‘I'm With Her’ - an Eleanor Longden inspired poem.
The bio-medical model narrative
of diagnosing, labeling , medicating & pathologizing
Is fast becoming the general accepted understanding around mental health
A woman called Eleanor Longden in her famous Ted talk tells her story
Of misdiagnosis
Of not being heard
Of being completely missed ...
She says ...
The main question in psychiatry shouldn't be
'what's wrong with you?'
It should be ...
'what happened to you.?'
& I'm with her
Like - 'not on the fence '
cause surely mental health IS
linked to experience
so often a direct
consequence
of trauma, of oppression
& I don’t know about you
but I'm getting the impression
that we've been being tricked
Like - really - good and proper
believing
that the these problems
tells us
-about Us-
About who WE ARE
rather than what it was
that actually carved the scar
You see ...we're
..fooled into thinking
its about biology
physiology
& intrinsic to identity
They tell us that 'its in our genes'
instead of being in the scenes
of what happened to us
that play out on repeat sometimes
You know ..
the ones we don't mention too much
Our Great grandmothers.....
Look - some of
our GREAT grandmothers were incarcerated, locked away,
for years and years
Left to decay
sometimes shackled in metal vices
whilst
SLICES
of their brains
were cut out
to 'exorcise'
the threat
& yes this meant
they sometimes
would forget
the horrors
but it also meant they would
sometimes
forget their names
Our Grandmothers......
I guess
It won't come as a surprise that
large numbers of our
grandmothers were tranquillized,
pretty much sedated
& this equated
to a kind of 'half life'
often for their entire life.
& when this didn't quite sort them out 'make them sane'
they may well have been strapped down
whilst electricity was shot into
their brain
Our Mothers.......
and many of our mothers were
flooded with old school anti-depressants
Mass unnecessary womb extractions
and reactions
to instant hormones
Meant a detour
around that mid-life
rite of passage
that may have brought them home
and as for our sisters, as for ourselves
- well, we are labelled and
medicated
disorders allocated
often accumulated
‘cause there's no shortage of diagnostic criteria
to explain any deliria,
or otherwise
honestly - you’d be surprised
there's a disorder for everyone
& if YOU haven't been diagnosed yet
you just haven't been in the
wrong place
saying the wrong things
to the wrong people
at the wrong time
arbitrary luck, nothing else
‘cause I promise -
there is a disorder for everyone
It's in the book
(the dsm5)
this is the place from where they all derive
All squashed in
hundreds of them - (all planned )
as supply and demand
doesn't work too well
without the demand bit
so our 'disorder' has to fit
we need the pills to cure it
cure us ,
be our defence
chemical compounds of modern science
that conveniently turn off
or tone down
our emotions
Our feelings
& pharmaceuticals profit SO much they're
a-wheeling & a-dealing
With governments
Dictating policy
Is this not an atrocity ?
that drug companies have ANY say
In the big decisions of the day
& I really know I'm ranting now
but - here's the thing ...
subtly ...
hidden away
underneath the shiny surfaced
campaigns of the day
of 'mental health awareness raising'
that are SO effectively
glazing
over the point
over the pain
We find more of the same
( more of the same )
Hidden away is more of the same
excuse the pun
but
this is sending me insane
Cus now , even the good ones
are having a try,
you know - the likes of
Ruby Wax & good old Stephen Fry
sadly still perpetuating all the toxic lies
& generally doing a great job
of using celebrity status to
pathologize
So we all get to believing that's
it IS about us
"mental health is like physical health!" ...
and alongside that-
(invariably)
a belief that it's part of identity
so part of me - the heart of ME
that isn't going away
it's here to stay
needs to be managed,
contained,
Needs to be chemically explained.
& ...
- where exactly is this 'Rethink '
and what is it ‘Time To Change?’
essentially precisely nothing is being rearranged
I just see a continuation
of the same old,
same old shit
convenient
disempowering
medical-model-rhetoric
I see confusion & delusion
collusion with social control
& where the hell in all of this is
oppressions role ?
Traumas role ?
It's not getting a look in
Let alone being explored
So all of OUR stories join those the millions of others that
have been conveniently ignored
Cos TRAUMA can't be relevant
It's too much of a threat
TO the general scheme of things
Instead we should forget
Forget ..About what's happened , and put it down to genes
to 'chemical chaos '
'predispositions '
& The biological machine
U know..
Eleanor Longden wasn't EVER asked about what had happened to her
About any of her past
They just said she had an illness a kind of broken brain
And that this explained the voices
And the corresponding pain
So
..'diagnosed' with schizophrenia
& written off as hopeless case ,
& yes u may be thinking this is an
'absolute disgrace '
But it isn't an exception
her story is the norm ..
She just stumbled on rare Doctor who happened to not conform
And In her amazing Ted talk
Eleanor Longden says that...
The main question shouldn't be
'what's wrong with you?'
It should be ...
'what happened to you.?'
- Jo Watson
Jo Watson is a psychotherapist, trainer who is passionate about challenging the theme of ‘diagnosis and disorder’. Jo believes that the primary cause of mental distress is experience not biology and that the language of disorder needs to be replaced with a more positive, trauma informed narrative. Jo started the Facebook group ‘Counsellors discuss’ earlier this month and is committed to promoting this debate in professional and non professional circles alike.
You can follow Jo on twitter here
