u/Puzzled-Response-629

I'm not completely against psychiatric treatment. I'm currently on antidepressants because I think they can help my life.

But I am annoyed because I was put in mental hospital for quite a long time, and during that time I was injected with drugs against my will, without being told about some of the worrying side effects they can cause. I wish they had let me choose my preferred medication out of several alternatives, but they didn't.

Do you think your experiences with psychiatry have negatively affected your life?

People who defend psychiatry will say "if someone is a danger then they should be detained in order to protect the public", and I agree with that, because I don't want the public to be endangered. But I also think that psych patients should be treated as well as possible, and should be allowed to make medication choices between different drugs in the same class, for example. I think psychiatry at the moment doesn't care about the negative impacts it has on patients' lives.

I think there is still a very big stigma and culture of shame regarding antidepressants. People will think or say things like "nobody needs antidepressants, you just need to try harder at life". They might think you're soft, pathetic, or stupid for choosing to take antidepressants.

I guess we're not all born into equally easy circumstances though right? Some people are born into relatively easy circumstances (good genes, good environment) while others are born into more challenging circumstances (less good genes, less good environment) which could result in mental health problems.

Maybe the shame and stigma should be ignored? If people who are against antidepressants were in very challenging life situations themselves, they might consider taking the medication themselves.

Do any of you feel this sort of conflict? On the one hand I hate what psychiatry did to me (locking me up, drugging me against my will), but on the other hand I recognise that psych meds make me more productive, and I absolutely need to get back into a job.

If you have felt this conflict, how did you resolve it? Do you not take the meds, and then pray that you'll find a way to be functional again without meds? Or do you take the meds to function better, and hope that you will have a chance to hold psychiatry accountable in the future?

Do any of you feel as conflicted about antidepressants as I do?

Part of me thinks "don't take them, if you try a bit harder you can live a normal life without them" (I did used to have a normal life without them).

Then another part of me thinks "you could take them, who cares if others judge you, they make it easier to get productive things done".

What is your view? There's also the side effects of them which I hate. I really don't want to take them, but they do have some benefits.