Comments by Julie Greene, MFA

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  • Hello Itay,

    Thanks for this wonderful piece. A long time ago, I stayed in a place like that which ended up being closed down. I’m not sure why. It is described in the last chapter of my memoir, This Hunger Is Secret, which I published about a decade ago. It is now free for anyone to read. You can find it on my blog, http://juliemadblogger.com.

    It was my case manager’s idea to send me there. This was after shock treatments when I was having trouble thinking straight. I was frustrated and hopeless that I would ever get my mind back. They were going to send me to a state hospital. I went to the respite house instead. It was not at all like any place I’d ever been before. This was around the end of September, 1997.

    What was amazing was that there was this lack of hierarchy that was truly refreshing. The staff did not have those insulting “professional boundaries” that I saw in other places. They shared their lives with me. They even drove us in their own vehicles if we needed a ride. They weren’t therapists and weren’t trained as therapists, although one of them did end up converting.

    Not only that, but they had this staff office but it wasn’t off limits to the residents. We could come in there anytime we wanted. The door was open and there certainly wasn’t any insulting bullet-proof glass separating the staff office from the rest of the living space.

    You could come and go as you pleased. I had my bike there, too. They let me park it in the hallway. I can’t recall now how many weeks I stayed there.

    I spent a lot of my time just writing in my notebook. This was a habit I had developed as a result of shock treatments, but it grew into something more. I left the respite house. I was okay. By January, I was doing more serious writing. I enrolled in an adult ed writing class. In March I decided to try going back to college. I succeeded. I finished the first draft of a novel by August, 1998.

    I am not saying that the respite house was what saved me. I saved me. Good luck and lots of writing saved me. They allowed me the space to do it. I’m grateful.

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  • John,

    I was hoping you would write a piece for MIA, and I’m glad you did. I love the way you have described the white-clad slavedrivers who claim they’re only following orders. You really nailed them.

    Occasionally, I saw one or two try to break the rules and be kind. One of them did this telling me she’d lose her job if anyone knew. The other tried, but the doctor forced her into submission. She was taken off my case. One day, I saw her in the hallway. She looked at me with these sad eyes. I’ll never forget that.

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  • Bippy, you need them to tell you the numbers. Ask what your creatinine level is. If they insist it is “fine,” then you need to demand that they give you the number. “Fine” might mean fine by mental patient standards. The test here in the US is called a Basic Metabolic Panel. I suspect that it might be called something different in the UK. That panel tells you electrolyte levels also. I would suggest cutting way down on salt to help the swelling. There are herbs you can take for it, too.

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  • It is sad indeed that some people are so isolated that they feel they must resort to paying for “support,” in other words, “therapy.”

    There are still support systems in some areas for those that do not have any.

    I usually spend holidays alone, but I found out a local coffee shop is hosting a Thanksgiving event. If you look hard enough you will find support other than “therapy.” My main issue with “therapy” is that it tends to be a black hole that people can’t get out of. Who would want that, if they knew?

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  • Dr. Mary Dyer-Martin prescribed Marci’s drugs. She should be held responsible. When you put yourself in the hands of a doctor, you supposedly trust that doctor, too. Once you are on one drug, you might end up “out of it” and unable to comprehend that maybe you are on too much or too many. Breggin refers to this as “spellbinding,” and it’s very true. When you are drugged up, it’s the doctor’s responsibility to recognize this. It’s the doctor’s responsibility not to overdrug a patient. Now, if a person buys drugs on their own, then the responsibility is theirs and theirs alone. This is why some of us advocate for the abolition of the Power of the Prescription. When you are out of it from drugs, you’re likely to do anything the doctor says.

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  • One time, my fellow patient begged for a placebo. I wasn’t sure why. Placebos work quite well. You would think they cause no harm. Psych placebos still cause dependency and the notion that one is diseased. I believe that placebos only work on humans because we can experience hope and foresight. The animal sense of foresight is minimal by comparison. I don’t think they have any concept of a god, or of praying to something. I don’t think they need to. They seem more secure in themselves than we are.

    I also don’t think the concept of Parent God is present much outside Christianity.

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  • I have found that very consistently, if a person is down on their luck, people run away fast. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

    I paid thousands of dollars to a scammer this summer and when I figured out it was a scam I was able to get part of my money back, but not my sense of well-being. Where are the phone calls and emails of support when I need them? People pulled away and I feel very alone.

    Some blame me for feeling like crap after what happened, or blame me for not “getting over it” when really, they weren’t the ones who were scammed, and they don’t know what it’s like.

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  • I am saddened that mostly, what will help people is information, accurate, complete, and relevant information.

    Such as….legal information about landlord/tenant laws, information about what constitutes domestic abuse, information about job openings in the area, or informing the person that “the pill” can cause depression.

    I guess that’s why search engines seem to be a popular way to get “help.” I would trust a search engine over a psychiatrist any day!

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  • Registered, I don’t get that. So you’re saying if a person isn’t lucid, they have no ability to make a responsible choice? Who decides who is lucid and who isn’t? Psychiatry.

    I also agree that suicide is a personal choice. We don’t know people’s situations. We can’t get into their heads, which is really a good thing, when you think about it. If we do, we’ve gone too far.

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  • Frank, I just read an article by people in the economics field who make six-figure salaries. All of them stated that we need more of the humanities in the colleges, not less. Many stated that in the employment world, and especially if one is a CEO of a company, the most important skill they learned in college was communication. The article further stated that people who major in the arts (music, writing, fine arts, dance, etc) end up making equal salaries to those who majored in a STEM field. The difference is right after college, where STEM grads are more likely to get a good job. After a decade, it evens out. (When you die it won’t matter anyway.)

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  • fnert, Abolishing psychiatry does not impose on the rights of those who choose it. Right to psychiatry is not a human right that I know of. Do I have the right to astrology? Not really. I have the choice to go to an astrologer…or maybe not. The freedom to choose for oneself, that’s a human right. I also have the choice to become a drug dealer, but if I chose that,I would be breaking the law and I might get in trouble. Still, I have the right to choose. I hope I choose wisely.

    Even if psychiatry is banned, people will have the right to choose it. It will be an unwise choice, but come to think of it, many people, myself included, make bad choices.

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  • Yes, I believe it was 1985. And it was Carl Pfeiffer and the Brain Bio Center. I can’t believe my parents drove me there and suckered into it. He poked fun at me, I recall. It’s in my memoir. I didn’t know how to react. I remember telling my mother that we needed to listen to the real doctors, the psychiatrists.

    Years later, I had forgotten about Pfeiffer totally. In 2014 I dug up the paper he had given me. I was fairly sure the dietary recommendations he gave me were the carbon copy of what he told everyone else, but there it was.

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  • I personally loved college. I learned a lot and thrived in that environment. I felt like I mattered, even though in many ways it was totally fake. When you get out you realize this. You might matter while you’re a student. After all, students generate income for the colleges. Students make the college look great.

    Is anyone else out there disgusted that once you finish college the only time the college EVER contacts you again is to ask for money? That’s when you realize you’re not useful to them anymore. Your money is useful. You aren’t.

    Years ago, I remember one day when I was starving and out of it, one of my former colleges called me up for that yearly plea for donations. When I saw the college in my caller ID, I told myself that they were inviting me to do a reading or give a talk, that they finally recognized that I had written and published a book and they actually remembered what a good student I was. I can see why I continued to starve after I found out what the real agenda was, and what most people’s real agenda is.

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  • I agree! Why work for them? I know some people who call themselves “peers” and when I have talked to them, they actually say they can’t get a job doing anything else.

    That, I suppose, may very well be true if they walk into their next job interview saying they are ex-patients. I can’t believe they’d devalue themselves that way. YES, you can do other things. You just have to give it a try. And…just omit a few things from the backstory.

    If you train to do something new, you are just as valuable as any other trainee. The playing field is even if you keep some stuff to yourself.

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  • I am sure BCHarris has had plenty of experience.

    In the memoir I wrote and published, I have a section on my experience with an orthomolecular doctor. The memoir did not sell and I have taken it off the market, but it’s still available FOR FREE at my blog, if you are interested.

    I also did not have a very good experience. My parents had pushed me into it and they had driven me all the way to Princeton hoping for a miracle. I never found out how much they paid for the appointment, but it was a waste.

    If he had been the great miracle worker he was claimed to be, he would have told me that lithium causes kidney disease and to get off of it as soon I could. (Getting off that stuff is not that hard.)

    I hear that a long time ago when Dr. Breggin was taking patients, that’s what he would tell them. He saved many people’s lives that way.

    My new book, by the way, is coming out very soon and it’s about surviving after lithium damages your body. It is not about “lithium withdrawal” since really the only withdrawal is the scare tactics and lies commonly used in nuthouses. It’s about how to get away from the mental health system and how to deal with kidney disease naturally.

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  • I agree. Don’t check the box. Don’t admit it. Don’t even imply it. Interestingly, since the diagnoses have no validity, if you don’t tell, if you act as if you were never locked up, as if you never had a diagnosis, no one will know. If you tell the wrong people, they won’t just run away, they’ll do anything to smear your reputation. You will become a scapegoat. People need someone to hate, someone to blame for their own flaws and mistakes.

    I agree that the hatred out there is worse than ever. I have had a lot of trouble getting the attention of journalists and nothing I write to the Boston Globe even gets read.

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  • I agree with Lloyd, I’m not sure the suicide question is answered (I choose to use that scary word!). I personally believe a person has the right to end their own life, but some religions forbid it. By all means a person shouldn’t be criminalized for wanting to commit suicide, or thinking about it, or planning it, or toying with the idea. Oh let me add one more crime: writing a poem with the word “Death” in it.

    If these principles were closely and strictly followed, psychiatry would go broke very fast. No one would voluntarily choose to be marginalized, drugged, and labeled. No one would choose organ failure and early death. No one would choose forced unemployment. Oh dear, poor shrinks. They’d moan about losing their jobs or not getting paid enough. They would complain because now, they have to be honest (if it were enforced). Oh dear! Maybe some of them can try out psychiatric disability. After all, you don’t have to work, right? They did it to us. Why don’t they try it out?

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  • Hi Michelle, I am not sure if you will see my comment, but I am looking for lawsuits by people who took lithium and then, were never told they had kidney disease. There’s no sense in trying to sue the drug companies since the drug has been around for decades. Doctors have known that lithium causes kidney disease for decades. It’s pretty much standard practice to keep patients in the dark about their medical condition…and then it ends up being too late.

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  • The following happened to me in first grade. We were at recess. The teacher asked us to line up in a line. We did. I did not like standing there in the cold. I got colder and colder, in fact, and I figured I wasn’t the only one. Finally, the teacher said we’d better be good or we wouldn’t get to stay outside.

    Everyone was silent then. I said, likely quite audibly, “But we don’t want to stay outside. It’s too cold.”

    In a flash, the teacher, likely a recess monitor, was right beside me. She told me I was a “bad girl” and told me I should be ashamed of myself. She grabbed me by the scruff of my jacket and dragged me to the end of line, saying I deserved it.

    It wasn’t so much that single action, but what it symbolized to me at that very moment. School was no longer my friend. It was a scary, hostile place. And that it stayed.

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  • So this is what happened a few days ago. I was teaching a class and some of the kids were doing stuff that was going to lead to trouble. By trouble I mean someone was going to get injured if they continued. I tried to solve this by getting the kids interested in doing something else. This worked, for the most part, as I saw the kids scurrying away from where they were to another part of the room. Unfortunately, the aide then started yelling at them and using shaming language.

    Kids react differently to this type of adult bullying. Some will just disregard it. One boy, though, was particularly hurt because he was called “bad” and a bunch of other things.

    He was so upset, he sobbed and curled into a ball. I was amazed that the aide was so clueless about what had just happened. For most of the class she was sitting way off to the side, with some papers in front of her that she appeared to be reading, but more likely, the papers were hiding her cellular telephone.

    I don’t know why she chose that moment to yell at the kids, but it was startling and deeply disturbing. As far as I can tell, this is normal, daily life at the average school, and this is the way kids are treated there.

    Although I tried to comfort the child, I knew I was rather ineffective at doing so. After all, I was a scary adult. The cool thing is that another child came and sat next to him and stayed with him until he was okay. The other child was an ally. Adults are the threat.

    Anyone who speaks out against the status quo, whether an employee or a child, or even a parent, is going to be ostracized. And the wheels keep turning. How can we stop this madness?

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  • They do it all over, Jim, laws or no laws. I know people who were held like that. I recall being held at Boston Medical Center in a prison cell for three days, dehydrated and malnourished, while they scrambled to figure out what to do with me. Finally, they let me go since I didn’t “qualify” for anything at all. The prison shrink said I fell between the cracks and she threw up her hands in utter cluelessness. Thankfully, not one psych ward would take me. To this day, I don’t understand why, during those three days, I was completely denied any medical care. By then, I knew it wasn’t psychiatry that I needed.

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  • I would have to say that I have all too often seen peer workers push unwanted treatment on people. If the peer workers are working for the hospital, then naturally they’ll be hired to work to the hospital’s financial advantage.

    I see an issue with defining good health with more consumption of medical services. Maybe it’s good financial health for the institutions and providers.

    I was saddened to see on a forum a bunch of peer specialists saying that if their jobs were canned they wouldn’t be able to get jobs anywhere else. They defined themselves as unhirable. This saddens me, since many of these capable people would be welcome in other workplaces, doing completely other things. Isn’t it time that survivors got themselves hired doing something besides working for the MH industry?

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  • First of all, our complaints are dismissed because they claim we’re crazy and don’t know what we are talking about.

    Some have gained a little bit of a voice by joining the opposition and becoming providers themselves.

    This leaves the rest of us. Many of us have other areas of expertise. But whatever that is, it counts for nothing. We don’t matter. Frankly, I’m so tired of being treated like a lowlife (in regular life and also in survivor circles) I am ready to scream. But…on the other hand, I can join the Lowlife Pride movement or some such thing. Might not have much choice. Or….maybe I get looked down on because I’m shorter than most of you.

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  • Yeah, Kindred, I agree. I have had to endure the pushing of the Pledge of Allegiance. I am honestly afraid my job status would be affected if anyone found out I don’t say the Pledge. Kids are taught to obey, obey, obey, without questioning, and if they dare say anything they get a note sent home, or detention.

    Here is an example of what they do. One day, I had taught a class that worked out very well. Afterward, the teachers want the kids to line up to leave the classroom obediently and silently. I totally hate this ritual, but I have to go along with it. So that day, the kids lined up, and suddenly, one little girl broke out of the line and ran back to me to give me a big hug. I was so touched by this. Guess what happened? She got shamed, demeaned, and sent to the end of the line. That was the day I realized I need to cut down on my hours. I’m tired of feeling on the verge of tears over these human rights infractions. I also realize that I can’t fight it as a minority voice. There’s too much hierarchy to fight.

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  • Hello, I am the author of Life After Lithium, which is not yet published. I want to share with you that if you take lithium you will experience renal failure. You are likely to die of it, or die of something related such as cardiac failure or stroke. Kidney disease leads to diabetes and you might die of that.

    Your doctor should tell you about the wonderful lives people have on dialysis. You’ll be married to a machine three days a week, six hours a day. Do you want your life ruined by that? You’ll be forced to stop working, and go on disability. I’ve got more news. Most people die during the first year of dialysis.

    If you have already started lithium, your creatinine, which is a blood level, has already risen to an alarming level. Don’t expect your doctor to properly inform you about this, either. You will notice symptoms in a decade. You aren’t likely to live past your 50s.

    Your choice.

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  • Mindfulness? Huh? I agree with Steve. I work in the schools. They are oppressive to kids. Take high school for example. My kids have to be there at 7:30 in the morning. If they’re late, even by a minute, they’re punished. They have only three minutes to get from class to class.

    When I was hired I was given the spiel about inclusiveness. We were given extensive training on how to report child abuse. This was supposed to include abuse by school personnel, yet when I made a report to the state, my supervisor demeaned me and said I should not have done it.

    I have seen instances where teachers, who are hired and paid to teach, aren’t teaching. I don’t understand how, on a moral level, these teachers can live with themselves. The kids are at a loss. They deserve an education. They didn’t come to school to be babysat, supervised, bossed around, and threatened.

    When I get to teach, when I get to stand up in front of the class, I give examples of how voicing one’s concerns can make huge changes, even if you are a minor. I have said so many times, “You matter.” But at the same time, I realize that for many of these kids, they have spoken out plenty, but often they are not being heard.

    They still matter, though. I tell them not to give up.

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  • I have news from Marci. The place she is at, she says, is better than Elgin, or shall I say less oppressive, but still, it’s a hospital. She has six more weeks there. After Marci spoke up and revealed to another patient what a court order was (education, I say!) she then had any “privileges” revoked and she’s restricted to the “unit.” She says it is very difficult there as it’s one of those “acute” psych wards, where clearly, she feels out of place.

    She says every little bit counts. If you can call, or send a letter, she would be very happy! She sounded very clear, upbeat given the circumstances, and unfortunately for them, she remembers the various offenses against her very well. They can’t use their most effective weapon, drugging, against her, so they’re clearly trying other means, legal or not, to attempt to silence her.

    Every bit of support counts!

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  • Dr Tasch, I first heard you on the Breggin show. I’ve been very impressed with your work.

    What are the chances of being able to turn around a few more shrinks and a few more attorneys? Shrinks have power in the courts because they’re shrinks. Attorneys can make huge changes because they know the law.

    Can we ex-patients/survivors influence local attorneys and find more shrinks who have common sense and guts to stand against the system?

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  • I have read, or tried to read, several DBT books. All are horribly blameful toward the patient, who likely isn’t to blame for being misunderstood or misheard. I hated reading, “You can’t handle your emotions.” As far as I knew, I handled emotions better than most people around me at the time. I want to feel my feelings. Even the unpleasant ones, because sometimes, it’s necessary. Unpleasant feelings help us make good decisions. I want to remember, so I can tell the story to many people. I want to be pissed off and stay that way as long as I need to, and I am not uncomfortable with my own real feelings. The assumption that we’re somehow not okay in our own skin, that was the biggest insult. Mostly, it applied to those therapists, not to us.

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  • Magdalene, I am frankly quite tired of “activists” who tout the “therapy is good and drugs are bad” narrative. Very tired. I was abused by my therapist and therapy kept me in a sick state for years, always on the verge of the next crisis. I am tired of hearing that mindfulness is for everyone. I don’t think it’s logical, and in some cases, it’s very unhealthy since it causes apathy. I am tired of the demands that everyone should meditate. I am tired of being guilt-tripped because I choose to avoid it. I used to know someone who was addicted to meditating. It was bad. She couldn’t stop and got so far behind on schoolwork that she had to drop out. I avoid yoga, too, as it reminds me of the “gentle yoga” we HAD to do in the nuthouse. Why can’t people just let me be me? I’m fine the way I am, thank you. Sick of the trendiness of those things.

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  • I am glad you reviewed this book. We need more survivor stories reviewed because (on a practical level) doing so increases awareness that the book exists, increases exposure, and potentially increases book sales. I know that saying so sounds selfish but I’m remembering how I had a book published about ten years ago and for the most part, couldn’t even get my friends to help out. It was one of the most heartbreaking experiences I’ve ever been through.

    I will definitely check this out. I’m glad to see another person rejecting CBT and rejecting that packaged “mindfulness” that therapists love to sell. It is NOT for everyone, contrary to what the mindfulness salesmen claim. I found that mindfulness was just one more way to blame the victim. It turned me off.

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  • It IS news, although I agree with Pacific Dawn that we should have known this already. I find it reinforces the importance and influence that non-parental adults have in a teen’s life. As a teacher I am well aware that I am a role model for kids. I also remember my own teachers in high school and junior high. Many had a positive influence on me. At the same time, I wonder to this day about the indifference of some of them.

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  • We can start right now by stopping the use of made-up diseases to explain away our bad behavior, no matter how minor. If we are adults we should be accountable for our behavior. We cannot blame some disease. “I didn’t show up because of my depression.” Or, “I was late because of my ADHD…” These need to be replaced with, “I felt I couldn’t come to the party because I didn’t know most of the people there.” Or, “I was late because I mis-judged the amount of traffic I’d encounter.” Plain and simple. We need to do away with, “I snapped at you because of my bipolar,” and replace it with, “I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m under so much pressure right now due to mounting debts. It’s not you.”

    We need to teach our children not to fall back on disease-excuses. I’ve had to deal with this as a teacher. I have had kids ask to be excused from the room, which I am not allowed to do ordinarily except for a bathroom trip. I can tell when they want to use their label as the reason. They start to stammer and act awkward because they’re not sure they can tell me. They don’t know me.

    What I do with these kids is that I spare them the awkwardness and gently encourage them. I give them practical reasons to stick with the class and with whatever assignment we’re doing. Instead of letting them excuse themselves due to their labels, I integrate them into the discussion. I get them motivated. I have never failed to bypass the labeling this way.

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  • This is a two-hour interview, and I’m about 15 minutes into it. Already they can eliminate any schizo diagnosis. If her thoughts were that disorganized she wouldn’t remember all those names and phone numbers. That’s impressive! Also, she shows interest in the therapist’s life. That, too, is impressive since people steeped in the MH system are also immersed in themselves. I suppose the therapist here felt obligated to give her a dx by default. I’m very impressed with Marci’s desire to “not rely on the government” and get a job. This is so amazing.

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  • Bravo to Marci! How can we truly know what a person is like if they are diagnosed in captivity? I don’t think anyone should be diagnosed based on inpatient behavior, especially if they are enduring abuse, by staff or patients. Even animals will act differently if they are in cages. Birds pluck their feathers out. Rodents will eat their babies.

    As such, it does not, “in the court’s opinion, require inpatient attention. Many persons with the same attributes are found throughout society.”

    Sounds like the staff there at Elgin have bad morals, are unpleasant and abusive, and lack insight.

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  • We’re already doing it. I hold two jobs, working weekdays and Sundays. My weekday job is one I do outside my home. I have to put on a good impression no matter what, even if I have a bug I picked up at work. They call that “professionalism.” I don’t think “professionalism” has to be robotic, either. I have already filed a mandated report because I knew that was the right thing. Imagine if all ex-patients acted respectfully instead of the childish manners taught in the nuthouses. Imagine if all ex-patients inspired other people by example. Imagine if we all stood up for what we believe in. We would be leaders. Soon, there would be no more patients, no more suckers, no one would fall for it. Psych would crumble.

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  • This is scary indeed. What if this list were to be misused? Who can access the list? Your college? Your future employer or landlord? Can it be accessed if you are running for public office? Can the media access it? If you are being sued, or prosecuted for a possible crime, can being on the list work against you? Will they use it to detain people as supposedly violent criminals or monsters?

    Why don’t we all declare ourselves “monsters” and then see what happens. I got horns and a forked tail. How about you?

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  • I agree, Oldhead. I consider myself antipsych, but I am not a Scientologist. Some survivors and likely all scientologists are antipsych, as are other people (some ex-providers, many family members) Simple logic. These are just plain separate issues.

    I’m thinking though, that since the Sci clan shows up at these protests, some clarity might be needed, as some people likely have no clue there’s an antipsych movement aside from Sci

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  • My parents joined NAMI in the 1980s. This was mainly a support group. They said to me that I was compliant and that most parents complained of noncompliance. They felt that my situation wasn’t the same. Even in the 1980s he introduced me to the Vermont Liberation Organization, or something that sounded like that. This was just what it sounds like. They worked mostly by telephone since Vermont is mountainous and most people/patients couldn’t get around easily.

    I believe it was 1986 that they took me to see Dr. Pfeiffer. This likely cost them a lot, but since I was steeped in the brainwashing, I’d say I didn’t get much out of the appointment.

    My dad later rose to leadership in NAMI. Prozac had exploded on the scene but had not picked up the popularity it has today and the drug wasn’t yet passed out like candy. NAMI changed my dad. He had a chance to do a lot of research and attend conferences. He read On Our Own and saw Judi speak in person. He wanted me to learn about this “other way.” Then he started mentioning this bizarre thing called Human Rights. He kept talking about it, telling me I should learn about it. I figured, in my total naivete, that Human Rights meant something in history, like maybe the abolishing of slavery after the Civil War, or the Civil Rights Movement, and couldn’t possibly be relevant to me, here and now.

    My dad’s cancer was starting to return, but he took on a job as “monitor” in the state hospitals. He went to Westborough State, I recall. He spoke directly to the patients and asked them about human rights abuses. He was also highly instrumental in getting Metropolitan State (The Met), which was very near where I grew up in Lexington, closed down for good.

    Years after his death, my mom encouraged me to join her in the NAMI walks. The last year she asked me, I asked 1) if I could bring Puzzle, and 2) if I could run the walk instead of walking the walk. She said I should ask the organizers. If I recall correctly the organizers did not say, but implied, that most were far too sick (from their “treatments”) to be able to run it. This was an eye-opener to me. At the time, I was just shedding the unwanted “services” and “treatments” from my life.

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  • Hello Melody, I would love to know which educational institution put you through this. I have attended six different colleges, actually seven. In order of appearance, they are….UMass/Amherst, Bennington College, a defunct practical nursing school, Southern Vermont College (non-matriculating), Emerson College, Goddard College, and online school which was really a scam, at SNHU.

    I have never heard of such an inhumane, humiliating practice done at any of the schools I attended. At UMass, I believe starting sophomore year as music majors we had to go through “Juries” which was at the end of the semester. This was a chance to perform a piece in front of the faculty while they critiqued our playing. Students were not present. We were nervous about the juries, but nothing like what you describe happened there. I received my notes from them and they stressed the positive and also noted improvements. No one failed if they mucked up their juries.

    Bennington never had that. They didn’t have uniform standards for “passing” and each student was expected to create his or her own goals, and then, achieve them. The faculty were there to support these goals. Bennington was grade-free, meaning I could go as far as I wanted with my projects and was not limited by “grades.”

    Practical nursing school was nothing but memorization and no critical thinking. They didn’t like it when we thought outside the box. After the school ended (I never got that far) the class took a standardized practical nursing exam. I don’t remember anyone being raked over the coals as you describe.

    Emerson, in hindsight, was more conservative than they made themselves out to be. Faculty were required to give grades and with some courses, the administration required mid-terms and finals. Studying and working hard was a joy for me. I got straight A’s.

    At Goddard College, where I completed my graduate studies, I really learned how to teach, and more importantly, gained confidence and leadership skills. This was not a teaching program, that is, not a certification program, but the faculty were so good that I learned by example. We were required to teach our own classes and that experience was inspiring for me. The only time, to my recollection, that students felt pressured or nervous was right before final semester. The reason was that at the end of third semester we were expected to have a full draft of our manuscripts and we sent this in for approval for final semester. Not all students passed. Some were asked to repeat a semester. Sometimes this led to conflicts, but usually not. I passed. Final semester you really had to push yourself hard. I did. I loved it! At the end of final semester you pass in your manuscript again and two faculty members have to separately and independently approve your manuscript. Everyone in my class passed, all ten of us. Then at graduation we gave public readings and little speeches at the graduation ceremony.

    As for colleges that discriminate against gays, yes, they do! I applied to teach at a local college (Western Pennsylvania) which I will not name. During the application, they said I had to agree to Christian principles (I winced) and then they had me read their policies, which included banning all lesbian and homosexual activity. I stopped then and there. They auto-sent an email to me asking me to finish the application. I wrote right in the application, in a spot where my text would fit, that I cannot continue and refuse to work for a college that discriminates against the LGBTQ population. I sent that off. How could anyone, in good conscience, work there? I imagine this doesn’t happen in Massachusetts, where I am from, but maybe I’m wrong.

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  • I did not read the comments but I see there are many. I attended the first webinar. I noticed that I saw very few familiar names there, which is promising. Many were MH workers of various sorts from Oregon and had a lot of knowledge of Oregon-specific issues. They definitely reacted positively and seemed to be learning!

    I also felt that Bob Nikkel’s presentation was realistic because in many ways, their efforts did not succeed. I question how public health officials measure “health.” I took a public health class recently. This was an undergraduate class. These students were likely much younger and less experienced than me. They foolishly measured “health” by “number of doctor visits” and “percentage of people who go get vaccines.” Actually, I suspect this is the prevailing view, pushed by the media. So if I saw a psychiatrist twice a month and a therapist twice a week, I’d be more healthy? If I took a cocktail of blood pressure pills, cholesterol pills, and HRT, I’d be more healthy? I’d likely be dead! It looks like people just don’t get it.

    I would not say psychiatry has failed. Psychiatry is a dark shadow in our history, an abomination, an embarrassment.

    People wonder why, when the Nazis were rising in power in Germany, the story never reached most of the North American public. The reason is that the media did not publish these stories, or when they did, it was some tiny article in a remote corner of the newspapers. There was growing Antisemitic sentiment shared among the most powerful and richest influencers of the day. Their companies funded the papers through advertising.

    This is exactly what is happening now. They squelch our stories. They silence us in any way possible, even using illegal means to keep us out of the mainstream media. We continue to grow in numbers and are more successful at shouting loudly, but are dismissed as nutcases. When I explain to people that I “got better” because I got all MH “care” out of my life, they say, “Oh but you’re an exception.” I’m honestly tired of hearing that. I have known others who have done the same, ditched them all, and what’s cool is that EVENTUALLY, these folks flourish. It takes time to get through the grieving and financial wreckage.

    Psychiatry should be abolished. The drugs are only a side issue. Psychiatry is guilty of heavily influencing society on all levels, encouraging eugenics, that is, the separation of the supposedly sane and the supposedly insane. The media supports this idea, that we should be given “care,” which might include incarceration. That we should be put out of work and then, handed an embarrassment of an income from the State. That we should become property of the State, which now controls and monitors our finances and our living situation. We are rounded up and put in ghettos or prisons.

    Their “care” should be exposed for what it truly is. The Nazis lied about the showers and psychiatry is lying about what it does, too. We need to inform and enlighten the public so that psychiatric “care” can be stopped. Ended. We need to save our people from the fate we ourselves befell.

    A new era should begin, not based on hatred and fear of “other,” but based on love.

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  • I am not sure you are really aware of what this site and the activity you see here is all about. While I agree that sometimes, people might vent on here about their experiences or opinion, there’s no place else we can safely do this. Many of us had traumatic reactions to our psych experience very specifically because when we got out we had nowhere to take our stories. Psych abuse is rarely recognized as a trauma. Where do we go? The therapist? Really. Try it! My therapist told me the unit I was on didn’t exist! My psychiatrist told me I was manic and told me she would drug me till I couldn’t write anymore. Your profession is responsible for countless deaths and billions in disability money and Medicare payments to hospitals that held us against our will. Of course we are angry. It is about time someone was!

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  • However, most are treated with a combination of the two. You can do therapy alone, or drugs alone, but what if you do both drugs and therapy?

    I’d guess as the drug use increases, which invariably it will, the quality of therapy decreases. You might be falling asleep or unable to concentrate on a therapy session. Or the whole session might consist of a sunscreen lecture. You might be so unmotivated that you didn’t shower before therapy, so the whole session focuses on getting you into the shower. I have had countless therapy sessions where I asked them why I was getting edema and muscle cramps. It was from kidney disease from lithium, but this was really waste. Why didn’t they just come out with it and tell me I had kidney disease, when undoubtedly, the KNEW all along?

    In the end, therapy didn’t just suck. It was a danger to me, and I got out.

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  • Oh, I should add something else. For those out there who may be a so-called mental health professionals, you can help out by ENDING the assumption that having a mental health degree means you’re an expert on life. You are NOT. You might, though be an expert on the inner corruption of your profession. This is what you should be talking about. You should not use your credentials to claim expertise on the human condition. Quit acting like gods.

    I have heard this from SOME mental health professionals, even some here, all too much. I have heard such idiocy as, “I know what causes eating disorders! Perfectionism!” Me: Oh, so it’s a character defect, is it? How about, instead, saying, “The way they treat people diagnosed with ED is horrible! The use of force and threats in the ED professions is shocking and a human rights violation.”

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  • Wow! That is so totally comprehensive and far-reaching that I say, as solution, we need to meet people where they are at. When dealing with people who have swallowed psychiatry’s Kool Aid, we need to be kind, not aggressive and not pushy. When I began in activism I was too pushy and this did not fare well because it had the opposite effect of what my aim was.

    For those of us who are survivors, we need to lead the way by living well. We need to show the world we are not the needy, helpless, lazy…oh, find me more adjectives, please….that they claimed we were. We are not useless. We are not societal waste. We are people who ran into bad luck. We were misheard or we were young and made bad decisions such as the decision to actually believe them. It is not our fault. We need to realize and convey: This was just ill-fortune.

    The whole idea of Bad Luck is unacceptable in our society because people think there has to be some scientific reasons why things happen. While of course there are scientific reasons, for instance, why cancer strikes. Yet it’s not true that the person had bad morals, bad karma, a bad attitude, bad self-care, or “did it to himself.”

    Now the same with ending up in a shrink’s office, which has no relation to inner suffering per se. This is not a moral failing. For me, it was youthful bad choice, one that was not well thought-out and did not take into effect the possible consequences of psychiatry due to my own ignorance and inexperience in life. For others, it was forced on them by misguided people, people who are ignorant and believe psychiatry’s myths.

    Recently I found myself broke due to bad luck. Now all that is over, but during those two months I was under the worst pressure even though I am working two jobs. I am dying to write about the experience and relate it to the survivor experience. I sure have a lot to say about Bad Luck and why society hates to hear this side of things.

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  • Vitas, I’m glad you shared all that. Much of what the hospital did was totally illegal. In fact, there was really so, so much that I think you’d agree, there’s no “five minute version” of the psych abuse story, not for any of us. In so many ways I wish there was as when we speak with attorneys they don’t want to hear the real version. It takes too long to explain the massive amount of harm. It took many calls for me to find an attorney. The closest I got was one who said my case would involve so much paperwork that he did not have time to do it. At least he agreed I had a case. The rest cut me off after I told them what diagnosis I had been given.

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  • Don, that’s why I want to sign up as fake patient. Just to get the inside dirt.

    My guess is they’ll keep it on the market. We don’t matter. Mostly, we’re out of work and expensive for taxpayers. Of course, psych caused this, but anyway I am sure they won’t change anything at all. They want to keep us this way, silenced and marginalized.

    I took Olanzapine and had to stop it after three days. This was back in 1997. It was intolerable.

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  • Krista, it never occurred to me when I was back in Massachusetts that the Medicaid listings were faked. I didn’t have a grasp on how the funding worked. I made roughly 200 calls trying to find a therapist after I had fired the abusive one I had. I found that the Medicaid list was totally useless and after I exhausted that, I called at random. The National Eating Disorders Association was also unhelpful, as both the local and national chapters failed to locate even one therapist who took both ‘care and ‘caid. I lived in Boston and all 200 turned me down before I got into the door. I was suffering from severe trauma from the abuse. I kept trying and trying and I remember hanging up the phone after one failed call after another and just crying. I had my lovely dog. I had no one else, and my supposed “friends” thought the abuse was my imagination.

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  • Who is going to agree to this? How much will they have to pay study participants to get them to comply? And how many will drop out before the 15 days are up?

    Olanzapine has been out for about 20 years now. So now they’re doing this study? So now they suspect the drug damages people?

    They won’t find much. They don’t dare keep normal human beings on the stuff any longer than 15 days. What about us? We’re not human. We don’t count.

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  • Thanks for sharing this. Resilience is something you learn by doing.

    I couldn’t get a “job” as peer specialist, either. I told them I didn’t believe in force. One mention of human rights and that did it.

    It’s okay, there are plenty of things I can do for a job. Thank goodness I don’t have the mentality that “peer support” is my only choice, given my background. Now that I have gotten far, far away from the mental health system, I can choose for myself. Pretty much anything that suits me.

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  • The term Mental Illness has no basis in reality. It is hate speech, designed to promote segregation and create a class division. Of course, the diagnoses are also hate speech, with the exception of “depression” so long as it is used to describe a stock market or weather event. Or mood. We used to say “depressed” which meant sad, down in the dumps, or just having a bad day. Wish it stayed that way instead of becoming one more fake disease.

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  • I believe the concept of MI is useful to segregate from society those who we see as possessing traits we dislike or fear in ourselves. Diagnosing and “treating” supposed MI exists as the great segregator. It works well! We are taken out of the workforce, forced to live in separate housing, booted out of colleges and even from families, incarcerated, or killed. Supposedly, hiding us makes society more comfortable for the non-MI, or those who assume they are.

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  • I also did not know about this study you referred to in footnote #1. I’m going to check that out because it supports my theory that extreme dieting leads to all kinds of distress that gets misdiagnosed as one kind of MI or another. Extreme dieting also leads to distorted body image and long-term eating problems. These studies are ignored by the eating disorders community because they would rather treat ED by force. Force-feeding, incarceration, intimidation, verbal abuse, shaming, guardianship, and more. It’s more profitable to take away the rights of (usually) young women and girls, even removing them from their families, than it is to allow them get better. The ED treatment racket is pulling in more and more money and now they want to take it not only from wealthy families but from taxpayers.

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  • I can’t stand it when so-called progressive or “enlightened” people claim poverty is an attitude problem. Everyone I know who ended up in poverty was either born into it already or ended up broke due to bad luck. Medical bills can kill your wallet. Another reason is when a person decides to start a business, and then invests a huge amount into that business but it fails. Any time you start a business it’s a huge risk and you really have to have reliable people helping you out. No one can predict the future. I’m almost scared of people who are grandiose enough to think they can.

    Contrary to what some claim, you can’t just think of money and then, it’ll appear. Also you can live on very little but there’s a certain amount you need just to get by. While you can indeed live in the wilderness, very true…I considered it a while back…I found out it would be very expensive or impossible without a car. You CAN indeed live on rice and beans but not long term. Anyone lecturing others about eating nothing but rice and beans needs to try it themselves. When I was homeless I was struggling to get drinking water and to find a place to go to the bathroom. Just try it, try holding it all night because the past evening there was no place to go. Try walking 20 miles at night because you don’t have bus money. Yes, you need money.

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  • Please continue to have your kidneys tested, that is, creatinine level for one thing, and keep track of your electrolytes, especially if you have any more leg swelling. Don’t expect the doctors to tell you the truth. They won’t! They’ll blame anything BUT their drugs.

    I also took lithium exactly as prescribed for 12 years. I was taken off of it in 1996. In 2011 I started having renal symptoms and the doctors did not admit the lithium had caused it and never informed me I had kidney disease. Looking back, by 40 I was likely in State 2 CKD and certainly in Stage 3 well before I turned 50. I never knew until I was 55 and in renal failure. Even after they revived me they never admitted it. I had to find out myself.

    You CAN treat CKD with natural medicine. In fact, I would recommend anyone who has ever been on lithium to maintain a low sodium diet for starters, which will slow down the progression of any damage you have.

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  • Frank, I agree. Banning assault weapons…whom does this hurt? I can’t think of a practical purpose for one of those weapons. If they are banned, will the previous owners die? How will they be harmed? Take away food or water and many are harmed. While it might hurt a person’s pride and dignity to have to give up a cherished assault weapon, and might even feel violating, it’s not like they will die or get very sick without it. Furthermore, I feel like my safety and security are violated here in Pennsylvania knowing that just about anyone here might be armed. Honestly I worry that my dog will be shot while we’re out walking. The likelihood is slim but I hate the feeling that anyone out there can own a gun and can use me or my dog as target practice. It is unsettling. We have shootings in the city about every other day.

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  • Great article. I agree. A few years back I talked to a “trauma” therapist who told me his goal was to “soften” my anger. I asked myself why. Did my anger make him uncomfortable? I stopped communicating with him after he said that.

    More recently I realized that I am not the least bit uncomfortable with my own anger. I’m happy to have it there to help motivate me. Outrage is likely the most useful emotion to get things done in society. Certainly, passivity, medicated anger, or anger limited to the therapist’s office isn’t going to be very effective at making the changes we demand.

    If it’s the goal of therapy to silence us then I personally choose to stay as far away from the couch as I can.

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  • Good morning! Here’s an update on gun violence in Pennsylvania: Our governor, Gov Tom Wolf, whom I highly support, signed a gun control law yesterday. This is following a number of mass shootings in our state. It’s my understanding that these shootings were based on two separate factors. 1. It originated as a drug raid, but the criminal panicked and started shooting at the raiding officers. 2. Hate groups such as White Supremacists.

    Gun laws are very lax here. This is noticeable to me since I was raised in Massachusetts. Here, in some areas, guns and hunting are ingrained in the culture, so any attempt to limit gun ownership and sales is met with opposition. The opposition tends to go overboard in my opinion. People own guns for a variety of reasons. I’d say between Pittsburgh and Philly, our two major cities, there’s a fatal shooting at least daily. Many barely make the news. We’ve also had numerous murders done by cops. One of the most visible of these was the shooting of 17-year-old Antwon Rose, a black boy.

    Mayor Peduto, of Pittsburgh, proposed a three-part gun control law. I supported the first two parts and opposed the third. The first two banned ownership of assault weapons such as AR15 weapons. I supported this because these weapons have no practical purpose except to kill a lot of people. How can anyone gain anything useful or constructive by owning one of these? We restrict the ability of ordinary citizens to own highly toxic material due to the risk to the public. Assault weapons are equally toxic to the public. The risk is too high.

    The third part of Peduto’s law involved “extreme risk” orders. Basically, a family member or the cops could decide a person is “mentally unstable” and write up a petition. This paperwork would give the police free reign to raid the person’s home, search and remove weapons. I oppose this due to the impact on those falsely accused. I also oppose it because families could use this order to scapegoat other family members, as retaliation, or as a means of control.

    I think police raids on drug dealers should be done differently. They shouldn’t raid if children or other innocent people are present. In two of the shooting instances, the criminal panicked during the raid and shot the cops. Is there a way to catch criminals, no matter what the crime is, without scaring them into shooting? Raiding is cornering the person. I can see why they’d panic. What about getting them out of their element, doing these arrests in a less violent and violating manner?

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  • Can they even track people who are on drugs but have never been hospitalized? Think of the massive amount of prescriptions out there, prescribed not only by psychiatrists, but by nurse practitioners, ob-gyn docs, neurologists, pain specialists, orthopedists, geriatric specialists, pediatricians, and more. It would be very hard to track down a fair sample.

    While likely hospitalization itself doesn’t directly cause cardiac death, indirectly, it does. During hospitalization patients are brainwashed into believing they have real diseases that will require “medication adherence…” which in turn, kills them.

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  • Thanks, Sera. I have been thinking this for years. I have noticed the silencing. I have even noticed it in the so-called “alternatives to psychiatry” movement and I’ve heard it from fellow survivors. “We don’t want to hear that.”

    Being truthful about life events is a human right because it’s part of Freedom of Speech. Some, in fact most people choose to remain silent. This makes the role of those of us willing to speak out about injustices even more vital.

    We speak for many. We speak for those who cannot speak out, either due to force, or because their jobs or housing will be on the line if they do. Or they are dead.

    While I am giving a speech in a room full of people (where I am assured no one will interrupt, walk away, or stop me from speaking) I can see people flinch at certain moments when I say certain things. The good part is that I am heard out, I get to finish my sentence, I get to make my point. Ultimately I am thanked for the impact my words had on the audience.

    For the most part people aren’t allowed to speak. We are silenced by people who insist we’re psychotic. We’re unfriended. We’re silenced by drugs and incarceration. Our labels discredit us. We can’t get published or they make sure our writings don’t sell. Or we get killed.

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  • So shall we get cardiologists involved? Screen people’s “hearts” for potential terrorism? How about starting in infancy, segregate those with “toxic hearts.” Keep them away from law-abiding taxpayers. That’ll do it. Don’t associate with those inferiors, whatever we insist on calling them: negative, toxic, narcissist, psychopath, bad energy etc.It’s all based on how they make us feel, and how much they remind us of our shortcomings. We can’t stand the sight of them due to our own insecurities. So we continue to hate.

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  • Bob I agree. What practical use do these assault weapons have? The only thing I can think of is that they could be put in a museum as display pieces (such as war memorabilia) and never used again.

    The DSM is also an assault weapon that should be limited to a museum or buried deep in a historical archive so it can be referenced by researchers as a bad idea but never used. We have seen the shameful mentality that has arisen from it.

    The way to end hate is to cease all participation in hateful activities. This should be a conscious decision, as it is better to choose than to be pushed into something via force. We need to choose the most responsible way to act. We should hand in our weapons. Communities already offer this to people, weapons collection where a person can do so anonymously. We should each choose our words wisely, and teach our children to do so as well. Our actions and thoughts often follow our words. Our world is shaped by our language.

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  • Bonnie, your article well done and further illustrates some of things I say in my upcoming book, Life After Lithium. I’d like to link to this article in my book, if that’s alright. I already have Psych and the Business of Madness linked my appendix. Your article goes into more depth and by all means supports the cause. The historical context is an essential part that I often miss out on in my own writing. It’s just that I can’t cover everything….

    Somehow, intergenerational trauma fits into this picture as well. Or at least I see it in my own story, as a Jew, and as a woman.

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  • Hello, thanks for sharing your story. How much did you pay the therapists?

    Secondly, readers need to know that not all therapy patients get good results like this.

    I had about 20 therapists. Most were either incompetent or abusive. Here is a recent story I wrote about one of my therapists. http://juliemadblogger.com/wp/2019/07/27/narcissistic-abuse-done-by-a-therapist-this-is-what-it-is-like/

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  • Please see my expose article on the cyber school I worked at. Here is the link: https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/07/inside-online-charter-school-labeling-kids-disabled-for-profit/

    All the kids I had worked with were traumatized due to bullying at their former schools. This was ignored by the behavior specialists across the board. One of the school personnel even suggested the families were “lying” about the past. I did not think so. Wow they really wanted to silence me.

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  • Thanks for this article, Bob. I agree that it is up to us. Here are some things I would like to add:

    Jim Flannery’s recent film on how to escape forced treatment is very good. It is called Voices for Choices (on YouTube).

    Secondly, just because a state doesn’t have AOT does not mean they don’t use force. Yes, they do. Does a state hospital count? Yes, they use restraints and they force needles into you. If you refuse drugs they will put you on guardianship or just keep you locked up.

    Thirdly, force (whether it’s called AOT or not) is used as retaliation against activists and used to silence people, for the good of the institution.

    Those of us who have escaped or somehow ended psych “care” should now take heed to live well, to illustrate that we are fine without their “treatment,” that we can thrive once we are free of it. We can be careful about our use of language and make sure to use our words, not theirs.

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  • I have been told that running is a meditation, which I agree with. I do like running and usually when people push meditation on me I tell them I already run so PLEASE LEAVE ME ALONE!

    I like running because it is useful. I run on the treadmill, on a local running track, and on the street. If I am outdoors, I enjoy beautiful scenery. Indoors, I enjoy myself, too. It can be used as a form of transportation. Sweating is healthy for you and you earn your shower! Also, running strengthens your heart. Proven.

    No one pushed that on me. I decided myself. Maybe that is one reason I love it so much. That plus long ago when I went to brainwashing sessions, the therapist threatened me and said I couldn’t run. Now, it’s extra enjoyable to be free of her and defying her.

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  • Every time I hear about mindfulness I get this sick feeling in my stomach. I think it’s a mass effort to stop or curtail activism. I think it’s a farce. Yeah, it might feel helpful but it’s avoidant, really.

    If something sucks, face it head-on, figure out what sucks about it and if you can do something to make it not suck. Then, decide if it’s worth it. Sometimes it is not.

    Here is an example. My workplace screwed up and overhired. People are barely aware that this is the cause of us having very little work and very little pay. I personally am not making enough to live on and am going into the red. So this is what happened.

    I confronted them directly in an email and in a post on their social media. I posted both on our workers’ private Facebook page. Now, suddenly, as of today, people are following suit. They are speaking up!

    I asked them to be upfront with us and tell us what they plan to do with the huge number of surplus workers. I doubt they’ll get rid of us but they have to do something. As of today at last things are slightly improved.

    What was the alternative? Contemplate my navel? Talk to a therapist? Put a paper bag over my head?

    No! I spoke up right away. Nothing to do with coping except to tally up my budget and realize I can’t go on like this. All numbers, nothing that therapy or meditation can help with. I think we will see results!

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  • Thank you for this article. Andrew’s story is heartbreaking.

    I came from Massachusetts where they had this sneaky way of forcing drugs by using guardianship. They also had representative payees. If all else failed, they certainly had the money there to lock anyone up and force that way.

    If anyone wants to avoid AOT or other form of force, my guess would be to go to an impoverished area where the local gov’t does not have the resources to enforce any form of forced psychiatry upon its people. That is just a guess.

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  • I believe each person is the authority on him/herself. We need to allow each other the space to make our own choices. I’ve been criticized for having a hard time getting off drugs to help me sleep. However, we aren’t all alike. I found out my body can’t make its own melatonin.

    Access to information is vital. I keep wondering why the medical profession works hard to keep it from us.

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  • Do we know RW’s response yet? This is crucial.
    I would totally leave MIA because of the diagnosis-worship and social elitism, but I keep ending up with this “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” resolution. In other words, any attempt I’ve made to start a an online community fails. My project to create a collection of writings on forced psychiatry also failed and I took down the website. I know of others. Some are doing okay. It’s difficult. You need a lot of money to get something like this off the ground. To create a nonprofit you have to have already collected tons of money. Isn’t that ironic? To start an online forum you have to have tons of people willing to participate. I’ve thought and thought about it. Asked myself over and over how to start a community that doesn’t talk diseases and validates lived experience as expertise. I know there are a number of smaller online and local groups. MIA is incredibly visible and vocal compared to most of them. That’s why I keep coming back.

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  • This is ridiculous. I’m unsubscribing to this post in utter disgust. Yes, pill-shaming exists and just because some readers here have never experienced it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. If there’s a human trait (choosing to take pills, choosing not to, being forced onto them) then there’s going to be someone out there that shames you. There are tactful and not-so-tactful humans in the world. I’m not sure that those that shame people for taking drugs are doing them a favor since often pill-takers become more staunch in their belief that this is “medicine.” Shaming is cruel, and it often backfires.

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  • I usually tell people who are upset about their past decision to take psych pills that it isn’t their fault. We were coerced or forced. If you first took drugs behind locked doors, even if you think it was willingly, it was force because you were incarcerated. We were lied to, told half-truths, told overblown stories of how effective they are. Likely, at the time, we made the best decision, or thought we were. They were doctors. Not very clever or insightful, but they wore lab coats (often) and actually in my case, they towered over me, too.

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  • It is just like the different sides of “stigma.” On one hand, it could mean stereotyping, which is a form of bigotry, seeing us as incapable, disabled, and people that society should reject.

    It could mean stigma against activists as Untreated MI.

    It could mean “i’m a sicko and I’m proud of who I am.” The Mad Pride statement, which I have personally rejected. There’s always the additional “I need help” or “You should just put up with me.”

    I don’t think it’s stigmatizing, but more like a fact to say, “We are all different and our differences shouldn’t mean some are set apart.”

    Taking pills is a choice. I believe people should make the choice that’s right for them. For many of us, it means getting off pills. For some, getting off is going to be impossible. No one should make anyone feel ashamed for making the best choice.

    I am especially shocked when some know-it-all who is decades younger than me says “I can do it, therefore you can.” How absurd and self-centered. I do appreciate a good success story, but let’s not overextend it to telling others what they should do based on our own experience.

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  • I have indeed experienced pill shaming. I’m not sure if I should put quotation marks around that or not. When I was about 28 I visited a friend. I was on drugs, a cocktail of them. She looked at my bottles, which I was then opening, and she said to me, “Ugh, well, okay, so it’s time for your DRUGS.” It was the look on her face of utter disgust that said everything.

    The other pill-shaming I have received was from the withdrawal community. I found that I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that I still needed drugs to get to sleep. I had tried for five years and I had barely slept. I made the decision to reinstate and get my life back. I reinstated for three years. I think it was about a month ago that I stopped successfully. I wish, in retrospect, that people wouldn’t put such a huge value judgement on “drug-free.” Like there’s an either/or. We have chemicals in our food, in our air and water, no one in fact is “drug-free” so please get off your high horses. I understand the exuberance but just don’t shove it in others’ faces.

    And mind the ageism also. Older people have complex medical needs. Some of us have organ damage from the drugs. Much of this is life-shortening. I have kidney disease and yes, it causes inability to sleep. Using the drugs to get to sleep was the only thing I could do until I figured out another way. I ended up staying away from the withdrawal community.

    It gets to the point where you have to decide about quality of life. Who decides? YOU. Not your friends, not your doctor, not even your family. You.

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  • I agree, Paula.

    I know you and I have disagreed over the term “eating disorder.” I want to make this (again) publicly clear. ED needs to be taken out of the list of psych diagnoses and instead classified as a nutritional disorder alongside Crohn’s, Celiac, diabetes mellitus, and other disorders related to food intake. While starvation or erratic eating will certainly make you crazy, and for many, make our lives unmanageable, this psychological distress is a bi-product of a physical condition. ED in itself is the only DSM label that directly kills you. There’s no evidence that it’s a chemical imbalance of the brain, but a nutritional imbalance. By comparison, Crohn’s will make you weak, tired, and possibly depressed…but it seems to stay where it belongs…out of the DSM eugenics bible.

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  • I have been through “crappy boss.” This wasn’t my disorder, but a workplace disorder. I never figured out why they made that woman a supervisor.

    There was nothing “inner” I could have done to fix the situation except to quit. No matter how good my nutrition was, no matter how much I exercised, it wasn’t going to fix the crappy boss situation. I could have decided it was all due to my own mental illness and then, therapized the problem away, still wondering why I hated my job, why every day there sucked, why the therapy hadn’t exactly solved anything. What then? Time for pills? Oh I know! Shock treatments…..

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  • Hi Elizabeth, There’s a group for gifted and talented here in the USA called SENG. I am a member. I learned from this group that kids who are very talented and show this at a young age are often given psychiatric diagnoses. Many of them are given ADHD diagnoses and more.

    Also, I learned that often, kids end up developing unevenly. So while the child may be very good at one thing, he may struggle in other areas.

    To give myself as an example, I was talented in music and math, but mostly, I loved to compose music. I tried to get a job at 16, serving ice cream. I was a total flop at it. I’m a little clumsy and I came to realize way too late that this isn’t a psych disorder!

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  • Yes, KS, it actually does hurt. If I hold onto anything that cold I get blisters. I never used the technique myself because it’s idiotic and a waste, but I saw it used on other patients. The pt would ask for something like Klonopin and if the nurses had run out of pill ideas they’d just say, “How about a frozen orange?”

    Now one time I was talking to the nurses about human rights and they tried to hand me an orange. I told them this was a way to silence and discredit me. Along with the frozen orange was the command to “go into your room and be quiet so it’ll work.” It’s a total myth that pills work better if you’re in your room, total bullshit about the orange also.

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  • KateL, I tried DBT and found it silly and irrelevant. It didn’t help at all, whatever the heck “help” meant. In my case, the one thing I wanted was to stop the abuse and prevent it from happening to others. This, to me, is common sense. Why on earth should I sit and hold a frozen orange when everything in my being tells me I need to stop this from happening? If I don’t speak out…who will? Apparently people are so brainwashed they think if psych abuse happens it’s THEIR disorder. No it isn’t. Coping within, to me, means I have a voice and you bet I’m going to use it. I think meditating my life away would be a huge waste of time. Some do find value in the “here and now” mentality. It’s just not for me and it’s not the universal cure-all.

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  • KateL, your experience resonates with me. In my opinion, the MH system does not offer anything of value, not from mainstream MH, anyway. When it comes to trauma you might find value in one of those “kooky” therapists that is totally outside-the-box.

    I found value in a tapping therapist who understood totally that I had been abused in a hospital. Most therapists did not understand and assumed I was paranoid. Of course there’s no sense even trying to reason with them. Just move on.

    I would not even bother telling them about the kratom. Just keep it to yourself. I also broke my ankle, three weeks ago. Not badly, though. It is healed but I also sprained my foot and that is taking longer to heal.

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  • It’s the same with any prison system, Stephen. They don’t prepare the inmates at all. One week of workshop of some sort but it’s never enough. Times change. My friends who were on the inside said that they would have appreciated some very simple how-tos. In a decade, finding a rental has changed drastically. Technology has changed. They do background checks for housing and employment worse than ever now, but I think that is going to change.

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  • Anyone out there who has ever experienced verbal abuse from docs, nurses, aids, sitters, specialists, whatever….This abuse stays with you. Trauma from verbal abuse can hit harder than any other type. It’s been over five years and I am still affected by it. I still get overly defensive, feel like I have to “prove” myself all the time, can’t get along with other people, and can’t stand physical proximity of other people. I am scared even when the bus drives by a mental health clinic. Sirens make me flinch.

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  • I don’t think religion is supposed to be false or true. It’s a belief. Some of these beliefs work very well for some people, and we’ve got a variety of them, none true, none false. Some religions are harmful to society as a whole. Cults tend to be outside of the norm and also the harmful ones live segregated from the rest of society.

    Psychiatry is a cult. Psychiatry has to capture its subjects and brainwashes them. It has its own dogma that’s at heart, illogical. Psychiatry forces its members into ghetto-like situations such as halfway houses and HUD. Psychiatry takes its subjects out of the mainstream workforce.

    Cults can grow and become more mainstream. Christianity was originally cult-like, a seemingly far-out-there band of kooks, but centuries later, became mainstream. Most denominations of Christianity are not cults. Some are. And the lines are certainly blurred.

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  • Me: “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go to Bingo today.”
    Them: “You have to go. It’ s time for Group.”
    Me: “I just finished graduate school. This is truly insulting to me and I suspect others think the same thing.”
    Them: “So you’re too anxious to go to group, eh? How about a PRN?”
    Me: “I didn’t say that. I do not want to go to group. I think I’m better off spending my time writing.”
    Them: “It is for your own good. If you refuse to participate we can only conclude you aren’t ready to leave.”
    Me: “No, it’s for YOUR own good, so you can tell the insurance company I showed up for a psychoeducational group, and bill it as such.”

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  • Little Turtle, bio has its place. Depression is not a biological “illness,” in fact, there’s no disease process happening there. If the person has hypothyroidism, that is a biological issue and not psychiatric. In fact, a so-called MI is diagnosed (supposedly) AFTER bio is ruled out. Psychiatry states “no biological basis” and then, invents one (chemical imbalance) just to sound medical, and to convince people to take drugs.

    When I was a patient I truly believed that since the drugs “worked” (kinda) then that meant I had a chemical imbalance. This was faulty reasoning. Drugs aren’t some kind of litmus papers that diagnose diseases. If we’re to take the diabetes comparison seriously, that would be like saying, “I was given a shot of insulin which made me feel great, therefore, I must be diabetic.” Huh?

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  • Of course we can help the psychs after they’ve been put out of work. We already do that for people. It’s called Unemployment benefits. Any of them that still need “help” after that can apply for disability and enjoy their “benefits” and forced poverty. Oh we can also make them take drugs to keep their benefits. Make them live in HUD and pay for their groceries with food stamps. That’s the help we got, so they deserve it, too.

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  • It IS a religion. They have their bible, their dogma, their slogans, their own gods they worship called Pharmaceutical companies. Dear God, please send us more money so we can capture more converts. You are brainwashed until you believe, “I have a mental illness, a real illness just like diabetes. It can’t be cured but it can be managed if I blindly obey my treatment team even if it’s very illogical and might kill me.”

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  • People criticize Szasz for associating with Scientology without really knowing what Scientology stands for in terms of psychiatry. The CCHR, which is a branch of Scientology, aims to end ECT worldwide, aims to stop the drugging of children, and they work by pressuring the legislators just the same as we do. Only they have huge money behind them. You can’t argue with the high quality of their videos. They may want to end psychiatry for different reasons than survivors and witnesses do. But no matter their reasons, their aims are the same as ours. Their understanding of why ECT is harmful to people is completely in alignment with our own thinking. It is brain damage. And the drugs? Harmful to children, harmful to society. Their book and video on how the Nazis used psychiatry and how the Nazi thinking is so similar to the DSM is exemplary. It is all a great way to get this info out to the public. They are doing wonderful things to end these harmful atrocities. Why shouldn’t Szasz have associated with them? Was that so terrible?

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  • Yes, Steve Spiegel, I would agree. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine because it is taught in medical schools and the AMA and other organizations claim it is medical. Whether psych is legitimate or not depends on how you define legitimate, because legitimate might mean “what is generally accepted.” It is by all means based on false premises, which Szasz most eloquently and clearly points out. He does this by examining psych as a profession and a medical science by examining its claims on a scientific and moral basis. In my opinion, he successfully shreds it to bits! After you read Szasz you won’t have any doubts anymore! Which is why, when I have recommended Szasz to my friends who are still in the System, they refuse to read him. It’s scary to lose your identity, whether it had any basis in truth or not!

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  • Larry, many of these therapists take away our independence and self-reliance. They take away our trust in ourselves and foster a heavy reliance on the therapist to make our decisions for us.

    To find a therapist who doesn’t do this is not an easy task and the average therapy-seeker with average insurance coverage or even worse, public insurance, isn’t going to be able to shop around. Nowadays, even in the areas where cost of living is low, out-of-pocket therapy will cost you at least $120 a session. Who can afford that? I hear that in some urban areas the cost can be $300 or more per session.

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  • If a person is handed drugs by a pharmacist who is mistaken about what is included, then, if the unsuspecting drug-taker goes and commits a crime, my guess is that the customer would not be held responsible and the pharmacist would have hell to pay.

    I believe there have been plenty of cases where a person was not told about the sedating effects of drugs. The doc failed to tell the patient not to drive. When there are consequences, wouldn’t the doc be responsible?

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  • I agree with Steve. Therapists run the gamut. Some are obviously boundary-paranoid. I can always tell! I had one who cried in front of me. She was crying over another patient. whom I did not know, who had died of cancer. What was I to do? She constantly violated HIPAA by revealing personal details about other patients. This was annoying to say the least! She made me be her therapist countless times. Why didn’t she pay me?

    I had at least 20 therapists over the years. I always wondered why it wasn’t “working.” I have realized that their definition of “normal” is culturally-driven. Also, from one generation to another, “normal” changes. From one part of the country to another, from one neighborhood to another, and so on.

    They would talk about “baseline.” After I’d been only a few years in the System they were clueless about what “baseline” really was for me. Also, one’s baseline can’t possibly exist, since it’s not this fixed entity, but always changing and evolving. Even so, they wildly underestimated me for decades.

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  • I LOVE your art! Wow, absolutely amazing! Thank goodness you aren’t on those drugs anymore!

    I was also called bipolar, only for convenience. The shrinks’ convenience.

    What if you dropped all contact with your parents? While I realize it’s a sacrifice, they aren’t helping, are they?

    By the way, I know Dr. Joffe. My doctor, Dr. Kimberly Pearson, worked with her. Pearson would have said the same thing, told you to stay on the drugs. Or given you more.

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  • It is genocide!

    Here are some suggestions for kids who won’t sit still:

    Play outside
    No more video games
    Toss out the television
    Bicycling, basketball, and baseball (okay, fútbol for those of you outside the US)
    Pets, pets, pets!
    Plant a garden
    Go to a park
    Stop assuming and start listening (to the kids, not the shrinks!)
    Toss out the boring school subjects and insist that schools teach something useful and interesting
    End standardized testing
    End ADHD diagnosis
    Healthy food
    Stay away from psychiatry

    And if the kids really want electricity, peek out the window during a thunderstorm and take a stunning photo. See how scary electricity is? Bring your photo to Show and Tell.

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  • UPDATE: Please donate to Marci’s legal fund. The courts and “hospital” put her legal team through hoops and they’re making her witnesses come back again. The facility has been lying just to keep her in there. This means more funding is desperately needed!

    Here is the legal fund link again:
    https://fundly.com/marci-webber-legal-fund

    Every donation counts! If you are unable to donate, please share the link.

    I think each of us needs to remember when we, ourselves, were locked up. Freedom for Marci is a victory for all of us, especially for those of us who know what it’s like to be locked up and abused.

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  • Ron, my experience with even the best of therapists (or ones that claim they’re great) is the nearsightedness of most of these professionals. Not all, but many. Many have no clue just how bad therapy can be. Maybe Eugene is an exception. In Boston, I could not find a suitable therapist at all. I looked for about two years after I fired the one who was narcissistic. I did find one who did not believe in diagnosis, but I ran away very fast when he asked me out on a date. I met one who was unlicensed and also had no training. She had a business degree. I think she would have been better than average. However, she handed me a paper that I had to sign saying if I got into bad shape she would ditch me. She never told me she was unlicensed, either. I found out and never saw her again. I figured my all-holy psychiatrist wouldn’t approve.

    In two years of calling around, placing about 200 calls at least, I found no one at all! Most refused me when they found out I had ED, or when they found out I was so-called “disabled” and did not have enough money to pay them. A few offered a sliding scale but the lowest they could go was $60. I would say that 200 calls is plenty enough to know that such therapists are rare indeed. My so-called “health plan” had no therapists on staff who had any knowledge of ED. I called and complained and they claimed they would find someone for me. A month later they called said they were having trouble getting anyone on board. Then, I guess they forgot. By then, I was sure I would never see one again.

    I have, since then, had sample sessions with therapists. I did not say my prior diagnoses unless I was sure the therapist didn’t take diagnoses seriously. I was stupid enough to tell one life coach (a trauma one) about my abuse experiences while inpatient. She insisted on knowing my diagnoses and I was doubly stupid to tell her. She immediately refused to see me and said I needed “therapy” three times a week. For that, she got a bad Yelp review.

    Of the others, three of these told me I didn’t need therapy at all. One told me I needed an attorney. One told me I might benefit from career coaching, not therapy. Of course, I hang onto these lovely statements even though I really do not validate the expertise of “therapists.”

    The last one was the best. He spent a long time with me, questioned everything I said (not in a condescending manner at all!) and then, very clearly stated that I was doing fine and again, really do not need “therapy.” Interestingly, back when I was a patient years ago, I was desperate to talk to some nice, understanding person. Now, that desperation is simply not there.

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  • Catalyzt,

    Electronic records give people the illusion of privacy. Who the hell cares about how private those electronic records are when doctors talk about patients in the elevator, lunch room, hallways (the “huddle”) and also in their spas and on golf courses.

    We who were incarcerated have all heard them do this. They aren’t fooling me! There was a story ages ago about a cabbie on a golf course who was so shocked at the doctors’ gossiping that he reported them.

    I wish I could find the story now.

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  • Nancy99, a patient needs to decide for herself whether the concepts of mindfulness are useful. I do not agree that a therapist should impose these, but most do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been pushed to meditate, or blamed because I don’t meditate, that is, I CHOOSE not to.

    The concept of mindfulness is likely useful to some people, but it’s just not for me. I wish people would respect that.

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  • Kindredspirit, I can’t agree more. I, too, was subjected to the fake Buddhism done by hospital clinicians and therapists. I hated it! We even had watered-down yoga. Ugh.

    I am actually triggered when anyone says to me, “Take a deep breath.” No, I will not! No one is going to tell me how to breathe! I’ve been breathing fine for 61 years now, and at 61 I can run four miles at least. Since when do I have breathing deficits? What is really funny is when the person saying that is a smoker. The only time I’ll do this is if a doctor is listening to my lungs with a stethoscope. I don’t even remember the last time that happened, either.

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  • ferkane, I like what you said, and agree with many of your statements, especially when you said that a CBT therapist should not impose “correct” cognition. Or what they assume is correct.

    Here is where I cannot agree at all: “Well this may be taught on some CBT training, but it was not on mine. In fact, in my training, we were specifically taught that behavioural change was generally necessary for stable cognitive and emotional change.”

    Sadly, this is used on school children and it isn’t working. In fact, it’s totally missing the point. I am disgusted that school employees are now using behavior correction and they even think it’s helpful. I am terrified that as a school employee I’m going to have to praise kids for sitting quietly and be obedient. Ugh.

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  • Ron, I have found, as a so-called consumer of MH services, that a very good therapist is so hard to find that for most, it’s nearly impossible. Those who are on a low income or on dis-ability who are forced into poverty usually have no choice in therapists or do not get one at all. I found, as did others, that finding one that had any clue of what they were doing with ED patients was next to impossible. Your chances of finding one at an agency that takes public assistance insurance is next to nil.

    In some states, the combination of Medicaid AND Medicare will cause a worsening of all sorts of care. Providers find the paperwork exhausting and many will not do it. Even after filling out the forms, they are often refused. This isn’t true in all states. Do you, as a provider, take Welfare-type insurances? I assume you have a sliding scale…but when I was on dis-ability, even $60 a session was much, much more than I could afford. I’m surprised at the providers that do not even realize this! Welfare recipients struggle to pay a $5 copay!

    I have confronted therapists on their insanely high fees, and guess what invariably happens? They do not want to talk to me anymore. I’m dismissed as yet one more poor person they do not want to deal with. Even now, when I see something that, in my opinion, is way overpriced, even if I can afford it now, I will not buy the product or service. Let that be the complaint statement.

    When I finished life coach training, I convened with other grads of the program who scoffed at me for lowering my fees. The message was very clear. “We don’t even want to serve those poor people.” There you have it. I was so disgusted with their attitude that I closed my business.

    How many therapists in the USA are not in the business of insulting people with a diagnosis? Very few. You may not, but most therapists, sadly, do. Most therapists will insult you further by telling you you have some inner problem, such as “poor coping,” when really, the problem is totally external or physical.

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  • I was having a hard time getting through the comments, for some reason….

    Anyway, I am very glad this book came out. I just had a really negative experience with CBT. I purchased a self-help CBT book that focused on trauma. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The book talked down to readers. It was so insulting I just had to put it down.

    Not only that, the so-called coping methods were just plain idiotic, or just so obvious it was common sense. Most reminded me so much of the “hospitals” that caused the trauma in the first place. Why on earth would I ever want to hold onto ice cubes? Oh please! I couldn’t read any further. What next? Stuffed animals?

    Finally, I confronted the real question: Why would I want to obliterate my emotions? What’s to “cope with” if I am coping just fine? I do not find certain emotions uncomfortable at all. The book totally missed the mark for me.

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  • I was certainly in total agreement with this article for quite some time, when we got to the “therapy” part I started flinching.

    There is therapy for the rich, and therapy for the rest of us. Ninety percent of so-called therapists will immediately send a voice-hearer to a psychiatrist. Most therapists will tell a voice-hearer that he or she has an “illness” or a “defective brain.”

    The best therapists will cost you money. If you’ve been put out of work by the System, you aren’t going to be able to afford a decent therapist. Those of us who were on dis-ability payments couldn’t afford even the lowest fees. Not only that, searching for a decent one is hit or miss.

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  • I agree wholeheartedly, Ron, that some ways that we try to help ourselves are not productive. Some people go out drinking, which is often very unhelpful and can be destructive.

    However, not everyone deals with adversity in an unhealthy manner. A person might go out running, for instance. I found found for myself that I do better without that so-called help. Why? Because the absence of that help gives me the space to find the answer within myself. It is there, and in fact, it always was. When you have “help” in your life, you will turn to that help and then, lose your trust in yourself and your own ability to solve problems.

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  • Wow, This is so, so amazing. I’m about halfway through the podcast while I am writing this. Caroline is someone I would certainly want to meet. I am Jewish and also a psych survivor. I could certainly relate to everything Caroline said here.

    I wish there was a text version of this. The absence of a text version was why I missed this.

    Will, Jews do not try to convert others. Proselytizing is either discouraged or possibly considered to against our laws. Jews do not make any effort to convert others.

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  • Steve,

    I totally agree when you say, “Stop diagnosing!” I don’t think we need a new diagnostic code for various behaviors that authority figures do not like. I do not agree that a “small percentage” of so-called MI have a diagnosible physical problem. Not having enough to eat, for any reason, is physical, or sometimes, having certain hormones out of whack. Never mind the environmental problems, such as “no heat in the house” or, “patient lives in very unsafe housing.”

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  • I hear what you are saying, Ron, but there is no way I’m going to agree that this person with expertise has to be a so-called mental health professional.

    The person might be a drug dealer, who sees someone who has become psychotic from street drugs. A drug dealer very well knows the bad effects of street drugs.

    The person might be an attorney, who can be very helpful in instances of child abuse or spousal abuse.

    An endocrinologist will immediately and quickly notice if a person’s depression comes from a thyroid issue.

