Since I am blocked from commenting on Dr. Allen's most recent post, I'm making my comments here. Dr. Allen's post is about the latest research findings* that antipsychotics shrink the brain. This rather important information was sat on for several years by Dr. Nancy Andreasen, one of the co-authors of this paper. Dr. Andreasen sat on the information because she didn't want people to go off their antipsychotics, even though her research indicated that these medications damage the brain. (Dr. Andreasen built her career on the pharmaceutical lie that antipyschotics actually "protect the brain.") The psychiatrists I dealt with as late as 2004/2005 were telling me that if Chris didn't take these drugs to "protect" his brain, his brain was going to look like a concrete block of Swiss cheese. Thanks, Dr. Andreasen.
Dr. Andreasen's position is typical of doctors who think they are God and yet have a skewed version of what it means to be God. In this world, the Doctor God forces treatment on psychotic people by withholding the truth, but is a "partner" in decision making with the otherwise sick but so-called mentally healthy. In my world, God empowers us all to make the best choices for ourselves.
Now, back to Dr. Allen. Dr. Allen now realizes that he was taught the wrong thing about brain atrophy. "I had been taught that this phenomenon was first discovered in patients who had never been treated with antipsychotic medication." But Dr. Allen then goes on to introduce a spurious choice that treating psychiatrists have no right to make. "Of course, even if it was entirely due to the drugs, one would still have to weigh the risks of cerebral atrophy versus the risk of being chronically tortured by accusatory hallucinations and living out on the street, as was well-portrayed in the movie The Soloist." (Any doubt what choice Dr. Allen would make for them?)
He interjects a straw man argument of skid rows littered with unmedicated schizophrenics:
Go check out Skid Row in L.A. in person if you don't believe it. That part of town is actually marked with a sign that says, "Skid Row." See the folks on street corners loudly preaching incoherent gibberish about the Gospels for hours to an audience of...no one at all.
I despair for psychiatrists who show little understanding for why people are on skid row and the choices they have made to get there, who believe that bad drugs are better than no drugs at all. Why not acknowledge that many people on skid row are there because they don't like the side effects of the medications they are given, their families refuse to take help them, and psychiatry isn't interested in what makes them tick in the first place?
Schizophrenia is the bread and butter of the mental health industry, as long as the patients remain patients. Chronic schizophrenia is a goal. Naturally, the psychiatric profession denies this, but here we have it in print: knowing that the drugs aren't useful but not caring, either. There is outrage about the mess called skid row, but not about the failure of understanding that drove them there in the first place.
Dr. Allen is really worked up about antipychotics being used as antidepressants. Readers of my blog are also concerned about this misuse of dangerous drugs, but why is Dr. Allen saving his outrage for people with depression (a mental health condition that is historically easier to treat than schizophrenia) instead of directing his outrage where outrage is due: that schizophrenia patients continue to be lobotomized with drugs that don't work except to make them compliant as patients?
Showing favoritism for the depressed, he writes: "Nonetheless, these results should certainly give pause to any doctor treating a non-psychotic patient with anti-psychotic medication - especially since much safer alternative drugs are available. This potential risk is on top of the serious risks that these medications may cause diabetes, high cholesterol, and a chronic untreatable neurological condition called tardive dyskinesia. As all these risks are cumulative, long term treatment of non-psychotic individuals with anti-psychotics before all other measures are tried is particularly reprehensible."
Well, I can't get worked up to the same extent as Dr. Allen over depressed people when I know that psychiatry has failed at its bigger challenge with schizophrenia patients and has much less sympathy for their plight. It's equally, if not more, reprehensible for schizophrenia patients to have diabetes, tardive dyskinisia, etc. since psychiatry has not exhausted all other measures. Exhausting all other measures is tiring work. Rather than do the work, biochemical psychiatry claims there are no other measures.
The title of Dr. Allen's post is "Antipsychotics are for Psychosis, Not Insomnia." No, they are not. These drugs don't cure psychosis and they have horrible side effects and according to current research, they shrink the brain. So, why does the psychiatric profession keep insisting that they are for psychosis? What if doctors had insisted, in the face of important evidence to the contrary, that thalidomide was for pregnant women and only pregnant women?
On a positive note, is it possible that antipsychotics actually don't shrink the brain, and we are simply being primed for the next generation of expensive chemicals to be foisted upon us? There's a name for that practice that eludes me.
__________________
Archives of General Psychiatry,"Long-term Antipsychotic Treatment and Brain Volumes: A Longitudinal Study of First-Episode Schizophrenia," Beng-Choon Ho, MRCPsych; Nancy C. Andreasen, MD, PhD; Steven Ziebell, BS; Ronald Pierson, MS; Vincent Magnotta, PhD, Arch Gen Psychiatry 2011; 68(2):a128-137).
I despair for psychiatrists who show little understanding for why people are on skid row and the choices they have made to get there, who believe that bad drugs are better than no drugs at all. Why not acknowledge that many people on skid row are there because they don't like the side effects of the medications they are given, their families refuse to take help them, and psychiatry isn't interested in what makes them tick in the first place?
Schizophrenia is the bread and butter of the mental health industry, as long as the patients remain patients. Chronic schizophrenia is a goal. Naturally, the psychiatric profession denies this, but here we have it in print: knowing that the drugs aren't useful but not caring, either. There is outrage about the mess called skid row, but not about the failure of understanding that drove them there in the first place.
