Docu-drama about schizophrenia

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Clare
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Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Clare »

This docu-drama on UK Channel 4, 21 April, 10pm, has had a lot of publicity
and hopefully will create a good debate about the controversies over the
treatment of mental illness - in particular schizophrenia.

The Channel 4 website has this information which encapsulates Rufus May's
views. (See also a story about Rufus May in The Independent last year
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 40381.html )

Channel 4 publicity also lumps schizophrenia in with all other conditions,
with its "1 in 4 people" figure of people who will be treated for mental
illness at some point in their lives.

The identity of the doctor whose story is being told is withheld and
programme makers are apparently not saying whether or not the doctor is
currently employed.

See also the stories from The Independent and Psychminded below the Channel
4 story - .

http://www.channel4.com/health/microsit ... ramme.html

The Programme

The film follows Ruth's unorthodox journey with Rufus as she strives to
combat the voice and regain her job.

Rufus May is a maverick psychologist. He believes there is no such thing as
schizophrenia, that medication can destroy lives and that there's nothing
wrong with hearing voices. Rufus is an authority on the subject. He was
diagnosed with acute schizophrenia aged 18.

In this powerful and thought-provoking film, BAFTA-award winning director
Leo Regan, takes a challenging look at how society deals with mental
illness, using an innovative mix of contemporaneous documentary footage and
dramatised scenes. To protect her anonymity, Ruth is played by
BAFTA-nominated actress Ruth Wilson and some details have been changed.

With figures suggesting as many as one in four people suffer from mental
illness at some point in their lives, the film prompts the question, how far
can people who hear voices also continue to live a normal life?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 08941.html
A dialogue with myself
When Ruth began hearing voices, she turned to a controversial drug-free
therapy programme. Now, her story is told in a powerful TV film, says Jeremy
Laurance

Channel 4
Actress Ruth Wilson playing junior doctor Ruth for 'The Doctor Who Hears
Voices'

Tuesday, 15 April 2008
Ruth is a junior doctor like any other, facing daily decisions of life and
death. More than a year ago, she became depressed and suicidal, was put on
medication and suspended from her job. What she didn't tell her employers
was that she had begun to hear voices. She thought she was going mad.
Most mental health specialists would at that point have said Ruth should be
admitted to psychiatric hospital and treated with drugs, forcibly if
necessary. Hearing voices is regarded as a key delusion that marks out the
insane from the sane. But she feared that if that happened she might never
be allowed to practise medicine again.
Instead, she consulted Rufus May, a clinical psychologist with the Bradford
District Care Trust, who has become something of a celebrity in the mental
health world for his radical approach to treatment. He agreed to treat her
privately (waiving his fee) because she was from outside the trust area. She
stopped her medication and together they began a six-month course of
therapy, which included a mock fight in the street, getting half drowned in
a stream, chatting in a tree and a visit to May's home.
Her therapy, and its conclusion, was minutely documented and has been
recreated for a Channel 4 film, The Doctor Who Hears Voices, to be shown
next week. An actress plays Ruth. The result is an extraordinary
drama-documentary with a powerful performance by Ruth Wilson, known for her
Bafta-nominated role in Jane Eyre.
The film challenges our notions of mental health and how to treat it. May
doesn't think Ruth is mentally ill and rejects the idea of treating her with
powerful antipsychotic drugs. Instead, he teaches her to talk back to the
voices in her head, with the aim of identifying and getting a grip on them
and ultimately coming to control them. The voices are abusive or
derogatory - "You are a worthless piece of shit" gives a flavour. It's scary
stuff; at one point Ruth reveals that she is convinced that a fish tank on
the ward is controlling patients' heartbeats.
Would anyone be comfortable having a doctor who suffers such delusions in
charge of their care? Or their child's? Watching the film, you have to
wonder. Ruth has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and told she will be
on drugs for the rest of her life - but Rufus May is convinced that she will
make a good and safe doctor without them.
It is a high-risk strategy, which few psychiatrists would be comfortable
pursuing. May has his doubts when Ruth goes missing for several days and he
wonders if she's committed suicide. About 1,200 people with mental problems
take their own lives each year, and another 50 kill someone else, many of
them while not taking their medication.
May is no stranger to the risks. For a decade, he has run self-help groups
for voice-hearers, where he supports a drug-free approach to treatment. He's
softly spoken, thoughtful, yet he has a cheerfulness that disarms patients
and professionals alike. (His trust has asked him to contribute a blog to
its website, recognising his popularity with mental patients.)
He is himself a "recovered schizophrenic", diagnosed at 18, treated with
drugs and told his problems would be lifelong. Having found a way back to
health, he is committed to guiding others on the same journey and has become
a leading advocate of drug-free psychiatry. At one point in the film he
urges Ruth: "You can recover. Too many people have been lost. We don't want
to lose you."
His nemesis in the film is orthodox psychiatry, represented by Trevor
Turner, a consultant at Homerton hospital in east London. He is one of few
conventional psychiatrists prepared to engage in this debate. Turner agrees
that supporting patients to manage their voices is helpful - but it is not
enough, he says. "No doctor would dream of saying, 'I am just going to treat
the voices.' If I assessed there was a risk - and in this case 'Ruth' was
talking about suicide and hearing voices and was out on the streets - I
would definitely have taken action to protect her. If there was no other
way, I would have battered down the door and taken her into hospital."
After a series of crises, Ruth finally has a breakthrough and is back on the
road to recovery. The closing scene shows her sitting in a car outside the
(disguised) hospital where she is back at work. May asks her if she is
competent as a doctor. "Yes," she says. "He [the voice] is not the problem -
it's if people find out, that would be a problem. The power balance has
shifted."
Leo Regan, the director, who spent a year shadowing May, said his aim was to
"challenge people's preconceptions about mental illness" rather than to
promote one approach over another. "I think the debate between Trevor and
Rufus raises some important questions and will provoke people to think a bit
more deeply about how we treat people who hear voices."
Today, Ruth is still well and working. May insists that she would have
fallen apart if she had lost her career. It was a high-risk strategy - some
would say foolhardy - yet it apparently succeeded.
Rufus May's presence in the mental health system is a necessary irritant, a
constant reminder that orthodox psychiatry needs to be more
consumer-focused. But one cannot help fearing for the consequences if he
pushes his approach too far.

