Freedom! Freedom! Letting go of psychiatry US style

Today’s vignette is not about the way letting go of psychiatry is supposed to work. Let me explain. Normally when people write about how they ended their relationship with psychiatry, they talk about how they made a conscious decision to just stop going to their appointments, maybe because they felt they no longer needed them or perhaps because they didn’t feel they were serving any useful function.

Chris has seen Jesus de N. (his psychiatrist) ONCE since we moved to Florida in August. Today he attempted a third try only to be told that the doctor had a problem with his car and would be late. Chris was prepared to wait until the doctor got there, but was told that he’d have to make a new appointment because the doctor would not be arriving any time soon. (This was the second time in a row that the doctor has cancelled.)

So, the question is, does Chris actually have a psychiatrist? I think not. He has a psychiatrist on paper, someone whose office he can phone to get a referral, someone who can satisfy our insurance company to continue to cover him, but this person is not someone he actually sees. He is free to do what he wants, unencumbered by psychiatry. This is brilliant! I’m surprised that more people who want to escape psychiatry’s clutches aren’t praising the system here in the United States. (Dr. Stern, Chris’s psychiatrist in Switzerland used to phone him if he missed an appointment or was late. She rescheduled any missed appointments for the same week. Not the case here. Here, it’s like the psychiatrist doesn’t think he needs to see his patients.)

Hallelujah brothers and sisters. Free at last!

Startling news

On Friday, Chris and I met with the director of the brainwave center to go over the results of the testing. To cut to the chase there is clear evidence of a brain trauma. According to the report we received, “Frontal, temporal motor strip and parietal dysregulation are consistent with his symptoms. These areas participate in the executive, default, and salience networks, which have been implicated with schizophrenia. The frontal lobes are involved in executive functioning, abstract thinking, expressive language, sequential planning, mood control and social skills. The temporal lobes are involved in auditory information processing, short-term memory, receptive language on the left and face recognition on the right.”

Evidence of a brain trauma in the left frontal lobe was surprising news to the director as both Chris and I had assured him that he has no history of a trauma.

“Oh, I guess I forgot to mention that when I was about age 30 I used to bang my head on the wall on occasion, and also, I got hit by a car when I was 24 and landed on the side of my head though my arm cushioned the fall.”

I was both dumbfounded by the news and totally embarrassed that we had failed to report any of this in our previous interviews. I did know of the car accident, but this was the first time I learned that he had hit his head in the accident. (His father took him right away to a nearby clinic and he was pronounced okay.) As for deliberately banging his head on a wall, well, how stupid is that?

The point is there is clear evidence of a head trauma as shown by the spectral analysis and topographic mapping. Chris’s alpha, beta, and high beta powers looked very good to the director.

Recommended treatment: Direct neurofeedback x 20 sessions with left frontal and motor strip emphasis.