Sane Privilege

Saneism, stigma, psychiatry, and intersectionality

[saneprivilege]

Left to its own devices, my mind spends much of its time having conversations with people who aren’t there. I walk along defending my self to people, or exchanging repartee with them, or rationalizing my behavior, or seducing them with gossip, or pretending I’m on their TV talk show or whatever. I speed or run an aging yellow light or don’t come to a full stop, and one nanosecond later am explaining to imaginary cops exactly why I had to do what I did, or insisting that I did not in fact do it.

Ann Lamott, Bird by Bird

[silva-the-meepster-deactivated2]

Two things I get tired of —

1. People denying that autism/Asperger’s etc. exists or that it has only simple hurdles to overcome, like snapping your thumb rather than oftentimes a life time challenge.

2. People who know that it exists but are ableist and want to squash it and eradicate either the people who have it or the “disease" from their brain, and their ableist propaganda. 

I am not unaffected, but I am not diseased. 

[saneprivilege]

This is why we need neurodiversity: "I am not unaffected, but I am not diseased." It's true for autism, and it's true for mental illness.

We can recognize how inequitable social & built environments privilege the neurotypical or sane mind. And then we can fight to be accommodated without being labeled as diseased, disordered, or defective.

We shouldn't have to identify as sick in order for our ways of thinking and feeling to be accommodated!

[dumpsterkitty]

Goodwill Exploits Workers

Paychecks show .22 cent/hour wages while regional CEOs take in a half a million dollars per year. 

[saneprivilege]

More info from ThinkProgress:

The company argues that these disabled workers would otherwise not be employed and should therefore be grateful for any amount they earn, even if it is 22 cents.

And a similar case involving mentally disabled students in Rhode Island:

Students were paid “subminimum or no wages” for their labor, according to the Justice Department report. The investigation found that students who were paid made between 50 cents and $2 an hour and sometimes worked weekends.

[imnotevilimjustwrittenthatway]

It also taps into the long history of abuse in the autistic community. When you’re autistic, it’s not abuse; it’s therapy, and it’s for your own good. If you could just act like a person, it wouldn’t happen. The goal of a lot of “treatment” programs for autistic kids is to make us “indistinguishable from our peers.” These programs got their start in conversion programs for gay or effeminate boys. They make people kill themselves. They fuck you up. And they’re the de facto educational option for autistic kids. If you call someone “high functioning,” you are reinforcing every person in their life who taught them that to avoid being hurt, they needed to be someone else.

Crown of Weeds, here (via imnotevilimjustwrittenthatway)

This happens with mental illness, too. Kids with "behavioral problems" are given psychiatric diagnoses, medicated (sometimes from infancy), and made to change "for their own good."

I have no problem with consenting adults who want to take psych meds (or other drugs for that matter). There is no shame in freely choosing to take medication for a mental illness. But a child is too young to consent!

It's misguided and ableist to tell autistic kids or kids with mental illnesses that they need to act neurotypical in order to function. The built and social environment should accommodate the people who use it—not the other way around.

[namiwla]

With a unanimous bipartisan vote, the state Senate has approved a measure that will give counties more options for the treatment of individuals subject to a 72-hour involuntary commitment due to severe mental health disorders.

[saneprivilege]

One aspect of the Steinberg bill is funding for Laura's Law, which allows for forced administration of antipsychotics. Considering that research shows poor long-term outcomes for antipsychotic use ... this is not good.

In disability studies, the mantra is, "Nothing about us without us."

This is important: Nothing about us without us. That means that laws to "help the mentally ill" shouldn't be written without the input of people who have been badly hurt by saneist, coercive psychiatric practices.

The Steinberg bill passed the California state senate unanimously. There's a consensus that people with severe mental illnesses should be coerced, confined, and otherwise contained if they refuse to accept medical treatment.

This consensus is saneist. In a saneist society, certain ways of thinking and feeling are privileged, and deviation from the norm requires "treatment." Most demeaning of all, laws mandating treatment are framed as "helping the mentally ill," when in reality their main purpose is to assuage normate people's fear.

[saneprivilege]

Recovery

I used to have panic attacks. I thought I was going to die. Between panic attacks, I was afraid to sleep or shower or do anything else by myself. What if I started having one? What if I actually died?

I never chose for them to happen. I never thought they would end.

But I don't have them anymore. I have recovered from panic attacks. I started getting much better when I stopped taking my prescribed Xanax. Not instantly—the withdrawal was hell—but as the months went by. My doctor told me during withdrawal that an "underlying anxiety disorder" was coming back. The doctor said that, because I was suffering so much after quitting Xanax, clearly I needed to go back on it.

That's saneism. Saneism means questioning another person's subjective experience because it doesn't match the psychiatric paradigm. Saneism means ignoring social factors and treating another person as if chronic distress signifies a defective brain.

To me, "recovery" doesn't mean what saneists use it to mean. "Recovery" doesn't mean "accepting I have a brain disease" and resigning myself to lifelong "medical treatment" for it. It means not having panic attacks anymore.

For some people, mental illness can last a lifetime. To you, "recovery" might mean "managing symptoms with medication." It might mean getting therapy. You might think of it as a spiritual or holistic or social process.

What bothers me is the saneist idea that only medical (drug) treatment works for mental illness. What bothers me is the notion that anyone who's been diagnosed with a mental illness is sick for life.

And by the way. Just because I use diet and exercise and a support system not to feel anxious ... does not make mean I'm "not really sick," that I was "faking it," or that my lived experience is somehow invalid. You can't see my mind. Just because I've found recovery outside the psychiatric paradigm doesn't make my distress less legitimate.

[saneprivilege]

Shit Saneists Say: "Untreated"

I want to start by writing about Shit E. Fuller Torrey says. Because he is disgustingly saneist but he's really just saying things that "experts" imply all the time about mental illness:

"People with mental illnesses who are being treated are not more dangerous than the general population," said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center and an authority on the topic. "But evidence has become overwhelming that untreated severe mental illnesses are a significant contributor to violent acts, including homicides and a large percentage of rampage murders." (source)

Watch out, normates—the untreated crazies are coming to kill you unless you give doctors like Torrey the power to force them to get treatment.

Think about who's saying this: Torrey is a practicing psychiatrist and the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which believes in coercive psychiatric treatment. He's an establishment voice, and his position is that treatment decisions shouldn't be made by the people getting treated. They have defective brains! They're violent!

Instead, treatment should be controlled by doctors like Torrey embedded in a paternalistic, racist, profiteering system. Nevermind that antipsychotics and other drugs may actually make mental illness worse over the long term. (Even NAMI is acknowledging this possibility.)

Torrey gets quoted any time someone does something horrendous that can be blamed on mental illness. I want to ask him, "What about all the crimes committed by neuronormative people? What about the epidemic of violence committed against people with mental illnesses? What about the stigma and ostracism and abuse that so many people suffer because of your bullshit?"

His little disclaimer, that "being treated" keeps mentally ill people from being dangerous, really doesn't help, because he has a very limited concept of what "proper treatment" for mental illness includes. In his world, alternatives like neurodiversity and c/s/x don't exist. If you're diagnosed, then either you choose to comply with drug treatment or you're coerced into compliance.