Anti-Psychiatry: What do you think of it?

OH MY GAWD!!! Schizcophrenia a "myth" or caused by "cowardice" or failure of nerve". What incredibly outdated beliefs! This kind of "thinking" scares me because these people develop a following that believes what they say. Don't get me started on Tom Cruise and what he spouts... floks he is someone who gets paid to act, he has no basis for what he says other than his beliefs.

For those who argue mental illness does not exist because there are no medical tests to prove it exists. I go along with the poster who questioned if colon cancer didn't exist before we developed the technology to test for it. Psychiatry/psychology as a science has only been around for a little over a hundred years. Just because we lack the technology to detect mental illness doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It means we lack the technology. A tip o' the hat to the person who pointed out that the physical sciences have changed dramatically (and continue to change) over the passage of time. Psychology/psychiatry are still growing. I had a psych prof in college who expressed the belief that eventually we will discover that all mental illness has a biological basis.

Payne, I'm with you about being glad I live in today's world with the meds we now have. Like another poster, I've battled depression most of my life. I would not be alive today if it were not for my meds. When I first started taking them I was resistant to the idea of possibly taking them the rest of my life. Now, when I'm living a healthy, productive, happy life I don't care that I'll be on them the rest of my life. My existance pre-meds was not living it was existing, and a miserable existance at that. Like I said - now life is good. I don't mean I'm happy, happy, happy all the time. I mean I expreience the ups, downs and in-betweens that other people experience without daily plans how to off myself. again, like I said, I'd be long dead were it not for my meds.

Anti-psychiatry is crazy. L. Ron Hubbard was crazy. Thomas Szasz was crazy. And yes, this IS an entirely intentional negation of their opinions. They were and are, not only crazy, but malicious. If you feel drawn to their ideas, think again seriously. There are people who help society (including those with mental illness) and there are those who hurt it. These people hurt it. And the late Mr. Hubbard is not immune from such comment because he insisted and possibly even believed that he had founded a new religion.

I hope I'm not getting off the subject too much, but haven't we now gotten to the point where most folks are being told that at least, as someone suggested, the "real" mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, ARE biologically based? For example, that bipolar disorder is just like diabetes......

Psychiatrists no longer even bother, it seems, to "talk" to patients. They are medical doctors who dole out medications that somehow treat the disorder. Even the drug companies admit that they don't know how the drugs work. I suppose that ignorance is true of other kinds of drugs, too, but it does bother me.

The questions are: Does something in the person's life trigger the brain changes? Are the brain changes themselves the cause of the "abnormal" behavior? Or is it a combination of both?

I am "labeled" (shades of Szasz?) as having bipolar II disorder. However, I found it interesting that one psychiatrist told me that I would always be prone to depression because of an abusive childhood.

I am looking forward to the day when the professional who does the therapy with the patient is also the professional who dispenses the drugs. I still think it's a strange dichotomy, perhaps ironically.

that bipolar disorder is just like diabetes......

for some reason this makes me want to headdesk and break stuff.

Brain is biological... when you laugh, certain chemicals are released... the cause and effects are blurry. Although "it's all in your head" is cruel and untrue, "It's a chemical imbalance, pop a pill and you'll be fine" is even crueler. Often... it is in our head... not the illness itself, but the cognitive distortions... which one needs to overcome in order to live full life... happiness is not matter of chemistry (otherwise we might be snorting coke all day long and be "happy"), but a result of our actions, etc.

I think the people who are anti-psychiatry have run into the bad people in the mental health field. And that is sad. I think that the mental health fields really need to have more checks and balances in their field to weed out the horrible people.

My pdoc is pretty nifty. However I had a couple pdocs that I wouldn't even send a pet cockroach to.

Payne, once upon a time psychiatrists did therapy and prescribed meds. Then along came managed care. Insurance companies will no longer pay pdocs do provide therapy. That said, I am blessed to have one of the really good pdocs out there. He listens to me. He talks to me. There are times I feel I had a full therapy session in a 15 minte med check with him. He does provide therapy, it's what I get out of being with him. Psychologists are lobbying to be able to write scrips for psych meds. I believe thay have the privilege in some states, but not others. Some therapists are also taking steps in order to be able to write scripts. The T I used to see went back to school and became an ARNP so her could write scripts for his clients.

