Psych branch of the prison system

I've been reading a little about mind freedom and anti-psychiatry.

I guess this was spurred by realizing that my leg was not going to go back to normal without some professional help. My leg really got torn up/scarred/immobilized/muscle-imbalanced by the shot of a neuroleptic. I have some muscles that aren't working, others that are working too much. It's been depressing because I've had similar muscle injuries that, well, never healed. I'm still dealing with chronic shoulder injuries eight months later. I did find a bodyworker who did a lot for my leg (long story) and I will see her a second time this weekend.

But anyway, back to the anti-psychiatry. I guess this is something that's always interested me, but I had never been aware of being an explicit victim of the mental health system, and I stopped taking any psychiatric drugs around the same time that I started coming across anything critical of psychiatry, so it was never particularly "hitting home" for me. It's not a socially polite topic, and there was no real "hook" to draw me in. Maybe I subconsciously "othered" the people who dealt with the abuses of psychiatry, since they seemed like "crazy people," so I was less concerned about them. (Whereas when it comes to circumcision, which I talk about, it is very easy for me to imagine the sense of loss and violation of having had part of your body cut off. Or at least to get very upset about that idea. Perhaps because bodily integrity - having a body that feels more or less the same from day to day and isn't hurt by random things -- is very important to me, since I have sensory processing disorder and anything weird about my body bothers me a LOT.)

But who would have guessed, I now am in the middle of anger about psychiatry, because of a case where people did just about the WORST thing anyone could do to me:
-call me crazy
-provoke Lyme rage/neurotoxin rage while I was susceptible
-harm my body
-"rape" me by holding me down and doing something I did not consent to
-give me psychiatric drugs
-give me a neuroleptic
-while I am extremely sensitive to medication
-put me in a psych ward where I don't have access to my Lyme treatment

Honestly, the worst part is that they harmed my body. My leg and brain were feeling fine before this, and now they don't. Now I have months or years of work ahead of me to get them back to where they were.

I am scared because I don't know whether this will be a 2-month problem that heals pretty well on its own, or one of those other problems that never really heals, or one that I keep having until I finally find the right practitioner who can actually see the same problem I see. I often have a problem where practitioners can't even see the problem that is torturing me. I have to keep looking until I find someone who sees the same thing I see about my body. It's wonderful when I finally found the chiropractor who pointed out the bone strain in my skull before I even showed it to him, and helped to relieve chronic skull pain, or the bodyworker who diagnosed even more muscle imbalances in my leg than I had been aware of. It's great that there are people like this out there.

Anyway.

Back to what I was originally going to share:

http://www.antipsychiatry.org/e-mail.htm#whatsitlike

This is a great description of what it's like being in a psych ward.

Yes, you can get put in there for illogical reasons having to do with liability.
It's terrible, the overlap between police and psychiatry.
Yes, the experience of the psychiatry can be worse than the original problem.
Yes, people can be traumatized by psychiatric "care."


In fact, I would venture to say: It's not really psychiatry. It's a different branch of the prison system.

-One where there are no trials.
-Defendants get no representation and cannot defend themselves. If a doctor gives you a diagnosis, there's not much you can do to argue it.
-People are restrained in other means

Honestly, that's what it is, folks. Psych wards are a hospital branch of the prison system.

They are really not therapeutic because as the person says, you have to submit and do whatever it is you need to do in order to get out.

It is really terrifying. It's hard to relax in there or let loose or express your feelings because if you say the wrong thing you might not get out.

Also, much of what you say and do is recorded and reported on.

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