squad

It’s ironic that the label of ‘madness’ itself causes the same kind of powerlessness, the same abusive wrenching-away of choice and freedom and autonomy, the same kind of shame and humiliation, that the original trauma did. As a child, no one took me seriously or believed me, listened to what I wanted, respected my body, treated me as if what I felt mattered. Being a ‘psychiatric patient’ is rarely any different. But what is more than ironic—what in reality is a tragic human rights atrocity—is that the system of care called psychiatry in this country and much of the Western world is based upon ‘treatment’ for severe trauma which replicates the dynamics of that original abuse. Do we really, as a nation, think that in order to ‘get better,’ in order to recover from the distress of decades of abuse, we have to be treated as if we have no rights?—the right to be believed and listened to, the right to be in control of our life and our body? Should we be treated as if we have no value or worth? Why is it that to treat the effects of powerlessness, which is the core of so much trauma and abuse, psychiatry thinks that we should be powerless?