“Mental Health” Liberation
I'm Janet Foner. I’m the International Liberation Reference Person for “Mental Health” Liberation. I reference everybody, but especially ex-inmates, ex-psychiatric inmates, therapy survivors, psychiatric drug survivors, and relatives of people in all those groups—which is probably almost everyone here.
Basic RC is basic “mental health” liberation. For example, we can’t “lose our minds.”
“Mental health” oppression keeps people scared to show their feelings at all, which makes it hard to build RC and to make it as big as we want it to be. Also, as RCers we can feel like we’re going to go over the edge or go “crazy” if we have a heavy session.
“Mental health” oppression makes it “normal” to be oppressed. It holds capitalism and classism in place with the message that you are supposed to conform, that you are “crazy” to question things. “Mental health” oppression isn’t really about “mental patients” or “mental hospitals”; it is about what will happen to you if you “misbehave” in this society.
The newly revised “Mental Health” Liberation Policy Statement is on the RC website and will answer a lot of the questions that might be puzzling you.
New Cumberland, Pennsylvania, USA
(Present Time 183, April 2016)