I never stop being aware of is how unsafe it is to be vulnerable in this society. The below book takes a magnifying glass to what is happening all over society, under our noses in the name of psychiatry. Anyone who doesn't fit into the mainstream is vulnerable. Rob Wipond has written a book that... Continue Reading →
By Steven Morgan - Tonight will be a Haldol night. The newly minted nurse will say, This is going to make you feel better, and I will duly reply, Ok, anything. She will tell me to lean forward over the table and pull up my gown. I will feel cold air crawl like fingers around my torso. She will tell me it’s going to feel like a prick, but only for a moment. I will feel the skin on my ass cinch around the needle. The tranquilizer will swim out the chute in a billowing yellow cloud. She will announce, Good job, jerking back. ....
"Exactly. My sister told her GP she felt suicidal. The police took her away in hand cuffs.” so REALLY?? they tell us to be sure to ask for help. What do we do when there is no help available? Until we are, as a society, willing to answer that question people will continue to die without being offered a chance to share and thus process their pain. ...
The catch - 22 I thought about the other day: The mental health system tells clients/patients/consumers that they need better boundaries while expecting them to ignore their boundaries.
Woah, everyone who has never seen the cops (or mental illness professionals) out of control for no good reason whatsoever should watch this. Yeah, this is like what happens to us when they don't understand our altered states as well...things just start happening and it's all out of your control. Next thing you know you're in four point restraints and they're shooting you up with drugs to shut you up and disable you. Literally. People have no idea unless it's happened to them. It's ugly, it's violent, it's traumatic. (video included)
I don't spend so much time thinking about this stuff anymore, but as a writer I've found that there are many people who need to hear this from someone else because they think they're the only ones such heinous shit happened to. Or worse, they have come to believe they deserved the heinous shit because there is no one in their environment to reflect to them their real beauty and any sort of belief in their inherent well-being (we all have that).
By Richard Lewis -- As the benzodiazepine crisis spreads throughout the United States and other parts of the world so does the debate within the benzo victim/survivor community about important definitions of key medical terms and about safe and successful paths to healing and recovery. Does “iatrogenic benzo dependence” and “addiction” represent completely separate medical and social phenomena? If they are to have distinctly different scientific definitions, can they also (at the same time) intersect in multiple ways in people’s actual real life experience? And what is the medical and social significance of exploring these concepts and seeking unity of understanding and purpose? Before delving into the content of this debate let’s briefly review the social context from which this “Benzo Divide” has emerged.
By Will Hall -- Cannabis (marijuana) is now legal in two states, legal for medical use in 23 more, and polls show the majority of Americans support legalization. As a counselor working with people diagnosed with psychosis and mental illness I am often asked about my clinical -- as well as my personal -- experience with medical cannabis. … [click on title for the rest of the post]
By Leah Harris -- As I got deeper into the research about childbirth options, I began to notice the commonalities between the natural birth movement and our movement of users and survivors of psychiatry. The first commonality is that we are confronting industries – the birth/obstetric and psychiatric industries, respectively. In both cases, the trend is toward the most invasive medical technologies, which also just happen to make a lot more money for these industries. When it comes to mental health – as we all know, it’s institutionalization, shock, and expensive psych drugs. ... (post included information and a trailer about a new documentary too) [click on title to read the rest]
By Ron Unger, LCSW -- Unfortunately, the typical interaction between professionals and clients seen as psychotic in our current mental health system has characteristics which make a positive human relationship almost impossible. To start with, rather than starting from a place of equality, where two people negotiate to see each other and to define reality, the professional holds onto a position of assumed superiority and declares himself or herself as able to define both the other person and the overall nature of reality, without any need to reconcile that view with the viewpoint of the “psychotic” person. This makes sense within the standard paradigm, as once a person’s mental process is defined as “psychotic” it is understood to be determined by illness, and to be senseless, with nothing of any value to offer. Under such circumstances, true dialogue, in which the experience of the professional meets the full experience of the other, is impossible. … [click on title to read and view more]
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