Comments by Ted Chabasinski, JD

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  • I am not sure exactly how I feel about the concept of the camp. But I would go myself except that I am very sick. I am not sure how this gathering will work out either, but I hope it does, and I wish the best of luck to the people who are organizing it. The idea of people in our movement getting together and being nice to one another — how can it be bad? The more I think about it the better I like it.

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  • I want to put in another good word for a class action lawsuit against the psychiatric drug companies and the psychiatrists who are funded by them. I am a lawyer myself, but it is very hard for me to gauge the possibility of success of such a suit. Success usually means that the defendants will have to pay out a lot of money to the plaintiffs. But whether that would happen or not, such a suit, if well-publicized, would get the general public to start asking questions about the psychiatric religion. We often hear a lot of talk about “banning psychiatry.” That would be nice, but our real and doable task is to discredit psychiatry, and a class action lawsuit might be a good step in that direction. If there is anything I can do to help this happen, please let me know.

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  • Although I am (still) an attorney, I don’t have any experience with class action lawsuits, so I can’t say how this one might work out. But it is very clear to me that, no matter how this proposed suit will fare in the courts, if we make sure that the general public hears as much as possible about this, it will be a big step forward in taking away the power of psychiatry, which is more of a very profitable cult than a real medical specialty. The more the public sees psychiatry as it really is, a destructive force in our society, the sooner psychiatry will have its power taken away. What was done to me was over sixty years ago, way past the statute of limitations, so I can’t be a plaintiff, but I will urge everyone I know to be part of this lawsuit if they can.

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  • First I want to say that I feel very positive about what seems to have become more and more an anti-psychiatry viewpoint being presented by MIA.

    As far as a class action lawsuit, I think it is a great idea, but if it happens it will take a small army of public interest lawyers. The other side will gather a large army of high-powered corporate lawyers, and a large fortune of funding from the drug companies. But I am sure you know that.

    I wish my law practice had been more high-powered, and that I was still practicing, so I could help with this enterprise. Any lawyers who take on this challenge, will, I think, be performing a great service to humanity.

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  • This story is very moving, and I can identify with Catherine, as I too was severely abused by psychiatry as a child and teenager. What can I say? We have to fight back against this horrible cult that claims to be a medical specialty, fight back as hard as we can. One thing that would help is if more people who have had experiences like this came out of the closet. Right now, I think the average person thinks psychiatry is benevolent because they don’t realize how many people have been abused by it. About one person in ten in the United States has been an inmate in a psychiatric facility, but most folks think people who have survived psychiatry are a very small group. Fight back!

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  • This was REALLY well-written. Have you written any larger pieces about your psychiatric experience? Please let me know; I would love to read them. I have been struggling for years now to write a memoir about my own psychiatric experience, which took up my entire childhood from ages six to seventeen. I am much older now, age 85 to be exact, but when I think of what was done to me then, it brings back the feeling from then that I am a subhuman mental case. Not very “therapeutic”, eh?

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  • I was amazed to read that in the middle of the high-level advocacy work Laura was doing, she repeatedly fell into the hands of the psychopaths running various psychiatric prisons, but she kept on doing her life’s work! Good for you, Laura! I was lucky that once I got out of the psych institutions where I spent my whole childhood, I never went back. The closest I’ve come was maybe a year ago, when I started to cry in the emergency room, realizing that my days of good health were over. Some nurse literally ran up, and made plain that she thought I should be committed, because , I guess, crying in the emergency room is a sure sign of serious “mental illness”. Everyone knows that, right? Isn’t psychiatry wonderful, so helpful?

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  • Yes, psychiatry is indeed a cult. When its wild claims to effectiveness are compared to what it actually does to its unlucky patients, anyone who believes in their claims is no longer paying attention to reality. Unfortunately, a large proportion of our society does this. I don’t know what word would really accurately describe psychiatry as anything but a cult.

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  • Sera, I think you make a very good point (as I understand it) that we need to understand the thinking of the people who oppose our freedom and like to think of us as “nut cases”, although of course they think of themselves as too respectable to use such direct language. But I don’t believe we have to wait to figure out completely what is going on in the minds of our respectable oppressors. We can use the same tactics as other groups through the centuries, making ourselves impossible to ignore by insisting we have to be listened to. I’m talking about classic tactics like demonstrations, sit-ins, all the ways that oppressed people have always used to force their oppressors to have to justify themselves.

    The New York Times just published a book review talking about the Scientologists. I’m not a big fan of Scientology, psychiatry, or any other cult. But what most struck me about this review is that it ran through a catalog of those who criticize psychiatry, AND THERE IS NOT A SINGLE WORD ABOUT THOSE OF US WHO HAVE SURVIVED PSYCHIATRIC ABUSE. I am sure you are very aware that for quite some time. it was psychiatric survivors who were leading the fight. We are easy to ignore now because our movement has made itself invisible. We have to make ourselves VERY visible, and soon, and the methods for that are classic.

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  • Sera, I admire your willingness to deal with the bigotry of the readers of this NYTimes article and the thoughtful way you have gone about it. But I wonder whether it is possible to fight bigotry with rational argument. I have always seen us psychiatric survivors as an oppressed group like any other, and in my 65 years or so of political activism, as a supporter of other oppressed groups and of psych survivors like myself, I’ve found that rational argument does not work well in fighting bigotry. It isn’t what stopped slavery, it hasn’t stopped sexism or racism. The few positive changes we’ve accomplished came about through political activism, from refusing to accept being treated as less than human. I wish we were out there refusing very forcefully to accept the debased role in society that the bigots have tried to force on us.

    Here in the United States, as people are starting to realize, our country is rapidly becoming a totalitarian state. The people who want it that way don’t give a damn about intellectual arguments. We have to try to stop them in a different, more political way. If we psych survivors don’t do that, I fear that, just like under the German Nazis almost a century ago, we will be the first group to be exterminated.

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  • Yes, I had a couple of stays at the Vancouver Emotional Emergency Center in 1974, during a very troubled period of my life. Later, I learned that what they did at VEEC was very similar to Soteria House, even though VEEC’s funder had no experience with Soteria. But he sure understood that people in crisis needed emotional support, not drugs and shock and all the other damaging practices of psychiatry.

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  • Thank you, Jenifer, for having the courage and commitment to write this article on MIA. I know how hard it is to talk and write about these experiences. You are a brave and admirable person.

    I am also a psychiatric survivor from my childhood. The “child welfare” system took me from my foster parents at age six and handed me over to the notorious psychiatrist Loretta Bender to be experimented on with shock treatment. (Dr. Bender went on to take money from the CIA for experimenting on children to see what would happen if they were kept on LSD all day long for months at a time.) While in the “hospital” I was repeatedly raped by a staff member, a very common occurrence on psychiatric wards for children. When I told my foster parents about it, Bender’s response was to say that it was a delusion caused by my mental illness.

    When Doctor Bender was finished with me, I was sent to a state hospital, where I spent the rest of my childhood until I was seventeen. Although I had been told in the “hospitals” over and over that I was a subhuman mental case, I went on to work my way through college, hold down responsible jobs, and eventually become a lawyer representing people abused by the “mental health” system.

    If the public knew more about what psychiatry does to children, it would accomplish a lot toward breaking up the cult-like belief people have in the profession. Those of us who are childhood survivors of this cult should be joining together to support one another and expose what the shrinks are doing. If anyone reading this wants to do something about it, please contact me.

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  • I have not read Tina’s book yet , but from this review I get the general idea. I agree that calling for ending psychiatry and its abuses isn’t going to work until we start talking about how to deal with people’s troubles in a nurturing and helpful way. I myself, who literally grew up in the insane asylum, was greatly helped at a very difficult time in my life, when I stayed in a Canadian place similar to a Soteria House, where I got emotional support and respect, instead of the drugs and humiliation that psychiatry offers. I think it would be very fruitful for our movement, whatever name we call it, to advocate for what we think should be done, not just criticizing what is done now. Of course, though, we have to do both.

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  • I would like to ask how these places are funded, and also say that I was a resident in a place similar to Soteria , called the Emotional Emergency Center in Vancouver, Canada in the early 1970’s. I was in a severe crisis for sure, bur even a few weeks in a place where I received mainly just emotional support was a tremendous help. That summer, I went on a national organizing project for the psych survivor movement that took me to 15 or 20 cities by Greyhound bus, trying (fairly successfully) to bring together the scattered groups and people into a real movement. My trip was also successful in creating another burnout for me, but the Emotional Emergency Center took me in again and was again very helpful.

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  • The prevalence of anxiety and depression can be easily explained if one is not promoting psychiatry and its toxic drugs and brutal treatment of those who come under its power.

    Our society(and of course, many families) is full of events that anyone would be anxious and depressed about. But it works better for those who run our society to keep people in line and prevent them from doing something about these events. Thus, the cult of psychiatry and its lies help our oppressive “leaders” to stay in power. Are you poor? Have you been sexually abused as a child? Worst of all, as I was, have you been under the power of psychiatry since you were a child? Of course you feel anxious and depressed.

    I have a wonderful new friend, fifty years younger than me, who was almost literally born under the power of psychiatry. And so we have a lot in common. She is really an admirable person, intelligent, ethical, helpful and nurturing toward other people, and a young woman of many talents. I love her, and it is heartbreaking for me to see all the self-blame and lack of self respect she has, that I instantly recognize as the result of what the psychiatrists did to her.. I have had fifty more years than she to heal from psychiatry, but how can one heal from a childhood under the power of a “helping profession” that spends so much of that power telling you over and over that you’re a subhuman mental case?

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  • This very thorough article is obviously really valuable. I can certainly follow it, but even with my Phi Beta Kappa key, it is difficult for me. Although my health is near collapse now, I will soon be trying to start yet another group to fight psychiatric abuse, with a working title of “Protect Our Children from Psychiatry.” As many know, I spent almost my entire childhood in psychiatric institutions, though I am now a lawyer, and I have a special interest in psychiatry’s abuse of children. I also think that the public would be much more willing to question the psychiatric cult and its destructive practices when children are involved.

    The sophisticated critiques of psychiatry in MIA will be very helpful for this, but I think most people will have trouble following them. May I suggest that articles like this include some kind of easy-to-follow summary at the end? I know if this group really happens, we will be asked what our basis is for our refusal to obey the lies of psychiatry, since after all, psychiatrists are “doctors” and “scientists”, not subhuman mental cases like us. Easy to read summaries of great articles like this one would be very helpful. And thank you again, Bob, for writing this.

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  • I am an attorney, now retired, who has represented thousands of people to fight their proposed commitment to psychiatric incarceration. Here in California, the legal standard for commitment is that the person be a danger to others or themselves, or “gravely disabled”, defined as not able to meet their needs for food, clothing, and/or shelter. I am curious what the legal standards for commitment are in British Columbia. If peoples’ human rights are to be protected, there needs to be a clear cut and rational legal standard. It’s not a panacea, but without such a standard, the horrible abuses of institutional psychiatry will continue to hurt huge numbers of innocent people.

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  • This is yet another example of how the mental illness system is becoming much more powerful and destructive. Given the large number of people who are losing their freedom through this fraudulent organization, FUNDED BY HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF GOVERNMENT MONEY. I think this scam ought to be a large focus of our liberation movement. It is worth non-violent demonstrations where we can organize them.

    And this scam fits right in with the drift of American politics toward Fascism/Naziism that we are seeing now. Do I really have to remind psychiatric survivors and our supporters that the first group of people murdered by the Nazis in the Holocaust were the German psychiatric inmates?

    People, we just can’t ignore things like this and continue to give up on activism. I can tell you right now, that there will not be “Alternative Conferences” at the concentration camps.

    I think if we focussed on this issue, we could get the general public to see what psychiatry is up to and how it threatens almost everyone. It is time we come from the shadows and start defending ourselves before it is too late.

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  • Thank you, everyone, for your comments. The buttons are coming soon. We have settled on a very good design, and I am investigating a local manufacturer for them. Of course, the offers to help out financially are very welcome, but what we specially need are people who will help distribute them. If you are willing to help get the buttons to people who will wear them, that will be a great help.

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  • Although I am a lawyer in California, I am on inactive status, plus it would not be a good idea for me to offer legal advice without ever talking to you in person. PLUS I have never practiced in your state, PLUS I can’t quite follow your question and the events behind it. All US states have Protection and Advocacy programs who could advise you, and I urge you to contact them. Sorry I can’t help with this.

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  • Actually, i think the general public is much more likely to pay attention when they hear about children being abused. I would like to encourage people in our movement to emphasize the abuses of kids by psychiatry. If we want to take away psychiatry’s power, we have to get the public to se the reality of what psychiatry really does.

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  • This might be taking away from your point some, but I have to say that MIA is not “the movement.” It is a publication where issues of the movement are discussed, which is very helpful, but it is not a forum for activism. Right now, unfortunately, there isn’t much activism, but just a lot of talking.

    Myself, I would work with anyone who sincerely wants to end the abuses committed by the “mental health” system. But I think you can understand that those of us who have actually been victimized by that system have the most at stake in trying to end these abuses.

    Also, I was very excited by the article we are all trying to comment on, because it is an attempt to figure out what function these conferences should have, and what we should be trying to accomplish with them. I think it would be helpful we tried to focus our comments on that topic. The end of SAMHSA funding for the “Alternatives” conference gives us an opportunity, I think, for any new conference to be a lot more focused on actually how we can fight psychiatric abuses, instead of being funded by the abusers.

    We need to strategize about this topic, so can’t we talk about that?

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  • Yeah, although I am a democratic socialist myself, I am fine with working with people who are conservative or whatever. Szasz, for instance, was quite conservative in his general politics, but made a great contribution to our cause. Senator Grassley of Iowa is a very conservative Republican, but he has been very outspoken in his criticism of the abuse of psychiatric drugs. I see no reason to pick a fight with anyone who sincerely wants to work for this cause. Of course, I would not work with the neo-Nazis or the KKK, but they are not about to try to join us, to say the least. I do have a feeling, though, that once our movement regains the activism we used to have, a lot of this infighting will stop. It is hard to argue with someone when you are both in front of some abusive facility both helping each other to carry a banner that says Stop The Abuse of Psychiatric Inmates.

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  • I hope this discussion can get back to the topic of how we can have effective conferences that will lead to effective actions we can take to remove the power of psychiatry. I am not a very ideological person myself, and although I certainly think our cause should be linked with the causes of other oppressed groups, I will work with anyone who sincerely wants to work with us. I think it is a mistake to focus on the fine points of doctrine. We need to focus on how we really can accomplish something.

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  • Yeah, it is our job to show people that we ARE a human rights movement, and that almost everyone is at risk of being pulled into the orbit of psychiatry. Sure, we have not been very successful at reaching even our own, potentially very large constituency, but now we have a chance to do that without being told what to do by the people who both fund us and oppress us. I don’t think figuring out what to do will really be that hard. There are MANY campaigns we can do that would have an effect. We just need to strategize and ACT!

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  • Yes, Daniel, the Southern California group already has a good core, as far as I can tell. And I think you have plenty of people there to organize a small conference in your area. People have grown used to the idea that conferences have to have many hundreds of people, and be held in expensive hotels. Before SAMHSA, we would meet on college campuses, and at least once even at a campground. People could afford these conferences, and you didn’t have to try to get your local “mental health” department to fund you, which I hope people can now see was NOT a good idea. WE can do this! YOU can do this! Myself, I think a small close-knit conference creates an atmosphere where ideas for real organizing are easier to happen, and where people who don’t think of themselves as leaders can realize that they too can make important contributions. Go for it!

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  • GREAT article, and really good comments too. I especially like the emphasis the author puts on talking about strategy and what actions we can take. I would add that any future conferences should make sure we work more on being supportive of one another, as our liberation movement sometimes makes me feel as if I am back in Rockland State Hospital, where I grew up.

    I think it is a blessing in disguise that SAMHSA and the rest of the “mental health” system will no longer fund the “Alternatives” conference. This leaves us free to talk about what we need to do to end the power of psychiatry.

    Myself, I think what we need are small, regional conferences, where people have to drive a few hours at most with a car full of comrades, and where the expenses are kept down so that people don’t have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to attend. We need to spend some time trying to create a nurturing, supportive atmosphere, and then do just what the author suggests — work on our strategy for taking away psychiatry’s power. It makes no sense to me to have a conference where all we do is talk. Of course, that is the kind of conference which is (or was) exactly what the funders wanted. In the process of doing this, we will also be creating new leaders, who by thinking about what needs to be done, will be training themselves to actually do it.

    And we need to go back to the practice we had before SAMHSA took over, where we had a demonstration against whatever oppressive “mental health” facility is nearby. Never any shortage of those! This emphasizes for the conference-goers what our task is as a movement.

    The first such conference may need to be national, but it can still be relatively small, and I think it should be. MindFreedom International had such a conference in 2000, and it was generally thought to be a success.

    But after that, what I am hoping to see is that most or even all the conference attendees each organize a local conference of their own, hopefully dozens of small conferences around the country, each covering a relatively small area, so that a network can be formed and people can get to know one another face to face, not just on their computer on some &#(&!!$)&$## “social media.” And doing this will give a lot of new people practice in being leaders themselves. Even if they are able to gather up a dozen people or so, or even just a handful who meet in someone’s living room, they will experience themselves as actually LEADING. We need this kind of grassroots organizing. In fact, we had this before until we let the system take us over.

    A group of even a dozen people who are closely knit and have a strategy for what they want to do in their area can accomplish a lot.

    So thank you again for this excellent article, which I think calls for just what our human rights movement needs. And I invite the author to contact me, and perhaps we (and a lot of others, it seems) can all work together to carry out what this article calls for. If we stick together, we can still achieve what I and many others have tried to do for a long time.

    The people united will never be defeated!

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  • I do think that in most places like this in the United States, children are not held for many years, as I was. What is more common is that children are put on drugs and kept there, sometime for the rest of their lives. I know that I would not have been able to survive Bellevue and Rockland State Hospital if I had been drugged. I would have died maybe twenty or thirty years ago, sitting in front of a television in a daze.

    This will not change unless as many people we can organize fight back.

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  • I think it is honorable for decent people to work within the system and try to be as helpful as they can. Even the writer here, though, makes clear that won’t do much to change the overall system.

    There is nothing really mysterious about the “mental health” system, though it certainly has succeeded, so far, in promoting that perception. At bottom, though, we are looking at a social institution dedicated to maintaining the power and privilege of a few people against the many, just like much of the rest of our society. And it does this by violating the human rights of its “patients.”

    Other groups whose human rights have been grossly violated like this have made some progress by just banding together and insisting that they won’t take these abuses any longer. There are millions of people who have been locked in psych wards here in the US. There are many more who have been drugged and shocked without having been incarcerated, plus many friends and family members of such people who have understood the destructive nature of psychiatry without having been victimized themselves.

    Millions of people ready to be organized…We can’t give up.

    Over and over, we post articles on Facebook saying how terrible everything is. We talk and talk and talk, but somehow do nothing.

    The potential is out there for a powerful and effective movement, but somehow we do nothing. I won’t try to answer the question “Why?,” because I think a lot of people know why.

    But we shouldn’t give up. We can’t give up.

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  • Thank you for this great article, Richard. It is always good to see some kind of strategizing going on. To me, the key point you make about why this is a good strategy is that the issue is already coming into public awareness.

    Of course, there are other issues worth working on. My touchstone for this is, can we get anyone to work on it? That is very difficult. Activism is in short supply.

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  • A very important development around this issue is that there is a Nevada legislator who wants the state to investigate the role of psych drugs in this huge epidemic of killings. I hope we do all we can to make this happen, as I am sure the drug companies are going into a frenzy to block it.

    Once at least one state looks into this, I am sure it will spread. We should not ignore this.

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  • I was taken away from my foster family and sent to be experimented on with shock treatment at the age of six. This was based partly on the BS that “schizophrenia” was inherited, in my case supposedly, from my mother. (But mostly on the practice of treating foster children as easy subjects of drugging and psychiatric abuse.) So all this persistence of genetic theories about “mental illness” has a high importance to me.

    And as Jay Joseph shows, the persistence of these lies, presented as scientific facts, comes down to the profit and power of psychiatry and (nowadays) the drug companies. His arguments may seem very technical, but they are important, because this pseudoscience affects the lives of many thousands of people.

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  • Although one ever tagged me as an optimist, I don’t agree that psychiatry is here to stay. While the PR machine of both the profession and the drug companies (is there really any difference?) keeps grinding away, more and more people are damaged by psychiatry, and no matter how many self-serving lies are told, more and more people have become aware through their own experience that psychiatry is not a constructive force.

    As for alternatives, there are many different programs that are frequently talked about on the pages of MIA, and although they have great difficulty getting funding, I think people who want to “reform” (whatever that means) the “mental health” system ought to be working toward the time when places like Soteria Houses and similar places are recognized and funded.

    Meanwhile, the human rights abuses run rampant, but at the same time many more people are hurt by them, and they are more and more angry. This is just like what happens to many other groups in our society who have gone on to create mass movements that can change things.

    We certainly don’t have such a movement right now, though at one point we had the beginnings of one. But I think that’s what we should be working for. And I think it can be done.

    Yes, there are people who work within the system who truly believe they are accomplishing something but at best they are making life slightly better for psychiatry’s victims. And frequently people who do this are pulled into the system and strengthen it.

    Again, I just don’t see that ultimately, the present system is going to last forever. But saying that over and over becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. You can’t win anything if you give up before you start.

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  • Yeah, I think these are good points. Besides all the money the drug companies are making from these poisons, what is also happening is a change in our culture. The idea that it is best to numb oneself, rather than make changes in one’s life in order to feel better, has become almost the norm.

    The United States is on its way to becoming a nation of drugged zombies.

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  • I had the honor of visiting Jim and Mary in Ireland a few years ago, where I also spoke at a large forum MindFreedom Ireland had organized. Bob Whitaker and Terry Lynch were among the other speakers.

