July is Mad Pride Month

MindFreedom International

July is Mad Pride Month

"We Are The 100 Percent!"

2012 Events in More Than Five Nations

Show "Creative Maladjustment"

Did you know Martin Luther King expressed pride in psychological "maladjustment" to oppression? He called for an International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment (IAACM) more than a dozen times.

MindFreedom International invites you to tell us how you will make MLK's vision real this July! Celebrate 20 years of Mad Pride!

SAMPLE ACTION: Honor friends and colleagues who are unique by forwarding the below exciting Mad Pride 2012 News with a few words like, "Thank you ______ for your IAACM leadership!"

BELOW are recent and upcoming Mad Pride events in five nations celebrating individual and global creative maladjustment, and peacefully challenging the mental health industry's futile cheerleading for what is falsely called "normal."
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MAD PRIDE COMING UP JULY 14, 2012!

You heard of Gay Pride... Black Pride... What is Mad Pride? A movement that celebrates the human rights and spectacular culture of people considered very different by our society. You!

Mad Pride isn't just for the 1 percent... or the 99 percent... Every human is uniquely different, so this is a celebration that 100 percent of humanity can be part of!

July 14 -- Bastille Day -- is the traditional day for Mad Pride, since among those freed from the Bastille in Paris were two held because of psychological labels. For 31 years our movement for nonviolent revolution in mental health has rallied around 14 July, and the whole month. Join in the fun!

You can celebrate Mad Pride Month whenever and wherever, but here are a few Mad Pride events in Toronto, Vancouver, Oregon, Italy, UK, Ireland....
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TORONTO: *INSANE* NUMBER OF MAD PRIDE EVENTS!

Activists in Toronto have always been strong on Mad Pride. This year they are crazy strong. Toronto is organizing more than a dozen amazing events over five days from July 10 to 15, 2012!

The Toronto festival has everything from arts and music to panels and parties to a parade including a Bed Push! (You push a gurney through the streets, chased by guerilla theater psychiatrists!)

Here's a link to all Mad Pride Toronto 2012 events. Click event title links to see the fantastic posters:
http://www.madprideto.com/events.html

Find the link there to their Facebook, which has more complete event info.
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VANCOUVER 'MAD' ART GALLERY

In Vancouver, Canada on July 14, 2012, the West Coast Mental Health Network holds a Mad Poets & Krazy Cases Fundraiser for Mad Pride Day.

There will be artwork, pizza, drinks, and a cabaret with an open mic for "poets, visionaries, singers, strummers and hummers with something to get off their chests and who are in the mood to celebrate our human bio-diversity and unparalleled tenacity in the face of persistent challenges and barriers." Gallery Gachet, is dedicated to psychiatric survivor art!

For info about how you can participate (for example by painting eyeglass cases!):
http://bit.ly/madpride-vancouver-2012 (scroll half-way down, to Mad Poets and Crazy Kases)


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YOU CAN HONOR PATCH ADAMS AT OREGON COUNTRY FAIR

At this year's Oregon Country Fair -- a mad event in its own right (Google some images!) -- MindFreedom International will celebrate Mad Pride on July 14 in the Community Village by awarding clown / physician / psychiatric survivor Patch Adams, MD for decades of Lunacy Promoting Leadership in MLK's IAACM!

Since 1992, Patch Adams has also helped provide 20 years of support for MindFreedom International, and his "Gesundheit Institute" has been a proud sponsor in the MFI coalition. Find us in OCF:
http://bit.ly/patch-adams-iaacm-award
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MAD PRIDE IRELAND LIVES ON!

Mad Pride Ireland held a Mad Pride Family Fun Day Ballydehob on May 27, 2012, with over 1,500 people and a balloon release in memory of John McCarthy, their founder who just passed away recently. They followed that up with a June 3 fourth annual event in Cork. These events featured numerous musical groups, a market, and clowns and other performers, see a video:
http://bit.ly/madpride-ireland-2012

MindFreedom asks all Mad Pride 2012 participants to hold a "Moment of Loudness" to remember inspiring global Mad Pride poet leader, John McCarthy, founder of Mad Pride Ireland. Whether or not you knew John, check out inspiring videos about his Mad Pride legacy:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/john-mccarthy-rip
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BOYCOTT NORMAL SUPPORTS MAD PRIDE!

Seen the "Label Rip" at the protest of the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting?

