The Berlin Manifesto for a Humane Psychiatry draws on the combined expertise of individuals with lived experience of mental distress and/or experience with psychiatry, their family members, and psychiatric and community mental health professionals. At meetings I initiated in Berlin during August and September 2019, a broad alliance of organizations and individuals (the Trialogical Action Group of the Berlin Manifesto of a Humane Psychiatry) drew up a catalog of demands with the aim of changing the untenable conditions of the entire mental health and psychosocial support system in Germany as quickly as possible.
The Trialogical Action Group presented the Berlin Manifesto on October 10 at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. The Manifesto presents five general ideas that should form the basis of all psychosocial support and mental health care structures, making them more acceptable and accessible. The goal is to enable persons in mental distress to recover in their own individual way and to develop their environment accordingly. It should also support their family and friends to remain or become more helpful along this journey of recovery. Changing the mental health and psychosocial support system in Germany requires public debate about the ways our society should help and support people in mental crisis and with chronic mental health problems. We believe the driving force behind all help and support should be humanitarianism and respect for inalienable human rights. It is this public debate that the Berlin Manifesto seeks to ignite.
Berlin Manifesto for a Humane Psychiatry
When examining the situation of psychiatry in Germany today, the picture is alarming: More and more psychotropic drugs, more use of electroshock, many avoidable coercive measures, the expansion of hospital, residential and forensic beds, and often inaccessible and inadequate outpatient services. In addition, there is an overabundance of bureaucratic and economic requirements in all areas of psychiatric care. These are some of the deficiencies that prevent care for people in psychological crises to — always — respect human dignity.
The consequences are serious and damaging. The long-term recovery rates of people with psychosocial disabilities have not improved over the last 20 years. The mortality rate of people who are given psychiatric diagnoses and who receive conventional treatments remains very high. Psychotropic drugs are prescribed far too often, for far too long, and in far too high dosages. This has a negative effect on all involved: persons with mental health problems, their family members, and those working in psychiatric services. From a human rights perspective, the reform of mental healthcare and support services is progressing far too slowly! This contradicts the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN-CRPD), which provides a legal framework for all forms of support for individuals in mental distress. The convention has been ratified by Germany in 2009.
A growing number of people do not want to accept this intolerable situation anymore. This manifesto has been drafted by individuals with lived experience of mental distress, family members, and psychiatric professionals as well as formal caregivers from Berlin. We have drawn up the following demands as guiding principles for a reform of the entire mental health and psychosocial support system in Germany. To bring these ideas to life is not only the responsibility of mental health professionals, of family members and users/consumers/survivors of psychiatric services; it’s everybody’s business and a task for the whole of society.
Guiding Principles for a Humane Psychiatry
People in their pursuit of happiness and well-being are the measure of our actions. The human rights principles established in international conventions such as the UN-CRPD must feed into all mental healthcare and support structures. A broad public debate including all stakeholders in the mental healthcare and psychosocial support system is necessary. The debate should avoid and counteract the stigmatization of people with psychological impairments.
Our demands are as follows:
1. Autonomy and self-determination
A humane psychiatry in accordance with the UN-CRPD guarantees the right of users/consumers/survivors to decide for themselves which type of psychiatric and psychosocial support services they want to use and how to do so. In crisis situations, if and when it is more difficult to determine the person’s own preferences, intensive individual support must be offered. Supported decision-making also helps to avoid coercive measures. Any support provided to better coordinate the use of services must remain “help for self-help.”
2. Economic security
Care should not address the individual alone, but must also take into account the social and economic situation of users and their respective environment. Income security and adequate housing are a prerequisite for any therapeutic success. It is a common experience that individuals who have limited working capability or who receive reduced-earning-capacity-pensions due to their impairments frequently fall into precarious economic situations. By contrast, measures to guarantee economic security must always be adjusted to the person’s needs.
3. Taking into account individual social networks
Mental or emotional crises as well as long-term impairments always arise and exist within a social arrangement and have an impact on it. Therefore, the inclusion of the person’s social network is necessary and must be guaranteed throughout the whole process of care and support. This requires the improvement and extension, as well as a greater variety, of crisis support services (e.g., crisis rooms, crisis pensions) that are low-threshold, accessible, and outside psychiatric hospitals. Outpatient and community care must take precedence over in-patient treatment. This requires, among other things, a bed reduction in acute psychiatric services, especially in large, overcrowded, and confusing mental health wards. These steps are necessary to open all mental healthcare and support structures to the whole society.
