He tangentially brought it up as part of an opinion about ECT in general; note that the discussion of involuntary treatment didn’t really get going until Ragiel popped into the thread, assumed a position of authority, and started lying.
Has anyone in this thread said that psychiatrists are (generally) jerks, incompetents sadists? 
That seems like a bit of a strawman.
The problem is with the institution as a whole, not the individuals.
That wasn’t a “tangent”, it was the whole point of his second paragraph, and it started to derail the thread in that direction and in the direction of the “lies of the psychiatric establishment” long before Ragiel came in this thread. The OP wanted to hear opinions and experiences with respect to ECT, given that his friend is given the choice to try this treatment, not discuss the psychiatric institution.
And note that Ragiel is a psychiatrist. Of course he or she will be somewhat in favour of his/her profession, but he/she wasn’t lying. He/she’s seeing the potential benefits of the law, while you’re seeing the potential abuse. Maybe not being able to take care of “food, housing, and clothing needs” is not something that is “significantly threatening to cause alarm” to you, but some would say it is.
“Generally”? No, probably not. On the other hand, AHunter3 did say:
That’s a pretty strong thing to say. He also said that the “profession” lies. Maybe that doesn’t mean the individuals, but the institution as a whole, as you say, but still, I understand how someone involved in this “institution” (and who does a good job) may get offended.
I never said the OP said anything about forced treatment. I was responding to: Originally Posted by Q.N. Jones
Please read AHunter3’s posts to other threads to put his comments in context. He is anti-psychiatry on all fronts because he has had bad personal experiences with the mental health profession.
I’ve read lots of AHunter3’s posts, and he makes some interesting and valid points. His beef is with uninformed, non-consenting psychiatric treatment. I believe psychiatric treatment is frequently undertaken without knowing what the consequences of that treatment is. I am also firmly against forced treatment, particularly when the patient has already tried it and has made an informed, personal decision against continuing with it. There are countless stories of people who feel that the treatment is worse than the disease, and their opinions should be respected.
I know how psychiatrists access their patients because I’ve seen so many. I know what emergency psychiatry procedures are because they’ve happened to me and my friends.
I remember my de facto involuntary committment.
“Sign this.”
“What if I don’t sign?”
“Then, we’ll have a hearing and you’ll be committed against your will. After that, it’s mandatory that you spend thirty days in the locked ward. (Long list of privileges you don’t get in the locked ward) (Hint that my not signing would be large black mark against me during my entire time there) (explanation <In retrospect, probably false> of why I would not prevail in an involuntary commitment hearing)”
“(Anguished scream, followed by exteme sobbing)”
“If you’re going to carry on like this, I’ll have to have you taken to a Quiet Room”
Forced medication?
Oh since meds had generally been helpful to me, I took mine willingly. Those who did not were indeed forced.
Nurse Ratchet Types?
Absolutely. The above institution had two extreme ones. I’ve also met wonderful, sympathetic, healers who are deeply committed to improving their patients’ lives (My current psychiatrist and therapist are marvellous people.). But to deny that pyschiatry has a ‘sprinkling’ of Ratchets is ridiculous.
My therapist and psychiatrist routinely attempt to fathom the inner workings of my mind so tha they can better help me, take my word over the many folders of reports, understand that I do no do things like the average person and don’t see it as a problem, and defy the stereotypes of shrinks in many other ways.
I can imagine my life without medications. I’d really rather not. You can have my meds when you pry them from my cold, dead hands. I have never understood why people say that there aren’t miracle drugs in psychiatry. I get my miracles from the Rite Aid pharmacy.
I also emphatically agree with large portions of what AHunter3 has written here. There are bastards who think that their degrees somehow make them right all the time, and if the patient disagrees it must be a sign that they’re crazier than we thought. There are plenty of well intentioned people who have no idea what they’re doing, or put all their trust in the latest revolutionary treatment no matter what results they get. Then, there are the good shrinks. But, for your own safety and wellbeing, you learn to assume that any shrink you meet is either clueless or a bastard until they prove otherwise.
I’m not sure what your background is with mental illness, or if you have ever been in the throws of a sever depression. I’d happily give up some of my memory, which is crap anyway as a result of being depressed in the first place, to live a somewhat normal life. If meds and therapy hadn’t worked for me, I would have gotten ECT, even knowing the potential side effects.
In theory, no one should be commited against their will if they have decided not to accept treatment. The issue becomes more complicated when it is personal.
I once decided that I was fine without meds, in university, and stopped taking them. My psychiatrist told me this is something that depressives do - think they are cured. I rapidly regressed into a catatonic and blank person, with no way of understanding my world. If my mother hadn’t forced me home and into out patient treatment with a competant pysch, I would have killed myself.
I have a cousin who is severly mentally ill and is being indulged by her mother. Her decision to remain untreated is not a rational decision. It is the product of a very sick mind. I wish we could have her commited, because it breaks my heart to see her living this life, knowing it could be better. But because she is so addled, she can’t possibly understand this, anymore than she can understand that “normal” people can find the energy to shower more than once a week without being forced.
