June 06, 2008Medicating Our TroopsThere's a fascinating article in Time this week, and that's not something I say about that mag very often. The mag has gone and taken an in-depth look at how many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are being medicated for depression and sent back to the front lines. Sixteen percent of troops are taking anti-depressants and it all just goes from there. War is truly hell. It's nice to see someone in the mainstream media take a poke at this issue. I'm not sure that the article is entirely successful--there are some stats in it that are just wrong--but globally I give the mag credit for doing a fair and balanced job. One Army official, for example, is quoted saying he believes the troops get good care (which I doubt, but what else would he say?) and the magazine even delicately swings at the question of anti-depessant use and suicide: "At least 115 soldiers killed themselves last year, including 36 in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army said on May 29. That's the highest toll since it started keeping such records in 1980. Nearly 40% of Army suicide victims in 2006 and 2007 took psychotropic drugs — overwhelmingly, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozac and Zoloft. While the Army cites failed relationships as the primary cause, some outside experts sense a link between suicides and prescription-drug use — though there is also no way of knowing how many suicide attempts the antidepressants may have prevented by improving a soldier's spirits. 'The high percentage of U.S. soldiers attempting suicide after taking SSRIs should raise serious concerns,' says Dr. Joseph Glenmullen, who teaches psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. 'And there's no question they're using them to prop people up in difficult circumstances.'" Forty percent is a discouragingly high percentage. I'll leave it at that. One thing that mag leaves largely untouched is how these troops will do once the Iraq War is over (assuming it ever is. Afghanistan is a different story), or how they do when they rotate home. I have even larger concerns about their long-term health and how many troops might end up not being able to get off anti-depressants. But that's for another day. For now, it's pretty clear to me that America is going to be reaping the whirlwind of the Iraq War for a long time. Thanks very much, President Bush. Posted by Philip Dawdy at June 6, 2008 12:03 AM
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We must be very grateful to Bush family. We must remember that Bush father has already been on Eli-Lilly company's board. By the time Prozac was launched! The Lillygates are reported here: Eli Lilly, Zyprexa & The Bush Family Historically, the exposure of any single Lilly machination-though sometimes disrupting it-has not weakened the Bush-psychiatry-Lilly relationship. In the last decade, some of the more widely reported Eli Lilly intrigues include: A sample of those who have been on the Eli Lilly payroll includes: ............. "Joseph Wesbecker - Prozac/Sarafem (fluoxetine) By Bruce E. Levine, PhD I believe you all have already read it. Two off the latest stories: Suicide Antidepressant Withdrawal 2008-05-26 Iraq/Texas Soldier Commits Suicide: Was a 19 Year Veteran with a Family Unethical Antidepressants 2008-06-01 Iraq/Oregon Soldier Is Not Allowed to Speak to a Counselor Unless he Takes Antidepressants First
Great, we're giving the soldiers sedatives so they don't have to think about what they are doing out there. Posted by: Erik at June 6, 2008 06:02 AMLast month I saw a documentary on Iraq veterans. It was interviews with some of them and their problems coping with losing legs, an eye... you must already seem this one or others. One of them didn't suffer physical lost but was disturbed like all others which is a condition that I believe many people can understand. And I've remembered this article: I don't have access to the English version. But I don't doubt that this soldiers are not on antidepressants while on the front. "The University of California scientists found that sevoflurane gas stopped patients remembering "emotive" images, New Scientist magazine reported. The behavioral results show that 0.25% sevoflurane blocks emotional memory, and connectivity results demonstrate that this dose of sevoflurane suppresses the effective influence of the amygdala. Collectively, the findings support the hypothesis that the amygdala mediates memory modulation by demonstrating that suppressed amygdala effectiveness equates with a loss of emotional memory." It was suggested that this gas could prevent PTSD. There's something new on the front. This time not LSD. What a wonderful world! Erik, Philip, Posted by: Ana at June 6, 2008 01:17 PM The Bush crime family loves war. War is great for business. Remember Dubya's grandfather, Prescott Bush? As director of NY bankers, Brown Brothers Harriman, Prescott was funding the Nazis, and at the very time that thousands of his fellow countrymen were forfeiting lives to safeguard our freedoms and liberties. Like his grandson today, Prescott was a Quisling of the worse order. Harrimans were convicted several times under the Trading with the Enemy Act. Prescott and his fellow traitors should been tried at Nuremberg for their war crimes. Imagine what a difference a few more hangings back then would have made today. For all the gory details of the wartime traitors, see Professor Antony Sutton's book, "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler" The Brits were just as bad. Sir Montagu Norman, governor of the Bank of England, no less, was a personal friend of Hitler's finance minister, Hjalmar Schacht. With the help of financiers like Max Warburg, they engineered the infamous economic austerity policy that helped usher in the military dictatorship of the Third Reich. Back then, the corporate fascists of IG Farben were profiting from the slave labor camps of the Reich. Today, the same grouping - the Synarchist International - run the PsychoPharm death industry, turning our children into mind-blown mental slaves for life. I have often heard it said that 20% of all homeless men living on the streets in Britain are ex-servicemen. Most of them are mentally disturbed because of the traumas they suffered through war. Posted by: Sloopy Cowbell at June 6, 2008 05:34 PMAna, Trauma leaving an impression on you is normal. PTSD is a contrived load of shit. Why dive it a name? Why throw guesswork pharmacology at it? Why build a body of 'science' around it. Spend the money and the time providing these people psychotherapy, friends to talk it out, these people are hired killers volunteering for a life of fighting in political wars, and when they see the death, they get all traumatized, which is normal. There is no fucking pill for jealously, why would there be a pill for sorrow. There isn't! It's a guesswork pharmacology corporate baked billion dollar PR placebo chemistry set, and it must be stopped.
