Very eye-opening though extremely depressing. It makes me wonder how many of my symptoms are due to psychiatric medications, mostly antipsychotics. It's absolutely insane how big of a factor money has been to the ills of psychiatry, how psychiatry itself basically owes its existence to capitalism. I can think back to my psychiatric experiences spanning over a decade and I feel so betrayed. This has made me completely reassess how I see myself re: schizophrenia especially regarding how it was a diagnosis largely given to the poor and Black populations in its inception, or to a variety of people with a range of different symptoms. It's so insidious how the unfounded claim that schizophrenia is a biological disease has swayed ignorant patients and their families into taking medications that inflict so much pain and even exacerbate their illness, making them dependent on the medications for the rest of their lives.

I highly recommend this book to victims of the psychiatric system, especially those who feel like they have gotten worse after taking antipsychotics. I think everyone should read it to be honest, to see how cruelly the marginalized are treated under the thin guise of concern over their mental health.

The truth is that psychiatry has been a way of social control. The treatments seen as most effective were and are sedative. As long as you aren't causing trouble, you are considered to be improving, no matter how much turmoil you're put through, no matter how irreversibly disabling your condition becomes. It has its foundations in racism and capitalism. There has to be better ways of treating the mentally ill. In America, it is truly pitiful.