Do you think the way those on the LL (especially rung) treated Fort Max’s PTSD was ableist?
Oh buddy don't get me started.... (long post below it's around 1.5k words)
CW for discussion of ableism below and mentions of suicide
I think in general MTMTE had a lot it wanted to say about a lot of very serious issues, but did not give them the proper gravity and respect they deserved. Honestly, there is a lot I could say about the ableism in MTMTE, but I will try to keep it on topic.
I do generally like Rung, but MTMTE #6 in particular is a bit hard to read for me because the way Rung's therapy is presented here from beginning to end is very similar to a certain brand of Bad Therapist I have had personal experience with. Rung is very pushy with Max when repeatedly pressing him to open up about an incredibly traumatic event and places what he personally thinks is best for Max over Max's comfort and safety. And this does lead to Max suffering from a traumatic flashback during their session after Rung's prodding.
He also suggests mnemosurgery as a potential solution when Max claims that he does not remember what happened which is shown two issues later to be an incredibly dangerous form of treatment for dissociative amnesia with Chromedome refusing to perform it on Skids out of fear for his safety and wellbeing.
Rung himself also says much later with Skids that he knows recovering repressed memories through mnemosurgery runs a high risk of retraumatization and rules it out as a treatment option. It's possible that Rung just did not believe that Max was really suffering from dissociative amnesia and brought it up as an option to 'scare' Max into opening up, but that's really not better even if he never actually intended to do it. Again, Rung places his own view of how Max should be acting (he should remember, he should be ready to talk about it, etc...) over working with Max as he is.
(Side bar: it really wouldn't be unusual/out of the question for Max to have memory issues after what happened. Not only from a trauma perspective, but he also self describes what Overlord did to him as being "lobotomized" + memory issues after waking up from a prolonged coma like Max was in are very common. Rung could just be going off what Ratchet reported him as saying at Delphi, but that doesn't discount that Max genuinely could have had large gaps in memory that he felt obstructed him talking about what happened in the way Rung wanted him to.)
It's somewhat hard for me to gauge how much time has passed in between issues in MTMTE, but I can't imagine the length of time between MTMTE #5 and #6 is very long at all given that everyone is still talking about Max's "resurrection" and arrival on the Lost Light like it happened very recently. That does make Rung's actions worse in my mind because the first sessions of therapy are largely building rapport and a therapeutic alliance between patient and practitioner which is something Rung skips right over. I think with Rung in general views his patients getting better as a reflection on him more than as his patient's success. Like when Red Alert starts spiraling he says something about "all my hard work is coming undone" when it's not Rung's hard work. It's Red Alert's hard work that Rung guided him through. (Which is not to say being a therapist is easy or not worth taking pride in, but viewing a patient regressing as them undoing your work feels very uncomfortable.)
So I think with Rung being confronted with someone who isn't open to the idea of therapy and does not think Rung is capable of understanding him (Max's comment about Rung "never having to get his hands dirty"), he takes it personally. It comes off as Rung thinking Max is being purposefully difficult instead of just not being ready to talk about it. (Another example of this tendency is Rung's therapy session with Megatron much later.)
And then Rung unprompted bringing up Overlord is just so terrible especially as he brings it up in a way that directly diminishes Max's trauma. It's hard to read it as him saying anything other than "you should be over this. he's not around to hurt you anymore so why are you being like this?"
This is something that clearly upsets Max as he is literally digging his fingers into the slab he's sitting on hard enough to leave indents on it and he immediately tries to end their sessions. To which Rung replies by saying that Max has no choice in matter even though their sessions are clearly causing more distress than good.
With how it's written, I do think that Rung unintentionally pushed Max into his mental health crisis rather than it being something that just occurred on its own. Which is not to say that Max isn't accountable for his own actions, he still is, but I don't think the hostage situation would have happened if Rung had put Max's safety and wellbeing first over his vision of what Max's recovery should look like. In the lead-up to the hostage situation, Max's face is often framed in shadow with usually just his eyes visible which is used as visual shorthand for Max's deteriorating mental state. This actually starts while still in Rung's office.
So, to finally get back to answering the initial question, I definitely do think the way Rung handled treating Max's PTSD is ableist. It puts getting Max to act "normal" again over Max's emotional wellbeing and Rung repeatedly ignores the boundaries Max is putting up to get him to open up before he feels ready even when doing so is clearly re-traumatizing Max. And since Max apparently did not know that his therapy sessions were mandatory until he asked, this does imply that Max was at least willing to give therapy a try, but was turned away from it by Rung's brand of therapy.
And with some aspects of this scene compared to how Rung's therapy is portrayed later (specifically with Skids), it almost comes across like since Max's trauma often comes out in bursts of intense anger and violence, he is viewed as less deserving of the same care and compassion that other patients get. The same treatment he recommends for Max is the one he says is too dangerous for Skids later which really does not feel good.
As for the other characters on the Lost Light, you have Rodimus who suggested using the video footage of Max's torture to distract him. None of the characters had any way of knowing this, but this action really does get harsher in hindsight after the trauma-induced spark mutation plotlines with Skids and Tailgate later, because this action on its own could have killed Max. And then Rodimus gives the direction to shoot Max in such a way that Rewind has to ask multiple times that Rodimus isn't telling him to kill Max. You would think "shoot to wound" would have been in his original instructions if he actually cared about Max's safety at all.
This is such a horrible way to deal with this situation in general. Not only was Max already incapacitated after being shown the projection, but Rung was so close to Max in this scene that the shot never should have been taken even ignoring that. Max disrespected Rodimus's authority on the ship and his reaction to that makes it seem like all of this is happening specifically as revenge for Rodimus's wounded ego because it certainly isn't out of concern for the wellbeing of the hostages. (Rodimus literally says "I can't put Rung's life at risk a second time" at the start of the hostage situation before his phone call with Max but is okay with the very real possibility of Rung being caught in the crossfire after that point).
There's also Magnus who calls Max "deeply disturbed" implying that something like the hostage situation was only a matter of time when it was not.
I do agree that they probably should have not given Max a gun, though, at the very least until after passing a mental health screening. Not just for the safety of the others on the ship, but for his own safety as well. Being a veteran and suffering from PTSD puts one at a significantly elevated risk of suicide as well as having easy access to a deadly weapon. Firearms specifically are very dangerous here because there is a very little window for outside intervention and they tend to be overwhelmingly more fatal than other methods. While perhaps understandable given the lack of training/procedure of those involved and the poor understanding of mental health that Cybertronians have, it feels as though Max really was set up to fail by everyone who could have made a difference for him.
The ableism is a recurring issue in MTMTE too (Red Alert, Ten, Spinister, Riptide, etc...) that can make parts of it very difficult to read, but that's another post in of itself. I fear I've yapped enough already for one day.
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