Good article, but doesn’t go far enough. “Schizophrenia” and eating disorders are not genetic. The book Crazy Like Us shows how eating disorders are extremely culturally dependent, going up dramatically when the concept of “eating disorders” is introduced into a culture. They are also to some degree of product of adversity, whether that adversity is malnutrition, stress, or cultural pressure to be thin. As for “schizophrenia”, the “paranoid” part is a pretty obvious reaction to childhood trauma, for instance thinking others are talking about you behind your back because you used to be a target of racist bullying (my best friend’s issue). And the visions/voices that get diagnosed as “schizophrenia” by psychiatry are treated as signs of a spiritual path by cultures with shamanic traditions, so, like “ADHD”, it is more a problem of our restrictive environment.
Great article, and very much applicable to the cause of mental health rights, as the last paragraph points out: every time there’s a mass shooting not connected to Islam and the damn media rushes to “diagnose” the shooter, we can point out the hypocrisy of associating him (they’re usually men) with all “mentally ill” people. I hope this technique will be effecting in countering the societal bias against us, although in my opinion it’ll be tougher, since the media seems to hate us even more than it does Muslims.
Good article, but doesn’t go far enough. “Schizophrenia” and eating disorders are not genetic. The book Crazy Like Us shows how eating disorders are extremely culturally dependent, going up dramatically when the concept of “eating disorders” is introduced into a culture. They are also to some degree of product of adversity, whether that adversity is malnutrition, stress, or cultural pressure to be thin. As for “schizophrenia”, the “paranoid” part is a pretty obvious reaction to childhood trauma, for instance thinking others are talking about you behind your back because you used to be a target of racist bullying (my best friend’s issue). And the visions/voices that get diagnosed as “schizophrenia” by psychiatry are treated as signs of a spiritual path by cultures with shamanic traditions, so, like “ADHD”, it is more a problem of our restrictive environment.
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Great article, and very much applicable to the cause of mental health rights, as the last paragraph points out: every time there’s a mass shooting not connected to Islam and the damn media rushes to “diagnose” the shooter, we can point out the hypocrisy of associating him (they’re usually men) with all “mentally ill” people. I hope this technique will be effecting in countering the societal bias against us, although in my opinion it’ll be tougher, since the media seems to hate us even more than it does Muslims.
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