SUMMARY KEYWORDS
human, distress, power, profession, humanity, systems, moral responsibility, connection, states, psychiatry, ideology, institution, person, altered states, community, australia, psychosis, people, threat, mental health
There is a need in Australia, and probably worldwide, to completely overhaul the mental health systems and the way we be with and respond to people in altered states of consciousness; hearing voices, extreme states, whatever narratives we would like to attach to the experiences of someone expressing distress. The current approaches are simply fluffed up versions of how we understand people expressing themselves, through the lens of a 100-year-old ideology of the psychotic other.
In reality, any one of us can and probably does have unusual beliefs, altered states uncomfortable experiences and therefore expressions of those experiences. But for the most part, anyone of us having those experiences does not come into contact with the mental health institutions, professions, professional groups and ideologies of sickness. It is likely that we continue to be responded to as a human who is equal and mutual to others, who has expressed their distress. But for some the expression is called psychosis by any person with the authority of belonging to a group (professional or political).
In Australia, It's long time overdue to move towards a collective of people, equal humans who are not seeking to prioritize their profession, rather intend to offer the simplicity and complexity of human-to-human connectedness. The income stream, the institution, the legacy, the power over a person in an unusual experience. And by unusual, simply meaning something that the person in a position of power can't quite organize or make sense of, and therefore must do something to someone to change it.
My professions of Nurse Practitioner and Psychotherapy are of course invested, like all professional groups, in being prioritized, seen as having the answer, desiring of power and funding. Each profession feels entitled to the funding, the power and the credibility. Each profession has the answer - apparently.
Of course, that his not true; the person who is expressing their reality has the answer. Yet the reality - there is not a profession in Australia that doesn't prioritize itself over the very person it states is at the centre of its intention to help. In reality, it would appear that the people pf the professions are expressing a dissociachotic state in thinking that their role is anything other than a threat to the person in distress. Given that dissociachotic, altered, or extreme states or ‘psychosis’ are perpetuated, and likely originate in the concept of threat of being in this world - in the world of others - the very presentation of a professional prioritizing their own needs over the person in distress could lead to psychosis; The threat of annihilation, the threat of engulfment, the threat of not existing in the face of other humans.
We need a revolution, but not of the mental health system. The mental health system is now simply an economic industry. It is broken beyond structural repair. We need a revolution in the fact that any person suffering in our community needs other community members to be still, to wait, to support, to nurture, to love, to connect and to offer equitable humanity without the labels, without the structures, without the incarcerations, especially given the context of a distressed person’s life that is already present and happening, behind their expression of distress that is so often labelled as psychotic.
It is surely time to move beyond and outside the narrow boundaries that have, for over 100 years, been used to deconstruct and decontextualize that which is most available and most useful - environments and contexts within our communities, being human, connections based on the responsibility not to do strange things to people when they express distress, be a mutual community member and sit, listen and love. And, stay alongside the person in their state of being. And be there as long as required until that's no longer required. And, this might be over and over again. And, It might be very brief, only occasional or very often.
Until we can remove the ideological fantasy of psychiatry, of systems of individual progress, power and careers, politics and 'In groups' and the neoliberal rationale for the mental health industry, it seems unlikely that we can move away from the systems, which ultimately enact power over a person who is already expressing that a parallel/equal life does not feel like it exists in their experience; their power to exist, their power to be in a mutual relationship, the power to breathe safely in the world in which they live.
If I was a psychiatrist, I might refer to myself as a social psychiatrist. Can I refer to myself as a social psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner? Wait, that could be a new group. I could start that group. And we could ask for power. We could demand power…and money. We could ask for resources; we could ask for recognition. Perhaps we could ask for a professorship to be attached to us. Perfect. We could start a degree course in social psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner roles, separate to other nurse practitioner roles. This is the nature of our systems currently.
The focus immediately becomes on the professional (and profession); the person stating that their intentions are about the other, in building their own sense identity and structure for and around themself. This of course, is Dissociachotic – setting themself at variance by placing between them and others, that which allows them to feel safe.
What is being discussed and described is that the focusing our attention or love or kindness or spirit or heart or energy on a person in front of us is not the priority in our roles. It is of course understandable in a capitalist neoliberal marketplace. We need to build these ideologies to give ourselves income. But, the least we could do is to stop pretending that this is in the nature and spirit and intention of helping another individual with regards to them being in a legitimate way of being in their world. Never has it been more desperate to move towards human-to-human interaction and encounters, community connection and away from the systems focused claptrap
In the modern era, people in a Dissociachotic state are labelled as psychotic and get the least and most barbaric interventions of anyone in our country
From a therapy point of view - how we treat one another is the therapy. But importantly, it's the therapy of both. If I treat someone barbarically under the ideology of an othering of humanity, I feel awful. It might indeed send me into an altered state, a state of disbelief, discomfort distress, that my own humanity has been sacrificed in the ideological barbarism of someone else. Of course, it will also render the person who was already fearful and distressed, even more so. So, this mutuality in humanity is not about nursing, peer work, psychiatry, OT, social work or any of the other major groups that are currently vying for power, money, acknowledgement, resource legacy, institutional pillar within our society.
This mutuality and humanity, is based in the reality that when I walk down the street, or when I ride on an escalator, or when I stand in a football crowd, or when I stand at a concert, or when I stand by the river and watch the swans, if there is anyone else around me they too are mutually human, and might just be enough for connection, love and companionship in any given moment. And if we can go towards the connection, love and companionship, embracing how any other person is being, we might just find that the conviviality that emerges is energizing and evoking of emotion and spirit, an emancipating experience for both of us.
We need a revolution in being human together. And we need that starting at the point of understanding people who are said to be psychotic actually being people who are giving us the opportunity for connection with how they are in that moment, not how we idealize them as having to be in a different way before we can find human connection.
The mental health system no longer serves a purpose to the very people who are at the origins of that system.
Surely the time is now, to deconstruct those institutions and pillars that have served to oppress others and sought to weed out those who were once perceived to be fundamentally different to the rest, because we know that ideology is not true. It is our ethical and moral responsibility.
In this era, to connect, to move away from oppressive violent practices and to recognize another person next to me, in our street, in our community, on the beach, in a football stadium, in a household or anywhere around us and is in distress deserves the decency of a humane other to pause and reflect on their own behaviour to just be alongside the person in distress. And when invited, be in relationship with that person in different ways. Perhaps that's as simple as the revolution required in being together.
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