Sun star Solaster simpsoni
To: no-list@yahoogroups.com
From: Dennis Budd <nitewing@ku.edu>
Date: Tue, 10 Sep 2002 20:51:59 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: [no-list] freedom train
On Wed, 11 Sep 2002, northcoast_com wrote:
--- In no-list@y..., Zzz wrote:
I think Www's point goes right to the heart of the matter. I said several weeks ago on this posting that the more we see this as a civil rights movement and that everyone has a right to free choices about what treatment they receive the more effective we can be in developing a clear advocacy agenda.
I'm really not comfortable framing it this way. I think we have to help construct the way that quality services can be achieved. It is not as tho' the problems of the system are merely defective choices by the providers! The system itself has to be transformed and madness dealt with differently.
'Choice' is an important concern and the lack thereof an important point of advocacy.
The very "choices" we have to make are framed by the system itself. Many of us try to see further for our choices, into that realm that the system itself leaves void. But even then, the larger society tries to frame the choices that we have to make.
I remember when I was newly graduating from computer programming school, and I was honest about my psychiatric history. Computer programming is a high pressure field, and potential employers backed away afraid that the pressure would cause another breakdown. Never mind that the causes of my original breakdown were more complicated that that. My own perceptions were irrelevant from the beginning. It's like that with persons labelled mentally ill.
BTW, I have done computer programming for a living the past thirty years, not mental health. In some respects I feel like I'm a "professional mental patient", except that it's all been volunteer. I haven't gotten a penny from my work in this movement beyond some reimbursement of expenses. Not that I'm complaining; I've never wanted to work in the MH system, but I am saying there are some of us like me out there. I too can't afford to go to Alternatives, although Su is going.
But I think earning respect by taking responsibility is a powerful statement too. Retrieving the civil rights dynamics from the 60s (the 'freedom train') is a necessary part of the logic of our work. But we must extend that to "where no one has gone before," to the right to earn respect, to work that creates a new social attitude toward madness.
The "right" to earn respect says it. Society does not see that "right" as even relevant to the way its members relate to "mad"people. We end up not only with a "mental health" system that devalues the choices of its clients, but with a mental health system that is inherently abusive because it reduces and labels the experiences and values of its clientss, rather than respecting what they bring to the tapestry of human experience. In this the mental health system is not simply being abusive on its own, but is reflecting the larger attitudes of society with respect to madness.
This is pretty advanced stuff. It goes far beyond what I normally write about choice, labeling, rights, force, and invalidation, and underlies the whole ball of wax.
Dennis