The Doctor Who Hears Voices, Channel 4, Monday 21 April, 10pm

Story about Rufus May -
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 40381.html

===============

http://www.psychminded.co.uk/news/news2 ... ent006.htm

Underground recovery
A docu-drama about clinical psychologist Rufus May helping a woman diagnosed
with bipolar disorder without using drugs is to be broadcast on Monday.
Writing exclusively for psychminded, May explains that he had to keep his
work with the woman secret. Otherwise, such is the reliance on psychotropic
drugs, she would have been compulsory detained.
April 17, 2008
.....
It took over a year for Leo Regan to make the film, The Doctor Who Hears
Voices, about my work. I think it manages to be a documentary about mental
health that avoids the usual traps of being a freak show.
I work with adults with mental health problems and believe people are
capable of recovering from all mental health problems if they get the right
support.

I had a psychotic episode when 18 and recovered despite doctors diagnosing
me with "schizophrenia" which they said was a life-long condition and that I
would always need medication for.
With his camera in tow, Leo steadily shadowed me at both work and in my
independent role giving talks and campaigning. Leo wanted his footage to be
'real' and not contrived. He went to a lot of effort to film me when I was
worried and anxious as well as when I was confident and self-assured. Once
he even turned up at my house at 3am!
The film focuses on my relationship with Ruth [not her real name] who I
decided to try and help outside of my NHS work. Ruth was a junior doctor who
was suspended from her practice for having suicidal ideas.

