I left things hanging at the end of yesterday’s post, when I speculated:
What if our mental health system regarded the madfolk as artists of their own imaginings, whose offerings of non-ordinary thoughts and behaviour were to be contemplated for their own sake, without interference? What if there were space for madness to simply exist?
What would this look like? How might we shepherd the mad experience in such a way that it might exist without being shut down?
I have a friend who spent some time working in an ayahuasca camp, supporting people through their psychedelic journeys. This will have been a very practical responsibility: walking alongside them so they didn’t wander away or get lost; helping them if they got sick from the drug or felt distress; easing them back into a grounded state when the trip was winding down.
Why could we not offer this service to those experiencing altered states which are naturally occurring? Why not madness doulas?
A doula … is a non-medical professional who provides guidance for the service of others and who supports another person (the doula's client) through a significant health-related experience, such as childbirth [and] non-reproductive experiences such as dying. A doula might also provide support to the client's partner, family, and friends….
Community-based doulas work with underserved communities of which they are often members to provide a sense of cultural humility that fosters trust and strengthens relationships between the doula and their client. The services provided are often low cost, and expand in the amount of support offered compared to traditional doulas and consider physical, social spiritual and emotional needs. …. Additionally, community-based doula models provide insight in the creation of policies that will support those families and underserved communities. Wikipedia
Rather than framing someone as mentally ill, a doula might approach madness as a transformative life event; they might assist their client to navigate social systems and institutions, and thereby help them to avoid incarceration and coercive treatments.
I don’t know a lot about doulas or doula culture, so I could be barking up the wrong tree altogether. But in the first instance one might put together a scoping exercise, do some costings… would this type of service cost as much as psychiatry and lifelong medication? Would it have better outcomes? We do need to find new ways to respond to madness, other than with pathologising and punitive measures. A madness doula service could be one such new way.
[Postscript: I’ve connected the dots that this idea has come to me via conversation with Hel Spandler around death doulas, and Hel tells me that Tam Martin Fowles of Hope in the Heart is also doing some work on this concept. So I will connect with them further if possible; watch this space…]
photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash
Julia,
Something I've always found foundationally significant about art is that it provides an avenue to explore meaning outside of "real life." Art is useless and that's the source of the freedom it gives us. I've always been skeptical about blending the line between art and life. Making art we can take great "risks" because they are metaphoric or symbolic. They do not harm anyone. Often those blending that line are looking for ways to abuse without responsibility. Jacob Grossberg, my old teacher, always said, "In art I can do what I want; but I'm not killing anybody." Having escaped the Holocaust as a child and drafted into the Korean War, he knew all about the other kinds of activities.
The doula idea sounds really promising! It could be a way of providing the kind of insulation from life-consequences that art gives. As with art, in ceremony; as you find in rituals that let us explore psychological states without harming or being harmed; there is a means of removing potentially risky actions from real life.
We all need to have ways to be able to make leaps that take us out of our stereo-typical thoughts and behaviors. That can happen in art or within a ritualized setting without the risk of harming others. Of course, the artist, or the initiate, is risking themselves; but that is our own decision about our own life, attention, situation.
Tony
This strikes me as a thoroughly interesting idea Julia! Well worth investigating. Keep up the good work.