#i refuse antipsychotics

[quinnallerton]

Damn shame that meds for severe clinical depression make you gain weight.

Severe clinical depression already made me overweight.

Why is it like this?

[giritina]

Is it a hot take to say hard line anti-psychiatry is definitely reactionary and anti-science and bad

[cookiekitkat8484]

dream blunt rotation

[8millionscorpions]

bored. need to rest in bed due to being in the ER last night for a rly bad head injury they did not treat me at all for and told me I had to walk home w a head injury, refused to give pain meds when asked (I asked for Tylenol or ibuprofen. they said we'll prescribe u 600 mgs which is over the counter strength), at 1am w it about to thunderstorm after only 1 blood test. they would not hold me the whole night. despite me showing heavy signs of a concussion

anyways my head hurts and I'm resting in bed for a while and taking it easy. I can't Decide

[alternativeulster]

does anyone else have a dad who will say things like "beyonce is a satanist and there's also a gang of satanists who ritually sacrifice babies in the woods by our house (in smalltown rural ireland)". and this is just something that you have to live with. because he will get extremely angry if you point out that thats a deranged thing to believe. and everybody around you knows its insane but enables it anyway because its easier than dealing with him angry. anybody else having this bizarre experience or is it just me

[sgkjd]

finally i'll be soon getting reassessed for my schizoaffective diagnosis. i don't think i would last without meds if this diagnosis was right but here i am 2+ years without taking any antipsychotics

[wewontbesleeping]

why did my roommate's friend give him one of his seroquel and he TOOK IT? with no questions??

[cryptidsandchamomile]

It's normal to be paranoid when youre alone in a new apartment, have no curtains/blinds on the windows, and feel like someone's gonna rush you out of the dark right??

[auschizm]

I’m confused about something. I don’t mean to be mean, but I don’t understand. How do doctors force people to take meds? Why would someone continue to take a med that they don’t like the effects of? When a doctor starts me on a new med and it makes things worse, I stop taking it. Do doctors have some way to enforce that I put a pill into my mouth every day? How do they even know if I have? No doctor has ever tried to prove that I was or wasn’t taking any med. I do inform them that I stopped taking the med that had bad side effects and they always seem to approve of that. Is that not how it usually works? I know doctors can be awful so I’m definitely not saying that being forced to take a med isn’t possible but is that common? Should I be worried about something bad happening from me telling a doctor that I stopped taking a med they gave me? I really hope this comes across as genuine curiosity!

Various ways doctors might force medication (in this context mainly antipsychotics) on people include:

Dismissing and invalidating your concerns/negative experience with the meds. ("If you don't think these meds are helping you're wrong/too sick to know what you need.")

Restricting treatment based on your refusal to take meds. ("If you don't agree to take these meds I won't continue treating you/I'll refuse to refer you to further treatment elsewhere.")

Threatening hospitalization. ("If you don't take these meds I'll be forced to hospitalize you.")

Making discharge conditional based on you taking the meds. ("I won't discharge you before you agree to take these meds.")

Physically forcing meds on you while inpatient. ("If you refuse to take these meds, we will forcibly inject them.")

Threatening further forced hospitalization if you stop taking the meds. ("If you stop taking these meds/don't show up for scheduled injections, I will forcibly hospitalize you again.")

Getting a court order mandating you to continue taking the meds as part of your parole.

Not all doctors use these strategies, but it does happen to a concerning amount of psychosis spec people.

[gothhabiba]

hi i just saw some of ur posts on anti-psychiatry and then kept reading more on ur blog about what it is. for the most part i agree with what you've said about how capitalism uses psychiatry to designate people who are bad/abnormal and how it aligns itself w/ misogyny, racism, and so on. with that said i think i have some similar concerns/questions as another asker about what this means for those who do/would suffer even in a non-capitalist society, even if we didn't ascribe a specific label to X symptoms. if we are opposed to psychiatry, what are the options for people today who are suffering and want help? are you opposed to psychopharmaceuticals and therapy? i dont mean to ask this in a confrontational/accusatory way, i'm just new to this and genuinely curious

There are a few different parts to your question & so there are a few different angles to approach it from—

are you opposed to psychopharmaceuticals and therapy?

