CounterPsych

Charles Barber

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Madness Radio:
Comfortably Numb
Author Charles Barber

First Aired 3-19-2008 Duration: 53:07

Author Charles Barber talks about his new book Comfortably Numb: How Psychiatry is Medicating a Nation, a history of the rise of psychiatric drug marketing from 'mother's little helper' to today's 200 million plus anti-depressant prescriptions.

http://www.charlesbarberwriting.com.

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Steven Morgan

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Madness Radio: Reinventing Bipolar
Steven Morgan
Posted: 07 Aug 2008 06:25 PM CDT

Voices and Visions from Outside Mental Health. Produced by freedom-center.org & theicarusproject.net, peer-run support communities. Broadcast Tuesdays 4-5 pm EST on FM Pacifica affiliates WXOJ-LP Northampton Mass, & KWMD Kasilof, Alaska.

This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file:

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Yes I Know that You have 'Footage' on It

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I was there.
As for you who don't 'believe' in such things...good thing it didn't happen to you isn't it? How would you have coped if it had?

Awareness Exercise 10

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

University Staff Assessments

Years ago I liked to 'whine bitch and complain' about people whom I do not know talking about me in the third person everywhere. (you little boys from Sunshine will like this one)

Among those who were 'strangers' to me was a man who used to live near me, just around the corner in fact, on T.St.W. Now this man I did not know, and I still don't actually know him, but I DO know some things about him that he does not know that I know.

Anyway, just recently this man who I do not, and did not know, and who does not actually know me, walked past me, looked right at me but was quite expressionless. But then he shook his head, which he lowered slightly, in the negative fashion. A sort of tsk, tsk kind of thing. He actually said nothing at all and then walked away. This man has performed for me a number of times.

So, given just that one little scene there, as is, what does it mean?

What was the man doing in relation to me?

What does the man think he is doing?

What do I think he was doing?

Did he mean for me to see him?

Is this one of the times he knew that I saw him or one of the times HE believed he was 'hidden' from an 'inferior'?

Was this one of the times when someone like him is pretty much acting out his feelings about something while being oblivious to me?

Is he the neighbour of a psychiatric hospital staff member who lives on the same street?

Is he her husband perhaps?

Does he know everything about what went on in the psychiatric hospital in relation to me but is keeping it 'secret' like everyone else involved?

Does he think he knows everything but really he doesn't ?

Tell you what...talk that over amongst yourselves just like you have been doing for the last fifteen YEARS or so and see if you can come up with a consensus reality. I am sure that my protagonist expects that you will as you always have so far.

In a week or so, I will come back to this post and give you a little information added and you can see if your consensus reality still holds water....(no literal water involved in that, statement nor is it a metaphor for pee, so don't go off on any of your psych class tangents now; we wouldn't want to have to call any of the ACTors to save you from your thought disorder now would we?

One Degree of Separation

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This is the hardest thing to get anyone to see and hear because it is the simplest and most obvious.

The gossip mongering of the group involved and the’ paranoid delusions and hallucinated conversations’ I was presumed to have are ONE and the same thing.

When psychiatry rejects an obvious truth, because it can’t handle the idea of ‘blame’ as an abstraction, under ANY conditions, it invents a new MEANING for the targeted person, or group’s reality. When the person accused, supposedly ‘falsely,’ is, in fact, to blame for an event or behavior, the search for an alternate meaning to explain that all away, results in blaming the victim for being a victim AND (twisted or ‘switched’ integration of opposites) supports and enables the aggressor(S).

This is HOW domination types ‘win’ the contest they believe they are in with other people and as I have said many times before, “He (they) couldn’t do it without all of you to help him (them). If most people just obeyed the laws we already have instead of running around breaking them, and then acting like amateur C.I.A. agents, most of the domination and submission types could not do what they do now.

One other suggestion:

Would all of you mental health workers, at any and all levels, PLEASE stop the auto response bit, “we can’t blame others.” Most of you do this the instant it sounds like anyone even close to becoming psychiatrized just begins to suggest that he or she has been ‘harmed by others.’ “Blame” MEANS, “to hold accountable.”

Perhaps if we all stopped the auto response and tried a bit of discernment by attaching these ideas to SPECIFIC situations, people and evidence, we could actually help people who have been victimized by those ‘others’ (who must never be blamed), learn how to deal more effectively with the jackasses who count on this ludicrous, all inclusive notion to help them do whatever they like and get away with it.