I don’t know about davenportavenger, but I do know what severe depression is like, and I WOULDN’T have wanted to give up my memory and damaged my brain. If you, knowing the risks and side effects, want ECT, then go for it. But everyone should be free to make that decision for themselves.
Did your psychiatrist also discuss the symptoms of withdrawal from whatever antidepressents you were taking–symptoms which can, in some cases, include catatonia and depression?
I think your sympathy and good wishes for your cousin are admirable, but don’t you think it’s a little scary to wish you could lock someone up, strip them of their freedom, place them in a humiliating environment, and then force them to take drugs that have a variety of negative side effects and are frequently ineffective because you disapprove of their lifestyle?
This is why my psychiatrist warned me against going off the meds by myself, but no - what I experienced when I went off my meds was not withdrawal. It was the way I was before I was treated.
As for my cousin, I never, ever said that this is what I wished for her.
What I wish is that, instead of her mother’s indulgence and acceptance of her behaviour, the rest of the family could intervene, find her an in-patient initial treatment to have her properly assessed (not some kind of horror hospital from a nightmare, but competant mental health professionals). I do not wish her humiliation, but I think she’d be humiliated if she was in her right mind and saw herself as she is untreated? As for drugs, she’s taking them now, and seems to be of the mindset that all she has to do is take drugs. They are obviously not working, and further affirmation that mental health should not be treated by family physicians. She needs someone who can asses her, treat her, and provide her with the tools to rebuild her life. If this means confinement, I’d rather see that than the nightmare of a life I see everytime I visit their home.
The point I’m trying to make is that I think it is more irresponsible and cruel to let someone to live this way when you know there is help, and know that if she was sane, she wouldn’t want it either. If this means forced in-patient treatment, and yes - even medication, I advocate that as an option before I’d advocate abandoning someone to a mental void.
But when you say you wish you could commit someone to an in-patient facility, that’s exactly what you’re wishing. Being forcibly removed from your current situation, locked up, told that there’s something wrong with you and that you don’t know what’s best for yourself is humiliating.
I think you clearly do want positive things to happen in her life, and that’s really great, but when you want to force someone into a treatment program your going to humiliate them. There’s no getting around it.
She’s only got one mind; it’s not a “right mind” or a “wrong mind” it’s just “a mind.” And it’s hers to do with as she wills. Saying “I think you’ll agree that what I’m forcing you to do is right” isn’t an adequate justification for violating her basic human rights!
In my experience, being an inpatient in a mental hospital has absolutely nothing to do with providing tools to rebuild one’s life.
Nothing. At. All. Even in the ones that don’t look like they’re out of a horror movie.
There’s no “What’s wrong with my life and how do I fix it?” there’s no “Let’s make a plan for my future and provide the support services necessary for me to reach it!”
There’s just a parade of “experts” who speak to you for 10 to 20 minutes, and, in that time period, manage to become an expert on your life and know exactly what needs to be prescribed to fix it. The focus is overwhelmingly on using medication (and to a lesser extent group therapy sessions and to an even lesser extent individual therapy sessions) to get the person to conform to whatever life they’re currently living.
You may live with a shitty family, or be stuck in a job you hate, or be drifting aimlessly in life–but as long as you remember to shower, smile, and not bother the people around you, you’ll be “recovering” just fine.
The line between sane and not is arbitrary and in the subjective eye of the beholder. Ultimately, you don’t approve of how she’s choosing to live her life right now and you want to force her to change. You want to make her conform to how you think she should live, and I think that’s wrong.
How much time do you spend with her? How often do you call her, take her out to do stuff, or visit her?
Have to disagree with you here. My cousin doesn’t shower more than once a week. She never smiles. When she’s not sleeping, she is eating or complaining about how she is so mentally ill and isn’t it sad. We have a history of mental illness in our family. She’s grown up with it, and she’s seen family members in treatment and getting help.
Untreated, she’s impossible to be around. When I first moved her, I tried calling her and visiting. She would always be asleep, and when she was awake, she just frustrates me, reminding me of myself before I was given help. She’s fallen into the selfish cycle of depression, and can’t see beyond her own misery.
I refuse to think this is any kind of life.
Her biggest complaint is that she’s mentally ill and helpless, and you want to respond by committing her, which will make her an even bigger mental patient and make her even more helpless? That’s perverse!
She shouldn’t be incarcerated because you have a negative opinion of her life.
If I may trod Godwin’s Balance Beam for a moment…
severus:
I have met some Holocaust survivors who tend to automatically associate National Socialism with genocidal antisemitism and forget that many of its adherents were simply people who believed that the best government is a centralized and unopposed authority run like a corporation board, and who never had anything against Jewish people.
Can’t say as how I blame them much for that, and they have a point anyway, now don’t they?
Look, a sizeable portion of the victims of forced psychiatric treatment (including me) got there as an outgrowth of voluntary treatment. Some of us sought help, found the help unhelpful, and found that the helpful people don’t like having their wares turned down. Some of us sought help at one point, then at a later point the mental health professional’s awareness of us having sought help leads them to impose treatment as a logical (to them) extension of voluntary services.
