Evidence please

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-35260927

I'm reading a lot of claims here about abuse in psychiatric institutions. Stuff that goes on behind closed doors that the general public doesn't know about. You guys seem to think that by posting about it on the internet that you'll expose it and be taken seriously.

Please direct me to some genuine video footage of this if it exists. How hard can it be to get a job as a hospital orderly and a hidden camera?

To me, the regular treatment that everyone finds normal is abusive. It's not incidents of people being beaten up... the regular practice of afflicting brain damage (medication, ECT) and trauma (restraint, separation room) against someones will and calling that treatment...even when someone is not violent...is simply abuse. And I don't see why people don't get that. Keeping people away from real and non-invasive treatments known to work (visit to a medical specialist, psychotherapy, CBT, EMDR, dietary treatments) is really bad too. But it's is generally known that these type of things happen daily and doesn't need proof...i guess? It's general practice and in my country it's the only thing many wards do: brain damage and trauma, nothing else. The ward were I was did have nothing else: no therapy, no psychologist, no regular meetings with the psychiatrist, nothing. Why would one need to proof that...it's what all of psychiatry is set up to do...?!?

I just don't get why people don't see this as abuse.

These are videos of general psychiatric practice too:
- Dutch video of a boy, Brandon, who was locked up and chained to a wall for 3 years. All this time he was chained in a room with a closed window and never went outside. The psychiatrist's explicitly voiced idea was to break him so that he accepted being in chains fulltime. After a caregiver sought media attention they freed him and brought him to another institution, where he lives a normal life, see second video of him walking happily outside. This is general, legal practice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=se82tE1KOPs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOlj_TVUQNQ
- Dutch video of an autistic man spending months naked in a separation room without being showered regularly (didn't shower him for weeks), being observed or getting help. His crime was yelling at people and throwing small stuff when in a very stressful situation, created by the institution. This is regular practice, many more in the Netherlands are in a situation like this for months or years.
[url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8laZG3zR4
[/url]
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJQy0IoAtOU
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlnplx2WFLE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXdpR-GEz4k (think this is borderline between jail and psychiatry though).

And some examples crossing the line of law:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzi8IKlGS4E
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EICAC7skjdU

I'm sorry, but all that is abuse.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5IWFDY_oNo
Title: "supervision of psychiatrists fails", hundreds of patients only in the Netherlands stay in separation for longer than half a year, more than hundred longer than a year, some even longer than 3 years, while the Health Inspection says this hardly happens.

Many people they approached don't dare to tell their story, they say, out of fear of punishment from the institution. The two girls tell they were in a separation room for months, without having been violent or uncooperative. A mother only dares to tell her story anonymously out of fear of repercussions from the institution...her daughter was separated for 6 months for smoking weed. She saw her daughter get physically and mentally more and more ill. She was only let free because the mum went to court, and the court decided there was no reason to separate her, because the reports showed that she was behaving in a friendly and cooperative way.

To me, this is inhumane and abusive.

Whatever you think about CCHR they're doing an excellent job in exposing this. People think "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" is the thing of the past - wrong, the reality is just as bad as it was before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ifitvaIe7k

Psychologists, psychiatrists, nurses, etc. don't seem to understand that just because you work in the field doesn't mean that you don't have a mental disorder yourself.

Yes. All psychiatrists and some of the nurses I met seemed to have strong narcisstic traits. Many I speak to have similar experiences. It takes a certain kind of person to like the position of a psychiatrist, where your only job is to judge and overpower vulnerable people, forcibly lock them up and drug them with toxics and offer no real solutions, listening ear or helping hand.

On second thought...I spoke to one psychiatrist that seemed healthy. He became a psychiatrist because of schizophrenia in his family and wants to change psychiatry and offer real help. He was the first psychiatrist I could have a normal conversation with.

Marian, I don't think that those sorts of things are acceptable and I don't believe that the majority of the British public would either. From what you've said about your own case it sounds more like malpractice than standard procedure to me but I'm not Dutch. If you had been in the UK you would be able to say that they failed to follow government guidelines, as set out in the Mental health act but I have no idea what the law is in your country.

