Oh look, a landmine. I wonder what will happen when I'll step on it? I can foresee this comment to attract a lot of criticism and accusations of various bad things. But this is one of the cases...
Exemplary
Oh look, a landmine. I wonder what will happen when I'll step on it?
I can foresee this comment to attract a lot of criticism and accusations of various bad things. But this is one of the cases where you just have to reply to something, you know?
I disagree with a lot that this essay states. It has quite a few statements that are just (remember the CoC, remember the CoC, …) completely unfounded in reality.
Since this is ~health I'll take the luxury to rely on factual evidence for statements and theses. Not nebulous concepts and statements that just don't follow reality.
I could dissect almost every paragraph of this essay to explain every issue I have with it, but since I probably should get at least some work done today, I'll limit myself to the most egregious ones. But first things first: the author very correctly identifies a lot of issues regarding healthcare and politics in general in the US. My issues are almost exclusively with the conclusions they come to and the reasoning they use to get there.
Let's start with them constantly mixing up different definitions of words that each rely on their own context to actually apply. Prime example would be:
If we take Hannah Arendt’s definition of the political […] as being any action that is performed in public […], you can send private emails containing racial slurs, but since they weren’t “meant for the public,” you are somehow not racist.
I can't decide on what to tackle here. The semantic fact that "any [public] actions" is not the same as "only public actions", meaning that private actions could thus also theoretically be political (necessary vs. sufficient conditions); The fact that the author themself disagrees with this definition, stating "everything you do in private is political", and yet still using the disagreed with definition in order to construct arguments for their own point (as weak as both the arguments or the point may be); Stating something can only be racist if it is also political, potentially using the systemic definition of racism, in which case you'd also need to use the definition of "political" that applies in that context (which I'd guess would be any action performed by someone in a position of power, maybe?).
Or how about truly staggering statement of:
What if [all mental illness], in the Americas, at least, could be traced to histories of colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, and everyday segregation and isolation that haunt all of our lives, rather than to be biochemical imbalances?
Really? You want to state that all mental illnesses (in the Americas) stems from colonialism, genocide, slavery, etc.? Even dementia/Alzheimers? Schizophrenia? ADHD? Postpartum depression? Agoraphobia? This is either one of the more impressive cases of American Exceptionalism I've seen in a while, a very thoughtless statement, or another case of misused definitions (in case probably something like "only those diagnosis that could possibly be caused by colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, etc. are actual mental illnesses). Readers choice.
I'll finish with this (remember the CoC, remember the CoC, …) unique criticism of capitalism:
Because to stay alive, capitalism cannot be responsible for our care – its logic of exploitation requires that some of us die. […] [With wellness] as the standard mode of existence, is that it invents illness as temporary.
No it doesn't? Completely disregarding everything else about this section of the essay (including the attempt of assuming that because a "default" exists, everything else must adhere to that default and anything that doesn't is hence bad), the assertion that because state A is considered the "norm", any deviation from that norm is thus inherently temporary, just doesn’t make sense. If I set the norm that all coffee cups must be non-leaking, and someone then punches a hole into mine, that doesn't mean that the state of leaky-ness is thus only temporary because it's a bad, non default state. That cup will keep leaking.
The author tries to argue that due to capitalism all illnesses are seen as temporary. They also just ignore at that point the existence of the entire category of chronic illnesses that they themself have brought up earlier.
As I said at the beginning, I could go on until I've gone through almost every paragraph of this essay, probably writing an entire essay in itself.
Suffice to say for now that to me, the original essay is barely more than a textual gish-gallop that uses actual problems in the US to come to barely defined and sometimes contradictory conclusions.
Edit: Improved some bad grammar and corrected an unintentionally incorrect pronoun. That one really shouldn't have happened.
So, I agree with your point here. I just wanted to mention that "mental illness is not real, and it's a result of X", where X is "oppression of women"[1] or "big pharma"[2] or "psychiatry"[3] is a...
Really? You want to state that all mental illnesses (in the Americas) stems from colonialism, genocide, slavery, etc.? Even dementia/Alzheimers? Schizophrenia? ADHD? Postpartum depression? Agoraphobia? This is either one of the more impressive cases of American Exceptionalism I've seen in a while, a very thoughtless statement
So, I agree with your point here. I just wanted to mention that "mental illness is not real, and it's a result of X", where X is "oppression of women"[1] or "big pharma"[2] or "psychiatry"[3] is a significant fringe opinion that gets a lot of media attention, and some of the prominent authors get posted to Tildes.
On one side you have most people who understand mental illness has complex bio-psycho-social causes, and that a good support package needs to address all of these. And on the other you have vocal fringe cranks who for some reason are getting lots of attention.
[1] Dr Jess Taylor (who is a psychologist, but not a clinical psychologist)
[2] A variety of psychologists in the UK hold this opinion
[3] See eg the Power, Threat, Meaning Framework which is a mostly terrible attempt to reframe all mental illness as a reaction to life.
Could you expand a little on this point, or rather rephrase it a bit, because right now I'm not sure how an opinion can be both significant and fringe at the same time. Do you mean it is a very...
a significant fringe opinion
Could you expand a little on this point, or rather rephrase it a bit, because right now I'm not sure how an opinion can be both significant and fringe at the same time.
Do you mean it is a very fringe opinion or a very big idea for the fringe of the relevant ideological movement? Or something else entirely I just missed?
“significant” in that it gets a lot of lay support, “fringe” in that there is no real evidence for it, practitioners don’t take it seriously. Consider for instance anti-vax ideas on the right or...
“significant” in that it gets a lot of lay support, “fringe” in that there is no real evidence for it, practitioners don’t take it seriously.
Consider for instance anti-vax ideas on the right or an extreme version of “the social model of disability” on the left.
