Not a chemical imbalance: peer

The diagnosis of schizophrenia is the most common diagnosis of all categories in the DSM4. This means that the cause of schizophrenia cannot be put down to just one thing, like a chemical imbalance in the brain caused by toxoplasmosis parasites. But perhaps for some people, cats are the cause. In any case television reports that it is a possibility. But, no way is that how it is for everyone diagnosed with schizophrenia. No way!

I had a diagnosis of schizophrenia given to me fifteen years ago. I’d experienced three deaths in a short period of time and I was isolated and in an abusive relationship. But that alone wasn’t the cause, it was the trigger. However, I was told it was a chemical imbalance and I must be treated with anti-psychotic medication.

There were scary things that happened in my childhood again and again. There was no real physical violence though. And, the person who was violating my childhood was also very loving and nurturing. However she exploded into suicidal threats due to her childhood trauma for the duration of my childhood and teenage years. This conditioning in childhood has meant that, as an adult, I’ve been triggered into an altered state of consciousness when someone close to me has died.

So why did I get the label schizophrenic? Because most psychiatrists are really lazy, uncaring and stupidly trained to follow out-dated dogma. A thinking professional would’ve realised what has caused me problems is transgenerational trauma. That is trauma that is passed onto the next generation because there isn’t effective social structure to allow the parent to overcome the abuse suffered , so they can tell their story to their children in a helpful non-threatening manner.

I blame transgenerational trauma on psychiatrists and their insistence on forcing harmful chemicals on people who don’t want it or need it. Neuroleptics don’t work for people who have experienced trauma, because people who have experienced trauma do not have a chemical imbalance, they are traumatised. So what could my mother do but pour out her sufferings to her children? She would’ve been locked away. She would’ve been drugged. I would’ve had to put up with foster parents who didn’t love me as much as she did, who may’ve put me on drugs if they thought I was behaving too artistically for their straight-laced sensibilities.

45 per cent of Australian Aboriginal children in foster care are put on psychiatric drugs. That’s horrific racism! There is no way that Australian Aboriginal children have a genetic ‘mental illness’ gene. More like there is some kind of imbalance in the Mental Health Act that allows this wholesale drugging of children and adults who are most likely suffering from trauma as well as transgenerational trauma, from the genocide that happened in this country!

I am enjoying learning about the growth of the peer support movement and how there is hope for people like me and parents who have a reasonable fear of medical professionals. I am also learning art therapy techniques that I believe do shift behavioural patterns, well, these things work for me.

It takes a long time to recover, if you can. For me, I’ve spent over a decade in art based rehabilitation, that was gentle and didn’t push me to quickly move on. This has meant I have been able to learn what I needed to and have developed a consensual reality that also makes sense to me. It’s taken a long time though. I’ve had steps backs where I was taken to hospital and tortured with cattle tranquilisers and heavy doses of neuroleptics. I’ve had times where I’ve lost the plot and said things that I didn’t want to say and only made sense if people understood the symbolic nightmare realm I’d entered into.

I have been repeatedly given the label schizophrenic by psychiatrists who give that label to anyone who shows symptoms that include unusual sensory experiences such as hearing voices. A better society would not give psychiatrists such a high platform in mental health treatment, when their belief of chemical imbalances are based on bollocks. I’m tired of a society that sits by and lets generations be tortured because of their faith in the cult of psychiatry. Many art therapists train for over ten years in various techniques. So, it’s not about the years studied, it’s about the sponsorship.

I say let those who want to be drugged by psychiatry, have their drugs, because perhaps they do actually have some parasite causing a cyst in their brain, that’s stressing them enough to cause trauma to the body that induces ‘symptoms of schizophrenia’. However, please, if the drugs don’t work, don’t force them on people and then say it’s their fault for being, ‘treatment resistant’. Besides, when drugs like Abilify have a known side-effect of causing hallucinations, how on earth can they be acceptable? Psychiatry and government law, is not currently making sense. It’s time for them to grow up and become better. As for blaming cats… well pussy down the well.