Using the mental health system in England as a case study, a recently published book chapter argues that social workers have both remained complicit in psychiatric oppression and actively resisted by forming alliances to support radical, service-user-led social movements.
Although social work is not typically thought of as a critical profession in the management of the mental healthcare system, a historical overview sheds light on how the government uses social workers to regulate social welfare services and control the people who use them.
Rich Moth, Lecturer at the Royal Holloway University of London, uses Gramscian theory and a close look at the history of Englandâs mental health system to argue that changes in social welfare policy are not a coincidence or in response to social need. Instead, the shaping of social welfare systems is deeply dependent on other historical and political moments. This has broader implications for how professionals, including social workers, are trained to interact with people who are direct recipients of state policies that determine mental healthcare and treatment practices.
He argues that â…social workâs development (like that of psychiatry and other health and welfare occupations) should not be understood in terms of an autonomous âprofessional projectâ or a spontaneous response to self-evident human need. Rather, state social work is better understood as a highly context-dependent form of institutional activity, conditioned by the nature of the welfare regime from which it emerges and within which it is situated.â
The post-World War II (WWII) period and process of deinstitutionalization illustrate how current social and political contexts prompted a change in social welfare services. At the time, there was rising knowledge and resistance towards the horrendous harms done to people receiving inhumane asylum âtreatmentsâ such as insulin coma therapy, electric shock treatment (ECT), and psychosurgeries.
Veterans at the time also pled for psychological and social support from the trauma they experienced at war. This prompted a general policy consensus that led to community mental healthcare and efforts to redistribute social goods for people most harmed by psychiatry, such as people experiencing poverty, women, racialized communities, and LGBTQ+ folks.
However, over time, capitalist governments have continuously adopted neoliberal approaches to mental healthcare. Such approaches (1) fail to recognize and address structural problems, such as poverty, which directly contribute to mental distress, (2) very poorly invest in social services, even when community-wide support is promised; and (3) instead place responsibility on people to take care of themselves through medication compliance and other individualized solutions.
According to Gramsci, this process is deeply entwined with the goals of the âintegralâ or capitalist state, which uses both consent and force to control people, maintain social order, and support capitalism.
In this context, consent occurred after the asylum and post-war period when the state responded to a call for change and developed community-based approaches to mental healthcare. Although promising, in contention with this were social workers who were trained to surveil or monitor these systems and identify people who deviated from owning individual responsibility for their mental distress (e.g., rejecting the use of psychotropic medications).
This led to punitive consequences that can be seen in âthe controversial Mental Health Act reforms [which] introduced pre-emptive detention, increased spending on secure institutions and restrictive community treatment orders, and [led to] a rise in the number of people with mental distress [who are] incarcerated.â
Despite the social work professionâs complicit role in perpetuating oppressive practices in psychiatric care, radical social workers have also served as activists who have formed strong alliances to support anti-psychiatry movements and fight for social justice. Such approaches have rejected the neoliberal approach to blaming individuals for mental illness and have fought for the state to pay more adequate attention to how social inequality causes individual and intergenerational mental health problems.
Although this argument is based on an overview of institutionalization and oppression within the mental health system in England, similar government practices occur internationally, and social workers will continue to occupy critical roles where they assist in enacting and regulating state policies.
Therefore, understanding how professions (such as psychiatry and social work) have perpetuated harm in mental health service contexts is an essential first step in disrupting the underlying capitalistic system that fuels such practices through institutional harm.
Some social workers already advocate for how their profession should encourage and respond to a âpost-psychiatryâ world, especially as neoliberal culture worsens mental health by promoting individual isolation and community disruption. However, controversy about the social work profession persists, especially in light of social work being proposed as the ultimate solution to eradicating violence in the criminal legal system through defunding the police.
However, in line with this current argument, some wonder whether social workers are really a less harmful solution since they still abide by a system designed to control marginalized people who are most vulnerable to the oppressive practices enforced by the state.
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Moth, R. (2023) Institutionalisation and oppression within the mental health system in England: social work complicity and resistance. In V. Ioakimidis & A. Wyllie (Eds.), Â Social Workâs Histories of Complicity and Resistance: a Tale of Two Professions (pp. 165-182). Policy Press. (Link)
Not sure social workers can force drug people, gotta blame psychiatry for that, in 2nd place, but youve gotta look at everyone involved from the enabler, firts place blame, down, nurses, gorillas, psychiatrists, sold out social workers, sold out psychologists, drug companies, universities teaching it, people supporting it as it is with violence and force, on people..by standing side by side..parents families of flag flying patients, flag flying patients, anyone who stands with the violent regime of Govt Mental Health, led by Psychiatry, enabled by all world Governments. All those people are all specially complicit in the violent poisoning abuse, called Govt!- psychiatric- mh care.
