Mishiguene

The disabled community has been holding a political slogan for decades that demands “nothing about us, without us.” This demand is directed at those who, by action or omission, restrict access to fundamental rights. By demanding that there be nothing about us without us, the disabled community seeks to recover their independent and autonomous life in order to lift the social barriers that prevent access to fundamental rights. The political slogan dates back to 1505 when it was used in Poland to draft a new constitution that allowed the transfer of power from the monarch to the Polish congress of that time.

The slogan expresses the idea that no policy can be decided without the direct, full and effective participation of the members of the group affected by said policy. This political demand includes religious groups, ethnic groups, people with disabilities and social groups that have less access than other groups to social, cultural and economic opportunities. Among these groups whose fundamental rights have historically been violated are people with psychosocial disabilities who have been segregated, confined and tortured in health ghettos such as colonies, farms, clinics or psychiatric hospitals.

When a person is going through a mental health crisis, they have to deal with the fact that they will be isolated in some way. The most common way the mental health system reacts is through involuntary treatments, which may be injections, mechanical restraints, chemical restraints, or isolation in a mental institution. These involuntary treatments, far from alleviating the specific mental health problem, prolong the supposed need for mental health treatment for years. Primary mental health care isolates the behavior of someone going through a crisis by dissociating it from the social body by individualizing a supposed dangerousness in the person who only went to ask for help because he was suffering.

Some countries in the world following the guidelines for deinstitutionalization established by the World Health Organization for mental health services, such as Italy and Argentina, have passed laws to close mental institutions. But these public and private institutions continue to operate because the transformation of the mental health system is a social process that involves showing societies that mental health care is built on the cultural prejudice that associates madness with criminality and evil.

I live in Buenos Aires, a large city with four monumental psychiatric institutions located on very large plots in two different neighborhoods. One of these psychiatric institutions is used exclusively for the care of psychiatric emergencies and is located in the Chacarita neighborhood, right next to the city cemetery. The other three psychiatric institutions are located in the Constitución neighborhood and are intended for the involuntary treatment of the elderly, men, women and minors. Many homeless adults live in these psychiatric institutions until the end of their days. The Constitución neighborhood in particular has become over time the place where people are sent when they are going through a mental health crisis, that is to say like the psychiatric ghetto of a large city because it segregates people with psychosocial disabilities, their families and social relationships.

Today, a ghetto is an area of ​​a large city where a cultural, ethnic or religious group lives in a segregated manner. The word “ghetto” comes from the Italian ghetto and was first used in 1516 to segregate a religious group. Jews were confined to a closed neighborhood of the city called the Geto Nuovo in Venice. In Latin America, the regional organization “RedEsfera Latinoamericana” currently demands the social recognition of “Crazy Cultures”, referring to crazy people as historically oppressed cultural groups. Social segregation always represents a form of confinement that a minority suffers. People with psychosocial disabilities are part of crazy cultures, that is to say, we constitute ourselves as a socially oppressed minority.

At one point in my life I found myself faced with the need to participate politically in the group of people with disabilities who demand that their right to political participation be guaranteed, through support and reasonable adjustments. That need was related to understanding what had happened to me when I was 16 years old and became disabled due to the involuntary treatments I was subjected to. When people without disabilities make decisions without reaching consensus with people with disabilities, the possibilities of accessing independent living are reduced. In many cases, people with psychosocial disabilities or neurodivergent people see their independent living limited even by the psychopharmacological treatments themselves, which often raise barriers to accessing freedom of conscience and expression.

A few years before I went crazy, I had completed my Bar Mitzvah, so I was familiar with Jewish culture. In adolescence, I began a search for my identity that continues into adult life. When I began to challenge my parents, I questioned them that, although I had completed the Bar Mitzvah and had been born from a Jewish womb, I did not consider myself Jewish. Over time, I came to understand that it can take a long time to recognize that a person’s origin, history, and heritage do not necessarily determine their freedom. This is why, in adult life, I became a culinary Jew, as I like to characterize myself. There is something very curious that still arouses spiritual concerns in my adult life and that is that, in the most acute phase of my delusions, when I was confined, subjected to conversion therapies that are considered torture, was when I heard the voice of God telling me that I was a messiah and that I had to save the world. Inevitably, these first-person memories lead to reflection on the ontology of delusion, that is, on what a delusion and a hallucination specifically are.

Historically, the answer to this question is usually given by academics, researchers, and mental health professionals without consulting people with psychosocial disabilities. In addition, decisions about antipsychotic treatments for a person who hears voices or has visions are made only on the basis of evidence-based knowledge accessed by professionals who do not hear voices or have visions. In this scientific construction, knowledge based on experience is discarded in favor of knowledge based on evidence. All of this has led to the dramatic situation of naturalizing eugenics in people with psychosocial disabilities and health ghettos in societies.

These practices to turn a neurodivergent person into a neurotypical person are often justified on the grounds that they are carried out for the safety, well-being and mental health of the person. Thus, torture and aberrant practices such as electroshocks, solitary confinement and lobotomies have been justified. In my process of reconciliation with my origin, my history and my heritage, I left behind the burden of being a messiah. But I did not stop asking and asking myself questions. If there is any way to avoid social alienation, perhaps it is by questioning one’s own education and beliefs.

My grandmother told me how my Jewish great-grandparents had crossed Europe escaping from anti-Semitic Stalinism. My relationship with her allowed me to think like mishiguene, which means crazy in that ironic and funny tone that Yiddish can have in some families. Her story, which is part of my heritage, helped me to understand everything that it means to recognize oneself as a survivor, without having to return to occupying the place of a victim. Everything that is done in the name of mad people, without the participation of mad people, has produced enormous damage that societies should repair. This is not a moral, scientific or social problem, but rather a process of cultural transformation that requires profound decisions in accordance with ethics.