( Poem follows below after this short introduction) So this is a warning for anyone who believes in mental illness & thinks that psychiatry is helping them rather than harming them & to remind them how it is a potentially dangerous tool for oppression & medicalization of normality. In 1850, a US Doctor came up with this diagnosis to claim that slaves that wanted to run away/ran away were mentally ill because he a) believed black people were inferior to white people b) that any desire in a black person to be free must be mental illness as they were born to be enslaved. I am not kidding. This really happened.

Drapetomania

So you see it has a name
this singing in my veins
the wish to be free of my chains
is apparently insane
for by my skin I was born to serve
those who would whip me
those who would trick me
of my birth right
to stand free in the sun
No, apparently, if I run
I am sick
tell me quick
doc what do I do
& tell me how do
you sleep at night
being so cruel
to your fellow man
is there a name for what
you do, I could think of a few
I can only come up with
' *******'