Dr. Allen is really worked up about antipychotics being used as antidepressants. Readers of my blog are also concerned about this misuse of dangerous drugs, but why is Dr. Allen saving his outrage for people with depression (a mental health condition that is historically easier to treat than schizophrenia) instead of directing his outrage where outrage is due: that schizophrenia patients continue to be lobotomized with drugs that don't work except to make them compliant as patients?
Showing favoritism for the depressed, he writes: "Nonetheless, these results should certainly give pause to any doctor treating a non-psychotic patient with anti-psychotic medication - especially since much safer alternative drugs are available. This potential risk is on top of the serious risks that these medications may cause diabetes, high cholesterol, and a chronic untreatable neurological condition called tardive dyskinesia. As all these risks are cumulative, long term treatment of non-psychotic individuals with anti-psychotics before all other measures are tried is particularly reprehensible."
Well, I can't get worked up to the same extent as Dr. Allen over depressed people when I know that psychiatry has failed at its bigger challenge with schizophrenia patients and has much less sympathy for their plight. It's equally, if not more, reprehensible for schizophrenia patients to have diabetes, tardive dyskinisia, etc. since psychiatry has not exhausted all other measures. Exhausting all other measures is tiring work. Rather than do the work, biochemical psychiatry claims there are no other measures.
The title of Dr. Allen's post is "Antipsychotics are for Psychosis, Not Insomnia." No, they are not. These drugs don't cure psychosis and they have horrible side effects and according to current research, they shrink the brain. So, why does the psychiatric profession keep insisting that they are for psychosis? What if doctors had insisted, in the face of important evidence to the contrary, that thalidomide was for pregnant women and only pregnant women?
On a positive note, is it possible that antipsychotics actually don't shrink the brain, and we are simply being primed for the next generation of expensive chemicals to be foisted upon us? There's a name for that practice that eludes me.
__________________
Archives of General Psychiatry,"Long-term Antipsychotic Treatment and Brain Volumes: A Longitudinal Study of First-Episode Schizophrenia," Beng-Choon Ho, MRCPsych; Nancy C. Andreasen, MD, PhD; Steven Ziebell, BS; Ronald Pierson, MS; Vincent Magnotta, PhD, Arch Gen Psychiatry 2011; 68(2):a128-137).
Posts
Rossa,
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that Dr. Allen likes to write about the topic of "disarming borderlines"... while he ignores the fact that his own profession needs to be "disarmed!"
Another favorite topic of Dr. Allen is "freeloaders"... He dismisses the fact that he and many of his colleagues work in government-funded university systems... where they have been producing nothing of value for the taxpayer... Freeloading, for decades!
Many of these government-funded psychiatric departments have hospital affiliates, where they give drugs to children and elderly... like candy!
They receive tons of money from Pharma, and Pharma funds their research... so they teach drugs, prescribe drugs, begin to believe in drugs... even for children and elderly... They don't want to face the fact that they are causing more harm than good... They're in denial... big time!
At least with conventional pyschiatry, we all know where someones stands... those who keep one foot in the conventional side, with another foot on the other side (claiming to care about the harm of conventional psychiatry) scare me the worse!
It's like trusting Putin with Russia... At the end of the day, he's a KGB man... will always be... It's all he's been taught... It's all he knows.
With very few exceptions, the vast majority of these psychiatrists who come from conventional systems will always live there... It's comforable for them.
The vast majority of those who've been trained to exercise control, and take away rights, as they see fit have in their nature to do so.
Incarceration, drugs, ECT...
It's all they've been taught... It's all they know.
IMO, they're frightening people!
Duane Sherry, M.S.
discoverandrecover.wordpress.com
"Anti-psychotics" don't cure "psychosis", no. What they do, in their true quality of major tranquilizers, and not "anti-psychotics", is sedate people who experience extreme stress. So that these people's response to the stress they experience won't disturb others. I sometimes hear people say that "schizophrenia" is too many thoughts, i.e. superfluous, meaningless, dispensable thoughts. If you see it that way, the chemical lobotomy makes perfectly sense. But thinking happens, like everything else we do, in response to our environment, and so there can't be "too many" thoughts -- unless there's "too much" environment...
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt that "anti-psychotics" shrink the brain. But I also believe that the fact that this is acknowledged now, after it has been known for quite some time, but consistently denied, isn't a coincidence. A new generation of expensive, "improved" drugs (oh, of course a 6-week-trial can tell us everything about the long-term effects!) is probably in the pipeline.
Rather than ramble on and on about how to "disarm borderlines", Dr. Allen would do well to take a stand against the use of psychoactive drugs with chilren and elderly at his own University of Tennessee Psychiatry Dept -
ReplyDeleteChild and Adolescent Psychiatry -
http://www.uthsc.edu/psych/childadolescent/
Geriatric Psychiatry -
http://www.uthsc.edu/psych/geriatric/
Dr. Allen refuses to take the hard stands, because at the end of the day, he's part of the system... part of the problem...
And he knows it!
Duane Sherry, M.S.
Duane - Chris has been helped considerably by his current psychiatrist, Dr. Stern. I think psychiatrists are vulnerable to criticism, but there are many who are honestly trying to do a thankless job. On his blog, Dr. Allen says many things that I agree with, such as condemning the use of neuroleptics in children. He just doesn't "get" schizophrenia and that's where I like to challenge him.
