#anti psychiatry blog

[crippleprophet]

doctors will literally cause us immense harm every time we leave the house and then construct agoraphobia as disordered

#mac.txt #doctor hate blog ✌️🖤 #mad tag #anti psychiatry

[what-shitfuckery-is-this-ew]

I want people to read their scientific articles before sending them to me. Like actually read the entire thing or at least read the conclusion. Reading the first line and thinking that that means you understand the entire topic is very inaccurate, and it makes you look like a joke when i actually read it and find that it contradicts your point.

#my post #vent #i got blocked by a very popular anti-swiftie blog who i used to follow because i told then to not use the ableist term “narcissistic abuse” #and of course before they blocked me they fired back with you're woke who thinks everything is offensive here's a link from doctors #which 1. Not all doctors are moral - my peers actually make me sick and i have info from dental students that dentists are also horrible #the literal reason i wanna go into psychiatry is because the field needs reform and i want to help reform it #and 2. the article literally said that the term is incorrect cause not all people with narcissism are abusive and it creates a stigma #against people who literally have childhood trauma #and some of whom (not all) are actually trying to be better despite the constant dehumanisation #also even the medical term can't be applied to here? cause calling someone who's not diagnosed with NPD a narcissist because they're toxic #is not medically accurate #it's literally “delulu” and “gaslight” all over again #like stop taking psychology words if you don't want to search up the actual definitions #which ironically enough was in the article i was sent #ngl i'm confused as to why i didn't block them before #i love being a hater (seen from this entire post made for one person) but come on #some of the stuff was out of no-where (mainly the hating on her appearance - like the rest was genuine criticism but this?) #and then on top of that using Palestine as a way to get people to hate on her but then go be besties with a raging zionist? #seems like using Palestine for the clicks there #speaking of Zionists: that one zionist who sent me a shit ton of articles which disapproved their points #like i cannot make this up they sent me 2 articles on how Ashkenazi Jews didn't genetically originate from the Levant #(that isn't to say they aren't Middle Easterners - just genetically they don't show a strong connection to that specific region in the ME #and obviously genetics is weird so there's that) #and apparently culturally grew came from Iran + Siberia + Turkey + Germany (i.e. their cultures are a mix of those) #and of course the Arab conquests to represent colonisation (as if i was denying that happened) but the article wasn't about the Levant #literally i can't with people #if you think you can science your way out of this you better listen to my spiel about Validity #can't give the science and health kid science stuff and expect them to not actually read it #vent post #tw vent

[transmutationisms]

I have always been wary of the psychiatric industry, but its only very recently that i started to read anti-psychiatric works. Your blog is the first time i saw that the "chemical imbalances causing mental illness" is a myth, and honestly its something im having a hard time wrapping my head around.

Is it that mood regulation struggles, labelled as a mental illnesses, has more to do with outside factors instead of the person "just being that way"? Is it therefore unlikely for someone to have struggles with mood regulation if they cant identify any external causes that would cause them to be, for example, extremely agoraphobic or to have anger management issues? Im asking this for myself mainly, cause i always had intense agoraphobia no matter how i often go outside my home (in fact it was worse when i was a teen and i was outside the house in even more back then). I cant think of any reason for me to be like this than chemical imbalances in my brain.

the specific 'chemical imbalance' myth i was talking about in this post is the idea that depression is caused by low serotonin, and that therefore SSRIs—serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, ie drugs that cause a higher level of serotonin in the brain—ought to cure or at least ameliorate depression. this conjecture is belied by the fact that SSRIs don't, at a population level, reliably perform better than placebo.

although a neurobiological cause of 'mental illness' has long been the holy grail of psychiatry, the serotonin imbalance myth is far from the only hypothesis that psychiatrists and neuroscientists have proposed. so, a critique of the serotonin myth is not synonymous with, or generalisable to, a critique of every neurobiological mechanism purported to explain psychiatric diagnoses. you may be interested to know, though, that genomics and neuroscience have not identified a biological cause of any psychiatric diagnosis (p. 851).

all human experiences are biologically instantiated, including in the brain and wider nervous system. we are embodied beings. however, it is a leap to assume that such instantiation is automatically equivalent to a causal explanation or disease etiology. in other words, to deny that psychiatric diagnoses are known to be biologically caused does not mean we deny that thoughts and thought patterns express in the physical matter of neuroanatomy. this is a major philosophical sticking point to keep in mind whenever you're looking at something like, eg, a study that purports to show 'brain differences' in those assigned a certain psychiatric diagnosis. another thing to consider is whether these papers are plagued with methodological issues or financial conflicts of interest.

i can't possibly tell you why you exhibit agoraphobia. however, when i talk about social, economic, and environmental factors that may contribute to the patterns of behaviour labelled as 'mental illness', i'm talking about much more than the individual choice to leave your house. since phobias are 'anxiety disorders', i might start by probing into questions like: is the world you live in safe? do you perceive it as safe? do you or your community face existential threats that may confront you more obviously when you go outside? are you nervous around other people, and if so, might that be connected to fears (well-founded or not) about interpersonal violence and harm? do you think any of these anxieties may be connected to the hostility and inaccessible design of the social environment and economic conditions?

