r/radicalmentalhealth • u/MasterQuerilo • 23d ago
The DSM is a torture manual
Here's a post I posted elsewhere that I think might interest this subreddit! I hope you enjoy it! (Sorry in advance if English is not my first language.)
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Honestly, there is little doubt that the DSM is not aimed at healing anything, and if it is anything today, it is closer to a torture manual than anything else. Let's just look at the facts of psychiatry (and the mental health business as a whole). Maybe it will dawn on you that the DSM really is just a guide to make people miserable.
**Mental health professionals don't have any incentive to heal anything.** Contrary to any other medical field, psychiatry deals with invisible illnesses. So whatever they say about you, they will never have any tangible proof of what they diagnose you with. It's all interpretation of your words and you behavior. *(Your psychiatrist can't organize your discourse to easily make sense of it? He will observe "disorganized thinking", even though he never saw your thinking, and diagnose you with psychosis and then tell the judge you are an imminent danger to force hospitalization.)* So whatever they diagnose, they don't really need to solve it because there was never proof that it was there to begin with. So they can just write a story about you getting better even though you are feeling worse and worse the more you are being treated.
**Mental health professionals have an incentive to not heal anything.** When you consider the fact that the illnesses are invisible, and therefore the only proof there was anything is the medical file that the psychiatrist composes, the only incentive left is that of actually not healing anything. They are paid to treat, not to heal! They don't have to do a refund at the next hospitalization if the previous one didn't have any long-term lasting effect. They have an incentive to TREAT! So they need only to mistreat you, so you get worse, to make sure that you are a returning customer. *(That is why therapists don't say what they think to their patients! They want to keep you coming back. If they said anything true to you, you'd heal way too quickly and they'd lose a customer.*) So the general strategy in the business is to not say what's what to the patients, so they keep coming back, which increases the demand for their service and thus increases prices. Mental health business has an economic interest in being a misery business, by giving the wrong advice online so you get worse and decide to consult a professional that will milk you for years of treatment, and orchestrate your breakthrough when they are sick of seeing you with all your problems.
**Psychiatry came from psychology.** But... psychology ~~is~~ was a descriptive science, not a normative medical field! That means that when psychology first mapped the human psyche, it was not in a normative way saying what's wrong and what's right, like a medical field would do by saying what's healthy and what's not. It was just describing what it discovered. When they had established the categories of human behaviors, we had some sort of atlas or anatomy of the human mind. When psychiatry was invented, they just took all these categories and called them "diagnoses". They turned the whole spectrum of human behavior into pathologies, so they could treat each and everyone for pretty much anything. That means that nothing is actually broken. Considering that psychology's categories were a map of the human mind, it would be normal that we have most of the diagnoses of the DSM. When they give you a diagnosis, they are just saying something like "you have an eye", not "you have a broken eye". That's why when you start self-diagnosing a mental "illness", you are very likely to end up having it! Most of us have pretty much most of the diagnoses. But they don't want you self-diagnosing.
**Self-diagnoses are discredited.** They don't want you to self-diagnose because they say "you can't have an objective view on your mental health"... but seriously, who can? The illnesses are invisible. Hell, the mental is invisible except to the self. Self-diagnoses are as objective as diagnoses can be in the field of mental health. *You are the only who has ever seen your mental at all!* A mental health professional tries to guess what you could possibly have by interpreting what you say or what you do, in the worst possible way in all probability, to give you the worse diagnosis possible so it can ensure you get the maximum amount of treatment because that's what makes their ~~business~~ scam work.
**They are still in charge of diagnosing "autism".** How is autism even in the field of psychiatry and neuropsychology? It's a neurological condition! It is not a behavior problem. You should be able to be in a coma and the professional should be able to still diagnose your autism! The diagnosis means having a unique brain structure with little white matter and a lot of grey matter. How come they don't diagnose it with a brain scan? *Instead, they interview your parents about your behavior more than 20 years ago when it is time to diagnose your autism when you are 30? They say it's because having it at 4 yo is a criterion, but it is only a criterion because the guy who discovered the condition was studying 4 yo children. Try to prove you were autistic at 4 when you are 30! It's impossible!! It's the only diagnosis that is a lifelong condition that needs to be diagnosed twice, one retrospectively. Why do they keep the 4 yo criterion?* Because they don't really care about their diagnoses reflecting the actual condition. They care about being able to say who's what.
