It struck a chord with many when it was released a year ago. The song sheds light on the flaws and mistreatment prevalent in psychiatric facilities, drawing attention from both the audience and critics. Recently, Lia Kali shared her journey behind the song on the popular Spanish TV show “El Hormiguero” on Antena 3TV where she opened up about the personal struggles that inspired her music.

“UCA” serves as more than a musical piece, it stands as a powerful testament to the challenges faced by a young girl caught in a system that fails to provide genuine support and compassion, instead perpetuating oppression and cruelty. The song delves into a narrative of turmoil within a family dynamic that quickly spirals into violence, leading Lia Kali to seek refuge and eventually find herself confined in an adolescent psychiatric facility out of desperation.

Life in a psychiatric center was like torture, says Lia Kali

During her appearance on “El Hormiguero” Lia Kali shared how her freedom and autonomy were stripped away in the name of treatment. She painted a picture of conditions at UCA, where youths are often heavily medicated and kept isolated, resembling prisoners more, than patients. The song talks about how she was made to take medication without a diagnosis, highlighting the lack of empathy and care that worsened her suffering and that of other young people in similar circumstances.

The showman Pablo Motos asked Lia Kali “what was life like? I’ve never asked him…. I’ve never been with anyone who’s already been…. What was life like in there?”

And Lia answered categorically: “Torture. I mean…all of a sudden… that’s when you realize it and that’s also why, when I… when I asked myself whether I wanted to release this song or not, I realized that I did because I talked to people who still dealt with those centers and who still knew that the same practices were still being done, which ultimately are torture, which is tying people to the bed the same way for a week.

Kali described the inhumane and degrading practices that still persist in some adolescent crisis units, where young people are tied to beds and over-medicated, deprived of any human contact and basic understanding-treatments that she said are tantamount to torture.

“Are you going to tell me that you are trying to heal and help someone who is sick and what she needs is a fucking hug, and you won’t let her have any physical contact or talk to anyone and that your solution is to medicate her until she doesn’t even know who she is and have her tied to the bed without really caring about her diagnosis? I think that in Spain there is a big problem that what we do with people who bother is to put them to sleep. They dont care.” Lia Kali said.

She continued saying: “So I am ashamed and I am very sad that even today there are people who have relatives who have to go through similar tortures, tortures that are even forbidden in Europe, for example mechanical restraint, which is tying you to a bed, a lot of places in Europe, in which it is forbidden because it is understood as torture, which is what it is. I mean, to have a child, even a child tied to a bed, whether it is for an hour, ten minutes, it doesn’t matter, it is torture. It is a child… For God’s sake!””

Lia Kali’s impactful story in “UCA” has sparked conversations about the morality of psychiatric treatment for juveniles and the urgent need for changes within these facilities. The singer not only critiques the physical and emotional harm she endured but also condemns the apathy and systemic mistreatment by individuals who are meant to provide protection and healing.

Lia Kali’s appearance on “El Hormiguero” not just helped share her personal journey but also amplified the message of the song, resonating with audiences who may have been unaware of the reality faced by many adolescent crisis units, or those who suffered it and thought it “was normal”, or just did not find the strength to speak up. Her courage in sharing her story has been praised as a step towards demanding change, motivating others to speak up and take action against injustices and tortures in the mental health sector.

Psychiatry, treating patients “like dogs”

“What I found was a bunch of psychopaths who were there, probably underpaid, but treating us as if we were literally dogs. And in the UCA of Sant Boi I will say it and well, well, even enjoying it, for me the hardest thing was to say that I was there for a week, because after that week they realized that I did not have to be there. I got there because of something that made no sense at all and it was a doctor who did not feel like stopping to look at what was happening to me at home and why I was the way I was at that moment and sent me to a place where I did not belong.”

Evidencing a practice that is denounced a common in psychiatric hospital, Lia stated that she “was medicated without a diagnosis, right? I mean, it was like super crazy and I was aware of everything and I was like ‘how can there be such psychopaths here enjoying watching and laughing even when they do a restraint on someone and throw them on the [floor]?’. You know those…” speaking of when the hospital personnel were putting their knees on the chest of the patient, “Yeah, this happened to me. And I remember the face. I have that kid’s face etched in my mind, that half smile, of enjoying that and saying Loco, man, we have real psychopaths. How come there’s not a much bigger control in Spain? Fuck, they are our people, you know? They are also people. They’re people who feel, they’re people who love and they’re people who sometimes life has gotten the better of them. Sometimes they are just born this way, different. And I don’t think anybody deserves this. Hopefully, it will never happen to anyone in your family, no and hopefully and hopefully, it will change. And what I am saying here now, I hope that tomorrow there will be more control over these shitty centers where people are literally mistreated.”

