Call Out: PsychOUT: A Conference for Organizing Resistance Against Psychiatry

Good luck G.Pie. Sounds like a lot of work, albeit very very useful. Maybe I can come up with something to submit.

Have a friend who is a videographer on the Island, who goes to Vic lots, and is edgey, however, he is leaving shortly for a couple of months, so I would have to contact him as to his availability

let me know....

Thanks, Sineed!

Sounds like they are emphasizing contributions from amateur dabblers over professionals.

Well good luck G.Pie. I'm fascinated by the amount of labeling that goes on in the mental heath profession. My 16 year old normal teen aged nephew was diagnosed (and I use that term loosely) with "Disruptive Disorder" aka Being a Normal Teenager.

Here is a decent article on labelling and how the industry profits.

http://www.cartercenter.org/news/documents/doc1890.html

Hahaha. He had another equally silly one added on and for the life of me I forget. It was that stupid.

I seriously hope the conference is accepting submissions from non-professionals and non-academics.  There is a great deal to be said for experience-based information from both psychiatric survivors and mental health care professionals.  Anecdotal information often isn't given the credibility it's due, and even the best double-blind study can be flawed by human bias.

I'm not saying that all submissions should be granted a free pass, without any kind of scrutiny.  I just happen to think professional and academic credentials should not be considered above content in submissions.

In my experience, many successful people with credentials up to their eyeballs have skated by on politicking and an ability to memorize and regurgitate information.  They have no talent for original thinking, and are incapable of thinking outside the confines of the canon of their particular discipline.  These are not people you want speaking at any conference, let alone this one.  And yet they do.

Of course, I have a personal bias - I come from a family of original thinkers, very bright people who, by virtue of their mental illnesses, are relegated to a life of frustrated under-achievement.  Or have committed suicide before realizing their potential or reaching any kind of peace within themselves.  And having a deep personal understanding of how mental illness can blight a life, and how dysfunctional the mental health care system continues to be, I have very strong opinions about the need to support marginalized voices and lend credibility to those who do not conform to society's expectations.

I understand "crazy".  I've lived with "crazy" all my life.  And I support and applaud those who step outside the label - or make it their own - and refuse to be pushed into obscurity and relegated to a silent and borderline existence.  Many cheers to all who submit papers to this conference - whether they are accepted or not.  You rock.

KenS wrote:

I have never been a fan of the mental health industry, its only the last several years that I've realized that over the course of my whole life I've dealt with the wreckage of the industry.

I don't know what motivates individuals to become involved in health care, or what precisely happens to people with good intentions who come to signify what is worst about the system, but there are systemic problems, and there are societal issues that damage already fragile people to the point where they will never achieve the level of support and stability they need to live their lives as they would choose.

I've given a fair amount of thought to these issues, and haven't arrived at any stunning conclusions, except perhaps that abuse of vulnerable people is spread across the wide spectrum of health care.  The elderly, the physically disabled, developmentally delayed individuals, etc. - all I've spoken to have told me of some experience they've had with abuse and exploitation.  I think that in the case of a few people who choose health care as a career, it's not so very different from people who are obsessively sexually attracted to children, who choose to work within a power structure that allows them free access to those who are most vulnerable.  There are people who choose health care who believe it will allow them access to people they can abuse and dominate with impunity.

Most often it occurs when an individual either has no support system independent of the health care system, or when family members are not able or willing to advocate on behalf of their relatives within the system.  Independant "watchdogs' and "ombudspersons" are reliant upon a complaint-driven system that requires an individual, or those on their behalf, to willfully submit to a system that requires reporting and follow-up that may not be practical for those who are most marginalized.

Regardless, I think it behooves those of us who are able to stand up for ourselves and others to provide a measure of check and balance to a system that seems to need an external control.

Le T wrote:

Actually I was specifically referencing G Pie's comments. But thank you for your concern. Next time I will use quotations so as not to get you all up in arms.

True story.  What I meant is although I'm disabled (if you're the type that considers Temple Grandin to be "disabled"), my values and thoughts originate and are based on one side of the psychiatric desk.  That's valuable information to smart people like David Healy and Bob Whitaker and Grace Jackson and Rob Wipond and Philip Dawdy.

