#institutionalization

[only-knives]

how many times do i have to tell people. psychiatric institutions do not exist to protect mentally ill people. they exist to separate us from society and torture us into complicity. most people i have met in psych hospitals lie their way out. because there is no other way out. they don't help us there. some people find it beneficial, but most don't.

also, not everyone there even "belongs" there! i met someone who went to the ER for a headache and ended up in the psych ward! another person came in for an anxiety attack mistaken for a heart attack and got put in the psych ward. i was involuntarily admitted because they thought i tried to kill myself when i didn't! i had only told my doctor i was struggling with drinking and wanted to make sure i didn't need detox. and when i got there, they forced me to go cold turkey from all my medication (including the ones for my chronic illnesses!). i was stuck in bed for days, and this was then used against me as proof that i needed to be there!

(by "belong" i mean according to the actual written standards for hosptialization. i don't think anyone "belongs" in a psych ward)

these places are not safe. they were a compromise the ruling class made after people started realizing asylums were abusing, torturing, and effectively kidnapping women. they didn't stop doing that. they just made it look like they did. they convinced everyone that it was different this time.

a cage made of gold is still a fucking cage. (disclaimer: this is US-based experiences, i do not claim to speak for people in other countries)

[liamthesnail]

thinking about the chemical restraint scene in Project Hail Mary and how much that made me think about watching my friends be physically restrained the same way Ryland Grace was. watching a 14 year old girl get pushed to the ground for "misbehaving" (being a teenager in an unexpected situation who just wants to go home) and watching a 45 year old man get pushed to the ground for "not cooperating" (being a teacher in an unexpected situation who just wants to go home) giving me almost the same reaction shook me to my core.

Eva Stratt telling him "Please don't make this harder for me," felt like every authority figure telling me i had a choice but when i picked the one that wouldn't happen, they forced me into a situation i didn't want and i didn't choose. Eva Stratt is such a difficult character for me solely because she embodies everything I fear. A lack of autonomy. Grace was told he had a choice. He didn't.

"Please don't make this harder for me." Don't send me away, I don't know how to be an astronaut! I'll be good here, I promise. I'll be good... I'll be good...

Ryland Grace was told he had a choice in being sent away, but the choice was already made for him. this happened to me, it happened to my peers, it happens to everyone.

"Please don't make this harder for me." Don't send me away, I'll be good! I promise! I won't cause trouble. I'll be good.... I'll be good....

Ryland Grace, the patron saint of the troubled teens.

also i know grace isn't 45 but gosling is and i need people to know that he is 45

[this-is-anti-masculinity]

Holy shit fuck this.

I get the point that they’re trying to make. I really do.

But please. Please stop.

Please stop pretending that men don’t experience psychiatric abuse. Please stop pretending that men don’t and have never experienced MSA/medical sexual abuse. Please stop. Fucking stop.

Especially since, yeah, some of the people complaining about being lonely as men are incels who use “I’m lonely” to mean “the women around me have standards and won’t tolerate my open misogyny”. But some are ND and experience compounding social isolation from that and expectations from men. You know, the primary targets of psychiatric abuse. The neurodivergent and Mad. I sent an anon about this once, but some level of psychiatric abuse being driven by misogyny doesn’t mean it affects NT women more than visibly ND/Mad men. That’s who you hurt when you openly mock the idea of a man being subjected to this because of “loneliness”. The incels don’t care.

I shouldn’t be sending asks when I’m nauseous from flashbacks earlier today. But that’s why I am. You don’t get to say this shit. Even if you’re trying to make a point about misogyny and misogyny in the medical/psychiatric field towards women experiencing loneliness. There are ways to do it without attacking people’s trauma.

This is androsaneism.

I really don't have anything to add. To pretend like men don't suffer medical/psychiatric abuse is so incredibly insensitive and cruel.

[crippled-peeper]

Some people will only "support" a marginalised/minority community until they can sexualise people from that community, and that community grovels at their feet all the time. The moment someone from that community points out the weird behaviour is the moment these people will throw a huge fit and try to create villains out of the people who called them out. And if this person is also from a marginalised/minority community, then you become an even bigger villain because that person will always weaponise their identity against you. This is a classic case right here. I'm so sorry that this is happening to you Morg. But I also adore the fact that you're not afraid to be the "mean trans man", because more of us transmascs need to start being "mean" (read: not coddle people who are secretly bigoted, just because they're not overtly transandrophobic and constantly wishing for us to face transphobic violence all the time).

this. all of this.