Now you can see this and many of the videos, photos and coverage, plus listen to audio, about the successful MindFreedom protest in front of thousands of psychiatrists in Philadelphia:
http://bit.ly/apa-2012-protest

The Mad Pride theme was "Boycott Normal: Occupy APA!" Our folks may have tough days, but what is mistakenly called "normal" is wrecking a whole planet's ecosystem. Normal... isn't.

MindFreedom International and allied organizations united for a successful, peaceful march and protest of the 2012 APA Annual Meeting, questioning the dysfunctional over-labeling, over-drugging and forced psychiatric treatment all too common in psychiatric practice today. Hundreds of psychiatric survivors and allies made our voices heard.

You can now see a collection of a variety of mainstream media, and of course our own media as well, of this historic event. To see video, photos, articles, hear a BBC broadcast, as well as news and blog coverage, see:
http://bit.ly/apa-2012-protest

Thanks to everyone in making the protest a success! Our peaceful surprise weapon: Mutual support! MindFreedom's emerging resistance community is not letting up on the APA -- a peaceful protest of APA's smaller fall conference in New York City is already planned. To learn more about the event, see:
https://www.facebook.com/events/417279764959510/
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BASTILLE DAY AT HOME: NEW YORK STATE!

New York State is also where the first Bastille Day protest in support of our movement took place, 31 years ago. On 13 July 2012 in Albany, NY the theme of this year's event is, "Everyone is at risk! Celebrate the human spirit. Speak out against psychiatric oppression." More info here:
https://www.facebook.com/events/397831000235813/

And check out the new Occupy Psychiatry Facebook page, to help coordinate similar peaceful resistance:
https://www.facebook.com/OccupyPsychiatry
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GO MAD PRIDE ITALY!

You need a little Italian for their Facebook page, but Torino, Italy held a Mad pride event last month:
https://www.facebook.com/madpride.torino

Their promo video has special creative maladjustment:
http://vimeo.com/44320101
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MAD PRIDE UK

Worcestershire, UK didn't just name sauce. They are holding "guerilla" Mad Pride events throughout 2012, see:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mad-Pride-Festival-Worcestershire/228316700594125

While a psychiatric survivor group in UK was formed back to 1848, their first known "Mad Pride" event was 1993, so way to go on the 20th anniversary! Wikipedia has a bit of Mad Pride history here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Pride

Info on the psychiatric survivors' movement is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychiatric_survivor

Mad Pride's message to all human beings is inclusive: "Hey... you're one of us!"

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DID WE MISS YOUR MAD PRIDE EVENT?

Inspired to take action? Even one person can show Mad Pride, such as by forwarding this!

Let MindFreedom know about you are celebrating your Mad Pride at news@mindfreedom.org. MFI will try to announce events on the web:
http://bit.ly/madpride-2012

Those organizing Mad Pride events can chat on a free and open email list:
http://lists.mindfreedom.org/mailman/listinfo/madpride-talk_lists.mindfreedom.org

Too busy to chat? There's a one-way public news list just for Mad Pride activities here:
http://lists.mindfreedom.org/mailman/listinfo/madpride-news_lists.mindfreedom.org

To see some past Mad Pride events for inspiration, follow the links here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/campaign/madpride/
and browse 100's of items here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/search?SearchableText=%22mad+pride%22

For info about Boycott Normal go here:
http://www.boycottnormal.org

For quotes from MLK's speeches and essays over 12 years about "creative maladjustment" and calling for an IAACM, click here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/mental-health-global/iaacm

To see other events, conferences, etc. related to the movement to change the mental health system, click here:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/events_sf
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I have MadPride Harry A. Nasrallah claims it's, "irritating, Antipsychiatry"

via Current Psychiatry Online:

Vol. 10, No. 12 / December 2011 The antipsychiatry movement: Who and why

"Although irritating, antipsychiatry helps keep us honest and rigorous about what we do"
(when is this going to start?)