    An optometrist will find out that disorientation and poor ability to communicate come from vision problems.

    A politician, too, can help, by raising public awareness about problems such as sexual harassment, child abuse, and more.

    All these folks are, as you say, “helpers who have to know more than the average person.” As I see it, therapy professionals are only one part of it. I find it scary and dangerous indeed when I start hearing therapists claim to be the only experts. I find it concerning when I hear the general public see mental health professionals that way, too. Some are insightful and wise, others are certainly not, and that’s true in all walks of life.

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  • By the way, Peter Simons, your articles here are totally awesome. Your ability to see through the medical literature (and its lies) is astounding.

    We need to attack these fraudulent industries, such as psychiatry and its ilk, with every weapon we have. We need mathematicians to analyze their so-called studies. We need scientific experts in electricity to see through the claims about ECT. The article here (can’t find link right away) which was published recently about the high levels of electrical current used in ECT (no, it’s not therapy!) is so amazing. We need sociologists, also, to see through their lies. We need financial people of all sorts, who show their deep concern over pharmaceutical fraud.

    We need artists, writers, journalists, musicians, and dancers to tell the truth to the world.

    We have so many weapons to use to fight this. We must unite. We must stop fighting against each other, which is more fuel for THEM, and instead, embrace our differences.

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  • Whether or not you see “autism” as legitimate, or any of these other behavior problems, the very fact that these drugs can affect the development of a child is extremely scary.

    The field of psychiatry and other specialists who advise pregnant and nursing mothers needs to WAKE UP for sure.

    My friend was taking anti-d drugs while pregnant. I do not know if she breast-fed the child. If she ever put two and two together and realized that the drugs had damaged her child, I doubt she ever wanted to face up to it. That would be the hardest thing to admit to oneself.

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  • Not only that, now that I am on this subject, many people have approached me and told me stuff like, “I went to college and didn’t know how to handle eating at the dining commons.” “If only I had known that going on an extreme diet would do this.” “I didn’t know how to cook.” “I didn’t realize that losing ten pounds shouldn’t be done in two weeks. I wish I had known.”

    Teens so often go on extreme diets due to not knowing the potential harm in it. The reasons are varied but certainly not liking oneself is only one of them.

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  • Ron, I cannot find your comment that you put on my comment. When I stated that a supposedly “bad” emotion is one that makes therapists upset, I really meant not just therapists, but the entire influence the MH industry has had on the media. Therapy contributes to it by convincing people to think everything under the sun is a mental problem.

    People think anger is bad. No, it’s not. It’s what you do with it. Due to rampant assumptions people make, people assume that anger automatically means the person feeling that anger is uncomfortable and it needs fixing.

    I’m not at all uncomfortable with my own feelings of anger. I don’t go out hurting anyone and I don’t do self-harming behaviors. People assume I, and others, can’t handle these emotions. This is projection indeed. I’m okay with feeling angry. Yes, I can handle it and what I ultimately do with it is up to me.

    That said, I’ve made mistakes. Can I be human now and then?

    I had a job that badly sucked, and after that, I had to recover. How did I resolve it? By doing writing, but not just journal writing, but writing in a way that helps other people and contributes to activism.

    There was, indeed, a recovery period. I had to recover from the job, and that was not easy. Is it okay to feel like crap for a little while? I think it’s fine, and human. People are oh-so-quick to rush in and try to fix something that likely shouldn’t be meddled with.

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  • Paula, this is true. But all women and girls have pressure on them. ED is on the rise. I think that’s because psychiatry and the ED industry realized they could make a few bucks off of us. I have seen it myself. Kids start going to those treatment centers, and then, they turn into revolving door syndromes. I think psychiatry and psychology need to butt out and quit calling it a mental disorder.

    There are plenty of environmental issues (pollution, ozone layer, drugs) that contribute to cancer. In fact, environmental issues, and especially stress and poverty, cause an awful lot of diseases out there. Just because stress and poverty cause disease does not make all those diseases mental disorders.

    I went through both binge eating and anorexia, and yes, you do suffer from these. Most of us truly wanted to be able to eat normally. I felt like I would rather have breast cancer than an ED. By the time you’ve been through years of therapy, drugging, and incarceration, the original reason why you went on that first diet gets completely lost and buried. Because psych and big money took over ED, it now perpetuates the problem, gives people more diagnoses, leading to “success” rates that are an embarrassment, though they will not admit this.

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  • I see another choice out there. There is something to recover from. The mental health system!

    I have a chapter in my book on social media and mad pride. Only I titled the chapter something else. I do not think it’s a good idea for people to use social media to boast about how sick they are. There’s kind of a cult around that. If you do that, you’re going to attract followers who are morbidly fascinated with illness and death. The very presence of followers is like a reward. Get sicker, get more admirers. The formula looks lucrative until you realize they aren’t very good friends.

    This is an addictive tendency, sorry to say. It is a vicious cycle. I have seen people go down a very bad path doing that. I fear that Mad Pride is stoking the fire for this. I don’t think this was the original intent of Mad Pride.

    On the other hand, I believe our society needs to be more accepting of human variety of expression. There are no bad emotions, only ones that make therapists upset. This translates in a bunch of mythology being generated in the media, that dreams up a new disorder every day! They post a new disorder, and people immediately latch onto it and then, it’s another disaster, another new doorway to the nuthouse. Pssst…someone certainly profits from it!

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  • I couldn’t agree more, Stephen. My friends all pulled away from me when times got tough and when I was homeless they refused to help at all. Such is human nature.

    One time, I got on Facebook and asked if anyone had a spare room. I got unfriended for that, or blocked. Then my same Facebook friend that had given me the cold shoulder offered a room in his place to a different friend. I was bewildered. Makes you lose faith in humanity.

    What was really the worst part of it was when people started acting scared of me. Relocating totally cured that, thankfully. Disorder of the community…..

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  • I have worked in a school. Yup, absolutely. The parents are indeed opposed and generally have a more realistic view of their kids’ struggles than the school does. The schools focus on behavior only. If you are cutting class because you know how to do it, and playing video games is more fun anyway, the school will label you. Then they get Medicaid funding to hire and aide to act as policewoman, generally only to make sure the kids stay in class so the school won’t be sued.

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  • Rassulus, I agree that the main concern of therapists, or shall I say, “therapists,” is that if we abolish therapy, they won’t have jobs.

    I don’t buy that at all. Too bad! How many patients and expatients on here have stated that psychiatry stole their career? And that’s okay?

    Should we feel sorry for them? I don’t. Get another job, for godsakes. We writers call it a “day job.” Bag groceries. That’s what one shrink told me to do, if I recall correctly. Okay, so they ruined my career and that’s their answer? Go work for Dunkin Donuts or McDonald’s. They’re always looking for people.

    Funny, they counsel people who are jobless, feel oh so sorry for us…fake empathy…and then they panic over their own potential joblessness.

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  • I was discussing this with a family member last night. Memory was also a frequent topic of discussion in writing school.

    Most of the time, with memoir, we trust the writer. This comes not from how believable the story is, but consistency in the writer’s voice. Occasionally you have the case of the unreliable narrator, a narrator whose story you might doubt because, as a reader, you might think the drunk, dreaming, or somehow, deluded.

    I believe now that all writers of memoir are to some extent, unreliable. We do not remember perfectly. Readers understand this, though. We are human, and humans aren’t perfect. We also prioritize. My brother, for instance, remembers not only the makes and models of every single car we had, but even recalls the type of engine, the history of the model, and how well it performed. I, on the other hand, could care less about cars and all I remember are the various adventures we had in each one, and what my parents named them. And of course, the little songs my mom made up about a couple of them. My other brother remembers absolutely nothing, or claims this anyway. I do not remember much math. I recall I was quite good at it and aced calculus, but still, I recall very little of it. I don’t use it in my daily life, which is likely the reason. This doesn’t mean I did not, at one time, know a lot of math. And it doesn’t mean I’m delusional that I ever took calculus.

    In writing school, we talked about truth vs accuracy. We tend to remember the basic truth about an event, which is our truth. Time may alter our exact recollection of the details. In writing, the readers aren’t going to care about the accuracy of details as much as they care about the message behind the story.

    That particular workshop struck me more than any other I attended at Goddard. The instructor gave us amazing examples of how memories alter over time. We talked about the importance of telling and re-telling our stories.

    It is very true that stories change over time. My story of ECT changed as I began to put the pieces together. The
    ECT part of my memoir I wrote in 2009 (and published) did not mention the ECT. It did illustrate that for a year and a half, I was very out of it. The entire time I wrote the memoir, I did not realize that ECT was the cause. So if I were to re-tell that story, and I have indeed done so, it comes out much different, but the story’s core truth remains the same. What changed and evolved over time was my interpretation of that story.

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  • Attorney Karen, YOU TOTALLY ROCK!

    Can we make a case for those who were damaged, and then, the damage was covered up? That is, we were lied to not only before, but after the fact?

    My own ECT story, which I sent to the FDA in 2016, was ignored, tossed out totally because I did not provide “studies.” I guess they are completely uneducated and do not realize that memoir, which is based on what a person went through, doesn’t need proof. In fact, unnecessarily backing up your statements likely discredits you.

    Here is a link for anyone that wants it: http://juliemadblogger.com/wp/ect-pages/my-electroshock-documentation-as-submitted-to-the-fda-in-2016/

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  • Financial concerns can lead to extreme stress, especially if your credit score drops. I worked for a bank for a while. There were days, many days, when the most rewarding part was telling people not to give up. I even shared tiny parts of my own story, how I had a low credit score (it crashed) and I shared with them how I brought it back up. I can’t say how many times I was thanked. I had to be very careful because I couldn’t do anything that would be seen by the supervisors as “advice.”

    There is a point at which you might get enough money to live on, and then, all that stress totally goes away.

    Might I add, also, that the mental health system will wreck your credit score. The most common reason that people of any age failed to pay their bills and got way behind was hospitalization. As a customer service representative, I knew better than to ask these folks what got them into the hospital. They often volunteered this information. Heart attack was quite common, as was cancer. Of course, those that were in for psych were not going to say so.

    When you are in a hospital, it is very hard to pay bills. You often have no way to get to an online banking website. ECT or drugs might cause you to forget to pay or to forget your PIN, or to go into overdraft for a variety of reasons. Of course, you aren’t getting a paycheck for being in there, either, unless you have accumulated an awful lot of sick time.

    After a while, I carried a check in my wallet. I was so scared of being snatched up and not being able to pay my rent. That, to me, is sad.

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  • Kumininexile, what an awesome comment!

    I, too, love this article. I am very uncomfortable about income inequity. I am finding that some people, even people who have had a lot of education (this gets paid for , too!), have no awareness of the struggles one goes through when one is underemployed, on disability, or facing huge debts.

    I remember counting pennies so that I could get the rent paid. I was walking down the street one day and this couple was getting out of their truck, arguing over whether to use the pennies they had left to pay for food or diapers.

    I have met people who have absolutely no clue. They think that homelessness is an attitude problem, that all you have to do is meditate and that makes everything hunky-dory. Please note who it is that is pushing this…..Not the poor!

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  • As I said in my email to you, I do not object to word “disorder.” I do object to “mental disorder” or “mental illness.” I do feel, as said, that ED is a nutritional disorder and does not belong in the DSM (not that anything does…the book needs to be classified at a hate book, a book of eugenics). It should be taught in nutrition schools. It isn’t. Not only that, most insurance plans don’t cover nutrition, not unless you’re diabetic or have kidney disease. Maybe that’s because nutritional counseling does help, and psychiatry would lose money if people could freely access it. In fact, learning about nutrition does help a lot of people, no matter what the issue is.

    I do not think for one minute that ED is a brain disease. I know it isn’t caused by perfectionism or poor self-esteem. All of these are myths imposed on patients, as is the use of incarceration and force, often to their detriment.

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  • I have been concerned about this for a while. Even apps like Sleepio are concerning to me.

    I worked for Crisis Texting Line and quit very quickly. First of all, anyone contacting them is subject to mandatory reporting. Secondly, I did not want to be a volunteer bot. I was unimpressed with the training. Thirdly, this app collects data. In fact, they’re very proud of that, and include it in their advertising.

    There’s also some kind of therapist-for-hire that works via texting. The service is insanely expensive, $75 for a texting therapist? Huh? I tried this a long time ago and was unimpressed and asked for my money back.

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  • Let me remind people that Binge Eating Disorder was not recognized by the APA until Vyvanse was determined as a drug to “fix” it. I have an MIA article on this.

    This happened in 2013. At the time, I kept wondering why the APA took that long to figure it out. I thought they were just stupid. Yes, that too….

    I kept wondering if their refusal to recognize BED as significant was why my complaints were ignored for decades.

    BED is certainly real, and you will very much suffer from it. However, it is a mistake that some people think (and I did, too!) that it comes from a “chemical imbalance of the brain.”

    It is true that it comes from a chemical imbalance, but not what people think. Malnutrition is a very real, very serious chemical imbalance!

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  • Yes, Oldhead, it’s interesting that many on the left talk about “right to treatment” like it was really treatment! It’s more like “right to have your rights taken away.”

    I am seeing distrust on both sides of the fence. I am very impressed by the Health Freedom movement. Most naturopaths will steer their patients (patients?) away from psychiatry. Many will even encourage you to reject a lot of Western medicine, too. I have a chapter on how to choose a naturopath. One of the things I say is that many will send you a “disclaimer” reminding you that what you do is your choice. People think this is an attempt to get themselves out of messy legal situations. Actually, the statement is a reminder to make your own decisions! This concept is one I also discuss throughout the book.

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  • Catnight, only one therapist ever said that to me. He said he does very short-term therapy that might be one or two sessions. This was a tapping therapist. He focused on trauma. I think he was the last therapist I ever saw. I had just been abused in the hospital (inpatient medical ward) and I have to give him credit for totally believing me. I saw another one for a free session only, via Skype. She told me, “You don’t need a therapist. You need a lawyer!”

    I have spoken to a few career coaches. Funny how survival with these people means omitting 35 years of my life.

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  • I agree, Oldhead. I state this many times throughout the book, reminding people that there’s no validity to these diagnonsenses. As a writer, though, I have to gently bring the reader to the point of realizing it themselves. As we say, “Show, don’t tell.” It is more powerful that way.

    For instance, in various parts of the book I explain that one psychiatrist on a ward diagnosed every single patient with “bipolar.” We were baffled by this. Some had just left other wards where they were given other diagnoses. Another psychiatrist labeled all female patients with “anger problems.” We knew because we compared notes. We joked about it, too.

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  • It IS child abuse to fabricate a diagnosis. We need to think about this because when it comes to the psychiatrization (hmm) of children, this could be a vehicle for nailing social workers and behavior specialists who force children into diagnoses. It would also constitute child abuse for a parent to bring a child to a psychiatrist with the intent of having the child drugged for either their convenience or to collect disability payments for the child.

    As far as adults are concerned, I am not sure where false diagnosis comes into play. I would suspect it falls under malpractice, but it would be much harder to pursue legally.

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  • I remember decades ago when we were all on lithium, a guy told me lithium had given him “diabetes.” I asked him why he thought he had diabetes and he said he knew because he was always thirsty. Sad to say, I was sure he was mistaken. He really meant diabetes insipidus, which has no relation to the other diabetes, although with the other diabetes, thirst can be a sign. The guy also told me about the urine experimentation. I was sure he was nuts! It took me decades before I found out it was indeed true. I also remember being in a “group” where this one guy frequently had to rush out. Again, I figured it was his “mental illness.” This was certainly not why. He was rushing out because he had diarrhea. He also had the shakes really badly and the beginnings of TD.

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  • I just want to say I was one of the patients that was paid $10 cash to be interviewed in front of the one-way mirror. It was 1997. I ran into the resident later on. I asked him if he “passed” the mock interview. He said he did not. Now that I look back, I wonder what he diagnosed me with. They thought I had BPD back then but what I was truly suffering from was aftereffects of ECT. What they did by totally mishearing me like that was a crime. After I left McLean that diagnosis mysteriously disappeared off my record, never to return. So I ask myself now what on earth he diagnosed me with that they disagreed with. Of course, if he had said, “Brain damage from shock” they would have immediately silenced him. I do not recall that guy’s name, either.

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  • I think the consensus here is very clear. Of course this is only my opinion, but I think the real change is going to come from the underclass, the poorest of the poor, many of them mental patients or ex-patients. This is where I personally see the largest revolt, and it is already starting. What is the word sociologists use? Proletariat.

    We can certainly eat their cake. What is going to happen, though, when we refuse their Kool Aid?

    Public health experts who deal with statistics are often saying that the poor do not have access to health care, or shall I say, “health care,” and see doctors less often, and therefore, must be very unhealthy. But no. The Revolution is already starting. People are finding that a lot of natural medicine is cheap or free. The best of it you will find in your grocery store, but the free stuff is priceless. Like, say, sunshine. Hugs. Your dog. Okay, okay, agreeably, dogs do cost money, but it’s a small price to pay for saving your own life.

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  • Hmm…that didn’t work. Paula I want to thank you for pointing this out and I hope you have a bit more influence on MIA than I possibly could. I saw the diagnoses harming the kids with whom I worked. They said to me literally. “I do not like being singled out.” And other stuff they told me. They weren’t able to articulate it because I do not think the families or the kids been fully informed. They did not know that they were seen as future delinquents, but the distrust that they were treated with likely told them exactly what the message was.

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  • Paula, thank you. I agree with you and also, I do not think that MIA should continue to uphold MH degreed people as “experts.” Those of us who have been locked up and know what it is like are more “expert” than they are. Why are we not heard? I am especially furious at Daniel Mackler, who brilliantly denounces his own profession and then, has the nerve to use his credentials as proof of his expertise. Huh? You can’t have it both ways…..

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  • Alex, a person needs to have enough money to live on. For a while, I did not. I couldn’t afford a place that was habitable. This meant living with unbearable neighbor noise, rats, a flood, mold, and a landlord that threatened me, cut off my electricity and threatened to cut the water, too. That is what happens when you do not have enough money to live on.

    Artists generally do not get paid enough to live on, either. I faced this as a kid. How would I support myself in a male-dominated field of music composition? I was so scared I was going to be doomed to waitressing. At my last job waitressing I had been sexually assaulted. Was all work like that? I didn’t know. That fear was one of the things that drove me into the mental health system.

    Now if I could have found a way to get paid as a composer, I would not have had anything to fear. There was no way that I knew of, not at the time.

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  • I discovered nootropics back in 2013. I was certainly not seeking a “brain boost.” As Dragon Slayer pointed out, you have to have brains in the first place. What I was looking for was something to help me with binge eating. Some of these nootropics really did help! After a while, I stopped taking them. I discovered pine nut oil, which worked! Then, I ended up realizing that other healthy fats will work just as well, and cost much less.

    I was a person who binged not when I was hungry, but right after a meal. Leaving psychiatry allowed me to study this scientifically. I figured out that all it takes is a few binges to get physically hooked. This is how it works: The body learns fast that it is going to be subject to a major onslaught of calories. Since it knows this, it braces itself by shooting up the insulin level. Now, you’re almost guaranteed to binge! The reason why people binge in response to “food triggers” is not psychological, but actually what happens is that the body decides that certain triggers are a warning that a binge is coming. This leads to a sudden rise in insulin.

    I was absolutely right when I knew, even back in 1983, that forcing the binge eating to stop would stop the cycle and at least give me a chance to beat it. I was doing the right thing when I put myself in the hospital. Of course, it was a heavy price to pay and a very roundabout way of doing things.

    I am putting this here in hopes that anyone suffering from binge eating might learn from my experiences, not that what I learned necessarily applies to anyone else, but maybe this will be helpful.

    I realized that eating some kind of fat, olive oil or nuts included, in the beginning of a meal will help prevent a binge. Gradually, I stopped bingeing. I stopped starving myself. It is great not having to worry about it constantly.

    I have revisited nootropics recently because after all these years I still have drug-induced insomnia. While yes, nootropics aren’t the best thing for you, I have to consider the harm that sleep deprivation does to my body (and my social life!), and weigh the pros and cons. I’m sticking with nootropics for now. I’ve been able to taper a little bit, too. I’m still tinkering with the dose.

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  • Daniel Fisher, I am so, so happy you mentioned that. They did the Rogers thing to my late boyfriend. That’s how they forced him to take “meds.” He kept telling me the “meds” were poison and he would not take them. He was right. The “meds” killed him. I’m convinced that what happened was a combo of “meds” and smoking, but the smoking was due to “meds.” The meds make it nearly impossible to quit smoking.

    I believe they were trying to do that to me, but they did not succeed. I was so, so lucky! They were pushing Zyprexa on me. I had tried it back in 1997 and the doc stopped the drug almost immediately and told me I should not take it. I knew it would cause ridiculous weight gain. I found out that this was their aim. However, it has already been proven beyond a doubt that forcing weight gain by coercing a person onto antipsychotic drugs does not cure anorexia, and very often, it worsens ED. I’d already been through it! It took me a while but I figured out that they wanted to get me on the injectable. Their aim was to try out the Zyprexa just to see what happened, and then, get me into a psych ward, sending me to my doom.

    One reason the psych wards wouldn’t take me (thank goodness) is that my kidneys had failed. This meant too much liability. An outside agency came in to evaluate me. The conclusion was that any agitation I was displaying was due to the abuse by hospital personnel and due to the extreme noise level on the hospital floor. Thanks to those very young crisis workers, I was freed from that horrible place.

    It took me a very long time to recover from the abuse trauma to even get to a point where I was functional. All these years I have not really had anyone to talk to about what happened. No, anger isn’t a disorder. It is a normal and expected reaction to abuse. (Do I need to boldface that?) I relied on writing to help me. Even now, I can get very worked up if I am re-traumatized. Very slowly, I’m getting over it, piece by piece. I channel the anger into activism. It makes me a better activist for sure.

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  • yeah, good point there. “Alternative medicine” is regularly debunked by Western Med because many of those alternatives are a threat to pharma and the medical device companies.

    They already know, for instance, a way to survive without dialysis. They don’t want us to know. They use excuses like, “That’s only done in poor countries” but guess what? Alternatives make a whole lot more sense than invasive surgery to create a fistula, and then, putting a person on a machine. For life. Or shall I say for the rest of one’s life that you wish you never chose.

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  • I gotta laugh, DS. I had this awesome tooth fairy named Danny. I even exchanged letters with Danny. I loved that more than anything. Imagine a tooth fairy who writes back! Funny, though, Danny’s handwriting changed sometimes, from the right-handed, angular writing of my dad, to the beautiful left-handed script my mom wrote. Hmm…was Danny DID? Of course, that wasn’t up for debate. No, he was a real tooth fairy. Of course.

    I did know that Santa and the Easter Bunny were fake. Those were for Christian children, not for me. Not my chimney! No fat guy would fit down there, and I seriously wondered about any chimney on the block. Now if only people would realize that mental illness is a similar delusion, but oddly, grownups are the ones who believe this. Kids generally know better. Till they get brainwashed.

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  • I agree that many participants, in particular, the lowest level “staff,” will certainly need to recover. Imagine how terrible it would be to come to the realization that putting someone in solitary was unbelievably cruel. Strapping someone to a bed meant you had abused them. I bet most “staff” would be scared to admit it. It hurts too much, likely, so they avoid coming to this realization even if it is staring them in the face.

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  • Naw, I don’t think it’s inadvertent if their goal is to make us obedient. If we are, that’s called “responding to treatment.” I have to laugh because when I was incarcerated the stupid nurses claimed that if I went to group it would show that I was “better.” No, it would show that I was submitting myself to idiot groups like Bingo which were insulting and demeaning to many of us.

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  • PD, I think of those recovery modalities as as “psychiatry’s little sister.” They are part of psychiatry. When I say I am antipsych, I really also mean the entire MH system. Incarceration, brainwashing, labeling, the whole bit. It all has to go. It’s all harmful. I do not care how “nice” a therapist is. Unless their real goal is to keep a person away from the System (which is hugely ironic anyway, as they are part of it), or a therapist that helps someone escape, then I certainly have no use for it. If they’re doing that, then it’s not therapy. It’s something else.

    The best therapists share information and that only. Might be information like, “Did you know that taking that drug will put you at risk for diabetes?” “Have you noticed that ever since you entered the MH system, your life has gone further and further downhill.” This would useful. Most will not even come close.

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  • I do not think psych drugs should go off the market. I think prescribing should go off the market. What if people could go out to a pharmacy and purchase whatever they wanted? This would lower the god-like power AND the economic power of the MD. People would no longer go to an MD to get a “refill.” Why, when if you want drugs that badly, you can go buy them? In my opinion, “prescribing” psych drugs takes no brains at all. Anyone can go find one of those charts and figure out how to titrate if they want the drugs that badly. I know that is what they rely on. Charts. Anyone can read one. However, if they knew the real effects of the drugs, I doubt many would purchase them. Some would, of course, but likely they would not stay on them. Who wants a drug like Zyprexa which will soon enough make you very very fat? Remember that awesome video done by the Zyprexa rep who finally spoke out? Yes, it’s really true…you can indeed tell someone on psych drugs a mile away, especially if you have had the experience yourself. Twitching, agitation, being very overweight, and unkempt appearance because if you are fighting off fatigue and the urge to pace, who is really going to care about grooming, anyway? Never mind they make us so poor we can’t afford decent clothes.

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  • Stephen, that was pretty much my parents experience of NAMI. Back then, it was a gripe group about kids that refused so-called treatment. They asked why this was happening and the parents talked about ways they could trick their kids into agreeing. My dad told me, “I’m so glad you are compliant because I would not want to do that.” Still, he was somewhat baffled by my unquestioning worship of my doctors. He tried to get me to question their actions. I know there were times my parents would call them up and question. Instead of joining in, I was a bit peeved that they doubted the gods. One time, my dad told me to write down if they ever did anything dubious.

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  • It is comforting to some people that they can just send the person to a mental health professional and use that as an excuse not to talk to that person. Been through it myself, when people said to me, “That’s for the therapist’s office. Why don’t you talk to her?” Thing was, I really did not have anyone to talk to back then and the therapy was abusive.

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  • That is a great question, KateL. If your brother was wandering around in a store and psychosis wasn’t considered a disease, then my guess is they would not have called the cops. He wasn’t doing anything illegal and I’m sure he felt very threatened by the presence of the cops. I would, too, if a cop approached me and I wasn’t a crook. Hmm…if I was a crook, I’d also feel rather nervous.

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  • Phil, I totally agree. If we get rid of psychiatry, we won’t be calling depression or any other problem a disease. We will know that these are not diseases at all, but meanwhile, we will validate people’s suffering even more since it’s not a disease they can use as an excuse. It IS suffering, for many people. It’s not permanent and the “effects” of drugs doesn’t prove that there was at any time, a “chemical imbalance.” This is backwards logic for sure.

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  • Dragon slayer, you’re not alone. I remember, for example, I tried to get the Foundation for Excellence to help me publicize my anthology. They flat out refused. I will never forget that. They said that I had no expertise to be doing the project. Is an MFA in creative writing not enough to edit a collection of writings? Since when is a MH professional more qualified? They actually aren’t. Wow, I was so furious that I refuse to read their newsletters. By the way, the project failed due to lack of submissions. The Foundation for Excellence is not the only organization that refused to help publicize. I need to cry over that. Yet one more project I was not able to get off the ground because honestly, I hate selling anything.

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  • I think one of the most abusive things that psych does is to put people out of work. Once we are out of the workforce, they can pretty much do anything. Schedule multiple appointments, even day programs. People who are put out of work are not likely to be able to return. We have no work history to fall back on. I am lucky I got employed and now, I have enough work history so that I do not arouse suspicion. Trying to get a mortgage, though, they asked for tax returns going back a few years. Telling them I was out of the country did not work. Because my work has been independent contractor they said I had to have a solid work history for two years. I found out about a mortgage opportunity that I likely qualify for. However, I decided to hold off anyway. I want to have the option to move anytime I want.

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  • I agree. Many therapists do transfer whatever is going on with them. I remember some of the therapists said they had abusive parents. Sure enough, they imposed this on their patients regularly. Interestingly, they imposed whatever type of abuse they themselves had been through. For some of us, this created false memories and split up families.

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  • Wow, good point, Stephen. I was a patient back in the days when psychiatry and even therapy was considered dubious, far out, and wacko. Hardly anyone engaged in their “services” and I don’t recall most of us buying into their false logic. I did not. My decision to try therapy (for an eating disorder) was pretty much due to peer pressure from an employer I had worked for. Interestingly, he was one of the most self-absorbed people I had ever met. Back in the late 1970s, this mentality was frowned upon. I was brought up told that it was something you avoided. I remember feeling very guilty if ever I came close. At the time, I was truly disgusted with the employer, although I kept that to myself. I decided to “try” therapy, thinking I’d only do it for the summer. I got sucked right in. Therapy was extremely addicting. I was in the system over a year before I took drugs…and believe it or not, I begged for them.

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  • Szasz was totally awesome. I love reading him. He is truly a great writer and entertaining, also. I cannot put him down. All this rather amazing considering technically, he was a shrink. My experience of shrinks is that they lack intelligence and lack insight into pretty much everything. My parents were shocked over this, too, and the lacking of the “staff” also. “They just don’t seem very smart,” my mom said. Was anyone listening? Apparently it did not sink in with me for decades.

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  • Dr. Goetche (sorry, I do not know how to do the special character to make the proper spelling), I love that you pointed out that as soon as a person is forcibly incarcerated, anything that happens is forced. Of course it is. You’re behind locked doors! And might I add that in the USA, any incarceration is involuntary. You may sign a “conditional voluntary” paper, but you sign it when you’re on the ward already. Also, once you are there, you can’t get out. Not voluntary! Anyone who thinks it is voluntary is surely deluded.

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  • Wasn’t it Pink Floyd that said, “Leave the kids alone!” I think that was from “The Wall,” but I’m not sure.

    Oh, now I remember, “Teacher, leave those kids alone.” Those were the words.

    I was working in education and I saw them try to fit the kids into the ADHD box. This worked out great for the kid on occasion because he was able to use his “severe attention disorder” as excuse to skip school. He couldn’t pay attention or he got distracted…He knew what was going on.

    Funny, they said to me, “We have to know that he’s in school. If he is skipping school, and goes and robs a bank, the school would be held responsible.” Now this made no sense given his age, and also, if he was supposedly that distracted then how could he concentrate well enough to pull off a bank robbery? I was so concerned that already, he was tagged as a juvenile delinquent.

    One day, after my job had really gotten bad, I was crying so hard I could not contain myself. When you see abuse via diagnosis and coercing onto disability, for me, it was so upsetting that I started to refuse to do my job. I wanted to be kind instead, and they didn’t like this very much.

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  • Wow, Fred, that is terrible that 1. you were injured in a car accident and 2. that they decided it was a mental disorder. Yes, I agree, we all need an apology and some should get some monetary reparations. I keep thinking the lost wages for 35 years would certainly get me a big sum. I think, also, they should pay back American taxpayers who paid a bundle for my fake treatment. This includes ECT. If anyone thinks that was therapy, they’re delusional.

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  • Bruce, I experienced the retaliation first hand. I never spoke out against them until I was abused in a hospital…I was 53 and they deprived me of water. There was no argument here, this is not a “perception” or “opinion.” I have diabetes insipidus and they really could have killed me by doing what they did. Never mind the verbal and physical abuse as well.

    After that, I was so badly traumatized that I ended up not being able to handle it and they hospitalized me. The doctor there tried to get me into a state hospital but I guess it did not work, so they let me go after 26 days. I kept wondering why that had happened but now I realize that they felt they had to silence me.

    I tried telling my therapist and she insisted the unit I said I was on did not exist. Really? Possibly she was psychotic. I am not sure.

    That silenced me, except in my blog where I complained about it bitterly and repeatedly. This was a way for me to heal from the trauma. One day, must have been about a year and a half after the trauma, the same hospital, Mass General, told me over the phone that my insurance did not cover therapy there. This was actually a lie. I knew that what they had told me was somehow not legal. I put that in my blog and up on Twitter.

    Now, MGH had caught wind of what I was doing. I believe it was April that I went for my monthly “meds check” (ick) and my doctor chewed me out, yelling and hissing at me…really very bad and “mentally ill” behavior. I was so embarrassed I didn’t know what to do. I was sure that others in that office suite (8th floor of the Wang building, Wang 815, if anyone cares) had heard her. I knew they likely thought it was some patient “going off.” I am not sure how she explained it all to her colleagues later on. Anyway, she insisted I take an antipsychotic, saying, “Any antipsychotic will do, just take it! I’m giving you this drug to stop you from writing!” She explained that her administration had insisted on this, specifically to silence me. After that, after I had been seeing her 12 years, I fired her. My last appointment was June.

    In August, 2013, that’s when my kidneys failed. I made the major mistake of telling them it was okay to contact my former psychiatrist. That’s when they started abusing me very badly. Physical abuse, verbal abuse, etc. Before that, they had been quite sweet to me. They tried to force me many times to take an antipsychotic drug. They also tried to have me committed to a psych ward. When it was clear that this may not be possible, they then told me they wouldn’t let me out unless I took Zyprexa. I took one pill because they were threatening me so badly. I believe their intention was to get me onto an injectable. That did not happen. They had an outside team evaluate me and they determined that I wasn’t a danger to anyone and then, the hospital was forced to let me out. I promised them I would go to a day program. Just to make sure I did not have a cop raid, I went three days, and then, quit.

    I saw one other shrink who insisted I had not been abused, that I was “psychotic” and she said “If you refuse to take an antipsychotic, you have no use for me.” I was very happy not to have any use for her. She also asked me five times if I had a gun and if I felt like killing anyone. Huh? I never saw a shrink again. I saw a nephrologist for kidney disease and after he threatened me, I realized I was going to have to leave ASAP. I did! I left the country.

    Even then, I had online bullies. I believe they were hired people and likely, it was MGH that hired them. I managed to use spam filters to get rid of them.

    In 2017, I had a speaking engagement lined up. Months passed and after they published the list of speakers, apparently some unknown person called the conference organizer and then I was then canned. I did not find out who it was. Likely, they told her I was psychotic. I’m so, so tired of these accusations. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not, but these assholes out there continue to accuse. I think they do not want to hear my story, or they want my story totally discredited.

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  • Bruce, this is so amazing. You are one of THEIR worst enemies. I hope you keep yourself well protected because THEY tend to retaliate. I love your writings so much and because of this I am very very proud to call myself antiauthoritarian. I hope to get a diagnosis of the severest form of oppositional defiant disorder possible. Disorder? No, it is what keeps me alive, keeps me speaking out when others cannot or are afraid to, keeps me telling the truth. I must do this, as I see it as a sacred duty as a writer. I really hope they hate me, too. I should add, too, that I was a Lou Reed fan. Now I know why.

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  • Yes, very true, Steve Spiegel. I do have “problems” now that were created by psychiatry. I have abuse trauma and it affects me all the time. It changed me, changed the person I am. I was also harmed by their drugs. I have to deal with kidney disease now, which of course I solve by natural medicine and not their medicine. I have drug-induced insomnia which I believe, as of right now, I have finally solved. Eight years of insomnia turning me into a bitch…..But now it seems to be solved.

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  • Yes, it is sad that Jamison recommended that people poison their kidneys. Ever wonder why we “mental patients” had pimples? Lithium caused this. The first signs of the kidney destruction will appear in the skin. Your skin, which is an amazing organ, will try to do to work of the kidneys, getting rid of toxins that now, the kidneys can’t filter out.

    At this point of my life, since my kidneys are barely functioning, I allow my skin to do this work. In the northern hemisphere we are approaching summer. Instead of using an air conditioner, I recommend allowing yourself to sweat, which will help to remove these toxins. Foregoing the AC is an inexpensive way to give yourself a sauna. You are saving on your electric bill and also saving your life.

    Survivors of lithium will need to reduce protein, sodium, and phosphorus, but not potassium as usually recommended for those with kidney harm. Also, since lithium causes diabetes insipidus, you should not try to limit water. You will need to drink as much as thirst demands, to avoid dehydration, and also you will need to actively work on keeping up your potassium levels. This can be done by eating potassium-rich foods or, if these are not available, taking a small amount of potassium supplement (I break those commercially-available potassium pills in half). If your potassium has dropped you can tell because you get hiccups and/or very painful muscle contractions (cramping). I don’t know why magnesium will help balance out electrolytes. I’m still researching this.

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  • It was my paternal grandmother that turned me onto Chagall. My grandmother was subject to sterilization…this, I am convinced now, was part of the eugenics movement. She was afraid to talk about it, did not dare to say aloud in front of us kids, but I did, eventually, hear it. She had one child and then they cut off her ability to have more. This affected her for her whole life, and totally explains her protective attitude toward me (which, by the way, the shrinks claimed was pathological!). I was her only granddaughter, which ultimately meant I was the daughter she never was allowed to have.

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  • I agree. The transition is not easy. I have made a study of the transition–and, as a person who was brainwashed for 35 years I can say this–it doesn’t happen overnight. I put some observations of the process in my book (Life After Lithium) saying that for some, the grieving is unbearable. I have known many whose anger (part of grieving) gets mistaken for mental illness which drives them right back to psychiatry. Many will not leave since they’ve identified as mental patients for so long, they fear losing their identity, their selves, in the process. “I AM bipolar, so how can I give up who I am?” When you leave a cult (I am also a cult survivor) you go through the same bewilderment. “Who am I now?” We need to reach out with compassion, help these folks go through this transition. Mostly, they need to be aware of what it is, and why it’s happening.

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  • Thanks, Lucy, I went to read one of your articles in MITUK and found that to comment, i had to create a separate account over there. I am too lazy to do this, I suppose. I wanted to say that for whatever reason, when reading your story about journeying into the Maori cultures and realizing the importance of story, I started thinking of the stories of my own people. I cannot help but realize (yes, I happen spell it with a z…) that my own story parallels the Passover story, and funny, too, we’ve just finished our Passover celebration.

    Why did we leave Egypt? Because we had to. We had no choice. It was like we were not only forced to escape, but we also fled in absolute terror. Me too! I was so scared when I left the US, scared they’d stop me at the airport, or they’d find a way to put me away before I could leave. Afterward, I was criticized by ignorant people who said I ran away because I had a personality disorder, that I would never be satisfied and that any of these consequences I surely brought upon myself. The only thing I could do was to shake my head and walk away.

    We live in such a sick society that turns against anyone they do not like and will blame that person for every problem they ever had. I kept wondering why that kept happening, why, for instance, fat people turned against me because I was thin and they had to struggle, hated because I was smart and others resented it, hated for so many reasons that were not something I had myself created, but they had created. I had to run away from the hate.

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  • I have just heard AWESOME NEWS on the Breggin show….This great psychiatrist who has had a turnaround because she realized the truth about her own profession, from Wisconsin, Gail ___ (I can’t recall her last name and it’s hard to pronounce) is going to testify for Marci. This is very good news indeed. I wish I could call into the show and thank her but it seems that Breggin isn’t taking calls. I am keeping my fingers crossed for Marci. It must be horrible in that “hospital” to have to endure such abuse. I am hoping she is released at last.

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  • This is in response to Steve Spiegel’s comment. Would someone who identifies as an AP activist wander around stinking and acting incoherent? Possibly, but not likely. Anyone who is capable of understanding basic AP ideological concepts likely doesn’t have severe cognitive issues. People who have just had ECT or are heavily drugged are less likely to grasp the concepts. But that’s the object, right? Keep us as clueless as possible.

    I suspect MI denial will show up as a mental disorder eventually. Then, we all better watch out. If that happens and we are asked, just lie and tell them we worship the DSM and their disorders. Tell them if we ever got depressed we’d go to a shrink immediately. Then, walk away and laugh.

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  • Hi Hidden,
    Thanks for your comment. I do have a Twitter account but I don’t use it very much. I used to have my blog entries go up on Twitter which increases visibility of course, but now I don’t do that. I should think about tweeting some of the entries. I have a YouTube channel that I use occasionally. Making a video is a lot of work and time-consuming. However, these will reach a large audience.

    I believe my blog has over 5,000 entries. I likely put up about 300 to 500 entries a year, and these are all original and mostly text. Some entries are thousands of words long, and all entries are spontaneously written. People don’t realize this. I do not go through them, re-do them, or do much editing. They are what they are. I liken this to painting with acrylics. You have to finish the painting fast because the paints dry so quickly.

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  • Kate, you asked what would happen, if psychiatry were eradicated, if a person wanted to commit suicide. Being upset, sad, etc, isn’t a crime, so why should a person who is suffering get locked up like they’re a criminal?

    If there were no “hospitals,” teens would much more likely open up about suicidal feelings. There will be no threat of a nuthouse to keep them silent and scared. Much of suicide happens because of the MH system. Hospitalization increases suicide, because after a person gets out, they are 100 times more likely to commit suicide than a non-mental patient. Not only that, therapy often pushes a person to suicide, because much of the time, therapy encourages the very same problems it is supposed to solve. Psychiatric drugs often cause agitation, a precursor to suicide. I bet if we eradicated the mental health system, suicide would decrease, not increase.

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  • Oldhead, I think there will be a bootleg psychiatry. People practicing it illegally. (Not that a lot of shrinks don’t already do that.) Shrinks will practice under the table, diagnosing minorities, immigrants, and Muslims. What a great way to spread hatred. Drug ’em, lock ’em up. Even though it will no longer be legal, shrinks will practice because people will still be interested in having those they hate put away.

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  • I think people are thinking they don’t want integration. Psychiatry is a great segregator. People love that we’re contained in “hospitals,” “programs,” and “homes.” They love that we’re excluded from the workplace and that we don’t have money, which disempowers us. They want to keep us as useless waste, as they see it. Why? Because then those who aren’t crazy can gain power, gain money, and no one’s going to complain. This is what is partially behind the argument that something has to replace psychiatry…because people can’t stand the idea of us living among them.

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  • Those that are anti-war do not deny the existence of war. Those that are anti-nuke do not deny the existence of nukes. Likewise, those of us who align with antipsychiatry do not believe psychiatry doesn’t exist. We recognize it as an atrocity that should be stopped. How much of it should be stopped seems to be the question. Is any of it redeemable? While there are some things about it that might be called helpful, when they add the rest of it into the mix, we realize that the harms and the resulting consequences are too high a price to pay.

    This is also true of employees of the mental health system, who enter thinking they are going to help people. However, what is the help, really, beyond being an outlet for people who are troubled? Along with that comes diagnosing and possibly causing harm by so doing, referral to a psychiatrist, creating a ghetto-like environment, creating dependency that didn’t exist before, and being legally obligated to section a person at slightest remote hint or allusion to anything that makes you uncomfortable.

    People do like having someone to talk to, but it comes with such a heavy price that, if one were to know the real pros and cons (most of which are hidden until you buy the service), very few would choose to have it in their lives.

    One of the main reasons I object to psychiatry is that once you buy this service, even if you assume it is your own choice, if you decide you don’t want it anymore, you can’t end it. Psychiatry is an unending subscription service. “You can check out anytime you want, but you can never, ever leave,” as we used to say. Invariably, anyone who subscribes will experience a decline in all areas of life, including spiritual, physical (one’s health and surroundings), social, economic, and premature end of life.

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  • I support Marci for many reasons. One is that I, too, was abused in a hospital. Many do not realize that when you are going through ongoing abuse over a long period of time, the stress is unbelievable and it’s very hard not to seem agitated. The more the staff provokes a patient, the more upset the patient is going to get, and that, of course, is further fuel to claim the patient is nuts…and this prompts worsening of the abuse.

    It takes an outsider, someone honest who sees the bigger picture, to recognize that any presentation of agitation in the patient is environmentally caused.

    As example in my own experience, when I was being abused at Mount Auburn Hospital, in Cambridge, MA, when I had kidney failure, I did end up having outsiders come to “evaluate” me. The intention of the Mount Auburn doctors was that the outsiders would deem me crazy enough to be transferred to a psych hospital. That’s not what happened.

    I was visited by these outside evaluators twice. The first time, the person walked into my room and said, “My god, the noise level is so bad here that it’s a human rights issue.” She was talking about the constant blaring of loudspeaker and patient call bells. Bingo! It had taken until then before anyone heard me. This simple and truthful observation started us off on the right foot. I explained how the staff had pushed me by verbal abuse to the point where I totally broke. I explained that when you have no potassium in your body, you might not exactly make much sense, which was the reason I was totally incoherent upon arrival (I was on the verge of “coding”). The outside person understood that I had been falsely accused by the hospital doctors of dangerousness. They stopped the sitters after this, allowed me to keep my door shut to shut out the noise (the nurses were furious about this!) and then, they were forced to let me out of there.

    This is the kind of objective observer that Marci needs. She needs someone to realize that disliking cruelty isn’t a mental disorder, in fact, it is a sign of sanity.

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  • Frank, I agree that the reasons for “treatment” are more than what they public realizes. It is a historical fact that whistleblowers and other antiauthoritarians are subject to wrongful incarceration, including being locked up in a nuthouse. If the authorities want to silence someone they’ll do whichever one they can get away with.

    You can hire a doctor and pay that doctor to deem a person nuts or demented. It’s been done. It is regularly done to elderly.

    I’m sure there are political adversaries they’d like to directly kill if they could. They can’t because they’ll get caught. They have clever alternatives: Drive the person crazy by verbal abuse till they off themselves, claim the person is psychotic, thereby wrecking their credibility, or by drugging and/or incarcerating.

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  • Frank, therapy can indeed kill you. Indirectly. Psychiatry also kills indirectly, because the psychiatrist doesn’t actually take a gun out and shoot the patient. Patients die from treatment ordered/prescribed by psychiatrists. The treatment is self-administered by a patient through lies and coercion, or administered by a nurse.

    Therapy also kills. I know, because I have been subject to therapy in a very harmful way. Imagine having this person who is supposedly an authority figure telling you you’re addicted to water, that you deserve to be in a state institution, that you are psychotic and invented hospital abuse, that you are a sneaky liar, that everything that happened to you you brought upon yourself. All of these repeated to me twice a week for over a year. Not only that, I was repeatedly threatened that if I didn’t obey and lost as little as a half pound, I’d be hospitalized. It was degrading and humiliating to live under these conditions, living in terror of the next police visit. Because of Maria, I really did almost kill myself. That was 2012. I am lucky I did not, and lucky I didn’t tell anyone. You have to recover from an abusive therapist. I had no one to tell, no one to talk to, and whenever I tried telling people they refused to believe it was that bad, but it was. I had to get over it on my own, which I did by blogging about it until the impact of the story had softened some.

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  • The biggest, most obvious problem with psychiatry is that they lock people up and take away their rights. The create dependency, not only on drugs, but on therapy. They create disability with their drugs and “side effects” and also simply by labeling and calling a person “disabled.” Putting a person on disability, effectively ending their careers, will seal this into further permanence. Thus, an “illness” is born. Yes, it is becoming an epidemic. Shouldn’t our growing anger over their gross human rights violations be enough?

    Phil, I want to also ask about psych’s new tactic: Calling us “mental illness deniers.” Aligning us via this terminology with climate change deniers and Holocaust deniers. It sounds like a new disease to me that might show up in the DSM-6.

    They did not expect us to make widespread use of the internet, mainly because they assumed we had no interest or we lacked the capacity to use it. Surprise, surprise! We can now gather, compare stories, and make tactical decisions on how to push our cause. Where to go from here?

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  • As I said Steve, they had their textbook ideas, and I suppose what mattered was which textbook stereotype they were using. They had no clue what my upbringing was like. I would love to write about antisemitism in psych because I heard “typical Jewish upbringing” a lot, or “Jewish mother,” or even telling me I was a “spoiled Jewish girl.” Because they were authority figures (and through schooling, I’d been taught not to doubt them), I would just nod my head and say nothing. Even the Jewish therapists would make remarks like that.

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  • I certainly agree, Alex. I had 35 years of my life stolen from me, which is very hard to face. I think I’m over it now, but I’m not over water deprivation, which left me confused, angry, hurt, and terrified. I’m not over being called psychotic and dangerous when by all means, I wasn’t. I am not over being put on suicide watch (which was abusive) when they knew I wasn’t suicidal. I am still having a hard time with the fact that they didn’t just not apologize, didn’t just totally deny that they’d done anything wrong, didn’t just call me psychotic and try to drug me to silence me, but even afterward continued to harass me online (thought I do not have direct evidence of this, only deduced evidence) and they did everything they could to wreck my reputation.

    I am still afraid. After water deprivation trauma I’ve been prone to get traumatized very easily. It’s like every memory of anything that ever happened to me haunts me all the time. (This is a blessing, too, if you write memoir!)

    As far as holding resentment over the lost 35 years, naw, I can’t bemoan that forever. People lose years of their lives to bad marriages, unsuccessful business attempts, and natural disasters. It’s not like I’m the only one. Knowing this certainly softens the blow.

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  • Sam, I don’t doubt that dissociation exits. Running is a meditation for me, but also, running, if you do enough of it, could be called dissociation. You stop thinking running thoughts, such as, “I really should be running faster,” or, “Maybe I should have tied my left shoe tighter.” You stop that kind of thought and you go into another zone altogether. It is like you don’t have legs anymore. Sometimes, I whisper a silly mantra to myself, such as, “Nyah nyah,” or I say swear words at my former therapist who forbade me to run, but that, also, ceases to have any real meaning after a while.

    A long time ago, when I was about 16, I was babysitting and the kids had gone to bed. They had a gray cat. The cat came up to me and started getting affectionate. As I stroked the cat, stroked her nose, that is, I recall feeling like we were totally glued together like that, me and the cat. It was like we were totally one. I must have sat there, mesmerized, for at least an hour. Was this due to adolescence, or because petting an animal is powerful and healing? It never happened again. By all means, it was not an unpleasant experience.

    Later, after ECT caused me to become very spaced out, my doctor claimed the confusion I was experiencing was dissociation. I went and looked it up. I remember shaking my head and saying to myself, “Huh?” It didn’t describe what I was going through, not at all. Years later I knew he and the others had been way, way off base. I wonder if he knows now.

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  • We aren’t immune to errors in judgement. Making a mistake isn’t a mental illness, either. I made a mistake when I posted what I said about Matt. I didn’t do it because of some kind of character disorder, but because of some leftover anger.

    One day, about a month ago, I made an error at work. It wasn’t a mistake in judgement, but from working too quickly and overlooking something. The supervisor asked me why I did it (it wasn’t a huge offense or anything!) and I said, “Human error.” I think she was shocked at that.

    It was a mistake for me to go on a crash diet in 1980, and also, it was a mistake to think that what happened afterward was due to a mental defect worthy of “therapy.” I had no clue, and honestly, I was really, really scared, mostly scared that binge eating would totally incapacitate me. It can! Try eating 10,000 calories in a sitting. You will be lying in bed moaning and holding your stomach for a very long time!

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  • Sam, Of course, brains change. Anorexia harmed my ability to think straight and I was scared I would never be able to think properly again. What I learned was that food will remedy this, and your brain can recover. I also read The Body Keeps the Score. I was okay with it until I got to the part that started showing vague pictures of brain scans that were supposed to prove something. The book took a turn down the deep end for me when it started saying the changes are permanent and can only be remedied by a therapist.

    People can be stuck in a certain mode, for sure. Therapy and labeling can cause the stuckness, promote it and even thrive on it. Spend a week in day treatment and you’ll see therapists encouraging undesirable behaviors such as cutting or sulking. It can even be lethal.

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  • There are a lot of factors. We have a media that is still running pharma ads, even though these ads have been banned in other countries. The pharma industry is the most powerful lobbying agency in Washington. We put people in prisons, call them “hospitals,” and wonder why they only leave angry, confused, dismayed, or even suicidal. We have a media that only portrays one side of the story. Meanwhile, there’s an undercurrent of distrust of the medical profession. I believe the distrust is growing as more and more are harmed or their loved ones are harmed. Something is brewing. Maybe a revolution!

    The Industrial Revolution wasn’t a battle, there was no warfare. There was just a radical change. We can hope that as more and more start to question, we will start to see some positive changes around us. Isn’t it inevitable? As psychiatry gets more pervasive in society, they could very well push it so far that the entire field implodes.

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  • Samruck, I don’t see your comment here, but when you say one sixth are drugged, wherever that statistic comes from, isn’t that kinda shocking?

    I would say the statistic is much higher among the elderly. How many elders are on cocktails of blood pressure drugs, etc…AND a psych drug or two? This alone is so alarming that maybe we need to take some action! When women are pathologized just for being women, isn’t that a problem? If foster kids are given antipsychotics for the explicit purpose of control, aren’t we, as a society, in huge trouble? When whistleblowers get diagnosed just to silence them…well?

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  • Danzig, various religions have been arguing over who is right and who is righteous for a very long time. One country conquers another, or takes over. Unfortunately, this ends up being like eugenics. “We are better than they are.” It’s nonsense, but quite pervasive. People can believe whatever they want. We hope they do not hurt each other just because they do not agree.

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  • Little Turtle, I can’t find your question here about what I think about critical psychiatry vs antipsychiatry….

    Every bad idea out there has its redeeming qualities. Otherwise, the idea would be immediately struck down. Drawing here from my experience in the Moonies when I was 21 (before my ED started), I can recall I got sucked in by the good things about the Moonies. They talked a lot about love, compassion, and hope for a better future. This looked very appealing to me in 1979. Others were also sucked into it. While we were brainwashed, we did not recognize the bad things that were happening. We barely noticed that they used sleep deprivation (five hours a night) and added sugar to the food they gave us. They used songs and catchy slogans. The songs were beautiful, all of us singing together. Then they introduced concepts that I couldn’t tolerate. Jesus, heaven and hell, and even devils and angels. These concepts were foreign to me. I knew by my Jewish upbringing to reject these ideas. Now what? They pleaded with me to have an open mind, that “Father loves you,” etc. Do you see how this worked? They used kindness to get me to give them my money. They tried to coerce me to give up college and my job, too.

    Psychiatry and the entire industry uses the same techniques to draw people in. When I first went to the hospital, they were nice to me. They said stuff like “You did the right thing to ask for help.” “You’re in the right place.” Some of the therapists in day treatment were also very nice…or seemed so. One of them even warned me not to start day treatment. She had been around long enough to know what would happen.

    If the hospital, therapy, and psychiatrists were outwardly abusive from the start, I would have left sooner. One of them was, called me a spoiled rich Jewish girl, but I dismissed him as an “exception.” I believe most at least thought they had good intentions. The Moonies with whom I had contact certainly had good intentions, having no clue what they were really doing. Good intentions don’t make it morally okay. Many people who work for corrupt industries have good intentions when they do bad things. They are cogs in a destructive wheel.

    Looking back in the historical sense, many of my former shrinks and therapists left the profession in disgust. Some got in trouble with the law for very serious offenses. One that I know of got burnt out, then, returned. Some retired. I think most of them are scared to admit, even to themselves, that they caused great harm to me and to many of their patients, justifying it by claiming it was “necessary.” It wasn’t.

    Do I wish to abolish psychiatry? Yes, because it is harmful to people and to human society. It is a practice based in eugenics.

    I do think that having another person you can talk to is very important. I do believe people suffer immensely. I do not call these things mental illnesses. If I am having a hard time, it means I need to take action. The hard part is figuring out what the appropriate action is. Talking to a therapist or doing avoidant “coping skills” and calling the problem MY disease, only delays or even halts that action. I have to figure out how much power I have to change things, and how much patience I have to tolerate the things I have no power to change. Interestingly, a lot changes on its own….if we let it.

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  • Pacific Dawn, I had a lot to get better from. Ninety-nine percent of it was caused by “treatment.” One percent was due to my own foolishness, including the bad choice to go on a diet in the first place (an uninformed choice, as I was clueless about the consequences), and the bad choice to try therapy. Drugs were also my choice. I literally begged for them back in 1982 because I hoped they would “fix” my eating disorder (therapy wasn’t helping), but this also wasn’t an informed choice, and the drugs I got weren’t what I wanted anyway. By then, it was too late.

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  • Yes, we see more and more people realizing that the mental health industry is unhelpful. Getting away won’t necessarily lead to good results immediately. People go through grieving and we all grieve differently. Inevitably, many are angry. This is understandable, and often very necessary. If only we could channel all that rage into some action to end the psych regime! We aren’t channeling it very efficiently if we continue to attack each other, instead of bringing it where it belongs.

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  • For me, the only way that I could have regained my ability to think independently was to end therapy. I do not wish to think the way my therapists demanded. Therapy taught me self-absorption and self-blame, reflective of an entire cultural era in the USA of scrupulous examination of the self. It was addictive and harmful. Turning inward is not the answer. Maybe it’s okay occasionally, but I wouldn’t make a habit of it now.

    I’m trying to make up for all the years I lost to therapy. Trying to teach myself as much as I can, trying to help other people, reaching out, doing good things as much as possible to make the world a better place.

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  • In journalism, writing, music, public speaking, anytime you have an audience you must consider who is in that audience. You can tell the same story or deliver the same message but you have to do it in a way that the audience can relate.

    In journalism, you must know the publication’s target audience. An article might do well in one publication, but not another. If I have written something and want to get it published I can send anywhere at random and hope that the magazine accepts it. However, I would be better off looking for a magazine that had an audience that matched the article.

    Nowadays, writing prostitution is quite common to the point where it has become the norm. Write something because it’ll sell, that’s the main mentality.

    I think writers should maintain their own integrity and write what they truly believe in, even if they know their ideas are going to be unpopular. Still, it is a choice. Kiss butt, or be yourself. I fear that too much butt-kissing can be habit-forming.

    Writers are also expected to sell their stuff. Pitching. Ugh. I don’t think selling has much to do with writing. It was truly liberating for me to realize that I could hire someone to do all that nasty selling stuff, so I wouldn’t have to waste writing energy on the marketing rat-race.

    I have hated selling since high school, when our high school band got coerced by a traveling salesman to sell burlap bags as a way of making money for the band. I sold many, walked around various neighborhoods going door-to-door asking for a dollar for each bag, which we would deliver to them sometime in the future. This was something like 1974. A dollar was worth more then. Finally, our bags arrived and we had to distribute them to those who had paid the dollar. The bags were poor quality, pretty much useless items. I was so embarrassed to have to have sold them so aggressively. It has left a bitter taste in my mouth.

    What’s worse, writers have to market themselves these days, not just their writing. This is not the same as self-promotion, but way too close for comfort for me. Too many writers cross the line, getting on Facebook and kissing butt to the masses. No thanks.

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  • Oldhead, I believe some prisons are worse than others. Still, the fact that I liked it early on doesn’t mean it was a good place or even humane.

    The fact that I actually liked the hospital for a while was what sucked me in. I kept going back thinking, “They’re so nice.” I hoped they would actually help me, kept hoping and hoping until it was obvious they weren’t there to help people at all!

    In the beginning, I did not hate it, and didn’t mind going there. The best brainwashing isn’t done by cruelty, but by kindness.

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  • I think it was the field of philosophy or logic that determined that while a person can easily be declared insane, it is not possible to then declare a known insane person sane.

    Thinking back, it was very easy to fake a psych diagnosis but it is not so easy to convince them you’re normal. No matter how normal you act, they can always claim you’re weaseling out of a hospitalization or drugs.

    Even most “invisible illnesses” can be detected by a test. Those that can’t…well, I doubt the validity of many of them.

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  • As I saw it, the stays were far less unpleasant back then. It did make a difference when they took away the pool and ping pong tables, took away the smoking room, took away decent quality art supplies, our rights to keep our shoelaces and dental floss…the list is endless. The units weren’t locked and were run differently. With the old units, there was an advantage to having a chance for them to get to know you. Any of this could (and should) have happened at the outpatient level, but rarely did, which was the sad reality of why some of us kept going back. I even liked some of the staff at those places. I wouldn’t have kept going back if I hadn’t. Gradually, as more and more units became locked, the quality of staff got worse and worse. Patients stopped liking the hospitals and started dreading having to go back. Many staff were completely untrained and didn’t know what they were doing. The decent ones quit in disgust, or if they stayed they had to break rules just to be kind. Some were fired for being too nice.

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  • Hi Sandy, I have an MFA in creative writing with a concentration in memoir, Goddard College, 2009. I am also a survivor. I have written about ten books and I hear what you are saying about not being able to change an old text. My thesis, which I published, is a piece of history. Published writing is personal history even if it is not memoir. The work represents where I was at that time, ten years ago. I used the term “mental illness” as part of the secondary title. I will not take that back. That is what I believed in then. Now, I know better.

    When I wrote the book I had no clue, for instance, that the year and a half I spent “very ill” in 1997 or so was actually not an illness, but brain damage from ECT. It took me a long time to realize this, and now, I can go back and look on that chapter and realize just how misunderstood I was during that time.

    I am caught in the middle a lot when I write. My friend, whose intentions are certainly good, tells me that if I call a mental hospital a prison people are going to be turned off. But what else could it have been? I am caught between trying to sell a book and feeling driven to tell the truth.

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  • One of the prisons had “Tea and Toast.” Huge insult. Their idea of “challenging” was to play Group Bingo and get to be the one who put the pieces on the huge board. Geez. Every time I went to college I had no qualms about writing long papers, reading tons of books, and giving presentations. Go to the nuthouse and I got insulted by Bingo, and finally, told that even that was “too challenging” for little ole me. It was challenging because it was very hard to put up with the lowest expectations imaginable.

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  • AA worked for my late boyfriend. He got sober through AA and then, later on, was a role model for many younger people who were newly sober. He and I did not share much about AA because it was his turf, but it was my understanding that many picked him as a sponsor or mentor. He was what others would say “solid in his sobriety.” He also liked that the group is faith-based. AA helped him get back to his spiritual roots and gave him a lot of confidence and pride. But as I said, it was not my turf and I didn’t pry into his business.

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  • Many people have told me that OA didn’t work for them. It will work for overeaters sometimes, but not usually. I am not sure of the exact track record but from what I can tell, it’s not very good.

    We have a very strong, powerful diet industry in the US. These folks will sell you anything and make you think it will help you. There is the addictive nature of dieting to take into consideration also. I have known many to take the first step and then, end up trapped. The diet industry has many potential candidates!

    OA isn’t a for-profit institution, and there aren’t any particular leaders. It tends to be run in a democratic, though somewhat haphazard way.

    In OA, they have different factions with different beliefs. Perhaps you have heard of “Gray Sheet.” I don’t know if this still exists, but those that follow ‘Gray sheet” follow a very restrictive regimen. The problem with any of these restrictive programs is that the rigid mentality often harms people, making them worse.

    There are looser-run groups but these often consist of people who never quite get over overeating.

    Groups have formed based on OA or based on other 12-step groups such as GA. Some spin-offs focus on anorexia or bulimia. I imagine that by now, there’s one for binge eating also. There are a number of these. Some meet by telephone. I have not been too impressed with any of them, but some people derive benefit.

    When my friend was married to an alcoholic she used Weight Watchers as her escape from him. She told me that many of the women who went there were also escaping bad marriages temporarily. She tells me that the WW group was like a lifeline for her, her safe time away from her husband. I think this is quite valid since the husbands aren’t likely to suspect anything.

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  • John, If people can relate to your situation they will be more likely to support you. I think there’s a certain amount of snobbery in the movement…I wish this wasn’t the case but I think it’s the case everywhere. First of all, we don’t have to all like each other. Secondly, some folks still uphold the idea that some are superior to others.

    For example, when I was at a conference in 2017, I was excited to meet other activists. What happened, though, was that some did not even speak to me, even though I made effort to speak to them. I was a little unnerved when an activist that I assumed would at least say hello did not even acknowledge my presence. It was like I was invisible. After that I realized that the idea of eugenics is alive everywhere. Even in the movement, you will find some that feel that others are beneath them. This is a sad reality about humanity that I wish was not true. If we are to end psych diagnoses, that is, the idea that some people are of superior character and others inferior, then we also need to end elitism and snobbery.

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  • John, it was indeed like mob mentality for me back in Boston. My friends were paranoid about me and thought I would kill them. My minister (whom I assumed was an ally, wow was I wrong) also thought I would kill him. That sounds like psychosis to me, doesn’t it sound that way to you? Mass paranoia against someone who never harmed anyone. I did nto threaten either, but the psychs threatened me plenty. They are the danger to society. I sure wasn’t.

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  • Very true, John. I have had police raids in the past. They searched my home without my permission or knowledge and without a warrant. They came to “arrest” me based on speculation, no evidence, no warrant. I had done nothing wrong. They hauled me off by ambulance countless times. Still, this is a fraction of what they do, not all of it. Most of the time they are trying to get drivers to obey traffic rules. Psychs are always aiming to diagnose us, which is a hate crime.

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  • They are worse than the police. The cops sometimes do good things. If there’s a car accident they’ll help summon an ambulance and help get you out of the car. I met a cop who helped get a cat out of a tree when the animal officer was not on duty. Psychs do much less good in the world, except for those that turned against their own profession. What cop turns against his profession and then, blasts it to the rooftops like Szasz or Breggin? I have heard of none. There is plenty of anti-cop sentiment but that’s not because people see the entirety of the police as invalid, only some of it. I know one ex-drug cop who teaches people how to pass a drug test, but that is about the only cop I have heard of to turn against the cops as a profession. I do not doubt the validity of the cops. Their training and profession are valid and a lot of it teaches them good things, such as CPR or finding lost people. Around here, mostly cops stop drunk drivers. I bet that is 90% of their job right there. Some act like bullies but that’s not because what they are taught is totally invalid. Home raids on so-called MI are only a tiny fraction of their job, even though that is the most we ourselves see of them.

    Almost all of psychiatry is eugenics based. The very principles that guide diagnosis are steeped in condescending hatred toward those they see as inferior. I would not say that about cops, though I must admit I still fear them.

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  • That is not what Bob said, Oldhead. Psych was cruel and immoral back then, say, in the 1950’s, but now a huge portion of the population is diagnosed and drugged. I think I am around Bob’s age and I also do not remember anyone being diagnosed when I was in high school. Kids were said to have “problems.” Mostly, we solved our “problems” totally on our own. Life has indeed changed. At my workplace where there were younger people, many were diagnosed and many talked about it, too. Wow what culture shock this is.

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  • I am a writer, too. All writers have to change their stories a wee bit to satisfy their editors. It is ideally a cooperative venture. Still, think of it…to be published in the New Yorker is not an easy feat. It is a very prestigious publication and if anyone gets picked by them it’s their Big Break. I can see why Aviv might have had to concede. They might not have published Laura’s story at all if she had not.

    I have prostituted myself many times as a writer. It just depends on how much you do it. One time I had a piece published that for whatever reason, they butchered when they put it to print. There were spelling and punctuation errors that happened when they copied it over. I was furious and demanded that they re-do it, saying that the piece, as it was, embarrassed me.

    I have been published in CCHR publications and I am not ashamed of that. They appreciate my work, have thanked me, and honor me as a writer and you can’t ask for more than that.

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  • I have read all those books, most of them while I was in graduate school. I recall what Styron said of Dr. Gold, that he liked the man well enough, but that the doctor had failed to help him.

    I remember Andrew Solomon’s head trip with “agitated depression” which was clearly drug-induced. He does say so.

    As for inability to write, that’s about the worst thing that can happen to a writer. Or…being told you aren’t allowed to write and threatened with drugs if you do. I remember when I went into the nuthouses, I asked for a pencil and paper and that was all I needed to feel okay.

    To work through trauma from hospital abuse I wrote in my blog, told the story over and over until I was done with it. Writing is not only a comfort for me, but it is a means for activism and communication. I believe the one thing I want to do more than anything is to tell my story so that others will be forewarned, and also to bring hope to people. Yes, there is life after psychiatry.

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  • Treatment-resistant, in my case, meant they missed the boat entirely for 30 years. I would walk into their offices and say, “I am very depressed because I binged again.” They would say, “Never mind that. How is your bipolar?” Their bipolar-type treatments sure did not help my eating disorder. When they increased the meds, it didn’t help my ED any, so they called me “treatment-resistant” because I continued to complain.

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  • How is regression to the mean any different from peer pressure? I was in a day treatment program where all the other patients were much worse off than I was. They were suffering from TD, multiple incarcerations, and were overall very depressed. I didn’t even know what I was getting myself into, thinking it was going to be like college. I was definitely peer-pressured to become more disabled, more depressed, more incapable. Why? Because the rest of them were. I started smoking, too.

    In eating disorders prisons, kids are under immense peer pressure. “Almost dying” becomes the new “in” thing. If two are tubed, they all stop eating so they, too, can have the tube status symbol. When passing out becomes popular, well, you can guess.

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  • The subjects I hated most in school were lunch, recess, and gym. The reason was that I got teased the most during those times. I remember outside of school loving to ride my bike, to do gymnastics in the yard, or to stand on my head just for the heck of it. I’m fairly sure that if I tried I could still do that.

    I’m not sure how they could re-do gym class to avoid the social tiers that result. The tallest, or best coordinated always win. Someone else always loses.

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  • We can all be open about our vulnerabilities to an extent. The degree of this is different for everyone. At times, I may admit to someone that I am very afraid of doctors because I was harmed by one. Then they understand why I work so hard to be healthy. I might also explain why I hate being interrupted or being accused of interrupting. I will say that a long time ago I was in an abusive situation where I was not allowed to get a word in and constantly cut off by other people.

    If you bring your story to a point where others can relate, it isn’t just your story anymore. It is reflective of a universal struggle. Who does not want to be understood, loved, or included? Fear is fear for all of us, we feel it similarly, though we may fear different things.

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  • Schools need to teach relevant material. They need to get the kids fascinated and passionate about learning. Some schools succeed in doing that for some children. Most fail.

    Kids should be allowed (or required) to design a curriculum for themselves that works for them. They should be able to voice their opinion, and be heard, on school policies.

    I have noticed with all the children I meet with, they all seem to have peripheral interests that could be further explored at school, but aren’t. For some, these interests are so strong that they shouldn’t be peripheral, but in the foreground of their education. Schools have become career-oriented. For the most part this does not include careers in the arts. Some of these kids would love more art, music, sports, dance, or drama and they’re not getting it.

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  • Sylvain, I totally agree. I work in a school system with supposedly “disabled” students. I have read their IEP documents and I have spoken to the students and their parents. The IEP might say ADHD but doesn’t say anything about why the student has no interest in school. The IEP might say “refuses to participate” but that, too, is happening for a reason. I have noticed that these same supposedly ADHD students can concentrate just fine if the circumstances change, or the topic is to their interest.

    When I was a kid I had very little interest in studying anything but music. I even failed some classes. Now I realize that since I was very good at music, I ended up being one-sided in my interests. Music was fascinating to me and everything else was irrelevant.

    Sometimes kids act up due to bad experiences in the past or present, and this, too, is omitted from the “everything that’s wrong with me” IEP statement. I see this as doing the students a disservice.

    If a student is deaf, or needs help ambulating from class to class, that’s very different from perceived mental illness. If you are perceived as MI, then it’s those around you that see you as disabled who are causing the disability.

    There is another thing to consider. Money. Sometimes it is profitable to put a kid into the disabled category. Medicaid now picks up the tab, meaning that the schools can exploit the student as a funnel for Medicaid money all they want.

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  • Stephen, Workplace process groups are likely a good idea, because from my observation, almost all workplaces lack effective communication. I find it especially true that communication is shunned when it goes from the bottom up, that is, the lowest caste workers have very little say in the workplace rules and policies and how they are enforced. Communication from the top down is usually bossing around and that, too, is ineffective.

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  • I agree about group therapy. It is largely ineffective and mostly harmful. I was part of a day treatment program where the therapists were overly involved in the patients’ affairs. I believe this was the reason why one patient there committed suicide. I have written some funny pieces about Group Therapy that are in my book This Hunger Is Secret. There are several scenes in there. I also replicated Family Therapy, which in my opinion was the most comical chapter of the book.

    Group therapy is unnatural. Even now, I hate sitting in a circle. If I were teaching I would not demand this of the students.

    In Group, there was so much pressure to bear your soul to these folks, and if you did not, it was a disorder. Too much self-disclosure becomes a habit. I believe my group-induced “talent” for self-disclosure is what made me a better memoir writer. The downside of therapy is that you invariably become far too self-absorbed…which in turn, will worsen depression.

    All in all, it was a huge waste of time for me. I should have been in school or working. After all, isn’t showing up 99% of the battle? We showed up. We could have been doing something more fulfilling. Later, I was denied the privilege of the more meaningful groups and told I was only good for Bingo. This was so insulting to both my intellect and my emotional intelligence that I refused to go to groups.

