#mad activism

[jazzikayz]

Therapy is conditioning, usually social control. That's it. They'll find new ways to do it that hurt less but as long as you meet the goals set by a room of fancy psychiatrists with a lot of power, you're "healthy"

[jazzikayz]

Neurodivergent self dx is and always has been incredibly valid for a lot of people. I think we also need to talk about what "lived experience" actually means, though.

When parents are trying to figure out if they should get their kid tested for autism, and autistic white women in or above their late 20s with degrees and full time jobs, who are late professional or self dx, start spitting off answers about how they wish they'd gotten tested or diagnosed as a child, that's no longer lived experience. That's not your experience, that's something that looking back you wish you could've changed about your life.

I experienced psychiatric trauma as a result of my early dx autism, I was in therapy before I was in kindergarten. I was isolated in school to the point of depression, then hospitalized, then put in a special program where I was being illegally restrained daily, then sent to a therapeutic school. I have been being conditioned like a dog longer than I've been able to count to 20. That's lived experience.

Just because you use a word to describe yourself doesn't mean we have the same lived experience qualifications.

[blankcest]

Anyways I love you BPD people i adore you, im one of you, and i’ll always believe in your recovery

[traumata-heart]

Madness, Meaning and The Mad Movement. Why should you care?

Matthew Jackman, founder of The Australian Centre for Living Experience

[nirthenergy]

Sanism

is a form of discrimination and oppression against someone because of a mental trait or condition they have, or are judged to have.

[nirthenergy]

That an important question in psychiatry shouldn't be 'what's wrong with you?' but 'what's happened to you?'

Eleanor Longden

[fuckyeahmadpride]

Richard-Yves Sitoski: 50% protruding nail, 50% hammer.

I am an Activist for Mental Health Issues from the peer perspective–that is, from the point of view of someone who lives with mental health issues.  My immediate goal is to provide a clearing house and networking node for others who live with emotional and mental health problems.

Not all of us can function at a high level–at least not all of the time–and most of us are hampered by geographical, educational, social, cultural, ideological, economic, physical, intellectual and cognitive issues which can range from the unpleasant yet tolerable to the wholly unendurable.  Add stigma–sorry, prejudice!–to the mix and it’s a wonder some of us ever maintain articulacy at all.

What am I doing about it?  As an inhabitant of Owen Sound, a medically under-served community in Western Ontario, Canada, I have had to deal with a number of these problems.  I do, however, enjoy the benefits of Bulldog tenacity coupled with Jack Russell wit.  I can provide a voice for the voiceless, I can provide activism on behalf of the impaired, and best of all, I can push for more grass-roots, bottom-up citizen influence in a top-down, “provider”-based bureaucratic system.

I am a MADvocate.  I’m loud and proud.  I’m not anti-psychiatry in principle, only in practise: the medical community’s tendency to overpathologize cannot but be considered misguided, and their default response–to wield the blunt instrument of medication–is nothing short of an abdication of responsibility.  Sometimes the best therapist is the patient.  We’re all in this together.  We only have ourselves to work with.  Let’s get busy!

[fuckyeahmadpride]

from MentalHealthPortland.org