#psych reform

[dromaeocore]

Good news! There are plenty! Most of which have been in practice for years and have been shown to work! And these are just some of the alternatives!

[rattusn0rvegicus]

Sometimes, when talking about the current psychiatric system, we get lost in anger and don’t look towards alternatives and what a better tomorrow might look like. Here’s some cool mental health/psychiatry reform things that I think are neat (Somewhat US centric bc that’s where I live). Lots of them focus on psychosis, because I think psychosis is a sorely ignored subject in mental health activism.

US Peer Respite Directory - A list of voluntary, community-based, non-clinical crisis support group-home like environments that are staffed by people with lived experience of mental illness and/or lived experiences in the psychiatric system.

Students With Psychosis - A nonprofit that empowers students with psychosis through virtual programming, support groups, etc. They’re run by the amazing Cecilia McGough, an advocate with schizophrenia.

Hearing Voices Network - A network of support groups for people who hear voices, see visions, and have other extreme experiences. Focused on supporting individuals without judgement and giving them a place to explore their experiences and grow from them.

Open Dialogue - An psychosocial approach to psychiatric services that focuses on treating clients with respect, shared decision-making, dialogue between client, providers, and family (if the client wants family involved), and more minimal use of medication.

CommonGround software - A software developed by Dr. Pat Deegan that allows clients to communicate their needs to their providers more efficiently to support shared-decision making. Dr. Deegan has a lived experience of being diagnosed with schizophrenia and believes in personal medicine and med empowerment.

Project LETS - A radical approach to peer support and healing that has a disability justice centered approach, giving people with lived experience a voice and focusing on mutual aid. They provide peer mental health advocates, self-harm prevention, and more.

Integrative Psychiatry - A holistic form of psychiatry that focuses on nutrition, exercise, therapy, and psychosocial factors, where medication is just an aspect of treatment. US database of integrative psychiatrists here.

Soteria Houses - Community homes with peer support that provide residents with personal power, responsibilities, and “being with” residents, that focus on a humane and person-centered approach.

Relating to Voices Using Compassion Focused Therapy - A self-help book by Drs. Eleanor Longden and Charlie Heriot Maitland about managing distressing voices and building a respectful, cooperative relationship with them. Views voices as potential allies in emotional problem-solving rather than enemies.

Clubhouse International - A non-profit organization that gives people with mental illness opportunities for friendship, employment, housing, educational, and medical services all in one place. It was founded by a group of friends who survived a psychiatric hospital together.

Psychosis Research Unit - A group of psychology researchers who are doing research on and developing psychotherapeutic techniques for coping with and managing psychosis, such as CBT for psychosis and Talking with Voices therapy.

[despazito]

my hot take is that just because personality disorders shouldn't be pathologized as some incurable illness or Asshole Syndrome but instead should be viewed as the culmination of years worth of maladaptive coping mechanisms brought on by trauma there still needs to exist some form of nomenclature to categorize these states of being and you still most certainly should see a (trauma/systems informed) psych about them. i'm sorry but if these toxic behaviour patterns have been around for years especially decades i don't believe a supportive and understanding family/community is sadly enough to fix it, seeking professional help is the responsible thing to do if you have the self awareness to see the harm your actions cause to those around you

[snvffsoda]

I have a headcanon for Ren that before Strade died Strade made him his own signature button-up like the one he always wears but made it custom for Ren as a gift in a pseudo passing on the torch kind of way but before he could gift it to him he died and Ren found it after his death and that's what made him decide to wear it and start kidnapping and killing again, starting the cycle once more

[moonlit-positivity]

If you've been raised your whole life being abused and tortured and told that you're the problem, how the hell are you supposed to know that you're not? That those people abusing you are the problem and that it has nothing to do with you at all? How the hell are you supposed to know that things need to change if you never see any different and you're never encouraged to get out because something better actually really does exist out there?? That shit seems like a myth to us. We can be so stuck in this perpetual darkness simply because the environment we live in is hell bent on keeping us blind. Yeah okay eventually we find out about boundaries and are finally given a proper vocabulary to define toxic relationships, but is it really necessary for us to have suffered irrevocable damage & trauma before we find that shit out?? It's wild to me how far behind we are as a society that people still see mental health as useless and an excuse to throw therapy in your face as some form of moral punishment. Why are we still living in the dark ages with this shit.

