Honestly, I’m a little surprised about the fuss which is being made around this study. It almost makes me want to put on a tinfoil hat and look for some conspiracy. Or is it just psychiatry’s/pharma’s attempt to control the message in the light of more and more people seeing the emperor has no clothes?
“Sometimes, an aspect of the disease is that the patient believes threats and enemies are everywhere – including in the person of the doctor.”
It’s not an aspect of a disease, it’ accurate assessment of the situation and these people deserve to be called doctors just as much as Dr. Mengele. It’s state sponsored kidnapping and torture.
If the dropped using drugs they would have surely cut it down significantly. Even more so if they went with Open Dialogue-like approaches but I guess I can dream on.
And what does that really mean:
“The students are almost inevitably legal adults, but there are a lot of other parties that have skin in the game and really have concerns and to one degree or another legitimate involvement.”
ALMOST legal adults? I didn’t know that when you become a student you become infantalized. I knew that happens when you become a patient but apparently this way of social control is expanding. If it’s really health we’re talking about then the same rules should apply and the patient’s welfare should come first. Unless it’s not health that all these “other parties” have in mind.
Btw, I don’t belive that for a minute:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the schools are trying to strike the right balance,” said Paul Lannon, a Boston lawyer who advises colleges on legal issues. “They care for the students. They want the students to do well. They want the students to be healthy.”
All they want is to cover their a** in case something happens. Nobody cares about students, they are there to be made money off.
One more reason to stay away from the psych industry. They ruin your life in so many different ways one does not know where to start. And after that they dare to turn around and tell you how bad “stigma” is.
Supposedly they have now forbidden the psychologists from taking part in interrogations. However, I’ve not seen any sign of them wanting to punish the people who did it nor do I believe they will enforce it in future. I hope they prove me wrong but the more I know the more cynical I get.
Let me guess: business as usual?
First of all there has to be real penalties, including criminal, for doctors who are not sticking to guidelines on these drugs. Otherwise they can do whatever they want and never face any consequences.
“The report acknowledges a noticeable difference of opinion about that causes of prescription drug dependence between the governmental and practitioner organizations on one side and the support groups, withdrawal charities, and affected individuals on the other. The first group attributed patterns of dependence to individual differences in patients while the latter placed accountability on the inappropriate prescribing practices of the doctors.”
That is in itself very telling. Let me translate:
“first group attributed patterns of dependence to individual differences in patients” -> “these people are junkies and their defective brains are to blame”
But it’s nice that some people are starting to address the problem. It is too little, too late for many but maybe it will help at least some and prevent more people from getting hooked on these drugs going forward.
Humanities aside – most doctors and that included (first and foremost) psychiatrists are not very well educated in …biology. It seems counter-intuitive to a lot of people but the biological education in medical school is very narrow and little attention is paid to making students understand even such basic concepts as theory of evolution.
I’ve had first-hand experience as part of my studies was done at the medical university where my faculty shared some of the courses with medicine. They were very good at some things (like anatomy) but lacked in other respects and even well-prepared biological courses were treated as “unimportant”. Later on I had to work in a collaborative environment between doctors and life scientists and such issues were showing – things that were obvious for us (like that using drugs cocktails to treat cancer or HIV should work better long-term to prevent drug resistance) were coming as a surprise and hard to understand concepts for doctors. So I’m not very surprised when members of this profession show sometimes stunning ignorance even on issues they should be educated about and psychiatrists are probably the worst offenders.
Wow, that’s remarkable. I hope it will spread.
‘I’d Rather Die Than Go Back to Hospital’
The sign of sanity and clear thinking. One has to really be out of one’s mind to want to re-experience psychiatry.
Recommendations have this tiny problem that they can be (and are) routinely ignored with no consequences to the ignoring.
“There’s an unsettling correlation between psychopathy, a personality disorder characterized by a lack of conscience, and those who find personal wealth and success” Jon Ronson reports in The Psychopath Test. Psychopaths are four times more likely to be found among CEOs than the general population, which means that lack of empathy or remorse combined with superficial charm, egotism, unethical behavior and a search for thrills are some of the qualities rewarded most highly. ”
That’s also a good observation. The values of our society are upside down.
He has a point. Way to deal with “superfluous population”.
…while the NSA was recording.
When you google “lizard people” and “flat earth society” you’ll also find a lot of interesting things. Not everything you real on the internet is true.
“Psychiatry NEVER diagnoses anybody as needing Justice”
So true…
I actually think there’s a good “model”: every bad think that happens to a person adds up, the more severe more than the benign one. When enough sh*t accumulates, especially at once people break down. That is what it used to be called “mental breakdown” and that is for me the one and only correct “diagnosis”. Some people have the breaking point earlier, others can withstand a lot more but almost anyone will break down if enough bad things happen to them. It’s really that simple – what is complicated is when you deal with an individual and his/her unique life story. We are all different and we’re all the same.
bpdtransformation, B.A.
I think you may be reading to much into studies on this topic. I also saw studies which suggest that it’s not the early childhood that’s the problem (at least for psychotic “disorders”) but rather what happens in early teens, especially related to social stress (bullying, racism or even such “benign” things like moving out of town and losing one’s childhood friends).
It may be very well that the truth is somewhere in between – for one person it’s the neglect when she was 3, for someone else it’s sexual abuse at 14, for someone otehr it’s romantic breakdown at 30. People are complicated.
If I understand correctly by “mother” you understand “primary caregiver”?
“When I started out psychiatry was not medicalized, and was purely humanitarian.”
I’m not sure when and where you started out but I can’t recall any period in psychiatry’s history when it could be called “humanitarian”.
However, I must say I don’t agree with that:
“The appropriate treatment is the psychotherapy of character. Psychotherapy is a specialized form of human engagement that repairs the damage to one’s character”
It’s another way of telling people they’re broken and defective and need to be “repaired”. While I do agree that conscious effort to overcome one’s habits and change bad coping strategies may be helpful for some people under some circumstances and some people need a friend or maybe a therapist to point them in the right direction I strongly disagree with the idea that badly developed personalities are to blame. More often than not it’s the society that drives people “crazy”.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Human suffering has never been a brain problem. It is a human problem, and it has been so since the dawn of time.”
This is an important message that cannot be repeated often enough. Thank you for these words.
This questionnaire is loaded with societal expectations, I agree with it.
I could not hep but LOL at ” I can weigh up the pros and cons of psychiatric treatment”.
Very important questions, I’d also like to know the answer.
“I agree that there is no one event that can be identified as a ’cause’, and agree that it is a culmination of events that are triggered at some point.”
I don’t agree with that. It may be true in many cases but I know full well that the only time I tried to take my own life was when I was being tortured in a hospital and the one and only, singular reason was for the torture to stop.
“Instead, like surgeons, they will implement tools that reduce the suffering and enhance the well-being of the patient.”
translated:
“We are real DOCTORS goddammit! We do MEDICINE.”
I wonder who are the “experts” testifying in these trials? The likes of Lieberman & co?
I think they just discovered that the Earth is not flat afterall.
That is a wonderful idea :). I’m on board.
Garbage in, garbage out.
People get better when they feel like they belong to a community, are needed and respected by others. It’s really that simple.
You don’t want to buy ineffective and toxic meds for huge amouts of money? Clear conflict of interest.
In the world where corporations have constitutional rights nothing is too crazy.
Antipsychotics are devastating at any dose. It’s just the question if you ant to die quickly, slowly or live as a zombie.
“the laws protect them and regulate OUR behavior, no theirs”
You’re 100% right. Would someone include a Bribe Seeking Disorder or Insatiable Greed Syndrome in the DSM that would be the end of this book of nonsense.
There are never criminal charges in these cases… For the companies such settlements are a drop in a bucket and the “cost of doing business” and most individual doctors are insured against such cases so that they rarely have to reach to their own pockets.
As long as there are no jail sentences it’s not justice – it’s a mockery.
I agree. That is not necessarily to say that people who commit acts of violence on these drugs were necessarily latent killers anyway – one has to consider akathesia which from what I’ve heard is enough to turn Ghandi into a serial killer. Also these drugs diminish empathy. I don’t think I know one person who has never expressed an urge to murder their boss but almost no one seriously thinks about it. Killing another human being is a hard thing to do save for a small minority of people with psychopathic personalities who usually don’t need encouragement anyway. If the drug takes the empathy away, takes impulse control away and on top of that causes suffering then it’s a “perfect mix”. For people who got on these drugs because they already had some relational problems it’s the end.
People often say about mass shooters that they are psychopaths. Leaving aside the appropriateness of using labels a psychopath (someone naturally lacking empathy and ability to form attachments combined with a fetish for murder but otherwise “normal”) will not commit mass murder and then suicide. A person like that may become a serial killer or join the military or do something where one can realize these urges without suffering the consequences. The mass shooters don’t fit this profile, not in my mind. These actions scream desperation for me, not cold blooded murder even if they appear so.
Let’s start with the fact that psychotherapy is not medical treatment, even in the crazy world of psychiatry it isn’t. I find it particularly amusing when people do clinical trials with it. It always reminds me of: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/2/24/blind_trials.png
It’s a matter of individual vs stats. When you look at the magnitude of the problem ADs seem to be worse but that does not mean everyone trying to come off them will have a major problem. Like with any other drug really, some folks get a pass.
Are you trying to say that Germans are better people than good folks down in Illinois? I don’t think so.
I seriously don’t get people’s obsession with Jobs. He was an extraordinarily good salesman and a***ole at the same time, bordering on a sociopath. It’s close to a last person I’d put on a pedestal for people to emulate as a hero.
There are many better and smarter people who do not exploit others and have less of an ego. Sadly, they don’t become demigods.
“I don’t think they create positive symptoms but could be mistaken about that.”
You are in fact mistaken. The work of Robert and others clearly show that the use of neuroleptics, especially long-term increases a chance of psychosis (so-called supersensitivity).
“You might notice that when someone “acts out” medication is an issue somewhere.”
That is so true. I had problems at the point when I entered psychiatry but it was not before I tried some of their pills that I’ve become suicidal, with panic attacks, obsessive, paranoid etc. Not that I didn’t have reasons to be like that given the nature of my relationship at the time but going on these poisons and then coming of them because of the side effects and then going on different ones and ;like that for weeks and months seriously screwed me up. The worst by far was Zyprexa – the person who came up with this one should burn in hell.
“I have no time to deal with you” – that’s the most prevalent reason for someone being labelled as “dangerous”. I mean why would you do your job when you can force drug someone, put them in restraints and go for coffee.
That is btw the literal quote. They don’t even bother to pretend, they’ll just lie in the hospital documents and to the judge.
They were trying to hook me on this drugs. They denied every possible side effect and didn’t notice almost complete anterograde amnesia while I was being “observed” 24/7 in a hospital. A drunken monkey with a razor blade would do a better job in helping people than an average psychiatrist.
A pig with lipstick is still a pig afterall.
Dr. Mickey’s life must be exhausting… but so is ours. Digging through a tons of horse*** and it seems like for little change.
I am not that sure you can blame the drugs for criminal behaviour as a sole factor but then I’ve never experienced severe akathesia (I did a bit but I recognized it for a side effect of the drugs and flushed the pills).
People who take these drugs have many problems but one thing is sure – the drugs do nothing to stop them and in many cases they cause them to step over the line. It’s absolutely disgusting that not only are people not informed about it but some are straight out forced to take them. In my mind if a”patient” commits a crime under the influence of forced drugging the psychiatrists should be responsible. But they always refuse any responsibility for what they do – they only want the power.
That is great news. For all those who are struggling with no help (or the opposite of help) from the system.
It’s depressing and enraging at the same time. No matter how much evidence you present it’s the same old song. We are the Jews of the XXI century – you can blame anything on us.
Plus kicking out studies with conflicts of interest would likely do the same.
Maybe we should stop calling these drugs “anti-depressants”. The same way we should not call crystal meth an anti-obesity drug (though this one can actually be effective for what it’s worth).
I’m pretty sure you’re right.
People who can’t feel physical pain have real problems keeping themselves out of harms way. People who don’t feel emotional pain never learn not to harm others because they have no way to develop empathy.
Psychiatry wants to turn us into psychopaths. No one who has experienced a full range of human emotions wishes to be reduced to that.
“If they ever find a drug that blocks feelings of depression it would be devastating to humanity.”
Thank you. You’re exactly right.
I wonder if they now compared both to say taking part in therapeutic midnight naked dancing around a bonfire and howling to the moon would they obtain similar results? It all sounds like huge placebo effect to me. Whatever you do to people who are “depressed” (whatever that even means in the real world) a proportion of them are going to get better if they believe it’s meant to help. When you do absolutely nothing a proportion of them will recover as well. Finally there will be people who won’t recover no matter what because they happen to have real, persistent problems which aren’t solved with an attitude change. When do we stop pretending we’re dealing with medicine and diseases here?
Well, on all fronts – they should have read MIA and they would have known that already. That being said – it may be a step forward.
Good news :). I hope it spreads elsewhere in Europe too.
“How much can they really tell in those brain scans?”
Not much really. There are serious methodological issues with imaging, especially functional imaging related to artifacts and bad statistics (I always refer people to the IgNobel on the thought processes of a dead salmon – google it ;P).
But even when the study’s done rights all that imaging observes is a sum of activity in broadly defined brain regions. It tells you very little of what is actually going on and does account poorly for individual variability which is huge. We know that for most people for instance fear responses are controlled by amygdala but that is a huge oversimplification. There are different circuits within that structure, some activating, some inhibitory and that does not even account for the fact that it may be largely different for different people. Seeing that giving someone a drug makes amygdala more active may give you a hint this person’s more fearful but the easier and more reliable way to get that information is to ask.
In other words giving people drugs or placebos has some influence on their brain activity. That’s hardly an earth-shattering discovery.
Maybe because it is placebo effect for the most part?
That being said I don’t really buy the brain imaging studies at this point, not until they get reproduced independently multiple times and preferably with different, complementary methods.
“Anti-depressants” likely have more effects on the brain than placebo, because they screw up the neurotransmitter signalling.
Tick, tick, tick… when is the first “bomb” going off? People dying or being damaged for life with this pill which supposedly cures a non-existing problem and in fact doesn’t even do that?
The problem with that is the mistaken idea that demand is what creates supply. It works well in theoretical models but it’s not how markets really operate. There are a lot of ways to create demand by force or by manipulation or by social pressure. Psyhciatry’s been using them both. In fact it’s very tightly linked to the broken economic and political system, and as the article above shows, protects it vehemently.
I agree. In fact I did the same – named the people and hospital involved in the abuse of me publicly. I was threatened with a lawsuit for that (which I have recorded) but my response was to laugh at them and invite it. I’d love to see them sue me with defamation but I know they never will since I’d win and expose them.
I’ve seen this as well. People asking on forums: “I have a disorder X. Is it OK for me to have children?”. Followed by everything from “it’s OK if you stay or your meds and if your psychiatrist says so” to “You should never do it. You’ll suck as a parent and your children will also be crazy because it’s genetic”. It makes me so angry.
“activism is the most undervalued and underfunded ‘therapy’ for psychiatric survivors, trauma survivors, and their loved ones”
Amen to that. I rarely hear words so true.
Retarded or evil?
I had “highly intelligent” used on me as a form of an insult from a psychiatrist who talked and behaved like a true sociopath (I don’t know if that was learnt behaviour or who he really was).
It’s not overused – it’s underused. Psychiatry is all about social control and that’s the message that we have to shout from the rooftops. It’s not a bout helping, which is sadly the illusion most people live under.
Thanks you so much for creating that list – it’s important to remind people that psychiatry’s infamous history is not a thing of the past but it continues beyond the Holocaust era and is not restricted to “bad countries”.
What’s next? Heroine?
They are really f***ing ridiculous. Btw, one of the well known side-effects of ketamine (why it’s not really used for anesthesia in people) is it’s propensity to induce horrible nightmares and generally unpleasant mental states. Not to mention in the first place that it is an anesthetic and can be very dangerous with overdose.
The “funniest” part is that “serious” people are actually talking about it like it was a valid area of pursuit for new medicines. YOUR WHOLE FRAMEWORK IS WRONG!!! How long do we have to say it?
That is an excellent point. In fact the current political elites are not divided into left and right but just less and more extreme representatives of the ruling class.
In other words – we need to change the system completely. And indeed it’s a class war alive and well.
Thanks but I’ll take living in today’s Sweden over living in Nazi Germany.
I don’t think you use the word socialism in the same way as people who actually describe themselves as such understand.
Please, to begin with – read Marx’s Communist Manifesto and then come back to comment. I’d bet you’ll find this book stunningly reasonable. Or at least you’ll know what you’re criticizing.
I wonder why mentally ill die so young? It must be because they’re crazy…
Exactly. The neoliberal doctrine fails to take into account all the non-monetary incentives such as morality, love, empathy, altruism and so on. We are so used to this kind of thinking that it’s hard to get away from this mindset and consider that most people are actually good. Sure, everyone has also some selfish in them but then the right incentives are to promote social solidarity and not individualistic greed.
The_cat – having lived in a few different countries so far the more “socialistic” ones (I mean social-democratic European countries) do much better than more capitalist ones. Also in terms of actual free market. You can call it a paradox but having the state regulate market in a more socially just direction actually promotes genuine competition between small businesses as opposed to hegemony of big business and cronies.
I think you should listen more to what Mr Sanders says instead of looking at the label (we should be used to that approach here I suppose ;P). I don’t agree with a lot of things, especially on foreign policy, but he’s not crazy.
It’s not only about pricing – it’s also about making sure that drugs don’t get approved when they don’t work and cause harm. Like getting the FDA that does its job instead of serving as a fig leaf for pharmaceutical industry.
Following current logic foxes are ideal candidates for guardians of a henhouse – they are experts on poultry afterall.
It seems like from the psychiatric surviviour perspective Sanders is the best candidate so far. Hardly perfect but that may be the best there is.
Welcome to the DSM. A world of wonders where the inmates are running the asylums and giving people labels.
Settle, pay a small fine/compensation, continue making loads of money…
We need a new system.
Well, in China it’s also not all that rosy – they usually do it to someone (who as fallen out of favour anyway) once in a while to keep people happy but overall product safety in China continues to be abysmal. At least that’s what my Chinese friends have told me.
Same as it doesn’t make any sense for any other industry. They pay you off with a percentile of the money they made off you and other victims and continue to repeat the same offenses over and over again. Nobody goes to jail, no company goes bankrupt. It’ the “cost of doing business”.
I hope people will read it with an open mind.
Plus that psychiatry does is the exact opposite of helpful – it tells them they’re defective and have to live with it after which it places them on drugs which cause disinhibition and lower empathy. Interesting that it backfires…
If someone is violent they must be crazy. Hence “link” between mental illness and violence. Confirmation bias right there.
Give there’s no definition of mental illness that would make any sense it’s extremely easy to label people displaying a given behaviour insane and then attribute this behaviour to all the other classes of insanity. It makes no sense unless that is exactly what you want to do.
“As for the future, we realize that we are growing older (I am now 65, my wife not much younger) and that we cannot continue looking after Meili forever.”
This is truly heartbreaking that parents of disabled kids all around the world have to be asking themselves that question: what happens to my child when I’m no longer able to care for him/her?
It’s unacceptable that we consider drugging healthy people like Meili and making them sick just because they have a mental disability. Finding them psychiatric diagnosis to justify this is even more reprehensible.
So being abused is not good for you? Who would have thought…
It’s funny that psychiatry has to “discover” such things. Better late than never.
Btw, that is also linked to “anti-stigma” propaganda:
“”The Scottish government has long worked hard to reduce the stigma faced by people with mental health problems.” As this stigma declines we would expect more patients to seek help from their GPs for problems such as depression.”
Instead of looking at the causes of their problems and organizing people are now attributing their problems to broken brains and getting chemical lobotomies. Given that most of the recipients of this “care” are older women it looks awfully like a profitable way of getting rid of “superfluous population”.
That can’t end up well…
Not only are people not getting better – they will have more problems at the end of the day when side effects and dependence take their toll. Not to mention that I have not seen an antidepressant fix poverty before.
It’s kind of sad that ACLU has to pick that one up. These people should be in prison along with other people involved in torture as well as those who signed off on it.
I remember myself on Seroquel – it’s a miracle I didn’t murder anyone. I felt so deprived of any connection to my feelings that I would have done anything to feel something in a normal way again. The more extreme the better. These are torture drugs and I have no doubt that some people commit acts of violence against self or others because of them.
Funny how psychiatry has the habit of causing and exacerbating the very problems it claims to treat.
Always blame the odd one out. Which is going to create more angry people in the end. Counterproductive for society but politically expedient.
Marihuana smoke has lower temperature than tobacco which is hypothesized to prevent it from causing lung cancer (many carcinogenic substances don’t form at lower temperatures). Also some studies suggest it’s components may have anti-cancer properties. All of that is not very conclusive thus far though.
Plus if you want to keep marihuana illegal than all people who drug kids with things like amphetamines (“ADHD” drugs) and other psychotropic drugs should also be sent to prison.
Apology would be nice – financial compensation would be better. Criminal charges for people involved in this scandal even better.
No empathy, no shame, no remorse – which personality disorder is that supposed to be, remind me again?
I think that should also apply to “ADHD” drugs (amphetamines) and in fact all drugs. If we were real about prescribing medicines to treat illness and doing so only when necessary then we should not need brand names at all.
Amphetamine instead of Concerta (or whichever type of stimulant this one is) could do wonders.
Is the next study going to be on if the sun sets on the west or if fish can survive without water?
I mean, it’s nice they’re studying something else than pills but we already know poverty’s bad for you. Can we move on to actually doing something about it?
The Onion got it right :D.
One should beware bills which include such nice sounding words as: family, freedom, truth, nation and so on in the title. They are usually the exact opposite of what they proclaim.
How generous of them. There are people involved in Dan Markingson’s death who should face criminal charges but if that’s what you’re hoping for I’d not hold your breath.
Psychiatric treatment at it’s best. Her son has nailed it, it’s sad that only after he lost his mother.
From my experience people who are resistant to suffering are less likely to be emphatic. Psych drugs numb people’s emotional responses and they also kill empathy. Antidepressants can also kill love: http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/30/health/he-antidepressants30
Feelings are there for a reason.
I’m not a Christian but I’ve learnt to understand and appreciate the Christian ideas on the value of suffering. It has the power to transform you into a better, wiser human being.
You can write any guidelines you want – without ways to enforce them and punish transgressions it will do exactly nothing. In other words – duh.
The fat lady has sung… and she continues singing in vain as the psychiatrists & co put their fingers in their ears and pretend they hear nothing.
Btw, isn’t it a sign of how f***ed up our thinking about these issues is when the article first writes about all the social, economical and historic reasons for the suicide epidemic to then label it a “public health issue”? It’s not a health issue – it’s a social justice issue. It won’t be helped by pills and a bunch of “professionals” but by putting the record straight for the decades of systemic abuse and fixing the injustice.
It reminds me about the book I’ve recently read – The Swarm by Frank Schätzing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_%28novel%29
One of the main characters is a researcher of Nunavut First Nations and a good deal of the book is dedicated to his struggles with that legacy. In general I recommend it highly – it’s a great read and a well researched book on important topics.
Sad legacy of the American genocide :(.
Please, support indigenous organizations such as Idle No More. They’re fighting for better future not only for themselves but also for us and the whole planet.
What helps is that someone is there thinking about you and maybe sending you a little gift to lift you up. That’s all there is – human connection. Everything else is bs.
It would be hilarious if not for the fact that some people will believe it.
Unfortunately the drugs have fund there way everywhere :/.
Can’t stop loving the Onion for yet another jab at psychiatry :).
Psychotherapy is to normal human relationship as prostitution is to sex with a loved one or a friend. You pay for someone to pretend they care for you.
It’s relationship build on dishonesty and false pretenses from the get go, no matter who the therapist is.
You’re right. I honestly prefer psychotherapy only because it’s less harmful and you can’t really force it on someone.
Well, these studies may also suffer from publication bias…
EXACTLY. You spared me time and effort on writing this comment :).
Try joining some paper sharing websites like Research Gate. It does not always work but sometimes people actually send you requested articles for free.
Not that you should trust what you read anyway…
Do you know the Yes Men? Check out their documentaries – we need something like this on our side :).
Unfortunately, even if she wins she’s already lost her chance for a healthy baby. Plus the GSK will pay a relatively small fine and keep poisoning people.
There needs to be a better solution to close this gaping wound.
🙂 Good point 😀
An incredibly insightful movie and by far his best.
I wish I could go. I hope you have amazing time :).
The truth is every mass shooter gets labelled as mentally ill if not before then after the shooting. Afterall you have to be crazy to do that right? Circular thinking at its best. When almost every person on the planet can be diagnosed with some DSM insult, what difference does it make?
By this login we should ban guns for all young white males because they constitute the majority of mass shooters.
Actually – maybe juts ban all of them for everyone.
I don’t have time to check all of those but the Nazi example is simply wrong:
“The 1938 German Weapons Act, the precursor of the current weapons law, superseded the 1928 law. As under the 1928 law, citizens were required to have a permit to carry a firearm and a separate permit to acquire a firearm. But under the new law:
Gun restriction laws applied only to handguns, not to long guns or ammunition. The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as was the possession of ammunition.”[5]
The legal age at which guns could be purchased was lowered from 20 to 18.[6]
Permits were valid for three years, rather than one year.[6]
The groups of people who were exempt from the acquisition permit requirement expanded. Holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazi party) members were no longer subject to gun ownership restrictions. Prior to the 1938 law, only officials of the central government, the states, and employees of the German Reichsbahn Railways were exempted.[5]
Manufacture of arms and ammunition continued to require a permit, with the revision that such permits would no longer be issued to Jews or any company part-owned by Jews. Jews were consequently forbidden from the manufacturing or dealing of firearms and ammunition.[5]”
The gun laws were actually relaxed, not strengthened by the Nazis. And all of this was anyway mostly irrelevant or what happened to the Jews and others since you don’t need firearms to organize a pogrom not having firearms will save you from one.
So the evil government is going to take over and put everyone in the concentration camps but they will bother to obey what is written on a piece of paper?
I grant you if there’s a coup or any other regime change the Posse Comitatus will fly off the window.
“Before the Nazi’s could begin their mass extermination they first had to get the guns away people.”
That is factually untrue. The Nazi Regime has relaxed gun laws before the war.
What is wrong with banning all guns though? If it saved even 1 life it’s worth it.
Don’t want to be too cynical but could this growing opposition to labelling “mentally ill” as dangerous among psychiatrists come from the fact that they’ve realized it’s actually against their own interests? As people are less likely to “seek help” when they are immediately deprived of their rights?
Don’t get lost in the wording – the whole thing is written up to obscure personal responsibility of individual researchers. You know – I don’t have a conflict of interest, it’s just the system that’s a bit complicated and it’s all confusing and please look the other way now.
“companies aren’t legally required to register a (phase 1) trial with Clinicaltrials.gov.”
WHAT??? When you think you’ve see the bottom of the barrel…
Actually vaccination has if not saved, then very much improved my life curing me of recurrent painful tonsil inflammations and other respiratory tract bacterial infections.
Don’t throw all the medicine under the bus.
It’s no accident that the Daily Mail picked up the story when it affected Luke Montagu, “heir to the Earl of Sandwich”. It it affects Mary living down the street (and down the street is social housing or immigrant neighbourhood) nobody gives a sh*t.
I don’t see anyone running away. It’s simply complicated. People commenting here are from different cities, states and even continents so it’s intrinsically difficult to organize any real life action which does require something else than using internet/phone/mail.
I think this movement is successful for two reasons – they have money and Dick Cheney’s daughter is lesbian. I mean that only partly tongue in cheek – the fact that homosexuality can “afflict” even the members of the ruling class is a good enough reason to give them rights. If you’re a white rich old man you’re more likely to discover your son’s gay than that he’s black. And if he happens to go “crazy” you’ll find a way to keep him away from psychiatry (unless abusing him is what you want).
Exactly. Psychiatry is an all-encompassing system of abuse. It targets all oppressed groups plus some random victims just because it can.
Fighting against psychiatry is not like fighting against racism – it’s like fighting against racism and sexism, and corporatism and bigotry and…so on and so forth. Many groups have successfully managed to escape being in it’s clutches en masse – there’s no drapetomania and homosexuality is not a “mental illness”. Still these groups get psychiatrised more often. For these groups there’s a survival advantage to differentiate between themselves and “mad for other reasons” to convince the general public they deserve the rights.
Psychiatric surviviours have many things that distinguish them from other marginalized groups. We face a lot of the same problems that other oppressed groups but in many ways our position is worse. Even the sheer idea that we are crazy so what we say is always to be questioned – even if it’s an obvious fact like 2+2=4. You of course face this kind of dismissal when you’re black or a woman or another minority but it’s not as intrinsically linked to the society’s definition of who you are. Also we’re not easily recognizable – it’s hard to hide you’re black but anyone who’s escaped the system can blend in the crowd. It’s a good protective mechanism and few people want to risk being hauled back for their activism. You can hide it so you often don’t have to face it. People of colour are forced to organize by the fact they wear their skin and there’s no such escape from the system. Being black or homosexual or a woman is a part of one’s core identity, one that you’re born with. Being a mental patient is a false identity installed in you by the masters of mankind and therefore is not so easily turned into strength. “Mad pride” doesn’t really resonate with people because many of us don’t consider ourselves “mad” and for good reasons. “Psychiatric surviviour” is a better organizing identity in this respect. There are many subtle differences that make us much more difficult to organize.
Change doesn’t happen overnight. Nor is it permanent – every right you win can be taken away from you if you’re not looking. The history of black movement is a testimony to that – the moment they managed to abolish one form of systemic abuse another one was created in its place. But still it’s getting better.
Sadly, it’s true. Psychiatry exists to cover up individual and institutional/systemic abuse.
You’re exactly right. Nonetheless that in no way absolves psychiatry or its individual representatives from responsibility.
It is the same human instinct that calls for bringing back death penalty every time a horrific crime is committed and will hung even an innocent person simply because the mob can’t accept sometimes there’s nothing one can do and no one to punish. It explains why people insist on bombing the living crap of the Middle East even though it creates more “terrorists” and human misery overall than simply doing nothing. It explains how the Patriot act was passed and how people allow their civil and human rights to be taken away from them if you only scare them badly enough. Not every human being is giving in to that instinct but most do and thus we end up with systems of oppression “for our own good”.
Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do – it’s not a sexy message that people like even if it’s true. And the opposite message – “we’ll just use force and it will all be good” is so willingly used by politicians and otehr power-hungry persons around the world because it gives them tools to control you. It doesn’t matter it’s not true.
“Needless to say, most states do whatever they want so that’s already not a protocol honored by at the very least my state. ”
Yes they do. And then they fix the documents to show that they did everything by the book – including testimony from the second doctor who wasn’t even there (corroborating the 1st doc’s testimony), fabricating “danger to self and others” lying about drug dosages and so on. It’s real “fun” when you get out and go to complain to patient “advocacy” and they tell you that no illegal activity was mentioned in the documents therefore no violations were committed. In other words: “we asked the criminal if he/she committed the crime and they denied” – case closed. Is there any other part of the legal system where that is allowed?
Also known as Stockholm syndrome. Not to mention that many “patients” on psych wards will express feeling of gratitude, love and whatever other emotion they feel they need to conjure to get the hell out of there.
Actually, these things are still better than forced “treatment” since you’re at least taking this decision for yourself. For me being involuntarily committed is the same as being locked up at Gitmo and tortured in a million different ways (some of them can be read in the Senate torture report). Forced psychiatry is torture, it’s rape and it’s really that simple.
“I’m tired of walking on egg shells and worrying about ensuring that no one’s feelings are hurt in the process. No matter how polite or nice or empathic I am in my outspoken criticisms of the actions within this field, it fails to matter. My tone is not the problem. Neither is the problem the tone of those who have been traumatized and tortured by their experiences.”
Thanks Noel for stating that so clearly.
Btw, we need whistleblowers and videos of abuse. It’s done a lot for the Black Lives MAtter when people can see what is actually going on – on the streets and in jail cells. There are no videos from psychiatric wards…
I guess we need to spread the message beyond the choir. The general public is not on our side and indoctrinated, even if they have some healthy mistrusts against psychiatrists in general.
I agree 100%. They wouldn’t mind if these terms were indeed harmful to us.
If any drug in the world deserves the name “torture drug” it’s Zyprexa. I think even Lucifer would go “hey, stop right here, it’s too cruel” before prescribing that.
““psychiatric survivor”, which, in my view, is a misappropriation of a term normally applied to people who survive torture, concentration camps, or life-threatening diseases”
Someone should explain this guy that this is exactly the point. Psychiatry is torture, rape and locking people up in concentration camps. It’s their history and it’s their present.
With articles like this one has to wonder – is he that stupid or that evil? I mean the level of infantile rationalizations and lack of responsibility for one’s actions (“hey, we did something very dumb and only caused harm to millions of people but let’s call it a high school crush, giggle about it and move on”) is astounding. I’ve given the writings of this guy to some of my friends previously and the look on their faces when you tell them he’s an esteemed psychiatrists is priceless.
Valerian is kind of a natural benzo and can have similar effects:
“Because of valerian’s historical use as a sedative, antiseptic, anticonvulsant, migraine treatment, and pain reliever, most basic science research has been directed at the interaction of valerian constituents with the GABA receptor.[15] Many studies remain inconclusive and all require clinical validation. The mechanism of action of valerian in general, and as a mild sedative in particular, has not been fully elucidated. However, some of the GABA-analogs, particularly valerenic acids as components of the essential oil along with other semivolatile sesquiterpenoids, generally are believed to have some affinity for the GABAA receptor, a class of receptors on which benzodiazepines are known to act.[16][17]” (from Wikipedia)
So be careful with it.
I trust my druggie friend better when it comes to psychoactive drugs both legal and not. He at least acknowledges that they are not medicines, that they act differently at different people and at different times and he will stay sober to be with you through the experience if you ask him for it (to stop you for doing something crazy while you’re on the drug). He’s smarter than any psychiatrist out there but he’s also a great empathetic guy and not a sociopathic hack on a power trip.
Which is something that neurologists or other real doctors should deal with anyway.
People with physical emergencies also need comfort. Another example that comes to mind is women in labour. In some places they get treated as objects resulting in both physical danger and psychological trauma. A friend of mine worked as a psychologist in ob-gyn ward and she said most of women she talked to had perfectly normal, healthy pregnancies and physiological labour, yet were completely traumatized by the way staff treated them. This is completely unacceptable and doctors of all specialties (as well as nurses) should get it through their thick skulls that they are not gods handling objects but are there to serve the needs of actual humans.
“I have never personally witnessed a psychiatrist who was sadistic or got pleasure from a patient’s suffering.”
Well, good for you – I have. One working in a locked ward incidentally.
Amazing that a relative of mine who has type I diabetes and actually feels better on insulin never thought about stopping to take it several times a day, even though it is a real pain in the… well various parts of your body you have to injure everyday to take blood to measure sugar and inject the hormone.
I wonder if that could have something to do with insulin being an actual medicine for a real illness…
7) Spread the message to your family, friends and anyone who wants to listen.
8) Never condemn anyone to clutches of psychiatry by advising/coercing or forcing one to enter the system.
That is a great point. We are no longer whole as beings with emotions – having normal human feelings has become a sickness. Some people say we live in a society run by sociopaths. If the values of society are the values of its elites then there may be something to that.
The “funniest” thing is these are the same people who judge others as delusional, narcissistic and/or lacking insight. Yeah.
No justice, no peace…
I wonder how long is it going to take until these programs are hijacked by pill-pushers though… Maybe I’m too cynical but it makes me kind of cringe.
“Repositioning American Psychiatric Association from wise sage to caring ruler”
Is there anything more telling than this? They’re so full of sh*t… “Caring rulers” – more like “tyrants” or “dictators” and caring has nothing to do with it.
I’m so sorry for your loss :(. It’s horrific.
I guess having a sick baby does wonders for the depression…
It’d be nice to also include the information about conflicts of interest in these studies. Maybe someone could do meta-analysis for that….
Orwell is rolling in his grave so fast that you could use him as a turbine.
“The authors argue that the phrase “conflict of interest is pejorative”
Seriously, JAMA? That is the real problem?
Has anyone ever tried to contact the subjects of the study? I know their details are not available publicly (obviously) but there are sometimes ways to track them (e.g. via ads requesting contact if they’re willing to tell their stories).
Garlic contains natural antibiotics. On the other hand it’s also quite hard on the liver.
Exactly. I wonder how “monitoring” is going to change anything. Will give you some poison, but don’t worry – we’ll monitor closely as you’re getting sick and possibly die. Women are advised not to take most drugs while pregnant – why is that not the case for psych drugs?
That can very well be the case. These drugs affect brain development so I’d be surprised if they didn’t screw up at least some kids for life. It’s horrible to even think about especially when you consider how many women are on these drugs.
You’ve said it all. I agree 100%.
Pharma is trying to medicate every human emotion, personality type or cognitive ability. It’s good some people are starting to notice.
Revolving doors…
“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”
Joseph Stalin
I guess that’s how they see it.
That is a great initiative to actually analyze all the papers on the topic. There’s a lot of garbage papers out there and anyone who sieves through it to produce a conclusion is doing awesome work, even if it may feel hard and ungrateful.
I believe that right bacterial flora is vital to one’s health but the interaction between our bodies and our second bodies (we have more bacterial cells in our guts than our actual cells) is so complicated it’s really hard to know anything for sure at this point. But it’s somehow good to know that you have you little microbial friends to help you digest and fight of invaders. Makes one feel less alone ;).
“The personal is the political.”
That’s exactly right.
And APA’s condemning all forms of torture, including the one done “for your own good” is long overdue.
You don’t have to justify your use of drugs to anyone. You’re an adult and you’re taking decisions for yourself. That’s what we’re all asking for. Take care and get better soon.
But it’s not even the worst – in 3rd world countries people who fight corporations end up dead (like people trying to protect Amazon against foreign corporations).
I guess one has t be prepared for what it takes to fight back.
“Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market…It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good.”
He’s totally correct.
I think it’s different for different people. And I think many if not most are not really looking for a change in themselves – they’re looking for a change in their circumstances. That’s my biggest beef with psychiatry and psychology in general. You can’t talk someone out of poverty, disease or ongoing abuse. I like the idea of concentrating on the present but I don’t think talking about it is going to help. I sometimes think there are to many therapists and too few social workers who help people with day to day struggle.
“From this perspective, what is happening to the person at the present time becomes the focus rather than spending time seeking to understand the dynamics of past events. If an event from the past is troubling now, it is vital to explore what the now trouble is.”
Yes, exactly.
OK, I’m going to go over the top and make a Nazi analogy (which in case of psychiatry is not even that over the top given history):
If you were given a choice to work in at an entry to a concentration camp and save some folks but condemn others to torture, abuse and often death would the fact that you saved some people justify you working in concentration camp and signing others off to awful fate? Would it be a moral choice to stay at that job rather than quitting and finding other ways to stop people from flowing into that camp?
I’d say no. I’d say that being fired is preferable. Stop giving justifications to a system that’s inhumane and torturous.
“The only way to not give up on people like Mary is to fight for better, non-psychiatric resources. We need to understand that a large aspect of the fight is not just whether we refuse to commit vulnerable people to psychiatric hospital, but how we can fight for change.”
And how working in a hospital and signing people off for abuse is fighting for change? For me it’s legitimizing the system. You want better non-psychiatric resources – great but how sitting in a hospital and going about business as usual is going to bring that about? why not become a whistle-blower? Why not join others to create alternatives? Why not go work for an institution that actually helps (a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen)? Working within that system and putting a smiley face on it only ensures that nothing ever changes.
We’re talking about 32 year old woman not a 2 year old. And she was conscious and not passed out. I’m pretty sure that free will applies.
“She said no but she went to the bar with me and she had a short dress and before she said her ex was a bad guy and I was much nicer and she seemed to like me and how was I supposed to know that she didn’t want it.”
If you’ve described what happened with Mary accurately then it’s very clear what she didn’t want. No means no. It’s pretty clear.
I still disagree ;).
I simply don’t believe there’s any way to say if someone is developed or stuck early or late. It’s like saying human social and emotional development is some kind of a line and you’re somewhere on it and you move in one or the other direction. I don’t see it this way. I think people have unique ways of relating to others, maladaptive or not which change in time, space and depending on the person you’re interacting with. Even when you were abused your whole life and relate to people round you accordingly I don’t think it’s a regressed state – it’s a state that is developed and just as the appropriate as the one which you’d have were your life history different.
“Mary’s outcome is unlikely to be affected by Margaret’s choice.”
Really? How about if she commits suicide because of the trauma of forced “treatment” aka rape? It’s not theoretical – I tried to kill myself because of a “choice” that a person like Margaret did with complete disregard for my opinion on the matter. You say you take responsibility for one’s life with such decisions? Well then embrace it. The responsibility for suicide, for homicide (do I have to explain the anger and hatred which being abused creates?), for further deterioration of mental and physical state, for life-long trauma. That is the legacy of forced “treatment”. It is not more compassionate. IT is condemnation of someone to torture.
If you can’t do something to change someone’s life as you admit then why do you have to submit that person to even more humiliation and abuse before it’s over? As Katie has written so eloquently here – what sacrifices do you take except for “feeling bad”? Why don’t you take that person to your home, offer her warm place to sleep and food and support if you really care? Signing someone off to psych ward is just washing you hands.
No means no.
Psychiatric rape is rape like any other.
“No means No.”
It’s so easy to understand when it comes to sexual rape. But somehow with psychiatric rape it’s still OK to say “No means yes”.
“I. for one, am tired of the cheap excuses– cloaked in the MH jargon that makes my skin crawl. For 20 + years, I was eye witness — on the front line, in the trenches, watching highly educated, credentialed professionals become dissociated in every way from the work of their profession– . Authority without substance, arrogance without excellence– talk, talk, talk, — until it seemed that they created their reality based on words, language, a lexicon of psychiatry.”
Thank you for writing that. This piece is so triggering for me precisely because of that. After I recovered somewhat from the abuse I had to endure in my psychiatric imprisonment I went to confront my abusers and guess what – the excuses they made sounded exactly like this article. I was supposed to “understand” their “difficult choices” and that they “can’t help everyone” and that they did the best for me. Even when I was standing them telling them loud and clear “you tortured me”. Blank stares, never an admission of guild, of mistake, never so much as “I’m sorry for what I did to you”. And the pervasive fear of litigation. Because would they ever admit they did the slightest thing wrong them maybe I could sue them. “We are sorry you didn’t enjoy our service” – it sounded as if I was talking to a corporate machine and not actual human beings. They blurted a few excuses and washed their hands. And then when I challenged them on breaking the law (which they also did, even though there’s really no need for that as they have almost absolute powers) – threats. This is exactly what is wrong with this profession and their “compassionate” representatives who have no idea what they’re doing but don’t bother to really listen – they could as well put fingers in their ears and go “lalala”.
There’s a “slight” difference between someone who comes asking for a pill and someone who says “no”.
Also doctors have a responsibility for their own actions – at the very least they are responsible of providing information so that the patient can truly enjoy informed consent.
“It is a family SYSTEM”
…and let’s not forget that some people have sh*tty, abusive families and you’ll never know because they look so normal. So many people end up “mental patients” because of conscious efforts of abusive parents or spouses.
“Also I am a bit curious why you vent such angry feelings and label my article a sob story”
Well, because you’re trying to justify what you did throughout explaining how “difficult” the decision is. I can assure you that is is only a billion time more “difficult” for Mary whom you stripped of her freedom, dignity and human rights. Sorry but I am not going to be sympathetic to you for taking such a decision.
Exactly. That sounds pretty clear to me, no need to read anyone’s mind.
Check out this: wolf-pac.com They’re fighting for an amendment. I don’t know if it can succeed but at least one has to keep trying.
That is exactly true.
“But what would you be able to walk away from that bush and leave her there?”
If that’s what she told me – yes. You can’t help someone against their will.
So it is OK to abuse and torture someone because his/her family says so?
I have told my family that if I ever come into contact with psychiatry and they ever cooperate with them I won’t speak to them again. That I’d rather die than to go to this hell again. And I’d never ever condemn any of my family members or friends to psychiatry – not only subject them to forced “treatment” but any of it. I’d not take them to a psychiatrist or psychologist and if they wanted my advice I’d tell them to stay away. So no, I’d rather my daughter went back to wherever she wants to go than be tortured, abused, imprisoned and her mind and body destroyed by drugs.
I think you have no idea what kind of torture you’re sending people too. Neither do their families.
It’s all fine and good and I don’t have a problem with any of that, in fact I am happy you’re doing a good job.
In the same time all your good job means nothing when you condemn another human being to psychiatric torture. Do you seriously believe that this is ever preferable, even when most of the people here, notably those who were on the receiving end of this kind of “compassion” tell you “DON’T DO IT”? Even when the very person in question tell you not to do it?
I feel the same when I remember that even in my drugged stupor I was able to resist. I hardly remember anything since they gave me benzos but from bits and pieces I recall I know I stole a knife from the dinner and went on to cut the “net beds” aka cages they had so that the next person would be able to escape. I’m still proud that even though I was abused and needle raped I was still able to resist the dehumanizing experience and I never gave in.
I am always laughing and getting angry at the same time whenever I hear psychiatrists whining about patients being “violent” against them. They’re the ones who are violent and any form of resistance is simply self-defense.
At no point have I said I hate her. I simply expressed my anger and frustration and described my perspective.
I understand that the system is broken and that many people working within it are not necessarily bad people and they may have the best of intentions but it does not excuse each and every action. Maybe if someone if forced to do things like that because of being in the system then a morally right choice is to quit? I do believe that she does a lot of good things for people but then if I were on Mary’s place I’d not care a bit. The same I don’t care if the person who did something like that too me is a good person in other circumstances. It’s simply not an excuse.
I know there are places in which you can’t avoid doing things against your convictions. That’s why I’d never in my life join a military unless my country was under attack nor would I go work for an institution which I consider immoral.
Have you ever been a subject of forced “treatment”?
Well, maybe it’s semantics but this whole “not developed” sounds to me too much like the broken brain. There’s nothing broken. Or nothing “not-developed”. Sure, people do change upon such experiences and they do change when they recover. People change. All the time, from day to day, more so when crisis happen and less so when the lives stay stable but they change. For me judging if someone has “developed” or not is stigmatising and suffers the same problems as DSM labels – there’s no definition of normal. I don’t know what a “developed” personality is. People are different and they change. Sometimes you like them, something you don’t. But that can’t be measured and defined and any attempt of doing so is suspicious for me.
I am angry with you personally too. And disappointed. It was not your decision to take.
“I couldn’t have lived with myself if that had happened.”
Can you live with yourself now that Mary is subject to psychiatric torture? As a surviviour of it I can tell you I’d take beating in the bushes any time. And she has taken a decision and communicated it to you and you decided that you’re going to do what felt better for you. Against her will. That’s not right.
I’m not saying that to be mean or offend you or anything. I’m just saying this because you’re 100% wrong and you have blinders on. You may feel compassion for her but you clearly can’t empathise with her. How many times do we, psychiatric torture surviviours have to tell you that it’s wrong? How many times do we have to explain how dehumanizing and traumatizing psychiatric torture is? And you still act like it was in any way better than whatever possible abuse that she would face in the real world.
I don’t know what would have happened to her if you let her go. Maybe, possibly it would be really bad. Maybe she would kill herself. But at the very least it would be her decision. She would have the autonomy, she would be the subject and not the object. You clearly don’t understand that you’re taking from people what is the most important. People survive horrific things or they perish but they at least have their dignity left. The control over whatever good or bad decisions. You’re taking the only thing that people really have in this life – the autonomy and control over their own minds. There’s nothing worse than that.
If you really want to help people like Mary, why don’t you work for a respite centre? For a homeless people shelter? Create a space where people like she could go and get the physical safety that would enable to recover and if not then at least would let her live her crazy life in relative comfort? Why do you have to continue feeding the broken abusive system and taking the “hard” decisions that help no one?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C. S. Lewis
Ponder that for a moment.
“But sometimes it doesn’t work. (…) Many people who suffer emotionally don’t have agency of their own, and may not be in a position to make the best choices for themselves. Sometimes, we just can’t abandon them to the world. ”
OK, let’s stop right here. This is the recurrent theme: but if you tried everything and the person is still suicidal? Well, then, you’ve tried everything and it’s the right of that person to decide and you should let them go. You accept this right for people with cancer who decide to forgo chemotherapy because it’s too painful for them and by that forgo the whatever % chance they have for recovery? It goes back to the same issue – people in mental distress are seen as incapable of taking decisions, as children who have to be protected from themselves. And psych professionals see themselves as people who know what the “right” way of thinking is and the right response and suicide is always unreasonable. That is simply not true. And it’s arrogant to say so. This is a cruel world and I can’t say that deciding to say goodbye to it is any more or less reasonable than the decision to keep going. And I’m not inside someone else’s mind to tell them what kind of pain they should be pushing through to get to this better place that may not even be there for them.
