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Old 10-31-2014, 05:15 PM
 
Location: New York NY
5,508 posts, read 8,703,776 times
Reputation: 12668

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Pookie Jenkins View Post
The paperwork isn't trouble since they're getting paid for it. It's pretty easy to get locked up where I'm from, because medicaid dollars are plentiful. I also live in a low-income "minority" neighborhood which is blatantly targeted with unsolicited "treatment" programs designed by elitist/racist bureaucrats.
Most of the people in the hospital weren't even symptomatic, some were there for detox and got pulled into the psych ward to keep the money flowing.

I'll eventually sue the diagnosing psychiatrist and hopefully get my records sealed after presenting my case.
Interesting, in that in most poor minority neighborhoods the overwhelming problem is the LACK of mental health services. Most often the solution isn't medication and treatment, but the legal system and jail. If you haven't had to endure the latter and only have to deal with the former consider yourself very, very fortunate.
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Old 11-01-2014, 11:17 AM
 
283 posts, read 520,114 times
Reputation: 293
"I don't really have the time right now to address this suspiciously troll like post point by point but I will say that watching somebody you love suffer from acute anxiety and agoraphobia to the point of almost becoming a shut-in is enough to convince me that mental illness is a legitimate cause for distress in many people."

I'm not arguing peoples psychological/behavioral issues aren't real. I'm arguing that such issues by themselves don't prove anyone has a brain disease that can be accurately "diagnosed" by a psychiatrist who simply looks at the patient and declares they have XYZ disorder.

It's simple. Behaviors and psychological issues =/= brain disease. Behaviors and psychological issues = behaviors and psychological issues.

I myself suffered from extreme anxiety, panic attacks and obsessive compulsions as a teenager, but guess what? I don't anymore because I simply decided to take control over my own life and mind when I became an adult, and my symptoms have gradually dissipated to almost nothing today at age 29. That's part of why I'm confident that I don't have some incurable and unrelenting disorder called "schizophrenia." It's a fake label based on the judgement of a miseducated quack. Nothing more.

"Posts like yours only serve to muddy the waters and reinforce the belief that you can yell or shake the depression out of someone......which of course is pure ignorance."

On the contrary, the ignorance is all yours. As I explained in the OP, the evidence, World Health Organization epidemiologic studies, has proven that even "schizophrenic" patients are capable of full recovery with little or no drugs or psychiatric bureaucracy. See:

Recovering from Schizophrenia Without Medication | Mad in America
http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/55.pdf
Recovery from psychotic illness: a 15- and 25-year international follow-up study
Evidence That People Recover from Schizophrenia - NEC
Do all schizophrenia patients need antipsychotic treatment continuo... - PubMed - NCBI
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Old 11-01-2014, 11:22 AM
 
283 posts, read 520,114 times
Reputation: 293
"Cooking is unscientific too. Does that make cuisines unreal? Should we stop labelling dishes and call them by their complete recipes? I agree with some things you say about medicine and politics but not wanting to label things is just doing away with language. Some kind of misguided political correctness."

That analogy is laughable. The problem with the labels is that they're treated like literal, bona fide diseases when they aren't. No oncologist can 'diagnose' a patient with cancer by simply looking at them in the doctor's office.

What part of this don't you people get? The whole diagnostic process in psychiatry is fraud. It's that simple.
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Old 11-01-2014, 11:33 AM
 
283 posts, read 520,114 times
Reputation: 293
Quote:
Originally Posted by citylove101 View Post
Interesting, in that in most poor minority neighborhoods the overwhelming problem is the LACK of mental health services. Most often the solution isn't medication and treatment, but the legal system and jail. If you haven't had to endure the latter and only have to deal with the former consider yourself very, very fortunate.
NY would be the exception then. This is pretty much a progressive nanny state that is hellbent on promoting "mental health" about as much as CPR (google "Chirlane McCray World Mental Health day").

