I identify as an activist, and I am tired. Not yet ready to move on to some dreamscape. Hoping to be re-energized. But very, very tired. Part of the reason Iāve reached this level of exhaustion is that I seem to be living what life would look like if āpainted into a corner,ā met āput in a boxā in a car wreck, leaving the two a tangled idiomatic mess. Yes, this āpainted boxā in which so many activists of so many kinds seem to find themselves stuck is all the harder to escape for its combination of confined quarters and wet edges. It can be suffocating.
In October, Will Hall published an article,Ā āOur Movement Has Failed.ā In it, he asserted the following:
āWhatās happening in the āpeerā world is very far from the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Communityās vision of peer leadership. And my colleagues at WMRLC will be the first to point out that their work is limited by the need for larger social change.ā
Although I was a little confused as to how my local communityĀ āĀ the Western Mass Recovery Learning Community (RLC)Ā ā earned a spot in Willās blog, I suppose heās right that most things āpeerā donāt look the way I and those with whom I most closely work feel that they should. (In fact, Iāve written about some of that in blogs like this one:Ā āIn Peer We Trust.ā) Yet itās a mistake to speak of the vision under which we operate as strictly the RLCās āvision.ā That feels somehow minimizing and marginalizing. As if us ācrazyā folk over here in Western Mass came up with some quirky counter approach that hasnāt found its footing just yet. Silly us.
In actuality, we coexist under that vision (or similar) with many others including the folks over at Intentional Peer Support, some of our friends up north at the Hive Mutual Support Network, and, well, much of the world Hearing Voices movement. Just to name a few (hundreds of thousands). Yes, the RLC is a loud voice for the integrity of peer support, and weāve developed something of a reputation and platform for that. (See, for example, āAn Open Mindā in Sun Magazine,Ā my opinion piece in the Boston Globe, or the articles focused on our work in the New York TimesĀ and Foreign Policy.) But we are far from operating in isolation.
Iām also not sure Iād claim that our work is exactly ālimited by the need for larger social change,ā so much as Iād say that creating larger social change is a part of our work, even if not fully realized just yet. In truth, to say that our movement has āfailedā (even just āso farā) is to diminish or dismiss so many lives that have been saved, voices raised, internal spirit fires rekindled, and paradigms weakened, even if only a bit. Together we have real potential to make that ālarger social changeā come to life.
And yet, my message isnāt too much cheerier or any less melodramatic:
This movement has unquestionably seen some successes, but holy hellā¦ At. What. Cost.
What follows are the top eleven examples of how activists and advocates are asked to cough up boundless energy while simultaneously being demoralized, devalued, diminished, and used. Why eleven? Sure, thatās a weird number to choose;Ā a weird number for weird me. Think of it as a list of ten with one for the road, if it makes you feel better.
In any case, these are examples of why it can feel so soul-crushing to attempt to upend power dynamics and sustain well-organized pushes for change; why it sometimes feels like this movement is chewing us up faster than progress is being made.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent (Yelling Doesnāt Help)
It has become painfully clear over the years that when an activist enters a room in the āmental healthā world, they tend to enter at a deficit. Most others speak, and theyāre heard for what they actually say. When we speak, we must simultaneously attempt to prove that we are not āantiā anything and not ātoo radical,ā just so that our actual words may even be heard as we speak them. We need to pet and soothe egos while challenging minds. Oh, and we better do all that without taking up too much time (because that alone might be seen as a symptom, or a lack of impulse control, or as a show of anger and disrespect that renders us not worthy to be heard at all). All this just for the privilege of standing at the very same starting line as everyone else in the room.
Sometimes it can feel like speaking from under water, while the rest of the group is up on deck. Like everyone on message shares an invisible bullhorn, and anyone offering a counterpoint speaks through choppy air like a bad connection. And, the harder one tries to be clear, the less theyāre understood. Because what theyāre saying doesnāt fit within the pre-sets on peopleās filters, or with what they want to hear, and so the more specific one is about any differences, the farther off they seem. Thatās a frustrating and exhausting thing… for there to be a sort of inverse relationship between how much of what one says is heard correctly and how precisely one speaks.
I recall in the earliest days of the RLC a hospital saying theyād looked at our website and seen that it was āantipsychiatry,ā and on that basis, refused to give us any access to the people hospitalized there. The most important part of that story, however, is that at the time, our website was only a placeholder, with no information of any substance and no particular perspective conveyed. Just a few images, and our mission statement (which was focused solely on the provision of peer support, and far milder than the one we have now).
Iāve had similar experiences individually, with people attempting to define my own beliefs in ways that run contrary to (or at least slightly askew of) my words. Sometimes they speak my supposed beliefs back to me with the utmost confidence, surprise turned quickly to disinterest when I have to explain (again and again and again) that thatās not what I actually said. Sometimes I feel as if, every time I open my mouth, I should be asking everyone to summarize back to me what they heard, just to hear how far off base theyāve fallen.
How do we acquire the same privilege of starting at the āneutralā line? Of being heard for what we actually say? How do we change how we are seen, when most of that truly is in the eye of the beholder?
(Oh, we see you. We see you as we want and need you to be. Donāt mess with a good thing.)
Youāre So Articulate (Maybe a Little Too Articulateā¦ Would You Please Shut Up?)
It seems so obvious. If the stereotype is that one is acting out of emotion rather than information, āanecdoteā rather than hard research, anger rather than reason… Well then, the best bet is to speak as articulately as possible, emphasize logic, and come with a back pocket full of facts… Right? Except, in my experience, that person is quickly seen as taking up too much space, acting too self-righteous. Who are they to speak with such confidence?
My favorite is when Iām told that the way I speakĀ ā so definitive and clearĀ ā makes other people (ones who typically make more money and hold more power than me) feel silenced. That by simply being in the same space, I render them voiceless, unable to speak their own truth. (This, of course, begs the question of what precisely they wanted to say that theyāre so afraid to say in front of me.) Perhaps my words make them feel as if their medicalized views are being dismissed, because Iāve infringed upon about one percent of the 95% of the air space that such views take up with my inconvenient facts. How dare I push up against their generalizations with something that might require them to reevaluate their own unrecognized dogma?
One of the funniest (super unfunny) things Iāve ever seen was a psychiatrist on the stand at a commitment hearing talking about the āpatientāsā flat affect and delayed response times while he exhibited just about the flattest affect and strangest speech pattern Iāve seen to date. (Much stranger than the to-be-committed individual while she was on the stand, by the way.) His side still won.
Because those with the power define the roles we are supposed to play, while claiming all the wiggle room for themselves. Sometimes there is this fantasy that if we can demonstrate dramatically enough how flawed those roles can be, that people will be dutifully impressed and willing to change. Yet, in actuality, when those with considerably less power try to change the story, itās more likely to create annoyance than a shift.
(Shoo fly, shoo.)
Thatās Not What Weāre Here to Talk About Today (Would You Like Five Minutes at the End?)
People are quick to frustration when thrown off agenda, even if their agenda was the wrong one right off the bat. I recall a recent meeting that a co-worker and I dropped into. There, we encouraged consideration of alternatives rather than business as usual with the topic at hand. In actuality, our questions and suggestions took only a small fraction of the time available, but the facilitator of the meeting went on at great length to counter us. So invested was he in demonstrating our wrongness that time to address the planned agenda fell far short. Yet, I guarantee (and frustrated side glances confirmed) that if a survey went out asking what threw the meeting off track, the fingers would point toward us.
This, of course, speaks to who is setting the agenda in the first place. One is generally not seen as disrupting that which they determined in the first place… even when they change their mind about how things should go. It also speaks to the one most common inclusion myth of all time: The goal is just to get them to your table. Nope. Real inclusion means establishing a joint agenda at a new table altogether.
(Would you like that five minutes, now? Really, itās only three because things ran long, and I know people are shuffling papers and getting ready to go, but we promise we are listening real hard!)Ā
Your Anger is Righteous (But It Makes Me Uncomfortableā¦ So, Stop It)
At this point, the system seems to want a lot of credit for all their purportedly progressive efforts to put āpeersā in largely ineffectual roles where their relative silence is rewarded with high (but not too high) paychecks and low expectations. Itās happening under the guise of change, but it is mostly an act of silencing.
It works in two ways: Either a loud voice is hired with the hope that theyāll come more under control once their finances depend on it. Or (most often), a group of individuals eager to compromise are employed at least in part as a buffer between the systemās most powerful interiors and those calling for change. That group allows the interior to go about its business as usual, while claiming commitment to change through the mere presence of this tokenized group, andĀ ā if all works as well as hopedĀ ā the tokens might even turn on those pushing for change from the outside and keep each other busy and away from the serious work.
In the end, most system-appointed leaders know itās the āright thing to doā to acknowledge some harm and need for change. But these liability-minded folk also seem to put about a 10-second shelf life on anything approximating an apology, and so anyone who wants more is met with discomfort and, eventually, if they keep it up too long, willful exile and diagnostic avalanches.
(Hey, buddy. We brought you into this room, and we can kick you right back out of it. If youāre not willing to respect that we want you around to make us look good, and not to make us feel uncomfortable, then youāre not welcome here.)
You Look So Good Wearing Me (I Should Have Gotten a Copyright)
I realize this sounds like a bit of a bad pickup line, but thatās certainly not how itās meant. Rather, there is a sort of phenomenon that happens where an activist does something innovative and limit-pushing, gets ostracized and torn down (perhaps even fired), and then imitated to all hell and back.
Thereās little thatās more maddening than being demonized for doing something, only to have that idea stolen and portrayed as new and wondrous once youāre out of the way. But it happens all the time.
In fact, it has happened to me in both big and small ways. I lost a job once where I was heavily criticized and questioned for doing too much in a different way, only to have that organization attempt to build up their name on much of what I had developed once I was gone. Iāve also seen words Iāve literally written onto some of our brochures plagiarized by other organizations that have since accused us of being ātoo extreme.ā (Then come up with your own damn words, will you?) It sometimes makes one wonder what those individuals who lifted those words even thought that they meant in the first place.
And watch out should you ever decide not to share. Then you get accused of not having your eye on the larger good, and being in it for your own self interests.
(Let us get what we can out of you, please. Youāre dispensable, but your work isnāt. Now hand it over all nice like, please.)
Denial is a Diagnosis (And a Tautological Trap)
We all know that denying youāre āmentally illā can be seen as a symptom that you are āmentally illā indeed. TAC-heads (Treatment Advocacy Center) have even erroneously lifted a real medical diagnosis (anosognosia) and applied it inappropriately to this phenomenon in a sad attempt to turn ālack of insightā into an illness all its own.
Yet, it apparently works the same way when one says, āNo, Iām not anti-psychiatry.ā Woops. Apparently, Iām anti-psychiatry now all the more. I frequently think back to an interview I did with John Read in which he explained that āanti-psychiatryā is a sort of diagnosis at this point; just another way that people can claim thereās something āwrongā with you, and you therefore no longer need to be taken seriously.
The funny thing is Iām really not anti-psychiatry. (And Iām not interested in arguing about it, either, with those who feel that I should be.) Iām more critical psychiatry than āanti.ā Iām all for questioning at every level. Iām not so impressed with rigid agendas to be force fed. Most importantly, I believe that the best way to support someone to get out from under psychiatryās clutches is to shine light on all paths. It may seem a bit counterintuitive, but the best way to show someone out is to also give them the option to stay.
(Thank you, maām, for explaining how youāre not anti-psychiatry. Now we know you surely are just that. And hereās the real trap: Weāll only believe that youāre not when you stop saying anything at all.)
Cannibalism is Fun (Friends Taste Better Than Enemies)
Iāve been watching this Netflix series called the āSanta Clarita Diet.ā Iām not impressed. Itās kind of gross, and Iām perplexed by what Drew Barrymoreās career seems to have come to. Itās also really more about zombies than cannibalism. Though, I guess zombies are cannibals in their own way… But, I digress.
In any case, any good activist knows that weāre meant to be snacking on each other. I mean, this is what happens with systemic oppression in general, right? The most powerful somehow convince the āhave notsā that they need to be angriest at the āhave even lessā contingent. (Drug test for food stamps! Welfare abuse! Donāt let those freeloaders get too comfortable on my dime! Did you see that fancy cell phone they bought?!)
The same thing happens here. The system convinces those standing on the middle ground that their survival (either their āmental healthā or their paycheck) is dependent on moderation. Theyāre rewarded for their relative silence (complicity) with speaking engagements, award nominations, better paying jobs, shorter work days, and seats at that table that everyone keeps talking about. At the same time, those of us who are a little louder and firmer and freer with our anger are the ones supposedly screwing it all up. Of course, no one speaks so plainly about this phenomenon. Instead, it becomes all about how the ones in the middle are so āskillful at compromising,ā or so āfriendly and professional,ā while those on the fringes are ātoo angry,ā and ādonāt you wish theyād just choose a different way to get their message across?ā
Gosh. If only someone had ever told us that if we were just nice and polite all the time, people would listen, and the system would already be fixed! (And, if you believe that…)
(Hey, loud mouth! Youāre messing things up. Donāt you know I have a good thing going over here?)
Saying It in a Way They Can Hear It (Is Almost Like Saying Nothing At All)
If I had a dime for every time Iāve heard a provider talk about wanting to find or hire an advocate who can speak their advocacy demands in a āway that people can hear…ā Well, Iād be able to buy that social change Will spoke about before.