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  • Only occasionally should it be medical, and then, it’s never a psych issue anyway. For instance, thyroid levels being off can mimic depression or bipolar. Anemia resembles depression. Malnutrition will appear to be an eating disorder or can even psychosis. Electrolyte imbalances or dehydration often appear to be psychosis. Psychs love to bring problems that aren’t their turf into their turf. If they had their way, they’d psychiatrize everything, including heart attacks, stroke, natural disasters, and this commonplace thing called a death in the family.

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  • I am seeing also that the message that one has to recover from psychiatry is not very clear in the article. Of all of life’s challenges, most of us have the hardest time recovering from drugging, labeling, incarceration, and marginalization. Many of us find these challenges to be much harder than whatever struggles we were having that brought us to the MH system. I, for one, am still struggling to get over it, and still have many fears that were caused by the system. Examples are fear of human touch, fear of the cops, fear anything medical, etc.

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  • Mental, After you are first tricked, it’s hard to make an informed decision. You may choose to go to a mental hospital for “help,” but after you’re there, and drugged, how on earth can you make a good decision for yourself?

    ECT, for instance, is rarely done by physical force. I have witnessed patients being told they’ll be refused all MH services if they do not comply with shock. I have also seen patients told they can leave sooner if they agree to shock. Meanwhile, we’re held there, drugged and brainwashed until we comply.

    After you walk in, you’re under their spell. After the first agreement, there is no valid agreement, since after the start of coercion or drugging, you lose you ability to choose responsibly.

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  • RW, I am glad you wrote this. A relative of mine alerted me to the New Yorker article. We both agreed that the article rambled too much. I found it confusing after a while, not knowing what the message was. Was it that mentally ill people, dangerous as we are, might be able to get off drugs at some point? Or was it that getting off drugs was tough but mentally ill people might be able to do it? Neither, to me, says what I’d like to have seen in the New Yorker. I agree that the main point was lost. I suspect this was an editorial move and not the doing of the writer.

    I have seen plenty of people reduce their drugs or even get off of them, but if they are still acting and thinking like mental patients, they are less likely to succeed. You can actually change the way you frame your life and that, to me, is the most important step.

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  • Kumin, What happened to your book? It sounds like there was some fiddling on the part of our adversaries into the distribution and marketing of your book, from what you are saying.

    I wrote a book as part of my masters degree program and it did not sell. Partly, this was because I do not know how to sell anything. I should have hired someone. The other part involved some interference by the adversary. They did everything imaginable to discredit me, wreck my reputation, and made selling the book next to impossible. I still have copies and there’s a copy available for download on my website. For free.

    As I approach the time when I will be publishing another book (I’ve written about ten), I plan to do a better job of marketing. My reputation has been partially restored. I am hoping I will not have as much angst over this book than I did with This Hunger Is Secret.

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  • Bloodletting is still practiced. Kidney dialysis is bloodletting. They gradually remove your blood, send it through a filter, then, put it back in, supposedly clear of the toxins your kidneys can’t get rid of. I keep thinking a transfusion might work just as well. I imagine very wealthy people opt for this, paying out of pocket. People with kidney disease typically are anemic and often the red blood cells swell in attempt to get oxygen.

    Dialysis is big business, a huge profit-maker for the dialysis companies. I believe it can be safely avoided by taking simple (not expensive) dietary measures. Kidneys normally are very good at eliminating toxic waste (by-products). When your kidneys don’t work well, toxins accumulate in the body. It is not that hard to follow a healthy diet, except it’s inconvenient sometimes to find something edible at a restaurant. Avoiding certain foods, you can be assured that the toxins (some from food, some created by food synthesis) don’t accumulate to begin with. These toxins include sodium, phosporus, calcium, and protein, and for many, also potassium, unless you took lithium, because many lithium survivors lose potassium and have to replenish it. Some people have to reduce fluids, but if you took lithium, chances are this restriction is also not applicable. There are herbs you can take that help, also, and a few vitamins. While creatinine is a by-product of exercise, in my the benefits of cardio-type exercise outweigh the risks. The increase in creatinine following exercise is temporary.

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  • Also, I should say that in theory, life coaches don’t push their ideas on their clients. This is very clear in the training. I’m sure many break this rule. You’re supposed to let the client figure out stuff herself, use her own morals, logic, intuition, etc, to form conclusions.

    Life coaches do not have to follow any laws, except they are mandatory reporters. I’m not sure if this is true in all states. Mandatory reporting laws vary from state to state.

    I recently called a life coach in another state and city (just to ask for info, not for life coaching) and found him to be an abusive bully. I wonder if he saw my scathing Yelp review?

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  • Actually, PacificDawn, what constitutes a “life coach” varies widely. There is no certification requirement. Many people set up businesses as life coaches with no formal training at all, and that is legal so long as you don’t lie about your credentials.

    It IS true that many life coaches won’t take on patients they perceive to be mentally ill. In fact, we were told to refuse services unless the person saw a psychiatrist concurrently. I found out that to see a life coach I would have to lie (by omission) my past diagnosis, which means I cannot discuss 35 years of my life, and omit any diagnoses I had been given. Many will also refuse unless you see a therapist. And some will even insist that you see a Western doc if you have any chronic disease at all. But life coaches vary and not all of them follow this.

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  • Varun, I was a college student also when I started therapy. This was during the summer. My choice to go outside the campus counseling center was driven by my desire for privacy. I was so scared that anyone might find out I was going to counseling. I was scared that someone might find out I had an eating disorder. I also personally knew the college counselor from another situation. So I chose to go to the local counseling center in town.

    This was one of the worst decisions of my life. Therapy caused me to become self-absorbed, thinking there MUST be something wrong with me, that is, fundamentally wrong with my character that caused me to have an eating disorder. What I did not realize was that the diet itself, that I had gotten out of a popular diet book, had caused the entire problem. People do not realize the serious consequences of drastic restrictive diets. You end up stuck in it, and further weight loss and low caloric intake only worsens a person’s distorted ideas about losing yet more weight. It is an endless cycle. A trap.

    I didn’t realize this, though. I wondered if a character flaw caused it. Those therapist said, “You have an eating disorder so you must have an enmeshed mother.” This was a stereotype they had back then, and it is so false in my case that it is laughable. Then they said, “You have an eating disorder because of perfectionism.” This, too, didn’t fit me at all. They even tried, “We can’t help you, so your eating disorder is trivial and you’re probably faking it.” I latched onto “chemical imbalance” because I wanted to find some cause of the ED. That must be it! Then, drugs might fix it, right? I started asking for drugs. They claimed I was nothing but a spoiled Jewish girl.

    They did indeed violate my confidentiality, and they also violated other patients’ confidentiality. I went to an emergency room on advice from my roommate. She had told me that “If you go to the ER then they will give you drugs. They HAVE to,” she said. I was hoping they would hear me, finally, and give me the magic pill that would stop my ED.

    Instead, those idiots called my parents and I had not authorized for them to do so. I was 25 years old at the time and not a minor.

    They never heard me. They continued to drug me and couldn’t figure out why I didn’t “respond.” They gave me more. They diagnosed me with schiz but I did not have any schiz characteristics such as the ability to hear voices. It was so unfounded….and I was stuck on disability payments for the next 35 years.

    I regret the decision to start therapy. I regret continuing the therapy and my own failure to recognize that it was addicting. I regret believing them and seeing them as authority figures for as long as i did. I was 23 when I started therapy. I was 56 when I finally left that world. I am 61 now, employed at last, and finally ending disability payments.

    It is so quick and easy to fall into that trap. It will take a long, long time to get out of it.

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  • An example of editorial middle-grounding can easily be seen in Psychology Today. Eric Maisel, who writes about children here for MIA, tells me he has to tone it down when writing for Psychology Today. Or…he is toned down by the editors there. If you meet him in person you get a different story entirely.

    As a writer, I sometimes call this kind of behavior prostitution, that is, sacrificing ones beliefs just to get published. However, I, too, am guilty of writing prostitution. Sometimes you will do anything to have your voice heard. Why? We have to decide. We have a need to say something, and sometimes, bowing down just a little bit is not that terrible a price to pay.

    I have to decide how much to bow down. While I would love to teach creative writing at a local college, I stopped my application when I saw the college’s horrible policies against gays. I then took pen to paper and wrote, right in the application, that I refused to continue due to their discriminatory policies. I am not sure if they read my half-finished application, but I got to say what I wanted to say.

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  • Thank you, Bruce, for this article. I also saw the New Yorker article on Laura and felt that something was missing. I also felt that the article was rambling and way, way too long. There was too much repetition and the article itself lacked a cohesive central theme. Still, it was great seeing Laura’s story in the major news media.

    I am wondering about your terminology regarding “middle grounders.” I am wondering if this constitutes a bit of classification and possibly, stereotyping this perceived classification. It’s like some who classify “liberals” or “conservatives” somehow as groups where all think alike. You can’t actually say that in all accuracy about us “fanatics” who understand the truth about psychiatry, and yet, we get lumped together by the media. We’re “mental illness deniers” or just plain lack insight. The truth is, though, we are not all alike. Our stories differ greatly, as do our opinions.

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  • I attended life coaching school. In that class we were told we should refuse to take on anyone we perceive as “mentally ill” and refer them to a psychiatrist. We were also told that if a person is diagnosed we have to make sure they “take their meds.” However, when I came out in class as a survivor, many approached me and said, in private, that they felt the DSM was hogwash, but they didn’t want to say anything. Our teacher even spoke of chemical imbalances! EEEKs!

    Interestingly, it was the classmate who drugs her kid who bullied me after class was all over. She was so unreasonable…I have to laugh…If the kid had her for mom, well…….

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  • Father John, you are totally awesome and I thank you a bunch for all you have done for us.

    Human behavior also is not rocket science. Anyone can have insight into it, including prisoners, janitors, cafeteria workers, students, and anyone who has contact with other humans. Children have amazing insight. There’s no need for a degree to understand lying, dishonesty, and corruption, and to recognize when a worker for the oppressors is breaking the rules, risking their jobs, and actually being kind. There were a few, but most said nothing and complied.

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  • And why should the person have a degree in psychology? We need more clergy writing in as this is an underrepresented population on MIA. We need more scientists from other sciences as well. The discussion in the article is about electricity. What does a psychologist know anything at all about electricity’s effect on the brain? If your loved one has been through ECT you know better than anyone else the effect of ECT on a person’s life, regardless of your profession. I agree with the author that those who have been through ECT may not immediately be aware of the damage. My boyfriend did not have a college degree and he had majored in business. He understood more than any of those idiots at the mental hospital that the ECT was damaging to me. I was even seeing an esteemed psychologist for “therapy.” She was totally uninterested in me and even nodded off during our sessions. She was one of the most clueless individuals involved in the whole fiasco. Since when are psychologists the experts on life? I really hope you reconsider your position, Oldhead. You know better than that!

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  • Thanks so much for this very logical explanation. None of these things are an opinion, they are facts. We can choose to refuse to believe the facts, or misinterpret them, as most, in fact, will do. We can choose to remember only what we want to remember. In the case of ECT survivors, often we cannot remember.

    I am going to share this article with a relative who is a physicist. Much thanks for this!

    Julie

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  • “Our culture would rather scapegoat angry people than deal with what they’re very often legitimately angry about.”

    What a breath of fresh air. I admit I have done my share of displaced blaming. But still, that doesn’t mean every single bit of blaming I’ve done has been transferred to the wrong party.

    I still DO blame Massachusetts General Hospital for willfully, deliberately, and cruelly depriving me of water. I blame them for failing to apologize when they had obviously harmed me. I blame them for denying that it was abuse. I blame them for not admitting fault when it was quite clear I had diabetes insipidus and what they had done could have killed me. I blame them for all their illegal attempts to silence me after it all happened. I blame them for trying to diagnose me with mania and paranoia to discredit me. I blame them for failure to recognize that I was enduring a traumatic reaction from water deprivation. I also blame them for spreading around lies to the general community that I am a dangerous person.

    I credit myself for getting away when I did. I blame myself for acting like a bitch at times and blowing my cool at people who didn’t do anything wrong, simply because I was experiencing traumatic memories. I regret the loss of friendships that happened during those years. Most will not respond when I try to contact them, so I am not able to apologize in a way that will be taken seriously.

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  • Kate, Using our words is about the most powerful thing we can do. I started writing most of my Yelp reviews when I was safely out of Massachusetts. I wrote so many that I moved up the Yelp ranks (I’m a premier Yelper or some such thing) because people liked my reviews so much. I have even been contacted by people who read my reviews. I have successfully turned people away from facilities that harmed me. People read what I have written and then are concerned that the same thing will happen to them. I so much feel the need to tell the truth, even if it is the bitter truth. It is my duty to warn other people so they won’t have to go through the same shit I went through.

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  • Kate, since that happened to me once for blowing the whistle, I am not surprised. One time I started noticing the minister at the church I was going to seemed be very bigoted and elitist. I wrote a complaint letter to a church higherup, that is, someone over his head. Next thing you know, the cops were coming knocking at my door. Believe it or not, they were accusing me of planning to kill the church minister.

    I was shocked. There’s nothing worse than being called dangerous when you are not. It was like they were afraid of me. They threatened me and demanded that I stop writing.

    I knew at that point I had to leave town, leave and go as far away as possible. I also knew I couldn’t tell anyone. Is another continent far away enough?

    Every day when I write, even as I write this, I am thankful that I got away from a place where I was threatened and told I wasn’t allowed to write. I guess whatever I wrote was powerful indeed. Maybe I should be proud of how scary I was, just by writing stuff.

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  • Kate, my experience was so similar to yours. My complaints about my eating disorder were misconstrued as, “You are just a spoiled Jewish girl, so…” When I had pimples from lithium they never informed me that pimples are a side effect. They claimed it was “poor self care.” When I broke my leg because Risperdal messed with my hormones, causing osteoporosis, it was “bad luck.” When Seroquel caused me to gain 100 pounds, I was the one who was too lazy to go to the gym. When Imipramine caused racing pulse, I was told it was “nothing” even though my pulse was never under 90. BP was raised on that drug, also, again, “nothing.” Imipramine caused agitation, again, “We don’t know, maybe you need more therapy.” When my feet and legs swelled up from kidney disease caused by lithium…oh no, that is poor self-care and likely from your eating disorder. One doc even said it wasn’t edema when it obviously was. When I started getting very painful muscle cramps in my toes, fingers, feet, etc, caused by kidney disease, it was “anxiety.” Really, it was impending kidney failure. When finally my kidneys outright failed, it was “suicidality” when in fact, it was from lithium all along. Trauma from hospital abuse was mistaken for paranoia and mania. Can they ever get anything right? Best to stay away!

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  • Rachel, DBT is a way of telling patients, mostly women, that they’re defective and need “therapy” to heal from something that the clinician is delusional about. Some doctors will label anyone that walks into their office as BPD. BPD is a way of discrediting you and permanently wrecking your reputation. It will work well if a person has been abused because then, the abuser is now safe because the woman’s accusation is nothing but a symptom.

    It worked very well for the doctors who knew that shock had harmed me. BPD silenced me and it was their excuse, ultimately, to threaten to put me in State. They HAD to do that to cover up ECT harm.

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  • Kindred, I agree totally about DBT being blameful toward the patient. I read the first few pages of the manual and did not go any further. First sentence: Life is hard. I’m fine with that. But then it went on to show two girls, one of them shown as a sicko, and the other one, non-sicko. So the manual said this is for you sicko folks. After reading that, I was so turned off I wouldn’t read anymore of that nonsense.

    I’ve been in DBT groups. The last one, everyone was fidgeting from their anti-d drugs. That was hard to endure, seeing everyone in that room fidgeting constantly. i kept wondering how the staff could stand it. Anyway, the concepts were so basic that I was surprised that most of the patients couldn’t understand them. I ended up feeling like I was leading the group explaining these things to them. I believed at the time that the drugs caused them to have cognitive difficulties. I can’t think of any reason why they seemed so slow-minded. I felt like I was back in grade school, but these were grown women, some well-educated, too. Many also played with stuffed animals…..

    I finally left the day program after three days, realizing it just wasn’t for me. Then, not much later, I found the Movement and I have not looked back. Sept 13 was my last psychiatrist appointment. She asked me five times if I felt like killing anyone, then she threatened me and said I had to take anti-p drugs and if I didn’t, she wouldn’t treat me. The answer? You guess.

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  • DBT is so invalidating. It is avoidant in its very nature. It is also silencing. Many of us were harmed and we’re supposed to “cope” with it now? No way! In other words, “We don’t want to hear your shit because we don’t want to take action to stop abuse. Here’s some therapy instead. You’re the sicko. The abuser is irrelevant now, part of the past.”

    DBT is perfect to let rapists and other abusers off the hook. “She was a sicko, right?” She was just imagining it all. Paranoid. Personality-disordered. They walk because of this nonsense.

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  • Rosalee, I also read that same book on trauma, or maybe a similar one. I agreed with much of it until I got to the part about trauma causing brain changes which are permanent that only a trauma therapist can heal. I cannot believe that these changes are permanent unless you make them permanent or sustain them by going to a mental health professional. Just getting away from the source of trauma is a start to healing, even though it is true that the worst of the traumatic reaction comes later on. It isn’t logical that going to a mental health professional is going to heal what mental health treatment caused. It makes so little sense…and yet people do this all the time, without even realizing it.

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  • Kate, Ditto to what Steve said. The MH system causes people to see themselves as losers. This is so hard to stop. You can’t just change out of loser mode instantly just because someone says so. In fact, telling people to change their thinking sometimes backfires.

    People can, though, change things bit by bit, in realistic-sized chunks. I think the idea of not using clinical language to describe ordinary experiences is likely a start for many people. However, you really have to distinguish between stuff that should be called by clinical language, and that which should not. Total abolition of clinical language just isn’t realistic. If I do not drink enough water I am going to be dehydrated, and that is an unarguable medical fact, not a feeling and not an opinion.

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  • Kate, you can contact me anytime. Reaching out to you. Find me on my blog, juliemadblogger.com. There is a Contact Me page there and I respond as soon as I see it. I was dxed BPD right after shock to excuse away the confusion from the shock. I was lucky that the dx was taken off later on, but years after that, my ex-friends distance-diagnosed me with BPD and somehow that got spread around. I also have “paranoia” on my social record, which caused me to lose all my friends. I have not really recovered from that.

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  • Dr. Moss, I agree with you on this one. While we already know these diagnoses are harmful, that is, our community here is very aware that a diagnosis will marginalize you, put you out of work, wreck your reputation, etc. As for drug harm, that’s publicly available knowledge also. There are varied reasons why people get into the rabbit hole of MH, often force or coercion or not knowing that it’s a rabbit hole.

    However, the question remains, why do people stay patients? Why do people stay even when, if they took a broader look at the situation, they see that MH world did not help, but actually caused deterioration. Why do so few doctors notice? Why do patients accept the deterioration instead of taking action?

    Those that are court-committed clearly do not want to take the drugs and often do not agree with the diagnosis. I’m certainly not referring to those who are in MH by force. Force wouldn’t be necessary if the patient can start identifying as a mental patient. Most of us did, sadly.

    When you identify as an MP without the use of force, or if force is only used occasionally, then the establishment has what it wants. Permanent patients.

    Therapists push this, many without realizing what they’re doing. Docs invariably do also. There’s a lot of peer pressure in the system to identify as an MP, and all this serves a purpose for the establishment.

    I believe it also serves a purpose for the patients. Many are terrified of being taken off disability payments because that means a major source of income will be cut off. Many are afraid to stop therapy for a variety of reasons. Many are also afraid to stop drugs, even if they suspect they might not even need them anymore.

    The System provides security for many. It’s a place to go. It’s where your friends are. It might even be where you have an identity or social role. Many patients still believe it’s helpful, even though they aren’t sure why and can’t seem to say exactly how it has improved their lives. They’re told it’s life-saving, and many still believe this.

    There are many redeeming factors about being a patient. That nice nurse or nice mental health worker. That one doc or therapist that you can spill your guts to. Therapy, which for many, feels good. But it’s all a trap. Every trap out there, including religious cults, has redeeming qualities, which is why we get sucked in in the first place, and often, why we can’t drag ourselves away.

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  • Both Sides, you gotta realize that most of us were deeply harmed either by individual carers or by institutions. Or both. I for one am proud to be opinionated and biased toward the underdog. After all, most of us weren’t even allowed to express our opinions. We were silenced or discredited. You don’t like it here on the ward? Don’t worry, it’s just a symptom of your paranoia. And so on.

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  • Exactly, Kindred. In a presentation I gave I likened diagnosis to a college major. We really did boast on the wards. It was a status symbol. Especially among the “almost dying” crowd. That can even win you brownie points. Or, it was like, “What are you in here for?” Like what crime did you do? Depression, bipolar, these were the sins we committed, just by being labeled, that got us in there.

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  • Daniel, I also had a negative experience with TELL. I know of another website that’s better. I also thought the TELL staff seemed to think that therapy abuse is rare and not only that, THEY own the market on it and it’s not possible, in their eyes, that anyone outside their private club has ever been abused by a therapist. Not only that, they recommended therapy to heal from therapy abuse! Makes no sense! They ended up being really rude and I gave up. No, they aren’t the only ones who have ever been abused. These are the kinds of stories that come out years, or even decades later. We’ll hear about it big time in 20 years when many of the victims and perps are already dead. Do we get an apology from the Vatican of Therapy? Do we get our day in court? Trauma IS damage, it can wreck your social life and even cause you to lose a job or lose your marriage. I had to recover from Maria and a few of the others. Not all were abusive. I had to get over therapy addiction, also. I found it was just as hard to leave an abusive therapist as it is to leave an abusive partnership.

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  • Daniel, I have had my share of that sort of therapist. Typically, the initial red flag MAY be that you start to feel like the “therapy” is life-saving. You might worship the therapist thinking he/she is the greatest, or the One and Only. The therapist perpetuates this (possibly without realizing it). You feel like the ONLY one you can possibly confide in is the therapist. Yes, it is a setup.

    Another red flag is that you seem to be on a roller-coaster, that, oddly, started when you started therapy with this therapist. Or you started having thoughts of suicide around that time that have ended up ongoing.

    You may observe favoritism. The therapist sees another patient four times a week, or insists on seeing you that many times, or keeps you late a lot.

    The therapist keeps changing the rules, adds extra contracts, etc. The therapist contacts you without your contacting her/him first.

    Threats. The therapist frequently threatens to drop you, or to have you hospitalized, or to send the police.

    Accusations. The therapist accuses you of things you hadn’t dreamed of doing. Overall distrustful relationship. Fear-based, frequently punishes the patient, sulks, goes into a huff or otherwise acts unprofessionally.

    Sexual advances, sexual remarks that are out of place, etc. Contacting your family or anyone in your life without your permission.

    Refuses to take your side in any conflict. Denies that another therapist or doctor harmed you, or denies that you were treated badly in a facility. Automatically sides with the clinician.

    Calls you psychotic repeatedly, claims you are paranoid when you are telling the truth, calls you dangerous when you aren’t. Jeering, eye-rolling, gaslighting.

    Physical abuse. Or denies that another person abused you when you are telling the truth.

    Bosses you around and runs your life. Threatens to have your kids taken away or other loss of rights. Character-bashing.

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  • Where is the research on what happens to a person after being given massive polydoses of antipsychotics? I was on 900 of Seroquel, 20 of Abilify, and 6 of Risperdal, simultaneously, and also concurrent with 600 of Lamictal, 300 of Topamax, and a third anticonvulsant, Trileptal. All at once.

    I believe I have permanent insomnia, eight years of resulting exhaustion now with no improvement, as a result of all those anti-p drugs. Nothing helps except to get my hands on some drugs, which gives me partial relief.

    I am scared to death to see a sleep doc because of their tendency to misdiagnose and worsen what is already a bad situation.

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  • Fred, it took me decades to admit it. It is also not easy to say I faked my way into hospitals because of the backlash I could get. However, people do not realize the real reason I did it. Every time I had trouble with my eating disorder (dieting cycle, really) I had to take action. I tried, multiple times, to get my therapists and psychs to listen. They never did, and apparently even those who had known me for years had no awareness that I had ED. I went 30 years like that. During that time, if the binge eating got out of control, I would say the word “death” in my session and that got my hospitalized. I now had temporary relief from bingeing. I dreaded leaving because I knew I’d be back at it again. I lied and said I was “suicidal” just to stay in there. Every time I left I felt disappointed, let down because they failed to hear me, failed to recognize what was really bothering me. I went back over and over due to the “unfinished business” feeling. It never worked.

    To most, I appeared “bipolar” but the truth is, if you’re so stuffed with food you can barely move, you’re going to be depressed. I was called “rapid cycling,” for obvious reasons. All those years I figured I must have a brain disorder causing the eating binges. I latched onto bipolar. It took me decades to figure out (on my own) that it wasn’t a brain disorder, that the erratic eating was affecting my moods, not the other way around. I had to realize that the diet had caused the ED. Starvation will affect you for years, changes the way insulin and other chemicals act in your body, and also can change your mentality and outlook. Repeated binge eating will cause you to have insulin spiking and this can go on and on. Breaking the cycle was essential for me (I knew this, but the psychs were just plain clueless!) and the only way I could do it, back then, was to get myself locked up.

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  • I would have made the exact same observations myself. I did see and know patients who begged for a diagnosis, loved being diagnosed and were happy to walk around practically boasting about it like it was their college major. Some were happy because that meant “there was a treatment,” in other words, they might get some drugs like Klonopin, which was always a bonus, like a lollipop for certain patients. Many really were drug-seeking. They even switched doctors when the first doc refused to give them Ativan or whatever they could fake it and get.

    When I got my diagnosis I kept asking myself how on earth I would live up to it. How was I going to be a convincing voice-hearer if I didn’t really hear voices? Should I lie? What if they ask me what they’re saying and I hadn’t a clue what voices say?

    One time I invented a delusion and I admit I wasn’t good at it. It didn’t pass inspection. It was far easier to act bipolar after they figured out I wasn’t schiz. But really, I was always disappointed at how poorly I fit their molds, any of them.

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  • My dad did work for NAMI as a monitor in the state institutions. He remarked that the people who worked in those places were extremely low paid. He noticed that they were not treated well, but of course, they got to leave at the end of the shift and the prisoners there had no rights and no pay. He also observed that there are some positions in health care that were about the only job that certain immigrant populations could get.

    I was abused by “sitters” while I was on a medical ward. I noticed that they, too, were treated badly. Not as badly as they treated me, but badly. Overall, immigrants get treated badly anyway.

    And I can give many examples. The way the doctors spoke of the sitters was pitiful. They were dismissive of them and verbally insulted them. To have to put up with that, day in and day out, would certainly wear on a person. If you refuse or speak out you can lose your job. It was a matter of an oppressed population beating on the one population less powerful, the patients. It happened a lot!

    One of them told me they had cornered her into working overtime. She was supposed to meet her kid at the school bus stop after school. The school had decided that if she did not show up they were calling DCF. Lose your job or lose your kids.. Either way, you lose.

    Most were unkind. They pushed their religion on me and called me names, verbally abused, physically abused, stared at me when I was changing, wouldn’t let me pee alone, jeered at me repeatedly, insisted on having the TV on all night long, and wouldn’t leave my side even though there wasn’t any evidence that I was at all at risk. I actually remember the “nice ones,” since they were a rare blessing. The resulting trauma affects my ability to be physically close with anyone. That includes sex or impending sex. I panic and exit. All from hospital abuse trauma. Never mind having a hard time getting along with people.

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  • I knew people who refused to talk to me, stating that I should only talk to a therapist. I other words, they were able to quickly excuse themselves by claiming they didn’t have expertise on the commonplace life issues I was experiencing. Why? I was a mental patient having these issues. Like regular ole stuff like isolation and loneliness were somehow different because I was an MP. So that, of course, was very isolating having been told over and over that I’m not worth listening to, that only a therapist could put up with me, etc. I’ve learned that this was just a way to get rid of me.

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  • Hello Jane, A big hug and…welcome! I’m so glad you wrote what you did. It very well could have been my story. After I stopped all psych treatment including therapy, I got better! Why is this story telling itself over and over and yet, mainstream media seems to ignore us. The usual story is that a person stops psych treatment and then, relapses. Now for some reason, that’s not the story! We are getting stronger and now we even have (sort of) a community of us.

    I am also from the Boston area and I was in the psych system 35 years. I’m 61 and got employed last year. I try not to look back too much. I was on “antipsychotics” and “mood stabilizers” which were to treat the Diagnosis of the Day, whatever they found most profitable, and sometimes, they chose the diagnoses that were best at silencing me. It did not work!

    It was the brainwashing that was most crucial for me to overcome. That and getting some friends in my life. It all comes back. Very slowly. Remember that, and never give up!

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  • I can give an example. I went to therapy asking for help for an eating disorder in 1981. They did not know what eating disorders were back then. They never heard me for the next 30 years of intensive therapy. One therapist after another after another…most of them never knew I had an ED even though I said it many times.

    I can’t count the number of diagnoses I ended up with, the cocktails, the lockup situations, the “programs” that promised to help and did not, and the shock treatments that nearly did me in.

    I suspect that the world of mental health is in such hopeless shape that what Eric is suggesting here is more or less a dream, not something that can possibly happen. I don’t think there’s hope for psychotherapy since most therapists worship the DSM and psychiatry. And they called all that “help.” It wasn’t.

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  • The best therapy I had ever heard of lasted one session. A guy I knew had been diagnosed with a hopeless condition called epilepsy. What was incorrect about the diagnosis was the permanence of his seizure condition. It is very common for teens to have seizures resulting from rapid hormonal changes. Without realizing that the epilepsy was temporary, he got a vasectomy, because he felt it would be irresponsible to pass along a disease to any offspring. Then he found out the truth: He did not have a seizure disorder anymore.

    The man became despondent over this. He bemoaned that he had destroyed his chances of having children. He even became suicidal. At this point, he decided to try therapy.

    The therapy lasted one session. The therapist told him that usually, vasectomies can be reversed. This bit of information-sharing was all the man needed, and thankfully, the therapist knew enough not to turn him into a permanent mental patient. The man had the necessary surgery, went on with his life, and was never suicidal after that.

    Unfortunately, this is not how it usually goes. People get addicted to the appointments and pampering, end up with the nasty habit of too much self-disclosure, become self-absorbed, and all this leads to chronicity. Therapy can be an awful crime, a terrible thing to do to a person.

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  • I don’t understand why so many people blindly obey orders even when the rules and policies are totally illogical. I know some do it out of fear, fear of being kicked out, or fear of unseen, unspecified punishment. Usually people obey simply because most of the others around them are also obeying.

    Many policies are based on distrust of the constituents to think for themselves. Then when those in power see that one or two do think for themselves, the original thinkers are banished or shamed.

    It is the way that people are. We saw it in the schools and in most workplaces. Half of the USA is dissatisfied with their jobs. The main reason people quit is not because they leave for better pay. They leave mostly due to ingratitude of the management.

    Most shocking is the blind obedience of many nurses and lower staff who obey orders knowing that what they are doing is inhumane. Some get a kick out of it. Others go along with it out of fear.

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  • If it’s something you heal from, then yes, you’re implying disease or disorder. I have seen those complaints about these so-called narcissists. The anti-narc community loves to separate the world into two halves, the Evil Narcs, and those that aren’t Narcs. They’ll even go so far as to say it’s contagious and that you have to stay away from them or you’ll “catch” it. This is demonizing people, othering them. It’s pretty easy to say, “He’s a narcissist,” spread that around, and then, the poor guy is alone and isolated. That ain’t healing.

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  • I find it very sad that anyone would call another human being “toxic.” Where is the poison? Where is the radiation or dangerous germs? I would never call another human being “toxic” since that is really a euphemism for mentally ill or personality disordered. By all means there are toxic workplaces and toxic social situations, but no human being is toxic. It is a pseudo-diagnosis. What is behind it? It is a declaration of that person’s inferiority, and denial of their human worthiness. Why claim that a person is diseased? It’s really okay not to like another person, or to fail to understand that person. Why can’t we leave it at that, rather than excuse our dislike by calling the disliked person “toxic”? We may not feel comfortable with our own feelings, or our lack of empathy, but just leave it at that without claiming the person is diseased.

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  • I am pretty sure I am an anarchist, too, now that I have read your book and got some clarification on what anarchy is. This is why employment (working for boss) never appealed to me. I like having the money but it wears on you if you don’t have the opportunity to use your mind. Very few jobs require the intellect that college required. Some don’t want to hire anyone who actually thinks for themselves. They prefer blind obedience. I do not fit in at all. They liked me at that last job but they kept badgering me to obey, even when obeying meant doing things that were illogical.

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  • I was a member of a supposedly “liberal” church that claimed to be welcoming, but that turned out to be hypocrisy. They didn’t include anyone they did not like, and this meant pushing out the poor, being unwelcoming to black people and immigrants, and of course, anyone deemed to be nutso they felt too embarrassed to include.

    A lot of groups that claim to be liberal are just hypocrites. They include only those they want to include. Snobbery prevails. The elite left, let’s say. The elite right, too.

    Oh, shall I say the Elite Antipsych community, too? Elitism is rampant.

    I am enjoying your book so much, Bruce. I even quit my job, sick of being bossed around by a 21-year-old. Time for a change.

    Even at my other job, the one I like, I hate the useless rules. I think rules are designed for those who refuse to think for themselves. They need slogans to help them make decisions that the rest of us can make just as well using common sense. Today I told my supervisor that I refuse to follow a protocol if it doesn’t apply or if it’s illogical.

    In 2011, nurses and doctors followed a protocol, water restriction, that nearly killed me. They could have done the logical thing and considered I am a lithium survivor. They did not, because they were too obedient to make a responsible, humane decision.

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  • It’s about time MIA talked about antisemitism since it is rampant and has affected many of us. When I was a kid I heard it all the time. I was the bad one who had killed their Jesus. It was all the fault of the Jews. We were sinners who didn’t have Santa Claus. We didn’t have Easter baskets and we sang gibberish every Saturday (wrong day, they said) at Shul. We were outsiders who had to go to Hebrew school and miss all the fun.

    Yes, I got over it. I don’t see it as a major trauma in my life.

    I can guarantee, if your son ever gets into the Mental Health System, he’ll see worse antisemitism than he ever got at school. I had them calling me spoiled, a Jewish American Princess, and for years they criticized my “typical Jewish upbringing.” They said my mother had a “Jewish mother complex.” All baloney.

    What was my childhood really like? My parents took us into the mountains, taught us how to find the constellations and find our way by the angle of the sun or moon. They taught us how to navigate in the woods, even if there wasn’t a trail. We learned to cook over a campfire or a camping stove, to canoe on rivers and to ski in the coldest of the winter. My mom recycled long before any other mom did. She knew that sugar was bad for you well before Sugar Blues came out. She loved to challenge me to a fun game of Guess That Composer. I admit occasionally she won, especially when it came to discerning those Italian composers whose names all ended in ini.

    Dad taught me good judgement and good morals. He taught me that doing what is right is more important than doing what you are told. He knew this because he remembered the Holocaust. We were told we could not ever forget it, though we did not directly discuss it much.

    Most important, my parents believed in me. Keep on having faith in your children even if you disagree, even if you think you know better. You very well likely do, but let them learn. Encourage independent thought and let them know they can think anything, that no one should force or coerce them to believe things that they do not want to believe. This is one of the core Jewish beliefs that I still cling to, Freedom of Thought. Let them teach themselves to make it in the world. They will.

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  • As an example of the above, I have known people to read articles about “highly sensitive people.” This is a pseudodiagnosis, and it has harmed many people. As soon as they latch onto the self-diagnosis of this deficiency, “highly sensitive,” suddenly, the looping effect takes hold and they will become the diagnosis. This is a terrible trap. I know people who latched onto that diagnosis and now have social problems, difficulty maintaining friendships, and even have trouble keeping a job. I have no clue how to tell a person to stop this self-diagnosis, that the very idea of that something is terribly wrong with them is poisoning their minds.

    There is no such thing as “highly sensitive.” Some people are more prone to be observant of certain details. Others observe and remember totally different details. I notice workplace unfairness a lot sooner than others. I am the first to complain, often the only one who dares to say anything.

    Understandably, I am bothered when I have to take a call at work and I hear the caller being prompted by another person in the room. One time, I took a call from a guy who was clearly being abused by his girlfriend. He told me his girlfriend found out that he had purchased our product and now, he said, she was making him close the account with us. He said he regretted it. Knowing she could not hear me, I told him, “You can always sign up again, don’t worry.” Meanwhile, she continued to yell at him and cuss him out in the background.

    Afterward, I approached my supervisor and really, I wish now that I hadn’t. I was shocked at her lack of human compassion and lack of understanding of the significance of the event. She was condescending and told me to “get back to work.”

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  • One of the best therapists I have ever seen I saw over Skype. After I told her what happened to me she looked at me and said, “You don’t need a therapist. You need a lawyer.”

    What we need are people, degreed or not, who can point out exactly why and how “therapy” violates people rights. We need people to steer others, by example, away from therapy. We need role models who can illustrate that “problems” can be solved without aid of the mental health profession.

    Some of us need validation, just someone to listen and agree, “Yes, that therapist broke the law and broke all ethics to which they were bound as therapists.”

    Decades ago, say, in the 1960s, therapy was not very popular. Why? Because rigorous self-examination was not popular. People did not worry about every little thing that was wrong with them.

    As soon as you point out a person’s intrinsic deficiencies, or what you see are deficiencies, it sets a person down a very bad rabbit hole that’s hard to get out of. Sadly, all you need to do is to suggest a deficiency for the person to go into a tailspin.

    Yesterday I was on the phone with a guy, a free “business coach” session. I told him I’d like to have a more meaningful job, but I can’t seem to get hired at one. This guy knew nothing of my background and I didn’t tell him I spent 35 years as “disabled, severely mentally ill.” Knowing nothing about how far I have come (including currently dealing with a terminal illness), he ended up telling me I was “pessimistic” which, sadly, got me started on thinking I had a deficiency. Good thing I know better than to dwell on it or worry about it. If I was that flawed, I’d be miserable, and I’m certainly not.

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  • Regarding “fast metabolizer,” I have reason to believe this may have been why I ended up on gigantic cocktails. I have diabetes insipidus, which was from lithium. This means I metabolize water much faster than the average human. We used to talk about this way back when. People were saying they were “washing out their meds,” which was likely partially true. If the drug is metabolized in the kidneys and has certain other properties, you will literally wash it out of your body due to high water consumption.

    Diabetes insipidus can be treated with drugs. They usually use a potassium-sparing diuretic, which acts paradoxically and helps you retain water so you’re not so thirsty. This isn’t a good thing for your kidneys, as these diuretics will speed up kidney decay. I was never treated for DI because it took those idiot doctors nearly three decades to diagnose me. This is insane because it’s very easy to diagnose. I am realizing also that high water metabolism is likely keeping me alive right now. I do not need, or want, “help,” because they help will harm.

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  • Actually, Jan, we live in different countries so maybe the situation is different. People have to get by somehow on the unlivable “disability” income. Most of them are working and not telling the government. You get in a lot of trouble if you’re caught. My friend who had her own very successful business decided to claim “depression” as disability but kept the business going. She put the business in a family member’s name. Not legal but people have to get by and they do what they can. Many I know on disability also get money from their families, but in the US it has to be done in cash. You can’t have a penny going through your bank account. My friend ended up so broke she had to cheat on her taxes.

    There are also people who end up with an enormous amount of money from these side-jobs. There was a big news story about a local fortune-teller who made huge amounts of money but something wasn’t legal about it (can’t recall) so she got caught. I believe that happened when the justice system got wind of her activities and they had an undercover cop pose as a customer.

    I know a lady who sells her own specialty laundry soap and she has made good money doing this. My coworker sells veggies from her garden. I have a neighbor who has a tiny garden where he raises these amazing flowers. He regularly cuts them down and gives them away. He gave me some and I was so touched by this I almost cried. Home chicken coops are very popular here, even in the city, though you’d need a lot of laying chickens to make anything substantial.

    I suck so badly at selling anything at all. However, I’ve made a point of studying how to sell. (What is a job interview but advertising and selling yourself, and of course, lying a little….) I hope to get skilled enough at it to get my book to sell, which I hope will be this year. I’ve also studied how to delegate “nuisance” tasks. It’s a win-win because whoever you hire can use you as a reference, you pay them, the job gets done. You save time and they get a another sale to add to their accomplishments. That, in fact, is community.

    I couldn’t possibly do this if I was still in the System. MH is a fail-fail situation all around. You won’t live well if you’re living as an inferior, subhuman creature. You’ll be lucky if you’re still alive after they get through with you.

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  • Melody,
    I also live in Western PA. Yes, it is big state so just saying “Western PA” could be anywhere from Erie to Greene County. I would like to meet you if possible or connect somehow. We need some activism around here! I can’t seem to find your website. Those brain zaps sound awful. I never had them and never knew much about them. Maybe they mainly come from antidepressants? I was coerced onto anti-p drugs and mood non-stabilizers for decades, and my kidneys and thyroid were harmed from lithium.

    Julie

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  • I agree, Kindred, but for the most part people who have been in the System are told they cannot work or are in some way incapable. Most of us have has been brainwashed to believe we are less capable than we really are. In fact I do not know a single person who was treated in the System with expectations that were too high. Whatever capabilities you had were treated a symptoms of a disease, so they weren’t capabilities anymore. Some of our capabilities were a threat to them. God forbid, an artist might capture the scenes in mental hospital. A writer will write about what it was really like. Were in in law school? Well? What were we good at now? Being good in “group”? ugh.

    Because we were brainwashed to be more dependent than we needed to be, I generally stress trying to reach a point of increased independence, especially dependence on psychiatrists and therapists, or at least stop seeing them as gods on high.

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  • People do not realize that HUD and all the handouts are not a free ticket. In order to qualify for HUD your income is already so low you cannot afford a decent place, or any place. Once you get in your chances of ever moving out are very little. You will not be able to “transfer” to another HUD if the one you are in sucks. They put you through the worst hoops if you want to do that. You have to apply, and then wait and wait. Unless you have a Section 8 certificate you can’t relocate. Ever.

    Living conditions…well, if you are in senior housing you might like a nursing home more. I hated senior housing! I hated living with people I had nothing in common with. It felt very institutional.

    The handouts cause dependency. I heard that fewer than 0.5% ever get off disability. If you are on disability your chances of a landlord accepting you are next to nil. I had to lie and say it was “retirement.” It worked!!! But that won’t work unless you are over 50. Once you get a good history with one landlord then moving to a better place will be much easier, since you are not reporting to the landlord that you currently live in HUD. If you work locally and tell your employer your address you will be giving yourself away…and your chances of getting a job, again, are fewer.

    Some people do manage to sell on Ebay or Etsy. I knew a guy who cut hair on the side. Massage is not hard to learn. Getting paid gigs as a musician (weddings, etc). Sewing clothes, selling your art (photography is likely the one visual art that could be very profitable) or selling your psych drugs. Fortune-telling (i.e. “readings,”) if you can convince other that this is valid, will be instant money. All of this must be done illegally, that is, without reporting to the gov’t, or you are screwed unless your business is pulling in enough to live on. That is, if they find out you’ve been doing what you must do to survive, you’re a criminal.

    The key is to get out. Get away from mental health social circles and quit the mentality of dependency. Do not use the System’s language. These are the hardest things for many of us. Learned dependency takes years to shake off.

    This is weird…I feel that I have ditched the mentality well enough. One day, roughly a month ago, I came home to find my keys were not in my pocket. For a split second I was transformed back into a dependent mental patient. I was suddenly thinking of “staff” that would somehow rescue me. Or a therapist who was that instant paid friend. I’m so glad that sudden flashback to the old days only lasted a second until I realized my keys were in my other pocket.

    I believe this will happen again if I am ever in a really scary situation. It would have to be extreme though. Like if I was hit by a car or beat up.

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  • Kindred, the naturopaths that I know are far removed from all this. You have to have a certain amount of self-preservation around these Western medicine folks. Yes I still flinch when I have to walk past an urgent care center and every time I thank my lucky stars that I am walking past….as fast as I can!

    I agree, they actually justify the HIPAA violations. I did call a hospital once to point out the HIPAA violation they did and they apologized. That happened at the surgical center when I had my eyes done. They said some stuff to me when the guy giving me a ride home was in the room. An apology was enough. Plenty enough. They admitted fault and said they would be more careful next time.

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  • Oh sorry that I wasn’t clear. Do not go to doctors that take insurance. I also went to Urgent Care one time and I knew that they’d find out that I was on Medicare at the time. I left the ER AMA when I realized they weren’t going to do anything good for me medically.

    There are plenty of naturopaths that you can find if you look for them. Not ones hired by hospitals! Ones that work entirely independently. No real naturopath will go along with the insurance system. Contact me if you want the names of a few. There’s no reason to see a Western doc if you do your own research, including reading what various naturopaths have to say. You choose! This, by the way, is why I’m alive and not dead. I make my own choices, allow myself room for error, adjust when necessary, and lo and behold, I’m far more healthy and energetic than I was the entire time I was in the MH system. Even with kidneys that don’t really work.

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  • Wow. Just wow, KS. I think you are right. I personally do not see doctors for anything. I had my eyes fixed because I had to. Yes they had some old info. They knew I had kidney disease. They didn’t access my old Boston records and now it’s been so long (six years since last shrink visit) that I doubt they will. They had access to ophthamology records from 2016.

    This is what I do, and I recommend it to anyone. Do not use insurance! As KS said, do not see a doctor unless you get shot or hit by a car. I do get blood tests but I pay out of pocket for them and I don’t go to a doctor to get them prescribed. The results are not shared. They might send an email telling me my levels are off, but that is it. Like I don’t know this already!

    Most naturopaths will not share with your doctor, but beware of the ones that insist on it. They aren’t real naturopaths! Any alternative practitioner may advise but you aren’t obliged to take that advice. That is the beauty of it. You decide, and you take responsibility for your own decisions.

    Read up on stuff on your own. Take everything with a grain of salt. Ask yourself if what you are reading is logical. If it sounds like a scam, it likely is.

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  • Unfortunately you usually can’t tell much from a website. Looks like the person with username ILNC has now decided to bow out. I do not understand why he came here. This is a website that, I hope, does not validate any mental health “treatment,” and certainly would not endorse any treatment. Unfortunately, since a lot of so-called professionals want to get in on the act (after all, MIA loves to publish people with letters after their names!) then what has happened is that some professionals get to push their services, programs, etc, and I don’t even need to name names here. I just keep wondering why. We’re not going back. And that’s the whole point of all this. Never again.

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  • So, ILNC, what is your organization? Are you going to be transparent about that? Interestingly, Massachusetts General Hospital has the best of the best reputations, yet while I was there I was deprived of water to the point where I would have died if I had not gotten out of there. Mass General runs McLean, which is a cesspool of bad care. Also, my highly esteemed MGH psychiatrist threatened to drug me until I could not write, telling me that her MGH administrators wanted to silence me. If MGH was so great, why didn’t they inform me that I my kidneys were failing from lithium? Why did they keep me in the dark when warning me might have saved me a lot of grief? Great reputation, sure. They manipulate the statistics in their favor, just like all of them. (It’s really easy to classify a wrongful death as something else, you know…)

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  • Michael, I have a masters degree in creative writing with a concentration in memoir. You cannot just toss out stories told by people who are really there. To me, these stories mean far more than any statistics compiled by someone who was never on the treatment end of things there. I’m not saying the place is good or bad. I think MIA as a whole cares far too much about statistics and does not value stories enough. Storytelling is how we move people, how we reach them and evoke emotion and perhaps also inspire to action.

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  • Yes, KS, I too have met very cruel nurses. Many were just plain incompetent. I remember ages ago helping the nursing staff write notes with proper grammar. Some did not know how to spell the simplest words. Even words like schizophrenia. They couldn’t spell it. You wonder about the quality of care in such circumstances. Yes, they can do stuff like take blood pressure, but many weren’t too good at critical thinking. Or they didn’t even know what critical thinking was. We were the ones who with the broken brains, remember?

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  • Bruce, I am loving your book! I wanted to tell you that. I have reviewed it on Amazon (posted as JG) and I’m not even done with it. I also wanted to write a review of it for MIA but who knows if they’ll let me.

    Anyway, I have to laugh. I started a new position. At work we only have bits and pieces of downtime, during which the workers either chat with each other or, oddly enough, play with children’s fidget toys. I decided I was not going to waste my mind. I would sit there and write but that is not allowed. I brought a hard copy book with me but the boss said I can’t read during work, with the exception of their stuff, which is kept in a looseleaf notebook at my desk. Rules rules rules!

    I am sure you will not mind my creative solution to the dilemma. I have the Kindle copy of your book. I managed to print out a bunch of pages. I brought those pages to work and when the supervisor wasn’t around, stuck the pages into the notebook. Now, while I might appear to be studying that darned notebook an awful lot, I’m actually getting my Bruce Levine fix!

    I have challenged authority for as long as I can remember. I remember being in a playpen and when my parents weren’t looking I ripped a hole in the playpen mattress. I “decorated” my furniture with blue crayon during nap time. My mom left the room while she was cutting my hair. Oh how fun it was to snip snip snip! My mom had to take me to a professional hairdresser to fix the mess.

    I have challenged what I felt was illegitimate authority here at MIA (favoritism) and also when I was on the ISEPP mailing list (failure to acknowledge the harms of “therapy”).

    All my life I have been shocked and disappointed in my fellow humans who insist on not saying speaking up, even when they’ve known something was immoral. However, it took me decades before I ended up speaking up at the hospitals about the obvious wrongs. Again, I was shocked and disappointed that my fellow patients didn’t just insist on remaining silent, but they turned against me. They called me psychotic even.

    For instance, when I spoke up about the lack of telephone privacy on an eating disorders ward, I got the following responses from my fellow patients: “But we don’t have human rights.” “But you have to follow what the staff say.” “Who cares if they aren’t following the law. None of the hospitals do!”

    These are all logical fallacies.

    The “staff” were far worse. They said the human rights laws that I pointed out did not exist. I pointed out that there was a private phone in one of the rooms that they commonly called “The Yellow Room.” I asked to use the phone in the Yellow Room and they told me “We don’t have a yellow room!” insisting I was psychotic. Then, when I showed them the policies that were in the way, way back of the patient handbook, they had to take a different tactic. One of the nurses said, “These human rights are only for some patients, not for all. We will let you have your way. But you’d better stay quiet about it.” Finally, I said that patient rights laws applied to all patients, not just the “good” ones.

    I had a home inspection a while back as my rental home was being sold. A couple of local cops showed up. It felt like a home invasion. Their report was full of exaggeration and disdain for the way I choose to live. It’s my choice, and my right, not to have fancy furniture! It isn’t messy in here but one or two empty boxes lying around constituted “trash strewn all over the home.” Not quite! I got a letter from the rental people saying the inspectors are coming back in 30 days and the place better be cleaned up. They never came.

    I have been inspired by your book, Bruce. If they ever contact me to tell me the inspectors are showing up, I’m going to ask them to show up in plain clothes, not uniforms. If they show me their badges I will tell them I do not need to see proof of their elevated social status. They’re not arresting me, for godsakes!

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  • So, being victim to racism is the new disease? Huh?

    So one day, in my neighborhood, my friends informed me about Santa Claus. We were barely out of toddlerhood. I went back and asked my mom about that. She explained that we do not have Santa because we were Jews.

    Was I suffering from Santa deficiency? What is the therapy for that? Is the world of psych, psychology and psychiatry arm in arm, insistent that they’re the ones to go saving everyone, now going to make me role-play with a stuffed Rudolf?

    Why should being who I am, including my heritage, be a disorder? This type of therapy seems to reinforce this, encouraging minorities to go right down the rabbit hole.

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  • Equally hurtful is accusing parents of abuse based on no evidence except projection on the part of the “clinician.” We already know that people who are less well off or are of a minority group are more frequently victims of this. Immigrants also get accused disproportionately. If you have MI on record you’re more likely to have your kids taken away.

    I’ll never forget the antisemitic remarks those damn doctors continued to heap on my family. If I were to smack them 100 times for each time they said “Jewish mother” I think my hands would fall off before I was done.

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  • Of course there’s such thing as repressed memories. There is a real danger, though, when you go to a therapist who supposedly extracts those memories. Therapists are full of biases and they’ve got their own agenda. I’ve known a few who were child-abused themselves so they project this onto all their patients. It is really a dangerous thing to do. I credit therapy for splitting up my family for a number of years. Thankfully the effect wasn’t permanent.

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  • Shift of consciousness may, or may not, change how you view reality, but I don’t think it does a thing to influence anything except our own actions, thoughts, beliefs. I don’t think an attitude change or “shift of consciousness” (the same thing!) are going to change the actions of others. Actually, to do so, if it were possible, would be a freakish act of control.

    If a woman is being beaten or abused by her husband, she can do all she wants with her attitude but that isn’t going to change him. Why? Because if this were true then he would be beating her not because he’s being cruel but due to her supposed “attitude.” Obviously this is a very blameful approach to take.

    She might, though, read a cool book, or meet a new group of friends who influence her to have the courage to walk out. Here, her attitude change didn’t stop him or change him, but gave her the courage to leave.

    On the other hand, lack of her own money is going to be one of those huge roadblocks to a successful exodus, one that can’t be produced by an attitude, or wishful thinking. Maybe luck will work better.

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  • Sam, I truly believe that false memories can indeed be induced, and often, induced by therapy. It’s not hard to do this, as a mere suggestion can alter one’s thinking about a past event and can cause a person to re-frame that event in a negative or positive way. Either of these can be harmful.

    For instance, if a child is abused by his/her parents, a suggestive remark by a therapist might cause the now-grown child to believe that their parents were “doing what was in their best interest,” even though it very well may not have been.

    In the other direction, I have seen therapists re-frame non-traumatic events as traumatic, in order to point out parental harm that didn’t even exist. I witnessed one patient who was told repeatedly that there was something terribly wrong with his upbringing, and yet, the events that this patient later told me about were not incidents of child abuse or neglect. The patient rejected therapy early on, thankfully.

    I cannot tell you how often culture played a part in this. My Jewish upbringing was constantly called a dysfunction by the therapists. I didn’t know whom to blame for my supposed mental illness so I ended up thinking my parents were bad parents. To fill in the void that resulted because I couldn’t actually recall any specific events, I filled in the blanks with false memories. Vague ones, but the harm was done, sad to say. It takes years or even decades to undo this.

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  • Anything at all can be a tool. If you call it that or recognize that you’re using it that way. I had friends back in the day who went to psychs solely to serve their addiction to the pills. The idea was to go to a shrink to get your fix, whether it was anti-d’s, anti-p’s or of course, benzos. Only they didn’t use the word “fix.” They would go and plead their cases, claiming just how “anxious” they were, and would leave with their next month’s worth of hits. They got mad when the shrink wouldn’t be their dealer, claiming the shrink didn’t understand or wasn’t “doing anything” to help them. They never realized that addiction and dependency on the pills was the cause.

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  • Here is my favorite line: “The beautiful thing about psychiatry’s pronouncements is that no one can ever prove them wrong.”

    This is very true, not only of diagnosers, but of lay people also. If another person views you as psychotic, personality-disordered, or otherwise MI, you don’t stand a chance, and you can never prove them wrong. I have tried to point this out to Governor Wolf (Pennsylvania) because of this new proposed legislation on gun control. The first two parts are fine but they also want to label people as “extreme risk” and then treat them with force, the object being to remove all weapons from them. I have pointed out to him that to be thus labeled wrecks a person’s life. And what if the “extreme risk” determination is incorrect? Now what?

    He and the other legislators proposed that if a person contests the “extreme risk” diagnosis, they should present their case in court. I told Gov Wolf that this won’t work, as insanity, once proclaimed, cannot be disproved. I think this was determined by the field of philosophy and logic quite some time ago.

    For this reason, I recommend that if you are seen as dangerous by a set group of people you should remove yourself from that situation ASAP and start over where they don’t know you. And then, just act responsible and people will never know about your misfortunes of the past.

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  • All this data-collecting must have been a huge effort. But you didn’t answer the most basic question. What is it like there?

    You can collect all the data you want on “outcome” on places like McLean but that won’t tell you the food is inedible, the staff are mostly incompetent and poorly trained, and the place is filthy. The units are locked and they coerce or force you into accepting “treatment” you otherwise would reject.

    So the desired result? The patients are a lot quieter, aren’t they? What is the word used? Docile? The study even says so! Must be the best place on earth….

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  • Stephen did you ever take lithium? That WILL cause what you are experiencing. It can happen long after you are not taking the drug anymore. Even decades later, people’s kidneys fail. Muscle cramping (Charlie horses in any muscle including toes and fingers) are a sign that you could be headed for trouble. Get a renal panel done and READ IT, ask about creatinine level specifically. Oh, read my upcoming book, too. I talk a lot about that, discuss potassium at length.

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  • My degree in Creative Writing never got me a U job. I don’t even begin to fit the qualifications. They want a full work history, including teaching career, and list of publications.

    I have written ten books, published two of them. The second barely sold any copies in four years due to unfriending over psych abuse. I couldn’t twist arms anymore so I took it off the market and now give it away for free.

    I even find it hard to get a speaking engagement. They want fingerprints practically. I can’t even get an offer to do a reading, even though I have tried. The best I can get is to sit at a desk selling hard copies of my book at a bookstore. I didn’t want to do that. I did not want the embarrassment of leaving with a the same full stack of books I arrived with.

    You really have to sell yourself. I don’t like doing that. I’m finishing up a book right now and to ensure sales and availability to all I am selling it for a dollar a copy.

    Some of my fellow grads are saying the exact same thing. Book didn’t sell, couldn’t get a job, etc. Many went back to their former careers. I didn’t have a former career to return to so I ended up staying poor and got poorer.

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  • I do have some lithium orotate at home. I tried a very low dose of it for insomnia. It didn’t work, had no effect on sleep so I have not taken it since. I can’t believe anyone would recommend 60 whopping mgs of that stuff, either. I think anything more than 10mgs a day is unsafe for the kidneys. For some, such as elderly, people already damaged by lithium, or anyone with a physical health condition should take less than 10. Yes it is available in some drugstores, online vitamin suppliers, and in some health food stores.

    Just because it is a supplement does not mean it’s safe. As another example of a widely-distributed supplement is potassium ascorbate. This comes in 99mg size tablets and can be found in any drugstore. However, it is soooooo easy to overdose on potassium and then end up in the ER with a heart attack. For some people, though, they lose potassium or their levels are low, so for that population, potassium supplementation is medically necessary.

    I DO lose potassium due to damage from pharmaceuticals, but an entire pill of that stuff is too much for me. I rarely take it, but if I do I have to cut the pills in half.

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  • I also wonder about people who comment on here constantly. I wonder if they have lives outside of MIA. I wonder if maybe they need to gain some perspective on this. MIA is only a website. It may be a social hub, but folks on here aren’t real friends, they are people in cyberspace you interact with via cyberspace only (for the most part).

    I would encourage anyone to go out into your community. Talk to real people in real-life conversations, pick up the phone, and get a life outside of fake socializing.

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  • Sera you are far more likely to get your story into the media than most of us are.

    If you are going to use your own story as illustration, as you did in the workshop, I’d suggest putting it in third person: “This happened to someone I know.” Don’t say it was you. Just for future reference.

    In a recent job interview I was asked if I ever had a conflict with a coworker. I haven’t. I did have a conflict with a supervisor. She had deliberately picked on me and did what might qualify as workplace bullying. Instead of saying that happened to me, which would have made me look bad in the job interview, I stated that I witnessed her doing unethical things including belittling another worker. Here, of course, I put it in third person.

    All of life IS like a job interview. People constantly criticize and constantly seek out ways that we are faulty, abnormal, or diseased. We are all actors. We play roles, some of us many roles. Acting is lying, whether we realize it or are simply fooling ourselves.

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  • Screen time means different things. Blind people and people with other disabilities use so-called “screen time” to access assistive technology. Many kinds of assistive technology help folks who are disabled work their jobs and do other necessary things to sustain themselves.

    When I had cataracts I could not read a print book. The entire time I continued to read and write by using a screen. I enlarged the print and used color reversal. If I really believed “screen time” was harmful, I would have stopped reading and writing.

    Right now, in my work, I spend all day in front a “screen.” I have had no harmful effects. Why? I do not watch TV, I do not play video games, and I do not participate in fake socializing such as Facebook.

    I do believe that violent video games, television, and fake socializing are all very harmful to children and to just about anyone. Television is extremely violent, even the commercials involve violence. TV is noise pollution which harms our well-being. TV also involves a flickering screen (you won’t notice this unless you stop watching it for a while). The flickering light that constantly bombards people likely induces seizures and behavior problems.

    I do not have kids. If I did, I would raise them without a TV in the home. I would certainly not ban “screen time.” I would encourage my kid to learn to use various computer applications, to learn to type, and to learn to read the news with skepticism. I would teach my kid to question what they are told instead of blindly accepting it. I would also encourage time spent outdoors and encourage enjoyment of physical exercise.

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  • Getting more and more people to realize the truth will lead to fewer people acting as profit-generating “patients.” Without clientele psych will fail. In the process, while we warn others we need to make it very clear that this is a bogus science that doesn’t act in the best interest of the patient, but in their own best interest, and in the interest of the DSM, the drug companies, the medical device companies, and from the looks of it, the government also.

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  • Stephen, my guess is that your doc located old records. This will happen if the doc is affiliated with a hospital you were in, or any hospital connected to that one. Nowadays large hospitals are expanding and buying up smaller ones. This means increased record-sharing between these sister institutions. In order to escape you need to stop going to any doc or institution within that range of communication.

    Here’s an example: I could have relocated from Boston to Western Massachusetts, where I once lived, and been relatively safe. However, instinct told me not to move there. Shortly after I made this decision, Massachusetts General Hospital expanded into Western MA. So now, anyone affiliated with Cooley Dickinson hospital in Western MA would have access to my Boston records. Some of these huge hospitals expand into other states, usually adjacent states. For instance, the UPMC empire, which is centered in Pittsburgh, purchased most of the Pittsburgh hospitals and expanded not only outside the county but into neighboring Ohio.

    I know very few people who managed to escape the clutches of psychiatry without relocation. A lot depends on local laws and what the institutions can get away with. Years ago, you could simply go to another doctor across town but this is no longer a safe option. They WILL share. Count on it.

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  • I do not say “I overcame MI.’ That is not even accurate. I never fit their description of an MI person and was never disabled. What I did have to overcome was what psychiatry caused. Trauma, kidney disease, and low expectations of myself. All those were treatment-induced.

    I did have to “overcome” my eating disorder but that was ignored by my doctors for 30 years, so it was not “treated.”

    I do not tell doctors anything. I do not see doctors. I might tell my friends, but you have to be very careful whom you tell.

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  • This is making me sick. Maybe the MIA editors should have explained a few things to the author here. We don’t validate DSM diagnoses here. Any. And that includes so-called personality disorders. The basis of such labeling is based in eugenics, the assumption that some people just don’t make the grade.

    I’d like to point out that HIPAA, which by the way, is not spelled HIPPA, doesn’t oblige the patients to do anything! HIPAA only applies to medical providers and any personnel who work in a hospital or treatment setting. So your shrink’s secretary is bound by HIPAA laws not to go leaking out who sees the shrink. The janitors also cannot tattle about who they saw on the psych ward. Patients are not legally bound. They are highly pressured to not squeal, not say a word when they witness abuse. Sadly, many patients actually believe this is covered by HIPAA law. It isn’t.

    You won’t have to pay a fine or do prison times if you name the names. It is helpful to others if you warn them about a particular abusive clinician, or name the hospitals that treated you badly. What no one should do is exaggerate, lie, or reveal very intimate details about ANY person, on social media, publicly viewable articles, or on a website.

    As a writer I am very careful about revealing anything about other patients. This isn’t because of HIPAA, though. It’s because if you use a name and say you saw that person in a nuthouse, you could be wrecking their reputation. When I have mentioned specific incidents or specific people I sometimes get around the libel issue by fictionalizing the characters, or creating conglomerate characters. You have to disguise their identity in that case.

    I am not subscribing to subsequent commentary on this article mainly because I don’t want any hateful, disgusting talk about “personality disorders” showing up in my inbox.

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  • I agree only partially, Steve. Not all FFs had rotten childhoods. FFs are entirely created by the System. If we conclude they had rotten childhoods, this puts blame on the parents (and of course it couldn’t be the therapist!).

    I was a frequent flyer and my childhood, though not perfect, was not terrible either. I became an FF because it was encouraged by therapists, by these crisis teams, by the community, and mostly, peer pressure within the System.

    I have witnessed patients boasting about how many times they had been hospitalized. This was a status symbol! It was a status symbol to have many suicide attempts on record. In the ED world, if you had been tubed, you’re a notch above the rest. “Almost dying,” this, too, is a status symbol. It is subtle but if you listen closely to the dialogue, that is the implication. Many of these patients that I personally knew who were FFs did not have abusive childhoods. You cannot blame the parents because the majority of blame falls on the System.

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  • This is very true. This was across the board with all institutions where a patient was a known frequent flyer. In fact, FFs figure this out. So eventually they show up at a new ER where they are not known. Why? They know they’ll get better care. Problem is, a lot of FFs will then overuse that new ER and then start to get worse care there. And it only goes on. Most FFs get that way because their outpatient providers catastrophize every misfortune the patient encounters. Mental patients are trained very well to show up at an ER even for a hangnail! After a while you wear out your welcome at any hospital in your local area. I have known people who did that. Finally, after years of this nonsense, they developed a problem that was an actual emergency. Often, FFs die due to neglectful or abusive medical care.

    Whether a person is an FF or not, no one deserves neglectful or abusive medical care. Yes they do cop an attitude. That’s gotta stop.

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  • I feel saddened that the comments are hidden. The survivor voice is squelched because of this.
    That said, I witnessed a wrongful death on a psych ward once. I don’t know, to this day, if the family sued. They did a half-assed job of examining the guy in the ER. He was a known frequent flyer. Do they ever give known frequent flyers adequate medical care? NO! We were shuffled to psych by default. He made it up to the ward. He died (supposed heart attack) during the admissions process. Who the hell failed to notice he was having a cardiac event?

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  • Speaking of Yelp reviews, mine were not removed. I was upvoted to a higher position Yelper so now whatever I write carries more weight.

    My recommendation would be to write other reviews, too. Review a new business that just started up in town, like a restaurant or crafts shop. Make sure every single review is based on your own experience with the business. Use very specific terms explaining why it was great or why it sucked. Stick to your own story and be careful of sensationalism.

    So for a restaurant, you wouldn’t want to write, “I heard the food sucks there.” Where is the indication you really tried it out? Also, “sucks” is vague. A better review might state, “I arrived at 6pm with my family and we had to wait 30 minutes to be seated.” Or, “My wife ordered steak and we had to send it back because it was undercooked.”

    If you are to review a hospital, use very specific terms also. You might want to avoid generalizations and stick to specific events and use colorful description. “The emergency department was so crowded I was forced to sleep in the hallway on a hard plastic chair.” And so on.

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  • That’s funny. My comment that I put here was quietly removed and I wasn’t even told. Of course this makes me even more convinced of what I am saying. I think MIA is great for helping people realize the truth about the mental health system. People learn here that they are not alone.

    MIA needs to honor the survivor voice more, and quit upholding MH professionals as the only experts. Sadly, the notion of their expertise is the underlying assumption here. It’s almost like the editors speaking out of both sides of their mouths. “Yes, MH treatment sucks, but their professionals STILL know better!” A lot of us are pissed off. I have reduced my participation at MIA for this reason.

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  • Fibro is an excuse diagnosis. “I don’t know what is wrong so I am going to call it Fibro so I don’t have to pay any attention to your complaints anymore.” Basically that is all it is. I also believe IBS is a similar excuse diagnosis. “I don’t want to deal with your complaints anymore, so I’ll call it an incurable disease so I can safely ignore what you’re saying.”

    I actually know someone who was misdiagnosed with Fibro. The diagnosis itself caused the person to fall into the looping effect, suddenly developing the entire “symptom-set” of Fibro AFTER the diagnosis. This caused long-term disability, drugging, and down the downward spiral.

    Turned out it was not Fibro, which is by default a misdiagnosis, but something else causing pain, which was overlooked for years until finally it was detected. Treatable and curable.

    Now I am asking myself if this person is going to cling to the Fibro diagnosis as a way of staying on disability, or leap back into employment and enjoying life once cured. I have noticed that a lot of people, an overwhelming number, are really scared to go back to work, which is understandable because the MH System creates this fear. The result of being so scared is to revert to any kind of disease possible, even look for diseases, just to remain a drop-out. Those invisible diseases are likely the best disease of choice, as they’re vaguely defined and difficult to detect, many based on patient report of symptoms…easy way to stay on disability, in my opinion. But many just don’t see the forest through the trees.

    Maybe I have this disease? Or that one? If you keep asking yourself this, you are sure to find something, some new label to put on yourself. It is like finding dust in your home. Look hard enough and you will find something to get picky over.

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  • I agree. I once talked to a teacher who said she never read any reports about students passed onto her by former teachers. I asked her why. She explained that whether these reports are accurate or not is up for debate, first of all. Secondly, should she read them, this would cause her to view us with bias, with pre-formed assumptions.

    I never realized quite how valuable this commentary was until I left the MH system. I recall I put a bit of this “passing down” tendency by teachers in my memoir, but it shows up only briefly. I entered a classroom in the 9th grade, my first day of high school. Immediately, the teacher said, as she read my name on the attendance list, “Oh, I hear you are sometimes late for class because you stay behind at the last class talking to the teachers!”

    This she said right in front of the entire class. The kids burst out laughing. This was not a good way for me to start off 9th grade, sadly.

    While it was true that in 8th grade I enjoyed lengthy, extracurricular discussions with my teachers, what was not passed on was the deep, intellectual content of these discussions.

    I learned a lot from my junior high social studies teacher, Mr Egbert, who taught me all sorts of stuff about social theories, rebellion, and the importance of being my own person. He explained all this in terms of political theory. Mr Egbert inspired me, more than any other teacher. That was sadly left out of the narrative. What got put there instead? “Attention-seeking.”

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  • Roberta, Thanks so much for sharing this story. I am increasingly appalled that elders are drugged so much and so heavily. The plight of elders is of particular interest to me as I am not that much younger than your father. This story so very clearly illustrates the harm that those drugs can do, even drugs for physical conditions such as statins, which are given to elders like candy.

    Much of this is due to the Medicare system. Medicare is not a benefit to elders. It is a benefit to the doctors who treat the elders. Medicare doesn’t pay elders a penny, but is paying billions to doctors and pharma companies. They use elders’ bodies and lives as objects, so they can get paid and enjoy a bit of power in the process. Old people are gonna die no matter what, so who will notice if a few guinea pigs get killed?

    Thing is, we’re human beings, humans with decades of history, culture, memory, and tradition behind us. We are each unique and complex. We are not useless waste just because we are older. The medical profession needs to stop treating us like we’re emotionless, ugly things who lack intellect and perception.

    As for the depression your father feels, my guess is that this will improve, perhaps very slowly, though. Alcohol and drugs (of any sort) will dampen a person’s ability to feel passionate. You end up with an “I don’t care” attitude which is truly a downer. You feel a lack of passion and direction in one’s life. The passion does come back, though. To live–this means you are striving for something. We need to have something we want, whether it is to run 5k faster, to get a better job, to earn enough money to feel secure, to find a mate, to raise kids, or to help a charitable cause.

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  • Wow, Ekaterina, this is really an awesome and enlightening article. If I recall correctly, in my study of music during my early college years I learned about the lives of many famous composers. I enjoyed reading biographies of them, especially those books that wrote about the compositional process.

    I also read a lot of music theory books. Composition is an odd combo of mathematics and creativity. Sometimes it like putting together a puzzle. Some composers believed that a person could compose out of nothing, but I disagreed. Behind whatever we wrote was a backbone of music history, culture, esthetics, and music theory. By all means it wasn’t going to hurt us to study it and learn it well, then, go break the rules!

    An amazing book that I would recommend to anyone interested in the arts would be “Break Every Rule” by Carole Maso. Maso is a writer and the essay within this book, “Break Every Rule,” was extracted from a talk she gave to LGBT writers.

