The oppression of the mental health system is perhaps the most fundamental oppression as it keeps us all effectively under control or dumbed-down by punishing (from subtle to very blatant ways) the very same behaviors & activities that our minds require for healing from distress experiences. For eg. people are medicated & hospitalized for being 'depressive', instead of provided the resource & information they might need to grieve some loss or discharge their anger at an unjust system. And instead of changing the societal structures at the roots of our 'madness'.
The Marketing of Madness
This is the kind of thing that is possible (inevitable?) when we have no viable "acceptable" model (real understanding) of how the human mind operates.
Also see page on
in this e-book
A great resource on this topic
is a booklet called
"What's Wrong
with the Mental Health System
and What Can Be Done About It"
which can be ordered from Rational Island Publishers
from the introduction:
Mistreatment and oppression is the common lot of people in our present societies who are labelled as having "emotional problems" or "acting irrationally".
The threat of being called "crazy" is used in the oppression of every group in the population.
if this video disappears, look for copies here
January 11, 2013 | from DGR News Service
By Ben Barker / Deep Green Resistance Wisconsin
The dominant culture, industrial civilization, is insane. Literally. It is in direct opposition to life. We can see this by looking from any angle: an economic system based on the infinite consumption of living beings; the spiritual sickness that allows clear-cuts, rape, conquest, and oceanic dead-zones; social rewards for those who can fuck others over most efficiently. as the world burns, the destructiveness of this culture has become too clear for debate.
Consuming the living and converting them into dead products is essential to the functioning of civilization. indeed, it is the meaning of the word “production”. civilization as a whole can be defined by its material functioning: a culture based on the growth of cities, with cities being defined as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life. it can also be described as a system that socially rewards (and requires) exploitation, domination, and atrocity. Both definitions reveal civilization’s fundamental death urge.
What is killed by civilization includes the psyches and souls of human beings. consider, for example, the global scale of people struggling with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Bi-Polar Disorder (at least two million people in the United States alone), Depression, and Anxiety. Consider also lives wasted in wage slavery, addiction, and apathy. some know mental struggle more intimately than others, but the dominant culture makes all of its members sick.
This book is for those who feel, in their bones, the struggle of living in such a culture, and for those who love life and want to fight back. The numerous activists, artists, and writers who have contributed to this book also surely know this struggle. included here is a compilation of personal stories, essays, artwork, and maps for healing, all pointing towards, and developing an answer to, this general question: what does it mean to be sane in an insane culture?
Download Mental Health & Civilization: A Compilation here:http://dgrnewsservice.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/mental-health-civilization.pdf
In the absence of any objective medical tests to determine who has ADD or ADHD, doctors rely in part on standardized assessments and the impressions of teachers and guardians while the they administer leave little room for other causes or aggravating factors, such as diet, or environment.
Hence, diagnosing a child or adolescent with ADD or ADHD is often the outcome, although no organic basis for either disease has yet to be clinically proven. Psychiatrists may then prescribe psychotropic drugs for the children without first without making it clear to parents that these medications can have severe side-effects including insomnia, loss of appetite, headaches, psychotic symptoms and even potentially fatal adverse reactions, such as cardiac arrhythmia.
And yet, despite these dangers, many school systems actually work with government agencies to force parents to drug their children, threatening those who refuse with the prospect of having their children taken from the home unless they cooperate.