We CAN blame others, when others should be blamed, and are to blame. Most of you who claim ‘we cannot blame others’ already DO that, but then deny it. In fact you spend a great deal of time blaming the victims for “blaming others.” It is most likely to be used when it is one of you, or someone belonging to your particular group, who is being blamed whether it is justly so or not.

Please stop using “we can’t blame others’ as a knee jerk response. The others who ARE to blame love it when you say that, since it helps them ‘win.’

One Degree of Separation

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This is the hardest thing to get anyone to see and hear because it is the simplest and most obvious.

The gossip mongering of the group involved and the’ paranoid delusions and hallucinated conversations’ I was presumed to have are ONE and the same thing.

One other suggestion:

Please stop using “we can’t blame others’ as a knee jerk response. The others who ARE to blame love it when you say that, since it helps them ‘win.’

Focusing on Reality

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

By Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic

Let's try focusing on single, everyday incidents involving perfectly average folks and see if we can't integrate those confusing, amazing, mystifying estian/psychiatric/dysfunctional opposites.

Now don't look for 'hidden' meaning because there IS none. The only thing 'hidden' from you is the perfectly obvious which you cannot see or hear as most of you 'normal' people have been well trained to deny it all and to engage in 'splitting.' So now look for the OBVIOUS meaning which I am telling you in a perfectly straight forward way in excruciatingly pedantic detail. What you are splitting is reality itself, what you are consciously aware of, from what you are not and in a 'them and us' mentality which takes the same events, experiences or human traits and divides them into TWO different and opposing versions of them.

So let's focus on the daily drama which is said not to exist at all. This is quite the 'trick' isn't it?

First say this out loud, both as individuals, and then as a group;

A. I am one of the people, who are talking 'covertly' about the people who 'think' that people like me are talking about them. My behaviour is not 'covert' and I am only deluding myself that it is.

B. WE are the people who are talking 'covertly' about the people who 'think' that people are talking about them.

When we deny we do this, the people who claim it is being done are then invalidated for their perceptions and reactions. When going, or taken, to psychiatrists, for 'help,' the profession believes that the perception of you people doing all the talking (aka gossip mongering) is WRONG and therefore the emotional reactions to being treated like that and invalidated for it also wrong. Psychiatrists then create an alternate reality to accommodate their own beliefs and to explain away the GROUP phenomenon which also denies the reality as experienced by the patient.

“Reality' is then transformed into its opposite.

Now to integrate these opposites, you need to do a few basic things.

Take what I tell you is happening at face value.

Give up your loony group delusion that you 'normal' are somehow all magically 'hidden' in plain sight while acting out all day.

Among the many things I told psychiatry about my own case were these:

That university students were discussing me and that included doing observing and evaluating my perception of my own reality and character for me, and that bus drivers were discussing everything that was happening inside Homewood, their opinions on it all and questioning everyone else to get their take on it including a large variety of fare box Fannies and Freddies, many of whom were ‘graduates’ of the addictions unit. For this post thought let’s keep it nice and simple and not go beyond the first two.

One bus driver was on route #1 in those days of 1995. I ‘claimed that he was discussing me on the bus and that he was discussing me with a university type who once even asked him when I was two and a half FEET away, “Is this the young lady you were telling me about”? The bus driver confirmed that for him and then, apparently by doing his ‘splitting’ act so that I would not know or understand them, the university type turned around, eyes glowing with amusement (as most involved tend to display) and the ever present little smirk on his face and said directly to me, “Hello there.”

Now despite the denial which THEY are in, not me, these two know exactly who they are and what I am talking about. I want them to know that their denial of their own behaviour IS what gets assigned a new value of ‘mental illness’ and then this ‘assessment’ goes towards the diagnosis which will be given to someone like me for telling the truth about what they do.

Now the ‘splitting’ is done in these little boys heads and then they project their own split onto me and I become the one who does not understand reality, rather then THEM. In other words they draw an imaginary dividing line between what I will see hear know and understand, and what I won’t, and then they treat me ‘as if’ their own delusion, now being projected and defended, was mine.

Next let’s look at the university students who stand at the fare boxes and discuss what is going on at the university and what they have heard everywhere with those same bus drivers. What you are doing is denied to exist by psychiatry as it ‘would not be reasonable for people I do not even know to be behaving this way.’ Therefore, psychiatry DENIES this group behaviour exists and then reframes my account of it as yet more of my paranoid delusions and hallucinated conversations. Psychiatry does this in an attempt to ‘make some kind if sense of things’ as THEY want to understand it according to their training, and they also do it to defend and protect the psychiatric status quo and just like the rest of you to try to keep from getting BLAMED for anything.

