Anyone here, at least partly, because of mental health treatment rather than in spite of?

[LaVieEnRose]

Just curious. Don't feel like elaborating now.

 

[CandyCane]

Definitely. I was neurologically disabled by psychiatry. They're a bunch of quacks pretending to be doctors. And getting away with it.

 

[Darkover]

i would bed bound without antipsychotics due to a brain injury and not mental illness lucky for me the antipsychotics work otherwise i would be a world of pain

 

[MideonNViscera]

A little. I did have a pretty traumatic experience with them that haunts me somewhat, but I don't consider it very high on my list of problems.

 

[sadlilanteater]

I had to see a psychiatrist since I was 10, a lovely man but I don't think the knowledge of mental health was where it is today for him to help me, so ineffective drugs lead to a worse situation where I'm too far gone at this point. But I hold nothing against the treatment I got, they just didn't understand what they were dealing with.

 

[iwanttodiee]

Kinda, I wasn't thattttt suicidal (only thoughts) but then prozac/flouxetine came and I'm the suicidal mess that I am now. I stopped taking it for others reasons and it was too late, nothing happened.

 

[LastFlowers]

It most definitely made my situation a hundred times worse, the system and the "treatments" wasted SO many years of my life and (ironically) chipped away at my sanity, did some major mental, emotional and some physical damage, and left me with even more fear and shame for speaking out on the real reasons that I suffer or what I plan to do about that suffering.

Also it further enabled abuse and harmful dismissive rhetoric by the people around me, they are now stuck in the mindset of the mental health system and the DSM labels (people need to understand just how arbitrary and unscientific/non-objective these labels and groupings of observable behaviors are)..doesn't matter how much evidence there is to the contrary of the beliefs they have come to settle in, they won't budge because the narrative suits them and their lack of remorse or guilt.
My case isn't even an anomaly where all of this is concerned.

Definitely. I was neurologically disabled by psychiatry. They're a bunch of quacks pretending to be doctors. And getting away with it.

They even appropriate proper medical terminology from other fields, in order to be taken more seriously.

Now they have more authority and power than your typical physician. And the general public supports and participates in it.
Insanity.

A little. I did have a pretty traumatic experience with them that haunts me somewhat, but I don't consider it very high on my list of problems.

Yea. My time there was not and is not the main source of my reasons to die, but jesus was the whole deal an absolutely traumatizing time suck that made sure I had no access to any other legitimate avenues to help myself..and the pulled strings still linger on my being.

I also had some close calls where they could have very well permanently and massively incapacitated my brain's integrity, which I did not need screwed with, on top of my body and my other detriments/distress.

 

[Rainy_days]

Yeah medication completely destroyed my self identity, memories, personality. It's been years since I stopped them but unfortunately a lot of the effects have been permanent. My life is basically split into before and after, where the after means feeling like an alien living inside the husk of a former human. My only cope is to try not to think about it.

 

[GlassAlwaysEmpty]

Going on antidepressants 12 years ago was one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

When I was first offered antidepressants I was excited, I thought this was ticket to being happy again. 12 years later, dozens of different medications later and none of them has ever really helped.

Long term use of antidepressants has consequences. They include:
Feeling emotionally numb
Not feeling like themselves
Reduced positive feelings
Feeling as if they're addicted
Caring less about other people
Feeling suicidal

I have all those. Good chance I would have those even if I had never taken antidepressants, but taking them has certainly not helped.

 

[randy]

indirectly. antidepressants made me lethargic, and I essentially wasted my life being horizontal on the couch

 

[CandyCane]

Now they have more authority and power than your typical physician. And the general public supports and participates in it.

Yeah they're like pseudodoctor cops. When the chemical imbalance being total manufactured BS hit the public last year, that should have been it for psychiatry, but people so desperately want to believe.

 

[LastFlowers]

Yeah they're like pseudodoctor cops. When the chemical imbalance being total manufactured BS hit the public last year, that should have been it for psychiatry, but people so desperately want to believe.

