Antipsychiatry, as a movement, matters and I would say that fighting antipsychiatry, as a movement, also matters.
Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to stick my head in the sand and just “live and let live.” I’m a live and let live kind of gal. It’s the way I handle most things and in terms of people who are critical of psychiatry (not antipsychiatrists; moderate, rational people) that’s how I feel about them. Criticism, in the end, is often healthy as it help to make an institution better.
But antipsychiatry? That’s another thing entirely. That’s a concept that needs to be fought. Actively.
Leave the Antipsychiatrists To Their Views?
Someone came onto a Facebook thread where some antipsychiatrists were commenting and said this,
But in the end; does it really matter about someone else’s opinions? Does their arguments both pro and con really effect your everyday life? Whether mental illness is real or not is irrelevant isn’t it? The bottom line in life is how we respond to ourselves. If it works for you- don’t argue with someone that opposes your view. You will never change a view that only takes the opposite of ones own views. I know I have a mental illness that has been curbed by the decisions I made for me. Would I ever take an argument from someone that is not in my shoes- well, that statement in itself is ridiculous. Everyone has a right to their opinion- that does not make it a pinnacle in my life.
Philosophically, I completely get where this girl is coming from. I’d say it’s “live and let live.” Which, as I’ve said, is completely reasonable and understandable in many differences of opinion.
But I disagree completely about antipsychiatry. People who deny that mental illness exists need to be fought. It’s not because of my mental illness, per se. My mental illness and its treatment exists irrespective of what antipsychiatrists say. I’m strong, I’m educated and I’m not about to let antipsychiatrists get under my skin. It’s about all of the other people out there who have mental illnesses and are being adversely affected by such lunacy. Those are the people I’m worried about. Those are the people I fight for.
It’s like when you see a bully on the playground but they’re not bullying you. You can walk away from it safe in the knowledge that you’re not being hurt – but someone else is. And who am I if I walk away and let someone else be beaten up?
Antipsychiatry Kills
And in the case of fighting antipsychiatry the stakes are much higher than a beating. Someone who doesn’t get mental illness treatment because some idiotic group denies the illness’s existence and demands that people stay out of treatment can actually die. Denying treatment when someone is sick can kill them. That’s as true with a heart condition as it is with a mental illness.
Fighting Antipsychiatry
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to grab a placard and a Sharpie, that’s not my thing. I think you fight antipsychiatry in much subtler ways. You fight antipsychiatry by throwing your support behind organizations that fight for people with mental illnesses. (I just went to the National Council’s convention. They kind of rock.) You fight antipsychiatry by educating yourself and others (see these mental illness myths dispelled by a doctor). You fight antipsychiatry by not walking away when you see them hurting others.
I know there will always be antipsychiatry. I just hope that antipsychiatry becomes more and more disempowered as science becomes more and more clear. I believe, eventually (likely not in my lifetime) we will look back on antipsychiatrists as flat-Earth type folks and shake our heads at such silliness. The science will get us to that point, eventually.
But until that happens, I’ll just keep fighting antipsychiatry in my little sphere with my writings and hope that it trickles down to a person or two in need. And I’d like to encourage you to do the same.
NOTE: I am neither “anti-psychiatry” nor seeing it as a “cult.” Nope, I only hate haters, and these people, the contemporary American psychiatrist not limited to those from 3rd world nation states, hardly bastions of American democracy, not sites in any way known for human rights. I need to trust these people, for I am SMI, and yes, if only….. Stated plainly, scam artists, who benefit big time from the pharmacological industry, prescribing needed meds, only to abuse us. This is excess waste of public monies, hello? Know US history, know US Law. ADA 2008, scan the findings and purposes therein, grow through sound awareness, drop all assumptions. That is their turf, subjective reasoning and bad scientific method, states only. all grounded in weakly construed assumptions.
