The point of "mental Health" oppression is to  hold all the other oppressions and the oppressive society in place. People generally think that "mental health" liberation is about "mental patients" and "mental hospitals."  No, it is about ending an oppression that holds the oppressive society in place and keeps it going. "Mental health" oppression supports the oppressive society. All the oppressions do, but this is the one that beats you up if you try to change things in a big way. Or if you even think abut changing things in a small way: it makes you feel like you are "crazy" if you try to do something different than what is so-called "normal".

“Mental health” oppression makes it seem like we are in danger of losing our minds. There’s a lot of oppression going on, and distress piles up on us just living day-to-day in this society. We often feel like things are too hard and that there’s nowhere to go with it, even those of us in RC who have sessions. 


This has to do with being prevented from discharging. A lot of what prevents us from discharging is “mental health” oppression. (As Tim Jackins has been saying, it’s not so damaging that we got hurt; it’s that we didn’t get to discharge and recover.) 


If you have a few feelings from being targeted, then you get targeted more if you let the feelings out. Right? Does everybody remember trying to let them out and getting creamed [badly treated]? We learn not to let our feelings out.


THE MYTH OF "GOING CRAZY"

As young people we weren’t allowed to discharge our distress. Because of that, and a lot of misinformation, we grew up believing the myth of “mental illness,” that there is “mental illness.” That we can “go crazy,” that we can “lose our minds.” When we got into RC, this myth did not vanish magically, unfortunately. A lot of us know better than that but still don’t get it [understand it] in a certain way. There’s a difference between knowing theoretically that the myths are untrue and discharging our way out of them.


You are completely intelligent. That means you have a mind. So, you can’t “lose” your mind. It does not fly out the window or somehow go away from your body. Your mind is yours. No one can do anything to you to take it away except give you brain damage—and even then, your mind is still functioning to whatever extent it was not damaged. 


I ended up in a “mental hospital,” and there’s a way that I was lucky. I had been discharging all my life because my mother had never stopped me from discharging. And she herself discharged all her life. Of course, out in the world I got harshly targeted for discharging. When I got into the “system” I was thinking, “Am I ‘crazy’?” You know, “because I’m in a ‘mental hospital’?” And then I thought, “No, I’m thinking! How can I be ‘crazy’ if I’m still thinking?” So, I didn’t ever really believe it. I believed that there were people who “went crazy,” but I did not believe that I did. It was a big wedge into the oppression that I understood on a deep level that I didn’t “go crazy.” And after being in RC for many years, I realized that there is no such thing. I was lucky. But it does take a long time to realize these are myths. 


THE WORK OF "MENTAL HEALTH" LIBERATION

The work of “mental health” liberation is to combat these myths. That’s the big work of “mental health” liberation. It’s also to get people discharging; in particular, to give them the opportunity to discharge about what happened to them and their families in relation to the “mental health” system. 


This is an oppression that most people don’t talk about. They don’t talk about when they were in the “mental health” system or their family member was. They don’t talk about going to therapy or taking psychiatric drugs or family members taking them. They don’t talk about these things because they are stigmatized. You can be sitting in a room of a hundred people and everybody there has some connection to the “mental health” system, and you don’t know it. So, you can be thinking you are the only one. Every time I do an RC workshop, I have people raise their hands in answer to questions about their connection with the system. It creates a lot of safety. Almost everybody in RC is at least a relative of someone who has had therapy or been in a “mental hospital.” And almost everybody has had therapy of some kind. I don’t know if that is true in the larger society, but at every workshop I’ve led that turns out to be the case. There’s hardly anybody in RC who has not had contact with the system.


“MENTAL ILLNESS” 


“Mental illness” is what I like to call a long session without a Co-Counselor. Think about it: So-called “mental illness” is somebody having some distress that they are acting out, or trying to have sessions about, or replaying. Or they are having a lot of discharge. All of this without a Co-Counselor. Or somebody is not connecting right now with present time. Maybe they haven’t connected with it for several days, or maybe for several years. But they haven’t “lost their mind.” 


“Mental illness” is simply distress. People don’t know what to do about it, so they label it in many ways. “Conditions” are diagnosed and labeled. They are described in the Diagnostic/Statistical Manual (DSM). Whenever the DSM is revised, they come up with [create] more “mental illnesses.” Why? Because they are trying to sell drugs. The psychiatric drug companies are using the system to make a lot of money. 