4. Transparency of mental health support systems
Users/consumers/survivors need comprehensive information about their rights as well as about available support services. This applies in particular when a variety of mental health care and support services are available locally. Being able to choose how and when care and support are provided complies with the human right of individuals that their will and preferences are respected while at the same time taking into account the realities of their lives. Transparency and diversity of services must be guaranteed for all phases of the recovery process. Psychiatric and psychosocial support systems should be financially transparent and their organization should be clear. Compliance with human rights principles in the whole mental healthcare and support system should be monitored regularly. Violations must be sanctioned effectively.
5. Participation
We need more participation at all levels. This requires a paradigm shift from a medical treatment model towards a support model. Mental health professionals cannot produce recovery; they can only accompany and facilitate it. In accordance with the principle of helping individuals to help themselves, users/consumers’ autonomy must be strengthened. Professionals should be experts in raising awareness and building capacity to take self-responsibility. Participation, however, is more! Ultimately, psychiatric and psychosocial support systems cannot be planned without experts with lived experience, as stated in the slogan “Nothing about us without us.”
Many of these demands have been discussed among experts for years. They are part of successful models and are included in the recommendations of the council of experts of the Federal Ministry of Health (in Germany). It is astonishing that they do not yet constitute the foundation of our mental healthcare and support systems.
To achieve this, we need commitment at all levels of society. Fundamental issues concerning public services as well as social and health policies are at stake. The “Psychiatrie-Enquête,” the German expert commission’s Report on the State of Psychiatry, initiated significant improvements in psychiatric care since 1975. However, against the background of a bureaucratization and marketization in mental health services, these reform approaches have been worn down and lost in many aspects.
It is time to change this!
We invite you to support our efforts to achieve a more humane psychiatry in Germany. In signing the Berlin Manifesto you can call for the inviolability of human dignity in all areas of psychiatry!
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Sign the Berlin Manifesto for a Humane Psychiatry at www.change.org/berliner-manifest
Further information can be found at www.berliner-manifest.de
E-Mail: [email protected]
Members of the Trialogical Action Group who together authored the Berlin Manifesto in August and September 2019 and/or translated it into English in October 2019 (in alphabetical order): Stephan B. Antczack, Gamma Bak, Burkhard Bröge, Uwe Brohl-Zubert, Julia Eder, Dietlinde Gogl, Sabine Haller, Jacob Helbeck, Ingrid E. Johnson, Ute Krämer, Thomas Künneke, Anja Lehmann, Peter Lehmann, Tina Lindemann, Ule Mädgefrau, Yvonne Mahling, Peter Mast, Katrin Nordhausen, Jann E. Schlimme, Uwe Wegener, Stefan Weinmann, Gudrun Weißenborn, Claudia Wiedow, Jenny Ziegenhagen.
Dr. Schlimme, I highly commend you for putting forth this Manifesto and Petition. It is encouraging to know there are still psychiatrists out there in the world who have integrity, compassion and a conscience. It takes integrity for a professional to acknowledge and speak out on the destructive disaster psychiatry is. It seems most psychiatrists are too power hungry, or insecure, to ever let go of the whole power and control thing and are mostly concerned about their status, ego, privilege, etc. Thank you for your humanity! I truly hope your endeavours in Germany are successful!
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Thank you for your support. We hope to raise enough attraction with it in the chaotic media main stream these days.
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This sounds a lot like the posters on the walls at the hospital who subjected me to 7 hours of torture after lying to police and having me snatched from my bed after I was drugged without my knowledge. “We Value” and “Mission Statements” such as showing dignity to “patients” and having processes in place for complaints.
