N.1. Psychiatric Drugs and Re-evaluation Counseling (Lengthy Reason)
Harm from Drugs
According to RC theory, our minds are intact and we can discharge, re-evaluate, and think of an elegant solution for each new situation. Psychiatric drug use is based on other assumptions.
Some psychiatric drugs can cause permanent physical damage to the central nervous system, or death. Many of them affect the ability to learn.
These drugs may sometimes allow a person to look more “normal,” tolerate unworkable and oppressive conditions in society, stop “anti-social” behavior, and suppress and numb feelings. They are not a real solution. They can add additional layers of hurt, both emotional and physical. Psychiatric drugs are being used more and more to silence people’s struggles against racism, poverty, classism, young people’s oppression, sexism, LGBTQ+ oppression, other oppressions, genocide, and war.
Psychiatric drugs also interfere with emotional healing. They can suppress the discharge process and hide outward indications of distress rather than promote discharge and healing.
The pharmaceutical industry is expanding rapidly and is making huge profits by exploiting the people hurt by oppression. It widely promotes the misinformation that there is “biological/genetic/chemical-imbalance mental illness” and that drugs are the best and only solution.
“Mental Health” and “Mental Illness”
The “mental health” system increasingly requires workers to give drugs to control people’s “symptoms” of “mental illness.” These workers are typically over-worked in under-staffed institutions. They can lose their jobs or be taken to court if they do not give the drugs. They may or may not have access to effective counseling methods.
In addition, health care providers, including physicians, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners, who work in general medicine (and not the “mental health” field) are often expected to prescribe and refill prescriptions for psychiatric drugs. Teachers and school administrators are increasingly pressured to refer young people to the “mental health” system. Forced drugging of people in the “mental health” system is a common practice in much of the world.
RC questions the concept of “mental illness.” We have found that everyone has been hurt, and those hurts show in different ways. The term “mental illness” is used to describe a wide range of behaviors, including heavy, prolonged discharge. Some of these behaviors are the result of experiences of hurt, including oppression and other massive hurts inflicted on people by society.[184] Other behaviors simply do not fit the expectations of our rigid society. People are conditioned to find these behaviors restimulating. As a result, some may push others, as well as themselves, to use drugs in order to both suppress the behaviors and hide the distresses that have caused them.
An increasing number of young people, poor people, Native and Indigenous people, Global Majority people, women, elders, LGBTQ+ people, incarcerated and institutionalized people, people with disabilities, and people oppressed in other ways are being put on these drugs, sometimes without their meaningful consent, in order to hide the hurts being inflicted on them by society.
Psychiatric Drugs Are Not a Solution
Psychiatric drugs are often used as a “solution” to what are perceived to be emotional, learning, and behavioral problems. Young people are particularly vulnerable to lifelong dependence, addiction, life-threatening diseases later in life, or even death, when adults force them to take drugs at an early age. In some countries, parents are threatened with their children being excluded from school or other programs or with losing state benefits or custody of their children if they do not give them drugs.
There are real solutions to people’s emotional, learning, and behavioral problems. They require us to organize for fundamental societal change and to pay thoughtful human attention to the people who have been harmed.
Stopping Drugs Safely
It can be harmful to suddenly stop taking some psychiatric drugs. Therefore, Co-Counselors who decide they want to stop taking psychiatric drugs are advised to consult with a physician, psychiatrist, or other medical professional authorized to prescribe psychiatric drugs, about how they can safely stop taking the drug.
[184] The brain can be damaged by infections, toxins, physical trauma, and degenerative processes. These are physical injuries and may affect behaviors, feelings, and other human functions. As with similar damage to other parts of the body, this kind of damage to the brain may benefit from medical intervention. This Guideline doesn’t address such physical injuries.