Well, I’ve been through the mental health system, and I feel a bit like a pariah, because I disagree with the view of doctors that meds are the best solution to mental health problems. I think non-drug approaches are better. Allowing a person to figure out what has disturbed them in life, and what they need to do to resolve any worries.
If people want to take these drugs then okay, but I also think people should have the right to take other approaches.
The article was written by a person who says “I have spent several years of my life in various psychiatric institutions”. So it is a person with experience of this system, and what helped them. I don’t see at all how they can be seen as fear mongering. They seem to be giving their honest account of their experiences as a patient in the mental health system.
As for reality and data, there is a lot of reality and data showing that psych drugs are not perfect. There is evidence that antipsychotics cause movement disorders (restlessness, involuntary movements), metabolic effects (changing blood sugar levels), effects on heart function, weight gain, etc. And there is evidence of negative effects from antidepressants too, like sexual dysfunction, and a small increase in the risk of birth defects, just as an example:
I support patient choice. If a person wants to take psych meds, okay. But I think they should be informed by reputable authorities (CDC in the US, national health organisations in other countries, including regulatory bodies of psychiatry) about the positives and negatives of these drugs. That is the only way to make an informed choice.
Ultimately I hope for non-drug approaches to mental issues. Approaches that recognise the real issues in people’s lives that cause them distress, rather than approaches that label the patient as “ill” and dismiss them with a powerful and sometimes unpleasant drug.
Maybe people with mental difficulties (and I’ve been through this system myself, for a long time) aren’t injured or ill. Instead they had genuine reasons to feel angry or distressed at the time of their “illness”.
I’m reminded of what I heard in an interview with a training psychiatrist who took antidepressants himself (within recent years, he contributed to the advice that Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists gives to patients trying to come off antidepressants):
Some people call these things [mental illnesses] a chronic illness, but… another way of looking at them is a response to stressful circumstances… if you know the number of stressful life events in someone’s life over the last year, you can predict their risk of depression with great accuracy
If some people want to take these drugs then okay. But the evidence shows real negative effects of these drugs. I support patient choice. If we support the right of people to take these drugs, then we should also support the right of people to find other ways to manage their problems.
I have seen stats about genetic dispositions, yes. Wikipedia says 40% of a person’s risk of having major depression comes from genes.
Still. One thing is that you don’t know what your genes are. Your genes might have less of a risk than you think. But also, maybe an increased risk can be dealt with through lifestyle choices. I’m not saying people shouldn’t take meds if they want to take them, and I think personal choice is extremely important. But the meds do have annoying and somewhat harmful side effects… so I suppose that has to be weighed up in a decision to take the meds or not.
I strongly dislike SCAM stuff, like homeopathy etc. And Scientology (who are anti-psychiatry) is obviously a scam too.
Some people find psychiatric drugs helpful, yes. But I have met psych patients, drugged against their will for months, who were still miserable after months of drugging. I think a psychological approach, such as counselling, is probably better.
I think a lot of psych patients are trying to understand what’s going on in their head. If they can reach this understanding, then they no longer need drugs, with all the negative health effects that the drugs cause (such as movement disorders, restlessness, muscle spasms, weight gain, sexual dysfunction, etc).
It’s great until the cow gets bored and walks off.
I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
But he is a bad person. He’s being a fucking idiot and being insulting to the person who made the software for him in the first place.
People like that don’t deserve patience and understanding. Perhaps a good response would be “this software is free for you to use, if you don’t like it then fuck off and make your own”.
Iran probably wants this, because they can say “look, the West cares more about money from shipping, than it does about the lives of human beings in Gaza”.
Yes this makes sense to me. I definitely think we should look for better ways to deal with mental health problems. And yes you’re probably right that we should have a better standard than simply “you can now slave at a job, therefore you’re healthy”.
I think one good solution for mental health problems (maybe not always, but it can work) is talking to somebody who is willing to listen. This can be hard to find. But there are mental health charities out there who do great work in talking to people who are having problems. There are support phone lines and things like that.