Borderline Families

I also fell prey to the “pros.” I understand your feelings, anger, and guilt. Stay strong. You can still help your daughter on her path to wellness. Some of us cannot…our kids are gone. Be her champion and help those of us who are trying to make the medical industry re-examine the current model of treatment.

There is no question that psychiatric medications are prescribed far, far too readily, and often inappropriately, and it seems to me like it is a far bigger problem in the US than it is here. I don’t take any meds at the moment except for Diazepam, because none that I have tried seemed to help me. But on the other hand, there are people who are helped enormously by the right medication – I have friends who honestly don’t believe they would be alive now without the medication they are on. One, who has a Bipolar diagnosis, was constantly suicidal, self harming, couldn’t be left alone at all, her parents had to be with her constantly, she took numerous overdoses, and needed stitches so frequently. Then she was started on some medications that just worked for her, and since then she has recovered to an incredibly degree – she doesn’t self harm or overdose, her moods are stable, she is happy with her life, and she is starting training to be a Mental Health nurse shortly. Whilst I do think it is really important that medications are prescribed less freely than they are now (particularly amongst children – overmedicated children is something I have a real issue with), and aren’t just doled out to anyone who says they are feeling low etc, I also think it is important to remember that some people’s lives are transformed by medication, and that is what I dislike about the anti-psychiatry movement – it is just too strong for me when I have seen people change completely as a result of meds. I don’t know about any financial issues regarding meds – as I am not in the US that isn’t really an issue that I consider – maybe there is some big conspiracy, and maybe there isn’t – I am not qualified to pass judgement on that. But I don’t think it can be questioned that some people’s lives are changed by medication, and for that reason I have trouble with the staunch anti psychiatry line.

I think you are very courageous to tell this truth of yours and to put a message out there for others to learn from. Sorry to hear you and your daughter have been through this. Be kind to yourself. You thought you were doing the right thing. Biopsychiatry is unethical and hurting so many people. So many don’t know this. Now you know better and will make d…ifferent choices. Please visit my newest site on this topic – Mental Illness and the Pseudo Science of biopsychiatry at: http://biopsychiatry.ca/ – You are not alone. Big pharma is behind the marketing of biopsychiatry and especially to parents who like you end up making choices based on their lies to you – they hold a lot of responsibility for the drugging of a young generation right now (along with adults of course).See More

No explanation needed to anyone on your personal journey, is ever needed in my opinion. Most ppl have no earthly clue what the hell is like watching a child now grown adults suffer on psych meds, not many ppl have seen the horrors of the inside of the care places and hospitals, or been talked down to by doctors, or fed complete BS read from cooked data fact sheets for informed consent, from drug companies for their meds. The list goes on and on, and the fatigue is killer. Imagine one day laying in bed wondering if the battle will ever be completed, and finding the energy to be there for the child. Well, that’s the energy you need to get up and go every day and so do I. I’d personally start writing raw from your gut w/out thinking of others reaction. There are a lot of sufferers out there, but one thing I have noticed is most parents write pro med pro NAMI blogs. It’s a rare mother who gets up and says WTF.

Well, there’s a mom who lost her son to Seroquel suicide in the latest article “Making a Killing” by Elliott. His new book, should go well with Whitaker’s and both should replace the DSM in all doctor’s offices.

In my Seroquel XR being trialed for BPD at the UMN article on Aug 24, the young man’s mom, Mary has left a comment on my blog. She lost her son to a corrupt trial for Seroquel, at the expense of his life for AstraZeneca to increase profit and patent extension.

This is why the drugs don’t work–maybe some ppl say they do work for them, good. Most stories I read are not the case. It sure isn’t the case for my daughter, in fact the antipsychotics and antidepressants create/induce psychosis in her. Most likely what happened to Dan Markingson as well.

I’m with Bippidee on this one. I’ve been lambasted elsewhere on the internet for saying this, but I owe my life to a combination of psychotherapy and medication.

I was lambasted all over the Internet for being a mother who didn’t want her daughter on drugs and one even ripped me for that in email, also one ripped me FOR having my daughter on drugs. At one point, one person who used to leave me vicious attacking comments emailed me and apologized, saying they realized they were taking it out on me because I am a MOTHER. It’s true live and learn, to each his own and their own lives. Unfortunately, the stuff I’ve seen go down w psych meds was not what the doctor’s promised: “take these and it all goes away” “go off the meds and you’ll kill yourself by age 18″ -those things were told to my young daughter. Many ppl find solace in meds at the same time they make a change in their lives and think the meds helped, when in fact they did something else that changed for the better. Later in life, they learn it was themselves who got through by self-determination and personal trials, and many adults, who have used psych meds walk away from that with more wisdom than the average person for how to get thru trials.Just a rambling thought/comment.

Yes, mothers get too much praise AND too much blame regarding the outcome of their children, far more than fathers. This seems to be an enduring problem not only in psychiatry but in most aspects of life. It seems very unfair.

