Behaviorism and Mental Health

Alternative perspective on psychiatry's so-called mental disorders | PHILIP HICKEY, PH.D.

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Another Survivor’s Tale

April 29, 2014 By A reader |

My Story
This post was submitted by a reader.

I tried to commit suicide for the first time when I was 15. I spent my 16th birthday locked up in Dammasch State Mental Hospital, I freaked out when I was told I was going to have to stay so my clothes were ripped off me, by male aids and I was thrown naked in a real padded room… hint they are NOT padded. The light was on all the time and nothing was provided for cover to keep warm. I remember seeing men looking at me and I remember pictures being taken thru the peek hole window. I was in that room, with meals shoved thru a slit in the door for 3 days. The toilet was a hole in the floor and no, there wasn’t any toilet paper. . While at the “hospital”, I remember being put in a strait jacket and tied into a chair and my “meds” forced down my throat. When I realized I could vomit them back up I was sedated and given drugs via an IV. I woke up to being raped. I made friends with one gal, she was 14. She had ( I know know as ) anorexia. I watched her try and try and try to eat. She died. Another person I made friends with hung himself and died. The psy dr said I was on the schedule for shock treatments since I refused to co-operate with the rules and the staff. That scared the shit outta me. I started doing all the things I was supposed to do and 3 months later I was released.. cured. Nothing was different for me, except I learned how to manipulate people to get what I wanted. I HATED that feeling so I never took “advantage” of that “skill”.. Remember I had just turned 16.

In my early 20’s I tried to commit suicide again and committed to another hosp in Vancouver WA with a DX of Manic Depression. I was on a cocktail of lithium, stelazine, tofranil chloral hydrate and a few others I can’t remember the names of .. for more than 7 years I saw a psychiatrist until my divorce and my insurance ran out. Dumped to fare the best I could into the mental health system for the poor I quit all my drugs cold turkey.
It was while under the Dr’s care I read a book he recommended called Self-Talk. I believed I was sick with metal illness(es?) until I read that book. For the first time I heard no one can make me feel anyway at all unless I choose to let them. That my responses to life were totally under my control and direction ALL of them. I was 32.  I’ve attempted suicide or came very very close to it 6 times in my life. Finally I asked myself, self, I’m smart enough to have gotten the job done so whats REALLY going on? I figured out WHY I kept diving into the back hole. I really do walk a different, road now thanks to getting the message my subconscious kept sending me. Thats been my experience with the Mental Health system. I am continually agast and appalled at the amount of drugs being forced onto people, particularly children, We adults have been fed a line of BS for so long about depression that it’s destroying us as a nation and no one can see it.

A  Reader

Filed Under: Tell Your Story Tagged With: suicide, survivors of psychiatry

 

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The phrase "mental health" as used in the name of this website is simply a term of convenience. It specifically does not imply that the human problems embraced by this term are illnesses, or that their absence constitutes health. Indeed, the fundamental tenet of this site is that there are no mental illnesses, and that conceptualizing human problems in this way is spurious, destructive, disempowering, and stigmatizing.

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