#criticizing the psychiatry

[the-alarm-system]

SYSTEMPUNK

Systempunk: A term or Subculture surrounding the liberation of plurals and the critique of psychiatry. We're outspoken on how the psych community mistreats us and how we will force the breaking of the chains that continuously fakeclaim or harm us whenever we do something singlets/psychiatrist do not like. We have been silenced and told that if we are open, it is a sign of us lying. We have been forced to follow the strict guidelines of the dsm5 in order to avoid being told that our experiences are false. We have been forced into psychiatric wards and abused because we are not singlet. We have been the face of the liars for too long, plural liberation is something we must push. The future is plural.

ANTI ENDOS AND RADQUEERS DO NOT TOUCH.

Meaning of the flag:

Brown and Black: The POC-bodied systems who are put down by both the community and the society around them. POC-bodied systems who have had their diagnosis's rejected due to their race. POC-bodied systems who have a cultural origin or connection and are hurt because of it. POC-bodied systems who are appropriated by other systems and are not listened to. POC-bodied systems who are hurt by the white dominated psychiatric system. POC-bodied systems who deserve to be heard and understood.

Purple stripe: Endogenic Solidarity, allyship, love, liberation. Endogenic systems are continuously harmed by antis who remain uncritical of psychiatry, are against the liberation of plurals, and deny a plural future in order to push singlethood onto others. Endogenic systems are also used in a lot of fakeclaiming content made by singlets and psychiatrist despite the research that supports their existence. It's because singlet society hates plurals and hates any form of existence we have. Love your endogenic siblings. They are the diverse experiences of plurality, they have helped us through so much.

Yellow Stripe: Disordered and traumagenic system solidarity and liberation. Disordered systems are horribly abused by the psych system, we make up most of those hospitalized and we are put down as too crazy to make our own decisions. Even if our existence is from trauma or a disorder, we shouldn't be forced into a singlet cure, we deserve autonomy.

Pink stripe: Abolition of psychiatric wards used to abuse us, hide us away, and silence us. Our autonomy is stolen from them, we deserve resources that help us instead of force us into a place that fucking hates us.

White stripe: Psych-critical beliefs or Anti-psych beliefs, despite their differences we still stand together against the harms of the psychiatric system. ACAB included in this.

Barbed wire: Anti-fakeclaim culture, systems deserve to be believed. Pro-plural protection. Protect another no matter your beliefs, cops and psych wards fucking hate us and want us dead, protect those you love. protect the closeted, protect all systems.

Fangs: Fight for your existence, be loud about it, write essays, make art, do whatever you can. Force plural liberation down the throats of singlets. Force the future to be plural.

Ampersand: PLURAL PRIDE, PLURAL ACCEPTANCE, PLURAL LIBERATION, PLURAL HISTORY, PLURAL FUTURE

[actuallyverynormalbtw]

i dont like to talk about self-diagnosis because i dont enjoy people making assumptions about me, my illnesses, and my diagnostic status. but i will say:

i have self diagnosed and gone on to be medically validated with an official diagnosis. multiple times actually. i was never wrong about my self-diagnoses.

however, i have been misdiagnosed by professionals FIVE TIMES. and let me tell you, a professional diagnosis being wrong is far more harmful than a self-diagnosis being wrong.

if your self diagnosis is wrong, maybe you used the wrong language or put yourself in a box or now feel invalid and whatnot. but if your professional diagnosis is wrong, it can lead to abuse, medical trauma, panic attacks, issues with medication, even suicide.

i was misdiagnosed with BPD when i was 15 by a psychologist that i spoke to for hardly even 10 minutes. this diagnosis was based on my parent's description of my reactions to abuse, and the diagnosis was used to validate and excuse their abuse.

i was misdiagnosed with MDD when i was 12 and put through several different types of anti-depressants. we never found anything that worked, because it was actually ADHD and dissociation, but i did end up with panic attacks and insomnia all throughout middle/highschool!

when i self-diagnosed with autism however, it saved my life. it took me out of active suicidality because i was able to finally able to accept myself after years of feeling like i am just "being a person wrong". i had the knowledge to accomodate for myself and the language to advocate for myself. this was life changing. even if i was wrong, which i wasnt, i dont see how it couldve caused any harm.

my opinions on self-diagnoses arent black and white, and im not entirely settled on them either, but i do think this is important to understand. doctors and psychologists are not all knowing. we live in a time where we can access thousands of dollars worth of university level education on the internet, even the same exact resources medical students use. plenty of people are capable of interpreting themselves and that information to come to a conclusion about what they are experiencing and what might help.

sure, self-diagnosis might be biased. but a professional is most likely going to be just as biased, and possibly less aware of it. its just silly to use bias as a primary argument when it is an inescapable feature of human psychology. there is a reason ADHD is underdiagnosed in women. there is a reason anxiety disorders are underdiagnosed in men.

an incorrect self-diagnosis wont take away resources or your space in your comminities. but professional misdiagnosis can cause real damage.

