I think it's important to post the data in relation to the discussion we'd been having on neuroleptics. The idea that peer support or non-neuroleptic treatment doesn't show good long term results is common but a result of effective industry messaging rather than the study of actual data.
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A chart showing the increase in the disabled mentally ill since APs were introduced in the 60s
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Chart showing 60%+ of hospitalized patients receiving good outcomes after treatment in time periods before neuroleptics were introduced
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70%+ functional outcome (not disabled) after open dialog therapy in Finland. 67% never relapsed, 79% asymptomatic after five year follow up. Also shows similar results from Soteria (peer support) houses (rare in the US). There is actually a peer support house in my new city that I plan to go to if I ever experience problems again. I feel at this point that by moving and removing myself from my unhealthy family dynamic I may not ever be psychotic again.
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A comparison of long term recovery rates for patients on and off APs. This is brutal. Chances of recovery on APs are less than 5%. You are 8x more likely to recover if not using APs. Guess if you choose the med route you gotta have a lot of "willpower" to be in that 5%.
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Chart shows the rise in all-cause mortality rates among the mentally ill. Does "willpower" protect you from sudden cardiac death? Asking for a friend.
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Chart shows clinically negligible results in depression results over time with AD use in comparison to placebo. Much like AP use, time will cause recovery whether you are on the drugs or not.
Most of this data can be seen in this paper that I linked
https://www.madinamerica.com/2023/04/white-paper-against-forced-treatment/
One wonders why, if APs are so damaging and peer support so much more effective, the industry is shaped the way it is. Unfortunately it does seem as if psycjoatry has become a cooperative effort in hand with the drug industry iver the years. We can look at cases of what happens to psychs who speak put against the ineffectiveness of the med model.
"The authors of the Cochrane review, which pointed out that we don’t have evidence that psychosis drugs in an acute early episode of schizophrenia is effective,154 included a randomised trial by Loren Mosher in their review.250 Mosher compared 55 patients in hospital, all of whom received psychosis drugs, with 45 patients treated in a non-hospital milieu where 67% did not receive psychosis drugs, and the results after six weeks were virtually the same.
Mosher wasn’t against using psychosis drugs.7:168 He opened a 12-room Soteria house in 1971, as he wanted to treat acutely psychotic people in a humanistic way with empathy and caring. There were no locks on the doors, and the idea was to treat people with respect.
His staff were not mental health professionals but people who had social skills and empathy and who listened to the patients’ stories, which often revealed traumas with abuse and extreme social failure.251 Thus, Mosher paved the way for the Open Dialogue approach (see Chapter 7, Part Three).
The good results obtained by Mosher, also after the randomised trial, by avoiding using psychosis drugs were too threatening to other psychiatrists.1 His patients had fewer relapses and functioned better in society in terms of holding a job and attending school than those on drugs. It was offensive to the psychiatrists to suggest that ordinary people could help crazy people more than psychiatrists with their drugs. But Mosher was the chief of the Center for Studies of Schizophrenia at the US National Institute of Mental Health, so it wasn’t obvious how he could be stopped.
The NIMH clinical project committee raised doubts about the scientific rigour of his research team and reduced the funding for Mosher’s project to such a low level that it was a financial kiss of death.1 This is the standard method used in healthcare by those who hold the power when the results of a project threaten the status quo and their carefully pruned self-image. Mosher tried to get around the obstacle by applying for funding from the NIMH division that dealt with social services, and the peer review committee was very enthusiastic. However, the clinical projects committee killed his project right off, as it threatened the very credibility of academic psychiatry with its medical model of drug therapy. This was done with derogatory remarks about the study’s postulated “serious flaws” and with the fatal blow that further funding would only come forward if Mosher stepped down so that the committee could redesign the project with another investigator.
