Psychiatric Abuse Is Not Bad Therapy

[Sunset]

Just an ongoing frustration. Abuse by mental health professionals is NOT bad therapy, or painful therapy, or whatever. It is abuse, and it has all the traumatic ramifications of abuse. Telling a survivor of psychiatric abuse that therapy can be hard isn't helpful. Nor is talking about how some therapists just aren't the right fit for some patients. And we're not going to just get over it - you can't expect a survivor of psychiatric abuse to jump in and trust the next professional like nothing happened. Treating us like we're difficult or don't want to get better, when the very process of stepping into the therapist's office may be incredibly intense.

Just frustrated. I don't use abuse where I mean "this was difficult for me."

 

[Deleted member 20280]

I Send those Laurie_:hug:s as promised

Laurie

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

Glad to see you speaking your mind Sunset! :tup:

 

[Mishap]

Is this something that many people experience? What constitutes abuse by a mental health professional? You don't have to tell me your experience, I'm just looking for general examples.

My last therapist said things to me that were extremely hurtful and not at all productive to my getting better after I'd been seeing him about a year. I saw him once more after that and then quit going. I wasn't going to keep paying him a fortune to belittle me. I haven't seen a therapist since because that experience was really devastating and left me untrusting. This was about three years ago and I know I really need to be seeing someone at the moment. I just don't want to go through finding someone again, or go through someone like him again.

 

[sun seeker]

Is this something that many people experience?

Yes. Google Ewen Cameron for examples. It upsets me to think about this much but the information is out there.

 

[ms spock]

I had one psychologist move in with me and try to take over my life.
I had one psychologist get into relationship with me.
I had one psychologist knock my front teeth out.
And other abusive stuff which I won't go into.

I was passed around a group of psychologists like an emotional gangbang.

I was 15 when the first one got hold of me.

My friend's sister killed herself because she got pregnant to her psychiatrist.

 

[Queen Boudica]

My sister went through psychiatric abuse. A 17 year old misdiagnosed and put on drugs over drugged up to turn her into a zombie and force giving her meds so she had bruises down the inside of her legs where they pinned her down to force her, they retraumatised her. Then her death, the number and concoction of drugs she was on, that she never should have been given that they knew was wrong for her and they still filled her a script with a months worth of 6 lots of meds, 2 x benzodiazepines another respiratory suppressant that they knew she was abusing to zone out all day. She was crying out for help, asking to be admitted to hospital. I hate them. It was murder pure and simple. Those psychiatrists should be struck off. He's still there practising in Great Yarmouth, Head of the department. The final one who was supposedly looking after my sister and just drugged her up. He should have been struck off.

 

[Mishap]

Oh my lord. I never even entertained something so severe. @Lizio I am so sorry that your sister was treated that way. It's inexcusable. I cannot imagine that her doctor is still allowed to practice. @Ms Spock I don't even know what to say. The abuse of trust is appalling. I'm so sorry that any of you had to go through those experiences. My heart hurts for you.

I never even for a second considered these types of abuse. I've never heard of something like this in the news, or on TV. I'm horrified. I expected to hear verbal abuse, emotional abuse. Not this.

 

[ms spock]

@Mishap it is very common. Retraumatisation by psychologists and psychiatrists is known to be a regular thing.

In NSW they even discussed bringing in a rule that the psychiatrists had to tell their clients in their first session that they weren't allowed to have sex with them as it was unprofessional. The psychiatrist was discussing the predatory people in psychiatry and how hard it was to contain these people.

 

[ms spock]

And when "crazy" people speak up they are not seen as believable and it doesn't get prosecuted as one cop said to me that such a patient would not come across as a reasonable witness in an adversarial legal system.

One of the guys down our way working with young men was having "sex" with them. I had a huge fight with the whole community because he was so nice and such a lovely white man, he wouldn't be hurting them. So I said they are 12,13 and 14 - it is against the law. Fullstop. Oh said people, yes that is true. He got away for it for years and years, and he wasn't struck off or anything else. He just moved.

 

[Mishap]

Yes. Google Ewen Cameron for examples. It upsets me to think about this much but the information is out there.

I did Google Ewan Cameron. I know a lot of that sort of thing happened back in the early days of psychiatric treatment. It sounds like Cameron was pretty extreme and to be funded by the CIA and later Canadian government is really appalling.

Not to diminish what people went through, my ex husband's grandmother was treated with it and I've heard first hand accounts, but how much electroshock therapy is used now? I was asking more about current abuse by mental health professionals. Sorry if I wasn't clear on that.

I think most everyone knows what lurks in the not far distant days of mental therapy treatment. Most of us would be "benefitting" from such treatments if we had our conditions and lived then. It's American Horror Story alright.

 

[ms spock]

One of my friends said to me recently, that if she had the money, and she had a major depressive episode, then she would choose to get electro-convulsive therapy.

What I am talking to you about, in terms of psychiatric abuse, is not in the far distant days of mental therapy treatment.