As someone with lived and living experience, I’ve spent years navigating the mental health system—both as a consumer and a professional. While I entered this work hoping to be part of a solution, the reality of what I witnessed behind closed doors left me disillusioned and heartbroken. The moral injury I experienced while working in treatment settings has shaped not only how I see the system, but how I choose to engage with it moving forward.
One of the most devastating aspects was witnessing how individuals seeking help were often discussed in treatment team meetings. The very therapists whom clients trusted to guide their healing were the same people making fun of them, using stigmatizing terms, and reducing them to their diagnoses, symptoms, or behaviors. In some meetings, clients were treated as little more than their insurance policies—valuable only as long as they were covered. Watching these dehumanizing conversations unfold, seeing people treated as case studies or punchlines rather than human beings in need of care, shattered something in me. This was not the support system I had hoped to be a part of.
Each time I tried to advocate for change, I was met with questions about whether I was 'doing okay,' with my recovery status being subtly (or not so subtly) used against me. The issues I raised about systemic failures were never truly addressed; instead, I was advised to 'practice self-care' or 'take a mental health day.' This response felt dismissive and condescending, reinforcing the idea that the problem lay with me—not the system.
We need to have real, honest conversations about the harm that occurs in these spaces. Too often, those of us with lived experience are tokenized—invited to the table but tone-policed when we speak up about what’s wrong. We are asked to share our stories but are expected to do so in ways that make others comfortable. When we dare to challenge the status quo, our voices are dismissed or pathologized. It’s exhausting.
Our experiences should be valued, not weaponized against us. The dehumanization we witness, and the moral injury we carry from it, needs to be acknowledged. We can’t keep sweeping these truths under the rug.
For those of us working in the field with lived and living experience, we need spaces where we can share openly, without fear of being patronized or silenced.
We need systems that support not only the people seeking care but the peer support workers who bring their whole selves into this work. I’ve stepped away from working directly in treatment, but my hope is that by raising these issues, we can move toward creating spaces that genuinely value our experiences, our insights, and our humanity.
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