#psych survivor

[soupmetal666]

I think something people don't understand or often misrepresent about psych wards in the US is that even if you sign yourself in voluntarily, you're often doing so because the alternative is being committed. They tell you you'll be able to leave whenever you want if you go in "voluntarily," but this is very often not true if, once you're admitted, they decide it's "too dangerous" or you're too unstable to let you leave. And then, you're essentially committed anyway. I see posts by people that make it seem like involuntary and voluntary stays are a sort of...binary thing at US hospitals/facilities and it's just not true. Or that voluntary stays are somehow safer or offer people more autonomy. If you go in, they have the final say about when you leave whether you're "voluntary" or not. They can ship you to a state hospital long-term against your will from a "voluntary" stay in a psych ward. I know firsthand. Just...look out for yourselves and your loved ones, folks.

#antipsychiatry #antipsych #institutionalization #psych wards #psych survivor

[dysmotility]

please please please don’t forget to include intellectual disability, psychosis / schizospec disorders, level 2-3 autistics, folks w dissociative disorders, and others with “severe mental illness” from ur conversations about mad liberation.

these are some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised mad people, and we need to give them a voice.

these are the places where liberation is needed the most

#mad liberation #mad pride #psych survivor #autistic #disabled #sanism #cripplepunk #intellectual disability #psychosis #actually schizospec #schizo spectrum #neurodivergent #level 2 autism #level 3 autism #level 1 #actually autistic #disability #queer cripple

[neuroticboyfriend]

not that people who've been to the ward are immune from being pro-psych, but if you've never been to a psych ward*, i sincerely don't want to hear about how psychiatry/psychology is good because you've had such a good experience with X provider, or X medication saved your life. *i also don't want to hear about how the forced treatment was what you needed or how the ward you went to let you have your cellphone etc. etc. i genuinely do not want to hear it.

like. the first hospitalization traumatized me so bad, i became dangerously delusional, was re-hospitalized, and sent to state. when they transferred me, i was strapped down into a gurney at all points on my body, *head and neck included*, and loaded onto an ambulance. my parents lost most of their parental rights; i was a ward of the state and had near zero rights. when i got there, they made me choose if, "if necessary," if i wanted to be wrangled down and forcibly injected with a sedative... or wrangled down and locked in a padded room all by myself (but at least i had a choice, right?). i signed consents and paperwork that i did not fucking understand. then i was told i'd be locked inside for 2 straight weeks (which yes, they followed through with). the psych ward was remote, nothing but barbed fences and trees around us. cant even see the sun through the heavily tinted windows. that was the *start* of the stay. i'm sure you can imagine nothing good came after.

so like. if you walk out of a place like that thinking it was good for you, then i can only imagine how traumatized you are and i hope you heal someday. but if you've never faced the destruction of your autonomy like that and go around being like "oh this is good actually" then shut the ever living fuck up.

#julian rants #this is okay to rb but im mainly venting #psych ward #psych survivor #psych ward tw #abuse tw #sanism #ableism #antipsychiatry #antipsychology #antipsych #psychiatric abuse #psychiatric trauma #trauma #psych abolition #psych hospital #psychiatric hospital #inpatient

[trans-axolotl]

content note: discussion of suicide.

this next monday will be the six year anniversary of losing one of my friends to suicide.

when he died, my high school barely mentioned his death, even though for other students who died by things like car crashes or illness, there were so many public expressions of grief. they believed that having any memorials for a student who died by suicide would encourage other people to die the same way. in their rush to erase the circumstances of his death, they erased the memory of his life.

there are so many things i am angry at that high school about in terms of how they treated mental health (mandatory reporting and collaborating with cops, their refusal to recognize the ways in which that system led to peer-to-peer crisis support, their refusal to recognize the ways that trying to keep each other alive through trial and error was scary and exhausting, carceral disciplinary policies, etc etc etc). but i think one of the things i am still angriest about is the way they enforced shame around his death. it felt like they were retroactively blaming him for the constellation of circumstances that made suicide an option in his life. it felt like they were blaming those of us who missed him and cared about him and wanted to grieve him. it made those of us still there who were actively suicidal feel even more scared about the reaction if we did reach out for help from one of those mythical safe adults.

as an adult now involved in psych abolition/mad liberation work, it makes me so fucking mad to see the ways in which he was discarded by people in authority positions. and the older i get, the more options i have found in my life for making sense of the world and finding healing and community and support which were never available to him because he died when he was 16 and the only things offered to him were a carceral psychiatric system that blamed him for his own fucking death. it feels so incredibly unfair.

i miss him and i think i always will; i can't remember his laugh or the sound of his voice or his favorite color any more and that aches. this grief is so heavy and it feels harder in a new way each year, when i become older than he will ever be. sometimes meeting new comrades or seeing new anticarceral suicide support models hurts because i wish so fucking bad that we had that back then. i remember how close we came to losing even more people that year and i know it is simple fucking luck that i'm still here when he's not.