Hi, I am a huge fan of your site. The love and devotion you feel for your family is a huge inspiration for me. Your whole blog is eye opening, informative and so deeply personal. I truly hope I am not out of place, for I too strongly believe the medical model is not appropriate or helpful in psychiatry. I just wanted to tell my small story, maybe it might also help. I am from Australia, and not qualified to comment on any other system, but I am a mum of three small children who suffers from PTSD. I have been acutely suicidal and hospitalized. I know that I would not be alive today if it was not for the combination of medications and psychotherapy. I have been incredibly fortunate that my treating team also does not believe in the medical model, and we have worked together to make our own pathway. I mean no disrespect to you or your followers, I hope I havent. I just wanted to say that there is still hope in psychiatry.

If meds are not working for your daughter, you’re right. She shouldn’t take them. But I take exception to the idea that I am simply ignorant because my child does.

I have never met a parent who WANTS to medicate their child. We resisted meds for our son time and time again. Trying med after med was horrible, and I refused to try the one med that ultimately became the med that

Whoops. Continued…

The tool that brought him stability. And quacks that say NO child can have psychosis are just as dangerous as a doctor that would over medicate. My son begged to die at 8 to make the voices stop torturing him. That was 3 yearsbefor we finally agreed to try meds.

I don’t mind identifying with antipsychiatry. It’s time more people got realistic about what is being peddled. We have been told for far too long untruths. When people like me demand more effective help, that’s when things begin to fall apart with the doctor. Re the debate on this blog about people being helped by the meds, I have noticed that it is usually women who say they are helped by the meds. By and large you don’t hear this from the men. When we first got the diagnosis of schizophrenia delivered like a ton or rocks, I really got discouraged because it is ofrequently cited that women have better outcomes then men. There was yet another incentive to just conclude that my son was beyond help. There can be many reasons for this but they might be more because women tend to play the “what’s good for you game” than most men do. They tend to do their homework, they follow directions. Please note I say “tend” but the statistics on their outcomes bear this out. They also tend to get a diagnosis of schizophrenia later (age 25 to 35). Young men (15 to 25) get the label of schizophrenia. Young men are not the most mature people as a general rule and even the older ones need women to nudge them when it comes to their health. (I know this is an unpopular thing to say.) So, I would be intrigued to hear more men say that the meds work for them, but I don’t. Is this only my impression?

“He wanted to know what lessons I could pass to those who might be doing the same with their children.”

You are right – when we are depending on the traditional system and place our hope in their promises we cannot believe anything else.

This is where instead of fighting and creating an “us against them” position we share our stories – what it was like, what happened and what our lives are like now. THIS is how others will be able to begin to “hear” us that they may in time begin to “listen” to us.

I am honored that you have found something in my journey and story that has shined a light for you on your own path, Kris.

In hope…

Susan

Hi, Kris,
Since you are familiar with my blog and “self-portrait” in blue with the quote by Harry Stack Sullivan (the tension of anxiety when present in the mothering one, induces anxiety in the infant), you can see that I am willing to examine my role in my son’s psychosis. Remember,too, that the “mothering” one can be the father. You don’t need to be a mother to be anxious and pass it on to your kids. I know now where my own role in my son’s psychosis lies, but, of course, it is never the whole story. Instead of always seeing the one with the diagnosis as the “problem,” my way of looking at is is that the one with the diagnosis is the person who is bringing the familial dysfunction to everybody’s attention. How can a person heal if they are always seen as a problem needing to be fixed? Another reason why I don’t mind seeing the mothering one as a lead to be investigated is that many therapies do look into the family background, as they should. If people refuse to look at the possibility that the family environment is dysfunctional, then they are writing off a potentially very rich avenue of help for their relative. That’s where the pharmaceutical manufacturers clean up. Their drugs don’t point the finger at anyone except the person with the diagnosis. For many people, that’s the way they would prefer it. (That’s my big beef with the book After Her Brain Broke, which I reviewed on Amazon.)
Thanks for allowing me to clarify.
Rossa

Don’t forget mothers and women are market targets for most of the psych meds. Once a mother walks in the door of a psych office w the kid(s)they are steadily fed the psychiatry medication based paradigm, often convinced they will harm their kids by NOT following doctor’s orders to medicate, and often end up with their own dx and meds too. Perfect marketing targets, and it’s not a new way of selling products. Women are the number one consumer of goods and shop, and buy for families, so we are a constant $$$ for many industries. The children being the newest target for younger and younger medication use is the most alarming facet of this entire pharmaceutical industry profit plan. Psychiatry makes billions upon billions of dollars, meds and doctor fees, hospitals, insurance, it is an industry that runs America. Plain and simple.

