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Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

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Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#61

Post by xenophanes2 »

gruseom wrote: post #50
xenophanes wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So your credentials consist of personal anecdotes? Maybe it's time to start taking the issue more seriously. I think it's a serious issue deserving a more serious approach. For example, you might try reading literature with multiple different perspectives on the issue. Then try to figure out which ideas are right and why. (If you've already done this, forgive me, and please please inform me why Szasz is mistaken, I w…

I like Szasz too, as well as his hippie counterpart R.D. Laing (whom you might check out if you're interested), but please, don't play intellectual hardball in this thread. The OP just lost his brother.

People are spreading very bad, destructive ideas that will result in more dead brothers. I think that's more important than being "nice".

Also, Szasz and Laing are closer to opposites than counterparts. See for example:

http://www.amazon.com/Antipsychiatry-Quackery-Squared-Thomas...

Quote from the book, by Szasz:

> In the late 1960s, a group of psychiatrists, led by David Cooper (1931-86) and Ronald D. Laing (1927-89), began to criticize conventional psychiatry, especially so-called somatic treatments. But instead of advocating the abolition of Institutional Psychiatry, they sought to replace it with their own brand, which they called "Anti-psychiatry." By means of this dramatic misnomer, they attracted attention to themselves and deflected attention from what they did, which continued to include coercions and excuses based on psychiatric authority and power. Thus, antipsychiatry is a type of psychiatry. The psychiatrist qua health-care professional is a fraud, and so too is the antipsychiatrist. In Psychiatry.The Science of Lies, I showed that psychiatry-an imitation of medicine-is a form of quackery. In this volume, I show that antipsychiatry-a form of alternative psychiatry-is quackery squared. > > For more than a half century, I have consistently asserted two simple but fundamental propositions: mental illnesses do not exist, and coercions justified by them are wrong. Anyone who seeks to help others must eschew the use of force. Not a single antipsychiatrist has ever agreed with these principles or abided by these practices. Subsuming my work under the rubric of antipsychiatry betrays and negates it just as effectively and surely as subsuming it under the rubric of psychiatry. My writings form no part of either psychiatry or antipsychiatry and belong to neither. They belong to conceptual analysis, social-political criticism, and common sense. This is why I rejected, and continue to reject, psychiatry and antipsychiatry with equal vigor.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#62

Post by whyleyc »

xenophanes wrote: post #25
trvd1707 wrote: post #20

I'm sorry for your loss. I lost my son to suicide in 2009. He was brilliant, very sociable, very mature and he too struggled with mental illness. Today I know a lot more about the subject and I'm trying to help preventing more suicides from happening and mental health from being poorly diagnosed and treated. Right now I'm working on a project to develop apps for smart devices that can help people at risk of suicide.…

Have you read Szasz? Have you refuted his arguments? If you have not considered arguments which say what you're doing is actively bad, but you're going ahead anyway, isn't that irresponsible? If you have considered them, could you tell or link me the answer?

Because ivory tower intellectual debate is exactly what people raw from the emotion of a life changing event need right now.

Why not take a step back and ask yourself whether this might be a helpful thing to do in a universe which didn't revolve around your debating skills.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#63

Post by PhasmaFelis »

xenophanes wrote: post #39
ceejayoz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Szasz thinks mental illness has no biological basis, which flies in the face of the empirical fact that twin/adoption studies have shown a clear hereditary basis for a variety of conditions like bipolar, schizophrenia, etc. Arguing that someone dying despite psychiatry invalidates psychiatry is like arguing cancer treatment is useless because some people die of cancer.

Do you want to discuss this seriously? If so, cite an actual study and say specifically what conclusion it reaches and specifically how that contradicts Szasz. You seem to be implying that Szasz and I hold our positions due to scientific ignorance, which is demonstrably false, and insulting. But maybe you didn't mean it that way.

It doesn't work that way. You have to provide evidence for your own claim before you get to demand counter-evidence from your detractors.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#64

Post by thaumaturgy »

Thank you for starting a conversation about this. I know it's difficult, but it's important for the health and wellbeing of many other people struggling with the same problems that there are conversations like this one.

I've struggled with depression too, though never been suicidal. Both of my parents made multiple suicide attempts last year.

I hope you don't blame yourself for not being there for your brother. You can't predict when someone will need help, it's extremely difficult for most people to offer effective help, and people struggling with depression and other mental illnesses often get good at hiding it.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#65

Post by polymatter »

xenophanes wrote: post #34
EMRo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was what doctors call 'high functioning.' He was able to operate in society and shroud his pain though it was incredibly painful to do so for him. He wasn't 'completely normal'. He was in a very well respected program in Boston and working through his issues to have the life he wanted.

