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Mental Health The Myth of Mental Illness

Medicine, by definition, is an empirical science, that is, it requires experimental data to prove its theories.

In the case of mental pathologies, the diagnosis is completely subjective, it is based on the physician's analysis, which, in turn, it is influenced by the patient's emotions and speech at the time of the appointment. If at the first appointment the patient is very depressed, consequently its speech will also be depressed and finally the chosen treatment will be based on this excessively depressive state, which may be a momentary state. This is just a pictorial example to illustrate my opinion, anyway.

To be added to the aforementioned context, there is the pharmaceutical lobby, flooding the market with miraculous drugs, which, sometimes, are just sophisticated placebo
 
Opi_Kid_Rock said:
In my Jurisdiction the Provincial Law of the Mental Health Act states that a Licensed Psychiatrist may “CERTIFY” someone to be mentally unfit to function and make decisions adequately in society and therefore shall be admitted against their free will. There are two types of patients: those certified against their will which makes up the majority vs. the willing.
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Man, that's really fucked up and if I were you I think I'd do something about it like get a lawyer.

I don't THINK it is usually like that in most parts of the U.S., but there could be more cases than I know.

IMO there should be no reason to lock someone up unless they pose a threat to others.

I can understand to an extent why we do it when people are suicidal, but honestly IMO we shouldn't even do it then as I believe suicide should be legal as everyone should have the right to do with their own body what they want, including legalized drugs (except IMO you should have to be for 18 to use MOST of them, though for weed I honestly don't even care if a 14 year old smokes.)

Well, I hope you find a solution to your situation.

Sorry you are caught up in this.
 
jose ribas da silva said:
Medicine, by definition, is an empirical science, that is, it requires experimental data to prove its theories.

In the case of mental pathologies, the diagnosis is completely subjective, it is based on the physician's analysis, which, in turn, it is influenced by the patient's emotions and speech at the time of the appointment. If at the first appointment the patient is very depressed, consequently its speech will also be depressed and finally the chosen treatment will be based on this excessively depressive state, which may be a momentary state. This is just a pictorial example to illustrate my opinion, anyway.

To be added to the aforementioned context, there is the pharmaceutical lobby, flooding the market with miraculous drugs, which, sometimes, are just sophisticated placebo
Click to expand...

While most of that is true, because admittedly, psychiatry is not as far along YET as other sciences, I still think that at least in the U.S. these cases of people being locked up against their own will for lengthy periods of time when they do NOT pose an immediate risk to themselves or others is probably relatively rare. There might be more cases than I know about and probably are, but I still think by and large the legal system won't support locking people up and throwing away the key unless they continue to exhibit clear signs of being a danger to themselves and/or others.

I still think psychiatry is overall a good practice that is probably moving in good directions but just VERY slowly, and that it should exist and is not just a crock of shit like some people think.

I think we need brain scans to be able to detect what is really going on in the brain and other tools that we just don't have yet.

But I tend to think that majority of psychiatric patients, at least in the U.S. as I don't know as much about the rest of the world, are getting treatments that they want because they have chosen to go to a psychiatrist and follow their instructions.

They might not be entirely happy with the choices the psychiatrist makes (and I've had psychiatrists make shitty decisions about me so I know about it a little, but then I just went to another one till I found the right one...in fact, I need another now...), but I think MOST OF THE TIME most of us can just choose to walk out of the office and stop seeing that psychiatrist and find a new one or stop seeing psychiatrists altogether.

I've seen plenty and never been in a position where I was without a choice, and I did go to a hospital for 3 weeks once when a psychiatrist fucked up and cut me off from my meds so Iv'e seen that side of it...but it was a walk-in-day clinic program where I was free to come and go as I wanted...I didn't even have to show up daily, and no one was making me do anything, it's just that they wouldn't give me the meds I wanted which was Klonopin.

I got another asshole psychiatrist who wouldn't give me Klonopin either and I basically let him know I didn't agree with anything he said and then left and found a new psych who prescribed me what I wanted.

Now my current one prescribes me SOME of the meds I'd like (in fact he might prescribe more), but he messes up on the other end of being unreliable and not being available to me when I want to go see him and ask him questions, so soon I will just go online and find more psychiatrists who take my insurance and find a new one.

When I find one, if I go to see him or her and don't like how they are treating me I will simply find another, then another, then another, till I find a good one, and I have very little fear that any of them will forcibly put me in a hospital cause I can see nothing that I might do to be able to be in that position, but that being said I also have pretty good resources in the form of the fact that if absolutely necessary I could get my mother involved and she works in the mental health field and would call any shitty psychiatrist on what they are doing and they'd leave me alone.