@Bippidee
I can appreciate that finding relief through “medication” is a meaningful and purposeful exercise, given the results. But may I just reframe the issue, please? The real issue about the anti psychiatry movement is that psychiatry claims to know that mental illness is a physical disease, a genetic inheritance, a chromosomal disorder, a chemical imbalance, and so on. There are many ways they label trauma, to get people to take medications. But if we frame this discussion in a cause and effect way, we can clearly have a proper discussion. Nobody disagrees that some have found relief with “medication”. This is obviously a subjective experience that nobody can objectively test. So the real discussion has to be about anti-psychiatry, and why people are so critical. The answer is simple, it is because there are no results from any tests to prove a physical, bio-chemical, genetic, etc relationship between cause and effect between brain and behaviour, like they try to make us believe. There is no scientifically proven evidence that mental disorder is caused by the brain or any other physical entity. We know there are associations, but there is no evidence to prove any causal links between the brain and behaviour. So how dare they lie to us and the FDA to market DRUGs that affect behaviour, and hide the true results of the research that clearly showed the disasterous effects of these drugs, which could never address the cause of “mental illness”. The drugs only subdue a symptom, which many people may find beneficial especially when faced with amazingly horrendous pain and will do anything to make the pain stop, if even for a little while. The drugs will never address the cause of the original “mental illness” because drugs can never address issues such as childhood trauma, and many other enviromental issues that have been linked to the cause of “mental illness”. Research (Breggin, 1993, Toxic Psychiatry, London, Harper just for one example among hundreds more) shows that “mental illness” tends to mend itself overtime, as the person usually comes to terms with whatever the issues are, in their own natural way. I say usually, but not always. Since you cant prove a negative, we shall never really objectively define whether someone is finding relief over time in a natural way or not, because they are also taking “medication” (which by now you can see I call these ‘drugs’ because they change behaviour like alcohol and other legal and illegal drugs do; whereas medication such as antibiotics saves people’s lives and targets bodily organs)-and since billions of dollars spent on marketing of drugs is so effective, and also because many people have no idea that “mental illness” usually works itself out over time, many people attribute the cessation of their symptoms with the “medication”/drugs. The next big reason why so many are critical of psychiatry is simply because of the sheer number of sudden deaths related to these drugs and the permanent disabilities that have resulted. Too many people have suffered sudden cardiac arrests to say this is just an association. It is a proven fact that taking psychiatric drugs over the long term will shorten the life span, as it wreaks havoc on the natural processes of the autonomic system, the most serious being NMS. Another big reason is also because of the huge increase in homicide, suicide, and general inability to function due to these drugs. The list goes on and on and on. So please do not think that anyone would ever try to take away the benefits anyone experiences by taking psychiatric drugs, because nobody wants to see another suffer. What has so many of us in the “pro-psychology” (which is what I prefer to call my position) field talking is the sheer ignorance by the psychiatry profession in avoiding talking about the causes of “mental illness” as if they have it all figured out! What about childhood trauma, what about family styles, parenting styles, abuses, etc etc. The environmental influences in “mental illness” have been laughed away by psychiatry because there are no pills for this! And yet we know that for each and every case of “mental illness” studied, not one has escaped such a traumatic experience in their lifetime. Still, with all this evidence of environmental influence, the DSM grows another tail, and the labels for new “illnesses” just keep multiplying. Why is that? Because theres too much money in manufacturing another drug! And no, there isnt a “conspiracy” as in “who shot JFK” but more like just another typical day on Wall Street, USA, whereby the powerful corporate executives decided Main STree USA could be used as guinea pigs once again. I blame the FDA for accepting big payoffs and turning their heads to the obvious scandalous research that was submitted as evidence that the drugs were safe, which we now know was a lie and was publicly outed a few years ago. And the FDA allowed the money trail to spin right into the pharmaceutical laboratory, accepting even more monies and “incentives”, etc. And dont believe for one second Europe is insular to this tyranny. Its all over Europe, just step into any city, village, or town and count how many “green” crosses you see, where there is another pharmacy opening up and selling off millions of kinds of “medications”…I will say that Europe is more psychoanalytically inclined, so there is a stronger tendency to try talk therapies first, but it is slowly becoming the norm in Europe to dole out psychiatric drugs….going according to plan! I hope this small bit has inspired you to think a little bit more profoundly on the real issues, and to get googling. The information is hard to find, but once you link in with a right thinking mentality, you can usually become inspired. Happy Days.

Kris,
You are one of my main inspirations and sources of information and encouragement on this issue. I know that my son was being harmed more than helped by the cocktail of drugs he was on (and is being slowly weaned from thanks to a new doctor). Unfortunately one of the terms of his probation is to be under psychiatric care and on meds, so it will be awhile before he’s totally free of them but I can see a change in him.

I hope you can let go of your guilt and need to apologize. Its very clear that your motive has always been to do what’s best for your daughter. What mother wouldn’t do that? And naturally we trust the doctors and “professionals” because that’s just the way it works….until we learn otherwise! It will be a long time before the general public realizes that we shouldn’t necessarily buy into something just because the “pros” say so. Slowly people are beginning to see the big picture but distrusting the Pharma Industry is a hard pill for most people to swallow (bad pun, sorry).

All this to say: THANK YOU. You are making a difference.

I think that pharma made it a deliberate tactic in response to groups like the forerunner to NAMI (see my blog link below) who made it their who were fed up with the blaming that went on before. This “coincidentally” happened at the same time pharma was poised to agressively promote its drugs. Today, it is all too common to hear “I’ts not bad pareting – my child has a brain disease.” Pharma sold the brain disease justification because it perversely appeals to many parents.
http://holisticschizophrenia.blogspot.com/2010/07/all-about-eve.htmlent