What is your opinion on katatonic schizophrenia?
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I think that its an embarrasement that the Left has largely ignored one of the social groups that faces the most profound social discrimination: people targeted by the mental-health industry. It is an area where the left continues to show deference to percieved authority, the authority of the doctors who say that they must in effect protect these people from themselves, that these people's rights are in the way of their own best interests which they have no ability to determine (the doctors know best).
While most other victim groups have made at least legal if not economic gains, people interned by "mental health" professionals have essentially no legal rights, no right to due process or civil liberty or human rights. I think this is really an outrage and something that the Left, if we care about human dignity and freedom, needs to wake up to.
To list some of the issues of psychiatric oppression:
1. Mental health treatment conditions patients to behave in accordance to how psychiatrists want them to behave and say the things they want them to here in order to avoid further treatment...they declare the 'treatment successful' after making it sufficently unpleasent that patients conform...mistaking coercion for progress.
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Mental Patients' Liberation: Why? How?
Inside the hospital, of course, mental patients are a recognizable group with a recognizable identity: that of victims in a living hell. The need to liberate our brothers and sisters on the inside needs no explanation.
As a long-range solution, mental patient's liberation means ending all involuntary commitment of law-abiding people, thereby restoring one of America's most fundamental and most important promises. But the hospital doors are still locked and you are still inside. In our consciousness-raising sessions, we have discussed how we got in, and how we got out, and we have discovered that all of us got out by learning to tell the doctors what they wanted to hear. We call it "learning to shuffle."
We discovered, in sharing our experiences, that when we loudly proclaimed (in the hospital) that we were not sick and that the doctors should leave us alone, we were rewarded with forced hypodermic injections of Thorazine and trips to the seclusion room, but when we learned to say humbly "I was sick, but with my doctor's help I'm getting well," our imprisonment neared its end. You will have the satisfaction of knowing which is truth and which is falsehood, and of knowing that although they have imprisoned your body, they do not have your mind.- http://www.antipsychiatry.org/mplib.htm
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2. Psychiatry isn't a real science or medicine, it is a system of control masquerading as one.
Rosenhan's 'psudo-patient experiment' and 'non-existent impostor experiment' demonstrated that mental hospital staff are thoroughly incapable from distinguishing mentally ill people from mentally well people. The fact that psychriatrists diagnosis can't reliably distinguish
In the psychologist Rosenhan published an article,On Being Sane in Insane Places, in the journal Science, (probably the most prestigious peer reviewed journal in the world along with Nature, hardly a lunatic frindge). a group of research psychologists admitted themselves to in-patient mental health care reporting hallucinations but otherwise, behaved totally normally and explained that the hallucinations were gone...but their psychiatrists interpreted their normal behavior and average histories as aspects of their psychosis; in other words, the diagonistic label defined the lens by which their behavior and personalities were viewed rather than their behavior and personalities informing the diagnosis. While legitimate medicine's diagnosis depend on observation, the observations made by psychistrists depend on diagnosis, and often on sterotypes, allowing them to view healthy individuals as sick.
The "psudo-patient experiment" was followed by the "The non-existent impostor experiment". In this, an established teaching hospital which declared that Rosenhan's experiment could never have been successfully conducted at it, and that its psychiatrists would be able to successfully diagnosis and detect non-mentally ill people from those who ought to be there. Rosenhan than agreed to conduct the same experiment at this teaching hospital, telling them that, over a three month period, he would send an undisclosed number of psudopatients so they can see how well they detect them. Of 193 patients the hospital had in those three months, they decided that they were sure 41 were Rosenhan's psudopatient research assistants, and suspected an additional 42...in reality of course, Rosenhan didn't send anyone.
Rosenhan wrote at the time very aptly:
The complete article can be found here: http://www.stanford.edu/~kocabas/onbeingsane.pdf
Rosenhan, D. (1973) On being sane in insane places. Science, 179, 250-8
3. There is extreme legal discrimination against victims of psychiatry, they are denied their most basic civil liberties as due process rights, meaning that the psychiatric profession is given free reign to run prisons not under the rule of law.
