Page 7 - From Mad News Today

Complex PTSD and dissociative symptoms can arise as a result of repetitive developmental trauma or neglect and persistent social stress due to bullying, discrimination, political violence or the sadness of being separated from family and country as a refugee.

But there are far more external factors that affect our mental health that are ignored by psychiatry! Feeling safe is something that significantly affects our mental health.

Free and informed consent means that you have the opportunity to say “yes” or “no”, that you receive correct and comprehensive information about the possible benefits and harms of medication and that you have access to good treatment even if you do not want it. chooses not to take any medication. In current mental health care, none of these three conditions are fully met.

In practice as well as research and advocacy work, we meet people daily who describe side effects but also the lack of alternatives to psychotropic drugs. People who call for support in tapering off and answers to questions about how prescribed medication affects their everyday life and well-being.

It is not "pill shame" that is the problem, as the Norwegian Psychiatric Association claims. The problem is that patients in psychiatry often cannot say no to medication, even when the medication does not work for them. Medicines that do not have a good effect and that cause serious side effects are for many the only treatment they receive.

Today, a quarter of the population consumes psychotropic drugs. Sick leave due to mental illness does not decrease, but increases. Pharmaceutical companies continue to produce old and new medicines non-stop, which psychiatrists prescribe, also non-stop.

My experience of the family has not been a good one. Whilst on the surface things appear relatively happy, in private there is an emotional void where there should be a meaningful family bond.

Real progress has been made on behalf of those rejected and forgotten about through the establishment of self-help groups where we make time for each other and attentive listening is paramount.

In the article, the author reports and contextualizes the exaggerated use of psychotropic drugs in CPR (Center of permanence for repatriation), highlighting how this widespread practice is in reality only the tip of the iceberg of a much broader phenomenon, characterized by the disregard of the psychophysical, cultural and social aspects of the health of immigrants in general.

"Despite this frenzy of medicine, I haven't gotten rid of my psychotic symptoms, my depression has been found to be treatment-resistant and chronic, and I still don't sleep well."