#but the general mistreatment of mentally ill people by our mental health system is horrible

[anarcho-masochist]

Do you know what sucks? All of the mental hospitals near me. I've only been to one good mental hospital in my entire life and it is really far away. Why do all of the nearby mental hospitals have to be downright terrible? It wouldn't even be difficult to do a better job than half these places. Yeah, some people will always hate mental hospitals because they are restrictive, but there are some serious issues that are extremely avoidable.

Don't hire staff that hate mentally ill people. Also, treat patients like actual people and not like you're babysitting someone's problem child violent criminal drug addict horror movie psychopath pit bull puppy with a bite history and no ability to think who definitely caused their own problems anyway and should probably just be incarcerated or put down or else they'll just continue to be both an inconvenience and Scary.

If you confiscate a patient's belongings and say you will return them when the patient gets discharged, do so and keep track of the items, do not throw them away.

Provide food options without ingredients that commonly trigger allergies. (The last mental hospital I went to had no gluten-free options for probably 2/3 of the meals so I ended up barely eating. Usually, the only GF option was salad or fruit and even their salads had croutons already mixed in and soggy enough that even if you picked them out, the cross-contamination was significant. The only protein source was meat and 100% of it was breaded. I wish this was hyperbole.)

If you have to deal with a situation where a patient is being violent: 1. attempt to de-escalate and only resort to force when absolutely necessary 2. do not insult or yell at the patient 3. do not insult or yell at a different patient with PTSD who had a panic attack after the first patient threw a chair at them 4. do not punish a third patient by taking away their media time because they intervened and successfully calmed down both the first and second patient.

Do not sexually harass trans minors. Do not subject a 16-year-old transmasc patient to a "cavity search" and then lie about it when the other patients confront you because the kid brought it up and after discussion, none of the cis or adult patients had to do anything like that but the trans AFAB minors (there were two) both faced some form of sexual harassment. Do not revoke phone privileges to the (several) patients who suggested a lawsuit. Do not take down the patients' rights poster in the hallway. Do not lie to patients about their rights. Do not threaten to out patients to their transphobic and abusive parents if they try to report the hospital. Do not give the patients who suggested a lawsuit smug looks for the entire next week as if you are superior because the patients backed down due to the victims not wanting to come forward about it anymore because they had no solid proof and, for one of them, because his parents would hurt him if they found out, which they would.

You would think this would be common sense, and yet, there are no mental hospitals within two hours of my house that haven't done at least one of these things.

Probably not worth it to try to look for farther away hospitals I haven't been to before considering that they're very unlikely to help anyway.

[grandmotherweb]

From 'Rude Questions To Ask LB Lee'

We do education on multiplicity, so we get asked a lot of questions. That's okay! The problem comes when we get asked rude questions over and over. Alternately, some folks are so scared of offending us that they won't ask anything, which is its own problem.

So we're here to help! We're going to put all those rude questions and their answers in one big post. That way, people get to learn and we never have to answer these questions in person again! 

Question: Are you dangerous?

If there was ever a question we wish we never had to answer again, it would be "are you dangerous?" We understand why people ask it (after all, we usually get depicted as axe-murderers in movies) but it's still a little soul-crushing.

If you really wanted to get philosophical about it, just about anyone could be dangerous in certain environments, and we're no exception to that. I mean, sure, Sneak would like to think that ze's a very nice person who would never hurt anybody, but then again, ze's never been put into a situation where ze's had to.

So this question is, in a way, impossible to answer, and yet, nobody asks this before we come out multiple. Which suggests that folks presume being multiple is what makes us dangerous, and we have to disprove their worries with our good behavior, even if they thought we were totally not dangerous for the years they knew us before. Ouch!

...

Question: Why do you hate the psych system?

This is a complicated question. Historically, the mental health industry has done a lot of horrible things to the people in its care, and still does; even if you only pay attention to multiples, it's not hard to find therapists who have published books about drugging, exorcising, or otherwise mistreating us. We know people who the mental health system has hurt terribly. It's only reasonable to distrust it when it has the capacity to wield such power over us, and a history of misusing it.

At the same time, though, we're in the complicated position of being dependent on this very system, due to our disabled status. It's a weird, unpleasant place to be in, to be financially, medically, and legally reliant on a system that has a history of mistreating people like you. But we've been lucky, and had generally decent experiences so far. (Namely, we've been able to fight through all paperwork errors threatening to remove our benefits, get legal help, and have a medical team firmly in our corner.) Mental health professionals HAVE helped us, quite a lot in fact. But they are not infallible. They are human beings, with human frailties and blind spots. If you can afford it and find someone who works with you healthfully, then I recommend it, but man, is it complicated sometimes.

Question: Can I call you a personality?

No, you may not. We don't call youa personality; we call you a person. We'd prefer the same courtesy!

Also, nobody here likes being called 'ego state,' 'part,' 'piece,' or 'fragment.' All those words feel dehumanizing to us; we don't want to hear them. We used to be okay with the word 'alter,' but now it's a kind of loaded term. Just call us 'people' or 'system members,' please.

(Note that different multiples have drastically different language preferences; it is entirely a matter of personal taste. When in doubt, ask which words are okay, and then use them.)

Question: Can you prove you're multiple?

Prove you're not and get back to me.

That might sound flippant, but we're being totally serious here. We have, as of yet, not actually seen any scientific evidence that singlets (as we call them) exist; all we have is a lot of anecdotal claims. How are we supposed to prove that we differ from the norm when we can't even prove the norm exists? What is the definition of a 'personality' or a 'person,' anyway? People who ask us to prove we exist pretty much never give us the criteria, so we can never actually satisfy them; the goalposts just keep moving so we always fail.

The answer doesn't really even matter, in our view. Whether we exist, or simply believe we do, our life has improved with accepting that. We're not about to argue with results.

Question: Are you going to try to become one person again?

No. To do so is a huge life change, and would require a complete reorganizing of how we interact with the world. Imagine if you had to lose your family, your roommates, and your own identity, all at the same time! It's very stressful! And definitely more complicated than, "Yay, all better now!"

We've known folks who've done it, but it's not something we really want to happen to us. If it happens, it happens, but we will likely resist it.

Question: Don't you want to be cured?

This is actually a more complicated question than you think, and will require some breaking down.

First of all, being DIFFERENT is not necessarily the same as being ILL. Being multiple may be a problem others want to solve for themselves, and that's fine! But that's not the case for us. We see our multiplicity as a way we're different, and not a way we're impaired. It's just the thing everyone gets hung up on, because I guess it's the weirdest, most obvious part.

That said, we do have Dissociative Identity Disorder. But plurality is just one of its symptoms. The other stuff, like the flashbacks and memory issues, yes, we hope to reduce those. But just being plural? No.

Furthermore, sometimes a cure is not possible or practical. Would we like to be magically immune to our depression, our flashbacks, Rogan's eating disorder? Sure! But we also have to accept that we may never reach that point, and make adjustments to our life to allow us to live as best we can, even if we ARE impaired. To us, 'health' can be so much more than being 'normal' or 'cured.' It can mean learning to deal with our burdens as best we can, and live as fulfilling a life as is available to us.

...

Question: Are you a boy or a girl?

This one isn't offensive so much as it is a complete brain-breaker. It's like walking up to an entire family of mixed genders, and asking them to pick one. We have four guys (one of whom is never here), two girls, and two who are neither. So we can't even get a majority rule.

They. Just call us THEY.