These posts explore the themes developed in my monograph, Narcisso-Fascism, which is itself a real-world test of the central concepts of the Biocognitive Model of Mind for psychiatry.
I read all your posts and over the years have learnt quite a bit from you. This story about working with indigenous people in North West of Australia, which must have been incredibly challenging, really moved me. Thanks for all your persistent efforts.
Do you know that you don't have to be a minority, they can legislate people into a position they simply never can escape.
Then someone who never was a minority becomes a minority of one.
Nobody believes you, nobody will help you, because it cannot be true, not in this country. Here that simply doesn't exist.
And by that you are material for The Sigmunds. They will finish you.. or make you 'finish yourself' and wash their hands in innocence. They just follow the manual. 'Its the patient' not them, not the manual, not the politicians who made your life impossible.
Look what they do to Jacques Baud, Nathalie Jamb, there they need to use bigger weapons as those people have more ways to get out or around it.
But avrage non minority joe, who doest live close to upperclass, for you they dont need such extremes, they just saw the legs from your chair...
Your piece reminds me of a story I heard from someone who worked at Callum Park in the 1960s. An inmate had been kept there for years, not a bother to anyone, but deemed to be unable to be released. She was entirely mute, would never engage with staff and spent most of her day walking while looking at the ground, until one day she recognised another person speaking her native language whereupon, she lit up and showed no evidence of impairment. She had simply been adhering to her cultural upbringing regarding the manner in which she must relate to strangers.
Mark Cross's book "Mental State" describes Australia's mental health system as operating under conditions akin to a siege. Too many customers/ consumers/ patients and not enough capacity by way of staff or beds. Australia has way fewer beds per capita than European peers and can't keep up with demand.
Cross describes institutional power dynamics and propensity for toxic hierarchical structures that are detrimental to the mental health of workers. Users of system feel the brunt of systemic problems that are manifested as high staff attrition rates and elevated rates of suicide, both of practitioners and patients.
Your practice in remote Australia echoes practices in Finland and elsewhere, where a team meets the distressed person in their home setting and seeks to establish a network of people around them that provides safety while they work through circumstances that might have triggered their episode, The team is available for follow up as needed. The distressed person is allowed to own their problem, not to be arbitrarily confined or categorised..
Exemplifying an entirely different attitude to incarceration are practices in penal systems in other countries.
The US, like Britain and Australia carries in its cultural DNA the aftermath of colonisation, massacre of native people and slavery. The aftermath has been discrimination on the basis of race, as is described in the articles referred to. The cultural legacy of our inhumane and violent past plays out to this day in our society's preoccupations with national safety, fear of immigrants and appeal to cultural purity a la Angus Taylor and Co.
The very high incidence of intellectual disabilities and mental illness in our criminal justice system further blurs public perceptions of the reasons for people being "put away". ( and public apathy)
Psychiatry is not positioned to influence these upstream contributors to ill health. Until mental health services go out to where the problems are (poverty abuse etc), nothing will change.
There's already public acknowledgement that the current system is not fit for purpose.
There is no shortage of money for mental health in this country, the problem is what they do with it. In the Kimberley in the 1980s, the average cost of a transfer to Perth was over $5000, close to $15000 today. That stopped the day I arrived. Today, far too much money goes to private psychiatric hospitals which are just a racket. They allow private psychiatrists to milk the system. ECT is another great racket, hugely expensive and does nothing.
"The very high incidence of intellectual disabilities and mental illness in our criminal justice system..." And that's just the lawyers.
Shockingly revealing of how professional class structures often work. In my case, the narrow proficiencies of my clinical team mean that they view my free creative work including WEIRD uses of the english language as highly suspectable. I was incarcerated for a month for putting a friendly creative letter under the door of a neighbor in my living quarters. Police shitheads do what they are told and punish anyone overstepping their ideas of what culture and cults should be.
When I was a child and we went to the zoo, there were signs saying "Do not provoke the animals." That's good advice, always make sure you're secure before poking at them because they can bite.
