FYM This...!

[Irvine511]

They take "chemical imbalance" as a common fact, and medication as the silver bullet.

i don't see anyone here doing this. i think everyone realizes that medicine is one tool used to combat mental illness, and it's often a very powerful tool and uncountable lives have been improved with medication. but a magic bullet? sorry.

 

[LJT]

And just because everyone accepts the theory, they still can't answer why the number of mental illness has increased since the advent of psychiatric medication. Does that seem odd to you?

Doesn't seem that odd, at least since the 70's I believe diagnosis of and recognition of various mental illnesses has increased. We're just better at detecting it, like an awful lot of other illnesses. There is also a case that can be made we are making medicalising some things that shouldn't be especially in regards to the DSM.

The advent of psychiatric medication sorta dovetails with most psychiatric disorders being taken as a an actual science and medical issue.

My hopes for this thread is mental healthcare reform that offers freedom of choice. My hope is that mental health services is offered to anyone who needs or wants them, but also they may choose alternative treatments, other than psychiatry and medication. Alternative treatments include Eastern medicine alternatives, the choice to stay in psychotherapy and not in 15 minute sessions with a shrink. Alternative treatment for me means basically living healthy without some medical machinations.

I've been thinking about how most people with disability go about their day-- living. My guess is that the disabled all try to make it through the day, some having it harder than others.

I'm going to go out on the limb of common sense to say that the "mentally ill", particularly those on disability, definitely do just try to get by in life. I'll go out on the limb to say that we're too busy on the Internet than to scheme some grand plan of terror and mayhem. In fact, we're too busy suffering; and we're suffering for having suffering. We're suffering from trauma and adversity that has detoured us from a norm of living. We end up being diagnosed from being depression to everything possible on DSM (probably not exaggerating), and being prescribed from one antidepressant to a cocktail of meds (definitely not exaggerating). We're being denied of our original trauma and actual problems that are most likely not due to chemical imbalance in the first place.

But most I've noticed lately is that people lump the "mentally ill"--the "mentally ill" encompasses the depressed, the bipolar, the anxious, the phobic, the "schizo*"... all lumped into one. As if we're all time bombs ready to go off. As if we should be herded and warded off into some camp, like cattle or subhumans.

But whatever the "Other" (politicians, docs, neighbors) may have in mind to treat us, I don't want the conventional methods of meds, electroshock therapy, and hospitalization for treatment. I don't want treatment; I want healing. Healing from healthy living and relationships. Not medication, diagnosis, and isolation. And it is the prospect of healing and its possibility that government and public policy could preclude it, is what concerns me the most.

Mental Health reform is an admiral reform, which most people I imagine would agree with, there is a lot that could be done better for the patient than just medication, though again I reiterate I don't know of anyone which recommends this as the only way. In a cost driven world I know medication is often pushed as the way and I know it is abused, it does not come as a shock. The alternatives you mention though such as eastern medicine and that are a fantasy in terms of mental health. Your going from something that at least has some good evidence to support it's efficacy to something that has none.

I also agree you should be looked at as human beings and not as dangerous animals, but again the media like simple narratives. Many people with mental health issues do suffer alone, but your line about that they should just be able to get on with your life with your own choices, those in the throes of a deeply psychotic state or at the depths of depression are not prone to make the most life affirming decisions. Medication and therapy are at least the best means we have at the moment to enable them to seek out and make their own choices about life in the future.

 

[solemole]

Gotta go.

Few questions to ask:
1.) Why is the number of mentally ill people increasing since the advent of psychiatric medication?
2.) Why do poorer countries like India have schizophrenics who fare better than the rich countries, AND only 16% are regularly maintained on medication?
3.) Why has those mentally ill/psychotic on disability grown 4x since the arrival of Thorazine?

Are these questions not relevant to understanding what's behind mental illness?

 

[solemole]

Few questions, points to distill:

1. Why are the number of mentally ill people increasing since the advent of psychiatric medication?

2. Why is the disability rate due to psychotic illness has increased 4x in our society since the arrival of Thorazine?

3. Why do schizophrenics fare better in poorer countries like India, where only 16% of schizophrenics are regularly maintained on medication?

