Post PSSD

Living with iatrogenic harm from ssri's and the consequences since 2013...

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

Doctors and drug companies like evidence-based medicine most of all because a core feature of it is producing plausible deniability.

Anything that isn't in the evidence-making scope(which is heavily tailored) can be denied...with authority!

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@markhoro "Don't ask questions. Critical Psychiatry doesn't allow it." The projecting going on here is off the charts.

[Sam Hall @samhall404]

As someone who is critical of psychiatry yet can still acknowledge its benefits and who supports reform, here are ten ironies within psychiatry that, once noticed, are difficult to ignore:

1. Those whom the profession long dismissed as “fringe extremists” and “anti psychiatry” were, in reality, mostly patients bearing the brunt of iatrogenic harm. Today, these voices, grounded in lived experience, mechanistic pharmacology and mounting evidence, have become some of the most coherent and influential in the discourse. Meanwhile, the genuine ideological extremists are increasingly those who continue to defend an outdated “safe and effective” biological psychiatry with reflexive certainty. They are anti-patient.

2. Drugs promoted for decades as correcting a mythical “chemical imbalance” have instead induced genuine chemical changes across bodily systems, frequently leaving patients in states of dysregulation more severe and persistent than their pre treatment condition.

3. Clinicians who spent years minimising withdrawal syndromes, pathologising patient testimony and accusing critics of bias are now quietly positioning themselves as pioneers of deprescribing. The very architects and defenders of the problem are rebranding themselves as its enlightened reformers.

4. A medical discipline that claims to combat stigma has generated one of the most insidious modern stigmas by transforming previously healthy individuals into lifelong psychiatric patients through iatrogenic dependence, then retroactively framing their drug induced suffering as evidence of an underlying “chronic brain disease.”

5. Self proclaimed experts in suicide prevention publicly question the necessity of black box warnings on SSRIs, while simultaneously appearing to misunderstand or trivialise akathisia, one of the most consistently documented pharmacologically induced pathways to acute suicidality and agitation.

6. A field that repeatedly invokes the mantle of “evidence based medicine” has relied for decades on short term, industry dominated trials while marginalising long term observational data and patient reported outcomes that challenged the dominant paradigm.

7. Psychiatry insists it is a legitimate medical specialty equivalent to cardiology or oncology, yet it reacts with disproportionate hostility when subjected to the same standards of rigorous post marketing surveillance, long term harm assessment and transparent risk benefit analysis expected in other branches of medicine.

8. The profession that most vocally claims to treat “brain diseases” becomes most defensive and dismissive precisely when patients report clear brain/neurological injury resulting from its pharmacological interventions.

9. Concepts like “insight” and “denial” are central to psychiatric diagnostics, yet the field itself displays profound institutional denial regarding the scale of iatrogenic harm and the limitations of its core disease model.

10. Psychiatry champions the biopsychosocial model in theory, while operating almost exclusively within a reductionist biomedical framework in practice, then expresses bewilderment when patients and critics point out the resulting epistemic distortions.

[Peyman Milanfar @docmilanfar]

In almost every field there's a steady decline in disruptive papers as careers progress. Engineering is the sole outlier.

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@tylerblack32 Given that all these chemicals are interplaying with one another in a sophisticated and complex manner the term "selective" still feels misleading. Their are indirect impacts on another chemical functioning.

It's like the term "side effects" which is another marketing term imo.

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@Cooperdavis The term "antidepressant" is even more of marketing term....

[Muel Mith @MithMuel]

There is no internal ‘error-detection’ mechanism within the psychiatry apparatus and its auxiliaries that can meaningfully identify these trends let alone address them

Its own structural organization allows for too many procedural off-ramps away from instances where the institution could make insights into its own dysfunction

A Patient presentation of iatrogenic harm like withdrawal results in adjusting the diagnosis

If a patient doesn’t respond well to SSRI’s the diagnosis escalates to Bipolar spectrum

The culprit is always the Patient, never Psychiatry

Negative Patient feedback is seen as an outgrowth of thier illness or it’s labelled ‘anti-psychiatry’

With its reflex of refusal to accept feedback, criticism and responsibility

And its ability to outsource any failure onto the people it claims to be helping

Psychiatry will always choose continuing to function as it knows how to, believing in its own effectiveness, over difficult self speculation

It’s only consistent response to any situation is always ‘more of itself’

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@alliyoungmd Yes because it's not possible to have a normal corrective feedback mechanism when the feedback source itself is getting pathologized.