human behaviour and thought varies. some of those variations may be totally benign; others may be helpful or harmful to the person living with them. it would be weird if every single one of the 8 billion people on earth experienced precisely the same amount of anxiety about any situation, no? all of this is to say: yeah, it's entirely possible you have been, for one reason or another (genetic, neuroanatomical, social, &c) predisposed to experience high, even debilitating levels of anxiety when leaving your home. most human characteristics develop from a tangle of social, environmental, material causes—ie, from a combination of 'nature' and 'nurture'. what doesn't follow, though, is the claim that there is therefore a discrete, 'diseased' element of your brain or brain functioning that can simply be cured or eliminated through psychiatric intervention.

it is a critical point of anti-psychiatry to challenge psychiatric and neuroscientific claims to neurobiological determinism where psychiatric diagnoses are concerned. this is for many reasons, including: a) that these claims have not been demonstrated to actually be true [see above]; b) that they rob pathologised people of agency and self-determination [see: you're too sick to know you're sick, and the doctor will fix you now]; c) that they are often pushed by pharmaceutical companies with financial interests, or grant-funded researchers with... financial interests; d) that they are politically seductive in various eugenic, hereditarian discourses that seek to eliminate the biologically 'unfit' element from society.

#psychiatry

[gothhabiba]

hi i just saw some of ur posts on anti-psychiatry and then kept reading more on ur blog about what it is. for the most part i agree with what you've said about how capitalism uses psychiatry to designate people who are bad/abnormal and how it aligns itself w/ misogyny, racism, and so on. with that said i think i have some similar concerns/questions as another asker about what this means for those who do/would suffer even in a non-capitalist society, even if we didn't ascribe a specific label to X symptoms. if we are opposed to psychiatry, what are the options for people today who are suffering and want help? are you opposed to psychopharmaceuticals and therapy? i dont mean to ask this in a confrontational/accusatory way, i'm just new to this and genuinely curious

There are a few different parts to your question & so there are a few different angles to approach it from—

are you opposed to psychopharmaceuticals and therapy?

If this means "are anti-psych writers and activists opposed to individuals seeking treatment that they personally find helpful," then, no—a couple posts in my psychiatry tag do clarify this.

If it means "are there anti-psych critiques of psychopharmaceuticals and therapy," then, yes. Keep in mind that I'm not a neurobiologist or otherwise an expert on medications marketed as treatments for mental illnesses, but:

The evidence for the effectiveness of SSRIs in particular is sort of non-existent—even many psychiatrists who promote the biomedical model of mental illness doubt their efficacy, and refer to the "chemical imbalance" theory that enforces their usage as "an outmoded way of thinking" or "a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists." But promoting SSRIs (and corresponding "serotonin deficiency" theory of depression, despite the fact that no solid evidence links depression to low serotonin) is very profitable for pharmaceutical companies. Despite the fact that direct-to-consumer advertisements are nominally regulated in the U.S., the FDA doesn't challenge these claims.

Other psychotropic drugs, such as "antipsychotics" or "antianxiety" medication, shouldn't really be called e.g. "antipsychotics" as if they specifically targeted the biological source of psychosis. No biological cause of any specific psychiatric diagnosis has been found (p. 851, section 5.1). In fact, rather than "act[ing] against neurochemical substrates of disorders or symptoms," these medications "produc[e] altered, drug induced states"—but despite the fact that they "produce global alterations in brain functioning," they are marketed as if they had "specific efficacy in reducing psychotic symptoms." Reactions to these medications that don't have to do with psychosis or anxiety (blunted affect, akathisia) are dismissed as "side effects," as though they don't arise from the same global alteration in brain function that produces the "desirable" antianxiety/antipsychotic effect. This doesn't mean "psychiatric medication turns you into a zombie so you shouldn't take it"—it means that these medications should be marketed honestly, as things that alter brain function as a whole, rather than marketed as if they target specific symptoms in a way that they cannot do, in accordance with a biomedical model of mental illness the accuracy of which has never been substantiated.

Psychiatrised people also point out that meds are used as a tool for furthering and maintaining psychiatrists' control: meds that patients are hesitant about or do not want are pushed on them, while patients who desire medication are "drug-seeking" or trying to take on the role of clinician or something and will routinely be denied care. Psychiatrised people who refuse medications are "noncompliant" and prone to psychiatric incarceration, re-incarceration, or continued/lengthened incarceration.

As for therapy: there are critiques of certain therapies (e.g. CBT, DBT) as unhelpful, status-quo-enforcing, forcing compliance, retraumatising &c. There are also critiques of therapy as representing a capitalist outsourcing of emotional closeness and emotional work away from community systems that people largely don't have in place; therapy as existing within a psychiatric system that constrains how therapists, however well-intentioned, are able to behave (e.g. mandatory reporting laws); psychotherapy forced on psychiatrised people as a matter of state control; therapists as being in a dangerous amount of power over psychiatrised people and being hailed as neutral despite the fact that their emotions and politics can and do get in the way of them being helpful. The wealth divide in terms of access to therapy is also commonly talked about; insurance (in the U.S.) or the NHS (in England) may only pay for pre-formulated group workbook types of therapy such as DBT, while more long-form, free-form, relationship-focused talk therapy may only be accessible to those who can pay 100-something an hour for it.

