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Traumatised.org
- not insane, nor to blame!
Pyschiatrically injured not
inherently flawed
This site aims to expose the way the
mental health system fails and re-traumatises adult survivors of childhood
trauma and abuse.
The
sad fact is that the current mental health system fails and re-traumtises
many victims of severe childhood trauma and abuse. Rather than being
helped many are ignored and thier lives are blighted by contact with
mental health services.
Survivors of abuse are failed by
health professionals
-
Failing to recognise how the needs of child
abuse survivors differ from other mental health
patients
Failing to recognise how the needs of child abuse survivors differ from other mental health patients
Inadvertantly reproducing situations of powerlessness and lack of dignity replicating the orginal abuse.
Failing to recognise Dissociation and Complex type II PTSD as valid conditions.
-
Putting male convicted sex offenders in the same ward and sometimes the next bed as female victims of sexual violence.
-
Frequent misdiagnosis due to very poor training on abuse issues
-
Survivors of abuse having to relentlessly battle and jump through hoops for elusive services witheld on the basis of incurablity.
Because of such poor training “professionals” conclude some survivors are beyond help and are incurable. The system then withholds any appropriate psychotherapy and effectively gives up on such patients
The label that punishes victims of abuse
When an adult survivor of severe childhood abuse or neglect is branded with an “Incurable Personality Disorder” a form of abusive discourse is inadvertantly being reproduced.
“They wont believe you”, “They’ll say your nasty”, “They’ll say your crazy”, “They wont like you anymore” are all familiar phrases to those who have been warned by their abusers not to speak out.
Unfortunately, many trauma survivors within the mental health system have their symptoms minimised, are disbelieved about the severity of their handicap, are misunderstood as an inherently difficult or incompliant, and suffer the stigma and discrimination of the PD label. The abuser has been systemically proved correct.
Although things are changing, (slowly), many still are written off an incurable. At best some can only hope to become career psychiatric inpatients and many take their own lives. I feel this is a tragic state of affairs. So many treatable victims of some of the worst crimes humans can commit have their lives blighted into adulthood, and have to battle for services when dealing with crippling levels of emotional pain and disability.
The term “untreatable” can become a morbid self-fulfilling prophesy. I have launched this site www.traumatised.org, which campaigns for the term Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder to be included in the next DSM V. The site also includes essays and offers survivors a space to share their own experiences and argues that no victim of severe trauma, however distressed, should be given up upon as incurable.
I do hope that the future of psychiatry will take a more compassionate view and I would welcome feedback and comments from any readers of this website.
