this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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me_irl
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"Mental illness" (as it's used in pop culture today) is a made-up term designed to gaslight people into believing that their natural, healthy reaction to the 21st century is somehow wrong and a pathology.
To be depressed in [current year] is no more normal than itching yourself when you're wearing a wool sweater. Nobody would call that an "illness," would they?
It’s fine to critique how “mental illness” is portrayed in pop culture, but the medical term is important. Yes, society is tough, but that doesn’t mean your struggles aren’t real or treatable. You can’t fight for change if you can’t get out of bed. Taking care of yourself is never something to feel bad about. <3
I take issue with calling it "treatable." From personal experience, the treatment doesn't really fix anything - it just makes it noticeably easier to bypass your natural reaction to being in an extremely unfavorable environment. That's not treating the problem, it's masking it akin to slapping a fresh coat of paint on walls with a serious mold infestation inside.
It's addressing the symptom instead of the actual problem, and our entire society is geared towards doing this because it allows people to keep being used to better the lives of those one-percenters running everything while pushing the cost of keeping the people doing so back onto those same people. It's disgusting, and it's nearing a breaking point that's gonna be very ugly when everything snaps.
Thanks for sharing. ‘Treatable’ does not mean ‘curable,’ and you are not the first person to make that confusion.
I'm not confused by it. Much of society is, however.
I see the utility in treating someone to get through an unusually difficult - but temporary - situation. When the difficult situation has become the norm that you can't escape from... then you're no longer "treating,” but instead doping them to get the performance you want out of them - and the "treatment" is never-ending.
Explain how long term mental health treatment is “doping” while type-1 diabetics who must take lifelong doses of insulin are not.
I'd like to inject some sanity (pun intended) into their point. Diabetes is body vs itself which obviously needs assistance. Some mental health things need to be "treated" just to make someone a "productive" member of society.
For a slightly different take, would you amputate one of your arms to fit in with a society where everyone else has only one arm?
mental illness is also the body versus itself, precipitating untreated in self harm, suicide, and addiction.
... Yeah, obviously those things are bad. That's a given. I was talking about things that aren't harmful to anybody, neurodivergent people have been punished since always for being different
Neurodivergence is not mental illness. The rest of us were talking about mental illness which is an entirely different topic.
You have to be very careful with this. Neurodivergence is a spectrum and while some of the symptomatic behaviors are definitely mild things that society should probably just learn to accept and accommodate-- other cause real damage and make it impossible for the patient to live a satisfying life.
This is especially true with ASD, where the "highest" functioning patients might just be harmlessly quirky, but other patients with the same diagnosis on paper (important for insurance and legislation) aren't able to express themselves and might not even be potty trained, or able to dress themselves.
Saying that we "shouldn't try to change people with Autism, society should just adapt" provides cover for politicians and health insurance companies to cut the very expensive therapies that help mold young children and enable them to achieve what they want out of life.
The fact is that we all have to change a little to accommodate society. Humans don't spring from the womb talking, wearing clothes, and using the toilet. Society isn't going to adapt to allowing my wife's patient who likes to rip off all of their clothes and masturbate at the grocery store to do so. And now, because of the online discourse of "Neurodivergence isn't a mental illness", politicians are trying to cut my wife's funding. After all, why would you spend tens of thousands of euros per child if their illness isn't even real?
Noted :( i wasn’t aware that language was currently being legislated around and i have always been very pro- both social and medical models of disability
all i meant to do was indicate how far acrid falcon had drifted from the conversation. the post and most discussion was consistently referring to i.e. depression and anxiety, so it was confusing for someone to come in and talk about an entirely different context of mental health
No worries, I've also become super sensitive to this ever since the discourse started spilling out into actual healthcare legislation here. Before it was easy to give people the benefit of the doubt, or to shrug it off as strangers online who don't know what they're talking about, but now I feel obligated to speak up just in case. Thanks for your understanding and for having a calm discussion about it.
Fiddles said it much more nuanced, and smarter than I could have. Neurodivergence is mental illness to some people... And I don't like those people
ok gross bye
What! Why??
How does insulin affect your mental processes? What a dumb false equivalence!
you've never seen anyone on the extreme ends of the blood sugar scale, have you?
Since my spouse happens to be Type-I, yeah - I have. It's not nearly equivalent. If anything, they are opposing examples - without insulin, none of us will be our normal selves. Insulin is a normal product of the human anatomy, depression meds are not.
So we come to the crux of it. Medications that benefit you and yours need are fine, but if someone else needs a different medication it's ethically problematic. Thanks for clearing that up.
Yeah - that's it. You got me all figured out, ya effing moron.
It's obvious you're just out to "win" an argument rather than consider what's being said and debate it in good faith. Evidenced by your complete lack of logical refutation of my points, but instead making a rather lame attempt to claim I'm the one being unreasonable.
I'm done with your bullshit. Goodnight.
Idk with which forms of therapy you've made experiences with. I wouldn't call it "doping". Depending on the illness or disorder, helping patients to deal with their shit in a way that improves their well-being at least a little bit (and more in the long-term) is what it's about. This does not neccessarily include work-perfromance or something like that. In fact, this is often not even important for therapy.
