I dislike it

mostly the drugs involved, I feel that it removes peoples right to self determination.

how do other people think of today's treatment of the mentally ill.

EDIT: too much hyperbole, to extreme, toned down OP so that others can discuss rather than oppose my point of view.

To be honest I don't know what sort of methods they use. Care to explain?? I also think it depends. If they are mentally unstable to the point where they are a threat to others and/or themselves, then something needs to be done. It's all well and good objecting to forcing people to confirm to one particular opinion, but if they are violent or destructive, it might just be necessary.

true, but even the threat of violence is now enough to evaluate some one.

the main methods are, therapy; which is light one on one sessions where the doctor asks questions and the patient reveals their emotions to the doctor (but ultimately any actual treatment ends up being medication) the light therapy is more or less for people who are depressed up to manic depressive (treatment in those cases is voluntary unless it is deemed that you are a threat to your self, which seems rational but the definition of threat has grown to levels which give doctors way too much power).

the next level would be moderate to severe manic depression to patients who are unable to function normally in society and there fore tend to be homeless and starving. the treatment starts of the same, light therapy moving more and more towards the other end of extreme in regards of treatment. basically if the patient does not respond, then they up the ante until they have done all that they can legally do, then they lock you up until they don't have the budget to feed you any more and they toss you out.

I know all too well that mentally ill people are widely misunderstood and/or mistreated. And it really has to come down with what doctors or "professionals" say is proper treatment. In most doctor's book, proper treatment is to get them out of the hospital, whether or not they can take care of themselves or be in someone else's care. Of course, most would say get them on the prescription drug that makes the behave differently. But that is no cure. In fact, doctors will tell you there is no such thing as a cure. Once someone is an alcoholic, they will always be an alcoholic. If someone is schizophrenic, they have to take medication and have therapy for the rest of their lives.

I do not believe in such things. There are cures to ailments. The problem in this society is that we are not taking proper care of our bodies. Our bodies are very powerful beings that are capable of repairing itself. We just need to give it the proper ingredients, i.e. nutrition. The pharmaceutical companies would have you believe that drugs are the safest and most effective way to heal your body. Of course they would say that. Would they make nearly as much money if they told people to eat good food instead? But the truth is, drugs are not always the best way. More people die from taking prescription drugs as prescribed than people taking too much vitamins.

It doesn't surprise me that so many people have mental and physical illnesses. Just look at the rise of diabetes. And then look at the common diet of modern people. Do you think that people can get their needed nutrition through fast food or corn-based products? And, how many people stay physically active throughout their lives? It's very difficult to keep your body and mind healthy when you don't have to work very hard (physically). Remember, a healthy body leads to a healthy mind.

It may svck, but it sure beats the old treatment, which was generally "drill hole in skull and/or brain, lock in room, electrocute every now and then".

EDIT: yeah it would, but neither do I believe we should go back to the old way.

Well I can't really come up with anything so I'll let them doctors decide what's best. :shrug: Doesn't sound nice what you said, but then again these people are not mentally sound, so I don't know how they should be treated.

My buddy is a paranoid schizophrenic. He doesn't know that I know this, mostly because 'he' never told me, the voices in his head did when he was switching medications. His old medications stopped working as intended so he needed something stronger. It took a month to switch over and an additional week for the new meds to kick in. During those five weeks, I saw him decline rapidly into a state unfit for society. He had to take an extended vacation from work because he was...Paranoid, of course. He previously had two jobs. One as a mechanic and the other as a bounty hunter. Due to the second job, he had to carry a pistol. On more than one occasion during those five weeks, I've talked him out of rampages and suicides. The methods he previously adapted for dealing with the voices no longer worked as they used to when he was off his meds which effectively made everything he owned useless, and he knew this. Because of this, he destroyed him entertainment system and roughly 17 rubix cubes. In the forth week, he was briefly hospitalized after firing four shots straight up into his ceiling. The hospitalization lasted three days and I visited him for 3 hours each of those three days. There was nothing they could do for him at that time. No medical procedure, no medicine available and no amount of counseling helped in the slightest.

