Probably the greatest lesson I’ve taken from anarchism, is the devastating effect hierarchy has upon human beings and society at large, how people are shaped their entire lives by the values of the work ethic, discipline, obedience to authority, guilt and unworthiness of pleasure. I like the way Murray Bookchin puts this when he says that hierarchical society leads to the ‘banalization and impoverishment of experience’ and how it suppresses although can’t eliminate our ‘Eros derived impulses’ – our life impulses ‘our urgings of desire, sensuousness and the lure of the marvellous’.
I’ve questioned the effect this has had on my own mental well being which is pretty bad. I’ve questioned to which extent it’s a problem which stems from myself and to which extent it’s a problem because of the type of society in which we live, and although there was likely always problems there for me I strongly feel that had I been brought up under an anarchist society I never would have developed these problems. I don’t think I can ever be mentally healthy within this society as it is so anxiety provoking with its inequality, insecurity and concentration of power above us.
But it’s pretty shit to think like that, and obviously other anarchists and other people still manage to have good mental health and enjoy their life, so that leads me on to asking why do some people do better than others and are people disadvantaged because of their economic class, and I have some theories on that that I’d like your thoughts on.
1. I think people raised from middle class backgrounds are more likely to have greater self-confidence. Their parents would likely have good jobs and be well educated, hence they would be brought up in a more secure healthy environment with the belief that they too will succeed. They are more likely to have a better education, and been told by their teachers that they have the ability to do well. They are probably more likely to be happy and more likely to be raised up around other happy children.
2. If you are raised working class, then you are more likely to receive less encouragement from teachers, other children and the fact of your social-economic position. You will recognise that other children have more than you, that they come from richer families and because of that can do things your family can’t like go on more holidays.
3. Its probably in working class people that values of discipline, work ethic and obedience are even more deeply instilled since in the mind of the bourgeoisie working class people must learn to accept their lesser lot in life. Which is probably partly why things like patriarchy seem to have such a grip on the working class.
There is obviously more to it than this and I may be wrong, but has anyone ever studied in detail how your class position effects your mental well-being and self-confidence?
I mean it’s obvious that hierarchy and inequality are terrible for our mental well-being, but I want the details and statistics.
No details or statistics,
No details or statistics, though I'd really love to see some posted, but just to say that I do think this is an important issue and that coming from an, for want of a better word, industrial or blue collar working class background can seriously effect your mental well-being when confronted by not just the obvious hierarchies of capitalism/patriarchy, but the more subtle ones that might be found in the 'movement' against these.
There seems to be quite a bit
There seems to be quite a bit on this. Top of the list in a google.co.uk search was the Poverty Site's statistics on UK mental health. There's shitloads of others in the search too, including academic or "scholarly" texts.
There's thousands of studies
There's thousands of studies on class, inequality and mental health. This gives a good overview and some statistics http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.674.2697&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
There's a really good psychology theory called social action therapy which basically says that being involved in political activism and directly challenging inequality is good for your mental well being. I don't think the article is online anywhere but there's a really basic summary on wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychotherapy_and_social_action_model ). So it's undeniably true that inequality, and capitalism have a negative impact on someone's mental health, but luckily it's a reversible process. .
I think it's really important
I think it's really important to note that mental illness as they're called are psychological phenomena rooted in an individuals lived expirence, and furthermore they continue to have lived expirences of both their often dismal environments and their conditions throughout.
That should go without saying but there is a prevailing tendency within modern psychiatry to view it as either a partial or complete biological phenomenon. Hence the inherited chemical imbalance in the brain bullshit that was popularised in major publicity campaigns for psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry.
There is also resistance within the field to all this by people often called critical psychiatrists and even "anti psychiatrists" despite often being practicing psychiatrists themselves.
I have had first hand expirence of the biological type myself. It's total fucking bullshit. They completely ignore anything going on in your life, pill you up with drugs that are an illness onto themselves and if you refuse, and with antipsychotics a majority of those prescribed (to my knowledge) actually do there are consequences for you. When I did this i was harassed at for ages my my mental health team, who actually never bothered to find out what my diagnoses was and eventually, as I came off meds without support (as none was on offer) and suffered horrific withdrawal symptoms.