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Social workers, they’re just following orders, essentially.
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I am a retired LCSW-C social worker. For what it’s worth, in the U S, lots of people are called social workers who aren’t – especially Department of Social Services caseworkers, who very well could have no background at all in social work. Beyond that, there are bachelor level social workers, and masters level social workers who have not yet completed the necessary time in practice and passed the licensing exam to get their LCSW-C (which entitles one to practice psychotherapy independently).
As the director of a treatment foster care program, I met a number of “social workers” – by any of the above titles – who were just plain great human beings. They would get out bed at 1 a.m. to deal with crises; they saw every person they served (foster children, foster parents, biological family members, educators) as a worthy human being. They sometimes dealt with scary situations with no apparent solution. They listened, encouraged, fought tooth and nail with schools and Departments of Social Services when they treated children like objects. We went to court to fight for children’s and families’ best interest.
Some social workers had real lived experience as children in foster care; many had dealt with the ugly consequences of poverty and racism. The same is true of our foster parents, who were often extraordinary – going to astonishing lengths to support struggling children.
But there is enormous pressure on social workers to go with the flow of the “mental health” system’s dominance by biological psychiatry and PhARMA. Social workers are roughly in the position nurses occupy in the field of medicine, where doctors, insurance companies, PhARMA, legislators and bureaucrats call the shots. Social workers, like nurses, often follow orders. If they don’t, they get canned.
The good social workers simply outwork the other cogs in the “mental health” machine. They sometimes succeed by being better prepared, with close relationships to clients and others in the system who are also looking for real solutions, outside of the system’s box.
But too many social workers ascribe to the ‘shrug school of social work’ – saying, when they run up against the system, “What are you gonna do? You can’t fight city hall.” Unfortunately, even those willing to duke it out with the system often fail to sufficiently question the DSM’s validity and reliability, as well as the rampant fraud in PhARMA’s clinical trials, and they don’t fully recognize the dangers inherent in the medical model.
Too many social workers take the approach of a social worker who dismissed a foster child’s complaints, saying, “He’s noncompliant – he doesn’t take his meds.” This child was transferred to another social worker who agreed with what I (often fruitlessly) preached: “Don’t tell me what’s wrong with him, tell me what happened to him.” He got off the meds, and with real support from his new foster parents, he prospered.
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… And I guess, at least partially, in this last minor’s case, against at least ONE medical advice…
Not that I disagree, on the contrary. especially given the outcome, but, sadly, it is in most cases, against medical advice that the wellbeing of some minors in bad situations have to be cared, protected and “thriven”…
Putting a carer in bad situations is bound by probability to lead to a bad outcome to someone, sometimes. And does cause in some carers to stop caring, or blame the victim, among others. Not excusing, just recurring to, at least, my experience and prior knowledge.
Moral “trauma” or to me more appropiate injury, which is from what I remember reading, actually more common among nurses than among physicians. Funny, don’t remember reading studies about moral injury on judges or lawmakers, neither administators otherwise “removed” from the sufferer…
But I did read a narrative from someone in the judiciary, but sounds off topic.
But I guess, way out of my depths, going on a limb, even social workers, regardless of the regulations they actually apply, do use the blanket coverage the judiciary and prosecutors put on anyone doing the state’s bid when there are claims about unfairness, damages, counterproductiveness, or suspected criminality. I imagine most don’t side with the victim, specially not against counsel’s advice.
So, maybe, part of the solution is the redress, restoring the balance of power to the complainer, instead of blanket coverage on the, at least oppresors, regardless of their good intentions, stated or otherwise.
If for nothing else, because it will bring to light, unveil, at least one big, probably the biggest part of the conflict: The victims, old or young, big or small.
So, I could sum up: Everyone cares until lawsuits or complaints start… Even before, being proactive…
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I agree, the social workers can be problematic. I had the misfortune of dealing with a pathological lying school social worker – not after my very young son was abused, as would have been appropriate, if they were actually there to help – but ten years later.
Why? Because my child had largely healed, and surprised his school by getting 100% on his state standardized tests. The social worker had called me, after his school learned about this, and started spewing a bunch of lies about how “you keep your child up at night” and “push him too hard.”
