Trouble17

Anarchists, anti-authoritarians and radicals
of all stripes spend a disproportionate amount

of time and energy confronting the so-called
‘big picture’ challenges of the world.

In this all-consuming competition to change
society, too often we overlook the personal

struggles that many of us face, including
some of the most basic questions of how we

relate to ourselves, each other,
and the world around us.

For some, the mundane tasks of day-to-day
living can feel so meaningless,

or so hyper-important,

that even the simplest decisions
become impossible to manage.

For others, ongoing or past experiences of
physical danger, trauma, and instability,

can severely compound the difficulties that
we already face surviving in a white supremacist,

hetero-patriarchal and capitalist society.

Yet despite the large number of us who face
these struggles daily,

within our movements,
mental health is often tokenized

or treated as an afterthought,
and mental illness is often invisibilized.

Mainstream society polarises crazy people.

On the one hand it lifts a few of us up to
celebrate our creative brilliance in the fields

of art, film, books and music.

When you hear about slavery for 400 years

For 400 years?
That sounds like a choice!

On the other, it stigmatizes and fears us,
controlling and locking us up.

Far from being a fast-track to creative stardom,
mental illness leaves millions of people to

fall through the cracks of our neuro-typical
society.

Most insanity does not get celebrated.

For many, it means losing your job or home
because you can't get out of bed.

Not being able to socialize or organize due
to anxiety, paranoia, or the inability to

maintain relationships.

Using risky coping mechanisms to try and manage
your own symptoms, or relying on the toxic

mental health system for your very survival.

To the extent that they can be separated,
the psychiatric and pharmaceutical industries

both extract incredible profits in their supposed
pursuit of our ‘mental wellness’.

Yet for those who would seek to break free
from the State and capital’s system of pathological

diagnoses and lucrative prescriptions... what
exactly does that leave us with?

Over the next thirty minutes, we will speak
with a range of individuals as they share

their insights on the causes and potential
solutions to mental illness, and share their

experiences of fighting stigma, dealing with
trauma and getting into the proper headspace

to make a whole lot of trouble.

Mental health means our own
interior kind of wellness.

Our own personal equilibrium of
how we respond to the ails of the world.

Mental health is your own way of feeling balanced
and feeling that you're well.

And we need to take it in a very broad sense.

In different cultures around the world,
well-being in itself is so different.

So I would see mental health as a very open
way of: are you feeling balanced and able

to face life in the complexity that it is?

As indigenous people we've lived through an
enormous amount of trauma, and trying

to find that balance living in the
environment that you do is challenging.

Mental health is the term that I use to talk
about sort of being unable to cope with reality,

and different forms of things that my brain
does... and ways that I change the way that

I perceive the world that are usually pretty
harmful to my life.

In the society that we live in, oftentimes
mental health ends up actually eclipsing

the larger context.

That language that we use to talk about
mental health is the the language

of the biomedical model.

But meanwhile it leaves
out the social context.

And we're not talking at all about the
living situation that you're in,

or the color of your skin,

or the kind of access
you've had to housing,

or the access you've had to education,

and what you have to deal with
on a daily basis.

So if you live on reserve you have all kinds
of challenges there.

If you live off reserve if you have a whole
new set of challenges.

And how do you work through them all?

How do you make it better for the next generation?

Since mental health is primarily
influenced by social factors,

there's no real way to solve it
without changing the social condition

that we're in.

What we see it as is being able to use your
psychological abilities to help fight against

the repression that comes towards you.

We need to figure out ways to increase our
ability to fight against the forces that are

helping make us mentally ill, as it were.

So I see mental health not just as something
that belongs to a person, or lives in a person.

But rather sort of a response to the
condition that is around us that

causes us to hurt in this world.

Mental unwellness in broader society
is an epidemic.

Whether it's just plain old capitalism that's,
like, really selling the idea of

anything solvable through some exchange of
money.

The terms of success - of a successful life
- that have been passed down by the state,

by mass media, they're really unattainable
for almost everyone.

And then even when people do achieve
material success in these terms,

they struggle with finding meaning.

The conditions around us have other
psychologically damaging effects.

The way that we relate to each other socially
and the tendency towards seeking of, like,

social capital than seeking actual, like,
close relationships with people.

When I think about mental health in my "immediate
community", I see a community that is making

space for particular people who are living
with mental health issues.

What I'm reminded of, is the ability for a
Black man in my building to live mad while

Black, and walk around in this building in
that way would probably not happen.

Because what I know is happening,
not just in the city,

but in this province and in this country,

is police responses to Black people
living with mental health issues,

or mad-identified, often,
but not always, result in fatal shootings.