[William Hardt Barbary @HardtMasonry]

Psychiatrist: "Your symptoms need to be managed. Here is a medication that will manage (blunt) your emotions and feelings rather than getting to the root cause. Now go talk to a therapist to see how they are working."

Therapist: "Let's talk about your feelings and emotions to get to the root cause of these symptoms."

Patient: "I don't feel anything anymore."

Psychiatrist: "You must have that medication resistant strain we discovered by conducting zero lab tests, but rather invented out of thin air....like the other non biological diagnostic definitions for mental diseases. Try these meds and stop those other ones. We have no idea how the mixing and stopping of different meds affect the brains neurochemistry, but we will deny they are causing you more symptoms and harm."

#MentalHealthAwareness
#MentalHealthMatters
#MentalHealth

[Daniel Owens @dsowens17]

I think what Mark says below about patients who work out they are experiencing withdrawal being a select group is a very important point and explains why the numbers in online groups aren’t even higher than they already are.

It takes a lot of self knowledge about one’s own body, willingness to question rather than passively defer to medical authority, openness to researching and connecting with others to educate oneself about what is happening and then real strength of character to stick to one’s convictions against what can be VERY hostile treatment and dismissal from clinicians with far more power and authority than oneself.

No wonder a third of people in online withdrawal groups report possessing graduate degrees.

But they are the tip of the iceberg. There is likely a far bigger group of people who have experienced withdrawal who believed what their doctor told them that they were experiencing relapse.

How do we know this? Because many of the people now campaigning initially thought they were experiencing relapse too…

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@LauraDelano Psychiatry has totally perverted the term 'relapse' by using in this context (ie the removal of a drug.) It is sinisterly inappropriate....like much of their language.

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

How do you have both destigmatization AND adequate informed consent? The answer is you don't. The two efforts are essentially at odds with each other. Any potential issue could be viewed as stigmatizing.

One of the main areas where psychiatry is compromised and untrustworthy.

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

RT @dsowens17: This is true. The difference is that in psychiatry, because symptoms of the original symptoms are subjective and can often o…

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@KevinRo90321458 @Cooperdavis They are not interested in learning. In fact there is a lot of incentive to not learn.

[Iatrogenic Awareness @iatrogenicaware]

'Stigma' surrounding mental health medications is a ludicrous concept that was designed to silence anyone speaking up about the severe and permanent harm that these medications cause.

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@tylerblack32 @Limessa_67 @laura74612 This of course is making assumptions around the severity of the pharmacological insult and that those drug-related changes "resolve"...

[Prof James Davies 💭 @JDaviesPhD]

Institutional power seeks to co-opt or elevate only those dissenting voices that validate its underlying structure. By rewarding 'safe' critique, the status quo creates the illusion of openness while protecting its core ideology from genuine disruption.

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

Psychiatry be like: "This thing that we aren't trained to look for or think about is rare"

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

I guess when biologists express concerns of ssri's entering the water supply and environment we can reassure them the fish are just experiencing "psychogenic" symptoms...

Give me a fucking break. These are chemicals that impact biological organisms.

https://t.co/yP8AqXFJdr

[Kemtrup @KemtrupTweets]

Psychogenic symptoms are REAL as can be. Remember the Le Roy, NY case. It was in the news. Local girls began having similar neurological symptoms. Everyone was SO certain pollution (not SSRI withdrawal or vaccine injury) was the cause. Erin Brokovich even showed up.

[Post PSSD @postpssd]

@HenryRunamucker It's impressive how consistent the bad takes are with that account...