Thanks so much for your kind and supportive words, Mengyuan. And my deep condolences on the loss of your friend. It’s so sad to hear of his trying to be a “good patient” and feeling guilty and blaming himself for things he could not help. Psychiatry was certainly a “black hole” for your friend, my daughter and others whose civil and human rights are so violated by their coercive and tyrannical practices! God willing, we hope to expose and change these things and work toward more helpful and humane caring for those afflicted with various psychosocial setbacks… especially the more severe ones.
“I am apprehensive because the shift in focus outlined in OMH’s memorandum might delay the meaningful conversations we need to have about best practices.”
My perception is that conventional psychiatry abandoned “best practices” along with “first do no harm” long ago.
Blaming the victims is more fashionable and convenient.
Thanks for this excellent article, Peter. You were obviously unpleasantly surprised, but not too much, by these rejections of your article. As you say,
“There is a good reason that I called my first psychiatry book, “Deadly psychiatry and organised denial.” The organised denial characterises this totally failed medical discipline more than anything else.”
You confronted guild interests a little too directly, and got the predictable circling of the wagons.
Thank you so much for this well written and well documented article, Christopher. And thank you for your part in the activism that put this protection in place in Connecticut. May you prevail in keeping it there!
“…I have learned how psychiatric care (and other medical care) can sometimes become a vicious cycle in which treatment-emergent or post-treatment adverse effects are misidentified as a new (or pre-existing) mental disorder, treated with higher dosages or more drugs or other risky treatments leading to more adverse effects, and more serious diagnoses until a person is quite disabled.”
Yes, Nijinsky, what Andrew and you have been subjected to buy these “mental health professionals” is so sad and maddening. As Boans said above, there is actually more accountability and consequences for people who abuse animals than for people who abuse humans under the guise of “treatment”!
Thank you for this excellent article, Rich and Elizabeth, and even more, thank you for the work you are doing in Wisconsin, Elizabeth. There is such a crying need for and such a dearth of knowledgeable, ethical, compassionate lawyers, doctors and mental health agency personnel to combat the draconian abuses and violations of human and civil rights of people who fall into the hands of the Gulag Psychipelago.
Seeing this article, Elizabeth, I was reminded of our phone conversation a while ago. I left no stones unturned, but eventually realized there was really no legal recourse for how are daughter was destroyed following a kangaroo court process that allowed the hospital to involuntarily brain shock her and force her onto a clearly contraindicated antipsychotic medication that caused terrible, torturous side effects. I am truly heartened to hear that you are making some headway on such things in Wisconsin, even though it may seem incremental in terms of what is needed.
I will requote what has been repeated above:
“For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
Reading this article made my blood boil once again, but I am very glad for your work. Thank you for shining the light into these dark places. I hope that I can live up to a similar calling, which is the best tribute I can think of for my own daughter.
Thank you for this excellent expose. Once again we see the duplicity of the Biosychiatry establishment, in their unholy alliance with Big Pharma, and how these professional publications who should be welcoming critical peer review end up carrying water for them.
Do you have any suggestions as to what we readers could do to help?
Yes, guardianship can be horribly unjust and abusive, as Marian Kornicki has so well described in this excellent expose. I myself am in the process of attempting to advocate for two of it’s victims; a 60-year-old man diagnosed with schizophrenia and his 66-year-old wife of 31 years.
As anyone who follows the news knows, Britney Spears had to fight like hell to get out from under a very unjust guardianship even though she was a multi-millionaire and had full mental capacity, unlike this man, who is poor and has a serious disability affecting his cognition, and his wife who cannot afford a private lawyer and thus has no legal representation going into an upcoming “successor guardianship” hearing.
But there is another side to this guardianship issue, and I’ve been on that side as well. When someone is truly incapacitated, as my young daughter was, without a guardian who is prepared to fight they will surely fall fully into the hands of the psychiatric powers that be, and can be kept entirely out of the loop. In our case, despite going through the expensive and onerous process of obtaining guardianship after she turned 18, we were ultimately unable to protect her from psychiatric coercion and abuse. An article describing our saga, which ended tragically, was published here on this site on the first anniversary of her death, July 29.
So for this reason I would not support abolishing guardianship. However, it is certainly in need of very close scrutiny, regulation and oversight that would put an end to the egregious injustices that are regularly perpetrated through the process as it now exists.
Thank you, Tom. Your comments bring to mind this quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
I missed your comment when you wrote it, warmac, and only saw it now because of Grace’s reply. So it’s doubtful you’ll see my response now . .
Believe me, my wife and I are still haunted by all the woulda/coulda/shouldas… and yes, we do bear some of the responsibility for the horrible trajectory that ensured with our precious daughter. That could be the subject of another article, but this one was meant to expose and portray the horror of falling into the hands of a system that purports to heal while it actually, for some, utterly destroys. Your comment about the runaway having a better chance of recovery makes me wonder if you are suggesting that perhaps we should have allowed our daughter to run away, in a state of total irrationality and emotional disequilibrium, and take her chances on the street. I hope not.
Straining out gnats and swallowing camels, are we, Stevie? I notice Bob readily corrected this error, and I doubt anyone was hurt by it. Are there any errors you and your colleagues would care to correct? People have been VERY hurt and some even killed by the professional lies and negligence mentioned in this article!
Once again, Robert, you’ve hit several nails squarely on the head in this rebuttal to Dr. Aftabs criticism of your “Psychiatry, Fraud and the Case for a Class-Action Lawsuit”. One of those nails:
“This is why psychiatry cannot be expected to reform itself. The guild simply can’t bear to confront the reality of its own research. Perhaps public pressure could force such change, but medical professions in the U.S. are treated by the mainstream media as speaking with authority, and that limits the possibility of public pressure as a change agent. That leaves the law as the only possible lever for prompting such wholesale reform.”
Yes, indeed…and I learned, very sadly, that the legal profession holds doctors in similar unassailable high esteem. My wife and I were in the process of renewing guardianship of our daughter, for the express purpose of protecting her from the potential ravages of psychiatric coercion. The attorney working with us cautioned us not to criticize psychiatrists in the process, because “judges regard doctors with near reverence.” We were relieved that our guardianship was renewed but, sadly, it turned out to be useless in stopping the hospital psychiatrists from forcibly brain-shocking her and then forcing her onto a medication that was contraindicated by genetic testing and that induced terrible side effects and started a cascade of additional psych meds. As you know, her story (published here on the first anniversary of her death, July 29) had a very tragic ending.
I agree that lawsuits may be the only way to effect change, but when you understand just how stacked the deck is it is not at all encouraging. It is virtually impossible to find an attorney or law firm that will take on any case against psychiatry, at least when it comes to medical malpractice. But your suggested class action suit would not involve medical malpractice, per se, so maybe there’s a better chance.
I’m not dismissing the legal avenue, but I’ve come to believe that the “court of public opinion” may be the best avenue to advance reform. If we continue to find ways to “get the word out” to the public, such as through this website and others, and build a grassroots of activism to expose the fallacies and very harmful practices within conventional psychiatry, I believe it could build a groundswell of calls for reform. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.
Thank you for this excellent condensation of “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, Penni and Nikkel–it makes a lot of sense (cents)! Seriously, I too have recommended “Anatomy…” to various people, but although it is an excellent, well-documented and very readable book, many just don’t have the time. I think this could help “get out the word” to more people, and maybe whet their appetite for more detail.
Sorry for the delayed response, When. You asked what alternatives to Psychiatry were tried, such as family psychotherapy. I suppose we could have and should have tried to engage her in some kind of counseling or psychotherapy, including family therapy, when she started to disengage from schooling and social activities. But as we said in the article, we tended to see it as a transitional “emerging adolescence thing”. But after the first crisis that landed her in the adolescent psych ward, the rapid decline in her psychosocial and cognitive functioning, along with lack of insight, made it very difficult to enlist her cooperation. There was also the trauma of the hospitalization and her wariness toward anything “psychological”. We did have some limited success in engaging our daughter in psychotherapy during the first couple years after that initial brief hospitalization, but both her willingness and ability nosedived as she was increasingly traumatized and damaged by the forced psychiatric treatments. Early on when we broached the subject of possible family dynamics that might be at play, Dr. G stated his belief that her condition was “ninety percent biological”. As we said in the article, there was no psychotherapy in her psych hospitalizations; I found this shocking. From conventional psychiatry’s perspective, patients seem to be reduced to neurons responding to medications, electric shocks or other biological “treatments
Cindi, even though it is now 8 years beyond the publishing of this article, and I know the ongoing saga with your son is at a very different place, I will post here my most recent text to you with regard to the article and our ongoing attempts to advocate for our mutual friend.
I am so glad and honored to have met you through our attempts to help our friend with her own struggle against the psychiatric and legal system, as it is. I just finished reading this article. Wow! You have articulated so well the horrible imbalance between psychiatry and the legal system surrounding it, and the patients and their families who are trying to advocate and extricate them from its grip. So much of what you said resonates deeply with me in terms of our own experience with our younger daughter, which ended so tragically, and with our older daughter who is free in a sense but still suffering from previous ravages and still in many ways under psychiatrist’s thumb as a semi-recovered patient. I applaud your continuing activism and hope that I will remain true to my commitment to do the same for the rest of the time I have on this Earth.
Thank you, Maria, both for your supportive and encouraging comments and for your donation to MIA in Catherine’s memory!
“While there are many different beliefs on how best to help an individual in an altered state of mind, at the very least, a greater awareness of underlying causes is critically needed.”
Yes, indeed!
And thank you for the link to your website. I plan to check it out as soon as I post this reply.
Carol and I really appreciate what you’ve shared here, uncommontype. Your story is so gripping!
“Honestly, I’ve been on I think every medication listed in your article and then some. I am not on any medication now except a birth control (Yas) and a thyroid medication as well as supplements I have chouncommonly.
While the journey you describe has been harrowing and excruciating at times, as you describe it, it’s so good to hear that you have gotten on a much better and healthier track!
“…not one person ever stopped to question if perhaps the medications (7 to 10, at one time 12) were causing me harm, not helping. They would max out the dosage and sometimes prescribe higher dosage than recommended”
From our perspective, this is so typical of psychiatry, and so maddening! They create iatrogenic harm, and then compound it by not acknowledging what they’ve done. The “First do no harm” of the Hippocratic Oath seems to be thrown out the window!
I’m sorry you had to go through such a horrible withdrawal process, but at the same time I’m glad that that idiot psychiatrist finally “gave up on you” so you could get off all that crap and finally get your life back. You describe so well the totally dispirited and depleted condition you were in under the fog of all those medications, which is how so many people trapped in the system are!
Just to clarify, my older daughter didn’t die. In fact, she’s your age, exactly! Like you, she has come through many psych hospitalizations, most of which were quite long and often very traumatic. In one instance, they almost killed her by slamming her with neuroleptics and causing neuroleptic malignant syndrome! Thankfully, unlike Catherine, she has been able to recover each time and has been able to work part-time to supplement her SSD income. She has just come through another extremely difficult episode, so now wouldn’t be the time, but I am going to bring your story to her attention at some point.
Beyond this, I’m wondering how you would feel about our sharing your story with within our circle. We wouldn’t include any identifying information, which we actually don’t even have at this point other than your username on this site, which we wouldn’t share. But if you’d rather not, we understand completely.
At any rate, our hearts go out to you as well and we wish you all the best in your continuing journey!⚘
Thank you, seebecrun, and yes, we have found some peace and hope to continue finding it and sharing our story and Shining Light into the darkness of a system that is so destructive to so many!
Thank you for your sympathy and condolences, Thilia, and for sharing your own ongoing saga.
“The system is incredibly messed up, and while I do believe that medications can help (to an extent) I do not believe they are an end-all blanket treatment, as it is often portrayed as.”
It sounds like you are on a better trajectory, and I’m glad you’re with someone who is going by the philosophy that “less is more” when it comes to psychiatric medications, and I’m glad you got off of such a toxic psychotropic cocktail.
I hope you are able to end up on the “minimal effective dosage” of everything, which might eventually be zero, hopefully.
Thanks for your comments, Lisa. Perhaps the syndrome you mentioned was involved in our daughters precipitous decline.. we’ll never know for sure. But I wish you the best in your own ongoing interactions with people experiencing similar things.
Krista, my absolute kudos to you as a “freedom fighter” who has made it to the other side! Thank you for sharing this information. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I plan to do so. Our daughter has been beaten down by the system, and we have been devastated along with her, but we will never give up in the battle to bring light to the darkness of psychiatric coercion!
Thanks for your comments, Lisa. Perhaps the syndrome you mentioned was involved in our daughters precipitous decline.. we’ll never know for sure. But I wish you the best in your own ongoing interactions with people experiencing similar things.
Thank you for your sympathy and condolences, Thilia, and for sharing your own ongoing saga.
“The system is incredibly messed up, and while I do believe that medications can help (to an extent) I do not believe they are an end-all blanket treatment, as it is often portrayed as.”
It sounds like you are on a better trajectory, and I’m glad you’re with someone who is going by the philosophy that “less is more” when it comes to psychiatric medications, and I’m glad you got off of such a toxic psychotropic cocktail.
I hope you are able to end up on the “minimal effective dosage” of everything, which might eventually be zero.
Thank you for sharing this, Denver Dan. What you said about Seroquel reminds me of an experience of my own. Well before we even had any idea that our youngest daughter, Catherine, would have any similar difficulties, our older daughter had gone through a couple of hospitalizations and was taking that medication. She was ambivalent about it, as it seemed to be helping in some ways, but also seem to be causing some difficulties. So in order to better empathize with her, I took a small dose of it myself. I slept like a log, and when I woke up, the whole next day it appeared as if I had lead in my brain. Everything I did was in slow motion, mainly my thought processes. If psychiatrists, who purport to be doctors who specialize in brain functioning, were honest, there are a whole lot of studies that they could be doing to really explore the effects of these drugs that they regularly use. But I believe that would cause even more dissonance than what they already have, and so we don’t see that. They consistently either deny or downplay side effects, and want to focus on illnesses that are really constellations of symptoms, often misperceived, that have no real known etiology.
Thank you so much for your sympathetic and supportive comments, TRM123.
“Grief from the loss of a child is not a process. It is a lifelong weight upon the Soul’.
That is so true. To be honest with you, I have no interest in going through a “grieving process” and then moving on with life. I actually treasure that “weight upon my soul”; I want it to be part of the legacy of my dear daughter and a motivator for me to spend the rest of my life working to bring relief to others similarly trapped and to contribute, even if in a small way, to better; more humane ways of responding to those who experience severe psychosocial difficulties.
“It is so important that all those who have experienced the devastation of our loved ones as a result of coerced, and/or enforced gross toxicities of psychotropic dugs, document our tragedies.”
Excellent points, Gilbert!
“…the psychiatrist can always blame the patient when there are ‘negative outcomes’ and deterioration by claiming that it is due to ‘the natural course of the illness’”.
That is a very maddening part of this whole aga, and that of many other people stuck in the mental health vortex, and you have stated it perfectly.
I hear you, Bree, and I agree with you that this thing called “mental illness” is very complex and confusing, and there are no easy answers. But I think you are missing the point, which is that people who know very little about what is really going on have way too much power and much too little honesty in this whole process. What happened to our Catherine in this process cannot just easily be brushed aside as needing to cut the mental health workers more slack. No, not when they press on with incorrect information, false narratives, a “knowledge base” that is horribly flawed and the ability to create a hell on Earth to some of the people who come under their power!
Thank you for these heartfelt condolences, Love 22, and our own condolences to you… may you find the strength to carry on and find your way out to a better and more whole life!
SuperNOVA, thanks so much for sharing your story…and with such articulate flair! Not only did you survive this ordeal, thankfully, but were able to help some of your cohorts in the process. Outstanding! You’ve hit so many nails on the head that I think you might be in the process of constructing something bigger… like a book, maybe?? I hope so!
And thank you for sharing YOUR story, LJM! I find it both amazing and chilling, but I’m glad for the positive turn that it took and the fact that a more positive trajectory has continued. Your story is reminiscent of that of Susanna Cahalan , as related in her book “Brain on Fire”. As I believe she states in the book, had it not been for a seizure that put her in a neurological rather than a psychiatric ward, she might still be languishing somewhere in our psychiatric gulag archipelago, medicated into oblivion, as so many are! And she was fortunate to have a maverick neurologist who thought out of the box, which led to the discovery that she was suffering from a real illness that had only recently been discovered: anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. When she was treated appropriately for that, what appeared to be severe psychiatric symptoms remitted fairly quickly and she fully regained her sanity!
Yes, Richard, believe me we have thought about almost every one of the things you mentioned here, and it even gave us pause in our willingness to share this story. After all, Catherine died “on our watch”. But as tragically as her life ended, I am still so glad for the last 10 months we had with her. She was clearly being transformed into a “lifer” in the state hospital, or at least in some highly restrictive place in the mental health system. We’ve seen far too many of those utterly beaten down and dispirited individuals, many of whom have been totally cut off from or abandoned by their families and former friends. And the system was made even worse because of all the added draconian restrictions of COVID. No, we had to get her out of there and she had to know we weren’t willing to leave her languishing in that horribly depressing and demeaning setting!
Yes, Lisa, it is certainly difficult, but thank you for being a “change agent” within the system to the extent that you can! I can certainly identify with that, having been employed in the educational system throughout my career.
I appreciate your passion, James, and receive it in the supportive spirit that I know prompted it. The effects and the outcome of what was done is certainly evil. I will leave it to God to judge the intent behind it. Regardless, exposure and action to change these evil outcomes is clearly needed.
Again; Boans, I appreciate your insightful and incisive observations. You’ve obviously been raked over the calls by the system as it is, but I’m glad you have survived and are giving testimony to it. Probably the only court that you or we have any chance of prevailing in is the “court of public opinion”. That’s a large part of what motivated us to share our story, and we really appreciate Robert Whitaker and the staff at MIA in supporting us in this. So may we continue to get the message out!
Yes Joshua, the psychosocial distresses we humans experience (sometimes very severely) labeled as “mental illness” are terribly ill-defined and often terribly ill-treated once someone falls into the hands of the “mental health system”. It certainly needs to change!
Thank you, KYP. We pray for release and a better outcome for you and, as you say, the millions of other families who are experiencing similar struggles.
Thank you for your condolences, huntmila, and for sharing your own ongoing heart-rending and very difficult ongoing saga with your son. To me, your son’s story underscores that there are no easy answers or one-size- fits-all solutions. If no two snowflakes are the same, as relatively simple as they are, how much more so with we human beings! I have certainly witnessed some of what you have shared, with both of my daughters and with others, how the issue of lack of insight in the midst of rather bizarre and sometimes dangerous behaviors can be very problematic. On the other hand, I’ve also seen people who lack insight into how debilitating and dangerous their psychiatric medication regimens have been and continue to be, which is also dangerous and potentially deadly. And then there are a bunch of people in between, where it is difficult to know whether they have been more helped or hurt by their ongoing “treatments”. That’s just my perspective.
I do encourage you to check into the MIA parent support group that is available on this site. Carol and I have really appreciated and benefited from it. I’m certainly not presenting it as a panacea, but I think it would be worth checking out and you might find some comfort in the camaraderie of others who are dealing with very similar issues with their own family members and trying to find a good way forward.
Heather, this is from my wife Carol who is now driving the car at the moment.
“Heather I really appreciate your validation and your condolences and I just want to thank you for lending your voice to creating a consensus. I would value the opportunity to hear more of your observations and your testimony and do anything I could to help spread your story as we work to build consensus to end psychiatric abuse.
Yes, John, they don’t know what they’re doing. As a Christian, I guess I should be praying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”…but I’m finding that hard to do.
Thank you, “Dunwith…”. If there is any strength we exhibit, it comes from a higher source…as I saw on a poster of a person ascending a mountain with a backpack, “The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). I’m glad you came through the system. I can appreciate how you feel, though, being in the system and feeling like a hypocrite. I felt some of that in my role as a school psychologist, especially after I saw “up close and personal” just what a terrible and damaging power imbalance there is between these systems and those they purport to serve. As I said above, we still have a sense of “moral injury” in having to cooperate as much as we did in our own daughter’s demise, as we were stuck between so many “rocks and hard places”.
Thank you, Wendy. We feel so far from perfect and regularly go through the “woulda/coulda/shoulda” thing as we look back on our daughter’s horrendous saga over the last six years of her life. But as I’ve said, we want our lives going forward to be a tribute to Catherine as we try to both expose the evil of inhumane, coercive psychiatry and try to help those stuck in it.
Ted, I’m aware of your story, have seen many of your posts and I believe I’ve even seen/heard you speak via You Tube. Your life has been a testimonial to the resiliency of the human spirit, and I’m so honored and inspired by your comments. Yes, we certainly intend to “fight back” and support others who are doing that. We’re so thankful for the MIA community, and other fellow “freedom fighters” in this struggle!
Thanks for your kind remarks, Someone Else. And I’m glad for you and others who have survived and escaped our wonderful psychiatric gulag archipelago. Yes, art can be powerful and definitely a part of healing!
Thank you, Francesca. Yes, your hope for us is what we’re trying to do, and in fact, feel “called” to do. God willing, that will be our best tribute to our daughter, and the most worthwhile way to spend the rest of our days on this planet!
“And if, somehow, the patient’s body adapts to the presence of these toxic drugs and she is able to resume some level of functioning, they attribute her recovery to whatever combination of drugs she is taking at the time.”
So true, Patrick. I’ve seen so many of these poor “recovered” souls when I visit a friend in one of our local community residences for folks on disability due to severe psychosocial difficulties (exacerbated by drugs).
And yes, they certainly do make shit up…it’s the “bread and butter” of the trade!
Thanks so much for your compassionate and caring sentiments, Daiphanous. This inhumanity of the system and refusal to even acknowledge the anguished feelings of those entrapped within it is so egregious! As we said in the article, and probably actually understated, we still carry the heavy weight of “moral injury” resulting from our own part in this saga, as even while we were trying to advocate for our daughter and extricate her from the psychiatric gulag, we often had to “go along to get along” to some extent, just to keep from being kept entirely out of the loop.
Thanks so much for your comments, Boans. You’ve obviously been there and “know whereof you speak”! Yes, we’ve also seen just how corrupt and deceitful the legal trappings surrounding psychiatry’s coercive practices is, and how much those with the power in this system circle the wagons and protect their own guild interests, above all! Whenever it’s a question of patients rights versus guild interests, guess who wins? One of the saddest and most maddening sub-stories in this, for us, was how the very legal system in our state that is supposed to represent the “voiceless” patient ended up colluding with the hospital and stripping away our daughter’s rights. That could be a story in itself.
Yes, you are right on! The false narrative disingenuously sold by mainstream psychiatry inures almost everyone in the system to the trauma and destruction of personhood often caused by their “treatments”! They have everyone indoctrinated into attributing everything to the “illness”. Thanks for your more humane approach, which is so needed by people in distress.
Thank you for this excellent and much needed exposé, Michael. Yes, I have witnessed up close and personal just how Shady the world of ECT is.. I’m also very thankful for the work of two psychiatrists, one of whom you mentioned in your article and both of whom have written articles on this website on the same issue; Drs. Peter Breggin and Niall “Jock” McLaren.
My wife and I were well aware of the serious dangers of ECT when our youngest of four children landed back in the psychiatric unit of our local hospital, despite our best efforts to avoid it. She had just turned 18 four months earlier, and she was truly very incapacitated– due largely, we believe, to very ill-advised “treatments” in a previous lengthy, traumatic previous experience at the same hospital. We therefore obtained legal guardianship so that we could assure personalized medical services for her and protect her from the coercive psychiatric practices we’d already witnessed, first with her older sister, then with her. But despite our diligent efforts, they railroaded her through involuntary ECT through an egregious kangaroo court process. Then they forced her onto to an “antipsychotic” that genetic testing flagged as one to be avoided. Both of these coercive “treatments” were traumatic and devastating, and did nothing to restore her thinking, behavior or personal relationships. She was discharged in deplorable condition to the local state psychiatric hospital after over four months. After 16 months of languishing in this setting, we were finally able to extricate her. But it appears too much damage was done. She came out of that almost 2-year hospitalization much more diminished and distorted in her personhood after psychiatry had full control of her for almost two years, and she suffered a tragic and ultimately fatal accident ten months after returning home–directly related to drug-induced OCD that was greatly exacerbated and apparently entrenched by the particular neuroleptic medication she was forced onto after the involuntary ECT.
My wife and I continue to be heartsick about this whole horrific saga. Our daughter was a bright, healthy, creative, athletic and personable young lady when she experienced a precipitous psychosocial decline at age 15. But at every point where psychiatry “took over” with coercive, draconian “treatments” her condition worsened in every way.
We are in the process of writing a more detailed account of this whole saga and look forward to sharing it when completed.
psmama, I have the same problem I had in responding to O.O.’s last comment…no “reply” button on your comment. So this is my reply to your response starting with “Russerford, I was in your daughter’s shoes also”:
Your comment was a wonderful advance “Father’s Day” gift. Thank you so much for sharing this! It is very affirming to hear from those who “get it”, but unfortunately, that understanding has come at a high cost. I am truly sorry for your pain. Thank you so much for keeping me and my daughter in your prayers. I will do the same for you. To be honest, in my more cynical moments I wonder what good prayer actually does, but I continue to do it, banking on the belief that “a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out”…and I am certainly that “bruised reed” and “smoldering wick”–how much more my dear daughter! But I am more and more convinced that the good that is done in this world, MUST be done by those of us who allow ourselves to be “His workmanship”, who are “created for good works”. So there is the need for both prayer and action, and prayer that our actions would be in sync with the Lord’s will. And I thank everyone who may read this for your actions on behalf of those suffering at the hands of the psychiatric Gulag Archipelago, even if you are an atheist! (In my opinion, struggling with faith as I am, you’re doing the work of God without even knowing it!)
O.O., for some reason there’s no “reply” button on your previous comment, so I’m using this one to reply. You started by saying,
“I can’t see, after everything, my journey ever being anything but difficult.”
I definitely hear the despair and anger in this and what follows. I’m sorry for your pain. But I thank you again for your supportive comments. And I do see strength of mind and spirit in you, and that is a very valuable gift. In saying this, I don’t mean to “whitewash” your suffering, past, present or future.
Thanks again. I hear you loud and clear, and these thoughts and suggestions are well taken. We have retained a lawyer, and are gathering some allies around us in this fight, including a survivor/advocate and a couple of holistic/integrative psychiatrists who are some of the few “good guys” among that seemingly conscience-seared cohort. I thank God we at least have the resources we do in this battle. My heart goes out to those that are entrapped in the psychiatric Gulag Archipelago with NO ONE on their side! I want to fight for them, too! I believe it has become my key life mission.
O.O., thank you so much for responding to me as you have done… That really means a lot! And all of the things you have shared are very helpful. I don’t want you to think that I’m shooting down any of it, even when some of what we’ve tried hasn’t worked very well to date. From what you said I realized you’re still in a difficult journey, and it probably feels like crap sometimes, plus I’m sure it’s left a ton of scars. But I want to commend you for being able to share as you are doing, and if my daughter could ever recover anywhere near as well as you obviously have, I would feel extremely blessed! One thing that gives us hope is that our older daughter, as I already mentioned, has also come through some pretty horrific coercive psychiatric incarcerations and has recovered remarkably well… although she certainly has some scars, too. You did very well to gather some allies to see you through what appears to have been your last hospitalization. I encouraged and helped my older daughter complete a rather extensive psychiatric advance directive, developed by the Bazelon Center, which definitely helped in a couple of her hospitalizations. When push comes to shove, psychiatrists can override them in many respects in most states (they simply invoke “In my best clinical judgment…”), but I do believe it was helpful and kept her from ECT. They were trying to push this on her twice as the only thing left to help her… but she is living proof they were dead wrong!
“I want to warn you that my relationship was super damaged with my family from what happened. From not knowing who to blame or who didn’t protect me enough.”
Yes, thank you for mentioning this. Believe me, it is always on my mind. The way this thing has gone is unbelievably pernicious, and we are between so many rocks and hard places, including that we have to stay in the “good graces” of the ones who are so much in control of our daughter’s life at this point. Our “mental health system”, as it exists, seems almost designed to alienate people from their families. I wouldn’t blame my daughter, based on what she’s aware of, if she hated us at this point! She has NO IDEA how we’ve been advocating for her, behind the scenes. While we have heard mental health workers lament the lack of involvement of families, what they want more than anything, both from patients and their families, is unquestioning “compliance”. When you seriously challenge what they’re doing, or trying to do, they have ways of making you (and your loved one) pay!
Oldhead, you have my hearty “Amen” on this! I don’t think there is any more crying need for the exposure of injustice than in the issues involving the draconioan, coercive, abusive practices within our current psychiatric system!
Jim, I’m glad to see you use that quote. I’ve thought of it many times myself, and if not for my fear that it would come back to bite us as we try to extract our daughter from her current psychiatric captors I would offer to buy them a very large and prominent sign with that very quote to post over their entrance!
“And who better to inflict that violence than the people at mental health services, aided and abetted by the people at the Mental Health Law Centre who are prepared to assist in the concealment of human rights abuses whilst claiming to be advocates for those being abused?”
Yes, what a cruel irony! One that we are in the midst of as I write this. Reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” …and in the case of the psychiatric Gulag Arhipelago, calling them “moral busybodies” seems far too mild!
“The hospital must know that people are watching. That if Evan comes out more damaged then he went in, that there will be repercussions.”
This is so true, and it is one of the things my wife and I are trying to do as we continue to negotiate the unbelievably precarious balancing act of maintaining contact and influence with those “treating” our involuntarily hospitalized 19-year-old daughter while trying to extract her from this seemingly No-exit hell!
One of the things I’m thinking of as I write this is to enlist friends who know us and our daughter to stand with us outside of the hospital with signs simply reading “We are watching you, _______, _______, and ______ (with the names of the attending psychiatrist, Chief of Psychiatry and Clinical Director in the blanks).
But here’s a chilling reality in our ongoing saga: Our daughter did, in fact, come out of a 74-day “psychiatric incarceration” much more debilitated than when she entered back in 2017. Were there repercussions? You bet, but not against the hospital! They managed to “spin” things in a way to actually blame us for her deplorable state. It has taken us until recently, through extensive effort, to get her hospital records amended to remove erroneous, misleading and pejorative information from this hospital’s records…after they got her back in their grip and perpetrated even more harmful, coercive and damaging “treatments” on her!
Having said this, I still appreciate all you’ve said. And of course, we will never give up!
Yes, yes O.O. Reminds me of the horrible demise of George Floyd. “I can’t breathe!” When psychiatry has it’s knee on your neck, someone besides you needs to be screaming…not just politely requesting!
Hello Jim, because of the delayed timing I wonder if anyone will see this…but I’m following through on one of your suggestions in our email exchange on this article and posting my comments to you here:
Thank you so much for sending this notice, and even more so for writing this article, Jim!
I was struck by your comment near the end, ” I am very concerned that Evan is about to be devoured by psychiatry’s maw.”
For the past 17 months my wife and I have been essentially reduced to watching helplessly as our now 19-year-old daughter, now in the 17th month of an involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, has been subjected to forced ECT followed by coercively ramping up a neuroleptic medication that was specifically contraindicated by genetic testing! Oh, we have been far from passive in this process, but as you know it is virtually impossible to wrest a loved one from the grip of the psychiatric Gulag Archipelago, especially as they become increasingly incapacitated by the coercive, draconian measures imposed!
And our situation is nuanced in a way that may be hard to understand, even for some of our compatriots in the psychiatric resistance movement. My wife and I obtained NYS Article 81 guardianship of our daughter, but for the opposite reason that most people do this: to keep her from being swallowed up by the system and kept in a very dispirited and diminished state, as I have witnessed happens to so many in the system when they have the kind of severe difficulties that she is experiencing. We would not have done this if she had retained enough of her capabilities to advocate for herself, as our older daughter has done. She has also been “through the mill”, but thank God she made it through and is now of very sound mind!
We are certainly not rich, but thank God we had the resources to do this, unlike many if not most of the people who get similarly caught up in our wonderful mental health system. But despite our efforts on behalf of our younger daughter, the very thing we feared is happening right under our noses!
As an added cruel twist, Mental Hygiene Legal Services, the very agency in New York that is charged with being the “voice for the voiceless”, actually colluded in the process of forcing ECT on our dear daughter (although they will never admit this and shrewdly seem to have covered their tracks).
How I wish there was someone to write such an article about our daughter’s horrible ongoing saga. I know you have a lot on your plate and I’m not asking you to do this, Jim. It’s just heart cry of an anguished father.
Excellent point, Ron. My first thought was “megakudos” to Dr. Moncrieff, who is such a courageous, brilliant, articulate shining light on these issues…and I still feel that way, but your point is valid and very well taken. I think she’ll probably respond to it.
Kayla, my opening comment about Sandra being perceived as a “collaborator with the enemy” (i.e., mainstream psychiatry) was based on previous responses (by some) to articles she’s written here. I hadn’t read any of the comments here beforehand and agree with you that most of them have been positive. And in speaking of “real world credibility”, i was in no way trying to deny or denigrate the experiences of those, like you or my older daughter, who have been victimized by forced or strongly coerced psychiatric treatments that seemed to harm much more than help them. I am trying my best to advocate for such people, and I’m sure many others who comment here are doing the same! At the same time, my own experiences and those of a wide range of people I continue to hear from leads me to have an appreciation for just how knotty the dilemma(s) can be for anyone dealing with a severely psychotic state–the individuals themselves and those who love them and are trying to find the best way back to sanity. My sense is that some people (not you) find it easier to “posture” in a stance that something is always wrong or always right than to deal with the hard realities of situations in which each path is fraught with serious potential difficulties. Having said that, I am firmly in yours and Sandra’s camp in terms of strengthening the safeguards against forced drugging. Hope I’m not coming across as a politician here!
Bravo, Sandra! I’m commenting before looking over other comments, knowing there are certainly some if not many here who see you as too much of a “collaborator with the enemy”. I do not, even though I have a loved one who has many times been on the “sharp end of the needle” and was deeply wounded and damaged by “the system”. In fact, I am currently in the midst of a crisis involving yet another family member who is in the throes of a first episode psychosis. Fortunately, we got her out of the hospital fairly quickly and we are blessed to have a very thoughtful, careful, recovery-oriented psychiatrist (like you!) and many caring friends working with us. Once again, I applaud your courage, passion, honesty and candor. As I’ve said before, you have what I call “real world” credibility since you’re not just posturing but actually working to help people recover. Thank you for your advocacy and willingness to “go against the grain” of your profession.
Great, Bob…and just so you know, I wouldn’t be “above” putting some such posters onto some of the professional bulletin boards at hospitals and colleges in my area if and when they become available!
Thanks for the heads up on this Bob. Its timely for me, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately on how to get the word out to doctors and mental health professionals that I know. Although my professional experience is nowhere near as extensive as yours, as a retired school psychologist who became enlightened on these issues fairly late in my career, I share a number of the feelings you express, particularly about regrets versus moving forward to promote positive change. I am most concerned about making a dent in the “false knowlege” that abounds among mental health professionals. Are there posters and/or flyers that can be printed about these courses?
John, I didn’t say the original design study was flawed, although it might be (consider there was no true control group; i.e., a group for whom there was NO treatment, which would control for the placebo or Hawthorne effect…but I realize there may be ethical concerns in offering participants “no treatment”). What I meant was that the conclusions drawn by the researchers after the 14-month study appear flawed (overly benign and lacking in cautionary information regarding the intensive medication group), at least in light of subsequent follow up information. I believe if researchers and mental health practitioners had the well-being of children at heart first and foremost, they would make a strong effort to counter or at least question the initial finding that appeared so favorable to intensive medication treatment for ADHD. I see no such strong cautionary statements; in fact, as has been stated, they appear to have “spun” the latter findings in a way that tends to support the initial “drug-friendly” conclusions.