[new-haven-psych-ward]

i am plagued by visions. enjoy some geats sponsor-rider swaps

[trans-axolotl]

People saying that mad liberation started on tumblr (or is a recent thing in general) is so fucking funny lmao bc like. My first experience with mad liberation was learning of the history of the (former) asylum I live next to, which in the seventies got abolished and repurposed as a museum + theatre + art gallery and archive of the patients paintings throughout the years. Also like have these people ever listened to anarchopunk? Those bands love talking about how psychiatry is a capitalist tool since the 80s lol. If they think you're being too radical they should go listen to that and hopefully their brain will explode so they stop bothering you godbless

RIGHT like. i saw someone make that comment and i was like you will get shocked and amazed if you ever start talking to people about mad liberation irl. i was talking with some punk friends about mad lib stuff and they were telling me all this wild stuff they were doing twenty years ago and the amount of overlap between the local punk scene and mad lib organizing in their city and shit they were doing when they were literally 12. which was absolutely crazy.

anyway the repurposing of the hospital sounds really cool and i honestly love learning about mad liberation history so much, there's so much cool shit people have been doing for years and it's so important to learn about! mad pride started AGES ago like. the first bed push was years ago!!! long before tumblr. there's so many old patient newsletters, protests, etc that are really cool things to be able to see that we've been fighting for a long time.

whenever my posts leave my like. tumblr circle i guess. i always get a lot of comments from people who just seem to not realize that radical organizing exists and that there r just people doing anarchist and abolitionist organizing in our real lives and that most of our time is not spent talking about it online bc we're busy lmfao.

it annoys me but also it's like tumblr is a fraction of where my time and energy is spent and i just need to remind myself that a lot of annoying shit on here does not really matter that much.

[dictee]

top five loustat only fic

tides by @nlbv

reformation by @downstairsbar

put your records on and regret meeting me by dreamtiwasanarchitect

after the storm by anonymous

vein by vein by morian

[boof-chamber]

I used to think “liberal” was as far left as a person could possibly be, though i was often confused as to why none of my liberal friends ever agreed with me. I guessed i must have been more liberal than they were, an “extreme liberal.” I am so glad I finally found out there was more left past there on the political spectrum.

[imgae-insertshockedgasps-16]

people hear that i'm anti-psych on a lot of levels and they immediately assume that it means that i hate therapy and that i think that no one should be allowed medical treatment and blah blah blah

but that's so wrong???

firstly) i prioritize completely informed consent and autonomy. a lot of health care professionals don't, esp in mental healthcare.

secondly) i acknowledge the good that mental healthcare can do, but the system is majorly fucked and trying to find good care that is what you need is like finding a light blue needle in a stack of dark blue needles; you end up hurt a thousand times before you even get close to finding what you need, not to mention that they all look pretty similar so you could end up with a dark blue needle and get fucked up w/o realizing it

thirdly) not everyone has/needs/wants mental healthcare. which is fine, until you need/have/want mental healthcare and people stop talking to you/crap on you/etc etc bc it's so stigmatized

fourth) look all of my points boil down to completely informed consent, autonomy, and how much the system sucks.

i'm not anti-people-getting-the-care-they-need, i'm anti-the-current-psychiatric-system. cause it sucks and is inherently biased and shitty and sure it makes progress but at a snail's fuckin pace which doesn't help the people stuck in it now

[mothnoir]

So so normal about what a character's music tastes says about them

[dromaeocore]

Speaking of peer respite (again), there are none in Minnesota, (despite them already existing in many Midwest states) meaning MN residents in crisis have no choice but to go to the psychiatric hospital, which is incredibly expensive and can be traumatizing and isolating.

(Peer respites are homelike, entirely voluntary environments for people in crisis, staffed by individuals with lived experience, and are usually free for their clients. You can come and go as you please, and are not isolated from the community like you are in psychiatric hospitals.)

HF2301 tried to ameliorate this problem by seeking funding for two peer respites, though it seems it was never picked up after 2019.

You can find the emails of the members of the Minnesota State Advisory Council of Mental Health here. I sent 'em an email already, as someone who is considering a move to MN who has multiple friends and loved ones in the state who could benefit from this service.