And then when you make a complaint, it’s investigated and found that the complainant was wronged your told by the Operations Manager that they will Fuking Destroy you if you keep complaining. Then they begin with slandering you with fraudulent documents which 8 years later are still being relied on by the current Minister for Health to further slander you in order to ensure their reputation is not harmed by exposing their criminal conduct and human rights abuses. What reputation? If it weren’t for the fact they are terrorizing our community they would know what is being said behind their backs. Mock executions and threats of pack rape seen as being ‘coercive methods’ and ‘poor choice of words’ by our police. “We don’t have a copy of the Criminal Code” at a large metropolitan police station. (And i’m supposed to believe that Sargent?). Though it does ensure that the organised criminals giving instructions to police are enabled. Call him a doctor if you like Sargent but you might want to check the documents before doing what your told. Save having to say later when I tell you about the failed attempt to unintetionally negatively outcome me that “it might be best you don’t know about that”. With no Criminal Code though failing to perform your duty might not be a crime either? Pervert? Nah, off to another kangaroo court called the CCC
As far as these United Nation declarations and stuff goes my country is throwing them out as we write. The CRPD made a statement that the Mental Health Laws in my country were a violation of human rights and that the treatments may constitute torture. That statement was neutralised by writing new Mental Health Laws that now permit teens to consent to ECTs and whilst they failed with the ability to sterilize children without parental consent, i’m sure they have a loophole they can rely on working.
Our Prime Minister is currently making the claim that we do not want International bodies telling us what we should do, something that has always been popular rhetoric (and i’m sure those who remember German history would recognise). Enabling human rights abuses and torture always sounds good until its you being subjected to it. Anyway, we should have our Euthanasia Bill rushed through parliament in record time soon. They took longer over the Animal Welfare Act. Still, horse racing is the sport of Kings eh?
Under our laws the punishment for abusing an animal is double what it is for the abuse of a mental patient. And they have actually prosecuted cases of animal abuse, something that can not be said of abuse of mental patients. This despite people being left in their own faeces for hours on end to punish their ‘bad behaviour’. They even took her leg braces away so she couldn’t get out of the bed. Horror stories galore and not one prosecution.
Lets hope these are not more empty words
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Thank you for your thoughtful comment! The manifesto is, as I said in the blog, a paper drawn up by 23 persons with diverse backgrounds. Most of them have lived experience in mental distress and / or psychiatry – they would not work with me on such a manifesto if I would not mean what I say and would not prove it – or at least try to prove it – in daily practice as psychotherapist and psychiatrist. Of course I make mistakes, and I encourage the persons I accompany to criticize me for that. And they do – which is helpful for developing the therapeutical relationship. Please get me right, it is far from perfect.
What we try to do with this manifesto is change the help system in Germany which is often more like the situations you describe in your comment. So: we work for this change and are grateful for the support form MiA.
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Thankyou Jann,
One of my fellow countrymen suggested that I look at what was occurring in Germany because in his opinion they were getting it right. So as you can imagine I am surprised to hear what your saying. I thought perhaps history had resulted in people realising how things can get out of control very quickly.
I’m glad to hear you encourage criticism. I note that one way of testing the integrity of persons who would abuse positions of power is identifying when they make mistakes, and how they act to resolve them.
In my instance the people who “made the mistake” of identifying me as having the status of “patient” knew what they were doing was criminal, otherwise they would not have known which documents to conceal, and how to send fraudulent documents to lawyers and have them slander me to my whole community. This is very easily proved by allowing my lawyers to tell me who they think my doctor was, something they claim they can not do for reasons of confidentiality (What? I can’t know who my doctor is? Or what drugs I can be ‘spiked’ with and by whom?)This demonstrates an evil of the heart, not just the mind (and therefore not your area of expertise). And it gets even worse when one examines what was done and by whom when those fraudulent documents were identified and exposed. My don’t the rats run for cover when you lift the lid and expose them.
Still we can’t have the public knowing that while the Cat was away, the mice turned to Rats. The Chief Psychiatrist and Minister totally derelict in their duty to protect the public from Organised Criminals operating in our hospitals. This is the issue with the cost of cover ups being cheaper that litigation (how much for a hot shot in an Emergency Department versus compensation for torture and kidnapping?) And 8 years later the new Minister still using the same fraudulent and slanderous documents to ensure I am denied any access to effective legal representation.
It says in the Hagakure that if one makes a mistake it is best that one corrects themselves as quickly as possible when it is demonstrated to them. This way if anyone else comes to you and says you made a mistake, you can reply by telling them, yes, and I have done all I can to correct my error what else is there to say? Behaving ethically and with honor has not been their strong point to say the least. In my instance as I state 8 years on and they are still concealing the truth with falsehoods. And the public are not aware and continue to vote for these frauds?
