Why aremany people anti-psychiatry, it helps us aspies a lot

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I dont understand why many people are anti-psychiatry, I mean it is true that some people have commited suicide while on psychiatric drugs, but thousands of times that number have been saved from suicides due to the effects of anti-depressants and modern psychiatry. Studying biological psychology, I have come to the conclusion that the people that are anti-psychiatry are most likely uneducated and do not know the basics of it, how it functions, and how it helps people. Some people even think that psychiatrists are murderers, I dont understand. I think they are so absent-minded that they think modern psychiatry is just like a hollywood horror movie depicting a psychiatric scene, full of torture and murder. The fact that some people think that psychiatry is like that makes me sick to my stomach, because psychiatrists are some of the nicest people you will ever meet, and they have saved as many, if not more lives than ER doctors. And the fact that some people dont consider psychiatrists as doctors, that is also crazy, psychiatrists have the power to perform physical examinations, order tests (e.g blood tests, fMRIs, etc) and undergo the same training (different specialties) as a cardiologist, urologist, neurosurgeon, etc. Another cause for this anti-psychiatry is Scientology ( I dont want to get into that, because we may have scientologists here, and I dont want to get into religion/cult arguments) and perhaps old age. Many older individuals are unaware that psychiatry has made great strides over the decades and the 'couch' in the psychiatrists office no longer exists. Modern psychiatric offices even have posters of the brain, just like your doctors office has posters of the anatomy. That is only a small example. Also, anti-depressants have become much safer, much more tolerable, and somewhat more effective than their older kin. This of course depends on a person-to-person basis and what illness is being treated. Some dont work on certain people, but it must be remembered that Plavix doesnt work to thin blood in certain people, and Nexium doesnt prevent heartburn in some people. I still think that there is a lot of bias going around on opinions regarding psychiatry, and I think unless people are medical professionals, or have suffered from mental illness and have been treated by psychiatry, they shouldnt have a negative opinion on psychiatry because they simply dont know enough to make a negative opinion without being biased in some ways. I can say this because I have OCD/GAD well managed with the help of psychiatry and the anti-depressant Zoloft (And I do understand that it doesnt work for everyone) I have Asperger's Syndrome (And Im proud) and I am studying biological psych. And I apologize if some of my views offend some people as psychiatry is a controversial topic at the moment.

I dont need one, so I have no use for one

I have never had a particularly good experience with a psychiatrist..

It does help some people.

Just not myself.

I felt suicidal from an antidepressant my GP prescribed. Then I had to see a Psychiatrist who wanted to increase the dose of the second one. I said no, it would make the side effects worse, which it did.

On the other hand, I can see Psychiatry has helped other people. Like I said, just not me.

If my mom had listened to the psychiatrists, I would have spent my life from early childhood on up being in an institution. Psychiatrists caused me to lose a very lucrative career as well. I agree, there are those who may truly help some people, but I am not among the ones helped. Autism is a neurological condition rather than a psychiatric disorder. A more appropriate doctor to treat autism related problems is a neurologist.

I've never met one, but I'm quite suspicious of them.

Why?

I heard, while watching the passage of an Autism bill through the House of Lords, that some Aspies had been prescribed so many hard drugs by psychs that their artistic abilities had been destroyed. What happened was that the psychs had no clue as to what was wrong with their patients, so they used the method of diagnosis by prescription - you don't know what's wrong, so you give 'em an antidepressant, and if that helps then they must be depressed. If not, try an anti-psychotic, and so on. In my head, hard drugs should be a last resort, and it's the height of irresponsibility to use them as a diagnostic tool.

More recently I heard on the news that most of the hard drugs that psychs and doctors prescribe do more harm than good. All of this points to either incompetence or corruption, perhaps in the form of some kind of financial link with the drug firms. We shouldn't underestimate the pharmaceutical industry's power to manipulate mental health workers.

The only direct whiff of this I've noticed is when I visited my GP to hand in my (private) AS diagnosis.....she told me point blank that I'd get no help from her except antidepressants and tranquillisers (her wording was a little more diplomatic, but that was the take-home message). Of course she's not a psych, but she is a health professional, which is part of the same family as far as I can see.

What else? I suppose we've got the life of Sigmund Freud, the "father of psychoanalysis," who although gifted with some useful insights, appears to have gone on a guru trip, claiming that his theories explained absolutely everything while quietly behaving like a dirty old man with his patients and prescribing all manner of wacky and harmful interventions, about which he showed little or no remorse when challenged. Perhaps he was merely echoing the morals of the Victorian middle class, and it's true that a lot of modern psychs see his teachings as deeply flawed, but his life history still paints a scary picture of what can go wrong when a patient trusts a doctor too much.

From what I've read by people who have problems with the psychs, a big issue is that the psyche is often too certain that they're correct....they seem to lack the humility to see that their DX isn't the last word in the matter, even though it often happens that a visit to a second professional yields a different diagnosis. I've alse read that some of them bungle the transference process.