Maysie, with respect, do you know what they intend to use these funds for?  I have it on good authority that they are unwilling to assist potential presenters.  In fact, an author/activist who would be an enormous contribution to this conference was turned down flat.  MindFreedom International has a much larger scope than PsychOUT so perhaps it's understandable that they choose to assist out-of-town presenters.  I have no problem at all donating my time and my effort to a great cause.  Asking me to pay for that privilege is a bit of a stretch. 

Le T wrote:

Quote:

If you mean they are emphasizing contributions from people who don't work in the mental health system, that is certainly true (it's about resisting psychiatry and there's not a lot of professional resistance to psychiatry) but your way of putting the point is offensive and highly questionable.

Actually I was specifically referencing G Pie's comments. But thank you for your concern. Next time I will use quotations so as not to get you all up in arms.

I didn't speak out of "concern", but of course you realize that. I did indeed miss the G Pie reference, however. My apologies. 

p.s. I am sometimes "all up in arms" but not here 

That's pretty much how I see it for ECT.  I had a psych professor a number of years ago who swore by the treatment for himself.  It has been and remains abused though, and I would support much more stringent restrictions on the use of the proceedure, mainly as in the area of proper education and informed consent than currently are used, at least here in my juristiction.

(I took out the word guidelines and put in restrictions because psychiatrists ignore mere guidelines all the time. )

Linger wrote:

)Crudely speaking, there is no 'involuntary treatment' in Canada. Involuntary admission is a rare and challenging event, involuntary treatment is not an option.

After this, I stopped reading the overview. This did not even get to difference of interpretation, those two psychout statements are not true.

The definitions of "involuntary" and "informed consent" should be examined.  Someone who is suicidally depressed, generally, isn't in their "right" mind.  It's like having sex with someone who is very very drunk - it can and has been construed as rape.  The same goes for individuals who are coping with a mental illness.  At what point can you say that the individual isn't competent to make decisions for themselves? 

Speaking from personal experience with chronic clinical depression, I can say there have been times that I really wouldn't have cared how much my brain got fried, or what "treatment" was conducted.  I was so indifferent to my surroundings that, had it not been for people around me and their care and love, I wouldn't have had any sense of self-preservation.

When the desire to continue your life, the most fundamental desire for survival, falls by the wayside, you need to examine the competency of the individual and access their needs accordingly.  EST may be the answer, but not necessarily for all.  To say, at that point, that the treatment is consentual, is in my mind a fallacy.

Definately, and you could make a strong arguement that truely 'informed' consent is a challenge in many cases.

Unfortunately at the present reality may be that a person is crisis and in need of assistance:

)Is treatment with-held until the person is 'in their right mind' (no answer to the larger question of how are they supposed to get 'right' with-out help)

)Is treatment offered, with what-ever clinical advise may facilitate the decision

I do hear where you are coming from and that a vulnerable individual does not have the space to carefully weight the potential risks vs. bennefits. Indeed a large part of my job is establishing rapport when we arrive on the scene and building that up to a point where a person trusts our suggestions for them. But I know that when we arrive on scene to relieve the police, time for contemplation can be a scarce commodity. And at other times I'm compelled to state that I do believe a person, accutely psychotic, is a risk to her/himself and in need of involuntary admission. If treatment is with-held because we say this is not consented too, it may be years before the person recovers enough to even have the discussion we'd like to have.

When you've got a person infront of you who doesn't concieve of traffic, or of roads, and is going to get hit by a car if left on their own, psychotropic medication can be a life-saving treatment.

G. Pie wrote:

re: involuntary hospitalization. .. the standard should be imminent danger of harm to self or others as opposed to merely obstreperous, sarcastic and difficult

Huh, that is the standard. Section a) imminent danger b) has demonstrated marked improvement with treatment in the past

From your phrasing of the experience, I wonder if the first hand information would be different if the source experienced it present-day, with Patient's right's advocates and the option of a tribunal where patients recieve lawyers to argue for release while doctors are not allowed representation. At any rate, honestly resources are so scarce presently that overt self-injurious behaviour may be treated only with a brief safety plan, a sleeping pill, and a follow-up appiontment (no admission); cantacerous behaviour is more expected than it is reason for confinement.

People voluntarily stay overnight in emergency hoping for inpatient beds to open the next day, resources are so scarce that programs regularly book into the new year and each day we are confronted with people and families asking for services that no-one provides.

