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Anti-Psychiatry 101
- Psychiatric Fatalism - Psychiatrists credit those
"diagnosed" as suffering from a "severe mental illness" with the
chance for only a partial "recovery" at best. This kind of negative
value judgment, as one might imagine, works like a self-fulfilling
prophecy. Where people are likely to perform according to
expectations, low expectations can only be debilitating.
- Forced Treatment - In no other branch of the medical sciences would a
person be forced against his or her will to enter the "hospital" if that person,
over the age of consent, would raise objections to receiving treatment. If you
have a potentially fatal disease you can choose to die rather than see the
doctor. With regard to psychiatric treatment, this is not the case,
rather than medicine you have imprisonment. Certainly the impetus behind such
imprisonment has more to do with maintaining social controll than it does with
concern for a person's well being.
- Big International Drug Companies And Psychiatry - The
panacea of contemporary psychiatry is the psychotropic drug. If you
leaf through any psychiatric industry magazine, you are likely to see
a number of advertisements for the latest development in chemical
restraints. If you leaf through any number of popular magazines at a
library or a newsstand, you are likely to spot advertisements for
behavior effecting drugs from Prozac to Ritalin. Drug companies are
growing rich doping people up on crippling drugs that impact their
functionality in a negative manner, and may actually, given long term
over use, do permanent damage to the people taking these pills.
- Stigmatizing, Labeling, Discrimination, And Prejudice -
Oddball, weirdo, wacko, misfit, coo-coo, etc., the name calling begins
before there is even a "diagnosis" made, and the "diagnosis" merely
constitutes another example of name calling. Not only are those so
labeled looked down upon by members of the communities to which they
belong, but they often tend to be looked down upon by the "health care
providers" supposedly serving them. How do you converse with a person
who dismisses everything you say out of hand as being symptomatic of
some illness you are said to manifest? Even if you insist that you are
a human being, and in command of your faculties, this professional is
likely to see nothing but a disease. The prejudicial treatment and
discriminatory practices directed against people who have been
incarcerated in "mental hospitals" requires community education and
involvement if it is to be alleviated.
- The Blame Game - The responsibility for the
condition of certain individuals labeled "mentally ill" all too often
is placed on the back of heredity. As this maneuver let's everybody off the hook,
so to speak, what an ideal solution! Do these results come from any
scientific studies of family trees? No. These doctors don't study
family medical history at all. There have been studies conducted
concerning the behavior of identical twins, but that's about it. More
to the point, the claim is that "a genetic propensity" to develop
those "symptoms" that cause one to be labeled "mentally ill" might
exist. Yeah, right, and try pinning down "a propensity".
- "Recovery" - If the system and
dependence upon it are "the illness", then "the cure" or "the
recovery" must translate into leaving that system completely. Extending the system may help keep people out of the state hospitals,
and that is definitely a good thing, but it is a "recovery" in name
only if it doesn't allow a person to function outside of that system
entirely. Survival and lifestyle issues are among the many things, as
well as professional condemnation and discouragement, that may
sabotage a person's bid for independence from the "mental health" care
system. When the avenues to success that should exist, just don't
exist, many people find themselves stuck at an insurmountable impasse
somewhere far short of the goals they would set for themselves in life.
As there is power in numbers, by joining together, we just might be
able to develop those avenues to success that we don't have.
- Inmates, Survivors, And Poverty - Persons labeled
"mentally ill" tend to be unwanted throw away people, and such people
may become warehoused in state institutions. As anybody who has spent
any time in a "state mental hospital" knows, it's not Monte Carlo, the
rich don't vacation there. The obstacles people labeled "mentally ill"
face are much the same as those obstacles that confront homeless and
poor people in the world,
and the solution to their predicament is much the same. The
opportunities that they don't have yet must be fought for, and gained,
if these people are ever to rise above the sorry situations they so
often find themselves in.
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