Your point about your own experience is very well taken, and as Steve said in his reply, it brings to mind critical psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff’s recommendations for a “drug-centered” rather than “disease-centered” approach to treating mental and emotional symptoms. Unfortunately, owing to the predominance of the current disease-centered approach, the concept of “informed consent” is regularly violated (in my opinion) and many people (including kids) do not have the option of discontinuing a drug when its harmful effects outweigh its helpful ones (if such effects were ever even present).
Your point seems valid and is well taken, John. I only saw it after posting my comment below. Yes, from a strict scientific point of view, the “study” was not maintained as such after the 14-month period for the reasons you mention; therefore, the post-14-month follow up findings are mitigated. However, I believe the follow up strongly suggests the initial findings may be quite flawed. This seems consistent with short-term versus long-term research on other “psychiatric conditions” (none of which have any conclusive validity as “brain diseases”, to my knowledge), and the strong tendency in mainstream psychiatry to trumpet and base treatment standards on these short-term studies while ignoring or even denying the findings of long-term studies.
Regarding the MTA study on ADHD treatments, this is what I found on the NIMH (who funded the study) website, under “Questions and Answers”:
“Because their treatment after the end of the study was not controlled, it is not possible to draw accurate conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions beyond 14 months, or determine if treatment improves long-term functioning. However, the observations collected from these uncontrolled follow-up assessments can provide information about the long-term course of ADHD itself. These data are being analyzed and reported as they become available.3”
Is this why they trumpeted the initial 14-month results (most favorable to intensive medication treatment) but have muted subsequent results that have shown either no difference between treatment groups or worse long-term results for those in the more intensive medication treatment group?
No matter how you explain this, it seems to be a prime example of how money and guild interests have come to trump honesty and commitment first and foremost to the patient in health care–especially in psychiatry. It is particularly egregious when children’s brains are increasingly put at risk from this dishonesty!
So sorry for the tragic loss of your precious son, Steven. I couldn’t agree more with your strong caution against relaxing the standards regarding “off label” use of psych meds with kids. I know from my many years as a school psychologist that the use of psych meds with kids has risen exponentially, with no sign of abatement. And the concept of “informed consent” is regularly violated in that the proposed benefits of medication are overinflated and the risks greatly understated; furthermore, dangerous falsehoods about the drugs balancing brain chemical imbalances and being “like insulin to a diabetic” continue to be blithely perpetuated. Even Dr. Duckworth, the Medical Director of NAMI (which tends to be VERY friendly toward psychotropic drugs and the biopsychiatry mindset), has stated that he NEVER prescribed antipsychotic medications to children. Thank you for this article and for sharing your very valuable “insider’s view” in exposing the dangers our children are being subjected to by the existing psychiatric system.
You make an excellent point here, Norman. I notice that many who have been indoctrinated in the “faith” of biopsychiatry confuse denial of the medical basis of psychiatric diagnoses with denial of the symptoms (which few if any of us in the “resistance” movement are doing. If the disclaimer you suggest was put into practice, and if a “drug-centered” rather than “disease -centered” approach was used (as suggested by psychiatrist Joanna Moncrief), then at least there would be some honesty in the process.
Once again you’ve hit the nail on the head, Phillip. Thank you for another excellent expose of the chicanery of psychiatry. Funny, as I was reading this I was thinking to myself, “What is that other new bogus childhood ‘syndrome’ they recently came up with?” And then there it was, just a few paragraphs down: “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder”. What an outrageous crock of crap! As a retired school psychologist, I’m well aware of how parents can be bamboozled and pressured to buy into this pseudoscientific crap! Thanks for your diligent, persistent, articulate presentations. You are giving us good ammunition to counter the harmful lies, half-truths and deceptions of modern biopsychiatry.
Yes, yes, David…I think I follow you. So do you think if the primal parents had been active participants in real trials with Eden Pharmaceutical, as co-producers, maybe the one son would’ve had the benefit of some good Ableify, thereby not engaging in delusional behavior that incurred the lethal fury of his brother, who was apparently jacked up on coCaine?
Thanks for another excellent article, James. I share your righteous indignation with the “never mind the conflicting and mitigating factors, just diagnose!” nonsense you bring to light here. I see a strong parallel to our special education system, in which i was immersed for many years as a school psychologist (now retired, still involved part-time). Like the DSM diagnoses, several of the special education diagnoses are quite ambiguous (e.g., “learning disability”, “emotional disturbance”, “other health impairment”) and subject to a variety of confounding factors, which can be difficult if not impossible to sort out. There’s a missing classification that i believe has at least as much validity as these ones I’ve mentioned: “School Toxicity Syndrome”. And the remediation is much more clear cut: change the environment! (Maybe I’ll see if I can get “The Onion” to publish my research on that one!)
But back to the parallel between the mental health system and the special education system. I see a similar problem that stems partly from the erroneous application of a “medical model” to behaviors that really have no clear medical etiology. Furthermore, even with the best of intentions (which I’m not assuming are always present), the “cures” to these supposed “illnesses” have a rather dismal track record, whether in educational or mental health outcomes. With regard to both mental health and education, the difficulties that individuals experience are very real and often do need attention. And unless one is blessed with a built-in, supportive social network to provide that attention free of charge, someone has to pay for services. I won’t be so cynical to say that funding is the ONLY reason for the DSM and the special education classification system in our country, but it sure is a major factor! No label, no services. On the one hand, you could say it could be no other way; after all, we don’t have unlimited funds. So if you’re “in the system” and want to get needed services for your client, it appears you have to “hold your nose” and pick the best label.
But as you, James, and several others have pointed out, there are many problems with this–some of them very grievous. Perhaps the worst is that the onus for the problem is placed squarely on the child or individual, who may have to drag that label (with all of it’s limiting implications) around for the rest of his/her life. And maybe even worse, in the case of DSM diagnosis, there is the strong likelihood of being subjected to a variety of mind- and body-altering drugs or other harmful “interventions”. And in any case, the REAL problem may never be addressed or even identified!
Another problem that seems inherent in either system is that an ever-expanding array of procedures, regulations, specialists, etc. are interposed between the person needing help of some sort and the actual service! So funds that could be used for those in need get eaten up by the bureaucracy (and maybe that would include me!)
I certainly don’t see any easy solution, but I do think we need to move toward a system that identifies specific needs tied to services, without reliance on bogus labels. Such a system would involve a complete overhaul of the current funding system. With the guild and financial interests at stake (as Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove so clearly elucidate in “Psychiatry Under the Influence”) that will surely be a daunting task!
I just checked and many other states also have “mental health parity” laws that would at least partially mitigate the cost of psychotherapy. Unfortunately, you probably need some kind of a mental illness diagnosis, which could open up a whole other “can of worms”.
Excellent points, Duane. Like you, I’m not an anti-capitalist and do not think the “creeping socialism” we’ve witnessed in our country over the past fifty years or so is a good thing. Even though I detest collectivism as it’s manifested in totalitarian states over the past century, i increasingly believe that a loving, very supportive community is very conducive to real healing for those suffering from extreme emotional and mental distress. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” In such a community, perhaps the expensive psychotherapy would not be necessary…or at least less so; or the community of caring friends would pull together to cover the expense, sort of like the Amish do in building a barn for one of their own. One other thing on this: Here in New York State, insurance covers psychotherapy with the same co-pay as medical conditions, due to “Timothy’s Law”.
Mickey, I heartily accept your apology and thank you for a very thoughtful reply. It’s clear to me that you’re a very honorable man. I was sincere in my first comment and I really admire your passion and commitment to translating these passions into corrective action! In my own passion I have sometimes said things that I later regretted… so we definitely share that human tendency. Keep up your strong voice and the honesty and good will you’ve demonstrated.
Mickey, much of what you say resonates with me. I especially like your suggestion of “ju-jitsu techniques calculated to employ psychiatry’s own claims and tactics against itself.” I believe that is what Robert Whitaker has done and continues to do, in part. In my own small way, I believe I’m also employing that tactic in advocating for a couple people close to me who are to differing degrees caught in conventional biopsychiatry’s web. And I’ve also been active in trying to get the truth out in a number of other ways, and I do see a place for strong and active resistance against the “false knowledge” in contemporary mainstream psychiatry.
However, I totally disagree with your following statement: “Jesus has often been cited as such an example [a “power-free good example”], but Jesus was murdered, and the example of the life he led has hardly had an effect on the quantity of evil in our contemporary world.” First off, I believe Jesus was and IS anything but power-free. I believe his life has had inestimable influence and real effect in dispelling evil in the world and promoting love, including in myself (although I’m very much a work in progress, continually in need of God’s grace). Clearly, evil still abounds in our contemporary world, including harmful practices in psychiatry and, in some cases, through “religious”, misguided people who claim to be acting in the name of God, or even Jesus! However, I will contend that the power of Jesus is very real, was perfectly manifested in his life, and has been very evident throughout history in the “good works” even of the very flawed people who (at times) through faith allow him to work through their lives.
Yes, Sandra, what you say brings to mind what I understand is one of the key principles undergirding the Open Dialogue approach: “tolerance of uncertainty”, which goes hand-in-hand with a humble honesty that acknowledges there is still a tremendous amount of mystery in all the states of mind and being that we call “mental illness”. I see the connection you mention with Joanna Moncrieff’s blog, as well as your own in reflecting on “Psychiatry Under the Influence” and “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)”. I think it would certainly be more honest and avoid some of the more egregious treatment mistakes to approach things from a “drug centered” rather than a “disease centered” perspective, as Joanna has suggested. And your comments on the way doctor’s in training, by necessity, concentrate on absorbing a tremendous amount of information from their mentors, at the expense of critical thinking, certainly helps in understanding how faulty information and practices are perpetuated.
I so appreciate your portrayal of the “lose-lose” scenario it terms of the way acute psychiatric hospital staff regard someone who ends up in the hospital while attempting medication taper, versus those who end of there while being “perfectly compliant”. I’ve witnessed both of those scenarios and it is truly maddening!
Thanks so much for this, too, Jim. I’ve long suspected this is the case and keep looking to see what “evidence” is used to support this apparently fallacious notion. We really need to bring this fact to the forefront, and confront the “false knowledge” of conventional psychiatry strongly, relentlessly, at every opportunity. Their myths have become far too entrenched, and it looks like unquestioned acceptance of such erroneous information played a significant part in the closing of Soteria Alaska and CHOICES, Inc.
Man, you’ve really nailed it here, Michael, in terms of what is needed and how much better it would be than the immediate and unrelenting brain drugging that almost every unfortunate soul experiencing a first episode psychosis now faces! It’s disgusting but not really surprising to hear that NAMI joined the gang responsible for closing those good programs you mention and were a part of. I’m trying to be a dissenting voice within my local chapter of that organization, but it’s increasingly hard. We need an alternative.
Jim, thanks so much for your efforts in Alaska, and your continuing work through PsychRights to bring needed attention and advocacy to those who continue to be caught up in the Gulag Psychepelago here in “the land of the free”. I like your following portrayal and rationale of Soteria Alaska: “… it is designed to prevent people who experience a first psychotic break from immediately being put on neuroleptics (hyped by the marketers as “antipsychotics), and thus transformed into chronic, disabled mental patients. It is pretty fair to say that 80% of such people so treated can get through their experience and on with their lives, compared to 5% of the people who can be considered recovered under the current psych-drugs-for-all, mainstream approach.” I find it both incredible and intensely frustrating that so very few in our current “mental health” system seem to have any inkling of this. Yes, to be fair, the 80% recovery figure (assuming this is that reportedly achieved by Open Dialogue treatment methodology in western Finland) needs to be replicated and corroborated. But what you ran into in Alaska seems to epitomize the saying that “false knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance”. The “psych-drugs-for-all” mainstream approach, as you so aptly put it, appears to be based on the false knowledge that psychosis is the manifestation of a progressive neurological malignancy that must be arrested by drugs at all costs. Ironically, this false knowledge often results in the very thing it purports to prevent: progressive neurological deterioration as a result of the intrusion and continued bombardment of toxic substances in the brains of its victims!
Anyway, thanks for continuing to “fight the good fight”!
Laura, you da woman! This looks great, and I can’t wait to dig in! This kind of information, forum and dialogue is so desperately needed. I happen to think it’s the most needed of anything in the “mental health” domain. Unfortunately, it may be that not everyone who has been debilitated by psych drugs will be able to successfully taper completely off…but they sure have the right to try, with as much support as possible–and to at least reduce them as much as possible. As you know, there is precious little support for that among medical professionals with prescribing power. Thanks for your valiant efforts to help others achieve the freedom you’ve been enjoying since getting off your own toxic psych med cocktail. Your life is a great testimonial and inspiration to me, and I’m sure many, many others!
“Dr. Marder knows Elyn Saks who was the recipient of long term high quality psychotherapy yet, as she writes in her memoir, when she finally agreed to use neuroleptics, she felt much better. I think we can no more discount her story than discount the story of Joanna Greenberg or many others who recovered without using drugs. ” [I’ll add Laura Delano, David Oaks, Will Hall, a few personal friends (anonymous, since i don’t have their permission to mention their names)…as well as those who only use them only on a self-directed “as needed” basis, like Keris Myrick, Jim Gottstein, and another anonymous personal friend]
I was just looking back at your response to bpdtransformation, and i do appreciate this comment.
It resonated with me in terms of what I’ll call “real world balance” (something i see in all of your articles)–meaning it avoids posturing in a dogmatic way that essentially denies the real life experiences of some in order to maintain “purity” of an ideological viewpoint. I am incensed by the degree to which i see this kind of one-sided posturing happening by the promoters of the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness–those who, unfortunately still hold most of the power in the mental health industry despite the lack of valid scientific support for their ideology. I think those of us who are very critical of mainstream psychiatry (justifiably) need to scrupulously avoid that same error. While we rightly bring to light those who have successfully come off of debilitating psych meds, to deny the experience of someone whose life has been improved by use of these same meds is wrong, and detracts from our overall credibility.
Thanks again, Sandra, for your honest, candid, caring approach, and for co-presenting this extremely important workshop to some of those who most need to hear it. It is encouraging to hear of the high interest level.
I see some references to Open Dialogue in the comments. bpdtransformation raised these questions/issues very articulately in the second comment above, so I won’t try to reiterate them. But I would like to ask, is Dr. Marder aware of the work in Northern Finland, and if so, what does he think of it? Does he believe they’re lying, or distorting the results in a self-deluded manner? Of course, first-episode psychosis cannot be equated with schizophrenia, notwithstanding the issue that “schizophrenia” is a rather ill-defined and far from unitary state of mind/being. So is that his “out”–that the success reported with Open Dialogue is because they are dealing with first episode psychosis, which may be transient anyway? If that is his position, would he be in support of refraining from use of neuroleptics, if at all possible, when treating first-episode psychosis? I seriously doubt it!
Sa, I’m probably posting this too late for you to see it (unless you checked the box for an email notice when there’s another comment on the same article)…Anyway, I REALLY appreciated your last response in our exchange on this article that starts with…
“Sa on May 9, 2015 at 4:28 pm said:
Russerford,
I really ‘hear’ you on the point that vocal family advocates in leadership roles often seem very concerned with protecting the image of the psychiatric profession and supporting the resulting drug recommendations – I have had the same experience.”
Your analysis of why so many family members seem blind to the pseudo-science behind the so-called “evidence base” in psychiatry was excellent, and resonates greatly with me. You brought out so many things I’ve also witnessed, such as the following:
” When confronted with stories of people who have recovered, many of these family members seem at some level so unable to imagine that recovery is possible, that they do not believe these people were ever severely ill.”
Some years ago a colleague of mine, knowing the story of my daughter’s horrific experiences in psychiatric hospitalizations, mentioned a film that i finally checked out of the library: “Lorenzo’s Oil”…It’s very heart-rending, but I highly recommend it. It’s about the absolutely heroic efforts of two parents to advocate for their son, and eventually contribute to a breakthrough in treatment that helped prolong his life some, and greatly helped others with the same rare and usually fatal disease. One of the most poignant and disturbing issues brought out was how their efforts were actually OPPOSED by the advocacy group in place for this disease! They resisted them on the basis that “you are giving people false hope”!
Also, your following point is key in this discussion:
“Now add that for some families -although certainly not our family and according to the research not for the majority of people – dramatic positive changes can happen after drugs are introduced particularly in the short term, and even for a few, the benefits last long term. All of this helps me understand how families have been led to so fervently believe that the psychiatrist just needs to find the ‘right’ combination of drugs to make this miracle happen for their loved one.”
I think this last point is SO important for people to note and understand! I believe it is a huge factor in perpetuating the aggressive drugging of altered states of mind and emotion. Because SOME people have an initial, dramatic positive response to medication, it is assumed that everyone needs this…and when they don’t respond as expected, higher doses and/or different drugs are thrown into the mix…or ECT, if all else fails! And the same holds true of those whose initially positive response turns not so good over time…Rarely is the thought of carefully tapering the medication given credence. And, of course, when a person sees their loved deteriorate after stopping medication (usually abruptly, because they feel so crappy and no one shows any interest in helping them carefully taper), this then confirms the myth that they have a “brain chemical imbalance for which they need to take medication for the rest of their life”.
This is tragic, frustrating and disheartening. But, in the words of Winston Churchill, “Never give up!”
Thanks again, Sa, for your very insightful comments.
Madmom,
I want you to know that even though (as I said above) I’ve rejoined my local NAMI chapter, I’ve done so with the intention of being a dissident presence within this organization. Not to oversimplify, but i see three types of people at NAMI meetings: 1) Anguished and devastated newcomers (usually referred by someone in the mental health system), desperate for support and direction; 2) People who have been coming to meetings, feel they and their loved one has been positively supported, and have more or less bought into the biopsychiatric model of mental illness that NAMI promotes; and 3) the leaders, who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the biopsychiatric model. Those in group 1 are the ones I’m most hopeful of supporting and those that are the most receptive to honest, open information and discussion; some in group 2 seem open to re-evaluating the “truth” of what they’ve been led to believe; group 3 vary from somewhat open (if they’re relatively new to leadership) to extremely defensive to the point of shutting down discussion or doing everything they can to prevent it in the first place.
As I said, I’ve stepped back from involvement lately as the meetings have left me with feelings of frustration and futility…it just feels too much like paddling upstream against a powerful current.
You mention “NAMI is supposed to be advocating for my daughter but they aren’t.” From what you’ve written in other posts about your daughter, I have much empathy for you on this. I have also experienced the leadership of my local NAMI showing no inclination whatsoever to intervene on my daughter’s behalf in terms of correcting potentially harmful, erroneous information in her hospital records. They bill themselves as “the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness”…yet, in my view NAMI’s leadership seems much more concerned with protecting the image of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry than standing up for individuals who are harmed by them–in fact, they seem to be in denial that such harm even exists!
I’m thinking more and more that an alternative to NAMI is sorely needed, and hopefully I’ll be a part of that.
I think you make a good point here, Sa. In keeping with the mantra “Think globally, act locally” I rejoined my local NAMI chapter expressly for the reasons you mention, since this is the organization that virtually ALL people/families in emotional/mental crisis get sent to in my area. I want to reach out to families in distress and try to be a “different voice” to the struggling and desperate family members who come there. At times I think I have had a modest, positive impact. I sense that families are very open to information when it comes from someone else who has experienced similar things.
Unfortunately, I’ve been AWOL for a while now because of the feelings of discouragement and futility I was left with the last couple times. Sometimes there is so much erroneous information being endorsed by the leadership that to confront it all I would have to make myself even more of an irritating presence to some than I’ve already been, and I just don’t have the temperament for it lately. I may be coming to the point when I feel that the negatives outweigh the positives in terms of my continued involvement. Admittedly, I’m less hopeful than I was a couple years ago when Bob Whitaker was invited to present at NAMI’s national convention, and when Keris Myrick was the board president….but I’m hoping to regroup and get back in the mix.
I keep musing about starting up some kind of local alternative to NAMI…a place that wouldn’t be beholden to the drug companies (who heavily fund NAMI) and where people could get honest, complete information and support, with no effort to coerce them toward a way of thinking that primarily serves the “system” rather than the individual experiencing mental and/or emotional distress. The trouble with this is I just don’t currently have the time and energy for such an undertaking…and I’m not sure if i have the personal skill set for such a venture.
“And with that example of activism in mind, I am now thinking of whether MIA could host a public discussion on “solutions,” and also mount a public campaign to publicize this issue.”
Okay, I’m in! Here are two suggestion for rallying cries for such a campaign:
Very well said, Sera. Your articulate words speak for so many of us. I think the persistence of this “chemical imbalance” belief system is bringing out the bipolar in me! Just when I’m becoming more hopeful that this destructive myth is crumbling, I see depressing evidence that it just seems to keep chugging along!
Anyone remember Justina Pelletier? It was this kind of “junk science” diagnosis and “treatment”, coupled with draconian police state tactics, that kept her incarcerated at a locked psych ward at Boston Children’s Hospital and separated from her loving family for over a year. I was proud to be one of the protesters at the “Occupy the APA”/Free Justina rally in NYC last spring, and I’m glad to say justice (finally) prevailed…although it will not be complete until those responsible for this travesty are appropriately disciplined.
“Imagine a world where we allow for medical uncertainty. We allow medically unexplained symptoms to be part of our medical puzzles without patient apology and without doctor frustration.”
This reminds me of one of the basic principles of Finnish “Open Dialogue”, something that i see as sadly lacking in conventional psychiatry: “tolerating uncertainty”. It is one of the seven basic principles of Open Dialogue and one of the key elements of Dialogic Practice.
“Tolerating uncertainty is at the heart of dialogue. It is thus a specific element and an element that defines the other elements. In Open Dialogue, there is the fundamental orientation of creating an organic understanding of the crisis with everyone’s input (polyphony). This stance is based on the assumption, as well as our experience, that every crisis has unique features. Hasty decisions and rapid conclusions about the nature of the crisis, diagnosis, medication, and the organization of the therapy are avoided. Further, we do not give ready-made solutions such as specific, preplanned therapeutic interventions to the family or the single person in crisis.”
Excellent point, Jeffrey! The duplicitous circular reasoning behind this morphing of ADHD to the bogus “pediatric bipolar disorder” is disgusting and maddening.
Also, thanks for the link to the article about psych drugs and the death of children, Jeffey. Yes, it’s these kinds of things that cry out for justice!! I’m going to copy it and add it to a file I’m keeping on that subject.
I appreciate your remarks, Jeffrey. While this article still leaves me feeling more hopeful, I don’t disagree about the need for justice. In fact, I’m working for it in some small local, “person-by-person” ways…and I’ve recently become part of something that will hopefully give me the opportunity to have a much broader impact. I really do wrestle with this issue–that is, how much to expend my efforts toward “re-education and reform” and how much toward bringing to justice those who seem impervious to change and blithely unconcerned about the damage they’re doing.
Thanks for this article, Sharna. I thought it was very incisive, concise and well written. It resonated with me in terms of what I’ll call “real world balance”–meaning it avoids posturing in a dogmatic way that essentially denies the real life experiences of some in order to maintain “purity” of an ideological viewpoint. I am incensed by the degree to which i see this kind of one-sided posturing happening by the promoters of the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness–those who, unfortunately still hold most of the power in the mental health industry despite the lack of valid scientific support for their ideology. I think those of us who are very critical of mainstream psychiatry (justifiably) need to scrupulously avoid that same error. We do not have conclusive proof that there is NEVER some kind of a legitimate brain disorder behind extremes in behavior, thinking or emotion, and to pretend that we do detracts from our overall credibility. As you say in one of your opening paragraphs,
“It is not outrageous to suggest that a child’s developing brain might be disordered in some way, just as any other organ in the body might be, and that the solutions lies in correcting that disorder.”
Of course, you go on to make clear your overriding concern about the inappropriate diagnosing and overmedicating of children in our culture.
I see there’s a lot of discussion, apparently mostly critical, about “epignetics”. That’s an issue I haven’t become conversant about and I’m sure it would be good to look into this further. I’m a little concerned that we tend to zero in on the parts of an article that we object to. To me, there is much to like about your perspective. I’m certainly not discounting the objections, and I hope to look more into the issues mentioned.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Janet! There is such a dire need for what you are doing. This is the kind of intensive support center I wish were available everywhere, since there are so many people caught in psychiatry’s deceptive and often life-diminishing web. It is good to know there is a brave and obviously independent-minded (i.e., “liberated”) doctor working with you, because like it or not most people trying to withdraw from toxic medications will need as an ally someone who can help with a very personalized taper. Keep us posted, and God bless you and all those involved in this noble project!
I keep hoping against hope that the duplicity and intellectual dishonesty that seems to abound in mainstream biopsychiatry, much to the detriment of those caught in it’s pernicious web, will be exposed and corrected. There is a proverb that says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” I’ve been alternately hopeful and heartsick in recent years.
This article strikes me as more than a ray of hope. In “Anatomy of an Epidemic” Robert Whitaker related how the concept of dopamine supersensitivity was first raised by physicians Guy Chouinard and Barry Jones back in the late 1970’s, but quickly dismissed by some of the key opinion leaders in psychiatry. As Whitaker said, “Psychiatry desperately needed this discussion to go away.” And it did, mostly, for over thirty years.
However, it seems to be making it’s way back into professional dialogue other that just among the “choir” (like here in MIA). This study, I believe, bears out the old addage that “You can fool some of the people some of the the time….etc.” Kudos to those who refuse to yield to the pressure of the power brokers who will defend the status quo at any cost. Eventually, the truth prevails.
“Before we ask questions or do anything, our primary responsibility is to see the mad person not as an other but as ourselves.”
Yes, indeed. This might sound like a “nice thing to say”, but having been confronted by the descent into madness of a loved one (and the return to rationality, thankfully) I have become keenly aware of just how tenuous and really somewhat arbitrary this thing called “sanity” really is. I have come to believe that extreme states of mind and emotion are not really different in kind from what all humans are subject to–just different in degree, or maybe more accurately in duration of extremeness (since most of us experience these same extremes at times, however short-lived). I think this is also behind my desire to know “what happened” to people that I regularly see in visits to people in a local state psychiatric hospital and at another local mental health residential facility. What were they like, what did they experience as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, etc….in other words, what brought them to their present state of being?
In psychiatry we hear so much about double-blind studies, randomized clinical trials, statistical differences, treatment effects, etc. There is a place for such things, to be sure. However, I believe there is tremendous knowledge and understanding that can be gleaned through the detailed story of one single individual. The experience of one person is both powerful and irrefutable.
“All it takes is the existence of one white crow to prove conclusively that not all crows are black”.
Frank, this is in response to your comments about the bias in our existing mental health system that strongly tends to regard “disease” as the source of negative outcomes.
This strongly resonates with me from my experiences with the system. It also seems to me that psychiatric diagnoses are very convenient “wild cards” that serve to deflect honest, scientific analysis of the use of medication or other treatments, especially when you understand that these diagnoses have no objective basis in terms of blood tests, MRI’s, or any other definitive medical measures. I have seen how this works in practice, up close and personal. Rather than recognize a clearly adverse drug reaction, psychiatric practitioners refer to “the episodic nature of the illness”. And of course they want to have their cake and eat it too, so that if one uses this “episodic nature of the illness” to argue for giving the person in a crises state time to recover, with support other than drugs or electroshock, they are then all about the “evidence base” in favor of their drugs and ECT–an “evidence base” that conveniently ignores long-term studies and other evidence that does support their reductionist biopsychiatric orientation (i.e., religious conviction).
And I believe it’s this selective attention placed on the “illness” (as a medical entity) that contributes to what I understand is a gross under-reporting of “adverse events” with drugs, resulting in a flawed data base which makes it all the more unlikely that future adverse drug reactions will be recognized for what they are!
I really appreciate both this article and the ongoing commentary by all…thank you!
Sera, I checked out the video above (well done!), as well as the web site, and just sent off a supportive email to Governor Baker. I know it’s HIS budget and he won’t actually be voting on it, but since I don’t live in Mass I didn’t know what else to do. If you have any suggestions about who else to send it to, please let me know.
“There’s another issue with ‘evidence based,’ and that’s the process by which much research is done. People who have been psychiatrically labeled have historically been taken advantage of by researchers in a myriad of ways. They’ve been ill informed of risks, and sometimes not given any real choice at all. At times, their desperation for help has been preyed upon.”
Excellent point, Sera. I believe this was part of a local hospital’s attempt to coerce my daughter into having ECT for her “treatment resistant mania”. Just prior to this she consented to having some psychiatric students observe her. The attending psychiatrist was a strong proponent of ECT, he was quickly pushing this as necessary (rather than stopping or at least greatly lowering the neuroleptic med that was causing akathisia–which staff would not acknowledge), and even said to her menacingly at one point, “You WILL have ECT!” I think he saw her as a great “subject” for study, since she is intelligent and articulate and might present a nice “before-after” picture of success for his students. Hey, what would be the harm of a few fried brain cells–she had plenty to spare! And if she turned out to be one of the unlucky ones…”Oh well, it was ‘clinically indicated’…We tried our best!”
Fortunately, while in a desperate state (exacerbated by their ham-handed “treatment”) she resisted this pressure (with our support) and her mania subsided after they finally discontinued the offending medication.
…” he asked me what i thought was the most important thing for the study in terms of making it valuable. i said: ‘insist on working with people in a first episode — and try like hell not to medicate them. and after that focus on all the open dialogue stuff.’ but as far as i know it never happened. to me that’s sad.”
Dan, as I remember, you addressed this issue in a piece your wrote after being on staff for a while in the Soteria Alaska program. And I totally agree with you, from my little slice of life experience and reading/study of the issue. Of course, there are people I know and dearly love who also need help, including full support in getting off (to the extent possible) the toxic substances they’ve been cajoled, coerced and outright forced onto…but that’s another issue!
I think the major obstacle to what you’re suggesting (rightly) is a terrible “Catch-22” that totally underscores your point about the need to address this at a systems level. Here’s the catch: The well-entrenched “standard of care”–even more than that, the “belief system”, here in the U.S. is predicated on the notion (despite lack of conclusive evidence) that psychotic symptoms are the manifestation of an underlying brain disease that, if not arrested through the use of medication, will result in increasing neurological damage. Therefore, it would be unethical to authorize any intervention (even as a “pilot study”) that withholds needed treatment. This seems to me to be a maddeningly frustrating conundrum!
But maybe I’m wrong on this–I would be comforted to know that there is not, in fact, such a pernicious dynamic in place to prevent the possibility of drug-free (or at least drug-minimal) first-episode psychosis treatment programs from ever seeing the light of day.
Perhaps Sandra or some other practicing psychiatrist on this blog could weigh in on this question?
“Paradoxically, the entrenched models and techniques are reinforced by dint of their being only marginally effective thus keeping that revolving door in motion.”
Yes! This hits the nail exactly on the head! Just like the practice of bloodletting, no? Because it “worked”, or at least seemed to work some of the time, and because doctors (as all fallible humans) tend to selectively perceive the “evidence” that supports what they already believe, misguided practice continues and becomes more deeply entrenched!
Thanks, Dan…always great to hear from you! Even though it hasn’t become as known as I’d like, I’ve also noticed Open Dialogue is getting increasing “press” and it’s been great to see it’s basic principles being implemented increasingly in various places here in the U.S., as you’ve mentioned. This is encouraging, even though I have more than a few moments of discouragement when I encounter how entrenched the “standard of care” for psychosis (i.e., “first and foremost, medicate!”) still seems to be in this and most other countries.
Thanks for asking and responding to these questions, many of which I’ve wondered about and discussed with others over these past few years.
If the results reported by the Open Dialogue practitioners in Lapland are true (and I have no reason to believe they’re fabricated or distorted), this really points to a tragedy of epic proportions here in the U.S. and elsewhere, don’t you think? Let’s just say, for the sake of making this point, that there is indeed a “subset” of 15-20 percent of people who experience psychosis who are better off taking and staying on antipsychotic medication. That means that 80 to 85 percent of people experiencing first-episode psychosis who come under “psychiatric care” in the U.S. are coerced or forced into taking very strong medications that they don’t really need and that often have devastating consequences to their bodies, brains, social/emotional well-being and lead to unnecessarily diminished lives! It’s an even greater tragedy if, as you believe, even the 15-20 percent who seem to need the meds really don’t!
Yes, you CAN put a square peg in a round hole, or vice versa; I think we see it happening all the time in our Gulag Psychepelago–sadly, the corners of the square pegs get rounded off and the curved sides of the rounded ones are straighted! One size fits all, doesn’t it?
oops…left out one critical word that totally changes what I was trying to say:
“an ‘evidence base’ that conveniently ignores long-term studies and other evidence that does NOT [left out] support their reductionist biopsychiatric orientation (i.e., religious conviction).”
I wonder how many similar cases have been buried because “adverse events” with drugs are not properly reported? Psychiatric diagnoses are very convenient “wild cards” that serve to deflect honest, scientific analysis of the use of medication or other treatments. Keep in mind that these diagnoses have no objective basis in terms of blood tests, MRI’s, or any other definitive medical measures. I have seen how this works in practice, up close and personal. Rather than recognize a clearly adverse drug reaction, psychiatric practitioners refer to “the episodic nature of the illness”. And of course they want to have their cake and eat it too, so that if one uses this “episodic nature of the illness” to argue for giving the person in a crises state time to recover, with support other than drugs or electroshock, they are then all about the “evidence base” in favor of their drugs and ECT–an “evidence base” that conveniently ignores long-term studies and other evidence that does support their reductionist biopsychiatric orientation (i.e., religious conviction).
“The study suggested that much of the drug level increase could have occurred after death, a finding that could explain the extremely high blood levels found in the two patients who died 3 to 4 days after receiving injections of appropriate doses of Zyprexa Relprevv.”
Looks like a classic case of “begging the question”, a philosophical term that essentially means circular reasoning. We are asked to believe out of hand a couple of things that should properly be considered as critical questions of this investigation: 1) that there was no actual error in the dosage administered; 2) the dosages deemed appropriate are, in fact, not toxic for SOME people (since it is abundantly clear that different people can react very differently to the same medication/dosage).
Once again, mega-Kudos, Robert! Thanks so much for your persistent calling out of the repeated false story-telling of mainstream psychiatry. Their fabrications would be laughable if it weren’t for the virtually unchecked power these folks have over the unfortunate souls who fall under their “care”. Of course, they will always parade before the public those for whom their drugs and electric shocks have had a positive effect (although sometimes even this is rather misleading, since the benefits may be only for a relatively brief time). Sadly, it appears that even some of the brightest, most talented and perhaps initially well-meaning psychiatrists have become shills for Big Pharma, whose profits make the income of the illegal drug cartels look like “chump change”!
Lieberman’s book and your review touch again on what I have come to believe is the most pernicious of the falsehoods that have been successfully promoted by psychiatry and the pharmaceutical companies: that mental illness (or at least schizophrenia in particular) is a progressive brain disease that if left “untreated” (i.e., undrugged) will result in continuous brain deterioration. This drives both the practice of heavily drugging the brains of individuals experiencing first-episode psychosis, and then failing to consider discontinuation of those same drugs once the person is “stable” (it appears that “stability” trumps recovery almost every time). While making these unsubstantiated claims about progressive brain disease underlying psychiatric symptoms, they ignore or deny that which has actually been proven: that brains exposed to the drugs they prescribe (particularly neuroleptics) decline in size in proportion to the dosage and duration of the drug.
Thanks again, Robert, for this sorely needed antidote to the delusions of conventional psychiatry. To borrow on the phrasing of Lieberman himself in one of the quotes you include in your article above, “if shrinks are not treated with such truth injections, their brains get smaller and smaller.”