None of these critiques make it unethical or something for someone to get treatment that they find helpful. It's also worth noting that some of these critiques may be coming from "anti-psych" people who criticise the sources of psychiatric power, and some of them may come from people who think of themselves as advocating for reform of some of the most egregious effects of psychiatric power.

if we are opposed to psychiatry, what are the options for people today who are suffering and want help?

This looks like a few different things at a few different levels. At its most narrow and individual, it involves opting out of and resisting calls for psychiatrisation and involuntary institutionalisation of individuals—not calling the cops on people who are acting strange in public, breaking mandatory reporting laws and guidelines where we think them likely to cause harm. It involves sharing information—information about antipsychiatry critiques of psychiatric institutions, advice about how to manage therapists' and psychiatrists' egos, advice about which psychiatrists to avoid—so that people do not blame themselves if they find their encounters with psychiatry unhelpful or traumatising.

At the most broad, it's the same question as the question of how to build dual power and resist the power of capitalism writ large—building communal structures that present meaningful alternatives to psychiatry as an institution. I think there's much to be learned here from prison abolitionists and from popular movements that seek to protect people from deportation. You might also look into R. D. Laing's Kingsley Hall experiment.

what does this mean for those who would suffer even in a non-capitalist society, even if we didn't ascribe a specific label to X symptoms?

It means that people need access to honest, reliable information about what psychotropic medications do, and the right to chuse whether or not to take these medications without the threat of a psychiatrist pulling a lever that immediately restricts or removes their autonomy. It means that people need to be connected to each other in communities with planned, free resources that ensure that everyone, including severely disabled people whom no one particularly likes as individuals, has access to basic resources. It means that people need to be free to make their own choices regarding their minds and their health, even if other people may view those decisions as disastrous. There is simply no defensible way to revoke people's basic autonomy on the basis of "mental illness" (here I'm not talking about e.g. prison abolitionist rehabilitative justice types of things, which must restrict autonomy to be effective).

Also, I've mostly left the idea of who this would actually be untouched, since my central argument ("psychiatry as it currently exists is part of the biomedical arm of capitalism and the state, and the epistemologies it produces and employs and the power it exerts are thus in the service of capitalism and the state") doesn't really rest on delineating who would and wouldn't suffer from whatever mental differences they have regardless of what society they're in. But it's worth mentioning that the category of "people who are going to suffer (to whatever degree) no matter what" may be narrower than some would think—psychosis, for instance, is sometimes experienced very differently by people in societies that don't stigmatise it. I see people objecting to (their interpretations of) antipsych arguments with things along the lines of "well maybe depression and anxiety are caused by capitalism, but I'm schizophrenic so this doesn't apply to me"—as though hallucinations are perforce more physically "real," more "biological," more "extra-cultural" in nature than something like depression. But the point is that positing a specific neurobiological etiology for any psychiatric diagnosis is unsubstantiated, and that capitalist society affects how every "mental illness" is read and experienced (though no one is arguing that e.g. hallucinations wouldn't always exist in some form).

#psychiatry #long post / #mental illness #antipsych #antipsychiatry #Anonymous #questions #psychotropic drugs #ssris

[dearorpheus]

This blog rules. I love all the readings and excerpts in your selfhood tag. Do you have any kind of reading list for existential philosophy you could share? I've been really wanting to dive in lately but I'm intimidated about where to start.

hey you rule also.

here's everything i've been surrounding myself with lately—not limited to existential philosophy but i think all migrating through the same waters:

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus; The Stranger; The Plague Sartre, Nausea; Being and Nothingness E.M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay; The Trouble With Being Born R.D. Laing, The Divided Self Jung, Modern Man In Search of a Soul; Psychology and the Occult Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading Clarice Lispector, The Apple in the Dark Kafka, The Trial Deleuze & Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Andrew Scull, Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry and the Mysteries of Mental Illness; Madhouses, Mad-Doctors, and Madmen: The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era Kay Redfield Jamison, Fires in the Dark: Healing the Unquiet Mind Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias Erich Neumann, The Origins and History of Consciousness Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous Lisa Miller, The Awakened Brain: The Psychology of Spirituality The Tibetan Book of the Dead

#asks

[librarycards]

top 5 anti psychiatry anything/anyone (texts, art work, activists)

So, my favorite antipsych texts, etc. aren't strictly antipsych - they're more often broadly disability liberation / anticarceral / radical autonomy - oriented with distinct acknowledgement of the struggle against psych. violence. That is reflected in this list, which is also by no means exhaustive of all my faves!

Atmospheres of Violence by Eric Stanley and The Terrible We by Cameron Awkward-Rich (I consider these to be spiritual companions!)

