We learn from Gabor Mate that trauma is the foundation of suffering and harm. In his movie The Wisdom of Trauma we learn how extremisms creates harm and suffering. Safety in zero is one such extremism.
The Wisdom of Trauma should be mandatory viewing for any safety person. Of course Safety has no interest in wisdom.
I wrote recently about Mate’s latest book The Myth of Normal (https://safetyrisk.net/the-myth-of-normal/). An amazing book founded on 40 years working with addiction, mental health and psychosocial health. Mate’s wisdom stands in stark contrast to the fraudulence of Safety that all of a sudden takes an interest in psychosocial health, except it names these ‘hazards’. Indeed, now we have all these non-experts in mental health and trauma popping up as experts in psychosocial ‘hazards’.
Safety is so good at fraudulence. It’s as if the rule of Safety is to make comment on something (eg. culture) with no expertise, knowledge or experience in what is being discussed. You will never hear an expert like Mate use such nonsense language as ‘hazard’ in reference to mental health.
What we see from Safety’s latest foray into the world of mental health and psychosocial health is all the groundwork required to create more harm than ever.
Here is an industry fixated for the past 50 years on the physical and material nature of harm, the regulation of barriers and a mindless curriculum about regulation, that suddenly enters into a world in which it has no qualifications, no expertise and no experience.
All of a sudden, psychosocial safety is the new yo-yo for Safety (https://safetyrisk.net/the-yo-yo-delusion-and-conversations-about-risk/). With no history or curriculum to begin addressing the complexities of mental health all of a sudden, Safety has the ‘fixes’. The delusions and harm created by this industry are breathtaking (https://safetyrisk.net/what-is-psychosocial-safety/).
The idea that psychosocial health can be treated like a hazard is complete delusion.
Yet, such aspirations to fraudulence are common (https://safetyrisk.net/hands-up-the-best-safety-fraud/).
The reality is, the safety industry as an obsession (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-a-mental-health-disorder-obsession/), in fallibility denial (https://safetyrisk.net/the-fallibility-factor/) and zero ideology, is itself the mental health disorder.
Zero ideology is the ultimate in extremism. Yet, ask anyone with experience, expertise and knowledge in mental health and they will tell you that the key to tackling mental health is trust, tolerance, acceptance, care and learning. You will find none of this language in anything Safety writes about psychosocial hazards (https://safetyrisk.net/duty-of-care-is-not-duty-to-care-for-persons/ ).
There can be no compatibility between the ideology of zero and psychosocial health.
Psychosocial health in no way bears any comparison to the way Safety conducts its work.
The ideology of zero is essentially and ideology of abuse.
Anyone who has to work and live under the extremism of zero will testify to the fact that zero fosters brutalism.
The close cousin of brutalist zero is Behaviour Based Safety (BBS).
How bizarre this industry that loves to brag about being ‘professional’ when its global mantra fosters the brutality and trauma of persons in the name of good.
Dr Rob Long
Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)
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- Safetie - May 21, 2023
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