As to changes in the brain... there is one theory - everyone please note I said theory(!) - that some people are born with a predisposition to mental illness. Then there is an event in their life that triggers the physical changes that lead to mental illness.

Frankly I never understood the debate whether mental illness is strictly physcial/medical or mental/psychological. To me it's kind of like the nature/nurture debate. It makes sense to me that it's a combination. One current focus in counseling is on biopsychosocial. There's biology involved (the bio). There's thinking involved (the psycho-). And there's input from the outside world (social).

As to not knowing how meds work... I refer back to my post where I said I would be dead were it not for my meds. I don't have to know how they work to know they work for me. How do I know this? Because at one point I worked with my pdoc to weanmyself off them. The day I realized I was making plans for suicide and that didn't bother me I called my pdoc to schedule an appointment ASAP. I need my meds - period. Or... aspirin has been around for ages. We still don't know how it works. I still take asirin if I'm in pain because it relieves my pain.

As to not knowing how meds work... I refer back to my post where I said I would be dead were it not for my meds. I don't have to know how they work to know they work for me.

The things... that we don't know how they work. And they are prescribed as candy. We are bombarded with "you feel sad - take meds" advertisments.

Btw... I actually like the aspirin analogy... because aspirin numbs pain... sometimes it's all you need, because you cannot adress what is causing it, or it's something that will correct itself... but sometimes feeding on painkillers can kill you because you don't adress the underlying issues... same with psych meds... sometimes they are a crutch (nothing wrong with those if they enable you to walk), sometimes they help. But sometimes they mask the real cause and do more harm in the end.

My thought is the "third way" MentalIllnessPolicy talks about has some merit. When research financed by pharmaceutical firms in the USA cannot be trusted to conduct honest science, I am concerned.

When 75% of the funding for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) comes from pharmaceuticals I question the efficacy of NAMI's information about medications. http://www.nami.org/Content/Navigati...stry1Q2010.pdf

When the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health says,

Today’s treatments are not good enough. Based on the results in other areas of medicine, we should be able to do better. Our Council workgroup told us that the path to finding new treatments is long, expensive, and essential. But even with current treatments, we can do much better if we learn how to tailor these treatments to the needs of each individual. Going forward, NIMH will be looking for clinical trials that are personalized (using predictive biomarkers) or preemptive (focused on early intervention) to maximize public health impact. http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/direct...-08-2010.shtml

I agree.

When Director Thomas Insel talks about NIMH research projects, I am excited: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/index.shtml

The point for me is there is recognition that treatment for mental illness needs to get better, more accountability especially regarding the influence of pharmaceuticals is good and more transparency is welcome.

May I ask what your basis is for saying these people hurt it? What qualifies them as crazy?

Because they questioned the status quo? Because they refused to accept everything they had been told and chose to take an alternative approach to things?

My take on Szasz's saying that mental illness does not exist (though I have not cleared this construction with him) is that mental illness in the way it is usually presented to us does not exist. At least this makes some sense to me.

A lot of people have had some bad experiences with psychiatry, or perhaps more accurately with bad psychiatrists. A friend of mine in uni who was previously intelligent, witty, and outgoing, become depressed in the early 90's while she was still in school and was drugged into a zombie like state. She was clearly overmedicated and to this day remains on many medications and has never returned to her pre meds level of functioning. I believe this is not an uncommon story. So I do think the anti-psychiatry movement has some merits if only in getting us to question the status quo and challenge the psychiatric establishment. Those on the extreme fringes of the movement who say psychiatry has no value or is dangerous are simply irresponsible in my opinion.

Personally, I've benefited a lot from psychiatry and meds, so I'm generally pretty pro psychiatry. I've had one really awful psychiatrist but even she helped me, and I've had 3 really excellent psychiatrists. I've also had excellent in patient experiences, and I've had good success with meds. I realize that to an extent I've been lucky that I live in a city with a world leading psych hospital, at which I'm a patient.

