Was psychiatry more helpful or more harmful for you?


  • Total voters
    51
D

dogemn

Student
May 30, 2023
113
In my case, psychiatry ended up being more harmful than helpful. I was labeled "clinically depressed" and "mentally ill" when I was only 11, which crushed my self-esteem. Instead of looking for the root causes of what I was going through (I was dealing with severe abuse at home), I was simply given a diagnostic label and prescribed SSRIs that didn't help.

Throughout the years I went to several psychiatrists, but I never felt understood or genuinely helped. The medications mostly gave me side effects with little to no real benefit.

I'm curious how other people's experiences compare. Has psychiatry been genuinely helpful for you, or have you faced something similar?
 
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K

kitkat9234

Arcanist
Nov 27, 2024
457
These meds have ruined every aspect of my life. Fucking poisons that don't even work leaving me with permanent side effects.
 
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I

idiotmother

Arcanist
Mar 21, 2025
449
I feel like I've repeated myself so many times on here, but just like kitkat said, I've been destroyed by these poisons. I've been gaslit and forced onto anti psychotics which have decimated my brain. Everyday is survival and horrific. I can't stop taking them either.
 
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wheelsonthebus

wheelsonthebus

vroom vroom
Apr 1, 2022
74
He diagnosed what turned out to be autism as BPD. Tell me how I could have developed a personality disorder from childhood trauma that I displayed the symptoms of before the trauma? My earliest memories include not understanding the workings of the network between other people. everyone around me assumed I knew I was autistic. but if a woman is a bitch needs to smile more is at all unpleasant, then BPD it is. nevermind that I cannot relate to or endorse the experiences of someone with the condition. Nevermind that more males are diagnosed with autism and adhd, and more women with bpd, and we accept that as a legitimate gender-based difference, even though viewing it that way is inconsistant with modern nuerological knowledge. now that it's on my medical record, I cannot escape the stigma from medical providers. I never considered leaving a suicide note, but I am strongly considering sending a single text message to him, my psychiatrist, before I shoot myself (very soon): "bitch"
 
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traingirl

traingirl

I was good. I was really good.
Oct 7, 2025
318
In my case, psychiatry ended up being more harmful than helpful. I was labeled "clinically depressed" and "mentally ill" when I was only 11, which crushed my self-esteem. Instead of looking for the root causes of what I was going through (I was dealing with severe abuse at home), I was simply given a diagnostic label and prescribed SSRIs that didn't help.

Throughout the years I went to several psychiatrists, but I never felt understood or genuinely helped. The medications mostly gave me side effects with little to no real benefit.

I'm curious how other people's experiences compare. Has psychiatry been genuinely helpful for you, or have you faced something similar?
Harmful harmful HARMFUL!! Stay away from them unless you are so severely depressed you can't move from your bed.
 
Unlucky777

Unlucky777

Experienced
Dec 10, 2025
239
These meds have ruined every aspect of my life. Fucking poisons that don't even work leaving me with permanent side effects.
This. Me too. I'm a shell of the person I used to be and one of the reasons why I'm here
 
N

notreallybored

Specialist
Nov 26, 2024
339
He diagnosed what turned out to be autism as BPD. Tell me how I could have developed a personality disorder from childhood trauma that I displayed the symptoms of before the trauma? My earliest memories include not understanding the workings of the network between other people. everyone around me assumed I knew I was autistic. but if a woman is a bitch needs to smile more is at all unpleasant, then BPD it is. nevermind that I cannot relate to or endorse the experiences of someone with the condition. Nevermind that more males are diagnosed with autism and adhd, and more women with bpd, and we accept that as a legitimate gender-based difference, even though viewing it that way is inconsistant with modern nuerological knowledge. now that it's on my medical record, I cannot escape the stigma from medical providers. I never considered leaving a suicide note, but I am strongly considering sending a single text message to him, my psychiatrist, before I shoot myself (very soon): "bitch"
ב''ה,

I'm going to be kind of a dick here but keep in mind I'm being a dick to the lack of insight in the psych industry.

If you're talking Borderline.. 'Personality Disorders' are sort of nebulous and sort of always amounted to a billing code so the industry could bill you for showing up..

Anyway, I've seen this a lot, and the 'enshittification' of, let's just say Western housing options to give people options to get RnR from people and relationships that cause them to have to have an 'attachment style' created a sort of epidemic of this, where some folks will shrug and be cool with even the most ridiculous crammed in with others lives and others go into, pardon the pun, hysteresis maybe for a reflex and assumption that an emotional reaction is always required or demanded of them..

Anyway, you're right that the equivalent in guys is less noticed or commented on between 'nobody cares about guys' and it less interferes with economics in standard gender roles so it's less a 'is it causing a problem' that triggers a diagnosis.

So I want to say the whole thing is a clusterfuck, but I'm just sketching that outline of 'how it be' because, psych created this diagnostic category to bill for, then shrugged that there are no treatments (except what there sort of is, valium and the usual SSRIs to maybe calm down that constant panic about whether y'all are supposed to be expressing love or hate to those you're around if 'seeming Borderline,' but of course grudgingly because the process of approving those as treatments for the particular billing category hardly even got started).

