"mental" illness is a misnomer. it is a physical ailment which affects the brain.

http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html

What I DO know is that medication has helped my many friends and i function.. when without it we couldnt thrive, just by changing diet, lifestyle..

and therapy has helped myself, as well as many others.

Without these things.. I would be so crippled in life.


I havent had a absoloute test of chemicals, and things like that... and no its been a long time measuring what is needed.


But it has saved my life, and i strongly believe in psychiatrists, and psycologists.. you just dont know how many people they help.


People DO get ill mentally when they have mental difficulty, just as the body gets ill, so does the mind..

The key is acceptance, and education on the subject for one to better understand, and come to terms with it, in ourselves, and others.

It doesnt help anyone to pretend it doesnt exist, because it does.

I speak in my community to educate people of this, take away the stigma attatched to it, and to offer resources.

People should embrace what has come to them naturally, and learn how to deal with it.. and yes.. there are many many people out there diagnosed, and misdiagnosed, and UNdiagnosed.

More people are on medication for this than people think, and IMO they should be.

Ive seen people that walk down the street talking to themselves go from that, to every day "normal" and working a 9-5 and taking care of their kids, where they couldnt before.

Ps, electro shock therapy hasnt been used in like 30 years, and surgery without consent just does not occour, this is not the 60's.


This sounds like fear mongering to me.


A chemical imbalance does not HAVE to be measured today by those procedures mentioned.. it is behavior, which shows one is lacking naturally what they should posess.

Way to go Earthy!

Right on Joe!

There was a case in Florida few years ago where a mother was threatened with child abuse charges for refusing to give her child a psychotropic drug. That’s about as close as you can come to “forced medication”.

While it is true that there are very few incidents of actually physically forcing medications on people, it is not an uncommon practice in psychiatric hospitals to deny privileges to patients who refuse to take their “meds”.

And it’s not a far cry from jailing people for not taking or administering drugs, to jailing people for purely political reasons. They are both based solely on a subjective “majority opinion” with no objective basis. Just get a psychiatrist to sign a paper and viola – your opponent can be held incommunicado indefinitely, with not so much as the phonecall afforded murderers and rapists. Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, Apartheid Africa and even current day China, all did, or are doing, exactly that. And there are laws on the books here in the U.S. today that allow for exactly that to happen.

In fact, there was a law passed in Illinois in 2005 setting up a “mental health screening task force” for children.
The implications are pretty obvious.

Now if someone is “a danger to others”, then they should have the same rights as any criminal would have. The right to a phonecall (which is often denied “mental patients”) and the right to a trial by jury where objective evidence is presented that shows without a reasonable doubt that they have violated some law of the land. But all that is a legal issue, not a “mental” one. And it will remain so unless and until we start passing laws against “mental disorders”. But watch out if that ever happens.

The critical factor here is that the so-called “disorders” in the DSM are just fabricated out of thin air. There are no objective tests for any of them. Hence, we have the situation where people can be incarcerated and held incommunicado, based on nothing more than the complaint of a relative! (ref: Florida’s infamous “Baker Act”)

(end rant)

I come from a long line of proud mentally ill people on both sides of my family.

When I was given a diagnosis, instead of feeling stigmatized, I felt relieved: "Ah, so THAT's why I want to kill myself. Makes complete sense now."

People who refuse treatment are responsible adults. They cannot refuse treatment for their children (in Ontario). They can refuse treatment if certain conditions apply for people for whom they are the power of attorney.

Note the word "responsible". Mental illness can attack the capacity of the sufferer to come up with good judgements. A responsible person is asked to make the decision for the incapacitated mentally ill with regards to treatment, much like a power of attorney can make far-reaching decisions for another person.

The horror story you depicted applies to patients in horror movies. In today's societies the mentally ill are not taken advantage of by mean or evil doctors. Checks are in place, and in my view doctors have a genuine inner need to help people. A person without that motivation, coupled with other very important traits, could not go through the rigours of medical training. Psychiatrists are too smart to jeopardize their licence or their salvation by torturing someone for the joy of it. Thus, treatments that are dished out to the mentally ill are not a retalition, not a punishment, not a mean and meaningless torture, but a sincere and serious attempt to help them get better.

I have been inside wards, committed more like it, as an inpatient, and I tell you, some patients are really out of it. And I have never been to a place like the ones for the crimially insane or those who roll their shiiit into little balls.

People can and do get sick to the point that they need others to make decisions for them.

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About whether psychiatry is a set of invented diseases or a science: Psychiatry is a new science. It cannot be expected to show mature results with its subject matter like sciences with a long history, such as physics or alchemy. (Chemistry.)

The reason there are no physical trials and tests is that there are some, and they use those in diagnosis. The medical doctor asks the patients questions, too, so there is much subjective data to go on by in physical medicine, too.

Mental illness is hard to define or discover. There are no moving parts that we can observe. With the right instrumentation we can see blood converge in spots in the brain of both normal and mentally ill people where we think there is an activity. That's about all. There is not such thing as graphic and visual as setting a broken bone or taking out someone's heart and putting in a new one. The psychiatrist cannot see the results, only judge it from the reaction, from the change in behaviour of the patient. But that's not a reason to dismiss the profession as "unscientific". Statistical methods and addition of practitioners to the common pool of knowledge are tools that other sciences use and so does psychiatry. What makes psychiatry a science is that it can be proven wrong. Its methodology is a combination of method of elimination and keen observation. I don't think science is anything more than that.

So why is psychiatry a science? Because it observes and reports. All science, technology, and medicine started out as trial-and-error endeavours. Psychiatry just hasn't been refined to better usefulness, because the trial-and-error treatments started very recently, compared to medicine and sciences.