I did a stint in a local jail as a youngster and I've been in a psych ward. The latter was far worse because I was locked up arbitrarily without a formal charge, had no access to a lawyer for over a week (as opposed to 24 hours in central booking), and was humiliated in court where the doctors did everything they could to make me look like a deranged animal needing to be tranquilized, despite the fact that I spent days in the hospital before the hearing where I behaved perfectly fine. Obviously they had no evidence of the "diagnosis" which is how I got out, yet because the judge was on the hospitals side I still came close to being forcibly drugged based off nothing but the word of a quack.

Psych wards are worse because the people in them have diminished rights, even compared to the murderers and rapists in jail.
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Old 11-01-2014, 11:50 AM
 
Location: Southern MN
11,928 posts, read 8,254,040 times
Reputation: 44398
Most people who practice medicine recognize that the use of diagnoses has it's problematic side. But the way the system is currently set up, in order to receive assistance from an insurance provider, a patient must have a diagnosis. And that diagnosis will determine the type and degree of assistance that patient is entitled to.

Diagnoses can and do change so it may help not to think of one's self as the sum total of your diagnosis. Or that people think ill of you because of it.

Rather think of it as a sort of short hand for medical staff who will be working with you. Rather than inform everyone of all the behaviors, statements and observances that have been made which indicate you may be in difficulty or a danger to self or others there is a label that serves as a handy-dandy catch-all for those things.

Good mental health staff are constantly monitoring to determine if that's an accurate appellation for your current level of wellness.

OP, if you are saying that your situation appears arbitrary, fraudulent and a violation of your dignity and rights, I would think most people would think and feel the same. Comparing the way you have been treated to how patients were treated at the turn of the last century is small comfort. Let's hope progress continues to be made.
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Old 11-01-2014, 11:52 AM
 
283 posts, read 520,114 times
Reputation: 293
Quote:
Originally Posted by nightbird47 View Post
My nephew is schiphrentic. I remember when he came to the house with his mom and would have conversations with a chair. He'd go out at night and wander so I'd lock the door, but he could still open them. One night he did spend half the night wandering outside.

He's been on a variety of drugs, and self medicated, but got picked up on a possession charge. The cops transfered him to mental health and for the first time he was diagnosed. Yes, it took time to find what worked, and he'll never seem 'normal', but he has a life now.

Yes, mental disorders are a physical disease centered in the brain. The reason we don't have a magic pill is we still don't know how much of the processes in the brain work, and it leads to trying things until one works.

But I'm bipoar 2. I figured it out in high school. Our psych book had a whole chapter on manic depression and I read it twice since it described me. And mom. I never said anything. Who wants a label stamped on your forehead? I had my own ways of coping until major stress came and they failed. I don't react right to any medication since I metabolize them wrong, so the pills didn't work. Removing myself from the stress and using my own methods and working with the regular if mild mood swings works fine. But I accept that I have a condition which makes me different. But I am not 'sick'. Just as we cope with unexpected limitations in life, I manage.

Not everyone can do what I do. And don't put me in some huge stressful place because I need a back up pill to pull me out. My nephew need meds. But there is nothing different in the brain not being quite right and the other organs we accept as sometimes needing a fix.

Maybe the label is wrong. Maybe it shouldn't be called mental illness, but brain illness, or brain disfunction. That is what it is.

There are those who are effected in a behavioral way, from things which happen in life, but these are reflected in the way the brain ceases to act as it is is supposed to.
All I can say is that this response is an example of the ignorance psychiatrists and drug companies have effectively fooled the public with. None of you people who've responded to this post have addressed a single point I made in the OP. You simply replied with "yes, mental illnesses are real" with no rhyme or reason whatsoever.

Well, PROVE IT!

And using the same scientific standards as doctors in every other medical specialty, not anecdotes about errant/undesirable behaviors.

Better yet, why don't one of you just answer these two simple questions:

1. Why are there no objective tests used to validate the presence of mental disorders? Why does the doctor simply look at the patient and declare that they have an illness instead of proving it the way oncologists prove people have cancer or cardiologists prove people have heart disease?

