psychotropic drugging hasn’t. You say directly, which leaves me to conclude that any psychiatric drug intervention is not relevant.
In the article you mention:
“The authors found that ACE-related health risks, namely mental illness, social problems and prescription medication use, accounted for about 30 percent of the 50 percent greater risk of death seen in this population.”
To me, that suggests medication has a direct role to play.
Most priests deny they are intricately involved in sexual abuse of children as well. From what’s known, it’s at least 8% of the clergy who are actively abusing children, and the rest are complicit by failing to report it openly.
Bono, from U2, makes a lot of money pretending he cares about poverty in Africa (do they know I’m living it up at Christmas Time). He hates taxes … but, unlike the rest of us, gets top-dollar advice.
“Her passionate belief in both the creative spirit within everyone and the importance of choice, along with her love and interest in the human being has taken her also into prisons where she has volunteered for many years offering soul support through Alternatives to Violence work and watercolor painting.”
That is something I respect, although I’m not aware of any country that won’t use violence if they believe it’s beneficial to them whilst commanding public opinion. The arms trade is very profitable. As is the pharma industry, another form of violence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7e2B-thaJG0
Keep making noise, and hope some (in whichever country) with enough influence begin to listen.
I was joking Steve.
“Since medications are started when symptoms re-appear or get worse, it is obvious that the results would be even more favorable for antipsychotic treatment if this bias could be eliminated.”
A quote from this study:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0920996417307624#bb0040
Most psychiatrists delight in these sorts of studies, even if they are highly questionable, for want of a better description.
It’s tragic, the situation in old age homes, a high proportion being on haldol.
The legend of the goat and it’s association with demonic activity is very complex. According to local folklore, somewhere in the suburbs of Paris in the mid 19th century, a French nobleman was observed, in what seemed, to the untrained eye, to be performing unsavory acts with several goats in a barn. The local parish was called in to investigate, and came to the conclusion that the peasants were very much mistaken, what they witnessed was in fact a manifestation of Baphomet. The nobleman was, in fact, in a life or death struggle with the devil himself.
“Yet there was no reduction for those with an undergraduate, graduate, or professional education, possibly because they would not directly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.”
Very astute observation, I would go further and hazard a guess that it may well negatively impact them, considering the pool boy, gardener and housekeeper would, on aggregate, cost significantly more.
I should add that these percentages are most likely higher in favor of antipsychotic injections and antipsychotics in general, because everyone knows that antipsychotics are not generally taken when a person is not actively psychotic. Maintenance treatment is a myth propagated by the antipsychiatry movement.
Well, according to studies, if the injection is a placebo and not an active drug, your chance of early death is 50% higher. Amazingly, these studies also find that an injection protects you from early death by as much as 30% when compared to swallowing a pill. Might have something to do with the size of the pills, experts are working on it … it’s quite possible all medication will be administered by needle in the future. The relatively large surface area of the buttocks may also be a protective factor …
Goats have the unfortunate status of being linked to the devil. There’s also the scapegoat … maybe there’s a connection.
It’s very misleading for someone to say they know what your real problem is, and offer a solution. Think about it …
“I believe that a good therapist should be so helpful on the first visit that you feel eager to return for the next session and that you should be drug-free enough to enjoy and benefit from the help.”
Better yet, after the first session, you find there is no need to make any further appointments with the “good therapist”. Am I right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS3O5zg290k
There is no good and bad, if someone ever tells you that, they are lying.
“Patients have the right to have influence in their own life”. It’s not been scientifically proven. Therefore, should be disregarded.
Smoking grass (in moderation if need be) is also therapeutic. The spirit herb.
Herbs good way to make money … spice trade very lucrative short time ago … queen England likes her tea, not so happy with Chinese and Indians, make too much trouble. Curry good too … naughty people say she no good, money always good for health. Queen UK live very long time, is proof.
“I am writing you this public letter to ask for your help. I’m working to decrease daily veteran suicides by 25% to 50%, from 20 a day to 10-to-15 per day.”
It’s a bit like reducing your daily intake of sugar.
