Notes on the 10th Triptych Convention
"Two Sides of Psychosis"
by
Mira DeVries
The 10th
Triptych Convention, subtitled “Two sides of psychosis” was held in Roermond on
November 14, 2002. It was the first of this format, namely, that “users” were
invited to participate. Users’ participation was free of charge, psychiatrists
had to pay. According to the invitation the sponsors were the two
pharmaceutical companies Organon and Janssen-Cilag along with the University of
Maastricht (Netherlands), but according to the program handed out at the door
the sponsors were Organon, Janssen-Cilag, and the Dutch province of Limburg in
which Maastricht lies. The convention was jointly organized by the universities
of Maastricht, Aachen (Germany), and Liège (Belgium).
The attendance was
surprising, around 500 people! There had been so much interest that several
days before the conference it had been necessary to close the registration and
turn aspiring participants away. This had never happened before. Users in
particular showed great interest in the convention. Users from as far away as
Switzerland, Sweden, and even New Zealand attended.
At the entrance we al
received name tags. Some of the tags bore a large green dot. I could not help
but notice that the green-dotted people were the users. When I mentioned this
to some of those green-dotted people they couldn’t believe it and were sure
there must be some other explanation.
One of the people
sitting up on the podium was Marius Romme, retired but apparently still active
professor of psychiatry of the University of Maastricht who is known for his
critical stand on biopsychiatry. Mary Boyle gives him an honorable mention in
her book “Schizophrenia, a psychiatric delusion?”.
Romme’s
colleague, J. van Os, psychiatrist and
neuropsychologist, spoke the opening words. Would the attending psychiatrists
please not forget to visit the display stands by Organon and Janssen-Cilag on
the first (in the US second) floor? Users were kindly asked to stay away from
the stands, as Dutch law forbids direct contact between pharmaceutical
companies and people who aren’t licensed doctors.
The participating
Dutch psychiatrists were promised that they would receive a certificate of
attendance worth five points at the end of the convention. This relates to the
Dutch law requiring doctors to update their education yearly. Participating
psychiatrists from Belgium would receive their certificate in the mail.
The language spoken
would be English even though most of the people attending were not native
English speakers, because there were also psychiatrists from Germany and Great
Britain attending
Van Os postulated that
the difference between a psychotic experience and a normal one is quantitative,
not qualitative. He stressed the importance of user participation. In the year
2002 science attributes the causes of schizophrenia to a triad: drug abuse/brains/genes
(the only difference I see with 150 years ago is that drug abuse has been
added). Actually almost anyone can have a psychotic experience (so who is the
rare lucky person who is immune to it?).
The first invited
speaker was Rikus Knegtering, a psychiatrist from the Netherlands’ most
northern province (Limburg being the most southern, but remember that the whole
country may be no bigger than Rhode Island). The chairmen had asked him to talk
about what goes on in doctors’ minds. Knegtering himself decided to expand his
talk to include what goes on in the minds of the patient and family. He had
made cartoons with English in the thought bubbles and Dutch subtitles. This was
very much appreciated by the Dutch speakers present. The cartoons were
projected onto a movie screen by a little laptop. Such technology!
The psychiatrist in
his story thought things like that he was rushed, that the patient had given
him too little information to go on, but that fortunately the parents had
filled in enough information to make it obvious that their son was
schizophrenic. I was impressed that the thoughts were reasonably well-represented,
except for the following:
Knegtering struggled
with English. Having prepared cartoons made it easier for him, but also for
those who were struggling to understand him. His spelling errors were
forgivable. One I simply have to
share with you. He had the psychiatrist thinking of his patient, “Will he sue
me?” which was misspelled “Will he sew me?” The Dutch expression “to sew” is
analogous to the English expression “to screw”. I was the only one in the
audience rude enough to laugh about it.
Poor Knegtering who
was so struggling to speak in English and had prepared his talk so well was at
a certain point interrupted by the chairman with the warning that he had only
three minutes left. This was to happen to all of the speakers.
In the break I
approached Knegtering and asked him why he had had the doctor worry about being
sued. In the Netherlands it never happens, least of all to psychiatrists. No
judge would take the word of a patient over that of a doctor, and no doctor
would testify against another doctor, so there is no real way of holding
doctors accountable the way we would expect in other professions. Knegtering
admitted that indeed Dutch doctors have no such fears, but he had added it
because he thought it amusing. I didn’t tell him just how amusing his spelling
mistake truly was. Knegtering added, as though he didn’t want me to think that
Dutch doctors have too little accountability, that they increasingly have to
fill in more forms.
