When you raise awareness the way we did on that Monday morning
in July you feel proud to be involved in a real movement for change.
Like
most successful activism, this was a purely grass roots affair.
People
prepared to say enough is enough. Forget the spin, forget cool
liberal
reformism, forget consultation exercises.
Its time to take a
stand.
It’s not the
first
piece of Mad activism and it wont be the last. It's difficult in this
so-called democracy we live in, to get mainstream mental health
organisations to take a critical stance on government policy. What
with
the need for the mental health alliance to achieve a consensus and
smaller
voluntary organisations too worried about their funding to support
stand-points that are not 'middle ground'. The strange thing about
the
compulsory treatment orders (CTO's) out-lined in the white paper is
the
lack of controversy surrounding them. Disappointingly I've seen very
little outright opposition to the rights infringing proposals.
This huge
paralysis in
the media obscures the reality that CTO's are a serious step
backwards for
recovery oriented mental health services. Rather than aiming to
emancipate, such a 'maintenance' emphasis constrains people in a
thick
coat of pharmaceuticals, denying the will of the individual,
catapaulting
them into a child-like role, or a lifelong battle of wills involving
multiple admissions and a growing void of mis-understanding betweeen
professional and patient. Granted there has been plenty of "we are
very
concerned..." in various organisations' responses to the White Paper,
well
I for one am more than concerned. I already witness enough
totalitarian
style 'biology bashing' techniques, tramping into people's lives in
the
vain hope of saving them from their situation. The all too familiar
conveyer belt of slowly escalating levels of polypharmacy then
follows,
with each step justified by the emphasis on social control and
compliance
in the 'drug power' zone.
Well thank
goodness
(as my Grandma would say) for Mad Pride, and the rest of us critical
beings willing to take a stand and say we want something different.
We
don't want drug company money's grubby influence on practice and we
don't
want more social control dressed up as treatment (Johnstone,2000). We
want
respectful services with a range of approaches on offer that see
people's
manifestations of distress as meaningful and aim for recovering a
valued
lifestyle. It was not a bit of luck that 30 people got more media
coverage
than the mental health alliances' 2000 strong lobby of Parliament,
last
year. This was a clear message Just say "No to CTO's" and "No to drug
companies" Psychiatric drugs kill one a week", personally I'd rather
have
a hug. This is something the public recognise, they know the drugs
don't
work like the man in the suit says they do. They know that highly
sedating
people is a short term solution. They sense something's going on in
the
ghetto that might be good for them too. Carol Batton has a poem that
compares the mentaly ill to a political movement beaten into
submission.
She has a point but that is changing. What if we say we're not
mentally
ill and never were, we're mad and proud and we've got alot of things
to be
mad about, not least CTO's and psychiatry's dependence on
huge corporate drug companies and mythical bio-medical ideology.
People
dont need neural networks blocked they need open social networks, not
under-active metabolisms, but meaningful activities, not to comply
rather
to have their diversity respected. The mist starts to part...
As we waded
through
the swamp of complacency that is the status quo, organising this
event we
realised something. If patients, ex-patients and workers rally
together
what a force for change that would be. Well it's happening. Like the
end
scene in 'Bugs' Life' where the ants suddenly realise that if they
take a
stand together they don't have to be ruled by the predator
grass-hoppers!
On a small-scale this was another major victory for people to have
the
right to be different and have different experiences, another victory
for
ordinary people with extraordinary lives.