If this means "are anti-psych writers and activists opposed to individuals seeking treatment that they personally find helpful," then, no—a couple posts in my psychiatry tag do clarify this.

If it means "are there anti-psych critiques of psychopharmaceuticals and therapy," then, yes. Keep in mind that I'm not a neurobiologist or otherwise an expert on medications marketed as treatments for mental illnesses, but:

The evidence for the effectiveness of SSRIs in particular is sort of non-existent—even many psychiatrists who promote the biomedical model of mental illness doubt their efficacy, and refer to the "chemical imbalance" theory that enforces their usage as "an outmoded way of thinking" or "a kind of urban legend—never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists." But promoting SSRIs (and corresponding "serotonin deficiency" theory of depression, despite the fact that no solid evidence links depression to low serotonin) is very profitable for pharmaceutical companies. Despite the fact that direct-to-consumer advertisements are nominally regulated in the U.S., the FDA doesn't challenge these claims.

Other psychotropic drugs, such as "antipsychotics" or "antianxiety" medication, shouldn't really be called e.g. "antipsychotics" as if they specifically targeted the biological source of psychosis. No biological cause of any specific psychiatric diagnosis has been found (p. 851, section 5.1). In fact, rather than "act[ing] against neurochemical substrates of disorders or symptoms," these medications "produc[e] altered, drug induced states"—but despite the fact that they "produce global alterations in brain functioning," they are marketed as if they had "specific efficacy in reducing psychotic symptoms." Reactions to these medications that don't have to do with psychosis or anxiety (blunted affect, akathisia) are dismissed as "side effects," as though they don't arise from the same global alteration in brain function that produces the "desirable" antianxiety/antipsychotic effect. This doesn't mean "psychiatric medication turns you into a zombie so you shouldn't take it"—it means that these medications should be marketed honestly, as things that alter brain function as a whole, rather than marketed as if they target specific symptoms in a way that they cannot do, in accordance with a biomedical model of mental illness the accuracy of which has never been substantiated.

Psychiatrised people also point out that meds are used as a tool for furthering and maintaining psychiatrists' control: meds that patients are hesitant about or do not want are pushed on them, while patients who desire medication are "drug-seeking" or trying to take on the role of clinician or something and will routinely be denied care. Psychiatrised people who refuse medications are "noncompliant" and prone to psychiatric incarceration, re-incarceration, or continued/lengthened incarceration.

As for therapy: there are critiques of certain therapies (e.g. CBT, DBT) as unhelpful, status-quo-enforcing, forcing compliance, retraumatising &c. There are also critiques of therapy as representing a capitalist outsourcing of emotional closeness and emotional work away from community systems that people largely don't have in place; therapy as existing within a psychiatric system that constrains how therapists, however well-intentioned, are able to behave (e.g. mandatory reporting laws); psychotherapy forced on psychiatrised people as a matter of state control; therapists as being in a dangerous amount of power over psychiatrised people and being hailed as neutral despite the fact that their emotions and politics can and do get in the way of them being helpful. The wealth divide in terms of access to therapy is also commonly talked about; insurance (in the U.S.) or the NHS (in England) may only pay for pre-formulated group workbook types of therapy such as DBT, while more long-form, free-form, relationship-focused talk therapy may only be accessible to those who can pay 100-something an hour for it.

None of these critiques make it unethical or something for someone to get treatment that they find helpful. It's also worth noting that some of these critiques may be coming from "anti-psych" people who criticise the sources of psychiatric power, and some of them may come from people who think of themselves as advocating for reform of some of the most egregious effects of psychiatric power.

if we are opposed to psychiatry, what are the options for people today who are suffering and want help?

This looks like a few different things at a few different levels. At its most narrow and individual, it involves opting out of and resisting calls for psychiatrisation and involuntary institutionalisation of individuals—not calling the cops on people who are acting strange in public, breaking mandatory reporting laws and guidelines where we think them likely to cause harm. It involves sharing information—information about antipsychiatry critiques of psychiatric institutions, advice about how to manage therapists' and psychiatrists' egos, advice about which psychiatrists to avoid—so that people do not blame themselves if they find their encounters with psychiatry unhelpful or traumatising.

