#antipsych

[trans-axolotl]

idk i think a lot of people sort of build up schizo-spec diagnoses in their head as this example of a "clearly biomedical disease that is the scariest possible example of mental illness that is always a crisis no matter what." and i'm not going to sit here and say that schizoaffective is always pleasant to live with, or pretend that it's something that I can manage perfectly-it does cause me distress a lot of the time, and makes some things very difficult. but for me, psychosis is by far not the most difficult symptom i have to deal with, compared to some of the other things that have brought me distress. And yet it's always the symptom that is reacted to with the most fear, confusion, and disgust by other people. I hate it when people generalize psychosis as always and inherently and forever a crisis, and ignore the fact that everyone who experiences psychosis is going to have their own experiences, perspectives on how it impacts them, and that treating psychosis as a super scary, inherently dangerous symptom is incredibly stigmatizing and prevents us from receiving support and care from our communities.

idk. i just really wish people would realize that for some people, psychosis can sometimes be a neutral or even positive experience (i've had some incredibly lovely psychosis experiences), and that by positioning psychosis as a "super scary disease that has no quality of life" and only offering carceral solutions, it perpetuates a pattern where we get continually pushed into harmful treatments. Instead of a situation where our autonomy is respected, where we're offered a wide variety of treatments from meds to therapies to peer support like Hearing Voices Network to material community based support and where we're allowed to define our own experience of psychosis based on how it actually affects us. like, i don't want to deny that psychosis is often distressing for many of us--but I do think we have the responsibility to evaluate where we've learned about psychosis, what societal messages we've internalized about psychosis, what kinds of knowledge about psychosis do we not have access to, and just actually think in depth about how our biases impact how we communicate about psychosis.

#personal #psychosis #schizo spec #psych abolition #mad liberation #antipsych

[soupmetal666]

I think something people don't understand or often misrepresent about psych wards in the US is that even if you sign yourself in voluntarily, you're often doing so because the alternative is being committed. They tell you you'll be able to leave whenever you want if you go in "voluntarily," but this is very often not true if, once you're admitted, they decide it's "too dangerous" or you're too unstable to let you leave. And then, you're essentially committed anyway. I see posts by people that make it seem like involuntary and voluntary stays are a sort of...binary thing at US hospitals/facilities and it's just not true. Or that voluntary stays are somehow safer or offer people more autonomy. If you go in, they have the final say about when you leave whether you're "voluntary" or not. They can ship you to a state hospital long-term against your will from a "voluntary" stay in a psych ward. I know firsthand. Just...look out for yourselves and your loved ones, folks.

#antipsychiatry #antipsych #institutionalization #psych wards #psych survivor

[serialunaliver]

the reason people on tiktok can't differentiate psychosis from conspiracy theory content is that conspiracy theory content plays into common themes in psychotic delusions, particularly persecutory and paranoid. but someone in the comments of one of these tiktoks mentioned that a lot of these conspiracy theories (qanon resembling paranoid psychosis the most in my opinion) originate from the US specifically, and this points to something other than mental illness. it's a political climate that encourages this sort of thinking and behavior--the individual is most important, defend yourself from your neighbors, community corrupts children. it has been observed that schizophrenic people in the US hear more violent voices and overall have a more terrifying experience with the condition. they feel alienated from communities around them and are abandoned by loved ones.

there is a semi-recent mass shooter in the US who, before the crime, experienced paranoid delusions and hallucinations. while such extreme violence from psychotic people is not the norm, if you read about his family, they are qanon fanatics who believe an apocalypse is coming. an environment that encourages and validates delusions that--out of all types of delusional thinking--are most likely to lead to violence against others. this man had been hospitalized for psychosis before but did not receive proper support from family after and had access to weapons despite the persecutory delusions.

now i'm seeing an increasing amount of younger people from the US noticing these things--well, specifically, the paranoid and violent conspiracy theories and how terrifyingly popular they are among the general population. to dismiss it as simply illness ignores the larger problem. it's highly unlikely the 200k people who liked a conspiracy video are all schizophrenic*. but they are instead people who consider this sort of thinking not only correct, but patriotic. and they are isolating their children to instill the exact same mindset in them. it's a cycle that will never be broken if it's dismissed as a flaw in the individual's brain.

*psychosis is a very debilitating condition and involves more than just "weird beliefs". this is why every goddamn doctor is able to identify me as psychotic by me simply interacting with people and the world around me. a psychotic person will not engage with others the way conservative conspiracy grifters do. stop tying everything to mental illness.

