Thank you for this incredibly validating essay. It’s exhausting to practice medicine in a culture that’s morally bankrupt and emotionally hollow.
Everyone wants a pill to fix the completely normal human reaction to a toxic environment. The pathologizing of emotional distress for profit is so insidious.
Your writing reminds me of Gabor Mate, MD. Who I deeply admire.
Your writing is the most valid of all the writing I have read in a year. My soul , my body have both been telling me the truth.
This corrupt and demeaning society we’ve created is killing us off.
I feel like a very bright and healthy human now. How in all sanity can we get out?
My husband and I play with moving out of amerika. And we are older and not as full of energy as we would like. So, besides crushing our cell phones with a sledge hammer, and never calling an insurance company again when we need an actual medically trained human to hear us, what can we do? I know, join our community. Listen, walk, have purpose, be kind and understand most of all:” what does the human spirit need to survive?” I guess simply step off the train track and sit down in the grass.
Thank you! Thank you for putting into words what many of us feel & think, but not able to express so clearly and so eloquently. 💐💝🙏🥰. God bless you and your family! Very best wishes! Good health and happiness to you 🙏💝.
I feel like my kid will never get better. 16 years (he’s almost 24) of dealing with treatment resistant OCD. He sleeps 14 hrs day to escape the thoughts. Two partial hospitalization programs, MULTIPLE drugs, nothing works. A complicating factor is he has Asperger’s. It’s depressing as hell. He’s GF and eats very healthy cause I make all his food. His one escape is body building.
That is so hard. Hang in there. Keep trying different approaches. I’ve been there and thought it would never end. Have a daughter who from 17 to about 26 was a wreck: diagnosed BPD, bad anxiety, anorexia, bing eating disorder, and the list goes on. In her case, she only turned the corner once she got herself off of all psych meds including klonipin. We did a family constellation which I believe helped shift her in into being ready to get off them. At 29 she has now finished college and is just beginning a career in advertising.
I also have a 25 year old son with anxiety so bad he left school and doesn’t work. Has trouble leaving the house. Three years of expensive therapy hasn’t changed that. We are now working on weight gain and getting outside to do yard work like chopping wood and he says that helps. He never took any meds. We now think a big issue for him is rumination like constantly thinking negative thoughts. So we are looking into rumination focused ERP. Look up Dr Michael Greenberg. We just got on the wait list for his practice. I do feel hopeless with him sometimes but then remember how my daughter finally pulled out of it.
Such a useful and honest piece - i've felt for a long time that we really have a range of cultural disorders that have been turned into personal disorders.
Given the incentives baked into capitalist neoliberalism, we now have an out of control industry incentivised from all angles to turn as many people with problems into patients on pills, in therapy or both.
A powerful and increasingly common step towards this entanglement is to seek out a DSM construct/label, or these days simply, self label. So many working in the sector have no idea that the DSM lacks all scientific validity and reliability, except for some of the dementias and some rare chromosomal disorders.
The rest are literally voted into existence by small groups of largely white middle class men with the majority having conflicts of interest with drug companies. See here https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076902
The history of this mess is there for all to read about, but many seem wilfully ignorant and enthusiastic about labelling or sign posting people to be labelled with todays most profitable fads 'adhd' and 'asd' Its really frightening to witness.
Try Andrew Scull desperate remedies, Owen Whooley on the hells of ignorance, Cracked by James Davies, Insane Medicine by Sami Timimi, A straight Talking Introduction to psychiatric diagnosis by Lucy Johnstone second edition and see Lucy's four part series on the latest neurobabble here https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/07/part-1-neurodiversity/ and try this, i've no idea who put it all together but its a great resource https://perlanterna.com/ or try the unrecognised facts section here https://cepuk.org/ Thank you Roger.
Thank you for this incredibly validating essay. It’s exhausting to practice medicine in a culture that’s morally bankrupt and emotionally hollow.
Everyone wants a pill to fix the completely normal human reaction to a toxic environment. The pathologizing of emotional distress for profit is so insidious.
Your writing reminds me of Gabor Mate, MD. Who I deeply admire.
Your writing is the most valid of all the writing I have read in a year. My soul , my body have both been telling me the truth.
This corrupt and demeaning society we’ve created is killing us off.
I feel like a very bright and healthy human now. How in all sanity can we get out?
My husband and I play with moving out of amerika. And we are older and not as full of energy as we would like. So, besides crushing our cell phones with a sledge hammer, and never calling an insurance company again when we need an actual medically trained human to hear us, what can we do? I know, join our community. Listen, walk, have purpose, be kind and understand most of all:” what does the human spirit need to survive?” I guess simply step off the train track and sit down in the grass.
Great writing…. Thank you💕👍👏🏻🎶🙏🏻
Thank you! Thank you for putting into words what many of us feel & think, but not able to express so clearly and so eloquently. 💐💝🙏🥰. God bless you and your family! Very best wishes! Good health and happiness to you 🙏💝.
I feel like my kid will never get better. 16 years (he’s almost 24) of dealing with treatment resistant OCD. He sleeps 14 hrs day to escape the thoughts. Two partial hospitalization programs, MULTIPLE drugs, nothing works. A complicating factor is he has Asperger’s. It’s depressing as hell. He’s GF and eats very healthy cause I make all his food. His one escape is body building.
That is so hard. Hang in there. Keep trying different approaches. I’ve been there and thought it would never end. Have a daughter who from 17 to about 26 was a wreck: diagnosed BPD, bad anxiety, anorexia, bing eating disorder, and the list goes on. In her case, she only turned the corner once she got herself off of all psych meds including klonipin. We did a family constellation which I believe helped shift her in into being ready to get off them. At 29 she has now finished college and is just beginning a career in advertising.
I also have a 25 year old son with anxiety so bad he left school and doesn’t work. Has trouble leaving the house. Three years of expensive therapy hasn’t changed that. We are now working on weight gain and getting outside to do yard work like chopping wood and he says that helps. He never took any meds. We now think a big issue for him is rumination like constantly thinking negative thoughts. So we are looking into rumination focused ERP. Look up Dr Michael Greenberg. We just got on the wait list for his practice. I do feel hopeless with him sometimes but then remember how my daughter finally pulled out of it.
Such a useful and honest piece - i've felt for a long time that we really have a range of cultural disorders that have been turned into personal disorders.
Given the incentives baked into capitalist neoliberalism, we now have an out of control industry incentivised from all angles to turn as many people with problems into patients on pills, in therapy or both.
A powerful and increasingly common step towards this entanglement is to seek out a DSM construct/label, or these days simply, self label. So many working in the sector have no idea that the DSM lacks all scientific validity and reliability, except for some of the dementias and some rare chromosomal disorders.
The rest are literally voted into existence by small groups of largely white middle class men with the majority having conflicts of interest with drug companies. See here https://www.bmj.com/content/384/bmj-2023-076902
The history of this mess is there for all to read about, but many seem wilfully ignorant and enthusiastic about labelling or sign posting people to be labelled with todays most profitable fads 'adhd' and 'asd' Its really frightening to witness.
Try Andrew Scull desperate remedies, Owen Whooley on the hells of ignorance, Cracked by James Davies, Insane Medicine by Sami Timimi, A straight Talking Introduction to psychiatric diagnosis by Lucy Johnstone second edition and see Lucy's four part series on the latest neurobabble here https://www.madinamerica.com/2024/07/part-1-neurodiversity/ and try this, i've no idea who put it all together but its a great resource https://perlanterna.com/ or try the unrecognised facts section here https://cepuk.org/ Thank you Roger.