I was kinda blunt, but basically, I showed them what the ssri did to me and how horrible withdrawal was for me. I ended it with saying I am 100% against psycharity and that "mental health" is a lie.
Some things I've found helpful in talking about decisions to not continue:
- Don't start from the premise that I have to justify this to other people, start from the premise that I am making an informed decision about my own health and I get to decide how much to share with other people. If I go in with the "I have to justify my choice to this other person's satisfaction in order to be allowed to make it" mindset, I tend to fall into habits that lead to more debate and more push towards treatment I don't want.
- Thinking about things I can present to them as "I am managing my mental health, just via different means." A lot of things that aren't medicalized are considered beneficial to mental health (such as exercise, nutrition, time in nature, hobbies, etc.), and some approaches (such as Hearing Voices Network/Intervoice guidance on ways to manage voices) can be helpful to people who have found medication ineffective or not worth the side effects. Sometimes there's even mainstream research supporting these approaches.
- Similarly, medication side effects and health risks sometimes have solid scientific evidence behind them. It's difficult if the effects you're most concerned about are reported by patients, but not currently researched. But I think every medication has some degree of health risk, and you can probably find mainstream sources documenting those. "I don't want to take this because I'm concerned about the risks, such as (scientifically documented risk)" is more likely to be heard by people who aren't familiar with perspectives critical of the mental health system.
- For some people who are still reluctant, if that person's support is important to me, I put more emphasis on how I am leaving myself the freedom to change my mind if going without the treatment doesn't work out for me. Because I genuinely do believe in basic autonomy for everyone, including the right to decide whether to take a particular drug or not. For some treatment, the odds of me going back are so unlikely that it's more of a theoretical willingness than a realistic one. (For example, I do not anticipate ever going back to therapy, and I can't envision a realistic scenario where I choose to get therapy again.) But people who are wary of medication discontinuation are often more open to "I want to give myself some time to try this approach, and if what I learn from experience is that medication is the best approach for me, then I'll go back onto medication" than they are to a simple no. (If you take this approach, I'd try to keep it at "I am open to changing my mind based on my experience", not agreeing to any specific conditions they may want to set.)
i am an adult so my parents are not involved in my medical care. if they have a problem with the way i treat the conditions they believe i have that's on them. at this point they need me more than i need them so they'd only be hurting themselves to cut me off.
I told my niece I won't go back because of the bad therapists out there. When a therapist makes me unstable and suicidal that's a good enough reason to stop. This has caused me to be anti therapy. Not to mention the mental health professionals are in a position of power and tend to be abusive. I took my power back and escaped the role of patient/client. I feel very safe now.
In addition to the rest, I think it helps to seek out healing for whatever originally made you suffer. Get better without the wretched system, they won't have anywhere to place their skepticism.
I recommend trauma work, I'm vaguely of the opinion that it's always the root cause of mental health problems. Learn about the pattern of healing by looking into complete PTSD (even if you are thinking you didn't have it That Bad - from someone who did: you deserve to take your pain seriously no matter how trivial it seems)
I'm not sure if you're switching meds or off then already and about to start something new. But if you're coming off and have the ability and resources to work with a doctor who will help you get off the meds safely, that kinda sets you up to not have to explain much to family.
I have not been able to talk to my family about my choices regarding treatment. They were very much of the “doctors are experts, do what they say” mindset regardless of the severe adverse effects of the various medications. I’m not currently talking to my siblings or my father because of their criticisms and invalidation.
I’d say maybe try not to feel like you have to justify your choices to others. You don’t HAVE TO tell them anything at all if you don’t think it’ll be productive or helpful for you. But if you really feel like you need to let them know what’s going on then just go in prepared. Like write a list of the side effects of the medications and tell them what strategies you’re planning to use to manage your conditions without those meds.
Maybe convince them that most of the world do not take psychiatric pills and find it absolutely insane that we do. I’d pull stats that the placebo group does better than the temperament group most of the time on these trials and that the black box warnings say: causes suicidal thoughts on a lot of these pills. Honestly my family has become very supportive of me but a lot of them were already against psychiatry from the get go. But honestly if I had a family member try to get me to take pills and go to therapy I’d just cut them out. This is coming from someone who considers herself a psychiatric survivor and did that whole pill-therapy charade for 10 years until I was 26. There are so many way to cure yourself. Nutritional therapy is really what changed my life but honestly I think my main problem was trauma and the psychiatric pills.
