agnesholder:

Genuine question, how do people with health issues like severe asthma (or asthma that seems mild until it’s in a city, and then becomes severe) and seizures and selective mutism and fear of crowds of strangers etc survive in big cities without the police on their asses? Like just walking down the street?

When I was having a lot of trouble with hypoglycemic episodes which also made me lose speech, I avoided going out much. Made sure to carry alert cards when I did have to, but mostly just stayed at home.

Especially after one episode where I fell over on a crowded bus and couldn’t talk coherently. Thankfully my partner was along that time, or who knows what might have happened. Blood sugar problems are at least a reasonably well-known reason for acting weird in public, but I was still worried about maybe ending up committed at best.

Something I have to think about more than I would like anyway, but that can make any kind of health problem scary.

(#wouldn’t have been afraid of getting locked up back home #that’s for sure)

I couldn’t find another earlier post having to do with being glad I do have some kind of more acceptable excuse alert cards now in case of meltdowns in public, but yeah.

That’s one reason I was extra horrified by that story from several years ago which came up again earlier. I knew that this was really not a good place to be perceived as crazy. That got demonstrated pretty quickly in some other ways.

But, if having one (1) panic attack while foreign and pregnant on a business trip will get you locked up (and a forced c-section so they can adopt your baby out to a British couple)? Not much good would be likely to come from having public meltdowns while foreign and already coming across as weird enough to get harassed a lot. Pregnant or no.

Honestly, I would feel fine with pulling out the hypoglycemia card if it came down to it. Even if blood sugar swings were not an immediate contributing factor, which they sometimes are anyway. Because that is a more socially acceptable reason for Acting Weird In Public, and I reckon that being diabetic in public is way less likely to get you locked up than admitting you’re autistic.

It may not be totally honest, but that’s a lower priority than not getting locked up. Really hoping that situation never comes up, regardless.

(Also one reason I am just not safe going to the doctor by myself, tbh. Where I am going to be super stressed and on the verge of meltdowns/shutdowns, because trauma. Some of it related to very badly handled meltdowns when I was younger. And somehow I doubt the hypoglycemia explanation would fly with professionals who already also overwhelmingly think I’m weird as hell in a bad way 😩)

corvusvulpes:

clatterbane:

strengthins0lidarity:

mrrrjjjreblog:

mazarinedrake:

whowasntthere:

yohoyohoadisneylifeforme:

smitethepatriarchy:

queerfabulousmermaid:

nynuwe:

geekgirlsmash:

sophiealdred:

thehippieconservatarian:

thinksquad:

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers.

Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.
The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental breakdown.

If you are not absolutely terrified and outraged by this you are wrong. The precedent this sets put every person on earth in danger.

oh my god read the article this is FUCKING HORRIFIC. she got back on her bipolar disorder medication and is in recovery but they won’t give her her child back “because of the risk she might relapse”. What you’re fucking saying with that is that mentally ill people shouldn’t even be allowed children even if they’re safe and well *just in case*, that we’re a permanent threat to ourselves and others even when we’re in treatment and recovery and living a stable life. I am FUCKING LIVID

Over a fucking panic attack. I’m fucking serious, all of this over a single panic attack. They took her baby in the most horrific way possible because she had a fucking panic attack.

From the Article:

She suffered a panic attack, which her relations believe was due to her failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition.

It’s worth noting, that it’s very common for people on psychiatric medication to go off of their meds if they become pregnant, because of risk of side effects.

I bolded the above. I wanted there to be no one to think that she was being irresponsible for not haven taken her meds regularly. She did it for good reason, for the health of her own baby. And she got punished for it.

i fucking cant

So she did what was best for her kid, has ONE SINGLE PANIC ATTACK WHICH IS A THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE WHETHER THEY HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS OR NOT and decide that they can literally violate her body in a horrific manner and take her kid away. But she’s the dangerous one.

Terribly sad. I hope this gets worked out in her benefit.

I can’t even imagine how terrifyingly awful that situation had to have been. Forcing a woman, against her will, to undergo sedation and then waking up in pain, without the fetus you’ve been carrying for 9 months? That’s beyond the pale. How much do the rights of an unborn fetus circumvent the rights of a full-grown adult? How much do we have to other the mentally ill, treating them (us) as less than human? She was literally treated like a breeding animal, with no cause of concern for her safety, mental health or well-being. Fuck. Fuck.

