Human types and psychology

Typing systems are already in existence. I think it is Meyers and Briggs' work which creates the well accepted types of activist-paragmatist-theorist-reflectionist. People are rarely a single type, and all types and combinations are valued. I don't know enough about these types to know if they can change over time. They're used by employers who want empiricial psychological evidence to build their teams the right way, which means based on organisational theory they need a right mix of types in the right positions to make a team work well as greater than the sum of its parts.

The problem is too many still see mental illnesses as illnesses and not different types, different human types which are all part of a spectrum of illness and not a product of a brain illness or supposed chemical imbalance.

Looking to find usefulness is what psychometric stuff is meant to do. These tests seek out the value of people rather than what's wrong with them. The latter is what psychiatrists do - and their science is the science of unwellness of the mind or psychopathology.

They look at a rose and see the thorns. The opposite would be to see the flower. The truth is to see the thorns and see the rose, and see the beauty and the potential pain. This I would hope is what mental health does but it doesn't. It just sees the pain.

Sent from my smartphone

Why me?

Sent from my smartphone

Crisis and self management

This should be an impossible sentence. Self management works except in crisis. This is about definitions I guess. Significant life crisis is something a person can't handle. Self management is all about managing outside life crisis but when it reaches a true crisis a person can't manage it themselves.

Self management is the best option for anyone. Crisis care makes things worse for a lot of people. It can be torturous and make crisis worse when a person desperately needs to get better. It can involve imprisonment, removal from a person's usual surroundings and coercive treatment. These are all obviously protocols which make a person feel worse and when they're used during a crisis they can significantly affect a person's mental state to make it worse.

I perceive the extension of selg management programmes as the future of mental healthcare in the short term but I can't see how crisis care can get better other than...well...lots of things which cost too much.

Sent from my smartphone

Annus horribulus

I've been going through a slow breakdown last yet. It started in March after I had pushed myself to my limit working to earn the money to start a charity. It sounds like a stupid way to fundraise but it would mean that I would have freedom to spend the money.

The plan was to work for 2 years to earn a very good wage then put a large percentage - 50% or more - towards my charity project which combined photography, philanthropy and progressive mental health. The first step was to get the funds to buy a professional set of camera equipment and get the website set up. In March this fell through because my employer didn't pay me.

For the rest of the year I got little bits of money which was owed to me - enough to live a meagre lifestyle. I never got the rest I needed after 4 months of intense work up to March when I had expected to get paid.

It was tough for me. I tried applying for jobs I thought I could get but was turned down. Again, this hurt. I should have focused more on job hunting to get office work. Instead I continued my work at home on schizophrenia clinical guidelines. I read so many papers and so much information but was left without evidence-based answers. Well, all but one: the value of work for health.

Around September or October my mental state got pretty bad. The non-corporeal entity said I was going to die before my birthday and I welcomed it. I ploughed my efforts into finishing off my work on national clinical guidance for schizophrenia, the culmination of over 2 years of work and hundreds of unpaid hours.

Come my birthday there was no death but I was given an opportunity to work on something for NICE so that's what I spent my birthday and much of October working on.

Before my birthday my dad felt the need to kick his son when he was down. I was given a year to move out. I was told my activism was worthless and was made to feel uncared for, which is how I felt anyway. I wish I had died on my birthday but there is no release for me.

Things were so bad in summer that I had tried to admit myself to hospital but they were messing me about so I left in a rage. My girlfriend dumped me while I was trying to admit myself. A girl I was in love with called me a drunk too all within the same 24hrs.

In November I tried to writre a book when I should have been looking for work. It was a stupid thing to do but it seems all I do are stupid, pointless things.

December was tough. I was driven by a letter from the Department of Health regarding the antipsychotics dementia tragedy. I was very poor by this stage. I was also suffering the seasonal side of the mood component of my mental state. With no release from social contact, the stress of worrying about money and the extreme stress of the deaths of the elderly I was getting more insane.

Christmas Day added insult to injury. I had planned to spend it alone but instead my family were around. This was an unexpected misery.

Then came boxing day and things got worse from there.

Sent from my smartphone

Freedom of knowledge and information on suicide methods

A key anti-suicide method is suppression of information, censorship and misinformation.

These are tools used because people don't want other people to kill themselves. Suicidology is not a well developed field and applied suicidology doesn't exist so people resort to shitty, unethical methods like censorship and misinformation. Rather than prevent people getting to the stage where they want death - a very difficult challenge - current practice is to suppress and censor methods and information about methods.

No wonder so many people want to die. For me what's worse is the censorship and misinformation. Knowledge is something pure in this shit of a life. It is something which empowers and something which is above the rest of the filth of modern society. Knowledge is about the pursuit of absolute truth. Anti-suicide practices tarnish this ideal.

It goes without saying that assisted suicide will be legalised on day though it may be some time before the current norms and morals about self termination are shattered asunder. I think before this true suicide prevention - which is stopping people ever wanting to escape their conscious existence - will be an active part of the design of society and culture.

Until then there's still the sort of shit which drives 1 in 6 in the UK to seriously consider taking their life at some point.

Sent from my smartphone

Self medication is a tricky thing

I enjoyed alcohol and cannabis. They used to bring me pleasure. I didn't consume to excess on a daily basis and at the weekend alcohol was an important part of unwinding and fun and social contact.

Then I went down the slippery path of self medication. This is where use turns into something which is not so pleasant. It becomes about escape. It is a form of abuse of recreational drugs when they become medication but they're also good as medication.

I hit a bad patch last October and switched to drinking 1 or 2 bottles of wine a day. This helped and I stepped down to 1 bottle during November.

This regular level of drinking is what some people do. It helps them survive a shitty life. The problem is the switch between recreation and medication, and there is the core problem of the shitty life which many addicts - self medication or substance misusers - want to escape.

Sent from my smartphone

I had 5 minutes today where I tried to feel good

Or look like it at least...it was an awkward and crappy 5 minutes.

I don't know if it is the meds, the psychiatric ward trauma or something else. Perhaps it is a lack of my favourite recreational drugs which means there's little pleasure at all.

I was given an extra day in the recovery house I'm staying in. I'm no longer a detained psychiatric prisoner. I managed to get access to the internet on a computer to send off a form for a little money, something I've been trying to do for a month. No pleasure there.

Ciggies don't make me happy. Booze doesn't feel like it used to. There's no cannabis in my life. I'm not self medicating any more but the self medication was way better than I feel right now.

I don't know if I'm going through anhedonia. I don't know if this is depression or the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. I don't know if this is ptsd or burnout caused by the stress of the psychiatric ward, a place I describe as my personal hell because detention is punishment. It could just be the medication but I'm on a low dose and still I feel like shit.

Every day I've prayed for death...actually all but one and that day I think I just collapsed asleep...this year. I am dead inside and flat and tired in ways I can't describe with words. My life is shit and has been for too long and too deep shitness.

At least I can sleep.

Sent from my smartphone

Homelessness and stuff

Most of the homeless I meet are men. Some are women but it is mostly men. Perhaps this is an effective of subjective validation - I see the men but not the women in my memory - but perhaps not.

I know civilised society doesn't want anyone to be homeless. Admittedly the Americans are different. In the uk several charities strive to eliminate homelessness but it still happens. The reasons are complex and not what anyone might expect.

