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)
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
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.
The Justice Department's opinion challenges civil rights protections that have long treated the institutionalization of disabled Americans a
Cory Turner at NPR:
The Justice Department released a memo this week that quietly calls into question decades of civil rights protections for Americans with disabilities and stirred fear and anger among advocates and families.
The memo, an opinion from the Office of Legal Counsel, argues that states do not have to provide in-home or community-based care to people with disabilities who need support. These services allow many disabled Americans to continue to live, learn and work at home or in their own communities, among family and friends.
"It is now the position of the United States government that people with disabilities don't have a right to be part of their communities," says Alison Barkoff, a health law and policy professor at George Washington University who led disability law and policy efforts during both the Obama and Biden administrations. "I can't overstate how significant this change in position is."
Without the federal government requiring that states provide these services – to help disabled people integrate into their communities – advocates and legal experts warn that cash-strapped states could cut them and return to what was once common practice: de facto segregation of Americans with disabilities in nursing homes and large institutions.
Pushback from the disability community was swift.
"As America prepares to celebrate 250 years of independence, [this memo] threatens to drag our nation back to a dark and shameful era of ignorance and cruelty," said the American Association of People with Disabilities. "This interpretation will open the doors for states to revert to warehousing people with disabilities out of sight and out of mind in institutions."
"This opinion is a direct threat to decades of progress toward community living for people with disabilities," said Shira Wakschlag of The Arc of the United States, a nonprofit disability advocacy group. "People with disabilities shouldn't be forced into institutions because a state refuses to provide services in the community."
The Justice Department did not respond to an NPR request that it explain its position as well as why it is changing course after decades of legal and bipartisan support for community services.
What the law says
This new memo calls into question what legal experts say has been settled law for decades.
Both Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act have long been interpreted to require that states provide services to Americans with disabilities in the most integrated setting appropriate. In short: Institutionalization should be a last resort.
In 1999, a case testing these protections made it to the U.S. Supreme Court. In Olmstead v. L.C., two women with mental disabilities sued Georgia, arguing that the state had failed its obligation to provide services that would allow them to return to their communities and that it had continued to institutionalize the women instead, thus violating their civil rights.
The court agreed that states have a legal responsibility to provide support that integrates disabled Americans into their communities, and for nearly three decades, courts across the country have embraced that interpretation.
By 2023, 8.4 million Americans were receiving home- and community-based services through Medicaid.
[...]
Why it matters
"The United States government since 1977 has taken the position that [federal law] includes an integration mandate that requires services to be provided in the most integrated setting appropriate," says professor Barkoff, who worked in the Obama Justice Department leading its Olmstead enforcement efforts.
For decades, Barkoff adds, both Republican and Democratic administrations, including the first Trump administration, proactively enforced federal disability law and repeatedly brought actions against states that relied too heavily on care in large, segregated settings that the law says should be a last resort.
The courts and Congress decided institutionalization should be a last resort because people's personal liberty is at stake, says Jennifer Mathis of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law: "Who you can see, when you can go out, when you eat, what you eat. Who your roommate is, who you talk to, what your environment is. And for so many people who are institutionalized, their life is literally a hallway. I have been on those hallways with people. It is deadening."
This memo signifies a dramatic change in the U.S. government's official position.
"We are incredibly concerned that the message coming from the federal government in this memo is, 'It's fine to go back to the days that people were placed in institutions,' even though they can be served in the community, even though they want to be and even though it's more cost-effective," Barkoff says.
The timing matters too. The memo arrives as a new case, Texas v. Kennedy, is making its way through the courts. The case, brought by Texas and several other states, is essentially a fresh challenge to the integration mandate on states.
[...]
Why now?
The Justice Department memo appears to be the latest salvo in a broader effort that began on July 24, 2025, when President Trump issued an executive order intended to make it easier for state and local governments to police homelessness.
"Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe," the order argues, going on to claim that "the overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both."
The administration's solution: Involuntary institutionalization. "Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order," the order reads.
[...]
One serious obstacle to large-scale institutionalization of the unhoused is federal disability law that has long required home- or community-based services instead, when appropriate. A footnote in the Justice Department's new memo appears to suggest these laws have contributed to the rise in chronic homelessness.
To the contrary, Barkoff says, the Olmstead decision "has been one of the most effective tools in providing services and stable housing to people who are homeless."
NPR has previously reported that the Trump administration's push for institutionalization faces another big obstacle: An acute shortage of beds at these specialized facilities.
The memo arrives as Republicans have also passed deep cuts to Medicaid, which is the primary source of funding for community-based services many disabled Americans rely on.
The Trump Regime’s US Department of Injustice released a memo attacking the dignity of people with disabilities by arguing that states should not have to provide in-home or community-based care to people with disabilities who need support.
See Also:
Disability Scoop: Trump Administration Claims People With Disabilities Don’t Have Right To Community-Based Services
Mother Jones: Trump DOJ Outlines Dubious Path to Force People Into Psychiatric Institutions
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).
(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.
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.
i am against forced institutionalization & coercive psychiatry as a whole, having experienced it and only causing more trauma & making things worse. i don't think i ever recovered, just mentally disappeared, and now suddenly, as an "adult"(?), i'm here. and not ready for it.
