Behind the Veil of a Diagnosis

Many of us live our lives behind the veil of a diagnosis. It's an easy place to be in in a society that is so quick to describe us as 'the mentally ill, the bipolar, or the manic'.  But when you lift the veil, you find a real stories and real people often impacted by great trauma. When you realize the prevalence of trauma among people with mental health diagnoses, you may quickly uncover the reason so many people are unsettled with the care that they receive.

I have been escorted to the hospital in handcuffs and leg shackles, and to treat a woman that has been traumatized and victimized in our culture in this manner does not seem to make sense to me.  I gave a lecture recently on my art while telling my story, and it's interesting that this treatment still does not make sense to me after so many years. I've only had seven hospitalizations but these moments wound me.

It's like in these moments when I am handcuffed that I'm no longer a mother and a wife, I've become this entity that must be moved and cannot be allowed to move- and that's what is so triggering about it. It painfully reminds me of the moments in my life I have not been able to escape situations of abuse and harm- times when I've been objectified as a person and had my humanity dismissed. We would never handcuff the person with a heart condition or with diabetes to take them to the hospital.
 

 To me it is as if the presence of a mental health diagnosis is license to treat people differently in our culture. As advanced as we are as a culture, I believe we can do better.