Around this time she started to hear an aggressive voice telling her to kill
herself. Coincidentally, she had approached me for advice just before she
started to hear voices. She had stopped taking medication some time before.
She could not approach her doctors for help with her voice hearing because
she feared that she would lose her medical career.
I set about supporting her non-medically. It was important to give her lots
of psychological and physical techniques to cope with her sleep problems,
her voice hearing and her moods. I became the only person she could trust
with what was really going on.
Leo was very interested in her story and tried to film us working together
on these issues. But it was impossible because of her need for
confidentiality and secrecy. As she put it "you cannot be a doctor and hear
voices". So instead we began to carefully document our meetings so that we
could re-enact them with an actor.
Even documenting the work added pressure to Ruth. For example, often after
Leo had interviewed Ruth about how she was doing, I would find that she was
extremely distressed the next day. On one occasion I banned Leo from meeting
with Ruth for over a month. At that point I felt that we would have to keep
Ruth out of the film entirely. In the end Ruth and I decided the pain of the
film making was worth the gain of telling her story.
I was working totally against the grain of conventional wisdom. Most health
professionals believe that when someone starts to hear voices or get
paranoid, both of which Ruth was going through, you have to intervene with
medication. If you don't, conventional thinking argues, the person's brain
will deteriorate irreversibly. I firmly did not believe this but, at times,
supporting Ruth through her crisis as she struggled with suicidal ideas and
intense paranoia, I did question my rationale. I wondered whether my
approach was making her worse not better. I knew if she did kill herself I
could be held responsible. At the same time I saw an intelligent, dedicated
person who had been let down by a judgmental employment system, who I
believed could recover and make a valuable contribution to society as a
doctor.
Ruth had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and again told it was a
lifelong condition. I don't agree with such practices. I think the
psychiatric diagnostic model often alienates us from our own experiences and
breeds fear and helplessness.
I suggested that it might be helpful to not embrace a diagnostic
understanding of her problems. Instead, I gave her a different model;
firstly, that she could recover a good
life. Secondly, that her distressing experiences were not the product of a
faulty brain but meaningful communications. I believed that all of her
experiences including mood swings, critical thoughts, paranoia and voice
hearing were understandable reactions to difficult life events. For example,
a lot of her paranoia and voice hearing reflected the way her employers were
treating her, as if she was a liability, by suspending her and refusing to
trust in her ability to be a good doctor. I was suggesting that these
so-called 'symptoms' were actually 'messengers' about past and present
hostile environments and that it was fundamental not to blame herself and
give up.
Importantly, Ruth needed to become confident in resisting the prejudice of
her employers by lying to them about her mental health. She could not afford
to tell them she was hearing voices. This was hard for Ruth as she is an
honest person and she felt her integrity was being ripped apart. As we
worked on deeper issues I encouraged her to express her emotions and address
buried wounds in order to be released from demons of her past. At times she
slipped deeper into paranoia and it was on these occasions that both of us
had our faith tested in my approach.
The film charts Ruth's journey though these experiences and also gives us
some insight into the more conventional psychiatric approach. Psychiatrist
Trevor Turner, former vice chair of the Royal College of Psychiatry,
outlines the importance of giving people in Ruth's situation medication
whether they want it or not because "miracles do occur". If they don't want
to take medication most psychiatrists and nurses will choose to force people
to take medication against their will. In the film Trevor gives a reassuring
description of how nurses are trained to forcibly inject patients with
medication "in the most comfortable and supportive way".
I hope the film triggers a debate not just about the rights of health
professionals to hear voices but also about the rights of people in crisis
to a force-free mental health service. Every week thousands of people are
coerced into taking medication that they don't want and this frequently does
more harm than good.
Without giving away the outcome of the film, Ruth and I attempted to work on
her recovery in a force-free way that honoured her right to have a drug-free
approach. We had to do this in an underground way. This is surely wrong. It
is surely wrong that many psychiatrists do not see their patient's 'mad'
experiences as meaningful.
It is surely wrong that they do not promote optimism and a belief in
recovery. It is surely wrong that psychotropic drugs that impair functioning
are seen as the first port of call and that patients have little choice over
what goes in their bodies. It is surely wrong that many people who stop
taking their medication feel they have to lie about this to their
psychiatrists. We are supposed to live in a democracy but if you are being
treated for a mental health problem in our society you are very often living
in a totalitarian regime.
The 'real Ruth' bravely decided to speak out about these kind of injustices
by agreeing to have her story documented, hopefully the number of people
speaking out about our society's approach to mental health will continue to
grow.
* Rufus May is a clinical psychologist with Bradford District Care Trust's
assertive outreach team, and honorary research fellow with the Centre For
Community Citizenship And Mental Health at the University of Bradford.
Rufusmay.com

* The Doctor Who Hears Voices is on Monday, April 21 on Channel 4 at 10pm
See also:
Jan 16, 2008: Schizophrenia psychologist launches 'coming off' psychiatric
drugs website - Rufus May fears medication withdrawal effects are confused
with illness symptoms
Clare
Clare
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Dennis
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Dennis »

Interesting story and good that it got publicity. Is there a way to see this documentary somewhere? I also liked Rufus May's website. Lots of interesting articles there...