“UCA” by Lia Kali transcends being a song, it serves as a call to provoke change emphasizing that art has a role, in addressing society’s darkest truths to inspire empathy. In a world where young voices are often disregarded or hushed, Lia Kali has found a potent means to ensure that her voice alongside others is acknowledged.

More about Lia Kali

According to the site of her agents:

“Lia Kali first discovered music within home and when she was just sixteen she rode her bike over all the jams in Barcelona. There’s where she made friend with lots of musicians and artists of the city and where she started to dialogue with reggae, jazz, soul and rap. Since then she has never stopped singing. Lia jumped from jams to other live stages of Barcelona with a bunch of projects, such as the Amy Winehouse tribute she leaded. That’s how she realised her love with the stage was much more than a first-glimpse love: the stage is her place to be. Eventually she got tired of singing others’ songs and started writing her own pieces and discovered the healing within it. Lia Kali writes the original soundtrack from her day by day stumbles and falls and released her first singles on 2022, going viral and reaching milions of streams and views in musical platforms and TikTok. On March 2023 she launches her very first album ‘Contra Todo Pronóstico’, where she summs featurings with the real who-is-who in the urban and rap Spanish scene such as Toni Anzis, Acción Sanchez, J Abecia, Zatu Rey from SFDK and even the top respected Colombian rapper Nanpa Básico. Lia Kali is nowadays most requested voices of the scene and with her debut album she makes one thing clear above all: any label falls short for her!”

Research show people using antidepressants have problems withdrawing from the drugs due to doctors not knowing how to do it correctly, and that it can take months and years due to severe withdrawal effects. Adverse withdrawal effects often are not recognized or misdiagnosed as relapse.

Millions affected

When the SSRI antidepressants first appeared on the market they were presented as drugs that could solve life situations and with no problems related to them. In fact, manufacturers distributed numerous papers with description of withdrawal symptoms from the drugs as being “brief and mild”, based on studies conducted by the drug companies themselves which focused on people who had been on the antidepressants for only 8 to 12 weeks. The result has been that over the years both doctors and the general population have come to believe these drugs can not cause severe and long-lasting withdrawal symptoms on stopping them. And further that stopping the use of these drugs following a treatment would not be a problem.

What has not been the focus in research is that the longer people are on these antidepressants, the harder it is to stop and the more severe the withdrawal effects.

Research presented at this year’s European Psychiatric Congress show there are major problems related to this and research indicate that more than half will have problems stopping, amounting to millions in Europe being affected.

Antidepressants cause residual change to cell structure

The use of antidepressants causes changes to the body and its ability to regulate the use of its own neurotransmitters used to control numerous bodily functions. The result of this change of the cell structures is that once a user has stopped the antidepressants this can cause withdrawal effects and these can last months or years after the drug has left the system. The new research explain what many users have said they have felt for years.

Dr Mark Horowitz, an expert and Clinical Research Fellow in Psychiatry at the National Health Service (NHS) in England, presented extensive research findings that put a new light to the problem.

“When you stop the drug, let’s say months or years after the patient had been started on drug treatment following a stressful period in their life, the antidepressant is metabolized by the liver and kidneys in a few days or weeks. But what doesn’t change in a few days or weeks is the residual changes to the post-synaptic serotonin receptors and other systems downstream of this,” Dr. Horowitz told.

In studies on humans, there are changes to the serotonergic system that persists for up to four years after the antidepressants are stopped.

“In other words, you now have a system that is less sensitive to serotonin being exposed to normal levels of serotonin after the drug is removed. And overall, this could be seen as a low serotonin syndrome,” he clarified.

This of course is a very simplified version of what’s going on. There are many other neurotransmitters and downstream effects of these changes that may also persist for long periods after the drug is stopped. All of these changes also are likely to explain the wide-ranging and long-lasting symptoms that occur after stopping antidepressants.

Adaptation to the drug

The underlying problem that has often been neglected is that years of use has caused an adaptation to the antidepressant drug by the body and brain and this condition persists for longer than it takes the drug to be eliminated from the body, and that’s what causes withdrawal effects.