Rebekkah:
Usually voluntary treatment becomes involuntary treatment as a function of well-meaning but paternalistic attitudes like that. The initial decision to seek help leads to the choosing of mental health services by the service providers, services that are then imposed upon the patient against the patient’s will for the patient’s own good.
The possibility of forced treatment is always there in psychiatry. Bringing it up is not inserting a red herring into the discussion. Failing to bring it up is ignoring the elephant in the living room.
I do not in any way deny that in most cases the motivation of the mental health professionals is benign. That, if anything, makes it scarier.
The word “treat” is a word with slipperier meaning than the average word. You can’t treat a person in the medical sense of the word without treating them in the vernacular sense as well. I do not like the way the mental health system treated me. I do not like the way the mental health system treats people in general. Those of you who defend psychiatric treatment (medical sense) may bristle when I keep reintroducing psychiatric treatment (vernacular sense) but they aren’t separable components. The mere capacity of the system to impose treatment on an involuntary basis, and its perennial use of that capacity, means it’s always there in the (theoretically) therapeutic relationship. To some people, it’s just a little piss in the punchbowl and you can’t even taste it. But it’s always there, and you never really know what the next cupful is going to taste like.
Oh for the love of CHEESE, do you have any idea how fucking insulting that is, to people who have been helped by psychology? Or to the truly decent people working in that field?
Severe anxiety disorder (panic disorder with recurrent agoraphobia) and depression, though the depression is really more a result of the anxiety and not all that bad on its own. So, no, I haven’t been through a severe depression quite like the ones that ECT patients go through. I truly do believe, though, that I would not be willing to sacrifice any of my memories or capacity to retain memories for all the mental health in the world. Because that, to me, would mean giving up control of my past and subtly changing my entire reality, which would play into my greatest fear of all. I honestly think losing any of my memory or capacity for memory would make me way more depressed and even liable to kill myself because it would be like that fear coming true.
But no, I don’t have ECT-level depression and I want to make that clear.
I understand that it pains you to see your cousin this way. However, even you conceded that this is a personal reaction. It’s impossible for you to look at the situation objectively, and while this doesn’t negate your stance at all, you need to realize that you have a bias in this case. We shouldn’t make or change laws based on sad stories.
Laws regarding forced treatment are there for YOUR benefit. If they’re able to take your cousin away, what’s to stop them from taking away everyone who showers once a week, or acts jerky to their family, or doesn’t smile? Do you think they should have been able to take me away when I was housebound, even though I could more than take care of myself, because my behavior wasn’t normal (even though I freely acknowledged such)? How far is that slope going to slip? These laws are in place for the protection of all of us, not to punish people like your cousin. Maybe she’s “fallen through the cracks,” but frankly I’d rather see that happen than have those cracks get wider and envelop a lot more people*.
*Yeah, it’s a mixed metaphor. You know what I mean.
I sympathize with your concern and it is possible that the right medication and therapy could make a world of difference in your cousin. But, sometimes there are situations that are beyond our control and this may be one of them. You do not have legal responsibility for her and you cannot “fix” her. There is always the possibility that you might convince her to admit herself voluntarily.
It’s not as if she choses to be ill!
AHunter3, I was about to thank you for your earlier clarification until I read your very dark Godwinized post. I strongly disagree with your analogy.
Metacom, if all hospital experiences were as you described, that would be tragic indeed. That must have been so frustrating and overwhelming. Truly, not all experiences are like that. People do get help.
Sorry Guin and Zoe, I do sometimes write from the gut and Rebekkah’s post hit me in the gut. That caring compassionate justification for forced treatment stuff creeps me totally the fuck out.
Let me climb back over the top I just went over and reiterate: there are a lot of sincerely caring professionals in the MH profession, and there are many people who have turned to them and experienced profound improvement as a direct consequence of psychiatric treatment that they have received. It’s certainly doing some good in the world.
I will admit that I’m definately biased in this matter. I have a strong family history of mental illness, including suicide. I have been exactly where my cousin is now, and recovering was the hardest thing I have ever done. If it weren’t for family and friends making it very clear to me that I was sick, but treatable, and that as hard as it was going to be, I needed help, I never would have been able to do it. I moved home, started seeing a psych and diligently did my “homework”, even though it felt like everything was impossible. Homework being,after some meds stabilized me… week 1, have a shower every day, week 2, go for a 10 minute walk etc…
She’s seen the battles we’ve fought in this family, and she’s seen people get better, but she cannot comprehend that this may possibly extend to her. Couple that with a mother who coddles her illness and inept doctoring, and she’s slowly wasting away.
In my mind, depression is not something we can sit idly by and do nothing about. Sure, there are meds, but the underlying behavioural anomolies that have developed over the years also have to be dealt with. Since she is, like I was, not in any shape to understand her world, I see nothing wrong with outside help.
That being said, it’s not my choice and I know that I’m reacting personally. It’s just hard to sit and watch a mirror of your illness, knowing it can be helped.
Sorry, all, for the hijack.
I suppose we all come to issues from our own personal experience — I from mine, you from yours, Metacom and Guinastasia and the other participants in the thread from theirs, and so on.
All in all, I don’t think we’re doing too badly at listening to each other in here! 