[CW Suicide and mental health] Lack of anarchist psychological help

Submitted by SnowCode in Anarchism

It comes as no surprise in this world that many people cannot afford to have proper care when dealing with depression, suicide, etc.

A while back, someone I knew said they wanted to commit suicide and had serious plan into doing so. I wasn't feeling too well (and still feel lonely) but wasn't suicidal. I am autistic and have social anxiety. So internet is obviously the best place for looking for help.

Or so I thought. Many help resources are expensive, many support groups don't accept people under the age of 18 because they're "afraid of facing legal actions" and they refuse to give any helpful tips for me to help my friends. They just give you a hotline number and says "give this to your friend. But leave the server once you're done because you're not supposed to be here given you're underage"

This make me very angry because this suicide hotline is worthless. I don't know my friend IRL, I knew they would very likely call the cops to "check on him" if he called and he didn't want to call either.

There is a complete lack of good anarchist support groups and practical ways to help people in difficulty.

I think it would be awesome to have anarchist mental health communities and practical guides for self-help and help of others in need on the internet. If anyone knows such resources or would be willing to help me building those, I am very interested.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

I agree with your sentiment and have stated similar before. Tho for a more interesting discussion I'll talk about what I disagree with.

I think I'm in a pretty good situation to talk about this issue as I have volunteered at a suicide help line and have gone to therapy briefly and am currently seeing a psychiatrist for my semi devestating "mental illness".

For suicide lines they are mostly useless imo. And there is real value but I don't think they would be done much different anarchistically. Due to laws in the US it's really hard for anarchists to do. Plus they are required by law to call the cops in setting situations if they could even practice legally after getting through the incredibly time consuming red tape. Alternatively it could be practiced illegally with everyone who does it putting their freedom in the line. But I don't see enough value in it for either of these options to be valuable. A far more effective solution is to use the suicide lines but with disclaimers about how to avoid the cops being called on you. It's pretty damn easy tbh bc the rules are publicly available. If they follow the disclaimer they will receive crisis services of similar quality to what anarchists would do anyway with the benefit of shit ton of nonprofit funding that anarchists don't have.

Now don't get me wrong so many people have told me how I've helped them but I think the value is way over blown. Like 90% of me being helpful is just linking to publicly available mental health resources on the internet and giving ranting their problems to someone at late hours of the night who won't judge. Suicide lines aren't for helping depression they are mostly useful in cases of getting people to pull their head out of the noose and thinking it over for a couple days.

So I could work on doing a anarchist suicide line but it's just not useful imo. Tho with some minor adjustments raddle would be a pretty decent in-between. People already give suicidal people a place to rant in non judgmental context. If some people worked together (I would be down to work on this with u or anyone else tbh) to create a really good wiki or post with a bunch of links to all the stuff suicidal text line resources and Crisis strats to recommend to people raddlers could pull out a couple helpful ones to recommend or the person in crisis could just pursue the sections they need help with and pick ones they like. And they raddle would be competitive with most suicide lines.

Regarding anxiety and depression the by far most common are actually quite easy to solve in comparison to other issues such as PTSD, schizophrenia, manic episodes ect. From a academic perspective and my personal experience. Now I'll divide my critique into the two sections mental health is divided in. Psychiatry and therapy. Both are separate for good reason and I see no reason why anarchist services mental health wouldn't separate into this binary either.

I can't speak to anxiety but for depression the most effective methods to my knowledge are psychosis inducing drugs like lsd or psycobin mushrooms and possibly the disassociate ketamine tho I haven't read much research so I can't speak to it's effectiveness tho it would be wrong for me to not mention it. And there is also SSRIs which are pretty shit from my understanding. Plus my psychiatrist told me they work worse than literal talk therapy or just getting a job u like so I have some ethos backing me up here. So I guess my confusion is how is this not already not provided by anti authoritarians? SSRIs ketamine and psycobin mushrooms are cheap and easy to purchase. They are pretty fucking safe except for SSRIs so you can just try ket or psycobin and read a guide to use them to help depression. Like what are anarchists to do? Tell depressed people they are depressed when they tell anarchist they are depressed? Bc raddle already spends a lot of time publicly showing evidence on effective treatments for depression and how to get them. Like if your depressed it's just the effort of spending a evening if research and buying the stuff. If people need more handholding (if your depressed you might) I'm sure a post on raddle would result in people helping u out.

