I have seen you in their eyes, you were there in disguise.

I wonder if they knew I’d talk about the things I saw and about the gross injustice that I witnessed on their floor. You where right there with me, showing me your special ones, the ones that needed hope ignited, societies rejected and shunned.

When they dragged me down a hallway, when they held me to the floor, when I heard their humiliating words and they injected me with psychiatric poison potions, a spell of lies coursing through my veins and oppressing me with their manipulating schemes to pad their score.

When I didn’t think I could take it anymore, when they made me eat their medication off a dirty floor, when they took away my rights, I wonder if they realised they had on their hands a girl with fight. When I submitted complaints and got answers that covered their own behind, when they wouldn’t hear my cry for justice and mercy, that’s not the kind of government I want to find. So now I submit my case to the courts above, instead of them putting me in a tribunal they can be the ones to be tried by a judge who is just and lucky for them also loves.

I’m crying out for your mercy, to heal the hearts and minds: Of the ones society has forgotten, the ones pushed down and trodden on by those consumed by the power they find. As you sweep the nation with your glory and raise up the broken ones, making them the centre piece and taking down the ones who poked at them for their own fun.

As they hear your voice and gain courage in the hope you have for them, they will speak out of the injustice of a mental health system that inflicts pain on the ones it’s in trusted with to heal. Send the broken to those that have the power that is real, don’t let them be locked up listening to screams of terror in the night and threats of punishment for non compliance, it’s really just not right.

It’s only Jesus name that has the power to set free, and his love that breaks the chains and changes their destiny. And as you heal me of the damage that I felt upon their hand, as I release forgiveness and love and show them I can rise above, the torment and the labels they tried to inflict upon my heart. I pray you change their hearts and minds to see the way to heal, it’s not in their pills and potions or in electric shocks and uni degrees, it’s in the power of your love. You are the one who sets the captives free and it’s only you that can open their eyes to see how it’s really meant to be. For the voices that have been discredited it’s just your illness speaking: I pray you raise them up and confound the wise in human eyes; with the words their speaking.

There is no easy way to break this stigma only a way to start and that is why I write this poem to cut a path in a dense jungle of judgment and confusion that has to be hacked through to change a broken system that’s totally missed the mark. Its the Australian mental health system that needs a new heart, so set up the paddles and flick the switch and let the current surge start.