At the most broad, it's the same question as the question of how to build dual power and resist the power of capitalism writ large—building communal structures that present meaningful alternatives to psychiatry as an institution. I think there's much to be learned here from prison abolitionists and from popular movements that seek to protect people from deportation. You might also look into R. D. Laing's Kingsley Hall experiment.

what does this mean for those who would suffer even in a non-capitalist society, even if we didn't ascribe a specific label to X symptoms?

It means that people need access to honest, reliable information about what psychotropic medications do, and the right to chuse whether or not to take these medications without the threat of a psychiatrist pulling a lever that immediately restricts or removes their autonomy. It means that people need to be connected to each other in communities with planned, free resources that ensure that everyone, including severely disabled people whom no one particularly likes as individuals, has access to basic resources. It means that people need to be free to make their own choices regarding their minds and their health, even if other people may view those decisions as disastrous. There is simply no defensible way to revoke people's basic autonomy on the basis of "mental illness" (here I'm not talking about e.g. prison abolitionist rehabilitative justice types of things, which must restrict autonomy to be effective).

Also, I've mostly left the idea of who this would actually be untouched, since my central argument ("psychiatry as it currently exists is part of the biomedical arm of capitalism and the state, and the epistemologies it produces and employs and the power it exerts are thus in the service of capitalism and the state") doesn't really rest on delineating who would and wouldn't suffer from whatever mental differences they have regardless of what society they're in. But it's worth mentioning that the category of "people who are going to suffer (to whatever degree) no matter what" may be narrower than some would think—psychosis, for instance, is sometimes experienced very differently by people in societies that don't stigmatise it. I see people objecting to (their interpretations of) antipsych arguments with things along the lines of "well maybe depression and anxiety are caused by capitalism, but I'm schizophrenic so this doesn't apply to me"—as though hallucinations are perforce more physically "real," more "biological," more "extra-cultural" in nature than something like depression. But the point is that positing a specific neurobiological etiology for any psychiatric diagnosis is unsubstantiated, and that capitalist society affects how every "mental illness" is read and experienced (though no one is arguing that e.g. hallucinations wouldn't always exist in some form).

[schizopositivity]

So I was searching for a new psychiatrist online, and every website filter, every description they have, for individual providers and medical groups will include a whole bunch of different mental illnesses and life situations that they specialize in. Basically every mental illness and stressful life situation you could think of. But I didn't see schizophrenia or psychosis on any list. They had mental illnesses that can have psychotic symptoms (like bipolar disorder or PTSD) and mental illnesses that have overlapping symptoms with schizophrenia (like ASD and ADHD) but didn't have psychosis or schizophrenia anywhere.

And this is so frustrating, because I'm used to therapists not knowing how to treat schizophrenia/psychosis at all, that's been every therapist I've ever had and I've sadly learned to deal with that. But for psychiatrists, I'd really love to be able to be prescribed high doses of antipsychotics by someone who knows how that affects people. Someone who has enough experience to list that as a specialty. I live in a small city with a long list of psychiatrists, I even checked ones farther away that could do online sessions. Still after hours of combing through websites I found nothing. I was even told by my therapist that normal primary care providers regularly hesitate or refuse to prescribe antipsychotics because it's a "liability".

And it feels so unfair. Seeing psychiatrists say "mental health is so important! I can help you find your best self!" while ignoring all of us who rely on antipsychotics to function. For me my antipsychotics are the biggest reason I'm alive today, that I have a job, that I have a long term relationship, that I have friends, that I can even function. Going off of antipsychotics is not a safe option for me.

The pharmacy requires refill approval from a psychiatrist or Dr. so that I can have access to my meds. And I shouldn't have to keep settling for mental health care workers who don't understand my illness, don't want to prescribe my meds, and don't care to try.

I don't understand how there can be such a major gap in mental health care that's never even talked about. For a lot of us with schizophrenia, antipsychotics are extremely important, and going off of them can have major consequences. The fact that medication can dramatically improve our lives is incredible, but the fact that so many mental health care workers don't understand it, don't want to prescribe it, or just guess when prescribing it is horrendous, and has life-changing consequences for us.