I would say generally in my community,
a lot of people have struggles.

A lot of people see therapists.

Some people have diagnoses.

Some people are medicated.

So I would say, like, in the anarchist
community a lot of people are struggling,

but there's, like, a lot more
conversations about that.

A lot more informal peer support than in other
communities that friends and family who are

not anarchists are a part of.

What I see happening in the mental health
system is that there are an incredible number

of people who struggle with issues of trauma.

And what happens is when they come into the
system and end up getting diagnosed with a

mental illness, what's happened to them
in the past gets eclipsed by this culture,

which is very wrapped up in this whole
model where there's a drug for

everything that you could
possibly need.

A huge piece of what we can do is
think outside the medical box

and use more transformative
ways of thinking.

Human beings are social creatures, meaning
that we simultaneously engage with

and are shaped by our surroundings.

This fact is often overlooked by those who
see madness as nothing more

than a neurochemical imbalance.

In reality, social factors such as how
broke you are, the color of your skin,

your gender and sexual orientation,
and how well you pass

as a productive member
of capitalist society,

all play huge roles in determining how you
are treated, what health care

and social supports you have access to,
and therefore greatly shape your

emotional and mental well being.

The hyper-individualization promoted by our
current social media paradigm swaps human

contact for superficial interactions based
on curated personas of likes and follows.

Did you lose your subscribers?!

The realm of spirituality has been so co opted
and tainted by religious institutions that

many of us have no access to rituals and traditions
that could help us feel a meaningful connection

to the world around us.

Profiting off this mess is the pharmaceutical
industry, comprised of some of the world's

biggest corporate powerhouses, who spend billions
each year lobbying doctors to push their newest

and most lucrative designer drugs, all with
the goal of getting as many people medicated

as they can.

♫♫ Crazy
I'm crazy for feeling so lonely

I'm crazy
Crazy for feeling so blue ♫♫

When one in four people
suffer from mental illness,

I have to sort of question
what that means.

Whatever the status of mental health is,
it’s rapidly declining.

And I think that’s happening
in an intentional manner.

It just seems to me that anything and everything
is being described as a mental health problem

– in such a way that creates this, like,
false idea that there is a mental health

solution for that.

Possibly in the name of a pill,
but often in the name of

some other additional kind of control.

A lot of the factors that lead to what we
tend to call mental illness are entirely out

of the control of the people who are
experiencing them,

and aren’t really from a biological
or chemical root.

They’re from the social condition
that the people are in.

How can we live in the world
that we’re in and be “well”?

We need to recognize that the society that
we live in is actually very unhealthy.

If we’re starting from this place that what
we’re trying to do is get people to be healthy

so that they can fit into society...

that to me is really scary.

Because I’m often sad, and I’m often hurt.

And I’m often anxious and paranoid
... and those are for very real reasons.

My spirit can’t be stable if the material
world around me is absolutely scary.

The real visceral and true fear of deportation,
bankruptcy, homelessness, incarceration...

these are things that contribute to someone’s
individual experience of despair.

And rather than offering a solution,
it’s always just some pill, or injection.

Or just... removal.

I work with refugee claimants.

The very first weeks they arrive here in Canada,
they live a whole different range of challenges.

A lot comes from what they carry.

What they lived in their countries: war, rape,
being jailed, being tortured.

But also a lot of things they lived
trying to get to Canada.

So some of them might have travelled a whole
year, crossing ten different countries without

documents, without papers,
before they arrive here.

So it’s a very heavy weight
they carry with them.

And also a lot of challenges they face is
actually arriving here with nothing and having

to face what it is to be a refugee claimant
in Canada.

One of the hardest things is being in a state
where you don’t know what’s going to happen

to you, right?

So you might wait a year, two years, to know
if you’re going to be able to stay here.

So this period of just... not knowing what
you can build for yourself and your kids

as a life is very hard.

Very stressful.

I think it’s really important, if we’re
gonna talk about mental health

and mental wellness,
that we think about ourselves

related to a larger social context.

I think one of the things that really impacts
our mental health is that we live in such

an individualistic society, where we think
the things that are happening to us

are happening because
of our brain chemistry.

Or they’re happening to us
because of some fault of ours,

because we’re not strong
enough to survive.

When really they’re these larger social
issues that are impacting everyone.

On a personal level, I get into trouble
when I get disconnected from things

that are meaningful to me in the world.

One of the things that I wanna do with my
life is engage with all of the imbalances

of power with communities that are trying
to counter those imbalances.

A lot of the factors are just like the standard
foundations of society, which is anti-Blackness,

racism and capitalism.