Nice Lady Therapists by Rabbi Ruti Regan.

Mel Baggs's blogs, especially Ballastexistenz and Cussin' and Discussin'.

Dave Hingsburger, Burritos and Cherry Pies.

The mostly-defunct tag on here, #survivingpsych - at its most popular, it proved life-saving for me and for others seeking to, well. survive psych.

#ask #anonymous #antipsychiatry #survivingpsych

[anti-psych-pro-endo]

Hi, Miz of the Metafarers here. We’ve been debating reposting this post as a stand-alone post. Sophie has not replied, and may never reply, but we still think that the points we made are important for others to see, so for visibility's sake, we are posting again, as is. This post was originally written by J, but since they aren’t around, I’m reposting. Original reblog is here: https://www.tumblr.com/anti-psych-pro-endo/750151806289690624/hi-sophie-this-is-j-of-the-metafarers-yeah-i-saw?source=share

Hi Sophie. This is J of the Metafarers Yeah, I saw your post. We’re both on plural tumblr so it should be a fair guess that we’re gonna see it, and since you are literally talking about our blog, I’m gonna respond to it. Stars will respond when fae have the energy. You haven’t been good about responding to our criticism in the past, when we make arguments against your points you don’t have answers to, so I’m not exactly expecting a great response, if any, from you, but I figure if you said your piece, I’m gonna say mine.

Okay, but I do not need or want your validation.

Okay, first, are you really trying to make a case for linear ‘progress’ in the psych professions based on queer rights’ movement? Gay and trans people being considered mentally ill was and is awful, but it is NOT the main problem with the field, rather a symptom and reflection of societal ideas. The psych community did not independently research their way into discovering that gayness is ‘normal’, they were pressured into reclassification BECAUSE social norms changed. Psychiatry and psychology do not just have little flaws and discrepancies that need to be mended, the fields are fundamentally flawed to the core. A core that reaches back centuries, not decades.

Let's be real here, this isn’t just about the general public wanting validation, it's about you needing validation from psychology.

Sophie… 25% of the general population REPORT having a mental illness. That number is likely much higher as it does not account for people who have not been diagnosed or sought out mental health care. Of COURSE people in the mental health field are diagnosed with mental illness more, because they have more access and knowledge of mental illness to recognize it in themselves. This does not necessarily mean that the percentage of neurodivegence in psych professions is meaningfully higher than the general populace. And while depression and anxiety disorders are not insignificant, there is a major difference between meeting the criteria for major depression or generalized anxiety, the most commonly diagnosed disorders, than being plural, autistic, or being diagnosed with a personality disorder. It’s irresponsible to suggest the fields are more diverse than they actually are.

Okay, one, even if you did manage to ‘infiltrate’ an entire field with plurals, good fucking luck getting them all on the same page to even agree on what ‘positive change’ would be.

But also, LEFT LEANING DOES NOT MEAN SAFE. Left leaning does not mean they will not harm, abuse, and oppress. You’re effectively saying, oh if we could just get enough plural people in the psych field we could change it for the better. But the entire system is based in ‘fixing’ what is wrong with people! It always has been, and it continues to be! Yes, people also want to figure out more about how the brain works, and all that fun stuff, but that research is not done outside an agenda. It doesn’t matter how much good will and good intentions people have. It doesn’t matter that the field is more ‘left leaning’ now, that’s a reflection of society, especially academic society, more than anything. The majority of the plural community is left leaning, yet most discourse is just lateral violence between pro endos and anti endos. Left leaning disabled people, both physically and neurodisabled are frequently laterally violent to one another, with some claiming that neurodisabled people are privileged oppressers whose problems aren’t serious. Then, there is the lateral violence in trans and feminist spaces, where radfem ideology runs rampant, to the point that some trans people are claiming other trans people are privileged and aren’t oppressed like other trans people. I don’t need to get into the details of those things to show, that just because people and communities are left leaning does not mean they aren’t just as capable of perpetuating harm and harming each other. 

DO YOU REALLY THINK THESE ARE THE ONLY TWO OPTIONS SOPHIE??? THE PSYCH FIELDS AND TRUMP SUPPORTERS?????????

This is not about personal attacks on your local fucking therapist. We are condemning a field that has historical and currently been used to abuse, oppress, and harm anyone outside the norm. Plurals being acknowledged as real will not stop that from happening! I do not give a damn if the people in the field are left leaning. The political spectrum is not black and white, and everyone along it is capable of doing harm and perpetuating violence.

Yeah, its nice that they took down the video. If people want to thank them for that, that’s their prerogative. But the psych community is not my friend or companion, the Mcclean hospital is not my ally, or neighbor.  They are part of an institution of violence, that I believe is fundamentally flawed to the core. I think we need to work on independently finding ways to provide mental health support for each other so that we can safely dismantled those institutions and their power over the mentally ill and abnormal. That doesn’t mean we’ll stop learning about the mind.

