When the System Becomes the Trauma. "How State-Inflicted Emotional Distress Alters the Brain and Mental Health"

Antonio Merrick
Aug 4
4 min read

By Antonio Merrick

“People break, not because they are weak, but because someone kept twisting the knife while pretending to protect them.”

I didn’t break because I was fragile. I broke because the system made sure I would.

Before all this, before I was dragged through hearings, misrepresented in court, and stripped of my children, I didn’t need 300mg of Seroquel to stay alive and sleep at night, or Prazosin for nightmares. I did not need nightmare medication, anti-anxiety pills, or the constant self-monitoring required to feel like myself. But after the state inserted itself into my life, based on misinformation, bias, and bureaucratic cruelty, everything changed. What I experienced was not just personal tragedy. It was trauma inflicted by the government. Moreover, once I realized that, I had to understand what it had done to me, not just emotionally, but neurologically, medically, permanently. This blog is the result of that search.

Trauma Does not Always Look Like Trauma

When people hear the word trauma, they picture explosions, abuse, or tragic accidents. They do not picture a custody hearing. A caseworker. A judge who will not listen. Emails that turn your life upside down. However, trauma can come from institutions, especially when those institutions claim to help you, then turn around and destroy you. That is what psychologists call institutional betrayal trauma. It is when harm comes from a system you believed would protect you. Moreover, it does not just cause emotional pain; it causes neurological damage. In 2020, researchers Smith and Freyd published a meta-analysis showing that institutional betrayal was linked to:

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Depression and suicidal thoughts
Chronic anxiety and hypervigilance
Sleep disruption, memory issues, and cognitive fatigue

(Source: Smith & Freyd, Psychological Trauma, 2020)

I did not need a clinical diagnosis to recognize myself in that list. I was living it.

How the Brain Reacts to Government-Inflicted Trauma

What I went through did not just shake my emotions; it rewired my brain.

In the months after the state took over my life, I began to notice frightening changes: I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t regulate my thoughts, I would spiral into rage or panic at the smallest triggers, and eventually, I lost the ability to function without medication. I had never experienced anything like it before. However, neuroscience explained it. When a person experiences chronic psychological threat, especially when the threat is unpredictable, uncontrollable, and comes from an authority, the brain begins to adapt. But not in a good way. Here is what happens:

The amygdala, the brain’s threat detection system, becomes hyperactive, putting you in a permanent state of fight-or-flight.
The hippocampus, which regulates memory and emotional control, begins to shrink.
The prefrontal cortex, responsible for decision-making and logic, starts to shut down during emotional distress.

Researchers like Teicher et al. (2016) and Yehuda et al. (2015) have shown how long-term trauma reshapes the brain’s structure and chemistry. These are not just emotional responses. These are biological injuries caused by stress.

In my case, these injuries required medical intervention. I was placed on high doses of medications—Seroquel, among others—just to manage what the system had done to me.

Not because I was inherently depressed. Not because I had a psychotic disorder. But because I had been through state-sanctioned psychological abuse, my nervous system could no longer self-regulate.

This Isn’t Mental Illness. It’s Injury.

Let me be clear: I wasn’t broken before the state got involved. I had grief. I had stress. I had responsibilities. But I also had my kids, my dignity, and my sanity.

It was only after I was accused, misrepresented, isolated, and denied basic rights, like the right to be heard, the right to accommodations for my disability, the right to fair legal counsel, that I began to collapse. And that collapse was not random. It followed a predictable pattern of trauma response, backed by decades of science.

“Patients who endure chronic institutional stress often report symptoms of mania, psychosis, and emotional dysregulation, even when they had no previous history of mental illness.”

(Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score)

These symptoms are not signs of weakness. They are clinical evidence that the system became the abuser.

The Medications Are a Clue—Not the Cause

When the government uses someone’s psychiatric medication history against them, without asking why they were prescribed those meds in the first place, it becomes a form of gaslighting.

If I only needed Seroquel after CPS and the courts wrecked my life, then that medication is a clue. A breadcrumb. A piece of evidence that the trauma came after, not before.

This is why we must start distinguishing actual mental illness from trauma-induced neurochemical crisis .And this is not just about science, it is about civil rights.

When the State Creates the Disability

If a person becomes disabled only after being harmed by government action, whether through neglect, coercion, or emotional abuse, then that is a state-created condition, a legal issue. That means the government is not just failing to accommodate a disability. It is creating one.

Furthermore, that falls under: The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and Federal constitutional protections against discrimination and due process violations. My case is not unique. Thousands of others are silenced, medicated, misdiagnosed, or destroyed by the same system. Some never recover. Some take their own lives.

I almost did.

So What Do We Do Now?

We need to start telling the truth: State-inflicted trauma is real, institutional betrayal causes neurological harm and high-dose psychiatric medication isn’t always proof of illness—it’s sometimes proof of abuse. And we need to stop asking trauma survivors, “What’s wrong with you?” and start asking, “What happened to you—and who did it?” If we fail to recognize the damage being done in courtrooms, foster systems, and bureaucratic offices, we are allowing the state to create trauma, then blame the victims for not being able to handle it. This paper is not just research. It is my reality. Moreover, I hope it forces us to ask: What if the system is not broken? What if it’s breaking us on purpose?