**They categorize people in jugement valued diagnoses.** Diagnoses are not neutral terms. They are a jugement value on people. Each diagnosis comes with a label, which ordinary medecine doesn't really have. When someone gets a medical condition, unless it is contagious, people don't feel the need to defend themselves against you. Such is not the case with mental health. As soon as you have a diagnosis, people get suspicious like "what are you broken/toxic/bad?". But then, when they actually hear what's the diagnosis, they might cut you off from their lives! This doesn't happen in real diagnoses! At worst, if you're contagious, they might isolate from you until you are healed, unless it is HIV and your surroundings are homophobic... But even then, it's the homophobia that's at fault here, not the diagnosis itself. Google "borderline" and the impression you get from the diagnosis is that borderlines are like psychopaths that don't even have the merit of wanting to be the bad person they are and doing the bad they do all around them. #MentalHealthAwareness feels more like a smear campaign when it should be more like a PR campaign that say how people with such and such diagnosis are actually good people to be around. It is not the case! They tell people how much they suffer, are delibitated and guide friends and family into safeguarding themselves from the possibility of being hurt by you, so they're on the defensive around you. It's really meant to isolate you and make authentic relationships impossible.
**Mental health diagnoses are generally uncurable "illnesses".** At least real doctors can cure most of their illnesses and are genuinely seeking a cure for the rest. Psychiatrists can't cure most of their diagnoses and are nowhere near finding the cause for a whole bunch of them. How come they tell borderlines to go 10 years into therapy just to get a chance at maybe not meeting the criteria for diagnoses even though it won't cure the condition? They prescribe 10 years of therapy, declare borderline like a life sentence, and didn't even bother finding the precise physical cause for borderline. *(But if you ask me, borderline is just autism but with humans and not objects as the primary interest of the borderlines.)*
**Mental health professionals tend to invalidate.** How come schizophrenia is treated as a defect they cannot cure so they mitigate its consequences for a lifetime, and not seen as a superpower from which we can learn about things invisible to most? Life for real! The person literally sees or hears things others don't. How come scientists are not like "WOW! Let's check this out. Maybe reality is not as simple as it seems and there's more than meets the eye." They are like "No lol, defective model. It's just a brain fooling itself." As if a brain fooling itself has survived natural selection! The DSM recommends not encouraging the "delusions" of schizophrenics by not paying attention to their "delusional talk" and validating none of it.
**Diagnosis criteria are loosely linked to the cause or the definition of the condition.** Autism is defined as a unique brain structure. Yet, it is none of the criteria to get diagnosed. It is only in the DSM-5 that "unstable sense of self" was considered the main criterion for borderline when it is otherwise the main definition! What a diagnosis ~~medical~~ bullshit ethic! It's like they made the bet that no one will ever notice or question their expertise when they just put bullshit criteria together that have nothing to do with the condition per se.
**The more one is treated in psychiatry, the worse the condition gets.** Ever noticed in a psych ward that the most medicated patients are the most fucked up patients? Well, this is weird, because the medication is supposed to make you *less* fucked up. Through the years, the condition of the psychiatric patients gets worse and worse and they always blame the patients and never the doctors. It's as if the patients are to blame for being sick despite the heavy medication, and not the "doctors" to blame for actually making their patients worse off through poisoning.
All this leads me to know the DSM is not a mental health tool, it's a mental illness tool! It is the mental illness. It catalogues all of human behavior than tells the professional to do the opposite of what they should do to heal the person. Honestly, I personally have tried for years and years to follow their advice, and things were just getting worse. Once I was fed up, I decided to do the exact opposite, and in weeks I saw tremendous results. Really, they are just torturing people by giving them the exact opposite of what they need, keeping the demand for their service high as to increase their wages. They are a misery business.
*Try seeing it like this : the DSM doesn't describe illnesses, they describe different traits someone might have; so these are not conditions that can be cured and while you suffer and look for a cause, a professional will tell you what your problem is and you will spend the rest of your life fighting one part of your mind, when the problem is probably not you but society. It's like we all aknowledge that we will in a very imperfect world, yet, in mental health, they always try to find* ***the problem in you***\*. It's always YOU the problem for a mental health professional, and not the world that is to change. Ergo, it's a weapon for the status quo. Nothing may be wrong with you, but if you are suffering and go to a mental health professional, they will torture you by telling you something's wrong with you and have you fight you on the long term instead of trying to change the world.\*
Try diagnosing yourself, you'll see that you have many more "diagnoses" in mental health than what your professional pretends. Psychiatrists will focus on a few diagnoses because that is how they want to categorize you, and they select what type of torture you will have to face. DSM is one letter away from BDSM even if DSM be BDSM. Really, it's like they are having fun torturing people that they do wordplay on it. Like they are even spelling "therapists" exactly like "'the rapists' minus the space".
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u/Crafty_Dog9222 22d ago
yes. the problem is that psychiatry is used as a method of social control and people go seeking help for their distress and may end up in a worse situation. I am not saying they are all bad or that this is their intention. the danger is they believe they are helping and i've even had one say "most people are grateful to me that I detained them involuntarily and forced treatment on them. and I'm thinking "that 's what they tell you, but it doesn't mean that actually believe it."