Are these questions not relevant for understanding what's behind mental illness?

 

[LJT]

2.) Underreporting I imagine, the family often try to look after the person themselve and struggle on doing so, shame and all that of seeking help for someone who is unwell in that way...I have a good friend who worked at a psychiatric hospital in India, and well most of the schizophrenics were chained in their cells.

Plus psych meds are expensive they don't have ready access to them.

 

[solemole]

Many people with mental health issues do suffer alone, but your line about that they should just be able to get on with your life with your own choices, those in the throes of a deeply psychotic state or at the depths of depression are not prone to make the most life affirming decisions. Medication and therapy are at least the best means we have at the moment to enable them to seek out and make their own choices about life in the future.

Probably right. Though, we ourselves can't pick out a person in public and literally go "Hey, you're weird! You should be hospitalized."

There are those mentally ill suffering and suffering for suffering, because they're ostracized by other people... and all they want to heal. and for those who want to heal, like me, want that freedom of choice. In fact, we're the ones trying to take the first steps and effort toward that path, but are often block by the doctors and the system.

anyways, later.

 

[Steved1998]

People on meds for most of their lifetime are more likely to end up with Alzheimer's or some cognitive degeneration, and brain shrinkage.

 

[Diemen]

Free Your Mind. Foist Your Mind. We're here to be challenged with preconceived notions and presumptions, and to exchange thoughts and ideas, right? Or are we to mildly agree on somethings and shut out the unacceptable topics by consensus?

Yeah, I've got a ton load of information. And it isn't fair to dump it all.

But if people want their world shaken and see things differently, well, here's a crash course.

A ton load of information? Shaking up people's worlds?

Perhaps it would engender more productive discussion if you came across a little less aggressively certain that you've got all the answers and anyone who begs to differ just doesn't have your knowledge yet.

 

[PhilsFan]

1. Why are the number of mentally ill people increasing since the advent of psychiatric medication?

Because we have been getting better at diagnosing mentally ill people?

 

[solemole]

Gave you the citation. Go read it.

 

[solemole]

2.) Underreporting I imagine, the family often try to look after the person themselve and struggle on doing so, shame and all that of seeking help for someone who is unwell in that way...I have a good friend who worked at a psychiatric hospital in India, and well most of the schizophrenics were chained in their cells.

Plus psych meds are expensive they don't have ready access to them.

Just got back from watching Zero Dark Thirty. Strangely, there's something I identify with it but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's a TV show... anyway, sorry...

LJT-- The question concerning why the disability rate due to psychotic illness since the arrival of Thorazine, and the other more general question, why are there more mentally ill people since the advent of psychiatric medication, are obviously similar. This is the question that has been plaguing Whitaker that he felt he had to investigate and take a stand.

The other article by Healy takes its concern about antipsychotics administered to veterans and suicide on the same logic. Why since the administration of antipsychotics to veterans, suicide have increased significantly when compared before 1955.

It seems that you are quite knowledge about psychiatric medicine on a professional/academic level. You might want to check out Whitaker's book if you have the time or interest.

 

[solemole]

A ton load of information? Shaking up people's worlds?

Perhaps it would engender more productive discussion if you came across a little less aggressively certain that you've got all the answers and anyone who begs to differ just doesn't have your knowledge yet.

You're right, I sucked up the air when I started this thread. (Not being sarcastic.)

This thread is for those with disappointment with psychiatric medication.

I'm already sick of people just coming in to chastise repetitively the same thing. But it's their right to an opinion.

Sure, call me irresponsible for saying/warning to stay away from psychiatric medications. Make that a litmus test for crazy people, and I have been outed here as crazy.

People understandably want to commiserate on experiences with meds and family and take a more grateful stance, go start another thread.

Since I'm the only one who's upset with the issue and brought it up, go lock this thread.

 

[PhilsFan]

This thread is for those with disappointment with psychiatric medication.

This is downright silly. What is the point of a thread devoted to one side of an issue?

This thread SHOULD be for people who want to discuss psychiatric medication. It's your inability to deal with disagreement that has caused all of the problems.

