Tough Love

Some people on the bipolar forum get very emotional about my criticisms regarding meds and long-term treatments. I'll add that some folks on this forum, especially Copy_Cat, may seem insensitive to many mentally ill people. But I think we're offering tough love here because we care enough to tell the truth about psychiatry. We care so much that we often fail to water down our comments to suit those with thin skin. To this I say that there is no easy solution, but I'd be happy if you have suggestions on how to discuss serious truth with those who are easily upset.

Cliff notes: I tend to piss off med-huggers - any suggestions?

The truth about psychiatry saved my life.

Here is how mindfreedom suggests telling truth.
"Does Your Mental Health System Need A TRUTH Injection?" http://www.mindfreedom.org/truth/truth-flyer-text

They must have thought about this for a wile.

Mabey also using the methods of drug and alcohol abuse treatment like "Look at your results".

I shouldn't be reading that forum and those posts describing med changes followed by the question "why am I so sick"? It only upsets me cause that was me in the same scared situation only now I know why I was so sick. I know the truth.

I still can't explain how exacty I did not see myself getting sicker as the meds were piled on and changed around. It was like an amnesia of some sort, I forgot the "me" before the psychiatric pill nightmare began. I was looking for meds to solve the problem they created without seeing they were the cause.

Breggin calls it spellbinding. Plus of course some people will do whatever it takes to get away from these loathesome people and then try to figure it out afterwards.

And of course a lot of the so called mentally ill are just plain stupid.

Oh Ian!

Don't let our soft and easily perturbed overly emotional labile temperaments stop you from sharing your tough love with us. We so greatly need someone to help us pull ourselves up by our bootstraps because it's oh so hard to do without someone with an aligned self identity to coach us towards an unmedicated state. And the truth! Oh the truth! We need someone with the requisite education in physics to expose the myth of heritability, that fraudulent and defunct pseudoscientific theory that holds that parents pass on their genetic material to their offspring and that this genetic material might be causally implicated in the development of some psychological disorders. What nonsense!

Please give us another chance Ian! We only have 5 Ian Reynir motivational threads in the BP forum! Share your tough love and serious truth with us!

Thanks IJ, I've gotta be womdering why I even made a comment let alone that Ian felt the need to start a thread.

Rod wrote:Thanks IJ, I've gotta be womdering why I even made a comment let alone that Ian felt the need to start a thread.

Just remember that IJ has not liked much of what I've written for a while. He seems to think that because he can't manage without his chemical addiction that I must be full of crap for suggesting that others get more serious about a med-free approach. So you may be wondering then, if IJ is so critical of my "telling the truth", what may I have claimed to be the truth exactly? For one thing, genetic causes for bipolar disorder have not been proven. Another thing is that many psychiatrists instruct patients to remain on medications for life without any attempts to discontinue meds.

So I see a lot of people on the bipolar forum who resist these truths out of a fear that it may mean that they're doing something wrong - wow, what a concept. Admitting we are doing something wrong is important in my opinion, and it is the truth, but a lot of people seem to think that bipolar is something they can't control, thus, they are NOT doing anything wrong.

So when I suggest that they may be doing something wrong, they feel the bubble burst (especially Infinite_Jester or rather Insecurity_Jester), which makes them feel bad. I don't tend to sugar-coat stuff so I was looking for suggestions on what things I can say to wake people up to the truth that maybe they're doing something wrong.

Hi Ian. I worked in general nursing and psych for 20 years and never met a person with a mental illness. A lot of idiots who were willing to cripple themselves along with their stupidity but not a single person that was ever demonstrated to have a chemical imbalance that was treatable with drugs.

For some people anything that changed them was likely to be for the better.

Most people are trash.

Drive down a country road. Pull up next to a field of sheep. Get out of the car and yell at the sheep for being sheep. Where is that going to get you?

But the world is not just full of sheep. It has wolves.

Ian Reynir wrote:Infinite_Jester or rather Insecurity_Jester

Oh, I see what you did there. You replaced the first part of my name with "insecurity" to imply that I'm uncertain about the positions that I endorse. Very clever.

Ian Reynir wrote:Just remember that IJ has not liked much of what I've written for a while. He seems to think that because he can't manage without his chemical addiction that I must be full of crap for suggesting that others get more serious about a med-free approach.

Find me that quote.

Ian Reynir wrote:if IJ is so critical of my "telling the truth", what may I have claimed to be the truth exactly? For one thing, genetic causes for bipolar disorder have not been proven.

Psychologists, psychiatrists and neuroscientists don't actually talk about "genetic causes" anymore because of a shift in genetics that occurred in the 1990's of conceptualizing development as a multiply influenced and bidirectional process. Current models in genetics look like this



Of course you would know this if you spent even 30 minutes studying behavioural genetics.

So as for the claim that "genetic causes" haven't been proven, you're completely right, but for the wrong reasons: no one is trying to prove that genes cause anything. Genes are just one part of complex cellular machinery that are responsible for the development of different phenotypic characteristics. Instead, psychologists, psychiatrists, and neuroscientists claim that psychological disorders are heritable, in the sense, that the genetic material that is passed on from parents has a causal role in the development of psychological disorders.

Is that clear? Or do you still think you've debunked areas of study you're totally ignorant of?

Ian Reynir wrote:So I see a lot of people on the bipolar forum who resist these truths out of a fear that it may mean that they're doing something wrong - wow, what a concept. [ . . . ] So when I suggest that they may be doing something wrong, they feel the bubble burst

Here's a link to an article on Wikipedia that explains what a "genetic fallacy" is. It's a form of argument where you try to show that the conclusions of someone's argument is false because of the origin their argument. For example:

Insecurity Jester is scared of the claim that medications are not an effective treatment for bipolar disorder.
Insecurity Jester is motivated to put forward the argument that medications are an effective treatment for bipolar disorder because he's scared
___________________________________________________________________________________
Therefore, Insecurity Jester is wrong that medications are an effective treatment for bipolar disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy

Is that clear? Because it's seems that you don't understand that your arguments are fallacious.

I think I've been tough enough on IJ! Honestly, I have reason to believe that out of all the people on this forum, he probably cares about people about as much as anyone here. I personally think that he's not able to see positive/constructive parts of someone's post at the SAME time as as the negative/wrong parts. I enjoy the critisism for the most part because I've actually learned some things about crafting better/cleaner arguments. I also pay more attention to what I write because of folks like IJ. Good stuff. I just hope that the truth about solving real problems doesn't fade in the background while we bicker.

Sorry about the "Insecurity_Jester" comment, but it was irresistible because I've seen many academics who are driven by insecurity. So really, I'm comparing IJ with high academic achievers. I should know because I am one and I am insecure too. Maybe "Intellectual_Jester" would be more appropriate...