Too bad itās bullshit. (Oops. Did I say that āout loud?ā) I mean, sure, there are ways to say things that might reach people better. I practice that myself, and I work with individuals who I sometimes refer to as āprovider whisperers.ā But if someone isnāt wanting to hear you in the first place, thereās not much you can do. Iāve spent years trying to figure out just how many times I need to say what I donāt mean, in order for people to hear what I do. Iāve tried dressing up, and dressing down. Iāve tried starting with a compliment, and being self-deprecating. I usually manage to get at least a few laughs when I present. I mean, that ought to help, right? Help stop people from being so angry or disliking me so much that they dismiss what I have to say before I evenĀ get started? And yet, what I eventually learned is most of them donāt want to hear what I do mean. And, the only way I can fix that is to… well, stop wanting it myself.
This is all so much foolishness. Since when have the peopleĀ with less power ever been in the best spot to undo systemic oppression? Suggesting that there is a right way that I could say something to make change, and that if change isnāt made that itās my fault is a good game. It lets you off the hook, right? Itās like diagnosis. Youāre not sad because youāre homeless or living in poverty, you silly. Youāre sad because youāre depressed! Donāt look at me. Youāve got to fix this yourself (using these pills that I give you), or youāre treatment resistant.
No. This is absurdity. Itās the people in power who can make the change. When someone has trouble hearing me, Iām typically not going to be able to āfix itā by saying what I am trying to say in some different way. As much as I wish it werenāt true, I need you. You, dear ally (in whatever form you come), are the one who can push people to listen. If you have enough power on your side, you can even demand it. You are the one who holds all the credibility and respect. You are the one who can tell them to cut it out.
Donāt tell me they donāt like me, or have complaints about me and what I say. That gives them power, and sucks a little bit of life out of me every time it happens. Instead, ask them why. Ā Ask them what theyāre afraid of. Tell them to get over it. Help me get heard. Thatās your job. You have to have some skin in this game. Some risks youāre willing to take. And if you donāt want to, then please donāt tell me that youāre an ally anymore. Youāre just another person who wishes Iād āsay it in a way they can hear itā which, like I said, is basically like saying nothing at all.
(Look how angry you are. How can you expect me to support you?)
Sweet Whisper of the Ally (Youāre Tickling My Ear)
This isnāt just another cute header. (Though I admittedly like all the headers in this article quite a lot.) This is about that person. You know the one. That person whoĀ approaches you after youāve spoken up at a meeting or workshop or other public forum to challenge the presentation in some way. Their favorite place to approach you is in a public bathroom, or just on your way out the door. There, they speak in hushed tones and thank you āso muchā for saying what you did. Because they canāt speak up like you do. They might get in trouble if they did. Or, maybe theyāre just nervous about speaking in front of crowds, and afraid theyāll stumble over their words. (So was I once upon a time, by the way, before I figured out I couldnāt afford to be silent.)
Great. Thatās just great. Sometimes it even feels flattering. And itās certainly better than the folks who saunter up to you during a break and speak in much more brazen tones about how your perspective might put someone at risk, and how you just donāt understand. Poor little naĆÆve you.
But let me tell you something. Iām tired of it. So tired of it. It is precisely what leaves me on an island, facing criticism with a reputation as āthe difficult one.ā The one who doesnāt play well with others. Which is ironic because I get along perfectly well with most people, and one of my strengths is synthesizing multiple perspectives. But, whatever. What does it matter when people who barely know you find you a little too challenging, and everyone else will only whisper their support.
Just know if youāre only whispering, youāre not an ally. If you take no risks in what you say, youāre not an ally. If you believe itās okay that I pay the price for your silence by being the only one to speak up, youāre not an ally. And if youāre not there to defend me when Iāve been put in that position over and over and over again, then you are decidedly not an ally. You have just as much paint on your hands as everyone else.
(Paint! I see no paint! What do you mean?! I was just trying to be nice.)
Eat Misery (Be Happy)
I despise the term āconsumerā as it exists within the mental health system. If I am a āconsumer,ā it is as a consumer of misery. I am expected to repeatedly share the most painful parts of my existence, pretty much for the purpose of everyoneās entertainment (since it certainly doesnāt seem to lead to much change). I am expected to sit with the deep pain and desperation of others as a relative constant in my job. I am expected to listen to people working in the system say terrible, horrible, demoralizing, dehumanizing things on the regular about people not unlike myself, and somehow avoid screaming at them. (Say it so they can hear it, remember!) And, I am expected to push for change with people who donāt always take me seriously and constantly talk behind my back, all while also dutifully filling my social media feeds with pertinent issues and horrifying stories of injustice in the world.
And Iām expected to do it all nicely, and gently, with a smile on my face, and with so much patience (because change is slow!). Sometimes I wonder how many other jobs come with such a high expectation of smiles in the face of so much disrespect.
Whereās the off switch? There has to be an off switch somewhere, right? What happens when the input of terrible gets to be too much, but any output of fury at all the injustice (including the slowness of change while people are dying) will accomplish nothing more than people being mad at you?
(Now, will you look at her. We told you she was a problem, didnāt we?)
We Absolutely Love What You Do (As Long As You Do It Over There… You Knowā¦ Away From Us)
If I had a dime… No, letās go with a nickel this round… for every time someone who makes more money than me asked me to do something for them without any compensation… Well, hell. Maybe Iād be making as much as them. Itās funny how readily people are willing to consume my work, without necessarily wanting to be associated too closely with me. Or maybe theyāre willing to give me a platform to speak a bit, so long as itās clear I donāt work for or represent them.
Perhaps the best part (for them) is that me looking so āradicalā over here, makes the small shifts these pretenders of change are making over there look tame in comparison. So, they get away with it, while I pay the price. For their small (often dubious) gain. Itās a good strategy. (For them.)
But who wants to be the one constantly in the position of making others look good? Where does my humanity go when you treat me like a disposable tool? Just how long am I expected to keep up the energy it takes to hold all thisĀ ā myselfĀ ā together?
(We love your work. Weād like to use your work. But, youā¦ Well, youāre a bit of liability, so we donāt need you. Iām sure you understand.)Ā
Yes, folks, this is what systemic oppression looks like. (More on that soon.) All of this. And this is what tears us apart. Those not-really-your-ally allies. The people willing to take your work in so many ways, but rarely willing to risk taking you. Those who never want you to act angry, because they never want to be expected to apologize or change. The ones who think that we’re doing something wrong the moment they experience any discomfort. The ones who tell you to āsay it so they can hear it,ā when we all know damn well that thereās no way to actually do that. Saying hard things is what it is. You do it, or you donāt.
It is exhausting. It is deflating. It is dishonest. It is a (willful) refusal to see.
If you recognize yourself in what I wrote about those on the flip side of the coin from me, then you have a choice to make. Saying you want change is not enough. If you say you want change, but you can’t escape the fact that your face is all over what I wrote, then you donāt really. You should stop lying. To yourself. To all of us. Get some skin in the game, or stop playing. Sit with the reality that your inaction has been harmful and has hurt people. Wallow in defensiveness and shame for a few minutes if you must, but then move on, because it’s not helpful. Decide to make a change. Or don’t, and get out of the way. Stop taking up space from those who are willing to take the necessary risks.
As for me, I know this whole piece is a bit self-pitying and melodramatic (as aforementioned). Iām better off than many. I do make money doing this work (never mind that it consumes almost every day of my life). I get to travel periodically to interesting places, and speak at public gigs. My life isn’t so hard, and yet sometimes I feel like I’m dying inside for all the reasons above and more.
My hope is that this piece doesn’t need to be about me alone; that many advocates and activists will see themselves in the ‘I’s above. That seeing the commonalities in what we’re all up against may provide some fuel. The system needs to see us in a particular sort of way to sustain itself. That generally means we won’t be seen at all for who we truly are, but we canĀ at least try to do that for each other.
āWe donāt see things as they are. We see them as we are.ā – Anais Nin
I found the part about you not being allowed to go into the hospital because you were from an “antipsychiatry” organisation to be interesting. It’s a self-defense mechanism. Everyone has one.
What if someone locked up in a “hospital” finds it to be the most abhorrent and traumatising time of their life? If an antipsychiatry person ends up getting them out and helping them, and then that person (whom you just got out) upholds your views, well, then he’s just antipsychiatry now too.
The power roles thing is something we already know. I liked the part about the person playing the role of psychiatrist in the commitment hearing having a very flat affect and strange speech pattern himself.
And yes, “antipsychiatry” is almost a diagnosis now. Antipsychiatry, critical psychiatry, pro-psychiatry; these words just mean “crank”, “moderate” and “scientific” respectively (depending on who you ask).
Your views are seen as too extreme? You have to justify it by saying you’re “critical psychiatry”. It’s all rubbish.
But hey, it’s all politics at the end of the day. Makes me wonder why I’m even writing this comment. It’s all obvious.
Not totally sure how to interpret some of your comment, but thanks for reading, either way.
I disagree with your link between ‘critical psychiatry’ and ‘moderate,’ but perhaps that does – as you say – depend on who you’re asking. I only know that the only place I ever get called a ‘moderate’ is around here, and only by a pretty small group of folks. :p
Personally, I’m not backing away from ‘antipsychiatry’ to justify anything. I’ve never cared for the term. It’s too black and white. I prefer to be critical of anything and everything. š
-Sera
Interpret it all as me being supportive of whatever you are doing. š
Got it. Thanks. š
Sera
You are not alone in this. I have been saying the SAME things for 25 years including that it is exhausting to have to say the same things, over and over again, to those who can’t/won’t hear it as REALITY; always trying to āget throughā to those who donāt want to be āgotten throughā TO. And THIS is what we ALL need to talk about publicly; the construct ITSELF, which has humanity all neatly divided, via abstractions, in absolute terms, into āthem and usā subsets, which no one has to bother to even THINK about, as completely ludicrous. People who know me personally would think I wrote this. I also think of it this way:
We are no longer āalone with our truthā for we have more and more company all the time with those who have been alone with THEIR truth, which means we are no LONGER aloneā¦ā¦
āCuringā the paradoxical trap by exposing it, instead of āexplainingā it, to those who donāt want to hear. They will hear it when it becomes MORE beneficial for THEM to do so, than to keep fighting against it.
Sera, your meticulous, powerful response to the way youāve been treated as an activist mirrors my feelings about my 30 years in this movement. As painful as it is to read, youāve articulated so brilliantly the daily othering and degradation many of us face in our work. Iām really tired too. But I also find strength in reading and identifying with your analysis. Thank you!
Thanks, Darby. I appreciate your response, and knowing that my experiences resonate with others. And that you’re still here! š
-Sera
Sorry for red-pilling, but here it is: If Sera isnāt allowed to effectuate significant, lasting REFORM in psychiatry, then psychiatry cannot be salvaged, and must be ABOLISHED. In my experience, Sera is one of the smartest, most dedicated, most flexible, and most personable Mad activists. Compared to anyone, sheās a stand-up person. Compared to Munchausens and quacks, sheās a saint! It should surprise no one that these complaints were thrown at Sera by people who arenāt Mad. Every. Single. One. And, since these are the very same people who HATE working closely with Mad people, theyāre OBLIGATED to step aside and let Sera take charge. These quacks canāt have it both ways. They canāt refuse to serve people, and then undercut the person who will. I realize thatās one of the quackās schizophrenogenic antics, but itās intolerable, unprofessional, and catastrophic to Mad people. It MUST stop. If it doesnāt, then folks like Sera need the legal authority to completely break out of the #FAKESCIENCE , and care for the public in their own way. Enough is enough.
Thanks, J. In the best of worlds, I think abolition is indeed where it’s at. I’m not sure how we fix something that is being driven by so many interests that just aren’t helpful or healthy. What keeps me chasing reform is knowing how many people are stuck in there if we stop tending to that, and the numerous successes many of us have seen of helping people move beyond stuckness to a full life. I don’t feel great about getting too black and white about abolition goals primarily for that reason… But, yes, we need something totally different than what we have now.
-Sera
“if youāre only whispering, youāre not an ally.”
If you are only whispering, you are smart enough to know who has the power and the money.
Money
$18 Billion dollars a year in antipsychotics. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/health/a-call-for-caution-in-the-use-of-antipsychotic-drugs.html
$11 Billion dollars a year in antidepressants. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/06/prescribing.aspx
$10 Billion dollars a year in stimulant drugs. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/health/the-selling-of-attention-deficit-disorder.html?pagewanted=all
“In the 1970’s it was barely a 1 Billion dollar market.” https://books.google.ca/books?id=2DFLI2ib-1oC&lpg=PA43&ots=HEQREreIFM&dq=sales%20of%20tranquilizer%20drugs&pg=PA43#v=onepage&q=sales%20of%20tranquilizer%20drugs&f=false
“The United States invests a sizable amount of money on treatments for mental health and substance abuse: $135 billion in 2005, or 1.07 percent of the gross domestic product.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21289350
Mark,
Eh, there are lots of ‘smart’ reasons why people leave those of us who are speaking up on our own, yes. It’d probably be smarter for me to shut up, too… Maybe follow my brother’s path, and work in the field of computers. And yet, here we are.
-Sera
I’m not avoiding activism because of intelligence but cowardice. How do you avoid being locked up, drugged and shocked Sera?
Unlike with MLK or Gandhi they don’t even have to stage a fake trial with trumped up charges to imprison us. Then they can punish us to their hearts’ content even to the point of death when pretending to be benevolent humanitarians.
I hear you, feelindiscouraged. Most of this blog was directed as those who hold power and aren’t at any particular risk, not people who are trying to avoid incarceration. I’ve definitely experienced marginalization, but fortunately haven’t faced any real threat of incarceration in a long time for which I am very thankful. -Sera
Are you trying to be funny? I can’t help seeing in all these basically tongue-in-cheek complaints something of the humorist. (Painting oneself into a corner, for instance, and there aren’t other ways to paint a house? You know, as in, I didn’t really mean to do this to myself. Oops. There I go again, slapping myself.) Are you the Erma Bombeck of activism? If not, you might try taking yourself a little less seriously and, thereby, developing a sense of humor.