i remember another letter (never sent) that i wrote to a friend while they were in an ICU bed after a suicide attempt when i didn't know if they would live or not. i have spent so much time in the past 10 years begging for anything to keep me and my friends alive, but even in that letter i knew that there is so much fucking violence that is hidden beneath psychiatric logics of cure and safety that promise a "solution" to suicide. I knew that institutionalization, coercion, and shame would not have helped build a life more liveable for him or **** or any of the people i've loved and lost since.

there needs to be more fucking options for care and support that aren't so incredibly cruel to suicidal people. i know so many people doing incredible work in alternatives, peer respite, a million different frameworks for healing and liberation. but it makes me so mad every day i have to live in a world where there are still people restrained, locked up in psych wards, having all autonomy and personhood taken away from them. knowing there are dozens of people every day getting blamed for their deaths the same way he was blamed for his.

i miss him. i cared so fucking much for him. and he died by suicide, and all of those things are true. he has been dead for 6 years and he lived before that and the people who loved him want to remember all of him; our celebrations of his life should not require hiding the way that he died.

Image description: [1000 origami cranes in all different colors and patterns that are tied together in strings of 25]

(these were the 1000 cranes we made to give to his parents, in memorial and recognition of how much he meant to us.)

#personal #suicide tw #suicide mention tw #psych abuse tw #psych ward tw #ok to reblog if u want #psych abolition #mad liberation #psych survivor #it's a lot of grief hours over here and will be for a while all week i think #lots of grief so many ways this year for so many people #but this week. his memory . my grief for him #is hitting especially hard. i think partially because of all the transitions in my life. i'm graduating college. he will never become an ad #adult. #i think i might ask my roommates if they will go do something to remember him with me. maybe making origami cranes and sending them off in #the river. or writing things down and burning them #idk. grief is hard #six years in grief is different. but hard

[yellowyarn]

Sometimes i wonder what the people at the psychiatric hospital did with the cords from my pants. i wonder what they do with all the tings they take from us. do they just get thrown away like they are nothing? i cried over losing the cords from my favorite frog pajamas i wonder if the nurses knew i would cry about that.

#they probably dont think about it #antipsychiatry #antipsych #anti psych #anti psychiatry #antipsychology #psych survivor #psych abolition #psych critical #psychiatric victim #psych hospital #psychiatric hospital #psych ward #mental heal hospital #tw psychiatric hospital

[awarmshrine]

Less "discreet plastic fidgets you can use at work" "making small talk with my housemates is oppressive emotional labour" "buy a $200 toy to heal your inner child" neurodivergent liberation, more "writing letters to incarcerated folks" "visiting your friends in hospital" "not calling the cops on people sobbing in public" neurodivergent liberation.

#idk if I expressed this well #and also I don't think this will be a popular take #but like. sick of being told that justice for us is about being able to be consumers of capitalism #and being isolated as liberation #idk maybe I'm being unfair but like. it's not liberation if it's just you #it's only liberation if it's for all of ys #my words matter #mad pride #neurodivergent #psych survivor

[cyberabbit]

being hammered with psych violence is great, because every single time you express any emotion ever it's a Symptom™ and you never are allowed to have any genuine expression ever again.

#antipsychiatry #rabbit blahs #believe psych survivors #psych survivor

[catboys4recovery]

"grippy sock vacation" "omw to the loony bin" "haha i need a lobotomy" SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!!! SHUT! THE! FUCK! UP! IF YOU'VE NEVER BEEN FORCED INTO THE HELL THAT IS A PSYCHIATRIC WARD THEN FUCKING QUIT MAKING FUN OF US AND OUR PAIN!!! THAT SHIT IS TRAUMATIZING! IT'S WORSE THAN PRISON! DISABLED PEOPLE HAVING OUR AUTONOMY AND IDENTITY STRIPPED FROM US IS NOT A GOOD SUBJECT FOR YOUR UWU DARK HUMOR YOU ABLEIST SHIT

#not positivity #for the record idc if you have a mental illness #if you haven't been institutionalized #it's ableist to make jokes about it #period #mad liberation #mad pride #psych survivor #troubled teen industry

[schizophrenicnatsuo]

Being a psych survivor is just a constant parade of people refusing to respect you, refusing to see your abuse as real, claiming your abuse is unimportant because talking about it might make some people not want to take meds or whatever, prioritizing (presumably) sane doctors' feelings over your safety, telling you that you're not really mentally ill or that you don't really understand how bad mental illness can be, justifying violence against you, and attacking you if you do so much as point out the reality that psychiatric abuse exists

#psych abuse tw #psych abolition #psych survivor #mad pride #us tag

[emohorseboy]

Shelving books at my new job and reacted to this like a vampire next to a stack of bibles

#jumpscared by the dsm while i’m trying to live my life #go away #dsm 5 #anti psych #anti psychiatry #mad liberation #psych abolition #psych abuse #psychiatric survivor #psych survivor #psych trauma #psychiatry #mad pride #mad studies

[intersexfairy]

they put me on this mood stabilizer and i am much more unstable than i was now. it's almost like being locked up for 3 weeks and near totally disconnected from the outside world fundamentally changes a person

#julian rants #vent #psych ward #psych survivor

[dysmotility]

you don’t have to necessarily agree with someone’s take to think their voice is important.

right now i’m seeing some discourse about the different access needs disabled ppl have, like physical access needs vs. sensory needs.

i don’t necessarily agree that late dx’d autistic folks are choosing to make their disability a big deal, i do think that our voices tend to take up more than our share of space i. the autism community. we tend to center our own experiences and not consider the overt isolation and dehumanization of growing up segregated because of a disability.

i will always support the most marginalized, and that includes the visibly, cognitively, and intellectually disabled.

