On the Fake Agency of Mental Health

The way people, especially medical professionals, speak about mental disorders pisses me off. There is this air of agency that is given to mental disorders that is not given to physical disorders. “You can change your brain”. The onus is on ME. And if I can’t change my brain successfully,I am the problem.

My Quest to becoming Just Right

Healing in the United States is an oxymoron. To seek medical care and healing in the United States is an endeavor I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. For the past 15 years of my life, I have fought for a treatment for my obsessive-compulsive disorder. Over time, I have become increasingly jaded, grief-riddled, hopeless, and even jealous. The sick irony about mental health (and health writ large) is how many folks would be deemed “mentally ill” if everyone’s basic human rights were covered. Capitalism breeds unhealthy and maladaptive behaviors. And then when our bodies can not keep up with a pace of a life not meant for us, we are shuttled into the healthcare system for tests and care instructions that place the onus on us to get better. Do you have the money to get “better”? Do you have the time to get “well”? Do you have support to get “care”?

It seems that medical education and treatment plans are predicated on not what would make your life more human but on what would make your life compatible with being a good worker.

I lament with the people of r/anti-psychiatry. They placed their care in the hands of clinicians and got worse results. Serotonin, Dopamine, Epinephrine are all touted as things that people with mental disorders either have too much of or too little of. To be in a profit-motivated world means to always be too much or too little. We’re never going to be “just right” especially when money is to be made.

What would a medical system that was completely for the advancement of humanity and earthly well-being look like? Would ADHD medication be the right treatment for people whose brain works a little different than others.