It is important to say that “mental health” workers are good people. They are trying their best to deal with an irrational system. They are oppressed as workers. They have to handle a large number of cases every day without any time to discharge, because in the context of the system they are “perfect” and don’t need to discharge. 


Harvey Jackins knew that there is no “mental illness” because he saw so-called “mental illness” evaporate before his eyes. (See How RC Began, by Harvey Jackins.) Of course, as he went on developing RC this became clearer and clearer. And it keeps being confirmed as we do “mental health” liberation.


PSYCHIATRIC DRUGS 


Given that there is no “mental illness,” we certainly don’t need psychiatric drugs. People feel like they need the drugs because they have to go to work and the drugs help them do the work. Well, not really. Do the drugs really help them do the work? What the drugs do is put their feelings on a back burner. They are not focused on the feelings, so maybe they can focus on the work. But the drugs also shut down a piece of their mind, a piece of their ability to think, and they shut down their ability to discharge. The person is “functioning” in the sense that they are doing their job, but they are not functioning fully.


This doesn’t mean that everybody should stop taking drugs right this second. There are a lot of things to think about before stopping psychiatric drugs. The RC psychiatric drug policy is in the Guidelines. The purpose of an RC guideline is not for people to just read it and follow it—but to discharge about it, see what they think, understand it, work with it, and use it. The guideline is about how we would like things to be. It’s a direction. We don’t have to agree with it right this second. We do get to discharge on it and move our re-emergence in a direction that we’ve figured out is forward moving for the RC Community.


BEING "NORMAL"


The society pushes us into little boxes of how we are supposed to behave. We get to open up those little boxes when we are doing “mental health” liberation. The oppression makes everybody feel like they are supposed to be “normal.” Well, what is “normal”? It is an expression of the dominant oppressor roles. That’s “normal.” If someone is targeted by a particular oppression, they don’t fit into the dominant “normal” pattern. (When I say “normal” I’m saying it in quotes, because there is no such thing.) If you belong to any oppressed group, you feel like there is something wrong with you because you are not “normal.” 


(There isn’t anybody who wasn’t oppressed as a child, but a lot of people have a number of oppressor roles and not a lot of oppressed roles. The people who carry a lot of oppressor roles got smashed into them. They got forced away from themselves in order to behave like the expected oppressor roles. So, even the people who carry the dominant oppressor roles and appear to be most “normal” don’t really fit into those roles.)


Discharging on “mental health” liberation allows us to notice the internalized oppression we carry, or the internalized oppressor roles we carry. It allows us to “see” them as what they are—things that made us look like somebody we are not. Things that tried to make us somebody else.


A big piece of “mental health” liberation is letting the real you resurface into reality. What does it take to move this forward? It takes persistence, over and over and over and over again. Many people keep wondering why Tim keeps saying some of the same things. (laughter) It’s because it takes time to discharge patterns. And I keep saying the same things over and over and over. (laughter) And you get to do this. And you get to figure out how to say it a different way each time, or to say it to different people, or whatever. It takes persistence. 


Most of “mental health” oppression is hidden because we don’t talk about it, remember? It seems like the way to be is “cool,” right? Not getting upset, looking good, knowing all the right moves. (laughter) Knowing how to fit in, or at least trying to fit in. That’s the way we stay safe in this society, right? But being able to be cool and distant and looking good takes a toll. It hurts us very badly. It takes away our creativity. It takes out “you.” Really, the big thing it takes out is you, who you are.


GETTING PRESENT AND LEADING

Another important thing is getting present. Most people won’t follow you unless you are—or at least seem to be—a little bit present. (laughter) 


People don’t feel comfortable telling their “mental health” histories. Making it safe to tell them includes ensuring confidentiality and also showing that you can listen to their story. That it doesn’t bother you. That it’s not going to send you over the edge [make you feel upset and out of control] to hear how they feel on the edge. “Mental health” oppression says that people who have been hurt by it are “losers” and have no minds. Right? That’s one of the messages of the oppression. So, if you can show that you have great attention, that reassures people that you are okay, which makes it safer for them to talk to you about this.