And did psych even talk to neurology about 'huh, so there's this type of person we keep seeing that everyone agrees has something going on because they stress themselves and others out with the two extremes of emotion when expressing attachments,' and.. honestly it seems like there was the slightest handful of anyone going good work and this all got buried under the 'nah everyone has to do the dumbest thing possible' for particularly the last ten years.

So I hate autism as a big nebulous category that just includes some heady mix of 'maybe there's neurological structural and biochemical issues' 'anything that isn't the behavior the provider prefers' and 'AMPHETAMINES GET YOUR AMPHETAMINES WHO WANTS TO SEE WHO SURVIVES BEING SPUN AND WHO JUST GETS REALLY SPUN? WE'LL TELL YOU ALL THE SIDE EFFECTS ARE LIKE A DRINKING GAME' but nonetheless, with slightly less stupid categorization, getting to what combination of nature, nurture, and current cultural and social pressures create and sustain the (sorry) hysteresis rather than the shrug differently abled people can manage for not always projecting a fight flight or f___ response to social pressure to emote..

Well, psych propagates through billing as we've all seen, so all that succeeds is what generates the most billing, and tracking outcomes besides billing is a huge mess that also would seem intrusive unless all of us dumb enough to touch the industry would give our lives to trying to make it less stupid through the slow scientific method that would also institutionalize most humans for one night out in any major city because everything Freud recommended as treatment is also a 'disease' now rather than a hangover.

Probably drifting off the best I can do for a thesis there, but as much as you're happy living the Autism Lifestyle and I'm bent these billion loosely if at all related neurodiversities aren't at least conceptualized as distinctly as different cancers by the medical establishment (and, bad news, there's no such thing as typical except that arbitrary standards could be set) .. yeah, what's up with these assholes who never looked for a cause they could treat while billing to treat it, even if the palette of medications largely remained unchanged anyway?
 
Unlucky777

Unlucky777

Experienced
Dec 10, 2025
239
Harmful. Very harmful. And I'm now paying the ultimate price with my life
 
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fadedghost

fadedghost

Student
Dec 10, 2025
191
Vastly more harmful. Psychiatry (and therapy) was the second worst thing that's ever happened to me. The worst thing was meeting someone who sexually assaulted me in a violent way. The third worst thing was meeting someone who raped me, but it didn't result in injuried like the sexual assault.
 
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RunDown

RunDown

Getting ready to go
Jun 18, 2025
80
Psychiatry will always be harmful if the metric for mental health is how well you can adapt to exploitative societal systems. I understand that medicines help people cope with living in these systems. I think this is a sign of failure. There is a lack of meaning in our lives, we're disconnected, while narcissism thrives. Psychiatry reminds me of how wrong early astronomers were about our solar system. It took a thousands of years to figure it out. Psychiatry is in its infancy and full of presuppositions. The science on most mental health conditions is not conclusive. Throughout its history, there have been groups of patients, treated as guinea pigs, that suffered irreparable harm. I am one of those patients now. I'm happy that some people are helped, but man I wish I never touched a psych med. I wish I was informed of possible lifelong damages.
 
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D

dogemn

Student
May 30, 2023
113
Psychiatry will always be harmful if the metric for mental health is how well you can adapt to exploitative societal systems. I understand that medicines help people cope with living in these systems. I think this is a sign of failure. There is a lack of meaning in our lives, we're disconnected, while narcissism thrives. Psychiatry reminds me of how wrong early astronomers were about our solar system. It took a thousands of years to figure it out. Psychiatry is in its infancy and full of presuppositions. The science on most mental health conditions is not conclusive. Throughout its history, there have been groups of patients, treated as guinea pigs, that suffered irreparable harm. I am one of those patients now. I'm happy that some people are helped, but man I wish I never touched a psych med. I wish I was informed of possible lifelong damages.
I couldn't have said this better. I'm really sorry to hear you've been harmed by psychiatry, friend. I so deeply regret having taken psych meds too.
 
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fadedghost

fadedghost

Student
Dec 10, 2025
191
Psychiatry will always be harmful if the metric for mental health is how well you can adapt to exploitative societal systems. I understand that medicines help people cope with living in these systems. I think this is a sign of failure. There is a lack of meaning in our lives, we're disconnected, while narcissism thrives. Psychiatry reminds me of how wrong early astronomers were about our solar system. It took a thousands of years to figure it out. Psychiatry is in its infancy and full of presuppositions. The science on most mental health conditions is not conclusive. Throughout its history, there have been groups of patients, treated as guinea pigs, that suffered irreparable harm. I am one of those patients now. I'm happy that some people are helped, but man I wish I never touched a psych med. I wish I was informed of possible lifelong damages.
I agree with @dogemn . Extremely well articulated. đź’Ż
 
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