When these killers get home and are haunted by their nightmares of remembering shooting hot lead into innocent iraqis faces, they can burn in hell for I care. Giving their regrets and nightmares a medical label is just a frigging sham. Perturbing their neurology with drowning it in whiskey or antidepressants is the same masking load of shit its one and the same. Psychopharmaceutical complex sees plenty of lifelong gullible customers in the returning 'soldiers' / hired killers, and they are all fodder for this pathetic psychiatry trying to get credibility as legitimate science... I couldn't care less about anyone who returns from a war that was unjustified. They weren't fighting for their country's freedom, or Iraqi freedom, its a shambolic mess. And America not learning the lesson of Vietnam just shows how pathetic the human race can be. So dope them all up, fire up the ECT and DBS for all I care. These people gambled with their lives when they become volunteer hired killers for political wars, and they continue to gamble with their lives putting these guesswork 'meds' into their systems voluntarily. It's just another market for them. What a sham, what a shame. Posted by: Poe at June 7, 2008 03:54 AMSloopy, I didn't know about Prescott. I don't know what politicians have in mind. All I know is that it seems that they are getting less and less concerned with people. We have a long discussion here. I've found this yesterday and fortunately it's still online: Joseph Wesbecker had been taking Prozac when he walked into his workplace, an Indianapolis printing plant, in September 1989, shot dead eight colleagues, wounded 12 and killed himself. Survivors and relatives of the dead took Lilly to court in 1994. They claimed that Wesbecker's violence was due to Prozac. The jury found that Prozac was not at fault. Two years later, media pressure forced Lilly to admit that it had..... http://www.breggin.com/bulletinprozac5.html
Thank you! It's good to know that you can understand what I'm writing.:) I didn't see the "-Don't they know anything? It was as if we don't exist." I used to be angry. But I was full of hope. I've found an e-mail, yes I wrote messages to WHO, FDA, MHRA and I don't remember how many e-mails I wrote. I found one of them yesterday and started to laugh. Silly me! "...The withdrawal effects are unbearable. And you find out that these drugs are powerful and are on the market not because they are good for your mental health. You find out that the USA Pharmacological Industry and some Associations like, oh my God, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, American Medical Association's Council on Scientific Affairs, the University of California, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, even Mr. Bush father who was once on the Eli-Lilly board, take part on a powerful consortium of medical-pharmaceutical self-interest groups. This is part of one of this messages. Gee! I have to stop. " Last year the FDA required Shire to update Adderall's label in the U.S. to warn that it should not be used in children or adults with structural cardiac abnormalities. The FDA said it's too soon to tell if ADHD drugs really increase cardiovascular risk and that it was "pursuing additional means to better characterize the cardiovascular risks for all drug products approved for ADHD." Among the options, the FDA said, was long-term safety trials to look at cardiovascular risks." http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/05/06/29.php Poe you rock! Accepting a psych label, your own or someone else's, is a crime against all that is decent, shambolic indeed! Posted by: Sally at June 7, 2008 11:52 AMPoe, Antidepressants, by enabling longer deployments, may actually be increasing the incidence of PTSD -- a very damaging condition. That's the big takeaway from the story. And while there is no pill for jealousy, PTSD has a set course of symptoms that cause a great deal of misery and damage -- and it is treatable. The treatment for PTSD is more psychological than psychiatric. It is not really a big pharma market. PTSD exists. It is not a simple emotional reaction to trauma. It involves vivid, disorienting flashbacks and avoidance of any kind of stimulus -- including social contact. Posted by: Kalea Chapman at June 8, 2008 07:37 AMregarding the above comments: One thing I offer to those who are jaded or suspicious of psychiatry is pay attention to the deeds of the provider, not just the words. There are good providers out there who treat people with real illnesses, and provide care in a multifactorial process: therapy, meds, and most important, promoting the idea of change to the patient. If you believe most if all psychiatric illness is a sham, then run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. Your rigidity and inflexibility is your problem; good luck finding sympathetic, supportive people to be in your corner. I see genuine people who are struggling with tangible problems who need help from unbiased, objective people with skills to provide such services. It is not about drugs or "biochemical imbalances". It is about care. This site seems to dispell the myth there is a cure with a pill. Good for this blogger! Check out the episode of Numbers when the Rob Morrow character is seeing a therapist who says to Morrow after asking "do I need a drug", and the therapist replies, "if you want to get better, take a pill, but if you want to get it right, fact the truth," Too many people aren't ready to face the truth. If you are, there are responsible docs out there who will work WITH you. Posted by: therapyfirst at June 8, 2008 10:01 AMAs much as arguing with the fanatics is something I am rarely in the mood for, let's rumble. "And while there is no pill for jealousy, PTSD has a set course of symptoms that cause a great deal of misery and damage -- and it is treatable." You and your cohorts in the indoctrinated world of therapy choose to call a behavior or feeling a symptom. You appropriated this language from real medicine that deals in observable biological diseases with known etiologies and known treatment action that corrects known biological defect. I laugh when I hear this kind of language from a 'therapist' and don't 'listen', I laugh. And then I cry. It's just another example of your unearned authority and misappropriated right to speak on the topic of human distress. Which you have clearly seen fit as something that can be learned and mastered from a book. Which was your first and carnal mistake in life if you ask me. You take a phenomena, called reaction to trauma, call it abnormal, give it a name, PTSD, a noun, an object, floating through the person's body and life, like cancer, sell it as just as tangible as cancer, just as 'diagnosable' as cancer and often times get into hysterics claiming it is just as 'deadly' as if some phantom aberration of the brain just suddenly appeared a few days after I shot my first iraqi civilian for instance. This is why people laugh at your qualifications. You spend a few years reading textbooks which indoctrinate you to