I was wandering around the web the other day and a picture caught my eye. It was an officer in the United States military and the message included that it was ok for men to admit they are having problems with depression. This is an amazing campaign and I believe and hope in the long run it is going to open the doors to a lot of men looking for treatment both from what they saw and dealt with during conflict and in their return back to the USA. The only problem I have is this campaign was started in 2007 and not decades earlier.

As a young boy you are taught that men are tough, strong and keep their emotions to themselves or else others will see them as weak. This message is taught by the parents, media and then society reinforces it. So when a man is hit by a turmoil of emotions instead of turning for help he tries to deal with it on his own and depending on the severity of the depression may very well decide his future. Instead of going to his doctor he begins to drink or use drugs to nullify the emotions that he is fighting to get buried which may eventually turn into an addiction but in a way that is okay as society sees men who abuse substances in a lot nicer light then those with mental issues even though the two go hand in hand in a very high percentage. Now this man be a functioning addict but what happens when his issues continue to build to the point where he loses his job, his family, his home and finds himself on the street panning for loose change. What happens when this man is tired of starving and freezing so decides to grab a gun to rob a bank or a little old lady. Now he is sitting in a jail cell with no alternate substance to cover his demons so the depression is very apparent ands looks unbeatable. The man has lost his family, friends, material possessions and suicide is a very attractive option when you have nothing left and you want the pain to end. Another jailhouse suicide. Who is at fault? The mental illness definitely holds some responsibility but what about the stigma that led to the decision to follow the wrong path? What would the story be if the man felt comfortable and did not worry whether or not society was going to look down at him so he sought treatment right away. Chances are his story would continue to be written instead of a premature end. The new military campaign is a wonderful act I just wished it started a long time ago.

Dealing with the Borderline Personality Disorder stigma is harder then the actual disorder for you find yourself constantly telling people that you can not sum up everyone with BPD with a simple sentence or assumption. Stigma with this disorder is similar to playing telephone in grade school, one person whispers a sentence in the person who is next to him/her ear then that person passes it along until you reach the end and find out the original message has been so distorted it is difficult to recognize. People takes a couple of bad examples then deems everyone else with the same disorder through one very narrow perspective and then tells all of their friends of this belief who continue to pass it along but it seems like no one stops this communication to actually take the time to understand the disorder so all of this false information is allowed to saturate through society until everyone takes it as common knowledge and then uses it to judge others. If I said I went on vacation to England and managed to have sex with three different women from the area so it must mean all women from this country are very easy and promiscuous then I started to pass out this information to everyone I knew. Would this become the new common knowledge? No because common sense prevails as most people would believe I just got very lucky in more then one way but when this same principal is applied to mental illness common sense is no where to be seen. The best gift that you can give to society is education which will combat the stigma that is created and hopefully prove that the common knowledge is full of errors. Remember when everyone thought that the world was flat or that Aids could be contracted by sitting on a dirty toilet seat or the only way to treat mental illness was lobotomies or that depression only effected women. The stigma can be changed but it is going to take a lot of hard work and education to accomplish it with people standing up and saying “I am sorry but what you believe is wrong. BPD has a wide scale on how it effects a human being so it is impossible to sum up everyone who is suffering under one simple category”.

The stigma that goes with self harm/self injury is so unbelievably full of risk that the fact it still remains scars the heck out of me. People believe that others self harm to gain attention so the best answer is to ignore it. I have had people fired over this stigma as I don’t believe that you should take the risk as the wrong answer may very well lead to a dead body. A scenario that I see constantly on different forms is a young teenager who in a flurry of emotions took a sharp object to his arm and caused damage to it. The child goes to the parent and says “Hey look what I did when I got upset”. The parent instead of realizing this child is screaming for help takes the stigma route and decides the child is just seeking attention so rips the teenager a new one about the damage that they are causing to their body believing that guilt will make the problem goes away. The next time the child hits a crisis he does the same thing except this time he does not tells anyone as he remembered the lecture from the incident before so he makes sure to hide his new marks carefully. I wonder how many suicides were actually cries of help that went unheard because people believed the person was just trying to get attention, I wonder how many self harm accidents were documented as suicides and I wonder when society is going to realize that a mentally sound human being does not purposely hurt themselves no matter of the reason behind it. Your child shows you a cut on his arm that they are responsible for you grab him/her by the ear and drag them to the closest emergency room for this situation it is better to take the approach of covering all bases instead of playing with fire with the belief the child is just seeking attention.

