I have faith. I have faith in that which animates us all. It’s bigger than any one of us and yet we can find it all within us too.
The biggest problem in mental health treatment is the idea that anybody need be treated at all. What people really need is a safe space to be who and what they are. Once people are in a safe place they simply need to be supported in trusting their own process.
When this is done right everybody’s path is going to look radically different. Cookie cutter mental health treatments are not particularly effective at best and harm many people, sometimes profoundly, at worst. Any mental health program that doesn’t understand that everyone is radically different as an element at its core is going to be destructive on some level for a good number of people.
Most treatment programs for those who get labeled mentally ill have components that are mandatory for everyone involved — this is generally a form of violence unless people whole-heartedly want to be told what to do in every moment…which may, on occasion, actually be a good thing for some people some of the time. It certainly was not for me and isn’t for a large and significant population of those of us who’ve been subjected to the system. I remind you I speak as someone who both was subjected to the system and who also worked as a professional within the system for many years. I’ve seen the chaos which is the system from both sides in very intimate ways.
Finding our own personal sovereignty towards an egalitarian society full of sovereign beings is what healing is all about. Authority over others is violence.
All human beings need such support from the moment we are born. As we grow up we start giving it to ourselves and those around us too if we are pursuing health and well-being.
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“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
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I can’t call the current system of care a “mental health system” when it’s so clearly one that generates, encourages and sustains mental distress and pain. And so I’ve often referred to it as a mental illness system. Here I’m underscoring that as it’s important that we make big changes if we want to help not only the most vulnerable people in our society, but also society itself. We create one another. None of this happens in a vacuum.
Below is a list of posts from Everything Matters that look at the system from many different perspectives.
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.
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