[this-is-anti-psych]

Hello :D

Welcome to our anti psych blog! This is a space where people who were or still are in some sort of psychiatric facilty or otherwise similar situation can share their story without judgement.

While the name might imply otherwise, submissions and asks do not have to follow the This is… pattern. You can just share general information, experience or other things relating to the anti psych movement or psychiatric abuse.

As this topic sadly brings a lot of discourse with it, we as a mod will stay relatively anonymous. We are a system and use they/he pronouns collectively. We switch between singular and plural pronouns for ourselves, so feel free to use whatever! We have been involuntarily hospitalised and been under child protective services care. We are living in germany and as such our experience might differ from people outside of europe/germany

We are white and skinny and as such cannot relate to issues regarding fatphobia and racism in psychiatric spaces, but will try to amplify the voices of those having had experiences with those things

This blog is NOT a safe space for:

bigots of any kinds (racists, transphobes, homophobes etc)

syscourse or any type of trying to invalidate somebodys lived experience

“narc abuse” believers and similar stigma towards Cluster B disorders

stigma and hatred towards homeless people, addicts and people with psychotic symptoms or similar things

I am NOT a medical professional. I cannot diagnose you, talk you out of suicide or self harm or offer you any medical advice, so asks requesting that will be deleted. I also dont know everything about every single mental illness, situation or condition, i am constantly learning!

#this is anti psych : our tag for answered asks / submissions #personal : personal things #anti-psych reblog : reblogs #anti-psych original : original posts that arent answered asks

trigger warnings will always be tagged, but in general this blog handles topic of medical and psychiatric abuse, so scroll with care!! If we forget to tag a trigger, feel free to remind us of that and we will tag it.

this blog was inspired by the many this is… blogs and the blogger @lifeafterpsychiatry (if you dont wanna be tagged in this, let me know, i will edit this out!)

this post might be edited or added onto when things change or i learn new things

[this-is-anti-psych]

idk if this is the right place to share this but like as a teen the psych system is often so bad u have no chance to get out without parents / guardians permission ur just stuck until ur 18

100% yes! Children and Teenagers have even less autonomy when it comes to the psych system, especially when parents or legal guardians sent you there. On top of that, in these age groups one is in a very crucial stage of development where psych wards can be even more traumatic.

And dont worry, this is absolutely the right place to share this. Despite the name of the blog, submissions do not have to follow the This is… pattern.

[heartattackinblackdye]

i do think we need to detach hygiene from value as a person. as someone who has dealt with not being able to shower or brush my teeth due to depression and executive dysfunction, it usually is not a choice. sometimes there are situations in which you CANNOT care for yourself properly and that shouldn’t mean you can now be stripped of your worth. physically disabled people who have trouble with hygiene i love you, mentally ill people who have trouble with hygiene i love you, neurodivergent people who struggle with hygiene i love you, people without access to adequate hygiene products i love you. it’s going to be ok

[daretocarebear]

seeing a cool harm reduction post oh yay…. seeing they don’t mean harm reduction as in drugs but as in eating fun candy and treats or spending money on collectibles…… so u have missed the point. If the only form of harm reduction u support is abstinence from drugs u are not actually an advocate for harm reduction….

[daretocarebear]

I’m trying to help a person safely shoot up & ur over in the corner telling them to switch to monster….

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

Whenever I see someone who is antipsych (adjacent), but they understand antipsychiatry as exclusively against psychiatrists in particular and against medication while still praising therapy as the good alternative, I want to eat my desk in frustration

Yeah there are lots of ways to go about being anti psych that I am absolutely not a fan of. Like if you're "against psychiatry" in a way where you're mainly concerned about people "falsely claiming to be mentally ill to get out of work" we're not allies in any sense of the word like I don't think the disabled people are the problem actually

[transbutchsupreme]

The stigma on addiction kills people. It fucking kills people. You are policing people so when they fail, they hide, they self harm and they die by their vices. If all you have is judgment for addiction and no sympathy or empathy for users, your opinion is less than worthless to me as the daughter of a life long addict. You are not better than any addict. You are one devastating period of life away from being them and even I don't wish that you face someone like yourself now, should that point come.

Addicts are not statistics, are not their vices, are not your negative health affects to a drug. Read: a smoker is NOT the embodiment of second hand smoke. They are users without safe use public spaces and I'm fucking begging you all to understand that people being mentally ill and doing things you don't like to cope is not the same exact thing as them choosing to harm other people.

Some of you hate addicts more than conscientious abusers and it shows. Some of you see them as one in the same and it shows.

Some of your opinions on addiction tell me everything I need to know about your understanding of children, offline sex workers and the homeless.

And I'm really fucking tired of sitting here in make belief land with you people as you miss my points deliberately as you preach abstinence and penance for a demographic you do not know and are not even a part of.

Why the fuck is a demand for empathy being met with such apathy and hostility. Fix it.

