Pathologizing Trauma 

Trigger Warning: Description of sexual assaults.

Andrea takes us on a journey through what her childhood, in the 60s and 70s, was like coping with sexual assaults from several males around her from a very young age both in and outside her family.  Like other women growing up in this era, she was assaulted, blamed for it, and then punished for making men do this to her.  Andrea fought back.  Sexual assaults happened and her family along with the social constructs and institutions, of that time, enabled abusers and covered up their crimes while victims who were disclosing, like Andrea, were made into the problem.   
Her drive to survive made her doggedly save her money so she could escape her family.  After graduation, she moved away to college.  But physical ailments, again rooted in the sexual abuse she experienced, made her so ill the College sent her home: back to the abusive environment she had worked so hard to break free.   

She always knew that her difficulties were rooted in those assaults but instead of recognizing this truth the mental health industry, from whom she sought help for being unable to eat and being underweight, pathologized what were her normal reactions to trauma.  Her disclosures of sexual abuse were dismissed as schizophrenic delusions. It was a diagnosis that gave everyone carte blanche to harm her with impunity.  Ultimately, Andrea was put on 58 different forms of psychiatric medications including large doses of anti-psychotic meds and given ECT.   Several times, doctors were shocked by the large doses she had been prescribed but didn't change it.  

She received no assistance, no therapy.  She wasn’t regularly seen by a psychiatrist or therapist.  No one talked to her.  No one mentioned the abuse she had endured. 

Andrea broke free.  This time from the mental health industry.  On her own, over ten years, she weaned herself off of all the psych meds she had been prescribed.  She has been med-free now for a year and is focusing her time on working to ensure other people don't go through what she did.  

Music by Shari Ulrich