As much as somebody like this can have grievances with the American health care system (don’t we all when the bill comes due?) it’s also true that there are “heavy consumers” of non-psychiatric care because of psychiatric issues. For instance “panic disorder” was discovered during research into heavy consumers of emergency services: a person with panic disorder may present with chest pains and other difficult to diagnose symptoms caused by stress (note you can’t just diagnose a heart attack with an EKG but you have draw blood and wait for hours)
There is a definite “counter-transference” where a patient can have a deleterious mental effect on a participant, most of all in psychiatry and in other medicine. It is true that some people don’t get attention they require but there are also people who ask for more out of medical practitioners than they can possibly give and they are treated pretty sharply because it comes at the expense of the practitioner and the other patients. The idea “the personal is political” can be particularly dangerous because you’d have the same issues in any kind of system (e.g. something like the UK NHS which is free at point of service but rationed) unless you were really unfortunate and “cost was no object” and you had a private doctor like Michael Jackson.
Significant == gets lots of money and attention, is promoted by large organisations representing a profession (eg, the British Psychological Society), is promoted in mainstream media Fringe ==...
Significant == gets lots of money and attention, is promoted by large organisations representing a profession (eg, the British Psychological Society), is promoted in mainstream media
Hmm it's 5000 words long, and I'm not very impressed by the linked article, based on your chosen excerpts..... What do you think the author is trying to say, albeit poorly, that DOES have a good...
Hmm it's 5000 words long, and I'm not very impressed by the linked article, based on your chosen excerpts.....
What do you think the author is trying to say, albeit poorly, that DOES have a good point?
Edit: clarification in bold. I dun goofed and thank you for being kind and patient
I am sorry, but this comes across as extremely.. I don't know.. entitled, haughty, arrogant? Why don't you show us your chosen excerpts, so you may impress us by your wisdom, and knowledge? To...
I am sorry, but this comes across as extremely.. I don't know.. entitled, haughty, arrogant?
Why don't you show us your chosen excerpts, so you may impress us by your wisdom, and knowledge?
To your second point, I don't think @Landhund sees any redeeming qualities in the article.
It's totally possible that I'm the one who misinterpreted their comment, but my reading of it was more along the lines of "this is a really long article and from the excerpts here I don't think...
It's totally possible that I'm the one who misinterpreted their comment, but my reading of it was more along the lines of "this is a really long article and from the excerpts here I don't think it's worth the time to read it all".
As in, they're not complaining that Landhund chose bad excerpts that don't represent the article well, but simply saying that based on them, the article isn't worth the reading time.
I'm torn on this myself as well. Originally I interpreted the original comment the same way @zielperson did and was about to write a (potentially snarky) reply (remember the CoC, …) with that in...
I'm torn on this myself as well. Originally I interpreted the original comment the same way @zielperson did and was about to write a (potentially snarky) reply (remember the CoC, …) with that in mind. But having read your reply just now I'm not sure which interpretation is more accurate, both fit quite well...
I'll just chose the more generous one: @chocobean, I think the only redeeming quality of this essay is that the author correctly shows a few ways in which the american social and healthcare systems are utterly broken and bare functioning, leading to completely preventable suffering on a scale that is just unthinkable in most wealthy nations, especially those in Europe. (We are far from perfect, but at least we don't have health statistics that make a warzone blush.)
But that is no reason to read that text, there are much better, more coherent, more factual and less politically and emotionally charged and biased sources for that.
Oh praises to you and @csos95 and @Cannonball, and to the charitable interpretation! Indeed that was what I meant, that, having seen the quality of the writing from your excerpts, the article...
Oh praises to you and @csos95 and @Cannonball, and to the charitable interpretation!
Indeed that was what I meant, that, having seen the quality of the writing from your excerpts, the article linked does seem rather incoherent and erh, problematic. I was thinking I should read it anyway before commenting but, I guess I was acting spoiled and entitled, I thought maybe if I was already going in with a bias, then maybe I would miss any good points made.
I wasn't doing my homework and I wasn't clear and polite when asking to copy yours. My sincere apologies to all of you, and thank you as well.
Believe me, you haven't missed much not reading the essay. Actually, no, that's not correct... You haven't missed much of value not reading it. I've certainly experienced quite the selection of...
Believe me, you haven't missed much not reading the essay. Actually, no, that's not correct... You haven't missed much of value not reading it. I've certainly experienced quite the selection of colorful emotions reading it (although no doubt not as expansive, intense or colorful as the ones the author experiences due their rather unfortunate list of mental disorders), but it's not an experience I'd necessarily recommend to other people.
Near the end I had to actually force myself to stop skipping through the barely coherent one-sentence paragraphs that have taken over the authors writing style at that point.
I think they're just asking if there are actually any redeeming qualities in the article since Landhund seems to have read it thoroughly. I took "not very impressed by your chosen excerpts" as a...
I think they're just asking if there are actually any redeeming qualities in the article since Landhund seems to have read it thoroughly. I took "not very impressed by your chosen excerpts" as a jab at the poor quality article, not Landhund's choices.
I generally agree with you. This is the point where I spun around and headed back home (tildes.net): Jesus Christ. It kind of paints all of the proceeding text as word salad - something to be...
I generally agree with you. This is the point where I spun around and headed back home (tildes.net):
What if [all mental illness], in the Americas, at least, could be traced ...
Jesus Christ. It kind of paints all of the proceeding text as word salad - something to be purged from my mind.
I am not the most well-read on political philosophy but I would like to say that based on my interpretation of Arendt and what is stated in this article... I don't particularly get the impression...
Exemplary
I am not the most well-read on political philosophy but I would like to say that based on my interpretation of Arendt and what is stated in this article...
I thought of all the other invisible bodies, with their fists up, tucked away and out of sight. If we take Hannah Arendt’s definition of the political – which is still one of the most dominant in mainstream discourse – as being any action that is performed in public, we must contend with the implications of what that excludes. If being present in public is what is required to be political, then whole swathes of the population can be deemed a-political – simply because they are not physically able to get their bodies into the street.
I don't particularly get the impression that the author understands Arendt either or they are being deliberately(?) ungenerous in their interpretation. Arendt does not say that it is necessary to be present in public in order to be political but rather, "...politics finds its authentic expression whenever citizens gather together in a public space to deliberate and decide about matters of collective concern."[1] And Arendt used this idea to criticize totalitarianism because it's antithetical to public debate and criminalizes criticism, etc.