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Suppose that instead of believing in mental illness, people today believed in evil spirit possession and explained weird or unacceptable behavior as the product of evil spirits. Suppose some or all of the states then enacted laws authorizing the incarceration of people who are possessed by evil spirits (instead of people who supposedly are possessed by mental illnesses). Would this be a proper and constitutional exercise of legislative power? Evil spirit possession has no objective reality and exists only in the imaginations of people who believe in evil spirits. Mental illness also has no objective reality and exists only in the imaginations of people who believe in mental illness. The behavior that gets people labeled mentally ill (or possessed by evil spirits) isn't imaginary; but mental illness or evil spirit possession as an explanation of why they behave as they do is.
Today in many states of the United States there are laws which permit the involuntary commitment (incarceration) of people for mental illness alone without requiring a showing the person has ever committed an illegal act. If we want to incarcerate people because they seem peculiar to us or because they say things that are not true or that don't make sense, or because we think that despite a past that includes no unlawful activity they might do something bad in the future, then that's what the laws should say - although doing so might raise constitutional questions. Using "mental illness" as the justification for incarceration is as illogical and unjustified as explaining behavior we dislike and don't understand as the product of evil spirit possession and having commitment laws for people who are possessed by evil spirits.
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There are a few groups in particular who tend to be the target of America's involuntary psychiatric commitment laws...In many states parents have statutory power to commit their children who are under age 18 without judicial proceedings, in large part because of the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584 (1979). This Supreme Court decision in 1979 is probably largely responsible for the fact that in the years immediately following it "adolescent admission rates to psychiatric units of private hospitals have jumped dramatically, increasing four-fold between 1980 and 1984" (Lois A. Weithorn, Ph.D., "Mental Hospitalization of Troublesome Youth: An Analysis of Skyrocketing Admission Rates", 40 Stanford Law Review 773). According to another report, "private psychiatric hospital admissions for teenagers are the fastest-growing segment of the hospital industry. ... Between 1980 and 1987 the number of people between 10 and 19 discharged from psychiatric units increased 43 percent, from 126,000 to 180,000. One reason is the aggressive advertising used by for-profit psychiatric facilities" (Christina Kelly, "She's Not Crazy But 14-year-old Sara got committed anyway", Sassy magazine, March 1990, p. 44). According to another report, between 1971 and 1991 "the number of teenagers hospitalized for psychiatric care has increased from 16,000 to 263,000" (Time magazine, August 26, 1991, p. 12). According to University of Michigan Professor Ira Schwartz, "psychiatric hospitals are turning into jails for kids" (Sassy magazine, March 1990, p. 44).
Of course, mental "hospitals" are jails for all persons detained there against their will. Furthermore, they are places where people may be incarcerated with no showing of prior illegal (or otherwise harmful) conduct - only "mental illness". Yet statutes authorizing commitment for mental illness do not define mental illness but let supposed professionals (psychiatrists) define it any way they see fit. If subjected to proper constitutional scrutiny, such laws would be void for vagueness, as would a statute allowing imprisonment for something called "crime" but which failed to define crime
www.antipsychiatry.org/due-proc.htm
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4. Psychiatry's belief in mental illness as a biologically based disease and therefore requires an organic, drug based treatment model, is purely speculative without any scientific proof. This myth however is Big Buisness that allows the pharmaceutical corporations to construct a profession designed to push their product onto people whether they like it or not.
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Because the mentally ill often are unaware of their disease, treatment must be forced on the mentally ill. All 50 states have laws that allow involuntary treatment if professionals deem they are a danger to self and others.
Psychiatrists, we are told, can now accurately diagnose mental illness and have safe and effective treatments. Psychiatry is considered a valid medical specialty, like cardiology, and the claims of the movement are based on scientific research.
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The movement's major source of funding is the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry, which funds the drug research; which funds psychiatric journals, and even the American Psychiatric Association itself; which funds advertising to doctors and the public; and even funds lay groups such as NAMI (at least $11 million) and Children and Adults with Attention Deficit Disorder (at least $1 million).
