“…constitutes the re-enactment of the original event that has overwhelmed the organism. When this happens, the person can be thrown into the same emotional state that accompanied the original event, even though the situation now might be different”
My experience in the mental health system replicated every single aspect of the traumas I experienced as a child. People were constantly telling me that I need to drop the behaviors that I learned in childhood because now they were impacting my current situation. except that I was in the exact same situation I’ve been in as a child. Powerless over abusers that I wasn’t strong enough to get away from.
None of it was ever acknowledged and now I live in fear that it’s all going to happen again as soon as I’m not able to take care of myself.
Even people who say they’re aware of things like power threat, meaning framework use it to their own advantage. I contacted a therapist who specialized in this form of treatment and advertised it. She takes Medicare. She told me she’s not taking new patients but she does have a once a week zoom group that’s $40 out of pocket. And is like a 3-month commitment. So I’m supposed to trust not only her but the whole zoom group. And it’s up to 14 people who can enroll.
Patient autonomy? Maybe some patients are privileged to have autonomy while the rest of us are subject to coercion and force.
I experienced 40 years of trial and error. As a result I’ve spent the last five years mostly bedridden. But they still pour money into looking for genetic solutions to problems no one has ever substantiated are genetic.
I decided to use the old “benefit of the doubt” skill and looked up this HiTop thing that’s being proposed as an improvement over the DSM and OMG the language is even worse — more pathologizing, more patient-blaming/shaming, really “saying the quiet part out loud” as the kids say.
Ex., the replacement for borderline personality appears at the far right of the diagram.
The APA claims that HiTop is “more scientific” than DSM. And yet HiTop has ratings for “flirtatiousness”, for “attention seeking behavior”, for “maliciousness”.
(“Finally, unlike DSM–5, the HiTOP project adheres to the most up to date scientific evidence, rather than relying on expert opinion”)
In what world is this science? I’m honestly starting to worry about these people. They seem to have lost touch with reality.
I came back to this article for another reason, but feel it’s important to point out that Psych Nurse A@ndrew22 never provided the requested link to substantiate his claim that:
“I read an essay here once defending leaving a woman unmedicated to the point that she was lying down on a bridge in rush hour traffic. That’s, um, insane.”
Psych Nurse A@ndrew22’s commenting behavior is a very common behavior of defenders of forced psychiatric treatment on this website and elsewhere. The behavior is: Making outlandish or unsubstantiated claims and then ignoring all requests to provide evidence to substantiate the claim.
A@ndrew was asked more than once to provide a link to an article he claims to have read on this website, and yet he never did. He just continued to make more outlandish claims, completely unsupported.
I think this behavior should be called out more often.
(I came here because I haven’t seen any comments from Gina F. in a long while and I hope she’s okay.)
I was put on antipsychotics, and kept on SSRI/SNRIs, after getting a borderline diagnosis at age 40, following ECT for “treatment resistant depression”. The psychiatrist said, “you have borderline personality disorder. That’s why the ECT didn’t work.” He didn’t bother to tell me what borderline personality disorder was or why having it meant the ECT wouldn’t work. He didn’t explain why he couldn’t have diagnosed borderline before doing the ECT and spared my brain. He didn’t bother to explain anything. He just put me on antipsychotics and told me that I needed something called DBT.
I was kept on one antipsychotic or another, as part of the so-called cocktail, for the next 10 years. Every time I objected, I was quickly silenced. Sometimes they said it was because of my anger. “We can’t handle your anger.”
Nobody thought about why I might be angry? Paying a psychiatrist for 6 years who only drugged me and didn’t keep any records? Being abused on a locked psych word while pregnant? Being made to see verbally and financially abusive outpatient therapists? Going broke paying for treatment that only brought me more problems? Being dropped by the psychiatrist I saw in high school who put me on Elavil in my first appointment and then dropped me without notice (or a phone number of somewhere to call if I had trouble) and didn’t even bother to tell me what to do about the Elavil? Begging for help for the next 3 years and only being mocked even when I attempted suicide with the Elavil? Being blamed for everything?
I had one psychiatrist who believed that Abilify fixed the “part of the brain that was broken in people BPD”. I saw her give a presentation at a conference about borderline at an Ivy League medical school where she attested to this “fact”.
Once when I went to see her for a med check, she said she needed to renew my Abilify prescription and asked me what dose I thought helped me the most. I said “I don’t think Abilify helps me at all.
She said, ” I’ve seen you off Abilify. I’m prescribing the highest dose”. Okay, I thought…then why did you ask? Now I know that I had akathisia that whole time — I think that’s what she was seeing and blaming it on me, on “the borderline”.