I'll come back later to post my section in therapy. I'm a bit sick of writing atm and I want to save my writing so it's not lost.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Therapy I think can be very useful. I also think anarchist therapy is not a thing for the very reason I the greediest raddlers critique anarchists. Most people don't want therapy from people who don't have licenses. Most people also don't want to pay therapists to get licenses. So an anarchist therapy program could have trained unlicensed therapists who just self study and practice illegally but be at massive risk to freedom, vastly reduced clients but save lots of money. Or they could become licensed therapists, not risk freedom but have to charge money and be basically every other anarchist legal therapist.

So an anarchist therapy program is already crippled by the start due to anarchists refusal to figure out how to keep a movement well funded by making fuck tons of money and shitty anarchists love of lib shit policies like licenses.

So to do anarchist therapy one would first have to create so much fucking mutual aid that all basic needs are filled for free and have 100$ of thousands of dollars to blow to train anarchists to get therapist licenses. With in the US it costing around a 100k to become a therapist. This is less expensive in other countries but the point still remains.

Anarchists r just to weak to pull this shit off at the moment. Tho a free therapy program and funding anarchists therapists to practice legally for free would be so fucking great. If that's your life goal, lots of ingenuity, luck and the rest of your life you might be able to pull it off but prob not.

So the question is how do anarchists provide for the need of therapy without the cons that make it almost impossible? (Part 3 coming later I need to formulate my ideas more. )

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SnowCode OP wrote (edited )

Interesting read thanks. Some notes:

  1. I think having an "unofficial" or "illegal" therapy is still much better than having no therapy at all. (for all the people who cannot afford it)
  2. It would be awesome to have a practical guide for friend and family of depressed, anxious or suicidal people. To know how we can really support them further than saying "call XYZ number"
  3. What about support groups? What are their limits?

Also, a suicidal anarchist friend of mine said they didn't wanted therapy anymore because he "don't want to cope with capitalism". What do you think about that?

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lettuceLeafer wrote

I think having an "unofficial" or "illegal" therapy is still much better than having no therapy at all. (for all the people who cannot afford it)

I would agree. Tho I won't do much further comment on my opinions / how to do this. My OPSEC for raddle is pretty lax for good reasons. So if I continued the discussion I would could be caused of publicly commiting acts of criminal conspiracy in the states.

It would be awesome to have a practical guide for friend and family of depressed, anxious or suicidal people. To know how we can really support them further than saying "call XYZ number

Maybe I could make a poster and memes about that topic. Than try to spread it around and try to get it passed around between normies and depression groups.

What about support groups? What are their limits

I don't know anything about support groups academically or personally. From my knowledge they are just people who suffer from an issue talking to people. Take AA for instance if you take out the 12 step model and just have alcoholics meetup up and supporting each other in a weekly group I'm not sure what additions anarchist support groups would make. Tho I'm extremely ignorant to this topic so don listen to me lol.

Also, a suicidal anarchist friend of mine said they didn't wanted therapy anymore because he "don't want to cope with capitalism". What do you think about that?

I would say that's the dorky leftist bullshit self crippling thinking that I hate. Therapists are actually pretty radical in their teachings nowadays. Like most therapists are literally taught about the dramatic problems capitalism does to people's mental health. Sure they charge a lot of money but that's due to the necessity of licenses and college to practice legally. Most therapists would practice for free if they would have their needs payed for.

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SnowCode OP wrote

Maybe I could make a poster and memes about that topic. Than try to spread it around and try to get it passed around between normies and depression groups.

Thanks that would be nice. I think making more in depth guide(s) about it would be a good idea as well. But I think this should be written by psychologists.

support groups

What I meant with that is this: is it possible to make "therapy" work in mutual aid with other people with similar/other problems. This would be especially good online imo, because of the benefits of privacy and anonymity.

