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This is not about being against therapy, against medicine, but rather it is a critique of psychoanalysis as part of a larger philosophy of anti-psychiatry, of the means by which subjects of psychoanalysis are understood. To arrive at the point where one finds the neurotic lying on the couch, one must create an entire series of relations, of categories that are implicitly accepted: the space of the analyst’s office as a sort of machine, the machines of analysis in place within the discourses of psychoanalytic treatment, the means by which these machines have themselves been produced by acts of producing-production in the asylum, the academies of psychoanalytic thought, how these are met with a subject who is already known to be neurotic before they even lie on the couch, the continual process of going back and back and back until, aha! There is the Oedipal signification, the act of creating an analysis of subjectivity that relies on finding a point at which neurosis, Oedipal trauma, can be imparted as a means of controlling and reducing subjectivity down to a singular structure of acquaintance.

Oedipal trauma relies not only on the repetition, the creation of acceptable subjectivities of traumatized experience, but also of a continual reference back to it, the creation of it as a kind of singularity of traumatic structure. These are the means by which psychoanalysis finds itself coupled to structures of capitalist exchange: by providing a continually acceptable, hierarchical, arboreal understanding of trauma that can be linked to capitalist understandings of the body, of trauma and traumatic experience, the same structures of retraumatization may be maintained and repeated.

The contrasting image, the schizophrenic on the walk, requires an entirely different model of experience, of how meaning is made, of what meaning constitutes, how experience and identity is formed under capitalist violence, how subjects relate to one another, how the hierarchical structures of the family, of bodies of despotic power, of capitalist embodiment are all called upon and necessary to the kinds of trauma that are noted as existing in the neurotic individual in the isolated environment of the psychiatric environment, the apparatus of psychoanalytic critique.

The schizophrenic subject is differentiated from the neurotic one, and neither is an individual, a singular person, a person who has been diagnosed as such. to ignore the structural importance of a diagnostic term, of how that creates an assumed subjectivity, how this can be expanded into looking at late capitalism, postmodernity, and other structures such as the consolidating experiences of autism and ADHD in a hyperconsumerist hyperreal sort of global capitalist body, the means by which schizoanalysis allows us to understand trauma as decentralized, denatured, as consolidated in the Oedipal structuring of the family but as reinforced outside of it, relying upon a non-hierarchical network of reinforcement that creates assemblages of subjectivity, of relation, of possibility of relating. 

Western psychiatry is not a perfect institution. While it does benefit some people, it has a lot of systemic problems embedded within it. Diagnoses often uphold social norms, which isn't always a good thing- consider how racism, sexism, etc. interact with the mental health system, as well as how Western psychiatry is often used as justification to strip basic rights from people because they don't fit those norms well enough.

It's one thing to seek support and receive what you were looking for. Great. I'm glad that you had a good experience. It's another issue entirely when "support" is pushed at the cost of someone's autonomy, independence, or freedom- when support is given like a threat, not an aid.

The concept of mental health is neither absolute nor universal. One person's healthy life is another's living nightmare. Applying your ideas of health to someone else may not actually help them.

You do not have the right to decide for someone else whether their experiences are beneficial for them. You have the right to negotiate a different way of interacting with those experiences if needed (or even to leave someone over it), but that's not the same as deciding that actually, someone is Very Sick and needs to be medicated or sent to therapy whether they want it or not.

Have whatever opinion you want about someone else's mental health, but remember that it's your opinion based on your own life experiences and frameworks, not objective reality. They may see their own experiences very differently from you.

they dont tell you that the tti becomes ingrained in your brain. that everywhere you look you will see someone that looks like a friend, an enemy, a staff. you will hear a story, or read a fiction book not even set in the tti, and go "that could've happened there" or even "that is exactly what happened there".

my needs are higher than it is socially appropriate to ask someone to meet when you dont know them well -> i don't know the people running any given organization or program or class at all; i am a stranger to them -> asking for what i need is punished bc it is seen as rude, bossy, or entitled -> this is so aversive to me that i simply stop trying to participate in anything.

like

this is the way I would personally phrase it: my experiences, feelings, and reactions are a product of many factors, such as my environment, the options that are available to me, the choices i've made within those options, the way people have treated me or I've seen them treat others... whether or to what degree anything innate influences this process, such as anything hormonal or anatomical in my brain, is of little importance to me.

for me it's helped to contextualize my obsessions and compulsions as responses to very real material forces, when diagnoses seek to present them as irrational aberrations resulting from individual pathology. obsessing over food and weight, for example, is encouraged and rewarded in society. when i deprive myself of sleep to perform the same actions over and over, i am responding to painful situations by performing an action that calms me down and distracts me; the fact I have to get up early for work is not harm I am doing to myself! when i start being convinced that signals are being sent to me by people attempting to kill me and those around me, I am expressing a very real fear linked to current situations and power structures. when i get stuck asking myself the same thing for hours on end, even when this causes me emotional distress, i am frustrated by there not being a satisfying answer available to me. i don't mean this in a psychoanalytic "it is imperative to look inwards and find the cause of every emotion" way; i don't believe that introspection is a moral mandate or universally leads to positive results, but you were asking for causes, and so I am addressing this specifically. (i also wrote about the question of will and the characterization of compulsions as something you are "powerless" over here and in this tag).

i'm not sure how to fully articulate the feeling that at least gave me (there are so many feelings honestly. there are so so many ways having that happen to you fucks you up. this post is really only about one of them but there are so many more) but it sure as hell does not make people less suicidal. there are better ways to support your friends i promise

The United Nations recognises it as a form of torture.

It increases suicide risk by 191 times.

It increases the risk of dying from heart disease and stroke by 3.5 times (no shit on that one, forcing extremely high doses of heavy drugs on someone without even titrating it does that)

45% of patients in psych wards have experienced sexual violence during an admission.

there is NO non-ableist way to insult someone's intelligence.