    Rules are good to learn, but as artists we must go beyond blindly following instructions. The greatest art breaks the traditional mold, sets a new path, and shows the reader/audience something they have never seen before. It will make you think in a new way, bringing you from where you are to a new understanding. If you piss people off in the process, make them laugh or cry, this is likely a good sign because you have moved them. You’re not boring. Which is the point, is it not?

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  • I believe a lot of false positives show up due to poor nutrition. Elders may very well not be able to afford food, not be able to get out shopping, or aren’t being fed properly if they rely on someone else to provide for them. Also, it’s harder for an older person to digest food, some do not have teeth anymore, or they might develop constipation from lack of exercise…this can cause a person to reduce their intake. Still other elders actually deliberately restrict intake to the point that they could be classified as eating disordered (usually age will prevent this from being detected). I know as a fact that malnutrition can look just like dementia. Having been through it as an older person I recall I was forgetful, esp short term memory, had balance problems, and felt vertigo almost constantly. It was almost like post-ECT. I couldn’t figure out how to put on my clothes or how to braid my hair. Or whether I was wearing clothes at all….had I forgotten and was now walking around naked? I knew something was wrong but couldn’t quite put a finger on it.

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  • Dragon Slayer, I have studied brainwashing. It is most effectively done not by cruelty, but by kindness, or shall I say under the guise of kindness. You are right that they deliver a double-punch. People are enticed into psych not due to cruelty, which is of course a turnoff, but by the appearance of kindness and air of expertise. This brainwashing technique has been used by many, usually with underlying evil intent. I am not certain all psychiatrists are fully aware of what they are really doing, though. You would think they could see the long-term effects of putting people on drugs and incarceration, and of coerced unemployment….They cannot see it though! They can’t even fathom that they’ve created a horrible mess. Either that or, unable to face the truth, they bury themselves in denial.

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  • None of this surprises me. The corruption and ousting does not surprise me. Anyone who speaks the truth and is persistent about it is going to be targeted by these corrupt organizations that are desperate to silence us. They will silence a person any way they can, legally or illegally.

    I had a speaking engagement in 2017 at an eating disorders conference. I had applied for this and was chosen, as I heard, from among 200 applicants. Months later, the organization (NEDA/BEDA) wrote to me and told me they were trashing my presentation. Basically I was told that an informant had let on that I was somehow too mentally ill (psychotic) to do this presentation. The one way to totally discredit a person is to call that person psychotic. You’ll never be believed or seen as credible again.

    To this day I do not know who made the call to NEDA/BEDA. Undoubtedly a former provider saw me there on the roster and phoned them telling them I’m incompetent or whatever. Only a former provider, or someone claiming to be, would have the clout to do this effectively. I would love to find out. It is only another underhanded way they have retaliated.

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  • I read the FDA’s statement. They ignored all statements written by individual survivors. All. They threw them out stating that it was “anecdotal evidence” and discredited us. Every story sent in about a person whose life was wrecked or who ended up with something other than what they were promised…..all these stories were tossed out. The only survivor comments they kept were those that quoted “studies.” So now, what are we? We aren’t human beings with real stories. We are numbers, statistics only, to be crunched, stacked, compared, and then what?

    Statistics and studies are dangerous because anyone can find a valid study to back what they are saying. The earth is flat? There’s a study that shows that, I’m sure. Trees can talk? I’m sure a real scientific study you can find in the literature backing your claim to make you look credible. I could, if I wished, stick a bunch of references into my writing but doing so would add unnecessary clutter. Memoir is an art form and because the main source of information is ones memory (or saved diaries), footnotes are rarely needed or desirable. In memoir, the writer is generally trusted as a reliable source, but at the same time it’s a given that ALL human memory is imperfect. So if I tell my readers that 20 years ago I was talking to a doctor whose hair was “disheveled,” it’s a given that this is what I happen to recall. Does it really matter what his hair looked like (I mean, how disheveled is disheveled?) or does it matter what he said, what he proclaimed, what he did, and those words that damaged most deeply? The reader WILL trust the memoirist to write honestly, which is what matters.

    There were a lot of things I noticed in the FDA statement, a lot of excuse-making and reasons not to hear us, to throw us under the bus, to pretend we do not exist.

    ECT is now approved not only for tx-resistant depression but for BPD, so watch out, folks. More and more will be diagnosed (based on what?) and fast-tracked. It’ll be such an easy way to get rid of women and elders….THINK ABOUT IT!

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  • Drugs should be a choice, not something a doctor imposes on a person via a prescription or via force. In an ideal world, drugs would be available for purchase freely, without the magic gateway called a doctor. Doctors have far too much power! As soon as you have a prescription, the doc controls the amount, the supply, and also, you have to go back and go back to that particular doctor for refills, so now you are stuck married to that doctor, hooked on the appointments just so you can get your fix.

    In some countries, doctors do not prescribe and people just go to farmacias to purchase whatever they CHOOSE to take. Interestingly, in these countries, the doc-patient relationship is different because the prescription isn’t part of the equation. Doctors have more patient contact and play a different role, interestingly, obviously because they don’t have the instant ties to the drug companies. They are also paid less, that I know of.

    As for reinstating, I made the CHOICE to reinstate. I did this without a doctor’s blessing and without having to go and get diagnosed by any sort of doctor. I knew after five years that I was not sleeping due to damage from drugs, and I was nonfunctional due to insomnia. I thought my life was over because I was so tired, but finally I figured out that I was going to have to reinstate.

    It was common sense. If I wanted to sleep and be functional again, I was going to have to reinstate and then taper at a slower rate than I had previously done. I knew I had to do this without seeing a doctor. Had I seen a doctor I would have been put through a sleep lab test, more misdiagnoses, a shrink, ended up psych diagnosed all over again, and….the diagnoses would have defeated the purpose of leaving the MH system.

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  • I have a knapsack for taking Puzzle on the bus. She’s a dog, not a cat. She loves the bus! She is 12 now and snores when she sleeps. When I am working at home I hear her snoring loudly while I am on the phone talking to my customers. When I have a training at work (we do these on video calls) I sometimes use my computer speakers instead of a headset which freaks her out so she comes and stands right by me. I am surprised she can hear it because she is mostly deaf. Maybe she wants to be “trained” in her old age. Hey, Puzzle, want some Salesforce, or some chicken liver?

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  • Hi Kate, I had to do a search for the word, “Silence” to find your post. Sadly, the silent treatment you are getting from Yale is typical. We do not get the apologies and compensation we justly deserve. We almost always cannot get legal representation, although I am hoping that this changes.

    What remains? An ugly, rotten, hole of emptiness. A vast cauldron of nothing where once we had doctors and other people we truly trust. They’re gone now and that trust we held for them, and for humanity is general, will not return. Instead, what will replace it? Actually, the truth replaces it! Enlightenment that we were deprived of before! We are now bearers of this truth, and we have a responsibility, should we choose to take that responsibility, to pass the word on to others that THIS IS WRONG. What a blessing it is to be the bearers of this truth. Who else can tell this amazing story? Who else has witnessed it? Who else has seen such injustice first-hand? It is like having the Ring that the Hobbits had or having the responsibility of the Ruby Slippers…or The Force….choose whatever metaphor you’d like that suits you….But we must take this responsibility seriously. It is a mission, a new mission, a brilliant and joyful one when you think about it. It will become a passion, a driving force in your life. a reason to go on living.

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  • Samruck, people who are single by choice are NOT deficient and are not lacking and are not limited and are not people who should be somehow pitied. Personally, I pity a lot of married people and can’t fathom being tied down. The thought of it is repulsive to me, although I did enjoy a relationship very much a long time ago. I am a different person now. I am older and my priorities are not the same.

    We cannot judge others according to our standards of what is normal and according to what WE think “happy” or “secure” means. I am very happy the way I am and feel secure just as I am. I’m not lacking, I’m not deficient, and I don’t feel the need to go out on the prowl for yet one more “partner.”

    It is a very narrow view indeed to assume that everyone needs, or doesn’t need, a partner. As soon as we say “everyone,” we are in for a lot of trouble!

    We are social creatures, true, but we humans have a vast variety of ways to be social. Having a single partner is only one way, there are many, many ways. I agree that some people are lonely and some desire more social contact than what they have. Still others would like to have more alone time than they currently have, and more privacy.

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  • Hey Steve, Remembering the doc who shocked me and the McLean docs who covered up the damages, that is, Dr. Michael Henry, shock doc, and the all the others, all of whom I name in my documentation to the FDA, I bet hardly any of them could make chocolate chip cookies from scratch! They don’t teach that in medical school. Too complicated for their simplistic mentality. Are you kidding? They buy one of those boxed mixes from the supermarket. I bet you anything. Or buy them from Whole Foods, snob bakery section.

    Because of their drugs I can’t eat salt now. Last night I enjoyed salt-free pizza. From scratch, my own recipe. I’m getting good at making it. Okay, from now on, it’ll be called Screw Psychiatry Pizza. Or some such thing.

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  • I have no desire to date. None. I’m not asexual. I just have other, more pressing priorities. Activism is more important. Writing is more important. Career is more important.

    I dated a guy last summer and really did not like it. He insisted on taking me out to eat which meant unhealthy eating all the time. It was hard to find anything healthy on these menus that my body could tolerate. To him, eating well meant “You eat out all the time.” I couldn’t get it through his head that I really wanted to cook my own sensible food, save money and didn’t want all the extravagance and unnecessary flattery. I couldn’t imagine spending much more time going out to eat in expensive restaurants several nights a week like that. Did he have any paycheck left to pay the utility bills? Well, he must have sensed my discomfort and broke up with me, telling me the usual “other woman” lie because he didn’t want to hurt me by telling me the truth. I knew, though. He was uncomfortable around me.

    I’m just too independent to date anyone. I value my freedom. I have Puzzle. That’s enough for me. I don’t need some human hanging around….clinginess? Ick. I have friends but a sig other, naw, not for me.

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  • Hi Everyone, I have not been able to keep up with the comments because I have had work obligations and I have also been working hard on my book manuscript. I assume everyone has heard about the new FDA ruling that took effect yesterday. Peter Breggin announced it yesterday during his broadcast and discussed it. I announced it in my own blog as soon as I heard about it, which I believe was the day before Christmas when the FDA quietly announced it. I notice they announced it when they KNEW people were likely to be absorbed in the holiday rush and unlikely to check their email or keep up with the news. Did they think those of us activists wouldn’t notice? We did, however…..They have downgraded (or upgraded, whatever…) the ECT machine for certain diagnoses, claiming it’s “safe and effective” for severe BPD, treatment-resistant depression, and a few other diagnoses involving catatonia.

    Watch for increased diagnosis of severe BPD and depression, and widening of the umbrella of what is considered “treatment-resistant.” Schiz is a little harder to demonstrate but could be done with a few drugs inside the system or if the patient has dementia. This is going to prove quite profitable for elderly. More and more elders are going to be declared depressed because it’s easy to get the ECT paid for with the insurance they have, courtesy of taxpayers, Medicare. Better yet, get them on Medicaid also and milk it fast….ECT is great for that.

    It’s easy to get an elder depressed! Put the elder on blood pressure (or other) drugs, separate the elder from family in a “hospital,” (five or six days is enough to “prove” the elder is depressed, right?), do unnecessary surgery courtesy of Medicare since it’s “covered,” or tell the elder he/she has a terminal and hopeless medical condition. Poof! Instant dependency on doctors, multiple unnecessary and harmful appointments (they’re retired, so it’s justified, right?), resulting depression, reason to medicate and subsequent ECT.

    What else are they going to do with elders? Elders are a drain on the system, a waste of societal resources…….right? Just like those “mentally ill,” a blight on society!

    Except there’s one problem. We all get old…….But never mind that……..Folks in their 20s and, to an extent, 30s, can’t see too far into the future…and psychiatry takes full advantage of this little tendency when they prescribe their pills, of course…….

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  • I went through a period of loneliness. For certain, isolation was the cause. I am very outgoing and not shy. Shyness was not a cause of the isolation. Fact was, barely anyone spoke to me for a period of about two years. Psych had wrecked my reputation, causing others to shy away. I was thought of by others as violent, paranoid, psychotic, whatever. Yes I saw this in their social media posts. They also called me “toxic.” One ex-friend wrote that I was “no longer a person.” I DID notice the way others who considered me “mentally ill” pushed me away by insisting on “email only” or “Facebook only” relationships. If I dared point this out to the person and suggested talking on the phone or maybe even getting together, the person would refuse or make excuses. The excuse-making was very noticeable.

    Later, when people started talking to me, with much hesitation, some of my over-therapized friends were methodical in their methods of deliberately distancing themselves. When I finally twisted their arms tightly enough I might get a phone call, but many routinely cut phone conversations off after ten minutes or some other set time, often the same amount of time per conversation. That was noticeable in the way they insisted on ending conversations no matter what the content was. I had other friends who cut a conversation off if I ever strayed onto the topic of psych abuse.

    It was ironic that I had been through this awful experience and not one person was willing to let me talk about it. I was silenced as soon as I brought it up. My natural tendency was to continue to do so. This is what trauma will do to you. You will continue to pull the conversation toward the subject of the harm because you NEED to talk about it!

    Thankfully, that period of extreme social isolation is over now. I have friends at work and other places as well where I have been able to find really nice people, and I have been communicating with my family, too. Because my life is now enriched by real friendships, I don’t at all mind spending my holidays alone. I get the day off so I celebrate by working on the book I am writing. This makes me very happy indeed!

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  • JanCarol, By all means, YES to increased healthy fats! I don’t know when the “low fat” trend started but it has been in part to blame for many dietary disasters, including being the primary cause of ED for SOME people.

    Although I hesitate to make any recommendations online (or to anyone at this point) because people tend to grossly misinterpret whatever they read or otherwise pick up from such sources, I might make a general statement about healthy fats! Increasing my use of healthy fats (no, “vegetable oil” isn’t one of them) helped me cure my ED. This was likely the #1 change in my diet that stopped binge eating in its tracks for me. I learned this not from a doctor, not even from reading “studies” or from medically-derived material, but actually by intensive self-experimentation that started as soon as I began to depart from the System.

    First of all, common dieting knowledge told me that consuming fat will lower my appetite. Generally, restaurants know this. Look at the appetizers restaurants freely give to customers. Rarely do they give out nuts or anything fatty. They want you hungry, not satiated! More likely, they’ll whet the customers’ appetites by serving salty chips with a mustardy dip or salsa.

    Eating nuts will satiate a person. I don’t know why, but this was one of my little anorexic “tricks” I knew for decades. This is due to the fat content. The diet industry was revisiting this idea and marketing new products to people around 2010-2013 at the time in the form of pine nut oil. I was desperate to try anything to stop binge eating so I tried it and found it helpful.

    While pine nut oil WILL help SOME people (I tended to use 1/2 tsp before each meal, knowing that after the meal was my primary binge risk time) it’s also true that less expensive healthy fats will “work” just as well. You bet people figured that out! At that point, expensive pine nut oil lost its appeal.

    I believe it was Dave Ausprey who came out with his own brand of Bulletproof oil. People rave over that stuff. I believe, though, that any decent quality MHT oil is equally valuable for less money.

    I consume an array of healthy fats each day, which may include various types of nuts (unsalted, unprocessed, often those I take out of the shell myself), good quality olive oil (for certain sauces and general use), lots of ghee, MHT oil, pure sesame oil for flavoring, sometimes coconut oil (for sauteing), red palm oil (for baking), and likely others.

    I’m a little fussy over which types of nuts I buy since some are more recommended than others when one has kidney disease, which I have from lithium. I usually buy these in bulk, in large bags I store in the fridge. They DO have a shelf life. Now and then I purchase about $50 worth of them (again, unsalted, uncoated, not glazed or seasoned, not roasted because often these companies often roast the nuts in unhealthy oils and chemicals) and have them delivered.

    I should also add that I don’t hesitate to eat “carbs.” I eat a LOT of carbs now. I make my own no-salt bread and I spread ghee on it. I eat plain pasta and I put no-salt homemade sauce and olive oil on it, lots of veggies (these are mostly water and carbs with some nutrients such as vitamins and minerals, too!) and also many whole grains (again, carbs!) including buckwheat, millet, even popcorn with healthy oil dribbled over it. I try to reduce protein considerably since my kidneys can’t clear it easily and consuming too much of it will raise my creatinine. I sure didn’t learn that from a doctor. I studied like mad, experimented, and figured out on my own what I need.

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  • Hi JanCarol,

    I am sure you speak from experience, being a leader on the surviving antidepressants board. Can I add one thing? Mainly because these are public message boards and I fear that any dietary recommendation might be misinterpreted by someone randomly stopping by, hoping for answers.

    While intermittent fasting and “keto” is great for some, both of these are disastrous for anyone who has been through an eating disorder. My eating disorder was started because I went on a diet similar to the “keto” diet, 1980 version. I had no history of ED, and wasn’t depressed and didn’t even know what a fashion magazine was. One thing, though, my mother had survived anorexia when she was a teen and had fully recovered. There was also nothing in my family history such as sexual abuse that might have been a stereotypical predictor of ED.

    It has been years and I have come to realize (as many of us have!) that the diet itself caused the ED. This has in fact been proven to happen to SOME people who go on drastic diets. I would also include any type of fasting (except whatever people do for their religious duties) as causative for ED. The diet literally causes a cycle that is very hard to break, and sometimes lasts for years or even decades.

    If anyone is recovering from psychiatry and recovering from drugging, I would avoid mucking around with restrictive diets if you have any history of ED, because doing so could rekindle your ED. You do not want that nightmare back into your life.

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  • I am saddened to read this. I note in your comments, Neesa, that you started off suicidal and then got put on drugs and it was all downhill from then on. This is not an uncommon story. I know others who are afraid to get off the drugs because of a return of voices or whatever. I think JanCarol’s observations are very important. I have read that very serious dependency on drugs requires an extremely slow taper, possibly at a rate of 2% instead of the 10% many people try.

    I am concerned about your health. I suppose because my boyfriend, whom I dated 17 years, was on Clozaril, took it as prescribed, was “stabilized” on it, kept his appointments faithfully, and died at the age of 45. No, not suicide. His heart couldn’t take it anymore. It was sudden.

    I had heard him struggling to breathe at night, coughing from congestion, rolling over as if doing so would somehow ease the strain on his heart just to keep pumping. The drug had caused weight gain, made it impossible to quit smoking, lowered his resistance to infection, and was combined with Prolisec and Ditropan, which I hear cause additional risks. He was given Trilafon and Prozac on top of all that, and the thyroid pill (since he was a lithium survivor like me). We both had diabetes insipidus from past lithium use.

    After he died, I asked why he was taken. Why was I not taken? He was the better one, the wiser one, the one that the kids loved so much (he had about 38 nieces and nephews). Why Joe? Why? Can’t we just trade places?

    Nothing would bring him back. It was 2003. The next year, the Sox won the Series and I remember I cried over that, too. Why couldn’t he be alive to see this?

    We knew so little back then. I shudder to recall my own ignorance and naivete.

    We walk a tightrope, and sometimes, we don’t even know we’re on it.

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  • Hello, I couldn’t help but giggle over this article. I went to med school, too. Went to Harvard Medical School, “residency” at McLean. I’d love to say that, now that I’m not even in the MH system anymore, with a bit of a smirk on my face knowing I was smart enough for med school all along so that statement might actually be taken literally.

    I was an experimentee, used at McLean Grand Rounds several times, right after ECT, learned on, and no, they don’t give a hoot about confidentiality, HIPAA or not. I remember afterward they’d leave those meetings with smug looks on their faces like they’d finally solved the puzzle, only to tell me one more concocted lie after another. “Of course there’s nothing wrong with your brain and it’s all in your head!” Was it going to be more ECT to “cure” the increasing confusion I felt from the shock? What now, doc?

    Finally, they’d messed with me tooooo badly, and they needed to get rid of me, embarrassed or maybe they’d possibly damaged me beyond all hope, certainly beyond recognition. “State hospital is just the thing for you!” they said. Lies, lies, lies.

    I didn’t think of it as lies. I never did. I always assumed they had best of intentions. Cover up damages from shock? That, of course, was the last thing on my mind. I only wanted to know why I couldn’t think straight. Why, doc? Why?

    Just as they were about to shuttle me off to State I told them to go screw. Told them I would kill myself rather than go to State.

    That did it. That prompted my instant GRADUATION from McLean. With honors, of course. Oh, and a scholarship to a community hospital and another 15 years of coerced (but paid for by taxpayers) mental health care until I got myself out.

    When I read “Grand Rounds” wow that brought back memories………What bullshit. What do they do with lab rats after they kill them, anyway?

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  • Most of these studies serve as last-ditch attempt to legitimize “therapy” as okay while so many people are damning psychiatry. Therapy is psychiatry’s little sister. For many patients, if not almost all, therapy is the Gateway to the Endless Pit of the Mental Illness System, never to return. You want a diagnosis, drugs, more diagnoses, increased level of care needed, repeat offender, chronicity? Please go to a therapist. It might be a slower, more insidious route than showing up at an ER, but it’ll work just as well to silence you, put you out of work, ghettoize you, and kill you off early.

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  • Dear Madmom, I was once a member of a UU church. One day, I got totally fed up and decided to write to a higher-up about my own minister’s unfair treatment of diagnosees at our church. I was writing on behalf of all diagnosees, and not only us, but on behalf of others he had treated in bigoted fashion. I really thought the email had gone nowhere, as the higher-up wrote to me saying that she could do nothing and that if anything were to be done it would have to be solved in-house. I assumed it had stopped right there. However, it must have gotten straight back to the church. This was over New Year’s, the beginning of 2014.

    On January 10th, I was coming home from a protest in Boston. It was around 3pm when I was dropped off by my friends. Ten minutes after my arrival home, I heard a loud knock on my apartment door. There was a lady cop, who was the cop social worker, and two church people who were committee members. They accused me of planning to kill the minister! Where did they get that insane idea?

    I told them I had no such plans! I told them I was shocked and didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. Where was the evidence of this, I said. No warrant, no paperwork, just standing there accusing me of future dangerousness, and seeming to try to get a confession out of me, or try to get me to fork up some weapons, which I clearly stated I did not have! I am five foot one, and couldn’t see too well. Why were they accusing little ole me?

    They claimed I had written something on a public website. I said this was a false accusation and told them I had not written anything on a public church website. Maybe they had the wrong person. I was so, so scared. What right did they have to terrorize me like that?

    They told me I could come back to church, SO LONG AS I DID NOT WRITE ANYMORE. I told them no thanks, I would like to retain my Freedom of Speech and Expression, which is rightfully mine and always was. Conditional church membership? Never heard of that in the UU Principles, I said. Then they said this little visit was “off the record,” that they weren’t telling anyone else at church. Oh great, now I’ll be called crazy if I ever mention it to anyone else. Was it also off the police record, too? Was this cop threatening me on the side? Maybe paid by them to do this? I never found out.

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  • Exactly, Oldhead. People have a right to put anything they want into their bodies. It might be downright poison such as gasoline, but they still have the right to do it, in my opinion. How many people choose street drugs? Some. How many are coerced via the prescription pad and assume that means “safe and effective”? Prescribed pills include opiates, blood that is transfused, antibiotics, many drugs for things like blood pressure, birth control pills, and all kinds of stuff that’s downright dangerous. Do people choose to exercise, have a healthy lifestyle, eat right and avoid mental health care? If you do you might feel a ton better.

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  • Hey, Oldhead. It’s been done. It’s called street drugs. Been around a looooonnnnng time and they ain’t going away just yet. I hope not because shouldn’t people have the right to choose? Choice via prescribed drugs can’t possibly be choice at all. The prescription adds authority and illusion of safety to the pills that shouldn’t even be there. I’m all for free choice. You wanna take drugs? Take drugs. Leave the MD and his power and institutions and diagnoses out of the equation so that way you really choose it.

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  • I agree with bcharris here. People who do their own research and take control of their health, understanding why they take each supplement (instead of blindly following doctor’s advice) know what they’re getting themselves into. Those of us who have taken our bodies back will stop taking a supplement if it makes us feel sick or worsens our health. We don’t need doctor permission to make our health decisions for us.

    I think this above research and publicity is a move by Pharma to scare people into believing drugs are safer than OTC supplements simply because a doctor prescribes them. This is a move likely pushed by the AMA and other physician interests pushing for more power and authority for physicians, in hopes of bringing back their exclusive prescribing power, strengthening their elite position in society. This kind of hype reminds me of when L-Tryptophan was taken off the market for a while due to one contaminated batch….only because Western Medicine is very threatened by people being able to take supplements and improve their health. They are afraid of losing their power…it is a move of desperation here.

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  • When I was abused in a hospital I lost a lot of my friends. They claimed it was ‘impossible” that such a thing could have happened. They claimed I was “delusional.” My therapist claimed the unit I was on did not exist. Even now, people outside of MIA claim it couldn’t possibly have occurred. However, it did occur. This kind of thing is not “the exception.” I was not psychotic. These were just people doing their job, apparently. These were nurses scared to speak out against the ones that had abused, scared of losing their jobs, nurses that knew I was right but afraid that if they sided with me they’d get fired. They were right. They would have! Still, when I said abuse, I meant abuse. I stand by my words. I know I am telling the truth. It’s hard to forgive when you were deprived of water. It’s hard to forgive when they defended their actions that nearly killed me, and then, to keep me quiet, tried to get me committed in a state hospital to ensure I didn’t pursue the case legally. Seven years have passed and I am still called psychotic to this day. I hate it.

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  • Someone left a disrespectful comment about there being no such thing as reincarnation. To that, I say the following:

    I am a Jew. As a Jew, I choose to tolerate other people’s belief that Jesus was the Messiah. To me, the concept of Messiah does not compute, and when I hear “Jesus” I cringe inside. When I hear Christmas music I also cringe, but am I going to swear out loud at the Muzak when I head out to Walmart in a bit? No! Why? Because it’s not polite.

    As a Jew I am also agnostic. It is my right to have this belief, which for the most part I do not share with others. As a Jew, I choose to tolerate people’s belief in God. I also choose to tolerate people’s belief that there is no God, that is, Atheism. I choose not to choose.

    As a Jew I also feel obligated to tolerate beliefs I do not hold myself but I know are a deeply held part of nonwestern cultures, such as reincarnation. I think it is hugely disrespectful and narrow-minded to say that reincarnation doesn’t exist, is a delusion, or is impossible. What if I said the Christmas story was a mass delusion and anyone who believes it should be incarcerated? Maybe the entirety of Vatican City should be locked up and drugged.

    Is life even real? Please poke me. I must be dreaming. This dog is so cute, she couldn’t be real.

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  • Oh wow, this is so funny and sad. That was about my attitude, too. I could predict their actions because I had been there so many times. I agree that one’s thoughts are private and are no one’s business! I can think anything I want! I can walk past a store and think of breaking in a stealing everything inside. Have I committed a crime? No! I honestly don’t care whom another person believes they are reincarnated from! That’s private business and should stay private. In fact, locking a person up for any belief regarding reincarnation is treading on incarceration based on religious beliefs. You did not do any deed to cause this. I’m glad you’re out. Stay out. Don’t go back to them and don’t tell them your thoughts anymore. They don’t help. They hurt.

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  • I witnessed a library cop reprimanding a young student for holding his head down appearing to be asleep at the library. I was shocked. In fact, he was not asleep. He was holding his head like that because he was watching a video on his cellular telephone and wanted to shield his phone from the bright lights. So he was hovering over the phone and looking down into it, certainly not napping. I was so appalled at this cop’s behavior (and the fact that she reprimanded me for quietly eating at the library when I was a regular patron and I was truly starving) that I plan to write to the library administration and complain. While it’s a rule you can’t eat there, I was then stuck eating outside in the cold. At that point someone mistook me for a homeless person because I was so starving after a two-hour, freezing cold bus ride. Libraries shouldn’t be run like penitentiaries. They used to be sanctuaries for people. Sad.

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  • They use Ed as a way to control patients. Those of us who have been in this sort of “care” see this technique used regularly on patients. If you question the rules, that is Ed speaking. If you ask to be released, that’s Ed speaking. If you dislike your therapist, that’s Ed again. If you ever dare speak of human rights, it’s surely Ed. They demand that you banish Ed from your head immediately by holding onto a frozen orange or they might hand you some pills or make you do very gentle yoga or color-by-number. Yes, it’s abuse, but as soon as you point that out they’ll let you know your eating disorder is surely to blame. Being human is a symptom, speaking out a disease, asking for fair, humane treatment is pathological. Your best bet is to vandalize the place, maybe write terrible swear word on the walls in permanent crayon. They’ll have to kick you out if you do that. Then you are free and you’ll get your rights back.

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  • As usual, the most important factor was left out. Were these individuals in treatment for their EDs? This is so important. I believe the ED voice is treatment-induced. I have seen the believe in the ED-Devil-like character induced in treatment, coerced into patients by therapy. This is caused by exposure to ED-specific therapy. Those who have not had this type of therapy do not have an ED voice and have never heard of such a thing. All you have to do, if you want to induce an ED voice, is to pester a patient, repeatedly, “What is ED saying?” Just ask that a bunch of times, obnoxiously, expecting a response. Ask like ED is a real person that has taken possession of the vulnerable, trapped patient. Now, the patient is more trapped. By the imaginary Devil ED. Very good job. You have succeeded! Now you have a guaranteed Revolving Door Syndrome.

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  • Yes, I agree, this article is brilliant. I was cracking up over Frances’ statements. Just in themselves, they are typical of a shrink…speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Passing the buck. Refusal to take responsibility. Setting a terrible example also. Even blaming patients…and as a physician he’s supposedly a person that patients look up to, a role model of sorts.

    If Allen Frances was my employee and I witnessed him acting like that I would reprimand him because I would want my work associates to take responsibility for their own actions. If I kept him on I would demand that he clean up his own spilt milk. Lying and claiming you’re “delegating” only gets you in hot water.

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  • I will not call anyone toxic. I can think of a few toxins, such as psych drugs and Agent Orange, but humans are not truly poisonous. I have done multiple blog entries on this topic and also, I believe, a podcast. I feel very strongly about this. I believe everyone deserves a chance. In fact, I will make a point of befriending people that others diagnose as toxic, because loneliness and being labeled is a horrible thing to endure.

    In the name of self-care, a group of about ten friends kicked me out right at the time I needed them most. They couldn’t have timed it better. That was eight years ago and it took me a long time to get over it. I went back to their forum and they kept telling each other they’d done the right thing and “taken care of ourselves.” Okay, they may have thought so, but they hurt me badly in the process. They continued to call me horrible names such as “not a person anymore,” “toxic,” and “negative.” Those words. It hurt so badly I wanted to cry. Then they’d go congratulate each other again for “doing the right thing.” I hated it.

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  • Harper that seems like an extremely formulaic and narrow viewpoint. I no longer believe that there’s one magic answer to everything that will work for everyone. I know a lot of people out there who will tell you there’s only one way, notably, Evangelical Christians, some folks in AA, some therapists, and people who hold rigid religious beliefs. Oh, including some who say they’re Buddhists. Maybe some psychiatrists, too.

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  • I think the title should be, “Fewer than half…” not “Less than half…” since we’re talking about the number of studies here. Just sayin’.

    I see this all the time. Yesterday on a website I saw witch instead of which. Maybe they spelled it that way to be seasonal.

    I wish the general public had easier access to texts of medical studies. A lot of the time I try to open a pdf and they want me to pay. Of course they do not want the public to be informed, so they can maintain their power and authority over us.

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  • Mental health professionals are notorious non-apologists. I believe they do feel guilty but feel that apologizing means they’ll be sued. After I was deprived of water in a facility, which traumatized me, they did not apologize even though it’s obvious they did something horribly wrong. What happened is that my doctor lied to me two years later, defending the hospital’s actions, telling me the water deprivation was medically necessary. A simple peek into my blood levels at the time, and knowledge of my own body (and the result of taking lithium) tell me otherwise.

    I’m not sure what to do with this, the knowledge that a crime was committed and nowhere to go with it. I feel this empty void where there should be communication. I hate the silence from them and the occasional retaliation they still try to pull off. I’m still scared to travel to Boston, scared of what they could do if I were recognized, scared because of the very remote chance that I would run into a previous provider. Yes I know that’s illogical, but since when does fear have to follow what the intellect tells it?

    And yet the one thing I want to do is to ask them, earnestly, for an apology. To ask if they validate that what they did was morally abhorrent and harmed me deeply. To demand that they change their policies, change the way they do things, and from now on, admit fault immediately instead of covering their butts and then waiting years to do so.

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  • They very well do cut corners every chance they can, every time they think they can get away with it. They do it in nursing facilities. Cut the staff so they don’t have to pay as many people. Cut housekeeping on weekends. Cut the meals on weekends, too. McLean did this. We had only snacks on weekends, froot loops and shit. Stop the real arts and crafts. Close the fitness facility and cut the nicer staff who did recreation. Cut therapists out entirely. Just drug em. McLean cut their hairdresser, too. My boyfriend was friends with her and he was heartbroken that she was going to leave. She used to cut his hair. She told me he had the thickest head of hair you’ve ever seen. True.

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  • I have a day job too. I also have a masters degree in an unrelated field. And yet all the time these MH professionals and MANY SURVIVORS too claim I have no expertise except as a former patient. This is such bullshit I am ready to throw my degree at them (along with my 3.95 GPA) and hit as hard as I can. Yes we can be competent individuals and that competency and responsibility does not necessarily mean you work in the MH field.

    No violence intended, I must add. A degree isn’t a physical thing you can really throw. The paper only represents it, represents years of hard study and work and heartache and triumph.

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  • yeah I agree with Oldhead, psych has pulled the wool over society’s eyes. That IS abuse, with people running around scared they might have a disease and teens killing themselves because they know how bad it is to be locked up.

    I don’t see myself as a victim. I have moved past the trauma of being abused in a hospital, although I still feel it to a large extent. But I am thrilled that I have found a way of life that does not include doctor appointments, doesn’t include pharma, doesn’t include going to a therapist because that is assumed to be the one and only way to “self-improve.” It is bullshit. Go to the gym, join a class, learn herbal medicine, get your driver’s license, all these things are self-improvement with real rewards.

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  • Yeah, Shaun, The System is great if you are scared to go into the workplace or if you can’t find a job. FREE MONEY and it’s for life! Completely invisible permanent chemical imbalances come in handy you know. Just about as handy as “back pain.” A few towns over you can see billboards all over the place, lawyers advertising to help get people on the payments so they don’t have to work. Handy here in the county where jobs are so scarce and poverty so high that dis-ability looks like riches. If you are disabled you get paid per kid, too. Useful, and profitmaking, I must say.

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  • Anonymous, I took a life coaching class but very quickly gave it up when I realized how scammy the business is. I am doing just as you said, working in an unrelated field and due to be totally off disability very soon. They have already stopped SSI, and I have been using up my nine months they give you of free money assuming you will fail. I keep activism and work separate. I really like my job even though it isn’t in my field (writing). It’s a job, with its pros and cons, but it pays the bills so no more dependency on Uncle Sam and taxpayer money. Not only that, I got a certification under my belt in the process. I am looking for a second job (the backup).

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  • I was refused a volunteer job working in any capacity for an eating disorders organization because of my anti-psych stance.

    All I want to do is offer something different and refreshing to these (mostly) young women. A new picture of what it means to live free of the very serious eating issues (call it what you want) that I suffered from in secret for over three decades. A new view of what it means to be autonomous, responsible, and free of the tyranny of doctors and institutions. I want them to see that not only is recovery (from ED) possible, but it’s not something that takes rocket science, either. Recovery doesn’t mean you have to obey some outside authority. In fact, the road to recovery is outside of their rules. Their rules will only keep you sick and keep you coming back. I want them to know that the answer comes from within, that it is already there, and that it’s far more attainable than the MH professionals would like them to believe. However, I’ve been banned every time I try. They find out, or, in the case of the NEDA conference I was supposed to speak at, someone from my past (who?) literally called up the conference organizer and told them I was a dangerous SMI. Very sad.

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  • My eyes were recently opened about just how low we are on the totem pole when I received a somewhat rude response from Jessica from the Foundation for Excellence. This was maybe a week ago. I had asked her to help publicize my project, http://forcedpsychiatry.com. Jessica outright refused, telling me any project they publicize has to be run by “experts.”

    Excuse me? If you are compiling a literary anthology on forced psych, what degree would you need? NOT an MH degree, actually, such folks are not qualified to edit an anthology. I have a masters in creative writing which I earned in 2009. That DOES make me an expert. But us lowly exes couldn’t possibly be experts in anything but patienthood. Bullshit.

    Jessica also further insulted me by telling me I was welcome to write an article on their site on “lived experience” since I had expertise in THAT. Hey, what about all those years I studied my butt off in undergrad and graduate school? Is that NOTHING because I’m an ex-patient? Is my degree made meaningless because I’m specialized in different field, not MH? I’m also certified in customer service, by the way. Does that, too, not count, because of my CLASS?

    Yep, we are still in the lowest class, especially in the eyes of these professionals. I don’t care how different they claim to be, most still see us that way, sorry to say.

    Never mind the other publications that also REFUSED to help publicize http://forcedpsychiatry.com. Meanwhile, these same publications promote MH professionals and their projects.

    I also do “peer support” but for sure I do not call it that. I call it helping other people, reaching out to people as a friend, and doing everything I can just to set a good example of what life can be like after you leave the MH System. I blog almost daily (http://juliemadblogger.com), been doing so now since 2005. Trying to expose the industry as much as I can.

    There. A bit of self-promotion which is okay for MH professionals to do, but not okay for me, apparently. I’m called personality-disordered if I even ask.

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  • Sorry, Cassie, there is no way I am going to write, publicly or off the record, that “mental health care is valid and necessary.” Not to Ben Carey or anyone else. No way, and I will not say it publicly, either.

    Not after MH “care” coerced me onto disability which I never needed nor qualified for. It took me years to find a job after forced unemployment. Being supposedly dis-abled stole 35 years of my life, which is over half of it. Now I am 60 and feel like I have to rush to catch up and do everything I can do before lithium-induced kidney disease does me in.

    Not after I learned, at last, that the only way to cure my ED for good was to ditch the MH professionals. And I am not the only one!

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  • Cassie, Where did you get “ogre” from? I would never say that. I don’t say that MH professionals are bad people. I believe that the MH profession is corrupt. That says nothing of the character of those who practice it. Have you ever worked for an unethical company? I did, a few times. For example, I was stuck in a job selling a product that was a ripoff. Now selling a ripoff product is unethical, and yet, to keep my job, I had to keep on selling it. It was a temp position and I could hardly wait for it to end. Since I worked in a position where I was coerced into doing something unethical, does that make me an “ogre”?

    There are no ogres out there. I never use that word to describe human beings. It is a label, a cruel word, and I just do not say it.

    I have known MH professionals who were “wise” and “caring.” They still harmed me! They labeled me, caused dependency, and the therapy was addicting. Continuing going to the “nice” ones kept me out of the job market for a good many years. Oh, not only that, they claimed the “treatment” was life-sustaining.

    If someone is going to be “caring” or “wise” in your life, I would hope it would be a spouse, parent, or close friend, or perhaps a caring teacher or mentor. “Wise” and “caring” are not traits limited to the MH professional world. They don’t have a patent on wisdom.

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  • de facto, very good points. Mental health professionals are highly likely to harm their patients since THEIR premise is false, their ideas about us false, their stereotyping, their profiling of us, their tendency to classify us into whatever’s convenient, their claims that imprisonment is “treatment,” their repeated lies that the drugs are not addictive, that therapy couldn’t possibly also be addictive, that MH care seriously traumatizes people. The very fact that they call it “care” or “help” is a big joke.

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  • Johanna, I saw your comment that mentioned “imbalances” but I cannot find it here posted in the comments section. While there is much we do not know, we do know that the “chemical imbalance” theory of so-called MI has been debunked ages ago. We do know that there’s an imbalance called hypothyroidism, one called dehydration, another involving blood sugar, etc. We also know for sure that these psych drugs cause imbalances, never mind irreparable organ damage and early death.

    When you mentioned that ‘imbalances resolve,” I wonder what the heck there was to resolve chemically in me except the imbalance caused by the drugs.

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  • The usual psychobabble is that people who are suicidal cannot see the forest through the trees. Is this true? Or do they see the grim reality of the forest in a way others around them fail to see?

    I recall an article about a vet who took his own life. He left a detailed note. The Vet services all failed him. He lists them one by one in the note and states that each one of them could have helped but refused to. He was in dire financial straits and was unable to get help for physical issues or trauma trying any way he could. His note sent a very clear message to the VA.

    He also made a clear statement about the various “help” agencies out there that never provide help. I have noticed that the nonprofits have sold out. Many are funded by sources that would surely create a biased atmosphere for anyone seeking help.

    One I noticed was a rape help agency I had gone to in 2008. They did help me then, gave me advice, etc. However, when I contacted them again the only thing they seemed capable of doing was insulting me over the phone with the usual breathing instructions.

    This ain’t help, it is insulting! I find it especially insulting when someone decades younger than me thinks they know how to breathe better.

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  • I have no doubt that a writer’s inability to write would cause suicide. Go sit in on a discussion between MFA in Creative Writing students. If there’s anything worse than death to a writer it is inability to write.

    When I graduated, though I was scarcely aware of it, I took on a silent oath. That I would write about everything I had seen and heard, much of which happened on the wards. For doing just that I was persecuted and forced into exile.

    Drugging and shock are great ways to silence writers. It is on par with banning their books or bullying them or threatening until they stop.

    I believe it is the week after next we celebrate Banned Books Week. I’m trying to figure out how to celebrate.

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  • I am revisiting this post and read the article, as much as I had access to. I noted the wording of the article, “only 5%” had ESRD. If you realize the sampling was of those who started on lithium after 1980, and had been on it at least ten years as of 2010, this gives us a sampling of people who are likely age 30 to 50. They likely do have kidney disease, and they are not likely YET at ESRD. Patients who reach ESRD are usually put on dialysis. Death most usually occurs during the first six months of dialysis. If you survive that, you are likely to live a few more years.

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  • The discrediting of people with college degrees is rampant. Your mental patient status trumps your degree. There are exceptions, people who have MH-related degrees. I have been discredited on here, on MIA frequently, discredited by other patients and survivors, and dismissed by supposed “professionals.” All this renders my degree and extensive education meaningless on the social level. I can’t be trusted, I might be violent, and if I say I am good at something, that gets scoffed at as grandiosity or just dismissed. I have far more authority and get more respect at my workplace than I do here.

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  • Yes, Steve, that story about the second therapist really needs to get out there. I have spoken of her many times in my own blog, but the blog isn’t getting a lot of pageviews right now. I am trying to get the story more visible without resorting to joining Facebook again. She is still practicing. I don’t think she should be, and I don’t know where to go to report her where I will be taken seriously.

    I face the usual dilemma, the easy way out that people use. All they have to do is call me crazy and my story and anything I say is silenced.

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  • Michael I am sharing this one in a blog post of my own. I just blogged about this.

    In my work in customer service most of our customers are kind, polite, and gracious. However, we do get ones we call “irate.” This is the common term in the industry. They even yell or swear at us into the phone. Some are extremely rude and blameful. I’ve had some call from their cars and then blame me for THEIR background noise. The list goes on.

    We get trained in this. As home workers we are told to empathize, or at least sound that way. We are told to force an empathetic attitude even if we do not feel it and what we are really thinking is, “I really am about to sneeze,” or some such thing. Or, as of late,”Darn I need to turn on the fan.”

    We have learned not to take these irate customers personally. They may say they’re pissed, but who are they really pissed at? Me? For an error made by UPS? They do, and they even blame us for their own errors.

    We have figured out that more often than not, these customers are projecting whatever is going on in their lives onto us, because we are there to pick on! I had one, early on, crying over the phone over a pair of flip-flops we couldn’t get to her in time for vacation. I knew something else was happening. Maybe it was a really important date, or maybe this was just the last straw for her in a long line of recent misfortunes she had experienced. I weathered the storm by realizing that, and also later on, joked to myself that my best flip-flops were from the dollar store! Of course, saying that would have gotten me fired. Maybe she will stop at a five and dime on vacation and find the perfect pair she has always wanted…..

    I don’t know how on earth I can stand being yelled and sworn at, but this is my job and it’s part of the job, for which I am paid. We learn, but it takes time and it’s only human to get upset by it every now and then. Only one time that happened, when the customer hit too low below the belt and insinuated that I am stupid, among other things. It was hard to deal with that. What makes up for it all are the wonderful customers who come next, who thank us profusely for our problem-solving skills and say we’re the best.

    I ask myself why these customers don’t bother me, but an insulting remark from a complete stranger on Facebook really ticks me off. Why is that? Possibly the content, which is often an accusation of having a mental disorder.

    These stranger bullies on Facebook are doing nothing but projecting. I’ve been accused of paranoia by someone who, I later found out, was paranoid herself. I was accused of lying by liars, accused of abuse by a person who was abusive toward me (and I had not been toward her), and so on.

    I am not sure how to deal with the know-it-alls except that such attitudes tend to soften over time. You see a lot of that on Facebook.

    I wonder if those accusing public figures of mental illness are actually worried about their own “mental status,” whatever the heck that is. According to Paula Joan Caplan, most people want to be assured they are not mentally ill, that what they are feeling and experiencing is understandable.

    As customer service rep, I know not to accuse, nor comment on a person’s character. I try to tell customers their anger is understandable. If a customer receive the wrong item, I might joke about the time I received basketball shoes instead of running shoes (me? I’m too short!). Or if their item was lost I joke about how my BICYCLE got lost by UPS. That, to me, is so funny (did it roll out of their storage area?) that the customers usually relax and know they’re not going to be accused of dishonesty.

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  • One in 200 successfully get off disability. Congratulations! I am at that point myself, just waiting for the letter from Social Security telling me I no longer “qualify” as dis-abled. I plan to frame it!

    And you even make enough to support your kid and her mom. Wow, so cool. I hear you on NOT telling coworkers about your “dark past.” After all, as soon as you tell them they will never treat you the same.

    I was on it, including back pay, from age 25 on. Now I am 60 and finally back into the workplace.

    Looking back on my greatest accomplishments, I’d say getting off disability is very close to, if not at the top of that list.

    I earned my degrees while still in the System, only I really don’t know too many others who managed to pull that one off. In spite of the doc’s recommendation that I drop out. Oops.

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  • Stephen, I had one that cried in my presence and used me as her therapist, too. I had one ask me out on a date. I had two that slept during our sessions. Elsa Ronningstam would sleep for 10 minutes at a stretch while I sat there not knowing what to do. The only reason I ended up with her as a therapist was because my previous therapist insisted I see a psychologist and Ronningstam was the only one available. Since she specializes in stuff like sociopathy, she didn’t know what to do with me. She couldn’t help me with my ED at all. I saw her after ECT till I fired her. After seeing her for many months she called me up and said she had to have me come in so she could answer the questions on the disability form. I came in and she asked me “What are your symptoms?” I was shocked…oh wait, I’d already been shocked…either way, that did it for me. After eight or so months she didn’t even know why I was there.

    The abusive one insisted that I get force-weighed and regularly threatened me over my weight. I figure at that time it was her duty, or better yet, my psychiatrist’s, to inform me that I had kidney disease (functioning under 40%). The therapist knew but did not tell me. I have diabetes insipidus which means I need more water to survive. This therapist repeatedly accused me of “water-loading,” “water addiction,” and “abusing yourself with water.” Totally untrue! She even accused me of vomiting, which I have never done. I never learned how! She sent the cops to my house when I was sitting quietly, studying, at the library. She even called me and I happened to be in a location where I could pick up the phone there. I did, and she asked, “Where are you? The cops couldn’t find you at your apartment.” Huh? I was so scared to go home that day. She sectioned me another time, and then, claimed she had only sent the cops for a “wellness check” and claimed the cops mis-heard her and dragged me in anyway. I doubt it since a section involves paperwork they have to fill out w her. They HAD the papers! She regularly lied to me, then claimed I was the liar. I had to sign a seven-page contract with her, which she regularly changed to suit her whim. One time she came to the hospital where I had been imprisoned. I prepared for the meeting with “staff” and had a statement written out. My voice was not heard. The meeting was all about her! I was shocked. Of course with her narcissistic tendencies, that all makes sense. One time in “therapy” she said “bullshit” after everything I said. And more.

    I hated that she ran my life. I so badly wanted out after I realized this. I went through withdrawal after I quit her. Narcissistic abuse does that to you. You become isolated in the therapy and your other relationships weaken or end. During the abuse you might seem erratic or bizarre to others since you are being manipulated the whole time. I lost many friends that year. They never understood that the abuse caused it all. it took a long time to recover, and I was angry for a long time as part of the grieving process.

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  • I was overdiagnosed with debilitating arthritis which would have been debilitating if I had believe the diagnosis. I was told I wouldn’t walk or run again. I was overdiagnosed with a “severe and disabling personality disorder,” which oddly enough, disappeared once I recovered from electroshock. I gave up my driver’s license in part because of a false diagnosis of temporal lobe epilepsy. I have never had a seizure except when they gave me shock. I was overdiagnosed with rotting teeth which caused the surgeon to remove five of my teeth that shouldn’t have been removed. I was diagnosed with mania when what I was experiencing was trauma. I was diagnosed with the common cold when the real problem was that I had been raped. Recently, a telephone doctor insisted I go to the ER for a foot that was hurting, discolored and swollen. He claimed “It could be your heart.” Bullshit! I went to a podiatrist and it was tendinitis.

    We are so much smarter about our bodies than any doctor could possibly be. It is only common sense to realize this.

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  • Meghan, Something doesn’t sound right about this relationship at all. If this were a friendship, what kind of friend would this be? It isn’t helping you. It is hurting you. You need to end it and find good people in your life.

    I agree with the others. Often therapy does more harm than good. I had an abusive one I would love to write about here in an article but I don’t know if MIA would welcome that since so many subscribers are therapists…..Although I don’t see how relating a personal experience would steer anyone away from therapy…only from the abusive or harmful therapists. Sadly, there are far more out there than most people are willing to recognize. We do not know what happens behind closed doors, do we? In general I do not think going to therapy is a good idea.

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  • Steve, Typically, shrinks accuse parents of ED kids of “overinvolvement” or “enmeshment.” However, I know my own parents were not like that at all, yet I still got an ED. I think the theory is total bullshit and a way to blame parents for what is simply a dieting problem. I do know helicopter parents, though. I believe this is a cultural value. As I see it, some cultures value helipcopterism, while others shun it. The tendency goes in waves. It’ll be huge with one generation, then half a generation later it will swing the other way. This also goes with parental emotional sharing. Didn’t all of us who grew up kids of WWII parents experience a certain reserved attitude? Of my young girlfriends, only one said she was “close” to her mother. The rest of us had normal parents, or, as we saw it, normal for the day.

    Changing parental attitudes affected me when I went to work as a nanny. The dad had a totally different attitude about parenting than I had ever seen. He insisted his way was the only right way, which I found offensive and actually an offense to my upbringing. I had to put up with it, though. I was being paid to do so.

    We have to be open-minded to different parenting styles. I don’t think there’s a one right way. We may see parents in another culture in a negative way, but I think we have to accept these differences instead of being overly critical.

    For instance, some parents of cultures that aren’t mine seem too rushed and pushy with their kids. I hate hearing a parent tell their kid to hurry up constantly. However, if I had been raised like that I bet I’d see it as normal and even acceptable.

    My parents used spanking. Most did that I knew of. Many used a belt. My dad insisted on not doing that. I wondered if he was weird or maybe one of those hippie pacifists. I don’t believe spanking harmed me in the least, not that I would advocate it nowadays. They did not shame us or verbally abuse us. That made the difference.

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  • Me too. It is lonely because if I share I risk wrecking my social life with whomever I share with. I have, in my new life, with mixed results. I have had to end relationships with people who hear my story and then act afraid of me. I generally just cut it off. I have to constantly fight off the urge to tell my story because doing so is a natural inclination as an activist. I feel that telling it is powerful and a story communicates to others. However, the results can be disastrous if they assume you’re psychotic and won’t believe otherwise.

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  • Thanks for debunking this study, Bob. You would think people would figure that one out. However, many are likely too drugged or shocked to think straight anymore. These drugs have made their way into the medicine cabinets of so many people at this point. Back in 1980 I barely knew what mental illness was and I had never heard of psych drugs, even with my college education. Is the trend beginning to turn as more and more are harmed? Or do they have more tricks up their sleeves?

    Maybe it’s about time we shouted “Bah Humbug.” If we are ever heard.

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  • You might believe me, Cassie, but most people don’t, they woul+d rather call me disease-names then ever admit the therapist might have been wrong.

    As for “good therapist, bad therapist…” This is a pitfall that many fall into. They think that there are good doctors and bad ones, and sadly they are totally missing the point. You can’t divide them up that way because doing so makes it look like therapy and western medicine are really okay, and the bad apples are people we should just dismiss as deviant. Even the best therapy is based on keeping people sick, needy, and teaching them dependency. Even my very best of therapist prolonged my mental patient status. Being nice means the patient keeps coming back. Being cruel might send them away traumatized but which is really worse? If you have a bad one it might help you realize the System is not a very good place to go if you are suffering. Not unless you want to get more disabled.

    Anyone can submit to Forced Psychiatry, which is anthology I am producing and here is the website: http://forcedpsychiatry.com. Submissions are open now. Please go take a look and spread the word. This will be a published book available on Amazon and pseudonyms are allowed. Anyone affected by force, coercion, lockup, etc, can contribute, including families affected. (Yes, I will be contributing.)

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  • Cassie, I will jump at any opportunity to tell my story, but in this case it’s not exactly relevant and clutters up the muck of stories that Carey will receive. Imipramine isn’t an SSRI and is rarely used anymore. I didn’t do anything violent or horrible. I only had thoughts and feelings and mostly I kept them to myself. To add to all that, I had been abused by my therapist. It wasn’t the drug alone that produced the rage. I know in my heart that her abuse made it all ten times worse. Think : narcissism and you will get the idea. It was very hard to get over it.

    We humans love to find easy answers but the truth is it wasn’t just the drug. It was her. But who will believe me?

    What I really want to do is to write a piece about what it is like to be abused by your therapist. I hope it truly offends all the therapists out there, any of them who assume all therapists are great and wonderful. She had a lot of credentials and a must have a lengthy and involved resume. Funny how that means nothing and doesn’t tell you a thing about what happened inside that office. I can still picture it, with the cushiony couches, that horrible potpourri smell, the fucking stuffed animals I hated, those scarves we were supposed to play with like they were children’s toys, the waiting room, everything.

    Sometimes on my way out of Walmart these days I see a vending machine full of stuffed animals and I feel sick seeing it. It’s so sad when I see mental patients buying them there, putting dollar after dollar of their disability check into the machine.

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  • Eric, Thank you for this freaky and haunting story. I was confused all the way through. Editor of what? I finally deduced that this was some kind of college publication. On the whole I would have appreciated a little more clarity throughout the piece. Of course I realize you have to preserve Ann’s anonymity but you can do that without being vague or ambiguous.

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  • Cassandra, that’s an amazing letter. I am glad you wrote.

    That said, I don’t think I will be sending a letter. I don’t have anything constructive to add. First of all, SSRI drugs had no obvious effect on me, neither positive or negative. The SNRI (or whatever) drug Effexor caused insomnia and binge eating. I did have a very negative “effect” from Imipramine, and also a positive “effect.” Imipramine stopped binge eating for me, but unfortunately it put me into a suicidal rage.

    There’s a huge difference between feeling rageful and actually taking action by doing something violent or destructive. I didn’t act on the feelings. I came close but did not make an attempt. I have no physical evidence that I went through all that, no obvious damages except lost relationships.

    I was prescribed Imipramine from Nov 2011 until Feb 2012. I was suffering after I was taken off because the idiot who took me off tapered in three days. I experienced no relief from the rage and very bad binge eating that went on for another year. The rage subsided gradually but it took a long time. My way of expressing myself was mistaken for a mental disorder, which caused further harm, but that’s all over now.

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  • I would not go to one that decided I had any mental disorder, no matter what kind of doc it was. My current naturopath says “depression” but stresses that it’s not a disease but a way people sometimes feel, certainly not a condition one has in one’s character makeup, but a transient and very understandable human way of feeling. Since I am rarely depressed the topic doesn’t come up at all with him. If any doc decides I have mental issues I run away very fast. Any kind of mental disease or label.

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  • JanCarol I have never heard of a “natural” doc who used psych labels. Any of the ones I have consulted steer clear of such medicalizing of normal behavior. Isn’t anyone a little nervous when they get poked and prodded? I have stopped going to docs who do that, “natural” or not. I refuse to give them my business. BTW, life coaches shouldn’t label people but the majority of them do.

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  • I would write this letter but as a survivor the effect of these drugs on me in terms of making me violent was minimal. In 2012 I experienced a really bad “effect” from Imipramine, though. It lasted long after the drug was stopped but I am fine now. A lot of people called me “dangerous” but that was hogwash and just passed on from doc to doc that was unsupported by historical facts.

    My writing endangers psychiatry, so in that sense, I hope to be lethal in other writings that I do. Dangerous, scary, a menace of course.

    I know people, fellow pts, who were made manic by drugs, but I don’t know if I could make a strong enough statement as witness alone.

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  • Psych is not always summoned for that reason. Some of us went to therapists for other reasons, not “Objectionable behavior.” Some, say, had depression they had never told anyone about, that hasn’t manifested itself in outward behavior. My own reasons are included here. I did have an ED, but no one had noticed the weight loss because I hid it well, and my school work, though it faltered momentarily, on the whole remained outstanding. When I revealed to others that I had gone to shrinks, and had even resorted to a psychiatrist, people I knew such as faculty and classmates were shocked.

    I wasn’t sent to therapy by anyone but me. My choice. Only I didn’t realize the rabbit hole I was getting myself into. Within months I was converted, even prior to taking any pills at all. I was talking their symptom/disease language, knew the slogans, and had given up my music career. It happened in a flash to observers.

    Looking back, I should have seen a nutritionist, hopefully an alternative one. These were not available in 1981, and none of the therapists knew anything about ED. This is sadly a very common experience in my generation.

    So I was not “sent” to a shrink and nothing about my behavior prior to entering the system was bothersome to anyone.

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  • I don’t see self-publishing as something I would “resort to,” but rather, it is my first choice. It not a cop-out. Self-pub means you take charge of what happens. Times have changed and many authors are choosing this route over traditional publishers. I have written ten books and published two. My next book will be self-pub, my first choice, because of my past experience and what I saw my colleagues go through with publishers.

    You have to decide. Do you want fancy, or do you want to spread the word to many people and potentially save lives? Why do you want to see the book in print?

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  • ARe you kidding? Profit. Fame. Attention. Money. It’s her identity, her “brand.” Miss Bipolar. Without it, who would she be? She doesn’t even know who she is.

    They used to tell us that about eating disorders, in the ED nuthouses. That part was very true. ED did become an identity for many people, me too, and you start to wonder who you would be without it. You get scared to let it go, even though you know you can, since without it you fear you are nothing. I am wondering, though, if telling us this, just rubs it in and magnifies the problem. Because they’d say it almost like a self-fulfilling prophesy. Just like they told so many of us, the day we left, “You’ll be back.”

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  • Okay, I understand. My fellow graduates have gone with traditional publishers with mixed results. I would be very careful. I fell for Chipmunka and that was of course a ripoff. My book was my masters thesis and sold, in four years, maybe four copies total. It was about the most demeaning and shameful thing that ever happened to me, mostly because I supported my fellow graduates and on my tiny disability pay, purchased their books just to make them look good, even reviewed them. They never returned the favor, and even stopped speaking to me when I ditched the System.

    I would never go with a supposed traditional publisher again, after seeing friends of mine also ripped off by other publishers that weren’t even scams. A really good one will get you readings, get you on TV, get you into the papers, etc. So with a decent publisher, which even the best of writers rarely find, you won’t have to pay a publicist separately. But that’s like finding a needle in a haystack.

    To me, giving away my writing for free and hearing a “Thank you” from someone means so much more than having a big name publisher and risking having all my books sitting in my basement collecting dust. Any day.

    I’m not trying to say your book won’t sell, but it’ll be harder than you think it’ll be. A lot of people just give lip service and you can make them promise up and down, send them links, send excerpts, and they will not follow through, not share on social media, not help you out in any way, and in the end, tell you to get lost. My best friend, well…ex-best friend, refused to read even the sample and told me so.That summarized the entirety of what I went through. After that, after six years of grad school, after that joyous moment of my thesis passing, and even getting a standing ovation at graduation, after rewriting like mad, that’s what I got. Humiliation.

    Nov 2014 when my publisher wrote to me and said my book had sold zero copies in the past year, I went down the beach near where I lived in South America, me and my dog, and I let myself bawl. No one heard. Then I went back home and went on with my life.

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  • Ron, just wondering, how can a person want involuntary treatment? Agreeably, no lockup joint is voluntary even if you asked to go there, since you can’t voluntarily leave. So anyone who claims they are voluntary in a lockup joint is fooling themselves.

    Secondly, that I know of, a court order cannot be legally done to person who has been willingly going to treatment. If walk in there and you do not resist, then the court order can’t be done to hold you there. They can only commit if they perceive you as an escape risk or they think you are resisting. There’s a fine line here.

    For example, I was unconscious (and in fact, my heart wasn’t beating) when they claim they put a Sec 12 on me back in Massachusetts. Now I don’t know if my records are accurately written, since I am positive that they couldn’t have legally obtained a Sec 12 on me while I was in kidney failure. Not that such illegal shit can’t be pulled on an MP. After all, who cares about us? We’re worthless scum to them.

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  • Wow, I love this story. Thank you for sharing that! It’s funny that only an hour ago I was visiting Drugwatch. I love that you can look up lawsuits there.

    I also had panic attacks, but only for a year, and that was some 20 years ago, not long after shock treatments. The panic attacks stopped as mysteriously as they came, around the same time the cognitive impairment wore off.

    I imagine you know a wealth of information about drugs! I have been looking for lithium lawsuits, hope to find some to help me feel inspired. Thanks again.

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  • Irit, I have an MFA in Creative Writing and in my opinion you should self-pub. I am not suggesting this as a shortcut, but because when you publish, the publisher will reap the profits and make decisions you may not like. I would self-pub and make the book available as an ebook (Kindle/Nook, etc) in addition to hard copy.

    I would hire several readers prior to getting it into print. You want someone to do a “reading” and you want someone to do a closer, fine read, which is more like what the proofreader does. The more pairs of eyes, the better. The actual proofreader should be someone who does this detail work specifically as a profession. I do readings of anyone’s “madness memoir” entirely free. I do not proofread (not for money, anyway) because I suck at it. I will do a reading with margin comments of the entire manuscript free of charge.

    I see no need for a publisher. Times have changed, even since I got my MFA. For sure. You will need someone to design the cover who knows how to do covers (might ask around here or try Fiver), and you can buy the ISBN and file copyright yourself. I would suggest publishing directly to Kindle. They have a special service for this that is possible to access in Canada.
    You can contact me at julie at juliegreene dot net

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  • I would have said that, or, “Or,”…… Either one of these would have worked. Still, I’d hate to have my comment taken down because I neglected to use a quantifying preface to my sentence. Had I left it out, Dear Steve the Sheriff, would it be implied? Say, if I said, “Group One tells Group Three….” Actually I wouldn’t have said that anyway. It is not universally true.

    There are some that insist you have great parents and can’t understand why you run away, haven’t spoken for a month, or act out in school. Must be a disorder, couldn’t be his/her home life…..

    Can I generalize by saying that psychiatry is rarely on the mark? Even if we think they are at the time, or, are totally convinced that they are right, ten or 20 years down the line…if we aren’t dead, we very well may not only have changed our minds, but regret that we believed them, and regret the consequences.

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  • Or, in some cases, Group One tells Group Three, “Your childhood sucked. We’re better than your own Mommy and Daddy. We’re the new and better parents!” They say this to anyone in Group Three, twisting around any type of childhood narrative, good and bad, to fit Group One’s version. This leaves Group Two wondering what they did wrong. Due to Group One’s blameful attitude, and high level of authority and esteem in society, Group Two may then begin to wonder about every little nit-picky thing and wonder if THAT was the one thing that caused their loved one’s supposed “mental illness.” Group One blames Groups Two and Three for all of Group One’s subsequent errors, mainly because Group One refuses to admit fault and refuses to apologize. Group One continues to do great harm, and then, calls that harm “mental illness,” attributing it to either the moral shortcomings and character defects of Group Three themselves, or the past failings of Group Two that nurtured, raised, and cared for their loved ones.

    Okay, is this a “generalization”? Or a retelling of a familiar tale?

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  • Brett, I don’t see Frank’s reaction, stating he was “insulted,” as an attack on any person. I see it as a reaction. Look at the wording.

    “I’m insulted.”

    Now, in shrink talk (forgive me, everyone, please…), note that Frank has made an “I” statement here. He used the word “insulted” as a descriptor. It appears as a verb, but the usage of that verb is as an adjective. The adjective usage describes Frank’s thoughts or feelings, as “I am” (you can say just as easily, “I am sad,” or, “I am surprised”). The word “insulted” is clearly not a descriptor of you, nor of the proposal, nor of those that designed it, but of his own initial personal reaction. Note that what follows in his original post continues along the same lines.

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  • out, I put mine there almost as a joke because my degree is not in a mental health field. It’s in creative writing, which earns me no money at all. I figure if they can shove their letters around, why shouldn’t I?

    After all, I got my masters without their permission and in fact, against doctor permission, and in spite of all their predictions that I could not do it.

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  • Brett I am surprised you didn’t know what I was referring to when I think I made it clear. You cannot make claim that there’s a double standard here at MIA between survivors and “professionals” when we have two groups that aren’t of equal power in society, aren’t of equal wealth, and by all means, one group has more authority in most spheres than the other.

    Here, though, while you seem to demand and equal playing field, it simply isn’t possible when we are talking about extreme harm and traumatic experiences done by psych AND THERAPY the likes of which you cannot even fathom.

    None of us are insulting you personally. I love taking jabs at the psych profession, I repeat, profession, and yes I love to bash therapy, too. Not therapists, or at least not you since I do not know you, but therapy as a concept.

    I can talk about the abusive therapy experience I had all I want and in living color, too. I AM FREE NOW! I don’t see why you should be insulted by that. It should not have happened. I am only trying to warn others of the red flags.

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  • Psych is a profession. Survivor is not.

    Psych is a corrupt profession. Since survivors on our own aren’t a profession, or a union, and we don’t have the power to put you anyone else behind locked doors, I’d say that’s an unfair statement, Brett.

    Please read Steve’s “sheriff” article again. Tell me how badly the psych profession, or, say, you in particular have been harmed by survivors. Have your rights been taken away? Have we put you out of work? For how long? What about your kidneys? Have any one of us here destroyed your kidneys?

    I just filed my taxes (and paid them) or the first time in 37 years. 37 years out of work. Can you top that?

    So it’s not okay to occasionally “insult” your profession?

    Okay, having some fun here.

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  • I am not sure what we’re supposed to object to in our letters to Carey. I have yet to jump on the bandwagon. I can’t, in all fairness and accuracy even mention “biological psychiatry” since there’s nothing “biological” about psychiatry. Where is the biology behind their Bible, the DSM? No biology there. No x-rays, no blood chemistry either. Psych is a hate movement, it is eugenics-based, it takes away people’s rights. It splits up couples and families, even encourages families to “disengage for their own good.” What biology is used in the courtroom when they take away your kids or take away your freedom? Psych causes death by suicide, homicide, incarcerates millions of people who have not committed crimes. What is biological about that? Where’s the biology in restraints? Seclusion? Forced unemployment? Zapping people’s brains with voltage till they can’t think anymore? Wouldn’t that be classified as torture, not medicine? I see no biology here.

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  • Who is up for a PROTEST there? Right there outside that conference at Brigham and Women’s in Boston? Ready? I will be the first to sign up! I know one of those docs! He falsely dxed me with temporal lobe epilepsy! I do not have it and never did. I suspected as such, and stopped seeing him with no ill consequences. Later I found out that he is an overdiagnoser. In my opinion, he was also a misogynist.

    He tried to convince me that the devastating cognitive effects I had from ECT were from my periods. Oh please. I would like to surprise him and tell him I am still alive, (sorry dude).

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  • I have been accidentally put on the “provider” mailing list for this and it’s annoying. Whereas I did attend a training for life coaching last January, I made the decision not to pursue it as a career for various reasons that came quite clear to me as there is too much corruption in the profession. I don’t see how a person can become an MH professional, even one that isn’t called that but really IS that (let’s be realistic here and call it what it is!), and still maintain a clear conscience. You really have to walk a fine line. My own classmates, fellow grads of the program I was in, were already talking about how to charge clients as much as possible as soon as class ended.

    I was in a meeting in Denver with the ISEPP group where this project, or a similar one, was discussed. The discussion went nowhere and at the end of the meeting I had no clue whether the plan was on or not. I hated the rude eye-rolling on the part of some of the participants.

    TO THE ORGANIZERS OF THE Denver meeting: IF you invite so-called survivors to your meetings, then at least do so because you value our input as equal to yours, not because you feel obligated to include us.

    Darius, Your comment caught my eye. The idea of categorizing the responses into these distinct groups turns me off as the effect of psychiatry and it’s little sister that also can cause great harm by its harmful use of categories, psychotherapy, are not only on the individual victim/patient, but will affect the patient’s family, neighborhood, workplace, school, and historically, for years or decades to come. The categories are limiting.

    In brief, psychiatry makes us all sick.

    What is said in the article (here I am paraphrasing) that psych is something used to control people whose behavior is somehow objectionable is too narrow a statement, and perhaps extreme as well. Many, if not most of us were okay, by that I do not mean perfect, but just fine the way we were prior to our initiation. Afterward, we were so much worse off that we were branded as MP’s for life, still in the System or marginalized in the role of outcasts. This might cause our family to become an Outcast Family, branded as sick, wrong, deranged by psych, especially if our families don’t kick us out quickly enough.

    We can have category #5, #6, #7, too. I knew a janitor who cleaned a psych unit. The janitor tried to blow the whistle and then was incarcerated along with the rest of us, effectively silenced, forcibly unemployed at that point, life ruined.

    When will it stop?

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  • Yes, that is exactly what psychiatry does to creative people. It sabotages. You are a writer? Poof! We don’t allow that here. You compose music? Poof! What did you want to do that for, anyway? You’re a computer programmer? Isn’t that overly ambitious? Medical student? Why don’t you think more realistically! RN? Why don’t you volunteer in the flower shop? Anything they could say to insult us, demean us with their low expectations of us…they would do. They hated our genius and would do anything to deny it. This especially rang true for me in April 2013 when my psychiatrist told me she intended to drug me till I was incapable of writing. Why? Because my writing exposed human rights abuses at the institution she worked for, MGH, medical capital of Boston.

    I will never forget that. In a nutshell, that one appointment told me what the past three decades of psych had been all about. The one thing I knew was that I had to leave. I did.

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  • If anything, his childhood was a springboard to his long and amazing career as entertainer and performer.

    I see my own life that way. I grew up as the shortest kid in the class, wore glasses, was Jewish, and a whole lot of other reasons why the other kids teased me. I certainly don’t look back on that with horror, but with amusement. It made me who I am, and I am not only proud of that, but thankful.

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  • Damn this is beautifully written. I wish the part about his childhood was not included, though. I felt the description of Parkinson’s, that is, the present that he was dealing with, was plenty enough. I wish MIA would include more articles like this one. I enjoyed the empathetic tone of the writer toward the sufferer, his ability to put himself into the center of the protagnist’s shoes, to feel what he felt, or suggest what he may have felt, though we do not know. The idea of “mental illness” is so dismissive. It shuts down, it does not listen, it does not feel.

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  • Actually, Steve, they thought “individualized treatment” meant giving everyone the precise same meal plan but allowing each person choices, say, a choice of type of cookies they wanted. Or a choice between cherry yogurt or vanilla. Huge variation and individualized treatment. Never mind a few of us might end up with an uncooked egg hard-boiled egg, just for variety’s sake. This, of course, led to some challenges since we were required to finish everything on our trays. What is the moral here? Everyone is different, right?

