Are you familiar with this oft-quoted statistic: “people with serious mental illness served by the public mental health system die, on average, 25 years earlier than the general population”? You see it everywhere...
(I've been visiting early posts from this site. A lot are diary-like and there is more involvement from readers since this predates social media getting really big.) Something that comes up quite often in discussions with my friends and readers who have been on meds and have come off of them is how many of the "psychiatric" symptoms they were being "treated" for disappear upon discontinuation of the medications. This is widely known and experienced among those of us who have decided to stop medicating ourselves. For me there are two most astonishing details. The first was when I discoveredI was being given more and more Risperdal to medicate away the akathisia that the Risperdal was causing! Once off the Risperdal the akathisia was gone and so was most of what we'd called anxiety which led me to take massive doses of benzos. This is tragic and disgusting.
I can agree that all the treatment I received involuntarily was indeed torture. From The Diamond Valley Leader a piece about Tina Minkowitz who works tirelessly for our rights: IF someone decides not to have chemotherapy in Victoria; that’s their choice. If they want to opt out of an organ transplant, or forego taking daily... Continue Reading →
How about "New Tool to Manipulate and Coerce People to Take Meds Against Their Will??" I have no problem calling this bullshit. But if someone wants to take a drug? Who the hell are we to question that?? From Medical News Today: A new instrument for improving patient understanding and acceptance of long-acting injectable antipsychotic... Continue Reading →
It's potentially dangerous to come off psychiatric drugs rapidly. For guidance in safer withdrawal methods see here. You think maybe something wasn’t quite right? This journey started the summer of 1985 and is about to end this summer of 2009. I have been withdrawing the past 5 years. Nothing ever did work and in retrospect... Continue Reading →
I have been blessed lately with multiple submissions. Today Mary Maddock of Ireland's MindFreedom, author of Soul Survivor submits a piece. By Mary Maddock Coercion in Psychiatry You would think people who study medicine would see that a young woman who had a difficult pregnancy, a very long labour, deprived of sleep and who had... Continue Reading →
As someone with left leaning political views who also identifies as a feminist I am repeatedly frustrated, disappointed and angered by the left's neglect of the human rights of those who have been psychiatrized. On this blog I tend not to emphasize my politics outside the political issues surrounding mental health because regardless of our political... Continue Reading →
Okay this is damn scary and you know people like Treatment Advocacy Center and NAMI are going to be all over it. It's a forced medication philosophy's wet dream. This is hard-core, big brother stuff and you know it will be marketed real hard here in America if some people have their way. Microchip that... Continue Reading →
Thanks D. Bunker: not sure why I didn't get this in email. I usually do. Mind Freedom has: Web of Link$ Around Ray Sandford: Survivor of Electroconvulsive Therapy - MFI Portal by David W. Oaks — last modified 2009-04-09 21:28 Here is a list of more than two dozen agencies and individuals involved in the... Continue Reading →
Honestly folks. Click this link and sign the damn thing. It takes about one minute. Please let me watch my stats jump on clicks out to this link. I can't imagine what's stopping you. From the petition site: Ray is a 55-year-old Minnesota resident who is regularly receiving "Involuntary Outpatient Maintenance Electroshock." Involuntary outpatient electroshock... Continue Reading →
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