Well done!

took you a decade to wake up you may not need meds after all, bipolar may all be bullshit, eh?

we'll check back with you in another 10 and see if you understand szasz 40 years ago when he wrote "the myth of mental illness."

we're all babies on this planet, and most asleep at that.

may your dreams be at least pleasant.

re: naked people hitting others?

how much money phil to build a nice "garden of eden" for these people where they are LOVED and PROTECTED?

huh?

when a monthly supply of zyprexa costs $500, eh?

you think if we took the money spent on COCKTAIL DRUGS and built HYATT REGENCY MANAGED RETIREMENT HOMES in which these naked people could RUN FREE and smear shit on plushed walls (not cement isolation rooms) etc, huh, huh, you think that would work?

NO?

go take the DBSA stance, medication is good, used responsibly, etc, do it philip.

appear on the cover of BP Magazine along with Electroboy.

i respectfully ask you to not respectfully ask me to stop reading your site & have some backbone.

you do have some, but you need a lot more.

ps: i'm not writing this post for myself, i'm writing it in the name of all the others you asked to stop reading, because omg, they advocate murder.

no one advocated murder in that thread really, they just said they can understand the DESPAIR that can lead someone to committ murder.

no one said murder should go unpunished.

no one said the murdered people DESERVE it.

often the killed people are innocents, ELI LILLY AS A CORPORATE ENTITY SHOULD BE EXECUTED AT THE WALL.

yep, i'm yelling. in silent writing. so that they won't have a reason to shut me up with injectable zyprexa.

also, stop approving my comments, i don't really care if your readers read it.

i'm only talking to you and i'm lazy to email you.

Fair enough. People have a right to their opinions and reasonable people have a right to point out when they're insane. That thread is batshit with errors of cognition, and the narcissism in "this is what happened to me so this is what happens to everyone" would be funny if it wasn't so deeply and profoundly disturbed. I read through that and all I could think was, my god, these people vote. Ish.

Bravo!

z0tl: i've read szasz. i am sympathetic to some of his arguments but that's about as far as i get with him. the dbsa stance? um the stance i've taken fairly consistently is the libertarian one that people should do as they wish with mh diagnosis and mh treatment and as long as they are not committing violent acts or disturbing the peace, then they are free to do as they wish or free to do as their voices tell them. or whatever.

btw i won't write for bp magazine. they don't allow criticisms of meds by name and i find that dishonest. so please stop acting like you know about me z0tl.

as for a garden of eden, that's a nice idea and i am certainly all for some experimental social approaches to treating psychosis. sadly i am not in control of a mental health agency or a funding body, so i am kinda limited in what i can do.

my frustration with some folks who get delusional and psychotic is all they do is whine about meds and that no one likes them and they just get hurt, but i never see them step up and take personal responsibility for their behaviors and do the tough psychological work to shut down their delusions and psychoses. that's not true of everyone dx's with schizophrenia but it's sure true of a lot of them. when they step up like that i'll do what i can to help them.

Well stated, good stuff.

What people post here and elsewhere as comments can be disturbing, very. I don't know what the answer is. Other than any of us moderating comments have to take damn fine care of ourselves. Which might include shutting down comments for awhile to catch a break.

I just hope that you, Philip, aren't getting scraped raw by this. Because it surely sucks to be doing the best you can only to be assaulted by abusive shite.

Thank you for this post. After reading some of the earlier comments, I just logged off. It was very upsetting to me. I cannot understand how anyone could be anything but horrified at what happened to this poor woman. It makes me sick.

Philip,

I don't think anyone is justifying the murders.

But please read http://www.sssristories.com. The common theme is that people commit crimes on these drugs who had no criminal history whatsoever.

Jeff Riordon, the former major league pitcher, is a perfect example. This guy, who is finanically set for life, held up a jewlry store for $100. It turns out he was on 5 antidepressants.

Jay Cohen, an MD who is definitely not antimeds, says SSRIs can make people homocidal.

I also know from personal experience that isn't surprising that these drugs can do that. Fortunately, I never had any homocidal thoughts or killed anybody but when I was on 5mg Celexa, I became very angry at someone over a trivial matter. That behavior was so unlike me and convinced me that I needed to get off this drug even though my psychiatrist had encourage me to stay on it.

Anyway, no one is saying that psychologist deserved it. What happened is very tragic. But please don't lose sight of the points people were trying to make.

AA

Thank you Philip. I was horrified by those comments and I've been a victim of psychiatry (and psychology) in some of the worst ways. Murder is murder is murder. And we have no idea what really happened. I too was a mental health worker. I've had knives held to me and once someone threatened me with a gun. This is when I was working with the homeless...I had nothing to do with prescribing meds to these people and I had only met them the day they threatened me. My interactions with people at the time were short. I was a damn good, idealistic kid back then. I was innocent. They were fucked up.

I have rage about how I was treated in the system, but I've never been homicidal. We live in a very scary world where people hate so much they can't feel for people they vaguely perceive as the enemy with no clear indications that they are an enemy.

The psychiatrist who ruined my life? I love him. It's one of the biggest conflicts I have in my life. He did nothing intentionally and I live with this dissonance. I know he cared about me. He had no fucking idea what he did to me. Some day I will write him and share with him what he did. But he is a good man, deluded perhaps, handing out mind-numbing, killing medications---but before I educated myself I looked forward to seeing him everytime I went. He wanted me to feel better. We laughed and joked and he believed in me. He encouraged me to do whatever my dreams were. He wanted to help me and make me thrive. That's all. He just didn't know how to do it. That does not make him a monster. It makes him dangerously ignorant. And in this case I say, "Forgive him he knows not what he's doing." And yes I'm damn angry with him too. But no hate here, thank you. And all the angry haters...well you helped me see that I need to let go of my rage. That is what will heal...that is what will cross over and allow us to be heard. Not that anger doesn't have it's place---it's a great motivator. But blind hatred helps no one. And certainly it will close the ears of the people who stand to learn the most from us.

