Jeremy and DSeid,
If you would be so kind as to take a glance at the section titled "A Little Story About a Conference" on this page ...
OK, yes, my situation is a bit different. I would not describe myself as seeking help or treatment. (I actually went through a period of many years during which I wanted help pretty desperately, and might have been considered to be "depressed", but my experiences with psychiatry came later when I did not consider myself to be in need help).
I'm sorry that I so often come across as uncaring or insensitive to the suffering of others when it comes to these issues. I'm...well, at least mildly regretful? ...that my (warranted) skepticism about the psychiatric profession, its theories of biological-based "mental illness" and its "treatments" for same and so forth, are upsetting to people who want good treatment and care for their suffering loved ones.
I think there is probably common ground. Our concerns converge in places, especially with regards to quality of care issues and the prevention of abuse, and (hopefully) the attempts to empower the "consumer" of mental health services so that, on the one hand, the heavy-handedness of medical authority is ameliorated by an informed, organized, and aware population that insists on explanations, options, and choices; and, secondarily, so that funding for mental health services is no longer determined and allocated without the input of those who will be receiving and making use of it.
Hopefully, you would also agree that you and your loved ones benefit far more than you suffer from the existence of a vocal, angry, militant-radical contingent of pissed-off former mental patients screaming our heads off about callous disregard for patient welfare, unsafe treatments, misuse of coercive authority and violation of civil rights, and lack of adequate redress for malfeasance.
Jeremy is hoping for an improvement in the quality of the types of treatment and care that can be offered. While I remain unconvinced that the profession is even playing in the right etiological ballpark, I do think that candor and rigor plus research funded by other sources in addition to the pharmaceutical industry will stimulate new findings and improvements, and hopefully you, with your greater faith in their current knowledge base, would concur with that.
We are addressing the stigma by ripping the cover off the box: the profession, the patients, the condition(s) known as "mental illness", and the possibility of receiving treatment are ALL overshadowed with the stigma of how psychiatric treatment has been and continues to be used: as a means of dealing with those whose behavior disturbs society, for the benefit not of the patients but for the protection of society from them and the disturbances they create.
I don't think the stigma problem will ever go away until and unless we either quit dealing coercively with people except by charging them with violations of the law (unlikely and probably impossible) or else quit pretending that we don't do it by labeling the activity a form of "help" and imposing it on people who don't want it. Perhaps the police functions of psychiatry could be separated entirely from the provisions of mental health services for those who seek it--then we could go head-to-head with the police functions and have a better public debate over its abuses without the care systems being used as their shield and ending caught in the middle of the debate.
Original SDMB thread - Shock treatment
See my previous post on this same thread