Yup, that's a great term for them.
I didn't even realize it came into the public eye in any new way that such shit was bunk, but maybe I'm just too out of touch, I still see a ton of people (including "professionals") spewing that theory as irrefutable fact.
(Nobody does their research and when you beg them to or even do the work for them, they turn away. Willful ignorance.)
Only "chemical imbalance" I ever had was from the chemicals in the medications.
I'm just somewhat relieved that I was never so completely under their influence that I allowed anything worse to happen..

Despite all my other miserable woes and detriments taking up the space in both the present and past, I still remember the gut wrenching terror when they took me into a room and laid it out on the table that they planned to perform ECT on me, of which I immediately refused (even at that point, I had already witnessed the effects in other patients and I also knew they were doing it because they didn't appreciate the pushback I gave the staff and my overall inquiring nature) and to which they threatened that they didn't need my permission if they were so inclined to get a court order.
(The director of ECT got a cut per "bed".)
Thank fuck that never ended up happening, I have since come to know of much worse consequences from that "treatment" and how they claim it "works" (or fails to..the negative side effects are basically considered the success).
I also found other victims trying to publicize their experience…one of them in particular was very adamant and trying to advocate against what happened to them the best they could after the fact..turns out this person had it performed at the exact same location that I had my close call.
Couldn't believe it.
I wasn't even searching under that specificity.
I may not have dodged any other bullets in my life, but at least I dodged that one.
I had already lacked and lost control of my physical body, I was not going to let them permanently damage my brain.
Submission is their goal.

 

[CandyCane]

Yup, that's a great term for them.
I didn't even realize it came into the public eye in any new way that such shit was bunk, but maybe I'm just too out of touch, I still see a ton of people (including "professionals") spewing that theory as irrefutable fact.
(Nobody does their research and when you beg them to or even do the work for them, they turn away. Willful ignorance.)
Only "chemical imbalance" I ever had was from the chemicals in the medications.
I'm just somewhat relieved that I was never so completely under their influence that I allowed anything worse to happen..

Despite all my other miserable woes and detriments taking up the space in both the present and past, I still remember the gut wrenching terror when they took me into a room and laid it out on the table that they planned to perform ECT on me, of which I immediately refused (even at that point, I had already witnessed the effects in other patients and I also knew they were doing it because they didn't appreciate the pushback I gave the staff and my overall inquiring nature) and to which they threatened that they didn't need my permission if they were so inclined to get a court order.
(The director of ECT got a cut per "bed".)
Thank fuck that never ended up happening, I have since come to know of much worse consequences from that "treatment" and how they claim it "works" (or fails to..the negative side effects are basically considered the success).
I also found other victims trying to publicize their experience…one of them in particular was very adamant and trying to advocate against what happened to them the best they could after the fact..turns out this person had it performed at the exact same location that I had my close call.
Couldn't believe it.
I wasn't even searching under that specificity.
I may not have dodged any other bullets in my life, but at least I dodged that one.
I had already lacked and lost control of my physical body, I was not going to let them permanently damage my brain.
Submission is their goal.

They are so scary. I've learned a bit about ECT. I can't believe that it is legal. I'm glad you skipped at least that method of torture. I wish people cared about psychiatric survivors, but they don't. It's too easy for psychiatry to write all complaints off as "crazy" or "a symptom of their mental illness" and discard it, no matter how rational the person sounds. It's wild to me how many campaigns encourage people to identify with mental illness and utilize psychiatric services. And convincing people it's for the user's benefit, not the prescriber's. Especially knowing how little science there is, how terrible the outcomes are and how poorly people are treated once they enter mental health services. Some people are happy with it, but most aren't.

Also, yes, chemical imbalance was exposed last year: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
The study received a lot of media coverage.

 

[wait.what]

people need to understand just how arbitrary and unscientific/non-objective these labels and groupings of observable behaviors are

True … the nonsense that is the "personality disorders" is particularly embarrassing. Inter-rater reliability is horrible. There's a pretty well-known study where the exact same patient profiles got labeled with antisocial personality disorder if a male name was attached, and histrionic personality disorder if it was a female name. Imagine an actual medical doctor handing out Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnoses to all the boys, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma to the girls. It's so stupid it beggars belief, and yet here we are.