Henry A. Nasrallah, MD 

Editor-in-Chief

excerpts:

"Finally, the antipsychiatry movement aggressively criticizes the pharmaceutical industry’s research, tactics, and influence on psychiatry. Also included in the attacks are academic psychiatrists who conduct FDA clinical trials for new drugs and educate practitioners about the efficacy/safety and indications of new FDA-approved drugs. Although industry research grants are deposited at the investigators’ universities, critics mistakenly assume these psychiatrists personally benefit. The content of all educational programs about psychiatric drugs is strictly restricted to the FDA-approved product label, but critics assume that expert speakers, who are compensated for their time and effort, are promoting the drug rather than educating practitioners about the efficacy, safety, tolerability, and proper use of new medications. Part of the motive for attacking this collaboration is the tenet held by many in the antipsychiatry movement that medications are ineffective, unnecessary, or even dangerous. I wish antipsychiatrists would spend a week on an acute psychiatric unit to witness the need for and benefit from psychotropic medications for psychotic, manic, or depressed patients. Although psychiatric patients experience side effects, they are no worse than those experienced by cancer, arthritis, or diabetes patients."

"The antipsychiatry movement is regarded by some as “intellectual halitosis” and by others as a thorn in the side of mainstream psychiatry; most believe that many of its claims are unfair exaggerations based on events and primitive conditions of more than a century ago. However, although irritating and often unfair, antipsychiatry helps keep us honest and rigorous about what we do, motivating us to relentlessly seek better diagnostic models and treatment paradigms. Psychiatry is far more scientific today than it was a century ago, but misperceptions about psychiatry continue to be driven by abuses of the past. The best antidote for antipsychiatry allegations is a combination of personal integrity, scientific progress, and sound evidence-based clinical care." 

His final paragraph begins with a couple of insults followed by a claim; the veracity of which is questionable to say the least...I see no evidence of honesty resulting from criticisms leveled by "antipsychiatry" in this editorial. It is inaccurate for Nazrallah to state that people who are critical of psychiatry, keeps psychiatrists honest,  Following this statement by characterizing critics who speak out against "the pharmaceutical industry’s research, tactics, and influence on psychiatry" as members of a conspiratorial, "antipsychiatry movement," a biased negative judgement proffered as if there is no pretense to disguise the lack of basic human regard for those critics of psychiatry that Nazrallah claims help keep psychiatrists honest? Nazrallah discounts valid criticisms by attributing it to an ancient medieval illusory history of psychiatry that no one alive ever witnessed or experienced.  No error of attribution, casually proffered to manipulate emotions fears and innate biases can invalidate the humanity of the person or their  history of being tortured in psychiatric treatment facilities. Attributing valid complaints of criminal mistreatment to the past as a justification for failing to perform an ethical medicial duty owed any patient--it does not diminish the truth inherent in the testimony. This can no longer be used as an excuse that relieves any medical professional who hears it, from an ethical duty to act. The public is not as easily coerced as frightened people in emotional crisis...

Some people cling to a belief that emotional, social and behavioral difficulties are caused by a "brain disease."  It seems to me that believing one has a brain disease encourages people to abdicate responsibility for their own health and for their own behaviour. I fail to see how a belief that people's difficulties are caused by a neurobiological condition, without definitive evidence this is in fact the case, is helpful. Those who believe in a disease model of mental illness, seem to invalidate themselves and discount their ability to learn new skills, enhance their innate abilities and correct deficits they have identified as being barriers. A belief mental illness is caused by a neurobiological disease with no cure causes dispair and can prevents some people from making any effort to learn how to more effectively cope with life on life's terms. I fail to see how encouraging such a belief is ethical, and it certainly is not at all therapeutic.

I have no doubt that some people with a psychiatric diagnosis remain invested in the belief they have a brain disease as an excuse to avoid being accountable for their behavior or responsible for their personal recovery.  As long there's no attempt to infect or indoctrinate me into this flawed belief system; it's all good...Compliant psychiatric patients who remain invested in biological based fallacies, render themselves powerless---That is my own experience...As long as I believed I had a brain disease, I was powerless to aid in my own recovery, or even believe recovery was a possibility; or that it should be expected...

I was given a bipolar diagnosis; I am grateful that with appropriate help provided by a professional, I managed to find real recovery.  I am no longer bound by a false belief or the negative self-esteem which accompanied it.  I know that I do not have a defective brain or a neuro-biological disease.  I know I do not need to take dangerous, minimally effective drugs on a daily basis for the rest of my life.   I do not miss the negative impact the drugs had on my vision, my moods, my ability to function, or my digestive tract.  I also do not miss the regular blood tests required.


