How SEIU F***** Over Trauma Survivors

Several years ago, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) put up a website saying that they were looking for stories from people who had been gaslit, threatened, and otherwise abused by Universal Health Services (UHS), America’s largest psychiatric hospital chain. The stated goal was to shut down those warehouses of neglect and human misery. I submitted my story.

The $122 million Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuit gave pennies on the stolen dollar to each of the states involved, like $35 ,000 for Delaware. It also awarded $6 million to the whistleblowers. There was no compensation to and hardly even a mention of the real victims, the human beings who were gaslit, neglected, abused, and whose rights were violated.

The settlement mandated fiduciary monitoring for fraudulent billing, but nothing to remedy the abuse and harm UHS perpetrates in the name of the standard treatment for mental health conditions.

And then the SEIU website –which solicited our stories and promised to use them to shut down UHS hospitals–vanished. Poof! Like it never happened. And the UHS hospitals are still hoodwinking and abusing distressed people for profit.

SEIU is no better than Universal Health Services, exploiting the most vulnerable the most. Untrustworthy.🖕

About Shay Seaborne, CPTSD

Shay Seaborne CPTSD teaches Relational Neuroscience for stress reduction, trauma recovery, and community building. Shay has studied the neurobiology of fear / trauma /PTSD since 2014 and Interpersonal Neurobiology (IPNB) since 2019. They write, speak, teach, and make art to convey their experiences as well as their understanding of the neurobiology of fear, trauma theory, Interpersonal Neurobiology concepts, and principles of trauma recovery. A native of Northern Virginia, Shay settled in Delaware to sail KALMAR NYCKEL, the state’s tall ship. But once they finally had mental health insurance, their life rapidly changed. The standard treatment for PTSD nearly killed them. The psychiatric abuse began a cascade of negative medical encounters that repeatedly caused additional harm and the development of severe Medical PTSD. Shay wishes everyone could recognize that "mental health problems" are symptoms of dysregulation, our mainstream culture is neuro-negative, and we can heal ourselves and each other through awareness, understanding, and safe connection.

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