psychotropic drugs are poorly prescribed and administered because a major reason they are used is for control of people who are different

Yes, I completely agree.

I have such mixed feelings about this. I’m in a relatively unique position, I think; I’ve been hospitalized without my consent. Being involuntarily committed to a locked psychiatric facility is, and I cannot say this forcefully enough, the absolute most degrading and humiliating thing that has ever happened to me, and I cannot imagine anything worse.

Give me a break, that does not put you in a unique position. I’ve been involuntarily committed and its not pleasant (and varies from hospital to hospital) but I can’t help but read your comment and think, wow, you must have a pretty cushy life, if you’ve seriously never experienced anything (or can even imagine anything!) more humiliating and degrading than that. Come on.

That said, I’m all for this “pro-choice” and “mad pride” stuff.

I think you underestimate the power of internal motivation. I didn’t reach out for other ways of making myself better because everyone treated me like shit; I did it because I had things I wanted to do and I couldn’t do them if I continued the way I was.

It’s the same, I think, with both fat acceptance and mad pride.

1) The majority of people do not live in reality by choice. Just because there are consensual necessary delusions (religion, currency, free will, things of that nature), does not mean that there aren’t a multitude of “unnecessary” delusions that people indulge in. Many of these delusions are highly, highly destructive to themselves or to others. Most of the time, the public at large accepts their attitudes as one they have a right to have. The disturbed are just that…disturbing to others. Meanwhile, many of the disturbed think that the norm is fucking nuts, and they’d (we, really) be right.

2) My real problem with this thread is how much it is about desperate mental illness rather seeing psyche as a spectrum. It’s basically parallel to the ticking time bomb torture frame. There is little discussion on people who are functional and even less about what functional means. Perpetually talking about mental issues in terms of crisis moments precludes real discussion, which I think has to include a bit of patter on exogenously created crazyness (like mental breakdowns from overwork). I also think there needs to be alot more discussion of how much society needs “crazy” people as a captured market for pharms and service companies. Not to mention the whole reinforcement of what is normal.

3) Oh, and to reinforce what has been said before, the majority of the time, psychotropic drugs are poorly prescribed and administered because a major reason they are used is for control of people who are different (or to make lots of money). It is understood that they work for some people here. However, is it understood that people who comment here are one hell of a self-selected population? That if you actually had a representative sample, you might find something other than you expect?