Still, I wish you well with your endeavours, as i’m sure you do me in my search for a place where truth is preferred to lies, and healing rather than torture and maiming/killing to maintain a falsehood for profit.
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Missed the edit time.
Questions I have. Where does one make a complaint about human rights abuses, in particular the use of torture? What I have found is that the State Government has no mechanism despite it being required under the Convention to resolve complaints on matters of torture. Instead they rely on the ‘refoulment’ of anyone who has been tortured. Where does one go with issues of refoulment?
How many people are being tortured by the exploitation of the loophole of not torture if it is “inherent in or incidental to lawful sanction”? So for example in my instance ‘spiking’ my drink with benzodiazepines and planting a knife for police to find is enough to overcome this protection against the use of torture. Off we go (the techniques used at Guantanamo are now lawful and seen as ‘coercive’ rather than torture) and any complaints drive them insane with gaslighting (their families will assist in this once you threaten them). Further refoulment but hey, in for a penny, in for a pound it would seem. And believe me when the government starts torturing people don’t rely on your friends or the frauds who claim they will stand up for human rights, they run like Hell. Hypocrites they are described as in my Book. They will use their oaths as a cover.
What good are these Conventions and Human Rights if there is no access to a remedy (cheers Jim:) and the people with a duty to perform keep chanting the words “insufficient evidence” despite the burden of proof being easily met? This criminal negligence will of course come back to bite them eventually when a ‘favour’ is needed by another corrupt public official wishing to lay blame elsewhere. But they don’t seem to see that far ahead.
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This is a very good question. I experienced a couple of incidents with psychiatrists in New York City in the 15 years I lived there that – to my humble opinion – go against my human rights, and I wouldn’t know where to complain about this. Here in Berlin, there are different places where you can go to complain. (Only here in Berlin, I luckily found a great psychotherapist who is also an MD, who encouraged me to tamper off of medications. So far I’ve been lucky in Berlin, nothing terrible has happened here yet….but I’ve also heard terrible stories from others, so bad things can happen here too.) One of the institutions in Berlin, where you can complain is the BIP, they even offer their services in different languages, and this is their flyer in English: https://www.psychiatrie-beschwerde.de/fileadmin/user_upload/BIP/Flyer/BIP-EinlegerENG-web.pdf, and there are many more all around Germany. This is another leaflet I found: https://www.dgsp-ev.de/fileadmin/user_files/dgsp/pdfs/Publikationen/Unabhaengige_Beschwerdestellen_in_der_Psychiatrie_-_Ein_Ratgeber.pdf, I don’t think they offer this booklet in English, but you could always copy and paste the text into an online translator.
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Thanks IngrideJohnson. Good to know some countries are at least trying to provide avenues for remedy.
I would have thought our Commission for Human Rights would have been the avenue for complaints regarding Torture, but apparently not. They tell me they don’t deal with it and refer back to the State bodies, ie the people who authorised the Torture in the first instance (“no emergency provisions”, “no superior authority”). And significantly those State bodies can not investigate where certain individuals are involved (for example a Minister). Thus if a Minister authorises the use of Torture then the complaint is effectively buried (and in some cases quite literally).
Quite clever and i’m glad I can’t be forced into playing cards with these cheats. Oh wait, I can when they plant a knife on me. It is of course a breach of the Convention but who is looking? The UN? Took them 20 years to condemn our previous MHA as a “violation of human rights”, see you in another 20 years. A bit hypocritical criticising Saudi over Jamal Khashoggi when we are doing the same thing, only bringing people under the Mental Health Act with ‘set ups’ to make it “inherent in or incidental to lawful sanction” (Article 1.1).
I did hear that there was one of the Commissioners on the Human Rights Commission rocking the boat some time back but she has been removed now. Best they appoint someone prepared to poke themselves in the eye if they think about doing their job lol.
Once again thanks for the info.