I could not get off them with support or even cut up my tiny awkward 50mg (maximum dose) pill of olanzipine (zypraxia in some countries) because they fused to allow me to come off. I could not sleep, I went from having a massive appetite to none and began to loose weight and i felt physically very sick. Eventually I discovered they hard way that one of the actuall fucking withdrawal symptoms they don't fucking tell you about is fucking "supersensitivity psychosis".
I actually became dangourous in this period and completely understand that an intervention of some kind had to be made, but I was sectioned and noone can convince anyone that that is a very nice expirence.
When I was sectioned one can only describe the situation as total chaos. Violence breaking out several times a day, predominately between staff and patients, there was absolutely nothing in the way of groups or psychotherapy really, at least not for the first few months after I had been moved to three hospitals. I actually fucking read that in hospital in little after thought article in a copy of the guardian I begged someone to get for me that "70% of hospitals don't reach BASIC human rights standards" (according to the CQC) while I was actually expirenceing it. I also read a couple of years later, this tine on the front to page of the guardian that there was an epidemic or rape and sexual abuse in hospitals, mainly psychiatric hospitals, while surrounded by people, actually mostly men, sharing their own horror stories. I doubt I heard everything that was going on, most people don't talk about that shit.
The staff have a near universal lack of sympathy for you. To them you ate bassically degenerate scum, with somthing wrong with your brain that mean you dont seem to warrant normal human treatment. Especially if you have been violent to your self or others.
There was some "therapy sessions" I should note. Later on in had a weekly session at first with a psychiatrist and later by a psychologist that was bassically evidence gathering pill pushing, and "insight" which was mostly getting me to confess to things and show compliance as a condition for release.
There was one paticularly horrible incident when I was first detained. I got into a few arguments with the staff there, theyou were very aggressive and any assertiveness seems to be stamped out before they loose control.
After I stood up to them and actually ridiculed them a few times the drug pushing got pretty intense. I was also restrained a few times with out any physical provocationature or threat, on multiple occasions.
After I refused to take any drugs, when they actually said I could, they randomly, in sone kind of premeditated assault, bashed a door I was standing near from the other side, knocking me back, and threw me into so easy other guys who grabbed me by my upper body while my legs were lifted up off the ground. I was carried by a large group of "nurses", which were actually big angry men with little to no actual knowledge of psychology, into a "seclusion" room, whereally I was aggressively thrust onto a blue floor matt, not unlike the ones I used in PE in school, and had near the maximum dose of the most crushing drug poison one could imagine forced I to my body totally against my will. I was left nearly paralytic om floor while through the only with do to the room, which led to another small room, a female nurse watched smugly with a perfectly still frown with a slight wry smile (of that describes it) on her face, as if it wereally revenge for humiliating the staff (including her) in debate earlier.
I was in excruciating agony in the next few days, as get terrible muscle pains and with this tine dystonia from the drugs. I told them this, actually at a point where I could barely breath, struggling from one position to the next trying to gasp for hours, unable to think, unable to imagine, unable to expirence anything but pain, and they gave me another fucking dose afterwards.
I washould a pretty fucked up looking creature between my second and third dose, I must admit. Dystonia really changes your muscles to the extreme.
A little before the third dose soneone said that that if I stopped trying to fight they would give me an oral dose of the medication a took at home, when it came to it, theyou said "too late" and forced even more into my body before taking me from the hospital in the West Country, a region i had never really left, and too me some place in fucking Yorkshire hundreds ofor miles away. That place was even more chaotic and violent then the first. But for some reason i sone how managed to win over the consultant in a meeting on the first day, and only spent six days there with protection that attracted envy from the other patients there, before being downgraded to low secure and moved again, and then again, staying in low secure for a year, before being moved to, eventually, an open ward for a couple of years and then released. I spent three years in hospital overall.
I was ill on and off throughout my stay don't get me wrong. And I got into a few fights, both with staff and patients, and despite being a throughly pathetic individual on most occasions I was pretty aggressive before being admitted, which was totally out of character for me.
I do belive however, that the present situation in psychiatry and it's "hospitals" are of any benifit to anyone.
