Or is it for psychiatrists and the self identifying “mentally ill?” There is a very real conflict of interest between these groups, since one supports business as usual and the other wants basic human rights that others take for granted–and the “consumers” have given up on.
I bought a copy of Anatomy of an Epidemic for my dad’s birthday gift. I appreciate the fine craftsmanship you put into it.
I also appreciate your candor in posting the above remark. It helps the bulk of your readership understand how you truly feel about us.
By “providers” do you mean psychiatrists, Sera? They should be held legally responsible for mass shootings if the shooter is being “treated” by them IMHO.
We know the mother smothered her toddler because she was bipolar.
How do you know she was bipolar?
Because only a person with bipolar would smother a toddler.
Brilliant deduction. And a perfect example of the Circular Reasoning Fallacy.
Devouring more and more souls–especially young ones. Psychiatry is the Minotaur lurking in the labyrinth which is our twisted culture.
This monster must be stopped!
If you want a healthy brain steer clear of “mental health.”
Who’s talking full frontal assault? I prefer guerrilla warfare with anonymous blogs, memes, etc. Check out Auntie Psychiatry’s blog sometime.
I would rather take Valium, Morphine, or some other pain killer/tranquilizer for my sorrows than the crap they misleadingly dubbed “antidepressants.”
Danzig666, my condolences on what you have suffered. 🙁
May you find your Peace soon.
Steve, do you think too much screen time may also play a role? Have you read The Plug In Drug by Marie Winn?
Despondent, Haldol WOULD wear off. But they never let it! And they blame all the seizures/eye rollings/Parkinson/etc. on lucky you. Or your Mental Illness which is in fact the Real You forever after.
No Steve. No one on this site has said, “Hey, we need to team up with NAMI, SAHMSA, (fill in psych group) for Mental Health awareness week and go stigma busting together by wearing T-shirts enscribed with our diagnoses at the park.”
But we have had folks who work for these places writing here.
I’m not just referring to Corinna or Sera Davidow who make uneasy alliances in the hopes of helping those who can’t escape or are scared to right now.
Here’s an example.
There was a snarky article by a “mental health” professional–not a psychiatrist–pointing out how unreasonable anti-psychiatry folks were by quoting the most over the top statements made mostly by the most annoying and eccentric members. Not technically a Strawman argument but not representative of our movement.
I get it. He and the others hold all the cards. Without some miracle we will never be free from our oppressors. Not very classy to rub our noses in it though! And it doesn’t make it right or just.
Good!
Amen! The reason many psychiatrists hate this site is it threatens their absolute power, prestige, and lucrative careers. Anything that challenges their power and might will have a “bad reputation” with them.
I bet slave owners in the 19th century hated abolitionist magazines for that reason. And the periodicals didn’t try to win them over as I recall.
Good question!
Positive PSYCHOtherapists drive me bonkers.
Coming into the dark windowless psych ward sipping their latte while we’re suffering caffeine headaches.
“Hello kiddies! Is my luscious latte half full or half empty? We need to appreciate how suuny and wonderful our lives are. My own life is full of blessings. Tee hee.
“My hubby wubby just got a big promotion at the company he manages. Money had been a little tight since we bought that brand new house in the gated community, but now our darling angel Jessica can continue her ballet lessons.”
You sit in silence. All you have awaiting your release is a roach infested HUD efficiency you would be ashamed to invite friends to. But that’s okay cause you don’t have any friends but the other designated losers segregated from society too. Also living in squalid poverty with no spouse or kids and rejected by their families of origin.
You sit as Perky Pam the therapist lectures you on your negative attitudes. You wonder if the extra days you would get for throwing Perky Pam’s latte in her insensitive, smiling face would be worth it.
Why y’all so negative? Must be cause you’re crazy!
To you professionals I’m sorry for all the incivility you experience here. Though some comments may be hurtful, perhaps such incivility should not be surprising in light of the treatment many of us who have been labeled as “disordered” have received at the hands of your colleagues and your profession.
To quote Shakespeare: If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?
To all my fellow survivors I urge you to take the moral high road. Ignore any sneers and put downs you may encounter here. Perhaps the professional isn’t even aware of the tone he/she is taking. If you can’t say something nice don’t comment. Scroll past the hurtful comments or avoid the commenting section altogether.
Why don’t you ask your patients to come online Amy? They could explain their experiences first hand rather than second hand through you.
Google is in bed with NAMi and other psychiatric organizations to drum up more results to “help” depressed people. If they offer their help beware!
Eliminate the insanity defense and psychiatrists will lose their civil clout. No other doctors have these powers. Nor should MDs have powers granted only to judges and elected officials.
That would also severely diminish if not end “stigma” too since an SMI label would cease to mean dangerous criminal in the public’s perception.
My sentiments exactly. Remember the old cartoon Bloom County with “Bill the Cat for President”?
“He has been a handicapped, union, minority worker. He has been a pro-choice, Southern Baptist, vegan, anti-nukes gun nut. He has been a pro-life, Methodist, animal rights activist who supports business.
“Bill the Cat for President. He has been one of us.”
I guess this site wants to be Bill the Cat. Why would the pro-psych crowd WANT to come here anyhow? Wouldn’t they prefer NAMI, Healthy Place, the APA website, Psychology Today, New York Times, Huffington Post or any of those other 1,000,000,000,000 sites and forums where they can tout their view unopposed and shut US up?
If MIA wants to compete with the pro-psych crowd and get fans from NAMI, etc. by sacrificing their regulars they can blame themselves if MIA goes belly up from attempting to be all things to all men. This is not a threat but a prediction–one I don’t want to come true.
Mainstream psychiatrists tend to see themselves as Dirty Harry. We’re the disease and they’re the cure.
To quote Oldhead loosely: “Who the XXXX are we? Who the XXXX are they?”
I’m curious. Doesn’t the writer realize most of her readers are are They?
I knew that Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible was a criticism of McCarthyism. A drama about literal witch hunters.
I wish you well Steve. I’m cool with your metaphor of sheriff since communities need law and order to protect the innocent. I just hope you’ll hold the Psych Experts to the same standards as us Crazy Peons. The idea that psychiatrists are oppressed victims in need of protection sounds like the movement Sir Giles Wellesley is spear heading over the pond.
I know. You need to do your duty. Many psychiatrists aren’t truly evil but ignorant or–according to Dr. Pies–not well informed.
For everyone else, if any TAC or AOT apologist comes here, spouting traumatizing crap, ignore the jerk. Scroll past the hateful, stupid comments so you don’t have to read them. I notice Give Me Your King is no longer among us, enlightening us with his brilliant views on how we should be locked up and sterilized. There’s always something to be thankful about. 🙂
My new name for the NAMI acronym. National Association for Manufacturing Insanity. Ha ha.
Read an article in Xojane by a woman claiming to be happy over her psychiatric label of “clinical depression.” Her main reason? She felt she needed an excuse for being unhappy. What?!!!
She still went to work. Her SSRIs didn’t make much difference. But because she had a “brain disease” she could excuse herself for not being ecstatically happy 24/7. “Please excuse Janie for not smiling today. She has a mental illness. ~Dr. Smith”
Why does our culture think everyone has to be an upbeat, thick-skinned extrovert? Putting a guilt trip on someone for not smiling all the time can cause extreme sadness called depression. We may encourage physical diversity, yet through psychiatry’s quixotic quest for “mental health” and a “normal brain” we only allow one kind of personality. Very extroverted, conscientious, low in openness, and low in sensitivity. (I prefer that term to neurotic.)
Yeah. I felt sorry for Michael J. Fox because of it.
Couldn’t log in under my new handle all the sudden. Computer glitch. 😛
Dr. Szazs would certainly agree.
Lost 35 pounds and still losing. My cocktail of crap more than doubled my weight. Losing successfully for the first time–in my forties. Thanks for morbid obesity, Psychiatrists!
Smacking someone senseless with a wooden bat doesn’t look as professional or scientific. Plus you get splinters in their hair.
Rational complains of being silenced here. But he isn’t–however many of us choose to scroll past his reiterations of the Same Tired Arguments.
None of us would receive such a civil reception if we posted dissenting views on NAMI or Healthy Place. We are SO MEAN to people like Rational here it would make a houseplant weep. *Sob!*
Seizures and random destruction of brain cells are good for you. Science says. Just shut up and enjoy it!
I have never been shocked, but when a shock survivor tells me it’s horrifying I believe her or him.