ReplyDeleteWhat are real family motivations? Read the history of world nobilities and the great literatures. This is humanity is - what has actually happened. None of it fits the model of forced reconciliation for the very good reason that that model does not explain and demonstrate human behaviour.
ReplyDeleteSo what to do when the model doesn't fit? Blame the troops! Some of them are hooligans - chemical hooligans , irredeemable!
The Doctor is confused about forgiveness, If you study human history and what I learned from Holocaust Survivors you realize that "forgiveness is not a cup of Tea". A daughter can forgive her rapist father but still concurrently be happy to see him hang as they are in some Asian Countries. Forgiveness is not proactive love nor is it a desire for a relationship , nor is a desire to party.
Forgiveness does not preclude justice and common sense. Criminals and abusers are still criminals and abusers. Forgiveness simply ends things and leaves them in peace.
He doesn't really seem to understand the dynamics of interpersonal power either. Some people dos not have the courage to see and accept that humans can learn to do evil and will do aggressive evil without remorse. Tyrants achieve power and keep it, They crush any signs of rebellion even before the rebel knows they are rebelling and this applies in dictatorships and in families. It makes no difference whether people carry the label "parent" or "Waffen SS" the drive for power will trump all human psychological growth development. Not a single member o the Nuremberg Accused felt any sense of Guilt even as they were hanged. It is a personality characteristic, it makes no difference to call them "father" or General". Most sane adults are responsible for what they do, what they have done defines who they are , that is what human development is, Some humans are legal criminals some are moral criminals,they have become this by what they have decided as adults, People are what they are and they must be held accountable for that. There are qualitatively unloving people, what defines them is not what they might have been, not what they could have been, not what Dr. Allen wants them to be, they are what they are and are defined by their actual actions and decisions.
Yes, Rossa, you are right. It is sort of Godlike. His model has family members tied to each other in unbreakable bonds, They are all the same, no good, no bad , no one is responsible, like a porridge soup, all one taste, the rapist lies down with the Rapee , the lion with the lamp. and he, the therapist remains Godlike directing the reconciliation (and outside of therapy at that) of all those who have no independent direction, no right to refuse, no right to say NO!
There is a section of the population that has a mutual perhaps unspoken desire to relate to each other. For some people the attachment is there and there is guilt , sorrow the whole pie, for others there is no attachment - sorry has no meaning - only freedom from the abuser is important.
Basically the doctor's a nice guy and has got a lot of good ideas and intentions, but I think he only fits a certain range of culture, mind you it is quite mainstream. However people who have been abused by human monsters or had extreme negative social experience (that includes schizophrenics) should stay away from him. It'll be just a form of extra abuse enabling the abusers.
Remember the parable of the scorpion crossing the river on the Frog's back. The scorpion always stings. The doctor's model of the world cannot account for scorpions, So therefore he declares that frogs and scorpions have chemical imbalances and he doesn't have to deal with them.
ReplyDeleteAs for his reconciliation Agenda: You have been abused by a rancid hamburger. The Doctor has you vent about the hamburger, then he has you dialogue with it in the empty Chair, something goes wrong! he doesn't know what to do, you seem to still have problems, there is something wrong with his techniques. So he asks you to go out and find the rancid hamburger , now turned to puke and eat it. You protest. He says "Puke isn't all bad, there is some good taste", "it's good nutrition, You protest, he asks you to forgive the puke, he gives you a 10 step program to make the puke feel guilty so you can meta-communicate with the puke, you truly forgive it and you meta-communicate with it , though neither you nor the puke cares, much but you still don't want to eat it he tells you no one is good, no one is bad, no one is to blame and tells you you can only truly love if you eat the puke, you must learn to see the puke's good points, how the puke became puke, the puke was once atoms just like you, and if you don't you are resisting forgiving the puke and besides it will make the Doctor feel really good to see you eat the puke.
Now what do you do if you are the patient?
I'll go out and get a good meal and won't go back. Fortunately I am already healthy and don't have to eat puke to save my soul. I pity those that get convinced into thinking they have to.
The puke are people that can be qualitatively assessed as not loving or as abusers in the exact same manner that the law can assess certain people as criminals. If people are in the same cultural definition and they have mutually agreed goals , then and only if they request it, (in the nature of complaining about ongoing relationships) is reconciliation appropriate to encourage.
The Doctor believes no one is good, no one is bad, no one is to blame, and consequently the idea of choosing loving over unloving relationships is missing, because everyone is all the same anyway. that you should, not could, but SHOULD get to know your local abusers and rapists that raped you and diddlers that diddled you, much better and understand how they got that way, see their good points and work on them maybe to squeeze some tearful guilt out of them, maybe, etc and that will make the world a better place for you me and the whole human race.
...
And if that's your thing , then go for it.
...
For me, no thanks, I have a happy, guilt free, zero tolerance, attitude towards abusers of all kinds especially nutty doctors who believe that for daughters who have been raped that it is not enough for them to forgive their rapist fathers, they have to pro-actively get to know him better and understand his good points because it gives the good doctor a thrill. I say "nutty" because it is nutty to not understand that rape and child abuse are crimes against human beings and will remain so eternally and objectively no matter how they are sugar coated.
