As someone with diagnosed mental illness and a degree in Psychology, I feel I can add something to this discussion.
My personal experience growing up was difficult. As a middle age adult, I have developed skills that make my life seem pretty normal. I no longer need psychiatric medication. One thing I tell my kids that I didn't understand when I was young is, much of what you feel and experience is the human condition. We all feel depressed, anxious, behave neurotically at times etc.. it's a matter of degree. Does it keep you from having normal relationships, a job, being financially responsible? The problem with this is there are many people I have worked with or known who couldn't keep relationship's or a job but were not mentally ill.
I would have been diagnosed on the spectrum had been born a couple decades later. My issues were blamed on being left handed, being "right brained".
I think when we live in a society where we have time to spend on social media sharing our mental health challenges in lieu of just trying to find food and shelter, it's a sign of advancement.
I am also hopeful that the current pattern of glorifying illness and sympathy seeking behavior will diminish as we all become comfortable talking about it.
It's true. Certain circles of tumblr, tiktok, and twitter have made it "fashionable" to have mental disorders among themselves in an audience for victim points. (The uncharitable side of me would add "because physical disorders aren't so easily faked".)
This obviously does not negate my sympathy for those with the real disorders - I have some as well. It's enraging to see the real stuff be treated so lightly though.
Agreed. It also reminded me of the book Illness as Metaphor by Susan Sontag. In the essay she talks about the social perception and behaviors around illness and how those create real barriers to overcoming and curing disease. Specifically, the she writes about how consumption was at one time fashionable due to the gaunt physique and blasé attitude TB would often cause.
It not only deters healing, it makes people act ill when they are not. Social media is filled with people pretending to be sick. If you want some of the most blatant see [0] the disability there isn't three broken ribs requiring a ventilator.
Reminds me of Luis the 14th and his anal fistula [1]. Courtiers started faking anal fistulas after the king had an operation to remove his. It got to the point where they would get treatment for them, or fake getting the treatment, regardless of health. This was not a simple operation at the time. Chances of death were high, to the point where the first was performed on a condemned criminal who was pardoned if he survived.
> Around the Meiji Restoration, when everyone was obsessed with how great foreign stuff was, Japanese medical students went to Germany, learned psychiatry, came back to Japan, and told everyone they were neurasthenic. Being neurasthenic became first a fashion, then a class marker. The idea was that neurasthenics were people who were working too hard (good, admirable), and who were so smart and doing so much furious intellectual activity that it was straining their nerves (impressive). Also, they were probably sensitive souls too pure for this world. The most embarrassing extreme of this happened in 1903, when some photogenic Japanese youth carved a poem in a tree, went to a beautiful waterfall, and leapt to his death. Everyone praised him for how sensitive and artistic and neurasthenic this was, and turned him into a posthumous national hero. Meanwhile, “in 1902 an article reported that fully one-third of patients visiting hospitals for consultations were suffering from the new disease.”
> Eventually Japanese psychiatrists got fed up, and started announcing that actually neurasthenia sucked and you should not have it. From a 1906 Japanese neurology journal:
>> These days, young students talk about such stuff as “the philosophy of life”. They confront important and profound problems of life, are defeated, and develop neurasthenia. Those who jump off a waterfall or throw themselves in front of a train are weak-minded. They do not have a strong mental constitution and develop mental illness, dying in the end. How useless they are! Such weak-minded people would only cause harm even if they remained alive.
> Finally everyone struck a compromise and agreed that most of the lower-class patients weren’t real neurasthenics (hard-working, intelligent, sensitive, admirable), but had a similar condition, imitating the symptoms of neurasthenia, based on being too weak and pathetic to cope. This seemed to do the trick, and people stopped coming to the hospital with neurasthenia symptoms. Watters writes:
>> Looking back on the debate, it seems as if acceptance of neurasthenia had been so successful that psychiatrists felt obligated to restigmatize this mental disorder in hopes of limiting its adoption. By the end of World War II the diagnosis had almost completely gone out of style among both psychiatrists and the population at large.
While the placebo effect definitely does exist, I do wonder if a sense of agency (i.e. having the sense of control over your sickness) also has a similar positive effect?
The reason I ask is I've read many books about mental health over the last couple years. The more modern ones are all about acceptance and wearing them as a badge of honor. The timeless ones tend to talk about overcoming/controlling them by having a sense of agency.
I'm not particularly proud or fond of wearing my problems as an identity. I think thoughts are more powerful than we believe. Sure we should absolutely talk about them openly, but how many people make themselves more sick because of their thoughts? I found myself in this pattern for awhile because I instilled the identity that I was sick.
We all face the vicissitudes of the human condition. We all get to choose how we perceive them.
This seems like an example of taking the giant ocean of people that is Twitter and Tiktok and pretending even 100 crazy people in a population of literally billions represents a "trend" or societal phenomenon.
One might hypothesize that the most active users of Twitter might not be the most representative of the greater population, even...
However, any idea along the lines of "people need help, not acceptance" needs to be very carefully discussed, because in the world I grew up in, you didn't get help or acceptance: you got punishment, you got shame, you even sometimes got violence as "treatment."
A lot of people out there who will latch onto anything telling them they don't need to be accepting of difference.