Negative stigma is what kept racism going for so long as well as sexism but as a society we were able to learn that instead of labeling a group as one model instead we take the approach to look at each human being individually so can some one tell me why this does not apply to mental disorders? My neighbor BPD and I share some common characteristics but we are two separate people so please look at the human being and not the disorder when deciding what you think of me as a person.

by untreatable

(Click for larger image)

by Pakmum

Good morning, welcome to the mental health hotline…

If you have obsessive compulsive disorder, press 1 repeatedly.

If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.

If you have multiple personality syndrome, press 3, 4, 5, and 6.

If you suffer from paranoid schizophrenia, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.

If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be transfered to the mothership.

If you are hearing voices, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.

If you are manic depressive, it doesn’t matter which button you press. No one will answer anyway.

If you are dyslexic, press 96969696969696.

If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the pound button until a representative comes on the line.

If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother’s and grandmother’s maiden names.

If you have post traumatic stress disorder, slowly and carefully press 911.

If you have bi-polar disorder, please leave a message after the beep. Or before the beep. Or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.

If you have short term memory loss, please try you call again in a few minutes.

If you have low self esteem, please hang up. All our representatives are busy.

I have a confession to make.
I do.
I have been lying to you all.
Yep.
Absolutely!
I’ve been lying to everyone for the last 28 years, 11 months, 3 weeks and lord knows how many seconds! Now, a week or so before my 29th birthday I have decided to come clean, stand up and confess. Has to be done, no question about it, can’t keep up these lies any more.
Ok…?
Here goes…

[deep breath]

I
am
NOT
a
MAN!

[blimey that feels good!]

It’s like this fifty eight thousand tonne weight has been lifted off my somewhat hairy back. It’s true though – I’m not.

It’s perfectly understandable why you’d all think that I am, what with; the presence of a beard, chest hair, rippling muscles, an Adam’s apple, a penchant to get a hard on at the mere passing thought of a naked woman, and the ability to turn into a raving ape at the actual sight of a naked woman…and oh yeah, I’ve got a penis.

But alas, I am not a man.

Why?

Well, I don’t feel the desire to – when ratarsed – piss in shop doorways; I don’t wolf whistle at woman as they walk down the street; I don’t chug pints of beer as a hobby; nor do I watch sports [breath] I don’t shag other women when I’m in a relationship; I remember birthdays and anniversaries and all sorts of grossly inappropriate important events; I never leave the toilet seat up nor do I feel the need to play the “I can get less urine in the bowel than you” game [breath] I think beer tastes like luke-warm yak’s vomit; I don’t feel the need to lie to a woman constantly in order to (a) impress her (b) cheat on her or (c) bang her; I don’t play football nor receive ridiculously pseudo-erotic pleasure from watching guys running around a field in tight shorts but I do however receive ridiculously pseudo-erotic pleasure from watching a man in a waistcoat screw a ball the length of the table [breathe] I see woman as more than just t-a-c; don’t keep a tally of how many lays I’ve had; I drink alcopops…in public…have never vomited into a pint glass; stolen a witch’s hat; got into a fight; screwed my girlfriend’s best friend nor would I no matter how tempted I may be [breathe] I’d never slap a woman in the face; nor on the ass as a means of coming on to her [smaller breath] I would never give a woman a job based solely on the quality of her posterior; nor get into a discussion about rating my friends’ tits on a 1-10 scale; I wouldn’t scribble 100 words for a woman’s sacred garden above the urinals in the pub…sacred garden? You need more proof? Fine…my mood changes frequently; I talk about my emotions; am not afraid to cry if I want to; nor even when I don’t [breath] I want babies; I want commitment; I like living somewhere where I can see the carpet; I’ve never measured my cock when I’m alone; when I’m talking to a woman I’m looking at her eyes – not her tits; I really don’t see the appeal of a g-string; think cricket is bloody stupid; and would much rather be sitting on a beach talking to a woman about the advantages/disadvantages of John Howard than sitting on a beach staring at her arse [breath] I really don’t see why women need to shave their legs; or their armpits; or their moustache and to be blunt would much rather sleep with someone with a bush hairier than a badger’s back than a bald bush smoother than that of a prepubescent schoolgirl; oh, and I care more about woman orgasming than I do my own, colour me selfish that way [breath] I have no problem ballroom dancing with another man; I have no problem hugging another man; I have no problem talking emotionally with another man; I have no problem crying in front of another man; I have no problem going to see a Doctor if I’m sick; nor do I have a problem with eating an egg and broccoli quiche whilst asking for directions from a man chowing down on a steak sandwich; and oh yes, I admit to making mistakes.

