Closing Psychiatric Hospitals Isn't The Issue
I used to dream of the day when the hospitals would all shut down. I
even dared to dream of tearing a few down
myself, brick by brick. I fantasized of a miracle in which all the locks
on all the doors and windows would mysteriously vanish and everyone
could escape.
In my anger, I blamed the system. Even outside of hospitals, I saw
people trapped. I saw folks who'd been sitting in the same dull, old,
tired, worn-out day treatement program for ten years or more. These
folks did nothing more than sit around all day and drink coffee and
smoke cigarettes.
In my zeal to change things, I tried to rescue folks. I started
drop-in's. I attracted quite a lot of people. The folks I got from the
day treatment programs came to my drop-in. Do you know what they did?
That's right. They sat around and drank coffee and smoked cigarettes.
These people were "soul-dead." Their spirit had been crushed by the
system. their life force had been snuffed. I realized that it was the
internal self that I had to help liberate, and not worry so much about
the physical bricks and mortar of the system. Instead, the major task of
liberation is to free people's minds of the brainwashing of the system
and to rekindle the life force or spirit within.
The system teaches people well. It teaches us to be hopeless, helpless,
dependent, life-long, pill-popping, "mentally ill", sick, crazy, lazy,
defective, "brain diseased", psychiatrically diagnosed labels. To
overcome this oppression, we have to reach the spark of life within
people which I call the "human spirit." Spirit isn't something
religious. It is that which drove Beethoven to write beautiful music
which his deaf ears would never hear. It is the courage which holds
people's souls together under the most adverse of conditions from
concentration camps to POW camps.
To reach this level in people, I had them remember. Remember what it was
like before they became mental patients. What their hopes and dreams and
aspirations were. I ask people what they wanted to be when they thought
about it as a child. I try to find that thing which is withing each and
every one of us which moves us with a passion. I don't judge the dreams
and hopes of others. I merely help them to find that within themselves
which has been oppressed by the system. Once found, I affirm their
dreams in a positive way and show them how, step-by-step, fueled by
their own passion, they can achieve their dreams. I give people
permission to make mistakes and keep on traveling down the path of their
own design. It isn't easy but, I have managed to be fairly successful in
helping to "deprogram" people from the "cult of psychiatry" and get a
life of their own. It's the most rewarding thing I've done in my life
and it's a heck of a lot more satisfying than trying to break
institutional locks with my bare hands.
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