You are on the solid middle ground Philip. Keep holding to it, you do a good job for all of us, thankyou.

Unfortunately, too many people out there feel that strong opinions entitle them to bad manners.

I don't feel too hot about meds and psychiatry either, but I would never go around being nasty to people because of that belief. Nor can I ignore that it does have a positive impact on some cases.

If nothing else I'm grateful that you're taking the time and the effort to help people make more informed decisions. I've seen for myself the positive impact this website has had on other bloggers.

Live and let live folks. Anything else is asking for trouble.

"Why don't you guys in the anti-psych world get off your duffs and do it yourselves?"

Right on! Criticism is good. But when it becomes personally insulting and self-sufficient, it is just as destructive as the Fuller Torrey type of propaganda. Unfortunately, part of the anti-psychiatry movement hasn't realized that there's something called social accountability. So, all they can do in their bitterness is to get at virtually everyone who doesn't share their views 100%. Instead of using some of their energy in a constructive way and offer support.

I'm not understanding. Who are these anti-psychiatry people?
Michel Foucault was NOT anti-psychiatrist.
R. D. Laing was NOT anti-psychiatrist. I believe it's useless to claim it here for without reading and having a deep approach of Laing's work Ted will say again, as he did on another post, that he IS anti-psychiatrist even when he claimed he was not.
Same to Michel Foucault I guess. His work is far more complex. I'm sure if he was alive he would raise his voice asking these anti-psychiatrists to stop using his name.
I can assure that this blog follows Foucault's views, I sorry to inform you Philip, and work. Since I have no place to search the ideas of anti-psychiatrists and only have a glimpse of them reading their attacks I assume they are not foucaultians enough. The last thing Foucault would stands for is "victimization". It goes against all his beliefs, theoretical approach, work and life.
This blog is a place of "resistance" and "biopower", to use Foucault's concepts, is being denounced everyday.
Same to all other people who are working on a regular basis reporting their experience on psychiatrists drugs, side effects, withdrawal and everything related to psychiatric problems.
Perhaps reading Foucault"s "The History of Sexuality": Vol II: The Use of Pleasure" and Vol III: "The Care of the Self" would be of great help to all of you.
At least you would start thinking about yourselves and come up with new strategies to have your voices heard.
Attacking those who are on your side makes no sense and worst: the way you are behaving only helps "psychiatrists" to use your own words against you.
I'll once again ask you to read one more time the works of Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing "The Divided Self" and "Self and Others". Focus your attention on "double-bind" Bateson concept used by Laing. I guess it would be of great help to all of you.
Criticizing psychiatry does not equals "anti-psychiatry".

Thomas Szasz: (I think, I've said this before in a previous comment) He doesn't deny that there's emotional, psychological suffering. Which he denies is that this suffering were biologically, physiologically caused, as psychiatry and Big Pharma wants everybody to believe. Even if one uses "illness" in a psychological context as a metaphor, it can easily be misunderstood (just because of psychiatry's and Big Pharma's massive gene- and neurotransmitter-propaganda), why I personally, agreeing with Szasz in the metaphorical nature of "mental illness", avoid the term.

However, Szasz is a liberalist, I'm not. I don't think, as he does, that "mad" people should be left alone at any price, even if they're about to get killed by their madness, or are about to kill others with it. As mentioned, there's this thing (that doesn't go too well together with liberalism) called social accountability...

I'd definitely prefer to be taken some place safe, even against my initial will, where I couldn't hurt neither myself nor others, if ever I became violent due to madness. Unfortunately, there aren't many places, that are really safe, and I haven't yet worked out, whether I'd prefer to be put in restraints, placed in a seclusion room and get drugged out of my wits, or to be left alone. Seems equally miserable to me, both "solutions". And, as I see it, both are a result of liberalist thinking.

So, "you guys in the anti-psych world get off your duffs" and let's create some safe places, instead of dwelling in liberalist self-sufficiency!

Philip,

I do not know of anyone else who comments on this blog, and do not wish to be associated with them. Given that you have never rejected any of my comments, I can only assume that the content was acceptable. For the record, I have never personally emailed you.

I am not part of any "anti-psychiatry" collective, and am sorry that you think I am disappointed in you. Of course, it goes without saying that tortures such as those you highlight in China are grave wrongs. My point, however, was that by not rejecting all coercive psychiatric procedures, you imply that other coercive psychiatric procedures are valid. You chose not to deny this, and it is this point on which we disagree. So, even in the face of some excellent efforts by both yourself and perhaps some others who may comment here, I feel your position is wrong. I am very willing to discuss this issue, but it is your blog, and so you can quite legitimately do what you want with it.

I do take issue with being called "as dangerous as the hardcore Fuller Torrey wing," however. For instance, I do not subscribe to the belief that "If antipsychotics were evil for you, then they are evil for everyone." I am of the opinion that voluntarily ingesting substances is a basic human right, and that coercively interfering in the choice of adult persons to take drugs is always and everywhere wrong.

You go on to say that "mental illness exists." I disagree, and we could discuss why we disagree, e.g., by first defining what we mean by mental illness, disease, and so on. But again, it's your call.

I come to this site to read interesting reports on psychiatry, and occasionally comment. At least now I know what you think about some of issues I feel are important.

Ted.

Phillip,

Your experience reminds me of the time I worked at the Feminist Women's Health Center, and my experience with the Woman's Movement in general. Because I was pro choice and in my opinion, a feminist, my family disowned me, shocked and disgusted by my radicalism, and yet, because I wasn't as radical as the radical feminists I worked with, I didn't fit in there either, viewed as not radical enough. Back in those days we'd have heated arguments about what a "feminist" was.

As a college freshman I had a writing teacher tell me that in an essay I did't need to write "I think" because the reader realized I was the one thinking it. Still like everyone else, all of my comments here should be prefaced with "I think."

To the best of my ability, I've stopped entering into exchanges with people who call me names (and also to the best of my ability tried to stop calling people names, though it can be fun, at least until you read their reply;).

You're in a tough place and you do well. I have a dear friend who is an African American man campaigning for Hillary. Sometimes when he tells me about the grief he is catching, I think, I bet Phillip feels that way sometimes. Hang in there. I don't know if my last post on Barber thread upset lots of folk including you. If it did, I'm sorry. It was a hard one to write and I just don't have the emotional energy to read the likely angry replies. Hopefully that means I won't generate too much ire as it seems that in the world of internet communication, s/he who posts last wins. So I have the luxury of walking away sometimes. But you, being the owner of the blog, can't. And the most shocking thing is that you're not getting paid lots of money for this. I do appreciate you and your hard work even if I don't always agree.

Your blog provides great information and would do so even if you didn't have comments, but your comments are a great forum for debate and for the kind of communication/flaming that seems inherent in the internet forum.

Still, my opinion which causes controversy and hurt feelings is that people with symptoms of schizophrenia don't kill because of these symptoms, they kill because they are violent. Statistically as a group, by people who suffer from delusions commit less murders than people who who don't suffer from delusions. I understand that sometimes people suffer from delusions that cause them and their loved ones terrible pain. But people who aren't suffering from delusions also feel compelled to make choices that cause themselves and their families terrible pain. I understand that depression can be debilitating but believe that talk therapy only exacerbates and humiliates, drugs, while temporarily helpful, in the long run don't help.

Us post-moderns are so vain, we've pretty much mainly only tried two ways of alleviating human suffering, therapy and drugs. The solution two human suffering is I think to accept it, but even if it's not, it is bizarre that so many folks seem to think the answer has to be either talk therapy or drugs or both. What about choices three, four, ten, two hundred?

Humans have been trying to medicate human suffering away for years with mixed results. The drawbacks of the ancient drugs, alcohol, marijuana, opium, coca, are well known. These new ones are more dangerous because we don't understand how they work.

I don't think there are ever times in which the big old sledgehammers of psychiatry are ever appropriate and I confess I wish you'd get that. It's bizarre for me to read that you really think people murder because they are schizophrenic, but I know this is a common way of looking at things.

I just finally got a job, low paying, doing social skills groups for people who want to work but have problems with anxiety and depression that get in their way. The people in the group, called consumers these days, and I, are going to go out to restaurants and other places and practice dealing with people, in groups of two or three. I won't be addressing whether the folks choose to take meds or do talk therapy or not.

Anyway, keep going.

I (an antipsychiatry type) was at first (about a year ago) equally disappointed in Furious Seasons and Philip Dawdy. I think I must have had an imaginary magical Hero reporter in my mind, this crashed into reality. I got over it.
Its been now a year and half of myself daily reading Furious Season. I sent in a very small $ contribution when funding was asked for.

I think antipsychiatry types believe in two kinds of citizens, not three (as in the current model). One being a free citizen, the second being a criminal.

The third one in modern society is the mental patient allowed to be free as long as he/she takes the (magical) medication. The meds magically make the mental patient "good" instead of "bad".

Philip the case you cite of the dangerous stabby mental patient, this person should be in jail for their criminal actions.

No medicine or chemical molecule can make stupid people smart, or dangerous-crazy people rational.

People should be allowed to be as crazy as they like until it harms or threatens another person (or themselves) and this judgement of criminality should not be up to one or two biased people and there should be real evidence.

The other thing you cite Philip crazy/mental illness has always been here and always will be, is true, but you left out some important details.

In 1900 the percent of seriously mentally ill was a fraction of the population. Something like 2% of the population. Today it is what 20%?.

Fraud such as the snake oil salesman of legend have been around since the dawn of money. These partially worked with the (positive) placibo effect of belief in something.

Today the 250 billion dollar drug industry has little to no check on the true effectiveness vs safety of medicines it sells.

The long said mental illness's are physical brain problems , or DNA faults, have not come true. There is no lab test for any mental illness as a physical brain problem.

The foundation of psychiatry was based on jail and torture to get the mentally ill to change or be obedient( if they ever got out). Chemicals are just the latest method to try to change someone, and to keep the costs of jail down.