I have found that there are many tools to support recovery from mental, emotional, and psychic pain----I am extremely grateful I know I am worth the effort.  I have taken psychiatric drugs for brief periods of 2-3 days, a handful of times in the last 8+ years. I know that I am not diseased, disordered or chemically imbalanced. I know I am not powerless over my moods, my emotions, my behaviors or my recovery.

It is shameful for any psychiatrist to invalidate survivors.  The term "anti-psychiatry" is used by Nasrallah in an attmpt to disparage, and invalidate people who have been harmed by his profession. Similarly, the false claim that psychiatric diagnoses are caused by a brain disease or defect is used to justify claiming the disease causes a lack of insight.  This claim is used to justify minimizing, invalidating, disrespecting and ridiculing patients who complain when they are mistreated, even those who have experienced grave harm. Since none of us were alive over a hundred years ago, it appears that Harry A. Nasrallah seems to lack insight into the valid issues he is attempting to address with his editorial.  I question his ethical integrity since he fails to explain how the real world outcomes of patients who have been harmed, traumatized and even disabled by psychiatric treatment is justifiable; indeed, he fails to even mention psychiatry's victims, as if they do not even exist. My perception is that Nasrallah is unwilling to validate the lived experiences of psychiatric survivors or even acknowledge complaints of real and lasting harm, because he knows they are an "adverse effect" of current standard practices used by psychiatry.  Naszrallah's claim that psychiatric survivor's complaints are based on historical events which were not actually experienced is not credible.

If Nasrallah's statement that most psychiatrists believe survivor's complaints are "unfair exaggerations based on events and primitive conditions of more than a century ago" is true; this could explain the current failure to effectively treat the majority of people who receive psychiatric treatment.  It also suggests that the psychiatric profession as a whole, is seriously lacking any real insight into the very people it hopes to serve.

FYI Henry A. Nasrallah----the complaints which you claim are, "unfair exaggerations based on events and primitive conditions of more than a century ago," are not.  Every survivor I know has complaints that are based on their own lived experience.  Most have spent more than "a week on an acute psychiatric unit" which is why they know the truth of the safety and efficacy of the drugs; they have experienced the traumatic nature of the coercion, the medical neglect, and the abuse of power and authority that occurs in Standard Practice, and these are not uncommon experiences.  That some psychiatric patients are "helped" and remain compliant, does not mean the harm done to other patients is justifiable or acceptable.


I have experienced how harmful and how disrespectful some professionals who provide "psychiatric treatment" using techniques which are called Standard Clinical Practices.  I see the evidence of the utter failure of modern psychiatric treatment every day when I help my beloved son.  My son is struggling to overcome the traumatic iatrogenic injuries inflicted upon him by neuroleptic and other psychotropic drugs, mdical neglect and lack of compassion, his injuries that are compounded by the manner in which he was treated by mental health professionals, specifically, the abuse of power and authority upon which bio-psychiatric treatment relies.  Psychiatric treatment robbed him of his autonomy, deprived him of his human dignity which obviously, badly damaged his sense of self-worth. The "treatment" was experimental, and it was forced upon him by a "lead researcher" and "Nationally renown expert" who ignored ethical medical principles, State, Federal and International Laws governing individual and parental Civil Rights, and tortured my precious son into a state of profound disability with impunity. 


George Santayana said, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Psychiatry as a profession, does not seem to value the history from whence the standards of care and standard clinical practices are derived. This begs the question, "Why do psychiatrists continue to use these standards while disavowing any connection to how, when, and by whom the standards were first used and developed? The patriarchal mental health and social service system of the eugenics era is evident in the publicly funded biologically biased community mental health clinic model. Diagnoses and treatment protocols become standardized by consensus, not "evidence based." Consensus is a quasi-democratic, i.e. political, process; not a scientific method. Consensus is evidence of agreement, it is not evidence of diagnostic or treament validity or reliability. Substituting consensus for analysis of existing statistical data, or in the absence of objective research data to assess a treatment's efficacy, safety, and actual effectiveness for the symptom and the patient it's being prescribed is medical fraud--it's now "standard practice" thanks to consensus and hubris.   

Harry A. Nasrallah do you question how ethical or moral is it to minimize, or dismiss altogether the valid complaints of psychiatric survivors as you do in this editorial?  Addressing these valid complaints that you and your colleages pretend are irreleveant, would earn psychiatry, as a profession, some sorely needed trust. Who knows, it may even help restore some of the ethical integrity the psychiatric profession seems to believe is still has, despite the unethical conduct being ignored; and worse, being rewarded.