I am telling you that for as long as no one can be blamed, no one will ever understand the reality of this because everyone (almost) works very hard to conceal the truth.

See me, seeing you. Hear me, hearing you. Stop looking for 'hidden' meaning in what I say and see that you are only 'hiding' from yourselves. Own your own behaviour. Stop the splitting of reality, the projecting of it as your favourite defence mechanism, and the denial that you do it and just FACE REALITY.

We are all living in ONE reality. It is only two different points of view on that, not two DIFFERENT dimensions.

The truth will set us ALL free.

Grow up.

The Psychiatric Box

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

By Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic

All boxes have four sides. These are the sides of the Psychiatric Box.

The soon to be psychiatrized one, shows distress and claims someone, or a group, or something, is doing him/her some kind of harm. Either the individual in distress or someone else, on that one's behalf, contacts a psychiatrist for help.

The psychiatrist appears to listen to the patient's distress but not for too long. Often now, ten to fifteen minutes is seen as sufficient time for a “diagnosis.” It is a 'diagnosis' of the individual who sits before the psychiatrist which is the aim of the assessment. The soon to be psychiatrized does not really understand that this discussion about his/her problems is NOT being taken at face value, but rather is being heard from inside the psychiatrist's pre-programmed mind as signs and symbols of 'mental illness' which is directly equated by today's psychiatric profession with “brain disease.” The patient is now under what we call ‘the clinical gaze’ and is being treated as an object of observation and not an equal human being. The psychiatrist of course does not share this perspective on the patient with the patient. That would be too equal. It is a 'secret' relationship he is having, mostly with himself, and is often very much like one that brought the patient to the psychiatrist's office in the first place.

The psychiatrist decides, often in ten to fifteen cost effective minutes ,whether s/he does, or does not, believe the patient's understanding of 'reality' is valid and comes up with a diagnostic label which reflects the psychiatrist's beliefs according to what s/he has been taught to understand in the psychiatric training. The patient is often told the diagnosis, but not always. If the patient then says, but I am not sick (at least not 'sick’ in the terms psychiatry is defining it as a 'brain disease' and/or 'chemical imbalance,' the psychiatrist is most likely to hear the denial of the diagnosis as a sign of 'illness' in the patient, who is then said to be 'in denial' or ‘lacking insight’ into his/her own 'illness.' The diagnostic label itself is sometimes heard later, as a sort of psychiatric “surprise” of which the patient was not informed at all. Once labelled though, the label tends to stick like glue with most people who are informed of it, even if new ones are later applied instead or as well as, the original one.

Whether the patient yet realizes it or not, s/he is now boxed in to the mental illness system's inescapable parameters for after this point, no matter WHAT s/he says or does, it has all been written beforehand and identified as 'symptoms' of mental illness proving how right the system is for taking over the life of the patient. This may well complete the psychiatry tautology then (the circle so often understood by the patient only AFTER s/he is trapped) and is often a repeat performance of the relationship problems with another in a relationship outside the system. Ironically then the psychiatrist, and the problem person(s) or situation, that brought the patient there in the first place, is now dominating the patient's life even more than before s/he arrived for the 'help.’ Now the patient knows there is no way out except to try to convince the ' doctor,' another psychiatrist in control, or often a whole endless series of them, that the original complaint that brought the patient there is actually valid and that the diagnosis is not.

Thus begins the patient's lifetime career as a 'mental patient' with incarceration, drugging by force, eye rolling, sighing, and, if the patient is non compliant, perhaps shock treatment to get rid of those 'delusions' about being harmed by ‘others.’ All the patient's relationships (whatever may be left of them ) will now change to accommodate the expert diagnosis. Group pressure will be applied with intimidation tactics, behaviorist tactics, threats, and psychological isolation used to get the patient to co-operate with what is now a group agenda. The patient is now alone with his/her truth.

The only choice left after that is adopt the reality which has been defined FOR the patient by others, or pretend to believe it, just so that those others, who can never be blamed will not offer anymore unwanted 'help.' Or perhaps one may choose to fight on, usually alone, trying to penetrate the group resistance to the truth.

Now though, we are not all as alone as we once were for now we can connect better to others who have been though the same kind of thing, and many of us have made it back out of this group madness, a little worse for wear perhaps, but in one piece.

There is hope but it is going to come from those of us who can see it and understand it better and NOT from the experts who cannot hear a word we say because they are so well trained to define it all in terms of an alternate reality which really is like 'talking to aliens' to most of us.

