One of the best comments I’ve ever heard was from a mental health survivor speaking at a meeting of an anti-psychiatry group who said “Psychiatrists aren’t real Doctors”. Think about it for a second: you go to see a Doctor to get treatment for your health problems. You certainly don’t go to be made worse or drugged into submission by all manner of (sometimes dangerous) chemicals. As for Psychiatrists doing Psychotherapy, I’ve never seen one that could do effective Psychotherapy to save their lives.

I’ve long thought that one of the cruel ironies of the mental health system is that at a time when you are at your lowest, when you are often frightened, confused and vulnerable, you see some cold, impersonal “Doctor” who gives you meds and crap advice masquerading as “therapy”.

Even the best Doctors, like my GP, do not question the efficacy of this system. When I once mentioned how a friend with Bi-Polar Disorder was on so many meds that she could barely function, trembled all the time and had to constantly take naps, my Doc just said “Yes, but her symptoms are being treated, right?”

Psychiatrists are known for their ignorance and arrogance (I once saw a shrink whose favorite expletive was “Nonsense!”), along with their contemptuous dismissal of treatments and perpsectives that do not conform to their own. Combined with the kind of power they enjoy, such as the power to have a person committed to a Psych hospital without their consent, these traits have frightful consequences for those of us diagnosed as “mentally ill”.

This is not to say some people are not helped by Psychiatry (or psychiatric meds), but most of the people I’ve met, most of the stories I’ve read, along with my own experiences have led me to conclude that Psychiatry is more a system of social control and management than a legitimate path to healing and recovery.

Psychiatrists are, in fact, more like cops than “real Doctors”.

Any parent who hands a kid meds but feeds them stale cake in the form of loops for breakfast should stop eating shit sugar and shoot some free throws before poisoning yourself and your kids.

It seems that many in the psychiatric profession have fallen prey to the Henry Kissinger effect, wherein Kissinger likened career military personnel to “dumb, stupid animals.”

Noting that psychiatrists are at the very bottom of the entry and performance criteria in formalized medicine, it may become that much easier for them to see patients as nameless, faceless drones to be used as money makers.

Gee! It sounds just like the attitude of the captains of big finance and industry.