Our stories
@Historylover wrote:I would be grateful if someone could help me to work out how to use quotes from others' posts.
When you are on the reply page, do you see the grey button on the top right corner of the form that says "Quote"? If you push that, it'll insert a full quote of the post you are replying to into your post. Then, if you want to narrow down the quote, say to just one specific paragraph, you merely need to highlight everything you don't want and hit delete.
It gets a bit trickier when you want to quote from multiple posts. I have to open reply pages to those posts in other tabs and then copy/paste quotes from them into the response I'm writing.
Mind you, I'm on a PC, I'm not sure if/how the process might differ if your using a tablet or mobile.
@Historylover wrote:Over the following years my psychiatrist took the time to understand. It came naturally to him to do so. He was meticulous in his work. He knew that what he had been taught about so-called 'mental illness' was incorrect - and that personalities warp and twist according to their intra-family/lineal conditioning, their experiences and their inter-personal relationships generally. Their particular trauma.
He 'unpicked' my damaged personality and rebuilt me - not to whom he thought I should be, but whom I had the potential to be. Over time, my Depression lifted - with as little medication as was necessary until none was. I have not had another bout in decades and take no medication.
I have to say, your experiance with a psychiatrist seems really exceptional. Not just in terms of you striking such a good one - and first time round, no less - but also in the fact that your psychiatrist was so involved with your care.
My experiance was that the system basically uses psychiatrists as pill dispensers, and that the real work of patient care is basically fobbed off on to psychologists. My first port of call when I needed help was a psychiatrist and even from the system management level, there was very little prospect of my treatment being successful. I was "lucky" to get one half hour appointment about every five weeks, and most of those sessions were spent reminding him precisely which patient of his I was.
I could go on about how bad he was, personally, but as I say, even in terms of how he was utilized by the system to treat patients, what hope ws there of him ever accomplishing anything productive?
So, as I say, I find it really remarkable that you were able to have such an involved relationship with your psychiatrist.
@Historylover wrote:I must clarify that my comments about billing by doctors - which has no oversight - had referred to GPs - not to my ex-psychiatrist who had trained me to never accept such dishonest practices. People assume that because they are GPs they are honourable.
I get that. My contribution was merely meant to illustrate that there's the same sort of fraud you were talking about across all branches of healthcare; basically anyone who's job allows them to squeeze money out of medicare.
I've been fortunate in that I've always had a really good GP who I trust. But as I said, I have encountered dodginess in my dealings with other branches of the health system.
@nashy wrote:If anyone wants to learn more about ECT we'd recommend reading over this fact-sheet.
The trouble is that that fact sheet uses a lot of language such as: "studies have shown", when the people conducting these studies are part of the very same mental health system that advocates this treatment. My understanding is that it is hardly surprising that these studies generate positive conclustions about ECT, because they are designed to only examine factors that will produce favorable conclusions.
https://www.vmiac.org.au/wp-content/uploads/VMIAC-Election-Platform_VIC_2018-1.pdf has a section about ECT on pages 19-20. To me, the final paragraph of pg.19 is of particular interest:
"We cannot report how many people sustain long-term cognitive impairment from ECT, or the seriousness or permanence of those impairments, because this data is not reported."
@Historylover wrote:I consider that having to be cautioned over expressing one's own opinion to another stifling to free speech - free thought - to closing down access to alternative view points. Surely we have the right to express opinions - to discuss? Broaden our understanding and knowledge? Learn? To learn that there are others who share our opinions? We are not expressing unlearned opinions - but well-researched experiences, discussions and observations.
I've sadly found that there are many areas of conversation relating to mental health/suicide/ect. where "free speech" is carefully rationed. Which only adds to my scepticism about the mental health system et al.'s various claims and stances. If such claims/stances are trustworthy and correct, then why is there so much fear and aversion to having free inquiry about them? Surely if they are as absolutely correct as their advocates maintain, then such stances should be easily able to address any freethinking question directed at them.
Only faulty, unscrupulous reasoning fears free inquiry and open discussion.
Even allowing for the fact that some people might be uncomfortable or distressed about discussing the legitimacy of mental health norms, you often aren't aloud to have free open discussions behind "trigger warnings" that would clearly warn anyone uncomfortable with the subject matter to stay away from the discussion.
As you seem to suggest, I think that the taboos in these discussions, and the stifling of free speech does a lot more harm then good; especially in terms of acknowledging the depth and nature of the mental health system's failings, and therefore in ultimately remedying them.
@Historylover wrote:My posts describe the positive aspects of my life but I would not want you to think that it was all good with that highly skilled ex-psychiatrist.
I appreciate that.
But I think the main thing is that, all-in-all, your experiance with your therapist was overall positive and worthwhile.
That's sort of the direct opposite of what I went through. If I'm being completely honest, there was one little positive thing that came out of my time with her. But the overall dammage done by her doesn't begin to justify that one measly benefit. All things considdered, I would've been so much better off having never entered her "care".
@Historylover wrote:@chibam I don't know how to manage this situation as I don't want to spoil good feelings you may have derived from our exchanges. I have been greatly benefited by our exchanges and find you a well-considered poster. My posts describe the positive aspects of my life but I would not want you to think that it was all good with that highly skilled ex-psychiatrist. I need to post to get it out of my system but don't want to distress anyone. I don't know whether to post here or elsewhere to keep the good vibes going here.
Yeah. It's hard to know what to do when you hit that wall where you don't really feel like you can speak freely in the environment, isn't it? I've wrestled with that dilemma many times in places like this.
I can't answer that question for you, but I can say that I've read plenty of "upset-with-how-I-was-treated-in-the-system" posts on this forum. We aren't the only ones here who know the dark side of the MH industry, not by a mile.
@Former-Member wrote:@chibam I didn't want to distress anyone with my not-so-positive self so opened a new discussion with an alternative name - LikeMinds. It seems that is now tangling me up. Perhaps I forgot to log off and re-log on as HistoryLover. Stress does that.
Aww! Here I was thinking we had another "Likemind" joining in on our discussion.