I did not set out to tell myou story like this but still, I hope it informstays you in sone way as to the state of things.
Imy presently in supported living taking sone soft meds and have been in this situation for about a year.
Biological psychiatry in my
Biological psychiatry in my opinion is about power, and is therefore a political project that requires a political response.
There is no evidence for a biological basis for mental illness
I always recall a friend and
I always recall a friend and comrade who was a well-respected psychiatric nurse (i know this for a fact because i shared a flat with some of his ex-patients) who once told me that he was hoping schizophrenia (he was also the one who told me there were three different clinical definitions, American, British and Russian) was indeed organic and not social for the simple reason that once the cause was determined it is going to a lot easier to develop a drug treatment than it would be to change society to one where the problem would disappear.
Is there then no medical response to alleviate the various conditions? Again from personal experience i am aware of what happens if someone discontinues his or her medication.
I am also well aware of the detrimental side-effects of many of the drugs and/or the misdiagnosis and therefore wrong prescriptions and perhaps the fact that they are often belatedly addressed is about a patient's lack of power compared with sufferers from other ailments.
Or is this powerlessness something all suffer from, patients and staff, too. I it as some believe the pharmacological industry that exercise the real power as many suspect or is it simply the accounting and book-keeping managers of the NHS who are in control.
patient Insurgency
patient Insurgency
This is simply untrue. Whether that evidence is actually all that useful in treating mental illnesses is a separate question.
I think that making the case
I think that making the case that mental illness has no biological basis and is therefore by implication only a social construct is oversimplifying things a bit. The fact of the matter is that whatever the cause that people do experience mental illness as a real condition that causes distress and often poses a threat to physical well being.
Also, the idea that mental health problems are "only a social construct" can also give traction to the idea that since it not a real medical condition then it's okay to defund public mental health treatment programs and deny treatment to those suffering from mental health problems who cannot otherwise afford to pay for treatment on their own.
Here is a link to an interesting article summarizing how anti-psychiatry can be used as a justification for austerity measures in the hands of the right.
https://melbournelacanian.wordpress.com/2015/06/22/the-leftist-defense-of-psychiatry/
Quote: Here is a link to an
There's a long history of progressive ideas in mental health being used to justify spending cuts by government, beginning with asylum closures and the the start of community care. That doesn't mean the arguments themselves aren't valuable. I guess it's important just to be critical about who is saying what and why they are saying it.
I work in a CMHT, I was really depressed when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, and read loads of antipsychiatry stuff around this time, so it's something I've thought about a lot over the last few years. I think from my reading there is a lot of contrary evidence as to whether psychiatric disorders have a biological basis or not. There is statistical evidence to support both viewpoints and the subject is very politicised so it's hard to find any objective studies. Lots of psychiatric medication and biomedical treatments work, anecdotally speaking, but have lots of other effects which can be frightening, disempowering and distressing for the people who take them. Given the whole point of psychiatric medication is to make people less scared, helpless or distressed, you can see why some people would rather steer clear of the whole system. Mostly chemical cures treat symptoms rather than causes of distress so they are not long term solutions. There are very few medical 'cures' for mental illnesses. That said, sometimes treating the symptoms is important before any long term work can be done, so I think medication has its place. A person isn't going to be able to address their social circumstances or come o terms with loss and trauma if they are too depressed to speak, eat or go outside.
Mental illness is very poorly understood scientifically and it is a highly political issue and, obviously, it is very personal for people with lived experience. There seems to be no objectivity in mental health even when dealing with supposedly 'scientific' or 'evidence-based' treatments. A lot of biomedical treatments are widely used despite being based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence. ECT (for depression) and lithium therapy (for bipolar disorder) are prime examples of this; anecdotally they are very effective treatments (I've worked with patients who have literally have their lives saved by ECT) but even psychiatrists themselves will tell you that they have no idea why they work or what they actually do to you. You can see why it's a controversial subject. I'm not sure if I'd let someone electrocute me on a hunch.
