Why an 'anti psych' forum?

Entangled wrote:I just hope that we can educate everyone to understand... real, good psych. and, false labeling. Maybe someday we can come with a common ground Anti-psych and psych, both educated, knowing and understanding the benifits and stop the hinderings...

Yes, but that`s a false dichotomy (see my OP). Psychology and psychiatry are fields with enough depth to include criticism. In fact, almost all criticisms of psychology and psychiatry come from psychologists and psychiatrists. People who identify with the``anti-psychiatry`` label are playing right into their critics hands. Their critics can then say that this group is ``against us and our research`` and then dismiss them when really many critics of the two P`s are trying to improve the state of the mental health care system and the current scientific paradigm used in the related areas of study.

This may be why http://tinyurl.com/82sjc8t link to photos of the APA convention protest, look how many "anti psych" people there are.

Every type of view point needs openmindedness. If we were closed minded we would be in the dark ages, still.

The scienticic method. Idea; hypothesis; experiment; results; conclusions and then doing it all over again to find a logical and rational explanation is the bases of science. Thus, psychology and psychiatry are part of the scientific method. It has it's uses within it's understanding. I am an advocate. But, I will never sya that is the only thing out there.

But, to say that these are the only healing methods available is creating narrow-mindedness. If we allow ourselves to stay within one type of methodolical study, we do no one justice. PSychiology and psychiatry can do that. The method itself can create it's own problems.

For instance, the psych method is not only a methos of study and treatment, it's also an institution, based on a employment. People in the field are trained to find problems. If a person off the street came into a psychologists office, reading an scientific article on a specific mental illness and after seeing the psychologist's notes, then read the notes within the chart, that person would appear a "basket case." This can then label someone as unable to benefit in our society. Once that happ happens, the person feels worthless and alienated. This, to me is the problem with psych. Labeling.

I might have worked in the field as a CNA in psych... diagnosed as well. But, I can never say that is the only way that mental or emotional health can be obtained. There self-help books, religious areas, meditation, holistic medicines and most of all... the openmindedness that another type of study can help even more.

The scientific method is what we have now. It serves it's purpose, now. The scary part is relying only on these ideas and not trying to find alternate methods that can be better.

To me, Anti-psych is misleading. It tends to say... irradicate psych or against psych as a whole, when I read about something different. How psych can be abusive and harm instead of do good and the watchfullness, the steps needed, the education to allow openmindedness so this will not happen anymore.

I guess what I am trying to say is this. It would appear, even if this was not the intention, that the "anti-" psych forum is a movement against psychiatry, psychology and the scientific method being a basis for mental and emotional health. So, if you have some feelings about psych that work, the title shows "anti-" and the person will skip right by it. On the other hand... If someone was against psych completely and the forum is not based on an all-or-nothing idealism, again the term would prove misleading.

Like a wall. A giant wall between psych and anti-psych. If you have grievances against the psyche method, but there are areas that are not so absolute, you are stuck on the anti-psych side of the wall. If you are pro-pscyh, but see problems with it, you are again on the pro-side of the wall... and there is no middle ground.

So, the question is, if the "anti-psych" forum is an educational tool to help people understand the falicies that come up, the problems that become aparent and the education necessary, there should be a middle ground. As was said. "anti" psych was termed but has grown into something different. Educating the public to be cautious about how much trust they put into the psyche scientific method, then "anti" should be replaced with another term, encompassing other mental and emotional health methods that can help and heal the individual...

I don't feel psych can really be equated with science at this point. There's threads of it around, but it's a bit like the emporor's new clothes in practice, for the majority anyway. Most of the research is mickey mouse statistics. The experimental stuff is replete with failed replication attempts. The medication process is trial and error and sometimes fraud, based on short-term data shrounded in placebo and nocebo. Evidence-based psychotherapies are practitioner-based boxes of tricks that sometimes work and often don't. The cultish psychoanalysts were rightly curtailed but we're left with a gutted version of human life and human need. It's all fitted into a socioeconomic agenda regardless. Sufferers are blamed when it suits, exculpated if it suits.

You have some good points Entangled. The name of the forum might be misleading and seems somewhat spiteful. But really, it is the posters that make it into something, and not the label.

Personally, I don't consider myself pro or against. I am pro research, and I don't have a problem with labeling or the scientific method that is being used in psychology. It still has a way to go to be serious though, as the above poster noted. But there was some serious improvement in the field in the last 20 years or so, as far as theoretical work goes. Statistics can be a good tool, and it has improved quite a bit, mathematically speaking. The important thing is to know the pitfalls and use the right tool for the job, and not assume false or dubious causality. One day, something more solid might come out of it with real causality. But I don't think it is necessary in order to be useful. It might just be a dream as well.