We cannot help but wonder if we are really from the same planet as the psychiatrists who cannot hear a word we say as REAL.

As I once said of one of my own doctors after pondering the odd notion that I could not have been ‘set up’ or ‘harmed’ by another as it would not have been ‘reasonable’ for ‘others’ to behave that way, “What planet have you people been living on?”

Focusing on Reality

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

By Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic

Let's try focusing on single, everyday incidents involving perfectly average folks and see if we can't integrate those confusing, amazing, mystifying estian/psychiatric/dysfunctional opposites.

Now don't look for 'hidden' meaning because there IS none. The only thing 'hidden' from you is the perfectly obvious which you cannot see or hear as most of you 'normal' people have been well trained to deny it all and to engage in 'splitting.' So now look for the OBVIOUS meaning which I am telling you in a perfectly straight forward way in excruciatingly pedantic detail. What you are splitting is reality itself, what you are consciously aware of, from what you are not and in a 'them and us' mentality which takes the same events, experiences or human traits and divides them into TWO different and opposing versions of them.

So let's focus on the daily drama which is said not to exist at all. This is quite the 'trick' isn't it?

First say this out loud, both as individuals, and then as a group;

A. I am one of the people, who are talking 'covertly' about the people who 'think' that people like me are talking about them. My behaviour is not 'covert' and I am only deluding myself that it is.

B. WE are the people who are talking 'covertly' about the people who 'think' that people are talking about them.

When we deny we do this, the people who claim it is being done are then invalidated for their perceptions and reactions. When going, or taken, to psychiatrists, for 'help,' the profession believes that the perception of you people doing all the talking (aka gossip mongering) is WRONG and therefore the emotional reactions to being treated like that and invalidated for it also wrong. Psychiatrists then create an alternate reality to accommodate their own beliefs and to explain away the GROUP phenomenon which also denies the reality as experienced by the patient.

“Reality' is then transformed into its opposite.

Now to integrate these opposites, you need to do a few basic things.

Take what I tell you is happening at face value.

Give up your loony group delusion that you 'normal' are somehow all magically 'hidden' in plain sight while acting out all day.

Among the many things I told psychiatry about my own case were these:

That university students were discussing me and that included doing observing and evaluating my perception of my own reality and character for me, and that bus drivers were discussing everything that was happening inside Homewood, their opinions of it all and questioning everyone else to get their take on it, including a large variety of fare box Fannies and Freddies, many of whom were ‘graduates’ of the addictions unit. For this post though, let’s keep it nice and simple and not go beyond the first two.

One bus driver was on route #1^{^[1]} in those days of 1995. I ‘claimed that he was discussing me on the bus and that he was discussing me with a university type who once even asked him when I was two and a half FEET away, “Is this the young lady you were telling me about”?^{^[2]} The bus driver confirmed that for him and then, apparently by doing his ‘splitting’ act so that I would not know or understand them, the university type turned around, eyes glowing with amusement (as most involved tend to display) and the ever present little smirk on his face and said directly to me, “Hello there.”

Now despite the denial which THEY are in, not me, these two know exactly who they are and what I am talking about. I want them to know that their denial of their own behaviour IS what gets assigned a new value of ‘mental illness’ and then this ‘assessment’ goes towards the diagnosis which will be given to someone like me for telling the truth about what they do.

Now the ‘splitting’ is done in these little boys heads and then they project their own split onto me and I become the one who does not understand reality, rather then THEM. In other words they draw an imaginary dividing line between what I will see, hear, know and understand, and what I won’t, and then they treat me ‘as if’ their own delusion, now being projected and defended, was mine and not theirs.

Next let’s look at the university students who stand at the fare boxes and discuss what is going on at the university and what they have heard everywhere with those same bus drivers. What you are doing is denied to exist by psychiatry as it ‘would not be reasonable for people I do not even know to be behaving this way.’ Therefore, psychiatry DENIES this group behaviour exists and then reframes my account of it as yet more of my paranoid delusions and hallucinated conversations. Psychiatry does this in an attempt to ‘make some kind if sense of things’ , which they are having trouble being able to do, as THEY want to understand it according to their training, and they also do it to defend and protect the psychiatric status quo and just like the rest of you to try to keep from getting BLAMED for anything.

I am telling you that for as long as no one can be blamed, no one will ever understand the reality of this because everyone (almost) works very hard to conceal the truth. That is why we who get psychiatrized like the “C.I.A. metaphor, among others like it. It fits.