In that particular case, the zoo is likely at fault as they are notorious for squalid conditions and poor privacy as in the wild. The wild is not perfect, and it's becoming less perfect with human urbanisation, but it's still better for most animals than a human zoo.
Most children do not know to be very gentle in zoos, as they scream and shout, but the sign per se is "good advice". Thanks ;)
The patriarchal influences can be seen in these 'treatments'. Women were far more likely to be on ineffective, dangerous drugs in 1989 when a in psychiatrist started prescribing anti-depresssants and diazepam to me. I went to the wrong guy looking for help dealing with the loss of a job I loved and was driven out of by men that resented my getting to their position in a male dominated industry. Very hostile place and make co-workers and a resentful manager... anyway I was threatened by my manager, I didn't know I had anyone on my side. However, I found out after I resigned the company manager and my senior manager in that company didn't want me to go. Tried to get me to stay, but while I was relieved to know upper management wanted me to stay and I wanted to stay, their solution was to put me in another position that would have me reporting to and working with the same men that had been making my job inhospitality. Sorry about the background, but I thought after that exhausting experience and loss I knew I had to talk to someone. I, without knowing better, went to a psychiatrist. He didn't care about the background and told me I had an imbalance and when I got worse and wanted off, he said I was like a diabetic in that I'll need those drugs got the rest of my life. After nearly 20 years of suicide attempts and depression I begged the doctor to wean me off. He refused. I nearly died quitting them cold. Such psychic pain I had for a long time! But I did it and got better. What's weird is the doctor was always asking after my husband's job and health, not in a suspicious way, I felt he could only address me after acknowledging my husband in some way.
I advise everyone to go to talk therapy before taking drugs or at least try natural supplements like SAMe before taking drugs that doctors and patients are warned of the dangers of causing depression symptoms and suicide ideation or actual suicide.
Horrible exploitive control those people have over vulnerable people.
Hi Niall,
I read all your posts and over the years have learnt quite a bit from you. This story about working with indigenous people in North West of Australia, which must have been incredibly challenging, really moved me. Thanks for all your persistent efforts.
Regards
Tim Wilson
Do you know that you don't have to be a minority, they can legislate people into a position they simply never can escape.
Then someone who never was a minority becomes a minority of one.
Nobody believes you, nobody will help you, because it cannot be true, not in this country. Here that simply doesn't exist.
And by that you are material for The Sigmunds. They will finish you.. or make you 'finish yourself' and wash their hands in innocence. They just follow the manual. 'Its the patient' not them, not the manual, not the politicians who made your life impossible.
Look what they do to Jacques Baud, Nathalie Jamb, there they need to use bigger weapons as those people have more ways to get out or around it.
But avrage non minority joe, who doest live close to upperclass, for you they dont need such extremes, they just saw the legs from your chair...
And your life will be ruined.
Edit: corrected auto-correct typos
Your piece reminds me of a story I heard from someone who worked at Callum Park in the 1960s. An inmate had been kept there for years, not a bother to anyone, but deemed to be unable to be released. She was entirely mute, would never engage with staff and spent most of her day walking while looking at the ground, until one day she recognised another person speaking her native language whereupon, she lit up and showed no evidence of impairment. She had simply been adhering to her cultural upbringing regarding the manner in which she must relate to strangers.
Mark Cross's book "Mental State" describes Australia's mental health system as operating under conditions akin to a siege. Too many customers/ consumers/ patients and not enough capacity by way of staff or beds. Australia has way fewer beds per capita than European peers and can't keep up with demand.
Cross describes institutional power dynamics and propensity for toxic hierarchical structures that are detrimental to the mental health of workers. Users of system feel the brunt of systemic problems that are manifested as high staff attrition rates and elevated rates of suicide, both of practitioners and patients.
