From Mad in the UK: Most of my life has been occupied with understanding the destruction inflicted on me and members of my family by psychiatry. In 1990 aged 18, I was diagnosed a borderline-case paranoid-schizophrenic. I was diagnosed in the USA so effectively I went mad in America. My life came to a stop. The diagnosing psychiatrist, on the other hand, went on to write best sellers ultimately appearing on Oprah. In 1995 I began training as an existential-phenomenological psychotherapist in London. There was no relationship between these two events. I did not train in order to make sense of what had happened to me. I assumed this to be impossible not only for me but for anyone. I had imbibed the common myth that psychotherapy is subsidiary to the field of psychiatry. One can only reach a certain level of understanding of distress and then a psychiatrist must be called in.
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