In the wake of the Newtown, CT rampage killing in December, many of us are feeling scared. All the trauma of psychiatric commitment and forced "treatment," the humiliations and bitterness that had to be choked down, are brought to the surface. The White House and federal actors in general have almost all sold us down the river, giving us as a present to the NRA and the gun control advocates alike to make opportunistic, scapegoating policies that pretend to do something to prevent gun violence. New York State rushed into the fray even before the White House released its proposals, with Governor Andrew Cuomo (said to have presidential ambitions) and legislative leaders cobbling together a law that intensifies the breaking of confidentiality of mental health service users by reporting their anguished thoughts and feelings to a criminal database, and expands outpatient commitment.
Connecticut has a chance to do something different. Yesterday the Mental Health Services Working Group of the Connecticut legislature held hearings, at which countless activists testified into the night, many people speaking for the first time about their experiences with the mental illness system and their personal challenges, and what actually made a difference for them. The hearings were livestreamed on ct-n.net but they are not showing any archive for that day.
One activist, whose name may be John Foster, talked about having found someone who could tell that the psychiatric drugs were not good for him, and helped him to get off, with support and hugs. He said, "I can feel the raindrops on my skin. When I was under the influence of drugs I couldn't feel any of that." He called on Connecticut to set an example, saying, "These people are really attacking us & belittling us. This is we the people and this is the constitution state. It's time for us to get it right. If we don't, nobody else will."
I'm drawing a lesson from this, that it's possible to have a public discourse where truth will be told about force, about drugs, and about challenges people face in their lives. I want to see it go further to its next step - not just using the pain of forced treatment to argue against its extension to outpatient services, but accepting the implication that civil commitment and inpatient forced treatment has to be abolished.
Earlier in the day, Myra Kovary and I talked about how we are being affected. This is not something new - the NICS database has been around for some years now, and of course civil commitment and forced treatment as well. What's different is the outright expression of hatred, the public vilification and guilt-by-association, the blatant exclusion of us from the political process and public discourse. In other words, discrimination that is being affirmed as public policy.
That is also why it is what I call a "wedge" issue - an issue that can crack open the whole ugly edifice of force and discrimination that often tries to hide as something else. Our community is troubled - hurt, afraid and angry. We are finding the courage to speak up and take the risk that anything we say can and will be held against us, that our speaking out will itself be used to force us back into psychiatric slavery: a regime of inequality where anything can be done to us and where we have to hide our humanity and protect our dignity in private while accepting public humiliation.
I am recalling my own taste that happened over thirty years ago. I cannot speak about recovery or about neurodiversity, only about difference that has no name or a number of partial names, about abuse and severe trauma from the psychiatric system, and about wanting despite all that to have a place in society that accepts difference that includes solitude.
In my public persona as a lawyer, I think that we need to make arguments under the ADA and the federal and state constitutions that reflect what we know: force is not an acceptable answer to any behavioral difference or emotional distress. Any psychiatric profiling at all - labeling someone as dangerous based on a disability whether alone or in combination with other factors - is unlawful discrimination. This is the standard in effect under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and other international human rights law. If this is contrary to the "direct threat" defense under the ADA, the ADA needs to be changed.
Mental, emotional and behavioral differences from a supposed societal norm do not predispose a person to violence. Yet many people would say that any outburst of violence is itself evidence of an emotional/mental/behavioral disequilibrium. The first step is really then to throw out normality, as well as labeling, and to interact with each other in pluralistic ways that accept, respect and protect diversity on all levels, including the level of how we relate to diversity and how we relate to relationships. I am not arguing for pure subjectivism and isolated individuality, but rather for respectful engagement with differences of all kinds.
There are no laws, no policies, no formulas, no disciplines that lead in a sure path to happiness and harmony. The question is not to craft a perfect society that eliminates the risk of suffering, but to converge from all perspectives to seek truth together. Human rights and non-discrimination are secular principles that can function as a kind of shorthand for some of this. While it should not become a dogma in turn - i.e. a way to avoid thinking through issues in their particularity - it is a way forward that can converge with others on a similar path.
Human rights and non-discrimination, i.e. repeal of the mental health laws (allowing forced inpatient and outpatient "treatment" and civil commitment) and all other profiling laws, has to be the starting point for legal reforms just as respectful engagement through peer support and other face-to-face supportive relationships has to be the starting point for reform of mental health services. Opening up questions of what (and who) is criminalized, and how to create laws that will promote harmony and mutual respect, is also much needed as part of this conversation.
It can be a good thing if the tragedy of Newtown, and the profiling and scapegoating discourse that has been the dominant response to it, opens up a searching inquiry into our mental health system and the laws that underpin it. After listening with my partner to three hours of hearings last night, first turning it on in the background while trying to do something else and then paying close attention - I feel hopeful for the first time since Dec. 14, that another way may be emerging into the public discourse and is no longer being suppressed.
