Anti-psychiatry

Hello my fellow Libetarians,

libertarian
noun [C]
a person who believes that people should be free to think and behave as they want and should not have limits put on them by governments:

If anyone seriously wants to help someone get off psyche drugs then i suggest www.theroadback.org over 20 000 people have used it to get off psyche drugs.

I know you all hate me and i seem condesending and this and that, but i really can't be bothered with little nerds debating if psychiatry is evil or not or whatever your meant to be debating.

REG, it's not a question of hatred or even, as lem suggests, of rudeness (actually, lem's last comments to you were quite rude, imo - sorry lem). It is more to do with your understanding of libertarian communism.

First, the government does not equal psychiatry. Moreover, while few will dispute on here that biopsychiatry and big pharma have many oppressive dimensions, the argument that psych drugs are all dangerous or fatal is unnuanced and your idea that those who take them are dupes of capital is quite condescending/elitist.

Incidentally, I don't know what dictionary you're using, but 'libertarian', as far as contributors to this site are concerned, does not not mean that people 'should be free to [...] behave as they want'. Even a communist society would surely have rules or guidelines.

Tagline?

so...

you want us to reject and attack psychiatry, but don't want a discussion on whether or not it is actually a bad thing?

do you not see a fundamental problem here?

I am studying psychiatry at the moment as part of my medical degree, and spent last thursday in Broadmoor talking to patients/prisoners there.

I'm going to read some of this thread, but before I do I'll say that my current view is that

1/ forced medication is problematic but necessary for those unable to make decisions for themselves due to their illness
2/ anti-psychotic and neuroleptic drugs reduce the incidence of psychotic symptoms

These fundamental principles do not imply support for the current way they are implemented. I am not knowledgeable enough to talk about about treatment dosages etc...
I thought it would be more honest to set out my stall at the beginning.

Ah, it's all bollocks.
1. What's wrong with psychosis? Nothing, perfectly natural response to a fucked up world.
2. What's wrong with drugs? Well, they kill as well as causing major brain, liver, heart, and kidney damage and also enclose the patient in a nightmare world where they have no ability to relate to other people. If, as anarchists we reckon that humanity is a social species, then you'll begin to see what's wrong with that. In essence they deprive you of your humanity, after your humanity has been removed by society, i.e. psychosis.
Madness is better than death, or sedation, it's just psychiatry doesn't seem to think so, and will use any excuse to enforce it's regime of fascism on ordinary people who happen to be a bit strange in the eyes of their peers. There is nothing beyond that in madness, people just happen to seem a bit strange to others and because there is a psychiatric system at their disposal, these others use it to remove the worrying individuals in their midst. In my experience, people usually get labelled as mad for having morals, or showing up the social hypocrisy of inidividuals in their social milieu.

madness and psychiatry are the great excuse used to impose fascism on ordinary people. Wondering at the lack of working class militancy? What about all the people on disability cause they can't work cause they're on drugs for deppression, and if they can't work because they're too sedated, how are they going to go about rectifying their situation in the world outside work, when they are too sedated to try and get a job? Drugs debilitate, remove self-respect and remove the ability to rationalise about your situation. And therefore, they also remove the ability to fight for any kind of rights or issues you feel you may have. We're trapped in a Pharmaceutical State, and there's no way out, unless we tell psychiatry where to get off.

Try telling that to someone whose life is being fucked up with hallucinations making them think they're drowning, that people are trying to kill them, that they are possessed. Try telling that to someone who is unable to function - not in the dismissive "you're not useful to capital" sense, but in the simple, every day, LIVING YOUR FUCKING LIFE sense - due to their illness.

The same can be said for many of the disorders which these people are on medication for.

Given suicide rates among the mentally ill, I'm guessing psychiatrists aren't alone on this.

Or are undergoing quite horrific internal suffering. Or are unable to function, or be happy, or make decisions, or live their fucking lives because of the way their mind works.

It's all very well pontificating about social factors and "fascism" and so on, but to be honest, you don't seem to have a fucking clue.

Ho, bawbag, i've lived with most of the conditions you describe here, I'm actually labelled a paranoid schizophrenic, which should entitle my opinion to a bit more respect.
Have you ever been labelled psychotic? Have you ever had to take sedatives? Have you ever tried to commit suicide because you were imprisoned in what amounted to a care home for the mentally ill?
Do you, in fact, have a clue?
I think not.
People shouldn't speak for the supposedly mentally ill, regardless of how compassionate they think they're being, and if you ever had to take sedatives for a week, let alone nine years, you'd change your tune about psychiatric fascism pretty damn quick. Bawbag

Psychiatry has its uses, but it also tends to create a whole lot of harmful social constructs and the like.

"Ooh! You're autistic? Are you able to drive a car? Live alone? Care for yourself? You're actually in college!?"

Bodach - would you accept that other people might have different experiences of taking psych meds?

'Ho, bawbag', indeed! As an England-dwelling Scot, it's nice to hear the delights of the Scots tongue from time to time [sighs wistfully].

I also sympathise both with Bodach's experiences and even his viewpoint, to an extent. Don't get me wrong, I think biopsychiatry is a largely a lucrative con. I also don't buy into the medical model of 'mental illness' - both parts of that phrase are eminently contestable. All this I and several others have indicated earlier on this thread.

I just don't think that Bodach's experiences, however terrible, can be extrapolated to everbody. Some people simply find they are better equipped to cope with life using some kind of psychiatric medication. As JonnyT says, that's 'better equipped for life', not 'better equipped to serve capital as a mindless drone'.

Bodach's view of psychiatric fascism is as appealing as any Philip K. Dick fantasy, but unrealistic.

