alt-account's recent activity
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Comment on Facing segregated schools, parents took integration into their own hands. It’s working in ~life
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Comment on Mental health support / discussion thread. in ~talk
alt-account Link ParentI think both your point and @ainar-g's are crucially important. Access to care is a necessity, no question about it - without that, everything else is moot. More than that, to be meaningful,...I think both your point and @ainar-g's are crucially important. Access to care is a necessity, no question about it - without that, everything else is moot. More than that, to be meaningful, "access" has to cover not just the basic availability, but the affordability, the stress, the potential repercussions, the complexity of seeking help. It's a lot to deal with, and it all needs to be addressed to have a functioning mental healthcare system.
I've been comparatively fortunate in terms of finding care. It hasn't been a perfect process, far far from it, but I have been able to see a variety of qualified specialists over the last decade or so. And I've had a wide variety of conflicting, and sometimes flat out contradictory, diagnoses and treatment plans. These people weren't incompetent, it's just that the state of the art, even the very best of human understanding when it comes to mental health, has a long way to go yet. I think of it like cancer treatment 50-60 years ago: we know there's something wrong, we can figure out only the broad strokes of what it is, but our best bet for treatment is still choosing a drug almost at random and hoping the benefits outweigh the risks.
The last thing I want to do is discourage anyone from seeking treatment - like I said, I've been at it for over a decade and I'm still going - but I do think it's very important to remember a couple of things: firstly, the simple fact that we absolutely need to be funnelling resources into research. Lots of resources. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, that while seeking help is always, always worth doing where possible, it's a different experience for everybody and it may well not be what you hoped for.
Some of my absolute lowest points have been realising that the people I needed to help me, the people who in turn wanted to help me, didn't have the ability to do so. Times when I had just enough left in me to force myself out of bed, and force myself to the doctor, only to have that last tiny glimmer of hope go out when the new drug, the new therapist, the new recommendation didn't do anything to help.
I steel myself for that now, I know that failure is part of the attempt and the only thing to do is keep trying. It scares the hell out of me that every time I cross something off the list, the pool of things that might work gets smaller.
I keep trying. I just wish more people spoke about how hard that part is, and how far we still have to go.
The above turned into a bit of a vent. I didn't intend it to when I started typing, I was going for a quick comment that access and research are both important.
I do worry about posting this - I really don't want to scare anyone away from taking that first step - but I think it's in keeping with the thread and honestly I believe it's something that needs to be said.
As am I!
My personal experience of the education system prior to university was unpleasant, to say the least, and at the time I would have given anything to escape the anti-intellectualism and disruption around me - I literally dreamed of an ability streamed system, so reading about the opposite framed in such positive terms was a surprisingly visceral experience.
Of course, as an adult I realise that it's a far more complex issue, and that achievement grouping is more likely to end up with the lower achievers being given up on, rather than given the extra support they need. Add the correlation between socioeconomic status and achievement, and a whole new level of practical and ethical concerns opens up. As the "poor, smart kid", I arguably would have had the most to gain from an ability grouped system.
I don't entirely know where I'm going with this. I mean it very genuinely when I say that I'm interested to see what happens - and I certainly don't claim to have a magical solution (or even one better than what they're trying now). I guess I just hope it turns out to be a way to help everyone, rather than dragging every student toward the middle.
[Edit] Typos