(i am not trying to fear-monger about professional diagnosis, moreso responding to the fear-mongering surrounding self-diagnosis)

[sophieinwonderland]

“There is no epidemic of people getting falsely diagnosed with DID.”

Correct. There is however many younger people coming into dr’s offices who have heard of DID and believe they have it, when they do not. Some of these kids have even made TikToks later reporting that they eventually realized they did not, in fact, have DID.

Plenty of people misdiagnose themselves. It’s not that crazy of a concept that people might also misdiagnose themselves with DID. Again, no shame to those that do.

But with increased awareness, so too will people be more likely to recognize symptoms of a disorder in themselves. While there is an increase in the amount of people self-diagnosing with DID, is there adequate evidence to say a majority of these are wrong?

Because logically, increased awareness and social acceptance means...

it will be easier than ever for young DID systems to recognize that they have the disorder and...

There will be less shame involved in having the disorder, both because they found a community that supports them and because they themselves found out and could out a label onto it early in life as opposed to living for decades in secret with their symptoms.

I think what we're really seeing is a huge surge in accurate self-diagnosis which the psychiatric community is woefully unprepared to deal with due to decades of neglecting teaching about dissociative disorders.

DID has historically been underdiagnosed, and this is self-diagnosis playing catch-up where the psych community has fallen behind.

[valeriesrevenge]

How come that you’re anti psychiatry?

The history of psychiatry is one of extreme misogyny, a legacy which continues today. Lobotomies, hysteria “treatments”, over-medication (a-la 1950s housewives), experimental medications and other horrific abuses to women and the mentally ill have taken place in the name of psychiatry.

Even today, psychiatry is heavily influenced by popular culture and “trends”, which cannot be said for regular medicine. This leads to waves of over-diagnosing and medicating those who don’t need medication. It leads to the warping of medical diagnosis (hence a completely new DSM every few decades with everything changed), which is not a strong foundation for a medical science. In fact, much of it, in my experience, can be seen as a pseudoscience with MUCH human experimentation.

I don’t disagree that people with severe mental illnesses, perhaps those who experience hallucinations/manic episodes can possibly benefit from medication. I won’t speak for them. But in my own experience, psychiatrists and even untrained MDs are FAR too willing to hand out serious diagnoses without hardly any consultation with the patient. Sometimes within 10min of meeting them, which has happened to me.

And so women are trusting these diagnoses and medicating and pathologizing every thought and action as part of an illness. Many women I know have gone through a difficult, high-stress period in their lives and been given a diagnosis of Clinical Depression or Generalized Anxiety or BPD (this is the big one now) or Bipolar 2 or, slightly less likely, ADHD. Some of the medications for these conditions are HARSH and can cause serious side effects, yet the psychiatrists will hand them out incredibly quickly.

I can’t support this industry that profits off women already struggling in life and treats women and mentally disabled people so flippantly. And therefore I am anti-psychiatry or at the very least, highly critical of the field as a whole.

[yellowyarn]

Sometimes i wonder what the people at the psychiatric hospital did with the cords from my pants. i wonder what they do with all the tings they take from us. do they just get thrown away like they are nothing? i cried over losing the cords from my favorite frog pajamas i wonder if the nurses knew i would cry about that.

[allbrows04]

“if you are struggling, get professional help”

and said professional help is just “try not to dwell on it”

like wow gee i never thought of that before!!!1!

me: hey ive been trying not to dwell on things but it doesnt really work. i want a real change

mental health professional: *shrugs*

[weird-and-unwell]

My hot take on personality disorders is that they're a great way for doctors to make you doubt and gaslight yourself.

(To be clear, this is not a criticsm of people with those disorders.)

But for real, you get diagnosed with a pd and immediately everything you think, feel or do is up for debate. I had a (bullshit) diagnosis of BPD, for example, and every emotion was criticised to hell and back because it was clearly an extreme bpd emotion needing to be stopped. I'd get upset about, say, someone not being in my life anymore, and be told it was a "fear of abandonment". A symptom that needed to be controlled.

PD diagnosis' mean that unhealthy coping mechanisms or behaviours causing you distress get mixed up with just...regular behaviours and feelings. And then both are seen as reason to demonise you.