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Thank you for speaking out against the staggering in scope harm, and murders, in which the psychiatrists are participating. As one who works with people labeled as “psychotic,” I hope you will be honest with your clients, fellow psychiatrists, and educate others that both the antidepressants and antipsychotics can create “psychosis,” via anticholinergic toxidrome poisoning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxidrome
The ADHD drugs, other pharmaceutical drugs, and of course street drugs can also create what gets called “psychosis.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/kids-health/common-adhd-medications-may-cause-psychosis-study-finds-n985616
The psychiatrists also need to learn that “psychosis” is NOT a “lifelong, incurable, genetic” issue. It does go away, once one has been weaned from the psych drugs, and once one’s brain heals from the damage done by the neurotoxic psychiatric drugs.
Truly, we do need the psychiatrists to end their ongoing crimes against humanity. Their modern day, all Western civilization, psychiatric “holocaust” has been going on for decades.
https://www.naturalnews.com/049860_psych_drugs_medical_holocaust_Big_Pharma.html
Thank you for speaking out, as a psychiatrist. But it’s a shame the majority of psychiatrists learned nothing from the Nazi psychiatric holocaust, and have been claiming to know nothing about the common adverse effects of the drugs they prescribe for decades. Best wishes in your endeavors. Change is most definitely needed.
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Thank you for your comment and support. I cannot find much to disagree – I would like to add that the so called “antidepressants” and neuroleptics also cause a lot of problems when tapered. Actually this is the major block of my daily work – helping to taper these drugs and find different ways to get along / manage / deal with or overcome the mental distress and its psychosocial and life.historical backgrounds. The solutions need to be psychosocial and as normal as possible – therapeutic help should be self-help of course. That implies that my help is only temporary and that a time will come, when it is no longer needed. Sometimes this time comes quickly, sometimes it takes quite some time. Unfortunately only a minority of psychiatrists think this way in Germany – it is truly a shame for my profession and a disaster for their patients.
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I agree. The psychiatrists are participating in a “disaster for their patients,” as well as a disaster for our societies in general. Their child abuse and rape covering up proclivity has functioned to aid, abet, and empower the pedophiles and child sex traffickers.
https://www.amazon.com/Pedophilia-Empire-Chapter-Introduction-Disorder-ebook/dp/B0773QHGPT
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2019/01/23/18820633.php?fbclid=IwAR2-cgZPcEvbz7yFqMuUwneIuaqGleGiOzackY4N2sPeVXolwmEga5iKxdo
https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/04/heal-for-life/
https://community.healthimpactnews.com/topic/4576/america-1-in-child-sex-trafficking-and-pedophilia-cps-and-foster-care-are-the-pipelines
I also agree about the withdrawal problems with the antipsychotics and antidepressants. The majority of psychiatrists claim the common withdrawal symptoms of these drug classes are “a return of the disease,” or a worse DSM disorder. For example, withdrawal from the antidepressants looks like “bipolar” to our DSM deluded “mental health” workers. And withdrawal from the antipsychotics does result in a “super sensitivity manic psychosis.”
But, as I said, if you can avoid the drugs, one’s brain does eventually heal itself from the neurotoxic poisonings. I’m proof. And the child abuse covering up “mental health” workers, and their religious controllers, are now terrified of my “too truthful,” Spirit led, anti-child abuse artwork. Because it visually documents the truth in a way that is considered “prophetic” to the criminal ignoramuses within the “mental health” field.
Unfortunately I’m living in a sick society, where what’s all the rage with the monied powers that shouldn’t be, is Spirit cooking, and pedophilia art.
http://ibankcoin.com/zeropointnow/2016/11/26/sick-lets-revisit-the-podesta-penchant-for-pedophilic-cannibalistic-and-satanic-art/
Gosh, I was attacked, and neurotoxin poisoned, way back in late 2001, for knowing the wrong people were in charge of America way back then. But I was correct. Banker’s daughters likely innately know more about bankers’ wars, than either our religious leaders or their “mental health” minion.
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/all-wars-are-bankers-wars/
But the battle of good vs. evil continues …. and the worst of history is seemingly repeating. The war mongering and profiteering, bailout needing, fiscally irresponsible, “banks steal $trillions worth of houses,” globalist banksters do seem to want to take us into a WWIII, just like I knew they would want to do, in 2001.
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“Humane psychiatry” is an oxymoron; there is no “humane” way to inculcate a self-definition of “diseased,” “disordered” or otherwise defective in an already suffering person. Psychiatry is abusive by definition and always will be.