He's now on the strongest meds available for his illness and he's back to normal. Once these meds stop working, which they will, he will be hospitalized permanently. Until then, he's making the most of his life. He has no idea how long he has and he's fully aware of what will happen. He accepts this and appreciates everything everyone has done for him, knowingly or not. He's still working those two jobs and he studies astro-physics in his off time. When he gets bored, he plays with his large array of rubix cubes or builds robots. He's a third degree blackbelt who cannot fight without being charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He still owns his pistol and still carries it with him.

You tell me these places are hell? That's fine. If my friend has an episode and kills people, I think we can all agree we'd rather have had him in hell as opposed to killing those people because the voices told him they were demons after his soul. This has nothing to do with social norms or society trying to make perfectly fine people conform. This is about genuinely sick people needing to be taken out of the public. It svcks, yes, but it's not some conspiracy theory to make everyone the same or ever-faithful robots. Those are ideas born of teenage angst. People are dangerous. Paranoid schizophrenics are very dangerous. To think otherwise is naive. To think someone suffering from this disease is in control is ignorant.

Ok, i might be a bit biased because i'm a med student doing my psychiatric internship right now, but at least i'm talking from experience.

Mirglof, It sounds like your view of mental institutions is based more on fiction then the current reality. So yes, in the past there have been some terrible institutions and "treatments" like lobotomy. But that is in the past, today most treatments are evidence based just like the somatic health system.

Some psychiatric diseases however have been described as hell on earth. Losing control of your mind and thoughts is truly a terrible thing (like in schizophrenia described above). The aim of treatment is and should always be to give patient back the control of their mind instead of taking over control from them.

The treatment of depression is indeed with cognitive therapy and medication. However it is always voluntary and the medication given (antidepressants like SSRI's and TCA's) are used for many other illnesses ranging from chronic headache to irritable bowel disease. Seeing people who have severe depression, not able to experience joy in anything, thinking about suicide, and then being able to help them is truly a beautiful thing.

So try giving it a chance.

Actually, from what I've read, electric shock therapy is supposed to be safe and effective in some situations.


Radiohead wrote the chilling "Climbing Up The Walls" because Jonny Greenwood was a nurse and was terrified after the government announced the Care In The Community scheme, which was basically a money-saving drive to reduce the number of mentally ill people in hospital, and he'd worked with those people, and realised that it simply was not safe to have them released unsupervised. (Inevitably, the number of crimes committed by mentally ill people skyrocketed.)

That's not to perpetuate the stigma that all people with mental illnesses are dangerously insane, since of course there are millions of people with depression and other conditions that are constructive members of society. (Just take a roll call of every bi-polar celebrity for a list to start with.) It's just that if you've reached the point where you need to be committed to hospital - that you've been deemed a danger to yourself and to others - then you're obviously not in a position to be safely let out again until you conform to society's rigid expectation that you aren't going to kill yourself or anyone else.

The frequent criticism levelled in the UK is that there's a chronic shortage of therapists. Cognitive behaviour therapy is widely seen as extremely effective, but the waiting lists are so long to get treatment that patients are just stuffed on Prozac for years on end while they wait for a therapist to become available. Then because they're just popping pills rather than actively treating the illness (as with so many physical conditions) the patient starts to feel better, takes themselves off their meds, and puts themselves back to square one again, which is intensely frustrating for all concerned.

I don't care. it doesn't matter what sob story I hear, they still don't have the right to erase peoples minds with drugs. Every one is the master of their destiny, and to take away their control is to make them no more alive than a rock or a pile of dirt.

and I am not trying to degrade your friend, This is merely what I believe, and will never stop believing. like I said, I expect most people to disagree with me.


Never compromise, I would fight it with every fiber of my being. That is not "help" that is taking away the validity of some ones existence. I would rather escape into madness and into complete inability to be aware of what is happening. than to be just aware enough that I have no control.

Hmm so what would you propose then? Leaving people like that to do what they want?

if it were up to me? yes. I value the self determination of one individual over the life of ten. or a hundred, or a thousand. to me, nothing else matters. that is why a borstal is my worst nightmare.

What right do you have to say they don't?? In the story posted above, the guy is obviously very happy with the drugs he is taking, and how they are helping him. What right do you have to take that away from him?? What right do you have to leave someone who is mentally unstable, and dangerous, drug free with the possibility to harm and kill others?? Having a mental disorder can sometimes take away control. Who are you to pass judgement on others about how they should be treated, when, by the sounds of it, you've had no medical training and very, very limited exposure to people with mental illnesses.

you did not pay attention when I said self determination. if an individual is content with the drugs, let them take them, all I care about is self determination.