My problem is more about the practice. It seems that as a whole, it smacks of false advertising and a bunch of rain makers and water-of-life sellers. This is pretty much the medicine/psychiatric part.

It basically sells salvation, but does not deliver, and has no tool or way to deliver. And by that, I mean that people have a problem, and they look for a solution. They go to the doctor/psychiatrist in order to solve the problem. So the seek salvation/solution to the problem.

And all they get is a label and maybe some drug, or empty talk. All done with some sort of superiority and authoritative posing. But the problem, in many cases is never solved at all. If they were just a few quacks and carpet sellers, it would not be a big concern. But you are talking about a giant industry that sells drugs and services, usually publicly subsidized. I wonder if the fact it has so much authority is not a problem in and of itself, for the practical field to improve itself. They have nobody they answer to, and are taken as experts, even in the judicial system, while a little more humility would certainly be warranted, due to where they actually are at the moment in their field of study and practical usefulness.

I think they are big enough and with empty pockets enough as it is. Now it is time for them to be accountable and responsible for what they are given authority over. For me, it is about accountability and results. They fail on both counts in a big way (in relation to what they spend and insidiously promise). Give me a psychiatry that has both ethics and usefulness, and there will be no complaint on my part.

"Your race would eventually discover our power of illusion and destroy itself, too."

-The Star Trek Transcripts,- The Menagerie, Part 2 http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/16b.htm

This talk of the scientific method combined with the subject of psychiatry , made me think of the above. Science is not going to figure out the brain any time soon, but they fake that they have.

This anti-psych forum is a 'safe' place to point that out I guess.

I think those aliens need a hair club for men... Or just some type of hair care! Or just remember that they should have hair... don't you think?> They certainly won't make the cover of a hairstyle magazine.

Ok... they might... "The race that forgot they had hair! And, lost it? Will they discover that they should have hair... what products they should use? Next up, the aliens and their advanced intellect discuss what hair products they believe they should use, how it will effect the market of hair care products... Ladies you must watch to know the latest trends..."

Talk about hair loss? All you need is some good shampoo that strips the oils and gunk away and a nice conditioner that has the protein, oils and moisture needed for great hair! Just imagine them with beautiful long flowing hair.

But, no! They are so busy thinking about stuff with those giant brain heads, that they forgot to take care of their hair? It's the same old problem ladies? Some alien race gets so high on themselves that they forget to take into consideration the more important things in existance and they loose all their hair. By the time they realize it, it's gone.

Never get to smart for the forum or you will loose your hair.

Sorry I had to put down... sorry... I will let you go back to discussing the pro's and con's of psychiatric care.

(Laughing )

Entangled wrote: All you need is some good shampoo that strips the oils and gunk away and a nice conditioner that has the protein, oils and moisture needed for great hair! Just imagine them with beautiful long flowing hair.



I will let you go back to discussing the pro's and con's of psychiatric care.

(Laughing )

"In a way, we really do need conditioner, as advertising implies. But the real reason why we need it is because our hair gets damaged by shampoo. This is just another case of using lies to help a bad product (shampoo) gain dominance over a good product (soap), then introducing another product (conditioner) to compensate for the bad product's faults, and then tricking people into accepting huge price increases once they forget the good product." http://100777.com/health/shampoo

Entangled wrote:I will let you go back to discussing the pro's and con's of psychiatric care.

Have you considered adding the brain and body damaging nueroleptic Abilify after our first product gave you brain damage causing symptoms of bi-polar disorder or just didn't work ? I haven't seen those T.V ads that say Antidepressant warnings over and over for abilify to trick people into taking an anti psychotic. Are those T.V ads still playing ?

Ask you doctor if "adding abilify" will damage your brain...
Read http://www.ahrp.org/risks/biblio0100.php

As someone posted before, being gay used to be a mental illness. As I have posted before, being a runaway slave (Drapetomania) used to be a mental illness.

How would you like to be the gay individual that they need to dope up to "fix"?

How would you like to be the slave, that refuses to stay on the plantation, that they viciously whip to "cure"?

What if you thought like Peter in Office Space that, "Humans weren't meant to live like this" but psychiatry said you had a mental illness and just need some meds to get you through your day?





(Warning!: Language: Having interesting thoughts? Don't worry... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0ZKH2PGA8g)




TL;DR:
"Those who dance are considered insane by those who cannot hear the music." -- George Carlin