quote:
I choose "to dance with the man that brung me." Psychiatry has provided me with relief from some of the worst of my symptoms. It has literally saved my life. My illness is a treatable disease. It is also considered a disorder. You, of course, are free to call it whatever you like.
As are you, and there's no denying that many folks find psychiatric treatment to be akin to a miracle, something that enables them to live and thrive.
As long as you respect my right to define my difference in other terms, believe me I have no intention of depriving you (or others who wish for and benefit from psych meds & other psych treatments) of what works for you.
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I don't think we have to worry about being snatched from SDMB and placed in a hospital against our will just because of something said here.
I wouldn't expend any energy worrying about that, because you could also get snatched up and placed in a hospital against your will for what you said in a college classroom, or for the "please clean up your mess" sign you posted in the coffee area at work, or for having long or short hair, or for believing or not believing in God, or for wearing your baseball cap backwards -- in other words, for damn near anything at all because under the right circumstances anything at all can be considered indicative of your need for treatment.
One of the more famous stories in movement lore is that of Leonard Roy Frank. He was an investment professional of some sort with a six-digit income and then got laid off, and with plenty of money saved up in his personal account he decided to take some time out and get in touch with his roots (Jewish, non-observant parents) and grew his hair out long & with peyot curls and beard, became vegetarian, got immersed in the Torah, etc. His folks came to visit, freaked out that he was doing this instead of seeking a job commensurate with his experience and prior salary, and spoke to their family doctor, who spoke to a psychiatrist he knew, who arranged to meet Leonard Roy Frank and upon doing so had him committed involuntarily, held him for quite some time, had him electroshocked as well as drugged (involuntarily in both cases), and who identified the goals of Frank's therapy as the dropping of all these recent changes in his life.
Nor is it by any means always family members' involvement that precipitates these things. Huey Freeman was in a condo or hotel lobby waiting for his girlfriend to come down to meet him and he was dressed fairly downscale for the building, and a person he did not know starting asking him questions about his dress and demeanor and Freeman replied with some variation on "who asked you?" or "I wear what I please" and added that it was a free country, yes? The person to whom he was speaking was a psychiatrist, identified himself as such, informed Freeman that he had problems and that he (the shrink) could help him and that he (Freeman) should come to his clinic for treatment, and when Freeman expressed a lack of interest, the psychiatrist had him committed and held him involuntarily for quite some time and subjected him to forced treatment. I've met Freeman (was on a talk-radio presentation with him years ago).
I'm sure many of you would like non-subjective, non-anecdotal references for the occurrence of this kind of thing. So would we, but how does one get objective quantitative stats? Get the states to pass laws requiring psychiatric facilities to report the percentage of involuntary commitments where the patient was not really a believable danger and was just minding his/her own businesss? We know it occurs often enough to fuel a rather angry portion of our movement.
Sort of happened to me. I upset my RA and a couple of other folks on campus with some things I'd written excitedly late at night and xeroxed and handed to them, asking them for their opinions. In my case my commitment was voluntary, but I did not understand that what I was signing was other than an "I agree to talk to the doctor and I do so of my own free will", there was nothing on that paper that indicated that I would be deprived of shoelaces and belt and placed on a locked ward and held for a couple weeks -- I just figured I'd talk to the 'nice doctor' for an hour and we'd argue about Freud and potty training and whether my writings were brilliant insights or if instead my excitement over them was misplaced blah blah blah, and then I'd go back to my classes and the folks I'd upset would quit bugging me to talk to the shrinks about it.
PART of the problem is that the psychiatric system doesn't have a good protocol for admitting and treating someone who is upset and mentally scrambled from horrible things that have happened to them in real life, but that's where they get taken nonetheless. So people with a nine-year history of childhood sexual abuse and survivors of Bosnian concentration camps get diagnoses bipolar or depressed or schizophrenic. Yet these are supposedly diagnostic categories for people with organic brain dysfunctions -- sloppy sloppy sloppy sloppy!!! Indeed, the inter-rater reliabilitiy of psychiatric diagnoses is right around chance level (i.e., if two doctors independently assess a person without knowledge of the findinds of the other, chances are no better than a roll of the dice that the disgnoses will overlap even in broad categories). Small wonder that so many folks in our movement do not believe "mental illness" exists as a genuine physiological phenomenon at all!
I've mostly been inclined to think maybe it does, that there is a "difference in wiring" that makes one more likely to end up with the psychiatric diagnostic label, although I also believe that anyone can go into the mental state called "schizophrenia" or the one called "depression" under the right set of circumstances (and no I'm not confusing the blues with depression).
Look, folks. We have been told we are different, and that our difference justifies your doctors treating us in ways we don't necessarily want to be treated, because our difference is an "illness". And certainly there are many of us who wish we were normal and also say that it is an illness. In 1961, you would have heard very very similar things being said about (and by) gay people. Would you, in 1961, have said "No, no, it's a difference and it's biological in nature and real and all that, but it's not an inferiority and certainly not a disease, and unless they want to be changed and made 'normal', it's not our place to try to normalize them" -- ??
No, I think if you are honest, most of you would say that you would not have been able to say that in 1961. (Some of you clowns will say that's because you weren't alive in 1961. You know damn good and well what I mean ). You would not have come to think of gay folks in that way until there was a movement which expressed this viewpoint along with some justifiable anger and liberationist outrage.
That's why we have a movement. Grant that we may enjoy at least a modicum of the success attained by the gay rights movement. I'd like to start with the sophisticated people who constitute this board.
That includes you folks who go to psychiatrists and benefit from what
they provide you. We need to come together in such a way that we are not
speaking for you and you are not speaking for us. Or rather in such a way
that we remember to speak for each other's contingent when we do speak.
I said "the difference becomes a disability only when, on an individual
basis, we find it to be one". When one finds it to be a disability,
one is entitled to receive the special care and considerations due to other
disabled people, where special provisions must be made in order to maximize
their ability to participate in society, but without a mantle of CRIPPLED
draped over your head as a consequence. To have autonomy held in the highest
regard. To receive treatment in the least restrictive setting. To have access.
To have insurance companies told that they cannot deny you the treatments
needed to be able to function in society. And to have a consumer voice.
See my next post on this same thread
See my previous post on this same thread
Original SDMB thread Is manic-depression a disease to be cured?