there's our catastrophe

youneedacat:

Or, specifically, of therapy culture. I am writing a response to someone and ended up finding this old blog post of mine and quoting from one of the people quoted in it. And I got caught up reading all the old quotes again. They’re mostly from radical feminists, which is something I’m not. But the stuff they say has a lot of points that get into the way therapy culture has invaded — and perverted — activism in general. So I thought if throw it out there for people to read. Be aware the links probably don’t work, but last I checked I could find most of the articles by googling parts of the quotes. I think this shift towards therapy culture that happened ages ago (I know someone who lived through it) can explain a lot about many of the ineffectual and downright twisted parts of modern activism. And lots of people my age and younger have never known a time when it wasn’t like this, and don’t even realize the origin of some of these problems. A lot of this is discussed in terms of class but lots of other factors (race, disability, etc.) can cause similar rifts.

oh, shit yeah

I think I read some of these articles back in the day but I didn’t have the necessary organising experience to put them in context.  I was just really upset that the article was (in my view) stigmatising people who need or benefit from psychological therapy.  with a bit more experience under my belt, I am now totally positive that there’s a connection between an excessive faith in talk therapy and some of the toxic, narcissistic, individualistic, precious behaviours and attitudes I see in most feminist communities (& others, but this is something I particularly associate with feminism).  If this upsets you too then I urge you to consider a) that lots of people with their own mental illnesses have a problem with what’s here termed “therapy culture” and b) the term “therapy” refers to a fairly specific and culturally/historically situated set of ways to deal with mental illness, and a critique of the influence of therapy on a community should not be identified with a rejection of all possible mental health treatment. 

Internal documents from Serco reveal that staff at immigration detention centres are told to be alert to detainees using self-harm as a “bargaining tool” in their claims for asylum. The staff memo and incident log, obtained by New Matilda, also reveals just how widespread self-harm is at detention centres — leading the company to warn employees of a “self-harm culture”.

…The rates of self-harm revealed in the internal memos are alarming — but refugee advocates believe that self-harm is even higher than reported. Refugee advocate Ian Rintoul told New Matilda, “We know from information from staff at the detention centres and our scrutiny of Serco running sheets that attempted suicide rates are definitely under-reported”.

…Rintoul continued: “Incidents of self-harm and attempted suicide are on the rise and can broadly be correlated to the increasing lengths of time people are in detention.” According to immigration detention statistics from DIAC, of the 5597 people in immigration detention as at 30 September 2011, 2035 people — or 36 per cent — had been in detention for 12 months or more.

“The essential problem is long-term, indefinite detention itself, so it is difficult to see any possible improvement until detention is itself ended,” Rintoul said.

“Short of that, ensuring that processing arrangements are transparent and have time limits for the various stages of processing would help remove the uncertainty, arbitrariness and capriciousness of the present arrangements. These are the main contributing factors to the deterioration of mental health associated with detention.”

the fact that the first thought of Serco decision makers is to warn against the manipulative use of self-harm by detainees is an amazing intersection of racism & wilful ignorance of issues around mental illness.  via Em Russ. 

DOGS, cats, guinea pigs and even ferrets could become a more common sight on Melbourne’s trams, trains and buses.

Under changes to the Department of Transport’s ”assistance animal pass”, it will become far easier for people with conditions such as autism, Alzheimer’s, epilepsy and psychiatric illnesses such as social anxiety to travel on public transport with their pets.

The assistance animal pass was introduced more than two years ago for people who wanted to travel with assistance animals that alleviate the effects of their disability. However, since then, just 15 people have been issued with the pass, which has been criticised for being too restrictive and even discriminatory.

The conditions of the previous pass stipulated that it could only be issued if the animal had been trained from an approved shortlist of accredited animal training organisations. Under the new pass, those strict requirements have been lifted, opening the way for hundreds of people who have had their assistance animals privately trained.

<3_<3

The Baillieu Government has today announced the recipients of a $4 million funding grant promised to tackle suicide and self harm among LGBTI youth.

…The WayOut Project, working in rural Victoria, will receive $1.48 million, Safe Schools Coalition Victoria (SSCV) will receive $416,000, Minus18 will be given a boost of $146,000, Rainbow Network will receive $348,000, Zoe Belle Gender Centre will receive $146,000, and GLHV and the Youth Affairs Council has been allocated $440,000.

As part of the funding, $220,000 will be set aside to evaluate the impacts of the initiative.