But I also take a very active role in my recovery. I research everything. I believe in maintaining a healthy lifestyle and having lots of interests helps keep me out of my depression. I can afford to pay for private therapy from an expert. I'm also fully capable of and willing to advocate for myself.

My one criticism of modern psychiatry that is based on my experiences, is a movement away from a recovery model to a managed symptoms model. It's like once you're diagnosed with a mental illness the focus is on your limitations and how best you can manage to live within those limitations, rather than on returning you to a pre-illness level of functionning. This may be an appropriate approach for some people, at some points in their lives. But it's not for me. I'm highly educated, intelligent, and ambitious as all get out. I'm constantly bumping up against mental health professionals who tell me to be carefull, to take jobs that are below my skill level etc. I simply don't listen to them, but then I'm pretty confident in my own abilities. I wonder how people who are less confident and self motivated handle the not so subtle message that they have to settle for less than perhaps their best because they have a mental illness.

--splitimage

Hi, Dark_Dreams,

I have no problem with challengers of the status quo or the questioning of any currently accepted orthodoxy, provided that the challenge and the questioning have some basis in objective fact (and yes, I'm quite aware that some people would challenge even the existence of such a thing as objective fact).

I myself do not believe that either Mr. Hubbard's or Dr. Szasz's opinions about mental illness had or have, taken as a whole, any basis in objective fact. That is by no means to say that current orthodoxies in mental health are or should be sacrosanct. There are many ideas and practices in mental health that are highly questionable, in my personal opinion.

Unfortunately, both Mr. Hubbard's and Dr. Szasz's critiques were and remain overly broad and, again, taken as a whole, had and have no basis in fact. There are credible members of the anti-psychiatry school and then there is (as in everything) the lunatic fringe. You can gather where I'd place Mr. Hubbard and Dr. Szasz.

Obviously, this is just my personal opinion. I do tend to have retrograde opinions like this, compared to some.

Take care!

I also have issues with Mr. Szasz and Mr. Hubbard. I think both of them need to spend a good deal of time ALONE trying to deal with people of their favorite group, who, unmedicated, are trying to deal with their illnesses and try to tell them that their suffering is only a result of society's definition of their mind sets. I have been with too many people for whom the world has stopped making sense to buy that the anxiety and the terror is all the fault of society. I would invite them to start with me.
On the other hand, you can't drug everything into nonexistance. get rid of one thing, you still have to deal with the psychological consequences of having had the psychiatric problem for years, in some cases for almost all ones life. That often can't be medicated away. And no, you don't know why some of this stuff works, any more than you know exactly why most of the pain medications on the market work, or why some of the anti cancer medicationn or treatments work. If you think all of those are thoroughly understood, think again, and again...
There are theories galour, and doctors and researchers are good at presenting them in a convincing manner, but there is a lot that we don't know about the body, especially about the nervous system, whether Central or peripheral. That asperine you take isn't as simple as you think. Not by a long shot.
I know what I have been taking hasn't been uncomplicated, and there has been a price I have had to pay, but I have been better off with my meds, so I take them. They have given me ten to fifteen years of life I otherwise would not have had, where as all Hubbard and Szasz's theories would have given me was a life of going around being life's little victim, if I hade even survived. Not everyone should be medicated, and of them not eeryone should be for life, and NO ONE should be with out therapy, but everyone should have the choice if it is needed.

I told myself I wasn't going to add anything else here, but maybe my mania is kicking in?

I was just remembering that years ago, when I taught abnormal psych, the book said that drugs were given to patients so that they would be able to benefit from therapy. Now I'm not so sure that that is the case.

By the way, does aspirin say anywhere in the materials that the doctors don't know why it works? Psychiatric drugs admit that readily--e.g., "It's thought that blah-blah influences the neurotransmitter blah-blah" or whatever. I'm not bothered by the ignorance of aspirin's therapeutic mechanisms. I just don't like the fact that it's my BRAIN that's being experimented with by powerful psychiatric drugs that can have devastating side effects, such as tardive dyskinesia, the slowing of the thinking processes, and other psychomotor problems. But I guess we'll just have to wait until more is learned about the brain and the nervous system as a whole. I do agree that SOMEBODY could do better in treating us. But, let's face it, the "normal" population isn't generally worried about the mentally ill, as long as we are doped up and kept out of the way.