Ironically it's those of us anti-psychiatry folks who don't believe in the insanity defense who will recommend the murderer be punished for this. Those of you who believe that for pay therapy helps will recommend more of the same which will result in more therapists being placed in these dangerous situations.

I don't think murder is ever right, I'm opposed to the death penalty. I also don't think that the fact that someone in a homeless
shelter needs a compassionate empathetic person to talk to means that person is mentally ill.

The fact that two of the biggest problems in our society are homelessness and empty homes tends to indicate we have a huge systemic problem and the actions of individuals are signals and symptoms that changes in the system need to occur. Again, around the time prozac hit the scene, there were lots of studies out there indicating therapy was not very effective. A real study of the mental health industry would focus on which is the least effective, medication, therapy, or a combination because neither are particularly effective. When the economy takes a down turn, violence increases. People need jobs and homes, not someone to take money they don't have to imply that their financial problems and the problems stemming from them are of their own making.

Yesterday there was another school murder spree/suicide. These tragedies are increasingly more common. I don't think there's a therapy or a pill that can effect this horrifying trend. The rise of therapy and psych drugs is a symptom of a problem not a solution. As you say, it's hard to know what the solution might be.

You do a great service with this blog. I wish I could always agree with you.

Ditto! Mom Dawdy

Warmly,
Herb
VNSdepression.com

AA: i'm well aware of the cases you cite. what makes you think they have any bearing whatsoever on what happened in nyc?

Excellent post, Philip. Your fairmindedness is the main reason I keep coming back to your blog, even though I don't agree with many of things you write.

And as for all the disturbing comments, it's the nature of the beast that is the net.

I don't think any of those people would have dared say something as inconsiderate IRL. But as the cartoon says, on the Internet, no one knows you're a dog!

Philip, when I sent this story to you, it was in my psyche, and it was all over the NY news. No one deserves to be hacked to death like that with a butcher cleaver. Another doc came in to help her and he won't make it, lost so much blood.

Now I maybe bipolar I may be schizoaffective, but I know right from wrong. Yelling at a doc and saying foul language may not be right, but it's better than slicing and dicing another human being.

What I am waiting for the Post and the Daily News to come up with a law over this, like Kendra's law, or Megan's law. See if they send anyone talking to themselves in Manhattan to Bellevue.

Thank you Philip, for having the cajones to write what you wrote. I am making you an honorary New Yorker in addition to your Jersey status.

Philip,

I didn't mean imply that at all and sorry if that is how I came across.

I think in light of the fact for example that people like Robert Hawkins were definitely on them, I think it is only natural that when we hear about a situation like this, we wonder if meds had anything to do with it I do that whether a psychologist is murdered or if more students are murdered at a university. I think if I didn't have the personal experience of celexa causing me to get enraged over nothing, I wouldn't be inclined to do this.

But you're right, we need to wait until the facts come out before jumping to conclusions. In fact, on the paxil progress boards, someone had read that the murderer might know the psychologist and not be a patient. I hope this is the case (not that it brings the psychologist back to life or lessens the tragedy) because I greatly feared a backlash from the TAC folks.

AA

I respect your insight, and I totally agree with you. I am just one voice, but I think I have seen all sides.

Why did you post about the murder in the first place? Because you assumed that a patient, someone with a mental disorder/illness, committed the act. However, it appears that now the person of interest was someone she met at guitar camp.

Breaking news that the guy who just killed those people in Illinois recently went off his meds. At least in this instance, one could theorize that he was a crazy man who wouldn't have killed those people if he'd staid on his meds. Sudden discontinuance of medication could do some bad things. This is not going to bode well for those of us who are crazy but don't kill people.

Murder is bad. People kill for a whole plethora of reasons. Some we find acceptable and some we don't. Guy kills the woman he raped and her unborn child, burns their remains and runs. He's not "crazy", but he still did the same bad thing.

And what's with the "best I can get out of readers" bullshit. Didn't know we were being graded. People were responding to your post. Weren't you recently unhappy that people didn't respond to a post you did because it was about your personal experience. People yesterday were leaving comments about their personal experiences with shitty care and you're unhappy again.

Philip,

You might want to read this story:

http://www.startribune.com/nation/15661842.html

NIU gunman identified; officials say he stopped taking medication before rampage

Again, this has nothing to do with the murder of the psychologist and nothing justifies what happened to her. But it gives rise to my point that it even though we have to judge each situation by its own merits, it is totally understandable to keep thinking that drugs played a part in any incident we read about.

AA

Well, having been lumped in with others as having written a terrible comment, I think I will stop coming to this site. My son WAS killed by his incompetent psychiatrist and I don't blame myself for having the novel, though terrible thought that if perhaps something had happened to him, my son might have gotten a competent psychiatrist, been taken off Zyprexa, and lived. I never said I wished this, but the article and comments did make me think it. I am sorry that the comment section has been misused in your view and I will definitely not use it again.

Like Lisa, I also could not respond due to the comments.

I came back later, because I could not stand the fact that people were taking soapbox stands over why the woman was murdered...and showing no compassion for loss of human life.

As Gianna states, I also harbor no such hatred or anger toward any psychiatrist or doctor.

I wonder if anyone remembers when Wayne Fenton was murdered? There are people that work every single day to care for people who they know could possibly harm them, as a matter of fact I have witnessed many staff being attacked and needing medical care afterward, and they still go to work, because they have compassion for others.

This is a terrible tragic story, and anyone coming back to defend there original comments on the prior post need to understand what you say now, in my opinion has done nothing more than show the bitter, hate-filled heart you carry, and for that I wish you peace, at some point in your lifetime.