Creating psychiatric language that renames tranquilizers to antipsychotics, and jail to hospitalization is not a just solution for the different person.

That the medications create real physical brain and nervous system problems that didn't exist before psychiatric diagnosis is a crime. This medically induced disease also locks the patient(adjective) "mental patient" (noun) into the system for life.

again I write
No medicine or chemical molecule can make stupid people smart, or dangerous-crazy people rational.

I am sorry people have insulted you Philip. I explain their angry insults as your website and email are the easiest place for the lightning to strike, so to speak ( no professional wants to hear peoples anger). Hopefully it is cathartic for the angry people, and they don't become physically violent in their real life.

I find this post confusing Philip. I get the part about abusive comments and emails, no one deserves that and you shouldn't put up with it, civil discourse is always possible. But I don't get the logic of jumping from believing mental illness is real to saying coercion is sometimes necessary for people who can't "wipe their own butt" and to seeming to assert that coercion or forced medication can prevent violence in anyone. You are up on the research, there is no proof that coercion prevents violence in anyone although as you have frequently pointed out, there is some evidence that medication may be associated with violence. I guess this post seems a little like "identity politics" to me, although I must admit I've never been exactly sure what folks mean by that phrase. To me, putting people diagnosed with schizophrenia in a separate category from other folks diagnosed with mental illness could be a form of identity politics. I would love to see us integrate all folks with labels into one group and not buy into the drive to separate us into us and them--us being those who don't have the "seriously mentally ill" labels or histories and them being those who do and the ones that Treatment Advocacy Center keeps saying they are targeting when really they are targetting all of us. If someone could give me a clear definition of identity politics I would be grateful.

"Why don't you guys in the anti-psych world get off your duffs and do it yourselves?"

Personally I've been broken.
If you do the Soteria thing you need money. The government hands it to the psychiatrist experts and the pharma Co. experts. Who proclaim the chemically broken brain theory, with no evidence.

Refusing to adhere to one extremist viewpoint or another is generally a sign of wisdom. IMO, it's a symptom of intellectual weakness to cleave to a party line because it shows an inability to think for oneself. It's far easier to buy a line of rhetoric and a belief system because it's a one-stop identity shop, like being a Hot Topic punk.

And honestly, being in the middle - as anyone who's ever been in the pit at a punk show knows - is a whole lot of fun. You get to throw A LOT more elbows >:)

Standing ovation. You left out the one thing that has been most harmful from my standpoint -- the chilling effect the dogmatists have on discussion. Whether shutting down bloggers is the intended effect is a subject for further consideration, but it is a reality and the very definition of "oppression." Wanting to silence others is such a shivery thing to want.

Thank you, Philip, for all the hard work you do here. You are making available information that it is not always easy to find. Information that people need in order to make the best decisions for themselves. Wish you'd been doing this back when I started taking meds.

I happen to agree completely with your middle ground position. While I think many conditions are over-diagnosed and over-medicated, I also know people who have benefited immensely from medications. We all have a different truth derived from our own unique experiences. And we should all be allowed to explore where that truth takes us--with the information we need to make the best decisions for ourselves.

Thank you so much for continuing to write. That's really all I can say. It's terrible what people are saying to you. No one is wrestling with the issues harder than you are and you're doing an amazing job.

Dear Philip:

Geez, I should be doing my final packing and such; but I read this post, and just had to comment. We live in a word where having little common sense has gone to becoming a kin to being a social pariah. I have all the reason in the world to completely abhor the professional psychiatric community for very personal and professional ones as well. But denial of mental illness in like denying the sun shall rise, and unfortunately some people just don’t get it. They is little doubt that those that make a stand for advocacy, and a vast improvement in the overall system of treatment and care of those with mental illness with be target from all sides. You will have the so called deniers as well as the set establishment that both believe they have all the correct answers and will feel threatened but what is said here.

Don’t you wish this situation was all that simple? But the fact is that the mental health system is far from simple. Each case is truly individual; thus it must be handled with, and treated with that very pertinent thought and reality in mind. Though I’m not a big advocate of medications because I have been down that road for many years, and lived the horrible results of these so called treatments; and I also believe without doubt that the institutionalization of the mentally ill non-offender population is akin to a travesty and crime as it is being conducted today.

To other populations of the mentally ill that have committed serious crimes and egregious acts upon others we have a responsibility and duty as a society as a whole to hold those mentally ill responsible, and keep them isolated from society in the most humane way possible.

I also know there are some great benefits from medications and others treatments to some populations of the mentally ill that have been left with few other choices or options if they want to continue to lead a functional and productive life at the very least.

Whether that be the tide of popular psychiatry today, or just that it’s the best of bad options we are presented with at this present time. Though you may have received unfathomed criticism for message of self determination, information, debate, free and open opinions/expression, questioning, discussion, education, and the true lived experiences expressed here on this blog. I am one that actually believes that those that are angry, and are barking from the bleachers have actually listened and heard the truth now. Those organizations and individuals may not like what they are hearing with all absolution, because it goes against their ignorant ingrained premises of knowing all, and a single entrenched one mindedness. I guess is many way it is a positive and progress that you have rattled a few of those all mighty cages and they have unleashed the rabid dogs to attack you. Those on the extreme edges of these issues are going to feel threatened, be angry, and fear what you and many others have to say. This is not necessarily a bad thing, because they are now been forced to re-evaluate their positions and grabble with the possibility they may not be as concrete and all knowing as they once were.

I believe personally in a holistic model that treats the whole person, medically, socially, spiritually, allows opportunity and choices, with a reasonable standard of living, the pursuit of happiness and acceptance by our society as a whole.

Such as the already established model we already are using with the developmentally disabled population(not perfect my any stretch of the imagination, but light years better than the care seriously mentally ill receive in all reality). Everything should, and has to be placed under the microscope for evaluation and effectiveness if we ever expect reasonable results in the end. I’m a skeptic, and try to maintain a realistic demeanor on all these issues pertaining to mental health; so I’m not holding my breath at this time. But I am hopeful and will continue to battle on in spite of what appears to be insurmountable odds stacked against us and the message we wage and toil to have heard by those with the supreme power to create these changes.

They is no doubt it will entail a complete change in attitude and some investment on a governmental level for any of these real changes to blossom in action and come to pass.

For the nay Sayers that are sitting there constantly belittling you with personal attacks; they will always be there on the side lines gabbing and muttering away their nonsense, and doing very little to make any effectual changes come about!

Philip, I truly appreciate and commend the fine work you do here with great passion and fortitude, just keep on bringing all the information and issues into the light of day for all to see.

Yours truly
Stan

PS time to unhook this computer and pack it up for moving! See you here sometime in the near future. For now I am going dark while in the process of moving and reestablishing my life once again.

I discovered your blog a couple of weeks ago, and already it has become a daily read. You do such great work, not to mention service to so many, through your tireless efforts to pursue the issues from all angles in this blog. I, for one, am a grateful reader -- and probably should have said so earlier. It's too bad that, as Rosie said, that some people feel that their strong emotions entitle them to bad manners. Those of us who appreciate the work you do probably don't speak up as readily, but we are out there, too.

Well said, Philip. You hit the nail on the head when you said this is all about identity politics. So you can't really win, because it isn't really an argument. But kudos to you for fighting the good fight.

I do have problems with the idea of "mental illness," but not for the same reason as the anti-psych gang. First, I think there's just barely enough evidence to reclassify schizophrenia, severe mood disorders, and chronic anxiety disorders as neurological disorders. (That's not to preempt debates over their exact causes, proper course of treatment, etc. - I just don't think "mental illness" is the best category under which to conduct those debates.) As for Axis II disorders, I think most of them are either redundant (what does OCPD designate, except someone with OCD who refuses to cooperate with his psychiatrist?) or not a credible medical diagnosis at all (e.g., "hystrionic personality disorder"?).

Finally, milder, more transient, and/or clearly situational problems might be grouped under "psychosocial injury or distress." So I'm all in favor of doing away with thelabel of "mental illness," with all of the unnecessary stigma and confusion it creates - but I know my approach would not appeal to Thomas Szaz.

Even if one uses "illness" in a psychological context as a metaphor, it can easily be misunderstood

My advice is to stop misunderstanding it. Stop assuming everyone who uses the term misunderstands it the way you do. Above all, stop fixating on the "illness" and look at the "mental." You really want to see the "mental" in mental illness replaced? Don't the antipsychiatry idjits know what Mental means? Do they not know their opponents want to rid the construct of "mental" as well?
What do they think biopsychiatry is? Gah! To fight "mental illness" means doing Fuller Torrey's work. Think on these things, put your caps on and think.

Philip, well said. It's not so black & white for me, either.

WAY TO GO Philip!

flawedplan: Never deconstruct anything without having something else to replace it with. I prefer the English "emotional distress" by far to "mental illness", especially the "illness"-part of it. I don't think, "emotional distress" does Fuller Torrey's work at all.

mark p.s.: Yes, I know that it isn't as easy. It needs funding, sure. But they did it in Germany ("Weglaufhaus"), e.g. I don't think, it will bring us anywhere, if we don't show the establishment, that we actually can do things without them. The mental health system has a monopoly of treating emotional distress. Nothing much will change, unless this monopoly can be broken, at least on a small scale. - By the way: nice to see you!

It was Szacz's twisted fixation that got us in this mess. His OMG! Illness! That's! A! METAPHOR! has strengthened the biopsychiatry stance (by telling them what to oppose), which was losing prominence before he and his parrots came along. Without his genius anyone with 2 braincells to rub together would recognize the illness in mental illness as Metaphor, no different from a "sick" smile, or a "sick" joke or is this use of "sick" a reference to biologically based brain disease as well?

It takes a literalist to pounce on the obvious and invigorate a debate that we don't really want, do we? Blame yer leader, he did it.

Random House standard, non-batshit-crazy definition of Illness:

1.unhealthy condition; poor health; indisposition; sickness.