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Oxymoronic language like “virtually spotless”, “light yet filling” and “military intelligence” have become standards. Phrases are redefined like “recession” to “necessary downturn”, “crude oil on a beach” to “moose”, “civilian death” to “collateral damages” and “being killed by your own army” is now called “Friendly Fire”. (Disposable Heroes of HipHoprisy Television, the drug of the Nation).
Good point Oldhead. The language being used is important. “Unintended Negative Outcomes” lol. They were snapping peoples necks during ‘restraints’ Doc. One i’ll add to my list.
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Seriously, what is “friendly” about being shot in the back by your own troops??
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Truth.
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“Time keeps on circling, circling into the future.”
If it weren’t for inhumane psychiatry there would be no need for humane psychiatry. Problem. When inhumane psychiatry has marginalized and disenfranchized, one might say, subhumanized and decitizenized, a segment of the population, humane psychiatry is going to bring it back into the fold again? Let me say that I have serious doubts about the matter. Once inhumane psychiatry targeted a population, humane psychiatry is still targeting them but in a different way. If you really wanted a humane psychiatry, you would automatically and directly address the need to end forced treatment. Leaning on the potential for international law to do so, you’re first point, is a way of addressing the problem obliquely rather than directly. I get the idea, through this, that you are more interested in promoting your profession than in maintaining and protecting human rights. Here’s more ‘incremental change’ chicken feed. Someday, sometime in the future, perhaps…in a universe far, far away…we will be ready to dispense with forcing unwanted treatments on people. Uh huh. When it comes down to it, in my view, there’s no day like today for doing so.
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When inhumane psychiatry has marginalized and disenfranchized, one might say, subhumanized and decitizenized, a segment of the population, humane psychiatry is going to bring it back into the fold again?
Nice bit of random insight.
Someday, sometime in the future, perhaps…in a universe far, far away…we will be ready to dispense with forcing unwanted treatments on people.
Of course, just be patient…don’t you want to be “practical”?
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Excessive patience is a vice.
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I’m all for practicality, OldHead. I just have an issue with nonsense, not nonsense as nonsense, but rather nonsense taken for sense. Nonsense as nonsense is silly fun. Nonsense taken for sense is a pain for everyone.
Look up “praxis” sometime. It’s a word that is big in some Marxist circles, and for good reason. Unreason is simply not going to take anyone very far in any direction they should choose to go in.
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Thank you for this article. I have a question though about the first point, “autonomy and self-determination”.
What will happen when a person chooses to end their suffering for good and is found out to be preparing therefor? Will their decision-making capacity and refusal of “help” even matter? Will those who do not perceive said suffering get to decide that the person has to live through their pain for the former’s emotional benefit? “Intensive individual support” doesn’t answer the question to me.
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I agree with Lloyd, I’m not sure the suicide question is answered (I choose to use that scary word!). I personally believe a person has the right to end their own life, but some religions forbid it. By all means a person shouldn’t be criminalized for wanting to commit suicide, or thinking about it, or planning it, or toying with the idea. Oh let me add one more crime: writing a poem with the word “Death” in it.
If these principles were closely and strictly followed, psychiatry would go broke very fast. No one would voluntarily choose to be marginalized, drugged, and labeled. No one would choose organ failure and early death. No one would choose forced unemployment. Oh dear, poor shrinks. They’d moan about losing their jobs or not getting paid enough. They would complain because now, they have to be honest (if it were enforced). Oh dear! Maybe some of them can try out psychiatric disability. After all, you don’t have to work, right? They did it to us. Why don’t they try it out?
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Thank you for posting this beautiful article.
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A bit like the one day they are chemically castrating and ECTing homosexuals and the next day they are cured and no longer require ‘treatment’, my government is going to allow people to be euthanased given certain conditions are met (ie that they fill out the forms with a ‘verbal’, and we know what will be done about that, nothing). I am assuming that one will need to obtain the stamp from a psychiatrist in order to have the ‘prescription’ filled.
I did ask a few pharmacists about how they were going to get around the supply of chemicals used for killing people and was told the ‘blind eye’ method. Pretty much standard fare for government here anyway. Torture people and then turn away from anyone who complains.
