Psychiatry Gave Me PTSD by Nicola Clare

Psychiatry gave me PTSD.
Psychiatry gave me PTSD
A silhouette now
Or a hologram
Wedged between sheets of sound
Proof, somehow
Shatter proof glass
Stuck
For an eternity; cast,
A mad ranting lunatic!
Labels glued so firmly that any passage of time is insufficient to reverse the grim reality of
ā€˜Ah, she suffers with her nerves’ ā€˜has reduced capacity,,,,, functionality’
ā€˜What, she’s dead? Ah yeah, the mental health sure!
The increased mortality’

Psychiatry gave me PTSD
A body adorned in scars
Designed within its grasp
No art without red
No gain without dread and
The painful hypnotic
Decline;
Into the clutches of
Anxiety, depression, bipolar, borderline.
Any former shine, scratched, as I stumbled, all
Time losing meaning, the line between fine and not fine
Erased; beneath the medicated shuffle. Cries to be heard an inaudible muffle
As I’m handed a couple more pills

Psychiatry gave me PTSD
A battle of wills
That killed any discourse or dialogue
Power imbalance
Tilted to monologue,
Orders, and instructions from the sane to the insane
The ordered to the
Post-Traumatic Stress Disordered.
Disordered?
Or a response to being engulfed in madness, dressed for weeks in pyjamas, repeatedly knocked down by, badness, and sadness!
Time for a fresh canvas!

Can you listen? Can you see?
My emotions and responses aren’t pathology!

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From the author: What an inverted reality we live in where things are often the very opposite of what they seem. I entered the psychiatric system to get help with PTSD. It left me with a second bout!!!! That realization hit after a dream where I saw myself as a silhouette behind glass (heavy Perspex really). I was shouting truths but no-one could hear me. This piece attempts to give a voice to those stuck in that system.

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Thumb image credit: Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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