Anti-Psychiatry: Against Forced Psychiatric "Treatment" - Abolish the Mental Health Act

[Petros Agapetos]

What is Forced Psychiatry?

Forced psychiatry, also known as 'involuntary psychiatry', 'psychiatric commitment', 'involuntary treatment', 'forced treatment', 'assisted treatment', 'court ordered treatment', 'sectioning', 'psychiatric hold', is the forced imposition of psychiatric interventions upon an individual by the government, against the will of the person targeted. Forced psychiatry has a long and grisly history dating back a couple hundred years that most people are aware of, but today, in the modern era, this controversial government practice hides in the shadows. Behind the closed doors of psych wards, government mental health system workers carry out violent forced 'treatments' against the will of those that are undergoing mental and emotional crises. To add to the silence, the stigma of being labeled a 'mental patient' and the trauma from these horrific experiences at the hands of the system prevents more people speaking out and fighting for their rights. Many forced into psychiatry have died at the hands of the system. While forced psychiatry may be an issue society would rather keep hidden and not talk about, this doesn't make this controversy any less real, as millions of people worldwide have had psychiatry forced on them. MindFreedom envisions a society where people no longer have to live in fear of psychiatry being forced on them, where human rights apply to all humans, not just those without psychiatric diagnoses.

[Petros Agapetos]

Why is forced psychiatry so controversial?


Nobody denies that people can become very overwhelmed with life, and experience extreme states of mind or exhibit problematic thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Everybody at some point in their lives needs support, and anybody can undergo a crisis, or periods of overwhelm that would get labeled 'madness', or 'psychosis', or 'mental illness'. Growing numbers of people who've experienced these states of mind first-hand, and growing numbers of innovative mental health professionals, are beginning to see that society's response to these problems has been part of the problem, not part of the solution.

More and more people are coming to see the importance of freedom of choice not only in the solutions to mental or emotional problems, but the importance of individuals having the freedom to develop their own interpretation of their problems, even if that interpretation is at odds with the interpretation put forward by psychiatry. Any reasonable person will admit that labels of 'mental illness' are subjective, not objective, and that psychiatry, the dominant profession in this area, is an inexact science. Many would be aware also of the growing body of evidence that psychiatric drugs do cause damage to the brain and body when used long term, and do come with all sorts of risk/benefit trade-offs. Forced psychiatry is controversial because it imposes, by force, a choice made by others on the individual who is going through a crisis, this represents government forcing its interpretation of the person's problems on them, and most brutally of all, forcibly altering that person's body against their will. Forced psychiatry represents the ripping away of choice in what treatment a person may want, what interpretation of their problems they may have, and what solutions that person may seek to their problems.

Forced psychiatry represents government making the assumption that drug-based psychiatry is the 'only way' to be responding to the disparate problems that get labeled 'mental illness'. Forced psychiatry in a very real sense, hands the profession of psychiatry a state enforced monopoly on human emotional and mental overwhelm. But if we admit psychiatry is subjective, possesses no biological objective medical tests to prove its assertions that those it labels mentally ill have bona fide 'brain diseases', then it becomes orders of magnitude more controversial that government is granting this profession the power to enter your body by force, against your express wishes.

Even doctors who can prove genuine bodily diseases with objective science, like heart surgeons do, don't have the power to forcibly meddle inside your body. Yet this profession of psychiatry has reserved the right to force itself into your brain, this is at odds with every modern human rights ethic, and must come to an end.

Forced psychiatry usually involves the targeted person losing their right to own their own body. This can be a life destroying experience, and is experienced by many survivors of it, as torture. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture agrees, and has as recently as 2013 called for the abolition of forced psychiatric interventions, as you'll see in video below.

There can be no doubt, to reiterate, that people in mental distress and crisis can present challenges for those around them, but MindFreedom believes there is always a way to respond to our fellow human beings who are in crisis without ripping away their dignity and human rights. Sadly, across the world, mental health systems respond not with compassion and a range of choices and approaches and paradigms, but with a monopolized, psychiatric drug based paradigm, rooted in the theoretical 'medical model' of psychiatry

Millions of people around the world find mainstream psychiatry's drugs, labels and interpretations of their problems compelling and even helpful, MindFreedom acknowledges this.

