Blog contributed by: Bhargavi Davar,
Convenor TCI Asia Pacific
So, why do persons with psychosocial disabilities, and users and survivors of psychiatry, do it when psychiatrists or psychologists set up their "business as usual" conferences and present academic papers? Why is participation important here, in a way that is not important in those other spaces. Does this mean that psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, and other mental health professionals, or students for that matter, can never organize a conference or a curricula or a dissertation topic without having dozens of us dissenters participating and having "our voices" heard?
For one thing, it is an old habit, our resistance to the 'psy' disciplines. 'They' can never do right by us! Our movement(s) is built upon a 80 to 100 year old resistance to the development of the 'psy' disciplines and their classic institutional designs for "ships of fools". The "ex-patients' liberation movement", works of memorable leaders such as Leonard Roy Frank, who I had the privilege of meeting; Kate Millet, David Cooper, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, and many other white men and women who "escaped" from mental health care by their resistance, their writings, poetry, "mad art", writings created a vibrant experiential archive of madness. The Mad Pride movement was born (absent, a "Chemistry Pride" or a "Physics Pride" movement, etc.) and dissent was expressed through street tabloids, "Dendron", "Madness Network Newsletter", etc. in the post war reconstruction period. Just as contemporary dissenters challenge occupation by the West in the name of peace building, activists from the west, including the US, Europe and the West, at the time followed inspiring state dissenters such as Franz Fanon, Cesaire Aime, and others, who steadily challenged colonialism, the worldwide apartheid, wars for race supremacy, vanquishing of indigenous populations, trampling over land and water, and oh, all that violence.
The movement continued to be white, north country, through these years, a point of embarrassment today, in (nearly all) post colonial countries, as people of colour in low and middle income countries, and in the high income countries, have set up their own counter to what is experienced as the "dominant western white voice" within a diverse set of discourses of "mad" resistance. See NSUN, USP Kenya, TCI Asia Pacific as examples.
Basic and
advanced math, probability and predictions, game and set theory, logic, etc.
are used to a lesser or greater degree by most of us in our daily lives. Citizens of the world who are using
mathematics, do not set up a worldwide protest when mathematicians do not
invite us to their conferences. This is
true of physics, microbiology, ion chemistry, astronomy, sociology, history, geography,
anthropology and various other "professional" conferences that happen
worldwide. We do not do this even for gynecology, urology, cardiology, or neuroscience
conferences.
So, why do persons with psychosocial disabilities, and users and survivors of psychiatry, do it when psychiatrists or psychologists set up their "business as usual" conferences and present academic papers? Why is participation important here, in a way that is not important in those other spaces. Does this mean that psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, and other mental health professionals, or students for that matter, can never organize a conference or a curricula or a dissertation topic without having dozens of us dissenters participating and having "our voices" heard?
For one thing, it is an old habit, our resistance to the 'psy' disciplines. 'They' can never do right by us! Our movement(s) is built upon a 80 to 100 year old resistance to the development of the 'psy' disciplines and their classic institutional designs for "ships of fools". The "ex-patients' liberation movement", works of memorable leaders such as Leonard Roy Frank, who I had the privilege of meeting; Kate Millet, David Cooper, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, and many other white men and women who "escaped" from mental health care by their resistance, their writings, poetry, "mad art", writings created a vibrant experiential archive of madness. The Mad Pride movement was born (absent, a "Chemistry Pride" or a "Physics Pride" movement, etc.) and dissent was expressed through street tabloids, "Dendron", "Madness Network Newsletter", etc. in the post war reconstruction period. Just as contemporary dissenters challenge occupation by the West in the name of peace building, activists from the west, including the US, Europe and the West, at the time followed inspiring state dissenters such as Franz Fanon, Cesaire Aime, and others, who steadily challenged colonialism, the worldwide apartheid, wars for race supremacy, vanquishing of indigenous populations, trampling over land and water, and oh, all that violence.
The works of
Judi Chamberlin,
Sylvia Caras, Mary O'Hagan, Iris Hoelling, Chris Hansen, David Oaks, and dozens
of others are considered inspirational living legacies. David Oaks, who I met
in Oregon a couple of decades ago, prophetically spoke about an
"Emergency" coming to the "developing" world. More contemporary
activists such as Gabor Gombos, Rufus May, Olga Runciman, Yana Jacobs, and
organizations like NEC, "Support Coalition International", (which
later became "Mind Freedom International"), carried the baton of
resistance in the highly institutionalized west through the '80s and the '90s.
Over the decades, the Mad Pride, now called the "user survivor
movement" had the support of several allies such as Jean Paul Satre,
Ronald Laing, Dan Fisher, Thomas Szasz,
Peter Breggin, Philip Thomas, Peter Stastny and a number of others, who exposed
the underbelly of psychiatry, and its institutions. Szasz, a psychiatrist by
profession, wrote his memorable book, "The myth of mental illness"
debunking the idea that problems of living are actually diseases. Also add the legacy of
"alternatives" to psychiatry, a driftwood stream of psychiatry with
transformed practices that continue till today, including Soteria Network,
Orthomolecular Psychiatry (which is now Integrative psychiatry), INTAR, etc.