I am a MadMother.

I have Mad Pride.

Harry A. Nazrallah, you can dismiss me as "antipsychiatry."

No psychiatrist can minimize me, or invalidate my experience.

Trust, and respect are earned; they are not awarded with a diploma from a medical school, or issued with a medical license. Trust and respect are not ephemeral, they cannot be maintained when unethical behavior and dishonesty are "standard practice" No  profession can claim to be trustworthy or respectable if unethical behavior, dishonesty and fraud are acceptable standard practices. Having the trust and respect of others is based upon the actual effects of one's conduct; not one's intent to be benificent, or helpful. 

After I posted this rebuttal to Harry Nasrallah's editorial, the links were disabled-so here is the text of Nazarallah's Op-Ed:

Henry A. Nasrallah, MD 

Psychiatry is the only medical specialty with a longtime nemesis; it’s called “antipsychiatry,” and it has been active for almost 2 centuries. Although psychiatry has evolved into a major scientific and medical discipline, the century-old primitive stage of psychiatric treatments instigated an antagonism toward psychiatry that persists to the present day.

A recent flurry of books critical of psychiatry is evidence of how the antipsychiatry movement is being propagated by journalists and critics whose views of psychiatry are unflattering despite the abundance of scientific advances that are gradually elucidating the causes and treatments of serious mental disorders.

What are the “wrongdoings” of psychiatry that generate the long-standing protests and assaults? The original “sin” of psychiatry appears to be locking up and “abusing” mentally ill patients in asylums, which 2 centuries ago was considered a humane advance to save seriously disabled patients from homelessness, persecution, neglect, victimization, or imprisonment. The deteriorating conditions of “lunatic” asylums in the 19^th and 20^th centuries were blamed on psychiatry, not the poor funding of such institutions in an era of almost complete ignorance about the medical basis of mental illness. Other perceived misdeeds of psychiatry include:

• Medicalizing madness (contradicting the archaic notion that psychosis is a type of behavior, not an illness)
• Drastic measures to control severe mental illness in the pre-pharmacotherapy era, including excessive use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), performing lobotomies, or resecting various body parts
• Use of physical and/or chemical restraints for violent or actively suicidal patients
• Serious or intolerable side effects of some antipsychotic medications
• Labeling slaves’ healthy desire to escape from their masters in the 19^thcentury as an illness (“drapetomania”)
• Regarding psychoanalysis as unscientific and even harmful
• Labeling homosexuality as a mental disorder until American Psychiatric Association members voted it out of DSM-II in 1973
• The arbitrariness of psychiatric diagnoses based on committee-consensus criteria rather than valid and objective scientific evidence and the lack of biomarkers (this is a legitimate complaint but many physiological tests are being developed)
• Psychoactive drugs allegedly are used to control children (antipsychiatry tends to minimize the existence of serious mental illness among children, although childhood physical diseases are readily accepted)
• Psychiatry is a pseudoscience that pathologizes normal variations of human behaviors, thoughts, or emotions
• Psychiatrists are complicit with drug companies and employ drugs of dubious efficacy (eg, antidepressants) or safety (eg, antipsychotics).

Most of the above reasons are exaggerations or attributed to psychiatry during an era of primitive understanding of psychiatric brain disorders. Harmful interventions such as frontal lobotomy—for which its neurosurgeon inventor received the 1949 Nobel Prize in Medicine—were a product of a desperate time when no effective and safe treatments were available. Although regarded as an effective treatment for mood disorders, ECT certainly was abused many decades ago when it was used (without anesthesia) in patients who were unlikely to benefit from it.

