| I have strong feelings about your response. There are people who were either medicated at a young age or forced to take medication through legal proceedings. Of those, most will have experienced the same hit-or-miss phenomenon with psychiatric medication. In some cases, however, this means that they were forced to take medications that had debilitating side-effects or didn't particularly work, and experienced serious stress trauma due to their ongoing helplessness in the situation. I do not expect them to be any less capable than anyone else, as a result, of understanding that other people are not them. I do not expect them to be offended when other people describe experiences that are not theirs. You're responding to the advice of someone who has taken medications voluntarily and had control over the process; this person is writing in response to an article by a man who, for all his bad experiences, was ALSO taking medications voluntarily. The statement that you single out as objectionable is actually nearly universal advice, and reflects my own experience with medications and mental health problems. If your comments about "how offensive that is" are based in your own experience as someone who was coercively medicated, I would be interested in hearing an explanation of why you find them objectionable. If they are not, however, I seriously question the value of your interjection into the conversation. I am attempting to be gentle and moderate in my response and I apologize if it seems harsh to you. |