A further $762,000 will also be allocated to support grassroots LGBTI youth programs run in local communities. The funding will be coordinated by the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria and a number of small grant rounds will be available over the next three years.

presumably this is in response to the kerfuffle over the homophobia of the peak anti-depression organisation in australia, BeyondBlue.  4 million dollars is a fairly pitiful amount compared to beyondblue’s budget but it’s a step in the right direction I guess.  the zoe belle gender centre is the only one of these organisations that is centred on trans issues. 

In the first study of its kind, Australian researchers followed about 2000 Victorian students from age 15 to see how many self-harmed during adolescence and into their 20s.

They found self-harm was most common among 15-year-olds, particularly girls and teenagers with symptoms of depression and anxiety.

…The group of young people involved in the study, run by Melbourne’s Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and King’s College in London, were asked at regular intervals between 1992 and 2008 about whether they self-harmed. Eight per cent, or one in 12, reported self-harm from age 13 to 19, with 10 per cent of girls and 6 per cent of boys deliberately hurting themselves at least once.

link is to the herald sun article which is weirdly non-sensationalist, but does have the hilarious headline “self-harm linked to depression”.  no!  you shock me.  anyway, I’ve felt for a while like the kinds of figures I’ve heard on prevalence of self-injury are way too low, so it’s good to know that’s not just coming from my own skewed perspective.   (although obviously a skewed perspective is inevitable so what I should really be saying is that I’m not wrong about its prevalence within my demographic.)

jenniferanne:

FUCK YES.

!!!!!!!!!

Australia’s depression charity restricted access to a key report into gay and lesbian mental health because staff were concerned about the views of the organisation’s chairman Jeff Kennett, former employees - and the report’s author - claim.

Former staff members at beyondblue have told The Saturday Age the report, Feeling Queer and Blue, was put ”completely to the background” because ”we knew that Jeff [Kennett] didn’t want it in the foreground whatsoever”.

Mr Kennett drew controversy in July 2008 for comments likening a bisexual football trainer to a paedophile working as a masseur for young boys. Last month, he said happy heterosexual marriages were the best environment for the mental health of children.

fuck jeff kennett, for real.  I can’t even begin to articulate the level of loathing I have for him.  but basically this, plus the fact that he has a collection of gollywogs, one of whom he think’s it’s appropriate to name nicky winmar, tells you everything you need to know about him.  fyi he’s also a former premier of Victoria so I mean he’s a high-profile dude, people know that he has these kind of opinions and still put him as the chair of their stupid fucking ineffective depression charities. 

beyondblue is totally hamstrung to begin with.  my understanding is that they’re restricted by charter from using any of their massive amounts of funding for anything other than “awareness”.  they don’t do any kind of service provision, they mostly do campaigns like “depression is real, don’t be a dick” and “don’t be ashamed of your depression”.  so there’s a big issue with more and more people realising that what they’re feeling is depression and there not being the resources for them to actually get any kind of support or treatment.  like, it’s great that they’re trying to reduce the stigma around depression, really, that’s important work.  but I personally do not care about the stigma around depression more than about 0.00001%.  I don’t really care if my mental health issues need to be a rigidly kept secret from all but my most trusted confidants if it means I actually get psychiatric care.  I don’t want to be melodramatic but medical treatment could literally be the difference between life and death in a way that a nebulous level of social acceptance cannot.  survival is my first concern. 

also I think that even if your goal is just the reduction of stigma and misunderstanding around mental illness, there are more urgent priorities.  I’d suggest psychosis, PTSD, eating disorders, OCD, or basically anything other than depression.  of my various mental health issues, depression is much more likely to be the one that people actually get and are sympathetic and supportive about.  I realise that this is partly because of the work of mental health campaigners, but I also think it’s something about the nature of the illness itself…regardless, I really think that it carries less stigma than almost any other mental health problem, and maybe it’s time to focus on some other stuff now.  or is the issue that beyondblue supporters think that depression shouldn’t be stigmatised because it’s not like being really crazy?  sometimes I get that vibe. 

my hope is that the scandal around kennett’s homophobia creates a dialogue around the viability of apolitical mental health policy.  right wing economic and social policy of the kind espoused by kennett negatively impacts mental health.  the poor mental health outcomes experienced by marginalised groups is proof of that.  you need to tackle social justice to tackle mental illness.  I don’t understand why this is even controversial.  putting a dude like kennett in charge of an organisation like beyondblue means that it’s fucking over before it’s begun.