I've been trying to think of a way to lay this out for a while bc it is the #1 most common concern that I see expressed by people who are uncertain about antipsychiatry, like, by far, and it requires a sort of perspective reframe that can be hard for me to put words to. I've had like three ppl express some of these concerns in the last couple days alone, some of them good friends (hi Alex!) and I wanted to just make a public post about it, bc I think it trips a lot of people up.
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.
I get it! I also take meds. I also have to rely on the systems that hurt me. For me, being antipsych is about saying "it is fucked up that we are forced to rely on these harmful, hierarchical systems to access care. We deserve something humane. We deserve to be the ones in control of our own treatment. We deserve to have our autonomy valued and protected and prioritized." Psychiatry does not offer us these things, and its structure at the core ultimately prevents it from doing so, due to its hierarchical nature & inherent power imbalances. This is broadly applicable to many of our current systems, and saying so is not the same as making an argument that we should simply not have any systems at all.
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