Obviously I can only speak of the system I know, the past several years in my city in Ontario. But here people cannot be kept for rude behaviour.

GMuffin wrote:

I reserve the right to be obnoxious and rude.  These concepts involve freedom of speech and freedom of thought as well as other fundamental human rights.  Somehow, the Charter applies to everybody except those with a psychiatric diagnosis.

There is huge validity in this statement.

Obnoxius and rude is viewed as decompensating when it comes with those who have a cognative disorder diagnosis. crying and pitiful behaviour is more acceptable and is viewed as "compensating".

Have often thought that those who have a cognative diagnosis should have teeshirts or hats or some other labelling clothing of item to put on and wear when they are having moments like everybody does. Just so that everyone knows it is not "decompensating".

Like:

Today, I am curmudgeon because I wanna be, as I don't feel like crying.

...used to have a  hand knitted red sweater  from my  grandmother that I would put on when I wanted people in my family to leave me alone, and when I was wearing it all boundaries were respected.

In fact the daughter, the nephew and my partner all recognized my use of this sweater for that purpose before I did. From my perspective, I had just put it on when I felt I needed the loving comfort of a grandmother's arms.

Happy New Year to you both, Remind and Sineed.  With respect to spilling my guts, I really had no choice and can take no credit for it.  I just keep a faint hope alive that not that many people know who the Goodbye Pie is. 

Great post, Rebecca, thanks.  Informed consent is the guideline for all intelligent and humane medicine.  Biomedical, biochemical, standard, pseudoneurological psychiatry doesn't even count as a science, never mind a medical one.  All psychiatry has ever proved (and will ever prove, in my opinion) is that mind-altering drugs alter the mind.  Well done, take a bow, "doctors."

I'm glad you see that belligerence (or "sarcasm and irritability" as my favourite doctor would say) can be a valid response to an insane situation.  The system is sicker than the people it purports to help.  In fact, that's my Rule #1 for compassionate and effective mental intervention:  Try to be more rational than the people you are labelling and treating.

Lastly, I wanted to add that "anti-psychotic" is a misnomer; no drug on Earth is anti-psychotic.  Probably the only cure for psychosis is sleep, the first thing that flies out the window when I become ill.  Their original name was tranquillizers which is quite accurate.  They work by damping everything down -- your hallucinations as well as your functioning, such as it is.  "Anti-psychotic" is a marketing term and it works:  they're one of, if not the, biggest money makers for Big Pharma.  Schizophrenia didn't satiate their greed; they moved onto bipolar in quick order.  The FDA has now approved Seroquel as an "add on" treatment for plain old depression. 

G. Muffin wrote:

you are woefully misinformed.

I missed it with you writing your post at the same time I was. As entertaining as your sentiment is, you chose to call a professional uninformed and ignorant, I do not join in this downward spiral of name calling. I bid you aduie.

Linger wrote:

G. Muffin wrote:

you are woefully misinformed.

I missed it with you writing your post at the same time I was. As entertaining as your sentiment is, you chose to call a professional uninformed and ignorant, I do not join in this downward spiral of name calling. I bid you aduie.

Umm, I think the whole thread is about the "professionals" being uninformed and ignorant.

Polly B wrote:

Linger wrote:

G. Muffin wrote:

you are woefully misinformed.

I missed it with you writing your post at the same time I was. As entertaining as your sentiment is, you chose to call a professional uninformed and ignorant, I do not join in this downward spiral of name calling. I bid you aduie.

Umm, I think the whole thread is about the "professionals" being uninformed and ignorant.

It's okay, Polly B.  I just slaughtered him with a spelling flame.  Downward spiral, indeed. 

I'm not even going near this. 

My response

This article grossly misrepresents a conference that was a legitimate critique of psychiatric theory and practice. It is sensationalist in focusing on David Carmichael without providing the context that pharmaceutical companies have been forced to put warnings on labels for SSRI's due to increased violence, suicidality and impulsive behaviou people taking these drugs. It has been well documented that people with no history of violence have behaved in completely uncharacteristic ways.
The article also focuses a great deal on comments made by Edward Shorter someone who has made a comfortable career promoting and defending psychiatric myths. Despite Shorter's claims psychiatry remains a pseudo science. The construction and application of diagnostic criteria lack scientific validity. Theories of chemical imbalances not only have failed to be supported by empirical evidence but have been demonstrated to be false. Research on psychiatric drugs has demonstrated that they lack effectiveness and have profoundly negative( sometimes fatal) side effects. 