#seriousposting #psychosis #antipsych

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

it's so annoying when i criticize a structure or system as being, quite factually, inherently abusive and severely harming the people forced to be in it, and someone comes in with "but people NEED that system? isn't it ableist to say we should get rid of a thing people NEED?"

like i don't know how many more ways i can say "the fact that people literally need this system and rely on it to live means the system doesn't have room to be even mildly flawed, much less actively fucking abusive."

the only available system for legal guardianship being abusive means people die. the only available system for receiving psych medication being abusive means people die. the only available system for income & housing for people too disabled to work being inherently abusive means people die. the people who aren't outright killed by these abusive systems live in abject poverty and under constant surveillance, endure constant trauma, have no legal recourse to escape abuse. the people who are subject to these systems are surviving them, not being helped by them, and that is completely unacceptable. How Much More Clear Can I Get.

#dyspunktional #cripplepunk #cripple punk #mad liberation #antipsych #madpunk #antipsychiatry

[scaryarcade]

nobody in the fucking world is obligated to go to therapy. "not going to therapy" is never a moral failure. the only thing you're obligated to do is to treat other people with respect. the idea that therapy is the only path to being a person who's safe to be around is so fucking warped and rotten i can't believe how deeply ingrained it is in our society that even well-meaning people parrot it without thinking

#abyssposting #antipsych #idk the wording on this one got away from me. #i need to go do homework though lol.

[genderkoolaid]

btw if you are/have ever been suicidal or want to hear about suicide from an antipsych queer disabled perspective. read alexandre baril's Undoing Suicidism. you can buy it (which I do recommend) or get it free here (also his og paper on suicidism & this plain language explanation of suicidism)

tbh i never want to hear another discussion about suicide and how it relates to oppression that doesn't discuss suicidism. ive been suicidal nearly my entire life and his writing is the first time ive felt seen by a perspective on suicide that didn't alienate me for having the Wrong Feelings about my own suicidality. also, alexandre baril is a trans man, and while he does not specifically bring up the high rates of suicidality amongst transmascs, i love supporting transmasc academics and i find it interesting that one wrote such a radical perspective on suicide. rlly cannot recommend this enough. he also specifically tried to write a book that would be accessible to people who struggle with reading academic texts.

#m. #suicide #antipsych #suicidism

[neuroticboyfriend]

not that people who've been to the ward are immune from being pro-psych, but if you've never been to a psych ward*, i sincerely don't want to hear about how psychiatry/psychology is good because you've had such a good experience with X provider, or X medication saved your life. *i also don't want to hear about how the forced treatment was what you needed or how the ward you went to let you have your cellphone etc. etc. i genuinely do not want to hear it.

like. the first hospitalization traumatized me so bad, i became dangerously delusional, was re-hospitalized, and sent to state. when they transferred me, i was strapped down into a gurney at all points on my body, *head and neck included*, and loaded onto an ambulance. my parents lost most of their parental rights; i was a ward of the state and had near zero rights. when i got there, they made me choose if, "if necessary," if i wanted to be wrangled down and forcibly injected with a sedative... or wrangled down and locked in a padded room all by myself (but at least i had a choice, right?). i signed consents and paperwork that i did not fucking understand. then i was told i'd be locked inside for 2 straight weeks (which yes, they followed through with). the psych ward was remote, nothing but barbed fences and trees around us. cant even see the sun through the heavily tinted windows. that was the *start* of the stay. i'm sure you can imagine nothing good came after.

so like. if you walk out of a place like that thinking it was good for you, then i can only imagine how traumatized you are and i hope you heal someday. but if you've never faced the destruction of your autonomy like that and go around being like "oh this is good actually" then shut the ever living fuck up.

#julian rants #this is okay to rb but im mainly venting #psych ward #psych survivor #psych ward tw #abuse tw #sanism #ableism #antipsychiatry #antipsychology #antipsych #psychiatric abuse #psychiatric trauma #trauma #psych abolition #psych hospital #psychiatric hospital #inpatient

[dromaeocore]

So, Peer Respites are a not-very-well-known alternative to psychiatric hospitalization. They are 100% voluntary and staffed by peers, AKA individuals with lived experience of mental illness/emotional distress/what-have-you. Generally, they are a homelike environment where you can come and go as you please, and there is lots of voluntary programming like groups, art, yoga, etc. You can bring your own food or cook meals together with staff and other residents. Stays are usually anywhere from five days to two weeks, depending on the respite house and also your own wants and needs. There are no restraints, strip searches, or seclusion.

