Psychiatric harm is the emotional, psychological, or existential damage caused by psychiatric systems that misname, dismiss, overpathologize, or strip away agency. It often occurs not from malice, but from frameworks that reduce a human being to a diagnosis, treatment protocol, or compliance issue.
You came for help, and left with a label you can’t scrub off. That’s not care. That’s harm.
Forms of psychiatric harm may include:
- Being treated as a case, not a person
- Having your story overwritten by symptom checklists
- Medication without informed understanding or consent
- Forced hospitalization or compliance under threat
- Gaslighting of trauma, neurodivergence, or intuition
- Emotional erasure masked as professionalism
Important distinction:
Psychiatric harm is not the same as a bad experience. It is systemic, recurring, and often invisible to those within the field. Survivors are often told their resistance is proof of illness, not insight.
📚 Related Work
Screaming in Plain Sight is a wake-up call written from inside the damage. It speaks directly to the realities of psychiatric harm, diagnostic erasure, and the cost of being misnamed by the systems meant to help. Learn More About the Book →
🎵 Plain SIght
A soulful ballad about the frustration and pain of feeling unseen and misunderstood by those closest to you during mental health struggles. This song holds space for the quiet battles, the silent screams, and the heartbreak of emotional abandonment.