simply 'get over the fact the basis is groundless and assumptive, theoretical and speculative, just never mind that, get over that and spend a life reading studies on the outcomes of people we label with these speculative diseases and prod with guesswork meds'. It is everyone's problem that trauma and distress are now the purview of maniacal 'scientists' who look for 'symptoms' of a defective abnormal human being, rather than simply place yourself in the shoes of the man who has witnessed mass murder on the battlefield and try and stand with him in Why give it a name? Why? Why be divisive and preach OTHERNESS to people who are already feeling alienated and hurt and are coming home to a hostile public who mostly doesn't value the war they have just fought? Why teach helplessness, why ABUSE the unearned authority you have, and tell this man his brain is defective, and call into question in his own mind just how much he can rely on ever getting through it? HOW can I get through this tough time (he asks himself) with a defective brain to rely on? Can you even rely on a defective brain? Of course not! Am I going to be there for my son if I remain this distressed for years? What will become of me? The shrinks say I have an incurable brain disease son. I'm gonna comply with the 'treatment' and hope for the best. Why is this happening to me? I've just been to war now I have an abnormal psychology, a mental illness. Wow. Gee. I get the short straws in life. How in the fuck can you help when you are coming from this defeatist, COLD, DISTANCED, OTHERNESS, CLINICAL, JUDGEMENTAL, STANDPOINT? A standpoint of superiority. A eugenic standpoint even. You can't. "It's treatable" you say. Oh goody gum drops! And you've got more than a checklist to prove I should have a primitive infant science of chemical mind rape sloshing around in my neurology daily through every synapse for life? You've got more than a checklist and a degree on the wall that says you read the necessary textbooks? No!?? You don't have more than that? "I've got an office and a business card and so and so board licensed me to practice what I know" Ah, yeah, but you're asking me to put a chemical compound into my entire body, specifically designed to fundamentally restructure my neuromechanics and executive function. Can you please tell me what is happening to my brain if you say it is defective? I asked politely. No. I don't want to know what you 'think' is happening, nor what your trade union, the APA thinks is happening, I want to know exactly what I am doing to my brain before I do it to my brain. You say I have this disease and it is treatable. Please explain. I suppose while you don't understand the neuromechanics of jealousy you fully understand the neuromechanics of my constant flashbacks to the moment when I shot hollow point bullets into the enemy's neck and watched his eyes meet mine for a second in agony and mortal fear as his lifeblood drained away, and how that rips at me at night as I see his mind scream 'why!!!' and I break out into a cold sweat and want to change the fact that I was there, and want to drink a fifth of vodka in the middle of the night whilst standing in my sweat soaked singlet crying with fridge door open? You understand the neurology of that moment do you? With a college degree and some hubris you're gonna get out the DSM and tell me what my problem is and that it is 'treatable' and I am going to let you drug me with wanton guesswork? Is that how this is gonna work? Ok what time next week. "The treatment for PTSD is more psychological than psychiatric. It is not really a big pharma market."
Massive fail there. And even you were right, please enlighten me as to what the 'science' of psychology has unearthed in its 'research' to help me with my combat nightmares. I'm on tenterhooks. Maybe who knows, giving me a permanent label that disempowers me, stigmatizes me for life, and says I am abnormal and defective will go some way to beginning the healing process. "PTSD exists. It is not a simple emotional reaction to trauma. It involves vivid, disorienting flashbacks and avoidance of any kind of stimulus -- including social contact. " "It involves" No wrong. Trauma involves... trauma involves vivid flashbacks. Not 'it', when your 'it' is the noun you and your trade union made up. And PTSD exists, sure. But not on the autopsy table, not on the test results of any objective medical diagnostic scenario. It exists in your filthy bible the DSM, and exists in your head, the collective heads of all the shrinks, all the people who have been told by the shrinks they have it, and the public who read the media who in turn trust the experts are speaking the truth and are reasonable and not indoctrinated OUT OF THE PARK!!!!!!!!!!!! The main problem. Where in the fuck did this world get so many apparently intelligent people, who can get into college, who come out as mental health professionals willing to take so much on faith. Where did that disorder come from? Why is there generation after generation of distilled lies and hubris coming out of mental health as a sector. The answer my friends is rote learning, anyone can rote learn. Make a mistake in the 50s, base the whole science around it, base the whole prestige and legitimacy of the field around it, and you just watch the next three generations distill it and market it to the world and fool themselves in the process as well as the media, the governments, and most harmfully of all, the poor people who come to them at their lowest hour, and have the shrinks turn it into their lowest decade. If you're a vet reading this... You're not abnormal. I'd be fucked up after taking lives and seeing my buddies bleed too. You had a noble ideal joining the volunteer army. Just maybe next time, remember, if there was a real ground war, where the homeland was threatened, I would not ask you to fight for me, I would join up if my family and my own life were threatened by an invader. I will not be part of a political contrived war in Iraq, and I did not ask you to. The worst president in history asked you to ok. Choices are made in life. You saw the combat, you cannot change it now. The public doesn't hate you, it understands your motives at the time were what you believed in. You are not dead. You are still alive. That is what you need to remember. Every moment spent thinking about the past, will rob moments from you future and that of your family's. You're not a birth defect. You're not out of order. You're not mentally ill. You're a healthy man, with a healthy fit body and brain, whom doctors cannot place test results of showing you are brain defect, so you will work through it, return to the remaining years of your life and find a new career or something constructive. Or you can get lifelong disability payment and sit in a trailer and numb yourself out on alchohol and psych meds. And die a fat lonely old man who the world saw as a 'crazy vet'... choice is yours. Mental health has a cancer in the modern world. It's run by relentless ideologues. You ought to consider yourself warned.