HISTORICAL FACT: (some intro data: White men by and large, even today.) And here we go! 1900-1935: When the US was striving to embrace the long overdue end to American slavery, circa the late 19th century, these people crawled like worms out of the grossly dysfunctional system of white privilege, and straight to the accursed labs in Cold Springs Harbor, NY, where Darwin’s hateful cousin Francis Galton was engineering the eugenics movement here in the US. Judgment calls on basis of head size and shape, and eye and skin color, and on that list does go. Uh-huh, that. 1930s-1960s: Which, after being flatly rejected by the American people, then dedicated themselves to forced sterilization of the nation’s most disenfranchised citizens. Kept that up, they did, for many years, brutal and utterly inhumane drilling of holes in not only the skulls of corpses, but living and breathing men, women and kids, to boot. Uh-huh again, that. And, after the failure of the ‘deinstitutionalization’ process circa the 1960s and into the 1970s, sat on their grimy hands while 10s upon 10s thousands of severely mentally ill men, women, and yes, kids as well, kicked onto the streets, which was the root cause of our contemporary homeless crisis here in the US. Uh-huh-huh, that. And, years after the Stonewall Riots in 1969, endorsing ongoing criminalization of homosexual Americans. Hate remans hate, and they are haters through and through. Zero change in identifiable behaviors, observable and irrefutable, all of which which continues today, in the year 2024. Yep, you got the right. And even today, discharging SMI American people into homelessness yet again, refusing access to state managed mental hospitals, a clear effort to cover up of ongoing abuse of highly at risk and gravely vulnerable US citizens in such settings. Covering shit up is all these type of people know how to do, such as the effort to cover up the violent escape of violent young man named Jesus Rincon Murrieta in summer 2011, AZ State Hospital, and directly contributing to the gruesome murder of a young woman named April Mott, who had only that one connection to the lying pieces of crap who had indeed, refused to report Murrieta’s known threat to the general public. Duty to warn? Yeah, right, the only warning that need be made clear today: No, they do the same in 2024, and care not one whit for the reality, be it their own revolting history, be it this terrifyingly tragic killing, whatever. I can and do attest to all, as the author of “PJ Reed. The Arizona State Hospital and Patient Abuse” (2012-16). In closing, ergo, what of the state of Montana? Which has long had one the highest rate of suicide in the US, and the latest indication as per public record, MT kids now killing themselves at over 2.6x the national rate of youth suicides. Do they care, MT psychiatrists? No, of course they don’t, not one whit, and backing up a social worker (Karl Rosston, all public record) to oversee what has since morphed into and unprecedented public health crisis. Need it be said, WTF!!! LSCWs have no right to the PHI of any American citizens sans express consent, they are not medical professionals, never have been. Glorified file clerks, often white women, fully in bed with hate-centric white American psychiatrists. This writer, ‘lil ‘ol moi, has been out the loop for at time. Any wonder why? The time is coming, this today has been made public in the international press.
Wow, alot of haters and reactions towards this post by antipsychiatry people. Anyways, I suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and I think antipsychiatry movements are very destructive as a whole and do nothing but cause problems to those who have legitimate mental problems. Telling people to not take the medications that would cure the mental illness saying that “these pills do absolutely nothing for you and are making you worse” is like telling a sick kid to not take the cough medicine that would cure the coughing, or like telling a person with a broken leg to not get into the hospital and get treatment for it, or like telling someone to not find a cure for their heart disease or cancer of any kind. People in that movement spew their ignorance on mental illness and psychiatric treatments and so on and then get all riled up and say that you don’t understand why they exist for arrogant reasons. They tell you that it exists because of the “coercive tendencies” within psychiatry, when actually coerciveness may be necessary if you’re dealing with a psychopath in any way, thus there is no actual evidence to prove that there actually is coercion within psychiatry regarding families being taken from their own will. Psychiatry exists to help people, not be in some form of “conformation” control like what these antipsychiatry movements spew since a mental illness is not character-logical. Another thing that the antipsychiatry movement also spew is that “mentally ill people are discriminated against”, failing to realize that normalizing mental illnesses cause problems in society and the individual in the long run, since again, a mental illness is not character-logical and it’s absurd to say that it is. Another thing that the antipsychiatry movements spew is that “mental illness is a myth” while completely ignoring the fact that there’s people who suffocate from mental illnesses that are legitimately bad so much that they’re living a complete nightmare, like you are and like myself. Another thing that I see within the antipsychiatry movement is that it’s heavily affiliated with and inspired by postmodernism that’s filled with logical fallacies, since a prominent and well known member of Michael Foucault said that there should be a new way to cure mentally ill people while completely ignoring the fact that there’s already been progress on helping the mentally ill people who suffer, since historically people used to be put in prison cells for being mentally ill and not do anything about it as well as there were surgeries of parts of the brain being physically removed assuming that it would cure the mental illness. The further back you go in generations, the worse they get. Part of the reason why there was less psychological disorders was because there was much less diagnostic criteria to diagnose psychological disorders. So the antipsychiatry movement as well as postmodernism is full of shit, end of story!
As an indicator that antipsychiatry has been making some isolated inroads in places that should probably know better, check out this article about a course/program/scholarship at one of the branches of U of Toronto:
http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/bonnie-burstow/2016/10/when-it-comes-to-being-shrink-resistant-toronto-universities-l
I’m not particularly against useless academic departments (my undergrad minor was in philosophy), and it’s still expressed in the utopian conspiracy-laden rhetoric you’d find in most echo chambers, so I don’t see this having much of an impact, but still, found it interesting.
Hi Mark,
Great. Something else to rile against. And I’m Canadian, too!
– Natasha Tracy
Natasha, as you know, this subject really interests me as I have recently abandoned the antipsychiatry movement, where I was quite active. For myself, I choose not to fight them, just point out their inconsistencies and walk away. There are indeed problems with psychiatry and lots of room for improvement but rejecting psychiatry altogether (as the antipsychiatry movement proposes) is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. There are some great antipsychiatry writers who are worth a read even though they are completely wrong. Thomas Szasz, for instance, I find fascinating despite the fact that he was a pompous academic who knew little about mental suffering. I have an interesting library which includes Szasz, Andre, Burstow, Torrey, Healy, Foucault, just to name a few.
When I mentioned inconsistencies above, to me, the most glaring one: If nothing is wrong with these people, then why are so many of them collecting disability benefits? Why are they unable to work when they’re able to spend hours per day playing keyboard warriors? It’s a nasty question (a little too right wing for me) but a valid one, I think.