The British government won’t even hand the baby over to the Italian government. They’re keeping it in a British foster home. THIS WOMAN’S BABY MIGHT NOT EVEN GROW UP SPEAKING HER LANGUAGE IF SHE DOESN’T GET IT BACK.

The entire fucking world should be enraged over this case. What gives them the right???

Woman loses her child because of a panic attack, men have full custody despite beating their wives and kids

Mentally ill people can’t have kids now.

Cool.

I don’t know who can now, given that 25% of people experience mental illness in a given year.

The story is from 2013. I remembered, it was so awful.

This shouldn’t have been legal at all, and I also can’t imagine that her being a foreigner was irrelevant to the whole thing.

Some earlier commentary, including on the legal space (bearing in mind that IANAL): http://clatterbane.tumblr.com/post/118330824173/woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social

this is a followup story from 2014 https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/15/pacchieri-baby-adopted-forced-caesarean-case-uk

Source: thinksquad

strengthins0lidarity:

mrrrjjjreblog:

mazarinedrake:

whowasntthere:

yohoyohoadisneylifeforme:

smitethepatriarchy:

queerfabulousmermaid:

nynuwe:

geekgirlsmash:

sophiealdred:

thehippieconservatarian:

thinksquad:

A pregnant woman has had her baby forcibly removed by caesarean section by social workers.

Essex social services obtained a High Court order against the woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and her child to be taken from her womb.
The council said it was acting in the best interests of the woman, an Italian who was in Britain on a work trip, because she had suffered a mental breakdown.

If you are not absolutely terrified and outraged by this you are wrong. The precedent this sets put every person on earth in danger.

oh my god read the article this is FUCKING HORRIFIC. she got back on her bipolar disorder medication and is in recovery but they won’t give her her child back “because of the risk she might relapse”. What you’re fucking saying with that is that mentally ill people shouldn’t even be allowed children even if they’re safe and well *just in case*, that we’re a permanent threat to ourselves and others even when we’re in treatment and recovery and living a stable life. I am FUCKING LIVID

Over a fucking panic attack. I’m fucking serious, all of this over a single panic attack. They took her baby in the most horrific way possible because she had a fucking panic attack.

From the Article:

She suffered a panic attack, which her relations believe was due to her failure to take regular medication for an existing bipolar condition.

It’s worth noting, that it’s very common for people on psychiatric medication to go off of their meds if they become pregnant, because of risk of side effects.

I bolded the above. I wanted there to be no one to think that she was being irresponsible for not haven taken her meds regularly. She did it for good reason, for the health of her own baby. And she got punished for it.

i fucking cant

So she did what was best for her kid, has ONE SINGLE PANIC ATTACK WHICH IS A THING THAT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE WHETHER THEY HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS OR NOT and decide that they can literally violate her body in a horrific manner and take her kid away. But she’s the dangerous one.

Terribly sad. I hope this gets worked out in her benefit.

I can’t even imagine how terrifyingly awful that situation had to have been. Forcing a woman, against her will, to undergo sedation and then waking up in pain, without the fetus you’ve been carrying for 9 months? That’s beyond the pale. How much do the rights of an unborn fetus circumvent the rights of a full-grown adult? How much do we have to other the mentally ill, treating them (us) as less than human? She was literally treated like a breeding animal, with no cause of concern for her safety, mental health or well-being. Fuck. Fuck.

The British government won’t even hand the baby over to the Italian government. They’re keeping it in a British foster home. THIS WOMAN’S BABY MIGHT NOT EVEN GROW UP SPEAKING HER LANGUAGE IF SHE DOESN’T GET IT BACK.

The entire fucking world should be enraged over this case. What gives them the right???

Woman loses her child because of a panic attack, men have full custody despite beating their wives and kids

Mentally ill people can’t have kids now.

Cool.

I don’t know who can now, given that 25% of people experience mental illness in a given year.

The story is from 2013. I remembered, it was so awful.