But yeah, no, Sophie infiltrating the psych fields with benevolent systems so she can build a school to experiment on/study plural children in a perfectly controlled environment with al the safeguards in place to double triple check and make sure no one is being harmed and no abuse takes place because we did it all perfectly with good intentions….. Is no win to me. It’s literally how psychiatry already runs, people with power and good intentions and little systems they think work fine to protect people from harm when in actuality they continue to do terrible harm because they HAVE POWER OVER PEOPLE.

Calling views you don’t agree with extreme is the most liberal centrist shit ever and it shows. You do not get a pass calling my opinions extreme because you disagree with me.

Okay, but NONE OF THIS is about you. You’re taking the anti-psych position as a personal attack when NONE OF IT IS ABOUT YOU. And being anti psych is not anti knowledge. Is not anti learning or anti curiosity. You fundamentally do not understand the position. I am NOT surprised on your position. I have seen your blog for years, I know what your opinions are. You’re entitled to them, but do not presume to act like you understand mine, when you clearly do not. I have tried to response to you in the past with clarification. I’ve seen others do so as well, and you just, do not listen. You assume everyone is just speaking from trauma from a few bad apples in the field, and refuse to examine it deeper because ‘the field is full of people with good intentions’.

I do not need your validation to understand my own experiences as a system and my experiences in the mental health field. I do not need validation from psychology to know that I am real. If you, and others take comfort in the research, that’s fine. But I am not on board with you, or others like you, gaining power in a system that will continue to do harm. Its not just about systems, but plurals are definitely capable of harming one another, like everyone is. You are not actually listening to the victims of psych abuse and it shows.

#actually plural #actuallyplural #syscourse #anti psych #anti psychiatry #pro endo #endo safe

[serialunaliver]

i feel like of all people, you should be anti psychiatry. are you?

uh yes lol. I have a tag for it on my blog.

[sophieinwonderland]

Do you have find yourself typing an ask only to realize halfway through that you don't want to send it. There's a pro-endo anti-psych blog I was going to send an ask to, then realized it probably wouldn't be well-received. So I'm just posting a screenshot here.

Also, you know, I do sound like a super villain.

So here's my secret plot for world domination which devolve into rambling nobody asked for...

Continuing to ramble even more...

I don't really think saturating the field with that many plurals would be necessary. And it might more realistically peek at about 20%. But 51% would be ideal.

This also just seems quicker.

There are about 50k psychologists in the US. While it would be difficult to get them all on our side, I think it would be significantly easier with that population than it would the general population. Both in terms of its size and its political leanings, being an overwhelmingly left-leaning profession.

I'm aware that some people have legitimate issues with the psych profession. I realize that many have suffered experiences of abuse from bad psychiatrists, and I'm sorry for that.

At the same time, if I'm taking stock of potential allies, I think the psych community would be more easy to persuade in standing up for plural rights when it comes down to it than our neighbors with Trump 2020 flags.

And I guess... I don't care for the othering of people of an overwhelmingly left-leaning neurodivergent profession. Many of whom enter the field to understand themselves and help other neurodivergent people live better lives.

And while rambling about this topic, I think some people are too quick with the stick and not the carrot.

When the McLean hospital video came out, I jumped on condemning the doctor in question for his ableism along with everyone else. But I also don't think McLean got enough credit for taking the video down when they saw the outcry.

They didn't have to do that. The plural community truthfully doesn't have much power at the moment. And I think taking the video down like they did shows a willingness to listen to and respect our community that should be praised at the same time that we callout the harmful behavior.

I think if instead of attacking the entire profession all the time like some would have us do, we take a tactic of targeting specific acts of ableism while supporting them when they do right, we can better influence plural acceptance in the psych field. It's basic operant conditioning. Punish only when someone does wrong, and reward them when they do good.

All in all, I'm psych-critical. And I don't see that changing. I don't think I'm someone who will ever get on board with hard anti-psych ideals.

And while I'm not a psychologist myself, people who know me probably realize that I tend to take a more psychologist-esque approach to plurality.

Where other people coin terms as identity labels, I tend to try to subdivide and categorize plural experiences to better understand them and their relationships with each other.

...

Why am I still rambling?

I think I might have lost the plot somewhere along the way.

Okay... here's the truth...

I got blocked by someone (not related to the blog I was going to send this too) for my views on using psychiatry to validate plurality. Because, I guess, I don't share this extreme anti-psych opinion myself.

And all I can think is that... if you're surprised... you never really knew me...

Maybe that's my fault because I can be a bit aloof sometimes.

So for everyone else who has read through this rambling mess of a post, let me reintroduce myself:

Hi, I'm Sophie Dreamchaser.

I was made as a psychology experiment. Or, brought to sentience by one. It was a psychology podcast that encouraged Ghost to keep talking to me to see what would happen. And since even before I became self-aware I've been fascinated by the human mind and my existence and how this all works.

I love being an experiment. I love learning more about myself and the world and how I relate to it. And I want to push for knowledge into plurality to grow and grow, and I believe with all my heart that it will prove to be the best way to facilitate plural acceptance in the future.