It angers me when ignorant people who have never experienced shock and never will preach how wonderful it it. I noticed a bunch of not-too-well-educated “mental health” workers (C.N.A./LPN’s/M.A’s) praising it all the sudden. Truly scary. Like something from The Manchurian Candidate. Maybe their own brain cells had been decimated.
Psychiatry is the perfect career choice for a sadistic bully.
Funny. You would think she’d be more familiar with MIA’s philosophy by now.
I have had “mental health” underlings pressure me to date guys I found unattractive if not repulsive. They would get mad at me, accuse me of being stuck up and judgmental.
They would remind me I was no better than the others. And our “mental illnesses” meant we had so much in common–only another “bipolar” could understand me. A therapist actually told me that. We’re all alike after all! 😛
Then they say, “You’re not your illness.” Hmm. Someone can’t keep the narrative straight.
I want to make some graphs of my own.
1. A line graph. One dark, solid line for the number of mass shootings in America. Several lighter, divided lines for numbers of various psych drugs consumed.
2. A pie chart divided to show how people get diagnosed and enter the mental health system. X% who got in through “losing it” for no easily discernible cause. Y% who were severely traumatized from rape or veterans with battle fatigue. Z% who took SSRIs for depression, nerves or off label purposes and wound up with nice little Bipolar labels. And we mustn’t forget kids who start out by fidgeting in class, get put on ritallin and are accused of bipolar as young adults.
3. A bar chart depicting life expectencies of those diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar throughout the past hundred years. Contrasting those in the 1900’s with the 1960’s and the present when all these Safe and Effective Treatments are so readily available. Whether we want them or not.
Hmm. Maybe it would be a better modality of “treatment” because of its very ineffectiveness. Almost 100% placebo effect.
My favorite drug was Prozac because it had almost no discernible effect on my thinking. 😀
Maybe people could privately rip apart DSM manuals for catharsis. But that could be expensive.
Maybe doll up a metropolitan phone book to look like a DSM book and rip it apart. I have torn up outdated phone books. Great release of angry energy!
I am looking for a discount copy of the DSM 5. Knowing the 300 insults they call diagnoses would be grist for my satire.
Most people who think psychiatry is legitimate have no idea what that book contains. Funny how embarrassed top ranking shrinks have been by its contents. 🙂
The truth shall set you free.
I will do some research. I don’t know the direct sources. They were cited in one of Bruce Levine’s books. I probably should start there.
Hello Hannah. You must be new here.
Bonnie I am working on a short novel criticizing the educational system, but it points out the evils of psychiatry too. A couple of the bullied teens get “helped” by the psych system. None of the bullies do.
Puzzle can’t tell right from wrong. She would never knowingly harm someone without cause.
Unlike gifted human beings who use their intelligence and social standing to lord it over others–knowing right from wrong but rationalizing it or ignoring whatever shreds of conscience they still have.
“Antidepressants” appear to interfere with the natural release of endorphins when people exercise. They did trials on 3 groups. One on Zoloft, one just exercised. The third group did both.
The exercise only group came out on top. Next the Zoloft plus exercise. And the Zoloft only on the bottom.
For what it’s worth I don’t see the anti-suicide movement by the current psychiatric system to be about affirming human life, but rather control. When using human beings as guinea pigs for brain drugs becomes less profitable they will welcome physician assisted suicide. On psychiatry’s own terms.
Remember the “mentally ill” have no real say in the “treatment” they receive. The nature of the alleged disorder renders consent irrelevant. How convenient for exasperated family members and other caretakers!
Aunt Betty’s refusal to get a lethal injection proves how truly sick she is. Obviously she fails to realize the severity of her “illness.” Must have anosognosia.
Be very afraid!
Hope is a powerful medicine. But hoping in psychiatry is about as rational as hoping the Easter bunny will save me.
Dr. K., I only say the drugs don’t stop killing sprees. The drugs called “anti-psychotics” have caused me thoughts of insane violence; I overrode these bizarre impulses by sitting on my hands–literally–alone in a dark room till the fit would pass. At least I was the only one who suffered. 🙂
But why should anyone suffer?
Not everyone in that situation would choose to act as I did. Part of the reason I kept toying with the idea of suicide was my fear of killing others. Self murder seemed better even if I went to Hell. Often I doubted I had a soul to damn.
According to church theology I did, but the way fellow Christians treated me was inconsistent. They acted like I was a soulless monster. Normals have souls–but the “mentally ill” do not.
Someone should ask Rick Warren if the “mentally ill” have souls. He acts like he believes otherwise!
Some idiot was accusing Lauren Tenney of not doing research. He knew science had proven all “mental illness” was from a chemical imbalance. I told him the president of the American Psychiatric Association thought otherwise and posted a link to Pies’s article. That shut him up.
No one asks why the shootings have increased while more psych drugs are consumed than ever.
The way I try to explain it is mind altering drugs can cause violence. If someone in heroin withdrawal commits murders no one says, “He should have listened to his dealer and stayed on his meds.” Street drugs are “bad medicine” remember.
Hmm. Thought the illness was genetic–that childhood abuse was irrelevant. “Nobody’s fault,” remember.
You may disagree with the NRA’s ideology but they are privately funded by individuals. Not gun manufacturers. My dad belongs; he’s a retired clergyman. Not the CEO of some rifle making company. (Can’t name one off the top of my head.)
I’m angry at the NRA president for saying “All the mentally ill are monsters and should be locked up.” This did not score him points–even with NAMI or SAHMSA. He’s pretty ignorant. Does he think locking up 20% of the population is feasible? And what if the APA declares gun ownership to be a “symptom” of various “mental illnesses” in the DSM 6?
Effecting marketing. Definitely not a branch of science–though there are soft sciences involved in marketing and propaganda.
Good point, Hobbes!
Bcharris, I might hire you as a consultant. My body no longer absorbs micro nutrients after 23 years of SSRIs. My gut flora may be wiped out.
The doctor I see is clueless. All she recommends are monthly iron infusions and B12 injections. Never criticizes the drugs she thinks I take.
r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com
Inobusca, until you said it was a parody I thought it was serious. 😀 Ha ha!
Psychiatry itself is a cartoon of a science and therefore defies satire.
I agree. I get very angry that they are drugging their kids. But my anger is at the liars who deceive loving parents into feeding their kids speed under the pretext that it’s medicine.
A lot of people insist they have a mental illness. At some level do they like the idea they have no control over their actions and can’t be held accountable?
The way our society functions now, the masses believe “normal” people have free will. “Schizos” and “bipolars” don’t. Either the random chemical reactions in the skull cause wanton mayhem and violence or the pills take over transforming evil Mr. Hyde into peaceful Dr. Jekyll. No real person–just biologically based insanity or drugs.
The whole premise of psychiatry caused me existential angst when I believed it. I get mad at those who refuse to think and mindlessly buy whatever pop culture sells. But at least I have seen the light. Drugs or no drugs, locked up or at large–my knowledge provides a peace no shrink can steal. 🙂
Short term, usually not. But no mainstream psychiatrist limits the time period they prescribe the stuff.
Btw, I think sometimes neuroleptics do have benefits as emotional pain killers. But long term usage of massive quantities of morphine is a very bad idea. And claiming they cure”chemical imbalances” is a lie.
Assume for the sake of argument, chemical imbalances in the brain cause extreme states. That still doesn’t justify using drugs as a long term fix. Why? They have no idea what they are trying to fix. For all psychiatrists know they could be making the imbalance worse rather than better. Most human brain chemicals have yet to be discovered according to Peter Breggin. Pretty presumptuous to fix something when you can’t see the crack.
I MAY have cancer. In its early stages I wouldn’t feel discomfort. So maybe they should remove random bodily organs and subject me to weekly chemo and radiation treatments for the rest of my life. Sounds like a plan.
And when my hair falls out and I keep puking–say “It must be the cancer. Can’t be the chemo. It’s perfectly safe and effective.”
I agree. Yet nearly all the health professionals, “loving” family members, and even some grateful consumers swear the stuff is magically effective.
I see the shuffles, flat expressions, vacant eyes, and inability to function. I have also experienced all the above and more. Are others blind or just dismissive of things they don’t like or that contradict TV?
When slavery officially ended the newly freed citizens did need help. Many continued living like slaves as sharecroppers. Racism got worse–not better. The KKK was started.
Northerners promised the ex-slaves “five acres and a mule” since they might get the vote and the Yankee demagogues wanted it. Sadly land and the 19th century equivalent to tractors never materialized.