Dr Mark Horowitz explains why withdrawal effects last for more than a few days or weeks after the drug is out of the system, “it’s not the time taken for the drug to leave the system that determines the length of the effect. It’s the time taken for the system to readapt to the drug not being there that explains how long withdrawal symptoms can last for.”

Antidepressant withdrawal syndrome is a set of physiological symptoms that occur on stopping or reducing the dose of an antidepressant. They can manifest in either psychological or physical symptoms because these drugs affect so many bodily systems. They occur because adaptations to the brain caused by the drug take time to resolve.

Dr Mark Horowitz pointed out that it’s important to understand that withdrawal symptoms do not require addiction, all that is required is adaptation to the drug. This is often referred to as physical dependence. Physical dependence in pharmacological terms means the process of adaptation to appear to exposure to a drug that affects the brain, which is true for antidepressants (and, for example, to caffeine, which does not generally cause addiction but can cause physical dependence and therefore withdrawal effects).

As the SSRI antidepressants act on a neurotransmitter mechanism that influence not only mood but many bodily systems withdrawing from the drug after years of adaptation thus can cause strong reactions on many of these functions and their influence on one’s life.

Symptoms of withdrawal

There are dozens and dozens of possible effects that can be caused. Symptoms include dizziness, insomnia, impaired concentration, fatigue, headache, tremor, tachycardia, and nightmares. Withdrawal can even cause affective symptoms such as depressed mood, irritability, anxiety, and panic attacks.

“We know that these are symptoms of withdrawal and not just relapse (a return of someone’s underlying condition), because they have been found in studies of people who stopped antidepressants with no underlying mental health conditions,” Dr Mark Horowitz told. He mentioned examples such as people who are given these drugs for pain, for the menopause, and even in healthy volunteers.

There are other effects including an increase in suicide attempts in the two weeks after stopping antidepressants. It has been attributed to withdrawal effects itself because it’s too quick for relapse to explain this increase in symptoms. Dr Mark Horowitz further noted that they have also found in studies that while 30% of those who responded were suicidal before starting medication, 60% became suicidal after stopping so that this means for 30% of people they will experience being suicidal for the first time in their lives because of withdrawal effects.

The maybe most disturbing symptom from withdrawal of antidepressants, which often has been neglected, is a condition known as akathisia. Akathisia is a movement disorder usually caused by a psychoactive substance in which the individual generally will experience an intense sensation of unease or an inner restlessness that often prompts the patient to pace backwards and forwards and can be an intensely unpleasant experience. Dr Mark Horowitz noted that it is often recognised as a long-term consequence of antipsychotic exposure, but withdrawal from antidepressants and benzodiazepines and a variety of other psychiatric drugs can also cause the condition.

“It is the most horrible presentations that I see. People are pacing, they feel agitated, they feel terror. A lot of them are talking about suicide because it is a state in which you get no rest and no calm, often for weeks and sometimes longer,” Dr Mark Horowitz pointed out.

And it’s important as this condition is often misdiagnosed when people are presented to the emergency department as agitated depression, as mania, because many clinicians and others are unfamiliar with the fact that coming off these drugs can cause akathisia.

Withdrawal effects not recognized or misdiagnosed as relapse

Tens of thousands users of antidepressants from Europe every month are seeking information and advice from American peer support forums on how to come off their medications. Their stories are for many very similar.

The research group of Dr Mark Horowitz surveyed 1,300 of these. Three quarters of them said their doctor’s advice on withdrawing was unhelpful.

The major reasons where that the doctor had recommended a rate of reduction that was much too quick. And that the treating doctors weren’t familiar enough with withdrawal symptoms to have any advice, or they told the user that stopping with antidepressants would not cause withdrawal symptoms.

Dr Mark Horowitz indicated that doctors often still believe that withdrawal effects from antidepressants are “brief and mild”. And they do not know that withdrawal symptoms include anxiety, depressed mood, and insomnia.

“It’s easy to confuse with a relapse of depression or anxiety, especially when it’s in the clinician’s minds that withdrawal effects are brief and mild. Someone turns up with severe symptoms that are long lasting, it’s very hard to put the connection together,” Dr Mark Horowitz added.

Another disturbing fact is that withdrawal effects is not only related to antidepressants. “The same is true for coming off of all psychiatric drugs. Often the changes produced on the brain by psychiatric drugs can persist for months or years after stopping, which is why withdrawal syndromes can last a lot longer if it takes the drug to be eliminated from the body,” Dr Mark Horowitz pointed out.

