Thread by @Mad_In_America

Spotlight: MIA’s @emalinus4 interviews feminist psychologist and filmmaker @JanHaaken about the role of #trauma and #mentalhealth discourse in social movements.

#podcast #psychiatry #psychtwitter #psychchatter
madinamerica.com/2021/02/trauma…

“The progressive mental health movement must demand something of the larger public and not just settle for spiriting people away to places or directing them to services. As a broader society, we must have greater respect and not call the police when someone is acting odd.”

“My own feeling is that the mental health field has not been a very interesting place for radical ideas, maybe beyond how it surfaced in the occupy movement. There was some interesting activity as #Occupy camps became places for taking care of people who lived on the streets...”

“There is a great benefit in sitting with some tension... and not assume that because you have a trigger that somebody else necessarily needs to do something about it... movements can find ways of weathering distress and resist seeing every discomfort as a sign of trauma.”

“... poverty, exposure to the police state, chronic trauma, and suffering are endemic, #PTSD doesn’t cover those conditions because it would open up the whole establishment to claims that it doesn’t want to admit.”

“My argument is that the history of the #PTSD diagnosis is a case study in how diagnoses basically fail—even the ones that carry the mantle of social movements fail to acknowledge and reduce human suffering.”