Archiving a Twitter thread below:
I haven’t had spoons to properly rant abt this yet but one absurd way in which hospitals promote sanism in the guise of protecting mentally ill patients is by hiding us away
Mini 🧵
My main hospital hides all my psych appts from other offices causing scheduling conflicts
They also apparently hide them from the patient experience office which is trying to make sure all my telehealth appts are captioned so there’s another hurdle to accessibility
Every psych ward I’ve been in used a euphemism for itself
Like they wouldn’t call it the psych floor. It would be like Bldg X Floor Y or something when the neurology floor is just the neurology floor
All this is ostensibly done for patient privacy & I suspect idea is to save patients from discrimination but in reality it reinforces the idea of mental illness as something shameful that should be hidden. They could instead teach staff to not discriminate against psych pts 🤷🏽♀️
Ofc I’m sure there are some laws at play here too. Medical records are silo’d too like this. So for example other specialists even in same hospital system can’t see my psychiatrist’s notes clearly saying i don’t have conversion disorder. How is this helpful to me?
There are other absurdities too. For example open notes initiatives mean I have immediate access to medical records from every specialty but psych. If I request psych records my psychiatrist has to approve request to supposedly protect me in case reading the notes would “harm” me
Anyway the way the medical system tramples on autonomy & rights of mentally ill ppl in the name of protecting us is insidious & pervasive.& ofc no one tells you these things until you run into them. Informed consent has to incl these & infantalization of psych pts has to stop.
She Smacks Her Forehead 