I think it's better if you write your own thing, but you want a template/example, here's basically what I said:

Hello, I am a(n) [MN resident/individual with loved ones in MN/concerned citizen/whatever you wanna put about yourself here]. As members of the State Advisory Council on Mental Health, I would love for you to revisit the idea of funding (a) peer-run respite house(s) in MN, as outlined in 2019's HF 2301. Peer-run respites are a homelike, cost-effective alternative to inpatient hospitalization for folks experiencing a behavioral health crisis, staffed by peers with lived experience. They are successfully run in at least 14 states and counting, and are a rising trend in the US. On average, they resulted in $2,138 lower Medicaid expenditures per month and 2.9 fewer hospitalizations for individual respite clients. (source) [feel free to put more data here if you know of any, there's a ton] There are currently zero peer-run respites in the state of Minnesota, despite the strong evidence base for peer support. I know many people who would benefit from such a service, especially individuals who do not qualify for inpatient hospitalization or would prefer a less clinical environment. [Thank you for considering/I hope you will consider this/etc] [Name]

[rattusn0rvegicus]

Why do we continue to funnel money into psych hospitals when essentially every single suicidal person I've ever talked to has had an unhelpful or traumatic experience there, and the literature shows that people are more likely to attempt suicide AFTER leaving the psych ward, AND people hide their suicidality from loved ones and from providers - not just because of the stigma around suicide, but also because they're terrified of being involuntarily hospitalized and coming out with MORE trauma and crushing medical debt?

And NO, I'm not saying "defund mental healthcare", I'm saying we need to put funds TOWARDS other stuff that ACTUALLY prevents suicide - universal healthcare and housing, for one. Peer-run services that foster connection and community for folks - such peer respites, drop-in centers, support groups like Alt2Su, and warmlines, for another. And finally, actual quality therapy and psychiatry where people don't have to fear being coerced into a horrible situation if they're honest with their providers about what they're going through. Where there is a TRUE collaborative provider-patient relationship.

THAT is actual suicide prevention.

I am speaking as someone who has both been to and worked in psych hospitals. The patients are treated like shit. The staff are treated like shit. Most people don't "get better", they just learn how to lie their way out of there from other patients. I'm not saying they're NEVER helpful to anyone but holy fuck, we are doing people a disservice by acting like suicide prevention = more coercive psych wards with even more stringent "safety" rules that suck every bit of joy out of life for the patients (and many of the staff).

...Oh, and while we're at it, healthcare needs to be fucking free.

[urghost-andurboo]

Hiya! I was wondering if you knew of any literature about reforming the psych system because I agree its broken AF and as someone who's a part of it I want to be able to do better. No worries if not, I just saw posts you've reblogged and thought you'd be a good person to ask!

i do have some recommendations!

"mind fixers: psychology's troubled search for the biology of mental illness" by anne harrington and "comfortably numb: how psychiatry is medicating a nation" by charles barber both give a history of the medicalization of mental illness and critique the biomedical model. (hint: there's a lot of BAD science that makes up the core of psychiatry - the evidence for there being a biological basis for mental illness and psych meds working at all is very flimsy.)

the disorderland podcast debunks bad science, especially pop science, talks about the commodification of mental health, and explores whether the symptoms we pathologize are actually symptoms.

"madness and oppression" by fireweed collective is a workbook that helps you see how you're not crazy -- you're oppressed. it looks at how what a psychologist/psychiatrist would consider a symptom is actually a very rational and normal response to being oppressed.

"on your own: patient-controlled alternatives to the mental health system" by judi chamberlain is written by a psych survivor, and goes into her own experiences as well as what alternatives exist to the system. great for learning about peer support!

"stolen" by elizabeth gilpin is a memoir by a psych survivor. she was abducted and taken to a "treatment" program in Appalachia, then went to a boarding school that functioned more like a prison with abusive group therapy. this one's good for humanizing mental illness BUT can be triggering as hell to psych survivors - so proceed with caution.

"the zyprexa papers" by jim gottstein is probably my favorite on the list, it's about how the antipsychotic zyprexa causes diabetes and metabolic disorders, and is still commonly prescribed (this is how i got diabetes). it shows how psych med regulations are not enforced, especially since zyprexa is often prescribed off-label for conditions it hasn't been shown to be clinically effective for, and has led to death in some cases.

madinamerica.com is a good site to explore for psych abolition, debunking psychology research, new psychology research that centers patient's autonomy and rights, and personal accounts of mental illness. it's been around for a decade so there's a lot of quality content to sift through!

i also recommend reading about peer support and peer respite houses - i don't have any particular books or articles about them, but that can be a good jumping off point to looking for an alternative model to the current psych system.

[illnessfaker]

"i don't think it's a good idea to get rid of everything instead of reforming it" in response to an anonymous ask advising them to look more into anti-psych. like you can just say you don't wanna bother educating yourself on what anti-psych actually calls for. that's fine.

[kii2me2ii2]

Calling people censorship apologists is a proship dogwhistle.