How a nervous breakdown can lead to treatment that destroys your brain

Tuesday, June 12, 2012 by: Mike Bundrant
Tags: nervous breakdown, stress, mental health

(NaturalNews) The following is a fictitious scenario, yet, believe it or not, shockingly similar events happen in America today. If you don't believe it, listen to the Jim Gottstien interview on Mental Health Exposed. Jim Gottstein is an attorney and founder of PsychRights.org. During this interview, Jim explains the dramatic fight he is up against to defend victims of mental health terrorism in America today.

Victims of mental health terrorism live ruined lives as a result of seeking treatment from mainstream psychiatric services. Stories of forced detainment, forced drugging and even forced electric shock therapy are common today. The victims are people just like you and me - normal people with normal problems.

Getting sucked into the vicious cycle of psychiatric abuse can begin with an oh-so-common event, such as a nervous breakdown.

Imagine the following very plausible scenario:

You are under a lot of pressure in life and, as it builds, you feel more and more anxious. It feels like you are nervous all the time for no reason and you wonder if you might have a medical problem. You may be in the middle of a ton of stress at work or home, but you don't believe all this could add up to so much chronic anxiety. At any rate, you ignore the issue, hoping it will go away on its own, even though it is now interfering with your sleep.

After a couple of months with 2-3 hours sleep at night, you get more bad news at work and you finally lose it. What follows is hard to describe. It feels as if your world is ending. The anxiety finally gets the best of you as you break down in tears, disoriented and confused. You can't even put into words what is happening inside of you. All you manage to do is lie in the fetal position and sob.

You are having a nervous breakdown.

Not knowing what else to do, you somehow pull yourself together enough to call a taxi to take you to the hospital. After doing some initial tests, the doctor finds "nothing physically wrong with you." This is somewhat upsetting to you, since it means it must be "all in your head."

Your mind is still an ocean of activity. Your nerves are raw. You tell the doctor, "I don't get it! I just don't get it. What is happening to me? How did I get in this place? I can't go on like this!"

Your cry for help earns you a ticket to the hospital's psych ward for evaluation. The psychiatrist checks his colleague's notes: extreme anxiety, disorientation, confusion, possibly psychotic, suicidal. He wants to give you a strong sedative and evaluate you for major depressive disorder and psychosis, perhaps even dissociative identity disorder. After all, you said you didn't know how you got here.

This is indeed sobering, as you have never considered yourself psychotic or in any way mentally ill. You have always been well adjusted, with the exception of the previous few months. You refuse the meds and want to leave.

Your wanting to leave is seen as a red flag by the psychiatrist, who denies your request to go home. He won't allow you to leave! If you were anxious before, now you are truly frightened and demand your freedom. You angrily inform the staff that you are no one's prisoner. You have constitutional rights!

These claims of imprisonment and violation of the constitution are seen as further evidence of psychosis. After all, this is a hospital, not a prison. The psychiatrist decides to medicate you against your will, as you are now considered a danger to yourself and others.

Psychiatric aides, big guys who'd do well as bouncers in a nightclub, hold you down while the doc fills your veins with the most wonderful, calming stuff you could ever imagine. Within a few minutes, you are lying listless on the hospital bed. You won't be causing any more problems for a while now.

Half-baked on anti-psychotic drugs and sedatives, you are now a cooperative patient. They keep the meds coming at regular intervals. It is discovered that you have major depression with psychotic features and you are ordered into treatment with a local outpatient psychiatrist.

You are taken from the hospital directly to the outpatient clinic and told you may return home, after signing a contract that you will not commit suicide before you are seen again and, of course, absolving the hospital of any wrongdoing.

The sedatives are doing their job keeping your frantic brain at bay. Treatment for the severe case of depression is initiated. After a few weeks of ineffective SSRI's, ECT or electro-convulsive therapy (electric shock therapy) is seen as the only option. You reluctantly consent.

After all, if you don't cooperate, you are threatened with detainment again and you have to work. You have come to depend on the meds to get through the day, anyway. And, well, these guys are doctors, so they must know what they are doing.

After the prescribed 12 sessions of shock therapy, you can't remember the reason why you sought treatment in the first place. In fact, many of your memories of life seem to have just disappeared. Your brain has been stimulated, so you do feel better for a few days. After that, the dull, aching anxiety that threatens to resurface if you don't take your sedatives is ever apparent. Your mind feels like a dustbin full of yesterday's trash.

A friend tells you that long-term exposure to psychotropic medication and electro-convulsive therapy is scientifically tied to a condition called Chronic Brain Impairment. In other words, these psychiatric treatments actually cause a traumatic brain injury and may impair the brain for life. There are a few good psychiatrists that practice the principle first do no harm, but most psychiatrists ignore it. Maybe you should find someone who can really help you heal?

You hear the words, but your mind is so dull and you thoughts so scattered that you don't think it would do you any good to even try at this point. Besides, what would you do without your medication?

No, this is just how life is. Things fall apart...maybe they never were together in the first place. Your psychiatrist informs you the electro-convulsive therapy works in the short term, but will need to be repeated periodically to keep you where you need to be.

How is this possible in a country that believes in freedom and individual rights?

In essence, not everyone in America believes in freedom or individual rights, especially those in positions of social and political power. There may be those who support psychiatry, however, individuals should hold the absolute right to mental health freedom, the right to possess your own mind.

The irony is, tragedies like the above characterization are totally avoidable. When someone has a nervous breakdown, or any psychological issue, it can be handled effectively without medication. If your best friend were going through it, how would you help? I am guessing your course of action would do less harm and be more effective than the average psychiatrist.

Jim Gottstein of psychrights.org is on a mission to change mental health in America, ending detainments, forced medication, forced electro-convulsive therapy and other forms of mental health terrorism in America.

Please educate yourself by listening to Jim on Mental Health Exposed.

About the author:
Watch the free video The AHA! Process: An End to Self-Sabotage and discover the lost keys to personal transformation and emotional well-being that have been suppressed by mainstream mental health for decades.

The information in this video has been called the missing link in mental health and personal development. In a world full of shallow, quick-fix techniques, second rate psychology and pharmaceutical takeovers, real solutions have become nearly impossible to find. Click here to watch the presentation that will turn your world upside down.

Mike Bundrant is co-founder of the iNLP Center and host of Mental Health Exposed, a Natural News Radio program.

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