What's your point?

I am unable to comprehend your lack of understanding. He was mentally ill. He was treated for it. He operated within society in a fashion that does not comply with the stigma of mental illness (no murdering people, no sociopath manipulation). We need to remove this stigma (that all mentally ill are dangerous psycopaths). This will help those who are mentally ill find treatment.

I think perhaps you do not believe that depression is a mental illness. Perhaps you also believe that drugs and hormones can not affect mood, that heroin and alcohol have no affect on the body. Or perhaps you believe that there are absolutely no circumstances in which a human can grow to adulthood without exactly normal sensitivity to mood affecting drugs and hormones. Like how we all evolve slightly different nose shapes and patterns of hair growth, but all the organs in the whole body act with perfect regularity with drugs with no variation at all.

I don't know, as someone whose 8 year relationship ended with a partner who never accepted depression wasn't something I can control. To me its like not believing that lung cancer exists or something. We have evidence, diagnosis and treatment for it. Depression is hardly a made-up condition.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#66

Post by badclient »

Mz wrote: post #24

I get the impression that this is a long, polite way of saying Steve committed suicide. The last time I was on HN and the topic of suicide came up, I wrote kind of a ranty piece that I am not up to editing it (to remove the rantiness) and reposting. The short version: If you know someone who is suicidal and you care about them, spend time with them. In person. Suicide is almost always committed when one is alone. My…

If you know someone who is suicidal and you care about them, spend time with them. In person. Suicide is almost always committed when one is alone.

100%, although I wish we talked more about the challenge of determining that someone is suicidal.

Here's what I wrestle with the most about this. I fear that if I "misdiagnose" someone as suicidal, that I might have now given them the idea that there is such a thing as suicide and it may now become an option, completely backfiring against my goal of helping them.

I wonder if there is best practices although it seems a bit silly given we are basically trying to read someone's mind - something that even they(especially them) might not have clarity about.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#68

Post by wiredfool »

whyleyc wrote: post #62
xenophanes wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read Szasz? Have you refuted his arguments? If you have not considered arguments which say what you're doing is actively bad, but you're going ahead anyway, isn't that irresponsible? If you have considered them, could you tell or link me the answer?

Because ivory tower intellectual debate is exactly what people raw from the emotion of a life changing event need right now. Why not take a step back and ask yourself whether this might be a helpful thing to do in a universe which didn't revolve around your debating skills.

That's not ivory tower debate. That's "I'm hyperrational so you're wrong" dysfunctional argumentation.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#69

Post by rwallace »

ceejayoz wrote: post #40
xenophanes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does it affect basic human rights, exactly? Some examples: People labelled mentally ill can be imprisoned without a trial. People labelled mentally ill can avoid prison when another person who did the same actions would go to jail. People labelled mentally ill can be drugged by force. This is bad for basic human rights, isn't it?

> People labelled mentally ill can be imprisoned without a trial. So can people not labelled mentally ill, and involuntary confinement happens well within the confines of our legal and justice systems. > People labelled mentally ill can avoid prison when another person who did the same actions would go to jail. People found not guilty by reason of insanity are typically kept in a forensic unit with similar levels of…

> So can people not labelled mentally ill.

In principle, anything can happen to anyone. In practice, being labeled mentally ill dramatically increases the likelihood of your civil rights being violated in ways that can ruin your life. Changing the law wouldn't solve the problem of mental illness overnight, but it would make it much easier and safer for mentally ill people to seek solutions.

Re: Tell HN: My Brother Died Last Week. His Death Will Not Be In Vain

#70

Post by JustinCEO »

dchuk wrote: post #36
xenophanes wrote: post #16

> he did all the things he was supposed to do to get help in a moment of crisis - made multiple calls to his care providers, to 911 and even went to the hospital. He had been experiencing symptoms for several years but was in a highly-respected treatment program that was working intimately with him. So in other words, conventional psychiatry failed. And the author's solution seems to be to spread it more. Maybe after…

Per your logic, we should abandon heart transplant surgeries as soon as one doesn't go as planned. Anecdotal evidence against the efficacy of any medical treatment is not reason enough to abandon it.

Quite a lot of attempts at suicide prevention efforts don't go as planned. Do you disagree?
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