The mental health movement in my book is the enemy. The mental health movement grew out of the movement to incarcerate people who were different (the movement for forced treatment), not lawbreakers. The mental health movement is out to change the behavior of people it sees as not “fitting in”. You work for the mental health system. I think that only by standing outside of the mental health movement, and the mental health system, can one get a sense of perspective on this matter.
Perhaps a corollary to the book authored by Thomas Szasz The Myth of Mental Illness should be written, only this book should bear the title The Myth of Mental Health. If so, then maybe people would start to get it. We don’t need a behavioral change system. We need a society that accepts people as they are.
I suspect we will continue to disagree on elements of this, Frank. I’m mostly going to look past your first paragraph (which feels a little insulting) and say this:
As I said in one of my comments above, I agree that wiping the slate clean and starting over in terms of what we regard as ‘helping’ people and why and how to go about all that in our society is the ideal.
Where we most strenuously disagree, I believe, is where I feel you have over simplified things. It’s not *just* about people being ‘different,’ as much as that’s a huge part of it. It may, in fact, be the most motivating part of it for the roots of this system… And yet, there are also people who are really struggling and want help, etc. Additionally, whenever I hear people get so fixed on abolition rather than change, it feels like it comes from a place of privilege to me. (Not privilege as in wealth or lack of hardship or whatever, but privilege nonetheless…. The privilege of not so much being at risk anymore of ending up in one of these places. The people I work with go in to institutions every day to try and help people get on their feet and get out… Abolitionist talk misses that. I realize that if we were truly successful in abolition, those people would also get out… Except, it wouldn’t be those people… They would have been lost and died off long ago. And I’m just not comfortable with sacrificing people in the now for what we might achieve somewhere far down the road.
I want to end psychiatry too. But in the meantime people suffer and die. I get angry at commenters so fixated on revenge they ignore those who suffer and say they shouldn’t recover. What???
Those who escape the Madhouse without Walls need to recover not just from the emotional pain/bad habits that made us prey for the psychiatric industry but the usually worse trauma psychiatry has inflicted on us.
I agree. There needs to be a network of support. Where I might disagree is that I feel this system of support should be an underground network of support for resisters of psychiatry. I’m not fond of the idea of a government run support system for people wishing to employ the “mental illness” excuse. As I’ve said before, I’m not an illness survivor, I’m a treatment survivor.
Yes. After the Dred Scott Decision the government was worthless at helping people escape slavery. So the Underground Railroad began.
Actually, I think the matter has to be simplified. The mental health movement grew out of forced treatment. One who doesn’t see this doesn’t see anything. Now you’ve got a “right to treatment” movement. Forget that. What we need is a right to refuse treatment movement.
When living conditions are used as an excuse for medical treatment, well, something is missing, namely, a tangible disease or illness. This is medicalization in a nutshell, and where does it lead? Obviously, to 20 % of the population, more or less, receiving “medical” “care”. You want “mental health”? Cough, cough. Get out of the treatment business. Stop selling treatment.
Here. Let me check my glossary on this subject:
“Mental health” = not receiving treatment for a “mental health” issue.
Just this week I happened upon a 2010 edition of Szasz’s “Myth of Mental Illness”. In the 2010 preface, Szasz explicitly states that he is NOT “anti-psychiatry”, because he considers BOTH psychiatry and anti-psychiatry to be “pseudoscience”. Just sayin’…..
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, Sera!
In her book Quiet, Susan Cain comments on how our society pressures introverts to conform and become outgoing game show hosts. You also have to always see the glass as HALF FULL. Never mind that half empty is equally true. Cause that makes you a pessimist. You negative Nellie! Don’t you know it’s sick and crazy not to think life’s a bowl of cherries and Lollipop Land? Obviously delusional.
Seriously? You find this blog funny? I don’t get it.
I often had a hard time getting Erma Bombeck, too.
Maybe Frank thought Sera intended this to be a humorous essay. From my own reading of the piece and Sera’s comments here I don’t think so. Her tone is light and full of metaphors, but there are no jokes or witticisms–good or bad.
Nice piece!
Ra-right, don’t let me mock you, if I mock you.
I thought her piece pretty dark in a way, and if I brightened the picture any, my apologies.
Hi, Sera,
SO good to read another blog from you – I was thinking recently it had been a while, and I always find your blogs energizing and affirming!
You really struck a chord with me this time. I was one of those “insider” dissidents in the “mental health” system for a decade or so, and I ran into the very same kind of dismissive attitudes once my views were known. In particular, I relied a lot on knowing the latest research on a topic as a means of balancing the power for clients, but I encountered exactly the same resentment from folks, as if I’d somehow “outfoxed” them by presenting actual DATA that they were unfamiliar or uncomfortable with. It was, indeed, VERY tiring, and I got out of the field and into advocacy as a result. Advocacy pays like crap but at least I could go home feeling OK at the end of the day. Still, most advocacy is for individuals, and system advocacy is much harder and much slower.
Bottom line, we’re working against CORRUPTION, and corruption is not changed by data or even by good working relationships. It’s changed by deleting the financial incentives toward corrupt behavior, and it’s rampant in our society today. I truly believe that’s where we have got to put more of our energy, yet the thought of taking on THAT juggernaut is even more exhausting!
Thanks for putting so much of my experience into words. Sometimes helping individuals who are brutalized by the system doesn’t feel like much, but it DOES make a huge difference for those individuals, and in the end, the country IS made up of individuals and maybe we need to help wake up a lot more before the big-scale changes we need to see become possible.
—- Steve
And telling potential allies the TRUTH about psychiatry and the drugs they push.
Thanks, Steve. You’re right… we’re working against corruption, and data doesn’t help. I appreciate that frame. š
The funny thing is Iām really not anti-psychiatry.
And therein lies the problem, as you search for acceptance and approval from your enemies while banging your head against the wall of the Globe and similar venues. You have pretty well demonstrated the standard arguments and techniques used by the system to silence people such as yourself. All that’s left is for you now to stop trying to convince these people of your rightness, and start organizing to remove their power over you, and the rest of us. If you are anti-repression you should be anti-psychiatry, and proud of it.
Meh. As I said in my blog, I don’t think ‘anti-psychiatry’ is helpful. I’m all for anti-oppression, anti-force, etc… but for me, anti-psychiatry kind of misses the mark. Sorry!
How does antipsychiatry miss the mark? Psychiatry is the pseudo-scientific justification for torture, drugging, abuse, involuntary incarceration, and even murder. Why not oppose it? If psychiatry is a modern form of slavery, which it is, ought it not to be opposed?
I absolutely refuse to have the slavery compared to psychiatry argument again. This blog was deeply personal for me and took me a long time to write, and I simply won’t participate in having it hijacked in that way.
As to the rest… The whole argument misses the mark for me. Almost any perspective that is completely one-sided is usually missing something in my eyes. That is how ‘anti-psychiatry’ feels to me. It a) misses that humans have used drugs for an eternity to manage their feelings, experiences, etc, and I’m not entirely sure that’s wrong in the most fundamental sense b) misses the fact that iatrogenic harm and dehumanization happen in the system for many reasons that include but extend beyond psychiatric drugs… At a minimum it misses those things.
In any case, I’m done arguing about this, too, but thank you for reading the blog.
I was simply stating a fact, not trying to derail any conversation, or even to argue. I’m just trying to understand. I’m still very confused as to what you think psychiatry is, and even more confused about what you think antipsychiatry is. Sorry for the confusion. Although I disagree with him on this topic, Szasz was very much open to the idea of the freedom to drug oneself. As for the second point, I’m even more confused because antipsychiatry stands in direct opposition to any form of iatrogenic harm and dehumanization that is caused by psychiatry, whether by psychotropic drugs or any other way. I appreciate your patience with my questions, but it seems that when people use the terms “psychiatry” and “antipsychiatry” they often talk past one another because they are not talking about the same things. I guess I’m still confused about what exactly your blog post is about or what you want to have a conversation about. My apologies.
It’s funny. My post feels so clear to me, and seems to be connecting with several others to whom it also feels very clear. But, I guess we all see things through our own lenses and experiences, and so I can’t fault you for feeling otherwise.
Perhaps it comes down to my simply not liking the word. I do not think that the term ‘anti-psychiatry’ conveys the things that you say above very well at all. I also feel that many people who talk about ‘anti-psychiatry’ as their primary perspective tend to over simplify things, but as you’ll see above some people feel that over-simplification is a bonus.
It doesn’t work for me. That’s kind of all there is to it. It’s like arguing about what the word ‘bipolar’ means. Even for those who accept that label, it actually *looks* a thousand different ways, let alone if you factor in those who do not. It is not a way I choose to identify myself, and I think the term misses the mark, at the very least, in being a way to accurately convey what (some) people mean by it. I don’t really see the point in arguing about it, honestly.
-Sera
That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying. I actually don’t identify myself primarily as an “antipsychiatrist” either. I’m not interested in arguing with you either, since I’m sure that the truth that we share is greater than our differences. I would be curious to know, perhaps at another time, why you don’t like the word “antipsychiatry” and why you don’t think that the term conveys the aforementioned meaning very well, or in what way “antipsychiatry” oversimplifies things. No need to respond now, since I understood at least one thing from your post, and that is that you are tired. I hope that you can rest up, replenish, and find joy in things that make you happy. All the best, and thanks for your reply.
I think psychiatry infantilizes people, damages their brains and vital organs, defames them and encourages their segregation, makes them live in poverty, enables their bad behaviors, and kills them.
But large numbers of people ALREADY IN the system believe it saved their life, soul, and is the meaning to their existence. Take away their psychiatric saviors and those people will throw hysterics and riot in the streets. Going cold turkey can send them body and mind into shock possibly causing permanent damage or death. Can you imagine this?
I donāt think āanti-psychiatryā is helpful
Is that the extent of your analysis, i.e. what “feels right”?
Oh for goodness sake. You’re over hear arguing semantics, and Pat is down below ignoring the problems that paid peer roles have created. Perhaps the two of you could argue together?
I’m done and holding out hope that people may show up here who want to actually talk about the blog, and not these arguments that are getting us nowhere.
I am responding very specifically and sincerely to the points in your blog, as you do articulate some valid concerns, so your emotion seems out of place, and slightly hostile.
Thank you for saying that. We should be looking for common values and strategies, not attacking each other!
I don’t think psychiatry is helpful, therefore, I don’t see a psychiatrist. I could modify this statement by saying I don’t think psychiatry is helpful for me, but, you see, if thousands and thousands of people did the same, maybe we could get rid of psychiatry.
There is an argument that psychiatry is more harmful than it is helpful, and in many instances, this argument is borne out by the evidence.
There is another argument, coming from skeptics, that the scientific basis behind psychoanalysis is sketchy at best, and completely fraudulent at its worst.
Both arguments make sense to me.
If the authorities had not started putting away loonies a few centuries ago, this matter of mad doctors would not be such that it is today. Stop locking people up who have broken no laws, and there goes your need for medical specialists who specialize in fabricating medical excuses to lock people up.
There is a wealth of sorely needed discussion matter suddenly surfacing on MIA, that’s for sure. Anyway I’m reading this in pieces and commenting as I go along, so to continue…
Iām also not sure Iād claim that our work is exactly ālimited by the need for larger social change,ā so much as Iād say that creating larger social change is a part of our work
Actually I forgot to comment on the notion of a “movement,” which is a nice thing to fantasize about but until we all mean the same thing I think we should avoid using the term, which according to who uses it can mean anything from the anti-psychiatry movement to the “mental health movement,” whatever the latter might be.
Anyway Sera your above quote may be more true than you want to realize, as we really have no work other than defeating the system which reduces everyone’s lives to monetary values, and is the original source of most people’s suffering no matter how that suffering is labeled. There is no “answer’ or “individual solution” other than eliminating the causes. Those of us who end up being bruised and battered along the way need whatever assistance and support we can provide, but this should be seen as a temporary measure until we achieve liberation for all. We do not need a new “field” of “alternatives to psychiatry,” any more than we need a “field” of anti-psychiatry, either of which would establish psychiatry as the basis of reference from which all else emanates. Both should be seen as means to an end rather than ends in and of themselves.
Dictionary dot com gives two definitions for movement:
1. an act of changing physical location or position or of having this changed.
2. a group of people working together to advance their shared political, social, or artistic ideas.
It uses the example of “the labor movement”. In quotation marks.
I think we mean the second definition.
Of course, it’s always possible for any group of people not to work together on shared ideas, too.
I think the confusion we’ve got here may have to do with the intersection (and confluence) of a few different movements, that is, the mental health movement, the psychiatric survivor movement, the consumer/user/survivor (C/S/X) movement (I’m not linking this to the one that preceded it on this list), and the antipsychiatry movement. To this group, one might add the critical psychiatry movement. Some people might throw in “recovery” movement, alternatives movement, and/or peer support specialist movement for good measure. Peer??? Oh, yeah, and there’s also the biological psychiatry movement, or organized psychiatry for short. Basically, we’d be having to deal with a few basic differences between antipyschiatry, the mental health movement, the psychiatric survior (or ex-patient) movement, the so-called peer movement, and the critical psychiatry movement.
To have a movement you have to agree about stuff. None of these so-called “movements” you mention even have a program I’m aware of except for what you call the “survivor” movement, which is largely the legacy of the mental patients liberation movement, which was ALWAYS 100% anti-psychiatry. (The “consumer/CSX movement” was primarily one man’s turf from what I can see, though I didn’t have the misfortune to be hanging around while all the disintegration of the movement was occurring.) We never debated about whether or not we were anti-psychiatry, it would have been like re-inventing the wheel. And that was years ago. Back to the future!
