Healing the rifts between mental health workers and psychiatric survivors (CFS mentioned)

[Tom Kindlon]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/800678807770460160

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/800725431611691008

 

[Mary]

I'm not sure what to think about this. Spandler says in part:

Second, the psychiatrisation of conditions like Myalgic Encephalopathy/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) where organic and physical conditions become ‘all in the mind’. Here, whilst there is a complex inter-relationship between the mind and body, psychiatric reductionism has resulted in a catalogue of instances of maltreatment, neglect and abuse.

She seems to be saying there is mistreatment of ME/CFS patients, but at the same time states there is a body-mind connection resulting in ME/CFS - so apparently it is all in our heads, but we have not been treated properly by the shrinks?

The idea of "healing" this "rift" makes me feel kind of crazy - it's like you get mugged by someone, and then are asked to "heal" the "rift" between you and the mugger (psychiatry).

I guess she's well-intentioned but her thinking seems rather muddled.

 

[sarah darwins]

The idea of "healing" this "rift" makes me feel kind of crazy - it's like you get mugged by someone, and then are asked to "heal" the "rift" between you and the mugger (psychiatry).

I was trying to think how to describe my feelings about this, then you did it for me Exactly.

I don't even want an apology from them. I just want to hear that they're gone, out of our lives, their attempt to redefine an illness out of existence consigned to history.

 

[A.B.]

Get their toxic influence out of our lives. We have enough problems to deal with.

 

[me/cfs 27931]

As a "psychiatric survivor", I'd like to tell my story.

Recently a neuropsychiatrist, after extensive cognitive testing, actually apologized for how I've been treated by the psychiatric profession.

She verified that, in fact, I don't actually have primary major depression, or attention deficit disorder, or borderline personality disorder(!), or dementia, and validated my various debilitating neuro symptoms.

I was floored. No psychiatrist before had ever apologized or even believed my neuro symptoms and PEM were real.

Decades of psych misdiagnoses. Forced lockup following bad responses to new psych treatments. Forced ECT. A decade of exercise therapy combined with various stimulants. 30+ mostly ineffective psych meds, often with intolerable side effects (including seizures, hallucinations, and constant anxiety attacks).

It's quite obvious inappropriate psych treatments and an unmanaged crash/remission disease cycle have resulted in permanent neurological damage, cognitive deficits and liver damage.

When you are sucked in to the black hole of childhood psych misdiagnosis, it's virtually impossible to ever dig your way out and get actual medical care.

Fortunately, my primary care doctor took the time last year to read the Institute of Medicine report, and now sees that pacing, antivirals and LDN relieve my symptoms/help my mood more than any antidepressant.

Healing the rift? I doubt I'm capable of that much forgiveness. But I'll work on it.

 

[JohnCB]

I think Helen Spandler is trying to deal with the wrong stage of the problem. There is no point trying to wash the blood off the road until the car accident victims have been removed from the scene to the hospital or the mortuary as necessary. With psychiatry, as in motorway madness of old, vehicles are still smashing up in the fog and new victims are still dying. You cannot have restorative justice until the source of the injustice has been quelled. You cannot have truth and reconciliation until it is recognised that there is truth to be revealed. In South Africa, they introduced the truth and reconciliation system after the apartheid system was dismantled, people could talk in relative safety, and both sides of the old system recognised there was a need for reconciliation.

At present what we need is a way of understanding that there is institutional bullying and it largely continues despite the hand wringing. Bullying was endemic in schools. First it had to be recognised and it had to be recognised that teachers were also part of the problem with their arcane punishments. First teachers were reined in, then the teachers were in a position to rein in the worst of the pupil population. There is still a way to go but the injustices were recognised and controls put in place.

It is a similar situation with institutionalised sex abuse. First it needs to be recognised that there is a problem, and secondly that it is possible to put in controls to protect people. Perhaps the government enquiry will eventually go some way towards this, but it is still a case of recognised that there is a truth to be revealed. Perhaps in time there can be reconciliation and healing, but not yet. People like Anne-Marie Ellement are still dying but at least her case has shone a light in.

Psychiatry is nowhere near that. It is still a situation of the victims shouting into the darkness and deaf ears choosing not to hear. As with the other cases it is a form of bullying, and it is not trivial bullying. All of these things come out of severe power imbalances. Medicine, especially in bureaucratised medicine, whether that is NHS style socialised medicine or insurance based corporate institutions, has a huge power imbalance, and within that psychiatry is even worse. That is what needs to be addressed. Perhaps UN and other human rights organisations recognise that there is a problem of some kind, but government doesn't and the legal system doesn't. Psychiatry is a wonderful playground for the arrogant and the bullying. They are given huge power to manage themselves and they are given a level of control over individuals that would simply be illegal in any other field.

That is where Helen needs to start, but she is on the inside. She cannot see the overall picture. I wish her well in any attempt to improve matters, but I think that as a PhD rather than an MD she will find that she too is largely powerless.

 

[trishrhymes]

Thank you @Webdog for sharing your experience. Once again I am appalled at the torture inflicted in the name of medicine.

Thank goodness you have at last found sane doctors.

Love and hugs.

 

[Woolie]

The idea of "healing" this "rift" makes me feel kind of crazy - it's like you get mugged by someone, and then are asked to "heal" the "rift" between you and the mugger (psychiatry).

Yea, I get the same feeling when I read statements about how "trust has been lost" between CFS patients and the medical profession. Patients shouldn't have to work to gain the trust of their doctors. That should be implicit in the relationship. Its doctors need to work to gain the trust their patients. The trust burden is entirely on them.

