#abolish psychiatry

[mayashwood]

I am still off my meds. I'm so fking off my meds lol.

Observations:

It's like having a migraine, only all the time, at the same time as having the flu, I'm constantly either sweating profusely or shivering or both, I'm dizzy, tying shoelaces is extremely difficult, I'm having mild visual and auditory hallucinations all the time, and sleep doesn't really exist as a separate state from unsleep any more, instead it's like the two have sort of melded into a constant waking nightmare where I drag this bag of flesh around for two days or so having panic attacks until it basically can't stand up or speak any more, then collapse into bed for a few hours to writhe and literally scream at the horrors I can no longer prevent from intruding into reality.

Critical Commentary:

While the experiences I'm having at the moment are markedly different from the way I experience reality (if you can call it that) when I'm on my meds, I honestly can't say that they're definitely objectively worse, being on my meds was kind of fucking shit too, I'd just been on them for over a decade, so I'd got used to it, and there was considerable pressure to accept that because, you know, stuff like my marriage and my job and the approval of society at large were so obviously contingent upon compliance, otherwise you're the BAD kind of mad person who won't do what they're told is good for them, so it's their own stupid fault they're mad.

Also, I just cold turkeyed a moderate dose of an SNRI I'd been on for 5 years, and a TeCA I'd been on since like 2013, things, I'm told, are bound to get kinda wild, and yeah, that checks out, but also its kinda fine, like with getting on the meds in the first place, you just have to find a place of acceptance that this is your new reality. At least with my meds set to the off position, there's a realistic hope that things might improve.

Verdict:

Look, I can't really be like: 10/10, would recommend, quit your meds cold turkey everybody (that feels irresponsible, you do you), but the feeling has been growing in me for years now that getting on these fucking drugs in the first place, which by the way, are just the least fun drugs I've ever done by a long shot, was a terrible lapse, motivated by cowardice in the face of the judgement of others, and the only drugs I ever really NEEDED to be on were weed and estrogen, and I know it's early doors, and I'm very used to having to make room for the possibility of failure in all my endeavours, but at this stage, I'm very happy with my choices.

Wish me luck.

[crippleprophet]

save me drugs.com

[wheelie-sick]

okay I thought I'd give a little bit of information about antipsychiatry because I want to dispel some myths

What antipsychiatry is:

The assertion that psychiatry is an inherently abusive framework and institution that must be abolished.

What antipsychiatry questions

The way psychiatric medications are used

The way madness is categorized

The defining of madness as an illness at all

The defining of madness as "unnatural" and sanity as "natural"

The medicalization of behaviors that are perceived as inconvenient but cause no harm

The medicalization of behaviors, beliefs, and experiences that do not cause suffering

The use of mental health related diagnoses as a tool for the state

What antipsychiatry is not*

The belief that no one should take medication

The belief that mental illness is "fake"

The belief that mental illness does not cause suffering

The belief that seeking help for madness is "stupid" or wrong

The belief that no one has been helped by psychiatry

The belief that no one would benefit from help (generally, not from psychiatry specifically) for their madness

The belief that after psychiatry there should be no support for mad folks

*some antipsychiatrists may believe these things but they are not inherent to the ideology

What antipsychiatrists want

An end to psychiatry as an institution

An end to psychiatric abuse including involuntary institutionalization

Autonomy for mad folks

What antipsychiatrists don't want

People to kill themselves or otherwise hurt themselves

[bioethicists]

psychiatrists do not provide access to medications. they selectively restrict access to medications. regardless of your personal relationship with your individual psychiatrist, the broader power structures in place are that psychiatrists are a barrier you must cross (again + again + again) to receive psychiatric medications. some people are shoved across this barrier against their will; some people are forbidden to ever cross it. but if you begin to understand this as a system of restricting access rather than providing access, you will understand that abolishing psychiatry would not destroy your access to medication, but instead make it easier.

before accusing me of trying to "take away your access to meds" through my activism or opinions, ask yourself this: who in your life, right now, has the power to restrict your access to psychiatric medication? why? what expectations do you have to meet in order to continue to access these medications? who enforces them? can you think of anything you might do or say that would cause you to lose access to these medications? have you ever had to pretend to be feeling or doing something differently in order to retain access to medications? have you ever had your medications arbitrarily changed against your will due to insurance, financial, or behavioral issues? have you ever had to 'prove' yourself in order to obtain specific medications (perhaps stimulants or opioids?)? has a provider ever threatened to take away your prescriptions in response to something you said or did? have you been told or do you believe that you need your access restricted because you "can't be trusted" or "lack insight"?

if want to find the people trying to limit your access to medication, i suggest starting with the provider name on your pill bottles.

