Some reflections on the presentation “The violence of diagnosis” by the Spanish psychiatrist Laura Martín López Andrade. I finally realize that I'm not the only one with this way of thinking.

 

Laura Martin Lopez Andrade is a Spanish Psychiatrist, also President of the Association “La Revolucion Delirante”. She was a speaker of  the course “Listening to Discomfort #1” at the Institute of Humanities of Barcelona, ​​in June 2022. In the first session, Dr Laura Lopez spoke about the “Violence of Diagnosis”. A wonderful session, which made me understand that I was not isolated with my reflections. Long before I began humanitarian work, I had already seen how some mental health professionals turned to medicine without making any effort to go beyond the symptom, I'm talking about 20 years ago. At that time I worked in an institution with children, and it was very sad to see how the diagnosis of ADHD Attention-Deficit/Hiperactivity Disorder proliferated and with it the “magical” cure of medicines for its treatment. Schools working hand in hand with doctors and chemical laboratories that offered to help children, parents, schools and mental health professionals, promoting the use of these medicines that they themselves manufactured. I have always believed that this disorder is nothing more than the symptom of a sick society. Honest, loving and real communication in families is very poor nowadays, since everything has been reduced to the use of phones, iPads, etc.; leaving us kidnapped and enslaved by the use of this technology. And other factors that I am not going to mention here, I have seen the same thing in all these years of humanitarian work, in all the refugee and immigrant camps that I have worked in, people lose their identity to be an immigrant, to the caules, arbitrarily, the rest decide for their mental health. These people have suffered, and continue to suffer during their long journeys, traumatic situations, and many of them are medicated. The problem is that these people have a short stay in the camps, and no one informs them of the side effects of these medicines, nor is it taken into consideration that these people will continue with their trajectories, and that for this reason they will have to cut off the medication treatments in abrupt manner. I always wondered, if we are in a context where basic survival needs are not covered, wouldn't it be much better to provide support where first aid techniques are provided where people can perform them themselves until they reach their final destination? Today we are losing conscious and empathetic listening, where the needs of the people we serve are not put as a priority, regardless of the context in which they are. It is much more convenient to follow to the letter everything we supposedly know, because you need to have a great dose of humility to accept that not everything you read applies to reality. And reality is life itself, and life itself is the encounter of the human being with himself, with his peers and everything that surrounds him. If there is something that I constantly learn, it is that therapeutic processes are genuine when the therapist acts with humility, and leaves room for conscious listening and flexibility. Because this process is the meeting of two human beings, who deep down, life has brought them together, to learn something new about life, individually and together.I recommend reviewing the work of Dr. Laura Martin Lopez Andrade and giving ourselves the opportunity to wake up to a new world, which we human beings already knew, but which we have forgotten and which is necessary to return to heal and transform the wounds of the that we are suffering as a society and as human beings. And finally I want to make it clear that this is a reflection on the abusive use of medicines in mental health. Medicines are necessary, as long as they are not misused. As well as, it should not be used to legitimize the power of a society over those who do not fit into its parameters or standards of “normality.”