Tell Your Story

My Story I tried to commit suicide for the first time when I was 15. I spent my 16th birthday locked up in Dammasch State Mental Hospital, I freaked out when I was told I was going to have to stay so my clothes were ripped off me, by male aids and I was thrown naked in a real padded room… hint they are NOT padded. The light was on all the time and nothing was provided for cover to keep warm. I remember seeing men looking at me and I remember pictures being taken thru the peek hole window. I was in that room, with meals shoved thru a slit in the door for 3 days. The toilet was a hole in the floor and no, there wasn’t any toilet paper. . While at the “hospital”, I remember being put in a strait jacket and tied into a chair and my “meds” forced down my throat. When I realized I could vomit them back up I was sedated and given drugs via an IV. I woke up to being raped. I made friends with one gal, she was 14. She had ( I know know as ) anorexia. I watched her try and try and try to eat. She died. Another person I made friends with hung himself and died. The psy dr said I was on the schedule for shock treatments since I refused to co-operate with the rules and the staff. That scared the shit outta me. I started doing all the things I was supposed to do and 3 months later I was released.. cured. Nothing was different for me, except I learned how to manipulate people to get what I wanted. I HATED that feeling so I never took “advantage” of that “skill”.. Remember I had just turned 16.In my early 20’s I tried to commit suicide again and committed to another hosp in Vancouver WA with a DX of Manic Depression. I was on a cocktail of lithium, stelazine, tofranil chloral hydrate and a few others I can’t remember the names of .. for more than 7 years I saw a psychiatrist until my divorce and my insurance ran out. Dumped to fare the best I could into the mental health system for the poor I quit all my drugs cold turkey.It was while under the Dr’s care I read a book he recommended called Self-Talk. I believed I was sick with metal illness(es?) until I read that book. For the first time I heard no one can make me feel anyway at all unless I choose to let them. That my responses to life were totally under my control and direction ALL of them. I was 32. I’ve attempted suicide or came very very close to it 6 times in my life. Finally I asked myself, self, I’m smart enough to have gotten the job done so whats REALLY going on? I figured out WHY I kept diving into the back hole. I really do walk a different, road now thanks to getting the message my subconscious kept sending me. Thats been my experience with the Mental Health system. I am continually agast and appalled at the amount of drugs being forced onto people, particularly children, We adults have been fed a line of BS for so long about depression that it’s destroying us as a nation and no one can see it. ...

Oppositional Defiant Disorder has to be the cruellest label, stigmatization of all. Allegedly caused by “inconsistent Parenting” routinely misinterpreted to mean “different parenting styles” children who are bored in school, whose coping mechanisms, eg. zoning out, messing in class, who are unable and or unwilling to learn unchallenging material, who question, who are more advanced than their peer age group are routinely labelled as O.D.D. ...

I am a 30 year man who finally realized a few months ago (after finding this website) that he is not mentally ill but just an adult who often acts like a child. I dabbled with some “official” drugs (meaning prescribed) in the last few years when I was first diagnosed with depression (was put on anti deps + anti anxiety pills) and then bipolar a year later (this time it was mood stabilizers and sleeping pills). ...

Very interested to read some of your very clearly reasoned, explained and referenced posts. I am familiarising myself with the status of the Recovery Model of mental health for my new job and have repeatedly come across critiques of modern psychiatry and the DSM diagnosis. I am encouraged by this line of questioning because I have 7 years experience with the Grow peer support program for recovery and personal development. Like many recovery programs, it largely ignores diagnosis, seeks to recognise and draw out the strength and human potential in all of us and has helped many people to dispense with meds altogether and live a productive, peaceful and happy life. In contrast I have found it heartbreaking to see the dehumanising “flattening” of friends when they have been heavily medicated or zapped. Learning how to constructively experience, integrate and grow from the disappointments and challenges of life has been preventative for me and taken me off the slippery path of unhealthy thoughts and attitudes. Professional therapists need to see psych patients as humans first with intrinsic value and untold potential. They need to see the purpose of medication as the end of medication. Thank you. ...

During my teenage years I met the World Health Organization’s criteria for “schizoid personality disorder”. At the time, I did not consider the possibility that there might be anything wrong with me. Instead, I believed that my isolation was a result of a lack of social understanding. So at age eighteen, when I left my harmful family environment to go to college, I set out to remedy this lack of social skills. I broke off communication with every one of my high school associates and set out to meet lots of new people and involve myself in many social activities. Meanwhile, I learned everything I could about human behavior. I researched history, economics and art; biology, anthropology and evolution. I learned the principles of marketing and tried them out in real life. I visited websites and combed one-by-one through what amounts to perhaps a thousand individual psychological research summaries. Then I examined the mathematics of information theory and machine learning to put this all together. ...

A Norwegian psychiatrist has written a book for children with the title «Pappa’n min er syk i tankene sine», which translates into «My daddy is ill in his thoughts». I applaud her wish to help children understand what is going on when a parent is having mental problems. I also disagree with the belief system she writes within, the idea that depression and anxiety and psychosis are illnesses of the thoughts or brain. ...