    Jim and Mary and Terry (and Bob too, though he is American), I think you are a great credit to our movement, and because of your integrity and hard work, you have done an incredible job of raising the consciousness of people in Ireland about our issues. I wish we had your help here in America.

    Of course, Ireland is a much smaller country, less than five million people, while the US has over three hundred million.

    But I think the general approach, if we really want to change things, has to be the same. We have to be willing to take risks and make sacrifices, to speak truth to power, to show the public through our own honest example why they should take a hard look at the reality of psychiatry.

    So I still try to follow my own advice as best I can. And as discouraged as I have become, I still thank all of you for your inspiring example.

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  • But I want to make a larger point, As usual on MIA, we have here dozens of comments talking about how terrible psychiatry is. These follow yet another fine piece of writing from Bob Whitaker saying how terrible psychiatry is.

    But why is there never any discussion of what we can do about this? We all know the problems. We all have a very good idea of what is wrong.

    But we need a discussion of what we can do about it. Preaching to the choir does not change anyone’s mind. How can we reach the public? How can we recruit people, not with us now, who will be willing to go out and actually DO something to reach the public, to raise people’s consciousness about the atrocity that is psychiatry?

    It is a cliche, I know, but we need less talk and more action.

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  • I think that the fact that psychiatric leaders like Pies and Torrey get so upset with terms like “psychiatric survivor” and “anti psychiatry” tells us that we should use these terms whenever we can. Not to bug them, but because it is clear that they recognize that when these terms become common in the larger society, opposing psychiatry becomes more acceptable in the public eye.

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  • Great article, Noel. What specially stood out for me was your insistence that what “mental health” professionals do are MORAL issues, not intellectual ones. Seeing these issues as intellectual leads only to talk, and a failure to actually do anything about these abuses. Understanding them as moral issues leads, hopefully, to ACTIONS that might change things.

    Good work!

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  • Once again, Phil Hickey hits the nail on the head. And yes, it is really significant that a story like this appears in a widely-read mainstream newspaper like the Daily Mail. And what Phil didn’t mention is that the Daily Mail is not published by crusading radicals. It is an extremely conservative newspaper.

    Meanwhile, just in the last week or so, the establishment liberal Huffington Post is running a 15-part, book length series about the various scandals around Risperdal. And a number of pretty establishment newspapers are writing in depth about the fake Study 329 that lied about the safety and effectiveness of Paxil used against children and adolescents. This was first exposed by the British Medical Journal.

    All this is great, but we HAVE to have a movement that can follow up on this. It isn’t enough to have the facts out there, although that is extremely important. We have to have a vehicle to keep this in the public eye. Almost all other oppressed groups in our society have been able to get themselves together, and have made tremendous progress in gaining their rights. Why can’t we?

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  • I think, because of people like Bob Whitaker and others, we have the factual ammunition to discredit psychiatry as it is now practiced. (I don’t think its practice is going to change much either.)

    But having facts just isn’t enough. We need to create a mass movement, just like those created by many other groups in our society that have been and are abused. The people power is there. Literally tens of millions in the US have been inpatients on psych wards, and they did not like it. But for most, it was one bad but short event, and no one wants the identity of “mental patient,” any more than they want to be seen as a leper or, say, a Muslim terrorist.

    How we recruit people like that is not an easy question to answer, to say the least, but I think we are not going to get far if we don’t answer it.

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  • I can’t really tell what Corbyn has in mind. It sounds like he is against bigotry about our issues, but what would he have the health service do?

    In 1985, when he was Mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Bernie Sanders spoke at our last Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression, so I think he understands the human rights issues. But I am not clear now either what kind of “mental health” interventions he would support.

    I do have a sense that both Corbyn and Sanders have good gut feelings about it though, in that I am sure both of them see us labelled people as human beings to be respected.

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  • Margiealtman, you wrote:

    ” Your idea is great however it kind of makes the movement exclusive and almost needing an evaluation before your are admitted to the group. What do you think?”

    I think that yes, that could be a problem. I haven’t been trying to work it out in my mind because it is all I can do to stay in the movement in some fashion. But I guess my answer would be that such selective meetings would not be “the movement.” They would be a few groups among many. Those who wanted to trash everyone else would be free to do that to each other. Those who wanted to work together as mutually respectful comrades could do that. Hopefully, the people who mainly wanted to hassle everyone else would wind up disappearing, at least that is what I would like to see.

    I think having such selective groups/conferences would be very helpful. If someone else would like to organize them, I would participate.

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  • Bonnie, I have thought of precisely that, gathering together only those people who see the need for solidarity and having meetings/conferences with them, and I think it would be a good thing. But I feel too burned out to do it.

    Yet I know it has to be done, just not by me.

    What I have noticed, though, is that locally, here in the Bay Area, there is very little of this trashing. Even though I have some serious political disagreements with people here, we treat each other with respect. I think a lot of that is because we all really know each other. We are not just words on a screen, electronic messages sent from thousands of miles away.

    When I organized the May 16 anti-shock demo here in Berkeley, I was almost surprised that it was relatively easy to organize. That was, I think, because few people here trash one another because of political differences.

    I think we should be doing more local organizing anyway. Our movement really doesn’t have the resources any more to do large projects. Pretending that we do just leads to a lot of posing, where people announce that “I’m a leader,” and try to show that by attacking everyone else who is actually trying to do something real.

    So I plan to work almost entirely with people I can relate to face to face. In a situation like that, those who think they can be seen as “leaders” by attacking others won’t get very far. And developing a sense of solidarity will be possible…I hope.

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  • There are too many instances to describe. It even happens that you might praise someone for their ideas or their work and they turn on you. I have been seeing this for several years, but now it happens every day instead of every week or so. It is impossible to function in this movement. You don’t see it here on MIA because the comment section is closely moderated. But out there on Facebook etc. it is really nasty.

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  • Thank you for your support, Katie, and for reminding me of the sacrifices you have made for this cause.

    I guess working for social justice is never easy. But what is most difficult is when the people who attack you for it are not from psychiatry or the drug corporations, but the people who should be your comrades.

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  • Having a member of British royalty campaigning against psychiatric atrocities is very helpful. And I am very impressed with all the anti- or critical psychiatry activity in the UK among academics and professionals. This is great.

    And the raising of consciousness among a certain class of people is very important.

    But transforming all this into the kind of political changes needed to actually stop these atrocities will not be that easy. There needs to be a mass political movement to turn this talk into action, and force the politicians to actually do something meaningful to stop all the suffering and exploitation. This requires a very focused kind of political campaign, because our real enemy is not (just) the psychiatric profession, but the multinational drug corporations that own it. These same companies own the politicians who have the power to stop the abuses.

    One would think this fight would, and should, be coming from the movement of psychiatric survivors that already exists. But that movement is busily destroying itself, turning against one another and especially those within it who call for doing more than clicking the “like” button on Facebook.

    Mass movements of the kind we need cannot function without solidarity, without a sense that we are all in this together. Who would join in such a difficult task when what awaits them is the same kind of degrading treatment they received on the psychiatric ward?

    I don’t know how to change this. I don’t have a magic wand that I can wave. All I know is that the political moves in the U.S to strip us of our human rights, to turn us into the Jews, the lepers, the subhumans, the scapegoats of the twenty-first century, are moving closer and closer to being adopted. And meanwhile we allow a few people to destroy from within, the movement that ought to be in the forefront of fighting for our survival.

    And I am afraid, for myself and everyone else to come.

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  • Bonnie, thanks so much for your many contributions to this cause. And I certainly agree that there has developed a kind of “infrastructure” (for lack of a better word), which includes books and critiques like yours, and including Mad In America as well.. All this supplies arguments and information for those on the front lines directly confronting psychiatry.

    But what I don’t see is a mass movement, which to me is totally necessary to fight institutions like psychiatry that are gross violators of human rights.

    Particularly, as someone who has been in the “psych survivor” movement for decades, I see no growth, but rather what seems to be a determination to self-destruct. People are trashed right and left. People who actually try to lead specific and meaningful actions against psychiatry are especially attacked. I have never seen anything like this in any political work I have ever done, which goes back a long way.

    Although there are literally tens of millions of people in the United States who have spent time as inmates of psych wards and did not like their experience, it is impossible to recruit such people into the hostile swamp our movement has become.

    I don’t know how to change this. But it has to change, because without a mass movement, the forces that will be necessary to end psychiatric oppression just aren’t there.

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  • Thank you, Sera, for your (as usual) insightful and thoughtful article. I just love your title. Anasognosia indeed, lol.

    Just as our movement has protests in front of the American Psychiatric Association and/or the local electroshock “hospital,” I think it would be useful and productive to demonstrate directly against NAMI and/or MHA when they show up somewhere claiming to represent psychiatry’s victims. We can piggyback on whatever media coverage they are getting. Hopefully, this will bring to the public’s attention who they really represent. Perhaps when they show up near where I live. I can try to make this happen. But I think any activist could do this, as our movement generally recognizes what NAMI really is and who and what it represents.

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  • I also object to the sexist comments made earlier.

    I have a feeling that this grossly phony campaign by the drug maker, claiming that approving this worse than useless drug is a “feminist issue,” is eventually going to backfire on them. This Astroturf way of doing things is, I think, going to educate a lot of women (and men) to the tactics of the drug companies that they may not have been paying attention to before.

    It’s the sort of drug whose benefits (nonexistent) and negative effects (many) will be very clear to the kind of people (young women much more likely than average to pay attention to what happens to their bodies when they take a drug) who will be using this. It may become a feminist issue, all right, but a real one, not what the drug company has in mind.

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  • Phil, I just want to express my appreciation for the many articles like this one you have published in MIA. Once again, you make really important points, clearly and well thought out. I am going to use this article in a letter I am writing to a certain candidate to bring to his attention the dangers of psych drugs.

    Thank you again.

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  • I have always thought that diagnosis is one of the most bullshit of all. That is, until I personally received what amounts to death threats from someone who would fit that diagnosis.

    Some people with psychiatric labels really ARE dangerous, and if you are on the receiving end of their threats and you are afraid of dying, yes, you are not going to be sympathetic to their behavior.

    When I was representing people at commitment hearings, there were almost no people who really fit the commitment standard of “danger to others.” But when I had to represent the small handful of such people, I was really frightened. I remember insisting that I sit next to the door of the hearing room, and that the door be open. Fortunately, the people I am talking about did things like say “kill, kill” to the hearing officer . I don’t know what I would have done if I had to argue that they be released, knowing that they were almost sure to attack someone, including maybe me, if they were released.

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  • “My concern is how much of the society on drugs can any country sustain?”

    Yes, I think this is a very important question that few are asking. It is certainly true of psychiatric drugs, where I am seeing a huge increase in the nasty exchanges between people related to the disinhibition caused by antidepressants.

    Our culture is being changed for the worse by these drugs, and even the most thoughtful critics of psychiatry are not talking about this.

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  • This article is so moving and poignant. I already knew that women were much more likely than men to be shocked. But I had no idea that the damage is greater as well.

    And Bonnie, your novel excerpt is very powerful.

    Thank you for writing this, although it makes me feel more upset and powerless against the atrocity of psychiatry than ever.

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  • Hi there Registered. I think it is very important to keep in mind, when analyzing arguments, who the audience is. I am addressing myself to the psych survivors and other activists and critics of psychiatry who read MIA. I am not citing specific problems with psychiatry, as actually there are many other commenters and authors on MIA who do a good job of that.

    I am getting a bit impatient with you, so I make this challenge to you: if you believe you know how the abuses of psychiatry should be fought and what arguments should be made, you should make those arguments and fight those fights. I will support you if I like what you say and do.

    But I don’t think it is helpful to stand on the sidelines and criticize people who are actually trying to do something. My motto is “don’t theorize, organize.” I wish you good luck in your efforts.

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  • I totally accept that you too have had bad experiences with psychiatry. I also certainly agree that just arguing in generalities won’t get very far without facts to back it up.

    But my arguments here are for the readers of MIA, who already know the facts. For the general public, I would cite a lot of facts.

    I think you may have misunderstood my comments a bit as well. When I said the arguments you cited had no intellectual substance, I didn’t mean YOUR arguments.

    I just don’t see how we can solve the problem of the massive abuse of people by psychiatry without holding the people responsible who commit these atrocities. Just as with the corrupt bankers who wrecked out economy, who were then appointed as financial advisors to the government after being bailed out, a few well-deserved prison sentences would work wonders. In that context, what the country of Iceland did s very instructive. And in the context of our human rights movement, jailing the criminals who do these things would work quite well to stop this kind of behavior in the future. But that won’t happen if we put our heads in the sand and pretend that somehow, no one had any moral or criminal responsibility.

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  • Really, the criticism the last commenter cites has no intellectual substance. It just repeats the psychiatric party line, with no analysis of the criticisms made by people who are skeptical of psychiatry.

    I am an attorney, and I can say that this is analogous to a criminal defendant, confronted by a lot of evidence pointing to his guilt, responding by saying that he is an expert on his behavior and therefore the charges against him have no merit.

    This would not work in a trial, but right now, unfortunately, all psychiatrists have to do to be taken seriously is spout the same kind of nonsense. Their defense is that “what we say is true because we say so.” And that often works for them, at least for now.

    Part of the reason it works, though, is that some of psychiatry’s critics (and I am grateful for their work) somehow fall into the trap of dealing with psychiatry’s abuses as if they were fascinating intellectual issues being discussed in some seminar at Harvard. This may interest those who like such seminars, but such people are generally rather morally numb, and they are not going to take any risks or speak out to change anything.

    Much of what psychiatry does, such as drugging foster children at an early age and ruining their lives, are not interesting intellectual questions. They are crimes against humanity, but until the public (the only force with the power to effect change) sees these atrocities that way, they are not going to take action. That is my major problem with the approach of saying that psychiatrists have no moral responsibility.

    If they have no moral responsibility, then that whole concept has no meaning. The logical end of that position is that we should do away with all laws against crimes, as after all criminals don’t really understand that what they are doing is wrong.

    Of course, that is nonsense. and so is the idea that psychiatrists don’t really understand what they are doing. Given the immense amount of suffering they inflict on other human beings, it defies common sense to say that they have no moral culpability.

    It is bad enough that psychiatrists are never prosecuted for their crimes, even when they are very obvious. Of course, this is true for many criminals who are wealthy and powerful. But people who are critical of psychiatry should not be doing what in a way is the same thing, absolving these doctors from their moral responsibility.

    Nothing is going to change until the public understands the true ethical nature of psychiatry.

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  • I don’t agree with all these intellectual excuses for not holding the average psychiatrist responsible for what he or she does. The fact is, these doctors have a moral obligation to know what is happening to their patients, who are undergoing great suffering because of what is being done to them.

    For whatever reason, they choose to ignore this.

    As someone whose childhood was taken away by one of the leaders of her profession, who was shocked and raped and tortured at a young age by psychiatry, I find this attempt to make excuses for the behavior of psychiatrists really offensive.

    And I think this article epitomizes what is lacking in this magazine. There seems to be no sense of moral outrage among the psychiatrists who write for MIA.

    Mad In America is in many ways a helpful development for those of us who are trying to end the abuses of psychiatry. But the moral numbness of this article, and there are many like it, is less than helpful.

    One can talk about abstract psychological theories like cognitive dissonance all you want, but there is something that should be talked about much more urgently on these pages. And that is, the responsibility of psychiatrists to know the difference between right and wrong, and act accordingly.

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  • This is terrible news. I feel so sad to read this.

    But it isn’t surprising that the “mental health” establishment, and the drug corporations who control it, always wanted Soteria to fail.

    This reminds us that it isn’t enough to come up with great ideas for helping people. We also have to struggle very hard politically to make them happen and keep them going.

    I myself was helped a lot by a program similar to Soteria in Vancouver, B.C. and I am very grateful. Like Soteria Alaska, it fell apart after its original leaders left, though not in the same way as in Alaska. I don’t know what might have happened to me if it wasn’t for the help I got there.

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  • I hope the legislators were listening. I think this must have been a very powerful presentation.

    I’m not a religious person, but I think it is important to talk about the morality of what the psychiatric system is doing. When you have so much suffering and ruined lives, these practices reach the level of crimes against humanity. I think we have to say that, because most of MIA’s readers, certainly the psychiatric survivors, know that it’s true. The general public should know this too.

    And I think our movement for human rights should be raising the issue of the psychiatric abuse of children more, much more. It seemed that we ignored what happened to Rebecca Riley and Justina Pelletier. Why?

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  • It sounds as if the UK “mental health” system has gone even further than here in the US in openly being an agent of social control. What we read here tells us it is so far only being used this way against the lowest on the class ladder, but I (maybe unrealistically) think that the MH system is setting itself up for some forceful political resistance in the near future. This kind of stuff is becoming more and more brazen, and I think, as long as we have some semblance of democracy left, there is going to be a price to pay for this arrogance.

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  • As I said earlier, I am not a fan of psychiatric drugs. As for my friend who considers herself bipolar, and does have severe mood swings, she was first locked up as a teenager, given drugs (of course), but then weaned herself off of them. Unlike a lot of survivors that I have connected with lately, she did NOT have a bad family history. She is still close to her mother, who I have met, and when I first met her, she was mourning the recent death of her father, who sounded like a loving parent and a very good influence in her life.

    For many years after her loony bin experience, everything was fine for her psychologically and emotionally. But when she reached middle age, her mood swings reappeared. They got her in a lot of trouble, badly affected her ability to keep making a living, and led her to give away much of her money and property. So as I said, she went on lithium to keep her life from falling apart.

    And if I were in her position, I would do that too. There should be better solutions, but there aren’t.

    Myself, I think my primary mental illness nowadays is to be willing to challenge the conventional wisdom, not just in most of our culture, which seems to worship psychiatry and its drugs, but in our little movement too. That gets me in trouble. I am sure there is a drug for it. In fact, I think any antipsychotic would work.

    I think it is very important for our movement for people to keep an open mind about everything. I have strong options about a lot of things, but I will change them when reality tells me that I’m wrong. I learned that in Rockland State Hospital where I grew up. If I had gone along with what I was told to believe, I would never have left. Now I experience pressure both from within the larger society, and within our tiny movement that tells me I must think a certain way, and only have opinions that appear on the (unwritten) list of two hundred approved thoughts.

    Sometimes both the larger society and our tiny movement both make me feel as if I am back in Rockland State Hospital. But I insist on making up my own mind, and I think everyone else should do that too.

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  • Of course, I’m no fan of psych drugs, but I think this doctor is being pretty straight with us. Yes, this is far from a perfect world. There are a lot of non-drug resources, but spread out over the US population of 320 million, it is very hard to find them.

    And a lot of people are ready to do anything not to feel the emotional pain they are experiencing. I can see how it might not be so bad to give someone the least dose of the safest psych drug possible as a temporary crutch to get them through what they are experiencing.

    Someone very close to me considers herself to be bipolar, and the fact is that her huge mood swings, especially her occasional mania, has really gotten her in trouble. She takes lithium. She hates it, but her mood swings have nearly ruined her life.

    I have a strong feeling some of the people who know me are really going to go after me for this, but at the very least I think this particular psychiatrist is sincerely trying to have an honest dialogue here.

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  • I think the argument will be that outpatient commitment is a lesser deprivation of liberty, that should be balanced against the compelling state interest of getting murderous schizophrenics off the streets.

    As far as I know, OPC has been challenged legally in only one state, New York. In the case of In re K.L., New York’s highest court upheld the law, but the legal reasoning resembled the Dred Scott decision (“A black man has no rights a white man is bound to respect.”) In other words, the court openly said we have always done it this way and we see no reason to change it. Fortunately, I don’t think K.L. will carry much weight in the federal courts, as it is completely lacking in any rational legal argument.

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  • Keep up the good fight, Lauren. I think the best we can do now is gather up our strength, such as it is, and organize some kind of effective national organization to fight things like the Murphy bill.

    I think the bill will pass, but that does not mean our fight will be over by any means. One thing that is happening now is that psychiatry is grossly overreaching, and that is the sort of thing that eventually gets people to fight back. Murphy’s bill is part of this overreach.

    And a positive thing that the Murphy bill does is defunds all the Astroturf organizations and the “Alternatives” conference that have been supporting those who have betrayed our movement. Without that money, hopefully those who benefit from it will disappear (I hope).

    Something else that should work in our favor is the new consciousness in our country now about racism and the domination of our country by a tiny few who want to take us back to feudalism. Our movement should try to connect with that. Not “should,” we HAVE TO.

    We are a movement for freedom and liberation, fighting what is now being called the billionaire class, and all the other antidemocratic tendencies in our country. We need to align ourselves with the larger fight that is starting to take shape.

    In the short run, I don’t think we can beat back Murphy. In the long run, and there is no other way we can go, we and the other 99% of the people in this country are going to take back our freedom.

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  • Of course, for most readers of MIA, these findings are not at all unexpected. The more “mental health” training people have, the less respect and help they give. You have to ask then, what do these people learn in their training? What motivates them to go into the field in the first place? And why are they not held morally responsible for what they do?

    We, and Mad in America, should be raising these questions. When someone shows up in an emergency room having made a suicide attempt, for instance, the way they are treated gives them even more reason to feel they should end their life. Should we be respecting the people who act this way?

    I don’t think it is right to ignore the ethical meaning of this. I think we should be speaking out.

    The people who commit these destructive acts should be held responsible for them.

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  • So depressed mothers who keep taking the antidepressants during pregnancy, as psychiatrists generally advise, get worse. And newborns of such mothers experience many bad effects.

    But psychiatrists and drug companies think this is just fine.

    These people have no regard for other human beings at all.

    Psychiatrists, just like anyone else, are morally responsible for what they do.

