Audio: Readings by the author
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Power to the People:
On Valentine’s Day morning [Monday 14th Feb 2005], in partnership with my friend Catherine Ingram of Derbyshire Voice, the culmination of two years planning and preparation came to fruition. Hundreds of survivors of the psychiatric system gathered at the City of Westminster’s Whitehall in London with the shared aim of bringing the issue of Psychiatric Assault to the attention of the public, MP’s and the media, and to urge radical reform of the mental health system; a protest against the abusive methods and practises employed by psychiatry which are endorsed and facilitated by the state.
Protesters applied injection plasters in the form of two X’s to their bums and marched past The Department of Health and Parliament, concluding at the Imperial War Museum [the original site of Bedlam asylum], where a rally was held, issues raised, and testimonies heard.
En route, peaceful, poignant, and humorous gestures of defiance were made; an ‘in yer face’ expression of outrage that mirrored back to the psychiatric establishment the disrespectful and humiliating treatment it imposes. I had titled the campaign:
On Valentine’s Day morning [Monday 14th Feb 2005], in partnership with my friend Catherine Ingram of Derbyshire Voice, the culmination of two years planning and preparation came to fruition. Hundreds of survivors of the psychiatric system gathered at the City of Westminster’s Whitehall in London with the shared aim of bringing the issue of Psychiatric Assault to the attention of the public, MP’s and the media, and to urge radical reform of the mental health system; a protest against the abusive methods and practises employed by psychiatry which are endorsed and facilitated by the state.
Protesters applied injection plasters in the form of two X’s to their bums and marched past The Department of Health and Parliament, concluding at the Imperial War Museum [the original site of Bedlam asylum], where a rally was held, issues raised, and testimonies heard.
En route, peaceful, poignant, and humorous gestures of defiance were made; an ‘in yer face’ expression of outrage that mirrored back to the psychiatric establishment the disrespectful and humiliating treatment it imposes. I had titled the campaign:
KISS IT! XX
I, and a delegation, which amongst others included Dr Joanna Bennett, whose brother David had been disgracefully treated and tragically killed at the hands of psychiatry, delivered a petition and a Valentine’s card that pin-pointed the issue to 10 Downing Street. The card, bearing the Prime Minister’s name, was intended to prick the government’s conscience. It depicted, in true cupid fashion, a heart pierced by an arrow, but when the card was opened the heart was turned upside down to form an arse and the arrow became syringe. An accompanying message read:
Have a Heart ...
I trust the Prime Minster did not miss the point.
In addition to its obvious connotation Kiss it! XX also conveyed, Kiss it Better and Kiss it Goodbye. The two crosses represented X Marks the Spot, Double Crossed and simply Wrong!
The changes that are so imperative, will I feel, come about when the covers are pulled back and the naked truth is exposed for all to see; a corrupt and incestuous relationship between psychiatry, the state and the drugs industry… professional self-interest, the politics of social control and the colour of money, all rolled into one.
We should search for creative and imaginative solutions to replace the tyranny of the present regressive clinical regime. I look forward to the day when survivors of the psychiatric system become an organised Civil Rights Movement and our collective and united voice is heard and heeded. Then, perhaps, psychiatric oppression can be consigned to the history books.