Any good political theory/ reading recommendations about the psych system?

PotentiallyApricots@beehaw.org to Neurodivergence@beehaw.org – 9 points –

I’m a person who was pretty badly harmed by the psych system and all that entails and I think I would feel better if I could read some wiser peoples’ words about it lol. Surely there must be some good political theory or academic writings about this that people have heard of?

I want to avoid things like memoirs, clicky articles, wellness content, etc. Looking for something more direct and zoomed out and theoretical. I feel like that has to exist?

Edit: I wrote this thinking about how much Johanna Hedva’s Sick Woman Theory or some feminist writings I read in college unfucked my head with regard to those topics.

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If you haven't, and are emotionally capable, it may be worth reading the DSM I - V (1 through 5). The DSM 5 was really wild to read when I was in my psychology courses, and the DSM 4 is full of a lot of the systemic issues that are still present today. The DSM 5 only came out in 2013, the DSM 4 in 1994 then DSM-Text Revision in 2000 so... Imagine all the doctors who went to school on the even older DSM 3 in 1980 or the even older doctors who may have been in school when the DSM 2 in 1968....

Yeah, a lot of stigma came from those texts. As such, they can be a really powerful tool for your problems right now, but they might also be triggering. So not sure if it's the best suggestion, but that's my contribution.

This is a great suggestion. I haven’t read it cover to cover but no text is better at indicting exactly what i’m thinking of. I didn’t realize the fifth one was only in 2013. I have a great therapist now, but the people who were working in the places I encountered around 2012-2015 repeated and believed the most harmful unscientific nonsense it was wild. No critical thinking at all. It has always seemed so wild to me that certain people are allowed to use that goddamn disaster book to make such consequential decisions about the lives of vulnerable people that have just met. Thanks for reminding me of this.

you may enjoy sections of Sami Schalk's Black Disability Politics and it may be helpful to your efforts in finding people who write on this subject; here is one excerpt for example that i noted in my recent read-through of it:

On December 31, 1977, the Black Panther published a guest commentary article titled “Principles of Radical Psychiatry” by Claude Steiner, a white founder and practitioner of radical psychiatry. The article opens with a quote by Malcolm X and then asserts that “psychiatry is a political activity” because “the psychiatrist has an influence in the power arrangements of the relationships in which he intervenes.” Steiner argues that psychiatry and the psychiatrist can never be neutral because “when one person dominates or oppresses another, a neutral participant—especially when he is seen as an authority—becomes a participant in the domination.” Steiner goes on to state that psychiatry’s false and oppressive claim to neutrality makes marginalized people rightfully avoid psychiatric services. He then offers the alternative of radical psychiatry, writing, “A radical psychiatrist will take sides. He will advocate the side of those whom he is helping. The radical psychiatrist will not look for the wrongness within the person seeking psychiatric attention: rather, he will look for the way in which this person is being oppressed.”

Hell yeah this is exactly what i was looking for. Thanks

you may also enjoy Thomas Szasz on this subject and concur with some of his analyses about the validity of "mental illness" as a concept/what follows from accepting it as a concept (although i believe he was strongly right-libertarian and this informed some of his opposition to psychiatry as a practice--so you may wish to take or leave some of what he says consequentially)