#6. Quackery and Torture Masquerading as Medicine

This is Day 6 of our 30-day blog on the Declaration of Principles adopted by the 10th Annual Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression held in Toronto, May 14-18, 1982.  (More info here.)  Today we are talking about Principle 6.

Principle 6 reads in full as follows:

We oppose forced psychiatric procedures because they are at best quackery and at worst tortures, which can and do cause severe and permanent harm lo the total being of people subjected to them.

Basic Rationale

History is replete with the wreckage of discredited outrages from the psychiatric industry:  knitting needle lobotomies, insulin coma, getting wrapped like a mummy in freezing cold wet blankets, getting water-boarded into freezing cold water, shock collars on school children, extracting sound teeth, extracting sound tissue, blood-letting, skin-cutting, terror (yes actually, terror), hanging from ceilings, coffin boxes, sensory deprivation, skin irritation, hemorrhaging, vomiting, spinning in circles, experimentation, sterilization...  The list goes on...

Equally disturbing, each new generation of psychiatry actually believes in the torture they promote.   They believe, emphatically, with the utmost certainty - that their particular brand, protocol, procedure is exactly the remedy in order for the day.  While scoffing at psychiatric lunacies past, the modern generation of medical students is out there touting the benefits today of drugging, shock, TMS (electrode implants in your brain).  Lobotomy has been recycled, rebranded psychosurgery.

The international community has called this stuff torture.  Countless critics have questioned the efficacy and safety. Head in the sands of Pharma and profits, psychiatry still insists that its quackery works.  Not only that, psychiatry actually claims, under oath, in courts, in ERs, in prisons, nursing homes, half-way houses, assisted living, and on the ward, that its quackery is necessary. Time and again, according to them, only these things will treat what the hostages of this industry have.

If you scratch the surface of the self-dealing and trade interests, its not that hard to grasp what is going on. For the torturer, torture tends to be self-reinforcing.  Put anyone in enough pain and you will either get the results you want or kill them trying.

Notably, a lot of us prefer.  Indeed, the dirty little secret of the psychiatric industry is suicide.  This includes the role they play in aggravating the risk and making it a truly attractive option.  A lot of us are literally dying to get out.

The biggest times for suicide on inpatient wards are a few days after admission, and shortly after discharge.   It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why this is.  A few days into admission, the light starts to dawn.  Your problems might have been big before, the distress seemingly intolerable.  But now, after experiencing the way you and others are treated in the system of ‘care’,  you know it can actually get worse. You connect the dots and realize, perhaps for the first time, how bad it can get and how truly alone in the universe you are.

The second time for suicide is in the period right after release.  You have faked it until you made it.  You were miserable before, but now you return to your decimated life.  Dead relationships, dead pets, dead career.  No job, no reputation, no leg left to stand on.  Huge obstacles, huge bills, huge social prejudice.  The system of ‘helping’ dismantled your life, ruined your future and billed you for the privilege.  Inside they might have tortured your body, but back on the outside the senselessness and loss adds a whole new dimension.

Now, don't get me wrong.  I am drawn to novel approaches, quackery in the making, at least as much as the average bear.  I have a healthy respect for the diversity, creativity - sometimes ingenious, often totally stupid ways that human beings innovate in response to perceived need.  Arguably, much of what gets people labeled mad in the first place is the natural diversity of humankind in response to challenge or threat.  We find ourselves in new or distressing situations, and presto! a brainstorm for how to get out.  This is the stuff Edisons and Einsteins are made of.  In the long run, makes for progress, invention and promotes our survival.

For this reason, I have a healthy respect for the quack and the quirky potential in us all.  It's not just a biological imperative.  It makes life interesting, exciting and rich.

The problem I have - one many of us have - is when power or privilege dumb-down the options.  In the ideal world, you would get to have your quackery, I would get to have mine.

The problem for me comes - as with psychiatry - when powerful others demand their own way.  A fairly sane, rational response is to resist this.  Probably most of us prefer to watch from a safe distance.

We also usually consider the outcomes more credible when others actually puts their own skin in. It tends to build trust when you try your stuff out on you.  That's especially true when the stakes or risks are seem obviously high.  Ergo, the rational skepticism that a lot of us have with the complicated, flashy, high tech the medical industry pushes.  We legitimately wonder:  Will this have untold effects?  Is it reversible?  Do they really know what will happen over time?

If physicians really had to self-test the stuff they make their living selling, my guess is that the industry would get a lot more honest - safe, effective, ethical - overnight.  Just imagine this:

• The way you get certified to give shock is to get it.  Does that minimal impact on memory, intelligence, cognition, really stand up to the industry claim?  

• And what about TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation)?   Safe, healthy, effective?  Fully reversible?  Awesome!  Should be no problem then:   How about we open your skull up, insert the magnets, try them out, pull them out...   Then you can give your personal report on how those nerve-endings fare.

• You claim neuroleptics are well-tolerated, the concerns over-rated, the sum-total benefits well worth the cost?  Ok, you first.  Give it a whirl - seroquel, haldol, abilify, you name it.  Breath-baited, we're waiting for your user-rating -- and the outcomes from your own 2, 5, 10 or 20-year exposure plan.  

Until those results are in, I'd vastly prefer that you have your quackery and I'll have mine.  I'd vastly prefer to observe the results of your theories on you from a safe, respectful distance.  In the meantime, you keep your quackery off me, I'll keep mine off you.  Then, somewhere down the line, perhaps a few decades from now - and from far across a great divide  - we can both compare some notes. 

Questions for Reflection

We are building this work together.  Your lived experience is needed and valued.  It is essential to building our shared knowledge and expertise as a movement.  Please comment on any or all of these questions or in any way that speaks to you personally.

1. Have you ever had quackery forced on you in the name of treatment?   

2. Did it ever rise to the level of torture for you?  What contributed to that happening? 

3. What would you like others of conscience to know about your experience?

4. Has there ever been a time that you were willing to try something novel that someone else suggested?  What made you open to trying it?   

5. How is that different from the experience of being forced? 

6. If you had a novel idea that you thought would help someone, how might you approach them?

7. When others are trying to be helpful, what do you most want them to know or respect about your way of going about things?  

8.  If, as a culture, we were serious about improving outcomes, how could we safely, effectively maximize the learning from our different ways of doing things?   

Conference on Principle 6: Postponed

More information here.