In hospital ED records from 2007, there is a mention made by a doctor who was dictating his activities, observations of and involvement with me during 5 hours, that I am a"poor historian." Ironically, I have to this day never met with or even seen this doctor, and vice versa. The conclusion was followed by a little post-script stating that he wouldn’t know me from Adam if he saw me, despite having written the entire account of me from the first person perspective. Really, I provided very little history, because I wasn’t really asked, (something I figured was attributable to the hospital records department having in its own filed the most substantial majority of records and historical accounting from me, having been in an adult intensive outpatient program for two years, following a month long inpatient procedure, and after the two years of intensive, was still an outpatient scheduling check-in and progress check-up on a more casual schedule over six months … right up to the day that all information pertaining to me became non-existent, and new diagnoses, and history of the new diagnoses were filled in. I was not, however, even examined under any terms that might pass for making an effort to actually determine a diagnostic impression, no evaluation nor anything close was performed, but my previously [assumed] diagnosis for which I had been seeing a private doctor regularly, being monitored on medications and therapy for Bi-Polar II (actually it was never diagnosed, I was being treated for “target symptoms,” which were actually the result of a tardive syndrome induced by olonzapine -cycling between moderate to mild akathisia and fatigue resulting from it) , but records would have shown enough target symptom treatment to inform that I was Bi-Polar II. Bi-Polar [any] was R/O in the newly made that day diagnoses: Psychosis NOS R/O BI-POLAR, and Schizophrenia with history of Schizophrenia (that was the info written in by the phantom Doctor who divined these from no disclosed resource (perhaps Spiritual PhytoEssencing that randomly penetrates his 5th and 6th Chakra in the form of Sound-Thought Ethereal Essence guiding his knowledge, or maybe he was told to write up something for em stat purposes only w/o any responsibility for or contact with the patient, as he noted at the end). It’s curious that in my medical history and records, it was first recognized that I am a “Poor Historian.” What makes me a poor historian in effect today (my records and history are so toxic and viral, far beyond errors, that to allow for them to be transmitted to any new health provider w/o undergoing a major audit and revision into something that seems like it can pass meaningful use muster, would probably direct a well-intentioned but lethal course of treatment, in addition to being a DANGER TO SHIPPING). ...

My sister was diagnosed at that difficult time when she had to get a job after college. She was shy and fearful too, about life but not growing up in the cocoon of a large family, the youngest of 6 children. I was the oldest girl and required to work at the family business every summer starting at 9 years old. Sis, I will call her di not have to do anything. 6 years younger than me she was bought expensive clothes because my parents had more money. I was bought cheap things and when I hit 16 was told that I had to buy all my clothes from then on. I left and now am so glad I did. ...

The following post is a part of our “Tell Your Story” category, where our readers submit their stories about their contact with the mental health system. This was originally a submission in our forum by Jaymax, before we changed to the new submission format: Jaymax Why dont you tell the truth about being a Scientologist? on: February 15, 2013, 04:50 Dear Phil.Why don't you tell the truth about being a Scientologist from the Church of Scientology? And that's why you campaign against psychiatry with misinformation and lies? Phil Re: Why dont you tell the truth about being a Scientologist? on: February 15, 2013, 10:34 Jaymax,I am not a member of the Church of Scientology, or indeed of any church. As to why I criticize psychiatry, it is because it is based on spurious and invalid premises and does an enormous amount of harm.If you believe that I disseminate "misinformation and lies," then please come back and specify.Best wishes. Jaymax Re: Why dont you tell the truth about being a Scientologist? on: February 20, 2013, 01:46 Really? You sound EXACTLY like a Scientologist ranting about the evils of psychiatry.My main issue is actually that your knowledge of the field mental health is so outdated and lacking. Do you not believe in ongoing education and Professional Development? Phil Re: Why dont you tell the truth about being a Scientologist? on: February 21, 2013, 10:19 Jaymax,Thanks for coming in.Firstly, the only common ground between Scientologists and me is the fact that we criticize modern psychiatry. Our reasons are very different.Secondly, I don't rant. Thirdly, perhaps my knowledge of the field is outdated and lacking. I certainly don’t claim to know everything. The critical question, however, is this – specifically what errors am I making? What am I missing? What am I getting wrong? Attacking me because I’m “outdated” serves no purpose. Snidely questioning my commitment to education gets us nowhere. Instead, provide me one piece of hard evidence that contradicts my position. One fact is better than a thousand ad hominem attacks. ...

The following post is a part of our “Tell Your Story” category, where our readers submit their stories about their contact with the mental health system. This was originally a submission in our forum by normac, before we changed to the new submission format: normac Hello Phil on: September 11, 2012, 16:31 I happened upon your blog a few days ago, and have a few questions about bipolar.Hope you are doing better, as I observed you were off due to surgery. My story is long, as most people with a mental illness can attest. ...