Hello, reader. How are you doing? I want to tell you that I’ve been harmed by mandated reporting. It’s supposedly helpful to make us all safer. But it’s more of a “cover your ass” so no one gets sued. And it’s a way to disempower people who are have been kicked around enough already. I don’t deserve to lose my freedom for telling the truth.
The truth is God. Truth is exactly what I need to say. Guarding my words and tiptoeing around a law, especially when I’m not feeling well, is dangerous exhaustion.
huge barrier
Yes, mandated reporting is mostly a load of shit. Professionals have to agree to call the cops on people for saying certain things in a therapy session, doctor’s appointment, emergency room? Teachers are mandated reporters too. Yuck, I hate thinking of all the people who we can’t tell the truth to. Making professionals who should be helping us heal into the cops’ agents is super creepy.
Mandated reporting puts a huge barrier between people like me and help we might need. We’re told over and over to seek help for mental health issues, but mandated reporting is one way our lives can be destroyed for seeking help. Mandated reporting leads to the imprisoning of innocent people through forced holds. It boggles my mind to think of how many times I’ve not spoken up because I didn’t want my freedom taken away. Think of how many people have been in that situation countless times, and it’s a tragedy.
The psychiatric system is broken. Taking freedom away from people deemed “a danger to themselves and others” creates a huge breakdown of trust. We need trust and to be able to tell the truth to people without having our lives destroyed. Mandated reporting makes trust impossible.
psychotic
As someone who hears voices all of my life, I am in a dangerous position when I go to the doctor and in other places where telling a mandated reporter about my everyday experiences can lead to my psychiatric imprisonment. Hearing voices means I’m technically psychotic, and some people consider psychosis a danger in and of itself. Some professionals consider it obvious that I need to be put away somewhere “safe” so psychiatrists can sedate the fuck out of me until my voices go away.
But actually I like my life, I love myself unconditionally, and my voices are not a problem. A lot of people have ok voices. Actually I would say that my voices are never the problem–when they do get difficult, they are an indicator that something in my life is awry, not the problem itself.
I mean that my voices getting unpleasant (when they’re usually fine) is like if the water is suddenly cloudy–maybe we should check what’s going on upstream. Or the voices are the canary looking woozy–maybe we should leave this coal mine. If the coal mine is not a safe place to be, please don’t blame the canary.
So many times I have been the canary hated for telling the truth. But you don’t need a better canary–you need to leave the coal mine before you can’t.
stress
Usually my voices getting difficult means my stress is too high: I need to care for the actual person I am, not the person that the world tells me I should be.
I need an amount of rest, quiet, downtime, nature, pleasure, clean water, and delicious food that is 100% reasonable. Many people need similar. There’s nothing wrong with my needs. There’s something wrong with the culture that prioritizes making money over our well-being.
Calling the cops on me is not going to reduce my stress. In fact, it’s going to make my day way worse. Being imprisoned in a hospital or psychiatric facility has never helped me. Those are bad places for people like me who need safe touch, pleasure, restful alone time, and deep respect in order to feel ok.
Hospitals and psychiatric care have never been places I’m respected at all. I’m treated as not a human, and my desire to live goes down, never up.
thank you
Thank you for considering that mandated reporting isn’t something that necessarily makes people safer. It breaks down communication, stops us from seeking help, destroys freedom, and is “one size fits all” when we vary.
Not only is it disrespectful to the people who have less power, it’s disrespectful to providers as well. If they need to betray their students, patients, and clients in order to comply with a stupid law to keep their jobs or licenses, that’s cruel.
anarchy
It reminds me of anarchy. You don’t trust me to do the right thing unless there’s a law and a threat of state violence if I break that law. But you trust me to vote? I mean that if I’m such a nincompoop lacking morals, values, and foresight that fear of arrest is what makes me behave, why do I get to choose anything at all? Why can I choose propositions and who should rule the country, school board, or anything?
Voting is lauded as taking hold of our power. But I know what power is, and that’s part of what makes me crazy. In a plutocracy oligarchy such as the United States, money is power officially. Yes, you can buy a lot of things and enable your cronies.
But real power is forming a new human inside your body and pushing it out into the world, then raising it with compassion. Real power is growing gorgeous chaotic gardens, taking off your clothes and dancing in a meadow, mutual aid, singing when you need to sing, making the art you’re on earth to make, and cooking the most delicious lunch from dumpstered produce and food bank leftovers.
Real power is community and telling the truth–real power is love. You’re welcome.
not neutral
This org Mandatory Reporting is Not Neutral is trying to help more folx comprehend the things I’m saying here too, plus racism and other painful truths. I hope they reach a lot of people.