Stefanie was more fortunate than many caught in psychiatry. I’m glad she got better. Just wish there were more stories like hers.
Good diet and sound sleep are ineffective if your SSRIs wipe out your digestive tract and your neuroleptics create insomnia.
Continue to bail with a teaspoon while I drill more holes in the boat with my Black and Decker.
Those drugs are Hell on Earth. Often the folks who take them fail to see their cognitive decline.
No onlooker can fully appreciate the suffering those drugs cause. Till your brain rots thoroughly.
You claim I insult folks on neuroleptics?Speaking as a no longer stupified ex-zombie I disagree strongly. Everyone I know who has come off those things has an increase in IQ. Sometimes 20 points or more.
Almost everyone who takes psych drugs has free will issues. Either they are bullied by brute force (court ordered) or thoroughly deceived as I was. Many quit the drugs cold turkey because they’re miserable rather than having a paradigm shift. They experience withdrawal, get locked up, put on 2 or 3 times the drugs and “deteriorate.” The Myth of Decompensation is born.
If I said people who had been beaten over the head repeatedly suffered brain damage and you swore it was fun and enjoyable for them–in addition to bolstering their cognitive skills–would I be insulting them? By criticizing physical battery I’m insulting the victims. Uh huh.
Many folks who wind up labeled and drugged who are smart were that way to begin with. I have heard reports from NAMI about how adult kids were helped. They started out as college honor students. But thanks to the wonders of psychiatry they can now wash dishes unassisted–almost. Wow! A real improvement. According to NAMI.
Good point. A lot of us are physically disabled due to psychiatric damage. I count myself among the “lucky ones” since I came off my Effexor unusually fast and am much better after just six months.
More functional already than when drugged. Keep the place clean with little effort. Never could on my “cocktail” of psych drugs. Keeping my blog more regularly. I plan on looking for work soon.
I give myself one year to get off disability.
Btw, it is disgusting folks like me have to live at tax payer expense. But tax payers seem happy with that–as a collective–since they want us drugged and/or institutionalized. If they wanted the waste to end they’d fight psychiatry.
Serves them right to lose money on the deal!
Two problems.
1. Discrimination. Psychiatric labels lead to “social disability.” See a shrink, get an SMI label and no one will ever hire you again.
2. Long term drug use causes real disabilities. These poisons wreak havoc on the brain, central nervous system, and every bodily organ.
I’m working to overcome those problems by building up my health again. My digestive tract has sustained the most damage. As far as getting around the discrimination and transportation issues I see no alternative to trying to make a living with the online gig economy.
If I succeed I plan on hiring myself out as a consultant to help others escape dependency on the MI System by freelancing too.
I was very suicidal for years. Here’s why.
1. I was sick of being owned by the mental illness center. So thankful I don’t get “services” I don’t want from them anymore. Not just the drugs (which themselves were an exquisite torture) but the infantalizing and telling me I won’t ever succeed.
2. I believed I was a vile subhuman monstrosity.
3. I feared my “meds” would quit working and I would murder innocent people. Seriously. I thought killing myself was the lesser evil. Heroic if you think about it.
Leaving the Mental Illness System, coming off their drugs, and rejecting stigma (my psychiatric label) has given me a new lease on life. That’s why I say anosognosia saves lives!
Wow! Did suicide.com use Real Science to prove folks who kill themselves become angels? Actually no theologian believes dead folks become angel.
It has been proven beyond all shadow of a doubt that chemical imbalances are real, psychiatry cures discrimination (stigma), and suicides turn into angels. All proven by hard science in a lab somewhere. Please don’t pester us for links–cause it’s there.
They watch too much television. All their knowledge of science comes from drug commercials and their theology of the afterlife from Saturday morning cartoons.
A lot of shrinks here wanted to euthenize “patients” too. Just didn’t have the guts to go through with it. Sterilizing was carried out however.
For now they have called a halt to killing us or encouraging suicides. Slowly poisoning the “unfit” is much more profitable.
The major premise behind Psychiatry is not just that genetic disorders exist. There’s Down Syndrome, Huntington’s, Sickle Cell Anemia to name a few. The idea is that all bad behavior is purely genetic. Good genes make morally upright, ethical people. Bad genes mean the reverse.
Hence the link between Psychiatry and Eugenics. The latter is also about weeding out the “unfit.”
Why not give people bits of brightly colored gelatin instead then? Psychiatry is based on a major lie anyhow. Just hand out capsules containing more dried gelatin.
Ta da! The placebo effect. 😀
If you notice how some commenters fight tooth and nail defending these stigmatizing labels you wind up scratching your head. Why do you WANT to be hopelessly insane/broken/dangerous?
1. They’re getting the Good Stuff now. Dr. Awesome-Sauce is giving out uppers more freely than his office mints.
2. It gives them freedom to act like jerks to all around them. “I can’t help myself. My Bipolar made me do it.” Yep. Just like Dr. Strangelove’s hand.
3. They don’t have to do anything now except go to adult preschool (day treatment) then go home and binge watch TV. Who wants to take responsibility of your life when you can loaf and let Big Brother and his twin Dr. Frankenstein take care of you.
4. They’re a big fish in a small pond. Having climbed to the top by being “perfect patients” they enjoy a sort of prestige over the “not-so-good patients.” By leaving the MI system they would be a Nobody.
5. They’re afraid. Been there. Done that. I questioned the MI System for maybe 5 years before screwing up my courage to leave. It also took a while for an opportunity to materialize.
That last one though…I always liked the idea that I wasn’t sick/crazy/evil/murderous. Why anyone loves the idea of being hopelessly evil and deranged is beyond me!
For my own part I frequently experienced tardive psychosis during mini-seizures brought on by the neuroleptics I took. So I refuse to call those drugs “antipsychotics.” They also caused obsessive patterns of thought that made everyone hate me. Thank goodness these went away when I was taken off my stelazine.
Now the only thing I take is levothyroxin for my bad thyroid. And lots of supplements including a monthly iron infusion due to the number SSRIs played on my gut!
Thank you for your honesty, Craig.
Ron, poor nutrition, smoking, and vegging in front of the TV lead to an early death. But these bad habits are exacerbated by drugs, isolation, and poverty created by the stigma imposed by mental illness labels.
My Aunt Norma Jean was diagnosed as schizophrenic at 17. She lived to be 87. Oh, and she never took psych drugs. And she got better–though never fully. Probably brain damage from shocks.
Granted, that’s an anecdote. It would be interesting to see some real statistics on life span among the”mentally ill” before the drugs became too available. I don’t trust Google enough to use its search engine for that though.
Among other causes of these shootings is the way our society regards human life as cheap. Especially the “severely mentally ill.” No one has any problem drugging 5% of the population into an early grave since 1 out of a hundred might commit a murder someday.
Not only do they regard the “mentally ill” as useless eaters but remorseless monsters who must be imprisoned/crippled/killed for the Public Good.
The “monsters” often have “good insight” embracing the role assigned them of Monstrous Other–in addition to the maddening drugs they are coerced into taking. Like Frankenstein’s monster they give up on love and try to inspire fear instead.
Some yes. There are those who break out–generally with help from individuals–not government drones.
I believe I will be off disability in a year or two. Bit by bit my strength is returning since I’m off the devil’s tic tacs now. 🙂
Kelley was a murderous creep. Psych drugs did not transform him into Mr. Sensitivity. Imagine that.
Pies has driven himself crazy through continuous lying. Not a “brain” disorder. A moral one. Only instead of “creative symptoming” as Glasser called it–you see lavender gazelles to avoid the painful reality surrounding you–Pies has gone nuts trying to justify his wicked ways.
Remember the cruel Commandant in Schindler’s List? He couldn’t live with his own guilty conscience. When they executed him he had “lost it.”
I wish there were a way to publicize this trial. Everyone I know believes in the “chemical imbalance” more firmly than the fact the sky is blue. Bunch of dumb sheeple.
It says depression/bipolar/schizophrenia are real brain chemistry disorders on TV. TV never lies! So it must be true.
Out of touch with reality?
You mean believing poisons are medicines? That dying 25 years prematurely is healthy? That “no” means “yes”? That although you earn a six digit income and enjoy prestige you can readily identify with those you malign and force to live in crushing poverty? That deceiving all your patients and the general public is noble?
Nothing psychotic about that. Especially if you can diagnose yourself. 😛
Uh, Zenobia…the writer’s math is off. 11 positive plus 4 negative plus 4 mixed equals 19–not 18.
