What does Mental Health, Psychiatry, and the Ouija Board have in Common? Dan Nelson, author of Ouija Board and the Skeptic (Mad In America) who holds a BA in Philosophy, MA in Human Resources and Industrial Relations. Through twenty years of working in management systems, he knew that systems were designed to output a particular product or service and that that system was the cause of any and all undesirable results the system outputs. In this article, he states that the mental health systems are responsible for their lack of ability to assist some who live with mental health challenges. Dan writes, “Psychiatry's practices are so entrenched, its methods so accepted, that skeptics and outsiders are often dismissed as uninformed or unqualified simply because they haven’t undergone the same training that instills confidence in its frameworks. But skepticism, especially from those with lived experience, isn’t just valid—it’s necessary. It forces us to question whether our tools and methods truly serve those they claim to help.” We respond to our lives, our challenges, our struggles. Too often mental health issues are a normal and nature response to trauma. As Dan points out if the psych industry isn’t looking at the systems around their clients and changing those systems, and instead they medicate and work with the client to be able to tolerate the difficulties they are dealing with – they aren’t solving the morning. They are applying a band aid. A good example of this is how our systems are designed to pathologize the victim is schoolyard bullying. Too often the victim is expected to learn to develop new skills to deal with the bully. Often they must be extricated from the school to be protected. The bully, too often, is not confronted or restricted in ways that would prevent the bullying. Dan demonstrates how we can take that same example and apply it to the mental health system where victims come forward with mental health challenges caused by environmental factors and yet the industry will medicate the victim instead of looking at how to change the environment. And it is occurring within another system where the DSM and psychiatry is accepted to often without including the possibility (like with a Ouija Board) that perhaps it is not truth. Music by Shari Ulrich and Jelly Roll
