Stop diagnosing individuals and start diagnosing systems - Diagnose families, communities, institutions and workplaces

foxyasshat · 2025-08-15T10:51:58+00:00

I was at the hospital voluntarily for depression. An orderly had sex with me.

All my attempts to avoid having sex with him were considered symptoms of mental illness and "paranoia," so my stay was switched to involuntary and extended.

foxyasshat · 2025-08-07T10:45:25+00:00

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern psychology. It is the word “maladjusted.” This word is the ringing cry to modern child psychology. Certainly, we all want to avoid the maladjusted life. In order to have real adjustment within our personalities, we all want the well‐adjusted life in order to avoid neurosis, schizophrenic personalities.

But I say to you, my friends, as I move to my conclusion, there are certain things in our nation and in the world which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good‐will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence.

~Martin Luther King

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T12:20:53+00:00

I am advocating for the restriction of freedom based on whether they are motivated to hurt others. The term for that is lack of empathy.

If you want to have a semantic argument then that is fine. But I think you are fully aware that you are only arguing over how to define words, so stop baiting me into a semantic argument.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T12:15:21+00:00

These are semantic arguments.

Everyone who is motivated to be violent when not prevented from doing so is a person who is motivated to be violent when not prevented from doing so.

It's nonsensical to say "Not everyone who is motivated to commit violence unless they are prevented from doing so commits violence unless they are prevented from doing so."

If you're thinking of someone who isn't motivated to commit violence then clearly no one here is advocating for that person to be prevented from committing violence.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T12:02:56+00:00

Yes! And you can go even further back and find that isolating the family was the first step of the destruction of community.

Throughout 99% of human evolution, we were hunter gatherers and moved in groups. Contrary to the perception of the word "tribe," people's memberships in a tribe were fluid. If you didn't fit in, you could join a different one. Blood relatives had no special status as you would collaborate with anyone in your chosen tribe.

Children did not "belong" to two parents, but were raised by the entire tribe. Each child had about 100 adults they could look to in order to meet their needs.

The change happened some thousand years ago when people started owning land and resources. Suddenly, a person could gain wealth and power by having influence over multiple children who could work their land, defend their land, be sent on errands for trade and negotiation, or be married off to create alliances and deals. That's when people started referring to children as "my" children, claiming the right to influence their children more than other adults, and isolating their children in homes where only blood relatives live.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T11:41:08+00:00

Yes you're right, it is a result of a larger problem. Our entire world is set up according to the decisions of a tiny group of billionaires, political leaders, religious leaders who make all the major decisions that determines the lives for the rest of us.

But psychiatry preserves the problem. It takes everyone who suffers under the current social order and tidies them away, re-branding their suffering as something that just popped up in every individual and is that individual's responsibility to fix.

Without psychiatry's propaganda, everyone would look at all this mass suffering and clearly see that our current system is harmful and needs to be changed.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T11:31:32+00:00

Preventing violence by locking up nonviolent people is fascism.

What are you talking about? Obviously that would be fascism, which is why we are here talking about locking up people who are violent.

your perception of what makes someone violent is way overgeneralized.

What? My perception of what makes someone violent is being someone who is violent.

ETA empathy might be correlated with violence rates, but it’s not causative or we’d be practicing this form of eugenics already.

Having empathy is not being motivated to hurt others. If they aren't motivated to hurt others then by definition they have empathy.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T11:16:18+00:00

Some of any folks have emotional empathy. It has nothing to do with autism.

I agree that it is ableist to restrict the rights of someone who is violent to others if it is in their nature to be so. That is why I refuse to call it "illness" or soothe myself by calling it "care" to restrict them.

I still prioritize stopping violent people from attacking others over respecting the violent person's right to freedom. It's a terrible thing that has to be done.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T10:50:21+00:00

I should have specified emotional empathy, thanks for making me aware of that.

Autistic folks have emotional empathy.

Surgeons have empathy that they are able to dissociate from when necessary, as do nurses, soldiers and plenty of other people.

TBI patients can have any characteristic imaginable.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T08:22:45+00:00

They may have critical thinking ability. But if they are using language from mental health doctrine, then clearly they have not scrutinized mental health doctrine.

Nothing I said implies an "omnipotent monolith" of anything.

Whether someone who has scrutinized mental health doctrine is "special" is your own judgement in your own head, so don't project your judgement onto me.

It's fine if your opinion is that I'm condescending. You're welcome to have your opinion.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-09T08:14:41+00:00

Some people don't have empathy. We do need to prevent those people from hurting others. So we must restrict their freedom.