See me, seeing you. Hear me, hearing you. Stop looking for 'hidden' meaning in what I say and see that you are only 'hiding' from yourselves. Own your own behaviour. Stop the splitting of reality, the projecting of it as your favourite defence mechanism, and the denial that you do it and just FACE REALITY.

We are all living in ONE reality. It is only two different points of view on that, not two DIFFERENT dimensions.

The truth will set us ALL free.

Grow up.

^{^[1]} names in another private location

^{^[2]} name at another private location

The ‘Hidden’ Concept

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This will allow all of you psychiatrists and other sane people to decipher the ‘mad’ code in which we who tell you our truth are speaking.

This is the hardest thing to get anyone to see and hear because it is the simplest and most obvious. Are you ready? Concentrate hard now.

You are a mob engaged in endless, mindless, gossip mongering with me as your topic.

I have told, and continue to tell psychiatry, that there is a mob of people I don’t even know who are engaged in endless and mindless gossip mongering.

They ask you about it and you say you know nothing about it. (or you minimize your participation in it)

They tell me that it is all in my mind since it would not be ‘reasonable’ for all of you to think and behave this way. They don’t know why I cannot see that.

I tell them that this is a nexus statement, since I AGREE it is ‘not reasonable for all of you to behave this way.’ A Nexus statement is one in which all the words being used are in fact true, but the premise to which they are attached makes them mean different things. That makes it very hard to hear what is going on.

Psychiatry like all of you other ‘normal’ people then engages in the splitting process. What is, in fact, two sides of the same experience is now defined as two ‘different’ experiences; the one I see and hear, and the one most of you claim does not exist.

Psychiatry then decides that they will accept the group consensus as ‘reality,’ adopts it for itself, protects and defends the group and it’s consensus agreement on the nature of reality’ and becomes a profession of ‘experts’ in the invalidation of all of us who ‘claim’ we have been put though this phenomenon at the hands of groups of ‘normal’ others. We are endlessly told in fact, that we cannot ‘blame’ any of you for either, what you do, or for the fact that you all agree to cover it all up after you do it.

It is about responsibility. It is also about the ability of the one who set up the game to create and define reality itself for all others and the ‘others’ in that statement INCLUDES all of you.

"Hidden Meaning"

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

This will allow all of you psychiatrists and other sane people to decipher the ‘mad’ code in which we who tell you our truth are speaking.

This is the hardest thing to get anyone to see and hear because it is the simplest and most obvious. Are you ready? Concentrate hard now.

You are a mob engaged in endless, mindless, gossip mongering with me as your topic.

I have told, and continue to tell psychiatry, that there is a mob of people I don’t even know who are engaged in endless and mindless gossip mongering.

They ask you about it and you say you know nothing about it. (or you minimize your participation in it)

They tell me that it is all in my mind since it would not be ‘reasonable’ for all of you to think and behave this way. They don’t know why I cannot see that.

Your G.P.

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Regarding the 'Imbalance'

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I believe there IS an imbalance but it is not in the brain chemistry. It is in the psycho spiritual or metaphysical realm of relating. Human beings tend to protect and defend dysfunctional values and boundary violating behaviour as though their lives depended upon it. We love 'the devil we know' simply because we are used to it. It takes effort to change that and we will not win any popularity contests by doing it. We are so accustomed to having how we all LOOK and SOUND to 'others' as the top priority, defined as 'normal,' that we object to anyone who tries to state openly that how we ARE is twisted and self destructive. So rather than hear the truth, the majority engage in a contest with those 'others' who are 'not like us' believing that the only way to preserve the group madness we know and love is to dominate all the 'others' who are as mad as we are for doing exactly the same thing!

Switching the Cluck Off

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

First posted in August, 2007
By Patricia Lefave, Labeled, D.D.(P)

There’s a new breed of chicken
Ruling the roost.
These chickens aren’t chicken
‘Bout what they let loose.

They are taking control,
They are running the world.
They are now on a roll
Their new banner unfurled.

On it they claim,
‘We’re here to decide
What the truth is for all,’
And we cluck this with pride.

They cluck to the left,
They cluck to the right.
They cluck it all day.
They cluck it all night.

They cluck it up.
They cluck it down.
They cluck it with smiles.
They cluck it with frowns.

They’ve practiced their speeches.
It’s a hell of an A.C.T.
In some other countries
they’ve made an imP.A.C.T.

They have left all their barnyards,
Embraced pecking disorders.
There are no more de-fences,
They are crossing all borders.