There is a cancer on the presidency. There usually is every decade. But there is a cancer on the mental health system. The sheer name of this system is even one of its millions of problems. Human distress, is now unhealthy. If you are distressed, you're not fucking normal. Any distress, that ever happens to you, go see someone who has spent a couple of years reading textbooks at college about abnormal people, because you are now an abnormal person. Therapists, with stock standard training, bereft of understanding, replete with hubris that will come on here and drop the party line are a dime a dozen. There's nothing remarkable about an unreformable mental health ideologue. The world is full of them. If it wasn't, we would have had positive reform by now. Instead the cancer grows exponentially, as cancers will. Graduation day pumps out some more tumors for us. Rote learners convinced they have chosen wisely, specialized in a career in the cutting edge, the final frontier, get to far in, convince themselves they don't need to worry their discipline isn't founded on any hard understanding, they can poke around in the lives of millions and study the outcomes later, trial and error, and we will just go on trusting the experts, because we all got forced to go to social engineering factories called 'schools' and we defer to authority on everything, division of labor, even when our neurology is at stake and the expert has nothing but a handful of beans to grow a magic serotonin stalk. The disciplines charged with responsibility of dealing with human distress and delusion, themselves are irrevocably mired in delusion, and cause UNTOLD human distress. Do you honestly think there would be a whole movement of people this angry with you if you weren't doing something wrong. Only reason the rest aren't angry with you is because they are either: To scared, weak, trusting and disabled by being drugged to think it through and get to the truth Ignorant sheep, willing to defer to authority at ANY COST INCLUDING MY LIFE AND THEIRS, indoctrinated to become fanatical psych followers even in the face of a paucity of evidence the size of space. Victims of the same indoctrination school/college party line training course that turned you from a harmless teen into an adult who chose the career of fucking with people heads with guesswork. I'm totally done for a while. Mental health in this country is a mess and its not due to any defective brains popping off. Boy is it a mess. Rote learners straddling a pile of studies hundreds of miles high all the way up to space... yet you could fill space with amount of guesswork, harm, hubris, and evil that is created and pushed by the mental health pros of this world. Posted by: Poe at June 8, 2008 03:33 PMThe big issue with the the term PTSD is that it appeared so that the disease were treated by psychiatry.
http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/posts-i-want-you-to-read/ This is from Seaneen a 21 years old woman who is trying hard to make same sense understanding her illness and finding any relief. She writes brilliantly and expresses her feelings, acts, ideas and her views on what she thinks having a maniac-depressive condition means that gather lots of people telling her they could realize some of their own experiences while reading some of her posts. I took this excerpt because of the similarity that I see on the two wards I visit here in my city in Brazil and the data other people give me regarding the “smoking problem”. I just want to say that I'm Brazilian but I'm not a spokeswoman of all Brazilians. I have learned from being involved at previous sites that focus on mental health issues that the longer the rant, the less I want to read it (from personal experience as much as a reader). Shakespeare had a valuable quote when he wrote, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing". If you do not believe in the practice of mental health care, fine, just say that and share an experience or a vignette of someone's struggle to receive decent care. If you think you can just shout one down and win by the number of words you write, think again. Yes, there are charlatans, frauds, and perhaps a bit harsh, but evil people who claim to be health care providers who do nothing less than prey or mislead patients and the public. But if you overgeneralize and include caring people like me in tirades, you will be challenged. For what it is worth to readers, I'm sorry you have been burned as a patient or an interested party to a patient. Mental health care has its place, it just needs a louder voice from those who care and want to preserve that caring role. Or, have I misread the intent of this blogger? by a psychiatrist of 15 years Posted by: therapyfirst at June 8, 2008 05:27 PMSome good self help books... Mad In America by Robert Whitaker Making us Crazy by Kirk and Hutchins Toxic Psychiatry by Peter Breggin The Gene Illusion by Jay Joseph Dying for a Cure by Rebekah Beddoe On Education (1762) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau Psychiatric Slavery by Thomas Szasz This blog The documents and manifestos available at the Jeffrey S Poland website, google Jeffrey Poland and you'll see the best schizophrenia paper in the history of man. Generation Rx by someone can't remember but there is a film of it coming out in two months youtube search for the trailer While you're at youtube check out Dr. John Breeding's videos March of the Zealots A fight to Be by Ron Bassman Anything from Alice Miller, the last original psychologist to be born in the history of man For further self help travel to unpopulated areas and weird holiday destinations like the Faroe Islands and see unadulterated nature and unadulterated people. Go to the island of Dominica and build a house and live on the cheap with servants for 150 grand. Get as far away from Harvard as you can. Read the horror stories (strike that 'best practice') at psychdiagnosis.net Read some philosophy from age old thinkers for free online. Get used to screen reading. It is the future. Or you crack your noodle open like a watermelon for some ideologue shrink and invite him to do a poo in it.
Forget climate. What about body burden. Why isn't anyone talking about that? Because they are all content to poison us and our kids while making us feel guilty for turning on an electric light.