They're also on the rise!! I know this because I've spent all day today compiling data on peer respites in the US so I could create this fun graph for ya'll.

In the past ten years, at least 38 new peer respites have opened in the US. The data for 2023 is incomplete, but at least one has already opened, and another is scheduled for a soft opening later this year.

Some things about the data:

I did not include peer respites which were permanently closed (2) or could not find an opening date for (1)

I used the National Empowerment Center's Directory of Peer Respites, along with some internet sleuthing to find a few more (and to find the opening dates for each one). Because of this, I may have missed a few.

There were a handful of peer respites for which I could not pin down a for-certain, exact date for. I did include these in the dataset as I was able to find rough estimates.

I have also not done a deep dive for all peer respites that were unsuccessful, which may skew the data a little bit.

I included Soteria Vermont as well, as it technically fits the definition despite being specifically for people with psychosis

If you would like to help get a peer respite off the ground, I would recommend donating to Peer Support Space Inc.'s Orlando FL Peer Respite. Their soft launch is November 2023, and they are scheduled to open to the public in January 2024. This is really important, because Florida's only peer respite has recently permanently closed.

If you're interested in starting your own peer respite, the National Empowerment Center has a list of resources here.

If you are interested in seeking help from a peer respite, there is a directory of most of them here. You can also look at the Google Doc I created to compile my data, which has a few more/is slightly more updated - though it's not nearly as nicely put together as the other one!

If anyone would like to add any information, non-US peer respites, etc, feel free to!

#peer respites #peer respite #psych ward #psych hospital #psychiatric hospitalization #psych critical #psychiatry critical #anti psychiatry #antipsych #antipsychiatry #mental illness #neurodivergency #disability #hospital diversion #psychiatry #disability pride month #psychiatric survivors #putting in all the tags I can think of so ppl see this lol

[creekfiend]

Alfie just linked me to this review of the DSM IV that is written as if it is a dystopian novel and it is the best thing I've ever read in my life

Excerpt: 'This mad project is clearly something that its authors are fixated on to a somewhat unreasonable extent. In a retrospectively predictable ironic twist, this precise tendency is outlined in the book itself. The entry for obsessive-compulsive disorder with poor insight describes this taxonomical obsession in deadpan tones: “repetitive behavior, the goal of which is […] to prevent some dreaded event or situation." Our narrator seems to believe that by compiling an exhaustive list of everything that might go askew in the human mind, this wrong state might somehow be overcome or averted. [...] A mad person is like a faulty machine. The pseudo-objective gaze only sees what they do, rather than what they think or how they feel. A person who shits on the kitchen floor because it gives them erotic pleasure and a person who shits on the kitchen floor to ward off the demons living in the cupboard are both shunted into the diagnostic category of encopresis. It’s not just that their thought-process don’t matter, it’s as if they don’t exist. The human being is a web of flesh spun over a void."

GET THEIR (THE AMERICAN PYSCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION'S) ASS!!!!!!!!

#kill kill kill #antipsych

[equalperson]

i think we should always take predominant sexes and races for psychiatric disabilities into question.

are men really more likely to be antisocial or narcissistic, or are women just overlooked because ASPD/NPD are seen as too "aggressive" for them?

are women really more likely to be borderline or histrionic, or are they just seen as so "hysterical" that they have to be feminine?

are black people more likely to have schizophrenia or ODD, or are labels of "psychosis" and "defiance" simply used to further dismiss, oppress, and imprison BIPOC?

are white people more likely to have autism and ADHD, or are doctors just more willing to accept that white children are disabled and not just "bad?"

oppressive biases are everywhere in psychiatry. never take psychiatric demographics at face value.

