R.I.P. ZOE SCHWARZ - 1972-2000.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/dec/11/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth
With full and due respect to the writers, I have read this and I disagree with some of what is written in it.
I believe that there is no such thing as "manic depression"; and further that there is no such thing as mental illness.
From the actual words of the woman who eventually took her own life, you can I think see that it may be the case that at least an aspect of what upset the woman was her treatment by the mental health system, the role in life she was being forced to take on by the mental health system and her incarceration by the mental health system.
Pyschiatry is fundamentally a fraud and a crime.
The parents think that it was unawareness of the "illness" and its characteristics that prevented proper so-called "treatment" and help.
Could it not possibly be the belief that there was an illness at all, and what that belief entailed that was part of the problem?
----
"Bipolar affective disorder, as the ancient illness is now called, has been associated down the ages with originality and charisma, often with genius: Byron, Coleridge, Melville, Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, Strindberg, Spike Milligan, Louis Althusser, Otto Klemperer, Stephen Fry, Vivien Leigh, Kurt Cobain, Francis Ford Coppola...
The illness is now regarded as a genetic neurobiological brain disease that affects one in 100 people to some degree."
An "ancient illness"? Would malaria be called an "ancient illness"? What an odd phrase!
I don't know of any Ancient Greek or Latin texts that refer to "manic depression"....
How do we know that all these people had this so-called "disease"?
Have we examined all of their brains?
Case not proven.
[Even if it were possible to examine all the brains of all the above-mentioned people and they were all found to have the same "brain lesion "X"" how could that prove that everyone who had severe highs and lows had the "disease"?
.....
Behaviour can be surely entirely determined by the (normal) functioning of the cortex or upper brain and surely any behaviour can be "generated" by this part of the brain without disease being present. ]
The illness is now "regarded" as "a brain disease"?
Would lung cancer come to be "regarded" as a lung disease?
Lung cancer woud surely be proven to be a lung disease.
Again this is an odd word - "regarded" - to use. Either it's a brain disease or it isn't.
Surely you can't "regard" it as one until you know it is one.
"Regard" implies an opinion.
It affects 1 in 100 "to some degree" - either it affects them or it doesn't. Strange.
Also, in this extract it is called a "disorder", an "illness" and a "disease" - which is it?
All three?
Also Byron may have had "manic depression" but he didn't spend his life being forced to take bullshit drugs, in and out of pysch wards against his will, on benefits etc...
He probably would do if he was around today!
These points reveal that what is being discussed is a social construct not a proven disease.
.....
"So, brainwashed, we didn't think of manic depression when she punched her elder sister in a quarrel (Zoë was very strong) and, in another quarrel, bit through her younger brother's sweater and into his chest."
What does the above extract imply? That violence is a symptom of so-called "manic depression".
How can that possibly be the case when it has been said that manic depression means "highs and lows in mood"?
???
If she had been violent and not had severe ups and downs in mood what would have been blamed then?
Violence is not itself a mental illness. It's a behaviour.
Who is really being "brain-washed" here?
Where is the evidence for what is being said?
" ...a terrifying place... very difficult to describe, which makes it harder for others to understand. The stigma is hard, too. It's hard to imagine being out of it... you feel you've gone mad even when you're lucid. Don't know what to do with myself. What to think? Where to start? Cannot envisage improvement in the future. Everything is quite frightening."
Does this refer to imprisonment on a psychiatric ward?
Is the stigma referred to the stigma of being labelled mentally ill?
"I love you all but I can't live like this."
Like what exactly?
Does she mean she can't live the life of a psychiatric patient?
She may have been very depressed but is psychiatry giving her the right help for this?
"her treatable but incurable illness."
Is there really an illness?
Where is the evidence that she was suffering from an illness of any kind?
"I'm living behind a glass wall." She contemplated a future on medication. In her last diary entry, she wrote: " ...if I don't get better, I will most probably have to accept a more humble job and more humble living arrangements than I would like. But make the most of things: I can work my way up... have to accept that at 27 I am not 'set up' job/house/relationship-wise.
The lifestyle she is being forced into and that she finds hard to accept is one that is perhaps determined by the fact that she is in the "mental health system."
One of her friends said that it was her "pride" that killed her.
Is pride a "mental illness'?
In the suicide note that she wrote, amongst the first words are: "No one is to blame for my death."
May I boldly suggest that if anything was to blame for her death it was Psychiatry!------
All these things are just observations on the article and the story of Zoe.
They are just a view. I don't pretend that they are anything more than observations.
I am sorry if they offend. They are not meant to.
They are meant to question things that I think need questioning.
------
OK. It is one thing to say there are loads of creative people who suffer very severe mood swings and patterns of behaviour and mood that are very similar.
It is another thing to say "therefore they must all have a brain disease xyz and need drugs xyz"
when there is no evidence whatsoever for this.
It does not follow. Non sequitur.
------
"Bipolar disorder is not a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders...." Wikipedia, May 2008...
....
-----------------------------------
As it says on a website in Zoe's honour:
"Zoë was a star. She refused to live out her days as a mental invalid.
On 22 August 2000 she took her own life."
This is surely implying that she took her own life to avoid so-called "psychiatric treatment" rather than due to or as a "symptom" of an "illness". Sorry if that seems like an inappropriate comment but I feel it is fully warranted.
I was also born in 1972.
I have also been what I can only call a victim of psychiatry for at least two decades.
I can only say that it sometimes feels like a miracle that I am alive.
-----------------------------------
The mental health system is a trap!
And there is no escape without assistance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I am sincerely sorry if anyone is offended by anything in this post.