Something to know about is my five-point program called “Getting Present and Staying That Way.” It’s on the RC website in the “Mental Health” Liberation section, at <www.rc.org/fivepointprogram>. It’s also in Recovery and Re-emergence Number 5 (page 36) and Number 6 (page 28). It’s useful for keeping your attention out around this subject, which is very heavy for most people. There are five things that you need to do, and you need to do them all at once. They are all intertwined with each other. The five things are (1) have a big support system and lots of sessions; 
(2) decide to pay attention to reality and not distress by making that commitment and discharging about it; 
(3) in all your sessions, have some part of or hopefully all of your attention on benign reality; (4) have a life that you really want—figure out how to do that (if your life sucks [is awful], you will never get your attention out—think about it); (5) have fun, as much as you can.


“Mental health” oppression is everywhere. It’s all around us. Therefore, it is not only terrifying, it is also something that we can lead on everywhere. A good way to start is to set up a place where people can tell their “mental health” histories. It could be a table at a workshop, a topic group, your women’s support group, your artists’ support group, or any other support group. 


Yes, there are “mental health” system survivors in your Area, and you didn’t know it because nobody was saying so. When you find out who these people are, you can set up a support group with them. 


BEING "MESSY"

When we lead “mental health” liberation, we have to be “messy.” I’m not saying, don’t do things in a correct way. That’s not what I mean. I mean we have to show ourselves. We have to look “uncool.” We have to be vulnerable. We have to be nerve-rackingly open. We have to be loose and real and discharging and showing who we are. That’s not easy in this society. 


We have to show how badly we got hurt by “mental health” oppression in order to show that there is a way through it. We have to show it because it lets people know that it’s safe to show it. Also, if we don’t show it, they’re not going to show it. Being vulnerable and showing who we are helps people know that it’s okay to be who they are. 


We have to be able to risk humiliation as “mental health” liberation leaders. We have to be able to say, “Yes, I was locked up in a mental hospital,” or, “Yes, I have a sister who is on psychiatric drugs,” or whatever. We get to say that—in a safe place, in a session, at a workshop. When I started leading “mental health” liberation, I couldn’t say I was an ex-inmate. It took me many years of discharge to be able to say that and not feel so humiliated that I couldn’t talk. It takes a lot of discharge to be as relaxed as I am now—and even now I’m not completely relaxed about it. Anyway, you get to show this. You get to show that it’s possible to survive looking at and working on these things that feel so humiliating.


THE END OF "MENTAL HEALTH" OPPRESSION

Can we end “mental health” oppression without ending all the other oppressions? I think that’s probably impossible. Some mechanism in the society would re-establish “mental health” oppression in order to keep the oppressive society going. I don’t think somebody is up there in a little box planning all this. You know, looking down on the society and planning it. I think it’s just a big mechanism that arose out of oppression. It’s just a huge sticky mess that prolongs the mess of the society that we live in. 


If we had complete “mental health” liberation, the oppression would be gone and we would live in a fun society. We would live in a society in which people would be having fun and discharging everywhere. If you needed a session, your neighbor would know RC (they might not call it RC). But you wouldn’t have to go anywhere to get a session. Somebody who wanted to have a session could have one because everybody would be discharging. Nobody would be raising their children without discharge. It would be “family work” everywhere. “RC” would be everywhere. My favorite image is of people dancing in the streets, artwork on all the walls, no cubicles that people have to sit in all day. It’s of young people being supported to do what they want to do. 


I could talk about this for a long time. But I wanted you to get an image of what it might be like. There are many, many ways things would be different if we didn’t feel like we had to fit in, behave, do what we’re “supposed” to do, conform to the oppressive society, and hold in place our oppressed and oppressor roles. What would it be like if we didn’t have to do all those things? 


I assume there would be a transition period. There would be “mental hospitals” that were lovely like this site—by the ocean, by a lake, in the woods. They wouldn’t be “institutional.” People would do RC. They might not call it RC, but that’s what they would do. The residents and the staff would collaborate to make the whole thing work. And there would be no such thing as psychiatric drugs or seclusion or restraint or electro-shock, or psychosurgery—all those things would be relegated to the past, appearing only in history books or museums. 


I don’t think there will be a “mental health” system when we get to the classless cooperative society.

Janet Foner

International Liberation Reference person for  "Mental  Health" Liberation