Side Entrance
Front Entrance
Free Parking
Blessed Sacrament School Across the Street
Located right at the intersection of W. Sunset Blvd and Cassil Place.
I chose Scientology as a religious area to explore because I never feel I quite understand the religion, and probably my least favorite chemical dependency meeting was an AA group run by the Church of Scientology in Westwood. The group leader discussed how the night before he had thought about swallowing every pill in his medicine cabinet, but that he then remembered his responsibility to the group and changed his mind. The group then spent the entire session trying to make the leader feel better about himself. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that Scientology is not a religion that has ever made me feel “comfortable” or “welcomed”.
On Saturday, July 24, 2010, from 12:30pm to 3:30pm, I explored the “Psychiatry: An Industry of Death Museum” at 6616 W. Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, which is right at the intersection of W. Sunset Blvd and Cassil Place. It is across the street from the Blessed Sacrament School, which is a Jesuit-sponsored Catholic school for grades K-8. First I wandered around and took photos of the outside area, then I got to the Citizens Commission on Human Rights Entrance, where I noticed a sign indicating no photos are allowed. So unfortunately, I have no photos of the inside of the museum. A woman at least 50 years of age, with blonde hair, British accent, and well-accessorized outfit, greeted me outside as she saw me texting on my cell phone near the front entrance. She popped her head out and asked, “Are you coming inside?” I said yes and walked in, immediately explaining why I was there. She wanted to know who referred me and asked that I sign in. I wrote down “Antioch University” as my referral. She kept pushing me to give her a name of someone specific at Antioch University, and I lied and said I couldn’t remember my professor’s name.
She said Antioch students had come in the past and asked whether I would like to watch part of a video in a back room before entering the museum. Knowing I have a whole 10 hours worth of religious fieldwork ahead of me, I say “yes, that would be wonderful”. This first video, like most of the videos thereafter, kind of played like a dramatic “news” story, in which the background voice was mostly a deep male voice, the volume was loud, and there are lots of bold texts at the bottom of the screen indicating names and professions of the various people who commented on “the destruction that is psychiatry”. Though the blonde woman was friendly enough, after her spiel about how the museum was no way associated with religion I kind of felt myself tuning her out a bit. Though, I have heard before that Scientologists do not consider Scientology a religion. Anyway, she was quite a talker. I did however find her accent very interesting, as I heard some words , which sounded like she was using Scottish pronunciation so I was very curious as to where she was from. I said, “I’m such an American, I can’t tell whether your accent is British or Scottish”, and she explained that she had a Yorkshire British accent but that she had spent a great deal of time with Scottish family friends as a child.
There were A LOT of videos to watch as you walk through this fairly small exhibit. Unfortunately, you cannot watch two videos at the same time, so you sort of have to watch when others are watching or make sure you’re in an area alone before you start a video. The volume is quite loud. I was impressed that all the videos were on high quality flat screen tv’s. When my friend Heather showed up, I had already walked through half the museum. There were two Caucasian men and two African American men touring the museum at the same time we were. The first four videos I found quite interesting, but after that I was sort of having to give myself a pep talk in order to pay attention, I think partially because the video presentations were so dramatic instead of just the facts alone. I remember thinking, “let the facts speak for themselves, there’s no need to try to convince me of anything…”. I mean, I’m one of the best “customers” they could hope for. I’ve been diagnosed with psychological issues several times in my life and have never had a positive response to any psychiatric medication I have tried. (I’ve since researched my disorder and realized, it’s because they haven’t found any medications that work). I could easily be persuaded into believing these particular medications are useless, because I feel very strongly that we’ve only had psychiatric medications for 50 years and therefore we don’t really know what we’re doing yet in the psychiatric industry. We’re still in trial and error and even the psychiatrists are aware of this, which is why they will tell you, “let’s try this drug and see if it works”.
The gift shop made me laugh because I couldn’t help but picture myself wearing a big baby pink t-shirt that says something to the effect of “Psychiatric Drugs Kill” to one of my sessions with children with autism, most of whom are on some form of psychiatric medication. I think it is easier for our society to accept medication for the treatment of something as noticeable as autism, but not as easy to accept for something with symptoms, which are common among children, like ADD.
One of the more memorable exhibits was the school classroom, because there were pictures of young children on the wall who had committed suicide, or whose autopsies ruled that they had died of a heart malfunction caused by Ritalin or other amphetamine-type drugs. I do not deny that deaths from psychiatric medications have occurred. I am sure this is the case, as deaths from all sorts of medications have occurred. All of us are aware that even birth control and tampons are risky, not to mention undergoing even routine surgery. But because psychiatry is a relatively new field, I’m sure it is even more devastating to a parent who wasn’t 100% sure about placing their child on medication in the first place. It’s still taboo to many. Statistics were flashing on the wall, which stated that roughly half of all children on psychotropic drugs in the world are living in the United States. As I was leaving the museum, the blonde lady asked if Heather and I would fill out a one page survey. We were happy to do this, but afterwards, it took an awfully long time for me to get my camera back from behind the front desk. She couldn’t seem to take a hint that we wanted to get out of there, and took her time explaining a 3 hour video that could be purchased for $15.00 which I could use for my school credit, along with showing us the t-shirts, baseball caps, and a book signed by it’s author.
I really didn’t know what to expect going into this place. I was a little concerned after reading other student’s postings that I might be disturbed by the material, and I was in parts, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. For some reason I was particularly bothered by animals getting hurt, and by the lobotomy videos because patients were in so much pain and they had indicated no anesthesia was used at the time. I was quite pleased to go home and to look up www.apa.org, where I did not find a picture of Benjamin Rush used as the APA logo. Perhaps it once was used, but I am pleased to know that this was just a piece of history and not the current way of being. I was also told by a Caucasian man working there that “therapy aversion disorder” is currently in the DSM IV and that we should go home and look it up. This disorder sounded a bit silly to me, so even though I did not have access to my DSM, I tried looking it up online. My guess is that this too was perhaps a part of history, maybe one of you can fill me in if you’ve heard of it before.
Lastly, as far as my feelings are concerned, I can admit I felt a little self-conscious watching the African American Racism video with the two African American men before my friend had arrived. I sort of wondered if there was a huge difference of perspective or if our experience of the video was more similar, because most of us have been exposed to historical videos demonstrating the horrors of racism in school, and this isn’t anything new. I would say I’m a passive listener to videos, but I was less passive when talking to the front desk hosts. I guess a pattern in my thought process with others is that I am a little skeptical. I hear what others have to say but I check it with my own memories, experiences, and knowledge before wanting to agree with someone 100%. I felt this way examining surgical tools and stories on the wall at the museum, as well. I assumed most items were replicas and not originals. I think in spite of my skeptism I was very interested in the subject matter and did not come across as judgmental though inside at times I was. I appreciate the freedom we have in the U.S. to express differences of opinions, and it does not bother me that people are anti-psychiatric medication. I think it is so new that unless coping with a disease such as MDD, schizophrenia, alcoholism, etc., it is often a personal choice rather than a requirement. If drugs help you function, fantastic, if they interfere or do nothing at all, leave them be. I think the museum would have been more compelling had they separated history from the present day dilemmas of psychiatry instead of acting like people are currently be tortured as they were in the past. They didn't do a particularly good job of separating what was and what currently is. I do think it is significant that so many psychiatrists spoke out against their own field.
Here is the website for those with further interest:
http://www.cchr.org/museum.html%23/museum/intro
No comments:
Post a Comment