Get it? Szasz invented a controversy that exists inside his own fevered imagination, and gave all our opponents the roadmap that put us on the path we're on. His "expose" of illness as metaphor (which was not the first) made a non-issue prominent, thus arming the opposition, and telling them where to strike. He made NAMI what it is today. Thanks Tommy! I am so looking forward to your obit.

I'm tired, astonished, appalled and feeling terrible.

So I remembered what Gianna wrote:

"I don’t feel like keeping on telling my (at this point, dreary) story and I’m sick of dwelling on the insanity of mental health care. The criminality of doctors who don’t listen as well as the criminality of big pharma controlling what the doctors who don’t listen spew."

I thought there was a "common sense" on what was the harm that psychiatry promotes.
Now I see that there are different points of views even on what schizophrenia is.
What's the point of keep on fighting?
I will have to listen after a long explanation of one of the issues that I thought was common knowledge at least for those who suffers the old silence order:
"-You are wrong! You are either a scientologist or a anti-psychiatrist.*"
I surrender. It's already too hard to explain all of these
People have no idea about the sufferings of withdrawal. Reading the list of symptoms is not of great help for it's hard to imagine how disabilitating the symptoms are.
Now I come across with the " "You are wrong! Your are not anti-psychiatrist enough."
I'm sorry. I don't have time to stop it all and make a research with people who suffer something called "schizophrenia" to see if the disease exists or not.
I also don't want to ask my ex-husband, who suffers from maniac-depressive psychosis - now bipolar disorder -, if he thinks it's a disease or not.
I'll keep on with my life and forget about it all.

*There's no scientologist church in Brazil but psychiatrist claim we are scientologists. There's no anti-pychiatrist group in Brazil but they claim we are when we claim we had withdrawal symptom - end of discussion... psychiatry wins.

flawedplan: Never deconstruct anything without having something else to replace it with.

That's my point. What mental illness right now is being replaced with; not on blogs, not in coffeehouses, but in the discourse, hospitals, agencies, academies. What is happening to the concept of mind in the real world, and why would I contribute to that? Perfidy.

"Why don't you guys in the anti-psych world get off your duffs and do it yourselves?"

I got a job, I got a job. I'm doing supported employment, job coaching and social adjustment training, voluntary and free to the consumer paid for by vocational rehab, and get paid enough to afford gas to a second job I must find to really pay the bills. So as an "anti-psych" type, I'm doing it the best I know how. We've got lots of folk out there, many of whom are anti-psych types doing lots and lots, there's David, Ted and Co. at mindfreedom, Gottstein at at the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, many folks at the Georgia Mental Health Consumer Network (who I won't name because I don't want anyone to suffer from being assigned that label)and many others (http://psychrights.org/index.htm). You middle of the road guys do good work too, and let's face there's probably been once that Fuller Torrey's stop beating the guy with a billy club because he's mentally ill approach may have helped someone.

I to prefer the term emotional distress and I'm not sure I get the identity politics thing. Is the women's movement identity politics? the civil rights movement? I know labeling some of us mentally ill and some as not is a false distinction. Read the DSM kids, one instance of psychosis, whether because your loved one just died or because you heard a voice that wasn't really there, and you forever meet the diagnostic criteria for schizophrenia, bipolar 1, or depression with psychotic feathers . So pretty much all humans fall into that category. The Last Psychiatrist has written some good stuff on what happens when we decide some humans need to be controlled and some to control.

The reason this blog can be painful to read and I'm sure to write and maintain is because we discuss issues that are important, confusing, and dividing.

A couple of comments here.

Ana: I don't really mind if you want Laing to not be viewed as an anti-psychiatrist. According to Laing's son, it would have helped if Laing had actually read The Dialectics of Liberation prior to it being published.

Marion: While I disagree with your political position, your comments at least make it clear that psychiatry is at heart political force and not medicine.

flawedplan:
"You left out the one thing that has been most harmful from my standpoint -- the chilling effect the dogmatists have on discussion"
Surely replacing "dogmatists" with "those who adhere to principles" would be a fairer way to put it. I can only speak for myself, but my aim is precisely opposed to silencing anyone. It is instead to enjoy a discussion concerning which of these principles are good, and which bad.
Further, if illness is not clearly defined, then the concept of mental illness is meaningless. How could it be otherwise?

Stan:
"But denial of mental illness in like denying the sun shall rise, and unfortunately some people just don’t get it."
So then why is psychiatry/the state so keen to insist that mental illness *is just like* any other illness?

Ted.

Just one more thing, I think it's important to make a distinction between people who are in emotional distress and people who have what the rest of us call "bizarre beliefs and/or behaviors." Having a bizarre belief doesn't necessarily equate with being in emotional distress, though its guaranteed to get you diagnosed as schizophrenic, as is being a veteran and having post traumatic stress disorder. I also hate the term disorder, but that's for another day.

The reason that I get so furious when I see "schizophrenics" described as violent is because I see that someone gets committed for having a belief that makes his relatives uncomfortable, and then this person is tortured, spyed on (monitored), drugged and generally goaded and surprise becomes violent. People that the majority considers to have bizarre beliefs and/or behaviors need to be accepted and included.

Our current policy of goading, torture, and exclusion does harm to everyone, and again most people have at least one belief others would find bizarre, so labeling such people schizophrenic is a false distinction that causes the person so labeled to lash out, indeed making lashing out an understandable and even likely response.

It was widely reported that Cho's mother slapped him for not talking as a kid. Washington Post reporter that initially reported this entered into an email dialogged with me because I insisted that physically abusing a child for not talking was child abuse and not justifiable. Does this mean it's okay that Cho did what he did, of course not. Does this mean the Virginia Tech massacre is Cho's mother's fault, not entirely, but clearly it points to the idea that beating and other forms of coercion contribute to tragedy.

flawedplan:
"Szasz invented a controversy that exists inside his own fevered imagination, and gave all our opponents the roadmap that put us on the path we're on. His "expose" of illness as metaphor (which was not the first) made a non-issue prominent, thus arming the opposition, and telling them where to strike. He made NAMI what it is today. Thanks Tommy! I am so looking forward to your obit."
So the most vocal and consistent critic of coercive psychiatry is *most* to blame for the massive increase in psychiatric coercion we have all sadly witnessed in the past five decades? What am I missing here?

My typo, "depression with psychotic feathers." Hmmmm, am I nuts or just a bird?

I've read every book by RD Laing and 3 biographies. He was no antipsychiatrist, and he denied being identified as such. Why anyone would disrespect his or anyone's self-definition blows my mind. Another thing I don't follow are all the questions about the body of scholarship known as "Identity politics" on this here contraption of intertoobz when Wikipedia, Google, Encyclopedia Britannica et al are totally clickable resources.

Ted,
I will not waist my time arguing with such an uninformed person.
Do your homework and prove with real arguments that he is anti-psychiatrist. But I believe you should address your beliefs to other people. Not here.
As far as Michel Foucault is concerned I have an interview where he analyzes the antipsychiatry movement. It's in Portuguese and I don't know where it's in English.
I've also discussed antipsychiatry in Paris with Deleuze in 1985.
It had it's value but it's nonsense nowadays to say such, I'm sorry all of you, many STUPIDITIES and NONSENSES.
You say nothing but BULLSHIT.
I'm very sorry Philip and all the people who are here.

What are you missing? Inquiry.

When you find a theory that appeals to you and makes a lot of sense, I recommend you exhaust every ounce of your energy in ripping it apart, and take whatever stands as the starting point. Once people stop engaging their pet theories they lose the very rigor this subject requires. Antipsychiatry folk reference Thomas Szasz a lot, therefore I submit your critical thinking begins with him.

If all this seems too ambitious start simpler and in general. Be more curious.

I have no doubts that these so-called anti-psychiatrists has no interests and no concern whatsoever with people who are sick.
They are pure and simple trolls wanting to create more and more disagreements.
I haven't seen any argument remotely connected with any worries in regard of people who suffers mental illness.
Who do you believe that wants to promote such misunderstandings?
I have a guess.
The show is over for me. I'll not pay attention to this kind of provocations.
I'll go to the next post and I won't even read so-called anti-psychiatrists comments.
I believe there's too much to be done. I'm thinking about those who are ill. That's my concern, that's why I'm here.
I'm thinking about Gianna, I'm thinking about people who are suffering the hell in mental institutions and who were not lucky enough to achieve what Daniel Fisher, Patricia Deegan and others have achieved.
These are the people I care about.
Next post.
I'm very sorry if my English is in a terrible mood these late days. :)

Philip, I don't worry about you running a sensational blog that is a lightening rod because you are strong, and you are good at it.

These comments remind me of some of the infighting in the deaf community.

Though my Rob was killed by Zyprexa, many people haven't stalled for a moment before criticizing things I've had to say. Though over twenty relatives on my mother and father's sides of the family had various shades of mental illness (Aunt Fanny, bipolar, stuck her head in the oven, father killed by early ECT, e tc, etc.) I have been severely chastisized for stating that I've always thought that in MY FAMILY, genetics has played a big role. Because my back was to the wall, and Rob got ECT, I have been slammed, until I've asked what, under the circumstances, the other person would do. And etc. I have chosen to leave these issues behind, let them fall off me like leaves off and tree, and choose battles that have to do with the pharmaceutical industry, the FDA, false clinical trials, etc., as well as networking with others who have lost their family members to psychotropic drugs.

It is in this spirit that I will choose not to take on this battle that you have been socked with. But I know for sure that you are up to it and perhaps relish it, as it is an integral part of this blog.

Zealots at ether end of the spectrum are dangerous. They are exactly what they hate.Perhaps they spend so much time focusing on them, the consumes them. The ends justify the means? That's pretty cult-ish. Has there ever been a time when insulting someone has got them to accept your ideas? Seems to produce the exact opposite effect of closing/turning them off. The gutter mouths try to use the same Force, Fraud and Fear. Except they have no power, so they fail even worse than their nemesis. Too lowly sides of the same nasty coin. Both are using abusive means to achieve their goal and as such, both are bad for society and people as a whole. Intimidation, its a sign of a very weak person/point. What wokrs beter here's the information form you're own opinion or believe this now motherfraker....