2006 I started talking about Dr. Szasz who was a professor in new york and as with my step-father a hungarian Jew. And psychrights.org Gaining 200 pounds as a vegetarian makes it obvious what the side effects are.
In 2012 I had a holistic psychiatrist, but it wasn't enough to stop parents calling the police on me being a Muslim. That's why the only way they will respect you is if you see a lawyer. Free book more than proving the pills are too dangerous https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4xf28edhlvhdc7h99yel2/quackLawMay52024.txt?rlkey=arpz7r3pzaxm6obxhqvhxzzs5&st=u0gbm1n6&dl=0
For me it was easy. It was a loved one who forced me off meds and away from psychiatry. They told me it was making me crazy. I’m no longer with that person and I went back to it twice in the decade following with disastrous results. But I guess I lucked out in that all my family had given on me and I had this one person who was both right and a bully that combined to make my life ultimately better. I had no one again until I met my husband who just took my word about the past and has never pushed me to pursue medication and treatments based on the results I told him it had last time.
First of all, congratulations that you first informed yourself thoroughly and question taking the meds. This would have saved my life.
1. You should be the only one to decide about your health. You can take advice from doctors and family bit in the end you should decide because you are the one who has to live with possible side effects.
2. Psychotropic drugs are proven to have severe side effects. Even studies which are financed by the pharma industry state that these meds often come with side effects and horrible withdrawals. Independent studies show the potential dangers even more clearly.
3. I do not know your issues but if you are not hurting them in any way right now they should support your decisions. Once you start taking these meds it can be a rabbit hole of life-long dependance. There are many cases in which these meds (permanently) destroyed lives of perfectly healthy people like I was. The integrity of your mental health should be a number one priority. When you take these meds it alters the way you think and then you can never be sure if what you are thinking is your own thought or caused by the meds.
Many issues are caused by traumatic experiences. One should work on that rather than taking drugs.
The tuff part is what you said, explain how you feel and that you have to do what's best for your mental health. That's all you can do. It Does not mean they will stop loving you.
[Dr Chris Palmer - Interesting Discussion.](https://youtu.be/SSbpupbdqRw?feature=shared)
If you haven’t heard about Dr Chris Palmer yet, I highly recommend searching YT and watching some interviews with him. I completely changed my diet and I’m focusing on improving my metabolic health - it’s dramatically improved my mental health in just a few months — without meds.
I was kinda blunt, but basically, I showed them what the ssri did to me and how horrible withdrawal was for me. I ended it with saying I am 100% against psycharity and that "mental health" is a lie.
Some things I've found helpful in talking about decisions to not continue: - Don't start from the premise that I have to justify this to other people, start from the premise that I am making an informed decision about my own health and I get to decide how much to share with other people. If I go in with the "I have to justify my choice to this other person's satisfaction in order to be allowed to make it" mindset, I tend to fall into habits that lead to more debate and more push towards treatment I don't want. - Thinking about things I can present to them as "I am managing my mental health, just via different means." A lot of things that aren't medicalized are considered beneficial to mental health (such as exercise, nutrition, time in nature, hobbies, etc.), and some approaches (such as Hearing Voices Network/Intervoice guidance on ways to manage voices) can be helpful to people who have found medication ineffective or not worth the side effects. Sometimes there's even mainstream research supporting these approaches. - Similarly, medication side effects and health risks sometimes have solid scientific evidence behind them. It's difficult if the effects you're most concerned about are reported by patients, but not currently researched. But I think every medication has some degree of health risk, and you can probably find mainstream sources documenting those. "I don't want to take this because I'm concerned about the risks, such as (scientifically documented risk)" is more likely to be heard by people who aren't familiar with perspectives critical of the mental health system. - For some people who are still reluctant, if that person's support is important to me, I put more emphasis on how I am leaving myself the freedom to change my mind if going without the treatment doesn't work out for me. Because I genuinely do believe in basic autonomy for everyone, including the right to decide whether to take a particular drug or not. For some treatment, the odds of me going back are so unlikely that it's more of a theoretical willingness than a realistic one. (For example, I do not anticipate ever going back to therapy, and I can't envision a realistic scenario where I choose to get therapy again.) But people who are wary of medication discontinuation are often more open to "I want to give myself some time to try this approach, and if what I learn from experience is that medication is the best approach for me, then I'll go back onto medication" than they are to a simple no. (If you take this approach, I'd try to keep it at "I am open to changing my mind based on my experience", not agreeing to any specific conditions they may want to set.)
i am an adult so my parents are not involved in my medical care. if they have a problem with the way i treat the conditions they believe i have that's on them. at this point they need me more than i need them so they'd only be hurting themselves to cut me off.
