creative not sick

Is Free Thinking A Mental Illness?

There’s got to be a better way to insert links. I’ll figure it out, but for now, I’m sorry my links aren’t very pretty.  The title of this blog post is actually the title to the article I’m going to link to, and the comments attached to that article are important. They run the gamut from “you people are paranoid freaks and have no idea what you’re talking about” to “right on, I’ve been there and seen this” – and I believe all the people commenting are speaking some measure of truth.

People who have lived with persons diagnosed probably correctly with ODD have an understanding of the disorder as it was meant to be diagnosed, that the DSM-WhateverVolumeWe’reCurrentlyOn is intended to be noting these behaviors in extreme severity.

It doesn’t mean that all clinicians are diagnosing all patients correctly. It doesn’t mean people are not being misdiagnosed every day. It doesn’t mean these diagnosis aren’t being used to control behaviors and thinking patterns that are disliked by the mainstream. It doesn’t mean diagnosis cannot be manipulated and medications used in an attempt to make “weird kids” become “normal.”

And my saying that doesn’t mean the above will ever, ever work, by the way.

And it doesn’t mean that clinicians aren’t encouraged to make diagnosis in order to prescribe drugs, and that drug companies don’t benefit financially from the prescribing of said drugs. Or that clinics and hospitals and doctors and providers don’t benefit from follow-up visits to manage the prescribing of said drugs.

So arguments in comments notwithstanding, I still ask…. is it paranoid or fear-mongering to question the breaking down of “depression” or “anxiety” or “schizophrenia” into lesser diagnosis in order to prescribe essentially the same drugs?

Here’s the link. What do you think?

http://www.offthegridnews.com/how-to-2/is-free-thinking-a-mental-illness/

Hello world!

Welcome to this new place, Wounded Not Sick. This is a special place where secrets and fears can be shared, and where being anonymous is encouraged, although certainly not required.

I’ll tell my secret first.

I’ve worked in medical mental health for a lot of years, and I believed that a lot of good happened there. But lately I’m starting to see a lot of less good is happening there, and I am frightened and disillusioned. What I see is that change for the better is not happening from within this broken system, and probably will never happen from within, because the system itself is self-perpetuating, and the honest truth is [insert drumroll] there is no money in curing mental illness. There is, sadly, money to be made diagnosing young people with chronic and persistent mental “illnesses” –  schizoaffective disorders, mood disorders, and personality disorders.

Schizophrenia, bi-polar, borderline personality. Social anxiety. Antisocial tendencies.

Terms and labels that make us think of school shooters and crazy people pushing shopping carts and living under bridges and not functioning.

Let me tell you a secret.

Sometimes medical psychiatry causes people not to function. Sometimes miracle drugs look more like behavior control than good medicine.

Sometimes helping looks more like hurting.

And I lie awake in my bed at night wondering how I can continue to be a part of this.