(no subject)
What the fuck is this, you ask?
Yup, Motherfucking Menninger has a blog. A blog that is filled with stunning amounts of bullshit that bears no resemblance to the experience of being a patient locked up there.
This post in particular forced me to leave the room directly after reading it because I was afraid I'd stab something through my computer screen--and for once this is not me being melodramatic.
I wrote a long comment in response to it, only to discover that they apparently have to approve comments before they're posted. Great job at ensuring there's real, unbalanced information about Menninger, assholes. I had, however, anticipated this and copy-pastaed it before I hit post.
In this case, "sincerity" itself is bullshit.
I personally experienced three months of Menninger, from the other side of the locked door as the writer. In my experience, there was very little actual empathy for patients; there was a total unwillingness on the part of most of the staff to participate in a dialogue with patients. Empathy cannot exist if you are not even willing to listen.
You want to talk about not bullshitting as treaters, about not wanting to engage in psychobabble--but your post uses a common bit of Menninger psychobabble, "mentalizing." Even if you link to another post that attempts to define it, it's still your own invented psychobabble. It's even a post that the writer himself also authored. This is an excellent example of the hamster-wheel logic pervasively used at Menninger: you run around and around and around, but you never get anywhere.
"Safety" is another example of the psychobabble Menninger employs. Patients are heavily restricted and told it's "for everyone's safety." On the surface, this seems to make sense--but scratch beneath the surface of that thin Menninger veneer and it becomes nonsensical. If you take away from patients anything with which they could possibly harm themselves or others, how are they going to learn to regulate the emotional states that cause those harmful behaviors? It's similar to the problem faced by many people upon release from prison: they've been controlled, not rehabilitated, so once they're free again, in an environment where many potential weapons are available, they tend to repeat the harmful behaviors because external regulation has not taught them internal regulation.
But if a patient dares to question why they are not allowed to have, say, a Q-tip (and yes, these were actually taken away because they were classified as "sharps"), the only answer they'll get is "We've had a problem with it in the past. It's a safety concern." This seems to make sense at first, but one must examine it beneath the surface level.
Part of Merriam-Webster's definition of "safe" is "not likely to be harmed or lost." What are patients losing when the people they look to for help treat them like children and criminals? What are patients losing when they're locked in an insular, Orwellian world where they must constantly watch every word and motion because doing the "wrong" thing brings infantilizing punishment?
I lost a lot at Menninger. I lost being treated as a competent adult. I lost the decision to make any meaningful decisions about my daily life. I lost faith in the people I'd expected to help and support me in my efforts to put my life back together. Most importantly, I lost hope.
That, to me, is the very opposite of "safe."
My diagnosis: Menninger's "empathy" is bullshit, and their writing about combating their internal psychobabble is bullshit.
Yup, Motherfucking Menninger has a blog. A blog that is filled with stunning amounts of bullshit that bears no resemblance to the experience of being a patient locked up there.
This post in particular forced me to leave the room directly after reading it because I was afraid I'd stab something through my computer screen--and for once this is not me being melodramatic.
I wrote a long comment in response to it, only to discover that they apparently have to approve comments before they're posted. Great job at ensuring there's real, unbalanced information about Menninger, assholes. I had, however, anticipated this and copy-pastaed it before I hit post.
In this case, "sincerity" itself is bullshit.
I personally experienced three months of Menninger, from the other side of the locked door as the writer. In my experience, there was very little actual empathy for patients; there was a total unwillingness on the part of most of the staff to participate in a dialogue with patients. Empathy cannot exist if you are not even willing to listen.
You want to talk about not bullshitting as treaters, about not wanting to engage in psychobabble--but your post uses a common bit of Menninger psychobabble, "mentalizing." Even if you link to another post that attempts to define it, it's still your own invented psychobabble. It's even a post that the writer himself also authored. This is an excellent example of the hamster-wheel logic pervasively used at Menninger: you run around and around and around, but you never get anywhere.
"Safety" is another example of the psychobabble Menninger employs. Patients are heavily restricted and told it's "for everyone's safety." On the surface, this seems to make sense--but scratch beneath the surface of that thin Menninger veneer and it becomes nonsensical. If you take away from patients anything with which they could possibly harm themselves or others, how are they going to learn to regulate the emotional states that cause those harmful behaviors? It's similar to the problem faced by many people upon release from prison: they've been controlled, not rehabilitated, so once they're free again, in an environment where many potential weapons are available, they tend to repeat the harmful behaviors because external regulation has not taught them internal regulation.
But if a patient dares to question why they are not allowed to have, say, a Q-tip (and yes, these were actually taken away because they were classified as "sharps"), the only answer they'll get is "We've had a problem with it in the past. It's a safety concern." This seems to make sense at first, but one must examine it beneath the surface level.
Part of Merriam-Webster's definition of "safe" is "not likely to be harmed or lost." What are patients losing when the people they look to for help treat them like children and criminals? What are patients losing when they're locked in an insular, Orwellian world where they must constantly watch every word and motion because doing the "wrong" thing brings infantilizing punishment?
I lost a lot at Menninger. I lost being treated as a competent adult. I lost the decision to make any meaningful decisions about my daily life. I lost faith in the people I'd expected to help and support me in my efforts to put my life back together. Most importantly, I lost hope.
That, to me, is the very opposite of "safe."
My diagnosis: Menninger's "empathy" is bullshit, and their writing about combating their internal psychobabble is bullshit.