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  • Hi Vanilla, I don’t know why you said that. Having been name-called for years, that is, called “not even human,” called “off her meds,” called, “Needs to be locked up,” called, “Someone needs to take her dog away and put her dog in a shelter,” called, “She used to be nice but now…” called, “Horrible,” called, “She’s paranoid about the meds,” called, “Why does she talk about rights all the time…” called, “I am afraid to talk to her…” called, “We need to lock our doors, don’t answer the phone because it might be her….” called “dangerous…” Do I need to go on? This is by people who once cared for me, by people who were friends of mine. This is how I was treated by those that once loved me. This is how I was seen by those that had cared for me like I was a sister, by those that had protected me and watched over me and seen me as a comrade. A club member, a pal. By those that later called the cops on me. For my protection. Claiming they were saving me. And themselves. In the name of some disease. So?

    Survivors have been silenced in other venues (such as the NYT) for years, while the NYT upholds the voices of spouses and parents, as we know. Never mind the Boston Globe and others. You get your chance with NAMI.

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  • Oldhead, To address what you said, I could add that my mom paid thousands of dollars for my education, my bachelor’s degree and masters from esteemed colleges, that is, a BFA in Writing, Literature, and Publishing (which I earned with high honors), and an MFA in Creative Writing. My masters degree was published not long after I graduated. These creative writing fields are not the same as journalism, rarely appreciated and pay so little we often lose money just to get published. However, it’s a skill, one I highly value, one that I have used over, first to keep me alive while incarcerated, then, to describe in my blog what happened, then, to blow the whistle when I didn’t know what else to do. Then, of course, I used the same skill to work through the trauma that resulted from the human rights abuses done to me. Now I keep writing to tell others to stay away from psych, and because to me it is a moral duty to keep writing and telling anyone whom I can reach. Why? Because I can.

    It does have a lot to do with education. That got paid for. I am even embarrassed to say so. But I love my mom, too.

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  • Out, I think so, too. Someone figured out why pyramid schemes invariably fail. There’s a simple mathematical reasoning here. I researched this after I was involved in an employment scam earlier this year. How many people can you sucker into buying something overpriced and worthless? How many of your pals, soon to be ex-pals, did you coerce into it? And how many are now screaming their stories of financial ruin to the world?

    The lithium generation is either dead now or very sorry. The Prozac generation is aging, with early dementia clouding their thinking, but underneath, you bet they are pissed. If you were poly-drugged, your parents have outlived you, and their tragic story of your shortened life is hitting the news stands right now.

    If many more die, we will run out of burial space.

    It very well might not be long.

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  • I will stop commenting on MIA as soon as the “likes” policy is in effect. I would suggest that anyone else do this, too. Please do continue to speak out as much as always, but do this outside of MIA commentary. Do it in your own blogs and on your own pages. You can always post a link to your commentary here. If it is your page, MIA can’t edit it, ban it, or try to moderate you. Do follow legal protocol…don’t plagiarize and don’t commit what would be legally considered defamation (but DO tell the truth!). I have been blogging unabashedly and rather prolifically for ages…now I will voicing my opinions and thoughts exclusively off MIA.

    http://juliemadblogger.com/wp/2018/08/08/changes-to-the-mia-site-and-my-commentary/

    And that’s that. Goodbye.

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  • Okay, then, my solution is as follows. I will stop commenting here. Instead, I’ll comment in my own blog where I don’t have to worry about moderation and a popularity contest. I may, or may not, provide a link here. I am not leaving a comment knowing it will be liked or not liked, where it will stacked up with other comments and ranked, no matter where it ends up in the pile. I don’t want that. Yet I will still be able to comment if I wish. I would suggest anyone can do this via their Facebook or other pages they have.

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  • James Moore, how can you say I’m being unfair? Who is in power here? Who has the power to delete comments or ban someone? Ahem!

    I have not commented in the NYT. I commented once, an antipsych stance in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and my comments have been held for moderation ever since.

    Now talk about marginalization! How many of us have been banned from online communities because we stated the FACT that we were harmed by psych? Just saying that will cause you to lose friends, be called dangerous, called delusional and paranoid in online communities. I have lost so, so many friends who decided I was too delusional to deal with, or too disordered, or “off meds…” Whatever. Marginalized, blocked, silenced. Banned from speaking at a conference after I’d already been accepted. Kicked out, refused a blogging job that I was well-qualified for because they were “afraid the writing would cause people to avoid treatment.” And yet…this for telling the truth, nothing more. Banned because I choose to not have a therapist. You wanna hear about years and years of that? I can keep writing, you know.

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  • James Moore, the “likes” system wrecks other community sites. Ask anyone who has been through bullying on Facebook. Facebook is junk because it turned into a popularity contest. It is not a safe place to say much of anything anymore except to show off a pic of your pet.

    Can you say which other sites use the “likes” system and it’s great and wonderful, adding to the site in some fashion?

    As a professional writer, I can say with confidence that boiling down your opinion to a black-and-white like or dislike can’t possibly reflect with any accuracy your real thoughts on the piece. Even a “rating” via number of stars is too much of a generalization.

    This is what’s going to happen. People will “like” the comments made by people they like or people they’re friends with. The comments made by people who just so happen to have writing ability (based on education…which many are deprived of…). Comments written by those who do not have access to a full-size keyboard, or are at a library or in a facility where time is limited and comments are written fast with no chance to edit or proofread will get fewer likes. This is not fair!

    And i’m sitting here writing from home on a full-sized keyboard….so I realize this.

    Why is MIA marginalizing those who are already marginalized? Ahhh…the segregation and stratification continues…..

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  • No way James Moore! Other online communities are full of popularity contests, hurt feelings, and bullying. Why imitate what they’re doing wrong, just because they’re doing it? The likes part about Facebook is one of the main reasons I quit.

    I have been bullied on Facebook more than once, on the regular area and also in specialized areas (pages and various clubs on there).

    MIA is the one place where I haven’t been bullied. MIA is the one place where I can say “this event happened” and I won’t be called dangerous or paranoid just for telling the truth, here and in my personal blog.

    If you go forward with the likes plan, you are silencing those of us who need a place to talk about what happened.

    Please stop this idea in its tracks. PLEASE!

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  • Absolutely, s_randolph. How does one define force? If you lie to a person, which I saw more often than not, deceive them into conceding to hospitalization, is that force? I think so! I have heard professionals say to patients, “Only a few days,” or heard patients tell me their therapists or doctors said that. This was not usually the case. Some stayed a month or longer. I knew many who planned for those “few days” and ended up forced out of work and out of their homes.

    What about the deceptive advertising these places spew out. The pictures of the “compassionate” nurses and people being listened to. This rarely pans out as the ads state. Why don’t these ads say something like….

    Don’t worry, we will keep you so long as we profit. If we decide we don’t like you, we don’t discriminate here…you get the same restraints, isolation, and needles as anyone else. You can be assured that even though you are not a cookie, you will get cookie-cutter treatment that is state-of-the-art. Even our shock machines are state-of-the-art, the authentic replica of machines they had decades ago, like an old antique car. Makes us lots of money (but HIPAA keeps us from revealing just how much). You may or may not have diabetes, but we’ll continue to compare you to a diabetic even though it’s totally illogical. No fear, you will get diabetes anyway from our drugs…so it’s all logical…sorta…and cozy here. Check out our lovely grounds here…these are to impress the visitors, as you’re not likely to see daylight for a long time. Maybe you can get a window view…if you can see between the thick bars we put there to keep the place secure…after all, psych doesn’t want you getting out and revealing to the world that you’re better off without us.

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  • knowledge I witnessed a man being sent away, right in front of me, who said over and over he was “going to kill himself” right away, he said. The man was begging to be hospitalized. They told him he wasn’t sick enough. This was total bullshit, of course.

    I don’t know the real reason. Was he a frequent flyer and maybe they had stopped listening a while back? Was this insurance? I actually don’t think insurance was the issue. I suspect it was the fact that he was a wheelchair user. That presented a challenge for local “units” as many, as I recall back in Boston, were not wheelchair accessible at all or presented a safety risk…for the unit, of course. Or maybe they were afraid of an ADA-style legal issue. This poor guy was literally bawling on his way out. Shit.

    I don’t think such places are good for anyone, including the staff, but as it was his only option (that he could ascertain) they should have honored his request. The options, out of their grab bag of traditional “treatment,” (such as weekly therapy with a brand new T he had never met before, and that appt wasn’t for a number of days…) were not going to work, which he pointed out, due to the immediacy of the situation. Back then, there were no peer respites around, either. He just didn’t know what to do.

    Likely he really needed someone to listen, which occasionally happens in lockup, not often, though. That instead of the degrading treatment he got at that ER. Boston Medical. 2011, July. Saw it all.

    My fear at that time was that he would kill himself just to prove what assholes they were, or to prove them wrong. I wonder if he is reading here. I hope he is. Hello, dude!

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  • Many do not, never had the chance to learn, or were told they were incapable or were discouraged in some way.

    When I was at a clubhouse back in fall of 1997, which lasted all of maybe three days, I asked if I could use the computer and teach myself. They told me I wasn’t “ready.”

    In December of that same year, I managed to get a computer that could get online, that had Win95. I taught myself everything I know about computers. Now I have a job working as independent contractor that requires extensive computer skills. Not ready? Geez.

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  • Another thing….Many simply do not have time to comment. Was this taken into account? If you have two jobs and three kids will you be addicted to MIA the way some people seem to be? If you are stuck in day treatment all day, do you have time to comment? What about those who never learned to type, or find typing, or writing itself, too difficult to deal with?

    As one who is keyboard-verbose I am well aware that not everyone is.

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  • I want to thank MIA for improving the search function, as I would agree that it doesn’t pull up the articles I need even though I know they are there!

    I already have the ability to not read comments! We all do! It’s called x-ing out the tab entirely, or just scrolling to the bottom of the comments and adding my own. I do this when there are a hundred comments and I cannot, realistically, read every single one! I tend to avoid those with too many ALL CAPS, or ones that just go on and on, which there aren’t too many.

    I enjoy comments that talk about dark subjects, or, in other forums, might be labeled “negative.” Negativity-bashing is bullshit, because most of the bare, naked truth about psych and lockup certainly stinks. Much of our best and most powerful literature is dark and wry, or doesn’t end happily. I love humorous comments, too. I also love hearing how people escape or turn their lives around post-psych.

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  • Pleb, That has been my experience submitting to MIA also. You are not alone. I have sent articles that sat unresponded to for a month, then, when I inquired, somehow, interestingly, whatever I sent was mysterious “lost.” Really? Once or twice is believable but the number of times this happened makes me wonder. So I resent. That happened more often than not.

    Now if I were a MH professional, or ran some well-known organization, or was lucky enough to win some huge grant….Then of course things would be different.

    I think MIA should have a blind submissions policy. This is the best way to be non-discriminatory. Blind submissions means that the editors do not know the name of the person who sent the piece in when they receive it. They will not know the social rank (ahem!) either. Almost all online mags have this policy, and in fact, they tend to be rather strict about that. I agree with whoever said there’s an elite crowd here. I don’t think it’s right at all.

    Some will comment more than others. Also, some are more expressive at the keyboard than others. Some have only cellular phones to type on, and this will limit their ability to comment. Some access this site from libraries, where, sometimes, computer time is limited. A few access it from facilities, with staff glaring at them the whole time (Hey, what site is that?…).

    I happen to write a lot. This is just the way I am, and also, I type very fast. I wish I could type faster so I could get more words out every day. If I could spend a weekend not sleeping and only writing, I would do that, gladly, but it’s not practically feasible. Working full-time now at a job doesn’t stop me from writing, thank goodness! Hope my ex-shrink isn’t reading this!

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  • Kindred, I agree. I am less likely to comment here if it turns into a popularity contest a la Facebook. Disgusting! Terrible!

    Say what? Ranked? Oh, like some people are naturally superior to others….Really? Then what is that saying about anyone else? Isn’t that exactly what dx does? Those who don’t win the popularity contest are going to be thus silenced, because they lose visibilty. This is bullshit.

    If any survivors (or those that love them) reading this want to have their voices heard regarding the use of forced psychiatry (this includes “hospitalization,” drugging, anything one was deceptively coerced into, shock, etc) please submit to the anthology, Forced Psychiatry. I am taking submissions now.

    I do not take research papers. There are plenty of those to go around. I am looking for vivid details and description. Does not have to have a “happy ending.”

    Check out the site: http://forcedpsychiatry.com

    Works that are accepted will be compiled into a published book.

    No outside funding! No grants, no paid publicists, no hidden agenda, etc. Just me trying to do good in the world and give people a voice.

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  • Another sad example of how these professionals assume they have power to diagnose and determine some are mentally inferior. Note the language used in the quoted passages, the use of “we” when describing those who diagnose.

    “We,” therefore, does not refer to the entire human population, but a group of elites who claim they know better than the rest of humanity. Apparently they hold so much power that they are the authorities on who is suffering and who isn’t. Baloney.

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  • I don’t understand why the writer of this article, who holds a PhD, thinks he is such an authority that he can call his male protagonist “healthy” and his female protagonist “maladaptive.” Whereas I don’t particularly worry which example was male and which was female (though I did take note of this!), I am concerned that a PhD’ed person seems wield such power over others, in particular, children and their families. Diagnosing is the act of proclaiming, YOU ARE something. “You, Miss, are maladaptive and you, Sir, are okay.” Thus, this determination, made by a PhD who has seized power by diagnosing, separates the okay from the not-okay, splitting off a group of not-okays so that they can be “treated,” marginalized, ghettoized, imprisoned, or killed.

    I am yet one more person who was labeled manic every time I aced a class, every time I was working hard on a college project, during National Novel Writing Month, and pretty much any time the MH professional found it convenient. They pathologized high intelligence, love of academics, desire to get somewhere in life, and any form of activism as a disease. Why? They had to uphold the label I had already been given. They had to uphold their own power. Some of them, I believe, regularly did this now and then at random just so that they stay in business.

    Last time I saw any type of doctor was right after my cataract surgery. After I explained to him how I had to adapt to being able to see again, which I must add is not at all easy, he smiled at me and said, “You have just the right attitude. Keep it up.”

    Had a doctor, even an eye doctor, who saw “bipolar” in my chart examined me at that time, under the exact same circumstances, he would have demeaned me as “overly ambitious” and cautioned me to take things one step at a time.

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  • Steve, I wrote to you privately.

    I, for one, steer away from generalizations, although I am guilty of doing it just like many others. A sweeping generalization undermines the credibility of the speaker. If you say, “Everyone,” you’d better mean it, or someone who isn’t included in that “everyone” won’t be able to relate. If you say, “All psychiatrists are evil,” to me, that sounds far less credible than giving specific examples of gruesome incidents you witnessed. Using description and vivid, gripping detail (without exaggeration) is more powerful than a generalization, and reaches people where it matters — right in their hearts.

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  • Cults and psychiatry use the exact same brainwashing techniques. When I encountered the Moonies I was traveling alone far away from where I lived. Isolation is a very effective technique. The Moonies took us away from society and we stayed a summer-camp-type situation. You really couldn’t leave on your own because it was out in the country on deserted roads. You cannot leave a nuthouse, either. You are separated from family and friends and they don’t let you freely communicate with the outside world.

    Real brainwashing coerces using kindness. The Moonies claimed the “loved” me but really they had another agenda. Psych, namely therapists, act all nice but their idea is to “change the patient’s thinking.” We are coerced into higher levels of “care” via kindness and deception. We may be told “It’s only a few days,” which is bullshit, or told, “Don’t worry, you are a voluntary patient,” and you aren’t. You are pampered and told how badly you “deserve a rest.”

    Conversion is the goal in both situations, that is, replacing the victim’s current ideology with a new one, theirs. After that, it’s a real feat to undo it.

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  • ADHD diagnosed people are used to the stimulants, and have built a tolerance. There’s the difference, since non-ADHD students use them only occasionally, so they would be more sensitive to them.

    According to a personal trainer I knew, some runners benefit from drinking a small amount of coffee prior to a run. You would have to time it just right. What happens is that while running, the caffeine level will suddenly drop, which they term “coffee poop-out.” I experienced it once and then, learned. The other drawback to drinking coffee, for some runners, is that it can cause a stomach ache.

    The trainer told me to drink it only if I find it beneficial, but not too early prior to running. I find that I really have to start my run within 45 minutes or it is going to poop out. I can take it or leave it these days.

    To coffee or not to coffee is a major debate among runners, just like the argument over stretching. I do not do the latter, since either before or after running I am likely to overstretch a muscle.

    That said, Runner’s High beats stimulants any day!

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  • Paula Caplan made a great point. I would love to explore this study further, but I ask, what happens if you perceive yourself as mentally ill, that is, if you believe the doctors, or your family is totally convinced? You might then accept the disabled label, you are forced into unemployment for life and poverty, and a lifetime (a shortened one!) of drugging and maybe even shock.

    My hope is to reach as many people as possible, in whatever stage of that diagnosis they are in, and help them turn around. This may mean convincing someone to cancel the very first mental health appointment. If we are lucky. Most, though, are married to the System in some way and it’s tough to help them see beyond it.

    There’s an interesting tidbit in this story about seeing your doctor as incompetent. You may also get bad treatment at the hands of “staff,” and start to doubt that they are really the gods they make themselves out to be. This is only the beginning.

    There is a danger, though, inherent in this because getting a doc who is obviously incompetent might lead to your ending up in the hands of one you consider “better.” The good doc/bad doc mentality is pervasive throughout MH and Medicine in general. So many times I heard, “That one was bad…go to this one instead!” So many people I knew thought that they only needed a “better doc” or “better hospital.” I was like that for years, or more likely, decades. It was like waiting for Elijah the Prophet who never shows up at the Seder. Oh well, next year, if we keep on singing the same song. (I think the ritual is built in to the Seder to make a point.)

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  • Are you kidding, Shaun? Those groups they claimed were therapy were nothing but filling in grade-school level worksheets. Discussion was minimal. The lazy staff person handed out worksheets, we filled them in, and everyone read their responses. That was the more advanced groups. Bingo was just one level under that. Art therapy insulted the patients who were truly talented at art. You bet “writing group” insulted me. I’d usually go off in a corner and scribble off like ten pages. They never let me read anything I wrote, and if I squeezed in the words (really fast before I got interrupted again…) they’d kick me out of group.

    Oh, speaking of that, I’d write for the psychiatrist, too. I worked very hard at this, then, I’d walk into the psychiatrist meeting and he’d refuse to read anything I wrote. Or he’d insult me by saying, “Sum it up in one sentence.” I can’t tell you how furious that made me, but they did it many times.

    The worst was when I had about six pages to show the psychiatrist. He literally pretended to read them. I knew he wasn’t. As he read, he tossed each page onto the floor, just to let me know how superior he was.

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  • Shaun, if anyone tells their healthcare provider, or psychiatrist, or therapist that they have a plan to kill themselves, they clearly want to be hospitalized. Talking about suicide is the most effective way to get admitted. That way, the person gets a warm place to stay where they don’t pay a heating bill, hot showers with no water bill, and free food and you don’t even have to apply for food stamps to get it. You can easily and quickly get away from the roommates you don’t like, or escape from abusive spouse or parents, or get some relief from caring for your kids. You can even use the heck out of the ADA and get excused from work. Not only that, taxpayers pay for your holiday.

    Only invariably you get there and realize maybe you shouldn’t have opened your trap after all. You realize you could have gotten your needs met more efficiently by staying out. Now what?

    There are no voluntary patients on a psych ward. The ward doors are locked and we are trapped in there. None of the staff give a shit who is deluded into thinking they are voluntary and who is not. You are all slaves now and they can do what they want, or do nothing, and get paid for it.

    Now if you really want to do yourself in, in this day and age you keep your plans to yourself. People know better. We may be called “patients” but we aren’t stupid.

    One alternative, of course, is not to make plans at all but just decide and do it very fast before anyone can stop you. Many fail… in fact I think most do. They end up imprisoned and treated like total shit. You don’t want that, as if that happens it’ll wreck your life.

    Given that all this is extremely messy business, and for me, ending my life means I can’t write anymore (some might be thrilled about that!) and I won’t be able to do activism, I choose to live. And live every day as if there’s no tomorrow. Life is precious. There’s no debate there, not in my mind. No debate.

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  • Thank you, Dr. McLaren, for this witty article! I loved reading it and chuckle over it remembering the decades I spent drinking the Kool Aid as a patient. I think there’s one more reason psychiatry continues to believe the lies in spite of the overwhelming evidence of their invalidity.

    Admitting you are wrong means you grieve. You grieve for the years you spent devoted to the lie. You grieve for your misguided career. You grieve for the money, time, and energy you put forth upholding that lie.

    Psychs are like anyone else. Humans avoid painful feelings on the whole. I think they, and their subservient patients, refuse to admit the truth because the idea of such grave loss terrifies them.

    To say, “I was wrong,” is virtuous indeed, but few do. We are trained by our society to refuse to apologize. Apology often means you admit you were wrong or made an error.

    When I had my antipsych turnaround, the first change i noticed was that I began to willingly and joyfully apologize. I noticed, though, how often others fail to do so. I did this because I was already down the grieving path. Most stay where it is safe and cozy, and never take that leap.

    I was in that safe and cozy place of believing the lies until finally about six years ago I was pushed into the grieving state by extreme torture on a psych ward (water deprivation). After that, the road was rocky indeed, a major struggle to regain the person I really am. I consider myself lucky…but lucky in spite of psychiatry. Because of their abuse, I left them behind and started a new life.

    For psychiatrists, individual ones, to break away, it means starting life over. Are they prepared to do this? Some make the leap to freedom. Most, sadly, do not.

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  • Rachel my kidneys are damaged, too. I was told I didn’t have much time left years ago. It turned out to be false…I don’t know what your GFR is but mine is undoubtedly very close to 15, and has been for a while. I manage it totally on my own. I went our running yesterday and am not in “pain.” Please contact me if you are interested in learning how to manage it. The medical establishment already knows this, and has published studies proving kidney disease doesn’t have to be a death sentence, that dialysis isn’t even necessary and can be harmful, but they claim you have to or you will die. It’s a lie! Nephrologists continue to make doomsday assessments of patients and spread the cult of hopelessness. Not only that, from what I recall, mine never made any helpful recommendations to me. I figured out how to manage kidney disease on my own, in spite of the medicos.

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  • Long before my antipsych awakening, I was interviewing with a doctor who said to me, “I see you are schizoaffective, but I note you do not have ‘flat affect.'”

    I then told the shrink that according to my own personal observation, the drugs we are given caused the “flat affect.”

    He paused, then said, “Likely you are right about that.” He then noted I “tolerated” the drugs well, and said that was why I didn’t have “flat affect.”

    I look back and laugh, but also I realize that this “toleration” led to insane doses of drugs and much harm to me.

    I agree that the brain heals. Or can heal, but doesn’t heal for everyone. For many, it doesn’t heal fast enough. I have studied this and as of yet, they don’t know why some brains heal faster. It is not an “attitude problem,” either. They just don’t know and cannot predict. These drugs also cause damage to the other organs, including the heart and endocrine system. Eventually, the damage is systemic.

    I resent the lofty attitude that some people have who claim such healing is easy, or simple, or that there’s one universal answer that will save the world. I resent the superiority attitude of some of those who have healed. It doesn’t help those who are still struggling to hear others boast about it.

    I figure all I can do is share my own experience, but I also consider myself extremely lucky. If I ever gave off the impression that healing in all areas was easy, or a breeze, then someone heard me wrong.

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  • Perfectionism is not a human trait. It is a cultural construct. In fact, the notion of perfectionism has changed over the past 50 years.

    My dad was a self-professed perfectionist. This is not mean “driven” nor any expectation to be “perfect.” He was born in 1924. He was a hard-working student, likely gifted in math and science, and when he worked he paid close attention to detail. Because of this, he was valued at his workplace and give promotions and even given tuition to get a second master’s degree. He died in 1997.

    By 21st Century standards, my dad was not a perfectionist by any means. If we got bad grades, he accepted it and gently encouraged us. If he himself made a mistake, which, being human, of course he did, just the same as any other human, he didn’t berate himself nor get overly frustrated.

    Given the messy state of my childhood bedroom, piled high with clothes by the door to ensure my own privacy, my parents were very tolerant indeed and rarely said anything. Never mind my tangled hair, which, to this day, won’t stay tidy for more than five minutes.

    My dad said perfectionism was a good thing. It helped him get his work done. I look back and remember him as emotionally stable (whatever that means) and never had a reason to see a shrink.

    Who decides who is a perfectionist and who is not? Psychiatry. Interestingly, for much of my life, I’d hear the following from MH professionals: “You have an eating disorder, therefore, you must be a perfectionist.” I even heard that perfectionism causes ED, or that it’s 100% a universal predictor of ED. And yet, I know many who were told they were perfectionists and this, sadly, caused perfectionism due to the looping effect.

    Getting straight A’s, for me, was not due to perfectionism. It was because I loved school and took to it. I love learning, love the classroom, and, though I am embarrassed to admit it, I’m smart, too.

    Speaking of intelligence, I read recently that intelligent or gifted children (I hesitate to use that term, actually) are often pressured during childhood to hide intelligence or even feel ashamed or embarrassed. I found this rung true for me. I sure felt that way when I was a kid, and during adulthood (outside of academia) the shame only continued. My intelligence wasn’t wanted in society and was never valued until recently. Psychiatry dumbs people down, not only by drugs, but primarily because they silence our brilliance and call it a disease.

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  • Electroshock IS abuse. Locking up a person IS abuse. Thing is, we are trained to believe it isn’t. We are trained via our diagnoses to believe it is treatment, when logic and common sense (and the law, to some extent) tell us otherwise. Like say, the Bill of Rights. I can only conclude that once you are a patient you stop believing you are truly 100% human, but a subspecies that has no rights.

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  • Rasselux, I think we’re all aware of brain injuries beyond drugs. I can think of a few. Electroshock. Anyurisms (sp?). Stroke. Atherosclerosis. Tumor. Trauma to the skull/head. MS I believe is a brain thing. Dementia and Alzheimer’s. Fluid buildup. Diabetic coma can damage the brain. Seizures. These may be related, or not related, to psych drugs.

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  • Psychiatry goes against my basic upbringing, which was to be as autonomous and self-reliant as possible. We were Jewish. We went hiking, learned survival skills, camped in the wilderness, learned to ski, and to steer a canoe, and I carry a knapsack to this day. Psychiatry goes against the post-Holocaust Jewish culture in which I was raised, and my basic agnosticism, which oddly, it seems I must have been born and blessed with.

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  • Interestingly, people are built better than cars. Cars do not have decision-making power, nor do they grow as they age, nor do they have the wisdom and insight that humans have. They don’t reason. They cannot take care of themselves. Do they change their own oil? No. People refuel themselves, bathe themselves, and don’t need “tuneups” despite what the medical community claims.

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  • Hi Amy, it is easy to get those “hospitalizations” off your record. Relocate (out of state is best) and DO NOT SHARE your old records. Don’t tell medical professionals your history. Lie and say you never saw a shrink. Don’t tell your relatives who your doctor is, if you have one, and don’t tell your doctor (if you have one) who your family is, so they won’t be contacted. Don’t put your doctor’s name on your refrigerator! Don’t share your pharmacy records. Minimize contact with Western Med. Don’t call yourself sick and don’t borrow diseases either. I wrote a whole book on this technique, which many have used successfully.

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  • Amy, Redesign torture, maybe with newer, better, or cheaper tortures, and spiff up the prisons? Really?

    It may look fancy, but reality is you still have no rights in those places, you are still unable to leave, you are still labeled with a mental disorder, too. Despite the plush carpet and smiling faces of “staff.” In many ways, those “nice” places are worse since patients are deluded into thinking it’s “care.”

    I recall going to those “nice” places and thinking the exact same thing as you did. But in retrospect it was the nice places that turned me into a permanent mental case.

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  • Shaun, if you are curious about the “groups” in hospitals which are billed to insurance at a ridiculously high cost to taxpayers, these “groups” consist of watching TV, Bingo games, and use of worksheets that are at the kindergarten intellectual level. None were therapy. I recall addressing this with my doctor, saying that the groups were insulting to me. I was either threatened and told they wouldn’t let me out unless I attended, or they claimed that the fact that I refused to attend these insulting groups meant I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle them. When I tried suggesting “meaningful discussion,” the staff claimed “Patients will be triggered.” Or, “Patients lack insight and aren’t smart enough.”

    I can tell you where meaningful discussion happened in those places. Invariably, it took place among us patients when the staff weren’t in the room. It was whispered in the halls or late at night, and any such conversation, if staff witnessed it, was shut down immediately. They also listened on to phone calls routinely and shut the phones off to silence that, too, or ordered us off the phone.

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  • Shaun, Who decides who is dangerous and who isn’t? I, for one, was called dangerous when I wasn’t. Is psychiatry or therapy the Almighty God who has such divine wisdom as to know these things? How many times has psychiatry been wrong and perceived a person as dangerous when he or she has not been?

    You probably have had patients who have taken themselves to the ER because they felt suicidal (or because they couldn’t make up their minds so some shrink made up their mind for them). How long do suicidal thoughts last? These thoughts are most often transient, as you know. How many patients have you known whose suicidal thought dissipated while they were still waiting to be seen?

    Speaking as one, I recall that most of the time, for me, the thoughts disappeared during the time I spent in the waiting room. However, when I was interviewed, now no longer suicidal, I was so embarrassed that I either lied and said I was, or I said I was fine (but they always kept me anyway, for THEIR safety).

    Many times I went to the ER because I couldn’t get my doctor to speak to me off hours, or because he/she was unavailable. Or because the crisis team refused to handle eating disorders.

    Having lived the life of a person perceived as dangerous when I wasn’t, this for years, I can assure you no one wanted to talk to me at all. No one tried even. It was fruitless discussion because I as seen as either a liar or lacking insight. I could have said the sky is blue and they would have had to go check the color themselves to see if I wasn’t delusional.

    Psychiatric holds do not protect the patient or society at large. Many times the patient is held only because the institution is terrified of a lawsuit, certainly not for the well-being of the patient.

    Patients are smart now. They wised up and know that the only way to complete a suicide is to refrain from letting on, lest one be locked up. Many see lockup as a worse fate than death itself.

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  • That I know of, most states have laws against any sex between therapist and client. How can it be consensual in a relationship that isn’t equal to begin with? That I know of, you lose your license in most states, am I right?

    Alex, thanks for validating that most therapists are either incompetent or abusive. There’s crossover between the two. I have known many to overstate their competence. This is rampant with eating disorders, which until very recently were rare or just not seen. I have known many therapists and also hospital doctors who claimed they had experience, training, and competency in the field, and didn’t. You are right that it takes a while to learn, and by that time, you’ve wasted time, paid the therapist’s paycheck, and likely gotten worse. When I had training in life coaching we learned that it’s unethical to misrepresent your competency.

    My guess is that such misrepresentation is illegal if done by a licensed professional in any field. It constitutes abuse and gross exploitation. I am thinking, for comparison, Harold Hill in The Music Man…who claimed he could teach kids to play musical instruments, but he was actually a swindler.

    I remember one therapist outright lied to me about his competency. Since I was young (25) and inexperienced I had no reason not to believe him.

    After a year I found out the bitter truth. My worship of this therapist blinded me from seeing him as he really was. He was “nice.” One day in a flash I realized what a humbug he was. The disappointment and letdown were just too much for me at the time.

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  • But that isn’t true, either. Abuse and love aren’t opposites. Abuse isn’t the absence of love. The two have no relation to each other. You can love your wife and beat her daily anyway.

    Love will not stop abuse, either, since one doesn’t contradict the other. Conversely, abused kids very often adore their abusive parents. Or worship them as in Stockholm Syndrome.

    If I were to ask a heathcare practitioner to stop abusing me, I might tell that person to stop gaslighting, or to stop shoving me, or to stop cutting me off mid-sentence, or to listen instead of putting words into my mouth. Or to let me out of restraints, or please don’t give me any “treatments” I don’t want.

    I notice abusive healthcare professionals will deny the abuse and therefore, gaslight, even boast about the great “care” they’re giving you, and also act sweet and kind in front of any potential witnesses.

    Some act super professional in front of supervisors and colleagues, but when you are alone with them with no witnesses they are anything but professional.

    One therapist told me he loved me. It was warped and perverted, and had nothing to do with caring or decent therapy.

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  • I agree. It is abuse. So often, abused spouses think they’re the disordered ones (this being an element of abuse) and they take themselves to therapy. “What is wrong with me?”

    Therapy may give the abused spouse an outlet. But she gets labeled. He doesn’t. He can use the therapy visits as further reason to label her the nutso, and exonerate himself, washing his hands clean. His sick wife. While she continues to take her story to the therapist.

    But where do her powerful words end up? Wasted in an office! Her words belong in court, do they not? Or anything she can do to get away.

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  • As far as I am concerned, psychiatry has to be stopped. Did anyone talk about reforming the Nazis movement?

    There is the movement and there are individuals involved in it. We have witnessed a handful abandon the psychiatry ideology and come to join us. We see examples of this daily here on MIA, not just patients who once believed wholeheartedly in “diagnosis,” but practitioners who suddenly see the light.

    Psychiatry must be stopped. I think there’s hope for individuals, though, as more and more are having the same epiphany. But not the practice of psychiatry, which has to end. We don’t know how that will happen. Will it be overthrown or will so many abandon it (patients especially) that it crumbles? Possibly both.

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  • It is, but reality is that you can write all you want, but if your word doesn’t get out there, you don’t really have a voice. You may find the act of writing personally healing, but it only becomes empowerment if people read it.

    Credentials: MFA (master’s degree) in Creative Writing, Goddard College, 2009. Other credential: Speaking from the point of view of a person who worked six long years on writing a book that did not sell. Reality: You write, you publish, you sell. If you can manage to sell, your voice might be heard. Selling depends on your social position and on how much money you spend. From the point of view of a person who has been blogging daily (original text all mine) for well over a decade, and oddly, blog views are pitifully low.

    I keep doing it, I keep writing out of habit I suppose, or because it is a way of life. A tiny percent of what I write gets into the public eye.

    A long time ago I wanted to kill myself just to get my writing noticed. Funny, and sad how that happens. At some point I will die of old age, and then, suddenly people will realize how much effort I put into my writing. Now that is the sad reality for many of us. We live with this disparity. Voice for the few.

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  • Christian, This article is incredibly important. I plan to share it and I hope others will also spread the word. I would like to add that for many of us, “hospitalization” in the USA has not been much different from this. I was abused in a facility when I was over 50 and medically compromised. It must be horrifying when it happens to a child.

    I would like to invite you, and anyone here, to submit writings to a new anthology on forced psychiatry. You can find more information here: http://forcedpsychiatry.com

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  • I would have to say I agree with Oldhead, too. MIA encourages dialogue but where is the action? I have been worried that those participating at MIA waste too much time “discussing” the issues. Any real action is done outside of MIA, in other groups, even done by individuals. I fear that the dialogue part sucks people in, becomes habitual for many, and ultimately, causes stagnation or even apathy.

    I have never used the term “critical psychiatry.” Where the heck did that come from? Are you putting words into our mouths? I can’t do the survey. I’m not a participant in a movement I have barely heard of, not a willing one, anyway.

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  • I couldn’t lower the Seroquel at all, in fact I went from 25 to 75 and stayed there. This is why I switched to Thorazine.

    Just a hint: 75 mg of Seroquel is the equivalent of 100 mgs Thorazine. You should be able to substitute gradually and switch over. It took me a few days to switch. I went to a shrink site where I found a table on switching. So….Had I gone to a shrink they would have accessed the exact same table and done the switch just like I did.

    Now I ask…Does it really take an advanced degree to find a table in a search and follow the table? Nope.

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  • That could have been my story, except I experienced the same thing from anti-p withdrawal. I didn’t sleep! I cannot believe I went five years in that nether world between sleep and wakefulness due to the worst insomnia I have ever had. I, too, was terrified of doctors after what I had been through, so I would not go to one.

    I figured the best thing to do, the sensible thing, was to reinstate. I got drugs illegally and then, tapered. Slowly. I couldn’t tell you how long I have been tapering since the reinstatement. Seroquel was impossible to taper from but Thorazine is reasonable, much easier, and switching from one to the other was a snap. I stopped totally but then, reinstated an even tinier sliver. I believe the tiniest I can get the slivers is about 3mg. Thorazine dosing goes up to 2,000mgs, so that gives you an estimate of how much I have managed to go down on it. If I ever have to get a prescription I’d go out of state and pay cash, no insurance.

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  • I actually wrote the agency a thank you. I praised these workers who recognized that I was only under stress from hospital abuse and not “mentally ill.” I told the head of this agency to commend them and that all their workers should do the same as was done for me. I said they should listen to the patient rather than judging by records and opinion of doctors.

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  • FYI, when I was inpatient for kidney failure, while my kidneys weren’t functioning and my electrolytes were off, they decided to diagnose me with a mental disorder. They tried to force me onto Zyprexa based on my “mental status” while in kidney failure!

    Seems like of all those idiot doctors, only the kidney doctor noted that while a person’s electrolytes are as off as mine were, there’s no way I could have been capable of clear thinking. He alone didn’t feel my “mental state” was representative of “baseline.” The other doctors were too stupid to figure that one out.

    I would be dead if I’d taken Zyprexa. They wanted me on a hefty dose and wouldn’t let me leave unless I agreed to take it. Then they got all panicky because they found evidence of “antipsychotics” damaging one chamber of my heart. This didn’t stop them from attempting to force-drug me.

    I was only able to leave because an outside agency evaluated me and insisted that I should be let out.

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  • Duncan, undermining of humans has no place here or anywhere.

    In writing classes, we had to be reminded: We’re not here to talk about the writer as a person. We’re here to talk about the writing.

    This is a major challenge for writing students in beginning memoir classes, where the temptation is to say something like, “This piece shows what a strong person you are.” This, too, is comment on character and not about the writing. We were encouraged, though, to express our own emotional reaction to the piece of writing and discuss reader impact.

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  • Corinna, that is what I was saying. Most of us have not worked as professional peers. Which is why I questioned the point of view of the article. Most have not sat in on administrative meetings. We weren’t employees. We were prisoners.

    At my workplace, which has nothing to do with MH, I haven’t revealed anything about my past and do not intend to. I have attended workplace meetings where I am treated the same as the other workers of my level. I am not singled out as a nutcase because I don’t have a known diagnosis at work. Have I shown emotion? Of course. In a civil manner, because it’s my job and I want to keep it.

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  • Alex, I am not surprised at what happened to you with the university students. Institutions, including universities, have a tiered power structure that is unbalanced to begin with. You have the full professors, adjuncts, those waiting for tenure, grad assistants, never mind admins. There are “staff” such as librarians and secretaries, these have their own power structure also. Even among the students you may find a power division.

    I am surprised at how naive institutionalized patients can be about the power structure of a “hospital.” When I was on the wards, I’d say the majority blamed the doctor, the unit psychiatrist, for various bad decisions the institution made on the patient’s behalf. Reality is that the doc is only a pawn. Many patients aren’t aware that behind the scenes, admins are talking to insurance companies, wheeling and dealing for money without regard for human life.

    Likewise in a university. Profs are not always acting alone. There are admins such as deans behind the scenes. What a dean decides is not necessarily in everyone’s best interest. What is “best interest”? They likely follow the money’s best interest, though it depends on the U.

    I saw profs who didn’t have the best manners. Some were arrogant. Some were always late for class. In some U situations I ran across lazy professors and wondered how they kept their jobs. For the most part, though, they were awesome role models, excellent instructors, admirable people you just don’t forget.

    The best ones set a great example for us students. I learned how to teach by observing the methods of my professors over the many years I attended college. It was so much a healthier environment than the “hospital” setting. Considering how much you pay for a hospital and how much you pay for a U, I ask, therefore, which one is clearly the better bargain?

    While the cost of college has skyrocketed, you do learn there, you benefit. You leave with a degree, the friends you made, and a loan to pay back. You leave a hospital with a diagnosis, trauma, wrecked reputation, possible loss of job and breakdown of family relationships, and on top of all that, drug addiction.

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  • Anger made me an activist and if didn’t feel total outrage over psychiatry and it’s lovely “System” I would not be a decent activist. Anger gives me energy, energy vital to life. It makes me spunky and gives me my quick sense of humor. Anger makes me ever so more to stay alive, I stay around to see my goals and dreams actualized. I have psych to “thank” for my anger, because when they pushed me too far, they pushed me out of their desperate grasp.

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  • Yes, that’ll work if you carry the vial of fake stomach acid with you as your fake stomach.

    Another desperation tactic might be to ingest activated charcoal at the same time that you ingest the Abilify. Warning, though, activated charcoal will wipe out your nutrition. Don’t eat then, eat some other time. And also, charcoal will block up your plumbing so if that happens you need to keep on top of that.

    “Doctor, my patch must have fallen off in the shower. Suddenly I just don’t see it there, if that’s what you’re wondering. By the way, my aunt died and I will not be able to come to our next appointment. I will call once I am back in town. Maybe then I can get this patch replaced.”

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  • Exactly, they write crap about our personalities to imply we’ll never get better, stating it in our records. When they treat us this way, with these MI expectations, we fall into those helpless roles very quickly without realizing it. I learned that this is called the Looping Effect. I always wondered what the name was for “becoming exactly what’s expected of you.”

    A striking example is among foster kids who are told they’ll end up in the CJ system. Told that from day one, and treated like they’re already criminals.

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  • This article hit an emotional chord with me, except the context is one I have not been involved in. I have never been a consumer/administrator nor have I worked in a professional capacity as Peer. I have never been to college to study mental health nor been on the decision-making end in any MH scenario. I was the recipient only, the one on the bottom of the totem pole, the “patient.” So I have not attended such a decision-making meeting in that context. I am wondering why the article focuses this way, when clearly, most readers have never been through this.

    I have, however, attended more shrink appointments than I can count, or even those group shrink meetings where there are ten shrinks and only little ole me to defend myself. Like being on trial (but where’s the crime?).

    What I recall of those meetings is that sometimes, I was there for token purposes only. They either did not allow me to speak or time-limited me to one minute. Or they’d say I had a few minutes, then, invariably after I uttered a sentence or two they’d cut me off and say “We have to wrap this up.” They’d end the meeting and whatever I said didn’t matter because it was a done deal already.

    If I dared complain, they would claim, “But we invited you to the meeting and let you speak.” That was always bullshit and constituted gaslighting. They knew I had not been heard.

    There were times I got emotional, for the reasons stated so beautifully in this article. It was my freedom taken away (and they threatened to take away what I had left…), my home I was at risk for losing, my body they were forcing drugs into, and my beloved dog Puzzle I would have had to give up had they gone through with what they were trying. One time, had they not let me go, I would have died of dehydration while interred in the facility.

    Yes, I got emotional because I care about my life. I begged, cried, and pleaded for them to give me water. Please! Please! I was so desperate and terrified. How can one remain totally calm when one’s life is at risk? And the fact that I begged them, doesn’t that prove I care about what happens to me?

    If I were suicidal, I wouldn’t have cared. I would have just let myself get dehydrated.

    Then they had the nerve to claim I was suicidal. Why? Because I got emotional. Because I cared deeply about the one body I have. Because I wanted to see tomorrow. I realize now the total incongruity of their actions and words….But I suppose their desire for power, and desire to silence me and take my rights away, trumped any sense of logic they had.

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  • Auntie, I have said this before but I think it starts with each of us. We kick back, but we also live well, acting as real-life demos of what it is like to kick psych out of your life. While I know many are suffering we need to take these grievances to the right places. These complaints need to go to the FDA and even taken to the courts, if possible.

    I know the mantra “psych ruined my life” is prevalent, but we need to state also that psych caused the multiple medical issues we have faced, sustained us as disabled people, loved to keep us out of work, supported and upheld our maladies. We need to state loud and clear that leaving psych did not cause mental illness nor supposed “worsening of mental illness.” We need to make it clear that damages such as tremors, TD, memory loss, and so on are not “mental illness” but caused by the treatment. The general public needs to see this clearly because if not illustrated, the average person will not connect the dots.

    For many of us, leaving psych saved our lives. We need to say this loudly also, and those of us who have immensely more stable and happy lives need to make themselves visible.

    You get to a point where you are not afraid to tell people after you get to know them and they trust you. That trust must be there otherwise “telling” won’t work. It will only lead to distrust. When we give away our background, we win people over to our side.

    I did this at my regular Toastmasters meeting and it worked! I love giving antipsych speeches there. But at another Toastmasters Club I revealed too soon, resulting in their clear reluctance and hesitation when I joined that club. I made the decision to take a long hiatus and try again.

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  • Oldhead I think Slater very well might be on the brink of joining our side. This was what I meant about process. She is partway there.

    Likewise, many of us did not become antipsych overnight. We had to shed the brainwashing, the dependency, the worshipful belief in them, the bad habit of going to doctors and therapists for every little thing. The System trained us so well. We had to get over the fear of grieving, and of course, the actual grief over not playing the “patient” role anymore. Many simply do not know any other way. I believe that finding another role, or life purpose, might help. That and getting away from those that treat you like a patient!

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  • Hi Rossa, Glad you asked about what PRN means. It stands for Pro Re Nata. The literal meaning is a little different from how it translates medically. It is a nursing abbreviation for “as required.” If you are given Haldol PRN, this means they either forced it on a patient because they think they know what is best, or, because the patient has complained and this is the go-to solution.

    PRN is not the same as “ad lib,” which in nursing means given if and when the patient asks for it. Ad lib is not often written since it gives the patient too much control. They do not like that. It might be appropriate, in their eyes, for a patient in extreme physical pain (accident victims, cancer patients), because only the patient can feel that pain. I was interred with a woman who had end-stage breast cancer and they had to remind her constantly, “What is your pain level? Do you need something?”

    I remember that situation well. I was there for anorexia and here I was with a dying woman. The staff regarded me with disdain and lavished all kinds of love on that patient. Never mind her constant visitors and flowers. I got none the entire time, no cards, no flowers, abused by “sitters,” and the staff even said they wanted to get rid of me and send me to to the psych ward to get me out of their hair. MGH.

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  • Steve it got that way with me, too. In 2012 I told no one, and then, did not follow through. That was June/July. By September I was totally fine, no help from “them.”

    After that, a year later, to be falsely accused of suicidality and theatened with long-term lockup while I was in kidney failure was scary, upsetting, and deeply traumatizing. Nothing I could say or do would get them to listen. What a bunch of arse-holes. No, assholes. I said it.

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  • If I were to total up the vitamin pills I take no way would it be 31. Not only that, I designed my regimen myself. I did it through self-experimentation. I change it now and then and some are “prn” (wow their word…) but it feels settled now. I take a few for insomnia, a few for ED (you still get physical effects for about a decade after you get better), and a few for kidney disease, and one herbal pill for blood pressure as it has started to creep up (it works great!). I stay away from the medical profession if possible. I let them do my eye surgery but I don’t want them meddling with my kidneys. If I had let them, I would have died by now. I am so afraid they’ll snatch me up and force me on dialysis, but I am fine and certainly not sickly. There are simple natural things you can do, mostly concoctions I make myself and drink, uncomplicated, inexpensive, too, that work as well as dialysis and I have already started that on my own. That’s usually twice a week.

    Okay, counted. I take 16 vitamin pills in the morning regularly, plus a smidge of powdered Niacin. At night, powdered Thiamine and no pills.

    I do not tell doctors that, as they’d call it a mental disorder, ha ha.

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  • That said, I know I was on three antipsychotics simultaneously at highest possible dose, some even higher, three anticonvulsants simultaneously, and usually one or two other pills to add to the mix. That very well could have added up to 31 pills a day, as I had to take them a number of times per day per order from those fake Messiahs, never counted (maybe did not want to face it, ha ha…)

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  • This article resonates with me. Also, I agree with Alex about “toxic environments” even though I don’t use the word “toxic” as social metaphor. I choose not to because I fear it is too offensive to some people who have been called “toxic” themselves (i.e. “You are mentally ill,” which is really what is under that statement).

    Either way, for me, therapy was that toxicity. My therapist was manipulative, gaslighted me, threatened me, kicked me out of her practice and then, begged for me to come back, used sectioning power to scare me, accused me of things I never did, and made me play with stuffed animals. She regularly accused me of lying when I wasn’t. All this made me feel like I was very stuck. Stuck until I realized…THIS IS ABUSE! And I got out.

    Withdrawing from her narcissistic abuse was absolute hell. This was six and a half years ago. That was when I was actively suicidal for about a month. Then, a year later I had anorexia really bad, and I know her abuse (and other people’s failure to hear what I had to say about it) definitely was the cause. (Anorexia and suicide are not the same thing, please do not confuse. You die of it, but you die of a lot of terrible things out there.)

    Then, slowly, I got better. I got over her.Yes, getting away was the answer! I wish I didn’t have to nearly die to find out. But I am grateful and I have a decent life now. Really good.

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  • Knowledge, I have wondered how my life would have turned out if I went into law instead of music or writing. I find that lawyers know what ethics are. Psychiatrists either do not know or ignore ethics altogether. I believe they may have ethical concerns about what they’re being asked to do in medical school. They are told to ignore ethics, ignore what their moral conscience tells them, and to be dishonest to patients because “the ends justify the means.” This is a logical fallacy, one of many that med students are told and in turn, we patients are told and we’re supposed to accept like the pills we’re handed in a cup.

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  • Wow, This piece is very telling about the failure of the System overall. My experience with these state-run agencies and nonprofits is similar. They do nothing at all, back up the state and the psych institutions, do not serve the people, and help no one. Some start off great and die young or sell out.

    There were some good ones that then started kissing butt to the hospitals, then you saw them fall flat.

    I got a position with Crisis Text Line but quickly quit as soon as I saw what it REALLY was. They data-mine user information and pool it. Very sad. That is its real purpose. Don’t be fooled. Not only that, they boast that a bot can be a text responder just as well as a human can. Why not bot therapists, too?

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  • And let me add, I was off drugs five entire years and not sleeping at all during that time. Hypnotic state kept me going. That was all I got, night after night. I was fully conscious and the exhaustion was beyond belief until I finally gave in. Five hellish years later. It’s just that I didn’t say the word “Withdrawal.” I didn’t want to be so trendy. It was more like, “Drug-induced insomnia.” from HELL.

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  • Not true, Rachel. Just because I wasn’t bedridden (or crying….) doesn’t mean I wasn’t having a hard time. Five years of the worst possible insomnia…Is that “easy”? Really? It was so bad that people claimed I must be faking it. I literally lost friends over it, blameful friends, one even had the nerve to claim that the drug-induced insomnia came from a “gratitude problem.” Wow, now I know it didn’t (arrogance, I must say!).

    My ex-psychiatrist claimed I had “mania.” I wasn’t manic but after several years of not sleeping and losing all the friends I had (not sleeping makes you into a bitch…) I was not manic, but so exhausted I was afraid I would die of organ failure. Is that “easy”? I am lucky I did not die. I am lucky I didn’t commit suicide, as many do. It did not get to that point, but my life felt useless, pointless, because I couldn’t accomplish a thing! Never mind dropping things, bumping into things, and short-term memory problems. I am lucky I did not see a shrink during that time.

    My decision to reinstate with drugs obtained illegally saved my life. How long do you think I did that? Two years. Two years to get off those drugs. Easy? I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t bitching or yapping about “withdrawal” because I didn’t have brain zaps. Still, I had to get off so slowly otherwise end up a miserable insomniac all over again. It was easy to titrate, but do you think it was easy to be worst possible exhausted, easy to lose my friends, easy to be accused of mania and scared to death of more forced drugging?

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  • Oldhead, precisely as you say. “Beset by contradictions.” All of us are full of contradictions. Contradictions pull us this way and that and in fact, keep us alive. If we were serene, we would be static, unmotivated, bored with life, and devoid of ambition and drive.

    As for psychedelics, I’m all for it. What confuses me is reliance on doctors to prescribe them, reliance on their all-holy expertise. Why not just try psychedelics if you want them? Why bother with doctors at all? They’re useful for taking out bullets or setting bones. Everything else, their track record is terrible.

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  • Rachel, thanks for asking. I have the entire page written but need to iron out a few leftover particulars. The theme will be announced when the submissions open and I will open it up for about six months for people to submit. I will be asking for creative works rather than research papers and preference will be given to those who are personally invested in what they write. I will be looking for poetry, shorts, essays, memoir, and the like.

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  • Daniel, You make very good points. In the book, what happens is that Slater wants psychedelics but she only wants them prescribed by a doctor. So instead of getting them on the street she accepts what the doctor says, namely that she can’t try psychedelics simultaneously with the anti-d’s! Had she used her own head, and gotten the drugs herself, maybe her experience would have been more like yours, and maybe she would have been able to get off the prescribed anti-d’s.

    I also agree with you that anti-d’s are about the worst of the drugs to get off of. I was not on them for the most part. However, if you read my comment that I put here earlier, I had to reinstate due to long-term, very severe (hate that word), unbearable insomnia that would not quit for five years. How I lived through all that, I will never know, but I did until I finally decided to buy psych drugs on the street. I made this decision weighing the risks of street drugs against the worse risk of seeing a psych (or other MD) and getting a dx put back on my record. I chose street drugs as the least harmful option. I was able to taper successfully down to a sliver and now, I am off the pharma finally. Yes it took a very very long time but the good news is that street drugs saved me a lot of grief and got me functioning again. I sleep now. It was very very easy to ascertain when to lower the dose. Easy because the question, “Am I sleeping okay?” is simple, measurable, and cut and dry. I did all this without a doctor and decided based on my own response, which I feel I can measure on my own better than some person in an office can.

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  • Oldhead, She is hoping psychedelics will “cure” her. But she insists on getting these psychedelics prescribed by a doctor. She explains that she is just so ill that no non-doctor can deal with her.

    I don’t buy this at all, and most of us don’t, I am sure, as many of us were likewise labeled “severe” at some point, or tx-resistant. We might have been called “severe” or tx-resistant, but this was due to the frustration of the clinician, or due to insurance non-coverage, or because there was no DSM label that we fit into neatly, or because we didn’t like being locked up, or because their pat answers and simplistic therapy didn’t work the first time. Or maybe it was their failure to listen that got us the severe label.

    This is not a reason to believe that only a doctor has all the answers for you. A doctor very well can pull out a bullet if you are shot. They are good for a few things. But not all of life. That is the essence of what seriously frustrated me about this book.

    And let me add that I have been very much a Slater fan ever since I was introduced to her.

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  • I am not sure that is what I got from her book. I did not hear her promoting MH. I didn’t hear exactly that. I heard her utter helplessness, her bewilderment over how she got into the predicament she ended up in, and total flabbergastedness over why it all occurred. I do not think for one minute she wants others to fall into the same rabbit hole she did. My concern is that she still goes to these doctors. Why does she not solve her own problems instead? She is smart and resourceful. Why does she still seek the appointments and prescription method? Does she not know this is the road to death?

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  • I am sorry you feel that way. I didn’t think feeling compassion toward a writer I seriously admire, and wanting to reach out to her, from writer to writer was “arrogance.” I never had compassion from psych. I got a diagnosis. I got bossed around, was told I couldn’t work when I could, and got locked up and got my rights taken away. For that, taxpayers got a bill.

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  • Yeah, fiachra, I am sure cold weather depresses the heck out of me. I don’t feel depressed emotionally, but I have this very strong urge to go cuddle with Puzzle under the covers ALL DAY LONG to stay warm and cozy. Well? It can get cold in winter!!! The answer? A heater. Oh. Cuddle more with Puzzle! Who the heck wants to get out of bed when it is FREEZING, anyway?

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  • Knowledge, I have seen that so, so many times, when kids blame their parents and even call them “pure evil.” I don’t get that. Why do they not call the abuse “evil”? They even go so far as claiming these parents were born “evil” and were “psychopaths.” Or personality disordered, paranoid, bipolar, chemical imbalance, otherwise diseased. Huh? When you dig deep, you invariably find out the abuse was passed-on abuse, that the parents were abused or traumatized themselves, if not by their parents, then subject to trauma, likely early in life. Often it is stuff buried so deep we just never learn. Unless someone just sits down with the person, quits the disease nonsense, and sees them as a valuable and valid human being, no less and no more.

    I just cannot stand hearing people called psychopath, mentally ill, or personality disordered, any of those hateful words. It breaks my heart.

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  • Yes, in fact that chapter was my favorite. I honestly believed she got their permission and I didn’t realize she had gone over their heads! Guardians…hah! That is exploitation at its worst.

    As a writer I have fallen prey to this and once I literally pulled a chapter out of a book just prior to publication. When you write memoir you *must* be very careful and not tread in this realm.

    If any of you are familiar with the writer Lucy Greeley, she died of a heroin overdose at some point. Then, her friend Anne Hatchett wrote a book about Greeley. Hatchett was said to have exploited Greeley’s death.

    If you are going to write about someone you were close to after they die or after you lose touch irreparably, you have to be careful. You focus on your feelings and what you recall and have record of, and you realize those leftover feelings will evolve and change over a long, long period. You have to be aware that others, the others left behind have feelings, too. You also have to be aware of your own short-sightedness and be sensitive to the fact that there are things you may never know.

    Professionally, this is ten times more essential.

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  • Szasz makes it very clear that Woolf killed herself by diagnosis and therapy. She was apparently steeped in the very idea of her madness, which she polished up like one would polish up the best silver in the house.

    The myth that the best creative people are “mad” clearly harmed her, too. And he states that madness got her out of having a kid and out of a humdrum job so she could write more.

    I spent years believing I could not work. This was untrue. I couldn’t work a boring, rote, repetitive, job where creativity and intelligence are not valued. However, there are indeed jobs out there that are a potential good match. Too bad it took me decades to find my current one.

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  • Well, she fully understands that the drugs caused the harm. But she hates feeling depressed. Almost like feeling bad isn’t part of life. While I agree, bad feelings can suck, I would not (currently) medicate bad feelings.

    For five years I did not medicate the horrific insomnia that resulted from taking these drugs. I chose to stay away from all pharmaceuticals. I chose misery over seeing a psychiatrist. I knew that seeing a psychiatrist and getting psych pills prescribed to me would end up with a diagnosis back on my record. Also, the prescription means the doctor is in control. I wanted to retain control over what I consumed.

    I chose to obtain legal pills, psych drugs, via the street rather than go to a psychiatrist. You may argue that doing this is “risky.” Look at the risks involved in seeing a psychiatrist!!! Do I want to take that risk? NO! Then, remaining in control, I did a slow taper. Every time my sleep stabilized, I lowered the size of the sliver, right down to nothing.

    I am not saying people should break the law. But psychiatrists break the law all the time, institutions have no regard for human rights laws, and none of these have any professional common sense ethics. If anyone outside of the nut wards knew of the violations we patients witnessed and endured, my own petty violation would seem like tiddlywinks.

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  • I figured I should take on this task. Actually, Welcome to My Country was the first book I read after I took a break from grad school and then, returned. I had just adopted Puzzle and she was nine weeks old (she is 11-1/2 now). I was recovering from devastating weight gain from Seroquel that had literally crippled me. The therapists had “advised” me not to return to grad school, stating that I “belonged” in day treatment. They claimed if I went back to school, I would “only end up in the hospital again.” Wow…they were wrong! I hope they are seriously embarrassed now.

    I remember the day I met with my advisor and she told me about Slater. I was scribbling my notes at a furious pace, wanting to capture every piece of wisdom she had to offer. I even remember the steam on the windows at the coffee shop where we met. “You *have* to read Lauren Slater, Julie, you will really love her writing,” she told me, without spoiling the end, when she described the book.

    I went home and ordered a good dozen paperbacks. I remember digging in with such enthusiasm. I still have all the critical papers I wrote on Slater’s books, in my files and in my memory.

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  • I dunno. To me it is staring me in the face. I saw it in the nuthouses for so long, and one day, made the connection. Ah hah! I suspect that what happens is anyone who figures it out gets silenced in some fashion. You’re silenced in any way they can. Drugging. Incarceration. Outright threats. Illegal use of sectioning. Anonymous online bullying. Vandalism. Spoofing. They will stop at nothing to silence us. This limiting of our Freedom of Speech at all levels is making it difficult to be heard.

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  • Catnight, I am sorry that happened. I sometimes hear stuff like “It is a disease like cancer.” This is such baloney unless you really do have a tumor that causes you distress, and very few of us fall into that category.

    My electroshock coincided with my dad’s cancer. I kept telling myself that he had a real disease, and I was being treated for a fake one and didn’t deserve the elaborate “treatment.” As it turned out, after the ECT I ended up brain damaged and then, finally, I told myself, “Oh gee, I must be legitimately mentally ill finally.”

    I don’t even think Lauren Slater would have wanted for you what happened to you. I don’t think she wanted people to interpret her that way. She was a therapist, not a psychiatrist.

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  • Jclaude, I hope you see this. This is how you deal with the appointments with them. So I assume you “applied” for a potential psych or therapist. Here is what you say:

    “I’m sorry, I just got a call and my old aunt just passed away. I will have to be out of town for a few days and I’m not sure when I will be returning. I honestly do not know if I can make it to that appointment or not. Can I call you when I return?” Then, never call.

    Or, try this: “I’m sorry, I’m in a grocery store right now in a cashier line and I can’t discuss anything personal. Can I take down the number and call you?” Pretend you will, and don’t.

    Or, “I’m sorry, I just can’t get my calendar app to open right now. Can I call you right back?” Don’t call.

    Or, “I’m sorry, this is just such a terrible connection. I don’t know what is wrong with this phone but I just can’t understand you. Who did you say you were?” Hang up. Be careful and don’t sound “incompetent” or deaf or they’ll send the cops. Just make like the phone battery is dead.

    Tell them you are at work and your boss won’t let you take personal calls. Insist they call after 9pm or on Sunday.

    Tell them you’re with your dealer and have to keep it in airplane mode. Policy.

    Julie

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  • Steve McC, YES! I’ve been saying that for ages. See a doctor and you are asking for trouble. You are asking for at least Appointment Addiction, dependency, and a huge waste of time.

    Recently, my brother suggested I see a dentist. I guess he doesn’t get it. With fewer years ahead of me than behind, do I want to waste hours, day after day, of precious life in a dentists’ chair, waste thousands of dollars that go where? Into his pocket! For what? For pearly whites? I want to spend the last few years or decades of life being an activist, not paying time and money (hard-earned, I must say!) to the dentist! That plus I am totally convinced that if I go to one, I will lose my precious teeth.

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  • I found Johnny and Jane to be a super enlightening book as a person who has been traumatized by recent abuse while inpatient on a medical floor (I was over 50 years old when all that happened!). I learned that trauma is human and I wasn’t diseased. I learned that war is terrible. Human but our reactions to it are normal and we very much should be horrified by war, and we very much should be horrified by abuse in a hospital, and we should be horrified by any sort of injustice, we should be angry, even for a long, long time. Until they hear us. Until things change.

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  • Like Darwin’s theories, Maslow’s theories have been misused.

    When I was 20 years old I was first introduced to “therapy” by my employer. I tried to be polite and said nothing, but I really felt disdain over his engagement in therapy. My reaction was, “Oh my god, no one would waste time in an office like that unless they were too rich and way too self-absorbed.”

    Sadly, three years later, I fell for therapy myself. I thought that going to the “poor people’s clinic” would be different. I didn’t want to be elitist, either.

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  • Oh yes, you have to say, “No notifications.” Once you figure that out your phone conversations aren’t constantly interrupted. I do have a cell phone and the main reason is bus prediction. I am car-free, and have been for 30 years. Oddly, people have criticized me for this decision, saying that it is limiting and causes dependency, but actually, it frees me up. I refuse all rides from people and insist on taking the bus. I’ve had “dates” who were insulted by my self-sufficiency! Honestly, my idea of “date” does not include “You depend on your man for every little thing.” That sounds like the road to abuse or manipulation or just plain bad relationship as far as I am concerned. So I take the bus and get by on my own.

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  • Streetphoto, read Paula’s book, which she linked to. You can find it in hard copy.

    Paula, it would be great if I could add They Say You’re Crazy to my Kindle collection. When will it get put into Kindle format, or some kind of downloadable format? When I left the country I had to leave behind some 700 books, sadly, and now I’m trying to not accumulate so many hard copy books. I don’t mind accumulating files on my kindle, though, as they are transportable. Knowledge is POWER.

    Read, you guys! Reading helps keep you out of the grip of psychiatry. Psych drugs and ECT impair your brain, impair the attention span, worsen concentration and make it hard to read for many people (even though some folks claim otherwise). Reading takes practice and you have to keep it up. If you do not read, your brain will get out of practice. If you insist on only listening to audiobooks or only watching TV and video (as they do on the wards (some wards ban books!), your brain will lose its ability to read text. If you insist on only reading short bits of text at a time, your brain will lose its ability to sit and read for long periods. But if you have patience, and work at it, you will develop a love of reading. Just try and try, and what you lost due to being out of practice will come back. And keep at it!

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  • Please do not confuse generalize over “devices.” Not all devices are evil. There are devices that help quadriplegics get in and out of bed. Reading devices help people read books (such as Anatomy of an Epidemic, which might save them from psych drugs!). As for “screen time,” not all screen time is evil and horrible as the media now insists. “Social media” is not the same as just looking at a screen. Before my cataract surgery, the only way I could read and write, which was how I educated myself and learned about the history of our movement and read about world and local news, was by using the screen and reading off of it. I do not own a TV, microwave, stove, nor dishwasher nor clothes washer nor dryer. I am not on Facebook, and I feel that reading and writing via computer, the only way I can access text, is very different from gossip and bulling others via Facebook-like applications. I hate watching videos via YouTube and I do not listen to audiobooks as I don’t have the patience for them. Text reading is much faster. Text reading is a great way to actively use your brain, as is writing.

    Because I am computer savvy I was FINALLY able to secure a job after being jobless for decades. I had been putting in up to ten applications a week for a couple of years, and had almost given up hope.

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  • Well, Lawrence, you know doctors as well as we do. Never talking means they talk in their spas and clubs. They might talk in the elevators, the halls in their huddles, thinking we patients, with no brains in our heads at all, aren’t capable of hearing what they are saying nor understanding.

    Funny, I am only now reading many of the key antipsych books, but just from spending all those years in the nuthouses, I had them pinned down simply by overhearing their shit. You know, all it takes is sticking a pair of headphones into your ears and keeping them shut off. They’ll talk, thinking you can’t hear them. Or sitting in an apparent daze in front of the tube, but really, listening to their damn chatter. Especially when the head nurse or supervisory doc walks in. Stay in the daze or pace by. You’ll hear all you need to know that’s fit to print in the best antipsych books. Guaranteed.

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  • Streetphoto and Paula, This is very true! I am so grateful for whistleblowers like Paula J Caplan who spoke out after she witnessed what amounted to corruption that affects hundreds of thousands of people to this day, as an insider while a member of the DSM committee. Her courage to continue to speak out against their two-faced nonsense is exemplary.

    I hope someday the DSM members will be brought to trial as human rights criminals (not Paula, though!). They are not serving the pubic nor serving diagnosees. They are serving the drug companies. Is the elephant too big to be seen?

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  • I agree, Paula. As example, for decades I was hoping that Binge Eating Disorder would be recognized in the DSM and I had no clue why it wasn’t. Now, suddenly, in 2013, it was! Why? Because they had a name brand drug for it. Suddenly, we have an epidemic of BED, as I describe in my article here in MIA, https://www.madinamerica.com/2018/02/is-binge-eating-disorder-made-disease/. The article, by the way, drew much controversy. It’s not that more than ever are binge eating. It’s that now, we are valid, bona fide diseased so now folks can go to “doctors” and not be called “fakers.” Trust me, for decades we were called by other diseases such as borderline or anxious or anything but! Now they’ll give us dangerous, expensive pills that might kill us. (If you want speed, which does indeed reduce your appetite, ask any anorexic, we’ve known about coffee for decades now. It is far safer than Vyvanse, if you’re gonna compare!) Either way, hocus pocus, diagnosis! Suddenly, we got real! Suddenly, it’s a disease, but I don’t think it means we suffer any more or less. It’s just that now you can make an appointment with a doctor for it and have a valid-sounding “mental disease.” You can get hooked on therapy even worse. Which some find “useful” I suppose.

    I suggest the following. Stop dieting! Know that binge eating is the natural, normal consequence of restrictive eating. It’s not abnormal to react that way after anorexia. It’s not a mental disease. After starvation, whether you chose to starve or not, it’s very normal to go on binges for years, even a decade before your body gets used to food being plentiful again. It does go away, and it doesn’t need therapizing, pills, nor “treatment.” In fact, too much therapy will likely sustain you in a binge eating state, since it will make you hyper-focused on the bingeing. This is why many find over-monitoring intrusive and counterproductive. Just let it gradually subside, and it will.

    Julie

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  • R Whitaker, if you read my comment, and perhaps you did not, I was also targeted as a speaker. I was removed as a speaker from a high-powered conference after I’d been accepted to that conference. I qualified, yet someone “flagged” me. Their excuse for removing me as a speaker was that I was “not recovered” and that I’d “trigger” the attendees, assumedly due to my supposed stick thinness, which I am no longer, thank goodness. I am sure it was total bullshit. They didn’t want the likes of someone there who was going to question the psych slavery narrative.

    BTW, my blog, which I have kept 13 years now (and blog daily, anti-psych all the way), has been flagged numerous times, toolbar put on (basically hacked), and I have also had online bully commentary, including bullies that appeared to knock down my self-esteem, accuse me of being “severe borderline,” narcissist, and psychopath. Swear words used, etc. Links to porn sites even. I believe the bullies are hired and I can only guess who hired them. I sent some of the commentary to other activists who agreed the bullies were hired, and said that since I’m an adult, little can be done, and it’s barely possible to trace them.

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  • The fact that four years went by before the flagging is telling. This is what happened to me regarding a speaking engagement I had already booked. I was accepted to speak at the NEDA/BEDA conference. This is a ritzy conference that was held in New York last November. I was accepted and told to sign up. I bought train tix to New York and booked a room. Months passed. One day, out of the blue, the BEDA chair wrote to me and said they were canceling me because they’d “heard about me.” They claimed I “wasn’t recovered” and that I would “trigger people at the conference.”

    Not exactly. I might inspire people at the conference to avoid ED treatment centers, to start up their own self-help groups, to trust their own body intuition, to end doctor dependence, and to do sensible drug tapers…but of course NEDA/BEDA is sponsored by treatment centers and drug companies. Again, I was thoroughly approved. I had a great idea for the presentation and I have presented before. They didn’t tell me the source of the flagging.

    I was hoping to apply to do a TED Talk. They can’t argue against real personal experience and real achievement. I want to do a TED Talk because I do well in front of audiences, because I tell an entertaining and engaging story, and because I know I can reach more people that way. I looked into motivational speaking but I find it’s very hard to get speaking engagements ordinarily. I have tried contacting my alma maters, where I paid tuition and did amazing academic work, and they have stated they don’t want me speaking there, given lame excuses, or they just don’t write back. I am thinking of starting in the high schools instead.

    BTW, would appreciate support from anyone out there. If you have connections, can you get me a speaking engagement? Willing to travel.

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  • The only part of the article I don’t quite align with is that emphasis on achievement is a negative force. I was always focused on academic achievement and I was very good at music. Focusing on intellectual things was what helped me thrive in academia.

    Sadly, therapy overemphasized relationships. As a result of therapy I became needy and attached to certain people I met in the “milieu.” I was emotionally attached to the therapists. It was a sad change from the academician I once was. None of what therapy had to offer had anything do with using your thinking. You were supposed to “feel.” It seemed too mushy to me. Yet I became brainwashed by the “group hug” and stuffed animal play.

    Now, I have gone back to my former self. I stopped emphasizing friendship and am plowing ahead with “career” in the forefront of my mind. This is how I am. I am hard-working, achievement-oriented, prefer to work independently, can create my own goals, and I love to do creative things. I was meant to be like this.

    Happiness doesn’t depend on relationships anymore. People let me down far too many times. Humans are fickle and unreliable. Instead, if one happens by, that’s a good thing. If one leaves, I don’t fall apart over it.

    What’s cool is that now that I am not in therapy and not labeled, I am free to feel what I want without professional criticism. So what if my bf broke up with me due to his two-timing? Had I been in therapy, the idiot therapist would have said, “Oh, let’s process this,” or, “So now you are grieving. Let’s set up extra appointments to get you through this.” Fuck that.

