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'Experts' discussing early intervention in #psychosis always seem to come back to two options:
1) Anti-psychotics
2) Psychological 'interventions'
I find the whole 'expert' framing of the issue increasingly narrow and lacking in lived experience perspectives. Thread.
1) Anti-psychotics
2) Psychological 'interventions'
I find the whole 'expert' framing of the issue increasingly narrow and lacking in lived experience perspectives. Thread.
First the thing about early intervention: I gather the aim is to 'get in early' before young people with symptoms become young adults with 'psychosis'.
To me that raises many questions. How do you identify these symptoms at such a young age, when they might well be normal anxieties and responses to life? Is it ethical to 'intervene', particularly by giving anti psychotics with terrible side effects?
Then there's the apparent binary choice between taking anti-psychotics or psychological interventions, whatever those may be (or both, if the 'expert' is that way inclined) But what if, perhaps, people want to find their own way through? What then?
11 years ago I was deemed to have 1st episode psychosis. I was forcibly subjected to (1) for a couple of weeks before being referred to (2) for 'early intervention'. Like that was going to happen after the trauma of (1).
But hey, guess what 'experts'? It's actually possible to make sense of your own trauma, and the resulting 'psychosis' and the effects it has on you, without (1) or (2).
Not only that, but it's even possible to recover from some of the worst side effects of the 'expert' treatment you may have had to endure: the wiping of memory with anti-psychotics, the patronising interviews, the repeated questioning when you were traumatised.
Yes, it's all possible: a world of wellbeing without your crumby 'expertise', without people being subjected to further harm. A world where care and compassion replace the 'experts' who today make a mint out of others suffering.
