#psychiatric abuse
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.
i-do-stupid-things-because-i-can:
Hey, so I’m super excited that Dracula Daily is a thing, but I feel like I should warn people that one of the main characters in the novel is a guy that runs a lunatic asylum, and his scenes might be kinda hard to read for anyone who’s been through psychiatric abuse.
I would appreciate it if people reblogged this post and didn’t tag it with spoilers or put trigger warnings on it, since it’s important that this warning is seen by the people who need to see it. Thanks!
Edit: A lot of people are saying this guy shows up in August. This is not true. His first entry is on May 25th, and he’s a pretty big part of the book from then on. His name is Dr. Seward.
is there a good study somewhere on how eager colleges are to forcibly institutionalize people for suicidal ideation
- if they do not like that you research your disorder/s and treatment/s
- if they do not explain the reason/s behind certain treatment/medication that they are prescribing you
- if they are reluctant/refuse to let you access your medical records
- if their first response to symptoms is medication without any talk therapy
- if they say they “don’t believe in therapy”
- if they say they “don’t believe in medication”
- if they insist on seeing your parent/legal guardian without you being present
- if they tell you that there are no other treatment available if you complain about your current treatment/medication not working/having unmanageable side effects
- if they diagnose you without explaining how they came to that diagnosis, what it entails, and which treatments you have at your disposal
- if they fall asleep during a session (you’re laughing but it happened, several times, and i’m not boring)
- if they assure you that you cannot have [insert disorder here] because you are too young/wealthy/poor/fat/skinny/smiling/old/whatever bs (the only valid reasons for not having a disorder is if you do not meet the minimum criteria for it, age/body/ethnicity/etc are not criteria)
- if they tell you that you obviously do not want/are not ready to get help (that’s a super abusive technique, would only see this as a valid comment to make if you are pressured into seeing them by someone who has authority over you)
- if they insist on you continuing to take a medication despite the side effects very negatively affecting you (for example: if you are recovering from an ED and you get the “gaining weight” side effect and that is very triggering to you)
- if they are flippant about/disregard your feelings
i’m probably forgetting a lot. feel free to add.
EDIT: I made a blog to vent about bad mental health practitioners @shrinksfromhell. Check it out and submit your stories!You can also apply most of these to standard physicians. Useful list, folks.
These people are supposed to be providing you with a service. If they’re doing a terrible job, it’s time to “fire” them and find someone new.
more things:
-they tell you that they do not “believe in diagnosis” when you bring it up as a goal for your recovery.
-they refuse to take into account a previous mental health professional’s diagnosis/reports or get in contact with them
-they threaten you when you try to keep details private that you are either unready to share or are afraid of the repurcussions of sharing
ie. a) you: “i was traumatized but don’t feel comfortable sharing the details right now/can’t talk about it without getting really upset/will have flashbacks or dissociate if i talk about it.”
them: “well if you don’t want to tell me then we can’t work together”
or
b) you: “i’m self harming and wanted to tell you because i want to be honest with you, but i know i am not in danger of dying and do not plan to kill myself/do not want to die”
them: “how are you self harming?”
you: “i do not want to share how i’m self harming because i am scared of being forcibly hospitalized, but i know that i am not in danger of dying and do not want to die”
them: “well if you think it’s so bad you can’t tell me, then you obviously need to be in the hospital”
-tells you that your diagnosis is too rare/serious, and they will need to see you express symptoms in person before they will believe you or treat you for it
(bonus points if it’s a previous professional diagnosis from that psychologist they refuse to contact, double bonus points if you also have an extensive personal acccount of symptoms going back several years ad several writeups for mh professionals but they refuse to look at it)
okay well that got a little. personally charged. these are all things that have happened or are personally happening to me right now and i’m so. fucking. tired.
my gf: you know things are bad when mac decides a therapist would help
made the earliest appointment they had which is monday, someone be proud of me lol. let’s hope she doesn’t activate any of my counseling pain points, which are numerous
i feel like a lot of people kinda don’t realise bodily autonomy also must include the right to harm yourself. yeah genuinely. and it makes no difference whether that harm is likely or unlikely, objectively real or ideologically imagined. if you want the government to define what it’ll allow you to do with your own body and enforce what you cannot “for your own good” you are 1) basically begging to live in a police state 2) a huge idiot because it will inevitably bite you in the ass when something you do gets defined as harmful
One of us realized yesterday that we’ve been out of our anti-depressants for days and none of us knew it or remembered to refill it. It explains why we had an emotional breakdown a few days ago, why we came as close as we did to suicide, why we felt like self-harming for the first time in years, and why everything has been so hard in general. Now Alan refuses to leave front until we get back on our meds because of how bad it’s gotten. Its scary to see him on alert like this.
I hate having to go to pharmacies i hate having to go see a counselor i hate knowing my freedom could be taken away at any time for wrongthink (i.e. for suicidal thoughts/behaviors) and that i feel so fucking isolated in my troubles. I fucking hate sanism and the impossible goals abled people put on disabled people.
I was gonna try to put a positive spin on this, but fuck that. I cant even get my& fuckin meds until monday because my psychiatrist is out and my alternatives for getting an emergency supply are going on an endless game of phone tag with my pharmacist and my clinic’s after hours’ line or voluntarily admitting myself into a mental hospital that’s known for it’s cases of sexual abuse against patients.
Fuck all of that. Fuck the USA and fuck the psychiatric industrial complex.
Blurry (⭐Hailey? & Alan? & ??????)
