#bedlam a mental health crisis in America is a good introductory book abt American psychiatry and its entanglement with the prison system

[jigzsaw]

idc ill die on this hill: I hate doctors in the US. Whenever someone is like ‘I feel like doctors don’t treat [group] well’ it’s like yeah. Doctors tend to not treat women, black people, people with uteruses, the mentally ill, the physically disabled, or trans people very well. You might be thinking ‘that’s a lot of different people’. Yeah. It begs the question: who are doctors actually helping? It begs the question: what’s happening in our medical system that doctors consistently treat such high portions of the population so poorly? It begs the question: as long as our government attacks these people, as long as our government favors the privatization of medicine, as long as our government is kind to medical monopolies, will doctors ever really change? Will they actually listen to the concerns of women? Will they stop prescribing higher doses of medicine to black people than white people? Will they stop noting black people as more aggressive than white people even if they clinically present the exact same? Will they learn how medical conditions present in races beyond white people? Will they actually investigate severe period pain? Will they stop over-prescribing antidepressants every time someone struggling with mental health comes to them? Will they let their patients have autonomy in their health regardless of their race, gender, physical or mental ability?

No bc if you make bank off people being sick you have no incentive to treat them well or care about their wellbeing. You have the incentive to instead make them as sick as possible so you can steal as much money from them for as long as possible. These high prices are imperative, not only so the billion dollar health industries keep getting their billions, but so doctors are paid well enough that they never feel a strong problem with their position in society.

And hating on psychiatry bc American psychiatry needs to kill itself. How do u live with ur self and tell urself that u help people when ur a DOCTOR AND YOURE CONNECTED TO NOT JUST THE AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC CARCERAL SYSTEM BUT THE AMERICAN SLAVE LABOR BASED PRISON CARCERAL SYSTEM. Like how do you participate in sending mentally ill people in crisis to prison for the crime of being mentally ill and struggling and think ur a good person and a benefit to society