I'm tired though and I can't be arsed to think about this.

Sent from my smartphone

What is the purpose of therapy?

This is perhaps a stupid question. It is meant to make people feel better - or at least this is what the people believe. From counselling to CBT the expectation, as always with all mental health, is to make a person feel better.

As is too often the case this isn't true. It is currently about psychopathology, I.e. what psychiatric and psychological researchers think therapy should be about.

This has shifted a lot over the years but it still means normalisation. The purpose of therapy is to make a person normal by force or subjugated free will. The latter is about people accepting therapy for their own reasons - for example the reduction of distress or unwellness - but getting something different instead.

What should it be about?

Sent from my smartphone

No solutions for a broken heart

Sent from my smartphone

Clinical guidelines for schizophrenia

Apart from drugs, uk clinical guidance is for cbt, arts therapies and family interventions.

That's it. That's all. Cbt doesn't work according to the science but its better than nothing. The high quality trials show it is ineffective compared to control treatments, treatments which are recommended against for some reason.

I don't know enough about arts therapies to say if they're a valuable treatment. Again, they're better than nothing but there's a wide range of "better than nothing" therapies to chose from.

Family therapy is not something I would want when I'm in crisis or perhaps even at any time. It may work for some people and I'm lucky in that though I have no connection with my family they're still caring enough to house me when I'm in need and put up with my bad behaviour when I'm in crisis. Sometimes that is all mental health services care about - not having to provide a service.

There's so much more need though. For a start there needs to be specific recommendations for first episode psychosis as well as repeated episodes and continued treatment. There needs to be recommendations for patients who are hospitalised long term because the occupational therapies just consume time and I don't know how much value they have. There is a desperate need for high quality recommendations for treatment resistant schizophrenia - at the moment doctors kill their patients with the drug clozapine and there are no other recommended treatments of any kind. Clozapine can kill quickly and definitely reduces life expectancy.

Of course the key problem in writing national clinical guidelines is there's no good evidence for any of the treatments apart from the chemical cosh. The science of the cosh is flawed in my opinion and doesn't promote well being nor improve quality of life for many. It certainly doesn't reduce the significant disability of schizophrenia and neither do current clinical guidelines.

Sent from my smartphone

What is the solution to misery that no one understands?

Depression is what doctors think misery is. It is more complex than this but it is easier to forget.

This is why its so important to equip people with their own mental health system, to recognise their distress and know how to get out of it. It is also important to know when to ask for help and listen to those who think a person needs help. The latter is a tough call and a learning lesson, one I've failed on in recent times. I hope I will learn from my mistakes this time.

Sent from my smartphone

User involvement in the charity sector in terms of employed users

The mental health charities usually employ a lot of people with lived experience. It is something which they pride themselves upon and it is my guess that, in terms of numbers, they employ more people with some form of mental or physical disorder than any other charity sector. I would guess they also have more senior people who've experienced nhs treatment of some form for mental disorder.

There is a good reason for this. Involving people inside the campaigning organisations means campaigns are better informed. It also means there's less need to check with their stakeholders - those they campaign for - what is important and what isn't.

For example, many people on benefits would say they want more money. A person who works and hasn't experienced the benefits system may be unlikely to understand just how hard it is to leave a full life while on benefits. Scrimping and saving make it possible to have a sub standard rather than outright awful standard of life but there are still many good things which people on benefits miss out on.

The organisations also have to be made to allow people with a variety of mental disorders to work together to achieve the goal set down by the stakeholders. This means their workplace structures - their policies and practices - are designed around allowing people to work who might otherwise be unable to work in unadapted work environments.

This creates the test bed for the possibilities of helping the mentally ill to work rather than the too often practice of starting them on benefits with the expectation that they'll be on benefits for life. This is the compassion which can result in a bad outcome because it creates disability. The saftey of not having to work reduces distress and may help reduce the individual's burden because of certain symptoms but the long term loss of a normal life can be a cause of distress later on in life. Poverty is also a factor which creates worse outcomes in life.

Involvement through employment solves a lot of these problems and offers benefits for the charity. The mental health charities lead the way as far as I am aware and other charities also follow suit. They're also creating the employment policy and practice which would work in other organisations who have different objectives (and where the value of involvement is less).

The involvement through employment in charities has created the systems for other organisations, the proverbial 'lifts and ramps' which can help to reduce disability and disadvantage in the workplace for all people .

Sent from my smartphone

Solutions to hard problems aren't simple

We all live in a time where facile answers are considered practical. I don't think they are. I don't think practical and easy or cheap or whatever else is synonymous is what delivers on the real questions which should be burdening society.

There are some questions which are important to answer. The key one for me is described by a term called the human condition. I prefer not to use the term mental health because it is just one school of thought, one I often find finds facile answers to difficult questions.

The difficult questions are things unlike how to create happiness. They are about happiness and sadness as non judged constructs, and truly understanding what is happiness and what is sadness at the level quantuum physicists demand when they're thinking about what matter is made of. Happiness and sadness, pain and please, even right and wrong are different things for different people. They're things which change over time and with different cultures. They are not constant as the North Star. They are like strings and quantuum bits - things the finest scientists don't understand yet.

I imagine scientists like Socrates or Newton could never have understood just how complex the nature of matter is. Even Einstein was baffled by the problems which modern cosmologists and quantum physicists try to answer. As yet they too have facile answers.

Perhaps they've asked the wrong question. The question the world's finest scientists should be asking are different. The question is not what the external world is made of, though this is important. The question is about what we are made of.

The depths of the oceans and the craters on Mars have been explored but we know so little about our internal reality - the reality which every human being has to struggle with and thrive from every single day.

The real questions are about the human condition. The real answers will not be found by people looking for facile answers. The truth - the absolute truth - of the human condition should be what occupies the finest and no so fine minds because it does this already.

We all struggle to seek answers to our life problems, be we slaves or scientists, princes or paupers. When we can't find those answers...where is the science?

It isn't mental health. That's for sure. The system seeks facile answers to poorly asked questions.

There is the possibility of a true pursuit of the absolute truth of the human condition. There are even greater questions and pursuits of knowledge to get on with after that but too long have the important questions not been asked and facile answers been accepted.

What is the human condition?

Sent from my smartphone

What can be done for alzheimers patients?

This is an organic brain illness which produces the unwanted behavioural symptoms as well as other symptoms.

There are lots of causes. One is the extension of human life. The body can live far longer than the brain, especially with the number of harmful and pleasurable chemicals people use. Our emotions, originally designed for use in the African savannah plains to protect humans, are not designed for modern day life and this too can wear the brain down.

The taxing grind of work also wears down the brain - or does it? I'm obsessed with neuroplasticity as a hope for overcoming organic brain problems and I don't know enough to say whether it is a pancea to dementia and other behavioural and emotional disorders. I can imagine the constant firing of synapses as the brain works through problems of daily life, from reality processing to high level cognition, would wear out a circuit eventually but the brain is also heavily over-engineered.

Simple brain exercises may not tax the brain in the same way that stress, intense concentration or high intensity reality processing (e.g. playing a fast paced computer game) puts the brain in top gear. The problem is the latter may be what's necessary to overcome dementia rather than light brain exercise. A mind gym and a body gym may be akin. Too much can be harmful in the short and long term.

