24 May 2007

Psychiatry is immoral

I have had an Australian blog entitled Outlaw Psychiatry Now, and a related one called Abolish Psychiatry Now, drawn to my attention.

While the language is a little more extreme than I would use, I wholly agree with the spirit behind it. Coercive "treatment" of any kind is as morally abhorrent as torture. And the extremity of the language is perfectly understandable when you realise there are real people behind it with relatives who (they allege, and I find it easy to believe) are being abused by the headshrink industry ("psychiatric profession").

Here is an extract (some names changed).
Consider this: a perfectly normal (normal even according to psychiatric criteria!) 15 year old adolescent girl, having been put in a psychiatric ward "for observation", following her mother's complaints against her (because she refused to do the house chores as told by the mother), is being declared mentally ill on arrival there by the shrink in charge. That was the beginning of her 29 years of psychiatric torture, denial of her basic human rights, humiliation, deterioration of her health and well being, stigmatising, isolation from friends and from the community, exposing her to the deadly dangers of neuroleptics (Clozapine, during the past year, in particular), and the overall destruction of her life - of the best years of her life!

Naturally, she resisted this unjust attack on her, and she refused to take the poisons ("medications") she was ordered to take. Yet, the more she resisted, the more vicious labels were added to her descriptions by her shrinks in her file, and more dangerous neuroleptics, and in high dosages, were forced on her. She then absconded many times, but only to get herself in even bigger trouble, because her abrupt withdrawal off the neuroleptics caused her severe crisis which led her back to the psychiatric trap. When she was back under their control again the shrinks considered her crisis as "aggravation of her mental illness" and tortured her accordingly, and all in the name of "medical treatment".

However, her last two shrinks - a Dr. Ahh, and a Dr. Bee - proved to be particularly vicious towards her. They insisted - despite hers and her father's objections - that she take the deadly Clozapine, and both of them had her incarcerated in a psychiatric ward, to force her to take an increasing dosage of the poison. Ahh went even further than the hospital psychiatrists to force Rebecca to take a daily dose of 400mg , and he has been sending a team of psychiatric nurses to her home every day, seven days a week, to watch her swallow the poison!

On February 12, 2007, Dr. Ahh was replaced by a woman psychiatrist, Dr. Bee. However, her father's hopes that the brutality of Ahh would be replaced by a more gentle and more humane attitude of a woman doctor were dashed by her very quickly. Knowing that he is against the continued torture of his daughter with that high dose of Clozapine, she simply avoided the father and refused to arrange a meeting to discuss his daughter's case, saying that she is too busy. So the torture of Rebecca continues, and with no end in sight, and Dr. Bee continues with Ahh's brutality despite Rebecca's and her father's objections.
Ah, now I get it. It's that kind of thing which we are to have more of.

It appears the headshrink industry is having a world conference to "ethically debate" (= find ways to rationalise) coercion in psychiatry. German-speakers may like to check out the website of critic Gert Postel, a translation of which is provided here.