In order to find happiness playing the “bipolar” role it helps to be a flamboyant drama queen. Use melodramatic terms to describe how crazy–yet gifted–you are. Speak in reverential awe of the god-like “doctor” who saved your soul with “medicines” necessary for redemption.
Next, use your story to evangelize others to realize that they too are crazy bipolars in need of salvation through a chemical cocktail. You can even earn a comfortable living doing so.
Washed up actors–too fat and dead pan to act–can travel to APA conventions, currying favor with these deities, and serving as shills to the masses about how REAL bipolar is and how they too can be happy/productive (although morbidly obese and dead pan) if they just submit to multiple drugs and shocks.
There are also decoys or “peer specialists” who make a pittance to lure others to continue their “treatments.”
Bloggers who tout the Gospel of Psychiatry on sites plastered with drug ads and affiliate links to other drug sites.
If you’re lucky, and suffer minimal brain damage, you can write self dramatizing memoirs and fake histories about how lots of dead people MUST have been mentally ill. (If the drugs/shocks are necessary for BDs to function, then why are all the famous, successful ones 100+ years dead?) Then they can give you a professor’s chair–invented for a psychiatric mascot like yourself. Your real job isn’t to foster learning but sell Psychiatry. As long as you show up and tell how your lithium is making you exuberant, you’re guaranteed tenure! 😀
Being maimed by drugs taken long term and defamed by a phony diagnosis I am forced to live on disability too. For now.
Sman, I doubt anyone here wants to rob you of the pittance you subsist on. I only get $760 a month. No food stamps and forced to live in roach infested HUD slum where everyone knows there’s something “wrong” with me for living here.
I wish I knew some of these people Someone Else. Every church I attend is militantly pro-psychiatry in the hopes of appearing humane.
People–in Christian forums–complain that they need Prozac since Jesus isn’t enough to save them. If they think Science has all the answers they should take a page from Richard Dawkins and get the Heck out of church since they have no real belief in God or souls or good and evil!
And no green stuff for the quack.
Priorities!
Why wouldn’t HIPAA release records of all the “mentally ill” since no one cares about them anyhow?
Unless the psychiatrists are nervous about losing perspective vic-uh-consumers, since knowing they will be publicly disgraced would serve as an effective deterrent to depressed people seeking out psychiatric abuse–I mean services.
Trying to horn in on my racket, eh?
Not gonna stand for you putting an end to my little operation, see?
Imagine the above lines delivered by a Big Pharma CEO who does a James Cagney imitation.
Remember Les Miserables? Inspector Jalvert would have made a great shrink.
Once a thief always a thief. Once a schizophrenic always a schizophrenic.
Psychiatric diagnosis are really moral judgments. Some of these “symptoms” are bad behaviors. But by labeling the person as hopelessly depraved they are socially marginalizing them–declaring them irredeemable. Doing their best to prevent any reformation of character.
Psychiatry is not only morally bankrupt, but encourages such in our society as a whole.
Dr. Breggin you are a busy man, so you probably can’t answer this question. (Good article, by the way.) Maybe one of the other commenters can.
About Devin Kelley. He had a criminal record. Among other things he had almost murdered his infant son to get back at his wife.
Why wasn’t Kelley in prison for attempted murder? Google searches reveal nothing.
My guess is that instead of doing time like a real criminal should, he was sent to a psych ward. Because of his “insight” and religiously swallowing the drugs provided, the shrinks said he was safe and let him out early. Leaving him free to go on his killing rampage.
Is there any truth to my hypothesis?
They certainly take no trouble to undeceive the public. I find Pies’s article about the “metaphor” psychiatry bases its authority on a snarky bit of self congratulation. He and his cronies are laughing up their sleeves at how easily the public is deceived by “well-informed” professionals in the know.
I am printing that article to show my dad. Once he knows the truth he will be furious.
Psychiatrists also contradict themselves in other ways.
For example: claiming that bad behaviors are different from “mental illness” but how do they judge whether someone is “mentally ill?” Blood work? Brain scans? Nope. Behaviors that hurt the performer, threaten others, or simply bug those around them.
Why did that guy go on a killing spree?
Because he was mentally ill.
How do you know he was mentally ill?
Because only a mentally ill person goes on killing sprees.
You can’t argue with that astounding logic. 😀
I know you don’t like Freud (nor do I) but he seems to not have been into the biological model of psychiatry with his theories of the subconscious and prolonged “therapeutic” talks.
For what it’s worth, Frank, belief in my “mental illness” made me act crazier than just the pills could have done. I’ve heard a firm belief in your own “mental illness” can have that effect. Like hypnosis.
Dr. K, I frequently feel frustrated because no one around me is open to any ideas about “mental illness” they don’t get off television. People are ignorant as ever–ordinary Joe Blows–and I feel hopeless to ever educate them.
Barely resisting urge to become a misanthropic recluse and hole up away from the creeps and idiots. (The two types of people on planet Earth.)
Isn’t the APA overestimating their enemy–if they even have one?
I was able to leave psychiatry once I realized it was incompatible with the Bible.
Then I hear pastors give commercials for psych drugs in their sermons. Naive morons!
Emerson said, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” I say it’s the first refuge for scoundrels and selfish jerks who want to shuffle the suffering off to a corner to rot away from the Real People in the church. The snappy dressers who tithe with nice families.
The more vocally pro-psychiatry a church is the meaner it is to the “mentally ill.” Often they do their best to freeze them out. Take your “meds” then keep away from us! See what kind, compassionate folks we are! We want them to get the help we need to keep them away from us.
If everything we do comes from random chemicals in our heads we have no souls and should quit wasting time at their churches since religion is a hoax. Apparently Rick Warren has never bothered to think it through. Saddleback Church discourages thinking or reflection anyhow from what I hear.
Everybody I know on neuroleptics is a numb, stupified zombie. I have no idea what alternate universe you inhabit.
These pills created stuff I never had before. Horrible nightmarish stuff. The nightmare of being drugged 24/7 is almost over but I’m angry and grieving and have no safe place offline to vent.
If the drugs made folks feel so damned great no one would ever go off them! I took mine religiously for 25 years because I thought I deserved to suffer. They were nothing but an act of penance–self destruction to make my abusive “loved ones” happy! 🙁
No, according to the media “mental health” doesn’t cause violence. Mentally ill people do! The solution? More drugs!
Drugging 25% of the population hasn’t solved violent shootings. There are more shootings now than 25 years ago when most of these drugs weren’t invented.
The obvious solution? Drug more people than ever!!!! That’s a (literal) no brainer. 😀
If “antidepressants” work so well why are many people who take them on disability and not working? Why are so many horribly depressed and suicidal?
I had depression as a kid, but learned to “talk myself out of it.” Taught myself compensatory methods that psychiatry refuses to acknowledge since they feed off learned helplessness.
Believing I had a “brain disease” that only mind altering drugs could fix did more than make me an unwitting junkie. It tricked me into abdicating responsibility for my thoughts and feelings–even helped me rationalize acting like a jerk or lunatic. (Hey, might as well have the game as the name–as the saying goes!)
For years shrinks lied to me. If I would take my “meds” I could hold down a job, find love and acceptance, lead a happy and productive life. Bunch of lies!
Rasselaus, they can hunt forever as far as I’m concerned. But they should be honest about the findings (a big fat nothing) and quit LYING to everybody!
Jan, aren’t you iatrogenically disabled? Those years of unsafe, ineffective drugging have permanently damaged many of us. Hence, I still accept disability with a clear conscience till I can think of something better.
There are those who “psych out” without drugs. But I guess those are the minority. And in the past 70% would snap out of it on their own.
100 years ago I would not have wound up labeled mad. The standards for what constituted “madness” were a lot stricter too. People with it enough to write articles and posts were not considered madhouse material.
Many of us have lives that stink. That does make us miserable. When folks tell us we’re sick/crazy not only do they insult us but it minimizes the crap in our lives that would make anyone sad!
I got labeled “paranoid schizoaffective.” People treated me like something subhuman/dangerous/stupid. I got kicked out of college and my mom started abusing me–with encouragement from psychiatry.
After a year of Hell on earth I wanted to kill myself. Why? It must have been a chemical disorder in my brain. It’s not like “mentally ill” folks have feelings after all, just chemical explosions in our heads. That makes it okay for everyone to treat us like garbage! 😛
Pies is a poet. He doesn’t deal in science but metaphors and imaginary words. Like the evil version of Dr. Seuss or Ogden Nash.
Is this site for psychiatric survivors, Bob?