That reminds me that I recently got my all-time favorite mental health diagnosis: "personality disorder not otherwise specified." I'm pretty sure this means the doctor thinks I'm an asshole. As Holly Hunter's character says in "The Piano:" "It suits."

Yeah they're like pseudodoctor cops. When the chemical imbalance being total manufactured BS hit the public last year, that should have been it for psychiatry, but people so desperately want to believe.

I like the "pseudodoctor cops" label. I hadn't realized that the "chemical imbalance" myth had publicly imploded…I try to stay away from the news and social media, which are both largely useless and increasingly difficult to tell apart.

I was actually sold that exact "chemical imbalance" line as an 18 y.o. back in the early '90's. I've been on psyche meds pretty much continuously ever since. With each passing decade my symptoms get worse. The docs add a few pills here, subtract a few there, but I ain't recovered that fabled "chemical balance" yet. (In truth there was never much to recover. I started deteriorating emotionally about the time I started school.)

 

[CandyCane]

True … the nonsense that is the "personality disorders" is particularly embarrassing. Inter-rater reliability is horrible. There's a pretty well-known study where the exact same patient profiles got labeled with antisocial personality disorder if a male name was attached, and histrionic personality disorder if it was a female name. Imagine an actual medical doctor handing out Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnoses to all the boys, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma to the girls. It's so stupid it beggars belief, and yet here we are.

That reminds me that I recently got my all-time favorite mental health diagnosis: "personality disorder not otherwise specified." I'm pretty sure this means the doctor thinks I'm an asshole. As Holly Hunter's character says in "The Piano:" "It suits."

I like the "pseudodoctor cops" label. I hadn't realized that the "chemical imbalance" myth had publicly imploded…I try to stay away from the news and social media, which are both largely useless and increasingly difficult to tell apart.

I was actually sold that exact "chemical imbalance" line as an 18 y.o. back in the early '90's. I've been on psyche meds pretty much continuously ever since. With each passing decade my symptoms get worse. The docs add a few pills here, subtract a few there, but I ain't recovered that fabled "chemical balance" yet. (In truth there was never much to recover. I started deteriorating emotionally about the time I started school.)

IMHO "personality disorders" are early complex trauma. Mental health is like "they're untreatable" while sitting around drooling, not even understanding what it is they're calling untreatable. It's not a coincidence that schema therapy aka reparenting, has such a high success rate with "personality disorders" compared to other treatments. But, while it works well for some, it's time consuming, labor intensive, can't be scaled, requires therapy for years. It seems most mental health workers want to do the least amount of things possible for the most amount of money. I wish mental health workers had to study and publish statistics about their own patient outcomes. It would save us all a lot of time.

The chemical imbalance is still out there because what else would they say, but it's also got exposed pretty heavily for a few weeks last summer.

So you've been dealing with this for awhile. I'm off everything now. But my CNS was never really the same after exposure. I'm not depressed though, just anxious and suicidal.

 

[western_heart]

hard to tell, but psychiatric drugs have been a destabilizing force in my life- have resulted in me failing classes, bought a new car once. antidepressants induce hypomania in me

If I'd been to the right kind of therapy a decade earlier, instead of being prescribed so many medications, I might have been diagnosed properly and learned to cope before I fucked my life up so much in my 20s. If I'd received bad therapy, I could be worse off or dead already.

 

[LastFlowers]

True … the nonsense that is the "personality disorders" is particularly embarrassing. Inter-rater reliability is horrible. There's a pretty well-known study where the exact same patient profiles got labeled with antisocial personality disorder if a male name was attached, and histrionic personality disorder if it was a female name. Imagine an actual medical doctor handing out Hodgkin's lymphoma diagnoses to all the boys, and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma to the girls. It's so stupid it beggars belief, and yet here we are.

That reminds me that I recently got my all-time favorite mental health diagnosis: "personality disorder not otherwise specified." I'm pretty sure this means the doctor thinks I'm an asshole. As Holly Hunter's character says in "The Piano:" "It suits."

