#psychiatry

[prokopetz]

Level 1: Asylums are scary because there's crazy people there.

Level 2: We shouldn't treat mental health facilities as objects of horror because it stigmatises mental illness.

Level 3: Asylums are scary because there's psychiatrists there.

[co-fronting]

Something that always bothers me in mental health spaces is the fear of relating too much to each-other across the lines of different disorders. Too many times I've met people who are not dissociative systems, but have dissociative experiences (such as from BPD), and they trip over themselves saying "no no, I mean, I don't REALLY understand what you go through, my thing is totally different," and it makes me a little upset. Disorders are just clusters of symptoms packaged together in a certain way, that's why the names and criteria often change across DSM and ICD editions, and viewing them as entirely exclusive clubs where only they could possibly understand anything about each other isn't a particularly healthy way of seeing it. The lines between disorder labels are blurrier than you think. You are not being a bad person or overstepping for relating to symptoms of a disorder, or people with a disorder, without having their specific label. Very rarely (if ever, frankly) is there a symptom that can only occur in one disorder, or even one type of disorder. Psychosis can occur in countless circumstances. Dissociation and identity compartmentalization can occur in countless circumstances. It's better to focus more on your specific symptoms and building community with your fellow neurodivergent people, using the resources that help you regardless of if they were specifically made for your diagnosis, over worrying about whether or not you're "allowed" to relate to something or experience something similarly to someone else.

[1000rh]

…psychiatry assumes that society does not cause distress in biologically normal people, who are considered biologically normal at least in part because they are economically productive. This assumption permits the conclusion that if a person is distressed to the point of unproductivity, it is because that person—not society—is abnormal. Thus, psychiatry’s commitment to biological essentialism not only masks the role of the constructed sociopolitical environment in creating distress but depoliticizes it by characterizing that allegedly irrational distress as induced by biological abnormality.

– Kiera Lyons, “The Neurodiversity Paradigm and Abolition of Psychiatric Incarceration” (2023)

[certifiedsexed]

Genuine question, what issue do you have with the dsm having ODD in it? I know next to nothing about ODD btw

Well, I'm Black and survived lots of trauma and child abuse, which admittedly colors my opinion but here's a run down:

ODD (or Oppositional Defiant Disorder) is a diagnosis almost solely given to Black and Native/Indigenous American kids (and its often given to Black/Native/Indigenous kids who display the same symptoms that get their white counterparts diagnosis' like PTSD, Autism and ADHD).

The symptoms of ODD largely revolve around "disliking authority figures", "being angry", "defies rules and authority figures", and "argumentative". I think like, 50% of kids in prison get diagnosed with it in the US.

Its not used to help kids, its used to label them as "bad" for displaying feelings and things that are often explicit signs of trauma and/or neurodivergence, especially kids of color!

The "science" (or lack thereof) behind it has been torn down repeatedly and yet the DSM-5 continues to keep it there so people can use the diagnosis to fuck kids over. And its not just the racism that pisses me off, to be clear!!

The explicit bigotry in having a disorder that boils down to "your kid is angry, doesn't trust adults and argues a lot", especially with the state of ageism in the world is so dangerous for kids and fucking despicable.

[semiplural]

Resistance

Our life is more than someone else's pathology.

[marrow-morrow]

in the 1960s 12 sleep deprived guys all saw a hat that definitely wasn’t there, and then in 1962 it was witnessed again

[only-knives]

how many times do i have to tell people. psychiatric institutions do not exist to protect mentally ill people. they exist to separate us from society and torture us into complicity. most people i have met in psych hospitals lie their way out. because there is no other way out. they don't help us there. some people find it beneficial, but most don't.

also, not everyone there even "belongs" there! i met someone who went to the ER for a headache and ended up in the psych ward! another person came in for an anxiety attack mistaken for a heart attack and got put in the psych ward. i was involuntarily admitted because they thought i tried to kill myself when i didn't! i had only told my doctor i was struggling with drinking and wanted to make sure i didn't need detox. and when i got there, they forced me to go cold turkey from all my medication (including the ones for my chronic illnesses!). i was stuck in bed for days, and this was then used against me as proof that i needed to be there!

(by "belong" i mean according to the actual written standards for hosptialization. i don't think anyone "belongs" in a psych ward)

these places are not safe. they were a compromise the ruling class made after people started realizing asylums were abusing, torturing, and effectively kidnapping women. they didn't stop doing that. they just made it look like they did. they convinced everyone that it was different this time.

a cage made of gold is still a fucking cage. (disclaimer: this is US-based experiences, i do not claim to speak for people in other countries)

[guelwaar]

this poser antipsych guy i have class with just told me he “determined [his friend] wasn’t autistic thru observation and interview” . and like. basically checked it against the dsm and decided but said that they should probably get tested by a professional later. this guy who is Proudly Antipsych 😭😭 he’s constantly referencing the dsm criteria for everything. like he talks about the dsm and how cool it is all the time. i fear the word is losing meaning

i talk about antipsych as having two major component positions: an epistemological critique of the knowledge-claims that psychiatry makes, and an ethical critique of its motives and rewards for making such knowledge-claims. to me these two positions go hand in hand and mutually inform one another, but plenty of people are persuaded by one and not the other, or are familiar with one and lack facility with the other.

people who advance an epistemological antipsych argument without an accompanying ethical critique will tend to focus on psychiatry's chronic lack of empirical evidence, its inability to even settle on a consensus position re: the degree to which 'brain disease' is an essentially metaphorical way of speaking vs a number of actual biological entities, the vagueness and overlap of clinical psychiatric symptom lists, etc. however, without an accompanying ethico-political analysis of the role and purpose of psy-sciences in capitalist society, these people may also turn around and argue that psychiatrised people are therefore faking/malingering, are lazy, are simply being told they're 'special', need to pull up their bootstraps and be normal, etc. think of eg thomas szász

on the other hand people who make an ethical critique of psychiatry without a firm epistemological grasp of what they're talking about will tend to express opposition to practices like medical incarceration, coercive treatment, ruling a patient unable to consent, etc; however, they may still agree that the dsm labels are identifying 'real' dysfunction/defects, and the trick is simply to design a more compassionate system to deal with such people. especially this attitude tends to come out wrt diagnoses considered more 'severe' such as schizophrenia, bipolar 1, or other presentations with psychosis; it's also popular in these circles to claim that xyz psych diagnoses (often autism, but not exclusively) are different because they are 'neurotypes'/developmental disorders/cognitive disabilities/etc. you can imagine how this might become a popular position in an effort to preempt the type of epistemological critique described above with its corollary assertion that the distress or dysfunction reported by psychiatrised people must not be 'real', because it's not empirically evidenced.

imo plenty of people holding versions of these two positions are genuinely committed to antipsych as they define the term, which is why arguing with them baffles them so much. but these critiques will never amount to anything until an understanding of what's wrong morally is integrated with an understanding of what's wrong philosophically in the psychiatric system