Thanks Clare, for giving it attention here.

Dennis
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Clare »

Yes, it was a very interesting documentary. The young girl Ruth, was really struggling with this condemning voice telling her to kill herself, and then kill Rufus, but he very slowly and carefully spoke to the 'voice' and continued doing so for several months. During this time he connected her voice to the experience Ruth had of losing her brother to heart disease, and not having grieved.

It was so good to see that she could finally get in touch with the deeper hurt and cry and cry.

He broke all the 'rules'; brought her home for a weekend to stay with him and his wife and family during which he and ruth both dunked their heads under freezing cold water in a running stream - It was quite beautiful.

All the while the narrator interviewed another psychiatrist who had in fact originally treated Rufus for his schizophrenia, and who was now so anti Rufus' treatment of Ruth, and would only prescribe anti-psychotic drugs.

The end result of the hard work done by both Ruth and Rufus, was that she had returned to work as a doctor in hospital, and when asked had the 'voice' gone, she smiled and said no, but things are different now....in fact she was finding it quite funny.

I recorded it, ads and all, and could put it on a disc, I wonder if I ever get my act together I could upload it to a website, but that might be another day ( am still struggling around DVD's which I have already promised to you ) One day......it will all come together.

In the meantime, thank goodness for people like Rufus May.

C
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Lloyd »

I saw that, it was very interesting. I thought it was good that she was being treated in a different way than "normal" i.e. being told you are genetically tainted and will have to take drugs for the rest of your life. But also I felt that the core of her problems weren’t really dealt with too well.
To go and work in a shop or office hearing voices is acceptable to me if the problem is being dealt with; I mean your not dealing with life and death situations, but going to work as a doctor feels very premature to me. It all seemed a bit "messy", and although I thought Rufus seemed a genuinely good bloke I felt that he was lacking something. Maybe seriousness?.. Or skill?... Somthing?..
I think he could of taking Ruth’s illness more seriously, and it could have been dealt with in a more sure-footed, and safer way. They did go some way in to finding out what the voices were all about, I thought that was great but it wasn’t enough for me. It was too shallow an analysis; if I was her therapist Id be very reluctant to just leave it there. She maybe is safe to work as a doctor; who knows? But the fact that she still hears voices is a sign to me that there is still much more that could be done.

Having mental/emotional illnesses accepted as "normal" is not the way to go in my opinion, there are reasons why they happen, they are signs of an underlying problem with us humans. It simply is "not" good if someone has to live with voices telling them they are shit, or having a compulsion to wash their hands 500 times a day, or whatever. Its just not! Its better to see and accept a problem that IS there because then you can do something about it. If we all accept that mental illness is normal then were all stuck with it aren’t we. The causes will not be dealt with.
What id like to see is the causes found, and categorically and conclusively "proved", and I expect the best place to look is the way people are treated as babies and children. If 99% or more of mental/emotional illnesses are caused by the environment we are born and brought up in then there are only 2 options left open to us; either we change the way we treat babies and children and try to "prevent" mental/emotional problems from happening in the first place and be ready and able to deal with any emotional problems effectively as soon as they turn up, or we keep everything the same, and in that case we will all have to accept that some people in our societies are going to get ill, and are going to suffer, and are going to be dangers to the public or themselves; all because they are dealing with problems they themselves did not create!
The first option is a rational way to deal with a problem; how long will the second option continue to be even remotely acceptable to us?…

I just read the first link: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style ... 40381.html I think he does have his head on straight, but is lacking a deep knowledge and understanding of the causes of mental illnesses, and how to prevent and cure them. Its good that he’s trying to change the system, it needs changing, there needs to be more people like him in the mental health profession. He’s defiantly going in the right direction anyway; away from the chemical imbalance theory and its monstrous consequences!

Cheerz,
Lloyd.
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Steve »

Clare, Lloyd, Dennis,

There is a lot of this sort of thing being uploaded to YouTube. I've been on it for days, spare time, and have the feeling I've just scratched the surface. Someone uploaded "The Birth of Modern Psychiatry", for example, an Adam Curtis documentary featuring R. D. Laing and giving me my first awareness that the Rosenhan experiment even took place. (I'm still almost amazed that as an institution psychiatry was even able to survive that one.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment "Alice Miller" used as a search term generates about a dozen hits. "Child abuse" 9,300.