I don't know which side is worse. Both think they know what's right for every one and should force their views of the utopian's society for the betterment of all. Both want to break out the jackbooted storm troopers to make you comply. Why would you need to force anyone if their version is so rightous? Anyone that objects needs to be taught a lesson? They will force you, until you agree to admit their brilliances.

Drugs/meds are a personal choice for some they work great and are mercy from the divine; while for others, they are utter hell. Each person is different and trying to force your experiences and your limited scope on to someone else shows extreme short sightedness with a lack of real world experience.

You getting attacked is just like what happens to the people who are Scientologists who speak up. They look for anything they can aim for that you care about or anything from your life instead of arguing about the science and the facts presented? Every see the film "Thank You for Smoking " they aren't winning by proving their statements, they're winning by drawing question on the person presenting the contrasting information. And every gets duped by that sadly.

If they feel so strongly why aren't they breaking people out of mental hospitals? Cowards....

Yes, there is mental illness and perfectly fine social traits(as long as its to consenting adults who cares) have been mislabeled as disorders by the so called educated minds. The problem isn't the science, its labeling in place of science. And the shrinks won't admit misconduct by the social norm(als) is responsible for a lot of misery and cognitive impairment. When has a shrink come out said that "Shut up or I'll give something to really cry about" is counterproductive scare the kids worse making them cry more. Its abuse and the use of fear for control to make someone behave in a way that is the opposite of a perfectly natural response to what someone did. No one wants to admit they went to school and were mislead. That your heroes/inspirations/teachers/role models/leaders were shysters.... A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.

These type of actions/abuses is why the anti-psych movement will never go anywhere or achieve anything. There something true to that claim "an abused person is more likely to abuse others". The group is too busy infighting and attacking each other. Like rabid dogs in cage. The shrinks know this and all they need to do is let the anti-folks zealots speak their hard line "I'm the messiah","the greatest mind ever" and/or "I know what is right for everyone... I should be the supreme leader..." to discredit the movement. Screaming insults may make you better better and superior but it does nothing to solve the problem.

One would think "they" have plants(salting the mine) and/or trolls but sadly we all know how "authoritative" man likes to be. Even if they are misinformed. Much like an alcoholic except they're drunk on the presence/power that their little keyboard gives them. Until they make themselves unwelcomed and get banned/filtered, then they scream conspiracy and censorship. How many times when we make an anti-psychiatry statement do we have a disclaimer we're not part of so-so? Why do we hate our own so much? That's right, its all of our own's behavior...

No one should have anything forced onto them even if they are suicidal (there is a right to self determination) . However anyone feeling suicidal that wants help should get it. Maybe we need a law to force mental health facilities that they have to accept anyone who needs a safe place from themselves. Back to reality, how badly do you think a shrink would treat someone if they were forced to see them? Forcing usually leads to resentment and some form of retaliation.

Nether side is totally right and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. A wise man once said there are three versions to every two side story. Each sides and then the truth. What's sad is if you question them or disagree then intellectual exchange is terminated for insults. A discussion is an exchange of ideas, an argument is an exchange of ignorances.

All the abusive language does is discredit you and your message. Act like a raving lunatic and get treated , respected and your opinion valued/viewed as one.

However I fully reserve the option to call you big fat poopyhead with a nappy bowl cut at an undisclosed later date

Ana:

"I will not waist my time arguing with such an uninformed person."
I already said I didn't mind if Laing is not considered an anti-psychiatrist, however that term is defined. I note that you aren't addressing my only point here, i.e. that Laing's son admits his father did not take the opportunity to read The Dialectics of Liberation before Cooper published it. Laing surely has to take some of the blame for this, however strongly he wrote against the term in the years following it. But anyway, it's hardly a critical issue, and even if it were, it begs for a definition of anti-psychiatry, which I don't see. If you can provide one, then great, we can discuss it if you like. I have no interest in Foucault, having read his confused Madness and Civilization.

I appreciate that you are concerned with those who you say are sick, but I don't see how you can level such a charge against someone who rejects all involuntary psychiatry. I am not denying that people suffer very real problems, but cannot see myself prescribing coercion as a cure.

flawedplan:

"Why anyone would disrespect his or anyone's self-definition blows my mind."
As I said above, Laing must surely bear some (but not all) of the responsibility for this view of him. He was certainly not opposed to psychiatric coercion, and in this sense resembles mainstream psychiatry. Shall we should just call him an establishment psychiatrist then? I really don't mind..

"What are you missing? Inquiry."
Into what? I don't see how you addressed my response to you (i.e. that blaming an opponent of psychiatric coercion for psychiatric coercion does not stand up), nor that you offered any substantive advice. I am all for trashing Szasz with actual arguments, but to this day I haven't seen one I found at all compelling. Perhaps you did?

I appreciate good debate, and if for any reason the owner of the site does not want to post my comments, then I accept that. If people want to continue the discussion, then I'm happy to do that.

Ted

Some were questioning the term "identity politics", which I used as well as Philip. Perhaps there is a better word out there. But what I mean is, an awful lot of anti-psychiatry types don't seem to me to be criticizing psychiatry for altruistic reasons (otherwise they would be looking for ways to improve it, not just tear it down). Rather, they need to be in opposition to this monstrous force in order to maintain their own identities as psychiatry survivors, or Scientologists, or guardians of the eternal flame of psychoanalysis, or whatever. So then they weave this exclusionary master narrative in which they are the true champions of the "mentally ill" against the evil forces of Psychiatry, and no other points of view count except to prove how Psychiatry has everyone else brainwashed. Never mind those of us who have different experiences with "mental illness" and the mental health care system, or who have drawn different conclusions from our experiences - we're just dupes, or weaklings, or we don't exist. That's identity politics for you.

Garth, I believe your explanation of identity politics rocks. Ted, um, wait. But here's good news, after 10 hours today covering a Senate Committee on Child Protection here in Texas, which has the largest investigation in history going on at that fundie compound right now? Right, well, the Commissioner of Department of Children and Family Services proposed an immediate PSYCHIATRIC STEP DOWN PILOT PROGRAM for children in foster care. I don't know what that means, but doesn't it sound lovely? This is the state that gave the nation T-Map, and perhaps we are the one that will take it away. Anyhoo I almost wet my pants. And, 2 other expert witnesses spoke specifically to the MISLABLING OF PTSD as a BIOLOGICALLY-BASED BRAIN DISORDER, so the word is getting out there, people are learning.

Of course when the advocate from Mental Health America (funded by big pharma) testified she totally ignored the above issues, which blows chunks. But it's a good day, and this thread was so nice and necessary, thanks to all for putting it out there.

I can't speak for all of anti-psychiatry just my own little corner. I liken forcible medication to rape. I speak from person experience. All it took was a psychiatrist's word a nod from the "consulting physician", a regular visitor to the ward - a "yes-man" the hospital can rely on.

I still have a hard time even talking about the experience, but it galvanized my view of psychiatry. I don't trust it. I don't trust a discipline that is so utterly subjective and based on a fundamentally flawed premise.

The part that really steams me is this notion that psychiatry deems to tell you that your affliction has no cure, but only because they say so - not based on ANY empirical, testable, or falsifiable evidence. Furthermore, if you contest their will - it constitutes PROOF that you are ill or my other fav: have lack of insight. What a crock.

I don't care about Szasz or whoever. I can look to my own experience and see plainly the evil psychiatry is more than capable of. We need to keep the psychiatrists under pressure, to keep their feet on the burners. They wield power like a kid playing with his dad's loaded gun.

Garth,

I don't think psychiatric abuse survivors or anti-psychiatry types have a duty or obligation to be altruistic any more than rape survivors do. It's self preservation at the root of my voice.

One thing that is so hard in this all is people who buy into their diagnoses. You certainly have a right to do so, but you are right that it seems so wrong to me, such a waste. I have friend who was diagnosed with depression 20 years ago. This is virtually all she talks about.
"I have depression," she says, "I stayed in bed last week for three days."
"I thought that was because of your new additional medication," I say.
"It was," she says.
"If the medicine makes you unable to get out of bed, have you ever considered not taking it? If you've been depressed for 20 years and you've been taking medication for 20 years, have you ever considered not taking medication?" I ask.
"I have to take medication because I have depression. I was told I'd have to take medication for the rest of my life," she explains.
"By a psychiatrist?" I ask.
"Yes," she responds.

Now that's an identity with real political, social, and personal danger.

Philip, I'm sorry to hear that you have to deal with that sort of abuse. If those people knew anything about anything, they would realize that you can't browbeat someone into changing their opinions. But reading through this thread now, I think it's quite remarkable that at least some people with such divergent views are able to come together and actually discuss them, and we all have you to thank for the opportunity. I would suggest that perhaps there could be some sort of dialectic process going on here, but then I'd probably be accused of being a Marxist, an anti-Marxist, a Hegelite, an anti-Hegelite, etc...

I got to wonder, though, if the commenter who called people "cowards" for not escaping from 'mental hospitals' has ever been in one. 'Cause, you know, most administrators feel that allowing 'patients' to escape kind of defeats the purpose of having a locked ward.

Earlier tonight I got into an argument with a special education teacher about the Massachusetts program of screening poor children for 'mental illnesses.' I said that I think a program that inevitably leads to more drugging of kids who don't fit well into the rigid, boring school environment is bad news. She accused me of wanting to deny medicine to sick kids, asked if I'd converted to scientology, and said that she thought all the "anti-psychiatry types had gone out with the '60s."