[sudokufriend]

anyways, if it’s not seen as wildly irresponsible to advise (or even pressure) people in your lives who are struggling, to go to therapy, then in that same vein it should not be seen as dangerous or misinformed to warn people you know off of going to therapy.

otherwise, you should be prepared to bear the burden, should your loved one - that you advised - be placed on a medication that has adverse effects (including tardive dyskinesia, shortened life span, slowing of metabolic rate, increase risk of organ diseases and neurological diseases), or be killed by the system, or have their bodily autonomy taken away, or be diagnosed with a disorder that makes it impossible for them to express fear or worry of a threat, or end up with worse trauma. or indeed kill themselves after therapy/psychology/psychiatry proves at best ineffective and at worst deeply traumatic and life altering.

this sounds harsh, this sounds very harsh. but if someone had told me in 2019, at the age of 15, when i was beginning to have panic attacks over the inevitability of climate change, that 6 years later i would be dealing with daily nightmares from psychiatric incarceration, and wouldn’t be able to see a medical doctor (as in, physical health) without having my mental state questioned, and would be grappling with the negative physical effects from psychiatric medications, i might have hesitated. i might not have sought out psychology. but ultimately i did go ahead. because therapy, to much of our world, is a low risk high reward endeavour, when truly it is high risk and very very low reward.

yeah the joke is funny but it’s actually really sad that people who are struggling can’t be candid about experiencing suicidality without threat of incarceration. and that the role ‘mental health’ professionals play in enforcing state policy is so normalised that everyone in these comments finds it funny. what kind of fucked up system insists that those deemed mentally ill must be subjected to therapy and then can’t even allow those trying to glean whatever small benefits are possible, to be genuine and talk about their real feelings?

also what’s particularly horrible is the self confessed therapist saying that ‘y’all ain’t slick’ as if incarcerating people and subjecting them to state violence is funny. fucking man…

[giritina]

I think sometimes about how so many people discourage labels and specificity and pathologizing anything about yourself and frame it as countercultural. Meanwhile, people in the mainstream will tell you the same. I think about this because I have talked with a lot of people about the schizophrenia spectrum who absorbed the idea that diagnosis doesn't matter, labels don't matter, just get help for who you are... and they felt empty and hopeless. The therapy wasn't working, the medicine wasn't working. Their symptoms didn't make them look different than other people on the outside, but on the inside, their experience was specific. The specificity is the only thing that gave them the chance to find any solace at all.

The DSM is flawed, but I question those that seem to want to abolish psychiatry and specificity and claim we're all experiencing one thing. We're all experiencing the trauma of the outside world. There's no reason for these words. Etc etc. There's clearly some scientific flaw in categorization when most people will walk out of a psych eval with a long list of disorders, but I resent those who say that the simple discomfort of seeing a long list is what's wrong there; that specificity, "pathology", is the enemy. When you have a word for a specific experience, you can research it, you can help it. If we name every bacteria, we can understand each one, but naming mental illnesses seems to make even mental health professionals uncomfortable. So many people deny us specificity. They hate it when we come and ask to be treated for X thing we suspect we have. They hate when we form an identity around our mental condition. They fold everything into one big name. Anxiety. Depression. CPTSD. Then we accept that and try to get help, and we feel nothing. We try to form an identity, and we're told that forming an identity around a diagnosis is pathologizing and wrong. Even some leftists want to tell you it's wrong. It's unnatural. There's no point to it.

Meanwhile, I always remember reading how people with schizophrenia spectrum illnesses seemed to benefit greatly from narrative therapy where they related and made community over their collective oppression. They used schizophrenia and ableism to unite and be more than an individual, but also to be something that really tangibly in the world at all. Disability theory brings us together, a refusal to view the self as any different from abled people often only isolates us.

(From Recovery of the Self in Psychosis)

[atsoine]

antipsych brothers we need to be a bit more nuanced please. yes diagnoses are made up names for collections of symptoms and often hold people back and in the psychiatry system create classist divisions between who can and cant get help and how humane that help will be but ALSO, those symptoms? they still exist. theyre still real. like yes the system is broken and needs to be abolished and completely changed but also! mental illness is still real and still does affect people. dont tip into ableism with your activism PLEASE.