Rossa,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate psychiatrists who have had the courage to make the clean-break form their peers, from the system as we see it today.
Loren Mosher, M.D. -
http://www.moshersoteria.com/articles/resignation-from-apa/
Abram Hoffer, M.D. -
http://www.doctoryourself.com/hoffer_future.html
... a few others.
As you know, both of these doctors used psychiatric drugs, but as a last-resort, in small amts, and/or for limited periods of time.
As for the others... the doctors who want to leave one foot in the conventional side, I've heard enough of their stuff...
Keep in mind, they make their livelihood with Pharma money, from companies that are involved in fraud up to their ears... They work inside university departments with researchers who have not ethics whatsover, and sit next to some of these monsters at meetings, rub elbows with them, and say nothing.
In fact, they say nothing about a lot of what's been taking place for years. With very few exceptions, the vast majority of them have remained silent for years as the second-generation of psychiatric drugs took its toll, and have had little or nothing to say as drugs have expanded marketshare - with children and youth, elderly, post-pardum women, miliary service members... with a few exceptions, 38,000 members of the APA have remained quiet!
That tells me all I need to know about psychiatry.
I'm not interested in hearing what it is they have to say... Unless they are actively working on fundamentally changing the system for which they are a part, I have no respect for them.
None.
Zero.
Nada.
Too many of them are not real doctors.
Too many of them have no sense of remorse for the injury and death they've caused.
Too many have no respect for vulnerable people.
IMO, too many of them are monsters in lab coats.
We have to agree to disagree.
Duane Sherry
Rossa,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why your last comments did not make it onto my blog. I don't recall blocking anything from you. You don't appear to have changed your screen name
I value your comments, even though we obviously disagree about schizophrenia, so please try again. If they do not appear, e-mail me back channel and let me know!
(I don't think those folks on street corners are making a "choice" any more than Alzheimer's patients are chosing to forget things).
David,
ReplyDeleteI wrote a least three comments to three different posts that got to the stage of "your comment will appear once it has been approved" It is possible that they ended up in your spam box, as I found some comments to my blog found their way there.
The choice that street people make to be there is because they cannot stand the drugs and they don't want to live in a group home or with their ever lovin' family. (I'm being facetious.) Not everybody who is on the streets is "schizophrenic," but that's what sticks in the public's mind. Many are alcoholics, drug users, etc. My son lives at home with me. Should he be medicated just because he received the SZ label seven years ago? The frenzied public thinks all "unmedicated schizophrenics" are wandering around skid row causing trouble, and clamors for government to take a sledgehammer to social policy.
Enough of my ramble, and thanks for commenting.
Darn, - my first post had the top half truncated - it was very long - what was left may be out of context. I have to refine a lot of stuff here to refine - too much for one go.
ReplyDeletesee if it takes.
I have a colourful style and despite whatever rant is here, this is an attempt to understand and describe the Doctors' Cosmology. I believe that this cosmology is responsible for his views on Schiz. and that actually extends to other psychologies. It's a very deep conflict in arguments with humans and this psychology is at the core of many divisions in human activities such as the propaganda War in MSM USA , the mid-east conflict. Global Jihad understanding of Dictatorships, Repubs-Dem elections and many civic things such as crime and punishment.
Crazy Idea? Well, maybe the world is reflecting that crazy idea.
The conflict here is as deep as leftist-rightist politics and there never has been much much chance of "reconciliation" with those two viewpoints. But the point is there is another viewpoint and that viewpoint can include everyone. And this is not about "science" but about human personal identifications IE what people identify as belonging to their ego identification in what they protect and the same thing which to others might be dis-identified. At the root of this is necessary maybe to understand identity theory.
--->
LOL Rossa - That is the advantage of having a Blog. Now that I have an active commenting Blog I will start a category labeled "banned Posts" and number them. Everything that is banned will get posted and linked on my site.
"Woe betide Ye that Ban the Innocent Post - Ye will be known far and wide for your Wicked Ways!"
My casual comments for the last few years have been very unpopular and been censored. That is why I decided to create and an active Associate Blog to my Narrative Blog
===>
As For Dr. Allen, you won't get through to him. I've been reading his book and his Blog. I'm sure his views on Schizophrenia are really from his social world view and his social /cultural agenda, not from "science".
Science is always subject to a person's world views and socialization. So don't butt your head against a wall Rossa. If what I think is right then it's not about "Science" and arguing that will never make any difference, It's something that goes to his deepest level and even possibly an agenda of how he wants to see the world and a pro-active way of acting on it.
Anyway don't butt your head against a wall arguing "science" with him. You'll just be in counter-therapeutic "denial". lol
Yeah, He printed some of my comments on his site, My first response to him on another Blog was somewhat overamped, I know what it is like to see someone spouting the chemical imbalance horse potatoes again. So what am I? Chopped Liver? I'm one of the few people in the world who know , with direct experience that the chemical imbalance theory isn't fully Kosher.
Part 2
ReplyDeleteHe is for a lot of good things and A lot of what he says and advocates for seems pretty good but that just made the negative more disappointing. I say "Hey! Why can't I join the protected species list too! Bad Chemicals is the ultimate racism "
I think I've figured out the slant , It's something that goes right across the spectrum in his Psycho-Cosmology. I think I'd have to write a book to explain it.