I told her that was not true. I explained I’d stopped even doing homework with my son in fifth grade, my husband helped him instead. (Except one night, when my husband was having trouble helping my son with a math problem. They asked for my help. I answered their math question in a NY second. My son was shocked, and asked me how I knew the answer so quickly. I told him I bothered to memorize my math facts, the very fight that ended my helping my son with his homework in the first place … But a little reverse psychology, and probably my son had enough pride to not want to be dumber than his mother, is likely what resulted in my son finally bothering to memorize his math facts.)
And this would explain at least part of why my son did so well on his math standardized test in seventh grade. Finally, I asked this pathological lying school social worker if there was some behavioral problem. (Keep in mind, the school had yet to inform me how well my child had done on his state standardized tests at this point, and my children’s teachers regularly complimented me on how well behaved my children were.) She meekly, and quietly said “No, there were no behavioral problems,” so we hung up the phone.
But that insane social worker’s attempted control over my child and/or family did not end there. I had parent teacher conferences coming up. And, instead of me going to each of my child’s teachers individually, as was always the case with prior parent teacher conferences. I was confronted with all my child’s teachers, collectively, spewing the social worker’s delusions at me, all at once.
I was forced to explain to these seemingly, highly deluded by the social worker, teachers, that my family comes from a family of scientists – my father was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in physics from Northwestern, not to mention he got his MBA from the U of I, et al; my uncle had his masters in chemistry; my mother worked on her masters in biology; my family were mostly bankers and doctors ….
And my current boss, at the time, had given me an IQ test, prior to hiring me. He took the test at the same time as I did, just out of curiosity. He was a lawyer, and missed 5 on the IQ portion, I missed one.
Finally, I asked all the teachers if any of them had ever heard of genetics. The science teacher finally woke up, grabbed me, and took me to the principal’s office … essentially apologizing for the bullying as we went.
She explained what happened to the principal, who finally confessed that our school district was “not equipped to deal with the brightest children.” I said okay, but why not be honest about this from the beginning? I told her my son has known since preschool that he might go to a private school for high school. Thus, we agreed to do just that – honesty solved the problem. And the science teacher was a wonderful advocate for both of my children in that public school, through eighth grade.
But I believe our interactions with a dishonest school social worker point out the systemic problems with how some social workers behave. Too many make assumptions, too many make up lies, in order to dishonestly accomplish the goals, and /or hide the flaws, of a incompetent school … or whatever organization, with whom the “mental health professional” is “partnered.”
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Parallels, physicists and mathematicians in a branch of my family. High IQ on at least me (other’s accomplishments speak for themselves), sad story, long, for me and someone else. Artists, fishermen, caring people, along the brances. Blood relatives, political relatives too. Some abroad, PhD, etc.
Not pushing or suggesting, I never wanted to be labeled as IQ, precisely because HOW I came to be labeled as such. Sad, long story, I was very young, funny I remember…
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Now that I think about it, that model of caring sounds ACTUALLY like an unsolved famous moral problem.
Sounds like a version of the trolley problem:
You put someone in this case “forced” to cause a damage, as in you loose some rights even if it “saves your life, limb, property or reason”, to actually make other people safe (the mythical danger to others, and maybe self). Notice danger, not damage. The original trolley problem, if I remember correctly, left no room for probability.
And sometimes the bystander that gets to be pushed to save the passenger is the same person. Danger to self. Reiterating, the original problem spoke of damage, not danger, there was no room for uncertainty either.
Risk and uncertainty are two different things: one is quantifiable, the other is not. Disregarding, for my argument, if the quantification applies to the population or the individuals…
The variant here, is that in the original trolley problem, the pusher was not legally, but morally obligated to decide, if at all. Being a thought experiment. No one could force you to make a choice, that would have been inmoral, as in bad, no ethisist would have forced you to pick push or not push…
After all do nothing but be another bystander and probably look out for the other person with the lever was an option.
And the trolley problem, as far as I know has not been solved, and probably because it is not transitive: If A, B, and C is the at least moral wellbeing of the pusher, the pushed and the to be saved, when A > B, and B > C, is not necessay, not true, that A > C.
In fact the pusher was not allowed to give his or hers life to save another, if I remember correctly.
Behavioural economics experiments have shown many human decisions, preferences, are like that, intransitive, particularly voter’s choices. Sarcastically, maybe accurately, irrational economics, or choices…
And therefore, it cannot, to my mind be solved with logic, since being a moral problem, the solution necessarily should PROVE that A, B or C is the least bad, or better outcome.