Their big issue, the abolition of involuntary treatment, is sacred to the antipsychiatry movement. Yet they have no solution as to how to replace it. I have had many, many arguments with different posters on this issue. I got into an argument with Tina Minkowitz (who is basically spearheading the movement to have involuntary treatment called a human rights violation and abolished) and I told her about my own experience. There was a time in the late 1980s when I was psychotic, could not recognize my parents, and was writhing around on the hospital floor, screaming that my hands and feet were on fire. Even though I was incoherent, I let it be known that I did not want medication. Would these antipsychiatry activists just leave me in that condition indefinitely? I’m afraid they would. That’s why they’re never going to be taken seriously.
“Antipsychiatry kills”. Well, psychiatry almost killed me. I refuse to reduce all my emotions, thoughts and behaviors to a label. I refuse to walk around all day, everyday, intoxicated by mind altering prescription drugs. I finally chose to face reality and truly work for my happiness and wellbeing. And this was no easy task, but i’m glad I finally grew up. Yes, perhaps there are some people who were just born with a chemical imbalance. I really do hope the industry could establish an objective biological test one day. But for now it’s still a crap shoot based on pseudoscience. So many people are antipsychiatry because the industry nearly killed them or has killed someone they know. But for those who have had a positive experience with psychiatry, then keep on popping and electroshocking! I don’t judge :)
“I really do hope the industry could establish an objective biological test one day.”
Now look, I don’t know your story and I’m not here to judge you but how do you anti psychiatry/science people think this is going to happen? Seriously, how on earth are you people helping the sick when you deny the existence of the disorders that you claim to want a test for? A test for these disorders is the LAST thing you people want because it completely and utterly destroys your argument (even beyond the dismal anti-science positions you’ve already adopted). Assuming a test is possible (it might not be possible) it would be another great discovery by science and another massive failure from the anti-science buffoons, why tie yourself to the people who are against progress in this area?
Unfortunately, the medications given by psychiatrists are not able to cure mental disorders. They cause so many damages that they should be forbidden. This is why so many people are against psychiatry.
There are better alternatives. You should look for treatments that are not based on dangerous drugs.
“Unfortunately, the medications given by psychiatrists are not able to cure mental disorders. ‘
Same with HIV/AIDS. Should people be against treatments for them as well? Look, I understand were you are coming from but what is your alternate? Deny the existence of the problem? That doesn’t seem very helpful.
” They cause so many damages that they should be forbidden.”
The problem with this totalitarian view is that you are ignoring the people they do help. What do you want to say to them? However, I do agree we need much better treatments.
“This is why so many people are against psychiatry.”
I’m sure some people are but hopefully most people are rational enough to see that improvements need to be made rather than taking a hard-line anti-science position, hopefully.
“There are better alternatives. You should look for treatments that are not based on dangerous drugs.”
Partially true. Psychological alternatives are very useful but for all the drugs faults (and I don’t deny them), they do perform better than placebos and so demonstrate some added usefulness in combination.
I think it’s smart to pay attention to people who criticize psychiatry. A lot of people nowadays are able to make all the decisions they like about their treatment and their lives because of said people. Believe it or not once upon a time that wasn’t the case, (for a lot of people it still isn’t.)
Also, I have to wonder, Natasha, you’ve tried a lot of treatments that just haven’t worked. An “anti psychiatry” thought has really never crossed your mind?
Hi Debbie,
Oh sure, I’ve had my antipsychiatry moments, but, honestly, I grew up. When I thought that I was thinking out of anger and not rationale. I’ve fantasized about stuffing meds down all the doctors throats who prescribe them to see how much they like being lab rats. But, again, that’s just anger. The reality is I’m sick and I’m working to get better in an imperfect and impossibly difficult system. The meds are dramatically imperfect but they’re the best we have right now and psychiatry does the best it can with the tools it has. Fighting psychiatry is the wrong movie. “Antipsychiatry” is the wrong idea. Working with the system in the best way possible to help the most people.
– Natasha Tracy
I consider myself a critic of psychiatry but not anti-psychiatry which seems much more extreme. Anti-psychiatrists don’t believe that mental illnesses exist at all and that seems unreasonable to me given all the research that has been done so far on the topic. Many people with severe depression often compare it to the flu which indicates to me that there is probably at root cause something biological going on. Additionally, the fact that people with certain disorders( major depression) are more likely to have heart disease,migraines, rheumatoid arthritis and dementia indicates something biological as well.
On the other hand, I think it is good that anti-psychiatrists make it known that antidepressants are about as effect as a placebo for the average “depressed” patient. People who are suffering from depression deserve better than a placebo for a disorder that often ends in suicide.