I haven't fully evaluated his psychotherapy yet from my perspective, I don't know if I can from the book. I have certain things I look for and those things are not well known.
However, for sure , he has some kind of outreach agenda for his patients which is to perform task management outside of therapy which is totally against the idea of self-directed growth. I don't like it. It's his idea of how he wants people to behave and and it doesn't accept what people are. Because he is involved in the politics of blame he cannot look at human beings objectively and asses them for what they are without their labels. I think his psychotherapy has some kind of flaw in which he compensated by pro actively pursuing an agenda. Simply facilitating growth will take them to the natural human development of where they decide they want to go. The therapist does not decide for them. Decisions outside the therapy box are their own.
Bottom line is not all human beings fit into his psychotherapy model, he doesn't feel comfortable with all kinds. This would include any kind of persons who had such extreme trauma that their identity was totally wiped out. Such people are no often no longer identified with their original parents. They have to get re-parented and find the lessons of love and caring elsewhere probably starting with their therapists. This simply doesn't fit into a model of forced family reconciliation and no one being to blame. The model these people present is the model of raw human basics drives without mommy and daddy attachments to cloud the issue. It is this model that is very important . The Doctor's model fits a cultural cross-section of society, and only that society. There are many values and assumptions hidden in that model such as the assumption of parenting contract or an assumption of seeking daddy love or mommy approval.
If you wipe out the cultural model go to a straight Tabla Rosa, go to a world where American standard family values are as alien as Martians then you have the minds of of Schizophrenics and other DSM-V's.
What are real family motivations? Read the history of world nobilities and the great literatures. This is humanity is - what has actually happened. None of it fits the model of forced reconciliation for the very good reason that that model does not explain and demonstrate human behaviour.
So what to do when the model doesn't fit? Blame the troops! Some of them are hooligans - chemical hooligans , irredeemable!
...
Dr. Allen,
ReplyDeleteThere is simply no scientific proof that “schizophrenia” is a biological brain disease. More importantly, no proof that is an incurable, lifelong illness that needs treatment with psychiatric drugs.
None.
Yet you and many of your colleagues continue to perpetuate this myth.
Why?
Are you not aware that the natural recovery rate for “schizophrenia” is over 50 percent?
When the symptoms first present in young people, and they are treated early, with real treatment, not the kind you use, the recovery rate jumps to 90 percent.
We had better recovery in the days of Dorothy Dix, when “treatment” involved providing basic food and shelter, compassion, and allowed people to feel part of the community… reminding them of their worth, their place.
Not until psychiatric drugs were introduced, did the recovery rates plummet.
And yet you and your colleagues continue to place psychiatric labels on people… labels that de-humanize.
Psychiatry continues to use fear tactics… tactics that frighten families.
Psychiatry continues to incarcerated without due process of law – real courts, juries, and attorneys to represent the person accused of being a danger.
Psychiatry continues to use ECT… a procedure that has no place in a civil society… a practice that needs to be abolished – yesterday!
If you want to be take seriously as a reformer, I would suggest you make a clean break from your professional peers.
A clean break for you or any other psychiatrist involves the following (as a minimum) –
1) Stop labeling people with “schizophrenia”… There is absolutely no proof that it is a brain disease, much less a condition that needs lifelong treatment with psychiatric drugs!
2) Stop prescribing drugs as a first-line, or only line of treatment. Exhaust all other methods before prescribing drugs.
3) Stop prescribing drugs without informed consent – full disclosure of the dangers of long-term use.
4) Take a stand to abolish ECT.
5) Stop forced treatment without due process. Make certain that each person who is deemed to be a danger be given access to the courts – real courts, with juries and attorneys who represent the person in question. Alternative treatment options can be presented by a knowledgeable attorney who serves as a true advocate.
6) Begin to study integrative approaches that have achieved enormous success, and provide this information to families. These include orthomolecular medicine, neurofeedback, meditation, spirituality, a host of others…
7) Begin to study peer-run respites and provide this information to patients and families.
8) Begin to study the recovery model at large… Begin to develop an appreciation for recovery…. Provide this information to patients and families as well.
9) Stop drugging kids, elderly, post-partum women.
10) Provide non-drug options to military service members and veterans.
11) Provide non-drug options to anyone who has undergone trauma. This includes not only counseling, but lots of other methods that have been successful – meditation, neurofeedback, and treatments that incorporate meridian-based therapies, such as eye movement desensitization , neuro-emotional technique, and emotional freedom techniques.
12) Stop the myth that psychiatrists are “experts”. You are not. You know very little about the human brain, and even less about the human mind. None of us do.
Until such time as you and your colleagues are willing and able to make such a clean break, you will find many of us who have little respect for you and your profession.
It’s time, Dr. Allen.
Make the clean break.
If you don’t have the courage to do so, stop pretending to be a reformer.
Duane Sherry, M.S.
Discoverandrecover.wordpress.com
Rossa,
ReplyDeleteYou wrote to Dr. Allen, "Enough of my ramble, and thanks for commenting."
Enough of your ramble?
You were discussing the way in which people who've been diagnosed are drugged, with a guy who obviously thinks there needs to be more of it.
Enough of the ramble?
Your blog discusses the way your own son was gravely injured by a psychiatric label and conventionial treatment. The guy you were commenting back to has provided plenty of each to many people along the way.
You thanked him for his comment.
What comment?