Regardless, I won't need her help. I guess I am lucky enough to be in a position where I can view them as just any other business where I am the customer and the customer is always right, and I'll just leave and find another if I feel I am being mistreated.

But I have sympathy for those not in my situation and recognize that the OP is in a different one.

I still think psychiatry as a whole is a good science that should exist, it's just that it is necessarily behind the times in comparison to other hard sciences like cancer research for example, because mental illness is a more subjective thing because we just don't have as many tests to figure out what is going on in the brain yet as we do for what is figuring out in the body.

That doesn't mean we won't necessarily get there though, and I don't like the idea of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and saying that all psychiatry is a crock of shit and a racket because there are some bad psychiatrists out there and some aspects of the science which are not yet the way they should be.

But also, I think the OP probably should have given this thread a different title from "the myth of mental illness", because AT LEAST psychiatrists believe mental patients that SOMETHING is going on that they need help with.

IF you want to REALLY see some bad shit happen see what's up if we convince the world that mental illness is in fact a myth that requires no intervention.

I recently saw a true crime show about a paranoid schizophrenic who lived in a religious Amish community where they did not believe in mental illness and just believed he was possessed by the devil and would not let him see a psychiatrist.

By the time he finally did he got some meds, but then his family convinced him he didn't need them anymore and that it was only cause his faith wasn't strong enough and he should just pray.

He stopped taking them, went crazy and murdered his wife and ended up killing himself after he got out of a mental hospital, all cause his community didn't believe in psychiatry and thought his illness was made up and he was just being possessed by devils. It's like Christian-science but for mental illness, which is obviously usually going to be a recipe for disaster, and was in this case.

If they'd believed in psychiatry he probably could have gotten his medication earlier and he and his wife would still be alive.
 
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Mycophile, in all your posting you seem to assume good faith from all the Psychiatrists.
That's extremely naive of you, and I do not mean to offend.
Psychiatrists are in the end humans, and the vast majority of humans, given a power, they will abuse it one way or the other, and that's not because they are psychiatrists, but because they are humans.
It is that simple.
Not all people are so weak when they have power, but in some lines of work, the potential is really high.
Also take into account honest mistakes due to any circumstance, and that in this field it's not possible to objectively quantify illness...
And that Big Pharma is known to compensate medical professionals to push a certain product or another.....
I think it's easy to understand where I'm going, and that my reasoning is realistic... I guess we might disagree on how often misdiagnosis and other mistakes occur.
 
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Phobos said:
Mycophile, in all your posting you seem to assume good faith from all the Psychiatrists.
That's extremely naive of you, and I do not mean to offend.
Psychiatrists are in the end humans, and the vast majority of humans, given a power, they will abuse it one way or the other, and that's not because they are psychiatrists, but because they are humans.
It is that simple.
Not all people are so weak when they have power, but in some lines of work, the potential is really high.
Also take into account honest mistakes due to any circumstance, and that in this field it's not possible to objectively quantify illness...
And that Big Pharma is known to compensate medical professionals to push a certain product or another.....
I think it's easy to understand where I'm going, and that my reasoning is realistic... I guess we might disagree on how often misdiagnosis and other mistakes occur.
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There doesn't seem to be that much we are disagreeing on other than how often misdiagnosis and other mistakes occurs (which I said I admitted it may happen more than I am aware of) because if you just carefully read my last post, which it kind of seems like you didn't, you'd understand that I said that I have dealt with shitty psychiatrists before and that I just left and went and saw others and I am not naive that they all necessarily have good intentions.

I said that by and large I think in the United States people being forcefully locked up against their will for really extended periods of time doesn't seem to me like it happens all that often because their are laws to protect people from that and that MOST OF THE TIME it really needs to seem like the patient is a danger to themselves or others. I mean I suppose a psychiatrist could misinterpret or flat-out lie and try to get a patient admitted, and I doubt don't it happens sometimes, but at least in the United States patients have rights and can hire lawyers for that kind of thing.

Like I said, i saw psychiatrists who I felt weren't treating me right and I left and saw others. I am sure I am in a luckier situation than the OP based on where I live and just maybe not getting stuck in an even worse situation, but I don't think there's usually anything stopping most patients from walking out of the psychiatrists office and getting a new one and a 2nd opinion.

That being said, I acknowledged that I don't know the laws in Canada where the OP is from and that things could be different there and it appears that they might be...but I don't think in the U.S. that it's so easy for psychiatrists to lock patients up against their will for extended periods unless they seem REALLY dangerous, NOT because I am naive and trust all psychiatrists, cause i don't, but because we have laws to protect against that.

Also, when you say things like "it's not possible to objectively quantify illness" you keep ignoring certain things I'm saying like how I have seen a good psychiatrist who said "it doesn't really matter what your diagnosis is, just what the symptoms are and what works for them."

