Good essay, though it's a little tilted towards the 'medical model' of mental health treatment. I appreciate the 'insight from epidemiology': "Health care itself explains only a small fraction of health outcomes. Much of what we need for better outcomes is fundamental, but it is not part of health care. Social factors [...] are much more important for health outcomes than your specific diagnosis or health-care plan."

I've commented somewhat extensively about my friend's struggle with the mental health industry. They've decided she's a chronic psychotic who requires anti-psychotics for the rest of her life.

A year after she was formally misdiagnosed by the mental health industry I found videos on my phone from ~2 weeks before that 2015 hospitalization. I think my videos prove that my friend's supposedly-chronic condition can be entirely explained by substance abuse.

The tragedy of "American Mental Health Care" is the use of palliative drugs, when the various causes of the various diagnoses have actually been figured out by researchers. Science knows exactly how stimulants harm the metabolism [0]. The symptoms of mental illness can usually be explained as a metabolic problem - sometimes caused by substance abuse, sometimes by diet, always exacerbated by 'stress'.

Emotional stress is the most important drain on the body's metabolism. I have a bunch of references from books about stress - went to the ASU science library to read a book referenced in Gabor Maté's In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts [1], and found a discussion of how 'stress' contributes to psychosis.

[0] My comment/quote/submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18211048 - "I learned from a Hacker News comment/submission a while ago that cocaine causes its harm by shredding the mitochondria. [searching] Ahh, found it, this one:" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10956058

[1] https://www.google.com/books/edition/In_the_Realm_of_Hungry_...

In 2018, after her treatment center perpetrated fraud on the District Court, my friend got annoyed about how all the new clients at her treatment center were getting cheek-swabbed. She herself had not been cheek-swabbed when she was sent there 2 years before, and asked to have this genetic test. It revealed that she is a poor methylator, who cannot turn the provitamin folic acid (commonly used to fortify food as it is shelf-stable) into Vitamin B-9. She said that adding L-Methy-Folate to her routine was like flipping a switch from "depressed" to "not-depressed" [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27990331 (also some good responses to my comment - search for 'histamine')

The Supreme Court of the United States is going to be considering my petition soon. I'm optimistic that it will be one of the handful that they grant. All I'm asking is for them to order the district court to hold the evidentiary hearing that is required by the case law. (I'm currently working on a write-up of my experience for https://MadInAmerica.com, using some tips from HN moderator dang.)