Yet many professionals claim that the mental health movement is not a legitimate medical or scientific endeavor, let alone a civil rights movement, but a political ideology of intolerance and inhumanity. Numerous psychiatrists and psychologists have examined the psychiatric research literature and found it to range from smoke and mirrors to quackery.
Psychiatrists have yet to conclusively prove that a single mental illness has a biological or physical cause, or a genetic origin. Psychiatry has yet to develop a single physical test that can determine that an individual actually has a particular mental illness. Indeed, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders uses behavior, not physical symptoms, to diagnose mental illness, and it lacks both scientific reliability and validity.
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Actually, the surgeon general's report on mental health states that "the precise causes (etiology) of mental disorders are not known" and "there is no definitive lesion, laboratory test, or abnormality in brain tissue that can identify (a mental) illness." The Textbook of Clinical Psychiatry (1999) states: " ... Validation of the diagnostic categories as specific entities has not been established."
http://www.stopshrinks.org/articles/op-ed_...ler_8-29-03.htm
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All of the supposed evidence that psychiatrists use to justify themselves has no scientific model for how it works, instead, they observe that some (but not most) people get better from their 'treatment' and claim that this proves that mental illness is an organic illness that can be treated with medication. What they don't say however, is that the degree of success falls within the range of a placebo effect and sugar pills work as well as anti-depressants.
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After thousands of studies, hundreds of millions of prescriptions and tens of billions of dollars in sales, two things are certain about pills that treat depression: Antidepressants like Prozac, Paxil and Zoloft work. And so do sugar pills.
A new analysis has found that in the majority of trials conducted by drug companies in recent decades, sugar pills have done as well as -- or better than -- antidepressants. Companies have had to conduct numerous trials to get two that show a positive result, which is the Food and Drug Administration's minimum for approval.
What's more, the sugar pills, or placebos, cause profound changes in the same areas of the brain affected by the medicines, according to research published last week. One researcher has ruefully concluded that a higher percentage of depressed patients get better on placebos today than 20 years ago.
URL=http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42930-2002May6?language=printer
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I wanted to bring this issue to people's attention in as much detail as i could because i think the mental health industries treatment of its "patients" is an outrage and should acknowleged as such. The Left is far too ignorant of this issue and too soft on it. I'd like to open a debate about what the Lefts role should be in trying to protect these people's civil liberties from the pharmaceutical industry and psychiatrists who profit from causing suffering.
Links to more information:
-Schizophrenia, A Nonexistent Disease
-Your Drugs may be your Problem
-Psychiatric Drugs-Cure or Quackery? (contains detailed references)
-The diagnostic criteria and official discription of schizophrenia : read how vague, broad and overly inclusive it is
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What is your opinion on katatonic schizophrenia?
Its alright
I thought I was catatonic once, I couldn't move, just sat there tripping. I probably wasn't though
Tbh, I have a similiar reaction wrt depression - surely there's something to say for getting rid of crippling affect. But, hey hum, the pills aren't as good as you would think they would be, are they?
IMHO, Tragic Clown is a tiny bit too radical (the most radical regular poster I have come across, so maybe my views will change), wrt Mental Health, at least in this society where you can move into poverty fairly easily with a "mental illness", iyswim
Hmm, like, I fel the same way, at the time I thought it was sick what they were doing. But, you have to ignore that feeling, or you could go back, simple as that... maybe, anyway - you get to know how to live in the out patient system. I am currently resisting an increase in medication - its too sedating, really it is. And like I say, I don't like to think about the rules those places run by... or you do... you go back!!!111 (maybe).
I see absolutely nothing wrong with that proposal.
That's a tad hyperbolic, don't you think?
Psychiatry may still be in its infancy in terms of understanding the etiology/physiology of mental illness, but to say that it's nothing more than a "system of control" is ludicrous.
Psychiatry can be used to control people, sure, but then so can any other branch of science. In the Third Reich, Jews and Poles were incarcerated based on their physical race and Nazi doctors has all sorts of fancy explanations for why that race was "naturally inferior".