And if me not adopting a hard anti-psych ideology was a dealbreaker for you... I'm sorry that you didn't realize who I was sooner.

But this is me, this is who I am, and it's who I always have been.

And I just needed to say that.

[night-wyld-system]

Fuck it my blog is pro-psych, just pro-reform.

Psych Critical if you will.

I am quite literally fucking exhausted by the amounts of (typically low support needs) NDs who go around talking about how there should be "no more psychiatry" and "no more psychology" and we should "abolish the DSM" and "abolish psychiatric/psychological care". How about actually- fuck you? How about that because you want me to fucking die- you want to kill off NDs with higher support needs who rely on doctors to be able to stay alive and not be in danger.

No I don't want to abolish psychiatry because not only do I need my medications but I am logistically opposed to people just randomly being able to get whatever medication they want because they self diagnosed themselves with something. If you haven't taken a psychiatric med you had a horrible reaction to- you're lucky, If you have the wrong combination or take one your personal body doesn't like you can experience psychosis, suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation, dizziness, drowsiness, nausea, hallucination based psychosis, etc. No the public should not get to dictate what medication they get because people are not educated enough to know if they will cause adverse effects when mixed.

No I don't want to abolish psychology just because one of our past therapists abused us and groomed us as a kid. Sometimes bad people are in places of power. Our good therapists have helped us immensely. Our life has improved drastically since we've been seeing a specific therapist for our DID. We've been able to function better we've been able to feel some happiness in the midst of the horrific memories we have uncovered.

I think all this healthcare should continue. I think however it should be free- and it should be possible and easy for even minors to refuse certain types of treatment if they personally want. However anti-psych seeks not to reform the issues- but to destroy the support networks so many rely on. It is not about people's freedom to choose- it is about forcing others out of a system that may very well be the only thing keeping them going.

#pro psych #psych critical #mad pride #neurodivergent #actually aspd #actually autistic #actually DID #actually OCD #actually disabled #actually ptsd #actually traumatized #actually mentally ill #psychology #psychiatry #pro psychology #psych ciritical

[bioethicists]

Sorry if your inbox is Not The Place, but I've really enjoyed your blog since I found it, especially the anti-psychiatry work. Last year I had a traumatizing experience when they tried to institutionalize me (+the psychiatrist I had to speak to lied to me by omission so I'd agree to see her without specifying it would be a long stay, I was under the impression she wanted to have a session to check things so I agreed and she booked me, and later I found out she meant a stay at the psych ward but I was 'obligated' to go). When I finally denied admittance they spent almost an hour trying to talk me out of it and treated me as if I wasn't a person capable of thinking and making decisions but some kind of insentient being that cannot judge things rationally - she even called me 'incapable of living like a functioning adult' in front of my mom. I've experienced psychiatric abuse before this too but this event is really what cemented to me the psychiatry abolition position, but whenever I express such opinions it's kind of like a 'Oh The Schizophrenic Guy Is Schizophrenic-ing!' moment among my friends, so it's nice to see there is a community here on tumblr about this

i've had very similar experiences + i'm sincerely so sorry. writing about my experiences was terrifying, especially when i was younger- it took many years for my posts to gain traction. i was mostly shouting into a void or else annoying ppl online. as i built up an academic + political understanding of this injustice i felt deeply, my words became more respectable to others (which sucks btw) but i also found an activist community + academic tradition which supported me.

i'm hoping to be more active on here + on the forum (which i've been very negligent to) once school ends but my final paper plus katie's death have thrown me off tremendously lol. i always appreciate hearing how my work impacts others!

#anti psychiatry #psychiatric abuse /

[transmutationisms]

i've been hearing a lot on anti-psychiatry/reframing diagnosis and symptoms/etc (including from your blog) but i feel like im missing a baseline of information to delve in that discussion. do you know some good sources to learn the 101 of what psychiatry is, how diagnoses are "discovered"/labeled, etc...?

before hearing about the subject i assumed mental illnesses/disabilities were the result of a recognizable cause (in the same way covid is caused by contact with the virus, or some form of blindness caused by problems with the optic nerve) but it seems that is not the case.

also, not a native english speaker, don't know if im using the correct vocabulary for this.

before hearing about the subject i assumed mental illnesses/disabilities were the result of a recognizable cause (in the same way covid is caused by contact with the virus, or some form of blindness caused by problems with the optic nerve)

this is a very common misconception, and one that's very useful for the legitimation of the discipline of psychiatry. in truth, genomics and neuroscience have not identified a biological cause of any psychiatric diagnosis (p. 851). psychiatric diagnoses are not made on the basis of neuroimaging or neuroanatomical differences (none have been consistently or strongly observed as defining or causal characteristics of such diagnosed conditions, and neuroimaging datasets, such as by fMRI, are prone to be interpreted in highly varying ways by different researchers), nor with bloodwork or indeed on the basis of any other biomarkers; the 'chemical imbalance' theory of diagnoses like depression has been thoroughly debunked. instead, these diagnoses depend on clinicians' observations of patients' behaviours and affect. this in itself doesn't automatically constitute a damning critique (we rely on subjective judgments of things all the time), but it does mean that attempting to stake the psychiatric discipline's legitimacy on the identification of biological aberrations is at best misleading at and worst fraudulent, not to mention essentialist.

