Hey, quick reminder that psychiatric medications don’t treat the cause of a person’s madness. They do not make a person more sane. They certainly do not fix an ‘imbalance’ of neurotransmitters.
What they can do is they can provide mind-altering effects that can make it easier to cope with the symptoms of madness.
Don’t ever let a doctor or anyone else pressure you into taking psychoactive medication because they think you ‘need it’ in order to ‘get better.’ You are the person who is best able to judge whether the mind-altering affects of a particular drug will help you cope. Don’t accept lies and misinformation about what medication can do for you.
Comments like that kill people.
Edit: They are designed to make people functional, for better or worse. There is no magic pill that just *fixes* mental illness. A proper treatment would ideally involve medicine as a last resort after therapy and other various coping strategies. Some doctors don’t do that and just try to medicate you, but that’s not a problem with the profession it’s a problem with the doctor. And unfortunately sometimes people have such a tenuous ability to cope or acknowledge external reality that it severely impedes their ability to function. I’m not a huge fan of zombifying people but my mom was a neuropsychiatrist and from the stories she told me sometimes there is literally no hope for people beyond medicating them enough that they don’t hurt themselves or other people. Either through neglect or malice. It’s not a value statement, it’s just a sad reality.
Also there are innumerable cases where medicine improves quality of life.
On the other hand, I could stand to be medicated but I don’t because it’s a lot of effort. I should though.
You want to know what kills people? Taking a vulnerable person over whom you are able to exert control and forcing them into an intensely intimate ‘treatment’ program because you believe that your course of action is the only thing that will make them ‘better’ kills people. That kind of trauma and violation kills people.
… and the lie that psychiatric drugs work by ‘correcting imbalances in neurotransmitters’ contributes to that violence and contributes to that killing.
So spare me the shocking stories of the people who can’t take care of themselves because I was there. I know what it feels like and I know what it feels like to have your every ability to govern your own body and your own mind stripped from you. Nothing justifies that kind of abuse. Wanting to make someone ‘better’ does not give you the right to violate them.
THIS THIS THIS
QueerAnarchism 