Mental Health Civil Rights Movement
WELCOME TO RECOVERY AND SURVIVAL :-)
· 27th Apr, 2009 at 7:15 AM
janiegreville
The remainder of the story told at the end of this introduction is to be published next year under the provisional title ‘Memoirs of a Lunatic’. It charts the progress of my ‘sentimental education’ after deciding to end my marriage in June 1997. That ‘education’ was emphatically gained from ‘the school of hard knocks’ via the reactions of my (now ex-) husband, close family and NHS Mental Health ‘professionals’ to the acute crisis I suffered in the summer of that year.
Twelve years on I now describe myself as a recovering survivor of psychiatry, as well as (and including) mental, emotional and physical abuse tantamount to violence. Most of the abuse was legally permitted from within the 1983 Mental Health Act within the powers described in it under Sections 2 and 3, also within the extended powers of the act in relation to Section 117.
I am not only recovering from the abuses of civil and human rights inscribed into this act, however. I am also recovering from family and community discrimination, stigmatisation, marginalisation, invalidation, ostracisation and exclusion via enforced financial state dependence. All of these difficulties were made sustainable by the attitude of the mental health service in its attitude to me as a 'mental health patient'.
'Hate Crime' vis a vis a person or group from an ethnic or other minority group sans mental health labelling is a criminal offence subject to rules of evidence. I accept that racist attitudes within the effective agents of the law frequently ignore evidence.
'Hate Crime' vis a vis a person with a mental health label is almost routinely profiled as delusion, paranoia or at 'best' a regrettable matter to be ignored by the target since to become upset or angry about it, or to want to do anything about it is 'stressful' and therefore 'bad for your mental health'.
Mental Health patients who become harrassed and intimidated by their neighbours are labelled 'vulnerable adults' and removed to alternative accommodation, perhaps offered enhanced sheltered accommodation. The authors of harrassment and intimidation are left alone. Is it me or is this a wacky way of 'fighting hate crime'?
I am far from alone in this circumstance. I don’t know the figures off hand. I’ll find out and let you know.
All over the ‘western world’ a movement is now gathering momentum and connectedness. It is a movement in favour of humanising and normalising our concepts and percepts of ‘mental illness’ in relation to ‘mental health’. It is a movement critical of the theoretical basis of conventional psychiatry, with its roots in 19th century pseudo-science. It is a movement critical of the co-dependence between psychiatry and the pharmaceutical industry.
It is a movement keenly aware of the irony implicit in the labelling of the ‘mentally well’ and the ‘mentally ill’: all too often the abusive are the ‘well’ and the abused are the ‘ill’. We challenge this conclusion. We invite sufferers of mental, emotional, physical and sexual abuse to come forward and share their stories with us, anonymously if they/you wish, and to share with us to what degree mental health service providers – your psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse and/or social worker – incorporate/d meaningful and effective acknowledgement of your de facto life challenges in their treatment of you.
‘Glad to be Mad’; ‘Madness Radio’; www.depra.si; “Poglai!”; ‘MissionMiraculous’ and ’The Icarus Project’ are just a few of the many initiatives now active internationally in addressing multi-dimensional struggles and deprivations of people labelled as ‘mentally ill’ within our culture. These initiatives are founded and run by people who have experienced mental health difficulties at times during their lives, most of whom have been labelled as ‘mentally ill’ and have had to combat the devastating consequences of such a label.
I’m one of these individuals, as the forthcoming publication about my life since 1997 will show. I have survived circumstances of living that I once thought would certainly kill me by my own hand. Contingencies intervened in 2003 such that I finally began to meet with civil and humanising treatment by fellow human beings and from here I was able, little by little, to emerge from my isolation and to rebuild my life.
My living purpose now is to reach out to individuals languishing now as I did then. Five close associates of mine over the last twelve years are now dead, due to suicide in the face of social and economic exclusion, pessimistic prognoses given by their psychiatrists and an utter dearth of any treatment options made available that may have assisted them to accept themselves and to find positive and nurturing connectedness in this life with others.
So far I have a website, two blogs, involvement in a regional mental health awareness and education centre and involvement in a newly emerging group of survivors and recovering service users, MissionMiraculous.
I now turn to Independent Minds Live Journal and create a group here in the hope that the survivor movement may reach someone alone and unsupported who needs to know that actually – YOU’RE NOT ALONE, IT JUST FEELS THAT WAY RIGHT NOW.
If you know anyone who fits the bill please direct them to www.missionmiraculus.org.uk.