Therapyfirst, I comment here but don't control the intent of this blog. You seem defensive about therapy. As you know, getting mental health care from a paid professional is like prostitution, not quite the real thing, though I'm speculating, having never paid for sex, but when you pay for compassion and understanding, it just ain't compassion and understanding. Mine is a minority view here. I think most folks who post here would agree with you. And yet look at your behavior, your deeds. You write, "If you believe most if all psychiatric illness is a sham, then run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. Your rigidity and inflexibility is your problem; good luck finding sympathetic, supportive people to be in your corner." In other words, if you disagree with me, you are wrong, I don't want to hear it, shut up and leave. Where's your empathy, Mr. Therapist, your decency? Aren't you being rigid and inflexible? But it's okay when you exhibit the behaviors you condemn in others because you're a special member of a helper class. Pretty grandiose there dude. You sound like a controlling sadist, but then you are a pshrink. And then you write, "the longer the rant, the less I want to read id." D*ckhead! Do you apply this same rule to your clients, do you not listen the ones who are talking too passionately? I guess not, just kick them and out and "save" the quiet, obedient ones, unless of course the ranty folks have fatter pockets. And you dare quote Shakespeare. As, among other things, an English major, brutalized by the functional illiteracy of purported therapists, I'll tell you this, you didn't read the whole play. If sound and fury signify nothing to you, you damn sure know nothing about human suffering and are causing a good bit of it. Posted by: Sally at June 9, 2008 01:53 AM therapyfirst , There's too much "sound and fury", the focus is lost and real issues are put aside. I'm selecting what to read. By taking a glimpse on comments now I only read those that will bring me enlightenment and are really concerned in promoting mental health. There's no time to loose. Mental health care has its place, it just needs a louder voice from those who care and want to preserve that caring role. That's the point. Could you explain to me why psychiatry and psychology are so connected? Oh look the psychiatrist of 15 years is calling me a scientologist and saying fuck you to me and ridiculing the length of my posts. Last time I looked the comment text box allows for me to speak as long as I wish. You call what you do for fifteen years 'care'? It takes a special kind of person to take people suffering human distress with electrodes. Enough said. You want a short vignette? Busy are you? Busy writing guesswork scripts for guesswork pharmacology for people whom you have no clear picture of any proven biological defect. I don't care for your suggestion to 'move on'. In fact I will dedicate my life to demeaning and devaluing your 'care interventions' because they cause nothing but harm and are founded in dogmatic ideology. I'm no scientologist. But I guarantee you this, if someone were to practice scientology for 15 years they would destroy less lives than you no doubt have contributed to destroying in your 15 years as a member of your profession which is in itself, a faith based cult. You are a cult member, 15 years deep. The fact that you use words like 'if you don't believe in mental health care move on' is telling... Studies of religious, political, and other cults have identified a number of key steps in this type of coercive persuasion:[27] 1. People are put in physically or emotionally distressing situations; You're an indoctrinated ideologue. And to admit freely you're a psychiatrist for 15 years, rather than bolster your credibility, merely shows me the blood on your hands. Everything you've ever done as a psychiatrist is full of sound and fury and signifying nothing. Have a nice day. If you don't like long posts, which is normal for a mindless rote learner used to a life of reductionism like yourself, you want a quick vignette from a pharma rep and you're on your way right?... If you don't like long posts don't practice an evil profession that destroys lives, bodies, and families. Simple as that. Since you people can't kick off a post without either a Shakespeare quote or a comparison to hard medicine diseases like cholera, and scientology ad hominem, here is quote for you... A quote which colors your every professional action, which I hope realize on your deathbed as an old man filled with regret.... "Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. " CS Lewis. Posted by: Poe at June 9, 2008 06:33 AMMr Poe: Ana: Psychologists are doctorates trained in University settings generally in the field of psychology and most are trained in various elements of academic and clinical interventions. Personally, I hope your experiences with therapy have been more positive than negative, and if you have to reexplore issues, go back and you'll probably get into it easier than what you had to do in prior courses. on a separate note, it is interesting that Sally and Poe took my above comments personally. I am not here to practice therapy, as I abhor the concept that therapy can occur over the internet. I would offer this premise to either or both of you if interested: I appreciate the owner of this blog allowing this debate to be aired. Other blogs I have written to seem to believe censorship is protective; slander is unacceptable, that I agree, but difference of opinion is what makes this culture work to a fair degree. In my office, if you tell me the sky is green, I'll be baffled, but I wouldn't tell you that you are wrong. I would just hope your belief gives you faith and hope. Isn't that what life is about? Crap, now I've ranted. Guilty as charged. Posted by: therapyfirst at June 9, 2008 10:41 AMhey TF! Great to see you here! Keep on commenting! rants and all! You're a good example of a provider who wants the best for patients, with personal integrity, and your voice needs to be heard. This is one forum it will be (and won't be deleted!):) Stephany: You'll see he did print my comment at least. I look forward to writing here, if of value. Posted by: therapyfirst at June 9, 2008 12:45 PMGee! Poe,
I believe we must know each other better to have a good discussion. therapyfirst, I know the difference between psychiatry and psychology very well. I did psychotherapy. Freud? The most important. I did the job with her. Most psychiatrists have some backround in psychology prior to starting medical school, as did I, so the residency experience solidifies the educational foundation. This is exactly what I fear: According to my experience and the experience I see of other people, no psychiatrist was capable of doing good psychology. I abhor the concept that therapy can occur over the internet. Sure! But you have to compromise. Psychiatry is all over the WWW kingdom trying hard to sell drugs.
