From Mad in Puerto Rico: Often, when we talk about psychiatric hospitalization and psychiatric coercion, we hear professionals, providers, community members, family members and even people in psychological discomfort support this dynamic saying things like: “there are no other options” or “we have no other alternative.” This is because hospitalization is the standard of care for people with high levels of psychological discomfort; it is what is commonly prescribed. Although there are compassion-based alternatives, they often rely on community or private funding to sustain themselves. In addition, in my experience, many providers seem to be unaware of these alternatives, do not receive training in them or simply ignore them in favor of traditional approaches such as psychiatric hospitalization.
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