I think the initial poster accepted that meds were useful in SOME cases. As such, I really don't see how your particular experience with meds (which you claim to be good) falsifies what he said.

I also don't see how his post was judgemental or intended to be judgemental.

I personally thought that the effect that he was aiming for was 'empowering'.

Now... How does therapy work for people who have mental illness? Why, by changing their neurology. How else would you suppose it to be effective? We know already that life experiences like learning to cook, being subjected to insults, having close people around us die alter our neurology. And of course the converse holds where having life experiences such as supportive friends, learning how to eat well and exercise and get enough sleep, going to therapy also alters our neurology.

The 'people who are mentally ill need to take their meds just like the diabetic needs to take their insulun' analogy is only as good as psych medications are shown to be comperable to insulun in treatment response. I think that the situations that the initial poster is alluding to, however, aren't situations in which a person takes psych meds and then is 'normal' and continues on functioning (like someone who takes insulun). Rather, he was talking about the cases where people are on 'maintenence' treatments where those maintenence treatments simply don't produce a good level of functioning and integration into society etc.

'Chemical lobotomy' is another term that was used for anti-psychotics in psychiatric circles. The discovery of chlorpromazine (in the 60's) was hailed as a breakthrough in psychiatric treatments precisely because (it was alledged) that it had all the benefits of a lobotomy for clinical management (e.g., lack of independent action) with the added bonus of being reversible once the medication ceased! Unfortunately, the development of tardive diskinesias and dementias undermined the 'reversibility' aspect considerably... But interesting that the effects that anti-psychotics were praised by clinicians for was their ability to grossly sedate people.