Admiting that in the mental care model (uuugh!), the pusher can give his or her rights, even obligations, and is legally bound to do something, even something specific about it. And the pusher probably has more choices available than just to push or not push one, or several individuals to save anothers, few or many.
Not as simple, rather more complex and probably more complicated than the original trolley problem.
Complex and complicated are not the same either.
And as such, probably more unsolvable, althought sometimes, at least in mathematics not always the case. Conceding partially…
So, paraphrasing from the T1: “…It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop…”.
It might be a matter of preference, as in capricious, arbitrary, prejudicious, specially IRRATIONAL, since reason cannot be applied to it, and therefore, QED, it should be ABOLISHED as law of the land, any land.
Hahahaha! that sounded great in my mind :).
No law or jurisprudence can be irrational since no one can reason with it, or about it. Although I might have proved meself wrong about it… đ
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I have NEVER heard such a plethora of paranoia, misinterpretations, and outright lies regarding people seen as “mentally ill” as I have from “social workers.” I’ve had it difficult enough with people in general, but encountered, fortunately not at all at a professional level, taking a yoga class from such a creature, I have NEVER encountered, nor did I expect such BIZARRE discriminatory behavior, and evaluations. It REALLY was comparable to going back to the old South, where if a black person would sit down at a restaurant with white people, use the wrong bathroom, walk down the wrong street, you’d get the whole plethora of discriminatory “evaluations.” All because there’s something genetically wrong with them (see unproven chemical imbalance theories regarding “diagnosis,” while the “treatment is proven to cause chemical imbalance etc.)
Thinking they know your intentions, when they are all wrong, and believing they are objective, anything can be misinterpreted…. What’s most bizarre is that people think that shows articulate thought. And it’s all pretension, superstitious pretension. The whole society doesn’t want to have to deal with the REAL effects of trauma, or ANYTHING (cause of effect) out of the ordinary, or beyond their brainwashing: so just make up something that sounds like something, some scientism and there you go. And people think it’s objective, are relieved as if the problem is being dealt with, resolved, fixed, and it’s mostly doing EXACTLY the opposite.
Force someone on pills that in the long run cause symptoms (the pills not the disease) and pile on more pills, till there’s a life expectancy loss of 20 to 25 years, which come from the treatment not the “disease,” and then the rest: disability, loss of self determination, addiction…
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People working on the front lines — social workers, caseworkers, psych techs, nurses, etc — have, as a group, an enormous amount of power. If they were to, as a group, demand change, change would happen.
From what I’ve experienced, and the reason that I don’t consider these people allies, is that the large majority of them believe in the fundamentals that are put forth by psychiatry: they believe in the validity of the DSM. They value, first and foremost, medication compliance on the part their charges. They believe in concepts like anosognosia and Cluster B (“this person is not in pain; this person is trying to play the system”). They are watchful of patients who might be “malingering” or “drug seeking”. They don’t have a problem writing negative things in their case notes. They don’t consider whether what they write will harm a patient in the future, such as if the patient has a medical crisis.
From what I’ve seen, people working in these jobs seem pretty okay with everything about the system. They might speak up to defend a patient who’s being clearly harmed if it happens right in front of them. But for the most part, they believe in psychiatry — or they sure put up a good front that they do. This is why they can’t be allies.
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KateL,
Unfortunately, many many people have been harmed by exactly what you have described, and I am sorry that you have had to deal with this.
The original theoretical foundation of social work was “person in environment,” exactly the opposite of biological psychiatry. If you talk to social workers and psychologists privately, many will express reservations about the drugs; but when push comes to shove they will cave to the medical model and make the referral for “medication.”
And there are also many in these groups who are all in on the drugs – witness psychology’s campaign to become authorized to prescribe. All this despite the mountain of evidence that “person in environment” wins hands down over the medical model; but the $60 billion PhARMA spends each year on “public relations” (and their ability to outspend patients in legal proceedings) carries the day. Everyone – the “professionals,” politicians and the media is afraid to rattle PhARMA’s cage. Thank goodness for Robert Whitaker, ISEPP and the brave survivors of the system.
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Agree 100%. Most allied psyche professionals take psychiatry at face value.
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“From what Iâve seen, people working in these jobs seem pretty okay with everything about the system. They might speak up to defend a patient whoâs being clearly harmed if it happens right in front of them. But for the most part, they believe in psychiatry â or they sure put up a good front that they do. This is why they canât be allies.”