That doesn't mean that physiology is nothing more than a "system of control"!
Obviously a line needs to be drawn regarding basic human rights and no science, no matter how credible its proponents, can be allowed to override it.
None of this, however, addresses the fundamental question of psychiatry and that is does it work? And despite all the horror stories the answer is a definitive yes.
People get better thanks to psychiatric intervention. It's not "easy", it's certainly not "efficient", but millions of people are able to lead happier and healthier lives thanks to mental health professionals.
But then most of them wanted help.
When people are forced to accept "treatment" for psychiatric problems, it rarely works and more often then not, they are left in an even more incapacitated state than they started.
Which is why I agree entirely with the outlawing of "commitment". Individual motility is our most fundamental of rights. It doesn't matter how sick one's brain is, one still has the right to captain one's own fate.
But condemning the entire field of psychiatry because of the injustice of coerced treatment is a grosse overreaction. Psychological counseling and even psychiatric medication can be immensly fruitful and productive, just so long as everyone involved consents.
Except, unlike "evil spirits", the blanket term "mental illness" does not propose a cause.
It's merely a recognition that something is wrong. An assesment which, incidently, most people suffering from mental illness would agree with.
This idea that most mentally ill people don't know that their ill is a complete myth. Almost every single entry in the DSM lists "causing distress" as one the required elements.
If somone spends all their time in bed and never sees anyone and is happy about it, that's no one's business but their own. But if they're miserable and are in such constant mental anguish that the only escape they can think of suicide, that's when psychiatry can help.
That's because, again, our understanding of the human brain is rudimentary at best.
It seems quite idealist, however, to imagine that the human brain is "incapable" of getting sick or that illness cannot strike in cognitive-behavioural areas.
Yes, most known neurological diseases show wide effect, but that's because our current level of analsys is only capable of detecting wide effects. Perhaps in a few decades time, we'll hone our instruments and will be able to analyze with greater precision.
Besides, I think that it's artificial to say that biological and psychological are seperate issues. Our brains are phsysical organs. So regardless of where depression or anxiety comes from it has a biological manifestation.
Are SSRIs or tricyclics the best way to adjust that biology? Maybe not, but they're the best we've got now. And while some studies do show that they are marginally effective, others show that in select groups they can be reasonably effective.
As I see it, the only "problem" with psychopharmaceuticals is that the expense is crippling. That's not a problem with psychiatry, however, it's a problem with capitalism.
If Paxil or Zoloft or Prozac doesn't work for you, don't take it. But in a money-less society, there would be no harm in trying it out.
There is also some rather convincing evidence that a good deal of orthomolecular treatments are far more effective than standard psychopharmaceuticals or even "talk therapy".
But because there's no money to be made, no one's really interested in investigating.
Again, it's a problem of capitalism, not the "evils" of psychiatry.
I'd love to change the world, but I don't know what to do, so I leave it up to you...
Not in the psychoses, I think.
Its not that easy. E.g. what is illness?
<claps for LSD>
Simply generalizing that all psychiatric patients' "problems" are just a part of their natural personality is bullshit. Less than a year ago I had extremely intense obsessive-compulsive disorder and couldn't do even the simplest things without fearing that I would get sick. Many people have the same experience with mental illnesses, and don't think they were sick until they get treated. I actually thought the OCD was keeping me safe, and I thought it was a good thing, until I was put on Prozac. Then I realized that this was taking over my waking hours.
And you really think cases like this should not be put on psychiatric drugs?
I concede that people should not be put in hospitals or made to take these drugs against their will, no matter how scientifically wrong they may be, but people also need to be educated about these kinds of things so that we can recognize a real disorder and be able to discern it from normal behavior.
Signature Virus - Copy this into your signature.
Well, to answer my own questionillness may be an action failure of unobstructed doing. What do people think... if I want to reach for a glass of water, there is nothing obstructing me, and I can't - am I ill? Is this sufficient?
Anyway, its more complicated than, you would think.