Sorry you had such a shit time, that sounds fucking abysmal. Which hospital were you in? I work in Somerset
Quote: Which hospital were
I was actually in an NHS hospital in Barnstaple, Devon for the really shit stuff, they're the ones who sent me off to Yorkshire. When I got there, after about 6 days in medium secure picu somone they took me into an office and pointed me to a map, and basically asked me where I lived. I pointed to Devon and they were pretty astonished. They seemed to think devon was part of Cornwall and that "they is nothing down there" maybe there is a little bit of truth to that lol where I lived, but anyway the closest one they could send me to was cygnet Kewstoke near western super mare as that was owned by the same company, cygnet. I have no idea what the rest of that place was like but the ward I was on in there was dismal.
jura wrote: patient
jura
thank you.
I'm quite reluctant to get
I'm quite reluctant to get into a full fledged debate as to whether or not mental illnesses are biological or not as, although it could make that point, it may not be necessary to to say so if we can agree that biological psychiatry is obfuscating (if that's the right word) the social origins of mental illness, and this is another systemic problem of capitalism.
The extent to which mental illness is biological is a scientific question, one we may not be qualified to answer. There are differing views in the relevant fields, with some much more compelling specifically to me then others, but there is no scientific consensus on the question of the biological component.
There are other questions we might a dress however, and that is, as I said, of the social and ultimately policy underpinnings of one's wellbeing. If you do not accept the case against a biological compotent of mental illness, perhaps you can accept the case in favour of the environmental causes of mental health issues, which I believe to be overwhelming, and focus on the truly evidence based practices such as psychological therapys, peer support, and ultimately changes to the world in which we live for the betterment of humanity.
while there is much in
while there is much in psychiatry that is unsupported, poorly understood, and used as a means of social control, to argue that there is no biological basis for the phenomena understood as mental illness is baseless. for one thing, there is much in biomedicine broadly that is poorly understood, such as the mechanism of action for the active ingredient of tylenol, as well as treatment that is given in the absense of complete information - empiric therapy with antibiotics, for instance. those examples don't mean that there is no biological basis of disease, or that all medicine should be thrown out with the bathwater.
in regards to mental health, there are disease states where the structure or the function of a system in the body changes and then contributes to mood and behavior effects. there are far too many to name, but a good example is hypo/hyperthyroidism; if you have ever received medical care for mental health, you will have had a blood sample taken to test the levels of your thyroid hormones.
however, this conception of a 'biological basis' in the way used here is concerning to me, because it implies a tabula rasa perception of the human body, where if all other confounding were controlled for, only 'biology' (which even means what when used here, genetics?) would be the ultimate first cause. The chicken, or the egg. Instead, what is becoming to better understood, is that biology (the totality of the organic systems contained in one humam body) and interaction with the environment are intimately associated with each other. it has always been both nature and nuture. interactions with the environment will literally change how your body functions, from a micro level of organization with the changing of protein metablolism due to changes in genetic expression in reaction to some sort of environmental stimuli, to a macro level, such as the lived experience of psychological stress increasing cortisol production and sympathetic stimulation; these environmental factors over time will alter how the body works.
going back to the original ask of the post, yes, i would say that there is an increasing body of evidence that hierarchy, class and inequality have a negative impact on health in general. i will post some here once turkey day stuff is over
Note that I never said that
Note that I never said that mental illnesses are biological. I have no doubts about the social environment having effects on human health, including mental health. The question is the extent and the conditions and mechanisms through which this happens. But saying that there's not a shred of evidence suggesting biological factors have a role in mental illness is simply wrong. I'd go as far as to say that the evidence is at least as good and strong as the evidence in favor of social factors causing mental illness (on the other hand, perhaps that is because social explanations of mental illness are discouraged in the profession due to some ideological bias – but this conjecture would itself require some evidence).
I think we have to be extremely careful here because in "full revolutionary mode", it's very easy to fall into the trap of ascribing anything to capitalism simply because it strengthens our case against it: "But of course, the issues you're experiencing all boil down to capitalism, please sign up here". That is both scientifically incorrect and politically dishonest.
patient Insurgency
I agree, but I read you saying "There is no evidence for a biological basis for mental illness" as answering that question.