The World
Network of Users and Survivors of Psychiatry (WNUSP) was formed in 2002,
thereabouts, drawing from the legacies of people like Mary OHagan, Iris
Hoelling and Chris Hansen. This was around the time when the UN was gearing up
for drafting the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The
WNUSP brought liberation to us worldwide, by ensuring a great drafting on legal
capacity, liberty, and integrity. However the WNUSP was more active in the
global north, not engaging with the global south, except in a minimalist way. It
had no presence in low and middle income country regions, or, for that matter,
in the non-white world of the west.
The movement continued to be white, north country, through these years, a point of embarrassment today, in (nearly all) post colonial countries, as people of colour in low and middle income countries, and in the high income countries, have set up their own counter to what is experienced as the "dominant western white voice" within a diverse set of discourses of "mad" resistance. See NSUN, USP Kenya, TCI Asia Pacific as examples.
It can be
said that the movement(s) of persons with psychosocial disabilities, users and
survivors of psychiatry, mad people and all colonial and post colonial
identities thereof, has had a history as long as the birth of the 'psy'
disciplines. The movement is there, challenging these disciplines, and not
others, because of the strength of marginalized identities and experience of
violence, trauma and torture by the so called 'psy' sciences, including the
lock up, seclusion, restraints, use of hazardous neuroleptics and narco
analysers, insulin coma, shock treatment, implants, tasers, tranquilizers,
benzos, and other addictive hazardous substances. Mathematicians and other disciplinary people,
thankfully, do not perpetrate this, nor is violence, trauma and torture,
central to the very practice of mathematics, chemistry and the other sciences. To be freed of involuntary commitment was
considered as a "long term goal" of the movement.
Secondly,
and importantly, "they" never change!! Having been a student of the
philosophies of natural and social sciences, there were some basic principles
that we expect from an aspiring science: That it goes beyond an
"aspiration" to be a science!! This never happened to psychiatry. We
were taught that when an experimental result belies the hypothesis, there will
be a course correction, and there will be accumulating new "truths"
based on the falsifiability of claims (Karl Popper and followers). Also that when a whole set of claims have reached beyond the realm of falsifiability,
reason and objectivity, then there will be a "paradigm shift" (Thomas Kuhn and followers).
For example, some theories, such as that the earth is the center of the
universe, just get trashed. "Science" precluded non-falsifiable
theories and science progressed by paradigm shifts.
Well, there
are millions of people who experience distress, disturbance, and disabilities,
psychosocially, on the planet today. However, the 'psy' disciplines have not
helped a lot, have caused grievous harm, having gone beyond the point of reason,
objectivity and falsifiability, not making a paradigm shift, assuming a god
like universality. Traditional philosophers of science would call such
endeavours as tautological belief systems, faith and rhetoric, and not science.
Any science is so because it is falsifiable, and can be dropped if not worthy
of reason.
For example,
where drugs fail, there is now the "drug resisting" mental disorder. When
there is apparent drug withdrawal effects found in whole populations, it is the
illness not the medicines. Where all interventions fail, there is total
"loss of insight" needing forced commitment. There is no
falsifiability conditions when medication does not cause harm, nor when institutionalisation
will fail (In our experience in the movement, there are trillion instances when
institutionalisation has failed, to the point of leading to death). There is no
condition set, of proof of evidence and verification, that taking consent
away favours outcomes of inclusion. A
"disease" which has no bug or germ, a blood pathology or other such
physical markers, however small, is unfalsifiable, its truth claims are made on
a statistical cloud castle, and it is not a science. [This however does not
mean that there is no personal distress, disturbance or disability.] A number
of critical philosophers, including Adolf Grunbaum, Felix Guattari, Andrew
Scull, Nikolas Rose, and others have
addressed the emptiness of claims of the 'psy' disciplines to science, and its
historical, capitalistic, underpinnings.
The point
is, that the 'psy' disciplines, particularly, psychiatry, never undertook
course correction. It never defined what are its credentials, proof of concept
and verification. There were hundreds of opportunities to do so through its
history and development. Now, with the CRPD, there is ample opportunity to go
beyond course correction and harm reduction and effect a "paradigm
shift". From the point of science, and from that of values, this is
necessary. By this time, the critique of psychiatry comes at its highest pitch,
from within, cf. the Special Rapporteur's report. Dr. Puras is a child
psychiatrist, disgusted by the recalcitrance of globalizing psychiatry, without
course correction. Allen Frances, who is a lead author of the DSM classics, has
disowned the enterprise. There are dozens of other psychiatrists who have quit
the field, after failing to bring the professional lobbies to notice some fault
lines in the basic tenets of their discipline and its practices.
It is really
important, despite lack of movements in the other natural and social sciences,
that we continue the struggles. No other 'science' has let down humanity like
psychiatry, its medicines and its institutions, have. It is not about 'degree'
but about 'scale'. The harm caused is not about being 'a little less' or 'a
little more', but is at a different level altogether, as the UN CRPD monitoring
committee has taken the pains to elaborate country after country. With the
Lancet paper, psychiatry is moving to another 'scale' without valid
epistemological foundations which goes beyond 'harm'. When hazards strike whole
populations, society has usually found stronger words for naming such
phenomena.
We look forward to Rapid Responses to
the Lancet paper at #WhatWENeed
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