From Mad in Denmark: The Norwegian ‘ Recovery blog ‘ recently published a large interview with the French-Swedish recovery veteran, psychologist and professor Alain Topor. Mad in Denmark was given permission to translate it, and here is a slightly edited version. The interview was made by Vegard Eide Dall and Johanne Rogndal, and you can access it – and much more – at https://recoverybloggen.com/
To read the English translation of this article, click here. To read the original in Danish, click here.
This interview is one of the best examples of what a mental health system should look like in a society like us that can support.
If you cannot visit a client’s house to see how they actually live, and you are not allowed to go there for various reasons (often involving others), no therapy can help. If a client isn’t safe in their own home, talking about it doesn’t solve the problem.
Yes, psychiatrists are often too elite, “too clean”, and too high-level to visit people who are suffering. However, if you actually go to someone’s house and sit with them for an hour, you will realize that psychiatry as it currently exists is ineffective and in fact cruel.
And, for those who may say, “Oh, if you give money to people, they will not work,” that’s not true. This idea fosters a belief system that sustains psychiatry and capitalism. If any, many people will work even more because they would be focused on what they want to do not what is “demanded” of them to do….all these demanding without a relief is mental illness. Every powerful corporation has its target (the workers) at vulnerable state!
Many people, if they have their basic needs met, will not be focusing solely on their inner world, trying to calm their minds because they are stressed out. If you travel around the world, you will see that most places have many more markets, bazaars, and bustling societies. Here, what do we have? Corporations and even ironically calling them families. Every business is taken over by a few individuals who can employ everybody but do not pay enough for living. That’s the problem. People would become incredibly creative, and everyone would run a business out of their homes if they were free to do so to supplement their income…and then we will see how much depressive, anxious oriented person doing what they meant to do – innovation and creativity. Now we are all corporate pawns!
MIA should commission and support more articles like this, as they address real problems and offer genuine solutions rather than simply reiterating old narratives. Such articles foster broad and meaningful conversations, in contrast to empty, anti-psychiatry pieces that often rely on clickbait rather than substantive content and ironically “shrink” conversations to basic rebuttals.
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