Just an hour ago I stumbled onto this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEIg1as2ppc
This woman has several other videos up there.

Here's five minutes of (interestingly, I think) a conservative state legislator challenging a "progressive" leader's membership on a NAMI board at the same time she's apparently been supporting "Teenscreen", a plan guaranteed to drum up business for the drug companies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASa7iQQpOMI

Geez! I just this minute searched for the Summerhill documentary the BBC put out this winter--it looks like the whole thing's there!
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_q ... arch_type=

This guy looks and acts pretty Californian. Ignore that and just listen to what he says:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1tMrwvbosw&NR=1

If nothing else this all proves that something is going on out there, that the entire world has not fallen into lockstep.

Steve
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Lloyd »

Nice one Steve. There is some really good stuff there. Just watched the first vids: The Birth of modern Psychiatry.

Link for them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McPnMQ31 ... re=related

Why don’t they show these sorts of films all the time on normal T.V.? Psychiatry and Big pharma are out to get as many people on drugs as possible, they are a true menace to society, the public has a right to know the truth.

And the videos of Gwen Olsen are very good aswell, it's really good thats shes seen the light, especially because shes been there and seen behind the scences of big pharma! She has first hand experience, and is providing proof off how corrupt and sick the pharma companies really are.

I had never heard of The Rosenhan experiment, brillent! Its a damb shame it didnt work to sort this mess out though, now we have the DSM... :roll:

Ive seen the summerhill drama, its brillient. Theres a good video about summerhill here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 8006272328. I did see anouter one about the schools fight with offsted but its not available anymore to download, and its not coming out untill 2009 i think, its called "Imagine a school...summerhill".

I'll definaitly be checking out the other links...

Cheerz,
Lloyd
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Dennis »

Just a few quick words from me. I'll make the Summerhill BBC drama series available in the film club next month, as well as the Summerhill documentary Lloyd referred to. I've seen both, and it put a smile on my face, knowing that resistance is NOT futile. Thanks again, Lloyd, for pointing me to these.

Steve, I'll look at your linked videos as soon as possible.

Dennis
Everything I write here is my opinion, not absolute truths but I don't want to start every sentence with[i] in my opinion[/i]...
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Steve »

A drawback of video is that copy/pasting the good parts sort of goes by the wayside, you have to work a little bit more. From Summerhill's site:

"To be a free soul, happy in work, happy in friendships, and happy in love or to be a miserable bundle of conflicts, hating one’s self and hating humanity – one or the other is the legacy that parents and teachers give to every child."

A. S. Neil

thanks Lloyd,
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Lloyd »

There are alot of videos on youtube, i really like this one, its got loads of psychiatrists admitting that their are no tests to prove that any mental illness exists, and that they cant cure people...

Psychiatry EXPOSED!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b30iwhEw ... re=related

"A drawback of video is that copy/pasting the good parts sort of goes by the wayside, you have to work a little bit more."
Hi Steve, sorry I dont understand what you mean?...

Cheerz,
Lloyd.
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Dennis »

I had never heard of the Rosenhan experiments either and they were quite revealing. Shouldn't that have Psychiatry closed down permanently?

Psychiatry was never about curing people, but about controlling people. It always was and always will be. The Birth of modern Psychiatry videos were very good. The part where a smiling woman explained how Prozac made her life so much happier got an interesting twist when her husband was asked what he thought. 'She wasn't the same woman as when he married her', he said. 'Is she a better person now', the interviewer asked. 'She's different', he answered, while his wife kept smiling the whole time next to him. Reminds me a bit of my favorite scifi movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In a way, people are now being drugged to feel happy, no matter what the circumstances are. Who benefits from that?

Also I just watched the Bill Mahler performance on the pharmaceutical industry. Never realized it but the reason why every behavioral pill has an x or a z in it, must be to make the impression that it's a complicated word and therefore more people tend to give it a scientific credibility. Manipulation seems endless in cases like these.

Dennis



PS. If you want to post a youtube video, use the tab above where it says youtube and place the last code of the link in between, the part that I marked red:

youtube.com/watch?v=TfDSlfVqjx8

One more clip, not related to the above but a nice one anyway. Don't mind the commercial message at the end.