I agree that Big Pharma is not all that motivated to come up with new research and drugs, except to make money. The so-called "new" drugs are generally just a twist on the old ones--like Pristiq being a "version" of Effexor. They just dope us up. I do think that I, too, have been a victim of being overmedicated. Hence, I am grinding my axe.

One of the things that has impressed me about this thread is the passion we have for getting better. Life is difficult even without an illness (so I have heard). Frustration with treatment is common. The ill want to get better NOW and the professionals want to help them. The simple truth is getting better is hard. For some getting better may not happen.

Whatever opinion we have about the antis, governmental agencies and professional organizations have acknowledged they need to do better. A component of getting better has been addressing some of the antis' concerns.

Elsewhere, I have been taking part in a discussion related to the same themes. This is what I had to say about it there...

Mr. Jaffe comes to this discussion with a reputation that precedes him lizardlady.

- Torrey suggests terms for "the junk heap of lexicographic history"

- DJ Jaffe and the Treatment Advocacy Center

- Anosgonosia and the Treatment Advocacy Center

Mr. Jaffe also maintains a blog at Huffington Post that is linked through his profile. Should you wish to understand his perspectives better, you can read that.

Meantime, I would suggest that before you invest your faith in what someone has said -- given that we can all say anything -- you verify that the information you have been provided with is valid. This is why I tend to provide links in my responses, so people can follow up and determine for themselves if what I've said is verifiable and true.

~ Namaste

The following is lifted from Peter Breggin's website...

Those who wish to know more about Breggin's work can review his website or use a search engine to locate more information about him.

Dr. Breggin is not what I would call an "Anti-Psychiatrist". He may be more correctly identified as a participant of the "Critical-Psychiatry" movement.

Lumping his efforts and expertise in with the religious movement of Scientology is, I feel, a means of attempting to discredit his efforts to hold the field of psychiatry accountable for the harm that can be produced by psychiatric medications and procedures like lobotomy and electro-convulsive therapy.

Thanks spiritual emergency for the explanation & the links - I fully intend to explore them.

And I think you're right when you say that psychiatry has lost it's focus on recovery. Simply keeping people out of the hospital seems to be the goal, and that to me is not real recovery. Every Fri. night I talk to an average of 7 psychiatric patients. All of them are on disability and see no hope of getting off of it. All of them are on multiple meds. All are extremely socially isolated. To me that is not recovery. When I disclose to them that I'm a psychiatric consumer, it helps with rapport, but they are all stunned when I say I work full time.

ok - so I don't have schizophrenia or bipolar, just recurrent severe episodes of MDD and PTSD. But I have insisted on full recovery as my goal, because anything less was unacceptable to me. I'm lucky that I'm able to afford private talk therapy with an outstanding psychologist because she's really helped me in a way that meds can't. Yes I take meds, and I don't like to think about what I'd be like without them, but to me they merely stabilized me enough to do the talk therapy which was critical to my recovery.

By the way have you read "The Centre Can Not Hold" by Elyn Saks. It's her account of living with Schizophrenia and documents the difference in treatment approaches she experienced in the UK and the US. I believe she does take meds but lives a very successful life in recovery.