To my own understanding, if we're following Arendt's way of thinking, and again I'll quote here because I think this captures it succinctly, "Public space refers to the activity of shared debate among plural human beings; this space and activity are maintained as long as opportunities exist for the gathering of citizens."[2]
I think by this definition, to participate in a public space does not necessarily need to mean: be outside, touching grass, participating in a march. Public space can very much be an online shared space where people engage in political debate. The internet did not exist for political debate and criticism of Nazi totalitarianism in Arendt's life and if it did, I don't think she would de-legitimize the political power or equality of those who use online public forums as a stand-in for their physical presence in the streets.
So sure, civil disobedience and and marches are excellent ways to reclaim public space (as in actual places we can physically occupy) but I would suspect that Arendt would see cyber disobedience and forum debate as authentic expressions of the political as well.
And even if I go the other way and say, sure, physical presence is necessary, then by Arendt's definition, if this space does not exist for someone, for whatever reason (physical, mental, etc.) it has lost its legitimacy because of those in power and citizens must try to reclaim that in whatever way they are able.
The author makes some more ungenerous claims about Arendt's neglect to understand that private things are political, etc. But I would like to say specifically,
Arendt failed to account for who is allowed in to the public space, of who’s in charge of the public.
Arendt's understanding and writing of the political is shaped on the fact that she, a Jewish woman, had to flee Germany because of who was allowed in the public space. I find it pretty repugnant to suggest that Arendt "failed to account" for this because I think she DOES account for it. It's the whole basis for her work.
I like the way you pointed this out. I'd go so far as to say that in almost every case, when a textual critic - and man, are undergrads susceptible to this - is going "aha! This famed thinker...
I like the way you pointed this out. I'd go so far as to say that in almost every case, when a textual critic - and man, are undergrads susceptible to this - is going "aha! This famed thinker failed to account for something very basic!", in almost every case it's because the critic doesn't understand the context/hasn't actually read the work in question in detail.
As someone who suffers from a severely debilitating chronic illness (ME/CFS with autoimmune small fiber neuropathy), there are several aspects of this article that I find deeply insulting to the...
Exemplary
As someone who suffers from a severely debilitating chronic illness (ME/CFS with autoimmune small fiber neuropathy), there are several aspects of this article that I find deeply insulting to the disabled. To wit:
Sick Woman Theory is for those who are faced with their vulnerability and unbearable fragility, every day, and so have to fight for their experience to be not only honored, but first made visible. For those who, in Audre Lorde’s words, were never meant to survive: because this world was built against their survival. It’s for my fellow spoonies, my fellow sick and crip crew. You know who you are, even if you’ve not been attached to a diagnosis: one of the aims of Sick Woman Theory is to resist the notion that one needs to be legitimated by an institution, so that they can try to fix you according to their terms. You don’t need to be fixed, my queens – it’s the world that needs the fixing.
The first sentence starts off okay - it is true that many disabilities (including my own) are invisible and there are challenges to living within the contradiction of my personal experience with the way I am perceived to others. But several other points really irked me. For instance, the world was not built against my survival - it was simply built for the survival of other, healthy people. It's not as though society maliciously conspires to bring down disabled people. Rather, when people fail to accommodate disability, it is because they are ignorant of it, which is far more forgivable. Perhaps to some extent, people are even willfully ignorant, but I think a lot of this is discomfort with the idea of disability, not malice. I can even understand this perspective - I don't like thinking about my disability either. It's depressing, painful, existentially unnerving. All of these are challenges that society should strive to surmount. But painting 'the world' as being somehow being 'against' disabled people is foolish and counterproductive.
Likewise the idea that disabled people do not need to be legitimated by an institution. I understand the struggle of my disability not being recognized by doctors - I have fought like hell to get a diagnosis and treatment. But to see this struggle and turn away from the concept of institutional legitimacy is an extreme 'sour grapes' argument. How else can I expect to make progress on my disease? Mere millions of dollars have been spent on ME/CFS research, and still we barely understand its pathophysiology, let alone any effective treatments. What is needed are the billions of dollars that have turned HIV from a death sentence to an inconvenience, that have developed effective treatment for countless cancers, etc. Who else could bring these resources to bear but an institution?
Perhaps it's because the author believes that 'I do not need to be fixed'. NUTS to that - if there is one thing I could wish to communicate to my peers, the medical establishment, the world, it is 'I need to be fixed'. This illness is a nightmare, and but it does not need to be that way. It can be treated, maybe even cured, but first it must be seen and understood. I can't pretend to understand how the author has come to the opinion that disability is the fault of society, but their essay is frankly damaging to the cause of the disabled.
This is the kind of fuel the right uses to paint the left as unhinged and I don’t blame them.
What if [all mental illness], in the Americas, at least, could be traced to histories of colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, and everyday segregation and isolation that haunt all of our lives, rather than to be biochemical imbalances?
This is the kind of fuel the right uses to paint the left as unhinged and I don’t blame them.
While I agree with your sentiment - that's a hell of a premise to throw out there without further explanation, making it an easy target - there is some rationale behind it. If you accept the...
While I agree with your sentiment - that's a hell of a premise to throw out there without further explanation, making it an easy target - there is some rationale behind it. If you accept the validity of mind-body connection it follows that the environment that shapes your mind can possibly influence your brain's health too (which does bring it back to biochemistry, but leave that aside for a second). Compound that with transgenerational trauma, (e.g. post-traumatic slave syndrome), and it's not the biggest reach in the world to consider that social systems of the day can impact the mental and physical health of people through successive generations. The exact impact on individuals is debatable, but I'm not totally opposed to the thought experiment.
The connection makes sense, but I think where the break happens is the way overbroad generalization to all mental illnesses and the, frankly, weird implication that only in the Americas does...
The connection makes sense, but I think where the break happens is the way overbroad generalization to all mental illnesses and the, frankly, weird implication that only in the Americas does society harbor baggage from colonialism, genocide, slavery, and so on.
I remember Barack Obama, in some important speech or other, characterized slavery as America's "original sin." At the time I thought it was a very apt metaphor, but it was just a metaphor. Takes like the author's seem to take that metaphor way too literally in ways I think are a bit of a reach.