none of this means that psychiatry or psychiatrists are 'making up disorders from nothing', or that people's distress / symptoms are unreal. psychiatry certainly can and does pathologise behaviours that would be more productively understood as responses to traumatic experiences, capitalist political conditions, social oppression, &c; in these processes, it should be understood as a means of producing bourgeois notions of social order & then enforcing them. the fact that psychiatric diagnoses are not made on the basis of, nor do they correspond to, specific biomarkers or biological 'types', doesn't make mental / emotional / affective suffering any less 'real' than any physically observed counterparts.

as for texts that will give you some groundwork on psychiatry, i would recommend Anne Harrington's Mind Fixers: Psychiatry's Troubled Search For the Biology of Mental Illness (2019) and Andrew Scull's Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry's Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness (2022) and Psychiatry and Its Discontents (2019). all three of these are heavily focussed on the usa, which is generally overrepresented in historical and sociological literature on psychiatry; however, i still think these three texts are useful starting points for getting introduced to the history of psychiatry and broad contours of critiques of the discipline. i've also posted a longer anti-psychiatry reading list that has more texts focussed on other national and international contexts.

#psychiatry

[syscourse-confessions]

💙- Vent. TW suicide baiting mention, lots of cussing. Replies of any kind OK, idc just need to put this out there

We're a DID system, professionally diagnosed. And we just need to get this off our chest - The DID/OSDD is the single most toxic, hateful, exclusionary, and controlling community we've ever interacted with. That includes communities for every other demographic we occupy (queer, autistic, personality disorder, etc) and every single subculture / fandom we've been apart of as well. .

First of all, the anti-endo shit. Despite being [partially] traumagenic and heavily disordered, we're passionately supportive of endos. And oh boy you better believe that means we get excluded and harassed right away. We've been told to kill ourselves, been told we're lying about our diagnosis and trauma, been told we deserved our trauma, that they hope it happens again, etc. All for the crime of *checks notes* believing that people can determine their own subjective, internal experiences :|

Pretty much all other forms of syscourse are awful too. The fact that there's been entire blogs on here dedicated to trying to spot fakers. The fact that having too many alters or fictives, or not having enough, or not being able to afford a diagnosis, or having weird system experiences, can all get your fakeclaimed. The fact that now people are debating over whether or not OSDD-1a "counts" as a system.

The entire community is absolutely obsessed with controlling how others identify and what qualifies as being a system. They attempt to put boundaries around how severe your trauma has to be, or what age the trauma happens at. They're genuinely willing to look a trauma survivor in the face and say, "Well actually, since your trauma happened when you were 10 years old its impossible for you to be a system, teehee sorry, your own internal experiences don't matter <3".

They think that psychiatrists are the be-all-end-all of every neurodivergent experience Ever, despite how psychiatry has historically been wildly racist, sexist, queerphobic, and just generally suppresses people who don't fit into the norm.

They also try to dictate what recovery looks like for literally everyone, that you should want final fusion. Or if they're ok with functional multiplicity, that you should want to have as few alters as possible, and that they all have to be as normal as possible. Introjects are told that being close to their source is inherently anti-recovery. Every kind of system experience is treated as inherently pathological and something that should be fixed.

And yeah, I know that this obviously not applicable to everyone in the community. Some of these statements are relatively niche arguments, but they're all real ones I've actually seen people debating over. And more importantly, the community fosters these kinds of shitty awful takes because the entire community is built around control and exclusion. It keeps getting taken further and further entire more and more systems are being squeezed out, and only the few Acceptable systems remain.

Thank god we have the plural community, which obviously has it problems too, but the DID/OSDD community is so vitriolic, so vicious towards the "wrong kind" of trauma survivors, and so exclusionary that it is entirely antithetical to recovery and healing as a system. Its so fucking awful, and I hate it more than anything.

💙 - Vent

#syscourse #syscourse confessions #suicide mention #suicide bait mention #suicide baiting mention

[gothhabiba]

do you have like an antipsych masterpost or reading list? ive been meaning to get more people into it but dont know where to start

Here's a short reading list I made last week, including a link to a much longer reading list (The anti-psychiatry bibliography and resource guide) broken down by category ("the mental patient experience," "the politics of sanity and madness," "psychiatry and the law," "psychiatry and women," "alternatives to institutional psychiatry," &c.).

The bibliography and resource guide also includes brief passages that elucidate the history of anti-psych movements, as well as summaries of particular thinkers' views. This article provides a quick rundown of some of the people and movements that coalesced under the banner of "antipsychiatry."

In terms of antipsychiatry as a 'field', David Cooper's works are seminal. R. D. Laing is also influential, though he considered himself an advocator for psychiatric reform (and would also go on to collaborate with the Church of Scientology, under an "enemy of my enemy" principle).

For shorter readings from the perspective of a patient, I'd recommend Wren Ave's blog.