The second speaker was
Peter Lehman, secretary of the ENUSP, European Network of Users and Survivors
of Psychiatry.
Lehman discussed
dependence on psychoactive drugs. He reminded us of the changes they make in
dopamine receptors. Research on rabbits indicated that when after a period of
neuroleptics having been administered, they were withdrawn, tardive psychoses
appeared. (How can you tell that a rabbit is psychotic?). When the neuroleptics
were withdrawn abruptly, many rabbits died. (How many?)
Neuroleptic withdrawal
deliriums are indistinguishable from alcohol and barbiturate withdrawal
deliriums. Research also reveals that there is no difference between “relapse”
and withdrawal symptoms.
Unfortunately, most
physicians refuse to cooperate with slow drug withdrawal. The rare ones who do
often ask their patients to keep the doctor’s name strictly secret for fear of
being overwhelmed with requests for assistance in drug withdrawal.
At the Run-away house
in Berlin (not to be confused with the Run-away houses in Amsterdam and Utrecht
which share only the name) about which Lehman has written a book, people are
helped to withdraw from drugs, but their are no guarantees of success.
The third speaker was
supposed to have been a psychiatrist named Peter Vlaminck. I’ve heard that he
is excellent. Unfortunately, he was home with a high fever. Another speaker had
been asked to take his place, but was caught in traffic and would be late. So
the fourth speaker was asked to precede the third speaker.
He was a user, Ron
Coleman, and he definitely stole the show. Coleman didn’t read his speech from
notes. He spoke spontaneously, naturally, convincingly, and with lots and lots
of humor. His T-shirt said: I hear voices and they don’t like you.
Coleman said he was
used to being asked to respond to the speaker. That’s easy, all he has to do is
say what rubbish it was. But since the previous speaker hadn’t arrived yet,
like a good schizophrenic he would debate with himself.
In 1982 he was
diagnosed schizophrenic. In 1987 the diagnosis was changed to chronic
schizophrenia. In 1991 he gave up being a schizophrenic. He was able to do it
thanks to the wonderful doctor Phil Thomas (more about him later). So there are good doctors, said Coleman, though
not many. Thomas changed Coleman’s diagnosis to personality disorder (because
apparently even a good doctor like Thomas can’t stomach leaving somebody
diagnosis-free) and wrote Coleman’s psychiatrist a letter. That made it
possible for Coleman to start getting off of the drugs.
The DSM, said Coleman,
is a comic book. The DSM-3 contains 200+ diagnoses of MI. The DSM-4 contains
390. Can you imagine what the DSM-10 will be like?
The DSM describes MIs
like spiritual disorder and cannabis dependency disorder. In his first year at
college all of his classmates, including those who would later become
psychiatrists, were MI, but they didn’t know it because nobody had told them
yet.
When you speak to G-d
you are praying. When G-d speaks to you you are schizophrenic. (Coleman failed
to identify the source of this witticism, who is Szasz).
Psychiatrists don’t speak to G-d because they think they are G-d.
Bipolar disorder is
middle class schizophrenia.
In 1938 recovery rates
for schizophrenia were 33%. In 1958 after the first neuroleptics had been
introduced (in 1954) they rose to 33%. By 1988 research indicated that recovery
rates for schizophrenia had risen further to 33%. In 1998 after the introduction
of the atypicals, recovery rates soared to 33%. Scientifically this can only
mean two things. Either the pharmaceutical companies have pulled off the
biggest fraud in history or it’s a different 33% that’s recovering every time.
The role of the
psychiatrist should be to make himself redundant in the client’s life. (note:
not patient!). That isn’t possible when
the client is disabled by the schizophrenia construct.
Coleman first became
psychotic after a period of insufficient sleep. Now he knows how to recognize
the warning signs and avoid it.
He also hears voices.
One of the voices he hears belongs to the Catholic priest who abused him in
childhood. The voice tells him that what happened to him was his (Coleman’s) fault. He also hears the
voice of his deceased lover.
Falling in love is the
ultimate psychotic experience. His 14-yr. old stepson recently regained his use
of the English language when he fell in love. For two years all he ever said to
Coleman was “uh.” Now he talks to him.
