Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion

Dear Friend,

Imagine a hypothetical scenario: you have suffered, and are suffering, with terrible headaches- for years! You had to take so much time off work- they fired you.
Being always in pain, and broke, made you a very prickly person- your wife left you.
Eventually, you stopped biking, reading, going out with your friends- how can you?? Always in bed, exhausted, in pain.
You are so desperate now; you are starting to wonder if your life, with those headaches, even worth living??
The doctor should be able to help, surely??
You go to your local clinic, and this is what the doctor tells you:

1. I am so sorry, no one knows what causes those headaches but it could be.. some chemicals gone wrong in your head?? I can give you some painkillers. They might work or not; its impossible to say. We would, most likely, need to increase the dose as you will develop tolerance. The side effects? Why, of course. You will have to stop driving; might become an impotent, also- obese; start having nightmares; and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

2. Could we explore what causes the headaches so you could avoid the cause..? In case it is still present? And stops you from recovering? Don’t make me laugh. I am a doctor, not a God.

3. Could we do some tests/analyze your headaches? Make an individual treatment plan? Plan for cure?
What planet are you from?? Everyone knows those headaches are IMPOSSIBLE to cure. And no one has the tests. But never fear- there are hundreds of painkillers for 300 types of headaches; we could start and stop, and combine- for as long as you live.

The above farce is, unfortunately, not a joke. Headache is a metaphor for mental illness. There are over 300 types described in the official “manual for mental disorders”, each of them being linked to the guidelines/medication’s regimes.

The medications are designed to suppress symptoms and have no effect on illness duration/potential cure. If there is no potential for cure, your customer- once hooked on your product- is yours for life. As a business model- it is very effective.

-We do not help the patient to find the cause of his illness; to alleviate it/prevent it

-We do not state the essence of the illness in a layman language; we either don’t know it or do know it but too scared to say (societal taboos!); complex medical jargon is, therefore, our smoke and mirrors.

-We are not explaining the diagnosis in a commonsense way (smoke and mirrors, again!); and if you don’t know what you are fighting, how can you succeed?

-We do recognize the value of “talking therapies”; but where patient needs “thousands of treatment hours”, we offer- six (!).

So, is there no hope? OF COURSE there is! Wise and thoughtful practitioners exist all over the world; they choose to open clinics outside of mainstream medicine; they often charge a lot.

A "free treatment"- yes, it exists! but its complex and poignant - better addressed in a book.

Dr Jasmine

P.S. The medications themselves are not not necessarily bad, or useless. If we offer them to a person who is acutely distressed; at a minimal efficient dose, and for a very short time, and it decreases acute suffering- this could be seen as a positive result (providing we are transparent about side effects, possibility of addiction etc). Medications should be a very small part of mental illness treatment; us saying its "a main part"- is wrong.