Quote: the closest one they
I know Kewstoke ward a little bit. I'll be a bit more wary of them now you've said all that! I've got a theory that private hospitals can get away with the kind of abusive shit you're talking about more easily than publicly funded hospitals can just because they get less scrutiny on them. Not that any psychiatric ward is ever going to be pleasant...
I had a bit of a moral crisis recently after someone I worked with got sectioned. Do you think it's ever OK to treat people without their consent, or is that an absolute red line for you? It sounds like you've got a lot of experience to draw on so it'd be good to get your perspective.
The whole bio/psycho/social argument has been done to death now. It's worth remembering that even illnesses with an obvious bio/physical cause have an element of social construction. Eg if you break your leg at work because your company has poor health and safety policies, the broken leg has social and political causes as well as purely medical ones. It's not either/or.
Drugging people without their
Drugging people without their consent is always violence.
Quote: patient Insurgency
Sorry for the late response everyone. I actually did not see a contradiction between the two comments when i wrote them. I was thinking that, although i am swayed by the argument against a biological cause for mental illness, the argument is scientific, and we must trust in that field, so long as (to my knowledge) they are actually practicing science. I also think now that it is irrelevant to our concerns, as there remains overwhelming evidence for a basis of mental health, in social and other environmental conditions.
I don't see a contradiction between saying that there is no evidence that these conditions are biological phenomena, and saying science has not ruled it out. i have actually changed my opinion slightly though, that we need to let the academics thrash it out and come up with a clear answer, rather then for someone like me to put my stance on a pedestal and say it take precedence over what comes out of science.
i am still refining my opinions in that aspect though.
Yes it as an absolute red line.You cannot possibly know the impact of this kind of violence, they do not even study it as far as i can see. Although I did see one study on the use of coercion in mental health care that showed that, surprise surprise, it has a harmful impact on the so called "therapeutic relationship", which is supposed to be crucial in the recovery of patients.
I know people hate this comparison, but it actually does feel like you're being raped. It is an absolutely horrific and traumatic experience with long lasting physiological and physical effects. it is sometimes also lethal.
No-one i know who has been through this has any trust of psychiatry, or often the entire medical field. it is an absolute betrayal.
The effects of the drugs are crushing. Apparently it seems, starving regions of the brain of dopamine and other neurotransmitters, totally crush ones ability to think or imagine. It is like a constant mental block, that may require significant effort to overcome if it can be at all, and at best only momentarily when it is possible. It also dampens ones emotions, rendering you apathetic and docile. You become controllable and predictable, but you do not become necessarily less violent. In fact there are studies on these drugs which find that you are up to four times more likely to commit an act of violence when you are on them, i have read.
It is nothing more then a practice of power control and domination. There are differing schools of thought within psychiatry, but the prevailing one is one of power control and domination.
And as for private versus, public hospitals; it does not seem to matter, in my experience at least. it can be that private hospitals are worse, i don't know, i have only been to one NHS hospital and 3 private hospitals. But with the majority of hospitals not reaching basic human rights standards, according to the CQC, I tend to view it as a systemic problem, with the prevailing purely biological model as the ideology to justify it.
Being told that you have a mental illness is not the liberating experience that its made out to be. i'm starting to think its something more like racism or misogyny, where one side believes that the other is somehow less human then the other. In my experience, being told all of a sudden that i had a psychotic disorder was a bit like being told in some Pseudo-medical language that i was something else. It is, as one critic put it, like being told you are a Jew in Nazi Germany. Saying i am fundamentally different biologically because of a real psychological condition i was in, really does feel like an insult, or a slur, but with added authority of science medicine and the state. Some of the real extremists, of psychiatry, do actually, think that is is just an inherited chemical imbalance in the brain, or that the cause is immoral behaviors in adolescences etc, it is basically like being told you are a degenerate.
In the various kangaroo courts that you might go through while under section, the opinion of the of psychiatry is taken to be expert opinion that cannot be challenged, and that you cannot dispute the "facts" of how you came to be there or how you have been on the ward etc. this is something i had to learn the hard way, after repeated attempts, and occasional tip offs from solicitors (which they are not allowed to give). Those solicitors also happen to be operating something of a cottage industry of ripping off legal aid from patients. one basically admitted to me that they always go down the same route, applying for a tribunal, even if its the only opportunity to explain yourself in the year, simply because they get more money that way.
