I mean, how do you call people going after my mental health?
You sure that's not just -your- therapist? The entire profession is not a monolith. I would say, however, that the entire profession does care about money though. Something I didn't appreciate when I was incredibly mentally ill is that dealing with people like us can be taxing, stressful, and not very enjoyable, especially when we have episodes. The complex needs of the mentally ill wear many people down, and very few people would engage in what is effectively years-long treatment without the prospect of reward. Ergo, it is no surprise they 'want money'. Yet that does not mean they do not care about their patients either.
However, that is not to say your personal psychiatrist/therapist is doing the right thing. I cannot possibly know that, I am both not a mental health professional, nor you. However, your entire post is making a whole lot of assumptions about the intent of therapists. As someone who interacted with a few mental health professionals, I cannot say I share the same experience.
Though I would say always be wary of individuals whose vested interest lies in you being deficient in some way. For example, a charity only exists and receives funding so long as an issue continues to exist, which is why I doubt the higher-ups would be happy if the issues disappeared. But at the same time, don't treat every such institution or individual as if they follow the mould.
Good luck to you.
No, it's the whole system around treating cptsd
Sadly the issue is systemic.
I agree with Okama, not all people in a oppressive institution. In fact I too had a good experience with my psychiatrist.
YET
It doesn't meant that they didn't put me in danger. They were caring about me BUT their formation was the one of an institution that wanted me back on the production line even tho I was not able to move. So they pressed medication on me as any psychiatrist did.
The problem is the individualization of mental health and the concept of "mental health" itself. I was poor at the time (
in a more difficult situation than than now)(I know I'm again telling my story, but it is important to understand).. What I needed was not pills, it was
time, and
money to be able to recenter, work on myself, make the steps I needed etc. This was not possible with what I had. So I quit my psychiatrist who were actually starting to put me in danger with medication and I tried to plee my case as an disabled man.
This gave me the opportunity to have more financial help. Which is now helping me to get better, do the step I need with the time I need to get myself out of my condition.
This is what I'm trying to explain :
Mental health is a status within the domination systems of sanism and ableism.
People do have some mental difficulties, it's real, BUT the way society reply to that is by
individualizing the problem (making it a you problem) instead of trying to understand the systemic causes. We all have issues with our "mental health" but these issue are most often the result of trauma, poverty, disability.
Things that are systemic, things that comes from the exterior, rarily problem coming from the inside or the genetic (even if it can happen), even things like Skyzophrenia or dissociations are result of these kind of trauma. Psychiatry and psychology are basically an institution that repeats the capitalist affirmation (
"you are responsible of your own mindset"). This political base creates a situation where this "doctors" are actually INTERPRETING mental health problem based on problematic conclusions that doesn't take any systems into account (don't get me started on the DSM-5). This individualization will push psychiatrists to justify the violences through the medication or the internalization of people based on their material interests (as health professional within capitalism) to put everyone back on the production line even when they will not understand fully the symtoms.
For example, I stayed years with my psychiatrist. A the end and the moment where I decided that it was too much a risk for my health to be medicated like they were planning to, they STILL HADN'T understood fully what I had and how to treat it. They tried everything, they put me on slipping pills everyday, I had pill that made me feel numb, completely deconnected from reality, I had antipsychotics, I had various kind of antidepressant, pills that made me vomit, pills that made me lose all pleasure, pills that made me tremble everyday. To a point where the next treatment I would have to take was shots of giga antipsychotics with
syringe every week. (just so you know, antipsychotics can destroy your brain as a side effects).
Yes, they were nice, very thoughtfull, but they were the gardian of hell. Simply because they only had one interest : HEAL ME for me to be able to work again.
But how do you heal something that is created by the stresses of Traumas and precarity?
Well, when you are a liberal in a capitalist society, you can't. Because you can't see this things, they do not register in the balance. I had to myself find a solution to get better. It's not perfect, but it's getting there.
What activists want:
0 - Destroy this institution
1 - Strip away the power of this institution to give it back to the activists.
2 - Destroy the pathologizing language created by psychology and psychiatry (we do not have "psychosis", or "ptsd" ot "skyzophrenia" or what else, our bodies are simply responding exactly how they should to things that are happening or happened to them and if we want to fight these problems, we need to fight the systems (of domination) that create them. The term "Mental health" (
observe that I'm always using the quotes) must disappear from our language.
3 - Organize the collectivization of medication so that we can uses them collectively in function of our collective needs.
4 - Take down the systems of domination that are creating the conditions for our
madness (this is the recuperated word used by activist)
5 - And make people realize that being "mad" is a STATUS within a class system of sanism. Not something we are, but something that psychiatry puts on us (hance why we use that word to take it back).
If you look around, you might see this flag popping up in the next few years:
This is the "mad pride" flag. The one used by all people who have "mental condition" and therefore those who our civilization consider as "crazy"
Like I told you, we are "mad", not stupid. And this flag is the one used by antipsychiatry.
For the moment, it is mostly a western and french movement, but it will grow.
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Psychiatry is an oppressive institution, BUT that doesn't mean that we can't use it at our advantage. In fact, some of their medications are still usefull and some of their prescription too (
I was saved partly by antidepressors for ex) but they need to be used with a SYSTEMIC approach, with the knowledge that what we feel (Okama, Blax, me & others here) are the result of systems of dominations. (big systems that will hurt people)
Society will
dehumanize MAD people,
pressure them into thinking that we are our own problems, make us believe that we can simply "work it up harder", individualize our sufferings and if we do not take part in the capitalist framework....
We will be considered as parasites
BUT
We can fight back and be smarter.