Thanks for this very intensive, thought-provoking article, Robert. I think you’ve really elaborated the huge reductionistic mistake inherent in biopsychiatry, i.e., reducing human consciousness and feelings to the “squirts and twitches” of neurons that simply need to be chemically regulated to correct problematic thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Your analysis in a way brings to mind the words of a famous, ancient king, who said “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning”–even though I know that wasn’t really your point. I especially love your illustration of Eddie’s learning to play the B7 chord–that helps me understand and further appreciate the incredibly complex interplay between human consciousness, neurology, learning, behavior, etc.
So…since we hear so much about all the “undiagnosed” and “untreated” mentally ill in our society, struggling in anonymity, and since foster kids are apparently blessed with being more often diagnosed and treated, doesn’t it follow that foster kids should be, as a group, happier and more mentally healthy than kids in general? Where’s the research on that?
Well, thanks for keeping us abreast of the way the pharmaceutical companies are making boobs of themselves!
Seriously, though, the coverups of the serious harm of psychotropic drugs would be laughable if not so tragic. And the fact they can take these kinds of “hits” in the way of million and billion dollar lawsuits and just keep on rolling and raking in billions makes the money made in the illegal drug trade look like chump change!
Another tragic irony that I’m sure has been mentioned here and elsewhere: All the hoopla in our society and public schools about “saying no to drugs” (street drugs), while the number of kids on these toxic and pathetically understudied drugs has been rising exponentially–even forced on families and kids by the very institutions that are supposed to be educating and caring for them!
Yes, now reading the other comments above I also thank you, Jonathan, for your diligent efforts to bring this about. I certainly have my share of cynical and pessimistic moments in this fight, but we must press on! Here’s an excerpt from one of Winston Churchill’s famous speeches about another noble fight:
“But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months – if it takes years – they do it.”
And now let me take the liberty to slightly modify a following portion of that speech (modifications in brackets):
“I am addressing myself to [my fellow freedom fighters against the Gulag Psychepelago] – surely from this period [ ] this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
This is horrific, and to say it makes me angry is an understatement. But I’m not a bit surprised. I’ve experienced something very similar, although not quite as egregious, here in New York State.
I used to live across the river from Trenton. As you crossed over the Delaware River from Pennsylvania into New Jersey (Route 1), when looking to the left there was another bridge with the lit slogan, “Trenton Makes, the World Takes”.
If it’s still there, perhaps they should change it to “Trenton Abuses, the State Excuses”.
James, let me add my voice (a bit belatedly) to those who greatly appreciate the perspective you’ve brought through your articles. Actually, I haven’t read all of them yet, so I plan to go back and “fill in the gaps”. Ironically, as I was reading and discussing this one with my daughter–even as I was doing so because of the positive, uplifting, hopeful message–I took a temporary, dark departure into the bitter, angry thoughts that regularly re-emerge when I think about the way in which psychiatry can and does brutalize people in the name of healing and/or “stability”. In fact, I added some pretty graphic, crude remarks to those thoughts! Another irony: my daughter, who more than once has undergone very misguided, torturous experiences at the hands of psychiatry’s “healers”, does not seem nearly as subject to these forays into Bitterland as I am!
At any rate, your article resonates with me, even as there is a part of me that resists it, for it seems to draw me to a higher, more hopeful place–the place of the One completely innocent victim/redeemer!
Richard, my first comment is below and this article has definitely influenced my thinking on this issue. Nevertheless, I find myself somewhere between yours and Jonathan’s stance on this at this point. There is a point you make that strongly resonates with me. Having witnessed very egregious aspects of psychiatric force and coercion in the “treatment” of a very dearly loved one, and the absolute power over their “patients” that psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals have over individuals, I am not so sure that prisons (with all their horrific aspects) are worse. I have come to believe that a convicted felon has more rights and freedoms than an involuntarily committed psychiatric patient. In a prison, you at least usually have the benefit of fresh air and sunshine for at least a portion of the day. In my loved one’s case, she endured three months in a locked facility with neither. A prison sentence has a set time; a psychiatric “sentence” does not. I believe prisoners have more potential for good legal representation (although not usually without a ton of money) than psychiatric patients (in my experience, “mental health courts” are kangaroo courts in which the deck is heavily stacked in favor of hospital staff). In prison, they control your body; in a forced psychiatric setting, they control not only your body, but are allowed to saturate your brain with whatever they deem “clinically appropriate”–although this also happens, to some extent, in prison.
Richard, I’m really not trying to flatter you when I say you have made the most articulate and well-reasoned argument on this subject I’ve ever read or heard. It has definitely influenced me, as one who has been on board with the need to “reform the system”. I really do have to rethink my position on this. I haven’t yet read all of the the above responses, and your replies, but even with your excellent argument there is still a “chink in the armorl”, so to speak, in my mind. Maybe this has to do with a distinction between forced hospitalization and forced drugging (or other “treatment”, like ECT) that i believe markps2 is making above. For sure, it has to do with the lack of truly humane and personalized care for those in the midst of extreme emotional/mental states (i.e., psychosis).
At any rate, let me give you a scenario as a way of presenting my continued concern:
This type of scenario is of very real concern to me. I’m certainly not raising this as a “set up”, as it is an actual quandary that I’ve been faced with. In this scenario, you have an adult family member who is neither suicidal or homicidal, but dangerously delusional. For example (and this is not the actual situation in my personal experience), the loved one is convinced she is a covert agent of the CIA and must meet at midnight at a certain location–one that is known to be a hangout of drug addicts, prostitutes and violent criminals. She cannot be reasoned or talked out of this and, in fact, becomes angry and accusatory toward those who try to impede this “mission”. You want with all your heart to avoid the psychiatric unit at the local hospital, which was so demeaning and injurious to her in a previous episode.
Okay, now let’s suppose we are fortunate enough to have Hearthside Healing, or Parachute NYC (about which I’ve heard good things), or one of the new Soteria Houses nearby. That would be wonderful, and a huge improvement in my local area (even though it is awash in all of the conventional mental health facilities and resources).
But…in this delusional state, my family member will probably be no more likely to check into such a place as she would be to check into the local hospital’s psych ward.
Some of you might say, “Well, she’s an adult. It’s her choice. Let her go and try to carry out her ‘mission’”. To me, loving her and knowing how irrational she is at the moment, that would be grossly negligent. There is the very real possibility that she would put herself in the hands of some very bad actors and end up greatly harmed, dead or missing.
On the other hand, to facilitate her return to the hospital would be to put her back into the hands of those who have unchecked power to harm her body, mind and spirit.
I think you have addressed this, in a way, in your article. This kind of real life scenario is what prevents me, at this point, from taking the absolute stance you are advocating; however, you’ve certainly made a good case for how “reform” may play right into the hands of the worst elements of the status quo.
Hey boans, thanks for your many excellent contributions here in MIA Land! I’m using this post to reply to your comments on the most recent article by Dr. Sandra Steingard, as for some reason there was no “reply” box on that one…so sorry for this “out of context” reply.
Your comments about what happened to you in a recent emergency room in your locale resonated with me, for reasons I think you’ll understand if and when you read the article I’m going to give you the link to. Unfortunately, there was apparently a much “happier ending” to your fiasco than the one my daughter was subjected to.
As usual, I’m getting into the discussion late–maybe too late for you to notice and reply.
Anyway, it was great to see you at the recent Symposium in Syracuse, and I really appreciated your input. While I thoroughly appreciated the discussion, I left a bit confused on one point. I know you’ve written and remarked on this topic before, so I’m hoping you’ll help clarify this for me.
I wanted to raise a question about this at the recent symposium. Even the presenters who appear to be the most reform-minded (Dr. Harding and Dr. Harrow) seem to accept the consensus that first episode psychosis MUST be treated with neuroleptic meds (although i thought i noted a brief, passing comment by Dr. Dixon that may have suggested she does NOT believe this is always warranted). This appears to be based on the belief that there is a neurologically toxic subtrate to psychosis that must be arrested, as is true for seizures (although, as for that, isn’t it ironic that seizures are INDUCED through ECT as a means of ameliorating severe depression or mania?!)
I’m keenly interested in this topic (I have “skin in the game”) and have read quite a bit about it, but I still have many questions. I’m not a psychiatrist, so perhaps I’m missing something. Part of the reason I’m skeptical about this has to do with Dr. Nancy Andreason’s research. She initially reported that her research documented loss of brain tissue in schizophrenic people over time, but retracted this later (as I understand it) upon further analysis of the data that showed this loss in brain tissue to be correlated with exposure to neuroleptic medication.
So…Is there conclusive evidence that psychosis itself is a neurologically damaging process that needs to be curtailed as quickly as possible? If so, could you cite the research supporting this? I am aware of various DUP studies, but hold some skepticism about them, as well.
“Sadly, though, this bill does not address the crux problem; the overreaching power that doctors in major medical centers and academic institution are exercising in disregard of citizens’ constitutional protections.”
Thanks for bringing attention to this, Nancy. I’m glad to know someone else shares my disappointment with this. Of course it’s an outrage that wards of the state or ANY individuals, particularly very vulnerable children, would be treated as guinea pigs and I’m glad for any and all actions taken to put a stop to such abuse.
When Justina’s and her family’s plight came to public attention (and thanks again for your part in that here in MIA), I immediately thought this debacle, once rectified, should give rise to a “Justina’s Law” that would protect all children and their families from ever falling into such a pernicious trap.
I would think the Pelletiers would be in favor of having Justina’s Law address the problem in a broader, more fundamental way, as you so articulately lay it out. Does anyone know where they stand on this?
Kudos for hanging in there, AngryDad. Dr. Peter Breggin has some stories of parents standing up for their kids against drug-happy school staff, mental health professionals, etc. in “Medication Madness”. I’ve been there myself, although apparently nowhere near the intensity of your situation. I was privileged to have a small supportive role in another woman’s heroic story in standing up for her son and saying “no more” in spite of threats of Child Protective Services–what a horrible irony, eh? I’ve summarized her son’s story in my article “From Adversity to Advocacy”, published earlier this year at the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care website: http://www.mentalhealthexcellence.org/author/rstence/
I really appreciate your responses, Jon. Since I’m checking back into this discussion a week later, you may not see this comment. But here goes anyway…
I’ll give a specific scenario that is somewhat different from those you’ve mentioned, and is of very real concern to me. I’m certainly not raising this as a “set up”, as it is an actual quandary that I’ve been faced with. In this scenario, you have an adult family member who is neither suicidal or homicidal, but dangerously delusional. For example (and this is not the actual situation in my personal experience), the loved one is convinced she is a covert agent of the CIA and must meet at midnight at a certain location–one that is known to be a hangout of drug addicts, prostitutes and violent criminals. She cannot be reasoned or talked out of this and, in fact, becomes angry and accusatory toward those who try to impede this “mission”. You want with all your heart to avoid the psychiatric unit at the local hospital, which was so demeaning and injurious to her in a previous episode.
Okay, now let’s suppose we are fortunate enough to have Hearthside Healing, or Parachute NYC (about which I’ve heard good things), or one of the new Soteria Houses nearby. That would be wonderful, and a huge improvement in my local area (even though it is awash in all of the conventional mental health facilities and resources).
But…in this delusional state, my family member will probably be no more likely to check into such a place as she would be to check into the local hospital’s psych ward.
Some of you might say, “Well, she’s an adult. It’s her choice. Let her go and try to carry out her ‘mission'”. To me, loving her and knowing how irrational she is at the moment, that would be grossly negligent. There is the very real possibility that she would put herself in the hands of some very bad actors and end up greatly harmed, dead or missing.
On the other hand, to facilitate her return to the hospital would be to put her back into the hands of those who have unchecked power to harm her body, mind and spirit.
This is what prompted me to ask the questions I did in my initial comment above. And your responses were obviously well thought out and somewhat helpful. But I still struggle to see how it would work in the kind of situation I’ve described.
I strongly agree with most of what you say, Jon. That your background has included working in an inpatient psychiatric setting gives you more credence in my eyes. Some people’s comments, whether in favor of increased or decreased psychiatric hospital beds, seem naive and make me wonder whether they’ve ever really experienced or witnessed the extreme mental states that lead to civil commitments. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not justifying such commitments, and especially not the ill-conceived “treatments” forced on people in such extreme states. But I’m convinced that any really effective alternative (such as the “Open Dialogue” treatment model in the Lapland province of Finland) has to be very well thought out, carefully staffed and implemented.
I’m totally on board with your vision of a very different type of crisis care, staffed primarily by peers and therapists; a place that would provide as you say “a space to experience deep distress and extreme states that is safe and caring”. And I further agree that increasing existing hospital beds is both untenable in terms of cost and ultimately leads to great harm to those it purports to help.
However, I have to ask you to be very real and honest about this: Based on your experience, both in the inpatient psychiatric unit and in your current practice at “Hearthside Healing”, do you believe the primarily peer-staffed facilities you’re aware of would really be equipped to appropriately help people in the most distressing mental states (e.g., psychotic mania)? What about the issue of locked wards? Do you think this is ever warranted, and if not, what is the alternative? How would you address safety for residents and staff? You probably know that people in the “Torrey/Jaffe” camp have plenty of concerns and “scare stories” from people who disparage alternative programs as grossly inadequate (of course, we’re well aware of the very real “scare stories” that abound in the current “gulag psychepelago” system!)
Part of the maddening dilemma, as i see it, is fueled by the pernicious circular reasoning of conventional psychiatry. Since the existing “standard of care” dictates that these extreme states be “treated” aggressively with medication, there is no allowance for non-drug interventions. Therefore, aside from the few drug naive distressed people who might find their way to such a progressive, primarily peer-staffed facility, many of those who come in will be in the throes of prescription drug withdrawal (perhaps mixed with effects of street drugs), or will need to have careful adjustment (hopefully tapering and eventual discontinuance) of the drugs they’ve been put on. And, of course, there’s the issue of very little funding and public support of such alternatives.
Oi vay! But I like your spirit and ideas, and we have to keep plugging away!
What’s especially egregious is when they induce or exacerbate aggressive or otherwise “dysregulated” behavior with their ham-handed “treatments” (usually bombarding the individual’s brain with toxic chemicals) and then punish the resulting drug-induced behavior with seclusion, restraint and more drugging or shocking of the brain. I’ve witnessed it up close and personal, and it’s very sad and infuriating.
Yet I’m thankful for this article and those who promoted this change in policy and practice in at least one hospital. I think we need to celebrate even small advances toward more sound and humanitarian practices, and try to promote this in our own circles of influence however we can.
David, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see this excellent article here on the “front page” of the MIA site! My heart sank when I heard of your terrible accident and I was grieved that perhaps we had lost one of the best advocates and spokespersons for those abused by mainstream psychiatry’s ill-founded practices.
Well, I see that we have not lost you! You may not remember me, but I’ll never forget how amazed and blessed I felt about eight years ago when, after stumbling across an article you wrote (“Madness and the Mental Health System”) and looking up the phone number for your organization, Mind Freedom International, I heard your voice on the other end of the line. I was in a desperate moment because of the “no exit” nightmare my daughter was experiencing in the psych ward of a local hospital. Your genuine caring, compassion and commitment–with actions to back up the words– came through loud and clear and was a great comfort to me. She has recovered well in many ways, as I write this. I am thankful for this, although she still has a long way to go, i believe, to undo the damage inflicted upon her.
We are definitely in different places in terms of religious belief and practice, and to me that underscores the very point you are making. When it comes to our passion to expose and stop abusive, coercive, de-humanizing practices in psychiatry, we are united! I believe within any group there is a human tendency to drift off message, form exclusionary “inner circles”, start to pick at one another over differences, etc. These, of course, undermine the unity needed to move forward and accomplish worthy goals.
Speaking of religious groups and their involvement and/or stance with regard to the practices of psychiatry, I must say I’m extremely disappointed at how many of my fellow Christians have been bamboozled by the unholy alliance of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry and bought into the false and often damaging narrative promoted by these institutions. A “daydream” I’ve often had is picturing Jesus appearing at a “mental health” symposium being held in a Christian church, taking a bullwhip to the pharmaceutical reps and their “hired guns”, overturning their tables, and bellowing “It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it an opium den!”–or something like that. Fortunately, I am working with some kindred spirits within my Christian community to shed the light of truth (hopefully in love) on this issue.
I’m proud to say I’m a supporter of Mind Freedom International and Mad in America, both of which I thank God for (even for those of you in either group who may be offended that i mentioned God!). Thanks for your years of tireless advocacy, David. Keep up the good work!
Thanks, Philip for your continued work in exposing the psuedoscience, misleading information and outright deception behind what I call this “gulag psychipelago” that continues to ensnare so many of our fellow human beings. I really appreciate your diligent research and your well reasoned and articulated articles.
“What if instead of heading down this dead end again, we focus on the “socially isolated” part of the equation? Could we find ways together focused not as much on how to help get people into treatment, but how to help get them into life?”
Excellent point, Mark…I totally agree!
Even though I’m leery of all the psychiatric labels that get increasingly thrown around in our culture these days, there’s one that I think may have some validity/utility with regard to some of these mass murderers: malignant narcissism. I first heard it mentioned in reference to the boys who committed the mass shooting at Columbine. I also got a strong feeling of malignant narcissism (more than psychosis) in what Elliot Rodger revealed of himself in those videos he made before his murderous rampage in Santa Barbara. Social isolation was certainly a strong theme as well, and i wonder to what extent social isolation may be a “breeding ground” for malignant narcissism.
At any rate, I agree that more efforts should be expended to get isolated people into life (not in a coercive way, though, which can be tricky) rather than looking for “treatment” (which usually translates to medication). Elliot Rodger apparently had plenty of “treatment”, and I believe it was revealed after the fact that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were both taking psychiatric medications.
Thanks, Francesca! Yes, I thought it was a bit strange that he seemed to be implying that since “the chemical imbalance hypothesis is difficult to disprove” that it follows that we can assume it’s true until disproven! In my response to his response, i included the following:
“I hear your point about the difficulty disproving the chemical balance hypothesis; however, I’m concerned that the false story keeps going forward full steam (despite evidence to the contrary) that depression and other mental health difficulties are KNOWN to be caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be corrected by specific medications. And then it seems to me that the potential benefits of these supposed “brain chemistry correcting” drugs tend to be greatly inflated and the risks minimized–which is contrary to the principal of ‘informed consent'”.
Thanks for another superb, articulate article, Joanna!
I’m late to respond to this article, so my chances of getting feedback to this question are probably slim, but here goes:
I’ve been trying, with some success lately, to have a dialogue with my PCP on the issue of psych meds in general and antidepressants in particular. In response to an article i attached to an email to him, indicating that the “low serotonin hypothesis” of depression has long been debunked, his defense of antidepressants included the following:
” I believe the chemical imbalance hypothesis is difficult to disprove until we have a thorough understanding of neurotransmitter metabolism at the level of the CNS. A blood serum level of serotonin or norepinephrine does not have to correlate with a neurosynapse serotonin or NE level. For example, most of our potassium is in the cells, not in the blood.”
I’ve tried some internet searches to address this question of blood serum levels of serotonin or norepinephrine versus neurosynapse levels and haven’t come up with anything definite yet. I would really appreciate any light anyone has to shed on this issue.
I’m sure I read this excellent, informative article before, Paul, but I’m coming back to it because of a dialogue I’m having with my PCP about psych meds in general and antidepressants in particular. I doubt whether anyone will read this, given how long ago the article was written, but I’m hoping so because I’d like to get some feedback on a question. In response to an article i attached to an email to my family doctor, indicating that the “low serotonin hypothesis” of depression has long been debunked, his defense of antidepressants included the following:
” I believe the chemical imbalance hypothesis is difficult to disprove until we have a thorough understanding of neurotransmitter metabolism at the level of the CNS. A blood serum level of serotonin or norepinephrine does not have to correlate with a neurosynapse serotonin or NE level. For example, most of our potassium is in the cells, not in the blood.”
I’ve tried some internet searches to address this question of blood serum levels of serotonin or norepinephrine versus neurosynapse levels and haven’t come up with anything definite yet. I would really appreciate any light anyone has to shed on this issue.
Wow! That’s more good news, and I’ll be VERY interested in what comes out of that discussion. As for answering my questions, you have in a general way. But more specifically, (1) do you think the idea of the state agency i mentioned not approving a drug unless there’s a tapering plan attached to it is a sound practice; and (2) doesn’t it make sense to never rule out that the POSSIBILITY of the minimum effective dosage (eventually) of any psychotropic medication would be zero?
The reason I’m so interested in these questions is that most folks on psychotropic meds who want to try tapering are forced to do this on their own at present. It seems to me that if such a policy, and more importantly such a mindset, comes more into the medical/psychiatric mainstream, more people will have support in carefully tapering these toxic substances in a way that will have more chance of success. Now, when i call them “toxic substances” to be honest I cannot say that is ALL they are. I have seen instances, both with my daughter and others, where clarity of mind followed closely on the heels of the administration of a neuroleptic medication. However, in the cases I’m familiar with the question still remains as to what brought about the psychotic state in the first place, including medical “brain tinkering” that appeared dubious, at best. My experiences with doctors, psychiatrists and even mental health therapists, to date, tends to leave me discouraged and sometimes very angry. I sometimes see these professionals as little more than shills for the pharmaceutical industry, even though I don’t believe most of them are consciously so. “Commercialism masquerading as education”, to use your words. That’s a huge part of the problem, as i see it.
Hi Sandra, we’ve had some conversation about this before, so it’s kind of a continuation. I’m encouraged by your honesty, candor and willingness to challenge your colleagues while maintaining what seems to be a respectful dialogue–even your willingness to take some rather sharp criticism (at times) from some psychiatric survivors on this site who have been badly burned by the status quo.
I resonate strongly with one of your last comments during the Q & A at the end of this presentation; that is, the real problem with the short time frame imposed on current acute care for psychosis (ten days!). This clearly fuels the reliance on heavy drugging with neuroleptics, and stands in the way of alternative non-drug approaches. Even with all the drugs (actually, because of them i would say) my daughter underwent several protracted, torturous “treatments” in which they put her brain through the wringer. Ironically, i believe it was this “rush to stabilize” (with drugs) that actually undermined her recovery! (The last time she was in an acute psychiatric ward of the local hospital for about three months, followed by a couple more months in the local state hospital).
In response to the concern I expressed previously (and still have) about the lack of non-drug options that exists in our country (and most others) in treating psychosis, you stated something to the effect that it would be a great improvement if psychiatrists would at least adhere to the principle of prescribing the least effective dosage–a practice which is very robustly supported even “within the mainstream”. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently and heard some very encouraging news that one of the agencies in New York State that works with people with developmental disabilities (it may be DDSO) has the policy that a psychotropic drug for any client will only be approved if it comes with a plan to taper it from the outset! I hope this is true (I plan to look into it further), and i hope such a policy expands to other state agencies. Actually, it would be even better, in my opinion, if they had policies and practices that sharply curtailed the use of these medications altogether.
Now here’s the really good thing, at least in my mind at this point: Since we know that people have successfully tapered off of every psychotropic drug, the possibility that the “least effective dose” might be zero for any given person should always be considered. Of course, the tapering process would need to be done in a very careful, very individualized manner.
I just received an email about H.R. 4574, the “Strengthening Mental Health in Our Communities Act”, recently sponsored by several Democrat congressional reps as an alternative to the Murphy Bill. I just sent an email message my NY Representative, Louise Slaughter, urging her support of that, as well as the “Parental Protection Act” mentioned here, which is being sponsored by a Republican congressman. I believe these bills should both have bipartisan support!
Thank you, Congressman Stockman! As I’ve said before, this case cries out for a “Justina’s Law” to begin to curb these misguided zealots (or worse!) and put in place a watchdog, with teeth! As I’ve also said before, I believe Justina’s case is merely the tip of an iceberg of heavy-handed psychiatric coercion that goes on routinely–especially with the unfortunate voiceless youngsters who end up as wards of the state.
I’m glad you’re discussing this issue of psychiatric records. I’ve also encountered varying resistance with this (getting my daughter’s records), but I’ve been pretty insistent and have gotten most of them. The discharge summaries from her hospital stays are riddled with errors and, of course, present things generally in a way slanted to justify their “treatment” while giving little or no indication of things that would call into question their “treatment” methods and decisions. I really think we need to press forward with full force in demanding full access to these records. I don’t think any other branch of medicine could get away with denying patients access to their records the way psychiatry does. They use the cloak of “confidentiality” and “best interest of the patient”, in my opinion, as a cover up. I think this one issue, if pressed, would go a long way towards exposing the shoddy, “hit or miss”, injurious practices that seem so prevalent in psychiatry.
Another great article, Laura…thank you! Your story, vision, passion, compassion and bold leadership continue to be greatly inspiring! Carol and I will be taking the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan tomorrow morning. We’ll see you at the protest/rally.
One other thing: When you spoke of those “close to my heart”, naming some of the fallen victims of psychiatry “and the countless brothers and sisters who’ve been hidden away behind years of heavy neuroleptics in group homes and state institutions” it reminded me of the sad souls i see every week when i visit my friend at a local “single residence occupancy” mental health facility. They’ve been conditioned to dutifully line up every day to take the drugs that are considered so essential to their mental health, while it is abundantly clear that they have suffered physical, emotional and social harm from these toxic substances. There HAS to be a better way, and it’s good to keep these beaten down folks in mind as we meet tomorrow.
I’m pretty much on the same page as you on this issue and many others here on MIA, Wiley, and I applaud Dershowitz for taking the stand he has on this and offering his services pro bono. However, there’s no way he’s a “right winger”!! Here’s how he describes himself: “I am a centralist liberal, and I get along very well with centralist conservatives. What I don’t like are extremists on either side…”
I’ll make no bones about the fact that I’m generally on what would be considered the “conservative” side of many issues. However, if Justina’s case were being championed by the most liberal group imaginable, that would not at all deter me from joining them in decrying the blatant injustice being perpetrated on Justina and her family. Actually, I’m somewhat hopeful this case may illustrate there can be “common ground” and civil discourse between people across the wide political spectrum in our current world.
Thanks, Corinna. I like the following, especially:
“We can speak with all the human eloquence and advocacy zeal, we can reveal all the mysteries of the mental health world, we can have advocacy efforts that move mountains, but if we don’t love, we have nothing. We are just a resounding gong.”
That’s something i really need to keep in mind, as an antidote for the anger and bitterness that keeps welling up over how my daughter has been ravaged by the “mental health” system. Advocacy, yes; unproductive, bitter anger, no.
“The only thing that matters is faith, expressing itself through love.”
…oh, and get a load of this, straight from Massachusett’s DCF website:
“Supporting Children, Strengthening Families.”
DCF Core Values
The DCF Core Values are anchors that ground our practice. DCF is committed to making these values more than words on paper. By strengthening the links between the Department, families and communities, DCF will move closer to service delivery systems that reflect the core values:
Child-driven
Family-centered
Community-focused
Strength-based
Committed to Diversity and Cultural Competence
Committed to Continuous Learning
Nancy, thanks so much for this beautifully written article on behalf of Justina and her family! I wish this could appear on the front page of every newspaper in the country. I will certainly be posting it to my Facebook timeline. Is is going to take a million people surrounding the Massachusetts capitol and refusing to leave until Justina is freed to end this Stalinesque nightmare?
I’ve called the Governor’s Office (Deval Patrick) twice already, asking that he intervene to restore Justina’s civil rights. I urge anyone reading this to contact him at the following:
Phone: 617.725.4005
888.870.7770 (in state)
Fax: 617.727.9725
TTY: 617.727.3666
I also contacted the Interim Commission of Massachusetts’ Department of Children and Families, Olga I. Roche. Please call her office about this: 617-748-2000
As has been stated over and over in explaining the difficulty in curtailing the cost of any government program, “Everybody’s money is nobody’s money”. Well, I would propose a similar maxim when it comes to children turned over to a government program: “Everybody’s kids are nobody’s kids”.
Kudos, Barry, to you and your wife for having the courage and perseverance to pull through such a horrendous ordeal and then champion this issue in such an effective and saving way for so many! Your article is an encouragement to me to promote the awareness of the tremendous need for detox from psych meds here in the U.S.–and then have something done about it!
Another excellent article, Philip…thank you! I don’t really know what the current stats are, but i have long suspected that the apparent resurgence of ECT in recent years is connected to the increasing prescription of antidepressant medications. This article you cite by Rif El-Mallakh strengthens that suspicion. Like psychotropic meds, i’ve heard ECT spoken of by local psychiatrists and others as if it’s the best thing since sliced bread! Of course we know ECT is primarily used for “treatment resistant depression”, although it is also used for “treatment resistant mania” (which is what they tried to coerce my daughter to take it for). In either case, it seems so typical of psychiatry’s woefully ham-handed approach to things: after your full bore chemical assault fails, you turn to shocking the brain and inducing convulsions. If it were as benign as they portray, why isn’t it the first line of “treatment” instead of a last resort?? And why do they give people anti-convulsives if it isn’t because convulsions cause brain damage? And why don’t they conduct pre- and post-ECT neuropsychological assessments, including follow-up at periodic time points? Surely such studies would dispel the concerns of nay-sayers like me, no? Of course, we hear about and from those for whom “ECT saved my life!” Well, i certainly wouldn’t want to take that away from anyone. However, what they may not realize is that the ones who “saved their life” pushed them off the cliff in the first place. Luckily, they landed on a ledge below and the “ECT rescue helicopter” didn’t drop them to the canyon floor below! (We don’t hear too much about those unfortunate victims.)
medical : an occurrence in which a disease spreads very quickly and affects a large number of people
: a sudden quickly spreading occurrence of something harmful or unwanted
Full Definition of EPIDEMIC
1
: an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time : an outbreak of epidemic disease
2
: an outbreak or product of sudden rapid spread, growth, or development
Here is an excerpt from a review of “Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the the New England Journal of Medicine:
“A large survey of randomly selected adults, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and conducted between 2001 and 2003, found that an astonishing 46 percent met criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for having had at least one mental illness within four broad categories at some time in their lives. The categories were “anxiety disorders,” including, among other subcategories, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); “mood disorders,” including major depression and bipolar disorders; “impulse-control disorders,” including various behavioral problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); and “substance use disorders,” including alcohol and drug abuse. Most met criteria for more than one diagnosis. Of a subgroup affected within the previous year, a third were under treatment—up from a fifth in a similar survey ten years earlier.”
If you compare the numbers of people who would have been considered mentally ill in, say, 1940, to the above estimate, I believe this would constitute an increase that most people would consider one of “epidemic proportions”.
However, as astounding and alarming as the increase in prevalence of what is considered “mental illness” has been over the past half-century or so has been, this wasn’t really the main point being made in Robert Whitaker’s book, as I understand it. He was not primarily making the case that psychotropic medications are causing the burgeoning numbers of people who are, or could be, diagnosed with a mental illness. He was pointing out that since the advent of psychotropic medications, the numbers of people being PERMANENTLY DISABLED by mental illness has been rising. This, of course, flies in the face of the narrative that continues to be repeated: that psych meds, by correcting the underlying brain chemical imbalance, have ENABLED more and more people who would otherwise have been institutionalized to live a healthy, happy and productive life.
Anyway, thanks for your thought-provoking comments, Mental2. This is the kind of dialogue we need!
Excellent points, Steve, and so well summarized! And I join you in affirming Madmom’s caring and support for her daughter. Another heartrending thing I’ve witnessed is how few people in these locked psychiatric wards get visits from family or friends from “the outside”.
I always appreciate your comments here at MIA, Steve. If you want to make another try at shedding some needed light on these issues at the next NASP convention, I’d be honored to join you in that venture if you’d like…but first I’ll have to re-register and pay my dues!
Madmom, I know very well the pain you’ve described so well. I witnessed and experienced very similar things during each of my daughter’s several hospitalizations. It’s so maddeningly frustrating when you have to watch your loved one decompensate under psychiatric “treatment” that is so damaging; and then to have to “go along with it” as a parent, because if you don’t you’ll be cut out of the picture entirely and then have no ability to at least have continued contact with your loved one and perhaps some ability to influence the “treatment”. The irony is, those in charge believe they’re reducing the severity and chronicity of “the brain disease” by medicating quickly, aggressively and continuously; in fact, the long-term studies (such as that recently published by Dr. Martin Harrow) indicate just the opposite! These biopsychiatric zealots always use “anosognosia” of people in extreme emotional/mental states as a justification for forced drugging. Why don’t we hear more about “anosognosia” of hospital staff?? In my experience most seem oblivious to the clearly evident damage being done on a daily basis to the victims of their “treatment”. My wife and i witnessed very clear symptoms of continuing akathisia in our daughter during her second lengthy hospitalization; however, it was never identified or mentioned by hospital staff, and we only became familiar with the term much later when her outpatient psychiatrist identified it from our description. And every week when I have lunch with my friend (diagnosed with schizophrenia) it is heartbreaking to see how physically and/or emotionally debilitated most of his fellow SRO residents have become–and, of course, they’re all well trained to dutifully line up for the meds that assure they will remain in this diminished state! Thankfully, my daughter has been out of the hospital for over 20 months and has recovered very well in many ways. However, she remains dependent on these substances which have clearly been very toxic, with no medical support to taper responsibly and instilled with the fear of relapse and re-hospitalization if she tries to “go off the plantation”.
As has been stated over and over in explaining the difficulty in curtailing the cost of any government program, “Everybody’s money is nobody’s money”. Well, I would propose a similar maxim when it comes to children turned over to a government program: “Everybody’s kids are nobody’s kids”. As imperfect as parents are, they are generally far more protective than any state entity will ever be!
Great points, Nancy! I have also thought that Justina’s case could be very instrumental in giving us some needed traction because of the very thing you mention: it’s appeal to the common sense and heart of every person who realizes they or their loved one could also
fall victim to the draconian triumvirate of biopsychiatry, government agencies and the courts! Perhaps this will lead to a “Justina’s Law” to bring some real oversight (with teeth!) to this out-of-control 3-headed beast!
Thanks for this excellent, informative, no-nonsense article, Michael. As for thoughts on NAMI, I’ll add my two cents as i just did earlier today in response to Leah’s article: Despite deep concerns about their “unholy alliance” with mainstream psychiatry and Big Pharma, I have re-engaged with the NAMI chapter in my area. The reason for this is at least threefold: (1) I was greatly encouraged and saw it as at least a “glimmer of hope” that Keris Myrick was elected as the national board president, and even more encouraged when Robert Whitaker was invited by her to present at last year’s national convention; (2) This is the organization that virtually ALL people/families in emotional/mental crisis get sent to in my area; (3) I want to be a “different voice” to the struggling and desperate family members who come there. On this last issue, i think i have had a modest, positive impact. I sense that families are very open to information when it comes from someone else who has experienced similar things.
Having said this, however, i must say i continue to have considerable internal dissonance about the issue. I certainly wish there were a grassroots organization such as the one you envision here in our area…i would surely join it! More than that, i would help establish it. Admittedly, i haven’t done much yet in that regard but i hope to work toward that goal.
Yes, a sobering point, Nancy. I believe one of the greatest tragedies in our “mental health” system is that the dogma that “mental illness is a brain disease” has allowed family dysfunction to be completely ignored and even entrenched, at the expense of the member who is designated as the “ill” one. I believe there are very few instances, if any, where family dynamics do not play at least some part in the mental/emotional crises experienced by any one family member.
Great post! Thanks for sharing your experience, and it’s great to hear that your mom finally “saw the light”. You seem very courageous. I think you raise a great point that I’m also constantly seeing: the pattern you mention that is observed on the NAMI posts. It prompts me to go back in and try to be an influence to help them see this. I think it would be VERY revealing simply to take a random group of kids and adults diagnosed with “bipolar disorder” and carefully trace their history in terms of symptoms, initiation of meds, med changes, symptom changes, etc.