David Cooper¹ coined the term “antipsychiatry” in 1967. Years before him, Michel Foucault propagated a paradigm shift that regarded delusions not as madness or illness, but as a behavioral variant or an “anomaly of judgment.”²That antimedicalization movement was supported by the First Church of Christ, Scientist, the legal system, and even the then-new specialty of neurology, plus social workers and “reformers” who criticized mental hospitals for failing to conduct scientific investigations.³

Formerly institutionalized patients such as Clifford Beers⁴ demanded improvements in shabby state hospital conditions more than a century ago and generated antipsychiatry sentiments in other formerly institutionalized persons. Such antipathy was exacerbated by bizarre psychiatrists such as Henry Cotton at Trenton State Hospital in New Jersey, who advocated that removing various body parts (killing or disfiguring patients) improved mental health.⁵

Other ardent antipsychiatrists included French playwright and former asylum patient Antonin Artaud in the 1920s and psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and Erich Fromm, who authored antipsychiatry writings from a “secular-humanistic” viewpoint. ECT use in the 1930s and frontal leucotomy in the 1940s understandably intensified fear toward psychiatric therapies. When antipsychotic medications were discovered in the 1950s (eventually helping to shut down most asylums), these medications’ neurologic side effects (dystonia, akathisia, parkinsonism, and tardive dyskinesia) prompted another outcry by antipsychiatry groups, although there was no better alternative to control psychosis.

In the 1950s, a right-wing antipsychiatry movement regarded psychiatry as “subversive, left-wing, anti-American, and communist” because it deprived individuals of their rights. Psychologist Hans Eysenck rejected psychiatric medical approaches in favor of errors in learning as a cause of mental illness (as if learning is not a neurobiologic event).

The 1960s witnessed a surge of antipsychiatry activities by various groups, including prominent psychiatrists such as R.D. Laing, Theodore Lidz, and Silvano Arieti, all of whom argued that psychosis is “understandable” as a method of coping with a “sick society” or due to “schizophrenogenic parents” who inflict damage on their offspring. Thomas Szasz is a prominent psychiatrist who proclaimed mental illness is a myth.⁶ I recall shuddering when he spoke at the University of Rochester during my residency, declaring schizophrenia a myth when I had admitted 3 patients with severe, disabling psychosis earlier that day. I summoned the chutzpah to tell him that in my experience haloperidol surely reduced the symptoms of the so-called “myth”! Szasz collaborated with the Church of Scientology to form the Citizens Commission on Human Rights. Interestingly, Christian Scientists and some fundamental Protestants³ agreed with Szasz’s contention that insanity is a moral, not a medical, issue.

A major impact of the antipsychiatry movement is evident in Italy due to the efforts of Franco Basaglia, an influential “psychiatrist-reformer.” Basaglia was so outraged with the dilapidated and prison-like conditions of mental institutions that he convinced the Italian Parliament to pass a law in 1978⁷ that abruptly dismantled and closed all mental hospitals in Italy. Because of uncontrolled psychosis or mania, many patients who were released ended up in prisons, which had similar or worse repressive conditions as the dismantled asylums. Many chronically hospitalized patients died because of self-neglect or victimization within a few months of their abrupt discharge.

Finally, the antipsychiatry movement aggressively criticizes the pharmaceutical industry’s research, tactics, and influence on psychiatry. Also included in the attacks are academic psychiatrists who conduct FDA clinical trials for new drugs and educate practitioners about the efficacy/safety and indications of new FDA-approved drugs.

Although industry research grants are deposited at the investigators’ universities, critics mistakenly assume these psychiatrists personally benefit. The content of all educational programs about psychiatric drugs is strictly restricted to the FDA-approved product label, but critics assume that expert speakers, who are compensated for their time and effort, are promoting the drug rather than educating practitioners about the efficacy, safety, tolerability, and proper use of new medications. Part of the motive for attacking this collaboration is the tenet held by many in the antipsychiatry movement that medications are ineffective, unnecessary, or even dangerous. I wish antipsychiatrists would spend a week on an acute psychiatric unit to witness the need for and benefit from psychotropic medications for psychotic, manic, or depressed patients. Although psychiatric patients experience side effects, they are no worse than those experienced by cancer, arthritis, or diabetes patients.

The antipsychiatry movement is regarded by some as “intellectual halitosis” and by others as a thorn in the side of mainstream psychiatry; most believe that many of its claims are unfair exaggerations based on events and primitive conditions of more than a century ago. However, although irritating and often unfair, antipsychiatry helps keep us honest and rigorous about what we do, motivating us to relentlessly seek better diagnostic models and treatment paradigms. Psychiatry is far more scientific today than it was a century ago, but misperceptions about psychiatry continue to be driven by abuses of the past. The best antidote for antipsychiatry allegations is a combination of personal integrity, scientific progress, and sound evidence-based clinical care.