I don't disagree, but even if the model is wrong, it can still be useful. My personal opinion though is that the US environment, on the whole, is perhaps uniquely toxic to its population through...
I don't disagree, but even if the model is wrong, it can still be useful. My personal opinion though is that the US environment, on the whole, is perhaps uniquely toxic to its population through the coincidence of so many factors that conclusive study on the root cause of mental illness will likely take decades longer than the same research in other countries. In fact, I'd bet that there's no one big bad but they all play a part and just compound each other terribly well here.
Compared to Denmark, perhaps, but... Compared to Sudan? Belarus? The DPRK? Qatar (for non-Qataris)? I don't mean this in a mean way, but your comment about america being uniquely toxic is a little...
the US environment is...uniquely toxic to it's population
Compared to Denmark, perhaps, but... Compared to Sudan? Belarus? The DPRK? Qatar (for non-Qataris)?
I don't mean this in a mean way, but your comment about america being uniquely toxic is a little indicative, maybe, of someone who's laser-focused on America's problems and maybe not thinking about what the world as a whole deals with.
Maybe I expressed it poorly; I'm focused on the sheer number of factors that would potentially erode, specifically, mental health, as opposed to the US having worse (or better) conditions for...
Maybe I expressed it poorly; I'm focused on the sheer number of factors that would potentially erode, specifically, mental health, as opposed to the US having worse (or better) conditions for survival or mortality. Every country has its issues, but if there's another that comes close in extending life expectancy while sabotaging quality of life, enlighten me.
I don't know, Japan? Simultaneously one of the safest and most socially harmonious countries while having horrifying suicide statistics. Mental illness is culturally dependent, and that can make...
I don't know, Japan? Simultaneously one of the safest and most socially harmonious countries while having horrifying suicide statistics. Mental illness is culturally dependent, and that can make even "simple" mental illnesses like depression hard to treat. If you want to understand Japan's unique issues, I can recommend some autobiographical works like "My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness" or even "No Longer Human", but my general point is the US isn't uniquely bad.
Every country and region is going to have a unique sociocultural heritage, so it's a bit presumptuous to say the US is particularly complex just because you're most familiar with America's problems.
Japan is a good example, but Japan is similarly unique! (talk about an oxymoron) You're right that mental illness is culturally dependent, and both Japan and the US are outliers in terms of how...
Japan is a good example, but Japan is similarly unique! (talk about an oxymoron)
You're right that mental illness is culturally dependent, and both Japan and the US are outliers in terms of how social expectations on the individual are destructively unbalanced, especially in the urban areas. If they weren't exceptional, you'd have reeled off 10 countries that qualified. Yes, every nation has its issues, but even if we subjectively disagree which is worse, they're all not in the same boat.
I'm not as singularly familiar with America's problems as you may think, as I have my own country to worry about.
I only gave the one in-depth example to prove the broader point. Here's a list of countries with a discussion on the unique challenges and pressures that different regions face:...
If they weren't exceptional, you'd have reeled off 10 countries that qualified.
I only gave the one in-depth example to prove the broader point. Here's a list of countries with a discussion on the unique challenges and pressures that different regions face:
Japan, South Korea, China.... if you'd prefer numbers, France and the US have nearly identical Disability Adjusted Life Year numbers per Capita. (United States at 573.38 per 10k in 2017, France at...
Japan, South Korea, China.... if you'd prefer numbers, France and the US have nearly identical Disability Adjusted Life Year numbers per Capita. (United States at 573.38 per 10k in 2017, France at 576.08). I'm sure there are other European countries in that same band, but when I saw France and the US were adjacent, I stopped looking.
Moreso than, say, Laos where unexploded ordinance from the bombings the US did in 70s still randomly goes off and kills kids or maims farm workers?
My personal opinion though is that the US environment, on the whole, is perhaps uniquely toxic to its population through the coincidence of so many factors that conclusive study on the root cause of mental illness will likely take decades longer than the same research in other countries.
Moreso than, say, Laos where unexploded ordinance from the bombings the US did in 70s still randomly goes off and kills kids or maims farm workers?
When they do that they're acting in bad faith. As I told a somewhat libertarian friend last year - after he was upset with a liberal girl for saying something thoughtless about capitalism - "It's...
the kind of fuel the right uses
When they do that they're acting in bad faith. As I told a somewhat libertarian friend last year - after he was upset with a liberal girl for saying something thoughtless about capitalism - "It's not a one dimensional thing. There's left vs. right, and then there's the 'dumbass motherfucker' dimension. Someone left or right leaning can be a dumbass motherfucker".
What they like to do is pick the stupidest people that also voted for Joe Biden and claim that's who makes up his base. But that's dishonest.
I’ve known a few women who had chronic pain conditions that were present together with depression and would consistently “politicize” any suggestion that their problems had a mental health...
Exemplary
I’ve known a few women who had chronic pain conditions that were present together with depression and would consistently “politicize” any suggestion that their problems had a mental health component. This foreclosed any possibility that they’d get help.
tells the story of a woman with fibromyalgia who was like “the dog who caught the car” in that she found the doctor who would give her intensive treatment that ultimately wound up sickening her much more and who also found “new age” approaches to her condition were also highly destructive, I think might be the best book I’ve seen on “sick woman syndrome”
Myself as someone who has suffered from sporadic chronic pain (which is definitely worsened by stress and negative emotions and certainly has contributed to depression) I’ve learned that you have to treat it as real sometimes and not real other times. In the case of acute pain, say a broken leg, you very much have to avoid activities that cause pain otherwise you won’t heal. In the case of chronic pain there is either no lesion or a lesion that will neither heal not get worse (e.g. a slightly damaged sensory nerve.). In a situation like that it can be deadly to avoid activities that cause pain because what happens is you get depressed because you’re not doing anything, you get more sensitive to the pain, you do less, etc.
Once more it is not the message that that kind of person wants to hear but there is very much a preoccupation with the self that is part of that condition. From a “religious” perspective, however, the self and the body are ashes in the end and if that is how you find meaning you are going to suffer. I think of Goethe’s Faust where Faust goes through all sorts of misadventures with the devil that don’t satisfy him and where he finds satisfaction (and salvation) through serving others.
