Today on Twitter, someone who has recently experienced mental health difficulties and been through a rough time which led to the support of mental health services posted positive tweets about their exemplary and timely care.
Clearly they were grateful, pleased with the excellent support they received and eager to give praise where praise was due.
Nothing wrong with that you may say and of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. The world would be a much nicer place if we all said thank you for good care and recognised and applauded exemplary service.
However, I found the tweets upsetting because (unintentionally I’m sure) they negated my own horrific experience.
Rather than tweeting a thank you and describing the positive experience the tweet started with:
“I read lots of negativity about mental health professionals. My experience is that the vast majority are caring, kind and compassionate”
This is gas lighting at its worst. Because someone has had a good experience of a mental health service it doesn’t negate or compensate for the real life bad experiences of others.
What someone glibly calls “negativity” is my truth and the truth for too many people.
We are not being “negative” when we tell our truth. I won’t rehash my personal experiences they are well documented on my blog. I am fully aware that there are many good, kind mental health professionals doing a demanding job in difficult circumstances but equally in too many teams there is a deep seated culture of abusive practice and where a lack of care and respect towards service users is endemic.
By dismissing those of us who try to expose this abuse through raising awareness on social media our truth is being denied.
Personally; I was illegally sectioned, dragged from my house late at night after the crisis had passed, had my employer informed without my permission, given forced medication to the point of lithium toxicity, incarcerated on a filthy male ward, denied fresh air, access to water and fresh food, physically abused and subjected to daily ill treatment. So when I tweet about this and when others describe equally horrific experiences we are not “being negative” we are exposing truth and poor practice.
We don’t need to be silenced or negated by other service users because we already face an uphill battle to be heard and validated.
Just because someone enjoys a pleasant road trip doesn’t mean that there aren’t car crashes and equally one good mental health experience doesn’t alter the many poor experiences.
So let’s watch our language, celebrate and give praise where it’s due but recognise that far too many people are still experiencing archaic, abusive and inhumane treatment in the name of mental health care and when it is exposed this is not “negativity” it is truth.
schizoaffected3 