I have a feeling that some people who force others into “treatment” and I mean these more compassionate ones (which in my view are a minority anyway) do that mainly to make themselves feel better. I don’t mean that to offend anyone but that’s just human nature. Everyone wants to be in control and prevent bad things from happening and keep people alive. They can’t accept that sometimes you just have to let go and it’s a decent thing to do. That using force against someone is just pointlessly adding to their agony.
Why putting Mary in a place where she definitely didn’t want to go and that being confronted with an alternative of going to her less than perfect life? Well, you can only do that if you assume you know better what’s best for her and her opinion can be disregarded. It’s an awful thing to do and all the responsibility for the misery that ensues will fall on a person taking that decision.
In this example it even looks like there was a theoretical alternative – providing Mary with a safe space, a respite in which she could escape the abuse of the daily life. It reminds me of a discussion that goes around euthanasia for some quadriplegic people. Many compassionate guys deny it saying that many of the reasons that quadriplegic patients cite as a justification for letting them die could be easily fixed by better care. That’s all fine and good but we live in the real world and while we deny these people the right to die citing a theoretical possibility of improving their lives “somewhen” they continue to suffer. So while you tell them to “have hope” and force them to live you’re essentially condemning them to hell on earth. Should that be your decision to take? Because you’re uncomfortable with someone killing themselves? Life is only a value when a person wants to live, not when it becomes torture.
I can identify with Mary and I can tell you were I in her place I’d rather go on the street and cope with any abuse there on my own than go back to psych ward. There’s no hell worse than this fate.
If you really want to make positive difference in people’s lives why don’t you join in creating places like this: http://www.westernmassrlc.org/afiya
Why do you continue to work for the system in which you have to go against your own principles?
And please, don’t use this as an excuse:
“I also feel that it is unfair for people on this board to criticize when they have not been placed in a position of responsibility for someone’s life. (…) Yet sometimes for those of us who work in the mental health field, we have to deal with situations where a person’s life may be in imminent danger.”
as a psychiatric surviviour who had this kind of arguments offensive. They were used against me to justify rape, torture and traumatisation . You are not responsible for my life. You’re not a surgeon who deals with me when I’m unconscious. If I’m not passed out I have responsibility for myself and that includes right to follow or not any advice you give me. It includes the right to self harm and to suicide. I reject the idea you can take this right away from me and torture me “for my own good”.
I know, I wanted to go but I’ve got a bit too much on my plate recently :(.
A somewhat unrelated question: are you planning to lobby Mr Corbyn in relation to his new “Minister for Mental Health”? http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/corbyn-creates-new-dedicated-minister-for-mental-health/
I personally think this is one of the guys who may be right on our side if there are enough people to show him our perspective. It seems like change may be stirring up both Europe and US and it’s incumbent on us to make sure it goes in the right direction…
I’m so sad I couldn’t attend…
Will it stay on youtube after the event?
I don’t think people with that label are not developed. I think they are poisoned. They may have been “developed” OK before the abuse started and they will be fine when it ends and when they are able to find safe and loving environment.
That’s rich…
Really? Since when amphetamines are harmless or non-addictive? Because there is a lot of history with these drugs and there’s a reason why they are treated as narcotics. Our society has very short memory – it’s enough to stuck a new shiny brand name on an old meth and suddenly we don’t remember what happened to soldiers who took it to better their performance and housewives who wanted a little help staying slim.
Comparing caffeine with amphetamine is indeed “hahaha”. And yes, you can get addicted to caffeine and have some problems with overdose, I know people who did and it’s become easier with all the unnatural sources with super high content like energy drinks. It’s nothing compared to the potency of amphetamine. Which also causes psychosis by the way.
Len, that’s a nice piece of fiction that never happens in clinical practice that you’re describing there.
Are you mentioning this Straterra by the way:
“Strattera (atomoxetine) increased the risk of suicidal ideation in short-term studies in children or adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).”?
I’m going to be blunt here: if you feel horrible for what you did to that poor woman you should be. This is exactly the arrogance and ignorance that psychiatric survivors are talking about here and which people like you are apparently not able to understand (since I think you’re actually trying to listen to us). I mean, which part of: “No, you can’t do that. Not again” can’t you understand? Why do you think you can take that decision for her when it’s clear she prefers to go back to wherever but not to locked ward.
This story is extremely triggering for me and shows exactly what is wrong with psychiatry. Compassion rammed down someone else’s throat against his/her will is not compassion. If you can’t provide someone with help they want you can’t provide someone with help period and should be able to accept that and not make choices for that person. You can’t help someone against his/her will – that is not help, that is abuse. If you say that it’s the system that forces you to do that then how can you work within the system that makes you commit such horrific acts? “I was just following orders” is not a valid excuse anymore, is it?
I can’t express how frustrating that is. I could maybe understand the cluelessness like that of the “pizza lady” who suggested that forced patients would be made to feel better by throwing them a discharge party. But you know what is going to happen to this poor woman, you know how it ruined people’s lives and drives them suicidal – you blog on MIA and read our stories – and yet you did that. This is absolutely disgusting.
I was trying to take my own life because of a person like you who did the very similar thing to me. Because of the horrific abuse that it started. I didn’t succeed but if I had that person would be personally responsible for my death. Are you prepared to take that responsibility should Mary kill herself (which I pray she will not)?
Why do you keep doing this? WHY?
“There are good doctors and there are bad doctors”
The same was said about cops. And now with all the videos coming out seems like there are almost no good cops. The problems is not the bad apples, it’s the orchard. When you have a sick corrupt system as psychiatry is, the individuals matter very little. Even when someone manages to stay “good” they’re forced out or have to operate on the fringes or act against their morality.
I think the key thing here is to make sure he gets lobbied by the right epople. I believe this guy has heart in the right place but many people get duped into believing psychiatry’s propaganda about “helping people with serious mental illness”. That’s why it’d be good if psychiatric survivors tried to get a foot in the door and provide him with a different perspective. Which is in general true for all the left weaning progressive politicians, including Sanders in the US. We can’t expect them to read our minds when almost the only message out there is the one generated by the corrupt system mascarading as advocacy.
The door is revolving so fast you can barely see it… They have no shame and no fear anymore either.
“Okay. Someone is standing on the roof of your respite. It’s thunder and lightening, and they’re saying they want to kill themselves? What do you do?”
Funny how that question is never asked of “traditional” psychiatry. So you bring that person to the hospital and what? The answer to that is almost always – “and then the abuse starts”. It’s great to see alternatives to the current mess but nothing at all would be already an improvement.
What’s going on today? First the Paxil study revisited gets all the coverage, now this? Is the tide indeed changing :)?
That is amazing work and I’m happy it gets the coverage it deserves :).
Btw, their apologetic ideas of why it could be are so typical. It can’t be that the drug is causing it, it must be something else. Maybe the higher doses don’t cause so much aggression because they disable you for good? How about that explanation?
The only thing I find surprising is that they don’t see the same for older people.
I’d venture into saying it’s not safe for anyone.
Humans are storytelling animals.
Wow, you’ve got talent…keep writing, I want more :).
I think it’s very different for different people, some find exercise helpful I also found that caffeine, in any form, was a no go for me for a few months. I used Melissa tea instead, which has a calming effect.
You also managed a movie, which you should advertise more 🙂
In any case I think it’s useful to expand one’s knowledge about the nutrient content of natural foods and combinations of them (e.g. combining high iron and high vitamin C foods t enhance iron uptake).
Some supplements help though. Magnesium and iron are quite important if you suffer from drug-induced restless leg syndrome for instance.
I just worry about people taking supplements without knowing what’s in them and doing blood checks – taking too much of some vitamins or microelements (like iron or iodine) can poison you.
Good luck with the taper, I hope you can make it soon.
“People with ADD do not have any trouble concentrating on things they like….it is the boring mundane tasks like math,school work and chores which they have trouble.”
Yeah. Just like EVERYONE else. Or are you trying to tell me that “normal” kids just can’t stop doing their homework and spend hours memorizing irrelevant facts without protest. It’s ridiculous to say that. Of course everyone has easier time to concentrate on things that they like and are interested at – it’s like a definition of interest.
I worry that until psychiatry comes up with a drug that makes you burst into flames or your head explode on the spot everything goes. Thalidomide was pulled of the market partly because it’s effects were so “spectacular”. Today, you can show that the drugs are both ineffective and dangerous but still they’re allowed to stay on the market and at best what changes is the length of “side effects” list. The FDA has become completely inconsequential and frankly a joke. It’s wild wild west.
Actually – yes and no.
First of all if you don’t identify where the problems stem from any intervention you give is likely to fail, especially in the long-term, unless you by chance decide on something that’s targeting the root causes. So for some kids these kinds of problems may be caused by being too tired and providing them with a reasonable schedule which allows time for rest and unsupervised play will do the trick. If you want to put it under therapy it’s up to you, I’d call that responsible parenting.
There are problems which are caused by children being neglected and abused and there therapy may be helpful but not as much as first fixing the child’s environment – no therapy will help someone who is being abused on a a daily basis.
There may be problem where kids have underlying medical/nutritional needs and these need to be addressed.
None of these though justifies the use of stimulants. They may “help” in short term, not surprisingly, as amphetamines are known to help with concentration and attention (that applies to all people and not only “ADHD”) but in the long-term the effects of the drugs diminish and in fact the big population studies on presumed “ADHD” kids on and off meds show that the off meds group does better (for the citations I encourage you to browse through MIA blogs as I don’t recall it from the top of my head – one was done in Canada very recently). There’s also some evidence taht even the short-term effects may be overestimated as the drugs induce feelings of confidence about one’s performance that are not always justified and make kids more manageable which is reported as improvement by teachers and caregivers even if it does not affect the actual performance. Add to that the fact that these drugs have serious side effects on physical and mental development, not the least of them being a cause of psychosis (a well known effect of amphetamines) and using these drugs on kids becomes questionable to say the least.
Exactly. Fever is a real thing but it doesn’t mean that there exists a genetic “high-temperature disorder” which has to be treated with aspirin for the rest of your life. And even this analogy doesn’t show the absurdity well enough since fever you can actually measure.
The biggest elephant in the room of DSM “diagnosis” (among all the other bulky animals) is the fact that there’s no normal state you can compare them too. For every physical illness there’s a normal state: cancer – no cancer, infection – no infection, diabetes – normal sugar range. For psychiatric disorders this is never defined in any way that can be useful. Even when you have illnesses defined by a subjective range like said diabetes – you have an upper norm and a lower norm which you can measure and it doesn’t change depending on who’s looking. There’s no normal amount of fidgeting and attention that anyone can define. Not to mention that it changes during the day and depending what you’re doing and in what environment you are.
I think the most ridiculous statement that people make about ADHD is that kids with the ADHD “have problems concentrating in general but they become super concentrated on things that interest them”. No sh*t. Like all the other human beings from the dawn of our species. And people eat statements like that up and nod and act like they were just presented with quantum theory of gravity or something.
…your point?
…and neither is giving them meth “treatment”.
“Psychiatrists as a collective often stick out as being strange (a bit like members of other extreme organisations).”
In general the psychiatry’s guild bi***ing and moaning about being stigmatized, as funny as it is, is actually based in real public perception. which having a personal experience with several of them I totally see where it stems from. There was not a single one of them who didn’t seem like he/she has a severe problem, most often in the direction of being narcissistic or almost (completely?) psychopathic. I honestly don’t know if the profession draws such people in because of it’s abusive nature (which I think is a part of it) or do the people turn onto this overtime given the systemic dysfunction. I guess it’s a bit of both psychiatrist come off as pricks and weirdos not only to the unfortunate patients but public as a whole.
Oh, so when it’s YOUR son you are not so eager to drug him. How interesting…
“Insel is reportedly planning to join the Google Life Sciences team to lead an effort to create technology for the detection, prevention and management of mental health conditions.”
Good luck to him with that and yes I am being sarcastic.
I don’t even what to think what kind of “disorder” that person represents. Sadly, I think it’s very prevalent in the said profession.
You’re describing a relationship with a psychopath and that by the very nature of it can’t be saved – the only way to win is not to play and stay away from psychiatry altogether ;).
Honestly, pharma should have no role in development of drugs. They should stick to producing them. It’s such an obvious conflict of interest it’s unbelievable but in an economic and political system which allows such philosophical absurdities like “self-regulation” it’s strange to even think about it. We are so conditioned to accept certain things as right we never stop to ponder how absolutely insane and counterproductive they are.
What is exactly their reason for not withdrawing these drugs immediately again? Given what they themselves written about “efficacy”, forget for a second all the other problems? These drugs get approved in a shady way and then it’s basically over: you can prove that they don’t do any good, that the original studies were manipulated or straight out fake, that the drugs cause short and long-term damage and deaths and they’re still allowed to stay on the market. Where’s the times when the thalidomide was withdrawn after the phocomelia scandal? Now it seems we’re in a much worse shape. Today they would have let the thalidomide be sold and maybe make suggestions to doctors that they should follow some guidelines about prescribing to pregnant women but if they don’t – well, who cares.
I agree except for “emotional developmental arrest”. It sounds like someone has not developed properly emotionally, which has nothing to do with it. It’s simply a natural response to abusive relationship and persistent situation of being intimately involved with people one can’t trust. For some people it starts from the get go with abusive childhood but for some only appears in adulthood (like finding oneself in an abusive relationship with romantic partner). In such a situation lack of trust is normal. The “splitting” is just trying to deal with impossible situation: one one hand I know (whether consciously or not) that this person is abusing me and I can’t trust them etc. on the other I love that person and I’m attached to them and I’m trying to preserve this connection. That leads to a whole lot of erratic behaviour because you can’t acknowledge reality and stay in this situation without going crazy and bouncing from one wall (trying to defend oneself against the abuser) to the other (trying to keep the relationship and avoid abuse). Given that abusive people almost always engage in gaslighting you end up with someone who is “paranoid” (which is anyway usually right 99% of the time) and distrustful but in the same time trying to cater to abusers needs and blames self for the problems. It’s really a very understandable behaviour but completely weird when looking from the outside especially for someone who has never experienced such a dynamic (that’s why most therapists have no clue). And even after the abusive relationship has stopped it takes time and effort to be able to trust people and not fear falling into the trap. All these things that psych professionals describe as “symptoms” and produce some bs theories about what part of you didn’t develop are only normal reactions of normal humans to situations of cognitive dissonance and extreme emotional distress.
“only loving human relationships and understanding one’s defenses can lead to recovery” Exactly true.
“However, it is evident the BPD is often misdiagnosed, and the National Comorbidity Survey Replication study reveals that 85% of people diagnosed with BPD also meet the DSM diagnostic criteria for other disorders.”
Btw, ain’t that true for all the DSM labels? Or in fact for all the people on the planet? how often does someone go to psychiatrists office and goes out with no diagnosis? Like “don’t worry, it’s just normal emotional response, take it easy, talk to a friend and get some rest”. Does that ever happen? We’re seriously down to discussing how many devils sit at the tip of a pin and writing “scientific” papers about it. It’s absurd.
Really? So drugs which act by numbing down your normal emotional and cognitive functions and turning you into a zombie with sociopathic tendencies (if you’re lucky and don’t go suicidal or homicidal) don’t change your personality for the better and cure trauma? Who would have predicted that…
People don’t have personality disorders. People have personalities. If you don’t like it – well it’s not your f***ing business. If they don’t like it there are good ways of working to improve oneself and none of them involves psychoactive drugs. Plus being a victim of trauma, abuse etc. and reacting to it is not a disorder either. Psychiatry should get out of business of blaming the victim. In fact they should just go out of business entirely.
Btw, we can make black humour about it but it’s a serious issue. I mean if really these drugs can cause you to commit violent acts which you otherwise never would have committed then shouldn’t you be let go? How is that fair? Should not a doctor who prescribed it be responsible? We punish people who do illegal stuff under the influence but the assumption is they know what they’re risking by taking the substance and they do it voluntarily. It gets even worse when someone commits murder under the influence of drugs he/she was coerced/forced to take. I personally was drugged against my will with benzos and allegedly was “aggressive” (although I’d take it with a truckload full of salt given what lies they put in my documents elsewhere) – fortunately I didn’t kill anyone but if I did who would be responsible? And why should I be responsible when I was so drugged I couldn’t even remember it? And how can anyone tell if that was really the case or the person wanted to do it anyway and used the drug as a cover? These are serious legal questions that nobody takes seriously. I’d say maybe we stop prescribing people drugs which can end you up with murder conviction but if we do we should acknowledge these problems. Right now we’re just blaming people for the actions they may be unable to control because pharmaceutical propaganda tells are their drugs are safe and effective.
“Call your doctor if you feel its OK to kill people after taking this medication.”
LOL
These drugs are the worst you can give to someone who is already ins substantial emotional distress.
33% of all inmates
30% of male inmates and 70% of female inmates are prescribed psychotropic drugs.
I have a feeling that the inmates have taken over the asylums and criminals are not the ones who are locked up in prisons but the ones who run them.
The question is – what are these 35% of people thinking?
In the ranking of the worst criminals in human history:
1. Bankers
2. Pharmaceutical companies
…far third place: serial killers.
“This sort of technology has obvious advantages from a compliance standpoint, since doctors will have direct knowledge of whether or not the medication regimen is being followed. (…) “People are given a bag of pills and told to go away and take them and very often they don’t,””
Btw, since when is that my doctor’s business? I’m an adult and it’s my right to take or not take any pills he/she prescribes me and it’s also my business to tell him/her about it since this relationship is based on trust. Look at the attitude here. The arrogance and straight out authoritarian approach is mind-boggling.
Anyone else thinks that’s beyond creepy? Add what we know about NSA&Co to it…
The opposite of psychiatry is empathy and compassion.
An illness is a state of pathology in which the body is not functioning and responding to internal and external clues in the right way. It can be caused by an external factor (like a virus) or internal (like cell death or cancer).
Examples:
– people with type I diabetes don’t respond to elevated sugar levels properly because they are not able to produce a hormone which normally mediates this response
– people who have a bacterial infection will have cell death and metabolites in their system which normally should not be there and which are either a direct product of bacteria or response to them (like cytokines)
If your “mental illness” is cause by any factor like this – brain damage, viral infection, vitamin deficiency – I’m fine calling it an illness. I’m not fine calling it a mental illness since we don’t call sepsis “fever disorder” and don’t put it in a book full of temperature-dysregulation illnesses. These are illnesses which should be handled by the appropriate area of medicine: infectious medicine, neurology, gastroenterology and what not. Even more importantly – they are not actually illnesses sensu stricte but rather symptoms of illnesses – so HIV-induced psychosis is a symptom of HIV infection. But in this case you can trace the symptom to a real illness.
In cases of these illnesses you can also establish, if not the original cause, then at least a “normal” state. So the blood sugar level and corresponding insulin or the lack of tumour or lack of virus/bacteria and the lack of fever etc.
Now to the “mental illnesses”: they have no known etiology and they can be diagnosed solely based on symptoms. Here however we’re making assumptions about what is a right response to the environment. We know what is the right response to a certain sugar level in blood -we can measure it in all people. We know what’s the right response to bacterial infection and that’s fever. But what is the “normal” response to a death of loved one? What is a normal response to sexual abuse? What is a normal response to loneliness? You cannot define a normal in these cases so how can you define a pathology? The etiology of these “illnesses” is also purely external so even if you called them illnesses you can’t fix them by fixing the individual but by addressing the cause. You don’t treat “fever disorder” by cutting off the piece of the brain which controls body temperature – you may give someone aspirin but you won’t ask them to take it for the rest of their lives to control their genetic illness (though ability to produce fever is certainly written in our genetic code). That would be absurd. You find out what the reason for the symptom is, and you eradicate it. You may give some medicine to control the symptom as above mentioned aspirin but you do it with full knowledge it’s only an accessory and not addressing the root of the problem.
In case of “mental illness” the root of the problem is not a pathogen but toxic social environment. And the answer to that is not medical – at least I don’t know a pill that would stop people from abusing you or making them love you or appreciate you. the answer is psychosocial and therefore it’s not an illness – it’s just a response of a person to adverse environment.
Ever heard of neurology? You know, that deals with real illness affecting the brain? Or other areas of medicine?
Every living person has contradictions. And delusions for that matter – it’s the only way our brains are able to classify and cope with reality. Some people have more to cope with.
“i think it’s a balanced & intelligent article/overview – Amusing as well.”
You have an interesting idea about “balanced”. It’s basically a list of some facts from Szasz’ life without any relevant citations written in a biased tone. An example:
“While Szasz did write a few paranoid things about psychiatric dystopias, he never descended into the really cranky conspiracies that the Scientologists did”
Sounds quite opinionated for a balanced piece, but maybe that’s just me. Plus what are these “few paranoid things”? Why didn’t the author bother to cite them so that the reader can say for him/herself if they were indeed paranoid but not quite cranky as the article claims?
Seriously? RationalWiki? It sounds like a mirror image of Conservopedia.
“People are putting forward the argument that mental illness doesn’t exist.”
I’ll give you an analogy. When I say “there are no killer whale fish” doesn’t mean I don’t believe in killer whales – I simply know they’re not fish. And they should not be treated as ones because if you try to treat a killer whale as if it were a fish you’re going to do some damage to the poor animal.
First of all not having a system at all would already be an improvement. As research shows everything psychiatry does only makes the problem worse so having no psychiatry would mean that a lot of people who are now locked up in the drugs/hospitalizations cycles or are chronically disabled would recover on their own. Especially when they were not told that they are sick by everyone around but have tehir feelings and problems acknowledged as real and socially acceptable (you know, things like grieving the loss of a loved one for more than two weeks).
Secondly, it’s in essence a system of lowest effort. The easiest thing you can do is to take the person who’s causing trouble and dump them in a hole and drug them to stupor and early death. It’s not only easy but also profitable for certain people. But not for society at large. Instead the things we all want and deserve: taking care of people basic needs for food, shelter and feeling valuable for others (like by having a meaningful employment) would take care of most cases of mental illness. Building communities and acting against the atomisation of society would cure others. It’s true that there will probably always be “hopeless cases” but compared to what it is now it’d be an enormous improvement.
I think the biggest problem is that this thing is systemic. You can’t really re-build a system from within without radical change. I suggest you watch “the Wire” – it shows beautifully how a system works, from the lowest to the highest levels and how individual attempts on reform and improvement and what not are doomed to fail. There’s no incentive to build alternatives because the system as it is makes them futile.
Computer as a machine is necessary for the programs to be run but there’s a dualism between the physical construct and the code. You can run different codes on the same computer and you can use the same code on different computers. It’s not the same thing.
Of course our thoughts, feelings and behaviours require brain but it’s not the same thing as taking a reductionist approach to it like – in this bunch of neurons sits consciousness. If that was so simple neuroscience would have solved most of it already.
So no, the mind is not the brain. You can’t objectively measure or even describe subjective experience. Even if we both look at the red ball and we both call it red we don’t know what the other person sees inside his/her brain. Maybe my red looks like her green inside. You simply don’t know. That’s why study of the brain is essentially different from the study of the mind and the neuroscience is unlikely to answer certain questions.
Lawsuits are good but in the current system all that happens is even if you win – they pay a fine which sounds big but is like 0.00000001% of their monthly profits or something and they move on. Regulations don’t get changed, nobody goes to prison, they continue business as usual. Essentially the same problem like with banksters.
The whole system has to go…
This is absolutely disastrous if it’s true. Given the number of kids on these drugs we’re creating a massive health problem for the next 100yrs. The bone mass they won’t get as kids is unlikely to be completely recovered later and then when they age… disaster.
I’d love to take part in that but it sounds like a full time job, and I’m already working two :(.
As for things that are arguable – maybe one could add a “anti-forced treatment abolitionists” to the “anti-psychiatry” entry and explain that it’s a part of anti-psychiatry movement that’s restricted to mostly or only to forced psychiatry. I think it’s possible to do.
“Criticism of psychiatry, and the whole mental health enterprise, was more acceptable 40 years ago than it is today.”
I think that’s the effect of PR “anti-stigma” campaigns which equate being anti-psychiatry with being anti-people who suffer from emotional distress. Are you against psychiatric drugging? Or, you’re just this terrible person stigmatizing the poor depressed folks. Have you maybe mentioned the fact that ADHD drugs are chemically similar to meth? You’re horrible to vulnerable kids who are now going to end up in prison because of you. And similar bs. One would think the trick that psychiatry uses – equaling themselves with their patients when it’s profitable for them (“you can’t criticize us you insensitive person”) and distancing themselves when it’s unfavourable (like when someone on psych drugs shoots up some school kids) is transparent but it works frighteningly well. It is easy to debunk if you can just get people to stop and think for 2s but people are not used to doing that nor are they taught that in schools, at least most of them. We used to do that in classes – take statements and point out contradictions and manipulations etc. But that’s like forbidden knowledge because it takes away the power from advertising and PR. God forbid you not only hear and internalize but listen and think about it. Just move on and keep shopping.
“Since I’m going to hear voices anyway, I may as well stop the medication.”
Sounds like the meds weren’t “working” anyway. But, hey it can always be sold as “if she only took her meds” story. They never ask why people want to get off these meds at every opportunity. Maybe because there are logically only two possible explanations:
1) They have no insight – in this case it means they are still “symptomatic” and the drugs don’t work anyway so why bother?
2) they are sane and they prefer to take the risk of going “full crazy” again to whatever they feel while on the drug
My guess is the 2nd one’s true. A guess supported by a personal experience of some 2nd generation “anti-psychotics”. They are torture drugs – I’d rather jump in front of a train that zombie through the rest of my life on them.
“Then she returned to college in the fall to restart her senior year — and, as is common in these scenarios, stopped taking her meds. (…) Natalie was re-committed to the hospital and Doris admits that this relapse was more severe than her initial psychotic break. (…) While she did rebound again, the devastating cycle continued: Natalie would take her meds, feel stable and then would forgo the meds believing they were no longer necessary. “Yet if she even inadvertently missed a few days of medication — even while receiving therapy and other forms of treatment — the demons would return, and one of the first things they would tell her was to stop taking her medicine,” Doris wrote. “The second thing they would tell her was not to talk to her mom, the most powerful other influence in her life. Each time she obeyed and relapsed, she plunged into a longer free fall, hitting the ground harder, recovering more slowly and returning at a lower plateau.””
Well, this is so well known – stopping the drugs causes relapse psychosis which is worse than the previous one simply because the drugs sensitize the brain. It’s been covered extensively by MIA.
I wonder why people never ask their children and parents etc. WHY they don’t want to take the drugs? Why is it that the “crazy ones” have this single thing that they fixate on which is to stop the drugs as soon as possible. And they do that when they’re supposedly stable, that is they should not have “symptoms” and should be having insight if the drugs are indeed working. Not a reflection on that in the article.
It’s really a remarkable piece of propaganda. The voices in the poor girl’s head knew better but nobody bothered to listen to her. “Take your drugs and shut up”. The most painful thing is that this is often the attitude that the most well-meaning family members have, being brainwashed by psychiatry.
I think we also need another “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”. Both a book but maybe more importantly a movie. There were few singular thing that did more damage to psychiatry as this piece of art. It doesn’t have to be fictional – a good documentary would do. But it has to be something that not only tells it like it is – it has to be able to catch people’s attention. We need our Michael Moore or a person of this talent to get people entertained and interested – otherwise the only people reading/watching are the choir.
“And when Reagan came into power in 1980 more and more people had to put their energies into basic survival, with less time available for activism. (I had never seen people sleeping on street vents before then.)”
I think that’s a big one. It was essentially a peak of counter-revolution. Consumerism raging on the sometimes literal corpses of disposable people. I think this tide is changing.
Excellent suggestions. I may add one: if you buy a book and read it – let it free. If you don’t want to part with it in order to be able to quote it etc. – you can copy it for personal use or buy a second one. Many people read books they would never otherwise read because they find them in a pile in a cafe etc. There are many places where one can drop and pick up books and that increases the number of readers dramatically. Find one or more in where you live and share.
That’s what happens when corporations and the state become one. They stop serving and protecting the people, instead they do the exact opposite – mismanage each and every public service in order to privatize it for pennies and the only function they keep is the oppressive ones (police, military and psychiatry).
It’s terrifying to say the least. Especially for someone who works in science.
“There was some evidence of limited efficacy of risperidone in reducing aggression and conduct problems in children and youths (aged 5 to 18 years) with disruptive behavior disorders in the short term (four to 10 weeks) from a small number of studies in which there was some risk of bias of overestimating the true intervention effect”
honestly, I don’t care if they reduce aggressive behaviour or not You know what also reduces aggressive behaviour? Beating someone to unconsciousness. It also reduces all the other behaviours and that’s also what the anti-psychotics do. They turn people into unmoving, unfeeling zombies. It’s sick to do that to anyone. These drugs should be banned for children.
I’d not rely on any politician but he’s the best bet in terms of one who would probably listen to a well organized advocacy group. And he does have an uphill struggle – why the mainstream media can’t shut up about the racist and sexist rants of one particular candidate on the republican side, they’ve labelled Bernie extremist and as of late are trying not to cover him at all. Sometimes they would talk for 15 minutes about Hillary and Biden, who’s not even running and “forget” to mention him, even though he’s leading in New Hampshire and recently in Iowa. Which suggests he’s the change we can believe in ;).
In any case – whoever wins the organized movements with clear objectives is necessary to achieve change.
Agreed.
Also legal challenge and lobbing politicians (especially on a local level) are useful if you manage to gather a strong and committed group.
“caring ruler”??? What’s next “benevolent dictator”? Or maybe “only slightly ruthless tyrant”?
Lack of insight you say…
What the hell is the “conditional discharge”? I don’t see how people can seriously call these places hospitals…
“The reason we are not covered by corporate media is not that there’s something “wrong” with our presentation. The fact is they have no intention of assisting us in bringing down an industry which is part and parcel of the system they represent.”
Exactly. When you’re trying to satisfy them you’ll need to water down you message to the point when you’ll essentially turn into NAMI.
That is indeed a good idea. The only problem may be that like other movement they may have drunk the kool-aid and not want to be associated with the crazies who need “help”. So far most of the prison reformists call for moving people with “mental health issues” to hospitals. I sometimes find it hard to condemn their tactics (when wanting to save someone from death penalty I’d also go with anything) but in the end they probably don’t realize they push these people out of the frying pan into the fire.
I think psychiatry is one thing but we also have to rein in the pharmaceutical industry. Lots of psych drugs are sold also for non-“mental illness” reasons. While some of them may be legitimate (although it’s likely a tiny percentage) most are complete bs or make people worse over the long term (like benzos for muscle relaxation).
This is a really important experience. Having someone to live for and knowing that someone will grieve you for the rest of tehir lives is the best way to stop seriously considering suicide. People need meaningful relationships and sometimes a vulnerable animal is as important as a human in giving you strength and meaning.
How about turning it into a hobby – a blog? Link to his interviews etc. and comment on them to debunk his claims? That would be a good resource and a place to point people to when they buy into his propaganda.
“f individuals suffering from depression are to avoid the “psychiatric monster” they must be able to access existing alternatives.”
They are called friends. In my view there’s no “treatment” for depression. Depression is not an illness and it’s caused by this thing called life. Everyone has to learn to live on tehir own and hopefully find people who are compassionate, trustworthy and emphatic to share this life with. Everything else is useless loss of time.
Those with dementia suffer from neurological illness not mental illness.
I generally agree but I don’t think that providing more extensive or “better” therapy, whatever that even means is a real issue. A real issue is deeply dysfunctional society, student debt, job insecurity, pressure to succeed at all costs, hyperindividualism, commercialization of universities etc. etc. Without addressing roots of the problem you can’t solve it.
No amount of talk therapy will cure depression of someone who doesn’t know if he/she will have a home and be able to eat. No amount of therapy is going to cure anxiety for someone who has every reason to feel scared about the future. People are depressed and frightened because that’s the 100% reasonable and normal response to the world we live in.
There’s one more factor to consider: the amount of guns per capita. While it’s hard to absolve the police from the responsibility for the abuses we now all can see on tape one can’t ignore the general climate of “everyone can be armed and dangerous”. This is also something that does not exist in other countries. Police there usually don’t expect every person on the street to be bearing arms. Add to that all the other problems and you have an explosive mix that kills hundreds of people.
Btw, the authors’ response is golden:
“David Menkes and Andrew Herxheimer postulate that a possible explanation for the increased risk of violent crime in our study is the use of antidepressants (by which we assume they mean SSRI antidepressants), on the basis of some case reports. This argument might or might not be true. Our study did not investigate the effects of treatment, which need careful modelling of large datasets with advanced statistical approaches to avoid different types of biases and misinterpretations. Meaningful research needs numbers, not just words.”
Oh, so doing a properly controlled study actually requires some effort and proper statistics? Too bad, that apparently what the authors are into.
Plus it’s nice that they’re worried about biases and misinterpretations when linking anti-depressants to violence but they’re a-OK linking depressed people to violence with a poorly controlled study. Of course one would not want to harm corporate bottomline but if some random crazy people get stigmatized or locked up and their lives are destroyed because of that… well, who cares about them anyway.
“SF has received one speaker’s fee from Janssen outside of the submitted work, which was donated to charity. GMG reports grants and personal fees from Servier, Cephalon/Teva, Lundbeck/Otsuka, Takeda, Merck, Eli Lilly, Sunovion, Convergence, AstraZeneca, GSK, and Medscape outside of the submitted work. PL declares no competing interests.”
I’m sure that have nothing to do with the way the study was conducted and analyzed.
They almost never control for the effect of drugs. It’s like taking a group of black people, feeding them meth and then running a study comparing them to white people not taking drugs. And then claiming there’s a link between paranoia and aggression and ethnicity. If they did that there would be world wide outcry about racial bias and they would all be kicked out of their positions. But you can run similarly idiotic “studies” on “mentally ill” and be treated like a real scientist. What a joke.
Too bad for them because if you trust the DSM 100% of their neighbours are mental themselves included.
We clearly need more people talking how “mental illness” leads to mass shootings.
When it comes to Vermont and the person who’s currently running for president – what are Bernie Sanders’ views on psychiatry and would it make sense to push him on that issue? I know Vermont is home to some good initiatives and this guy seems to be responsive to pushing (the kind of Black Lives Matter did as of late). Maybe this would be one way to bring the issue to the public attention and inject our views into the conversation…
I wonder if in his research he looked if there is any influence of the drugs in how people respond to social support and how long it’s positive effects persist in those on and off the drugs. Anti-psychotics blunt affect and change cognition so I’d expect people to be less responsive to social environment when they take them and to be less resistant to losing such support as well. I wonder if they did it or if they even allowed anyone to go “untreated”. If the social support is all about reminding you to take a pill then no wonder that the effects don’t last.
The problem with all these studies is that there’s no real control group. People are never allowed to go without “treatment” because it’s assumed, with no good evidence and plenty to the contrary, that they need it and it would be unethical to spare them the drugging. And then the psychiatry proponents can turn around and scream “correlation’s not causation” while doing an actual experiment to prove causation would not be allowed.
“young adults may resist treatment due to the side effects: would you, he asked, want to gain 30 pounds or experience sexual dysfunction? ”
Young adults may also resist “treatment” because of the EFFECTS – turning into a drooling zombie, which is the primary way these drugs “works”.
To address the other two questions:
– in the case of retraction authors rarely are subject to any consequences. In some cases this is justifiable – when the publication is a result of an honest mistake (which happens). But there are clear cases when fraud was committed and nothing really happens. The worst case scenario for the person committing the fraud is losing face in front of scientific community and therefore further funding and employment possibilities. Which sometimes happens in basic science and for young researchers but rarely when established clinicians are involved. In fact there is no clear mechanism for punishing such behaviour that I know of and it’s mostly the hope that tarnished reputation will do the job. It often doesn’t.
– in case of transparency – the current state of affairs is ridiculous, inexcusable and can only be explained by the politicians and regulatory bodies being in bed with pharma. There are some organizations like AllTrials which are fighting for more transparency, independent bodies which document problems with studies such as Retraction Watch and that critically re-analyse the data or document side effects (like Cochrane and RxISK.org). But there’s no coherent mechanism right now to force clinical study authors to follow the guidelines and publish all the data or in fact publish at all. The preregistration is largely on voluntary basis and even when journals claim to require it as a standard they often do not follow their own rules. In other words: it’s a hot mess.
Great job. This is probably even better than a quiet retraction that no one would notice.
I think you have just discovered the underlying cause of “mental illness” on campus.
The whole discussion in the video is ridiculous.
“1 in 4 students reporting to campus counseling centers now are already on some kind of psychotropic medication.”
I think I just got and instant depression. Wow… 25%? Wow…
We are breeding a whole generation of seriously disabled people with serious emotional and personality issues. If you drug them for all their lives and tell them that every aspect of being an actual human is a symptom no wonder that everyone now is “mentally ill”.
It’s not so much of a problem that police kills someone black or “mentally ill” etc. The problem is that police kills period. Look at police shootings in US vs other developed countries.
Training is good and fine, body cameras are an ok idea but in the end of the day if you can kill people for no good reason and get away with it nothing will change.
Perfect storm…traumatised kids who have no one to speak for them and defend them. It’s a crime.
True but a vast majority of “ADHD” cases are simply kids behaving like kids. Some of my friends had problems already when sending their kids to kindergarden. They got complaints about their kids being “hyperactive” because of such abnormal behaviours like climbing onto things (for a 1.5 and 4 year old). Isn’t that what children in these ages are supposed to do? Train their muscles and coordination skills and balance etc.? Yet the people who worked there were complaining (usually it was only one of the caregivers who noticed this horrible “symptom” – I would say it says more about this person than about the child). Fortunately none of my friends is gullible enough to diagnose and drug their precious kids to please someone who doesn’t want to do her job but I’m sure it’s not always the case.
“Genes for behaviour” is an absurd idea to begin with. All there is are genes for potential for a behaviour. Sure, if you don’t have legs it’s hard to walk and if you don’t feel emotions it’s hard to be emphatic to your fellow humans but the genes underlying the development of legs or brain structures related to emotion processing do not determine when and how and how much we walk or empathize. We do that in response to the environment. And even when our genes provide us with certain capacities it’s totally possible to lose these abilities, either permanently or temporarily in response to trauma.
You see this even when you study fruit flies. It’s relatively easy to impair animal’s ability to perform a behaviour but inducing a behaviour is a tricky thing and you almost never get it with a single gene. Usually you need to present an environmental stimulus anyway.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that people do inherit personality traits but that’s a different thing from saying that they inherit behaviours.
“My grandmother said it was from the fact that African Americans were very protective and caring to the otherness of their disabled family members. White families due to shame from the wealthy classes or distancing from other families were much more open to putting family into the system.”
Black Americans are also probably more likely to see the system for what it is while white privileged people don’t realise until they’re trapped. When you have been abused for so long your bs detector is more sensitive.
I don’t want to go all conspiratorial but could it be that the shriek for the “treatment” instead of prison is a counter-revolutionary response to the call for prison reform? You want to free people from prisons who shouldn’t be there, we’ll lock them up elsewhere? The same shipping of blacks from slavery to prisons to mental institutions… Blacks, native Americans, activists, everyone else who’s “maladjusted”.
I don’t think much of that is planned or consciously realized but there are surely people within that movement who have it at the back of their heads…
“I never saw a lawyer.”
I allegedly saw one. In a drugged stupor so I don’t even remember it (benzos…). Right to representation … hahahahahahha (Joker’s laughter).
guilded turd=gilded… and real turn=turd
Spelling…
Expanding on your analogy: guilded turd is even worse because no one wants to touch the real turn as no one wants to get dirty – when you put some shine on it people think it’s good and end up with sh*t on their hands.
“Psychiatry had become a political tool.”
Like it has ever been anything but…
Great piece and very informative, thank you.
Involuntary psychiatry should go. That is the most important thing – until this is done no amount of educating the public about the dangers of drugs etc. will have any real meaning.
Except that most developed countries in the world have strict gun controls and as much freedom if not more than US. It’s just a fact.
Grey matter = cell bodies. In other words: neurons die. Which in almost all areas of the human brain is practically irreversible (except for hippocampus). Sadly it’s also not unexpected – we know that survival of neurons is tightly linked to their activity. Neurons that don’t receive meaningful inputs commit suicide. When you deprive whole populations of neurons of dopaminergic input for prolonged periods of time it’s not surprising that some of them will die. Btw, it’s “funny what you find when you go to some basic research studies: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25367720
“Adult mice were separated into six groups of n = 5 animals each. Body weight (5 mg/kg) of haloperidol was administered intraperitoneally for 7 days to block dopaminergic D2 receptors and induce degeneration in the motor cortex“
Btw, given the absurdity of the “all have disorder” DSM – how is it possible that people who prescribe these drugs didn’t even bother to find some label? It’s not that hard – pass me the book and I can slap one over anyone’s forehead. I guess it just goes to show how little people care when prescribing drugs. I remember when me and my friend were watching Dr House with a mix of amusement and terror as he was using “diagnosis by prescription” (if a drug against A it doesn’t kill you and helps – it means the patient has A). Turns out a lot of “doctors” watch this series not as dumb amusement but as “how to” manual. Scary…
We told you so…
I’m not sure if there is any legitimate use of these drugs for anyone. Maybe some people voluntarily take them to blunt their psychosis but then they shouldn’t take them for long time periods anyway and if it’s about short-term, one time use for “calming down” benzos or other sedatives would do the trick for most people (not that these are much better but there’s hardly anything worse than an “anti-psychotic”).
They all “work” by the same mechanism so claims that they have radically opposite effects on the brain are bogus to say the least. It’s no wonder that when you switch off the very important dopaminergic input that neurons degenerate.
I think if they simply gave this money to the “patients” they would cure a whole bunch of cases immediately. At least all of those depressed due to financial instability, poverty, debt, unemployment etc.
I think the last paragraph of this article is the most telling. We are still stuck with “it’s a heritable disease” because of some meaningless correlations but if it were the case with current genomic and transcriptomic studies we should have at least some answers. Instead we have huge lists of genes which are marginally associated with this or that “psychiatric disorder”. Even if some genes (like those making sure we do not develop into psychopaths) are necessary for the development of “mental illness” (or its underlying cause – being able to experience emotions) none of them is sufficient.
Btw: “Here are my suggestions for any psychiatrist who is genuinely concerned about the stigmatization of his/her profession:
Repudiate the spurious medicalization of non-medical problems;
Acknowledge the destructive and disempowering nature of the “treatments”;
Apologize to all concerned;
Find honest work.”
It made my day, thank you :).
For the migraines you may want to visit a neurologist (some of them are actual doctors, not like psychiatrists). I don’t want to scare you or anything but chronic headaches and cognitive impairment can be a sign of something serious and suppressing the symptoms with psych drugs may not be the best way to go. Sometimes migraines are “benign”, sometimes caused by serious underlying issues. Also, you may want to check your hormone levels, they can mess up cognition and cause headaches as well.
It’s always better to treat the underlying cause rather than medicate the symptoms, especially when you don’t know what’s causing them in the first palce.
But it’s not surprising. Psychiatry is used to treat anyone who disagrees with them in the most benign detail as delusional and detached from reality. So they simply extend the dismissive attitude they have towards their “patients” to the rest of the world.
Btw, one more verbal manipulation tactic that Philip didn’t mention here (though I believe he has addressed it elsewhere) – the lumping of psychiatrists and their “patients” together when it’s convenient (“you would not want to stigmatize the poor crazy people, would you? well, then you can’t say anything bad about psychiatry” – a beautiful logical fallacy right here) but distancing themselves when inconvenient (like the mentioned suggestion that psychiatrists are never afflicted by the same “mental illnesses” than the rest of us mere humans).
A rich mixture of arrogance and self-delusion…psychiatry at it’s “best”.
These drugs should be banned.
Another one…
The fat lady has sung. But apparently it’s OK to cause brain damage in “schizophrenics” and other “human trash” – they are not good little robots so they have no worth in society. Who cares if they only get worse and end up dying 25 years too early.
“requirement of prior authorization for antipsychotics for children under age six”
Six? Seriosuly? No six year old kid needs an anti-psychotic. It’s crazy.
Thank you for taking a stand. It may seem like it was for nothing but it ain’t. Just like Manning or Snowden or countless others who blew a whistle on the abuses against human and civil rights.
“make people feel bad about having to take meds.”
Like that’s a problem. The real problem is taht people are coerced and often forced to take drugs that make them physically sick, mentally destroyed and often lead to suicide or death from medical reasons.
I’ve heard the story of “my drugs saved me”. In the same time there are people who believe homeopathy saved them or prayer saved them or drinking their own urine saved them (yeah, the last one is a thing). It’s all good and fine and you’re entitled to your believes but if we really care about “evidence-based medicine” which we’re supposed to care apparently then psychiatric drugs have almost no efficacy. Worse than that, anti-depressants can cause suicide.
So if you want to take you meds please continue to do so, it’s your life and your body but don’t complain when we’re trying to inform people. Informed consent should be the right of every patient and it’s clearly not the case right now.
“The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Suicide (1999) and the National Strategy to Prevent Suicide (2000) were followed a decade later by a higher suicide rate”
Totally predictable. All they had to do is ask surviviours beforehand. The only time I tired to kill myself for real was in the “hospital” and because of what they did to me. People who work in locked wards are criminals.
Mental health emergency helpline – “we don’t have time to talk to you, go to the hospital”. I’m not even kidding.
I disagree that the current system is so despite people’s best intentions. some of the people working in the system at best don’t give a flying f***, at worst enjoy exercising power over vulnerable others. the only human reactions I received were 100% from people outside the system. Psychiatrists, psychologists and most nurses (except one who ended in a psych ward because he couldn’t get a better job) were all abusive and some of them psychopathic.
That is also common practice. In the psych ward they kept me in I tried to talk to another person in the evening and the staff immediately appeared (otherwise they never had 5 minutes time for you) and told us to go to our rooms and stop disturbing the peace. Psychiatric hospitals are dehumanizing and not better than prisons.
Thank you for the courage to speak out and your advocacy. Your an inspiration to us all.
This is horrifying. Play is a necessary component of normal development, all cognitively advanced animals play – monkeys, cats, dogs, dolphins. It teaches you all skills needed in life: motor, sensory, social, cognitive. I’m so happy I’m not a kid now…
Like there was ever legitimate use…
“For instance, at 24 weeks participants showed an increase of 0.5 satisfying sexual events per month compared with placebo.”
Oh, that sounds convincing. Is that really the best they managed to manipulate out of data?
Amphetamines (aka stimulants or ADHD drugs) are known to cause psychosis, which then turns to “bipolar” or “psychotic disorder” or whatever label is more fashionable at the time.
I think maybe they should first deal with the hungry and the homeless aspect and I can assure you a lot of the “mental illness” would be cured. Psych wards are prisons by another name and not a solution to anything.
I don’t think you understand what we advocate for at all.
Desperate people fall in for many traps: con men, cults, psychiatry…
Some people say that the concerns over spending led to closing down asylums just as much if not more than the outrage over their abuses. If current neoliberal madness is going to end psychiatry then it would be one good thing that it’s brought about.
What is the point of spending money on the system which only harms people if you could help them for a fraction of that cost? The real problem here is those very neoliberals who want to cut all and any social programs are only too happy to fund drugs because that helps their corporate friends. So you get none of the real help and all the psychiatry’s bs.
Great post. It reminded me of my own experiences and how anger saved my life. I’ve written a longer post about it but the internet has decided to swallow it so let’s just say that :).
Are you suggesting that the authors of the DSM fit the description of a psychopath…? Well you’d be right.
We are not allowed to feel anything anymore. If having feelings is abnormal, what is normal? Grief, sadness, at times anger etc. come from our humanity.
I think it only goes to show what is the state of this profession today. I’d just add that a mediocre writer knows more about human psychology and a street druggie more about effects of psych drugs than a standard “doctor”.
I don’t know about brain zaps but the restless leg syndrome from Zyprexa/Seroquel is supposed to go away immediately after you stop the drug. It doesn’t. I had to deal with it for over a year until I managed to get rid of it with magnesium and iron supplements. Nonetheless it still comes back in a mild form at times and I have to return to supplements. I never had this before the drugs and it was clearly drug-related symptom. It’s a horrible feeling that you constantly have to move your legs and you can’t sit still or fall asleep. Combined with extreme tiredness from these drugs it’s real torture.
I’m a bit afraid we’re going in the other direction. The current socioeconomic and political situation in Western countries looks frighteningly similar to conditions that led to the rise of fascist Germany.
As to “My partner Diana Kline predicts that the next wars will be fought by corporations; it is a terrible thing to imagine but that is the direction that we are going in.” – this has already happened to a large extent. The war in Iraq was full of contractors and it were companies like Halliburton and Blackwater that made a killing, literally and metaphorically on that war. American army and spying apparatus has been largely outsourced to corporations. There is a name for a system where governments and corporations merge to create a police state and this name is a scary one.
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I’m changing the things I can’t accept.”
Amen to that.
Btw, some degree of justice would also be welcome. When 20 people beat a guy to death they should all end up in prison themselves. Otherwise there will be no stop to the violence.
Everyone wants to make a buck of pretending they care about you.
Here’s an answer: no.
Fears? Isn’t that an established fact already?
Keep up the good fight. Do not let them keep it under the rug anymore.
Btw, why is Risperdal used to “treat” autism in the first place? Like it does anything else than lobotomising people and further impairing their social skills – the one problem that most people thrown into the “autism” basket tend to have in common.