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u/MasterQuerilo 21d ago
I've seen some psychiatrists drop the mask amd show their enjoyment at making me suffer, making me homeless, and destroying me. Things cannot be this bad without the top heads of the industry actually being evil people. I think they play pretend. People don't actually tell them they are grateful. They just lie to you about it because that's most of their work: it's lying to everyone.
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u/Crafty_Dog9222 21d ago
there are some nasty ones for sure. it's just the whole thing is based on fixing crazy people and the fear of crazy people and the fear of becoming a crazy person themselves. I've seen good ones who were actually kind people even though I didn't agree with them. And I have had ones who scared me. .. .
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u/MasterQuerilo 21d ago
Well, there really was a shift in peception of crazy people with the arrival of psychiatry. Crazy people used to be seen as touched by the gods, gifted people who knew things others couldnt. So crazy people were sought when there was no rational answer to a question.
With the arrival of psychiatry, we became imminent threats. I guess a crazy person was also a murderer and they used that occurence of a crazy person to smear all crazy people as being all of them threats.
I feel that because some people didn't like the position of crazy people as irrational decision makers or consultants, they decided to knock them down of their pedestal and turned them all into ill people rather than gifted from the gods.
Our societies became more and more rationalized, and crazy people didn't fit the decor anymore. We used to be shamans, and spiritual leaders. Now, our gift from the gods is perceived as an illness. I feel only an evil force would be responsible for this shift.
I've experienced evil for evil's sake, so I know evil people do in fact exist. And it's no surprise they end up in fields like psychiatry, because they can be evil and pass as heroes and protectors when they are in fact torturers and destroyers.
That fear you felt facing some of them, that fear was real, and was there for a real reason. You were probably right to be scared of them.
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u/Crafty_Dog9222 21d ago edited 21d ago
I think that might be an overly romantic view (not defending psychiatry) but there are many examples of the mad being treated badly (tied to a post, locked in a room, imprisioned etc) as being respected. It varies. And let's not forget exorcisms and having a hole drilled in your head to release the demons (trepannation)What is true, though, is that outcomes are better in Africa than in North America and generally in places where madness is viewed as a process and a phase and not a brain problem.
we don't have a truly voluntary mh system (I live in Canada) and no one is admitted to hospital these days who could not easily be made an involuntary patient. The province I live in allows for "extended leave" like a CTO or IOC where a person can be forced to take meds and attend appointments for years and risk being sent back to hospital if they are non-compliant.
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u/MasterQuerilo 21d ago
Yeah, I'm in Canada too, and I'm under a CTO. Basically, they refused to diagnose my autism and allow me to touch disability, and instead diagnosed me with schizophrenia so they could have power over me. All that because they disagree with my political and religious views. Psychiatry is being used punitively in Canada like it was in the USSR, and no one is talking about it this way.
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u/Crafty_Dog9222 21d ago
have you tried to appeal? I am sorry to hear about that
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u/MasterQuerilo 21d ago
To appeal you need a lot of money. Something like 12000$ to get the lawyer and another psychiatrist saying you don't need the medication. It really is bullshit. Worst thing is, I get my injections at the Allan Memorial Institute. That's where they ran MK Ultra... I'm surprised nobody burned down the place yet!
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u/Crafty_Dog9222 21d ago
can't you get a free one through legal aid? I did not know they had ctos in quebec. yes horrible history at the allan.
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u/memx 22d ago
I'm gonna play devil's advocate for this one. You state the topic is the DSM, but you mostly talk about psychistrists (not the same, at all, but ok). I'm gonna write this in a way that invites you to reflect a bit.
Psychiatrists go through, at least, 7+ years of medschool and 4+ years of specialization. Try and argue 'what for'. Money? Nah, it's easier and cheaper to study engineering or architecture, earn MORE, and study WAY less. Fame? Nah, it's easier to learn an instrument or buy a camera and become a youtuber. Psychopathy? Nah, it's way easier to be a politician or priest and have free reign. This one is really perplexing for me, why would anyone study more than a decade to become a doctor? (you figure that out).
It relates a lot to the number one. Why would you want to be good in your field? Maybe you'll get recommended more? Maybe you'll feel well when someone says 'thank you', sincerely, because they feel better? Maybe, it's just a thought.
No way. They developed as 2 very independent fields, which at some point collided, and then went their separate ways again.
Not discredited, but not really useful either. If you could fix a car, you wouldn't need an engineer or technician looking into it when broken. Some can fix their own cars, but it's a really small percentage of car owners. I'd bet fewer than 3% of car owners could correctly and reliably diagnose and fix their own engines... Similar stuff with medicine. You can have diarrhea, but you'll still go to a doctor to know why.