You mean the quick one about people on Skid Row not making a "choice" to be there? That comment?
....
Let me get this straight, Dr. Allen stands up against some over-use of psychiatric drugs, and a bit of the fraud... leaving the larger issues untouched, not to mention a great-big one for you and many others... the issue of the schizophrenia label and treatment, and he gets a pass?
I don't get it.
Duane Sherry
Dr. Allen,
ReplyDeleteOn your blog, you like to write about the roles people take on in dysfunctional families...
You write about the "savior" and the "monster".
In the dysfunctional world of psychiatry, which one are you, David?
Huh, which one are you?
The answer seems pretty obvious to me, but then again... I'm not a "doctor".
Duane Sherry
Duane,
ReplyDeleteThank you, too, for your comment.
...Rossa
Syblue.
ReplyDeleteTo answer to your remark
"Science is always subject to a person's world views and socialization. So don't butt your head against a wall Rossa. If what I think is right then it's not about "Science" and arguing that will never make any difference,"
I long ago came to the conclusion that science is a red herring in schizophrenia. It totally confuses the issue and keeps people from learning to heal themselves. Today's "science" is tomorrow's discredited science, so why bother? I agree, we'll never win.
Thanks for your comments.
...Rossa
Dr. Allen,
ReplyDeleteI'm left some pretty tough comments for you on this blog, and yet no response from you...
Where are you, doc?
Where'd you go, huh?
You've been confronted, and now you're gone.
Have you slipped into the zone that so many of you wanna-be docs go when confronted...
The quiet zone?
Have you once again gone where you're really most comfortable...
The place conventional psychiatrists should call "home".
The place where very few of your 38,000 APA colleages go when things get tough.
The quiet zone.
That's where you are, isn't it, doc?
Come on out, doc.
If you're gonna claim to be different than your cowardly colleagues, you're gonna need to come out of hiding!
Duane Sherry
1/4
ReplyDelete"I long ago came to the conclusion that science is a red herring in schizophrenia."
Well, the doctor believes in science. There are many references to things "unscientific " in his "spur" book.
He says he initially din't go into psychotherapy because he believed it unscientific and they had too many competing views.Competing views doesn't prevent a person from getting in there and competing though, so it's more than that.
Eventually he did , but his profession which actually does give him good foundation to go into psychotherapy, it's a a better career path and doesn't exclude PT. However his profession influenced him and possibly that profession has a few parts on back order.
for instance, I think it was William James that first described in the late 19th century some doctors sticking pins in a catatonic woman's head while she was sitting in a chair as they studied her. . He pointed out how bizarre THEIR behaviour was and how reasonable was her reaction to trauma.
They are putting the science in the wrong place for one thing and for another, science is limited by the CONSCIOUSNESS that uses it. Nerdy scientists (especially some of the ones I've met in Psych Hospitals) have no common sense or emotional development or to say full personality development.
The problem is the study and healing of the people's consciousness and the the scientist must go through some kind of development process which is more to do with something more (organic)? than just science. Anyway simply being a scientist is not enough.
The problem with and healing for is consciousness. That's where to find the principles ,laws rules, operations it doesn't operate randomly and I think it's deeper and can be accessed in more ways than "hospitalers" know or are even willing to know. I think chemical and consciousness are interactive for individuals , for generations,a for large social groups. I know from a user point of view that my metabolism changed and my basic emotional functioning altered in something like six months or less. But that was preceded by three years of striving against a wall and standing absolutely in one place. Generated momentum released as it were.
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2/4
ReplyDeleteThe masses are under a very deadly kind of psychological repression and they internalize those models which are from their leaders. Who will admit this? Especially when the repression is accompanied by mass propaganda denial. It goes right I think common accepted social norms which have been introjected are poisonous and crippling and responsible for most mental illness. People are forced into going along with things larger than themselves and those things are destructive.
but what I mean by culture influences science is that I suspect some cultural beliefs and practices are anti-therapeutic and blinding are brought to the therapy room. I'm studying to try to find out if I am right about this or how right I might be and what it's meaning might be.
Schizophrenics lose their socialization if they ever got it - most of it founded on deceits. They are not very easy people to get back in line and make do what is expected of them. Maybe a lot of psychotherapy in the hospitals might be an attempt to force socialization.
The doctor here is certainly co-opted by the politics of blame an possibly hospital influences or directives to control behaviors.In other words - politics - which things overrule and oppress the benefits of the individual.
The "Spur" book is good to read and if a person doesn't agree either consciously or with sentiment, with this mission statements at the end of the book they should not take therapy with this type of person and even take the opposite of some of the advice. It's nice to know in advance, but I think unfortunately most patients can't figure it out because they are patients. The Doc is definitely what I call behaviorist, not sure if that is technical , in his goals. I'm searching to get a good picture to see what he actually does in therapy to compare with my experience but I don't think it is there. I'm still reading.
My model is that neurotic problems are defined as historic unfinished business. The patient works with directed intention and the therapist somehow makes sure of this - the rambling "talk" of psychoanalysis is really so unnecessary it seems to me - they just don't get to it.But also the resolving of businesses involves facilitating emotional experience and thus transformation. That's what did it for me. But i this there is learning loving and caring and picking up that love as the same as is learning an art from a teacher or master teacher. So there is a real qualitative difference between loving and caring people and unloving people and there are consequences for that in terms of transactional value and especially consequences in that regard for those who outside of therapy did not grow. Also people who work on themselves seek to complete themselves, once the blocks are removed people actually go to where they need to go and then change to where they want to go. They actualize themselves. Intolerance to the unloving is natural. They go on to establish caring relationships and compliance with the unloving and repressive is resisted. It is the natural outcome of the caring persons.