(I had “neck pain”, “shoulder pain”, “upper back pain” for decades and finally had it focalize to my jaw when my dentist told me to wear a bite guard and I did. I did try puréing all my food for a few months and it seemed to help but more importantly at the time I was going through a “midlife crisis” and having misadventures a bit like those of Herr Faust. Today I have some days when I feel a nagging pain in my jaw but often I forget I have a problem. Right now I can go looking and find it feels a touch puffy and inflamed right now but it doesn’t stop me from going ahead with my day.)
As for the genderedness of the problem I’ll suggest that men who have condition of those sort which becomes all consuming are under intense pressure to “man up” and if they don’t are likely to face violence either from others or themselves.
I think I'm misunderstanding what you say here, - pain having different forms (chronic and acute; musculoskeletal, neuropathic, inflammatory; etc etc) and different treatments doesn't mean some...
I’ve learned that you have to treat it as real sometimes and not real other times. In the case of acute pain, say a broken leg, you very much have to avoid activities that cause pain otherwise you won’t heal. In the case of chronic pain there is either no lesion or a lesion that will neither heal not get worse (e.g. a slightly damaged sensory nerve.). In a situation like that it can be deadly to avoid activities that cause pain because what happens is you get depressed because you’re not doing anything, you get more sensitive to the pain, you do less, etc.
I think I'm misunderstanding what you say here, - pain having different forms (chronic and acute; musculoskeletal, neuropathic, inflammatory; etc etc) and different treatments doesn't mean some pain is real and some pain is "in your head" -- all pain is real, all pain is in your head. Some pain doesn't have an easy to see physical cause, but that's still real pain.
Their wording indicates to me not that some pain is real and other pain isn't, but that some should be treated (by the person experiencing it) as if it were not real. Their example of the broken...
Their wording indicates to me not that some pain is real and other pain isn't, but that some should be treated (by the person experiencing it) as if it were not real. Their example of the broken leg, that sounds be treated as real because ignoring the pain would cause you to aggravate the damage and disrupt healing. Other pain (in particular chronic pain) may sometimes be delt with more effectively by framing it mentally as "not real" so that they can find the mental energy to go do the other things that will prevent their mental and emotional health from spiraling downward.
Just to reaffirm, psychosomatic conditions are extremely real in the brain! They're unique and respond to very different treatments that are still being investigated. Ketamine and shrooms have...
Just to reaffirm, psychosomatic conditions are extremely real in the brain! They're unique and respond to very different treatments that are still being investigated. Ketamine and shrooms have shown promise in treating some chronic psychosomatic conditions, so there can definitely be a medical component a doctor can help with.
-- The concept of invisible disability comes to mind. They are not so much invisible as just more easily ignored. Disability becomes invisible when your spaces don't allow our presence, when your...
Psychologists have constructed a myth – that somewhere there exists some state of health which is the norm, meaning that most people presumably are in that state, and those who are anxious, depressed, neurotic, distressed, or generally unhappy are deviant.
--
The Sick Woman is a disabled person who couldn’t go to the lecture on disability rights because it was held in a venue without accessibility.
The concept of invisible disability comes to mind. They are not so much invisible as just more easily ignored. Disability becomes invisible when your spaces don't allow our presence, when your activities don't accommodate our participation, when your solution is simply to fix us because you believed we are just wrong.
I knew about the reality women faced when seeking medical treatment before, but the way it was framed resonated with me even more this time. We can be oppressed in so many different ways that we get separated and forget how much society can equalize us by their mistreatment. There are so many ways of oppresing our peers that we should be vigilante not to be contributing to the wrong movement. And silencing is the sin on the menu today.
Silencing is not hearing one's story, and if we believe everyone should have a voice, we need to go after those who can't speak or find it difficult to do so instead of expecting them to show up. Make spreading other people stories part of your political acts, make them visible in the spaces you visit, in the spaces you want them to visit.
Oh look, a landmine. I wonder what will happen when I'll step on it?
I can foresee this comment to attract a lot of criticism and accusations of various bad things. But this is one of the cases where you just have to reply to something, you know?
I disagree with a lot that this essay states. It has quite a few statements that are just (remember the CoC, remember the CoC, …) completely unfounded in reality.
Since this is ~health I'll take the luxury to rely on factual evidence for statements and theses. Not nebulous concepts and statements that just don't follow reality.
I could dissect almost every paragraph of this essay to explain every issue I have with it, but since I probably should get at least some work done today, I'll limit myself to the most egregious ones. But first things first: the author very correctly identifies a lot of issues regarding healthcare and politics in general in the US. My issues are almost exclusively with the conclusions they come to and the reasoning they use to get there.
Let's start with them constantly mixing up different definitions of words that each rely on their own context to actually apply. Prime example would be:
I can't decide on what to tackle here. The semantic fact that "any [public] actions" is not the same as "only public actions", meaning that private actions could thus also theoretically be political (necessary vs. sufficient conditions); The fact that the author themself disagrees with this definition, stating "everything you do in private is political", and yet still using the disagreed with definition in order to construct arguments for their own point (as weak as both the arguments or the point may be); Stating something can only be racist if it is also political, potentially using the systemic definition of racism, in which case you'd also need to use the definition of "political" that applies in that context (which I'd guess would be any action performed by someone in a position of power, maybe?).
Or how about truly staggering statement of:
Really? You want to state that all mental illnesses (in the Americas) stems from colonialism, genocide, slavery, etc.? Even dementia/Alzheimers? Schizophrenia? ADHD? Postpartum depression? Agoraphobia? This is either one of the more impressive cases of American Exceptionalism I've seen in a while, a very thoughtless statement, or another case of misused definitions (in case probably something like "only those diagnosis that could possibly be caused by colonialism, genocide, slavery, legal exclusion, etc. are actual mental illnesses). Readers choice.