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The history of psychiatry in Germany is utterly appalling. Their methods of mass killing were taken up and used by the Nazis. The German psychiatrists were not under the boot of Hitler indeed even Hitler tried to stop the killing but it continued in the ‘hospitals’ even after the war and as far as I’m aware none of them were brought to justice… Their courts couldn’t decide if killing the patients was the right or wrong thing to do and that was right up into the 1970’s . Psychiatry needs to be buried not reformed.
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Thank you all for your thoughtful comments on the topic “Can psychiatry be reformed” or “Can there be a humane psychiatry”? Isn’t “humane psychiatry” a paradox? I have my doubts too, since the background for this paradox is a (often mainly biological) medical model as “Oldhead” wrote. Personally I could do without the term – but mostly I want to do without this medical-model-system whether termed psychiatry or gnagnagna. I like to help without this medical model – and I can do that within this system in my office (kind of subversive, but not really subversive of course).
We as action group are aware of this problem and we had an intense debate about this question: do we really want to use the old term “psychiatry” (with all the problems discussed here)? At last we decided to use the term because we wanted a debate about help for persons with “mental health” problems/psychosocial “disabilities” and we wanted a PUBLIC debate. In other words: we want persons to participate in this debate who are not already critical about psychiatry or not already informed about these topics.
Anyway, we are convinced that in the actual help system in Germany humane (respectful, sustaining and self-help oriented) help for persons with mental crises/psychosocial disabilities is also possible and also given. Many of our action group have experienced that too – also often the opposite has been the case – and many of our action group are actually providing it – not saying that we are perfect in this. But this kind of help is NOT the standard and it is NOT already the direction into which the help system is developing. To the contrary, we have the feeling that the help system is in real danger to remain unchanged or become even more inhumane and we want to fight against that.
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Excellent follow up and acknowledgment about the perils of using the term ‘psychiatry’, as well as the harms inherent in the current system of “help”.
“Help” is definitely needed. I think people get caught up in thinking there is an either/or. If we don’t want psychiatry then we must be denying the need for “help”, which couldn’t be further from the truth – speaking only for myself, of course.
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I agree, Kindred. Help, yes, but not that kind of help.
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I am saddened that mostly, what will help people is information, accurate, complete, and relevant information.
Such as….legal information about landlord/tenant laws, information about what constitutes domestic abuse, information about job openings in the area, or informing the person that “the pill” can cause depression.
I guess that’s why search engines seem to be a popular way to get “help.” I would trust a search engine over a psychiatrist any day!
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There’s a difference between psychiatry and “help,” as psychiatry interprets even genuine help as “treatment,” which causes it’s clients/victims to internalize self-images of being somehow defective.
So it would be advantageous to distinguish between the two — psychiatry is more than just a “term,” it signifies a particular ideological orientation which defines inability or unwillingness to conform to the dominant culture as a problem with the individual, not the social order.
Psychiatry is a tool of social control, and any system administered by psychiatry will serve that primary function. So a true “help system” needs to divorce itself from psychiatric control.
Good luck with that. 🙂
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This year I have witnessed a patient being beaten up by the police in their psychiatric cell, why? They had called the police very many times, so the police came to confiscate their mobile phone. Why did they call the police? They were being viciously abused in the so called hospital. Patients being beaten up by other patients, patients being beaten up and viciously verbally abused by the so called carer’s and nurses. I witnessed one teenager in a secure unit escape his abuse over a high wire fence and be brought back by the police and right back to his abusers many times. Many times he escaped, many times he was brought right back to the same hell. Psychiatry needs to die.
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This is unacceptable! Where did this happen? In the US? This needs to change.
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Streetphotobeing, it would be great if someone could submit this story to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CIDTP) Nils Melzer, who is collecting submissions until November 25, for a report he plans to submit to the Human Rights Council in March 2020. I will also submit my story from my involuntary hospitalization at the New York Presbytarian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City in 2014/2015 as well. My story is not as dramatic, but I do see what happened to me as a violation of my human rights. More information on how to submit you can find here: https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Torture/SRTorture/Pages/Call.aspx.