I think your characterizing the mental patient liberation movement as 100 % antipsychiatry is 100 % fantasy. You’re talking about a movement that has been beset by a certain degree of factionalism since the beginning. Certainly the movement we had was more antipsychiatry than the “pe-ah” movement that followed it, however, I think many of the seeds of the sell out, or co-optation, were in place well before it occurred.
I know there has been some differences between radicals, moderates, and conservatives. I see myself as a radical, and so the moderate or conservative line, buying and selling “mental health treatment”, doesn’t appeal to me. The moderates and the conservatives have their facilities, their treatments, and their careers. Some people call them ‘support systems’. Bleep that.
Anyone who doesn’t have anything better to do with their time doesn’t need a lecture from me because I imagine they are getting lectures all the time. Long boring stupid lectures.
People don’t have to agree on everything, not even to be part of a movement. As is, you’ve got this confluence of multiple movements guaranteeing disagreement. Regarding the movement itself, that is, any movement that one identifies with, or considers oneself a part of, there should be some kind of basic agreement, but nothing needs to written in stone, movements are about general agreement anyway.
Organizations, a part of movements, have programs. Movements as such, don’t have programs. A movement is more unorganized, obviously, than an organization, however, it helps when many organizations make up a movement. The fewer organizations, the less clout for the movement as a whole, and the fewer people there are that are likely to embody it.
I think your characterizing the mental patient liberation movement as 100 % antipsychiatry is 100 % fantasy.
And you’re 100% wrong. Just check out the most definitive statement ever put out by the movement:
http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/act/movement-history/1982-principles
“26. We believe that the psychiatric system cannot be reformed but must be abolished.”
I’m all for the 1982 principles, and for # 26 there. I also don’t think they mitigate from the fact that we are speaking about one set of principles from one conference, and that many of the people who were there were on their way to selling out over the course of the next few years.
After the 1985 conference on human rights and psychiatric oppression, from what I’ve gathered, there was going to be a 1986 conference. It never materialized. That’s a long pause, and not the kind of pause that refreshes.
we are speaking about one set of principles from one conference
Wrong, wrong, wrong. The 1982 statement was an updated and more sophisticated restatement of basic principles that had been formulated at least as early as 1976 and, I believe, published in Madness Network News. I’ll see if I can find a copy.
Regardless, that “one conference” was the movement’s governing body, and the statements issued in its name were the positions of the movement at large, not just a few people. The Toronto statement was the result of 3 separate and intense sessions over the course of 3 days involving the majority of conference participants. It stands as one of the movement’s crowning achievements, and stands the test of time. It also demonstrates why the movement had to be destroyed.
Update — I have indeed retrieved the original 1976 principles from the 4th Annual North American Conference on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression, on which the 1982 statement was modeled. Among the statements: “We oppose the psychiatric system…because it is similar in important ways to the Inquisition, chattel slavery, and Nazi and Soviet concentration camps…it cannot be reformed but must be abolished.”
I will post the entire statement on the “Organizing” forum as soon as I get time to transcribe it; I found it most interesting after all these years, and still spot on in many ways (and even better in some imo).
I can’t wait to see the entire statement from 1976 posted. I was at the 1976 conference at Tufts University, if that is the 4th, and so I might have seen it at one time or another.
Seeing as now there are these Alternative Conferences, and there are no more Annual Conferences on Human Rights and Psychiatric Oppression, as I was saying.
It also demonstrates why the movement had to be destroyed.
Uh, did THE movement know this?
I mean now you’ve got all these opportunists, careerists, government agency bureaucrats, and “consumer/user” lifetime treatment junkies out there, regular brown nosing step and fetch its, calling themselves “peers”, and the system stinks to high heaven with corruption. I could even see hash-tagging it: #NotMyMovement.
Frank, didn’t know you were at the ’76 Conference, I’m impressed, that was my first one too. I know you mentioned you were at the one in Bryn Mawr, but I thought that was all.
OK I’ll work on transcribing it asap. Much of the Boston and Toronto versions read almost word for word. I noticed that the Boston statement said we opposed the CONCEPT of “mental illness”; the Toronto one said we opposed the “medical model of ‘mental illness,'” which is not the same thing, and the first way makes much more sense.
Yeah, ’76 and ’78. The next was going to be in Cleveland. I don’t know where I was then. I had a few spells in the psychiatric pen, and then 10 years out of the system. I wasn’t in the best of situations, and then my longest spell of captivity, more punitive than anything else I guess. That was enough to get me to try to reconnect with the movement. It’s been 20 years since then.
I don’t like these online comment things, and rarely do them. I’d rather have the in-person conversations because it’s such a chore to try to communicate in the first place…too much is lost in this platform – So, Sera Thank you for all you do. What you write and your perspective gives me hope in what I do – because it makes sense to me and i think “yes, that’s what I mean, those are my thoughts on the subject too!”. I am employed as a “Peer Support Specialist” in the state of Maine. It is difficult to be very aware of the serious cracks in the foundation of the mental health “system”, and its flaws and the murder and the pain and the life-ending damage and hypocrisy etc, and yet to be employed and working in/for the “system” at the same time. But dammit I need a job and part of my job is to not compromise my principles, and reading your stuff reaffirms and validates….this.
Ugh! Must be horrible. As a smart, articulate MI consumer with a college degree I thought about becoming a PSS. Everyone at the center I attended applauded the idea.
I started hearing audible voices the week before training. I decided not to go; the voices stopped shortly after.
I had already been reading William Glasser and Terry Lynch, so I was having a paradigm shift. That’s what “anosognosia” really is. Questioning the cult’s beliefs.
Maybe I conjured up those voices which I had never experienced before or since to prevent my becoming a peer support specialist. My heart knew it was wrong and overpowered my conscious mind temporarily.
mecarlym,
Thanks so much for reading and commenting, as much as you’re not so generally inclined. š There seems to be a real push/pull for so many of us when it comes to staying in this work and fighting vs. walking away to do something else, or at least not get paid within the system. Touch choices all around, but you sound like someone I’m happy is still connected. š
-Sera
Sera, Recovery is a dead end self-destructive concept. It is based on the premise that marginalized people are marginalized for some legitmate reason. It goes no where good.
You may have noticed that I use the word ‘recovery’ nowhere except in the name of where I work, which was a name developed something like 15 years ago.
Perhaps you’d enjoy this blog I wrote quite some time ago called the ‘Recover’ Trap. https://www.madinamerica.com/2013/04/the-recovery-trap/
Once again, please take some time to know me and those I work with before presuming criticisms.
So many movements, and so much activism, with such meager results. Why? Markps2 makes a valid point. As we jabber on about movements there are people being tortured in psychiatric dungeons, innocent children being drugged into oblivion, and the homeless and the elderly are being subjected to cruel psychiatric treatments. Grass roots movements, protests, and activism might open a few eyes, but until the major bastions of power – political, economic, social, and media – are moved to proclaim the truth about psychiatry, it will be an exceedingly difficult uphill battle. Why isn’t there a major blockbuster film that reveals the true history of psychiatry? Why don’t the books that reveal the truth about psychiatry make the New York Times best sellers list? Why isn’t the New York Times consistently reporting on psychiatric atrocities? Why don’t politicians understand the truth about psychiatry? Follow the money.
I pointed out that some of these movements are at cross-purposes, and some of them don’t even seem to realize it.
“As we jabber on about movements there are people being tortured in psychiatric dungeons, innocent children being drugged into oblivion, and the homeless and the elderly are being subjected to cruel psychiatric treatments.”
Some good questions to ask are where does this movement or that stand on the issue of psychiatric incarceration and torture, where does it stand on child poisoning, and where does it stand on elder abuse.
Psychiatry itself being a bastion of power, I think the truth is going to have to come out of grassroots struggle and education. Often against the bastion of power that is psychiatry.
The APA has engaged in some heavy duty PR campaigning, together with big pHarma, and that’s what we’re up again. The media, in the USA, is financed in a major way by drug companies. Add to that, corrupt politics, what with all the corporate money in it.
Sure, follow the money. Do that SDP, and you just might change your political position.
LOL! Good one Frank. š You make some excellent points here, particularly about psychiatry itself as a bastion of power. The connection between Big Pharma, the media, and the therapeutic state in general, seems to be the axis of evil against which we allies are cast as combatants. This is why it seems to me that there must be a way to infiltrate the system on the highest levels. The giant of the psycho-therapeutic industrial complex smashes grassroots resistance as if it were a bunch of tiny little ants. Some proverbial David needs to hurl a smooth stone at this giant’s ugly face or gouge out its eyes before severing its loathsome head. That sling and that stone could be something as simple as the right book or the right movie. Can’t we get Tom Cruise to star in a movie that exposes the truth about psychiatry? He’s into that kind of thing.
The giant of the psycho-therapeutic industrial complex smashes grassroots resistance as if it were a bunch of tiny little ants.
I prefer the term “prison/psychiatric industrial complex,” for reasons, as stated elsewhere, of our avoiding appropriation of an existing movement, the prison abolition movement.
PS Is this “giant” a friend of the Dragon?
Yes. They are all friends. We need a myth that is true and that makes sense to defeat the myths of psychiatry, including the myth of mental illness. The giant must be felled, and the dragon must be slain.
I don’t think it is ever going to be so easy as that (1 book, 1 movie), Dragon Slayer. It’s apt in a way that you bring up David and Goliath because we’re dealing with a religion, however, the story of David is a Judaeo-Christian parable, and antipsychiatry doesn’t need to fashion itself into a corresponding religious sect. We’re dealing with a religion that is trying to pass itself off as a science. As long as it’s so hideously wrong headed and corrupt as it is, it’s going to have critic/heretics. I think the mental health system has more in common with the criminal justice system than it does with the medical hospital system. That’s a criticism right there as this is not about tolerating serious crime, this is about not tolerating human difference.
According to the story David could only kill the giant through supernatural intervention. A young teenage boy with a few pebbles and a sling is no match for a fully armed experienced warrior over 9 feet tall.
You are both exactly right. Psychiatry is a false religion. It is a false religion that poses as a legitimate, scientific, medical profession. How is it that this false religion has recruited so many willing and unwilling followers? How has this false religion spread and deceived almost the entire world?
A giant, no matter how large and experienced, is no match for the Lord. Psychiatry, like Goliath, will fall:
“Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.
And it came to pass, when the Philistine arose, and came and drew nigh to meet David, that David hasted, and ran toward the army to meet the Philistine.
And David put his hand in his bag, and took thence a stone, and slang it, and smote the Philistine in his forehead, that the stone sunk into his forehead; and he fell upon his face to the earth.
So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone, and smote the Philistine, and slew him; but there was no sword in the hand of David.
Therefore David ran, and stood upon the Philistine, and took his sword, and drew it out of the sheath thereof, and slew him, and cut off his head therewith. And when the Philistines saw their champion was dead, they fled.” (1 Sam. 17:48-51)
The bow is bent, and the arrow is straight and sure. The dragon of psychiatry will be slain.
Iām not gonna listen to you as I could lose my career. Not worth it. Iād rather pick my battles and live to fight another day.
Also is it true you get along with most people? I read on your blogs you are irked with the Boston globe as activist and the school system as a parent too.
Maybe your burnout now is result of the kind of activism you do. I prefer to pick my battles and engage the mental Heath system as a gentleman.
Pat
Yes, I like to call like to call it activism with integrity, and you’re right, it’s hard to do that sort of activism without burning out. š It’s hard to imagine that you’re actually trying to argue with our push back against the Boston Globe for their deeply offensive ‘mental health spotlight’ series, or the way our school systems are failing our kids… Is that really what you’re doing? Also, my ‘getting along/synthesizing’ comment wasn’t about my blogs. I say what I want here. I was talking about my ability to navigate my daily work. š And speaking of my daily work, didn’t I – at your request – just send you a book I wrote on developing peer respite? It escapes me a bit why you keep coming on these blogs and intentionally misrepresenting or disparaging what I have to say. š But that’s okay. I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. š
-Sera
Your the one who already has 35 comments. You deserve criticism as well as praise
Just wanted to offer a new perspective for other AMERICANS working as peers. I like to live to fight another day and pick my battles.
Peer respites are a battle Iām choosing to advocate. I wonāt email you again for resources but thanks for the manual.
Criticism is fair, and there’s already a good amount of it in this comments section if you missed it! But I’m often troubled by your comments, as they seem to misrepresent what I say and what I do more often than not. I’m also confused by your capitalization in the above, but that’s also fine. And, you’re welcome to continue to e-mail me or the RLC for resources… My point was that you seem to tend toward attack here, and yet you clearly must see *some* value in what we do.
I like you quite a bit. This website is not for me. I capitalized Because Iām American and I know Americans are only people I want to comment on.
You all solicit people when they are actually facing threats. Even if you were hospitalized against will here in America itās not comparable to many other countries. Yet people like to go on speaking tours going on about and saying recovery is better in other countries. Itās painful for me to here sometimes.
Pat, you’ve said this many times. If this website is not for you, why do you keep reading and commenting on it?
I can’t help wondering why in the world Sera would respond to any of this.
Looks like I done rammed all the commenters into submission with my voice of reason.
Sorry to tarnish the idealistic tone of the conversation with my realistic and subjective viewpoint.
Ramming commenters into submission, eh?
Or is your hostile tone off-putting, and people are refusing to engage with you because you are being a bully?
What……………….??? Your realistic and subjective viewpoint………..? It seems as if you’re a legend in your own mind.
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
Doesn’t matter what I say.
Are you ok? That doesn’t sound like your usual tone of comments? Maybe you’re like me, – getting a headache from all the arguing here! š I like Sera’s work, and I think some of the older *boys* here are giving her a hard time she doesn’t need, or deserve…. I saw a LOT of humor in Sera’s piece, above, and a lot of pain, too. It’s obvious to me that Sera feels very deeply, and cares very much about people. We need more of that.