Aren't we are all trying to know what is the best for mental health? For my part I'm trying this moment hard to find the right questions to be made. Otherwise we are wasting our time, it took me half an hour to write all of these... brilliant remarks! LOL. So it's not a metaphor about wasting time. I never saw a psychiatrist on any blog trying to discuss. No matter how many philosophers we read, how many quotations we have... If we can rely on someone! If we only knew that someday we would need a psychiatrist! I'll say once again: Take a look at the blog: http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/ This girl has something to share! Posted by: Ana at June 9, 2008 01:00 PMGee! I'm spending so many time searching here and there and reading so much in English, wathing BBC and seeing so many stuffs in English that I just said "-I'm sorry!" to my neighbor! I like the one on the movie "Frankie and Johnie"! I'll open a Blog! Don't be afraid Philip! I'll make two posts just to introduce myself and spare others people time trying to know who am I, what am I here for and so on. TF- I've written a post with Dr.F's letter showcased...that letter says it all re: the Biederman scandal. Thank you Stephany. Therapyfirst, Almost all groups (but especially those trying to retain/increase their personal power) "attack others who do not toe the line to their rigid and inflexible rhetoric". Virtually every major religion would fall to this rubric. I think those of us who have been harmed by psychiatry feel a certain obligation to warn others. All you're seeing is the same passion that anyone who is trying to prevent a great harm would do. My experiences with psychiatry have involved involuntary incarceration and forced drugging. I call it rape. There is no other term that adequately describes the experience. I only survived and regained my freedom through guile and deception. "If you believe most if all psychiatric illness is a sham, then run, do not walk, to the nearest exit" is ultimately the right thing to do, but you must obviously realise that to victim of psychiatric rape this does sound a bit trite - one has to be able to leave first... Posted by: Paul at June 9, 2008 03:51 PMDr. Therapyfirst, Your recent post is so perfectly illustrative of a couple of the many problems with psychiatry/psychology/mental health for profit, that I'm compelled to point them out. First, while I have no personal knowledge of either you or Poe, assuming your reports of having been a practicing pshrink for 15 years are true and his report of having been brutalized by pshrinks is true (an assumption which you seem to buy admitting that there are some serious problems in your "profession"), when you read both my and Poe (and perhaps others) somewhat harsh critiques of psychiatry, you respond with verbal violence writing, "If you believe most if all psychiatric illness is a sham, then run, do not walk, to the nearest exit. Your rigidity and inflexibility is your problem; good luck finding sympathetic, supportive people to be in your corner." Then you go further and subsequently post that "it is interesting that Sally and Poe took my above comments personally. I am not here to practice therapy," implying that in spite of the fact that you acknowledge that we've been brutalized by your "profession," our critique of it is a symptom of some psychiatric disorder and then in the typical and frankly evil manner of a psychiatrist, you describe your violent angry words as not symptomatic of some genetic brain disorder but instead an understandable aberration of a decent and reasonable person and thus write: "I would offer this premise to either or both of you if interested:If you work in a field you have dedicated 15 years of your post high school education to being considered a professional and an expert, only to have people who have little to no experience in said field tell others with an air of authority your work is a fraud and toxic to the community, get back to me how you would react." Indeed why is it that your unreasonable reaction is understandable and sane, and our reactions, even if you perceive them to be unreasonable, indicate that we need not just therapy but off line therapy from you? And you leave us with this precious nugget: "In my office, if you tell me the sky is green, I'll be baffled, but I wouldn't tell you that you are wrong. I would just hope your belief gives you faith and hope. Isn't that what life is about?" It intrigues me that you seem to be honestly reporting your experience and really not seeing how screwed up it is (Fuller Torrey discusses that sort of thing a lot, lucky for you, I disagree with him). When a patient reports to a psychiatrist that the sky is green, what she's paying the psychiatrist is to tell her that, if it's the case, the psychiatrist doesn't see the sky as green but instead sees it as blue, and that the psychiatrist thinks that many other people share his perception. If the pshrink just silently implies agreement, s/he's harming the "patient." Can you see how? Paul, Wow, I missed the irony you picked up on in Therpyfirst's medical order that: "If you believe most if all psychiatric illness is a sham, then run, do not walk, to the nearest exit." You are right. Psychiatric patients are not allowed to leave without the permission of their psychiatrists who diagnose them as mentally ill for not leaving even though they can't leave because their psychiatrist will not give them permission too. Therapyfirst, your profession's abuse of me has left me virtually penniless, so I'm going to take some generic ibuprofen for my dental pain because I can't afford a dentist. Why don't you, Mr. 15 years as a practicing pshrink have a nice glass of scotch and count your money. Posted by: Sally at June 9, 2008 06:08 PMah, Sally...trust me, don't take TF down. Posted by: Stephany at June 9, 2008 06:57 PMIt is truly sad to read so much pain and hurt in the above comments. I have met some of the bastards who have done irresponsible, incompetent, and probably evil things that the above submissions hint of. What I hope you will try to absorb from my submissions to this site is that not all psychiatrists are bastards. Some doctors truly embrace and practice the Hippocratic Oath that preaches for me two very important principles: first, do no harm, and second, go from least to most invasive. What I would like to try to offer through my involvement at this site is reveal some insights and ideas how to maintain function in what