It also, as Gianna states, closes the ears to anyone remotely needing "educating" from your personal stories, which are not relevant to this one.

I'm surprised that the post got any response at all beyond lamentations of the tragic loss of human lives. I don't see evidence that psychiatry had anything to do with the murders of these psyCHOLOGISTS.

Philip, you make a really excellent point (and one that I hope you'll continue to make) about people taking responsibility when they're not taking drugs. Anyone who's read my posts on previous threads knows that I've been severely harmed by psychiatry, and that I find quite a lot to be critical of. But I try always keep in mind that there are people like Herb's spouse and Stephany's daughter who ultimately have been helped a lot. For me, the biggest hurdle to a semi-decent life was getting away from coercive bio-psych, but nearly as difficult, and much more long-term, has been taking responsibility to build for myself some sort of life that I can actually live in. The dogma of biochemical determinism (which people are buying into when they say that drugs 'made' someone violent) decreases the likelihood that people will take responsibility because if it's all just chemicals, then personal responsibility has nothing to do with it. I think that an essential part of taking responsibility is to try to let go of some of the anger and to stop reflexively twisting any instance of the letters 'P', 'S', and 'Y' appearing together into an excuse for venting bile about one's own experience.

There is so much that really is wrong with psychiatry which thoughtful critiques could be the first step to rectifying... I hope that people making these shrill, ignorant arguments realize that they're standing with the scientologists in helping to discredit even reasonable criticism.

I wish that people would stop trying to turn tragedies like these into fodder for advocating their agendas, and I mean that both for those who are looking for ammunition to blow holes in psychiatry AND those who want to use any instance of a person who has a MH label doing something awful as a justification for expanding psychiatric coercion.

Thomas Szasz wrote a lot of books, and I haven't read them all, but from what I have read, even when he was comparing psychiatry to the Inquisition, and latter and less convincingly to chattel slavery and the nazis, it seems to me that his central premise was always that every person is a moral agent who is ultimately responsible for all of their actions regardless of how they've been treated or mistreated, diagnosed or misdiagnosed, or what dogma they've been indoctrinated with, or whatever is going on with their biochemistry. Szasz is mainly known for opposing psychiatric coercion, but he was equally strong in his criticism of the 'insanity defense,' which absolves perpetrators of legal and moral responsibility for their crimes. And most germane, Szasz always differentiated between coercive psychiatry and contractual psychiatry, and as a libertarian had no problem with the later as long as caregivers are honest about what they're offering.

Philip, I hope that you're not getting too discouraged by those comments. I think that your blog is immensely valuable because, even though we don't all see exactly eye-to-eye, most of the time we are able to discuss some very controversial mental health issues in a civilized way in the middle ground between the competing dogmas that psychiatry is great for everyone and that it is an 'industry of death.'

Thanks for your efforts, and I hope that you'll keep going.

-UnderTheThresher

"Ignorance breeds fear and fear breeds intolerance."

Anyone who justifies murder is just plain wrong.
It reminds me of the anti-abortion people who defend mudering doctors--unbelievable hypocrisy.
Would it be okay for you to block some of the comments?...I personally think that would be fine.

To say that a murder is understandable is different from saying it's right or somehow justified. I think it's understandable that people are dying in the war in Iraq. I don't think it's justified and don't support the war. Someone who is violent should be punished. We don't know that the stabbed psychologist was harmed by a patient. But I'll present this idea - if an anger management therapist is murdered by her patient, it's not proof the therapist deserved to die, it's proof anger management doesn't work.

If there are more homeless than beds for homeless in Seattle as there are here in Atlanta, if someone is breaking the rules at the shelter, and/or breaking the law there the police should be called as they are committing crimes (in the case of the nude man this is assuming he has clothes to wear) and then people who are willing and able to follow the rules of the shelter and are also homeless should be given those beds. This is how the rule breakers learn to obey rules, they are given the right to choose. I'm not sure what the relationship between obeying rules and taking meds is supposed to be beyond sedation which doesn't seem fair or productive and leaves the sedated person more vulnerable to abuse and potentially creates a cycle where they will become violent as soon as the sedation wears off.

chloe: i'm hardly grading commenters but it is discouraging to me that some ppl had zero sympathy for the murder victim. i'd say psychologists are a long long way from being anyone's enemy and i had hoped for more thoughtful comments even from ppl who dislike the mh system.

sorrowful: i am very sorry to see you go. i knew that i'd lose readers over this dustup, but i simply cannot tolerate any justification of murder. it gives the rest of us a very bad reputation.

someone asked in this thread why i don't just ban some ppl from commenting. in the 2.5 years of this site i have only banned 3 people. i try to let people say whatever they want. my comments policy is on the bottom of my about page.

Phillip,

You are wonderful, even if you choose to ban me for this comment which needs to be made clear. It is only those of us who are anti-psychiatry who oppose the murder of this therapist. I do think therapy often does more harm than good. I don't think this justifies the murder of a therapist. I don't think people who are violent deserve "treatment." Many of us came from troubled childhoods and issues. Most people who murder did not. To say that the current mental health system causes violence is not to say that people who work in it deserve to be killed, not at all. It's to say the opposite, to say that since it doesn't work we need to go in different directions to prevent the murder of mental health workers as well as untold pain and suffering.

I just wanted to point out that psychologists cannot prescribe medication but that does not mean they are not complicit. Certainly almost all psychologists take on patients who are medicated and having their medications "managed" by psychiatrists. Psychologists take referrals from psychopharmacologists who often do not do talk therapy. As I have said elsewhere what needs to be changed is the professional and patient ignorance surrounding reacting adversely, withdrawing irresponsibly, and the relative risk/benefit ratio of medicating someone LONG TERM vs. treating them from the get go in a more holistic empathic manner. All that being said we still don't have a clue whether this violent murderer was in treatment, in therapy, or what the hell was wrong with him.