I have two ideas about that paragraph:
1.- Some people do choose and continue in a profession because somehow it fits their needs and wants. Like, I don’t want to be bossed around and I like, or at least don’t find THAT uncomfortable to boss people around. I like giving orders and sit a top of others, and I like reading and logic but not administration. “I know! I want to be a judge!”. Not that simple, since the professional career opens and closes options, but some people, in my personal experience do fit the idea that somehow their career decisions that somehow landed them in what they do NOW goes along with their wants and needs, and whatever someone else would find “bad” in their job, seems not too that bad to THEM in THEIR position. They find it at least acceptable on others. That’s my impression from studying and indirect experience. They might even DO their job to try to escape being in the position of others because it is less unpleasant putting other people in the position they wouldn’t want to be in. The old “rather be them than me”.
2.-From direct experience some medical students do believe in helping others, sacrifice, comittment, kindness, etc. I’ve seeing it, when nothing else med students do hold hands with patients when obviously, given their lack at that time of other usefull skills, can’t do anything else. They do want to help, “even if it is just” by being there in “just human” capacity. I’ve done that, I’ve seen it in some of my former schoolmates.
Now, what happens then? Well, the training and the practice does take away a lot of the empathy and caring you started with. The system does weigh on people to push them into “not caring too much”. I’ve heard/read explanations, moral injury seems the most relevant to me, banality of evil is another. Seeing things you don’t expect, counter to what you believe should be done on the moral side, when you are obligated to participate in them, does cause for some of us, to loose or diminish our empathy.
So can it be both? Yes, most definitevily. A person can have an appeal to do something in a certain way like giving orders AND the system does weigh on your empathy.
That, without being derogative, explains to me why psychiatrists do what they do: they have a predisposition, a like, a wish, a joy, to do what they end up doing AND the system does make their inmoral behaviour not only more likely, but appropiate even compassionate!. In the eye of their peers, those encouraging them, praising them and repressing the ones that, if at all, disagree…
Not sure about social workers, because it seems to me they are more like nurses in the empathy camp: they do have it, greater than physicians (physicians just so happens that even as aspirants to med school are better in answering empathy exams, does happen, I can imagine they can be from the beginning more dishonest when answering exams?), they do keep it longer than physicians, and they are worst hit by the system. So even if they started from a better higher humanity, eventually the path of least resistence, the one in which the harms on nurses are less because of moral injury and probably the social workers is to stop caring so much.
I’ve seen the course not on other individuals along the med school-resident-practitioner road. But I’ve seen samples, groups of individuals at each stage in the med camp, and I can corroborate as my personal experience that by the time they are practicing, sometimes the only reason they seem to care, is because if they don’t it looks bad, diminishes authorty, or there are lawsuits. In some places they are even encouraged to be evil because somehow that “looks” somehow “cool”. Honestly, I have seen it and gone through that.
And then there is the just following orders thing. That really takes away a big chunk of anyone’s humanity. That is the Milgram effect/experiment and the Zimbardo effect/experiment. And it is what Hannah Arendt realized, and I heard wrote beautifully, after being on some post WWII trial. I have seen it with opened eyes, I lived through it, and I spoke to some of my peers about it, just apparently, someone else said I might have made for my then peers in training more difficult to “follow orders”… just by explaining to them “WTF” was going on with my peers and why the “actuators” of the system did what they did. As loosely and ocassionaly as I could.
And nurses, the ones I knew even if very little, DO care, just not the psychiatric ones. I don’t have experience with social workers unfortunately (or not!?). đ
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The article was written by a doctoral student in Sociology. Teo very different academic departments.
Like every profession in the helping firlds there sre good the nad and the indifferent. I would like to see a history of Social Work because much of it came from guilty and horrified wealthy white women who tralized big problems with how society dealt with most of humanity. There were also many hidden LBGQT + folks in the profession as well that has yet to be fully acknowledged. Lots of isdues with eugenics and racism snd isms of all types. I dont know where NASW is with all of the past history at this point.
I think the profession was severely compromised starting in the 1950’s and just little by little became part of the coporate societal complex that we live in today. Folks like docs snd nurses font go into the profession to harm but we and Inwoukd have to say we all have not helped in dome of our efforts to help.
What the profession needs is a truth and reconcilliation effort and a detailed historical accounting. The proffesion as with others needs to respect surviviors and admit many of us were hidden survivors.