Regarding the idea that Thomas Szasz provoked the ongoing muddle about the literalness of the illness in 'mental illness,' here is a quote from the dust jacket of the 1974 book "The Death of Psychiatry":

'"Diseases are something we have, behavior is something we do." On this premise, [the author] develops his theory that the vast majority of people whom we call "mentally ill" have problems of living rather than physical disabilities. They are not "sick" and therefore must not be "warehoused" and "treated" on the basis of a medical model.'

In the book, the author makes clear that people not included that "vast majority" are those that have actual neurological problems such as tumors or syphilis. His is very clear about his belief that schizophrenia is not a disease with a basis in the biology of the brain.

But it wasn't Thomas Szasz who wrote that book, it was the Anakin Skywalker of psychiatry, Mr. Cat Poop himself, E. Fuller Torrey.

One thing that is so hard in this all is people who buy into their diagnoses. You certainly have a right to do so, but you are right that it seems so wrong to me, such a waste.

What you're saying is you won't be happy until I think like you. And that is a morally reprehensible position.

BTW, this is what the conversation is about. It's not about whether some who comment here believe in biopsychiatry or identify with a psych diagnosis. I'm convinced that some commenters steadfastly avoid knowing what others think about that, for the greater satisfaction of warring with them, but whatever. We're not talking about the medical model and Szasz jazz, but about the evil of authoritarianism. Tribalism and the will to dominate; identity politics.

Those who take this morally offensive position never see it, because they are blinded by self-righteousness, which not incidentally gives license to unleash the sort of hostility Philip references in his opening post. Self-righteousness is the justification for abuse, so self-righteous people should put one instantly on guard about them. All your work is ahead of you on this, but for now just think about your own fight for psychic liberty, and what freedom means to you. That's what everyone wants.

Plus it's good for people to think and feel differently from one another, with occasional peak cosmic convergences when they practically merge -- that's all well and good for bonding and solidarity, but the need to for one person to merge their consciousness with another sends me packing. Because of what it leads to; the power struggles, the modifications, and the compulsion to inflict.

True Thresher, but my hatred of Szasz burns with the heat of 10,000 suns, partly because of his prominence. Of course there's no way I can prove he is the architect of Teen Screen, but I wonder if we'd be in this mess if someone would have cut his tongue out decades ago. At worst he's a Trojan Horse, at best an opportunist who made a career out of hyperbole, attacking the mild dictionary definition of illness as "affliction, unhealthy condition; poor health; indisposition; sickness" and fueling this entire debate.

Is it real? His conflation of "illness" with biology? Most people would be happy to accept the standard dictionary definition of illness. So. Why does Sally's friend insist her depressed moods are a medical disease? Who did this?

He's in textbooks, and The Myth of Mental Illness is studied in psychology 101. Szasz may not have been the inventor of the biopsych controversy we're up against, but he is the showman.

Philip wrote:
"...I am a "motherfucker," a "cocksucker," a "fence sitter," a "fraud" and a "greed filled pig."

LOL. That reminds me of the Terrance and Philip movie, "Asses of Fire," from the South Park feature film! I think your detractors should watch that, if they want to come up with something that's vaguely memorable. "Pig fucker," for example, or "donkey-raping cock master.

Oh, fuck it! Life's too short!

Matt

FP, I seriously doubt I'd be happier if you thought like me, thought it would be kind of funny, but I do find it troubling to talk to someone who describes their mental status as an illness because a doctor has told them they are sick, but people certainly have the right to trust the 'medical doctors' they go to for help. The problem is the doctors who, knowing better, mislead, which is why I'm anti psychiatry. But all I could and I think should have done with my friend I did, in telling her that a lot of people don't believe in the medical model and mentioning that I think sometimes the drugs can exacerbate the problem, then being supportive of her choice.

Still, it hurts to see especially in a friend who is asking me directly for help. I don't agree that self righteousness is justification for abuse, and as you well know your identity politics, authoritarianism riff is a better argument against your position than for it. I go with Evelyn Reed on abuse, it perpetrated by against those we don't recognize as human, though of course I can't take it as far as Reed, I'm not a Marxist, but look at what happens on the net, you find a position you disagree with so strongly that you can dehumanize the person who wrote it and then come out slinging. I'm not asking for a complete merger of consciousness, just some empathy.

Yesterday according to http://www.ssristories.com/index.php?sort=date:

A 21 years old woman antidepressant consumer Hangs Self in England;
A Man Beats Fiancee to Death With Baseball Bat: Then Is Suicidal in New York (Zoloft);
A Man Attacks Police With Ax: Also Involved Alcohol in England (Paxil)

Let the war on words continues.

Okay, I'm confused again. flawedplan, you are 1)telling Sally what she is saying, which isn't what I read her to say but I could be wrong, and you are 2) then calling what you think she is saying morally reprehensible. And this is not self-righteous or authoritarian how? You aren't trying to persuade her to think exactly like you? Because it sounds like you are.

UnderTheThresher:
"Regarding the idea that Thomas Szasz provoked the ongoing muddle about the literalness of the illness in 'mental illness'"
I'm not sure of your point. Szasz's Myth of Mental Illness (the book) was published in 1961, and has been enthusiastically denounced by the psychiatric establishment (especially the post-1974 E. Fuller Torrey) ever since.

While this discussion was being held, and this discussion has been around for more than three decades, the “Psychiatry Chronicles” keeps making its history just with some differences:

-Stephany was enjoying a first day feeling better after 59 days being in hell withdrawing Xanax;

-no news about Gianna;

- a relative in despair went to the first mental hospital seeking help for a loved one who is shouting and is totally out of control. It was said that "-the patient is in a maniac state of bipolar disorder;

-same to a family which the patient received the label "schizophrenia";

-a person feeling depressed and suicidal after months went to a psychiatrist in search for help. The treatment was an antidepressant, a benzodiazepine and a mood stabilizer. Although he⁄she already knows about side-effects there was no other way to search for help and he⁄she wants to get out of this state;

-some people around the world committed suicide or homicide because of a SSRI;

-a key opinion leader; a ghost writer; a physician received their money according to the deal;

-an advocator after being on a mental institution and recovering from schizophrenia gives a very positive idea about his views assuring that everybody can beat this state denying the label “schizophrenia” and declares that with positive thinking, family support everyone can recover;

-a mother is in despair because his son was beaten in a mental institution;

-FDA declares that………… ………. .;…………. …

-according to a research in 2056 there will be X numbers of Y disease;

-anti-psychiatry shows a new face; psychiatry doesn’t;

-JAMA publishes an article claiming that……… . ………. …………….. …………… .

-someone decides to stop taking psychotropics;

- …………. ……………………………………..;

-………………… ………………………………………….;

-…………….. ……………… …………… …………; ∞

-someone decides to stop fighting exhausted to see the same story repeating itself and knowing that it’s impossible to make any difference with the old strategies being declined decade after decade with the guarantee that the new solutions will finally be put in practice...

.....in

the

future.

re:trolls
"anti-psychiatrists has no interests and no concern whatsoever with people who are sick.
They are pure and simple trolls wanting to create more and more disagreements" Posted by Ana

People that are sick, have not become "sick" in one day. The sickness of "mental illness" takes time to develope. For psychiatry to continue to tell of the brain chemical imbalance reasons for mental illness, (along with the fixing chemicals from Pharma Co.) is criminal. All that has happened over the last hundred years is a larger percentage of the population, 1 in 500 (year 2003) to 1 in 75 ( year 2005) to be classified seriously mentally ill.
For your postion of support for the current model of psychiatry, the numbers of mentally ill should be dropping, and there should be success in treating serious mental illness with psychiatric medicines.

Then we have psychiatric power to rename and reclassify what is mental illness.
We have psychiatrist mixing criminal behaviour such as pedophilia and drug addiction, with non criminal behaviour such as schizophrenia.
Confusing the choice to be a criminal or drug addict-criminal, with the involuntary hallucinations of a schizophrenic person, or involuntary manic elation/depression of a manic depressive.

re:breaking people out
"If they feel so strongly why aren't they breaking people out of mental hospitals? Cowards...." Posted by F .
If someone was to break someone out of a locked mental ward, this would be a criminal offense of some kind.
For the sake of arguement, lets say it was successful.
In todays world of communication, the excapees could not find a safe haven, or employment.
That is if they are not conditioned-addicted to psychiatric drugs, or not physically neurologically brain damaged from the year(s) on psychiatric drugs, and the psychological negative effects of being in prison (all they know is the life on the psych ward).

Sally, the following statement epitomizes the heart of my disagreement with you: "I don't think psychiatric abuse survivors or anti-psychiatry types have a duty or obligation to be altruistic any more than rape survivors do. It's self preservation at the root of my voice."

This to me is typical of anti-psychiatry posturing, and why I and many others see it as essentially self-centered, arrogant, and destructive. If your positions are not based on concern for other people or on a rational assessment of the big picture, but only on your own self-centered agenda, why should the rest of the world take your views seriously? If everything you say is only meant to serve your own interests, what on earth do you think you are contributing to the discussion?

I hate the anti-med brigade (the "meds are eeeevil" people) with a passion.

I have a severe mental illness. Untreated, I would die in short order (due to suicidal leanings) or spend the rest of my life in an institution.

I am in the 30% for whom the meds give me a normal life.

If one more supercilious wanker tells me "ohhhh you don't need to take those horrible evil pills" I might just enhance the reputation of the mentally ill as axe murderers (joke!).

If you tell me that, you are invalidating 20 years of suffering - 10 untreated, and 10 to find a suitable treatment - implying that it's not a big deal or that the illness is somehow not real.

Being batshit crazy is horrible. Medication makes me sane. I stick around because my life is finally worth living. Meds did that.

Sure, if you're in the other 70% who need other intervention, no objections to you seeking it. Just stop trying to take my life away from me, thanks.

re:I hate the anti-med brigade (the "meds are eeeevil" people) with a passion.
by DeeDee Ramona

DeeDee, You voluntarily take the medicine ( it works for you), WHO is going to stop you from taking it?

I would never force you, or tell you to stop taking the medication.

