It’s easy to see connections between radical mental health and the Occupy movement. After all, both movements are challenging the objectification of persons and nature at large. In the radical mental health movement, we raise our voices against the mainstream mental health system in which our complex experiences are objectified into labels that fit cookie-cutter understandings of mental health. In the Occupy movement, we raise our voices against the corporate-centered culture where our lives are treated as objects whose purpose is to bring financial gain to corporations.

The injustice in the mental health system closely intertwines with the injustice that results from corporatocracy. To begin with, our mental distress is always inseparable from the socioeconomic circumstances that we are in. Further, pharmaceutical corporations exploit our insecurities as an opportunity for revenue growth. In addition to advertising drugs as an effective tool to fix a “chemical imbalance,” corporate influence corrupts the powers that be in the mental health system. Time and again we find out about financial ties between pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and members of the working groups for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) that is used to categorize and pathologize our psyches. Moreover, the government does little to regulate corporate greed, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relies on research conducted by the pharmaceutical corporations when approving new drugs. These corporations are driven to maximize shareholder value, rather than follow the Hippocratic Oath to “do no harm.”

When corporations that prioritize productivity over community are culturally and politically sanctified, challenging the status quo seems all the more difficult. However, through social protest—whether with Occupy or radical mental health—we take a step against the accepted paradigm to reclaim our humanity and community. Given that we are putting our real selves on the line, we may become stressed. We may be hurt. We may be traumatized. That is why it is important to learn how to give and take care of ourselves, through mutual support and community. It’s fundamentally important to try to match our process in doing this work with the product that we are collectively seeking.