[breathe]

[before I pass out]

Bloody hell I could go on all day, but hey, the easiest way to prove my massive (almost) 29 year long deception – I have no problem with standing up before the whole of the world and announcing: I am suffering from depression!

[oh]

[hang on]

[ummmmmm]

I…ummm…made…a…mistake.

Sorry. Sorry everyone. Dammit, I got it wrong.

I am actually a man after all.

A hell of a man!

Far more so than anyone who fits into the categories I described above; and any man who dares say otherwise may very well be the second person to get a bitch slap from me. And any woman who dares say otherwise – well – if I don’t know them they may get a scolding glare, if I know them, maybe a slap on the butt (‘cause remember I don’t bitch slap women nor do I slap their asses as a means of coming on to them, keep up!)

To be a man, is to be one thing: courageous.

In today’s world, where men are vilified by woman on an almost global scale and forced to become the Neolithic apes they despise so much in order for them to be interested in you (I know, go figure!) being a man is to have the courage to: cry whilst watching Bambi; actually ask for help from the female shop assistant when buying lingerie for your girlfriend; talk about tampons and hormones with your girlfriend; order quiche in the restaurant; actually buy lingerie your girlfriend would like and feel sexy in rather than something you want to see the female shop assistant wear for you; tell your girlfriend if you’ve had a fight with your best mate; cry whilst eating the best piece of tofu you’ve ever tasted; nervously shake when you kiss a woman for the first time; say no to your girlfriend’s best friend when she’s seducing you in the nuddy; realize sport is a complete waste of your life; that pissing in doorways just makes you look like a twat; take your girlfriend’s tampon out of her bag and give it to her without treating it like a live hand grenade; nervously shake when you kiss a woman for the first time badly; ask where her clit is & if there’s anything you’re doing wrong; cry if you’re feeling upset; not hit the first thing you see if you’re drunk, angry or stupid; say I love you in circumstances that don’t involve blow jobs; nervously shake when you kiss a woman for the first time badly and then joke about it afterwards; not always follow your penis’ every request; admitting to how you’re feeling; follow your beliefs no matter what they may be or how derisive your friends are being; not always cum first and then falling asleep; put the toilet seat down; go to the Doctor; tell your girlfriend you have a problem; hell, tell any of your friends that you have a problem.

Being a man is having the courage to stand up and admit that you have a mental illness and not care what anyone thinks.

[And I’m not just saying that because I’m a man who is doing this same exact thing]

That one simple word is all what being a man is. Believing in yourself so much that you don’t care what other men or women think of you. If other men can’t handle it, then, they don’t deserve that beer they pretend to like so much. If women can’t handle it, then, remember that the most important thing is the emotional connection you have, not how many or how often you’ve shagged.

Quality, not quantity.

This insipid culture we now live in where a man is considered to be weak, worthless and spineless because he admits to having a mental illness is what is costing lives. More men die from suicide every year than women. More men go through life in pain than women. Why? Because they’re too afraid to admit they have a problem. Why? Because they don’t have the courage to stand up to the fear, derision and masculine stripping vilification they will receive from all corners if they do. Why? Well, that’s just because everyone’s decided what a man should be instead of realizing they are – like women – human. Men don’t come from Mars any more than women don’t come from Venus (and just for the record, you don’t have to like visiting Uranus to be man).

One of the purest forms of the stigma against mental health is also one of the vilest forms of stigma out there; sexism. And however controversial this may sound, it’s being propagated by women just as much, if not more so, than by men.