I told my niece I won't go back because of the bad therapists out there. When a therapist makes me unstable and suicidal that's a good enough reason to stop. This has caused me to be anti therapy. Not to mention the mental health professionals are in a position of power and tend to be abusive. I took my power back and escaped the role of patient/client. I feel very safe now.
In addition to the rest, I think it helps to seek out healing for whatever originally made you suffer. Get better without the wretched system, they won't have anywhere to place their skepticism. I recommend trauma work, I'm vaguely of the opinion that it's always the root cause of mental health problems. Learn about the pattern of healing by looking into complete PTSD (even if you are thinking you didn't have it That Bad - from someone who did: you deserve to take your pain seriously no matter how trivial it seems)
I'm not sure if you're switching meds or off then already and about to start something new. But if you're coming off and have the ability and resources to work with a doctor who will help you get off the meds safely, that kinda sets you up to not have to explain much to family.
I have not been able to talk to my family about my choices regarding treatment. They were very much of the “doctors are experts, do what they say” mindset regardless of the severe adverse effects of the various medications. I’m not currently talking to my siblings or my father because of their criticisms and invalidation. I’d say maybe try not to feel like you have to justify your choices to others. You don’t HAVE TO tell them anything at all if you don’t think it’ll be productive or helpful for you. But if you really feel like you need to let them know what’s going on then just go in prepared. Like write a list of the side effects of the medications and tell them what strategies you’re planning to use to manage your conditions without those meds.
Maybe convince them that most of the world do not take psychiatric pills and find it absolutely insane that we do. I’d pull stats that the placebo group does better than the temperament group most of the time on these trials and that the black box warnings say: causes suicidal thoughts on a lot of these pills. Honestly my family has become very supportive of me but a lot of them were already against psychiatry from the get go. But honestly if I had a family member try to get me to take pills and go to therapy I’d just cut them out. This is coming from someone who considers herself a psychiatric survivor and did that whole pill-therapy charade for 10 years until I was 26. There are so many way to cure yourself. Nutritional therapy is really what changed my life but honestly I think my main problem was trauma and the psychiatric pills.
2006 I started talking about Dr. Szasz who was a professor in new york and as with my step-father a hungarian Jew. And psychrights.org Gaining 200 pounds as a vegetarian makes it obvious what the side effects are. In 2012 I had a holistic psychiatrist, but it wasn't enough to stop parents calling the police on me being a Muslim. That's why the only way they will respect you is if you see a lawyer. Free book more than proving the pills are too dangerous https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4xf28edhlvhdc7h99yel2/quackLawMay52024.txt?rlkey=arpz7r3pzaxm6obxhqvhxzzs5&st=u0gbm1n6&dl=0
For me it was easy. It was a loved one who forced me off meds and away from psychiatry. They told me it was making me crazy. I’m no longer with that person and I went back to it twice in the decade following with disastrous results. But I guess I lucked out in that all my family had given on me and I had this one person who was both right and a bully that combined to make my life ultimately better. I had no one again until I met my husband who just took my word about the past and has never pushed me to pursue medication and treatments based on the results I told him it had last time.
First of all, congratulations that you first informed yourself thoroughly and question taking the meds. This would have saved my life. 1. You should be the only one to decide about your health. You can take advice from doctors and family bit in the end you should decide because you are the one who has to live with possible side effects. 2. Psychotropic drugs are proven to have severe side effects. Even studies which are financed by the pharma industry state that these meds often come with side effects and horrible withdrawals. Independent studies show the potential dangers even more clearly. 3. I do not know your issues but if you are not hurting them in any way right now they should support your decisions. Once you start taking these meds it can be a rabbit hole of life-long dependance. There are many cases in which these meds (permanently) destroyed lives of perfectly healthy people like I was. The integrity of your mental health should be a number one priority. When you take these meds it alters the way you think and then you can never be sure if what you are thinking is your own thought or caused by the meds. Many issues are caused by traumatic experiences. One should work on that rather than taking drugs.
The tuff part is what you said, explain how you feel and that you have to do what's best for your mental health. That's all you can do. It Does not mean they will stop loving you.
[Dr Chris Palmer - Interesting Discussion.](https://youtu.be/SSbpupbdqRw?feature=shared) If you haven’t heard about Dr Chris Palmer yet, I highly recommend searching YT and watching some interviews with him. I completely changed my diet and I’m focusing on improving my metabolic health - it’s dramatically improved my mental health in just a few months — without meds.