The ever-sagacious Monica Cassani writes “Some people are so terrified and reactive they assume that I am somehow suggesting that everyone come off their meds. Like right now. It’s a sad reflection of exactly how fear based most treatment and care in mental health is… people cannot even conceive of actually having a choice in these matters.”
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I agree totally with you. People have the right of making choices, and they need to be informed about what the results may that result from their choices. I also agree that we need more structures in place that give opportunities for choice for alternatives.
However, if we provide alternatives that lead to healing, health and well-being there won’t be a steady supply of people for the present so-called “mental health system” to drug and turn into perpetual patients. What we have now is a very lucrative business for the professionals and the system and I don’t think that they really want to turn loose of this “goose that lays the golden eggs!”
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Should read…”people have the right to make choices…..
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I saw this the first day it came out on my facebook newsfeed and “liked” it then and there yet it is still haunting me a week later. There is more truth in this little statement about fear and rigid thinking–actively cultivated by mental health treatment modalities–than volumes elsewhere that try to debunk or explain away psychiatry’s lure.
When I was overmedicated on a heavy psych cocktail I am fairly confident my higher reasoning skills were under chemical constraint–which, of course, made me an excellent consumer. How does one help a person under such a physiological and psychological bind of psych meds and indoctrination look at their situation with acceptance, nonjudgement, but also a shred of flexibility?
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by respecting them…we managed to get through the fog and so do lots of other folks. I think it’s insulting and unfair to imagine nothing is going on behind the haze. It’s also clearly bullshit in my experience. Do I have more clarity now? Yes, but I also found my way off the drugs and so do lots of other people. It’s a violence to force ones view on another…always.
I avoid acting like I know better than another. Ever. Because again, I’m quite confident I do not know what is right for anyone other than myself.
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please know I’m not assuming you think nothing is going on behind the haze…just thinking out loud about what is a common thread among those who like to judge those who are unlucky enough to go the drugged route…and that is what I’m generalizing about here. If one actually meets the person…one can communicate regardless of whether one is on drugs or not…if people don’t know this they’ve not payed attention…and it’s not our job to save every individual either. Respecting people means letting them live their lives in ways we may not want to live ours.
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in fact respecting people means allowing for the reality that the way another chooses to live, even if distasteful to us, may be exactly what is best for that other person.
