One of my best friends just got out of the ward. I can't tell you how true this whole account was. One day your friend is there and then over the next few days they start acting strange, not sleeping, and then they're in another universe.
After that happening a bunch of times, typically paired with some scary behavior (one time we had to spend all night looking for him before police picked him up at dawn), you start wanting to watch out for them. You look for the signs to pre-empt the psychotic episode. Then suddenly a new tension is created. They really don't want to feel like you're their parent/caretaker. In fact being presented with an authority role like that can trigger episodes. So you have to be very subtle about how you check on them to see if they're okay. And as they bristle you kind of wonder just how okay they are even if they seem 100% normal at that moment; do they understand how things are?
It's difficult. Not only that but his last two girlfriends were people that he met in the ward, the last of which I'm fairly sure convinced him to stop taking his medication. Just as the author said, there is an anti-psych culture in the ward. At the beginning, my friend would call the doctors "whitecoats" and basically didn't believe anything they told him, but eventually would just comply because he'd realize that was the only way to get discharged.
He didn't like the idea that he needed medication to function. In fact one of the crueler parts of schizophrenia (at least in his case) is that when you initially stop taking medication, you get manic. Suddenly instead of being foggy you start thinking fast, being creative, feeling euphoric. He called me one time during of these periods telling me that he thought he'd finally beaten schizophrenia, that he was ready to live life. A few days later and he was psychotic, pacing in his room, trying to relay messages to me about the Sacred Geometry of the Universe. A few days after that he was back in the ward.
It's tempting to think of these people as shamans or something, that we're simply stuck in our own subjective bubble, just as valid as whatever their interpretation is. I know that he desperately wants to believe that, especially during his episodes. That seems to be what Laing was saying. But it's just not true. Just like Giulia, my friend would just regurgitate random philosophical nonsense that he'd picked up throughout life. Unlike Giulia though, he is completely dysfunctional. He used to be a hard worker, but he couldn't finish college once the episodes began. He can't hold down a job although he has tried again and again. If it wasn't for his parents he'd probably be homeless. During the episodes he's a danger to himself and probably others. There is no option to just accept people like this as an alternative type of life form or something that we just leave alone. As much corruption as there is in Big Pharma, overdiagnosing etc., people with issues this serious need help and medication is currently the only way we have.