Standard psychiatric care is coercive (yes, the United Nations calls forced treatment torture)

As a person who has experienced involuntary commitments, seclusion, restraints, forced medication, and intentional humiliation as part of my “mental health” treatment, I am still working through the severe and persistent effects of force and coercion. Being in relational dynamics in which I had no voice and in which I was not treated as a human being with viable thoughts and legitimate feelings impacted my sense of self in ways that were incredibly destructive. I didn’t have a word for it when it was happening. Torture was something that happened to prisoners of war in faraway places and in terrible movies. It was not something that happened to young Americans in modern hospitals. … [click on title for the rest of the post]

June 26, 2013

In honor of the woman I witnessed being tortured in a psych ward

Since I learned and posted about the United Nations report that explicitly states that forced and involuntary psychiatric treatment is torture, I've been haunted by a memory of something I witnessed during one of my hospitalizations as a very young woman. I have my own radical experiences of such torture that I wrote about in 2007 here on Beyond Meds, but it's not what I've been struggling with in the last few days. Instead what plagues me now is the knowledge that this is happening to others, everyday, all over this country and virtually no one is doing anything to stop it. … [click on title to read the rest]

March 10, 2013

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Standard psychiatric care is coercive (yes, the United Nations calls forced treatment torture)

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In honor of the woman I witnessed being tortured in a psych ward

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