Hi,

I am very upset. Please reread the comments again. No one justified the murder of the psychologist. When anyone loses their life in this manner (well all loss of life is bad but you know what I mean), it is horrific. I can't imagine the terror that woman must have felt and what her family and loved ones are feeling.

But having said that, I can relate to the comments that sorrowful made. This woman wasn't justifying the murder of the psychologist either but was expressing anger that anyone of you would express if you were in her situation and had lost a child. Unless you have been in her position, you really can't understand what that is like.

I also personally know someone who almost lost her life in a psych hospital because a psychiatrist committed her over a dispute regarding a medication. This is someone who has always been med compliant.

Does that mean I think all psychiatrists are evil? No. But I would be less than honest if I said I didn't have evil thoughts torwards this person. That doesn't mean I want him to die but is called a normal human emotion.

For those of you who think I have no clue what is like to work in this type of field, think again. I have worked in special ed and have been attacked by students. Fortunately, I never feared for my life but some of the attacks were quite painful.

And even though I loved the students I worked with, including the ones who attacked me, at the same time, I silently cursed the ones who injured me. That is a normal human emotion.

I just find this whole thread very ironic because one of the main themes in this whole issue is that alot of people, including me feel that meds have suppressed every human emotion on this earth. Of course, I am exhaggerating but you get my point.

So when people express emotions that I think are normal in light of their experiences, they get shot down as justifying the murder of a psychologist.

And even if we thought the murders were justified which obviosuly none of us believe, we would be darned fools to feel that way because we definitely don't want to do anything to give rise to the TAC folks who think anyone with a mental health dx should be medicated into oblivian.

Once again so everyone is clear about my position - What happened to this woman was horrific and my condolences to her family and loved ones. But I had to say what I did.

AA

Um, did everyone miss the follow up that the suspect is NOT a PATIENT of the psychologist who was killed so brutally?

Nothing justifies murder. Nothing justifies assuming it must be a mental patient when a mental health professional is killed either.

"To say that the current mental health system causes violence" is horseshit. The elephant in the room boils down to this -- the successful completion of psychotherapy, which entails the ability to form a therapeutic alliance with treatment providers, is an achievement, the most wrenching and difficult work a person can undertake. That's why it's scorned by the gutless anti-psychiatry wankers, who attack psychotherapy because they lack the courage to deal with their minds, and must not fall short in their endless comparison of those who will.

Too bad the state of Virginia is about to make therapeutic alliances based on trust impossible for everyone in the state based on fear and prejudice. Of course most people with mental illness in this state and other states have absolutely no access to a psychotherapist. We have huge waiting lists just for DBT so called therapy for 4 visits and lots of folks can't even get on the lists. And private practioners usually say they won't treat people who have ever been psychotic so most folks who have ever been psychotic are sh-t out of luck when it comes to the chance of starting, let alone successfully completing psychotherapy. But let's blame the victims, it's more fun isn't it?

alison: thanks for making that point. it's one i should've made myself. that said, no one has been arrested or charged with the murder, but police are apparently operating on the theory that it could've been someone who saw her as a patient or saw one of the others docs she shared offices with. and it could've also been someone else completely removed from her professional life.

Therapeutic alliances based on trust may well be an accomplishment, making such alliances legally mandated, regarding such as medical treatment or legal punishment for committing a crime and/or profiting from such financially is horseshit.

Oh, and implying that our current mental health system "the system" includes "therapeutic alliances built on trust" is also, well horseshit for the reasons Hymes mentions and others. I think the victims in this situation are all of us who have ever been therapists and all of us who have ever been "patients" and all of us who have ever been a loved one of someone getting "mental health treatment." We are all somewhat to blame and somewhat victimized by the system. The impulses underlying the creation of the system are not evil, the people working in it are for the most part not evil, but it does not work, and is counter to the development of "theraputic alliances based on trust."

So direct your comments accordingly, as in reforming client confidentiality between treater and consumer, rather than attacking the therapeutics you have no experience, respect or courage in pursuing.

I agree with you all the way. As a psych resident, I have seen good psychiatrists and bad psychiatrists. There are those who practise contractual psychiatry, and those who practise coercive psychiatry. And like every other profession, there are those who blindly throw medications at their patients.

The same can be said for the people who are treated by these doctors. There are patients who want to get well and are willing to try medication, people who do not like medication but want to get well, people who have been mistreated by a healthcare worker and hate the profession, and a Lot of people who see the world as black or white. Which might explain some of the comments on the earlier post.

Fact- The murderer was not a patient of the psychologist.
Fact- More acts of violence are committed by people who are anti-social/ on street drugs/ inebriated, not mentally ill/on medication.

Unfortunately, caregivers hold a higher position of responsibility in the MH worker-patient relationship (IMO), and therefore, while a tirade/act of violence/irrational anger by the patient may be explained away, we have no excuses for the caregiver.

It is sad to seen anyone literally hacked down by someone overpowered by their own personal demons.

I have no problem with the concept of justice, and holding the patient responsible for their own actions.

And yet I must also wonder at the state of expertise needed to detect such things. Learning how to detect and how to deal with upset clients and patients probably should not be left to "on the job" training, or the school of Hard Knocks, especially if it is a matter of personal survival. When the guy has the butcher knife in their hands, it is way too late.

You would think that this sort of thing would be part of the basics studied in undergrad school, something like Human Upsets 101.

Thus my criticism for the psychiatric/psychological arts to begin with.

Physician, heal thyself.

