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You don't have to be stupid to be fooled by psychiatry. Plenty of smart people have been gullible enough to believe it's a legitimate medical specialty. But once you see it, you can't unsee it. You've let a glorified drug dealer play Russian roulette with your neurochemistry.

@JDaviesPhD Some people have fixed, false beliefs in psychopharmacology held despite clear contradictory evidence and lack of logical support. It's like they're living in "different realities." If you say this to them as a patient, they'll electrocute your brain (for your mental health!)

I am a 'clinician' & it's my experience that this 'well-defined concept' is often misused to excuse lazy thinking, knee-jerk dismissal, lack of curiosity as to what meaning the unusal belief may conceal, & of course, the ascription of a highly stigmatising & demoralising label.

@mgoldingmd That's your takeaway from the article? Very sad indeed.

Well worth the read. It’s very difficult to get some patients who need psychiatric medications to stay on them. Very sad.

@jonathanstea Depending on the concern, the placebo effect can work wonders through those approaches... without any harmful "side-effects" 🤷‍♀️

Alternative medicine grifters often abuse the phrase “addressing the root cause” when they talk about treating health concerns. The problem is not so much that “addressing the root cause” is wrong—in fact, treating multiple causes is a mainstay of mainstream health care. The problem is that in alternative medicine, a pseudoscientific or false “root cause” is often targeted. For example, you might see an advertisement that a person’s posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms can be treated by addressing the trauma they experienced in a past life using past life regression therapy. Or you might read about using Reiki to treat the “root cause” of a person’s depressive symptoms, which is mistakenly believed to be their unbalanced energy. The truth is that alternative medicine practitioners rarely possess the qualifications to evaluate the causes of health concerns, let alone diagnose or recommend treatment.

@Yrrepmot Most psychiatrists believe they possess some kind of special mind-reading capabilities. They're a danger to society.

The psychiatrist (who I have never even met) is now saying the damage and withdrawal I am experiencing from Sertraline is “perceived” and they are “not convinced that the observed affect is from discontinuation of Sertraline”… 😒 This drug has taken everything from me and they won’t even acknowledge the harm it has caused. I never consented to this kind of risk and now they’re gaslighting me. Also, note how they try and blame my ARVs instead for all the symptoms associated with SSRIs. Since when were psychiatrists experts on HIV medication? My HIV Dr has never mentioned any of these symptoms could be caused by Truvada or Raltegravir. And it’s not commonly reported by pwHIV. What an absolute joke. #medicalgaslighting #PSSD #Sertraline #brainInjury #HIV

@dsowens17 Their lack of insight is truly remarkable.

This is a common problem with people reporting harms from SSRIs. Those who prescribe them are far quicker to blame other drugs (or in fact anything else) they don't prescribe rather than those they prescribe themselves. This is regardless of temporality and symptoms matching well established patterns in SSRI withdrawal... They rarely seem aware of the cognitive dissonance they are demonstrating....

@BadreNicolas That was all I needed from my mom when she decided to call 911 and give them all kinds of bizarre, slanderous statements about me to force me to see a psychiatrist, as if that would fix my financial crisis or my husband's abusive behavior toward me and our young kids.

I used to work in an ER doing psychiatric evaluations. Most people came in intoxicated. Many were seeking respite at shelters. Some were in dangerous situations, almost always precarious ones. We didn’t have much to offer: a safe bed for a few hours, a bus pass, a free sandwich. I would always offer to dress the sandwich for them: “Do you like mayo? Mustard? Want me to sneak some roast beef from the cafeteria? Are you okay with mystery meat? I think it’s turkey.” It wasn’t much, but it was a brief moment of kindness and intimacy. It seemed to soothe all sorts of hurt; it was definitely meaningful to me. Psychiatry is really hard. It can be difficult to know what is going on and even harder to know how we can help. Sometimes the simplest kind of humanity makes the difference. In French, a friend , a “copain”, is someone with whom you share bread. Sometimes that is all someone needs, even just for a moment.

@JDaviesPhD It takes a huge leap of faith to believe that psychiatry is a legitimate medical field. Not to mention a special version of reality where normal rules don't apply, blatant COIs aren't a problem, and common sense is disregarded.

55.7% of US psychiatrists accept pharma industry payments. Studies show the pharma industry spends billions per year making payments to clinical trial authors, DSM panel & FDA committee members, creating COIs at every level of the drug approval process. madinamerica.com/2026/03/undisc…

@jadethebpdcoach @jaunty_aphorism You might (rightfully) see it as an issue of clinical abuse while they might see it as providing much-needed care.

@meanharmonic @jaunty_aphorism This would be more of a separate issue of clinical abuse of a patient than a simple consensus among your treatment team

🧵 For someone offering “peer support” this is a ridiculously paternalistic view: clinicians confer privately, reach a conclusion alone, & then inform the patient who they are. How delightfully mid-century. Are you also advocating for the reopening of asylums? Lobotomies? 🤔 1/31

@jadethebpdcoach @jaunty_aphorism That's not always true. With a system like this in place, it's very easy for a treatment team to destroy a patient's personal agency and remove their civil rights. It can be extremely dangerous to disagree, depending on the psychiatrist's temperament. robwipond.com/your-consent-i…

@jaunty_aphorism Patients are free to disagree with their treatment teams’ consensus. A treatment team having a consensus does not reduce a patient’s personal agency

@awaisaftab @DoctorPerin Does your EMR not automatically share patients' records? Any provider using Epic has this feature available.