[handweavers]

you are punished for going on psychiatric medication and you are punished for not going on psychiatric medication. if you are punished either way you might as well do what you feel is right

[lifeafterpsychiatry]

And this widespread assumption that people who are anti psych are simply too privileged to know the full reality of mental illness is so fundamentally ignorant of why people become anti psych cause it's usually not for lack of experience with the psych system

[this-is-anti-psych]

I might talk more about it and edit / reblog this post but I need you to care about addicts. Yes, even the scary ones. Even the „dirty“ ones. Even the ones who chose addiction. All of them. No conditions and „but…“ attached.

[this-is-anti-psych]

“the difficulty of defining abuse within a context where certain coercive measures are legally permitted”

Aka where it would be clearly abuse in any other context, but psych wards are legally allowed to just do that shit.

This is why legality is not morality.

100%!!!! it might be (unfortunately) legal, but that doesnt negate the fact that psychiatric abuse is real and present in every institution!

It just shows how much mentally ill people are treated as subhuman.

[serial-unaliver-deactivated2024]

HELPPPPP

[charlesoberonn]

Reminds me of Jason Kander, former Missouri Secretary of State. When he went to the VA hospital to treat his PTSD, he told the nurse that Obama told him he should run for president, and she thought he was delusional.

[charlesoberonn]

Correction: It was worse. She asked him how long he's been hearing voices.

[therapyhorrorstories]

I think I'm gonna make this my go-to story. It's not the worst I've ever heard, which is an asset because people won't believe you if you tell them the actual bad stuff those people do. And it just perfectly sums up the casual arrogance everyone working in mental health seems to have. The way they treat you as inherently Lesser for being in their care.

[therapyhorrorstories]

If they can't even handle basic, easily verified shit like "I'm a lawyer" they are never going to believe you when you tell them that you know how to manage a condition you've been dealing with for decades better than they can or will.

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

And then there's Alexander Morris, who was put in a straitjacket, called racial slurs, and denied treatment for his potentially life-threatening heart condition when he told them he was the lead singer of the band he was lead singer of.

Four Tops singer sues hospital alleging racial discrimination after he says he was placed in a ‘restraining jacket’ | CNN

The lead singer of the Motown group the Four Tops has filed a federal lawsuit against Ascension Macomb Oakland Hospital in Warren, Michigan,

[plum-soup]

There are multiple parts of that article that are Jae droppingly awful but this one really gets me:

They almost let this man die in a straight jacket simply because they were too racist. And then when they realize their "mistake", they tell him that his life is worth a 25$ supermarket gift card. Of course he's suing them for $75,000 as he should but like. Can you imagine how insulted he must've been. The 4 Tops were one of the top Motown bands of all time. You can be at the top of the music scene and still, they'll kill you because you're black. And they'll use fake claims about mental illness and "aggression" to justify it

[genderkoolaid]

& to be clear: none of this is good for anyone. actually delusional people, people who actually hear voices or see things, do not deserve to be treated like this. there is nothing about a person harmlessly believing something fantastical (or which sounds fantastical to you) that requires you to put them in a straightjacket and drug them or deny them necessary drugs. Black mentally ill people do not deserve to be tortured and murdered in a hospital for being Black and mentally ill.

this kind of system is a weapon which can be pointed at anyone. in order to prevent shit like this from happening, we also need to deconstruct how we view mentally ill people, including people who are delusional and hallucinate, and what we view as "reasonable" or "necessary" when it comes to such people.

[doberbutts]

Black people- including famous black people- have been arrested for "breaking and entering" their own homes due to a neighbor witnessing them unlocking their own house door with their own house key and calling the cops. College professors, celebrities, politicians, and everyday people such as my own father.

It's common enough that young black kids are told to keep any identifying information on them at all times just in case someone reports a black kid breaking and entering by walking into the house they've lived at since they were born. Because that has happened.

When you add mental illness and the healthcare industry into the mix, things only get worse from there. To be clear, you don't need to be black or mentally ill to be treated poorly by a doctor or nurse that's decided they know you better than you do. But it sure doesn't make things easier.

And people have died as a result- or have we already forgotten the death of Adriana Smith who went to THE HOSPITAL SHE WORKED AT AS A NURSE reporting severe headaches and was dismissed as exaggerating and imagining the severity, only to be declared brain dead upon arrival less than 24 hours later and artificially kept alive to force her dead body to carry her baby to term- which couldn't even happen and they had to remove him via C-section anyway.

These are related problems. And until we fix the root cause, they will keep happening.

[alexseanchai]

[image 1: Tumblr reply by thepolterheist: "lol I read an interview w a lawyer who was briefly in inpatient and he told a nurse he was a lawyer and she put “delusions of grandeur” on his chart"]

[image 2: a paragraph from the linked article, which reads: "The lawsuit states Morris was offered a $25 gift card to a supermarket as an apology by the hospital, but he refused the offer."]

[murraysiskind-deactivated202511]

It’s so crazy that suicide prevention is just people going awwww don’t!! Awwww come on noooooooooo stopppppp

[allhailklisz]

[yokelfelonking]

One of the best ones I saw was a thing noting that every single one of the few survivors of suicide jumps off of the Golden Gate Bridge realized, on the way down, that the problems they were killing themselves over actually were fixable or could be worked through...except for the now - extremely unfixable - problem of gravity.