Everything I write here is my opinion, not absolute truths but I don't want to start every sentence with[i] in my opinion[/i]...
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Steve »

Lloyd,
I just meant copy/pasting snippets of video isn't as easy as as with text.

Fred Baughman is great.

Stick with this one until at least 5:00, or fast forward to it (total time 10:41):



There is a nonmedical way of relieving these same symptoms (0:42):



Reading the comments posted on Youtube can be interesting. "Patients" themselves defend psychiatry's position with the same fury as AA zealots defend their "program", for instance, or religious ones defend their particular faith. They've invested to the point thatseeing reality for what it actually is just too terrifying, I think. It's terrifying and nauseating even for those of us not invested, though! Sometimes Miller's opposition to the use of humor as a remedy for terror and nausea just makes me want to go over and park my lorry on her nicely manicured lawn. No not really. But I might hug her until she had to beat me to make me quit! Or maybe both would be good. Incidentally and possibly off topic: my worst, most painful beatings came at the hands of my mother during a period when my father's academic and professional career was being seriously threatened by a survivor of the Holocaust, at that time a powerful man in education: "There are two people in the world who know anything at all about what you are trying to do." [Something relating to 'metal fatigue'/industrial engineering.] "One is in Germany and the other is me. If you don't use me as your major professor I will destroy you." My father had chosen someone else. I met this guy decades later--and before I discovered he and my father had known each other at all--and found him (as I think most people have) to be exactly the opposite of how my father then later described him: "a terrible, vicious, bitter, mean, awful man." I expect both sides of him were equal, both real. People got sides, is the point, and the reason I bring this up. I know linking the beatings Hitler took from Alois to the ones I took from my mother is pretty tenuous. I don't put much into it except as a way of reminding myself that there is powerful bullshit out there looking to self-replicate, looking for victims. Psychiatry--and I think most 'education', actually--has its foundations in the same blind fear that motivated Hitler's dad. But I can't help wondering why no animals on earth other than people, so far as I'm aware, ever really laugh.

Woo I'm deep, kindof.
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Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Lloyd »

Hi,
"I just meant copy/pasting snippets of video isn't as easy as as with text." Ah, I see what you mean.
It would be a lot better if people could post full films as well on youtube, there was a lot missing from The Birth of modern Psychiatry. I think it is possible to post longer vidz but you have to create a "producer" account or something...

I saw that vid about "ADHD" yesterday, I thought it was quite amusing how that bloke couldn’t answer the simple question what does a child with "ADHD" look like. "Umm, ar, um, I don’t know. There’s no physical test for it but if enough of us child haters agree a child's got it then that’s proof they have it". What an idiot!

Has anyone seen this one: oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)? It would be funny if it wasn’t very disturbing and annoying! What’s next, and how far will it go before everyone stands up and revolts against this bullshit? Next week there could be a "children who think for themselves disorder"!
Signs and symptoms
It may be tough at times to recognize the difference between a strong-willed or emotional child and one with oppositional defiant disorder.
(All the more reason to not create anouther "disorder". And its tough because there is no such thing as ODD!)
Certainly there's a range between the normal independence-seeking behavior of children and oppositional defiant disorder. It's normal to exhibit oppositional behaviors at certain stages of a child's development.
(Its normal to exibit oppositional behaviours at any or all stages of a child's development if you have incompetent and stupid parents!)

However, your child's issue may be oppositional defiant disorder if your child's oppositional behaviors:

Are persistent
Have lasted at least six months
Are clearly disruptive to the family and home or school environment
The following are behaviors associated with ODD:

Negativity
Defiance
Disobedience
Hostility directed toward authority figures
These behaviors might cause your child to regularly and consistently show these symptoms:

Frequent temper tantrums
Argumentativeness with adults
Refusal to comply with adult requests or rules
Deliberate annoyance of other people
Blaming others for mistakes or misbehavior
Acting touchy and easily annoyed
Anger and resentment
Spiteful or vindictive behavior
Aggressiveness toward peers
Difficulty maintaining friendships
Academic problems

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/opposi ... er/DS00630
Outrageous!
Causes
There's no clear cause underpinning oppositional defiant disorder. (2) Contributing causes may include:

The child's inherent temperament
The family's response to the child's style (what the fk is that supposed to mean?..)
A genetic component that when coupled with certain environmental conditions — such as lack of supervision, poor quality child care or family instability — increases the risk of ODD
A biochemical or neurological factor
The child's perception that he or she isn't getting enough of the parent's time and attention
Before I even looked it was blatantly obvious that genetics and chemical imbalance theory was going to be there!