You spent 20 years looking for a treatment, I spent 20 years trying to get OUT of treatment.

The people like myself who are anti-med have been forced , tricked and coerced into taking the psychiatric medications. Medications I/we feel have a negative effect on our physical and mental health. Negative physical effects that might be permanent.
I hope we can empathize or understand each others experiences and positions.

thanks to all of you for an interesting and provocative string of comments. it's even remarkably civil! keep 'em coming.

Mark brings up a good point here: many of the comments(well all of them)are based on personal experience of self or another in one's life, and those who are tending to be the most "anti" extreme are the ones who had unfortunate and horrible forced medication experiences. This is where the other side comes in who often cannot understand that extremist point of view.
Medications do work for some and not for others, and they are dangerous and have often low efficacy which is obvious or we wouldn't talk about meds and psych issues at all in the same sentence.
I've witnessed patients being forcibly injected against their will with antipsychotics and it was a terrifying experience just for me to witness, let alone the person who it happened to that receives a lifetime of trauma to deal with as a result.

This is what is wrong with the entire system, is there are 2 levels we stem from: success and failure.

It will only be when success and failure come together that any change can happen.

Regarding Soteria settings, and those who have suffered stepping up to the plate to start them, fund them and run them:

As Mark stated earlier his spirit is broken and he cannot take any energy to the platform. But in fact he is, when we hear his voice.

People like myself who have the unusual situation of being inside this arena as a parent, a patient and an advocate are the ones who I feel will be and should be the ones to take note of all experiences, form it together into a real, and I mean real living experience, where people can reside with proper respect, human dignity and care.

This place, in my opinion will allow all patients, healed, broken, on medications or off of medications to reside together. All choices made by the client are their own.

This is also something easily funded by private donations and grants that do not have to be pharma-funded, but think about this: what if a Soteria model can be constructed with pharma money and yet allow patients/clients to choose their path of care within that place?

That, in my opinion would be the ideal setting, where all sides can reside, keep all civil liberty in tact, choice, freedom and if choice is medication, then it shall be, and if med free is choice, then it shall be.

I feel we all have a common goal and most here have been hurt by this system, including myself. Running on emotion doesn't accomplish anything. Advocacy is damn hard work and I commend those who drag their asses out every day as a result of their injuries done to them/their bodies and minds.

Anyone remotely concerned with opening facilities for clients will pay close attention to this thread, because these are the voices that say much.

I would not expect a government agency to step up, but I do know a citizen can, and one voice, I'm sorry to repeat myself here--one voice can and does make a difference.

Actions though speak louder than words. Sometimes it takes a lot of listening to formulate a good plan.

Kudos to all here, and to the person who referenced my "good day after 59 days of Xanax withdrawal hell"--thanks! Because it WAS hell.
But no one forced me to take those meds. I'm sure I'm pushing the edge here with suggesting the use of pharma money--just tossing it out there for thought. I personally don't know if I was approached by Lilly or AstraZeneca with $$ and a building permit what I would do. I do know one thing, I've witnessed a lot of people without care, and many women discharged to homeless shelters or the streets from psych wards--it is a provocative idea using pharma's $$ isn't it? as long as a person doesn't have to sign a med compliant contract for housing (like NAMI does)then choice is left in tact.

Thanks, Philip. Then here's another comment: I'm getting a little sick of hearing people talking about forced medication as if that were the be-all and end-all of the conversation. Don't get me wrong - I don't doubt that there have been abuses, and I'm sorry for the trauma some people have gone through. But the vast majority of people who are taking psych meds are NOT being forced to take them. They are doing so voluntarily - and not necessarily because they are ill informed about the risks or blindly follow whatever their doctors tell them, but because they've assessed the risks and benefits and decided it's worth it. Why are such facts of other people's lives so hard to accept, and why are these experiences invalid or irrelevant when it comes to discussing the "evil" of psychiatry?

My opinion about forced institutionalization is based on my mother's history. She has had psychotic episodes sinces she was 8 years old. She was involuntarily committed when I was conceived back in 1968. She was self-mutilating and suicidal, and they released her anyway when she was 6 months pregnant with me. I was placed in a great amount of danger from being left alone with her, and she came very close to killing herself when I was a newborn alone in the apartment with her. I have wavered in my opinion on forced institutionalization because of the danger I was placed in as a helpless child, as well as herself. However, she was definitely completely in the legal responsibility of the psychiatric system when they made the decision to release her. My conclusion is that her psychiatrists did not seem overly concerned with either her or my safety. Forced institutionalization seems to have failed us both completely. I don't see a point in forcing people into an institution that does nothing to protect people who are a hazard to themselves from destroying themselves or their children.

garth that is an excellent question. your point that most people taking meds are doing so voluntarily is accurate, as far as i know. i think the antipscy camp's points about forced medication are excellent as well. i think what i am becoming more fascinated with is what i called the subtle coercion in the mental health system...kind of that great middle of experience where people do take meds voluntarily but are essentially talked into it by a social construct that has run amok in our culture. hmmm. i think i'll write about this more when my energy is better.

thanks

I suppose you're also tired of hearing the cries of rape victims because so many other people enjoy sex?

Ever had a cavity filled against your will? How about lumbar surgery? Didn't think so. These drugs damage your brain - full stop. I don't think there is a more important and less understood organ than the brain. Yet, it's the first thing they go after whether it was with ice picks, electric shocks, scalpels or the new trendy chemicals.

Forced brain damage is the MOST egregious act. So, I pity those willing to accept this fate for whatever reason. How many damage their brains to a point they can't even tell? Go to a locked down facility - you'll see the obvious ones, but so many more are sitting right in front of their computers...

People do not assess risk/benefit. They can't. They don't have the capacity nor the DATA to do so. If negative studies aren't published, if data is massaged just so, heck few people are even qualified to truly understand how clinical trials are actually run, analysed, and submitted to reg bodies. How many people can actually read the package insert and understand the implications? Few people thats how many. You rely on what your Dr. tells you and what you can scrounge up on your own. But you and your Dr. aren't going to reanalyse the data now are you???

So, you have to take it on faith that the drugs do what pharma says, that the Dr.s are competent to identify and treat what ails you - GOOD LUCK.

The beauty is that the likelihood of actual recovery is better good if you do nothing at all. So, if you want to live in a chemically lobotomized fantasy, I won't dissuade you. I won't even get a little sick and tired of you repeating it. I think the world is big enough to accommodate.

Sally, you always say (google your comments) that the people who you make wrong have a "right" to take drugs and see mental health professionals, as if you are granting them a privilege. I'm just sayin, mighty white of you.

Alison, everyone is self-righteous, judgmental, stubborn, spoiled, willful and the rest, which you would better understand if you studied the humanistic psychology your blog recommends. We're all evil, we all have borderline personality traits, everyone has a dark side, to some extent to be human is to be mentally ill, it's a matter of degree and timeframe, and what people do with it. Where a person falls on this continuum of psychopathology changes all the time, every day, though some people get stuck at the dark end.

I'm talking about those who's self-righteousness and judgmentalism are obvious, enduring and inflexible personality traits, so prominent that it's hardly a matter of nuance or interpretation, but what stands out as their protocol, or as someone above put it "posture." Psychiatric "survivors" are the ruling template, with PETA activists a close second. Seriously, as Loren Mosher said, psychiatric survivors, really? We're all survivors of something.

The people like myself who are anti-med have been forced , tricked and coerced into taking the psychiatric medications.

mark, there are people who have experienced all that and more who are not like yourself, are not anti-med and who do not take the same positions or identify as anti-psychiatry or survivors of psychiatry. It's true. You are no more destined to make the horrors you've known the centerpiece of your life as they are. What if the people who have experienced adversity and don't hold it so tightly are not misguided, or in need of conscious-raising, instruction and transformation? Maybe it's you.
When the student is ready the teacher appears. Unless you're a zealot, then all the world is your clay. It makes them livid with rage, that no one wants their knowledge (see opening post).

Stephany: "As Mark stated earlier his spirit is broken and he cannot take any energy to the platform. But in fact he is, when we hear his voice."
I completely agree (as I do in all the rest of your comment). It doesn't need to be a Soteria, you establish. Being there for friends in crisis, supporting them the best you can as Sally does, as the folks at Freedom Center do, if it's with words or action, speaking up in public, bringing out the truth, and discussing it, as Philip and Mark and so many others do, is a lot, and makes a difference! It certainly made and makes a huge difference to me.

Garth: Unfortunately, what I witness with most people is exactly what Philip points to : They're talked into taking drugs. Moreover, I do not see, that people are fully informed about the effects and side-effects. I'm often met with a "But my psychiatrist didn't tell", whenever telling people about certain side-effects, that are WELL-KNOWN, although, obviously, suppressed by both psychiatrists and mainstream internet-sources (while checking those out often is the utmost someone in crisis is able to cope with). This politics of suppression is in no way a basis for what I call informed consent, or free choice.

Another aspect of this: As long as there are no alternatives available ON THE SAME CONDITIONS as drugs and ECT are available, we can't speak of a "choice" at all.

Which leads me to DeeDee Ramona: As Mark points out: No one is going to take the drugs away from you! As long as there's only one single person in the whole wide world who chooses drugs for their treatment, I do NOT want to take these drugs away from them. But: In the interest of THESE PEOPLE, as well as in my own (now just call me selfish...), I want the information out (and thanks Philip for bringing it out there!). AND I want alternatives made freely available to everyone who wants them. Only that would be truly democratic.

You have got what you want, DeeDee Ramona. "...if you're taking drugs and they're working for you, the blessedness of God on you. But please, please, please, stop arguing with the people who are out there working for the people they don't work for! Because, you see, we're not out there fighting for you if it works for you. We're fighting for the guy who spent 50 years in a mental institution because they've taken his soul and they've taken his life, ... (...) Be happy with them (the drugs) and let me do what I need to do: Stop other people being unhappy with them." -John McCarthy

Am I anti-psych? Well, that depends on how "anti-psych" is defined. I do not follow a certain, established ideology and its dogmas (as I'm not especially fond of neither ideologies nor dogmas). Indeed, I feel more comfortable about "critical to psychiatry". But, on the other hand, and personally, I do not approve of psychiatry's IDEOLOGY nor its DOGMAS, either. So, to that extent and in that sense I may well be called "anti-psych". No more, no less.

