Shaming children is abusive and it's one of the many hidden sources of trauma since people sometimes need to learn what shaming behavior is. This is especially true if parents were subjected to shaming themselves by their own parents and have never recognized it as abuse.
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is one of the largest investigations ever conducted to assess associations between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being.
The shocking science about the long-term effects of corporal punishment, essential viewing for every parent. and The idea of painless, nonthreatening coercion is an illusion. Fear is the inseparable companion of coercion, and its inescapable consequence. If you think it your duty to make children do what you want, whether they will or not, then it follows inexorably that you must make them afraid of what will happen to them if they don’t do what you want.
The most striking thing about this program is, of course, the number of antidepressants and antipsychotics these children are given, often from toddler age. It is deeply disturbing to hear parents declare that they have become convinced that their child needs to be constantly drugged and will probably continue to need these medications for life. When one mother expresses concern about the effect these may be having on her child’s development, she is, politely but definitely, dismissed. It is even more distressing to hear a thirteen year old say that she has to take several medications because they “make me more like I’m supposed to be.” Who decides how she’s “supposed to be”? It is to weep....
Since I began my work with those labeled mentally ill it’s been clear that trauma plays a large part in the lives of most of those with psychiatric labels. This blog covers this reality again and again. This simple observation that many of us have made and many others want to deny is beginning to... Continue Reading →
Unfortunately the public policy part of the video I'm sharing below makes me squeamish because all to often children who are introduced to the system by any method are drugged and mistreated in a panoply of additional ways. That's often what happens these days on the ground. It's easy to look at the science and... Continue Reading →
Helen Fisher is an anthropologist who has looked at how antidepressants effect romantic love, falling in love and most importantly ongoing attachment. The conclusion being that the love response and the human instinct for attachment are profoundly messed up. Antidepressants don't just create sexual dysfunction, they wreak havoc with the whole emotional system that creates attachment to other human beings. In my experience it is not only the antidepressants that do this. As far as I can tell all psychiatric drugs do it. As is often the case antidepressants are more commonly studied when the mainstream is being considered. The fact is, however and unfortunately, that neuroleptics are going mainstream. Historically, neuroleptics (antipsychotics) and the other psych meds aren't taken by as many "normal" people as the antidepressants do so they haven't been studied by this woman who is basically making a social commentary. Someday perhaps such studies will extend to include all psychotropics, as there are more and more people effected by all these classes of drugs.
I've talked many times about our culture being one of abuse. So much so that many times we are not even aware of the harm being done. This is one of the many reasons "mental illness" is so incredibly difficult to get a handle on.
This footage is pretty damning. Shows some of the kids on massive cocktails completely out of control and then drug free much healthier. It was indeed my experience of coming off meds. The really weird twisted "emotional" shit was the drugs. I once wrote about the common phenomena of many of us in withdrawal circles discovering that any suicidality we experienced vanished once we were drug free.
I've often said we live in a culture of abuse. I'm not always explicit about what that means. Here is one simple example of how we are out of touch with the nature of our being and impose abuse on ourselves and our children. Even in infancy we do harm to our children without meaning... Continue Reading →
He believes that the failure to appreciate the history of trauma and interpersonal conflict in the children's lives, coupled with a need to explain the children's anger, leads to a premature and erroneous diagnosis of child bipolar disorder....Unfortunately, trauma broadly underlying the source of mental distress is true for adults as well who are labeled bipolar (and schizophrenic and depressed and anxious) and it's rarely taken into consideration with adults either.