Yes, it's not very scientific to throw meds at someone till one hopefully works, and that is usually what happens, but in the end if one DOES work, it means fuckall what the patients' diagnosis is or if the med he/she was given was not necessarily intended for the particular diagnosis the patient was assumed to have.

I also flat out admitted over and over that I think psychiatry is behind other hard sciences because YES...it's true we don't YET have things that can detect the exact type of mental illness a person has and see inside the brain in the same way we have technology that can see inside the body and detect cancers and things like that, and that ideally that would be possible someday, but that the fact that this is now the case is just an unfortunate reality and not a sign that psychiatry is all a crock of shit, but that for very specific reasons it just is not yet able to advance as quickly as the other hard sciences, and this will not necessarily always be the case.

You want to say that the fact that this is the way psychiatry is is proof that it's all a scam full of evil doctors who don't care about patients, while I'm saying that yes, there are bad psychiatrists and bad diagnoses, and yes, psychiatry is not advanced in comparison to other hard sciences, but that it is still a legit science that is just moving very slowly, but albeit, in my opinion, USUALLY in the right direction.

I feel for how the OP is being mistreated and believe that he is, but I feel he should have titled this thread "Psychiatric Misdiagnosis and Forced Hospitalization" and NOT "The Myth of Mental Illness" because that title suggests that we ought to question whether mental illness exists at all.

Let me ask you a couple questions:

1) Do you think mental illness exists? Do you think Bipolar is real? Do you think Paranoid Schizophrenia is real? (and when I say "real" I mean the symptoms behind them actually exist and that there can be a proper treatment for them, not NECESSARILY that every single idea we have about them is 100% true)

Or do you think they are made up? That the symptoms of these problems are all imaginary and we have no meds that work for them and psychiatry only exists to pretend these illnesses exist at all and treat people who have nothing wrong with them because it is 100% all about making money and big pharma and that no one behind the field of psychiatry means well or is trying to help anyone?

2) Do you think that EVERY SINGLE medication or treatment that psychiatrists have used and developed is full of shit and useless, or do you think SOME of them work SOMETIMES?

Finally 3) Do you think, whether we call it psychiatry or give it another name, that it is at least a good thing that we have a science dedicated to trying to figure out what causes various sorts of mental problems and how to fix them?

Cause I don't see how you can't agree on all of those and if you don't then I am interested to hear why.


Also, did you read the story I told about the show I watched about the real life story of an Amish man with paranoid schizophrenia who was not allowed by his family to go to psychiatrists and get medication because they DID believe that "mental illness is a myth" and that all it meant was that his Christian faith was not strong enough? Did you read about how he eventually went and got meds and they helped, but his family made him stop taking them, so then he went nuts again and killed his wife, then went to a mental hospital and killed himself after getting out??

THAT is the end result of us believing that "Mental Illness is a myth", and it ain't a pretty picture is it?

What's worse, being forcefully admitted by a shitty psychiatrist but eventually getting out, but having the price for that being that at the very least, in other situations patients are at least BELIEVED TO HAVE SOMETHING THAT NEEDS TREATMENT and being able to get SOME kind of medication, or NOT being believed that ANYTHING is wrong and not being able to get any medication and then killing someone else or yourself?

I mean, it's not a fair question truth be told cause they could be equally bad: patients do die as a result of misdiagnosis and forced meds or kill themselves, but likewise, in situations like this, people die by NOT getting proper treatment.

By and large though, it is STILL unquestionable IMO that it is better we live in a world where mental illness is acknowledged to exist and there being the POSSIBILITY of getting treatment for it that MIGHT work, even at the cost of misdiagnosis or forced hospitalization, rather than retreating into the dark ages and forgetting that mental illness exists at all or that there are meds that work for it, and having no one have anywhere to turn if they are mentally ill.

Would you REALLY prefer there to be no psychiatry, no psychiatric meds, no belief in mental illness at all, and no science of any kind that is, even if highly flawed, based around trying to find solutions to mental illness?

Cause if not, then I don't see how you or the OP can benefit from trying to spread the message that "Mental Illness is a Myth" and that the field of psychiatry is always 100% flawed and should be eradicated...
 