Women desire men to be men and this means not having flaws or problems or weaknesses.
In order for a man to be accepted they must act in this way regardless of how they’re feeling.
For we wouldn’t want to be weak now would we!

In a discussion on mental illness I was once told by someone that they could believe and accept in the existence of a woman suffering from post natal depression, but could not believe that depression was something a man could suffer from. In other words, in women it is perfectly acceptable but in men, it is seen as a weakness, a trait to be avoided, ignored, derided and laughed at.

Is it any wonder why so many men are blowing their heads off or chucking themselves off bridges?

Tell me, what’s more courageous?

1. Bottling up all of your emotions so that a woman can respect you, only for your brains to redecorate your office?
2. Admitting to a woman that you have a problem, even if it means never visiting her sacred garden again?

Yep, you’re right.
If it is indeed true that a woman can’t be attracted to a man that cries, then there is something seriously wrong with the world in which we live. Men have feelings, men feel pain, men hurt – and they should be allowing to show it without recrimination.
Women need to realize this.
Men need to realize this.
We all need to realize this.

by Addy
Originally posted on All that I am, all that I ever was… (November 2007)

“This shift to biological explanations in our own lifetimes did not just come out of the blue. It is driven by NAMI, and funded by the pharma industry. Questions for you:

Why does NAMI drive this theory, despite studies that show biological explanations increase stigma? … Who, besides NAMI has set up the causation debate between that of bad character or biology?”

In response to some great questions from flawedplan , I’ve been considering why the biological explanations of mental illness have triumphed in the common understanding about causation. Unfortunately, I have no idea of the answers to many of his/her questions but I think the biologic explanations for mental illness have become predominant because of the confluence of a number of trends.

Firstly and most obviously, big pharma has driven this paradigm because it dovetails with their commercial imperatives. If mental illness is primarily biologically caused then pharmacological interventions are quite naturally the best and, indeed, the most rational treatments. The influence of big pharma on determining the debate in this, and in neutralising dissenting opinion, via its enmeshment with drug approval entities and professional bodies that define what is and is not mental illness and via advertising and “astroturfing” community-level understanding of such illnesses, cannot be underestimated.Secondly, psychiatry in its desire to be considered a “real”, hard science has abandoned what it considers outdated psychological aspects of its history and practice to embrace the more physiological explanations for mental illness. At its most crude: Freud et al = bad, neurotransmitters = good. This shift has been driven more by a desire to position the practice of psychiatry to enhance its authority, validity and prestige rather than in response to the science.  The evidence of the biologic nature of mental illnesses is actually very weak.Thirdly, the commercial pressures applied to health extend beyond big pharma. There is a strong incentive for people needing treatment for mental illness and their primary carers (both medical and social) to redefine mental illness from behavioural/situational to physiological/biological in an effort to get the care they need in a system that is fundamentally concerned with containing costs. Health insurance companies, whether private or public, are less likely able to refuse paying for care when the cause of an illness is considered biological.Fourthly, the system in which we live has a vested interest in locating the source of mental illness in the individual rather than looking at systemic causes of distress and dysfunction. Although this doesn’t discount the explanations of mental illness as “character flaw” or other “personal failure”, such explanations implicitly question the relationship between the person suffering and the society in which they live. But to ascribe the cause of mental illness to biology/physiology is to remove any responsibility from society and place it entirely on the individual’s “broken brain”.Finally, there’s a strong impulse in our Western cultures to search for technological solutions for problems, regardless of the cause of those problems. We’re encouraged to have such faith in science that we almost instinctively look to that paradigm and methodology for explanations and solutions. The unconscious belief is that any difficulty we encounter can be remedied by science.  “Hard” sciences (such as biology and neurology) are privileged over “soft” sciences (such as psychology and sociology). In such an environment, it’s inevitable that biologic explanations of mental illness will be considered more valid.There’s an interesting article by Guy Rundle, “This is the Night, Remembered if Outlived” from Arena magazine. It’s quite old but, like a lot of Rundle’s pieces, it’s well written and says much that makes one think. There’s a particular paragraph that I think is relevant:

Furthermore, a shift in the process of self-understanding had begun to occur, with people’s reading of themselves as ‘systematic’ beings — rather than as selves or souls — starting to become a dominant mode by which behaviour is interpreted. This was not a new phenomenon of course — everyone learns to recognise the effects upon themselves of, say, drunkenness, and to distinguish between their ‘intrinsic’ and chemically induced emotions — and this sort of self-understanding is vital within a limited scope. But to give oneself over to this sort of thinking about one’s whole personality is to make it impossible to interpret any given emotion as a meaningful event? Angry? That’s a rush of adrenalin. Stressed, nervous, hunched, tired — your cortisol is out of whack. Feeling low? No, you’re serotonin deficient.

by auchel

This is an article I discovered on Digg.com which I found to be an excellent piece on mental illness. It was described by the author as: “My discussion on mental illness and the challenges we have as both a society and as someone afflicted with mental illness in seeking health.”

read more | digg story

(I’m going to write about depression as that’s what I know but I reckon these ideas can apply more or less as well to many other mental illnesses.)

Everyone who has known someone living with depression has ideas about what causes their illness. It’s possible to consider these theories of causation as existing on a spectrum based on the degree of agency attributed to the person suffering. At one extreme (say, zero on the scale) would be the neurobiological explanation: depression is solely caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain independent of the events in the person’s life. This positions depression as something that merely happens to a person, something independent of their life and experience, something over which they have no control.

At the other extreme (say, ten on the scale) would be the wholly moral explanation: people are depressed because they choose to be, that they are malingering, that they are self-indulgent and sympathy-seeking. This positions depression not only as something entirely within the person’s control but as a state they are somehow encouraging.

Between these two extremes can be placed all other theories of depression causation such as (in rough order of least to most agency): depression is caused by stressful or traumatic events in a person’s life that result in an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain; depression is a pathological but understandable emotional response to stressful or traumatic events in a person’s life; depression results from poor coping skills to stressors/traumas; depression is a weakness of character; etc.

In any individual, differing theories of causation will be attributed to different people they know experiencing depression.

For the person encountering someone with depression, the degree of agency perceived to be involved in causing that depression is likely to be directly proportional to the amount of stigma they may hold to the person living with the illness. The higher on the agency scale the person’s causative theory of depression is in any instance, the more they will perceive the depressed person responsible for their own suffering, the more likely they are to view the person to be inherently morally flawed and the less likely they are to feel sympathy or offer help.

It’s human nature to reason about our lives and experience, particularly to determine the cause of problems in order to discover solutions. In depression it’s often impossible to definitively identify the cause of an episode. In the absence of any clearly identified external cause, sometimes people slide up the scale of agency: “Since I can’t see any reason for your depression, then it must be something wrong with you.”

Looking for causes is not only often futile but frequently pointless. Even in instances where contributing factors can be identified, they may not be able to be removed or modified. Where searching for causes encourages stigma, it’s not only unhelpful but positively harmful.

I think the focus on the cause of someone’s depression diverts attention and energy from the immediate issue: someone is suffering immense pain. If you can’t identify and remedy the cause of the person’s suffering, I’d suggest stop trying, accept what they’re experiencing without judgement, be there for them and give them the love and support they need.

(I’m aware of the irony in arguing for less focus on the cause of events in a blog entry exploring the cause of stigma.)

by auchel

‘Creep not upon the earth, my brother, like an animal. Put on those wings which Plato says are caused to grow on the soul by the ardour of love. Rise above the body to the spirit, from the visible to the invisible, from the letter to the mystical meaning, from the sensible to the intelligible, from the involved to the simple… If with all your might you strive to rise above the cloud and clamour of the senses He will descend from light inaccessible and that silence which passes understanding in which not only the tumult of the senses is still, but the image of all intelligible things keep silence.’  (Erasmus)