And until those are destroyed,
there’s no actual solution.

When I think about the conditions that
contribute to unwellness for Black people,

the number one is generally
the experience of

the transatlantic slave trade,
first and foremost.

The experience of colonialism.

The ongoing experiences of colonialism.

The ongoing occupations of Black spaces.

I see the hyper-surveillance of those communities
as a particular kind of occupations.

And I’m using that word sort of in soft
quotes, while keeping in mind the context

of what the word ‘occupation’ means here.

500 years of colonialism has really taken
its toll on Indigenous people.

And it’s taken it in so many different ways.

There’s been a lot of hurt.

There’s been a lot of pain.

There’s been a lot of trauma that’s been
passed on from generation to generation.

It’s a real struggle to get better when
you’re left to fend for yourself.

But it seems like in a lot of the communities,
they purposefully take everything away

and then are—it feels like they’re just
waiting to see everybody die.

I think that with the high rates of suicide
in every single community—I know the Inuit

community is probably the highest, but you
know, even in my community, y’know,

the suicide rate is pretty high.

I think that when you’re always surrounded
by death, because people give up,

that having these ceremonies to turn to,
where you can honor their memory

and be surrounded by healers
is a good way.

And because the Indian Act forced us
to give up all those ceremonies,

now is the time where
we have to re-learn them.

Of all the modern sciences aimed at reproducing
subservience and reinforcing State power...

psychiatry is particularly nasty.

Its history is fraught with the warehousing
and torture of countless individuals in sanitariums

and asylums.

In their eternal quest to understand and destroy
that which is different, states have performed

every conceivable type of experiment on human
test subjects, from mass sterilizations

and LSD-induced comas
to decades of routine lobotomies.

Psychiatrists’ enthusiastic embrace of eugenics
during the early 20th century was a major

inspiration for Nazi scientists, providing
them a convenient pseudo-scientific justification

for the Holocaust.

And while the term became taboo after WWII
the inherent link between psychiatry

and eugenics continued long after,
and some would argue, still exists today.

Although psychiatry poses amidst the hard
science-based branches of medicine,

nowhere else is the creation of
medical conditions and disorders

so socially manufactured as
in psychiatry's bible,

the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
or DSM.

While the process of deciding how to categorize
the mentally unwell can involve aspects of

the scientific method, it is oftentimes no
more than a room full of old white men promoting

their collected social biases
and individual agendas.

Ralph was sick. A sickness
that was not visible like smallpox,

but no less dangerous and contagious.
A sickness of the mind.

You see... Ralph was a homosexual.

Within the sacred pages of the DSM, homosexuality
was considered a mental disorder until 1987,

and to this day, many transgender people need
to be diagnosed with a mental illness in order

to receive the treatments they need.

Women who may have once been labeled
as nymphomaniacs or hysterics,

are today branded instead with BPD,

or borderline personality disorder,
a catch-all diagnosis primarily inscribed

on women whose histories of trauma
are not seen as real or legitimate.

Although there have been attempts to distance
psychiatry from this legacy, its ongoing history

is one of padded cells, forced injections,
electroshock, and indefinite institutionalization.

If you find yourself on the wrong side of
the modern mental healthcare system,

you can easily fall into a vicious
feedback loop of mental health crises,

often caused by trauma, leading to
further violence and re-traumatization.

This may take the form of forced
hospitalization, incarceration,

hurting yourself
or people that you love,

or ultimately
... being murdered by the police.

The state engages with mental unwellness by
being the identifier of those of us that are

well and those of us that are unwell.

So the state and psychiatry define being well
in terms of how well you conform to a normal

and in this society that normal
encompasses all of the problematic

natures of mainstream society.

If you went back and asked your guidance counselor
what their version of success would be for

you moving forward,
well, it’s like how well you conform.

They started the residential schools
to assimilate the children.

It was the law that if you didn’t give up
your children you were sent to jail.

They call the foster care system
the next residential school.

The kids that are in care aren’t
brought up in a good way

and they fall through the cracks.

The state usually criminalizes mental unwellness.

Generally if you look at the ways
that psych wards operate,

it’s not significantly different
than prison.

And if you look at the way prisons operate
they’re usually used as psych wards.

There’s no real distinction between the
carcerality of american society in general

and the way that we treat the mentally ill.

Including the way that police
shoot mentally ill people.

News 1: A police officer shoots and kills
a teenager with schizophrenia.

News 2: A mentally ill man being shot four
times by a police officer despite the fact

that the victim showed no threat of force.

News 3: And a mentally ill man shot dead
by two Dallas officers.

I’ve spent four and a half months in state
jails, about a month and a half in psych wards,

and there are some, like,
really noticeable similarities.

