Spades Up Advocacy: An Unflinching Approach to Mental Health Rights

​Spades Up Advocacy is a different kind of animal in the mental health landscape, representing a radical commitment to truth, transparency, and human rights. In a culture saturated with misinformation, stigma, and a systemic bias toward coercion, we exist to challenge the status quo and spread the truth about effective, ethical care. We confront the myths of mental health—rejecting the notions that restrictiveness equals safety or that clinical authority should ever supersede individual liberty.

​The Reality of Coercive Psychiatry

​Coercive psychiatry is the practice of imposing “treatment” through force, threat, or legal mandate. This includes involuntary commitment, forced medication, and the use of physical or chemical restraints. By stripping away bodily autonomy and informed consent, coercion transforms a healthcare encounter into a human rights violation, often leaving deep-seated trauma in its wake and prioritizing institutional control over personal healing.

​Spreading the Truth

​We fight to change the landscape by:

• ​Challenging the Narrative: We push back against misleading narratives that criminalize distress and misrepresent people with mental health challenges as inherently dangerous or incapable of self-determination.

 

• ​Exposing Systemic Failures: We objectively dissect the financial, ethical, and clinical failures of the current crisis-driven system, highlighting the unsustainable cost of involuntary institutionalization compared to community-based supports.

 

• ​Prioritizing Lived Experience: We center the voices of individuals who have navigated these systems, providing a necessary and powerful counter-narrative to purely clinical perspectives.

​Our Commitment

​Our work is fundamentally pro-mental health rights. We empower those at an extreme disadvantage by emphasizing the paramount importance of autonomy, self-determination, and informed consent.

​Please check out the articles located below and in the navigation menu.

​Join the movement for liberty and dignity in mental health.

Systemic Critiques

Beyond the Stigma: Debunking the Myth of “Mentally Ill” Dangerousness This article dismantles the harmful myth that mental illness equates to dangerousness, highlighting that individuals with mental health challenges are statistically far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. It argues that “dangerousness” is a legal label rather than a predictable clinical diagnosis, emphasizing that healing depends on environmental support rather than fear-based labels. Ultimately, the piece calls for replacing systemic stigma with compassionate, community-based care to foster true stability and safety.

The Political Patient: Aligning Public Sentiment with Ethical Care This article explores the tension between evidence-based clinical practices—specifically harm reduction—and the public policy and sentiment that fund them. It argues for bridging the gap between medical ethics and community concerns through better education, integrated care models, and a focus on long-term stability over short-term containment.

The Invisible Cage: Deconstructing Psychiatric Oppression and the Call for Transformation This article examines how the mental health system can function as a tool for social control, exploring the ways diagnostic labeling and institutional coercion marginalize individuals. It critiques the “architecture of marginalization” that fosters isolation and shame, ultimately calling for a systemic shift toward a trauma-informed, collaborative model of care that prioritizes personal autonomy and social equity over rigid clinical conformity.

The Architecture of Shame: Dismantling the Stigma Fueling Our Public Health Crisis. This article explores how societal stigma and “weaponized shame” create structural barriers to mental health and substance use recovery, transforming health challenges into a public health crisis. It critiques the reductive view of these issues as individual moral failures and instead advocates for a paradigm shift toward trauma-informed care and systemic reform.

Rights And Ethics

“Coercion Is Not Care”: The Movement to End Force in Mental Health This article examines the global movement to eliminate forced interventions in mental health, such as involuntary hospitalization and restrained treatment. It argues that “coercion is not care,” highlighting how such practices violate human rights and cause lasting trauma that deters people from seeking help.

Institutional Trauma and Long-Term Confinement: A Crisis of Care and Ethics This article examines how long-term psychiatric confinement can cause institutional trauma, creating a “circular logic” where a patient’s natural distress is pathologized to justify further detention. By analyzing the erosion of autonomy and the harm caused by coercive treatment, the piece argues that these restrictive environments often trap individuals in a cycle of “iatrogenic” injury. Ultimately, it calls for a shift toward trauma-informed, community-based care that prioritizes human dignity over systemic control.

The Paradox of Control: Psychological Coercion in Institutional Mental Health Settings This article analyzes the “paradox of control” within institutional mental health settings, where rigid behavioral structures and privilege systems often prioritize administrative optics over authentic healing. It critiques the “economy of compliance” that forces patients to perform wellness to regain basic rights, arguing that such environments stifle personal growth and erode therapeutic trust.

Beyond the Bars: Making the Case for Least Restrictive Care in Mental Health This article advocates for a shift from institutionalization to least restrictive care, arguing that long-term confinement causes iatrogenic harm and strips individuals of their autonomy. By prioritizing the Recovery Model and community-based alternatives like peer support and Assertive Community Treatment, the piece contends that mental health systems can achieve better clinical outcomes while upholding the fundamental dignity and freedom of the individual.

The Lived Experience

The Unheard Experts: Tapping the Unseen Potential in Mental Health Care This article highlights the “unheard experts” of the mental health system—front-line workers and individuals with lived experience—whose practical wisdom is often sidelined by top-down bureaucracy and administrative burdens. It critiques a system that prioritizes billing metrics and risk management over human connection, often punishing staff who speak out against ineffective or dehumanizing policies.

The Unbreakable Spirit: How Profound Pain Forges Purpose This article explores the transformative power of suffering, arguing that profound pain can be harnessed as a catalyst for personal growth and societal change. Drawing on the philosophical idea that a defined “why” allows one to endure any “how,” the piece examines how adversity strips away the inauthentic to reveal a deep-seated purpose and an “unbreakable spirit.”

Alternative Paradigms

Autism: Reframing the Narrative from Disorder to Diversity This article challenges the medical model of autism as a “disorder,” reframing it as a vital form of neurodiversity. It traces the history of the diagnosis, debunks common myths regarding empathy and vaccines, and highlights how autistic traits—such as hyperfocus and pattern recognition—have been historically invaluable.

Meeting People Where They Are: The Lifesaving Logic of Harm Reduction This article advocates for harm reduction as a pragmatic, life-saving alternative to abstinence-only models of substance use care. It explores evidence-based strategies—such as naloxone distribution, syringe service programs, and fentanyl test strips—to demonstrate how meeting people where they are reduces overdose deaths and disease transmission.

Extraordinary Clinical Insights

The Cornerstone of Care: Building Trust in Therapeutic Relationships This article argues that trust is the indispensable foundation of mental health recovery, requiring a “sacred space” where vulnerability is met with validation rather than punitive clinical responses. By prioritizing transparency, autonomy, and non-judgmental curiosity—or incorporating peer support for those wary of traditional systems—providers can create the safety necessary for genuine, lasting transformation.

The Science of Sleep: Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Rest This article explores sleep as a vital biological necessity rather than a passive state of rest, detailing its critical role in brain detoxification, memory consolidation, and hormonal regulation. It breaks down the various stages of the sleep cycle and warns of the cognitive and physical dangers of “sleep debt,” ranging from mood disturbances to increased chronic health risks.

Unlocking the Brain’s Healing Power: A Deep Dive into EMDR Therapy This article explores Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy, a psychotherapy designed to help the brain process “stuck” traumatic memories. It explains the science behind the method—specifically the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model—and how bilateral stimulation mimics REM sleep to reconnect emotional memories with logical thinking.