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My own view:

The debate stopped, at least I don't hear any of it, whether schizophrenia is one disease or many. I hear from my mentally ill friends that they take antipsychotic meds, for psychosis, for obsessive-compulsive disorder, for borderline personality disorder, for chronic anxiety. That pretty well covers all major trends in mental diseases. Now I and my friends have added selective seratonin reuptake inhibitors, too. (SSRIs.) This is what alost every person with mentall ilness takes.

So I conclude that:
1. It is possible that psychiatry has properly separated diseases, but it has stumbled upon a drug combination that alleviates all suffering, and perhaps in the future they'll develop or discover drugs that are more psychiatric disease specific. Or else,
2. There are no different psychiatric diseases, they all are hugely different manifestation of the same disease, that's why the same drug combination seems to help all. Or else,
3. The issue is more complicated than this, and that is why there has been found no medicative cure for any mental disease.

First of all, yes mental illness is considered a medical condition. And yes, they can refuse treatment. The only time treatment can be forced upon an individual is if they are claiming harm to themselves or others. This is generally in situations where they have been admitted to a psych hospital stay due to determination of incapacity.

Secondly, I don't know what your background is, but I have worked in mental health and have seen it in the lives of friends and family members. Granted now all mental illness listed in the dsm is severe mental illness. And most of the diagn is dsm are rare case. Some of the most common general mental illness are depression, bi-polar, anxiety and SZ (Schizophrenia). Granted some mental illness can be treated with non-medication, daily life adjustments.

When you stated that one out of (whatever it was), the bulk of those individuals were probably diagnosed with depression. Now this may only occur once in their life, possibly due to something situational. However, with treatment (therapy and possibly medication) that individual may never experience it again. But has a higher likelihood of getting it again versus someone who has never had it.

However, research has determined that depression and bi-polar are linked to measureable changes in brain chemistry.

There is nothing wrong with getting treatment for mental illness.

To address ECT, this is no longer deemed an appropriate treatment for most mental illnesses. However, we have came a long way from 'frying' people's brains. ECT is now used, like mentioned, after all other treatment have failed and with individuals with severe depression. Those individuals with severe depression are usually suicide all the time and attempt suicide multiple times in the course of years. Now ECT involves implanting an electrode on the brain, to stimulate a particular area which is known to reduce their symptoms.

Yes, mental illness is real! Yes, a combination of therapy and medication is usually the best course of treatment. Yes, individual with mental illness do have patient rights!

And no.. they refuse phonecalls to noone.. anywhere.


Sounds like someone was baker acted, and they didnt like it.


People get the help they need from caring professionals.


I cant count the amount of people I have been a support system, and advocate for people who have called me from mental facilities.


AND for the criminally insane.

I think the major manufacturers of ECT equipment (Google “Electroconvulsive therapy equipment” – there are two on the first page alone) would disagree with you. That is, assuming the machines they are currently selling are actually being used for what they were designed for – which I think is a pretty safe assumption.

I don’t want people to fear the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries. I would much prefer they become incensed enough to want to do something about the abuses and propaganda.

Ok, so they are lacking in "proper behavior”. I have no disagreement with that. In the words of Jeffrey A. Schaler, Ph.D (psychologist and professor in the Department of Justice, Law and Society at American University’s School of Public Affairs in Washington, D.C) “Mental disorder is something you do. Medical illness is something you have”.

What I object to is the propagation of the lie that there is some objective proof of chemical imbalances causign mental disorders. It is, purely and simply, a myth.

From dictionary.com:
myth – 5. an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution

That just about says it all.

So according to this thread, everything thats wrong in my head is a myth. All those times I tried to kill myself were myths.

I'm calling this B.S.

I've saw a person with schizophrenia scream because they saw their intestines coming out of their body. I've seen a 70-year-old man flying through the room with his arms out, thinking that they were an airplane. I've seen people that were bi-polar. I've seen depressed people come out of shock treatment. I've seen addict/alcoholics with dual diagnosis. I've seen more but I don't want to type pages about it.

What do you think is the reason that they are like that?

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/electroconvulsive-therapy/MY00129

I see about a dozen people who are jumping on SkyHook without taking the time to understand what he may really be saying.

People can do just about anything they want electively.. this is a freak thing, and also is used mainly for testing.

Why dont you call around, and see how many facilities actually use this.

People can at will choose weather or not they want to continue a certain treatment on a outpatient basis. Yes, I guess I have to see your brain too to know its there right?

People have choices in deciding for the most part their treatment.. the reason they dont have choices is when they are a danger to themselves and others, and I believe it should be that way.

I DO believe we could use more advances in the psychiatric field.. but we have excellent ways to get help, and tools, and were pretty good at this point.

Wow, Earthy, that's great that you speak to the community about it.

Sorry but that is simply not factual. I have talked to at least two people who have been refused the right to phonecalls from mental institutions.

The one person I know of who was Baker Acted, didn't appear to me like she liked it. So yeah, I'd say that's true.

Look, I have no beef with people being helped by caring professionals. My own mother was helped by one and I am thankful for it.

My beef is with the lies, propaganda and abuses of both the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries.

Stating that there is objective evidence to support the claim that any mental disorder is caused by a chemical imbalance, is simply a lie. Even the Director of Research for the American Psychiatric Association admits that.

I dont know if mental illness is real or not, but I know that Draconians are real!!!

Thanks.. I just know it was a long road in understanding, and coming to terms with this.. fear, and how society would view this stifled me, and even my family treated me like a disease.. I have come to embrace it, and reach out.

People need the ability to be themselves in this world, without feeling like crap about it.. and when we go uneducated, we dont get the help we need when we need it.