A tweet I’m responding to:
Is anybody really surprised about this? I’ve had guns pointed at me at least twice during a “mental health check.” https://t.co/RpKiWkQQsk
— Adam Randolph (@phrenoosyche) June 10, 2018
he was responding to this:
Police Broke Into Chelsea Manning’s Home With Guns Drawn via @theintercept https://t.co/qoG3xT2yrG
— Mad In America (@Mad_In_America) June 9, 2018
My response to Adam and then to the general topic at hand:
No…people don’t generally believe it…and that’s what has to change. I’m so sorry that happened to you too.
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Mental health “care” is extremely violent with far more frequency than people are willing to believe. I was thrown down a flight of stairs at 19 years old by four cops. I was a skinny little thing -120 lbs — and I wasn’t fighting…just not moving fast enough. That’s police brutality and again, it’s frighteningly normal. I hear stories from readers with frequency. My extreme experience with violence is over 20 years ago but it’s still happening all the time. I speak to it in my advocacy so people come to me to confess their own pain and despair in having been so violently abused.
The vast majority of people don’t want to know or believe what happens in the name of mental health “care” or “treatment” … and so those of us who’ve been ravaged by the system are once again traumatized by society’s denial.
Psychiatry is far too often violent and invasive. Most of it is committed in the mental health system, and not by cops. Some of it is so extreme it’s hard for those uninitiated to conceive of but, sadly, it’s very common. The bottom line is psychiatry, in general and at best, is subtly coercive. do people have different experiences sometimes, yes. That doesn’t change the fact that so many people are being gravely harmed and it’s being denied.
Once the sensitive becomes aware and conscious of the coercion it ceases to be subtle…it becomes obvious blatant violence against the soul of humanity and that is when things get really tricky. How to escape the abuse? When all of society is telling you you need it?
Psychiatric abuse is very much like domestic violence except with domestic violence there is large sectors of society now that that acknowledge it’s very real…
We’re dealing with human rights violations.
If this isn’t your experience of the psychiatric and mental health systems that’s great. If you felt supported and loved and got what you needed that’s wonderful. This isn’t written to erase your experience. It’s written for those of us who’ve generally found nowhere to speak about, unpack and heal the atrocities we’ve experienced. They’re real. And they’re not in conflict with your experience. They’re different and all human beings are different and we, just like you, want to have a safe place to heal. Right now that mostly doesn’t exist for us. Please learn about what’s happened to us and believe us. Let us create a world where we all can heal in safety.
Update: A friend of mine made a great analogy. Psychiatry is like patriarchy... (I added, yes…it’s the system that’s the problem. Individuals may vary…sometimes quite a lot) This is why some of us are so gravely harmed and others do quite well and find appropriate kindness and healing.
I also, yesterday, wrote about how having suicidal thoughts is treated like a crime.
More info:
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*it is potentially dangerous to come off medications without careful planning. Please be sure to be well educated before undertaking any sort of discontinuation of medications. If your MD agrees to help you do so, do not assume they know how to do it well even if they claim to have experience. They are generally not trained in discontinuation and may not know how to recognize withdrawal issues. A lot of withdrawal issues are misdiagnosed to be psychiatric problems. This is why it’s good to educate oneself and find a doctor who is willing to learn with you as your partner in care. Really all doctors should always be willing to do this as we are all individuals and need to be treated as such. See: Psychiatric drug withdrawal and protracted withdrawal syndrome round-up
For a multitude of ideas about how to create a life filled with safe alternatives to psychiatric drugs visit the drop-down menus at the top of this page or scroll down the homepage for more recent postings.
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