2:15pm June 1, 2014

FWIW (because of an ask I just got)

I can’t stand Thomas Szasz. I can’t stand R. D. Laing. I can’t stand Peter Breggin.

I think they are professionals who have tried to hijack a movement of former mental patients, by becoming “dissident psychiatrists” who then go on to control their patients just as badly as anyone else in the psychiatric institutions of the time period they came from. Meanwhile now large parts of that movement come from the philosophy of those psychiatrists, rather than coming from the direct experience of former mental patients who are trying to find workable alternatives to a system they see as broken.

Judi Chamberlin, in “On Our Own”, does an amazing job at describing how fucked up this is.

So just because I’m critical of psychiatry sometimes, don’t ever assume I like them. Holy crap, they are awful, and they’ve done far more harm than good. They’re basically psychoanalysts who think that if everything went back to the days before psychiatric medication then everything would be wonderful. And coincidentally, they would be the ones in control again.

Also just because I’m critical of psychiatry doesn’t mean i blame anyone who uses psychiatry to any degree at all. I don’t mind that people go on meds, I don’t mind that people see shrinks, I don’t mind that people go into mental institutions when they feel like they have to. As long as people really want to do these things, or as long as they are doing the best they can in a broken system, or whatever, as long as they’re not being forced, I’m not going to complain. Because we all have to survive.

I myself have done all of those things at different times. I’m on meds for anxiety right now even though I don’t see a shrink. Without them, any time I go into the (physical) hospital I would have nonstop anxiety attacks starting usually the second day I am there. With them, I’m fine. I see no problem with that. I don’t currently have a shrink, but I did have a shrink until he retired, the same one who diagnosed me with autism as a kid. He mostly handled paperwork and stuff for me. And I did voluntarily go into a psych ward once as an adult, although I now consider that to have been a mistake given what happened (versus what I was told would happen). I also used to go to kind of a psychiatric clubhouse thing, like a patient-run place that really was a lot too much like an institution, but theoretically was a place for adult mental patients to hang out and there was peer-run group therapy there and stuff. I eventually had to leave because it didn’t feel safe, but I did try it for awhile. And by didn’t feel safe, it became clear that some people saw me as low-functioning and potentially dangerous because I showed my emotions on my body instead of calmly discussing them in the abstract.

Anyway – critical of psychiatry, for me, doesn’t mean agreeing with everyone else who is critical of psychiatry, and also doesn’t mean critical of people who use psychiatry as it is now.