#hi i'm back. i got covid and also into anti-psychiatry #anti-psychiatry #antisocial personality disorder #narcissistic personality disorder #borderline personality disorder #histrionic personality disorder #schizophrenia #oppositional defiant disorder #autism #ADHD #sexism mention #racism mention #antipsych #ASPD #NPD #BPD #HPD #ASD #antipsychiatry #anti psychiatry #anti-psych #anti psych

[trans-axolotl]

saw a post the other day that said that psych survivors were overexaggerating and fearmongering for saying that people should be aware that having diagnoses on your record can be a danger + impede your life. and the more i think about it the more annoyed i am. because i think people need to know that there are exceptions to health privacy laws that can make having psych diagnoses and psych hospitalization history on your record risky depending on your circumstances. diagnoses follow you through your health interactions-you do not have to consent to have your information shared between providers. judicial proceedings are also an exception to the HIPAA privacy rule, so for things like custody battles, guardianship, getting orders of protection--the court can petition for medical records. there's so many other situations where even if they can't legally access your information without your authorization, people will require you to disclose diagnoses, records, previous hospitalizations and refuse to give you services/hire you/whatever unless you share that information with them. for example in many states anyone (a provider, a cop, friends and family) can disclose that you have certain psych diagnoses like bipolar to the DMV which then might require that you undergo drivers license review as frequently as every 3 months. my university is actively trying to kick me out right now because i had to disclose my medical record, psych diagnoses, and hospitalization history to them as a requirement to stay enrolled.

and i don't want to scare people or make people think that having a diagnosis on their records is automatically going to mean that it is weaponized against us. because i do know plenty of people who have never faced issues with their records. but i do expect that the community supports the people speaking out about the ways that we have been harmed by diagnoses creating barriers to accessing necessary parts of our life. instead of attacking us or saying that we're lying about things we are currently experiencing.

#personal #antipsych #antipsychiatry #mad pride #mad liberation #saneism #it's just like. i think we need to be realistic! and not deny people who are literally talking about things happening to them #and also allow people who have the option. to make informed choices about seeking diagnosis #bc for many of us that isn't up to us. but if you are considering seeking formal diagnosis. there can absolutley be some good and helpful #things that come from that! im not denying that at all! but there's also some negatives #and i think also like. if people refuse to acknowlege the ways this is structurally a problem #how are we going to make it better so that we don't have to deal with thsi stuff

[melanovia]

I feel like people forget psychiatry is a paradigm we created with flaws and biases of our own and not something divinely decreed by reality . many forms of treatment are designed to profit off people's symptoms ongoingly without finding solutions in a holistic way. not to mention the ableism of how it's diagnosed which often stigmatizes people ("personality disorders") without recognizing the root cause (which is often a response to trauma/survival). Throughout history people have been damaged by treatments seeking to make them more palatable to society rather than improve their quality of life.

also the way that diagnoses are weaponized against patients. "oh, they're a (____), so you can't trust what they have to say." leaving them vulnerable to systematic abuse.

#saying this as someone whose mother was institutionalized throughout their life #and a sibling whose psychosis was triggered by medication #antipsych

[serialunaliver]

i've seen posts talk about psychs restricting or withholding medication and want to add the opposite, there are psychs who push or require patients to take unneeded medication and overmedication is also a problem of autonomy not often brought up because it's done to patients where people consider it "necessary", like psychotic patients. we are then excluded from treatment programs or treatment itself for questioning this or refusing the medication. schizophrenic long-term patients have loss of brain tissue as a result.personally I have diagnosed neurological conditions now.

so both restriction of meds and overmedication should be considered same issue with lack of autonomy of the patient and there is not enough awareness of the effects of the medication, mostly because it's *assumed* the psych "knows best"

#antipsych #seriousposting

[chronicbitchsyndrome]

i need everyone to understand that not all medication stigmas are equal or even comparable.

yes, you can experience stigma for going on adderall for your adhd, and you can be prevented from accessing that systemically because the medication is so stigmatized. the premise in a lot of psychiatric structures is often that you should be able to function without your adderall or your anti-anxiety meds, and so you must be forced to do so.

those exact same structures and people are likely to force a psychotic person to go on antipsychotics, because the stigma against psychotics is a stigma against us being unmedicated. we are seen as inherently needing medication, as being dangerous and violent without it.

those two things coexist! some pathologies structurally force individuals slapped with those labels into unwanted medication, and some pathologies structurally prevent individuals slapped with those labels from accessing desired medication. not all medication stigma is equal or comparable. when you see a post offering positivity for people who are unmedicated, it's targeted towards groups of people who are forced on unwanted medication, which is a demographic that exists!

#antipsych #madpunk #dyspunktional

[scaryarcade]

LMAO. yeah haven't you heard? psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses serve to protect disabled people from eugenics! you can google 'psychiatry and eugenics' to find out more

#antipsych #abyssposting

[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