I begin with the memorials of those who died in psychiatry: M’hamed El Yagoubi writes about his wife and companion Nathalie Dale (in France). Dorrit Cato Christensen writes about her daughter Luise (in Denmark), and Olga Runciman dramatizes her anger and outrage over another death in Danish psychiatry. María Teresa Fernández speaks in honor of her brother (in Mexico), and also reflects from a moral perspective and as a person with a disability who works on the CRPD.
Survivors have a unique vantage point on degradations such as solitary confinement, restraints, injections, forced nakedness, brutality, authoritarianism, the stultifying effects of psychiatric drugs, the sheer destruction of electroshock, and sadistic psychological manipulations. How can we heal from abuse that society condones and that the law allows with impunity? For women forced psychiatry is sexualized and gendered, and should be recognized as both disability-based and gender-based violence. These writings stand as evidence of severe harm and as critique of laws and practices from the bottom up.