    I don’t need therapy to create a mess for me when no mess exists. When my ex told me he was two-timing me and wanted to break up, I was laughing inside, cracking up, telling myself, “Either he just needs an excuse to end it because he has no guts to admit he’s scared of commitment, or he’s a damn idiot and I do not want him around.”

    Who needs therapy? I’m fine. That’s because I am in a secure place within myself and I don’t define happiness as another human being. Oh, I do center life around my dog. I do not think she centers her life around me, though. I think she thinks of food constantly, and the many ways she can trick me into spoiling her even more every day.

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  • “A post on Facebook about cats or someone falling on their face might garner 50 “likes,” while a vulnerable and honest reflection of pain, need for connection, or hopelessness will tend to go ignored and result in lost followers.”

    That’s exactly how I lost all my friends when I was about 53 years old. I tried to ask my “friends” on Facebook (and other places) for help with my eating disorder and then, very quickly, they were not my friends anymore. This makes me so angry, even now. They even called me dangerous and said I should be locked up. One of them said I “was no longer a person.” Makes me sick.

    I have no clue how on earth I made it through 2011, 2012, and 2013 alive. They never realized I had a narcissistic therapist during that time, which was causing me to react by crying out for help. It takes a long, long time to get over therapy abuse. I got over it alone, no help from the unsupportive ex-friends.

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  • This is likely because the therapists have no clue what really bad poverty is like. They are employed, after all. They have degrees. Most have a chance at making decent money, some end up with crap jobs, though.

    I have been on different ends of the economic spectrum and I find that what SomeoneElse is saying is true. I came from privilege and the therapists couldn’t relate to that. Later, I found they’d ask me stuff like, “Can’t you take a cab?” when of course the price was prohibitive.

    Therapy is mostly ineffective, simply because the therapist tends to assume the client thinks just like she does. The therapist assumes she is normal and healthy and the ideal for living. Bullshit.

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  • Law on the inside: You have no rights. Even if they have “patient rights” laws as they do in Massachusetts, these laws are totally disregarded. All states have “treat the patient with respect” as that one is national. Bullshit, they will treat you however they feel like treating you. If you complain that it’s not respectful, they’ll gaslight you by saying, “So, how have we not been respectful, didn’t we do___ for you?” Then they go off on a list of how great they’ve been, how much they’ve bent over backwards for you, which they know is baloney, then call you ungrateful. Say what? Offered to change the TV channel? What about letting me pee and change my clothes without staring, eh?

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  • What if thousands of people just stopped going to doctors? How often do we REALLY need a doc? How often do we have bones that need setting? How often does a person need a bullet removed, or get into a car accident? These are times you need a doctor. Not for scrapes, bruises, colds, and mostly if you get the flu a doc can do nothing anyway, nothing helpful.

    Our insurance system, especially ‘Care/’Caid, pays for everything with no copay. You can see a doctor for the stupidest things. ‘Caid covers ER trips and ambulance rides whether they were necessary or not. Just call and they come.

    I am speaking of my past self here. I went to them for anything. They were free, after all. Invariably, they never gave me decent care, never satisfied me in any way, never addressed the issues I came to them for. Once, I went to the ER after I’d been raped and I ended up with a dx of “common cold.” They even wasted tax dollars giving me an unnecessary, wasteful “breathing treatment.” Stupidity! Every time I went in there saying “Help me, I can’t seem to eat” they just sent me away with a dx of “anxiety.” Useless.

    I was force weighed at the doctor about once a week for about a year per order my abusive therapist, and every time, the PCP charged my insurance. I never had to pay a cent and wouldn’t have! I never understood the high charges for operating a doc office scale. $45. $60 even a few times. Why did it have to be a doc? Why not a nurse? Wouldn’t that be less burden to society? I’d love to total up the dollars and cents.

    I do not see them now. Never. I had the flu, and because I didn’t see them, I got over the flu very fast. I hurt my foot when I dropped something on it, and that ended up hurting very badly but it would have been misdiagnosed had I seen a doc. Two days later I was fine.

    Seeing doctors is hugely wasteful. They do nothing productive. They aren’t gods.

    So thousands of people could just stop going without consequence to them, but much consequence to the medicos and their institutions.

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  • If you are locked up, doing a hunger strike makes sense. If you are not, no one’s going to care. Especially three-day hunger strikes. You will survive three days of not eating if you’re healthy. A month-long hunger strike would raise eyebrows, and also, get you incarcerated with a tube up your nose. I think, though, there are laws protecting prisoners who do hunger strikes. I’m not sure if they can be force-fed under law if they’re striking. Isn’t there an international ruling on that?

    Now if you aren’t healthy, say, if you are diabetic or have other serious condition, or are underweight, not eating will kill you and again, unless the hunger strike is organized you’re likely to be accused of suicidality, and your cause disregarded.

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  • I’m sick to heck of the topic of drug withdrawal! And I’m sicker still of the claim that MD’s and PhD’s are “experts.” This is why I have kept my participation in MIA to a minimal lately. I’m sick of the topic of drug withdrawal because while I see it as important, overemphasizing it minimizes human rights, or rather, lack thereof, which IS the bigger picture. I’m so disgusted with the overfocus on this topic here (and elsewhere) that I want to quit outright.

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  • Lavender, I see writing as communication, though the process is also a personal journey, but the point is, you are bringing the reader along for the ride. That, to me, is the focus, the ride. I don’t write for myself. I write to communicate what happened so that it might be prevented from reoccurring. This is my goal. I am always focused on helping others see the truth about the MH system, and helping others understand that they, too, might be better off if they walk away.

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  • Especially since, as far as psychiatry goes, many can look up these pills and self-prescribe. And they do! Some 20 years ago I started noticing I could self-prescribe better than they could. I said nothing. Not then.

    Secondly, it’s been proven that compassion works better than therapy. Just the fact that the personality of the therapist is the most important factor, way beyond the methodology or amount of training.

    When I had acupuncture I remember the acupuncturist was really nice. That made the acupuncture work, though to this day I don’t know if anything else other than someone was nice to me mattered at that time.

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  • Mad studies scholars may see it as something within everyone, but the mainstream sees it as an excuse to segregate and exclude, though a very arbitrary one. Madness is nonexistent in that the actual characteristics of one perceived as mad are not defined nor do they delineate Mad People at all. The difference, as far as I’m concerned, is that those perceived as Mad get their rights taken away. That’s societal, not personal.

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  • Lawrence, For once I am glad to hear this from a psychiatrist. You forgot something. Disability. Psych diagnosis is easy to obtain. You barely have to fake anything. Just walk into the presence of a psych and tell him/her your past diagnosis, and he’s likely to believe it, whether you had that dx or not. He’ll write it in your record and now, you’re guaranteed a basic income for the next seven years, called “SSDI.”

    What a great idea for those dissatisfied with their jobs, or those who are in a field where work is scarce. Great for women who want to depend on their husbands and need an excuse to stay home. Great way to get out of the workplace if you were sexually harassed on the job, without dealing with the mess of reporting anyone. Great for artists of all types, as it’s an income instead of having to get a “day job.”

    I am guilty of the above, most of them, which is why I bring it up. I didn’t know how I would get a job as a music composer, and at my previous jobs I had been sexually harassed. Disability worked great for me, excusing me from the workplace, until I was abused in a hospital. Everything turned upside down for me after that.

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  • I agree that many survivors need to publish under a pseudonym, for obvious reasons. I do not, but that’s only because there are five of me in every major city. So I am easily mixed up with others who have my same name, and whose to say if it’s the real me? I was well aware of this when I published in MIA under my real name, but if my name were something else, something less common-sounding, I would not want to use it.

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  • I am thinking along the same lines. I am not uncomfortable with “lived experience” because to me it means you’ve been locked up and experienced psychiatric violence. That’s not even debatable, it is a fact. You were behind locked doors, drugged, shocked, or all of the above. I’m not sure what “mad” is, though. I do not define myself as “mad” at all. I don’t think anyone I know defines me that way. If they do, they aren’t my friends anymore.

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  • To expect acceptance from everyone is unrealistic, considering how many people are out there.

    The other day I received negative feedback at my Toastmaster’s meeting. I was shocked at the amount of negative, and so little positive feedback. I had enough self-esteem to know that my speech was one of the best I have ever given, and also very different from what I usually give there. Why the negative feedback? At first i was dumbfounded.

    Harsh, negative feedback is not the norm for this meeting. However, I wondered very briefly if the speech I had given was simply a bad speech. I realized that the speech was excellent, but the venue was wrong. It was a mismatch. At Toastmasters they don’t expect “art” and “poetry.” They’d rather have a concrete, sappy story. Many of the nuances in the speech flew over people’s heads.

    So inside, I told myself I would not toss the speech, nor take the negative feedback very seriously. I would take the speech to a different audience, an artsy audience, maybe a poetry reading or some such thing, because really it was performance poetry, not a speech per se.

    The fact that I was able to shake off the harsh criticism and move past it says something about self-esteem. I couldn’t have done this during the couple of years after psychiatric abuse (abuse by therapist and abuse while inpatient). Psych abuse shakes you up very badly and makes you vulnerable.

    The fact that I handled the negative criticism well also says a lot about my fellow Toastmasters’ faith in me. They would not have given me this harsh feedback if they thought I would not have been able to “handle it,” or if they thought I was “sensitive” or that I’d crumble if I heard it. They knew I would not. They would not have given feedback like this to a rank beginner. They made it clear that they set the bar high for me. I took this as about the best compliment you could get. It was an amazing learning experience.

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  • I experienced severe insomnia as a direct result of taking Effexor! This was back in 1999, summer. I had never had insomnia before and was shocked that I couldn’t sleep. Stopping Effexor solved the problem. Any other antidepressant either had no effect on sleep or caused insomnia. But of course the average shrink would say this is just “anecdotal evidence” and act all dismissive…..

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  • Any excuse to keep a person longer on a psych ward, they will do it, especially if they can milk the insurance in the process. They cannot prove patients are ill and a patient cannot prove he is not.

    I, too, have seen overweight people accused of “poor self care” on psych wards. They’ll use any excuse. More likely they’ll accuse underweight people of that, though.

    I have been remembering times they kept people because they were too lazy to find a translator. For six or more extra weeks. Or incarcerated from the ER “just in case” simply due to lack of translator. That was such a crime.

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  • We have to realize that pressure to be thin is relatively recent. The diet industry wasn’t that strong in the media and in our culture until the past couple of decades. Back when I was growing up I remember this diet aid called “Aydes.” I remember talking with my friends, “But why would anyone want that?” meaning why would anyone want to eat chocolate to lose weight. Dieting was rare in the 1960’s and 70’s, at least in my own culture and among my friends. It was unheard of in my family and I never really knew anyone growing up who went on a diet. Only vaguely. I don’t recall pressure in school, either. Not that kids didn’t get teased for everything under the sun…they did! Fat was just one of them. Now, it is different. People forget that this dieting thing in the media and the pressures are all new.

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  • Another thing: Fat-shaming can lead to ED, to any type of ED, to compulsive eating, to anorexia or bulimia or binge eating or any combination of these. What I saw of pro-ana members were mostly those who had been fat-shamed. Most were not anorexic, but wannabes. Most did not become anorexic but came to the pro-ana forums to find solace due to the taunting they’d been through in their schools.

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  • Yeah but if you have been through an ED, which may, or may not necessarily be visible, the skinny-shaming hits very hard. No one necessarily knows how “shaming” may affect another person, or whether it is perceived as shaming, either. Many times, a flippant comment about a person’s body that is intended as a compliment is really an insult, depending on context and other elements. ED
    “activists” say we should refrain from body-commenting altogether, to be on the safe side.

    For instance, the comment, “You look healthy,” when said to a person who has recently gained weight after being force-fed in an ED facility, will not be taken well! It very well will be seen as hurtful, translated as, “You gained weight in there, didn’t you?” This, I recall, was discussed at length among patients, who resented their families’ well-meaning comments on weight gain.

    We also had to deal with jealousy, believe it or not. Even people who were very very thin dealt with it. Much of this was from healthcare providers themselves, from our friends, even from relatives. You heard stories about sisters competing and even mother-daughter jealousy.

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  • I’ve experienced discrimination as a heavy person and also was discrimination when I was underweight. I remember hearing microagressions, remarks about my weight that were totally uncalled for and rude. Like once I was in a thrift store and someone commented that I could “fit through the aisle.” Or various other rude comments. Since when is weight-based commentary only inappropriate if aimed at “fat people”?

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  • I am not sure anyone was suggesting not caring as a solution, Emily. Not caring can be a result of drugging, which isn’t a solution at all, but a masking of what we actually feel or worry about. We live in a society that is increasingly drugged and because of this, increasingly turning a blind eye to the inequity all around us. We are raising obedient sheeples more and more. What next?

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  • I think most people WILL care what a cop thinks of them during a routine traffic stop. I think most will care what the HR person thinks of them during the job interview. You are likely going to care that they don’t think of you as a typical terrorist while you are walking through an airport. The day I locked myself out of the house, right after I moved here, the cops didn’t even ask me for identification. Why? Because they took one look and decided I “looked honest.” I’m just little ole me who stepped out with her dog. So yes, unless you are seriously drugged or very young, you do care. Only people rarely realize how much they care until they’re on the other side of the profiling fence.

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  • Steve, Some, not all, women value these things. Only some women wear makeup and only some feel that shaving their legs is important. Only some feel that wearing glamorous clothing means beauty. Only some wear fancy jewelry or anything supposedly “sexy.”

    I am proud to say I don’t fit into that category and never did. I don’t know why. I never valued those things, never even spent time in front of the mirror, never paint my nails nor spend time shopping for frilly clothing. Clothes are for warmth and protection only, for practicality. I braid my hair because it’s the best way to keep it from tangling. To decorate the body seems wasteful, but that’s my own personal value and I realize other people think it’s great to play dress-up and I need to try to respect that more.

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  • You didn’t cover weight gain from antipsychotic drugs. I have seen the fat acceptance ideas used as argument by therapists and psychs to stay on these drugs. “Yes, you are gaining weight but accept yourself! Keep taking the drugs, don’t complain, and love yourself anyway!” It’s a bullshit argument for complacency, for failing to take action.

    Any ideology can be used for good or bad. Psychiatry has used fat acceptance to support drugging people with Zyprexa and other similar drugs that cause diabetes and early death.

    On the other hand, fat acceptance has helped many people, when the ideology is used constructively.

    Is there any way to be notified of these sooner? It seems I always come in on the tail end and I never heard about the May 24th event as well.

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  • I agree, Tina. The right to choose to use available health-related resources regardless of citizenship, locale, race, or economic status. The right to be free of being forced or coerced to partake in such.

    I even wonder about the flu shot. Many tell me it’s being pushed on them, and they barely have a chance to say no. I was alarmed when I had to fill out a form at the ophthalmologist’s office asking me if I’d had a flu shot and mammo. What does this have to do with cataract surgery? After my surgery is over, I’m sure I’ll have a chance to give feedback or ask questions (if not, I will anyway) and I hope to point out the imposition these questions pose to the patient. I suspect they’re trying to get these things onto your record and plan to “share” these things with any doctor that signs onto the online system.

    Last time I was at the eye doc the doctor insisted I get a primary care doctor. This, too, is an imposition, since I am not sick nor injured right now, but thankfully the folks in the office seem to have forgotten to continue to push that one on me.

    Health care should be a choice, not pushed on a person. And I do not like it when a doctor tells me how to manage my adult body. I am in charge of my body, not the medical industrial complex. I have the right to ask for a badly needed cataract surgery and have the right to be spared from all this rude pushiness.

    Also, in my opinion, the fact that I notice these things now, while in the past was blase about the obvious infractions on my rights, I credit to being off the drugs! I am no longer oblivious to human rights abuses. And darned proud of that, because I think this is the way I am meant to be.

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  • Steve S, I concur. Also, many people who are in state of emotional distress might need or want “help” but the help they get, if it’s from the System, invariably is rarely what they are asking for.

    I remember each time I left a facility, or ended with a therapist, I asked myself, “Why do I feel such a terrible sense of disappointment?” But then, I learned I was not alone.

    I have known people who ended up in “therapy” for physical pain, due to joblessness, due to overall impoverished conditions, or because they’d been crime victims or subject to bad circumstances such as being hit by a drunk driver. Therapy leads to a psych diagnosis, and that is the gateway to drugging, marginalization, and worse.

    “But that is not what I asked for.” Sadly, I hear this too much.

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  • I don’t understand. Right to refuse treatment whether one is ill/injured or not is a right. Right to illness? I don’t agree with the parallel to right to laziness. One does not choose to become ill, I hope! However, Right to Illness implies that a person deliberately contracts an illness, or has the right to do so. I feel that people who are ill with any malady, real or perceived, should be treated well! Health is not black or white, it is on a continuum.

    You have the choice to exercise or not. You can not exercise, that, certainly, is a right. I am not one to judge whether another person’s choices about their personal health matters are good choices or not. And why should medical people claim authority over another person’s personal health choices? However, they do, increasingly so.

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  • Speaking of….I finally caved and went to get evaluated (again) for a cataract operation. This time when I filled out their required forms they had the nerve to ask me if I’d had a mammogram and flu shot! How is that relevant to cataract surgery? I answered “refuse to answer” since that was an option. I hope they’re just like any other doctor and they do not even read the forms I take the time to fill out. I tried to leave as much as possible blank, and wrote in sloppy handwriting….

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  • Hello Will and All, I never saw this article when it came out. I started to write a similar article of my own recently and when I was done, decided that since I am not Will Hall, since I am not Sera Davidow, since I am not Ron Unger….and so on….I would not even get the article published here, so I didn’t bother to submit it.

    My premise was that we need to clean up our act and stop the hypocrisy within our own ranks. End the elitism, end the white dominance here, end the tiered system from which we came and run our Movement truly democratically. We need to stop giving exclusive vocal rights to the few, and open it all up instead to the many who have been harmed, to the many who have been affected and are demanding changes of all sorts.

    We also need to end the dominance of drug discussions and realize the larger picture, the elephant in the room. They’re still locking people up, they’re still diagnosing, they’re still name-calling and marginalizing anyone they see as mentally defective. This is eugenics, run by the wealthy and powerful. It is only going to continue.

    With the drug-only focus, we’re only picking at the tip of the iceberg. Instead, the whole damn iceberg has to be gone. While the drugs, the Topic of the Day, are visible and horrible, so is incarceration, so is forced/coerced unemployment, forced/coerced disability, and the resulting monetary impoverishment many of us face. We will never have a voice if we remain poor, unemployed, or worse. Drugs or none.

    Politicians do follow the money. Where’s ours? We don’t have any. Scientology succeeds more than we do. They have money.

    We can all end corruption in gov’t, but I suggest each of us do this on a local level, or county level. There are ways each of us can do our own investigation and get these thieving scoundrels out of office.

    Julie

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  • Thanks, Jclaude. I was peer-pressured into believing I must have had bad parents since I began to hear horror stories in the therapy groups. I asked myself, “If I am here, then something must have gone on.” The group pressured me to “talk about it.” They assumed I had been abused and kept needling me to talk about child abuse that had never occurred. In my book, the memoir I published, I have a chapter on that exact moment I was pressured in group therapy. I re-created the scene (with names changed).

    What happened in the scene was odd. I was pressured by the other patients. They were expecting a child abuse horror story. If any horror story had happened to me, it was my eating disorder, that is, a dieting cycle I could not end, which had only started maybe 18 months prior to that moment.

    I was terrified to tell the group the truth. “Sorry, I have no child abuse horror stories to tell you. I don’t make the grade. I’m not good enough for you all. I do have embarrassing eating problems even though I might look okay to you.”

    I never said that. What came out that afternoon was an ear-piercing scream. Likely, I was screaming at the irony of the moment.

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  • JC, I wish MIA would talk about this issue more.

    I am working on a new article for MIA about how some, certainly not all, workplaces are oppressive and reminiscent of the nuthouses in their hierarchical structure and overbearing “policies.” I went through a bad workplace situation in January so that inspired me to write it. (I have another job now that seems totally reasonable so far!)

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  • Streetphoto: The mental health system isn’t just a pill mill. It’s a system of incarceration. It removes people from society or ghettoizes them, essentially de-voicing them or refusing to allow them to participate in society and denies them rights to make their own decisions. It removes them from the workforce, creating a tiered society, a society based on elitism, the haves who are supposedly capable who have rights, and those who are considered incapacitated, whose rights are taken away, sanctioned by laws in many countries. Drugs compound the matter, they are part of it, but they they aren’t the big picture.

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  • Mary, this is their little-known “eating disorders protocol.” Any ED patient in their inpatient “program” is automatically restricted to 32 oz per day. They monitor this very carefully. They won’t allow soup nor tea. They also watched me in the bathroom even while I was toileting, totally illegal in MA, and insisted they’d have to watch me shower. They claimed I would drink the shower water. I refused to shower with someone watching. I was very very thin then. I became desperate for water within a very short time. I begged and begged. Pleaded with them. I realized I would likely become dangerously dehydrated as I’d been upon admission if this continued. My normal intake for over 30 years now has been at least six liters per day in 68 degree weather. In summer or if I am exercising, that could double. I do not get an electrolyte imbalance from drinking my usual amount of water.

    While I was there I noticed my face was beginning to have that “sunken in” appearance of dehydration. My eyes became scratchy, my lips cracked, my skin became dry. I had headaches which they claimed were from fluorescent lights. I told them that had never happened before. Then, they said it was “caffeine withdrawal” and allowed me a cup of coffee in addition to the four 8-oz bottles of water they allowed me. They denied I was suffering from what was essentially life-threatening to me, and very very scary and upsetting. They were also verbally and physically abusive to me, and they intentionally listened on to all my phone conversations, illegal in MA.

    I continued to ask, “Why? Why? Why are you limiting my water?” They repeated, “Protocol.” I have hated the word protocol ever since.

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  • Wow….Maybe we should see this as a step back, or perhaps a challenge we have to face…but of course it’s not failure. After all, the dialogue is ongoing, not over.

    Tina, something was forwarded to me regarding making an appeal to the UN. I was literally tortured in a medical facility, Massachusetts General Hospital, via water deprivation in mid-2011. This was their “protocol,” so this is scary because it’s still ongoing, that is, they still have this universal strict “protocol” and they watch you so you cannot cheat. I believe it was pure stupidity that caused them to do this to me, but this was MGH! The greatest hospital in the USA! Stupidity and discrediting of the patient that would have killed me! I now suffer trauma due to my life having been threatened.

    In the mailing you had mentioned two choices and now, in light of this new development, what would you recommend I do? Two ways to bring this torture to the attention of the UN. I would love an investigation into this “program” that MGH does not even advertise. I would love for MGH to end their water restriction policy as they told me there was no medical reason for it whatsoever. Just a universal policy. I feel the policy poses a threat to patients because they do not make exception for those that may have diabetes insipidus, and the possibility is very real, even undiagnosed, as mine was undiagnosed 27 years (I was told I was “faking it”).

    I’ve been called psychotic over and over. And this really did happen. But you cannot argue when they call you crazy. It is senseless.

    I had anonymous hired online bullies for two years bullying me over this, too. And they even abused me in another hospital (2013) to try to silence me and get me locked up permanently.

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  • I am surprised, but then again, not so surprised, that so few have commented here. We have been silenced too many times. When I say abuse, I only mean psychiatric abuse as I was not abused by my parents, and yet, since psychiatry refuses to admit it could possibly do harm, they insisted all those years that I must have had bad parents. The repeated accusations did terrible harm to my family, to my parents and siblings especially.

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  • Thanks for addressing this. Thanks, Sera and Emily. I listened to the whole thing. Please, please do more on this! MIA does not address this topic enough. Too much about drugs, not enough about force and abuse in so-called “care.”

    The reason why this harm, the main harm of the System is so rarely addressed is that this harm is so obvious and so huge and so widespread that most people don’t even notice it.

    When I was back in the nuthouses I tried to talk about the parallels with forced care and sexual violence. Of course I was called psychotic just for speaking up. When I said that intubation was rape, I was told to be silent. When I suggested that forced catheterization was rape, I was told I was psychotic. When I said that being glared at while I ate was violating, I was called crazy. When I ended up traumatized from all that they did, I was told I “needed treatment.” How ironic.

    I agree that trauma-informed care is a myth because they don’t validate that “care” itself is often abusive, and therefore, not care at all.

    I wonder why they need a trigger warning. Do we get trigger warnings before we get locked up in hospitals?

    I’m going to be linking to this in my blog because it reflects exactly what I have been blogging about for the past 5-10 years or so. Only if Sera says it, maybe people will finally hear the message.

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  • I would suggest the following: Establish a scholarship whereby self-directed students who able to work without close supervision can apply for a low-residency type academic study such I did at Goddard College where I did my graduate work. The low-residency setting allows students to remain living wherever they are, and travel twice a year to a conference where they work intensively together for about ten days. This way, students are not required to relocate.

    The other suggestion I would make would be to set up such a program in a university that is located in an area that is affordable to live. Of course, trends cannot be predicted, but as of now, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, etc, are insanely expensive compared to, say, the Appalachian region or parts of the South.

    Psych survivors are invariably so poor they/we cannot afford to live in any other locale than the most impoverished of areas. Because my current area is affordable, I am delighted with the people, the culture, the way of life, and the welcome I have received here.

    Why not set up an antipsych department at a junior college? As of now, I am currently planning out an antipsych class, likely an overview of principles, to teach at my local junior college. I plan to apply to do this for the Continuing Ed department. It’s my understanding that if the class is well-received I will be invited to run it again.

    Many continuing education centers independent of universities will welcome teachers willing to teach this subject with open arms. And variations thereof! “Writing by Psychiatric Survivors.” “Mad Poets Strike Again!” And so on.

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  • Ria, I believe you. I stayed in touch with one of my buddies after I left. She reported to me that it got even worse there.

    I remember (this being 2011, January) the bathrooms were very bad. I personally cleaned the women’s bathroom daily. I had to clean piss off every toilet seat and sometimes even poop. This was wintertime and they never managed to get the window in there closed, so it was around 45 degrees in there and we had no clue how we’d shower. There was a “handicapped” bathroom but that was usually used by the unfortunate person whom they’d kept held in solitary, usually for about a week. As a psych ward it was about the worst overall I had seen in a while. The food was so bad people couldn’t touch the stuff. They got worried I would lose too much weight so they let me have Kosher meals, which were non-McLean, ordered in specially. The other patients were awfully nice that time. We knew damn well the staff were totally incompetent. I left there in far worse shape than I was in upon my arrival.

    My therapist had insisted I go to the ER. Why? I had a broken tooth and she insisted I needed a psych ward for that. I was told at McLean that my broken tooth was “anxiety from teeth-grinding at night” and they insisted I take Haldol for it. I was held three weeks, no dentist, told repeatedly it was my imagination and that the Haldol would cure it.

    By the time I had that tooth pulled it was so badly infected due to the delay that the dentist was worried about pulling it, but of course it was essential to come out. I was really sick afterward because it was so infected from the extraction. Not only that, the crack was visible with the naked eye. McLean had no excuse. I was not faking it.

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  • Ria, pretty much that sized them up. The night staff at McLean were terrible, I recall, one time I was there. This one lady came and brought pillows and blankets so she could sleep all night. This other one brought a textbook so he could study his school work. He ordered us to stay in our rooms until 6am. When I left my room to get a drink of water, which I truly needed for a medical condition, he ordered me back inside. The other patients came to my defense. I remember that rather clearly and with a sense of camaraderie toward the other inmates. I phoned some higher-up office and complained. The night staff were okay to me for the next few nights and then, went back to status quo.

    For future, if anyone out there is incarcerated: Don’t call the human rights office. Call the human resources office, that is, the HR office that is in charge of hiring and firing, and complain. That will get you some action. Don’t complain about bad bedside manner. Complain about patient abuse, rape, negligence, patient harm, sexual harassment, theft of your belongings or anything they really need to hear about. Sadly, all that is the usual stuff that happens on a psych ward.

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  • Yes, Phoenix. Let this be a lesson to therapists to hear out what the patient has to say about former therapists! It shouldn’t be a taboo topic! And for godsakes, mandatory reporting, even if you are reporting on abuse done by a mental health professional, is the law! Mandatory reporting about abuse done in a mental hospital is the law! If you see something, say something! That is the law! Those who turned their backs on me have some serious reckoning to do.

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  • Eric I am sad that you enjoyed your stay so much. No wonder they kept you four months. Who paid for your hotel stay?

    I used to be like that, too. That’s one of the many reasons I stayed a mental patient for so long, and didn’t get out for decades.

    I was devoted to it, like it was my destiny, my life’s purpose. God-given. Sacred. Only after three decades I realized their diagnoses (whether that meant role in the nuthouse or “schiz”) had no leg to stand on, and it all crumbled.

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  • I agree, it’s nothing but psychobabble. Here’s what I would have preferred, but it never happened. Each time I switched therapists I wanted to tell the new one about the last one. I wanted to say what went horribly wrong. I was never allowed to say that. It was taboo. I hated that.

    Like I went to see this T in 2008 and I fired her after she ignored that I was raped. Yep, it flew right over her head. She literally did not notice that my neighbor had raped me. After I fired her and found another therapist, I wanted so badly to tell the next therapist, “Hey, this is what happened, this is why I fired her!” but that conversation never took place.

    The next therapist I struggled with at first but we came to a pretty good understanding. She got laid off. The next therapist was narcisstic and abusive.

    The one thing that would have been helpful at that point, 2012, would have been to talk about the therapy abuse. There were people in my life that could have been there for me. I was begging to talk about it, hoping that someone would listen. I went from therapist to therapist, hoping that someone would hear my story. Sadly, my psychiatrist refused to believe me and called me psychotic and I couldn’t get a single therapist to listen. I almost killed myself around mid-2012 as a result. I didn’t. Never took any pills. I tried to tell someone but I couldn’t get anyone to sit down with me and listen to my story. Around the beginning of 2013 a therapist tried to ask me out on a date. Great therapy. When I told my psychiatrist about him she told me I was psychotic, and that such therapists do not exist.

    I concluded that therapy is useless. I’m surprised I’m alive after all that. Can anyone blame me for not having contact with the bozos called MH professionals?

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  • I had a narcissistic therapist. That was hell. The whole time I saw her was hell on earth. I remember leaving Maria’s office feeling like I wanted to kill myself and wondering why.

    Maria was controlling and abusive. She used to accuse me of vomiting over and over and I never vomited. She told me she was arranging for me to go to the State Hospital.

    After I was deprived of water at Massachusetts General Hospital (which is TORTURE under any law in any country!) she told me the “unit” was on did not exist and that I was totally psychotic and it never happened. Then she claimed this meant I needed the State Hospital even more. She pushed for it harder after that and threatened me at every appointment.

    That woman should not be licensed and in fact I think she should do prison time even though I don’t believe in prison really. I HATE WHAT SHE DID so much. I hate what she did to me and I hate what she did to all her patients because in my heart I know I was not the only one. One of these days she will have a suicide on her hands. I pray this doesn’t happen but I see it as inevitable and I pray she gets nailed for it. At least.

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  • Yes, Chaya, that I observed also. This is one reason a “therapist” can sometimes be easier to talk to than a family member. The conversation is less “loaded” if you are talking to someone with less history behind her. Of course so can a friend or neutral person you meet online that you don’t have to pay $150 an hour to talk to.

    Rachel, I remember saying the same thing to myself. I thought it was very sad that no one would speak to me at the time, literally no one even though I tried so hard. So I was going to have to find some “therapist” and PAY that person who was going to hate talking to me, but she was being paid to sit there and if she could stand me, listen to me. I hated the thought of it, but I figured if I was going to have any spoken conversation at all it was going to have to someone I paid. Then, of course, I realized that therapy is nothing but prostitution! I cried every day during those years, crying out of the isolation I was stuck in and lack of spoken conversation.

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  • Gabi, That is a funny question. I am proud to be alive in spite of psychiatry. I am alive because I refused it. I am alive because of noncompliance.

    My mom taught me something when I was a little kid. She said if you ever have a difficult problem to solve, you can solve it! Just put on your Thinking Cap. She said everyone has a Thinking Cap. But we have to remember, she said, to put it on.

    Psychiatry tells us we do not have Thinking Caps. Psychiatry tells us we have to rely on Them for all our needs. However, if we rely on them, we will fail, over and over and over. This is because they are unreliable. What happens is that we end up terribly disillusioned by psychiatry, and subsequently we might feel disappointed in humanity in general. But the beautiful thing is that we then might fall back on what is left–ourselves. Lo and behold, we might dust off our Thinking Caps.

    We all have one, and we can put it on and use it anytime. My mom was right! It costs nothing to use it. It is magical and amazing. Put it on and you can do just about anything.

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  • The worst example of narcissistic behavior that I have seen recently was my therapist that I had between November 2010 and around March of 2012. I was total hell having her for a therapist. She had a Savior complex and was very controlling and manipulative. She regularly threatened me and falsely accused me of all kinds of things, whatever she felt like accusing me of. I am horrified that she still practices therapy.

    Still, on principle, I don’t call people narcissists. I say, “narcissistic behavior.” I don’t label others. Much as I hated Maria’s behavior I will not label her. I know in my heart that what she did was criminal. It was abuse. It was not a disease and I will not excuse her abuse by claiming it was a symptom of a disorder. She should not practice therapy until she can work out her control issues. I hope she reads this and wises up.

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  • That’s why the CV sheet we have to sign when we are admitted is colored differently. Ever notice that? It’s not for OUR benefit. It’s for the junior staff to ensure they know which paper is the essential one we have to sign No Matter What. We have to be coerced into it No Matter What. So because they can’t be trusted to memorize “conditional voluntary” written on top of the page, the paper is colored differently. After all, cumulatively speaking, the staff are far less educated and less intelligent and far less insightful than the patients.

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  • Gabi I recall when my late boyfriend believed he was a “federal agent” I went along with it. I listened to his entire fantasy about his work as an “agent” and all that that his “assignments” entailed. I kept on listening and if something sounded scary to me, I said so and asked him if he also felt scared or threatened. He said he did. We talked through all of it and I never said “That is not true.” I never tried to prove him wrong nor rationalize nor minimize anything he told me. ALL of what he said was based in reality, and actually much of it I never realized until years or even decades later. For instance, a lot sprung from his anger over my ECT. I was barely aware that I’d been damaged by it, but he was painfully aware that the person he had known may not come back from ECT fog (I did!).

    Another thing I perceived at the time as being unrealistic was his claim that the drugs were “poison.” He insisted they were “bad for him” and he did not want to take them. He spat them out and hid the spat-out pills from the staff. One day, he handed me a wad of them that he had spat out, saying, “These are poison and I will not take them!” I didn’t know what to do except walk away and toss them out in my trash.

    Now, well over a decade has passed and in my heart I know he knew exactly what he was talking about. He knew. Even after he finally agreed to take them, which he agreed under much pressure, he knew deep down they were killing him.

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  • I just read about people who are trauma survivors feeling like their lives are going to be cut short, having a feeling of imminent death that isn’t a suicidal urge but just a feeling like you do not have much time left or a feeling of urgency? Does anyone else have that, too? I have had that myself and I thought it was a “new life philosophy” that I developed after I was deprived of water in a hospital. But I am beginning to wonder if maybe it’s a result of the trauma. I always feel like I have to rush, and that started after MGH deprived me of water. After that I had a lot of trouble getting people to believe me or take me seriously. I hope someone reads this.

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  • What is mentally healthy in one culture is considered out of the norm in another. For instance, my parents were like other WWII parents and did not share emotionally with us kids. This was the way that parenting was done back then. By the time I got to therapy, my therapists came from the next generation, so they claimed my parents were “emotionally distant.” This was not true. They were most likely warmer emotionally than most parents of that generation. Therapists compared our parents to theirs, and any variation was by definition “abuse.”

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  • I know here in the USA the FBI keeps records called NICS, this is a record of people who cannot own firearms and one of the parts of this is MI, but it’s only those who have been court-committed and I suspect this would only contain some of us who have been court-committed on certain types of sections. Apparently you can write to the FBI to see if you are on this list. You can even ask to be taken off. I wonder if you could state that being on the list affects your employment and housing status (and possibly all sorts of other things, education, ability to get a loan, etc) and this is why you want to be taken off.

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  • Chaya, just one little point. If a person is truly starving then you’d better not give that person candy. This, sadly, was a misunderstanding when the American soldiers came upon some starving Holocaust survivors. In their zeal to get them fed, they gave the starving survivors chocolate. The survivors died.

    What happened? When you overwhelm a starving person’s system with candy or chocolate after prolonged starvation, sometimes a condition called “refeeding syndrome” can develop. Usually, once it starts, the condition worsens and the person dies. It is very complex and serious, involving edema, heart failure, diarrhea, and physical lethargy. It is very hard to reverse refeeding syndrome. But the soldiers didn’t know that this would occur.

    Nowadays, refeeding syndrome almost exclusively occurs in ED treatment facilities when patients are tube fed too rapidly. This is a huge liability risk for these facilities and they are truly scared that patients will develop it.

    All I am saying is that candy is not an answer to starvation. It isn’t that it is unhealthy food, it really can kill a starving person fairly quickly. As for helping for weight gain for a non-diabetic person who isn’t starving, it might help, but you might get a stomach ache.

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  • We have all seen the same thing. Victims complain of aftereffects of ECT, such as cognitive confusion or memory loss. We got the same response. “It’s an underlying mental illness.” I happen to recall these doctors even had the nerve to try to convince me I had been confused all my life! If we don’t improve they lock us up in State. “Severe Mental Illness.”

    However, I see Atty Karen’s point here. Will they be able to get away with making these bogus claims in court under oath? They may have lied to us knowing we were confused. They could get away with it while we were in a vulnerable state (and while there were no witnesses to challenge them). But in front of a judge is another matter.

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  • Auntie and Fiaschra, I would think that the fact that such a list exists is a human rights abuse in itself. Some countries do have lists of people who have committed certain crimes. In USA there is a list of people who cannot work in health care (I found it!) and a list of those who cannot work around children, I imagine. But different countries do things differently. What have the so-called SMI actually done? Where is the evidence? What crimes?

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  • Dang, Fiaschra , I gotta laugh at their “guesswork.” When I went to Gould Farm in 1984 and told them as plainly as I could, “Eating Disorder,” they said that wasn’t on their “list” so they arbitrarily told me they’d treat me for “depression.” Of course, treating a broken arm with broken leg treatment isn’t going to be too relevant. I complained that their “treatment” wasn’t working. They said, “How about disability?” Again, ED wasn’t on their “List” of possible “severe” disorders so I got stuck with “schizophrenia.” That got put on my disability form and I never saw the form, never filled it out nor was I interviewed by a third, neutral party nor was allowed a second opinion. Stamped and sealed by the end of summer. Funny, in September I started nursing school where I got straight A’s and I kept wondering, “What brain disease?” but was afraid to ask.

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  • Exactly, Auntie. I would think your ultimate goal would be to get the hell off their list. You don’t know. Future employers, landlords, banks that are going to say yes or no, people that are going to matter down the road might have access, and if they don’t now, they may in the future. Never mind the gov’t. Plus I imagine you get far worse medical care if you are perceived as SMI. Even, say, if you show up and are having a legitimate heart attack. “You’re just anxious. Go home and do coping skills and come back on Monday and we’ll take your blood pressure.” I have seen people die that way.

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  • Another thing I hear is effective is if you absolutely have to go to Western Med, bring a trusted friend or relative. Make sure that person stays right in the room with you the entire time and if the doc demands that the person leave, insist yourself that the person stays put. You can even say you want a witness, or say that this person should be a part of your aftercare or at least informed. Perhaps this person provided transportation and “needs to know information,” you can say. Really, though, the person is there to make sure they don’t pull any shit on you.

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  • Auntie, if the internet service means avoiding actual office visits, then that’s a good thing. Try for telephone doctor service. You can quietly slip into telephone only and no office. I use a Voip phone to be on the safe side. However, I never give them a reason to call the cops on me in the first place. Don’t give out your relatives’ phone numbers, either, as “nearest family member.” Not unless you want your cover blown to bits if you are ever taken to the ER unconscious. Think about it…If you are hit by a car, they will call your family. If you are worried about family members ratting on you in a moment of panic, maybe it’s time to invent fake family members. Yes, it says on the forms you’ll be booted out of the clinic for falsifying info, but they’ll deal with that after you’ve croaked someday and they have a mess on their hands because they can’t figure out whom to contact.

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  • Mental health professionals are in the business of covering up the abuse of other mental health professionals. They will never admit the faults of the other ones. They will cover for each other no matter how bad the abuse, even cover for sexual abuse done in mental health settings, claiming the patient must have been “attention-seeking” or must have a “persecution complex.” Mental health professionals are obliged like anyone else to report abuse of patients done by other professionals or staff or abuse that happens in facilities (such as physical abuse and neglect) because they are mandatory reporters. They are obliged to report these abuses by law. Do they ever? No, instead, they claim the patient needs more drugs and more therapy, and they insist that the patient is drugged into silence. Rarely does a professional encourage a patient to report abuse to the police, or file a report to the proper authority as required by law.

    These really are laws in all states. If you see abuse on the job you have to contact police. They sign papers saying this, even if you are a volunteer. This is true even if you aren’t a mandatory reporter by profession. I swear the janitors and those bringing around jars of flowers were more ethical than the nurses.

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  • Oh the media has been going on about a “blood test” lately but I checked up on that one. It looks like more misleading propaganda since what the actual blood tests are that they refer to are the ones you get that rule out “other causes” such as checking your thyroid, checking for diabetes or low blood sugar, checking liver and kidneys and for cushing’s disease and maybe making sure you don’t have anemia or Vitamin D deficiency. Funny when I went to therapy back in 1981 I sure wasn’t given a blood test at all. I was never asked to see a primary care doc that I recall. Finally my parents insisted I see one.

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  • My ex-shrink came out with a PPD book. I saw him in Bennington, VT. The book is out of print now. His name is Carl Burak, MD. I suppose he took advantage of the woman he wrote about and exploited the hell out of her. Anyway, I bet you can get it used on Amazon. I can tell you more in private about “Carl.” I saw his associate, a psychologist, Dr. Alkoff, and I never really directly saw Dr. Burak, who was prescribing, which wasn’t even legal (Alkoff relayed the info to Burak, who then prescribed, which was their way of doing things) but they claimed it was Kosher. Alkoff insisted he “knew all about the drugs.” He didn’t. He didn’t know much about anything…but that’s besides the point. I learned about Burak’s book when I saw it on Amazon. They had a racket going and I guess were rather wealthy. I suspect the trio (Burak, Burak’s wife, and Alkoff) skipped town after too many scandals. Alkoff fled to Florida, then, to Seattle. Always looked very fishy to me to have multiple licenses like that.

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  • In the USA you can get psych off your local records without getting off the federal disability payments if you can’t find employment right away. You used to be able to simply go from one clinic to another, but now, with electronic records, this is less simple than it sounds. Now you will likely need to relocate. I am shocked at how many people immediately then “share” their medical records. This is exactly what not to do. Tell them “Oh yes, I’m working on it,” but don’t.

    Then, assure them you have already done it. Tell them the records have already been sent a month ago, if they happen to ask. So surely, they have them, but they are likely filed incorrectly, right? No one is going to know. They won’t pry any longer. Don’t complain about “depression,” “anxiety,” or anything even remotely resembling it. Don’t use their clinical language for mental distress and put on a happy face. Fake out the screenings. If you spent enough years on the nuthouses, you definitely know how to answer the questions. No, no one in your family ever had an addiction nor ever attempted suicide and there’s no known mental disorder in your family, either, that you ever heard of. Prozac? Doesn’t some movie star take that?

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  • Oh, another thing….If you get a paper script, SOMETIMES you can drop it off, they’ll fill it, but you can just leave the script there, and if you never pick it up it’ll just sit there and you won’t have to pay. Eventually if they’re super busy they’ll either forget about it, you can ignore the auto-reminders and they’ll eventually toss it. Maybe they’ll just think you’re on “vacation.”

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  • Yeah, oddly, I remember they pushed anxiety pills on me for minor procedures when I told them these pills were both not necessary and had no effect on me. Also I was offered various pain pills which oddly never do much. Most don’t work on pain nor have any effect except a few make me nauseous. I’d end up saying, “It doesn’t really hurt that much, ” and they’d say, “That’s good, the pills must be working” but I never took them.

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  • Oldhead it varies from locale to locale since some folks have limited access as far as where they go to pick up drugs. Besides, in my opinion, a lot depends on who works there and the “other” circumstances.

    In my old pharmacy, I almost quit because they wouldn’t stop announcing my name on the loudspeaker when my drugs were ready. I kept telling them not to, and they would not stop. Also, buying at the self-register meant whatever I bought was announced out loud. The register didn’t name drugs but did name vitamins and other items. This was a privacy concern. People consider all sorts of things such as timeliness, maybe a certain employee who works there (and there’s turnover), knowing the pharmacist by name, or, in some cases, going someplace where they do not know you, or going out of town where you might not feel self-conscious. I knew people who felt less embarrassed going to a pharmacy where there was a drive-in, so they never had to walk in to the place. Nowadays some people get theirs mailed, but that involves risk of theft for some people.

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  • Auntie, is relocating an option? What if you left the UK for over a year? Would that possibly get you off their radar? If you can’t, what if you could get off NHS? Of course this would leave you without any medical services at all. A few can do this. Depending on your needs this could work out. Unless you have something very serious or complex you likely don’t need doctors at all. Many problems are caused by seeing them, actually. When you stop seeing them, these problems go away, or become minimal. I see an optometrist (not MD) for glasses only. I avoid contact with Western Medicine as much as possible. It is a gateway to labeling.

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  • Stephen, That’s what I was told, exactly. By a specialist trained in eating disorders. “I know you told me that, but I can’t trust anything you said because all anorexics are sneaky liars. Therefore, you must be lying.”

    First of all, I wasn’t lying.
    Secondly, there is indeed an origin of that stereotype. I do know some were affected at a young age, as young as six, who were forced into habitual lying because they were terrorized by multiple doctors, constantly hounded over their weight, forced to fake out the scale and fib about what they have eaten lest they be taken out of school and from their homes by force an locked up, possibly tied into bed and raped via the feeding tube.

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  • Steve, I heard from other kids when I was growing up in the 1960’s that in the Catholic schools the teachers were like that all the time. The stories were so consistent that sadly, we accepted abuse of students as “normal.” We knew it wasn’t right but we were just little kids. There were stories about our school and Hebrew school, too. I never got hit by a teacher but one of them took it upon herself to jeer at me repeatedly, some of the teachers’ aides, too. I was terrified at lunch time because a lunch lady picked on me every time I returned my used tray to the return window. In remembrance of her and those times I wrote a piece called “Lunch Lady Communist.” It was one of my best blog entries from back then. You can probably find it in my blog, likely dated ages ago.

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  • Are we really born disordered? Seriously? Okay, it’s “latent” and it grows and festers inside us, and then, suddenly, out it comes at some opportune time, like, say, around late adolescence or while in college. Like it was a seed already inside us, waiting to explode and wreak havoc. It does sound handy, this fake disease model, but we know it is false. No disease. Then what? Oh, these adolescent conditions which are truly a nuisance, such as, perhaps, a bit too much partying, are now suddenly deemed permanent diseases. Bipolar for life.

    Okay…But it’s my understanding that many personality traits change over one’s lifetime. None are set in stone. I read somewhere here in MIA that people’s personalities are even totally unrecognizable decades later. How many politicians and people in high places are now rather embarrassed over how they behaved in their younger years, and would not want the public to see their adolescent escapades as permanent character defects?

    Held accountable for crimes? Of course. But just playing your stereo up loud….big deal.

    Many people I know personally have gone through changes over the years. I knew people who acted reckless and now are not. I knew some who were shy and now are much less shy. I know a few that were predicted would never marry, but then married happily, are quite outgoing and had many children.

    “I didn’t inhale,” said the the President. Sadly, our overly critical public eye actually was going to judge whether or not Clinton smoked pot when he was a kid. Let the man without sin throw the first stone. I remember how my college dorm smelled back in the 1970’s. Like…um…incense, right? And now many states are legalizing it…..

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  • About time MIA addressed the trauma we experience as a result of treatment other than “drugs.” Such as imprisonment where we are treated like a nonhuman “thing.”

    Friedman is right that most therapists and trauma centers assume “abuse” means parental abuse but when I talk about I mean abuse I got from while inpatient and from some of my doctors and therapists. There is nowhere for us to go with this, nowhere to talk about it. No forums. No support group. No place. You only hope someone will listen, but if you try to talk about that effectively ends the conversation.

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  • My experience with CVS was the following, not in order of occurrence:
    2013: While I was inpatient at Mount Auburn Hospital, I was asked by the attending physicians which drugs I was on. To be totally clear about this, I wrote them down on paper. I also said the names and doses aloud. I also stated that I had picked up two prescriptions in person at my local CVS on August 11, 2013, a day prior to my hospitalization. I was on the medical floor for kidney failure.

    The psychiatrist came back into my room later, pointed his finger straight at me, and said, “You are a LIAR!” Then he said, “I called CVS myself! They said you were not in there on Sunday. They said those are not the drugs you take!”

    For the next two days I was given drugs I never took, some cocktail that didn’t make sense that I refused.

    It took those bozos two days to figure it all out. They had misspelled my name and between them and CVS they had not even verified spelling, date of birth, address, etc. Mental patients aren’t worth it.

    The inpatient doctor did not apologize and the entire staff there continued to abuse me until the day I left. About six months later I walked into CVS and the head pharmacist apologized but I don’t think she fully understood the potential implications of a name mix-up like that.

    Earlier in 2013: A pharmacy assistant “advised” me not to take a drug my psych had prescribed for sleep. This was an antipsychotic drug Latuda. He said it was too new to be safe, and there was no evidence that it would help with sleep. I never filled the script.

    All the years I went to CVS, I know in my heart they cringed seeing me on those massive amounts of drugs. I know they saw me get really sick in the end. They saw people die. They knew, and I bet they hated having to fill scripts for elders knowing that filling them wasn’t really curative after all. They were taking part in a lie.

    I have hesitated to apply for jobs like that, where I have serious ethical concerns about what I am doing. I remember I questioned working for McDonald’s, which I was forced to do when I could find nothing else. I know some people can’t find work elsewhere. I’m speaking as a daughter of an engineer who worked many years for Raytheon. I know my dad struggled with that sometimes, too.

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  • Peter, Your work here is so amazing. This post should be up on MIA as a permanent page right up next to “The Case Against Antipsychotics. And I ask why on earth you’re going into “counseling” (as I see in your bio) when we need someone like you to fight these folks at the level of the courts or the FDA. Get your voice out there in mainstream media.

    And everyone else, share this article. I wonder what would happen if it were quietly passed around in pamphlet form at a large teaching hospital outpatient psych clinic. (Of course, on the outside of the pamphlet it can say something harmless like “free patient resources”)

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  • Interestingly, there are no rehabs, that I know of, for people damaged by ECT. Unless, of course, you count state “hospitals” where they hide damaged people. Or nursing homes. Or we don’t see them or know of them because families are invariably advised to “disengage” due to the patient’s “grave mental illness.” The rest are rehabbed only in our memories. They are gone.

    There will never be rehab until there is public acknowledgement that ECT causes brain damage. What they often claim, post-ECT, is that some new underlying, latent mental illness suddenly and mysteriously appears out of the blue. Rehab for a fake mental illness won’t address the real harm that has been done. Until the truth is acknowledged and faced head on, and confessed by these criminals, I fear we will lose many more precious lives.

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  • I plan to post a review of my own at some point.

    Anyone who publicly posts a review should be careful to comment on the book itself. A review is not a debate about electroshock, though a reviewer might describe the book’s emotional impact (which in effect reveals the reviewer’s position).

    I should add that my observation of product review sites in general has been that they’ve been co-opted, and I don’t even know if that is the right word for what has happened. Vendors are realizing that consumers rely on these sites to make purchasing decisions. Some review sites are better than others at deleting fraudulent reviews, whether positive glowing ones, or negative ones that are untruthful or defaming.

    Amazon, in turn, has tightened up and is making sure reviewers actually purchased the product. I believe Amazon requires a login to post a review. Still, I am finding that Amazon reviews are now far less reliable than they were only a few years ago. I receive far too many emails from vendors literally bribing me to post a review, offering me a free product, etc.

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  • Registered, that would be nice if those principles were consistently practiced. They are not. I, for one, as patient, not as any hired person, was threatened because I told the truth in my blog about things that happened to me inside a mental hospital. I told the truth that I was deprived of water at Massachusetts General Hospital. They found out. Am I allowed to be human? Is it natural and perhaps, understandable to be traumatized after life-threatening water deprivation and subsequent denial that it ever happened?

    Yet these doctors told me I had no Freedom of Speech, no human rights, no rights at all. No right to write. They told me I should take drugs so that I would be totally blocked from my ability to write, from then on. Silenced. That didn’t work, so then they attempted to incarcerate me long-term and abused me again, and denied me medical care and denied me knowledge of my own medical condition.

    So they have the natural tendency to occasionally blow their tops, and that’s okay, but if we do…or even come close…in person or online…guess what happens? Hey, Facebook!!! Yoo hoo! Cute little “report” button kinda conspicuous there. Do I see a double standard here?

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  • Registered, I had to do a search for your comment. I think it is excellent. I hope my response posts properly underneath your comment. This is an old blog by Dr. Berezin (I don’t know if my spelling here is correct even). There are a lot of psychiatrists’ blogs out there and many are seriously scary.

    If we read in *their* literature about how threatened they are about patients getting online and writing blogs and using social media in general, what about doctors using social media? Many psychs use pseudonyms but some do not. I keep wondering what would happen if their employers discovered their blogs.

    Some write very well but many do not write well at all. There are some that clearly are pissed off at their workplaces and rant in their blogs about how terribly their workplaces treat them, how boring their jobs are, how they hate treating patients who are nothing but addicts, on and on. Do their employers see these posts? Some I’d say break HIPAA! What if their patients saw these posts, HIPAA violation or not? What then?

    How would I feel, as patient, if a doctor I trusted posted that she hated her job? I remember my doc told me once how much she loved being a psych. But then, I read online that she hates her job and hates the patients. Gee.

    I do believe in honesty and transparency, but I also believe that in professionalism and tact. If you are being paid to be polite, be polite. These docs are being paid to have manners and ethics and this includes online ethics. Don’t call your patients, or anyone, a “cretin.” That’s just plain rude and unprofessional. If you truly hate your job, please just quit. Isn’t there a psych shortage? I see psych job postings all over the place. Take your pick. Even overseas, if you’re in trouble.

    Years ago, I was online and browsing at random when I saw a comment cross-posted to Facebook, that is, this was not a comment on Facebook but cross-posted. The post was about maternal abuse. Some kind of article by a woman whose mother was controlling. Right underneath was a comment, about a paragraph long saying, “My mother was controlling and abusive, too.” Roughly those words. This was written by a former therapist who had abused me, with her professional photo, and set to public.

    Now, of course, I knew exactly why she had felt the need to be so insanely controlling of her patients, and why she had very clear narcissistic tendencies. She had never resolved this ghost from her past. She transferred it onto vulnerable people, and claimed it was “life-saving care.” This is therapy? This is a professional? God help us.

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  • Ah…my paternal grandma introduced me to Chagall. She had a collection of his work, and I am not sure of the format, but my memories of her showing these works to me date from very early on. I believe she also had a Chagall hung on her wall. Undoubtedly not an original but it was worth something. All the Kramer sisters were artistic and one was a professional artist. They all lived to be very old, if I recall correctly. Some of their kids are still living.

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  • I know a few people who refuse to read nonfiction because they see it as too technical, too difficult to understand, or perhaps even too academic. Many associate nonfiction with their negative memories of “school” and therefore, fear it. They prefer a chance to escape into something totally make-believe. And yet, a fiction writer is more obliged to write “believably,” while the public demands that a nonfiction book “reads like a great novel.”

    The best fiction slips shining gems of truth within its covers. I remember when I was a student composer (before psychiatry) I learned about composers who wrote brilliant music under terrible regimes, under the pressures of Nazi Germany and behind the Iron Curtain. You do hear the message, sometimes even in pauses between notes. They say prisoners write on toilet paper when they have nothing else.

    I believe this is what we, as a group, are doing. We are scratching out poetry on whatever we have. We are living in times of incredible silencing. Toss it to the wind. It may fly far.

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  • I think those tests are bullshit. I have taken Myers-Briggs and I don’t see that answering it one way or another makes a person “abnormal” or anything else anyone should worry about. I have been putting in several applications each week. If the employer asks me to do an online personality test I immediately end the application. I refuse to do those as basis for hiring. Then, right away, invariably, in my email or even text message I get something like “You forgot to complete our application!” Yep, privacy invasion! I have to “unsubscribe” from these bozos.

    Just today I had to “flag” a job offer. Again. There are scams out there. This one was a job that paid, but paid people to do illegal, unethical work. Sorry to say, taking a job like the one I saw would put me in on shaky ground to say the least, as I would be knowingly partaking in illegal behavior. This was more than selling products that were inferior, it was far worse than that!

    As a person who has been working hard to secure a job I have run into more scams in the past few months than I have in my entire 60 years of life. If I were to total percentages, I’d say I have to wade though these offers and postings and of what I see perhaps 75% are ripoffs, bad jobs, and scams. You can’t even trust Glassdoor and Indeed anymore as the bad employers *sometimes* oversee the postings there and pay to get fake positive ratings posted. Likewise, I’m seeing some companies with overwhelming, over-the-top bad ratings, and yet I’m asking if those, too, are legitimate.

    Now given all this….If I were looking for a job in earnest and had a great deal of schooling behind me and now I were asked to outright lie to customers, what would I do? The lie, to snag them, would be that they had a permanent, invisible and unprovable illness. My job, as employee, would be to lie to them, and lie to their families. Another part would be to sign legal papers attesting to the fallacy. The papers would imprison the victims, but I’d have to play-act as part of my job that the prisons were actually hospitals. “Treatment centers.” A lot of my job would involve brainwashing, but this would be called therapy. I would prescribe dangerous drugs, and have to lie and call them “lifesaving medications.”

    Now today I flagged a job because as a writer I believed the job was asking me to do something illegal, that a writer and human being would get into a lot of trouble knowingly breaking the law. As a doctor, knowingly being told to deceive people, I say, FLAG PSYCHIATRY.

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  • Yes, Olga R, blame on the companies that have produced the drugs and have been well aware of the risks and have understated them, and also, the doctors like David’s who fail, time and time again, to warn patients of the risks, or, like mine, outright deny or ignore when patients point out warning signs.

    I did not generally get such strikingly terrible effects from these drugs. However, when my weight doubled, this was ignored. When I got ataxia, this was ignored. When my bones thinned, this was ignored. When my kidney levels were so low I nearly died, this was ignored. The only drug that caused me to feel like I was going to explode inside was a tricyclate antidepressant, imipramine. When I reported the effect, along with rapid heartbeat and raised blood pressure (up 30bpm higher and 30 points systolic and diastolic both) I was ignored. I told the doc I felt “racy” and “angry” like I had a “bass drum inside me all the time.” She told me this was “nothing” and to keep taking the drug. I couldn’t take it much longer so I asked an inpatient doc to take me off. She did. She did so in three days! That was some taper!!!

    So now it was March 2012. That horrible bass drum beat never stopped and I was truly wondering what the heck was going on. June 2012 I made plans to kill myself. I flunked that one. Screwed up my plans and didn’t tell a soul.

    When I ended up in the “hospital” due to something unrelated, I found the “staff” did not listen to me nor wanted to understand. They walked away from me in the middle of a sentence! They didn’t want to know. They didn’t care. They didn’t even want to help. I left, totally disgusted, and never told them about the little suicide plan I had just narrowly escaped. Weren’t they supposed to help with that stuff? How ironic! In fact, I never told a soul for another six months. By then, it was a moot point. No one gave a shit anyway.

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  • Sandra, I have an MFA in Creative Writing and precisely what I am professionally trained to do, and love to do, is to look over book-length manuscripts, and I was specifically trained in memoir, to write memoir and personal essay and teach writing. I vowed when I finished my master’s training in 2009 that if anyone wrote a “madness memoir” I would happily look it over for free. Then of course I walked out of psych and all hell broke loose in many ways. I guess some folks got used to me being a “patient.”

    I would love to look over your manuscript! I cannot believe anyone would refuse such a thing. Get in touch via my blog and we’ll figure something out. I do rough reads and closer reads both or whatever a person needs.

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  • Yes I was using Wine and running a number of programs but Wine does not always work and I ran into incompatibility with my devices and also, difficulty trying to see the computer screen. With Windows I have less trouble all around with accessibility. I am using as many open source programs as I can. Actually I have not purchased any programs since I purchased this unit. Also, with Linux, many programs had this terrible keyboard lag and I type very fast. I could never resolve that. Now that I have switched back I am realizing just how annoying the keyboard lag was, and how much it hampered my writing. It was in all my programs, not just in the browser, and I use a wired keyboard. I am sad I had to switch back, but I learned so, so much from using Linux, including how to install an OS and many other useful skills.

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  • Uprising, that’s fine, but a few people get help from the pills, too, and they don’t experience negative “effects.” They might argue the same, or they might say…

    I had bad pills but I also had some that helped.

    Does this mean we should ignore that the drugs wreck some people’s lives? They don’t wreck everyone’s life, only some people’s. Therapy ruins more lives than is reported, and therapy abuse goes unreported and abusive therapists keep on practicing. Just because there might be a few good ones, should we discredit the massive numbers of patients that were harmed and call them nuts?

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  • Sandra, The CIA doesn’t even care about most of us. They can’t follow every single person on earth nor even every human in the USA in detail, nor want to. They don’t care about little ole me. I am sure of that. I’m nobody of interest. I’m not a suspected terrorist. I doubt you are.

    The reason why I say this is because to follow and track every single person would require a large database. Their computers cannot handle such a database. Ever notice how often the post office screws up mail forwarding? That is because their computers cannot handle the sheer number of people in the US. More often than not, right? They screw up that yellow sticker, or assume you don’t live where you live and you have to sort it out or the census mixes you up with someone else. Now I have had two postal screwups, one that caused me to nearly have my bank account closed. Another cost me money because I was assumed for six years to live at the wrong address and I was barred from opening certain accounts, such as one with UPS for about ten years.

    The good part is that they really do not care. I’m nobody. Just an old lady, not a suspected terrorist nor crook. And more I cannot post here. I don’t care if websites track me via cookies. They track other people too, millions of people all over the world, and it only matters if I get arrested and accused of certain types of crimes.

    I have had the cops come to my home many years ago and accuse me of future dangerousness, even ask me where my weapons were. However, they came with no warrant, no paperwork, and when they accused me of posting on a site, they had no evidence that I had done so. I hadn’t posted what they accused me of! I explained the email I had sent, which they had no copy of, and in fact they had never even read it, nor realized that the contents contained no threats of violence.

    Someone had pushed the panic/paranoia button, clearly.

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  • Well, then, I, for one, do not endorse therapy. I cannot agree with those who claim therapy is great when I do not see therapy doing great things simply because therapy might not use drugs.

    I see therapy causing dependency, addiction to therapy, abuse, outright unethical practices, complete ineffectiveness (this is hard to prove, in fact), loss of life functioning, unemployment, disability due to chronic unemployment, encouragement to use drugs, coerced diagnosis, forced diagnosis, forced higher level of care, very bad habits including self-disclosure, threats, bribery, accusations, gaslighting, sexual abuse and seduction, and more.

    MIA rarely takes a stance on this due to the proliferation of therapists on this site…therapists provide an income…they more often publish a therapist than take a stance.

    I say NO MORE. Therapy addiction is harmful, causes disability, is literally killing people, and needs to stop.

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  • Frank, I can’t find your other comment and I know I should be posting under that one. While it is obvious that drugging causes earlier deaths, causes disabling effects such as diabetes and more, we cannot ignore the rampant corruption in the therapy and “help” industry. I know this from my brief stint as “life coach.” While my training was genuine and did teach good principles, in real life I’d say for sure, ethics go out the window. From what I observed in over three decades as insider/patient, therapists totally love to get people hooked on therapy! This is how they make a buck, and about the only way they make a buck. Get clients, get customers, keep your customers. Get your numbers up, which is another way of saying ensure they show up for appointments otherwise you lose your job. Bribe, threaten, lie if you have to. I have seen them charging insurance for appointments that never happened, or making claims that dubious therapy methods are actually effective, then, when these methods don’t work, blaming the patient for their “attitude problem” or claiming the patient “isn’t ready for therapy.” And sexual abuse is so under-reported it is a joke. The patient is psychotic or has a personality disorder or looking for attention.

    The harms of therapy alone are undestated here on MIA. They kinda have to be since so many MIA subscribers practice therapy themselves. I have talked to a few. They claim therapy is great since therapy does not use drugs. Some are clueless and have never heard of therapy addiction. They don’t even realize that therapy causes dependency on therapy, that is, they are teaching terrible habits without usiing a single drug.

    I know a few patients who actually think it’s great they got off drugs, but they never learned to make their own decisions because they’re hooked on therapy. They turn to case managers to make any decisions for them, or to drive them around like they need chauffeurs (because they never learned to take public transit) or do their cooking, cleaning, and grocery shopping for them when they need to learn to do this themselves. Hey, Now We Are Six….But the mental health professionals didn’t like it when we reminded them we’re legally adults and have adult human rights. Because if we were allowed to do for ourselves and end the insulting handouts they’d be out of a job.

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  • Steve, if incarceration is “BAD” then why are they pushing for more “hospitals” and why do so many people call it “care” when it’s not?

    I talk to a lot of people who have never known what it’s like inside one of those places. When I reveal to them the very basics, that the wards are locked, that people stay for months at a time never seeing daylight, that people are deprived of human rights, treated like animals and the therapy consists of Bingo games, they are shocked and they tell me this is an outrage. “Why is this still going on?” they ask me. “You mean our taxes pay for this?”

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  • Of course they use cookies! All sites do. They have to to run a site. It’s not malicious “spying.” It’s just how websites work. Anyone can clear their cookies anytime they want. Some people have their browsers set to clear cookies and cache every time they close their browser. The disadvantage to this is that IF you do online banking your bank will not recognize you and will ask you to re-identify yourself all over again. In the case of online banking, for instance, the cookies are used to make sure it’s you, and actually protect you from fraud. While MIA doesn’t collect data by maintaining actual lists, websites that have users and visitors, especially ones that sign in cannot function without cookies. This is to protect the users, too.

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  • I distrust most psychotherapies (that is, “talk” therapy) having been badly harmed by an abusive one, actually several that were abusive or just outright incompetent. Therapy promotes dependency, if not on anything else, the therapist. Therapy is extremely addictive. You get addicted to self-disclosure, which is a horrible bad habit, a habit you need to button up in many social situation and find, suddenly, you can’t due to years of that terrible habit. Talk therapy induces helplessness, sometimes far worse than psychiatry does. My psychiatrist only met with me once a month, while the therapist insisted on twice a week and insisted on forced weigh-ins, threatened me constantly, and coerced me to play with children’s toys, claiming it was “role-playing.” She made me change chairs, and talk to the stuffed animals in baby-talk. If she could get me to cry, that, she claimed, was “healing.” No it wasn’t, it was satisfying her intense and very sick desire to control her vulnerable patients. I suspect she had a controlling mother and was just transferring the abuse. This she did with no drugs whatsoever, just with threats and manipulation. It was pretty bad narcissism, but I do not use such labels, it was a behavior. I refuse to excuse her unethical and illegal behavior by claiming she had a disease that caused it. I cannot submit myself to therapy again.

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  • LittleTurtle, i can’t find the comment of yours that ended up in my email, but I agree that there is a biological component. We cannot deny our biology. I can’t deny that I am short in stature and this of course led to my being teased a lot in elementary school. Wearing glasses at a young age also led to further teasing. Having dark skin causes many people to be discriminated against, and has for ages. If you have Middle Eastern appearance you might worry about flying because you could be suspected as a terrorist by TSA. All of these social reactions to people’s appearance alone shapes how we interact and view the world. If a person has had a stroke, injury, or heart attack, that, too, is biology, and cannot be ignored, either. I don’t think the Movement ignores these biological realities. In fact, we know psychiatry fails to recognize when a person’s biology caused discrimination, exclusion, or alienation, but gets called a mental disorder by mistake.

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  • Sandra I feel the same way. I am free of them but I don’t talk about it with anyone in the clinical sense. I stay away from doctors. I have a lot of friends now that I just tell, though. I can even say it in public. “I escaped my psychiatric diagnosis.” I don’t know why. I’m not afraid of saying that anymore. I don’t say it to a doc though. No way. That is the route to lockup. The express route.

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  • Lawrence I am laughing because you said during medical training you snuck into the “meds” drawer and took one of the pills! Ha ha! And then, slept a few days. Really, you should have rented a bed in the nuthouse. I don’t think they charge much per night if you stay there. You could have billed taxpayers, no one would have noticed. They must have had room service and a nonsmoking room for you, no? Or were you …ahem…SMOKING back then? Smoking what? You know they restrain you for that, do you not?

    Either way, if it made you sleep a few days, imagine taking several of those per day, building up a “tolerance,” then, having to take a higher dose since you were “tolerating” the drug, or, because the drug made you pace. They needed to “medicate” the pacing, after all. They do that. Then what? Suppose then, you “tolerated” those drugs. Then, they’d add another drug, then, you’d spend a few weeks in a nuthouse “stabilizing.” By then, I think your medical career would have been long gone out the window.

    Then, some three decades later, this is what will happen. You’ll notice that no matter what, you can never, ever sleep. Never. Pills or none, you can’t. Your body cannot initiate nor sustain sleep no matter how tired you are, because your body completely forgot how, in all the years those drugs did it for you.

    You are now 65 years old. You are constantly exhausted. Your marriage is hardly worth it since you lose your temper all the time. You have alienated your neighbors and friends. You and your wife decide to separate. You can’t get a thing done during the day. You keep nodding off, and yet, you can never ever sleep.

    You have decision to make. Is life really worth it, living in constant exhaustion, constant nether-world? You are alone now. You suddenly realize that taking all those drugs, all those years, somehow did this to you. You feel deeply enraged, that you were cheated, duped, and that you were robbed of everything decent any person could ever have.

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  • Well there are indeed self-righteous folks out there that claim you can heal and get very blameful and claim you didn’t “taper” right and if only you listen to some know-it-all young person who claims to know exactly what it’s like to be an older person…I gotta laugh. They are clueless and sometimes arrogant, too, and I am tired of hearing about how there’s some “right” and “wrong” way to taper. I honestly do not want any further lectures from someone 30 years younger than me about how to breathe, when to breathe in and out, how the fuck to cut a pill, how to buy a pill-splitter, when I was alive decades before they were and breathing just find before their egg and sperm ever met. I was in a nuthouse before they ever took a pill, well before Prozac was even invented. I begged for the stuff, too, fell for the hype just like we all did in there. For most of us, those capsules did not do a damned thing anyway, and the SSRI idea was abandoned early on. It did about as much as snapping an elastic band on your wrist. Nothing. Not for me. I felt it was over-advertised, overpriced junk. What a disappointment.

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  • That I know of, Steve McCrea, they’ve proven the drug damage to brains in autopsies. I am saddened that people have to die to prove it. We may only suspect or guess brain damage and it may slowly still be happening undetected, as we lose small pieces of our lives. We might not be able to add figures in our heads anymore. We can’t do calculus but who cares? We lose at chess when we used to be able to beat a computer at it. We used to have 200 digits of Pi memorized and now…it is all gone. Or we had all the species of North American birds, even the extinct ones, memorized, and now, we cannot remember the meanings of simple vocabulary words. We could knit with our eyes closed. Now, nada. We cannot cry anymore. No one gives a shit. It didn’t matter, did it? It doesn’t. Years and years go by, but then we know for sure when a person is irreparably damaged as still living people, as TD, seizures, or dementia. And then it’s too late. AND STILL called mental illness. AND DRUGGED.

