Back to the OP. Many patients are angered by the mental health field for a variety of reasons. Some more legitimate than others, of course, nevertheless I believe that frustration is what fuels a lot of the anti-psychiatry/psychology/treatment websites. Also, just look at the posted comments section in any media article on mental health treatment and you will see and hear that same frustration. It's usually about 20% the anti-medical everything loons, 20% diet and exercise will fix ya, 20% political debate, 30% "I was screwed by this quack", and 10% "After years of quacks, this doctor saved my life."
Some of those numbers could be improved, IMO.
I think it's more than just frustration. I agree that is a part of it, but I know plenty of people who became disgruntled with the mental health care system, including myself, who didn't then go on to become anti psychiatry and advocate against the entire field. So it makes me wonder what it is about those in the anti psychiatry movement that makes things so different for them. Why do they take up the sword, so to speak, and go into battle with this amorphous creature they see as 'Psychiatry', whilst others who have also been let down or abuse by the system choose not to impart their own views onto others, or onto the field as a whole.
I do think what Birchswing said regarding incidents not being taken seriously enough when they are reported, or not being responded to at all might be one added layer to the anti psychiatry puzzle. You take someone who has already felt harmed, or been harmed, and then give that person little to no consideration or recourse to address that harm, and you've quite potentially left them wide open to the influences of the anti psychiatry movement, imho.
*thinks...* Okay, this will be the
one and
only time I will go into any sort of detail regarding my previous experience of abuse in therapy, and
only because I believe it is pertinent to the topic at hand....
The Psychiatrist who abused me put many of his female patients, including myself, through a systematic grooming process that lasted anywhere from 12 months to 2 years, and involved tactics such as psychological manipulation, fear suggestion, isolation, and dependency, before the therapy was then gradually sexualised until a sexual relationship was eventually commenced. I consider myself one of the luckier ones, because thanks to a couple of incidents that occurred at the time I was able to break out of the almost cult like stranglehold this Doctor had on many of his patients, and leave before things went past a certain point. In my case the situation got as far as the early stages of some increasingly inappropriate touching, although nothing that was outright sexual, and a certain amount of sexually charged comments and/or language. Despite the fact that, strictly speaking, I wasn't sexually abused by this Psychiatrist, being put through close to a year's worth of psychological mind games and manipulation, along with the sexualisation of therapy that I did experience still left me with a truck load of trust and trauma issues (having someone get inside your head and mess with it like that can be incredibly damaging, as I'm sure you're more than aware).
Now because I felt as if my situation wasn't as severe as others, and because I didn't want to tie up any investigation with what might have been considered a 'frivolous complaint', I personally chose not to file a report, but I do know others who eventually did, including not just former patients, but family members as well. From what we were lead to believe the medical board had already been informed, via unofficial complaints and rumours, that something was amiss at the time the abuse was occurring, and they did nothing. Even after official complaints had been made it still took them another 4-5 years before any action was taken - the Psychiatrist in question was then eventually stripped of his medical licence. I believe the majority of us who had been through his so called 'care' breathed a huge sigh of relief when the final verdict came down...it might have taken a while, criminal charges might not have been bought against him, but at least he could no longer practice as a Psychiatrist, or as a Physician, and hurt any more vulnerable people out there. That was up until 2010/2011 when it was discovered by a group of former patients attempting to bring a civil suit against him that his license had been returned not less than three years later, and he had been allowed to recommence practicing (the only restriction being he not be involved in private practice), before eventually retiring in relative luxury to an undisclosed location overseas. So basically for putting patients through a calculated and systematic regime of psychological and sexual abuse (and in some cases outright raping them while they were under conscious sedation with no capacity to consent) he essentially ended up getting off with what amounted to little more than a slap on the wrist in my book.
Obviously finding out this new development I was very angry, and in many ways also felt doubly betrayed. Not only had the system appeared to fail to protect those most vulnerable, it seemed as if it were more concerned with protecting the overall reputation/careers of the perpetrators by doling out only the most perfunctory of punishments, and then promptly working to bring them back into the fold. In my case I've been fortunate enough that I've at least been able to begin to work through a lot of this with my current Psychiatrist, who I have come to trust implicitly. But what if that wasn't the case? What if after going through all of this instead of coming across someone in the mental health profession who I could learn to eventually trust, it was the anti psychiatry movement I came into contact with first?
In these types of cases I personally feel as if the failure of the boards (and/or whatever other organisations are involved) to act, or to act appropriately, is just as damaging, both to the patient and to the reputation of the Psychiatric profession overall, as is the abuse that occurred in the first place. You take an already victimised person, make them feel victimised all over again by failing to adequately address the cause of that victimisation, and then present them with a platform where they may very well feel as if they finally have a chance to be 'heard', and I can see how some people might be drawn to the anti psychiatry movement as a place for them to vent their anger (and more often than not their confusion as well). To my mind it still doesn't explain why many who go through the same, or similar experiences don't end up becoming anti the entire system, whilst others do, but looking at it based on my own first hand knowledge I can at least see how such things might occur.