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  • I always find it strange when people tell these stories about the horrible way they are treated by psychiatry, stories that are very typical, yet still feel compelled to say how of course so many many people have been helped by psychiatry. “Compelled” may be a literally accurate word too, as even AlterNet is a semi-mainstream media outlet and may have demanded this disclaimer. After all, we don’t want to be “anti-psychiatry,” do we? Psychiatrists like Lieberman and Torrey have succeeded in making the phrase into the equivalent of being a Muslim terrorist. Even on Mad In America we often see this (not the outside pressure though), and I really don’t understand it.

    Just the same, though, this young woman deserves a lot of credit for coming out of the closet and talking about her bad– and typical– experience with psychiatry.

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  • Regarding Julie Greene’s suggestion that we all try to file complaints about the way we were treated by the mental illness system on the same day, if it could be done, it would be a good thing. But with just a few dozen cities saying they were going to do protests of shock on the same day, it was incredibly hard to coordinate, and this action that Julie suggests would be even harder.

    Just the same if anything even near to this could be done, I agree it would have a big effect. Getting it to happen though would be extremely difficult.

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  • I haven’t been able to read the book yet, but I surely agree that our culture has to change before we can get rid of this parasitic growth called psychiatry. Our highest value seems to be the accumulation of things, and we don’t value people all that much. And I think too, as I continue in this movement all these years, that creating alternatives to psychiatry is more and more important in my mind.

    There will always be times in most people’s lives when they are troubled and unhappy, and are searching for help. As we have seen with things like Soteria Houses and Open Dialogue, help that works is often just emotional support that enables people to solve their own problems. But if that kind of help isn’t there, people are forced to turn to drugs and shock and the acceptance of the labels of mental illness, of the idea of oneself as subhuman.

    There is a lot of financial profit in that, a lot of money to be made. That value is something we have to fight, to swim against the tide and try to create a society where people, not profit, is the central value.

    I think this struggle over values is very central to the struggle against psychiatry.

    I am looking forward to reading Bonnie’s book, and I am happy to see the support our movement for human rights is giving it.

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  • Once again, the Guardian publishes a thoughtful article about our issues. If only there were such a publication in the United States. (it is true that the Guardian has an online American edition though.)

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  • madmom, I think you should not be as despairing about the Murphy bill. If it were inevitable, it would have passed by now.

    And there are pockets of resistance within NAMI as well. I remember perhaps a year ago an article here in MIA by a woman from South Dakota who, after hearing Bob Whitaker’s presentation that was allowed at that year’s NAMI national conference, declared that she was very angry at the way she had been lied to by the NAMI national leadership and the drug companies that control it.

    In Connecticut, from what I have been told, the state’s NAMI actually helped beat back a loosening of forced commitment and drugging laws, in cooperation with the group called Ablechild.

    I think you are in Oregon, a very liberal state, and I know there is a fair amount of activity that is critical of psychiatry there. What our movement needs is a family group that represents the constituency that NAMI claims to represent, but in an honest way. It would be very valuable, and I think possible, to organize such a group there.

    It is a hard task that we have, to fight an evil system that has so much power, and it is easy to give in to despair. I feel that way a lot myself. We have a society controlled by a tiny minority that values money and power at all costs, that sees other human beings as profit centers to be exploited instead of cherished and nurtured. Our country is on the verge of being destroyed by these forces.

    But I think eventually, the long arc of history will swing in our direction, and it’s our job to make that happen. For myself, nothing will bring back what psychiatry took from me, but I am comforted when we support one another and make progress, as small and gradual as it may be.

    So please don’t give in to despair. I tell myself that every day.

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  • I think the reason this campaign is succeeding is that the public sees psychiatric abuse of children differently from the abuse of adults. In most people’s eyes, I think, this situation has a different moral dimension.

    I have been saying for a while now that our human rights movement should be paying more attention to the plight of children. I think the reason the usual suspects didn’t fight the laws Ned Opton is telling us about here is that they knew it would be very bad public relations for them.

    I was a foster child too, many years ago. I wasn’t drugged, thank God, because the drugs psychiatry uses against people now had not yet been developed then. But I had shock treatment at the age of six as part of an experimental group of several hundred children. Many years later, when I organized the successful vote to ban shock treatment in Berkeley, the fact that I had it as a child had, I think, a powerful effect on the voters.

    But what about this? If drugs and shock are bad for children, how can they be good for adults? If a child gets a shot of an antibiotic, or surgery to correct some injury, no one finds that disturbing. These are legitimate medical interventions, and hopefully they are helpful.

    I think a large part of the public, probably a majority, knows in their hearts what psych drugs and shock represent. Psychiatric propaganda has made the idea that these atrocities are good for people part of the conventional wisdom, which like a lot of other conventional wisdom, most people are afraid to contradict. But when kids are involved, it is just too much for people to stomach.

    So fighting the abuse of kids in the “child welfare” system can accomplish more than helping these kids, which obviously is very important. It will also open people’s minds and hearts to looking at what the psychiatric/drug company system is doing to our whole society.

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  • Danny, I do regret that there is more anger in this discussion than is justified, and I share your concern about people who feel terrible and hope to be helped by this. But really, ketamine is just another street drug, and I don’t see how it is different in essence from heroin. Of course, chemically it is quite different, but at bottom it just gives you a high. Isn’t that what heroin does?

    And though I wrote sarcastically, I think it really is true that if we are going to encourage people to take drugs, it would be good social policy to just legalize drugs like heroin so that people who are addicted to it would not be made into criminals. I also think it’s true that if the drug corporations were given a monopoly on the production of heroin, we would start hearing in television ads that it is a wonder drug.

    I know that many people are unhappy and are willing to take psychiatric drugs to numb themselves. I have done it myself, at times. I have taken benzos, but (1) I was aware of how addictive and dangerous they can be, and (2) I really disliked how a large part of me was missing, along with the anxiety I was fleeing from. So it isn’t that I have some kind of ideological position that is just intellectual. I’m not willing to give up part of what makes me human for the sake of blotting away my emotional pain.

    But I want to repeat that I respect your position and I regret if I said anything that made you feel disrespected.

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  • Hey, heroin would work too. If the drug companies were allowed to have a monopoly, it would easily be legalized. It would keep a lot of people out of prison then. (Too bad the drug company CEOs won’t go to prison though.)

    How is that for a proposal? Do you think a drug company might hire me in their PR department?

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  • Lauren, I look forward to your analysis of what we can actually DO to stop the Murphy bill, which as far as I can see is the result of our human rights movement mostly being bought off by the mental illness system.

    We stopped fighting for our rights, instead taking money from the system, either as highly-paid bureaucrats doing public relations work for SAMHSA, or as low-paid “peers” helping at the lowest level to run the system. Now suddenly we see what happens when you do that.

    No other movement for liberation, and I hope that is what we still are, has ever won anything by taking money from their oppressors. The Murphy bill is the payback for this.

    Those who disagree, let’s see what you come up with at the next “Alternatives” conference, the conference that has been central to making the Murphy bill possible.

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  • I find this article pretty difficult to understand. In fact, I am having more and more trouble understanding what Dr Healy writes as time goes on. Is it because his references are very British, and someone not in the UK is not familiar with them? Or what?.

    I notice the earlier commenter IS from the UK, so maybe this explains it.

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  • I agree with both the writer of this blog and Michael Cornwall’s statement as well that if parents in general (who probably make up the majority of our society) come to realize the threat to themselves and their families that the multinational drug corporations pose, there might be some great steps forward in the fight of all decent people against the destructive power of psychiatry.

    I have to say also that I think the amazing critical article about drugging children in a recent issue of TIME magazine is a development our movement should be encouraging.

    Our human rights movement needs to reach out to new allies, and I can’t imagine better allies than the parents of children targeted by drug companies, to be treated as profit centers instead of human beings. We have ignored the abuse of children, like the cases of Rebecca Riley and Justina Pelletier. I don’t know why this came about, but I think we have to pay more attention to what happens to kids snatched into the system.

    “…(the) psychopaths and sociopaths (who run the mental illness system and own it) truly believe that they will never be caught and that they are entitled to do what they do.” Yes, and it’s our job to make sure they answer for their crimes.

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  • Yeah, great comment, Truth. I always point out that if only “evidence-based therapy” were done, almost none of what is done now would happen. The evidence shows shock and drugs are damaging and unhelpful, so by all means, let’s stick to what is “evidence -based.” I never could quite understand why this phrase is used by psychiatry, and I think our response to it should be very much like what Truth In Psychiatry has given.

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  • Fred, I think it is good that you talk about demonstrations, especially civil disobedience. And the psychiatric abuse of children, as I have said many times lately, is a very good place to focus our energy. I know you are in Oregon (I saw your speech on television, by the way) and it appears that in both Eugene and Portland, there was a lot of coverage of the shock demos by the local progressive media. That tells me, which I thought already anyway, that Oregon is a very promising place to concentrate the small forces that we have,

    It is hard to get people to do civil disobedience. Nobody looks forward to going to jail, including me. But it is a way to raise the consciousness of the public that doesn’t require large numbers on our part.

    Another sort of action that does not need large numbers is vigils, especially candlelit vigils at night. People who don’t relate to picket lines see a vigil like this as more of a moral statement, and I think our own people feel more safe joining an action like this.

    In any case, we need to start acting and stop talking so much.

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  • Hi John. Thank you for your suggestions, although I won’t try to comment on all of them. We definitely have to start small. Our movement here in the US was nearly destroyed in 1985 with the “Alternatives” conference, and the well-funded Astroturf groups set up by the federal mental illness system. So we are starting from scratch, or more accurately, we are starting from less than that, because now there are so many traitors who do their best to please their funders and sabotage any move to really fight back.

    I think what we can do will depend on what the small group of committed people we have are willing to do. Since we don’t have big numbers, we have to find actions that can be effectively carried out by a relatively small group.

    Above all, we have to throughly discuss and strategize about what we need to do, and I greatly value your suggestions.

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  • I didn’t see any advocacy of “hardcore communism” made by anyone. Almost all western European countries have socialist parties, and they are voted in and voted out, since these countries are democratic. We aren’t talking about Joe Stalin or Vladimir Putin here. The bottom line in this discussion is, will this country continue to be run by a wealthy few for their own benefit, or will we have a government that works for the benefit of everyone?

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  • Yes, I agree this is a very important article. Though my political activity is almost entirely in the anti-psychiatry movement now, in the past I’ve been involved in groups dealing with larger issues

    And it is clear, at least to me, that the huge influence of the multinational drug corporations is mostly responsible for the terrible situation that people with psych histories have to deal with now.

    Myself, being a democratic socialist also, I am choosing to get involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign. The issues he is raising in his campaign are exactly the kind of issues Will talks about here, but better than that, even, he has raised and continues to raise the activism level of regular people to try to do something about this situation.

    It is also true that in 1985, when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont, he addressed the last meeting of our Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression, just before it was destroyed by the power of money, in this case the federal “mental health” system.

    Disclosure: In the 1960’s, both Bernie and I were members of the Young People’s Socialist League, and like him, I will not hide the politics I believe in.

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  • It looks as if Doctor Anonymous, whoever he or she is, is gone, at least for today. The arrogance of this person really makes me angry.

    This psychiatrist was allowed to hijack our discussion, which was supposed to be about our next steps in fighting for our human rights. You can bet if any of us were commenting in, say, Psychiatric News, our comments wouldn’t last thirty seconds, and we would be blocked.

    We have important work to do to free ourselves, and we should not have to put up with this.

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  • Of course I agree that we should be not just talking about, but actually developing constructive ways to help people. There is a lot of discussion of that on MIA already. The problem with saying that is that the people who benefit from the present system won’t allow anything better to exist, and they fight it tooth and nail.

    A psychiatrist who I greatly admired, Loren Mosher, when he had a high level title with the National Institute of Mental Health (Chief of Schizophrenia Studies) believed that people with mental problems were not being helped by being locked up and drugged. So he started a couple of places called Soteria House, where people got little or no drugs, but had a safe place to stay with a lot of emotional support. For this, he was driven out of his job with the NIMH.

    Even though Soteria Houses were shown to be very effective, I know of only two of them in the US now, because the psychiatric profession, which is virtually owned by the drug companies, won’t allow them to be funded.

    I think also that you should view what we do as a human rights movement. When people’s rights are being violated, that should be resisted. And as Frederick Douglass observed, correctly, many years ago, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle. It never did and it never will.”

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  • Berkeley’s ban on shock was not overturned to preserve the right of people to get it. The courts ruled that Berkeley did not have the authority to ban it.

    I could respond to your defense of shock in detail, but I have to say that the statements you make about how it has been improved and how it is safe and effective are just the same propaganda that the psychiatric profession has been pushing for many decades.

    Lobotomies were also touted as wonder cures, yet no one (except the few lobotomists that are left) would defend them now.

    One of the main reasons this atrocity continues is that its victims are discredited, while the shock doctors, and psychiatrists in general, are seen as godlike figures whose nonsensical pronouncements are treated as the word of God.

    Millions of people have had shock in this country, and you will find very few of them who would defend it. I think the people who have suffered like this are the ones who should be listened to, not their tormentors. Like all other abused people, we will be ignored until we learn to fight back effectively.

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  • I want to bring to people’s attention a recent article in TIME magazine that talks about how morally wrong it is to drug our children this way. I think it is very important when mainstream media outlets publish something like this, since most articles they publish sound like drug company ads (which they are).

    I’m sorry that I can’t seem to generate a URL, but if you feed this title into a Google search, you will find it. Well worth reading.

    Where’s the Moral Outrage for ADHD Mass Medication?

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  • I certainly agree with what you say, B. It is one of the most difficult things we have to deal with. Gay people had the same problem. Despised by most people, easily able to hide their sexuality if they chose to. But there was an advantage in that if you are gay, you are motivated to connect with other gay people. Just as you say, I think most secret survivors, who make up maybe 98% of us, don’t want to deal with this experience and they don’t have to.

    I think the gay movement dealt with this by offering something to its constituency, a real movement that fought back. We can do this too. But the combination of a powerful industry that profits from our situation, plus the fact that no one wants the identity of “mental case,” for good reason, has us up against a terrible barrier.

    But if we don’t try, we are facing in the near future something far ore horrible than what we have already seen and experienced.

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  • I agree with just about everyone who has commented so far, about the arguments that we should raise. The thing is, what do we do to get these arguments listened to? Yes, the truth is on our side, but what good is that if no one hears it?

    And Noel, I don’t mean to be attacking you at all, because I think just about everything of yours I’ve seen here has been thoughtful and worth reading, but I have to point out that you rather contradict yourself when you talk about “screaming in the streets” but then give the protests that Martin Luther King led as a good example.

    Our folks aren’t screaming in the streets. They are almost never in the streets at all. The civil rights protestors of the Sixties, and I was one of them, did not always march silently. They chanted, they sang, above all they made their presence felt. Sometimes they broke unjust laws, and went to jail for it. Often they were denounced as dangerous radicals for disturbing what some would have called the American way of life.

    On May 16, just a few days ago, some of our people in 25 cities in 9 countries demonstrated against shock treatment. I have not seen anything like that in many years. We need to keep doing things like this. And I am going to do everything I can to make that happen.

    At least one person on May 16 was brave enough to put herself on the line and be arrested for trying to enter a Kaiser hospital that does extensive shock treatment. I thought her civil disobedience was very brave and an example that should be followed. I plan to follow it soon.

    We can’t just talk while the drug companies and the psychiatric profession continue to present us as subhuman killers who should be locked up and drugged and shocked, whose voices should be silenced, whose lives are unworthy of life.

    There are tens of millions of people in this country who have been inmates of psychiatric institutions. They are never heard from, these invisible survivors of psychiatry. If we could reach them, we would be a powerful movement. We aren’t going to reach them unless we show them an example, unless they see a movement that actually does something more than talk and go to conferences. They aren’t interested in jobs where they can order around others who’ve been abused by psychiatry. We need to inspire them.

    We need to inspire them the same way Doctor King and the other leaders of the civil rights movement inspired their people. It took courage and a willingness to do more than talk.

    There will be more events like what we did on May 16th, and I hope many people reading this will join them. We are a human rights movement, and we have to remember that.

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  • “We need to do something to get people to start listening.” I think this is the most important part of the article. We can offer all the arguments we want, but no one is going to listen to them if all we do is preach to the choir. Writing articles for Mad In America is a good thing, but they’re not read by the general public. We are a human rights movement like any other and we should look at what other human rights movements do.

    And we did before 1985. I am getting so tired of saying this and mostly being ignored. If all this talk talk talk talk talk talk is the way to go, then how can it be that our constitutional rights are so openly being attacked? How is it we can recognize the legitimacy of black people’s anger as they react to their brothers and sisters being killed by the criminals who are supposed to be enforcing the laws, yet somehow tell ourselves that expressing our own anger at the abuse we suffer is somehow not “nice”?

    No, it isn’t true that typical psychiatrists are just well-meaning but misguided when they drug as many people as they can, from small children to elderly people near the end of their lives, knowing that these drugs are going to kill them? How is it somehow forgivable that they take drug company money for doing this?

    If we expressed our anger toward these people by taking to the streets, people in our movement would stop throwing this anger at one another. We should be focusing our anger at the people who have deliberately hurt us, not our brothers and sisters. We should be out on the streets, protesting the injustices we must bear, not going to conferences funded by the system where we are allowed to vent harmlessly.

    The Murphy bill, the move in New Jersey to keep parents from protecting their children from shock and drugs, the almost complete blackout of our voices from the mass media, nothing like this was happening before the disaster of 1985.

    I don’t understand how, in the face of all these horrible moves against us, people somehow think all they have to do is go to a conference and get a pat on the head from some psychiatrists. Are we waiting until the police break down our doors and take us away? In fact, in many cases they are doing this now.

    As Frederick Douglass said 150years ago, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle. It never did and it never will.” He didn’t advocate for slaves to order around other slaves, he fought for freedom. And that’s what we should be doing too.

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  • Coming late to this discussion, I have to say that the reason for the lies about Nash’s “recovery” (if that is the right word) is the money spent by the drug companies in bribing doctors directly and the media indirectly (through the dependence that the media now have on drug advertising).

    At least we have Nash’s own statements of the truth to point to, as Bob Whitaker says. But I think we are going to have to go a lot further than comment and talk to make any progress.

    Last weekend, people in 25 cities in 9 countries held coordinated protests against shock treatment. It’s time we started doing actions like this, just like every other movement for human rights has done.

    We can do this! And we will.

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  • Just a few days ago, there were 25 protests against shock treatment in 9 countries. There is nothing stopping our movement for human rights to carry out more actions like this, many more. We just need the will to do so. I think in many ways we have become demoralized because of the powerful forces we are up against, and by the money spent by the mental illness system to buy us off.

    It doesn’t have to be like this. Even without money, even without much of a structure, we have pulled off a historic action, which can be done many times in different ways, again and again. It is time for less talk and more action.

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  • We have to stop talking and stop acting or there will be more and more of this.

    And the rhetoric they use to justify this is sickening. One hopes that some parents groups will act on this (but of course, I am sure that NAMI is all for it.) The Ablechild group could be a good force in this, though they are not in New Jersey.

    Maybe the “Alternatives” conference will take this up. Just being sarcastic, of course. “Alternatives” is about the main reason historically we are facing horrible measures like this now.

    I am considering going to “Alternatives” and getting arrested. Our movement needs to recognize how SAMHSA and those who cooperate with it are complicit in taking away our constitutional rights.

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  • I think there should be more discussion on MIA about how it happens that such a bill as Murphy’s has made so much headway. I don’t understand why people are concentrating on the involuntary outpatient commitment part of it, since almost all states already have IOC anyway. This kind of move to take away our rights is happening because SAMHSA has set up an Astroturf “movement” whose main thrust is to discourage people from fighting the system. So of course our rights will be taken away. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle. It never did and it never will.” It was true in the 19th century, and it is true now, and it will always be true. If you don’t fight for your rights you will lose them, especially if you take money from the people who are taking away the rights we should be demanding.

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  • But “seclusion” or “quiet rooms” are still common in psychiatric institutions. And it doesn’t take a lot of effort to see what that does to people. As a young child, sometimes I was locked in rooms for weeks at a time. I think that was supposed to be “therapy.” The psychiatrist in charge of the “Children’s Group” at Rockland State Hospital, where I spent my late childhood, wrote an article for the Saturday Evening Post, an important national magazine at the time (late 1940’s) that said that we were receiving “all of the essentials and none of the frills of modern psychiatry.”

    Yes, the abuses of psychiatry were in the past, he said. Doesn’t that sound familiar?

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  • I think this is a great project. I escaped being drugged because my childhood spent in the system was so long ago. But in the past couple of years I have been educated by a lot of people and groups that have had to struggle with this, and I really admire and respect people who have made the choice to get off these poisons. I think it takes a lot of courage and strength of character to do this, and I also think that people who have gone through this can be leaders in our human rights movement, and of course, some of them are already.

    So thanks to MIA for doing this. It will be a wonderful service for people.

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  • I know I’m repeating what everyone has already said, but I think these ideas should be repeated over and over. People kill themselves, or try to, because of their life situations. This is so clear that anyone paying attention can see the truth. How the damn “mental health” system has managed to turn being justifiably unhappy into a “mental illness” is beyond me. This situation is another example of how psychiatry has turned into a religion, a religion that demands human sacrifices.

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  • While it may be true that newer psychiatrists may be more humane to start with than their older, more jaded colleagues, I don’t agree with the implicit premise that the institution of psychiatry will mainly be changed from within. Like any other institution that oppresses people, it has to be changed from without, by the general public, who do not yet realize how threatened they too are by psychiatry; and by the people who have already been damaged by it, we survivors who know full well what psychiatry stands for.

    And almost no one, even in the survivor movement, even seems to think about the tens of millions of people who have been trapped in the system for a short time, and have fought their way out of it. These in-the-closet survivors give us the possibility of a real mass movement, if only we could figure out how to recruit them. I think we could start by trying to create a supportive and nurturing community in our existing movement. Coming out of the closet, for many secret survivors, will mean lost relationships, lost jobs, the social status of a leper. At least in return we could offer a supportive community.