Voices are not part of
biology. 70% of the people who hear voices relate those voices to life events.
In 1920 after a
decision of the Supreme Court 20,0000 schizophrenic women were involuntarily
sterilized in (I forgot which US state he said). So now there is no more
schizophrenia in that state? Hitler exterminated 50,000 schizophrenics. Is
there no more schizophrenia in Germany? The genetic theory of schizophrenia is
a scientific delusion.
Unfortunately, this
great speaker who had us all sitting on the edges of our seats was also told
that he had only three minutes left.
Meanwhile the delayed
speaker had arrived. He was Peter van Harten, a psychiatrist from Heerlen not
far from Roermond where the convention was held. Although I agreed with nothing
that he said I must commend him for coming so well prepared at such short
notice, only a few hours?
Van Harten confirmed
that his opinions are opposite of those of Vlaminck, the speaker he was
replacing. So we should just turn everything he said around in our minds.
An ideal concept of
illness must have valid criteria and be reliable. It used to be that different
psychiatrists would differently diagnose the same patient. Now thanks to the clearly
described criteria in the DSM this is no longer the case.
He projected an image
on the screen that was reported to have been drawn by a psychotic man. It was a
well-drawn portrait. The forehead was covered by an open mouth. This patient
claimed that other people could hear his thoughts.
There are 100,000
schizophrenics in the Netherlands.
The role of psychiatry
is to meet the needs of the patient. One of those needs is a diagnosis. Critics
of the schizophrenia concept still use it.
Next he projected two
brain scans onto the screen. They belonged to monozygotic twins, he said. In
the right-hand picture we could see loss of brain. This was the schizophrenic
brother. (Nowadays we know that not “schizophrenia” but neuroleptic drugs cause
the difference. Besides, if the twins were monozygotic and schizophrenia was
genetic as psychiatrists claim, both images would have been identical.)
Illness has three
possible outcomes. Either the patient recovers, he becomes disabled, or he
dies. This is also true for mental illness.
Next four images were
projected onto the screen. They were supposedly all drawn by the same patient
at different times. The first was drawn at the beginning of the psychotic
period, and was a realistically and well-drawn orange cat. The successive
drawings were the same cat but more chaotically drawn, representing the
patient’s advancing confusion as he became more psychotic. The last two
drawings were not recognizable as a cat. (I don’t believe that the successive
drawings were made by the patient, if even the first one was. They were too
accurate in relation to the first drawing. It is unlikely even that the patient
would have had access to exactly the same colored crayons. I believe the last
three drawings were the same drawing as the first but intentionally distorted
by a computer. Even if the drawings were real, that still would only
demonstrate the damage to the person’s brain from neuroleptics, not any
supposed illness.)
In spite of my
suspecting his slides of being fraudulent, I found it rude that this impromptu
speaker was also interrupted for the three-minute warning.
Van Harten closed his
talk with the remark that research into MI is promising.
During the first
coffee break I approached the registration desk. It was manned by the lady who
had corresponded with me about my registration. She had repeatedly confused me,
Mira de Vries, with one of the scheduled speakers, Maarten deVries (last name
written without a space). De Vries is an extremely common last name here, like
Smith or Jones in English-speaking countries. Maarten deVries is also employed
by the University of Maastricht and is (or was) chairman of the WFMH, initials
that are apparently supposed to remind us of the WNF. In fact the World Fund
for Mental Health is a joint venture of the pharmaceutical companies and seems
to have as its goal: convincing governments of poor countries that their
citizens are mentally ill, and lobbying them to spend their money on
psychoactive drugs instead of food, clean water, shelter, and education. They
claim to champion human rights in psychiatry, by which they mean the right to
be diagnosed and drugged accordingly.
Half a year ago I
wrote DeVries a polite letter inquiring about WFMH activities and asking him
whether he could refer me to a web site. He never answered it. So now I brought
a copy along to hand him personally. However, I was told that he had canceled
his participation.
After the break the
chairmen from Maastricht traded places with their colleagues from Aachen, who
were to chair the next part of the convention. They were no less strict about
the time limit.
The fifth speaker was
Richard Bentall, Professor of Psychology at the University of Manchester,
England. The title of his presentation was : Bad theories are bad for mental
health.
He started with
projecting a picture of a beautiful, castle-like building. Behind the
fairy-tale façade of this supposed asylum for the insane the most terrible
cruelties transpired. Psychiatrists have always used violence against their
patients. First there were the insulin comas, from which many victims died.