I feel very sad to be totally blown off this comment board by what I said and I respectfully suggest that you re-read the comments again. Several people attempted to say, again, that they did not mean what you accused them of and one person even came to my defense, as the mother of a son murdered by Zyprexa. I think the stance you took, sweeping all posters into one dish - the dish of approving murder of a psychologist- was unfair and not well thought through. But it taught me that this comment section is full of loopholes and dangers and is not a place I will choose to be. I have plenty enough sorrow in my life to make a decision to be chastised and yelled at.

Sorrowful, understanding your severe anger and pain regarding the death of your son, and appreciative of your advocacy as a result; I feel someone being killed randomly by a butcher knife is different. The woman could quite possibly have been in the wrong place at the wrong time; no one knows if the murderer was a patient; and the statement(s)you made did come across as it did. I'm sorry to say this, but yours was the one that shocked me the most. That being said, I can't speak for your pain and anger, but this woman was violently murdered, and did not deserve it in any way shape or form and either does anyone else; doctors or psychiatrists who rx medications gone bad included. I would never dream of harm toward anyone.

I applaud you taking your anger and pain into advocacy as you have written here before, and hope that continues to be a good outlet for your agony.

Re: frustration at some with delusions/psychosis.

I'm schizoaffective. Sometimes I whine about the side effects of my medication or just about the illness in general. I see a psychiatrist and therapist, but I'm not sure what you mean about doing the psychological work to deal with the delusions. CBT barely touches them. It's hard to challenge thoughts that are "real" to you. Now, I'm working on other areas like broken boundaries and self-esteem. I don't really know how to deal with my delusions except suppress them and hope they go away with time.

I really don't know what you think you can do to help me, but I don't like being called a whiner when I have a serious chronic illness that is difficult to live with. Would you call a cancer patinet a whiner for complaining about their chemo?

I love the way some people comment on "narcissism" (especially professionals).

narcissism, to me, is about thinking you know someone, and their experience of life, for simply chatting with them...

i go for anxiety treatment, i get treated for dentist chair anxiety, i go for depression treatment, i get treated for the first thing i didn't like about my parents when i was young, and the one thing you all ****ing fail to pick up on is the amount of times i'm telling you "it's not the same experience".

and when it does get through, PD diagnosis.

jesus christ, when will MH diagnosis be about the experience of life people are having and not the interpretation from someone who hasn't experienced it first hand...

Thank you for this, for me, you redeemed your site with this post. I fight as hard as I can as one mental health professional to serve clients in a humane manner that respects their treatment wishes. I also have to remind myself everyday that taking lithium and living in the psychiatric world as a client is worth it to be able to function in society. It has worked after every other conceivable method failed. I had reached the point in the last month where I could no longer read your posts because they were harmful to my own health. I feel that after this post I can return. I appreciate that anyone can come here and feel free to disagree and agree with what they like within certain boundaries of decency. Thank you for upholding those boundaries.

I have been on mental health websites for over ten years. I myself am Bipolar...Bipolar II, luckily, so I experience a different, perhaps minor, form of MI.

I, and many, many others I met on such forum boards, experience a form of bigotry from psychiatrists that has pushed us away from using this resource. We definitely get an "us v them" attitude, but ours is that the psychiatrist in question didn't actually listen to us, rather told us what to do and treated us as if they were the only one with the answers, a remnant of the "doctor as god" mentality. Sometimes we are treated almost as if we are mentally RETARDED rather than mentally ill.

To say it's frustrating puts it mildly. It can actually be detrimental to our having any kind of decent quality of life, as many people just take their psychiatric treatment at face value, take their meds, and end up FEELING like less of a person because of the way they are treated.

Purely by happenstance, I was in a position where I was encouraged to host my own website. I have heard the same things over and over there, as well. We are first and foremost human beings, but all too often we don't get treated as such, we are treated as "patients", and have no trouble recognizing the facial expression and words which quickly indicate that we're not a "person" to the psychiatrist, but rather a "patient", as is often pointed out in medical doctors: "The gall bladder needs an IV".

I found the percentage of psychiatrists who've experienced some form of MI or family member with MI a revelation, but also cause for even more frustration. My, and others', experiences have been that psychologists and therapists have the same (that I know from personal experience and the comments of others battling MI). Experience has shown us that, by and large, psychologists and therapists treat us as human beings FIRST and people with mental illness second?

Psychiatrists tend to do the "take your meds" and see us fifteen minutes every three months, rarely listening to our individual difficulties beyond medication, whereas psyhologists TALK to us and LISTEN to us? Perhaps it is the training; I've heard numerous times that Psychiatry is on the lowest rung of the totem pole when it comes to medicine, so perhaps it's a case in part of needing us to be even lower than them, I don't know.

All I know is that many of us have had negative experiences with psychiatrists as opposed to positive ones with therapists, social workers and psychologists. Now I'm seeing more and more psychiatrists insisting that they be the therapist for their patient as well as their medical prescriber. Certainly there's more money to be made as a therapst, as the visits are much more frequent, but psychiatrists in general make LOUSEY therapists, so I wouldn't do it.

If one goes to most mental health forums, they will see that we are people first, dealing with the same issues "normal" people do. I don't believe in "normal", I think if enough diagnoses were discovered, everyone in the world would have one form or another of "mental illness". I refer to the rest of the population as GUMs instead: Great Undiagnosed Masses.

Yes, we deal with some of our issues differently than "GUMs", and yes, sometimes we need professional help to deal with those issues, but I, too, empathize with the frustration caused by wanting real help and experiencing instead being treated as if we are some kind of different animal, needing to be led by the hand through life and the psychiatrist not feeling he's done his job unless we are "medicated into mediocrity" (as Hagop Akiskal, a world-renowned psychiatrist advocating a different approach to psychiatry, has been known to say.

He posits, correctly, that if we are medicated into what many psychiatrists believe is a state of "functionality", we are actually so numbed to life that we either suffer on that way or become what they call "med noncompliant". I agree that meds work for some, but not most, people, but that does seem to be the accepted form of treatment.