    But expecting to end the oppressive nature of psychiatry from the inside is exactly like trying to end slavery by appealing to the moral sensibilities of the slaveowners. Yes, there WERE decent slaveowners who came to see that treating human beings as things, as property, was wrong. But it took a lot more than that to end slavery (which even now, as we see, still exists to some extent.).

    Evil systems won’t change themselves, and it is not realistic to believe that can happen.

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  • It took me a few minutes to figure out what Sera was talking about, as I never go to such conferences. I cannot imagine how attending gatherings of mental health bureaucrats would accomplish anything towards my liberation — from the oppression of mental health bureaucrats.

    I guess if your political activity is mainly running a agency that these mental health bureaucrats fund, it sort of forces you to rub elbows with them. I am grateful that I don’t have to do this.

    I don’t mean by this to attack Sera, as I believe she is diligently and sincerely trying to create a helpful agency for people who have been trapped in the “mental health” system. But I think what she is railing against should have been pretty obvious to her. Of course the bureaucrats and the shrinks don’t really respect us. As for most of them, they never will.

    We will get respect when we really start fighting back. They will respect us, or at least fear us, when they realize we are serious about working for our liberation. There is no future for our movement and our freedom as long as so many sincere and capable people spend their energy on the sort of nonsense that Sera writes about here.

    There will be no end to this garbage until we stop thinking that minor reforms will somehow lead to major changes. Even with the best of intentions, those who think they can accomplish something worthwhile by working within the system will be coopted by it. And the good energy and commitment they expend on this will just be wasted.

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  • “(S)urely there’s room for people who disagree about things like: is there such a thing as mental illness and could some of it be partly biological? Or: Is it always wrong to use a substance, prescribed or unprescribed, to manage your pain?”

    Yes, and there is room in my conception of being anti-psychiatry for these ideas. I myself believe that there are some kinds of mental distress that have physical causes, particularly extreme mood swings, but also what psychiatrists call “schizophrenia.” I also believe that some instances of “depression” have a physiological basis. (Hope I don’t get attacked for this.)

    And while I would not take them myself, I can understand why some people feel so much emotional pain that they are willing to numb themselves out with drugs to escape it. I myself have taken benzos for short periods of time when life was making me feel unbearably anxious. Sometimes I even drink alcohol for the same reason, not good for me, I know.

    But just because that may be true, doesn’t mean that psychiatry as it is practiced is a force for good in our society. Almost everyone posting on MIA has experienced terrible abuse from the psychiatric profession, and this is not some rare incident.

    Psychiatry as a whole is really destructive to our society, and that’s why I consider myself to be anti-psychiatry. But as I wrote earlier in this thread, I am not interested in harassing people for whatever word they want to use to describe their attitude toward psychiatry. The important thing is that we all work together to take away psychiatry’s power to hurt people. I hope we can put our energy into activism, rather than talk talk talk talk talk at each other. (Notice I said “at” and not “with.”)

    Fighting over words is not helpful, especially when it leads to good people being attacked. So let’s give a big priority to figuring out what we can actually DO, and also to supporting and nurturing one another in our common struggle to free ourselves and the people we care about from the clutches of psychiatry.

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  • Nancy, I agree that there seems to be a tendency among certain people in our movement to harangue and hassle people, and demand that they call themselves “anti-psychiatry.” Frankly, from what I can see, this almost always comes from people who are doing very little, if anything, to actually change the situation. This is becoming a new standard for being “politically correct,” a concept I find to be a royal pain in the butt.

    I DO consider myself to be anti-psychiatry, because I share all the concerns you have laid out in this article. You have mentioned dozens of reasons why we must fight back and take away the power of psychiatry. I think your politics about this issue and mine are 99% in agreement. ( I don’t agree with myself 100% of the time either.) So whether you call yourself anti-psychiatry or not, that is fine with me. I am sure when there is action to be taken we will be on the same side. I think it is a waste of time to harangue you to identify as anti-psychiatry, when in practice our politics on this issue are the same.

    BUT I think there is a value in calling oneself anti-psychiatry, and it was best revealed by Dr. Lieberman in one of his tantrums in the media, when he complained about the New York Times actually giving space to someone who dared to criticize the profession for which he is one of the main apologists. He talked about the concept of being anti-psychiatry the way people in the middle ages denied the concept that the earth is round and revolves around the sun. E. Fuller Torrey, who promotes taking away our constitutional rights, also talks about the anti-psychiatry position as if it were some kind of “mental illness” for which we should all be locked up.

    What this tells me is that these gentlemen (umm, is that the right word?) are TERRIFIED of the idea that the general public, as more and more people call themselves anti-psychiatry, will start seeing this as a reasonable point of view. Using this phrase is a shorthand way of saying that psychiatry is intellectually and morally bankrupt. And it is the general public we should be trying to reach.

    So I am going to continue to identify as anti-psychiatry, but I would never denounce you or anyone else if they don’t want to use that word. I don’t give a damn about political correctness, and I don’t want to try to be in charge of how people describe themselves. What is important to me is that those of us who see clearly the horrors of psychiatry, and the danger of the unlimited power they are demanding, stick together, with mutual respect and caring for one another, to fight back.

    I think the people who are trashing others who won’t use “politically correct” language are doing our movement a great disservice. If they feel so strongly about how bad psychiatry is, I think they should get off their butt and actually DO something about it, not appoint themselves as in charge of what words we use to describe ourselves.

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  • I sure agree with that. It is better to try and fail than do nothing. And anyway, there is never a direct path to attaining social justice. I have been involved in organizing for a long time, and have had a few successes, but most of the time what I have tried to do doesn’t work. Still I keep trying, because this cause is so important, not just to me, but to all who have been abused by psychiatry, and to our larger society too.

    As far as “science” being used by psychiatry to justify what it has done, I don’t think that means we should decide that science is somehow to blame. When I was in a grad school program in psychology 50 years ago, the head of my department spoke about “scientism,” a kind of religion. That is what psychiatry takes advantage of, the tendency of people to believe that whatever is presented as “science” must be correct. But psychiatry is not “scientific.” The only thing scientific about it is that its apologists, like Dr. Lieberman, repeat the words “science” and “scientific” in every other sentence.

    Science, to me, is just a way to ascertain the truth. When what psychiatry does is evaluated through the real scientific method, it is clear what a fraud it is. Keep in mind that real science is on our side. It is important for us to point that out as much as we can.

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  • John, I agree with you that it would be a good idea. Since I never was drugged, as I was locked up so long ago the drugs didn’t exist yet, I am only in a fe groups o people trying to get off them, but I can see there is a lot of understanding about why and how these drugs are pushed on people. I think there is already a degree of politicization in some of these groups.

    So in some of these groups, there is already a lot of consciousness-raising going on.

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  • I think this is a very perceptive comment. Yes, by ignoring the fact hat most emotional distress and what is labeled “mental illness” is caused by the bad experiences people have, psychiatry is changing our culture in a very dangerous way. Essentially, what psychiatry is telling us is that fighting back against the abuses in our larger society is a symptom of mental illness.

    How well this fits in with the concentration of power and money that is corrupting our society.

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  • I agree with “Sa” that family members and other people who are in NAMI now are potential folks who we should try to recruit to our movement. NAMI gets almost all its funding from the drug companies, and so its grassroots members are exposed to tons of pro-drug propaganda.

    I know a fair number of people who are NAMI members and really want what is best for their family members, and who want to be with other people with “mentally ill” relatives for support. If we could reach them, they would be powerful allies.

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  • I very much like what Andrew Loder wrote, except I don’t think it is true that the purpose of peaceful protests is to ask those who oppress us to please stop. They are not the audience for this. The general public is the audience. At this point in time, the public hardly knows anything about our issues, and peaceful demonstrations bring these issues to their attention. The demos also help us recruit people to our cause.

    I also strongly agree that we need to do a lot more than mild protests. But I have to ask, who is going to do them? Right now our movement is not large. Before we can do civil disobedience, we have to have a reasonable number of people who are willing to do this. Calling for civil disobedience is a good thing, that I wholeheartedly agree with, but right now it is hard to get people to do ANYTHING, much less get arrested for blocking entrances to shock hospitals, etc.

    It is a big first step to get people to do more than just complain to one another, or click on the “like” button.

    I mean, I have read people who say we should have a million people march on Washington to demand justice for our issues. That is a great idea too, but where are those millions of people going to come from? We have to work from the stage where we are, and right now there is a lot of movement building to do.

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  • Jim, can you think of any way people reading MIA can be helpful in this?

    While I am not sure of your general politics, I think one thing that could be helpful is that this particular case shows the influence of the uncontrolled influence of drug corporations on the government, something that Bernie Sanders might be convinced to start talking about in relation to psychiatry.

    After May 16, I hope to try to get some of our more political movement people to focus on influencing him to talk about our issues, Keep in mind that in 1985, he addressed our last Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression when he was mayor of Burlington, Vermont. No other politician has ever done something like this, as far as I know.

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  • Yeah, I sure agree that our critical/anti-psychiatry movement should pay more attention to what happens to other disrespected groups in our society. As I go back a long way, I came to this movement from being a supporter of the civil rights movement in the 60’s and early 70’s.

    As a child, I already understood that what was being done to black people was the same as what was done to us, the inmates of the crazy house.

    I hope that this new rebellion, people refusing to be abused like this, will lead to OUR movement waking up and starting to fight back. The civil rights movement of the 60’s inspired everyone, and I hope it inspires us again.

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  • I took a look at the comments, and what occurs to me is that the public gets much more upset about the drugging of children than of adults. When I was organizing the ban on shock treatment many years ago, I noticed that many people who would otherwise defend shock were outraged at the idea that I was given it at age six. Psychiatric abuse of children is an issue that resonates very deeply with people. Few will defend it, even if they otherwise practice the religion of psychiatry.

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  • Wow, Chaya. I kind of skimmed the HuffPost article, but didn’t think to look at the comments. It is very unusual for HuffPost to publish anything very critical of psychiatry (though they do occasionally print articles by Bruce Levine and Peter Breggin). I think it may influence them to publish more articles like this if their readers are supportive as you describe.

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  • I think the idea of the Hearing Voices Network is great, and it does a lot to change the attitude of the public towards people with a mental illness label in general. It is wonderful to see people like Eleanor Longden getting a lot of public attention that counters the stereotypes of people who are considered outside the pale. But at the risk (which I often take) of being denounced as politically incorrect, I have to say that this is becoming a fad. I know there are a lot of people who I KNOW do not hear voices, jumping into this movement and claiming to be its leaders.

    In my ten years in a state hospital, and my decades in our movement, I have met very few people who hear voices. I think it is great that there is a trend now to help people to deal with this who have to deal with it, but let’s get real.

    Even though I think this is a good development, there are a LOT of other things that need to be done. We need to think about strategy in general. Just because this (very constructive) movement is getting a lot of public attention doesn’t mean that we should think it’s going to solve all the problems we have to face.

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  • It seems really bizarre to me that the psychiatric profession does this. Obviously, the more sophisticated ones, like Dr. Pies (?) don’t want to have to defend the indefensible.

    I am wondering, though, whether this garbage is really worth the effort. It isn’t, I don’t think, an issue that most people care about that much, at least divorced from its context (pushing drugs). I think it may be diverting us from more important things, like trying to find an overall strategy for how to deal with the power of the psychiatric profession to abuse people almost at will.

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  • I think this is wonderful, because Lieberman sounds like a fool.

    A short while back, the New York Times ran an article that was mildly critical pf psychiatry, and Lieberman actually demanded that the Times give him space for rebuttal. Of course, they refused, and Lieberman threw a virtual tantrum. But here, he has made a personal attack on someone, and a chance for rebuttal makes a lot of sense. Since it appears that the moderator of the program was openminded enough to give exposure to Bob’s ideas, a request for a rebuttal is likely to be successful, I would think.

    Lieberman’s book appears to be ghostwritten. Too bad for him he can’t carry around his ghostwriter with him to keep him from putting his foot in his mouth once again.

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  • This conclusion goes way back. When I was a psychology grad student, one of the most discussed issues was that the results of therapy were the same across all theoretical approaches. It didn’t make much difference what kind of therapy it was. Therapy worked out well, the better the interpersonal relationship between the therapist and client.

    I think, going a little further with this idea, that it shows that people in severe mental/emotional distress are healed by emotional support. From the Quaker retreats to the Soteria houses, people get better when they are cared about and treated with respect and kindness.

    Respect and kindness…how hard that is to find in the “mental health” system. No wonder “mental illness” becomes chronic. You are upset, unhappy, not functioning well, and you are drugged and given the message that you are semi-subhuman (maybe not so semi) and will have to be drugged for the rest of your life.

    How can people believe that this is what society should provide to troubled people? I think it is because psychiatry has become a kind of cult, a belief system in which people believe the profession’s claims, even in the face of what they really do.

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  • The earlier versions of the psych survivor movement failed because the NIMH (and later, SAMHSA) spent a large amount of money (by our standards) creating and continuing to fund Astroturf groups that advocated the policies of their funders. I was there in 1985, when after the first “Alternatives” conference, funded by NIMH, a large number of activists dropped out of our movement, as they recognized and were rightfully frightened by the power of money and government arrayed against us.

    Meanwhile, the drug companies and their public relations departments went into a frenzy to successfully convince the public that the solution to all problems in living was drugs and drugs and more drugs.

    Unlike even the gay movement, which also faces the attitude of the public (which is changing rapidly for the better) that they are somehow less than human, we psych survivors are up against a very profitable industry focussed on us, and on keeping us quiet and passive.

    Another huge problem for us is that we are invisible. Sure, there are strange people walking the streets who the public perceives as typical of psych survivors. But the fact is that almost all of the tens of millions of people who have been in the clutches of the mental illness system are out there with everyone else in society, trying to blend in, usually successfully. They have no motivation to come out of the closet, because all they will get for that are lost jobs, lost relationships, and the status of lepers. We have the potential to be a large and powerful movement, but we have not addressed how to bring these secret survivors into it.

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  • Since I don’t really understand this story, I probably shouldn’t comment. I am glad this person finds it liberating to think of her problem as caused by her brain. Rather than making her feel helpless, as she says, it makes her feel less self-blaming.

    Somehow I am having trouble grasping this, but certainly anything that helps someone get control over her own life has got to be a good thing.

    I usually have an answer for anything like this, sort of, but not this time. I hope other people comment, with more understanding than I seem to have here.

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  • In defense of the Times, they have published more and more stories skeptical of the psychiatric profession’s bizarre view of the world. Compared to the average media outlet, sometimes they sound like a version of Mad In America.

    After all, our friend Jeffrey Lieberman was heard to complain that the Times was persecuting his profession, so SOMETHING good is going on there.

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  • Yeah, it certainly is frightening than so many Americans take psych drugs. And it means that our warnings to the public about the dangers of psych drugs run up against a lot of resistance from people who don’t want to face what they are doing to themselves.

    There was a very relevant article in the New York Times a few weeks ago called “Medicating Women’s Feelings,” by a feminist psychiatrist, where she encourages women to deal with the causes of their anxiety and unhappiness, instead of numbing themselves out. I think our culture devalues emotion to start with and then psychiatry promotes that.

    Like many other social institutions, psychiatry both mirrors the culture it arises from and then changes it.

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  • This is the Huffington Post’s idea of looking critically at psychiatry: ask one of its leaders what he thinks. I have never seen them ever ask anyone with a psychiatric history to write anything. The fact that they treat people like me as non-persons tells you just what their attitude is toward these issues. It is a genteel version of “lock them up and throw away the key”

    These establishment liberals are the WORST when it comes to our issues.

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  • While I agree with most of this article, this buzzword of “epigenetic” really bothers me. There is nothing new in saying that people’s behavior is determined by both”nature” and “nurture.” This was a big issue fifty years ago when I was in a couple of graduate programs in psychology, and it is a big issue today. But it is also pretty obvious. Just change “nature” to “genes” and there you are, a great new scientific discovery (sarcasm intended).

    All this “epigenetic” stuff is just a renaming of nature versus nurture, and really, it is pretty obvious. I don’t think people should take academic writing all that seriously. Writing like this confirms to me that I made the right choice when I dropped out of grad school. Clearly I was never cut out to be an academic.

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  • Very powerful. This is the kind of thing the mainstream media should be reporting, not the drug company propaganda.

    What isn’t mentioned here (because you can’t mention everything, of course) is that after all these drugs, this woman now still has to process her grief. If the shrinks had left her alone and helped her to get the emotional support she needed, she would by now have been able to come to terms with her grief. The past doesn’t go away, you can only come to terms with it.

    But there is another important point I want to make, and I hope MIA doesn’t remove it. This assertion by psychiatrists that one has only 15 days to “get over it” betrays a very chilling worldview. How can one “get over ” this in 15 days? The answer is, only if your relationships with other people have no depth or strength at all. The average psychiatrist seems to see their clients, and other human beings as profit centers, to be drugged and exploited, not as fellow human beings to be cherished and nurtured.

    I would like to be able to ask them publicly how long it would take them to “get over” the death of someone close to them.

    If they answered, which I think is probably true for most of them, just a short while, what does this say about the moral character of psychiatrists? About their ability, or willingness, to be connected with other people? The profession, with the help of drug company PR money, has succeeded in portraying themselves as godlike omniscient figures we should model ourselves after. Psychiatry has become a kind of cult, a cult that demands human sacrifices.

    Surely, when one compares what psychiatrists on the whole actually do, with the misplaced trust and belief people have in psychiatry, there is a great gap. The public believes in psychiatry in spite of what it actually does.

    It is scary to see this, but unfortunately it is the reality. Religious beliefs are hard to challenge, but I think that is one of our tasks,as we struggle to replace psychiatry with real help for people in distress.

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  • I am looking forward to reading this very much. I’m sure it will help me in my work. Also I want to say that I have very much appreciated Bonnie’s very helpful and well thought out writing on strategy for the anti-psychiatry movement.

    And Bob Whitaker’s new book Psychiatry Under the Influence is coming out this same month! I think there is some important intellectual momentum happening now.

    Looks like I am staying up late in the next few weeks to read the kind of books I can’t put down.

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  • Wow, these fools are really amazing. Since they can’t defend their nonsense, they deny they ever said it, even though there are tons of statements by them easily findable on the internet and in other publications.

    They have become so used to telling any lies they want and not being challenged that they think they can get away with it forever. But those days will soon be over.

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  • Act, yes. It occurs to me that, much as I agree with Bonnie about strategy, we can’t build alliances until we have a movement of our own to connect with other movements. We are at a point now where we have almost no activism at all. I think anything that gets people to stop talking and start acting is a great leap forward.

    That is one thing we are addressing with the coordinated demos on May 16.

    The other thing that is holding us back, and is very related, is the incredible nastiness we express to one another in the psych survivors movement. I ask myself every time I try to do something why I am letting myself get into this swamp. Sometimes I feel as if I have gone back to my childhood in Rockland State Hospital, where I would be physically and emotionally assaulted all day long sometimes.

    There are tens of millions of people in the US who have been inmates of psychiatric institutions. They keep their psych histories secret, since anyone who admits to it is at risk of losing jobs, being rejected by friends and lovers, all those things. These are people who could make a great contribution to this cause. But you really would have to be crazy to join this movement the way it is now.

    This happens to a lesser degree in other movements and the general left as well. But our movement is the WORST.

    I don’t know the solution to this, but I know that as long as working in this movement means being attacked constantly, no one is going to join us. If we don’t address this soon, I think our movement will stop existing.

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  • I think that is a good point, though not easy to carry out. Besides the difficulty of getting an audience, our movement itself, at least a lot of the people in it, doesn’t seem to grasp how ridiculous the claims of psychiatry are. Before we can convince others of this, we have to perceive it ourselves. When I have pointed out what nonsense much of the psychiatric propaganda is, I have been met by something like, no, no, no, it’s serious because everyone believes it. This is just a manifestation of folks in our movement not being able to think strategically.

    A good example of how humor can be used, though, is the recent program about drug company propaganda by the comedian John Oliver. One line just really cracked me up: “Ask your doctor if taking bribes from drug companies is right for you.”

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  • I was hoping you would have a simple solution, Bonnie, lol…sigh.

    As you know, I am working right now on the issue of shock. I think it is a way to get the public to see the true nature of psychiatry, and it is also something we can get our very fragmented movement to agree on.

    But I think you are right that the issue that would really resonate with the public is the psychiatric abuse of children. I think if we did this, it would make a lot of people, especially of course parents, rally to our cause.

    Unfortunately, it has been very hard to get people in our movement to see this. When four-year-old Rebecca Riley died eight or ten years ago of massive doses of psychiatric drugs, her tragedy got national media coverage, which our issues rarely do.

    When Justine Pelletier was taken from her parents by psychiatrists because they refused to have her “treated” for her “mental illness,” literally tens of thousands of people came to her aid.

    But in both cases, which both happened in the same city, our psych survivor movement just sat there, saying and doing nothing. It seems there was no appreciation of how important it was that a child was being abused by psychiatry, and that it was being noticed by the media.

    I played a small role in fighting for Justina, and I came to Boston several times to try to help. I was appalled by the disinterest shown by our own people. We could have focused the discussion of Justina on the issue of psychiatry, instead of the “disagreement among doctors” explanation by the media. It wasn’t a disagreement among doctors. It was a naked power grab by psychiatry, which if our movement had paid attention could have been brought to the attention of millions of parents. We could have reached many of these parents and formed coalitions with them.

    I totally agree with you about coalitions being a means to expand the influence of our movement, and what more logical, and powerful, coalition than with parents? Recently, I have had the chance to work a little with parents who have come to realize that psychiatry was harming their kids, not helping them. They are wonderful allies, very respectful of us survivors, because they have seen for themselves that the propaganda of psychiatry is lies.