Thank you, Leah, for this obviously heartfelt, passionate and articulate article. I strongly agree that we need to reach out and not just commiserate with each other or “preach to the choir”. I am aware of my own tendency to demonize those “on the other side” of these issues, and continue to strive to find the right balance. Yes, there are some who seem to come pretty close to “demon” status, but I believe most are misinformed, misled, and trying to cope with things the best they can (speaking of individuals and families in emotional/mental crisis) Your anecdote about your conversation with the woman from NAMI was especially encouraging to me. Despite deep concerns about their “unholy alliance” with mainstream psychiatry and Big Pharma, I have re-engaged with the NAMI chapter in my area. The reason for this is at least threefold: (1) I was greatly encouraged and saw it as at least a “glimmer of hope” that Keris Myrick was elected as the national board president, and even more encouraged when Robert Whitaker was invited by her to present at last year’s national convention; (2) This is the organization that virtually ALL people/families in emotional/mental crisis get sent to in my area; (3) I want to be a “different voice” to the struggling and desperate family members who come there. On this last issue, I think I have had a modest, positive impact. I sense that families are very open to information when it comes from someone else who has experienced similar things. Unfortunately, following some initial limited dialogue, the President of our local NAMI chapter has stonewalled me. The Executive Director and I have at least “agreed to disagree” on certain points. There may come a point when I feel that the negatives outweigh the positives in terms of my continued involvement, but for now I remain hopeful.
Anyway, Leah, thanks again for this excellent article. Your points are well taken.
Excellent article, Phillip. You’ve laid this out so clearly and rationally.
“This deception is the foundation of modern psychiatry. But it doesn’t just occur at the point of individual assessment. It also applies to the invention of these illnesses in the first place. Somatic symptom disorder, like all psychiatric diagnoses, is considered to be an illness because the APA say so. And individuals are considered to have a particular psychiatric “illness” because an individual psychiatrist says so. It’s all based on subjective opinion. And subjective opinion is notoriously unreliable.”
How terribly ironic that these “experts” have successfully substituted their own bogus illness for one that they claim existed only in the minds of the girl, her family, and the doctors who followed her for an extensive period! And how chilling that such chicanery was upheld in a court of law to the point where she has been essentially kidnapped and incarcerated by the state!
And your analysis confirms and strengthens my conviction that Justina’s case is only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the terrible hoax being perpetuated in our society at the expense of many unwitting and voiceless victims of our draconian Gulag Psychepelago! Fortunately, the Pelletiers have finally gotten considerable attention and sympathy from both the public and various public officials, owing at least partially to Lou Pelletier’s chutzpah, verbal skills and willingness to defy the “powers that be” on behalf of his daughter. Hopefully, with the help of God (which I believe is often effected through people who are attentive to his Spirit) justice will prevail in this case. What’s really sad is that there are probably many, many more kids and families who are being similarly misled, coerced and torn apart every day by similar but less dramatic circumstances. We really have to rise up and stand against this wolf in sheep’s clothing!
That’s fine, Oldhead. Provocative wording deserves to be countered with some details which are intended to bring the discussion back down to the flesh and blood reality of the diversity of the patient population. To move forward: I would like to see more focus on the recommendation by Jim Gottstein that we urge our senators to dialogue with members of the reform movement so that they CAN be apprised of the needs for reform which I hope would include the need for a holistic response to First Episode Psychosis, the need for independent review of medication utilization, independent legal services, etc. Dr. Ablow of Fox News wrote a a summary of weaknesses and needed change which could also be forwarded to congressmen. The legislators are under a lot of pressure to do SOMETHING, and we need to offer them something better.
Russ’ wife wishes to apologize for mistakenly posting the last comment listed under Russerford. She forgot to make sure that she was on her own account. I am referring to the one addressed to Oryx and oldhead.. I probably made matters worse by “reporting” it. Oh, dear.
Oryx and oldhead, it is very possible that Tim Murphy is sponsoring a hastily written, misguided bill because the psych reform movement has shunned and failed to dialogue with him and other Republicans and Democrats. We are the ones who are supposed to make the effort to talk to these representatives. Would anyone care to come forward and confess how many times they have written a letter or actually visited their representatives in a respectful manner.? My husband and I would know little of psychiatric abuse if our own daughter had not fallen into it. Our culture conditions us to respect professionals and defer to their expertise. Robert Whitaker describes in Anatomy of an Epidemic how carefully the false narrative was sown before policy makers were targeted by the American Psychiatric Association. Psychiatric abuse has been a well kept secret. Tim Murphy’s bill may be the fruit of alienation and isolation.
Excellent comments, “Someone Else”; but here’s just a bit of “friendly fire”. While i share your concern about the iatrogenically created mental illnesses and am very thankful for Robert Whitaker’s excellent expose on this in “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, to say that all of what is called “mental illness” is caused by psychotropic drugs doesn’t stack up to reality. If that is so, how do you explain that folks had these same kinds of extreme symptoms long before psych meds ever came on the scene? I believe my own daughter’s initial episode of psychotic mania may have been triggered by her being placed on and then suddenly going off of a benzodiazepine, but honestly i do not know for sure. It certainly wasn’t a drug, street or prescription, that caused the persistent and debilitating anxiety that led to her being prescribed this drug. By saying this, I’m not supporting the bogus and now debunked “brain chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness. And believe me, i deeply regret my part in getting her started with this medication. But i think we need to be honest about what we know and what we don’t know. There is still a lot of unknown about what’s behind the extremes of emotion and thinking many of us experience at different times in our lives.
Jonathan, I so much appreciate your thoughtful, balanced reply to Kate. And I also welcome Kate’s very down-to-earth, obviously heartfelt comments. I think we need this kind of dialogue here if we’re going to do more than “preach to the choir”. I have also experienced “up close and personal” the gut-wrenching dilemma of a loved one in the throes of psychotic mania. There are no easy answers. To let the loved one “fend for herself”, so to speak, would clearly have put her in harms way based on the particulars of her psychosis. On the other hand, the second time around (“once burned, twice shy”) we had extreme concerns about what was going to take place in the hospital. And the bombarding of her brain with a dizzying array of neuroleptics, benzos, anticonvulsives and other drugs is exactly what happened–with little to no understanding of her individual history. Athough her sanity was eventually restored, i continue to believe it was largely in spite of rather than because of the drugs she was coerced to take, contrary to what would have been done if we had the alternative type of crisis care you mention. And she continues to be saddled with the dire consequences of these brain and body-altering substances. This raises another thing that i believe is desperately needed: detox centers for those “stuck” on heavy duty psych meds and who want to at least make a decent, supported try at getting off in a careful manner. Dan Mackler has written a nice piece about this somewhere, in terms of what would be needed to do it effectively. After all, who would expect a heroine or cocain addict to “just say no to drugs”? We have all kinds of detox/rehab centers for people hooked on street drugs, but virtually nothing for those hooked by the white-coated drug pushers!
“Most surprisingly, we saw the greatest increase in use during the five-year study period was among adults, with the largest gains seen in women ages 26 to 34, climbing 85%.”
Surprising…really? From the ads i keep seeing on various websites, they’ve been marketing these drugs very aggressively for adults for some time, and i believe those pictured in the ads are usually women! The symptoms of ADHD are so amorphous and ubiquitous that just about anyone could think they might have this “disorder”.
Excellent points, Steve, and so articulately stated! I think you’ve hit on perhaps the central rotten core underlying all the peripheral problems in conventional biopsychiatry: the assumption, with apparently no acknowledgement that it is an assumption, that “we are our brains”. Or as one of my grad school psychology professors stated was the belief of some researchers, “all human behavior can be described as ‘squirts and twitches'” (i.e., neurons in action).
So, am i my brain, or do i have a brain? And if it’s the latter (which i believe), what is this “i” that has the brain…and all the other intricately interrelated parts that comprise my incredibly complex physical body? Even if you leave out the spiritual dimension (which i do not) and deal strictly with the phenomenon of consciousness, it should be clear that human consciousness is not a biological entity. It seems that modern Western culture has been so steeped in materialism and reductionism that it can neither recognize or appreciate the absurdity of this!
I share your concern, elocin. When i heard a recent report that her parents observed her stomach was bloated and there were red streaks on her stomach and some other part of her body–her arms, i think–it reminded me of my own adult daughter’s physical reaction to the heavy drug cocktail they put her on in one of her lengthy and torturous involuntary hospitalizations. Talk about weight gain…she practically blew up before our eyes! Came out of the hospital so sedated she was usually in bed 16 hours of the day. Her outpatient psychiatrist was afraid to make any changes in this toxic, brain-numbing mix until purple streaks on her arms and body appeared and she began to have bad liver readings.
Fortunately, she was gradually and successfully tapered on the med that seemed to be causing the worst of the weight, skin and liver problems (Depakote). I doubt this would have been successful if done too quickly.
(Unfortunately, she was placed back on this drug during a subsequent hospitalization, where they initially almost killed her and then put her through a horrific brainstorm of drug changes that more than reversed all the progress she had made in the previous year. That’s another story I’ve detailed elsewhere.)
” (In fact, there are indications that they may even have disputed whether such a disease even exists – an extraordinary accusation coming from psychiatry!) They also, apparently, formed the belief that the parents were dysfunctionally invested in the notion that Justina was gravely ill, and were subjecting her to needless medicines and treatments.”
What rich irony! Yes, this is indeed “an extraordinary accusation coming from psychiatry!” It seems unbelievable they would have the chutzpah to dispute the presence or even existence of mitochondrial disease and accuse the parents of subjecting Justina to “needless medicines and treatments”. Psychiatry’s entire existence is predicated on dubious and frequently changing diagnoses and hit-or-miss treatments with little proven efficacy and tons of deleterious effects!
We have all these laws in various states named after individuals, with other euphemistic names such as “Assisted Outpatient Treatment”, which make it easier to force psychiatric medications and psychiatric incarceration on people.
Perhaps out of this outrageous fiasco will come a “Jutina’s Law” that will finally give some appropriate due process and oversight, with teeth, to stand against the Gulag Psychipelago into which so many of our fellow citizens are swallowed up.
“On January 22, 2014, after three hours of testimony before a Superior Court judge in Burlington, the judge said he disagreed with Christina’s mental illness diagnosis and the assessment that she was a danger to herself and others. The judge ordered her release after five and a half weeks in the psychiatric ward.”
Most readers have no idea how unusual and remarkable this is! First of all, it was only due to this woman’s going outside the system, directly to the press, that this type of court hearing took place. Otherwise, if she got any kind of hearing it would have been a closed “kangaroo court” in which the cards would have been completely stacked in favor of the hospital (these kind of hearings have a track record of supporting the hospital’s position about 95% of the time). I congratulate the judge involved, who apparently relied on his own common sense and had the courage to forgo the requirement for “expert witnesses” to contest the hospital’s psychiatrist and lawyers. Believe me, I’ve been there (as parent of a patient who had deteriorated under their form of “treatment”) and a person without very substantial means is ENTIRELY at the mercy of the hospital’s demigods!
Sandy, Your article came at a very opportune time for me. I’m considering giving a copy to my daughter’s psychiatrist. Thanks so much for your impeccable honesty, pursuit of truth,
compassion and respect for your patients! And man do i resonate with the point you just made in replying to Jonathan, pertaining to those who “dismiss what i say without looking carefully at the evidence”. I, like you, strongly desire dialogue–reasoned, mutually respectful dialogue–and i find the refusal of many to engage in this maddening!
Wow! Laura, your story has been so encouraging to me, and every new bit of it that you bring out so articulately and passionately renews my own hope and committment to go forward and “get the truth out” to a society that has been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the reductionistic and ultimately pessimistic biopsychiatric dogma. I’m also very encouraged by your “Coming off Psych Drugs” support group in your area…i wish we lived there! I may be in touch with you about starting up a similar group here, when the time is right (I know, the time is ALWAYS right, but I’m not yet in the place to take this on). I’ve gotten kinda bogged down in a few things, including a bit of a mental “funk”, so i haven’t yet followed through in getting started with FEMHC—but i hope to do that soon!
I’m going to post this article on my own Facebook page.
Hey Dan…thanks for this honest, open, down-to-earth reflection. Having been in the role of counselor as part of my professional work in the past, I appreciate and resonate with many of your comments and feelings. I also appreciate very much what you’ve been doing these past few years. I’ve bought a couple of your movies and have shared them with others. You wouldn’t know me by my posting name here, but we had a couple phone conversations in the past when my daughter was caught in the pernicious grip of a couple involuntary psych hospitalizations. I was happily amazed at how accessible and personable you were. Thanks again, from the bottom of my heart. By the way, that was totally consistent with the things you’ve shared in this article. It’s also in keeping with my general experience of finding those in the “alternative mental health movement” (for want of a better tag) much more accessible, respectful and personable than those in the psychiatric mainstream, who seem to construct barriers to insulate themselves from most real dialogue and interaction with those they purportedly “serve”. So thanks again for sharing. For what it’s worth, i think you’re on the right track.
Even Dr. Ken Duckworth, Medical Director of NAMI (considered “the enemy” by some here in MIA-land), expressed serious caution about the use of antipsychotics with children and stated he never prescribed them to kids.
Thanks, Ted. I’ve been inspired many times by your writing, speaking out, your amazing resilience! I’m glad we have an “old man” like you on our side. Keep it up!
Steven, I also greatly appreciate your comments on this issue, especially from your unique perspective as one who has overcome the damage the system has meted out and now has an “inside” view. Kudos, and keep up the good work!
Thanks once more, anonymous, for your excellent and articulate comments. Your balanced view on this issue amazingly incisive and greatly needed, in my opinion.
On the one hand, you have people who have NO idea what it is to experience extreme mental/emotional states and to then be traumatized by the supposed “helping” system, and they portray everyone on SSI and/or SSD as freeloading deadbeats. On the other hand, you have the constant “gimme, gimme” crowd who plays up victimhood to the hilt and for whom the government (i.e., working taxpayers) can NEVER do enough.
We need the kind of realism, compassion and balance your comments reflect.
…plus, there is a substantial subset of these kids who end up getting put on antipsychotic meds–almost always “off label”, and without ever having had true psychotic symptoms (until, in some cases, AFTER they get put on these drugs!). Of course they were bipolar or pre-schizophrenic all along, dontcha know?! It just took the “diagnostic use” of stimulant meds to bring it out in the open so it could be properly treated. Give me a break!
I believe i read somewhere that kids labeled ADHD are the largest group taking SGA’s (second generation antipsychotics).
I believe after the 8-year follow up much of what “came out” about it still tended to put a spin on the results that disguised just how ineffectual medication was in the long term. At any rate, the push to diagnose kids with ADHD and get them on medication does not seem to have diminished one iota!
Nevermind…I just answered my own question by doing a little internet search. I guess it should have been quite clear from Gretchen’s article above that the “behavioral treatment” group was just that–behavioral treatment with no drugs (duh!).
It seems there was hardly a peep in the media about the 8-year follow up, which showed a fading effect of medication and superior long-term results from behavioral treatment.
I’ve read before about the MTA study; i think it was mentioned in Peter Breggin’s “Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry” and maybe in Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic”.
One thing that’s still unclear to me: Were any of the groups in this study unmedicated? I don’t think so. Some commentary I’ve read seems to imply the group that received “community treatment” was unmedicated, but i don’t think that’s the case; rather, it seems they were just not as aggressively medicated as one of the other groups. I believe the researchers, having identified the subjects as having ADHD, would be compelled to take the position that to “not treat them” would be negligent–perhaps the fear of a law suit would contribute to this, also. This appears to be a kind of circular reasoning that, IMO, prevents quite a bit of sorely needed research.
Anyway, if anyone out there can clarify this for me, i’d appreciate it.
Thanks backatcha, anonymous. I deeply appreciate your many articulate, heartfelt and sometimes heartrending posts here on MIA. I’ve read many of them and they’ve had a strong impact on me.
You’re absolutely right–it was horrific having to witness their repeated brain-raping of my daughter, putting one toxic substance after another into her brain after being specifically told of her prior adverse reactions to the same. I’ve likened trying to work with them to negotiating with terrorists, but worse! With terrorists, you’d at least have an identified enemy with a known malicious intent, and possibly some allies with power to extract your loved one from their clutches!
I’m so glad you escaped and are “fighting the good fight”; i hope and pray my daughter will also do so eventually. She has recovered well in many respects, for which i’m very grateful…but she continues to bear the scars, physically and emotionally, of the ravages of her “treatment” and the road remains rocky with many potential pitfalls.
Yes, Donna…When i saw this piece from the New York Times i also immediately thought of the previous article here on MIA about Dr. Tom Burns of Oxford admitting that Community Treatment Orders don’t work. You don’t think this “news” from New York could be in any way related to that, do ya?
I’m in New York, and the social worker at the state psychiatric hospital where my adult daughter ended up after horribly misguided psychiatric “treatment” over several years suggested that she should be provided with “assisted outpatient treatment” (i.e., court-monitored “Kendra’s Law” treatment) upon discharge. Fortunately, by this time I had informed myself enough about this insidious euphemism and pointed out that the only time she was ever violent was in reaction to the medications she was either being given or withdrawn from–and that all but one of these incidents occurred IN the hospital. They quickly dropped this ruse, but unfortunately the discharge program she opted appears dominated by staff who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the religion of biopsychiatry.
I’m a school psychologist with longstanding concerns about the burgeoning use of psych meds in our society (especially with kids). However, it took the “up close and personal” experience of seeing my own daughter ravaged by psychiatry to see just how misguided, harmful and draconian our psychiatric system can be–even when some or even many of the people involved in this form of “care” may be well-meaning (in fact, that makes it all the more pernicious and maddening!).
It became chillingly clear to me throughout my daughter’s saga that a patient in an involuntary psych hospitalization has less rights than a convicted felon! Few people realize how utterly stacked the cards are in favor of acute care psychiatrists and against the unfortunate souls who enter their domain; they may as well post a sign at the door: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” But…but…don’t the patients have access to Mental Hygiene Legal Services? Yeah, right…any idea how often the judge at one of these psychiatric kangaroo courts decides in favor of the patient (represented by MHLS) versus the hospital?? Maybe about 5%, from what i remember reading. Clearly, the hospital’s have the big bucks, the best lawyers, the power!
So now I’ve become part of the “Resistance” on behalf of my daughter and the many, many unfortunate souls who fall into the biopsychiatry trap.
I definitely smell the odor of Big Pharma and the APA behind this puff piece touting the benefits of AOT in New York. Sadly, the public in general has NO idea of just how misguided and insidious it is. I’m trying to do my part in my little corner of the world. I’ve even rejoined my local NAMI chapter (gasp!–i hear it from many of you, my dear comrades), since like it or not that’s where ALL the mental health clinics, psychiatrists, hospitals, etc. direct people–at least in these parts. I think i’m having some success in promoting dialogue and have clearly given some folks a message other than what they’re going to hear from the NAMI “rank and file”. At this point i see winds (perhaps a breeze?) of hopeful change in NAMI, even though i know some of you vehemently disagree. We’ll see…at any rate, if it seems to be a lost cause, i’ll have to look to other venues (which i’m doing anyway). I love MIA and Mind Freedom International (I’m a contributing member of both), but unfortunately there are no notices on the walls of psych units about these or any other “alternative” mental health organizations, and there are no local chapters (to my knowledge). Maybe i’ll start one….
Peter, i so appreciate the points you make here. I read the mother’s letter on Pete Early’s site and had many of the same feelings you express. I am deeply appreciative of Bob Whitaker and the excellent work he’s doing. I’m also a parent who has been in a similar place as Pete Early and the mother who wrote this letter. The place i’ve come to, from what I’ve observed and experienced throughout my daughter’s ongoing saga and through my own personal research, is much different from where they are. I believe that as a society we’ve been duped into buying a very reductionistic and scientifically flawed view of mental illness, which needs to be strongly challenged (as Whitaker and others are doing). But having said this, i don’t see any easy answers for my daughter at this point–or for the many others who have been ensnared in the net of highly dubious and clearly harmful biopsychiatric “treatments”. In our zeal to shed the light of truth on these issues and rescue those who have become entrapped, i think we need to respect that the majority of family members of people in these situations have not arrived at where they are blithely or lightly.
Oops! I have to correct the information i gave about that teleconference with Dr. Xavier Amador. It’s this FRIDAY, not Thursday.
Here’s the info again:
***Conference Call with Dr. Xavier Amador on Anosognosia
Friday, May 24 at 11:00 am, EST
To access these calls, dial 1 (888) 858-6021 and enter pass code 309918#.
Please…I urge any and all MIA readers to tune in and have input in this discussion. The concept of “Anosagnosia” has been used by folks like Dr. Amador and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey to justify forced drugging and other highly coercive measures in psychiatry.
I would also LOVE to have the host of this website, Robert Whitaker, in on this conversation!
Sandra, thanks for sharing your perspective on this topic. I am always so appreciative of your honesty, knowing that you are perhaps not as “doctrinaire” as some on this site would prefer. It would be much easier to posture on on side or another of the many issues you address if you were not “in the trenches”, dealing with real people and no easy answers. We would be so much better off, in my opinion, if we had even a small fraction of psychiatrists with your melding of meticulous rationality, honesty, humility and commitment to what is best for each individual.
Now for a switcheroo…I want you to be aware of a teleconference coming up this Thursday that i plan to “tune in” to. It is hosted by NAMI, as part of their “Ask the Doctor” series, and the special guest this week is Dr. Xavier Amador, who will be speaking on anosognosia. I think your own article on this was the first of yours i read on this site. I am desperately hoping you’ll be able to join the conversation, even though i know that may be impossible due to your work schedule. I have rejoined our local NAMI chapter mainly to be a “different voice” in this organization, since so many people get channeled to NAMI and then get indoctrinated into the very heavily “pro-biopsychiatry” mindset that prevails. On the other hand, it is hopeful and heartening sign to me that Keris Myrick was elected national board president of NAMI, and that Robert Whitaker is speaking at the upcoming convention in Dallas (Amazing…Praise the Lord!)
At any rate, here’s specific information on the teleconference:
***Conference Call with Dr. Xavier Amador on Anosognosia
Thursday, May 24 at 11:00 am, EST
To access these calls, dial 1 (888) 858-6021 and enter pass code 309918#.
Please…I urge any and all MIA readers to tune in and have input in this discussion. The concept of “Anosagnosia” has been used by folks like Dr. Amador and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey to justify forced drugging and other highly coercive measures in psychiatry.
I would also LOVE to have the host of this website, Robert Whitaker, in on this conversation!
Sandra, again i want you to know i SO much appreciate your thoughtful, honest, realistic approach to this issue as reflected in this series of articles. I especially appreciate your balanced approach as one working “in the trenches” to help people in very real and difficult situations. As sad and angry as i’ve been about the terrible “treatment” my family member has endured and the devastating effects i believe neuroleptic medications (and other psych meds have had on her, the “just say no to drugs” approach is not the answer for her. Can she be safely tapered? She encountered a terrible setback while attempting to do so in the past, but the alternative (to stay on them and “lock into” the diminished life that has resulted)is unacceptable. So she’s back in the process of tapering the one that seems most problematic at present (with success, to date). Kudos to you for your courage and willingness to dialogue with us here on MIA, even though i know you’ll take some heat from those who think you’re still too much a part of the establishment! Please keep us posted.
I realize this post is a bit after your article, so i’m not so sure you’ll see it. I’m glad you asked for this, as it further clarified my already corrected memories. Now that i look back on this information, i realize that David Oaks did weigh in quite heavily on the issue. I was reminded of how powerful his open letter to Pete Earley was…and that it was his intention to have the kind of dialogue with Pete that i endorsed in my post above.
At any rate, i hope you get this information and i’m looking forward greatly to your next article on optimal use of neuroleptics.
Oops…here’s a self-correction to my own comment above: It was Robert Whitaker, not David Oaks, who was the “controversial” keynote speaker at the SAMHSA conference i mentioned. I know Robert posted a very articulate rebuttal to Pete Early’s critical piece, and i believe David Oaks also had something to say about it. At any rate, i still think it would be good to have ongoing, civil dialogue between people with different viewpoints on this and many other issues. The tide seems to be turning in a good way, but there is still a huge power imbalance in favor of those with a strong biopsychiatric orientation, as i see it.
Sandra, i am so glad to see you honestly address this last point. While my heart is strongly with survivors of psychiatry, and i have no doubt that many (including my relative) have been greatly harmed by “psychiatric treatment” as it is currently practiced, i get the sense that some do not grasp (or perhaps choose not to acknowledge) the very real dilemma of trying to “save” a loved one who has slipped into a life-threatening extreme mental/emotional state.
I would love to see more open and honest dialogue between outspoken proponents on both sides of this issue, who have “skin in the game”. For example, David Oaks (a psychiatric survivor and Founder/Director of Mind Freedom International) and Pete Early, a journalist who wrote about his son’s saga with mental illness from the perspective of a parent who was horrified at the system’s treatment of his son. To his credit, David Oaks (who i greatly admire and respect) suggested such a dialogue after Pete Early came out with a sharp criticism of the conference in California at which David was a keynote speaker a couple years ago (sponsored by SAMHSA). The “powers that be” had tried to bar David from speaking, but thankfully he was reinstated after an outcry of protest from many of the attendees. While Pete’s position (i believe he’s in support of “assisted outpatient treatment) is anathema to many MIA bloggers and readers (including me), i still think such a dialogue would be helpful and might reduce the polarization among folks who have legitimate and honest concerns.
Thank you for your very articulate, passionate and insightful reply. I admit that some of what you wrote stung a bit, even if that wasn’t the intent. I realize that those of us struggling with the observed terrible effects of psych meds on ourselves or a loved one may fall into an error that is almost as bad as the myth that an ingested chemical can “correct” a distressing altered state of mind; which is that getting rid of the offending chemical(s) will “correct” the distressing altered state that originally prompted taking the drug in the first place! I agree that such thinking is far too simplistic–it is, in fact, a very pernicious form of reductionism that basically denies the wonder, uniqueness and complexity of the human experience.
Having said this, however, it seems to me you are in some denial about what seems like obvious effects of drugs (whether they are street or prescription drugs) on the behavior and thinking of human beings. When someone takes a hallucinogenic drug like LSD, for instance, of course the particular content of their hallucinations or delusions will be unique to their personality, experiences, cognitive and creative abilities, spiritual status, etc. But to think the LSD was not the major precipitant to these altered states of mind/emotion seems naive to me. If such altered states of mind were problematic, hopefully this could be “corrected” by stopping the LSD (although it may not be so simple, since the LSD may have permanently altered the person’s brain chemistry or structure). By the same token, i think you would agree that a person living within the “cloud” of a prescribed psychotropic drug (or, more commonly, a cocktail of such drugs)would be better off dealing with whatever problems and issues they had if this “cloud” could be removed. Don’t you think it’s possible that the prescription drug could also be a precipitant to extreme states of mind/emotion? It seems very clear to me that this is so in some cases.
Some of what you wrote makes me wonder if you have some specific knowledge of my personal situation. I’ve been fairly open in various blogs and usually use the same user name. I’ve also had contact and conversations about this with a number of people in the “psychiatric alternatives movement” (is that the correct term?)–and i’ve greatly appreciated the accessibility and support of these people. My loved one is fairly transparent and has always given me permission to share things about her experience. However, i realize such openness can have a “down side” and perhaps i should re-evaluate this. At any rate,if you do have such knowledge, please be aware that there is a great deal you don’t know about her/our situation. Of course, there’s a good chance i’ve just revealed my own paranoid tendency!
Thank you so much for your honest, thoughtful discussion of this issue. I am appalled at the lack of awareness in mainstream psychiatry about the studies you mention suggesting that “less or not at all may be better” when it comes to using neuroleptic meds for first-time psychosis. I’m glad you mention the studies cited in support of early and aggressive use of neuroleptics in treating initial episode psychosis. Unfortunately, these studies seem to have had an undue influence on standard practice–particularly in acute psychiatric units in the U.S. Why is it that mainstream psychiatry has not kept pace with more recent research and modified it’s standard practices accordingly? I find it maddening that despite all the talk of multimodal approaches, when mainstream psychiatry speaks of “treatment” they almost always mean medication. Kudos to the folks in Finland and elsewhere who are placing emphasis on the value of intensive human support in dealing with emotional crises and extreme mental/emotional states.
This is a very real issue and dilemma to my family, as we have been navigating the ongoing saga of a member diagnosed with severe mental illness involving multiple lengthy, traumatic hospitalizations and various medications (including several nueroleptics). Her most serious difficulties did not begin until after psych meds were introduced. Although her initial response to a neuroleptic (Seroquel) prescribed by her outpatient psychiatrist appeared positive, based on what has transpired since i believe she would have been much better off to have “weathered” the difficulty with intensive but non-medication alternatives. When speaking with one of her in-hospital psychiatrists about my concerns about the terrible side effects she’s suffered from various psych meds and my concerns about further damage, he mentioned there were studies suggesting that untreated mania results in brain damage.
I remain very concerned about the issue of brain damage and the possibility of deleterious brain chemistry changes possibly caused by the neuroleptics she’s taking (i.e., “supersensitivity psychosis”), which i suspect may have been behind her last hospitalization (since she relapsed into a manic/psychotic state even though regularly taking prescribed meds). On the other hand, she experienced a prior relapse while in the process of tapering her neuroleptic (and maintaining mood stabilizer, lithium). So either way she goes, there is danger of relapse and re-hospitalization. I am more and more strongly seeing the need for carefully crafted and implemented detox programs for people like my loved one who have suffered terribly from these drugs and would like the chance of at least trying to get safely off!
Dan, i absolutely agree with you! This is on my mind a lot, and if there’s any way i can help in this i want to do it. Thanks for your efforts. You’ve clearly thought this through in great detail, and it’s encouraging to know someone else shares my concern about this. Thanks again for your excellent videos on Open Dialogue and Healing Homes, which i purchased and highly recommend to anyone interested in knowing about mental health alternatives that work!
Sandra, your article is very encouraging to me. I have an adult daughter who seems trapped in the mental health system due to having been placed on medications that i believe have put her in a terrible double bind: either continue on them and continue to suffer terrible side effects (which will probably worsen and even shorten her life) or attempt to taper and run the risk of withdrawal psychosis and more traumatic hospitalizations. I share your positive sentiments about Whitaker, Open Dialoque and some winds of positive change in NAMI (i would add the election of Keris Myrick as president)–it is so good to hear these words coming from a psychiatrist, who hasn’t given up on therapy! We need many, many more like you.
This resonates with our experience; we’ve struggled during the
past six years to have a loved one’s personal, evidence-base of response to medication acknowledged to be characterized by adverse and paradoxical events and worthy of some variance to standard protocol of treatment. We’ve had little success. Our loved one has suffered repeatedly from being subjected to treatments which we predicted would exacerbate disregulation.
Laura, thanks so much for another passionate, articulate post! I was (again) feeling despair and rage today over the way in which my daughter has been ravaaged by a system that is supposed to heal, but consistently violates the very first principle of medicine: “First do no harm”. This post was a tremendous boost to my spirits. I have shared a previous similarly articulate post of yours with my daughter, my sister-in-law and another young friend who are all in the grip of psychiatry’s pseudo-science, and i intend to share this one with a couple of folks “in the system” who need to wake up and smell the coffee! To repeat that old, trite line, “You go, girl!”
My wife and i SO resonate with this excellent point. We have faced this issue “up close and personal” with our daughter, who was deprived of the most basic therapeutic benefit of fresh air and sunshine during two extended psychiatric hospitalizations. In one case, we got results after my wife threatened to file a civil rights complaint and the attending psychiatrist (one of the better ones we dealt with) put her “neck on the line” to approve some time (with us) in the hospital’s large enclosed courtyard. In the other case, after three months total confinement and our repeated requests, hospital staff finally made arrangements for her to go outside in a small courtyard within the hospital, shortly before her transfer to a state hospital where she quickly had outdoor privileges. I made the same point at a court hearing (initiated by my daughter) during the latter hospitalization that Jonathan makes in this article: that even a convicted felon gets time outside every day! It’s deplorable that psychiatric patients are regularly deprived of this in many places!
Thanks so much for your kind and supportive words, Mengyuan. And my deep condolences on the loss of your friend. It’s so sad to hear of his trying to be a “good patient” and feeling guilty and blaming himself for things he could not help. Psychiatry was certainly a “black hole” for your friend, my daughter and others whose civil and human rights are so violated by their coercive and tyrannical practices! God willing, we hope to expose and change these things and work toward more helpful and humane caring for those afflicted with various psychosocial setbacks… especially the more severe ones.
Report comment
Thanks for this info, Linda.
Report comment
“I am apprehensive because the shift in focus outlined in OMH’s memorandum might delay the meaningful conversations we need to have about best practices.”
My perception is that conventional psychiatry abandoned “best practices” along with “first do no harm” long ago.
Blaming the victims is more fashionable and convenient.
Report comment
Thanks for this excellent article, Peter. You were obviously unpleasantly surprised, but not too much, by these rejections of your article. As you say,
“There is a good reason that I called my first psychiatry book, “Deadly psychiatry and organised denial.” The organised denial characterises this totally failed medical discipline more than anything else.”
You confronted guild interests a little too directly, and got the predictable circling of the wagons.
Russ
Report comment
Thank you so much for this well written and well documented article, Christopher. And thank you for your part in the activism that put this protection in place in Connecticut. May you prevail in keeping it there!
“…I have learned how psychiatric care (and other medical care) can sometimes become a vicious cycle in which treatment-emergent or post-treatment adverse effects are misidentified as a new (or pre-existing) mental disorder, treated with higher dosages or more drugs or other risky treatments leading to more adverse effects, and more serious diagnoses until a person is quite disabled.”
So well stated! This is exactly what happened to my dear daughter, as described in the article published last year on this same site on the first anniversary of her death.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/07/catherines-story-a-child-lost-to-psychiatry/
If we had a law here in New York like the one you helped put in place in Connecticut, she might still be with us today.
Report comment
Yes, Nijinsky, what Andrew and you have been subjected to buy these “mental health professionals” is so sad and maddening. As Boans said above, there is actually more accountability and consequences for people who abuse animals than for people who abuse humans under the guise of “treatment”!
Report comment
Such excellent points and so well-stated, George!
Report comment
Thank you for this excellent article, Rich and Elizabeth, and even more, thank you for the work you are doing in Wisconsin, Elizabeth. There is such a crying need for and such a dearth of knowledgeable, ethical, compassionate lawyers, doctors and mental health agency personnel to combat the draconian abuses and violations of human and civil rights of people who fall into the hands of the Gulag Psychipelago.
Seeing this article, Elizabeth, I was reminded of our phone conversation a while ago. I left no stones unturned, but eventually realized there was really no legal recourse for how are daughter was destroyed following a kangaroo court process that allowed the hospital to involuntarily brain shock her and force her onto a clearly contraindicated antipsychotic medication that caused terrible, torturous side effects. I am truly heartened to hear that you are making some headway on such things in Wisconsin, even though it may seem incremental in terms of what is needed.
I will requote what has been repeated above:
“For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.”
Reading this article made my blood boil once again, but I am very glad for your work. Thank you for shining the light into these dark places. I hope that I can live up to a similar calling, which is the best tribute I can think of for my own daughter.
Report comment
Thank you for this excellent expose. Once again we see the duplicity of the Biosychiatry establishment, in their unholy alliance with Big Pharma, and how these professional publications who should be welcoming critical peer review end up carrying water for them.
Do you have any suggestions as to what we readers could do to help?
Report comment
Yes, guardianship can be horribly unjust and abusive, as Marian Kornicki has so well described in this excellent expose. I myself am in the process of attempting to advocate for two of it’s victims; a 60-year-old man diagnosed with schizophrenia and his 66-year-old wife of 31 years.
