Friday, December 3, 2010
Excerpts From My Book Online
There is still no "Look Inside" feature on Amazon.com about my book, How Dysfunctional Families Spur Mental Disorders: A Balanced Approach to Resolve Problems and Reconcile Relationships (I am still bugging the publisher), but if you want to take a peak, you can at Google books at http://books.google.com/books?id=NRFfrE9WlQ4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=How+dysfunctional+families+spur+mental+disorders&hl=en&ei=O6_5TODcDoeglAfZpKzhBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false
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I am in receipt of your book from Amazon, I haven't begun to read it yet as I have a backlog of reading in front!
ReplyDeleteNevertheless - I am looking forward to exploring its contents!
Anna :o]
Dr. Allen,
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting the link to an exert of your book. It looks very interesting.
Regarding the points you made about extremism regarding various issues and how there is a middle ground, I disagree. I don't mean to get off the topic of mental health but the Start Treaty is a perfect example. There is absolutely no reason for the ratification of it to be delayed and from all the readings I have done, by doing that, it is putting the United States security at grave risk.
Concerning the issue of mental health, this may be unintentional on your part but I actually see extremism regarding your views on Robert Whitaker's book, Anatomy of an Epidemic. He seems to be treated as an anti med zealot when actually, he realizes that meds do benefit some people.
In light of the fact that many psychiatric meds are covered by medicaid and that funding for services is going to be greatly jeopardized in the future, I don't understand why psychiatrists like yourself refuse to consider some of his non med ideas like the program in Lapland Finland in which they try to keep 1st psychosis folks off of anti-psychotics. Apparently, it has a great success rate.
By the way, I am not anti meds. I know someone who was on antipsychotics for schizophrenia and it was probably the right move. But in light of all the horrendous side effects this person has developed which will probably be life shortening, I will always wonder if something like the Finish Program could have kept this person off of meds.
Anyway I realize there is no guarantee that everything would work but the refusal to consider anything that Whitaker says is ironic in light of your own position on extremism.
By the way, I don't mean to sound like I am picking on psychiatry as I think mainstream and alternative practitioners have extreme positions on various issues. They seem to be incapable of looking outside the box if you don't fit their protocol.
AA
AA that's really diplomatic of you. Nicely said. But here's my view: I've seen a hundred or so psychiatrists in a 14 year period, and they tortured me by forcing drugs on me every day, neuroleptics and benzos that harmed my body and ability to think, work and communicate. It was extremely painful. Psychiatrists also attempted to brainwash me into agreeing I had a ‘mental illness’ and that I ‘must be agreeable to treatment’. Brainwashing is repetition of lines to create ‘faith’ with threats, verbal abuse, often involving holding a person without consent.
DeleteIn my experience psychiatrists have never listened to me, never validated my experieneces, rather traumatised me, verbally abused me, drugged me and abducted me. Even the UN says that psychiatric forced drugging falls under the definition of torture.
I’m sorry AA if you find this truth extreme, but it is my experience, but it took a huge chunk out of my life. The only way I recovered was when I found another human who loves me, talks to me, and makes sense, but also was willing to cut through the propaganda and see the truth in what I was saying, even though it was outside his experience.
I am an atheist, and brought up as an atheist. I find some so-called atheists have an idiotic faith in some propaganda regimes that are intolerable, because they subject humans to experiments that involve torture, they deny human-rights of freedom from torture as well as freedom of opinion. Yes, I have met psychiatrists that actively try not to harm and listen to the people, Marius Romme and Lewis Mehl-Madrona… then there’s Peter Breggin, but they don’t live in Australia.
STOP PSYCHIATRIC ABUSE! Sign my petition: https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/attorney-general-s-department-stop-psychiatric-abuse-and-gain-an-apology-for-it-ever-having-occurred
AA,
ReplyDeleteI agree that on some issues there is no middle ground, but on the other hand, extreme and polarized opinions on most issues that have multiple and somewhat independent subcomponents are often wrong.
I don't disagree with everything Whitaker says, nor do I think he's an anti-psychiatry zealot. I think he means well and has made some valid observations.
What I do not like about him is the way he takes an observation and then makes rather spectacular inferential leaps in explainig them when there are other readily verifyable explanations for the data he describes.
For instance, he attributes the recent increase in the number of people on psychiatric disability to anti-psychotic meds supposedly causing people with schizophrenia to get worse, when in fact it is due to an explosion of highly questionable mood disorder diagnoses.
He also said in a talk I heard that the famous "revolving door" of patients with severe schizophrenia going back over and over again into state hospitals was also evidence that the meds were making patients worse. If he spent one day in a psychiatric emergency room he'd know that the reality is precisely the opposite: that those who go off meds (or use other substances) are the ones in the revolving door.
As you point out, the potentially toxic side effects of antipsychotic medications are bad enough without us scaring people with non-existant dangers.
I read the preview, is your target reader the general public or people going into the field?
ReplyDeleteI learned a good amount of history from your words. I really never thought about how others viewed those with mental illness before. I do not agree that it is the parents who are to blame in most cases. As it is a choice to accept or reject things that happen. But I see how some are programed to be and believe they are the victim. No one ever tells them they have a choice to change.
I am rambling. Sorry. I read and learn for my own knowledge. I have enjoyed your writing.
Thank you.
Hi Grammy,
ReplyDeleteThe book is mostly for the general public, but professionals and students might find it interesting as well.
There is no point in blaming anyone for troublesome family interactions. Doing so is never productive. The idea is for folks to find out what purpose the patterns serve and how they can be changed.
Well don't blame the person suffering because of the abuse by calling them 'psychotic' or 'mentally ill', force them to agree to those labels and forcefully drug and electrocute them! That's psychiatric policy to do that. That's abusive to those who are traumatised. Whitaker speaks up against that for people like me who have had unfeeling psychiatrists accusing me for rhyming, for laughing, for dancing, for singing, for playing trumpet, for writing, for saying I don't want their drugs... as 'proof' of 'mental illness'. That's nasty. That's not care or help. At least validate the abuse a person is suffering, or that person is not is easily going to trust again or feel safe enough to think within the realities of a society that has okayed these abuses.
Delete