    I hope you write more about this issue. I think the issue of psychiatric abuse of children can be very powerful, but it is very hard to get our people to see this. In general, it is very hard to get our people to act in a strategic way. And since our movement is not large, we have to think hard about how to use our limited resources.

    Keep up your good work, Bonnie!

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  • I really like this powerful and true article. But we should keep in mind that it will take a long, hard struggle before we can create a system where people wanting real help with their problems in living get the kind of help that Sarah writes about here. In the meanwhile, I hope our movement for human rights can take the lead in helping one another in the way she describes.

    We need to be giving one another the human connection, the nurturing, the respect that Sarah talks about. It is so hard to work in this movement now without that. Yet it is so comforting and inspiring when I am working with other comrades in this movement who give support and caring to one another.

    Let’s do this! Let’s model what we advocate for. Let’s make our whole movement the kind of supportive community that all people need.

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  • I am deeply troubled by the attitudes expressed in this article.

    It has been well established that SSRI’s may set off homicidal and suicidal impulses. The FDA, hardly a bunch of anti-drug radicals, list this as one of the “side” effects of these drugs. In virtually every one of the mass shootings that we are hearing about now, the perpetrators were on psychiatric drugs. The increase in mass shootings and the increased use of psychiatric drugs since the Eighties have gone hand in hand.

    Even if only one in ten thousand of the people taking these drugs has this reaction,(and it is unlikely that the figure is this small) that is one hundred people per million. In the US now, there are tens of millions of people taking the drugs. Let’s say that (very conservatively) there are forty million Americans on SSRIs. That is four thousand people who fall into a homicidal rage. Of course. some people can check themselves, but others won’t.

    How is pointing this out somehow “extremism”? Since when has it become a virtue not to take a stand?

    I think this position is immoral.

    In Germany in the 1930’s, the “centrist” position would have been that only half of the Jews should be killed. I know there will be an uproar about what I just said, but it’s true. I think that anyone who claims that what I have said was too “extreme” should say what position THEY would have taken at that time and place. Because what I have just described WAS the “centrist” position.

    Sometimes one has to have the courage to speak out about what is right. And sometimes people have to look at the practical effect of refusing to take a position. We are not discussing some interesting philosophical problem. We are talking about the lives and suffering of millions of people.

    There are times when it is correct to find right and wrong on both sides. This is not one of them.

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  • I was in a very similar place in Vancouver, the Vancouver Emotional Emergency Center, at a crisis in my life, and I think it might have saved my life. I of course had more sense than to sign myself into a psych ward, but I was emotionally paralyzed at a time when I needed to move on.

    Places like VEEC and Soteria are badly needed. But we have to fight politically for them, because the system in place now does all it can to prevent them from being funded or even allowed to exist.

    Alternatives and fighting the existing system have to go together. We see that now in Western Massachusetts, where people are losing their funding for a “peer run” service center. Without political power, which we MUST develop, very few good programs will be allowed to exist.

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  • Yes, I do think this article will encourage people to get off their drugs.

    I am more and more impressed by people who have the courage to free themselves from these poisons. And I have also seen that people who do this have become some of the best activists in our human rights movement. Anyone who can choose to go through the ordeal of getting off these poisons is really almost heroic.

    Thanks for this article, Chaya. It will help a lot of people.

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  • Thanks for the praise, Chaya,and of course your help would be very welcome. I have tentatively set the time and place as Herrick Hospital in Berkeley from 2 to 4, but there are shock shops in San Francisco as well. If we had enough people we could do both. Thanks for the suggestion about contacting the people who were at Leonard Frank’s memorial. I’ll bet almost all of them will come to this demonstration. Let’s talk soon.

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  • I was heartened by Dr. Pies’ complaint about Mad In America. It shows that mainstream psychiatry feels very threatened by any real public discussion of its shortcomings.

    What will he be saying if/when our movement for human rights actually leaves its bubble and starts fighting back very publicly?

    I think mainstream psychiatry feels so threatened is because they know the profession is based on lies and does a lot more harm than good. Once the media starts giving some space to our arguments, psychiatry is going to be very exposed. And I think that will happen.

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  • The Forbes story is a bit weird, since after pointing out that the FDA recognizes suicidal and homicidal thinking as a possible “side effect” of the drugs, the author seems to back out by the end.

    The writer in the Daily Mail is much more forthright, and I am told by Cheryl Prax, a survivor activist in London, that this reporter frequently is critical of psych drugs.

    At least (I hope) we won’t have to read the usual “if only he could have received psychiatric help before this happened.” Or will we?

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  • We now have a sort of steering committee in place, and have even been able to hire someone part time as staff. Someone sent us a very good logo suitable for a t-shirt and we will be trying to decide what to do about t-shirts soon. What I am most concerned about is if we get a whole bunch made and don’t have time to sell them. Fulfilling orders will be very time consuming as well. But just the same, I think it is a great idea.

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  • The comment about “extremism” reminds me of a Jules Feiffer cartoon from many years ago at a time when black schools were being bombed in the South. It was a parody of President Eisenhower saying that he was “against extremists on both sides, those who want to bomb the schools and those who want to keep them open.” There’s nothing extreme going on here except the extremely damaging way people like me are treated by the profession of psychiatry.

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  • Well, finally at least one mainstream media outlet is getting the facts approximately right. For coverage that portrays people like me (and probably you) as demented killers, check out almost any story on the Huffington Post. On the issue of vision problems, their version is that they were caused by the co-pilot’s “mental illness.” Think about what that angle conveys about what we survivors are: warped monsters and freaks. For other equally bigoted stories on psychiatry, check out their recent review of Jeffrey Lieberman’s book “Shrinks,” written by someone who claims to be very happy with his lifetime drugging with ADHD amphetamines, who is most likely just a PR person for the drug companies. At about the same time, there is an article on “teenage depression,” written by someone who purports to be a 16-year-old girl. Amusingly, if that’s the word, this supposed teenager slings around the obscure language of psych drug propaganda like an experienced public relations shill. Maybe she is so brilliant that she is the youngest person ever hired for such a job.

    I am not holding my breath waiting for some mainstream media outlet to point out that if psychiatry is so helpful, how is it they didn’t help this man? I am sure we will soon see stories saying the usual “if only he could have received psychiatric help sooner.”

    I don’t know what we can do about this yet, but I think it is important for our movement to take notice of which major media outlets promote psychiatry and demonize people with psych labels. For this, I nominate Huffington Post and NPR (National Pharmaceutical Radio) for some kind of award.

    On the other hand, the Guardian newspaper (out of the UK) and, recently, the New York Times, have written critically about psychiatry. In fact, one story in the Times was responded to angrily by Dr. Lieberman in some medical journal while practically foaming at the mouth. Recent stories in the Times about psychiatry have often been so close to our perspective that they would not at all be out of place in Mad In America. I highly recommend one called “Medicating Women’s Emotions” by a feminist psychiatrist. She said that women who feel unhappy and anxious shouldn’t drug away their feelings, but go out into the world and do something about what is causing their unhappiness. Great article.

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  • I already knew about about the end of the exclusion of the mourning period in the DSM5. Is this something different? If so, I find it hard to believe, given the flak psychiatry has already received over this issue. But it seems there is no end to how brazen these people are.

    A shock doctor gets put in charge of a $400 million slush fund, designed to promote brain interventions for “mental illness.” Michelle Obama joins NAMI in calling for more drugs for the “mentally ill.” At times like this, it seems as if we are going backwards in our movement for human rights.

    When I hear about these things, as someone who has been in this movement since 1971, it’s very hard not to give in to despair.

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  • I think it is very important to note where this interview was aired. National Public Radio, aka National Pharmaceutical Radio, is one of the worst media outlets when it comes to issues of psychiatric abuse. Many of its listeners believe they are going to get a progressive view of issues when they tune in, but what they get regarding the field of “mental health” is just the opposite. No media outlet is a stronger apologist for psychiatry and its atrocities than NPR.

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  • I think Peter Breggin would be one of the best sources. He is a dissident psychiatrist who has been fighting the excesses of his profession for many years. Sorry I don’t have a specific reference for you, but if you Google Breggin and shock it will turn up something informative.

    An even better source of information would be if you asked the people who had it what their experience was. I was six years old when I was experimented on, and I can tell you the experience was terrifying, caused me to lose a lot of memory, and is something I am still struggling with over seventy years later. My friend who is working with me organizing the May 16 event lost her memory for her long marriage, her children in their younger years, and her 25 year career as a nurse, which she had dreamed of as a little girl. What is even worse, she can no longer practice her profession and often forgets events that have happened just days or even hours before.

    These are not isolated incidents, but quite typical.

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  • My computer keeps eating my comment, but I will try again.

    This is nothing new from Lieberman, and as Bob so well points out, both he and his profession of psychiatry are emperors without clothes. How do they get away with this? Because the mass media give virtually no exposure to psychiatry’s critics.

    One thing about our approach is that while it is extremely valuable and necessary for folks like Bob to expose how scientifically invalid the claims of psychiatry are, the average person on the street is not going to get excited about that, even if we were able to get these ideas more exposure.

    When we write about how much damage the practices of psychiatry causes, this is not an abstraction. These are severe human rights violations,and we should be saying so. Other movements for human rights, like the civil rights movement of the 1960’s, were able to get their message out, because they made themselves very visible.

    We can and should be doing that too. Elsewhere on MIA, I have written about the demonstrations against shock treatment in dozens of cities which will happen on May 16. This is the kind of action human rights movements do. I have already been contacted by a journalist connected with the New York Times about this, because the media take this kind of action seriously.

    Of course, shock treatment is only one of many abuses. But it is an abuse that the average person on the street knows in their hearts is wrong, and a first step in breaking the myth that psychiatry is a benevolent institution. I urge everyone reading this to participate in, or organize, a May 16 demo in your area. If we want our rights respected, we have to fight for them!

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  • Beautifully written and powerful. The world needs more books like this. The way you were made to feel comes across very strongly, and the general public needs to know how useless most medical professionals are in situations like this. Don’t stop writing, you are on to something good.

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  • Thanks, Phil Hickey, for yet another great article. It has occurred to me that if our human rights movement concentrated more on the psychiatric abuse of children, we might be able to make more progress in showing the public how destructive psychiatric “treatment” is. Like shock treatment, the average person, I think, becomes pretty concerned when they hear about children being hurt, and understands that something is very wrong with psychiatry.

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  • It’s a good thing to talk about all the possible helpful interventions that people could experience. Like all alternatives to the present system, though, they will have to be fought for. I think working for alternatives and fighting against the routine abuse offered by psychiatry now have to be done at the same time. The psychiatric/drug company system is not going to give up its power without a fight.

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  • Well, I’m not sure what that action could be. As you know, we put it on the ballot many years ago in Berkeley, and the voters adopted a ban. But the courts ruled that the city did not have authority to ban it, only the state.

    I am thinking about trying to put it on the ballot in Oregon, where I am probably moving soon.

    As for more aggressive actions, it would be best not to talk about them. What my gut feelings are, and what my brain tells me would be practical, are two different things. But I do think we are up against a very evil system that needs to be fought just as hard as we can..

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  • We are fighting a powerful institution, and it will take much effort and time to win this fight. This is true for almost all campaigns for social justice. It took black people 400 years to get where they are today, and there is still a lot to be done. I am not happy seeing how much progress we have to make. But I do think these coordinated demonstrations have a good chance of putting ourselves back in the public eye and forcing people to recognize the justice of our cause.

    I refuse to give up, and I don’t think you should give up either.

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  • I think the most significant statement in this article is the sentence wherein the authors talk about the “most significant stakeholders.” I notice that the clients/victims of psychiatry are not on this list.

    But the authors have no hesitation in claiming to speak for these very people, that include me.

    I think this is the essence of articles like this. E. Fuller Torrey does this as well.

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  • Of course, I am sure everyone reading MIA knows this, that anyone foolish enough to talk about how down they feel will find themselves on a psych ward, pumped full of drugs, just as fast as the police can get there. And ultimately, as we also know, their chances of actually killing themselves will be extremely more likely.

    I don’t know how we can alert people to this danger, but I wish we can find some way to try.

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  • I am really happy the two of you have already connected. It tells me something is really going to happen there. And even if the two of you can only get a small group, like ten or twelve to demonstrate, I think a demonstration over this issue would really catch the attention of the public and the media there. It would be a novelty, an issue the country is not used to, and I think the chances are high that the local media will pick it up. This I think is especially likely if you and Katherine bring up that this is happening in several dozen places. Good luck, and I am glad you are involved.

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  • David, I would really appreciate it if you would please stop highjacking the discussion of this article. Your comments are supposed to be relevant to the subject of the article. If you want to discuss philosophical ideas or abstract theories, why don’t you write an article yourself and submit it to Mad In America and ask them to publish it? I promise that if I comment on it, my comments will be to the point and related to what you have written.

    Please be considerate of others here.

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  • Hi, Someone Else. If you go to ectjustice.com, all the cities who have demos planned will be listed there, with most of the contact info. We are trying to find as many people as possible who will pledge to organize an event in their town. I agree with you that a protest in a smaller place can have a big impact,and we are doing our best to find people in small cities. If you live in a small town, even a handful of people can have an effective demonstration, especially since media in those places are always looking for local news.

    I don’t know where you live, but if there is no demo set up near you, I would hope you would consider organizing one yourself. As I wrote in this blog, it isn’t that complicated, and we can help you figure out any problems.

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  • Compromised as academia may be right now, just the same I would not criticize anyone who goes into it with an ethical attitude and a willingness to take risks to make the kind of change that should happen.

    I mean, having ANY kind of standard career puts on in a position of working in a compromised setting.

    The kind of people who really make me angry, though, are those who actually DEFEND the system in order to get a job. That isn’t what this article is about.

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  • John, I understand you live some distance from London, but if you are willing to organize a shock protest in your city on May 16, please contact Cheryl Prax with Speak Out Against Psychiatry. I know you can get it done, and I have a lot of respect for the comments you have made here over the last couple of years. So I hope you decide to do this. Our movement needs more people like you who are willing to be leaders.

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  • As someone who was given a diagnosis of “schizophrenia” at age six, so I could be experimented on with electric shock treatment, I am wholeheartedly in agreement with Peter’s call for protecting children against psychiatry’s eagerness to drug and otherwise hurt them. I want to thank Peter for his work over the years to protect people like me and millions of others from the abuses of the “mental health” system.

    I also want to say to everyone who is concerned about human rights in the psychiatric system that a focus on the abuse of childen would resonate strongly with the general public, who after all will eventually decide about the kind of system we should have to help people with their emotional and other problems in life. I have been disappointed with our movement as it failed to engage with the situations of Rebecca Riley and Justina Pelletier, two children who were horribly abused by psychiatry. Even the mainstream media followed the situations of these two kids, yet we stood by and did nothing. This was an chance to reach the public with the truth about psychiatry. Why didn’t we take this opportunity?

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  • I hate to just repeat what everyone else is saying, but this is just an ad for the drug industry. But what would one expect? Forbes is a very conservative business magazine.

    Don’t you just love the way the author skims over that fact that antidepressants work no better than placebo? People who aren’t really depressed fake their symptoms so they can be included in drug trials????? Huh? Really bizarre.

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  • I like this article too. It takes on an issue that we who consider ourselves as anti-psychiatry probably have not thought through very well. I would never put anyone down for taking psych drugs long term, but telling people what you think is good for them can be condescending. Chaya, you deserve a lot of credit for being willing to grapple with this issue, and I really appreciate what you have written here.

    I am grateful that you have started a very important discussion.

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  • Right on to you, Michael. The only problem I have with this article is that you are picking on such a weak opponent. Lieberman’s arguments are intellectually pathetic, and even though I don’t have a high opinion of psychiatry, I still can’t understand how Lieberman was chosen the president of the APA.

    But I hope Doctor Lieberman continues to write, in as many publications as possible, as often as possible. He is one of our secret weapons.

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  • Although they are not always consistent in this, the Times frequently runs stories that are critical of psychiatry and the drug companies. This is rare in the mainstream media. Another type of story they have run which is very helpful to our cause is first person accounts of various problems that people have with psychiatry, Recently there was one by a woman who is struggling to get off psych drugs. Another one, maybe a year ago, that really struck me was an account by a veteran returning from, I think, Afghanistan. He had made an actual suicide attempt, and signed himself into the local psych ward expecting to get help. After a week or so of “treatment,” consisting of a five-minute interview with a psychiatrist and a prescription for a bunch of drugs, plus sitting all day in a dayroom in front of the TV, he realized he was not going to get any help and signed himself out (lucky that he could). It is almost unheard of now that psych survivors are presented as human beings in the media.

    Of course, for the survivors reading MIA, this didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. But for the regular readers of the Times, this must have been revelatory.

    For those readers of MIA who are activists, this suggests to me that focusing on the Times to try to get them to cover our actions might well be fruitful. Hopefully they will cover the upcoming May 16 demonstrations in many cities to protest shock treatment.

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  • I think this could be very helpful to us. If the GAO creates some pressure, and the federal “mental health” system has to account for what it does, it might raise HUGE questions in the mind of government officials who pay for this terrible system. As we know, the fact is, overall, typical psychiatric interventions cause more harm than good. Yet more and more taxpayer money goes to pay for them.

    One of the most illuminating studies of all was reported on in MIA recently about the connection between degree of exposure to psychiatry and the likelihood of committing suicide. This Danish study showed that people were FORTY-FOUR TIMES (not percent, times) more likely to commit suicide if they spent some time as an inmate on a psych ward in the past year..

    Imagine what would happen if the GAO looked at this kind of research and reported it to Congress.

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  • There is a big difference between people who are not psychiatric survivors and who dabble in our issues, for whatever reason, and sincere allies who have put their jobs and careers at risk to support us, like Richard, like Bob Whitaker, like the late psychiatrist Loren Mosher. Everyone who knows me knows that I don’t easily trust non-survivors in the context of our movement. But I don’t think it is right to dismiss Richard’s arguments because he is not a survivor. I know what he has done for other people trapped in the psychiatric system, and I respect what he has to say here.

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  • I just can’t resist saying how amused I am by this article. Psychiatrists have become so used to being treated with undeserved deference that they fall to pieces when they get some long-deserved criticism. I have seen other articles by Lieberman where he makes the same complaint. And his other complaint, that psychiatry is the only “medical” specialty that has a whole movement opposing it, is just a riot. It isn’t an argument against being anti-psychiatry. It is an argument for it.

    This man was the president of the American Psychiatric Association! If he is the best psychiatry can up with as their spokesperson, we in the anti-psychiatry movement should expect to win soon.

    Keep the faith, Doctor Lieberman! Write as many articles as you can.

    Maybe you and I can even debate on television, eh? After all, I am just a lifelong schizophrenic, so you would have nothing to fear.

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  • How sad that this is being taken seriously. Our movement is not very strong as it is. Now we are told that we are too militant? That is the same position that the psychiatric system takes.

    I suggest that anyone reading things like that should ignore it. We have a lot of work to do. Those who think psychiatry isn’t really so bad have a right to their opinion. Those who want a job in the system have a right to do that too. But they don’t have a moral right to tell us that we should not defend ourselves, and we shouldn’t take this seriously.

    Again, we have work to do, and we should keep our focus on that.

    I do have to say, for those who don’t know me, lol, that I can’t say what I really think because MIA will remove my comment. But I must say that people who defend evil don’t deserve our respect.

    There is a quote from the Talmud that I like that is very relevant: “Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act.” Think about it.

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  • Yeah, being older, I well remember the enormous claims of the prevalence of “mental illness” that were made in the Fifties, when I was a psychology major in New York. There was something called the Midtown Study, which every year interviewed people in Manhattan and claimed that eighty per cent were “mentally ill.” We students laughed at that, because it was so clear what a nonsensical overreach it was. Now, as you point out, the figures are adjusted to something that sounds believable. Otherwise, the apologists for psychiatry would be laughed out of court.

    Great article.

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  • Doctor Elliot, I really admire your persistence and courage in exposing what that university has done. You are a good man.

    But I suspect the University of Minnesota is just the tip of the iceberg. Particularly, I see Harvard University, with far more power and prestige (and money), approving, by its failure to act, the heinous behavior of Doctor Joseph Biederman, who was exposed by Senator Charles Grassley as taking money from psychiatric drug companies to further his “research” on drugging small children and ruining their lives. If only there were someone at Harvard with your tenacity and courage.

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  • I read this article elsewhere this morning, and I think it is a beautiful and moving essay that goes right to the heart of what is wrong with the psychiatric system. Psychiatry claims to help people, yet before anything else, it tries to reduce them to the status of subhumans, even in their own minds. Shock treatment, drugging people into oblivion and an early death, restraints, solitary confinement — how can anyone do this to another human being? But we psychiatric “patients” are not seen as human beings by those who claim to help us.

    I have struggled for many years to overcome the self-hatred that psychiatrists forced on me as a child. And almost all of the psych survivors I know have had to struggle with this.

    Thank you for this beautiful and true article.

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  • It’s great that the Times will publish something like this, a break from the usual drug company propaganda found in almost all the mass media.

    I didn’t try to read the comments, but it is very frightening to hear about the religious fanaticism. And it is a religion that demands human sacrifices.

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  • When I hear or read people lecturing me about how anyone who disagrees with them is racist, sexist, etc., it has almost always been my experience that they themselves are coming from a position of great privilege. Myself, my first political activity was in the civil rights movement of the Sixties. I got into it because of my own experience. I was torn from my foster parents at age six and experimented on with shock treatment, then sent to a state hospital (of the 1950’s) for the rest of my childhood. For this reason, I have identified with all people who have been put into a situation where their humanity is disregarded and their human rights taken away. So I think when people make accusations of this sort they are often wrapping themselves in the flag of someone else’s liberation. And I have to ask them: what have you experienced in your own life?

