From Medium: “As someone who has spent time in a psychiatric ward, fellow white people suggesting that ‘mental health professionals’ always respond to mental health crises in compassionate ways is… a lot. People within the system brutalize, coerce, and oppress. But of course the problem is that once you are in the system as a patient, you become an unreliable narrator. The only way out is compliance. Otherwise there is so much harm, disempowerment and dehumanization that can be done to you ‘for your own good.’ And mental health care conversations are challenging because lots of people do have lived experience but there’s such a vast gulf between ‘went to my doctor for anxiety and got a prescription for Zoloft’ and ‘watched my psych ward roommate get punched and put into restraints.'”