Less damning on the psychs themselves, why are they called "shrinks" ? The term comes from the idea that a psychiatrist's job is to shrink the inflated ego of the patient so that they can see the world more realistically and make better judgement calls. Anybody attempting to shrink another's ego is going to make enemies, unless it's done with great skill. Of course, AS is not a condition that's going to get any better by the "shrinking" process, and in many ways a psyche is an inappropriate choice of health professional for an Aspie.

The whole idea of baring your soul (as you might to a shrink) to a person you've only just met can be dangerous. Really that's the kind of candour that's best reserved for longstanding, well-trusted friends. So a person might make an intellectual choice to open up to a shrink, if they don't have any suitable friends handy, but the emotional distrust is likely to remain, and that may do a lot of harm to the client-shrink relationship.

The other reason I'm suspicious of them is that I've known several people with mental health problems, and their opinion of their shrinks has always been pretty low, and I've yet to hear of a success story - one in which a shrink's intervention is seen to do palpable good. Customer satisfaction (probably the best measure of quality) in the profession would seem to be pretty low.

Anyone who wants to see a psychiatrist ought to have their head examined.

Almost every single one I had was a massive failure at what they were doing.

That said, as an adult, I get to fire them until one of them starts talking sense.

I'm on meds now and in control of the situation - if I'm unhappy, I can change or wean off meds.

Having control over who I see, what I take (if anything), and a whole lot of initiative/nerve (because I am NOT going to repeat past experiences), things are working out this time.

That's a good way of avoiding the worst dangers.....to just see them as your servants rather than as demigods or parent figures. Experts often have a way of insinuating themselves as authorities, but there's no law saying we have to take their advice if we find it lacking.

I have more reasons than most to hate shrinks.

A psychiatrist once blew up my brain and I have no memory of over a month of my life - no memory of being in a psychotic mania that required my boyfriend to take a leave of absence to make sure I didn't harm or kill myself. No memory of how I got all the cuts on my body, or the 20 lbs I gained overnight.
THat was the worst that's happened, there were other smaller incidents.

You better believe I'm not going through /that/ again.

If the psych can't meet my needs effectively, there are about eight billion other psychs in the world to try.

One of the first questions I ask is their experience with AS.

One psychiatrist, on the first visit and without any review of history, interview or other process, decided that I was bipolar and started writing prescriptions. I tried one of the meds, and had terrible reactions. Hard to trust someone who does not appear to be interested in finding the real problem and is more interested in masking the symptoms.


M.

As a profession, you have people able to drug you into a stupor (if not worse), and the only hope of getting real help hinges on how much the individual doctor wants to help you then discharge you as a patient.

For a lot of them, return visits is income. Conflict of interest. Just as medical doctors (and related industries) realize more profit from treating a problem compared to curing it, a psychiatrist can clean up if you have money/insurance and can sit on a couch for an hour every week for the next 20 years.

For those who can't afford it, a scrip for heavy meds that might mask the problem is good enough to get you on your way so you don't waste their time.

A good doctor wants to understand your situation, help you find a solution and see you living as independently as possible. But that's time and money and not always the most cost-efficient use of his time.

I have always had paradoxical or strong adverse reactions to the drugs they prescribe, and the side-effects are rather intolerable as well.

The main problem I have with psychiatry, and psychology that it is so insanely expensive that its actually cheaper for us to be given meds (whether this is appropriate or not) than get actual therapy.

Also I believe it can be more difficult for people with ASDs to find a helpful professional, as, as other posters have said in other threads, we think so differently that we end up spending the whole hour trying to communicate with this "foreign thinker" and them with us.. that actual therapy can be difficult to obtain.

I've had nothing but bad experiences in the mental health system where I live. My shrinks had no understanding of autism, what so ever. I was dealing with a couple of Nazis who were telling me to be normal.

If you want to understand the anti-psychiatry movement intellectually, read writings by Erving Goffman, Thomas Szacz, RC Laing dating back to the 60s. More recent good reads are Agnes's Jacket by Gail Hornstein on psychiatric survivors and Of Two Minds by Tanya Luhrmann on training of psychiatrists.

Wouldn't say it's all uneducated people or Scientologists. Many people simply have had bad experiences with psychiatrists--they're not all as nice as the ones you've met apparently. Still a lot of problems and occasional human rights abuses with the mental health system itself.

I checked myself into a county run clinic. I was given 30 seconds with the psychiatrist. He said I was bipolar and manic. He said he would baker act me if I didn't take the meds (350 Seroquil and 900 Depakote). I had to stay there for seven days. It was probably the most uncomfortable prolonged experiences of my life. The meds made my sensory issues 10x worse. It took me 4 months to get weaned off the seroquil/depakote once I got to another doc after discharge.