Yes, abolish carceral mental health systems

A Return to the Radical Roots of the Neurodiversity Movement

On international women’s day, as I was doomscrolling past endless #girlboss posts, I stumbled on neurodivergent people advocating to #breakthebias in mental health by increasing access to psychiatric diagnoses for women and communities of color. To be honest- this was the cherry on top of the neoliberal cake that has been pissing me off for years now. This is dangerous and it is not progress. How has the mainstream “mental health” and neurodiversity movement become so whitewashed, depoliticized, individualistic, and capitalist? So, LET’S TALK about returning to our radical roots.

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Hi friend and comrade- thanks for reading the 3rd edition of my newsletter that bridges science with social justice and global geopolitics. Each week we explore a new topic and dissect how we can better apply radical political values to our daily life and relationships and unplug from the capitalist matrix.

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I. “We don’t need prisons, we need more mental health!” Do we though?

We’re told that mental health systems exist to cure to our problems. Mainstream neurodivergent “influencers” may solely market you products or “self-care hacks” as solutions to your suffering. In 2020, the police abolition movement was co-opted into a neoliberal trend with companies throwing #BlackLivesMatter on their merchandise and celebrities posting black squares on IG to increase their “brand value”. There was public outcry to defund the police and reallocate funds to mental health services.

From an article by Tyra Bosnic, a psychiatric survivor:

“One night in 2013, I was in yet another psychiatric unit and I couldn’t sleep. Just outside the locked door of my room… another patient on the unit was screaming for her mom. A flurry of shadows cut through the square of light cast by the window in the door as more employees intervened. There was a loud thump and the girl cried out. Then the unit was silent again. This was business as usual.

Fellow patients and I used to joke that if we could handle the psychiatric units we were admitted to, going to prison would be a cake-walk.”

The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture presented a report asserting that involuntary psychiatric interventions based on supposed “best interests” or “medical necessity” “may well amount to torture.” 

As a rule of thumb: If your advocacy for a social cause solely pushes for reform or diversity in an existing system without working towards abolition, you are way off base and are contribute to strengthening an oppressive system. Upholding an existing system will always put you on the wrong side of history.

Tyra Bosnic continues to share her personal experience:

“I was 14 years old the first time I was admitted to an in-patient unit for my bipolar disorder. Through the years at various places, I was subjected to strip searches, a nurse made me show her all of my self-harm scars while I was still naked, and I was put in double-doored security rooms where restraints were still attached to the hospital bed. At one place, I didn’t know there was a camera monitoring my room 24-7 until I noticed the small television broadcasting a live feed at the nurses’ station a week later. Because I disclosed I was struggling with an eating disorder, a nurse supervised me every time I used the bathroom to make sure I didn’t try to purge. I also encountered the padded room. Often renamed the “quiet room,” patients could voluntarily go in to calm down during an episode — or be forced into one for hours if they talked back to the staff too much. And numerous studies back up that I’m not the only one traumatized by in-patient treatment.”

II. Existing mental health systems are about victim blaming and punishing individuals