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Ofocurse I agree on 1, 2 and 3, one of the main points I would like to make is that in instance, as we do not have any way to surely determine condition and best cure, that every Psychiatrist giving a diagnosis and a med would be obligated to explain that there is a possibility that the meds might work, and that they also might not, and properly explain risks associated with the therapy, rather than acting like they are giving out relatively safe drugs or that they actually KNOW whats going on rather than guessing.
I know of people that are given Benzos on a endless refill with instructions give to take as needed. Never mind potential physical and psychological addiction, or the fact that in absence of warning about the risks associated with the drug, parents will use their Xanax to calm children, although ofcourse I recognise a high degree of guilt in the parents as well.
What I'm trying to say is that Psychiatry is now where surgery was in 1900 or something like that, and they should act like it.
I don't support the statement that gives title to this thread BTW, I have first hand witnessed 3 people I know progress from regular young adults with maybe a few small quirks into full blown schizophrenia with hallucinations, another friend had horrible crippling anxiety and ended up dead from Benzo+Heroin OD at 23, and I have many other examples but there is no way that I am saying that there is a need for a working psychiatry.
Given the current state of advancement of the science behind psychiatry, I honestly find it revolting that some drugs that might work better than others in some cases are not used as the patent expired or well, just because there is no way that something that might actually work in a short amount of time is preferred to something that needs to be taken for extended periods of time due to increased economical returns.
 
"Normal" does not exist, and comes in different shapes and sizes. I believed mental illness was a myth, but now it angers me to even hear people spew that garbage. I grew up with a Bipolar mother who, when hypomanic, would hitchhike across the country leaving me alone. She returned once, cried for an hour, and then cursed me and left again for weeks.

Now while bipolar and schizophrenia seem extreme. Depression and PTSD are very real. The things I saw in the military changed my life forever. I see faces in daydreams that I cannot explain. You are not drifting away. They are here with me. I now embrace it. Before being medicated? 6 suicide attempts with a tolerance that wouldn't let me go peacefully. While not happy, I now function to a degree.

Mental illness is very real and interferes with my life as much as my chronic ailments.
 
I agree with Phobos, I am from Brazil, but I lived in the US during one year, I also lived in France and in Portugal so that I visited psychiatrists in four countries, a solid basis of comparison.

In Brazil and in France, I had the impression that the doctors want to have the maximum number of patients to gain money, therefore the appointments are very short and they will not discuss a lot with the patients if they affirm that a specific medicament is better for them than another one. Of course, if it is something relatively normal in terms of doses and type of drugs (but this happens even with benzos).

In the US is different, the doctors are somehow rude, haughty, it appears, sometimes, that they don’t want to help the patients and in this sense I agree with Phobos on this subject. Perhaps, I am not American, I cannot certainly state, they are giving too much power and social importance for the doctors, a mentality that probably arises in universities.
 
To clarify, there are well-established psychiatric pathologies, some of them can be empirically confirmed by experimental methodologies. However, for most of us, people who have acquired mental diseases in the course of life (non-organic diseases not caused by biological failures), the diagnosis are completely subjective, there is no scientific basis for classifying ordinary people into different groups of mental pathologies, as it has been done.

This supposed mental diseases arise from the actual difficulties that modern world imposes on us. They may be chronic if these conditions persist for a long time, but they are usually temporary. In this context, I ask: what are the criteria for giving a patient a specific drug? There are no criteria, it is based on vague and subjective analyses. Thus, psychiatrists give benzodiazepines and antidepressants to patients without criteria, these are very strong drugs to be used like that.

Actually, the criteria are based on statistics, like, "people who behave in this fashion is better treated with this drug, because there are 80% of positive results in the previous adopted treatments"
 
better saying, which symptoms would justify the use of a drug, which are the symptoms? Sadness? anxiety? depression? very vague symptoms
 
Phobos said:
Ofocurse I agree on 1, 2 and 3, one of the main points I would like to make is that in instance, as we do not have any way to surely determine condition and best cure, that every Psychiatrist giving a diagnosis and a med would be obligated to explain that there is a possibility that the meds might work, and that they also might not, and properly explain risks associated with the therapy, rather than acting like they are giving out relatively safe drugs or that they actually KNOW whats going on rather than guessing.
I know of people that are given Benzos on a endless refill with instructions give to take as needed. Never mind potential physical and psychological addiction, or the fact that in absence of warning about the risks associated with the drug, parents will use their Xanax to calm children, although ofcourse I recognise a high degree of guilt in the parents as well.
What I'm trying to say is that Psychiatry is now where surgery was in 1900 or something like that, and they should act like it.
I don't support the statement that gives title to this thread BTW, I have first hand witnessed 3 people I know progress from regular young adults with maybe a few small quirks into full blown schizophrenia with hallucinations, another friend had horrible crippling anxiety and ended up dead from Benzo+Heroin OD at 23, and I have many other examples but there is no way that I am saying that there is a need for a working psychiatry.
Given the current state of advancement of the science behind psychiatry, I honestly find it revolting that some drugs that might work better than others in some cases are not used as the patent expired or well, just because there is no way that something that might actually work in a short amount of time is preferred to something that needs to be taken for extended periods of time due to increased economical returns.
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See, I agree with every single thing you just wrote there, especially the bolded part at the end.

