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Ethical Considerations

Aside from a botched way of treating their patients, there are a number of dangers in practicing psychotherapy that I feel must be considered, if one at all cares about the quality of life of the potential patient. One of these is the effect of medication upon the citizen.

What Medications Do Psychiatrists Use to Treat Psychotic Illnesses?

The medications used to treat people diagnosed psychotic are called 'psychotropics,' and psychotropics are almost exclusively what we call 'dopamine blockers.' Unlike antidepressants, which may boost the functioning of serotonin or dopamine, psychotropics are depressants, and they inhibit the function of dopamine. Naturally, this is going to have unpleasant, mind-robbing effects on the human psyche, as we will see shortly.

When Are Psychiatrists Allowed to Medicate You By Force?

To be medicated by force, you must first be 'Baker Acted.' This is a process by which a person or group in power determines that you are an imminent danger to yourself or others, and deprives you of your freedom in the outside world against your will. And remember: only they get to decide whether you truly pose a danger. You don't even have to commit a crime to be Baker Acted. If they want to say, "Yes, we think you're a danger to yourself," and slap you in the psych ward, they can do so. It's all about vague terms.

After that, they determine whether you should be medicated by force. To do this, they hurl the next vague term at you: 'adjudicated incapacitated.' If they feel -- and again, only they get to decide -- that you are incompetent to make a decision about whether or not to take medication, then they can medicate you without your consent. Typically, they pull down your pants, stick a needle in your rear end, and inject the sad juice directly into your veins, where it continues to affect your well-being for as long as six months afterward.

And guess who was 'adjudicated incapacitated' twice? That's right: yours truly, the author of these hard-won essays.

Just What Do Dopamine Blockers Do, Anyway?

Dopamine is sometimes called the 'pleasure chemical.' It operates in the reward circuitry in the human brain when we engage in fulfilling activities, like eating food, working, or listening to music. Some drugs, such as cocaine and methamphetamine, exert their pleasurable effects by increasing and prolonging the activity of dopamine in the reward system.

Standard antipsychotic drugs, as we have seen, have the opposite effect. They decrease dopamine activity and can make you feel tired, listless, bored, frustrated, subdued, and unmotivated. I myself have tried many brands of antipsychotics, some over the course of months. The drowsiness they cause can reach unbearable extremes and you can gain weight from lack of energy. However, everyone around you would be happy, because you'd just be sitting there, doing nothing. It's as if your feelings don't even matter to them.

Aside from boredom and weight gain, we also know that dopamine blockers can cause a movement disorder called Tardive Dyskinesia characterized by involuntary tics, some of them facial grimaces, that last for the rest of your life. And if you're adjudicated incapacitated, you don't even get to choose. You're just the government's guinea pig.

Advice for Acquaintences

As I have shown, psychiatric misinformation can get very nasty. A clinician's reputation can be harmed if he or she belittles or underestimates the intelligence of a patient. My advice for psychiatrists and other acquaintences is to remember the point of view of the patient, take into account everything I've discussed so far, and be careful about what you say in regard to the patient:

Instead of saying:	Try saying:
"You have a delusion"	"You seem preoccupied by a possibility"
"You're psychotic"	"You've been diagnosed psychotic"
"You need medication"	"If you want, you can try medication"
"You think people are out to get you"	"You think (someone) is out to do (something specific) to you"
"You're paranoid"	"You seem worried that you can't trust others"
"Loss of contact with reality"	"Preoccupation with unlikely possibilities"
"Your thinking is irrational"	"You've committed the fallacy of _____"

One final remark: You may be wondering what a 'fallacy' is. Technically speaking, a fallacy is a mistaken rule of inference that doesn't always lead to correct conclusions. As such, they are the true elements of irrational thinking in this world, committed by nearly all of us at some time or another and even by psychiatrists in abusing their patients. A few examples of fallacies are:

Fallacy of Affirming the Consequent -- When you assume something is true just because it fits the evidence. For example, "There's a crack in my windshield. Someone must have come along and vandalized my car," or, "He doesn't trust his therapist. He must be suffering from paranoid delusion."

Fallacy of the Straw Man -- When you misrepresent someone's position or 'put words in the mouth.' For example, if I said, "I believe that most arguments against voluntary euthanasia are specious," and then you told someone, "Scott thinks we should euthanize everyone who is disabled," you would be strawmanning me.

Fallacy of Division -- When you assume that because an entity has a property, every constituent of that entity must have that property. For example, "That pile of sand is huge. Every grain of sand in it must therefore be huge," or, "My roommate got angry and yelled about corporate selfishness after receiving a sales call. He lets something as insignificant as a sales call bother him," or, "One of my friends says he hates the whole world. If he hates the world, he must hate everyone in it."

Fallacy of the Single Cause, Scapegoat Fallacy -- When you shift the blame or the cause of something entirely onto one event or person, when there could be many contributing causes, as in, "That only happened after you used drugs. You have only yourself to blame." This fallacy is often marked by the words, 'You're the one...' When you hear these words, watch for this fallacy.

Fallacy of Ad Hominem -- 'Ad hominem' is Latin for 'to the man.' This fallacy occurs when you try to argue that someone's claim is false simply by insulting him or her. For example, "Of course you're wrong. You have a thinking disorder."

Fallacy of Appeal to Authority -- When you argue that something must be true because an authority states it. For example, "Peter is a successful psychiatrist who went to graduate school and spent many thousands of dollars to earn his degree. If he says you're delusional, that means you're delusional!"

Fallacy of Appeal to Majority -- When you argue that something must be true because almost everyone else believes it. For example, "Everyone in this house except you believes in the prophecy of Joseph Smith. So it's you who's wrong, not us."

(If any psychiatrists commit any of the above-named fallacies in response to my essay, you will know that they are thinking irrationally.)

It's also important to show respect for 'buzz words' and phrases stereotypically associated with psychotic delusion, and to avoid wrongly inferring that someone is delusional based merely on his or her use of these phrases: "conspiracy," "government plot," "mind control," "signal directed at me," "spying," and others. When we hear phrases like this, some of us leap to the conclusion that they must be delusional, but it is always respectful to give thoughtful consideration to the speculator's point of view.

Advice for the Diagnosed

My advice to the diagnosed is to stay calm if the medical industry lies about you. Your feelings are important to us and we are taking measures to end all injustice committed against innocent citizens. In the meantime, it may help to focus on using a logical language in which to frame your concerns, making cautious use of such terms as:

Partly
Possibly
Point of view

When you get used to saying that people are partly to blame for things, and that that certain things are only possible from your (or someone else's) point of view, then you will be able to guard yourself against claims of being delusional. If you learn the names of fallacies such as those listed on the previous page, you will gain even more intellectual power over the uninformed who make baseless accusations against you.

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In conclusion, patients diagnosed psychotic may not be delusional in the true sense of the word. They may simply be influenced by their unique hardships to have worries and resentments that 'normal' people do not have. They are not 'out of touch with reality,' as everything that happens in their brains is real. In this essay, I have tried to foster sympathy for them and show that they are real people with real feelings, just like you, who must wake up every morning to lives of their own. It would be a shame to see them mistreated by haughty psychiatrists the way I was.

If anyone seriously tries to tell you that I'm delusional, or psychotic, or crazy, or a madman, then I've written this essay to address and challenge their claims. I hope my willingness to shed light on the rationality of hitherto-labeled psychotic behavior and to defend patients from medical malpractice will be proof in the end that the pen is mightier than the needle.


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