#mad liberation #mad pride #autistic #disabled #psych survivor #disability #sanism #actually autistic #chronic illness #disability tag #cripplepunk #disability justice #intellectual disability #developmentally disabled #severe autism #level 2 autistic #level 3 autism #care work

[neuroticboyfriend]

involuntary hospitalization should be considered kidnapping. or abduction. that is all.

#softspoonie #antipsych #psychiatric abuse #antipsychiatry #psych ward #psychiatry #psychiatric hospital #psych hospital #hospital #mentally ill #mental illness #sanism #ableism #madpunk #neuropunk #abuse #trauma #psych survivor #trauma survivor #abuse survivor #ptsd #cptsd #survivor #disabled rights #disability rights #human rights

[trans-axolotl]

Image description: [ a photo of the Psych Survivor zine in a bush of ivy. The cover is a collage made out of medical records, vintage flower drawings, and magazine letters spelling “psych survivor zine".]

Hello everyone! I am so thrilled to announce the launch of the psych survivor zine, now available to download on www.psychsurvivorarchive.com.

A little bit about this project:

The Psych Survivor Archive is an abolitionist organization deeply invested in mad liberation and cross-movement organizing.

We host two projects: the Psych Survivor Zine and the Digital Story Archive. The Psych Survivor Zine celebrates Mad art in volumes released twice a year, with thematic prompts for each edition. The Digital Story Archive is a more informal forum for psych survivors to write about our lives and share as much as we want, when we want, how we want. 

Through this archive, I hope to create a platform where psych survivors are believed and the psych system is held accountable for the ways it has harmed us. Our pain, resistance, knowledge, and grief are worth listening to, and I offer up this archive as a communal method of bearing witness. 

This space is for the imperfect crazy person, the noncompliant patient, those of us who trash our rooms in the psych ward and yell to ourselves on the street. This space is for our comrades still incarcerated in all kinds of institutions and prisons. This space is for anyone who has been harmed by the psychiatric system and wants to rage about it–and this space is for anyone who doesn’t have the words to talk about it. 

This space is for you.

You can download a pdf and an image described pdf for free on the website, or order a physical copy! This zine is incredible-featuring artwork by 13 different Mad artists, the 55 page zine includes collages, poems, harm reduction toolkits, and more!!

Artists include @kihnindewa, @bioethicists, @gothhabiba and @librarycards, among many more!

This project has been really vulnerable and cathartic with me, and I am so excited to share it with you. Feel free to explore the website, submit your story, and check out our resource guide.

#personal #psych survivor #survivingpsych #antipsych #psych abolition #mad liberation #mad pride #psych survivor zine #disability #really really happy with this. #disability pride month #also if i tagged you and you don't want to be tagged pls let me know! i don't know who else from the project is on tumblr #mad punk

[yellowyarn]

psychiatric diagnosis is just made up. maybe bipolar is actually a group of things, maybe its just bipolar. maybe MDD is a type of BD, who cares? us whatever words you like, make on up, or use none. there all nonsense anyways. some white guys just sat around like "hey there seems to be a lot of people not thinking/acting/feeling how we like... we should give it a name and arbitrary criteria so we can lock them up and force feed them sedatives by the spoon full!"

#totally ok if you like the label u were given by a doctor too #or if you like a label thats in on of The Book (the DSM or ICD) #whatever works best for you! #disability #nuero punk #auti punk #autipunk #nueropunk #psychiatry #psych survivor #psychpunk #mad pride #mad liberation #mad punk #madpunk #mental illness #mentally ill #mental health #anti psych #anti psychiatry #anti phys #same for some diagnosis for physical illnesses but thats a lot more complicated and a whole other thing

[shattered-yet-whole]

me: I keep getting urges to go back to my abuser... but I know it's bad for me. I just end up more traumatized every time.

my abuser:

#no but really... i keep having urges to go to a psych ward because they taught me that taking me seriously means they make decisions for me #even if they actually dont take me seriously and just make the decisions #to be clear i dont need inpatient (not even by their shit standards bc no one needs control wrested away from them) #im not suicidal anymore (no thanks to them)... theyve just done something to my brain where i want to go back to my stupid abuser #psych survivor #psych survivor meme #psychiatric abuse #psychiatric hospital #anti psych #antipsychiatry