This shouldn’t have been legal at all, and I also can’t imagine that her being a foreigner was irrelevant to the whole thing.

Some earlier commentary, including on the legal space (bearing in mind that IANAL): http://clatterbane.tumblr.com/post/118330824173/woman-has-child-taken-from-her-womb-by-social

Source: thinksquad

Woman has child taken from her womb by social services – Telegraph

clatterbane:

clatterbane:

cactustreemotel:

lancrebitch:

pandorasprings:

fatascribunda:

dykeprivilege:

Christ

This is the logical conclusion of a lack of bodily autonomy for women before and during pregnancy. This is where it leads.

i’d like to highlight the fact that she was away from her home country on a business trip (she’s italian but it was britain’s social services who did this), and she was not told they were going to do that. so basically anyone, anywhere can do this to women.

WHAT THE SHIT

Jesus Christ even the 1st sentence in the article is awful:
“Exclusive: Essex social services have obtained a court order against a woman that allowed her to be forcibly sedated and for her child to be taken from her womb by caesarean section.”
Like how much more passive could that wording sound? “Allowed her to be forcibly sedated”? How about “they forcibly sedated her, performed non-consented surgery, and stole her child”?!?!?! Jesus fuck.

One thing that particularly gets me here:

‘The case has developed into an international legal row, with lawyers for the woman describing it as “unprecedented”.

They claim that even if the council had been acting in the woman’s best interests, officials should have consulted her family beforehand and also involved Italian social services, who would be better-placed to look after the child.’

When there is actually case law directly related to this from the ‘90s, because similar shit has indeed been pulled before, including forced obstetric treatment of women who have been sectioned. (The Mental Health Act here scares the shit out of me, BTW.)
http://www.homebirth.org.uk/law1.htm

“The judges in the case of S ruled that ex parte High Court declarations (where only one side is heard by the judge) do not protect doctors and hospitals from later being sued for trespass, and that patients must be represented at court hearings. This means that it is highly unlikely that anybody, mentally competent or not, will have surprise court orders for medical treatment sprung upon them in future.
The Court of Appeal also reaffirmed the absolute right of a competent adult to refuse medical intervention, even if the result would mean that she or her baby died.”

Note that her own lawyers are talking in terms of fewer legal rights than this. Which I also find disturbing. It certainly does not sound like she had any knowledge of or representation at any hearing over forced surgery.

The only element here that may be unprecedented is their holding a foreign national captive, and then keeping her child. Though I actually wouldn’t be surprised if that has happened before. 😐

Reblogging this older post again, because jfc.

The only difference I can see here is in Social Services’ framing of the case as taking custody of a fetus, with the forced c-section as sort of a peripheral issue. NOPE.

(Where it came up again: http://clatterbane.tumblr.com/post/118329873218/andreashettle-onnaollie-pinkhairedbitch )

(Original story is from 2013, but it came up again)

voicehearer:

violence against people who are in psychiatric institutions is not lesser or somehow more deserved if the people who are in institutions “deserve” to be there or “belong” there

aka people who hear voices and and communicate with angels and demons and God and ufos and who don’t feed or clothe themselves don’t deserve ANY form of abuse even the tiniest, slightest, faintest fraction more than someone who was “really sane” and ended up in an institution “by mistake”

furthermore, the ability to institutionalize and abuse “innocent” people wouldn’t exist if the ability to institutionalize and abuse “actually crazy” people didn’t exist

but my bottom line is being “crazy” does not make you worthy or deserving of abuse in any way

I actually hesitated to reblog one otherwise excellent post a little while ago, very specifically because of that reference to the exploding emotional pressure cooker. As apt as that idea might be in a lot of cases, including my own life sometimes. Because that analogy got used against me when I was younger in ways that turned it very triggering.

I’ve talked some before about how some very serious misinterpretations of what was even happening led to some extremely harmful therapy and psych treatment in general when I was younger.

(Also very relevant there: some other good discussion of the problems inherent in parents/other adults in power being the real clients, with the open goal of “please fix this crazy kid and make them easier to live with ASAP!” Talk about built-in conflicts of interest and potential for abuse, which don’t seem to worry much of anybody who hasn’t ended up on the wrong end.)

