#psych survivor

[dysmotility]

please please please don’t forget to include intellectual disability, psychosis / schizospec disorders, level 2-3 autistics, folks w dissociative disorders, and others with “severe mental illness” from ur conversations about mad liberation.

these are some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised mad people, and we need to give them a voice.

these are the places where liberation is needed the most

[sickness-stricken]

This is how it feels to be psych critical in 2025 except your inbox gets flooded with “well just because the mask didn’t help you doesn’t mean it won’t help anyone, you want people who are helped by the mask to DIE?????”

[eepyfaggoth]

want to share the language " i have had multiple psychiatric hospitalizations and i did not find them helpful" in case it helps anyone

[lilies-in-the-attic]

I distinctly remember in one of her old Steven Universe videos (pre garbage I think) she talked at length about how much she hated Amethyst and how poorly written her depression was.

She said something like "If you're depressed then get on anti-depressants or fuck off" and even as a kid who was a fan of hers I thought it was a callous and cruel thing to say. A lot of people, children in SU's audience especially, don't have access to anti-depressants, and Lily as a leftist should be quite aware of that

It’s extra funny now that Lily is trying to be this psych critical movement leader because the person that introduced me to her in the first place said that Lily’s constant dismissal of characters’s mental issues with “shut up and take your meds” was her first exposure to the normalization of treating mentally ill people like patients before treating them like people with agency

[stuffieautism]

going through a whole realization right now that the psychiatric system was never trying to actually help me, the treatment for my psychosis and trauma caused me years of harm (and more trauma) without ever solving the issue, every time i spoke up that something was hurting i was shamed and blamed until i internalized it and my reaction to ever being upset or unproductive or uncomfortable or angry or in pain was to feel deep and horrible shame, and the reason i took so long to get better is because the therapy was not doing anything to help me accept myself (i did it on my own) and what actually helped was getting the support i needed for my autism and disability that wasn’t trying to make me “better” but was allowing me to be the person i wanted to be and unlearning the shame that i was taught my entire life, and in summary capitalism is evil i’m going to go play animal crossing and cuddle my stuffed animals

[catboys4recovery]

"grippy sock vacation" "omw to the loony bin" "haha i need a lobotomy" SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!! SHUT! THE! FUCK! UP! IF YOU'VE NEVER BEEN FORCED INTO THE HELL THAT IS A PSYCHIATRIC WARD THEN FUCKING QUIT MAKING FUN OF US AND OUR PAIN!!! THAT SHIT IS TRAUMATIZING! IT'S WORSE THAN PRISON! DISABLED PEOPLE HAVING OUR AUTONOMY AND IDENTITY STRIPPED FROM US IS NOT A GOOD SUBJECT FOR YOUR UWU DARK HUMOR YOU ABLEIST SHIT

[emohorseboy]

Shelving books at my new job and reacted to this like a vampire next to a stack of bibles

[cyberabbit]

being hammered with psych violence is great, because every single time you express any emotion ever it's a Symptom™ and you never are allowed to have any genuine expression ever again.

[soft-jinx]

not that people who've been to the ward are immune from being pro-psych, but if you've never been to a psych ward*, i sincerely don't want to hear about how psychiatry/psychology is good because you've had such a good experience with X provider, or X medication saved your life. *i also don't want to hear about how the forced treatment was what you needed or how the ward you went to let you have your cellphone etc. etc. i genuinely do not want to hear it.

like. the first hospitalization traumatized me so bad, i became dangerously delusional, was re-hospitalized, and sent to state. when they transferred me, i was strapped down into a gurney at all points on my body, *head and neck included*, and loaded onto an ambulance. my parents lost most of their parental rights; i was a ward of the state and had near zero rights. when i got there, they made me choose if, "if necessary," if i wanted to be wrangled down and forcibly injected with a sedative... or wrangled down and locked in a padded room all by myself (but at least i had a choice, right?). i signed consents and paperwork that i did not fucking understand. then i was told i'd be locked inside for 2 straight weeks (which yes, they followed through with). the psych ward was remote, nothing but barbed fences and trees around us. cant even see the sun through the heavily tinted windows. that was the *start* of the stay. i'm sure you can imagine nothing good came after.

so like. if you walk out of a place like that thinking it was good for you, then i can only imagine how traumatized you are and i hope you heal someday. but if you've never faced the destruction of your autonomy like that and go around being like "oh this is good actually" then shut the ever living fuck up.