The stories I have heard curl my hair. In Britain, in particular, the system is broken down to an amazing degree. I've heard of one person getting a psychiatrist who couldn't even speak English, and another who started gibbering about baking a cake in the middle of the session. Now the British attitude has become "put 'em back to work" and people who are incapable of doing so, or have been disabled all their lives, are being pushed into rejoining the working world and made to feel bad if they can't accomplish same.

I don't want an eden--we are human beings, and in some cases I've seen people with MI deal with issues in a far more tolerant manner than the GUMs who express their prejudices against us in many ways. An effort to see us as people making our way through life with a hindrance, such as epilepsy (from which many of our meds are derived), would be a welcome relief.

Epileptics take medication all their lives. Despite this they experience episodes where their illness overtakes them, no matter how hard they try to battle it. Exactly the same things can be said about us, but since our episodes cause us to act in ways society doesn't consider appropriate, we are seen as a threat, an alien, or someone incapable of making their way through life.

If we could be seen as the world sees others with obvious, medical illnesses, and given the proper help we need to get through life while battling our disorders, I think the change in our ability to function in this world would be dramatic, and I know there would be far less instances of people acting out of their huge frustration at not being seen as humans first, humans who battle almost daily against a disease as yet little understood, but as virulent as any medical condition. I wish it could be possible, but I know not in my lifetime, if ever.

Which, by the way, as so many have said does NOT excuse violence in any way. I, too, believe in personal responsibilty. But I have also known very good people to do very bad things.

One woman I knew had an episode which caused her to drive "slalom" across the Golden Gate Bridge and do wheelies on Crissy Field. She lost custody of her children because of it. I knew another, very bright, lovely woman whose episode caused her to take a tire iron to her pharmacist because he wouldn't give her the drugs she wanted to commit suicide. She spent some time incarcerated because of it.

Personal responsibility is absolute...but what do we do when a psychotic episode overtakes us and we act irrationally? Haven't we all heard the studies on how many mentally ill are in prison and/or homeless? I abhor the idea of what was done, but as others have said, I understand it.

The fact put forth that the person involved wasn't even a mentally ill patient is telling. Who gets blamed first for such things? How automatically does "...had mental problems", "...was off his meds" happen, and how horribly much does it contribute to the stigma we face?

So he wasn't a mental patient. GUMs, as I said...but mental illness usually gets into the news as a possible cause of violence and acting out. What statement does that make? That we're different, and dangerous. I'll bet fewer of US do serious violence than GUMs, if studies were done. But "mental illness" as a cause is latched onto.

Holy crap people, if you think your psychiatrist is evil and pumping you with needless meds get a new one. Or just don't get one at all. Even in Sin City not all cops are corrupt. What gave you the idea that all psychiatrists chose this career to screw with people? Use some freaking common sense. Didn't you learn in school that stereotypes are offensive and usually untrue?

Annoyed,

This is the thing. We live in a society that tells us that going to therapy which inevitably leads to drug prescriptions is the right thing and are barraged by oodles of news and magazine reports that falsely imply that research and results clearly indicate that therapy and drugs improve lives and actually heal people when research and results clearly indicate the opposite. Therapy which usually includes drugs and these days almost solely consists of drugs is recommended for so many people, legally required for others, and the information that neither therapy nor drugs improves behavior or quality of life is there but not getting out.

Back when meds made the scene insurance companies were producing information that very few of their insureds who saw therapists ever stopped, i.e. got well. And the lives of the insured usually got worse during therapy. Think about this, most people who go to marriage counseling get divorced, so maybe marriage counseling doesn't help save marriages. Most people who go to anger management classes get arrested for violent crimes, so maybe anger management doesn't work.

All sorts of articles were published about people going to see therapists and being told they'd need them for the rest of their lives, when they didn't need them before they started seeing them. The problem is that the industry of mental health promotes and perpetuates stereotypes, the DSM is a stereotype catalog. Psychiatrists are knowingly participating in an ineffective system that turns merely unhappy people into violent dangerous people too often, so your recommendation that people don't go to one at all is good advice, but for those of us who were forced and/or trusted our medical professional, speaking out is one of the few things we are allowed to do.

The research psychologists have some interesting work, most of which, possibly all of which, leads to the conclusion that our current model of drugs and therapy cannot work. Clinical psychology doesn't want to hear this, nor do the people who believe this stuff, still as a society our "mental health" is deteriorating at least partly because neither the clinical psychologists nor the psychiatrists will look at the data of the research psychologists.

I read an important article today on another psych blog about how twins are NOT genetically identical.

http://psychcentral.com/blog/

Wonder when the Stanley Foundation will incorporate that information into their recommendations and "advocacy?"

Actually Sally this is the thing: we live in a society filled with behaviors, activities and relationships you disapprove of, and the fact that people find these experiences essential and essentially satisfying will not stand. For once I wish our lovable anti-psych ideologues would just come out and tell us what it is you would do if you were in charge. What specific policy you envision, and what you are doing as a citizen to realize your vision of authoritarian America. Just sayin, inquiring minds might want to know.

FP, psychological theory is to me like religion, I may not agree with yours, but I support your right to have it. Of course there are some religions I agree with more than others, and some psych theories. As for behaviors, activities and relationships I disapprove of - sorry babe I ain't no scientologist so you can't pin the homophobe thing on me. I disapprove of the entire for profit psych industry, maybe this is what you are getting at. However I would no more condemn someone for voluntarily choosing that path than I would condemn someone for becoming a Nun, another choice that mystifies me.

