Saturday, May 18, 2013

What's the awareness ribbon for psychiatric abuse?

 
And I don't just mean the findings of the Victorian Mental Illness Awareness Council (VMIAC) revealing '45 per cent of women in the state's psychiatric hospitals have been sexually assaulted in their care.'
 
I mean what Jaana Satu Castella said at a recent talk, that the world will look back on the use of neuroleptics, in the same way people now find the idea of lobotomies horrific.
Jaana works with Open Dialogue techniques in Denmark and Finland. It makes sense to have conversation. It makes sense to understand, to validate and to listen. Humans are not fruit-flies (although David Anderson may think some humans are). And a crisis is often a response to loss, to alienation, to pressure, to change… That is not something that can be healed easily without the cooperation of society. It is so important to be aware of abuse. It is so important never to deny it. Because if your society denies your abuse, then they have aided and abetted the abuse and then not only obstructed justice but concealed facts and that makes  society an Accessory After the Fact. And when that all still remains hidden with no public awareness happening, that makes victims really, really angry.
Yes, I live in Australia, this isn't the place where children are sold off and married, or people are forced to work 2 days non-stop in factories... No, but it is a place where psychiatry abuses ritually, without a qualm.
If everyone else in the world thought neuroleptics were a good treatment for a person in crisis, who'd experienced significant loss, like I had when I was forced to take high doses of these drugs, it still wouldn't be okay. If everyone in the world said, yes neuroleptics really do work and they don't harm at all, it still wouldn't be okay to force them on people. If the world said things like that, which they don't, what happened to me would still not be okay. Psychiatrists don't take into account allergies to their 'medications' unless you are dying from them. They ignore patient discomforts with their treatments. They say like things like, 'you'll get used to it.' That, is really, really bad thinking. But it wasn't just one psychiatrist that said that to me, it was many, many psychiatrists who told me that. So, I can only conclude that they're trained to tell people to get used to things they're allergic to.
Ridiculous that psychiatrists can get away with this abuse, isn't it?
So, I suggest we stop psychiatric abuse. Be aware of what is happening in your country. Do not excuse it. Do not justify it. We are not fruit-flies, we can be communicated with.
And ask yourself... why after 202 years of psychiatric abuse, horrific torturous horrible things that have happen to people, who are not fruit-flies, or criminals, horrific things like lobotomies only last century and chemical and electro-shock lobotomies still happening... yet, psychiatric abuse does not have a ribbon for awareness. Why?
Where, where's our ribbon?
 
 
 

2 comments:

  1. A black ribbon?
    More good stuff!
    (:þ)

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  2. The black ribbon generally has the meaning of mourning for others. It is also used for melanoma awareness. There is a mint green ribbon that sometimes is about awareness and of all kinds of abuse. I would like there to be a ribbon that puts the spot-light specifically on psychiatric abuse. Psychiatric abuse is so wide-spread and is a government aided abuse. It is also a 'medically' justified abuse and many of the popular ribbons are in aid of funding medical research, so I'm guessing that's why an awareness ribbon for psychiatric doesn't seem to exist.

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