NAMI is pharma front group plus some naive people who don’t understand who they are getting played.
What a joke… Corruption to the highest degree.
United Stasi of America.
The “treatment” facilitates this kind of behaviour. Not only they give you drugs that give you total disinhibition, mood swings and in some cases full blown psychosis when no was present but they also tell you that you have no control over the situation. Well, if you have no control over your impulses and the drugs make you very angry, even more than you’d normally be, and kill any empathy you may still have then why not go and shoot up some people?
I’ve never been homicidal but I know full well that I never had full blown panic attacks and other whacky emotional rides before I was started on an “anti-depressant”. “Mood stabilizers” didn’t make it better – when I was not binge eating seconds before falling asleep while standing I had withdrawal which was mood swing after mood swing. Seroquel made me feel like a zombie and I was acting out only so that I could feel anything at all. Prozac – total anxiety that made me feel stomach sick and gave me shaking hands. I’m so happy I never took any of these drugs for more than a month. I wonder why people in “treatment” sometimes kill themselves or others. Weird…
When the fascist state finally takes hold for good we know who’s a good candidate for a chief psychiatrist in charge of “euthanasia”. It all sounds like exaggerating and I hope it is but there’s a very ugly undercurrent in US and Europe right now.
I can’t stand this guy. He’s so arrogant – he has no claims to back up his opinions, yet he voices them with complete confidence and contributes to a witch hunt that’s already gaining steam.
No sh*t Sherlock. Suicidal people more likely to be impulsive to agitated. Wow…
Btw, this is the most useless set of behaviours to predict anything I’ve ever seen, maybe save for “breathing and moving their eyeballs”.
He was clearly traumatized by the “good professionals”. The only time I attempted suicide for real was in psych ward and only because they tortured me to that point. I have mostly recovers from any issues that I had that brought me to that place except for I still suffer panic attacks because of the “hospital” stay. I still get anxious when I hear an ambulance and triggered by doctors in the most benign circumstances (like blood taking). So much for the “help” they offer.
Btw, the whole “danger to self and others” was if fact because I rejected a physical exam and the “doctor” “didn’t have time to deal” with me an actual quote. So it makes me angry and amused at the same time when I read Jonathan’s comments on what is and is not legal. There’s no law to protect you against psychiatry. They killed people in that hospital before and there were numerous stories about abuses in it year after year and nothing’s changed.
Great insight Noel, I agree 100%.
Love your analogy. Psychiatric rape and torture should be banned.
Have you thought also maybe you’re indulging him too much? I understand all the issues he has and the guilt you seem to have over it but sometimes one has to take a stand. Sometimes the best way to cure an alcoholic from his addiction is to kick him out on the street and tell him to come back when his sober (worked for my grandfather).
I’m not necessarily suggesting you kick your son onto the streets, it seems like a bad idea given what you’ve written about him but maybe you should just go in an clean the room (or give him a choice: either you do it until tomorrow or I’ll do it). I don’t know how strong he is but if you have family members around you should make sure to be prepared in case he gets violent that he doesn’t harm you. There’s some chance that he’ll see that he can’t hide in his room and do what he wants with you forever. I know it may be hard for him to understand your position if he indeed has a form of autism but you should try to explain to him the rules.
I think the biggest problem here is how to deal with the situation to improve it while not risking escalation that will lead to further abuse of your son. It’s a very thin line to walk…
“Do you know what it’s like to have your son hate you, call you filthy names, and treat you like an enemy after years of practically being his only real advocate? This is my life now. I miss my son. I feel like I’ve lost him.”
I understand your pain but I also understand his position. I have told my family that if they ever turn me over to psychiatry I will never talk to them again. You may have done that in the best faith and when you felt you had no choice but you also have to understand that you son could see you as his enemy because of that. I don’t know how it was before you decided to hospitalize him the first time but such things never help.
I really don’t know how to fix something that’s so badly broken. I feel for you and hope you’ll find a way.
Btw, there’s one more problem that gardenlisa may need to face: I of course don’t know the details of her family history but if they did previously participate in forcing/coercing her son into the system his aggressive stance and refusal to follow advice may be a result of this. I’m not saying that this is any fault of her or her family (sometimes families have no other choice but to comply or lose any control over what is done to their loved ones) but it would explain the lack of trust, paranoia etc. It can take a long time to heal and a lot of good will on both sides to overcome things like that.
Psychiatry destroys individuals but psychiatry also destroys people’s relationships to their spouses, parents, kids.
I’m so sorry for you and your son. Zyprexa is a real torture drug and by many accounts one of the worst both in terms of “side effects” and withdrawal. I hope you’ll get through it.
Exactly. The whole argument from Jonathan seems to be: “the only alternative to the use of force by me is the use of force by police”. Like the use of force by psychiatry is any better than the use of force by police. In fact is often worse because it included mind rape (which Jonathan admitted using), for which there’s no justification at all.
Plus in the legal system you have due process. You don’t have one in psychiatry (and please don’t pretend like the civil commitment and other sad jokes are due process).
If it’s torture when done by a psychopath to a sane person it is torture when done to a “schizophrenic” by a “compassionate doctor”. Torture is torture period.
“But you take it a step farther Richard. You demand that force never be used….no matter the circumstance. ”
You’re building a strawman again.
All that Richard says is that it is not psychiatry’s business to use for on people they’re supposed to help. A psychiatrist faced with violence should have the exact same rights as any other human being: when attacked directly defend oneself or if possible avoid it and call the police. Then the police should deal with it accordingly.
That being said – these kinds of situations are a miniscule percentage of all the psychiatric uses of force. The so-called abuses of power are 99.9999…% of them. Using force because someone “doesn’t have time” to do his/her job (I’m a quoting the torturer who chose to abuse me because she didn’t have time to do what she was paid to do as a “doctor”), because someone disagrees with you, because someone’s annoying, because you are in a real-life Stanford prison experiment and experiencing a power trip… The abuses of power are a rule.
Accordingly, you’re constantly coming back to the false alternative “prison or hospital”/”being and killed/traumatized in psych ward”/”being killed/traumatized in jail”. These are not the only alternatives and US police and prison system is a total failure which it does not need to be. Pretending that they are only allows the system to continue. This is not an argument for force in hospitals, this is an argument for police and prison reform.
This is a similar way of how people should approach elderly who experience severe dementia. There are white lies which can help the person to calm down and do not harm anyone.
I wonder why the “professionals” are so against lying to people in psychosis (which btw they do all the time when talking about drugs etc.) but putting their hands on a vulnerable person is a-OK.
“To do nothing, in the example of when someone is starving themselves (say half normal body weight) is wrong. A doctor would have to force feed the patient until it can be verified the patients brain has proper nutrition/can think rationally. When severely malnourished the brain can not/does not function.”
You’re wrong here. It’s no different if you substitute anorectic (because that’s what you’re describing) with psychotic, depressed etc. It’s denying people agency over their lives and using physical humiliating force on them.
Btw, forced feeding is torture too. If you have doubts look up some videos describing it being done to Guantanamo prisoners. If something is torture when done to a “sane” person it is torture period.
“A slow suicide (example of smoking>to>lung cancer) is OK/rational, a quick suicide is wrong/bad/irrational.”
R u serious on that one?
Everyone should have a right to self-destruct. Forcing other people to live to make yourself feel better is arrogant and counter-productive. If you really want to help a person who’s self-harming or suicidal you ask them what would make them better and want to live. You try to comfort them and persuade them. You don’t humiliate them, abuse them, torture them and then be all surprised they call you a human right abuser.
“We have just described the effects of Eli Lilly’s best-selling antipsychotic, Zyprexa.”
Oh, the torture drug.
I have tried a lot of these poisons but this one would be too hardcore for Lucifer to stomach.
There are numerous people who say the same thing about placebo. Or faith healing. It is no evidence at all.
In terms of medical journals – have you first tried to sieve out all the articles published by people with conflicts of interest, then all the ones which have methodological problems etc.? Because when you do that there’s very little left…
“For example – someone in the psychiatric community, in treatment for mental illness is at a higher suicide risk than one who does not have a diagnosis.”
Except that’s not what the study was about. It was people who had a diagnosis and were hospitalized compared to the matched population who was offered other therapy options. And btw, even if that was it – it’s incumbent on people advocating the use of force to prove that it helps not the other way around. I’m yet to see the proof that forced treatment improves outcomes – so far it seems it does the exact opposite.
“Almost every parent I know is hesitant to even consider the use of medication for their child, despite the noted benefits of doing so, including mitigating the development of future, co-morbid disorders, addiction and so on.”
That is patently false. No psychiatric medication has been shown to prevent co-morbid disorders or addiction, in fact many were linked to causing such problems (benzos, stimulants). Even the short term benefits are questionable at best.
“country that WANTS mental illness to just go away”
…and is going about it in the stupidest way possible.
“You are empowering people to deny their loved ones an option with your rhetoric.”
Yeah, empowering people to get control over their own bodies and minds is a horrible thing indeed. Given the number of pills Americans pop every day they should be the most sane and happiest nation on the planet. So why aren’t they? Could this be because the pills aren’t working and psychiatry is a sham?
Excellent addition to the discussion :). It’s not either or, especially for the egregious “crimes” that “mentally ill” commit (or may some day in future because they’re “dangerous”).
“I feel safer among Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs than I would in any hospital in my State.”
At least you can learn the rules (and there are rules). In psych wards it is total obedience and still you get abused at every step. It reminds me of dealing with a psychopath – some people just derive pleasure from jerking you around and looking at you trying to figure out how to avoid punishment, in vain (because the rules change at his/her whim).
“their own life” Typing too fast 😉
“Of course, the question of “protecting” someone who is suicidal from him/herself is a much thornier issue.”
Nope. Everyone has the right to their own body and control over tehir own right. Killing myself should be a right.
“If you oppose force, why do you support police and the prison system for working with the “mentally ill”?”
Oh god, it’s such a strawman. “If you oppose war in Iraq are you if favour of Al-Qaeda?”
“So yes…everyone has a right to defend themselves. We’re in agreement there. I think what might make this more clear is describing in real terms how to work with people who are violent. ”
Do you mean psychiatrists? I hope you extend this right to your patients so that when one of you comes to them with needles and threats they have all the right in the world to fight back. Or when they are brought in against their will for that matter.
I’ve heard this argument a 1000 times before: “a guy was brought in and didn’t want to cooperate and then started to be aggressive when we told him he can’t go home.” Yeah – I’d also be aggressive if someone kidnapped me and imprisoned and tried to force me to perform tricks to his/her amusement.
Psychiatrists and other staff have no right to complain if any of tha people brought in and kept involuntarily attacks them. In this situation it is self-defense and you’re the abuser.
Thank you for writing that. I could have not said it better.
Forced psychiatric drugging is rape and torture of the worst kind.
“Generally, people who are acting in an uncompromisingly threatening and violent way are managed by police through the use of tasers, nightsticks, beanbag guns and handguns.”
This issue has been addressed by Richard. The answer is not “let’s fine a gentler way to kick your a** and throw you in a hole”. The answer is to find ways to not use force at all. In some places police is well trained and I’ll take a well trained emphatic policeman over psychiatrists every time. In fact I had an encounter with some and they treated me very well although I was a pain in the a** at the time and even told me that they don’t want to call ambulance on me since they didn’t have a very good opinion on what psychiatrists do to people. In the end they managed to talk to me and get me out of a panic attack.
In the same time psychiatrists react with extreme violence to anything including refusal to take a physical exam (which is a right of every human being). I’d argue that most of the presumed violence from patients against staff is actually well deserved and form of self-defense. These a***oles literally complained in my official hospital documents that I was aggressive because I was fighting against restraints. Tell me about inmates running the asylum…
“If a person is deemed criminal, they end up in the prison system.”
That’s a problem of a stupid legal system. People end up in prisons for ridiculous things which harm no one and are at best a nuisance. They should not be locked in prisons and they should not be locked in psych wards. Just leave them alone or help them through a crisis. It’s just prison-industrial complex combined with racism and social exclusion calling the shots.
“The long term hospital model has been dramatically reduced in favor of the prison system for managing “mental illness.”
When do you people get it that shipping people from one kind of prison to another (only called “hospital”) is not an answer? We’ve seen this movie before and I’d urge you to read up on why asylums were closed in the first place. There was never a time when psychiatric hospitals were good places where they helped people. NEVER.
“One of the best ways I have seen for reducing the use of force in hospitals is by requiring hospitals to document every incidence and then publicizing the results in the media.” ROFL. Because self-regulation always works, right? We see that in the last outbreak of police brutality cases. It’s not like people working in the same organization and committing the same kind of infringements will ever cover up for one another, lie in official documents, fabricate evidence etc. That never happens. Except it does. Except it has happened to me – I had outrageous lies written up in my hospital documents, signed testimony from a person who wasn’t even there and it was all taken at face value while my testimony was “crazy person’s ravings”. Sorry but you’re out of sync with reality on this one.
Using forced “treatment” (or PSYCHIATRIC TORTURE -let’s call it what it is) on someone who is suicidal is like putting pouring water on someone who’s already drowning.
If psych patients have applied the same standard of proportional response to staff’s violence there would not be a psychiatrist alive in the country. But we are the violent ones…
I think that’s a different matter. If someone indeed is waving a knife and running at you you have a right to defend yourself or anyone who is standing nest to you. We all know that this is 0.000000001% (or something like that) of the psychiatric use of force. For them to go full blown bully it’s enough you tell them that you don’t want a physical exam performed on you (personal experience right here). Somehow people who are so “dangerous and aggressive” usually scream “don’t touch me” before being psychiatrically assaulted and raped.
The real people who pose danger to self and others are psychiatrists and psych nurses who engage in human rights violations as a matter of course.
Funny that being against human rights violations is “extreme”. No more extreme than being against murder or rape. Or death penalty which is state sanctioned murder for that matter. One would think the Western civilisation has had this conversation before and came up on the side of human rights… on paper only.
To be honest it’s “a bit” more complicated. SSRIs not only have the effect on certain neurostransmitter signalling but also on hippocampal neurogenesis (which also has to do with memory) and god knows what else. It’s all good to study it in animal models to get understanding about how the brain works but running a live experiment on real people is somewhat… what’s the word… unethical?
“Any of this is really looking for a foot in the door to ban them all.”
Not realistic politically in US at this point. But eventually the best solution.
There’s an easy solution to all of this: just ban guns altogether. For everyone.
Well, if you give someone who is not diabetic insulin he/she will be in trouble, right? Therefore it’s not inconceivable that messing up neurotransmitter levels when no deficiency or over-activation was present to begin with will screw up the brain.
Sure. But in these cases depression is not an illness, it’s a symptom of an underlying illness that should be treated accordingly, not suppressed and poisoned by so-called “anti-depressants”. Nonetheless, the majority of cases of “depression” are totally normal people experiencing “life”.
Typical psychiatry bs: “you’ve recovered? well, you weren’t doing that bad to begin with”. Tell me about confirmation bias.
If the drug doesn’t work – well we can’t cure everybody (and it’s your fault)
If the drug “works” – it’s a wonder drug
If you stop taking the drug and recover – you were OK all along
They’re really good at producing sequels to Catch 22.
“Patients with co-morbid psychiatric disorders have become frequently excluded together with patients with any co-morbid Axis I disorder, which were twice as likely to be excluded in recent studies.”
Like “co-morbid” means anything in psychiatry. But the fact that they cherry-pick people to increase their chances of getting a positive result is not surprising.
It could be. I never had panic attacks before I was started on an “anti-depressant” Mirtazapine. Then I had other drugs on and off including ones which would make Lucifer go “hey, that’s too cruel” – Zyprexa and Seroquel and that made them even worse. Took me almost 2yrs off them to recover.
Yet doctors still talk about these drugs as “benign”. This is exactly what a neurologist of all people told my friend prescribing her benzos. There’s nothing benign about them – they’re extremely dangerous, especially for someone with heart issues like she has.
For what these drugs really do to any given person your guess is as good as mine. They bind many receptors and have different effects on them and then there’s also a big black box called our body which can react to the presence of the drug in many ways, enhancing or reducing it actions or even going all the way to the otehr side. All psych drugs have people reporting all kinds of effects, from the “desired” ones to completely opposite ones through everything in between and bizzare.
One thing is sure – I’d never want to take it.
15 formulations of testosterone = one drug called testosterone. Plus it’s ridiculous to equate it with a libido increasing drug.
Could you link to that study?
In terms of correlating violence with anything at all – I’ve seen people attribute the decrease in violent crime to everything from global warming to lead pollution. In the same time the link between suicides and “paradoxical effects” and anti-depressants is quite clear. There is no reason to suggest that “depressed” people are more prone to violence either.
1. No that makes a big difference. The same as treating stimulants as performance enhancing drugs as opposed to meds treating “ADHD”. The difference is between telling people: here’s a pill that may or may not enhance your performance (in exchange for such and such risk of side effects) and telling them they are sick, defective and abnormal. Which disease mongering is. It takes benign, normal problems of living (which are often created by underlying problems like emotional issues in a marriage, work stress, unhealthy lifestyle etc.) and turns them into an illness that needs medical attention. That is a huge difference and it is lying to people and it is extremely harmful.
3. The effects of this drug are overblown (this +1 good sex in a month comes from pharma’s “research” which we know very well rarely plays out so well in real life given how these studies are created and analysed) and side effects likely underreported. Plus the long-term effects of this drug and possible withdrawal issues not known at all at this point. But that’s not what people will see in commercials.
4. I’d hope you’re right.
I interpret them as uninformative for many reasons. First of all the assumption that higher risk groups are more likely to stay on the drug is not necessarily true (especially when we’re talking about “ADHD” and not real illness). Secondly, the point of evaluating people in a follow-up without asking them if they continued on the drug or not sounds idiotic. Even if some of them lie not asking is just inexplicable.
Btw, RCT for a psychoactive substance is a joke to begin with. Like someone can’t say they’re taking meth or cocaine: http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1462:_Blind_Trials
That will work well.
“The overarching goal of RDoC is to accelerate the pace of research that translates basic science into clinical settings by understanding the multi-layered systems that contribute to mental function.”
Watering down the language can be a worse thing – if it makes it more open for interpretation…
Police state has become psychiatric state.
Torturers.
“please understand, it was nothing personal.”
This is kind of triggering. What a psychopath says to a victim just before he/she is about to do some incredible damage.
Let’s start with the fact that no psychiatrist who uses force against his “patients” is ever going to admit that this can be traumatizing and make people worse rather than better. And even if that were the case it will be treated as not a big deal. I have challenged 2 psychiatrists on that personally and only heard denial, half-a** excuses (“sometimes it’s necessary”) and diversions (“I get a lot of letter from people who are grateful”). Are these are supposed to be people whom you are discussing your trauma with? It’s like telling a rape victim to go to her rapist for help. Laughable and pathetic.
Btw, what people who were traumatized need the most is justice. Justice not only understood as punishment for perpetrators (though that would be very welcome) but primarily as recognition of their suffering and making sure that it never happens again – not to them not to anyone else.
“It includes supporting research into the supposed “violence” of people with psychiatric histories”
I guess they don’t mean the research in what motivates people charged with helping other to torture, dehumanize and sometimes kill them? Maybe because such research has already been done (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment). Or maybe because some people are so engaged in witch hunt because they want to divert the attention from the real problems in society, one they’ve helped to create.
On the point of “runaway global warming” – even if that if off the table (which it isn’t) even a 5 degree rise in global temperatures would be a disaster that can make the most apocalyptic movies kind of dull. We have 6billion people on this planet that we have to clothe and feed and provide water for, not to mention the nice thing in life like education and leisure. Sure, we may survive as a species (which is not a given) but in what shape and on what kind of a planet? And there is no serious scientist out there (save for people who are bought by companies profiting from fossil fuels – I guess we’ve heard this theme before in terms of scientific studies and corporate interests) who say that a catastrophic outcome is unlikely. Take California – they are running out of water as we speak and even if it rains tomorrow some of the aquiferes have already collapsed so that the stores cannot be repleted.
Global warming has already caused tremendous damage to “mental health” (in addition to physical health, property etc.) for thousands of people. Widely covered natural disasters aside (like the hurricanes in the Philippines) – many people link global warming and the drought in Syria, which has if not caused then at the very least exacerbated the conflict and led many people to die or flee. In Europe we’re facing an immigrant crisis. Only this week we had 71 one bodies found in a truck near Vienna because the smugglers overcrowded the car and forgot about ventilation. 3 kids below 10yrs old are among the victims. If that does not affect people’s “mental health” I don’t know what does.
On MIA we often discuss alternatives and the main “alternative” to psychiatry is to build a more equitable, tolerant society in which people can have their basic physical and psychological needs met as a way to prevent mental problems in the first place. How can one envision such a society in a world which is at war for resources as the elements are going highwire and destroying infrastructure, crops and human lives?
“Honestly it is kind of dumb, here in Australia we’re having days 5 degrees below the average etc.”
I think you misunderstand what global warming is. The fact that you can have very low temperature in any given place at any given time during the year does not negate the fact that the average temperature of the whole Earth has risen (that is in many other places and many other timepoints it’s getting really, really hot). In fact global warming is leading to “climate change” which is basically altered weather patterns that cause unusual event (like super snow in a place where it should not be or at the wrong time, like hurricanes etc.). climate is becoming more extreme and we can see it already: California is a good example, recent heatwaves, hurricanes and so on. Some island nations on the Pacific are already facing rising waters.
We can discuss what is the best course of action but denying what is happening in front of our eyes is not a way to go.
I’ll say more and add another very important “side show” to the discussion: money in politics. It seems clear that it will be very difficult to obtain any significant change on any issue as long as people making decisions are beholden to money interests. There are many on-going efforts to reform the election funding in US, this one is in my mind one of the more promising:
wolf-pac.com
You can go on it and sign the petition and hopefully get involved.
Here we go – instead of trying to stop the climate change we will be talking about psych help for surviviours. How about addressing their economic, educational, hosuing etc. needs?
Democracy Now! had a great broadcast yesterday and today about the post-Katrina New Orleans and what an awful example of shock doctrine that is. But I’m sure “mental health” services are a priority.
I’d love to see a similar study done in other areas of research, particularly clinical. I bet results would be just as bleak for a lot of them.
Bpdtransformation – I really like the way you write. It really makes my day to read some wonderful sarcasm ;P.
That’s the whole problem. They use fraud to push their wonder drugs through the FDA and when later on research shows that they are ineffective and sometimes straight out harmful – they pay a fine, which is always small compared to the amount of money made. And the drugs are allowed to stay on the market as if nothing happened. There should be a more effective fine system for pharma (you’re convicted – you pay a fine plus all the profits you’ve made on the fraud like normal people). There should be a better mechanism to take the drugs off the market after fraud like that has been exposed and one which takes into account the fact that some people will need the drug longer because of withdrawal issues. Make pharma pay for damages. And of course change the system in such a way that fraud is close to impossible to begin with. It’s a nice wishlist but the current corrupt system makes it only a dream.
Great article.
I’m 100% for legalization and treating it like any other legal drug (alcohol, tobacco). The only problem I have is with labelling it as “treatment”. People have used psychoactive drugs to deal with the mental condition called “life” from times immemorial and that’s pretty much it. I’d not stop it and war on drugs is ridiculous but it’s also irresponsible to say that using any kind of drug to tackle life problems is a form of treatment. Having a drink after a stressful day can relax you but drinking every time you have to deal with stressful events is a clear road to addiction. Maybe marijuana is safer than alcohol and has more benefits (it’s seems so at this point but the mythology surrounding it is so thick it’s hard to be sure) but I have reservations when it comes to recommending it to people in distress.
One important piece of data missing: how many of the correctly registered vs not had positive outcomes?
“The researchers also showed that studies funded by pharmaceutical companies were more likely to be correctly registered with no changes to POMs than private trials.”
that’s actually interesting and to be honest unexpected.
I agree 100%.
FDA is a bad joke. Even the mainstream is starting to recognize the problem. I’ve seen comments on press releases and surprising many people call bs on it.
What about getting these people out of prisons where they mostly don’t belong (sorry but loitering and smoking pot should not be crimes to begin with)? What about solving homelessness and hunger and poverty? Maybe then one would not have so many “delusional” people to deal with.
Shipping them back and forth between “hospitals” and prisons is not an answer. Abusing them to no end in both of these institutions ain’t helping either.
They are worse.
Btw, I wonder if giving Mickey a safe place to sleep, food and clean clothes would not cure some of his “delusions”. Given his situations that just sounds like the most understandable defence mechanism his mind could have come up with.
Plus some of the rules we have are just plain stupid. there are too many nuisance crimes and poeple should not be locked up for loitering and mouthing off cops and sh*t like that.
“I can’t fault the police for doing their job.”
Yeah, you kind of can. Everyone keeps doing their jobs and we end up running a nice concentration camp. Everyone who participates in a system like this is guilty.
Wasn’t it also a fallout of the counter-revolution against the outbreak of freedom and creativity in the 60s? Too many wild women and blacks and natives and all the other weirdos running around – one has to rein them in, right?
Psychiatry is only a piece of a bigger picture. We can’t build alternatives to the current model until we address the totality of the problem. Until then we’ll be only moving people between asylums and jails every couple of years.
Well, it’s great but who will protect the abusers? And more importantly what if the abusers are the very people who are supposed to “treat” you?
It’s kind of funny (in a sad way) to watch psych professionals writhe and ramble when someone as much as suggests that tehir awesome “treatments” traumatize people. Good luck getting a psychiatrist to apologize to his/her victims or even stopping the ongoing abuse.
The primary reason why mental illness is not linked to trauma and experience of abuse of various nature is because psychiatry is not there to serve the victims – it’s there to silence them, control them and cover up for the crimes that were committed against them. And many trauma surviviors recognize it – I’ve just watched and interview with one, who was sexually abused as a kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmIQbB3iu0
(listen especially from 27′).
Not really. Aspirin happens to be a NSAID and it’s a pretty good drug with relatively few side effects (although it should not be prescribed to kids). But I’d not advocate to take it on a daily basis as a preventive measure. There’s been a lot of hype about it but little actual proof.
Or just don’t take “anti-depressants”. They don’t really do much anyway except for screwing up your brain and body for good.
“31%-37% of all mental health PED admissions were return visits”
Psychiatry’s doing a great job as usual. Who wants to guess what fraction of these visits goes as follows:
“Doc, we were last time because Johnny felt a bit sad and couldn’t concentrate at school. We gave him the pills but his depression is worse and he got fat and doesn’t want to talk to his friends anymore.”
“Oh, that’s his mental illness, he’ll have to learn how to live with it. Have some more pills.”
Thanks to you and David for the documentary and unwavering advocacy against all odds.
It’s not only “mental health”. With the “great” work from NSA (sarcasm alert) the whole underpinnings of the internet and cyber security are at risk. Not only what currently exists is laughable in terms of data protection but efforts by NSA to introduce backdoors into systems is going to ensure that the hackers everywhere will have plenty of fun. Add to that the idiot politician like UK’s David Cameron (seriously, who votes for these people? – I understand once but again?) call for banning encryption. I guess the excuse is as always “scary terrorists and big, big bombs”.
There needs to be a revolution…
It’s nice to know that the price of a drug is affecting the supposedly scientific and medical decisions on whether to allow prescribing them to a given population. I feel so much safer knowing that.
😀 thanks, that has brightened my day 🙂
I don’t think you should discount this man’s trauma. My encounter with psych torturers were equally brief but it was enough to haunt me till this day.
Btw, it’s enough to read the stats provided in the very article to see that it’s not a problem of lack of “mental health treatment” – it’s the problem of stupid laws and over-policing and generally police state:
“60% of Ontario prisoners today are on remand, which means they have not been tried and are presumed innocent — only 26% were on remand 30 years ago.
20% of Ontario prisoners today are being held on non-violent administration of justice charges, such as failing to comply with bail or breach of probation.”
Well if 60% of your prisoners have not been sentenced then you have more problems than just “crazy people”.
Yeah, they always make it sound like closing down asylums was such a bad idea because all these poor people end up in prison. Well, first of all these are not the two alternatives and secondly (and more importantly) people forget while these lovely places called asylums were closed in the first place.
“Everyone I have ever communicated with who has experienced both mental health and criminal justice systems will choose the criminal justice system ay day of the week.”
I agree 100%. Plus this is not even an alternative in the current system either. People end up locked up in psychiatric so-called “hospitals” which are essentially more abusive forms of prisons and spend more time there than they would have otherwise served in prison have their offenses not been deemed due to mental illness. It has actually been studied in Austria and the results were clear – the worst that can happen to you during a trial is being assessed “crazy”. You end up locked up for much longer and often indefinitely as your release depends on some power-tripping psychiatrists’ opinion.
Adults of whatever age and kids as well. Or maybe just humans in general. Prescribing these poisons to vulnerable people (like kids and elderly) is criminal.
Misuse…like there was a right use for them in the first place…
This guy (Murphy) must be getting paid really well (by pharma).
Where in Poland? Do you have any links to it?
It’s funny (well… not really) but many studies, including those reported and reviewed on MIA, include such statements. Or at best weird justifications: “we didn’t find that the drug A is effective against it but that is likely because our study has low statistical power or the moon cycle was in the wrong phase. We are sure that if we spend more time and money drug A will prove to be the miracle drug treating mental illness and solving global warming all the time while curing Africa’s hunger problem”.
I always tell people to avoid psychiatry altogether. I can’t in good conscience look at people running the risk of being tortured and murdered.
The wild life will evolve eventually and possibly to our detriment – we already have a huge issue with antibiotic resistance. It’s only one tiny part of how we are destroying the very world we need to keep intact to survive. Tell me about cutting the branch you’re sitting on.
Cat is a holy creature, even Egyptians knew that ;). And nothing better than a purring bundle of fur on your lap to help you relax :).
A nice initiative but I doubt it will make an impact. I think the key thing here is the money interest which will make sure this never makes it to the mainstream. It’s no about the science it’s about the power system, which is not interested in the truth if it hurts profits.
“Some would like for emotions to be ‘regulated,’ which, to my mind, is 100% counter nature, and only leads to trouble.”
Well put. People who want us to “regulate” our emotions are usually he very people who bear responsibility for our “bad” emotions in the first place.
These are great points. My biggest problem with psychiatry conceptualizing normality as some kind of “resilience”. In essence it’d be best if we all were highly-functioning psychopaths, not bothered too much with trauma, burdened with emotions and so on. It pathologizes normal human emotionality and blames the victim for responding to abuse.
I think a good analogy for that is obesity – another avenue where huge money has been spent to look for fat genes and magic pills when it’s obvious that most people who have weight problems are not victims of their genes but of the modern lifestyle and crappy diets. Even if some of us are somehow resistant to that and can remain slim even on junk food eaten on a sofa it does not make it “normal” nor does it make people who are obese genetically ill. Human are diverse and this diversity is an adaptive strength of our species, nor a weakness.
I don’t think anyone here is against brain research. It’s rather what kind of brain research and to what end.
It is clear that some mental problems are caused by physical illness or nutritional deficiency (say HIV-associate psychosis or Korsakoff’s syndrome) but these are not really psychiatry’s problems but should be dealt with by real doctors, neurologists and others.
“Considering that factors such as poverty, inequality, family disharmony, and various forms of social discrimination lie right at the root of so much of those distressing conditions that are called “mental illness,” this forces us to acknowledge that if we really want to address “mental illness,” then we really need to work together as a society and explore how we can address these broader social problems.”
That is an excellent point and sadly also the reason why nobody is really interested in addressing the roots of the problem. Our socioeconomic system is rotten to the core and much more is at stake than just people’s “mental health” but very little is done to change it. There are glimmers of hope like the Occupy but it’s by far not enough to stop the crazy neoliberal train from destroying humanity and the planet.
Great article. Thank you for the good work you do as a Hearing Voices facilitator.
Great article. Psychiatry is just another stick to keep people down in their holes.
How about a major overhaul of the whole system and kicking pharmaceutical companies from drug development altogether? Public funding worked well for the development of many great things, including the internet so I see no reason why pharma should be allowed to continue to pollute science.
It’s yet another piece of evidence which suggests that psychosis is a response to adverse environment in childhood and adolescence, especially chronic social stress. Other correlations show similar results for psychosis and moving schools, racial discrimination, being a child of recent migrants, sexual abuse, bullying etc.
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”
John Lennon
Wow, thank you for that quote…
DSM-5 defines delusions as “…fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in the light of conflicting evidence.”
By that every single person on the planet is delusional. With psychiatrists being one of the most delusional people there are.
LOL…
One more interesting thing would be to see if the trials which were unregistered and/or changed tehir procedures after registration had a higher rate of positive findings than the properly registered and conducted studies.
From Wikipedia:
Wellbutrin (bupropion):
– weak norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor (NDRI)
– also been found to act as a releasing agent of dopamine and norepinephrine (NDRA)
– converted in the body into several active metabolites with differing activity and influence on the effects of bupropion during first-pass metabolism
– also known to act as a non-competitive antagonist of the α3β2, α3β4, α4β2, and, very weakly, α7 nACh receptors
In other words hell knows how it works (except that it has some effect on at least dopamine and norepinephrin).
Flibanserin:
– a full agonist of the 5-HT1A receptor (Ki = 1 nM) and, with lower affinity, as an antagonist of the 5-HT2A receptor (Ki = 49 nM) and antagonist or very weak partial agonist of the D4 receptor (Ki = 4–24 nM)
– occupies the 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors in vivo with similar percentages
– has low affinity for the 5-HT2B receptor (Ki = 89.3 nM) and the 5-HT2C receptor (Ki = 88.3 nM), both of which it behaves as an antagonist of
– found to increase dopamine and norepinephrine levels and decrease serotonin levels in the rat prefrontal cortex, actions that were determined to be mediated by activation of the 5-HT1A receptor.[11] As such, flibanserin has been described as a norepinephrine-dopamine disinhibitor (NDDI).
In other words does something to serotonin signalling plus screws up norepinephrine and dopamine – seemingly in the same direction as Wellbutrin (up) so you may be onto something here.
Another disaster…
It’s supposed to be an agonist of serotonin receptor so it should increase the serotonin signalling, kind of like SSRIs do. Which is not to say that we have any clue what it actually does in the organism given the fact that in higher concentrations it also binds other receptors and we have no idea what other indirect effects it has or how the body compensates for it. The only thing I would guess is that it may very well induce sexual dysfunction like the SSRIs do.
After all who cares about people with dementia. They don’t work anymore, they are old and sick and soon to die anyway so why not make some money out of their suffering before the end. It’s despicable and the irony is that all of us are going to become old and many of us will lose cognitive abilities in the process but people who run this business think it’s not going to happen to them. Nothing makes me more angry than to see elderly people abused.
The real question is – how is that still legal?
I think it cures thinking and behaving by turning people into vegetables.
Talking to a psychiatrist is like walking on a minefield. Everything you say can and will be used against you – people should be getting Miranda warnings before meeting with one. I find the strategy of Lisbeth Salander from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo most effective – avoid them as much as you can and refuse to talk to them ever.
Are they also conducting research into the effects of battery and rape as treatment for mental illness? I’m sure it’s just as promising.
If that means less drugs and no force then it could be a good thing…it’s kind of difficult to get it from the article though what exactly the program looks like in real life.
Well, it’s supposed to activate the serotonin receptor so increase serotonin signalling. SSRIs are well known to increase serotonin signalling by inhibiting the removal the serotonin from the synaptic cleft and they are linked to potentially irreversible sexual dysfunction. My guess is that flibanserin will turn out to do the exact same thing – maybe increase libido in some women while impairing it, sometimes (always?) permanently, in most. Unfortunately we are likely to see this hypothesis tested in real life on real people and that all pretty soon.
It was not 15 but if you look at the metananalysis of anti-depressant trials submitted to FDA which was done by Irving Kirsch and colleagues it’s pretty clear that this “consideration” is meaningless. Plus it does not account for the problem that companies don’t need to pre-register and publish all trials so many negative results never see the light of the day.
Given that tapering with serotonin is well known to cause sexual dysfunction, often permanent…it’s sick…
“As part of the attempt to gain approval for its drug, Sprout initiated an ingenious marketing campaign, “Even the Score,” claiming that there was a sexism inherent in the number of FDA-approved treatments for sexual disorders: 26 for men and “zero for women.” However, this claim was false. There are only 8 drugs that treat male sexual dysfunction, and none are FDA-approved for low libido.”
Btw, that strongly reminds me of the campaign that tobacco companies directed at women in order to convince them to smoke. Same bs masquerading as gender equality: http://pialogue.info/books/Century-of-the-Self.php
You can also listen to Noam Chomsky on the propaganda industry. Btw, people who have participated in creating the propaganda system were psychologists.
“Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD)”
Wow…just wow…
If that is not disease mongering to the 100th degree then I don’t know wtf is.
“Could it be that those who generated those numbers and statistics don’t understand them, either?”
Not only could – it’s very often the case. The knowledge of statistics in people who conduct these studies is very low and I can tell you that as an insider.
Do you seriously believe that having a 57% of trials with positive benefit is something reasonably expected? Anyone who’s worked in bio/med-sciences looks at this number and laughs out loud.
That is exactly what we should be aiming at. It leaves less space for data manipulation and gets rid of publication bias.
That and also stop putting people on these poison’s to begin with. Nobody should be subjected to that, no one should suffer 10yrs of memory loss or even 1 day or 1h. No one should have to go through withdrawal. It’s so sick and revolting that we have to clean up the pieces left after the systemic crime perpetrated by psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies.
That is an amazing feat and I’m happy to hear about it – it gives us all hope and encouragement :).
It reminds me of the movie “Changeling”. It shows beautifully how mother’s fear for her kid is turned into “mental illness” by the system which has no interest in protecting her or her child.
“Our too paternalistic, greed only inspired, never ending warring, male chavanistic pig society is a not the answer. Our society needs to evolve.”
You’re exactly right. And sadly nothing covers up the crimes while blaming the victim as well as psychiatry.
I don’t feel comfortable with that. I think everyone should be allowed to commit suicide but assisting physicians for “mental health illnesses” sounds horrifying, especially with the history of psychiatry in mind.
Let’s legalize it already. We can get drunk and smoke cigarettes all we want and everyone knows that both things kill. Pot so far seems to be the safest of the three.
Btw, in US there’s an incentive to change this corrupt system, which seems to be getting some traction:
wolf-pac.com
It’s possible but not in this socioeconomic system. Look at Wall Street – the banks also pay a relatively small fine and go to business as usual and their executives get bonuses instead of a bunk in high security prison. It’s an equivalent of a robber who when caught does not go to prison but only has to give back a small percentage of what he stole and goes free.
Seroquel and Zyprexa are both horrific poisons. Both also gave me horrible Restless Leg Syndrome (it really exists – a great example of a iatrogenic illness), which was supposed to stop after I withdrew from them. It didn’t – it took me over a year and iron and magnesium supplements to get rid of it and still not completely – it sometimes comes back.
Psychiatry is organized crime.
Benzos for backpain is another example. Of course without any advice on the side effects or how long maximally one can take it. As a psychiatric survivour I of course knew better, refused and asked for physiotherapy instead but many people won’t question it but will simply fill in a prescription and end up with much worse problems that even the most debilitating pain.
“The US Food and Drug Administration has announced that there will soon be a public meeting to explore providing drug companies with greater flexibility in promoting off-label indications to doctors. When it comes to prescribing medications to children, and particularly psychiatric medications, this is a bad idea.”
This is a BAD IDEA period. It’s truly amazing how corrupt they are and I say corrupt because one has to be blind, deaf and stupid and willfully so not to see a huge issue with overprescription of pretty much everything. How does anyone seriously come up with a proposal to expand off-label prescribing? These people are evil because I can’t believe they are so dumb.
That is true. I also have to monitor the drugs pushed on my family and try to convince them not to take some really useless and harmful ones. Some drugs do help and having a family member with type I diabetes I know they can be life saving but the real tragedy is that the system is so corrupt that you can’t tell what’s good and what will kill you anymore.
Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who has not ended up not remembering his childhood or having to take notes about every little thing because you can’t make new memories. Or one who died early because of electricity induce brain trauma ending up in ministrokes and increasing a chance of epilepsy and early death. It’s like trying to figure out – which one you prefer lung cancer or kidney failure. How about none?
“I believe there have to be organic changes or organic disturbances in the physiology of the brain for the cure to take place. These people have for the time being at any rate more intelligence than they can handle . . . and the reduction of intelligence is an important factor in the curative process.”
That is nothing short of amazing. The brazenness of this statement…
ECT should be forbidden as a form of torture and mutilation.
It’s a huge elephant in the room when it comes to fMRI but the problems with reproducibility etc. are not limited to this method. Science, especially medical science, has a lot to fix.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
I’ve always been skeptical towards all “mental health professionals” but after a personal experience I’ve become anti-psychiatry. Maybe we should be done with the idea that psychiatry is supposed to help people with mental illness – it’s all about power, social control and solidifying an abusive system.
This dude should look at what his own government is doing to people of Australia and migrants /asylum seekers and take care of the human rights abuses and disastrous neoliberal and sometimes straight out fascist policies they’re introducing. Mental health, my a**.
“But the young woman I saw this morning believes my colleagues and I (and most other people) to be part of a network linked to the Illuminati who want to torture and rape her.”
Written by a “mental health professional”… She’s not delusional, she’s right.
In general I’ve got up to here of reading articles calling for more funding for psychiatry. It’s a black hole which sucks up the money and doesn’t give back anything, only makes people worse. How about funding social programs to address the root causes instead? How about not sending people to murder kids in the Middle East and lying to them that they will be heroes? How about funding Soteria House-like sanctuaries for people in distress? Housing for the homeless? I’m sick and tired of this “if it doesn’t work we need more of it (and we need more money)”.
The biggest “stigma” is generated by psychiatrists themselves – it’s both my personal experience and all the studies I’ve seen on the subject.
You’re exactly right :). And the patients would be scolded for not running on the broken legs (they’re not trying hard enough).
Not to mention that the do not put the bones back to their proper places to begin with. “Mental illness” is not like physical illness in that it’s not an illness at all.
Exactly. If that was the case these will be orgasm pills. They clearly are not, they are not happy pills either. Even people who are skeptical to pills often end up propagating the “chemical imbalance” bs.
And then when abused slave labour in 3rd world countries jumps to their deaths from factory windows they put in nets and call for mental health for the 3rd world. There has to be a revolution…
Neoliberalism strikes again. Anyone still thinks psychiatry isn’t social control?
I’m not religious but the amount of disrespect and ridicule with which psychiatrists treat pretty much everyone of their “patients” makes my blood boil. I guess if you’re religious you’re immediately delusional.
“Thus the splitting of ‘therapy’ and ‘political action’ can be revealed as an illusion that serves the re-production of capitalist service industries.”
Activism is the best cure for depression. Justice is the best cure for trauma.
We do need to get away from the neoliberal disaster we’re living right now and not only because of the impact on our psyche – we are about to destroy our planet. There’s a great writer who connects all these issues of oppression in an insightful way – I recommend Naomi Klein’s books, especially “Shock doctrine” and “This changes everything”.
Psychiatrists would treat Einstein like a 3yr old and call him delusional if he would dare to reveal how smart he was.
Class warfare it is.
“Specifically, an article in Pharmalot reports, researchers found that 63% of consent forms failed to include the risks found in boxed warnings. ”
That alone should be grounds for criminal prosecution.
“… the next time you find yourself in a rut, and eating too much, know that the unbecoming scene isn’t merely a question of will power – it’s rather, in all likelihood, a matter of your genetic makeup.”
This is such a load of horse***p. It’s not to say that keeping a diet is easy or that stopping yourself from a compulsion if the face of stress is easy but blaming it all on the genes is ridiculous beyond any reason.
I guess we should all write some scathing letters to the editor for publishing this bs. Btw, what are the conflicts of interest of this guy?
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a definition of insanity for some. So how do we call a society which insists on prescribing people more and more “anti-depressants” when it’s clear that they do not do anything against the “depression epidemic”? when do we start treating human emotions as normal responses to their lives instead of pathology?
“To return to the World Health Organisation; the statement about the commonness of depression simply seems to indicate that human unhappiness is common.”
Amen to that.
Come on, don’t the old white males always know best? The arrogance of Western culture is truly discouraging…
William James argued “I see myself running from the bear, so I decide I’m scared.”
That is a very important idea. In fact other studies indicate that consciousness does not really play a role in decision making but rather comes up with rationalizations after the decision has already been taken. It is a great mystery why we need the consciousness at all (or even if we do) to function. But these questions will never be fully answered by neurobiology even if it can provide great insights.
Sad but unsurprising :(.
All things aside, death penalty should be abolished once and for all, whether one is sane or otherwise.
The advice in this video is idiotic – how about getting off these poisons altogether? The sexual dysfunction on SSRIs is progressive and potentially irreversible – it’s neurological mutilation.
There’s no accountability. They straight out poison you and nobody cares.
Nothing better than a captive audience. I’d rather have my cat as a psychotherapist – she’s a narcissistic selfish creature but at least she’s not trying to hide it.
I’m not so sure it explains it though. I think living in modern cities causes people to be more disconnected from one another while in rural areas there’s more sense of community. I think this may lead to all the “mental illness”. Add to that disconnect from nature, overall stress, pollution, noise and what not and you have a poisonous mix.
Yet the narcotics prescribed by a pitiful imitation of a doctor are supposed to be medicines.
“Shift Work Disorder”
What the hell is that?
Psychiatrus psychopatus is a common one, especially in hospitals since they get off needle-raping and abusing people.
I guess when you’re disputing the diagnosis you’re only showing verbally aggressive behaviour hence proving it to be correct ;). Psychiatric logic…
Btw “Whatever effectiveness the drugs might have in reducing aggression” – the “effectiveness is the same as giving one a paralyzing agent or knocking one over the head with a baseball bat. It’s only psychiatry that managed to sell these as “medical”. Unsurprisingly since they used insulin and continue to use ECT to “treat” people.
“Three behavioral outbursts involving damage or destruction of property and/or physical assault involving physical injury against animals or other individuals occurring within a 12-month period.”
I love how arbitrary it is. What if there were two? And what property? Is throwing a plate on the wall the same as burning down someone’s house? These are “medical” symptoms? DSM is such a pile of nonsense…
Btw, I wonder if you add the lifetime prevalence of all these disorders:
– is there a single person in the world left who is not mentally ill?
– how many disorders one has, per capita? 2, 3, 10?
The people who invent this stuff are either evil or lunatics.
Exactly. The dirty little secret is that these drugs are essentially narcotics. Not what the “anti-stigma” campaign will admit though.
“There is much talk about the evil selling of baby parts by Planned Parenthood”
A correction: they are not selling the organs, they simply are covered for the transport costs.
As if the “diagnosis” meant anything anyway.
I know a story like that too. A guy sexually abusing first his daughter then her daughters and when one of them tried to commit suicide psychiatry got its hands on her. The perpetrator of course never faced any justice.
Another story about a girl being physically abused by her mother, tried to kill herself – again locked up and the mother never faced any charges.
Thank you psychiatry…
LOL I wish we had health care workers like that – drumming sounds fun.
“my experience was that every psychiatrist I dealt with was a sociopath, or else incredibly stupid and delusional”
I can back that up with my experience. Not one who was anything other than a psychopath or a fool.
Not in my books – I prescribe to the same heresy ;).
I’m not surprised it didn’t help – neither drugs nor CBT cure real life problems. In fact drugs can make it worse. I’d advice you to go off the drug if possible but that of course is dependent on if you can afford a possible withdrawal. There are good resources on MIA and elsewhere how to taper off anti-depressants.
As to your other problems whatever they may be I only see one thing that really helps -get involved. Seek out people who suffer similarly and become a activist. I know it’s easier said than done but it’s better than being stuck in hopelessness and alone.
In other words – all one needs is a “good” therapist, whether he/she uses CBT, CBT plus sth else or whatever. The only problem is that “good” therapists are in a very short supply.
I think the question is not if the “predispositions” can be heritable – they clearly are as we see personality traits passed down the generations. But these are quite different from being “mental illnesses”. The fact that one person has more “predisposition” to become obese eating too many burgers does not mean obesity is a genetic disease, nor does it mean that feeding anyone such a diet is a good idea. It boils down to pathologizing normal human traits while what really is pathological is the environment.
That is a very thoughtful comment, especially “Genetic traits are not diseases.”.
As for why psychiatry is forever looking for THE GENE is very simple and you sort of spelled it out: “It will always be problematic social causes”. Psychiatry cannot deal with that because it is not in the business of changing society but in the business of keeping the status quo. They’re looking for a fault in an individual and so any mention of the environment has to be dismissed as unimportant since that’s something they don’t want to touch or even think about.
I’d add – it’s not only in psychiatry. We are now looking for medical ways to address obesity epidemics while it is clear that the place to look is in our collective lifestyle and not biochemistry.
These people should be in prison. Hiding things like that is criminal, no matter if it is faulty cars or faulty meds. The fact that they get away with it just paying a fine or not even is a proof that we live in a corporate state.
The biggest irony is that his eye problems were likely caused by drugs to begin with. One can’t love psychiatry more…
Inflammation/chronic pain? People take these to control pain and chronic suffering can cause violence. I’m of course just speculating here. It’s hard for me to imaging aspirin could cause aggression. Benzos – hell yeah.
