Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

People will ask me: how can I be antipsychiatry when I rely on the psychiatric system to obtain care? How can I oppose something on which I rely to stay alive? Which I think is really understandable, given the somewhat misleading name of the movement (and there's several names for it already, none of which really are illuminating to people outside those circles, which I think is a big communication problem. But I digress.)

When I say I am advocating for the abolition of psychiatry, I'm not saying I want to abolish access to care. What I am saying is that I want to abolish the institution of psychiatry as the gatekeeper of that care. Currently that's the only way you can access the care you need, and that's a huge part of the problem! It's like... of course it would be incoherent to say "you can't be anticapitalist if you rely on corporations to survive," because of course the system is designed so that we must rely on it.

So what I am advocating for is the replacement of psychiatry as the sole avenue of care with other models, models which prioritize autonomy and remove hierarchy and coercive control. Peer respite in place of involuntary institutionalization, informed consent models of acquiring medications rather than forcing people to go through medical gatekeepers who hold enormous power over them and largely do not see them as real people, etc. There are many, many forms that proposed alternative ways to access care can take.