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Thank you for that info ingride. Am in the UK and it is worse than that, I made it conservative for fear being moderated. The cells were crawling with ants, for 6 months everyday and night this went on. They changed the doors on the cells to being opened by swipe cards but would not give the patients a swipe card to get into their cell, everyone else had a swipe card even the cleaners, but not the patient, this meant that when verbal abuse/violence kicked off they couldn’t lock themselves into their cell for safety. They could afford the many thousands for the doors but not get rid of ants, plus they immediately found a way to use the new doors to inflict more abuse by withholding a swipe card.
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Commenting as moderator: Just so you know, I will never moderate you for including accurate descriptions of your experience, no matter how ugly it was. Moderation is only for things that attack or distract, not for things that are true but uncomfortable. Sharing the true but uncomfortable is a lot of what this site is all about!
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Not sure about the US ingridejohnson, but there have been moves here in Australia to make it a crime to report to the United Nations. Details on the Lawyers for Human Rights website was where I read about it. (https://alhr.org.au)
The torturers don’t want anyone escaping the system that is set up to ensure any complaints are not dealt with by anyone except the State governments via ‘refoulment’ of the victims. Even our Prime Minister has pointed out how the rort is working via the kangaroo courts of corruption watchdogs. (His words not mine) We have a tourism industry to protect and having people who wish to cuddle Koalas know that they might be subjected to torture in our hospitals is a no no lol
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SPB — WTF!!?? Just realized you’re “back” for the 1st time in a year. Glad you’re alive — any chance you’ve corresponded with Auntie P. lately? Hope y’all aren’t spending all your time at MITUK. Cheers. 🙂
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Not at MITUK oldhead. you’re correct.. I almost died.
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We saw the same sort of things occurring during the Royal Commission into Institutional responses to Child Sexual Abuse streetphotobeing. A young boy who had been repeatedly sexually assaulted escaped and went to police, only to be returned to his abusers and be locked in a cage he couldn’t stand up in for a week and repeatedly assaulted.
These “character flaws” of the individuals doing the assaulting were not seen as being criminal offences by police. Thus they exercise their discretionary powers and choose (important word in this context) not to take any further action. Thus certain individuals find themselves above the law, and are free to use police services in their criminal conduct.
I’ve been threatened with arrest for having documents that prove I was tortured and kidnapped. And it has been positively amazing how many people turn their backs on you for fear of being targeted by our police. “It never happened” i’ve heard from witnesses threatened by police, when they know they are lying to my face. What goes around comes around though. We know who they are and they are now compromised.
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The most vulnerable in psych ‘hospitals’ are not able to wash and look after themselves. They end up smelling because nobody helps them, what then happens is that the other patients initially complain to ‘nurses’ then it goes to the ‘ward management’ they say to the complaining patients… ‘we can’t do anything it would go against their human rights’…then they add… ‘but you can’. That is the green light for the vulnerable patients to be abused and I witnessed horrendous verbal and physical abuse while the so called ‘carers’ ‘nurses’ and ‘management’ looked on.
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I was forced into the tub once. That’s in my book, which is free for anyone to read on my website. My new book will be available around the end of the year.
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Streetphotobeing….That is horrendous. And they call us sick? Just to read some of this stuff gives me ‘anxiety’, but I have to hide that because it is an MI
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I think ‘humane psychiatry’ is an oxymoron. What is humane about calling another’s distress a disorder and then giving or forcing that person to take harmful mind-altering drugs??
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Hi Jann, I read your article and I ‘soul’ searched. I get turned off at anything psychiatric, I fear searchers and more studies and talk of changes. The world is saturated with psychiatry, worse than religion ever was. Every time I have tried to seek out the nicest seeming person remotely related to the illness model, or the “there is something WRONG with you” model, I walk away disappointed. But you know what? I am pleased that you as a psychiatrist has the integrity and guts to actually realize that something is very wrong about psychiatry. I know as a psychiatrist you are limited as to how bold you can become as far as fighting for change. If changes do not happen, do me a favor and be the best human you can be within your field, so that at least a few of your visitors can benefit from your care. I always wonder how the psychiatrists when hitting that end of a long road, feel about their contributions to mankind’s wellness. We cannot keep reducing people to disorders, diseases, labels and poisons. We can recognize people need support. I hope you manage to make enough change that at least your clients are not seen as ill or sick….I have a question. What made you want to create change?
Here is a link, utterly boring but is the type of thing that makes me nauseous https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psychiatrist-large/201203/psychiatry-and-society
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