[authortobenamedlater]

Went to the Holocaust Museum in DC once. There was a video interview of an Auschwitz survivor who said he and some other prisoners stayed up all night with a man who wanted to kill himself. The man didn’t kill himself and survived to liberation.

In the video the survivor said “Never seek a permanent solution to a temporary problem. And they’re all temporary problems.”

Hearing that from a guy who survived the Holocaust rewired my brain a little bit.

[drgrlfriend]

I think something a lot of people don't understand is that depression is not suicidality, and suicidality is not depression. People can, and are, depressed without being suicidal, and sometimes suicidality peaks as people are emerging from depression. Suicidality is a wave, and the trick is to allow that wave to crest and subside WITHOUT acting on it. Whatever it takes to ride it out. For some people that's distraction, like watching television. For others it's calling a friend -- not to talk about the suicidality, but just to talk. For others it could be as simple as going to sit in a coffee shop or library, because the presence of other people is a huge diminisher of suicide risk. That's what suicide safety planning is about. It's like having any other type of emergency plan, like a plan for fire or evacuation. It's making a plan when you are in the frame of mind to do so, so that you can just DO the plan without having to think about it when the occasion arises. When you're in the midst of suicidal ideation, or even intent, you're not in a problem-solving mood. So knowing past!you, with the help of a therapist hopefully, came up with the plan and all you have to do is follow up until the wave crests and subsides, is what allows you to see another day.

ETA: Here's a link to a safety plan. https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/988-safety-plan.pdf

[goldkirk]

There’s a really compassionate and well-written paper/book/thing called Suicide: The Forever Decision that’s written specifically for people who are currently suicidal. The letter to the reader at the beginning is wonderful and deeply understands how to talk to someone who’s suicidal without preaching or talking down to them.

It’s very honest. It’s very clear. It’s very kind. It presents you with a lot of information and a lot of understanding and lets you take it all in like the autonomous human you are, and make decisions from an informed place. It goes over the reality of suicide attempts, pain involved, likelihoods of survival, after effects of attempts, and how to get help if you want it after reading all of that and learning about the reality of suicide attempts.

You can read it for free here: https://qprinstitute.com/pdfs/Forever_Decision.pdf

No one can ever stop you if you’re really determined. Only you can stop yourself. If you’re suicidal and there’s ANY tiny part of you that wants a chance to not go down that route, but can’t convince the rest of you yet, give this short book a try. Or share it with anyone you know who might need it.

[librarycards]

May I ask what qualifies someone as a psychiatric survivor? I've seen it around and kinda identify with it but I have never been in an institution, I have been treated badly by therapists and psychiatrists outpatient and don't want to overstep. Thank you for your posts, I've learned a lot!

traditionally, the language of 'psych survivorship' was used by and for ex-institutionalized patients who had survived psychiatric incarceration. that said, i don't know of anyone who would gatekeep the term from someone who had experienced abuse in an outpatient setting, and think that if you find community and utility and solidarity in the term, you should use it.

[decompose1]

i dislike the weird jump to blame suicide victims for their suicides and call them selfish. suicide is very frequently in some way a social murder. i think instead of blaming someone who was in such a dark place that they saw no other way out we should maybe be blaming the people who threw gas on the fire, such as those with a lot of power to make that person's life that bad or those who abused them into it. is that really that unreasonable

[innerchildabortionclinic]

there is something very sad and humiliating about having to desperately beg doctors and family members to understand that involuntary institutionalization does not in fact help your mental health, knowing your perspective will always be dismissed at the end of the day

it's such an awful existence to be a psychiatric patient as a teenager, there has to be another way to help aggressively suicidal teenagers, such as addressing the circumstances that make them want to die so much in the first place! you can stop suicide by locking someone up, sure, but they will not want to live

[doe-eyed-disaster]

it's awful that researchers are only now starting to take this perspective seriously, but there is a small but growing body of study supporting exactly what patients have been saying about psychiatric incarceration. one study in particular, from Allegheny county in Pennsylvania, offers a damning analysis of involuntary psychiatric commitments:

For individuals whose cases are judgment calls, where some physicians would hospitalize but others would not, we find that hospitalization nearly doubles both the probability of dying by suicide or overdose and also nearly doubles the probability of being charged with a violent crime in the three months after evaluation. We provide evidence of earnings and housing disruptions as potential mechanisms. Our results suggest that, on the margin, the system we study is not achieving the intended effects of the policy.

[bpdohwhatajoy]

Everyone who is anti psych: I’m anti psych because [long list of horror stories]

Everyone who isn’t: erm well that didn’t happen to me so….

[cartoonofmilk]

yknow, as counterintuitive as it may seem, helping a suicidal friend isn't a matter of stopping them from dying. it's about helping to make their world one that's worth living in.

it's important to make that distinction, lest we make people's quality of life worse in the name of "protecting" them.