It can be difficult for people to understand why others would object to having a popular chosen creed of 'mental help' forced upon them. MindFreedom is not against voluntary psychiatry, if you've found a solution that you've found helpful in your life, then we are very happy to hear it. Allowing government to force psychiatric drugs on your neighbors, however, becomes a whole different controversy.

Stripping basic human rights from people labeled 'mentally ill' is nothing new, governments, societies and those who choose to work in psychiatric wards have been dehumanizing 'involuntary patients' for generations. In fact, hundreds of thousands of people with psychiatric labels and other disabilities were murdered in the Holocaust. For generations, forced sterilization programs existed in western countries targeting those labeled 'mentally ill', only being abolished as recently as the 1970s. But societies still haven't got used to the idea of extending equality to those considered 'mentally ill'. Around the world, laws are on the books in most states and provinces, that make it legal for psychiatrists and their staff to forcibly drug and forcibly electroshock people. Even a forced 'diagnosis' can change the course of a life. Reaching out for help from the mental health system often comes at the cost of your basic rights, and many live in constant fear of being assaulted by the coercive and violent procedures that are central to modern forced psychiatry.

[Petros Agapetos]

Here are action steps that I think would be necessary in abolishing forced psychiatry.

1. Close all academic training programs in psychiatry at all medical schools. This would be necessary to stop the recruitment of any new medical students into the mental health field as well as abandoning those who are currently doing residencies and fellowships. It would mean abandoning any research already underway and saving any funds left over and re-investing them in other medical school training or research programs. Neurology might be one discipline that would welcome an infusion of funding. But the reality is that closing departments of psychiatry would itself cost far more than any hoped-for savings.

2. Give termination notices to all psychiatrists employed in all community mental health programs: outpatient, residential, day treatment, early intervention, prevention or any others. All patients currently prescribed psychotropic medications would have to be safely tapered and eventually withdrawn from these drugs. Or they would have to be maintained on them indefinitely. This process could take years and might have to be supervised medically by general practitioners, nurses, neurologists, and other medical specialists, all of whom would need to be given education in how to work with the dynamics of withdrawal. A recruitment process would have to be made in order to locate professionals or highly trained paraprofessionals who would be willing to handle and capable of handling this process. If such a recruitment was unable to be successfully accomplished, a very large number of individuals would have to rely on peer supports or withdraw without any guidance or support, which admittedly many do already. This change would force every person on psychiatric medications to make a very personal decision—to withdraw or not—whether there were supports or expertise available or not.

3. Cease operations of all psychiatric inpatient programs and discharge existing patients to the streets or to other medical units or to otherwise converted specialty units, very few of which even exist. Psychiatric patients would go back to communities which would no longer have psychiatrists—just as in all the other programs, whatever supports for short-term withdrawal would have to be assigned to other providers or peers or family members or to no one. Consideration at the state and local levels could be given to securing public funding for hundreds of Soteria House facilities and then to training staff to serve and support in this model. This would require a massive educational initiative to make state and local administrators and legislators aware of the Soteria model (a step in and of itself that would not be such a bad idea).

4. State laws would be changed to eliminate all references to psychiatrists or their current legally defined functions. This would be extremely contentious in the debate that would ensue regarding the legal issues surrounding civil and criminal court commitments. Legislators would have to be familiarized (in a way that most are not) with how people who are experiencing a mental health crisis should be handled if this process was radically altered. Decisions would have to be made around whether to abolish all civil and criminal commitment laws as well as finding alternative ways of protecting people and communities from potential harm to self or perceived threats to public safety.

5. The American Psychiatric Association and the American Academy of Community Psychiatrists would terminate themselves as organizations. Board certification procedures would be eliminated. All professional standards of care would be abolished. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual would be abandoned along with all psychiatric diagnoses.

6. The FDA should make the prescription of psychoactive drugs (i.e., neuroleptics, “antidepressants,” “mood stabilizers,” ADHD drugs, and benzodiazepines) illegal and punishable by severe fines.

7. All academic and educational programs from undergraduate to graduate level would cease their training programs in which psychiatric treatment is any kind of a conceptual framework.