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  • I can’t find the comment about brain damage by dragon slayer. It is hard to prove brain damage on a living person, easier on a cadaver. Either way, psych drugs damage the heart, damage the thyroid, damage the kidneys and pituitary, cause diabetes mellitus, cause massive weight gain, and more. Oh and can cause seizures, double vision, other eye disorders, possibly blindness, hormone disorders, bone thinning, sexual dysfunctions of all sorts, reproductive harm, poison breast milk, harm during pregnancy and during nursing, and outright kill an elderly person or very young person. I personally have damaged kidneys, damaged thyroid, diabetes insipidus, permanently poor quality blood that is always anemic, scary low GFR (and I plan to refuse dialysis), and according to my naturopath, the reason I can’t sleep is due to damage to my pituitary. As far as I know, the massive amount of “antipsychotics” I was given that I dutifully took for years caused permanent rebound insomnia and there has been no improvement in that for 7 years. Apparently I am not the only one! This runs rampant!

    Just last night a very kind and sympathetic “professional” with whom I spoke over the phone suggested I try to obtain medical marijuana, which I have not yet tried, and since this person is local I very well may enlist this person’s assistance in finding a physician who will prescribe a strain that will sedate but will not cause me to restart binge eating. This is the first time someone has listened to me, believed me, was concerned, and suggested a workable, reasonable and soon-to-be legal solution to this, considering my age and circumstances.

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  • Steve Mc, that, is precisely what I was saying in my Eating Disorders piece (which Dr. K says he does not agree with but I think he and a few others just did not understand!). If you starve, I mean very very seriously starve, you will then get “stuck” into a very bad dieting cycle that is hard to get out of and can last a long time. This was proven in the Minnesota Starvation experiment. Starvation causes a diet cycle. This, of course, is why people are stuck on yo-yo diets for decades. They can’t stop, can’t lose weight, can’t seem to control themselves, and this isn’t gluttony nor perfectionism nor a mental disorder, it is a dieting disorder. It happened due to a diet, due to starvation, which kicked off a bad cycle. Unfortunately, you will appear to have a mental disorder if it gets really bad. You might act depressed or even racy or hyper, or lethargic. In elders, anorexia will be misinterpreted as Alzheimer’s and this happens frequently I imagine. You cannot think straight if you are eating 300 calories a day, nor can you tell a doctor really what is going on, and next thing you know, you’re in a nursing home called incompetent and unable to care for yourself.

    This IS biological, misunderstood as mentally caused, but it is caused by a diet, by poor nutrition, erratic nutrition, gross nutritional imbalance, electrolyte imbalance, dehydration, no nutrition at all, diabetes, organ failure, or being massively overweight or so underweight you can’t think straight anymore. When I almost died and wasn’t eating I was unable to dress myself and unable to braid my hair anymore. I let it hang loose and I could barely stand up. Then my kidneys failed and they called THAT a mental disorder. I had no potassium left in my body. They were very stupid.

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  • Is it more productive to say “antipsychiatry movement” or “psychiatric survivor movement”? Both get bashed by pro-psych groups but there’s a difference.

    I am confused over what is “neurodiversity” because some of them talk about “I’m bipolar so please don’t stigmatize me.” I cannot align with this line of thinking, but I feel obliged to respect it because right alongside it is “I’m an artist so please bug off.” or, “I’m a little different and that is okay.” Which I do agree with. Or, “I hear voices, let me do this.” Which is fine by me. I don’t align with “bipolar” since that is a disease proclamation, unless of course the word is intended otherwise. But then, of course, we are getting very confusing here.

    Plus I am starting to get involved with other groups, too. Such as anti-bullying groups.

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  • Steve I agree, it IS criminal. I have heard “patients” insist that they do not want to know the side effects and they are perfectly happy with the limited information given to them by their doctors, even knowing that information is only a “partial list” of effects. I have challenged this over and over, asked why they do not want to know, why they insist on being blinded like that. They say to me, “Oh my god, YOU are not a doctor! How dare you!” But why NOT know? Why should a patient not be informed, and doesn’t a patient have a right to all information and to transparency and to the real risks, so he/she can make an informed choice? It’s like they don’t want to know because they know if they were informed, they would make the RESPONSIBLE choice not to take the drugs, but they want to absolve themselves of adult responsibility and instead, keep the doctor as babysitter. I think deep down some realize this and want to stay dependent children. And this is why they get so accusatory at me. However, by all means, David would not even have had a clue, never having taken these drugs before, and having had no prior exposure.

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  • Slayer, I am thinking specifically of when I was harmed, though temporarily, by ECT in 1996, I did not admit it, even to myself, for over a decade. I assumed it was mental illness but I never agreed with their BPD claim. When I published my memoir in 2009 I still thought it was “illness” but I left it as undefined. It took a while. Then, I figured it out. That is a very long time.

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  • Slayer, you make a good point that many who are victims of the drugs resort to using psych’s terminology instead of properly identifying the drug’s effect. Misplaced blame is common in tragedy as it is. We default to what is easier or more comfortable to admit, even if it means fooling ourselves at first. Grieving is not easy, and I know so, so many that delay it for decades.

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  • Dee, my experience likewise. I think due to budgetary concerns the “groups” got considerably worse after the early 80’s. The therapists were not very well trained, if at all, after that. They started those “worksheet”-style groups that pretty much anyone who had as much as a junior high school education could lead. The worksheets were ready-made groups and I recall seeing the group leaders shuffling through the worksheets and saying, “Which one this time?” “Did they do this one last time?” “Shall I do this worksheet, or that one?” “Will they know if I do this one again?” “Shall I just play music and have them do ‘relaxation’? They like that, right?”

    I always knew when these programs got paid by the head, because we either had to sign a paper saying we’d attended, and we were pushed into going (so they’d get paid more), or, someone would stand outside and write down who had shown up. Medicare paid for each of us. I cannot believe playing music for us was a group.

    Not only that, well-meaning friends of mine would call me, back when I did, in fact, have friends that called, and they’d say, “Oh, how are the therapy groups, are they helping you get better?” I didn’t know what to say to that. I tried to explain, but so often the staff were near the phones. Once I recall I tried to explain to a friend, tried to say, “It’s not really therapy and all they do is–” and I tried to hold back tears, but the staff member stopped me, interrupted my phone call and insisted I get off the phone immediately. They never wanted anyone revealing what a shithole the place was.

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  • Dee, after I was called schiz, my parents went to the doc and complained that I didn’t seem schiz to them. So the doc, Dr Merrifield, met with my parents and me (my two brothers were not present at the time) in a family meeting and he stated, with much to-do, that I was BIPOLAR. Well that got my poor mom cheering, actually, cheering with some relief that I was not schiz! From then on, though, I was doomed to be bipolar, for the next five years or so. I studied bipolar and acted bipolar. I was never manic but when I was happy they called it mania. I was mildly depressed because they didn’t recognize that I had an eating disorder all that time, and were incompetent at treating it, so there were times that I was in an ED-type fog, that likely resembled depression to anyone that saw me.

    Then they did ECT in 1995 and 1996 because my insurance was running out. Now I was dxed with schizoaffective and the added BPD to explain away the effects of ECT. They claimed I was “faking ED for attention” at the time. I lived with the schizoaffective, of which I had no symptoms whatsoever, until I left psychiatry altogether (escaped the country) in 2014.

    I think it is sad that the whole time, they were totally convinced I had a psychotic disorder and they were flat out wrong. Oddly, outside of the institution, such as at school or in situations where I did not reveal my dx, people didn’t seem to see me as nutso. This was what got me the idea of relocating, and got me realizing that relocating was going to work. It got me realizing that if you do not act like a nut, you are not a nut. If you are not seen as a nut, you are not a nut. And furthermore, if you do not talk like one, that is, if you do not describe yourself with THEIR language, you aren’t a nut. This involves inventing (or leaving out) a history for some of us if we are approached by a medical professional. And if you refrain from using substances that risk your sanity, such as booze or mind-bending drugs that could cause you to do or say something you might later regret (as in driving drunk) you are not a nut. It is not worth the risk. Are these things that complicated? This is how to stay out of a nuthouse.

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  • That doesn’t make sense, Steve S. What does in fact make sense is if you sit and do nothing for decades, or do only very passive activity, what they call sitting on a couch (instead of reading, writing, playing chess, playing football, exercising, riding a bike, playing an interactive game, listening to music, doing art, knitting, praying, working a job, fixing computers, shooting baskets, raising kids, etc) then maybe your brain won’t work as well.

    Brains work better if they are used, and the parts of your brain that you do use will get better as you continue to use them. I have not used the math part in many ways that I used to have, and I suspect it has not stayed developed due to years of disuse.

    Should I give up reading and start to use a “screen reader,” what will happen? I suspect the part of my brain that reads text will shrink after a few years. Even though I truly struggle to see text, because my eyes do not work well, I don’t want to lose the reading/writing part of my brain! So I don’t resort to “screen reader.” I keep it very strong. Or try.

    I feel sorry for patients who are coerced into believing they are disabled. I feel sorry for those that believe they have brain diseases or fall into a place where they become unmotivated. I feel bad when they do nothing but watch TV and smoke. I did that a few years because I believed I was schizophrenic and good for nothing else. I smoked and waited for my “shows” to come on. Wow I could never live like that now.

    I smoked and waited for the doctor to call. I remember sometimes waiting all day. He didn’t call. There were days I was afraid to leave the house because I was afraid i would miss his call. I would wait five or six hours.

    Then, the moment would come. I remember hearing the phone, putting down my cigarette and rushing to pick it up. It was him.

    “Why don’t you just take a Thorazine,” he said. Then, he hung up.

    So that was it. After hours of waiting.

    That was my life when I was 27.

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  • I think what MIA forgets is what their readership consists of. They remember their “regulars,” people they already have as usual readers, but they forget the “out of the blue” readership, those that come in from outer cyberspace. These are the more important readers. These are the new readers who perhaps just left a horrific experience in a hospital and are desperate for answers. They are readers who endured decades of psych and are finally, finally, waking up. They are readers who finally found MIA after years of being brainwashed. This is exactly where I was in 2013 when I first found MIA, and frankly these are our most critical people to reach. I think these are the readers who matter most. We need to think of these very fragile and frightened readers before anyone, frankly, before the seasoned readers who more fully understand the principles, because those that teeter in indecision are on the brink of returning to psych. If we can reach them, we can help bring them to sanity, bring them to make the decision not to go back to the hospitals and doctors offices. But if we do not reach them, alas, we lose them.

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  • Stephen, when the slaves die of kidney failure from the drugs, where do they stash the bodies? They must stack hundreds of them each year in a tower somewhere in utter shame. Most who took lithium don’t even live to be my age, so taxpayers won’t even have to worry about paying for their dialysis. No worries about wasting money on “those people.”

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  • Lawrence, I haven’t given up, but how am I supposed to react when my pieces are turned down over and over? Keep trying when it’s futile? Send in a piece and somehow strip my own name sign it “MD” or “Sera Davidow” and then, see if that changes their view of it? Sign it Kelmenson?

    As a writer, I figure my job is to move the reader from point A to point B and that means stirring up the pot. That means shaking up what people already think, and making people ask questions they have not yet asked. If I only please people, I’m not doing my job. And if I see something, and I do not say something, I am not doing what I swore I would do when I got my degree. Or probably years before that. To me, writing is a sacred thing. And likely that oath that was never put to me on paper is more sacred than that Hippocratic Oath the doctors never ever follow.

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  • How is eliminating psychiatry eliminating biology? That’s not logical. Psychiatry doesn’t address “biology.” Psychiatry, or, rather, its “care,” diagnoses people with mental defects according to arbitrary standards that have nothing to do with biology, then, uses these non-biological standards set by rich white guys to designate who will lose their rights. For life. Who will be declared disabled. For life. Who will be out of the workforce even though they are likely plenty capable. For life. Who will never earn an income. For life. Who will be separated from society, shunned, called “dangerous,” or predicted as “dangerous’ based on nothing biologically sound, nothing scientifically reasonable, only guesswork…for life. This, decided in a few minutes…decades ago. This, decided by a signature. This, decided because someone got paid, because someone needed an excuse, because someone decided to do it for convenience and nothing more. Because someone wasn’t willing to open their mouth and explain the whole nasty truth of the matter. Or listen. Or care. And for that reason, lives are wasted, people die, and no one ever knows.

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  • Stephen, it was only very recent that “patient” learned how to use the internet due to the proliferation of the “smartphone.” Before that, “patients” were not getting online. This meant the online world was “safe” from patient infiltration. It also meant that most patients did not have access to the wealth of information accessible via the web, information about the drugs that had been kept from us for decades. Of course, we could have guessed, but the Web verified that they KNEW all along, they knew the drugs caused organ damage such as kidney failure, they knew about heart damage, they knew about QT damage, they knew about diabetes and TD, but they failed to inform us, or told us it was a “trade-off.” The web also allowed us to connect with each other despite physical distance between us, connect and communicate despite being financially unable to meet in person, even some who are locked up can get online and “talk” to others. This strengthens us and scares psychiatry, and challenges them in a way they were never challenged before.

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  • Lawrence, Much of what I send in to MIA they either ignore or reply that my writing is “too basic” or “too personal.” I sincerely hope my writing is deeply personal and very basic, and I don’t want to prostitute myself by not writing basic and personal stuff. That is my point. That is what many of my blog readers appreciate, and the object of my writing and how I was trained, in my graduate studies in creative writing, to write. I worked very hard to earn my master’s degree, too. I read 60 books, wrote countless term papers, did a teaching practicum, wrote a book-length thesis (which got published) etc. I still write a ton. My writing has yet to find a home outside of my own personal blog…And apparently MIA is not going to be that “right match.” We have come to an impasse over and over and they just don’t want the kind of stuff I write, degree or no degree. Survivor or not. They want statistics instead, which I don’t want to write. It’s not my forte. I have to accept that, pissed as I am, and move on. It isn’t easy to let go and accept it.

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  • I apologize that I have not kept up with all the great comments here and have in fact only been able to read some of them. So I have missed a lot.

    Right now my focus and main work has been on the gross fraud of coerced disability and coerced unemployment since 10+ years of being put out of the workforce, or even a few years, depending on which field of work you’re in, inevitably means you are unemployable even though you are capable of working.

    After I was called schiz, I had to go buy a book on schiz (I bought the Torrey book) to see how a “good” schiz should act. I wondered why I couldn’t hear voices. I kept listening and listening, twisting my head different ways, and still, I couldn’t hear them like a proper schiz. I even turned down the radio. Maybe that would do it. But no. Nothing. I wasn’t good enough, I figured. Why couldn’t I hear them? What should I answer when the doc asked me what the voices said? Fake it?

    Institutionalization robs us of the ordinary skills that people gain from being immersed in the workforce. Working people may hardly be aware of this. The simple gesture of the handshake is absent in the institution. After 30+ years of intermittent lockup, I had to teach myself to shake hands with people! No one taught me this gesture! You don’t go up to your boss in the workplace and ask for a frozen orange. You don’t excuse yourself because you need to put a paper bag over your head. You don’t cry and share because sharing is “letting it out.” You don’t bring a stuffed animal to work and role-play with it. You don’t go ask your supervisor for a “PRN,” because if you do, your super will ask you what the heck that is. Thankfully, I knew enough not to do these things. I laugh at how useless the “skills” were that we were taught. These were not skills, they were a way to stay mental patients.

    If you ever make it as far as a real job interview you’ll have to invent decades of work history and you’ll need to be creative about it just to get your foot into the door of this thing called “work.” Good luck.

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  • I think psychiatry itself is well aware of the harms it does. It is well aware of the harms of institutionalization, and well aware of the harms of the drugs it and pharma have created (even before the drugs are released, or they are certain suspect) but as soon as they do cause harm and anyone points out the obvious (such as patient death) they shift the responsibility of their crimes onto those they harmed. It works every time. It works even if the patient is alive. It’s called Mental Illness. They lock people up for that.

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  • I did, for a long time, feel like kicking myself for believing the lies. I felt like a fool. I felt embarrassed that I had been duped. I felt jealous of the younger survivors who got out so much sooner than I did. I felt like a fool for letting them walk all over me.

    Now, though, I know that each of us was in different circumstances, that some are more easily able to walk out than others. I no longer ask myself why I stayed in. I know why. I know I stayed in year after year hoping that “the right one” would show up who could cure my eating disorder (which they apparently did not know I had!). “Next year, they’ll figure it out…” I said that to myself, over and over. “This admission will be the one.” “This doctor knows, not like the others.” “This will be the pill that stops the binge eating.” Little did I know, they weren’t trying to cure my ED, they were trying to cure nonexistent bipolar and schiz I never had.

    Somewhere in Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye keeps saying, “On the other hand…” and gives in to changing cultural demands, part of the plot. But one day, he blows his top and says, “There is no other hand!”

    There was no other hand for me. Probably water deprivation was the last straw. I think people walk out when it gets to the point of there being no other hand left, and that point is not the same for everyone, just like we grow taller at different rates. While I sure wish it was sooner for me rather than 34 years down the line, I’m glad it happened and glad I’m still alive.

    I don’t blame myself anymore. I ask how I can help others get out sooner, or not go in at all.

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  • Aw thanks, and thanks for writing this article. I can only hope that those who “reported” me would read what you wrote, especially the person who pushed the panic button after reading a very old blog entry I wrote which consisted of me only fantasizing.

    That day, when the cops showed up, I noticed that not one cop had read the actual blog entry my friend was referring to. My guess is that they were unable to find the entry and instead of trying to do so, just took her word for it. They ended up letting me go.

    After that, I went to my friend’s forum and read what they said. They called me a non-person. They said my dog should be taken away from me and I should be locked up for a long time! They said they wondered why I wasn’t and they said I was very very dangerous and warned each other to lock all their doors. I gotta laugh. They were thousands of miles away from me. This was a sad example of group paranoia directed and objectified at me, and I hadn’t ever threatened them. They blamed their problems on me and turned all their anger toward me. I’ve never been violent. I just wasn’t brought up that way. I had to relocate to get away from all that, and get away from the paranoid cops.

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  • That I know of, MIA editors are concerned that spammers show up who post stuff marketing items that have nothing to do with MIA content. They do have to delete spam content. They also have to delete or “moderate” anything that goes against their policies, and they are transparent about these policies. I don’t see anything about their sending the cops to a user’s home. If they collect geolocation it is likely only because they have nonprofit status, and likely have to report where users are located (roughly). They may also do this for editorial purposes. They want to know which countries people live in. If many speak a certain language they may decide to expand to offer a part of MIA in that language in the future. We now have MIA in Brasil and MIA in Finland. Maybe next will be MIA in French for those who live in Quebec and other parts of the world where French is spoken. All websites do this and it’s not to “spy” on people.

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  • i mean don’t you guys get it? DON’T LOCK PEOPLE UP! That’s what this blog says. Locking people up harms them. That and nothing more. It’s the elephant in the room all-too often ignored by activists who insist on adding too many spices to the soup, too many arguments and complex statistical data no one can understand but the issue is in fact very basic. Why should people who have only asked for help be locked up? Put behind locked doors? Incarceration defies logic, yet taxpayers pay for these so-called “hospitals” and actually want more built.

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  • I think people are misreading this blog. I don’t see victim-blaming here. I see psychiatry-blaming and honestly, despite my differences with MIA editors I highly doubt they’d publish something that was damning of patients. Such writing won’t float here. Read it again. I believe Lawrence is right on the mark. Institutionalization causes dependency. Very basic. Very obvious. Very overlooked because it’s so obvious. He is not saying that psych takes advantage of people who are weak to begin with. He says PRECISELY what I say in my own personal blog outside of here (because MIA won’t touch my stuff) and I’ve been saying for years. Psych, particularly at the inpatient and “day treatment” level, consists of heavy-duty brainwashing that causes dependency, causes long-term reliance on “staff,” causes a person to defer to whatever the doctor says, causes a person to default to “patient mode,” and causes a person to assume without question that he/she is unable to work, incapable, and disabled for life. Is this the victim’s fault? NO! This is caused by the horror story called psychiatry. This should be a wake-up call, and not a reason to sit here and bash yet one more great article coming from MIA.

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  • Carlene, I suspect that you are right. People call the police with no awareness of the possible consequences. More and more are being trained as mandatory reporters. I question their training, whoever it was that reported since you made it very clear that you were not at imminent risk.

    I have had this happen also. This happened due to misinterpretation or misunderstanding. For instance, use of a metaphor taken literally, or, a fantasy or musing taken literally, literary reference (there are certainly plenty of murders in novels!), use of the word “suicide” in a sentence taken completely out of context, a note on my fridge that contained the word “suicide” with no intent whatsoever (I question the reading comprehension ability of the cop who found the note!), blog entries that were not current (can people read dates?), Facebook posts that were misconstrued, etc.

    It has to be imminent risk, according to the law, according to any mandatory reporting law as applied to suicide. I ask if it is self-importance or lack of ego on the part of the person doing the reporting, a desire to be a hero or savior, or some kind of control issue going on.

    I did call the cops on someone a while back because it wasn’t “risk.” Someone was being beaten…domestic violence. So I had to decide very quickly. I’m not a mandatory reporter but I did call. The decision was not an easy one.

    Another separate occasion a man chased a woman with his car, out on the street in late afternoon in a bad neighboorhood on a Sunday, nearly running me over in the process, then he got out and chased her on foot while she screamed desperately that she was going to call the cops while she was running from him. He was snarling something very aggressive-sounding I couldn’t understand. I was very afraid. My phone was out of battery. I listened as I tried to get from the vicinity away myself, and from what I could hear the woman did indeed run to safety, indoors somewhere nearby. I cannot see well enough to get the license plate number, nor even guess anything about the type of car. “Sedan.”

    This is not the same as “in four months.” Jeepers. Common sense.

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  • I think our movement…if we have one…has started to examine the drugs very closely and turn its focus on drugs more than it did before. Of course this needs to happen, but there are consequences. Was it okay to take us out of the workforce? Okay to lock us up in the name of treatment, or okay to put us in housing where we never interacted with anyone but other mental patients? Was it okay to put us in a new fake world where we learned that some people were “staff” and others were “patients” and never the two shall mix, a black-and-white scenario that taught us to think like that, black and white, now a new mental illness for which we shall be soon blamed forever?

    That was institutionalization. We learned that “staff” were the authorities. We learned that they knew everything. We learned to go crying to them whenever we had the tiniest problem. We learned that we were patients who couldn’t do a darned thing for ourselves. But the handy staff did it all for us. They drove us to appointments, found “providers” for us, called us to remind us of appointments when we really could remember anyway, brought us our drugs and reminded us to take them when we were perfectly capable of remembering, and even read aloud to us stuff we could read ourselves. We got “help” playing children’s games. We were handed stuffed animals and told to role-play, encouraged to carry stuffed animals around in public and encouraged to talk baby-talk. We were encouraged to bawl like little kids and then, told we needed “therapy” because we had cried.

    Therapeutic groups were charged to Medicare by the head, sometimes over 50 dollars a head. Sometimes this consisted of watching a filmstrip or video and then, several minutes of discussion afterward. One staff would be in the room, a “staff” who often did not even have a college education. It wasn’t necessary. Staff were called “smart” by default, because they were staff and because they had rights and because they had keys to the unit. We patients usually had far more college education than the staff running the group, but we were too polite or too drugged to say so.

    I rarely got through a hospitalization without enduring a game of Bingo. We had to be supervised for these Bingo games because we were considered dangerous. The Bingo board was generally oversized, which baffled me because very few of us, if any, were vision-impaired. The instructions for playing were over-simplified, told to us as if we could not understand or as if the game was so complex that our defective brains couldn’t possibly comprehend it.

    Some of the groups were worksheet-type groups. This of course made it easy for the junior staff that had no clue how to run a group. All these staff had to do was read the worksheet as a group, alternating, and then, have the patients fill it out. I personally found reading the worksheet aloud insulting since most of us did not need a read-aloud. I knew that the read-aloud time was only filler for the staff, who didn’t know what else to do with the group time. They needed to claim all this was therapy, after all.

    There came times during my patienthood that I became insulted by the selection of groups available to me. So I complained in various ways. “The groups are insulting.” “The groups are beneath my educational and maturity level.” “The groups have no relevance to real life outside the institution.”

    What happened? I was told, “You clearly cannot handle the groups and therefore, need to stay longer.” “You cannot cope with the groups. They make you too anxious.” “The groups are too challenging for you.” “You are paranoid.”

    My favorite remark was the following: “You are incapable of sitting in a room full of people.” This was told to me by John Gunderson. This one cracks me up and I wish I had tape-recorded it, because I believe this remark alone reflects the entirely of psychiatry’s incompetence.

    These days, I compete in public speaking contests, have no stage fright, and plan to compete more in the coming months and years. I get a lot of compliments, too. I love to speak in front of an audience and I do so whenever I get a chance.

    I’ve been talking about institutionalization for ages in my blog: http://juliemadblogger.com if anyone wants to come over and have a look.

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  • There are a number of us who seem to have permanent insomnia from taking the drugs. People are saying heavy doses of sedating drugs will totally destroy one’s natural ability to fall asleep and sustain the sleep state even with drugs, or without them. Ten years on the drugs does sound about right to cause permanent rebound insomnia. I have been affected and I have great difficulty sleeping at all. I noticed this starting to happen while I was still drugged many years ago. It never ever resolved nor got any better. I waited a full five years and saw no improvement, and tried everything I could. I had to make a decision finally. I did not return to psychiatry nor resort to prescribed drugs, mainly because staying unlabeled is very important to me. But I didn’t want to be an exhausted bitch, either.

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  • I am not sure about the last statement, that whatever fallacies or shaky bits of logic are stated in the psych textbooks are somehow shaping scientific thinking. That doesn’t necessarily seem logical to me.

    I think this is a cultural issue indeed. Many people are embarrassed to discuss it and in some circles, bringing it up (one way or another) is considered offensive. We aren’t supposed to use certain words.

    I’m saying this from the point of view of someone who grew up deeply ashamed of being smart (or in any way talented) and felt I had to hide it, especially since it got me teased a lot. It takes its toll. Not the teasing. The fact that I felt so ashamed.

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  • Steve I am noticing (since I am getting older) that elder issues are a hot spot for both right and left. I would say that both are extremely concerned about elder abuse and are on the same page. If we can state that many elders are psychiatrically abused and state how this is done (gaslighting especially!), then I think we can win over both sides.

    Tell them…How would you feel if your mother or father was abused in a facility? You will get a reaction. Then you can state that abuse can mean accusation of suicidality, or incarceration not only in a nursing home but on a mental ward, or shocked to death, or given pills that kill them. And state how often this happens. On both left and right they are aware of nursing home abuse….we can tell them about psych abuse and that it runs rampant.

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  • Wow thanks for the good laugh! I read their catch-phrases and wonder, too. “Modest effects.” Like what the heck? They tend to use vague or non-quantitative language, of course for darned good reason. Not only can depression not be measured, but since when is it an entity, some sort of bad area, bad cells or bad chemicals they could actually identify in the brain that can just be removed or zapped with electricity or drugs? They know. They are very good liars. Who makes money off the Lancet? And how is it funded?

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  • I have been thinking about retaining ones cognitive abilities in general and why some people are able to remain (excuse me, this term gets to me) “sharp” in their senior years, and others are not able to. Obviously the issue is so complex I don’t think science fully understands, but I am thinking lately about brain plasticity…and the following:

    People ask me why I do not use a screen reader. A screen reader is a way to “read” text by having a voice read the text instead of using my eyes to read it. This sounds nice, and I know it helps people, but I do not want to do it even though reading can be tough sometimes. I continue to read quite a bit and strongly prefer text over video-style learning. I believe I should continue doing this. I KNOW a part of my brain is in charge of reading and writing text. I believe if I stop reading text I will lose the ability (over time) because that part of my brain will stop developing…or functioning well. I have psych and ECT to thank for all the text I write….in a rather bittersweet way I must add.

    In fact….While after ECT I really started writing up a storm, I REALLY wrote like crazy after they abused me in the hospital in 2011…And even more after I was threatened and told NOT to write (by both psych and the cops!). Screw em. I won’t stop till I die and I credit psych because I am alive in spite their “treatments” and threats.

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  • streetphoto, it looks like a case of the new clinic (the University one) not having an understanding of what eating disorders were, total ignorance on their part. Yep. They very well may have done a thorough mental health screening on her at the U and totally not asked about her eating. You could call it either stupidity or neglect. Most MH screenings don’t cover ED! That’s how I went 30 years through the system misdiagnosed myself.

    In late December 2011, I showed up at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts after I had not consumed any calories (not eaten) for six days. I felt dizzy and weak and honestly, was a little worried since my weight was around the danger point. This was disregarded and I was told “You feel dizzy because you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder.”

    What? I was 53 years old and NOW they give me some new diagnosis? I was handed an information sheet on GAD. Then they told me, “We want you to leave since other patients have more pressing issues than you do.” I was not even offered food nor told to eat nor given an IV. I left the ER, was very out of it, could not find the exit door, which they had to point out to me, and finally, caught the bus home. I could NOT believe what had just happened.

    Less than two years later I nearly died in that very same ER (I coded, and I don’t have much recollection of the exact time frame, obviously), likely because they saw my complaints as trivial.

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  • Psmama and cat, I believe we as a culture are taught to fear saying “I am sorry.” This is basic good manners. However, we fear apology and are told to avoid admitting we are wrong. Since I realized I was wrong for three decades, I now celebrate apology. I love admitting my errors. I celebrate the right to change my mind, switch gears, or plod onward to Plan B. Sadly, most of society stubbornly clings to the delusion of its own faultlessness.

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  • One time, the psych told me, “Okay, we will allow you one word only.” Literally!

    And people wonder why I fight so hard to be heard, even when it is no longer necessary. Why sometimes I don’t let others get a word in. Why I am terrified of being cut off. I credit psychiatry.

    I don’t know if the fear they instilled in me will ever really go away.

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  • I remember being interrogated at many meetings they held while I was inpatient. Ten doctors and me. They would grill me. During that time I was often belittled, shamed, even mimicked. I recall that even if I asked to be given time to speak I would be cut off before I even finished a sentence. In my own defense, if I anticipated such a meeting, I began writing papers so that I could “get more words in.” They would refuse to read the papers I had written. One time, the doctor hastily ripped the papers out of my hand, and then, faked it that he was reading them (he couldn’t have read my handwriting that fast!) allowing each paper to fall to the floor as he did so, and then, made some irrelevant comment indicating he had no clue of the content. I was jeered at. I heard them sigh with boredom. They rolled their eyes when I spoke. When my parents were brought into session, they belittled my parents.

    That was torture. It was torture to poke fun at me repeatedly, torture to make me look incompetent, torture to make me stumble on my own words and torture to needle me unnecessarily and then, claim I had an anger problem.

    I owe psychiatry a lot. Because of these torture sessions, where I had to present myself before these idiots, I learned to survive their interrogation, even though they made me feel like crap. I am now an excellent public speaker. Shall I credit them, or myself?

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  • Catnight, I also cringe when I hear sirens, as I, too, was hauled off. I especially fear ambulances. I cringe at flashing lights. I am very fortunate we just do not see them much around here where I have moved to. I believe this is because the county is so poor. Likely the “force” is understaffed. They are busy enough with house fires and car accidents. Where I used to live in MA, I saw them all the time, it was crazy.

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  • Same here, psmama. I went right up to the head nurse and told her that telling the patients that Zyprexa was for “anxiety” was illegal, or at least unethical, that Zyprexa was not FDA approved for anxiety, and to outright lie and tell them it was for that, and really, they were giving it to put weight on the unsuspecting kids. was total fraud.

    I have been hoping to have black box warning on Zyprexa and Seroquel because these will backfire if given to anyone with history of anorexia. They WILL put weight on, but weight gain isn’t recovery. So…of course you know this…The weight gain leads to Revenge Anorexia…As I put it. I know many who, after the Zyprexa (or Seroquel) weight gain, then, dieted like mad because they were rightfully PISSED OFF. Revenge Anorexia will literally kill a person. I have also heard of a few who developed bulimia in act of Revenge against drugging with drugs like Zyprexa.

    And I told this to the nurse. She said the ends justify the means and they needed to put weight on the patients. Because the insurance companies demand it. So she said lying was perfectly okay. The short term result was what mattered, she said. Really? Maybe because they had not yet been caught breaking the law.

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  • psmama, I saw so many young people cycle in and out of the ED places and come out worse each time, yet they continued to insist they needed the “treatment.” I woke up one day realizing the “treatment” was the problem. The “treatment” had caused most of what ailed them, and had perpetuated their ED’s. I agree totally that personifying ED as “Ed” is like kindergarten and totally insulting. It is like creating this false Devil, setting up the Devil as a scare tactic, and telling very vulnerable people that “If you disobey, the Devil will get you.” This is scary similar to what is done in brainwashing religious cults. “If you leave the cult, the Devil will get you.” Or, “If you stop treatment, you will Relapse.” Here, Relapse is the Devil-character that snatches people up. The scare tactics in ED treatment are rampant. “Don’t trigger each other!” in other words, don’t talk human rights or Ed will get you! which is bullshit.

    I went through it with them, too. As soon as I started talking human rights they tried to silence me. They didn’t succeed Then they tried to discredit me in the eyes of the other patients. They called me psychotic and paranoid over and over. It was traumatizing to say the least.

    I applied to speak at the recent NEDA conference and after I accepted the invitation, two months later, after I was sure it was for real, they contacted me and informed me they had just figured out who I was and they were uninviting me. Their claim? That I was “not recovered and would trigger others.” Obviously, none of them knew me well enough to determine if I was recovered or not. This was not the reason. They did not want any talk of human rights at the NEDA conference, that was the real reason! So how was I to take this? I see it as a stripe on my uniform. How many get UNINVITED to the NEDA conference, after all? Am I that powerful? Wow!

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  • I cannot find psmama’s comment. Psmama, I saw the horrors of ED “treatment.” I know what happens in ED “treatment” when you try to speak up for your rights. Any mention of “rights” is labeled a mental disorder. It sounds like you went through horrible torture and the “treatment” harmed your family also. My heart goes out to you. I want to thank you for posting here the truth here even though I cannot locate your post right now.

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  • Rachel that is funny and the reason why many journals have a “blind submissions” policy. For those of you who do not know, “blind submissions” means the submitted articles are stripped of any identifiers, any names, anything that would identify the writer, and then, handed to the editors who decide what will be published.

    That said, I wonder what would happen if psychiatry had a “blind diagnosis” policy. Strip the person of other diagnoses he/she has been given in the past by other docs. Actually, they do this as part of the Board Exams. They play a game called “What’s My Diagnosis” (like “What’s My Line” from the 60’s). I was called upon to be a guinea pig for a mock board exam. So I, at the time, had a diagnosis, or shall I say, coverup diagnosis, of Borderline which was used to excuse the confusion I experienced after the shock. This mock board exam took place approximately a year after the shock. I was still going through transient periods of confusion and the doctors, assuming my cognitive troubles were permanent, were now thinking “STATE HOSPITAL.”

    Now, little ole me, rail thin, but never mind that, was presented to a nervous fourth-year resident who was practicing for his What’s My Diagnosis game. Just a practice run. The nervous resident, watched via camera by many other residents, interviewed me. He was asked to come up with a diagnosis.

    I left, and they handed me a ten dollar bill.

    Months later, I ran into this very same resident, who had now passed his exams. I asked him how he did with “guessing” my diagnosis, wondering, since I knew in my heart the BPD was false, what on earth he had guessed. He did not reveal this to me, but said, “I fear I did not do well on that. My guess was way off. And they told me so.”

    Hmm…eating disorder, and consequences of ECT, maybe? Gee. Sadly, at the time they believed I was “faking ED for attention.” Very sad.

    I hope he is reading this right now. Dear young zealous doc, you should have stood up to them.

    I don’t recall what I did with the $10. But I am sure they would be VERY unhappy to learn that it has been written up into this amusing story.

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  • Wow Stephen, what a story. You know, back in the day, what kids did, what many of us did, was graffiti, and it was relatively harmless.

    I don’t know if you guys remember the absolutely beautiful Simon and Garfunkel song about graffiti. The song is only one minute long. I think it is called Poem on the Underground Wall. I believe they are referring to a location in Chicago.

    The song can be found on youtube and it is about expression of a young person feeling totally disenfranchised. So many of us did, and the young person in the song was speaking for us all in that flash of a moment. The “poem,” the word written, is not said aloud in the song. It is not necessary.

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  • Wait. Some people claim atheists are deluded. Many claim theists are deluded. Shall the battle lines be drawn?

    What would some people say if I were to say I was raised without the belief that Jesus was the Messiah? Was that also a psychosis? We had no concept of “trinity.” No concept of “son of God.” This was incomprehensible to me.

    Was my dad delusional when he said we could not mention the name of Jesus in our house? Or just putting his foot down, sick of seeing his kids getting swallowed up by the dominant culture?

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  • And there’s another sad reality. Social stratification. I don’t mean solely economics. I mean in every single social group, including online groups, we have the elite and the non-elite. The “in” crowd and the “not so in.” While you may find yourself “in” in one group, you are squashed in another.

    Those in a higher social position usually don’t have to fight so hard to be heard. They don’t have to deal with finagling, hemming and hawing, stalling, and red tape. They have a clear line of communication to the top.

    Words by any other name would smell as sweet. But there are days I would love to sign my name with someone else’s name, watch the results, and laugh my fool head off.

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  • I don’t agree. Puzzle very much knows right from wrong. It may not be a higher moral sense, but her sense of whether to act or not act is based strongly in her remembrance of my approval, current or past, of that act. She will gladly do something if she is certain it will get her food or a petting. From what I have observed, I do not scold Puzzle because she reacts to disapproval deeply, not that I really know what is going on in her head. When I hear people scolding dogs I feel bad. I identify, remembering times I, too, have been shamed, so I do not do this. The fact that she feels she has to sneak to raid the trash tells me that she does know it is a no-no.

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  • Stephen, i laugh because THEY should have asked that question. I had been a slave to them 20 years and had told them repeatedly that I had an eating disorder. So in their infinite wisdom, they responded by saying, “Oh, so you must have bipolar! We’ll give you treatment for that.” This is due to the total logic of psychiatry and it’s best friend, therapy.

    For an entire 20 years they never listened, never heard, and even jeered at my complaints over my eating problems. Now, my insurance was running out which was the reason for the ECT, the ONLY reason. The reason I agreed was because deep inside, I hoped that something, finally, would help my ED. Nothing else had, none of their “treatments.” Gee, I wonder why! But I never told anyone that. Why? Because they’d just poke fun at me all over again.

    Six months later, I could barely put a sentence together.

    It wasn’t until I was 50 years old, a good decade after shock, and three decades of MH “treatments” later, that I got a MH professional, a therapist working for a community agency, to “notice” I had an ED. God bless her.

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  • Bonnie it is merely a reflection that CAPA is a mailing list and at MIA, people have to be subscribed PER ARTICLE to each article, although subscribers are alerted each week via a newsletter. So while readers may read the articles, generally, unless they comment and check the check box (meaning a LOT of email is going to show up in their inboxes over the next week, and this may go into their work email, remember…) then, they are not subscribed to the comments. Therefore, not too many people saw your comment.

    Having been through endless frustrations over years of being ignored on Facebook and wondering why, and taking it way too personally, I realized the answer was mostly practical. You would not believe the tears and endless hair-pulling I went through. “I went through so much effort to write that post, why does no one even give a shit? Why do I work so hard for nothing?” But it isn’t MIA vs CAPA. It has more to do with the mode of delivery and actual number of views.

    I would literally cry out of frustration. And I still feel like crying when I think of the amount of work I continue to put into my writing and other works, and my failures, over and over, at getting anywhere with marketing my works. I lose friends regularly. Yet I am so grateful for the handful of supporters out there. As I used to say, God bless the stragglers still hanging on.

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  • Hey there allies, I would like a belated 60th birthday wish. I turned 60 a couple of months ago but i was working a slave job on that day. On my birthday I got demeaned and belittled to tears by my supervisor. Finally, totally exasperated, I told her it was my birthday and I expected to be treated better than that. She did not even apologize. It was a hard day. There was no party for me of course….circumstances. I was fired a few weeks later due to the workplace’s refusal to accommodate my mild vision impairment. They lied about the reason for firing. i worked a job after that and then found out it was a scam. i’ve been having a very hard time since, really struggling, and would appreciate a birthday wish even though it is not my birthday. I would like people to be nice to each other. Just stop the senseless cruelty. Thanks.

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  • Bonnie, I have noticed that victims of all sorts of crimes have a tendency to avoid naming the perpetrators. “My abuser,” they say. I can’t stand that. Why not use his name? Why not say, “Bob,” or “My father,” whatever his name was? Why not say, “Dr. Michael Henry”? He was the shock doc at McLean for over a decade and masterminded my ECT, but he was not the only perp, there were those involved in the coverup afterward also, many of whom I believe I never met face-to-face as they were administrative criminals.

    We cannot forget the administrators, who knowingly shelter the shock docs, who lie to the public and to families about the cause of harm, who invent underlying diagnoses, and who claim they are faultless.

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  • When I was a kid in high school I wanted the following:

    Someone older than me that I could look up to and trust.
    A few friends that I could share with.
    My own room, or adequate privacy and for no one to read my diary.
    A dog. A relationship with nature.
    To have a future I could look forward to.
    To be able to keep my thoughts to myself.
    To make my own choices and to learn exciting new things.
    And to ride my bicycle just about everywhere.

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  • When I took the Minnesota Muliphasic Fuckup Test in 1982, I noticed a culturally biased question on the test. The test asked a question that used a phrase that I had never heard before. As it turned out, this was a colloquial expression never used in New England, where I was raised. Likely it was used in the Midwest or the South, but I had no clue what it meant. I also noticed assumptions of a two-parent family, assumptions you went to a classroom school, assumptions of ableism, and that you knew a few things about Easter. Since then I believe researchers have noticed the biases. NOTE: It may not have been that test but another one…I am recalling a Y/N test I did with a #2 pencil.

    Even back then, I believed the inkblot test was totally bogus.

    When I was all done with these tests I went back to my therapist and complained that the tests had no relevance to my eating disorder and didn’t address the issue. Nowadays, I wish I had said that a whole lot louder.

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  • Slaying and Yeah, in my opinion, criminals of all sorts commit crimes because they know they can get away with doing what they are doing and won’t get caught. The mentality is so simple it even explains why my dog, Puzzle, raids the trash. She only does it when I leave the trash can open and I am not looking that way. This is the basis for much of crime, especially white-collar such as psychiatry. They will stop if they find out we’re peeking and we’re covering the stories.

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  • Oh I see. Because although it says “we do not agree” or perhaps we are saying “This book is full of hate speech” what book-burning also does is to oppose freedom of speech. So in that sense, the act is illogical or a mixed message.

    True, if you ask a librarian, people can write and publish whatever they want. True! Problem is that this bogus book is woven into our laws, used as a legal framework, even cited as “evidence” to take away the rights of many people and even deem them incompetent.

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  • The worst thing that ever happened to me, which I refer to as Psychiatric Abuse, was being called suicidal when I was not. I was treated like a dangerous animal, restrained, and put on 1:1 monitoring. I complained that the 1:1 people were physically and verbally abusive to me and were denying me basic privacy rights. I was told I was psychotic. I was not. This was even worse Psychiatric Abuse. This is the worst and pretty much only abuse I ever went through and had very little to do with “drugs.” They gaslighted me, held me hostage, would not let me communicate with the outside, continuously called me psychotic, told me they were sending me to an institution for life, tried to force me onto Zyprexa, and finally, let me go.

    After I left, I found out my church had kicked me out, most of my friends that I had left claimed I was psychotic and that it never happened. One of my good friends sided with the hospital and claimed they were doing their job. I cried every day for months alone, hugged my dog and cried and cried and thought my life was over.

    At the time I was 55 years old. That incident may have nearly killed me, but it made me an activist.

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  • I knew right away how I would answer this question, Bonnie. I will take up an issue about which I am often questioned and which I feel might be of help to others. The Day I Woke Up From Shock.

    It was my 40th birthday. I had named the effect of the shock, The Thing. This was the name I had given the confusion, because the confusion had taken on a character of its own, as if it lived and breathed inside of me, as if it was an evil creature that refused to leave me ever since…Ever since when? It was a question I could not answer but the doctors should have answered. Of course, I know now. I didn’t know then. Since the ECT. But this they kept from me. Instead, they told me the confusion was a symptom of my “mental illness.”

    I believed them, believed The Thing to be a psychosis, even though it didn’t quite add up to one. My psychiatrist suggested I was “dissociating,” but I told him I saw no similarity between what I went through and what I read about dissociation. Finally, they had told me I was “so severely mentally ill” that I would have to be hospitalized in a state institution. That was around the fall of 1997.. I was very scared!!! I did not want to go.

    The day The Thing left me was in early January, 1998. It lifted from me suddenly. I woke up and it was gone. No more mixed-up thoughts. No more having my thoughts disappear from my head. No more having my thoughts get tangled up like my hair tangles. No more having them slip away like sand slipping through my fingers. No more scrambled thoughts. They were just like they were before. Me. I was me. And I was 40 years old. My birthday.

    Right away, I did what I had gotten into the habit of doing. I started writing stuff down. Everything. I wrote emails, because now, I had email friends. I wrote down so many things. And that day, I started my very first novel. I wrote every day and finished a draft in eight months. After that, I took many writing classes, got two degrees, and I have written about ten books since. Two of them I published. Oddly, those psychiatrists had told me I would never succeed at anything and that I was “incapable of sitting in a room full of people.” (John Gunderson said that.)

    The tendency of shock survivors to write is probably documented somewhere. If it’s a gift, it is a bittersweet one. I would like to encourage all shock survivors out there to keep on writing, keep doing it and don’t let anyone stop you.

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  • This is interesting but I can speak to this as a writer who has studied not only how to write but the process of becoming a writer or blogger. Blogging is like performing. There is always an audience, that is, some readers. Therefore, to blog means to take on a PERSONA. This means a blogger puts on a metaphorical mask when she blogs, much like an actor becomes another person when taking on an acting role, depending on the assignment. One is never exactly oneself when performing. One is always the persona. Writers refer to the persona as the VOICE. Writers often say, “I wish I could find my voice.” This means writers seeking a niche as a writer, or, perhaps, style or way of writing. Finding that voice (which can change over time) is said to be a sign of maturity as a writer, and often takes years or even decades.

    So a blogger is performing for an audience, in effect, role-playing, always interacting dynamically with readers, and for that reason, is NEVER her true self. She only shows a slice of her life, never the whole shebang. Memoir as a form is also “slice of life.” It is not the whole of life. It is a segment that is explored in depth. It is effective as a form because it is not trite nor a mere summary.

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  • Cindi, I will try to contact Marci, and thank you for the update. This is truly awful. I have been in abusive hospital situations and I know how bad it can get with the verbal and physical abuse and gaslighting and constant threats you get in those horrible places.

    I want to ask if you and Marci have been able to piece together which of the drugs you think was the culprit. Or does it even matter now?

    God bless you and people like you that stick by people during the absolute worst of times. I remember what it was like when I had no friends left because of psychiatric horrors and people called me crazy. My ex-friends were the worst.

    Julie

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  • That I know of, class action lawsuits do nothing because there is no direct statement, no direct involvement. The patient does not face the same person who harmed him and no statement of apology is made nor is any demand made for cease and desist. You might get a check in the mail for ten dollars. I don’t think that will be very satisfying.

    Instead, you have to face the offenders head-on. Who really harmed? The makers of a drug? Or the person who called you mentally ill and handed you a prescription, insisting you needed that pill? The diagnosis itself is the root of that harm. A lawsuit against a doctor will be more impactful and will make bigger waves. I think we need more of these, more attorneys should take these on.

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  • Gottstein is licensed in Alaska but may, or may not, know someone who practices in the locale where you were harmed.

    Slaying, at this point, in my situation, some of those that were involved in my situation in some fashion have relocated. One or two because I think they got in trouble.

    The doc who first put me on SSDI was found to be practicing without a license but I think he started up again in another state. Another doc, who overstated his competency, relocated twice, radical relocations, looks suspicious to me. Others have also moved….And some I left the places they were working under not-so-nice circumstances.

    I have a plan, though, Slaying. Get in touch with me. I’m trying to get people together on this who REALLY WANT TO DO SOMETHING so we can knock heads together and take action. I really have thought up something.

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  • Yes I noticed that insane “counter appeal” regarding statute of limitations. “Should have known.”

    This has been pointed out to me as well…And arguably, why do patients not realize they are not “bipolar,” “schiz,” etc, when there is no evidence for it? I think we need to argue….As Bryan has….

    We are limited in how much information we have access to in the “mental health ghetto.” We are not encouraged to do our own research. We are encouraged to “ask our doctors” for all information and never rely on ourselves or our own common sense. We’re even told we’re incompetent and “lack insight.” Many are told we’re psychotic and cannot trust what we hear, see, and sense intuitively. We are told that if we are suspicious, it’s “paranoia.” If we dare question, it’s a “symptom.” All this can be argued as to why we remained clueless of the fraud and deceit, and why we continued to deceive even ourselves when the contradiction stared us in the face.

    But would the courts believe it?

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  • Bryan I just read all those legal papers you supplied in the links. I don’t know, as you put it, if your life is “ruined” or not, as that is up to fate, or maybe what happens in the coming years and how you spend those years. You seem like an intelligent, incredibly brave, and promising young man to me. You are a role model and a hero.

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  • Martn it was in that DeMarneffe building that i took part in mock board exams. I was a fake patient for that and I got paid $10 cash. A real $10 bill, handed to me by Dr. Meninger herself for being a guinea pig. I am proud to say I was misdiagnosed because they already had me misdiagnosed anyway. Maybe the resident guessed that I was recovering from shock and they gave him an F because “What?! That’s not possible. You need to study harder for the exams, buddy….”

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  • Martn, What is a fee based program?

    I admit it was Options Day Treatment that brainwashed me into becoming a mental patient in 1981. They did this without giving me drugs, they did it with “therapy.” I started off a college student and left the program nine months later in very bad shape. I can’t believe they called that therapy. They did not know what they were doing and they didn’t know a thing about eating disorders, which was my chief complaint. It is sad because I also saw incompetency handling other patients.

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  • Thanks knowledge. I am happy that I got away from Massachusetts where I was threatened, basically told by my doctor I HAD to stop writing, demanded that I stop and insisted that I take disabling drugs so that I would be incapable of writing. Even the cops and my church threatened me which was not even legal. I suspect the church elite paid the cop to ruffle my feathers, but I will really never know. None of that was legal to threaten me like that.

    I keep telling myself that success is the best revenge. I know they did all kinds of things to try to silence me, including trying to have me locked up in State several times totally without any real reason, multiple attempts to drug me, insistence upon my dangerousness, etc. I have spoken to so many people about these incidents and the threats and much of it was not legal.

    I have put up multiple Yelp reviews that they cannot take down. I put up YouTubes also, and HealthGrades reviews and a few others that have not come down. I put up anything I can to warn others that these things can happen to YOU, too. My YouTube I did not long after I left Mount Auburn Hospital extremely traumatized (and crying too) got many hits and much support too.

    I also believe in naming the names of the guilty. Writers change names to protect the innocent, not the guilty. Sometimes there’s a fine line, if family of the guilty are involved, but we have to think of other potential victims here, too. Name the names. You will help others by doing so. Even save lives. Don’t protect a perp. The only time you can’t name a name is when you are at risk, then, you wait a while. Expose them for who they are. And be truthful and honest. That is just my opinion.

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  • Yes the so-called “bipolar” schmooze club at the DeMarneffe building. Where the more bipolar you are, the more cool you are. Let’s support our moodswings, right? I think I showed up once.

    I showed up at the clubhouse in Waltham which I think was called…let’s see…Potter Place. I really thought just the name of it sounded like kindergarten. I remember I asked them if I could learn computers. They said I “wasn’t ready.” Wasn’t ready for what? So then it was just before my 40th birthday and I asked my mom to buy me a computer (since she asked me what I wanted for my birthday). I taught myself computers completely on my own. By the time Potter Place folks called me to wish me happy birthday I had already learned how to use Windows 95, AOL, email, and whatever they had for Word back then. It was before Broadband, way before Facebook. We only had dial-up. Then I went back to college and got straight A’s.

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  • Stephen, At McLean Hospital the night staff were very unprofessional. In fact, I remember the staff being untrained and unprofessional on the whole. There was a marked difference between the “units” where the patients paid out of pocket and the “units” where patients were covered by Medicare. Huge. Medicare patients had untrained staff that had only high school education. The pay-out-of-pocket units were staffed with very experienced staff. I know this simply because I was there as both Medicare patient and also visited others, this over a very lengthy and involved period. These wealthier units had experienced staff, many having worked there over a decade. They were well-trained.

    Even the food was better on those units. They had home-cooked meals. The food at McLean on the Medicare units was about as inedible as could be. It was mass-produced, not like “tray” food you get in a community hospital that you order off a menu. They brought it onto the unit in a big container and then, dished it out. Like elementary school food. It really couldn’t be eaten sometimes. You worried about contamination.

    As for the staff…Night staff slept all night. Some quite deliberately. One of them, I recall, a woman, brought pillows with her to work. She put two chairs together and put the pillows on the chairs, just so she could sleep. Then, she put a hospital blanket over herself. The other staff, a man, ordered all patients into their rooms. We were not allowed to leave our rooms from maybe 11pm to 6am. Period. Exception may be to pee, but they would harass you for peeing even. Now this lady slept ALL NIGHT. I know this. I did get up to pee. I have diabetes insipidus and I get up every night, to pee and get a drink of water. The guy did not allow me to get a drink so I called human rights and he got in trouble. Sorta. She STILL slept through the night and would get annoyed if I walked past and disturbed her.

    The object of these night staff was to give the patients enough “meds” to ensure we slept and then, NOT WORK. The guy used his work time to study for whatever classes he was taking during the day or evening. He was not working, either.

    I am amazed that these night staff got paid. Why is it that so many people struggle to get jobs and keep those jobs, and these night staff got paid to NOT WORK and be so cruel to us patients?

    Then, maybe a few weeks later, I told my outpatient psychiatrist, “The night staff at McLean slept on the job.”

    My psych told me “That’s impossible. You must be psychotic.”

    I can’t tell you enough how harmful it was, all those years, to be called psychotic when I was not. It was like being caged forever. And how satisfying it is to be free now to write these words.

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  • Gabi, I think a lot of life has to be learned and cannot really be taught. One is active and the other is one acting upon the other as subordinate. Somehow when the learner actively self-teaches, whether or not there is a teacher who guides the learner, the learning is learned better because it is actively done. And wanted and sought after. If we are curious and want it, we will seek it, or if we feel a dire enough need we will make it a part of ourselves. It is like walking a mile a day because the doctor insists we exercise (we are likely not to!), and walking a mile each day because that is how we get to the bus to go to work.

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  • yes you do make good points. I really would have wanted peer support sooner and would have maybe been more open-minded to trying something besides the traditional approach had someone who had had ED approached me. The problem is there is very little crossover between ED and psych. And there is pretty much NO peer support for eating disorders. God forbid people might actually get better and the ED treatment places might lose money.

    I don’t think you guys realize that there really is an ED community. ED is treated entirely separately so these patients hang out together. They become “treatment buddies.” They even call themselves that and they friend each other on Facebook. Sometimes maybe 400 or 500 friends, all from these ED treatment places. Many of these are residential treatment places where these young kids cycle in and out of. Many of them go in and out 10 times a year, every year, and they’ve been doing that since high school or even earlier. They are a clique. They have their own Facebook pages. It is not the same world as psych, and they look upon psych as different (although there is overlap).

    I never saw this world until I was over 50 and I was rather shocked. I was shocked at the human rights abuses these kids put up with. To them, it’s NORMAL to be locked up and they call it “treatment.” They don’t even know that it’s not normal to be watched in the bathroom and watched in the shower. They were taken too young. I was 50 and they called me granny and were very cruel from the onset. Then they claimed I was psychotic when I started trying to point out “human rights” to them. It was a losing battle.

    Never mind NEDA, which is the NAMI of eating disorders.

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  • Exactly, Darby. It does vary from state to state and outside the US, too. Especially how each state uses “peers.”

    And, Madmom, each state’s commitment laws are different and each state’s patient rights laws are different. I come from Massachusetts where they have what’s called the Five Fundamental Rights….These I have not seen elsewhere. Most states do have a code and most do include something about Patient Respect…but this is not measurable and difficult to prove if broken. Most have basic laws about restraints that are rarely if ever followed. I am unsure if the locales claiming they do not use them really do not use them and maybe just don’t document it. The Five Fundamental Rights are very specific, a little easier to prove one way or the other.

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  • I did! We had that in my high school. We had that for many issues, including drugs, that is, street drugs, but not just that. It’s a great concept but yes, it was co-opted. It is a term used in the workplace also. Peer support is used as a workplace terminology to mean a workplace support and networking between workers or sharing between one workplace and another professionally. Such as networking between specialized nurses. If you look on Glassdoor (if you are looking for a job) and input Peer Support you are unlikely to come up with what we’re familiar with. You’ll come up with anything from truck driving to nursing to business specialties. Yes I tried.

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  • Unfortunately, cb, you are right, there isn’t much support out there but it depends on where and how you look for it.

    I know this is just me and it might not apply to anyone else. Sometimes, the harder you look, the harder it is to find it.

    And if you look for it in others, you might not find it. I used to think I needed a therapist, and I did not find a therapist. I thought I needed a friend but I couldn’t find one. I looked around and then there was only me and my dog. This was around 2012 and I had this flash of something, I wasn’t sure what. Puzzle (my dog) and I were standing together in the kitchen and I figured it was just me and her and somehow everything was going to be okay.

    Nothing was okay after that for a long, long time, but I remembered that exact moment like it was saved in a photograph even though it wasn’t.

    After that I had a terribly scary thing happen (trauma) that made me fear this thing called “help” as if it were a four-letter word. I am still scared. So whenever I hear “help” I am scared like it’s a knee-jerk reaction. I am blessed with the trauma that protects me against the help that is not help at all, but harm.

    Now I remember that photo.

    See what I am saying? I am blessed because I found the real help by shedding the false “help” and finding it instead within myself. Well, me and my dog actually. I know the idea of self-reliance is a culturally centric one, but I embrace it now as I did as a young kid when I read Emerson and Thoreau and incorporated the ideas into my own ideology. I should not have listened to psychiatry’s imposed ideas of dependency, but alas, I was swayed for too many years.

    We survivors have a lot of unbrainwashing to do, and it is a difficult road indeed. There is no help, and very little support.

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  • I agree, Madmom. I am not about to “drop out” anytime soon. Although I must admit a few people have tried to convince me to “drop out.” I tried. I really did! I really tried to NOT read anything from MIA. I tried an MIA vacation. I couldn’t do it very long. And I do not want to “drop out.” I don’t have it in me.

    I am not saying one shouldn’t take a break. Nor am I saying MIA or any “movement” stuff is addicting. What I am saying is that I feel fucking passionate about this. Why should I not? I LOVE the passion I feel. That passion is who I am.

    It is exactly this that gets me up every morning. It is this that lets me eat every day, and keeps me from starving myself, and keeps me from immersing myself in my eating disorder like I used to do. It gives me a reason to go on.

    It keeps me writing these words. And I keep on writing. It is the same passion that makes sure I never, ever give up.

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  • Madmom, Hey, do you call writing several thousands of words per day “work”? Hmm…If they threatened me to stop doing it, is it even more “work”? ha ha ha

    If they pay you to write, is it work? If you do it passionately, is it more work? If you have a degree in it, is it work? If they claim it’s a disease, is it then NOT work, but a “disability” or a “compulsion”? Do you then get paid “disability” for it? What is that they call it? Grapho…..Geez. I hope I have a lot of that. That and oppositional defiant and very disorderly please. “While you are here, waiter, could you please add in an APA protest or two on the side, and please, no salt……”

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  • And another question. Peer work. What is work? How do we define “working”?

    I have asked myself this recently after a terrible experience working a low-paying job which thankfully is over. The bosses threatened the workers regularly and bullied us, all the while claiming fairness and claiming they were “sticking to policy,” ha ha. They added new policies all the time, every few days, and claimed if you broke their policy you’d be fired. I loved the scare tactics so much. I told them so.

    Anyway……giggle giggle…..So much for company culture. Pee faster? Fast food, anyone? I gotta laugh. One worker told me that in order to eat fast enough to shorten my break I should make a smoothie for myself. Geez, was it coming down to that?

    I challenge myself with this question…What IS work? What is a good worker? Is a good worker one who obeys a boss without question and does what she is told even if she disagrees? Or is a good worker one who thinks for herself and challenges what doesn’t make sense or doesn’t seem right? Will a good supervisor do what she is told even if it means bullying a worker she’s in charge of? Or will she do what she knows is morally right, defying upper management, and instead, be fair and kind, risking losing her job?

    What IS work? Which of these constitutes work and who decides? Why should a person who is following her conscience be let go, while a person who is merely following orders be paid and kept on?

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  • I think I linked it myself. Maybe. That is the blog that made my own personal history. I say that because really way back when, no one kept a blog. I mean back in 2005 when I started. My shrinks knew but they thought of it as a childish hobby. Occasionally they took interest in it. Cell phones were not common then. Until the advent of the cell phone, mental patients didn’t have interest in doing much online and didn’t have online access. Well, I was told I was “the exception.” I kept on blogging.

    Anyway, I kept up my blog and in 2011 after that water deprivation I was not only shocked, but totally LIVID. I blogged about it but my docs barely noticed.

    My doc and Massachusetts General Hospital took notice in 2013 and that is when all hell broke loose. MGH told my doc that she HAD to drug me till I was incapable of writing about the abuse anymore. They demanded she give me antipsychotics. She told me this in April 2013 and she was acting totally berserk, right in her office in the Wang building. I was so embarrassed. All this, over my blogging. She repeatedly threatened me, demanding that I “stop writing” and told me I was a “liability problem” for the hospital.

    I had a choice. Continue to write, or give in to them. Keep my freedom of speech, or stop. What would you do? I was even threatened by the cops early in 2014, and that was similar. Stop writing, or else……

    Well? I left the country! I value my freedom of speech and freedom of expression too much to stay in such an environment where I was constantly being threatened like that.

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  • I am very very wary of anything called “disability” and rarely call myself by that label except to state that I don’t see well (and therefore, couldn’t possibly drive a car safely). Or to state that I am not very tall and therefore, need a step-stool at times. I am fearful of aligning with disability-help organizations. For instance, one in my area promised “jobs for seniors.” I am 60, so I “qualify” as a senior. However, when I called them, they grilled me! They asked me right away if I was dis-abled and then demanded to know what my dis-ability was. I refused to tell them anything and told them, “Why don’t you send me your materials in the mail?” They did. I got their application which included a place where a neighbor had to sign saying my living situation was what I say it is. And their “jobs” pay sub-standard wages, half-time only.

    This, they explained, was because it was “training for a job.” I question this seriously. If we are “seniors,” then why do we need long-term “training” for an entry-level job that others take only a day or two to train for? Why weeks or months of training? So I asked them what this “training” consisted of. They were very vague on that.

    I have passed up this (ahem!) opportunity since i fear it’s “day treatment” all over again. I fear that this “training” consists of “group discussions” and “let’s talk about it” and “how do you feel” and “pep talk” and “breathing instructions.” I really will miss the Group Hug, though…….

    If they phone me I’ll just tell them…maybe…I’m working on it….Or maybe I’ll say, “Hey, it’s in the mail…..”

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  • The jobs I looked at but couldn’t apply for required a driver’s license…These were hospital-run organizations hiring supposed “peers.” Where I currently live one hospital runs the whole area. They’ve bought out other hospital systems that used to flourish here, so now, it’s a monopoly, just like Harvard runs a monopoly not only in Boston but all over Eastern MA expanding into NH and into Maine. So here where I now live, this one hospital system runs the medical establishment in an extremely wide area, branching into neighboring states. Common citizens hate this big business unless they are employees getting paid well by them! Also, this means patient record-sharing whether you want it or not.

    Anyway, they were advertising for “peers,” but all it was was “taxi service” to appointments. That’s why they wanted the driver’s license. I do not qualify because i’m nearly blind. As for lived experience, likely a few therapy appointments counted. More than that they probably didn’t want.

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  • What I saw of it in Massachusetts, and I never visited any of the Western MA RLC programs, they really were identical to day treatment in every way. I was embarrassed and I didn’t know how to react nor what to say to the “clients” who attended. “Hey, don’t you realize you could be doing something useful with your time?” I had hoped for “alternative” meaning political activism, APA protests, education about why not to take drugs, but that’s not what was there. It was more validation of the System’s supposed illnesses.

    And breathing exercises remind me of nuthouses too much….I can’t stand the idea of someone telling me when to breathe. I am too anti-authoritarian for that.

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  • Darby, When we speak of this, why are only the “drug” stories the ones that are getting out there and the other horror stories suppressed? Why is it still called “hospitalization” when the doors are locked and people are committed by the courts, forced to stay, and even taken by cops from their homes?

    We have this recent story of a high school in Florida. They’ll talk about the about supposed “mental illness” till they are blue in the face, about how scary and violent we are, about how much they should abuse us even more with their treatments, with their force, and put us away for life and deprive us of every right we have. And totally miss the point.

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  • I was shocked when the Boston Globe published a story about a couple in Acton, MA (where I think mostly they have money) that kept getting packages from Amazon that they had not ordered. Now this was a major article in the Globe. Huh? This is the most trivial story I have seen, and THAT was deserving of a Globe reporter’s time and energy?

    I have contacted reporters. I have begged them to put my story in the papers. Why do they care more about this rich couple getting Amazon packages? Shame on them! One reporter contacted me and was interested but it sounded like she was going to put it in some very obscure paper…Still, I started telling her but didn’t get to the point fast enough, unfortunately. I tried to give her the proper medical background (assuming she’d need to know about the kidneys, no?) and then, she cut me off, impatiently, and hung up before I made it to the juicy part. “Hey, I was abused in a hospital.” I never got that far. She hung up saying she wasn’t interested.

    I can see why people get frustrated when they can’t get lawyers to sue and just aren’t being heard. When our friends and relatives claim our story is trivial (why don’t you just get over it?) and when the forums are only about drug withdrawal. When MIA will only publish four “personal stories.” When people say we have “anger problems” but we know our anger is justified. When expressing our anger is called yet one more “mental illness” worthy of therapy and pills. When talking about a mental hospital is called a “war story” like it’s a fucking taboo.

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  • Exactly, Stephen. These “professionals,” the ones I used to see, spread around that I’m psychotic and tell other patients not to listen to me, not to be friends with me, that they’ll get “triggered” from me. NEDA (the NAMI of eating disorders) is pissed at me, too. On the whole, these sell-out organizations don’t like people that talk about human rights. I’ve even seen bogus claims that talking about “rights” is a sign of “paranoia.” Some of the patients, whose lives are basically full of the contradiction we know so well have been very very cruel to me, also. I’ve had to get off Facebook at this point. I deleted my account.

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  • Stephen I can’t even find a FORUM for hospital abuse! I can’t find anything. Others are looking, too. We are not alone, there is a large population dying to find a venue. I personally was called psychotic when I wasn’t, for decades, and it is very hard to explain just how deeply harmful this is. I was also called suicidal when I wasn’t, this was acutely damaging to me, and this, too, is very harmful. I also have this deep-seated anger in me that started in 2011 when I was deprived of water in a hospital to the point of medical dehydration. I can’t just wish the anger, trauma, and knee-jerk fear away, just like that. I have a lot of privacy issues that arose from the hospital abuse. And I cannot control other people’s insistence on seeing me as disordered. It is their choice to continue to view me through their diagnostic lenses. I can’t control this, but I can choose to not associate with those that see me as “mentally ill” instead of understanding that I was deeply harmed and might have good reason to need people to bug off.

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  • I think if there was a peer support for eating disorders it would consist of helping people who 1. had the experience of struggling with eating and 2. had the experience of being traumatized by ED “treatment” (which is far more violating of human rights than regular psych “care” on the whole).

    That I know of, if you stay in longer, #2 looms larger and larger. The trauma increases exponentially and affects your eating difficulties…if you even manage to stay alive. I think a group of peers to help alleviate the trauma would certainly save lives.

    And…given the grim statistic of psych “hospitalization” increasing suicide rates drastically, peers who help by actually believing people after they leave these hellholes would be lifesaving. You shouldn’t have to leave a psych prison where you were treated like a subhuman animal, and then, go home alone and cry your eyes out for months, or fall into the hands of some therapist who will dismiss what you say and call you psychotic or call your anger a disorder.

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  • Darby, I heard sometime around late 2011 of the “Recovery Movement” which seemed to be a group of people who validated that there was such thing as “mental illness” but also thought you “recovered” from it. I never liked their ideas. They were big on “coping skills” and such. None of it related to what I was going through at the time, so I dismissed their ideas and moved on.

    Having discovered MIA sometime in 2013 in a flash I realized that others knew the same things I did, that what there was to “recover” from were the human rights abuses done to us. Whatever ailments we’d suffered from, if any, that brought us to their offices or “hospitals” were now either resolved or forgotten. For some, now, having left psychiatry and therapy far behind, we finally had a chance to deal with these problems head-on.

    The “recovery” movement avoids human rights issues. They kept saying “Don’t tell war stories!” I thought that defeated the purpose and I didn’t want much to do with them after that. It was like telling me to shut up.

    The one thing I want to do, still, is tell those war stories loud and clear so the whole world knows I was badly abused in a hospital. I don’t see the point in telling it in a therapist’s office. I want to tell a major TV station or newspaper, but I can’t pique their interest. I am still looking for a venue. Still. If I was rich or famous they’d care, but I’m not, so they don’t. There are so many of us bursting with these unresolved stories and nowhere to go with them.

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  • I am so happy that you are pursuing this, and that you pushed on to discover the lack of insurance and licensing issue.

    I, too, was caught up with an unlicensed doctor. He was the one who initially put me (and countless others) on disability payments. It was 1984 and I had been turned down in 1983. He put me on SSDI for schizophrenia. Based on his word only, no tests were given, not even psych tests. In fact, I hardly ever met with him.

    Bryan I am happy that you are able to do this before the statute of limitations has passed. For many of us, we cannot pursue a case because we’re too exhausted during the years following the harm, and the period of time passes too quickly. These doctors and the facilities that support them get away with destroying people’s lives and making money off of it.

    I hope you realize that you are young and you have many years ahead of you. You can do a lot with the PI license. I hope you use it creatively and productively to screw the field of psychiatry for many years to come. BRAVO! And best of luck with the lawsuit. This is indeed groundbreaking. Brain disease? Naw, you have chutzpah.

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  • Darby I wish I could forward this article to the peer support employers that turned me down. I applied to a number of them. Laughably, one employer made me do an online personality test, one of those employment tests they have you do to see how compliant you are. I hope I failed miserably!

    Many peer support jobs in my region require a driver’s license and they check if you have ever had any speeding tickets, etc. I asked why once and they said because you visit “clients” and drive them to appointments. Is this not a form of coercion? I couldn’t apply to such jobs even if I wanted to because I do not have a license.

    Other peer support jobs turned me down due to my lived experience. Ahem.

    One I applied to had a group interview. I noted that the other candidates did not have lived experience. They were college students, specifically, social work students, who wanted college credit for being “peer support” workers. Huh? Apparently the agency didn’t care and wanted them anyway.

    I notice that there are very few opportunities for peer support in the eating disorders field. In fact, ED treatment centers try very hard to end friendships between us. They claim we will “trigger” each other, or claim we’ll “interfere with each others’ treatment plans.” They will stop any discussion of human rights, confidentiality, or informed consent.

    I was turned down for a blogging position by an ED organization because, in their words, “We don’t object to your writing but we’re afraid you might discourage people from seeking treatment.” Yes, they were probably right. I hope to save lives.

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  • Yes, Tireless. There should have been a response decades ago. And I don’t think the response necessarily has to be from the psychiatric/psychologic community. Getting BED into the DSM had everything to do with pharma and nothing to do with “having our voices finally heard.” To believe the latter would be naive indeed. I think the response to destructive eating needs to be to take all ED’s out of the DSM and recognize them as truly serious problems. ED’s are thought of as mental illnesses and people can stop thinking of them as such (it really takes a huge leap to do so) then you see them as really much MORE serious and deadly.