There’s coercive violence, isolation
- but the difference is that

like, when I’m in jail,
I’m well and I’m myself,

I’m in a battle against the state
and they're my enemy

and they’ve locked me in a cage.

And when I’m in a psych ward,
it’s like a whole different world.

I don’t understand what’s going on.
I have no connection to myself.

If I refuse medication,
I’ll be tackled to the ground

and have it injected into me.

The trauma that I feel in my life from having
been in jail is so much less profound than

the trauma that comes from a psych ward.

Generally mental illness is treated as
something to push under the rug and hide

and either like fix with, you know,
dumbing you down enough that you can

actually deal with whatever
bullshit society is giving you.

Or, with putting you away if you’re
unable to actually get back

into the capitalist flow of things.

Generally, the state engages with unwellness
on a complete individual basis.

The problem is individualized and the solution
is also individualized.

Self-care is usually a stand-in
for a lot of neoliberal approaches

to dealing with mental health problems.

I worry that sometimes this expectation
that people practice self-care

kind of misses the target in many ways.

Generally it focuses on a very individualized
approach of like, taking care of your personal

needs as far as like attention or how people
interact with you or things like that.

My wellness is maintained by taking
pharmaceutical drugs

that are made by some of the
worst corporations in the world.

People that are capitalizing
off of hyper medication,

they’re advertising to doctors
to try and get, you know,

as big of a quarterly
fucking profit as they can.

You have to simultaneously be able to hold
the understanding that the pharmaceutical

industry, like, really what they’re interested
in is profit and they’re gonna try to get

as many people as they possibly can
addicted to their drugs

… with the reality that like, there’s
actually a lot of people for whom

the drugs are really helpful, you know?

Not nearly as many people
as who are on them...

but I think it’s really important
to be able to have that analysis

where you don’t just get shut down
and think in a black and white framework.

And I think that just because a system exists
doesn’t mean that we can’t critique it

while understanding that there are some
people that might benefit from that.

And that there’s no shame in being able
to be a person that decides

what your care might look like.
That doesn’t make you less critical,

that doesn’t make you less of
a mental health advocate.

As a psychiatrist, I basically have to
work with a lot of people who have,

at least historically if not currently,
found psych drugs and hospitalizations

helpful at least to some extent.
And I think that’s fine.

What I do like to focus on with people is
maybe a return to true informed consent.

I like to focus, when possible, on supporting
people who maybe can’t find somebody who

is able and willing to help them taper or
withdraw from the medications that they’ve

been taking or live in a less coercive
environment during a crisis.

You have to walk in the white man’s world
to get the accreditation that they find believable

in order for you to help your own people.

For instance, I can get a psychologist
from Health Canada. They’ll pay for that.

But I can’t get funding from Health Canada
to pay for my spiritual elder

cause he doesn’t have
a degree in spirituality.

Rather than unquestioningly accepting the
State's authority on the causes and nature

of mental unwellness and official dictates
on what our interventions can and should

look like, today many crazy people are
asserting our power to choose the right mix

of institutional and informal supports
for the problems we face.

This growing movement seeks to counter
stigmatizing conceptions of mental illness

that paint it as an isolated
and individualized phenomenon,

positing instead the need for
dynamic peer-based solutions

rooted in interconnectedness
and community support.

Social media, with all its flaws,
can play an important role in building

peer to peer networks, by offering us
the ability to connect with others

who have faced similar experiences. This
can be particularly helpful for individuals

that face geographic or emotional barriers
to community and mental health support.

Because at the end of the day…
the best person to take care of someone in

mental health crisis is often someone
who’s already been through it themselves.

When we try to support or be allied with people
that face this type of mental health issue

or trauma, we should be, in a way, curious.

Not be afraid to ask questions.

To learn.

And to try to connect with those people
we try to help.

And really try to understand on a human
and deeper level what these people faced

in the past,
and what they are feeling right now.

The government did everything that they could
to destroy us... and yet we’re still here.

We all carry a different kind of trauma.

And sometimes those traumas
eat away at us until there’s nothing left.

And sometimes those traumas, we’re able
to work through them and they become our

—almost energy source.

To keep moving forward so that we can
help the next generation.

I have hope that, y’know, this generation
is addressing these issues in a good way.

So that we don’t continue the trauma.

And try to reverse it if possible.

Situations and humans are so complex.

And we need to really be open to that complexity.

Never try to simplify or put labels on people.

This person is ‘traumatized’, or this
person is ‘gonna be okay’.

She’s ‘strong’, she’s ‘resilient’,
right?

We simplify situations that are very complex.