We told you…
It’s pretty obvious to anyone who has ever taken these drugs that they’re poison’s. And if it isn’t it’s probably because they’re still taking them so they can’t think straight (or not at all).
Which they may as well do with no psych help at all. Probably better for that matter.
“avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to therapeutic treatments.
Maybe that’s the most important message…?
Well. isn’t that just common sense? This thing that psychiatry has long lost or maybe never had to begin with?
Go get them :). I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the outcome. The only shame is that these things never end up as criminal cases.
The answer to why these kids are prescribed “anti-psychotics” is quite simple – because in the current model the only thing the psychiatrists know to do is to drug people. And when one drug does not “work” then they need to go to another drug or add it on top. Since psychiatry has like 5 classes of drugs they are essentially flipping a coin (he seems sad – here’s SSRI, a bit angry – anti-psychotic etc.). It’s all ridiculous and tragic in the same time.
It is quite powerful…
Good point. Also there’s nothing more cruel and counterproductive to the violence and abuse that people expressing such despair are subjected to in the current system. No wonder more psychiatry -> more suicides.
Is you kid sad? Then f***ing talk to it. But no, you should put him/her on pills. Sick, perverted, disgusting…
I’m sure that having a bad teacher or being bullied is a mental illness. Which is also a great message to send to a kid struggling with toxic social environment. “These bullies who tell you that you’re useless and a weirdo – they’re right”. Awesome.
Some people have no shame.
This is disgusting propaganda and disease mongering incarnated.
“For the most prominent journal of American medicine to offer so much precious real estate for arguments that are half-baked and tendentious is amazing.”
I can’t say for sure but my instinct tells me the answer is “follow the money”.
“They also found that the stuttering could be eliminated with either a reduction in dose of the drug or raising doses of the drug in smaller increments during the initiation phase of treatment.”
Or by not giving people poisons to begin with. Works like a charm.
I think you have to first concentrate on yourself. Introspection is what one needs. Some people use meditation techniques for that, I have never thought they would agree with my personality until a friend made me realise I’m using “mindfulness” without knowing what it is.
What you need is self-acceptance. Not hating yourself, not loving or liking yourself -just accepting yourself for who you are. Everything else grows from that. And don’t be afraid of chaos. “Cognitive dissonance” is supposedly a bad thing but being in two or three or a hundred minds about one thing often only means accepting and internalizing the complexity of the universe.
I wish you could find a guide through it. But even without a guide it’s possible to got through it and emerge a better fuller person on the other side. That’s what crisis are for. I wish we had a more understanding society and a after environment for that.
What about a shamanistic crisis model? Maybe all a person in crisis needs is another person who has experienced his/her crisis before to guide and protect them. If I’m not mistaken in old cultures people undergoing such crisis were either under the protection of a shaman and/or put in a place of solitude (“safe place”) where they had limited ability to harm themselves or others but could work through the crisis. These were often in nature/ in isolated shacks and so on so they also limited the sensory stimuli, which could prevent the person from being overwhelmed. Maybe reproducing this kind of approach is what we need?
I’m sure that’s going to cause all the good professionals to cease prescribing “anti-depressants” to “bipolar” patients, right? Just as they have stopped prescribing benzos for over 4 weeks or high doses of anti-psychotics for long periods of time. Or to elderly who can face early death on them. I’m certain that the good doctors will take that seriously…
Well, the first problem I have is the one with assessing psychotherapy using clinical trials and such. It can be roughly summarised here: http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1462:_Blind_Trials
The literature about psychotherapies is a mess and I my mind mostly because it can’t be anything else.
The second problem I have is the fact that these therapies essentially reproduce the same problem which exists in the medical model – they’re trying to fix the individual as if that person was somehow broken. It is entirely meaningless because people don’t live in a vacuum and their problems don’t come solely from within. Some people contribute their getting better over years to psychotherapy but it can be as easily contributed to their changed circumstances or simply growing out of a bad emotional phase.
Why I say that there are almost no “good” psychotherapists – well, that’s just personal experience.
I’m not against psychotherapy as much as I am against psychiatry. If you think it helps you, you’re free to engage in it. But the same standard as to drugs should apply and that is informed consent.
Btw, I’m always a bit skeptical about the studies that show an effect of something without showing the mechanism of how this effect is achieved. It does not mean that the study is wrong, only that there are many studies like that which never get replicated.
You have to consider the dose that’s for sure. Plus worms aren’t exactly people.
“I like the idea of scientists pledging to publish ALL of their research, no matter what the outcome. ”
Pledging is not enough. Pre-registering the trials should be mandatory and trials which were not registered as such should not be allowed to be published or even conducted. All the data save for the personal information which could identify the patients should be accessible to anyone for free in public repositories. Ideally the trials should not be conducted by pharma but by independent bodies with no monetary incentives tied to the outcome. At least this is the nice dream I have…
ADHD drugs are amphetamines and they have pretty much the same effects. They make people just as more productive and healthier as they do any meth addict.
Amen to that.
I had CBT tried on me and all it felt like was a person with “professional” training is trying to convince me that if I only use some cheap mental “techniques”, which I have either discovered in kindergarten without the help of this highly educated person or they simply never worked for me, my problems will go away. Sure…
The main problem with CBT and a lot of other psychotherapies is that they ignore the reality of one’s problems (sorry but talking to you won’t revive my grandmother or sexually un-abuse me or fill my bank account with much needed money) and offer simplistic advice on how to control one’s emotions which are insulting to anyone with intelligence only slightly above a very dumb cat.
That’s an undeniably excellent point. You can’t talk people out of having real problems. Reality tends to win this contest every time.
If you’re poor or a member of abused and disadvantaged class you’re a subject. There is no human experimentation on rich and powerful people.
It’s social conditioning by the media not to look too “extreme”. As Chomsky puts it:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….”
― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
That is exactly what’s happening in this discussion too.
LOL… “having only “positive” feelings, along with “working productively” and having “mastery” over oneself and one’s environment”…LOL
If that’s healthy then a manipulative narcissistic psychopath placed in the position of power is the model we should all strive for. It does not matter if the “positive” is an appropriate response to one’s environment. Are you supposed to be “positive” after your child dies or after you got raped or when a thousand people die in a hurricane? Are you supposed to be “working productively” for less than a living wage in XIXth century safety conditions and in a job that you hate and consider harmful to the environment? The same environment that you are supposed to have “mastery” over? Are the people coming up with these definitions that dumb or that evil?
What you need is money out of politics first, else the “representatives” will be representing the pharma and not you:
wolf-pac.com
“And yet, you are now able to address a Congressional Hearing. I think that is more than enough evidence to show the benefits this facility brings to the state of Tennessee.”
Psychiatry 101. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You get better – you should thank them for the torture. You kill yourself or turn into a brain-dead zombie – well, it’s clear mental illness is horrible and we need more psychiatry. There’s no discussion with this propaganda machine.
“HR 2646, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 and HR 2690, the Including Families in Mental Health Recovery Act of 2015.”
Why do they have to come with these Orwellian names?
““The potential consequences for patients’ safety calls for further investigations.” – criminal investigations they forgot to mention.
“Desperate people do desperate things, and the problem is not an illness that possesses of the mind, or of the body, so much as the problem is the negative circumstances that they find themselves in.”
If I were to be subjected to AOT I’d sure as hell become homicidal. It’s also known as “self-defense”.
“The proposal was fueled by a rash of police shootings (more than 40 since 2010), with officials claiming that 75 percent of the suspects shot suffered from some sort of mental illness.”
I love how the problem of people getting shot by police turns into the solution of using forced psychiatry against people who are getting shot. How about doing something with the out-of-control cops? It’s essentially the same problem as the black community faces – it’s always our fault and never the police.
I love your spirit :). Happy 25th, ADA!
“The fact that studies of suicide prevention have been so difficult to recruit to, suggests patients may have more sense than researchers in this field!”
LOL… true that.
“There are good psychotherapists everywhere.”
LOL… No there aren’t. There are almost no good psychotherapists.
“Meds seem to be the quickest way to reduce sx and get them feeling better about themselves.”
Oh I’m sure they do. Instead of anti-psychotics, why not try paralyzing drugs? They also make people calmer.
I suggest you try some of these drugs yourself and see how awesome you feel.
“The experience in medical school and residency should leave someone better trained and having more empathy for patients due to the intensity of the training. It is unfortunate that instead the training can leave many doctors distancing themselves from human emotion and arrogant about their knowledge.”
I think it’s only natural an human. Experiencing death and suffering every day leads to emotional blunting and withdrawal as a survival mechanism. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe in the psych professions. This is not something you can train yourself to and you can’t bond with that many people in any meaningful way. People in emotional distress need real relationships not “professionals”.
“Nevertheless, they more often than not report that thanks to the pharmacological therapy their moods are stable and fairly upbeat, their anxiety, racing thoughts, voices, sadness, etc. improved.”
I suggest you prescribe them homeopathy or herbal tees (telling these are the new cutting edge drugs) and see that most of them will feel better either way. It’s called placebo effect. For the rest temporary tranquilization may seem helpful until they come back with 10x more mental problems and physical issues on top of them a few months later. Have fun withdrawing them from the drugs then – I’m sure they will also have amazing time with that (just to be clear – I’m being sarcastic).
When it comes to actual studies it’s pretty clear that anti-depressants are not really anti-depressive more than a placebo, anti-psychotics are major tranquilizers (sometimes rightly called chemical lobotomizers) which in the long term lead to cognitive decline and hypersensitivity psychosis, amphetamines are… well… amphetamines, I don’t think one needs more information and benzos are addictive and cause terrible mental and physical side effects. I’m sorry to tell you but you’ve got no idea what you’re putting your patients through prescribing them these poisons. If you don’t believe try to take some anti-psychotics and see how awesome that feels or give yourself a few months of benzos and then try to stop (just to be clear: don’t really do that, it’s torture and I don’t wish that on anyone).
Good point. It’s not like there has ever been a golden age of psychiatry when they were not abusive or they managed to get a single thing right. This is a failure from the get go.
I totally agree with you. While getting “talk therapy” is clearly less damaging than drugs and ECT in most cases it’s far from beneficial. It’s the same message pushed on a person – you’re wrong, defective, broken and how you feel and react is abnormal. It places the blame and the responsibility on people who usually have been abused and traumatized. We need social change and justice and not being told to suck it up (now called “resilience”) in one way or the other.
“All psychiatric symptoms are the expression of our problematic characters.”
Well… no. I’ve agreed with the article up until this point. It’s again this same rhetoric that places blame and looks for solutions solely within an individual. It may not be as destructive as the biological model but it’s still harmful.
The drugs are awful, that’s true but in case of violence and suicide (the latter one is associated with psychiatric “treatment” in a dose-dependent manner) I think it’s important not to overlook the effect of dehumanization and torture. If you label people, treat them like human garbage, subject to daily dose of physical and psychological abuse and torture with no prospect of ever getting out not to mention receiving justice – it’s not very surprising that many of them will react by taking their own lives (who would not want to escape?) or by lashing out on others, sometimes the perpetrators and sometimes just the unfortunate bystanders. It’s a normal and human reaction to abuse.
When the powerful and people in authority commit crimes against humanity the society shrugs it off as necessary evil. When the powerless respond with anything other than total submission – well, these ba***rds must have deserved it all along. It’s the same whether you think of minorities, people who are occupied or “mentally ill”. Oppression is so predictable.
One thing is clear though: psychiatry is doing an awesome job to help “mentally ill” and society at large. Good work… (sarcasm alert).
“they did not examine how increasing psychiatric treatment may have influenced people’s likelihood of committing violence”
A major oversight. I can testify that psychiatric “treatment” aka torture causes suicide and violence (very often well justify as everyone should have a right to self-defense). The people who are most dangerous and aggressive are the ones who run the “hospitals”.
“Yes, in this system; we “reward” the abuser and “discount” the abused.”
Precisely…
“Section II.B of the Rules is titled “Prisoners with mental disabilities and/or health conditions.” Other categories of prisoners in Section II are sentenced prisoners, untried prisoners, civil prisoners, and persons detained without charge. While the provisions in Section I (including all the positive highlights mentioned above) apply to all prisoners, the separation of prisoners with disabilities as a special category marks them off as different because of their (actual or perceived) disability and makes discrimination appear to be legitimate. Such separation violates CRPD Article 19 and the principle of full inclusion and participation in Article 3.”
This part sounds like a disaster :(.
Thank you for updating the MIA readership about the current state of affairs and persistent advocacy. I just hope UN would take their own principles a bit more seriously, not only in the light of this documents but also the new (again…) sex scandals…
“is aspect of the problem of diagnostic uncertainty in ADHD is not about whether or not the diagnosis is correct; it is more fundamentally about whether or not medical diagnosis is the right thing to do. From this perspective, biomarker evidence might contribute to better (that is, more accurate) diagnosis of ADHD, but clinicians might also get better at doing the wrong thing.”
“But if it were to be clearly established, through honest, transparent, and replicated research, that the habits in question do, in fact, stem directly from some neurological pathology, then the matter would be resolved, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder would indeed be a real illness, amenable to investigation, diagnosis, and treatment within the medical model, and it would probably be given a name that reflected the biological pathology rather than the behavioral consequences.”
I think I’m on the side of the authors of that reviewed article on this one. I think the problem is (ignoring at this point all the other problems like the fact that the “ADHD” behaviours likely don’t have one etiology anyway) – what constitutes an illness? While in terms of physical illnesses this used to be a very clear cut thing (which thanks to pharma’s disease mongering is not the case anymore) “mental illness” has always been a more tricky thing. At some point we arrive at something that can be defined just as a normal human variability in temperament, personality, resilience to various forms of stress etc.. Not to mention social factors which define what is healthy=acceptable and what is not. I think the authors of the reviewed article may be accidentally asking the question of “is there such a thing as mental illness?” at least in case of ADHD. People are different and these differences will be reflected in biology – it’s only a matter of looking closely enough. But if these differences divide people into “sick” and “healthy” in terms of their mental function – that’s a different question altogether and I think that’s kind of what the authors are starting to contemplate.
Well, look at the bright side: the narcotics are essentially legalized. It’s freaking ridiculous.
The most amazing thing is that we’ve been there before and we’ve learnt nothing (in terms of effects of prescribing amphetamines as medical treatment and performance enhancing drugs).
Well said.
“become”? I think it has always been this way – it’s its sole purpose.
How about “mental” patients are almost never treated seriously by doctors and any medical complains are usually dismissed as “it’s all in your head”? I think there’s hardly anyone with a “diagnosis” who having his “diagnosis” disclosed to a doctor was not met with a dismissive attitude and denied treatment or told to see a shrink or take psych meds for a physical condition.
I think trying to fix the DSM is a fool’s errand. It’s a Book of Insults for a reason and you can’t make it better no matter how hard you try.
Btw, what are the conflicts of interest in this study? The critical analysis should always start with that.
Seriously, who prescribes an “anti-psychotic” to a pregnant woman? Or to anyone at all for that matter?
You don’t have the same life history, you’re not identical. Does the in-born, hereditary part of personality play a role in how one responds to the environment? Sure it does. But being a sensitive person is not sick. In fact our society need more “mad” people who respond more to abuse and injustice.
Another crap study. They didn’t control for the meds? Great, one can then use this study to make a paper ball for you pet to play with or as a backup in case you run out of toilet paper. That’s really all there is to say about it.
Completed and shared :).
More than that: a child that was sick and had to be taken to hospital was forcibly separated from his/her parents. It happened to me and some of my friends as small children – I spend several weeks in a hospital and my parents were not allowed to visit (!) because this would cause crying when they leave. So the comfort of the staff was more important than the psychological well-being of children. Many kids were traumatised this way as parental separation in a very early age leads to a whole lot of issues. For me it led to a profound distrust of medical personnel which turned out to be a good thing, nonetheless it’s a crime on a generation.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s also a question of class and race. You’re not allowed to dream big when you’re poor. While nobody is safe from psychiatry you’re much more in trouble if you’re already disadvantaged – than any kind of behaviour that steps out of line is a sign of sickness.
It’s sick that people who have already been terribly harmed are then turned over to psychiatry to further victimize them and make sure they will never recover from the trauma. It’s disgusting.
Orange is the new black, prison is the new asylum. Oppressive systems don’t give up easily – they re-create themselves in other forms.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with socioeconomics and politics and stuff. People just randomly go nuts because they brains malfunction… “Anxiety disorder” hell yeah.
I will be surpsrised if your hopes come true :(. Especially in terms of punishing the “doctor”. Reminds me of the story from Germany (Gustl Mollath’s ordeal – you can google it) when a guy spent also close to 8yrs in a psych ward because of “paranoid schizophrenia”. He was eventually let out (and was fortunately not drugged while in the “hospital”) as it turned out that his “paranoia” was very justified by reality (his ex-wife conspiring with corrupt banksters to commit fraud). Of course none of the “good specialists” who have “diagnosed” him over the years has faced any consequences. They are still working and still labelling and locking people up. There are not consequences for abusers.
I am not surprised however abhorred that this has happened. There are no words to describe how I feel about this story…
Another stunning account of the damage ECT does is in the first chapter of Naomi Klein’s book “shock Doctrine” – it’s a great read as it links psychiatry, torture and neoliberal capitalism in explaining the doctrine of shock in society and individual lives. I highly recommend it to anyone who sees psychiatry as a part of a greater oppression system.
“How many women currently in abusive relationships are being drugged into submitting not only to the tyrant in their lives but the industry as well, too afraid to utter the truth?”
Story of my life… Fortunately I had my family and friends on my side so managed to escape.
Capitalism is a huge problem. It’s unsustainable too since it requires economy to forever “grow” which can’t happen on this one planet. It’s already killing the environment.
I don’t know what an answer is, some form of socialism or something else but we have to find it and do it fast.
Exactly what happened to me. I was “sane” only a bit unhappy in a toxic relationship (well, quite a bit unhappy). With the meds I got batsh*t crazy to the point I could not eat, sleep, work or do anything but cry in between panic attacks. Weird how it all went away with trashing the pills and the toxic bf.
“Sure haldol is good for a guy banging his head against the wall.”
No it is not. I’ve been there, I was suicidal and the worst thing that people do is to treat you like a freaking criminal and rape you with their drugs. It only makes things worse and suicidal people more suicidal (personal experience) and aggressive people more aggressive. you don’t put the fire out by pouring gasoline on it. Nobody deserves needle rape.
Let’s start with the fact that if you’re raping someone with a needle and then do it over and over again it’s hard to expect they will ever get better. I’ve seen how these “hospitals” look like and if I were a sadistic psychopath I’d immediately go work there. You don’t treat anything with torture, period.
Btw, everyone has a right to self injury.
The attitude that most psychiatrists have towards their “patients” is that of dehumanization. No wonder that they don’t consider what the person is trying to tell them – they don’t listen.
“I don’t think it is realistic to believe that it is feasible for us to change the economy (capitalism), or the mode of government (ostensibly democracy), or for that matter, any institutional force. ”
Well, then we can just all lay down and die since if we don’t do it and don’t do it fast that’s essentially the fate of our species (things like global warming, environmental destruction and threat of global nuclear war, you know).
If the drugs make you feel better and you accept the side effects then you’re an adult and you have the right to your own decisions but it’s kind of sad that drugging our brains should be an answer to the insanity of our society.
I think also reducing families to essentially the kid and his/her parents as opposed to multigenerational families is a problem. Having multiple caregivers (like parents, grandparents, aunts etc.) is spreading the stress of raising a child on more shoulders, socializing the kid to different people and generally making everyone happier. Having two or sometimes one person taking care of a child and working is insane.
“I would never tell a caring parent that they don’t know what’s best for their child.”
Well… One probably doesn’t say that because the caring parent usually won’t listen anyway but sometimes you wish they did.
People do many sh*** things to their kids in the name of care and never realize how much damage they have done until it’s to late. I’m not going to lecture anyone here on what they should and should not do with their kids, especially that I don’t know their real life situation but I have my thoughts about diagnosing 7yr olds with depression/anxiety.
LOL :D. Let me know when she answers ;P. Made my day, thanks.
“There is no cure for depression and anxiety.”
True – but only because they are not illnesses. Depression and anxiety are normal human feelings and they as much run in the families as love, trust, or any other good or bad human emotion.
“Mental illness does not care how much money you make. It does not care how educated you are or in what zip code you reside.”
Sure it does. People who are poor, come from migrant or minority communities etc. have higher rates of so-called “mental illness”. Which is very easily explained if you stop thinking about what’s wrong with someone’s brain and think what’s wrong with someone’s environment.
That being said – if you want to stay in the system and you think it makes you better it’s up to you. I just hope you’re not harming your kids by putting them in hands of psychiatry, especially in the form of drugs.
Resilient is one thing. But don’t we eventually want to live in a society where you don’t need to be able to take abuse, violence, poverty etc. and have a reasonably “sane” life? I have a problem not only with the medical model but primarily with the “blame the individual” model – that’s why I don’t like most of the psychological approaches either. It’s true that some people may sometimes need someone objective to point them in the right direction or teach them a coping skill but it’s not going to solve the problem of why people get depressed or “crazy” en masse.
I kind of see the fact that people are able to go crazy as a sort of a good thing. It speaks of tehir humanity and a deeper sensitivity. As awful a PTSD can be for a person who suffers and those around them – do you really want an army of people who can go to another country, kill people, see their friends getting killed and be all fine? For me that is inhumane. If people don’t suffer they don’t have any reason to stand up for change. It’s just like physical pain is there to protect you and teach you about the dangers of the world, mental anguish does the same thing. Sure, too much of either pain can kill you but one has to be able to feel it and feel it deeply. There’s no happiness without suffering – it is what makes us human and what makes our lives fuller. Doesn’t mean we should not try to get rid of the bad things that cause suffering but we should not suppress it and numb ourselves to it, be it with drugs or with “resilience”.
It’s funny how we still seem to have the same problems as we had over a hundred years ago. I’m just reading Bernard Shaw’s “Doctor’s dilemma” and author’s preface could have been written yesterday.
“Medications are necessary for some people.”
I can’t really see how that would be since the actual medical evidence, as little as there is of it, shows otherwise. Anti-psychotics prevent people from recovering and make them actually more prone to psychotic episodes as the tolerance and hypersensitivity builds over time. “Anti-depressants” are essentially placebos. Benzos are narcotics which make you sedated and/or high and should never be taken for loner than a month anyway. Amphetamines for “ADHD” – well, they are amphetamines, there’s little more to add. There is no evidence that keeping people on any of psych drugs over a long period of time does any good and plenty of evidence to show otherwise.
I think people mistake placebo effect and spontaneous recovery with drug working and withdrawal with “oh, I need to be on the drugs forever”.
“We medicate kids to adapt them to their surroundings (think public school or an unstable home). But we don’t talk much about adapting the surroundings to the kids. ”
Exactly.
I’m so happy that you’ve been able to save your daughter from the monster of psychiatry. She “only” lost a year, some people lose their lives. She’s lucky to have you.
Not surprising though. I still remember, from my time being a student in UK, the government-sponsored posters that were encouraging people to basically do a Stasi-like spying and denouncing their neighbours – suggesting if you see your neighbour doing something suspicious like throwing empty chemical bottles in trash you should suspect terrorism and call authorities. It’s state-sponsored paranoia and fear-mongering, while in the same time the government has a free hand in slashing social benefits, healthcare etc.
“over 70% of many psychotropics are written by non psychiatrists”
You want to know why we beat up at the psychiatrists, primarily?
Well, Steve has kind of answered that for me but I’ll just add: what percentage of other doctors (or “real doctors” to be more specific) prescribe benzos vs what percentage of psychiatrists? It may be a pathology in other areas of medicine but it’s not a founding block of these areas but a spillover from corrupt and broken psychiatry.
Hospitals are not places for drunk or aggressive people to begin with – I’ve heard there’s such thing as justice system, which includes police and jails. Besides 99.9% of “aggressive” behaviour by the “patients” is provoked by the stuff anyway starting with forcing someone in distress into these places against their will.
But instead of doing something to stop it we will just sell more happy pills.
Ulcers are usually caused by Helicobacter pylori. The stress hypothesis is another example of “we don’t know what causes it so it must be in your head” or at least caused by what’s in your head. That being said – prolonged stress is known to suppress immune system and can lead to worsening of many diseases.
I don’t want to be the grammar police but correcting the spelling could help (whch) ;P.
Exactly.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – there’s a lot of truth in that…
“So, who is at fault for this misuse, providers alone?”
Yes. Providers are the ones with the prescription pad and they are the ones who are supposed to take the decision and who are (unfortunately only in theory) legally responsible.
If you look up “chemical imbalance” on Pubmed you’ll find studies on the influence of telling people this fairy tale on outcomes. Of course the outcomes are worse when people believe the broken brain theory but psychiatry is amazingly good at avoiding the facts for the “evidence-based, scientific” discipline.
True. Finding MIA saved me. I was alone and nobody wanted to listen and then I found people who understand and have dedicated their lives to exposing psychiatric abuse and looking for solutions.
You have a point here but I would not forget that trauma is very often not something of the past but it’s ongoing. If someone experienced a tragic event in the past maybe one can help him/her heal but what do you do when someone is living everyday in the conditions of abuse and violence: physical, psychological, economic, political…
This is another problem with psych professions – they tend to see psychological issues as something that comes from inside the individual and that has to be fixed inside this individual. That is almost never true.
“you rebellious radical, you!”
That’s exactly how people get BPD labels – they have their own brains and are not afraid to use them or even do that loudly for everyone to hear. Psychiatry is scared to death of these people so it labels them with the label only insignificantly better than psychopath to make sure nobody listens.
Good luck on your book. Sadly I don’t speak French but maybe it will also get translated at some point :).
Btw, I got intrigued by your bio mentioning you’re also an author of fantasy novels. Have they been published? Are they also French only?
“a lot of people are simply in the habit of thinking and beliefs that are anxiety-inducing–for example, that the world is doomed”
Well, it is, kind of. At least when you think about the future of our species it does not looks rosy at all. So nothing illusory about that. In my mind the only thing that can save one from anxiety is activism. Even if it feels close to meaningless against the powers that run this place, it is better than doing nothing.
Almost complete anterograde amnesia, feeling “high” followed by tolerance after 1 dose leading to aggression. Happily I have never taken that for longer than a few days at the torture chamber, oh, sorry “hospital”.
Btw, the good professionals managed to miss the fact that the person in their “care” has no functioning long-term memory. Pretty damn impressive for people who claim they are specialists in how brain works.
“Extreme anxiety is the normal and adaptive response to extreme situations. (…) The notion of dissipating these anxieties with neurotoxic, addictive drugs isn’t just ill-conceived, dangerous, and disempowering; it’s a dehumanizing obscenity.”
I could not agree more.
That sounds promising…I hope the reality will be just as good.
A stable, living wage job in a supportive social environment he forgot to add. But if you include these criteria – he’s quite right.
I feel so happy that I refused to take their drugs for any amount of time. How comes this sh*t is still on the market?
Btw, I sometimes wonder how psychiatrists can differentiate between consensual sex and rape since they don’t seem to be able to understand the difference between psychological help and psychiatric torture.
“Sometimes outside limits or containment may be helpful, but we need to be very careful with using any type of outside control because these modalities can be so easily misused and abused.”
What you’re describing is someone who wanted to be restrained. That is consensual and not at all similar to the abusive and torturous practice that happens all the time in “hospitals”.
May I translate it for you:
psychiatric hospitals = prisons that practice torture
control interventions = torture
patients = inmates, torturees
acute control medications = chemical lobotomizers, torture drugs
I think it’s a good thing to call spade a spade once in a while.
Exactly my thought when I read that. What insane society we live in when things like that are allowed to be uttered by people who call themselves doctors and everyone just nods their heads. This crap not only should have never been published but the geniuses who wrote it should have ethics committee all over them and a special investigator just to make sure they have not “helped” some people in this way.
“Patients with dementia already have a poor prognosis, especially when psychosis or aggression co-occurs. The opportunity of diminishing these symptoms with an antipsychotic and thereby increasing quality of life may outweigh the small increase in risk of dying.”
This has left me speechless. I normally don’t wish people ill but a part of me wants these a*[email protected]#$ to end up with dementia and on anti-psychotics. this is basically equivalent to saying: “oh, well, they’re anyway human garbage so let’s just kill them faster”. What?!? These people are doctors I assume… of the Mengele kind.
Have you seriously just compared depression to cancer? You mean an actual disease characterized by malignant tissue overgrowth to persistent low mood? Wow…
Btw, you’re saying you’ve spend 20yrs studying inflammation and in another post you claim to have worked under Eric Kandel who has never touched inflammation with a long stick.
Really?
Could you link to these papers on Pubmed?
Erik Kandel does not work with psychiatric disorders btw.
Given that ADHD meds don’t seem to have a positive effect over the long term maybe we should stick to classroom adjustments?
“The drug had some cognitive effect”
Yeah, so much for their argument it only causes increased concentration in “ADHD” people.
It’s a drug and it we don’t need to ask about long-term adverse effect since amphetamines are not exactly new to the market. This is plain stupid and pathetic that pharma is allowed to do that. We are acting as if we never had a problem with these drugs before. Amphetamines and opioids are non-addictive – since when? Who is the insane one here?
This is getting more ridiculous and scary every minute.
If someone wants to use the “doors to perception” they should be free to do so but please don’t pretend it’s medical.
Anti-psychotics are chemical lobotomizers and I would not give it to my worst enemy.
It’s the overuse of antibiotics not only in medicine but first and foremost in agriculture where it’s being put into the feed to increase meat yield. These practices should be illegal but sadly they’re not in many places.
Yeah, let’s ignore 20yrs+ of basic research that goes into pretty much every drug discovery and is done largely by public institutions and praise the companies of putting a few months effort in the end with over 20yrs of huge profits.
Well, even Cochrane Collaboration has to depend on the research which is largely funded by pharma so I’d not be surprised if their findings were influenced by publication bias, data manipulation etc. I know they’re doing tehir best to weed this out but the sad reality is that most of medical research is not objective.
Btw, using statins on everyone above certain age is clearly medical malpractice.
Or you can just encourage people to exercise and eat healthy without risking the drug’s side effects. Btw, low cholesterol level is not the same as lower risk of cardiovascular disease and the number of people who have genetic predisposition to high cholesterol and cardiac problems is relatively low.
Btw, the drug companies should not be allowed to use proprietary names – just use chemical names. Or do consumer-directed marketing. Or any form of marketing whatsoever.
Nice theory, except it never works in practice. In other developed countries opioid prescription are highly regulated and the addition problem does not exist on the same scale as in US.
Or you maybe just want to put your head in the sand and tell people to read the leaflets.
You don’t treat low level chronic pain with opioids. This is just bad medicine, of the sort that kills people. Opioids should be reserved for terminally ill and hardcore acute pain like in traumatic injuries.
Power and money are one. Money gives you power, power allows you to hoard more money.
The drugs are for the throwaways of society. “Superfluous population” that nobody needs or cares about. No matter that in reality the problem does not stop there, all classes are affected but psychopaths at the top are not well known for their thoughtfulness and concern with collateral damage and long-term outcomes.
This is insane. TNFalpha is a very important signalling molecule in immune system and beyond and sure as hell Abs against it have many side effects. It should not be prescribed willy-nilly…
This is another problem – zero accountability for doctors prescribing stuff, often off-label. While forbidding such prescriptions may not make sense maybe injecting some regulations and accountability could help?
Agreed. It can be summarized as “I can’t take this sh*t sober anymore”.
One question: do you know what signalling pathway is affected in Parkinson’s disease and what signalling pathway is targeted by anti-psychotics?
DOPAMINE.
It’s like giving a diabetic a bit of insulin and then stuffing him full of cake. Sure it will not only not help but render the guy deadly sick.
Exactly. Parkinson’s disease is caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells and levodopa can slow down the symptoms by making the still remaining cells more efficient at making the molecule. Giving the drug that does the exact opposite, that is disrupt dopamine signalling is crazy. It only shows you that the “doctors” have no f***ing idea what they’re doing. This is criminal medical error right here. I’m really lacking words on that painful stupidity.
Surprise, surprise. Given that “anti-psychotics” cause many symptoms which are similar to Parkinson’s disease and interfere with normal dopamine signalling (which is already disrupted in this disease) – how dense does one have to be to give these drug to these patients (or anyone at all for that matter).
It’s appalling. These people are either to stupid and uneducated to be working in the field of medicine or simply evil and should be in prison for murder. Or both.
True, but being a psychopath is not a mental illness. Some people are just evil and calling them sick is a disservice to anyone. Also psychopaths have rights too. If they don’t commit crimes then they should be left alone – when they do they should be punished to the fullest extend of the law but not beyond it. Even we have a legal standard and a justice system that is applied evenly to everyone or we don’t.
Btw, I’m not naive on that. I know a person who is not overtly violent but without a shadow of a doubt highly psychopathic and perfectly happy to cause havoc in other people’s lives (including mine). Nonetheless I’d defend his liberty and human rights just I do for anyone else.
I have people in family who run a foster home. They do not drug the kids and have not experienced any of what you have described even if the kids are sometimes very troubled. Kids who enjoy killing animals etc. are usually beyond reach and will grow into psychopaths but they are a small minority of otherwise normal little humans. And even the budding psychopath does not deserve being forced on these drugs. If the kid is doing all of the above mentioned things and no humanly done intervention can help – there is juvenile justice system. Assault and sexual molestation land you in a detention centre.
Define “good life” or “good family”. The idea that you can judge if someone has a good life from the outside is simply ridiculous. It’s equivalent of telling someone to stop whining since children in Africa are starving and one has “1st world problems”.
You never know the intricacies of one’s life. Even if everything looks fine on the outside you may not appreciate that there may have been traumatizing events in one’s childhood or permanent feeling of loneliness even if the theoretical social environment looks “normal”. On the other hand people living in terrible conditions may find themselves surrounded by others who have similar problems and therefore create a more understanding and supportive society.
Nice idea :). Will it be continued and expanded?
…of course…
It’s been well known that REM sleep is crucial for memory consolidation and that drugs (including sleeping aids) negatively affect sleep patterns.
It’s not people who are “sick” it’s the culture and the current socioeconomic system.
Not to mention that they generate “mental illness” in the first place. Ive League schools are not renowned for their welcoming social atmosphere and reading the quotes from people working there in the article I’m pretty sure that there’s a high selection pressure to keep in the psychopaths because anyone else is not “best suited for the environment”. I wonder who’s lacking insight…
“Civil rights laws and cultural destigmatization of mental health issues have made it possible for more students to attend top universities, he said. But even so, we have to “come to grips with the fact that there are just some people who aren’t best suited for the environment. It’s not good for them, it’s not good for us,and it’s maybe even dangerous.”” – Peter Lake, a law professor and higher-education consultant
Am I the only one who thinks this guy should be fired and send for “mental health” treatment in order to learn some empathy and human decency?
“It’s like diabetes”
Except that this rhetoric ends the moment you get a label. Can you imaging they treated someone like this if he had diabetes? The media storm would explode and there would be condemnation from all sides. But make it “depression” and it’s all about “balancing rights and security”.
Apparently sad people are very dangerous. Or maybe they are dangerous because thy may figure out why they’re sad and start organizing to do something about it?
“Products rather than people.”
Welcome to the brave new world. We are only worth something as “consumers” or workforce (preferably cheap).
I hope she wins and she wins big. This is ridiculous. “mental illness is just like any other illness” – my a**. Do they ask for all your medical records if you take a leave for a broken leg? It’s an illness like any other except it will make you a second (or third or on par with invertebrates and just behind a lab mouse) class citizen and screw you over for the rest of your life.
Please stop drugging people and selling narcotics as “anti-depressants” against non-existent diseases.
“a working low-dose, long-term-use application for the drug”
Told ya! “No, they’re only going to be used as a short term practice to put a person in a transforming mind state in the presence of someone who will guide them through it”. Sure it will. It will be used the same way all all these toxins and narcotics they sell as medicines and the only people who will get better because of that are rich a***es at drug companies.
I wonder when they will come the full circle and recommend a bottle of whiskey for depression?
They don’t even bother to read them. It’s only to dismiss the crazy person’s concerns.
OF course. Mentally ill just get progressively more crazy despite the best of treatments and they are anyway lazy moochers. One has to wonder: are people that stupid or that evil?
You do the right thing and you get punished for that. Way to keep the system rotten the way it is.
” The records of my medication were sometime indecipherable”
Funny how that works, right? In my documents there is hardly a mention of any drugs let alone the doses. And these are the legal documents based on which the “patient advocacy” (laugh along with me) has determined that they did everything right. Funny that they did not write in their own documents (obviously fixed after the fact and signed by a person who was not even there) that they abused me for no reason and then drugged with huge amounts of 4 different drugs including benzos leading to, among others, almost complete amnesia. How this passes as correct documentation I have no idea.
Btw, I have informed my family and friends that were they ever to call psychiatrists on me or participate in putting me into one of these Guantanamo-like holes also perversely called “hospitals” I will never speak to them again.
The only reason that your close one is justified in doing so if he/she is doing it for the first time and has been brainwashed to think this is a place where you get “help”.
One suggestion: maybe we should stop calling torturers and human rights abusers “caregivers”.
They can’t even handle antibiotics. I stopped counting how many times I was prescribed an antibiotic for a viral infection and not prescribed one for a clearly bacterial one.
Medical doctors lack basic biological knowledge and very often are not interested in understanding what is that they actually do with a given drug or procedure. It may work in some cases if just by chance you have something “standard” but sure as hell you may also get yourself killed by trusting them too much.
It must be an excellent education system that produces doctors who have no f***ing clue what opioids are and how they work on people. One would think that an averagely intelligent teen should know that. These are not brand new drugs that have never been used before – you don’t have to study medicine to know they’re freaking addictive in any way shape or form if you only read some XIXth century novels.
It’s really depressing. If they don’t know what ones of the most famous drugs do to a human than I don’t want to know what is their knowledge on anything more cutting edge than a morphine derivative.
“law to require welfare recipients to serve as foster parents as a condition of aid”
SERIOUSLY?
“monthly state stipend of about $200 per kid”
How much is the monthly dose of anti-psychotic? We can’t give money to kids but we sure as hell can spend it to enrich drug companies.
“If you want to do something about this terrible problem, one has to go deeper than simply trying to outlaw the use of drugs.”
No. You start with outlawing what is obviously wrong. Then people will be forced to find otehr solutions and then you can work on the right as opposed to bad ones. Otherwise there’s no reason for the system to change. It’s like saying: you can’t simply outlaw slavery, you have to go deeper and address social issues in black communities. Sure one has to but the injustice has to be fixed first.
“other than 15 minutes with a shrink every two weeks”
Having known some shrinks in my life I would not let any of them near my cat, let alone a traumatized child.
“remediating symptoms”
These are not symptoms. An they are not treating someone’s illness they’re getting rid of inconvenience for them on the expense of the poor kid. I hate this perverse, sick language so much. Orwell would be proud to have come up with that one.
I think that people need real relationships not fake ones bought by money. Psychotherapy is to this like prostitution is to love. It can maybe help some people to go on in the short time but what most people need is a real friend.
People are different and have different experiences. Have you considered that maybe these people who “break down” more easily have had more extensive experience of trauma and/or other stresses? It’s a difference when something bad happens to a person who has had a good childhood and has a supportive circle of friends and family and another matter if it happens to someone who has already had traumatic experiences in the past or feels isolated from otehr people, lonely etc. Personality of course plays a role and that is partly genetic but I believe that environmental stressors, especially the ones of social kind are more important.
Plus how would you “fix” biology? We have all seen the disastrous effects of this approach. Are you assuming that some types of personalities are defective and have to be changed because they’re more sensitive to injustices and crimes of our world? These tend to be the very people who have the most to give to the society, not the psychopaths who rarely if ever suffer from any psychological distress. Madness is an expression of humanity, not a defect.
Psychiatry = social control. It’s really all one needs to know.
I think gun violence is linked to having a gun and using it against someone.
Btw, I can bet some money on the notion that most gun violence is committed by men. Is being a men a mental illness? This is the kind of reasoning that goes on in here.
I love the rhetoric they used – the same as for “schizophrenia” and “anti-psychotics”: disease causes brain shrinkage, drugs prevent it even though the data shows otherwise.
Btw, hippocampus constantly kills and adds cells during life (it’s the only known place with robust neurogenesis in the adult human). So even if depression really leads to cell loss, which well may be (due to social deprivation for instance that often goes with feeling down) it can be easily reversed by taking the person out of this state.
Or maybe “BPD” is a go-to label for anyone you don’t like or who does not want to buy into your bs?
I think that explains it better.
Addiction can be to a substance that has biological activity (like alcohol, heroin etc) or to simply doing something pleasurable. So I guess the metabolism can play a role in some forms of addiction. I’ve heard that people who get drunk more slowly and have more tolerance for alcohol become alcoholics more often but I have also not seen any research to really back it up.
Bottomline – even if you have biological makeup more prone to alcoholism it’s still mainly the social and psychological factors that make it a problem.
Psychiatry’s main social role is to blame and silence the victims. It’s not what what was done to you that’s wrong – it’s your reaction to it. It’s not that you were abused – it’s that you have a sick brain. It’s a truly disgusting form of oppression.
That’s a claim that psych-professionals wage very often against people with “mental illness”. Very popular for BPD label – described as crazy b**es who lack empathy. I think some people working in this professions don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe they should first find some empathy in themselves.
It’s amazing and depressing in the same time that anyone takes them seriously. ECT? Really?
That is true. Sticking to one’s principles against the odds is something to be admired.
How about 100% reduction?
But OK, I guess it’s a good thing that they’re doing something at last.
So nice that the Supreme Court has struck down EPA’s air quality control measures…
Who cares if the system is dysfunctional if there’s money to be made.
Truth of the matter is that in other Western countries where people don”t have that much access to guns there’s less gun violence. It won’t solve all the social issues around crime but it will take the dangerous toys away from problematic people.
Better to find a scapegoat than to p*** off the NRA.
“But basically every single “illness” category has the same problems our community has. Issues with with key opinion leaders, evidence-base, bogus research, and “treatment” vs. prevention. ”
Sadly that is true. Even sadder: these are not new issues. I recommend reading a book by Bernard Shaw “Doctor’s Dilemma” (especially the author’s preface) written some 100years ago and seeing what’s changed. Spoiler alert: not much.
In with bpdtransformation on that one – you can’t make a standarized double blind placebo controlled study on psychotherapy period so why bother. Some people believe that therapy has helped them and it seem to have fewer “side effects” than the drugs and can’t really be forced on you in any meaningful way so I don’t mind it even though I have a rather low opinion of clinical psychology in general.
I am missing one thing in this post: information about any conflicts of interest that the authors have, especially in terms of pharma sponsorship.
Personally I think this particular “study” was worth reporting on since it nicely shows the nonsense of the whole “too much/too little serotonin” so-called research. Also it has been quite widely reported in the media so I’m only waiting for people on the internetz starting to quote it as absolute proof for this and that.
Psychiatry caused me to have panic attack and swaths of other issues that I never had before and I’m largely rid off now (except for psychiatry induced trauma and associated phobias). They are a bunch of harmful quacks and calling them witchdoctors is and insult to all the witches and shamans out there.
They actually made me super anxious (Prozac) so I could support the article. Which I don’t either way since I don’t believe that complex emotions like anxiety can be switched on/off by a simple global neurotransmitter manipulation.
But the way – does it now then follow that SSRIs cause anxiety ;)? This is such a bucketfull of nonsense…
Sure it is… Show me more of these nice coloured brain cartoons and maybe I’ll believe.
“Human contact with caring, helpful medical people, right?”
That may be true except that I am yet to meet a psychiatrist who can provide the caring/helpful contact. Most of them would easily fit a description of a psychopath.
“treatments are helping reduce or improve “negative” symptoms such as “diminished expression of affect,” disengagement, disinterest, social withdrawal, and impaired functioning in daily tasks.”
Since these symptoms are largely caused by the drugs used to “treat positive symptoms” – not surprised.
Or we should fold that paper, then make a ball out of it and throw it straight into a bin. Badly designed experiments can’t be made better – they should be re-designed and repeated.
Nonetheless, the discussion of a real life impacts of publishing such rubbish stands. Risks of type I and type II errors are quite different.
Not to mention that people should have been blinded as to the form of treatment and I’m not sure how can you possibly do that with switching protocols, let alone psychotherapy. Drugs do produce obvious side effects in almost anyone who takes them so good luck blinding anyone.
That’s a good point.
This is something that should end the main authors of the study in prison.
As much as I despise drugging people I have my doubts about the psychotherapy. The main reason why I support these kinds of recommendations is because I find it much less damaging than drugs which physically destroy your brain and body. As to it being “safe and effective” I really don’t see it.
“We are not in control of our feelings , but we can control what we think about.”
I respectfully disagree. The only thing that some of us kind of control is the words that come out of our mouths as we think and feel. The rest isn’t controllable unless you treat distraction as a form of control.
In other news: breathing under water causes drowning. It’s funny what surprises people when they subscribe to the “broken brain” theory of “mental illness”.
“The findings contradict assertions of advocates for involuntary treatment like E. Fuller Torrey, wrote the authors.”
It’s funny that anyone would take seriously the lies that come from this person’s mouth. “Turn over the furniture” & co guys who can’t wait to force someone down and inject them with poisons.
That is sadly true. Retraction Watch is a great resource and they’re doing amazing work tracking down and documenting misconduct and other issues with science publishing.
“there was something wrong with ME, when I got too much clarity about the situation, as though I were delusional”
You’re beautifully describing the act of crazy making that serial abusers have mastered. Psychiatry is all about blaming the victim.
“Psychiatrists are ridiculed as members of a “tinkering trade” who induce their subordinates to stage elaborate rituals designed to show that they preside over a medical establishment devoted to humane care and cure, when in reality, they are little better than prison guards helping to generate the very pathologies they claim to treat. ”
…which holds true still today.
Very nice article on the recent history.
😀 LOL.
“mentally ill young men”
Scapegoating 101. “Mental illness” is causing all the evil in this world, and pill popping is going to cure it.
According to what I’ve read he was taking Xanax and that in high doses. I don’t think it’s likely that it was a sole reason for what he did but these drugs have effects such as emotional blunting (that includes feelings of empathy) and loss of impulse control. The guy clearly had other issues and he was clearly a racist but not every racist ends up as a mass shooter. These things have always more than one reason but drugs don’t make it any better and possibly are a final straw.
That is a very accurate analysis of the current propaganda.
“people with learning disabilities are not always well served by Mental Health Legislation.”
No one is well served by the Mental Health Legislation. I love how people love coercing others to “treatment” as long as they don’t end up on the receiving end.
It’s a crime of enormous proportions.
Btw, what about the foster parents? Are they going with it and thinking that’s OK?
I hope I’ll be able to go…
Insanity… Their poisons aren’t working and people start to catch up (plus the patents are running out) so it’s time to get new drugs. And what can be better for “depression” than narcotics.
There are many things that cure “depression” and none of them are psychotropic drugs.
I have not heard about that book, thanks :).
“redress includes five forms of reparation; restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. All of which are of great importance for victims of ill- treatment in the mental health system.”
I’m looking forward to the day these will be implemented, especially the last one…
“the fact that I took the pill and put it into my own mouth, that I did not test the threat that was made, the fear that they instilled in me and my inability to maintain a sense of self in the face of it, all made me feel ashamed”
This is so true…
I still think that the only thing that saved me was my rebellious nature – even drugged up to my gills so that I could hardly remember what was going on I managed to fight back and resist. Even if that came at a risk of being stuck in the system. I still have a sense of pride about every little thing I did to resist and angry at myself about every decision to comply. But I’d never blame people who decide to go with the system out of fear. It’s not on the victims to take the responsibility for the crime, it’s on the abusers.
Honestly, I’m a little surprised about the fuss which is being made around this study. It almost makes me want to put on a tinfoil hat and look for some conspiracy. Or is it just psychiatry’s/pharma’s attempt to control the message in the light of more and more people seeing the emperor has no clothes?
“Sometimes, an aspect of the disease is that the patient believes threats and enemies are everywhere – including in the person of the doctor.”
It’s not an aspect of a disease, it’ accurate assessment of the situation and these people deserve to be called doctors just as much as Dr. Mengele. It’s state sponsored kidnapping and torture.
That’s a good step forward but still does not prevent outrages like this to happen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath
I’m with Peter Goetsche on that:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gZq5_17EJ0
Stop psychiatric torture.
If the dropped using drugs they would have surely cut it down significantly. Even more so if they went with Open Dialogue-like approaches but I guess I can dream on.
And what does that really mean:
“The students are almost inevitably legal adults, but there are a lot of other parties that have skin in the game and really have concerns and to one degree or another legitimate involvement.”
ALMOST legal adults? I didn’t know that when you become a student you become infantalized. I knew that happens when you become a patient but apparently this way of social control is expanding. If it’s really health we’re talking about then the same rules should apply and the patient’s welfare should come first. Unless it’s not health that all these “other parties” have in mind.
Btw, I don’t belive that for a minute:
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the schools are trying to strike the right balance,” said Paul Lannon, a Boston lawyer who advises colleges on legal issues. “They care for the students. They want the students to do well. They want the students to be healthy.”