I want to try a number of drugs psychiatrists either won't prescribe or can't prescribe because they are illegal and as such if I want to try something experimental I have to do what others here do which is try RCs or whatever but truth is I have so far been too worried of side effects to try any old RC and I also don't understand how bitcoin and the deep net work or know enough about side effects.

I want to try Ketamine, but while there are some clinics for it, none take insurance and cost an arm and a leg.

I want high CBD/low THC strains of weed cause I get too anxious from regular weed, and just one state over from me in NJ they prescribe it for GAD and OCD which I have, but not in NY where I am, so I can't.

I am sick and tired of trying SSRIs that take weeks or months to POSSIBLY find out if they work. It seems that the only things they'll prescribe that take effect quickly are benzos, which yes, I take Klonopin, but it has some side effects I don't like. There seems to be a perception in most of psychiatry that if something works quickly then it is ineffective, yet I really want to just take a drug, have it kick in fast and know whether or not it works or if it has side effects so I don't have to wait.

Problem is that most of those drugs are more abusable or can have recreational uses, but so fucking what right? We should be allowed to make that choice for ourselves.

I mean, I believe in ALL drugs, literally ALL of them being legal for 18 and over so long as if it is going to mess with your coordination you aren't driving a car.

I think in a perfect world pretty much all doctors along with psychiatrists would act as HEALTH ADVISORS and not be able to tell you what drugs you can and can't have access to, and you should be able to get whatever drug you want, and then you go to them and they explain to you why they do or don't think that drug is a good idea, and EXACTLY WHY, and what drugs they'd recommend, and why.

I know legally that sounds like a mess, but it wouldn't need to be. If you were trying a drug that was dangerous and they told you they didn't recommend it, they could just have you sign something that they sign also saying that they do NOT recommend you take that drug and that they are not responsible for any negative effects or death on your part, scan it through their computer and BOOM! It's in the system that they DO NOT agree you should take it.

Then they put that past you and tell you everything you want to know, the good the bad and the ugly, about what could happen if you try to use Gabpentin + 4-ACO-DMT + Ketamine + Vortoxetine etc etc...(those are things I want to try LOL) for you depression and anxiety.

Of course, we'll never live in that world.

I also agree with you that psychiatry is like 1900s medicine, but that's just unfortunate. Even then they had SOME cures and it was better off than 1800s medicine or no medicine at all...but TOTALLY, psychiatry is not very advanced.

Every psychiatrist or neurologist I have seen made mistakes:

1st one was an ASSHOLE...HUGE ASSHOLE many years back.

Would NOT prescribe me benzos for my social anxiety and flat out told me it was because he was afraid I'd get into a car-accident from them and he'd get sued and when I responded by saying "well, what about my dying in that car accident as opposed to you just losing your license?" he gave me a sick sadistic little smile as if to say "well...ACTUALLY I DON'T care as much about you dying as my license."

I would tell him I had eye-contact anxiety and felt like people were staring at me, which is getting to be a well-known form of social anxiety which my Klonopin works very well for.

Instead of thinking I had GAD, Social anxiety and OCD, he was convinced I had paranoid schizophrenia.

I'd say I worried that people might be talking about me because they thought I was looking at them weird due to my eye contact phobia and then he said "so, do you also think they are following you in their cars?" and I'm like "NO...I'm not crazy" and he just gave me a sick twisted smile like he was really trying to prove to me and himself that I was not just socially anxious but paranoid.

He prescribed me Risperdal which is an anti-psychotic which is very dangerous and can lead to tardive diskonesia which is a dangerous condition. It did NOTHING for me. He gave me Buspar which some people say helps them but did NOTHING for me.

I said I thought MAYBE I could lower my Prozac....and he lowered it WAY too fast and I got 4 months of insomnia from SSRI WD, then had a panic attack cause he wouldn't give me Klonopin.

I left him and went to see another guy who gave me Klonopin, but then was about to take it away cause "we are only supposed to use it short term till SSRIs take effect" and while I know that's a common line of thinking, I think it is unfair not to let someone keep taking Klonopin if that's all that will work.

So I left that guy and went to see a neurologist who prescribed Klonopin.

Things went well with him for a while but some complicated shit went down which would take too long to get into so instead of being a man and talking to me face to face and tapering me HIMSELF off Klonopin or even referring me to another psychiatrist, he cut me off cold turkey leaving it in "good faith" that I'd find a hospital.

I found one, where I went to a day-program where I could come and go as I pleased for 3 weeks. T

There I saw a SUPER incompetent psychiatrist who gave me NO taper to my Klonopin, told me "it tapers itself cause it is long acting" and just said "divide up what little you have left and take a little less each day for a week"....that was his idea of a taper.