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  • It just occurred to me that what was lacking in this article, and in pretty much all articles in Mad In America these days, was any acknowledgement of human rights violations in psychiatry at all. Since the author attacks the “dogmatism” of anti-psychiatry, I think it’s valid to discuss this.

    I think psychiatry cannot be reformed any more than slavery. There were many people before the Civil War who advocated for the reform of slavery. Slavery benefited the slaves, they said, who were not capable of dealing with freedom or functioning as citizens. (Doesn’t this sound familiar?) So the reformers wanted such things as less beatings and kinder treatment.

    That’s what those who think psychiatry should be reformed are basically advocating for too. But reforming psychiatry and reforming slavery lead to the same thing: the perpetuation of a system whose basic purpose is to take away the human rights of the people who are subjected to it.

    I also think there is some confusion, which is encouraged by people like Dr. Torrey, about what it would mean not to have psychiatry as a system that people turn to when they are in distress. If psychiatry lost its power, its defenders say, then people would have nowhere to turn for help. This is really nonsense.

    Programs like Soteria House and peer-run respite centers help people, and they are not run by psychiatrists. In fact, the psychiatric profession fights them tooth and nail. Decent psychiatrists like the late Loren Mosher, who started the first Soteria House, are viciously attacked by their colleagues. In Dr. Mosher’s case, he was driven out of his position in the NIMH as a result of his advocacy of a more humane way of dealing with people in distress.

    I totally support the efforts to develop alternative ways of helping people with emotional problems. But while working on these alternatives , we must recognize that to put them into practice, it will be necessary to fight for them politically.

    I think working for alternatives and having an antipsychiatry position go hand in hand.

    Anyway, I am disappointed that MIA recently seems to be presenting only a reformist view. I don’t think analyses of the fine points of psychiatric treatment is going to advance anything important any more than talking about reforms to slavery was very helpful either.

    At bottom, the real problem with psychiatry (as with slavery) is its consistent and intense violation of the human rights of the people who come under its control. Talking about reform just helps to perpetuate these violations. We should be concentrating on ending them.

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  • I had a lot of trouble understanding this, and I am not sure I was supposed to. I think the writer did have something worthwhile to say, but in spite of my Phi Beta Kappa key and several degrees, I just couldn’t follow it. Hey, I am even a lawyer, and we lawyers really know how to be obscure, but this beats me.

    I also take issue with this nonsense about “dogmatic anti-psychiatry positions.” There is nothing dogmatic about being anti-psychiatry. For me, it simply means that I see psychiatry as a whole to be an institution that does a great deal of harm and very little good. People like E.Fuller Torrey have managed to create this nonsensical idea that if you oppose what they are doing you are beyond the pale. And they have actually frightened a lot of people who know very well how destructive psychiatry is from speaking out. This is just plain silly…but dangerous.

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  • I think my comment was somewhat misunderstood. I am not opposed to alternatives at all, and I agree with what Duane said about how we need to get rid of forced psychiatry AND develop alternative ways of doing things that will help people in mental/emotional distress. What is bothering me is that it seems that MIA is not encouraging other kinds of organizing. I don’t agree that psychiatry is going to be changed from within, or by developing alternatives. The psychiatric profession is not going to stand by while their power is being taken away.

    Look at what happened to Loren Mosher when he developed the original Soteria House because he felt drugs were not being helpful to people. The programs were defunded, and he was driven out of his high-ranking job in the NIMH. (And I would add, he was a fine decent man, whom I was privileged to know personally.)

    No amount of alternatives, by themselves, will take away the power of psychiatry, the power that enables all the abuses people constantly write about, for good reason. That can only be done by a human rights movement, like all the other movements in this country, that directly confronts the psychiatric profession I mean, do we try to end racism by forming an “alternatives to racism” movement, to end rape by forming groups that advocate “alternatives to rape?”

    But I think this endless stream of mental health professionals on the pages of MIA, no matter how decent they are (and I think most of them are) sends the message that all we have to do to end psychiatric abuses is just leave it up to the professionals. I think this system is only going to change when its victims fight back. That is true of all other movements for social justice, and it is true of ours too.

    So I am not complaining about the articles these progressive professionals write, but that there seems to be no encouragement from MIA for the involvement of psychiatric survivors in our own liberation. And this greatly disappoints me.

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  • I think this article is fine, and this doctor does sound like someone who cares about his patients. However, I notice that every time I go to this website, there is yet another article by a psychiatrist. I think MIA is making it clear that to the extent they want to see some changes in the “mental health” system, they think that system is somehow going to be changed from within.

    No other movement for social change has succeeded in this way. I am sad to conclude that MIA is not interested or willing to encourage organizing by the people who have been hurt by this system, unless they are trying to become part of it.

    I don’t feel good at all coming to this conclusion. On the other hand, it has become very clear that people like me, who you perhaps view as a dangerous radical or whatever, are not welcome on this website.

    I think it would be good for your readers to have this discussion, but I don’t see a forum for it here.

    Anyway, I am deeply disappointed by what has happened to MIA, and the political choices it has made.

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  • Alex, I was very interested in your comment about classism in our movement. It’s an issue that I have been aware of for a long time, and I am thinking of writing an article about it in my upcoming blog/antipsychiatry journal. But I know it will stir up a hornet’s nest. Plus it isn’t just something in our survivors movement. You can see it everywhere on the left, everywhere in our country, actually.

    I would really like to discuss it with you and get the benefit of your thinking. I don’t have an email address for you, and I hesitate to post mine. But if you would like to discuss this issue with me, please write to me through Mad In America and we can chat. Thanks.

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  • This just shows what “more money for mental health” means. Without any imagination or new programs, of course this was going to happen.

    “Less money for mental health” would have been a much better demand.

    It is rather ironic that client groups supported the earmarked new tax. They were promised innovative, frequently client-directed programs, but got little or nothing.

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  • Yes, as Steve and Frank point out, using statistics on more people getting psychiatric “treatment” as a measure of health is really bizarre. What is even more bizarre, to me, is that a large proportion of the public probably thinks this makes sense. A lot of what people like SAMHSA say doesn’t make sense, and I think we should point this out as much as we can.

    I have seen discussions on social media where our folks try to debunk the latest pronouncements by Congressmen Murphy, E.Fuller Torrey, etc. by giving rational arguments. It would be much better, I think, to point out to the public that what these people are saying is utter nonsense.

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  • It is important for us to look back on victories like these, Another similar victory that David doesn’t mention here is the historic vote in Berkeley, California to ban shock treatment there. That could not have happened either without David’s hard work.

    David also mentions another very important point that needs to be talked about: “Some activists dismiss electroshock as an issue for campaigns, because the vast majority of psychiatric treatment is of course with
    drugs. ” That is true, that many more people are drugged than shocked. But strategically, when we fight electroshock, we are attacking psychiatric power at one of its weakest points. This is very important if we think carefully about long term strategy.

    I don’t think most people right now see psychiatric drugs as a bad thing. But shock treatment is not something that many people support. When we fight it, and the psychiatric profession defends it, they discredit themselves. And this reduces the prestige and power that they have, which lies behind all of the abuses of psychiatry. When people stop perceiving psychiatrists as godlike figures, they will start to take a closer look at every horror that the profession promotes.

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  • A very thoughtful and helpful article about an issue that needs a lot of attention. I was lucky (haha) not to have been drugged, because when I was locked up in a state hospital for ten years as a child the drugs we have now had not been invented yet. When I got out at age 17 in April 1954, I just escaped them. Two months later, every inmate of just about every state hospital was put on these drugs. If I had been caught, I would be dead now.

    Only in the last year, because of getting to know a few people who had the courage to fight to get off these poisons, have I realized what a terrible and widespread problem this is for millions of people. I think our movement should give this a very high priority.

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  • Thank you for this very useful article.

    The phrase “evidence-based treatment,” as it is used by those advocating for the maximum use of psychiatric drugs, is almost amusing. I too am in favor of evidence-based treatment — because the evidence shows that what psychiatrists do isgenerally useless and damaging.

    So too the attacks on critics of psychiatry that they are “against science.” It is hard to imagine anything less scientific than the usual psychiatric practices. Something does not become scientific because the word “science” is repeated over and over.

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  • Sascha, I have great respect for you, but I think saying that Icarus has “evolved” beyond an anti-psychiatry position is pretty disrespectful of those of us who would not use the word “evolved”against people we disagree with. I don’t think Icarus ever did call itself anti-psychiatry.

    Having said that, I am very interested in whatever ideas Icarus has come up with that would be good alternatives to psychiatry in your opinion. Maybe I could get involved with them in some way.

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  • I am all for alternatives to psychiatry, and I think people who have talent or interest in that direction should work on them. But I certainly don’t think that the psychiatric profession and the “mental health” system are just going to stand there while they are replaced. Psychiatry has to have its power taken away, because they aren’t just going to throw up their hands and give up when we tell them about how we want things done. As for the concept of “anti-psychiatry” turning people off, I haven’t seen that, plus the concept is just finding its way out there.

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  • I really liked this very thoughtful article. When I was a child, since I grew up in a state hospital and I had almost no adult support, I had to figure out for myself what I thought about things. I knew it would be dangerous for me if I accepted all the beliefs I was supposed to agree with. And I still see a lot of the ideas that I am supposed to agree with without question as irrational and, yes, delusional.

    It is very hard sometimes not to go along with the program, but it still seems dangerous to me to agree with beliefs that are called “normal” that seems to have no grounding in reality. It gets me in trouble sometimes, since most people, as the author points our here, react almost violently when their beliefs are challenged.

    It is hard and dangerous to think for oneself.

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  • Thank you for this article. I like the title too. Yes, anyone who really cares about helping people and pays attention to the way psychiatry is almost always practiced should not be afraid of calling themselves antipsychiatry. I think that anyone who is willing to define themselves in this way is making an important contribution towards the day when people in distress can find respect and real help.

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  • I have become very fascinated lately with the various complaints of the psychiatric profession that people just don’t understand the great contribution they are making to society. It is amusing, sort of, to see that they appear to be very worried that those who oppose them are making such progress.

    If only it were true! As Bonnie points out, our work as antipsychiatry activists is almost invisible in the media, and the general public is hardly aware our movement exists. And criticism of psychiatry in the media, to the tiny extent it exists, NEVER is seen to come from psychiatry’s victims. One would think that all psychiatric “patients” are crazed killers wandering the streets talking to themselves…all thirty million of us in the United States who have been inmates of psychiatric institutions.

    How can we take advantage of this newfound anxiety and paranoia among psychiatrists (besides suggesting that they try some of their own drugs)? One useful and easy thing we can do, I think, is not run away from the label “antipsychiatry.” Bonnie sets a good example here. I think the more we adopt that name for our movement, the more the public will see our point of view as legitimate.

    It is our job to raise this question: given the great damage psychiatry has done and continues to do to millions of people, and ultimately to our entire society, how could anyone who paying attention be anything other than antipsychiatry?

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  • Just to point out the obvious, of course the shock treatment reduces agitation and aggression. It reduces every other kind of expression of emotion as well.

    If we want to stop this, we have to be “agitated and aggressive” ourselves. We were able to stop shock in Berkeley, CA, thirty years ago by taking the question to the ballot, where we prevailed overwhelmingly. I think the public still thinks that shock is barbaric, and our movement should be raising this issue a lot more than we have. In general, our movement for human rights needs more action and less talk.

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  • Very interesting, coming from someone who was a high level administrator in the Oregon “mental health” system. What he says shouldn’t surprise anyone who reads MIA regularly. But I would hope what he says could reach other government officials, those who want to see at least some real help given to people with emotional problems.

    I think this would be a good article to encourage such people to read. Thank you for writing it.

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  • Amazing to see something like this in a professional journal. I myself, because I was locked up so long ago, just missed being drugged, which would have meant I would not be alive now. But I have been tremendously impressed by the people I have met who have been able to get off psych drugs. It takes real strength of character to do that.

    And much of the time, people like that get little or no help in doing it. I think our movement should be demanding that that help be provided. We owe that to our brothers and sisters who have to go through the agonizing process of drug withdrawal.

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  • This is a relatively small area of the damage done by psych drugs, though in absolute numbers, it is very large.

    But the damage done is horrific, plus, from the point of view of strategy, I think this is an area we anti-psychiatry activists should focus on. The number of mothers who have to deal with this is large, and it isn’t something they can ignore. If the public were educated about this, it’s the sort of thing that people would become very outraged about.

    And it’s the sort of thing that demonstrates what psychiatry and its owners the drug companies are all about. Sell lots of drugs, make lots of money, destroy the lives of millions of people. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

    Doctor Urato’s argument is very clear and simple, and you don’t need medical training to understand it. I think those of us who are fighting to take away the power of psychiatry should be familiar with it and get the public to be familiar with it too.

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  • There are many attempts going on to find real alternatives to psychiatric “treatment,” and a lot of them are being discussed on Mad In America. I think it is a mistake to assume that somehow the profession of psychiatry is needed and must be preserved.

    Those of us who have been on the receiving end of psychiatry know how destructive it is. To say that we must keep psychiatry until there is a completely different system in place is not a good argument. For one thing, psychiatry does all it can to see to it that real alternatives don’t get funded. Creating a better system while getting rid of the old one go hand in hand.

    Of course psychiatry isn’t going to be instantly done away with. Powerful and destructive institutions don’t just give up. But if one’s position is that such institutions should just be “reformed,” nothing will change.

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  • I was very pleased by Bob’s comments, and I think he very much got to the heart of the matter. And that is that the APA is a corrupt organization that does a great deal of harm in our society.

    I think Allen Frances is probably the slickest and most effective apologist for his profession. He makes no pretension to be other than that. He has a kind of politician personality which serves this role very well.

    In other writings, he has openly said that psychiatry is shooting itself in the foot with enterprises like DSM 5. Of course, he says nothing about his own role in creating DSM-IV, the content of which is different only in (small) degree from the new version.

    I for one am not interested in saving psychiatry, to say the least. I am happy to see it start to self-destruct, and I want to do anything I can to speed up that process. I am not interested in having someone like Frances put his arm on my shoulder. His stance of trying to sound “reasonable” doesn’t impress me. Of course, someone trying to defend his profession would act like that, trying to disarm the rightful anger of psychiatry’s critics.

    Once again, thanks to Bob Whitaker for his work here and elsewhere, and I can hardly wait to read his new book.

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  • Not being a “mental health” professional, but a psychiatric survivor activist, these courses are not for me. I do think it is a good thing for MH pros with an open mind to be able to find out what the facts are about psychiatric interventions.

    And I think it’s fine for MIA to offer this. It will certainly help, some, if there are more professionals in the field who are less abusive.

    But I don’t see real change coming from within. Why should it? While undoubtedly there are a few decent people working in the field, those who have real power in the “mental health” system are not going to give it up because we “educate” them. Does anyone here really believe that these people don’t know what effect their behavior has on the troubled people that society has turned over to them? These are not the kind of folks who are about to see the error of their ways. They demonstrate their lack of concern for other human beings every day, and this lack of concern brings them great rewards.

    I wish MIA had more focus on the need to face psychiatry’s gross violation of human rights. Everyone in America is threatened by psychiatric power, and this threat needs to be brought to their attention.

    Again, I support this initiative to strengthen the knowledge of the few decent people in the field, but we need a movement that reaches out to everyone, not the tiny percentage of MH professionals that already realize that something is wrong in the field in which they work.

    We need a vigorous human rights movement. The psychiatric system won’t change until there is one.

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  • Katie, people like you, who have risked and lost their jobs for doing what is right, deserve a lot of credit. It is easy for people to talk from a distance, but incredibly hard to speak out within the culture of complete disregard for human rights and dignity that is psychiatry.

    It was amazing to me to see the literally tens of thousands of people working to free Justina. It was hard for me to believe, though it surely should not have been, to see the establishment liberals who run the State of Massachusetts ignore this outpouring of support for a year.

    Your courage and commitment are greatly appreciated.

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  • Great article, Sera. My own introduction to progressive politics was through the civil rights movement of the Sixties. It was that movement that led to all the other human rights movements in America in the last half century, including ours.

    I just read that there have been demonstrations about Ferguson in 170 cities now. I hope this becomes a revival of the civil rights movement, which is badly needed. And I hope this means that our movement for justice in the “mental health” system will be strengthened by this too, and we will take our own movement seriously. I certainly am not in this to get a job helping run the system that nearly destroyed me, and no one else should be here for that either.

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  • I think it’s great to have a positive focus, in that critics of psychiatry should be offering an alternative. But I think it’s important to keep in mind that the psychiatric system isn’t going to just give up and publicly confess the error of their ways. For one thing, the transnational drug corporations that own the psychiatric profession have huge profits at stake here. They will NOT give up easily.

    Another thing that disturbs me a bit here is that mental health professionals, even the most enlightened, tend to think that the problem is just that psychiatry has the wrong approach. They don’t talk about the millions of people whose lives have been destroyed, and continue to be destroyed, by the “mental health” system.

    The incredible power our society has given to psychiatry has led to huge violations of human rights. And we who have been the victims of these human rights violations need to be acting like all other oppressed groups. For a number of years, we did. And we made some inroads into public consciousness.

    Without an awareness by the public of the destructive nature of psychiatry, the political will to change things won’t develop. There are tens of millions of people who have spent time as inmates of psychiatric wards. I think they are the people our movement should be addressing.

    Yes, again, I agree that people working in the “mental health” field should be proposing alternatives. But I don’t see those alternatives happening until there is a large grassroots movement working to change public consciousness.

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  • By doing what we can to take away the power of psychiatry to hurt people. The psychiatric profession certainly isn’t going to cooperate with that. So I just can’t understand this delusion that if we just have enough “dialogue” among the “reasonable” people, all the abuses of psychiatry will be ended.

    There are already many attempts to provide real help for people, many of which are written about on MIA. The response of psychiatry and the drug companies that own it is to do everything they can to prevent these programs from taking hold.

    The argument that by fighting psychiatry we are preventing people from getting help is complete nonsense. This is the program of Allen Frances, who has said elsewhere that his reason for criticizing such excesses as DSM 5 is to save psychiatry from itself. I am not interesting in saving psychiatry. But I want to save as many of my brothers and sisters as possible from the atrocities that psychiatry now perpetrates.

    Then it will be possible for programs that really help to succeed.

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  • Thank you, Bonnie, for yet another good analysis of why people who believe in freedom should not imagine that tinkering with the edges of psychiatry will bring about any real change. That idea, in fact, is exactly what Allen Frances, whom I consider the most clever of psychiatry’s apologists right now, is advocating.

    I would emphasize also that the strong attacks that Frances and other psychiatric leaders make on the idea of “anti-psychiatry” should tell us something. What they tell me is that psychiatry is terrified of the idea that the concept of “anti-psychiatry” may take hold among the public as a legitimate point of view. And what that also tells me is that those who hold an anti-psychiatry position should announce it loud and clear.

    In the next weeks there will be more public discussion of an anti-psychiatry conference, or several of them, and I urge the readers of this fine and useful article to stay tuned and be ready to participate.

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  • Of course, talk to anyone who will listen. But I just can’t understand how anyone who has been abused by psychiatry can think that changing the minds of psychiatrists (which is rarely possible) is more important than changing the mind of the general public.

    I think that a lot of the people who have this position have had terrible experiences at the hands of psychiatrists, yet you somehow believe that if only you keep talking to them they will see the error of their ways.

    It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t an error. Surely they have to know what they are doing. When people die from the drugs that are forced on them, when people in great emotional need are treated with utter disrespect, surely the people who do this should be held accountable. And when we refuse to confront them, when we make excuses for them, when we continue to let them define who we are, we are accepting that what they did to us was justified and right.

    What psychiatry does to people is just as bad as lynch mobs and rapists and anti-gay thugs. The problem is that we seem to be afraid to say so. There’s a quote from the Talmud that I have used sometimes: “Who can protest an injustice but does not is an accomplice to the act.” I think it is very true.

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  • Aside from all the details about what drugs he was taking, the simplest bottom line regarding his suicide is that he had a great deal of psychiatric “help,” whatever it might have been, and that was uncontested. How this terrible tragedy gets twisted into an argument for more psychiatric “help” is unbelievable.

    We have to find a way to get this message to the public. The almost complete blackout of our point of view in the media is very scary. Meanwhile, there is a powerful attempt by our politicians to completely strip people like me of our constitutional rights and lock us up and drug us at will.

    This crisis has happened because, instead of fighting for our rights as all other movements of oppressed people have done, too many of us have accepted jobs and money from the system. The desperate situation we are in now is the result.

    Do the people who benefit from these jobs and this money really think it will continue once the Murphy bill and other moves of this sort have us officially declared as non-human?

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  • Oh, I am not talking about people who are right now under the control of the system. Of course, they are not able to speak out and express how they feel. I’m talking about people who are free now, more or less, but who in spite of knowing how badly they have been treated, somehow think if they are “nice,” or whatever word they would use, might be able to change things.

    Look, every other movement for liberation in the last half century, starting with the civil rights movement in the 1960’s, has only made progress when it spoke out forcefully against its oppressors. I am feeling more and more frustrated when people act as if they have never heard of such things. I’m not saying anything very original. The bottom line is that if you don’t fight for your rights, you will lose them.

    I don’t think that is particularly “radical” or “revolutionary”, or even “ideological.” It’s just common sense, and we have the last half century of the experience of other movements to confirm this.

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  • Yes, this is a very thoughtful article. But it also shows one of the main reasons the system is giving us these crumbs. I don’t think of myself as particularly ideological, but I do like to think of myself as having a pretty clear idea of what needs to be done to take away the power of the people who have hurt us. It just doesn’t make sense to me to think that if you help to run this system (even though in truth you have virtually no power at all within this system) you can somehow change it for the better.