Then there were the lobotomies (for which their Italian inventor received a
Nobel prize!).
Many people think that
Hitler ordered the extermination of mental patients. In actual fact it were the
psychiatrists who lobbied Hitler for permission to exterminate them as their
lives were not considered worthy of living.
In one institution the
staff held a cocktail party to celebrate the so-many-thousandth killing.
Ironically, some
Jewish mental patients escaped extermination because the psychiatrists did not
consider them worthy of euthanasia. Instead they were sent to concentration
camps where they were nevertheless exterminated.
The years 1984 – 1996
were marked by an increase in the use of force by psychiatrists. Research in
the US indicates that even voluntary patients are actually held involuntarily.
The psychiatrists ascribe those claims by the patients to paranoia, but when
the patients’ stories are compared tot their medical files and the families’
stories, the involuntary nature of their incarceration is confirmed.
The rate of occurrence
of sudden death from neuroleptics is underestimated. Mental patients often die
from “heart attacks.” Psychiatrists don’t admit that the cause of the heart
attacks were neuroleptic drugs.
It is has been
demonstrated that when a patient doesn’t benefit from one neuroleptic, he won’t
benefit from any. The search for the right drug is senseless.
Worst of all is the
dose scandal. Not until 40 years after the first neuroleptics were marketed was
any research about the proper dose done. It turned out that low doses are more
effective than high doses. Nonetheless psychiatrists continue to prescribe
massive doses (The “Mr. Doublit syndrome. When the nurse tells the doctor that
the neuroleptic isn’t effective, the doctor says “double it.” It is then still
not effective, but the dose is never lowered.) This is particularly scandalous
considering that although efficacy is higher at lower doses, the debilitating
side-effects increase with the dose.
The reason it is
claimed that the atypicals have fewer side effects than the classic
neuroleptics is because in drug trials low doses of atypicals were compared to
high doses of Haldol.
High doses are
prescribed totally irrationally.
Patients have always
known this but nobody listens to them. Psychiatrists claim that they aren’t
capable of talking sanely. That’s rubbish. Someone who is irrational in one
area can be perfectly rational in another.
Thought disorder is actually
not disorder of thought but of communication, particularly when the person is
distressed. Insight is agreeing with the doctor.
Bentall wasn’t yet a
quarter of the way through the presentation he had prepared when the
three-minute signal was sounded.. A shame.
In the break I asked
him whether he might be willing to consider political activism. He said he had
been thinking about it. The problem was that although he is a Ph.D., he is not
a medical psychiatrist but rather a psychologist. Politicians only believe in doctors.
The sixth speaker was
Thomas Bock, a psychiatrist from Hamburg.
He joked that although
he had been trying to learn the language of psychoses for decades, he had
forgotten to learn English.
Compliance is a ritual
of subordination. The first step to recovery is not believing your doctor.
Psychoses are similar to dreams, the same mechanism causes them. Crises can not
be prevented, they must be supported. What one sees on brain scans should be
considered scars left by experiences (and neuroleptics).
This speaker spoke no
shorter than the others so I must have been lax on taking notes.
The seventh speaker
was L. de Haan from the adolescent psychiatry ward at the University of
Amsterdam hospital. His apparently obligatory opening joke was that although
the hotel we were in belongs to Van der Valk, the roof was strong (recently the
roof of a different Van der Valk hotel caved in).
I don’t know what
schizophrenia is, said De Haan. Recovery from what? Recovery is a term from the
consumer movement. Psychiatrists speak of management. Who defines recovery? It
appears that schizophrenics sometimes recover after decades of illness, which
is hopeful. Patients who seek medical assistance do better than those who avoid
it. (yeah, sure.)
During the break I
asked De Haan since he doesn’t know what schizophrenia is, does he prescribe
neuroleptics? Yes. What if a teen-ager wants to be treated without drugs? Does
De Haan agree, or evict him, or force drug him? At first he hemmed and hawed and
beat around the bush. After I pressured him he said that in theory he might
treat somebody who didn’t want to take the drugs, however it was clear that in
reality that doesn’t happen.
The last speaker was
again a user, Wilma Boevink who is employed by the Trimbos Institute that purports
to do research into psychiatry and drug addiction. She spoke very well and her
English was better than that of the Dutch and German psychiatrists. I was
secretly proud of her.