The people they cluck at
All take it to heart.
For never they’ve known chickens,
Who are always so smart.

But THERE is the danger
for it’s not WHAT they say
but the FACT chickens SAY it
that’s ruling the day.

As the chickens cluck on,
Always pushing their views,
It gets harder and harder
To hear all other news.

A dilemma we’ve found,
As these chickens cluck on,
How to get them turned round,
And to switch the cluck off.

Promoting Wellness Through Social Justice

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Keynote Update

We are delighted to announce a diverse and inspiring line-up of keynote speakers and panel discussions at Alternatives 2010! A new addition to the line-up is award-winning author and journalist Robert Whitaker.

Pamela Hyde, JD,
Administrator, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)

How Consumers Can Help Shape Health Care Reform - Panel Discussion
The comprehensive health care reform signed into law by President Obama in March 2010 represents a set of new opportunities and challenges for the consumer/survivor movement. Panelists will discuss how consumers can have an active role in the process.

Robert Whitaker - Award-winning journalist and author of Mad in America and the new book Anatomy of an Epidemic.

Black Men Speak: African-American Men Tell their Story
Hear the story of what it is like to be African-American men with substance abuse and mental health issues and their individual roads to wellness and recovery. Interwoven in their stories are challenges of trauma, family issues, community violence, and the importance of faith, set in the context of the legacy of slavery.

Conference Brochure Available
Our conference brochure is available for download now - featuring the conference schedule, workshop highlights, conference highlights, and more! Click here to view the conference brochure.

And if you haven't yet registered, do so today! Alternatives 2010, taking place September 29 - October 3, is the annual event to connect and network with other consumer/survivors across the nation. You will experience ground-breaking workshops and cutting-edge institutes, exciting arts events featuring local talent, and numerous opportunities for spiritual and creative expression. It's always an unforgettable conference!

[Clickhere to register.]

Caucus Applications Due August 14
Each year Alternatives provides a forum for networking and discussing important issues with peers from around the country. Caucus sessions will be held Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. [To apply for a caucus session,click here.]

Please submit your caucus session request no later than August 14, 2010. All caucus sessions must be approved in advance. When accepted, you will be notified of the date of your caucus session.

SPACE IS LIMITED - SIGN UP EARLY!!

Ride and Rooms Board on Facebook

Our Alternatives 2010 Facebook page already has over 270 members. Please join the group via Facebook and encourage your friends to do so! There is a discussion already going about room and ride shares. This is a great way to build community and make connections before the conference begins!

You can also click below to "follow" Alternatives 2010 via Twitter.

Language Interpretation Available Upon Request

Alternatives 2010 is committed to making this conference accessible to people of diverse cultures. Interpretation will be available in Spanish, Vietnamese, ASL, and other languages; requests must be indicated on the registration form by August 15. Thank you!

Alternatives 2010 Flyer Available in Spanish, Vietnamese
The Alternatives 2010 flyer is now available in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Please click here to download the English version, click here for the Spanish version, and click here for the Vietnamese version. Please post these flyers wherever you can to help spread to the word. Thank you!

Alternatives 2010 is funded by:

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Center for Mental Health Services • www.samhsa.gov

Youthful Tendency Disorder

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

More U.S.Children Being Diagnosed With Youthful Tendency Disorder

REDLANDS, CA–
Nicholas and Beverly Serna's daughter Caitlin was only four years old, but they already knew there was a problem.

More U.S. Children Being Diagnosed With Youthful Tendency Disorder
Day after day, upon arriving home from preschool, Caitlin would retreat into a bizarre fantasy world. Sometimes, she would pretend to be people and things she was not. Other times, without warning, she would burst into nonsensical song. Some days she would run directionless through the backyard of the Sernas' comfortable Redlands home, laughing and shrieking as she chased imaginary objects.

Onion Med Watch

When months of sessions with a local psychologist failed to yield an answer, Nicholas and Beverly took Caitlin to a prominent Los Angeles pediatric neurologist for more exhaustive testing. Finally, on Sept. 11, the Sernas received the heartbreaking news: Caitlin was among a growing legion of U.S. children suffering from Youthful Tendency Disorder.
"As horrible as the diagnosis was, it was a relief to finally know," said Beverly. "At least we knew we weren't bad parents. We simply had a child who was born with a medical disorder."
Youthful Tendency Disorder (YTD), a poorly understood neurological condition that afflicts an estimated 20 million U.S. children, is characterized by a variety of senseless, unproductive physical and mental exercises, often lasting hours at a time. In the thrall of YTD, sufferers run, jump, climb, twirl, shout, dance, do cartwheels, and enter unreal, unexplainable states of "make-believe."