Or is it for psychiatrists and the self identifying “mentally ill?” There is a very real conflict of interest between these groups, since one supports business as usual and the other wants basic human rights that others take for granted–and the “consumers” have given up on.
I bought a copy of Anatomy of an Epidemic for my dad’s birthday gift. I appreciate the fine craftsmanship you put into it.
I also appreciate your candor in posting the above remark. It helps the bulk of your readership understand how you truly feel about us.
By “providers” do you mean psychiatrists, Sera? They should be held legally responsible for mass shootings if the shooter is being “treated” by them IMHO.
We know the mother smothered her toddler because she was bipolar.
How do you know she was bipolar?
Because only a person with bipolar would smother a toddler.
Brilliant deduction. And a perfect example of the Circular Reasoning Fallacy.
Devouring more and more souls–especially young ones. Psychiatry is the Minotaur lurking in the labyrinth which is our twisted culture.
This monster must be stopped!
If you want a healthy brain steer clear of “mental health.”
Who’s talking full frontal assault? I prefer guerrilla warfare with anonymous blogs, memes, etc. Check out Auntie Psychiatry’s blog sometime.
I would rather take Valium, Morphine, or some other pain killer/tranquilizer for my sorrows than the crap they misleadingly dubbed “antidepressants.”
Danzig666, my condolences on what you have suffered. 🙁
May you find your Peace soon.
Steve, do you think too much screen time may also play a role? Have you read The Plug In Drug by Marie Winn?
Despondent, Haldol WOULD wear off. But they never let it! And they blame all the seizures/eye rollings/Parkinson/etc. on lucky you. Or your Mental Illness which is in fact the Real You forever after.
No Steve. No one on this site has said, “Hey, we need to team up with NAMI, SAHMSA, (fill in psych group) for Mental Health awareness week and go stigma busting together by wearing T-shirts enscribed with our diagnoses at the park.”
But we have had folks who work for these places writing here.
I’m not just referring to Corinna or Sera Davidow who make uneasy alliances in the hopes of helping those who can’t escape or are scared to right now.
Here’s an example.
There was a snarky article by a “mental health” professional–not a psychiatrist–pointing out how unreasonable anti-psychiatry folks were by quoting the most over the top statements made mostly by the most annoying and eccentric members. Not technically a Strawman argument but not representative of our movement.
I get it. He and the others hold all the cards. Without some miracle we will never be free from our oppressors. Not very classy to rub our noses in it though! And it doesn’t make it right or just.
Good!
Amen! The reason many psychiatrists hate this site is it threatens their absolute power, prestige, and lucrative careers. Anything that challenges their power and might will have a “bad reputation” with them.
I bet slave owners in the 19th century hated abolitionist magazines for that reason. And the periodicals didn’t try to win them over as I recall.
Good question!
Positive PSYCHOtherapists drive me bonkers.
Coming into the dark windowless psych ward sipping their latte while we’re suffering caffeine headaches.
“Hello kiddies! Is my luscious latte half full or half empty? We need to appreciate how suuny and wonderful our lives are. My own life is full of blessings. Tee hee.
“My hubby wubby just got a big promotion at the company he manages. Money had been a little tight since we bought that brand new house in the gated community, but now our darling angel Jessica can continue her ballet lessons.”
You sit in silence. All you have awaiting your release is a roach infested HUD efficiency you would be ashamed to invite friends to. But that’s okay cause you don’t have any friends but the other designated losers segregated from society too. Also living in squalid poverty with no spouse or kids and rejected by their families of origin.
You sit as Perky Pam the therapist lectures you on your negative attitudes. You wonder if the extra days you would get for throwing Perky Pam’s latte in her insensitive, smiling face would be worth it.
Why y’all so negative? Must be cause you’re crazy!
To you professionals I’m sorry for all the incivility you experience here. Though some comments may be hurtful, perhaps such incivility should not be surprising in light of the treatment many of us who have been labeled as “disordered” have received at the hands of your colleagues and your profession.
To quote Shakespeare: If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?
To all my fellow survivors I urge you to take the moral high road. Ignore any sneers and put downs you may encounter here. Perhaps the professional isn’t even aware of the tone he/she is taking. If you can’t say something nice don’t comment. Scroll past the hurtful comments or avoid the commenting section altogether.
Why don’t you ask your patients to come online Amy? They could explain their experiences first hand rather than second hand through you.
Google is in bed with NAMi and other psychiatric organizations to drum up more results to “help” depressed people. If they offer their help beware!
Eliminate the insanity defense and psychiatrists will lose their civil clout. No other doctors have these powers. Nor should MDs have powers granted only to judges and elected officials.
That would also severely diminish if not end “stigma” too since an SMI label would cease to mean dangerous criminal in the public’s perception.
My sentiments exactly. Remember the old cartoon Bloom County with “Bill the Cat for President”?
“He has been a handicapped, union, minority worker. He has been a pro-choice, Southern Baptist, vegan, anti-nukes gun nut. He has been a pro-life, Methodist, animal rights activist who supports business.
“Bill the Cat for President. He has been one of us.”
I guess this site wants to be Bill the Cat. Why would the pro-psych crowd WANT to come here anyhow? Wouldn’t they prefer NAMI, Healthy Place, the APA website, Psychology Today, New York Times, Huffington Post or any of those other 1,000,000,000,000 sites and forums where they can tout their view unopposed and shut US up?
If MIA wants to compete with the pro-psych crowd and get fans from NAMI, etc. by sacrificing their regulars they can blame themselves if MIA goes belly up from attempting to be all things to all men. This is not a threat but a prediction–one I don’t want to come true.
Mainstream psychiatrists tend to see themselves as Dirty Harry. We’re the disease and they’re the cure.
To quote Oldhead loosely: “Who the XXXX are we? Who the XXXX are they?”
I’m curious. Doesn’t the writer realize most of her readers are are They?
I knew that Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible was a criticism of McCarthyism. A drama about literal witch hunters.
I wish you well Steve. I’m cool with your metaphor of sheriff since communities need law and order to protect the innocent. I just hope you’ll hold the Psych Experts to the same standards as us Crazy Peons. The idea that psychiatrists are oppressed victims in need of protection sounds like the movement Sir Giles Wellesley is spear heading over the pond.
I know. You need to do your duty. Many psychiatrists aren’t truly evil but ignorant or–according to Dr. Pies–not well informed.
For everyone else, if any TAC or AOT apologist comes here, spouting traumatizing crap, ignore the jerk. Scroll past the hateful, stupid comments so you don’t have to read them. I notice Give Me Your King is no longer among us, enlightening us with his brilliant views on how we should be locked up and sterilized. There’s always something to be thankful about. 🙂
My new name for the NAMI acronym. National Association for Manufacturing Insanity. Ha ha.
Read an article in Xojane by a woman claiming to be happy over her psychiatric label of “clinical depression.” Her main reason? She felt she needed an excuse for being unhappy. What?!!!
She still went to work. Her SSRIs didn’t make much difference. But because she had a “brain disease” she could excuse herself for not being ecstatically happy 24/7. “Please excuse Janie for not smiling today. She has a mental illness. ~Dr. Smith”
Why does our culture think everyone has to be an upbeat, thick-skinned extrovert? Putting a guilt trip on someone for not smiling all the time can cause extreme sadness called depression. We may encourage physical diversity, yet through psychiatry’s quixotic quest for “mental health” and a “normal brain” we only allow one kind of personality. Very extroverted, conscientious, low in openness, and low in sensitivity. (I prefer that term to neurotic.)
Yeah. I felt sorry for Michael J. Fox because of it.
Couldn’t log in under my new handle all the sudden. Computer glitch. 😛
Dr. Szazs would certainly agree.
Lost 35 pounds and still losing. My cocktail of crap more than doubled my weight. Losing successfully for the first time–in my forties. Thanks for morbid obesity, Psychiatrists!
Smacking someone senseless with a wooden bat doesn’t look as professional or scientific. Plus you get splinters in their hair.
Rational complains of being silenced here. But he isn’t–however many of us choose to scroll past his reiterations of the Same Tired Arguments.
None of us would receive such a civil reception if we posted dissenting views on NAMI or Healthy Place. We are SO MEAN to people like Rational here it would make a houseplant weep. *Sob!*
Seizures and random destruction of brain cells are good for you. Science says. Just shut up and enjoy it!
I have never been shocked, but when a shock survivor tells me it’s horrifying I believe her or him.
