Mental Health Diagnoses As Particularly Western Social Constructs

This entry in Wikipedia was posted by a Facebook group member a year ago, and I posted it to my timeline.  It just came up today as a memory.  It is quite long, too long for me to read again at the moment.  I’m not an authority, anyway.  I don’t know a lot about the professionals and experts cited and their views, though I know a little.  I’m offering it in this post for anyone who wants to read it and do their own research, or even anyone who might already know more than I do.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_construction_of_schizophrenia

Updated Books Page

I’ve updated my books page today with some books by R D Laing.  I’ve read two and am reading one.  The two I have read are Knots and Sonnets.  At the back of Sonnets are some thoughts in prose which I found helpful.  The one I am reading is Sanity, Madness and the Family: Families of Schizophrenics, which is a book of case studies and transcriptions of taped interviews.  I’m not sure if it is of its time or not, but it is very interesting.  I have provided UK and USA Amazon links for each book.

R D Laing was a leading figure in the Antipsychiatry movement and established some houses in London as part of the Philadelphia Association which provides an alternative approach to mental distress.

It’s Not My Fault

Actually, that’s not how I think.  I have what I believe to be a really unhelpful habit of looking back and blaming myself for so many things.  The way I think, it sometimes seems as if I must hate my younger self.  I feel as if I can see that I was totally wrong.  There are people who would rejoice in that, people who have already told me it is all my fault and take no responsibility for the inhumanity of their own words and actions towards me.  Some church people have been so strict and confrontational with me you wouldn’t know it was church people you were dealing with.  Those people, according to what has been said to me, still don’t want anything to do with me and are insistent that I stay away from them.  The Shearmans, the Coleses, are only two examples.  At the Christian Centre, Nottingham, one of the pastoral staff told me I was welcome to come to church but that I had frightened the Shearmans with silent calls about 16-17 years ago and I was to stay away from them. First of all they and their staff had frightened and angered me, and I was just being frightened, angry and confused OCD with my first ever mobile phone.  I’m sorry that I frightened them but they and their staff had also frightened and offended me.  They were targeting me from the platform.  I know this because one day one of them approached me and told me to leave because I wasn’t doing what I was being told to do.  As I remember it it was only coming from the platform, they weren’t talking to me otherwise.  And I think what the Coleses and their staff did to me was really nasty.  I was angry without any sign of violence, and it seems they have such an exalted idea of their position that they thought it was OK to pronounce sickness over me.  That was Moira Knight, one of their trusted few, in John Coles’s presence.  He didn’t say she was wrong.  I couldn’t believe what she had said to me, and it exploded in my mind how far they were prepared to go to resist me and keep me under.  It was a very effective double bind, which R D Laing said was operational in a lot of people called schizophrenic.

This Morning

So, what happened this morning?  R in the wheelchair told me it was either Sue or Sharon who said she had legs, she should use them.  When she told me that they were both sitting opposite me and she just said the one sitting opposite, so that is as close as I have it for now.  They started whispering together and laughing.  It came up about Sue swearing at me and telling me no one liked me again, and she said I had no proof.  They told me I was boring and my blog, which they say they haven’t read, is boring.  They told me I don’t know how to use my brain and that I am paranoid.  Sue said I was paranoid when I was saying about her swearing etc.

OK, I don’t have proof, but she and I both know, and I know she is lying.  She lies even to say she isn’t lying.  What sort of person says that another has no proof when they are expressing that kind of concern and offense?  I believe I should not need proof.  They have almost absolute power over me and I think that I should not need proof in the same way that a person reporting a past sexual offense against themselves does not need it.  We are that vulnerable.  I hope it turns out that I do not need proof.

They were all shouting at me this morning and laughing at me and letting other people, patients, shout at me.  They kept taking their side and using them to have a go at me.  I tried to talk to the doctor about what was happening and they wanted to hang around outside the door and watch, as if I was dangerous, so I said I would talk to someone else.  Jesus said the same thing – why have you come at me like this?

