Look, I understand that you have had some horrible experiences. But you know what? I’m sick and tired of you horning in on threads about mental illness where people are seeking support and spewing the same, tired old bullshit. Much of your information is horrible out of date and doesn’t always apply to every situation.
You think psychiatry is evil? Fine. But don’t sit there and tell someone they’re depressed that by seeking treatment, they are, how did you put it?
No, by taking the steps to seek treatment, some of us are taking control of our self-determination.
You can’t sit there and act like the expert, because you’re hardly an unbiased source. I’d love to see how you would handle a John Hinkley Jr. or a Mark David Chapman.
And in other news, I can actually spell marriage.
But a good link to support my statement:
I made the mistake of once mentioning I was engaged to him. Of course he just had to go on and on about how he couldn’t understand why you would want to get married, how could I know I want to spend the rest of my life with someone, and how marriages never last, etc etc.
AHunter3 should shut the fuck up about everything. He’s a condescending ass.
I agree with Zoe. Much as I respect AHunter3, which is quite a lot, I was raised to have contempt for the psychiatric profession and consider them charlatans. I tried to cope with severe clinical depression on my own. It landed me flat on my back in a mental hospital and close to catatonic. I got treatment for the depression just as I would for diabetes or heart disease.
Like anything else, psychiatry can be abused. I’ve met a few couselors who I felt were clueless; I’ve also been treated by a couple of dead good ones. When I was attending a weekly group therapy session, I met people who’d been in group therapy for years and would continue to do so, in my non-medical opinion, because they were waiting for someone to come along and hand them the answers. I may have wanted that, but I didn’t expect that and I didn’t want to spend my life the way I was. It’s been three years now since I’ve seen a therapist. I won’t tempt fate and say “I’m cured” but I will say it’s been some time since I last had a nasty depressive episode (2 years, nearly, as a guess?) and I’ve weathered a few storms which would have triggered one in between. I couldn’t have done that without what I learned from two good therapists.
Well, I don’t know how things are in the States these days, or in England, but I can tell you Swedish psychiatry is a nightmare that easily lives up to AHunter’s worst imaginings. On the other hand, most people suffering from clinical depression are treated on a voluntary, out-patient basis, so I doubt Kythereia to worry about that.
Personally, I’m skeptical about the meds. Latest research seems to demonstrate that they rely primarily (up to 80%) on placebo effects. Unfortunately this interesting volume of Prevention and Cure is no longer available on line; but I read the whole thing a couple of years ago and, for what its worth, found Kirsch’s arguments compelling.
b) OK, so I had this coming. People get tiresome when they are always on the same damn soapboxes. I know these to be my damn soapboxes.
c) As a survivor of the mental health system, I am entitled to say I don’t need marriage because I’ve already been committed, thank you very much
d) Kythereia may not be at risk of having involuntary psychiatric treatment imposed on her. You who have had only good or primarily good results from psychiatric treatment may not think Kythereia is at risk of that. The people to whom it happens generally never anticipated that it could happen to them. I issue the disclaimers because the disclaimers should be issued. Think of them as being akin to the warnings on the little dessicant capsules in your bottle of SSRI pills (“DO NOT EAT”) if you want. But whenever people post “I feel like shit and I was wondering, would it be a good idea if I go to a psychiatrist?”, I’m going to be there and I’m going to post the disclaimer. (“Psychiatrists have the power to force treatment down your throat and they do use it sometimes”)
e) I would handle David Chapman and John Hinckley Jr the same way I would handle other people who commit violent crimes. I would arrest them for committing violent crimes and I would prosecute them and upon their conviction I would see them punished as per the appropriate and available sanctions provided by penal code. Their alleged psychiatric condition doesn’t authorize preventive detention (psychiaty is no improvement over random dice-throw at predicting dangerousness), nor should it be accepted as an excuse for criminal behavior once done. (There’s a social, environmental, chromosomal, biochemical, emotional, or economic explanation for nearly every crime. In our criminal justice system we don’t accept such explanations as excuses. If that’s wrong, it’s wrong for everyone tried and convicted, not just for folks with psychiatric diagnoses).
f) I’m sorry I’m often a condescending ass. I’ll work on less condescending ways of expressing my less conventional / less mainstream opinions.
Personally, I am a little tired of the people who get on their “seek professional help” soapbox. As another survivor of the psychiatric merry-go-round, I think your viewpoint is necessary to any discussion of mental health issues. I am not saying people suffering depression shouldn’t see a psychiatrist, only that they should be aware of possible negative outcomes. I don’t see how your soapbox is any more tiresome than Guinastasia’s.
Guin: I am glad you started this thread because I didn’t want to highjack **Kytheria’s ** thread.
I don’t agree with **AHunter3’s ** post in that thread but too many people in the thread are reading a short post about a girl who is feeling blue and took an internet survey that was probably provided by a drug company and are counseling her to seek professional help. (Horrible run-on wasn’t that)
This is BS; those surveys are largely designed to convince people to go for treatment.
Feeling depressed and “Depression” are too different things. **AHunter3’s ** impassioned dislike for involuntary psychiatric treatment might actually keep her from getting sent down the path of medication and long term counseling when all that is really wrong is a short term funk.
A few others recommended several self-help methods first. People seemed too quick to talk about therapists and drugs in Kytheria’s thread.
Jim {I was diagnosed with depression and suicidal tendacies when I was 18, I did get better on my own.}
I know way more about “depression” then I’d like to, and I agree with AHunter3’s views (well, a lot of them anyways). I don’t think he hijacked that thread one bit. Someone asked for advice, and he gave it. It happened to be different then a lot of the other advice in that thread. I’m sorry that bothers you Guinistasia. We can’t all be like you, fortunately.
A heapin’ helping of caution is necessary for those who think anyone, including mental health professionals have their hands around the Gordian Knot of mental dysfunction. The human mind is an endlessly complex meat machine. At his stage of the game we’re still in stone knife and fire hardened spear territory with respect to the tools and techniques available in understanding and influencing the mind, and a lot of drugs are just a big heavy sword hacking away at that knot, not an unraveling and correction of the root problems.
I don’t agree with everything he says, but overall I think AHunter3 endeavors to speak truth to power and is necessary counterbalance to those who think every personal problem is amenable to a psychiatric or biochemical solution.
Do they? I’m not being sarcastic here. How do they have any more power over you than any other health care professional? If you tell a doctor you are homicidal or suicidal or thinking seriously of harming someone or are a danger to yourself, he has to act on that, very possibly against your will. In what other circumstances can they throw your ass in a mental hospital?
My psychiatrist has never made me feel like I had to do anything. He makes suggestions, I research them and either take them or don’t. When I don’t, he is OK with that. He has helped me through several very difficult times in my life and I never felt coerced, manipulated, or threatened.
Maybe these situations are informed by the doctors we deal with?
AHunter3, in his own sometimes convoluted way, was an inspiration to me when I discovered that drugs didn’t weren’t what I needed. There are as many depression stories as people with depression, and not every one of those is going to be “My doc prescribed drugs, we tried a few, and then I found one that worked”.
They are not 100% effective and they are not everyone’s cup of tea. It was a godsend to have someone who realized this instead of the same old “It’s a disease just like diabetes. A psychiatrist can cure it just like diabetes.” .