Recovery, she said, is
not about cure.
Psychiatry is not
about cure.
The patient must learn
not to ascribe all of life’s irritations to mental illness. A diagnosis means
that all questions are automatically answered.
The psychiatrists’
story is not her story. According to
the psychiatrists she was hospitalized because of a psychotic episode, and
thanks to treatment she went into remission. Her own story is that she was
unable to handle being battered by her husband, needed a place of refuge, and
had to learn how to deal with what was going on in her life.
When released from the
psychiatric hospital she had to learn to live with having been in it. Psychiatric
institutions are reservoirs of human suffering. People who are feeling terrible
are herded together in depressing and degrading institutions and expected to
feel better. It is easier to adjust to institutionalization than to adjust to
not being institutionalized anymore.
During the break I
asked Boevink whether the Trimbos Institute is generally sympathetic to our
cause. This is unfortunately not so, she said.
After those speakers
was lunch. Usually the caterers provide trays of fresh fruit, but there were
none here, so none of the food was remotely kosher. That was just as well, as
there was but little time for lunch, and I had a different plan in mind.
When I registered for
the convention, I was asked whether I’m a user or a professional. I explained
that I was representing the Association for Medical and Therapeutic
Self-determination in the Netherlands (MeTZelf, an SCI sponsor group). She said
in that case I would have to pay. Since I had paid, I received a name tag …
without a green dot! Oh what you can accomplish with 75 Euros (about $75, which
was the same as the fee for students though I didn’t see any students there).
So, naughtily, I
ascended the stairs to the display.
Already on the way up
there were plastic shopping bags lying in waiting to be filled with goodies.
They bore a colorful design especially created for Organon by a Dutch artist.
The name “Organon Netherlands” was sprawled conspicuously across the top. I might
add that I saw only users carrying the bags. No psychiatrist would be caught
dead with something like that among users. So I figured I’d better resist the
temptation.
The first display was
piled high with little knickknacks – colorful notepads, lined writing paper,
two different kinds of pens, pill boxes, and paper weights with something
orange in them which may have represented brains. All had the word “Risperdal”
written in huge letters where you couldn’t possibly miss it. I decided not to
seem greedy, besides, as I had resisted taking a shopping bag, I had nowhere to
put it all.
As I moved on to the
next display, a beautiful young blonde woman approached me and introduced
herself in English though her accent was unmistakably Dutch. I decided to stay
with the English. As I speak English with an American accent, it might help
disguise that I'm not really a psychiatrist. After all Dutch people think that
all Americans, including American doctors, are crazy.
Upon my question
Blondie said that she represented both Organon and Janssen-Cilag (so is she a doctor?) who had jointly presented
the display in spite of presumably being competitors on the pharmaceutical
market.
Blondie handed me a
blue box and asked me, “Are you familiar with this already? It’s Modiodal for
the treatment of narcolepsy. In the US it’s marketed as Provigil”. Narcolepsy?
I asked surprised. How many sufferers of narcolepsy can there be in the Netherlands?
I had just blown my cover, but she didn’t seem to notice. She answered,
“1200 to 1600. You can also prescribe it
off-label for all sorts of tiredness or drowsiness, or as an add-on to an antidepressant.
We’re only not allowed to promote it for that.” Did I see her wink?
What about using it to
treat the side-effects of neuroleptics, I asked. “Certainly,” she nodded,
“off-label.” And ADHD? “Yes, very appropriate, off-label.” The fact that drugs
for ADHD are prescribed to growing children is of course not important,
off-label.
I thought of asking
her about the side effects of the drug, but feared compromising my act too
much. What psychiatrist cares about side-effects?
I slid the box of
narcolepsy pills (an extremely rare condition which certainly doesn’t pay to
spend an advertising campaign on) open and exclaimed, “Oh my, how big! My
patients all have problems swallowing. I hope these dissolve in water?” Blondie
said that because there were users present they had filled the box with
peppermints. Later, at home, I studied the box and saw that it was clearly
marked as “a gift of candy.” This is probably standard practice, and Blondie
would surely have been suspicious of me if I hadn’t spoken with an American
accent. The mints, by the way, I later gave away to a junkie at the train
station, though he surely would have preferred the pills against narcolepsy,
off-label, of course!