If anyone here wants to understand this issue better – and why you want to question being prescribed psychotropic medication, if you can (severe illness states an exception, which we really are not discussing here), this is a great video to watch. Understand the ‘science’ behind these drugs that are marketed to the tunes of BILLIONS of dollars a year – by a very reputable scientist who understands what most here don’t.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=14&v=ZMhsPnoIdy4
best, Molly
I think your point about treatment and the reality of mental illness is well made – but you do miss a huge part of what the ‘antipsychiatry’ movement is all about… and it has to do with science, believe it or not. The primary issue from what I understand is the abuse of fake/pseudo science to create illness categories (DSM) that then are treated with medications that are NOT proven to ‘cure’ anything – there is no real ‘medical model’ of mental illness… only subjective models that are used in a medical setting – yet that does NOT mean mental illness does not exist.
The movement is more about honesty in the way we deal with these issues… yet someone who has bought into the fake/pseudo (NOT scientific, really, lots of information out there) chemical imbalance in the brain theories which are primarily supported as the pharmaceutical companies make BiLLIONS of dollars from doctors then prescribing ‘medications’ that ‘treat’ the illness. The medications can be useful, though there is no PROVEN effect that they are treating a ‘chemical imbalance’ – only speculation on effects that then create improvement in some.
The big big issue Antipsychiatrists fight? Is that these ‘treatments’ (psychotropic medications, barbaric ECT) cause very real HARM in those who take them. That is very well studied and documented… the myriad of very serious side effects and disability from long-term use. Even death.
That is the point you don’t get, sorry, not to be rude but you really need to get more informed. And even though I understand this pretty well, and have a very valid mental illness (Manic Depression now called BP-1) and have been treated successfully for severe mania with these harmful medications it does not mean that we should not be searching for better treatments for mental illness.
New medications, less harmful ones, better medical care of co-existing problems (do you have any idea the amount of toxins most folks are exposed to or ingest and the harm that can cause, including effects on the brain resulting in ‘mental’ symptoms – for one example) and patient education about the HARM long-term use of psychotropic medications cause.
Those are very valid issues, why I think the Antipsychiatry movement is an excellent safeguard against the abuse psychiatry can inflict and often does — primarily for profit motives when you get to the down and dirty bottom of it.
best, Molly
When I first heard the term antipsychiatry, I was immediately skeptical. The prefix anti usually means completely against, so I assumed they were all completely against every aspect of psychiatry. The more I learned, I realized they were really just critical of aspects of psychiatry that so many people blindly accept, and that’s why I consider the movement important.
Antipsychiatrists do not believe that mental illness itself doesn’t exist, but they do believe many aspects are socially constructed. The greatest example of this is when psych doctors misdiagnose their patients – I was misdiagnosed with BPD before my Bipolar diagnosis. This was largely due to my psychologist’s biases. She didn’t agree with things I said, so she called them black and white thinking. She considered me promiscuous, thought that a 19 year old questioning her identity meant she had an unstable sense of self. Certain demographics are more likely to be diagnosed with BPD. This is because they’re socially constructed, because psychiatry is not an exact science, and because mental health professionals get to define our mental health issues. Nobody is denying that mental health problems exist. But the boxes, the diagnoses, were invented by humans – humans who decided we needed a name for them. I like having a name for my Bipolar Disorder, but not everyone else does. Mainstream psychology is deeply flawed, ableist, and harmful. It’s absolutely deserving of criticism and it’s important that we strive to find new ways to look at mental health, instead of just accepting whatever is written in the DSM or on Psychology Today.
Psychiatric abuse is a serious issue and antipsychiatrists are the only people who have taken the time to adequately address it and devote time to it. Psychologists and psychiatrists have a large amount of power over their patients – they get to decide what treatment is best and can label the patient non-compliant if they don’t agree with it. Anyone with power can abuse it. They can tell their vulnerable patients things that are harmful to their well-being. Not every psychiatrist or psychologist is a bad one, but not every psychiatrist or psychologist is a good one.
As for psych meds, that was the viewpoint of antipsychiatrists I was most weary of. But a lot of them aren’t against them entirely. Doctors do jump to medicating a patient whether or not it’s necessary, and that should be criticized. Not everyone needs medications, either. Antipsychiatrists believe it should be up to the patient. Mainstream psychology would have you believe the patients don’t have agency to decide for themselves and that if they don’t take pills, they don’t want to get better. I believe the model of antipsychiatry that says it should be up to the patient and that they will respect their choices is known as “harm reduction.” Of course, there are extremists who use the term “Big Pharma” and believe all medications are evil and those are the ones I’d stay away from.
If you agree with my points, you agree with a lot of antipsychiatrists, and I think saying you will “fight antipsychiatry” rather than specifically stating you mean the extremists is harmful and inaccurate.
“… You fight antipsychiatry by not walking away when you see them hurting others….”-
Based on your statement(s) here Natasha, I invite you (and all others) to ‘like ‘/post / share/and comment on my Facebook Page- Mental health/psychiatric watchdog & reform activity- https://www.facebook.com/jpkeis?ref=bookmarks ————– About-
Consent,coercion,disclosure,involuntary treatment, culpable negligence,misrepresentation,conflict of interest, fraud, ghostwriting, health risks, harmful outcomes &alternatives issues related to: professional ethics, conduct and standards issues in psychiatry&mental health.
The hopeful result is to improve the outcomes of people with mental ‘illness’, and the ‘mental health’ of individuals, their families and communities.
Don’t walk away!