The following are behaviours associated with having neurotic parents that have no idea what they are doing or how damaging their behaviours are:

Negativity
Defiance
Disobedience
Hostility directed toward authority figures
Being a neurotic, incompetent, life/child hating parent might cause your child to regularly and consistently show these symptoms:

Frequent temper tantrums
Argumentativeness with adults
Refusal to comply with adult requests or rules
Deliberate annoyance of other people
Blaming others for mistakes or misbehavior
Acting touchy and easily annoyed
Anger and resentment
Spiteful or vindictive behavior
Aggressiveness toward peers
Difficulty maintaining friendships
Academic problems

It’s very weird when you see a patient sticking up for psychiatry; they have been taken in hook line and sinker by the genetic/chemical imbalance lies. Most people do believe this shit even though they know nothing about it. Psychology's gone out the window, precisely because inherent in it is the responsibility to criticize people's destructive behaviours. That just isn’t acceptable in our politically correct societies anymore. What happened to the decades of studies in to the real causes of emotional problems? It seems that was all for nothing! People with emotional problems are vulnerable, and the last thing they need is having more power taken away from them by being blamed for their own problems. Being told your genes are to blame is basically pointing the finger of blame at the person themselves, "its your genes, they are wrong, faulty, you are faulty" I’m sure a lot of people would much rather find out the real causes of their emotional problems, rather than have the ready made, one size fits all, genetic/chemical imbalance "theories" dumped on them as if they were "fact". But alot of people don’t really have much of a choice (or they dont think they do); if they go to a psychiatrist then there’s a 99.99% chance they will be told they are genetically defective...

Cheerz,
Lloyd.
Steve
Posts: 92
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 6:20 pm
Location: USA

Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Steve »

Lloyd wrote:I’m sure a lot of people would much rather find out the real causes of their emotional problems
Sure, so long as they don't find out the real causes of their emotional problems.

"Why, Steve, why? Please tell us why! The whole world is just dying to hear your mighty thoughts on the matter you know!"

Oh. Well because once you start figuring stuff out like that, your whole world kind of like gets turned upside down and ripped apart. Lot of "if-thenning" going on. Like "Well if that is true, then that means that must also true. And if that is true...then--OMIGOD WE'RE ALL F'IN OUT OF OUR EVERLOVIN FREAKIN GOURDS!!! HELP SOMEBODY HELLP MEEEEE!!!"

You have to admit that acknowledging the real causes of emotional problems a pretty big concept for practically anybody to have to gag down all at once, especially after all the effort the real causes went to in training not just us but everybody around us not to acknowledge them. Best thing if you ever run into somebody who's maybe starting to wake up a little is to give them a cookie or something, maybe some milk, tell them yep, you're certainly right all right, everybody's just stupid nuts crazy beyond belief, they sure are, but that things are getting better, and someday everything's gonna be okay anyhow. Tell them you got people working on it.

Is that enough yet to still make it in the Movie-of-the-Month Club?

GOTTA see that Summerhill one. Gotta gotta.

Steve
User avatar
Lloyd
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Joined: Wed Feb 20, 2008 6:12 pm
Location: England

Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Lloyd »

Hi Steve,
Sure, so long as they don't find out the real causes of their emotional problems.
Sorry I don’t understand what you mean, what is the alternative?.. Would you rather the truth be hidden, or covered up, or what?
Society needs to face up to what it does, parents need to face up to what they are responsible for; if everyone continues to hides from their own pain then not much is going to change is it?..
Well because once you start figuring stuff out like that, your whole world kind of like gets turned upside down and ripped apart.

You have to admit that acknowledging the real causes of emotional problems a pretty big concept for practically anybody to have to gag down all at once, especially after all the effort the real causes went to in training not just us but everybody around us not to acknowledge them.
I understand that, I realize that finding out the real reasons is painful and confusing, and that everyone is programmed to avoid the truth about this at all costs but that’s why humans are like we are, because in general we don’t want to face the truth or have to deal with it. It IS hard to take it all in at once that’s for sure!
When I first got in to orgonomy I was overwhelmed by a lot of my repressed emotions, and the truth about how messed up the human race is. It was painful and seriously confusing. It was like being dropped in to a very different world to the one I had grown accustomed to being in. But I’m very grateful that it happened. That was 2 or 3 years ago so I’ve had some time to get used to it, it’s not quite so overwhelming to look at either my own repressed emotions or the emotional sickness of our species as a whole.
And if the truth has that effect then what can be done about it? Its there whether society as a whole or we ourselves like it or not, whether we want to deal with it or not, whether we want to use it as a motivation to change things or not.