I might take bodach a bit seriously if he didn't call it "fascism", because it's patently nothing to do with "fascism" at all and calling it that makes you look like a cretin.

Fair enough, lem; I didn't mean to characterise Bodach's experiences as fantastical and sorry if it came across that way. It's the characterisation of psychiatric hegemony as fascistic that strikes me as fanciful.

Sorry, I don't really understand the second paragraph of your post. Congrats on the new tagline, by the way - I'm honoured you adopted my suggestion!

John, you wouldn't know fascism if it came up and hit you on the face.
1. I'm not just generalising from my own personal experiences but those of my social milieu as well, when I lived next to the hospital in Glasgow I knew 4 people under the age of 40 who died because of their medication. 4! Did anyone make a fuss? Did the press get involved? Did anyone give a fuck? No. Now why would that be? Perhaps cause these people aren't regarded as fully fledged human beings?
2. People who come off their anti-psychotic medication in Scotland without agreeing it with a doctor first can expect a knock on the door from a psychiatric nurse or two with a fresh injection. Is this fascism? Well, it doesn't happen to everybody, but I'm sure it didn't happen to everyone in Nazi Germany as well. How many psychiatric patients commit suicide every year? Does the fact that most of these suicides occur after being discharged from hospital on medication strike you as a bit of a coincidence?
3. Read Foucault on Psychiatry and then you'll know what I'm talking about, psychiatry is one of the building blocks of fascism. An empire of misery which has no boundaries to its operation.
4. John, if you'd ever been treated for a mental disorder, then you wouldn't throw so many hissy fits when the word fascism is used. If you can designate an entire section of the population as abnormal, then you can do whatever you want with them, kill them, turn them into zombies, make them kill themselves, cripple them intellectually, emotionally, physically and sexually, make them cripple themselves in the above manners. Now, did the Nazis do the same things? Yes.

I'm afraid John that you seem to live in some kind of democratic bubble where the state plays a benign role in its truthfully most pernicious aspects. Have you seen what the immigration directorate do to refugees these days? Lock up men, women and children who have commited no crime, and who are the most vulnerable people in our society, break down their doors in the middle of the night, and then deport them to countries where they will be in all likelyhood killed? And what is our excuse? That they're lying? Is this fascism? Well, the Nazis didn't gas everybody, a lot of Germans were allright.

Same goes with psychiatry, if you want to believe that the massive rise in anti-depressant use is because the state is becoming more benign, and not because it wants to incapacitate a large section of its population, then that's fine. Drugs make people dependent on the state for their own well-being on its most basic level, that of their own consciences. And when your conscience has been removed, how do you pose a threat? You don't.

Simple.

Psychiatry is fascism.

Bodach, I too disagree with you using a very specific word that describes a specific political ideology with a specific history to describe something completely different.

I understand that you feel very strongly about this, but it doesn't chime with what I have been taught. In the post above you essentially rest it on a claim that I would like to see evidence for (you may well be right, but I currently don't think you are)

The claim essentially is that psychiatric medication (let's stick to schizophrenia as that is what you have experience of) increases the risk of suicide in the population of schizophrenics. This s the claim I'd like to see defended.

Some ground rules I hope we can agree on could be
1/ anecdotal evidence is not permissable (I could have met people who smoked and didn't develop cancer but that doesn't alter a causal link in a broader statistical sense.)
2/ The fact that I and others have not been prescribed these drugs doesn't remove any ability to discuss the topic
3/ If studies show that the suicide risk is reduced by taking anti-psychotic neuroleptic drugs, then forceable medication could be seen in light of this as honestly trying to reduce the chances of someone killing themselves- the opposite of what you allege above:

Do those parameters seem OK to you? I'm truly interested, but I'm not going to do you the disservice of pretending I agree with you at the outset. My opinion is still that forced medication is sometimes necessary and is generally done with good intention.

Hawton, K., Sutton, L., Haw, C., Sinclair, J. and Deeks, J.D. (2005) Schizophrenia and suicide: systematic review of risk factors. British Journal of Psychiatry, 187, 9-20

http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/60/4/365

etc.

The papers I've just been reading suggest that there is not a statistically significant increase in suicide rate from using medication to control schizophrenia. There is in some studies a reduction of suicide risk- that is in addition to the proven reduction of incidence of symptoms which is the main point of the antipsychotics.

Ah, I see. I wasn't arguing that forced medication is fine (although I'm not arguing against it in all circumstances, either).

You re-named me; I suddenly feel strangely in touch with my feminine side.

Bodach, I appreciate you feel strongly about this, but you're talking rubbish.

You clearly have no idea what fascism is. It's a highly nationalist political movement aimed at the destruction of organised working class power and the establishment of a strong, undemocratic government.

Anti-depressant use is clearly not to incapacitate people - if anything it's to keep them working. And drug use doesn't make you dependant on the state, in most countries the state doesn't provide drugs - we're fortunate here that it does at low cost.

My source for this claim is the book Pure Madness by Jeremy Laurence, page 7 where he cites the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Homicide by People with Mental Illness(Safety First, Department of Health, march 2001) I haven't read the actual report, but I reckon it's pretty authoritative.

I reckon you're being hopelessly naive

Well, I'd side with Foucault and say that fascism is a technique of government, which develops from everyday forms of government like psychiatry. Fascism is just the logical extension of the system of governance we have at the moment. Psychiatry is one of the tools in that system.

So why are there so many people on anti-depressants claiming the sick? In third world countries people recover better from psychotic illnesses without psychiatry - fact. Why is there such low working class militancy in Britain? Could it have anything to do with the millions of prescriptions for antidepressants?