[sickness-stricken]

“You don’t get a good grade for being cooperative in therapy!” No but the bad grade is being forcefully institutionalized I fear

[yellowyarn]

Sometimes i wonder what the people at the psychiatric hospital did with the cords from my pants. i wonder what they do with all the tings they take from us. do they just get thrown away like they are nothing? i cried over losing the cords from my favorite frog pajamas i wonder if the nurses knew i would cry about that.

[lilies-in-the-attic]

“People only care about Lily because of her takes on Steven Universe!!”

Meanwhile, at one of my group ward recovery sessions…

Me: “So I found this video by someone called… Lily Orchard? Her friend was basically telling people to check themselves into the ward, like what the fuck?”

One of the other people there:

[schizophrenicnatsuo]

Being a psych survivor is just a constant parade of people refusing to respect you, refusing to see your abuse as real, claiming your abuse is unimportant because talking about it might make some people not want to take meds or whatever, prioritizing (presumably) sane doctors' feelings over your safety, telling you that you're not really mentally ill or that you don't really understand how bad mental illness can be, justifying violence against you, and attacking you if you do so much as point out the reality that psychiatric abuse exists

[trans-axolotl]

Image description: [ a photo of the Psych Survivor zine in a bush of ivy. The cover is a collage made out of medical records, vintage flower drawings, and magazine letters spelling “psych survivor zine".]

Hello everyone! I am so thrilled to announce the launch of the psych survivor zine, now available to download on www.psychsurvivorarchive.com.

A little bit about this project:

The Psych Survivor Archive is an abolitionist organization deeply invested in mad liberation and cross-movement organizing.

We host two projects: the Psych Survivor Zine and the Digital Story Archive. The Psych Survivor Zine celebrates Mad art in volumes released twice a year, with thematic prompts for each edition. The Digital Story Archive is a more informal forum for psych survivors to write about our lives and share as much as we want, when we want, how we want. 

Through this archive, I hope to create a platform where psych survivors are believed and the psych system is held accountable for the ways it has harmed us. Our pain, resistance, knowledge, and grief are worth listening to, and I offer up this archive as a communal method of bearing witness. 

This space is for the imperfect crazy person, the noncompliant patient, those of us who trash our rooms in the psych ward and yell to ourselves on the street. This space is for our comrades still incarcerated in all kinds of institutions and prisons. This space is for anyone who has been harmed by the psychiatric system and wants to rage about it–and this space is for anyone who doesn’t have the words to talk about it. 

This space is for you.

You can download a pdf and an image described pdf for free on the website, or order a physical copy! This zine is incredible-featuring artwork by 13 different Mad artists, the 55 page zine includes collages, poems, harm reduction toolkits, and more!!

Artists include @kihnindewa, @bioethicists, @gothhabiba and @librarycards, among many more!

This project has been really vulnerable and cathartic with me, and I am so excited to share it with you. Feel free to explore the website, submit your story, and check out our resource guide.

[cthulhu-cat]

Vent Post:

When I was suicidal, I called a hotline:

I was picked up by the police.

One of the officers told me, "You can either come with us or we can drag you there."

I was handcuffed and was driven to the hospital.

Put into a "quiet room" which was the most traumatic experience of my life.

I was given the "choice" of being committed involuntarily or signing a consent form for being "voluntarily" committed.

Was told it was my decision, even though it was coercion.

I felt humiliated being wheeled around on a gurney or wheelchair.

Was put in an unfamiliar environment with no privacy and little to no control over my life.

I fell asleep so they made plans for follow-up treatment without me, the singular thing I could really control in that environment.

Was chemically restrained, uninformed, and only realized it years later (which was recently).

This is unsurprising, since I called a hotline, but I had no idea this would happen. I just had no one else to talk to.

It has been more than three years and it haunts me every single day.

I get flashbacks - pervasive and persistent memories of the traumatic experience and/or re-feeling what I felt during the experience. I get nightmares.

I am so afraid of going back that I cannot trust mental health workers. I do not call hotlines. I do not have a support system anymore.

Going back is my greatest fear, my worst nightmare, and is my personal hell.

I am more suicidal after the experience than before.

[emohorseboy]

If one more person/post tells me to take my meds i am going to take all of them