There are other solutions and changing society/culture is one of them. The demon of psychiatry has allowed the suppression of aggression or other undesirable traits using the idea that these are somehow illnesses. This allowed cultures to develop without seeing aggression exist - they become suppressed using psychiatric drugs.

This error has spread to childhood and it is a dark time for the human race, as thousands of murdered elderly people found out in the UK and perhaps hundreds of thousands worldwide who were all killed by the unnecessary use of the chemical cosh.

The solution which would protect children is the same as what would protect the elderly from death through the management of undesireable behaviour: automotons need to get used to undesireable behaviour.

The example I might give is a poor one. I played rugby at school. Most children in the UK play non-contact sports or ones with limited pain and physical contact such as football. Rugby is a violent and dangerous sport. I loved it. We would play in freezing weather in shorts. We'd be covered in mud. There was lots of pain involved. Some people got serious injuries. I needed treatment for A&E for a damaged tendon and a dislocated shoulder if I remember right, all from rugby at school.

I went to a posh school and lots of posh kids would never have had to live the life I've lived nor risk what I've risked in terms of violent harm. I was more prepared for violence and agression because I played rugby. Aggression was important to the game. A prop forward would have to run at a line of the opposing team all set on taking the ball off them. This risked physical contact and harm but was part of the training I got. On the streets this meant I could take a beating and go into placres without fear of pain or harm whereas other people from my microculture - specifically university - feared to walk amongst those I would consider friends.

This poor example is about convey the possibility of conditioning to allow culture to accept aggression and other unwanted behaviour. I should have explained how living with my grandfather as he got old meant that I was conditioned to see aggression as normal. I chose something else because I was bored. This is the possibility for all mental disorders like dementia. The unwanted behaviour isn't unwanted when people can learn to accept and deal with it. The tool is acceptance of normality instead of pathologisation of abherronce and difference.

It means we never ever medicalise the human condition nor consider human behaviour as something to be automatically suppressed.

Bah. At my station now. Back to the fucking ward.

Sent from my smartphone

Useful paper on dementia treatment

Ballard, C. Et al 1999, treating behavioural and psychological signs in Alzheimer's disease, bmj july 17; 319(7203): 138-139

Sent from my smartphone

Fuck and bugger

A quick google search has failed to find anything which points to spontaneous remission of Alzheimer's disease. It is a real illness and the body can't heal it.

Sent from my smartphone

Fwd: A poem I found

This is amazing.

Sent from my smartphone

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Diane Parker" <thescriptdodger@gmail.com>
Date: 22 Jan 2012 12:24
Subject: A poem I found
To: "Arj" <arj.name@googlemail.com>

Portrait of a Friend

 

I can't give solutions to all of life's problems, doubts, or fears.

But I can listen to you, and together we will search for answers.

 

I can't change your past with all it's heartache and pain, nor the future with its untold stories.

But I can be there now when you need me to care.

 

I can't keep your feet from stumbling.

I can only offer my hand that you may grasp it and not fall.

 

Your joys, triumphs, successes, and happiness are not mine;

Yet I can share in your laughter.

 

Your decisions in life are not mine to make, nor to judge;

I can only support you, encourage you, and help you when you ask.

 

I can't prevent you from falling away from friendship, from your values, from me.

I can only pray for you, talk to you and wait for you.

 

I can't give you boundaries which I have determined for you,

But I can give you the room to change, room to grow, room to be yourself.

 

I can't keep your heart from breaking and hurting,

But I can cry with you and help you pick up the pieces and put them back in place.

 

I can't tell you who you are.

I can only love you and be your friend.

 

~ Author Unknown

;-) X
--

"You must bear a chaos inside you to give birth to a dancing star." ~ Nietzsche

 

Join me on Facebook:

http://facebook.com/rubyintheboudoir

 

Follow me on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/thescriptdodger

Does dementia go into spontaneous remission and if so then how?

Initially I was thinking about this as the difference between an organic brain illnesses and a mental disorder.

Even Kraeplin had to agree that schizophrenics could go into remission. This is what breaks the medical model of mental illness unless alzheimers symptoms can go into remission.

What's more important to me right now is whether it is possible at all for organic symptoms to cease and if so how. Is it neuroplasticity or some other effect? If it is possible spontaneously then there's a new direction for the treatment of the elderly.

Sent from my smartphone

Rights and interests of the disabled versus those of automotons

There's no difference. Not really. Human needs and rights apply universally. What differentiates things is the disabled have needs which others don't.

A person without legs for example needs a wheelchair whereas one with legs doesn't. I don't know if a legal right exists to provide a wheelchair or not, but this would make sense as a right in an advanced society.

I suppose here I'm rambling on about the right to be equal if a person desires. It is a bit more complex though. A person also has a right to be disabled too. This is about the integrity and sovereignty of different human types.

Through genetics or biomedical electronics there is a good chance that blindness may be eliminated in the future. Sight will certainly be able to be restored for most of those who want their sight restored. But there are some who may chose to remain blind. This may seem nonsensical to automotons. Most of them wouldn't understand the issue of integrity of self because they've never had it challenged nor suffered because of who they are.

Simply, the right for an automoton to exist is the same as the right for a disabled person to exist. A blind person may chose to remain blind even when the technology exists to restore their sight. This is their right and they play an important part in society. The blind and their experiences are part of the rich diversity of the human race, a richness far greater than pounds and pence will ever measure.

There is also another aspect related to automotons. If they become disabled they may have the right to become an automoton again but this would reduce the diversity of the human race.

This is where I am brutal. Being born sighted then losing sight is very difficult. I think anyone would want their sight back if this happened. Many have lived without the technology to restore sight but this will not happen in the future.

I suppose on this point I need to ask a question: do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few? Should disabled people be forced to continue to be disabled when their exists a technology to remove their disability for the good of humanity or should their needs and wants be met?

Sent from my smartphone

What would be the universal declaration of human rights in a thousand years time?

I have no idea but the value is not in the correct answer but in what it demands.

It demands thinking hard. Damn hard.

The rights of humanity are often enshrined in various declarations and laws across the world from the rather shoddy Human Rights Act - a practical instrument of law rather than a powerful, idealistic statement - to ...well...other stuff I don't know much about.

Some of them like the American constitution are created after a period of war, a period where life is hell for everyone and everything is stripped to basic living. This trial by fire or cathartic process forces society to know what is valuable and it also enables the idealism to say: this is the future and we want it now.

Wars are also a powerful tool for idealism. Britain entered World War 2 for no other reason than they just wouldn't have Hitler's shit. It was not fear. It was what I see as a very high form of morality. When tyranny rose its head Britain said, "fuck you and the horse you rode in on." The nation suffered but it suffered for something precious: the future and a better future. America stood back but it was Britain which said no.

I was born in Sri Lanka and this is why I have so much in common with the British. I'm from the North. What my people have suffered is worse than what psychiatric patients have suffered. Men and women, young and old all sacrficied to serve something they believed in. Most of all it was not self-serving. It was the same as the British. "Fuck you!" We will not stand for tyranny.