Anyway, I landed in the psych system when I was 13, after a series of pretty spectacular meltdowns which were managed very, very badly. With apparently no connection made to all the previous ones that looked pretty much identical when I was a smaller kid–surely that was grown out by puberty to the point of total irrelevance, right? 😩 I say “smaller” for a reason, since being close to full adult size by then probably did not help matters at all.

My mother looked for a therapist, and we saw her once before I had another bad meltdown and New Therapist suggested I be locked up For My Own Good (and before my out of control behavior hurt somebody, yeah). That happened a couple times more over the next few years, and was a close thing many more times.

Now, early adolescence is pretty well recognized as a stressful time for kids in general. With loads of new stressors in their lives. Even if people are preferring to ignore factors such as bullying and (sometimes should-be super obvious) disabilities/neurodivergence. That gets used against too many other kids who are experiencing severe difficulties, to deny that anything unusual is going on at all and avoid looking at the situations causing them distress.

But, my mom did get professionals involved. Who promptly went for a bizarre combo approach: obviously nothing unusual is going on in this kid’s life now, but they’re also obviously doing the emotional pressure cooker thing and just generally coming across as Very Weird Indeed. Therefore, the explosions must be attributable to Severe Emotional Damage from one specific truly horrendous type of early childhood trauma ! 😵 (Which never actually happened, but hey.)

I’ve talked more about how that focus can turn abusive and gaslighty really fast. But, at least as harmful in a lot of ways?

Professional endorsement of the idea that nothing happening in your life right now really matters, except as it may pertain to The Real Problem. In fact, your perceptions and reactions must be skewed enough that whatever you say about what’s bothering you/how you feel cannot be trusted.

(Oh, and it’s obvious that the people paying us have nothing to do with any problems you may be experiencing. May not always be totally conscious, but it really should not be discounted as a potential motivation.)

If you’re angry about anything that’s currently happening? It’s misplaced at best, and likely a sign of severe emotional damage. There is absolutely nothing to get upset about now. It’s all The Crazy.

Not too surprisingly, a lot of extremely stressful things were going on then, or I wouldn’t have started into that cluster of spectacular meltdowns at all. That included my mother’s extremely volatile and sometimes outright abusive behavior–which they did see in action some. And excused/enabled, because out of control severely mentally ill kids.

But yeah, nothing worth mentioning could possibly be going on then and there.

Plenty to try to sort through later, yeah. It’s been almost 30 years since I was introduced to the added psych abuse, and more fallout still keeps coming up.

Another post that’s not intended as a “poor me!” type deal at all, BTW. I am mainly talking about this at all now because I do expect that once you get beyond the specific details? That’s not nearly as unusual an experience as it should be. And it doesn’t get talked about enough, difficult as the subject can be.

It’s just particularly nasty when actual professionals get in on the invalidation and gaslighting. They’re set up to do plenty of damage, and with even less accountability.

sweetschizo:

sweetschizo:

Don’t armchair diagnose mass shooters and other killers. The misconception that all violent people must be mentally ill (and the following conclusion that all mentally ill people must be dangerous) has horrible real life consequences for visibly mentally ill people.

Schizophrenic people are 14 times more likely to be a victim of a violent crime than committing one because people assume that we’re homicidal and dangerous and may react very negatively to visibly mentally ill behavior, partly due to all the media portrayals of schizophrenics as violent killers.

50% of people killed by police are disabled or mentally ill (and the victims are disproportionately black or other people of color) because the unusual behavior of visibly disabled and visibly mentally ill people is read as inherently threathening and dangerous.

Please consider the real life consequences of reinforcing the association between mental illness and violence – people are dying because y’all want to blame all evil in the world on severe mental illness so that you can clearly separate yourself from it. You’re harming an already extremely vulnerable and marginalized group of people and it’s time to stop!