--splitimage

Namaste, while I agree that therer are some people who do reocover from what we call schizophrenia without medical treatment, Iand i have yself seen a woman improve greatly just from therapy alone, I think it should also be fair to pint out that what we tend to call schizophrenia is a collection of symtoms, and perhaps a series of brain rythmsif we even get so far as to check those. Most of the time, there is no way to tell what is causing the symtomes (or "the extra activitiy in the affected parts of the brain"), in spite of all the studies and discoveries that get trumpeted about in the journals. I'm very glad that you were able to get the help you needed without the meds because frankly, I agree that they can be nasty business. I do not believe that because you and others are able to that everybody can. I don't necessarily buy that just because the symptoms are similar, that the cause of the illness is the same. I don't even believe that about my own illness.
I fear that if we buy the idea that just because we put the label on a group of syndromes, then we actually have some control over the reality of the illness rather than simply have found a way to describe it so that we can understand each other when we speak of it, then we have made the same mistake that the positivistic medical field has made, and that the analytic and behavioristic fields have made in turn. We simply oversimplify the reality and mistake the model (ie the diagnostic system) into reality instead of using it to help us to understand reality.
When I found a combination of medications that helped me, the affect was dramatic. all the pleasant explanations and decade of work on my views of myself and understanding of my realtion to the world had been heart breaking failure up to then, because I could not even begin to work before the roof fell in. Now I can, and my tolerance to periods when my stress is higher is much better, where it would not have been even with meds. I need both. My point is not to say all people with chronic psychiatric conditions must be medicated, but some reasoning for why medication is not a good idea is faulty. If I am going to make that decision or have my son make it, then i would like to have a reasonable arguement put forward both pro and con. You have done that. In my opinion, Szasz and Hubbard have not.

Hello SplitImage,
There was a bit of a brief dialogue on Ms. Saks experiences here: Keynote lecture by Professor Elyn R Saks, diagnosis schizophrenia, love story as well

Admittedly, I bowed out of that conversation because of other commitments but also because I was deeply disturbed by Ms. Saks account of being restrained...

How can we build the trust that is so necessary to a supportive relationship if we terrify people?

I come to this discussion with an experience of my own. The bulk of it took place over a period of about two and a half years -- that marked the starting point from when things began to get odd to the point I returned to work, initially in a part-time capacity only. My experience did not include doctors, hospitals, medications or formal therapy.

There was a period of time when I thought that was most unfair, that I'd had to work through that on my own. Then, I started talking to the people who'd gotten hospitals, doctors and medications and started to think that maybe, I was a whole lot more fortunate then I'd realized.

In the years since, I've spoken with a lot of people, most of whom carry a diagnosis of schizophrenia. I've also had a child since diagnosed as "bipolar/schizoaffective". In the process of those discussions and experiences I've learned one very important thing: We need to listen to people.

When someone tells me their treatment helped them, I believe them. When someone tells me their treatment did not, I believe them. They would know better than I what is helpful to them and what is not.

Many people identify forms of professional assistance and support to be helpful. Many others do not. The experiences of one do not negate the experiences of the other. ALL voices are valid.

When it comes to Pro-Psychiatry/Anti-Psychiatry I think it's helpful to view the two as if they were one body. The Pro-Psychiatry side tries to display the side that it believes is acceptable, helpful, good, right. The Anti-Psychiatry side tells us about the dark side of the body of psychiatry. It points out where people have been hurt, traumatized, silenced, marginalized and yes, in some cases, literally tortured.

We need to be willing to hear this side because the field of psychiatry is not just a good and pretty face. Like all of us, it has two components. In Jungian psychology, these two faces are known as the Persona and the Shadow.

~ Namaste

lonegael: ... If I am going to make that decision or have my son make it, then i would like to have a reasonable arguement put forward both pro and con. You have done that. In my opinion, Szasz and Hubbard have not.

I don't know a great deal about Ron Hubbard and Szasz. Knowing that both of them have been branded as anti-psychiatry I'm going to assume that they are drawing people's attention to psychiatry's dark side. In this respect, I am not as concerned with who is saying something as I am with whether or not what they say are true.

I know literally nothing of Hubbard but a bit more of Szasz. The little bit I know of Szasz, I think he makes some valid points. It is true that there is no diagnostic test that can be done to determine who has schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, etc. Rather, a diagnosis is always based on presenting symptoms; as symptoms change, diagnoses can also change.

It's my understanding this was part of Szasz's criticisms in regard to the "Myth of Mental Illness". Bear in mind that during this same time frame, dissidents in Russia were being "diagnosed" with a form of schizophrenia whose primary "symptom" was speaking out against your government. These people reported the use of psychiatric treatments as the equivalent of torture.