All they want is to cover their a** in case something happens. Nobody cares about students, they are there to be made money off.
One more reason to stay away from the psych industry. They ruin your life in so many different ways one does not know where to start. And after that they dare to turn around and tell you how bad “stigma” is.
Supposedly they have now forbidden the psychologists from taking part in interrogations. However, I’ve not seen any sign of them wanting to punish the people who did it nor do I believe they will enforce it in future. I hope they prove me wrong but the more I know the more cynical I get.
Let me guess: business as usual?
First of all there has to be real penalties, including criminal, for doctors who are not sticking to guidelines on these drugs. Otherwise they can do whatever they want and never face any consequences.
“The report acknowledges a noticeable difference of opinion about that causes of prescription drug dependence between the governmental and practitioner organizations on one side and the support groups, withdrawal charities, and affected individuals on the other. The first group attributed patterns of dependence to individual differences in patients while the latter placed accountability on the inappropriate prescribing practices of the doctors.”
That is in itself very telling. Let me translate:
“first group attributed patterns of dependence to individual differences in patients” -> “these people are junkies and their defective brains are to blame”
But it’s nice that some people are starting to address the problem. It is too little, too late for many but maybe it will help at least some and prevent more people from getting hooked on these drugs going forward.
Humanities aside – most doctors and that included (first and foremost) psychiatrists are not very well educated in …biology. It seems counter-intuitive to a lot of people but the biological education in medical school is very narrow and little attention is paid to making students understand even such basic concepts as theory of evolution.
I’ve had first-hand experience as part of my studies was done at the medical university where my faculty shared some of the courses with medicine. They were very good at some things (like anatomy) but lacked in other respects and even well-prepared biological courses were treated as “unimportant”. Later on I had to work in a collaborative environment between doctors and life scientists and such issues were showing – things that were obvious for us (like that using drugs cocktails to treat cancer or HIV should work better long-term to prevent drug resistance) were coming as a surprise and hard to understand concepts for doctors. So I’m not very surprised when members of this profession show sometimes stunning ignorance even on issues they should be educated about and psychiatrists are probably the worst offenders.
Wow, that’s remarkable. I hope it will spread.
‘I’d Rather Die Than Go Back to Hospital’
The sign of sanity and clear thinking. One has to really be out of one’s mind to want to re-experience psychiatry.
Recommendations have this tiny problem that they can be (and are) routinely ignored with no consequences to the ignoring.
“There’s an unsettling correlation between psychopathy, a personality disorder characterized by a lack of conscience, and those who find personal wealth and success” Jon Ronson reports in The Psychopath Test. Psychopaths are four times more likely to be found among CEOs than the general population, which means that lack of empathy or remorse combined with superficial charm, egotism, unethical behavior and a search for thrills are some of the qualities rewarded most highly. ”
That’s also a good observation. The values of our society are upside down.
He has a point. Way to deal with “superfluous population”.
…while the NSA was recording.
When you google “lizard people” and “flat earth society” you’ll also find a lot of interesting things. Not everything you real on the internet is true.
“Psychiatry NEVER diagnoses anybody as needing Justice”
So true…
I actually think there’s a good “model”: every bad think that happens to a person adds up, the more severe more than the benign one. When enough sh*t accumulates, especially at once people break down. That is what it used to be called “mental breakdown” and that is for me the one and only correct “diagnosis”. Some people have the breaking point earlier, others can withstand a lot more but almost anyone will break down if enough bad things happen to them. It’s really that simple – what is complicated is when you deal with an individual and his/her unique life story. We are all different and we’re all the same.
bpdtransformation, B.A.
I think you may be reading to much into studies on this topic. I also saw studies which suggest that it’s not the early childhood that’s the problem (at least for psychotic “disorders”) but rather what happens in early teens, especially related to social stress (bullying, racism or even such “benign” things like moving out of town and losing one’s childhood friends).
It may be very well that the truth is somewhere in between – for one person it’s the neglect when she was 3, for someone else it’s sexual abuse at 14, for someone otehr it’s romantic breakdown at 30. People are complicated.
If I understand correctly by “mother” you understand “primary caregiver”?
“When I started out psychiatry was not medicalized, and was purely humanitarian.”
I’m not sure when and where you started out but I can’t recall any period in psychiatry’s history when it could be called “humanitarian”.
However, I must say I don’t agree with that:
“The appropriate treatment is the psychotherapy of character. Psychotherapy is a specialized form of human engagement that repairs the damage to one’s character”
It’s another way of telling people they’re broken and defective and need to be “repaired”. While I do agree that conscious effort to overcome one’s habits and change bad coping strategies may be helpful for some people under some circumstances and some people need a friend or maybe a therapist to point them in the right direction I strongly disagree with the idea that badly developed personalities are to blame. More often than not it’s the society that drives people “crazy”.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
“Human suffering has never been a brain problem. It is a human problem, and it has been so since the dawn of time.”
This is an important message that cannot be repeated often enough. Thank you for these words.
This questionnaire is loaded with societal expectations, I agree with it.
I could not hep but LOL at ” I can weigh up the pros and cons of psychiatric treatment”.
Very important questions, I’d also like to know the answer.
“I agree that there is no one event that can be identified as a ’cause’, and agree that it is a culmination of events that are triggered at some point.”
I don’t agree with that. It may be true in many cases but I know full well that the only time I tried to take my own life was when I was being tortured in a hospital and the one and only, singular reason was for the torture to stop.
“Instead, like surgeons, they will implement tools that reduce the suffering and enhance the well-being of the patient.”
translated:
“We are real DOCTORS goddammit! We do MEDICINE.”
I wonder who are the “experts” testifying in these trials? The likes of Lieberman & co?
I think they just discovered that the Earth is not flat afterall.
That is a wonderful idea :). I’m on board.
Garbage in, garbage out.
People get better when they feel like they belong to a community, are needed and respected by others. It’s really that simple.
You don’t want to buy ineffective and toxic meds for huge amouts of money? Clear conflict of interest.
In the world where corporations have constitutional rights nothing is too crazy.
Antipsychotics are devastating at any dose. It’s just the question if you ant to die quickly, slowly or live as a zombie.
“the laws protect them and regulate OUR behavior, no theirs”
You’re 100% right. Would someone include a Bribe Seeking Disorder or Insatiable Greed Syndrome in the DSM that would be the end of this book of nonsense.
There are never criminal charges in these cases… For the companies such settlements are a drop in a bucket and the “cost of doing business” and most individual doctors are insured against such cases so that they rarely have to reach to their own pockets.
As long as there are no jail sentences it’s not justice – it’s a mockery.
I agree. That is not necessarily to say that people who commit acts of violence on these drugs were necessarily latent killers anyway – one has to consider akathesia which from what I’ve heard is enough to turn Ghandi into a serial killer. Also these drugs diminish empathy. I don’t think I know one person who has never expressed an urge to murder their boss but almost no one seriously thinks about it. Killing another human being is a hard thing to do save for a small minority of people with psychopathic personalities who usually don’t need encouragement anyway. If the drug takes the empathy away, takes impulse control away and on top of that causes suffering then it’s a “perfect mix”. For people who got on these drugs because they already had some relational problems it’s the end.
People often say about mass shooters that they are psychopaths. Leaving aside the appropriateness of using labels a psychopath (someone naturally lacking empathy and ability to form attachments combined with a fetish for murder but otherwise “normal”) will not commit mass murder and then suicide. A person like that may become a serial killer or join the military or do something where one can realize these urges without suffering the consequences. The mass shooters don’t fit this profile, not in my mind. These actions scream desperation for me, not cold blooded murder even if they appear so.
Let’s start with the fact that psychotherapy is not medical treatment, even in the crazy world of psychiatry it isn’t. I find it particularly amusing when people do clinical trials with it. It always reminds me of:
http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/2/24/blind_trials.png
It’s a matter of individual vs stats. When you look at the magnitude of the problem ADs seem to be worse but that does not mean everyone trying to come off them will have a major problem. Like with any other drug really, some folks get a pass.
Are you trying to say that Germans are better people than good folks down in Illinois? I don’t think so.
I seriously don’t get people’s obsession with Jobs. He was an extraordinarily good salesman and a***ole at the same time, bordering on a sociopath. It’s close to a last person I’d put on a pedestal for people to emulate as a hero.
There are many better and smarter people who do not exploit others and have less of an ego. Sadly, they don’t become demigods.
“I don’t think they create positive symptoms but could be mistaken about that.”
You are in fact mistaken. The work of Robert and others clearly show that the use of neuroleptics, especially long-term increases a chance of psychosis (so-called supersensitivity).
“You might notice that when someone “acts out” medication is an issue somewhere.”
That is so true. I had problems at the point when I entered psychiatry but it was not before I tried some of their pills that I’ve become suicidal, with panic attacks, obsessive, paranoid etc. Not that I didn’t have reasons to be like that given the nature of my relationship at the time but going on these poisons and then coming of them because of the side effects and then going on different ones and ;like that for weeks and months seriously screwed me up. The worst by far was Zyprexa – the person who came up with this one should burn in hell.
“I have no time to deal with you” – that’s the most prevalent reason for someone being labelled as “dangerous”. I mean why would you do your job when you can force drug someone, put them in restraints and go for coffee.
That is btw the literal quote. They don’t even bother to pretend, they’ll just lie in the hospital documents and to the judge.
They were trying to hook me on this drugs. They denied every possible side effect and didn’t notice almost complete anterograde amnesia while I was being “observed” 24/7 in a hospital. A drunken monkey with a razor blade would do a better job in helping people than an average psychiatrist.
A pig with lipstick is still a pig afterall.
Dr. Mickey’s life must be exhausting… but so is ours. Digging through a tons of horse*** and it seems like for little change.
I am not that sure you can blame the drugs for criminal behaviour as a sole factor but then I’ve never experienced severe akathesia (I did a bit but I recognized it for a side effect of the drugs and flushed the pills).
People who take these drugs have many problems but one thing is sure – the drugs do nothing to stop them and in many cases they cause them to step over the line. It’s absolutely disgusting that not only are people not informed about it but some are straight out forced to take them. In my mind if a”patient” commits a crime under the influence of forced drugging the psychiatrists should be responsible. But they always refuse any responsibility for what they do – they only want the power.
That is great news. For all those who are struggling with no help (or the opposite of help) from the system.
It’s depressing and enraging at the same time. No matter how much evidence you present it’s the same old song. We are the Jews of the XXI century – you can blame anything on us.
Plus kicking out studies with conflicts of interest would likely do the same.
Maybe we should stop calling these drugs “anti-depressants”. The same way we should not call crystal meth an anti-obesity drug (though this one can actually be effective for what it’s worth).
I’m pretty sure you’re right.
People who can’t feel physical pain have real problems keeping themselves out of harms way. People who don’t feel emotional pain never learn not to harm others because they have no way to develop empathy.
Psychiatry wants to turn us into psychopaths. No one who has experienced a full range of human emotions wishes to be reduced to that.
“If they ever find a drug that blocks feelings of depression it would be devastating to humanity.”
Thank you. You’re exactly right.
I wonder if they now compared both to say taking part in therapeutic midnight naked dancing around a bonfire and howling to the moon would they obtain similar results? It all sounds like huge placebo effect to me. Whatever you do to people who are “depressed” (whatever that even means in the real world) a proportion of them are going to get better if they believe it’s meant to help. When you do absolutely nothing a proportion of them will recover as well. Finally there will be people who won’t recover no matter what because they happen to have real, persistent problems which aren’t solved with an attitude change. When do we stop pretending we’re dealing with medicine and diseases here?
Well, on all fronts – they should have read MIA and they would have known that already. That being said – it may be a step forward.
Good news :). I hope it spreads elsewhere in Europe too.
“How much can they really tell in those brain scans?”
Not much really. There are serious methodological issues with imaging, especially functional imaging related to artifacts and bad statistics (I always refer people to the IgNobel on the thought processes of a dead salmon – google it ;P).
But even when the study’s done rights all that imaging observes is a sum of activity in broadly defined brain regions. It tells you very little of what is actually going on and does account poorly for individual variability which is huge. We know that for most people for instance fear responses are controlled by amygdala but that is a huge oversimplification. There are different circuits within that structure, some activating, some inhibitory and that does not even account for the fact that it may be largely different for different people. Seeing that giving someone a drug makes amygdala more active may give you a hint this person’s more fearful but the easier and more reliable way to get that information is to ask.
In other words giving people drugs or placebos has some influence on their brain activity. That’s hardly an earth-shattering discovery.
Maybe because it is placebo effect for the most part?
That being said I don’t really buy the brain imaging studies at this point, not until they get reproduced independently multiple times and preferably with different, complementary methods.
“Anti-depressants” likely have more effects on the brain than placebo, because they screw up the neurotransmitter signalling.
Tick, tick, tick… when is the first “bomb” going off? People dying or being damaged for life with this pill which supposedly cures a non-existing problem and in fact doesn’t even do that?
The problem with that is the mistaken idea that demand is what creates supply. It works well in theoretical models but it’s not how markets really operate. There are a lot of ways to create demand by force or by manipulation or by social pressure. Psyhciatry’s been using them both. In fact it’s very tightly linked to the broken economic and political system, and as the article above shows, protects it vehemently.
I agree. In fact I did the same – named the people and hospital involved in the abuse of me publicly. I was threatened with a lawsuit for that (which I have recorded) but my response was to laugh at them and invite it. I’d love to see them sue me with defamation but I know they never will since I’d win and expose them.
I’ve seen this as well. People asking on forums: “I have a disorder X. Is it OK for me to have children?”. Followed by everything from “it’s OK if you stay or your meds and if your psychiatrist says so” to “You should never do it. You’ll suck as a parent and your children will also be crazy because it’s genetic”. It makes me so angry.
“activism is the most undervalued and underfunded ‘therapy’ for psychiatric survivors, trauma survivors, and their loved ones”
Amen to that. I rarely hear words so true.
Retarded or evil?
I had “highly intelligent” used on me as a form of an insult from a psychiatrist who talked and behaved like a true sociopath (I don’t know if that was learnt behaviour or who he really was).
It’s not overused – it’s underused. Psychiatry is all about social control and that’s the message that we have to shout from the rooftops. It’s not a bout helping, which is sadly the illusion most people live under.
Thanks you so much for creating that list – it’s important to remind people that psychiatry’s infamous history is not a thing of the past but it continues beyond the Holocaust era and is not restricted to “bad countries”.
What’s next? Heroine?
They are really f***ing ridiculous. Btw, one of the well known side-effects of ketamine (why it’s not really used for anesthesia in people) is it’s propensity to induce horrible nightmares and generally unpleasant mental states. Not to mention in the first place that it is an anesthetic and can be very dangerous with overdose.
The “funniest” part is that “serious” people are actually talking about it like it was a valid area of pursuit for new medicines. YOUR WHOLE FRAMEWORK IS WRONG!!! How long do we have to say it?
That is an excellent point. In fact the current political elites are not divided into left and right but just less and more extreme representatives of the ruling class.
In other words – we need to change the system completely. And indeed it’s a class war alive and well.
Thanks but I’ll take living in today’s Sweden over living in Nazi Germany.
I don’t think you use the word socialism in the same way as people who actually describe themselves as such understand.
Please, to begin with – read Marx’s Communist Manifesto and then come back to comment. I’d bet you’ll find this book stunningly reasonable. Or at least you’ll know what you’re criticizing.
I wonder why mentally ill die so young? It must be because they’re crazy…
Exactly. The neoliberal doctrine fails to take into account all the non-monetary incentives such as morality, love, empathy, altruism and so on. We are so used to this kind of thinking that it’s hard to get away from this mindset and consider that most people are actually good. Sure, everyone has also some selfish in them but then the right incentives are to promote social solidarity and not individualistic greed.
The_cat – having lived in a few different countries so far the more “socialistic” ones (I mean social-democratic European countries) do much better than more capitalist ones. Also in terms of actual free market. You can call it a paradox but having the state regulate market in a more socially just direction actually promotes genuine competition between small businesses as opposed to hegemony of big business and cronies.
I think you should listen more to what Mr Sanders says instead of looking at the label (we should be used to that approach here I suppose ;P). I don’t agree with a lot of things, especially on foreign policy, but he’s not crazy.
It’s not only about pricing – it’s also about making sure that drugs don’t get approved when they don’t work and cause harm. Like getting the FDA that does its job instead of serving as a fig leaf for pharmaceutical industry.
Following current logic foxes are ideal candidates for guardians of a henhouse – they are experts on poultry afterall.
It seems like from the psychiatric surviviour perspective Sanders is the best candidate so far. Hardly perfect but that may be the best there is.
Welcome to the DSM. A world of wonders where the inmates are running the asylums and giving people labels.
Settle, pay a small fine/compensation, continue making loads of money…
We need a new system.
Well, in China it’s also not all that rosy – they usually do it to someone (who as fallen out of favour anyway) once in a while to keep people happy but overall product safety in China continues to be abysmal. At least that’s what my Chinese friends have told me.
Same as it doesn’t make any sense for any other industry. They pay you off with a percentile of the money they made off you and other victims and continue to repeat the same offenses over and over again. Nobody goes to jail, no company goes bankrupt. It’ the “cost of doing business”.
I hope people will read it with an open mind.
Plus that psychiatry does is the exact opposite of helpful – it tells them they’re defective and have to live with it after which it places them on drugs which cause disinhibition and lower empathy. Interesting that it backfires…
If someone is violent they must be crazy. Hence “link” between mental illness and violence. Confirmation bias right there.
Give there’s no definition of mental illness that would make any sense it’s extremely easy to label people displaying a given behaviour insane and then attribute this behaviour to all the other classes of insanity. It makes no sense unless that is exactly what you want to do.
“As for the future, we realize that we are growing older (I am now 65, my wife not much younger) and that we cannot continue looking after Meili forever.”
This is truly heartbreaking that parents of disabled kids all around the world have to be asking themselves that question: what happens to my child when I’m no longer able to care for him/her?
It’s unacceptable that we consider drugging healthy people like Meili and making them sick just because they have a mental disability. Finding them psychiatric diagnosis to justify this is even more reprehensible.
So being abused is not good for you? Who would have thought…
It’s funny that psychiatry has to “discover” such things. Better late than never.
Btw, that is also linked to “anti-stigma” propaganda:
“”The Scottish government has long worked hard to reduce the stigma faced by people with mental health problems.” As this stigma declines we would expect more patients to seek help from their GPs for problems such as depression.”
Instead of looking at the causes of their problems and organizing people are now attributing their problems to broken brains and getting chemical lobotomies. Given that most of the recipients of this “care” are older women it looks awfully like a profitable way of getting rid of “superfluous population”.
That can’t end up well…
Not only are people not getting better – they will have more problems at the end of the day when side effects and dependence take their toll. Not to mention that I have not seen an antidepressant fix poverty before.
It’s kind of sad that ACLU has to pick that one up. These people should be in prison along with other people involved in torture as well as those who signed off on it.
I remember myself on Seroquel – it’s a miracle I didn’t murder anyone. I felt so deprived of any connection to my feelings that I would have done anything to feel something in a normal way again. The more extreme the better. These are torture drugs and I have no doubt that some people commit acts of violence against self or others because of them.
Funny how psychiatry has the habit of causing and exacerbating the very problems it claims to treat.
Always blame the odd one out. Which is going to create more angry people in the end. Counterproductive for society but politically expedient.
Marihuana smoke has lower temperature than tobacco which is hypothesized to prevent it from causing lung cancer (many carcinogenic substances don’t form at lower temperatures). Also some studies suggest it’s components may have anti-cancer properties. All of that is not very conclusive thus far though.
Plus if you want to keep marihuana illegal than all people who drug kids with things like amphetamines (“ADHD” drugs) and other psychotropic drugs should also be sent to prison.
Apology would be nice – financial compensation would be better. Criminal charges for people involved in this scandal even better.
No empathy, no shame, no remorse – which personality disorder is that supposed to be, remind me again?
I think that should also apply to “ADHD” drugs (amphetamines) and in fact all drugs. If we were real about prescribing medicines to treat illness and doing so only when necessary then we should not need brand names at all.
Amphetamine instead of Concerta (or whichever type of stimulant this one is) could do wonders.
Is the next study going to be on if the sun sets on the west or if fish can survive without water?
I mean, it’s nice they’re studying something else than pills but we already know poverty’s bad for you. Can we move on to actually doing something about it?
The Onion got it right :D.
One should beware bills which include such nice sounding words as: family, freedom, truth, nation and so on in the title. They are usually the exact opposite of what they proclaim.
How generous of them. There are people involved in Dan Markingson’s death who should face criminal charges but if that’s what you’re hoping for I’d not hold your breath.
Psychiatric treatment at it’s best. Her son has nailed it, it’s sad that only after he lost his mother.
From my experience people who are resistant to suffering are less likely to be emphatic. Psych drugs numb people’s emotional responses and they also kill empathy. Antidepressants can also kill love:
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jul/30/health/he-antidepressants30
Feelings are there for a reason.
I’m not a Christian but I’ve learnt to understand and appreciate the Christian ideas on the value of suffering. It has the power to transform you into a better, wiser human being.
You can write any guidelines you want – without ways to enforce them and punish transgressions it will do exactly nothing. In other words – duh.
The fat lady has sung… and she continues singing in vain as the psychiatrists & co put their fingers in their ears and pretend they hear nothing.
Btw, isn’t it a sign of how f***ed up our thinking about these issues is when the article first writes about all the social, economical and historic reasons for the suicide epidemic to then label it a “public health issue”? It’s not a health issue – it’s a social justice issue. It won’t be helped by pills and a bunch of “professionals” but by putting the record straight for the decades of systemic abuse and fixing the injustice.
It reminds me about the book I’ve recently read – The Swarm by Frank Schätzing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swarm_%28novel%29
One of the main characters is a researcher of Nunavut First Nations and a good deal of the book is dedicated to his struggles with that legacy. In general I recommend it highly – it’s a great read and a well researched book on important topics.
Sad legacy of the American genocide :(.
Please, support indigenous organizations such as Idle No More. They’re fighting for better future not only for themselves but also for us and the whole planet.
What helps is that someone is there thinking about you and maybe sending you a little gift to lift you up. That’s all there is – human connection. Everything else is bs.
It would be hilarious if not for the fact that some people will believe it.
Unfortunately the drugs have fund there way everywhere :/.
Can’t stop loving the Onion for yet another jab at psychiatry :).
Psychotherapy is to normal human relationship as prostitution is to sex with a loved one or a friend. You pay for someone to pretend they care for you.
It’s relationship build on dishonesty and false pretenses from the get go, no matter who the therapist is.
You’re right. I honestly prefer psychotherapy only because it’s less harmful and you can’t really force it on someone.
Well, these studies may also suffer from publication bias…
EXACTLY. You spared me time and effort on writing this comment :).
Try joining some paper sharing websites like Research Gate. It does not always work but sometimes people actually send you requested articles for free.
Not that you should trust what you read anyway…
Do you know the Yes Men? Check out their documentaries – we need something like this on our side :).
Unfortunately, even if she wins she’s already lost her chance for a healthy baby. Plus the GSK will pay a relatively small fine and keep poisoning people.
There needs to be a better solution to close this gaping wound.
🙂 Good point 😀
An incredibly insightful movie and by far his best.
I wish I could go. I hope you have amazing time :).
The truth is every mass shooter gets labelled as mentally ill if not before then after the shooting. Afterall you have to be crazy to do that right? Circular thinking at its best. When almost every person on the planet can be diagnosed with some DSM insult, what difference does it make?
By this login we should ban guns for all young white males because they constitute the majority of mass shooters.
Actually – maybe juts ban all of them for everyone.
I don’t have time to check all of those but the Nazi example is simply wrong:
“The 1938 German Weapons Act, the precursor of the current weapons law, superseded the 1928 law. As under the 1928 law, citizens were required to have a permit to carry a firearm and a separate permit to acquire a firearm. But under the new law:
Gun restriction laws applied only to handguns, not to long guns or ammunition. The 1938 revisions completely deregulated the acquisition and transfer of rifles and shotguns, as was the possession of ammunition.”[5]
The legal age at which guns could be purchased was lowered from 20 to 18.[6]
Permits were valid for three years, rather than one year.[6]
The groups of people who were exempt from the acquisition permit requirement expanded. Holders of annual hunting permits, government workers, and NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazi party) members were no longer subject to gun ownership restrictions. Prior to the 1938 law, only officials of the central government, the states, and employees of the German Reichsbahn Railways were exempted.[5]
Manufacture of arms and ammunition continued to require a permit, with the revision that such permits would no longer be issued to Jews or any company part-owned by Jews. Jews were consequently forbidden from the manufacturing or dealing of firearms and ammunition.[5]”
The gun laws were actually relaxed, not strengthened by the Nazis. And all of this was anyway mostly irrelevant or what happened to the Jews and others since you don’t need firearms to organize a pogrom not having firearms will save you from one.
So the evil government is going to take over and put everyone in the concentration camps but they will bother to obey what is written on a piece of paper?
I grant you if there’s a coup or any other regime change the Posse Comitatus will fly off the window.
“Before the Nazi’s could begin their mass extermination they first had to get the guns away people.”
That is factually untrue. The Nazi Regime has relaxed gun laws before the war.
What is wrong with banning all guns though? If it saved even 1 life it’s worth it.
Don’t want to be too cynical but could this growing opposition to labelling “mentally ill” as dangerous among psychiatrists come from the fact that they’ve realized it’s actually against their own interests? As people are less likely to “seek help” when they are immediately deprived of their rights?
Don’t get lost in the wording – the whole thing is written up to obscure personal responsibility of individual researchers. You know – I don’t have a conflict of interest, it’s just the system that’s a bit complicated and it’s all confusing and please look the other way now.
“companies aren’t legally required to register a (phase 1) trial with Clinicaltrials.gov.”
WHAT??? When you think you’ve see the bottom of the barrel…
Actually vaccination has if not saved, then very much improved my life curing me of recurrent painful tonsil inflammations and other respiratory tract bacterial infections.
Don’t throw all the medicine under the bus.
It’s no accident that the Daily Mail picked up the story when it affected Luke Montagu, “heir to the Earl of Sandwich”. It it affects Mary living down the street (and down the street is social housing or immigrant neighbourhood) nobody gives a sh*t.
I don’t see anyone running away. It’s simply complicated. People commenting here are from different cities, states and even continents so it’s intrinsically difficult to organize any real life action which does require something else than using internet/phone/mail.
I think this movement is successful for two reasons – they have money and Dick Cheney’s daughter is lesbian. I mean that only partly tongue in cheek – the fact that homosexuality can “afflict” even the members of the ruling class is a good enough reason to give them rights. If you’re a white rich old man you’re more likely to discover your son’s gay than that he’s black. And if he happens to go “crazy” you’ll find a way to keep him away from psychiatry (unless abusing him is what you want).
Exactly. Psychiatry is an all-encompassing system of abuse. It targets all oppressed groups plus some random victims just because it can.
Fighting against psychiatry is not like fighting against racism – it’s like fighting against racism and sexism, and corporatism and bigotry and…so on and so forth. Many groups have successfully managed to escape being in it’s clutches en masse – there’s no drapetomania and homosexuality is not a “mental illness”. Still these groups get psychiatrised more often. For these groups there’s a survival advantage to differentiate between themselves and “mad for other reasons” to convince the general public they deserve the rights.
Psychiatric surviviours have many things that distinguish them from other marginalized groups. We face a lot of the same problems that other oppressed groups but in many ways our position is worse. Even the sheer idea that we are crazy so what we say is always to be questioned – even if it’s an obvious fact like 2+2=4. You of course face this kind of dismissal when you’re black or a woman or another minority but it’s not as intrinsically linked to the society’s definition of who you are. Also we’re not easily recognizable – it’s hard to hide you’re black but anyone who’s escaped the system can blend in the crowd. It’s a good protective mechanism and few people want to risk being hauled back for their activism. You can hide it so you often don’t have to face it. People of colour are forced to organize by the fact they wear their skin and there’s no such escape from the system. Being black or homosexual or a woman is a part of one’s core identity, one that you’re born with. Being a mental patient is a false identity installed in you by the masters of mankind and therefore is not so easily turned into strength. “Mad pride” doesn’t really resonate with people because many of us don’t consider ourselves “mad” and for good reasons. “Psychiatric surviviour” is a better organizing identity in this respect. There are many subtle differences that make us much more difficult to organize.
Change doesn’t happen overnight. Nor is it permanent – every right you win can be taken away from you if you’re not looking. The history of black movement is a testimony to that – the moment they managed to abolish one form of systemic abuse another one was created in its place. But still it’s getting better.
Sadly, it’s true. Psychiatry exists to cover up individual and institutional/systemic abuse.
You’re exactly right. Nonetheless that in no way absolves psychiatry or its individual representatives from responsibility.
It is the same human instinct that calls for bringing back death penalty every time a horrific crime is committed and will hung even an innocent person simply because the mob can’t accept sometimes there’s nothing one can do and no one to punish. It explains why people insist on bombing the living crap of the Middle East even though it creates more “terrorists” and human misery overall than simply doing nothing. It explains how the Patriot act was passed and how people allow their civil and human rights to be taken away from them if you only scare them badly enough. Not every human being is giving in to that instinct but most do and thus we end up with systems of oppression “for our own good”.
Sometimes there’s just nothing you can do – it’s not a sexy message that people like even if it’s true. And the opposite message – “we’ll just use force and it will all be good” is so willingly used by politicians and otehr power-hungry persons around the world because it gives them tools to control you. It doesn’t matter it’s not true.
“Needless to say, most states do whatever they want so that’s already not a protocol honored by at the very least my state. ”
Yes they do. And then they fix the documents to show that they did everything by the book – including testimony from the second doctor who wasn’t even there (corroborating the 1st doc’s testimony), fabricating “danger to self and others” lying about drug dosages and so on. It’s real “fun” when you get out and go to complain to patient “advocacy” and they tell you that no illegal activity was mentioned in the documents therefore no violations were committed. In other words: “we asked the criminal if he/she committed the crime and they denied” – case closed. Is there any other part of the legal system where that is allowed?
Also known as Stockholm syndrome. Not to mention that many “patients” on psych wards will express feeling of gratitude, love and whatever other emotion they feel they need to conjure to get the hell out of there.
Actually, these things are still better than forced “treatment” since you’re at least taking this decision for yourself. For me being involuntarily committed is the same as being locked up at Gitmo and tortured in a million different ways (some of them can be read in the Senate torture report). Forced psychiatry is torture, it’s rape and it’s really that simple.
“I’m tired of walking on egg shells and worrying about ensuring that no one’s feelings are hurt in the process. No matter how polite or nice or empathic I am in my outspoken criticisms of the actions within this field, it fails to matter. My tone is not the problem. Neither is the problem the tone of those who have been traumatized and tortured by their experiences.”
Thanks Noel for stating that so clearly.
Btw, we need whistleblowers and videos of abuse. It’s done a lot for the Black Lives MAtter when people can see what is actually going on – on the streets and in jail cells. There are no videos from psychiatric wards…
I guess we need to spread the message beyond the choir. The general public is not on our side and indoctrinated, even if they have some healthy mistrusts against psychiatrists in general.
I agree 100%. They wouldn’t mind if these terms were indeed harmful to us.
If any drug in the world deserves the name “torture drug” it’s Zyprexa. I think even Lucifer would go “hey, stop right here, it’s too cruel” before prescribing that.
““psychiatric survivor”, which, in my view, is a misappropriation of a term normally applied to people who survive torture, concentration camps, or life-threatening diseases”
Someone should explain this guy that this is exactly the point. Psychiatry is torture, rape and locking people up in concentration camps. It’s their history and it’s their present.
With articles like this one has to wonder – is he that stupid or that evil? I mean the level of infantile rationalizations and lack of responsibility for one’s actions (“hey, we did something very dumb and only caused harm to millions of people but let’s call it a high school crush, giggle about it and move on”) is astounding. I’ve given the writings of this guy to some of my friends previously and the look on their faces when you tell them he’s an esteemed psychiatrists is priceless.
Valerian is kind of a natural benzo and can have similar effects:
“Because of valerian’s historical use as a sedative, antiseptic, anticonvulsant, migraine treatment, and pain reliever, most basic science research has been directed at the interaction of valerian constituents with the GABA receptor.[15] Many studies remain inconclusive and all require clinical validation. The mechanism of action of valerian in general, and as a mild sedative in particular, has not been fully elucidated. However, some of the GABA-analogs, particularly valerenic acids as components of the essential oil along with other semivolatile sesquiterpenoids, generally are believed to have some affinity for the GABAA receptor, a class of receptors on which benzodiazepines are known to act.[16][17]” (from Wikipedia)
So be careful with it.
I trust my druggie friend better when it comes to psychoactive drugs both legal and not. He at least acknowledges that they are not medicines, that they act differently at different people and at different times and he will stay sober to be with you through the experience if you ask him for it (to stop you for doing something crazy while you’re on the drug). He’s smarter than any psychiatrist out there but he’s also a great empathetic guy and not a sociopathic hack on a power trip.
Which is something that neurologists or other real doctors should deal with anyway.
People with physical emergencies also need comfort. Another example that comes to mind is women in labour. In some places they get treated as objects resulting in both physical danger and psychological trauma. A friend of mine worked as a psychologist in ob-gyn ward and she said most of women she talked to had perfectly normal, healthy pregnancies and physiological labour, yet were completely traumatized by the way staff treated them. This is completely unacceptable and doctors of all specialties (as well as nurses) should get it through their thick skulls that they are not gods handling objects but are there to serve the needs of actual humans.
“I have never personally witnessed a psychiatrist who was sadistic or got pleasure from a patient’s suffering.”
Well, good for you – I have. One working in a locked ward incidentally.
Amazing that a relative of mine who has type I diabetes and actually feels better on insulin never thought about stopping to take it several times a day, even though it is a real pain in the… well various parts of your body you have to injure everyday to take blood to measure sugar and inject the hormone.
I wonder if that could have something to do with insulin being an actual medicine for a real illness…
7) Spread the message to your family, friends and anyone who wants to listen.
8) Never condemn anyone to clutches of psychiatry by advising/coercing or forcing one to enter the system.
That is a great point. We are no longer whole as beings with emotions – having normal human feelings has become a sickness. Some people say we live in a society run by sociopaths. If the values of society are the values of its elites then there may be something to that.
The “funniest” thing is these are the same people who judge others as delusional, narcissistic and/or lacking insight. Yeah.
No justice, no peace…
I wonder how long is it going to take until these programs are hijacked by pill-pushers though… Maybe I’m too cynical but it makes me kind of cringe.
“Repositioning American Psychiatric Association from wise sage to caring ruler”
Is there anything more telling than this? They’re so full of sh*t… “Caring rulers” – more like “tyrants” or “dictators” and caring has nothing to do with it.
I’m so sorry for your loss :(. It’s horrific.
I guess having a sick baby does wonders for the depression…
It’d be nice to also include the information about conflicts of interest in these studies. Maybe someone could do meta-analysis for that….
Orwell is rolling in his grave so fast that you could use him as a turbine.
“The authors argue that the phrase “conflict of interest is pejorative”
Seriously, JAMA? That is the real problem?
Has anyone ever tried to contact the subjects of the study? I know their details are not available publicly (obviously) but there are sometimes ways to track them (e.g. via ads requesting contact if they’re willing to tell their stories).
Garlic contains natural antibiotics. On the other hand it’s also quite hard on the liver.
Exactly. I wonder how “monitoring” is going to change anything. Will give you some poison, but don’t worry – we’ll monitor closely as you’re getting sick and possibly die. Women are advised not to take most drugs while pregnant – why is that not the case for psych drugs?
That can very well be the case. These drugs affect brain development so I’d be surprised if they didn’t screw up at least some kids for life. It’s horrible to even think about especially when you consider how many women are on these drugs.
You’ve said it all. I agree 100%.
Pharma is trying to medicate every human emotion, personality type or cognitive ability. It’s good some people are starting to notice.
Revolving doors…
“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.”
Joseph Stalin
I guess that’s how they see it.
That is a great initiative to actually analyze all the papers on the topic. There’s a lot of garbage papers out there and anyone who sieves through it to produce a conclusion is doing awesome work, even if it may feel hard and ungrateful.
I believe that right bacterial flora is vital to one’s health but the interaction between our bodies and our second bodies (we have more bacterial cells in our guts than our actual cells) is so complicated it’s really hard to know anything for sure at this point. But it’s somehow good to know that you have you little microbial friends to help you digest and fight of invaders. Makes one feel less alone ;).
“The personal is the political.”
That’s exactly right.
And APA’s condemning all forms of torture, including the one done “for your own good” is long overdue.
You don’t have to justify your use of drugs to anyone. You’re an adult and you’re taking decisions for yourself. That’s what we’re all asking for. Take care and get better soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustl_Mollath
In Germany you can apparently spend the best of 8yrs as “paranoid schizophrenic” if you dare to go against banksters.
But it’s not even the worst – in 3rd world countries people who fight corporations end up dead (like people trying to protect Amazon against foreign corporations).
I guess one has t be prepared for what it takes to fight back.
“Our citizens would be far better off if we removed all the psychotropic drugs from the market…It is inescapable that their availability creates more harm than good.”
He’s totally correct.
I think it’s different for different people. And I think many if not most are not really looking for a change in themselves – they’re looking for a change in their circumstances. That’s my biggest beef with psychiatry and psychology in general. You can’t talk someone out of poverty, disease or ongoing abuse. I like the idea of concentrating on the present but I don’t think talking about it is going to help. I sometimes think there are to many therapists and too few social workers who help people with day to day struggle.
“From this perspective, what is happening to the person at the present time becomes the focus rather than spending time seeking to understand the dynamics of past events. If an event from the past is troubling now, it is vital to explore what the now trouble is.”
Yes, exactly.
OK, I’m going to go over the top and make a Nazi analogy (which in case of psychiatry is not even that over the top given history):
If you were given a choice to work in at an entry to a concentration camp and save some folks but condemn others to torture, abuse and often death would the fact that you saved some people justify you working in concentration camp and signing others off to awful fate? Would it be a moral choice to stay at that job rather than quitting and finding other ways to stop people from flowing into that camp?
I’d say no. I’d say that being fired is preferable. Stop giving justifications to a system that’s inhumane and torturous.
“The only way to not give up on people like Mary is to fight for better, non-psychiatric resources. We need to understand that a large aspect of the fight is not just whether we refuse to commit vulnerable people to psychiatric hospital, but how we can fight for change.”
And how working in a hospital and signing people off for abuse is fighting for change? For me it’s legitimizing the system. You want better non-psychiatric resources – great but how sitting in a hospital and going about business as usual is going to bring that about? why not become a whistle-blower? Why not join others to create alternatives? Why not go work for an institution that actually helps (a homeless shelter, a soup kitchen)? Working within that system and putting a smiley face on it only ensures that nothing ever changes.
We’re talking about 32 year old woman not a 2 year old. And she was conscious and not passed out. I’m pretty sure that free will applies.
“She said no but she went to the bar with me and she had a short dress and before she said her ex was a bad guy and I was much nicer and she seemed to like me and how was I supposed to know that she didn’t want it.”
If you’ve described what happened with Mary accurately then it’s very clear what she didn’t want. No means no. It’s pretty clear.
I still disagree ;).
I simply don’t believe there’s any way to say if someone is developed or stuck early or late. It’s like saying human social and emotional development is some kind of a line and you’re somewhere on it and you move in one or the other direction. I don’t see it this way. I think people have unique ways of relating to others, maladaptive or not which change in time, space and depending on the person you’re interacting with. Even when you were abused your whole life and relate to people round you accordingly I don’t think it’s a regressed state – it’s a state that is developed and just as the appropriate as the one which you’d have were your life history different.
“Mary’s outcome is unlikely to be affected by Margaret’s choice.”
Really? How about if she commits suicide because of the trauma of forced “treatment” aka rape? It’s not theoretical – I tried to kill myself because of a “choice” that a person like Margaret did with complete disregard for my opinion on the matter. You say you take responsibility for one’s life with such decisions? Well then embrace it. The responsibility for suicide, for homicide (do I have to explain the anger and hatred which being abused creates?), for further deterioration of mental and physical state, for life-long trauma. That is the legacy of forced “treatment”. It is not more compassionate. IT is condemnation of someone to torture.
If you can’t do something to change someone’s life as you admit then why do you have to submit that person to even more humiliation and abuse before it’s over? As Katie has written so eloquently here – what sacrifices do you take except for “feeling bad”? Why don’t you take that person to your home, offer her warm place to sleep and food and support if you really care? Signing someone off to psych ward is just washing you hands.
No means no.
Psychiatric rape is rape like any other.
“No means No.”
It’s so easy to understand when it comes to sexual rape. But somehow with psychiatric rape it’s still OK to say “No means yes”.
“I. for one, am tired of the cheap excuses– cloaked in the MH jargon that makes my skin crawl. For 20 + years, I was eye witness — on the front line, in the trenches, watching highly educated, credentialed professionals become dissociated in every way from the work of their profession– . Authority without substance, arrogance without excellence– talk, talk, talk, — until it seemed that they created their reality based on words, language, a lexicon of psychiatry.”
Thank you for writing that. This piece is so triggering for me precisely because of that. After I recovered somewhat from the abuse I had to endure in my psychiatric imprisonment I went to confront my abusers and guess what – the excuses they made sounded exactly like this article. I was supposed to “understand” their “difficult choices” and that they “can’t help everyone” and that they did the best for me. Even when I was standing them telling them loud and clear “you tortured me”. Blank stares, never an admission of guild, of mistake, never so much as “I’m sorry for what I did to you”. And the pervasive fear of litigation. Because would they ever admit they did the slightest thing wrong them maybe I could sue them. “We are sorry you didn’t enjoy our service” – it sounded as if I was talking to a corporate machine and not actual human beings. They blurted a few excuses and washed their hands. And then when I challenged them on breaking the law (which they also did, even though there’s really no need for that as they have almost absolute powers) – threats. This is exactly what is wrong with this profession and their “compassionate” representatives who have no idea what they’re doing but don’t bother to really listen – they could as well put fingers in their ears and go “lalala”.
There’s a “slight” difference between someone who comes asking for a pill and someone who says “no”.
Also doctors have a responsibility for their own actions – at the very least they are responsible of providing information so that the patient can truly enjoy informed consent.
“It is a family SYSTEM”
…and let’s not forget that some people have sh*tty, abusive families and you’ll never know because they look so normal. So many people end up “mental patients” because of conscious efforts of abusive parents or spouses.
“Also I am a bit curious why you vent such angry feelings and label my article a sob story”
Well, because you’re trying to justify what you did throughout explaining how “difficult” the decision is. I can assure you that is is only a billion time more “difficult” for Mary whom you stripped of her freedom, dignity and human rights. Sorry but I am not going to be sympathetic to you for taking such a decision.
Exactly. That sounds pretty clear to me, no need to read anyone’s mind.
Check out this: wolf-pac.com They’re fighting for an amendment. I don’t know if it can succeed but at least one has to keep trying.
That is exactly true.
“But what would you be able to walk away from that bush and leave her there?”
If that’s what she told me – yes. You can’t help someone against their will.
So it is OK to abuse and torture someone because his/her family says so?
I have told my family that if I ever come into contact with psychiatry and they ever cooperate with them I won’t speak to them again. That I’d rather die than to go to this hell again. And I’d never ever condemn any of my family members or friends to psychiatry – not only subject them to forced “treatment” but any of it. I’d not take them to a psychiatrist or psychologist and if they wanted my advice I’d tell them to stay away. So no, I’d rather my daughter went back to wherever she wants to go than be tortured, abused, imprisoned and her mind and body destroyed by drugs.
I think you have no idea what kind of torture you’re sending people too. Neither do their families.
It’s all fine and good and I don’t have a problem with any of that, in fact I am happy you’re doing a good job.
In the same time all your good job means nothing when you condemn another human being to psychiatric torture. Do you seriously believe that this is ever preferable, even when most of the people here, notably those who were on the receiving end of this kind of “compassion” tell you “DON’T DO IT”? Even when the very person in question tell you not to do it?
I feel the same when I remember that even in my drugged stupor I was able to resist. I hardly remember anything since they gave me benzos but from bits and pieces I recall I know I stole a knife from the dinner and went on to cut the “net beds” aka cages they had so that the next person would be able to escape. I’m still proud that even though I was abused and needle raped I was still able to resist the dehumanizing experience and I never gave in.
I am always laughing and getting angry at the same time whenever I hear psychiatrists whining about patients being “violent” against them. They’re the ones who are violent and any form of resistance is simply self-defense.
At no point have I said I hate her. I simply expressed my anger and frustration and described my perspective.
I understand that the system is broken and that many people working within it are not necessarily bad people and they may have the best of intentions but it does not excuse each and every action. Maybe if someone if forced to do things like that because of being in the system then a morally right choice is to quit? I do believe that she does a lot of good things for people but then if I were on Mary’s place I’d not care a bit. The same I don’t care if the person who did something like that too me is a good person in other circumstances. It’s simply not an excuse.
I know there are places in which you can’t avoid doing things against your convictions. That’s why I’d never in my life join a military unless my country was under attack nor would I go work for an institution which I consider immoral.
Have you ever been a subject of forced “treatment”?
Well, maybe it’s semantics but this whole “not developed” sounds to me too much like the broken brain. There’s nothing broken. Or nothing “not-developed”. Sure, people do change upon such experiences and they do change when they recover. People change. All the time, from day to day, more so when crisis happen and less so when the lives stay stable but they change. For me judging if someone has “developed” or not is stigmatising and suffers the same problems as DSM labels – there’s no definition of normal. I don’t know what a “developed” personality is. People are different and they change. Sometimes you like them, something you don’t. But that can’t be measured and defined and any attempt of doing so is suspicious for me.
I am angry with you personally too. And disappointed. It was not your decision to take.
“I couldn’t have lived with myself if that had happened.”
Can you live with yourself now that Mary is subject to psychiatric torture? As a surviviour of it I can tell you I’d take beating in the bushes any time. And she has taken a decision and communicated it to you and you decided that you’re going to do what felt better for you. Against her will. That’s not right.
I’m not saying that to be mean or offend you or anything. I’m just saying this because you’re 100% wrong and you have blinders on. You may feel compassion for her but you clearly can’t empathise with her. How many times do we, psychiatric torture surviviours have to tell you that it’s wrong? How many times do we have to explain how dehumanizing and traumatizing psychiatric torture is? And you still act like it was in any way better than whatever possible abuse that she would face in the real world.
I don’t know what would have happened to her if you let her go. Maybe, possibly it would be really bad. Maybe she would kill herself. But at the very least it would be her decision. She would have the autonomy, she would be the subject and not the object. You clearly don’t understand that you’re taking from people what is the most important. People survive horrific things or they perish but they at least have their dignity left. The control over whatever good or bad decisions. You’re taking the only thing that people really have in this life – the autonomy and control over their own minds. There’s nothing worse than that.
If you really want to help people like Mary, why don’t you work for a respite centre? For a homeless people shelter? Create a space where people like she could go and get the physical safety that would enable to recover and if not then at least would let her live her crazy life in relative comfort? Why do you have to continue feeding the broken abusive system and taking the “hard” decisions that help no one?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
C. S. Lewis
Ponder that for a moment.
“But sometimes it doesn’t work. (…) Many people who suffer emotionally don’t have agency of their own, and may not be in a position to make the best choices for themselves. Sometimes, we just can’t abandon them to the world. ”
OK, let’s stop right here. This is the recurrent theme: but if you tried everything and the person is still suicidal? Well, then, you’ve tried everything and it’s the right of that person to decide and you should let them go. You accept this right for people with cancer who decide to forgo chemotherapy because it’s too painful for them and by that forgo the whatever % chance they have for recovery? It goes back to the same issue – people in mental distress are seen as incapable of taking decisions, as children who have to be protected from themselves. And psych professionals see themselves as people who know what the “right” way of thinking is and the right response and suicide is always unreasonable. That is simply not true. And it’s arrogant to say so. This is a cruel world and I can’t say that deciding to say goodbye to it is any more or less reasonable than the decision to keep going. And I’m not inside someone else’s mind to tell them what kind of pain they should be pushing through to get to this better place that may not even be there for them.
I have a feeling that some people who force others into “treatment” and I mean these more compassionate ones (which in my view are a minority anyway) do that mainly to make themselves feel better. I don’t mean that to offend anyone but that’s just human nature. Everyone wants to be in control and prevent bad things from happening and keep people alive. They can’t accept that sometimes you just have to let go and it’s a decent thing to do. That using force against someone is just pointlessly adding to their agony.
Why putting Mary in a place where she definitely didn’t want to go and that being confronted with an alternative of going to her less than perfect life? Well, you can only do that if you assume you know better what’s best for her and her opinion can be disregarded. It’s an awful thing to do and all the responsibility for the misery that ensues will fall on a person taking that decision.
In this example it even looks like there was a theoretical alternative – providing Mary with a safe space, a respite in which she could escape the abuse of the daily life. It reminds me of a discussion that goes around euthanasia for some quadriplegic people. Many compassionate guys deny it saying that many of the reasons that quadriplegic patients cite as a justification for letting them die could be easily fixed by better care. That’s all fine and good but we live in the real world and while we deny these people the right to die citing a theoretical possibility of improving their lives “somewhen” they continue to suffer. So while you tell them to “have hope” and force them to live you’re essentially condemning them to hell on earth. Should that be your decision to take? Because you’re uncomfortable with someone killing themselves? Life is only a value when a person wants to live, not when it becomes torture.