I would say that's the dorky leftist bullshit self crippling thinking that I hate

Sorry I didn't give context for this one, but he didn't mean that therapists were pro-capitalist or anything like that. We was saying that, in his opinion, therapy only had temporary effects on him, but the real problems (like lack of money, authority) stuck anyway so nothing changed.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Thanks that would be nice. I think making more in depth guide(s) about it would be a good idea as well. But I think this should be written by psychologists.

why does a guide to avoid having the police called on you when calling into a suicide line need to be written by psychologists. I see no benefit.

is it possible to make "therapy" work in mutual aid with other people with similar/other problems. This would be especially good online imo, because of the benefits of privacy and anonymity.

I think we already kinda talked about this but support groups are a type of therapy but nothing more than a partial replacement for therapy.

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SnowCode OP wrote

What I meant by guide is not only for people struggling with suicidal thoughts, but also about how to support them and go beyond the "just send this number". Also about what to do if the person refuses to call the number or get a therapist.

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cyberrose wrote

About the licensing and stuff:

Why not forming therapy groups? There are already "Programs" which can be adopted; e.g. FORT, MRT, RT (Radical Therapy). They live from untrained persons and also live from sharing the idea and training new people.

There are also other, quite similar, approaches but I can't give any english name for them and they are also often more or less "marxist" oriented. E.g. critical psychology but can't name a specific method there. Also don't know if the readings in english are good.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

interesting. I don't know much about therapist licenses. I just kinda figured it was like medicine. thanks I'll look at this later bc I bet i can learn quite a bit from this.

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SnowCode OP wrote

That's interesting. If you have more information about the "programs" I am interested.

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cyberrose wrote (edited )

In german there is https://www.radikale-therapie.de/ I tried to look up some english page but the first few hits where quite dissapointing. So if you are interested you have to do your own research; sorry.

Basically its a form of group therapy based on:

  • Radical Psychiatry
  • Transaktionsanalyse
  • Co-Counseling

These forms of therapy are performed in a long-time group (1 year min) and do not have a leader or professional person guiding the group. The group starts with 2 weekends of training on which people from other groups come and teach the fundamentals of this therapy. After the first weekend the group is ready to perform its own weekly meetings. The meetings are organized in a way that every time 2 people prepare the meeting and perform the methods. This rotates and every week different people will be in the position to prepare the next meeting. This leads to the point that everyone is capable of sharing the knowledge and helping other groups.

The methods they use are based on the three mentioned abvoe but can be extended in various ways. Everyone can bring in other methods and try out if it fits to the group. E.g. body therapy is also very common.

This is basically RT. FORT is quite similar but women* only and MRT also but for men*. Also the content from every group can be very different.

In critical psychology there is something "similar" called "kollektive selbstverständigung" (https://selbstverstaendigung.de/was-ist-ksv/). With this they build groups to find out why people (they) behave in the way they do by reflecting their socio-economical standpoint and how society influences them. I can't explain it good in english since the wording is quite complex. The concept is based on critical psychology (Holzkamp) which is kinda an anti-authoritarian marxist psychology which was formed around 68.

Edit: I really like critical psychology; not for their real life methods (they often are just not there, lol) but for their view on life and how your psych is formed and how to act. Personal they gave me, just by reading the stuff, so much more ease in life but also conserved the anger on society; and the second point is often missing in classical psychology (I have the feeling it's that case at least).

Hope this is enough for now?

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SnowCode OP wrote

Thanks a lot, I'll look at that!

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cyberrose wrote

No problem. Thank you for bringing up the initial question ^^ Think this is a central problem these days and (also in radical circles) often overlooked. So again - thanks.

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SnowCode OP wrote

Thanks, I really appreciate your comment <3

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Therapy is incredibly useful at having a medical professionals objective view and analysis to get to the root of issues. Analysis to notice how social problems ect are effected by trauma and changing your thinking n mindset. Why someone paid for me to go to therapy as a gift (extremely generous) my eye have been open to .any things to work on that I didn't notice as harmful to myself and others. It was nice. That being said many therapists r bad and outright harmful.