I encourage people who aren’t schizophrenic to reblog this. These stereotypes are literally getting people killed and I’ve seen no awareness around this on this website.

smitethepatriarchy:

rubyvroom:

all-hail-gale:

merak-zoran:

seconddoubt:

left-reminders:

calliope-lalonde:

someone: so what do you think is the solution to homelessness?

me, socialist:

Let homeless people occupy peopleless homes, build houses for use rather than exchange, 3D print comfortable houses in a day, convert corporate skyscrapers into housing and commercial malls into publicly-accessible community centers with living commons and entertainment

When you say it to people and they break

“But the money? … we can’t just? But, Money? We can’t just… help… people? Can we? The Money. We can’t just help people? Like that? We can’t just? Money?”

There’s more to it than free real estate.

A massive portion of homeless people are mentally ill, and many of those illnesses aren’t being treated. Homeless people who have been on the streets and had their illnesses untreated for most of their lives aren’t going to adjust super well to suddenly having a place to live.

We need to build safety nets. We need social workers and mental health care professionals to help the homeless.

Every person deserves a roof and health care. Those two things need to go hand in hand.

The Housing First model of dealing with homelessness does exactly this. But actually when homeless people with mental illness or drug dependencies get into housing they start to do a lot better. Yes there are safety nets and things to work on after but it starts with housing. Homeless shelters right now aren’t doing enough because they either limit stays or make it so that drug addicts aren’t allowed to stay there at all. Obviously they’re still helping people but the Housing First model would actually help a lot more people long term and even be cheaper for the government in the long run. Unfortunately I don’t have sources but if someone can add them that’d be great.

Here’s one small study where they directly compared Housing First and Treatment First populations and found that Housing First did better.

Here’s another study doing the same with mental illness.

General health has also been found to improve with housing assistance.

Some models of Housing First appear to be more successful than others. This is an interesting study comparing various formats with different features including emphasis on harm reduction, case worker interactions, and scattered-site versus project-based housing. They conclude that which model will work best depends on a person’s profile, health status, substance history, etc.

Honestly the unmitigated gall of saying that homeless people wouldn’t “adjust well” to the safety, comfort, dryness, and stability of the basic need that is reliable shelter because they’re mentally ill, like, could you possibly find a way to insult and step on two marginalized groups at once more?

myceliorum:

“They do psychological testing before you’re hired here.”

—

44 Pages, employee quoted in documentary about Highlights children’s magazine

In context, this is supposed to be about what a great place it is to work because everyone is genuinely cheery and well-adjusted and wholesome and shit.

I just figured out why it bugs me:

I hate when people manufacture a utopia by excluding people without cause, and then act like they’re all beautiful and utopian as a result.

A much, much worse example on a much more devastating scale… I never trusted Bhutan’s publicity crap about being a beautiful Buddhist utopia (playing on Western stereotypes of where everyone’s success is measured in happiness. But I had no idea how they’d gotten to be a Buddhist utopia until I met refugees forced out in utterly horrific ways for being Hindu or otherwise non-Buddhist…

Obviously discriminatory hiring practices aren’t even in the same league as ethnic cleansing. And I don’t mean to imply that they are. They’re just two examples I’ve seen where someplace declares itself practically utopian… after making sure that everyone or nearly everyone within that place fits certain criteria, whether by forcing people out or making sure they never get there in the first place.

I always consider the use of psychological testing in hiring contexts discriminatory. But this one is bugging me more than usual, probably again because of the way it’s being used to weed out anyone not utopian enough and then declare a place a utopia. It’s like there’s a giant sign out front saying “Don’t even bother applying to work here, we don’t want people like you, but we’re a wonderful place to work because y’all aren’t here!” And they probably see absolutely nothing wrong with any of this…

Uproar in court as coroner delays David Dungay inquest for almost a year

class-struggle-anarchism:

This is utterly shameful and emblematic of the total lack of regard for indigenous Australians ingrained into the racist “justice” system of this shit country

Dungay died at the Long Bay jail mental health ward during a cell transfer after he refused to stop eating a packet of biscuits. Five immediate action team officers physically restrained him in the prone (face down) position and he was injected with a sedative by a Justice Health nurse.

In footage shown to the court and partly released to the public, Dungay said 12 times that he couldn’t breathe. An expert medical witness testified on Tuesday there were a number of points during the restraint when a medical professional could have recognised the warning signs of asphyxia and stopped the onset of what he believed was a fatal cardiac arrest.

Uproar in court as coroner delays David Dungay inquest for almost a year