On Sunday, Lil Ugly Mane shared a new album as Bedwetter: volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present, which includes the previously released "stoop lights." Early Monday morning, the rapper and producer wrote a powerful open letter on Facebook about his experiences seeking help for mental health troubles. In the middle of the note, he calls the American mental healthcare system "absolute shit that absolutely incentivizes violence and self harm by categorizing it as the sole interpretation of "severity" worth treating."
Lil Ugly Mane (real name Travis Miller) declines to specify the nature of his distress, other than he has spent "a lifetime... avoiding this shit." Miller writes that he spent months unsuccessfully attempting to connect with different psychiatrists and doctors, until he "reluctantly" checked himself into a hospital.
"I'd chosen to go in at a time where I was feeling okay so I would be fully able to articulate and describe the symptoms I was experiencing so I could potentially receive the most accurate treatment. I thought that made the most sense," he writes.
Throughout the post, Miller describes several layers of obstacles he faced: accepting that he needed help, the impersonal and distressing surroundings of the hospital he went to in search of assistance, and the crushing disappointment and anger he felt when he was discharged because he wasn't contemplating violence. "I was discharged. [H]anded back my clothes, given a xeroxed list of some websites about suicide prevention and a "feel better" or some other equally patronizing verbal pat on the back.
Miller goes on to contemplate the fallout of such an approach. "Our current mental healthcare system is absolute shit. Absolute shit that absolutely incentivizes violence and self harm by categorizing it as the sole interpretation of "severity" worth treating... This system has a very real potential to turn people who voluntarily seek help, people who aren't yet completely overtaken by their illness, into violent suicidal monsters because you are dangling their own treatment on a string in front of them, scoffing at their pitiful attempt at recovery and demanding they need to do more."
The FADER has reached out for comment. Read the entire note on Facebook, and listen to Bedwetter's album volume 1: flick your tongue against your teeth and describe the present below.