Whereas Britain won the war the Tamils lost. Their lands were devastated and the people imprisoned. Many were tortured, abused and worse. There was no victory for the people of the North. The oppression won.

Perhaps they're best equipped to know the solution. Perhaps they're best to know what declaration of human rights will be written in a thousand years time. The Tamils have been fighting for the same things the British used to fight for but they were left alone, even in their darkest hour. The Commonwealth did not come to their aid, not when they were being decimated nor in the decades of oppression before the end of the bitterest civil war in modern history.

There was no great D-day victory and their oppressors won. But I know Tamils and I know they will never stop. This is the same mentality which allowed Britain to hold the line against the tyranny of evil. It is from this mentality where the answers come to the questions of the future and how to get there. It is the mentality which people need to get there because it is hard. Fucking hard.

People still do it though. The Tamils and the British and many others. They may be few but I hope there are many, many that would fight against the tyranny of evil and many which would fight to answer the question in the title of this post.

They might not do it because its hard. They'd do it because they believe in something.

Sent from my smartphone

It is strange to think the greatest power for world peace...

...was not protest nor the good side of humanity realising it is time to put down their weapons and give up war. It wasn't religious teachings nor social movements.

The biggest power for world peace is the most devastating weapon ever used in humanities history: the atom bomb.

No country with nuclear weapons can be attacked. No third world war happened because the unleashing of any nuclear power's arsenal would be too devastating.

Mutually Assured Destruction is what brought peace. The Cuban Missile Crisis was when the world and the human race got closest to annihalation. No peace movement nor religious force nor anything else but the two most powerful men in the world realising what would happen if they went to all out war was what stopped a war that would have left few, if any, alive.

I don't expect any nuclear power stopped researching even more powerful weapons. The most powerful hydrogen bombs we are aware of were developed in scant decades after the first fission bomb was dropped.

Scientific experiments like the Large Hadron Collider can give an insight into what devastation is possible. Some scientists feared it could create a black hole which would destroy the entire solar system. This technology could already be weaponised.

MAD keeps the peace better than anything else. Sad isn't it? This is the quality of the human race. Peace through the most devastating thing ever created.

Sent from my smartphone

What colour would you be in tangible mixed reality?

The next century will see a leap in humanity as "unlike no other before it" as all great leaps before it: permanent tangible mixed reality.

Mixed reality is when electronic and real world collide into a seamless fusion, a fusion which brings extraordinary possibilities.

Once bionic contact lenses or bionic eyes are pervasive a person can be whatever they want in terms of their visual external presentation. The change is happening with Second Life and other electronic worlds where people can have their own avatars. The market for virtual apparel is growing from nothing into something, a something which will grow to become a massive industry in the future as these garments become something which are part of real world reality instead of viewed through conventional interfaces such as phones and computers.

But what colour would you be if you existed in this world? I'm talking about choosing skin colour.

Cosmetic surgery and tanning booths allow people to change their skin colour today within the range of normal colours, I.e. the spectrum of hues of pink and brown.

The future has new possibilities. All shades. Changing colours. Moving colours and patterns. What would you be?

Sent from my smartphone

Re: [Enusp] Fwd: The Schizophrenia Commission

Hi Tina

Your experiences sound awful. I guess there may have been many black protestors in there with you?

I agree with a lot of what you say.

Bear with me. This is a long response to you. I won't forward all of it to Rethink.

I think it is possible to label people though it is a meaningless practice which often leads to assumptions being used, for example black people are good at sports. Some aren't.

Schizophrenia as a pseudoscientific concept does exist - just about - but doesn't exist as such in clinical practice. Stuff like the mini mental state examination are open to abuse.

In the late 1970s I guess schizophrenia meant hearing voices though other things still came with it, such as dressing differently or being a promiscious woman. Modern (younger) psychiatrists may not use the same criteria. Today you'd be pretty darn cool. :-)

The diagnosis is used to oppress a type, at least historically. The type has shifted and perhaps narrowed in some ways. I think there's less focus on the voices aspect and other factors in Bleuler's idea have risen in prominence. This is especially true since DSM 3 and 4, perhaps because of the beating psychiatry received from the antipsychiatry movement.

I don't know enough to say what it means now but I know enough to say no two psychiatrists from different countries or widely different psychiatric schools of thought would agree on what it is when applied to a patient.

I don't think schizophrenia is a real thing but I think the prognosis is. Schizophrenics (and manic depressives and psychotic depressives) do much worse in developed world nations for a variety of reasons - not least treatment itself. I think treatment has improved but...imagine what they did to schizophrenics in the early 20th century.

A modern definition? It is difficult. In part there is distress and disability caused by the inability to cope with the delusions and hallucinations. Then there's the disability caused by the negative symptoms which, in my opinion, are the effect of the delusions and hallucinations. Then there's other problems caused by positive symptoms such as bizarre behaviour; this is not a scientific concept but a social judgement which results in exclusion or misunderstanding. There's also the Jungian idea of schizophrenia as an introverted mind state which, again, can lead to disability.

It is worth noting that India has Sadus and Fakirs - wise men and sages who, without the cultural construct and accepted place in society, would be otherwise diagnosed with something like schizophrenia. I am strongly a believer that schizophrenia is not a real illness but a social or cultural construct. I also believe the future will need the quality of schizophrenics (esp. If Alvin Toffler's Third Wave idea is the next revolution of humanity).

It is the prognosis which I hope will change. This is what I want treatment to focus upon and this is where the innovation and research also needs to focus. The measures have to change because I think they're wrong in many respects. There needs to be a much higher focus on well being. There also needs to be a significant shift towards solving the problem of the exceptionally high suicide rate (both attempts and completed attempts). Research and innovation is also needed to protect rights and the sovereignty of schizophrenics as equal citizens - equal to automotons which is the word I use to pejoratise normal people. For example, genetic screening could potentially wipe out schizophrenics if Meehl's theory of schizotaxia proves to be correct.

It isn't all rosy. I also think schizophrenics need to work. This is part of their reintegration into society and how the healing of The Great Confinement will happen. This will also better outcomes in my opinion in the long term but it is a very unpopular idea I would guess. There needs to be massive shifts in the problems of stigma and discrimination.

There still needs to be a safety net for first episode psychosis and I'm afraid it may involve incarceration. I'm sorry Tina but psychosis can be dangerous to life - mainly through regretable suicide but also through Abrahamic murders (the Bible schizophrenic, not the US presedential voice heater). After first episode I would consider creating expert patients is the way to avoid future coercion because the person can learn to self manage and retain insight. This is about empowering people and taking power away from psychiatry.

There is also the need to find new ways to contextualise and understand the unusual experiences. This is about changing the distress but it is also about something far greater. It is about the truth of psychosis. Perhaps it is an evolutionary step or perhaps it is connection with an alien/higher being. The latter - the religious interpretations - are much easier than the "it is a government conspiracy and I am being monitored by a secret agency" sort of thing. The important thing is discovering the truth.

My own experience of psychosis where I prolifically self harmed and was parasuicidal was a battle against a controlling force. It may have been what people call god - and this is the intepretation I use - or it may have been a battle between two consciousnesses, each residing in one half of my brain. The latter idea came to me when I was reading about alien hand syndrome. People who have their brains cut in half can find one half of their body acts independently and without the control of the main consciousness.