I like the "pseudodoctor cops" label. I hadn't realized that the "chemical imbalance" myth had publicly imploded…I try to stay away from the news and social media, which are both largely useless and increasingly difficult to tell apart.

I was actually sold that exact "chemical imbalance" line as an 18 y.o. back in the early '90's. I've been on psyche meds pretty much continuously ever since. With each passing decade my symptoms get worse. The docs add a few pills here, subtract a few there, but I ain't recovered that fabled "chemical balance" yet. (In truth there was never much to recover. I started deteriorating emotionally about the time I started school.)

Great points. I think I've read about that study, along with other origins of Psychiatry and how biased research disallows any falsifiability.
Even for the Psychology aspect that may have less to do with prescribing medication, a lot of these people in the field just really wanted to make a name for themselves by "discovering" a 'mental illness'.
People should be falling over backwards at the disparity between that and the usual avenues of typical findings in common medicine, etc.

"Personality disorder not otherwise specified"
This causes me to recall another laughable tactic of theirs..I believe there is also one or more mental illness labels for those who are critical of their diagnosis..or psychiatry at large.
As I've said before, they really covered all their bases lol.
You quite frankly cannot do or say anything that won't be "proof" of a supposed inherent illness.
They fail to take circumstance into account, which may or may not be permanent and is the core cause for a lot of peoples' mental distress, suffering and behaviors they adopted to cope.
The "trendiness" of labels on social media (or IRL) by a certain crowd does not help things.
They will rip your eyes out before they let you put into question what they have come to make their entire personality, community and way of being.
Even as someone like yourself, who stays off most social media and away from the news outlets..I still get wind of this shit, it finds its way around.

Ironically a lot of people start to display behaviors and progressively/positively fit the criteria of their diagnoses after they receive them.
It practically becomes a life guide, an identity that simply must be upheld at all costs.
Some people have even begun to visit therapists and similar in hopes they too, will receive the almighty crown of a mental illness label. That's the real sickness if you ask me!
These labels and the propagation of them are harmful to most everyone except the worried well.
They might feel like the answer in the moment..but wait and see how the consequences arise with time, if not immediately.

Also idk if anyone has ever heard of these acronyms:

YAVIS (Young, attractive, verbal, intelligent, successful)
vs
HOUND (Homely, old, unsuccessful, non-verbal, dumb)

Apparently the former is utilized as a quick way to describe the types of patients preferred by mental health care 'professionals', while the latter is the opposite.
Hmm..no kidding, I wonder why.
Makes their "job" a hell of a lot easier, or in some cases, a mere formality or self-serving exercise.

They are so scary. I've learned a bit about ECT. I can't believe that it is legal. I'm glad you skipped at least that method of torture. I wish people cared about psychiatric survivors, but they don't. It's too easy for psychiatry to write all complaints off as "crazy" or "a symptom of their mental illness" and discard it, no matter how rational the person sounds. It's wild to me how many campaigns encourage people to identify with mental illness and utilize psychiatric services. And convincing people it's for the user's benefit, not the prescriber's. Especially knowing how little science there is, how terrible the outcomes are and how poorly people are treated once they enter mental health services. Some people are happy with it, but most aren't.

Also, yes, chemical imbalance was exposed last year: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41380-022-01661-0
The study received a lot of media coverage.

Thank you.
And yea..I can't believe it either, I was going to refer to ECT as the "modern day lobotomy" as I have done so previously but I don't want to undermine the severity of consequences for those who were surgically lobotomized.
Still, it's bad.

Exactly right about the campaigns, encouragement and how easy it is to write survivors/victims off, as echoed in my other response.
They actually drive sane people insane and fulfill their own prophecies at the expense of another person's dignity, reputation, and life.

I appreciate the link! I will have a look.

 

[wait.what]

It's not a coincidence that schema therapy aka reparenting, has such a high success rate with "personality disorders" compared to other treatments.