(This is just a thought – maybe you should post as “FeelinLESS Discouraged”, or something. Aren’t you risking affirming your discouragement, by repeatedly writing that you are “FeelinDiscouraged”? See what I mean? I can see some irony and humor in your choice of online/screen name, but maybe it’s time for a change? You know I like your comments, and I’m tryin’ to B helpful here!….)….
Good point Bill. I was commenting in response to Pat. š
I am changing my moniker to Zoe_Awakes. Thought I would let you know. Zoe refers to soul life as opposed to Bios or mere animal life. Since “psychiatry” strives to transform the soul into a biological organ the name is an oxymoron.
Uh–you mean realistic and OBJECTIVE? Right?
So I’m back again…I should mention I haven’t read any other comments yet…btw movement burnout is an age old phenomenon and not to be taken lightly everyone…
When we speak, we must simultaneously attempt to prove that we are not āantiā anything and not ātoo radical,ā just so that our actual words may even be heard as we speak them. We need to pet and soothe egos while challenging minds.
What gives them the power to treat you like this is that you choose to approach them as a supplicant and let your day be judged by how they respond to you, and get upset when they predictably show their true colors. This is not a criticism, just an observation. It’s sort of like when Blacks still called themselves negroes and spent lots of time assuring sympathetic liberals that they didn’t believe in Black power. What you should pay more attention to is the degree of insecurity in their fear of you being “anti-psychiatry,” and recognize that they recognize you as someone who has their number and is worth taking seriously — sometimes by dissing you. My question is why these are the people you consider important to make an impression on and why you want to be a member of their country club.
The list of ways we can be dissed could go on and on, and yours is an excellent summation of the arrogance and contempt with which the mh system views anyone who even scratches the surface of their fiefdom.
The system convinces those standing on the middle ground that their survival (either their āmental healthā or their paycheck) is dependent on moderation. Theyāre rewarded for their relative silence (complicity) with speaking engagements, award nominations, better paying jobs, shorter work days, and seats at that table that everyone keeps talking about.
Uh, Sera — You do know this is why the real movement was defeated ages ago, and why people think they are actually talking about a movement here when they are talking about a fake movement, a shell built on the ashes of the one they destroyed with these exact same tactics? Believe me you’re not the only one shouting into the void.
Btw I hope you’re not reading any of this as hostile, I’m trying to be helpful.
Oldhead,
I guess part of my point is that it’s (largely) impossible to not eventually feel beaten down by the constant abuse, disregard, dismissal, etc… It doesn’t have to be about approaching them as lesser than or needing their approval. That I don’t is, I imagine, part of the problem. And yet, I am human. And it gets exhausting.
I very much disagree with your ‘black power’ analogy, although I get your point. As I’ve already stated, I don’t care for the term ‘anti-psychiatry’ and it’s not really about try to soothe anyone’s fears. I simply don’t relate to it, and the fact that that’s actually my *truth* and people *still* want to use it to dismiss makes the whole thing all the more maddening.
Yes, I realize that a large part of the downfall of the strength of this movement came with paid ‘peer’ roles and such. I talk about that with a great deal of frequency. And yet, expecting people to network, gain strength, and have a voice long-term with*out* any funding to support that is part of what made what was also not sustainable, I believe. Kind of a lose:lose…
-Sera
OK for one I was stunned by your earlier talk of anti-psych and privilege, too much so to comment on now but I’ll hopefully have the energy after I eat, maybe not. But I’m amazed you could spend all that energy on Pat and at the same time treat the issue of anti-psychiatry so cavalierly, as though years of anti-psych history and analysis could be dismissed as an “oversimplification” without even examining its precepts. Especially when it holds the answers to many of the questions you are beating yourself up over.
However, to help sort things out, there are two different subjects being discussed: a) Helping people with their problems; and b) Abolishing psychiatry. They are completely separate issues, and one need not negate the other.
Good point!
“oldhead”, *MY* personal problem with the “anti-psychiatry” label is that it simply legitimizes psychiatry as being worthy of having an “anti” movement….
I agree with Szasz, both psychiatry, *AND* anti-psychiatry are PSEUDOSCIENCES…. That’s directly from the preface to the 2010 edition of “Myth of Mental illness”…..
Two things:
simply legitimizes psychiatry as being worthy of having an āantiā movement
I’m afraid we have to cut our losses there; if there’s one thing psychiatry is “legitimately worthy” of it’s an opposition movement.
The other thing is that from what I’ve seen Szasz wasn’t talking about the anti-psychiatry movement, he was speaking of the “antipsychiatry” school of psychiatry associated with Cooper and Laing, which had nothing to do with fighting psychiatry. But I am interested in reading that 2010 preface, do you have a link?
I don’t think the dash means that much, OldHead. Usually with a dash would mean the word with the prefix hasn’t been in circulation that long while without the dash would indicate it had been around a little longer and that it was more generally accepted.
Thomas Szasz had this antipathy to what he saw as collectivism. Collectivism which he associated with communism. Communal living situations in Szasz book (Kingsley Hall/Soteria Houses) seem to be taboo. They are, however, not nearly so taboo in my own book. I have problems with the Szasz brand of shopfront psychoanalysis myself.
In my view this mess began with institutionalized treatment. Get rid of the institution, and everything else will take care of itself. Thomas Szasz is right about one thing though, today when they’ve got these people saying, no, you can’t get rid of the institution, we need supports. You end up with this extension of the state institution, the mini-institutions within the locality (group homes, assisted living facilities, day hospitals, clubhouses, etc.). There is no getting rid of institutional psychiatry so long as you have the community mental health system, the localized extension of the state hospital system.
I think we have to oppose this kind of repeatable nursery school for adult nursery school flunkies.
Thomas Szasz opposed deinstitutionalization (Above, it’s not happening, right?) in favor of ‘adult orphan asylums’. Of course, with coercive non-consensual treatment outlawed.
‘Adult orphan asylum’? Really? I dunno…I’m also not going there.
I don’t think you’d have people so institutionalized that they wouldn’t leave if the doors were thrown open without having had institutionalized forced treatment first.
The hyphen is not my concern, rather it is the fact that the Cooperian/Laingian types used the term to denote their particular faction within the psychiatric establishment, not what it means it plain English.
Anyway for me Szasz’s prime value was in his deconstruction of psychiatry, not his prescriptions for how to use that information, which often fall short of the mark. And I agree, he was probably ideologically threatened by left-leaning sorts such as Laing and this clouded his vision re: abolition (although he wrote of “psychiatry slavery,” which seems to be a contradiction). On the other hand there are a lot of hypocritical so-called “leftists” who give fuel to some right-wing arguments, at least on the surface.
I wasn’t even commenting on the whole “peer” thing, that came later, it seems that Alternatives 85 was the first big assault on the movement, and it appears in retrospect to not have been recognized for what it was by people who should have known better. However that’s a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking beings I wasn’t there at that point..
Whereās the off switch? There has to be an off switch somewhere, right? What happens when the input of terrible gets to be too much, but any output of fury at all the injustice (including the slowness of change while people are dying) will accomplish nothing more than people being mad at you?
Well, sometimes people go crazy, but hopefully you will avoid that by not thinking it’s your personal responsibility to stop the very obvious madness. But what you describe is the crux of the situation — we live in a constant state of collective urgency that people avoid by making it the domain of “experts in the field.” There are no true “fields” here, except battlefields.
Comment removed for moderation
PatH80
Peers can be as damaging as any thoughtless and lazy psychiatrist. In fact, I feel that peers who perpetuate the harm done to them onto those they’re supposedly walking with on the Journey need to be held even more accountable than the clinicians since we should know better. I suspect that in some institutions and organizations that peers work in the people hired as peers have been chosen with great care to make sure that they will never rock the boat or stand up and state anything contrary to what the system wants.
I believe that any of us who work as peers must constantly evaluate whether we are enabling the system or whether we’re helping people to speak their truth as they want to state it.
Sera, I said that because maybe you needed a little bit kindness to brighten your day.
I think your wonderful and like your attitude actually, but everyone canāt be you.
I think the international association of peer specialists should be giving you the spheel I gave above on peers but how it seems to me is different. Looks like their new board shares your beliefs and Mad In America too.
Hi Sera – these are undoubtedly degrading, violent, maddening and unjustifiable experiences that no one should ever go through, yet which are orchestrated on a mass scale for the purpose of breaking our people. That’s why I never enter those rooms, and find it infinitely preferable to align with and educate (on madness) already-radicalized groups experienced in direct action to defend those most-harmed by capitalism, to hold autonomous sanctuary spaces for psychiatric survivors (thanks for the shoutout to my local group!!), and to draw dicks on the writing of bootlicker shills as above who deserve nothing better.
Your work is appreciated. š Good to hear from you again.
Thanks, Lily. I hear you on just choosing to stay away. Obviously, I’ve made a different choice, but it doesn’t always feel so sustainable.
-Sera
I was trying to cheer Sera up.
I guess I really donāt belong here. My story is more like Ken Steeleās book the day voices stopped. Yeah thatās what hearing voices feels like.
I even joined hearing voices network as board member but the board didnāt approve of my opinions.
Now we got Oryx the Bill W of recovery movement for mental illness as he put it on the hvn USA board. Yeah so many people would drive me across country and hold my damn hand if I got sick. Yeah right.
Iām leaving this website for good.
If you’ve met Oryx you’d know why people drove him across the country and were willing to hold his hand or do anything else to help him find balance and well-being once again. He’s a good and decent man.
You keep promising not to come back to MIA but you’re always here. What is that all about?
Oh dear. Is Oryx all right?
He is in a documentary called Healing Voices. They show at one point where he runs into difficulties after giving a presentation at a large gathering. From what I remember his friends drove him home and stayed with him in hotels when they had to stop along the way. It was difficult for me to watch at that point. As far as I know he’s ok now. At least he was at the end of the documentary. Healing Voices shows that we can move ourselves forward no matter how we’ve been labeled and told that we’ll be ill forever because of our “chemical imbalances”. It’s worth watching if you have the chance.
Okay. Sounds like he has been feeling better for some time. Glad to hear it.
Promises, promises…
“The board didn’t approve of my opinions.”
Was it just your opinions or the manner in which you presented them?
Not knowing you, I Watched a video on YouTube and was very much impressed with your abilities, you are outstanding !
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/24/ministers-demand-action-rising-numbers-hooked-painkillers-anti/
Someone? needs to tell the telegraph the blindingly obvious (Sutton’s law) It’s the doctors, NOT women and MSM very much encouraged it!
steetphotobeing,
I can only imagine what you might have watched, but thanks! I’ll take a look at the article.
-Sera
Reading all these comments made me think of this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tXQVekUZCI
And by the way, it will be psychiatry laughing.
Do I want to abolish psychiatry after 3 years of utter horrific pain and near death, hell yes. But my thought/experience brings me to the view that it needs to be evolved away from and left to become irrelevant. If someone wants to know how to solve their panic attacks and we have a solution and that means they no-longer get trapped by psychiatry, they have another option and we have begun that evolution. You just need to do more of it en mass. It’s far easier to do if the (potential) victim is not addicted to the neuotoxins – be they benzo’s or whatever BS psych poison – in the first place. But of-course we have to help people off the poison and not exploit their plight for financial gain. Information must be given out for free, there are better ways to make money.
When I was taken in a straight jacket with hood over my face to the hospital it wasnāt for me.
When I got discharged I never talked about voices I hear again. Only to my self.
A long time later I joined Recovery Movement. Was going very good until I linked up with hearing voices network.
Guess to be with them I need to hire someone like Rufus May to address the voices while documenting it all on camera. Then Id probably be cool and all better.
No I wouldnāt buy, sell, borrow or trade anything I have to be like one of them. Iād rather start all over again. – NY.
Pat,
I continue to be perplexed by your portrayal of things. I’m sorry that you didn’t feel welcomed with Hearing Voices USA. And yet, I repeatedly hear you misrepresent what people have said, what Hearing Voices USA or the charter stands for, what I’m saying here, etc. You’re also conflating Hearing Voices USA and the RLC. The RLC is the group that brought Rufus May and Elisabeth Svanholmer to the US to offer some training on Voice Dialoguing. We don’t expect others to do what we are doing. We choose our own priorities, and I think many people have benefited from many of the choices we have made. I’m sure they also disagree with some of them, or wish we’d prioritize other things. We do the best we can.
My experiences with you in person have always been pleasant, but I’m pretty baffled by the parts of yourself that you bring to this forum. Ultimately, I guess it’s your choice how you show up here, but I do want to ask that you do your best not to misrepresent other people/groups wherever possible.
Thanks,
Sera
Thanks Sera. Well there isnāt really anywhere else like website that good to read.
Iām pretty triggered by people here so should just back off from everybody.
Hope you get through your activist feelings and get back on track.
I am glad you are recognizing that you are getting triggered, Pat. I’d be interested in knowing what kinds of things you find triggering. I think it’s important to be aware of our triggers and take responsibility for having them, even if they are often the result of other people doing stuff to us that was harmful. That way, it’s more possible to have a rational discussion instead of going off on attack/defense mode. It sounds like you had some traumatic experiences both in the “mental health” system AND in the recovery movement, which is not uncommon for folks. I’m glad you’ve found your own path.
Thank you (and Steve) for your community service in supporting the disenfranchised. I believe that there is widespread corruption throughout mainstream “mental health” care because it defers its most fundamental understanding of “mental health” to psychiatry and psychiatry lacks legitimacy. Psychiatry pathologizes sadness (emotional pain) and other natural problems with living (behaviors considered “socially unacceptable” but not criminal); “mental illness” is a myth. I am not an Antipsychiatrist because psychiatrists are corrupt, over-prescribe drugs, and make mistakes; I am an Antipsychiatrist because “mental illness” is a harmful hoax.