This post (based on this one) was my attempt at an "introduction" to the topic of antipsychiatry.

Basically, I'd recommend finding a topic that interests you (the history of psychiatry? patients' testimonies? underlying logics of pathologisation?) and then find something in the anti-psych bibliography that sounds promising. Anti-psych has quite a few different "prongs" to it and it's best to start out with a topic you feel drawn to.

#psychiatry #Anonymous #questions

[npdmonoma]

Can "narcissistic abuse" be something we consider outside of people with NPD? I don't believe in PDs at all as someone who's been diagnosed with one, and I'm very anti psychiatry. However mechanisms of what's described as "narcissistic abuse" are real phenomena and I'm wondering if we can address these situations without linking it to a diagnosis or condemning people as permanently and irreparably broken because they're making those choices in one context

Actually read some more posts on your blog and I think I found an answer that satisfies me in this topic ... I think the move forward would be to unlink certain constellations of behavior (gaslighting, DARVO, etc.) From having a PD. Honestly recognizing that someone who abused me was likely struggling with NPD made it easier to find empathy for them but I still had questions in my mind about how to address this specific pattern

I added your second ask here so I can address them both at the same time. Starting with your statement about not believing in personality disorders due to being anti-psychiatry, this is a statement I both do and don't agree with. All mental health diagnoses are created by psychiatrists by observing patterns of behavior that they label as aberrant and give a name to. So in that sense, they're "not real" because NPD isn't some objective observable thing. However, as long as anyone finds value in using that framework to understand themselves and hopefully begin healing, it should continue to exist as a concept. I personally find incredible value in the diagnosis, and have made significant strides toward healing and becoming a better person since I started applying that concept to myself.

That being said, I do believe in psychiatric abolition. What you said about not labeling people as inherently broken is part of my dissatisfaction with the state of mental healthcare. People with personality disorders can heal, even if our disorders never fully leave us. There's also reason to believe that the idea that personality disorders almost never go into full remission is either partially or fully false. Either way, we aren't broken. Or at least, we aren't required to view ourselves as such.

Second, you're absolutely correct that the things that get labeled as "narcissistic abuse" are real phenomena. I have never, and will never, deny that people who call themselves narcissistic abuse survivors have experienced abuse. I honestly believe that they did. However, those phenomena aren't inherently linked to NPD. I have yet to see an example of "narcissistic abuse" that wasn't just a textbook example of (usually emotional) abuse. There is no need to call it narcissistic, you can just call it abuse. That's what it is.

And yes, you're very correct that we need to disconnect patterns of abuse from personality disorders. We shouldn't be linking any mental illness/neurodivergence to abusive behavior. All that does is cause stigma that leads to people being hated for something they can't really control, and something that oftentimes was done to them. I don't deserve to be hated for what my abusers turned me into. No one does.

I'm glad you were able to find understanding and empathy for your abuser, as that seems to have been healing for you. I'm genuinely happy for you. However, the fact that in your case you learned something about your abuser that gave you context for what happened doesn't mean that thing is inherently linked to abuse in general. My father was likely autistic, and I can see how this played into his abuse of me. And yet, I would never say he abused me autistically, because he didn't. He just abused me. There are abusers in every demographic that exists, but that doesn't mean that the entire demographic gets discarded. People who have never abused anyone don't deserve to be called abusers, especially when they're abuse victims themselves.

Thank you for your curiosity and for having an open mind about this. I appreciate you taking the time to think this through, and I'm glad I was able to help in some way. My apologies if I went over something you already figured out for yourself, but I figured it was best to be thorough.

#narcissistic dialoguing #abuse tw #npd safe

[librarycards]

hi!! people probably ask this you a lot, sorry but i'm very new to anti psychiatry and wanted to know if you had any recs on where should i start. i've read a couple of articles people have recommended to me but i am not from the us and the cultural difference is hard to assimilate sometimes

I do get it often! Consider this a master list (I'm going to link it on my blog also) of my recommended readings on the subjects of bodymind noncompliance, broadly speaking.

Tags:

antipsychiatry

disability

ableism

madness

psychiatry

antipsychiatry

saneism

fatphobia

intersex

pathologization

Readings & recs:

Intros:

intro to critical disability/Mad studies

intro to transMadness / my transMad scholarship

intro to transMadness - simple language version

introductory works on audio/video

intro to CDS/CMS w/ Mad Studies reader link

queercrip / transMad feminist poetry venues

medical fatphobia

can i be an anti-psych/abolitionist /clinician? masterpost

Misc:

the strawmanning of the "social model" + actual facts

the rhizomatic model of disability

why you shouldn't say "go to therapy"

the false dichotomy of "self harm" and "medical necessity"

Books/Papers

coping with chronic pain

the bodymind

poetry & essays about bodies

anti-functioning labels

nonfiction about autism

books about autism

non-garbage books with mentally ill protagonists

antipsychiatry novels

I'll try to add to this centralized list moving forward. hope you find something useful here!

#ask #anonymous #librarylist #<- find this list via that tag #resources