Hospital notes:

- Overheard a group of nurses hysterically laughing over a patient who had went to the bathroom on themselves, and proceeded to let them lay in it for over 10 minutes before responding.

- Patients screaming in agony while nurses scroll TikTok. - Leaving post-operative surgical patients in body positions that are unsupported and unnatural, such as head leaning and extending down/forward with zero support, for hours while sleeping after anesthesia. Patient(s) wake up crying unable to move, in horrific pain.

- NO MASKS.

This is also one of the core themes of ‘The Body Keeps the Score’ (it’s how the book opens) and the foundation of PTSD research in America. Which is why we can all find another book about trauma that doesn’t center sad white men who blew up entire villages and communities.

https://twitter.com/patryk87837486/status/1791384986605563991

Trauma and Recovery (Judith Herman)
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (Pete Walker)
What My Bones Know (Stephanie Foo)
Healing the Soul Wound (Eduardo Duran)
The Body Remembers (Babette Rothschild)
Black Skin, White Masks (Frantz Fanon)

Many people right now are tapping into the heartbeat & cries of the universe and the oppressed, and it is leading many of us towards altered/extreme states (what is perceived as psychosis). Here are some important reminders for supporting someone navigating altered states: 1. Experiencing altered states is not inherently a crisis situation, and it is not synonymous with violence. Do not rush to react or control outcomes. Rush to connect and engage. Create space and lean into expansion. Do not narrow and limit possibilities and offerings.

Providence, Rhode Island: This is the *SECOND* time in 6 months I have personally witnessed human beings dumped by hospitals at bus stops and left without clothes or shoes or money or phones. Only a hospital gown + GRIPPY SOCKS. You fucking scum of the Earth carceral hospitals. I watched twice in disbelief as people walked by. As car after car drove by. Either starring or ignoring. My car stops though. The door flies open. Come inside. I’m Stefanie. Here’s water. Here’s a cigarette. Here’s a lighter. Here’s some money if I have it or can access it.

My partner is from Swaziland, and when he graduated as a traditional healer he found a plot of land to begin his healing work. I asked him if there was a paperwork process involved. He laughed at me loudly and said no. I was worried & asked how will anyone know the land is yours? He told me that he would approach the chief to talk about the land. And once an agreement was made and cows were given to the chief, the entire community would be invited to a celebration where they meet you, meet your family, and ask about intentions + desired use for the land.

PTSD is a white, western, colonial concept that locates the source of trauma in the past and requires a “non-traumatic baseline” to compare to. What the Palestinians are experiencing is not PTSD. There is no comparable framework. The trauma is enduring.

https://twitter.com/saeeddicaprio/status/1718407529967862098

Dr. Samah Jabr, Palestine’s head of mental health services, has been speaking about this for years. It is an injustice to the Palestinian people to describe their suffering in western & colonial terms, when they experience “justified misery.”

qz.com/1521806/palest…

Truly I must ask, what makes Jewish people believe that our suffering is so unique that it justifies the colonization and slaughter of other human beings? For example, 10-15 MILLION Congolese people were murdered under the colonial direction of King Leopold of Belgium. Black people face a deadly anti-Black environment daily. People of the Global Majority face colonization, climate disaster, + economic exploration. Trans people have been targeted for death. Who is entitled to safety in a white supremacist, colonial, imperialist world?

Before starting psychiatric treatment (especially medications), I recommend* folks get tested for:

- Low vitamin B-12 and D
- Autoimmune disease
- Nutritional deficiencies
- Post-viral infections
- Inflammation

*If accessible, affordable, or possible. Which it is often not. “But Stefanie, don’t you believe that I’m suffering? Don’t you want me to get help?”

Yes, I do!! I also know that what we call mental illness can be A LOT of other things, it can also have many root causes unrelated to direct experiences of trauma or “biochemical imbalances.”

We need to offer ways to get support in community that do not require us to first build community. Being a known, loved, present, valued, or respected person in community should not be a prerequisite for receiving care. I say this because people talk about building community like it’s easy, something that indicates morality, something we all have time for/can do, something that if you do a good job and do it right you will always have care and love and support within reach. Really not true.

There is *truly* no better irony than the updated DSM-5 creating a medical diagnosis for prolonged grief in a country that refuses to face it’s own present reality with mass death. AKA, “you have an illness if you can’t get on with life like the rest of us.” There is no space for grief in a culture that defines mental health by your ability to function. How long is the “right” amount of time to grieve? Not one loss, but many? Thousands? Millions? What are we *doing* here?

Having a hard time seeing everyone’s “I Matched!” medical photos. All of the joy & excitement for the next step of your careers, while everyday I & so many others deal w/ consequences of a LIFETIME of medical neglect. I hope you care about your patients as much as your coats. CW death

In case I die of medical neglect, violence, gaslighting, dismissal, & disbelief: I will just be another number, like my Disabled + Mad kin. Here is proof I was living and trying. Wasting while doctors look away. I had a life. I had a kid. We don’t want to fucking die.

If mental illness is a medical condition, then why is inpatient care treated so differently (outside of ICU restrictions)? Why can’t we have phones or laptops in the psych ward? Why is there 1 phone for patients to share? Why is time outside limited? Why is visitation restricted? When my father had a stroke, I was able to sit in his room with him 24/7. Why is it standard practice to leave psych patients/inmates alone? I’ve heard staff say they don’t want to disrupt the healing of patients, but that comes with the assumption that healing is… happening.

I thought my first flight with @Delta was dehumanizing. This flight was somehow worse. Delta “lost my wheelchair” & I was the last one on the plane for 40+ minutes, unable to go pee without my partner— who had to run around tracking down my chair. As I finally left the plane, about to pee myself, I see a bathroom. The separate accessible toilet is locked with a “maintenance” sign in front of it, & there are no bathroom stalls big enough for a wheelchair. I am desperate at this point, and have no options to relieve myself.

The prison and psychiatric industrial complexes both operate from a carceral logic that is centered around the belief that if you do not comply, behave, perform, or act the “right” way, your body is not yours + someone else gets to make the decisions about what happens to you. This logic + practice is present in all sites of carceral confinement, including nursing facilities, long term “care” facilities, residential “treatment” facilities, prisons and jails, psychiatric prisons and institutions, and group “homes.”