Everyone in the IOP DBT group was on one antipsychotic or another. Whenever they questioned it during diary card review, or if they admitted on their diary card that they had had an urge to skip their antipsychotic or that they had skipped their antipsychotic, which was a treatment interfering behavior, second in importance only to suicide, they would be humiliated by the clinicians.
“I don’t think I need it. I’m not psychotic. It’s making me ill”. Would be answered with, ” Are you a doctor? Did you go to medical school?”
No wonder psychiatric patients/survivors have so much anger. We were treated like lab rats and then blamed when the experiments done on us made us a bigger problem to people. We always got blamed.
Well said, Dee. They need only speak to us, their test subjects, to find the answers they seek. It’s not a mystery why people do poorly in this system if you open your eyes and ears.
I would like to know who paid for this study. I don’t see anything groundbreaking about it. Did they consider the fact that none of these disorders are real? Did they consider that a patient can be diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder and then put on SSRIs, have a manic episode and then get a bipolar disorder diagnosed? Did they consider the fact that that patient when they then begin to question their treatment and whether there is any validity at all to what their treatment providers are telling them can then get a borderline personality disorder diagnosed?
We keep hearing about a paradigm shift only to get more of the same. I don’t see anything groundbreaking about this study.
I was recently on a psych nurse reddit sub where they were talking about “borderlines” on inpatient wards. They were instructing a student nurse on how to “deal with” these patients.
The consensus was: put them on one to one observation but do *not* speak to them (they’re looking for attention. Don’t give it to them. The only reason they should be on 1 to 1 is too prevent them from “acting out”.)
I had a trauma response just reading those comments.
I truly believed, after I’d gotten ECT and a borderline dx at that hospital, that I was “there for help” when I kept winding up back there.
They put me on combinations of drugs that are known to cause akathisia, and when I displayed the symptoms of akathisia, including suicidal ideation, they punished me again.
How dare these people use terms like “revolving door” or “frequent flier”. They’re the ones who made my life a living hell. I’ll never recover from the trauma and illness that they inflicted. How many lives have they ruined?
“…constitutes the re-enactment of the original event that has overwhelmed the organism. When this happens, the person can be thrown into the same emotional state that accompanied the original event, even though the situation now might be different”
My experience in the mental health system replicated every single aspect of the traumas I experienced as a child. People were constantly telling me that I need to drop the behaviors that I learned in childhood because now they were impacting my current situation. except that I was in the exact same situation I’ve been in as a child. Powerless over abusers that I wasn’t strong enough to get away from.
None of it was ever acknowledged and now I live in fear that it’s all going to happen again as soon as I’m not able to take care of myself.
Even people who say they’re aware of things like power threat, meaning framework use it to their own advantage. I contacted a therapist who specialized in this form of treatment and advertised it. She takes Medicare. She told me she’s not taking new patients but she does have a once a week zoom group that’s $40 out of pocket. And is like a 3-month commitment. So I’m supposed to trust not only her but the whole zoom group. And it’s up to 14 people who can enroll.
Report comment
Patient autonomy? Maybe some patients are privileged to have autonomy while the rest of us are subject to coercion and force.
I experienced 40 years of trial and error. As a result I’ve spent the last five years mostly bedridden. But they still pour money into looking for genetic solutions to problems no one has ever substantiated are genetic.
Report comment
It’s not science.
What does it mean, “we apply the adjustments in the relevant areas?”. Has ECT been banned? Have they stopped drugging children?
If it’s too complex and demanding for them, they should quit. A lot of people would be better off.
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Yes, thank you for the correction. They need to stop speaking and listen.
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https://images.app.goo.gl/WSdzr9jJnxDjD7cz8
I decided to use the old “benefit of the doubt” skill and looked up this HiTop thing that’s being proposed as an improvement over the DSM and OMG the language is even worse — more pathologizing, more patient-blaming/shaming, really “saying the quiet part out loud” as the kids say.
Ex., the replacement for borderline personality appears at the far right of the diagram.
We’re going in the wrong direction!
https://www.apa.org/pubs/highlights/spotlight/issue-88#:~:text=Finally%2C%20unlike%20DSM%E2%80%935%2C,risk%20factors%2C%20and%20neurobiological%20abnormalities.
The APA claims that HiTop is “more scientific” than DSM. And yet HiTop has ratings for “flirtatiousness”, for “attention seeking behavior”, for “maliciousness”.
(“Finally, unlike DSM–5, the HiTOP project adheres to the most up to date scientific evidence, rather than relying on expert opinion”)
In what world is this science? I’m honestly starting to worry about these people. They seem to have lost touch with reality.
Report comment
I came back to this article for another reason, but feel it’s important to point out that Psych Nurse A@ndrew22 never provided the requested link to substantiate his claim that:
“I read an essay here once defending leaving a woman unmedicated to the point that she was lying down on a bridge in rush hour traffic. That’s, um, insane.”
