Posted @withregram • @lizwins_peersupport 988, the new “911 for mental health” launched yesterday, and it’s nothing to celebrate. 988 does not exist to offer coping tools, provide referrals to local mental health resources, or hold space for big existential discussions about the point of carrying on. Hotline staffers use a set of suicide screening questions to decide whether to initiate an "active rescue." The National Suicide Prevention Line calls the police on approximately 20% of callers; the police use geotracking technology to determine the caller’s location. 988 reduces the likelihood that a cadre of police with guns drawn will respond to a mental health crisis, but 988 will arrange for some police or a mobile crisis team to transport the person to an emergency room or psychiatric facility. I speak from personal experience: these places are terrifying. I could not believe the medieval medical environment where I was detained. Just because the asylums have closed does not mean the conditions for psychiatric patients have changed. Emergency rooms do not provide crisis intervention services; they are overcrowded, chaotic holding pens that decide whether to involuntarily hospitalize the person. Psychiatric wards take a fully biomedical and authoritarian approach to mental health, that the problem is with your brain, overmedication is the solution, and non-compliance is punishable by harming peoples’ bodies. Instead of calling 988, let’s ask people, “What would help look like to you?” If someone is feeling suicidal, it probably means that a series of things have gone wrong in their lives and the situation feels totally unmanageable. Instead of isolating that person in an environment where they are legally powerless, let’s help people solve their problems. What “help” looks like to each person would be different on a case-by-case basis, but 988 gives everyone the same treatment: taking their power away. Peer support resources: @projectlets @kiva_centers @translifeline @wildfloweralliance @peersupportspace #psychiatry #antipsychiatry #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #peersupport #peerled #madpride #988 #suicideprevention https://www.instagram.com/p/CgLhlBoOjU25fcf5stFAjYjpuX7-j4LsgSLi6s0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
