@GlorianaCervixia
I’ve been wondering for a while how much clinical experience she actually has. I think she got her PhD only two or three years ago?
Her statements recently about medications have really concerned me. She doesn’t listen to doctors who tell her she’s mistaken but she also doesn’t listen to women telling her that medications made huge positive changes in their lives. She seems so heavily invested in her view that all mental health issues come from trauma that she can’t listen to other people’s experiences. I find her view of medications disappointing and quite stigmatising.
I’ve worked for a long time in mental health and I have been surprised by some of the very broad claims she makes about how psychiatry, medications and diagnosis work. I unfollowed her a while ago.
I think she’s very, very good at creating a brand for herself and promoting that brand. I’m less convinced about the substance behind it.
I do think there's a tendency to pathologise trauma and trauma victims. There are conditions (PTSD/cPTSD) in which treatment with medication, anti-depressants particularly, isn't advisable. As PTSD is the textbook human response to trauma, this gives credence to some of what she says.
She's also right on the count that a time-honoured method of denying women their voices is to label them 'mad'. Once their mental health and/or competence has been questioned, they're no longer taken seriously and that's if they're listened to in the first place. That kind of sexism's been going on since time immemorial, or at least since men were in the habit of clapping a wife they no longer wanted in the bin so that they could take up with another woman.
The problem is the absolutism. She seems to hold utter conviction that ONE position is correct, that approaches to treatment are individual and not one-size-fits all, and that medication is never appropriate in any circumstances. This indicates a personal/professional bias which might be to the detriment of potential clients. A conviction that you're right, and ability to articulate that 'rightness' in a way that sounds convincing, might be persuasive and reassuring to listeners but the acceptance of a need to learn, even when in an advanced career stage, is probably more beneficial to the people in need of treatment.
About the 'horrors' that happen to her: from personal experience I can state that victims of abuse, especially when it's happened at an early age, attract more abuse. Abusers can sense it as though we're putting out radar signals only they can receive. I know this. I've been raped twice, been given a head injury by my father who slammed my head down a door, been stalked twice, been hospitalised after being knocked unconscious by another abusive man. In adulthood, for some reason I don't fully understand, I broke this pattern. I think it was a personal determination not to be a victim. But I still had plenty of men approach me in the street - still happens now to a lesser extent.
That's one reason. Another is the fact that she refuses to shut up about it. To me she's interesting for one reason above all: the abuse women get, the absolutely relentless campaign of harassment, threats, seemingly any means necessary to shut them up at all costs, when they dare to speak about female abuse at the hands of men. About that, she isn't exaggerating. I've seen some of the filth posted onto her tweets.
So, yes. With some reservations, as a victim of trauma myself a lot of this resonates albeit with a major disclaimer: these are personal, political and social observations and not clinical ones.