    Although the author doesn’t use the word, this is another example of thinking that “dialogue” is somehow going to change things. Does anyone think that if only the Jews had had more dialogue with the Nazis, the Holocaust would never have happened?

    I think one of the main reasons our movement has not gone very far is that we don’t seem to have any sense of moral outrage. If we don’t really think what is done to us is an outrage, if we ourselves don’t clearly see it as morally wrong, why should anyone take us seriously? And so most people don’t.

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  • But “suicide prevention” usually means psych drugs, and indoctrination that one is sick and inferior. Twice in the past month, MIA has reported on the Danish study that people were much more likely to actually kill themselves the more exposure they had to psychiatric interventions. If they had been admitted to a psych ward in the past year, they were FORTY-FOUR TIMES more likely to kill themselves. Not forty-four percent, forty-four times!

    I also wonder why the writer here labels himself “depressed,” but then says he is unhappy because of a breakup of a relationship. Why give oneself a diagnosis? I don’t understand.

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  • I have seen that argument before: “Look how we have not made any progress in thirty years. This shows how you anti-psychiatry people have nothing to offer.” The problem with this is that our movement for the last thirty years has been dominated by the people who are NOT anti-psychiatry. Before that, we were making great progress, until people started to take system money. Of course, the system is not going to pay you to overthrow it. They are paying you to keep your mouth shut and not use language like…”anti-psychiatry.”

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  • Reading this makes me wish I could have afforded to attend the Film Festival. I am especially interested in Laura’s offer to come to other places with a version of the festival.

    I expect to be moving to Portland soon and become active in the growing movement there, and I think a similar event would be great, both for the growth of the movement and the education of the public. I can’t speak for the people who are active there now, but I am going to talk up this idea. and I think people will be receptive.

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  • I guess I am finding this all very frustrating. One important factor in this is that we have no example in front of us now of a militant movement for human rights, the way the civil rights movement was in the 1960’s.

    The concept that if we call ourselves anti-psychiatry, this will alienate us from the psychiatrists implies that the way t0 make change is to convince the psychiatrists they are wrong. No way will that happen. Social change happens when we convince the general public that our cause is just. Well-considered demonstrations are one way to do this.

    I just can’t believe, though I know it’s true, that anyone would think that our audience should be the very people who have abused us and our brothers and sisters. That has been happening for the last thirty years, and look where that has left us.

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  • Perhaps not responding directly to this article, but…what on earth does “mental health advocates” mean? Isn’t E. Fuller Torrey a “mental health advocate?” Isn’t Murphy a “mental health advocate?” After all, they advocate for “more mental health.”

    Since I, and probably most of the readers here, would rather see less forced or unwanted psychiatric interventions, obviously, we are NOT “mental health advocates.”

    Or in other words, anyone who is against coercion is not a “mental health advocate,” but an “extremist.”

    I think Frances, being a psychiatrist after all, is performing the usual word magic, defining anyone who does not agree with him as beyond the pale. I think we should be alert to this and point it out vigorously. If we don’t, we may find ourselves with a new label in the next edition of the DSM. Anti-psychiatry folks will be defines as something akin to Muslim terrorists. I mean, folks like Frances are getting pretty close to that already.

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  • The phrase “anti-psychiatry” has not been discredited. Far from it. But the psychiatric profession and its leaders are trying their best to do so. We shouldn’t fall into the trap they are trying to set.

    It makes absolutely no sense to allow the system we are fighting to tell us how to describe our position. As I have said a number of times recently, when the average person hears “anti-psychiatry,” their response isn’t “how weird.” It is usually “what’s that?” And when asked that question, we get to explain our position.

    When I say I am anti-psychiatry, I mean that I oppose the system and the profession that has ruined millions of lives, and continues to do so. It is very simple and straightforward.

    I am not intimidated by people like E. Fuller Torrey. I’m anti-psychiatry and I’m proud of it.

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  • It is not my experience that regular people have a negative response to the idea of “anti-psychiatry.” Mostly, what they say is “what is that?” What is happening here is that psychiatrists are doing their usual number of labeling whatever behavior they don’t like.

    We should not let ourselves fall unto this trap. Being anti-psychiatry just means we oppose the abuses of psychiatry. There is nothing strange or far out about it.

    We can’t let the people we are fighting define our position. Frankly, what I see here is that psychiatrists are very worried that the anti-psychiatry position will become popular and seen as an important and legitimate point of view. They are trying to delegitimize it using the same old methods they always use.

    It would be a big mistake to run away from this because the psychiatrists say it’s beyond the pale. The more they freak out about it, the more it’s clear to me that they see this very phrase as threatening their authority in the public mind. And it is just that authority that must be taken away.

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  • I thought this article was very powerful, and Ally in her video shows herself to be a very effective spokesperson for this cause. It also makes me realize, if I didn’t before, just how important this issue is to a long-term strategy of getting the public to see just how destructive the psychiatric profession and its drugs are.

    So both to help and vindicate the victims of these drugs, and to eventually end all the abuses of psychiatry, this is an issue all of us should take to heart and bring to public attention as best we can.

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  • Yeah, I really like this discussion of our new cultural norm: don’t feel anything. I’m not sure whether psych drugs just fit into this, or whether they have caused it.

    Without human emotion, there is nothing but consumption. Things become more important than people. Buy, buy, buy, and don’t question what those in power are doing. It’s a recipe for totalitarianism, and we seem to be heading there very rapidly.

    Halloween is coming, and the zombies are already here.

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  • One of the most disgusting aspects of this policy is the fact, recently reported on MIA, that people are more like to actually kill themselves when exposed to the psychiatric “help” these practices force on them. The more exposure to psychiatry, the greater the incidence of suicide, including the appalling figure that people who spend any time in a psychiatric facility during the previous year are FORTY-FOUR TIMES more likely to kill themselves.

    Yet people still have faith in the psychiatric religion. It is a religion because people’s beliefs in it are not based on reality.

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  • Andrew. I consider myself strongly anti-psychiatry, and I certainly have no quarrel with people who do counseling, therapy, even practice psychiatry, if they do it in an honest and ethical way. Many people need this kind of help (I certainly did) and some of them even benefit from it (I did also, sometimes).

    My hero, or role model for how psychiatry should be practiced, was Loren Mosher, who was driven out of the NIMH because he advocated for providing emotional support, not drugs. He was a fine human being. If only most psychiatrists were like him, his profession would be truly helpful, not as generally destructive as it presently is.

    I say all this not to disagree with you, but just to explain my own position better.

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  • A very important and well thought out article, I think. My own definition is even simpler.

    I oppose the institution of psychiatry be4cause I recognize that as a whole, it does a great deal of harm to people over which it has power, and its tenets, such as labeling ordinary human emotion as diseases, has corrupted our culture.

    Of course, I could add many details, but the bottom line is that psychiatry does a great deal of harm and very little good.

    I think the fact that psychiatry’s leaders seem to almost foam at the mouth at the very mention of the phrase means that we should use it as much as possible. The more people who describe themselves as anti-psychiatry, the more this position will come to be seen by the general public as a valid and credible point of view. That’s very important.

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  • Well, although I would not deny the possibility of people faking it to get a pension, it certainly isn’t surprising that no one gets better. Psychiatric interventions in this kind of distress usually make people worse anyway.

    If it is true that half of these veterans are faking it, then what about the other half? I think this statistic tends to prove what I just said. Almost no one is helped by the “treatment.”

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  • I don’t understand why some people in our movement act as if Dr. Frances is to be taken seriously as some kind of ally. Yes, it’s fine he criticized the DSM 5, but he openly said he was doing that because he was trying to prevent his profession from shooting themselves in the foot.

    I think the way DSM 5 discredited psychiatry is just fine.

    A “civil war” takes place when people who should be on the same side fight each other. Our human rights movement and Dr Frances are not on the same side. This is nonsense.

    Further, I think it is a big mistake for us to be afraid of the label “anti-psychiatry” the way it is being used by Dr. Frances and E. Fuller Torrey. I am anti-psychiatry because I oppose psychiatry’s damaging practices. Nothing weird there. We are actually letting psychiatrists define anyone who opposes what they do as (almost) having some kind of mental illness. In no other area of politics could one side get away with this. As usual, psychiatry has no good arguments to justify what they do. Instead, they try to define anyone who opposes them as beyond the pale.

    To some extent, I think they may be succeeding in getting this non-argument accepted in a lot of places. But does our movement have to accept this as well? This is senseless.

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  • Thank you for this interesting and provocative piece. I have been thinking for a long time about how to take away psychiatry’s power, and mostly what I come up with is to find ways of making the general public see how (worse than) useless psychiatric interventions are. I do think that people believe, or at least have convinced themselves (not the same thing) that psychiatry does some good, and I can’t see how we can take away the power of coercion unless people stop believing that power is used for good. But I am afraid that you are right, or at least that what we are looking at is a circular belief: psychiatric power is good because it helps people, and psychiatry is helpful and therefore we should let it continue to have its power.

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  • Well, I will add my voice to all the other praise. Dr. Hickey, your article are so well-argued and relevant, and I always look forward to reading them.

    Do you think the indiscriminate prescribing of benzos and drug company payments to doctors are connected? I know this was a kind of stupid question. I think I should have said, did the new federal database about payments to doctors reveal anything?

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  • Thank you for this moving article, Seth. The real reason for this horror, as you have pointed out, is the depraved indifference to human life of the people who run these institutions.

    I think bringing atrocities like this to the attention of the general public may help our movement more than any amount of theorizing.

    I don’t consider myself anti-psychiatry because of any abstract idea about how things should be done. Psychiatry is an evil institution because at bottom the attack on Gloria is basically what they stand for.

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  • I think I might have been unclear about what I meant by our movement being taken over by the mental health system. What I meant was the intervention by the NIMH, and later SAMHSA, to fund conferences and organizations in return for not rocking the boat. Please have a look at my recent MIA article “Our movement needs an alternative to the “Alternatives Conference.”

    I have no problem working with mental health professionals who sincerely support our cause. I know that you are one of them, and that you have made sacrifices by speaking out against psychiatric abuse.

    No, the general public doesn’t have shock treatment high on its list of issues. It didn’t have the civil rights of black people and other abused groups high on its list either. The people whose rights are being ignored have the job of making our rights important to others. When they do, they win many victories.

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  • Thank you once again to Dr. Hickey for yet another cogent article about yet another of the unending abuses perpetrated by psychiatry.

    As a client of the “child welfare” system, I was given shock treatment at the age of six and then given up for dead and sent to a state hospital for the rest of my childhood. Thirty years later I organized the ballot measure that led voters in Berkeley, California to ban shock there.

    My educated opinion is that the general public overwhelmingly sees electroshock as damaging and barbaric. But our movement, because of its virtual takeover by the “mental health” system, has not acted on this. I think a concerted campaign against shock, focusing on parts of the country most likely to respond, could lead to its abolishment.

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  • Yet another important issue we should be talking about to the public. benzos are given out like candy to people who have never seen the inside of a psych ward. Most people are not aware of how much at risk they are from this dangerous class of drugs. This is yet another issue where we might get the general public to see how they too are at risk.

    And it is the general publi c we have to convince.

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  • MIA just reported on research about the very thing you just asked. The results of the study were that the more someone was exposed to psychiatric “treatment,” the more likely they were to try to kill themselves. The largest effect was when the person had spent time on a psychiatric ward in the past year. Those people were FORTY-FOUR TIMES more likely to kill themselves! And yet the profession keeps right along pushing for more “treatment” for despondent people.

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  • I rather agree with Frank about NARPA. I also think very well of them, and I would have gone to the latest conference if I could have afforded it. But as Frank says, it is more oriented to the legal end of things, not activism. (Not that I have anything against lawyers, as I am one.) In fact, NARPA’s only activity is to hold its annual conference.

    And I do think we need conferences for people who consider themselves anti-psychiatry. Given the frenzied negative response to the phrase “anti-psychiatry” coming from people like E. Fuller Torrey and Jeffrey Lieberman (the APA past president), it has become clear to me that those who lead the psychiatric profession are terrified that the phrase and what it stands for will become more recognized and accepted among the general public. I wonder if being anti-psychiatry will become a diagnosis of “mental illness” in the next version of the DSM. All the more reason for us to identify ourselves as anti-psychiatry.

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  • “Dr. Citrome predicts, with apparent misgivings, that the media’s activities in this area will increase when the Physician Payments Sunshine Act’s provisions take effect on September 30.”

    Ah, what is this? Sounds VERY promising. It will be hard for the media to ignore when the huge proportion of psychiatrists on the take from the drug companies is thoroughly exposed. One hopes this will make a HUGE difference in psychiatry’s credibility. How promising! We should be watching the fallout from this law closely.

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  • Once again Phil Hickey nails these idiots to the wall. What great ammunition he gives us for discrediting psychiatry.

    I find it amazing that the writer claiming bias against the poor misunderstood drug companies actually seems to think that if he just puts a nasty-sounding label on the critics it will take away their credibility. What does he think he’s doing, writing a new version of the DSM?

    But I also am confused by the pessimism expressed in several recent articles by psychiatry’s apologists. They seem to think that psychiatry is facing a crisis. They must know something I don’t know, as I see psychiatry still with a great amount of power, still able to continue damaging troubled people at will, and facing no consequences.

    I guess they realize that their profession is a total fraud, and that they are beginning to be found out.

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  • Wow, I think it is great that we are now seeing tactics and strategy being discussed more on MIA. As I’ve said before, thanks to people like Bob Whitaker et al, we have lots of facts and arguments to fight the typical psychiatry/drug company BS. Now it’s time to get all this out to the public.

    Articles like this are making me feel hopeful that we are turning a corner. The time is now to fight back.

    Thank you for this article.

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  • Well, Frank, yeah, a “coalition” sounds good. But to have a coalition, there has to be groups already existing. So I think there has to be organizing local groups around the country.

    And along these lines, it just occurs to me that these regional conferences I am talking about could be the start of local or regional groups. Like, a conference could be held in, say, Chicago, and then it could be followed up with the founding of the Chicago Anti-Psychiatry Coalition. That would be another advantage of having such conferences be fairly local.

    But again, I think there are many possibilities, and no matter how much we discuss them, the ones that really happen will be the ones where dedicated people put their energy. As long as we keep in mind we are just talking about tactics and strategy, that’s fine. If we start confusing tactics with principles, then we will start fighting. I’m glad to see that isn’t happening here.

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  • I want to comment on a few things oldhead said, and I find this discussion easier to follow when it is in order of when things are posted. I am having a lot of trouble finding new posts as they are scattered all over the page.

    Anyway, first, thanks, oldhead for your really good contribution here, and I’m glad you are doing it. I do want to disagree with one point you made, that there should be a national organization before there is a conference, else there will be a lot of power-tripping and fighting.

    Actually, the movement we have now almost specializes in fighting with one another, and I think we have to address this very carefully. It really drains our energy.

    I am more worried about things like that if there is a national organization before there is a real active movement again. This has happened before. Over the years there have been several national organizations formed with hardly any local groups in place. They disintegrated very fast, because there was really nothing behind them. These “paper” or one might say now, “electronic” groups only survive when they get big funding from somewhere, and SAMHSA of course would love to step right in and do that.

    Just the same, I think it’s fine to be doing both at the same time, organize conferences (notice the plural) and talk about a national organization. There really isn’t any power to fight over in a conference, since when it is over, it’s over. And I think we can have a number of (what I hope will be) small conferences. We should have gatherings around the country, so people can get to them without having to pay big bucks flying there, paying big fees for the conference, and hundreds of dollars for hotel rooms. I see no reason we can’t use college dorms, hostels, or even campgrounds to keep costs down. We can even self-cater to keep food costs down. We have done this before. It takes work, sure. But we have been indoctrinated to think these gatherings should cost like $1,000 or so. Then we think, oh, we have to have our psych agency or local “mental health” program pay for it…on and on.

    I thought of going to the recent NARPA conference. I think well of them, although they are not anti-psychiatry or run by survivors. But when I priced it out, it would have cost about $1,000.

    One last thing, which I think people reading this may not like. I think our first few conferences should be by invitation only. I can hear people already, saying that would be “undemocratic.” But I don’t think so at all. The people who do the work and the organizing have the right to decide who they want to work with. Once there are groups in existence, or a conference underway, of course everyone involved should have an equal voice in decisions (though my concept of a conference is that it is not there for decision-making, but more for inspiration and an exchange of ideas.)

    I always have believed that those who do the work should make the decisions. If you feel having a conference (or even an organization) by invitation is wrong, what would be democratic then? Asking NAMI who they want to come? Asking SAMHSA? Handing out leaflets to random people on the street? We have to start with people who are really in agreement, so we can plan what we want to do, not just argue about it. And we just CAN’T be fighting with one another, as we too often do.

    Myself, I am NOT planning to have a big leading role in this. I think it is important for new leaders to step forward. We can’t build a large powerful movement with just a little clique.

    The role I think I want for myself is to put a lot of energy into one of the small regional conferences, and to encourage as wide a participation in the leadership as possible. (Remember, the leaders are the ones who do the work.) I think that’s the right way to help bring about the kind of movement we need.

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  • About a class action lawsuit, I think many non-lawyers believe that such actions are much more effective and possible than they really are. Without going into a lot of boring detail, all a class action suit does is aggregate a lot of plaintiffs into one lawsuit.

    All I am trying to say with my article is that our movement should just do what every other movement for social justice in the last fifty years has done — have demonstrations, speak out, refuse to accept the inferior position in society that has been laid out for us.

    As for what would replace the current practices of psychiatry, there are many people working on that. A few , very few, helpful programs are already in place, like Soteria Houses, peer respite programs, all sorts of places that at bottom replace drugs and despair with emotional support and human caring for people in emotional distress. I think Mad In America has published many articles by people working on these things.

    This article is just about one small piece of the larger struggle we have to engage in, and certainly isn’t meant to cover everything.

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  • Yeah, the facts of this case are so common that if the plaintiff here wins, it will affect cases throughout the whole country. How arrogant these people are! And that of course is very common too. Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Jim.

    Forced drugging as battery? How great it would be to establish that. Of course it always has been, but the courts have ignored it right along.

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  • Very important article, Nancy. The “child welfare” system has become, if it wasn’t before, just a branch of the “mental health” system.

    People in our movement have to stop entertaining themselves schmoozing with their friends at the SAMHSA conference, and start planning real action, not just harmless talk.

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  • Yes, I completely agree. This “direct to consumer” advertising is bad enough in itself, but it also makes the media dependent on the advertising revenue it brings in.

    No publication wants to bite the hand that feeds it, so our issues have been almost completely shut out of the media now.

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  • I really like this article too. I think the author describes probably the worst thing (of course there are many) that psychiatry does to people: it destroys their self respect. And the first step to reclaiming their lives, I agree, is to refuse to accept the subhuman identity that psychiatry offers –no, demands– and start thinking of oneself as a valuable human being who can take charge of their own life.

    Even though, because I was not drugged, I came out of a childhood spent on psych wards more or less whole, or at least able to function, it took me a long time to develop self-respect.

    Here I will diverge from the article a bit, and say that our movement ought to be helping people reclaim, or learn, that they are good and valuable human beings. But my experience in the movement is one of experiencing constant attacks from people, often, I think, from jealousy. I am happy when others do good work and get recognized for it. But how are we going to change anything if being an activist is a constant emotional drain?

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  • I think this is a great idea. Not only do I agree with Jim that if some individual psychiatrists get sued, it will do a lot to end this practice. But I also think that this whole issue is a good one for protests, civil disobedience, and other actions to bring this practice to the attention of the public.

    I have been saying for some time now that the psychiatric abuse of children makes more of an impression on the general public than the abuse of adults. It is hard for people like Torrey and Biederman to portray toddlers as “walking time bombs” just waiting to shoot someone.

    Go, Jim!!!!!

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  • Reliability and validity are not the same thing, and I don’t understand the point of this article. As someone else pointed out, if you gave many raters the birth date of their patients, they would show one hundred per cent reliability in assigning the patients to the proper astrological sign. What would this tell you about the validity of astrology in explaining anything of importance? Of course, absolutely nothing.

    I noticed when DSM 5 came out, the APA talked of nothing but reliability For lay people without scientific training (of which I have a bit, at least enough to detect nonsense when I see it) this sounded very impressive, I’m sure. But as we readers of MIA all know, this doesn’t address the fact that the labels now being applied to people have almost no validity at all.

    I just don’t get the point of this article.

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  • I agree with just about everything the author of this article says. I think almost all the readers of MIA would also agree.

    I know I have said this a lot lately, but I think we need to figure out a way to reach the public and create the political will to do away with all the damaging psychiatric interventions and replace them with helpful practices like Soteria Houses, Open Dialogue, etc.

    We know now what needs to be done, now we have to figure out how to get it done. More activism is badly needed.

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  • I think this is a pretty good and thoughtful article, particularly as it comes from someone who helps run a state “mental health” system. But I am going to say something that will be considered politically incorrect.

    I have seen in my personal life that often I can be more helpful and supportive to my friends who are psychiatric survivors, as I am. But I have also seen, quite often, that many of the survivors in our movement are very unwelcoming and even vicious to other survivors.

    And in agencies too, I have seen that so-called peers, as the author observes, have not only acted as agents of the system as it is now, but have lorded it over their brothers and sisters, treating them even worse than standard issue “mental health” workers.

    Yes, I agree that everything else being equal, survivors may be more helpful than people who are right now very bogged down by their problems. But everything else ISN’T equal, and it hasn’t been my experience that consumer/survivors are any more helpful than any other group. There are many survivors who are among the most nasty people I know.

    And I have known actual psychiatrists, a very few, who are among the most decent, helpful, empathetic people I have ever known.

    But as someone who spent my entire childhood being tortured in psychiatric institutions, I say that we should not romanticize the idea that somehow “peers” are at bottom always all that helpful. We are like everyone else, some very nurturing and helpful, others just plain nasty. In other words, we are like all other human beings.

