Non-scientific problems with psychiatry

In cultures where it's a matter of hunt or starve, or dig the fields and plant or starve next year there's no time to worry about what someone said when you were 10. So people just get on with life. No one has more than anyone else, except maybe the chief might have a few more cows, but he's the chief. In the evenings you sit by the fire listening to stories or singing.

In cultures where you have nothing to do, no responsibilities, a few hours may be in an office, no community duties, you can worry all day long about your early childhood.

We just have it too easy. It's actually not natural.

Are we satisfied with our affluent lifestyles? No we feel inadequate because we have a fat tummy, a husband who looks at blonds, only one holiday abroad every year. We hate ourselves because we can't do eyeliner like the girl in accounts, or because we'd rather have been born a man.

These are just symptoms of too much time on our hands.

Sometimes it's all built up, you do need to talk to someone, and get great relief from doing so. But then get a hobby, do some voluntary work, help someone that actually does have problems. Then the pathetic little problems really disappear.

Nickeleye wrote:In cultures where it's a matter of hunt or starve, or dig the fields and plant or starve next year there's no time to worry about what someone said when you were 10. So people just get on with life. No one has more than anyone else, except maybe the chief might have a few more cows, but he's the chief. In the evenings you sit by the fire listening to stories or singing.

In cultures where you have nothing to do, no responsibilities, a few hours may be in an office, no community duties, you can worry all day long about your early childhood.

We just have it too easy. It's actually not natural.

Are we satisfied with our affluent lifestyles? No we feel inadequate because we have a fat tummy, a husband who looks at blonds, only one holiday abroad every year. We hate ourselves because we can't do eyeliner like the girl in accounts, or because we'd rather have been born a man.

These are just symptoms of too much time on our hands.

Sometimes it's all built up, you do need to talk to someone, and get great relief from doing so. But then get a hobby, do some voluntary work, help someone that actually does have problems. Then the pathetic little problems really disappear.

I disagree. Psychological issues increase in developed societies because wealth allows people to depend on each other less; and that dependence itself is critical for psychological health. In a society where everyone has a vital job, where people live and work in close proximity, and where families actually live together (often with multiple generations), then if a person has a psychological disorder, it will be noticed and people will take action in the early stages. In a developed society, it will be ignored until you are admitted to the psych ward (where it still might be ignored).

The problem isn't that psychological problems are small. They aren't. The problem is that modern society allows these problems to go untreated, or poorly treated, for years upon years. And the problem is that modern society does not foster deep socially inclusive ties that are absolutely vital for person's mental health.

Modern society is isolating. Our support networks are much smaller and fragile. The stigma of mental illness alone can obliterate ones small support network which doesn't encourage people to seek treatment.

Thanks for the thread
Would you say that we're being taught to avoid responsibilities by blaming them on diagnoses?

Here's one of the best lectures on the unknowns involved with the practice of psychiatry:
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://video.google.com/videoplay%3Fdocid%3D983112177262602885&sa=U&ei=u7YPTvP2C-jd0QHy2LSZDg&ved=0CBwQtwIwAA&sig2=7IlhBoF5TOL1r5JsvzleTg&usg=AFQjCNFwXljcRAq5fCT1SBZmUAh_GHEFdw
Another discussion, more in the 'Science' forum:
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?t=300989&page=1

I do really agree with what you're saying. I think that often times the psychiatric model discourages people from doing the basic human thing and trying to listen and be there for people who need support. I once knew a couple whose child had died, and their friends were insisting that they were mentally ill because they were so upset about it. When did it stop being considered normal to be upset that your child died? I just don't understand this. I think illness language often also keeps people from looking at what is HAPPENING in an individual's life to make him/her upset.

I'm grateful to have found this particular board.

I feel like I'm "home."

I will *never* go back to a psychiatric hospital in the US, where I was admitted a few years ago for two particularly severe lows.

Thank you for reading what I am about to tell. Here is the story of the first incarceration. The second -in a different hospital - was darker, so I shall not tell it.

I look back several years ago. In this picture, I am crying beyond control because my boyfriend of some years has just sent me word that he no longer loves me and has been secretly seeing someone else for almost the entire time we have been together. He was my best friend as well as lover, or so I thought. I was happy in our little "nest," doing even small things. I loved the views out the windows onto the park, the little patio out front we shared that had potted herbs. Inside the space of one minute, this small, peacecul world crumbles and blows away in a whisp of dust and tears.

I cannot stop crying. The pain is so intense I want to die. I cannot imagine ever getting beyond this space, this immense psychic pain and think it must go on forever. The people I am with don't know what to do. One of them says, "If she keeps going on like that, she will have to leave." Another comes up and slaps my face because he has heard that's what to do with people who are "hysterical." Then the dog, who was abused as a pup and hates crying, bites me and, in process, leaves me with an extensively bruised black eye.

I go by ambulance to an area general hospital where they decide I must proceed to the local psych hospital. It is surrounded by barren fields and vacant buildings, behind wire fences. The area around it looks like a bombing range. Inside, two nurses examine me. One says to the other, "This one smells." I am still crying.

Then they escort me to a waiting area. No one else is there. I am still crying. Someone comes and explains that there is no bed ready for me, so I must wait. After that, they ignore me. Hours pass. I am exhausted from crying. Still no one comes. I sit there alone and unattended several hours before someone comes to fetch me and begin the actual process of getting me "settled in."

In all, I stay at this place for three weeks and a bit. I must take drugs. I have no choice. I spend all day watching television, channels that someone on staff has chosen to be "appropriate" for everyone. Once a week someone brings by a cart of books that some kind souls have donated as unwanted reads. Occasionally there are art therapy and talk therapy sessions which are useful for breaking the monotony. Two people engineer a escape and leave the hospital. I am wishing I had the courage to go with them. Sometimes I sleep.

When finally I come out, I am "calm." My face is calm. I have not cried in some days. But inside I am as broken as I was on that first day because no medication has been able to turn back the clock and undo what has been done or bring me to a place of peace and security and feeling right about my world. And I am possibly more broken now because what could/should have been a place of healing was a place of warehousing and dumbing me down with medications until I stopped crying.