Saw a post earlier that’s like “psych wards aren’t evil and scary! fearmongering does more harm than good” and it’s like have you spoken to literally anyone with a negative experience with institutionalization, of which there are Many
I spent all of a WEEK in a modern and fairly chill psych ward and still wanted to die bc it was like a minimum security prison minus weight benches and the opportunity to go outside. I was only allowed to leave bc I agreed to start taking medication for a condition I didn’t have.
Many people have had much worse experiences than that, including actual straight-up abusive conditions. Mental healthcare is desperately in need of reform so maybe let’s not embrace our Shiny Constructive CBT-Approved Outlook to the point where we ignore that lol
Tag: psychiatry
last night i woke up at like 3am, thought “psych wards patients are like cats who are shut in the bathroom for being naughty”, and immediately went back to sleep
to add a bit more detail (hi @corasticot ) my ideas were:
– neurotypicals send you to psychiatric hospitals because youre a “threat” to yourself or the others but really, theyre tired of your bullshit. no owner seriously thinks shutting their cat away in the bathroom will make them understand why they shouldnt make a mess in the kitchen. at most they hope they figure it out and get too scared of the bathroom to do it ever again. no person will think in good faith that locking up a depressed/anxious/psychotic person will do anything else than scaring them to make them conceal their symptoms (im not talking expensive private clinics. some ppl have good experiences with them. im talking horrific state psychiatric hospitals where literally every “freak” get sent. youve got old ppl with dementia and a young adult with autism and depressed ppl and schizophrenic ppl in the same building like no big deal. with no therapy whatsoever)
– psychiatric hospitals look like big ass bathrooms, tiles floors everywhere, sanitizer, and white, no comfort
– naughty-cats-that-get-locked-in-bathrooms typically lament and yell behind the door until you free them. my psychiatric hospitals neighbors did that too and i was almost ready to do it too: you need attention from your owners/medical staff because youre lost and trapped
– btw, you get “locked up” in a psych ward like naughty cats
– you’re super bored bc there is literally no enrichment/no activities. you’re ripped off all your possessions (they took my hairband and books away)
– you often dont know why youre there in the first place. do you think the cat that made a mess in the kitchen 5 hours ago knows why hes locked up in the bathroom? neither do most patients
thanks for coming to my ted talk and lets burn psychiatric institutions to the ground comrades
precision: NO im NOT anti psychiatric care & research. its quite the contrary. but as long as we will live in a capitalist society that deems you “useless” or “a threat” if you cant reach the productivity goals they set… prisons and psychiatric institutions will stay horrifyingly abusive. Why do you think the big stigmatisation of mentally ill people and the first “petites maisons” (in france) appeared approximately when capitalism started existing??? its NOT a coincidence.
Sure, there are good people in psychiatric institutions. Empathetic people. Ive met some. They were incredibly sweet and generous. But their hands are tied, because Money, the State policies, and such, dont allow them to offer the care that mentally ill people NEED.
Also: i mentioned cats AKA pets on purpose. Because medical staff is all-mighty. Youre literally at their mercy for anything. It’s not a caretaker/vulnerable person dynamic. It’s a power dynamic. They will threaten to sedate you if you disturb them. You dont have a say in what meds youre taking. You literally have to beg for basic necessities, such as your personal possessions, clean clothes, social contact… And they can refuse it. Its the ground for abuse, and at best unbalanced relationships.
“But i had a good experience with a state institution!” The problem is that good experiences of state institutions for mental health are a accident. If – by miracle – you’re locked up in an humane hospital, with a caring staff, and everything is going well, its not the norm. And it takes an enormous mass of work from every member of the staff to achieve this, because everything about the way hospitals work makes it easier to torture patients than to take good care of them. And you shouldnt have to play russian roulette about your mental health.
Noticed how i talked about state institutions? it’s on purpose. Sure, there are people who have good experiences with psychiatry, because they got sent to private clinics they could afford.
But the problem is… most people can’t afford private clinics. State hospitals are free here. I’m not gonna pay 2,000€ to have care because!!!!! i cant afford it!!!!!! and im not poor. Im white, and middle-class. MOST PEOPLE CANT AFFORD IT.
guess what? the root problem is capitalism. Because care for people who might not even become “productive”, and medical care in general, is considered useless. Illness is supposed to be a “temporary problem”. And if its not…… you better have money for that. Not to mention the deep stigma around mental illnesses there is.
Atrocities hidden in language are a method used by both the military and the mental illness industry to keep their image acceptable and
saleable. Take for example psychiatric and psychological treatment.
Many think that when a person is placed in a locked facility with no trial they incarcerate the inmate illegally. If a medical staff runs the locked building, people believe, due to advertising, that the “patient requires hospitalization.” Drugs change to “medication” when prescribed. Medications somehow avoid the current medical blitz on drug abuse. Supposedly only self-medicators abuse chemicals. Electrical shocks change to electroconvulsive therapy. When a person takes a razor and carves little lines into her arms, doctors call this activity self-mutilation. When a physician saws into a person’s skull and slices out portions of the brain, doctors call this psychosurgery.
Dee dee NiHera, Money Changes Everything
How many folks would bring their friends, their kin or themselves
to the prison gate for punishment? By medicalizing the language to “hospital,” “treatment” and “help,” authorities know that many will turn in themselves and their loved ones.
Dee dee NiHera, Money Changes Everything
i just heard a psychiatrist say on the radio that “patients in psychiatric hospitals are treated with humanity and kindness”. like we’re not completely dehumanized. like they don’t let a man yell and kick the walls for the entire night because he’s anxious when he’s alone. like one of my friends didn’t get raped when she was hospitalized. by a NURSE. like they didn’t put a young female patient i was friends with in a terrifying closed room with handcuffs and a 92 years old woman with dementia because i told the staff she had received rape threats. meanwhile, the rapist? the guy who constanlty touched us without our consent? the guy who said homophobic horrors to me? they just let him stay in his comfortable room, with a good bed, and an open door.
but yes. tell me about how humane and empathetic you are in psychiatric structures, “doctor”.
medusa-avenging-squad 