SOMEHOW I had COMPLETELY Asymptomatic WD...meaning ZERO Klonopin WD from taking 1.5mgs a day for years, which I still have NO IDEA HOW I got so lucky....but I know it was pure luck.

So both my former neurologist and the hospitals' psychiatrist fucked up COMPLETELY with the Klonopin and it is sheer luck I didn't have a grand-mal seizure and they'd BOTH be to blame if I did.

They gave me another psychiatrist who refused to give me Klonopin because of the situation and when I told him my anxiety had come back and wanted it he said "well, I understand, but WE DON'T WANT YOU TO HURT YOURSELF" LOL.....as if I didn't know the ins-and outs of Klonopin after taking it for a decade.

I then had no access to Klonopin for 9 months so my social anxiety returned and FINALLY I found a new doctor who gave me Klonopin.


Now this doctor is the opposite, asks no questions and gives me whatever I want, but will NEVER meet with me in person, responds to NOTHING other than refills of pills. I have tried to make appointments with him for like 9 months to talk about wanting to try new meds but he won't respond to anything regarding an office visit and only refilling pills which basically means to me "listen, I'm just your drug dealer, I don't have time to be your doctor LOL".

So now I need to find a new psychiatrist who will both prescribe what I want, be willing to meet with me, and not cut me off from meds and be open minded.

That's hard to find. There always seems to be SOMETHING wrong with them.

I have also had certain of these doctors not admit to certain dangers that I KNEW FOR A FACT were associated with certain meds when I actually believe they knew those dangers existed but just didn't want me to ask about it because it would complicate things.

So yeah....psychiatry has a LOT of problems, but that being said, I am VERY lucky to even have anyone be willing to prescribe me Klonopin which helps my anxiety even with all of the associated risks, and someone who is willing to consider different options and believe I have issues that need addressing.

I took more issue with the idea of mental illness being a myth, or the idea that psychiatry is completely useless and evil, which I now see you don't really believe.

I also haven't PERSONALLY experienced being hospitalized and in my case whenever something went bad with a doctor I was able to find another, and because of that and the way laws work in the U.S. where USUALLY you must be a danger to yourself or others to be forcefully hospitalized, I kind of doubted how frequently it happens, but I believe the OP that it happens more in Canada than in the U.S., and truth is, I bet it happens more often in the U.S. than I am aware of.

I just so far have been able to avoid presenting myself as dangerous to anyone (cause I'm not) and I take the attitude with these doctors that I am going to be respectful, but then if they mistreat me I am basically like "I'm the customer, and the customer is always right, and I'll find a new doctor."

So far I have been "ok", but I would not say I'm happy overall, and would rather have an Ayahuasca shaman hahahah.

But I can't, cause I take SSRIs, and I'm not quite willing to taper off them and travel to the Amazon and find a shaman now lol...

But...it's a work in progress as a field, and i believe it has a lot to offer, and just that it is more in its' infancy at this point.

Truth be told, if it weren't for drug laws and they could prescribe psychedelics and other drugs legally and were willing to do so I bet we'd have a lot more progress in the field.

I recently saw a documentary on a guy who tried every psychiatric med out there for his depression and was going to kill himself but went to Peru and got an Ayahuasca ceremony and finally got better.

I wish they'd prescribe psychedelics here....maybe at somepoint I'll try out the online RC thing...

Anyways, I guess we agree on most of this stuff now.
 
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FutureReference said:
"Normal" does not exist, and comes in different shapes and sizes. I believed mental illness was a myth, but now it angers me to even hear people spew that garbage. I grew up with a Bipolar mother who, when hypomanic, would hitchhike across the country leaving me alone. She returned once, cried for an hour, and then cursed me and left again for weeks.

Now while bipolar and schizophrenia seem extreme. Depression and PTSD are very real. The things I saw in the military changed my life forever. I see faces in daydreams that I cannot explain. You are not drifting away. They are here with me. I now embrace it. Before being medicated? 6 suicide attempts with a tolerance that wouldn't let me go peacefully. While not happy, I now function to a degree.

Mental illness is very real and interferes with my life as much as my chronic ailments.
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I'm very sorry to hear about your story, but glad you have at least gotten some help.

So yeah, I mean, psychiatry with all its' faults is still able to save some lives and help a lot of people, whereas even 50-60 years ago someone in your position might not have been able to get help.

I know of someone who most likely did have paranoid schizophrenia back in the 60s who disappeared and was never heard from again and no one believed his problems were real.

Calling mental illness a myth can be dangerous, just like the story I told of the Amish guy who was a paranoid schizophrenic but because his family was super religious they wouldn't believe in mental illness or let him get meds and he killed his wife and himself.