I can identify with Mary and I can tell you were I in her place I’d rather go on the street and cope with any abuse there on my own than go back to psych ward. There’s no hell worse than this fate.
If you really want to make positive difference in people’s lives why don’t you join in creating places like this:
http://www.westernmassrlc.org/afiya
Why do you continue to work for the system in which you have to go against your own principles?
And please, don’t use this as an excuse:
“I also feel that it is unfair for people on this board to criticize when they have not been placed in a position of responsibility for someone’s life. (…) Yet sometimes for those of us who work in the mental health field, we have to deal with situations where a person’s life may be in imminent danger.”
as a psychiatric surviviour who had this kind of arguments offensive. They were used against me to justify rape, torture and traumatisation . You are not responsible for my life. You’re not a surgeon who deals with me when I’m unconscious. If I’m not passed out I have responsibility for myself and that includes right to follow or not any advice you give me. It includes the right to self harm and to suicide. I reject the idea you can take this right away from me and torture me “for my own good”.
Criminal convictions… yeah. Don’t we all know they’re too big to jail? Here’s another example:
http://www.democracynow.org/2015/9/18/mother_of_gm_crash_victim_why
No justice for bankers, for pharma, for auto makers. No justice no peace…
I know, I wanted to go but I’ve got a bit too much on my plate recently :(.
A somewhat unrelated question: are you planning to lobby Mr Corbyn in relation to his new “Minister for Mental Health”?
http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/09/corbyn-creates-new-dedicated-minister-for-mental-health/
I personally think this is one of the guys who may be right on our side if there are enough people to show him our perspective. It seems like change may be stirring up both Europe and US and it’s incumbent on us to make sure it goes in the right direction…
I’m so sad I couldn’t attend…
Will it stay on youtube after the event?
I don’t think people with that label are not developed. I think they are poisoned. They may have been “developed” OK before the abuse started and they will be fine when it ends and when they are able to find safe and loving environment.
That’s rich…
Really? Since when amphetamines are harmless or non-addictive? Because there is a lot of history with these drugs and there’s a reason why they are treated as narcotics. Our society has very short memory – it’s enough to stuck a new shiny brand name on an old meth and suddenly we don’t remember what happened to soldiers who took it to better their performance and housewives who wanted a little help staying slim.
Comparing caffeine with amphetamine is indeed “hahaha”. And yes, you can get addicted to caffeine and have some problems with overdose, I know people who did and it’s become easier with all the unnatural sources with super high content like energy drinks. It’s nothing compared to the potency of amphetamine. Which also causes psychosis by the way.
Len, that’s a nice piece of fiction that never happens in clinical practice that you’re describing there.
Are you mentioning this Straterra by the way:
“Strattera (atomoxetine) increased the risk of suicidal ideation in short-term studies in children or adolescents with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).”?
I’m going to be blunt here: if you feel horrible for what you did to that poor woman you should be. This is exactly the arrogance and ignorance that psychiatric survivors are talking about here and which people like you are apparently not able to understand (since I think you’re actually trying to listen to us). I mean, which part of: “No, you can’t do that. Not again” can’t you understand? Why do you think you can take that decision for her when it’s clear she prefers to go back to wherever but not to locked ward.
This story is extremely triggering for me and shows exactly what is wrong with psychiatry. Compassion rammed down someone else’s throat against his/her will is not compassion. If you can’t provide someone with help they want you can’t provide someone with help period and should be able to accept that and not make choices for that person. You can’t help someone against his/her will – that is not help, that is abuse. If you say that it’s the system that forces you to do that then how can you work within the system that makes you commit such horrific acts? “I was just following orders” is not a valid excuse anymore, is it?
I can’t express how frustrating that is. I could maybe understand the cluelessness like that of the “pizza lady” who suggested that forced patients would be made to feel better by throwing them a discharge party. But you know what is going to happen to this poor woman, you know how it ruined people’s lives and drives them suicidal – you blog on MIA and read our stories – and yet you did that. This is absolutely disgusting.
I was trying to take my own life because of a person like you who did the very similar thing to me. Because of the horrific abuse that it started. I didn’t succeed but if I had that person would be personally responsible for my death. Are you prepared to take that responsibility should Mary kill herself (which I pray she will not)?
Why do you keep doing this? WHY?
“There are good doctors and there are bad doctors”
The same was said about cops. And now with all the videos coming out seems like there are almost no good cops. The problems is not the bad apples, it’s the orchard. When you have a sick corrupt system as psychiatry is, the individuals matter very little. Even when someone manages to stay “good” they’re forced out or have to operate on the fringes or act against their morality.
I think the key thing here is to make sure he gets lobbied by the right epople. I believe this guy has heart in the right place but many people get duped into believing psychiatry’s propaganda about “helping people with serious mental illness”. That’s why it’d be good if psychiatric survivors tried to get a foot in the door and provide him with a different perspective. Which is in general true for all the left weaning progressive politicians, including Sanders in the US. We can’t expect them to read our minds when almost the only message out there is the one generated by the corrupt system mascarading as advocacy.
The door is revolving so fast you can barely see it… They have no shame and no fear anymore either.
“Okay. Someone is standing on the roof of your respite. It’s thunder and lightening, and they’re saying they want to kill themselves? What do you do?”
Funny how that question is never asked of “traditional” psychiatry. So you bring that person to the hospital and what? The answer to that is almost always – “and then the abuse starts”. It’s great to see alternatives to the current mess but nothing at all would be already an improvement.
What’s going on today? First the Paxil study revisited gets all the coverage, now this? Is the tide indeed changing :)?
That is amazing work and I’m happy it gets the coverage it deserves :).
Btw, their apologetic ideas of why it could be are so typical. It can’t be that the drug is causing it, it must be something else. Maybe the higher doses don’t cause so much aggression because they disable you for good? How about that explanation?
The only thing I find surprising is that they don’t see the same for older people.
I’d venture into saying it’s not safe for anyone.
Humans are storytelling animals.
Wow, you’ve got talent…keep writing, I want more :).
I think it’s very different for different people, some find exercise helpful I also found that caffeine, in any form, was a no go for me for a few months. I used Melissa tea instead, which has a calming effect.
You also managed a movie, which you should advertise more 🙂
In any case I think it’s useful to expand one’s knowledge about the nutrient content of natural foods and combinations of them (e.g. combining high iron and high vitamin C foods t enhance iron uptake).
Some supplements help though. Magnesium and iron are quite important if you suffer from drug-induced restless leg syndrome for instance.
I just worry about people taking supplements without knowing what’s in them and doing blood checks – taking too much of some vitamins or microelements (like iron or iodine) can poison you.
Good luck with the taper, I hope you can make it soon.
“People with ADD do not have any trouble concentrating on things they like….it is the boring mundane tasks like math,school work and chores which they have trouble.”
Yeah. Just like EVERYONE else. Or are you trying to tell me that “normal” kids just can’t stop doing their homework and spend hours memorizing irrelevant facts without protest. It’s ridiculous to say that. Of course everyone has easier time to concentrate on things that they like and are interested at – it’s like a definition of interest.
I worry that until psychiatry comes up with a drug that makes you burst into flames or your head explode on the spot everything goes. Thalidomide was pulled of the market partly because it’s effects were so “spectacular”. Today, you can show that the drugs are both ineffective and dangerous but still they’re allowed to stay on the market and at best what changes is the length of “side effects” list. The FDA has become completely inconsequential and frankly a joke. It’s wild wild west.
Actually – yes and no.
First of all if you don’t identify where the problems stem from any intervention you give is likely to fail, especially in the long-term, unless you by chance decide on something that’s targeting the root causes. So for some kids these kinds of problems may be caused by being too tired and providing them with a reasonable schedule which allows time for rest and unsupervised play will do the trick. If you want to put it under therapy it’s up to you, I’d call that responsible parenting.
There are problems which are caused by children being neglected and abused and there therapy may be helpful but not as much as first fixing the child’s environment – no therapy will help someone who is being abused on a a daily basis.
There may be problem where kids have underlying medical/nutritional needs and these need to be addressed.
None of these though justifies the use of stimulants. They may “help” in short term, not surprisingly, as amphetamines are known to help with concentration and attention (that applies to all people and not only “ADHD”) but in the long-term the effects of the drugs diminish and in fact the big population studies on presumed “ADHD” kids on and off meds show that the off meds group does better (for the citations I encourage you to browse through MIA blogs as I don’t recall it from the top of my head – one was done in Canada very recently). There’s also some evidence taht even the short-term effects may be overestimated as the drugs induce feelings of confidence about one’s performance that are not always justified and make kids more manageable which is reported as improvement by teachers and caregivers even if it does not affect the actual performance. Add to that the fact that these drugs have serious side effects on physical and mental development, not the least of them being a cause of psychosis (a well known effect of amphetamines) and using these drugs on kids becomes questionable to say the least.
Exactly. Fever is a real thing but it doesn’t mean that there exists a genetic “high-temperature disorder” which has to be treated with aspirin for the rest of your life. And even this analogy doesn’t show the absurdity well enough since fever you can actually measure.
The biggest elephant in the room of DSM “diagnosis” (among all the other bulky animals) is the fact that there’s no normal state you can compare them too. For every physical illness there’s a normal state: cancer – no cancer, infection – no infection, diabetes – normal sugar range. For psychiatric disorders this is never defined in any way that can be useful. Even when you have illnesses defined by a subjective range like said diabetes – you have an upper norm and a lower norm which you can measure and it doesn’t change depending on who’s looking. There’s no normal amount of fidgeting and attention that anyone can define. Not to mention that it changes during the day and depending what you’re doing and in what environment you are.
I think the most ridiculous statement that people make about ADHD is that kids with the ADHD “have problems concentrating in general but they become super concentrated on things that interest them”. No sh*t. Like all the other human beings from the dawn of our species. And people eat statements like that up and nod and act like they were just presented with quantum theory of gravity or something.
…your point?
…and neither is giving them meth “treatment”.
“Psychiatrists as a collective often stick out as being strange (a bit like members of other extreme organisations).”
In general the psychiatry’s guild bi***ing and moaning about being stigmatized, as funny as it is, is actually based in real public perception. which having a personal experience with several of them I totally see where it stems from. There was not a single one of them who didn’t seem like he/she has a severe problem, most often in the direction of being narcissistic or almost (completely?) psychopathic. I honestly don’t know if the profession draws such people in because of it’s abusive nature (which I think is a part of it) or do the people turn onto this overtime given the systemic dysfunction. I guess it’s a bit of both psychiatrist come off as pricks and weirdos not only to the unfortunate patients but public as a whole.
Oh, so when it’s YOUR son you are not so eager to drug him. How interesting…
“Insel is reportedly planning to join the Google Life Sciences team to lead an effort to create technology for the detection, prevention and management of mental health conditions.”
Good luck to him with that and yes I am being sarcastic.
I don’t even what to think what kind of “disorder” that person represents. Sadly, I think it’s very prevalent in the said profession.
You’re describing a relationship with a psychopath and that by the very nature of it can’t be saved – the only way to win is not to play and stay away from psychiatry altogether ;).
Honestly, pharma should have no role in development of drugs. They should stick to producing them. It’s such an obvious conflict of interest it’s unbelievable but in an economic and political system which allows such philosophical absurdities like “self-regulation” it’s strange to even think about it. We are so conditioned to accept certain things as right we never stop to ponder how absolutely insane and counterproductive they are.
What is exactly their reason for not withdrawing these drugs immediately again? Given what they themselves written about “efficacy”, forget for a second all the other problems? These drugs get approved in a shady way and then it’s basically over: you can prove that they don’t do any good, that the original studies were manipulated or straight out fake, that the drugs cause short and long-term damage and deaths and they’re still allowed to stay on the market. Where’s the times when the thalidomide was withdrawn after the phocomelia scandal? Now it seems we’re in a much worse shape. Today they would have let the thalidomide be sold and maybe make suggestions to doctors that they should follow some guidelines about prescribing to pregnant women but if they don’t – well, who cares.
I agree except for “emotional developmental arrest”. It sounds like someone has not developed properly emotionally, which has nothing to do with it. It’s simply a natural response to abusive relationship and persistent situation of being intimately involved with people one can’t trust. For some people it starts from the get go with abusive childhood but for some only appears in adulthood (like finding oneself in an abusive relationship with romantic partner). In such a situation lack of trust is normal. The “splitting” is just trying to deal with impossible situation: one one hand I know (whether consciously or not) that this person is abusing me and I can’t trust them etc. on the other I love that person and I’m attached to them and I’m trying to preserve this connection. That leads to a whole lot of erratic behaviour because you can’t acknowledge reality and stay in this situation without going crazy and bouncing from one wall (trying to defend oneself against the abuser) to the other (trying to keep the relationship and avoid abuse). Given that abusive people almost always engage in gaslighting you end up with someone who is “paranoid” (which is anyway usually right 99% of the time) and distrustful but in the same time trying to cater to abusers needs and blames self for the problems. It’s really a very understandable behaviour but completely weird when looking from the outside especially for someone who has never experienced such a dynamic (that’s why most therapists have no clue). And even after the abusive relationship has stopped it takes time and effort to be able to trust people and not fear falling into the trap. All these things that psych professionals describe as “symptoms” and produce some bs theories about what part of you didn’t develop are only normal reactions of normal humans to situations of cognitive dissonance and extreme emotional distress.
“only loving human relationships and understanding one’s defenses can lead to recovery” Exactly true.
“However, it is evident the BPD is often misdiagnosed, and the National Comorbidity Survey Replication study reveals that 85% of people diagnosed with BPD also meet the DSM diagnostic criteria for other disorders.”
Btw, ain’t that true for all the DSM labels? Or in fact for all the people on the planet? how often does someone go to psychiatrists office and goes out with no diagnosis? Like “don’t worry, it’s just normal emotional response, take it easy, talk to a friend and get some rest”. Does that ever happen? We’re seriously down to discussing how many devils sit at the tip of a pin and writing “scientific” papers about it. It’s absurd.
Really? So drugs which act by numbing down your normal emotional and cognitive functions and turning you into a zombie with sociopathic tendencies (if you’re lucky and don’t go suicidal or homicidal) don’t change your personality for the better and cure trauma? Who would have predicted that…
People don’t have personality disorders. People have personalities. If you don’t like it – well it’s not your f***ing business. If they don’t like it there are good ways of working to improve oneself and none of them involves psychoactive drugs. Plus being a victim of trauma, abuse etc. and reacting to it is not a disorder either. Psychiatry should get out of business of blaming the victim. In fact they should just go out of business entirely.
Btw, we can make black humour about it but it’s a serious issue. I mean if really these drugs can cause you to commit violent acts which you otherwise never would have committed then shouldn’t you be let go? How is that fair? Should not a doctor who prescribed it be responsible? We punish people who do illegal stuff under the influence but the assumption is they know what they’re risking by taking the substance and they do it voluntarily. It gets even worse when someone commits murder under the influence of drugs he/she was coerced/forced to take. I personally was drugged against my will with benzos and allegedly was “aggressive” (although I’d take it with a truckload full of salt given what lies they put in my documents elsewhere) – fortunately I didn’t kill anyone but if I did who would be responsible? And why should I be responsible when I was so drugged I couldn’t even remember it? And how can anyone tell if that was really the case or the person wanted to do it anyway and used the drug as a cover? These are serious legal questions that nobody takes seriously. I’d say maybe we stop prescribing people drugs which can end you up with murder conviction but if we do we should acknowledge these problems. Right now we’re just blaming people for the actions they may be unable to control because pharmaceutical propaganda tells are their drugs are safe and effective.
“Call your doctor if you feel its OK to kill people after taking this medication.”
LOL
These drugs are the worst you can give to someone who is already ins substantial emotional distress.
33% of all inmates
30% of male inmates and 70% of female inmates are prescribed psychotropic drugs.
I have a feeling that the inmates have taken over the asylums and criminals are not the ones who are locked up in prisons but the ones who run them.
Great. Now let’s add some grassroots publicity to it: http://www.madinamerica.com/2015/04/getting-anticritical-psychiatry-authors-read-case-book-activism/
Unfortunately you may be right here.
The question is – what are these 35% of people thinking?
In the ranking of the worst criminals in human history:
1. Bankers
2. Pharmaceutical companies
…far third place: serial killers.
“This sort of technology has obvious advantages from a compliance standpoint, since doctors will have direct knowledge of whether or not the medication regimen is being followed. (…) “People are given a bag of pills and told to go away and take them and very often they don’t,””
Btw, since when is that my doctor’s business? I’m an adult and it’s my right to take or not take any pills he/she prescribes me and it’s also my business to tell him/her about it since this relationship is based on trust. Look at the attitude here. The arrogance and straight out authoritarian approach is mind-boggling.
Anyone else thinks that’s beyond creepy? Add what we know about NSA&Co to it…
The opposite of psychiatry is empathy and compassion.
An illness is a state of pathology in which the body is not functioning and responding to internal and external clues in the right way. It can be caused by an external factor (like a virus) or internal (like cell death or cancer).
Examples:
– people with type I diabetes don’t respond to elevated sugar levels properly because they are not able to produce a hormone which normally mediates this response
– people who have a bacterial infection will have cell death and metabolites in their system which normally should not be there and which are either a direct product of bacteria or response to them (like cytokines)
If your “mental illness” is cause by any factor like this – brain damage, viral infection, vitamin deficiency – I’m fine calling it an illness. I’m not fine calling it a mental illness since we don’t call sepsis “fever disorder” and don’t put it in a book full of temperature-dysregulation illnesses. These are illnesses which should be handled by the appropriate area of medicine: infectious medicine, neurology, gastroenterology and what not. Even more importantly – they are not actually illnesses sensu stricte but rather symptoms of illnesses – so HIV-induced psychosis is a symptom of HIV infection. But in this case you can trace the symptom to a real illness.
In cases of these illnesses you can also establish, if not the original cause, then at least a “normal” state. So the blood sugar level and corresponding insulin or the lack of tumour or lack of virus/bacteria and the lack of fever etc.
Now to the “mental illnesses”: they have no known etiology and they can be diagnosed solely based on symptoms. Here however we’re making assumptions about what is a right response to the environment. We know what is the right response to a certain sugar level in blood -we can measure it in all people. We know what’s the right response to bacterial infection and that’s fever. But what is the “normal” response to a death of loved one? What is a normal response to sexual abuse? What is a normal response to loneliness? You cannot define a normal in these cases so how can you define a pathology? The etiology of these “illnesses” is also purely external so even if you called them illnesses you can’t fix them by fixing the individual but by addressing the cause. You don’t treat “fever disorder” by cutting off the piece of the brain which controls body temperature – you may give someone aspirin but you won’t ask them to take it for the rest of their lives to control their genetic illness (though ability to produce fever is certainly written in our genetic code). That would be absurd. You find out what the reason for the symptom is, and you eradicate it. You may give some medicine to control the symptom as above mentioned aspirin but you do it with full knowledge it’s only an accessory and not addressing the root of the problem.
In case of “mental illness” the root of the problem is not a pathogen but toxic social environment. And the answer to that is not medical – at least I don’t know a pill that would stop people from abusing you or making them love you or appreciate you. the answer is psychosocial and therefore it’s not an illness – it’s just a response of a person to adverse environment.
Ever heard of neurology? You know, that deals with real illness affecting the brain? Or other areas of medicine?
Every living person has contradictions. And delusions for that matter – it’s the only way our brains are able to classify and cope with reality. Some people have more to cope with.
“i think it’s a balanced & intelligent article/overview – Amusing as well.”
You have an interesting idea about “balanced”. It’s basically a list of some facts from Szasz’ life without any relevant citations written in a biased tone. An example:
“While Szasz did write a few paranoid things about psychiatric dystopias, he never descended into the really cranky conspiracies that the Scientologists did”
Sounds quite opinionated for a balanced piece, but maybe that’s just me. Plus what are these “few paranoid things”? Why didn’t the author bother to cite them so that the reader can say for him/herself if they were indeed paranoid but not quite cranky as the article claims?
Seriously? RationalWiki? It sounds like a mirror image of Conservopedia.
“People are putting forward the argument that mental illness doesn’t exist.”
I’ll give you an analogy. When I say “there are no killer whale fish” doesn’t mean I don’t believe in killer whales – I simply know they’re not fish. And they should not be treated as ones because if you try to treat a killer whale as if it were a fish you’re going to do some damage to the poor animal.
First of all not having a system at all would already be an improvement. As research shows everything psychiatry does only makes the problem worse so having no psychiatry would mean that a lot of people who are now locked up in the drugs/hospitalizations cycles or are chronically disabled would recover on their own. Especially when they were not told that they are sick by everyone around but have tehir feelings and problems acknowledged as real and socially acceptable (you know, things like grieving the loss of a loved one for more than two weeks).
Secondly, it’s in essence a system of lowest effort. The easiest thing you can do is to take the person who’s causing trouble and dump them in a hole and drug them to stupor and early death. It’s not only easy but also profitable for certain people. But not for society at large. Instead the things we all want and deserve: taking care of people basic needs for food, shelter and feeling valuable for others (like by having a meaningful employment) would take care of most cases of mental illness. Building communities and acting against the atomisation of society would cure others. It’s true that there will probably always be “hopeless cases” but compared to what it is now it’d be an enormous improvement.
I think the biggest problem is that this thing is systemic. You can’t really re-build a system from within without radical change. I suggest you watch “the Wire” – it shows beautifully how a system works, from the lowest to the highest levels and how individual attempts on reform and improvement and what not are doomed to fail. There’s no incentive to build alternatives because the system as it is makes them futile.
Computer as a machine is necessary for the programs to be run but there’s a dualism between the physical construct and the code. You can run different codes on the same computer and you can use the same code on different computers. It’s not the same thing.
Of course our thoughts, feelings and behaviours require brain but it’s not the same thing as taking a reductionist approach to it like – in this bunch of neurons sits consciousness. If that was so simple neuroscience would have solved most of it already.
So no, the mind is not the brain. You can’t objectively measure or even describe subjective experience. Even if we both look at the red ball and we both call it red we don’t know what the other person sees inside his/her brain. Maybe my red looks like her green inside. You simply don’t know. That’s why study of the brain is essentially different from the study of the mind and the neuroscience is unlikely to answer certain questions.
Lawsuits are good but in the current system all that happens is even if you win – they pay a fine which sounds big but is like 0.00000001% of their monthly profits or something and they move on. Regulations don’t get changed, nobody goes to prison, they continue business as usual. Essentially the same problem like with banksters.
The whole system has to go…
This is absolutely disastrous if it’s true. Given the number of kids on these drugs we’re creating a massive health problem for the next 100yrs. The bone mass they won’t get as kids is unlikely to be completely recovered later and then when they age… disaster.
I’d love to take part in that but it sounds like a full time job, and I’m already working two :(.
As for things that are arguable – maybe one could add a “anti-forced treatment abolitionists” to the “anti-psychiatry” entry and explain that it’s a part of anti-psychiatry movement that’s restricted to mostly or only to forced psychiatry. I think it’s possible to do.
“Criticism of psychiatry, and the whole mental health enterprise, was more acceptable 40 years ago than it is today.”
I think that’s the effect of PR “anti-stigma” campaigns which equate being anti-psychiatry with being anti-people who suffer from emotional distress. Are you against psychiatric drugging? Or, you’re just this terrible person stigmatizing the poor depressed folks. Have you maybe mentioned the fact that ADHD drugs are chemically similar to meth? You’re horrible to vulnerable kids who are now going to end up in prison because of you. And similar bs. One would think the trick that psychiatry uses – equaling themselves with their patients when it’s profitable for them (“you can’t criticize us you insensitive person”) and distancing themselves when it’s unfavourable (like when someone on psych drugs shoots up some school kids) is transparent but it works frighteningly well. It is easy to debunk if you can just get people to stop and think for 2s but people are not used to doing that nor are they taught that in schools, at least most of them. We used to do that in classes – take statements and point out contradictions and manipulations etc. But that’s like forbidden knowledge because it takes away the power from advertising and PR. God forbid you not only hear and internalize but listen and think about it. Just move on and keep shopping.
“Since I’m going to hear voices anyway, I may as well stop the medication.”
Sounds like the meds weren’t “working” anyway. But, hey it can always be sold as “if she only took her meds” story. They never ask why people want to get off these meds at every opportunity. Maybe because there are logically only two possible explanations:
1) They have no insight – in this case it means they are still “symptomatic” and the drugs don’t work anyway so why bother?
2) they are sane and they prefer to take the risk of going “full crazy” again to whatever they feel while on the drug
My guess is the 2nd one’s true. A guess supported by a personal experience of some 2nd generation “anti-psychotics”. They are torture drugs – I’d rather jump in front of a train that zombie through the rest of my life on them.
“Then she returned to college in the fall to restart her senior year — and, as is common in these scenarios, stopped taking her meds. (…) Natalie was re-committed to the hospital and Doris admits that this relapse was more severe than her initial psychotic break. (…) While she did rebound again, the devastating cycle continued: Natalie would take her meds, feel stable and then would forgo the meds believing they were no longer necessary. “Yet if she even inadvertently missed a few days of medication — even while receiving therapy and other forms of treatment — the demons would return, and one of the first things they would tell her was to stop taking her medicine,” Doris wrote. “The second thing they would tell her was not to talk to her mom, the most powerful other influence in her life. Each time she obeyed and relapsed, she plunged into a longer free fall, hitting the ground harder, recovering more slowly and returning at a lower plateau.””
Well, this is so well known – stopping the drugs causes relapse psychosis which is worse than the previous one simply because the drugs sensitize the brain. It’s been covered extensively by MIA.
I wonder why people never ask their children and parents etc. WHY they don’t want to take the drugs? Why is it that the “crazy ones” have this single thing that they fixate on which is to stop the drugs as soon as possible. And they do that when they’re supposedly stable, that is they should not have “symptoms” and should be having insight if the drugs are indeed working. Not a reflection on that in the article.
It’s really a remarkable piece of propaganda. The voices in the poor girl’s head knew better but nobody bothered to listen to her. “Take your drugs and shut up”. The most painful thing is that this is often the attitude that the most well-meaning family members have, being brainwashed by psychiatry.
I think we also need another “One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”. Both a book but maybe more importantly a movie. There were few singular thing that did more damage to psychiatry as this piece of art. It doesn’t have to be fictional – a good documentary would do. But it has to be something that not only tells it like it is – it has to be able to catch people’s attention. We need our Michael Moore or a person of this talent to get people entertained and interested – otherwise the only people reading/watching are the choir.
“And when Reagan came into power in 1980 more and more people had to put their energies into basic survival, with less time available for activism. (I had never seen people sleeping on street vents before then.)”
I think that’s a big one. It was essentially a peak of counter-revolution. Consumerism raging on the sometimes literal corpses of disposable people. I think this tide is changing.
Excellent suggestions. I may add one: if you buy a book and read it – let it free. If you don’t want to part with it in order to be able to quote it etc. – you can copy it for personal use or buy a second one. Many people read books they would never otherwise read because they find them in a pile in a cafe etc. There are many places where one can drop and pick up books and that increases the number of readers dramatically. Find one or more in where you live and share.
That’s what happens when corporations and the state become one. They stop serving and protecting the people, instead they do the exact opposite – mismanage each and every public service in order to privatize it for pennies and the only function they keep is the oppressive ones (police, military and psychiatry).
“Why is objective information so threatening?”
A rhetorical question.
I’d not give them too many ideas. I believe some of them were actually tried in the past by Nazi psychiatrists in Germany. ECT is back in fashion so you never know what the “caring rulers” will come up with next (caring rulers reference: http://creative.porternovelli.com/portfolio/american-psychiatric-association-rebranding-to-move-the-field-forward/ ) and I’m sure there are ways to bill a dead patient.
About approaches to drug use and addiction – an incredible interview/discussion with Johann Hari and Naomi Klein:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/johann-hari-naomi-klein-does-capitalism-drive-drug-addiction
For anyone who still thinks war on drugs makes any sense – please listen to it.
Btw, that’s a great interview on addiction but about 16-17 minute Jahann Hari tells a story about Vancouver drug addict who changed the city’s policy. It’s really inspirational:
http://www.alternet.org/drugs/johann-hari-naomi-klein-does-capitalism-drive-drug-addiction
It’s terrifying to say the least. Especially for someone who works in science.
“There was some evidence of limited efficacy of risperidone in reducing aggression and conduct problems in children and youths (aged 5 to 18 years) with disruptive behavior disorders in the short term (four to 10 weeks) from a small number of studies in which there was some risk of bias of overestimating the true intervention effect”
honestly, I don’t care if they reduce aggressive behaviour or not You know what also reduces aggressive behaviour? Beating someone to unconsciousness. It also reduces all the other behaviours and that’s also what the anti-psychotics do. They turn people into unmoving, unfeeling zombies. It’s sick to do that to anyone. These drugs should be banned for children.
I’d not rely on any politician but he’s the best bet in terms of one who would probably listen to a well organized advocacy group. And he does have an uphill struggle – why the mainstream media can’t shut up about the racist and sexist rants of one particular candidate on the republican side, they’ve labelled Bernie extremist and as of late are trying not to cover him at all. Sometimes they would talk for 15 minutes about Hillary and Biden, who’s not even running and “forget” to mention him, even though he’s leading in New Hampshire and recently in Iowa. Which suggests he’s the change we can believe in ;).
In any case – whoever wins the organized movements with clear objectives is necessary to achieve change.
Agreed.
Also legal challenge and lobbing politicians (especially on a local level) are useful if you manage to gather a strong and committed group.
“caring ruler”??? What’s next “benevolent dictator”? Or maybe “only slightly ruthless tyrant”?
Lack of insight you say…
What the hell is the “conditional discharge”? I don’t see how people can seriously call these places hospitals…
“The reason we are not covered by corporate media is not that there’s something “wrong” with our presentation. The fact is they have no intention of assisting us in bringing down an industry which is part and parcel of the system they represent.”
Exactly. When you’re trying to satisfy them you’ll need to water down you message to the point when you’ll essentially turn into NAMI.
That is indeed a good idea. The only problem may be that like other movement they may have drunk the kool-aid and not want to be associated with the crazies who need “help”. So far most of the prison reformists call for moving people with “mental health issues” to hospitals. I sometimes find it hard to condemn their tactics (when wanting to save someone from death penalty I’d also go with anything) but in the end they probably don’t realize they push these people out of the frying pan into the fire.
I think psychiatry is one thing but we also have to rein in the pharmaceutical industry. Lots of psych drugs are sold also for non-“mental illness” reasons. While some of them may be legitimate (although it’s likely a tiny percentage) most are complete bs or make people worse over the long term (like benzos for muscle relaxation).
This is a really important experience. Having someone to live for and knowing that someone will grieve you for the rest of tehir lives is the best way to stop seriously considering suicide. People need meaningful relationships and sometimes a vulnerable animal is as important as a human in giving you strength and meaning.
How about turning it into a hobby – a blog? Link to his interviews etc. and comment on them to debunk his claims? That would be a good resource and a place to point people to when they buy into his propaganda.
“f individuals suffering from depression are to avoid the “psychiatric monster” they must be able to access existing alternatives.”
They are called friends. In my view there’s no “treatment” for depression. Depression is not an illness and it’s caused by this thing called life. Everyone has to learn to live on tehir own and hopefully find people who are compassionate, trustworthy and emphatic to share this life with. Everything else is useless loss of time.
Those with dementia suffer from neurological illness not mental illness.
I generally agree but I don’t think that providing more extensive or “better” therapy, whatever that even means is a real issue. A real issue is deeply dysfunctional society, student debt, job insecurity, pressure to succeed at all costs, hyperindividualism, commercialization of universities etc. etc. Without addressing roots of the problem you can’t solve it.
No amount of talk therapy will cure depression of someone who doesn’t know if he/she will have a home and be able to eat. No amount of therapy is going to cure anxiety for someone who has every reason to feel scared about the future. People are depressed and frightened because that’s the 100% reasonable and normal response to the world we live in.
There’s one more factor to consider: the amount of guns per capita. While it’s hard to absolve the police from the responsibility for the abuses we now all can see on tape one can’t ignore the general climate of “everyone can be armed and dangerous”. This is also something that does not exist in other countries. Police there usually don’t expect every person on the street to be bearing arms. Add to that all the other problems and you have an explosive mix that kills hundreds of people.
Btw, the authors’ response is golden:
“David Menkes and Andrew Herxheimer postulate that a possible explanation for the increased risk of violent crime in our study is the use of antidepressants (by which we assume they mean SSRI antidepressants), on the basis of some case reports. This argument might or might not be true. Our study did not investigate the effects of treatment, which need careful modelling of large datasets with advanced statistical approaches to avoid different types of biases and misinterpretations. Meaningful research needs numbers, not just words.”
Oh, so doing a properly controlled study actually requires some effort and proper statistics? Too bad, that apparently what the authors are into.
Plus it’s nice that they’re worried about biases and misinterpretations when linking anti-depressants to violence but they’re a-OK linking depressed people to violence with a poorly controlled study. Of course one would not want to harm corporate bottomline but if some random crazy people get stigmatized or locked up and their lives are destroyed because of that… well, who cares about them anyway.
“SF has received one speaker’s fee from Janssen outside of the submitted work, which was donated to charity. GMG reports grants and personal fees from Servier, Cephalon/Teva, Lundbeck/Otsuka, Takeda, Merck, Eli Lilly, Sunovion, Convergence, AstraZeneca, GSK, and Medscape outside of the submitted work. PL declares no competing interests.”
I’m sure that have nothing to do with the way the study was conducted and analyzed.
They almost never control for the effect of drugs. It’s like taking a group of black people, feeding them meth and then running a study comparing them to white people not taking drugs. And then claiming there’s a link between paranoia and aggression and ethnicity. If they did that there would be world wide outcry about racial bias and they would all be kicked out of their positions. But you can run similarly idiotic “studies” on “mentally ill” and be treated like a real scientist. What a joke.
Too bad for them because if you trust the DSM 100% of their neighbours are mental themselves included.
We clearly need more people talking how “mental illness” leads to mass shootings.
When it comes to Vermont and the person who’s currently running for president – what are Bernie Sanders’ views on psychiatry and would it make sense to push him on that issue? I know Vermont is home to some good initiatives and this guy seems to be responsive to pushing (the kind of Black Lives Matter did as of late). Maybe this would be one way to bring the issue to the public attention and inject our views into the conversation…
I wonder if in his research he looked if there is any influence of the drugs in how people respond to social support and how long it’s positive effects persist in those on and off the drugs. Anti-psychotics blunt affect and change cognition so I’d expect people to be less responsive to social environment when they take them and to be less resistant to losing such support as well. I wonder if they did it or if they even allowed anyone to go “untreated”. If the social support is all about reminding you to take a pill then no wonder that the effects don’t last.
The problem with all these studies is that there’s no real control group. People are never allowed to go without “treatment” because it’s assumed, with no good evidence and plenty to the contrary, that they need it and it would be unethical to spare them the drugging. And then the psychiatry proponents can turn around and scream “correlation’s not causation” while doing an actual experiment to prove causation would not be allowed.
“young adults may resist treatment due to the side effects: would you, he asked, want to gain 30 pounds or experience sexual dysfunction? ”
Young adults may also resist “treatment” because of the EFFECTS – turning into a drooling zombie, which is the primary way these drugs “works”.
To address the other two questions:
– in the case of retraction authors rarely are subject to any consequences. In some cases this is justifiable – when the publication is a result of an honest mistake (which happens). But there are clear cases when fraud was committed and nothing really happens. The worst case scenario for the person committing the fraud is losing face in front of scientific community and therefore further funding and employment possibilities. Which sometimes happens in basic science and for young researchers but rarely when established clinicians are involved. In fact there is no clear mechanism for punishing such behaviour that I know of and it’s mostly the hope that tarnished reputation will do the job. It often doesn’t.
– in case of transparency – the current state of affairs is ridiculous, inexcusable and can only be explained by the politicians and regulatory bodies being in bed with pharma. There are some organizations like AllTrials which are fighting for more transparency, independent bodies which document problems with studies such as Retraction Watch and that critically re-analyse the data or document side effects (like Cochrane and RxISK.org). But there’s no coherent mechanism right now to force clinical study authors to follow the guidelines and publish all the data or in fact publish at all. The preregistration is largely on voluntary basis and even when journals claim to require it as a standard they often do not follow their own rules. In other words: it’s a hot mess.
Great job. This is probably even better than a quiet retraction that no one would notice.
I think you have just discovered the underlying cause of “mental illness” on campus.
The whole discussion in the video is ridiculous.
“1 in 4 students reporting to campus counseling centers now are already on some kind of psychotropic medication.”
I think I just got and instant depression. Wow… 25%? Wow…
We are breeding a whole generation of seriously disabled people with serious emotional and personality issues. If you drug them for all their lives and tell them that every aspect of being an actual human is a symptom no wonder that everyone now is “mentally ill”.
It’s not so much of a problem that police kills someone black or “mentally ill” etc. The problem is that police kills period. Look at police shootings in US vs other developed countries.
Training is good and fine, body cameras are an ok idea but in the end of the day if you can kill people for no good reason and get away with it nothing will change.
Perfect storm…traumatised kids who have no one to speak for them and defend them. It’s a crime.
True but a vast majority of “ADHD” cases are simply kids behaving like kids. Some of my friends had problems already when sending their kids to kindergarden. They got complaints about their kids being “hyperactive” because of such abnormal behaviours like climbing onto things (for a 1.5 and 4 year old). Isn’t that what children in these ages are supposed to do? Train their muscles and coordination skills and balance etc.? Yet the people who worked there were complaining (usually it was only one of the caregivers who noticed this horrible “symptom” – I would say it says more about this person than about the child). Fortunately none of my friends is gullible enough to diagnose and drug their precious kids to please someone who doesn’t want to do her job but I’m sure it’s not always the case.
“Genes for behaviour” is an absurd idea to begin with. All there is are genes for potential for a behaviour. Sure, if you don’t have legs it’s hard to walk and if you don’t feel emotions it’s hard to be emphatic to your fellow humans but the genes underlying the development of legs or brain structures related to emotion processing do not determine when and how and how much we walk or empathize. We do that in response to the environment. And even when our genes provide us with certain capacities it’s totally possible to lose these abilities, either permanently or temporarily in response to trauma.
You see this even when you study fruit flies. It’s relatively easy to impair animal’s ability to perform a behaviour but inducing a behaviour is a tricky thing and you almost never get it with a single gene. Usually you need to present an environmental stimulus anyway.
It’s hard to argue with the fact that people do inherit personality traits but that’s a different thing from saying that they inherit behaviours.
“My grandmother said it was from the fact that African Americans were very protective and caring to the otherness of their disabled family members. White families due to shame from the wealthy classes or distancing from other families were much more open to putting family into the system.”
Black Americans are also probably more likely to see the system for what it is while white privileged people don’t realise until they’re trapped. When you have been abused for so long your bs detector is more sensitive.
I don’t want to go all conspiratorial but could it be that the shriek for the “treatment” instead of prison is a counter-revolutionary response to the call for prison reform? You want to free people from prisons who shouldn’t be there, we’ll lock them up elsewhere? The same shipping of blacks from slavery to prisons to mental institutions… Blacks, native Americans, activists, everyone else who’s “maladjusted”.
I don’t think much of that is planned or consciously realized but there are surely people within that movement who have it at the back of their heads…
“I never saw a lawyer.”
I allegedly saw one. In a drugged stupor so I don’t even remember it (benzos…). Right to representation … hahahahahahha (Joker’s laughter).
guilded turd=gilded… and real turn=turd
Spelling…
Expanding on your analogy: guilded turd is even worse because no one wants to touch the real turn as no one wants to get dirty – when you put some shine on it people think it’s good and end up with sh*t on their hands.
“Psychiatry had become a political tool.”
Like it has ever been anything but…
Great piece and very informative, thank you.
Involuntary psychiatry should go. That is the most important thing – until this is done no amount of educating the public about the dangers of drugs etc. will have any real meaning.
Except that most developed countries in the world have strict gun controls and as much freedom if not more than US. It’s just a fact.
Grey matter = cell bodies. In other words: neurons die. Which in almost all areas of the human brain is practically irreversible (except for hippocampus). Sadly it’s also not unexpected – we know that survival of neurons is tightly linked to their activity. Neurons that don’t receive meaningful inputs commit suicide. When you deprive whole populations of neurons of dopaminergic input for prolonged periods of time it’s not surprising that some of them will die. Btw, it’s “funny what you find when you go to some basic research studies:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25367720
“Adult mice were separated into six groups of n = 5 animals each. Body weight (5 mg/kg) of haloperidol was administered intraperitoneally for 7 days to block dopaminergic D2 receptors and induce degeneration in the motor cortex“
Btw, given the absurdity of the “all have disorder” DSM – how is it possible that people who prescribe these drugs didn’t even bother to find some label? It’s not that hard – pass me the book and I can slap one over anyone’s forehead. I guess it just goes to show how little people care when prescribing drugs. I remember when me and my friend were watching Dr House with a mix of amusement and terror as he was using “diagnosis by prescription” (if a drug against A it doesn’t kill you and helps – it means the patient has A). Turns out a lot of “doctors” watch this series not as dumb amusement but as “how to” manual. Scary…
We told you so…
I’m not sure if there is any legitimate use of these drugs for anyone. Maybe some people voluntarily take them to blunt their psychosis but then they shouldn’t take them for long time periods anyway and if it’s about short-term, one time use for “calming down” benzos or other sedatives would do the trick for most people (not that these are much better but there’s hardly anything worse than an “anti-psychotic”).
They all “work” by the same mechanism so claims that they have radically opposite effects on the brain are bogus to say the least. It’s no wonder that when you switch off the very important dopaminergic input that neurons degenerate.
I think if they simply gave this money to the “patients” they would cure a whole bunch of cases immediately. At least all of those depressed due to financial instability, poverty, debt, unemployment etc.
Lovely. We’re already living in “Minority report”. Use some dubious statistics to stigmatize people before they commit any crime.
We should all advocate to the “right to be entropic” as Jacob Applebaum (a journalist and internet privacy activist) dubbed it:
http://www.caleupe.com/writing/jacob-appelbaum-a-technical-action-plan-in-the-face-of-surveillance/
I think the last paragraph of this article is the most telling. We are still stuck with “it’s a heritable disease” because of some meaningless correlations but if it were the case with current genomic and transcriptomic studies we should have at least some answers. Instead we have huge lists of genes which are marginally associated with this or that “psychiatric disorder”. Even if some genes (like those making sure we do not develop into psychopaths) are necessary for the development of “mental illness” (or its underlying cause – being able to experience emotions) none of them is sufficient.
Btw: “Here are my suggestions for any psychiatrist who is genuinely concerned about the stigmatization of his/her profession:
Repudiate the spurious medicalization of non-medical problems;
Acknowledge the destructive and disempowering nature of the “treatments”;
Apologize to all concerned;
Find honest work.”
It made my day, thank you :).
For the migraines you may want to visit a neurologist (some of them are actual doctors, not like psychiatrists). I don’t want to scare you or anything but chronic headaches and cognitive impairment can be a sign of something serious and suppressing the symptoms with psych drugs may not be the best way to go. Sometimes migraines are “benign”, sometimes caused by serious underlying issues. Also, you may want to check your hormone levels, they can mess up cognition and cause headaches as well.
It’s always better to treat the underlying cause rather than medicate the symptoms, especially when you don’t know what’s causing them in the first palce.
But it’s not surprising. Psychiatry is used to treat anyone who disagrees with them in the most benign detail as delusional and detached from reality. So they simply extend the dismissive attitude they have towards their “patients” to the rest of the world.
Btw, one more verbal manipulation tactic that Philip didn’t mention here (though I believe he has addressed it elsewhere) – the lumping of psychiatrists and their “patients” together when it’s convenient (“you would not want to stigmatize the poor crazy people, would you? well, then you can’t say anything bad about psychiatry” – a beautiful logical fallacy right here) but distancing themselves when inconvenient (like the mentioned suggestion that psychiatrists are never afflicted by the same “mental illnesses” than the rest of us mere humans).
A rich mixture of arrogance and self-delusion…psychiatry at it’s “best”.
These drugs should be banned.
Another one…
The fat lady has sung. But apparently it’s OK to cause brain damage in “schizophrenics” and other “human trash” – they are not good little robots so they have no worth in society. Who cares if they only get worse and end up dying 25 years too early.
“requirement of prior authorization for antipsychotics for children under age six”
Six? Seriosuly? No six year old kid needs an anti-psychotic. It’s crazy.
Thank you for taking a stand. It may seem like it was for nothing but it ain’t. Just like Manning or Snowden or countless others who blew a whistle on the abuses against human and civil rights.
“make people feel bad about having to take meds.”
Like that’s a problem. The real problem is taht people are coerced and often forced to take drugs that make them physically sick, mentally destroyed and often lead to suicide or death from medical reasons.
I’ve heard the story of “my drugs saved me”. In the same time there are people who believe homeopathy saved them or prayer saved them or drinking their own urine saved them (yeah, the last one is a thing). It’s all good and fine and you’re entitled to your believes but if we really care about “evidence-based medicine” which we’re supposed to care apparently then psychiatric drugs have almost no efficacy. Worse than that, anti-depressants can cause suicide.
So if you want to take you meds please continue to do so, it’s your life and your body but don’t complain when we’re trying to inform people. Informed consent should be the right of every patient and it’s clearly not the case right now.
“The Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent Suicide (1999) and the National Strategy to Prevent Suicide (2000) were followed a decade later by a higher suicide rate”
Totally predictable. All they had to do is ask surviviours beforehand. The only time I tired to kill myself for real was in the “hospital” and because of what they did to me. People who work in locked wards are criminals.
Mental health emergency helpline – “we don’t have time to talk to you, go to the hospital”. I’m not even kidding.
I disagree that the current system is so despite people’s best intentions. some of the people working in the system at best don’t give a flying f***, at worst enjoy exercising power over vulnerable others. the only human reactions I received were 100% from people outside the system. Psychiatrists, psychologists and most nurses (except one who ended in a psych ward because he couldn’t get a better job) were all abusive and some of them psychopathic.
That is also common practice. In the psych ward they kept me in I tried to talk to another person in the evening and the staff immediately appeared (otherwise they never had 5 minutes time for you) and told us to go to our rooms and stop disturbing the peace. Psychiatric hospitals are dehumanizing and not better than prisons.
Thank you for the courage to speak out and your advocacy. Your an inspiration to us all.
This is horrifying. Play is a necessary component of normal development, all cognitively advanced animals play – monkeys, cats, dogs, dolphins. It teaches you all skills needed in life: motor, sensory, social, cognitive. I’m so happy I’m not a kid now…
Like there was ever legitimate use…
“For instance, at 24 weeks participants showed an increase of 0.5 satisfying sexual events per month compared with placebo.”
Oh, that sounds convincing. Is that really the best they managed to manipulate out of data?
Amphetamines (aka stimulants or ADHD drugs) are known to cause psychosis, which then turns to “bipolar” or “psychotic disorder” or whatever label is more fashionable at the time.
I think maybe they should first deal with the hungry and the homeless aspect and I can assure you a lot of the “mental illness” would be cured. Psych wards are prisons by another name and not a solution to anything.
I don’t think you understand what we advocate for at all.
Desperate people fall in for many traps: con men, cults, psychiatry…
Some people say that the concerns over spending led to closing down asylums just as much if not more than the outrage over their abuses. If current neoliberal madness is going to end psychiatry then it would be one good thing that it’s brought about.
What is the point of spending money on the system which only harms people if you could help them for a fraction of that cost? The real problem here is those very neoliberals who want to cut all and any social programs are only too happy to fund drugs because that helps their corporate friends. So you get none of the real help and all the psychiatry’s bs.
Great post. It reminded me of my own experiences and how anger saved my life. I’ve written a longer post about it but the internet has decided to swallow it so let’s just say that :).
Are you suggesting that the authors of the DSM fit the description of a psychopath…? Well you’d be right.
We are not allowed to feel anything anymore. If having feelings is abnormal, what is normal? Grief, sadness, at times anger etc. come from our humanity.
I think it only goes to show what is the state of this profession today. I’d just add that a mediocre writer knows more about human psychology and a street druggie more about effects of psych drugs than a standard “doctor”.
I don’t know about brain zaps but the restless leg syndrome from Zyprexa/Seroquel is supposed to go away immediately after you stop the drug. It doesn’t. I had to deal with it for over a year until I managed to get rid of it with magnesium and iron supplements. Nonetheless it still comes back in a mild form at times and I have to return to supplements. I never had this before the drugs and it was clearly drug-related symptom. It’s a horrible feeling that you constantly have to move your legs and you can’t sit still or fall asleep. Combined with extreme tiredness from these drugs it’s real torture.
I’m a bit afraid we’re going in the other direction. The current socioeconomic and political situation in Western countries looks frighteningly similar to conditions that led to the rise of fascist Germany.