As anyone who follows the news knows, Britney Spears had to fight like hell to get out from under a very unjust guardianship even though she was a multi-millionaire and had full mental capacity, unlike this man, who is poor and has a serious disability affecting his cognition, and his wife who cannot afford a private lawyer and thus has no legal representation going into an upcoming “successor guardianship” hearing.
But there is another side to this guardianship issue, and I’ve been on that side as well. When someone is truly incapacitated, as my young daughter was, without a guardian who is prepared to fight they will surely fall fully into the hands of the psychiatric powers that be, and can be kept entirely out of the loop. In our case, despite going through the expensive and onerous process of obtaining guardianship after she turned 18, we were ultimately unable to protect her from psychiatric coercion and abuse. An article describing our saga, which ended tragically, was published here on this site on the first anniversary of her death, July 29.
So for this reason I would not support abolishing guardianship. However, it is certainly in need of very close scrutiny, regulation and oversight that would put an end to the egregious injustices that are regularly perpetrated through the process as it now exists.
Report comment
Thank you, Tom. Your comments bring to mind this quote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Report comment
I missed your comment when you wrote it, warmac, and only saw it now because of Grace’s reply. So it’s doubtful you’ll see my response now . .
Believe me, my wife and I are still haunted by all the woulda/coulda/shouldas… and yes, we do bear some of the responsibility for the horrible trajectory that ensured with our precious daughter. That could be the subject of another article, but this one was meant to expose and portray the horror of falling into the hands of a system that purports to heal while it actually, for some, utterly destroys. Your comment about the runaway having a better chance of recovery makes me wonder if you are suggesting that perhaps we should have allowed our daughter to run away, in a state of total irrationality and emotional disequilibrium, and take her chances on the street. I hope not.
Report comment
Straining out gnats and swallowing camels, are we, Stevie? I notice Bob readily corrected this error, and I doubt anyone was hurt by it. Are there any errors you and your colleagues would care to correct? People have been VERY hurt and some even killed by the professional lies and negligence mentioned in this article!
Report comment
Once again, Robert, you’ve hit several nails squarely on the head in this rebuttal to Dr. Aftabs criticism of your “Psychiatry, Fraud and the Case for a Class-Action Lawsuit”. One of those nails:
“This is why psychiatry cannot be expected to reform itself. The guild simply can’t bear to confront the reality of its own research. Perhaps public pressure could force such change, but medical professions in the U.S. are treated by the mainstream media as speaking with authority, and that limits the possibility of public pressure as a change agent. That leaves the law as the only possible lever for prompting such wholesale reform.”
Yes, indeed…and I learned, very sadly, that the legal profession holds doctors in similar unassailable high esteem. My wife and I were in the process of renewing guardianship of our daughter, for the express purpose of protecting her from the potential ravages of psychiatric coercion. The attorney working with us cautioned us not to criticize psychiatrists in the process, because “judges regard doctors with near reverence.” We were relieved that our guardianship was renewed but, sadly, it turned out to be useless in stopping the hospital psychiatrists from forcibly brain-shocking her and then forcing her onto a medication that was contraindicated by genetic testing and that induced terrible side effects and started a cascade of additional psych meds. As you know, her story (published here on the first anniversary of her death, July 29) had a very tragic ending.
I agree that lawsuits may be the only way to effect change, but when you understand just how stacked the deck is it is not at all encouraging. It is virtually impossible to find an attorney or law firm that will take on any case against psychiatry, at least when it comes to medical malpractice. But your suggested class action suit would not involve medical malpractice, per se, so maybe there’s a better chance.
I’m not dismissing the legal avenue, but I’ve come to believe that the “court of public opinion” may be the best avenue to advance reform. If we continue to find ways to “get the word out” to the public, such as through this website and others, and build a grassroots of activism to expose the fallacies and very harmful practices within conventional psychiatry, I believe it could build a groundswell of calls for reform. At least that’s what I’m hoping for.
Report comment
Thank you for this excellent condensation of “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, Penni and Nikkel–it makes a lot of sense (cents)! Seriously, I too have recommended “Anatomy…” to various people, but although it is an excellent, well-documented and very readable book, many just don’t have the time. I think this could help “get out the word” to more people, and maybe whet their appetite for more detail.
Report comment
Sorry for the delayed response, When. You asked what alternatives to Psychiatry were tried, such as family psychotherapy. I suppose we could have and should have tried to engage her in some kind of counseling or psychotherapy, including family therapy, when she started to disengage from schooling and social activities. But as we said in the article, we tended to see it as a transitional “emerging adolescence thing”. But after the first crisis that landed her in the adolescent psych ward, the rapid decline in her psychosocial and cognitive functioning, along with lack of insight, made it very difficult to enlist her cooperation. There was also the trauma of the hospitalization and her wariness toward anything “psychological”. We did have some limited success in engaging our daughter in psychotherapy during the first couple years after that initial brief hospitalization, but both her willingness and ability nosedived as she was increasingly traumatized and damaged by the forced psychiatric treatments. Early on when we broached the subject of possible family dynamics that might be at play, Dr. G stated his belief that her condition was “ninety percent biological”. As we said in the article, there was no psychotherapy in her psych hospitalizations; I found this shocking. From conventional psychiatry’s perspective, patients seem to be reduced to neurons responding to medications, electric shocks or other biological “treatments
Report comment
Cindi, even though it is now 8 years beyond the publishing of this article, and I know the ongoing saga with your son is at a very different place, I will post here my most recent text to you with regard to the article and our ongoing attempts to advocate for our mutual friend.
I am so glad and honored to have met you through our attempts to help our friend with her own struggle against the psychiatric and legal system, as it is. I just finished reading this article. Wow! You have articulated so well the horrible imbalance between psychiatry and the legal system surrounding it, and the patients and their families who are trying to advocate and extricate them from its grip. So much of what you said resonates deeply with me in terms of our own experience with our younger daughter, which ended so tragically, and with our older daughter who is free in a sense but still suffering from previous ravages and still in many ways under psychiatrist’s thumb as a semi-recovered patient. I applaud your continuing activism and hope that I will remain true to my commitment to do the same for the rest of the time I have on this Earth.
Report comment
Thank you, Maria, both for your supportive and encouraging comments and for your donation to MIA in Catherine’s memory!
“While there are many different beliefs on how best to help an individual in an altered state of mind, at the very least, a greater awareness of underlying causes is critically needed.”
Yes, indeed!
And thank you for the link to your website. I plan to check it out as soon as I post this reply.
Report comment
Thank you, uncommontype, and no need to apologize. Yes, I plan to share your response with my daughter when the time is right.
Report comment
Carol and I really appreciate what you’ve shared here, uncommontype. Your story is so gripping!
“Honestly, I’ve been on I think every medication listed in your article and then some. I am not on any medication now except a birth control (Yas) and a thyroid medication as well as supplements I have chouncommonly.
While the journey you describe has been harrowing and excruciating at times, as you describe it, it’s so good to hear that you have gotten on a much better and healthier track!
“…not one person ever stopped to question if perhaps the medications (7 to 10, at one time 12) were causing me harm, not helping. They would max out the dosage and sometimes prescribe higher dosage than recommended”
From our perspective, this is so typical of psychiatry, and so maddening! They create iatrogenic harm, and then compound it by not acknowledging what they’ve done. The “First do no harm” of the Hippocratic Oath seems to be thrown out the window!
I’m sorry you had to go through such a horrible withdrawal process, but at the same time I’m glad that that idiot psychiatrist finally “gave up on you” so you could get off all that crap and finally get your life back. You describe so well the totally dispirited and depleted condition you were in under the fog of all those medications, which is how so many people trapped in the system are!
Just to clarify, my older daughter didn’t die. In fact, she’s your age, exactly! Like you, she has come through many psych hospitalizations, most of which were quite long and often very traumatic. In one instance, they almost killed her by slamming her with neuroleptics and causing neuroleptic malignant syndrome! Thankfully, unlike Catherine, she has been able to recover each time and has been able to work part-time to supplement her SSD income. She has just come through another extremely difficult episode, so now wouldn’t be the time, but I am going to bring your story to her attention at some point.
Beyond this, I’m wondering how you would feel about our sharing your story with within our circle. We wouldn’t include any identifying information, which we actually don’t even have at this point other than your username on this site, which we wouldn’t share. But if you’d rather not, we understand completely.
At any rate, our hearts go out to you as well and we wish you all the best in your continuing journey!⚘
Report comment
Thank you, seebecrun, and yes, we have found some peace and hope to continue finding it and sharing our story and Shining Light into the darkness of a system that is so destructive to so many!
Report comment
Amen! Truth is a commodity severely lacking in the field of psychiatry!
Report comment
Thank you for your sympathy and condolences, Thilia, and for sharing your own ongoing saga.
“The system is incredibly messed up, and while I do believe that medications can help (to an extent) I do not believe they are an end-all blanket treatment, as it is often portrayed as.”
It sounds like you are on a better trajectory, and I’m glad you’re with someone who is going by the philosophy that “less is more” when it comes to psychiatric medications, and I’m glad you got off of such a toxic psychotropic cocktail.
I hope you are able to end up on the “minimal effective dosage” of everything, which might eventually be zero, hopefully.
Yes, I agree.
Report comment
Thanks for your comments, Lisa. Perhaps the syndrome you mentioned was involved in our daughters precipitous decline.. we’ll never know for sure. But I wish you the best in your own ongoing interactions with people experiencing similar things.
Report comment
Krista, my absolute kudos to you as a “freedom fighter” who has made it to the other side! Thank you for sharing this information. I haven’t looked at it yet, but I plan to do so. Our daughter has been beaten down by the system, and we have been devastated along with her, but we will never give up in the battle to bring light to the darkness of psychiatric coercion!
Report comment
[duplicate comment]
Report comment
Thanks for your comments, Lisa. Perhaps the syndrome you mentioned was involved in our daughters precipitous decline.. we’ll never know for sure. But I wish you the best in your own ongoing interactions with people experiencing similar things.
Report comment
Thank you for your sympathy and condolences, Thilia, and for sharing your own ongoing saga.
“The system is incredibly messed up, and while I do believe that medications can help (to an extent) I do not believe they are an end-all blanket treatment, as it is often portrayed as.”
It sounds like you are on a better trajectory, and I’m glad you’re with someone who is going by the philosophy that “less is more” when it comes to psychiatric medications, and I’m glad you got off of such a toxic psychotropic cocktail.
I hope you are able to end up on the “minimal effective dosage” of everything, which might eventually be zero.
Report comment
Thank you for sharing this, Denver Dan. What you said about Seroquel reminds me of an experience of my own. Well before we even had any idea that our youngest daughter, Catherine, would have any similar difficulties, our older daughter had gone through a couple of hospitalizations and was taking that medication. She was ambivalent about it, as it seemed to be helping in some ways, but also seem to be causing some difficulties. So in order to better empathize with her, I took a small dose of it myself. I slept like a log, and when I woke up, the whole next day it appeared as if I had lead in my brain. Everything I did was in slow motion, mainly my thought processes. If psychiatrists, who purport to be doctors who specialize in brain functioning, were honest, there are a whole lot of studies that they could be doing to really explore the effects of these drugs that they regularly use. But I believe that would cause even more dissonance than what they already have, and so we don’t see that. They consistently either deny or downplay side effects, and want to focus on illnesses that are really constellations of symptoms, often misperceived, that have no real known etiology.
Report comment
Thank you so much for your sympathetic and supportive comments, TRM123.
“Grief from the loss of a child is not a process. It is a lifelong weight upon the Soul’.
That is so true. To be honest with you, I have no interest in going through a “grieving process” and then moving on with life. I actually treasure that “weight upon my soul”; I want it to be part of the legacy of my dear daughter and a motivator for me to spend the rest of my life working to bring relief to others similarly trapped and to contribute, even if in a small way, to better; more humane ways of responding to those who experience severe psychosocial difficulties.
“It is so important that all those who have experienced the devastation of our loved ones as a result of coerced, and/or enforced gross toxicities of psychotropic dugs, document our tragedies.”
Absolutely!
Report comment
Excellent points, Gilbert!
“…the psychiatrist can always blame the patient when there are ‘negative outcomes’ and deterioration by claiming that it is due to ‘the natural course of the illness’”.
That is a very maddening part of this whole aga, and that of many other people stuck in the mental health vortex, and you have stated it perfectly.
Report comment
That’s wonderful, liddyLuu I would be interested to know how you did that?.
Report comment
Thank you, 2C922…, and I’m glad our story has been somewhat helpful to you in dealing with your friend. Best wishes to you!
Report comment
I hear you, Bree, and I agree with you that this thing called “mental illness” is very complex and confusing, and there are no easy answers. But I think you are missing the point, which is that people who know very little about what is really going on have way too much power and much too little honesty in this whole process. What happened to our Catherine in this process cannot just easily be brushed aside as needing to cut the mental health workers more slack. No, not when they press on with incorrect information, false narratives, a “knowledge base” that is horribly flawed and the ability to create a hell on Earth to some of the people who come under their power!
Report comment
Thank you for these heartfelt condolences, Love 22, and our own condolences to you… may you find the strength to carry on and find your way out to a better and more whole life!
Report comment
SuperNOVA, thanks so much for sharing your story…and with such articulate flair! Not only did you survive this ordeal, thankfully, but were able to help some of your cohorts in the process. Outstanding! You’ve hit so many nails on the head that I think you might be in the process of constructing something bigger… like a book, maybe?? I hope so!
Report comment
And thank you for sharing YOUR story, LJM! I find it both amazing and chilling, but I’m glad for the positive turn that it took and the fact that a more positive trajectory has continued. Your story is reminiscent of that of Susanna Cahalan , as related in her book “Brain on Fire”. As I believe she states in the book, had it not been for a seizure that put her in a neurological rather than a psychiatric ward, she might still be languishing somewhere in our psychiatric gulag archipelago, medicated into oblivion, as so many are! And she was fortunate to have a maverick neurologist who thought out of the box, which led to the discovery that she was suffering from a real illness that had only recently been discovered: anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis. When she was treated appropriately for that, what appeared to be severe psychiatric symptoms remitted fairly quickly and she fully regained her sanity!
Report comment
Yes, Richard, believe me we have thought about almost every one of the things you mentioned here, and it even gave us pause in our willingness to share this story. After all, Catherine died “on our watch”. But as tragically as her life ended, I am still so glad for the last 10 months we had with her. She was clearly being transformed into a “lifer” in the state hospital, or at least in some highly restrictive place in the mental health system. We’ve seen far too many of those utterly beaten down and dispirited individuals, many of whom have been totally cut off from or abandoned by their families and former friends. And the system was made even worse because of all the added draconian restrictions of COVID. No, we had to get her out of there and she had to know we weren’t willing to leave her languishing in that horribly depressing and demeaning setting!
Report comment
Yes, Lisa, it is certainly difficult, but thank you for being a “change agent” within the system to the extent that you can! I can certainly identify with that, having been employed in the educational system throughout my career.
Report comment
I appreciate your passion, James, and receive it in the supportive spirit that I know prompted it. The effects and the outcome of what was done is certainly evil. I will leave it to God to judge the intent behind it. Regardless, exposure and action to change these evil outcomes is clearly needed.
Report comment
Again; Boans, I appreciate your insightful and incisive observations. You’ve obviously been raked over the calls by the system as it is, but I’m glad you have survived and are giving testimony to it. Probably the only court that you or we have any chance of prevailing in is the “court of public opinion”. That’s a large part of what motivated us to share our story, and we really appreciate Robert Whitaker and the staff at MIA in supporting us in this. So may we continue to get the message out!
Report comment
Yes, Birdsong, this shameful system needs to change!
Report comment
Yes Joshua, the psychosocial distresses we humans experience (sometimes very severely) labeled as “mental illness” are terribly ill-defined and often terribly ill-treated once someone falls into the hands of the “mental health system”. It certainly needs to change!
Report comment
Thank you, KYP. We pray for release and a better outcome for you and, as you say, the millions of other families who are experiencing similar struggles.
Report comment
You’re very welcome, Grace, and thank you for the encouragement!
Report comment
Thank you for your condolences, huntmila, and for sharing your own ongoing heart-rending and very difficult ongoing saga with your son. To me, your son’s story underscores that there are no easy answers or one-size- fits-all solutions. If no two snowflakes are the same, as relatively simple as they are, how much more so with we human beings! I have certainly witnessed some of what you have shared, with both of my daughters and with others, how the issue of lack of insight in the midst of rather bizarre and sometimes dangerous behaviors can be very problematic. On the other hand, I’ve also seen people who lack insight into how debilitating and dangerous their psychiatric medication regimens have been and continue to be, which is also dangerous and potentially deadly. And then there are a bunch of people in between, where it is difficult to know whether they have been more helped or hurt by their ongoing “treatments”. That’s just my perspective.
I do encourage you to check into the MIA parent support group that is available on this site. Carol and I have really appreciated and benefited from it. I’m certainly not presenting it as a panacea, but I think it would be worth checking out and you might find some comfort in the camaraderie of others who are dealing with very similar issues with their own family members and trying to find a good way forward.
Report comment
Heather, this is from my wife Carol who is now driving the car at the moment.
“Heather I really appreciate your validation and your condolences and I just want to thank you for lending your voice to creating a consensus. I would value the opportunity to hear more of your observations and your testimony and do anything I could to help spread your story as we work to build consensus to end psychiatric abuse.
Report comment
Yes, John, they don’t know what they’re doing. As a Christian, I guess I should be praying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”…but I’m finding that hard to do.
Report comment
Thank you, “Dunwith…”. If there is any strength we exhibit, it comes from a higher source…as I saw on a poster of a person ascending a mountain with a backpack, “The task ahead of us is never as great as the power behind us.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). I’m glad you came through the system. I can appreciate how you feel, though, being in the system and feeling like a hypocrite. I felt some of that in my role as a school psychologist, especially after I saw “up close and personal” just what a terrible and damaging power imbalance there is between these systems and those they purport to serve. As I said above, we still have a sense of “moral injury” in having to cooperate as much as we did in our own daughter’s demise, as we were stuck between so many “rocks and hard places”.
Report comment
Thank you, Wendy. We feel so far from perfect and regularly go through the “woulda/coulda/shoulda” thing as we look back on our daughter’s horrendous saga over the last six years of her life. But as I’ve said, we want our lives going forward to be a tribute to Catherine as we try to both expose the evil of inhumane, coercive psychiatry and try to help those stuck in it.
Report comment
Ted, I’m aware of your story, have seen many of your posts and I believe I’ve even seen/heard you speak via You Tube. Your life has been a testimonial to the resiliency of the human spirit, and I’m so honored and inspired by your comments. Yes, we certainly intend to “fight back” and support others who are doing that. We’re so thankful for the MIA community, and other fellow “freedom fighters” in this struggle!
Report comment
Yes indeed, Birdsong!
Report comment
Thank you, Fiachra, and so glad you escaped and are doing well!
Report comment
Thanks for your kind remarks, Someone Else. And I’m glad for you and others who have survived and escaped our wonderful psychiatric gulag archipelago. Yes, art can be powerful and definitely a part of healing!
Report comment
Thank you, Francesca. Yes, your hope for us is what we’re trying to do, and in fact, feel “called” to do. God willing, that will be our best tribute to our daughter, and the most worthwhile way to spend the rest of our days on this planet!
Report comment
“And if, somehow, the patient’s body adapts to the presence of these toxic drugs and she is able to resume some level of functioning, they attribute her recovery to whatever combination of drugs she is taking at the time.”
So true, Patrick. I’ve seen so many of these poor “recovered” souls when I visit a friend in one of our local community residences for folks on disability due to severe psychosocial difficulties (exacerbated by drugs).
And yes, they certainly do make shit up…it’s the “bread and butter” of the trade!
Report comment
Thanks so much for your compassionate and caring sentiments, Daiphanous. This inhumanity of the system and refusal to even acknowledge the anguished feelings of those entrapped within it is so egregious! As we said in the article, and probably actually understated, we still carry the heavy weight of “moral injury” resulting from our own part in this saga, as even while we were trying to advocate for our daughter and extricate her from the psychiatric gulag, we often had to “go along to get along” to some extent, just to keep from being kept entirely out of the loop.
Report comment
Thanks so much for your comments, Boans. You’ve obviously been there and “know whereof you speak”! Yes, we’ve also seen just how corrupt and deceitful the legal trappings surrounding psychiatry’s coercive practices is, and how much those with the power in this system circle the wagons and protect their own guild interests, above all! Whenever it’s a question of patients rights versus guild interests, guess who wins? One of the saddest and most maddening sub-stories in this, for us, was how the very legal system in our state that is supposed to represent the “voiceless” patient ended up colluding with the hospital and stripping away our daughter’s rights. That could be a story in itself.
Report comment
Yes, you are right on! The false narrative disingenuously sold by mainstream psychiatry inures almost everyone in the system to the trauma and destruction of personhood often caused by their “treatments”! They have everyone indoctrinated into attributing everything to the “illness”. Thanks for your more humane approach, which is so needed by people in distress.
Report comment
Thank you, Richard. Your comments are so supportive, and I appreciate the passion behind them!
Report comment
Thank you for this excellent and much needed exposé, Michael. Yes, I have witnessed up close and personal just how Shady the world of ECT is.. I’m also very thankful for the work of two psychiatrists, one of whom you mentioned in your article and both of whom have written articles on this website on the same issue; Drs. Peter Breggin and Niall “Jock” McLaren.
My wife and I were well aware of the serious dangers of ECT when our youngest of four children landed back in the psychiatric unit of our local hospital, despite our best efforts to avoid it. She had just turned 18 four months earlier, and she was truly very incapacitated– due largely, we believe, to very ill-advised “treatments” in a previous lengthy, traumatic previous experience at the same hospital. We therefore obtained legal guardianship so that we could assure personalized medical services for her and protect her from the coercive psychiatric practices we’d already witnessed, first with her older sister, then with her. But despite our diligent efforts, they railroaded her through involuntary ECT through an egregious kangaroo court process. Then they forced her onto to an “antipsychotic” that genetic testing flagged as one to be avoided. Both of these coercive “treatments” were traumatic and devastating, and did nothing to restore her thinking, behavior or personal relationships. She was discharged in deplorable condition to the local state psychiatric hospital after over four months. After 16 months of languishing in this setting, we were finally able to extricate her. But it appears too much damage was done. She came out of that almost 2-year hospitalization much more diminished and distorted in her personhood after psychiatry had full control of her for almost two years, and she suffered a tragic and ultimately fatal accident ten months after returning home–directly related to drug-induced OCD that was greatly exacerbated and apparently entrenched by the particular neuroleptic medication she was forced onto after the involuntary ECT.
My wife and I continue to be heartsick about this whole horrific saga. Our daughter was a bright, healthy, creative, athletic and personable young lady when she experienced a precipitous psychosocial decline at age 15. But at every point where psychiatry “took over” with coercive, draconian “treatments” her condition worsened in every way.
We are in the process of writing a more detailed account of this whole saga and look forward to sharing it when completed.
Report comment
psmama, I have the same problem I had in responding to O.O.’s last comment…no “reply” button on your comment. So this is my reply to your response starting with “Russerford, I was in your daughter’s shoes also”:
Your comment was a wonderful advance “Father’s Day” gift. Thank you so much for sharing this! It is very affirming to hear from those who “get it”, but unfortunately, that understanding has come at a high cost. I am truly sorry for your pain. Thank you so much for keeping me and my daughter in your prayers. I will do the same for you. To be honest, in my more cynical moments I wonder what good prayer actually does, but I continue to do it, banking on the belief that “a bruised reed He will not break, and a smoldering wick He will not snuff out”…and I am certainly that “bruised reed” and “smoldering wick”–how much more my dear daughter! But I am more and more convinced that the good that is done in this world, MUST be done by those of us who allow ourselves to be “His workmanship”, who are “created for good works”. So there is the need for both prayer and action, and prayer that our actions would be in sync with the Lord’s will. And I thank everyone who may read this for your actions on behalf of those suffering at the hands of the psychiatric Gulag Archipelago, even if you are an atheist! (In my opinion, struggling with faith as I am, you’re doing the work of God without even knowing it!)
Report comment
O.O., for some reason there’s no “reply” button on your previous comment, so I’m using this one to reply. You started by saying,
“I can’t see, after everything, my journey ever being anything but difficult.”
I definitely hear the despair and anger in this and what follows. I’m sorry for your pain. But I thank you again for your supportive comments. And I do see strength of mind and spirit in you, and that is a very valuable gift. In saying this, I don’t mean to “whitewash” your suffering, past, present or future.
Report comment
Absolutely, Steve! You’ve hit the nail on the head!
Report comment
Thanks again. I hear you loud and clear, and these thoughts and suggestions are well taken. We have retained a lawyer, and are gathering some allies around us in this fight, including a survivor/advocate and a couple of holistic/integrative psychiatrists who are some of the few “good guys” among that seemingly conscience-seared cohort. I thank God we at least have the resources we do in this battle. My heart goes out to those that are entrapped in the psychiatric Gulag Archipelago with NO ONE on their side! I want to fight for them, too! I believe it has become my key life mission.
Report comment
O.O., thank you so much for responding to me as you have done… That really means a lot! And all of the things you have shared are very helpful. I don’t want you to think that I’m shooting down any of it, even when some of what we’ve tried hasn’t worked very well to date. From what you said I realized you’re still in a difficult journey, and it probably feels like crap sometimes, plus I’m sure it’s left a ton of scars. But I want to commend you for being able to share as you are doing, and if my daughter could ever recover anywhere near as well as you obviously have, I would feel extremely blessed! One thing that gives us hope is that our older daughter, as I already mentioned, has also come through some pretty horrific coercive psychiatric incarcerations and has recovered remarkably well… although she certainly has some scars, too. You did very well to gather some allies to see you through what appears to have been your last hospitalization. I encouraged and helped my older daughter complete a rather extensive psychiatric advance directive, developed by the Bazelon Center, which definitely helped in a couple of her hospitalizations. When push comes to shove, psychiatrists can override them in many respects in most states (they simply invoke “In my best clinical judgment…”), but I do believe it was helpful and kept her from ECT. They were trying to push this on her twice as the only thing left to help her… but she is living proof they were dead wrong!
“I want to warn you that my relationship was super damaged with my family from what happened. From not knowing who to blame or who didn’t protect me enough.”
Yes, thank you for mentioning this. Believe me, it is always on my mind. The way this thing has gone is unbelievably pernicious, and we are between so many rocks and hard places, including that we have to stay in the “good graces” of the ones who are so much in control of our daughter’s life at this point. Our “mental health system”, as it exists, seems almost designed to alienate people from their families. I wouldn’t blame my daughter, based on what she’s aware of, if she hated us at this point! She has NO IDEA how we’ve been advocating for her, behind the scenes. While we have heard mental health workers lament the lack of involvement of families, what they want more than anything, both from patients and their families, is unquestioning “compliance”. When you seriously challenge what they’re doing, or trying to do, they have ways of making you (and your loved one) pay!
Report comment
Oldhead, you have my hearty “Amen” on this! I don’t think there is any more crying need for the exposure of injustice than in the issues involving the draconioan, coercive, abusive practices within our current psychiatric system!
Report comment
Jim, I’m glad to see you use that quote. I’ve thought of it many times myself, and if not for my fear that it would come back to bite us as we try to extract our daughter from her current psychiatric captors I would offer to buy them a very large and prominent sign with that very quote to post over their entrance!
Report comment
“And who better to inflict that violence than the people at mental health services, aided and abetted by the people at the Mental Health Law Centre who are prepared to assist in the concealment of human rights abuses whilst claiming to be advocates for those being abused?”
Yes, what a cruel irony! One that we are in the midst of as I write this. Reminds me of the C.S. Lewis quote:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” …and in the case of the psychiatric Gulag Arhipelago, calling them “moral busybodies” seems far too mild!
Report comment
“The hospital must know that people are watching. That if Evan comes out more damaged then he went in, that there will be repercussions.”
This is so true, and it is one of the things my wife and I are trying to do as we continue to negotiate the unbelievably precarious balancing act of maintaining contact and influence with those “treating” our involuntarily hospitalized 19-year-old daughter while trying to extract her from this seemingly No-exit hell!
One of the things I’m thinking of as I write this is to enlist friends who know us and our daughter to stand with us outside of the hospital with signs simply reading “We are watching you, _______, _______, and ______ (with the names of the attending psychiatrist, Chief of Psychiatry and Clinical Director in the blanks).
But here’s a chilling reality in our ongoing saga: Our daughter did, in fact, come out of a 74-day “psychiatric incarceration” much more debilitated than when she entered back in 2017. Were there repercussions? You bet, but not against the hospital! They managed to “spin” things in a way to actually blame us for her deplorable state. It has taken us until recently, through extensive effort, to get her hospital records amended to remove erroneous, misleading and pejorative information from this hospital’s records…after they got her back in their grip and perpetrated even more harmful, coercive and damaging “treatments” on her!
Having said this, I still appreciate all you’ve said. And of course, we will never give up!
Report comment
Yes, yes O.O. Reminds me of the horrible demise of George Floyd. “I can’t breathe!” When psychiatry has it’s knee on your neck, someone besides you needs to be screaming…not just politely requesting!
Report comment
Hello Jim, because of the delayed timing I wonder if anyone will see this…but I’m following through on one of your suggestions in our email exchange on this article and posting my comments to you here:
Thank you so much for sending this notice, and even more so for writing this article, Jim!
I was struck by your comment near the end, ” I am very concerned that Evan is about to be devoured by psychiatry’s maw.”
For the past 17 months my wife and I have been essentially reduced to watching helplessly as our now 19-year-old daughter, now in the 17th month of an involuntary psychiatric hospitalization, has been subjected to forced ECT followed by coercively ramping up a neuroleptic medication that was specifically contraindicated by genetic testing! Oh, we have been far from passive in this process, but as you know it is virtually impossible to wrest a loved one from the grip of the psychiatric Gulag Archipelago, especially as they become increasingly incapacitated by the coercive, draconian measures imposed!
And our situation is nuanced in a way that may be hard to understand, even for some of our compatriots in the psychiatric resistance movement. My wife and I obtained NYS Article 81 guardianship of our daughter, but for the opposite reason that most people do this: to keep her from being swallowed up by the system and kept in a very dispirited and diminished state, as I have witnessed happens to so many in the system when they have the kind of severe difficulties that she is experiencing. We would not have done this if she had retained enough of her capabilities to advocate for herself, as our older daughter has done. She has also been “through the mill”, but thank God she made it through and is now of very sound mind!
We are certainly not rich, but thank God we had the resources to do this, unlike many if not most of the people who get similarly caught up in our wonderful mental health system. But despite our efforts on behalf of our younger daughter, the very thing we feared is happening right under our noses!
As an added cruel twist, Mental Hygiene Legal Services, the very agency in New York that is charged with being the “voice for the voiceless”, actually colluded in the process of forcing ECT on our dear daughter (although they will never admit this and shrewdly seem to have covered their tracks).
How I wish there was someone to write such an article about our daughter’s horrible ongoing saga. I know you have a lot on your plate and I’m not asking you to do this, Jim. It’s just heart cry of an anguished father.
Report comment
Excellent point, Ron. My first thought was “megakudos” to Dr. Moncrieff, who is such a courageous, brilliant, articulate shining light on these issues…and I still feel that way, but your point is valid and very well taken. I think she’ll probably respond to it.
Report comment
Kayla, my opening comment about Sandra being perceived as a “collaborator with the enemy” (i.e., mainstream psychiatry) was based on previous responses (by some) to articles she’s written here. I hadn’t read any of the comments here beforehand and agree with you that most of them have been positive. And in speaking of “real world credibility”, i was in no way trying to deny or denigrate the experiences of those, like you or my older daughter, who have been victimized by forced or strongly coerced psychiatric treatments that seemed to harm much more than help them. I am trying my best to advocate for such people, and I’m sure many others who comment here are doing the same! At the same time, my own experiences and those of a wide range of people I continue to hear from leads me to have an appreciation for just how knotty the dilemma(s) can be for anyone dealing with a severely psychotic state–the individuals themselves and those who love them and are trying to find the best way back to sanity. My sense is that some people (not you) find it easier to “posture” in a stance that something is always wrong or always right than to deal with the hard realities of situations in which each path is fraught with serious potential difficulties. Having said that, I am firmly in yours and Sandra’s camp in terms of strengthening the safeguards against forced drugging. Hope I’m not coming across as a politician here!
Report comment
Bravo, Sandra! I’m commenting before looking over other comments, knowing there are certainly some if not many here who see you as too much of a “collaborator with the enemy”. I do not, even though I have a loved one who has many times been on the “sharp end of the needle” and was deeply wounded and damaged by “the system”. In fact, I am currently in the midst of a crisis involving yet another family member who is in the throes of a first episode psychosis. Fortunately, we got her out of the hospital fairly quickly and we are blessed to have a very thoughtful, careful, recovery-oriented psychiatrist (like you!) and many caring friends working with us. Once again, I applaud your courage, passion, honesty and candor. As I’ve said before, you have what I call “real world” credibility since you’re not just posturing but actually working to help people recover. Thank you for your advocacy and willingness to “go against the grain” of your profession.
Report comment
Great, Bob…and just so you know, I wouldn’t be “above” putting some such posters onto some of the professional bulletin boards at hospitals and colleges in my area if and when they become available!
Report comment
Thanks for the heads up on this Bob. Its timely for me, as I’ve been thinking a lot lately on how to get the word out to doctors and mental health professionals that I know. Although my professional experience is nowhere near as extensive as yours, as a retired school psychologist who became enlightened on these issues fairly late in my career, I share a number of the feelings you express, particularly about regrets versus moving forward to promote positive change. I am most concerned about making a dent in the “false knowlege” that abounds among mental health professionals. Are there posters and/or flyers that can be printed about these courses?
Report comment
John, I didn’t say the original design study was flawed, although it might be (consider there was no true control group; i.e., a group for whom there was NO treatment, which would control for the placebo or Hawthorne effect…but I realize there may be ethical concerns in offering participants “no treatment”). What I meant was that the conclusions drawn by the researchers after the 14-month study appear flawed (overly benign and lacking in cautionary information regarding the intensive medication group), at least in light of subsequent follow up information. I believe if researchers and mental health practitioners had the well-being of children at heart first and foremost, they would make a strong effort to counter or at least question the initial finding that appeared so favorable to intensive medication treatment for ADHD. I see no such strong cautionary statements; in fact, as has been stated, they appear to have “spun” the latter findings in a way that tends to support the initial “drug-friendly” conclusions.
Your point about your own experience is very well taken, and as Steve said in his reply, it brings to mind critical psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff’s recommendations for a “drug-centered” rather than “disease-centered” approach to treating mental and emotional symptoms. Unfortunately, owing to the predominance of the current disease-centered approach, the concept of “informed consent” is regularly violated (in my opinion) and many people (including kids) do not have the option of discontinuing a drug when its harmful effects outweigh its helpful ones (if such effects were ever even present).
Report comment
Your point seems valid and is well taken, John. I only saw it after posting my comment below. Yes, from a strict scientific point of view, the “study” was not maintained as such after the 14-month period for the reasons you mention; therefore, the post-14-month follow up findings are mitigated. However, I believe the follow up strongly suggests the initial findings may be quite flawed. This seems consistent with short-term versus long-term research on other “psychiatric conditions” (none of which have any conclusive validity as “brain diseases”, to my knowledge), and the strong tendency in mainstream psychiatry to trumpet and base treatment standards on these short-term studies while ignoring or even denying the findings of long-term studies.
Report comment
Regarding the MTA study on ADHD treatments, this is what I found on the NIMH (who funded the study) website, under “Questions and Answers”:
“Because their treatment after the end of the study was not controlled, it is not possible to draw accurate conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions beyond 14 months, or determine if treatment improves long-term functioning. However, the observations collected from these uncontrolled follow-up assessments can provide information about the long-term course of ADHD itself. These data are being analyzed and reported as they become available.3”
Is this why they trumpeted the initial 14-month results (most favorable to intensive medication treatment) but have muted subsequent results that have shown either no difference between treatment groups or worse long-term results for those in the more intensive medication treatment group?