Cheerz,
Lloyd.
Steve
Posts: 92
Joined: Sun Dec 02, 2007 6:20 pm
Location: USA

Re: Docu-drama about schizophrenia

Post by Steve »

Hi Lloyd,

I think you got it. ("Sure, so long as they don't find out...") I just meant that despite what they say they want or even really feel, the average bear is too well trained to do more than deny the truth. Parents, teachers, etc. are the causes--most people I know eventually at some level apologize for their abusers, defend them to the hilt. Nothing new there. But I agree, it's amazing to watch people run for "shelter".

It probably wasn't useful for me to have been cynical, but it just seems to me that if I can see it then so can anybody. It's not like I've been completely immune, though as I just told a friend, I'm damned glad a cop stopped my mother from beating me to a pulp (age four), not just because getting beaten sucks, but because the experience really did kind of inoculate me. From then on, regardless, I had no trouble believing that it was her that was nuts, that I was basically okay. Not to say I didn't go around completely nauseated, often as not. But I really think now what that man did was to hand me a bullshit detector. It's not perfect and it doesn't pick up everything, at least not necessarily at first, but if you ever hear someone say nothing is more important than standing up for kids: believe it.

I'm a nut about this and I don't care. It's important. I've got so much rage and anger in me and I'm so sick of the stupidity and so I'm so fed up with being "polite" about it that when I blow -- hmm. I dunno. I'll do a video of it for Youtube. Seriously: while I don't 'worship' Bob Dylan by any means there's no denying it's hard to find a crazier motherfucker. He makes the point in his autobiography that he was (approximate) "never one to sit alone in a room, practicing hour after hour. Playing in front of real people was all the practice I needed." That hit me. I do some acoustic 12-string. I've written in this forum before that for myself, doing it for real in front of live audiences is what I want to do most--two winos down by the railroad track is good--real--whereas for me 10,000,000 Youtube views would be a bad joke by comparison. Maybe even tragic. I bring this up because you mentioned your experience with orgonomy. You could have mentioned anything. I don't mean to pick specifically on that. I think it's great that you realize the real trouble is out "there", that at least the natural part of yourself is and always has been just fine, but for me and in my opinion, my strong hunch, my suspicion--not just for me but for everyone--the way to win inner battles can never be by "practicing" rage, or tears, or orgasms (!?), in some kind of "safe environment", with or without the presence of a "teacher". And that holds true no matter HOW much the teacher claims (as his teachers promised him) he is worth monetarily (or how "brilliantly" he is regarded by his clients or peers). There's real crap out there, real damage being done right now to real children and it has to be stopped. I mean that's my feeling. Being real in real life is what counts, no matter how badly it's done. "Practicing", especially alone or with a select group can too often lead to make-believe personas, I'm afraid. Like theater. NOTHING wrong with theater IN a theater. I just think a distinction needs to be maintained between acting and "acting". Parents and teachers teach us to "act", and "act" like them, most often, and it's all fake. I believe the same is true--that it's fake--of anyone trying to sell me the idea that they have discovered some key to the way out. There won't be any "inner peace" or "healing" for me--not even a little bit--until the shit out THERE stops. And yeah I know that means "not in my lifetime", but tough shit. I don't care. With exceptions, my friends are either dead or dying of alcoholism or drugs or in jail or huge into prescription pharmaceuticals. At least three of them involuntarily fed whatever they give schizophrenics; I know at least one lives with tardive dyskinesia. Turning on "the news" is gutwrenching. My parents and original family of course are all screwed up beyond recognition. Peace? Huh-uh. War. I'm pissed. I don't need to be healed. I don't want to be healed. I want to get out "there" and fight back, say "fuck you TOO, buttwads!", kick some serious ass.

Don't worry, I'll be peaceful about it. I'm crazy, not violent. Sons of bitches.
Steve

"Words, mere words, no matter from the heart! Th' effect doth operate another way."
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