It angers me when ignorant people who have never experienced shock and never will preach how wonderful it it. I noticed a bunch of not-too-well-educated “mental health” workers (C.N.A./LPN’s/M.A’s) praising it all the sudden. Truly scary. Like something from The Manchurian Candidate. Maybe their own brain cells had been decimated.
Psychiatry is the perfect career choice for a sadistic bully.
Funny. You would think she’d be more familiar with MIA’s philosophy by now.
I have had “mental health” underlings pressure me to date guys I found unattractive if not repulsive. They would get mad at me, accuse me of being stuck up and judgmental.
They would remind me I was no better than the others. And our “mental illnesses” meant we had so much in common–only another “bipolar” could understand me. A therapist actually told me that. We’re all alike after all! 😛
Then they say, “You’re not your illness.” Hmm. Someone can’t keep the narrative straight.
I want to make some graphs of my own.
1. A line graph. One dark, solid line for the number of mass shootings in America. Several lighter, divided lines for numbers of various psych drugs consumed.
2. A pie chart divided to show how people get diagnosed and enter the mental health system. X% who got in through “losing it” for no easily discernible cause. Y% who were severely traumatized from rape or veterans with battle fatigue. Z% who took SSRIs for depression, nerves or off label purposes and wound up with nice little Bipolar labels. And we mustn’t forget kids who start out by fidgeting in class, get put on ritallin and are accused of bipolar as young adults.
3. A bar chart depicting life expectencies of those diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar throughout the past hundred years. Contrasting those in the 1900’s with the 1960’s and the present when all these Safe and Effective Treatments are so readily available. Whether we want them or not.
Hmm. Maybe it would be a better modality of “treatment” because of its very ineffectiveness. Almost 100% placebo effect.
My favorite drug was Prozac because it had almost no discernible effect on my thinking. 😀
Maybe people could privately rip apart DSM manuals for catharsis. But that could be expensive.
Maybe doll up a metropolitan phone book to look like a DSM book and rip it apart. I have torn up outdated phone books. Great release of angry energy!
I am looking for a discount copy of the DSM 5. Knowing the 300 insults they call diagnoses would be grist for my satire.
Most people who think psychiatry is legitimate have no idea what that book contains. Funny how embarrassed top ranking shrinks have been by its contents. 🙂
The truth shall set you free.
I will do some research. I don’t know the direct sources. They were cited in one of Bruce Levine’s books. I probably should start there.
Hello Hannah. You must be new here.
Bonnie I am working on a short novel criticizing the educational system, but it points out the evils of psychiatry too. A couple of the bullied teens get “helped” by the psych system. None of the bullies do.
Puzzle can’t tell right from wrong. She would never knowingly harm someone without cause.
Unlike gifted human beings who use their intelligence and social standing to lord it over others–knowing right from wrong but rationalizing it or ignoring whatever shreds of conscience they still have.
“Antidepressants” appear to interfere with the natural release of endorphins when people exercise. They did trials on 3 groups. One on Zoloft, one just exercised. The third group did both.
The exercise only group came out on top. Next the Zoloft plus exercise. And the Zoloft only on the bottom.
For what it’s worth I don’t see the anti-suicide movement by the current psychiatric system to be about affirming human life, but rather control. When using human beings as guinea pigs for brain drugs becomes less profitable they will welcome physician assisted suicide. On psychiatry’s own terms.
Remember the “mentally ill” have no real say in the “treatment” they receive. The nature of the alleged disorder renders consent irrelevant. How convenient for exasperated family members and other caretakers!
Aunt Betty’s refusal to get a lethal injection proves how truly sick she is. Obviously she fails to realize the severity of her “illness.” Must have anosognosia.
Be very afraid!
Hope is a powerful medicine. But hoping in psychiatry is about as rational as hoping the Easter bunny will save me.
Dr. K., I only say the drugs don’t stop killing sprees. The drugs called “anti-psychotics” have caused me thoughts of insane violence; I overrode these bizarre impulses by sitting on my hands–literally–alone in a dark room till the fit would pass. At least I was the only one who suffered. 🙂
But why should anyone suffer?
Not everyone in that situation would choose to act as I did. Part of the reason I kept toying with the idea of suicide was my fear of killing others. Self murder seemed better even if I went to Hell. Often I doubted I had a soul to damn.
According to church theology I did, but the way fellow Christians treated me was inconsistent. They acted like I was a soulless monster. Normals have souls–but the “mentally ill” do not.
Someone should ask Rick Warren if the “mentally ill” have souls. He acts like he believes otherwise!
Some idiot was accusing Lauren Tenney of not doing research. He knew science had proven all “mental illness” was from a chemical imbalance. I told him the president of the American Psychiatric Association thought otherwise and posted a link to Pies’s article. That shut him up.
No one asks why the shootings have increased while more psych drugs are consumed than ever.
The way I try to explain it is mind altering drugs can cause violence. If someone in heroin withdrawal commits murders no one says, “He should have listened to his dealer and stayed on his meds.” Street drugs are “bad medicine” remember.
Hmm. Thought the illness was genetic–that childhood abuse was irrelevant. “Nobody’s fault,” remember.
You may disagree with the NRA’s ideology but they are privately funded by individuals. Not gun manufacturers. My dad belongs; he’s a retired clergyman. Not the CEO of some rifle making company. (Can’t name one off the top of my head.)
I’m angry at the NRA president for saying “All the mentally ill are monsters and should be locked up.” This did not score him points–even with NAMI or SAHMSA. He’s pretty ignorant. Does he think locking up 20% of the population is feasible? And what if the APA declares gun ownership to be a “symptom” of various “mental illnesses” in the DSM 6?
Effecting marketing. Definitely not a branch of science–though there are soft sciences involved in marketing and propaganda.
Good point, Hobbes!
Bcharris, I might hire you as a consultant. My body no longer absorbs micro nutrients after 23 years of SSRIs. My gut flora may be wiped out.
The doctor I see is clueless. All she recommends are monthly iron infusions and B12 injections. Never criticizes the drugs she thinks I take.
r dot nichols 42 at yahoo dot com
Inobusca, until you said it was a parody I thought it was serious. 😀 Ha ha!
Psychiatry itself is a cartoon of a science and therefore defies satire.
I agree. I get very angry that they are drugging their kids. But my anger is at the liars who deceive loving parents into feeding their kids speed under the pretext that it’s medicine.
A lot of people insist they have a mental illness. At some level do they like the idea they have no control over their actions and can’t be held accountable?
The way our society functions now, the masses believe “normal” people have free will. “Schizos” and “bipolars” don’t. Either the random chemical reactions in the skull cause wanton mayhem and violence or the pills take over transforming evil Mr. Hyde into peaceful Dr. Jekyll. No real person–just biologically based insanity or drugs.
The whole premise of psychiatry caused me existential angst when I believed it. I get mad at those who refuse to think and mindlessly buy whatever pop culture sells. But at least I have seen the light. Drugs or no drugs, locked up or at large–my knowledge provides a peace no shrink can steal. 🙂
Short term, usually not. But no mainstream psychiatrist limits the time period they prescribe the stuff.
Btw, I think sometimes neuroleptics do have benefits as emotional pain killers. But long term usage of massive quantities of morphine is a very bad idea. And claiming they cure”chemical imbalances” is a lie.
Assume for the sake of argument, chemical imbalances in the brain cause extreme states. That still doesn’t justify using drugs as a long term fix. Why? They have no idea what they are trying to fix. For all psychiatrists know they could be making the imbalance worse rather than better. Most human brain chemicals have yet to be discovered according to Peter Breggin. Pretty presumptuous to fix something when you can’t see the crack.
I MAY have cancer. In its early stages I wouldn’t feel discomfort. So maybe they should remove random bodily organs and subject me to weekly chemo and radiation treatments for the rest of my life. Sounds like a plan.
And when my hair falls out and I keep puking–say “It must be the cancer. Can’t be the chemo. It’s perfectly safe and effective.”
I agree. Yet nearly all the health professionals, “loving” family members, and even some grateful consumers swear the stuff is magically effective.
I see the shuffles, flat expressions, vacant eyes, and inability to function. I have also experienced all the above and more. Are others blind or just dismissive of things they don’t like or that contradict TV?
When slavery officially ended the newly freed citizens did need help. Many continued living like slaves as sharecroppers. Racism got worse–not better. The KKK was started.
Northerners promised the ex-slaves “five acres and a mule” since they might get the vote and the Yankee demagogues wanted it. Sadly land and the 19th century equivalent to tractors never materialized.