"The Youthful child has a kind of love/hate relationship with reality," said Johns Hopkins University YTD expert Dr. Avi Gwertzman. "Unfit to join the adult world, they struggle to learn its mores and rules in a process that can take the entirety of their childhood. In the meantime, their emotional and perceptive problems cause them to act out in unpredictable and extremely juvenile ways. It's as though they can only take so much reality; they have to 'check out,' to go Youthful for a while."

To read the full story please go to the link connected to the main title.
Please note: The story above is entirely fictitious.It is intended as satire. (I know. Sometimes it is so close to reality we can't be sure can we?)

Oh my God! Thought Disorder! Thought Disorder!

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

I just realized I mixed up my fairy tales in the joke below....and it's not the first error I've mad either.
Now... you won't send out a team to perform an intervention for that, will you?

I promise I will try not to forget anything again.....

Observing the Every Day Thought Processes and Actions

Sat, 24 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

...of Normal Everyday People

By Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic

What is it that separates the 'normal' from the 'abnormal'?

From my own observations of the normal it does not seem to be much at all. In fact, it seems to be mostly some pretty fancy 'interpreting' of the same events, feelings and behaviours that are shared by both groups but made to APPEAR to be 'different' for one person as compared to another. I am suggesting it is most often this warped COMPARING and evaluating by different standards that is CAUSING most of the problems we have in relationship.

Added to that is the insistence by most, including all the 'authority' figures, that we should all operate from behind a pleasant SOUNDING and personable LOOKING facade indulging, CIA-like in covert ops, 'dis-information' and misdirection. The result is an insanity stew, (in the colloquial sense) cooked up by group dysfunction, with the false image or facade, being highly valued and guarded even while reality is being denied and suppressed. As in literal 'cooking', presentation is everything to these psychological 'chefs.'

In this section there is going to be a lot about the' normal' people and things we all see and hear every day, accepting without question and pronouncing it all sane and 'normal' for no other reason than it is done so often and is so common. 'Common' has been equated with 'normal' and of course anyone who does not understand that, is, like me, abnormal. Let's look at just one idea today shall we?

"Schizophrenics' (and other labelled people) claim we see patterns of behaviour in our ''crazy' experiences. In fact, our belief that we see and hear 'patterns' has been defined by psychiatry as one of our ‘symptoms.’ (As is virtually everything else of course)

On the other hand scientists have told us (like those at the Perimeter Institute) that human beings learn by detecting patterns.

So what is the difference then?

I will tell you: It is in the definition of the person who is making the statement. This definition is often made by groups of observers (superiors) in group-think sessions, or by those in 'authority.' Differences in status, education, colour, sex, religion, bank balance etc. will be given top consideration in assessing who is whom, and the diagnosis will come from them; the experts in the "all knowing” club.

However to save time and effort here I will just give you the simpler, easy to understand, version here.

If I see "patterns" this is a symptom of mine according to the 'sane' ones, and shows I am crazy.

If my psychiatrist, or someone at the Perimeter Institute sees the same patterns, they will be understood to be just brilliant and invited to speak to the public about their amazing understanding and observations.

That's the difference when dishing out the new menus from the Reality Cookbook. Always remember that presentation is everything. With the right presentation, you can convince most people that a steaming bowl of centipedes is an acquired taste and that anyone who is anyone just loves it. You don't want to be left out, and the only one NOT chowing down on the back yard critters, do you?

Awareness Exercise 9

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

Exercise for the Projectophrenic

by Patricia Lefave, Monophrenic

I can tell you that this is a very OLD and yet, still to be defined and diagnosed pandemic. For now though, just repeat after me until the meaning starts to sink in:

"My chronic negative gossiping and harassing behaviours are part of those of a large group[1] and this particular monophrenic's[2] "hallucinated conversations and paranoid delusions" are made of the same information, delivered to her, as acted out by me, and by all those like me, who are then denying we do, what we do. These are not two DIFFERENT realities but rather the SAME reality from opposing viewpoints."

Now you poor souls may also be suffering from the dreaded Multiphrenia , a serious chronic condition which causes you to keep multiple versions of the same reality going as the means of being perpetually blameless. (in your poor sick minds) You often may feel right out of control and compelled to keep it up until no one can make sense of anything you say. The compulsion to try to hide the obvious truth about yourselves is very common in Multiphrenics. Multiphrenia is also sometimes referred to as Psi[3] and is believed to occasionally cause some paranormal, metaphysical phenomena to occur.