I'll finish with this (remember the CoC, remember the CoC, …) unique criticism of capitalism:
No it doesn't? Completely disregarding everything else about this section of the essay (including the attempt of assuming that because a "default" exists, everything else must adhere to that default and anything that doesn't is hence bad), the assertion that because state A is considered the "norm", any deviation from that norm is thus inherently temporary, just doesn’t make sense. If I set the norm that all coffee cups must be non-leaking, and someone then punches a hole into mine, that doesn't mean that the state of leaky-ness is thus only temporary because it's a bad, non default state. That cup will keep leaking.
The author tries to argue that due to capitalism all illnesses are seen as temporary. They also just ignore at that point the existence of the entire category of chronic illnesses that they themself have brought up earlier.
As I said at the beginning, I could go on until I've gone through almost every paragraph of this essay, probably writing an entire essay in itself.
Suffice to say for now that to me, the original essay is barely more than a textual gish-gallop that uses actual problems in the US to come to barely defined and sometimes contradictory conclusions.
Edit: Improved some bad grammar and corrected an unintentionally incorrect pronoun. That one really shouldn't have happened.
So, I agree with your point here. I just wanted to mention that "mental illness is not real, and it's a result of X", where X is "oppression of women"[1] or "big pharma"[2] or "psychiatry"[3] is a significant fringe opinion that gets a lot of media attention, and some of the prominent authors get posted to Tildes.
On one side you have most people who understand mental illness has complex bio-psycho-social causes, and that a good support package needs to address all of these. And on the other you have vocal fringe cranks who for some reason are getting lots of attention.
[1] Dr Jess Taylor (who is a psychologist, but not a clinical psychologist)
[2] A variety of psychologists in the UK hold this opinion
[3] See eg the Power, Threat, Meaning Framework which is a mostly terrible attempt to reframe all mental illness as a reaction to life.
Could you expand a little on this point, or rather rephrase it a bit, because right now I'm not sure how an opinion can be both significant and fringe at the same time.
Do you mean it is a very fringe opinion or a very big idea for the fringe of the relevant ideological movement? Or something else entirely I just missed?
“significant” in that it gets a lot of lay support, “fringe” in that there is no real evidence for it, practitioners don’t take it seriously.
Consider for instance anti-vax ideas on the right or an extreme version of “the social model of disability” on the left.
As much as somebody like this can have grievances with the American health care system (don’t we all when the bill comes due?) it’s also true that there are “heavy consumers” of non-psychiatric care because of psychiatric issues. For instance “panic disorder” was discovered during research into heavy consumers of emergency services: a person with panic disorder may present with chest pains and other difficult to diagnose symptoms caused by stress (note you can’t just diagnose a heart attack with an EKG but you have draw blood and wait for hours)
There is a definite “counter-transference” where a patient can have a deleterious mental effect on a participant, most of all in psychiatry and in other medicine. It is true that some people don’t get attention they require but there are also people who ask for more out of medical practitioners than they can possibly give and they are treated pretty sharply because it comes at the expense of the practitioner and the other patients. The idea “the personal is political” can be particularly dangerous because you’d have the same issues in any kind of system (e.g. something like the UK NHS which is free at point of service but rationed) unless you were really unfortunate and “cost was no object” and you had a private doctor like Michael Jackson.
Significant == gets lots of money and attention, is promoted by large organisations representing a profession (eg, the British Psychological Society), is promoted in mainstream media
Fringe == it's still bollocks.
I would call Qanon significant but fringe.
Hmm it's 5000 words long, and I'm not very impressed by the linked article, based on your chosen excerpts.....
What do you think the author is trying to say, albeit poorly, that DOES have a good point?
Edit: clarification in bold. I dun goofed and thank you for being kind and patient
I am sorry, but this comes across as extremely.. I don't know.. entitled, haughty, arrogant?
Why don't you show us your chosen excerpts, so you may impress us by your wisdom, and knowledge?
To your second point, I don't think @Landhund sees any redeeming qualities in the article.
edit: English is hard. Typing, too.
It's totally possible that I'm the one who misinterpreted their comment, but my reading of it was more along the lines of "this is a really long article and from the excerpts here I don't think it's worth the time to read it all".
As in, they're not complaining that Landhund chose bad excerpts that don't represent the article well, but simply saying that based on them, the article isn't worth the reading time.
I'm torn on this myself as well. Originally I interpreted the original comment the same way @zielperson did and was about to write a (potentially snarky) reply (remember the CoC, …) with that in mind. But having read your reply just now I'm not sure which interpretation is more accurate, both fit quite well...
I'll just chose the more generous one: @chocobean, I think the only redeeming quality of this essay is that the author correctly shows a few ways in which the american social and healthcare systems are utterly broken and bare functioning, leading to completely preventable suffering on a scale that is just unthinkable in most wealthy nations, especially those in Europe. (We are far from perfect, but at least we don't have health statistics that make a warzone blush.)
But that is no reason to read that text, there are much better, more coherent, more factual and less politically and emotionally charged and biased sources for that.
Oh praises to you and @csos95 and @Cannonball, and to the charitable interpretation!
Indeed that was what I meant, that, having seen the quality of the writing from your excerpts, the article linked does seem rather incoherent and erh, problematic. I was thinking I should read it anyway before commenting but, I guess I was acting spoiled and entitled, I thought maybe if I was already going in with a bias, then maybe I would miss any good points made.
I wasn't doing my homework and I wasn't clear and polite when asking to copy yours. My sincere apologies to all of you, and thank you as well.
Believe me, you haven't missed much not reading the essay. Actually, no, that's not correct... You haven't missed much of value not reading it. I've certainly experienced quite the selection of colorful emotions reading it (although no doubt not as expansive, intense or colorful as the ones the author experiences due their rather unfortunate list of mental disorders), but it's not an experience I'd necessarily recommend to other people.
Near the end I had to actually force myself to stop skipping through the barely coherent one-sentence paragraphs that have taken over the authors writing style at that point.
I think they're just asking if there are actually any redeeming qualities in the article since Landhund seems to have read it thoroughly. I took "not very impressed by your chosen excerpts" as a jab at the poor quality article, not Landhund's choices.
I generally agree with you. This is the point where I spun around and headed back home (tildes.net):
Jesus Christ. It kind of paints all of the proceeding text as word salad - something to be purged from my mind.
I am not the most well-read on political philosophy but I would like to say that based on my interpretation of Arendt and what is stated in this article...