And worst of all perhaps...good luck getting it off your record!! I have actual professionals admitting I shouldn't have been diagnosed with BPD and it's incorrect, but it still shows up on my record every time I see a doctor. PDs are one of those disorders you're kinda stuck with, and it impacts everyone's perspective of you in a very negative way.

[schizoprophecy]

"headline stress disorder" is apparently a new term emerging and I think I need to slit the throat of psychiatry right now.

Is it a mental illness to be overwhelmed and upset from learning how many awful things are happening in the world right now? Is it a disorder to feel empathy for other people struggling, and despair at your own current and impending suffering?

"People with conservative ideology were less likely to be distressed" yeah I fucking bet they were, weren't they? The heartless cunts created this world and now we're being pathologised for thinking it's as bad as it really is.

[nando161mando]

[letherightonein]

I'm against therapy culture.

While I recognize that therapy techniques and approaches can help, I don't like the whole "go to therapy" culture.

People don't realize, for them is natural as breathing to look in the eyes, to socialize, to check instantly if something hurts or is uncomfortable, to switch between tasks, to concentrate, to become one with the moment, to bond, to be understood and understand.

I can't do those things without effort, without wasting extra time and extra energy. I have spent years trying to mask in order to survive and I still have to do it. Imagine living being self aware all the time, imagine, while talking being like "ok, now look between their eyebrows, now smile, wait what did he say? fuck, well, keep smiling..." every single day of your life. Imagine planning phone calls. I can go with a large list with things I still won't cover everything I do.

There's no therapy for that. There's no cure for that. Just coping. They essentially teach you how to keep masking, how your feelings are not in tune with the situation, how you are being inadecuate.

It's logical, if they teach you "the right way" you also become aware of your mistakes, all of them. The opportunities you missed because instead of talking about normal stuff you started talking about a book nonstop. The gap between the real you and all those things that make people "accept you" and be your friend.

There is no scape, I'm traped in my own mind, in my own personality, in my own traits, in my own senses.

"Go to therapy" is a way to keep telling you that you are not acceptable and you have to fix yourself.

[dk-thrive]

If you think battering yourself with self-criticism doesn’t have a host of unwanted side effects, you’re wrong. Persistent self-criticism is like living in a very small room (about the size of your head) with a bully twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Nobody comes out of that brimming with confidence.

— Dr. Julie Smith, Open When: A Companion for LIfe’s Twists & Turns (HarperOne, December 31, 2024)

[the-alarm-system]

Crying so hard dude imagine basing a punk identity around the white ass psych community’s dsm5, completely ignoring all spiritual and cultural forms of plurality because you want to bow to the feet of an oppressive, racist system

(yes this is about anti endos and systempunk)

I actually feel like we should take it back to talk about rejecting the psych systems harms and having plural liberation despite the culture around fakeclaiming that’s especially used to harm open (maybe mostly disordered) systems who talk about the oppression they face

psychiatrist love to have being open as a system as a sign of faking because they don’t want us to fucking talk about how we’re treated by them, if we mention it we’re suddenly a faking liar whose words are invalid

edit: ou ohhh,,,, guys check this outt

[pathologising]

I'm not entirely antipsychiatry mainly because I'm seeing it turn into this thing on here where it's like "my diagnosis/es is/are not real" but not in a "diagnoses are merely a tool to identify and explain experiences that impact one's ability to function and are not an indicator of morality or what have you" way, rather in a "there is nothing wrong with me, there can't be anything wrong with me, anyone who says there may be something wrong with me is the problem and the doctors are evil" way and I feel like thats a bit of a recipie for disaster but what do I know I'm literally just some guy

[sophieinwonderland]

Hot take: The reason DID is considered rare and schizophrenia isn't, despite both having about the same prevalence and DID arguably being even more common, is because drug companies can make more from Schizophrenia.

[susansontag]

being somewhat depressed if you live in an advanced capitalist society is likewise just as rational as developing trauma when living in a warzone. not everyone will, at least not to a chronic degree, but it’s hardly disordered

[zain-syscourse]

i might have asked this before here or on one of my other blogs, i honestly forgot, but is anyone who's anti-psych willing to answer a few questions for me?

i've seen the anti-psych label floating around, and i've tried to ask a few people who use it what it means to them since i'm not familiar with the ideaology, but i've gotten primarily hostility or no response.

my biggest question is simply... what does being anti-psych mean to you? how does it interact with people who are reliant on their mental health professionals, medications, in-patient facilities, ect? this isn't meant as a "gotcha" or anything, i'm genuinely curious.