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Fredd50
Senior Contributor

Positive Policy to replace Forced Psychiatry

Tina Minkowitz

Is an international human rights lawyer and a survivor of Psychiatric abuse

Who has worked 

Towards the development

Of the UN Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities

The CRPD

Has been ratified by many countries

Including Australia 

But has yet to be implemented

These new brief points

Outlined by Tina

Represent an insightful shift

In Focus that I think we should all consider

From forcing a medicalised view

Which is often Violently and harmfully enforced on those who refuse it

To a human rights based view

That does not indoctrinate or harm, but respects the individual in crisis, as well as the community.

Very well worth a read

https://www.academia.edu/39229717/Positive_policy_to_replace_forced_psychiatry_based_on_CRPD

 

2 REPLIES 2

Re: Positive Policy to replace Forced Psychiatry

 

Re: Positive Policy to replace Forced Psychiatry

I'd just like to say that it took me three tries to post that document.

Despite it being an incredibly positive move forward that is about

createing services that are supportive and not harmful.

 

It was really hurful, and retraumatizing when my posts were deleted.

 

They were deleted bcause I contextualised the doctument by saying how important

it was to me since I am a victim of repeated violent abuse in forced psychiatry.

 

The reality of the situation is that if a person made involuntary in a public hosptial is seen as 'insane' or 'floridly delusional' and refuses that explanation, or a medical view and the drugs that go with it they are violently forced. A person is deprived of non-psychiatric options and forced violently into psychiatry. Its a serious issue of abuse. 

 

Speaking my truth is a very important part in healing from and overcoming abuse 

 

I was never, ever helped by the so-called 'medical model' but I do have severe trauma to 

recover from because of the repeated violence.

 

It has been helping me to idenify as a victim of institutional violence.

 

It helps me feel and know that it was not my fault. That the institutions that harmed me were to blame.

 

That the institutions that covered up when I tried to speak out were to blame.

that the institutions that denied me the support I always knew I needed: to work through the metaphors and altered states that they called 'delusional' which never were and to integrate and makes sense of them.

 

When I try to speak out strongly against abuse, and it is covered up, that is re-traumatising and it is abuse. It is not for the sake of other victims that my abuse is hidden, it is for the sake of perpetrators.

 

But it is 2019

Soon the Royal Commission will begin

Now is a time for all those who experienced Violence, abuse and exploitation in all forms throughout the disability sector, including attempts to cover up abuse, including in online forums, to speak out.

 

This is one of our avenues to  get services that are not abusive, this is one avenue to finally getting peace and justice.

 

I am not nor have I ever been a person with a 'mental illness'

but that view was violently forced upon me

as it is on all people seen 'insane' who refuse it in Australian psychiatric wards once made involunary

I know this from over 13 admissions over 20 years and from speaking to many others who refused

 

This abuse needs to come into the open so that all of us who have experienved Violence, neglect and exploitation, in all seetings and contexts feel safe to talk

so that all this violence can be exposed and examined

Here is a snapshot from the terms of reference of our Royal Commission.

It will start soon and continue for 6 years

Nobody, ever, should be silenced for telling their story of abuse -no matter how widespread

the abuse or how much people don't want the truth to come out

Screen Shot 2019-05-25 at 9.41.17 AM.png

https://www.dss.gov.au/disability-and-carers/royal-commission-into-violence-abuse-neglect-and-exploi...

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