This last paragraph I definitely won't pass on to Rethink. Regardless though, people have a right to take whatever significance from their experiences.

What do you think?

In solidarity

Arj

Sent from my smartphone

On 21 Jan 2012 23:29, "Tina Minkowitz" <tminkowitz@earthlink.net> wrote:

Arj,

When I was locked up they first gave me a label of schizophrenia.  I honestly have no idea why or what it meant to them.  A week later I transferred to a different unlocked place as a coerced voluntary, where they gave me a label of depression.  The only difference I could see was that the first place was a dungeon where there was nothing to do and the broken TV was not fixed (and they served us coffee mixed with tea "because some people like coffee and some people like tea"), the second place had cushioned chairs and a sofa and a working TV.  Depression was a "nicer" label that went with the nicer furnishings and the pretense of voluntary status.  Schizophrenia meant they wanted to drug me with haldol, at a time when there was no right to refuse recognized even in principle.  A woman who refused the drugs for days, and also kept her own clothes (kind of hippie-like - flowing skirt and Indian gauzy cotton shirt, and flowered sandals) was eventually straitjacketed and forcibly injected, just for those reasons.  

No one ever told me what schizophrenia meant to them or why they applied it to me.  Nor do I want to guess.  I didn't speak to anyone there and the psychiatrist could only observe that I was crying and afraid to a point of shock.  

So in my experience schizophrenia isn't an illness or a condition or a kind of madness, it's a designation of exclusion and selection for annihilating and disabling application of mind-altering drugs.  

My experience happened in the U.S. in 1978.  But nothing in the intervening years makes me think there is any more validity to psychiatry's use of the label.  When someone tells me they or someone else is schizophrenic I need to know what it means.  Some people use it to mean voices/visions, thinking you can fly, or a profound experience of death and rebirth.  Or just generally madness or being out of touch with consensual reality, in touch with a different reality, etc.  I'd like to explore what these things mean without having to medicalize it or use a Latin or Greek derived big word.

I'm interested to know what your experience and thoughts are about schizophrenia and what you think the commission needs to know.

Take care,

Tina

Tina Minkowitz, Esq.

Center for the Human Rights of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry

www.chrusp.org

tminkowitz@earthlink.net

On Jan 21, 2012, at 6:06 AM, Arj Subanandan wrote:

Hi Enusp

Rethink is one of the leading mental health charities in the UK and has launched a Schizophrenia Commission to celebrate (ugh...as if there's anything to celebrate) 100 years of the label of schizophrenia.

I'm putting together a personal response. If anyone knows of any relevant research or has any views please feel free to pass them on to me to inform my personal response to the Schizophrenia Commission.

I would encourage anyone in the UK to respond to Rethink's SC because I expect many of you on this list are the harbingers of the progress which is so desperately needed for those diagnosed with a serious mental 'illness' and they need your views. I'm not a researcher or anything really so please don't think you need to be to have a view which is worth contributing.

I hope the commission is a small step and a giant leap for schizophrenics everywhere.

In solidarity

Arj

Sent from my smartphone

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "The Schizophrenia Commission" <rethinkweb@gmail.com>
Date: 20 Jan 2012 19:15
Subject: The Schizophrenia Commission
To: <arj.name@gmail.com>

The Schizophrenia Commission

---

Calling all schizophrenia and psychosis researchers! Posted: 19 Jan 2012 01:20 PM PST We are finally ready to launch the last of our three surveys on schizophrenia and psychosis. Our third survey is for researchers and research teams to describe their work on schizophrenia and psychosis. We are interested in the impact of research work and ideas for further studies to improve outcomes for people affected and increase our understanding of causes, concepts, consequences, treatments and recovery. Closing date – end of March. We look forward to hearing from you!

You are subscribed to email updates from The Schizophrenia Commission To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.	Email delivery powered by Google
Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

_______________________________________________
Enusp mailing list
Enusp@nogcson.lautre.net
https://listes.lautre.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/enusp

More disabled doctors!

Doctors are heavily conditioned automotons. Few who are different survive the training and rigourous conditioning process to advance to the level of consultant. It isn't just the exams. It is the need to fit into the hierachy. Its psychiatrists who are usually the mad ones in the medical profession. This is, perhaps, because their patients rub off on them or perhaps learning about psychiatry is enough to drive anyone crazy.

I've been developing an index of how well organisations do in meeting their disability duty and I wonder how well the general medical profession does in terms of helping those with mental and physical disabilities become GPs or other types of real doctors. If my guesstimate is correct, general medicine has few people with disabilities and I guess the majority of those have common mental disorders before they become doctors.

The mental health of doctors is usually pretty poor - so much so that psychiatrists used to retire at 55 and GPs have an exceptionally high occupational suicide rate (partly because of the access to successful methods and partly because of the burden of their job). I would guess few have these problems before they step forth on the career path though things may be different in the modern day.

I would also guess, perhaps incorrectly, there are few doctors with high levels of disability severity. There are rare examples of psychiatrists like Kay Redfield Jameison who've experienced severe mental disability but I would guess they're few and far between and even rarer in the general medical profession.

This guess is based on a friend of a friend - his nickname was Village - who was at medical school. My friend became a GP at a young age and I could see the change in him, the awful sanity. Village battled all sorts of mad behaviour while trying to complete his medical degree. I don't think he completed it. This was about 15 years ago and he had manic depression.

An ex-colleague dropped out of his first year at medical school many years ago because he heard voices. I assume the diagnosis was schizophrenia but I'm not sure. I assume he was hospitalised as was the standard back in those days. He never returned to complete his degree.

Perhaps patients don't want disabled doctors. A surgeon with Parkinson's disease would certainly be a liability but the individual could be a GP. A deaf GP might be difficult but with an interpreter things could be workable.

The point is if any profession should be employing disabled staff it should be the profession tasked with helping reduce disability.

Sent from my smartphone

check references for Kraeplin's stuff

http://cineypsicopatologia.weebly.com/uploads/2/5/4/6/2546789/1994_-_berrios_-_la_nocin_de_psicosis_unitaria.pdf 

--
"Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own."
Mother Teresa

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
Thomas Jefferson


I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
Marlene Dietrich

First do no harm, you bunch of fucking cunts

It is not called the Hippocratic Maybe.

Sent from my smartphone

The real challenge for the future of mental health treatment is applied sociology

The inception of psychiatry was not a good thing for the human race.

It was necessary and a reaction to the exclusion of the mad. Too many ended up impoverished and dying prematurely. They endured significant mistreatment. Without psychiatry's creation this crime against humanity would have continued.

Unfortunately there was a new problem created which was further propagated through the generations since The Great Confinement: the hiding of madness and the widening of the percentage of the human race 'normalised' by psychiatry and psychology. The very idea that there is a real thing called a normal human being is false but this is fundamental to the way mental health works, and it is applied to subjugate human difference in a different way to the conditions and systems which existed before The Great Confinement. They now use the paradigm and priviledge of medicine and healthcare, with pseudoscience as the new dogma of truth.

Society in the developed world is progressing past Industrial Age values. It is also coming to realise the fallacy of mental health as it is comes to the apex of its subjugation of the human race in the revised edition of Dsm-V, the main American psychiatric reference manual which dominates research worldwide. At least I hope it is.