@DoctorPerin Ppl in the US may think the diagnoses are following them but it’s usually just their psychopathology!

Diagnoses are provisional, negotiated interpretations situated within evolving epistemologies. Why isn’t de-diagnosis more popular?

@eyebaws1 Their other source of knowledge is what they're told by family/friends of the patient. If someone is in an abusive relationship, they can pretty much guarantee there's no escape.

You know what’s delusional? Thinking it’s ok to commit felonies. Civil mental illness patients haven’t reached that level of crazy. What is any alleged psychiatrist doing treating civil patients if they don’t think their largest source of knowledge is what patient tells them?

I can’t believe western society has bought into the psyop that psychiatrists can have any claim to expertise whatsoever when they don’t believe the patient. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard.

@BasedPsychMD Finally... men are men, women are women, and drugs are drugs.

People are waking up with regards to psych meds. The deprescribing movement feels like a freight train picking up momentum.

@awaisaftab Are you seeing such a critic in the room with us now, Awais? I don't know why anyone would hate psych diagnoses & treatment if not because of their love for the suffering people and the desire to ensure that every person avoids the harms that come with believing it's "medicine".

Be wary of the critics of medicine who are powered more by their hatred of diagnosis and treatment than their love for the suffering people and the desire to ensure that every person gets access to the help they need.

@eyebaws1 @olidnejad I wouldn't stoop that far to their level, but I do think that they're mentally sick. (Or just too stupid / too lazy to research the drugs they prescribe or the history of their own profession) youtu.be/3Ah5We3Lsrs?si…

@meanharmonic @olidnejad Yeah. I just think those that are ok w violating ppl’s basic rights and bodily autonomy are subhuman trash. There’s something intractably wrong with them and they’re not a good fit for this world.

Really important message from Sophie about the realities of living with an SMI and the personal impact of unhelpful, largely ideological, messaging that minimises the practical significance of symptoms.

@eyebaws1 @olidnejad 💯 that's exactly what it is. Some of those *experts* don't even realize they're brainwashed by pharma marketing / training -- but some of them know exactly what they're doing, and they enjoy it. I know a sadistic smirk when I see one. Psychiatry is a filthy, corrupt industry.

@meanharmonic @olidnejad but in my EXPERT opinion that is disorganized speech and i am correct bc i am an EXPERT". it kind of becomes full out transparent coercive authoritarianism.

@eyebaws1 @olidnejad It's a catch-22 scenario. Heads they win, tails you lose. Profess your belief in your "mental illness" and your "need" for their drugs, or you're so sick that you don't know how sick you are. There's no third option. It's unfalsifiable, pseudoscientific BS used for profit. 💊🤑🥼

@olidnejad I mean, some of us have been held at hospital against our will for like 10 months so that shitty psychiatrists can induce symptoms of severe mental illness. Who wouldn’t be mentally ill after being subjected to that.

@BadreNicolas @Foreman1David @suzypuss @DrAnnieHickox @samhall404 @awaisaftab Seems like a rejection of biology, physics, & the way the human body naturally works. It's important because "doing it anyway" (despite how you feel) is a foundational skill upon which countless other life skills can be built. Fitness easily snowballs into other healthy habits.

@meanharmonic @Foreman1David @suzypuss @DrAnnieHickox @samhall404 @awaisaftab Yes, you're making a fair point. There's a time and place for that comment, and maybe some relationships haven't reached that place and time. But rejecting the whole philosophy of growth and pursuing virtue would be going too far.

I can’t help but see the British preoccupation with “overdiagnosis” as the flailing of a culture that has given up on the clinical mission of addressing the full spectrum of human distress and disability, because they think they can’t afford to provide the needed care (scarcity), because some people ought to suffer (stoicism), and because some people are only pretending to suffer (malingering).

@Foreman1David @suzypuss @DrAnnieHickox @BadreNicolas @samhall404 @awaisaftab It's completely counterintuitive and maybe even impossible to recognize unless/until you've experienced it for yourself. But once you do, you can start to build momentum in the right direction. Walk before you run. It's not a moral failure, just a common misunderstanding.

@Foreman1David @suzypuss @DrAnnieHickox @BadreNicolas @samhall404 @awaisaftab When I feel too tired to lift, that's usually my signal that I need to lift. If I wait for the tired feeling to go away, it'll never happen. But if I push through all the discomfort and "just" do it anyway (easier said than done!) - *that's* when I can start to feel the energy.

@Foreman1David @suzypuss @DrAnnieHickox @BadreNicolas @samhall404 @awaisaftab What toxic ideology? Are you referring to ideas like "no pain, no gain"? Have you never worked on your own fitness or strength training, David? 😢 It can feel intimidating at first, but I promise it's worth it! And it's never too late to start.

@suzypuss @DrAnnieHickox @BadreNicolas @samhall404 @awaisaftab that toxic ideology is all over fitness X.