Political Memes

Mental health hospitals are hellish too. I can’t fucking stand Married with Children, not because of how stupid or unfunny it is, but because it was always on and I get flashbacks.

I attempted years ago - because I was dead broke and about to have to drop out of college. When I got out, I had lost my job and had to do survival sex work to eat.

The power structure of those places facilitate horrific abuse. For example, the Indian man whose screams have haunted my dreams for the past ten years - a man who had no family, came to the facility with no clothing… the staff (and patients) bullied the shit out of him. No one in that hospital was interested in helping him.

The psychiatrist I saw for maybe 15 minutes at the beginning of the day. All they did was prescribe me meds. There wasn’t any really meaningful therapy, at least as I understood it? It was more of a holding pen.

I think in the US, the horrifying truth is that mental health resources are mostly illusory. 988 exists so that we can pass out 988 stickers and pens - we can be the good people providing help. Therapists exist, but the waiting lists for good ones can be months and there are thousands of disturbed LPCs who went in to counseling for the wrong reason.

CBT is a shitty modality for things like “I’m miserable because I can’t afford to eat” or “I’m stressed because I got fired from my job when they found out I was trans” or even something as dumb “my body tenses up and I can’t focus my eyes when hear the name Al Bundy.” It’s symptoms focused and can be harmful for certain situations. But it also is often the only modality that one can easily access.

The entire structure of the mental health system in America is horrifically broken, but fixing it would require a complete overhaul of the system. So instead it’s bandaids - employee assistance programs and chat hotlines.