Right, Steve. The DSM is the biggest hoax, and it allows us to dehumanize those who are suffering. It also allows our social institutions like families, doctors, schools, etc. to get off the hook for having done harmful things. I’m never against helping people figure out their path in life, but I’m VERY much against categorizing and dismissing people with arbitrary labels and using drugs to suppress their reactions to living in our crazy society!
If they open comments, I think there is a need to give info on how to come off the neurotoxins safely unlike the Guardian who is using adverse reaction… akathisia – ofcourse they will not use the word – to scare people into staying on them.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2018/jan/24/antidepressants-please-please-do-not-just-abandon-your-meds-johann-hari
I am not sure I can stomach the article.
I’ll bet they don’t tell people their “meds” are highly addictive and just abandoning them will cause horrible withdrawals.
Tapering is psychiatry’s best kept secret. Along with the beloved chemical imbalance that the well informed inner circle know to be a “metaphor” while laughing up their sleeves at the gullible public.
I don’t believe that most psychiatrists have the slightest idea how to taper anyone off of the neurotoxins. In my experience they’re pretty clueless because I’ve seen them rip someone off of the drug cold turkey that they’ve been on for years and then slam them onto a large dose of another toxic drug. It’s pretty horrendous. And we all know when the new baby doctors have arrived on our teaching unit because the entire unit goes ballistic. This is usually because the baby doctors start playing around with the drugs that everyone is on. I once made the observation in morning report that I thought that the Geneva Convention forbid experimenting on humans, especially without their knowledge.
Anyway, I’ve gotten on my soap box and need to get off and stop while I can. Essentially I don’t think many of the psychs know much about tapering.
Well Well, that was a good read. I mean it was fun to read. The effort paid off, for me at least.
But
To be frank
What do you expect?
Haha hehe and so on and so forth
But
You nose-dive into the swamp of corruption and unlawfulness and then what? What is it you expect to happen?
You seem to be suggesting you want to be an activist, a maker of change.
And then you nose-dive into the swamp of corruption and unlawfulness?
It’s as simple as this: everyone who told you to change the system you have to be in the system was a liar, a sycophant, a bullshitter.
The system doesn’t change from within. It never did and it never will. Choose any system you like, and this holds true.
You want to be a whistleblower? Then you’re out. You are way out, expunged, gone.
Every single person that plays with the system, no matter how they do it, are the system. They are part of the corruption and the unlawfulness, and the lies.
True, as you hint at, there are narcissistic benefits, monetary benefits. But anyone working in the system, is the system. And they are part of the problem.
Death of an Activist? No no no. The activism dies as soon as it jumps into bed with the tyrant, as soon as it prostitutes its values. That is where the death happens. The rest is simply melodrama.
I have to admit this comment makes me angry, so I’m going to do my best to respond as best I can without falling into that.
I am not ‘in bed’ with anyone in the sense that you speak. The community with which I work has done more to support people to get out of the system, to push back against the system, to challenge psychiatry, etc. In the last ten years than most other communities and groups and activists I know. We work hard beyond our limits and take risks all the time to have that be true. I would suggest you check out our work first hand before assigning it to any category.
I do not ‘want to be.’ I am. And at least half the folks I know who disparage what we do as being somehow ‘in the system’ are spending most of their time saying those things, not actually doing themselves.
By the way, my blog says nothing about change ‘needing to come from the inside.’ And frankly, it’s more than a little insulting that you suggest I have such a childish view that lacks any real nuance.
This blog was about how hard it is to hold the lines I’ve held and do the work I do and the cost that comes with that… the cost to me as a human being who can only take so much poor treatment, even if it is expected.
Perhaps my next blog should be the predictable way in which people in this movement tear each other down, too.
Thanks for reading,
Sera
Yes, work is hard. And no matter how much we sound our personal trumpets, we often feel unappreciated, used, co-opted and so on.
In this article you are bemoaning not being acknowledged by the system. The corrupt and unlawful system.
Fuck the system?
Who walks in the classroom, cool and slow
Who calls the English teacher, Daddy-O
Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?
What triggers me you ask? Well ask and I shall pander to your inquiry brethren and ladies of our movement.
Was I fired from every job before I became a peer specialist? Yes I was, but that is not the issue.
I want you to know that my career as Peer specialist is my life. When you mention paid peer positions as hinderence to strength of our movement I take keen interest in finding out more.
I could not tarry this evening while eating dinner after long hard day because the peer specialist is integral to my life.
Kindles a desire in me. A desire that is burning and I will not let the comments here on peers be stagnant. Not while the romance of this profession lingers in my heart allowing me to reach higher. So much higher in the direction of my dreams.
It was not too many moons ago that I was a lonely man even trying online dating sites but to no avail. Deciding which way to go. Move to a coastal town and be a lifeguard? Try out big city life and work at a deli? It was a confusing time with frustration and trials too.
I thought I new everything to know about my city, but one day I went to a mental health event and the peer movement was waiting. It is the success Iāve always wanted.
I have come to feel something incredible. I have acquired the strength of the battle I have overcome. This is due working as peer specialist and the peer specialist movement.
Pat, I have a good friend who chooses to remain in the Psychiatric System. She knows I’ll support her if she wants to leave, but I don’t pressure her. Escape is difficult, but especially at age 59. She doesn’t pressure me to come back, take my drugs, or tattle on me to Big Brother.
Since leaving NAMI I don’t visit the site. I don’t visit Bipolar Burble, The Mighty, Healthy Place or the other countless other pro-psychiatry sites on the internet. If I did I would refrain from commenting, or say something we could all agree with such as “Quit bashing your ‘crazy psycho bipolar ex’!” since they attract creepy trolls like those. If I did dissent I would try to make the comment as polite and tactful as possible.
That’s called good manners.
Many of us disagree with Littleturtle, but his comments are polite and sometimes thought provoking. He communicates respectfully.
BTW, FWIW, I believe the person who posts as “little turtle” is a female woman. I *think* she stated that once in a comment here.
OK, *NOW* I can comment directly to Sera. No “rsvp” requested or expected, Sera. I liked the article above very much. I think it articulates well the dysfunctional inter-personal dynamics which permeates the whole “mental health / illness” system. I saw/heard/read some humor in the piece, even if it’s gallows humor. And, I think many of the more critical comments here are off-base, and even wrong. I’m a little surprised at the push-back Sera seems to provoke here. Too many of the comments are also off-topic. Not that that’s always a bad thing….
One of my best friends is a victim of forced psychiatry, but she does have a copy of the video from “Western Mass”-whatever it’s called(sorry, I can’t recall it right the name right now, but it’s the group you work with, Sera.)
Let me make a suggestion: Edit this down some, maybe combine and eliminate some #’s; maybe edit some wording into more formal/clinical language, then distribute this piece as far and wide as possible. It’s a strong piece, Sera, as written. My suggestions are in hopes of it seeing a MUCH wider audience, especially in the whole “Community Mental Health Center” crowd.
I can certainly identify with most of what you’ve written here.
KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK, Sera!
š
Esteemed colleagues, members of the press core, men and woman in recovery; ie. 1-24-18
I love the peer specialist field. Itās integral to my success in battle with mental illness. I also take as much pride as I am capable of managing in supporting others recoveries.
I think Iāve finally received everybodyās message. I didnāt notice the first few times. Thatās MY FAULT
Itās better this way. Better by far if I get rid of my cell phone. I donāt own a tv or computer as it is now.
Au revoire mad in America.
There’s no need for you to leave. I just have great difficulty understanding what you’re trying to communicate much of the time. I don’t want you to leave even if I asked you why you come back all the time. You puzzle me greatly.
Sera, I read your Recovery Trap blog before I joined this forum. It impressed me.
But you are involved with a group which uses the word “Recovery”, and you seem committed to the concept.
Mental Illness, Needing Psychotherapy, Needing Recovery end when those being impugned start politically organizing and fighting back, instead of pleading for pity and recovery.
If you have burned out on pleading for pity and recovery, and are not going to do it anymore, GREAT!
Nope. What you’re saying is presumptuous and sort of empty. Our name has the word ‘recovered’ in it because it was chosen 15 years ago and we didn’t have control over it. We’ve talked about changing it more recently and are working on that. But I don’t think there is a single person on our leadership team that would say they are invested in the concept of ‘recovery.’ We talk about our lack of belief in that, ‘mental illness’ ‘suicide prevention’ and many other such concepts all the time. So, please stop making assumptions and look at our actual work. š
Not a single person on your leadership team that would say that they are invested in the concept of ‘recovery’, yet it still the primary noun in the group’s name. And you think that I am being presumptuous and making assumptions when I say that you are promoting ‘recovery’?
Well if you are not going to promote ‘recovery’, then I will be anxious to see what happens.
Yes, I believe you are being presumptuous… You responded to a blog that has nothing to do with recovery with what feels like an attack on what I do based on the concept of recovery. And when I say you are being presumptuous it is because there is nothing that I write about that indicates support of the concept ‘recovery,’ and in fact, what I write about specifically speaks to my rejection of the term. Because there’s nothing on our website that speaks to ‘recovery’ beyond our name. And so on. We didn’t come up with our name, and while we’ve talked about changing it, frankly, we’ve been too busy with the ‘doing.’
If you’re curious to see what happens with our work, just take a look… at our films, at our materials, etc… We’ve been around for over ten years. There’s already plenty to see in terms of where we come from.
How about a segue? I don’t think someone totally disrupting a thread for purely egotistical reasons is behavior we are bound to respect.
Sera may not want to pursue this but since she said the following I nonetheless feel compelled to respond:
Almost any perspective that is completely one-sided is usually missing something in my eyes. That is how āanti-psychiatryā feels to me. It a) misses that humans have used drugs for an eternity to manage their feelings, experiences, etc, and Iām not entirely sure thatās wrong in the most fundamental sense b) misses the fact that iatrogenic harm and dehumanization happen in the system for many reasons that include but extend beyond psychiatric drugs.
How is this an argument against anti-psychiatry? a) What does anti-psychiatry have to do with some sort of puritanical/totalitarian war on drugs?; and b) Who ever said anti-psychiatry was primarily focused on drugs?
Anti-psychiatry is based on the literal impossibility of “mental illness” and the inherent fraud involved in presuming to treat “it.” For me it is also the recognition that psychiatry is not a branch of medicine, but of the prison system.
Also if AP is “one-sided,” what’s the “good side” of psychiatry?
I have a issue with all these people selling “mental health” treatment. In order to treat a person, that person must be presumed to have an “mental illness”. The “mental health” professional’s paycheck depends on convincing people who are literally not sick that they are “sick”. This makes the “mental health” professional a “mental illness” salesperson because before they can peddle neurotoxins, talk, or what have you, they have to have that reason for doing so (i.e. a “mental illness” diagnostic label.) As I’ve pointed out, this makes “mental health” a matter of not buying “mental health” treatment, people who don’t buy “mental health” treatment being presumed to be healthy. Both “mental illness” and “mental health” are metaphors, that is, literal impossibilities. When you tell me somebody has a psychological illness sometime, please, show me the psychological and how it is effected. If we’re measuring “the soul” in relation to one’s ‘salt’, I hear it must weigh very, very little. Were I lab tech, do we have a microscope that can go there?
Hence the market value of one’s soul is almost nil.
I understand what you’re saying, Sera, and I also know how painful it can be. Successful arguments are arguments that adapt to their audience, and sometimes that means a crushing amount of diplomacy on your part and keeping silent.
I write a lot about my experiences and am often invited to do readings for creative writing guilds or workshops. Over the years, I’ve learned to carefully edit my reality for the masses… It’s the only way they can hear me. The reality is so beyond what most of them can conceive of. I even once overheard one student tell another that my ability to illustrate emotion was uncanny. The other responded with, it’s still clearly fictional. Things like that don’t happen here… Oh, but they do.
Still, I can remember when I couldn’t fathom such a possibility. The first night in an institution, i laid there worrying about having the perfect dress for homecoming court. It would be four years before I was free again, and all the homecomings and proms would be over.
Often times, I feel myself wanting to drown them in the totality of my story just to say it out loud once…
But I need them to hear me… To see me… So, I push that down and compromise…
Thanks, Deena. Unfortunately, I just haven’t experienced most folks in the system *truly* hearing too much, even when watered down. Sure, they are less angry, more entertained, more thankful. But not necessarily more changed. not saying it never happens, but the overall trend…. I dunno.
Sera, I have missed your writing and am glad to hear from you again. I’m not sure what to say other than thank you for the work you do, both in your peer work and as a writer here. I’ve always found your writing inspirational, and it’s clear your clients (as a peer worker) and family (as an informed person who knows whatās what regarding “mental health” information taught to your kids) are lucky to have you. I am sorry to hear of your exasperating experiences, but I am not surprised given their familiarity to me as a psychologist who opposes the biomedical model. I want to thank you for the inspiration you have provided to me, and I hope I can translate your influence into helping others. Thank you, Sera!
Thanks, Brett. I appreciate your reading and kind words. I know it can also be difficult to be in a more clinical role and oppose the current paradigm. In fact, in one of our current film projects, there are three groups – individuals who’ve been ‘in’ the system, clinicians/direct support works, and administrators… And truth be told, Group 3 (administrators) was FAR angrier with Group 2 (clinical providers) when they said critical things about the system than they were with Group 1 (people who’d been ‘in’ the system). I imagine the reasons for that could be interpreted in at least a few different ways, but nonetheless, there it was.