Anyway, with absolute power in their hands, they( the psychiatrists) basically just lie. I have watched them do this over and over again. it seems to be endemic. the solicitors typically offer no defense, and do not actually even believe your own story anyway. The whole exercise is about proving your complaint. You are essentially on trial for noncompliance with psychiatry, you are already supposed to be guilty as this is your appeal (you get no trail to begin with), everything rests on the "expert" opinion of your accuser, including your solicitors views of you, and all you can rely on is the second opinion of a doctor on the panel, which typically bases their decision and the notes by the other doctor, and the nurses that work for him. The whole team is against you.
That being said, i did get out after like my 8th try. I had spent two years in a stable mental state more or less, and one year in hospital, being told that they are trying to move me out. They said they wanted me on a community treatment order, which basically means that i would be forced to take the drugs outside and have conditions on where i live etc and if i did not comply i would be immediately removed and sectioned without even the usual two doctors or a doctor and a social worker involved.
At first they were saying that i needed to be there for "rehabilitation". which basically means preschool style groups like coloring in etc, and occasionally cooking a very simple meal.
Then they were saying, "alright you can go but we will find you a place and put you on a community treatment order." This was in my first apeal, after then said "you can go", but then did not actually let me go. They argued that if i did go i would stop taking my meds, immediately go crazy, and become a risk to other people. Very compelling. they won, then they did not release me all year anyway.
The authority i was being released under would not pay for me, and they also disputed that i needed to be under that level of care i believe.
There is so much to this i could say. But eventually, with a social worker saying they could not release me the way they wanted, with my mother disputing their obvious lies, with a solicitor that i managed to build a good relationship with actually believing me, and the psychiatrist randomly changing my diagnosis after three years from "aspergers syndrome and depression with psychotic features" to "paranoid schizophrenia" week of my tribunal, a measure so extreme that none believed it, and that the second doctor had to dispute, and a few other fortunate occurrences, only then did they release me one year after being told i was actually discharged, without the CTO.
Incidentally, my diagnosis as it stands is still Asperger's and a depression with psychotic features or some such bollocks.
I can't go on rn i have so much to write, so much to vent, yet i have other things to do and its very late.
statistical evidence states
statistical evidence states that someone born into socio economic deprivation is 8 times more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia in their lifetime.
there is also evidence, and psychiatrists who argue, that people who aren't subject to psychiatric medication statistically have better social outcomes following a period of psychosis.
joanna moncrieff argues that there is a lack of evidence supporting long term use of anti psychotics. she suggests that the 'relapse' which is common in people stopping these medications is actually a withdrawal effect.
i believe there is also evidence that in developing countries (where anti psychotic use is less prevalent and people are simply given sedatives to reduce immediate distress) people tend to have an isolated episode then recover, as opposed to the model in 'developed' countries where people are given long term medication which they often don't want and frequently experience recurrent relapse.
she also argues that opiates and benzodiazepines are equally effective for treating active psychotic symptoms as anti psychotics are, and provides some evidence to support this.
scallywag, you should read david smail, he was a psychologist who developed what he called the social materialist model of distress. you can read quite a lot of his writing on his website, here.
http://www.davidsmail.info
richard bentall is also quite interesting in terms of critiquing the medical model and prevailing attitudes towards mental health
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/rethinking-mental-health/201602/richard-bentall-madness-explained-and-doctoring-the-mind
i also forgot to mention the
i also forgot to mention the midlands psychology group. their draft manifesto for a social materialist psychology is quite compelling
http://www.midpsy.org/draft_manifesto.htm
edited to add: it sounds like you'be had a truly horrific experience, patient insurgency, i'm sorry to hear about it and hope things are going better for you now. i think most people don't fully appreciate how bad the system can be to many people, and how dehumanising and disempowering the experience often is.
This article may be of
This article may be of interest to this discussion
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/mental-health-patients-psychotic-illnesses-schizophrenia-treatable-immune-disorder-university-oxford-a7462641.html