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  • A great article, David, packed with wonderful commentary, most of which I completely agreed with. I am glad to see your influence again in our movement.

    I was honored to be invited to speak to a special meeting of Rethinking Psychiatry last week. I can see this is rather a broad based group, who are welcoming to all sorts of people who are at least skeptical about psychiatry, including me. There are also several other groups in Portland, making up a still small but active movement there.

    I have almost made up my mind to move to Portland, to work with RP and other groups. I think I can make a contribution there.

    David, we should talk again the next time I will be in Oregon, which will be soon.

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  • Obviously, whether this is good or bad depends on what the interventions may be. But at least there is a recognition that bad experiences can cause emotional distress. This sounds so simple-minded, I know, but as readers of MIA are all too aware, psychiatry in general blames all mental problems on genes and serotonin and anything but life. So by itself it is a small step forward…I hope.

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  • I have no problem with this article. Nothing to argue about. There are many such articles on MIA now, but I am really not understanding where MIA is going. There are many outlets for articles like this. There is almost no outlet for talking about how to actually change what is being done to people trapped in the “mental health” system.

    People are being abused and damaged by psychiatry in huge numbers. How does publishing articles about the fine points of therapy help to end those atrocities?

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  • I think this is a fine article, but like so many other such good articles on MIA, it is preaching to the choir. Notice that NO ONE disagreed with it. But out in the real world, there are many people who drug their children, and will defend that abuse vigorously.

    I find that I am saying this over and over again, but it needs to be said. We really need more discussion on MIA about tactics and strategy. How can we get some of the great stuff in MIA articles to the general public? How can we effectively get the abuses committed by psychiatry to end?

    Or to put it in a few words, less talk, more action.

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  • Sigh…Once again Phil Hickey publishes yet another great article with a crystal clear argument about psych drugs. I love what he writes. He and others like Bob Whitaker and Peter Breggin have given us great ammunition for the fight.

    But how do we carry on this fight? I would like to see more articles in Mad In America about strategy and tactics, about what we can actually DO about the abuses of psychiatry like pressuring or forcing people to take these dangerous chemicals. We need to go beyond talking to one another and go out into the world and take our message to the general public.

    If you agree, you can contact me at [email protected].

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  • It is almost irrelevant whether he was taking antidepressants. The facts will be hidden anyway.

    What is really important was that he received the best help psychiatry can offer, and he killed himself. His death is being used to promote psychiatric “treatment,” so the question to be asked is why wasn’t he helped?

    I certainly agree with Sera about the kind of help that really should be offered, people giving support from their hearts to other human beings. But Let’s not lose sight of the fact that the “mental health” establishment fights this approach fiercely. People who try to do real alternatives are not encouraged by the system. It needs a political fight, and as Frederick Douglass wisely said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle.”

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  • We don’t have to know what drugs he was taking. We don’t have to think it was the drugs that caused his suicide. We don’t have to be anti-psychiatry.

    It is undisputed that he received tons of psychiatric “treatment,” probably what the shrinks would call state of the art, as he was a prosperous man and could afford it.

    So it defies common sense for his death to be used as an example of “treatment works.”

    The facts are there, and I hope we can focus on this. Robin Williams’ death was a demonstration that psychiatric treatment DOESN’T work. And we should be focusing on that.

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  • Anger can be a positive motivator as well. The world is full of psychopaths, especially in the psychiatric profession. They often have great power. The justified anger at their acts is hard to use constructively, because fighting them is so difficult.

    But without that justified anger, by default they continue with their criminal acts.

    It is fine for someone with a privileged life to advocate for turning the other cheek. But for the victims of these people, the choice is to fight back or continue to be abused. I choose to fight back.

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  • “Not an Onion Study”……yes, most people not familiar with this kind of garbage would think it was some kind of (bad) joke. But there is a silver lining, as this was probably one of the most stupid moves in the percent past made by the psychiatric profession. I have found that when I explain this to people who are not in our movement, they agree that it is outrageous, and of course, that in most cases it could apply to them. In the long run, this self-serving lie the profession has promulgated helps us to take away their power.

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  • Hey oldhead, I have to laugh, a bit, because of course I am part of a group that wants to have such a meeting, and ultimately a national organization. Or maybe we don’t need a national organization. The history of such groups is that they have often become just vehicles for power struggles. Myself, I think it is much more important to focus on local groups that are real and actually do something. This is the kind of question that I agree would be good to discuss at length.

    But don’t worry, any conference or new group will take time to organize, and there will be plenty of time for people to talk about what they want to see happen.

    I don’t know what MIA’s stance will be about the kind of ongoing discussion you describe. I think people like us should just submit articles with discussions of strategy. I plan to submit one soon.

    And there have been several excellent recent articles, by Bonnie Burstow and Richard Lewis, talking about strategy. Neither Bonnie nor Richard are psych survivors, but I think they have a real commitment to the cause of fighting psychiatric abuse, and I would be happy myself to work with them. We survivors should certainly try to get our ideas about strategy and tactics into MIA.

    There also is a section of MIA intended for ongoing discussions, but it doesn’t seem to get much attention. I don’t know how to make it get that attention, but maybe the MIA staff have some ideas.

    Anyway, it is great to see that more and more people are not only unhappy with the merger of what was once our movement into the mental illness system, but want to actually figure out what can be done about it. We need this very badly.

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  • I think madmom and Frank B. made excellent comments. But another important point, to me, is the idea that if somehow we just told our stories it would change the system. Hey, the people who run the system that has hurt us and ruined our lives know perfectly well what we have experienced.

    And we would be telling our stories to whom? How would we be reaching the general public? How would this change anything? This is very naive at best. As I have become tired of saying, our movement for human rights is not that different from other movements of oppressed people. They didn’t just tell their stories or go to useless conferences run by their oppressors. They were (and are) out on the streets, demanding their rights. Gays and women and black people and disabled people and all the others didn’t, and don’t, just sit around and tell their stories.

    Really, people, our movement needs to do some strategic thinking. Myself, the last thing I want is a pat on the head from some shrink, even if he has a charming Italian accent.

    And I call on MIA too to publish some articles about real strategy for our movement, not this silly nonsense. There is too much of this stuff. We need some hard thinking about what to do next.

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  • I don’t think being anti-psychiatry means “abolishing” psychiatry. This is a straw man. And I don’t disagree that making small changes that help some people now is a bad thing. But in order to accomplish these changes, one has to in some way limit the power of psychiatry. Shock doctors and those wh prescribe fifteen drugs at once are not going to change their ways because they are asked to.

    And in the long run, these changes and this chipping away at psychiatric power will mean that psychiatry can no longer force its damaging interventions on people. At that point the profession will either start offering something useful or it will abolish itself.

    I am anti-psychiatry but I don’t talk about “abolishing” psychiatry. That would be silly. Even with a magic wand it would not be possible. Like any other oppressive institution, change will only come after a long campaign.

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  • Not to go out of my area of expertise, but statins also have been shown to do a lot of damage, like cognitive disabilty and premature senility, while actually doing little or nothing to prevent hart attacks and strokes. While naturally occurring low cholesterol is associated with such benefits, artificially produced low cholesterol does not seem to have much beneficial effect. So states a very recent meta review of many studies. While MIA readers see a lot of criticism of psych drugs, we should keep in mind that the drug companies push a lot of other profitable poisons as well. Of course, everyone here should have a look at “Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime,” by the very courageous Danish physician Peter Gotzsche.

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  • Francesca, as I have said before in other forums, it has not been my experience that the average person, upon hearing the phrase “anti-psychiatry,” is turned off. Usually their response is to ask what it means, and this gives me an opening for discussion. As for the response of psychiatrists, of course they don’t like it. But who cares?

    Thinking that psychiatrists are the main people who can be relied on to change the oppressive nature of psychiatry is exactly the same as thinking fighting the evils of slavery should be done by appealing to slaveowners.

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  • I actually don’t think the typical reader of MIA is “anti-psychiatry.” I do consider myself anti-psychiatry, but everyone has his or her own definition.

    I certainly think there are a few decent psychiatrists who sincerely want to help. But they are a tiny minority. What seems obvious to me, though, is that the profession as a whole is one of the most destructive institutions in our society. The typical person with whatever problem goes into a psych ward and comes out much the worse. Particularly disturbing to me are situations where the person has undergone some trauma like rape or the death of a loved one, and is told they need to be drugged for the rest of their lives. Those of us like me are given a label that Thomas Szasz appropriately pointed out is like being called a Jew in Nazi Germany.

    These criticisms could be multiplied a hundredfold, and they are not interesting intellectual points. They are the basis of the terrible suffering of millions of people, inflicted by a profession that as a whole seems to be constituted of psychopaths, people who seem to have no ability or interest to feel empathy or understand of the suffering of other people.

    I think it would be naive for me to say I want to “abolish” psychiatry. But I think the power of psychiatry, which more and more is out of control, has to be taken away. This will I am sure take a long time. But when it is accomplished, and psychiatrists can no longer force their damaging interventions on people, psychiatry will abolish itself. Or hopefully (but very unlikely) it will change into a system that actually helps people. I will not hold my breath for that, though.

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  • I will be uncivil here, and say that any psychiatrist or anyone else who writes on MIA and defends the terrible system that I and many other MIA readers have been abused by, really doesn’t deserve any more respect than what they show for us.

    I don’t respect the profession that tortured me and took away my childhood. Who will be our next blogger, Doctor Biederman? Am I expected to be nice to him?

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  • A very good and thoughtful article. I was a bit startled at first, as I too had read the New Republic piece, which is brilliant.. Isn’t what this is all about, the completely materialistic culture we have here in America, both the richest and one of the most unequal countries in the developed world? I always knew (doesn’t take great insight) that Harvard was for the children of the rich, but it never occurred to me that in a way they were being exploited too. Because if you are to be among the “elite,” you have to be programmed not to have a conscience, to ignore the human worth of the people over whom you will dominate. It is training, in a way, to become a psychopath.

    And when you become a rich psychopath, you are losing your own humanity as well.

    The Justina Pelletier case made it pretty clear that the people who run Harvard care nothing for other human beings, or the cost to others of the wealth and privilege they acquire. But it seems if you “study” at Harvard, you have to give up your own humanity as well.

    Thank you for this thoughtful article.

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  • I think this was a great and useful article. I am very glad to see more and more discussion on MIA about what we can actually DO. I also very much agree that the psychiatric abuse of children is something that we should be concentrated on, as it is something that the average person who doesn’t otherwise pay attention to our issues would take seriously.

    Following in the footsteps of Richard and Bonnie Burstow, I am working on a article about my own ideas about tactics and strategy. I think the more discussions like this that we have, the better.

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  • I think this article is very important for encouraging people in our antipsychiatry movement to stop and think about what they are doing. I think there s very little tactical or strategic thinking in our movement and we need a lot more.

    I do think there is an important issue we should talk about when deciding what actions to take that Bonnie doesn’t mention, and that is the effect of the action on public opinion about psychiatry. At bottom, psychiatry has been given ts power because the public believes in psychiatry’s competence and benevolence. Anything we do that reveals to the public just how incompetent and destructive psychiatry is a big step on the way to taking away that power.

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  • I understand why people want to distance themselves from CCHR and thus Scientology. Unfortunately, the PR of the psychiatric profession and the drug companies, really one and the same, has made it impossible for anyone to evaluate CCHR’s activities in an objective way.

    I’m certainly no Scientologist, and I would keep plenty of distance between myself and them regardless. But at the risk of being tainted, I have to say that a lot of the materials CCHR puts out about psychiatry and its abuses are some of the best out there.

    This wasn’t always true, and the stuff that used to emanate from CCHR was pretty cult-like. Now I think some of the arguments and facts they publicize are very useful to our cause.

    Again, I am certainly no admirer of Scientology. But the psychiatric profession has far more blood on its hands than the Scientologists.

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  • Awesome article. Though it describes what is going on in Canada, of course this is happening all over the world now. I certainly agree that the psychiatrists who are doing this belong in prison.

    Although our movement does not have the numbers right now to fight this directly, I have been saying, and I say it again, that we should be concentrating on the psychiatric abuse of children. The general public has been sold on the idea that “the mentally ill” are the crazed killers wandering the streets talking to themselves. So why not just lock them up on the (clearly unconstitutional) grounds that they are “in need of treatment?” In other words, let’s just give psychiatrists a free hand to incarcerate anyone they feel like.

    But when we start talking about children, I think the public sees things differently. For one thing, these may be their own children to be labeled and drugged. And most people perceive the abuse of children as a lot more serious than locking up the stereotypical demented killer wandering the streets.

    The recent case of Justina Pelletier is an example of this. Tens of thousands of people were involved in pressuring the State of Massachusetts to free her. A teenage girl being abused by psychiatry…what an opportunity to educate the public about what psychiatry really is about. Unfortunately, the “consumer leaders” there mostly ignored what was going on right under their noses. They weren’t taking advantage of the opportunity to point out what was really happening, and so the public saw (and the media presented) the issue as a clash between diagnoses, and not the power grab by psychiatry that was essentially the cause of Justina’s ordeal.

    Recently I have been in contact with many people now who consider themselves to be “survivors” and/or “anti-psychiatry” (I am both) and want to start effectively fighting back. We need an alternative to the various meetings and fake organizations funded by the mental illness system. Over the next few weeks I will be participating in discussions with other concerned survivors and anti-psychiatry people (who are not necessarily survivors) to get our movement back on track.

    And this excellent article, I think, suggests some directions we should take.

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  • Again, Dr. Hickey, good job! Your articles are so clearly written and well argued, even entertaining.

    Your discussion of “E.T.-ology” should become a classic.

    And as you say, the real argument against the nonsense of psychiatric ideology is just that, that it is nonsense. I think this argument should be repeated over and over. This isn’t the place for subtle scientific arguments, because there is no science here, just drug company money.

    As you can see, I am a big fan of yours, and I am glad to see your frequent contributions to Mad In America.

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  • Every movement for liberation in the last half-century, at least, has been fueled by anger. When people are abused, it makes sense for them to protest.

    Of course this doesn’t mean you tell anyone who hears you to f— off. But as someone pointed out earlier regarding the gay movement, as long as they tried to act “reasonable” and “respectable,” they got nowhere. Once they started demanding respect instead of begging for it, they made great progress.

    “We’re here and we’re queer!” got gay people a lot further than telling people how respectable they were. This is always true of any group. Why should people pay attention when your message boils down to one that says that things aren’t really that bad? If you aren’t bothered by your oppression, why should anyone else be?

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  • This is pretty scary. That a generally progressive church supports people being oppressed by psychiatry frightens me. Yes, of course they didn’t say it openly, but that’s what this action meant.

    I have seen this among the Quakers as well. In spite of their long history of treating at least fellow Quakers with emotional issues in a humane and nurturing way, their thinking and ideas on this issue now come from NAMI and the drug companies.

    Again, I find it very frightening. Thirty or forty years ago, this was not the case, at least in “progressive” places like Portland and San Francisco.

    We are the last frontier for bigotry.

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  • I agree with you that we need to take away the power of psychiatry to force its unwanted interventions on people. But I don’t see how that can be done from within. We (survivors and others) are in the same situation as all other oppressed groups. Slavery wasn’t ended by finding more kind slaveowners.

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  • Thank you once again, Philip, for yet another crystal clear and well-argued post. I am gratified to see you identify yourself as “anti-psychiatry” as well. It is clear to me that the leaders of psychiatry are terrified that this position will be seen as more and more reasonable by the public. To me, this means we should use the phrase as much as we can. In my experience, the average person not in our movement is not turned off by the phrase. It just makes them curious as to why we have this position.

    Thank you again for your marvelous posts. Keep up the good work!

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  • It seems to me that if we could do away with “biological psychiatry,” we would still be left with FORCED psychiatry. Isn’t that the real problem?

    As far as calling ourselves “anti-psychiatry,” I just haven’t seen at all that regular people perceive that phrase as something too “extreme” to relate to. My experience is that people want to know what I mean by the phrase. And this of course gives me an opening to talk about a lot of things.

    The only people I have encountered who are really bothered by the phrase, and who keep referring to it as “extreme,” are people like E. Fuller Torrey, our friend, and Jeffrey Lieberman, the past president of the APA. The fact that they keep mentioning it tells me that they are afraid that it may become popular.

    I wrote a whole article about this in the past year on MIA. Please check out “Of Course I’m Anti-Psychiatry, Aren’t You?” Hopefully, you will find some well-reasoned and convincing arguments there.

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  • I think what has happened here is that there were not enough votes on the Board of Supervisors (six is a majority) to put the law into effect, but enough votes (four) to put it on the ballot. This could be good for our cause if our local movement comes out in force to oppose this. Back in 1982, as a lot of MIA readers know, we put a ban on shock treatment on the ballot, and won. There was national and even international publicity.

    Whichever way the vote comes out will be incredibly important for us. Asa far as I know, the only other time an issue restricting psychiatric power was ever on a ballot was our shock ban in 1982.

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  • Sera, I always appreciate your thoughtful articles, and this one gives me an insight into what it’s like to run an agency that’s mental health system funded, but still wants to do what’s right.

    I’m a little amused by your speculation about E. Fuller Torrey’s motivations, though. Myself, I wouldn’t give him the benefit of any doubt. I don’t think you can be serious, lol.

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  • Doctor Hickey, thank you once again for your cogent and clear debunking of psychiatric BS.

    One small detail in your quotes from Dr. Pies stands out in my mind though. He rails against “anti-psychiatry,” which tells me that the psychiatric establishment is starting to become quite worried about the increasing rejection among the public of psychiatric dogma. This is the fourth or fifth time in this past month that I have heard psychiatrists talk this way.

    More and more people, including me, are identifying as anti-psychiatry, and more and more psychiatrists are freaking out about it.

    We must be doing something right!

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  • Doctor Elliot, thank you for your persistence and your ethical commitment around this issue, a commitment that is rare. As the previous commenter points out, what happened to Dan M. and this latest victim takes place because, more and more, human beings are seen as nothing but profit centers.

    Those who control psychiatry have no regard for the sacredness of human life at all. Our society will fall apart if we continue allowing corporate (and individual) greed to dominate us.

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  • Awesome article. I also liked Lieberman for the same reasons you do. I saw a video clip of him and he asked why there was an anti-psychiatry movement, while there were no such movements against urology or cardiology. He was making our point for us. Besides being a psychopath, he is also not too bright.

    Love it, and I really appreciate your articles, which are always clear and forthright.

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  • HI, “old Soldier.” apparently some of your posts were deleted because you violated the posting guidelines that MIA has. I have nothing to do with deleting anyone’s posts. This done by a staff person for MIA. She contacted me and said she tried to get in touch with you about why your comments were deleted, but apparently, she cant reach you on your email.. I suggest you post something with your email on it, and she will then contact you.

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  • The real issue here is idealism versus cynicism. That’s what it is.

    We have to maintain our idealism and commitment no matter how much money and power the psychiatrists and the drug companies employ to silence us. I understood this well, in a basic way, as I sat in solitary confinement at Rockland State Hospital when I was eight, nine, ten…
    I told myself that I would never become like the people who were torturing me, and I dreamed of coming back some day and rescuing the other children from what was being done to me.

    And I have done my best to keep faith with that child, the child I was then, and with all the others like me.

    I want those who take money from the people who torture and abuse us to know that you will never defeat me and the others, we will never stop fighting, I will keep fighting till I die.

    And although I know that I will not live to see it because of all the years that have been taken from our movement, we will prevail.

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  • “Loving someone makes you vulnerable…” How true. I just lost an important friendship with someone, and our mutual vulnerability didn’t help us stay together. Both of us had experienced terrible childhoods, and your past never leaves you, not really.

    Thinking about this article for a while, I am starting to see how important its subject is. Certainly contemporary psychiatry almost defines love as a mental illness nowadays.

    And certainly our movement for human rights is nowhere near as supportive and nurturing as it needs to be. I think I want to explore this more

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  • Yeah, I don’t like it either. People can write to the editorial staff about it, though. I think what is happening is that there are more and more submissions now, as MIA continues to grow. I think the front page needs a redesign to accommodate more blogs at a time. Some of the other stuff doesn’t need so much display, I think.. Bob Whitaker told me he expects the total number of unduplicated readers to be over 100,000 for April.

    One hundred thousand and growing fast! That is awesome.

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  • I like this article, yet somehow it doesn’t ring true either. I agree that anyone who would follow these guidelines wouldn’t need to read them, and anyone who would commit these abuses, at least the serious ones, wouldn’t pay much attention to this.

    I would think it would have value, though, as a way for someone who wasn’t used to standing up for themselves in a relationship to have a set of guidelines for themselves of what they were entitled to in a relationship.

    About abuse in general, it makes me very sad to realize how common it is, and how destructive.

    And yes, it makes it very hard for someone to be trusting in a close relationship after experiencing abuse. I have seen this more than once in my personal life, with people who I loved, and who loved me, but who were so hurt by their earlier experiences that they couldn’t trust me or let me come close.

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  • there are such alternatives now, but very few. There is a functioning Soteria House in Alaska, where people are just given emotional support and protection while they experience and go though their crisis. There is another one funded in Vermont that has not yet opened.

    There are even a few places that get a bit of “mental health” money that are helpful.

    But there won’t be many of these until people stop their delusion that psychiatry is helpful. It’s our job to show the public that the money spent on drugs (which is pretty much all that psychiatry has to offer) would be much better spent another way.

    And as long as psychiatry has the power to force people into their damaging “treatments,” that’s what there will be.

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  • Yes, what you just said is sort of the point of my article. Our movement, our movement for liberation and human rights, has been very badly weakened and we are going to have to work hard to rebuild it. But there are still people around the country, people like Jim Gottstein and Lauren Tenney, who are organizing the May 4 demo in New York against the APA, who have a deep and principled commitment to change and liberation. I urge everyone reading this who can to be at that demonstration.

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