-Sera
Thanks, Sera. Here is a recent example (of many) of how it can be difficult to be in a clinical role and oppose the biomedical paradigm. I was recently informed by a psychiatrist that because I am not a medical doctor, lack their medical knowledge and expertise in psychopharmacology, and lack their clinical experience using psychiatric drugs with clients, I am not qualified to say anything to clients about their drugs. For example, I am not to point out the possibility that their experiences (e.g., sexual dysfunction, blunted emotions) might be drug effects or inform clients about what the science shows regarding the safety and effectiveness of the drugs they take. I am not to say anything that could possibly be construed as “undermining medical treatment.” In theory, this could lead to a complaint being filed by an offended medical doctor, an investigation, and disastrous consequences for my career.
It’s all well and good for me to be knowledgeable about psychiatric drugs and even to publish scientific articles on them, but I cannot share this knowledge with my clients because, as a non-physician, I am not qualified to “interpret” how to apply scientific knowledge about psychiatric drugs to individual clients. Only medical doctors, by virtue of their expertise and experience, can do so. The basic idea here is that a treatment is a good treatment – by definition, and regardless of what that treatment entails – if it is provided by a medical doctor.
If I understand there to be a potential problem with a clientās psychiatric treatment ā such as clear āantidepressantā-induced mania being diagnosed as ābipolar disorderā leading to a drug cocktail the client hates ā Iām told I should encourage the client to talk to their doctor. This would be the same doctor who thought it was good medical practice, in the example above, to interpret antidepressant-induced mania as the unmasking of latent bipolar disorder, prescribe an āantipsychoticā and āmood stabilizerā in addition to the āantidepressant,ā inform the client he is mentally ill and will need to remain on these drugs for the rest of his life, and dismiss the clientās reservations about the diagnosis and treatment. Iām pretty sure I know how such a conversation would go.
Richardās quote resonates with me: āSo in the final analysis, it does not fundamentally matter how much we expose the faulty science and oppressive forms of treatment and build resistance in numbers, Psychiatry and their Medical Model has become TOO BIG AND IMPORTANT to be allowed to fail in the current order of things.ā In the clinic, itās difficult to even expose clients to accurate information in the first place, let alone build any sort of momentum for resistance to the biomedical paradigm. Only medical doctors are apparently able to communicate with clients about their medical treatment. Psychiatry polices its members carefully and doesnāt tolerate dissent, so this ensures faith in the biomedical paradigm will remain strong without regard to the science reviewed in Anatomy of an Epidemic.
Sera and all
You have articulated some very real and insightful summations of just how difficult it is to be an agent of change working inside today’s “mental health” system. As many know I worked as a therapist for 22 years (until 2015) inside the community mental health system in a working class city in Massachusetts.
I fought against the takeover of the disease/drug based Medical Model for the entire time I worked there. The labeling and drugging was prolific and the agency probably went through more that two dozen or more psychiatrists and other type of prescribers during that period. I know the “Beast” well from the inside from the perspective of someone who has worked in the System. I’ve seen first hand the damage done.
Sera, there is no simple or easy solution to your dilemma (not that you thought there was one) and you probably won’t like to hear the conclusions I have drawn from this experience. But here goes.
I will preface my further comments by saying I have been an antiwar, pro Black Liberation, pro women’s movement, anti-capitalist type activist since the late 1960’s. Back then I came to believe that UNLESS we moved beyond a profit/class based based capitalist system NOTHING of substance would change regarding the major forms of oppression in the world.
So when I came to understand (in the early 1990’s) that Biological Psychiatry, and their entire paradigm of so-called treatment, was also another major form of institutional oppression harming millions of people with labels and drugs, it was natural for me to fight against it. It was also natural for me to more deeply analyze and study this institutional form of oppression.
In the beginning of this learning process (especially reading the real science behind these issues), I thought, “wow it is so obvious how harmful these labels and drugs are. And we now have a minority of doctors and other educated experts, along with numerous articulate psychiatric survivor stories, so we can just get the word out (over a relatively short number of years) and blow this whole oppressive paradigm out of the water.”
Well not so fast, Richard! have you forgotten the lessons you learned in the 1960’s? Have you forgotten what kind of all encompassing and powerful system you are up against here? Have you forgotten how those in power will do anything AND everything to protect their economic interests and hold onto their power and do what it takes to crush and/or demoralize those who dare to challenge the status quo?
So I am saying that I DID forget some of those past lessons and had a brief period (with the rise of MIA and all the great science and books that were coming out exposing psychiatric abuse) where I thought the Biological Psychiatry house of cards might soon crumble.
But I have since come back to my senses and have re-engaged with the best of my critical thinking skills. THIS DOES NOT MAKE ME PESSIMISTIC ABOUT CHANGE BUT ONLY MAKES ME MORE REALISTIC ABOUT WHAT IS REQUIRED TO MOVE FORWARD. So here is a list of my conclusions on the dilemma Sera (and thousands of other activists working inside and outside this oppressive system) face in the coming period:
1) Psychiatry and psychiatric abuse has changed over the past 5 decades. It’s always been oppressive, but it has grown exponentially in power and in the depth to which it has penetrated every pore of our society.
2) Psychiatry and its collusion with Big Pharma has become a highly profitable business achieving some of the highest rates of profit in the entire capitalist system, and is now a critically important pillar in the U.S. economy.
3) Over the past 5 decades, with the growing numbers of people labeled and drugged within our society, the ruling class (defending and preserving the status quo by any means necessary) has grown (over time) to understand the valuable role that the psychiatric Medical Model can play in disabling (with labels and drugs) the most potentially volatile sections of society that have traditionally been more rebellious – minorities, prisoners, women, disenfranchised working class youth, and other system outliers.
4) In the post 9/11 world, the intensity of world wide struggles and contradictions, have increased the need for those in power to maintain control of any type of opposition forces or movements that are aimed at shaking up major institutions. Psychiatry (and its ability to incarcerate and drug someone with a mere signature of a pen) has the political and police power in society that only the Executive Branch of government can rival. In these intense times, allowing Psychiatry to maintain this power is very useful to those resisting political upheaval and trying to preserve the status quo.
5) So therefore, the economic, political, and social role of Psychiatry (and their entire “mental health” paradigm) has now become INSEPARABLY BOUND to the future of the entire capitalist/imperialist system.
So in the final analysis, it does not fundamentally matter how much we expose the faulty science and oppressive forms of treatment and build resistance in numbers, Psychiatry and their Medical Model has become TOO BIG AND IMPORTANT to be allowed to fail in the current order of things.
6) NONE of my above conclusions means we should not build struggle and resistance AND/OR alternative forms of systems for those who need help. These are all important ways to expose these forms of human oppression, educate broader numbers of people, bring more people into resistance against the status quo, and save some people along the way. BUT there will be no FUNDAMENTAL type of change in what we all abhor until we grasp the necessity of moving on to a new historical era where capitalism is replace by a more humane form of socialism.
7) Therefore, we must find a way through ALL our organizing and transformative work to link the day to day struggles with the broader struggle to make bigger System and institutional change on a world scale. Anything short of this approach will ultimately lead to the types of demoralization and burnout described in Sera’s blog.
8) Fighting “The Good Fight” on the broader levels I have just described ARE NOT easy, and it can also lead to demoralization and burnout. BUT, at least it represents a more realistic and truer picture of what we are up actually up against, AND what it will actually take to have a chance of reaching our goal of a world free of all forms of psychiatric oppression.
9) Similar to the conclusions drawn from the environmental movement, we CANNOT save the planet from inevitable worldwide catastrophe WITHOUT System change happening eventually across the entire planet. The same holds true when looking at psychiatric oppression. It may all sound TOO BIG to some people reading this, but it is a “Long March” that is worth starting now. We can all do our part by marching forward with our head and eyes FULLY raised and looking towards the “prize.”
To Sera and others, this may not be what you wanted to hear, but it is the best that I can offer at this time.
“Dare to struggle, Dare to Win”
Richard
Thanks for taking time to write out so many thoughts and lessons learned, Richard. We may not always agree, but I appreciate that you’ve got much experience and wisdom to lend to these conversations.
-Sera
Sera
Thanks for responding, I guess. But I hope this “old white guy” and so-called “veteran of the 60’s movement ” wasn’t just getting a “pat on the head” and a “thanks for your service” type response here.
Usually you have a lot of provocative things to say on most topics; a trait I, more often than not, appreciate very much. I thought I raised some important and “heady” issues related to the questions you raised as to how and why activists and movements can become smothered and even suffer a “death,” AND, most importantly, how can we avoid this happening in the future. And it was all made quite specific in regards to the nature of specific changes in the world relative to Psychiatry and psychiatric forms of abuse.
Yes, my comment involves some big and controversial issues. Are they too “big” and/or too “hot” to warrant a deeper response from you?
Richard
Richard,
Honestly, I didn’t have time to fully read your post to respond more in depth so I just tried to put something out there recognizing you posted. I’ll try to read and respond more in depth over the weekend.
Sera
Sera, your example of speaking and behaving consistently, clearly and compassionately as a leader, writer/thinker, organizer, and personal and support person to countless numbers of people (including this ally in Canada and the commenters on your blogs) is awesome. Your level of commitment to economic, political, and social justice on the one hand and respect for the individual persons that cross your path motivates me to do more and better. If there were as many people in North America doing what you and your innovative, liberating, and supportive/supported colleagues at WMLRC do together, as there are commenters on your blogs, there would be oases of change all over the continent.
The thought of you replying in perpetuity to even more comments to your blog gives me vertigo. Please take good care and have a lovely weekend. Thank you for everything you’ve done and are doing, including planting seeds of change (economic, political, social, relational) all over the world.
Hi Diana,
Thanks so much for your comment and support. š And thank you for your efforts in Canada, as well! (We just offered our first training – on Alternatives to Suicide – in Canada in late October which was great. š )
-Sera
Quite a post Richard, I suspect I’ll be largely in agreement but here are some thoughts:
Psychiatry and psychiatric abuse has changed over the past 5 decades.
Parenthetically speaking, saying “psychiatry and psychiatric abuse” is redundant. Semantics aside, I would point out that, on an individual level, psychiatry is not more oppressive today, it’s been that way since Benjamin Rush. But the degree to which it now permeates society and culture is truly astounding, and terrifying — not only because of what is currently happening with psychiatry but also because of the continuing inability of people to see the obvious folly in such concepts as “mental illness”; this represents a deficit in our collective ability to reason, which is being stirred by the deliberate misuse of metaphor, a tactic that is being and will be extended to other spheres of life.
So in the final analysis, it does not fundamentally matter how much we expose the faulty science and oppressive forms of treatment and build resistance in numbers, Psychiatry and their Medical Model has become TOO BIG AND IMPORTANT to be allowed to fail in the current order of things.
Allowed by whom? Once we reach a tipping point where most people recognize the hoax as a hoax people will start to resist big time. It’s not only negative projection but shaky analysis as well to say psychiatry won’t be defeated until after capitalism is defeated — primarily because the defeat of psychiatry will be an element of the defeat of capitalism; it’s symbiotic, they’re both part of the same process.
BUT there will be no FUNDAMENTAL type of change in what we all abhor until we grasp the necessity of moving on to a new historical era where capitalism is replace by a more humane form of socialism.
This is true in general. It doesn’t mean that to fight psychiatry people need to have an advanced class analysis, however, though it never hurts. But such a perspective is not necessary to fight psychiatric oppression on a day to day basis, nor should AP survivors be pressured to mouth Marxist rhetoric as a condition of participating in this struggle.
Psychiatry got a new wardrobe, hairstyle, and makeup job. Still looks like the Wicked Witch of the West to me!
Richard L I love what you wrote. I think when we are newbies to the Movement we may have very high ideals and lofty goals, even unrealistic ones. This is not a bad thing even if we are grossly overoptimistic. I, too, recall the idealism of the 1960’s, the ideas people had that we could all live in peace and harmony, the “hippie” communes and people working so hard to maintain alternatives. I recall the earlier feminist movement, which was highly idealistic also. I recall a whole bunch of feminist utopia novels also.
What happened to the feminists? What happened to the hippies? Where is the idealism, the dreaming and reaching up to places higher than we can possibly go? I believe such dreams are a necessary part of social change.
Do we hope for a day when no one is called by a diagnosis or pseudo-diagnosis, when human behavior is not explained as synapses, but viewed compassionately, with genuine unselfish concern? I hope so.
Realistic or not, I see no harm in hoping for the best. A person living in poverty might dream of riches. Working with this idea, he/she may proceed to work logically, step-by-step, to eliminate debt, work with creditors, and increase income. He may not become wealthy but his credit score will go up some.
Without hope, where are we? I hope someday doctors aren’t paid so much nor treated like gods, nor have any say in court without tangible, measurable evidence. i hope we, as a society, stop blaming our own boo-boos on mental disorders, and take responsibility for cleaning up this mess.
Julie
Thanks for the feedback and I appreciate your optimism as well.
Richard
I don’t think a socialist revolution is any more likely to end psychiatry than I think death likely to put a person in a place called Heaven. Ending psychiatry should be on the socialist agenda, sure, but it isn’t. If you could manage to put it there, Richard, that would be something, but you’re just one person. As is, when dealing with proselytizers like you, sure, whatever you say, but when dealing with everybody else, we’ve got two separate and very different struggles going on here.
Richard,
I’ve come back to your comment a few times, and I’m not really sure how to respond. I guess I agree with a lot – maybe almost all – of what you’re saying. And yet, I do find the message paralyzing, as much as you say you don’t mean it to be. I’m also not totally sure I agree that the *only* way to shift some of this is to undo capitalism. Even with capitalism in place, I think I’m going to have to at least hope that there are other ways to adjust its focus or what feeds it… Somehow it feels more attainable to me to *use* capitalism’s tools to undo its capitalist appeal than to undo capitalism. Perhaps that’s foolish, but I’d be interested in a conversation about what *that* could look like.
