Tina Minkowitz, JD - Occupy the APA - October 2012

BEINGS

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Existing denial

by Initially NO

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Unshushable

Role of Litigation in a Strategic Approach to Mental Health System Change

Excuse for crimes committed

Excuse for that,

That abuse you heaped on me,

Then wheedled empathy

From those who say, I’m the same

As you, because of a diagnosis

From the ugly thug muggery psychiatry.

Please remember to have some sense

Next time you try to cut down

How I defend myself

Against those who put victims in

The same basket as their perpetrators,

And use those who commit crimes,

That want psychiatric excuses, as a reason,

To perpetrate crimes against the innocent,

Who may well be, only babies.

Excuse me social worker, who gets stalked

And excuses the man, saying ‘he can’t help it,

It’s his mental illness.’

Then forgets to protect and validate

People who have been similarly violated,

But also have that label ‘mental illness’

Slapped on them because they were

Driven into crisis by such abusers.

Excuse me, it’s not okay.

Not okay to advocate for psychiatric abuse

Perpetrated against those who

Are victims of crime, not okay to lump

People in the same basket as perpetrators,

Force them to become unwilling drug addicts,

By holding them down and injecting them,

As if violating victims of crime

Is the ‘least restrictive measure’

For a person who is not violent,

As if… you, as a member of society

Has an excuse for excusing psychiatrists

From committing these crimes,

As if… you, as a member of society

Has an excuse for accusing victims of crime

Of being perpetrators, when they’re not,

Never have been and never will be.

If you like drugs, if you enjoy being violated,

You are not someone who should be

Telling us what to say and think.

Masochism is one thing, sadism is another.

Stop violating people who have had enough

Violence in their life through your acceptance,

Excuses, for psychiatry’s wide-spread abuses.

If you’ve committed crime and think you can

Use that, as a means of bullying those

Trying to stop crimes happening,

So you can have an excuse, to lesson your guilt,

Then, surely, you must realise how wrong

That seems to me.

Committing violence against people

Who have not committed crimes,

Such as psychiatry does on a regular basis,

Is an unprovoked attack. Get with it,

Stop excusing it and never try to tell me,

That ‘some people like it though’.

Because I know people who are so scared,

So brain-washed, they don’t want

To ever criticise, because they’ve learnt that

When they criticise psychiatry, they get

Worse violations than they’re already suffering.

No excuses for psychiatry anymore,

If you don’t get with it, and stop the violations,

Then, either you’re terrified,

Or you’ve bought some stupid, ugly lies

And are accusing victims of being criminals.

You lot, who give psychiatry excuses,

You sicken me. Stop validating abusers.

It’s about decency

It’s about decency, it’s about awareness of the horror that happened, is happening, won’t stop happening until people do something.

Don’t be an a-hole and deny that the psychiatric regime is abuse, is torture to those who have to suffer it and that this must be stopped. Wake up out of your precious little dream that medicine is ‘good’ and ‘healthy’ and that people suffering trauma reactions to various awful things that have happened in their life, are the ones who are ‘sick.’

If you feel sick in the stomach after you see a puppy kicked, you’re not ‘sick’, you’re responding naturally. If someone then says you’re demented for feeling that way, you don’t have validation for your gut reaction to an ugly circumstance.

Think about that next time you utter the term ‘psychosomatic’ and ‘schizophrenia’ and ‘mental illness’. Think about empathy and how that works on the body and how people do react to awful circumstances. Think about things that are repeated traumas that are denied validation. Attempting to speak about such things, after years of being disallowed communication of ‘embarrassing’ violence against you, that accused you of being in the wrong.

Yes, I understand you don’t want to feel sick in the stomach for all the people in Australia that have been abused by psychiatry and are currently being abused, but you might have to, to connect with your authentic empathic self again, after years of denying the truth for fear of being ostracised. To go down a more ‘friendly street’ in life.