I have certainly spoken with people who have been detained and treated with medications against their will in Western culture who also report these events to be terrifying, painful, traumatic, etc. Is this the equivalent of torture? I suppose we would have to first determine what defines a torturous act.

This was also the same time frame when Rosenhan conducted his experient that saw perfectly healthy people in America being diagnosed as schizophrenic...

Szasz was calling attention to these practices. He was saying, "Show me the disease process. If we can't figure out with certainty who is schizophrenic and who is not; if we can make up our own ideas of what it is and what it is not, then the very idea, the very concept of schizophrenia is a sham, it is a myth!"

I still have Szasz on my reading list because I suspect he was saying some very important things that are still true of psychiatry today. For example, in our current culture, "the terrible twos" have become for some, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder. These toddlers are being put on anti-psychotic medication. Should we really be looking the other way or should we be criticizing this practice and saying, "Whoa! These are practically babies! What is going on with these children? Are we doing the right thing?"

So, I see the voices of the "Anti-psychiatrists" -- meaning, those who criticize psychiatric practices -- as being very essential. In some cases, they may in fact offer a superior form of treatment but were shoved into Psychiatry's Shadow because their very ideas were so threatening to the structure of Psychiatry which, these days, has become firmly mired in the biological model of dysfunction. If you speak against that or demonstrate that it could be otherwise, you are branded as the enemy.

Meantime, I'm not interested in Hubbard's religion, but if I was going to investigate what Scientology has to say about Psychiatry I would only be concerned with one thing: Is what they say true?

lonegael: When I found a combination of medications that helped me, the affect was dramatic. all the pleasant explanations and decade of work on my views of myself and understanding of my realtion to the world had been heart breaking failure up to then, because I could not even begin to work before the roof fell in. Now I can, and my tolerance to periods when my stress is higher is much better, where it would not have been even with meds. I need both.

In these elsewhere conversations I've taken part in, one word that came up that caught my attention was: Empowerment.

To me, empowerment is acting on our ability to make our own educated decisions for ourselves. To that end, two basics I encourage people to put in place for themselves are: Support Teams and Support Toolboxes

Who is on your team, what goes in your toolbox -- that is something that can only be determined by you and your most intimate circle. As a case in point, Jungian psychology was helpful to me, it might do nothing for you. No matter. I put the option out there, people can follow up on it if it appeals to them. We're different people with different experiences, we're not going to be helped by the same thing.

I'm also someone who believes in double standards. Let me explain...

When it comes to recovery, I believe there are two standards we have to adhere to. The first is personal recovery. This is something we each have to define for ourselves. Within the framework of personal recovery we may decide that includes some form of deficit. For example, we might walk with crutches but we still walk, still love, are still engaged in healthy relationships and meaningful activity such as work, raising a family, going to school, volunteering, etc. If that's what we define as our personal best, I think we've earned the right to call it "Recovery". There is no shame in making use of the tools that help you get there.

I hold professionals to a much higher standard when it comes to recovery. To put it succinctly, if a professional tells me they have given 39% of their clientele diabetes rather than schizophrenia... I don't think the professional should be permitted to call that recovery. However if an individual determines for themselves they'd rather have diabetes than schizophrenia -- that's their call. I believe you're entitled to informed consent. If a drug might give you diabetes, a stroke, a heart condition, you should be the one to determine if that's an acceptable trade off to you.

By the same token, the mere fact that you might choose to make use of a medication doesn't mean you are willing to take any med or all meds --just because you said yes to Celexa, that shouldn't mean your doctor can start giving you Zyprexa without your consent.

Nor does it mean you're a fan of Big Pharma, that you approve of their marketing campaigns, that you're not concerned for the treatment of others, or that you endorse controversial medication practices such as forced treatment or putting infants and toddlers on anti-psychotic medications.

Ok, I have read a lot of the great insight and wonderful information that has been both posted and linked here. My head is spinning, and really the bottom line for me now is this:

Should I see a psychiatrist or not?
Do I take meds or not?