I think there is also a huge gap depending on which psych treating you,
Due to there where they studied,there own personal experience treating others…
Re meds wow…it’s like some MED OVERLOAD ,others TIGHT ASSED
I can explain the latter well,risk of potential OD by patients.
Psych name is on you vial of pills,could get sued or potentially lose LISCENCE (??)
The former,it’s like they are just ( well,aren’t they all?) too busy…
Easier to write 3 month script…then visit in 3 months,isn’t it?
Re the diagnosis changes & why
I’ve had the same hate it
One Dr asked me to fill out 3 page questionnaire …to make sure I was indeed rapid cycle BP!!
WHHHAAAATTTT????
I know,I wonder sometimes if it’s drug interactions effecting the brain,causing symptomatic episodes.
Thus causing formulations of different diagnoses(???)
Anyway,Tabby
I understand quite bit re these pharmacology matters so hope it helps
Cheers.
Sandra
In the hospital,you are coddled from reality while out of reality.
I guess I’ve done the deal,ECT strapped down ,shot in hip w antipsychotics,
Given what a nurse actually called a chemical straight jacket, got into a near physical fight w some ass who was manic & I was manic …it was med time he says your really fucked up if your on all those pills!!!
I stepped closer 2 nurses had to seperate us!
ah Neverland…
Had a guy high on ??? wander into my hospital room at night….freaking me out…
But the very very MOST DANGEROUSLY UNPROFESSIONAL …I was talking to a PSYCH.
HE SAID …..PLS hear me OUT …when I said I was suicidal …..GO HOME …KILL YOURSELF!!!
QUOTE ….UNQUOTE.
My brain generally blacks out much of hospital & that grotty stuff
Coming back microchips of memories.
I cycle is blatantly so out there………I read the comments ..I feel the hurt,pain,suffering…..because I am.
Anti psychiatry?
ok. …
My thoughts on this are there’s many people both young & older,self medicating w illegal drugs.
I included myself ( way past) as well,I’m no angel.
Plus alcohol..again,I believe to quell symptoms,or because they are denied treatment.
Due to lack of psychiatrists in proximity,or the $ ( our American mates coping w this shitty disease)
I believe,in meds…however,personally I don’t mix drugs w drink ( violence) nor do I do any illegal drugs not even pot…I believe this is disease that as Natasha said,will KILL
Without adequate treatment,taking time & patience depending on the individual,naturally.
I must say,without being able to look at TODAY
Not DWELL so much on YESTERDAY
Though,sometimes comes easier than others….
YESTERDAY IS GONE…for our older music fans song by FLEETWOOD MAC… DONT YOU LOOK BACK!!
Our MANTRA.
As I see it the critical issue is really that someone with BPD often lacks insight into their situation when they most need help. For example, let’s say I become manic and start having psychotic episodes. I’m taken to the hospital where I’m sedated and put on other medications.
The medications work, and so does the hospitalization, but both of those are a lot worse than my “normal” life. I feel jailed and tortured. What I lack is any insight into the actual condition I was in immediately before being brought to the hospital. That is the whole point of a psychotic episode, what seems real to me is not actually real. I think I was behaving within the bounds of appropriate behavior and other people were out of line. I’m being reasonable and other people are getting up in my face. I’m not over-reacting, they’re being oppressive.
So, I skip out of the ward with the attitude that the whole thing was a waste of my time, a bunch of people trying to oppress me, and just another example of how people who hate me for what I am try to punish me. Because, of course, I’m totally rational at this point. It’s not like I’m still psychotic. It’s not like the after shocks of that psychosis are still reverberating through my brain.
All those evil psychiatrists telling me what to do. Miserable fuckers. I don’t need them or their medication.
The thing is, like a month later, I’m going to take a huge crash. Who knows what will tip it over, but suddenly I’ll be depressed, miserable, lethargic, irritable, and useless. But, of course, that isn’t my fault. I have BPD, being depressed is something that just happens. It’s not important for me to connect the dots between mania-hospitalization-advice from psychiatrists-me ignoring them-terrible isolated depression.
I just cannot tell you how many times I’ve seen the same story. I totally empathize with it. Having BPD is sort of like always being caught in the present moment. The past and future seem irrelevant because nothing seems to be controllable. But, to have any sense of control – any sense of a life – you have to assert you know what’s going on, even when you’re pretty sure you don’t. Medication has side effects. Listening to people makes you feel like a child. I mean, seriously, have you seen how badly therapists screw up their own lives?
It’s all true except one part. Most people do screw their lives up pretty well. But, it takes them a while to do it, and they get a decent amount of feedback. People with BPD just up and ruin their finances, job, marriage, and all their relationships over the course of a month for reasons which are kind of vague in retrospect. People with BPD commit suicide.
It’s not that psychiatrists or any other people out there know what they are doing. They are no more functional 95% of the time. But, it’s the 5% of the time, you know? And when you’ve got BPD you have a tendency to mentally gloss over the 5%. You sort of mis-remember intentionally subconsciously. Why, because the 5% scares everyone. It’s not just other people who look at it that get afraid, there is part of you looking outwards, experiencing it and not in control. And, that observer has a choice. You could accept you are out of control, or you could pretend you wanted to do all that stuff. It’s the way people ought to be. It’s the way I am. It’s what I want.
