Today I stumbled on a blog called “Borderline Families” and read of one woman’s heartfelt confession of her deconversion story from her former faith in the biopsychiatric model of mental illness and their chemical treatments for it.
Parts of it moved me to tears. I frequently identified with Kristin’s daughter, who is the focus of much of her posts. I missed this eloquent and beautifully written blog when it started up in April and I apparently just missed its last post at the end of November. I highly recommend reading Kristin’s story while it is still up which she sums up as a saga covering these posts.
Part One A Charade
The Final Post
I have to say, there is a part of me that is a little jealous at how much unconditional love Kris has for her daughter. As a teenager I went through some of the same things as Kris’s daughter but I faced the institutions and residential facilities, as well as the doctors, without that kind of support.
Jane,
Thank you for recognizing my blog, borderlinefamilies.com.
I have tried to be very honest and to tell the story of our family with the hope that by doing so I might be able to change the course of another person’s life. I sincerely want to keep another families from going through what we did – surrendering our power to the psychiatric system.
For a long time, I knew there was something wrong with the system, I just couldn’t say exactly what it was. For years, we had searched the country looking for relief for the emotional and cognitive distress that consumed my daughter from an early age. She spent time in many of the premier hospitals and treatment centers around the country but none of them had much to offer other than heavy doses of psychotropic drugs and restraints. She got worst under “professional” care.
When I started writing the blog, my daughter had just been through a wrenching year of withdrawal during which time I literally held up the edges of her world. We had no idea what was going on. Unfortunately, for most of that time, I thought that we were experiencing out-of-control “mental illness”.
I started reading the blogs Beyond Meds and A Journey. Then, I read Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whitaker, and everything fell into place. The fraud of the psychiatric industry and the stronghold the pharmaceutical companies has on the vulnerable in our society left me so angry and so regretful that we had believed in the medical model that I screamed. I read passages out loud to my husband. I collapsed when I read that there was no “chemical imbalance” prior to the drugs being introduced into my daughter’s system. We had been lied to for years and our daughter had paid the price.
I hope that I established myself with the blog as an advocate. I am passionate to see change in the psychiatric industry. I want to see alternatives to the quick-fix pharmaceuticals presented at the first visit. I want to establish a more humane and compassionate language around the issues of mental health. I wish that we had been told of the side effects of the psychotropics and shorten life span to expect.
I will begin another blog next year focusing on alternative treatments. Until then, I will leave borderlinefamilies up.
Thank you, Jane. I hope you continue to heal.
xx kris
By: kaulland on December 4, 2010
at 7:29 am
Kris, you are most welcome.
I think your story is a very important one. It’s a cautionary tale and there is no doubt in my mind that it is being repeated in other families in similar circumstances, in this country and in many others. Reading your story validates their feelings perhaps of outrage, guilt and remorse and all of the many other painful feelings you and your daughter both have had to endure as survivors of the psych system. Thanks for stopping by and commenting and take good care.
By: Jane on December 4, 2010
at 9:16 am
Thanks for the link.
I took a webcopy of that site to preserve it for my future reference.
I used winhttrack program (free on the web – httrack.com) which can mirror a website and back it up on a hard-drive.
I haven’t finished reading it yet, but I think the ending hasn’t been written yet.
I think the other story is far more common – the story where parents, duped by pharmaceutical propaganda and their own urge to control or desire for a shortcut are drugging their problem children into a controllable and dulled emotional state.
The third condition, that of having no significant parental involvement is what I had and in that I was lucky because in fact a negative nest of social relations is counterproductive to personality change. By being alienated – I absorbed the psychotherapy effects without interference.
If not parents like kris, it’s best to have no parents involved.
By: skybluesight on March 12, 2011
at 2:51 pm