When I first heard about the Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, I found myself asking, how much is this organization’s focus the result of compassionate people not wanting to see their loved one controlled or physically restrained? It is a worthy motivation, to be sure, but upon first reflection as I prepared to write for AASR, I concluded that I had felt safer when restrained and experienced self-containment as a result of my 2015 involuntary hospitalization (referred to as a 5150 in the state of California). It was so reassuring to have someone hold me down and treat me that I returned to the hospital again several months later before things could get so bad—I went voluntarily the second time. I began to wonder why.
When I push deeper, however, as to why I would have had this positive association with restraint and institutional abuse, I realize it’s because I was abused as a child. I’m reminded of my favorite Franz Kafka quotation from The Trial: “‘Like a dog!’ he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him.” This is the exclamation of a person who has been restrained, either mentally or physically–perhaps both. There is something intrinsically shameful and eerie about the use of restraint. Maybe this is why, to this day, I still sometimes feel like a child: at 29, I was stripped and strapped to a table by three men and involuntarily hospitalized, held for two weeks without the ability to leave.
As a child, I was also placed in seclusion and restraint within my own home.
I have realized my relief upon being involuntarily hospitalized was from the perspective of a person who had never needed to be restrained but who was raised being restrained. Until March 2015, my schizoaffective disorder had not yet progressed to a condition for which I would be hospitalized. But I always felt abnormal and aberrant, scrutinized by mental health professionals and caretakers who saw me through a pathologizing lens before any pathology was manifest. Sometimes, I wonder if this culture of suspicion didn’t contribute to my becoming suspect enough to be hospitalized.
This is a short article, so I will restrict myself to two examples. When I was a child, I had issues with transitions and making headway in classes because of my inflexibility, though I never was out of the classroom and was able to assimilate into the group. With unhealthy teachers, I became unhealthy, as was the case in 1st grade, when I hid beanbags, and my teacher saw me do it and treated me as pathological even though my grandmother was dying. In second grade, I stole a fellow student’s ring and was held accountable by a loving teacher who did not make me feel ashamed. It was the last thing I stole.
The lesson I take from this is that the attitude with which we discipline children really matters, as does the way we regard them in the first place.
It’s a lesson that I took into my teaching career–never resent or judge a child for their behavior. Not only do we not know where they are coming from, but we also don’t know what our judgment will do for their long-term outcomes. I have seen mental health professionals refer to children as abnormal versus normal. What does this mean for their outcomes if this is how the children are being regarded? And yet, this is the norm.