It feels so isolating to not even be on a long list of mental health problems, and to speak to countless people who've dedicated their life to the mental health field, yet don't even consider you as an option. I just got rejected by a group of 6 psychiatrists working in an office together. In a quick email they said they wouldn't be able to provide care for me. Apparently all of them, who are available and licensed to care for people with mental illnesses, don't even think it's possible that any one of them could help me. All I need is medication refill approval, but apparently they can't do that. It feels so defeating but I'm going to keep trying because I have to.

I am not an anomaly, I am one small part of a large group of people with my same diagnosis. And we all need care at the bare minimum, but we deserve care that has us in mind for once. One day, I'd like to think, that a profession centered around helping people with various mental illnesses and struggles, would add us to the list. Because we are here regardless.

[loving-n0t-heyting]

“Antipsych isn’t about rejecting treatment or drugs, it’s about autonomy, it’s about power, it’s about refusing to accept as self evident a system of carceral state authoritarianism maaaaan Ⓐ”

Yea, well, that’s nice for yr private definition of antipsych. I am against treatment, when the treatment involves fucking antipsychotics

Taking antipsychotics is, under most or perhaps practically all circumstances where it happens , a terrible and shortsighted idea that you should not act on. The psychosis-alleviating primary effects fade in the long term, while debilitating side effects like tardive dyskinesia and diabetes persist, even after quitting the drug. Meaning that one’s initial experience of the drug is not an accurate guide to its overall costs and benefits. And, in the meantime, you get a high chance to experience the agonising all-consuming torture of akathisia or the stupefying self-obscuring haze of zombielike cognitive impairment, both leaving you precious little mental acuity with which to carefully weigh these pros and cons anyway. Later generations of atypical antipsychotics are an improvement in some of these respects, but these risks have not gone away and can still fuck you up for life. It’s not fucking worth it

Do shrinks and friends infringe on patients’ autonomy in forcing antipsychotics on them? Sure. But you know what else constricts the patients autonomy here? The meds themselves. If anything diminishes your bodily freedom, it’s your legs compelled to twitch by akathisia and your eyes and neck twisted up for hours by dystonia. If anything robs you of your personal agency, it’s a permanent stupefied haze incompatible with abstract thought. If someone forces you at gun point to guzzle lead paint, the problem isn’t only—the problem isn’t even mainly—that you didn’t get to choose what you did or didn’t drink: it’s that you have just ingested poison, and this is bad news

Should ppl be forcibly prevented from access to haldol if they have somehow gotten it into their heads this is their heart’s utmost desire? Uhh I mean, ig probably not. Not that this seems like a particularly pressing issue here in the real world. But if yr radical critique of psychiatry as an institution centres an abstract notion of bodily autonomy to the exclusion of the devastating nature of these particular pharmaceuticals, I am tempted to say it is less than useless

[dykeiism]

whenever i see people talking about the purpose of mental health diagnoses, three reasons usually come up:

to encourage self-understanding

to concisely describe treatment options to professionals

to gain access to resources and accomodations

but it's hard for me to agree with any of these. given the harm associated with diagnosis, especially diagnosis of a personality disorder, i'm finding it increasingly difficult to justify diagnosing any mental disorder at all. below the cut is a breakdown of each of these three reasons, and why i believe that none of them hold up to criticism.

(1) to encourage self-understanding.

diagnostic criteria are so rigid that they discourage self-understanding. they fragment the human experience, categorizing it into easily digestible groups of "symptoms" rather than understanding a person's struggles holistically. this is why we have a phenomenon of people thinking, "well, my anxiety tells me this, but my depression tells me that" and "i'm having an intrusive thought but can't tell if it's coming from my ocd, ptsd, or bpd." diagnosis misleads patients into believing that, much like one might cough due to either pollen in the lungs or a respiratory illness, one might feel anxious due to either their generalized anxiety disorder diagnosis or their post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis. a more accurate understanding of the human mind would necessarily involve doing away with the pathology of gad versus ptsd, and instead being able to understand that the anxiety might simply result from a combination of previous negative experiences, a naturally sensitive personality, and underdeveloped emotion regulation skills. a diagnosis is a description of a pattern of thoughts and behaviours; nothing more. my mental health conditions don't cause me to think or behave a certain way. rather, my thoughts and behaviours are similar to the thoughts and behaviours of other people who have also been deemed mentally sick. this makes it possible for doctors to use a certain diagnosis as a shorthand to describe my personality and skills (i refuse to call such things "symptoms") to other doctors. it does not mean that i have a sickness that causes me to think and act in certain way.