EDIT: also I never claimed that I had the right to change any thing. so I do not understand why that is relevant. I am thinking that when I said "i dont care" it upset you. :shrug: I am not trying to change minds, just trying to start a discussion and see what other people feel/think about modern psychiatric treatment. there is no need for any attempt to belittle me for my point of view. especially when I have stated that my beliefs on this matter are just that. beliefs.

And for people who are not in a position to decide?

The only part of his mind that they're erasing not only comes back when a tolerance to the medication builds up, but is also the part that tells him everyone wants him dead, the world would be better without him, his kids hate him. The voices tell him to kill his closest friends. He doesn't want to live like that. For one without the disease, I know this is hard to understand. The voices in his head don't just appear to be a constant stream, they appear real. No, not even that, they ARE real and they are right. He can't stop the voices under any circumstances. What they say is law and he can't stop that. Telling a paranoid schizophrenic to ignore voices doesn't work. Without medication, he WILL kill other people and himself. There's no might, there's no could. There's no best case scenario. Without medication, this mans destiny is multiple homicide and suicide with no note.

For you not to believe that is ignorant. This is no sob story. This is reality. People with serious psychological disorders need help. Period.

like I said. i don't care. if they cant decide then they are not in control and that's the only part about drug treatments that I am ideally opposed to. I never claimed my opinion was one side fits all.



every one with mental illness is not like your friend and on the brink of homicide, but just because some are does not mean every one should be treated as such. I already said that my comments were not to degrade your friend, and I already said that these are just my views and that I were not claiming they were fact, nor was I pushing that my beliefs be adopted. so I resent being called ignorant just because I disagree with you and it pushes an emotional button.

I'm not trying to belittle your opinion, I'm trying to make you see that your opinion is not based on anything much at all, and is at best a misplaced belief that life for mentally ill people would be better if they were left to their own devices.

For you not to believe that is ignorant. This is no sob story. This is reality. People with serious psychological disorders need help. Period.

This is my closing statement from my last post. You're right, not everyone with a psychological disorder should be put on downers and locked away. People with serious psychological disorders, however, should be on medication and must be hospitalized when the need arises. I also stated that to say someone with paranoid schizophrenia shouldn't be on meds or in an institution is ignorant. People with less threatening diseases don't need as much.

I'm very interested now about what psychological disorder you have.

well, in that case. are you familiar with the story of the immovable object and the unstoppable force? self determination without compromise is the pillar of my personal philosophy. this discussion will go no where if we are simply discussing my opinion on it only. and in hindsight, I think since my opinion is the most extreme its hard for any one else to discuss what thread is about unless I tone it down a bit and use less hyperbole.

@jericho don't know. probably schizoid, antisocial, mainly a big chip on my shoulder over any thing involving society stepping in on the lives of individuals. but I am far to biased to self diagnose.

Heh, indeed. I was at a psychiatric hospital museum last year. Interesting, but scary too.

Really liked one world map that one of the patients had drawn back in the 1918 though, very surreal and awesome ^_^

What about people who aren't fit to make decisions on their own because they are, as we are saying, mentally ill? You can't leave these people to choose on their own because they are not fit to make decisions. Plus, some can be harmful to be left on their own.

So I'm guessing your in support of murderers, mass murderers, dictators, terrorists, drug traffickers, thieves, and all manor of other criminals because they all show self determination without compromise.

I don't really understand how you can enter into a discussion on treatments for the mentally ill, when you don't seem to have any substantial first hand experience in the subject, nor do you appear to have researched it much at all. Whilst I haven't done any of these things either, my opinion is far less "out there", and you seem to be ignoring what pretty much everyone else has to say, whilst repeating your own opinion. Which isn't much of a debate.

and how do you define "fit to make decisions" that is what most recently that bothers me. every year I hear more and more about new definitions that give doctors more right to determine that you are unfit to lead a healthy life.

I am opposed to having society say who has the right to self determination and who doesn't, because that contradicts the meaning of self determination. if some one wants help, help them. but if they don't, it doesn't what issue you resolve, that isn't "help" its violation.