I just wanted to say that this post and the resulting comments have really made me reconsider some of my own attitudes about psychiatry, medication, and disablism.

I don't feel confident enough about any of it to elaborate, but many thanks to Phillip and everyone else for giving me something to think about.

I think that Garth's comment sums up well the distinction that needs to be made. He said that "the vast majority of people who are taking psych meds are NOT being forced to take them." This is certainly true. What is also true, however, is that mental health laws exist which can and do coerce persons to ingest these drugs, and to be detained indefinitely. Not only by direct coercion, but by the threat of it (explicit or implicit). Not only this, but the state
has a monopoly on the definition of disease, and happily spreads the falsehood that the behaviors presently diagnosed as mental illness are bona fide brain diseases.

So, if "anti-psychiatry" is simply defined as being "anti-medication," then it too misses the fundamental point that Szasz makes. While we can each personally have legitimate opinions on whether we would ourselves take certain drugs, it can never be justified for an agent of the state (psychiatrist) to force others to either take them or to not take them.

Moreover, it should be noted that the anti-coercion position, by itself, is entirely consistent with both leaving others in bad situations (the "you don't care about schizophrenics" line, etc), and conversely, with offering any and all kinds of voluntarily-accepted help (the "you sure are eager to help these people and that's great" line)

Thus, Garth's comment that he is "getting a little sick of hearing people talking about forced medication as if that were the be-all and end-all of the conversation" is quite understandable, but would be better placed, inmho, by first taking a stance on the issue of psychiatric coercion, which one can can either be for or against.

Ted.

Paul, thanks so much, because your comment simply points out the kind of arrogance I was talking about before. According to you, you and your allies are the only ones who have access to the truth; other people are too stupid to think for yourselves, and those of us who try to argue with you are "chemically lobotomized." You apparently think your personal experience of trauma gives you unlimited moral superiority and thus the right to insult and demean those who disagree with you. I do care that people have suffered at the hands of bad psychiatrists, but guess what? There's a world of suffering out there; yours, mine, all of ours are just a few drops in the bucket.

Marian, I agree that too many people are "talked into" taking meds without being adequately informed or informing themselves about the risks - I didn't mean to imply that this wasn't a big problem (for medicine in general, not just psychiatry). I was trying to say that this isn't the case for everyone, not by a long shot, and the people who insist that it is (like Paul) are basing their views on a narrow, fact-free ideology.

Hey, FP, got my ABD=that's All but Dissertation in Counseling Psychology back in the day when Counseling Psychology was all about humanistic psychology, it's sort of a shame we never got to the point where you actually knew anything about me because you had already defined me from the get go. But I did not get out of my studies that all humans are evil, that's not what humanistic psychology says nor stands for. Being humanistic does not mean giving up on having a moral compass, rather it means striving to understand how we get to where we get as humans. Maybe you might want to go read some more of it.

This thread is a little long and I've lost track a bit but I do not agree that most people taking drugs are doing so voluntarily after intelligently assessing the risks and benefits -- no way. Maybe they thought this was the case when they started but certainly after being on them for any period of time at all then it becomes chemical dependence and/or addiction. At that point there is next to no way to judge what became of their underlying mood problems because the drugs have confounded them so much. And the main benefit of staying on is preventing withdrawal.

And personally I also support Sally in speaking to her friend. In fact, I think, if those of us who lean towards the belief that the drugs are toxic, addictive, and nearly useless, do not speak up in an honest way then we are being complicit and condoning something that we believe is harming others -- and harming them significantly. Not to speak up at all is what's morally reprehensible in my book. This is not the same as in some way blackmailing or "forcing" those taking meds to stop. I don't believe in that but I do believe in making my case if I can. My views have evolved over time and are based on what I consider significant evidence. This is not something arrived at in a seat of the pants, knee jerk way.

I still have one question:

What on earth is anti-psychiatry?
The main issue of this post lost its purpose.

Is it keep on "discovering" that there's not such a thing as chemical imbalance and that "psychiatry" rename diseases - as a matter of fact the DSM is not made by psychiatrists alone -?
Is it being a psychiatry survivor?
Is it following Thomas Szasz's Myth of Mental Illness?
Is it keep on trying to make people understand the side-effects and withdrawal symptoms from psychiatry drugs?
Or would it be sending e-mails to bloggers who try to raise this questions calling them mother-fuckers?

I would like to know so that I have an answer when I'm called scientologist or anti-psychiatrist.

The psychiatry makes harms but MEDICINE as a whole is making people get sick.

Could we be anti-medicine?
Pharmageddon seems to be a nice concept.

"The amount of money spent on hospital care for those given the wrong medicine or who have reacted badly to a drug could pay for 10,000 new midwives or easily cover the estimated cost of combating MRSA infections, says Compass."
http://www.jabs.org.uk/forum/post.asp?method=TopicQuote&TOPIC_ID=1424&FORUM_ID=5

ana, i'd suggest you skim this wikipedia entry. it's a decent thumbnail of the antipsych movement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry

Garth,

I guess I just have to repost your entire comment here"This to me is typical of anti-psychiatry posturing, and why I and many others see it as essentially self-centered, arrogant, and destructive. If your positions are not based on concern for other people or on a rational assessment of the big picture, but only on your own self-centered agenda, why should the rest of the world take your views seriously? If everything you say is only meant to serve your own interests, what on earth do you think you are contributing to the discussion?"

Your idea that people who are concerned about themselves and speak out of their own experience cannot be concerned about other people is inherently wrong. Someone who has no personal experience to draw on in this argument doesn't belong in it. Are you suggesting that what you say is contrary to your interests and therefore somehow valid? Are you advocating cultural appropriation? Science says that the chemical imbalance theory has not been validated at its most charitable. Science says that talk therapy is rarely effective.

If your experience is contrary to this, good for you, but if you don't speak out of your experience, you have nothing to say. I just don't understand why you think that speaking from your own experience is arrogant or destructive, and I think you're trapped in some masochistic myth that all personal experience is selfish and worthless, often a tragic side effect of too much "treatment" for mental illness, treatment which too often tells people, your mind is sick and so your experience is wrong.

What is it about speaking form my experience that makes it likely that my position is not based on a rational concern for other people? You seem to be middle of the fence, complaining about drugs but wanting to maintain your identity of being a special "mentally ill" individual. How is that not (using the phrase in the grossly oversimplified fashion of FP) identity politics? What is irrational about the anti-psych postings, if there is, as you assert, a typical anti-psych posting? And remember when you get mad and hurl insults instead of responding, it means you are afraid and unable to present a substantive response.

Still, I suspect in the real world, you and I would not differ in our opinions on how actual humans should be treated in a significant way.

'And the truth is your truth and my truth aren't everyone else's truth. I try to keep that in mind at all times. Try.'

Amen.

I guess it all boils down to one thing; know your audience.

Stalinist (wikipedia):

...a pejorative term when referring to ... the ideological stance(s) of individuals...who are perceived as particularly authoritarian or hard-line.

But heck, why be gloomy? The extremists serve a pragmatic function by making the sane and reasonable advocates seem sane and reasonable by comparison. And someone has to get shit done.

Philip,
This approach that Wikipedia gives on anti-psychiatry mixing
CCHR with Laing, Szasz, mindfreedom, www.scientology.org , Peter Breguin, John Breeding, Bruce Levine, Freud, Psychoanalysis, Michel Foucault, Erving Goffman, Deleuze and Guatarri, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, World Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry, statements like
"The influence of pharmaceutical companies is another major issue for the antipsychiatry movement";
The Nuremberg Trials convicted a number of psychiatrists who held key positions in Nazi regimes;
anti-psychiatry movement was also being driven by individuals with adverse experiences of psychiatric services; resonating with public concern about involuntary medication, lobotomy and electroshock procedures used to control patients; Observation of the abuses of psychiatry in the Soviet Union in the so-called Psikhushka hospitals also led to questioning the validity of the practice of psychiatry in the West.[16] In particular, the diagnosis of many political dissidents with schizophrenia led some to question the general diagnosis and punitive usage of the label schizophrenia....."

is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. It's all wrong.

You must notice that there's an advice:

"The tone or style of this article or section may not be appropriate for Wikipedia.
Specific concerns may be found on the talk page. See Wikipedia's guide to writing better articles for suggestions.(March 2008)"

that leads to this discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Anti-psychiatry

Your Blog could be part of this article.

Once again:
Criticizing psychiatry equals anti-psychiatry?
NO.

This article is partial and put in jeopardy the work of serious people.

I know what anti-psychiatry is and I know what is NOT.

Wikipedia and Medicine:

Is Wipipedia partial?

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_%28medicine-related_articles%29#Drugs

I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: “Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."

flawedplan,

this is exactly what is happening with the word
anti-psychiatry

Take a look at the explanation on Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-psychiatry

The article is being questioned because it put under this label all that goes against psychiatry.

This is outrageous.

Garth, I'm not advocating throwing the baby out with the bath. I'm demanding accountability. Sorry if you see this as arrogance and moral superiority. I can tell you that pharma and it's allies view anyone who doesn't buy into biopsychiatry as a quack and a threat. They actively work to spread that view. If you want arrogance and moral superiority, I suggest you look at psychiatry first instead of its victims.

Here's a smattering of what needs to happen imo:

1. Informed Consent

I don't think informed consent in psychiatry today is really possible. It's difficult enough in oncology. Patients already compromised are seldom in a position to objectively debate the risk/benefits of particular classes of drugs. Patients heavily rely on their physician to help make that choice this is doubly so if someone else is making those life decisions for you.