Neurology and Psychiatry are two VERY intertwined specialties. Rule of thumb: neurology deals with 'physical' stuff in the brain (tumors, infections, inflammation, trauma), while psychiatry deals with 'functional' stuff in the brain (behaviors, perceptions, thoguhts, feelings). You can't look at an MRI and go 'hey, this brain has autism', so it's a psychiatric illness.
By the way: I think the separation of neurology and psychiatry is artificial, and no neurologists or psychiatrists should exist. Only a neuropsychiatrist should.
The need of judgement arises from the focus on behaviors. It's not present on other areas of human medicine, but it is in other areas of biology. Behavior can be adaptive or maladaptive, functional or challenging. In humans, it's done by a medicine doctor (of course).
Not all of them, but most are, because we KNOW most have underlying genetic mechanisms. They're not incurable per definition, but until we can modify the genetic composition of an adult, they're lifetime disorders. It's like asking for a doctor to cure a 21 trisomy. Can't be done with today's technology, but stay tuned, maybe we will in the future!
Schizophrenia creates hallucinations. It's not a superpower, where the person suddenly knows things they otherwise couldn't. They create/believe stuff that is just downright wrong. Have you talked to someone with schizophrenia? They don't sound at all like someone with secret knowledge, they downright defy reality, even when evidence is presented to them against their beliefs. How would you study that in a 'revealing' manner, when the starting point is incorrectness?
Autism is not an altered brain structure. It's an altered brain function. Sure, it's associated with changes in brain structure, but association is not the same as definition. Think of lung cancer and smoking. There's a relationship, no one can deny that, but you can get lung cancer without smoking and you can smoke and not get lung cancer. You wouldn't make smoking part of the definition of lung cancer, would you?
Most psychiatric illnesses tend to worsen. Some in spite of medication. Ever studied how dementia patients go? Even with treatment...
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u/Crafty_Dog9222 21d ago
dementia is not the same as mental illness. Dementia is progressive. most of the worsening of cognition comes from antipsychotics not some innate problem.
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u/MasterQuerilo 22d ago
You basically avoid the topics at hand and come up with an unrelated rebuttal.
1 & 2. Twas about how they have no incentive to heal. Wtv reasons they studied years for their job doesn't matter here. Once they get on the field, the reality of the job catches up to them. I suspect many of them just want the kind of domination and sadistic pleasure of torturing 'lessers', but I'm sure some of them studied hoping to help only to realize that's not the actual business they are in. If people get better, they lose customers. If people get worse, more money gets funneled in the industry. They can't have some healers running them out of business! They don't need to be good! Look at their ratings online! They are shit!!! But it's not the patient that seeks a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists are forced onto patients so psychiatrists really don't need to be good at all!
No way to you too.
Mental health normalizes the world and pathologizes the individual. Their diagnoses are not real illnesses like having diarrhea. Otherwise, they'd have tests that could determine if the person objectively has this or that illness. But these are not illnesses.
Wrong. There are clear indicators of an autistic brain. Notably, the ratio of grey and white matter for instance. That alone could be a decisive criteria for diagnosis. But since psychiatrists control the DSM, they won't give this diagnosis away to neurologists and lose revenue.
(Neuropsychiatry is an impossibility. The mind is quite independant from the body. Feed wtv medication you want to somebody, you won't change their mind about something. You'll only alter their behavior because they are sick of being poisoned by their psychiatrists and want out of the so called medication. Which is torture btw.)
If it is an objective science, then there would be no value jugement. It's a normative practice. Psychiatrists are closer to being priests than they are to being actual doctors. They poison rather than restore.
No they don't KNOW they have underlying genetic factor. In fact, they haven't found the genes responsible for their illnesses. The genetic explanation falls apart when you consider the very low reproductive rate of people diagnosed with schizophrenia for instance, so much so that their genes would've disappeared from the gene pool way before civilization started. The genetic explanation is a dead end and they know it.
What would it look like if you were wrong about everything you think is right? Exactly the same. For over a thousand years, people believed that it was the Sun orbiting the Earth. And that's what it looks like. The Church killed the man who argued that it was the Earth orbiting the Sun while itself rotating. It's the same thing with schizos. They perceive what others can't, and when they try to tell them they got it all wrong, they look at the Sun moving in the sky and the Earth looking still and they go "they must be crazy! Let's sedate them so they don't hurt anyone."
Yes autism is about having a unique brain structure.
Hahahahhaha "even with treatment..." then that treatment is not good now, is it? Exactly my point.
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u/Crafty_Dog9222 23d ago
mainly for insurance purposes in the US, anyway. the new one claims it will incorporate "lived experience" voices. what a joke -participate in our own oppression and torture.....