At the last display
Blondie waved a box of Remeron under my nose, which claims to be an antidepressant
that isn’t and SSRI. Remeron was introduced in the Netherlands in 1994. The
official government advisory agency tells doctors that it is an antidepressant
of last choice because of its side-effects, weight gain and drowsiness, which
are worse than with other antidepressants. Other authoritative literature
(written by doctors) suggests that it should never be prescribed at all, and
refers to suspicions that Organon makes fraudulent claims about the drug and
refused to publish research indicating that Remeron is less effective than imipramine,
and old tricyclic antidepressant.
There was a brochure
for patients on the table (I thought there was to be no direct contact between
drug company and patient?) which I regret not having taken to tell you what
lies it contains. At that moment I was more interested in the Psychotropic Drug
Directory 2002 which would be a welcome addition to my collection. Blondie said
I could take it. To not seem too disinterested, I ask her whether she could
provide me with more professional information about Remeron? “Only in Dutch,”
she said. No problem, I slipped, blowing my cover, and I quickly ran back down
the stairs with my loot.
During the whole break
no psychiatrist had come to look at the displays, and I suspect few if any had
been there during the entire convention. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were
no 11th Triptych convention.
It turned out that
Blondie, according to the business card she gave me, is a “medical adviser” and
possibly a licensed doctor. She used the
title “Dr.” on her business card even
though in the Netherlands that title is legally reserved for Ph.D.s. What Ph.D.
would take a job as a sales-representative at a pharmaceutical company? Her
employer would probably defend her on account of the title being acceptable in
other countries. No doubt she really did graduate from med school. And people
lobby our government to spend more money on training doctors because there’s
such a shortage!
After lunch the four
workshops took place simultaneously:
1. Two sides of psychopharmacology
2. Two sides of the concept of the schizophrenia
construct and related human rights issues (truly, it’s an exact quote!)
3. Two sides of normality: psychosis in and
outside of psychiatry
4. Two sides of recovery
I had chosen workshop
#1. I was sitting there waiting for it to begin, when to my surprise, in walked
Blondie!
But that wasn’t the
end of my surprise. A group of psychiatrists and been sitting there whispering
with each other, and shortly after the workshop began, they rose and left it.
There were now except for the speakers only a couple of psychiatrists left. The
rest of the participants were users! The psychiatrists couldn’t go home as they
had to wait for their certificates of participation, so they sat in the lounge
having coffee, where I saw them at the end of the workshop. After that I didn’t
see them anymore, so maybe they managed to get their certificates early anyway.
Now you know the value of the obligatory educational up-dates.
At the workshop we
again had speakers. The first was a Belgium psychiatrist with little to say,
but he did a good job chairing the discussion.
The next speaker was
Phil Thomas, the British psychiatrist that Ron Coleman (the one who spoke so
well) had praised. Thomas struck me as being a doll. Here is as much of his
speech as I managed to jot down:
“I come from a part of
the city where 55% of the population is of not-western descent. I don’t believe
in the existence of schizophrenia but I’ll use the term, as well as the term
patient, because that’s what people are used to hearing. I am not a
psychopharmacologist. Medication is the key problem. Nowadays we know that what
mainstream psychiatrists call relapse is in fact not caused by some mysterious
illness but by damage from the medication. We call that super-sensitivity
psychosis or tardive psychosis. What really happens is that the supposedly
schizophrenic behavior is caused by the withdrawal syndrome.”
After that he gave a
rather technical explanation of the five brain systems that have dopamine
receptors. One is the limbic system (source of emotions, ambition,
assertiveness, etc.) Research has indicated that neuroleptics cause dopamine
receptors to proliferate in all those systems. That’s what causes tardive
dyskinesia, tardive dystonia, tardive akathisia, and it is reasonable to assume
that it also causes tardive psychosis.
Affective disorder is
caused by pharmacological stress factors.
Neuroleptics suppress
the vomiting mechanism, so withdrawal can cause heavy vomiting (if you’ve read
my book you may have noticed that I mention it). As dopamine also regulates
prolactin, neuroleptics cause potency problems in men and menstrual problems in
women.
Yet Thomas said that
he prescribes neuroleptics himself, even in new cases, although he mainly
engages in helping people get off them or reduce their doses.
He expressed anger at
the excessive power that psychiatrists have (given to them by our governments)
and at the high profits of the drug companies (as though it weren’t the doctors
themselves who tucked those profits into drug company pockets).
