Sane Privilege

I used to have panic attacks. I thought I was going to die. Between panic attacks, I was afraid to sleep or shower or do anything else by myself. What if I started having one? What if I actually died?

I never chose for them to happen. I never thought they would end.

But I don't have them anymore. I have recovered from panic attacks. I started getting much better when I stopped taking my prescribed Xanax. Not instantly—the withdrawal was hell—but as the months went by. My doctor told me during withdrawal that an "underlying anxiety disorder" was coming back. The doctor said that, because I was suffering so much after quitting Xanax, clearly I needed to go back on it.

That's saneism. Saneism means questioning another person's subjective experience because it doesn't match the psychiatric paradigm. Saneism means ignoring social factors and treating another person as if chronic distress signifies a defective brain.

To me, "recovery" doesn't mean what saneists use it to mean. "Recovery" doesn't mean "accepting I have a brain disease" and resigning myself to lifelong "medical treatment" for it. It means not having panic attacks anymore.

For some people, mental illness can last a lifetime. To you, "recovery" might mean "managing symptoms with medication." It might mean getting therapy. You might think of it as a spiritual or holistic or social process.

What bothers me is the saneist idea that only medical (drug) treatment works for mental illness. What bothers me is the notion that anyone who's been diagnosed with a mental illness is sick for life.

I want to start by writing about Shit E. Fuller Torrey says. Because he is disgustingly saneist but he's really just saying things that "experts" imply all the time about mental illness:

"People with mental illnesses who are being treated are not more dangerous than the general population," said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center and an authority on the topic. "But evidence has become overwhelming that untreated severe mental illnesses are a significant contributor to violent acts, including homicides and a large percentage of rampage murders." (source)

Watch out, normates—the untreated crazies are coming to kill you unless you give doctors like Torrey the power to force them to get treatment.

Think about who's saying this: Torrey is a practicing psychiatrist and the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which believes in coercive psychiatric treatment. He's an establishment voice, and his position is that treatment decisions shouldn't be made by the people getting treated. They have defective brains! They're violent!

Instead, treatment should be controlled by doctors like Torrey embedded in a paternalistic, racist, profiteering system. Nevermind that antipsychotics and other drugs may actually make mental illness worse over the long term. (Even NAMI is acknowledging this possibility.)

Torrey gets quoted any time someone does something horrendous that can be blamed on mental illness. I want to ask him, "What about all the crimes committed by neuronormative people? What about the epidemic of violence committed against people with mental illnesses? What about the stigma and ostracism and abuse that so many people suffer because of your bullshit?"