I wish the field would advance faster, but at least it still exists, which it really did not about 100 years ago for the most part at least.
 
jose ribas da silva said:
I agree with Phobos, I am from Brazil, but I lived in the US during one year, I also lived in France and in Portugal so that I visited psychiatrists in four countries, a solid basis of comparison.

In Brazil and in France, I had the impression that the doctors want to have the maximum number of patients to gain money, therefore the appointments are very short and they will not discuss a lot with the patients if they affirm that a specific medicament is better for them than another one. Of course, if it is something relatively normal in terms of doses and type of drugs (but this happens even with benzos).

In the US is different, the doctors are somehow rude, haughty, it appears, sometimes, that they don’t want to help the patients and in this sense I agree with Phobos on this subject. Perhaps, I am not American, I cannot certainly state, they are giving too much power and social importance for the doctors, a mentality that probably arises in universities.
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I am in the U.S. and yes, I have had some very rude arrogant psychiatrists, but it is not fair to say they are all like that as I have had some who were very compassionate.

They are just people, and will probably usually devote a bit more time to the patient I think than the ones you mention in those other countries from the sound of it.
 
jose ribas da silva said:
To clarify, there are well-established psychiatric pathologies, some of them can be empirically confirmed by experimental methodologies. However, for most of us, people who have acquired mental diseases in the course of life (non-organic diseases not caused by biological failures), the diagnosis are completely subjective, there is no scientific basis for classifying ordinary people into different groups of mental pathologies, as it has been done.

This supposed mental diseases arise from the actual difficulties that modern world imposes on us. They may be chronic if these conditions persist for a long time, but they are usually temporary. In this context, I ask: what are the criteria for giving a patient a specific drug? There are no criteria, it is based on vague and subjective analyses. Thus, psychiatrists give benzodiazepines and antidepressants to patients without criteria, these are very strong drugs to be used like that.

Actually, the criteria are based on statistics, like, "people who behave in this fashion is better treated with this drug, because there are 80% of positive results in the previous adopted treatments"
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I would have to say I disagree with the bold part.

If you know about not just psychiatry, but also psychology and even philosophy (I studied determinism in college...if you don't know about it you can look it up), you probably realize that everyone is generally a combination of 2 things: 1) genetics and 2) past experiences.

From the way you say that the illnesses come from "the difficulties of the modern world" it sounds like you only believe that our life experiences cause problems but not our genetics, and that is not true cause we already know that bipolar and schizophrenia and alcoholism and things like that can run in families.

I also do believe our brains can literally change from what we face in life. Like, not just like trauma as a psychological thing but maybe that the structures of our brain or amounts of dopamine or serotonin or brain waves can change from things we face, like in PTSD.

I do believe that there ARE real scientific basis to all the conditions people have but that we don't yet have the tools to see what is going on in the brain.

I also do not necessarily agree that most of these conditions are temporary.

I mean, it depends on what you mean by "temporary", but if you mean that they will just go away by themselves if we don't do anything about it, then I don't necessarily believe that is true.

If someone has a true mental health issue I doubt it will just go away if we ignore it.
 
Foreigner said:
Mental illness is real, but I have a lot of problems with modern psychiatry. That's how I'd sum it up.
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Probably the same ones we've already mentioned I'm guessing...

I have some problems with it too, but I also have some things I like about it, and it's better that it exists than if it didn't.

Considering that we don't yet have the kinds of brain scans that can perfectly detect what kind of mental health issues someone has, here's what I'd do if I was the god of psychiatry lol:

1) Legalize ALL drugs for 18 and over (well, I'd do that period...) so that psychiatrists can prescribe ANY of them (and so we can have the freedom over our bodies that we want
2) psychiatry then takes MASSIVE influences from the following: Psychedelic therapy, Native Shamanism and Psychedelic Shamanism of different types, Eastern Philosophy/Zen/Buddhsim/Taoism/All forms of meditation, hypnosis/auto-hypnosis, neurofeedback/biofeedback/brain technology, other modalities like isolation tanks, or ancient ones like sweat lodge, exposure therapy, outdoor survival with vision questions, lucid dream training, philosophies from all over the world
3) psychiatrists stop acting as if they are holier than thou
4) psychiatrists take part in some of the therapies they help their patients with, like take psychedelics with them and guide them through trips
5) psychiatrists LET THE PATIENT HAVE A VERY LARGE SAY IN WHAT KIND OF THERAPY THEY WANT AND WHAT KINDS OF DRUGS OR MEDS THEY WANT TO TAKE AND EXPLAIN ALL THE POSITIVES AND NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS
6) psychiatrist do NOT stop patients from taking certain substances that they want to use for therapy, but just warn them of the dangers and get them to sign some shit so that the risks they take don't mean that the psychiatrist will lose his/her license
7) absolutely NO locking someone up unless they are a danger TO OTHERS (not themselves, as I feel suicide should be legal).