Beyond distress, disorder or disability the frontier is diversity. This is the opposite of what the mental health system tries to do. It tries to homogenise that which is not meant to be anything but what it is: a human being.

This is where the sociology paradigm is valuable to see what the direction is for the future. I think fundamentally it returns to the religious ideal of acceptance and compassion for all but with the new dogma of science applied to explain why people should accept the strangeness of strangers and the madness of the mad.

The devil is the detail though, the application of sociology or religious ideals. A few centuries have done a lot of damage to the human race. I guess the masses don't really want to accept the vagries of behaviour and emotion of individuals who are of a different type, just as they may not have understood why black people were the same as white people and shouldn't be slaves.

This is the challenge. How the fuck to apply sociology and anthropology to heal the illness in developed world society which is why psychiatry was invented and is now causing?

Sent from my smartphone

Fuck

Forgot to swear in my last post. Cunt that I am. Clearly some cognitive decline.

Sent from my smartphone

The best analogy I can give for drugs of death

Psychiatric drugs work like painkillers. Painkillers work on the central nervous system or something. I don't know. I'm not a real doctor. But then neither are those doctors that deal drugs of death without the patient's knowledge.

Psychiatric drugs are like painkillers and they don't heal the brain like a real doctor would do - thank fuck.

Sent from my smartphone

Cunts

This is not a strong enough word for nhs psychiatric care. No wonder I want to die so fucking badly. Cunts.

Sent from my smartphone

Understanding Population Health and Its Determinants

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=10548&page=46

--
"Even the rich are hungry for love, for being cared for, for being wanted, for having someone to call their own."
Mother Teresa

"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent."
Thomas Jefferson


I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
Marlene Dietrich

The chemical cosh must be banned and patient choice should be the only time when antipsychotics are allowed to be used

The chemical cosh is dangerous and kills people. It causes illness, reduced life expectancy and a poorer quality of life.

It is not a medical treatment. It harms and does not heal.

Sent from my smartphone

I've been making some basic mistakes

When I was coming up with the jadi equation I forgot about the daly coefficient. It would have saved a lot of bitching and moaning. There is still more to do but I could have saved a lot of time if I had used some of the basic skills l learned a few years ago when I was an information officer.

Not only have I become very arrogant. I'm making some basic mistakes. I should remember to be better.

Sent from my smartphone

I suppose what is a key problem...

...is persuading people who don't give a shit that the drugging of the elderly is murder.

It is the priviledge of healthcare in action. Of course a doctor or healthcare professional wouldn't do a bad thing. Only criminals do that. If a doctor kills then it is okay. If a doctor kills then it is okay.

This is the mentality which the public and politicians buy into. Of course drugs can change behaviour and emotion. It doesn't matter if it is a doctor or a criminal dealing drugs. They're still drugs.

What matters is doctors have a higher status and a higher responsibility. That's why they're protected from criminal charges when they admit themselves they're responsible for the mass slaughter of the elderly. They were just doling out drugs to solve a social problem, the same drugs they've been using to suppress schizophrenics for years and make them more miserable.

But the public and politicians don't care. They allowed doctors to get away with it and they allowed doctors to continue to get away with murdering the elderly, and others, because their behaviour and emotion was considered a problem. This is not what doctors should be doing and this is not what they're absolved from. They are worse than criminals because no drug dealer takes an oath to first do no harm.

Psychiatry is a disgrace but so are the systems which are meant to protect the public and human rights. They allowed the slaughter to continue and without punishment.

And so did I. But only so it would never happen again and that the laws of homicide and punishment would be applied to psychiatry in the future. This would mean patients could accept drugs knowing their purpose, just as someone might if they're seeing a conventional drug dealer, but this could only be done with fully informed consent.

Anything less is murder and malpractice.

This is not an issue which requires conventional democractic processes. This isn't about a vote about whether we should allow doctors to murder. This would be relevant for assisted suicide but not for the killing of people and the lies which are perpetrated in the name of nhs social control.

There is no law and no justice as long as doctors can continue this crime against humanity.

Sent from my smartphone

Who global burden of diseases potential source of disability coefficients

This is a major study which is where the daly/qaly calcs come from. The severity of disability is the important bit. I assume it is a figure between 0 and 1. 0 is no disability. These would need to be recalculated for 1 to 10 for the JADI equation to work but they are already defined and this should be an easy calculation.

I am guessing 1 to 5 in the jadi equation is people who are employable in some form. A score of 10 is a quadraplegic doing a builders job or something like that.

With time the equation, particularly this coefficient, needs to be refined but it works with what is available. The coefficient doesn't only need to apply to established disabilities. It can work for race, gender or other stuff which is recognised as a factor of disadvantage. For example, gypsies and travllers might score a 5 even without a psychiatric or other diagnosis of disability. Organisations which employ people with this background are doing well to advantage those who are disadvantaged and excluded.

Sent from my smartphone

I am a moron

Shit. There must be a numerical estimate of the severity of disability. It is how QALYs or DALYs are calculated.

Dalys are years of lost life + (years lived with a disorder x a disability weighting)

So the JADI equation could work now. The disability weighting could be derived or be equivalent to the daly disability weighting on years lived with a disorder.

Sent from my smartphone

Suicide notes are important

There is a lot of value in knowing what is going through a person's head before they kill themselves and why they did it.

For me though there's nothing to say. I just want to die. All my note would say is something like, "good bye cruel world."

Previous attempts were different.

Sent from my smartphone

Coping with wanting death

I don't think anyone could really understand what this is like except for those who have to live with it. It is different from being suicidal but akin. It is like Chinese water torture on a person's psyche, and the process which leads to this feeling is an intense torture in itself.

It is a punishment worse than any other. It is the punishment where living is unwanted. It is a very lonely way to be or it can be.

To call it depression is an insult. To expect doctors to have a solution is a joke. They'd likely electrocute the person or chop into their brains. Cunts.

I would guess even the science of suicidology has a dearth of research and solutions for those who have to live day after day, year after year with the hope that death will give them release from the mortal coil.

This is why I want an assisted suicide but it is not an easy choice nor a path which I have made easy. I still have to find a way to survive and I don't think there is anyone who can help. At the end, I expect to be able to make a free choice to continue to live or to have my life ended.

It is time for this sort of compassion. Already doctors kill patients to end their pain. People who care enough to kill their loved one also get away without punishment from the law. It is time for the developed world to truly develop and accept what free will means and what real compassion is.

My system doesn't allow an instant death. It is 4 years of more suffering. Shit. I hate the thought of it. I don't think I will find my solution during this time because I don't think there is one. When it gets this bad for a person, when a psyche is so damaged inside, there is no real solution which remains ethical with respect to a human being's rights (I'm talking about forced treatments like ect).

Sent from my smartphone

The drive to human equality is not easy

We don't live in an egalitarian world where all can prosper, not yet, but this is the future. It is simple in this respect.

When given an opportunity to prosper most people - if not all - will do so given time. The film Trading Places illustrates the point. A black, homeless bum becomes a city trader and a white city trader becomes a bum. The latter in the real world would be immoral but the former has already been put into pratice. In the 1980s street traders were recruited to the investment banking floor.