8. All psychiatric-related positions in all programs—inpatient, residential, outpatient, local jails and correctional facilities—would be terminated or otherwise restructured. Human resource departments would rewrite all position descriptions and other staff would need to be retrained to handle mental health challenges in the new non-system.

These changes are of such magnitude that a planning process, if it was taken seriously (and it would not be), would take many years and yield endless reports because this is obviously a complete re-conceptualization of how mental health challenges would be handled. It would require a complete overhaul of how any remaining supports and services would be funded, and how entirely new training programs would be created.

[Petros Agapetos]

Does any user here also agree with me that forced psychiatry needs to be abolished? I am talking about people being forced to take mind and body disabling treatments against their will (i.e. neuroleptics/antipsychotics).

[Hadouken]

petros did you have ever had psychosis ?

[oszkar07]

Does any user here also agree with me that forced psychiatry needs to be abolished? I am talking about people being forced to take mind and body disabling treatments against their will (i.e. neuroleptics/antipsychotics).

One of my best friend from high school, he was 3/4 through law degree at University and during his time in University he started smoking weed which didnt agree with him and he developed schizophrenia.
He was in paranoid psychosis and killed his Uncle his father's brother with a hammer because he had some paranoid ideas about his Uncle. So if you dont believe in Psychiatric treatment , how do you feel people who experience those type of symptoms can be helped ?

I agree that historically psychiatric patients in the past were often treated really badly.
I also agree that psychiatric medications have side affects and its understandable why many people dont wanna take them , but when people are floridly psychotic and are not mentally stable enough to make rationale decisions about their own behaviour because they have delusions and cant distinguish between reality and their delusions/ideations then what can be done for them ?
Is it better to just leave them in their state of florid psychosis where they can damage their own reputation, harm themselves or others ?

[Petros Agapetos]

petros did you have ever had psychosis ?

Yes, once ,it was drug induced. Mainly cocaine and weed..

[Hadouken]

Yes, once ,it was drug induced. Mainly cocaine and weed..

can you tell that experience ? also was it the only time ?

[Petros Agapetos]

One of my best friend from high school, he was 3/4 through law degree at University and during his time in University he started smoking weed which didnt agree with him and he developed schizophrenia.
He was in paranoid psychosis and killed his Uncle his father's brother with a hammer because he had some paranoid ideas about his Uncle. So if you dont believe in Psychiatric treatment , how do you feel people who experience those type of symptoms can be helped ?

I agree that historically psychiatric patients in the past were often treated really badly.
I also agree that psychiatric medications have side affects and its understandable why many people dont wanna take them , but when people are floridly psychotic and are not mentally stable enough to make rationale decisions about their own behaviour because they have delusions and cant distinguish between reality and their delusions/ideations then what can be done for them ?
Is it better to just leave them in their state of florid psychosis where they can damage their own reputation, harm themselves or others ?

Here in Canada, we have the Mental Health Act; according to which:
If a patient is deemed competent to make their own treatment decisions; the patient's right to refuse treatment must be respected. If the patient is deemed incompetent to make treatment decisions, then a substitute decision maker will decide whether the patient will receive the treatment or not. But either way, regardless of how the substitute decision maker votes; the psychiatrist can apply for a "treatment order"; these orders as well as community treatment orders, at the very least must be abolished.

Antipsychotics only treat positive psychotic symptoms while they are acting. There is no evidence that they are preventing future psychosis; in fact, there is strong evidence, that D2 blockade by the antipsychotic causes 40% or more dopamine receptors ; causes upregulation. This is called "supersensitivity psychosis" and is a result of over-drugging people with neuroleptics. The benefits of treatment, are of course the hope that the medication will keep patients functioning well (i.e. not experiencing symptoms). But long term treatment is also associated with brain shrinkage and chemical lobotomy (permanent brain damage). Antipsychotics are over-used to the point of abuse nowadays.

[Petros Agapetos]

can you tell that experience ? also was it the only time ?

One time, I had used so much cocaine, that I lost my sleep. I couldn't sleep for over 2 weeks. It triggered psychosis.
I was talking to the television. Thinking that the people on the tv could see me too.; delusions and paranoia.
I recognized that I needed antipsychotic treatment, and asked for a prescription myself. I took the treatment when I needed to. But long term maintenance dosing is what I am against.