God, it’s refreshing to hear someone in the business admit the coercion and iatrogenic harm of this profession. I had two instances of forced (without my and my parents’ consent) hospitalization as a teen coping with SA as a young child. Both times it occurred when I was seeking help from the system. Both times I came out substantially worse than I went in. After the second time, I learned the lesson to never trust a mental health practitioner who has any power. Those events were 40 years ago, but my decision still holds.
I agree that there are compelling arguments for involuntary hospitalization to stabilize people in a psychotic episode (see Freddie deBoer’s argument based on his own experiences), but the majority of people I saw were like me - they reached out for help and got incarcerated.
As someone who’s had multiple psychiatric misdiagnoses and has never been treated for the childhood trauma which is at the very core of my suffering and inability to function as an adult is expected to in our society, I am doing a standing ovation to this article 👏👏👏
This is really interesting, thank you for sharing. I I agree with your view that a holistic change in society would dramatically reduce incidences of mental illness. I look forward to reading more of your material!
You may address this in other posts, which I’ll look into, but there are situations such as psychosis where it does seem (to me) that sectioning people is necessary. As someone who once experienced what psychiatrists called ‘acute psychosis’, I was in a drastically different mental state and a huge danger to myself before being forced into hospital. But the force was necessary because I didn’t have the presence of mind to give consent for treatment. I’m not sure if we have the answers for those situations yet, but I believe being monitored and isolated from others at that time kept me safe. I wasn’t sleeping and my sole parent could not stay awake 24/7 to watch me.
Drugs also played a part in this episode, so it makes some sense to me that drugs had to be given to bring me down. It took three months of treatment, it was a really bad case, and I’m grateful for the treatment I got.
However, perhaps different kinds of facilities (rather than clinical hospitals) may be able to be used for those situations one day. And given my episode was brought on by severe trauma, more options for early intervention may have helped me not use drugs to self medicate and perhaps not get to that breaking point mentally.
You can be saying that everyone has a right to be who they choose to be though,Dr.Taylor,I have met many people on my journey through this system,a minimal amount say they know they cannot do without medication,some are left without a job,the Psychiatrists can say they save peoples lives,which they probably do,their own insecurity can lead to them multiplying the meaning of what they say.I've had my experiences from decades ago and if you have been ingested in this society it can be difficult to tell if you can solve your problems without some knowledge of descriptions used in it to describe what you don't understand.You have your marriage,education and contacts to feel supported within,I have heard that the right type of personal relationship can be the right way to deal with these things,but if you move through these experiences they can seem to isolate people with divorces;part of my experiences was being cut off by who I thought of as friends and being left with a family who said they were my friends,but weren't,they had their own ideas about what life should consist of,and if someone shows signs of hostility,rejection,or personal corruption(they weren't overly corrupt,but what your senses go like after they have,in effect,driven you mad,seem very corrupting,when your perception becomes severely altered),they turn against you and due to what you know about them can attempt to drive you to suicide in order to preserve their familial wellbeing with their own ways. ---I haven't written to you before,though,about people talking to each other,it seems the way forward if you believe in giving everyone the same rights as you want.I don't see anything wrong with pathologisation if facilitation can be made for people to talk with each other,so that what can appear to be a private language can be understood to be the truth by both parties,this can appear to be impossible,I know this from experience,I've tried explaining a mental problem that a professional has to that qualified person,she thought about it,and eventually rejected what I know to be true-so you can explain something based in someones childhood,meaning to help them,you can come through experience based in personal analysis and experience of Psychotherapy,so you leave as much of the description to them as possible to avoid complications,and the complications related to how sexism and professional can come to the fore almost completely negate what you tried to mean-sounds familiar? We all live in an incomplete sociological description though,I take sleeping pills two nights a week,I have tried what I think were Diamazepam(I'm not sure of their identity),they mimicked the switch effect you can feel when you fall asleep,you can get 8 hours and wake up feeling naturally rested,they did seem the perfect solution to train people back to normal sleep,the doctors start saying they are addictive and you can't have them anymore,that may be reasonable for someone else,they prescribe you new ones that don't work as well but say they consider them as addictive and that their description of addiction isn't like yours,it means they believe in the circadian rhythm and if you don't have that naturally,then you have an addiction to pills,which they give you,when you could be of the belief to go without and just get tired enough,my GP(one of them)says she does meditation to help her sleep("it helps sometimes"),to my knowledge personal/work worries are stopping her from sleeping:so the medical world is incomplete. You try and give Psychiatrists a complete reason to change their ways,you seem to have a good basis,from my experience-fat chance,as they say.Produce a paper for the courts or Government,it doesn't seem like you can;I have experienced what you write about,I haven't liked it,I believe the medication is obviously not individuated,the drugs don't necessarily do what they claim,unless they are just right,they tend to act as a depressant,and you can believe they are good for you,they crop your mental workings and who you are,but they help some people to live.
My question is who do we need to flog to get answers,who are the people behind this oppression,How can we get people to avidly start questioning,how do we show the people that regardless of who holds the cards now,we can make small incremental changes that will be hard to ignore,
The sad thing is that the public has already bought this lie and I am not blaming them, they're brainwashed,how to make them see that?🙄🤔.
I agree with what you've said. What do we do when someone acts out of their distressed state and harms someone because they are dissociated? Society seems that these actions come from a mental illness. Are perps coming from a place of trauma? How do we view them compassionately, if at all? Does the role of meds have a place as an interim when distress is so great you're a harm to yourself? So many questions.