He pronounces “antipsychotics” as “an die saikau diks”. Why can’t some people learn to pronounce words correctly in more than one language? A sheltered existence? Brain damage? Fear of other cultures? Lack of time?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKeBjLG-ueY
Here’s his talk from 2015. “I’m not against the use of antipsychotics …”, bla bla … but reducing doses is only for first episode patients, the ones who take it for longer are basically f***d. Sorry, didn’t we warn you about that? (twitches his eye and grins sheepishly) No? But I can talk endlessly about our biological hypotheses … did I mention I know where the hypothalamus is … and better treatment is just around the corner … did I mention glutamate? It seems the brain needs it to keep it’s cells alive … could be a promising target treatment …
My advice, be patient, and take your time.
With an odds ration of 3.5 to 1 (from a drug withdrawal study) for a better outcome if you don’t take your psychiatrists advice, can we safely conclude that seeking help from a psychiatrist is bad for your health?
Wunderink has since changed his tune (he likes pharmaceutical money after all, and doesn’t want to lose his friends in the mental health scam), writing that the sooner you begin drugging children (in the predromal phase) with neuroleptics, the better the outcome. He didn’t do a study, it was just his musings (mental masturbation), paid for by some pharma company.
Also, the subjects in the study had all been drugged (and possibly indoctrinated, depending on your definition) for at least 6 months before they were split into the two groups.
“In a randomised trial comparing maintenance antipsychotic treatment to a supported reduction in people with a first episode of psychosis, only 29% of people overall recovered by 7-year follow-up—and of those who were allocated to antipsychotic maintenance treatment, less than 20% recovered.”
I’m not sure if the author of this piece intentionally tried to obscure the outcome of the Wunderink study in the quote above … Recovery was 40% for dose reduction, vs 17% for maintenance. Just to be clear on that. There’s also the question of properly interpreting “symptomatic recovery” in a way that doesn’t skew the results. Psychiatrists tend to be a little biased in that respect.
I partially read a history book on asylums and psychiatry for a whole country (which was from about 1850 onwards). There was a gradual rise of the asylum population from about 1 per thousand (around 1850) to about 3 per thousand in the first half of the 20th century. Slightly over half (~= 60%) had some sort of psychotic illness. The highest proportion were in the larger cities (up to 0,4%). Not sure what the average stay was before being released or transferred. The goal seemed to be recovery.
They don’t answer the question as to why chronicity is so much higher today, they emphasize that is the role for, or responsibility of, psychiatry to answer.
The question remains, if about 1% today are diagnosed schizophrenic, the most serious of mental illnesses, why weren’t the asylum populations 100 years ago much larger for the psychotic illnesses?
Why are prescriptions of antipsychotics so high today, about 2,5% of the adult population?
A possible answer is the neuroleptics themselves. Recent studies (on haldol, clozapine and olanzapine) suggest they increase hypofrontality. The most debilitating aspect of “schizophrenia” is cognitive impairment.
Yes, I agree, a psychotic break is by it’s nature unpredictable. Antipsychotics, however, increase the biological vulnerability for psychosis, especially evident if one stops abruptly. It’s not been studied, as far as I know, how quickly the brain adapts to antipsychotics.
If your on an antipsychotic for more than a year or two, you will find increasingly less psychiatrists willing to help you come off them.
“Western, Education, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD)”, I had to laugh at that one.
Weird does have a supernatural root, like Dang Ki, I suppose.
The “spiritual” infestation of Weird Psychiatry is in the form of chemicals, a sort of demonic possession.
A “psychotic break” is a natural “protective” response of the brain to a build-up (over time) of stress. It could be biological (gradual poisoning), or it could be the environment. What antipsychotics (and as an extension, psychiatrists) do, is to maintain and increase the level of stress over time. Fear and submission keep the “patient” in line most of the time. A bit like slavery.
I wasn’t aware homosexuality was criminalized in 2013. Hindu text seem to have been very open-minded on sexuality.
The science of psychiatry:
We’ve compared administration of 20mg Haldol over 2 years with 5mg Olanzapine, and have come to the confident conclusion that atypical antipsychotics are neuroprotective.
It could be seen as an improvement I suppose … I don’t see it that way.
Be a bit more assertive, and tell the truth, things have not gotten better.
“Long Term Institutions basically don’t exist”. You need to study history and look for credible sources. Institutions catered for, maximum, 0,3% of the population. The modern “institution” is living in the street and jail.
“I wouldn’t want to do it. It would be hard for me emotionally. I prefer to be alone with my books and my writing.”
I was told my motor was eaten by snakes … I’m waiting for the bill.