People tend to have a lot of personal and
community ways of dealing with

mental health problems,
but societally we tend to fail entirely.

Generally what I’ve noticed in
communities is a desire to help

and a lack of ability to.

The actual, like, social conditions
that cause these kinds of problems are

more what needs to be addressed.

And no one really seems to do that very well.

The best community support that
I’m a part of is very informal.

It’s just talking with friends about how
we’re doing, and what we’re thinking about.

A lot of it is about building those
relationships beforehand.

Because whatever you do when a crisis occurs
is going to be affected by and influenced

by the actual relationships
you have with people.

Y’know, just making sure that our interactions
with people are consensual.

Understanding what it may feel like
for someone to feel really scared

and be sharing something with you.

Not only what do they need,
but what can I offer?

And I think for me, actually that’s one
of the first questions.

There’s this opportunity in the crisis,
and in the breakdown,

for it to be a breakthrough.

If you stick around, y’know, if you
go through the hard times

and get through the other side
there’s a damn good chance

you’re gonna come out with some wisdom
that you never would have had.

As a community of people who like, actually,
care about making change in the world,

we need to lay the foundations for a
more understanding relationship to crisis.

The best community support doesn’t have
to look like an intervention.

And ideally, when our communities are in a
good place, and when individuals have

really good, caring relationships
and support networks set up,

then the crisis doesn’t happen.
Or it can be alleviated.

I think that what we really have to begin
to take seriously is that emotions surface

at a different range for different people.

And I think that some times there’s a way
that we think listening is enough.

And it may be sometimes people
might require something of us.

The authority that a psychiatrist is granted
can be subverted to lift the voice of the

participant in the therapeutic relationship.

The role of the therapist, psychiatrist,
social worker, mental health worker

... should be to step the fuck back
and model a non-hierarchical,

non-secretive way
of being with one another.

I hope that all of the work that our communities
are doing around healing from trauma,

around transformative justice
and community accountability

– that these can coalesce into some
peer support models

and some models for,
like, intervening in crisis.

And as much as I hope, and am excited
about this work, I’m also skeptical

because of the magnitude
of mental health crises.

There are so many different issues that face
us that sometimes it can be overwhelming.

But if you keep moving forward, and you keep
addressing these issues and keep trying to

find those solutions
... it brings hope to others.

From the epidemics of suicides
and overdoses, to the shock and rage

sparked by the never-ending
wave of police killings,

it’s painful to think about
all those who’ve died as a

result of complications with mental
health and their inability to receive

the support that they needed.

But their stories and lives aren’t forgotten.

Even as we continue to struggle
within and against a world

that is growing increasingly scary,

we must take steps to collectively
prepare ourselves for the battles to come.

Finding new ways to manage mental unwellness,
with all the beauty and conflict that entails,

is a fundamental component of building stronger,
healthier communities of resistance.

If we are able to do this, our movements will
not only become more sustained and resilient,

but will gain new layers of possibility as
we travel into the uncertain future together.

So at this point, we’d like to remind you
that Trouble is intended to be watched

in groups, and to be used as
a resource to promote discussion

and collective organizing.

Are you interested in starting a local peer
support group, or just wanna better integrate

mental health awareness into your
existing organizing projects?

Consider getting together with some comrades,
organizing a screening of this film,

and discussing where to get started.

Interested in running regular screenings of
Trouble at your campus, infoshop,

community center,
or even just at home with friends?

Become a Trouble-Maker!

For 10 bucks a month, we’ll hook you up
with an advanced copy of the show,

and a screening kit featuring additional
resources and some questions you can use

to get a discussion going.

If you can’t afford to support us financially,
no worries!

You can stream and/or download all our content
for free off our website: sub.media/trouble.

If you’ve got any suggestions for show topics,
or just want to get in touch, drop us a line

at [e-mail].

A reminder that our online store is fully
stocked with fresh swag for any subMedia fans

on your holiday shopping list.

We’re a broke collective funded entirely
by donations, and all proceeds from these

sales go towards making it possible for us
to make more films like this one.

We’ll be doing our last shipment of the
year on December 16th, so be sure and get

your orders in before then at sub.media/gear.

This episode would not have been possible
without the generous support of John Hamilton.

This is the last episode of the year… and
after this we’ll be taking a month off.

But stay tuned early next year for Trouble
#18, as we take a closer look at policing,

and community resistance to state violence.

So we see, in the context of
the War on Terror,

within the last, y'know
10, 12, 15 years,

an attempt to fuse policing resources
to better respond to what are perceived

as domestic threats.

FUCK. THE. POLICE!

Now get out there…. and make some trouble!