#psychiatric abuse cw
like i think that psych wards are fundamentally violent because the process of incarceration is fundamentally violent. even if it’s just for a few days, a few weeks, a month–it is still violent to be locked up, deprived of community, and legally unable to say no to what happens to you in there. and in the United States, I think the voluntary/involuntary designations are really useless, because how can there be meaningful consent if you can consent to go in but can’t consent to leave? how can there really be meaningful consent when your options are “you decide to go to the psych ward or we force you to go to the psych ward.” And if you do go in voluntarily, the threat of involuntary commitment is always there and is often weaponized by doctors to get you to do what you want. I cannot count the amount of times me and fellow patients were told that if we didn’t agree to something, they’d just go to court and make us do it anyway.
i see people talking sometimes, about how not all psych wards are bad. when they say that they mean that not all psych wards are abusive, use solitary confinement, physical restraints, drugging without consent, or use strip searchs. But I really think people need to understand that it is not just those horrifically abusive things that make a psych ward violent; the whole fucking practice of incarceration makes a psych ward violent in a very real sense.