Under the current system, with the fact that we can't tell what diagnosis someone necessarily has with brain scans, I doing all of that is about the best we could do.


At least seeing as no one will legalize all drugs though, they could incorporate a lot more the stuff I mentioned in #2, and stop acting like psychiatry is not one of many different methods of helping to heal people.

I look up most to native shamans as healing figures personally, but without psychiatry people with mental illness and mental health problems would NOT be in a good position...

I just think those who like to bash psychiatry a lot might not consider the alternatives of if there was no psychiatry at all.

Phobos seems to agree with what I'm saying.
 
@Opi_Kid_Rock: so I'm just wondering, but do you agree with both Phobos and me on these questions?:

"1) Do you think mental illness exists? Do you think Bipolar is real? Do you think Paranoid Schizophrenia is real? (and when I say "real" I mean the symptoms behind them actually exist and that there can be a proper treatment for them, not NECESSARILY that every single idea we have about them is 100% true)

Or do you think they are made up? That the symptoms of these problems are all imaginary and we have no meds that work for them and psychiatry only exists to pretend these illnesses exist at all and treat people who have nothing wrong with them because it is 100% all about making money and big pharma and that no one behind the field of psychiatry means well or is trying to help anyone?

2) Do you think that EVERY SINGLE medication or treatment that psychiatrists have used and developed is full of shit and useless, or do you think SOME of them work SOMETIMES?

Finally 3) Do you think, whether we call it psychiatry or give it another name, that it is at least a good thing that we have a science dedicated to trying to figure out what causes various sorts of mental problems and how to fix them?

Cause I don't see how you can't agree on all of those and if you don't then I am interested to hear why."


Phobos agreed with me on all of these.

I mean, I know psychiatry is WAY behind modern medicine and kind of like where modern medicine was 150 years ago, but at least it exists, and don't you think it's better off that we have SOME kind of science to work with people who have mental health issues and be willing to give them SOME kind of medication and therapy for their issues?

And don't you think you should probably have made the title of your thread: "Psychiatric Misdiagnosis and Forced Hospitalization" or "Problems with Psychiatry" and NOT "The Myth of Mental Illness"??

Do you REALLY think that mental illness is a myth and does not exist?
 
Opi_Kid_Rock said:
I’ve been reading up on the topic of Anti-Psychiatry lately after being admitted against my will into a psych-ward. My question is does the Myth of Mental Illness carry any weight you think as an argument? When I search Anti-psychiatry and the list of Psychiatrists who speak against their own profession and the list of literature by these individuals show up, it seems to make perfect sense. Any of you subscribe to this movement? Thomas Szasz PhD debates such an argument.
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100% no, mental illness is not a myth. And it's pretty ignorant and offensive to suggest that it is.
 
Mycophile said:
@Opi_Kid_Rock: so I'm just wondering, but do you agree with both Phobos and me on these questions?:

"1) Do you think mental illness exists? Do you think Bipolar is real? Do you think Paranoid Schizophrenia is real? (and when I say "real" I mean the symptoms behind them actually exist and that there can be a proper treatment for them, not NECESSARILY that every single idea we have about them is 100% true)

Or do you think they are made up? That the symptoms of these problems are all imaginary and we have no meds that work for them and psychiatry only exists to pretend these illnesses exist at all and treat people who have nothing wrong with them because it is 100% all about making money and big pharma and that no one behind the field of psychiatry means well or is trying to help anyone?

2) Do you think that EVERY SINGLE medication or treatment that psychiatrists have used and developed is full of shit and useless, or do you think SOME of them work SOMETIMES?

Finally 3) Do you think, whether we call it psychiatry or give it another name, that it is at least a good thing that we have a science dedicated to trying to figure out what causes various sorts of mental problems and how to fix them?

Cause I don't see how you can't agree on all of those and if you don't then I am interested to hear why."


Phobos agreed with me on all of these.

I mean, I know psychiatry is WAY behind modern medicine and kind of like where modern medicine was 150 years ago, but at least it exists, and don't you think it's better off that we have SOME kind of science to work with people who have mental health issues and be willing to give them SOME kind of medication and therapy for their issues?

And don't you think you should probably have made the title of your thread: "Psychiatric Misdiagnosis and Forced Hospitalization" or "Problems with Psychiatry" and NOT "The Myth of Mental Illness"??

Do you REALLY think that mental illness is a myth and does not exist?
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For many years I consumed and then vomited up to 36,000 calories a day. Would you call my eating disorder "imaginary"?
 
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