I don't particularly get the impression that the author understands Arendt either or they are being deliberately(?) ungenerous in their interpretation. Arendt does not say that it is necessary to be present in public in order to be political but rather, "...politics finds its authentic expression whenever citizens gather together in a public space to deliberate and decide about matters of collective concern."[1] And Arendt used this idea to criticize totalitarianism because it's antithetical to public debate and criminalizes criticism, etc.
To my own understanding, if we're following Arendt's way of thinking, and again I'll quote here because I think this captures it succinctly, "Public space refers to the activity of shared debate among plural human beings; this space and activity are maintained as long as opportunities exist for the gathering of citizens."[2]
I think by this definition, to participate in a public space does not necessarily need to mean: be outside, touching grass, participating in a march. Public space can very much be an online shared space where people engage in political debate. The internet did not exist for political debate and criticism of Nazi totalitarianism in Arendt's life and if it did, I don't think she would de-legitimize the political power or equality of those who use online public forums as a stand-in for their physical presence in the streets.
So sure, civil disobedience and and marches are excellent ways to reclaim public space (as in actual places we can physically occupy) but I would suspect that Arendt would see cyber disobedience and forum debate as authentic expressions of the political as well.
And even if I go the other way and say, sure, physical presence is necessary, then by Arendt's definition, if this space does not exist for someone, for whatever reason (physical, mental, etc.) it has lost its legitimacy because of those in power and citizens must try to reclaim that in whatever way they are able.
The author makes some more ungenerous claims about Arendt's neglect to understand that private things are political, etc. But I would like to say specifically,
Arendt's understanding and writing of the political is shaped on the fact that she, a Jewish woman, had to flee Germany because of who was allowed in the public space. I find it pretty repugnant to suggest that Arendt "failed to account" for this because I think she DOES account for it. It's the whole basis for her work.
I like the way you pointed this out. I'd go so far as to say that in almost every case, when a textual critic - and man, are undergrads susceptible to this - is going "aha! This famed thinker failed to account for something very basic!", in almost every case it's because the critic doesn't understand the context/hasn't actually read the work in question in detail.
As someone who suffers from a severely debilitating chronic illness (ME/CFS with autoimmune small fiber neuropathy), there are several aspects of this article that I find deeply insulting to the disabled. To wit:
The first sentence starts off okay - it is true that many disabilities (including my own) are invisible and there are challenges to living within the contradiction of my personal experience with the way I am perceived to others. But several other points really irked me. For instance, the world was not built against my survival - it was simply built for the survival of other, healthy people. It's not as though society maliciously conspires to bring down disabled people. Rather, when people fail to accommodate disability, it is because they are ignorant of it, which is far more forgivable. Perhaps to some extent, people are even willfully ignorant, but I think a lot of this is discomfort with the idea of disability, not malice. I can even understand this perspective - I don't like thinking about my disability either. It's depressing, painful, existentially unnerving. All of these are challenges that society should strive to surmount. But painting 'the world' as being somehow being 'against' disabled people is foolish and counterproductive.
Likewise the idea that disabled people do not need to be legitimated by an institution. I understand the struggle of my disability not being recognized by doctors - I have fought like hell to get a diagnosis and treatment. But to see this struggle and turn away from the concept of institutional legitimacy is an extreme 'sour grapes' argument. How else can I expect to make progress on my disease? Mere millions of dollars have been spent on ME/CFS research, and still we barely understand its pathophysiology, let alone any effective treatments. What is needed are the billions of dollars that have turned HIV from a death sentence to an inconvenience, that have developed effective treatment for countless cancers, etc. Who else could bring these resources to bear but an institution?
Perhaps it's because the author believes that 'I do not need to be fixed'. NUTS to that - if there is one thing I could wish to communicate to my peers, the medical establishment, the world, it is 'I need to be fixed'. This illness is a nightmare, and but it does not need to be that way. It can be treated, maybe even cured, but first it must be seen and understood. I can't pretend to understand how the author has come to the opinion that disability is the fault of society, but their essay is frankly damaging to the cause of the disabled.
This is the kind of fuel the right uses to paint the left as unhinged and I don’t blame them.
While I agree with your sentiment - that's a hell of a premise to throw out there without further explanation, making it an easy target - there is some rationale behind it. If you accept the validity of mind-body connection it follows that the environment that shapes your mind can possibly influence your brain's health too (which does bring it back to biochemistry, but leave that aside for a second). Compound that with transgenerational trauma, (e.g. post-traumatic slave syndrome), and it's not the biggest reach in the world to consider that social systems of the day can impact the mental and physical health of people through successive generations. The exact impact on individuals is debatable, but I'm not totally opposed to the thought experiment.
The connection makes sense, but I think where the break happens is the way overbroad generalization to all mental illnesses and the, frankly, weird implication that only in the Americas does society harbor baggage from colonialism, genocide, slavery, and so on.
I remember Barack Obama, in some important speech or other, characterized slavery as America's "original sin." At the time I thought it was a very apt metaphor, but it was just a metaphor. Takes like the author's seem to take that metaphor way too literally in ways I think are a bit of a reach.
I don't disagree, but even if the model is wrong, it can still be useful. My personal opinion though is that the US environment, on the whole, is perhaps uniquely toxic to its population through the coincidence of so many factors that conclusive study on the root cause of mental illness will likely take decades longer than the same research in other countries. In fact, I'd bet that there's no one big bad but they all play a part and just compound each other terribly well here.
Compared to Denmark, perhaps, but... Compared to Sudan? Belarus? The DPRK? Qatar (for non-Qataris)?
I don't mean this in a mean way, but your comment about america being uniquely toxic is a little indicative, maybe, of someone who's laser-focused on America's problems and maybe not thinking about what the world as a whole deals with.
Maybe I expressed it poorly; I'm focused on the sheer number of factors that would potentially erode, specifically, mental health, as opposed to the US having worse (or better) conditions for survival or mortality. Every country has its issues, but if there's another that comes close in extending life expectancy while sabotaging quality of life, enlighten me.