is sadly a more dysfunctional world of late due to many causes: politics, religion, cultures, and for all of us, family inputs that are not perfect, and for too many, just plain wrong at times. One of my favorite lines from a movie, Parenthood, is when the Keanu Reeves character says to his girlfriend's mother, "you know, you need a license to have a dog, to drive a car, you even need a license to catch a fish, but they'll let any butt reaming asshole be a parent." It speaks volumes to me that we as a society have a lot to learn to encourage and nuture healthy parenting. That's not the only dynamic to what is behind mental health struggles, but it can be an important one if not examined. What I sense is going to be an ongoing "agree to disagree" premise between me and several of you who frequent this site is we'll hopefully learn to respect each other's unique perspectives to the mental health experience. I'm not here to change anyone; I hope to just provide one opinion that might maintain hope and faith. For those who hate what I am simply because of my professional title, then that's your problem, not mine. One thing about my style you will learn is I am honest and direct. That will not change, because it works for me, and it seems to work for the patients I treat and have treated who want to feel and be better than they were previously. When I am wrong, note the WHEN, I will come to note it and correct it. When I am right, and the debate has been exhausted, I will hope others will give pause and reflection as well. If this site is trying to right some serious wrongs in my field, it won't be too successful with hate. I've been there, and I found out that path is dark, narrow, and dead ends fairly abruptly. I'm here because I feel this site has much promise, and I will offer what I know to hopefully aid in righting these wrongs. For now, wrong #1 is biochemical imbalance is the biggest sham in my field. Drugs don't do it by in large for any illness, but at times medication can be a stimulus for the change that begets change. But that is the sell to the wary and reluctant: you have to believe it is worth the try, 'cause that's what it is, an attempt. I've said enough for now. I'll offer more as I feel it is worthwhile. For those who feel I am of value or interest, thanks. For those who don't, oh well. Posted by: therapyfirst at June 9, 2008 07:24 PMThe 15 year shrinks says 'how would I feel' if someone denigrated his grand efforts in training himself to become some kind of 'expert'. Well you should be feeling like you wasted your time. Because you did. You might have bought a ticket to exploit people for a high income, but you don't possess a single tool to help anyone in distress. In fact you're hamstrung by your disease model indoctrination reeducation camp cambodia style training that you go through, you're given tools to fuck people up beyond recognition when they come to you for help. How do you think the average psych patient who loses years of their life feels that their initial human distress has been blown way out proportion by your ideology and dogma, and they've been unethically convinced they have an incurable brain disease for life, and are genetic pariahs, ALL WITH NO EVIDENCE. The people who become hypervigilant neurotics pathologizing their every behavior and turning them into subhuman untrusted animals who when people interact with them they ask 'is this the person talking, or the disease'.... I'd call that a fuck up. You fuck people up. And we'd be better off if you'd decided to become a plumber. Every psych training, years at college, fucking waste of time if you're just gonna come out and fuck people up. You've got nothing. Bunch of contrived labels, psychobabble, and guesswork meds. And get used to us. Because I ain't going away. And I can tell you, with your bullshit 'diagnoses' on the rise, and the millions of kids brains your profession professionally rapes.... These kids are gonna get just as angry as me when they grow up... and there will be a movement to shut you down. Telling me to 'move on' is like telling a slave 200 years ago to move on. Your ideology driven, faith based pseudoscience of a profession, is a bull in a china shop, a cancer on society. Psychiatry has done more harm than any other peacetime profession. You are hated. Your profession is hated. And it is because you destroy lives and families, and futures. You've got nothing. I couldn't care less if you spend 40 years learning how to dole out guesswork meds and needlessly medicalize human distress. You're not a doctor, you are a pretender, as are all your colleagues. Every dollar you've ever earned was paid for with the blood of my fellow pharmacaust victims. Your kind needs to be wiped out for the good of mankind. How dare you quote shakespeare. You're not a doctor. Some rampant misguided ideology that misleads the globe called you a Dr, but you do nothing but harm. I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of thousands of dollars you earned while I needlessly languished in iatrogenic disability for years. It's not about finding another therapist you fool. The problem is, you smarmy do gooder fools decide to go to college to become versed in 'treating' human distress. And every one of you receives the same contrived faith based body of bullshit guesswork 'science' in college, and comes out and presumes to tell ME and all of us, what madness is and what it fucking isn't. You haven't got a fucking clue. How dare you even attempt to lord your bullshit credentials over me or anyone. They aren't worth the paper they are written on, nor is any bullshit script for any guesswork pharma "medicine" you dole out on a daily basis. In fact it is one of my small consolations in life that I can know full well in my heart that all you shrinks have wasted your lives, shiny cars and incomes aside, you've lived and died having made the planet worse. It takes a special kind of person to tell a human being who comes to you distressed that they have a fucking brain disease, and just heap with a shovel more problems and distress, which is what you all do you hubristic animals! You all need to sent to an island where you are force fed neuroleptics until you look like Michael J Fox. Nothing can save you if there is a god... nothing. Convince yourself you are a fit and proper person providing 'care' all you like. In 300 years, after millions more die, your profession will be looked at as one of the darkest mistakes ever made by humanity.
