It must be demons, said Psychiatry

It must be demons.

It must be the devil.

It must be witchcraft.

It must be lunacy.

It must be insanity.

It must be a curse.

It must be sickness in their mind.

It must be because they need to be converted to Christianity.

It must be because they are poor.

It must be because their mind is so weak.

It must be because they are Black.

It must be because their natural state is slavery.

It must be because they are women.

It must be their uterus attacking their brain.

It must be because they are gay.

It must be a sickness that made them gay.

It must be because they read too many books.

It must be something wrong with their brain.

It must be a disease of the mind.

It must be a mental illness.

It must be a mental disorder.

It must be a chemical imbalance in the brain.

It must be a personality disorder.

It must be a gene causing a mental illness.

It must be passed down through families.

It must be the neurotransmitters at the synapse.

It must be neurodivergence.

It must be neurobiology.

It must be the way the brain is wired.

It must be the way they were born.

It must be mental health issues.

It must be that they are not resilient enough.

It must be that they are attention seeking.

It must be that they are self-obsessed.

It must be that they are lying.

But whatever it is, it definitely is not anything to do with our environment, our pressurised school systems, our societal stereotypes, our abusive families, our rapist exes, our grief, our losses, our lifelong distress, our numerous traumas, our capitalist overlords, our controlling media, our warmonger leaders, our damaging diets, our immense workloads, our oppressive governments, our lack of connection to nature, our filthy air, our impossible economy, our crushing debt, our fear, our anger, our sadness, our confusion, our fear of failure, our questions about life and death, our loss of purpose.

You see according to the history of psychiatry, the problem isn’t out there, it’s all in our weak little minds.

It always has been. It always will be.

And if we refuse to accept our ‘mental illness’ and start pointing out the trauma and distress we are subjected to, it is taken as more evidence of how mentally ill we truly are.

An inescapable system for so many humans.

A truly brilliant trap.

The list of explanations above tracks psychiatry’s main theories, narratives and social messages over 200 years. Many people are unaware of the origins and belief systems which underpin psychiatry. Even many psychiatrists do not know that their discipline was chiefly founded and spread by the church. Religion has always been intertwined with psychiatry.

To move away from oppressive systems, first we have to understand how they became so dangerous and abusive, how they rose to power, how they positioned millions of people as problematic - so we can learn to deconstruct it, and create something better in its place.

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