A discussion regarding medication/procedures should include the following:
a) There are no tests that can identify a mental illness/disease. It is my judgment you have ______ at the present moment because of the following behaviours/statements you have made:_____.
b) The drugs available work in your brain through a mechanism we don't understand.
c) You may or may not receive any real benefit from them
d) You run a high risk of addiction with significant withdrawal problems if you try to stop taking them or change drugs.
f) You are at increased risk for suicidality and/or homicidal violence.
g) The drugs have only been tested and approved for short time periods/exposure. I (your psych doc) plan to keep you on them for ____ time. We don't really know what effect this will have on you, but neither does the drug company nor the FDA. There is much evidence that lomg term exposure to this class of medication leads to permanent brain damage that can be manifested as _____ (TD in neuroleptics for example)
h) We do know that psychotropics alter you brain chemistry. Your brain will not be passive in this. Expect altered states for some period of time after which you might plateau or perceive some or no benefit.
i) Alternative to medication include the following:..... Repeat for risk/benefits

2. An end to forced procedures/medication/hospitalization
Forced medicine is intensely degrading and damaging. I don't think you ought to be not expecting an emotive response to being a bit tired of hearing about it. For me it epitomizes precisely what is wrong with psychiatry. It's the poster child. If you haven't been raped, I wouldn't really expect you to understand which I suppose might explain the enui you allude to.

There are so very many examples of violence done to people here. It's really quite staggering. There is nothing quite like a personal experience to clear one's mind on this.

3. Clinical/Regulatory Changes
If psychiatry wants to be treated like legitimate medicine, it must behave as legitimate medicine:
a) ALL studies filed with reg agencies must be reported and made available for public review (we can argue how, when, and where later)
b) Psych meds trials must include an ACTIVE placebo as appropriate
c) Psych meds must also be compared against existing marketed therapy as part of submission or extensions.
d) severe curtailing of off label use - require a court order or such
e) Current assessment methods are insufficient and overly subjective
f) Withdrawal protocols must be included with submission package

I don't have a posse, just myself. I don't belong to a clan, a group, a movement. Please don't lump me with whoever. My comments are indicative of my personal and professional experiences in the mental "health" system and pharma development.

"One day I was invited to a congress on psychiatry in Montreal. I was not a psychiatrist even having a little experience on this subject, a very short experience as I've been saying repeatedly; I declined the invitation. But the organizers assured me that they were inviting me only and exclusively as a historian of psychiatry to make the opening speech. As I love Quebec I went. Once there I was really surprised because the president introduced me as the great French representative of anti-psychiatry. Naturally there was very kind persons there that had never read a single line of what I had written and they were sure I was an anti-psychiatry. I just had wrote the psychiatry history till the beginning of the 19 century. Why on earth so many people, psychiatrists included, see me as an anti-psychiatrist? For the single reason that they are not capable of accepting the real history of their institutions."
Michel Foucault

Philip,
This is a quick translation I made.
I could make remarks on others theoreticians being linked to anti-psychiatry against their will in total disrespect and correct understanding of their work - Freud included.
This is very serious issue but I don't believe people are quite aware of the amplitude of this abuse of philosophers, psychiatrists, organizations work and it's consequences.
When I asked "What on earth is anti-psychiatry?" and you replied pointing the article on Wikipedia you did not understood my concern.
When I wrote a comment on this very article stressing that it's completely equivocated I was trying to raise this extreme important question.
There's not such a thing as "anti-psychiatry movement".
I'll rest my point for it requires lots of explanation and I'm not sure if it's of any interest.
All I know is that in France and UK it's taken very seriously.
Thank you.

Hi,
I think you've misunderstood what I was saying.

I know that meds do not work for everyone. I do think that if the meds are found not to work, that you shouldn't be forced to take them.

If the drugs don't work, discontinue them. They are worth trying first though and I certainly don't agree with banning all medication like some seem to.

BUT, I have encountered on many occasions those anti-psych activists who extrapolate from their own experience only - the meds didn't work for them, therefore if I am taking them, it's a placebo effect / I am fooling myself / I am some sort of victim / mental illness doesn't exist and I should stop taking the evil pills and go talk to a therapist about my issues.

This condescending bollocks is what makes me want to find an axe and a bulldozer. My illness is real. The "depressed" me is markedly different from the "normal" me (happy, bouncy, hyperactive - um, the "manic" me is just more so!). My illness has caused me immense suffering over the years which is now hopefully more or less over.

Talking to a therapist when I am sitting on a hospital bed, cannot read, write or watch tv, remember the ends of my sentences, am paranoid of everyone who comes anywhere near me and spend my time either staring vacantly at the wall or pacing up and down would not be particularly helpful.

I remember the experience as well of trying to pull myself out of depression with cognitive behavioural therapy alone as an inpatient - it was like bungee running. You are always snapped back to the start, no matter how hard you try or fast you run.

I was continually harrangued by the lady who ran the therapy group who thought that meds were a waste of time and figured that if I worked hard enough on the therapy I would get better. By extension, when after 3 months of daily sessions I wasn't any better, it was obviously because I wasn't making enough of an effort.

Then I was given a med that worked and... suddenly, the cognitive therapy was actually useful. The bungee cord disappeared, basically.

You know, I had PTSD, for the first time in my life, after that experience because of the anti-med attitude of the occupational therapy staff for those first 3 months. Luckily it only lasted (the PTSD) for about 6 months. This is why I so dislike the "meds are evil" attitude because the extension is that you can "get yourself well" and if you aren't, it's because you're not trying hard enough.

Yes my pills have side effects. Yes they are worth it. Yes, lithium could knacker my kidneys at some future date and I could die. However, since I don't get the luxury of stability between episodes, if I don't take it, I know I would die before the end of the year (sounds dramatic, yes, but the combo of paranoia, mixed state impulsivity and strong suicidal ideation is not a happy one). Sure, it's not fair, but there nothing I or anyone else can do about it so... I take my lithium.

However, some journalists over here seem to be doing their best to get anti-depressants banned (wait til they get to mood stabilisers!). I take a combination of an AD and a mood stabiliser which do nicely, thanks. I find such campaigning very personally threatening becuase I need those meds to survive.

Therapy is my "healthy diet and exercise" for the brain, my meds are my cardiac bypass surgery / new heart valves. I want my brain and heart to keep ticking over nicely as they are currently, thanks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Posttraumatic_stress_disorder

"I love the APA style, and I am one of the few people I know who not only love it (I'm usually surrounded by MLA-obsessed folks...yuck!) but I can write in APA format from memory usually (with occasional hints from the stylebook). Unfortunately, this is not an APA-style project, and we need to insure that the referencing system in this Wikipedia article is at least close to Wikipedia's style guide (WP:MOS, IIRC). I took out all the APA-ness of one section but it's late and I'm not going to work on the rest of the page tonight lest my brain turn off and I mess up some other section of the page (done that before). Anyway, just a note. I love the APA style, but Wikipedia is not the right place to be trying to use it. VigilancePrime 07:36, 3 December 2007 (UTC)"

This is what I'm talking about. I don't believe that Wikipedia is that impartial.
You write APA-style and just clean the "APA-ness"...

In the "Wikipedia-Reliable Source" all roads leads to APA.
Good job!

Alison, you may recall Maslow was quite preoccupied with the subject of evil, about which he said many things, including it's something the majority of us possess. But thanks for playing.

Ted:

Garth's comment that he is "getting a little sick of hearing people talking about forced medication as if that were the be-all and end-all of the conversation" is quite understandable, but would be better placed, inmho, by first taking a stance on the issue of psychiatric coercion, which one can can either be for or against.

So you can harangue him as a moral failure for taking a less oppositional stance than yours? Who died and made you Elvis? You really can't accommodate the fact that people on your side aren't as extreme as you. Maybe we are not on the same side, after all.

OH MY GOD NOW WHAT?

FP, Are you calling me a commie? Ow, or maybe the Stalin thing was meant for someone else. Perhaps we should send you off to the farm for a little reeducation;).

Still, for all we know Ted is Elvis. Seems a more likely candidate than Garth, and less likely than Puckett.

What are you so upset about?

"You know, I had PTSD, for the first time in my life, after that experience because of the anti-med attitude of the occupational therapy staff for those first 3 months. Luckily it only lasted (the PTSD) for about 6 months."

Deedee

I didn't know that PTSD is such a treatable disorder!
Good! It only lasted 6 months and you found cure. Please, explain us how did you manage to have such an incredible recover.
Was the antidepressant alone?
What has triggered your PSTD? 3 months with psychologists? :o)
I'm sorry asking you these questions but I didn't notice your story before.
Don't care about journalists works. Don't be afraid. Your meds will not come out of the market.
You can have them for the rest of your life.

I'm so happy with your testimony! It means that all veterans will be healed.
Thanks the Lord!

Unfortunately only those vets who were diagnosed PTSD. Those who are neurotics will not have a cure! :(

You're obviously not familiar with my body of writing if you call this upset. You know I love you guys, am just excitable; and this particular trainwreck has been a long time coming.

ana, dear, wiki is not impartial, it's open source. You can make all the corrections you want, and the trolls/fairies will come out at night and change it back.

I am a big fan of what is officially known as "critical psychiatry" -- my guess is googling that might deliver the goods for you. And let me know if you can somehow get away from Foucault in any discussion about power.

FP,

"You're obviously not familiar with my body of writing..." I think that's the most hurtful thing you've ever said to me. I'm a fan actually, though I'm staying off the tracks or trying to.

I didn't know, Sally. But most people who have read Suicide Notes and troublewaits recognize them as snapshots of severe and persistent psychopathology. I'm surprised you'd come away from it still skeptical that these conditions are real.

I'm not skeptical that such conditions are real, though we might disagree about other issues.

I experienced a very, very mild form of PTSD - which started about a month after being discharged from hospital, where I had spent many months, including the experiences I described above.

I am not prepar