[transfaguette]

(white) people with mild depression/anxiety etc joking about being sent to the rfk jr work camps but also having no awareness of what the CURRENT state of psychiatric institutionalization is like for more severely stigmatized mentally ill people esp those of color… like i don’t think we should dismiss rational fears of any working class mentally ill person in this climate but. the level of inhumanity you are joking about “to cope” has been happening for over a century even in the era of psychiatric reform :/ and you are most likely not going to be the next target on the list if this treatment expands further under this administration.

[sharksfrommars]

Reverse portal AU, but the reason Ford can’t bring Stan back is cus Ford has a mental breakdown and is institutionalised. People think he killed Stanley (cus of his car and the fact that Stan is missing). Ford tries to convince people that Stan is alive, but no one believes him.

Bill thinks this is hilarious and keeps messing with Ford’s brain chemistry and haunting his dreams. It drives Ford’s psychologist mad.

eventually, bill gets bored and/or distracted by Stan messing things up, and Ford is deemed stable enough to reenter society. He stays with Shermie for a while, as he still has regular therapy sessions. Dipper and Mabel are vaguely aware of their great uncle Stanford, who is a bit insane and unstable. In the summer of 2012, grandpa Shermie agrees to take Ford back to gravity falls. unfortunately, Dipper and Mabel’s parents want the kids out of the house for the summer, so they have to go too.

[writing2changetheworld]

Talk of institutionalization

You know, I couldn't figure out why my brother ignoring my consent and having me hospitalized (story to come when I can mentally handle it) bothers me so much (because people around me view it or whatever as a positive thing) and how to explain it to people around me not active in the Disability community. It wasn't just that I'm a human being whose consent was violated, it's that I'm a physically disabled person whose consent was violated.

And I think I've really started to figure it out. I've realized being hospitalized is a form of institutionalization. The two things are often talked about very differently and like they're two different things (yay ableism - sarcasm) so it took me a while. I pictured institutionalization as always being how it's shown and described in "Crip Camp": no windows and no contact with the public, awful and very little food, being left in your own filth, and some things I now realize were my experience in the hospital.

Now to figure out how to explain that harm to people who don't understand.

Fellow Disabled people, if you have any advice it's welcome.

[hussyknee]

The young woman was catatonic, stuck at the nurses’ station — unmoving, unblinking and unknowing of where or who she was. Her name was April Burrell. Before she became a patient, April had been an outgoing, straight-A student majoring in accounting at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. But after a traumatic event when she was 21, April suddenly developed psychosis and became lost in a constant state of visual and auditory hallucinations. The former high school valedictorian could no longer communicate, bathe or take care of herself. April was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia, an often devastating mental illness that affects approximately 1 percent of the global population and can drastically impair how patients behave and perceive reality. “She was the first person I ever saw as a patient,” said Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, who was still a medical student in 2000 when he first encountered April. “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I’ve ever seen.” It would be nearly two decades before their paths crossed again. But in 2018, another chance encounter led to several medical discoveries reminiscent of a scene from “Awakenings,” the famous book and movie inspired by the awakening of catatonic patients treated by the late neurologist and writer Oliver Sacks. Markx and his colleagues discovered that although April’s illness was clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia, she also had lupus, an underlying and treatable autoimmune condition that was attacking her brain. After months of targeted treatments — and more than two decades trapped in her mind — April woke up. The awakening of April — and the successful treatment of other peoplewith similar conditions — now stand to transform care for some of psychiatry’s sickest patients, many of whom are languishing in mental institutions. Researchers working with the New York state mental health-care system have identified about 200 patients with autoimmune diseases, some institutionalized for years, who may be helped by the discovery. And scientists around the world, including Germany and Britain, are conducting similar research, finding that underlying autoimmune and inflammatory processes may be more common in patients with a variety of psychiatric syndromes than previously believed. Although the current research probably will help only a small subset of patients,the impact of the work is already beginning to reshape the practice of psychiatry and the way many cases of mental illness are diagnosed and treated. “These are the forgotten souls,” said Markx. “We’re not just improving the lives of these people, but we’re bringing them back from a place that I didn’t think they could come back from.”

– A catatonic woman awakened after 20 years. Her story may change psychiatry.