[prettyplzwithacherryontop]

we need to just abolish all therapy and psychiatry for a while. lets also burn every attachment you have to your diagnosis. its an excuse to do nothing about your situation, and its way easier to do that than to think you have any power in changing. they want you to bind your personality to it, to chain you to an idea that doesnt change.

[tarrare-big-naturals]

Reblogging to add onto this because I know there will be some confused about the fact that this post exists in the replies:

Most hotlines in the USA are underneath the NSPL or National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988), who has made it sometimes VERY clear that their goal is to be the ONLY lifeline in the US. It shouldn't have to be explained but, obviously, this is bad for a number of reasons, including but not limited to the insane medical costs and trauma of being forcefully admitted to a psych ward, and the heightened risk of being killed by a cop if you're BIPOC or neurodivergent. I don't want to taper off topic too much here (I actually made a post ages ago similar to the one OP is looking for, actually) but just know that while sources may say that 988 gets police involved in less that 3% of calls, that is still a LOT of people and an article published this year by Mad In America highlights how these interventions further traumatize people and ruin lives, both through personal stories and statistics. (The rate of suicide post involuntary hospitalization is over 100 times greater than the average.)

Spread warmlines. Abolish carceral care. Keep each other (and yourselves) safe.

hey where’s that post about how it’s important to be aware before recommending/calling suicide hotlines that They Will Call The Cops On You. i have it saved somewhere but i can’t find it & i want to reblog it today For No Particular Reason

[hyperlexichypatia]

Because I talk a lot about antipsychiatry/ Mad liberation/ neurodiversity/ abolition, I get a lot of people asking for advice about their emotional distress or "mental health" issues, and, like... I am not good at giving advice on that. I'm not. And... I mean, look, I don't want to say I don't care. As a person, I care. I don't want you to be suffering! I care about that! But it's not... really relevant to the topic.

It's more like. If someone is talking about the social and political construction of marriage as a legal and economic institution, property rights, and the marriage equality movement, and you jumped in to ask "My wife and I fight all the time, do you think we should get divorced?" Like. That's a valid question! And maybe you should seek advice on that! But it's not actually The Topic.

And when I'm talking about the social construction of "mental health" and psychiatric oppression and the legal and cultural implications of conceptualizing cultural issues as a function of "the brain" and the invocation of "the brain" and "intelligence" and "mental health" moral panic to justify infringement of civil liberties... and you ask me "But I'm really depressed, so what should I do about that?" Like. It's not that I don't care! I do care! I don't want you to be depressed! It's just not that relevant to what I'm talking about, and also, I'm absolutely, I cannot emphasize this enough, supremely unqualified to give advice on that topic.

To be abundantly clear, I don't mean that I'm unqualified to give advice on that topic because you should ask a therapist or psychiatrist instead. My whole point is that they also probably won't help you with this. But that doesn't mean I can. I mean. For me personally, my entire strategy for dealing with emotional distress is a degree of emotional repression that would make Surak of Vulcan say "I think you're taking this a little far." But for some reason I'm not supposed to go around recommending that strategy.

But if I say that, then I get "Oh-HO, so you throw stones at psychiatry, but you don't offer any alternative solutions to the problem!" which. To be clear. I don't accept the framing of. I don't believe that the intent or function of psychiatry is to solve the problem of emotional distress. The intent and function of psychiatry is to classify humans into Correct and Incorrect Cognition-Types, and draw boundaries around which Cognition-Types are so Incorrect that those people can ethically be stripped of all human rights. Any effect, positive or negative, on emotional distress, is purely incidental. And, you see, I do, in fact, have an alternative solution to the problem -- the alternative solution is to abolish the concept of Correct and Incorrect Cognition-Types and extend human rights to all humans. I don't feel especially obligated to come up with an "alternative solution" for human emotional distress, because that's a largely unrelated problem.

But I hate saying this to people who ask me for advice on emotional distress, because it sounds like I'm saying I don't care about your problems. I do care. It's just not what I know about or can particularly offer any insight into.

[carnivorescarnival]

i am genuinely at the point where i think that if you believe in abolishing the police and abolishing prisons, you cannot remain neutral on the matter of psychiatry. i do not understand where this cognitive dissonance comes from. either you understand how institutional violence works or you don't.

