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sunrise: I didn't realize that by posting to this thread I was going to be cast into one of two camps.
sunrise, I hope you can appreciate that I was responding to Danialla specifically because she was taking an opposing viewpoint. Ideally, there is more than two camps but if we find the conversation is drifting into two opposing viewpoints, it's often because it's separating into those camps of pro-medication and anti-medication.
Danialla: What I really found offensive was the title of this thread. In my opinion it was needlessly inflammatory. Add to that the references to "physical restraints, ECT, frontal lobotomies", etc. being compared to and found the same as the use of medications, for the sole purpose of " controlling your thoughts and behavior" Come on, talk about perpetuating the stigma of mental illness.
Can you consider for a moment how your comment might be interpreted by someone who has been physically restrained, received ECT, had a lobotomy, or felt that they had been "chemically lobotomized"? When someone makes reference to these actual acts that have happened in their life or other people's lives, are they really perpetuating the stigma of mental illness or are they trying to raise awareness?
This is where it can be helpful to take a look at not only what treatments are used but also, why, and how those specific treatments came into use in the first place.
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In the early 1950s, chlorpromazine--marketed as Thorazine--was introduced for the treatment of psychotic disorders. Initially, physicians praised it for producing a "chemical lobotomy," and noted that it also produced symptoms similar in kind to the encephalitis lethargic virus. It was seen as a drug useful for quieting asylum patients, and not as a "cure" for psychosis. However, over the next decade, the drug underwent an image makeover (which was driven by the pharmaceutical companies), and by the early 1960s chlorpromazine and other newly introduced neuroleptics were hailed as "safe, antischizophrenic" medications.
Source: Mad in America
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Antipsychotic medication was initially marketed as a chemical lobotomy because it produced a similar deadening of responses. Because it was chemically induced however, the treatment was perceived to be "more humane" than the surgically induced frontal lobotomy, which was itself considered to be more humane than treatments such as metrazole convulsive therapy. Marketing techniques for new therapies are nearly always based on the deficiencies of the old ones. For example, the new antipsychotics were presented as superior to the old ones because they produced less neurological side effects like tardive dykinethesia. What we now know is that the new atypicals produce a
different kind of damage in some people such as metabolic dysfunction, stroke and pulmonary complications.
Now some will argue whether mental illness is really an "illness". Expressing the view that medications are only a crutch, you use them because you obviously are not working hard enough in therapy..... you all do have the time and money to go to therapy right??? That a doctor's sole purpose in prescribing these evil medications are only to "control" your thoughts and behaviors.... maw ha ha ha. Please.....
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Patient groups in the 1960s and 1970s often protested vigorously against the use of the medications, and fought in court for the right to forgo such treatment. What made their protests particularly powerful was that they came at the same time that the Soviets were using neuroleptics to punish dissidents.
Source: Mad in America
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Historically, psychiatric medication (and treatments) have been used to control other people therefore it's not false to point that out. It may not be true in your own experience but that doesn't mean it's not true of the experiences of others.
From a slightly different perspective,
a woman once told me she hated me because I had recovered without medication. I can't think of any valid reason why that should inspire hatred. In her case, I suspect she decided my non-medicated recovery meant I was in "
the enemy camp. I think it also brought up some fears of her own that maybe there was something "wrong" with her or her loved ones if they couldn't do the same and she felt a need to defend that. Meantime, I was only trying to speak from my own experience but I was shut down for doing so.
We seem to be in agreement that we are all different and the most effective treatment is the one that works for that person. But we shouldn't blind ourselves to a wider reality either. There is plenty to get inflamed about by the system of care and treatments offered to "the mentally ill". If we don't allow those views to be expressed, we silence and invalidate the experiences of those who might be different from us.