Sunday, February 23, 2014

How much does the "antipsychiatry" movement apply to me?

I am reading the blog of a woman who used to blog as a bipolar woman, but has developed tardive dyskinesia, gone off of her meds, and now states that she was never even bipolar.

I think that there is a lot of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. I don't know her entire story, and how it is that she wound up diagnosed as bipolar. But if it is true, that she was wrongly diagnosed, then I wonder to what extent her story is relevant to people who actually "have something."

It seems to me that a lot of the people who argue against medication state that they were wrongly diagnosed. And if that is true, that is a huge problem with psychiatry. But not my problem. I had multiple disabling depressions before I ever went on meds (yes, I am old enough that back then they didn't medicate children and teenagers). Sometimes I wonder if the meds caused the bipolar aspect of my mood disorder- but who knows.

It seems to me that there are different camps in the antipsychiatry movement. One is that the medications that we have aren't very good and we aren't very good a identifying who could benefit from them and who doesn't need them- and to this I have some sympathy. But the other is that there is nothing to medicate- that we are pathologizing normal human emotions. The "I was misdiagnosed" argument generalized to everyone else.

I think that there are a lot of people who are misdiagnosed. Who technically meet the criteria, perhaps, but really shouldn't be treated. But serious depression is hell on earth, and not normal (I hope). And of all the drugs I take, I really do not want to stop my antidepressant.

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