 

[solemole]

This is downright silly. What is the point of a thread devoted to one side of an issue?

This thread SHOULD be for people who want to discuss psychiatric medication. It's your inability to deal with disagreement that has caused all of the problems.

Yeah, sure, okay. I started this thread without setting the parameters or direction of the discussion.

Want to start a discussion about psychiatric medication? Start another thread. This thread is tainted for such discussions.

I don't know whether it's my "inability to deal with disagreements that has caused all the problems", because I started this thread and people stepped out, skimmed what I posted, and called bullshit. Disagreement on my part? Mmm.

 

[Galeongirl]

If you want to discuss psychiatric medication, then why are you making outrageous and moronic claims like "People should love their kids, rather than send them to a psychiatrist"?

Been there, done that. My parents sure loved me, I got attention whatever. But that sure as hell didn't save my childhood. While going to a psych probably would have.

 

[solemole]

If you want to discuss psychiatric medication, then why are you making outrageous and moronic claims like "People should love their kids, rather than send them to a psychiatrist"?

Been there, done that. My parents sure loved me, I got attention whatever. But that sure as hell didn't save my childhood. While going to a psych probably would have.

It was a bythought. At the end. An "advice."

 

[solemole]

OKay, you want me to turn things around. Enough of my nonsense.

Let's play thought puzzles... it's more creative and practical and freeforming.

Here's a few thought puzzles:

1.) You were the most paranoid person in the town and everyone knows it. You walk into a public restaurant with your parents, and you hear "there's the most paranoid person in the world." ... Are you really paranoid?

2.) If you woke up and found yourself in a mental institution, can anyone get out?

3.) Ok, more serious and practical: You're depressed and a loner. You're incapable of making friends, but want to. You're socially awkward.

Your neighbors are scared of you because they think you're a loner and probably do something one day. You're just as scared of them as they are of you... What do you do?

///going to take a nap.

see u lates

 

[solemole]

If you want to discuss psychiatric medication, then why are you making outrageous and moronic claims like "People should love their kids, rather than send them to a psychiatrist"?

Been there, done that. My parents sure loved me, I got attention whatever. But that sure as hell didn't save my childhood. While going to a psych probably would have.

Ok, I've channelled my unconscious, and I can finally articulate why I said it.

Trauma

Kids get sexually abused by their relatives or close family friends, and parents won't believe it.

Kids get emotionally bullied/ostracized, nobody steps up, school authorities won't deal with it, parents won't believe it.

Kids facing some kind of trauma that is never acknowledged by their parents. Their parents don't take the kids' issues seriously. Bam! Kids grow up acting out and f'd up, or they end up through the mental health system and doped up.

Parents who don't deal with/take kids' issues seriously.

Does that satisfy you peeps? Serious issue or nonsense?

 

[Diemen]

Make that a litmus test for crazy people, and I have been outed here as crazy.

You're assigning opinions to others that they haven't actually voiced. No one is calling you crazy.

People understandably want to commiserate on experiences with meds and family and take a more grateful stance, go start another thread.

Their commiseration is in direct response to an assertion you made in your opening arguments, so it is pretty on topic.

Look, if you are honestly starting a thread in FYM with the expectation that only a narrow vein of topic is to be allowed, and dissent is unwelcome, then you're in the wrong place.

 

[Diemen]

Ok, I've channelled my unconscious, and I can finally articulate why I said it.

Trauma

Kids get sexually abused by their relatives or close family friends, and parents won't believe it.

Kids get emotionally bullied/ostracized, nobody steps up, school authorities won't deal with it, parents won't believe it.

Kids facing some kind of trauma that is never acknowledged by their parents. Their parents don't take the kids' issues seriously. Bam! Kids grow up acting out and f'd up, or they end up through the mental health system and doped up.

Parents who don't deal with/take kids' issues seriously.

Does that satisfy you peeps? Serious issue or nonsense?

You make this sound like an either/or situation: either parents listen and raise their kids well, or they don't and just send their kid to a psych for meds.