I'll have to look more into that. At the very least, little could be less useful than what I've been doing.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Yup, that's a great term for them.
I didn't even realize it came into the public eye in any new way that such shit was bunk, but maybe I'm just too out of touch, I still see a ton of people (including "professionals") spewing that theory as irrefutable fact.
(Nobody does their research and when you beg them to or even do the work for them, they turn away. Willful ignorance.)
Only "chemical imbalance" I ever had was from the chemicals in the medications.
I'm just somewhat relieved that I was never so completely under their influence that I allowed anything worse to happen..

Despite all my other miserable woes and detriments taking up the space in both the present and past, I still remember the gut wrenching terror when they took me into a room and laid it out on the table that they planned to perform ECT on me, of which I immediately refused (even at that point, I had already witnessed the effects in other patients and I also knew they were doing it because they didn't appreciate the pushback I gave the staff and my overall inquiring nature) and to which they threatened that they didn't need my permission if they were so inclined to get a court order.
(The director of ECT got a cut per "bed".)
Thank fuck that never ended up happening, I have since come to know of much worse consequences from that "treatment" and how they claim it "works" (or fails to..the negative side effects are basically considered the success).
I also found other victims trying to publicize their experience…one of them in particular was very adamant and trying to advocate against what happened to them the best they could after the fact..turns out this person had it performed at the exact same location that I had my close call.
Couldn't believe it.
I wasn't even searching under that specificity.
I may not have dodged any other bullets in my life, but at least I dodged that one.
I had already lacked and lost control of my physical body, I was not going to let them permanently damage my brain.
Submission is their goal.

Hospitals couldn't care less about if their patients CTB or not. Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of my stay and I'm still hurting over it.

 

[punkarmadillo]

Not the medication side of treatment but the psychological damage they have caused has made me determined that I will never fail when I attempt to CTB as I will never be an inpatient again and other treatments are useless also. They did more harm than the reason that led to me ending in there in the first place.

 

[weightedrocks]

I go to a therapist pretty regularly, she tries her best but overall nothing has really improved since I've started going. She tells me I'm going through the worst time in my life and she's probably right. I don't know though, depression is all I've known for most of my life and I don't know what life would even be like outside of it. I try to take it day to day, thinking too far out just gets too dark.

 

[myownpetvirus]

100 percent my only reason here. Sleeping medications have put me into protracted benzo withdrawal. My life beautiful before benzos

 

[Unending]

I began to feel really upset if I see, smell, hear, or taste anything in real life that reminds me too much of the mental hospital. For example, those little tiny metal toilets and sinks, (I don't know if they're like this everywhere), a freezing building, gross cafeteria food, etc. It definitely isn't the main reason of why I'm here but has contributed to a lot of problems since my last visit. It was not okay at all.

 

[Meatball]

I would say yes to that question, but for sort of a different reason...

My daily suicidal thoughts did begin after some time in therapy, but...
It wasn't because the therapy didn't work.
It was kinda because it DID.
I was able to clearly see the true scale of hell inside of me, and lost most of my hope of ever stopping this agony.
It's as if only trying therapy can show you how ridiculous and futile it is, to attempt to change anything on a real and deep level. I've kinda promised myself that one day I will be free and able to live. And this promise now feels broken. So a part of me doesn't want to exist for even another second.

 

[Whole-Ad]

I spent a year and 7 months sectioned in a psychiatric hospital. I was recently discharged on the 14th December. I thought I had gotten better but now I'm feeling exactly like before I was sectioned. I'm just agitated all the time, don't want to do anything, spend more time in my car than at home, all I can think about is ctb.

I'm on anti depressants: Trazadone, Cariprazine, and vortioxitine. They don't help. Trazadone helps me sleep and without it I don't. But that's the only thing I've noticed. My family love me so much and I know it's going to be hard for them but they need to understand there's nothing else for me now.

I don't want to feel like this anymore I really don't I'm so tired of being like this. I refuse to ever go back to a psychiatric ward so I need to be successful in my next attempt.

 

[theboy]

The pills fry my brain but and the same time, is the better for me