As to “My partner Diana Kline predicts that the next wars will be fought by corporations; it is a terrible thing to imagine but that is the direction that we are going in.” – this has already happened to a large extent. The war in Iraq was full of contractors and it were companies like Halliburton and Blackwater that made a killing, literally and metaphorically on that war. American army and spying apparatus has been largely outsourced to corporations. There is a name for a system where governments and corporations merge to create a police state and this name is a scary one.
“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I’m changing the things I can’t accept.”
Amen to that.
Btw, some degree of justice would also be welcome. When 20 people beat a guy to death they should all end up in prison themselves. Otherwise there will be no stop to the violence.
Everyone wants to make a buck of pretending they care about you.
Here’s an answer: no.
Fears? Isn’t that an established fact already?
Keep up the good fight. Do not let them keep it under the rug anymore.
Btw, why is Risperdal used to “treat” autism in the first place? Like it does anything else than lobotomising people and further impairing their social skills – the one problem that most people thrown into the “autism” basket tend to have in common.
NAMI is pharma front group plus some naive people who don’t understand who they are getting played.
What a joke… Corruption to the highest degree.
United Stasi of America.
The “treatment” facilitates this kind of behaviour. Not only they give you drugs that give you total disinhibition, mood swings and in some cases full blown psychosis when no was present but they also tell you that you have no control over the situation. Well, if you have no control over your impulses and the drugs make you very angry, even more than you’d normally be, and kill any empathy you may still have then why not go and shoot up some people?
I’ve never been homicidal but I know full well that I never had full blown panic attacks and other whacky emotional rides before I was started on an “anti-depressant”. “Mood stabilizers” didn’t make it better – when I was not binge eating seconds before falling asleep while standing I had withdrawal which was mood swing after mood swing. Seroquel made me feel like a zombie and I was acting out only so that I could feel anything at all. Prozac – total anxiety that made me feel stomach sick and gave me shaking hands. I’m so happy I never took any of these drugs for more than a month. I wonder why people in “treatment” sometimes kill themselves or others. Weird…
When the fascist state finally takes hold for good we know who’s a good candidate for a chief psychiatrist in charge of “euthanasia”. It all sounds like exaggerating and I hope it is but there’s a very ugly undercurrent in US and Europe right now.
I can’t stand this guy. He’s so arrogant – he has no claims to back up his opinions, yet he voices them with complete confidence and contributes to a witch hunt that’s already gaining steam.
No sh*t Sherlock. Suicidal people more likely to be impulsive to agitated. Wow…
Btw, this is the most useless set of behaviours to predict anything I’ve ever seen, maybe save for “breathing and moving their eyeballs”.
He was clearly traumatized by the “good professionals”. The only time I attempted suicide for real was in psych ward and only because they tortured me to that point. I have mostly recovers from any issues that I had that brought me to that place except for I still suffer panic attacks because of the “hospital” stay. I still get anxious when I hear an ambulance and triggered by doctors in the most benign circumstances (like blood taking). So much for the “help” they offer.
Btw, the whole “danger to self and others” was if fact because I rejected a physical exam and the “doctor” “didn’t have time to deal” with me an actual quote. So it makes me angry and amused at the same time when I read Jonathan’s comments on what is and is not legal. There’s no law to protect you against psychiatry. They killed people in that hospital before and there were numerous stories about abuses in it year after year and nothing’s changed.
Great insight Noel, I agree 100%.
Love your analogy. Psychiatric rape and torture should be banned.
Have you thought also maybe you’re indulging him too much? I understand all the issues he has and the guilt you seem to have over it but sometimes one has to take a stand. Sometimes the best way to cure an alcoholic from his addiction is to kick him out on the street and tell him to come back when his sober (worked for my grandfather).
I’m not necessarily suggesting you kick your son onto the streets, it seems like a bad idea given what you’ve written about him but maybe you should just go in an clean the room (or give him a choice: either you do it until tomorrow or I’ll do it). I don’t know how strong he is but if you have family members around you should make sure to be prepared in case he gets violent that he doesn’t harm you. There’s some chance that he’ll see that he can’t hide in his room and do what he wants with you forever. I know it may be hard for him to understand your position if he indeed has a form of autism but you should try to explain to him the rules.
I think the biggest problem here is how to deal with the situation to improve it while not risking escalation that will lead to further abuse of your son. It’s a very thin line to walk…
“Do you know what it’s like to have your son hate you, call you filthy names, and treat you like an enemy after years of practically being his only real advocate? This is my life now. I miss my son. I feel like I’ve lost him.”
I understand your pain but I also understand his position. I have told my family that if they ever turn me over to psychiatry I will never talk to them again. You may have done that in the best faith and when you felt you had no choice but you also have to understand that you son could see you as his enemy because of that. I don’t know how it was before you decided to hospitalize him the first time but such things never help.
I really don’t know how to fix something that’s so badly broken. I feel for you and hope you’ll find a way.
Btw, there’s one more problem that gardenlisa may need to face: I of course don’t know the details of her family history but if they did previously participate in forcing/coercing her son into the system his aggressive stance and refusal to follow advice may be a result of this. I’m not saying that this is any fault of her or her family (sometimes families have no other choice but to comply or lose any control over what is done to their loved ones) but it would explain the lack of trust, paranoia etc. It can take a long time to heal and a lot of good will on both sides to overcome things like that.
Psychiatry destroys individuals but psychiatry also destroys people’s relationships to their spouses, parents, kids.
I’m so sorry for you and your son. Zyprexa is a real torture drug and by many accounts one of the worst both in terms of “side effects” and withdrawal. I hope you’ll get through it.
Exactly. The whole argument from Jonathan seems to be: “the only alternative to the use of force by me is the use of force by police”. Like the use of force by psychiatry is any better than the use of force by police. In fact is often worse because it included mind rape (which Jonathan admitted using), for which there’s no justification at all.
Plus in the legal system you have due process. You don’t have one in psychiatry (and please don’t pretend like the civil commitment and other sad jokes are due process).
If it’s torture when done by a psychopath to a sane person it is torture when done to a “schizophrenic” by a “compassionate doctor”. Torture is torture period.
“But you take it a step farther Richard. You demand that force never be used….no matter the circumstance. ”
You’re building a strawman again.
All that Richard says is that it is not psychiatry’s business to use for on people they’re supposed to help. A psychiatrist faced with violence should have the exact same rights as any other human being: when attacked directly defend oneself or if possible avoid it and call the police. Then the police should deal with it accordingly.
That being said – these kinds of situations are a miniscule percentage of all the psychiatric uses of force. The so-called abuses of power are 99.9999…% of them. Using force because someone “doesn’t have time” to do his/her job (I’m a quoting the torturer who chose to abuse me because she didn’t have time to do what she was paid to do as a “doctor”), because someone disagrees with you, because someone’s annoying, because you are in a real-life Stanford prison experiment and experiencing a power trip… The abuses of power are a rule.
Accordingly, you’re constantly coming back to the false alternative “prison or hospital”/”being and killed/traumatized in psych ward”/”being killed/traumatized in jail”. These are not the only alternatives and US police and prison system is a total failure which it does not need to be. Pretending that they are only allows the system to continue. This is not an argument for force in hospitals, this is an argument for police and prison reform.
This is a similar way of how people should approach elderly who experience severe dementia. There are white lies which can help the person to calm down and do not harm anyone.
I wonder why the “professionals” are so against lying to people in psychosis (which btw they do all the time when talking about drugs etc.) but putting their hands on a vulnerable person is a-OK.
“To do nothing, in the example of when someone is starving themselves (say half normal body weight) is wrong. A doctor would have to force feed the patient until it can be verified the patients brain has proper nutrition/can think rationally. When severely malnourished the brain can not/does not function.”
You’re wrong here. It’s no different if you substitute anorectic (because that’s what you’re describing) with psychotic, depressed etc. It’s denying people agency over their lives and using physical humiliating force on them.
Btw, forced feeding is torture too. If you have doubts look up some videos describing it being done to Guantanamo prisoners. If something is torture when done to a “sane” person it is torture period.
“A slow suicide (example of smoking>to>lung cancer) is OK/rational, a quick suicide is wrong/bad/irrational.”
R u serious on that one?
Everyone should have a right to self-destruct. Forcing other people to live to make yourself feel better is arrogant and counter-productive. If you really want to help a person who’s self-harming or suicidal you ask them what would make them better and want to live. You try to comfort them and persuade them. You don’t humiliate them, abuse them, torture them and then be all surprised they call you a human right abuser.
“We have just described the effects of Eli Lilly’s best-selling antipsychotic, Zyprexa.”
Oh, the torture drug.
I have tried a lot of these poisons but this one would be too hardcore for Lucifer to stomach.
There are numerous people who say the same thing about placebo. Or faith healing. It is no evidence at all.
In terms of medical journals – have you first tried to sieve out all the articles published by people with conflicts of interest, then all the ones which have methodological problems etc.? Because when you do that there’s very little left…
“For example – someone in the psychiatric community, in treatment for mental illness is at a higher suicide risk than one who does not have a diagnosis.”
Except that’s not what the study was about. It was people who had a diagnosis and were hospitalized compared to the matched population who was offered other therapy options. And btw, even if that was it – it’s incumbent on people advocating the use of force to prove that it helps not the other way around. I’m yet to see the proof that forced treatment improves outcomes – so far it seems it does the exact opposite.
“Almost every parent I know is hesitant to even consider the use of medication for their child, despite the noted benefits of doing so, including mitigating the development of future, co-morbid disorders, addiction and so on.”
That is patently false. No psychiatric medication has been shown to prevent co-morbid disorders or addiction, in fact many were linked to causing such problems (benzos, stimulants). Even the short term benefits are questionable at best.
“country that WANTS mental illness to just go away”
…and is going about it in the stupidest way possible.
“You are empowering people to deny their loved ones an option with your rhetoric.”
Yeah, empowering people to get control over their own bodies and minds is a horrible thing indeed. Given the number of pills Americans pop every day they should be the most sane and happiest nation on the planet. So why aren’t they? Could this be because the pills aren’t working and psychiatry is a sham?
Excellent addition to the discussion :). It’s not either or, especially for the egregious “crimes” that “mentally ill” commit (or may some day in future because they’re “dangerous”).
“I feel safer among Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs than I would in any hospital in my State.”
At least you can learn the rules (and there are rules). In psych wards it is total obedience and still you get abused at every step. It reminds me of dealing with a psychopath – some people just derive pleasure from jerking you around and looking at you trying to figure out how to avoid punishment, in vain (because the rules change at his/her whim).
“their own life” Typing too fast 😉
“Of course, the question of “protecting” someone who is suicidal from him/herself is a much thornier issue.”
Nope. Everyone has the right to their own body and control over tehir own right. Killing myself should be a right.
“If you oppose force, why do you support police and the prison system for working with the “mentally ill”?”
Oh god, it’s such a strawman. “If you oppose war in Iraq are you if favour of Al-Qaeda?”
“So yes…everyone has a right to defend themselves. We’re in agreement there. I think what might make this more clear is describing in real terms how to work with people who are violent. ”
Do you mean psychiatrists? I hope you extend this right to your patients so that when one of you comes to them with needles and threats they have all the right in the world to fight back. Or when they are brought in against their will for that matter.
I’ve heard this argument a 1000 times before: “a guy was brought in and didn’t want to cooperate and then started to be aggressive when we told him he can’t go home.” Yeah – I’d also be aggressive if someone kidnapped me and imprisoned and tried to force me to perform tricks to his/her amusement.
Psychiatrists and other staff have no right to complain if any of tha people brought in and kept involuntarily attacks them. In this situation it is self-defense and you’re the abuser.
Thank you for writing that. I could have not said it better.
Forced psychiatric drugging is rape and torture of the worst kind.
“Generally, people who are acting in an uncompromisingly threatening and violent way are managed by police through the use of tasers, nightsticks, beanbag guns and handguns.”
This issue has been addressed by Richard. The answer is not “let’s fine a gentler way to kick your a** and throw you in a hole”. The answer is to find ways to not use force at all. In some places police is well trained and I’ll take a well trained emphatic policeman over psychiatrists every time. In fact I had an encounter with some and they treated me very well although I was a pain in the a** at the time and even told me that they don’t want to call ambulance on me since they didn’t have a very good opinion on what psychiatrists do to people. In the end they managed to talk to me and get me out of a panic attack.
In the same time psychiatrists react with extreme violence to anything including refusal to take a physical exam (which is a right of every human being). I’d argue that most of the presumed violence from patients against staff is actually well deserved and form of self-defense. These a***oles literally complained in my official hospital documents that I was aggressive because I was fighting against restraints. Tell me about inmates running the asylum…
“If a person is deemed criminal, they end up in the prison system.”
That’s a problem of a stupid legal system. People end up in prisons for ridiculous things which harm no one and are at best a nuisance. They should not be locked in prisons and they should not be locked in psych wards. Just leave them alone or help them through a crisis. It’s just prison-industrial complex combined with racism and social exclusion calling the shots.
“The long term hospital model has been dramatically reduced in favor of the prison system for managing “mental illness.”
When do you people get it that shipping people from one kind of prison to another (only called “hospital”) is not an answer? We’ve seen this movie before and I’d urge you to read up on why asylums were closed in the first place. There was never a time when psychiatric hospitals were good places where they helped people. NEVER.
“One of the best ways I have seen for reducing the use of force in hospitals is by requiring hospitals to document every incidence and then publicizing the results in the media.” ROFL. Because self-regulation always works, right? We see that in the last outbreak of police brutality cases. It’s not like people working in the same organization and committing the same kind of infringements will ever cover up for one another, lie in official documents, fabricate evidence etc. That never happens. Except it does. Except it has happened to me – I had outrageous lies written up in my hospital documents, signed testimony from a person who wasn’t even there and it was all taken at face value while my testimony was “crazy person’s ravings”. Sorry but you’re out of sync with reality on this one.
Using forced “treatment” (or PSYCHIATRIC TORTURE -let’s call it what it is) on someone who is suicidal is like putting pouring water on someone who’s already drowning.
If psych patients have applied the same standard of proportional response to staff’s violence there would not be a psychiatrist alive in the country. But we are the violent ones…
I think that’s a different matter. If someone indeed is waving a knife and running at you you have a right to defend yourself or anyone who is standing nest to you. We all know that this is 0.000000001% (or something like that) of the psychiatric use of force. For them to go full blown bully it’s enough you tell them that you don’t want a physical exam performed on you (personal experience right here). Somehow people who are so “dangerous and aggressive” usually scream “don’t touch me” before being psychiatrically assaulted and raped.
The real people who pose danger to self and others are psychiatrists and psych nurses who engage in human rights violations as a matter of course.
Funny that being against human rights violations is “extreme”. No more extreme than being against murder or rape. Or death penalty which is state sanctioned murder for that matter. One would think the Western civilisation has had this conversation before and came up on the side of human rights… on paper only.
To be honest it’s “a bit” more complicated. SSRIs not only have the effect on certain neurostransmitter signalling but also on hippocampal neurogenesis (which also has to do with memory) and god knows what else. It’s all good to study it in animal models to get understanding about how the brain works but running a live experiment on real people is somewhat… what’s the word… unethical?
“Any of this is really looking for a foot in the door to ban them all.”
Not realistic politically in US at this point. But eventually the best solution.
There’s an easy solution to all of this: just ban guns altogether. For everyone.
Well, if you give someone who is not diabetic insulin he/she will be in trouble, right? Therefore it’s not inconceivable that messing up neurotransmitter levels when no deficiency or over-activation was present to begin with will screw up the brain.
Sure. But in these cases depression is not an illness, it’s a symptom of an underlying illness that should be treated accordingly, not suppressed and poisoned by so-called “anti-depressants”. Nonetheless, the majority of cases of “depression” are totally normal people experiencing “life”.
Typical psychiatry bs: “you’ve recovered? well, you weren’t doing that bad to begin with”. Tell me about confirmation bias.
If the drug doesn’t work – well we can’t cure everybody (and it’s your fault)
If the drug “works” – it’s a wonder drug
If you stop taking the drug and recover – you were OK all along
They’re really good at producing sequels to Catch 22.
“Patients with co-morbid psychiatric disorders have become frequently excluded together with patients with any co-morbid Axis I disorder, which were twice as likely to be excluded in recent studies.”
Like “co-morbid” means anything in psychiatry. But the fact that they cherry-pick people to increase their chances of getting a positive result is not surprising.
It could be. I never had panic attacks before I was started on an “anti-depressant” Mirtazapine. Then I had other drugs on and off including ones which would make Lucifer go “hey, that’s too cruel” – Zyprexa and Seroquel and that made them even worse. Took me almost 2yrs off them to recover.
Yet doctors still talk about these drugs as “benign”. This is exactly what a neurologist of all people told my friend prescribing her benzos. There’s nothing benign about them – they’re extremely dangerous, especially for someone with heart issues like she has.
For what these drugs really do to any given person your guess is as good as mine. They bind many receptors and have different effects on them and then there’s also a big black box called our body which can react to the presence of the drug in many ways, enhancing or reducing it actions or even going all the way to the otehr side. All psych drugs have people reporting all kinds of effects, from the “desired” ones to completely opposite ones through everything in between and bizzare.
One thing is sure – I’d never want to take it.
15 formulations of testosterone = one drug called testosterone. Plus it’s ridiculous to equate it with a libido increasing drug.
Could you link to that study?
In terms of correlating violence with anything at all – I’ve seen people attribute the decrease in violent crime to everything from global warming to lead pollution. In the same time the link between suicides and “paradoxical effects” and anti-depressants is quite clear. There is no reason to suggest that “depressed” people are more prone to violence either.
1. No that makes a big difference. The same as treating stimulants as performance enhancing drugs as opposed to meds treating “ADHD”. The difference is between telling people: here’s a pill that may or may not enhance your performance (in exchange for such and such risk of side effects) and telling them they are sick, defective and abnormal. Which disease mongering is. It takes benign, normal problems of living (which are often created by underlying problems like emotional issues in a marriage, work stress, unhealthy lifestyle etc.) and turns them into an illness that needs medical attention. That is a huge difference and it is lying to people and it is extremely harmful.
3. The effects of this drug are overblown (this +1 good sex in a month comes from pharma’s “research” which we know very well rarely plays out so well in real life given how these studies are created and analysed) and side effects likely underreported. Plus the long-term effects of this drug and possible withdrawal issues not known at all at this point. But that’s not what people will see in commercials.
4. I’d hope you’re right.
I interpret them as uninformative for many reasons. First of all the assumption that higher risk groups are more likely to stay on the drug is not necessarily true (especially when we’re talking about “ADHD” and not real illness). Secondly, the point of evaluating people in a follow-up without asking them if they continued on the drug or not sounds idiotic. Even if some of them lie not asking is just inexplicable.
Btw, RCT for a psychoactive substance is a joke to begin with. Like someone can’t say they’re taking meth or cocaine:
http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1462:_Blind_Trials
That will work well.
“The overarching goal of RDoC is to accelerate the pace of research that translates basic science into clinical settings by understanding the multi-layered systems that contribute to mental function.”
-> translation: “blah, blah blah, blah”
Reminds me of: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=718
Watering down the language can be a worse thing – if it makes it more open for interpretation…
Police state has become psychiatric state.
Torturers.
“please understand, it was nothing personal.”
This is kind of triggering. What a psychopath says to a victim just before he/she is about to do some incredible damage.
Let’s start with the fact that no psychiatrist who uses force against his “patients” is ever going to admit that this can be traumatizing and make people worse rather than better. And even if that were the case it will be treated as not a big deal. I have challenged 2 psychiatrists on that personally and only heard denial, half-a** excuses (“sometimes it’s necessary”) and diversions (“I get a lot of letter from people who are grateful”). Are these are supposed to be people whom you are discussing your trauma with? It’s like telling a rape victim to go to her rapist for help. Laughable and pathetic.
Btw, what people who were traumatized need the most is justice. Justice not only understood as punishment for perpetrators (though that would be very welcome) but primarily as recognition of their suffering and making sure that it never happens again – not to them not to anyone else.
“It includes supporting research into the supposed “violence” of people with psychiatric histories”
I guess they don’t mean the research in what motivates people charged with helping other to torture, dehumanize and sometimes kill them? Maybe because such research has already been done (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment). Or maybe because some people are so engaged in witch hunt because they want to divert the attention from the real problems in society, one they’ve helped to create.
On the point of “runaway global warming” – even if that if off the table (which it isn’t) even a 5 degree rise in global temperatures would be a disaster that can make the most apocalyptic movies kind of dull. We have 6billion people on this planet that we have to clothe and feed and provide water for, not to mention the nice thing in life like education and leisure. Sure, we may survive as a species (which is not a given) but in what shape and on what kind of a planet? And there is no serious scientist out there (save for people who are bought by companies profiting from fossil fuels – I guess we’ve heard this theme before in terms of scientific studies and corporate interests) who say that a catastrophic outcome is unlikely. Take California – they are running out of water as we speak and even if it rains tomorrow some of the aquiferes have already collapsed so that the stores cannot be repleted.
Global warming has already caused tremendous damage to “mental health” (in addition to physical health, property etc.) for thousands of people. Widely covered natural disasters aside (like the hurricanes in the Philippines) – many people link global warming and the drought in Syria, which has if not caused then at the very least exacerbated the conflict and led many people to die or flee. In Europe we’re facing an immigrant crisis. Only this week we had 71 one bodies found in a truck near Vienna because the smugglers overcrowded the car and forgot about ventilation. 3 kids below 10yrs old are among the victims. If that does not affect people’s “mental health” I don’t know what does.
On MIA we often discuss alternatives and the main “alternative” to psychiatry is to build a more equitable, tolerant society in which people can have their basic physical and psychological needs met as a way to prevent mental problems in the first place. How can one envision such a society in a world which is at war for resources as the elements are going highwire and destroying infrastructure, crops and human lives?
“Honestly it is kind of dumb, here in Australia we’re having days 5 degrees below the average etc.”
I think you misunderstand what global warming is. The fact that you can have very low temperature in any given place at any given time during the year does not negate the fact that the average temperature of the whole Earth has risen (that is in many other places and many other timepoints it’s getting really, really hot). In fact global warming is leading to “climate change” which is basically altered weather patterns that cause unusual event (like super snow in a place where it should not be or at the wrong time, like hurricanes etc.). climate is becoming more extreme and we can see it already: California is a good example, recent heatwaves, hurricanes and so on. Some island nations on the Pacific are already facing rising waters.
We can discuss what is the best course of action but denying what is happening in front of our eyes is not a way to go.
I’ll say more and add another very important “side show” to the discussion: money in politics. It seems clear that it will be very difficult to obtain any significant change on any issue as long as people making decisions are beholden to money interests. There are many on-going efforts to reform the election funding in US, this one is in my mind one of the more promising:
wolf-pac.com
You can go on it and sign the petition and hopefully get involved.
Here we go – instead of trying to stop the climate change we will be talking about psych help for surviviours. How about addressing their economic, educational, hosuing etc. needs?
Democracy Now! had a great broadcast yesterday and today about the post-Katrina New Orleans and what an awful example of shock doctrine that is. But I’m sure “mental health” services are a priority.
I’d love to see a similar study done in other areas of research, particularly clinical. I bet results would be just as bleak for a lot of them.
Bpdtransformation – I really like the way you write. It really makes my day to read some wonderful sarcasm ;P.
That’s the whole problem. They use fraud to push their wonder drugs through the FDA and when later on research shows that they are ineffective and sometimes straight out harmful – they pay a fine, which is always small compared to the amount of money made. And the drugs are allowed to stay on the market as if nothing happened. There should be a more effective fine system for pharma (you’re convicted – you pay a fine plus all the profits you’ve made on the fraud like normal people). There should be a better mechanism to take the drugs off the market after fraud like that has been exposed and one which takes into account the fact that some people will need the drug longer because of withdrawal issues. Make pharma pay for damages. And of course change the system in such a way that fraud is close to impossible to begin with. It’s a nice wishlist but the current corrupt system makes it only a dream.
Great article.
I’m 100% for legalization and treating it like any other legal drug (alcohol, tobacco). The only problem I have is with labelling it as “treatment”. People have used psychoactive drugs to deal with the mental condition called “life” from times immemorial and that’s pretty much it. I’d not stop it and war on drugs is ridiculous but it’s also irresponsible to say that using any kind of drug to tackle life problems is a form of treatment. Having a drink after a stressful day can relax you but drinking every time you have to deal with stressful events is a clear road to addiction. Maybe marijuana is safer than alcohol and has more benefits (it’s seems so at this point but the mythology surrounding it is so thick it’s hard to be sure) but I have reservations when it comes to recommending it to people in distress.
One important piece of data missing: how many of the correctly registered vs not had positive outcomes?
“The researchers also showed that studies funded by pharmaceutical companies were more likely to be correctly registered with no changes to POMs than private trials.”
that’s actually interesting and to be honest unexpected.
I agree 100%.
FDA is a bad joke. Even the mainstream is starting to recognize the problem. I’ve seen comments on press releases and surprising many people call bs on it.
What about getting these people out of prisons where they mostly don’t belong (sorry but loitering and smoking pot should not be crimes to begin with)? What about solving homelessness and hunger and poverty? Maybe then one would not have so many “delusional” people to deal with.
Shipping them back and forth between “hospitals” and prisons is not an answer. Abusing them to no end in both of these institutions ain’t helping either.
They are worse.
Btw, I wonder if giving Mickey a safe place to sleep, food and clean clothes would not cure some of his “delusions”. Given his situations that just sounds like the most understandable defence mechanism his mind could have come up with.
Plus some of the rules we have are just plain stupid. there are too many nuisance crimes and poeple should not be locked up for loitering and mouthing off cops and sh*t like that.
“I can’t fault the police for doing their job.”
Yeah, you kind of can. Everyone keeps doing their jobs and we end up running a nice concentration camp. Everyone who participates in a system like this is guilty.
Wasn’t it also a fallout of the counter-revolution against the outbreak of freedom and creativity in the 60s? Too many wild women and blacks and natives and all the other weirdos running around – one has to rein them in, right?
Psychiatry is only a piece of a bigger picture. We can’t build alternatives to the current model until we address the totality of the problem. Until then we’ll be only moving people between asylums and jails every couple of years.
Well, it’s great but who will protect the abusers? And more importantly what if the abusers are the very people who are supposed to “treat” you?
It’s kind of funny (in a sad way) to watch psych professionals writhe and ramble when someone as much as suggests that tehir awesome “treatments” traumatize people. Good luck getting a psychiatrist to apologize to his/her victims or even stopping the ongoing abuse.
The primary reason why mental illness is not linked to trauma and experience of abuse of various nature is because psychiatry is not there to serve the victims – it’s there to silence them, control them and cover up for the crimes that were committed against them. And many trauma surviviors recognize it – I’ve just watched and interview with one, who was sexually abused as a kid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wmIQbB3iu0
(listen especially from 27′).
Not really. Aspirin happens to be a NSAID and it’s a pretty good drug with relatively few side effects (although it should not be prescribed to kids). But I’d not advocate to take it on a daily basis as a preventive measure. There’s been a lot of hype about it but little actual proof.
Or just don’t take “anti-depressants”. They don’t really do much anyway except for screwing up your brain and body for good.
“31%-37% of all mental health PED admissions were return visits”
Psychiatry’s doing a great job as usual. Who wants to guess what fraction of these visits goes as follows:
“Doc, we were last time because Johnny felt a bit sad and couldn’t concentrate at school. We gave him the pills but his depression is worse and he got fat and doesn’t want to talk to his friends anymore.”
“Oh, that’s his mental illness, he’ll have to learn how to live with it. Have some more pills.”
Thanks to you and David for the documentary and unwavering advocacy against all odds.
It’s not only “mental health”. With the “great” work from NSA (sarcasm alert) the whole underpinnings of the internet and cyber security are at risk. Not only what currently exists is laughable in terms of data protection but efforts by NSA to introduce backdoors into systems is going to ensure that the hackers everywhere will have plenty of fun. Add to that the idiot politician like UK’s David Cameron (seriously, who votes for these people? – I understand once but again?) call for banning encryption. I guess the excuse is as always “scary terrorists and big, big bombs”.
There needs to be a revolution…
It’s nice to know that the price of a drug is affecting the supposedly scientific and medical decisions on whether to allow prescribing them to a given population. I feel so much safer knowing that.
😀 thanks, that has brightened my day 🙂
I don’t think you should discount this man’s trauma. My encounter with psych torturers were equally brief but it was enough to haunt me till this day.
Btw, it’s enough to read the stats provided in the very article to see that it’s not a problem of lack of “mental health treatment” – it’s the problem of stupid laws and over-policing and generally police state:
“60% of Ontario prisoners today are on remand, which means they have not been tried and are presumed innocent — only 26% were on remand 30 years ago.
20% of Ontario prisoners today are being held on non-violent administration of justice charges, such as failing to comply with bail or breach of probation.”
Well if 60% of your prisoners have not been sentenced then you have more problems than just “crazy people”.
Yeah, they always make it sound like closing down asylums was such a bad idea because all these poor people end up in prison. Well, first of all these are not the two alternatives and secondly (and more importantly) people forget while these lovely places called asylums were closed in the first place.
“Everyone I have ever communicated with who has experienced both mental health and criminal justice systems will choose the criminal justice system ay day of the week.”
I agree 100%. Plus this is not even an alternative in the current system either. People end up locked up in psychiatric so-called “hospitals” which are essentially more abusive forms of prisons and spend more time there than they would have otherwise served in prison have their offenses not been deemed due to mental illness. It has actually been studied in Austria and the results were clear – the worst that can happen to you during a trial is being assessed “crazy”. You end up locked up for much longer and often indefinitely as your release depends on some power-tripping psychiatrists’ opinion.
Adults of whatever age and kids as well. Or maybe just humans in general. Prescribing these poisons to vulnerable people (like kids and elderly) is criminal.
Misuse…like there was a right use for them in the first place…
This guy (Murphy) must be getting paid really well (by pharma).
Where in Poland? Do you have any links to it?
It’s funny (well… not really) but many studies, including those reported and reviewed on MIA, include such statements. Or at best weird justifications: “we didn’t find that the drug A is effective against it but that is likely because our study has low statistical power or the moon cycle was in the wrong phase. We are sure that if we spend more time and money drug A will prove to be the miracle drug treating mental illness and solving global warming all the time while curing Africa’s hunger problem”.
I always tell people to avoid psychiatry altogether. I can’t in good conscience look at people running the risk of being tortured and murdered.
The wild life will evolve eventually and possibly to our detriment – we already have a huge issue with antibiotic resistance. It’s only one tiny part of how we are destroying the very world we need to keep intact to survive. Tell me about cutting the branch you’re sitting on.
Cat is a holy creature, even Egyptians knew that ;). And nothing better than a purring bundle of fur on your lap to help you relax :).
A nice initiative but I doubt it will make an impact. I think the key thing here is the money interest which will make sure this never makes it to the mainstream. It’s no about the science it’s about the power system, which is not interested in the truth if it hurts profits.
“Some would like for emotions to be ‘regulated,’ which, to my mind, is 100% counter nature, and only leads to trouble.”
Well put. People who want us to “regulate” our emotions are usually he very people who bear responsibility for our “bad” emotions in the first place.
These are great points. My biggest problem with psychiatry conceptualizing normality as some kind of “resilience”. In essence it’d be best if we all were highly-functioning psychopaths, not bothered too much with trauma, burdened with emotions and so on. It pathologizes normal human emotionality and blames the victim for responding to abuse.
I think a good analogy for that is obesity – another avenue where huge money has been spent to look for fat genes and magic pills when it’s obvious that most people who have weight problems are not victims of their genes but of the modern lifestyle and crappy diets. Even if some of us are somehow resistant to that and can remain slim even on junk food eaten on a sofa it does not make it “normal” nor does it make people who are obese genetically ill. Human are diverse and this diversity is an adaptive strength of our species, nor a weakness.
I don’t think anyone here is against brain research. It’s rather what kind of brain research and to what end.
It is clear that some mental problems are caused by physical illness or nutritional deficiency (say HIV-associate psychosis or Korsakoff’s syndrome) but these are not really psychiatry’s problems but should be dealt with by real doctors, neurologists and others.
“Considering that factors such as poverty, inequality, family disharmony, and various forms of social discrimination lie right at the root of so much of those distressing conditions that are called “mental illness,” this forces us to acknowledge that if we really want to address “mental illness,” then we really need to work together as a society and explore how we can address these broader social problems.”
That is an excellent point and sadly also the reason why nobody is really interested in addressing the roots of the problem. Our socioeconomic system is rotten to the core and much more is at stake than just people’s “mental health” but very little is done to change it. There are glimmers of hope like the Occupy but it’s by far not enough to stop the crazy neoliberal train from destroying humanity and the planet.
Great article. Thank you for the good work you do as a Hearing Voices facilitator.
Great article. Psychiatry is just another stick to keep people down in their holes.
How about a major overhaul of the whole system and kicking pharmaceutical companies from drug development altogether? Public funding worked well for the development of many great things, including the internet so I see no reason why pharma should be allowed to continue to pollute science.
It’s yet another piece of evidence which suggests that psychosis is a response to adverse environment in childhood and adolescence, especially chronic social stress. Other correlations show similar results for psychosis and moving schools, racial discrimination, being a child of recent migrants, sexual abuse, bullying etc.
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”
John Lennon
Wow, thank you for that quote…
DSM-5 defines delusions as “…fixed beliefs that are not amenable to change in the light of conflicting evidence.”
By that every single person on the planet is delusional. With psychiatrists being one of the most delusional people there are.
LOL…
One more interesting thing would be to see if the trials which were unregistered and/or changed tehir procedures after registration had a higher rate of positive findings than the properly registered and conducted studies.
From Wikipedia:
Wellbutrin (bupropion):
– weak norepinephrine-dopamine reuptake inhibitor (NDRI)
– also been found to act as a releasing agent of dopamine and norepinephrine (NDRA)
– converted in the body into several active metabolites with differing activity and influence on the effects of bupropion during first-pass metabolism
– also known to act as a non-competitive antagonist of the α3β2, α3β4, α4β2, and, very weakly, α7 nACh receptors
In other words hell knows how it works (except that it has some effect on at least dopamine and norepinephrin).
Flibanserin:
– a full agonist of the 5-HT1A receptor (Ki = 1 nM) and, with lower affinity, as an antagonist of the 5-HT2A receptor (Ki = 49 nM) and antagonist or very weak partial agonist of the D4 receptor (Ki = 4–24 nM)
– occupies the 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors in vivo with similar percentages
– has low affinity for the 5-HT2B receptor (Ki = 89.3 nM) and the 5-HT2C receptor (Ki = 88.3 nM), both of which it behaves as an antagonist of
– found to increase dopamine and norepinephrine levels and decrease serotonin levels in the rat prefrontal cortex, actions that were determined to be mediated by activation of the 5-HT1A receptor.[11] As such, flibanserin has been described as a norepinephrine-dopamine disinhibitor (NDDI).
In other words does something to serotonin signalling plus screws up norepinephrine and dopamine – seemingly in the same direction as Wellbutrin (up) so you may be onto something here.
Another disaster…
It’s supposed to be an agonist of serotonin receptor so it should increase the serotonin signalling, kind of like SSRIs do. Which is not to say that we have any clue what it actually does in the organism given the fact that in higher concentrations it also binds other receptors and we have no idea what other indirect effects it has or how the body compensates for it. The only thing I would guess is that it may very well induce sexual dysfunction like the SSRIs do.
After all who cares about people with dementia. They don’t work anymore, they are old and sick and soon to die anyway so why not make some money out of their suffering before the end. It’s despicable and the irony is that all of us are going to become old and many of us will lose cognitive abilities in the process but people who run this business think it’s not going to happen to them. Nothing makes me more angry than to see elderly people abused.
The real question is – how is that still legal?
I think it cures thinking and behaving by turning people into vegetables.
Talking to a psychiatrist is like walking on a minefield. Everything you say can and will be used against you – people should be getting Miranda warnings before meeting with one. I find the strategy of Lisbeth Salander from the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo most effective – avoid them as much as you can and refuse to talk to them ever.
Are they also conducting research into the effects of battery and rape as treatment for mental illness? I’m sure it’s just as promising.
If that means less drugs and no force then it could be a good thing…it’s kind of difficult to get it from the article though what exactly the program looks like in real life.
Well, it’s supposed to activate the serotonin receptor so increase serotonin signalling. SSRIs are well known to increase serotonin signalling by inhibiting the removal the serotonin from the synaptic cleft and they are linked to potentially irreversible sexual dysfunction. My guess is that flibanserin will turn out to do the exact same thing – maybe increase libido in some women while impairing it, sometimes (always?) permanently, in most. Unfortunately we are likely to see this hypothesis tested in real life on real people and that all pretty soon.
It was not 15 but if you look at the metananalysis of anti-depressant trials submitted to FDA which was done by Irving Kirsch and colleagues it’s pretty clear that this “consideration” is meaningless. Plus it does not account for the problem that companies don’t need to pre-register and publish all trials so many negative results never see the light of the day.
Given that tapering with serotonin is well known to cause sexual dysfunction, often permanent…it’s sick…
“As part of the attempt to gain approval for its drug, Sprout initiated an ingenious marketing campaign, “Even the Score,” claiming that there was a sexism inherent in the number of FDA-approved treatments for sexual disorders: 26 for men and “zero for women.” However, this claim was false. There are only 8 drugs that treat male sexual dysfunction, and none are FDA-approved for low libido.”
Btw, that strongly reminds me of the campaign that tobacco companies directed at women in order to convince them to smoke. Same bs masquerading as gender equality:
http://pialogue.info/books/Century-of-the-Self.php
You can also listen to Noam Chomsky on the propaganda industry. Btw, people who have participated in creating the propaganda system were psychologists.
“Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD)”
Wow…just wow…
If that is not disease mongering to the 100th degree then I don’t know wtf is.
“Could it be that those who generated those numbers and statistics don’t understand them, either?”
Not only could – it’s very often the case. The knowledge of statistics in people who conduct these studies is very low and I can tell you that as an insider.
Do you seriously believe that having a 57% of trials with positive benefit is something reasonably expected? Anyone who’s worked in bio/med-sciences looks at this number and laughs out loud.
That is exactly what we should be aiming at. It leaves less space for data manipulation and gets rid of publication bias.
That and also stop putting people on these poison’s to begin with. Nobody should be subjected to that, no one should suffer 10yrs of memory loss or even 1 day or 1h. No one should have to go through withdrawal. It’s so sick and revolting that we have to clean up the pieces left after the systemic crime perpetrated by psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies.
That is an amazing feat and I’m happy to hear about it – it gives us all hope and encouragement :).
It reminds me of the movie “Changeling”. It shows beautifully how mother’s fear for her kid is turned into “mental illness” by the system which has no interest in protecting her or her child.
“Our too paternalistic, greed only inspired, never ending warring, male chavanistic pig society is a not the answer. Our society needs to evolve.”
You’re exactly right. And sadly nothing covers up the crimes while blaming the victim as well as psychiatry.
I don’t feel comfortable with that. I think everyone should be allowed to commit suicide but assisting physicians for “mental health illnesses” sounds horrifying, especially with the history of psychiatry in mind.
Let’s legalize it already. We can get drunk and smoke cigarettes all we want and everyone knows that both things kill. Pot so far seems to be the safest of the three.
Btw, in US there’s an incentive to change this corrupt system, which seems to be getting some traction:
wolf-pac.com
It’s possible but not in this socioeconomic system. Look at Wall Street – the banks also pay a relatively small fine and go to business as usual and their executives get bonuses instead of a bunk in high security prison. It’s an equivalent of a robber who when caught does not go to prison but only has to give back a small percentage of what he stole and goes free.
Seroquel and Zyprexa are both horrific poisons. Both also gave me horrible Restless Leg Syndrome (it really exists – a great example of a iatrogenic illness), which was supposed to stop after I withdrew from them. It didn’t – it took me over a year and iron and magnesium supplements to get rid of it and still not completely – it sometimes comes back.
Psychiatry is organized crime.
Benzos for backpain is another example. Of course without any advice on the side effects or how long maximally one can take it. As a psychiatric survivour I of course knew better, refused and asked for physiotherapy instead but many people won’t question it but will simply fill in a prescription and end up with much worse problems that even the most debilitating pain.
“The US Food and Drug Administration has announced that there will soon be a public meeting to explore providing drug companies with greater flexibility in promoting off-label indications to doctors. When it comes to prescribing medications to children, and particularly psychiatric medications, this is a bad idea.”
This is a BAD IDEA period. It’s truly amazing how corrupt they are and I say corrupt because one has to be blind, deaf and stupid and willfully so not to see a huge issue with overprescription of pretty much everything. How does anyone seriously come up with a proposal to expand off-label prescribing? These people are evil because I can’t believe they are so dumb.
That is true. I also have to monitor the drugs pushed on my family and try to convince them not to take some really useless and harmful ones. Some drugs do help and having a family member with type I diabetes I know they can be life saving but the real tragedy is that the system is so corrupt that you can’t tell what’s good and what will kill you anymore.
Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who has not ended up not remembering his childhood or having to take notes about every little thing because you can’t make new memories. Or one who died early because of electricity induce brain trauma ending up in ministrokes and increasing a chance of epilepsy and early death. It’s like trying to figure out – which one you prefer lung cancer or kidney failure. How about none?
“I believe there have to be organic changes or organic disturbances in the physiology of the brain for the cure to take place. These people have for the time being at any rate more intelligence than they can handle . . . and the reduction of intelligence is an important factor in the curative process.”
That is nothing short of amazing. The brazenness of this statement…
ECT should be forbidden as a form of torture and mutilation.
It’s a huge elephant in the room when it comes to fMRI but the problems with reproducibility etc. are not limited to this method. Science, especially medical science, has a lot to fix.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
I’ve always been skeptical towards all “mental health professionals” but after a personal experience I’ve become anti-psychiatry. Maybe we should be done with the idea that psychiatry is supposed to help people with mental illness – it’s all about power, social control and solidifying an abusive system.
This dude should look at what his own government is doing to people of Australia and migrants /asylum seekers and take care of the human rights abuses and disastrous neoliberal and sometimes straight out fascist policies they’re introducing. Mental health, my a**.
“But the young woman I saw this morning believes my colleagues and I (and most other people) to be part of a network linked to the Illuminati who want to torture and rape her.”
Written by a “mental health professional”… She’s not delusional, she’s right.
In general I’ve got up to here of reading articles calling for more funding for psychiatry. It’s a black hole which sucks up the money and doesn’t give back anything, only makes people worse. How about funding social programs to address the root causes instead? How about not sending people to murder kids in the Middle East and lying to them that they will be heroes? How about funding Soteria House-like sanctuaries for people in distress? Housing for the homeless? I’m sick and tired of this “if it doesn’t work we need more of it (and we need more money)”.
The biggest “stigma” is generated by psychiatrists themselves – it’s both my personal experience and all the studies I’ve seen on the subject.
You’re exactly right :). And the patients would be scolded for not running on the broken legs (they’re not trying hard enough).
Not to mention that the do not put the bones back to their proper places to begin with. “Mental illness” is not like physical illness in that it’s not an illness at all.
Exactly. If that was the case these will be orgasm pills. They clearly are not, they are not happy pills either. Even people who are skeptical to pills often end up propagating the “chemical imbalance” bs.
And then when abused slave labour in 3rd world countries jumps to their deaths from factory windows they put in nets and call for mental health for the 3rd world. There has to be a revolution…
Neoliberalism strikes again. Anyone still thinks psychiatry isn’t social control?
I’m not religious but the amount of disrespect and ridicule with which psychiatrists treat pretty much everyone of their “patients” makes my blood boil. I guess if you’re religious you’re immediately delusional.
“Thus the splitting of ‘therapy’ and ‘political action’ can be revealed as an illusion that serves the re-production of capitalist service industries.”
Activism is the best cure for depression. Justice is the best cure for trauma.
We do need to get away from the neoliberal disaster we’re living right now and not only because of the impact on our psyche – we are about to destroy our planet. There’s a great writer who connects all these issues of oppression in an insightful way – I recommend Naomi Klein’s books, especially “Shock doctrine” and “This changes everything”.
Psychiatrists would treat Einstein like a 3yr old and call him delusional if he would dare to reveal how smart he was.
Class warfare it is.
“Specifically, an article in Pharmalot reports, researchers found that 63% of consent forms failed to include the risks found in boxed warnings. ”
That alone should be grounds for criminal prosecution.
“… the next time you find yourself in a rut, and eating too much, know that the unbecoming scene isn’t merely a question of will power – it’s rather, in all likelihood, a matter of your genetic makeup.”
This is such a load of horse***p. It’s not to say that keeping a diet is easy or that stopping yourself from a compulsion if the face of stress is easy but blaming it all on the genes is ridiculous beyond any reason.
I guess we should all write some scathing letters to the editor for publishing this bs. Btw, what are the conflicts of interest of this guy?
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is a definition of insanity for some. So how do we call a society which insists on prescribing people more and more “anti-depressants” when it’s clear that they do not do anything against the “depression epidemic”? when do we start treating human emotions as normal responses to their lives instead of pathology?
“To return to the World Health Organisation; the statement about the commonness of depression simply seems to indicate that human unhappiness is common.”
Amen to that.
Come on, don’t the old white males always know best? The arrogance of Western culture is truly discouraging…
William James argued “I see myself running from the bear, so I decide I’m scared.”
That is a very important idea. In fact other studies indicate that consciousness does not really play a role in decision making but rather comes up with rationalizations after the decision has already been taken. It is a great mystery why we need the consciousness at all (or even if we do) to function. But these questions will never be fully answered by neurobiology even if it can provide great insights.
Sad but unsurprising :(.
All things aside, death penalty should be abolished once and for all, whether one is sane or otherwise.
The advice in this video is idiotic – how about getting off these poisons altogether? The sexual dysfunction on SSRIs is progressive and potentially irreversible – it’s neurological mutilation.
There’s no accountability. They straight out poison you and nobody cares.
Nothing better than a captive audience. I’d rather have my cat as a psychotherapist – she’s a narcissistic selfish creature but at least she’s not trying to hide it.
I’m not so sure it explains it though. I think living in modern cities causes people to be more disconnected from one another while in rural areas there’s more sense of community. I think this may lead to all the “mental illness”. Add to that disconnect from nature, overall stress, pollution, noise and what not and you have a poisonous mix.
Yet the narcotics prescribed by a pitiful imitation of a doctor are supposed to be medicines.
“Shift Work Disorder”
What the hell is that?
Psychiatrus psychopatus is a common one, especially in hospitals since they get off needle-raping and abusing people.
I guess when you’re disputing the diagnosis you’re only showing verbally aggressive behaviour hence proving it to be correct ;). Psychiatric logic…
Btw “Whatever effectiveness the drugs might have in reducing aggression” – the “effectiveness is the same as giving one a paralyzing agent or knocking one over the head with a baseball bat. It’s only psychiatry that managed to sell these as “medical”. Unsurprisingly since they used insulin and continue to use ECT to “treat” people.
“Three behavioral outbursts involving damage or destruction of property and/or physical assault involving physical injury against animals or other individuals occurring within a 12-month period.”
I love how arbitrary it is. What if there were two? And what property? Is throwing a plate on the wall the same as burning down someone’s house? These are “medical” symptoms? DSM is such a pile of nonsense…
Btw, I wonder if you add the lifetime prevalence of all these disorders:
– is there a single person in the world left who is not mentally ill?
– how many disorders one has, per capita? 2, 3, 10?
The people who invent this stuff are either evil or lunatics.
Exactly. The dirty little secret is that these drugs are essentially narcotics. Not what the “anti-stigma” campaign will admit though.
“There is much talk about the evil selling of baby parts by Planned Parenthood”
A correction: they are not selling the organs, they simply are covered for the transport costs.
As if the “diagnosis” meant anything anyway.
I know a story like that too. A guy sexually abusing first his daughter then her daughters and when one of them tried to commit suicide psychiatry got its hands on her. The perpetrator of course never faced any justice.
Another story about a girl being physically abused by her mother, tried to kill herself – again locked up and the mother never faced any charges.
Thank you psychiatry…
LOL I wish we had health care workers like that – drumming sounds fun.
“my experience was that every psychiatrist I dealt with was a sociopath, or else incredibly stupid and delusional”
I can back that up with my experience. Not one who was anything other than a psychopath or a fool.
Not in my books – I prescribe to the same heresy ;).
I’m not surprised it didn’t help – neither drugs nor CBT cure real life problems. In fact drugs can make it worse. I’d advice you to go off the drug if possible but that of course is dependent on if you can afford a possible withdrawal. There are good resources on MIA and elsewhere how to taper off anti-depressants.
As to your other problems whatever they may be I only see one thing that really helps -get involved. Seek out people who suffer similarly and become a activist. I know it’s easier said than done but it’s better than being stuck in hopelessness and alone.
In other words – all one needs is a “good” therapist, whether he/she uses CBT, CBT plus sth else or whatever. The only problem is that “good” therapists are in a very short supply.
I think the question is not if the “predispositions” can be heritable – they clearly are as we see personality traits passed down the generations. But these are quite different from being “mental illnesses”. The fact that one person has more “predisposition” to become obese eating too many burgers does not mean obesity is a genetic disease, nor does it mean that feeding anyone such a diet is a good idea. It boils down to pathologizing normal human traits while what really is pathological is the environment.