Psych Nurse A@ndrew22’s commenting behavior is a very common behavior of defenders of forced psychiatric treatment on this website and elsewhere. The behavior is: Making outlandish or unsubstantiated claims and then ignoring all requests to provide evidence to substantiate the claim.
A@ndrew was asked more than once to provide a link to an article he claims to have read on this website, and yet he never did. He just continued to make more outlandish claims, completely unsupported.
I think this behavior should be called out more often.
(I came here because I haven’t seen any comments from Gina F. in a long while and I hope she’s okay.)
Report comment
LoL, okay, Psychiatry. I have a “figure of speech” for you.
Report comment
I was put on antipsychotics, and kept on SSRI/SNRIs, after getting a borderline diagnosis at age 40, following ECT for “treatment resistant depression”. The psychiatrist said, “you have borderline personality disorder. That’s why the ECT didn’t work.” He didn’t bother to tell me what borderline personality disorder was or why having it meant the ECT wouldn’t work. He didn’t explain why he couldn’t have diagnosed borderline before doing the ECT and spared my brain. He didn’t bother to explain anything. He just put me on antipsychotics and told me that I needed something called DBT.
I was kept on one antipsychotic or another, as part of the so-called cocktail, for the next 10 years. Every time I objected, I was quickly silenced. Sometimes they said it was because of my anger. “We can’t handle your anger.”
Nobody thought about why I might be angry? Paying a psychiatrist for 6 years who only drugged me and didn’t keep any records? Being abused on a locked psych word while pregnant? Being made to see verbally and financially abusive outpatient therapists? Going broke paying for treatment that only brought me more problems? Being dropped by the psychiatrist I saw in high school who put me on Elavil in my first appointment and then dropped me without notice (or a phone number of somewhere to call if I had trouble) and didn’t even bother to tell me what to do about the Elavil? Begging for help for the next 3 years and only being mocked even when I attempted suicide with the Elavil? Being blamed for everything?
I had one psychiatrist who believed that Abilify fixed the “part of the brain that was broken in people BPD”. I saw her give a presentation at a conference about borderline at an Ivy League medical school where she attested to this “fact”.
Once when I went to see her for a med check, she said she needed to renew my Abilify prescription and asked me what dose I thought helped me the most. I said “I don’t think Abilify helps me at all.
She said, ” I’ve seen you off Abilify. I’m prescribing the highest dose”. Okay, I thought…then why did you ask? Now I know that I had akathisia that whole time — I think that’s what she was seeing and blaming it on me, on “the borderline”.
Everyone in the IOP DBT group was on one antipsychotic or another. Whenever they questioned it during diary card review, or if they admitted on their diary card that they had had an urge to skip their antipsychotic or that they had skipped their antipsychotic, which was a treatment interfering behavior, second in importance only to suicide, they would be humiliated by the clinicians.
“I don’t think I need it. I’m not psychotic. It’s making me ill”. Would be answered with, ” Are you a doctor? Did you go to medical school?”
No wonder psychiatric patients/survivors have so much anger. We were treated like lab rats and then blamed when the experiments done on us made us a bigger problem to people. We always got blamed.
Report comment
Well said, Dee. They need only speak to us, their test subjects, to find the answers they seek. It’s not a mystery why people do poorly in this system if you open your eyes and ears.
Report comment
I would like to know who paid for this study. I don’t see anything groundbreaking about it. Did they consider the fact that none of these disorders are real? Did they consider that a patient can be diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorder and then put on SSRIs, have a manic episode and then get a bipolar disorder diagnosed? Did they consider the fact that that patient when they then begin to question their treatment and whether there is any validity at all to what their treatment providers are telling them can then get a borderline personality disorder diagnosed?
We keep hearing about a paradigm shift only to get more of the same. I don’t see anything groundbreaking about this study.
Report comment
I was recently on a psych nurse reddit sub where they were talking about “borderlines” on inpatient wards. They were instructing a student nurse on how to “deal with” these patients.
The consensus was: put them on one to one observation but do *not* speak to them (they’re looking for attention. Don’t give it to them. The only reason they should be on 1 to 1 is too prevent them from “acting out”.)
I had a trauma response just reading those comments.
I truly believed, after I’d gotten ECT and a borderline dx at that hospital, that I was “there for help” when I kept winding up back there.
They put me on combinations of drugs that are known to cause akathisia, and when I displayed the symptoms of akathisia, including suicidal ideation, they punished me again.
How dare these people use terms like “revolving door” or “frequent flier”. They’re the ones who made my life a living hell. I’ll never recover from the trauma and illness that they inflicted. How many lives have they ruined?
Report comment