The Divided Mental Health Movement

I'll go into the details later, but right now I am recovering after an attack of sorts from some fellow suicide survivors. I was to moderate a panel on suicide survival next weekend here in Seattle at the combined national conference of the Suicide Prevention Action Network and the American Association of Suicidology. By email, I asked panel members what we ought to discuss. And, then, all hell broke loose betwen some panel members and myself. This morning I was removed as the moderator. Not such a big deal since I wasn't getting paid, would've had to get up at 6 am on a Saturday, and I was doing it to be nice to two groups whose work I care about. But it was a big deal, too, in a way that alarms me and will likely concern some of you as well. I'll get into the minutiae later.

For now, suffice to say that there are very prominent people in the suicide survivors/mental health advocacy movement who have their heads firmly up their behinds. They think that only family members of suicides count as survivors--and that people who've survived suicide attempts and years of suicidality are not survivors and that people like me (and maybe you) don't have a place in the emerging movement to address the twin causes of suicide and mental health in America. They are wrong. And yet these are the very same sorts of people who have far too much power in shaping the debate and policy around mental health in our culture--and in ways that have major impacts on patients, whom they claim to serve, and on any of us who give a rat's ass about individual freedoms. It's nice to see everyone's agendas out in the open.

I'll get into this later. But, now, the Mariner's are down 2-0 in the second inning and it's the first truly gorgeous weekend day of spring. Other concerns are more pressing.