I don't think you'll get any argument here that it's wrong if parents don't even attempt to understand what their kid is going through and just put them on meds.

But that's not the only choice. What of those parents who do listen, who do believe, who do work with their children and then also end up going the route of meds?

You're ignoring those who have a mental disorder that was not brought about by environmental influences or lack of involved parenting.

 

[solemole]

Look, if you are honestly starting a thread in FYM with the expectation that only a narrow vein of topic is to be allowed, and dissent is unwelcome, then you're in the wrong place.

People have stories. Personal, tragic stories; some shared in this thread. They all seem to suggest that there was something mental to begin with.

Okay okay. Nothing new I haven't heard before. No offense, people. Same old same old. Good for you they're working. Tough it's not. Everyone shares similar stories.

I started this thread to suggest there are possibly other causes to mental illness.

Besides medication, a mild traumatic brain injury to a toddler (running into something, bump on the head) can significantly change the child's behavior and make them aggressive. That seemingly small incident can have an effect for years. (Daniel Amen, MD "Change Your Brain, Change Your Life")

I can point out other cases in "history".

In the late 19th century, French physician Benedikt Morel discovered an increasing number of adolescents and young adults were exhibiting what he called "precocious dementia", and it spread across Europe. Asylums were filled with these young adults and kids. In 1920s, Carl Jung gave it a new name "schizophrenia." Then, ahem, Dr. Healy received data figures from 19th century North Wales that suggested lead poisoning may be one of the two leading causes, the other being childbirth methods by male obgyns with anesthesia and forceps. (Here's a freebie link: The Madness of Young People | Mad In America

I can bring up the story of German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin who in the late 1800s researched the outcomes of patients at an aslyum in Estonia. He observed and identified patients who suffered what he called "dementia praecox", also came to be known as "schizophrenia", basically more or less similar to the "precocious dementia" mentioned in the previous paragraph. But in a 1990 article British historian Mary Boyle "convincingly argued" in her article "Is Schizophrenia What It Was? A Re-analysis of Kraepelin's and Bleuler's Population" that many of Kraepelin's "dementia praecox" patients were undoubtedly suffering from a viral disease, encephalitis lethargica, which in the late 1800s had yet to be identified. (I'm partially plagiarizing verbatim Whitaker right now without quotes. It's on page 90-91. Sorry.) Basically. the encephalitis lethargica patients got lumped with the schizophrenics, and once they were separated from that group, the patient group that remained was no longer "dementia praecox group."
....
Basically: "The referents of schizophrenia gradually changed until the diagnosis came to be applied to a population who bore only a slight, and possibly superficial, resemblance to Kraeplin's." says Boyle.

In other words, what was a whole other disease got whittled down to Kraeplin's narrow definition of what he called "dementia praecox"/schizophrenia.

===

I can also bring up Whitaker's story (I'm paraphrasing to the best of my ability, which probably sucks) that around 1970s, there was a politics going around in psychology (in particular, psychoanalysis) and psychiatry. Psychoanalysis was on the wane, and psychiatry has rising. But psychiatry did not earn the same respect as the mainstream medical field. So psychiatry had to win approval for being legitimately biomedical. While DSM-II focused on "neurosis", DSM-III was arbitrary compiled to serve as "a defense of the medical model as applied to psychiatric problems." (quote from Colubmia U Robert Spitzer who spearheaded the project) DSM-III became their bible and key to legitimacy.
...
"But as critics at the time noted, it was difficult to understand why this manual should be regarded as a great "scientific" achievement. No scientific discoveries had led to this reconfiguring of psychiatric diagnoses. The biology of mental disorders remained unknown, and the authors of DSM-III even confessed that this was so.

APA President Theodore Blau wrote that DSM more of a "political position paper for the APA than a scientifically-based classification system."(Whitaker 269-270)

....

I can bring pull up all these documentations (though by now, my cynism tells me no one will bother reading citations).

And after all these citing documentation I've given in these posts, what do I get? ... Your/their disagreement. Not mine.

I'm not disregarding people's protest about their experiences. All I'm saying is that there is possibly a different angle to mental illness no one has really thought to examine or have known about.