This is one of the ugliest manoeuvres I have ever seen being used against a high-ranked investigator who was a treasure for the patients, and a bitter Mosher said 25 year later: “If we were getting outcomes this good, then I must not be an honest scientist.”1:224 The NIMH made Mosher an outcast and threw him out of the NIMH three years later. Others in America who questioned the merits of psychosis pills learned quickly that this would not advance their career, and NIMH did not allot any more funds to this type of project.5 Many years later, the first author on the Cochrane review analysed the follow-up data from Mosher’s study and discovered that they were even more positive than what Mosher had published.1:225
Psychotherapy for schizophrenia seems to be cost-effective. According to a NICE guideline from 2012, a systematic review of the economic evidence showed that cognitive behavioural therapy improved clinical outcomes at no additional cost, and economic modelling suggested that it might result in cost savings because of fewer hospital admissions.252
It wasn’t until 2014 that the first trial of psychotherapy in people with schizophrenia who were not on drugs was published.253 All the patients had declined to be treated with drugs. The effect size was 0.46 compared to treatment as usual, about the same as that seen in seriously flawed trials comparing psychosis pills with placebo, which is a median of 0.44.254
This means that the effect of psychotherapy is likely better than the effect of pills.US Psychiatrist Peter Breggin has described what a remarkable effect empathy, caring and understanding can have in patients with severe schizophrenia.135 As an 18-year old college freshman without mental health training, he volunteered at a state mental hospital and approached the patients as he would want himself to be approached, with care and concern, and with a desire to get to know the patients and finding out what they needed and wanted.
He was immediately appalled by how abused and humiliated the patients were by the authoritarian and sometimes violent staff, and by the brain-damaging treatments they used, including insulin coma therapy, electroshock, and lobotomy, all the while he was told that these treatments “killed bad brain cells,” which he found unlikely to be true of course.
Breggin developed an aide programme in which 15 students were assigned their own patient among those who were chronic inmates considered beyond help—burnt out schizophrenics—who had not yet been subdued by chlorpromazine. They were able to help 11 of the 15 patients to return home or to find improved placements in the community. During the next one to two years only three patients returned to the hospital.
Breggin’s programme drew national headlines and was praised as an important innovation by the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health in 1961. This was the last psychosocially oriented document to be issued by the NIMH. Ever since, the focus has been on co-operative efforts with the drug industry to promote biochemical explanations and drugs."
I also wanted to talk about what stopped me from getting help in my second psychosis. A big reason was that I didn't want to accept the label "schizophrenic". If I got help, that meant that there must be something wrong with me. I wanted to deny that fact. Now I know that just because you experience psychosis doesn't mean you are schizophrenic, despite what we are told. After a year of therapy my therapist assured me that I was not schizophrenic. At one point I talked to another therapist, who assured me that because I had been psychotic twice that I would always be on the "schizophrenic spectrum", no matter what I did. What this labeling does is dilute the term "schizophrenic". It makes no sense to label me, a functional, normal human, with the same label as the babbling man on the street like Jordan Neely or our friend a few posts earlier whose 20+ injections turned his brain into the moon. This dilution harms out ability to understand ourselves - much like autism, now many levels of social unawareness can be described with the same word used to diagnose the nonverbal kid rocking in the corner. It doesn't seem feasible and I reject the expansion of the terms in some ways.
The other big reason I didn't get help when I was worried about relapsing onto psychosis was I was deathly afraid of psychs, hospitals, and drugs. I didn't ever want to approach any place that carried any risk of harming me with a drug like invega ever again. I viewed these institutions as places of harm. These feelings exacerbated my episode greatly once I was placed in hospital. It's sort of a catch-22. If I hadn't been unable to stop screaming because I was scared of invega, I wouldn't have been involuntarily shot with Haldol. That's why I believe that it's vital to approach someone , even over the phone , while you can still express all of these fears. A lot of people DO want to help and some CAN understand about drug harms. I found out after my second psychosis that there are psychs that you can talk to about drug harms who will believe you. It's necessary to recovery to be able to stabilize yourself through psychosis in the safest way possible so that you can get on with your life.