You’ve either not interacted with the younger generations enough or you haven’t noticed it yet, there is an alarming number of people who claim to have some form of disability. And for a huge percentage of them, that’s their personality. Finding people with actual problems that keep it to themselves and not use it as a way to gain advantages in life is becoming harder. Though I will admit, I am largely talking about urban Americans, i am not sure about the rural america. The point being, it’s more than a sample size of 100 tiktokers.
The placebo effect to my knowledge has been demonstrably shown powerful enough even to shrink cancer tumors, so why would such a question even be posed at this point? We are just beginning to understand the mind body connection, but it's clear that negativity doesn't help much more than getting one's self to an actual doctor.
> Placebos won't lower your cholesterol or shrink a tumor. Instead, placebos work on symptoms modulated by the brain, like the perception of pain. "Placebos may make you feel better, but they will not cure you," says Kaptchuk.
[+] [-] NullIsland|3 years ago|reply
I would have been diagnosed on the spectrum had been born a couple decades later. My issues were blamed on being left handed, being "right brained".
I think when we live in a society where we have time to spend on social media sharing our mental health challenges in lieu of just trying to find food and shelter, it's a sign of advancement. I am also hopeful that the current pattern of glorifying illness and sympathy seeking behavior will diminish as we all become comfortable talking about it.
[+] [-] Waterluvian|3 years ago|reply
“…“the gentrification of disability,” how sickness became chic…“
is quite something.
[+] [-] kradeelav|3 years ago|reply
This obviously does not negate my sympathy for those with the real disorders - I have some as well. It's enraging to see the real stuff be treated so lightly though.
[+] [-] cpsempek|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diogenes_of_ak|3 years ago|reply
I’ll get better or die trying, but there’s a lot of confusion as to what all this means by both those well meaning and those who are assholes.
[+] [-] TameAntelope|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaaaaaaaata|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrown_22|3 years ago|reply
Reminds me of Luis the 14th and his anal fistula [1]. Courtiers started faking anal fistulas after the king had an operation to remove his. It got to the point where they would get treatment for them, or fake getting the treatment, regardless of health. This was not a simple operation at the time. Chances of death were high, to the point where the first was performed on a condemned criminal who was pardoned if he survived.
[0] https://www.insider.com/who-is-youtube-star-nikocado-avocado...
[1] https://tidsskriftet.no/2016/08/sun-kings-anal-fistula
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|3 years ago|reply
> Around the Meiji Restoration, when everyone was obsessed with how great foreign stuff was, Japanese medical students went to Germany, learned psychiatry, came back to Japan, and told everyone they were neurasthenic. Being neurasthenic became first a fashion, then a class marker. The idea was that neurasthenics were people who were working too hard (good, admirable), and who were so smart and doing so much furious intellectual activity that it was straining their nerves (impressive). Also, they were probably sensitive souls too pure for this world. The most embarrassing extreme of this happened in 1903, when some photogenic Japanese youth carved a poem in a tree, went to a beautiful waterfall, and leapt to his death. Everyone praised him for how sensitive and artistic and neurasthenic this was, and turned him into a posthumous national hero. Meanwhile, “in 1902 an article reported that fully one-third of patients visiting hospitals for consultations were suffering from the new disease.”
> Eventually Japanese psychiatrists got fed up, and started announcing that actually neurasthenia sucked and you should not have it. From a 1906 Japanese neurology journal:
>> These days, young students talk about such stuff as “the philosophy of life”. They confront important and profound problems of life, are defeated, and develop neurasthenia. Those who jump off a waterfall or throw themselves in front of a train are weak-minded. They do not have a strong mental constitution and develop mental illness, dying in the end. How useless they are! Such weak-minded people would only cause harm even if they remained alive.
> Finally everyone struck a compromise and agreed that most of the lower-class patients weren’t real neurasthenics (hard-working, intelligent, sensitive, admirable), but had a similar condition, imitating the symptoms of neurasthenia, based on being too weak and pathetic to cope. This seemed to do the trick, and people stopped coming to the hospital with neurasthenia symptoms. Watters writes:
>> Looking back on the debate, it seems as if acceptance of neurasthenia had been so successful that psychiatrists felt obligated to restigmatize this mental disorder in hopes of limiting its adoption. By the end of World War II the diagnosis had almost completely gone out of style among both psychiatrists and the population at large.
> He who has ears to hear, let him listen.
Glorifying illness causes a lot of harm.
[+] [-] thenerdhead|3 years ago|reply
The reason I ask is I've read many books about mental health over the last couple years. The more modern ones are all about acceptance and wearing them as a badge of honor. The timeless ones tend to talk about overcoming/controlling them by having a sense of agency.
I'm not particularly proud or fond of wearing my problems as an identity. I think thoughts are more powerful than we believe. Sure we should absolutely talk about them openly, but how many people make themselves more sick because of their thoughts? I found myself in this pattern for awhile because I instilled the identity that I was sick.
We all face the vicissitudes of the human condition. We all get to choose how we perceive them.
[+] [-] ineptech|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XorNot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] majormajor|3 years ago|reply
However, any idea along the lines of "people need help, not acceptance" needs to be very carefully discussed, because in the world I grew up in, you didn't get help or acceptance: you got punishment, you got shame, you even sometimes got violence as "treatment."
A lot of people out there who will latch onto anything telling them they don't need to be accepting of difference.
[+] [-] darth_avocado|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrange|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkoberger|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] np_tedious|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lr4444lr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TameAntelope|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-of-th...
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aaron695|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] KerrAvon|3 years ago|reply