What I'm going to say doesn't apply to everything. But regarding depression and anxiety I will be so bold to say that anarchists are already doing a better job in treating it. So much of these conditions comes from systemic issues and societal values. Anarchists are exactly wrong about this either both my therapist agrees with me somewhat and my psychiatrist deadass told me that having a job u like is extremely important in solving depressive episodes. Which in my experience is very true.

Browsing 2me4meirl this conclusion is often fine to my many apolitical people who are depressed and go to therapy. It's an experience of my depression and anxiety are so fucking hightened by being poor, having no time to working and hating their job. Therapists can do nothing but exacerbate this pain with cost. I don't blame therapist for this btw. It s a systemic problem to not blame individuals for.

Anarchist politics both provide systemic methods which are the cure to the systemic ailments which cause an overabundance of depression and anxiety and provide mental rethinking which eliminates many if the status quo negative thinking patterns which cause anxiety and depression.

Anarchism provides empowerment, autonomy, agency, basic needs for free, ways to live without work, supportive nontoxic community, purpose, ability to follow you goals and many other things. Due to these reasons anarchism + therapy + possible drugs in some cases is the most effective treatment for depression.

Regarding depression my psychiatrist and therapist weren't able to give me much help due to anarchism teaching me what they were already going to say plus my use of crisis resources.

Now many anarchists highten their depression and anxiety by knowing about societal issues. And I would argue this isn't a fault of anarchism but due to people being bad at anarchism.

So knowing this I think the most effective tactic is not creating radical therapy programs. It is doing anarchist systemic projects way better than currently. A world where all basic needs are filled would be a far better allocation if resources imo.

Possibly in such a world therapists would be able to donate some of their services for free since they don't need to pay rent. With people's expenses very low that can mean a lot of donations to fund people's therapy.

I don't want to therapy craft to much imo. I guess what I'm saying is that a allocation of resources is to help teach people and promote anarchist self love, build string communities and keep working to provide everyone's basic needs. Not good enough imo but the mast effective tactic I'm thinking of.

Part 3 is out /u/SnowCode

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SnowCode OP wrote

So knowing this I think the most effective tactic is not creating radical therapy programs. It is doing anarchist systemic projects way better than currently. A world where all basic needs are filled would be a far better allocation if resources imo.

I really agree with this. But this isn't always very easy. Especially for people like me, autistic and with social anxiety: I am really scared of getting in an affinity group, I have no idea on how that works and I don't have any friends interested in anarchism or anything. (but this is only from a personal perspective)

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lettuceLeafer wrote

oh of course. I don't usually do the disclaimer of doing whats in your ability and not beating yourself up about not being an effective anarchist bc its a common talking point on raddle. Anarchists are pretty clear about how important it is to take into consideration peoples ability, and situation in life so not to accept or shame people for not doing enough or any at all anarchist projects. Tho, I think I should say it a bit more bc sometimes the message isn't assumed by those reading it.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Personally the idea of group therapy sounds like a fuck horrible experience. I'm sure group therapy is great and helps many people. Just maybe one hegomonic pigeonholed solution is counter to what goals we seek.

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SnowCode OP wrote

Maybe the idea of an anonymous group therapy (online or so) be better?

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lettuceLeafer wrote

No I just don't find telling people personal info for not real reason to be enjoyable.

I do like someone gently doing a critical analysis tho. Not something I would want just any random to do.

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SnowCode OP wrote

Oh, OK. But if you're anonymous, does it really matters? Also, are people with similar problems as you ''random'' ?

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Yes doing boring and annoying activities with people you know is even more boring and annoying with anonymous strangers.

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SnowCode OP wrote

What do you mean by boring and activites? I don't get it.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

I find telling people about my mental struggles to be a boring activity even with people I like with similar problems. So when you say an anonymous support group I find the entire idea as boring as literally twiddling my thumbs. I would literally rather do nothing bc I actually find meditation interesting.

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SnowCode OP wrote

I understand but I think it's nice to feel validaded or have a place to vent, etc. Also meditation can go with it, I've seen quite a few meditation groups online.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

I don't know why we are having this discussion. I agree that it can be helpful for some people but I personally hate the concept. I don't get why you are trying to pidgenhole me into coping in a way I don't like.