References

1. Cooper DG. Psychiatry and antipsychiatry.London, United Kingdom: Tavistock Publications; 1967.
2. Rabinow P, ed. Psychiatric power. In: Foucault M. Ethics, subjectivity, and truth.New York, NY: The New Press; 1997.
3. Dain N. Critics and dissenters: reflection on “anti-psychiatry” in the United States. J Hist Behav Sci. 1989; 25(1):3–25.
4. Beers CW. A mind that found itself.Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1981.
5. Freckelton I. Madhouse: a tragic tale of megalomania and modern medicine (Book review). Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law. 2005;12:435–438.
6. Szasz T. The myth of mental illness. American Psychologist. 1960;15:113–118.
7. Palermo GB. The 1978 Italian mental health law—a personal evaluation: a review. J R Soc Med. 1991;84(2):99–102.

I am a survivor

Deepak Thaman

I am a survivor of trauma, who was once upon a time, a victim.  The most damaging aspect of having been victimized, is accepting the role of being a victim.  Once I accepted that I was a victim, and I wasn't able to just shake it off, or snap out of it; I sought help.  I was told that my problems were due to a genetic mental illness; I was told I would need to take psychiatric drugs for the rest of my life.  I fought this because it didn't make any sense.  How could the damage done to my mind, my spirit and my emotions be due to a brain disorder or chemical imbalance when I had PTSD as a result of being traumatized?

This was a belief that I fought, because it didn't make sense---I knew in my heart that my problems were caused by being molested over a long period of time; I couldn't understand how could the fact I had been victimized mean that I was genetically defective?  Eventually, I accepted that I was defective, and took the drugs.  I no longer believe that I am defective.  I know for a fact that I do not have to take psychiatric drugs in order to function; in order to 'get better' or to cope with real life. The belief that I had a biological defect, the belief that I had a disease that could be "treated" but that could never be "cured" meant that I could never get better and that I would never be able to function how I want to. My entire mindset was that of a victim, I was permanently damaged and I would never recover. I would not be able to take care of myself, be accountable or responsible. I internalized this belief; it became who I am. I was broken and without hope of any real recovery.

Believing that I had a disease: 
 I was always going to be broken.

It was years before I left my 'I am a victim' mentality behind. The catalyst was getting help outside of the public mental health system. My motivation? I believed I needed it more than anything I had ever needed in my life because I needed to rescue my youngest son from the State of Washington's children's psychiatric research facility, Child Study and Treatment Center. Victims don't rescue anyone. I was confronted by a horrific reality: I was now further traumatized by what had been done to my son at CSTC; what was still being done to my son. I knew if I did not stop feeling victimized and fight back, I would never rescue my son.

I got real help. I'd had group therapy, individual counseling, "case management;" and "med management;"-- none of these mental health "services" had enabled me to function better, or enabled me to process painful experiences.  I was able to see a private therapist who taught me real coping strategies for how to deal with my anxiety, and process my feelings of abandonment. I felt as if I were not important, not important enough to care about. I felt invisible.

Bearing the scars of abuse, the effects of being repeatedly traumatized, I had severe PTSD which crippled me emotionally. I was having to deal with an abusive mental health and social service system which repeatedly traumatized my son; my daily reality was traumatic in and of itself. It reactivated my childhood trauma, which naturally hindered my ability to function. The most powerful thing about therapy was being validated, I was believed! I was BELIEVED IN. Being believed when I said I was harmed, was so powerful. I was not "defective" or "diseased." I never had been. Being believed, enabled me to have confidence in myself; helped me to truly believe in myself.

In effect, I was helped to learn how to repair the damage trauma caused my spirit. I needed help learning how to accept what is, and support in assuming my responsibilities. It is only me who can decide to be in charge of doing what is needed for myself to become whole, or doing nothing and remain broken. I needed to be reminded that I am not supposed to be able to do it alone. I was able to learn some real coping skills, and little by little, attend to taking better care of myself, to know I am important enough to invest the effort.

I'm only as broken as I think I am. It is not how I feel that will kick my ass, it is thinking and believing that how I feel defines who I am. It is as if believing I had a brain disorder meant that how I felt was reality itself. My feelings are not the sum total of my reality, and they only were when I believed that I had a disease that I could treat with psychotropic drugs. Learning to accept my feelings for what they are, and learning that what I think of myself, what I believe is possible is so much more important than how I feel at a particular moment in time. All of this enabled me to stop taking the drugs on a daily basis, and with the exception of a few times for a  day or two to help me sleep, I haven't taken drugs to treat "bipolar" disorder for six+ years. I was told I would need to take the drugs for the rest of my life. I have not felt broken, and I am not. Getting the help I needed and learning how to walk through painful experiences has made all the difference.