I cop to anti-psych but cringe at ideologue. I had an interesting conversation with a man who is homeless at a place I hang out this morning about how he got arrested inside of the inner city hospital trying to sneak on to the locked ward to get some "help." I supported his desire to feel better and didn't criticize psych to him though I did give him my opinion that it is society and not him that is sick. I'm not sure where I fit these encounters in policy. Maybe all locked psych wards could simply be unlocked and for people who choose "treatment" the ones that were closed reopened and made voluntary. Maybe after a building has been vacant for a certain amount of time the state could open it up to the homeless, just thinking out loud.

I'm not a big specific policy envisioner though I do think that there should be no recommendation by any state agency much less requirement for any psych treatment which I would think makes me anti-authoritarian.

I think it's odd that you equate anti-psych with authoritarian, but I know you spend a lot of time reading psych theory. I wonder how your thinking got to this point. Feel free to explain.

"The post received several comments that I find disturbing and unacceptable, forcing me to ponder why I am even bothering to do this blog if the best I can get out of readers is a bunch of inhumane BS and tired anti-psychiatry polemics."

no,keep up the good work. i may not always agree with everything you write/post but there is more of a balance in view/perspective here and not just shrill anti-psychiatry ranting. they don't speak for me.

Authoritarianism is not unique to antipsychiatry so much as the human condition, a study that includes but is not limited to psychological theory. A very good primer on the authoritarian personality made the rounds last year, worth a read here:

http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/

Hello Phil,

This post was brought to my attention by Liz Spikol's site, and I must say that I was utterly shocked by the comments you reference as well. I have to admit that I get a little tired of your own anti-psychiatry rhetoric from time to time, but it is quite clear that, as retla says above, you are just being balanced in your reporting.

Take care and please keep up the good work,
K.

Hi flawedplan

Authoritarianism is not unique to antipsychiatry so much as the human condition.... why, you think so?

FP, The paper looks interesting still I'd expected a little more from you than the tired idea that conservatives are them and liberals are us which is what the intro to the book says.

As a leftie, but not a liberal, I'd say psychological research suggests that it's not forced counseling that should be available as there's something pretty authoritarian about holding a gun to someone's head and saying, hey share your most personal insights with me, a state sponsored counselor, and then have the crucial insight that your view is wrong and mine is right and I won't shoot you. Nixon might not be Jesus but neither is Chairman Mao. Psychological research as well as the entire body of literature and history of the human race tells us humans that you can't force insight and when you really believe that your view is so much righter than mine that I must be forced to change my view to yours, you're the authoritarian, so of course you were calling me, not the anti-psych movement, authoritarian. I disagree, and point the finger back at you. I'd say that being an authoritarian at times is a facet of the human personality that is normal for most people to slip into at certain times, just like depression, hypomania, hystrionic, ocd, etc. Though it's interesting to note that in dogs the myth that there's a pack order with an alpha wolf, that authoritarianism is a natural, genetic dog personality feature with some dogs born bossy and some simpering, perpetuated by the well meaning and often helpful Cesar Milan, has been observed to exist only in captive dogs. Dogs in the wild have been observed to be egalitarian, leadership sharers: "http://www.harcourtbooks.com/MerlesDoor/interview.asp"

Here is Peggy Natiello writing on Carl Rogers:

"The radical consequence of this belief, one that contradicted the conventional wisdom of traditional psychology, is that each person can be trusted to find his or her own solutions in a climate where certain psychological conditions prevail."

For society to rise above the natural human tendancy prevalent in each of us to be authoritarian, each person must be trusted, not forced. Your way is fine with me if you don't decorate it with all sorts of false proof that it works outside your own experience and don't force anyone down your road. I certainly don't think I'm forcing people away from the idea that their innate personalities may need drugs and invasive, forced "counseling." And I certainly think that introspection guided by a therapist is a worthwhile way to pass time, it just shouldn't be a weapon of the state.

Your entire comment is a strawman, it has no relevance to this conversation, as usual. The enforcers live inside your fevered imagination Sally. What is real is your hostility which has found an outlet in the psychiatric professional class, which makes you a bigot. You pump up fear in others using self-righteous moralism as the same justification that lets you applaud the unleashing of aggression toward these evil psychologists who deserve to be punished. Though I'm sure you would take no pleasure in the destruction of a human being.

Wow, Flawed Plan, you bite back trying in your captivity to become the alpha, or so it seems to me. I'm not living inside of your imagination and you're not living inside of mine. Your ad hominem attack does nothing to strengthen you argument which I think is this...people who describe themselves as anti-psychiatry are sick and that people who are psychiatrists are in their own class and that people who disapprove of people in that class are bigots, or are you just calling me a bigot? Am I wrong? (and why does the answer to that question need to be yes for you to feel okay with yourself, or does it?)

Wow, dense comment FP, deserves a second look, the bigot thing distracted me. I don't applaud the unleashing of aggression towards "these evil psychologists who deserve to be punished." I also don't think they are practicing medicine. Ah the thrills accusing someone who disagrees with you of a fevered imagination. Implies delusion, implies thinking people who disagree with you are mentally ill and authoritarian bigots. Seems like you could be a little nicer. Is it hot in here?

At best your argument boils down to the analogous "all sex is rape" claim made by victims of sexual assault. Sexual assault is awful and we all want to speak out against it, punish/rehabilitate the perpetrators and heal the victims. But sexual assault is an EXCEPTIONAL sexual experience, and women who compel others to see it as the NORM are twisted, trainwreck walking advertisements for the need of therapeutic intervention. Instead they choose to create an identity around their unresolved trauma, politicize their victimization, and browbeat women who enjoy sex with men into seeing the errors of their ways. This is an analogy.

You associate psychology with force. You hear psychology and instantly think oppression. Despite the real world evidence that coercive psychology is the EXCEPTION, and that the overwhelming majority resort to therapy in an effort to seek relief from unbearable personal pain that unlike you, they are willing to recognize for what it is.

