#psychiatric abolition

[bioethicists]

it's very important to understand how a personality disorder diagnosis functions in the psychiatric system, even if you identify with the diagnosis or find it useful.

personality disorders on your medical record will be used to discredit anything you say or do. they indicate "don't bother listening to this person; apply treatment regardless of their wishes but also they're probably manipulating/attention-seeking so maybe don't bother treating them". needing support becomes attention-seeking. behaviors that would be treated + supported in someone without this diagnosis are ignored or treated as manipulative. providers are instructed to "withdraw warmth" (a real thing in the DBT provider's manual, btw) in response to self-injury or suicidal ideation.

if you have been dx'd with a personality disorder professionally, you likely understand this.

now, here's the important part: this is not an issue of 'stigma' against a politically neutral, pre-discursive True Disease which is being Unfairly Maligned. these diagnoses were formulated based on the idea that some patients cannot be trusted, that some patients seek care too much. they are applied to patient charts as a justification for withdrawing care or as a dismissal of someone "not getting better" fast enough. in the uk, they are often employed by the nhs to shame or problematize people who use large amounts of nhs resources, arguing that receiving a lot of care through the nhs is a negative behavior stemming from a disordered personality.

there are elements of personality disorders which resonate strongly with many people, including myself, but you need to be clear-eyed about the origins + functions of this diagnosis. as a whole, they were created + function as ways to discredit + mistreat noncompliant or "difficult" patients. 'reclaiming' them is not going to change how they function systematically- it is going to make it easier to engage in this systematic neglect by evoking 'ableism' or 'stigma!' when people question the utility or application of the diagnosis.

[npdmonoma]

"NPD as a diagnosis was created by bigoted psychiatrists who use the diagnosis to label and punish people they think are bad, and that needs to stop" and "some people find value in the diagnosis and use it as a framework to understand their experiences, and they shouldn't have the label taken away from them by force" are two ideas that can and should coexist

[dysmotility]

one of the scariest things about being a psych survivor is that you don’t know what to do anymore when you need help.

hospitals don’t feel safe. residential don’t feel safe. and yet i still have the same mental health issues that caused me to seek care in the first place, plus the additional trauma.

i’m having a hard time right now. i wish i could just “get help” but it’s not that simple anymore. these programs just chew you up and spit you out, and i don’t want to go through that again. but it’s terrifying ti be on your own.

[1000rh]

…psychiatry assumes that society does not cause distress in biologically normal people, who are considered biologically normal at least in part because they are economically productive. This assumption permits the conclusion that if a person is distressed to the point of unproductivity, it is because that person—not society—is abnormal. Thus, psychiatry’s commitment to biological essentialism not only masks the role of the constructed sociopolitical environment in creating distress but depoliticizes it by characterizing that allegedly irrational distress as induced by biological abnormality.

– Kiera Lyons, “The Neurodiversity Paradigm and Abolition of Psychiatric Incarceration” (2023)

[neuroticboyfriend]

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.

[psychabolition]

CPA - Campaign for Psychiatric Abolition

[hyperlexichypatia]

I'm not, generally speaking, a fan of punishment as a solution to social problems. Punishment is often overly harsh, ineffective as a deterrent, and doesn't solve the actual problem. The punitive mentality is more focused on making sure the "bad guys" "don't get away with it" than on actually solving the problem.

But I get a lot more worried when people talk about "alternatives to punishment", or when they support their proposed solutions because "it's not punishment."

Because what that means, in practice, is "I'm conceptualizing this form of coercive control as 'not punishment,' and therefore not subjecting it to the rigor, due process, or evidentiary standards of punishment."

The U.S. loves punishment. It's one of our favorite national pastimes. But we do have, both legally and culturally, some limitations on punishment, at least in theory. Punishment isn't supposed to be "cruel and unusual." It's not supposed to be inflicted without "due process of law." You're supposed to be convicted by a jury of your peers.

But if you call it "not punishment," none of that matters!

You can force people to register under a law that didn't exist when they committed their crimes, because it's "administrative," not punitive.

You can subject disabled people to shocks similar to a cattle prod -- which would surely be cruel and unusual punishment -- but it's okay, because it's not "punishment," it's a "treatment" called an "aversive" (that's therapist for "punishment").

You can have people locked up and forcibly drugged solely because they can't afford housing, but it's okay, because it's "help," not "punishment."

Police can kill people in cold blood -- judge, jury, and executioner -- and it's fine, because it's "self-defense," not "punishment," even if they argue after the fact that the victim "deserved it."