why would i want to understand myself through the lens of a psychiatrist, anyways? psychiatry is a deeply individual solution to systemic problems. we're living in a world that evolution could not prepare us for, yet we are told that there's something wrong with our brains if we're unable to adapt to these unprecedented living conditions. i refuse to believe that my brain is sick unless somebody has looked at my brain and can tell me where the sickness is. we must not forget that we're dealing with the discipline that understood homosexuality and hysteria as mental illnesses, and that initially understood autism to be a form of schizophrenia.

(2) to concisely describe treatment options to professionals

imagine, if you will, someone with post-traumatic stress disorder. all you know about them is that they have ptsd. now, recommend a treatment method for them!

nobody can give a good treatment recommendation based on that diagnosis alone. more information is needed: is the patient dealing with persistent general anxiety, sudden panic attacks, or a phobia? does the patient have compulsions? is the patient aggressive, anxious, or depressive? depending on the answers, the ideal treatment plan will be quite different.

now let's consider borderline personality disorder. there are 4 types of bpd and there are 256 possible ways to combine the 5 symptoms required for diagnosis (there are 9 symptoms in total). the personalities, cognitive abilities, and struggles of people diagnosed with bpd are quite diverse, and they will all require varying types and degrees of professional intervention. that being said, bpd is almost always treated with dbt and a few medication options including antidepressants, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, and anticonvulsants. there are so many other disorders that are treated with dbt and the same drugs. so why make bpd, bipolar, ptsd, cptsd, and depression their own diagnoses? what reason is there, other than to fragment our struggles and generate stigma?

my wish for the future of psychiatry is that, instead of being diagnosed with a disorder that is simultaneously very specific yet inexplicably vague, patients will be told "your struggles are related to trauma and emotional dysregulation. i recommend that you take an antidepressant and attend dialectical behavioural therapy sessions," or "your struggles are related to catastrophization and unhelpful behaviours, i recommend that you engage in cognitive behavioural therapy."

(3) to gain access to resources and accommodations

there are better ways to do this. i don't think anyone should be turned away from the accommodations that they need. however, if resources are scarce and must be gatekept, then a simple interview or quotient test will be sufficient in determining the level of need.

[irrealisms]

shoutout to everyone with a complicated or negative relationship to antipsychotics. to everyone who’s “noncompliant”. to everyone who’s on them due to force or coercion. to everyone who’s on them because they’re afraid of not being. to everyone who’s going through withdrawal without medical supervision & against medical advice. to everyone who hates the side effects but still prefers them to being unmedicated. to everyone who dislikes them for “disordered” reasons. to the people on them who don’t think they need them & the people off them who think they do. to everyone who doesn’t like them but does better at school or work on them & to everyone who likes them but does better without them. to everyone who gets them on they grey market. to everyone who self-medicates with illegal drugs instead. to everyone with medical/psychiatric trauma. to everyone refusing to go to doctors (even if they would be helpful with other things) because they don’t want to be put on antipsychotics. I see you & im here with you. no matter what your diagnosis is you deserve bodily autonomy.

[mayinisopod]

My antipsychotics which i refuse to take are this bright pink color

they're just too appealing for me to look at.. i can't bring myself to take them because of how pretty they are

they are so cute looking.. just like me

[cogbreath]

j

km sorry.but psychosis hallucinatyopns is sooo intersdting to me when it happens sometimes i giggle sometkmes i play along setimtimes its a bit scary bur still fun i kind of actually love it and i am so glad at myself for stanodimg my ground and refusing antipsychotics from my doctor