Reading through all of these makes me a little sad.
I know this might be an unpopular opinion but I think heavily medicating children causes a lot of damage. Many people start being diagnosed with things in the early teens – very formative years as it is, especially in the brain (science has shown that teenager's brains are not fully developed). Throw in raging hormones and social pressures and school, etc. it's enough to break plenty of people down. I think that's natural. What's unnatural is diagnosing kids with sever mental disorders/illnesses, shutting them up in hospitals, and pumping them full of chemicals. What's crazy to me is how many more of these mental disorders and illnesses are being diagnosed now as opposed to even 20 years ago (when I was going to high school for instance there just weren't any kids on anti-depressants/anti-anxiety meds ... everyone didn't have ADD/ADHD, etc.). I had a school psychologist tell me I had "gender identity disorder" and told me I had a mental illness. That totally screwed me up and freaked my parents out and basically made the next 10+ years of my life hell. Up until that point I just considered myself "different" from other kids (still never considered myself female in any way) and I was relatively happy. I wonder how many other cases happen where the diagnosis screws someone up like that?
In my mid 20's I'd been diagnosed with anxiety disorder. When that happened, I thought, oh here we go again ... I'm mentally ill again. I was having panic attacks every day (severe enough that I ended up in the emergency room thinking I was having a heart attack or just generally dying). I didn't leave my house for 8 weeks straight. I lived off a meager unemployment check (which turned into disability for a year). When I'd try to leave the house I would panic. I'd go to the grocery store and leave a basket full of groceries in the aisle and run out. Basically I was a mess for 2 solid years. At the advice of my dad I went to see my uncle (who was a Psychology instructor at a community college) who had been working on a system with a partner that was rooted in kinesiology and combined with kind of a modified form of EFT and some psychological aspects. Of course it took me a couple months just to go visit him but he tried the system on me and within a few weeks I was actually NOT having a panic attack every day. Then he recommended I go down to China Town and see an old Chinese herbalist that he used to go to. Well that took me another month or so to do that but I did. That worked even faster. After the first dose I felt better. Within a couple weeks the improvement was night and day. I knew I could not go the pharmaceutical route (had a short stint of that that nearly killed me). I knew I had to beat the anxiety myself so I tried these alternate methods and they worked for me. I'm not saying they could work for everyone but there's alternatives out there. A lot of the disorders/illnesses (anxiety, bipolar, etc. etc.) occur when there are chemical imbalances in the body (not just brain). The drugs doctors prescribe, in theory, "correct" those imbalances. I just don't buy that. I'm not just going on my own experience but the experiences of plenty of my friends over the years as they were on one or more drugs to supposedly correct their depression, their anxiety, their bipolar disorders, etc. I don't know a single long term success story. I have one friend who gave up and stepped down off all her pills, went to a nutritionist and started going the all natural route. She's fine today. Everyone else? Still struggling. So I may not have a degree in medicine but I'm observant and I've got my own experiences. Everyone is basically responsible for their own health. Too many of us rely 100% on doctors who don't know our bodies and minds and treat us all one in the same or try a variety of pills that may hurt us more than help us. Yes, this is my opinion, and you're free to disagree, but I was not helped by the medical world and basically "cured" myself by looking at alternative methods (and I know others who have too) so my experience differs, but I'm glad I did it. I'd most likely be dead if I hadn't.
As for being trans, I don't consider that a mental illness. For me it's something physical. My brain was undeniably bathed in testosterone while I was in the womb. Because of my ultrasound everyone thought my mom was having a boy. Well, big surprise they all got. But seriously, I absolutely don't think I'm some exception to the rule. I may have popped out the shoot with larger than average junk but for the most part I'm stuck in a "female" body just like every other trans guy who doesn't have a diagnosed intersex condition. But having a larger amount of testosterone hit you, especially in the womb, changes things. I think we all have normal brains, we just don't have the bodies that match up with those brains. That to me is not a mental illness.