It's also a matter of cultural attitudes. If you said "The punishment for trespassing should be life in prison," or "The punishment for loitering should be permanent loss of the right to control one's body, money, or living space," or "The punishment for turnstile-jumping should be lifelong forced ingestion of drugs that numb basic cognitive functions," most people would think this was horrific, much too harsh a punishment for a relatively minor crime.

But if you change it to "Instead of jailing and punishing unhoused people with mental health issues, we should respond to their minor crimes by Getting Them Help, like institutionalization, conservatorship, or outpatient commitment," people now think this is completely reasonable.

Even being the victim of a crime can get someone not-punished far more severely than the perpetrators are "punished." People might serve jail time for financial fraud, but not usually a life sentence. Being the victim of financial fraud, however, can lead to a life sentence of institutionalization -- which fraud investigators have cited as a barrier to getting victims to report fraud. I personally know of multiple disabled young adults who were afraid to report being the victim of sexual assault or other kinds of assault because they knew that if they reported it, the perpetrator might or might not face some kind of punishment, but they would definitely face some type of "not-punishment" coercive control, like forced therapy, forced drugging, supervision, or having to leave school.

You want a society with less punishment? Me too. But only if you acknowledge that "punishment" includes all forms of coercive control. If you do something to someone against their will, if you restrict someone from their right to live as they choose, that's a punishment, regardless of whether you call it that.

[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.

[emohorseboy]

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

[sickness-stricken]

Cool fun fact: if you replace “therapist/psychiatrist” with “abusive partner” when a system bootlicker tries to discredit a psych abuse victim’s experiences it reveals them for the victim blaming pieces of shit they are

Go ahead! Try it at home!

[boof-chamber]

[devinsturk]

Copies of Mad Thought: a zine about being psychiatrized are available on my Etsy! It's a text-based, 12-page zine (or self-published booklet) of thoughts on my experience with psychiatric treatment. It also features a related ~400 word creative nonfiction essay I wrote. This zine measures roughly 8.5 by 5.5 inches and it is staple-bound. Thanks for checking out my work!

[boatcats]

My prayer for the people who've been hurt by systems of oppression and told we deserved it, the people for whom the records of that hurt have been used to deny us opportunities, haunting us like a scarlet letter, is that we find peace in knowing we are worthy and deeply loveable. May we create community and safety for each other.

[1000rh]

The political presumption that some people are broken and must be fixed is itself what traps many people in their sociopolitical distress. This is not to say that input from a medical professional is not valuable. Having an external perspective is a powerful way to help make meaning of an internal experience. Erroneous psychiatric labeling, however, is not a consequence of a biologically inevitable error rate of an imprecise science. Rather, the error that disproportionately burdens othered bodyminds arises only when, based on the normative presumption of abnormality-induced irrationality, expertise on an internal experience is removed from the only person who has access to it.

– Kiera Lyons, “The Neurodiversity Paradigm and Abolition of Psychiatric Incarceration” (2023)

[neuroticboyfriend]

without fail, every time i talk about the abuse of mentally ill children at the psych wards to explain these places should not exist and are not there to help people, there is always at least one person who reads it and is like "not all psych wards!!" like. i am going to [redacted]. the few places that are "better" are not the rule, they are the exception. and they BY NATURE still strip people of their autonomy - their freedom - due to the institutional and authoritative standards of "care." so given everything i already said, why the fuck do you still want that?

do you not see us as deserving control over our lives? do you think we're incapable of choice and need people to force their will onto us? do you think an observer can know more about a persons wants and needs than the patient themself? do you really think throwing a bunch of highly distressed people into a glorified cage, surrounded by professionals who decide how they eat, sleep, socialize, and do literally anything, is going to result in a healing experience? if so, why?

[hyperlexichypatia]

The DSM can and will be replaced by something with a better design.

I know.

They will come up with a new, "improved," reworded classification system for which people should be categorically disbelieved about their own subjectivity and which people should be subjected to coercive control "for their own good." And people will say it's "better" and "more scientific," and people will still be categorically disbelieved about their own subjectivity and subjected to coercive control.

And there will probably be several more rounds of rewording and reworking and Really For Real It's Better This Time, trying to narrow down and perfect exactly how people should be categorically disbelieved about their own subjectivity, and exactly which people should be subjected to coercive control "for their own good."

Until we eventually overthrow the entire system and abolish the entire premise.