Maybe if the medical industrial complex surrounding mental health wasn’t so profit-hungry and dehumanising, then she might not think that death is an option that she needs to take.
I strongly dislike SCAM stuff, like homeopathy etc. And Scientology (who are anti-psychiatry) is obviously a scam too.
Some people find psychiatric drugs helpful, yes. But I have met psych patients, drugged against their will for months, who were still miserable after months of drugging. I think a psychological approach, such as counselling, is probably better.
I think a lot of psych patients are trying to understand what’s going on in their head. If they can reach this understanding, then they no longer need drugs, with all the negative health effects that the drugs cause (such as movement disorders, restlessness, muscle spasms, weight gain, sexual dysfunction, etc).
I have seen stats about genetic dispositions, yes. Wikipedia says 40% of a person’s risk of having major depression comes from genes.
Still. One thing is that you don’t know what your genes are. Your genes might have less of a risk than you think. But also, maybe an increased risk can be dealt with through lifestyle choices. I’m not saying people shouldn’t take meds if they want to take them, and I think personal choice is extremely important. But the meds do have annoying and somewhat harmful side effects… so I suppose that has to be weighed up in a decision to take the meds or not.
Maybe people with mental difficulties (and I’ve been through this system myself, for a long time) aren’t injured or ill. Instead they had genuine reasons to feel angry or distressed at the time of their “illness”.
Some people call these things [mental illnesses] a chronic illness, but… another way of looking at them is a response to stressful circumstances… if you know the number of stressful life events in someone’s life over the last year, you can predict their risk of depression with great accuracy
If some people want to take these drugs then okay. But the evidence shows real negative effects of these drugs. I support patient choice. If we support the right of people to take these drugs, then we should also support the right of people to find other ways to manage their problems.
Yes this makes sense to me. I definitely think we should look for better ways to deal with mental health problems. And yes you’re probably right that we should have a better standard than simply “you can now slave at a job, therefore you’re healthy”.
I think one good solution for mental health problems (maybe not always, but it can work) is talking to somebody who is willing to listen. This can be hard to find. But there are mental health charities out there who do great work in talking to people who are having problems. There are support phone lines and things like that.
The article was written by a person who says “I have spent several years of my life in various psychiatric institutions”. So it is a person with experience of this system, and what helped them. I don’t see at all how they can be seen as fear mongering. They seem to be giving their honest account of their experiences as a patient in the mental health system.
As for reality and data, there is a lot of reality and data showing that psych drugs are not perfect. There is evidence that antipsychotics cause movement disorders (restlessness, involuntary movements), metabolic effects (changing blood sugar levels), effects on heart function, weight gain, etc. And there is evidence of negative effects from antidepressants too, like sexual dysfunction, and a small increase in the risk of birth defects, just as an example:
I support patient choice. If a person wants to take psych meds, okay. But I think they should be informed by reputable authorities (CDC in the US, national health organisations in other countries, including regulatory bodies of psychiatry) about the positives and negatives of these drugs. That is the only way to make an informed choice.
Ultimately I hope for non-drug approaches to mental issues. Approaches that recognise the real issues in people’s lives that cause them distress, rather than approaches that label the patient as “ill” and dismiss them with a powerful and sometimes unpleasant drug.
Obviously I don’t want to diminish the suffering of Ukraine in any way at all. Ukraine has it much worse in many ways. But there are still people suffering in every country.
Iran probably wants this, because they can say “look, the West cares more about money from shipping, than it does about the lives of human beings in Gaza”.
When you’re talking to an open source dev, just remember that they are literally giving you their time for free, and they are people who don’t like to be treated poorly....
I don’t mean any ill will toward the guy. He’s frustrated and he’s just taking it out in the wrong venue at the wrong people, but that doesn’t mean he’s a bad person.
But he is a bad person. He’s being a fucking idiot and being insulting to the person who made the software for him in the first place.
People like that don’t deserve patience and understanding. Perhaps a good response would be “this software is free for you to use, if you don’t like it then fuck off and make your own”.
Well, I’ve been through the mental health system, and I feel a bit like a pariah, because I disagree with the view of doctors that meds are the best solution to mental health problems. I think non-drug approaches are better. Allowing a person to figure out what has disturbed them in life, and what they need to do to resolve any worries.
If people want to take these drugs then okay, but I also think people should have the right to take other approaches.
Politicians want to improve our worsening mental health with big psychiatric initiatives. The problem with this model, says historian of neuroscience Danielle Carr, is that it ignores the social and structural forces causing widespread mental suffering.
