After suffering abuse as a child Rachel began to hear voices while a teenager and went to a psychiatrist for help. Years of hospital and drug treatment followed. However Rachel only recovered once she rejected psychiatry and began to embrace her ‘symptoms’ as a meaningful response to childhood trauma.
12 Responses to VIDEO: Rachel’s recovery from psychiatric labelling and unnecessary treatment
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Psychosis or Spiritual Awakening? | Voicehearer548 -
18/03/2017
[…] Rachel’s Story […]
Hi
I have just listened to Rachael Waddington talking about her experiences in the UK psychiatric system Thank you Rachael for your openness, honesty and reassurance that what you went through was a human process, which can be lived through, and you survived and can live a full life now. My son was diagnosed with bipolar and more or less told he had to be on medication for years, if not his whole life. He is recovering and although still on one med, which he plans to come off in the next few months, he is working and living a life. I don’t understand how the psychiatric system has been mesmerised by the pharmaceutical companies. Sadly I feel it has much to do with money, and not enough about compassion, listening, kindness and patience.
Thank you, and great to know about cepuk.org. We could do with a similar thing in Australia.
Kind Regards
Marcia
Well what else are ppl supposed to do to get better, phyciatry is the specialty to look after these sicknesses?
I am researching right now other reasons for depression and anxiety and alternative treatments, but none of that is taught to Drs or to us, you have to dig for it. It may or may not work.
I came off of meds for bipolar and felt great than crashed and have been worse than ever and put back on lithium to try to stop this. You normally can’t come off of meds and live free of them if you have a true mental illness. If you didn’t need the meds you wouldn’t have gone on them in the first place, you would not have had signs of mental illness and therefore not needed any meds. I’m talking in general not talking specifically about you. I have had no success with meds a Phycologist etc so now my insurance company because I’m off of work wants me to try ECT. I’m scared and I don’t know what to do, BUT I am reading about ppl who owe their lives to ECT. I know what the side effects can be but I’m just about out of hope and my will to live is almost gone.
Thanks for sharing your story. I had an experience with a bad tempered psychiatrist years ago who wasn’t prepared to understand the causes of my depression and was only interested in whether I slept and physical symptoms. Needless to say, the drugs didn’t help, and in fact, due to my underlying illness, had a terrible effect on me.
Although this happened over 20 years ago, I don’t know if attitudes have changed at all. It’s a shame that the profession is geared around the pharmaceutical industry and that diagnoses are used as a way of enabling medication rather than true healing, so that quite often these people are simply endorsed drug pushers and suppliers for these huge profiteers. By the same token, I understand that there are some cases where medication is needed, but that also doesn’t necessarily mean that their problems cannot be explored in some way, too.
Psychiatrists should know that this is a fantastic opportunity to explore the root of someone’s dis-ease instead of just another ‘no cure’ pharmaceutically based management system.
Rachel you are such a joyous shining light. Thank you for articulating so clearly, what must be the experience of thousands of our fellow human beings. Surely there cannot possibly be another area of health care that so consistently fails to holistically place the person at the centre of the story. The labels as you discovered are a sentence, removing you from a life you and so many others thought that they would have. I am bursting with joy for you Rachel that not only did you tear up those labels and stomp on them, but you stand so tall in order to advocate for those that cant. We are at the diagnosis stage with our 22 year old son and I WONT accept it and I WONT rest until we too get someone to work with him and help him with the trauma that he has sustained from an involuntary admission of 121 days, but of what MUST have occurred before it. It is 1am here in Australia and I am overjoyed to have found your video. Bless you Rachel, you are heaven sent.
I am also so pleased as well as it gives hope to people like my elder daughter. Also my younger daughter diagnosed with Schizophrenia is on top of the world and I managed to get her off the drugs given to her as a child of 13 – Risperidone – this just goes to show how inaccurate these labels are and that they do more harm than good. I am also impressed with your comments Diane as I too cannot accept the diagnosis of “paranoid Schizophrenia Treatment Resistant” and I have been looking closely at the real reasonse ie unable to metabolize the drugs and it is no wonder the drugs do not work and I have also been looking at physical underlying problems too which the majority of psychiatrists and even GPs do not stop to question in their haste to push drugs.
Thank you so much for sharing Rachel’s story, it is excellent in communicating .the effect of labeling misdiagnosis /etc. in Mental heath.I am speaking from a lived and living experience of this, but allowing healing also.
“There’s NOTHING wrong with me!” That’s so brilliant Rachel. There is hope for the world.
My son came off of all of the drugs about 18 months ago .. he’s still wobbly and says crazy stuff , but I too believe that it’s the right way.
He’s not been able to find a job yet but lives an ordinary life , he lives alone and cares for himself incredibly well.
He has a clean flat and a good diet.
That is wonderful he has a good diet!
Dear Rachel; I met you in NY at the ISPS conference and you have been such a beacon of hope for me and my husband as our daughter has spent years in mental hospitals living with taboo voices and kind voices alike and is finally living at home (well actually she is living in her own house on our property) We are helping her ease back into society one day at a time and I hope that one day she will be able to live completely med free after dealing with both childhood trauma and the trauma of psychiatric abuse and trauma. It is very difficult to find service providers who acknowledge the existence of psychiatric abuse and institutional betrayal but I am hopeful that as parents get more educated and join forces with psychiatric survivors, we will reach a critical mass where we will either be seen as a ‘market’ force able to demand different kind of services from the ‘system’ or we empower ourselves to create a whole different, non-monetized way of exchanging mutual support and services to those in distress such that the exchange of money, status, power, and privilege becomes less important than the building of community that takes place when people come together in a mutually collaborative and transparent way to restore justice, humanity, and allow healing to take place as families, communities, and as a planet. I am currently volunteering for MindFreedom International as well as Rethinking Psychiatry and I hope we can raise funds to bring you to our community soon on the west coast (Oregon) of the US
Sarah Smith, I am very impressed with your comments & I would like to include them in a post on my personal page. My page is public, so as to raise awareness,by educating, of issues we all should be aware of today. Thank you for your time & may you continue to succeed.