No matter how you explain this, it seems to be a prime example of how money and guild interests have come to trump honesty and commitment first and foremost to the patient in health care–especially in psychiatry. It is particularly egregious when children’s brains are increasingly put at risk from this dishonesty!
Report comment
So sorry for the tragic loss of your precious son, Steven. I couldn’t agree more with your strong caution against relaxing the standards regarding “off label” use of psych meds with kids. I know from my many years as a school psychologist that the use of psych meds with kids has risen exponentially, with no sign of abatement. And the concept of “informed consent” is regularly violated in that the proposed benefits of medication are overinflated and the risks greatly understated; furthermore, dangerous falsehoods about the drugs balancing brain chemical imbalances and being “like insulin to a diabetic” continue to be blithely perpetuated. Even Dr. Duckworth, the Medical Director of NAMI (which tends to be VERY friendly toward psychotropic drugs and the biopsychiatry mindset), has stated that he NEVER prescribed antipsychotic medications to children. Thank you for this article and for sharing your very valuable “insider’s view” in exposing the dangers our children are being subjected to by the existing psychiatric system.
Report comment
You make an excellent point here, Norman. I notice that many who have been indoctrinated in the “faith” of biopsychiatry confuse denial of the medical basis of psychiatric diagnoses with denial of the symptoms (which few if any of us in the “resistance” movement are doing. If the disclaimer you suggest was put into practice, and if a “drug-centered” rather than “disease -centered” approach was used (as suggested by psychiatrist Joanna Moncrief), then at least there would be some honesty in the process.
Report comment
Once again you’ve hit the nail on the head, Phillip. Thank you for another excellent expose of the chicanery of psychiatry. Funny, as I was reading this I was thinking to myself, “What is that other new bogus childhood ‘syndrome’ they recently came up with?” And then there it was, just a few paragraphs down: “Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder”. What an outrageous crock of crap! As a retired school psychologist, I’m well aware of how parents can be bamboozled and pressured to buy into this pseudoscientific crap! Thanks for your diligent, persistent, articulate presentations. You are giving us good ammunition to counter the harmful lies, half-truths and deceptions of modern biopsychiatry.
Report comment
Yes, yes, David…I think I follow you. So do you think if the primal parents had been active participants in real trials with Eden Pharmaceutical, as co-producers, maybe the one son would’ve had the benefit of some good Ableify, thereby not engaging in delusional behavior that incurred the lethal fury of his brother, who was apparently jacked up on coCaine?
Report comment
Thanks for another excellent article, James. I share your righteous indignation with the “never mind the conflicting and mitigating factors, just diagnose!” nonsense you bring to light here. I see a strong parallel to our special education system, in which i was immersed for many years as a school psychologist (now retired, still involved part-time). Like the DSM diagnoses, several of the special education diagnoses are quite ambiguous (e.g., “learning disability”, “emotional disturbance”, “other health impairment”) and subject to a variety of confounding factors, which can be difficult if not impossible to sort out. There’s a missing classification that i believe has at least as much validity as these ones I’ve mentioned: “School Toxicity Syndrome”. And the remediation is much more clear cut: change the environment! (Maybe I’ll see if I can get “The Onion” to publish my research on that one!)
But back to the parallel between the mental health system and the special education system. I see a similar problem that stems partly from the erroneous application of a “medical model” to behaviors that really have no clear medical etiology. Furthermore, even with the best of intentions (which I’m not assuming are always present), the “cures” to these supposed “illnesses” have a rather dismal track record, whether in educational or mental health outcomes. With regard to both mental health and education, the difficulties that individuals experience are very real and often do need attention. And unless one is blessed with a built-in, supportive social network to provide that attention free of charge, someone has to pay for services. I won’t be so cynical to say that funding is the ONLY reason for the DSM and the special education classification system in our country, but it sure is a major factor! No label, no services. On the one hand, you could say it could be no other way; after all, we don’t have unlimited funds. So if you’re “in the system” and want to get needed services for your client, it appears you have to “hold your nose” and pick the best label.
But as you, James, and several others have pointed out, there are many problems with this–some of them very grievous. Perhaps the worst is that the onus for the problem is placed squarely on the child or individual, who may have to drag that label (with all of it’s limiting implications) around for the rest of his/her life. And maybe even worse, in the case of DSM diagnosis, there is the strong likelihood of being subjected to a variety of mind- and body-altering drugs or other harmful “interventions”. And in any case, the REAL problem may never be addressed or even identified!
Another problem that seems inherent in either system is that an ever-expanding array of procedures, regulations, specialists, etc. are interposed between the person needing help of some sort and the actual service! So funds that could be used for those in need get eaten up by the bureaucracy (and maybe that would include me!)
I certainly don’t see any easy solution, but I do think we need to move toward a system that identifies specific needs tied to services, without reliance on bogus labels. Such a system would involve a complete overhaul of the current funding system. With the guild and financial interests at stake (as Robert Whitaker and Lisa Cosgrove so clearly elucidate in “Psychiatry Under the Influence”) that will surely be a daunting task!
Russ
Report comment
I just checked and many other states also have “mental health parity” laws that would at least partially mitigate the cost of psychotherapy. Unfortunately, you probably need some kind of a mental illness diagnosis, which could open up a whole other “can of worms”.
Report comment
Excellent points, Duane. Like you, I’m not an anti-capitalist and do not think the “creeping socialism” we’ve witnessed in our country over the past fifty years or so is a good thing. Even though I detest collectivism as it’s manifested in totalitarian states over the past century, i increasingly believe that a loving, very supportive community is very conducive to real healing for those suffering from extreme emotional and mental distress. “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” In such a community, perhaps the expensive psychotherapy would not be necessary…or at least less so; or the community of caring friends would pull together to cover the expense, sort of like the Amish do in building a barn for one of their own. One other thing on this: Here in New York State, insurance covers psychotherapy with the same co-pay as medical conditions, due to “Timothy’s Law”.
Russ
Report comment
Mickey, I heartily accept your apology and thank you for a very thoughtful reply. It’s clear to me that you’re a very honorable man. I was sincere in my first comment and I really admire your passion and commitment to translating these passions into corrective action! In my own passion I have sometimes said things that I later regretted… so we definitely share that human tendency. Keep up your strong voice and the honesty and good will you’ve demonstrated.
In solidarity,
Russ
Report comment
Mickey, much of what you say resonates with me. I especially like your suggestion of “ju-jitsu techniques calculated to employ psychiatry’s own claims and tactics against itself.” I believe that is what Robert Whitaker has done and continues to do, in part. In my own small way, I believe I’m also employing that tactic in advocating for a couple people close to me who are to differing degrees caught in conventional biopsychiatry’s web. And I’ve also been active in trying to get the truth out in a number of other ways, and I do see a place for strong and active resistance against the “false knowledge” in contemporary mainstream psychiatry.
However, I totally disagree with your following statement: “Jesus has often been cited as such an example [a “power-free good example”], but Jesus was murdered, and the example of the life he led has hardly had an effect on the quantity of evil in our contemporary world.” First off, I believe Jesus was and IS anything but power-free. I believe his life has had inestimable influence and real effect in dispelling evil in the world and promoting love, including in myself (although I’m very much a work in progress, continually in need of God’s grace). Clearly, evil still abounds in our contemporary world, including harmful practices in psychiatry and, in some cases, through “religious”, misguided people who claim to be acting in the name of God, or even Jesus! However, I will contend that the power of Jesus is very real, was perfectly manifested in his life, and has been very evident throughout history in the “good works” even of the very flawed people who (at times) through faith allow him to work through their lives.
Report comment
Yes, Sandra, what you say brings to mind what I understand is one of the key principles undergirding the Open Dialogue approach: “tolerance of uncertainty”, which goes hand-in-hand with a humble honesty that acknowledges there is still a tremendous amount of mystery in all the states of mind and being that we call “mental illness”. I see the connection you mention with Joanna Moncrieff’s blog, as well as your own in reflecting on “Psychiatry Under the Influence” and “Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me)”. I think it would certainly be more honest and avoid some of the more egregious treatment mistakes to approach things from a “drug centered” rather than a “disease centered” perspective, as Joanna has suggested. And your comments on the way doctor’s in training, by necessity, concentrate on absorbing a tremendous amount of information from their mentors, at the expense of critical thinking, certainly helps in understanding how faulty information and practices are perpetuated.
I so appreciate your portrayal of the “lose-lose” scenario it terms of the way acute psychiatric hospital staff regard someone who ends up in the hospital while attempting medication taper, versus those who end of there while being “perfectly compliant”. I’ve witnessed both of those scenarios and it is truly maddening!
Report comment
Thanks so much for this, too, Jim. I’ve long suspected this is the case and keep looking to see what “evidence” is used to support this apparently fallacious notion. We really need to bring this fact to the forefront, and confront the “false knowledge” of conventional psychiatry strongly, relentlessly, at every opportunity. Their myths have become far too entrenched, and it looks like unquestioned acceptance of such erroneous information played a significant part in the closing of Soteria Alaska and CHOICES, Inc.
Report comment
Man, you’ve really nailed it here, Michael, in terms of what is needed and how much better it would be than the immediate and unrelenting brain drugging that almost every unfortunate soul experiencing a first episode psychosis now faces! It’s disgusting but not really surprising to hear that NAMI joined the gang responsible for closing those good programs you mention and were a part of. I’m trying to be a dissenting voice within my local chapter of that organization, but it’s increasingly hard. We need an alternative.
Report comment
Jim, thanks so much for your efforts in Alaska, and your continuing work through PsychRights to bring needed attention and advocacy to those who continue to be caught up in the Gulag Psychepelago here in “the land of the free”. I like your following portrayal and rationale of Soteria Alaska: “… it is designed to prevent people who experience a first psychotic break from immediately being put on neuroleptics (hyped by the marketers as “antipsychotics), and thus transformed into chronic, disabled mental patients. It is pretty fair to say that 80% of such people so treated can get through their experience and on with their lives, compared to 5% of the people who can be considered recovered under the current psych-drugs-for-all, mainstream approach.” I find it both incredible and intensely frustrating that so very few in our current “mental health” system seem to have any inkling of this. Yes, to be fair, the 80% recovery figure (assuming this is that reportedly achieved by Open Dialogue treatment methodology in western Finland) needs to be replicated and corroborated. But what you ran into in Alaska seems to epitomize the saying that “false knowledge is more dangerous than ignorance”. The “psych-drugs-for-all” mainstream approach, as you so aptly put it, appears to be based on the false knowledge that psychosis is the manifestation of a progressive neurological malignancy that must be arrested by drugs at all costs. Ironically, this false knowledge often results in the very thing it purports to prevent: progressive neurological deterioration as a result of the intrusion and continued bombardment of toxic substances in the brains of its victims!
Anyway, thanks for continuing to “fight the good fight”!
Report comment
Laura, you da woman! This looks great, and I can’t wait to dig in! This kind of information, forum and dialogue is so desperately needed. I happen to think it’s the most needed of anything in the “mental health” domain. Unfortunately, it may be that not everyone who has been debilitated by psych drugs will be able to successfully taper completely off…but they sure have the right to try, with as much support as possible–and to at least reduce them as much as possible. As you know, there is precious little support for that among medical professionals with prescribing power. Thanks for your valiant efforts to help others achieve the freedom you’ve been enjoying since getting off your own toxic psych med cocktail. Your life is a great testimonial and inspiration to me, and I’m sure many, many others!
Report comment
“Dr. Marder knows Elyn Saks who was the recipient of long term high quality psychotherapy yet, as she writes in her memoir, when she finally agreed to use neuroleptics, she felt much better. I think we can no more discount her story than discount the story of Joanna Greenberg or many others who recovered without using drugs. ” [I’ll add Laura Delano, David Oaks, Will Hall, a few personal friends (anonymous, since i don’t have their permission to mention their names)…as well as those who only use them only on a self-directed “as needed” basis, like Keris Myrick, Jim Gottstein, and another anonymous personal friend]
I was just looking back at your response to bpdtransformation, and i do appreciate this comment.
It resonated with me in terms of what I’ll call “real world balance” (something i see in all of your articles)–meaning it avoids posturing in a dogmatic way that essentially denies the real life experiences of some in order to maintain “purity” of an ideological viewpoint. I am incensed by the degree to which i see this kind of one-sided posturing happening by the promoters of the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness–those who, unfortunately still hold most of the power in the mental health industry despite the lack of valid scientific support for their ideology. I think those of us who are very critical of mainstream psychiatry (justifiably) need to scrupulously avoid that same error. While we rightly bring to light those who have successfully come off of debilitating psych meds, to deny the experience of someone whose life has been improved by use of these same meds is wrong, and detracts from our overall credibility.
Report comment
Thanks again, Sandra, for your honest, candid, caring approach, and for co-presenting this extremely important workshop to some of those who most need to hear it. It is encouraging to hear of the high interest level.
I see some references to Open Dialogue in the comments. bpdtransformation raised these questions/issues very articulately in the second comment above, so I won’t try to reiterate them. But I would like to ask, is Dr. Marder aware of the work in Northern Finland, and if so, what does he think of it? Does he believe they’re lying, or distorting the results in a self-deluded manner? Of course, first-episode psychosis cannot be equated with schizophrenia, notwithstanding the issue that “schizophrenia” is a rather ill-defined and far from unitary state of mind/being. So is that his “out”–that the success reported with Open Dialogue is because they are dealing with first episode psychosis, which may be transient anyway? If that is his position, would he be in support of refraining from use of neuroleptics, if at all possible, when treating first-episode psychosis? I seriously doubt it!
Report comment
Sa, I’m probably posting this too late for you to see it (unless you checked the box for an email notice when there’s another comment on the same article)…Anyway, I REALLY appreciated your last response in our exchange on this article that starts with…
“Sa on May 9, 2015 at 4:28 pm said:
Russerford,
I really ‘hear’ you on the point that vocal family advocates in leadership roles often seem very concerned with protecting the image of the psychiatric profession and supporting the resulting drug recommendations – I have had the same experience.”
Your analysis of why so many family members seem blind to the pseudo-science behind the so-called “evidence base” in psychiatry was excellent, and resonates greatly with me. You brought out so many things I’ve also witnessed, such as the following:
” When confronted with stories of people who have recovered, many of these family members seem at some level so unable to imagine that recovery is possible, that they do not believe these people were ever severely ill.”
Some years ago a colleague of mine, knowing the story of my daughter’s horrific experiences in psychiatric hospitalizations, mentioned a film that i finally checked out of the library: “Lorenzo’s Oil”…It’s very heart-rending, but I highly recommend it. It’s about the absolutely heroic efforts of two parents to advocate for their son, and eventually contribute to a breakthrough in treatment that helped prolong his life some, and greatly helped others with the same rare and usually fatal disease. One of the most poignant and disturbing issues brought out was how their efforts were actually OPPOSED by the advocacy group in place for this disease! They resisted them on the basis that “you are giving people false hope”!
Also, your following point is key in this discussion:
“Now add that for some families -although certainly not our family and according to the research not for the majority of people – dramatic positive changes can happen after drugs are introduced particularly in the short term, and even for a few, the benefits last long term. All of this helps me understand how families have been led to so fervently believe that the psychiatrist just needs to find the ‘right’ combination of drugs to make this miracle happen for their loved one.”
I think this last point is SO important for people to note and understand! I believe it is a huge factor in perpetuating the aggressive drugging of altered states of mind and emotion. Because SOME people have an initial, dramatic positive response to medication, it is assumed that everyone needs this…and when they don’t respond as expected, higher doses and/or different drugs are thrown into the mix…or ECT, if all else fails! And the same holds true of those whose initially positive response turns not so good over time…Rarely is the thought of carefully tapering the medication given credence. And, of course, when a person sees their loved deteriorate after stopping medication (usually abruptly, because they feel so crappy and no one shows any interest in helping them carefully taper), this then confirms the myth that they have a “brain chemical imbalance for which they need to take medication for the rest of their life”.
This is tragic, frustrating and disheartening. But, in the words of Winston Churchill, “Never give up!”
Thanks again, Sa, for your very insightful comments.
Report comment
Madmom,
I want you to know that even though (as I said above) I’ve rejoined my local NAMI chapter, I’ve done so with the intention of being a dissident presence within this organization. Not to oversimplify, but i see three types of people at NAMI meetings: 1) Anguished and devastated newcomers (usually referred by someone in the mental health system), desperate for support and direction; 2) People who have been coming to meetings, feel they and their loved one has been positively supported, and have more or less bought into the biopsychiatric model of mental illness that NAMI promotes; and 3) the leaders, who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the biopsychiatric model. Those in group 1 are the ones I’m most hopeful of supporting and those that are the most receptive to honest, open information and discussion; some in group 2 seem open to re-evaluating the “truth” of what they’ve been led to believe; group 3 vary from somewhat open (if they’re relatively new to leadership) to extremely defensive to the point of shutting down discussion or doing everything they can to prevent it in the first place.
As I said, I’ve stepped back from involvement lately as the meetings have left me with feelings of frustration and futility…it just feels too much like paddling upstream against a powerful current.
You mention “NAMI is supposed to be advocating for my daughter but they aren’t.” From what you’ve written in other posts about your daughter, I have much empathy for you on this. I have also experienced the leadership of my local NAMI showing no inclination whatsoever to intervene on my daughter’s behalf in terms of correcting potentially harmful, erroneous information in her hospital records. They bill themselves as “the nation’s largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness”…yet, in my view NAMI’s leadership seems much more concerned with protecting the image of the psychiatric profession and the pharmaceutical industry than standing up for individuals who are harmed by them–in fact, they seem to be in denial that such harm even exists!
I’m thinking more and more that an alternative to NAMI is sorely needed, and hopefully I’ll be a part of that.
Report comment
I think you make a good point here, Sa. In keeping with the mantra “Think globally, act locally” I rejoined my local NAMI chapter expressly for the reasons you mention, since this is the organization that virtually ALL people/families in emotional/mental crisis get sent to in my area. I want to reach out to families in distress and try to be a “different voice” to the struggling and desperate family members who come there. At times I think I have had a modest, positive impact. I sense that families are very open to information when it comes from someone else who has experienced similar things.
Unfortunately, I’ve been AWOL for a while now because of the feelings of discouragement and futility I was left with the last couple times. Sometimes there is so much erroneous information being endorsed by the leadership that to confront it all I would have to make myself even more of an irritating presence to some than I’ve already been, and I just don’t have the temperament for it lately. I may be coming to the point when I feel that the negatives outweigh the positives in terms of my continued involvement. Admittedly, I’m less hopeful than I was a couple years ago when Bob Whitaker was invited to present at NAMI’s national convention, and when Keris Myrick was the board president….but I’m hoping to regroup and get back in the mix.
I keep musing about starting up some kind of local alternative to NAMI…a place that wouldn’t be beholden to the drug companies (who heavily fund NAMI) and where people could get honest, complete information and support, with no effort to coerce them toward a way of thinking that primarily serves the “system” rather than the individual experiencing mental and/or emotional distress. The trouble with this is I just don’t currently have the time and energy for such an undertaking…and I’m not sure if i have the personal skill set for such a venture.
Report comment
“And with that example of activism in mind, I am now thinking of whether MIA could host a public discussion on “solutions,” and also mount a public campaign to publicize this issue.”
Okay, I’m in! Here are two suggestion for rallying cries for such a campaign:
SHRINK THE POWER OF SHRINKS!
GET YOUR DRUGS OFF OUR BRAINS–SUPPORT DETOX NOW!
Report comment
Very well said, Sera. Your articulate words speak for so many of us. I think the persistence of this “chemical imbalance” belief system is bringing out the bipolar in me! Just when I’m becoming more hopeful that this destructive myth is crumbling, I see depressing evidence that it just seems to keep chugging along!
Report comment
Anyone remember Justina Pelletier? It was this kind of “junk science” diagnosis and “treatment”, coupled with draconian police state tactics, that kept her incarcerated at a locked psych ward at Boston Children’s Hospital and separated from her loving family for over a year. I was proud to be one of the protesters at the “Occupy the APA”/Free Justina rally in NYC last spring, and I’m glad to say justice (finally) prevailed…although it will not be complete until those responsible for this travesty are appropriately disciplined.
Report comment
“Imagine a world where we allow for medical uncertainty. We allow medically unexplained symptoms to be part of our medical puzzles without patient apology and without doctor frustration.”
This reminds me of one of the basic principles of Finnish “Open Dialogue”, something that i see as sadly lacking in conventional psychiatry: “tolerating uncertainty”. It is one of the seven basic principles of Open Dialogue and one of the key elements of Dialogic Practice.
“Tolerating uncertainty is at the heart of dialogue. It is thus a specific element and an element that defines the other elements. In Open Dialogue, there is the fundamental orientation of creating an organic understanding of the crisis with everyone’s input (polyphony). This stance is based on the assumption, as well as our experience, that every crisis has unique features. Hasty decisions and rapid conclusions about the nature of the crisis, diagnosis, medication, and the organization of the therapy are avoided. Further, we do not give ready-made solutions such as specific, preplanned therapeutic interventions to the family or the single person in crisis.”
http://umassmed.edu/psychiatry/globalinitiatives/opendialogue/
Report comment
Excellent point, Jeffrey! The duplicitous circular reasoning behind this morphing of ADHD to the bogus “pediatric bipolar disorder” is disgusting and maddening.
Report comment
Also, thanks for the link to the article about psych drugs and the death of children, Jeffey. Yes, it’s these kinds of things that cry out for justice!! I’m going to copy it and add it to a file I’m keeping on that subject.
Report comment
I appreciate your remarks, Jeffrey. While this article still leaves me feeling more hopeful, I don’t disagree about the need for justice. In fact, I’m working for it in some small local, “person-by-person” ways…and I’ve recently become part of something that will hopefully give me the opportunity to have a much broader impact. I really do wrestle with this issue–that is, how much to expend my efforts toward “re-education and reform” and how much toward bringing to justice those who seem impervious to change and blithely unconcerned about the damage they’re doing.
Report comment
Thanks for this article, Sharna. I thought it was very incisive, concise and well written. It resonated with me in terms of what I’ll call “real world balance”–meaning it avoids posturing in a dogmatic way that essentially denies the real life experiences of some in order to maintain “purity” of an ideological viewpoint. I am incensed by the degree to which i see this kind of one-sided posturing happening by the promoters of the “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness–those who, unfortunately still hold most of the power in the mental health industry despite the lack of valid scientific support for their ideology. I think those of us who are very critical of mainstream psychiatry (justifiably) need to scrupulously avoid that same error. We do not have conclusive proof that there is NEVER some kind of a legitimate brain disorder behind extremes in behavior, thinking or emotion, and to pretend that we do detracts from our overall credibility. As you say in one of your opening paragraphs,
“It is not outrageous to suggest that a child’s developing brain might be disordered in some way, just as any other organ in the body might be, and that the solutions lies in correcting that disorder.”
Of course, you go on to make clear your overriding concern about the inappropriate diagnosing and overmedicating of children in our culture.
I see there’s a lot of discussion, apparently mostly critical, about “epignetics”. That’s an issue I haven’t become conversant about and I’m sure it would be good to look into this further. I’m a little concerned that we tend to zero in on the parts of an article that we object to. To me, there is much to like about your perspective. I’m certainly not discounting the objections, and I hope to look more into the issues mentioned.
Report comment
Thank you, thank you, thank you, Janet! There is such a dire need for what you are doing. This is the kind of intensive support center I wish were available everywhere, since there are so many people caught in psychiatry’s deceptive and often life-diminishing web. It is good to know there is a brave and obviously independent-minded (i.e., “liberated”) doctor working with you, because like it or not most people trying to withdraw from toxic medications will need as an ally someone who can help with a very personalized taper. Keep us posted, and God bless you and all those involved in this noble project!
Report comment
Excellent point, Jeffrey! This is a travesty and I do feel regularly outraged. I’m trying to do my part to bring increased attention to this.
Report comment
I keep hoping against hope that the duplicity and intellectual dishonesty that seems to abound in mainstream biopsychiatry, much to the detriment of those caught in it’s pernicious web, will be exposed and corrected. There is a proverb that says “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” I’ve been alternately hopeful and heartsick in recent years.
This article strikes me as more than a ray of hope. In “Anatomy of an Epidemic” Robert Whitaker related how the concept of dopamine supersensitivity was first raised by physicians Guy Chouinard and Barry Jones back in the late 1970’s, but quickly dismissed by some of the key opinion leaders in psychiatry. As Whitaker said, “Psychiatry desperately needed this discussion to go away.” And it did, mostly, for over thirty years.
However, it seems to be making it’s way back into professional dialogue other that just among the “choir” (like here in MIA). This study, I believe, bears out the old addage that “You can fool some of the people some of the the time….etc.” Kudos to those who refuse to yield to the pressure of the power brokers who will defend the status quo at any cost. Eventually, the truth prevails.
Report comment
“Before we ask questions or do anything, our primary responsibility is to see the mad person not as an other but as ourselves.”
Yes, indeed. This might sound like a “nice thing to say”, but having been confronted by the descent into madness of a loved one (and the return to rationality, thankfully) I have become keenly aware of just how tenuous and really somewhat arbitrary this thing called “sanity” really is. I have come to believe that extreme states of mind and emotion are not really different in kind from what all humans are subject to–just different in degree, or maybe more accurately in duration of extremeness (since most of us experience these same extremes at times, however short-lived). I think this is also behind my desire to know “what happened” to people that I regularly see in visits to people in a local state psychiatric hospital and at another local mental health residential facility. What were they like, what did they experience as a child, as a teenager, as a young adult, etc….in other words, what brought them to their present state of being?
In psychiatry we hear so much about double-blind studies, randomized clinical trials, statistical differences, treatment effects, etc. There is a place for such things, to be sure. However, I believe there is tremendous knowledge and understanding that can be gleaned through the detailed story of one single individual. The experience of one person is both powerful and irrefutable.
“All it takes is the existence of one white crow to prove conclusively that not all crows are black”.
Report comment
Frank, this is in response to your comments about the bias in our existing mental health system that strongly tends to regard “disease” as the source of negative outcomes.
This strongly resonates with me from my experiences with the system. It also seems to me that psychiatric diagnoses are very convenient “wild cards” that serve to deflect honest, scientific analysis of the use of medication or other treatments, especially when you understand that these diagnoses have no objective basis in terms of blood tests, MRI’s, or any other definitive medical measures. I have seen how this works in practice, up close and personal. Rather than recognize a clearly adverse drug reaction, psychiatric practitioners refer to “the episodic nature of the illness”. And of course they want to have their cake and eat it too, so that if one uses this “episodic nature of the illness” to argue for giving the person in a crises state time to recover, with support other than drugs or electroshock, they are then all about the “evidence base” in favor of their drugs and ECT–an “evidence base” that conveniently ignores long-term studies and other evidence that does support their reductionist biopsychiatric orientation (i.e., religious conviction).
And I believe it’s this selective attention placed on the “illness” (as a medical entity) that contributes to what I understand is a gross under-reporting of “adverse events” with drugs, resulting in a flawed data base which makes it all the more unlikely that future adverse drug reactions will be recognized for what they are!
I really appreciate both this article and the ongoing commentary by all…thank you!
Russ
Report comment
Sera, I checked out the video above (well done!), as well as the web site, and just sent off a supportive email to Governor Baker. I know it’s HIS budget and he won’t actually be voting on it, but since I don’t live in Mass I didn’t know what else to do. If you have any suggestions about who else to send it to, please let me know.
Russ
Report comment
…and by the way, my daughter has been working as a peer helper/mentor within a large mental health agency in our area for well over two years now!
Report comment
“There’s another issue with ‘evidence based,’ and that’s the process by which much research is done. People who have been psychiatrically labeled have historically been taken advantage of by researchers in a myriad of ways. They’ve been ill informed of risks, and sometimes not given any real choice at all. At times, their desperation for help has been preyed upon.”
Excellent point, Sera. I believe this was part of a local hospital’s attempt to coerce my daughter into having ECT for her “treatment resistant mania”. Just prior to this she consented to having some psychiatric students observe her. The attending psychiatrist was a strong proponent of ECT, he was quickly pushing this as necessary (rather than stopping or at least greatly lowering the neuroleptic med that was causing akathisia–which staff would not acknowledge), and even said to her menacingly at one point, “You WILL have ECT!” I think he saw her as a great “subject” for study, since she is intelligent and articulate and might present a nice “before-after” picture of success for his students. Hey, what would be the harm of a few fried brain cells–she had plenty to spare! And if she turned out to be one of the unlucky ones…”Oh well, it was ‘clinically indicated’…We tried our best!”
Fortunately, while in a desperate state (exacerbated by their ham-handed “treatment”) she resisted this pressure (with our support) and her mania subsided after they finally discontinued the offending medication.
Nice article, Sera. Thanks!
Report comment
…” he asked me what i thought was the most important thing for the study in terms of making it valuable. i said: ‘insist on working with people in a first episode — and try like hell not to medicate them. and after that focus on all the open dialogue stuff.’ but as far as i know it never happened. to me that’s sad.”
Dan, as I remember, you addressed this issue in a piece your wrote after being on staff for a while in the Soteria Alaska program. And I totally agree with you, from my little slice of life experience and reading/study of the issue. Of course, there are people I know and dearly love who also need help, including full support in getting off (to the extent possible) the toxic substances they’ve been cajoled, coerced and outright forced onto…but that’s another issue!
I think the major obstacle to what you’re suggesting (rightly) is a terrible “Catch-22” that totally underscores your point about the need to address this at a systems level. Here’s the catch: The well-entrenched “standard of care”–even more than that, the “belief system”, here in the U.S. is predicated on the notion (despite lack of conclusive evidence) that psychotic symptoms are the manifestation of an underlying brain disease that, if not arrested through the use of medication, will result in increasing neurological damage. Therefore, it would be unethical to authorize any intervention (even as a “pilot study”) that withholds needed treatment. This seems to me to be a maddeningly frustrating conundrum!
But maybe I’m wrong on this–I would be comforted to know that there is not, in fact, such a pernicious dynamic in place to prevent the possibility of drug-free (or at least drug-minimal) first-episode psychosis treatment programs from ever seeing the light of day.
Perhaps Sandra or some other practicing psychiatrist on this blog could weigh in on this question?
Anyway, great article and great discussion!
Russ
Report comment
“Paradoxically, the entrenched models and techniques are reinforced by dint of their being only marginally effective thus keeping that revolving door in motion.”
Yes! This hits the nail exactly on the head! Just like the practice of bloodletting, no? Because it “worked”, or at least seemed to work some of the time, and because doctors (as all fallible humans) tend to selectively perceive the “evidence” that supports what they already believe, misguided practice continues and becomes more deeply entrenched!
Report comment
Thanks, Dan…always great to hear from you! Even though it hasn’t become as known as I’d like, I’ve also noticed Open Dialogue is getting increasing “press” and it’s been great to see it’s basic principles being implemented increasingly in various places here in the U.S., as you’ve mentioned. This is encouraging, even though I have more than a few moments of discouragement when I encounter how entrenched the “standard of care” for psychosis (i.e., “first and foremost, medicate!”) still seems to be in this and most other countries.
Thanks for asking and responding to these questions, many of which I’ve wondered about and discussed with others over these past few years.
If the results reported by the Open Dialogue practitioners in Lapland are true (and I have no reason to believe they’re fabricated or distorted), this really points to a tragedy of epic proportions here in the U.S. and elsewhere, don’t you think? Let’s just say, for the sake of making this point, that there is indeed a “subset” of 15-20 percent of people who experience psychosis who are better off taking and staying on antipsychotic medication. That means that 80 to 85 percent of people experiencing first-episode psychosis who come under “psychiatric care” in the U.S. are coerced or forced into taking very strong medications that they don’t really need and that often have devastating consequences to their bodies, brains, social/emotional well-being and lead to unnecessarily diminished lives! It’s an even greater tragedy if, as you believe, even the 15-20 percent who seem to need the meds really don’t!
Yes, you CAN put a square peg in a round hole, or vice versa; I think we see it happening all the time in our Gulag Psychepelago–sadly, the corners of the square pegs get rounded off and the curved sides of the rounded ones are straighted! One size fits all, doesn’t it?
Report comment
oops…left out one critical word that totally changes what I was trying to say:
“an ‘evidence base’ that conveniently ignores long-term studies and other evidence that does NOT [left out] support their reductionist biopsychiatric orientation (i.e., religious conviction).”
Report comment
I wonder how many similar cases have been buried because “adverse events” with drugs are not properly reported? Psychiatric diagnoses are very convenient “wild cards” that serve to deflect honest, scientific analysis of the use of medication or other treatments. Keep in mind that these diagnoses have no objective basis in terms of blood tests, MRI’s, or any other definitive medical measures. I have seen how this works in practice, up close and personal. Rather than recognize a clearly adverse drug reaction, psychiatric practitioners refer to “the episodic nature of the illness”. And of course they want to have their cake and eat it too, so that if one uses this “episodic nature of the illness” to argue for giving the person in a crises state time to recover, with support other than drugs or electroshock, they are then all about the “evidence base” in favor of their drugs and ECT–an “evidence base” that conveniently ignores long-term studies and other evidence that does support their reductionist biopsychiatric orientation (i.e., religious conviction).
Report comment
“The study suggested that much of the drug level increase could have occurred after death, a finding that could explain the extremely high blood levels found in the two patients who died 3 to 4 days after receiving injections of appropriate doses of Zyprexa Relprevv.”
Looks like a classic case of “begging the question”, a philosophical term that essentially means circular reasoning. We are asked to believe out of hand a couple of things that should properly be considered as critical questions of this investigation: 1) that there was no actual error in the dosage administered; 2) the dosages deemed appropriate are, in fact, not toxic for SOME people (since it is abundantly clear that different people can react very differently to the same medication/dosage).
Report comment
Once again, mega-Kudos, Robert! Thanks so much for your persistent calling out of the repeated false story-telling of mainstream psychiatry. Their fabrications would be laughable if it weren’t for the virtually unchecked power these folks have over the unfortunate souls who fall under their “care”. Of course, they will always parade before the public those for whom their drugs and electric shocks have had a positive effect (although sometimes even this is rather misleading, since the benefits may be only for a relatively brief time). Sadly, it appears that even some of the brightest, most talented and perhaps initially well-meaning psychiatrists have become shills for Big Pharma, whose profits make the income of the illegal drug cartels look like “chump change”!
Lieberman’s book and your review touch again on what I have come to believe is the most pernicious of the falsehoods that have been successfully promoted by psychiatry and the pharmaceutical companies: that mental illness (or at least schizophrenia in particular) is a progressive brain disease that if left “untreated” (i.e., undrugged) will result in continuous brain deterioration. This drives both the practice of heavily drugging the brains of individuals experiencing first-episode psychosis, and then failing to consider discontinuation of those same drugs once the person is “stable” (it appears that “stability” trumps recovery almost every time). While making these unsubstantiated claims about progressive brain disease underlying psychiatric symptoms, they ignore or deny that which has actually been proven: that brains exposed to the drugs they prescribe (particularly neuroleptics) decline in size in proportion to the dosage and duration of the drug.
Thanks again, Robert, for this sorely needed antidote to the delusions of conventional psychiatry. To borrow on the phrasing of Lieberman himself in one of the quotes you include in your article above, “if shrinks are not treated with such truth injections, their brains get smaller and smaller.”
Report comment
Great points, and very well put….thank you!