The key difference in my argument and the argument that all sex is rape (one that despite a goodly amount of feminist theory under my belt I'm not aware of outside of your example here) is this: All sex is not rape. To say that there's a movement of victims of sexual assault to convince others that all sex is rape is disingenuous. Therapeutic relationships are healing but rarely occur in an official therapist/patient relationship. Empirical data indicates that therapy doesn't help people get better. It helps people sit in their problems and make their entire identity their psychiatric label. It's destructive. I have no doubt that many people go into therapy to seek relief from unbearable personal pain. I doubt that relief comes from therapy. Evidence is on my side. If you find that therapy relieves your pain, good for you. It's analogous to prostitution. The direction and correction you get from a therapist, paid for is like the sex you get from a prostitute compared with the sex you get from a sexual relationship with a voluntary rather than hired sexual companion. Selling compassion and empathy is the wrong way to go. You may see the world differently but there's just no evidence that your way works. If it works for you, good for you but when you generalize to say that it works for everyone and anyone who disagrees with you is mentally ill, that very thought proves therapy hasn't worked for you.

Thanks Sally,

"anyone who disagrees with me is mentally ill"

is my new tagline, to replace

"all men are rapists and that is all they are."

Which I also made up, being the true fabulist in the conversation. All the facts are friendly when you live inside a bubble of your own making.

crazy or frigid - I think if you could afford the $250 therapist, she might present you with a third option, but it's only when you live inside your own life outside of the protective yet oppressive bubble of psych labeling that the bubble pops, though I suspect you and I could blow hot air into this one forever and though I don't have a tagline, I'm going to live by something a psychologist at a bar once advised me, "neither a sadist nor a masochist be," and stop now.

There are free therapists offered by many mental health agencies in most states. Honestly this isn't my arena, but Sally what does it matter what FP does? I believe in the first question she inquired of you, I read it as asking you what you do to promote mental health awareness besides leaving commentary on blogs. Maybe I misread that.

Good luck, it appears psychiatry, and family issues wounded your spirit, and it needs some healing.

That doesn't happen to all people.

Nothing I say here will likely be different from anything that's already been said.

I'm coming back to the blog world after a long delay and I stumble upon this.

I think the consensus is that murder is bad. It seems like some comments in Dawdy's previous related post may have been misunderstood. (I don't mind standing corrected.)

This is going to sound very elementary but I'm concerned about "people's feelings getting hurt." This is a mental health blog and much of the readership includes those who suffer from mental illness. It seems like these comments are nothing but arguing and bickering back and forth. I am all for freedom of expression but I worry that someone will get extremely upset over this and take it to the point where he or she suffers a relapse in some form. Take it with a grain of salt, but if this were my blog, at this point, I'd close/freeze the comments. I don't take kindly to personal attacks on others, especially since I don't handle them so well myself.

To finally comment on Dawdy's post: I couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you for covering this.

Concern troll, much? We should cater to some phantom person's fragility out of an assumption that said person is incapable of talking back and taking care of themself when "triggered" into a meltdown reading random threads on the Internet. Infantilizing grown-ups for their own good is the height of disrespect, and does them no favors -- real life doesn't come with trigger warnings. Anyone "harmed" by online interactions can take the opportunity to assert their ego with the rest of us.

Stephany, I was responding to FP's comment where she wrote this: "For once I wish our lovable anti-psych ideologues would just come out and tell us what it is you would do if you were in charge. What specific policy you envision, and what you are doing as a citizen to realize your vision of authoritarian America. Just sayin, inquiring minds might want to know."

As for promoting mental health, can't talk about any volunteer work I do here for confidentiality reasons, but I have a master's degree in counseling and have long thought that charging for "counseling" and "therapy" harms more than it helps which is why I don't make a living that way. I socialize with mhp's and share my opinions with them.

I first became what I suppose you could call a "mental health dissident" in 1988 while working as a counselor after getting a graduate degree in counseling. I was so disgusted by the sharing of private counseling notes of clients between counselors, psychologists, psychiatrists and insurance adjusters that I walked off of the job. Part of why I went to law school years later. What happened with my family was gravy.

It just irks me that in these days of drug criticism we forget that ssri's were developed largely in response to the failure of psychotherapy to deliver the solace and healing and curing promised. Insurance companies aren't only reluctant to pay for it because it is expensive, also because it's not been proven to work.

However, just as I've many friends and loved ones and acquaintances that swear by meds, folks that I let know that I don't take them and haven't found them helpful, I know and care about lots of folks that swear by therapy. My advice for 21 years to such people should they ask is that if they don't like therapy they should quit and for a couple of months spend the same amount of time and money they currently spend on therapy on some positive way of taking care of themselves, whether a horseback riding class, yoga, a new dress, a gym membership, or a new haircut, just something about affirming self love instead of buying into sickness, but if they don't ask, I don't volunteer as due to my training and beliefs about the human psyche, to do so would be wrong and dangerous. I feel safe expressing those opinions here and try my best to be reasonable and open minded. But for years I've been shocked that people think that a) there's some evidence therapy "helps" and b) that people think their therapy records are private or confidential. If you get any health care covered by insurance or free through some government program, your records are open to lots and lots of people.

FP, on the below, I agree with you:

"Infantilizing grown-ups for their own good is the height of disrespect, and does them no favors -- real life doesn't come with trigger warnings. Anyone "harmed" by online interactions can take the opportunity to assert their ego with the rest of us."

Sally I support every word you utter above. You know I am freaked out by rigid anti-psychiatry activists and push you a lot to test my impressions and evaluations about what you're all about. I don't think you are as bad as I tell myself. We have a complex relationship and I appreciate you.

Thanks FP, and back at you. Sadly, I have slept late and now must run out into the "real" world.

I also wanted to comment that I love FP's statement: "real life doesn't come with trigger warnings"