More on that later, but for now, practise breaking the spell of Projectophrenia by repeating the short exercise above. We don't want to overtax your defective brains by expecting too much, too soon, now do we? One day at a time; baby steps...

[1] LGIT large group insensitivity training

[2] Monophrenic: strange individual who actually means what she or he says and who is not speaking in 'hidden meaning."

[3] Protection of Self Importance

Children

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 00:00:00 GMT

COMMENTARY: We must stop treating childhood like a disease

Posted Jul 12, 2010 @ 09:00 AM

COMMENTARY BY JACOB AZERRAD —

In 2001, Harry Markopolos of Whitman repeatedly warned the authorities about Bernie Madoff. No one listened. Only a serious downturn in the economy led to Madoff’s downfall.

It’s not a Ponzi scheme, but once again, no one is listening and the red flags are everywhere. This time the victims are our very young, innocent children in the millions. Today, children as young as 2, are being prescribed powerful anti-psychotic medications. Side effects include tics, drooling, and incessant eating. Some children have gained up to 100 pounds and often progress to becoming diabetic.

This is not the old story about ADD or ADHD and the use of Ritalin or other approved drugs in use since the 1970s. This is not about helping the child who fidgets and can’t concentrate in an elementary school classroom.

This is about tens of thousands of energetic, outgoing, healthy, and normal 3- and 4-year-olds who just won’t sit still in Mommy and Me. It is those children who have now been diagnosed with a new and controversial diagnosis – Childhood Bipolar Disorder.

On Sept. 4, 2007, The New York Times reported that studies in the 1970s and ’80s concluded bipolar disorder was rare in children, but between 1994 to 2003, there was an astounding 40-fold increase in the number of children diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

In a 2007 “60 Minutes” episode, Katie Couric focused on the short life of 4-year-old Rebecca Riley, left, of Hull. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 28 months, she was dead one year later from an overdose of a psychotropic drug cocktail. At one point, Couric asks Rebecca’s mother, who had been charged with her daughter’s murder, if she thought her child’s behavior might have been normal. That in fact, maybe little Rebecca was just exhibiting “Terrible 2s” behavior.

On Nov. 19, 2008, the New York Times reported that 31 children who were diagnosed with Childhood Bipolar Disorder and given the drug Risperdal for tantrums died, and 1,176 suffered serious side effects.

Dr. Joseph Biederman, a prominent Harvard child psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and his team are more responsible than anyone for a child bipolar epidemic sweeping America (and no other country) that has 2-year-olds on three and four psychiatric drugs.

In a 2008 article, “Are Our Leading Pediatricians Drug Industry Shills?”, pediatrician Lawrence Diller states,
“The science of children’s psychiatric medications is so primitive and Biederman’s influence so great that when he merely mentions a drug during a presentation, tens of thousands of children within a year or two will end up taking that drug, or combination of drugs. This happens in the absence of a drug trial of any kind. Instead, the decision is based upon word of mouth among the 7,000 child psychiatrists in America.”

A key issue is the misuse of psychiatric diagnostic labels to explain bad behavior in children. This has resulted in the drugging of young children to a degree unprecedented in our history. To diagnose a 2-year-old as bipolar by adult standards is crazy.

The behavior of a 2-year-old is filled with curiosity about everything and anything. Young children have extraordinary ability in terms of emotions and cognitions. They can be very upset very quickly, very angry, very depressed, because their emotions are so fluid, so available.

These behaviors are seldom the result of blood chemistry issues. Instead, parents should view them as a healthy striving toward necessary independence. Growing up is not a condition. Childhood is not a disease. Children act up and defy authority and they need adults to teach them how to manage difficult feelings and handle disappointment appropriately.

There are ways for parents to do this that are quite effective and don’t involve drugs, but they do involve parents being teachers. Our preschool children are far too young to defend themselves. It’s up to parents to “say no to drugs” and teach their children that life is meant to be learned and experienced it’s not just a pill to be swallowed.

Many of the most popular child-rearing books, however, repeatedly urge parents to hold, soothe, comfort, and talk to the child who bites, screams, throws, breaks things, or otherwise behaves in obnoxious, infantile ways.

Children need parents, not pills. Parents need new parenting tools. We have been loving our children into behaving badly and the quick “fix” pills are becoming the easy way out that may have lasting untold psychic damage.