Your practice in remote Australia echoes practices in Finland and elsewhere, where a team meets the distressed person in their home setting and seeks to establish a network of people around them that provides safety while they work through circumstances that might have triggered their episode, The team is available for follow up as needed. The distressed person is allowed to own their problem, not to be arbitrarily confined or categorised..
Exemplifying an entirely different attitude to incarceration are practices in penal systems in other countries.
https://kentpartnership.org/what-norways-prison-system-can-teach-the-united-states/
The US, like Britain and Australia carries in its cultural DNA the aftermath of colonisation, massacre of native people and slavery. The aftermath has been discrimination on the basis of race, as is described in the articles referred to. The cultural legacy of our inhumane and violent past plays out to this day in our society's preoccupations with national safety, fear of immigrants and appeal to cultural purity a la Angus Taylor and Co.
The very high incidence of intellectual disabilities and mental illness in our criminal justice system further blurs public perceptions of the reasons for people being "put away". ( and public apathy)
Psychiatry is not positioned to influence these upstream contributors to ill health. Until mental health services go out to where the problems are (poverty abuse etc), nothing will change.
There's already public acknowledgement that the current system is not fit for purpose.
There is no shortage of money for mental health in this country, the problem is what they do with it. In the Kimberley in the 1980s, the average cost of a transfer to Perth was over $5000, close to $15000 today. That stopped the day I arrived. Today, far too much money goes to private psychiatric hospitals which are just a racket. They allow private psychiatrists to milk the system. ECT is another great racket, hugely expensive and does nothing.
"The very high incidence of intellectual disabilities and mental illness in our criminal justice system..." And that's just the lawyers.
Shockingly revealing of how professional class structures often work. In my case, the narrow proficiencies of my clinical team mean that they view my free creative work including WEIRD uses of the english language as highly suspectable. I was incarcerated for a month for putting a friendly creative letter under the door of a neighbor in my living quarters. Police shitheads do what they are told and punish anyone overstepping their ideas of what culture and cults should be.
When I was a child and we went to the zoo, there were signs saying "Do not provoke the animals." That's good advice, always make sure you're secure before poking at them because they can bite.
In that particular case, the zoo is likely at fault as they are notorious for squalid conditions and poor privacy as in the wild. The wild is not perfect, and it's becoming less perfect with human urbanisation, but it's still better for most animals than a human zoo.
Most children do not know to be very gentle in zoos, as they scream and shout, but the sign per se is "good advice". Thanks ;)
The patriarchal influences can be seen in these 'treatments'. Women were far more likely to be on ineffective, dangerous drugs in 1989 when a in psychiatrist started prescribing anti-depresssants and diazepam to me. I went to the wrong guy looking for help dealing with the loss of a job I loved and was driven out of by men that resented my getting to their position in a male dominated industry. Very hostile place and make co-workers and a resentful manager... anyway I was threatened by my manager, I didn't know I had anyone on my side. However, I found out after I resigned the company manager and my senior manager in that company didn't want me to go. Tried to get me to stay, but while I was relieved to know upper management wanted me to stay and I wanted to stay, their solution was to put me in another position that would have me reporting to and working with the same men that had been making my job inhospitality. Sorry about the background, but I thought after that exhausting experience and loss I knew I had to talk to someone. I, without knowing better, went to a psychiatrist. He didn't care about the background and told me I had an imbalance and when I got worse and wanted off, he said I was like a diabetic in that I'll need those drugs got the rest of my life. After nearly 20 years of suicide attempts and depression I begged the doctor to wean me off. He refused. I nearly died quitting them cold. Such psychic pain I had for a long time! But I did it and got better. What's weird is the doctor was always asking after my husband's job and health, not in a suspicious way, I felt he could only address me after acknowledging my husband in some way.
I advise everyone to go to talk therapy before taking drugs or at least try natural supplements like SAMe before taking drugs that doctors and patients are warned of the dangers of causing depression symptoms and suicide ideation or actual suicide.
Horrible exploitive control those people have over vulnerable people.
Context matters. Biological psychiatry is an ideology of mental disorder, not a science.