Mass Consumption: Asceticism meets Consumerism

 Ascetic Ideal Of Femininity = Anorexia

+ Consumer Ideal = Bulimia 

 When ascetic ideals clash with the status symbols of consumerism it gives rise to contradictions; wo/men should be faithful but also sexually rapacious, wo/men shouldn’t diet, in fact ideally they should eat a lot, yet they should be exceptionally thin and athletic; women should be child-like and submissive to patriarchal views yet independent and intelligent, women who wear make-up are vain yet women should have porcelain skin, long lashes and live up to the airbrushed fantasies in magazines; men should be both sensitive yet strong, emotionally open yet independent, complete in order to be a completion for others yet suffering well-timed moments of weakness for the complete modern woman who needs to be needed.  Both sexes are still too preoccupied trying to make the everything they are supposed to be work to know how to help the other.  Bulimia can be seen as an extreme reaction to, even an embodiment of, such contradictions.  Binge in the consumer mode, purge in the ascetic.  Both ideals, extreme asceticism and extreme possession (a post-modern avarice, self-possession) are incompatible, unsustainable and destructive. 

A different form of consumption has taken hold of men and women alike.  Not a huge surprise that modern ideas of anorexia emerge most evidently in the industrial metropolis.  Advice pages of Victorian Ladies Magazines are full of mother’s panic about their hitherto bright daughters cutting off their circulation with corsets to get the desired figure.  No wonder sensation novels are full of girls having fainting fits.

Feminism never got rid of corsets, society merely internalised them.  And, to pre-empt the burning bras corollary, women need them for comfort and feminism always knew it. Burning bras was a media invention to disparage a 1969 No Miss America march.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with corsets for that matter, they can accentuate that pelvic curve; rather the insidious cultural restrictions that impel a singular figure that’s the problem.

The media doesn’t cause anorexia or bulimia any more than a drug dealer causes addiction.  Yet society doesn’t allow dealers to hang out in the school playground without a fight.  Images of perfect bodies throughout culture must an atmosphere in which eating disorders thrive.  Disordered eating may begin as an unconscious attack of unacceptable social ideals, but if forced conscious it may become a reaction against.  The patient is not a model of the ideal; their behaviour is symptomatic of the reasons for objecting to such generic standards.  At a certain point of recovery, the stand-up and saying ‘My name is… and I am a bulimic’ stage, unconscious reaction to society becomes a conscious reaction against.  That is when the madperson can become the radical, lobbying for reform.

Cultural expectations control passion to the point of screaming.  The individual fights against it, striving for compromise equilibrium.  Forced into conscious thought, even locker room jokes are spoilt, male desire is as tangled up as female desire ever was.  Every romantic comedy shows a prohibitive standard of perfection tying the knot of attraction.  Beauty is only skin deep but the gaze depends on cultural expectations, and so does sexual love.

In the earliest extant law book, which biologically speaking is not that old, a charter myth of patriarchy follows fast on the Word’s Creation.  Si[g]n came into the world through that original woman eating knowledge.  Peace plucked into bits when she shared that food for thought with her other half.  The punishment, to be shamefully aware of flesh and painfully aware of Bloody childbirth (the spiritual origin of community).  Beauty and shamefaced ugliness, those binary opposites, are the apple of every communities eye; cultural standards that frustrate natural energy.  The story of Adam and Eve is a piece of art, sign or symbol, that naturalises intellectual standards of beauty as opposed to instinctual attraction.  These aesthetic social ideals crafted the psyche as soma, naturalised intellect as sympathetic flesh and communities Blood as Spirit.  And so Eve ate the apple.  Natural matter imbued with Si[g]n, so says the Word, decayed humanity.  Si[g]n is frustrated instinct, natural Passion becomes unnatural appetite.  The woman, functional as a ribbed and ribbing body to birth man, is coiled in her own brain tissue by reaching beyond her caged maw.  So, rebellious, Eve need submit to more suffering during childbirth.  The body as community as culture; much like the Tower of Babel story it is society, connections between two, that moral codes go between.  Associated then is woman’s submission to her own leaking body and her desired physical and mental submission to man who submits to God.  This may be verified by Lilith, who in some popular versions of the myth, refuses to submit to Adam and is punished with eternal barrenness; the natural state of woman’s Blood without violence translated to vicious nightmare, vampiric miscarriages of maternal instinct.  Women out of control are morally repugnant.  Unsubmissive sexual appetites belly crawl outside acceptable social functions, and are as such connected with indulgence of the senses; libidinous, gluttonous, curious.  A questioning mentality is translated physically.

