Well dignity for most people is conflated with status. Stigma diminishes status, therefore the mentally troubled are dehumanized, rendered non-credible, so not worthy of dignity.
The percentage of psychiatrists prepared to see a patient as an equal, and to have a genuinely collaborative and dialogical relationship with them is vanishing small.
Occasionally you might get some smug, smarmy poseur convinced of their right-on egalitarian stripes, but it's patronizing, paternalistic bullshit. It's just a self-inflating fantasy they have about themselves, and a form of cultural signaling for their virtuous peer group who get to have some live action social anthropology mental patient experience to complement their glossy large format Outsider Art books.
I don't think all mental distress is trauma derived, but most of it is. There's plenty of people with a Schizophrenia diagnosis mouldering away in a polydrugged trance in group homes around the world who actually have encephalitis or some niche autoimmune disorder. Just as there's people with treatment resistant depression who have hypothyroidism. I think it's ironic that a profession that aggressively inclines to biomedical reductionism so often avoids a comprehensive physical examination.
For those patients that have been traumatized, the mental health system just reproduces those narcissistically abusive dynamics, in spades. How the hell someone is supposed to heal when they can't access their emotions because they're medicated to oblivion is beyond me. The staff just become sinister proxies for the family members that screwed them up in the first place.
There's no shortage of weak individuals who nonetheless have a deranged need for power and control being magnetised to mental health employment. In the real world they're ineffectual wimps, but in "the system" they get to dominate and invalidate demoralised, distressed and vulnerable patients. That'll put some lead in their pencil.
Well dignity for most people is conflated with status. Stigma diminishes status, therefore the mentally troubled are dehumanized, rendered non-credible, so not worthy of dignity.
The percentage of psychiatrists prepared to see a patient as an equal, and to have a genuinely collaborative and dialogical relationship with them is vanishing small.
Occasionally you might get some smug, smarmy poseur convinced of their right-on egalitarian stripes, but it's patronizing, paternalistic bullshit. It's just a self-inflating fantasy they have about themselves, and a form of cultural signaling for their virtuous peer group who get to have some live action social anthropology mental patient experience to complement their glossy large format Outsider Art books.
I don't think all mental distress is trauma derived, but most of it is. There's plenty of people with a Schizophrenia diagnosis mouldering away in a polydrugged trance in group homes around the world who actually have encephalitis or some niche autoimmune disorder. Just as there's people with treatment resistant depression who have hypothyroidism. I think it's ironic that a profession that aggressively inclines to biomedical reductionism so often avoids a comprehensive physical examination.
For those patients that have been traumatized, the mental health system just reproduces those narcissistically abusive dynamics, in spades. How the hell someone is supposed to heal when they can't access their emotions because they're medicated to oblivion is beyond me. The staff just become sinister proxies for the family members that screwed them up in the first place.
There's no shortage of weak individuals who nonetheless have a deranged need for power and control being magnetised to mental health employment. In the real world they're ineffectual wimps, but in "the system" they get to dominate and invalidate demoralised, distressed and vulnerable patients. That'll put some lead in their pencil.