Stefanie was more fortunate than many caught in psychiatry. I’m glad she got better. Just wish there were more stories like hers.
Good diet and sound sleep are ineffective if your SSRIs wipe out your digestive tract and your neuroleptics create insomnia.
Continue to bail with a teaspoon while I drill more holes in the boat with my Black and Decker.
Those drugs are Hell on Earth. Often the folks who take them fail to see their cognitive decline.
No onlooker can fully appreciate the suffering those drugs cause. Till your brain rots thoroughly.
You claim I insult folks on neuroleptics?Speaking as a no longer stupified ex-zombie I disagree strongly. Everyone I know who has come off those things has an increase in IQ. Sometimes 20 points or more.
Almost everyone who takes psych drugs has free will issues. Either they are bullied by brute force (court ordered) or thoroughly deceived as I was. Many quit the drugs cold turkey because they’re miserable rather than having a paradigm shift. They experience withdrawal, get locked up, put on 2 or 3 times the drugs and “deteriorate.” The Myth of Decompensation is born.
If I said people who had been beaten over the head repeatedly suffered brain damage and you swore it was fun and enjoyable for them–in addition to bolstering their cognitive skills–would I be insulting them? By criticizing physical battery I’m insulting the victims. Uh huh.
Many folks who wind up labeled and drugged who are smart were that way to begin with. I have heard reports from NAMI about how adult kids were helped. They started out as college honor students. But thanks to the wonders of psychiatry they can now wash dishes unassisted–almost. Wow! A real improvement. According to NAMI.
Good point. A lot of us are physically disabled due to psychiatric damage. I count myself among the “lucky ones” since I came off my Effexor unusually fast and am much better after just six months.
More functional already than when drugged. Keep the place clean with little effort. Never could on my “cocktail” of psych drugs. Keeping my blog more regularly. I plan on looking for work soon.
I give myself one year to get off disability.
Btw, it is disgusting folks like me have to live at tax payer expense. But tax payers seem happy with that–as a collective–since they want us drugged and/or institutionalized. If they wanted the waste to end they’d fight psychiatry.
Serves them right to lose money on the deal!
Two problems.
1. Discrimination. Psychiatric labels lead to “social disability.” See a shrink, get an SMI label and no one will ever hire you again.
2. Long term drug use causes real disabilities. These poisons wreak havoc on the brain, central nervous system, and every bodily organ.
I’m working to overcome those problems by building up my health again. My digestive tract has sustained the most damage. As far as getting around the discrimination and transportation issues I see no alternative to trying to make a living with the online gig economy.
If I succeed I plan on hiring myself out as a consultant to help others escape dependency on the MI System by freelancing too.
I was very suicidal for years. Here’s why.
1. I was sick of being owned by the mental illness center. So thankful I don’t get “services” I don’t want from them anymore. Not just the drugs (which themselves were an exquisite torture) but the infantalizing and telling me I won’t ever succeed.
2. I believed I was a vile subhuman monstrosity.
3. I feared my “meds” would quit working and I would murder innocent people. Seriously. I thought killing myself was the lesser evil. Heroic if you think about it.
Leaving the Mental Illness System, coming off their drugs, and rejecting stigma (my psychiatric label) has given me a new lease on life. That’s why I say anosognosia saves lives!
Wow! Did suicide.com use Real Science to prove folks who kill themselves become angels? Actually no theologian believes dead folks become angel.
It has been proven beyond all shadow of a doubt that chemical imbalances are real, psychiatry cures discrimination (stigma), and suicides turn into angels. All proven by hard science in a lab somewhere. Please don’t pester us for links–cause it’s there.
They watch too much television. All their knowledge of science comes from drug commercials and their theology of the afterlife from Saturday morning cartoons.
A lot of shrinks here wanted to euthenize “patients” too. Just didn’t have the guts to go through with it. Sterilizing was carried out however.
For now they have called a halt to killing us or encouraging suicides. Slowly poisoning the “unfit” is much more profitable.
The major premise behind Psychiatry is not just that genetic disorders exist. There’s Down Syndrome, Huntington’s, Sickle Cell Anemia to name a few. The idea is that all bad behavior is purely genetic. Good genes make morally upright, ethical people. Bad genes mean the reverse.
Hence the link between Psychiatry and Eugenics. The latter is also about weeding out the “unfit.”
Why not give people bits of brightly colored gelatin instead then? Psychiatry is based on a major lie anyhow. Just hand out capsules containing more dried gelatin.
Ta da! The placebo effect. 😀
If you notice how some commenters fight tooth and nail defending these stigmatizing labels you wind up scratching your head. Why do you WANT to be hopelessly insane/broken/dangerous?
1. They’re getting the Good Stuff now. Dr. Awesome-Sauce is giving out uppers more freely than his office mints.
2. It gives them freedom to act like jerks to all around them. “I can’t help myself. My Bipolar made me do it.” Yep. Just like Dr. Strangelove’s hand.
3. They don’t have to do anything now except go to adult preschool (day treatment) then go home and binge watch TV. Who wants to take responsibility of your life when you can loaf and let Big Brother and his twin Dr. Frankenstein take care of you.
4. They’re a big fish in a small pond. Having climbed to the top by being “perfect patients” they enjoy a sort of prestige over the “not-so-good patients.” By leaving the MI system they would be a Nobody.
5. They’re afraid. Been there. Done that. I questioned the MI System for maybe 5 years before screwing up my courage to leave. It also took a while for an opportunity to materialize.
That last one though…I always liked the idea that I wasn’t sick/crazy/evil/murderous. Why anyone loves the idea of being hopelessly evil and deranged is beyond me!
For my own part I frequently experienced tardive psychosis during mini-seizures brought on by the neuroleptics I took. So I refuse to call those drugs “antipsychotics.” They also caused obsessive patterns of thought that made everyone hate me. Thank goodness these went away when I was taken off my stelazine.
Now the only thing I take is levothyroxin for my bad thyroid. And lots of supplements including a monthly iron infusion due to the number SSRIs played on my gut!
Thank you for your honesty, Craig.
Ron, poor nutrition, smoking, and vegging in front of the TV lead to an early death. But these bad habits are exacerbated by drugs, isolation, and poverty created by the stigma imposed by mental illness labels.
My Aunt Norma Jean was diagnosed as schizophrenic at 17. She lived to be 87. Oh, and she never took psych drugs. And she got better–though never fully. Probably brain damage from shocks.
Granted, that’s an anecdote. It would be interesting to see some real statistics on life span among the”mentally ill” before the drugs became too available. I don’t trust Google enough to use its search engine for that though.
Among other causes of these shootings is the way our society regards human life as cheap. Especially the “severely mentally ill.” No one has any problem drugging 5% of the population into an early grave since 1 out of a hundred might commit a murder someday.
Not only do they regard the “mentally ill” as useless eaters but remorseless monsters who must be imprisoned/crippled/killed for the Public Good.
The “monsters” often have “good insight” embracing the role assigned them of Monstrous Other–in addition to the maddening drugs they are coerced into taking. Like Frankenstein’s monster they give up on love and try to inspire fear instead.
Some yes. There are those who break out–generally with help from individuals–not government drones.
I believe I will be off disability in a year or two. Bit by bit my strength is returning since I’m off the devil’s tic tacs now. 🙂
Kelley was a murderous creep. Psych drugs did not transform him into Mr. Sensitivity. Imagine that.
Pies has driven himself crazy through continuous lying. Not a “brain” disorder. A moral one. Only instead of “creative symptoming” as Glasser called it–you see lavender gazelles to avoid the painful reality surrounding you–Pies has gone nuts trying to justify his wicked ways.
Remember the cruel Commandant in Schindler’s List? He couldn’t live with his own guilty conscience. When they executed him he had “lost it.”
I wish there were a way to publicize this trial. Everyone I know believes in the “chemical imbalance” more firmly than the fact the sky is blue. Bunch of dumb sheeple.
It says depression/bipolar/schizophrenia are real brain chemistry disorders on TV. TV never lies! So it must be true.
Out of touch with reality?
You mean believing poisons are medicines? That dying 25 years prematurely is healthy? That “no” means “yes”? That although you earn a six digit income and enjoy prestige you can readily identify with those you malign and force to live in crushing poverty? That deceiving all your patients and the general public is noble?
Nothing psychotic about that. Especially if you can diagnose yourself. 😛
Uh, Zenobia…the writer’s math is off. 11 positive plus 4 negative plus 4 mixed equals 19–not 18.