I couldn’t eat lunch, it was too spicy.

Whatever these people want, I will not work with them.  They are Nazis.  I will not have it said that they are working with me by my consent.  I’m not sure what they think they are trying to achieve, if it is not just trying to disempower and humiliate me.  Helen was there again, Steve who was responsible, so I was told, for the decision to not even help me with my bed.  Steve stayed laughing in the background, the women worked me over.

It started because I was told I needed to be out of my room so they could do a cleaning audit, and I let them bully me out.  I wasn’t dressed, I hadn’t showered.  When I pointed that out Sue gave me an empty stare and said ‘tough’.  I’d had a bad night because a woman on my corridor kept slamming the door again, I think it was Kerry, but I’m not sure.  It also could have been staff.  When I wanted to go back in my room Sue was sitting there and she said ‘she won’t come out again’, then we got into an argument about my right to stay in my room, and the fact that they can’t manhandle us out if we are not a danger to ourselves or anyone else.  As I said last night, they know it is the only place I have and they are taking full advantage of that. They were saying the other patients were all out and I said they didn’t have to be because the law protects us.  They were goading me, with complete disrespect.  They stripped me naked and insisted I stay among them in my distress, with them tossing me around on their horns.  I’ve had the hospital as my only home for nearly 16 months.  It has always been untenable.  I told them I would probably be gone within a month because accommodation and discharge is being talked about, and one of them threw up their hands and said hurray, or something to that effect.  Two of the other patients started on me, one said I should be in prison or in a hostel and that they were going to phone the police.  She got on the phone and asked for Scotland Yard.  I told her I would happily be in a hostel but they wouldn’t let me go.  I’ve got to wait until after 4th September when my Care Co-ordinator gets back from leave, unless I can find out from my advocate that there is a quicker way of doing it.

I had a dream last night that I was looking after Brian May’s house for him while he was away.  I also dreamt about the whole of the original Queen cast, but their hair was up in frizzy bunches on each side of their heads, while they were singing.

Oh, apart from putting me in the wrong all the time they asked me if I wasn’t sick of the sound of my voice.

Of course my constant fear about my blog is that it isn’t making the difference I want it to make, that in spite of all the clicks people don’t read it and they do think it is boring.  All I can say is that I am a real person coping,or trying to, with a terrible situation.  And I think I have something to say which should be taken seriously and should make the difference I keep saying I want it to make for myself and for others.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

I found this article on the internet.  Also this one from the NHS.  So much of it is so close to symptoms of schizophrenia it makes me wonder why someone was lazy or therapeutically incompetent enough to establish that in the first place.  If anyone is reading the links I have posted on my Essential Links Page they might have seen an article on Schizophrenia: A Nonexistent Disease, by Lawrence Stevens, JD.  I have read it, though I can’t remember much about it at the moment.  It refers to a book by Szasz (professor emeritus of psychiatry) – “Schizophrenia – The Sacred Symbol of Psychiatry” – in which he says there is no such thing as schizophrenia.  From the outset Stevens calls it a dazzling term which sounds scientific and has charisma.  Please read the whole article, it will be better to do that than to rely on my precis anyway.  It is long, but for anyone concerned with this I think it is worth it and it will be helpful to you.

Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Someone on Facebook gave me the link to this useful list.  I decided to tack on the end that PTSD is said to “mimic” schizophrenia.  I would say all of these ‘early warning signs’ could equally be a part of post traumatic experience.

