Sera Davidow - Intersections Between Sexual Violence and Psychiatric Abuse
Mad in America: Rethinking Mental Health
Mad in America
4.7 • 213 Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2018
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week on MIA Radio we interview Sera Davidow, a psychiatric survivor and prolific activist for the human rights of people labeled mentally ill. Sera serves as the Director of the Western Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community and is a founding member of the Hearing Voices USA Board of Directors.
Through her work, she has gained a range of experiences including starting up a peer respite, opening resource centers, and producing educational materials on non-coercive, non-pathologizing alternatives to the traditional mental health system. Sera is a regular blogger for Mad in America and has written extensively on the topics of forced treatment and sexual violence.
In this interview, we discuss the parallels and intersections between coercive psychiatric care and sexual assault.
In this episode we discuss:
- Sera's lived experience as a psychiatric survivor and survivor of sexual violence.
- The similarities between sexual violence and forms of psychiatric abuse including forced drugging, forced intubation, forced catheterization, strip searches, restraint, and containment
- How even seemingly minor or routine parts of psychiatric hospitalization, such as regularly monitoring patients, can be violating
- The role that victim-blaming and gaslighting play in both sexual violence and psychiatric coercion
- That the language and terminology of the mental health system such as "mental illness," "noncompliance," and "anosognosia" serve to perpetuate violence
- That people's discomfort with big emotions and taboo topics often prevent trauma survivors from speaking about their experiences within psychiatric settings
- How we can help providers and the general public understand the trauma and violence of psychiatric coercion
Relevant Links:
A World That Would Have Us Doubt: Rape, the System, and Swim Fans
Us, Too: Sexual Violence Against People Labeled Mentally Ill
Feminism 101: What is Gaslighting?
To get in touch with us email: podcasts@madinamerica.com
© Mad in America 2018
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Mad in America podcast, your source for science, psychiatry and social justice. |
| 0:12.0 | Hello, this is James, and welcome to episode 41 of the Madden America podcast. This week, Emily |
| 0:19.8 | Shearer Cutler interviews activist Sarah |
| 0:22.3 | David Al. Joining us this week is Sarah David Al, a psychiatric survivor and prolific activist |
| 0:29.1 | for the human rights of people labeled mentally ill. Sarah serves as the director of the Western |
| 0:34.6 | Massachusetts Recovery Learning Community and is a founding member of the Hearing Voices USA Board of Directors. Through her work, she has gained a range of experiences, including starting up a peer respite, opening resource centers, and producing educational materials on non-coercive, non-pathologizing alternatives to the traditional mental health system. |
| 0:57.3 | Sarah is a regular blogger for Mad in America and has written extensively on the topics of forced treatment and sexual violence. |
| 1:05.0 | Today we'll be discussing the parallels and intersections between coercive psychiatric care and sexual assault. |
| 1:13.1 | Sarah, thanks so much for joining us today. |
| 1:15.9 | Thanks for having me, Emily. |
| 1:17.5 | Could you start by telling us a little bit about your personal experience with both |
| 1:21.5 | coercive psychiatry and sexual violence? |
| 1:24.9 | Sure. |
| 1:26.2 | So I don't want to take up too much time with this part, but my story includes |
| 1:32.5 | sexual, physical, and emotional abuse starting as a child. And some of it is a clearer memory |
| 1:39.3 | than others. It's something I really struggled with starting, I think, around the age of four. |
| 1:45.9 | I have a sort of vague memory of a neighborhood boy that my family thought it was safe to leave me with and ended up not being safe. |
| 1:54.0 | And that continued through my teenage years and into my adulthood in these interactions with men in my life, |
| 2:05.6 | often people who were older than me who expected things out of me that I couldn't quite say |
| 2:12.9 | no to or that even if I said no to, they really weren't interested in listening to me. |
| 2:19.1 | And I think that that really set me up to enter a psychiatric system that also wanted to tell |
| 2:25.6 | me what it wanted and needed from me and to put me in a position of not really feeling |
... |
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