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SnowCode OP wrote

How sorry if you felt it that way, that wasn't my intention. I just wanted to understand.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Ah thats fine we cool.

If it makes it easier to understand I'm fairly anti social. Like I can go months not hanging out with friends or not having friends and not feel lonely. I'm just someone where the whole thing of talking about my problems doesn't do much for me. Even if I open up about problems to someone I care about who is receptive most feel relieved while it just feels grating to me emotionally.

So since I'm different than most in that way the whole idea of meeting up with people with a similar problem to open up about my struggle just sounds like a grating experience. Tho I can sympathize with how that could be a very great experience for others.

Tho I do like reading how other people cope if I'm struggling with a particular issue.

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SnowCode OP wrote

Thanks. I am asocial (or anti social, I have to admit I don't know the difference), I really don't like groups and being with most people. I can only stay with a very restricted number of people.

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moonlune wrote (edited )

If some people worked together (I would be down to work on this with u or anyone else tbh) to create a really good wiki or post with a bunch of links to all the stuff suicidal text line resources

that's a really good idea! We could even add it to our soon to be FAQ

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Sure I agree with everything u said. Maybe I'm just jaded as fuck but crisis lines can be kinda hit or miss. For a lot of good reasons you talk to the person kinda like how Yoda would? Responding to questions with a question bc the lines don't do advice and mostly just being an echo of people's thoughts rather than an actual person to talk to. Just to be clear I think this is good but it does make the services less effective in a way.

Also many suicide lines are more dual purpose now. Dealing with an ambiguous crisises like so enraged u want to kill someone, wanting to self harm, so worked up u can't sleep, panic attack ect.

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[deleted] wrote

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lettuceLeafer wrote

I guess I should clarify that I worked at a crisis line. It was built from the ground up for that purpose. Tho the reality is you just do the same thing suicide lines do.

The approach isn't about people Killin themself specifically. It's about flaming them down when their thinking is impaired due to emotional distress. This method applies to a lot more than just people wanting to kill themself.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

that shit allways pissed me off so much. Confession, one time I wasn't thinking and didn't make sure to swerve the conversation so the person (it was late I was kinda on autopiliot a bit) didn't get the cops sent to their house. Those liberal fucks I worked with made me complicit in sending the cops to someones house and possibly having the cops kill them. I havn't really been able to get back into it bc I'm just so pissed off I could make such a horribly bad mistake.

I'm glad you make sure to keep banging the drum about how fucked up mental health stuff is. I don't think I do it enough tbh. I appreciate it, bc your analysis is spot on.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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lettuceLeafer wrote

ayy, another person who became pretty anti authoritarian in high school. The concept of people who become anarchists early in life is interesting to me.

You probably helped a lot more people by trying to swerve it, that's actually really cool. I understand how that would feel really bad though...

prob, thanks. Tho I think I've mostly ran out of patience on joining liberal projects. I'm on a my way or the highway kick.

Again sorry for the wall of text skiwoxndnwo

no need to apologize I found it interesting. I'm glad I didn't clear the notification before you edit. Thanks for sharing your messed up and sad story.

Knowing your age I assume you are still living with ur parents. Hopefully its not too fucked up of a situation for u. I never really got on great with my parents and living with them sucked a ton. Hell I'm back at their house as I have to keep waiting on being able to buy property so I know your pain. Hopefully living with them isn't too painful. Though on the brighter side I have gotten to what I thought was a relationship too bad to recover with my dad but now we are back to a normal shit relationship. so there is some hope . :(

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SnowCode OP wrote (edited )

u/lettuceLeafer u/Ashy u/cyberrose u/moonlune u/bloodrose u/friendly_raddler

Sorry for the ping y'all. I just thought It would be interesting to create a wiki page on this topic but I don't know how to call it. Can you give me ideas for the name and links about the topic in comments? (I'll add those that have been mentioned in this thread)

Edit: The page is available at w/mental-health

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lettuceLeafer wrote

Oh u need to be whitelisted first. Just ask to be whitelisted on f/meta

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SnowCode OP wrote

I can already create wiki pages and edit them afaik

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