From Help to Trap: How the Mental Health System Disempowers and Keeps You Stuck

In working in the human service field for over 25 years, I have seen this happen 100s and 100s of times to people who deserve to live full lives, NOT be stuck in a system that disempowers their clients.

It usually starts innocently:

You’re overwhelmed. Grieving. Anxious. You’ve been through a breakup, the death of a loved one, a job loss, some other traumatic event, or maybe just feel like something is “off.” A well-meaning friend or doctor says, “You should talk to someone.” You do. You enter the system looking for support—a short-term lifeline to help you through a hard time.

What you get is a lifelong label.

Suddenly, you're not just having a tough time. You have a disorder. A chemical imbalance. A brain disease. Something permanent. Something you’ll need “treatment” for—probably forever.

Medication is introduced. Not as a temporary support, but as a necessity. A daily ritual. If you express doubts, you’re told you’re “non-compliant.” If the meds don’t work, more are added. If they make you feel worse (and they usually do), that’s chalked up to your condition getting “worse”—not the drugs themselves.

Your identity starts to change. You go from being a person struggling through something temporary to a patient with a condition. From someone having a response to life… to someone “broken.” You begin to internalize it. Maybe I really am this diagnosis. Maybe I’m not capable of handling life without a professional. Maybe I’ll need help forever.

And the system is built to keep it that way.

Insurance doesn’t cover the things that actually heal: meaningful connection, social interaction, housing, meaning and purpose types of activities (my entire Master's thesis was about the importance of purpose to mental health). Insurance covers check-ins, scripts, and symptoms. Providers are overloaded. Appointments are brief. You tell your story in 15-minute chunks to people who never see the whole picture. You start to believe you are the story.

If you try to leave—if you say, “I’m doing better, I don’t need this anymore”—you’re warned. “That’s just the mania talking.” “You’ll spiral.” “You’ll be back.”

This isn’t care. It’s containment.

The truth is, most people who enter the mental health system are reacting to life—poverty, grief, abuse, isolation, betrayal, systemic injustice—not a “broken brain.” But the system isn’t designed to empower. It’s designed to diagnose, pathologize, and bill. And the longer you stay, the harder it is to imagine yourself outside of it.

You entered seeking help. You stay because you were convinced you can’t survive without it.

But you can.

You entered the system looking for support, not a sentence. But the mental health industry thrives on chronic patients, not recovered people. The truth is: you’re not a diagnosis. You’re not broken. You’re a human being navigating a painful world—and your reactions make sense. Healing doesn’t come from endless appointments, pills, or labels. It comes from reclaiming your power, your story, and your right to define your own life. You don’t need permission to walk away from what no longer serves you.

You were never as helpless as they made you believe.

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References

• Davies, J. (2013). Cracked: Why psychiatry is doing more harm than good. Icon Books.

• Moncrieff, J. (2022). A straight talking introduction to psychiatric drugs: The truth about how they work and how to come off them. PCCS Books.

• Whitaker, R. (2010). Anatomy of an epidemic: Magic bullets, psychiatric drugs, and the astonishing rise of mental illness in America. Crown.

• Paris, J. (2015). Prescriptions for the mind: A critical view of contemporary psychiatry. Oxford University Press.

• Frances, A. (2013). Saving normal: An insider’s revolt against out-of-control psychiatric diagnosis, DSM-5, big pharma, and the medicalization of ordinary life. HarperCollins.