I do feel it is fully warranted on freedom of speech grounds.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2002/dec/11/medicineandhealth.lifeandhealth
With full and due respect to the writers, I have read this and I disagree with some of what is written in it.
I believe that there is no such thing as "manic depression"; and further that there is no such thing as mental illness.
From the actual words of the woman who eventually took her own life, you can I think see that it may be the case that at least an aspect of what upset the woman was her treatment by the mental health system, the role in life she was being forced to take on by the mental health system and her incarceration by the mental health system.
Pyschiatry is fundamentally a fraud and a crime.
The parents think that it was unawareness of the "illness" and its characteristics that prevented proper so-called "treatment" and help.
Could it not possibly be the belief that there was an illness at all, and what that belief entailed that was part of the problem?
----
"Bipolar affective disorder, as the ancient illness is now called, has been associated down the ages with originality and charisma, often with genius: Byron, Coleridge, Melville, Graham Greene, Virginia Woolf, Strindberg, Spike Milligan, Louis Althusser, Otto Klemperer, Stephen Fry, Vivien Leigh, Kurt Cobain, Francis Ford Coppola...
The illness is now regarded as a genetic neurobiological brain disease that affects one in 100 people to some degree."
An "ancient illness"? Would malaria be called an "ancient illness"? What an odd phrase!
I don't know of any Ancient Greek or Latin texts that refer to "manic depression"....
How do we know that all these people had this so-called "disease"?
Have we examined all of their brains?
Case not proven.
[Even if it were possible to examine all the brains of all the above-mentioned people and they were all found to have the same "brain lesion "X"" how could that prove that everyone who had severe highs and lows had the "disease"?
.....
Behaviour can be surely entirely determined by the (normal) functioning of the cortex or upper brain and surely any behaviour can be "generated" by this part of the brain without disease being present. ]
The illness is now "regarded" as "a brain disease"?
Would lung cancer come to be "regarded" as a lung disease?
Lung cancer woud surely be proven to be a lung disease.
Again this is an odd word - "regarded" - to use. Either it's a brain disease or it isn't.
Surely you can't "regard" it as one until you know it is one.
"Regard" implies an opinion.
It affects 1 in 100 "to some degree" - either it affects them or it doesn't. Strange.
Also, in this extract it is called a "disorder", an "illness" and a "disease" - which is it?
All three?
Also Byron may have had "manic depression" but he didn't spend his life being forced to take bullshit drugs, in and out of pysch wards against his will, on benefits etc...
He probably would do if he was around today!
These points reveal that what is being discussed is a social construct not a proven disease.
.....
"So, brainwashed, we didn't think of manic depression when she punched her elder sister in a quarrel (Zoë was very strong) and, in another quarrel, bit through her younger brother's sweater and into his chest."
What does the above extract imply? That violence is a symptom of so-called "manic depression".
How can that possibly be the case when it has been said that manic depression means "highs and lows in mood"?
???
If she had been violent and not had severe ups and downs in mood what would have been blamed then?
Violence is not itself a mental illness. It's a behaviour.
Who is really being "brain-washed" here?
Where is the evidence for what is being said?
" ...a terrifying place... very difficult to describe, which makes it harder for others to understand. The stigma is hard, too. It's hard to imagine being out of it... you feel you've gone mad even when you're lucid. Don't know what to do with myself. What to think? Where to start? Cannot envisage improvement in the future. Everything is quite frightening."
Does this refer to imprisonment on a psychiatric ward?
Is the stigma referred to the stigma of being labelled mentally ill?
"I love you all but I can't live like this."
Like what exactly?
Does she mean she can't live the life of a psychiatric patient?
She may have been very depressed but is psychiatry giving her the right help for this?
"her treatable but incurable illness."
Is there really an illness?
Where is the evidence that she was suffering from an illness of any kind?
"I'm living behind a glass wall." She contemplated a future on medication. In her last diary entry, she wrote: " ...if I don't get better, I will most probably have to accept a more humble job and more humble living arrangements than I would like. But make the most of things: I can work my way up... have to accept that at 27 I am not 'set up' job/house/relationship-wise.
The lifestyle she is being forced into and that she finds hard to accept is one that is perhaps determined by the fact that she is in the "mental health system."
One of her friends said that it was her "pride" that killed her.
Is pride a "mental illness'?
In the suicide note that she wrote, amongst the first words are: "No one is to blame for my death."
May I boldly suggest that if anything was to blame for her death it was Psychiatry!------
All these things are just observations on the article and the story of Zoe.
They are just a view. I don't pretend that they are anything more than observations.
I am sorry if they offend. They are not meant to.
They are meant to question things that I think need questioning.
------
OK. It is one thing to say there are loads of creative people who suffer very severe mood swings and patterns of behaviour and mood that are very similar.
It is another thing to say "therefore they must all have a brain disease xyz and need drugs xyz"
when there is no evidence whatsoever for this.
It does not follow. Non sequitur.
------
"Bipolar disorder is not a single disorder, but a category of mood disorders...." Wikipedia, May 2008...
....
-----------------------------------
As it says on a website in Zoe's honour:
"Zoë was a star. She refused to live out her days as a mental invalid.
On 22 August 2000 she took her own life."
This is surely implying that she took her own life to avoid so-called "psychiatric treatment" rather than due to or as a "symptom" of an "illness". Sorry if that seems like an inappropriate comment but I feel it is fully warranted.
I was also born in 1972.
I have also been what I can only call a victim of psychiatry for at least two decades.
I can only say that it sometimes feels like a miracle that I am alive.
-----------------------------------
The mental health system is a trap!
And there is no escape without assistance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I am sincerely sorry if anyone is offended by anything in this post.
I do feel it is fully warranted on freedom of speech grounds.
