I have to wonder if the reticence about speaking out on abuses/prejudice aimed at people with a psychiatric label, or about the inherently oppressive nature of psychiatry and the 'mental health' system themselves isn't rooted in peoples' fear of their own capacity for madness as well as being rooted in another long-standing historical prejudice.

The potential for emotional, mental or spiritual crisis is universal - literally no one is exempt. The only variables are what might actually trigger it in specific individuals, due to the fact that no two people are the same or share identical experiences.

The truth is: when most people see someone acting in an unusual manner, or expressing 'strange' ideas, or in the grip of some strong emotion, they get freaked out. Basically they are seeing a mirror into their own souls.

Then along comes psychiatry, promising a quick fix (but no true healing, and certainly not empowerment) and people jump at the chance to see a 'problem' dealt with in a swift, decisive (and supposedly 'compassionate') manner, and they embrace it without question.

While the way in which madness is perceived has changed over the years, the motivation for persecuting it has remained essentially the same. In the fifteenth century people whose ideas, beliefs or behaviour conflicted with the status quo faced vilification from the Church and were often persecuted and burned as heretics, or faced torturous 'exorcism' of their 'demonic influences' (Renounce, heretic/lunatic!)

In contemporary times, psychiatrists have become the high priests of the new religious order, promoting a falsely compassionate pseudo-science that in truth is the same old persecution cloaked in a shiny modern medical veneer. And as happened during the Burning Times, the rest of society has embraced it wholeheartedly.

How else can you explain the reluctance (even among people who consider themselves 'progressive') to grasp the concept that people who have been labeled are just as entitled to the liberty, rights and respect that most of their non-'diagnosed' peers take for granted, or the almost complete lack of tolerance for views that challenge psychiatrists' worldview? The closest parallel would be the regular accusations of 'heresy' that were leveled at dissidents during the heyday of the Medieval Church.

While people with a psychiatric label do not face the prospect of burning at the stake, persecution (and sometimes even torture) still occur to this day. Incarceration without trial of people who have committed no crime, forced interventions (now extended even into peoples' homes through PACT Teams and community 'treatment' orders) and pervasive bigotry of the same nature as that once leveled at accused Witches and heretics are routine, and just as much the product of irrational  fear.

Along with this comes the constant effort to silence the victims and to ensure their experiences are re-defined along socially-accepted lines. How else could you explain the medicalization of every aspect of the lives of people who bear a label, or the hysterical Orwellian gobbeltygook that invariably flies whenever the suggestion is made that psychiatric 'patients' are deserving of the same liberties, rights, respect and recognition of their inherent worth as is anyone else?

Smug in their power, psychiatrists have claimed the right to define arbitrarily what is 'normal' and what is not in alignment with existing societal mores, and to persecute violations accordingly in much the same fashion the Church once did. Dissenters are swiftly silenced by accusations  that they themselves are 'mentally ill', or affiliated with the Church of Scientology, or merely lacking in compassion.

The mass 'de-institutionalization' that commenced in the 1960's played directly into this, albeit unintentionally. Psychiatric prisons abruptly threw open their doors and turned loose thousands of people - folks who for years had been coerced into a dependency on the institution for every basic need, and many who had been physically or mentally incapacitated by the 'treatments' themselves.

No thought was put into how people would be re-settled into the community, and no infrastructures in terms of housing, income support/employment  or social/emotional supports were put in place in preparation for this forced mass exodus. Invariably many people found themselves homeless, or (very occasionally) committed crimes of survival, or (much more likely) themselves became the innocent victims of violence.

And who got blamed for this failed experiment? The victims. of course. Psychiatric doctrine itself remained safely beyond the reach of dissent. No consideration was given to the idea that a psychiatric label in no way lessens someone's entitlement to liberty, or diminishes their right to control their own body, mind and spirit.

'Normal' folk only saw the shells of people who had been broken by the institutions, twitching and looking 'crazy' as a direct result of the drugs they have been fed or acting 'strangely' as they struggled to come to terms  with the consequences of oppression as best they could. Rather than making any attempt to understand, the response from the public was invariably fear and loathing, along with demands for greater control of 'those people'.

This attitude persists to this day. And 'progressive' people have been as slow as the rest of society to grasp that urgent changes in attitude are needed. When prejudice involves race, or gender, or sexual identity, the public outcry is generally huge. Are psychiatrized people somehow less deserving?

It's time to wake up!