I did not begin to recover until well after I had become incapacitated by overwhelming grief, sorrow and deep depression unable to care for my sons, and myself.  My sons have experienced a great deal of trauma as a result of my inability to take care of them. This is a painful truth that I struggle to be at peace with.  The fact that my sons were harmed as children is the one thing I would change, if it were in my power to do so. It is not. A great deal of harm was done to my children who are now grown men. We all were traumatized by the manner we were treated by the professionals who "provided services" to Isaac. By the Grace of God, I was able to rescue him from the State of Washington's Psychiatric research facility for children, Child Study and Treatment Center.

I brought Isaac home in January of 2005. Due to the drugs tested on him, he is cognitively and neurologically impaired and has heart damage; but he is alive and for that, I am so very grateful. He trusts me, and knows that his brother and I believe in him. Isaac has said "My family knows what happened to me, and they believe in me, and that's why I can get better." Later, Nathan and I asked each other if that was something either of us had told him. It isn't. It's something he figured out for himself.

One of the blogs that I read is 1 Boring Old Man, written by a real good egg. The post titled, "the extent of it" explains why I was told I had a disease and would need to take psychiatric drugs for the rest of my life by mental health professionals. It helps a little to know I wasn't the only one told this lie.

here is an excerpt:
The same thing happened all over the country as biological psychiatrists moved to head up many other departments, actually most. Our journals were filled with clinical drug trials, brain research, and a peculiar kind of review article that started with the "burden of mental illness" and progressed to reports of coming biological treatments. By the 1990s, the eclectic menagerie of various kinds of psychiatrists disappeared, at least from the mainstream journals and faculties. Any fool should’ve seen that the massive influx of pharmaceutical money into psychiatry came with strings attached, and had a lot to do with the explosion of drugs on the market and drug company profits. But psychiatrists aren’t just any fools. During the 90s, psychiatrists were either on the bus [brief sessions primarily for medications] or off the bus [essentially becoming part of the psychotherapy community at large]. I was in Group B. What we know now is that the 90s were a decade of an escalating collusion between pharmaceutical marketing departments and academic psychiatrists unlike anything ever seen or imagined – except it wasn’t seen. It was buried in waves and raves of new treatments and a bristling air of discovery. Certainly a piece of that excitement was legitimate, but there was plenty that was spin. Sales of the expensive new CNS drugs began to soar. It was indeed The Decade of the Brain. read here.

My belief that I was damaged, genetically inferior, and "mentally ill" because I had been victimized was a belief I adopted in resignation; it was what I was repeatedly told by the mental health professionals I sought help from. Believing it, inhibited my ability to function and recover. The fact that the same thing was done to my son, only much much worse, angers me. He grew up being repeatedly told he was sick, being given the message that he is defective and diseased. He was victimized and had profound traumatic injuries. Instead of being helped, he was blamed, and he was drugged. The drugs didn't help, the drugs traumatized him; and caused my son so much physiological harm. A research psychiatrist is responsible for robbing my youngest son of his childhood, his intelligence, and his artistic abilities. The "mental health and social service system" is responsible for robbing all of us of precious time together as a family. What was done to my son should not be done to any human being anywhere.  I am horrified at the enormity of the betrayal of trust and lack of empathy shown by "professionals" who had an ethical and a legal duty to do differently.

I am so grateful my son survived; and damn lucky that he trusts me at all. I believe that recovery is possible for everyone. Finding real ethical treatment providers who will effectively help and not cause further harm to people who are in distress, that's another matter... I will spend the rest of my life doing my best to protect my son from further harm and to help him recover. I have to do everything in my power to prevent the same "treatment" from being administered to someone else's child; to do less is not an option.    

It has been a long journey to get where I am today. I had a lot of help. In the end, I am the one who needed to do the real work. I am the one who has to continue to do the work.

I can think what I want about anything, if it's not working;
I can think something else. 

I can learn. I can choose the journey I'm on. I am not broken. 

(I'm just a little cracked!)

What I once believed were burdens are now blessings...
I now know they always were...  

Life is good even when it's bittersweet.