I don't know about other countries, I'm happy if it's better in the UK! I just know that it is standard practice here and I have spoken to many that have been in similar circumstances.

The people I have known directly that got psychiatric "help" in the Netherlands:

- When I was not ill yet, I was the "guardian" (don't know the word) of a woman with schizophrenia. Me and her daughter found out that they had been messing with her meds without consultation of us, which is not allowed. The woman developped a near fatal side effect (malignant neuroleptic syndrome) because of it. The nurse admitted that, but when we filed a complaint the doctors said she had a UTI and it was shoved under the rug.

- My uncle was a very gifted and sensitive young man who was locked up and severely drugged (20mg haldol + large amounts of sedatives) for 30 years. The psychiatrist had no interest in helping him. He later was found out to have affairs with female patients, whom he had apparantly more interest in. Uncle tried to commit suicide because of psychiatry and was in a coma for a while. They admitted a few years ago "oops, sorry, you didn't have schizophrenia after all, only an anxiety disorder". A large part of his meds were withdrawn and he does much better now. After withdrawing was the first time in my life I saw him able to communicate with others. He is now happy, social, functioning. He lives on his own now, but has lost half a lifetime and doesn't have a family, friends or job.

- A man I know has schizophrenia. He had a childhood of chronic sexual abuse by his father. They only drug him into oblivion (20mg haldol a day plus 5 other drugs), for 20 years no, and in all those years he never had any therapy or help to overcome his traumatic childhood.

- A friend with "psychosis". She was raised by an extremely religious and anxious single mother with severe agoraphobia who kept her father away from her. After her first "psychosis" (which was mainly fear that some parts of the bible are not real and God did not exist) the christian hospital drugged her for 15 years. I asked and she never had any therapy or help with her past or overcome religious indoctrination.

- A friend always functioned well, until his daughter was sexually abused by someone they knew. He snapped and attacked the man. "My" hospital diagnosed my friend with bipolar disorder and drugged him with large doses of antipsychotics, benzo's and mood stabilizers for years. No therapy. After 5 (!) years he accidently came to another hospital, where they diagnosed him with PTSD. His regular psychiatrist refused to allow him EMDR or trauma therapy in the other hospital. After another 5 years he now has a fitting diagnosis - PTSD, not bipolar - and gets treatment for that and withdrawal from some meds. His life is in ruins, his wife left him, he lost his job and his house, hardly sees his children and he wants to commit suicide. It took him 10 years to get real help.

- Several people I know used to go to a special mental health farm to work and heal. It helps them a lot. The government pays for that. Now, they can't go anymore, because the mental health organisation "swindled" (right word?) with the government money on a large scale. A large number of patients were not allowed by the organisation to go subsidized working places, but the psychiatric organisation did get money from the government for it. Now, they are found out, and need to pay back money, and many patients need to quit their work because the organisation is short of money.

- A girl I met during hospital stay was forcefully admitted and drugged for months for being too happy and praying in the open air.

- I have experienced several times that a co-patient or I were humiliated by the staff, even during the forced administration of drugs (as in: making disdainful jokes over your head while you are with your pants down and they forcefully drug you).

- A woman I'm befriended to used antidepressants for a few years. She could not feel love of her children anymore and got all sorts of physical complaints. She went to a REAL doctor, who found out the drugs were the problem. She is now doing fine without meds and got all her feelings back.

These are only my personal friends and family member. This is why I think psychiatry is abusive. It's not just me having bad luck with psychiatry...this is how our mental health system functions.

Sorry for the long story, but I wanted to have all their stories told!

-- Sun Feb 14, 2016 2:12 am --

BTW - the Dutch public (without psychiatric experience) sees psychiatry as helpful and normal too and thinks they function according to guidelines.

I have been struggling all my life. I am now at an age where I have become "treatment-resistant", a lost cause basically. I am not receiving the help that I need to have while they could have helped me a lot when I was much younger, but they didn't offer any. I don't think they really care about us. They are just there to prevent public chaos or something like that.