Yeah.
Anti-psychiatry is a pathology of myth of American Individualism. I’m a man, this is my castle. I deal with my own problems, don’t give me yours. I fight for what is mine in my own way, and I keep what I win. Me. In that mythical world of gunfighters and free-market capitalism, someone who lets other people tell them what is real is the worst kind of invalid. A blind person can’t see, that sucks. A person who allows someone else to see for them is, in essence, allowing their Individualism to be violated. You can imagine the metaphor.
But Individualism is just a mythology. No one ever succeeded or failed alone. Everyone tells each other what to see, and we all accept it from each other thoughtlessly. Every TV advertisement, news program, joke, bit of gossip. We complain to each other about our lives all the time, and sit around telling each other what to think. If you consider it for a second, that is actually the majority of most people’s lives.
And the thing about Psychiatry is that, if you accept it, you take a big step back towards consensus. Honestly, I don’t think people like being alone, no matter how self-righteous they are. If you have BPD and just walk into the therapists office and give it a try, and take the medication…it does matter if that works out. But it also matters, and it’s a huge deal, that you take a step towards everyone else.
If you don’t go to the therapist, that’s your problem and all the people in your life will be hesitant to mess with you. If you go the therapist and it isn’t working, in my experience people want to help. When I didn’t have the energy or focus, people would do the leg work. If I wanted to go, they would make the appointments. If that therapist didn’t work out, they would find another. If I was irritable and grouchy, they would take things off of my plate.
I mean, some people act like jerks. But most people are really helpful if you sincerely want to be part of society. And, the people who aren’t helpful, I think it’s probably because they’ve got their own things that are unresolved.
This IS what exasperates me to literally no end… why oh why oh why do the diagnoses change?
I agree.. mental illness is real. I know, I suffer mightily – at times – with it and have, for oh so many many years. Yet, why does my diagnosis or diagnoses change when I must switch providers of care?
Why is it that I can see this psychiatrist – give symptoms (cause there is NO MEDICAL TEST) and I get Major Depressive Disorder. I then get anti-depressants; which throw me for a tizzy or suicidal.
I then go to this psychiatrist, cause my insurance dropped… and give symptoms and I get Bipolar II and get mood stabilizers, anti-depressants and a benzo. Still, the anti-depressant throws me for a tizzy or suicidal.
I go to yet another diagnostician… cause now I got insurance and can’t see my last psych cause he doesn’t take insurance… and I’m diagnosed with Bipolar I Mixed…. given anti-psychotic, anti-depressant, mood stabilizer and a benzo and can’t get off the couch or open but 1 eye 1/2 way and pee on myself.
Let us not even talk about the time I got Schizoaffective Bipolar Type…. during a hospitalization.
I give same symptoms… I describe same cycles… some even get/got the records of the previous…
why does my diagnosis tend to change or the clinicians dismiss one or the other’s diagnosis or better yet, ask me which diagnosis I agree with or feel is more accurate (oh yes)?
The meds are often used “off-labeled” and they are used “cross spectrum” for every literal thing nearabouts… even that which has not a thing to do with psychiatry. Epileptic meds for Bipolar, anti-depressants for pain management, benzos for epilepsy….
I AM mentally ill, no doubt… but someone answer me why do the diagnoses change depending on who and when I see someone and why do the meds always change… depending on who and when I see someone and furthermore, if anti-depressants are bad with those who have Bipolar… then why do some psychiatrists, who diagnose Bipolar, still prescribe anti-depressants without any concern…. Why?
I haphazard a guess: there is a DSM and depending on how knowledgeable the diagnostician is – is what I get as far as diagnosis, there are no medical diagnostic definitive tests to specify but we know something is amiss and there is noah’s flood of pharmaceutical meds abounding bountifully to pick and choose from because the meds are for the symptoms that are given primarily verbally and not for the illness(es) be what they may be…
am I anti-psych? absolutely not
am I anti-med? absolutely not
I just want someone to answer me…. why?
I don’t think I’m arguing against mental health therapy or pills, as I have always considered them not for me, why would I argue with somebody who apparantly willingly and with complete freedom as you say chose that route. I don’t care what you do with your brain, just as I don’t care what an alcoholic or a cigarette smoker does to help with stress, no matter what the level. Many people, myself included were involuntarilly commited against their will by family members who were in fact psychopaths and who as a psycopath think that you think they are telling you the truth. They will tell you that they were trying to get you help. If you confront and push a psycopath, they’ll turn snake-like and tell you that you cussed at them, that you were being abusive, out of line whatever. The second time I was in the hospital I had the wherewithal to explain some things, and guess what, I was out in a week and this time with no medication given in the hospital nor diagnosed with an Axis I disorder. A psycopath wanted to punish me or prove a point to me, and the judge believed him, but the doctor understood where I was coming from and let me go. I think antipsychiatrists don’t want people to be commited against their will when it’s clearly the actions of an abuser or control freak, in my case an abuser. Neuroleptics can cause damage to people, and ect can easily kill you or the injections can kill you in the hospital. I’m talking life and death with what the doctors can do, and you are saying something is wrong with your brain. I’m sorry something is wrong with your brain, but if you can answer me this one question, do you believe that a pill will stop you from killing yourself. I’m sorry but I don’t have respect for people who announce to others they want to kill themselves.