    I think ED needs to be taught in nutrition schools as mainstream nutrition study. Right now, it’s not. You go to a nutritionist and they know ONLY about diabetes and kidney disease. ONLY. They might know a little about the stereotype of ED, but that’s all. They don’t really know. Nutrition therapy for ED should be covered by “insurance” for ED and in many locales it is not. A person who is suffering, say, a college student (a kid like I was), should be able to walk into University Health Services and get an appointment with a nutritionist who knows about ED. You should be able to mention ED and they should know what you’re talking about, and not give you that stupid blank stare. Colleges should have peer support communities, other kids who went through ED. Students shouldn’t have to go through a therapist to access a nutritionist and other vital services.

    I have contacted my alma mater where I developed ED (Bennington College) numerous times and asked them if they would like me to come and speak. I told them I would not charge a cent. I reminded them that students may be suffering and that having someone come and speak might reach a few of them. They told me they were not interested. I have also contacted their radio station several time asking if they wanted to interview me. I have yet to receive a response. It is disheartening, to say the least (especially since I paid all that tuition…)

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  • Tireless, ED’s are not a “middle class” issue. Stereotypically, ED’s affect the affluent, however, statistically ED’s affect people from all backgrounds. People can develop ED’s later in life and even during elder years. I don’t see ED as necessarily a “family” issue especially when a person has left the nest decades ago. Also frequent among elders is laxative abuse or at least habitual laxative use. After 50 or 60, when a person has anorexia it is so easy to misdiagnose as early Alzheimer’s, which means spending the last years of one’s life in a nursing home likely drugged and tied into a chair. One of my elderly neighbors who was at least 80 was a compulsive exerciser. She was also being abused by her daughter. She wasn’t thin. When we think “eating disorder” we see a stick thin teen and we don’t think of elders, but I have known elders who suffered, either lifelong, or developed it late in life, and I was an elder anorexic myself. I don’t see “family” as being the cause nor answer to anorexia for those of us who are older. And in fact when I was 23 and living on my own, “family therapy” was irrelevant, destructive to our family, scary for my teenage siblings, bewildering for my parents, and really a complete waste of time. Except maybe profitable for the therapists, i don’t know.

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  • I have heard so many “me too” stories in response to this article. People have written to me telling me of how they were sent to ED “treatment” (or took themselves there) and how then this “treatment” then negatively affected their lives due to trauma. I know that those of us who take a human rights stance on ED treatment are not some tiny minority! I know that many are afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation or fear that they will be refused medical treatment for other conditions, or will be shunned in some fashion. There is much pressure to remain silent on the human rights abuses in ED. I hope that people can speak out, because these abuses keep people sick in their ED’s, keep people playing those control games. It is a terrible cycle to get caught up in.

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  • Lenora…Yes, yes, and yes. I have found that many people who align with addiction model did indeed suffer childhood trauma, but we have to be careful not to stereotype or make assumptions the other way around. I think people have to decide for themselves if the model is helpful. A therapist cannot say, “You have an addiction, therefore, you must have had a rotten childhood.” See the difference? These things must be realized ourselves, like an awakening, because that way, we empower ourselves.

    I agree also that food problems such as celiac (for instance) which really creates malnutrition. There are many variations of this malnutrition and various ways we don’t get what we need, mostly without even knowing it. Also, if you found something that works, GOOD! I support finding things that work! I support self-experimentation! Try out new methods and find out what works FOR YOU! I honestly don’t think relying on “standard protocol” is going to be successful for most of us.

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  • Julia, Yep, pretty much. I remember a lot of that. Being boxed into that mini-world. Except I didn’t have it as a child, in fact it didn’t start until I was well into college, oddly.

    I didn’t end up with the forced weigh-in until I already had diabetes insipidus, decades later, which is a condition that involves needing to drink a lot of water anyway. So that complicated the water-drinking part. What a game! If I didn’t drink, I ended up dehydrated. If I did, I was accused accused accused, just for doing what I needed to to do. The only solution was to end the forced weigh-in. One therapist agreed (suddenly realized I was an adult) but the other didn’t seem to realize I was over 50. Can they not do math? Wow I really hated that. I hated getting into the johnny, the ritual of it.

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  • I agree totally, Registered. People are smarter than psychiatry thinks. People can decide for themselves IF they have access to information. We do not need the middlemen called psychiatrists, who only lie to us and give us limited information. We should be allowed to take full responsibility for our decisions. Psychiatry does not take responsibility when it screws up, after all! It blames the patient when its drugs, prescribed by the lying middlemen, fail.

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  • JC, I had the same problem with a bullying ophthalmologist. I had to be firm. “I am seeking a second opinion.” Mainly because I did not want this jerk operating on my eyes! Also, I am afraid of doctors after what happened to me. The guy called me stupid and put that in my records. When it came time to go back I called them and told them I had relocated and no longer had need for their…ahem…”services.”

    Also, when I went to get glasses, the glasses were done wrong. I had to be firm. The bifocal line was put in the wrong place. A month later, they produced the right glasses and made double sure that line was right.

    If anything ever hurts the last person I’m going to call is a doctor. That’s asking for trouble. I just wait a few days.

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  • Tireless since I didn’t purge I do not have lived experience with it, however, perhaps it is something that a person can decide for herself and ask the following question…Am I doing this out of habit, or, am I doing this because my body demands that I do this? It is highly possible that the body prepares to purge upon sensing certain cues, and actually gets the stomach ready by increasing stomach acid, or possibly gagging on cue. I know people who told me this happened very easily for them, and often when they didn’t want it even. So the person would have to ask these questions and face them very honestly. And then, be prepared to work hard on stopping. It is a difficult battle since the body wants to continue with it after you’ve been doing this for a long time.

    I know from experience that many people develop a disliking toward the feeling of fullness to the point that it becomes intolerable…and you have to work up to tolerating it again. This takes much hard work and patience.

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  • Steve I tried to sue MGH but I was so traumatized that it was hard to get anyone to believe me at first. It was hard to get myself back together. I was kinda crazed, scared to death over what they had done. A similar “case” occurred in the UK a year later to a man who had diabetes insipidus from a brain tumor. He actually phoned the cops, which was appropriate…anyway, he died of dehydration. This was 2012. It was called a human rights outrage. Me? I was called crazy for it. And yet, it was the same thing. Same abuse. Yes they could have killed me and one big THANK YOU for validating me.

    My own doctor denied what had occurred and begged me to stop blogging about it. She threatened me and told me she was drugging me to force me to stop writing. The abuse just never stopped. So you can see why I finally left the country.

    Even then, a lot of people refused to believe me and claimed I was psychotic. Some people even said the “unit” I was held on at MGH didn’t exist. Wow, they just didn’t know the real truth.

    The statute of limitations is past but that I know of, the fact that I keep writing about it smears their reputation badly enough. Writing is powerful, and it pisses them off plenty.

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  • Yes! I found it was not too difficult, once I got the hang of it. If you do not want to be labeled, do not go to a psychiatrist or MH professional. Do not act like a mental patient, do not call yourself one, do not use their language, act responsibly and when in the presence of medical professionals, don’t admit that you ever went there. Get away from anyone who calls people by mental illness labels. Make this a habit and you will not be labeled yourself.

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  • MGH’s explanation for depriving me of water was that it was their standard ED protocol, that all their ED patients had to follow it. So all the ED’s that came to their unit had to be limited to 32 ounces per day regardless. I have diabetes insipidus, which is a rare medical condition meaning that I need far more water than that just to stay alive. Limited to 32 ounces I will become quickly dehydrated after a few days, which was what happened. My real need is six times that amount, which they claimed was a psychological addiction. By the 11th day, of course, I feared for my life. I was very scared and begging for water. I was trying to sneak some, too, but they were threatening me and physically abusing me. You have to realize when you are medically compromised (I was dehydrated upon admission) it makes it much, much more frightening. This was 2011 and I left very traumatized. The trauma was denied by my providers and mistaken for mania.

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  • Another thing: Patients develop secondary problems due to ED, such as osteoporosis (leading to broken bones and growth problems if the osteoporosis happens in childhood), stomach problems, all sorts of digestive difficulties, inability to get pregnant, birth defects, heart trouble, on and on.

    When a person has stomach or digestive problems it means they literally cannot eat or can’t eat certain types of foods. Or can’t chew or swallow. It gets very complicated. I have known people who get so physically ill that at that point these physical problems are so important that I think the psychiatrists need to butt out. For instance, if your electrolytes are totally off, or your blood sugar is nil, you can’t think straight and I don’t think this is time for a psych eval, nor time for a diagnosis. In fact, it’s never time for a diagnosis. And yet, they insist. I think they are hard up for customers.

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  • Yes, I have tried to alert the MIA community and tried back in Massachusetts. No one seems to realize that ED’s are treated separately from psych or different “protocol” are used. Bathrooms are locked and often, patients are monitored in the bathroom, or even watched while peeing or defecating. Or asked to say the alphabet. Some patients are watched while showering, not allowed to shower or do anything in the bathroom alone. This is terribly traumatizing. They are force-fed via tubes, which is rape in some locales, depending on the legal definition and whether the tube is forced. Some have the tube in for a month or more, and some are monitored via 1:1 to make sure they do not take the tube out. I know from first hand experience that some of the 1:1 people can be abusive, even physically abusive or verbally. I have heard reports of sexual abuse from patients. I have also heard multiple reports of tying patients down, even tying children down, or tying them in the day room, or tying them to wheelchairs, or, demanding that they stay in bed all day. I have seen patients with total muscle atrophy due to forced “bed rest.”

    Force-feeding can lead to refeeding syndrome, which often cannot be cured and leads to patient death. You will have to look this one up. Refeeding syndrome is usually caused by “treatment.” The hospitals are very scared of this. It is potential lawsuit material. Because they are so scared they abuse patients in their utter fear.

    I was deprived of water at Massachusetts General Hospital while in “treatment” for anorexia in 2011. I ended up traumatized and have really never gotten over it. They never acknowledged fault nor apologized. Instead, they tried to put me in a state hospital.

    More and more ED patients are put in state hospitals. When I called NEDA about this a few years ago trying to help out my friends they said they don’t do anything about it.

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  • Becky, Yes! I know Jeanine and I support and agree with her work. There are so few of us out there who are at the point of realizing that these “rehabs” do nothing but use force and coercion and take your money. Years ago there was no money in ED, now, of course, there is. And because there’s money, the ED organizations are pushing for “awareness” to get more customers. But as soon as folks like me speak out we are silenced. The fact that BED ended up in the DSM is all money.

    None of this has anything to do with the fact that people really do suffer, and we’ve been suffering for a long time. MIA readers need to be aware that the ED treatment centers are separate from psych hospitals and the human rights violations at the inpatient level are far worse. They are also more expensive, on the whole.

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  • Hi Tireless, Unfortunately, since many people keep their ED’s secret we don’t have accurate statistics on it. I have seen the most insane “studies” passing as “accurate.” For instance studies done in girls’ dormitories at boarding schools…How is this a cross-section of the general population? Sadly, men get ED, too. I have spoken to men with ED and they tell me it is very hard to come out of the closet.

    With men it can happen just like it happened with me. Many men even seek “treatment” such as therapy and pills and end up “treated” for mental disorders but the ED never gets addressed…and this can go on and on for decades. I know several men and women both in such a situation. With men, it is harder since they are less likely to be believed nor taken seriously.

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  • Nowadays, mental illness is taken seriously and the ED community is fighting to be included into the MI category and I do not support that. The ED community, including NEDA/BEDA and other ED organizations have made a point of not including me (BEDA/NEDA kicked me out of their conference last year!). They do not like human rights activists apparently.

    I don’t know how Pat defines disease. I personally see ED’s as something very real that people suffer from. Just because people suffer does not mean it has to be a “disease.” One does not mean the other (although we, as a society, are conditioned to believe this). I have been accused by the ED community of denying the severity of ED’s because I have stated that ED is not a mental disorder.

    I am waiting for the ED community to respond to this article. I tried Tweeting but I am not adept at Twitter. My tweets seem to disappear.

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  • Tireless, I agree, I do not use the word “recovery” either, mainly because it has been co-opted by other groups. I don’t use the word “recovering.” To me, what I am currently recovering from, in all seriousness, is the abuse I endured during my last few years in the MH System when I was in my 50’s. Much of it consisted of their attempts to silence me as I was emerging from decades of fraudulent psych diagnosis claim. This is an ongoing process for me, and a very difficult one.

    I agree, too, that the objectification of women is somehow linked to capitalism. We must realize, however, that ED is not exclusively a women’s or girls’ problem. When a man has ED the issue is compounded since if he tries to get “help” he is not likely to be believed nor taken seriously since it’s seen as a teenage girls’ problem.

    To call it a disorder or not? Yes, I do. I do not call it a psych disorder, though. I consider it outside of the psych realm. We have seen ED portrayed in the media for so long as psych, and we’ve seen it linked to psych, and patients are told over and over that “it’s all in your head.”

    Is high blood pressure psych? What if psych decided it was? They’ve put smoking addiction under their umbrella, why not high blood pressure? Why not heart attack, since they can get far-fetched and claim “stress” causes it? I actually saw that happen to a person! Why not claim kidney disease is psych since kidney disease makes you tired (from anemia). How about those dubious ones like Irritable Bowel and Fibro? Haven’t we seen that, too? When I was in the nuthouse (McLean) they told me my cracked tooth was not cracked, but it hurt me because I was grinding my teeth at night without my knowledge, due to “anxiety.” They tried to give me Haldol for that (this effectively delayed my getting the tooth pulled until it was badly infected).

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  • And something I want to say to people with ED who may be reading this. You DO have choices. I know you didn’t choose to have an ED. I did not. You do choose to go back to those so-called “professionals” again and again when you know “treatment” fails you over and over. Why keep going back? Why not take a different path or try something new? Why not trust yourself? Why keep believing these doctors?

    Believing them, and continuing to go back, that you do have control over. It is your choice when you go back and go back. You are not a failure. They have failed you. It isn’t even treatment. It is imprisonment and taking away of your rights, and you do not have to choose to return to that. You can choose to live your life. You can choose instead to find something to be passionate about instead of going back. That, exactly, is how to get over ED.

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  • And another thing….Many people have been shocked that if I say it’s not a mental health issue I am ALSO saying it’s not serious. NO WAY! These are not the same statement. It doesn’t have to be a mental health issue to be “serious.” Having come very close to dying of this thing, I am well aware of the seriousness of ED’s. You do not die of depression or schiz. Your brain won’t implode from thinking or having a feeling. You die of ED’s because you die from starving or electrolyte imbalance or dehydration, and many people are dying at a seriously alarming rate. Or you die in treatment because they refeed too fast. I recall a while back three people I knew died in the same week. It is very very scary.

    Still, I wish it wasn’t at all in the DSM. I wish it wasn’t treated by MH professionals. I wish they would butt out of the ED field altogether and leave it to nutritionists and other types of specialists, especially peers, folks like us. Peers are the real experts, people who have been through ED. This IS about the food, it’s about that first diet you ever went on. It’s about the reasons, if you can ever dig them up. It’s about acknowledging it, and moving on.

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  • Frank if you had been through an ED I am sure you would say differently. If you had been through psychiatry’s total inept “treatments” and therapy’s irrelevant solutions year after year, and been through their scare tactics and ineffective imprisonments over and over, only to find yourself starving again and again, I think you would have an entirely different opinion.

    Psychiatry and therapy have no relevance to ED, and have no answers. This IS about the food, which is a substance. ED is about starvation and its consequences. I wish I had known, and bypassed the MH System altogether.

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  • Hi Sam, From what I know and have observed, after anorexia many people experience either lack of hunger signals or an abundance of hunger. For those who do not yet experience any hunger there are various strategies that I have heard might work. One is simple discipline, which will work for those who thrive on discipline and orderliness. You might tell yourself you will eat at noon and then, eat at noon. Or, you might say, “I will eat after I finish this assignment.” And you might “reward” yourself after eating with something else, something pleasurable. Pick anything

    For many, though, discipline can backfire, especially when too much rigidity has been a problem.

    You just have to ask yourself where you are on the “organized” spectrum. Some folks find beat themselves up so much, while others do not know where to begin to discipline themselves in terms of managing their eating.

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  • Oooohhh. Bradford, thanks so much for explaining why for 30 years I kept saying to those fools, “I have ED,” and they stared back at me and said, “That’s impossible!”

    I hope someone’s laughing as hard as I am right now. That, in a nutshell, explains it all.

    I have always known that the real cause of people being called “mentally ill” is due to being misunderstood.

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  • I see these as physical addictions. Can people stop psych drugs? They are physically addicting. right? Booze is, too. Binge eating, as I have explained, is physically addicting, as is anorexia, and these things are not so easy to stop, especially when you have some “therapist” harping on you or threatening.

    Have you noticed that if a smoker is nagged, that smoker will cling to his/her habit even more stubbornly? However, if the smoker is left alone and he/she is allowed to see that not smoking is truly appealing, the smoker is likely to actively take the leap.

    We have a problem of the System acting as naggers, which is effectively keeping people sick. It works awfully well to keep folks out of commission.

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  • Tireless I don’t have any statistics on this, but many people have told me that support groups helped them. They stated that being among others who experienced the same thing in itself was a relief. People told me OA and AA helped them, or an ED support group. I think there should be more of this. There should be more peer support, that is, people who actually went through the struggle.

    I have heard them say in facilities that it wouldn’t be a good idea. They keep saying we would “trigger” each other. Yes, it is BS. They’re just protecting their money I think. If we actually got better they’d lose their customers.

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  • I don’t understand why Islamophobia is included here in MIA. It is a social issue, an extremely serious one. I never knew anyone locked up in a nuthouse for it. I never knew anyone labeled by a psychiatrist as a racist or antisemite, or homophobic, either.

    Of course I knew many bigoted shrinks, especially women-haters. And I must say, psychiatry and the Mental Health System itself is one of the most serious social threats we have in the Western world.

    People act collectively in ways that they would not act as individuals. I know this to be called either GroupThink or gang mentality. When it is directed by a group at an individual, it can become bullying. When police engage in GroupThink it can turn to police violence, which is amplified due to the group effect. I have seen “staff” act in GroupThink fashion, acting violently or verbally abusive against individual patients.

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  • Hi Carol, I could certainly relate as I am Jewish, grew up in MA, and found my introduction to Christianity (at age 21) extremely traumatizing. This was both in the form of exposure to a religious cult, and afterward, born-again type Christianity. I developed an eating disorder the following summer, when I was 22, and a big part was spiritual dissatisfaction. I felt that I couldn’t connect with God anymore, that my fat was getting in the way. Really what was happening was that leaving a cult, you tend to go through grieving, and you do feel disconnected, and disillusioned with society as a whole. Like society is only dull black and white, and the cult was in full living color. You can’t get over the disappointment, like everyone is shallow and trite. I wanted the cult back, but I couldn’t have it back. I wanted God back too. That warm chummy feeling, even though the cult was deceptive, I still wanted it.

    None of this was ever addressed in 34 years in the System for me. Not once. Well? They never asked. Fools.

    I think your point about spiritual crisis is a good one. And I cried when you said you tossed out the bipolar book. YAY!!!! If anyone reads this and tosses out theirs, too, it’s a victory.

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  • I couldn’t agree with this article more. I have known certain religious people, well-meaning, I must say, to make claim that anger is bad, that’s right, MORALLY bad. And then there are others that take “Turn the other cheek” to mean you are never to express nor even feel anger.

    I agree that anger is amazingly useful. My anger at the MH profession saved my life. My anger got me away from them. My anger helped me realize just how wrong they all were. My anger showed me the diagnoses were fraudulent. My anger fuels my writing and fuels these words I am writing now.

    Just as Sarah says here, I, too, was called paranoid just for expressing anger. That’s so insane, insanity on the part of people who have the audacity to call themselves “professional.” I was called violent, too. I have some choice words for that I cannot even say here.

    Julie

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  • I believe there were cases of anorexia in the 1800’s. And there was a guy in France would was known to not be able to stop eating. I literally cried when I read the Wikipedia article about him. It was heartbreaking. They ended up imprisoning him in a prison where (they say) he ate live rats. But this was not verified, so it may have been a rumor.

    There is a disorder that basically comes from your appetite center not working right, and that is called Praeder-Willi. It can usually be found alongside learning disorders and sometimes, but not always, mental retardation. It is detectable, something missing basically. You do not get a satiety signal, so you just keep going. I saw a YouTube on this and bawled my eyes out thinking of how these folks suffer. No it is not gluttony, it is a horror story.

    You bet I thought for a while I had PW. However, the main difference is that binge eating turns on and off. PW never turns off. I hope this speaks to the seriousness of BED, for anyone who doesn’t “get it.”

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  • I should add the following. I don’t know where this statistic comes from. Seventy-five percent of binge eaters are specifically addicted to sugar. I have heard that sugar addiction is so powerful it is more addictive than booze.

    I have known people to realize that their problem was sugar. Then, they realized all they had to do was to stay away from sweets. This really did solve it. However, if the sugar abstinence is then turned into another strict, rigid diet, the diet mentality then takes over and the purpose is totally defeated.

    This is likely why sometimes, meal plans fail, because a meal plan can be done so zealously that of course it’s the next diet. You then are set up to fail. I have known therapists to reinforce the setup!

    I am not addicted to sugar. I knew this early on. I do know (through experimentation) that I was likely addicted to some types of dairy food, and possibly my mother (who had ED many years before I was born) was also addicted to some dairy foods. For a while I started noticing that when I went grocery shopping, I was fine until I walked past the dairy aisle, then, all hell broke loose (and that was usually toward the end of my aisle-wandering).

    For some time, I was afraid to keep any food at all in the house. It was a matter of buying one meal at a time, just tiny quantities. I was so scared. Now I am proud to say those days are over. I can even purchase dairy food and leave it in the fridge and not worry.

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  • To be honest after a while I began to realize “they” do not have the answers. I kept looking to them and asking, begging really. “If you have all the answers, why can’t you make me better?” I just got a shrug, or a pat answer like, “Follow your treatment plan.” I knew they just didn’t know.

    Incarceration can’t really solve it since you’re locked up and don’t have the opportunity to binge. For many, this actually is so darned ironic. You’re free while you’re locked up. You’re free from bingeing. I really thought this. For those two weeks I was free of that hell. Then, they’d let me out and it would start again. That was my life. My secret life because I couldn’t get anyone to understand. Even during the years they had no clue I had ED, I lied sometimes and made up some stuff about being suicidal even though I wasn’t, so that I wouldn’t have to go out again.

    When I finally got free of psych I was also free to experiment. Wildly. Many failed. Many had mixed results. I loved that I could do anything, mix up my food, try eating different ways, try different eating patterns, try out different mindsets, and even try out fad diet pills you could get over the counter (only the cheap ones).

    Just being free of it all helped so much. You would think that I would have gone wild with the bingeing, but that’s not at all what happened. I’d say I was free to find what worked with common sense and logic. I was free to figure out what I actually liked and didn’t like.

    I was free also to figure out that I actually like myself. I always did, but psychiatry wrecked it for me all those years. I liked myself before, but now, I like myself a whole lot better without the diagnoses to cloud up stuff. Being away from them I find I know myself a lot better. That is so important!

    There are things I can’t do, or don’t like doing, or just am not very good at. I have to face that. I am not superwoman, just me. Some things are too hard for me, and probably someone better skilled than I am should be doing those things. (Like reaching up to high places, since I’m so short.)

    And also, therapists used to tout “mindfulness” and “living in the present” which is a culturally-egocentric value in my opinion, and not for everyone, especially us older folk who thrive on our hindsight. We are good at storytelling. Let us tell our stories! Therapists should stop demeaning us for it, and stop complaining that we’re dwelling on the past. This is what us older, (wiser), folk do.

    Why pathologize it? My therapists pathologized what I got my degree in, writing memoir.

    My mom used to say we had to be good because she “had eyes in the back of her head.” Did she? I used to look, try to see in her hair. Really?

    She did. She had wisdom and hindsight. And we foolish kids couldn’t even see it. But that is okay, because now I do.

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  • Exactly. I know that many times while I was normal weight I had a harder time being taken seriously. “You look okay, what’s the problem?”

    You make a valid point about making that number on the scale so important, and equating it with self-worth. It is so hard to detach these two things. I do own a scale but I could take it or leave it. I think the word is desensitization, or something similar. I don’t see it as the Judge. I used to. I remember the number made it or broke it for me. Now, other things are more crucial. When we find things that are crucial that we care about more than that number, we’re on our way.

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  • Lawrence, Do parents really know what their kids are up to? If I had been 10, yeah they would have noticed. At 16 I could have hidden it. At 22 when I started I was living far away and there was no reason for them to be worried. I called now and then and updated them on how college was going.

    As for “education,” no one dieted back then. What education was there to be had? No one had heard of ED. Know what we talked about in my house? Politics, going skiing, and Nixon’s resignation.

    You have to realize many people develop ED when they are older. Maybe even after their parents are no longer living. We aren’t all kids. You cannot blame parents.

    I think people need to know that extreme dieting CAN be very dangerous. It can be like doing a very addictive drug. You think you can stop. But suddenly you’re sucked into it.

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  • As for coping, from what I recall of my later years in the System I was “coping” with abusive treatment by starving myself. It was about the only thing left I could do. They cornered me into it with their power plays. They kept telling me what a bad patient I was, too.

    I got rid of the ones I had, then, tried to get new ones. I remember going from one office to another, asking them to help me. I didn’t know there was no help there.

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  • Psychiatry is very quick to call us rigid perfectionists. I have issue with this. I’ve even had therapists demand that I stop working hard at college! I can’t help it if I like the subject matter of the class!

    Another thing I had issue with was the fact that I like to run. They automatically assumed any exercise at all was OVERexercise. But for many, exercise is extremely helpful. It helped me to like my body more and to see food as fuel, not as the enemy.

    I’m happy to say that after I got those fools out of my life I have been free to run as much or as little as I want. I’m 60 years old and running a 5k in about a month. I look back on how they demanded that I stop running and I realize THEY had the control problems and foisted them on me.

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  • Yes and no. People with ED vary. Many are men, too. And also, many are older people, even folks in their 60’s and 70’s who are suffering. You can even start ED late in life.

    Another new thing is these weight-loss surgeries. Actually I have known a few people who got the surgery, and then, developed ED! Also, new are the drugs, which can cause all sorts of ED’s. I have heard of purging disorder caused by drugs, anorexia, and many developing bulimia, all from psych drugs and other pharmaceuticals.

    Another thing I’ve been trying to work on is that the weight-gaining drugs like Zyprexa should never be given to anyone with a history of anorexia. I think there should be a black box warning. The reason is that unwanted weight gain from the drugs will later cause a rebound effect and the anorexia will return with a vengeance. This happened to me post-Seroquel, and studies show that these drugs can often do this.

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  • Exactly, Richard. I had no clue what I was getting myself into when I started the diet. I sure didn’t want to lose more than a few pounds. I had no plans beyond that. My first binge absolutely shocked me. I had no word for it, didn’t have the word “binge” in my vocabulary. And I didn’t know “eating disorder,” either, nor “anorexia” nor “bulimia.” This was not due to naivete, but because such things weren’t known back then. In 1980, remember, this was the year Ronald Reagan was elected, and the Vietnam War was fresh in our memories. Life was very different back then.

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  • Steve many therapists who have control issues themselves get into the ED business. The ED “protocol” according to many therapists means forced weigh-in, reporting your food to a therapist or nutritionist, threatening the patient if she doesn’t gain, twice a week therapy, once a week weigh-in (see my article on this, it’s very very scary for kids), and a psychiatrist. This is the “team” (slavery) approach.

    The claim that ED is all about control…if it ever was…it now becomes control by the treatment team! So the control shifts. The team actually tells the parents to lay off, in effect they’re saying the parents did a bad job or caused the ED, that is, if the patient is young….the State is the Better Parent. “We do a better job so let us take over.”

    Now, the patient of course assumes these folks are actually working in her best interest and know better. Is ED about control? Yes. Yes. Yes.

    When that happened to me, THAT, is exactly what almost killed me. I was so trapped in it. When I look back I know I was responding to what they did. I know I starved myself voluntarily, but this was almost a defense against them, against the System that had harmed me.

    And in saying this, I am alive and fighting back. It needs to stop.

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  • Oh by the way, Frank, there are people who literally eat themselves to death. If you sit in on an Overeaters Anonymous meeting you might meet folks who seriously struggle with overeating. I have met people whose lives were very much taken over by overeating. I can say that overeating is not the same thing as bingeing. Some people suffer from both and some one or the other.

    I recall trying to explain this to people, even doctors, and since they never experienced it themselves it was futile and pointless.

    That I know of, in some regions overeating and bingeing are not even seen as distinct from each other.

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  • The part that was a choice, that I wish I had not chosen, was to believe the lies of my doctors and therapists all those years. First of all, they ignored my ED and assigned me other diagnoses. It was my mistake to believe them. That was a very bad choice.

    It was also my mistake, over the years, to believe they had any answers at all. It was my mistake to believe the lie that “doctor knows best.” It was a lie that we patients should “go to staff” or to a “professional” every time we had a problem.

    It was my choice to fall for all of that. It was my mistake. It was a mistake that cost me over three decades of my life.

    It was my choice to turn my back on psychiatry and the entire mental health system. In doing so, I am doubly blessed to see the end of my ED. I realized then that the System didn’t have any answers. The answers were within myself, and are within each and every one of us. I can only hope that others see this, so that the 30+ years I spent are not a waste, but can be made into a story that helps others beat this cycle.

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  • Lawrence I think most of the reason they almost always diagnose patients with concurrent psych disorders is because they want to drug us. They don’t have drugs for anorexia, so they tell us we’re depressed so they can give a cocktail of drugs. They even make excuses for giving Zyprexa. I’ve heard them telling kids that Zyprexa was “to calm you down” but really of course it was to induce weight gain in patients who weren’t gaining as fast as the insurance companies were demanding.

    They never acknowledged binge eating disorder until they had the designer drug. Back in 2013 I honestly didn’t realize this. Back then, I thought, “Oh, after all these years, they’ve finally listened.” Wow what a sucker I was. No, after all those years, they finally figured out how to make bucks off of us. And that’s the very sad bottom line.

    While statistically, more and more are getting ED, it’s also true that there’s financial interest in widening the ED umbrella. ED “treatment” is lucrative now. “Early detection” means more money for the ED prisons. We should be concerned because this is a human rights tragedy.

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  • Yes, this is true. Data supports that usually religious fasts don’t cause eating disorders. I am sorry for the misunderstanding here. I didn’t go on a fast. I went on a restrictive diet that I found in a diet book. The difference is that mine was prolonged. Not that I planned this.

    My guess here is that the writer was figuring most would break the diet and not stick to it for very long, or at all. He claimed you’d lose weight rapidly. What I did was stick to it. I was really starving. I started in the beginning of July and stuck to it through the summer and into the fall. I was not actually overweight to start with.

    The religious part was the reason behind the diet, that is, it wasn’t to “get boys,” nor to look a certain way. I don’t think I owned a mirror even. I was in college, a music composition student. I think part of the reason no one believed me for so long is because I didn’t fit the stereotype.

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  • I notice you edited your comment, Lawrence, to include seizures as exception. For a while during my long stint with psych I was wondering if my binge eating episodes were caused by seizure activity. I really didn’t know for many years.

    In the late 1980’s a doc said I might have TLE. Then, in 2011, another neuro said the TLE was a false dx and any irregularities were drug-induced. I believe this was correct. I never had those symptoms and anything similar I now realize was the effect of ECT back in the 1990’s. Hindsight….

    As I state in the article I solved the entire eating disorder problem by getting myself as far away from psych and therapy as I possibly could.

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  • Lawrence as I said in the article, therapy and psychiatry perpetuated my ED, first by ignoring it and assigning me psych disorders I never had. Then after 30 years had passed they finally decided I had ED.

    I was now in my 50’s! So now, they did ED “treatment” on me in the form of force-feeding and using scare tactics. They threatened me over and over. It was a power play and it just about killed me.

    This is how it was. The therapist would demand over and over what I had eaten, would accuse me of vomiting, would tell me she had ways to get me into the state hospital, and if I was as little as ten minutes late for our twice-a-week appointments she’d be on the phone with the cops…sectioning. Once I was studying in the library and my phone rang. It was her. She said, “Where are you? I’ve called the cops on you.” I have to laugh at that one. This is the kind of stuff I had to live with, living in constant fear. I was told if I didn’t gain a half pound I’d be incarcerated. I was told I had to take a cab and couldn’t burn any calories doing anything at all. These therapists should go out of business.

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  • ED is usually caused by a restrictive diet, that is, CAUSED by controlling your eating habits. Does that answer your question?

    From what I recall, this being decades ago, you have to realize that in 1980 hardly anyone went on a diet. I didn’t grow up in a chronic dieting family either, nor did I grow up giving a hoot about weight nor about fashion. I never looked in the mirror nor cared about my appearance.

    I went on a diet for religious reasons. I don’t consider myself a perfectionist. I didn’t have low self-esteem and I wasn’t depressed either. Come to think of it I wasn’t “anxious.”

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  • Obesity does kill. When a person suffers from binge eating, that person may become overweight or maybe not. During my decades of ED, I was various weights, and even when I was rail thin I suffered horribly from bingeing. I begged for help and what happened was I was not taken seriously. OR…get this:

    I was told it was “good” to binge. The truth is that an extremely large binge can cause stomach rupture and that is almost always instantly fatal.
    …Or I was told it was no big deal…..
    Or I was accused of vomiting. This repeated accusation was traumatizing for me.

    If you really do binge it horribly disabling. You can’t work like that and you can’t function at all. You are sick all the time, and you go broke, too. It’s no way to live.

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  • Well, again, you are relying on stereotyping. The stereotyping even seeps into “treatment.” So what happens is that young and vulnerable people are told “You are a rigid perfectionist” and of course that acts like a diagnosis. Most patients will rise to the occasion and act the part.

    Trauma may drive a person to go on a diet, but it is the extreme diet itself that triggers the cycle. Dieting causes a vicious cycle and it is so hard to get out of it that many tell me their lives are ruined by it. Therapy actually can reinforce the cycle by heightening the power play.

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  • I wish it were as easy as having been a choice. While back in 1980 I made the conscious choice to go on a diet (which had nothing to do with fashion mags as I had never seen one), which was only going to last a few months, and only a few pounds, I did not expect to be caught up in a deadly cycle that I couldn’t stop once I had started it. I didn’t know what I was getting into.

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  • I have a lot of faith in orthomolecular nutrition. I actually saw Dr Pfeiffer himself. My parents took me to him hoping that doing so would convince me to get off the “medications.” This was way back in the 1980’s. We drove to NJ to see him. Sadly, at the time, I decided he was a quack and dismissed everything he said. I think this was because I saw my psychiatrist as a god who could do no wrong. I wish I could take all that back.

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  • The comments here are really great. Steve McC I saw your comment in my email but I can’t find it now.

    Yes people do feel terrible sometimes, to the point of considering suicide. If you feel that conflicted, is that a “need”? Well it’s a need for something but not for psychiatry, lockup, and labeling.

    Yes, people suffer and yes they need something. They need to be heard, first and foremost. Most mental health modalities focus on symptoms and bullshit illnesses, not on real life problem-solving and issues such as poverty. Therapy doesn’t address it because therapy milks the poorest of the population (now, as this wasn’t always the case), so it’s an embarrassment.

    I have personally known people and read many stories about people who were in some kind of “treatment” for ages with therapists and during all those years the real thing bugging them was never spoken about.

    Then, something happens or some new person nudges their consciousness a bit. Then it all spills out. A sexual assault, abuse, bullying, these kinds of things that don’t get discussed in therapy if they don’t fit the therapist’s idea of what might bring patients to their offices. And some therapy patients never ever talk about what is really on their minds.

    Here is an example and this is public knowledge, a story I found online. A young person was suffering for a long time, and her therapists kept trying to hound her about her “abusive parents.” She knew her parents hadn’t been abusive and staunchly defended her upbringing.

    Finally, she was able to unearth it and tell someone. No it wasn’t her parents, but she had indeed been abused. By her grandmother.

    Yet this story doesn’t fit the stereotype. Nor does my own. I was abused while in high school but not by a family member nor relative. I was abused by my “best friend.” Trust me no therapist wanted to touch this one. They mostly insisted on defaulting to “abusive parents.” It was so harmful to me and harmful to my siblings (ripple effect).

    I did need to talk to someone. I found people sometimes, not therapists, usually some person older than myself I could look up to as role model, or mentor. Back then folks didn’t go to therapists very much.

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  • yes, either way you are right.

    I think we need to go back to basic principles. I can think of things people here probably agree on, such as forced drugging and ECT. However we are divided on “therapy” and even divided on what parts of the System should be abolished. All, or some?

    I know many therapists try to silence me about therapy abuse and claim that my telling my story is counterproductive. I have had to drop my membership in groups where there were too many self-righteous therapists claiming their practice was practically flawless and only an “exception” would be abusive. Not true.

    I refuse to take on the mentality that all non-drug approaches are humane. In therapy, all you have to do is to tell a patient she is psychotic or delusional when she’s telling the truth, and you have the recipe for very bad abuse.

    Many therapists do rely on the DSM and many believe in their diagnoses, too. Ever try seeing a therapist who saw you as schizophrenic or other psychotic diagnosis? You are never ever believed. You can try all you want but they won’t believe a word you say. Everything you say is denied.

    You can tell them anything. Like that you were sexually assaulted. They ignore you. I told my psychiatrist that a therapist asked me out on a date so I fired him. She claimed I was delusional.

    I have had nurses roll their eyes at me when I was in kidney failure, and discuss me like I’m a thing. I hope they are reading this right now. #mountauburnhospital

    This can happen with, or without the use of drugs. I believe the term is gaslighting.

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  • We live in a society where force is a way to wield power. Children are forced to go to school and if parents keep them home, it is considered truancy. In some societies woman are forced to obey their husbands, I daresay right here in the USA. Workplaces can be forceful. A boss or manager may threaten employees with “dismissal” should they act out of line. Employees are threatened with background checks and drug screenings. The atmosphere is oppressive in some of these workplaces, with much division between workers and those up top.

    We have normalized force, we shrug off the use of it, and that is not right.

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  • Fiashra after all those years looking to doctors for the answers, I more quickly found those answers within myself. And they were there all along, all those years but I stubbornly turned outside of myself because they insisted on their expertise. I believed them. I no longer do.

    I find the idea of seeing to it that psychiatry and the entire MH System loses its customer base is a great idea. Many of my neighbors refuse to see Western Med doctors and are extremely skeptical.

    There are two things. 1. Share our own experiences, and 2. offer compassion to those leaving or contemplating leaving the clutches of the System. And to me, the System means dependency on a therapist, too. I don’t see a person as free of psychiatry unless they can break the therapy addiction.

    I also think we need more venues (media) for story-sharing, getting these stories to the public.

    I personally joined Toastmasters and nearly every speech I give (about once a month at least) is anti-psych, or has antipsych overtones. I am competing in the International Speech Contest this year, and also trying out for TED Talks, likely 2019. If I get anywhere with this it’ll all be widely broadcast on YouTube etc. I’ve been working hard at public speaking and I find it comes naturally to me.

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  • There is no venue for therapy abuse. You can’t even go to another therapist for help with resulting trauma. That would defeat the purpose, no? And all that affects me to this day, affects my relationships and my ability to get along with others.

    I have even tried talking to my friends about it but they do not want to hear. Very few anyway. This subject needs to be brought out into the public and we need to be able to speak about it without being called paranoid.

    Look at what bringing sexual harassment did, people spoke up after many years. This is what I am hoping for.

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  • Well for that I apologize. My own organ damage IS permanent, permanent and life-shortening. Truth is I cannot get medical care for it because to seek medical care means down the line revealing how I got kidney damage (lithium). I have to live with the damage from lithium on a daily basis, my sleep is affected, I have permanent anemia, sometimes my red blood cells are deformed or swelled up, I drink six liters of fluids a day to compensate and take electrolyte supplementation. I also almost died a few years ago. I was lied to and told I caused it. Then I found out my kidneys had been failing for years, maybe a full decade, due to past lithium use (12 years). I was also lied to about my own medical condition.

    However, abuse trauma, from psychiatric abuse, caused me to fear and distrust doctors so much I am having trouble submitting to a cataract operation. I am blind in one eye and the other barely sees.

    I am not trying to minimize drug damage because to do so would be hypocritical. I AM trying to emphasize therapy abuse since it’s fucking taboo around here and therapists’ feelings get hurt so such stories are suppressed. Some people have no clue how abusive some therapists can be and just how hard it is on a person. Never mind what that woman did to me. Most do not even want to hear about it.

    Adam Lanza was a victim of therapy abuse, too. That is how badly it damages a person.

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  • Stumble into a great relationship or maybe have a pet stumble into your life. Stumble into church or a really cool meetup group, or, a gym. Friends of mine have found a lot of solace in the older self-help books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People. I personally liked When Bad Things Happen to Good People.

    I really have to give my dog Puzzle a lot of credit for being the awesome doggie she is.

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  • I think the work rules and “time off” rules need to allow for time off and no incentive should be there to move people from the welfare system (state, temporary) to the permanent SSDI system (or SSI). Once moved to this federal aid, fewer than 0.5% make it off disability.

    I call for more allowances for time off and fewer incentives to put people on permanent disability. I don’t think any psych condition is grounds for putting a person permanently out of the workforce. I do see conditions created by psych such as TD, brain damage, some organ damage as grounds for a disability claim.

    As substitute for psychiatry, which is practiced in a secluded office, I suggest more compassionate and caring communities.

    I notice slight differences between locales in terms of community caring. Watertown MA was cold and hostile, cars beeping at pedestrians just for being slow, a lot of road rage, and hostile and unfriendly neighbors.

    I found South America friendlier, but you did run into a lot of inappropriate behavior due to too much alcohol use.

    Where I live now, in one of the communities, within one month I was offered a ride by a passing motorist (just uphill a block or two) when they saw me struggling with my bags. Not only once, but four times in one month! This is totally unheard of where I lived in MA. I was so touched when the drivers stopped and asked.

    Also, at my workplace, workers were noticing that New Yorkers were more hostile and, as the word goes, irate. I am wondering if it’s a matter of population density, that too many squished together is going to produce hostility anyway, because it’s unnatural to live like that. People need privacy and space.

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  • Eric I love this. I, too, collected stuff, my best being a pool ball from a pool table on Wheeler 3, Emerson Hospital, in Concord, MA. This is where I met my boyfriend in 1986 whom I dated many years. Wheeler 3 isn’t the psych unit anymore. They moved to North 5. I had that pool ball many years.

    When I was in McLean a gal and her boyfriend (he was not inpatient with us) stole SO MUCH I was in utter shock. He would leave with these huge suitcases claiming he was “bringing her stuff home.” They believed it. When she started boasting about how much she had stolen, and whom she had stolen from, I started hiding my valuables. This was getting extreme. One weekend all the food was gone from the pantry! Well she got her money’s worth or some of it.

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  • Absolutely not, this is a generalization about ED and totally untrue. Many older ED’s like myself were completely ignored by psych, that is, our ED’s went totally unnoticed, for decades, and meanwhile we collected other diagnoses (whether they had any grain of truth to them or not) like Eric collected blankets. Many ED’s of any age are missed totally, since ED doesn’t always look like a rail thin teenage girl.

    I have been helped by drugs but I could have picked them up on Amazon just as easily. I didn’t need a doc for that.

    Psychs are poorly trained in nutrition and many don’t know jack about ED, either. Yes you can usually tell.

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  • Frank I agree, a friend was helped by a psych who explained the aftereffects of seizures.

    Psychiatrists should do this more often instead of making up their own diseases. I think there’s a need for psychs to help elderly sort out the negative effects of the drugs they are given, such as blood pressure and heart drugs. Also many of these drugs interact and we need people to identify these bad reactions. God bless the psych who tests for physical problems before jumping to conclusions, but very few do. I wish psychs did more real medicine, since they are indeed trained in this, instead of doing hocus-pocus diagnosis.

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  • It’s not Tireless that rants about the supposedly abusive middle class family, it’s another person. Tireless talks about the “recovery” movement.

    I know people think that about me, too, that I “rant,” but honestly if the general public started listening there would be no need for it. Where are the journalists? Where are the attorneys to take up our cases (thank you JG and a few others)? Many of us have lost friends and family too.

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  • Walter I am not 100% sure, but remembering back over a decade ago, I was kept on Seroquel way too long, even when my weight had doubled (literally). I have no clue why my therapist was mum on this, but she continued to defer to the psychiatrist who was blind to my appearance even though I complained bitterly.

    It seemed like this psychiatrist pushed the Seroquel to the point of her being delusional or possibly pushing me to say certain things and then, writing these in her notes. She claimed, years later, that I said, “I feel good on Seroquel.” I may have said this but she quoted me out of context. She quoted me in similar manner multiple times and during those sessions wanted to know a number (1-10) for how “good” I felt.

    Years later when she read her notes to me (trying to prove something) I could see that she had pushed me to say how great that drug was. She only wrote down that stuff, and didn’t record my complaints about weight gain, nor the person she saw before her, or about writers block that also plagued me, and lack of motivation. So here was an example of biased recording of patient outcomes.

    When I questioned friends who knew me they said I was “out of it” on the stuff.

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  • Fiaschra, Maybe they don’t want certain populations to increase in life expectancy. Psychiatry is handy for keeping these inconvenient populations in check. Which I suspect is its ultimate purpose. To suppress our voices, keep us out of the workforce, and ensure we die young.

    If seen this way maybe the “resistance” is SPEAK LOUDLY, LIVE LONG, and contribute to society in some meaningful way. Yes I know the suppression is very fundamental…..

    Susan R I like your ideas. Although having seen an oppressive workplace first hand recently, I can see that any worker solidarity is going to be difficult. People fear retaliation. The scare tactics in the workplace ensured worker silence.

    As on the wards, when they discouraged friendships and alliances among us, even to the point of separating roommates who got “too close,” or breaking up hallway conversations.

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  • I’m certainly not shitting on anyone. I can share examples but of course cannot be very specific for the sake of those affected. I see these folks as doing a disservice to those who have a genuine terrible experience.

    For instance, we know that a back injury can put someone out of work, and if much pain is involved, certainly make life unbearable. We also know that people who exaggerate “back pain” as reason to get onto disability do a terrible disservice to those who really have debilitating back injuries. See what I am saying? And we see variants of this, too.

    It’s bad enough that withdrawal is mislabeled “symptoms of mental illness” by some MH professionals. I have seen examples of MH professionals who stupidly mislabeled to the point of total ignorance.

    The worst of these being when I witnessed a fellow patient who had a bad reaction to long-term use of what I think was Risperdal. He had clear signs of TD which were called a “nervous twitch” by the psych!!!!

    But still we have to be careful not to blame every little thing that goes wrong in life on withdrawal. There are always some jumping on the bandwagon, or, rather, sneaking onto it. This hurts those who are legitimately there. I suspect more are on that wagon than should be, that’s all. By all means I wasn’t directing my comment at you personally.

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  • Richard L I love what you wrote. I think when we are newbies to the Movement we may have very high ideals and lofty goals, even unrealistic ones. This is not a bad thing even if we are grossly overoptimistic. I, too, recall the idealism of the 1960’s, the ideas people had that we could all live in peace and harmony, the “hippie” communes and people working so hard to maintain alternatives. I recall the earlier feminist movement, which was highly idealistic also. I recall a whole bunch of feminist utopia novels also.

    What happened to the feminists? What happened to the hippies? Where is the idealism, the dreaming and reaching up to places higher than we can possibly go? I believe such dreams are a necessary part of social change.

    Do we hope for a day when no one is called by a diagnosis or pseudo-diagnosis, when human behavior is not explained as synapses, but viewed compassionately, with genuine unselfish concern? I hope so.

    Realistic or not, I see no harm in hoping for the best. A person living in poverty might dream of riches. Working with this idea, he/she may proceed to work logically, step-by-step, to eliminate debt, work with creditors, and increase income. He may not become wealthy but his credit score will go up some.

    Without hope, where are we? I hope someday doctors aren’t paid so much nor treated like gods, nor have any say in court without tangible, measurable evidence. i hope we, as a society, stop blaming our own boo-boos on mental disorders, and take responsibility for cleaning up this mess.

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  • If we abolish their Bible, the DSM, the entire System and its pros will shift to a more helpful and honest profession. The UN has asked also that no person be declared mentally incompetent, that each human is an authority on his/her experience. What determines incompetence? A diagnosis! Get rid of those harmful and hurtful diagnoses and any pseudo-diagnosis such as “Black and White Thinking” and we are looking at more compassion, less categorizing.

    I found out the name for what happens when a person fits him/herself into a diagnostic category post-diagnosis. This is known as the “looping effect.” I know it is very common. I have witnessed this multiple times on “units.” People receive their awaited dxes, handed to them like awards, then, these unfortunate patients rise to their “bipolar” (or whatever) role in life, often for decades. This is hugely harmful, never mind the dx-based claims of dangerousness, claims of lacking insight, and justification for incarceration and more forced tx.

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  • I guess what I object to most is the elitism within the Movement. This comes from all sides, not just from provider circles excluding survivors, but from survivors who refuse to speak with other survivors, noses in the air, overlooking those they feel aren’t as important as they are. There is rampant snobbery in the Movement.

    And there is also a social ranking in some circles as to “off drugs” and “still on.” Or even, (I gotta laugh over this one), which particular drugs you’re still on. It is a status symbol. That is SO INSANE. I don’t think anyone should have to publicly post their drugs, for godsakes, to be accepted in a community. And oh, the worse you suffer from withdrawal, or claims of such, another claim to fame, the more attention you draw.

    Aren’t these things just fallout from where we came?

    Why can’t we all just speak reasonably to each other? I object to the tiers among us which are often arbitrarily drawn. I do think we should have chosen leaders and spokespeople from among us, people who can approach the government and the media. I don’t think “professionals,” no matter how sympathetic, reflect the survivor voice nor should they represent it.

    And I resent the claims that so many providers are quietly survivors themselves. You are not doing us any favors by remaining silent. Even those that claim they do so to “keep their jobs.” You are selling out, dudes, and snubbing us.

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  • Frank I am also concerned about the medicalization of our anger. Anger isn’t a disease, and is useful to overturn oppression and can effect positive social changes.

    I grew up in the 1960s, boy were people pissed over the Viet Nam War. It was exactly this anger that I believe was the major reason the USA pulled out (for the most part).

    If there are enough of us, and we call out in unison, the walls will come down.

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  • Tina I would be very happy to contribute. Originally, it was the use of force that caused me to question mental health “care,” as I saw multiple assaults on human rights while I was an eating disorders patient. Then, my disbelief in the System widened to include diagnosis and drugs.

    My initial reaction was a traumatic reaction to the use of force (water restriction) and after I would not be silent about it, subsequent threats to silence me via drugs and incarceration. Regretfully I have yet to spark the interest of a mainstream journalist, nor has any attorney been willing to take up my case, though a parallel case occurred in the UK that resulted in patient death. Prior to these incidents I had been incarcerated many times (three decades of that) and didn’t have a traumatic reaction. I am thankful that this red herring showed up in my life.

    I would be very very happy to write for this initiative! Please contact me at [email protected]

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  • i want to know why the author didn’t quote Bonnie Burstow, who publicly calls herself an abolitionist. Mr. Nikkel did not call BB a nihilist nor an extremist nor an angry black-and-white thinker. Who would dare do so? No, it’s easier to call survivors “angry,” “extremist,” all those euphemisms for “personality disordered.”

    Here we see the class system at work. The socioeconomic tiers created by the “needy ill” and the unblemished wealthy who hold power over them. In my opinion, this class system is exactly what must be abolished.

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  • I would like to see an end to the DSM and any euphemisms for “Mental Illness” taken out of mainstream use. I don’t mean terms like wacko, which is sometimes a compliment (depending on context). I would like to see a reduction of negative commentary on a person’s character.

    I would like to stop calling abusive spouses and other abusive people by disease names such as narcissist, psychopath, bipolar, schiz, and other conditions psych sees as permanent. I know people are angry at abusers, but if we see abuse as a crime and not a character flaw or disease, we are putting full responsibility for the abuse on the abuser, legally. Abuse is cruel and illegal, why excuse them by crediting some disease? Many abusers “pass on” the abuse they received as children, taking it out on their own kids. That, too, doesn’t make it okay, nor make it a disease.

    Doctors and other medical professionals sometimes are treated badly by administration or managers. They, in turn, take it out on their patients. I don’t see that as EVER being okay, nor in any way justified, nor ethical nor legal.

    Disease? These aren’t diseases, they are crimes.

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  • Force-feeding via a tube, or even non-tubed force, IS rape in some locales, but if you look at the legal rape definition, it varies regionally, and even between states of the USA. So sometimes it falls under that category and sometimes the category specifies “penis” or “sexual intercourse.” Newer laws mention the use of drugs (date rape drugs, etc) as means to falsify consent.

    Look closely at the UK definition of rape. A person must not only obtain full consent, but INFORMED CONSENT. This means, for instance, if you are a married man and misrepresent yourself as unmarried, it’s rape. Or if you aren’t using birth control and misrepresent yourself as “don’t worry, I’m using a condom.” Apparently a handful of misrepresentation cases have been tried in the UK.

    Psychiatry always misrepresents itself. If it did not, we, as a society, wouldn’t buy into it. But legally, psych assault may, or may not fall under the rape category depending on the exact wording of the governing laws.

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  • Hmm…where are the comments? Am I really the first?

    I agree, on a practical level, I highly doubt it’ll happen as you have outlined.

    However, Bob, you seem to have missed something. The All-Holy Bible, the DSM! Diagnosis means some people are singled out as diseased and “requiring treatment.” This is what leads to drugging and marginalization. You also specified, in your outline of the abolition events, only one MH practice, psychiatry, leaving out the rest of the shebang. I suspect also you took the comments (all by survivors, notably) out of context. Do you know any of these folks personally? It was almost like you were saying “All survivors are extremist black and white thinkers” which is, sorry to say, another way to say just how diseased we are.

    Most of us who are angry are not permanently angry. Anger serves a useful purpose, to protect us against another psychiatric assault and to preserve our human rights. Anger also helps spread the word to others who may be in the “questioning” phase. Many find that the anger, which is really a necessary part of grieving, dissipates over time. Especially if we are heard.

    You didn’t mention psychotherapists going out of business. Maybe because some therapists might be reading here and (horrors!) be offended. I think in many ways, since some therapists are movement allies ($$$), MIA and other groups sell out and let the entire dubious practice of psychotherapy off the hook.

    As I see it, it is pointless to abolish psychiatry as if it were the Isolated Evil of the World, when there are so many abusive practitioners and institutions that are not psychiatrists.

    After all, many MIA readers are “therapists” who work outside the box, outside of diagnosing and “treating.” However, these are rare indeed, far more rare than many are willing to admit.

    I think very specific things need to happen. We need to disempower the practice of psychiatry and Western Med in general. Doctors are overpaid. The psychiatrist’s opinion should not be used as court evidence. Emotional and mental distress should not be viewed as a permanent condition, and should not turn into lifetime disability and marginalization. What is “normal” should not be determined by mental health professionals.

    The CRPD has wonderful guidelines and literature outlining how people should be treated and is demanding that all countries agree to be humane to its people.

    What would happen if we abolished psychiatric *diagnosis* as a mode of eugenics? I don’t personally care what happens to the drugs, they can go on the street or be sold in vending machines so they’ll harm people less.

    Abolishing the DSM would improve the practice of “therapy” also. Therapists wouldn’t be cornered into treating diseases, they’d consider the person and the circumstances. A person wouldn’t be incarcerated due to being seen as “ill.” Without the support of the DSM’s phony diagnoses, many of these drugs would disappear from the market or fall into disuse.

    If psych drugs were sold on the street (they likely are already) people would use them for what used to be thought of as the drug side effects. Helping them get to sleep, a few for weight loss (or the opposite), a few to enhance one’s sex life (likely, again, the opposite), and one or two as date rape drugs. I used to hear of people using a few of these to “come down” off of hallucinogens such as LSD.

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  • Thanks, Sera. I just saw this just now after my friend pointed it out to me. So I came to have a look. Some of what you describe I have experienced, such as the silencing incidents you describe, my own very much similar. It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be for me. I can recall being in rooms full of people and not being allowed to speak at all, and being cut off just as I began a sentence. I couldn’t help but feel like “If anyone else said that, they wouldn’t be cut off as I was” but…Then I get the feeling either I am not wanted around, or no one wants to hear whatever I have to say. It gets tiring and I end up feeling like I am constantly fighting to get a word in. This has extended to friendships also, wrecking a few of them, because even when it’s not really happening, as I have the deathly fear of not being heard.

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  • Okay, I will hurry and get a quick-fix doctor license and set up practice in Florida. That’s the safest state for me. I don’t have to worry about being sued if I kill a patient. Maybe, in fact, it’s safer to kill than to maim, so I might pull the plug on someone to avoid a lawsuit. Ah, the life…I’ll see you on the golf course.

    In all seriousness, best of luck with this! And…I found this post as “sponsored content” on Facebook. Wow, MIA getting up in the world.

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  • I hadn’t seen this before. I read the whole article and wasn’t surprised at the “treatment” you got, Laurie. What hit home was the bit about being a whistleblower. Then, suddenly, all came clear to me.

    I never knew why I had been abused myself, horrendously, called suicidal when I wasn’t, threatened, physically abused, sneered at, all sorts of emotional abuse including eye-rolling and claims that I was psychotic, theft, called a liar, given drugs that would have killed me, and had my apartment illegally searched (I found out upon my release!).

    I never knew why on earth this happened until I got my records. The suicidal claim was lame indeed. There was no evidence that I was suicidal and as I read my records, they’d already evaluated me and determined I wasn’t.

    What I learned was that at the administrative level, they didn’t truly believe I was suicidal nor did they believe I was psychotic. Their aim was to incarcerate me and drug me until I could no longer write.

    It was my whistleblowing activities that concerned them. This was the threat, not any danger to self. At the admin level they knew this, though they told their lower-paid workers I was very very dangerous indeed. They told the workers not to leave me, to remain within three feet of me at all times.

    The object was to have me moved from the medical ward to a psych ward where I would be kept a long time and further abused. Thankfully, they were too lazy to engineer the move themselves and had an outside agency from Boston do the evaluating. It was obvious to these young crisis workers that enough harm had been done and they petitioned for my release.

    This happened in Massachusetts and I have spoken to the legislators also. I also put in a complaint about my outside psychiatrist who was the one who saw to it that I was seen as a danger. There were other complaints I wrote up against her also. I have not gotten a response.

    I will check out your site and thank you for everything you do.

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  • So when the study compared to undiagnosed people, had these undiagnosed folks been locked up for long periods, secluded from society, deprived of intellectual stimulation, unable to pursue academic study, and regularly insulted by low intellectual expectations?

    I aced calculus when I was a kid. I can’t do math now beyond simple arithmetic simply because I haven’t used it in decades.

    Patients are not encouraged to use their intellectual abilities. Those deemed psychotic are taken out of intellectually-stimulating “groups” and put into Bingo instead. Computer use is limited on wards if allowed at all. Units ban books. (I am told my memoir is among the banned books!) Rehabs encourage low-level jobs and discourage advanced college study.

    Reading this makes me realize that taking up the intellectual exercise of writing, which I did simply to record events post-ECT, was likely the main factor that led me out of System.

    Ironically, years later I was threatened by authorities who demanded that I stop writing, the very same thing that not only liberated me, but exposed the harms that marginalized me to begin with.

    When I was midway through graduate school a doctor and social worker took me aside and said, “We know you better than you know yourself. If you go back to graduate school you will only end up back in the hospital. You must go to a day program.”

    I told them to go to hell. I went back to graduate school and did fine.

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  • Lawrence, you are writing about psychiatry from psychiatry’s point of view. If you focus on the patient’s experience, psychiatry and all of mental health isn’t just a religion, it’s a brainwashing religious CULT. I have been writing on this topic for years in my blog. I did a two-hour radio broadcast on the topic of brainwashing, cults, and the similarities between psych and cults. My station is at blogtalkradio.com/juliemadblogger and if you scroll down the list of shows you will find the one on brainwashing.

    My suggestion has been that psychiatry and often, psychotherapy as well, both brainwash its clientele as a way of keeping them from leaving the cult and continuing to adhere to its illogical practices.

    The essence of brainwashing is to strip a person of his/he current identity and ideology, and then, replace these with a brand new identity and way of thinking.

    Thus, wherever you were at when you came into psych (such as, “I’m a college student and I just want a little help) gets knocked down and replaced with, perhaps, “I am a mental patient, I have a permanent disorder, I’m disabled, I smoke Kools, and I go to a day program and live in a halfway house.”

    It is written that if the brainwashing is successful, the subject will fully embrace the new identity.

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  • Don,I would love to get involved with any of the projects you mentioned. I will contact you offline.

    I am amazed at how widespread this procedure is, and yet, most people assume it is no longer done. Also, most who are unfamiliar with how psychiatry works assume that shock is somehow “modernized” and therefore, couldn’t possibly be as bad as witnesses are saying. Survivor accounts are discredited or we’re told, “But you must have been an exception!” I’m never quite sure what the best response is when people say that.

    I think the year was 1995 or 1996 when I witnessed a 96-year-old man, fellow inmate, receive electroshock at Newton-Wellesley Hospital’s inpatient psych unit.

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  • Sam, I want to know, after all the effort you have made to understand your SO, is she “better”? That is,”better” according to how she, not you, might define it?

    When I got better, and this is just speaking for me, “better” meant I started making my own decisions and taking control of my life. It meant having confidence, plenty of energy, and ability to do things on my own without relying on the demeaning “services” of the Mental System. The only way I could get to this point was to leave the Mental System far behind. I am not married and very happy to be single.

    When I wasn’t “better,” I called the therapist every time things went wrong. I didn’t decide for myself. I blindly obeyed the the doctor and the therapist. The therapist blamed me every time things went wrong, or blamed some vague thing called my “symptoms.” I was frequently “sectioned.”

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  • This is in response to Sa’s comment, but again, I don’t have the ability to sort through the posts so I am sorry for misplacing this comment. SO’s and anyone interested might want to know about the Maudsley method of treating eating disorders. This is done at home. Hospitalization is discouraged or just not done. The family apparently helps the child eat again. I know a few who have been through this method. From what I know, the success rate is much, much higher than the usual force method. There are a few families that aren’t a good fit for this method. I have read about instances where it goes horribly wrong. But overall it sounds like when it works, it works extremely well. The force method turns kids into Revolving Door Syndromes and encourages bad habits. More people die from anorexia than from Depressoin or from Schizophrenia, according to statistics. it really can kill.

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  • This is about my seventh attempt to post a response. Forgve me for putting it on the bottom but after all those attempts I just can’t scroll around to try to find the “right” place to put this.

    Say there really are EVIL People in the world. Then, doesn’t that mean some are NOT EVIL. It does. Some, according to this assumption are surely EVIL, while others, maybe the rest of us, are OKAY.

    What do you propose we do, since “some are EVIL.”? Say, lock them up? How about a concentratioon camp for Evil People? If they really suck that badly, why even bother? Just kill these inferior sub-humans.

    See, by calling some people evil, that’s re-creating the split society, with some “okay,” and some deranged. This is what the System taught us.

    how about holding the fully human people , which I would like to suggest we all are, totally accountable? Some commit horrible crimes. Many psychiatrists are criminals. They’ve committed some of the worst crimes in history. The crimes they committed were, and continue to be, based on the principle that some folks just aren’t good enough.

    Let’s not duplicate what they are doing.

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  • Or, how about this? You ask for help with X but they help you with Y, which you may, or may not have. Example: You go to the college health center saying you were raped. You get pills for depression..You go to them with a career question, you get diagnosed with a phobia. And me…I went to them with an eating disorder, asked for rhelp with it, they declared me schizophrenic. looks like I MIGHT be able to get hold of the records precisely when this was done….

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  • no no no! Frances that is waaaaay too much. With the Orotate you take very little! Not the euivalent of the toxic Carbonate. I tried it myself I got the size of tablets that are the lowest dose, which will give you roughly 5 mgs Elemental Lithium. I started with 1/2 pill, gradually went up. No more than two, that is 10 mg of Elemental Lithium (the rest of the mg is the Orotate, a B Vitamin).If you have the 10 size, only one pill at most, or two 5 pills. No more! Less is better and you will still notice better sleep. I also take magnesium and potassium along with this. It is very helpful but must take a low dose or you get toxic, you don’t want that. Go read up on it.

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  • From what I have heard stress contributes to most diseases out there, certainly to one’s susceptibility to infection.

    Of course, how one reduces stress, or whether one does, is a choice. And for some of us, stopping psychiatric “care” has been a great way to reduce stress. Sadly, people with Alzheimer’s are often sent to psychiatrists, and even worse, locked units. Many of them spend their final days locked up.

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  • Thanks for clarifying, Joanna. So that three-hour test rules out the possibility of, say, stroke being the culprit. This DOES make sense.

    My friend’s mother was misdiagnosed and that killed her. She has Lewy Body and the great McLean Hospital said it was Alz. Sadly, they gave my friend’s mother Risperdal. That did her in. I believe my friend was able to hire an attorney, but that will not bring her mother back, sadly.

    The test that the wealthy writer had was $10,000 out of his own pocket, he said. It did not diagnose Alz. Rather, it told him he didn’t have it. He ended the article saying the test showed he actually had something else, something that was less of a death sentence as far as he was concerned. He said very few can afford the test and it’s brand new, but you’re right, it’s not a positive, but negative indicator.

    If I recall correctly this was in something like The Atlantic, not in a scientific journal. It was an interesting read.

    I could relate as a person coerced onto disability and unemployment for over three decades and then, slowly realizing it was fraud. I have to correct people. I didn’t recover from schizoaffective. I never had it, never had the signs nor symptoms. I have to say this over and over because very few believe me. It is hard looking back knowing that for three decades, you were duped.

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  • You guys missed the FOX news article on Kelley. He was drugged from sixth grade on. And this was apparently instigated by his parents. As a child, he spoke out against the drugging. FOX interviewed friends from junior high who described it as “he was heavily medicated.” This suggests a cocktail. As a child. It was psych drugs, the article said so. This information was suppressed and the nuthouse escape made central.

    By the end of high school he had already been mass unfriended by his peers. He had chosen atheism, but he lived in a community that frowned upon atheists. He was socially othered and even then, seen in a very bad way.

    Mass unfriending gives you a pessimistic view on the world. It makes you suspicious and for a while you truly hate your life. You feel like you can never, ever trust again.

    I am lucky that after I was also mass unfriended, some very kind people out there decided, even though it was the unpopular view, to give me a chance. So it turned around and I was never violent nor resorted to suicide.

    Yes he got the bad end of the stick. It didn’t get any better for him, and it looks like his capture in the nuthouse, escape of not, only furthered his feelings of distrust and fear, and other people;s distrust in him. I suspect that by the time he married he was way out of control, and something other than marriage was needed to help him trust others again.

    This happens to people and I feel for anyone in such a situation.

    And thanks for the humor on Murphy!!! Hypocrite!!

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  • Thanks for this article. I was following along and nodding my head in an emphatic YES until I got to the part about Alzheimers. I believe the Alzheimer’s Foundation (or whatever the major charity may be called) states that to properly diagnose Alz, the patient has to go to a NEURO, not to a psych. The Alz Foundation has articles on “Preparing for your neuro exam” and talks about how grueling this three-hour exam is. There are also instructions for caregivers of the elder, telling about the exam and how tiring it could be for the elder.

    A neuro exam tests reflexes, EEG, balance, tests for stroke, seizure disorder, head trauma, etc. These would reflect physical changes in the brain. Am I right?

    A recent article came out written by a man dxed with Alzheimer’s. What happened was that he was diagnosed and then, he prepared for gradual decline and death. This was life-changing for him. (Yes it does change your life!)

    Oddly, as time went on, he found he wasn’t deteriorating. Then, he spent a huge fortune, (as he was wealthy) on a complex test that proved he never had Alz at all. The dx confirmed his suspicions, but he expressed in the article that knowing he had lived with a false death-sentence type dx was certainly almost like years had been stolen from him. Does this sound familiar to us?

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  • Skylar that was so brilliant. I have witnessed similar things. I agree, in ANY situation, you simply cannot fully know what another person is experiencing. You don’t have their past behind you, you cannot live in their body, nor feel the same things they feel.

    Empathy can only go so far. Perhaps you have read Rilke’s beautiful discussion of “inseeing.” It is transformative, intuitive, and far too sacred to ever happen in a shrink’s office where one party pays another.

    I am thinking that in a really close relationship, such as marriage would be ideally, inseeing would be part of that relationship. I can’t see it projected elsewhere in the artificial sense, such as onto an online discussion, onto a “case study,” or newspaper article.

    Maybe such expressions of deep love should be encapsulated in creative arts, poetry, and music, where the sacred can be safely preserved.

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  • Uprising, this writing class would not have been a general writing class, but specifically a class in memoir so people such as survivors (if you call yourself that) or ex-inmates can effectively write their stories. Good writing sells, less effective writing won’t sell. Imagine if we could get more stories out there, well-written stories that illustrated our credibility. People need to cultivate ideas on where to start their story, how to frame it, issues regarding point of view (this can get VERY complex), and many many more difficult questions.

    This would have been a very relevant class to our mission. Sadly, the editors didn’t want it. Part of me says, “They didn’t want the class because I was the one proposing it.” I know I’m not a big name, and it wouldn’t turn into a CEU, it would be helpful to survivors. What if an MD proposed it (even though an MD has no creative writing training typically)? It won’t be because an MD isn’t qualified.

    We know that if more stories came out, in either traditional publication, or online, or even as book-turned-movie, more would join the fight and those fortresses will crumble.

    For years people have asked me writing questions and I try my best to answer. All kinds of questions, some related to writer’s block.

    The goal of the establishment is to silence us, ensure our stories are not heard. Many feel too exhausted or are discouraged from writing, or are told they are incapable.

    MIA still upholds the authority of so-called professionals. I can’t even stand calling them professionals after what I saw on the wards.

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  • Julia, yes, I, too, found that “professionals” that I myself consulted were not helpful. Some harmed me deeply.

    I have strongly disagreed with MIA’s favoritism of MH degreed bloggers. As I stated in my forum post, something like 61% of blog posts (not including comments, but the posts themselves) were written by MH degreed people. I tallied all these up, and somehow broke it down into categories. At the time, all MIA radio broadcasts were by MH degreed people with the exception of Eleanor Longdon. All classes were geared toward MH degreed people and taught by MH degreed people. I offered to teach a writing class (I have a masters) but that idea was killed by the editors.

    I concluded that by far, not enough articles were written from the legal perspective. I wish more law students, attorneys, and paralegals would submit, especially since these cases often come up in the courtroom. I very much appreciated Breggin’s recent reports on a particular court case that has been in the media spotlight.

    I think there are some who don’t believe much can be done to turn the tide. And yet others who feel we can. I see friction between these groups, the Yes We Cans and the Don’t Even Bothers. As I see it these squabbles play out on here.

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  • I have somehow lost track of the ordering of comments here. Julia, I can’t speak for others but I don’t personally encourage people to “stay that way forever” or stay any way forever simply because this doesn’t happen, time changes us. We get older, we change, we grow, we die, and people and things and even climate all change.

    We cannot even state nor promise “recovery forever” as some programs actually do (if you obey them and keep on paying them money). These programs and their sweeping promises ultimately fail.

    I don’t suggest a passive approach such as waiting for some authority (parent, doctor, spouse, clergy, God, Jesus, magic pill) to somehow come out of nowhere, sweep down and “fix” our lives. In literature this is actually considered a cop-out method of ending a story, a bad plot method. A classic example (if you recall) is the ending of The Poseidon Adventure. At the end, they couldn’t leave the capsized boat. Stuck. Lo and behold someone had found them and cut through the boat. This plot twist was heavily criticized because all the way through, the protagonists had done for themselves, had taken responsibility instead of passively hoping for divine intervention, which was the preacher’s original message, way back in his sermon in the beginning, right? Whether you are religious or not, responsibility is the key here.

    Taking responsibility might mean taking back your right to decide for yourself, instead of passively allowing parents or doctor or therapist to decide for you. This takes a lot of practice since what people do (and I’ve seen this…) is that even after getting rid of the shrink, they then grab the nearest substitute. This won’t work.

    The System lied to us, forced us into relinquishing our control over our lives. Take it back. Take back your body, your mind, your life.

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