I don't know, Japan? Simultaneously one of the safest and most socially harmonious countries while having horrifying suicide statistics. Mental illness is culturally dependent, and that can make even "simple" mental illnesses like depression hard to treat. If you want to understand Japan's unique issues, I can recommend some autobiographical works like "My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness" or even "No Longer Human", but my general point is the US isn't uniquely bad.
Every country and region is going to have a unique sociocultural heritage, so it's a bit presumptuous to say the US is particularly complex just because you're most familiar with America's problems.
Japan is a good example, but Japan is similarly unique! (talk about an oxymoron)
You're right that mental illness is culturally dependent, and both Japan and the US are outliers in terms of how social expectations on the individual are destructively unbalanced, especially in the urban areas. If they weren't exceptional, you'd have reeled off 10 countries that qualified. Yes, every nation has its issues, but even if we subjectively disagree which is worse, they're all not in the same boat.
I'm not as singularly familiar with America's problems as you may think, as I have my own country to worry about.
I only gave the one in-depth example to prove the broader point. Here's a list of countries with a discussion on the unique challenges and pressures that different regions face:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_mental_health#Mental_health_by_country
It's worth noting that every country in South America has disabling mental illnesses at the same rate as the US or worse.
Japan, South Korea, China.... if you'd prefer numbers, France and the US have nearly identical Disability Adjusted Life Year numbers per Capita. (United States at 573.38 per 10k in 2017, France at 576.08). I'm sure there are other European countries in that same band, but when I saw France and the US were adjacent, I stopped looking.
Moreso than, say, Laos where unexploded ordinance from the bombings the US did in 70s still randomly goes off and kills kids or maims farm workers?
When they do that they're acting in bad faith. As I told a somewhat libertarian friend last year - after he was upset with a liberal girl for saying something thoughtless about capitalism - "It's not a one dimensional thing. There's left vs. right, and then there's the 'dumbass motherfucker' dimension. Someone left or right leaning can be a dumbass motherfucker".
What they like to do is pick the stupidest people that also voted for Joe Biden and claim that's who makes up his base. But that's dishonest.
Yeah, but to be fair, they could do that with the likely-not-stupid author of this essay.
I’ve known a few women who had chronic pain conditions that were present together with depression and would consistently “politicize” any suggestion that their problems had a mental health component. This foreclosed any possibility that they’d get help.
This excellent book
https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520223981/under-the-medical-gaze
tells the story of a woman with fibromyalgia who was like “the dog who caught the car” in that she found the doctor who would give her intensive treatment that ultimately wound up sickening her much more and who also found “new age” approaches to her condition were also highly destructive, I think might be the best book I’ve seen on “sick woman syndrome”
Myself as someone who has suffered from sporadic chronic pain (which is definitely worsened by stress and negative emotions and certainly has contributed to depression) I’ve learned that you have to treat it as real sometimes and not real other times. In the case of acute pain, say a broken leg, you very much have to avoid activities that cause pain otherwise you won’t heal. In the case of chronic pain there is either no lesion or a lesion that will neither heal not get worse (e.g. a slightly damaged sensory nerve.). In a situation like that it can be deadly to avoid activities that cause pain because what happens is you get depressed because you’re not doing anything, you get more sensitive to the pain, you do less, etc.
Once more it is not the message that that kind of person wants to hear but there is very much a preoccupation with the self that is part of that condition. From a “religious” perspective, however, the self and the body are ashes in the end and if that is how you find meaning you are going to suffer. I think of Goethe’s Faust where Faust goes through all sorts of misadventures with the devil that don’t satisfy him and where he finds satisfaction (and salvation) through serving others.
(I had “neck pain”, “shoulder pain”, “upper back pain” for decades and finally had it focalize to my jaw when my dentist told me to wear a bite guard and I did. I did try puréing all my food for a few months and it seemed to help but more importantly at the time I was going through a “midlife crisis” and having misadventures a bit like those of Herr Faust. Today I have some days when I feel a nagging pain in my jaw but often I forget I have a problem. Right now I can go looking and find it feels a touch puffy and inflamed right now but it doesn’t stop me from going ahead with my day.)
As for the genderedness of the problem I’ll suggest that men who have condition of those sort which becomes all consuming are under intense pressure to “man up” and if they don’t are likely to face violence either from others or themselves.
I think I'm misunderstanding what you say here, - pain having different forms (chronic and acute; musculoskeletal, neuropathic, inflammatory; etc etc) and different treatments doesn't mean some pain is real and some pain is "in your head" -- all pain is real, all pain is in your head. Some pain doesn't have an easy to see physical cause, but that's still real pain.
Their wording indicates to me not that some pain is real and other pain isn't, but that some should be treated (by the person experiencing it) as if it were not real. Their example of the broken leg, that sounds be treated as real because ignoring the pain would cause you to aggravate the damage and disrupt healing. Other pain (in particular chronic pain) may sometimes be delt with more effectively by framing it mentally as "not real" so that they can find the mental energy to go do the other things that will prevent their mental and emotional health from spiraling downward.
Just to reaffirm, psychosomatic conditions are extremely real in the brain! They're unique and respond to very different treatments that are still being investigated. Ketamine and shrooms have shown promise in treating some chronic psychosomatic conditions, so there can definitely be a medical component a doctor can help with.
--
The concept of invisible disability comes to mind. They are not so much invisible as just more easily ignored. Disability becomes invisible when your spaces don't allow our presence, when your activities don't accommodate our participation, when your solution is simply to fix us because you believed we are just wrong.
I knew about the reality women faced when seeking medical treatment before, but the way it was framed resonated with me even more this time. We can be oppressed in so many different ways that we get separated and forget how much society can equalize us by their mistreatment. There are so many ways of oppresing our peers that we should be vigilante not to be contributing to the wrong movement. And silencing is the sin on the menu today.
Silencing is not hearing one's story, and if we believe everyone should have a voice, we need to go after those who can't speak or find it difficult to do so instead of expecting them to show up. Make spreading other people stories part of your political acts, make them visible in the spaces you visit, in the spaces you want them to visit.
A quick note, and hopefully helpful to others as this article is discussed, the author is genderqueer and uses they/them pronouns :)