My observation is that conventional psychiatric treatments result in a self-fulfilling prophecy: mental patients need treatment because the treatments they receive cause brain damage that necessitates further treatment.
Looking back, I now recognize that my friend made herself psychotic when she used too much cocaine [0], but I didn't know that was the label for that type of behavior at the time.
After a few months of my involvement, she realized that she liked me more than self-medicating with the street pharmacy. But then she ran out of alcohol, was taken to the hospital, and was assaulted with medications that are NOT FDA-approved to treat substance-induced psychosis. The medications that they force upon my friend are actually known to cause stimulant users to use more stimulants.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance-induced_psychosis#Su... - "While the vast majority of cases are acute and resolve fairly quickly upon treatment and/or abstinence, they can occasionally become chronic and persistent. Alcoholic psychosis is sometimes misdiagnosed as another mental illness such as schizophrenia."
All my friend really needed was some Naltrexone to help keep her away from alcohol while she sobered up, and other drugs (thyroid, etc) and nutrients (B-Vitamins, good proteins, etc) to help support her metabolism (after 2 years, her forced treatment provider did a genetic test and added methylfolate [Vitamin B9] to her drug cocktail, because she can't use the folic acid used in fortified flour). But the only treatment she received was haloperidol (used to torture political dissidents in the Soviet Union [1]) and other palliative psychiatric drugs.
In my struggles to extract my friend from her misdiagnosis, I have come to believe that the system is completely hostile to the concept of cause-and-effect. The professionals believe their patients have chronic conditions that they will never recover from, and that even if the original cause of the patient's presenting symptoms is known, the patient's ongoing maintenance medications are the only thing that matters.
From the article:
> Misty slowly stopped responding to medication. [...] Antipsychotic medications led to dramatic weight gain. Misty dyed her hair jet black and her eyes lost their sparkle. She eventually started to refuse outpatient treatment.
Medications are known to worsen outcomes when used over the long term. Research has found that first-episode psychosis patients have the best prognosis if they never receive "anti-psychotics". The next best prognosis are those that have antipsychotics withdrawn after a short period of time. The worst prognosis is sustained by those who are maintained on "anti-psychotics". These "medications" cause "dramatic weight gain" by attacking the body's metabolism. Refusing outpatient treatment is a completely logical response when you are being harmed by the treatment.
> With the development of effective antipsychotic medication in the 1950s and 1960s, many psychiatric hospitals in the USA and other countries, including the UK, began shutting their doors.
Early 20th century "psychiatric hospitals" utilized various forms of abuse to give their patients brain damage that resulted in the patients being made docile. Lobotomy [2], electro-shock brain damage, etc. The "anti-psychotic" drugs were originally known as tranquilizers, and were used to the same effect: docility without recovery. The transformation of these drugs into "anti-psychotics" was a triumph of marketing over science.
Resistance to psychiatric abuse is spinning its tires because the system makes so much money perpetuating itself. But I am certain that eventually the sorts of palliative treatments forced on patients to perpetuate their mental conditions will join bloodletting, calomel (mercury poisoning) and the routine extraction of tonsils in the dustbin of medical history.
[1] I just learned about Soviet use of Haldol for torture from Robert Whitaker's first book, Mad in America. My observations confirm that 'Haldol' really is a terrible drug.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobotomy
Robert Whitaker's foundation is sort-of a clearing house for the Resistance: https://www.MadInAmerica.com/