Depending on what you have on your plate, long-time treatment can of course be required. What do you expect?
Psychologists can do a lot, but they can't do miracles.
While for some short-term treatment is sufficient, it isn't for others.
I see what you’re saying, but they can’t become a comrade if they died of despair. We need all the people we can get, so if that’s what it takes them to get to enlightenment, so be it. I say, eat the pills that make you numb until you’re to a place where you can stand, then let them go (and maybe step into some psychedelics if you want to/are able) and open your eyes to the horror around you, now able to face it. Then we can fight the system together.
It worked for me anyway.
Been on them for three decades, no such luck.
It’s okay, maybe you’re not ready. Honestly, the psychedelics helped me more than the antidepressants ever did, but you have to be ready to walk down that road.
Actually, I have been interested. It's not an approved method of treatment, so it's inaccessible for those of us not familiar (or comfortable with) going the less than legal route. The information I've gathered on the topic makes it seem risky, so someone who really knows what they're doing needs to be there to guide me through it.
TLDR I'm interested, but it needs to be a good experience.
Microdosing is a lot less risky, mushrooms spores are legal to buy, and growing mushrooms is a fun hobby that’s not terribly difficult, just takes some commitment. That’s what I did.
"Less risky" is still a risk I don't want to take without some good guidance/assistance from someone who's familiar with the ropes. Although it was quite some time ago, I have attempted to off myself once before, and there have been plenty of times since where I've come close to trying again. As such, I think it's too risky for me to follow your path.
I trust you to trust yourself, and having the right mindset is essential. But if you ever get your ducks in a row, I encourage you. Microdosing has opened new pathways for me, some that are difficult to walk, but I’m strong enough to face them now and I’m better for doing so. Good luck on your journey.
The point is, from an epidemiological perspective, the correct treatments to advocate for are things like environmentalism and consumer protection law, not easier access to prozac or whatever. We will never solve the problem until we're honest with ourselves, as a society, about the root causes.
Yeah, I get that, but you have to do what you have to do to stand on your own two feet before you stare at the ugliness of the world and face it, otherwise it will break you. If that takes antidepressants, take them until you’re ready to shake them off.
I believe it could happen one day, if some nerds can figure out how to do brain preservation. (well, that and whatever tech/biology stuff is needed to revive and support a brain)
I knew a full-on singulatarian who killed himself due to mental illness. Someone dying of despair will never preserve their brain for (what they see as) unending torture.
I was focusing more on the death part, and that dying in such a setting is a small step up from despair if arranging hope existed. Even if considered impossible, it'd basically be euthanasia which is still better than a true death of despair.
However I was also talking about physical preservation. A digital copy does not do anything for me. Though yeah, revival conditions would still be a worry either way if it could not be put into some kind of revival contract.
I mean the can't-get-out-of-bed part probably isn't some quick fix if-only-someone-had-told-me-doctors-exist-sort-of-thing. It probably points to larger, unchanging issues.
In some cases, the answer could be "move"... but again that is not viable for many, even if we're just talking about housing cost.
Clinical depression isn't somethings fixed with exercise. I've had friends who ran 5-6 miles a day try to kill themselves out of the blue. Fuck off with this bullshit simplistic view of mental health.
Not what I am saying at all.
I am talking from the perspective of the US medical system, living in a rural area without a car, isolation etc. If you didn't reply to the wrong person I'm not sure how you interpreted it that way.
I did, completely misread what you wrote. Thats my bad. I have heard a lot of dismissive comments about mental health, and I just assumed this was another one.
I think you're misrepresenting the comment.
Depression as a medical term only applies to people who have objectively nothing to be depressed about. Nobody would (to turn it up to 11) argue that a concentration camp inmate has depression when he's feeling like everything's fucked, because very objectively, everything is fucked in his environment.
The comment is instead about people who are thrown into a depressing, pointless situation they can't escape, just like the prisoner, only much much milder. They see no future, because there truly is no future for them. Now, that would be horrible for society, because those people might start to question why exactly they're in this situation. So as a bandaid, they get diagnosed. It's not actually shit, you just see it like that, because you are sick. Here, take a pill. It's gaslighting.
The rolling Stones had a song about mother's little helper 50 years ago. It's not exactly new.
WTF? No.
This is essentially medical misinformation, and dangerous. You don’t get to tell me off for misrepresenting a comment when 0.01 seconds later you misrepresent an entire field of medicine lol.
I hate that I am even giving you the tiniest benefit of the doubt but to combat your lying by research and example: People who survived actual concentration camps still suffer i.e. suicidal ideation into the rest of their lives, even though the cause of that trauma is “fixed.”
There is so much cause for trauma out there, from family, to natural disaster, to war. These traumas are deadly and ruin lives through generational trauma, addiction and suicide. In summary, your comment accusing people often just trying to care of themselves and their families, as abusing “bandaids” that actually help them to live meaningful and fulfilling lives is despicable. Go fucking fix society dude! Just don’t piss all over people who have, often for the first time in years, been given a chance to overcome disability and make something positive of their existence.
mental injury might be a better term.
Just because everyone is ill, doesn't mean it's not an illness. Argumentum ad populum
Careful now, that much salt in your diet will lead to all sorts of problems...