This is an essay written by the late Judi Chamberlin. (you can see a video history of her life here). Will Hall shared thoughts when she passed here.
This is a wonderful essay — Judi changed the landscape for survivors of psychiatry with the book On Our Own.
Judy Chamberlin is a household name for many who have been questioning the psychiatric system for a long time, but for the new generation of people who are being subjected to psychiatry without being offered choices she is not broadly known. I share this piece of history and brilliant piece of writing for those people. Her message remains as meaningful today as it was when she first shared it.
January 16, 2011, marked the first anniversary of the passing of Judi Chamberlin, psychiatric survivor leader, author and international disability rights activist. Please join us for a special teleconference to share our thoughts and memories of her, and to discuss the ways in which we are working to keep her vision alive. Marty Federman, Judi’s partner, will also be participating.
Date and time: Tuesday, January 25th, 3-4 pm EST.
go here to find out more details
An excerpt of her essay, Confessions of a non-compliant patient follows:
A famous comedian once said, “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor, and believe me, rich is better.” Well, I’ve been a good patient, and I’ve been a bad patient, and believe me, being a good patient helps to get you out of the hospital, but being a bad patient helps to get you back to real life.
Being a patient was the most devastating experience of my life. At a time when I was already fragile, already vulnerable, being labeled and treated only confirmed to me that I was worthless. It was clear that my thoughts , feelings, and opinions counted for little. I was presumed not to be able to take care of myself, not to be able to make decisions in my own best interest, and to need mental health professionals to run my life for me. For this total disregard of my wishes and feelings, I was expected to be appreciative and grateful. In fact, anything less was tacked as a further symptom of my illness, as one more indication that I truly needed more of the same.
I tried hard to be a good patient. I saw what happened to bad patients: they were the ones in the seclusion rooms, the ones who got sent to the worst wards, the ones who had been in the hospital for years, or who had come back again and again. I was determined not to be like them. So I gritted my teeth and told the staff what they wanted to hear. I told them I appreciated their help. I told them I was glad to be in the safe environment of the hospital. I said that I knew I was sick, and that I wanted to get better. In short, I lied. I didn’t cry and scream and tell them that I hated them and their hospital and their drugs and their diagnoses, even though that was what I was really feeling. I’d learned where that kind of thing got me – that’s how I ended up in the state hospital in the first place. I’d been a bad patient, and this was where it had gotten me. My diagnosis was chronic schizophrenia, my prognosis was that I’d spend my life going in and out of hospitals.
I’d been so outraged during my first few hospitalizations, in the psychiatric ward of a large general hospital, and in a couple of supposedly prestigious private psychiatric hospitals. I hated the regimentation, the requirement that I take drugs that slowed my body and my mind, the lack of fresh air and exercise, the way we were followed everywhere. So I complained, I protested, I even tried running away. And where had it gotten me? Behind the thick walls and barred windows and locked doors of a “hospital” that was far more of a prison that the ones I’d been trying to escape from. The implicit message was clear: this was what happened to bad patients.
I learned to hide my feelings, especially negative ones. The very first day in the state hospital, I received a valuable piece of advice. Feeling frightened, abandoned, and alone, I started to cry in the day room. Another patient came and sat beside me, leaned over and whispered, “Don’t do that. They’ll think you’re depressed.” So I learned to cry only at night, in my bed, under the covers without making a sound.
My only aim during my two-month stay in the state hospital (probably the longest two months of my life) was to get out. If that meant being a good patient, if that meant playing the game, telling them what they wanted to hear, then so be it. At the same time, I was consumed with the clear conviction that there was something fundamentally wrong here. Who were these people that had taken such total control of our lives? Why were they the experts on what we should do, how we should live? Why was the ugliness, and even the brutality, of what was happening to us overlooked and ignored? Why had the world turned its back on us?
So I became a good patient outwardly, while inside I nurtured a secret rebellion that was no less real for being hidden. I used to imagine a future in which an army of former patients marched on the hospital, emptied it of patients and staff, and then burned all the buildings to the ground. In my fantasy, we joined hands and danced around this bonfire of oppression. You see, in my heart I was already a very, very bad patient!
One of the things I had already discovered in my journey through various hospitals, which culminated in my involuntary commitment to the state hospital, is that psychiatric drugs didn’t help me. Every drug I was given made me feel worse, not better. They made me fat, lethargic, unable to think or to remember. When I could, I refused drugs. Before I got committed, I used to hide the pills in my cheek, and spit them out when I was alone. In the state hospital, I didn’t dare to try this trick. I dutifully swallowed the pills, hating the way they made me feel, knowing that, once I was free, I would stop taking them. Once again, I was non-compliant in thought before I could be non-compliant in deed.
Now I want to make one thing very clear here. I am not advocating that no one should take psychiatric drugs. What I am saying, and I want to make sure this point is understood, is that each individual needs to discover for himself or herself whether or not the drugs are part of the solution, or part of the problem. Many people I know and respect tell me that they would not be where they are in their recovery were it not for the particular drugs that they have found work for them. On the other hand, many others, of which I am one, have found that only when we clear ourselves of all psychiatric drugs do we begin to find the road to recovery. We need to respect these choices, and to understand that there is no one single path for all of us. (read the rest of this essay)
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