About
‘Psych Ward Lived Archives’ is initiated by ‘CN Psych Ward Wiki’, in the hope of filling the gaps between the lines of stipulated SOPs and composed descriptions, with our sufferings, memories, and joys that are too deep for words.
Different from wiki documentations, the Lived Archives is not writing aiming to be precise and sangfroid, but rather the real memories from psych ward care-experienced people. The oral history is usually formed with the interviewee, on the answers of a series of questions we prepared in advance; yet, it is made more integral with their own statements. In the end, the oral history is your own expression of your experience in your time in and out of the psych ward – a free expression within your own limit.
Due to its nature, the oral history cannot be forensic and accurate, but it nonetheless documents our vivid lives. The reason we initiate this project is we firmly believe those articulated writing cannot replace your lived experience, that the description of the institution cannot replace the humanity suppressed by institutionalisation.
As Elie Wiesel put in his speech, ‘I believe firmly and profoundly that whoever listens to a witness becomes a witness, so those who hear us, those who read us must continue to bear witness for us. Until now, they’re doing it with us. At a certain point in time, they will do it for all of us.’ Memories form our history, and the history is a living testimony. With history, we give the living the comfort of being witnessed, and the dead a commemoration; We remember those who benefit from the institution, and those who were oppressed, even parted from us.
The conservation of the oral history is to remember those who are not given their voice. Not only the oral history acts for people living now, but it also testify to the generations to come. For us marginalised psych ward care-experienced people, our voice often goes unheard, deemed a taboo, rejected from discussion; at the meantime, the mainstream psychiatry is rejecting our voice with all their might, so only themselves are heard. As we are constantly deemed as non-human subjects, it appears ever-important to document our own voice.
With our project, we would like to inspire other psych ward care experienced people and the general public to know that we are alive, speaking people. We document the voice of the interviewees and affirm your trauma and pain both inside and outside the psych ward, systemic or isolated; we also pass on your coping strategy and the practice of community caring. Furthermore, we are acutely aware that each interviewee has their own socio-economic status, and we are willing to face your diversity and the emphasis within your expression. In the end, we earnestly hope, that each voice shall be heard and remembered.