 

[Steved1998]

?

 

[BoMac]

Not sure what's puzzling you, Steve, it's all there!

 

[Steved1998]

You're right, I sucked up the air when I started this thread. (Not being sarcastic.)

This thread is for those with disappointment with psychiatric medication.

I'm already sick of people just coming in to chastise repetitively the same thing. But it's their right to an opinion.

Sure, call me irresponsible for saying/warning to stay away from psychiatric medications. Make that a litmus test for crazy people, and I have been outed here as crazy.

People understandably want to commiserate on experiences with meds and family and take a more grateful stance, go start another thread.

Since I'm the only one who's upset with the issue and brought it up, go lock this thread.

You start a thread on a controversial subject and don't like the responses. Guess what: that's the Internet. To make matters worse, you don't seem open to different view points and act like everyone else isn't as enlightened as you.

 

[Steved1998]

Not sure what's puzzling you, Steve, it's all there!

I must be living in the dark ages. Oh the tyranny of psychiatry!

 

[Galeongirl]

Ok, I've channelled my unconscious, and I can finally articulate why I said it.

Trauma

Kids get sexually abused by their relatives or close family friends, and parents won't believe it.

Kids get emotionally bullied/ostracized, nobody steps up, school authorities won't deal with it, parents won't believe it.

Kids facing some kind of trauma that is never acknowledged by their parents. Their parents don't take the kids' issues seriously. Bam! Kids grow up acting out and f'd up, or they end up through the mental health system and doped up.

Parents who don't deal with/take kids' issues seriously.

Does that satisfy you peeps? Serious issue or nonsense?

Eh, but wouldn't sending these kids to a psychiatrist actually help them?

I don't get your point, really. In all these cases, talking about it with a psych would help. Even if their parents love them and care for them, you can't expect your child to handle this on their own. And parents can only do so much.

If the parents don't deal with shit seriously, they won't send them to a psych either way, so I once again don't get your point.

And most kids facing trauma don't end up doped up, actually. Most traumas are solved by therapy, rather than medicine.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

OMG, Dawson

you don't seem open to different view points and act like everyone else isn't as enlightened as you.

Sorry to bring it up again but I think that's accurate, and it is Cruise like. Sorry. Don't mean to be glib but it is.

 

[solemole]

You start a thread on a controversial subject and don't like the responses. Guess what: that's the Internet. To make matters worse, you don't seem open to different view points and act like everyone else isn't as enlightened as you.

I don't think I've ever complained or felt upset about starting this thread.

Brilliant work, Sideshow Steve, Brilliant!

 

[solemole]

Eh, but wouldn't sending these kids to a psychiatrist actually help them?

I don't get your point, really. In all these cases, talking about it with a psych would help. Even if their parents love them and care for them, you can't expect your child to handle this on their own. And parents can only do so much.

If the parents don't deal with shit seriously, they won't send them to a psych either way, so I once again don't get your point.

And most kids facing trauma don't end up doped up, actually. Most traumas are solved by therapy, rather than medicine.

I've met quite a few people in college who claimed they've been sexually abused as a child and didn't put the two and two together until years later. Then their parents didn't believe them by then, and the wild teen life--ravin' drugs promiscuity... became clear to them.

Some parents don't have the patience to put up with their kids drama. I've met some of these kids in group therapy in high school. Normal kids who were sent to group therapy because the parents somehow thought they were up to no good and the parents didn't know how to deal with their kids. Their kids ended up on Prozac for no reason.

Movie reference: Ever seen Charlie Bartlett.. don't know if it has basis in reality, but the movie's about a single mom who has her teenage son to see a shrink so that the doc can raise a perfect child without problems. (Dad was in jail for embezzlement).

 

[solemole]

OMG, Dawson



Sorry to bring it up again but I think that's accurate, and it is Cruise like. Sorry. Don't mean to be glib but it is.

Cruise like, schmooze like.

I can say adding the fighting words up... more people got thinking that I'm in protest against them than vice versa, like I'm all upset people aren't believing me.

I'm not upset. I'm just annoyed people parroting like a parody of an SNL parody.