And private practice really didnt help it sometimes created other new problems.
Paperwork became a total nightmare. Billing became a nightmare both st sgencies snd private practice. Agencies had CEOs and CFOs instead of just directors and insurance both governmental and private created an untenable framework.
Many many left as I did. Others continued on but were hsrmed by continuing on.
Moral injury became part and parcel of way too many interactions and on top of sll thst the supportive frameworks dried up.
Greed is good the sentence spoken by the actir Michael Douglas Jr in Wall Street flew into entertainment into almost every structure of society. Those who saw and or felt this as I did experienced what some have called soul murder and the help that should have could have been there almost nonexistent since secondary and tertiary trauma not seen as a thing by administrations whose only concern was profit for shareholders and the private equity firms that have bought up so many places. Spin became gospel. In tbe Boatd of Sdvisors and trustee rooms the exec offices in the private office and on the fllors of psych units and group homes and trestment centers. At one time healing was sought but that was lost and ladt time I heatd five or so years sho even the 12 step groups in my ateacwere compromised. I hope thst the breskdown is finished a new griowth and hopes can flourish because if not we will all be living in the first or other circles.
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It sounds difficult to find meaning in a job that is supposed to be meaningfull under such circumstances.
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There was a lady I used to run into, on the bus and downtown at a center for destitute people. She knew everyone, and was always friendly, but her story was absolutely devastating, and I don’t know how anyone survives such abuse. and YES, it was because of “social workers.” She came from the Ukraine, I think, but this was years ago, before this awful war, since she’s gone back there, but then I heard had to leave again. But when I saw her she had come from Ukraine, had been promised a job here, but then there was ridiculous red tape. For who knows why, other than they are dealing with a human being, her papers didn’t come through, although she had been promised they would, and then the job didn’t go through. NOT a nice situation. And she had two children. Some “social workers” came to check on her, and because the house was messy (which it often is with children), and she was openly distraught about her situation, they suggested she go on anti-depressants. Well, her mother was a nurse, and knew all about anti-depressants, and how it wasn’t a good idea, so this very honest and open lady simply told her viewpoint. The social workers actually took away her children. Really because of that, and how they were free to misinterpret anything and everything, and clearly quite a bit of resentments that ANYONE would put it on the line with their supposed “treatments.” And being treated such, not listening to someone’s distress, not looking at how really she was a good mother, just the house was messy, but going on a bend because they weren’t seen as “angels.” How much is this coming from discrimination and resentments, as if ANYONE knowing the truth is interfering with their mission. I heard from someone else, QUITE BRAINWASHED also, who was a fundamentalist “Christian” thinking anyone not have been brainwashed by his idea of “Jesus” wouldn’t go to “Heaven” when they died (same kind of blind fundamentalism), and: “it was in the papers, there was a whole article, the house was all messy…..”
This lady did find a boyfriend, despite all of that, they got married had a child, she went back to Ukraine. But then had to leave there again.
One doesn’t even know what to say about such things, which one hears regularly about, is one open to listen. It’s what goes on in a fascist regime, actually.
I don’t know how she held herself together, the whole time. I would hear from her, as she was talking to others, that she had found a lawyer, and she was sure she’d get her children back. But she never did. It’s like these “social workers” are the CAUSE of distress, taking away one’s children. I’ve heard multiple stories of this also from Mind Freedom. Someone shows up at the ER, and is distressed, but when they say something enlightened about antidepressants or the like, they are somehow made ward of the system (and then would they further be human in expressing how THAT, how being targeted as if there’s something wrong with them makes them feel they are further detained, it’s blind fanaticism, fundamentalism, like in a fascist regime with brainwashed people). Mind Freedom has multiple times shared stories of a mother losing their child who ends up in the system, because of this.
And HOW MANY people have lost their loved ones because the system kept telling them that they just needed the right “medications” while everything got worse, while the epidemic who anatomy Robert Whitaker CLEARLY exposes grows!? How many people believe this and remain believing THAT is the answer, and dismiss (as if this is justified by their grief in seeing what’s done to their loved ones) DISMISS what statistically DOES correlate more with recovery!?
Not all social workers are like that. The one’s I’ve found for therapy, who I think learn from my story rather than they know what’s going on, all of the three I’ve worked with listened. But it took me years, after hearing really disturbing horrible stories, and seeing other grossly abused by “social workers,” it took me years before I heard about a place I could trust. The mainstream centers often seem to be nothing but……..
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