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Hi. I don't know if you're the right person to ask this, but I have a question about psych abolition. I've noticed that it comes hand-in-hand with deinstitutionalization for disabled people, which is a good thing as long as the energy is redirected to making sure they're given the support they need. But I've noticed that this is becoming no permanent residential, inpatient, or long-term care, because sometimes those are forced on people when not necessary, but I worry about how complete deinstitutionalization would impact the people who need high levels of care in order to survive, like people who need to live in complex care facilities because they need constant access to medical care. There are some disabilities that do require that or else the person will die. And obviously their rights in these facilities are being denied and that needs to stop, but a lot of people are saying that the solution is to get rid of the facilities entirely and I worry people aren't thinking about those people who need them (or they acknowledge that these people exist but are essentially going "People die under these institutions so what does it matter if other people die as a result of these institutions being abolished" which is essentially treating them as expendable for the greater good.) They should absolutely be considered in this for their rights, yes, but also for their wellbeing in the abolitionist future. I just worry people with severe disabilities aren't being considered here and that people are applying the massive issue of unnecessary care to literally everyone and not considering that some people absolutely need high levels of care, I'm worried about what happens to them and was wondering if you knew.

Ideally abolishing abusive psychiatric institutionalization shouldn't mean that no disabled people can receive full-time care. I get that in a capitalist, eugenicist and increasingly fascist society, people in power will try to cut corners everywhere they can when it comes to the care of disabled people, and it is a valid concern that deinstitutionalization will and has been used in such a manner in the current context. But the institutions aren't the only thing I hope to see change in this world. And I don't think we can really fix psychiatry or more generally make the world a just place for disabled people without questioning and changing a lot of other things also.

[the-alarm-system]

Guys please stop lying, being anti psych does mean abolish psychiatry, and it especially means abolish all psych wards. Don’t know why this is going past your heads or why you guys keep telling other people this. Abolish ALL psychiatry.

[wheelie-sick]

I find it wildly contradictory for someone to be an anarchist and pro-psych.

you cannot define yourself by your opposition to oppressive power structures then subsequently leave mentally ill people behind. you cannot define yourself by your opposition to oppressive power structures then decide the ones that oppress mentally ill people are fine and justified

anti-psych does not say that all mental healthcare must be abolished. what anti-psych does say is that the *oppressive power structures* found in the psychiatric system must be abolished. anti-psych does say that a new system of support, one where everyone is on equal ground, must follow.

if you are not in favor of abolishing the oppressive power structures in psychiatry then you are not upholding anarchist values. you don't get to decide that some oppressive systems of power are fine while others aren't. none of us are free until all of us are free.

[atthecenterofeverything]

(this is for the faq/something i’m sincerely curious about, not a gotcha) how does anti-psych conceptualize how some psych medications do benefit some people with certain clusters of symptoms and presentations? there seems to be an extremely common misunderstanding(?) that anti-psych = anti-drugs associated with psychiatry, that’s reinforced by (valid) critiques and observations of the relationship between drug developers and diagnostic schemes. is there a liberatory framework with which we can understand the use of drugs classed as psychiatric meds without falling into/reinforcing chemical imbalance fallacies?

yep, "is anti-psych against treatment/therapy/drugs?" or "but forced instutionalization/ECT/neuroleptics have helped me!" is for sure going in there.

my position so far has been that drugs are always ok to use and always morally neutral, and that the issue is with forced medication and patients not being informed on the effects of the drug(s) they are taking. in fact the desired effects from many psych drugs (lithium for example, with sedation) are simply mild manifestations of their "toxic" or "side" effects (trouble walking, dizziness, coma). the levels at which the drug is considered toxic and the prescribed levels often have quite some overlap. placing the issue on substances themselves instead of on the systems that use them as a means of social control leads to the same reactionary framework used for criminalization.

some psych medications do benefit some people simply because everyone is different, and no matter what we're talking about you will always find someone to defend it. a lot of people say that being spanked as a child taught them discipline; this doesn't mean we should conclude that the two are linked, or that spanking has some advantages. in the case of psych meds what people describe as "helping" is also often the same that a stoner gets from smoking weed: you want to be relaxed, you smoke, you are relaxed. psych meds are psychoactive. they do something to your brain. none of this however means that they are "curing" an underlying condition, or that you were suffering from a "weed imbalance" that smoking corrected. we understand the use of psych meds as one of the tools of psychiatry; we understand that they do not correct an underlying abnormality in your brain; we understand that the solution is not in banning the drugs or decrying big pharma's influence or calling for criminalization, the solution is in abolishing the powers that can force you to take them in the first place.

[dippersguidetotheunexplained]

we need to abolish psychiatry faster