Report comment
Thanks for this very intensive, thought-provoking article, Robert. I think you’ve really elaborated the huge reductionistic mistake inherent in biopsychiatry, i.e., reducing human consciousness and feelings to the “squirts and twitches” of neurons that simply need to be chemically regulated to correct problematic thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Your analysis in a way brings to mind the words of a famous, ancient king, who said “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning”–even though I know that wasn’t really your point. I especially love your illustration of Eddie’s learning to play the B7 chord–that helps me understand and further appreciate the incredibly complex interplay between human consciousness, neurology, learning, behavior, etc.
Report comment
So…since we hear so much about all the “undiagnosed” and “untreated” mentally ill in our society, struggling in anonymity, and since foster kids are apparently blessed with being more often diagnosed and treated, doesn’t it follow that foster kids should be, as a group, happier and more mentally healthy than kids in general? Where’s the research on that?
Report comment
Well, thanks for keeping us abreast of the way the pharmaceutical companies are making boobs of themselves!
Seriously, though, the coverups of the serious harm of psychotropic drugs would be laughable if not so tragic. And the fact they can take these kinds of “hits” in the way of million and billion dollar lawsuits and just keep on rolling and raking in billions makes the money made in the illegal drug trade look like chump change!
Another tragic irony that I’m sure has been mentioned here and elsewhere: All the hoopla in our society and public schools about “saying no to drugs” (street drugs), while the number of kids on these toxic and pathetically understudied drugs has been rising exponentially–even forced on families and kids by the very institutions that are supposed to be educating and caring for them!
Report comment
Yes, now reading the other comments above I also thank you, Jonathan, for your diligent efforts to bring this about. I certainly have my share of cynical and pessimistic moments in this fight, but we must press on! Here’s an excerpt from one of Winston Churchill’s famous speeches about another noble fight:
“But we must learn to be equally good at what is short and sharp and what is long and tough. It is generally said that the British are often better at the last. They do not expect to move from crisis to crisis; they do not always expect that each day will bring up some noble chance of war; but when they very slowly make up their minds that the thing has to be done and the job put through and finished, then, even if it takes months – if it takes years – they do it.”
And now let me take the liberty to slightly modify a following portion of that speech (modifications in brackets):
“I am addressing myself to [my fellow freedom fighters against the Gulag Psychepelago] – surely from this period [ ] this is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never-in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
Report comment
This is horrific, and to say it makes me angry is an understatement. But I’m not a bit surprised. I’ve experienced something very similar, although not quite as egregious, here in New York State.
I used to live across the river from Trenton. As you crossed over the Delaware River from Pennsylvania into New Jersey (Route 1), when looking to the left there was another bridge with the lit slogan, “Trenton Makes, the World Takes”.
If it’s still there, perhaps they should change it to “Trenton Abuses, the State Excuses”.
Report comment
James, let me add my voice (a bit belatedly) to those who greatly appreciate the perspective you’ve brought through your articles. Actually, I haven’t read all of them yet, so I plan to go back and “fill in the gaps”. Ironically, as I was reading and discussing this one with my daughter–even as I was doing so because of the positive, uplifting, hopeful message–I took a temporary, dark departure into the bitter, angry thoughts that regularly re-emerge when I think about the way in which psychiatry can and does brutalize people in the name of healing and/or “stability”. In fact, I added some pretty graphic, crude remarks to those thoughts! Another irony: my daughter, who more than once has undergone very misguided, torturous experiences at the hands of psychiatry’s “healers”, does not seem nearly as subject to these forays into Bitterland as I am!
At any rate, your article resonates with me, even as there is a part of me that resists it, for it seems to draw me to a higher, more hopeful place–the place of the One completely innocent victim/redeemer!
Report comment
Richard, my first comment is below and this article has definitely influenced my thinking on this issue. Nevertheless, I find myself somewhere between yours and Jonathan’s stance on this at this point. There is a point you make that strongly resonates with me. Having witnessed very egregious aspects of psychiatric force and coercion in the “treatment” of a very dearly loved one, and the absolute power over their “patients” that psychiatrists in psychiatric hospitals have over individuals, I am not so sure that prisons (with all their horrific aspects) are worse. I have come to believe that a convicted felon has more rights and freedoms than an involuntarily committed psychiatric patient. In a prison, you at least usually have the benefit of fresh air and sunshine for at least a portion of the day. In my loved one’s case, she endured three months in a locked facility with neither. A prison sentence has a set time; a psychiatric “sentence” does not. I believe prisoners have more potential for good legal representation (although not usually without a ton of money) than psychiatric patients (in my experience, “mental health courts” are kangaroo courts in which the deck is heavily stacked in favor of hospital staff). In prison, they control your body; in a forced psychiatric setting, they control not only your body, but are allowed to saturate your brain with whatever they deem “clinically appropriate”–although this also happens, to some extent, in prison.
Report comment
As usual, very well stated Jonah. Thank you!
Report comment
Richard, I’m really not trying to flatter you when I say you have made the most articulate and well-reasoned argument on this subject I’ve ever read or heard. It has definitely influenced me, as one who has been on board with the need to “reform the system”. I really do have to rethink my position on this. I haven’t yet read all of the the above responses, and your replies, but even with your excellent argument there is still a “chink in the armorl”, so to speak, in my mind. Maybe this has to do with a distinction between forced hospitalization and forced drugging (or other “treatment”, like ECT) that i believe markps2 is making above. For sure, it has to do with the lack of truly humane and personalized care for those in the midst of extreme emotional/mental states (i.e., psychosis).
At any rate, let me give you a scenario as a way of presenting my continued concern:
This type of scenario is of very real concern to me. I’m certainly not raising this as a “set up”, as it is an actual quandary that I’ve been faced with. In this scenario, you have an adult family member who is neither suicidal or homicidal, but dangerously delusional. For example (and this is not the actual situation in my personal experience), the loved one is convinced she is a covert agent of the CIA and must meet at midnight at a certain location–one that is known to be a hangout of drug addicts, prostitutes and violent criminals. She cannot be reasoned or talked out of this and, in fact, becomes angry and accusatory toward those who try to impede this “mission”. You want with all your heart to avoid the psychiatric unit at the local hospital, which was so demeaning and injurious to her in a previous episode.
Okay, now let’s suppose we are fortunate enough to have Hearthside Healing, or Parachute NYC (about which I’ve heard good things), or one of the new Soteria Houses nearby. That would be wonderful, and a huge improvement in my local area (even though it is awash in all of the conventional mental health facilities and resources).
But…in this delusional state, my family member will probably be no more likely to check into such a place as she would be to check into the local hospital’s psych ward.
Some of you might say, “Well, she’s an adult. It’s her choice. Let her go and try to carry out her ‘mission’”. To me, loving her and knowing how irrational she is at the moment, that would be grossly negligent. There is the very real possibility that she would put herself in the hands of some very bad actors and end up greatly harmed, dead or missing.
On the other hand, to facilitate her return to the hospital would be to put her back into the hands of those who have unchecked power to harm her body, mind and spirit.
I think you have addressed this, in a way, in your article. This kind of real life scenario is what prevents me, at this point, from taking the absolute stance you are advocating; however, you’ve certainly made a good case for how “reform” may play right into the hands of the worst elements of the status quo.
Thanks.
Report comment
Hey boans, thanks for your many excellent contributions here in MIA Land! I’m using this post to reply to your comments on the most recent article by Dr. Sandra Steingard, as for some reason there was no “reply” box on that one…so sorry for this “out of context” reply.
Your comments about what happened to you in a recent emergency room in your locale resonated with me, for reasons I think you’ll understand if and when you read the article I’m going to give you the link to. Unfortunately, there was apparently a much “happier ending” to your fiasco than the one my daughter was subjected to.
Anyway, here’s the link:
http://www.mentalhealthexcellence.org/author/rstence/
Report comment
Hmmm….why did my reply end up here? My “Good one!” was in response to Uprising’s comment “This is just adding Insel to injury.”
Report comment
Good one!
Report comment
Hi again, Dr. Steingard,
As usual, I’m getting into the discussion late–maybe too late for you to notice and reply.
Anyway, it was great to see you at the recent Symposium in Syracuse, and I really appreciated your input. While I thoroughly appreciated the discussion, I left a bit confused on one point. I know you’ve written and remarked on this topic before, so I’m hoping you’ll help clarify this for me.
I wanted to raise a question about this at the recent symposium. Even the presenters who appear to be the most reform-minded (Dr. Harding and Dr. Harrow) seem to accept the consensus that first episode psychosis MUST be treated with neuroleptic meds (although i thought i noted a brief, passing comment by Dr. Dixon that may have suggested she does NOT believe this is always warranted). This appears to be based on the belief that there is a neurologically toxic subtrate to psychosis that must be arrested, as is true for seizures (although, as for that, isn’t it ironic that seizures are INDUCED through ECT as a means of ameliorating severe depression or mania?!)
I’m keenly interested in this topic (I have “skin in the game”) and have read quite a bit about it, but I still have many questions. I’m not a psychiatrist, so perhaps I’m missing something. Part of the reason I’m skeptical about this has to do with Dr. Nancy Andreason’s research. She initially reported that her research documented loss of brain tissue in schizophrenic people over time, but retracted this later (as I understand it) upon further analysis of the data that showed this loss in brain tissue to be correlated with exposure to neuroleptic medication.
So…Is there conclusive evidence that psychosis itself is a neurologically damaging process that needs to be curtailed as quickly as possible? If so, could you cite the research supporting this? I am aware of various DUP studies, but hold some skepticism about them, as well.
Thanks.
Report comment
Excellent point…invoking Scientology is clearly a red herring. Bring it right back to questions of data, true science, rational inquiry, etc.
Report comment
Thanks, Nancy, that’s good to know. I kinda thought you’d have the “inside scoop” on this, based on your previous article!
Report comment
“Sadly, though, this bill does not address the crux problem; the overreaching power that doctors in major medical centers and academic institution are exercising in disregard of citizens’ constitutional protections.”
Thanks for bringing attention to this, Nancy. I’m glad to know someone else shares my disappointment with this. Of course it’s an outrage that wards of the state or ANY individuals, particularly very vulnerable children, would be treated as guinea pigs and I’m glad for any and all actions taken to put a stop to such abuse.
When Justina’s and her family’s plight came to public attention (and thanks again for your part in that here in MIA), I immediately thought this debacle, once rectified, should give rise to a “Justina’s Law” that would protect all children and their families from ever falling into such a pernicious trap.
I would think the Pelletiers would be in favor of having Justina’s Law address the problem in a broader, more fundamental way, as you so articulately lay it out. Does anyone know where they stand on this?
Report comment
Kudos for hanging in there, AngryDad. Dr. Peter Breggin has some stories of parents standing up for their kids against drug-happy school staff, mental health professionals, etc. in “Medication Madness”. I’ve been there myself, although apparently nowhere near the intensity of your situation. I was privileged to have a small supportive role in another woman’s heroic story in standing up for her son and saying “no more” in spite of threats of Child Protective Services–what a horrible irony, eh? I’ve summarized her son’s story in my article “From Adversity to Advocacy”, published earlier this year at the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care website: http://www.mentalhealthexcellence.org/author/rstence/
Report comment
I really appreciate your responses, Jon. Since I’m checking back into this discussion a week later, you may not see this comment. But here goes anyway…
I’ll give a specific scenario that is somewhat different from those you’ve mentioned, and is of very real concern to me. I’m certainly not raising this as a “set up”, as it is an actual quandary that I’ve been faced with. In this scenario, you have an adult family member who is neither suicidal or homicidal, but dangerously delusional. For example (and this is not the actual situation in my personal experience), the loved one is convinced she is a covert agent of the CIA and must meet at midnight at a certain location–one that is known to be a hangout of drug addicts, prostitutes and violent criminals. She cannot be reasoned or talked out of this and, in fact, becomes angry and accusatory toward those who try to impede this “mission”. You want with all your heart to avoid the psychiatric unit at the local hospital, which was so demeaning and injurious to her in a previous episode.
Okay, now let’s suppose we are fortunate enough to have Hearthside Healing, or Parachute NYC (about which I’ve heard good things), or one of the new Soteria Houses nearby. That would be wonderful, and a huge improvement in my local area (even though it is awash in all of the conventional mental health facilities and resources).
But…in this delusional state, my family member will probably be no more likely to check into such a place as she would be to check into the local hospital’s psych ward.
Some of you might say, “Well, she’s an adult. It’s her choice. Let her go and try to carry out her ‘mission'”. To me, loving her and knowing how irrational she is at the moment, that would be grossly negligent. There is the very real possibility that she would put herself in the hands of some very bad actors and end up greatly harmed, dead or missing.
On the other hand, to facilitate her return to the hospital would be to put her back into the hands of those who have unchecked power to harm her body, mind and spirit.
This is what prompted me to ask the questions I did in my initial comment above. And your responses were obviously well thought out and somewhat helpful. But I still struggle to see how it would work in the kind of situation I’ve described.
I’d be interested in any and all input on this.
Thanks.
Report comment
Well spoken…I agree!
Report comment
I strongly agree with most of what you say, Jon. That your background has included working in an inpatient psychiatric setting gives you more credence in my eyes. Some people’s comments, whether in favor of increased or decreased psychiatric hospital beds, seem naive and make me wonder whether they’ve ever really experienced or witnessed the extreme mental states that lead to civil commitments. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not justifying such commitments, and especially not the ill-conceived “treatments” forced on people in such extreme states. But I’m convinced that any really effective alternative (such as the “Open Dialogue” treatment model in the Lapland province of Finland) has to be very well thought out, carefully staffed and implemented.
I’m totally on board with your vision of a very different type of crisis care, staffed primarily by peers and therapists; a place that would provide as you say “a space to experience deep distress and extreme states that is safe and caring”. And I further agree that increasing existing hospital beds is both untenable in terms of cost and ultimately leads to great harm to those it purports to help.
However, I have to ask you to be very real and honest about this: Based on your experience, both in the inpatient psychiatric unit and in your current practice at “Hearthside Healing”, do you believe the primarily peer-staffed facilities you’re aware of would really be equipped to appropriately help people in the most distressing mental states (e.g., psychotic mania)? What about the issue of locked wards? Do you think this is ever warranted, and if not, what is the alternative? How would you address safety for residents and staff? You probably know that people in the “Torrey/Jaffe” camp have plenty of concerns and “scare stories” from people who disparage alternative programs as grossly inadequate (of course, we’re well aware of the very real “scare stories” that abound in the current “gulag psychepelago” system!)
Part of the maddening dilemma, as i see it, is fueled by the pernicious circular reasoning of conventional psychiatry. Since the existing “standard of care” dictates that these extreme states be “treated” aggressively with medication, there is no allowance for non-drug interventions. Therefore, aside from the few drug naive distressed people who might find their way to such a progressive, primarily peer-staffed facility, many of those who come in will be in the throes of prescription drug withdrawal (perhaps mixed with effects of street drugs), or will need to have careful adjustment (hopefully tapering and eventual discontinuance) of the drugs they’ve been put on. And, of course, there’s the issue of very little funding and public support of such alternatives.
Oi vay! But I like your spirit and ideas, and we have to keep plugging away!
Report comment
What’s especially egregious is when they induce or exacerbate aggressive or otherwise “dysregulated” behavior with their ham-handed “treatments” (usually bombarding the individual’s brain with toxic chemicals) and then punish the resulting drug-induced behavior with seclusion, restraint and more drugging or shocking of the brain. I’ve witnessed it up close and personal, and it’s very sad and infuriating.
Yet I’m thankful for this article and those who promoted this change in policy and practice in at least one hospital. I think we need to celebrate even small advances toward more sound and humanitarian practices, and try to promote this in our own circles of influence however we can.
Report comment
Gotta love it!
Report comment
David, I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to see this excellent article here on the “front page” of the MIA site! My heart sank when I heard of your terrible accident and I was grieved that perhaps we had lost one of the best advocates and spokespersons for those abused by mainstream psychiatry’s ill-founded practices.
Well, I see that we have not lost you! You may not remember me, but I’ll never forget how amazed and blessed I felt about eight years ago when, after stumbling across an article you wrote (“Madness and the Mental Health System”) and looking up the phone number for your organization, Mind Freedom International, I heard your voice on the other end of the line. I was in a desperate moment because of the “no exit” nightmare my daughter was experiencing in the psych ward of a local hospital. Your genuine caring, compassion and commitment–with actions to back up the words– came through loud and clear and was a great comfort to me. She has recovered well in many ways, as I write this. I am thankful for this, although she still has a long way to go, i believe, to undo the damage inflicted upon her.
We are definitely in different places in terms of religious belief and practice, and to me that underscores the very point you are making. When it comes to our passion to expose and stop abusive, coercive, de-humanizing practices in psychiatry, we are united! I believe within any group there is a human tendency to drift off message, form exclusionary “inner circles”, start to pick at one another over differences, etc. These, of course, undermine the unity needed to move forward and accomplish worthy goals.
Speaking of religious groups and their involvement and/or stance with regard to the practices of psychiatry, I must say I’m extremely disappointed at how many of my fellow Christians have been bamboozled by the unholy alliance of Big Pharma and mainstream psychiatry and bought into the false and often damaging narrative promoted by these institutions. A “daydream” I’ve often had is picturing Jesus appearing at a “mental health” symposium being held in a Christian church, taking a bullwhip to the pharmaceutical reps and their “hired guns”, overturning their tables, and bellowing “It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it an opium den!”–or something like that. Fortunately, I am working with some kindred spirits within my Christian community to shed the light of truth (hopefully in love) on this issue.
I’m proud to say I’m a supporter of Mind Freedom International and Mad in America, both of which I thank God for (even for those of you in either group who may be offended that i mentioned God!). Thanks for your years of tireless advocacy, David. Keep up the good work!
Report comment
Thanks, Philip for your continued work in exposing the psuedoscience, misleading information and outright deception behind what I call this “gulag psychipelago” that continues to ensnare so many of our fellow human beings. I really appreciate your diligent research and your well reasoned and articulated articles.
Report comment
“What if instead of heading down this dead end again, we focus on the “socially isolated” part of the equation? Could we find ways together focused not as much on how to help get people into treatment, but how to help get them into life?”
Excellent point, Mark…I totally agree!
Even though I’m leery of all the psychiatric labels that get increasingly thrown around in our culture these days, there’s one that I think may have some validity/utility with regard to some of these mass murderers: malignant narcissism. I first heard it mentioned in reference to the boys who committed the mass shooting at Columbine. I also got a strong feeling of malignant narcissism (more than psychosis) in what Elliot Rodger revealed of himself in those videos he made before his murderous rampage in Santa Barbara. Social isolation was certainly a strong theme as well, and i wonder to what extent social isolation may be a “breeding ground” for malignant narcissism.
At any rate, I agree that more efforts should be expended to get isolated people into life (not in a coercive way, though, which can be tricky) rather than looking for “treatment” (which usually translates to medication). Elliot Rodger apparently had plenty of “treatment”, and I believe it was revealed after the fact that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were both taking psychiatric medications.
Report comment
Thanks for the reply, B.
Report comment
Thanks, Francesca! Yes, I thought it was a bit strange that he seemed to be implying that since “the chemical imbalance hypothesis is difficult to disprove” that it follows that we can assume it’s true until disproven! In my response to his response, i included the following:
“I hear your point about the difficulty disproving the chemical balance hypothesis; however, I’m concerned that the false story keeps going forward full steam (despite evidence to the contrary) that depression and other mental health difficulties are KNOWN to be caused by chemical imbalances in the brain, which can be corrected by specific medications. And then it seems to me that the potential benefits of these supposed “brain chemistry correcting” drugs tend to be greatly inflated and the risks minimized–which is contrary to the principal of ‘informed consent'”.
Report comment
Thanks for another superb, articulate article, Joanna!
I’m late to respond to this article, so my chances of getting feedback to this question are probably slim, but here goes:
I’ve been trying, with some success lately, to have a dialogue with my PCP on the issue of psych meds in general and antidepressants in particular. In response to an article i attached to an email to him, indicating that the “low serotonin hypothesis” of depression has long been debunked, his defense of antidepressants included the following:
” I believe the chemical imbalance hypothesis is difficult to disprove until we have a thorough understanding of neurotransmitter metabolism at the level of the CNS. A blood serum level of serotonin or norepinephrine does not have to correlate with a neurosynapse serotonin or NE level. For example, most of our potassium is in the cells, not in the blood.”
I’ve tried some internet searches to address this question of blood serum levels of serotonin or norepinephrine versus neurosynapse levels and haven’t come up with anything definite yet. I would really appreciate any light anyone has to shed on this issue.
Report comment
I’m sure I read this excellent, informative article before, Paul, but I’m coming back to it because of a dialogue I’m having with my PCP about psych meds in general and antidepressants in particular. I doubt whether anyone will read this, given how long ago the article was written, but I’m hoping so because I’d like to get some feedback on a question. In response to an article i attached to an email to my family doctor, indicating that the “low serotonin hypothesis” of depression has long been debunked, his defense of antidepressants included the following:
” I believe the chemical imbalance hypothesis is difficult to disprove until we have a thorough understanding of neurotransmitter metabolism at the level of the CNS. A blood serum level of serotonin or norepinephrine does not have to correlate with a neurosynapse serotonin or NE level. For example, most of our potassium is in the cells, not in the blood.”
I’ve tried some internet searches to address this question of blood serum levels of serotonin or norepinephrine versus neurosynapse levels and haven’t come up with anything definite yet. I would really appreciate any light anyone has to shed on this issue.
Report comment
Wow! That’s more good news, and I’ll be VERY interested in what comes out of that discussion. As for answering my questions, you have in a general way. But more specifically, (1) do you think the idea of the state agency i mentioned not approving a drug unless there’s a tapering plan attached to it is a sound practice; and (2) doesn’t it make sense to never rule out that the POSSIBILITY of the minimum effective dosage (eventually) of any psychotropic medication would be zero?
The reason I’m so interested in these questions is that most folks on psychotropic meds who want to try tapering are forced to do this on their own at present. It seems to me that if such a policy, and more importantly such a mindset, comes more into the medical/psychiatric mainstream, more people will have support in carefully tapering these toxic substances in a way that will have more chance of success. Now, when i call them “toxic substances” to be honest I cannot say that is ALL they are. I have seen instances, both with my daughter and others, where clarity of mind followed closely on the heels of the administration of a neuroleptic medication. However, in the cases I’m familiar with the question still remains as to what brought about the psychotic state in the first place, including medical “brain tinkering” that appeared dubious, at best. My experiences with doctors, psychiatrists and even mental health therapists, to date, tends to leave me discouraged and sometimes very angry. I sometimes see these professionals as little more than shills for the pharmaceutical industry, even though I don’t believe most of them are consciously so. “Commercialism masquerading as education”, to use your words. That’s a huge part of the problem, as i see it.
Report comment
Hi Sandra, we’ve had some conversation about this before, so it’s kind of a continuation. I’m encouraged by your honesty, candor and willingness to challenge your colleagues while maintaining what seems to be a respectful dialogue–even your willingness to take some rather sharp criticism (at times) from some psychiatric survivors on this site who have been badly burned by the status quo.
I resonate strongly with one of your last comments during the Q & A at the end of this presentation; that is, the real problem with the short time frame imposed on current acute care for psychosis (ten days!). This clearly fuels the reliance on heavy drugging with neuroleptics, and stands in the way of alternative non-drug approaches. Even with all the drugs (actually, because of them i would say) my daughter underwent several protracted, torturous “treatments” in which they put her brain through the wringer. Ironically, i believe it was this “rush to stabilize” (with drugs) that actually undermined her recovery! (The last time she was in an acute psychiatric ward of the local hospital for about three months, followed by a couple more months in the local state hospital).
In response to the concern I expressed previously (and still have) about the lack of non-drug options that exists in our country (and most others) in treating psychosis, you stated something to the effect that it would be a great improvement if psychiatrists would at least adhere to the principle of prescribing the least effective dosage–a practice which is very robustly supported even “within the mainstream”. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently and heard some very encouraging news that one of the agencies in New York State that works with people with developmental disabilities (it may be DDSO) has the policy that a psychotropic drug for any client will only be approved if it comes with a plan to taper it from the outset! I hope this is true (I plan to look into it further), and i hope such a policy expands to other state agencies. Actually, it would be even better, in my opinion, if they had policies and practices that sharply curtailed the use of these medications altogether.
Now here’s the really good thing, at least in my mind at this point: Since we know that people have successfully tapered off of every psychotropic drug, the possibility that the “least effective dose” might be zero for any given person should always be considered. Of course, the tapering process would need to be done in a very careful, very individualized manner.
What do you think?
Report comment
Yeah…It appears some of our government authorities and agencies have a “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to issues related to psychiatry!
Report comment
I just received an email about H.R. 4574, the “Strengthening Mental Health in Our Communities Act”, recently sponsored by several Democrat congressional reps as an alternative to the Murphy Bill. I just sent an email message my NY Representative, Louise Slaughter, urging her support of that, as well as the “Parental Protection Act” mentioned here, which is being sponsored by a Republican congressman. I believe these bills should both have bipartisan support!
Report comment
Thank you, Congressman Stockman! As I’ve said before, this case cries out for a “Justina’s Law” to begin to curb these misguided zealots (or worse!) and put in place a watchdog, with teeth! As I’ve also said before, I believe Justina’s case is merely the tip of an iceberg of heavy-handed psychiatric coercion that goes on routinely–especially with the unfortunate voiceless youngsters who end up as wards of the state.
Report comment
Someone Else and Laura,
I’m glad you’re discussing this issue of psychiatric records. I’ve also encountered varying resistance with this (getting my daughter’s records), but I’ve been pretty insistent and have gotten most of them. The discharge summaries from her hospital stays are riddled with errors and, of course, present things generally in a way slanted to justify their “treatment” while giving little or no indication of things that would call into question their “treatment” methods and decisions. I really think we need to press forward with full force in demanding full access to these records. I don’t think any other branch of medicine could get away with denying patients access to their records the way psychiatry does. They use the cloak of “confidentiality” and “best interest of the patient”, in my opinion, as a cover up. I think this one issue, if pressed, would go a long way towards exposing the shoddy, “hit or miss”, injurious practices that seem so prevalent in psychiatry.
Report comment
Another great article, Laura…thank you! Your story, vision, passion, compassion and bold leadership continue to be greatly inspiring! Carol and I will be taking the Staten Island Ferry to Manhattan tomorrow morning. We’ll see you at the protest/rally.
One other thing: When you spoke of those “close to my heart”, naming some of the fallen victims of psychiatry “and the countless brothers and sisters who’ve been hidden away behind years of heavy neuroleptics in group homes and state institutions” it reminded me of the sad souls i see every week when i visit my friend at a local “single residence occupancy” mental health facility. They’ve been conditioned to dutifully line up every day to take the drugs that are considered so essential to their mental health, while it is abundantly clear that they have suffered physical, emotional and social harm from these toxic substances. There HAS to be a better way, and it’s good to keep these beaten down folks in mind as we meet tomorrow.
Report comment
I’m pretty much on the same page as you on this issue and many others here on MIA, Wiley, and I applaud Dershowitz for taking the stand he has on this and offering his services pro bono. However, there’s no way he’s a “right winger”!! Here’s how he describes himself: “I am a centralist liberal, and I get along very well with centralist conservatives. What I don’t like are extremists on either side…”
I’ll make no bones about the fact that I’m generally on what would be considered the “conservative” side of many issues. However, if Justina’s case were being championed by the most liberal group imaginable, that would not at all deter me from joining them in decrying the blatant injustice being perpetrated on Justina and her family. Actually, I’m somewhat hopeful this case may illustrate there can be “common ground” and civil discourse between people across the wide political spectrum in our current world.
Report comment
Oli, is Alan Dershowitz part of this vast right-wing Christian conspiracy? I think you may be letting your own politics cloud the issue here.
Report comment
Thanks, Corinna. I like the following, especially:
“We can speak with all the human eloquence and advocacy zeal, we can reveal all the mysteries of the mental health world, we can have advocacy efforts that move mountains, but if we don’t love, we have nothing. We are just a resounding gong.”
That’s something i really need to keep in mind, as an antidote for the anger and bitterness that keeps welling up over how my daughter has been ravaged by the “mental health” system. Advocacy, yes; unproductive, bitter anger, no.
“The only thing that matters is faith, expressing itself through love.”
Report comment
Bravo, well said!
Report comment
…oh, and get a load of this, straight from Massachusett’s DCF website:
“Supporting Children, Strengthening Families.”
DCF Core Values
The DCF Core Values are anchors that ground our practice. DCF is committed to making these values more than words on paper. By strengthening the links between the Department, families and communities, DCF will move closer to service delivery systems that reflect the core values:
Child-driven
Family-centered
Community-focused
Strength-based
Committed to Diversity and Cultural Competence
Committed to Continuous Learning
HOW CRUELLY IRONIC!!
Report comment
Nancy, thanks so much for this beautifully written article on behalf of Justina and her family! I wish this could appear on the front page of every newspaper in the country. I will certainly be posting it to my Facebook timeline. Is is going to take a million people surrounding the Massachusetts capitol and refusing to leave until Justina is freed to end this Stalinesque nightmare?
I’ve called the Governor’s Office (Deval Patrick) twice already, asking that he intervene to restore Justina’s civil rights. I urge anyone reading this to contact him at the following:
Phone: 617.725.4005
888.870.7770 (in state)
Fax: 617.727.9725
TTY: 617.727.3666
I also contacted the Interim Commission of Massachusetts’ Department of Children and Families, Olga I. Roche. Please call her office about this: 617-748-2000
Report comment
As has been stated over and over in explaining the difficulty in curtailing the cost of any government program, “Everybody’s money is nobody’s money”. Well, I would propose a similar maxim when it comes to children turned over to a government program: “Everybody’s kids are nobody’s kids”.
Report comment
Kudos, Barry, to you and your wife for having the courage and perseverance to pull through such a horrendous ordeal and then champion this issue in such an effective and saving way for so many! Your article is an encouragement to me to promote the awareness of the tremendous need for detox from psych meds here in the U.S.–and then have something done about it!
Report comment
Another excellent article, Philip…thank you! I don’t really know what the current stats are, but i have long suspected that the apparent resurgence of ECT in recent years is connected to the increasing prescription of antidepressant medications. This article you cite by Rif El-Mallakh strengthens that suspicion. Like psychotropic meds, i’ve heard ECT spoken of by local psychiatrists and others as if it’s the best thing since sliced bread! Of course we know ECT is primarily used for “treatment resistant depression”, although it is also used for “treatment resistant mania” (which is what they tried to coerce my daughter to take it for). In either case, it seems so typical of psychiatry’s woefully ham-handed approach to things: after your full bore chemical assault fails, you turn to shocking the brain and inducing convulsions. If it were as benign as they portray, why isn’t it the first line of “treatment” instead of a last resort?? And why do they give people anti-convulsives if it isn’t because convulsions cause brain damage? And why don’t they conduct pre- and post-ECT neuropsychological assessments, including follow-up at periodic time points? Surely such studies would dispel the concerns of nay-sayers like me, no? Of course, we hear about and from those for whom “ECT saved my life!” Well, i certainly wouldn’t want to take that away from anyone. However, what they may not realize is that the ones who “saved their life” pushed them off the cliff in the first place. Luckily, they landed on a ledge below and the “ECT rescue helicopter” didn’t drop them to the canyon floor below! (We don’t hear too much about those unfortunate victims.)
Report comment
From the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary:
ep·i·dem·ic
noun \ˌe-pə-ˈde-mik\
medical : an occurrence in which a disease spreads very quickly and affects a large number of people
: a sudden quickly spreading occurrence of something harmful or unwanted
Full Definition of EPIDEMIC
1
: an outbreak of disease that spreads quickly and affects many individuals at the same time : an outbreak of epidemic disease
2
: an outbreak or product of sudden rapid spread, growth, or development
Here is an excerpt from a review of “Anatomy of an Epidemic” by Dr. Marcia Angell, former editor-in-chief of the the New England Journal of Medicine:
“A large survey of randomly selected adults, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and conducted between 2001 and 2003, found that an astonishing 46 percent met criteria established by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) for having had at least one mental illness within four broad categories at some time in their lives. The categories were “anxiety disorders,” including, among other subcategories, phobias and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); “mood disorders,” including major depression and bipolar disorders; “impulse-control disorders,” including various behavioral problems and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD); and “substance use disorders,” including alcohol and drug abuse. Most met criteria for more than one diagnosis. Of a subgroup affected within the previous year, a third were under treatment—up from a fifth in a similar survey ten years earlier.”
If you compare the numbers of people who would have been considered mentally ill in, say, 1940, to the above estimate, I believe this would constitute an increase that most people would consider one of “epidemic proportions”.
However, as astounding and alarming as the increase in prevalence of what is considered “mental illness” has been over the past half-century or so has been, this wasn’t really the main point being made in Robert Whitaker’s book, as I understand it. He was not primarily making the case that psychotropic medications are causing the burgeoning numbers of people who are, or could be, diagnosed with a mental illness. He was pointing out that since the advent of psychotropic medications, the numbers of people being PERMANENTLY DISABLED by mental illness has been rising. This, of course, flies in the face of the narrative that continues to be repeated: that psych meds, by correcting the underlying brain chemical imbalance, have ENABLED more and more people who would otherwise have been institutionalized to live a healthy, happy and productive life.
Anyway, thanks for your thought-provoking comments, Mental2. This is the kind of dialogue we need!
Report comment
Excellent points, Steve, and so well summarized! And I join you in affirming Madmom’s caring and support for her daughter. Another heartrending thing I’ve witnessed is how few people in these locked psychiatric wards get visits from family or friends from “the outside”.
I always appreciate your comments here at MIA, Steve. If you want to make another try at shedding some needed light on these issues at the next NASP convention, I’d be honored to join you in that venture if you’d like…but first I’ll have to re-register and pay my dues!
Report comment
Madmom, I know very well the pain you’ve described so well. I witnessed and experienced very similar things during each of my daughter’s several hospitalizations. It’s so maddeningly frustrating when you have to watch your loved one decompensate under psychiatric “treatment” that is so damaging; and then to have to “go along with it” as a parent, because if you don’t you’ll be cut out of the picture entirely and then have no ability to at least have continued contact with your loved one and perhaps some ability to influence the “treatment”. The irony is, those in charge believe they’re reducing the severity and chronicity of “the brain disease” by medicating quickly, aggressively and continuously; in fact, the long-term studies (such as that recently published by Dr. Martin Harrow) indicate just the opposite! These biopsychiatric zealots always use “anosognosia” of people in extreme emotional/mental states as a justification for forced drugging. Why don’t we hear more about “anosognosia” of hospital staff?? In my experience most seem oblivious to the clearly evident damage being done on a daily basis to the victims of their “treatment”. My wife and i witnessed very clear symptoms of continuing akathisia in our daughter during her second lengthy hospitalization; however, it was never identified or mentioned by hospital staff, and we only became familiar with the term much later when her outpatient psychiatrist identified it from our description. And every week when I have lunch with my friend (diagnosed with schizophrenia) it is heartbreaking to see how physically and/or emotionally debilitated most of his fellow SRO residents have become–and, of course, they’re all well trained to dutifully line up for the meds that assure they will remain in this diminished state! Thankfully, my daughter has been out of the hospital for over 20 months and has recovered very well in many ways. However, she remains dependent on these substances which have clearly been very toxic, with no medical support to taper responsibly and instilled with the fear of relapse and re-hospitalization if she tries to “go off the plantation”.
Report comment
Very well stated. Thanks.
Report comment
As has been stated over and over in explaining the difficulty in curtailing the cost of any government program, “Everybody’s money is nobody’s money”. Well, I would propose a similar maxim when it comes to children turned over to a government program: “Everybody’s kids are nobody’s kids”. As imperfect as parents are, they are generally far more protective than any state entity will ever be!