Although biological functions have defined her as a slave to instinct, the New Testament has it that woman shall be ’saved by childbirth’.  Through childbirth the female form can be thought of as a creative not just a sensual canvass.  Motherhood is dissociated from Passion (from the virgin birthing a human saviour born of Blood yet conceived free of sexual ‘sin’.  His Passion translated to self-sacrifice through the body, a violent blood letting).  That Biblical mother’s (i.e. the birth of Samson) need to refrain from eating unclean things may be significant as part of this trend.  A nurturing woman’s needs must be under control.  Marriage as a financial appropriation of emotion submitted body and Passion to un/comfortable social definition, containing her procreative capacity within functional economic bonds.  Tied by apron strings, or more atavistically the umbilical cord, to the duties of preparing meals social definitions of femininity are forever entangled in food.  In this respect gluttony is a reader’s digest of instinct twisted by social definitions of gender.

Divorced from reality, traditional moral restrictions no longer go between human thought and action.  Post-modern mental rot has enacted umbilicus decay.  Dissociate from spirit, blood is clogged with transfat.  Dissociate from control, people sleepwalk into ambien eating.  Dissociate from comfort, bodies coil brains.  Women, no longer desired for their procreative abilities, should be girls with slight pelvis; their breasts apparently not required for feeding babies can be plasticity pumped full of toxic chemicals, to satisfy the mechanised gaze rather than natural hunger.  Irresponsible perhaps to have cosmetic surgery.  Still nobody is directly responsible; peer pressure is fatal and fitting in remains perhaps the least worst reaction for that bullied individual.  Haggard from birth by distant-screaming guilt, our aging society is determinedly youthful in its search for comfort.  Perhaps the only way an anorexic feels they can reject such frustrated pleasure pursuit is a distracted unconscious writhing that mortifies the flesh, as never being good enough gets depressed into self-destruction rather than being transcribed into useful creation. So consumerism runs rampant, pooling stagnant milk lakes and steeping bread mountains, while, counterbalancing industrial horizons, Romantic views idealise childhood.  Naturally, we want to be young, fresh faced, lithe, and carefree; not responsible for any of this.  This is perhaps where female images diverge from male.  Men are still signposted towards worker’s brawn and muscle, consummately responsible for good work, although a trilling boy power is catching on, cause celebre style.  The only responsibility empowered girls are weighed down with still tends toward shame for not being what they should, even if such blame is laughed off with a ‘zigiziga’ and a ‘what a wanker’ gist of the wrist.  Instead of defining ourselves based on natural talent, live action, definition continues to be mistranslated by fleshed senses.  Sexbomb successes.  Fat failures.  How sexually attractive is that fifteen/fifty year old?  The twenty-five year old is now the ideal youth, lithe and carefree, that actual adolescents defer childhoods to be, and older people botox reason to become again.  Our lives, our identities, are determined by distracted sensation.  Associated with moral codes, unreasonably valorised, that only result in senseless guilt.

So what is the compromise equilibrium for cultural si[g]n, for men and women, sexuality in equality, for identities, bodies, eating?  Disorder, at the moment, as the wor[l]d is deconstructed.  Those decaying binary oppositions of beauty and ugliness need to be, now fragmented yet figmented, re-imagined beyond cathexis.  Shame is a reaction against pride.  Without pride there is no shame.  Without singular beauty there is no shamefaced ugliness. Without forbidden knowledge, maggot bit by an absolute Word, associate bodies need not be riddled by self-consuming self-indulgent guilt, that pride of shame over comfort men and women might find an equilibrium, and live together even on this compromised earth without Passion becoming appetites.  If and when gluttony is no longer profitable to mass produced culture, disordered eating might move beyond bloated self-negation and create out of individual upheavals a motion against consumptive social definition.

by eleventhetter

Let’s face the facts: some people probably do get better after undergoing psychiatric treatment. However, some people also get better from a placebo or on their own. In such complex emotional problems, a small trigger can occasionally lead to a huge mental shift, provided that a person was nearly ready to make that shift. With placebo treatment, this ‘positiveness’ is usually more temporary, but is also beneficial.