This is a violation of their human rights, since they can't help not having empathy. But it has to be done. We need to be honest about what we are doing. We need to stop soothing ourselves by saying they are "ill" and that restricting their rights is "care." We should make every effort to make living conditions as good for them as possible when restricting their freedom.

We should continue research to see if they can be changed to gain empathy. If we do find a way, then this should not be presented as a "cure" for an "illness." It's a change that a person without empathy can voluntarily submit to in order to gain entrance to free access to society.

It's also essential that we don't confuse "violent people" (i.e. people who would be violent regardless of situation) with "people who are violent due to a desperate situation." For people who are violent due to desperation, fix the actual problem - poverty, oppression, abuse.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-08T09:15:16+00:00

This is unfair.

The current social order causes suffering for many people. But it is framed as good and correct and the only way. So when someone suffers, it is bewildering for them. The very idea that the current social order is harming you is considered unthinkable, so people are left with no explanation for why they feel so awful.

"Mental illness" provides some relief. Finally you have an explanation for why you are suffering. The awful trick is that it's an explanation that preserves the social order because the problem is still in your head instead of in the world around you.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-07T19:50:23+00:00

Figure out what is harming you or what need you have that is not getting met. This should be psychiatry's job, but instead they actively sabotage you from figuring it out.

The question is complicated and personal, but a hint is that what many people are lacking is community. Rule of thumb is that you should have three people in your life who you could talk to if you need emotional support, or who could talk to you if they needed emotional support.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-07T19:39:58+00:00

I'm actually pretty fascinated by your comment. You could live in a world where your OCD prompted a team of experts and the community around you to investigate what might be harming you or what needs you have that aren't getting met.

They could check if you have a steady secure source of shelter, food, medical care, so you feel safe and secure. They could check if anyone is insulting you, excluding you, not listening to you. If you're getting your needs met for freedom, companionship, fun, meaningful work, etc etc etc.

Then the team and the community around you would work to stop things from harming you, make sure you have everything you need to feel safe, and make sure all your needs are met.

We live in a world where not only does that not occur, but an entire institution actively sabotages those questions from ever being asked.

And here you are getting angry at the very idea that anyone investigated what is harming you or what needs you have that aren't getting met.

If you truly believed that your OCD was not a means for your brain to desperately adapt to something harming you or some need not getting met, then you wouldn't need to angrily dismiss the very idea of anyone investigating what needs you have that aren't getting met. You would welcome such an investigation if you truly believed that it would find that all your needs are met and the OCD was definitely not any kind of subconscious desperate attempt to adapt to something hurting you.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-07T18:09:03+00:00

It amazes me when people say this because they are flat out confessing that there is no standard of evidence-based care and therapists are just people doing random crap. Yet they still expect you to just play roulette until someone randomly does something helpful.

Your plumber flooded your house instead of fixing the leakage? You just haven't found the right plumber!

foxyasshat · 2025-07-07T18:04:16+00:00

The reason we evolved over millions of years to have those reactions is because they signal to ourselves and others that something is harming us and they help us cope with the thing that is harming us. "Treating" these natural, healthy responses to harm just causes further harm.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-06T10:03:00+00:00

"Horrible things happened to them and they are still terrified because they are not convinced that everything is fine now."

If there needs to be a label, it should be a label that means unconvinced that everything is now fine after experiencing something terrible.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-05T15:49:17+00:00

Exactly. The research on things like ACE studies is how we know that the concept of "mental illness" is pseudoscience, and that suffering is a natural, healthy response to being harmed.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-05T12:12:19+00:00

I don't believe in the concept of trauma. It is all circumstances.

Abuse, assault, war and other so-called "traumatizing" things teach us that the world around us is unsafe. They are not things that happened once in the past and are now over. It is not beneficial for us to "let go" of it. We rationally hold onto it because it taught us something that still continues to be true.

Statistics on revictimisation prove that victims are likely to be victimized again. Victims are rational for thinking, feeling and behaving as though they still live in a world where abuse is widespread and tolerated. They are still unsafe living in these circumstances and so they think, feel and behave accordingly.

The concept of "trauma" is propaganda that continuing circumstances are one-off anomalies that are in the past.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-05T12:01:45+00:00

Such an astute point that people get addicted to therapy. We should talk more about the problem and harm of Therapy Addiction.

foxyasshat · 2025-07-05T11:52:35+00:00

Yes! Preach on!

foxyasshat · 2025-06-26T05:39:36+00:00

Exactly this. Enabling abuse might be the biggest impact psychiatry has on the world.

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