3/4
ReplyDeleteThe doc doesn't do this, it;s all in his mission statements. He sees everyone n the same level, oh no, don't blame anyone and he pro-actively goes beyond the therapy room to give advice and try to manipulate what behaviour his patients will have. If the therapy process is good, it can be trusted to do it's work but he doesn't trust it. Perhaps he is more involved in socializing others to his norm. For those that have some implicit or explicit contract for this it is helpful, for others it is not. Something big is really wrong there. People must be allowed and they will decide their own destinies.
The doc denies the reality that people outside the therapeutic process will be left behind if they don't change. He even plays the sympathetic violin for them and - here comes his behaviour control - he wants to try to interfere with the natural development of the healing person and force on them naturally unwanted relationships with those that chose not to grow (whether in therapy or not). They don't deserve these violins. If a relationship changes and outside others don't want to change constructively that is their choice. The person who makes efforts to get out of the swamp doesn't deserve to be pulled back into the sludge. It's not any therapists decision it is totally the newly integrating person's decision free from the influence of any therapist agenda positive or negative. (The doc sees some therapies as having the opposite agenda of his and argues against that, but he hasn't go the trick of having NO agenda.)
He described one situation where he tried, Thankfully unsuccessfully, to persuade a patient to go out and have a relationships with her molesting father long after the fact and her molesting enabling mother. It's pure harassment and abuse. This is a betrayal of patient's trust with an agenda..and he goes on to say he does this over and over with other patients trying to persuade them ..."agains their great resistance" AiYa!! Sometimes he gets his results and it's like good theater for HIM. The therapist has no business doing anything else than facilitating the integration of the patient in my view. Whatever they do with that is their business. Giving up anger and expectations and forgiving doesn't mean the patient has to go out and have a tea party with Herr Himmler in order to be "healthy". Yes, Yes it can be done and it's very useful if an inheritance is in the wind and it's necessary to know when the SOB will drop dead.
But dumping this argument and all these propaganda persuasion on an unwilling patient would cause a great deal of distress for the ones in which it is denying their basic experience of reality. The business ends with letting go of it all. If there is nothing there after that , there is nothing there, if there is, only each person can tell what their experience of reality is. For someone to ignore and deny that sharing is very wrong. This doc has a vision of how he wants the masses to behave and what he wants to see. It is not realistic and it is impositional.
4/4
ReplyDeleteIt's far beyond that, this is such a flaw, this manipulating to enforced socialization , I think there is something very limiting in his practice. It's behaviour control instead of simply guiding the patient to an integrated self-supporting functioning. I wonder what else goes with this agenda sandwich, and what else does a person miss in communication when they are busy with their own agendas.
The book "spur" is interesting, I don't think the doc is all negative, I appreciate his work and efforts It's got a lot of information and a picture of professional development, some nice stories - there's one about how a patient tries s to kill him - made sense to me not because of the doc :) , but because it was similar to battlefield behaviour - mistaken perception - a friendly fire incident. It really demonstrates how perception changes reality - violence isn't madness - it's a part of the larger reality.
The Doc sees Chemicals as a slam dunk, castigating him won't make a difference to that. He sees the stats as saying only one thing. don't know if those states are accurate either or account for everything or can override better communication and consciousness changing techniques.
What does it matter the cat is black or white so long as it catches the mouse, you can't work on the stats you can only work on the consciousness.
You can't win unless you buy a ticket.
So you have to want to win. - You must be desperate to win.
..
Once I asked for insight", the shrink stamped his foot and said - that can come later. He made the next appointment dependent on whether I took my meds or not. Probably I might have even taken them if he had offered me anything that looked concrete.
Another year of psychosis, a suicide attempt (missed the artery - lousy sense of anatomy), hospitalization, three years on meds and there still was no "later". There was nothing, but myslef a room and psychiatric welfare, Then i got therapy from the Holocaust people. They didn't charge me (because I wrote the requested sop letter why I was quitting and they decided to offer me) they let me sit in groups for several years hardly saying anything (the head doc got something from the Govt but there were associates that were not Docs).
They saved me. I became a human being 30 years ago. If I had remained the same, I would say now - just kill me - it would have been kinder.
After I was saved and the euphoria died off, I found out that I was not real. It's very official. But as far as unreality goes, it's been pretty good.
To be fair I'm not finished the "Spur" book yet.
ReplyDeleteAnd here we go! -- It's been all over the Danish news already back in 2008: "We've solved the schizophrenia riddle!" I was a little surprized, back then, not to find much about it in the U.S. press. But that was maybe due to the fact that the research referred to in the Danish press in 2008 (and after, it's been in the media several times since) was European.
ReplyDeleteTo me the most interesting question is whether the print on these mutations reads "schizophrenia", as our researchers, and Big pHARMa of course, want it to, or whether it reads something like "trauma". But I reckon this question won't be asked at all. While the ads for the future generation of drugs probably already are in the making: "It is believed that schizophrenia is caused by a gene mutation. XYZ (insert name of new drug) suppresses this mutation from expressing itself. Ask your doctor if XYZ is wrong, er, right, for you! Side effects may include (insert three pages of side effects)." And then the whole hullaballoo starts all over again. With this new kind of "miracle" pills.