Well,I was told when I was released from the inpatient ward, diagnosed with bi polar, that It was a life and death decision to see my therapist. As well as stay on my medication. ( Which, in the past I had stopped taking.)
As well as eat, sleep, and exercise on a schedule.
Whether I have an opinion on this or not seems mute to me. I was to the point where I was in enough pain to take my life.
This is the alternative. I hear all the time these ” anti med, “anti psychiatry”, anti this, and anti that arguments.
I wish all these pundits would zip it. ( No offense meant ). I am fighting for my life here. Daily. Ok?
Let’s argue the political. Or perhaps whether chocolate stimulates certain glands, which elevate spiritual awareness.
But until someone can give me an alternative to the very bad choice listed above, I will see the Doctor. All three of them. And fight with the insurance company regarding the stacks of bills being accrued.
(Please overlook my typos.)
My problem is I have a family member who has a degree in psychology, yet firmly, and smugly believes that depression and mental illness is a sign of WEAKNESS. If he is hiding fear by his anger, I am not seeing it. I do believe it is possible he is in a nightmare state waiting to happen since most people in my family (diagnosed or not) do seem to suffer from a mental illness. This might cause him to be very fearful it will happen to him. However, nobody has really spoken to THIS kind of disdain and dismissal of the psychiatric realm. …I have never posted back to the Bipolar Burble, but I just had to speak out this time. Not I haven’t been deeply moved, challenged, and interested before by this blog — this is just the main time I have gritted my teeth and thought AGAIN about my unreasonable family member. See — he doesn’t just think the field of psychiatry is bogus — he considers me weak AND crazy… Like the idea of valid psychology for him exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.
Yes. The reason is all family is unreasonable by nature. And because all family is unreasonable by nature, once one is involved with the mental illness system, that family will be used against you by same when it is convenient for the system to do so and will be equally dismissed as antithetical to your recovery when consulting and having contact with family can in fact pull you away from the system.
In the end, the thing that always wins is the system. That has nothing to do with disdain–it is just a fact.
As an example with the person with multiple personality disorder, people from a town who were abusive, but who she could not mentally recall, would have a certain type of red hat, which was a warning to her. I’m sure over time that such people developed these things for some type of temporary benefit, and they would have many protection mechanisms, such as having a video or audio tape played (to them distinctly real) of somebody torturing them when they are confronted with something the brain considers -potentially- dangerous.
Epilepsy and Parkinson’s are demonstrated illness, whereas so-called mental illness is taking a so-called “rational” person and declaring somebody’s thinking deluded, manic, etc. From my own experiences with dissociative disorders, schizophrenia is not an illness, but for me a temporary way not of coping, but of protecting the body from harm. I knew one other person with multiple personality disorder who would have schizophrenic type things (see, hear, or taste unusual things at times) but was clearly not considered a true schizophrenic, because their level of schizophrenia was lower. Complete gibbering schizophrenia is a protection mechanism when the brain detects a strong threat and usually the individual would be helpless in protection against such a person. I’ve seen it time and again.
It seems to me that many of the naysayers’ arguments regarding psychiatric illness could be made against neurologic illness. No rational person would argue against medical intervention for epilepsy or Parkinson’s, because the biological bases are easily described on an MRI, PET or CT scan. But the biological fingerprints of schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness, while more subtle and elusive to these diagnostic tools, are no less real. It wasn’t that long ago (before modern diagnostic tools were available) that an epileptic seizure was clear evidence of demonic possession. Many of the arguments of the anti-psychiatry crowd are no less founded in ignorance, irrationality and fear of the inexplicable. Happily, the anti-psychiatry standard-bearers have refrained – for the moment – from taking pitchforks & torches into our radiology departments.
Richard,
People discriminate against the mentally ill. They do so in mild and sometimes horrifying ways. People get restrained against their will and are given too much or the wrong medication. Professionals are poorly trained, and there aren’t enough of them.
The essential fallacy of the anti-psychiatry position is the conclusion that something which is done badly should not be done at all. It’s self-evidently false. Psychiatry, including medication, has been great for me. My early life was very rocky, I experienced cycling moods and eventually my periods of mania crossed over into psychosis.
I checked myself into a hospital, was diagnosed, and placed on medication. I had a huge depressive crash after the mania and it took a a couple of years to find the right medications, but it worked out pretty well.
Unfortunately, doctors aren’t universally empathetic. If you don’t look like them and talk like them you ought to get treated exactly the same, but you usually won’t. Social privilege crosses right through the psych ward foyer.
My point is, the answer to your complaints isn’t to eliminate psychiatry as a practice. Mental illnesses are real and there are treatments for them. It’s just that people don’t get good treatment. Why? Universal health care, even in places where it’s mandated, is not actually practiced in earnest. Rich people get good treatment. Poor people don’t.
