I was doing some probably not so helpful "looking at the website of the hospital I was institutionalized in as a teen" earlier, and... well, they're a psychiatric hospital, of course they're gonna say this- but front and center they kept saying they're treating mentally ill kids & teens. It was basically the first line in all the introductory texts etc.
And to me it just shows how absolutely disconnected they are from viewing these kids as anything but vessels of said disease or whatever ... incapable of actually observing their lived reality, listening to what they have to say. And even as they try and push this disease centered view as a "positive" or neutral view, because "well they're sick but its obviously Not Their fault (!!!) because it's some organic thing etc, it's awful but this is still ok because we are Here to Help.!! This is curable with chemicals and lots of talking and crafts!!" Or some shit... (also hard to listen to at some point because any "the disease model is good because it takes away blame for your struggles" argument is immediately voided by the fact that you generally take All the Blame once their "treatment" doesn't work, because then it's your fault for not trying hard enough or something, ..... the original "disease" might no longer be your fault under most branches of psych right now, but you absolutely are still a target of blame basically everywhere else.... but I digress...)
but I spent months In there, as most other kids got discharged within a week (standard "crisis stay" length in this country, I guess comparable to the 24hour hold in some other places I've heard about?)... and nearly every other kid was actually CLEARLY an interpersonal abuse victim or otherwise heavily traumatized. But all of us kept being told we have some biological fucked up wiring or something, etc, that's why we feel so bad.
Like, I dont want to disregard the experience of people who say they did basically just one day as a kid (or older teen, adult, ...) wake up experiencing hallucinations, depression etc without prior experiences that would "explain" this, no trauma etc. I dont have an explanation as to why this happens to some people that isnt "well I guess it could be biologic factors?". And nothing is further from my intention than telling them "actually you're wrong, this happened because of [abuse you didnt experience], I know your experiences better than you!!!"... but I cant just.. close my eyes from what I saw back then.
Where kid after kid who walked in went through terrible shit at home or school, kids arrived who just months ago fled warzones or religious persecution in their home country, ... and I really dont care to argue whether actually, the biological disease Model can still be applied here because the trauma caused changes in your brain / nervous system , which is part of your physical body, ergo this is a physical disorder or whatever, psychiatric worldview saved!! I care about the fact that centering the body as something to be fixed completely abandons all these kids once they get discharged back into families that neglect them, foster homes that make them feel unwanted, group homes that restrict their freedom aggressively, ... that you're told to hold your tongue when we you tell on the abuse, because it's "important you take responsibility for your own actions that caused [abuse]" or some shit. I cant take this anymore I'm so sick of it!!! My body was not randomly malfunctioning, neither was the body of the kid who got sexually abused all throughout her childhood, the kids who got beaten for simple mistakes, the kids who came in one after the other who had crumbled under the academic pressure of their parents and would rather kill themselves than fail at this one thing they had been told is the only thing that mattered, ... the girl who came in after having escaped a civil war months earlier didnt have some random case of serotonin deficiency, she was distressed and crying because she was worried for the family members and friends left behind in a warzone and overwhelmed by a country whose language she didnt speak and that was so different from home. All around me I saw kids who had or actively were experiencing terrible pain from either someone else's direct harm against them, or larger situations they got caught up in, but none of it was named. Instead it was the fucking serotonin or something, now come and get your pills, its med call.
I'm never going to forgive psychiatry for what it did to us there as kids. Generation after generation being told they're sick, when what we were was fucking hurt.
The thing about the biological theory of mental illness is that it's far more likely to remove your full humanity and all interest in your interiority and the larger context of your struggles in the eyes of the people treating you than actually remove any stigma in practice.
germansingergirl
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
titsay
stormborns
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