Report comment
Great points, Nancy! I have also thought that Justina’s case could be very instrumental in giving us some needed traction because of the very thing you mention: it’s appeal to the common sense and heart of every person who realizes they or their loved one could also
fall victim to the draconian triumvirate of biopsychiatry, government agencies and the courts! Perhaps this will lead to a “Justina’s Law” to bring some real oversight (with teeth!) to this out-of-control 3-headed beast!
Report comment
Thanks for this excellent, informative, no-nonsense article, Michael. As for thoughts on NAMI, I’ll add my two cents as i just did earlier today in response to Leah’s article: Despite deep concerns about their “unholy alliance” with mainstream psychiatry and Big Pharma, I have re-engaged with the NAMI chapter in my area. The reason for this is at least threefold: (1) I was greatly encouraged and saw it as at least a “glimmer of hope” that Keris Myrick was elected as the national board president, and even more encouraged when Robert Whitaker was invited by her to present at last year’s national convention; (2) This is the organization that virtually ALL people/families in emotional/mental crisis get sent to in my area; (3) I want to be a “different voice” to the struggling and desperate family members who come there. On this last issue, i think i have had a modest, positive impact. I sense that families are very open to information when it comes from someone else who has experienced similar things.
Having said this, however, i must say i continue to have considerable internal dissonance about the issue. I certainly wish there were a grassroots organization such as the one you envision here in our area…i would surely join it! More than that, i would help establish it. Admittedly, i haven’t done much yet in that regard but i hope to work toward that goal.
Report comment
…and as those who repeat the term “pro-choice” play into the hands of those with no concern for real choice at all!
Report comment
Yes, a sobering point, Nancy. I believe one of the greatest tragedies in our “mental health” system is that the dogma that “mental illness is a brain disease” has allowed family dysfunction to be completely ignored and even entrenched, at the expense of the member who is designated as the “ill” one. I believe there are very few instances, if any, where family dynamics do not play at least some part in the mental/emotional crises experienced by any one family member.
Report comment
Great post! Thanks for sharing your experience, and it’s great to hear that your mom finally “saw the light”. You seem very courageous. I think you raise a great point that I’m also constantly seeing: the pattern you mention that is observed on the NAMI posts. It prompts me to go back in and try to be an influence to help them see this. I think it would be VERY revealing simply to take a random group of kids and adults diagnosed with “bipolar disorder” and carefully trace their history in terms of symptoms, initiation of meds, med changes, symptom changes, etc.
Report comment
Thank you, Leah, for this obviously heartfelt, passionate and articulate article. I strongly agree that we need to reach out and not just commiserate with each other or “preach to the choir”. I am aware of my own tendency to demonize those “on the other side” of these issues, and continue to strive to find the right balance. Yes, there are some who seem to come pretty close to “demon” status, but I believe most are misinformed, misled, and trying to cope with things the best they can (speaking of individuals and families in emotional/mental crisis) Your anecdote about your conversation with the woman from NAMI was especially encouraging to me. Despite deep concerns about their “unholy alliance” with mainstream psychiatry and Big Pharma, I have re-engaged with the NAMI chapter in my area. The reason for this is at least threefold: (1) I was greatly encouraged and saw it as at least a “glimmer of hope” that Keris Myrick was elected as the national board president, and even more encouraged when Robert Whitaker was invited by her to present at last year’s national convention; (2) This is the organization that virtually ALL people/families in emotional/mental crisis get sent to in my area; (3) I want to be a “different voice” to the struggling and desperate family members who come there. On this last issue, I think I have had a modest, positive impact. I sense that families are very open to information when it comes from someone else who has experienced similar things. Unfortunately, following some initial limited dialogue, the President of our local NAMI chapter has stonewalled me. The Executive Director and I have at least “agreed to disagree” on certain points. There may come a point when I feel that the negatives outweigh the positives in terms of my continued involvement, but for now I remain hopeful.
Anyway, Leah, thanks again for this excellent article. Your points are well taken.
Report comment
Excellent article, Phillip. You’ve laid this out so clearly and rationally.
“This deception is the foundation of modern psychiatry. But it doesn’t just occur at the point of individual assessment. It also applies to the invention of these illnesses in the first place. Somatic symptom disorder, like all psychiatric diagnoses, is considered to be an illness because the APA say so. And individuals are considered to have a particular psychiatric “illness” because an individual psychiatrist says so. It’s all based on subjective opinion. And subjective opinion is notoriously unreliable.”
How terribly ironic that these “experts” have successfully substituted their own bogus illness for one that they claim existed only in the minds of the girl, her family, and the doctors who followed her for an extensive period! And how chilling that such chicanery was upheld in a court of law to the point where she has been essentially kidnapped and incarcerated by the state!
And your analysis confirms and strengthens my conviction that Justina’s case is only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of the terrible hoax being perpetuated in our society at the expense of many unwitting and voiceless victims of our draconian Gulag Psychepelago! Fortunately, the Pelletiers have finally gotten considerable attention and sympathy from both the public and various public officials, owing at least partially to Lou Pelletier’s chutzpah, verbal skills and willingness to defy the “powers that be” on behalf of his daughter. Hopefully, with the help of God (which I believe is often effected through people who are attentive to his Spirit) justice will prevail in this case. What’s really sad is that there are probably many, many more kids and families who are being similarly misled, coerced and torn apart every day by similar but less dramatic circumstances. We really have to rise up and stand against this wolf in sheep’s clothing!
Report comment
That’s fine, Oldhead. Provocative wording deserves to be countered with some details which are intended to bring the discussion back down to the flesh and blood reality of the diversity of the patient population. To move forward: I would like to see more focus on the recommendation by Jim Gottstein that we urge our senators to dialogue with members of the reform movement so that they CAN be apprised of the needs for reform which I hope would include the need for a holistic response to First Episode Psychosis, the need for independent review of medication utilization, independent legal services, etc. Dr. Ablow of Fox News wrote a a summary of weaknesses and needed change which could also be forwarded to congressmen. The legislators are under a lot of pressure to do SOMETHING, and we need to offer them something better.
Report comment
Russ’ wife wishes to apologize for mistakenly posting the last comment listed under Russerford. She forgot to make sure that she was on her own account. I am referring to the one addressed to Oryx and oldhead.. I probably made matters worse by “reporting” it. Oh, dear.
Report comment
Oryx and oldhead, it is very possible that Tim Murphy is sponsoring a hastily written, misguided bill because the psych reform movement has shunned and failed to dialogue with him and other Republicans and Democrats. We are the ones who are supposed to make the effort to talk to these representatives. Would anyone care to come forward and confess how many times they have written a letter or actually visited their representatives in a respectful manner.? My husband and I would know little of psychiatric abuse if our own daughter had not fallen into it. Our culture conditions us to respect professionals and defer to their expertise. Robert Whitaker describes in Anatomy of an Epidemic how carefully the false narrative was sown before policy makers were targeted by the American Psychiatric Association. Psychiatric abuse has been a well kept secret. Tim Murphy’s bill may be the fruit of alienation and isolation.
Report comment
Excellent comments, “Someone Else”; but here’s just a bit of “friendly fire”. While i share your concern about the iatrogenically created mental illnesses and am very thankful for Robert Whitaker’s excellent expose on this in “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, to say that all of what is called “mental illness” is caused by psychotropic drugs doesn’t stack up to reality. If that is so, how do you explain that folks had these same kinds of extreme symptoms long before psych meds ever came on the scene? I believe my own daughter’s initial episode of psychotic mania may have been triggered by her being placed on and then suddenly going off of a benzodiazepine, but honestly i do not know for sure. It certainly wasn’t a drug, street or prescription, that caused the persistent and debilitating anxiety that led to her being prescribed this drug. By saying this, I’m not supporting the bogus and now debunked “brain chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness. And believe me, i deeply regret my part in getting her started with this medication. But i think we need to be honest about what we know and what we don’t know. There is still a lot of unknown about what’s behind the extremes of emotion and thinking many of us experience at different times in our lives.
Report comment
Jonathan, I so much appreciate your thoughtful, balanced reply to Kate. And I also welcome Kate’s very down-to-earth, obviously heartfelt comments. I think we need this kind of dialogue here if we’re going to do more than “preach to the choir”. I have also experienced “up close and personal” the gut-wrenching dilemma of a loved one in the throes of psychotic mania. There are no easy answers. To let the loved one “fend for herself”, so to speak, would clearly have put her in harms way based on the particulars of her psychosis. On the other hand, the second time around (“once burned, twice shy”) we had extreme concerns about what was going to take place in the hospital. And the bombarding of her brain with a dizzying array of neuroleptics, benzos, anticonvulsives and other drugs is exactly what happened–with little to no understanding of her individual history. Athough her sanity was eventually restored, i continue to believe it was largely in spite of rather than because of the drugs she was coerced to take, contrary to what would have been done if we had the alternative type of crisis care you mention. And she continues to be saddled with the dire consequences of these brain and body-altering substances. This raises another thing that i believe is desperately needed: detox centers for those “stuck” on heavy duty psych meds and who want to at least make a decent, supported try at getting off in a careful manner. Dan Mackler has written a nice piece about this somewhere, in terms of what would be needed to do it effectively. After all, who would expect a heroine or cocain addict to “just say no to drugs”? We have all kinds of detox/rehab centers for people hooked on street drugs, but virtually nothing for those hooked by the white-coated drug pushers!
Report comment
“Most surprisingly, we saw the greatest increase in use during the five-year study period was among adults, with the largest gains seen in women ages 26 to 34, climbing 85%.”
Surprising…really? From the ads i keep seeing on various websites, they’ve been marketing these drugs very aggressively for adults for some time, and i believe those pictured in the ads are usually women! The symptoms of ADHD are so amorphous and ubiquitous that just about anyone could think they might have this “disorder”.
Report comment
Excellent points, Steve, and so articulately stated! I think you’ve hit on perhaps the central rotten core underlying all the peripheral problems in conventional biopsychiatry: the assumption, with apparently no acknowledgement that it is an assumption, that “we are our brains”. Or as one of my grad school psychology professors stated was the belief of some researchers, “all human behavior can be described as ‘squirts and twitches'” (i.e., neurons in action).
So, am i my brain, or do i have a brain? And if it’s the latter (which i believe), what is this “i” that has the brain…and all the other intricately interrelated parts that comprise my incredibly complex physical body? Even if you leave out the spiritual dimension (which i do not) and deal strictly with the phenomenon of consciousness, it should be clear that human consciousness is not a biological entity. It seems that modern Western culture has been so steeped in materialism and reductionism that it can neither recognize or appreciate the absurdity of this!
Report comment
I share your concern, elocin. When i heard a recent report that her parents observed her stomach was bloated and there were red streaks on her stomach and some other part of her body–her arms, i think–it reminded me of my own adult daughter’s physical reaction to the heavy drug cocktail they put her on in one of her lengthy and torturous involuntary hospitalizations. Talk about weight gain…she practically blew up before our eyes! Came out of the hospital so sedated she was usually in bed 16 hours of the day. Her outpatient psychiatrist was afraid to make any changes in this toxic, brain-numbing mix until purple streaks on her arms and body appeared and she began to have bad liver readings.
Fortunately, she was gradually and successfully tapered on the med that seemed to be causing the worst of the weight, skin and liver problems (Depakote). I doubt this would have been successful if done too quickly.
(Unfortunately, she was placed back on this drug during a subsequent hospitalization, where they initially almost killed her and then put her through a horrific brainstorm of drug changes that more than reversed all the progress she had made in the previous year. That’s another story I’ve detailed elsewhere.)
Report comment
Thanks for this articulate analysis, Philip.
” (In fact, there are indications that they may even have disputed whether such a disease even exists – an extraordinary accusation coming from psychiatry!) They also, apparently, formed the belief that the parents were dysfunctionally invested in the notion that Justina was gravely ill, and were subjecting her to needless medicines and treatments.”
What rich irony! Yes, this is indeed “an extraordinary accusation coming from psychiatry!” It seems unbelievable they would have the chutzpah to dispute the presence or even existence of mitochondrial disease and accuse the parents of subjecting Justina to “needless medicines and treatments”. Psychiatry’s entire existence is predicated on dubious and frequently changing diagnoses and hit-or-miss treatments with little proven efficacy and tons of deleterious effects!
We have all these laws in various states named after individuals, with other euphemistic names such as “Assisted Outpatient Treatment”, which make it easier to force psychiatric medications and psychiatric incarceration on people.
Perhaps out of this outrageous fiasco will come a “Jutina’s Law” that will finally give some appropriate due process and oversight, with teeth, to stand against the Gulag Psychipelago into which so many of our fellow citizens are swallowed up.
Report comment
“On January 22, 2014, after three hours of testimony before a Superior Court judge in Burlington, the judge said he disagreed with Christina’s mental illness diagnosis and the assessment that she was a danger to herself and others. The judge ordered her release after five and a half weeks in the psychiatric ward.”
Most readers have no idea how unusual and remarkable this is! First of all, it was only due to this woman’s going outside the system, directly to the press, that this type of court hearing took place. Otherwise, if she got any kind of hearing it would have been a closed “kangaroo court” in which the cards would have been completely stacked in favor of the hospital (these kind of hearings have a track record of supporting the hospital’s position about 95% of the time). I congratulate the judge involved, who apparently relied on his own common sense and had the courage to forgo the requirement for “expert witnesses” to contest the hospital’s psychiatrist and lawyers. Believe me, I’ve been there (as parent of a patient who had deteriorated under their form of “treatment”) and a person without very substantial means is ENTIRELY at the mercy of the hospital’s demigods!
Report comment
Sandy, Your article came at a very opportune time for me. I’m considering giving a copy to my daughter’s psychiatrist. Thanks so much for your impeccable honesty, pursuit of truth,
compassion and respect for your patients! And man do i resonate with the point you just made in replying to Jonathan, pertaining to those who “dismiss what i say without looking carefully at the evidence”. I, like you, strongly desire dialogue–reasoned, mutually respectful dialogue–and i find the refusal of many to engage in this maddening!
Russ
Report comment
Wow! Laura, your story has been so encouraging to me, and every new bit of it that you bring out so articulately and passionately renews my own hope and committment to go forward and “get the truth out” to a society that has been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the reductionistic and ultimately pessimistic biopsychiatric dogma. I’m also very encouraged by your “Coming off Psych Drugs” support group in your area…i wish we lived there! I may be in touch with you about starting up a similar group here, when the time is right (I know, the time is ALWAYS right, but I’m not yet in the place to take this on). I’ve gotten kinda bogged down in a few things, including a bit of a mental “funk”, so i haven’t yet followed through in getting started with FEMHC—but i hope to do that soon!
I’m going to post this article on my own Facebook page.
Report comment
Hey Dan…thanks for this honest, open, down-to-earth reflection. Having been in the role of counselor as part of my professional work in the past, I appreciate and resonate with many of your comments and feelings. I also appreciate very much what you’ve been doing these past few years. I’ve bought a couple of your movies and have shared them with others. You wouldn’t know me by my posting name here, but we had a couple phone conversations in the past when my daughter was caught in the pernicious grip of a couple involuntary psych hospitalizations. I was happily amazed at how accessible and personable you were. Thanks again, from the bottom of my heart. By the way, that was totally consistent with the things you’ve shared in this article. It’s also in keeping with my general experience of finding those in the “alternative mental health movement” (for want of a better tag) much more accessible, respectful and personable than those in the psychiatric mainstream, who seem to construct barriers to insulate themselves from most real dialogue and interaction with those they purportedly “serve”. So thanks again for sharing. For what it’s worth, i think you’re on the right track.
Report comment
Even Dr. Ken Duckworth, Medical Director of NAMI (considered “the enemy” by some here in MIA-land), expressed serious caution about the use of antipsychotics with children and stated he never prescribed them to kids.
Report comment
Bravo! Well put, succint, to the point.
Report comment
Nancy and Ron: I agree with both of you! (and i’m not even a politician)
Report comment
Thanks, Ted. I’ve been inspired many times by your writing, speaking out, your amazing resilience! I’m glad we have an “old man” like you on our side. Keep it up!
Report comment
Steven, I also greatly appreciate your comments on this issue, especially from your unique perspective as one who has overcome the damage the system has meted out and now has an “inside” view. Kudos, and keep up the good work!
Report comment
Thanks once more, anonymous, for your excellent and articulate comments. Your balanced view on this issue amazingly incisive and greatly needed, in my opinion.
On the one hand, you have people who have NO idea what it is to experience extreme mental/emotional states and to then be traumatized by the supposed “helping” system, and they portray everyone on SSI and/or SSD as freeloading deadbeats. On the other hand, you have the constant “gimme, gimme” crowd who plays up victimhood to the hilt and for whom the government (i.e., working taxpayers) can NEVER do enough.
We need the kind of realism, compassion and balance your comments reflect.
Report comment
…plus, there is a substantial subset of these kids who end up getting put on antipsychotic meds–almost always “off label”, and without ever having had true psychotic symptoms (until, in some cases, AFTER they get put on these drugs!). Of course they were bipolar or pre-schizophrenic all along, dontcha know?! It just took the “diagnostic use” of stimulant meds to bring it out in the open so it could be properly treated. Give me a break!
I believe i read somewhere that kids labeled ADHD are the largest group taking SGA’s (second generation antipsychotics).
Report comment
I believe after the 8-year follow up much of what “came out” about it still tended to put a spin on the results that disguised just how ineffectual medication was in the long term. At any rate, the push to diagnose kids with ADHD and get them on medication does not seem to have diminished one iota!
Report comment
Nevermind…I just answered my own question by doing a little internet search. I guess it should have been quite clear from Gretchen’s article above that the “behavioral treatment” group was just that–behavioral treatment with no drugs (duh!).
It seems there was hardly a peep in the media about the 8-year follow up, which showed a fading effect of medication and superior long-term results from behavioral treatment.
Report comment
I’ve read before about the MTA study; i think it was mentioned in Peter Breggin’s “Brain Disabling Treatments in Psychiatry” and maybe in Robert Whitaker’s “Anatomy of an Epidemic”.
One thing that’s still unclear to me: Were any of the groups in this study unmedicated? I don’t think so. Some commentary I’ve read seems to imply the group that received “community treatment” was unmedicated, but i don’t think that’s the case; rather, it seems they were just not as aggressively medicated as one of the other groups. I believe the researchers, having identified the subjects as having ADHD, would be compelled to take the position that to “not treat them” would be negligent–perhaps the fear of a law suit would contribute to this, also. This appears to be a kind of circular reasoning that, IMO, prevents quite a bit of sorely needed research.
Anyway, if anyone out there can clarify this for me, i’d appreciate it.
Report comment
Thanks backatcha, anonymous. I deeply appreciate your many articulate, heartfelt and sometimes heartrending posts here on MIA. I’ve read many of them and they’ve had a strong impact on me.
You’re absolutely right–it was horrific having to witness their repeated brain-raping of my daughter, putting one toxic substance after another into her brain after being specifically told of her prior adverse reactions to the same. I’ve likened trying to work with them to negotiating with terrorists, but worse! With terrorists, you’d at least have an identified enemy with a known malicious intent, and possibly some allies with power to extract your loved one from their clutches!
I’m so glad you escaped and are “fighting the good fight”; i hope and pray my daughter will also do so eventually. She has recovered well in many respects, for which i’m very grateful…but she continues to bear the scars, physically and emotionally, of the ravages of her “treatment” and the road remains rocky with many potential pitfalls.
Report comment
Yes, Donna…When i saw this piece from the New York Times i also immediately thought of the previous article here on MIA about Dr. Tom Burns of Oxford admitting that Community Treatment Orders don’t work. You don’t think this “news” from New York could be in any way related to that, do ya?
Report comment
I’m in New York, and the social worker at the state psychiatric hospital where my adult daughter ended up after horribly misguided psychiatric “treatment” over several years suggested that she should be provided with “assisted outpatient treatment” (i.e., court-monitored “Kendra’s Law” treatment) upon discharge. Fortunately, by this time I had informed myself enough about this insidious euphemism and pointed out that the only time she was ever violent was in reaction to the medications she was either being given or withdrawn from–and that all but one of these incidents occurred IN the hospital. They quickly dropped this ruse, but unfortunately the discharge program she opted appears dominated by staff who have been thoroughly indoctrinated in the religion of biopsychiatry.
I’m a school psychologist with longstanding concerns about the burgeoning use of psych meds in our society (especially with kids). However, it took the “up close and personal” experience of seeing my own daughter ravaged by psychiatry to see just how misguided, harmful and draconian our psychiatric system can be–even when some or even many of the people involved in this form of “care” may be well-meaning (in fact, that makes it all the more pernicious and maddening!).
It became chillingly clear to me throughout my daughter’s saga that a patient in an involuntary psych hospitalization has less rights than a convicted felon! Few people realize how utterly stacked the cards are in favor of acute care psychiatrists and against the unfortunate souls who enter their domain; they may as well post a sign at the door: “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” But…but…don’t the patients have access to Mental Hygiene Legal Services? Yeah, right…any idea how often the judge at one of these psychiatric kangaroo courts decides in favor of the patient (represented by MHLS) versus the hospital?? Maybe about 5%, from what i remember reading. Clearly, the hospital’s have the big bucks, the best lawyers, the power!
So now I’ve become part of the “Resistance” on behalf of my daughter and the many, many unfortunate souls who fall into the biopsychiatry trap.
I definitely smell the odor of Big Pharma and the APA behind this puff piece touting the benefits of AOT in New York. Sadly, the public in general has NO idea of just how misguided and insidious it is. I’m trying to do my part in my little corner of the world. I’ve even rejoined my local NAMI chapter (gasp!–i hear it from many of you, my dear comrades), since like it or not that’s where ALL the mental health clinics, psychiatrists, hospitals, etc. direct people–at least in these parts. I think i’m having some success in promoting dialogue and have clearly given some folks a message other than what they’re going to hear from the NAMI “rank and file”. At this point i see winds (perhaps a breeze?) of hopeful change in NAMI, even though i know some of you vehemently disagree. We’ll see…at any rate, if it seems to be a lost cause, i’ll have to look to other venues (which i’m doing anyway). I love MIA and Mind Freedom International (I’m a contributing member of both), but unfortunately there are no notices on the walls of psych units about these or any other “alternative” mental health organizations, and there are no local chapters (to my knowledge). Maybe i’ll start one….
Report comment
Well said.
Report comment
Peter, i so appreciate the points you make here. I read the mother’s letter on Pete Early’s site and had many of the same feelings you express. I am deeply appreciative of Bob Whitaker and the excellent work he’s doing. I’m also a parent who has been in a similar place as Pete Early and the mother who wrote this letter. The place i’ve come to, from what I’ve observed and experienced throughout my daughter’s ongoing saga and through my own personal research, is much different from where they are. I believe that as a society we’ve been duped into buying a very reductionistic and scientifically flawed view of mental illness, which needs to be strongly challenged (as Whitaker and others are doing). But having said this, i don’t see any easy answers for my daughter at this point–or for the many others who have been ensnared in the net of highly dubious and clearly harmful biopsychiatric “treatments”. In our zeal to shed the light of truth on these issues and rescue those who have become entrapped, i think we need to respect that the majority of family members of people in these situations have not arrived at where they are blithely or lightly.
Report comment
Oops! I have to correct the information i gave about that teleconference with Dr. Xavier Amador. It’s this FRIDAY, not Thursday.
Here’s the info again:
***Conference Call with Dr. Xavier Amador on Anosognosia
Friday, May 24 at 11:00 am, EST
To access these calls, dial 1 (888) 858-6021 and enter pass code 309918#.
Please…I urge any and all MIA readers to tune in and have input in this discussion. The concept of “Anosagnosia” has been used by folks like Dr. Amador and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey to justify forced drugging and other highly coercive measures in psychiatry.
I would also LOVE to have the host of this website, Robert Whitaker, in on this conversation!
Russ
Report comment
By the way, i just read “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden” this past year, and highly recommend it. I think we need more Frieda Fromm-Reichmanns!
Report comment
Sandra, thanks for sharing your perspective on this topic. I am always so appreciative of your honesty, knowing that you are perhaps not as “doctrinaire” as some on this site would prefer. It would be much easier to posture on on side or another of the many issues you address if you were not “in the trenches”, dealing with real people and no easy answers. We would be so much better off, in my opinion, if we had even a small fraction of psychiatrists with your melding of meticulous rationality, honesty, humility and commitment to what is best for each individual.
Now for a switcheroo…I want you to be aware of a teleconference coming up this Thursday that i plan to “tune in” to. It is hosted by NAMI, as part of their “Ask the Doctor” series, and the special guest this week is Dr. Xavier Amador, who will be speaking on anosognosia. I think your own article on this was the first of yours i read on this site. I am desperately hoping you’ll be able to join the conversation, even though i know that may be impossible due to your work schedule. I have rejoined our local NAMI chapter mainly to be a “different voice” in this organization, since so many people get channeled to NAMI and then get indoctrinated into the very heavily “pro-biopsychiatry” mindset that prevails. On the other hand, it is hopeful and heartening sign to me that Keris Myrick was elected national board president of NAMI, and that Robert Whitaker is speaking at the upcoming convention in Dallas (Amazing…Praise the Lord!)
At any rate, here’s specific information on the teleconference:
***Conference Call with Dr. Xavier Amador on Anosognosia
Thursday, May 24 at 11:00 am, EST
To access these calls, dial 1 (888) 858-6021 and enter pass code 309918#.
Please…I urge any and all MIA readers to tune in and have input in this discussion. The concept of “Anosagnosia” has been used by folks like Dr. Amador and Dr. E. Fuller Torrey to justify forced drugging and other highly coercive measures in psychiatry.
I would also LOVE to have the host of this website, Robert Whitaker, in on this conversation!
Russ
Report comment
Sandra, again i want you to know i SO much appreciate your thoughtful, honest, realistic approach to this issue as reflected in this series of articles. I especially appreciate your balanced approach as one working “in the trenches” to help people in very real and difficult situations. As sad and angry as i’ve been about the terrible “treatment” my family member has endured and the devastating effects i believe neuroleptic medications (and other psych meds have had on her, the “just say no to drugs” approach is not the answer for her. Can she be safely tapered? She encountered a terrible setback while attempting to do so in the past, but the alternative (to stay on them and “lock into” the diminished life that has resulted)is unacceptable. So she’s back in the process of tapering the one that seems most problematic at present (with success, to date). Kudos to you for your courage and willingness to dialogue with us here on MIA, even though i know you’ll take some heat from those who think you’re still too much a part of the establishment! Please keep us posted.
Report comment
Sandy, here are the links you requested:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/psychiatric-drugs/what-about-bob/whitaker-samhsa
http://www.peteearley.com/2010/10/04/an-alternative-voice/
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mad-in-america/201010/samhsa-the-alternatives-conference-and-the-story-opportunity-lost
http://www.mindfreedom.org/mfi-blog/pete-earley
http://www.peteearley.com/2013/03/18/the-changing-face-of-nami/
I realize this post is a bit after your article, so i’m not so sure you’ll see it. I’m glad you asked for this, as it further clarified my already corrected memories. Now that i look back on this information, i realize that David Oaks did weigh in quite heavily on the issue. I was reminded of how powerful his open letter to Pete Earley was…and that it was his intention to have the kind of dialogue with Pete that i endorsed in my post above.
At any rate, i hope you get this information and i’m looking forward greatly to your next article on optimal use of neuroleptics.
Russ
Report comment
Oops…here’s a self-correction to my own comment above: It was Robert Whitaker, not David Oaks, who was the “controversial” keynote speaker at the SAMHSA conference i mentioned. I know Robert posted a very articulate rebuttal to Pete Early’s critical piece, and i believe David Oaks also had something to say about it. At any rate, i still think it would be good to have ongoing, civil dialogue between people with different viewpoints on this and many other issues. The tide seems to be turning in a good way, but there is still a huge power imbalance in favor of those with a strong biopsychiatric orientation, as i see it.
Report comment
Sandra, i am so glad to see you honestly address this last point. While my heart is strongly with survivors of psychiatry, and i have no doubt that many (including my relative) have been greatly harmed by “psychiatric treatment” as it is currently practiced, i get the sense that some do not grasp (or perhaps choose not to acknowledge) the very real dilemma of trying to “save” a loved one who has slipped into a life-threatening extreme mental/emotional state.
I would love to see more open and honest dialogue between outspoken proponents on both sides of this issue, who have “skin in the game”. For example, David Oaks (a psychiatric survivor and Founder/Director of Mind Freedom International) and Pete Early, a journalist who wrote about his son’s saga with mental illness from the perspective of a parent who was horrified at the system’s treatment of his son. To his credit, David Oaks (who i greatly admire and respect) suggested such a dialogue after Pete Early came out with a sharp criticism of the conference in California at which David was a keynote speaker a couple years ago (sponsored by SAMHSA). The “powers that be” had tried to bar David from speaking, but thankfully he was reinstated after an outcry of protest from many of the attendees. While Pete’s position (i believe he’s in support of “assisted outpatient treatment) is anathema to many MIA bloggers and readers (including me), i still think such a dialogue would be helpful and might reduce the polarization among folks who have legitimate and honest concerns.
Report comment
Thank you for your very articulate, passionate and insightful reply. I admit that some of what you wrote stung a bit, even if that wasn’t the intent. I realize that those of us struggling with the observed terrible effects of psych meds on ourselves or a loved one may fall into an error that is almost as bad as the myth that an ingested chemical can “correct” a distressing altered state of mind; which is that getting rid of the offending chemical(s) will “correct” the distressing altered state that originally prompted taking the drug in the first place! I agree that such thinking is far too simplistic–it is, in fact, a very pernicious form of reductionism that basically denies the wonder, uniqueness and complexity of the human experience.
Having said this, however, it seems to me you are in some denial about what seems like obvious effects of drugs (whether they are street or prescription drugs) on the behavior and thinking of human beings. When someone takes a hallucinogenic drug like LSD, for instance, of course the particular content of their hallucinations or delusions will be unique to their personality, experiences, cognitive and creative abilities, spiritual status, etc. But to think the LSD was not the major precipitant to these altered states of mind/emotion seems naive to me. If such altered states of mind were problematic, hopefully this could be “corrected” by stopping the LSD (although it may not be so simple, since the LSD may have permanently altered the person’s brain chemistry or structure). By the same token, i think you would agree that a person living within the “cloud” of a prescribed psychotropic drug (or, more commonly, a cocktail of such drugs)would be better off dealing with whatever problems and issues they had if this “cloud” could be removed. Don’t you think it’s possible that the prescription drug could also be a precipitant to extreme states of mind/emotion? It seems very clear to me that this is so in some cases.
Some of what you wrote makes me wonder if you have some specific knowledge of my personal situation. I’ve been fairly open in various blogs and usually use the same user name. I’ve also had contact and conversations about this with a number of people in the “psychiatric alternatives movement” (is that the correct term?)–and i’ve greatly appreciated the accessibility and support of these people. My loved one is fairly transparent and has always given me permission to share things about her experience. However, i realize such openness can have a “down side” and perhaps i should re-evaluate this. At any rate,if you do have such knowledge, please be aware that there is a great deal you don’t know about her/our situation. Of course, there’s a good chance i’ve just revealed my own paranoid tendency!
Report comment
Sandra,
Thank you so much for your honest, thoughtful discussion of this issue. I am appalled at the lack of awareness in mainstream psychiatry about the studies you mention suggesting that “less or not at all may be better” when it comes to using neuroleptic meds for first-time psychosis. I’m glad you mention the studies cited in support of early and aggressive use of neuroleptics in treating initial episode psychosis. Unfortunately, these studies seem to have had an undue influence on standard practice–particularly in acute psychiatric units in the U.S. Why is it that mainstream psychiatry has not kept pace with more recent research and modified it’s standard practices accordingly? I find it maddening that despite all the talk of multimodal approaches, when mainstream psychiatry speaks of “treatment” they almost always mean medication. Kudos to the folks in Finland and elsewhere who are placing emphasis on the value of intensive human support in dealing with emotional crises and extreme mental/emotional states.
This is a very real issue and dilemma to my family, as we have been navigating the ongoing saga of a member diagnosed with severe mental illness involving multiple lengthy, traumatic hospitalizations and various medications (including several nueroleptics). Her most serious difficulties did not begin until after psych meds were introduced. Although her initial response to a neuroleptic (Seroquel) prescribed by her outpatient psychiatrist appeared positive, based on what has transpired since i believe she would have been much better off to have “weathered” the difficulty with intensive but non-medication alternatives. When speaking with one of her in-hospital psychiatrists about my concerns about the terrible side effects she’s suffered from various psych meds and my concerns about further damage, he mentioned there were studies suggesting that untreated mania results in brain damage.
I remain very concerned about the issue of brain damage and the possibility of deleterious brain chemistry changes possibly caused by the neuroleptics she’s taking (i.e., “supersensitivity psychosis”), which i suspect may have been behind her last hospitalization (since she relapsed into a manic/psychotic state even though regularly taking prescribed meds). On the other hand, she experienced a prior relapse while in the process of tapering her neuroleptic (and maintaining mood stabilizer, lithium). So either way she goes, there is danger of relapse and re-hospitalization. I am more and more strongly seeing the need for carefully crafted and implemented detox programs for people like my loved one who have suffered terribly from these drugs and would like the chance of at least trying to get safely off!
Report comment
Dan, i absolutely agree with you! This is on my mind a lot, and if there’s any way i can help in this i want to do it. Thanks for your efforts. You’ve clearly thought this through in great detail, and it’s encouraging to know someone else shares my concern about this. Thanks again for your excellent videos on Open Dialogue and Healing Homes, which i purchased and highly recommend to anyone interested in knowing about mental health alternatives that work!
Report comment
Sandra, your article is very encouraging to me. I have an adult daughter who seems trapped in the mental health system due to having been placed on medications that i believe have put her in a terrible double bind: either continue on them and continue to suffer terrible side effects (which will probably worsen and even shorten her life) or attempt to taper and run the risk of withdrawal psychosis and more traumatic hospitalizations. I share your positive sentiments about Whitaker, Open Dialoque and some winds of positive change in NAMI (i would add the election of Keris Myrick as president)–it is so good to hear these words coming from a psychiatrist, who hasn’t given up on therapy! We need many, many more like you.
Report comment
This resonates with our experience; we’ve struggled during the
past six years to have a loved one’s personal, evidence-base of response to medication acknowledged to be characterized by adverse and paradoxical events and worthy of some variance to standard protocol of treatment. We’ve had little success. Our loved one has suffered repeatedly from being subjected to treatments which we predicted would exacerbate disregulation.
Report comment
Laura, thanks so much for another passionate, articulate post! I was (again) feeling despair and rage today over the way in which my daughter has been ravaaged by a system that is supposed to heal, but consistently violates the very first principle of medicine: “First do no harm”. This post was a tremendous boost to my spirits. I have shared a previous similarly articulate post of yours with my daughter, my sister-in-law and another young friend who are all in the grip of psychiatry’s pseudo-science, and i intend to share this one with a couple of folks “in the system” who need to wake up and smell the coffee! To repeat that old, trite line, “You go, girl!”
Report comment
My wife and i SO resonate with this excellent point. We have faced this issue “up close and personal” with our daughter, who was deprived of the most basic therapeutic benefit of fresh air and sunshine during two extended psychiatric hospitalizations. In one case, we got results after my wife threatened to file a civil rights complaint and the attending psychiatrist (one of the better ones we dealt with) put her “neck on the line” to approve some time (with us) in the hospital’s large enclosed courtyard. In the other case, after three months total confinement and our repeated requests, hospital staff finally made arrangements for her to go outside in a small courtyard within the hospital, shortly before her transfer to a state hospital where she quickly had outdoor privileges. I made the same point at a court hearing (initiated by my daughter) during the latter hospitalization that Jonathan makes in this article: that even a convicted felon gets time outside every day! It’s deplorable that psychiatric patients are regularly deprived of this in many places!
Report comment