That is a very thoughtful comment, especially “Genetic traits are not diseases.”.
As for why psychiatry is forever looking for THE GENE is very simple and you sort of spelled it out: “It will always be problematic social causes”. Psychiatry cannot deal with that because it is not in the business of changing society but in the business of keeping the status quo. They’re looking for a fault in an individual and so any mention of the environment has to be dismissed as unimportant since that’s something they don’t want to touch or even think about.
I’d add – it’s not only in psychiatry. We are now looking for medical ways to address obesity epidemics while it is clear that the place to look is in our collective lifestyle and not biochemistry.
These people should be in prison. Hiding things like that is criminal, no matter if it is faulty cars or faulty meds. The fact that they get away with it just paying a fine or not even is a proof that we live in a corporate state.
The biggest irony is that his eye problems were likely caused by drugs to begin with. One can’t love psychiatry more…
Inflammation/chronic pain? People take these to control pain and chronic suffering can cause violence. I’m of course just speculating here. It’s hard for me to imaging aspirin could cause aggression. Benzos – hell yeah.
We told you…
It’s pretty obvious to anyone who has ever taken these drugs that they’re poison’s. And if it isn’t it’s probably because they’re still taking them so they can’t think straight (or not at all).
Which they may as well do with no psych help at all. Probably better for that matter.
“avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to therapeutic treatments.
Maybe that’s the most important message…?
Well. isn’t that just common sense? This thing that psychiatry has long lost or maybe never had to begin with?
Go get them :). I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the outcome. The only shame is that these things never end up as criminal cases.
The answer to why these kids are prescribed “anti-psychotics” is quite simple – because in the current model the only thing the psychiatrists know to do is to drug people. And when one drug does not “work” then they need to go to another drug or add it on top. Since psychiatry has like 5 classes of drugs they are essentially flipping a coin (he seems sad – here’s SSRI, a bit angry – anti-psychotic etc.). It’s all ridiculous and tragic in the same time.
It is quite powerful…
Good point. Also there’s nothing more cruel and counterproductive to the violence and abuse that people expressing such despair are subjected to in the current system. No wonder more psychiatry -> more suicides.
Is you kid sad? Then f***ing talk to it. But no, you should put him/her on pills. Sick, perverted, disgusting…
I’m sure that having a bad teacher or being bullied is a mental illness. Which is also a great message to send to a kid struggling with toxic social environment. “These bullies who tell you that you’re useless and a weirdo – they’re right”. Awesome.
Some people have no shame.
This is disgusting propaganda and disease mongering incarnated.
“For the most prominent journal of American medicine to offer so much precious real estate for arguments that are half-baked and tendentious is amazing.”
I can’t say for sure but my instinct tells me the answer is “follow the money”.
“They also found that the stuttering could be eliminated with either a reduction in dose of the drug or raising doses of the drug in smaller increments during the initiation phase of treatment.”
Or by not giving people poisons to begin with. Works like a charm.
I think you have to first concentrate on yourself. Introspection is what one needs. Some people use meditation techniques for that, I have never thought they would agree with my personality until a friend made me realise I’m using “mindfulness” without knowing what it is.
What you need is self-acceptance. Not hating yourself, not loving or liking yourself -just accepting yourself for who you are. Everything else grows from that. And don’t be afraid of chaos. “Cognitive dissonance” is supposedly a bad thing but being in two or three or a hundred minds about one thing often only means accepting and internalizing the complexity of the universe.
I wish you could find a guide through it. But even without a guide it’s possible to got through it and emerge a better fuller person on the other side. That’s what crisis are for. I wish we had a more understanding society and a after environment for that.
What about a shamanistic crisis model? Maybe all a person in crisis needs is another person who has experienced his/her crisis before to guide and protect them. If I’m not mistaken in old cultures people undergoing such crisis were either under the protection of a shaman and/or put in a place of solitude (“safe place”) where they had limited ability to harm themselves or others but could work through the crisis. These were often in nature/ in isolated shacks and so on so they also limited the sensory stimuli, which could prevent the person from being overwhelmed. Maybe reproducing this kind of approach is what we need?
I’m sure that’s going to cause all the good professionals to cease prescribing “anti-depressants” to “bipolar” patients, right? Just as they have stopped prescribing benzos for over 4 weeks or high doses of anti-psychotics for long periods of time. Or to elderly who can face early death on them. I’m certain that the good doctors will take that seriously…
Well, the first problem I have is the one with assessing psychotherapy using clinical trials and such. It can be roughly summarised here:
http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1462:_Blind_Trials
The literature about psychotherapies is a mess and I my mind mostly because it can’t be anything else.
The second problem I have is the fact that these therapies essentially reproduce the same problem which exists in the medical model – they’re trying to fix the individual as if that person was somehow broken. It is entirely meaningless because people don’t live in a vacuum and their problems don’t come solely from within. Some people contribute their getting better over years to psychotherapy but it can be as easily contributed to their changed circumstances or simply growing out of a bad emotional phase.
Why I say that there are almost no “good” psychotherapists – well, that’s just personal experience.
I’m not against psychotherapy as much as I am against psychiatry. If you think it helps you, you’re free to engage in it. But the same standard as to drugs should apply and that is informed consent.
Btw, I’m always a bit skeptical about the studies that show an effect of something without showing the mechanism of how this effect is achieved. It does not mean that the study is wrong, only that there are many studies like that which never get replicated.
You have to consider the dose that’s for sure. Plus worms aren’t exactly people.
“I like the idea of scientists pledging to publish ALL of their research, no matter what the outcome. ”
Pledging is not enough. Pre-registering the trials should be mandatory and trials which were not registered as such should not be allowed to be published or even conducted. All the data save for the personal information which could identify the patients should be accessible to anyone for free in public repositories. Ideally the trials should not be conducted by pharma but by independent bodies with no monetary incentives tied to the outcome. At least this is the nice dream I have…
ADHD drugs are amphetamines and they have pretty much the same effects. They make people just as more productive and healthier as they do any meth addict.
Amen to that.
I had CBT tried on me and all it felt like was a person with “professional” training is trying to convince me that if I only use some cheap mental “techniques”, which I have either discovered in kindergarten without the help of this highly educated person or they simply never worked for me, my problems will go away. Sure…
The main problem with CBT and a lot of other psychotherapies is that they ignore the reality of one’s problems (sorry but talking to you won’t revive my grandmother or sexually un-abuse me or fill my bank account with much needed money) and offer simplistic advice on how to control one’s emotions which are insulting to anyone with intelligence only slightly above a very dumb cat.
That’s an undeniably excellent point. You can’t talk people out of having real problems. Reality tends to win this contest every time.
Or maybe clinical trials of psychotherapy are bs to begin with:
http://explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1462:_Blind_Trials
If you’re poor or a member of abused and disadvantaged class you’re a subject. There is no human experimentation on rich and powerful people.
It’s social conditioning by the media not to look too “extreme”. As Chomsky puts it:
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum….”
― Noam Chomsky, The Common Good
That is exactly what’s happening in this discussion too.
LOL… “having only “positive” feelings, along with “working productively” and having “mastery” over oneself and one’s environment”…LOL
If that’s healthy then a manipulative narcissistic psychopath placed in the position of power is the model we should all strive for. It does not matter if the “positive” is an appropriate response to one’s environment. Are you supposed to be “positive” after your child dies or after you got raped or when a thousand people die in a hurricane? Are you supposed to be “working productively” for less than a living wage in XIXth century safety conditions and in a job that you hate and consider harmful to the environment? The same environment that you are supposed to have “mastery” over? Are the people coming up with these definitions that dumb or that evil?
What you need is money out of politics first, else the “representatives” will be representing the pharma and not you:
wolf-pac.com
“And yet, you are now able to address a Congressional Hearing. I think that is more than enough evidence to show the benefits this facility brings to the state of Tennessee.”
Psychiatry 101. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. You get better – you should thank them for the torture. You kill yourself or turn into a brain-dead zombie – well, it’s clear mental illness is horrible and we need more psychiatry. There’s no discussion with this propaganda machine.
“HR 2646, the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act of 2015 and HR 2690, the Including Families in Mental Health Recovery Act of 2015.”
Why do they have to come with these Orwellian names?
““The potential consequences for patients’ safety calls for further investigations.” – criminal investigations they forgot to mention.
“Desperate people do desperate things, and the problem is not an illness that possesses of the mind, or of the body, so much as the problem is the negative circumstances that they find themselves in.”
If I were to be subjected to AOT I’d sure as hell become homicidal. It’s also known as “self-defense”.
“The proposal was fueled by a rash of police shootings (more than 40 since 2010), with officials claiming that 75 percent of the suspects shot suffered from some sort of mental illness.”
I love how the problem of people getting shot by police turns into the solution of using forced psychiatry against people who are getting shot. How about doing something with the out-of-control cops? It’s essentially the same problem as the black community faces – it’s always our fault and never the police.
I love your spirit :). Happy 25th, ADA!
“The fact that studies of suicide prevention have been so difficult to recruit to, suggests patients may have more sense than researchers in this field!”
LOL… true that.
“There are good psychotherapists everywhere.”
LOL… No there aren’t. There are almost no good psychotherapists.
“Meds seem to be the quickest way to reduce sx and get them feeling better about themselves.”
Oh I’m sure they do. Instead of anti-psychotics, why not try paralyzing drugs? They also make people calmer.
I suggest you try some of these drugs yourself and see how awesome you feel.
“The experience in medical school and residency should leave someone better trained and having more empathy for patients due to the intensity of the training. It is unfortunate that instead the training can leave many doctors distancing themselves from human emotion and arrogant about their knowledge.”
I think it’s only natural an human. Experiencing death and suffering every day leads to emotional blunting and withdrawal as a survival mechanism. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe in the psych professions. This is not something you can train yourself to and you can’t bond with that many people in any meaningful way. People in emotional distress need real relationships not “professionals”.
“Nevertheless, they more often than not report that thanks to the pharmacological therapy their moods are stable and fairly upbeat, their anxiety, racing thoughts, voices, sadness, etc. improved.”
I suggest you prescribe them homeopathy or herbal tees (telling these are the new cutting edge drugs) and see that most of them will feel better either way. It’s called placebo effect. For the rest temporary tranquilization may seem helpful until they come back with 10x more mental problems and physical issues on top of them a few months later. Have fun withdrawing them from the drugs then – I’m sure they will also have amazing time with that (just to be clear – I’m being sarcastic).
When it comes to actual studies it’s pretty clear that anti-depressants are not really anti-depressive more than a placebo, anti-psychotics are major tranquilizers (sometimes rightly called chemical lobotomizers) which in the long term lead to cognitive decline and hypersensitivity psychosis, amphetamines are… well… amphetamines, I don’t think one needs more information and benzos are addictive and cause terrible mental and physical side effects. I’m sorry to tell you but you’ve got no idea what you’re putting your patients through prescribing them these poisons. If you don’t believe try to take some anti-psychotics and see how awesome that feels or give yourself a few months of benzos and then try to stop (just to be clear: don’t really do that, it’s torture and I don’t wish that on anyone).
Good point. It’s not like there has ever been a golden age of psychiatry when they were not abusive or they managed to get a single thing right. This is a failure from the get go.
I totally agree with you. While getting “talk therapy” is clearly less damaging than drugs and ECT in most cases it’s far from beneficial. It’s the same message pushed on a person – you’re wrong, defective, broken and how you feel and react is abnormal. It places the blame and the responsibility on people who usually have been abused and traumatized. We need social change and justice and not being told to suck it up (now called “resilience”) in one way or the other.
“All psychiatric symptoms are the expression of our problematic characters.”
Well… no. I’ve agreed with the article up until this point. It’s again this same rhetoric that places blame and looks for solutions solely within an individual. It may not be as destructive as the biological model but it’s still harmful.
The drugs are awful, that’s true but in case of violence and suicide (the latter one is associated with psychiatric “treatment” in a dose-dependent manner) I think it’s important not to overlook the effect of dehumanization and torture. If you label people, treat them like human garbage, subject to daily dose of physical and psychological abuse and torture with no prospect of ever getting out not to mention receiving justice – it’s not very surprising that many of them will react by taking their own lives (who would not want to escape?) or by lashing out on others, sometimes the perpetrators and sometimes just the unfortunate bystanders. It’s a normal and human reaction to abuse.
When the powerful and people in authority commit crimes against humanity the society shrugs it off as necessary evil. When the powerless respond with anything other than total submission – well, these ba***rds must have deserved it all along. It’s the same whether you think of minorities, people who are occupied or “mentally ill”. Oppression is so predictable.
One thing is clear though: psychiatry is doing an awesome job to help “mentally ill” and society at large. Good work… (sarcasm alert).
“they did not examine how increasing psychiatric treatment may have influenced people’s likelihood of committing violence”
A major oversight. I can testify that psychiatric “treatment” aka torture causes suicide and violence (very often well justify as everyone should have a right to self-defense). The people who are most dangerous and aggressive are the ones who run the “hospitals”.
“Yes, in this system; we “reward” the abuser and “discount” the abused.”
Precisely…
“Section II.B of the Rules is titled “Prisoners with mental disabilities and/or health conditions.” Other categories of prisoners in Section II are sentenced prisoners, untried prisoners, civil prisoners, and persons detained without charge. While the provisions in Section I (including all the positive highlights mentioned above) apply to all prisoners, the separation of prisoners with disabilities as a special category marks them off as different because of their (actual or perceived) disability and makes discrimination appear to be legitimate. Such separation violates CRPD Article 19 and the principle of full inclusion and participation in Article 3.”
This part sounds like a disaster :(.
Thank you for updating the MIA readership about the current state of affairs and persistent advocacy. I just hope UN would take their own principles a bit more seriously, not only in the light of this documents but also the new (again…) sex scandals…
“is aspect of the problem of diagnostic uncertainty in ADHD is not about whether or not the diagnosis is correct; it is more fundamentally about whether or not medical diagnosis is the right thing to do. From this perspective, biomarker evidence might contribute to better (that is, more accurate) diagnosis of ADHD, but clinicians might also get better at doing the wrong thing.”
“But if it were to be clearly established, through honest, transparent, and replicated research, that the habits in question do, in fact, stem directly from some neurological pathology, then the matter would be resolved, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder would indeed be a real illness, amenable to investigation, diagnosis, and treatment within the medical model, and it would probably be given a name that reflected the biological pathology rather than the behavioral consequences.”
I think I’m on the side of the authors of that reviewed article on this one. I think the problem is (ignoring at this point all the other problems like the fact that the “ADHD” behaviours likely don’t have one etiology anyway) – what constitutes an illness? While in terms of physical illnesses this used to be a very clear cut thing (which thanks to pharma’s disease mongering is not the case anymore) “mental illness” has always been a more tricky thing. At some point we arrive at something that can be defined just as a normal human variability in temperament, personality, resilience to various forms of stress etc.. Not to mention social factors which define what is healthy=acceptable and what is not. I think the authors of the reviewed article may be accidentally asking the question of “is there such a thing as mental illness?” at least in case of ADHD. People are different and these differences will be reflected in biology – it’s only a matter of looking closely enough. But if these differences divide people into “sick” and “healthy” in terms of their mental function – that’s a different question altogether and I think that’s kind of what the authors are starting to contemplate.
Well, look at the bright side: the narcotics are essentially legalized. It’s freaking ridiculous.
The most amazing thing is that we’ve been there before and we’ve learnt nothing (in terms of effects of prescribing amphetamines as medical treatment and performance enhancing drugs).
Well said.
“become”? I think it has always been this way – it’s its sole purpose.
How about “mental” patients are almost never treated seriously by doctors and any medical complains are usually dismissed as “it’s all in your head”? I think there’s hardly anyone with a “diagnosis” who having his “diagnosis” disclosed to a doctor was not met with a dismissive attitude and denied treatment or told to see a shrink or take psych meds for a physical condition.
I think trying to fix the DSM is a fool’s errand. It’s a Book of Insults for a reason and you can’t make it better no matter how hard you try.
Btw, what are the conflicts of interest in this study? The critical analysis should always start with that.
Seriously, who prescribes an “anti-psychotic” to a pregnant woman? Or to anyone at all for that matter?
You don’t have the same life history, you’re not identical. Does the in-born, hereditary part of personality play a role in how one responds to the environment? Sure it does. But being a sensitive person is not sick. In fact our society need more “mad” people who respond more to abuse and injustice.
Another crap study. They didn’t control for the meds? Great, one can then use this study to make a paper ball for you pet to play with or as a backup in case you run out of toilet paper. That’s really all there is to say about it.
Completed and shared :).
More than that: a child that was sick and had to be taken to hospital was forcibly separated from his/her parents. It happened to me and some of my friends as small children – I spend several weeks in a hospital and my parents were not allowed to visit (!) because this would cause crying when they leave. So the comfort of the staff was more important than the psychological well-being of children. Many kids were traumatised this way as parental separation in a very early age leads to a whole lot of issues. For me it led to a profound distrust of medical personnel which turned out to be a good thing, nonetheless it’s a crime on a generation.
Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. It’s also a question of class and race. You’re not allowed to dream big when you’re poor. While nobody is safe from psychiatry you’re much more in trouble if you’re already disadvantaged – than any kind of behaviour that steps out of line is a sign of sickness.
It’s sick that people who have already been terribly harmed are then turned over to psychiatry to further victimize them and make sure they will never recover from the trauma. It’s disgusting.
Orange is the new black, prison is the new asylum. Oppressive systems don’t give up easily – they re-create themselves in other forms.
I’m sure it has nothing to do with socioeconomics and politics and stuff. People just randomly go nuts because they brains malfunction… “Anxiety disorder” hell yeah.
I will be surpsrised if your hopes come true :(. Especially in terms of punishing the “doctor”. Reminds me of the story from Germany (Gustl Mollath’s ordeal – you can google it) when a guy spent also close to 8yrs in a psych ward because of “paranoid schizophrenia”. He was eventually let out (and was fortunately not drugged while in the “hospital”) as it turned out that his “paranoia” was very justified by reality (his ex-wife conspiring with corrupt banksters to commit fraud). Of course none of the “good specialists” who have “diagnosed” him over the years has faced any consequences. They are still working and still labelling and locking people up. There are not consequences for abusers.
I am not surprised however abhorred that this has happened. There are no words to describe how I feel about this story…
Another stunning account of the damage ECT does is in the first chapter of Naomi Klein’s book “shock Doctrine” – it’s a great read as it links psychiatry, torture and neoliberal capitalism in explaining the doctrine of shock in society and individual lives. I highly recommend it to anyone who sees psychiatry as a part of a greater oppression system.
“How many women currently in abusive relationships are being drugged into submitting not only to the tyrant in their lives but the industry as well, too afraid to utter the truth?”
Story of my life… Fortunately I had my family and friends on my side so managed to escape.
Capitalism is a huge problem. It’s unsustainable too since it requires economy to forever “grow” which can’t happen on this one planet. It’s already killing the environment.
I don’t know what an answer is, some form of socialism or something else but we have to find it and do it fast.
Exactly what happened to me. I was “sane” only a bit unhappy in a toxic relationship (well, quite a bit unhappy). With the meds I got batsh*t crazy to the point I could not eat, sleep, work or do anything but cry in between panic attacks. Weird how it all went away with trashing the pills and the toxic bf.
“Sure haldol is good for a guy banging his head against the wall.”
No it is not. I’ve been there, I was suicidal and the worst thing that people do is to treat you like a freaking criminal and rape you with their drugs. It only makes things worse and suicidal people more suicidal (personal experience) and aggressive people more aggressive. you don’t put the fire out by pouring gasoline on it. Nobody deserves needle rape.
Let’s start with the fact that if you’re raping someone with a needle and then do it over and over again it’s hard to expect they will ever get better. I’ve seen how these “hospitals” look like and if I were a sadistic psychopath I’d immediately go work there. You don’t treat anything with torture, period.
Btw, everyone has a right to self injury.
The attitude that most psychiatrists have towards their “patients” is that of dehumanization. No wonder that they don’t consider what the person is trying to tell them – they don’t listen.
“I don’t think it is realistic to believe that it is feasible for us to change the economy (capitalism), or the mode of government (ostensibly democracy), or for that matter, any institutional force. ”
Well, then we can just all lay down and die since if we don’t do it and don’t do it fast that’s essentially the fate of our species (things like global warming, environmental destruction and threat of global nuclear war, you know).
If the drugs make you feel better and you accept the side effects then you’re an adult and you have the right to your own decisions but it’s kind of sad that drugging our brains should be an answer to the insanity of our society.
I think also reducing families to essentially the kid and his/her parents as opposed to multigenerational families is a problem. Having multiple caregivers (like parents, grandparents, aunts etc.) is spreading the stress of raising a child on more shoulders, socializing the kid to different people and generally making everyone happier. Having two or sometimes one person taking care of a child and working is insane.
“I would never tell a caring parent that they don’t know what’s best for their child.”
Well… One probably doesn’t say that because the caring parent usually won’t listen anyway but sometimes you wish they did.
People do many sh*** things to their kids in the name of care and never realize how much damage they have done until it’s to late. I’m not going to lecture anyone here on what they should and should not do with their kids, especially that I don’t know their real life situation but I have my thoughts about diagnosing 7yr olds with depression/anxiety.
LOL :D. Let me know when she answers ;P. Made my day, thanks.
“There is no cure for depression and anxiety.”
True – but only because they are not illnesses. Depression and anxiety are normal human feelings and they as much run in the families as love, trust, or any other good or bad human emotion.
“Mental illness does not care how much money you make. It does not care how educated you are or in what zip code you reside.”
Sure it does. People who are poor, come from migrant or minority communities etc. have higher rates of so-called “mental illness”. Which is very easily explained if you stop thinking about what’s wrong with someone’s brain and think what’s wrong with someone’s environment.
That being said – if you want to stay in the system and you think it makes you better it’s up to you. I just hope you’re not harming your kids by putting them in hands of psychiatry, especially in the form of drugs.
Resilient is one thing. But don’t we eventually want to live in a society where you don’t need to be able to take abuse, violence, poverty etc. and have a reasonably “sane” life? I have a problem not only with the medical model but primarily with the “blame the individual” model – that’s why I don’t like most of the psychological approaches either. It’s true that some people may sometimes need someone objective to point them in the right direction or teach them a coping skill but it’s not going to solve the problem of why people get depressed or “crazy” en masse.
I kind of see the fact that people are able to go crazy as a sort of a good thing. It speaks of tehir humanity and a deeper sensitivity. As awful a PTSD can be for a person who suffers and those around them – do you really want an army of people who can go to another country, kill people, see their friends getting killed and be all fine? For me that is inhumane. If people don’t suffer they don’t have any reason to stand up for change. It’s just like physical pain is there to protect you and teach you about the dangers of the world, mental anguish does the same thing. Sure, too much of either pain can kill you but one has to be able to feel it and feel it deeply. There’s no happiness without suffering – it is what makes us human and what makes our lives fuller. Doesn’t mean we should not try to get rid of the bad things that cause suffering but we should not suppress it and numb ourselves to it, be it with drugs or with “resilience”.
It’s funny how we still seem to have the same problems as we had over a hundred years ago. I’m just reading Bernard Shaw’s “Doctor’s dilemma” and author’s preface could have been written yesterday.
“Medications are necessary for some people.”
I can’t really see how that would be since the actual medical evidence, as little as there is of it, shows otherwise. Anti-psychotics prevent people from recovering and make them actually more prone to psychotic episodes as the tolerance and hypersensitivity builds over time. “Anti-depressants” are essentially placebos. Benzos are narcotics which make you sedated and/or high and should never be taken for loner than a month anyway. Amphetamines for “ADHD” – well, they are amphetamines, there’s little more to add. There is no evidence that keeping people on any of psych drugs over a long period of time does any good and plenty of evidence to show otherwise.
I think people mistake placebo effect and spontaneous recovery with drug working and withdrawal with “oh, I need to be on the drugs forever”.
“We medicate kids to adapt them to their surroundings (think public school or an unstable home). But we don’t talk much about adapting the surroundings to the kids. ”
Exactly.
I’m so happy that you’ve been able to save your daughter from the monster of psychiatry. She “only” lost a year, some people lose their lives. She’s lucky to have you.
Not surprising though. I still remember, from my time being a student in UK, the government-sponsored posters that were encouraging people to basically do a Stasi-like spying and denouncing their neighbours – suggesting if you see your neighbour doing something suspicious like throwing empty chemical bottles in trash you should suspect terrorism and call authorities. It’s state-sponsored paranoia and fear-mongering, while in the same time the government has a free hand in slashing social benefits, healthcare etc.
“over 70% of many psychotropics are written by non psychiatrists”
You want to know why we beat up at the psychiatrists, primarily?
Well, Steve has kind of answered that for me but I’ll just add: what percentage of other doctors (or “real doctors” to be more specific) prescribe benzos vs what percentage of psychiatrists? It may be a pathology in other areas of medicine but it’s not a founding block of these areas but a spillover from corrupt and broken psychiatry.
Hospitals are not places for drunk or aggressive people to begin with – I’ve heard there’s such thing as justice system, which includes police and jails. Besides 99.9% of “aggressive” behaviour by the “patients” is provoked by the stuff anyway starting with forcing someone in distress into these places against their will.
But instead of doing something to stop it we will just sell more happy pills.
Ulcers are usually caused by Helicobacter pylori. The stress hypothesis is another example of “we don’t know what causes it so it must be in your head” or at least caused by what’s in your head. That being said – prolonged stress is known to suppress immune system and can lead to worsening of many diseases.
I don’t want to be the grammar police but correcting the spelling could help (whch) ;P.
Exactly.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger – there’s a lot of truth in that…
“So, who is at fault for this misuse, providers alone?”
Yes. Providers are the ones with the prescription pad and they are the ones who are supposed to take the decision and who are (unfortunately only in theory) legally responsible.
If you look up “chemical imbalance” on Pubmed you’ll find studies on the influence of telling people this fairy tale on outcomes. Of course the outcomes are worse when people believe the broken brain theory but psychiatry is amazingly good at avoiding the facts for the “evidence-based, scientific” discipline.
True. Finding MIA saved me. I was alone and nobody wanted to listen and then I found people who understand and have dedicated their lives to exposing psychiatric abuse and looking for solutions.
You have a point here but I would not forget that trauma is very often not something of the past but it’s ongoing. If someone experienced a tragic event in the past maybe one can help him/her heal but what do you do when someone is living everyday in the conditions of abuse and violence: physical, psychological, economic, political…
This is another problem with psych professions – they tend to see psychological issues as something that comes from inside the individual and that has to be fixed inside this individual. That is almost never true.
“you rebellious radical, you!”
That’s exactly how people get BPD labels – they have their own brains and are not afraid to use them or even do that loudly for everyone to hear. Psychiatry is scared to death of these people so it labels them with the label only insignificantly better than psychopath to make sure nobody listens.
Good luck on your book. Sadly I don’t speak French but maybe it will also get translated at some point :).
Btw, I got intrigued by your bio mentioning you’re also an author of fantasy novels. Have they been published? Are they also French only?
“a lot of people are simply in the habit of thinking and beliefs that are anxiety-inducing–for example, that the world is doomed”
Well, it is, kind of. At least when you think about the future of our species it does not looks rosy at all. So nothing illusory about that. In my mind the only thing that can save one from anxiety is activism. Even if it feels close to meaningless against the powers that run this place, it is better than doing nothing.
Almost complete anterograde amnesia, feeling “high” followed by tolerance after 1 dose leading to aggression. Happily I have never taken that for longer than a few days at the torture chamber, oh, sorry “hospital”.
Btw, the good professionals managed to miss the fact that the person in their “care” has no functioning long-term memory. Pretty damn impressive for people who claim they are specialists in how brain works.
“Extreme anxiety is the normal and adaptive response to extreme situations. (…) The notion of dissipating these anxieties with neurotoxic, addictive drugs isn’t just ill-conceived, dangerous, and disempowering; it’s a dehumanizing obscenity.”
I could not agree more.
That sounds promising…I hope the reality will be just as good.
A stable, living wage job in a supportive social environment he forgot to add. But if you include these criteria – he’s quite right.
I feel so happy that I refused to take their drugs for any amount of time. How comes this sh*t is still on the market?
Btw, I sometimes wonder how psychiatrists can differentiate between consensual sex and rape since they don’t seem to be able to understand the difference between psychological help and psychiatric torture.
“Sometimes outside limits or containment may be helpful, but we need to be very careful with using any type of outside control because these modalities can be so easily misused and abused.”
What you’re describing is someone who wanted to be restrained. That is consensual and not at all similar to the abusive and torturous practice that happens all the time in “hospitals”.
May I translate it for you:
psychiatric hospitals = prisons that practice torture
control interventions = torture
patients = inmates, torturees
acute control medications = chemical lobotomizers, torture drugs
I think it’s a good thing to call spade a spade once in a while.
Exactly my thought when I read that. What insane society we live in when things like that are allowed to be uttered by people who call themselves doctors and everyone just nods their heads. This crap not only should have never been published but the geniuses who wrote it should have ethics committee all over them and a special investigator just to make sure they have not “helped” some people in this way.
“Patients with dementia already have a poor prognosis, especially when psychosis or aggression co-occurs. The opportunity of diminishing these symptoms with an antipsychotic and thereby increasing quality of life may outweigh the small increase in risk of dying.”
This has left me speechless. I normally don’t wish people ill but a part of me wants these a*[email protected]#$ to end up with dementia and on anti-psychotics. this is basically equivalent to saying: “oh, well, they’re anyway human garbage so let’s just kill them faster”. What?!? These people are doctors I assume… of the Mengele kind.
Have you seriously just compared depression to cancer? You mean an actual disease characterized by malignant tissue overgrowth to persistent low mood? Wow…
Btw, you’re saying you’ve spend 20yrs studying inflammation and in another post you claim to have worked under Eric Kandel who has never touched inflammation with a long stick.
Really?
Could you link to these papers on Pubmed?
Erik Kandel does not work with psychiatric disorders btw.
Given that ADHD meds don’t seem to have a positive effect over the long term maybe we should stick to classroom adjustments?
“The drug had some cognitive effect”
Yeah, so much for their argument it only causes increased concentration in “ADHD” people.
It’s a drug and it we don’t need to ask about long-term adverse effect since amphetamines are not exactly new to the market. This is plain stupid and pathetic that pharma is allowed to do that. We are acting as if we never had a problem with these drugs before. Amphetamines and opioids are non-addictive – since when? Who is the insane one here?
This is getting more ridiculous and scary every minute.
If someone wants to use the “doors to perception” they should be free to do so but please don’t pretend it’s medical.
Anti-psychotics are chemical lobotomizers and I would not give it to my worst enemy.
It’s the overuse of antibiotics not only in medicine but first and foremost in agriculture where it’s being put into the feed to increase meat yield. These practices should be illegal but sadly they’re not in many places.
Yeah, let’s ignore 20yrs+ of basic research that goes into pretty much every drug discovery and is done largely by public institutions and praise the companies of putting a few months effort in the end with over 20yrs of huge profits.
Well, even Cochrane Collaboration has to depend on the research which is largely funded by pharma so I’d not be surprised if their findings were influenced by publication bias, data manipulation etc. I know they’re doing tehir best to weed this out but the sad reality is that most of medical research is not objective.
Btw, using statins on everyone above certain age is clearly medical malpractice.
Or you can just encourage people to exercise and eat healthy without risking the drug’s side effects. Btw, low cholesterol level is not the same as lower risk of cardiovascular disease and the number of people who have genetic predisposition to high cholesterol and cardiac problems is relatively low.
Btw, the drug companies should not be allowed to use proprietary names – just use chemical names. Or do consumer-directed marketing. Or any form of marketing whatsoever.
Nice theory, except it never works in practice. In other developed countries opioid prescription are highly regulated and the addition problem does not exist on the same scale as in US.
Or you maybe just want to put your head in the sand and tell people to read the leaflets.
You don’t treat low level chronic pain with opioids. This is just bad medicine, of the sort that kills people. Opioids should be reserved for terminally ill and hardcore acute pain like in traumatic injuries.
Power and money are one. Money gives you power, power allows you to hoard more money.
The drugs are for the throwaways of society. “Superfluous population” that nobody needs or cares about. No matter that in reality the problem does not stop there, all classes are affected but psychopaths at the top are not well known for their thoughtfulness and concern with collateral damage and long-term outcomes.
This is insane. TNFalpha is a very important signalling molecule in immune system and beyond and sure as hell Abs against it have many side effects. It should not be prescribed willy-nilly…
This is another problem – zero accountability for doctors prescribing stuff, often off-label. While forbidding such prescriptions may not make sense maybe injecting some regulations and accountability could help?
Agreed. It can be summarized as “I can’t take this sh*t sober anymore”.
One question: do you know what signalling pathway is affected in Parkinson’s disease and what signalling pathway is targeted by anti-psychotics?
DOPAMINE.
It’s like giving a diabetic a bit of insulin and then stuffing him full of cake. Sure it will not only not help but render the guy deadly sick.
Exactly. Parkinson’s disease is caused by the death of dopamine-producing cells and levodopa can slow down the symptoms by making the still remaining cells more efficient at making the molecule. Giving the drug that does the exact opposite, that is disrupt dopamine signalling is crazy. It only shows you that the “doctors” have no f***ing idea what they’re doing. This is criminal medical error right here. I’m really lacking words on that painful stupidity.
Surprise, surprise. Given that “anti-psychotics” cause many symptoms which are similar to Parkinson’s disease and interfere with normal dopamine signalling (which is already disrupted in this disease) – how dense does one have to be to give these drug to these patients (or anyone at all for that matter).
It’s appalling. These people are either to stupid and uneducated to be working in the field of medicine or simply evil and should be in prison for murder. Or both.
True, but being a psychopath is not a mental illness. Some people are just evil and calling them sick is a disservice to anyone. Also psychopaths have rights too. If they don’t commit crimes then they should be left alone – when they do they should be punished to the fullest extend of the law but not beyond it. Even we have a legal standard and a justice system that is applied evenly to everyone or we don’t.
Btw, I’m not naive on that. I know a person who is not overtly violent but without a shadow of a doubt highly psychopathic and perfectly happy to cause havoc in other people’s lives (including mine). Nonetheless I’d defend his liberty and human rights just I do for anyone else.
I have people in family who run a foster home. They do not drug the kids and have not experienced any of what you have described even if the kids are sometimes very troubled. Kids who enjoy killing animals etc. are usually beyond reach and will grow into psychopaths but they are a small minority of otherwise normal little humans. And even the budding psychopath does not deserve being forced on these drugs. If the kid is doing all of the above mentioned things and no humanly done intervention can help – there is juvenile justice system. Assault and sexual molestation land you in a detention centre.
Define “good life” or “good family”. The idea that you can judge if someone has a good life from the outside is simply ridiculous. It’s equivalent of telling someone to stop whining since children in Africa are starving and one has “1st world problems”.
You never know the intricacies of one’s life. Even if everything looks fine on the outside you may not appreciate that there may have been traumatizing events in one’s childhood or permanent feeling of loneliness even if the theoretical social environment looks “normal”. On the other hand people living in terrible conditions may find themselves surrounded by others who have similar problems and therefore create a more understanding and supportive society.
Nice idea :). Will it be continued and expanded?
…of course…
It’s been well known that REM sleep is crucial for memory consolidation and that drugs (including sleeping aids) negatively affect sleep patterns.
It’s not people who are “sick” it’s the culture and the current socioeconomic system.
Not to mention that they generate “mental illness” in the first place. Ive League schools are not renowned for their welcoming social atmosphere and reading the quotes from people working there in the article I’m pretty sure that there’s a high selection pressure to keep in the psychopaths because anyone else is not “best suited for the environment”. I wonder who’s lacking insight…
“Civil rights laws and cultural destigmatization of mental health issues have made it possible for more students to attend top universities, he said. But even so, we have to “come to grips with the fact that there are just some people who aren’t best suited for the environment. It’s not good for them, it’s not good for us,and it’s maybe even dangerous.”” – Peter Lake, a law professor and higher-education consultant
Am I the only one who thinks this guy should be fired and send for “mental health” treatment in order to learn some empathy and human decency?
“It’s like diabetes”
Except that this rhetoric ends the moment you get a label. Can you imaging they treated someone like this if he had diabetes? The media storm would explode and there would be condemnation from all sides. But make it “depression” and it’s all about “balancing rights and security”.
Apparently sad people are very dangerous. Or maybe they are dangerous because thy may figure out why they’re sad and start organizing to do something about it?
“Products rather than people.”
Welcome to the brave new world. We are only worth something as “consumers” or workforce (preferably cheap).
I hope she wins and she wins big. This is ridiculous. “mental illness is just like any other illness” – my a**. Do they ask for all your medical records if you take a leave for a broken leg? It’s an illness like any other except it will make you a second (or third or on par with invertebrates and just behind a lab mouse) class citizen and screw you over for the rest of your life.
Please stop drugging people and selling narcotics as “anti-depressants” against non-existent diseases.
“a working low-dose, long-term-use application for the drug”
Told ya! “No, they’re only going to be used as a short term practice to put a person in a transforming mind state in the presence of someone who will guide them through it”. Sure it will. It will be used the same way all all these toxins and narcotics they sell as medicines and the only people who will get better because of that are rich a***es at drug companies.
I wonder when they will come the full circle and recommend a bottle of whiskey for depression?
They don’t even bother to read them. It’s only to dismiss the crazy person’s concerns.
OF course. Mentally ill just get progressively more crazy despite the best of treatments and they are anyway lazy moochers. One has to wonder: are people that stupid or that evil?
You do the right thing and you get punished for that. Way to keep the system rotten the way it is.
” The records of my medication were sometime indecipherable”
Funny how that works, right? In my documents there is hardly a mention of any drugs let alone the doses. And these are the legal documents based on which the “patient advocacy” (laugh along with me) has determined that they did everything right. Funny that they did not write in their own documents (obviously fixed after the fact and signed by a person who was not even there) that they abused me for no reason and then drugged with huge amounts of 4 different drugs including benzos leading to, among others, almost complete amnesia. How this passes as correct documentation I have no idea.
Btw, I have informed my family and friends that were they ever to call psychiatrists on me or participate in putting me into one of these Guantanamo-like holes also perversely called “hospitals” I will never speak to them again.
The only reason that your close one is justified in doing so if he/she is doing it for the first time and has been brainwashed to think this is a place where you get “help”.
One suggestion: maybe we should stop calling torturers and human rights abusers “caregivers”.
They can’t even handle antibiotics. I stopped counting how many times I was prescribed an antibiotic for a viral infection and not prescribed one for a clearly bacterial one.
Medical doctors lack basic biological knowledge and very often are not interested in understanding what is that they actually do with a given drug or procedure. It may work in some cases if just by chance you have something “standard” but sure as hell you may also get yourself killed by trusting them too much.
It must be an excellent education system that produces doctors who have no f***ing clue what opioids are and how they work on people. One would think that an averagely intelligent teen should know that. These are not brand new drugs that have never been used before – you don’t have to study medicine to know they’re freaking addictive in any way shape or form if you only read some XIXth century novels.
It’s really depressing. If they don’t know what ones of the most famous drugs do to a human than I don’t want to know what is their knowledge on anything more cutting edge than a morphine derivative.
“law to require welfare recipients to serve as foster parents as a condition of aid”
SERIOUSLY?
“monthly state stipend of about $200 per kid”
How much is the monthly dose of anti-psychotic? We can’t give money to kids but we sure as hell can spend it to enrich drug companies.
“If you want to do something about this terrible problem, one has to go deeper than simply trying to outlaw the use of drugs.”
No. You start with outlawing what is obviously wrong. Then people will be forced to find otehr solutions and then you can work on the right as opposed to bad ones. Otherwise there’s no reason for the system to change. It’s like saying: you can’t simply outlaw slavery, you have to go deeper and address social issues in black communities. Sure one has to but the injustice has to be fixed first.
“other than 15 minutes with a shrink every two weeks”
Having known some shrinks in my life I would not let any of them near my cat, let alone a traumatized child.
“remediating symptoms”
These are not symptoms. An they are not treating someone’s illness they’re getting rid of inconvenience for them on the expense of the poor kid. I hate this perverse, sick language so much. Orwell would be proud to have come up with that one.
I think that people need real relationships not fake ones bought by money. Psychotherapy is to this like prostitution is to love. It can maybe help some people to go on in the short time but what most people need is a real friend.
People are different and have different experiences. Have you considered that maybe these people who “break down” more easily have had more extensive experience of trauma and/or other stresses? It’s a difference when something bad happens to a person who has had a good childhood and has a supportive circle of friends and family and another matter if it happens to someone who has already had traumatic experiences in the past or feels isolated from otehr people, lonely etc. Personality of course plays a role and that is partly genetic but I believe that environmental stressors, especially the ones of social kind are more important.
Plus how would you “fix” biology? We have all seen the disastrous effects of this approach. Are you assuming that some types of personalities are defective and have to be changed because they’re more sensitive to injustices and crimes of our world? These tend to be the very people who have the most to give to the society, not the psychopaths who rarely if ever suffer from any psychological distress. Madness is an expression of humanity, not a defect.
Psychiatry = social control. It’s really all one needs to know.
I think gun violence is linked to having a gun and using it against someone.
Btw, I can bet some money on the notion that most gun violence is committed by men. Is being a men a mental illness? This is the kind of reasoning that goes on in here.
I love the rhetoric they used – the same as for “schizophrenia” and “anti-psychotics”: disease causes brain shrinkage, drugs prevent it even though the data shows otherwise.
Btw, hippocampus constantly kills and adds cells during life (it’s the only known place with robust neurogenesis in the adult human). So even if depression really leads to cell loss, which well may be (due to social deprivation for instance that often goes with feeling down) it can be easily reversed by taking the person out of this state.
Or maybe “BPD” is a go-to label for anyone you don’t like or who does not want to buy into your bs?
I think that explains it better.
Addiction can be to a substance that has biological activity (like alcohol, heroin etc) or to simply doing something pleasurable. So I guess the metabolism can play a role in some forms of addiction. I’ve heard that people who get drunk more slowly and have more tolerance for alcohol become alcoholics more often but I have also not seen any research to really back it up.
Bottomline – even if you have biological makeup more prone to alcoholism it’s still mainly the social and psychological factors that make it a problem.
Psychiatry’s main social role is to blame and silence the victims. It’s not what what was done to you that’s wrong – it’s your reaction to it. It’s not that you were abused – it’s that you have a sick brain. It’s a truly disgusting form of oppression.
That’s a claim that psych-professionals wage very often against people with “mental illness”. Very popular for BPD label – described as crazy b**es who lack empathy. I think some people working in this professions don’t know what they’re talking about. Maybe they should first find some empathy in themselves.
It’s amazing and depressing in the same time that anyone takes them seriously. ECT? Really?
That is true. Sticking to one’s principles against the odds is something to be admired.
How about 100% reduction?
But OK, I guess it’s a good thing that they’re doing something at last.
So nice that the Supreme Court has struck down EPA’s air quality control measures…
Who cares if the system is dysfunctional if there’s money to be made.
Truth of the matter is that in other Western countries where people don”t have that much access to guns there’s less gun violence. It won’t solve all the social issues around crime but it will take the dangerous toys away from problematic people.
Better to find a scapegoat than to p*** off the NRA.
“But basically every single “illness” category has the same problems our community has. Issues with with key opinion leaders, evidence-base, bogus research, and “treatment” vs. prevention. ”
Sadly that is true. Even sadder: these are not new issues. I recommend reading a book by Bernard Shaw “Doctor’s Dilemma” (especially the author’s preface) written some 100years ago and seeing what’s changed. Spoiler alert: not much.
In with bpdtransformation on that one – you can’t make a standarized double blind placebo controlled study on psychotherapy period so why bother. Some people believe that therapy has helped them and it seem to have fewer “side effects” than the drugs and can’t really be forced on you in any meaningful way so I don’t mind it even though I have a rather low opinion of clinical psychology in general.
I am missing one thing in this post: information about any conflicts of interest that the authors have, especially in terms of pharma sponsorship.
Personally I think this particular “study” was worth reporting on since it nicely shows the nonsense of the whole “too much/too little serotonin” so-called research. Also it has been quite widely reported in the media so I’m only waiting for people on the internetz starting to quote it as absolute proof for this and that.
Psychiatry caused me to have panic attack and swaths of other issues that I never had before and I’m largely rid off now (except for psychiatry induced trauma and associated phobias). They are a bunch of harmful quacks and calling them witchdoctors is and insult to all the witches and shamans out there.
They actually made me super anxious (Prozac) so I could support the article. Which I don’t either way since I don’t believe that complex emotions like anxiety can be switched on/off by a simple global neurotransmitter manipulation.
But the way – does it now then follow that SSRIs cause anxiety ;)? This is such a bucketfull of nonsense…
Sure it is… Show me more of these nice coloured brain cartoons and maybe I’ll believe.
“Human contact with caring, helpful medical people, right?”
That may be true except that I am yet to meet a psychiatrist who can provide the caring/helpful contact. Most of them would easily fit a description of a psychopath.
“treatments are helping reduce or improve “negative” symptoms such as “diminished expression of affect,” disengagement, disinterest, social withdrawal, and impaired functioning in daily tasks.”
Since these symptoms are largely caused by the drugs used to “treat positive symptoms” – not surprised.
Or we should fold that paper, then make a ball out of it and throw it straight into a bin. Badly designed experiments can’t be made better – they should be re-designed and repeated.
Nonetheless, the discussion of a real life impacts of publishing such rubbish stands. Risks of type I and type II errors are quite different.
Not to mention that people should have been blinded as to the form of treatment and I’m not sure how can you possibly do that with switching protocols, let alone psychotherapy. Drugs do produce obvious side effects in almost anyone who takes them so good luck blinding anyone.
That’s a good point.
This is something that should end the main authors of the study in prison.
As much as I despise drugging people I have my doubts about the psychotherapy. The main reason why I support these kinds of recommendations is because I find it much less damaging than drugs which physically destroy your brain and body. As to it being “safe and effective” I really don’t see it.
“We are not in control of our feelings , but we can control what we think about.”
I respectfully disagree. The only thing that some of us kind of control is the words that come out of our mouths as we think and feel. The rest isn’t controllable unless you treat distraction as a form of control.
In other news: breathing under water causes drowning. It’s funny what surprises people when they subscribe to the “broken brain” theory of “mental illness”.
“The findings contradict assertions of advocates for involuntary treatment like E. Fuller Torrey, wrote the authors.”
It’s funny that anyone would take seriously the lies that come from this person’s mouth. “Turn over the furniture” & co guys who can’t wait to force someone down and inject them with poisons.
That is sadly true. Retraction Watch is a great resource and they’re doing amazing work tracking down and documenting misconduct and other issues with science publishing.
“there was something wrong with ME, when I got too much clarity about the situation, as though I were delusional”
You’re beautifully describing the act of crazy making that serial abusers have mastered. Psychiatry is all about blaming the victim.
“Psychiatrists are ridiculed as members of a “tinkering trade” who induce their subordinates to stage elaborate rituals designed to show that they preside over a medical establishment devoted to humane care and cure, when in reality, they are little better than prison guards helping to generate the very pathologies they claim to treat. ”
…which holds true still today.
Very nice article on the recent history.
😀 LOL.
“mentally ill young men”
Scapegoating 101. “Mental illness” is causing all the evil in this world, and pill popping is going to cure it.
According to what I’ve read he was taking Xanax and that in high doses. I don’t think it’s likely that it was a sole reason for what he did but these drugs have effects such as emotional blunting (that includes feelings of empathy) and loss of impulse control. The guy clearly had other issues and he was clearly a racist but not every racist ends up as a mass shooter. These things have always more than one reason but drugs don’t make it any better and possibly are a final straw.
That is a very accurate analysis of the current propaganda.
“people with learning disabilities are not always well served by Mental Health Legislation.”
No one is well served by the Mental Health Legislation. I love how people love coercing others to “treatment” as long as they don’t end up on the receiving end.
It’s a crime of enormous proportions.
Btw, what about the foster parents? Are they going with it and thinking that’s OK?
I hope I’ll be able to go…
Insanity… Their poisons aren’t working and people start to catch up (plus the patents are running out) so it’s time to get new drugs. And what can be better for “depression” than narcotics.
There are many things that cure “depression” and none of them are psychotropic drugs.
I have not heard about that book, thanks :).
“redress includes five forms of reparation; restitution, compensation, rehabilitation, satisfaction and guarantees of non-repetition. All of which are of great importance for victims of ill- treatment in the mental health system.”
I’m looking forward to the day these will be implemented, especially the last one…
“the fact that I took the pill and put it into my own mouth, that I did not test the threat that was made, the fear that they instilled in me and my inability to maintain a sense of self in the face of it, all made me feel ashamed”
This is so true…
I still think that the only thing that saved me was my rebellious nature – even drugged up to my gills so that I could hardly remember what was going on I managed to fight back and resist. Even if that came at a risk of being stuck in the system. I still have a sense of pride about every little thing I did to resist and angry at myself about every decision to comply. But I’d never blame people who decide to go with the system out of fear. It’s not on the victims to take the responsibility for the crime, it’s on the abusers.
This is so brilliant – made my day, thank you :D.