“Schizophrenia is a challenging disorder that makes it difficult to distinguish between what is real and unreal, think clearly, manage emotions, relate to others, and function normally.” “The most common early warning signs of schizophrenia include:
Social withdrawal
Hostility or suspiciousness
Deterioration of personal hygiene
Flat, expressionless gaze
Inability to cry or express joy
Inappropriate laughter or crying
Depression
Oversleeping or insomnia
Odd or irrational statements
Forgetful; unable to concentrate
Extreme reaction to criticism
Strange use of words or way of speaking

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/schizophrenia_symptom.htm#conditions

Conditions that can look like schizophrenia

• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a traumatic event, such as military combat, an accident, or a violent assault. People with PTSD experience symptoms that are similar to schizophrenia. The images, sounds, and smells of PTSD flashbacks can look like psychotic hallucinations. The PTSD symptoms of emotional numbness and avoidance can look like the negative symptoms of schizophrenia.

My Autism And Me

This programme is 14 minutes long and part of BBCs Newsround series of programmes about/by/for children.

It is available until 4.59pm Friday 18th November, which as I write is almost 2 days.

The link is http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b01773m7/Newsround_My_Autism_and_Me/.  Please catch it.  This is a subject close to my own heart and experience, in that I used to think I might be autistic myself, especially during my 20s.

I now believe I am not, and that it is another label we have been taught to accept which is a disservice to everyone involved.

I will write more later.  Although my blog is still on Bulgarian time because I am afraid if I change it it will change the dates on some of the posts I wrote in Bulgaria, it is 10pm here in the UK and I haven’t eaten yet today.  There are no cooking facilities where I am and I want to find some food.  I am posting it now because I want my readers to be aware of the programme and have an opportunity to watch and preferably record it before it is taken down from the site.

One thing.  The girl talks about feeling words.  Bleuler, who coined the term ‘schizophrenic’, said his senses crossed over so that he smelled sounds and saw smells, or something.  But Bleuler was a major psychiatric contributor and definer of people and psychiatric conditions while these kids are autistic.

Excuse me?

Joan of Arc

I don’t really know anything about Joan of Arc. except what I read in a George Bernard Shaw play.  She turned up to fight for France or something, and rescued the dauphin (French prince?)  The church condemned her because she heard voices and had her burnt or something, then later decided she was a saint and canonised her.  That’s how the church says sorry and tries to deal with its guilt.  Not much good to Joan, they killed her.  And they haven’t learned from the mistake and her canonisation means nothing, because these days in the same circumstances they put people in a mental hospital.  Grubby people.  Nasty, slimy and creepy.

I was just trying to make sense of why John Pantry this morning started with a reference to Joan of Arc (I think it’s her feast day or something) then followed it up with a subliminal ‘schitz’ reference.  I could tell from his voice he was going somewhere treacherous and that it would be best not to listen to him.  He seems to be trying to act in a woman’s identity.

I feel guilty because how I’ve been taught it is.  I’m writing because of how it actually is.  I think they’ve siezed my books and other personal things that I had in storage in a church.  I feel guilty about saying this because I think I should see it is having taken my things into safekeeping for me.  I was told they had got rid of them though.  No one told me they still had them.  I just thought it became obvious when I heard what they were saying.  I felt ill.  Since then it appears that both Christian and non-Christian media have had acess to my things, because I mentioned a piece of writing I had done that might make people think I was violent, and a day or two later Steve Allen on LBC was saying that it looked more like someone saying ‘every time I say something that is true someone comes at me with a belt’.  If this is true, it isn’t right, is it?  It’s hostage taking and kidnap, even though it feels so much like love I should be grateful for.

I also had a blank book among my things, a big thick one for writing in.  I still have the recording where I think that Anna Raeburn made reference to that.  I’m frightened because I feel as if it’s right and I shouldn’t be opposing it.  I’m very frightened.  If they have worked together on this no one will be for me.  No one that matters to me.  John blips so sweetly he has to be right, doesn’t he?  It makes me feel I’ve wrecked everything myself and I have no right to object, maybe even no right to live.

Is heavy shepherding right?  I’ve used the term.  It might be out of date and out of use now.

