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Helping mentally ill people recover is often one of the objectives of treatment. Yet it is not the only objective. 

The agendas of mental health treatment that I've seen include to keep psych consumers manageable, to prevent us from becoming nuisances to the greater society, and to identify and mitigate risk or threat posed by patients. The funding that mental health agencies receive is based on preventing incidents, and on subduing those mentally ill people with difficult personalities. 

Social architects' objectives are to keep patients as passive as possible, as pacified as possible, as invisible as possible, and to prevent us from making our voices heard. Many people in mainstream society can't deal with we unruly mentally ill people. They are afraid of us, hate us, think we are scum, and would like to see us vanish or be locked away. 

People with mental illness get a bad rap for a number of reasons. We may have violated the law when acutely ill. We may not have good clothes and may not keep ourselves as clean and well-groomed as most. We may be addicted to smoking--and some have a dual diagnosis of drug use. 

Some of us have been nuisances to those who want nothing to do with us. And the list goes on. This is just reality, and it doesn't say anything to detract from the inherent worth of every human being, including mentally ill people. 

This is the problem: people are just too damn intolerant. Most mentally ill people are good people despite all this. We want the same things for ourselves as do the non-afflicted. But for most of us, the finer things in life are light years out of reach. The treatment system teaches us to have low expectations of ourselves. Additionally, many professionals will use false flattery on us, as but one of many handy tricks to pacify us. 

We are responsible for our actions, and we reap consequences for how we behave as do everyone. If mentally ill, we have the option of not buying the line given to us by the treatment system that we are incapable. We have the option of preventing relapses for years and even decades if proactive enough in treatment. We can discard the devalue messages handed to us while we comply with taking the pills. 

The system does what it is good at doing, but it will not lead us to a better life. If we nag at them enough, and if we demonstrate commitment to remaining in treatment, we can force or at least cajole the system to do more for us. There are many good counselors and doctors who work in the systems, just as there are a few bad ones who are in the wrong business. If we show that we want more for ourselves and are prepared to work for it, many who work in the system will respond well to that. 

The mental health treatment system is not evil. Yet their repertoire of methods is geared toward people who lack insight and will. Not all of us lack the potential to become better and do better. 

Jack Bragen is author of "Revising Behaviors That Don't Work," and "Jack Bragen's 2021 Short Fiction Collection," and lives in Martinez.