This is just a film of course but it is the ideal of the possibility which I like. Those who do best in life usually still come from very priviledged backgrounds and those who have the worst childhoods and poorest backgrounds still continue to have lives without opportunity or prosperity.

The egalitarian principle may seem like an ideal which is still ahead of its time but I don't believe this is true. Talent is talent regardless of disadvantage. There was a school friend of mine who went to the same expensive posh school I went to. He was different because he was from a poor background but his talent and potential was so exceptional the school offered him a free place. He was a misfit, and this meant he was excluded and isolated partly because of himself and partly because of the culture. He eventually dropped out in the first year which was a real shame.

I met him again a few years later when I ended up in a children's home. He'd spent a lot of time in state care. Care hadn't helped him realise his potential nor better his life opportunities but I would bet everything that his capability and talent were undiminished.

This potential is what the modern world values and thrives upon. Everyone has it if people and structures are willing to recognise it.

Those who have been through the standard - the priviledged - path of those who prosper well in the modern day are conditioned into a way of thinking and a mindset. They are 'in the box' and their imaginations are usually stymied through the process of behavioural and thought conditioning which comes with following the standard career path.

In health and social care this may ultimately be a disadvantage, at least in terms of progress and decision-making which reflects real world problems and solutions. A fettered imagination and a life without diversity of life experience are not the foundations necessary for delivering on the objective of health and social care. Too often those at the top live protected lives in ivory twoers away from the grass roots reality.

In the drive towards an equal society there is a lot of value in those who've been through the hard times in life, those who have struggled through the worse life, the inequality and the tyranny of evil of other people.
Equality is a national objective in the UK and beyond the simple principle there is a value to the modern constructs. It comes from the value of life experience versus book knowledge, from those who learn from the street rather than from the research and policy documents. It may be hard for those who went through the standard conditioning to be able to listen and value the words of those who've been through the hard path but this is a failing because it is a failing not to be able to listen and try to understand another human being. It is a failing I too often do.

If the objective is human equality then the voices of those who suffer disadvantage are as valuable as those who have lived a priviledged life. They prosper and it is about time the rest prosper too.

I do wonder what happened to my old school mate.

Sent from my smartphone

Those who live on nothing live free

This thought just came into my head. Why?

Sent from my smartphone

Response to letter about dementia deaths and other opinions on death and 'treatment' of mental healthcare

Dear Theresa

I hope I find you well. I hope you had a good festive period and are looking forward to the new year.

Thank you for replying to my last email. I'm afraid I've not yet read your reply. I didn't manage to open the letter and now I'm currently detained in a psychiatric ward. I would like to continue our conversation but your reply is still at home.

First of all I must apologise. I lied in my last email. I already knew about the reduction to one third the number of unnecessary deaths. It was a cheap shot which is beneath me. It was manipulative and it was driven by my desire to succeed on this issue.

I would have liked to have read your reply before responding but present circumstances mean I don't have this liberty. I've spent some time thinking about the issues while I've been a psychiatric prisoner over the last couple of weeks and I'm like to outline them to you. They may seem radical - mad even - but I believe it is important for the future of the NHS and the lives of mental health patients to be willing to think different.

I'll briefly restate the problem. There were 1,800 unnecessary deaths every year which happened not in the treatment of an illness - there is no cure for Alzheimers - but for the suppression of undesirable behaviour and emotion. When the elderly get closer to death they can be difficult to manage so the chemical cosh became used to solve the social problem of managing their behaviour and expression. The aim of 'treatment' was to make the elderly docile but the 'treatment' caused reduced life expectancy and death. It did not heal the brain but it harmed the brain and thereby violated the doctors' oath to first do no harm. The 'treatment' was akin to a straitjacket and gag but came in pill form.

The dementia tragedy is the apex of decades of this form of 'treatment' of emotional and behavioural disorders using biological means. The public and the government believe these are real illnesses and they are treated like real illnesses. I'm afraid to inform you this isn't true. The dementia tragedy is a good example.

The real illnesses which causes the symptoms of dementia is the degeneration of the brain. This degeneration is well established and there is no cure as yet. The degeneration of the brain leads to other organic systems failing as well as the unwanted behaviour called dementia.

Since the mid-20th century there has been a solution to the unwanted behavioural symptoms. The chemical cosh was an alternative to the lobotomy and was invented with the primary purpose to chemically cosh schizophrenics.

The chemical cosh does not heal the brain. There is a significant body of evidence showing that it harms the brain, causes illness, reduces life expectancy and causes death. I hope I don't need to reiterate that the chemical treatment is not what I would consider a medical treatment. It treats a social problem.

These social problems are called behavioural and emotional disorders or falsely called mental illnesses. They are not illnesses nor are they treated as illnesses. Homosexuality was not an illness. Neither was being an unmarried mother. Neither was being a slave who kept on running away (drapteomania was not codified in a reference psychiatric textbook). Schizophrenia and other so-called mental illnesses are not real illnesses either; though brain differences may exist this is not a sign of an illness. (I appreciate this last point is quite difficult to understand given the prevailing wisdom that schizophrenia really is an illness but it isn't.)

They are, however, treated by doctors. In my opinion this is why the public and the government assume they are real illnesses and perhaps some doctors falsely believe they are real illnesses too.

In the treatment of real illnesses doctors risk reduced life expectancy and death however this is not appropriate in the 'treatment' of behavioural and emotional disorders. In my opinion, death and reduced life expectancy in 'treatment' of mental illnesses is murder. 1,800 elderly every year were murdered by doctors to solve a social problem.

This false assumption of real medical treatment is how the medical profession escaped the sort of punishments which any other industry would face were a mass manslaughter discovered on the scale of the dementia tragedy. It is this privilege of do-gooding which meant the government initally agreed to the target of a reduction to 600 unnecessary deaths a year rather than total cessation of the manslaughter of the elderly to suppress unwanted behavioural symptoms.

I have been very angry about this. It is the main stressors I've faced before my current psychiatric imprisonment. My opinion is clear: we can not allow anyone to die in the 'treatment' of socially undesirable behaviour and emotion. The dementia tragedy...is deeply saddening and the continued slaughter has driven me mad.

A teacher of mine told me, "there's no use crying over spilt milk" and I'm trying to take this attitude. My anger would demand doctors who kill patients in this way be treated like any other murderer would be and their profession should no longer be tasked with the suppression of unwanted behaviour and the subjugation of unwanted human types. I have personally experienced so-called treatment and it is bad.

Instead I am trying to think of solutions for the future but it is with a clear rule in mind: we can not kill people for these reasons nor reduce their life expectancy and quality of life.

This would mean no more chemical treatments, electro-shock therapy, psychosurgery for mental disorder or other biological 'treatments.' The chemical cosh, mood stabilisers, antidepressants and other so-called treatments all harm the patient when there are other alternatives.

I appreciate this may not possible yet even though it is absolutely necessary and, in my firm opinion, is necessitated by the laws of criminal justice and homicide. The dementia tragedy can not be allowed to happen again. No murders can.

Instead could I propose a weak solution to resolve the ethical and moral issue: fully informed patient choice using the advance decision/directive system outlined in the Mental Capacity Act for all biological 'treatment' behavioural and emotional disorders. (Please understand that, in my mind, this solution is the equivalent of the legalisation of assisted suicide, albeit a slower death, however I must be honest and admit I am a proponent of assisted suicide. Patients would be making an informed choice to use a 'treatment' which risks illness, reduced life expectancy and death).