In order to find happiness playing the “bipolar” role it helps to be a flamboyant drama queen. Use melodramatic terms to describe how crazy–yet gifted–you are. Speak in reverential awe of the god-like “doctor” who saved your soul with “medicines” necessary for redemption.
Next, use your story to evangelize others to realize that they too are crazy bipolars in need of salvation through a chemical cocktail. You can even earn a comfortable living doing so.
Washed up actors–too fat and dead pan to act–can travel to APA conventions, currying favor with these deities, and serving as shills to the masses about how REAL bipolar is and how they too can be happy/productive (although morbidly obese and dead pan) if they just submit to multiple drugs and shocks.
There are also decoys or “peer specialists” who make a pittance to lure others to continue their “treatments.”
Bloggers who tout the Gospel of Psychiatry on sites plastered with drug ads and affiliate links to other drug sites.
If you’re lucky, and suffer minimal brain damage, you can write self dramatizing memoirs and fake histories about how lots of dead people MUST have been mentally ill. (If the drugs/shocks are necessary for BDs to function, then why are all the famous, successful ones 100+ years dead?) Then they can give you a professor’s chair–invented for a psychiatric mascot like yourself. Your real job isn’t to foster learning but sell Psychiatry. As long as you show up and tell how your lithium is making you exuberant, you’re guaranteed tenure! 😀
Being maimed by drugs taken long term and defamed by a phony diagnosis I am forced to live on disability too. For now.
Sman, I doubt anyone here wants to rob you of the pittance you subsist on. I only get $760 a month. No food stamps and forced to live in roach infested HUD slum where everyone knows there’s something “wrong” with me for living here.
I wish I knew some of these people Someone Else. Every church I attend is militantly pro-psychiatry in the hopes of appearing humane.
People–in Christian forums–complain that they need Prozac since Jesus isn’t enough to save them. If they think Science has all the answers they should take a page from Richard Dawkins and get the Heck out of church since they have no real belief in God or souls or good and evil!
And no green stuff for the quack.
Priorities!
Why wouldn’t HIPAA release records of all the “mentally ill” since no one cares about them anyhow?
Unless the psychiatrists are nervous about losing perspective vic-uh-consumers, since knowing they will be publicly disgraced would serve as an effective deterrent to depressed people seeking out psychiatric abuse–I mean services.
Trying to horn in on my racket, eh?
Not gonna stand for you putting an end to my little operation, see?
Imagine the above lines delivered by a Big Pharma CEO who does a James Cagney imitation.
Remember Les Miserables? Inspector Jalvert would have made a great shrink.
Once a thief always a thief. Once a schizophrenic always a schizophrenic.
Psychiatric diagnosis are really moral judgments. Some of these “symptoms” are bad behaviors. But by labeling the person as hopelessly depraved they are socially marginalizing them–declaring them irredeemable. Doing their best to prevent any reformation of character.
Psychiatry is not only morally bankrupt, but encourages such in our society as a whole.
Dr. Breggin you are a busy man, so you probably can’t answer this question. (Good article, by the way.) Maybe one of the other commenters can.
About Devin Kelley. He had a criminal record. Among other things he had almost murdered his infant son to get back at his wife.
Why wasn’t Kelley in prison for attempted murder? Google searches reveal nothing.
My guess is that instead of doing time like a real criminal should, he was sent to a psych ward. Because of his “insight” and religiously swallowing the drugs provided, the shrinks said he was safe and let him out early. Leaving him free to go on his killing rampage.
Is there any truth to my hypothesis?
They certainly take no trouble to undeceive the public. I find Pies’s article about the “metaphor” psychiatry bases its authority on a snarky bit of self congratulation. He and his cronies are laughing up their sleeves at how easily the public is deceived by “well-informed” professionals in the know.
I am printing that article to show my dad. Once he knows the truth he will be furious.
Psychiatrists also contradict themselves in other ways.
For example: claiming that bad behaviors are different from “mental illness” but how do they judge whether someone is “mentally ill?” Blood work? Brain scans? Nope. Behaviors that hurt the performer, threaten others, or simply bug those around them.
Why did that guy go on a killing spree?
Because he was mentally ill.
How do you know he was mentally ill?
Because only a mentally ill person goes on killing sprees.
You can’t argue with that astounding logic. 😀
I know you don’t like Freud (nor do I) but he seems to not have been into the biological model of psychiatry with his theories of the subconscious and prolonged “therapeutic” talks.
For what it’s worth, Frank, belief in my “mental illness” made me act crazier than just the pills could have done. I’ve heard a firm belief in your own “mental illness” can have that effect. Like hypnosis.
Dr. K, I frequently feel frustrated because no one around me is open to any ideas about “mental illness” they don’t get off television. People are ignorant as ever–ordinary Joe Blows–and I feel hopeless to ever educate them.
Barely resisting urge to become a misanthropic recluse and hole up away from the creeps and idiots. (The two types of people on planet Earth.)
Isn’t the APA overestimating their enemy–if they even have one?
I was able to leave psychiatry once I realized it was incompatible with the Bible.
Then I hear pastors give commercials for psych drugs in their sermons. Naive morons!
Emerson said, “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” I say it’s the first refuge for scoundrels and selfish jerks who want to shuffle the suffering off to a corner to rot away from the Real People in the church. The snappy dressers who tithe with nice families.
The more vocally pro-psychiatry a church is the meaner it is to the “mentally ill.” Often they do their best to freeze them out. Take your “meds” then keep away from us! See what kind, compassionate folks we are! We want them to get the help we need to keep them away from us.
If everything we do comes from random chemicals in our heads we have no souls and should quit wasting time at their churches since religion is a hoax. Apparently Rick Warren has never bothered to think it through. Saddleback Church discourages thinking or reflection anyhow from what I hear.
Everybody I know on neuroleptics is a numb, stupified zombie. I have no idea what alternate universe you inhabit.
These pills created stuff I never had before. Horrible nightmarish stuff. The nightmare of being drugged 24/7 is almost over but I’m angry and grieving and have no safe place offline to vent.
If the drugs made folks feel so damned great no one would ever go off them! I took mine religiously for 25 years because I thought I deserved to suffer. They were nothing but an act of penance–self destruction to make my abusive “loved ones” happy! 🙁
No, according to the media “mental health” doesn’t cause violence. Mentally ill people do! The solution? More drugs!
Drugging 25% of the population hasn’t solved violent shootings. There are more shootings now than 25 years ago when most of these drugs weren’t invented.
The obvious solution? Drug more people than ever!!!! That’s a (literal) no brainer. 😀
If “antidepressants” work so well why are many people who take them on disability and not working? Why are so many horribly depressed and suicidal?
I had depression as a kid, but learned to “talk myself out of it.” Taught myself compensatory methods that psychiatry refuses to acknowledge since they feed off learned helplessness.
Believing I had a “brain disease” that only mind altering drugs could fix did more than make me an unwitting junkie. It tricked me into abdicating responsibility for my thoughts and feelings–even helped me rationalize acting like a jerk or lunatic. (Hey, might as well have the game as the name–as the saying goes!)
For years shrinks lied to me. If I would take my “meds” I could hold down a job, find love and acceptance, lead a happy and productive life. Bunch of lies!
Rasselaus, they can hunt forever as far as I’m concerned. But they should be honest about the findings (a big fat nothing) and quit LYING to everybody!
Jan, aren’t you iatrogenically disabled? Those years of unsafe, ineffective drugging have permanently damaged many of us. Hence, I still accept disability with a clear conscience till I can think of something better.
There are those who “psych out” without drugs. But I guess those are the minority. And in the past 70% would snap out of it on their own.
100 years ago I would not have wound up labeled mad. The standards for what constituted “madness” were a lot stricter too. People with it enough to write articles and posts were not considered madhouse material.
Many of us have lives that stink. That does make us miserable. When folks tell us we’re sick/crazy not only do they insult us but it minimizes the crap in our lives that would make anyone sad!
I got labeled “paranoid schizoaffective.” People treated me like something subhuman/dangerous/stupid. I got kicked out of college and my mom started abusing me–with encouragement from psychiatry.
After a year of Hell on earth I wanted to kill myself. Why? It must have been a chemical disorder in my brain. It’s not like “mentally ill” folks have feelings after all, just chemical explosions in our heads. That makes it okay for everyone to treat us like garbage! 😛
Pies is a poet. He doesn’t deal in science but metaphors and imaginary words. Like the evil version of Dr. Seuss or Ogden Nash.