“Adding something to psychiatry” also doesn’t register (with me) as something that would be desirable.
“despite billions of dollars of research investment” … most (if not all) of that money is profit driven in order to approve, market and sell psychotropics. Or did I miss something?
If you wish a career in mainstream journalism, especially today, what you are allowed to write about and investigate is dictated to you. If you wish to keep your job, that’s the bottom line. It follows, logically, that mainstream journalism is propaganda. The only “human rights” the vast majority of journalists are protecting are their own.
What’s your point?
Never a Frown with Golden Brown.
Isn’t this what they teach in kindergarten? Yes, another German word …
I very much like the adult approach when you introduce drugs.
Expanding the market of neuropsychiatric drugs, is what it’s all about. But can these low-income countries afford them, is the question most bio-psychiatrists are keen to find out.
Why not come clean, and admit biomedical psychiatry is a modern, insidious form of eugenics.
I’m finding that a lot the so-called “biomedical models” are an artefact of the drug treatments.
“Authors make the critical distinction between loneliness and time alone” …
I’m glad they are still able to do that …
“the burgeoning field of global mental health”, Oh dear.
On topic, what I learned about “community mental health services” (I assume peer support is part of that) is that they try to scare you into being med-compliant, while telling you at the same time how corrupt the system (they are a part of) is. They don’t live up to any of their promises with REAL things, like help with housing, finances etc. The most useless bunch I ever came across. I gave up on them after some months.
I don’t wish to be off-topic, but I was wondering about Will’s “Maastricht Antipsychotic World Survey”. I believe it started around the beginning of 2018. You can join a mailing list if you want to be informed of the survey results, which I did, but have no idea how to access the results. Are they publicly available anywhere?
“We know a lot, but we’ve not been able to apply it.”
Yes, of-course, the age-old excuse / problem. Have a look at the mid to late 19th / early 20th century, you will find that recovery was much more common than today. Any statistic you can mention, it’s worse today. Unless transforming into a vegetable is somehow an improvement …
“too much school …”. It’s more accurately described as “excessive synaptic pruning during the schooling phase”.
This is the song they play for psychiatrists at their graduation ceremony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zyj1K5Lyr_Y
It’s called “riding the gravy train (with an exceptionally evil twist)”.
I confide in Alfred (sometimes) … although I pay for his keep.
Lies, damn lies, and lying statisticians …
“It’s very, very difficult to identify long-term effects of the drug…There are a lot of epidemiological studies that get done, these have become very popular, but they’re also in general very bad.”
Yes, some of the larger and more prominent ones tend to show the opposite of reality. Take the Fin11 study (and most similar studies from Scandinavia). If they find a relative risk (RR) of 0,8 for those on antipsychotic treatment vs. those not on them, but they leave out 2/3 of fatalities in the drug group, you could just say the study had a bad design and completely ignore it and move on. However, if you include the > 60% left out (improving the study design), you go from a RR of 0,8 to a RR > 2,0. Imagine that …
(oo)
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He’s also compared Soviet Russia to Secular Humanism …
The power that psychology wishes to (re) gain, in challenging the diagnostic method of psychiatry, is just that, a power struggle.
They are (essentially) competitors in the same market.
WiFi (which affects EEG) seems to trigger an oxidative-stress type response (heightened anxiety). I’m going back to my underground cave to collect my thoughts …
“The Power Threat Meaning Framework for considering emotional suffering could offer an infinitely more hopeful and respectful way of responding to eating distress than the traditional illness narrative imposed by psychiatry.”
If someone was selling a product, and stated it was (possibly) “infinitely” better than the competition, what would your first reaction (thought) be?
“I further believe OBEs within the healthy population, where there is no history of clinical pathology, should be fully respected by society and treated as non- pathological.”
Are you including DSM diagnoses when you say “clinical pathology”? As far as I know, there are no clinical tests for “psychosis”. Or are you saying OBEs are only valid (and therefore should be respected) for people who have never had any clinically diagnosable disease?
Getting a label like schizophrenia is a form of divination, it’s a prognostic label, nothing else. Being prescribed antipsychotics for life just enforces chronicity, they also protect the professional credibility of the diagnostic system and the psychiatrist.
I’m not really interested in “divorce court”.
As Peterson would say, “it depends on your definition of right-wing”. Most likely he will “spin” his ordeal in such a way so as to do the least harm to his brand.