Stacey ˗ ღ ˎˊ˗’s Reviews > Empire of Madness: Reimagining Western Mental Health Care for Everyone > Status Update

We are still in the habit of explaining to people in power why we must mitigate their plundering and hoarding.

“Human bones do not simply disappear. Meaning that even if the wrong was committed many generations ago, the current generation is still liable for the harm caused and must appease the spirits by seeking restitution.”

“The travesty is that when it comes to mental health, care doesn’t have to be expensive or hard to get. It can be affordable, unassuming, soothing. It can be done by people who look like you and who share your experience. With enough humility, it can even be done on a wooden bench under the shade of a tree.”

“We have to be willing to identify the real problems and confront them; we have to reorder some of our old and traditional priorities; we have to create new social institutions appropriate to the problem; and finally, we need a sense of passionate commitment to bring about the changes that are so urgently needed.”

“We are often made to believe through repetitive official and sub-cultural messaging that certain kinds of people are dangerous,” the writer Sarah Schulman explains, “that certain kinds of social interactions are threatening, even though the only thing they might actually threaten is an established power structure.”

“Over more than a decade in the field, I’ve realized that most mental distress I encounter isn’t spontaneous; it’s a rational reaction to colonialism and capitalism. My patients are not suffering from depression; they’re suffering from oppression.”

This guy GETS. IT. He’s saying everything I’ve been telling people for years about the root causes of mental illness! I am PSYCHED for this book to publish.