From Judi Chamberlin: The Ex-Patients' Movement: Where We've Been and Where We're Going

cemental stealth (aka mental "health") survivors articulate ideas like "sane chauvanism" and "mentalism" to denote oppressive ways of seeing folks having difficulties in living. Judi Chamberlin, published in a prestigious journal, articulates such in her overview of a mostly 1970s-1980s ex-mental patient liberation movement. Excerpts and link included.

Pharm animals

 

They used to be zoo animals

Now they’re pharm animals.

They have no voice

With which to speak.

They are non-sense

That can be interpreted

By the pharmers.

They used to be zoo animals

Now they’re pharm animals

Visitors aren’t allowed

To poke a stick

At them anymore.

Only the staff are allowed

To stick those

Who don’t agree

To swallow rat-shit

That’s served up regularly.

They used to be zoo animals

Now they’re pharm animals

There for testing

Products for the pharmacy.

 

When laws are a crime

Some laws are unfair

But the community backs them up.

For they are given fears

And the media stokes those embers up.

Think carefully about what you say

Hide away and try to avoid mentioning

Anything to do with your cause

That might give people pause

To think ill of your mentality.

Mental Illness--History

I remember when I first got sick, it was like I woke up and decided I wanted nothing to do with the world anymore. I had just turned 15. I was at boarding school and none of my so called friends wanted to throw a party. My mom came to the school and I hadn't even known, she dropped off a painting of an angel watching over two kids on a cliff. Well that's just how I felt at the time, I was the girl on the edge just about to fall.

America

It's what we Americans do

Syndicate content