God, it’s refreshing to hear someone in the business admit the coercion and iatrogenic harm of this profession. I had two instances of forced (without my and my parents’ consent) hospitalization as a teen coping with SA as a young child. Both times it occurred when I was seeking help from the system. Both times I came out substantially worse than I went in. After the second time, I learned the lesson to never trust a mental health practitioner who has any power. Those events were 40 years ago, but my decision still holds.
I agree that there are compelling arguments for involuntary hospitalization to stabilize people in a psychotic episode (see Freddie deBoer’s argument based on his own experiences), but the majority of people I saw were like me - they reached out for help and got incarcerated.
As someone who’s had multiple psychiatric misdiagnoses and has never been treated for the childhood trauma which is at the very core of my suffering and inability to function as an adult is expected to in our society, I am doing a standing ovation to this article 👏👏👏
This is really interesting, thank you for sharing. I I agree with your view that a holistic change in society would dramatically reduce incidences of mental illness. I look forward to reading more of your material!
You may address this in other posts, which I’ll look into, but there are situations such as psychosis where it does seem (to me) that sectioning people is necessary. As someone who once experienced what psychiatrists called ‘acute psychosis’, I was in a drastically different mental state and a huge danger to myself before being forced into hospital. But the force was necessary because I didn’t have the presence of mind to give consent for treatment. I’m not sure if we have the answers for those situations yet, but I believe being monitored and isolated from others at that time kept me safe. I wasn’t sleeping and my sole parent could not stay awake 24/7 to watch me.
Drugs also played a part in this episode, so it makes some sense to me that drugs had to be given to bring me down. It took three months of treatment, it was a really bad case, and I’m grateful for the treatment I got.
However, perhaps different kinds of facilities (rather than clinical hospitals) may be able to be used for those situations one day. And given my episode was brought on by severe trauma, more options for early intervention may have helped me not use drugs to self medicate and perhaps not get to that breaking point mentally.
You can be saying that everyone has a right to be who they choose to be though,Dr.Taylor,I have met many people on my journey through this system,a minimal amount say they know they cannot do without medication,some are left without a job,the Psychiatrists can say they save peoples lives,which they probably do,their own insecurity can lead to them multiplying the meaning of what they say.I've had my experiences from decades ago and if you have been ingested in this society it can be difficult to tell if you can solve your problems without some knowledge of descriptions used in it to describe what you don't understand.You have your marriage,education and contacts to feel supported within,I have heard that the right type of personal relationship can be the right way to deal with these things,but if you move through these experiences they can seem to isolate people with divorces;part of my experiences was being cut off by who I thought of as friends and being left with a family who said they were my friends,but weren't,they had their own ideas about what life should consist of,and if someone shows signs of hostility,rejection,or personal corruption(they weren't overly corrupt,but what your senses go like after they have,in effect,driven you mad,seem very corrupting,when your perception becomes severely altered),they turn against you and due to what you know about them can attempt to drive you to suicide in order to preserve their familial wellbeing with their own ways. ---I haven't written to you before,though,about people talking to each other,it seems the way forward if you believe in giving everyone the same rights as you want.I don't see anything wrong with pathologisation if facilitation can be made for people to talk with each other,so that what can appear to be a private language can be understood to be the truth by both parties,this can appear to be impossible,I know this from experience,I've tried explaining a mental problem that a professional has to that qualified person,she thought about it,and eventually rejected what I know to be true-so you can explain something based in someones childhood,meaning to help them,you can come through experience based in personal analysis and experience of Psychotherapy,so you leave as much of the description to them as possible to avoid complications,and the complications related to how sexism and professional can come to the fore almost completely negate what you tried to mean-sounds familiar? We all live in an incomplete sociological description though,I take sleeping pills two nights a week,I have tried what I think were Diamazepam(I'm not sure of their identity),they mimicked the switch effect you can feel when you fall asleep,you can get 8 hours and wake up feeling naturally rested,they did seem the perfect solution to train people back to normal sleep,the doctors start saying they are addictive and you can't have them anymore,that may be reasonable for someone else,they prescribe you new ones that don't work as well but say they consider them as addictive and that their description of addiction isn't like yours,it means they believe in the circadian rhythm and if you don't have that naturally,then you have an addiction to pills,which they give you,when you could be of the belief to go without and just get tired enough,my GP(one of them)says she does meditation to help her sleep("it helps sometimes"),to my knowledge personal/work worries are stopping her from sleeping:so the medical world is incomplete. You try and give Psychiatrists a complete reason to change their ways,you seem to have a good basis,from my experience-fat chance,as they say.Produce a paper for the courts or Government,it doesn't seem like you can;I have experienced what you write about,I haven't liked it,I believe the medication is obviously not individuated,the drugs don't necessarily do what they claim,unless they are just right,they tend to act as a depressant,and you can believe they are good for you,they crop your mental workings and who you are,but they help some people to live.
My question is who do we need to flog to get answers,who are the people behind this oppression,How can we get people to avidly start questioning,how do we show the people that regardless of who holds the cards now,we can make small incremental changes that will be hard to ignore,
The sad thing is that the public has already bought this lie and I am not blaming them, they're brainwashed,how to make them see that?🙄🤔.
I agree with what you've said. What do we do when someone acts out of their distressed state and harms someone because they are dissociated? Society seems that these actions come from a mental illness. Are perps coming from a place of trauma? How do we view them compassionately, if at all? Does the role of meds have a place as an interim when distress is so great you're a harm to yourself? So many questions.