But I can’t think of another circumstance where wealthy people get good and reasonably effective service, and poor people get poor service, and the poor people are like – “Screw it, we didn’t want anyone paying attention to our heart conditions, anyway. Statins are just there to make your arteries weak. There’s no such thing as high cholesterol” – or whatever. I mean, seriously?
It’s hard to know, when you’re very unwell, and you need help, who you can trust, what is right for you, and what is wrong for you. At various times during the course of bipolar, we will gravitate at one time to one idea and then to another. It is hard to see the wood, for the trees.
I think people need compassion and understanding, at all times; as much as we have to give. What they are saying might be detrimental – but look behind at the reason they are saying it. Often there is much hurt and pain. And to argue with them is to invalidate their hurt and pain just as much as they are invalidating yours. Those who would be silenced need healing.
This is interesting. If doctors actually knew what effect the medications had on a brain illness (they don’t, no matter what statistical garbage is put out), and they were completely neutral on this issue (they aren’t), I don’t think anybody could argue with a psychiatrist with the addendum that psychiatrists cannot do anything against an unwilling patient even if considered gibbering insane. You’d see your antipsychiatrists running away in this situation because there would be nothing to argue against. Even if there was a so-called magic pill, one could argue that it would have to be so high tech, because the person may believe there is a pill for any anxiety or histrionics- where could it end? To note the statistical garbage at the effects of their pills, since they have no scientific understanding at all of how the human brain functions, only at their studies, one could very well conduct the following studies (1) the effects of heavy intoxication of alcohol on a psychiatric patient and their illness (2) the effects of corporal punishment or beatings on a patient. These two studies (and you can throw in the drug trials as well) simply show that the patient is considered no longer in control of his activities or brain and needs the regulation of somebody else to induce his psychiatric carnival. He cannot get the pills on his own without a doctor, but he certainly can get alcohol, and alcohol is the solution for somebody who doesn’t give a **** and starts drinking because he feels like he is being punished by whatever leviathon is in his life, and although he has escaped their clutches, the threat of their claws is ever present, in his mind, and often in the world lurking and waiting for him.
You make a credible point and have a way with words. Would you be willing to share your thoughts on my blog? I highlight one individual every Friday and you have a fantastic voice. Generally, I ask them to share their personal stories. But, you pose your argument so well, I wouldn’t mind spinning in a different direction once.
Hi Shannon,
I truly appreciate the offer and the kind words but I’m not taking non-paying guest-blogging requests at this time. I do wish you well in your book, though, and if you’d like to talk about sharing part of your journey with my readers here, please contact me. https://natashatracy.com/about-natasha-tracy/contact-natasha-tracy/ (Perhaps once your book is available?)
– Natasha Tracy
Thank you Natasha. I will certainly contact you when my book is available. Meanwhile, I’ll enjoy following your blog!
“But I’m not taking “non-paying” guest-blogging requests”
Why am I uncomfortable with this reply?
Perhaps it is not the reply I am uncomfortable with. But rather the fact that it was not sent in private.
Hi Jacqueline,
If you ask a question publically, I answer it publically. If you had wanted a private response you should have either contacted me privately or said so in the comment.
Sorry.
– Natasha Tracy
Mix up here. I was not the one asking the question, a lady called Shannon did. I was simply following the thread! I was just surprised o see you announcing publicly that you only contribute elsewhere on health issues for cash and not for the good of the wider cause! No big deal!
Do you think somebody who is getting paid big money from Pharma for articles like this (attacking a VALID movement and ignoring and dismissing people whom precious psychiatry failed) would write for some small blog?
Natasha, I just wanted to say I love that you exist and do what you do!!
~Rhea
(dumb question perhaps — but how do I get a pic to show up for my posts?)
They say that the brain stores trauma memories, and usually the hospital was not the original source of the trauma, but it can escalate and oftentimes immobilize people until they get a grip on it. Having somebody “secured” inside in a dungeon does not allow the person to walk off or process the source of their trauma, and medications have been proven to actually lock in those trauma memories because you can’t process trauma effectively while sedated, but the brain still senses, and of course, new fears such as being punished for being aberrant, will not allow the patient to effect any defenses at all, unless the patient physically attacks one of the ward masters, which could release some of their suffering. Animals were never meant to be imprisoned with no effective means of defending physically, but a maniacal person doesn’t care, and will suffer any amount of damage up to and including death due to their many sinister and evil pain programs they’ve suffered in life.
Antipsychiatry exists because psychiatrists and families routinely have people commited against their will, and many times it’s an abuser who wants to punish, kill, or maim their spouse or family member- end of story. If somebody put a gun to your head and you did nothing about it, you’d be termed a psychiatric patient, because even though most people fight in the hospital, if you are unrelenting about it, you’ll be induced into a drug coma or strapped down until you have about 200 seizures before you leave, erasing really any memory of the incident. Does that mean I wouldn’t fight and still get shocked, I would fight and I would willingly get shocked, but I would fight. That sounds like a psychopaths dream. Now for those who need -help-, where was the -help- when people had to hunt to survive. Seems like somebody is enabling or in most cases abusing their mentally handicapped member.