We’ve gone to a local church twice for their Sunday service. It’s very close by and they vocally embrace and invite marginalized populations…ie: the homeless, victims of domestic violence, all people of color, and the LGBTQ communities. They also have a prison ministry etc etc. Totally into Social Justice, right?
This is my reality when I walk into liberal/progressive haunts of this sort: The systematic widespread poisoning, gaslighting, censoring, infantilization and (not rarely), death of those targeted by the psychiatric establishment as an arm of the state and so-called medical community both….is not even mentioned. It’s not on the radar.
People, during prayer requests felt comfortable speaking about their “mentally ill” friends and relatives with the narrative of the state. The oppressive, toxic, gaslighting narrative that shuts up these very people they are claiming to love and support with no mention of the potentially disabling neurotoxins and general lack of appropriate care for some of the most traumatized, sensitive and vulnerable people in society.
There is no social justice for those targeted by psychiatry and then marginalized by society in general. None and it’s especially glaring when surrounded by self-proclaimed liberals and progressives…(groups that I otherwise largely align myself with). You know what? Fox News covers the issues with psychopharmacology far more often than the other mainstream outlets. It’s a travesty.
And so walking out into the world is traumatic for those of us who understand exactly what is happening to those of us who’ve been marked.
Next part of the story– PART TWO: I continue trying to figure out how to be in this world as the freak that I am…
See also:
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MICROAGGRESSIONS are BIG sometimes All oppressed groups deal with these sorts of insults. In those *labeled* mentally ill the phenomena is almost completely denied and ignored. (“mental illness” isn’t what convention says it is)
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The biggest issue we face: #WorldMentalHealthDay 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. This post includes a collection of articles that envisions different ways to heal and support folks.
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Psychiatric abuse is like domestic violence…
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Retaining agency is not resistance to treatment…it is in fact a sign of health
For a multitude of ideas about how to create a life filled with safer 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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Amen, sister! It’s painful. The “identity politics” of modern American “liberals” seems to make everything much worse because being a “patient” with a label and having an “identity” as a “pill taking sick person” is accepted and protected by liberals but saying that you have been pathologized and injured for being traumatized and/or human is frowned upon. What’s up with that? Liberals would skewer me for saying this but I too have gotten more support from conservatives and non political types, for the reason that non-liberals are less keen to disregard material reality in favor of identity politics, and less likely to accept the loss of personal rights in favor of “social good”. Our injuries are a reality, not an idea. Liberals will wax poetic all day about “microagressions” and various “isms” but they will not accept the plain fact that these drugs physically injure people and the plain fact that system workers imprison people, often quite violently, and unconstitutionally, for thought crimes. When it comes down to it, liberals are capitalists. Their ideas of disability and traumatization are constructed as things that can be bought and sold, commodified into identities and products/consumers.
No one should believe MD stands for “medical diety.” Including docs. And, where is the responsibility of the pharmaceutical industry in the picture? Time to get #WOKE about this NOW. Thank you for bringing this to our attention!!
on another note…I wrote this somewhere else, but it seems to fit this discussion too:
I’ve started to work on self-inquiry that might show me how to drop my personal drama entirely that I might just serve. Clearly everyone is suffering in ways that far exceed the capacity of most folks to even try to see how to overcome it…let alone recognize that all of us are in this painful muck. It’s easier said than done. Once the body gets chronically ill some self-obsession seems necessary. The conundrum is that once we see honestly how much pain everyone is in, everywhere, we also see that it’s far far bigger than what anyone can do…humility is about giving up the personal drama and also any sense of being able to do anything other than meet the moment in front of us…when that involves other human beings, doing it with as much kindness as possible.
I found the same thing happening at a UU church I attended. I complained. Because my complaint got the minister in trouble, some church higherups retaliated by coming to my home with the cops. They accused me of planning a violent act against the minister that I had no intention of committing. I was forced to relocate. I have reported what happened to the state legislature. I think they’re embarrassed over it. I hope they are, but really, I deserve an apology. What they did wasn’t legal.
god, that’s really disturbing
Awesome, so so true, Monica. Thank you for pointing it out.