I actually think this is true for everybody diagnosed with a “mental illness”. Society wants to push you to a psychiatrist as an easy fix. But in reality, there are social and emotional pressures that have caused the patient to become distressed. It could be bullying, or financial worries, or the loss of a relative, or other big worries. Psychiatry invents “diagnoses” so that the true social and environmental pressures get swept under the rug. Because they don’t care about you, they just believe that you might turn dangerous (even if you have no history of doing anything wrong), so they’ll drug you to reduce what they think is a risk.
Edit: Thinking about it more, maybe we should get rid of the biopsychosocial model that doctors love to talk about. Just have a psychosocial model instead (getting rid of the bio bit, where they drug the patient). Because nearly all of the time, they never prove any biological fault with the patient’s brain. And yet they’re still happy to drug the patient.
Is Putin in the room with us right now? Don’t worry, he can’t hurt you.
This is completely wrong, because of course Putin absolutely does hurt people. He ordered the invasion of Ukraine and the killing of Ukrainians. His forces deliberately target civilians, or massacre them, like in Bucha. His actions have also killed innocent people from other countries, such as those on board flight MH17, who were killed by a Russian missile. He also orders the murders of people he doesn’t like, such as Alexander Litvinenko and Alexei Navalny (the latter’s murder being unsuccessful, but nevertheless ordered by the Kremlin). And one such assassination attempt, on Sergei Skripal, killed an innocent British woman, Dawn Sturgess. So no, it is clearly untrue to say that Putin can’t hurt someone, unfortunately.
For those who don’t know, he is a twitch streamer/youtuber that talks a lot about mental health, specifically for gamers and people in the internet generation....
I hadn’t heard of him until I recently watched a discussion he did (can also be watched without YouTube’s ads here), with a guy whose work I’ve been looking at. The guy in question is called Dr Mark Horowitz and he’s a training psychiatrist, and I think he passed med school and he did a PhD.
Anyway, a lot of this guy’s work is looking at withdrawal symptoms from antidepressants, and they talk about that. E.g. how withdrawals can be pretty severe for a lot of people, especially people who have been on them for years. Some people can take a year or more to come off antidepressants, slowly reducing the dose over that time.
Yes this community is about therapy, and antidepressants are a tangential topic. But still related to therapy and mental health topics. Perhaps the video I linked to is not of interest to you, fair enough if so. I found it interesting because I have tried different solutions for my own mental health, including counselling, and antidepressants. It’s interesting to find out more about antidepressants and potentially other solutions for mental health problems.
The European Union wants elderly people (70+) to undergo medical tests from now on to prove that they are still capable of driving a car every five years. However, the proposal has been met with a lot of criticism.
I support this. Cognitive function obviously declines as you get older. And elderly people have been lucky enough to live their lives. What if an 80 year old goes out driving, is quite infirm or easily distracted, and kills a 20 year old driver? That 20 year old has the chance to live stolen from them, while the 80 year old already got to live their life.
Dutch woman, 29, granted euthanasia approval on grounds of mental suffering (www.theguardian.com)
"The status quo, preoccupied with biomedical interventions... is no longer defensible" (documents-dds-ny.un.org)
I looked at this blog post and it mentions a UN report which seems to be quite critical of modern psychiatry....
What Helped—and What Didn’t Help—My Recovery (www.madinamerica.com)
I found this article interesting....
The world in 2024 (lemmy.world)
Obviously I don’t want to diminish the suffering of Ukraine in any way at all. Ukraine has it much worse in many ways. But there are still people suffering in every country.
What to do if you live on a farm and you're bored but also awesome. (lemmy.world)
UK-US air strikes launched against Houthis in Yemen (www.bbc.com)
Don't be that guy. (lemmy.world)
When you’re talking to an open source dev, just remember that they are literally giving you their time for free, and they are people who don’t like to be treated poorly....
Have you ever been defamed and misconstrued to the point where you became a pariah?
Psychiatry Won’t Solve Our Mental Health Crisis — Only Politics Can Do That (jacobin.com)
How i feel on Lemmy (programming.dev)
I've been watching a lot of HeathyGamerGG lately. Is he good?
For those who don’t know, he is a twitch streamer/youtuber that talks a lot about mental health, specifically for gamers and people in the internet generation....
EU wants over 70s to prove they can still drive every five years (www.brusselstimes.com)
The European Union wants elderly people (70+) to undergo medical tests from now on to prove that they are still capable of driving a car every five years. However, the proposal has been met with a lot of criticism.
Thoughts on psychiatric medication?
What are your thoughts on psych drugs, such as antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilisers, etc?...