TherapyFirst, It's good you're here. Let's see if you can actually agree to disagree without patronizing. It's scary how well intentioned you are. You have a point that parenting is not always good, but this has always been the case. No parent is 100% perfect, and it stands to reason no parent is 100% imperfect (unless they're also a psychiatrist, hah, a little joke). You seem confident that anyone who thinks all psychiatry and psychology is bad is at the very least mentally ill and/or a Scientologist. Troubling. I'd recommend you be a little more aware of your own limits. Your training doesn't make you any more compassionate or perceptive than anyone else, I say tactfully understating. You write: "For those who hate what I am simply because of my professional title, then that's your problem, not mine. One thing about my style you will learn is I am honest and direct." Your assumption that I hate you is insulting as due to the wrongs visited on me by your profession, I spend every day working not to be destroyed by hate, and do so quite well, but still you should take responsibility for the actions of those in your profession, actions which are worthy of hate. And as I'm sure you learned in pshrink school, when someone tells you they are honest and direct, well...still, it's good to have you here, the pshrink who thinks he's helping people with therapy and no meds perspective is a vocal one so it's necessary to address, imuho. Posted by: Sally at June 10, 2008 02:47 AMSally: First of all, thank you for reading what I offer. And I am glad to participate if it is of value to some. Hey, if it stimulates healthy debate and difference of opinion, that's cool too. But, respectful debate is what I will engage in, not hate. Experience is perspective, to some degree at least. Two people can witness an accident and give two different versions, depending not only where they were when it happened, but who was involved, where it occurred, and perhaps numerous other factors. Does that mean one is right and the other wrong if the versions differ? Maybe. Maybe not. My point: Two patients can go to the same psychiatrist and walk out with two reactions. Patient 1 could say, "I agree with him/her and will try the treatment recommendation." Patient 2 might say, "that doc is a bastard, he/she doesn't know what the hell he/she is saying." Yet the doctor could have said the exact same thing to both patients. Why the difference? That is what is error #2: the cookie cutter approach. One size does not fit all. By the way, to be as fair as I possibly can to Mr Poe, I can't in good faith read your writings if they are going to be as hostile as they appear to me. I feel my above comment Sally alludes to is how I react to your comments: If you hate me, and that is how you come across, that is your issue, not mine. Honesty and directness are not easy. that is why some patients walk out and say what Patient 2 said above. My interpretation may be wrong. But if they don't return to reveal more information, we'll never know. Because in the end, isn't that why most people go to a psychiatrist, because what is going on now is not working? Again, just an opinion. Posted by: therapyfirst at June 10, 2008 09:14 AMTherapyfirst says "Patient 1 could say, "I agree with him/her and will try the treatment recommendation." Patient 2 might say, "that doc is a bastard, he/she doesn't know what the hell he/she is saying." Yet the doctor could have said the exact same thing to both patients. Why the difference? Diagnostic impression? Ha! Yeah shrinks do a good impression of a doctor! How about they walk out because you are telling them to perturb their neurology, the seat of the very self, with blatant speculation and guesswork? How about the fact that you are no doubt not informing them of the dangerousness of the drugs. How about walking out because a psycho with a checklist is telling you to end your family line because you have a 'brain disease'? How about the fact that someone is either going to be scared shitless of what you tell them they 'have' and comply... or see you as an absurd aberration of all that is humanistic and reasonable about mankind and walk out in disgust. The color of your shirt? Are kidding me? What about the color of your money? Blood red. You people honestly consider yourselves 'tailors' of 'treatment options' don't you? It makes me sick. The justice system protects you as you ride roughshod over peoples lives without a clue what is going on their brains, masquerading as 'brain doctors'. Write yourself a script for some thorazine and take it for a couple of months and tell me how you feel. You people don't have a clue. You seriously think someone walks out of your office because they can't handle the 'truth and directness' of what you are saying. If the universe ever gave you even a glimpse of the truth of your actions and their consequences, you'd have to be restrained from jumping under the nearest train. You might not be inherently evil, innately evil, born evil, I don't think you are. But I hate your profession, its training, its extralegal power, its hubris, its 'research', its lies, and I will hate it until the day I die. This is both our problems. And one thing is for sure, this problem came into my life out of the mouth of one of your kind. And wrong, most people go see a psychiatrist because your profession is blessed to live in the age of mindless biological determinism in the wider society, and blessed to be very profitable for Big Pharma, and blessed to have the ear of government, and blessed to be able to experiment on coerced humans, and blessed to have billions to spend on tv ads, and blessed to be written into the tv dramas and movies, and blessed to be considered objective enough for the state to destroy peoples bodies with drugs, but subjective enough to avoid malpractice for the misdiagnoses and false diagnoses you make every day, smearing people's good names for life, and destroying people's self determination and confidence in a future for themselves, it is blessed to be in control of the spin and the message, it is blessed that you mainly intimidate and destroy the brains of your long term patients so they cannot participate in activism to shut you down, it is blessed that families pass down the generations that you are the place to go to for human distress problems.... That is why someone walks through your door. If they knew that door was the most dangerous door they had ever walked into in their lives, they wouldn't. You're blessed because the risks of psychiatry aren't taught to the young. And boy do I wish I could have been warned before I trusted your pathetic 'science' with my future, my good name, my life, my body, and my brain. You have NO understanding do you... 'the color of your shirt' are you KIDDING me? Repent. Posted by: Poe at June 10, 2008 10:54 AM Anna wrote: The big issue with the the term PTSD is that it appeared so that the disease were treated by psychiatry. You are exactly right. Therapy is hard work. Medications are easy. Let's also not forget that the VA has a service connected disability system. Being on an antidepressant will help future disability claims. PTSD rarely occurs in the absence of some secondary factor (relationship problems, possible compensation), but there are times when it does occur without these factors. However, I have rarely seen it without those factors present in some degree. http://thecountryshrink.com Posted by: thecountryshrink at June 15, 2008 09:59 AMI didn't say therapy is hard work and medication is easy... "Being on an antidepressant will help future disability claims. PTSD rarely occurs in the absence of some secondary factor (relationship problems, possible compensation), but there are times when it does occur without these factors. However, I have rarely seen it without those factors present in some degree." I didn't understand "how being on an antidepressant can help a future disability..." I'm sorry. Do you believe that these soldiers need these pills? One of the most strange discussions I saw on PTSD was approaching Katrina survivors. End of discussion. For me this is the begging. Just now I've noticed that we are discussing the same subject on two different posts. There we go again...:( Posted by: Ana at June 15, 2008 04:01 PMThat article in time certainly opened my eyes to this issue. Glad awareness is spreading.(Visual response: http://www.zegiel.net/?p=449). Posted by: Daniel Zegiel at September 6, 2008 03:15 PMPost a comment
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