It is also easy to portray M Anne Philips beliefs as bizare but if one is interested in bizarre beliefs and practices one only need to refer to the history of psychiatry with an extensive catalogue of claims of miraculous cures from hydro therapy, insulin coma therapy, electroshock and lobotomy. The miracle claims made for psychiatric drugs are no less invalid. If the author of this article was genuinely interested in a critque of psychiatry he would do well to read conference presenters Linda Andre's book Doctors of Deception or Robert Whitaker's Mad in America. Unfortunately this article does nothing to challenge or even question the pseudo scientific beliefs of psychiatry.

P.S.

Rally against Electroshock at Queens Park today 2:00pm

I am a psychiatric survivor.  I would like to share with you a new alternative that I'm sure none of you have ever heard about. 

First of all, I am VERY ANTI:

1. Drugs

2. ECT.

3. Restraints of any kind.

4. Psychiatrists, and counsellors for that matter.

I cured myself of schizophrenia all by myself using what is called, "Orthomolecular Medicine."  It was started in Weyburn Saskatchewan 65 years ago.  The only big name celebrity who was cured of "mental illness"  using orthomolecular medicine was Canadian born actress, Margot Kidder. 

She has stated repeatedly that as an actress, she had "access to all the best psychiatrists that Beverley Hills had to offer, but the only doctor who could cure me of my manic depression was Dr. Abram Hoffer from Victoria B.C."

During the 1930s, the conditions at the Weyburn Mental Institution was rated the third worst in the western hemisphere ahead of only Jamaica and Dutch Guyana.

When Tommy Douglas came to power in 1944, he wanted to change all that.   He wanted to discover a cure for addictions and a cure for schziophrenia and mental illness. He commissioned the only medical study of its kind ever. 

According to Dr. Abram Hoffer's book, Vitamin B3 and Schizophrenia: Discovery, Recovery, Controversy,..

A group of medical researchers from England came to Saskatchewan to take part in this study.  They wanted to know if there was anything that was naturally produced in the human body that had the same or a very similar molecular structure to LSD-25 which was just isolated in Switzerland in 1938, and to mesceline, which were two hallucinogenic drugs.

They discovered that adreneline, which is produced when mammals are under stress, if it oxidizes, will form another drug called adrenochrome, which is a hallucinogenic drug.  This compound is highly unstable, and in normal people, mixes with another compound produced in the body to produce 5,6, di-hydroxy-N-Methyl-Indole.  This compound has a calming effect.  In schizophrenics, they do not produce this calming effect.  Instead, they produce adrenolutin, which causes paranoia, anger, and agitation.

Dr. Abram Hoffer and his colleagues found that by giving patients high doses of vitamin C and high doses of Niacin or vitamin B3, they could combat this negative chemical reaction from taking place.  Some schizophrenics responded, but not all did.

dr. Abram Hoffer also discovered a pyrrole in the urine of some of these schizophrenics, and when given zinc along with vitamin C, they recovered very quickly.

These researchers also found that these vitamins in really high doses where able to get people off their drug and alcohol addictions.  Bill W, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, came up to Weyburn and participated in these studies. 

He told Dr. Hoffer that "if it weren't for these vitamins, that he would never have been able to recover from alcohol."  He tried to get vitamins incorporated as part of the AA recovery program, and the American Medical Association said NO.

The problem was that vitamins cannot be patented.  Drug companies would not make money, and the doctors would not make money in kick backs themselves.  Also, according to Hoffer, anyone can purchase these products themselves. They do not need a prescription from a doctor to get them.

In other words, huge egos, and corporate greed has kept people from living proper lives simply because doctors want to have power and control over the bodies of their patients.  Psychiatrists would rather have people perpetually dependent on them rather than let them be well.

In Toronto, on 14 Florence Ave., there is the Canadian Schizophrenia Foundation.  they have all kinds of literature on orthomolecular medicine there.  It is also called the Canadian Centre for Orthomolecular Research.

For those interested, I strongly recommend people to check it out.