-Sera
Thanks, Sera. I just saw this just now after my friend pointed it out to me. So I came to have a look. Some of what you describe I have experienced, such as the silencing incidents you describe, my own very much similar. It’s not nearly as bad as it used to be for me. I can recall being in rooms full of people and not being allowed to speak at all, and being cut off just as I began a sentence. I couldn’t help but feel like “If anyone else said that, they wouldn’t be cut off as I was” but…Then I get the feeling either I am not wanted around, or no one wants to hear whatever I have to say. It gets tiring and I end up feeling like I am constantly fighting to get a word in. This has extended to friendships also, wrecking a few of them, because even when it’s not really happening, as I have the deathly fear of not being heard.
I guess what I object to most is the elitism within the Movement. This comes from all sides, not just from provider circles excluding survivors, but from survivors who refuse to speak with other survivors, noses in the air, overlooking those they feel aren’t as important as they are. There is rampant snobbery in the Movement.
And there is also a social ranking in some circles as to “off drugs” and “still on.” Or even, (I gotta laugh over this one), which particular drugs you’re still on. It is a status symbol. That is SO INSANE. I don’t think anyone should have to publicly post their drugs, for godsakes, to be accepted in a community. And oh, the worse you suffer from withdrawal, or claims of such, another claim to fame, the more attention you draw.
Aren’t these things just fallout from where we came?
Why can’t we all just speak reasonably to each other? I object to the tiers among us which are often arbitrarily drawn. I do think we should have chosen leaders and spokespeople from among us, people who can approach the government and the media. I don’t think “professionals,” no matter how sympathetic, reflect the survivor voice nor should they represent it.
And I resent the claims that so many providers are quietly survivors themselves. You are not doing us any favors by remaining silent. Even those that claim they do so to “keep their jobs.” You are selling out, dudes, and snubbing us.
And oh, the worse you suffer from withdrawal, or claims of such, another claim to fame, the more attention you draw.
Wtf?
I have seen examples of such, almost like withdrawal is the latest new mental illness. We really have to be careful here, very careful.
Please share your examples then. I’ve experienced protracted withdrawal and I don’t appreciate you shitting on me and other people who have had that ridiculously horrible experience.
I’m certainly not shitting on anyone. I can share examples but of course cannot be very specific for the sake of those affected. I see these folks as doing a disservice to those who have a genuine terrible experience.
For instance, we know that a back injury can put someone out of work, and if much pain is involved, certainly make life unbearable. We also know that people who exaggerate “back pain” as reason to get onto disability do a terrible disservice to those who really have debilitating back injuries. See what I am saying? And we see variants of this, too.
It’s bad enough that withdrawal is mislabeled “symptoms of mental illness” by some MH professionals. I have seen examples of MH professionals who stupidly mislabeled to the point of total ignorance.
The worst of these being when I witnessed a fellow patient who had a bad reaction to long-term use of what I think was Risperdal. He had clear signs of TD which were called a “nervous twitch” by the psych!!!!
But still we have to be careful not to blame every little thing that goes wrong in life on withdrawal. There are always some jumping on the bandwagon, or, rather, sneaking onto it. This hurts those who are legitimately there. I suspect more are on that wagon than should be, that’s all. By all means I wasn’t directing my comment at you personally.
Julie, I didn’t think that your comment had anything to do with me personally, but you made claims about a class of people to which i belong. One of the most painful things about my withdrawal experience has been that very few people have believed me about it, so I have no interest in looking around to see if anyone might be making up or exaggerating withdrawal symptoms. I also think that you have a tendency in your comments to minimize the damage that psych drugs can do to a person.
Well for that I apologize. My own organ damage IS permanent, permanent and life-shortening. Truth is I cannot get medical care for it because to seek medical care means down the line revealing how I got kidney damage (lithium). I have to live with the damage from lithium on a daily basis, my sleep is affected, I have permanent anemia, sometimes my red blood cells are deformed or swelled up, I drink six liters of fluids a day to compensate and take electrolyte supplementation. I also almost died a few years ago. I was lied to and told I caused it. Then I found out my kidneys had been failing for years, maybe a full decade, due to past lithium use (12 years). I was also lied to about my own medical condition.
However, abuse trauma, from psychiatric abuse, caused me to fear and distrust doctors so much I am having trouble submitting to a cataract operation. I am blind in one eye and the other barely sees.
I am not trying to minimize drug damage because to do so would be hypocritical. I AM trying to emphasize therapy abuse since it’s fucking taboo around here and therapists’ feelings get hurt so such stories are suppressed. Some people have no clue how abusive some therapists can be and just how hard it is on a person. Never mind what that woman did to me. Most do not even want to hear about it.
Adam Lanza was a victim of therapy abuse, too. That is how badly it damages a person.
There is no venue for therapy abuse. You can’t even go to another therapist for help with resulting trauma. That would defeat the purpose, no? And all that affects me to this day, affects my relationships and my ability to get along with others.
I have even tried talking to my friends about it but they do not want to hear. Very few anyway. This subject needs to be brought out into the public and we need to be able to speak about it without being called paranoid.
Look at what bringing sexual harassment did, people spoke up after many years. This is what I am hoping for.
I believe you about the therapy abuse and I’m sorry that happened to you. Some of my therapy experiences have been very positive, but the majority of them have been negative or just plain awful. There is a major imbalance of power in a therapy relationship and that makes it easy for abuse to occur if the therapist isn’t mindful of their own issues.
Uprising do you have anything to say about anything else I mentioned?
Eh, I see some of what you’re talking about, Julie… I personally support people to use *any* drugs they want in whatever way works for them, and without needing to post about it. People always have used drugs. It’s not inherently bad. What’s bad is the system that pushes a particular set of drugs as the ‘cure,’ while demonizing people who use the other set.
I personally do talk about not using psych drugs at this point in my life… because it’s important to have some people (and not just some, but a critical mass of people) out there challenging the perception that psych drugs and psych diagnosis are a meaningful and consistent link in any sort of way…
Sera
Bruce Levin has made similar arguments in the two books of his that I read. The hypocrisy or at least stupid inconsistency sickens me.
Junior, drugs are evil. Unless you honk me off by arguing, throwing tantrums, or fidgeting while I talk. Then you take whatever drugs I say you must even if they make you vomit all day, have seizures, or need a bra. You’re evil not to take the drugs then.
Take this drug; not that.
Like “Eat this; not that.”
I agree with you that it’s a very snubby, often snotty, culture. And I don’t think that can be entirely accounted for by the narcissism and the fragility. It’s in-group and out-group dynamics. That pans out in all areas of life.
There is also the ongoing terror people have of their ideas being stolen and ran away with by some half-soaked opportunist. It’s also a very snatch-and-grab culture, as Sera mentions in her article. That puts people on edge. Understandably.
But it is also a culture that, through its parrying and collaborating, and enabling, of the unlawful and corrupt system, inevitably becomes rather fetid itself. Motivations are tainted. Egos are overblown. Abilities are exaggerated.
And it remains so, that even here, there is an inbuilt paternalism, whereby the non-mad are the flames around which the mad must buzz.
Some people, I accept, such as Sera, work hard at bringing people together. Other people, such as myself, encourage people to break free and go it alone.
But that flame keeps burning, and we mad people find it irrestible, for all kinds of reasons. But we all play a role. If I was to configure my role, it would be to play a kind of Alexander Pope of the mh system, the one that exposes the vanity and pomposity and has a good laugh at it. Because one thing mad people generally understand, it’s how the seriousness can so quickly turn into sadism. Some people need lampooning more than they will ever know.
Rasselas,
Thanks for your comment… Although, I don’t think this is accurate:
“Some people, I accept, such as Sera, work hard at bringing people together. Other people, such as myself, encourage people to break free and go it alone.”
I think part of the challenge of the community in which I work, myself, etc, is that we do both things… We offer talks and trainings to providers, attempt to develop better ways for people who might be more succeptible/willing to ‘get it’ to begin to think about things in a different way… While *also* making films like the ‘Virtues of Non-Compliance’ that is basically all about how being so-called ‘non-compliant,’ ignoring what we were told in the system and getting on with life, in fact, saved our lives… Or a project we’re working on right now that is all about gathering information from people who’ve survived the system to share their wisdom about how they navigated the system’s unwritten rules and were able to ‘play the game’ well enough to get out, etc.
We do both, and we don’t apologize for it. That makes us pretty hard to tolerate for a lot of people… And that’s fine.
Sera
Thank you for your post. I have experienced everything you talked about, and it is tremendously disheartening.
I came to the conclusion that many people who say they to want to hear ‘the other side’ actually don’t. They want to feel smug in their ‘open-mindedness,’ but they are threatened by any hint of real change.
It’s called cooptation – they pretend that you have a place with them, but that place is only to make them look better than they are.
I have become much more careful about when, where, and with whom I put myself on the line. I would rather organize with people who are truly open to hearing what I have to say than to bang my head against a wall in the hope that the politically deaf will grow a pair of ears.
Cooptation is what NAMI is all about. While the NAMI mommies and well-meaning but clueless family members run the show, it derives a lot of it’s credibility from the “consumer” mascots. Unless it’s a spiel for “life-saving meds that saved my life” no one wants to hear what they say. They have no input even into their own educational programs. (I’m not referring to questioning psychiatry, but wanting a program written above a 3rd grade reading level.) They’re show animals if not window dressing.
~3 year NAMI mascot–trained animal
Thanks so much for your reply, Susan.
I love what you wrote here:
“I came to the conclusion that many people who say they to want to hear āthe other sideā actually donāt. They want to feel smug in their āopen-mindedness,ā but they are threatened by any hint of real change.
Itās called cooptation ā they pretend that you have a place with them, but that place is only to make them look better than they are.”
I think it is exactly true… Please stick around only so long as you make us look/feel good about ourselves.
-S
The power holders never want to know what the oppressed really experience. Is it not always so?
It is indeed, John. And yet no less frustrating and demoralizing…
Sera, about supporting the concept of Recovery:
Unless anti-Paychiatry activism is people fighting for something tangible, then it really is just more pity seeking. “Please Rep Murphy, don’t subject us to involuntary psychiatric procedures, let us have or recovery. We are non-violent, neutered.”
It comes down to political activism and the way it most always proceeds. There can never be any pleading in it. So you don’t plead for relief from Tim Murphy’s bill, you let everyone know that all available means will be used to prevent it from being enforced.
And then with those who have survived the mental health and recovery system, you demand penalities for perpetrators, and reparations for perpetrators. If you don’t do this, then you are saying that it is your side which is at fault, so such penalties and reparations are not warranted. So it is still more pity seeking.
Angela Davis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LKQRXYyRn8
James Forman
https://youtu.be/Ej2BCUIdUI4?t=43m44s
Stokely Carmichael
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_klzg5kkbhM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ym0h6NusUw0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMYTN0-2ugI
The Mental Health ā Recovery Movement is simply the continuation of the bogus sciences of Social Darwinism and Eugenics. So though these sciences are bogus, when you take a passive and pleading posture towards them, you make it look like they are legitimate.
A Work In Progress
https://sites.google.com/site/stompingthecockroach/
I genuinely am not sure why you are posting this here. This blog isn’t about ‘recovery.’ I’ve been pretty clear for many years that I don’t support the concept. And I am a part of a community that rejects most conventional ideas about psychiatric diagnosis and ‘help,’ and takes many pretty concrete actions toward change.
Feel free to not like what I do or say, but arguing with me about something that has nothing to do with me because you – for some reason – need to believe that that’s part of my message is… not too much better than how the system treats me at the moment.
I’m not going to respond anymore. š
Thanks,
Sera
TF, did you know Murphy the Merciless got kicked out of office after being publicly disgraced?
What can I say but, “Praise the LORD!”
I have to say, my Schadenfreude on hearing this one was quite extreme. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!
The homicides/suicides are predominantly a result of medication
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5611892/#__ffn_sectitle
Every hospitalization I had bar (the first), was a suicidal event. After I stopped treatment the suicidal events stopped – for good.
Feeling Discouraged, yes I do know what happened to Rep Tim Murphy, jackass that he is.
Sera wrote, “I genuinely am not sure why you are posting this here. This blog isnāt about ārecovery.ā Iāve been pretty clear for many years that I donāt support the concept.”
But Sera, what then is the object of your activism? Those who have been in the psychiatric system are a persecuted minority, robbed of any kind of a legitimated biography, and usually still blocked in any efforts to reclaim such a biography.
Tina Minkowitz, Esq. wrote:
https://www.madinamerica.com/2017/10/un-to-usa-forced-treatment-prohibited/#comment-116741
“Therapy or recovery is not a remedy for forced treatment, the remedy is abolition and a full and comprehensive effort to make reparations to victims/survivors.”
Sera, you wrote to the newspaper and they published your letters. To me, it seemed like you were pleading, trying to reason with readers and evoke a sense of pity. And I think you endorsed various programs like halfway houses or Soteria, or your group, or other things, which in that context, must be interpreted as “Recovery Programs”. You were offering these as the alternative to forced psychiatric procedures.
People who are standing up for themselves do not plead:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_LKQRXYyRn8
Remember, the mental health system and recovery movement are rooted in the bogus sciences of Social Darwinism and Eugenics. And though these are bogus, when you plead for pity, instead of showing how people can stand up for themselves, you feed the idea that there is some basis in these bogus sciences.
Wow Sera, LONG blog.
You are a great writer.
I can hear you are tired but not giving in or up.
I think you understand them much more than they can understand you,
and you and they know it.
Perhaps you are one to get a psychiatry degree and work from the inside.
We need more people to get degrees. I was never good in school.