2. What's the different between 'mental disorders' and brain diseases?
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Old 11-01-2014, 11:58 AM
 
283 posts, read 520,114 times
Reputation: 293
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lodestar View Post
Most people who practice medicine recognize that the use of diagnoses has it's problematic side. But the way the system is currently set up, in order to receive assistance from an insurance provider, a patient must have a diagnosis. And that diagnosis will determine the type and degree of assistance that patient is entitled to.

Diagnoses can and do change so it may help not to think of one's self as the sum total of your diagnosis. Or that people think ill of you because of it.

Rather think of it as a sort of short hand for medical staff who will be working with you. Rather than inform everyone of all the behaviors, statements and observances that have been made which indicate you may be in difficulty or a danger to self or others there is a label that serves as a handy-dandy catch-all for those things.

Good mental health staff are constantly monitoring to determine if that's an accurate appellation for your current level of wellness.

OP, if you are saying that your situation appears arbitrary, fraudulent and a violation of your dignity and rights, I would think most people would think and feel the same. Comparing the way you have been treated to how patients were treated at the turn of the last century is small comfort. Let's hope progress continues to be made.
'Problematic side' seems like a soft way of saying it's illegitimate.

People *are* pretty much thought to think of themselves as the sum total of their dx, though. That's the problem. Even many of the people on this board have developed an identity around their "diagnosis."

Yes, I've seen documentaries with archival footage of 19th & early 20th century asylum patients. I'm definitely grateful I wasn't alive 100 years ago.
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Old 11-01-2014, 12:20 PM
 
2,776 posts, read 3,957,719 times
Reputation: 3049
The real issue is the push to move mental illness diagnosis into the realm of pure or physical science. The minute workings of the brain and its relationship to our thoughts are mostly unknown so that push doesn't work out very well no matter how many words are used in the DSM manuals. We honestly don't know why people do or think a lot of what they do and think. It's like we are computers performing functions (both mental and physical) but we cannot read the code which makes it all operate. Occasionally decent correlations are drawn and we know that certain chemicals set off chain reactions in the brain which broadly induce particular results, but that's pretty much it. I would argue that Psychiatry as the public is exposed to today is mostly thus in its infancy. Right now the stage it is in is more of a pill-pushing/chemical trial and error process which only works a small percentage of the time (and for nearly all of that permanent prescriptions are necessary).

We all know mental illness exists; I've seen it first hand in a former partner, the real issue with mental illness is this... being around someone with it sucks as it tends to affect/touch the lives of everyone who comes into contact with them in a negative way. I am optimistic in that I believe someday psychiatrists and neuroscientists alike will figure out our mental code and will know why some people behave in certain negative/dysfunctional ways. Humans are problem solvers by nature, and I can see this happening in my lifetime as so much has already been discovered/figured out already.
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Old 11-01-2014, 01:17 PM
 
Location: So Ca
26,603 posts, read 26,506,457 times
Reputation: 24551
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pookie Jenkins View Post
You're quoting for profit companies?
Mad In America Online Store | Mad In America

And your other links have on-line stores: http://www.power2u.org/mm5/merchant.mvc?
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Old 11-01-2014, 01:27 PM
 
1,168 posts, read 1,239,730 times
Reputation: 912
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pookie Jenkins View Post
On the contrary, the ignorance is all yours. As I explained in the OP, the evidence, World Health Organization epidemiologic studies, has proven that even "schizophrenic" patients are capable of full recovery with little or no drugs or psychiatric bureaucracy. See:

Recovering from Schizophrenia Without Medication | Mad in America
http://www.who.int/mental_health/media/en/55.pdf
Recovery from psychotic illness: a 15- and 25-year international follow-up study
Evidence That People Recover from Schizophrenia - NEC
Do all schizophrenia patients need antipsychotic treatment continuo... - PubMed - NCBI
How can they recover from something thing doesn't exist?
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