In my opinion it takes a lot of knowledge and understanding for a patient to make this decision. The public are as yet unaware of the underlying complexity and it is something they would need to be educated about. This could be achieved through a significant extension of the existing Information Prescription scheme. The aim is to offer every patient the level of expertise required to exercise their free will on the 'treatment' if ever they are labelled as mentally disordered. Too many still believe human difference is an illness and this is not the appropriate mindset to make the decision. A much deeper understanding is required, one which considers the sociological perspective as well as the alternatives.

This solution is about empowering patients and the public while gradually taking power away from the hegemony of psychiatry. There will always be a place for expertise which is what doctors should be providing but the history of psychiatry, in my opinion, shows me the profession are not experts in the true solutions to the problem. Since its inception the objective of psychiatry has been the homogenisation of the human race using the false application of the paradigm of illness to suppress human difference. Too much death and lost life, too much loss to individuals and society, has already happened and it is a silent tragedy.

My other solution is likely to sound crazy but perhaps in this instance it isn't a bad thing: change society.

Many of those dementia deaths could have been avoided if carers and care home workers were tolerant and compassionate about the undesirable or challenging behaviour which humans have exhibited as they grow old. There may be other solutions. I walked past a dementia care facility a few days ago while on section 17 leave and looked through the window. The elderly patients just were left in their bedrooms. One looked listless and if she was just waiting for the end of her life. I would not want this for any of our elders and perhaps solving this problem may also reduce the real life problems for the elderly. Retaining an active mind and body may be a better cure for Alzhiemers than drugging away the unwanted symptoms while waiting for the patient to die.

This objective of changing society applies to all mental and behavioural disorders. Though they are not real illnesses the prognosis is real. To me the prognosis is the worst life outcomes. People end up poor and unemployed. They become isolated and face various forms of exclusion. Too many talented people are relegated to menial roles because of their behavioural and emotional difference and those are the lucky ones. Many end up left to rot on medication and state welfare for life but it doesn't have to be this way. The systems and society which create the disadvantage and worse life outcomes - the prognosis - needs to change and this is an objective of government and health/social care.

The UK leads the world in this respect thanks to the work of charities like Mind and Rethink. They along with a coalition of other organisations instituted Time to Change, the largest mental health antistigma and discrimination program in the world. TTC is working to reduce the disability and distress associated with mental disorders without using harmful treatments which kill the patient. The Improved Access to Psychological Therapies scheme is another world-leading healthcare programme which offers safer alternatives to the historical psychiatric practice of biological 'treatments.'

There may be other solutions. These innovations will come forward with time. What remains vitally important today is agreement on the rule: we can not allow death, reduced life expectancy and illness to continue in the so-called treatment of behavioural and emotional disorders. It is murder.

If there is anything good which can come from the deaths of the elderly then let it be this rule. Please.

I can explain in greater detail if it is required.

You are welcome to reply to me via email. If you prefer to send a letter my electoral role address is:
4 Eccleston Close
Barnet
London
EN4 9EZ

Theresa. Thank you as always for taking the time to read my views.

Yours sincerely

Arj

Sent from my smartphone

Another thing I have to survive

What if I'm actually useful? It is very hard for me to see this but perhaps I'm seeing it a little more. It makes it even harder for me to take my life.

This was implicitly part of my old plan to deal with a semi-constant death wish. The altruistic route - supposedly serving the greater good - may work for some because they are forced to continue living for the value they provide.

This is unfair on the individual. Everyone has the right to die regardless of their value. We are not property. We are people. Each individual owns their own life and when they want it no more they should have the right to die.

Death is, of course, suffering for those who love and care for an individual but sadly death is also a part of life. Death can lead to a loss to society too but, again, this is part of life.

Few can understand why death is an answer for a few. Not enough people understand what pain drives a person to contemplate the cessation of their existence. Even fewer can understand the pain of contemplating living but this is something I suffer alone.

I have one lifetime I don't want. It is one lifetime I would give to the greater good but not to suffer more. I give it to...I give it for my reasons and to what I want. And when I am ready I expect an assisted suicide.

Sent from my smartphone

Society doctors shouldn't be doctors

Their burden is far greater as is their responsibility.

A profession which seeks to change society for the betterment of humankind is burdened more than any ever. Too much ill has already been perpetrated because of the assumption that compassion leads to good things and absolves individuals from harm.

Maudsley wanted the best minds for psychiatry. Society doctors demand even higher forms of capability. It is not those who learn through construct systems who are ready to take on the crippling burden. It is those who can survive being broken by carrying the weight of the world and the burden of the future.

I fear making a profession or a job out of it. It is why I would prefer every person carries this burden and no one leaves it to another or a profession to make this shit of a world better.

Sent from my smartphone

The funny thing...

...is the beatings were fewer and less damaging than the emotional abuse.

Sent from my smartphone

I'm trying to remember my first beating

It was when I was in yorkshire.

I had been given a new pair of gloves. I had used them once I think then left them to dry on an electric fire. I left them too long and they got burnt.

I don't think this is a false memory. I was smacked for it. I can't remember if this was when a wooden spoon was used or whether hands were enough. I definitely remember a wooden spoon being used for one or more of the beatings I got.

I was under 5 when I got this beating for the burnt gloves. By the age of 10 I would have had more beatings than my sister and two cousins who live in this country combined.

So when those pricks look down on me they can basically go fuck themselves and get the fuck out of my life. My male cousin couldn't even understand how much I've suffered. My sister didn't even have the decency to recognise what I had been through just as I don't easily recognise what I put them through. The bitch is so stupid as to bring this all up while I'm obviously a fucking wreck.

I'm so tired of doctors and how they fuck my life up. At least my family are a bunch of cunts I need never see ever again. They make me mentally ill, and not in a good way.

Sent from my smartphone

There's a part of me which thinks I'm going to die in here

This strange sense of paranoia can't be true. It is just one of those strange thoughts.

I may be evil but I can't see what terrible crime I've committed. Was it wanting to die?

I've prayed for my death to come. Please.

Sent from my smartphone

If any of the Few...

...of fighter command were amongst those who died unnecessarily then...fuck. I would hope those who live in the bountiful freedom we have today would stand up against the new tyranny of evil, the tyranny of psychiatry.

Those souls risked and died for our world today. For all the shit that it is it would be a worse world had Britain fallen to the Nazis.

Every year we remember the memories of the fallen by buying poppies. Too easily though we forget the true value of their sacrifice.

Too easily did all of us - the public, the police and politicans - forget that we never kill the elderly for their behaviour.

If any of the Few of fighter command died at the hands of the chemical cosh then...fuck....can any of our generation hold our heads up?

Theirs was not to reason why. They flew to defend an ideal, and too many died. My freedom is based on their sacrifice. I will not allow their memory and their sacrifice to be denigrated by the piss shit fucking cuntedness we call modern psychiatry.

Sent from my smartphone

What is the hardest thing about living with wanting your own death more than anything else?

Go on. You can finish this one off yourself.

Sent from my smartphone