The drug companies
claim that their drugs are so expensive because they invest in research, he
said. That’s rubbish. They invest only 12% of their profits in research (and
receive subsidies from their governments and collections). The largest part of
their budgets goes to marketing. Nowadays relatively few new drugs are
developed because it pays the drug companies more to invest in better marketing
of the old drugs (like Remeron).
After Thomas, Peter
Lehman spoke again, mostly about his book on withdrawing from psychoactive
drugs, which will soon be published in English, he said. When I mentioned
penfluridol, he said it has been banned in most of Europe since 1980 because it
was found to be carcinogenic (which would be the least of your problems if
you’re on it). This surprised me, if it’s true, because I have so many
authoritative books on the subject and none mention this.
After Lehman another
user spoke, Jan Verhaegh, whom I know from the clients’ union (a euphemism for psychiatric
consumers). He in particular expressed the opinion that what is lacking is that
we see matters in context. Symptoms should not be seen as separate entities but
should be contemplated in the context of what’s going on the person’s life.
Also the use of drugs should be seen in the context of circumstances, like how
they are working and how the person taking them feels about them.
I forgot who it was
that related about precedent: a psychiatric hospital in the Netherlands that is
sponsored by Pfizer, manufacturer of Zoloft. The government tried to block the
sponsorship but it couldn’t.
Like I said before,
many psychiatrists had already walked out of the workshop, although a couple
stayed and bravely participated in the discussion. They mainly complained about
the lack of information from the drug companies (because the drug companies
don’t know the answers either?)
Most of the people who
participated in the discussion were users. One said that when a doctor
prescribes drugs, the patient feels that his problems are taken seriously.
Another said that when she was in crisis, she mainly need an arm around her
shoulders and understanding, which was the last thing available at the mental
hospital. Somebody asked why it took psychiatrists so long to recognize the existence
or tardive psychosis when users have known about it for decades.
After the workshop we
returned to the auditorium for the closing speeches. Each of the workshop
chairmen was asked to briefly report on what was discussed in the workshops.
Meanwhile there had
been grumbling about the green dots, possibly because I had been agitating
about them. We were given an apology, and it was explained that the reason it
had been necessary was because of the Dutch law forbidding users to see the
displays. “Now you know what it’s like to be labeled” he joked, which missed
the mark because the ones with the green dots already knew. Unfortunately he
could not think of any alternative solution. That the drug companies not have
the displays was out of the question as they don’t sponsor conventions for
nothing, and without their sponsorship there can be no conventions.
Aside from that
matter, we were invited to make suggestions for the next Triptych. Jan Verhaegh
from the clients’ union jokingly suggested that next time we hold it in the
Russian language. Somebody complained about the speakers having too little
time. We were told that the reason for the strict discipline was that if we
didn’t vacate the premises exactly at five in the evening, the hotel would
charge extra. Somebody else said that pro-drug psychiatrists should have been
invited. They were, of course, but perhaps there hadn’t been enough arm-twisting
(or they preferred to walk out?). Coleman pointed out the need for these ideas
to be carried back into the mainstream psychiatric community, to which Dr.
Thomas responded that indeed, perhaps dissident psychiatrists should convene
and discuss how to do that (which I loudly applauded). I asked why the media
hadn’t been invited. I was told that they had, but they didn’t come. The
subject does not have the media or public’s interest.
As usual, large parts
of the population of psychiatric victims received not a single mention. They
are the people who even psychiatrists don’t dare claim are schizophrenic:
People in homes for the elderly, the mentally retarded, autistics, and physically
handicapped people who cannot lead independent lives. Wherever people need
care, neuroleptics are widely used, which in itself goes to prove the absurdity
of the dopamine theory of schizophrenia
Besides learning about
dissident psychiatrists in Europe this convention taught me nothing new. I had
not yet heard the term “tardive psychosis” but I’ve known it exists for ages.
If I can know it, anybody can know it, including mainstream psychiatrists.
Whoever doesn’t know apparently doesn’t want to know, perhaps like the
psychiatrists who walked out of the workshop.
I was happy to learn
that now also in Europe there is a small but serious group of dissident psychiatrists.
However, the conclusion that in my opinion they should draw, they don’t. If MI
doesn’t exist and MI treatments do more harm than good, psychiatry as a medical
specialty doesn’t have a leg to stand on. The users said it over and over: what
is needed is exactly not the distanced attitude of the professional but love
and practical assistance.
Mira