From time to time one has breakfast with some international news published by journalistic media of all kinds, of those that catch one’s attention. In some cases I usually read them and put them aside, and in others they simply become part of my archive of forgotten papers, a sort of newspaper pages forgotten in boxes, which from time to time pass to a better life. They collect dust, take up space and with the passing of the years they raise some comments among the people around you: …surely if a psychologist saw your work room, he would not hesitate to diagnose you with Diogenes Syndrome, I have even heard that from friends and family. Surely this Diogenes kept so many things that he got out of control. This is not my case.

Of course, from time to time, in my personal search for more space, I attack those boxes, press containers and many of them, after a discreet review, go to occupy the place that history gives them in the paper container. However, on other occasions some already forgotten headline comes back to remind me again why I kept it. In this case the headline to a column in the newspaper El País of August 13, 2014 (10 years ago) The WHO (World Health Organization) admits the use of experimental drugs. Shielding themselves behind the approval of an ethical committee belonging to the same organization (Juan Palomo, yo me lo guiso, yo me lo como – typical Spanish saying, meaning that one does everything without permisions of anybodyelse) they approved at that time the use of experimental treatments on the victims of an Ebola outbreak that was occurring at that time in West Africa, without having proven their efficacy at all. To justify this treatment, the then WHO Deputy Director of Health Systems argued that other previous treatments were not working and that therefore … it is not only ethical, but a moral imperative.

The WHO statement did not refer, according to the clipping itself, to the experimental serum that had been approved for use in human guinea pigs, but that certain ethical criteria should also be taken into account, including transparency about the nature of the drug (What transparency can there be, when the nature of its results is not known? Ah! These doctors). Of course there was also an emphasis on respect for the individual, dignity and community involvement and, I forgot, consent. Although if you live in West Africa, one of the most depressed areas of the world, where you have absolutely nothing to survive on, whatever those in control of the “medical shaman” shack tell you will be fine with them. What is the difference between dying of Ebola, malnutrition or any other disease for which you are not prepared or serving as a lab rat for the big pharmaceutical corporations, including the phony health guard empire misnamed WHO?

Furthermore, in the same clipping it was confirmed that the WHO had given the go-ahead on the use of certain experimental drugs on those humans in Africa, after a spokesman, a week earlier had advised against the use of any product …that has not gone through the normal process of licensing and medical testing.

Of course I am not going to go into this subject in depth here, but go ahead and say that a book could be written on the subject. If you have the time and opportunity I advise you to put the phrase that serves as the headline of this opinion article: WHO allows experimental drugs to be used, whatever your language, and you will see how thousands of entries on this subject will come up. The COVID 19 pandemic itself, which was not a pandemic and did not plunge the world into a terrifying end of times, was undoubtedly one of the last projects of the WHO and some big pharmaceutical companies on how to use experimental drugs on humans, with the difference that on this occasion they were used on those who could pay for them, enriching the industry in a shameful and disgusting way. Governments lied to us, some presidents even spoke openly of non-existent expert committees (as in the case of Spain), they spoke of transparency and ethics, they used us by calling us stupid and pointing the finger at us if we did not agree with their theses. All limits were exceeded. They hijacked democracy and freedom and subjected us to unnecessary stress from which we emerged, to later define us in general as mentally ill.

Someday I imagine that the truth will have to be brought to light or at least continue to publish material where we can read between the lines of how we were swindled, with the connivance of the WHO, which as on previous occasions, a week before declaring the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, declared that absolutely nothing was going to happen.

What can happen in a week for such a radical change of opinion, and even more so in an organization that, supposedly, has the obligation to watch over all of us?

Sometimes the cuts, although full of dust, are often useful to give us back a minimum of the personal integrity that was taken away from us for a couple of years and that still has not been given back to us, when we now know that there were vaccines that have generated serious health problems and some deaths. Yes, for the greater good. I expect, of course, millions of dollars in compensation to those who have been left with lifelong sequelae or to the relatives of those whose lives have been taken.

By the way, I leave the question up in the air: why in 2014 did we not already have a vaccine against Ebola? A presumed vaccine was patented in 2019, rVSV-ZEBOV, in the USA, if we consider that the disease was detected in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo, why did it take 43 years to obtain results?