In a recent comment I made about the mental-illnessing of Silvia Plath, the following dialogue happened:

Initially NO (December 10, 2013): Until 1973, you had a 'mental illness' if you were homosexual and were treated with the same 'medication' that you wouldn't give to a Zoo animal regularly without damaging your exhibit. Strange that J--- thinks this 'medication' is healthy. Haven't read enough J---, that's your problem. If you don't read, or at least watch some vids by psych survivors your writing will be tossed off the shelf along with Helen Garner's 'Bach's Children's Hour' (which incited hate crimes against children with learning difficulties). If your writing incites further torture of people in crisis, then I'd put you in the same category in a future where such torture is illegal to forcefully conduct. Psychiatrists don't talk J---, they're doctors. Doctors have very bad people skills and Plath wrote about how bad they were at talking, in her time. And, for your info A--- here's a recent Judge's finding: http://m.stuff.co.nz/national/health/9490650/ACC-to-rethink-abuse-link

J---e’s response was to flag my commentary and delete it, then send me a personal message, blocking my ability to reply; she didn’t want to feel sick about the support she’d given the psychiatric regime of terror already: ‘Please don't post your opinions, slander on my page. You know nothing about me and come across as angry and vindictive. You might be more effective by promoting your views in a less aggressive way or working with people who need a willing ear. Think about how you respond as a feeling person when confronted with anger, vitriole, slander and hatred. Listening quietly, patiently without judgement is a rare skill indeed.’

Quite apart from an ‘award winning’ writer not knowing how to spell, I really don’t think backwater, out of date prejudice should be given accolades.

Certainly not a poet I’d want to book.

J--- also had an argument that psychiatric abuse helped stop the suicide rate, and used her dead friend as evidence that psychiatry and mental-illnessing was valid.

‘Australia spent over $6.3 billion on mental health-related services in 2009–10… We spent all this money, and the more we spent the more our suicide rates increased.  More people died – alone and in anguish – by their own hands.  More families were destroyed and left to live with unimaginable pain and grief.  Less money was available to address the real causes of emotional distress and suicide.’

Psychiatric interventions make the suicide rate worse, not better

http://www.madinamerica.com/2014/01/37639/

Let’s walk down a more friendly street and stop the denial, if the people being harmed make you feel sick in the stomach, it’s because you have empathy and don’t want the abuse to continue. Do not misdirect your anger about this abuse at the people suffering because they’re an easier target of blame than the powers of psychiatry. Think of your own healthy conscience in years to come.

And, if you’re a writer, READ something more than pickled prejudice, or your writing will go out of date as quickly as cheese.

Please sign this petition to stop psychiatric abuse in Australia: http://www.outrageinaustralia.com

The symbolic language

From volume 4 of the BEINGS book series
 (enlarged versions of these pages, in the book, and also on the Beings books facebook page)

 

 

When an artist draws distress and the interpreters fail to see…

We don't want distressed young people strapped down on stretchers/ beds while psychiatrists get paid to tell nurses to stick pricks in the young person. We don't want that happening to adults either. But it happens all the time.

It's strange that the public doesn't recognise strapping a person down in a stretcher,  forced drugging and electrocution as abuse, when it's done by a psychiatrist's assistants.

That even though psychiatric abuse occurs so more often than other forms of ‘human trafficking’, it is not even considered as the cause of a distressed state. Such denial of reality the world has. That denial means a person tries other symbols to communicate the suffering that is denied. These symbols get diagnosed, instead of understood. A person's communication then is really violated. Literally gagged? Well, they don't tend to use literal gags, the white rag around the mouth killed too many and looked obviously violent.

It's strange that Australia still doesn't recognise that forced drugging is a horrific crime, accept in their signing of the UN CRPD ratification. Recognise if you are in the medical profession and ever do forcefully drug a person, you can be taken to court and if you are not convicted in Australian courts, you will be in the International Court. Psychiatric abuse is not okay, it never was.

the United Nation's CRPD ratification Australia has recently signed:

'Article 14 - Liberty and security of the person

1. States Parties shall ensure that persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others:

(a) Enjoy the right to liberty and security of person;

(b) Are not deprived of their liberty unlawfully or arbitrarily, and that any deprivation of liberty is in conformity with the law, and that the existence of a disability shall in no case justify a deprivation of liberty.

2. States Parties shall ensure that if persons with disabilities are deprived of their liberty through any process, they are, on an equal basis with others, entitled to guarantees in accordance with international human rights law and shall be treated in compliance with the objectives and principles of this Convention, including by provision of reasonable accommodation.

 

Article 15 - Freedom from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment

1. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his or her free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.

2. States Parties shall take all effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, from being subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.'

http://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CRPD/Pages/ConventionRightsPersonsWithDisabilities.aspx

If you can't see how human rights can occur, try doodling for a bit to let the automatic part of your mind show you possibility that social restraints deny you... cities were built this way.