Those statements should read "the medical profession needs to regain the trust of patients".

 

[lauluce]

I'm not sure what to think about this. Spandler says in part:



She seems to be saying there is mistreatment of ME/CFS patients, but at the same time states there is a body-mind connection resulting in ME/CFS - so apparently it is all in our heads, but we have not been treated properly by the shrinks?

The idea of "healing" this "rift" makes me feel kind of crazy - it's like you get mugged by someone, and then are asked to "heal" the "rift" between you and the mugger (psychiatry).

I guess she's well-intentioned but her thinking seems rather muddled.

they are not yet ready to realise they mistake, give them a century of two, IF PSYCHIATRISTS STILL EXIST BY THAT TIME

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I get the feeling this lady is out of her depth. She seems to have little or no insight into the realities of mental illness and the treatments that actually work - sometimes not the cuddliest ones.She may be right on the psychiatrisation of ME but surely what we need is some common sense and admission of incompetence, not healing after more screwing up?

 

[Woolie]

Psychiatry is a wonderful playground for the arrogant and the bullying. They are given huge power to manage themselves and they are given a level of control over individuals that would simply be illegal in any other field.

I was reminded of all this watching Paranoia on Netflix the other day. (alert; spoiler coming). The villain is a shrink who really uses his self-proclaimed knowledge of people's psyches to manipulate and control. Whenever someone in the village tries to question him, he turns it around on them by suggesting they are becoming upset or paranoid and clearly need urgent treatment.

Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?

 

[alex3619]

Here, whilst there is a complex inter-relationship between the mind and body, psychiatric reductionism has resulted in a catalogue of instances of maltreatment, neglect and abuse.

Here is my reading of this: psychiatry has attempted to reduce organic disease to mental disease and this has resulted in neglect and abuse. I think its just worded badly.

 

[worldbackwards]

Here is my reading of this: psychiatry has attempted to reduce organic disease to mental disease and this has resulted in neglect and abuse. I think its just worded badly.

I thought that at first, but I think that 'here' at the beginning is doing a lot of work. I think it's a specific, rather than general, application about the "complex interplay" waffle.

 

[Snow Leopard]

Note, that the current president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (referred to in the quote in Tom's Tweet) is none other than SW.

 

[Solstice]

I was reminded of all this watching Paranoia on Netflix the other day. (alert; spoiler coming). The villain is a shrink who really uses his self-proclaimed knowledge of people's psyches to manipulate and control. Whenever someone in the village tries to question him, he turns it around on them by suggesting they are becoming upset or paranoid and clearly need urgent treatment.

Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it?

That quote you're quoting immediately made my mind go to the stanford prison experiment to be honest. Allthough what you say sounds familiar too.

 

[Luther Blissett]

Opened the article, did word search for consent, no results, closed page.

It's that simple for me.

Until Psychiatry gives a damn about consent, how can its victims 'heal a rift' ?

What would we say about a normal person who ignored consent for money ?

I'm so sorry you had to endure that hell @Webdog , and hope you can find the best way to deal with it possible.

@Solstice , you might be interested in this critique of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and Erich Fromm's criticism of it.

http://www.rabe.org/serious-questions-about-spe/b

Erich Fromm

http://www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/frozim.html

 

[me/cfs 27931]

This thread got me thinking about one of my least favorite past psychiatrists, and I dug up this old news item about him.

Fortunately, I was neither of the patients mentioned in the article.

I do suspect the rifts here are impossible to heal.

Psychiatrist Accused of Improper Sex
Medicine: For second time, officials seek action against Santa Ana doctor over an alleged affair.
November 20, 1998
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/nov/20/local/me-45477

A Santa Ana psychiatrist whose license was suspended in 1987 for having an affair with a patient has been accused by state officials of gross negligence and incompetence for having a sexual relationship with another client.

The accusation, filed by the Medical Board of California last month in Sacramento, seeks to revoke 51-year-old Dr. Jeffrey Moran's medical license. Authorities level seven allegations, including having an improper sexual relationship with the 30-year-old patient, excessively prescribing controlled drugs and asking the patient to deny the affair to the medical board.

He also allegedly lied to police in an attempt to have the patient involuntarily committed to a mental institution.

...

During the liaison, Moran paid her college tuition, rented her a house, paid for her to have breast augmentation and provided excessive amounts of controlled substances--including narcotics and barbiturates--for the patient by writing prescriptions in the name of her friends or family members, according to the accusation.

The relationship turned to crisis in a stormy meeting in his office on Oct. 16, 1996, when Moran's wife confronted him and the patient, according to the accusation. Moran's wife already had threatened to expose his conduct to the medical board unless he ended the affair.

Moran is accused of attacking the patient in an attempt to restrain her when the patient talked about the affair in front of his wife. The board accused Moran of "grabbing her arms, bending her arms and fingers back, shaking her, and throwing her to the floor." The patient struck her head on a bookcase and received bruises on her arms.

At that point, Moran had his wife call police and "falsely and dishonestly" attempted to have sheriff's deputies put the patient in a psychiatric facility on an involuntary committal "as a danger to herself and others," according to the accusation.

....

The board suspended Moran's medical license for six months in 1986 after finding he had a 14-month affair with a patient, who he permitted to drink wine at therapy sessions and with whom he discussed his personal life. This conduct is considered "gross negligence and an extreme departure from the practice of psychiatry," according to the administrative law judge who heard the case.