I’m listening about 6-8 minutes behind.  John just said quite forcefully that he was going to keep going on.  My stomach hurts, I’m upset and I feel sick.  I feel I am the one that is treacherous.  I really do.  I can’t defend myself against anything, even the face to face stalking I get so openly in Bulgaria.  I’ve never felt such despair and the need to give in to what I have so far maintained is obviously wrong.  I feel I am more wrong than the ‘obvious wrong’ which is actually right, that is being done to me, and I need the ‘wrongdoers’ to help and restore me.  Please someone tell me they are wrong and help me.

My connection to Premier has been terminated, and my post which was showing in the tag search is now no longer showing, even though my Colin Dye (2) post has more tags than this one.  Someone is constantly taking a decision to disempower me.

Kensington Temple Platform Staff Member Who Looks Like Dr Gallo (2)

His name is Esteban.

(Copy with some tags I had to exclude.  First published 11.08 am Bulgarian time.)

I watched the recording last night of last week’s sermon by Kristian Lythe.  I had forgotten his name, I’ve not seen or heard of him for ages.  But Kristian mentioned him in his sermon, he had made a traffic lights illustration.  He was saying something about red lights, among other things.  I don’t know how much of the sermon I would need to talk about to have you understand.  It can be found at http://www.kt.org/media. (note: please don’t be distracted by the shouting and his insistence on having the word of the Lord or anything else you see and hear.  If any of it is true [how much of it can be?] it is still not the point).

I don’t know how they get hold of information like this about people in my life, but it particularly concerns me that they have sufficient information about this man, Dr Gallo, to use a lookalike of him. Maybe my concern and the way I am handling it are stupid, selfish, treacherous and ungrateful.  I was assuming that they had the information through having had direct communication with Dr Gallo, but that might not be true.   But if it is true, although personally and emotionally I would like to come out and patch things up, I really think there is cause for concern here.  They had told me to leave the church.  I haven’t been there for over a decade.

What are they doing with something like this, it is none of their business, and neither Dr Gallo nor anyone else has ever brought this connection up with me. I’ve known for ages they do the same things with close family and past friends and acquaintances.  As I have said before, I do feel love and I do feel loyalty, but this is stalking, in a way the psychiatric team has told me doesn’t happen, or at least, isn’t happening to me, and they have partly based their diagnosis on my insistence that it does and is.

My Christian response is my biggest felt response, but also I need to keep identification with others in the psychiatric patient community (excuse terminology, maybe I should talk more in terms of mathematical sets, for which being a part of one doesn’t necessarily imply relationship)  and recognise that this is stalking, it is a step, or more like several steps, too far in ruling a church and church discipline and discipleship, I need to employ the term ‘heavy shepherding’ because people recognise it, and recognise myself that this is what is happening in this situation.

They and other churches I’ve been involved with have been challenged many, many times by me about this, in emails, through my blog, and emails are not answered and no conversation entered into through my blog.  David Shearman’s church bounces my emails back to me, whether I have mentioned his name or not in the address or body of my email (I no longer send them and have assigned any responses to ones I do send to the spam folder) saying david.shearman@christian-centre.org is not a valid email address.  If this is supposed to be heart talk for please come home, then I am sorry, and it is probably my loss.  That email address used to be valid, I don’t know if it is only me that gets that kind of response, or used to until I stopped emailing.

I’m very, very sorry, but this is awful.  I feel awful for handling it this way.  I’m not even fully convinced that they are wrong to do this anymore, and that is one of the reasons I need feedback and help from people in whom I have expressed trust who might be more convinced than I am.  I am too emotionally caught up to fight, and the way my readers distance me, on the whole, makes that worse. These people know who they are, and some of them know I love them because I believe they are the sort of people who would want to help and not cause injury.