But even so, biopsychiatry’s ‘treatment’ figures fail to properly state the failures of the profession. What’s an easy way to this? Blame the person as a biological entity for being ‘treatment resistant’ rather than relating to them and trying to ascertain what made them feel that way. This easily absolves psychiatry of admitting ‘treatment failure’ and rather blames the patient. Thus, instead of laying off, they now have the go ahead to force more drugs and possibly electroshock. It’s brilliant, but sickening. Here, psychiatry has created a logical loop which always ends up with them winning out. By refusing to acknowledge the dismal conditions of ‘hospitals’ and the lobotomizing effects of drugs, the field has come to be viewed as ‘ironclad’ by many misguided individuals.

Also, biopsychiatry neglects the fact that ‘treatment’ or ‘improvement’ is highly subjective, and that this judgment is probably best made by the person being ‘treated’. Of course, placebo can play a role, and in a drugged up fog, people may think they’re doing better because they’ve been blunted and can’t feel anything, but often psychiatrists will judge someone as ‘better’ simply because they’re less expressive and easier to control. This hardly constitutes an improvement at the root of the problems at hand, and may actually worsen them (especially if these problems are with authority).

If one references to David Rosenhan’s sham patient experiment, ‘normal’ individuals found that the only way to escape hospitalization was to pretend that they were insane and had gotten better. This, of course, could account for even more of the ‘improvement’ since ‘treated’ individuals are largely not heard out.Human beings are complex.

There’s no doubt about that amongst people with common sense. But biological psychiatry tends to be devoid of it. I’m not going to deny that this may be difficult for some to understand, because it not only represents a loss of trust that has been placed in the system of many but a deeper flaw in our population itself. But in order to eliminate the stigma of mental illness we need to understand that emotional help is NOT an objective phenomenon, is NOT necessarily dependent on university work, and cannot simply be centered around convenience or simplification.

by sociopathicregret

The focus on gun control and mental illness after school shootings is largely unjustified. Of course, this is common knowledge to people with any shred of logicality, but I’m going to take it a bit further. There are many factors involved in these shootings, including parental neglect, reading insane material, depression, and…..

ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES!

Yep, I said it. The very policies that the schools supposedly ‘rely on’ to ‘prevent’ violence are actually a major cause of explosive violence and school shootings.

Why? They don’t differentiate between self defense, retaliation, and aggression. This creates a catch 22 for people who are made fun of and feel as though they have nothing to do. Their parents can commonly be seen calling the school, but the school does little, and if they do, the insults continue behind administrators backs. Even so, they’re called rats and made fun of even more.

This unintelligent school policy not only reeks of lack of empathy, but is blatantly in line with the ‘politically correct’ groupthink of today.If these individuals ignore aggression, they run the risk of getting hurt but much more likely being completely humiliated. This leaves one option: fight back.

However, with zero tolerance policies, all parties involved are almost always punished equally. This leads to many who just defend themselves or stand up for themselves to think that they are at fault, and even if they realize that this is not the case, it creates a lot more frustration than necessary.

People who are made fun of and snubbed thus have no option other than to suffer, or explode like many of the school shooters do. Even before these ‘zero tolerance policies’, school policy largely started leading up to this. It clears the school’s ass of blame no matter what and makes for an easy method of ‘processing’ cases without any real critical thought, time or effort.

I’m not condoning school shootings. I understand that they are the minority of those put in this situation; those who have come across certain rhetoric, those who are often abused the worst, those who have formed thoughts that it is okay to commit such a horrible act. But just imagine a poor kid who has been verbally and physically abused in school for eight years. He finally gets the guts to fight back and guess what happens? He’s suspended, or worse, maybe expelled if he does a number on the other guy. What’s more, his parents make him out to be bad. In the short term, it may shut things up, and make the school look peaceful. But in the long term it fuels an explosive rage that just doesn’t go away.

So, next time you see this on the news, don’t think ‘That guy just must be crazy!’ It’s certainly true that some may be in a rather unstable state of mind, but think of the causes of this. Think of the treatment they endure, and think about how all their exists are blocked. Different people have different tolerance levels depending on many different factors, and though we should not condone violence, we must give suffering individuals a method to alleviate that suffering.

Otherwise, we are unfortunately contributing to the problem.

by sociopathicregret