"Current therapies are only partially effective with little progress being made in identifying effective new treatments over several decades."
ReplyDeleteFrom your linked post Marian.
So what am I ? Chopped liver? There are others like myslef, I know them.
It's a deliberate lie or a deliberate ignorance.
Too bad there isn't a medicine for immoral blind ruthless greed. If there was there would ve some compliance issues. lol
There would have to be some legal orders issued for forced compliance. Psychiatrists could do theirr job and start issuing treatment orders for the truly criminally insane IE th CEO's 's and owners of the Pharmaceutical companies.
Marian,
ReplyDeleteHere in the United States, in about 2008, a psychiatrist by the name of Wolgang Sadee, M.D. of Ohio State University came out with what he considered to be promising research. Dr. Sadee announced that psychiatry was at a turning point, and would soon be able to prescribe anti-psychotics in a brand-new way, based upon genetics.
What was telling is what was imbedded in his statement… He explained that currently, psychiatry was involved in prescribing anti-psychotics in a way that involves nothing more than guess-work - “By the time we determine efficacy, irreputable harm can be done” in determining the “right” anti-psychotic.
By his own admission, psychiatry uses a swing-and-a-miss approach. (I’m not sure anybody can claim that “irreputable harm” can be done, but certainly grave harm!)
If I were a bettin’ man, I would put my money on psychiatry’s effort to push this entire “genetics” theme, as Pharma releases its third-generation, and as these monsters begin to prescribe the newer “genetically-based” drugs.
I think that Pharma and psychiatry are not bettin’ on the enormous changes that have been made since their last (second-generation, atypicals) were released on the public –
1) Powerful social networks, bloggers, facebook pages, twitter… sources of information on the dangers of the long-term use of psychoactive drugs… these messages are beginning to resonate – big-time!
2) Injury and fallout from the last marketing push… Rather than rely on the vulnerable two or three percent of the population, the second generation drugs were passed out to all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons…. There was more injury than they can bury, and people are talking about it!
3) The mainstream press is starting to turn… In spite of the enormous revenue from Pharma, mainstream news outlets are shedding some light on what’s taking place… It’s been slow, but once the press turns on something, it tends to not let go of the stories… It grabs ahold of them, outlets compete for the latest articles, etc… Such will be the case in the not-so-distant future… It’s coming!
So, I think the third-generation of “anti-psychotics” will have a tough time gaining ground, and the deck of cards called “psychiatry” will soon fall…
It has to… A myth cannot live forever!
I remain hopeful in a full-blown transformation of the mental health system.
It will not take place because psychiatry and Pharma finally saw the light…
It will take place because people began to talk with each other, to show one-another safer and more effective options….
It will take place, not because enough mental health professionals finally decided to do the right thing…
It will take place, because enough people stood up, spoke up, and spoke out… Enough people said, “ENOUGH!”
As Robert Whitaker have points out, psychiatry is on the wrong side of science.
Psychiatry will soon be on the wrong side of history!
And that “history” will likely occur before psychiatry and Pharma are ready for it!
Passionately,
Duane Sherry, M.S.
discoverandrecover.wordpress.com
Duane, I agree that the future of psychiatry doesn't look too bright. Even if there still are lots and lots of people who rush to the nearest shrink for a label and a prescription. Nothing is forever. Psychiatry neither. I wonder though, what mankind will come up with that will take psychiatry's place in society (but I'm not sure, I want to know... ). I must admit, that I have my doubts about the grand global awakening that so many people are talking about these days is right around the corner. I don't see it happening. Sadly, all I see is history repeating itself.
ReplyDeleteMarian,
ReplyDeleteI'd like to see us come back to the basics... treating each other as we would like to be treated, loving each other, and making sure that young children and elderly are taken care of, especially those with severe disabitities.
I think if we did that, the rest would take care of itself. Unfortunately, we have light-years to go.
I hope your move and new job are going well. Thanks for being an inspiration!
Duane
Duane, yes. But when I hear even many of those, who otherwise talk about nothing but the grand global awakening that, according to them, is right around the corner, and who can quote the entire Tao, Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth, the works of Ken Wilber, and whatnot, by heart, at the very same time also talk about "the mentally ill", "the schizophrenics", etc., without questioning these concepts, without hesitating to label people in this way, when I hear even some of the mentioned "gurus" themselves do this -- and I hear a lot of even these supposedly oh so conscious people do exactly this -- my heart sinks.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I see discrimination, oppression, etc., psychiatric and other, as challenges we're here, on this earth, to overcome. The moment we have overcome all the challenges there are, there's no reason for us to be here anymore. Pure consciousness has no form. Of course I can't know this, no one can, but I have a hunch that the grand global awakening will look a lot different from what most people expect/would like it to look like...
Marian,
ReplyDeleteThe "us" versus "them" mental health system that we have now simply has to be replaced.
As far as the "grand global awakening" that you speak of... IMO, the heart of each person is where this change needs to take place... So in a sense, it may not "look" like much, but it may be larger than anyone ever expected!
Be well, Marian.
Duane Sherry