I might be mistaken in my assessment, in fact at the moment I would like to cause injury myself and have obviously felt that way for ages.  I don’t think in a situation like this that makes me nuts or dangerous, even if under extreme provocation and in distress I even employ gestures to demonstrate how I feel when everything else is ignored.  When I was a kid ‘I’ll kill you’ meant ‘you have gone too far’, not ‘you’d better take steps to separate yourself from me and protect yourself’.  It might be crass and it might not be used in the kindest of relationships, but that is still the way it is for plenty of people who are not considered to be in need of incarceration.  I had it said to me plenty of times.  I’ve never thought of considering that anyone who said it should be locked up.  But maybe I should, on hindsight.  It is emotional thuggery if nothing else.

Ps I have heard Christian leaders involved in this say ‘prove it’.  In something like this that is neither honorable nor Christian.  Robb Thompson was one of them.  He might have been talking about something else.

Tommy, I really do believe this is something that needs to be dealt with, not only for my sake, but for that of others as well.  You have taught me well on that and I’m grateful (even if I don’t always feel I like you very much).  It is as close as a church can get to kidnap.  I know even this gesture towards you rather than coming to you directly is enough to break trust.  I feel that and it feels irrevocable. Partly I feel I’m disempowering myself in any way I could relate to you, and I believe you also need me to be empowered in any relationship we might have, as I need it myself.  So maybe this is just useless empty gesture time again.  I am implicating you, but I’m implicating you to try to empower you, if you think that is something I’m capable of.

Question Time Teresa May

She looked sickly sheepish, didn’t she, all the time they were talking?  You have to feel a bit sorry for her, programmes like that are their own form of torture.

I thought she was looking that way about me, because they were talking about waterboarding, and I used a metaphor in a post a few days ago about having my head held under water until I tried to scream.  Everyone knows, obviously, that when you are under water you can’t scream.

But this morning I woke up and thought, ‘who set me up to think they were talking about me?  The presenter.  Teresa May really MIGHT not even know I exist, so why should I attribute anything about her to thoughts she is having about me?

But she has been looking that way ever since I started blabbing.  That is why I think there is something in it.

And following my post, ‘Note to my 16 and a half stone self’, she somehow made leaflets, which she repeated 3 times, sound like Lil-lets, which used to be my choice, and followed it up with firm stuff about going too far, crossing the line, being stopped. They do this all the time, grab hold of something really sensitive and personal and go into a strict, scolding tone to put a limitation on me.  I’m always unprepared for it, I never quite believe it when it comes, and it always leaves me feeling, ‘hey, you can’t do that’, or worse.  I can almost hear them saying, ‘if you don’t come to us we are going to keep doing this’.  Who knows that if I go to them they will find stronger ways to do that in a face to face relationship?  DA! (Bulgarian for yes).

I love Jesus, and I know I’m a bit of a stupid person, but if my life is being stalked and has been stalked in this way, I do want it stopped.  I also want the way the mental health system works challenged, because when people present saying things like this they are put on medication for paranoia.  It isn’t just the reaction of society that is injurious, it is everything, and sometimes everyone, that goes before it.

I no longer go into a situation telling people I have a mental health diagnosis.  The law doesn’t require me too, and that is right.  And yet, even though I choose not to disclose things I’m not under an obligation to and relate as positively and normally as possible, people, even here 2000 miles away, is it, start hitting me with words and snippets there is no way they could know unless someone is telling them.  And I know what I’ve heard and seen on the radio and television, here and elsewhere.  Everything is fine for a day or two, then people start going crazy around me, and at me.

I don’t know how long the stalking has been going on, but my whole life has been like this and my dad thought there was something happening.  I wonder if what I am getting is a continuation of what was going on with him.  I don’t understand why they would want to do it, though.  Not if it goes all the way back to my dad.  He had performance connections, I’m not sure how strong, I think they were in his family.  I haven’t seen them since before I was 10 years old, well before.  They disowned him at one point, he spent time in an approved school.  As far as officials are concerned, maybe they just decided we are a bad family.  My sister has had 3 children taken away from her.