How to Help Someone With Depression - a guide.

The Cut published How to Help Someone With Depression and it has some helpful, broad guidelines for someone who would like to know what it is that they can offer friends and family who are suffering. 

PTSDiva.

I adore Scott Thompson, this is a link to his podcast, PTSDiva.

Some people skate through life with nary a bump. Others are knocked about like kittens in a dryer. And then’s Scott Thompson (Kids In The Hall, Buddy Cole), who has suffered more abuse than a Lars Von Trier actress. But none of those calamities have kept him down for long! He has instead emerged, if not better, then at least not worse - and always with a funny story. On PTSDiva, Scott talks to other comics about their lowest points, as well as surgeons, priests, and other experts on the human condition. Along the way, he'll share stories from his life, and how they've made him who he is today.

Putting this here so I can listen to his episode with Andy Richter, since I am currently listening to his episode with Richter on Richter's podcast Three Questions.

Host Andy Richter asks the same three questions to each guest: Where do you come from? Where are you going? What have you learned? These three simple questions, when answered honestly and thoughtfully, are enough to provide a pretty complete picture of who a person is. The answers are what Andy always wants to know about people. This will not be a one-sided process, as Andy won’t shy away from getting personal himself.

I love them both!

What's Your Ailment with Maria Bamford.

I haven't had a chance to watch this yet, but I adore Maria Bamford.

Check out her talk show, What's Your Ailment?

Organizing our way through mental illness.

McGill Daily has a piece up called Organizing our way through mental illness by Saima Desai.

The piece works through the links between mental illness and working in social justice/caring about social justice.

Desai quotes a Baffler article by Laurie Penny:

The isolating ideology of wellness works against this sort of social change in two important ways. First, it persuades all us that if we are sick, sad, and exhausted, the problem isn’t one of economics. There is no structural imbalance, according to this view—there is only individual maladaption, requiring an individual response. The lexis of abuse and gas-lighting is appropriate here: if you are miserable or angry because your life is a constant struggle against privation or prejudice, the problem is always and only with you. Society is not mad, or messed up: you are.

It's can be difficult to balance self-criticism with real, lived oppressions and limits. When discussing "the secret" of self-realization:

It would be nice to believe that all it takes to change your life is to repeat some affirmations and buy a planner, just as it was once comforting for many of us to trust that the hardships of this plane of existence would be rewarded by an eternity of bliss in heaven. There is a reason that the rituals of wellbeing and self-care are followed with the precision of a cult (do this and you will be saved; do this and you will be safe): It is a practice of faith. It’s worth remembering that Marx’s description of religion as the opiate of the masses is often misinterpreted—opium, at the time when Marx was writing, was not just known as an addictive drug, but as a painkiller, a solace when the work of survival became unbearable.

I find the language of it all odd. How "self-care" has been politicized, when really it existed before it was a headline. It was justing taking care of yourself. Or resting. Or taking a fucking break. I understand it as a political act, in the way in which it's used to describe consciously prioritizing taking care of yourself since the world is brutal and not kind. Penny herself ends with the Audre Lorde quote, "“is not self-indulgence—it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”

We gotta take care of our minds and bodies in order to resist.

Recommended reads:

Life-Hacks of the Poor and Aimless by Laurie Penny

Organizing our way through mental illness by Saima Desai

Every body goes haywire.

Finally found the time to read Every body goes haywire by Anna Altman. A friend had shared it with me months ago.

Joanna Kempner, a sociologist at Rutgers and author of the recently published Not Tonight: Migraine and the Politics of Gender and Health, writes that “people worry when they cannot fulfill their end of the so-called sick role, an implicit social contract in which sick people are given leave of their everyday duties, as long as they adhere to certain rules like seeking appropriate medical care and working hard to get better. But these obligations are difficult to meet when there is no effective treatment.”

Ooooof. This has been a bit point for me the last two years. Getting it into my head, and accepting that I have a lifelong, chronic condition. There is no endpoint, other than the big endpoint.

THIS INHERITANCE AWAITS MANY WOMEN. Almost 20 percent of women suffer migraines, and 75 percent of migraine sufferers are women. That same group of hard-to-diagnose and hard-to-treat diseases—lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis, but also chronic fatigue, chronic headache and fibromyalgia—primarily afflicts women. “Women are more likely than men to be disabled by chronic illnesses,” Susan Wendell writes, “and women (including women with other disabilities) suffer more ill health than men. Women live longer than men, but much of that extra living is done with a disabling chronic illness.”
...
Wendell points out that those chronic conditions bring with them the kind of invisible impairments that can cripple a patient without appearing notable. “Pain and/or fatigue are major sources of impairment in many chronic illnesses that are more common in women than in men,” she writes. It is exactly these impairments that are easiest to dismiss or misperceive as psychosomatic.
...
And doctors treat complaints about such conditions differently when they come from women. Kempner cites studies that show physicians prescribe less pain medicine to women than they do to men, even though women are more likely to suffer chronic pain. Other studies show that women are more likely than men to be prescribed antidepressants and tranquilizers—rather than pain medication—for their migraines. Add to this the fact that migraine is more likely to occur in people with mental health diagnoses like depression and anxiety, both of which are more common in women. All of this makes it hard to untangle migraine and other chronic pain conditions from stereotypes of female weakness and hysteria. The characterization perpetuates the notion of the migraineur-as-malingerer, the sensitive soul disabled by everyday disruptions.

I remember reading about hysteria in feminist health class and man did I not really get it at the time. It took an added decade of navigating the medical system for me to see it time and time again. I remember talking to my most normie friend N when she was on the verge of a burnout from her job. She was traveling internationally several times a year and was working over 60 hours a week. I told her, without mincing words that she should not wear makeup or dress up to go to the appointment (she usually would) because if she looks tired and beat, the doctor will be more likely to believe her. I also mentioned the study about how women often minimize their pain and discomfort out of the gendered habit of "I'm fine" -ing everything. I told her to psych herself up, and not play it off. This is a woman who is neurotically privileged and physically in peak condition.

This is hard to communicate when you appear to be young, healthy, and able-bodied. “To be recognized as disabled, we have to remind people frequently of our needs and limitations,” writes Wendell of women who suffer from chronic, invisible disabilities. The struggle for recognition is constant, even among the most compassionate: “Some people offer such acceptance readily, others greet every statement of limitation with skepticism, and most need to reminded from time to time.”

In my case, much of my close circle has these "invisible disabilities," chronic conditions that do not always display outwardly. There is something especially slippery about mental illness, something we're asked to describe at inopportune times, or when we aren't verbal or when we're feeling better, or when we're in such crisis we're catatonic.

I had my diagnosis immediately. Learning to cope with it takes years.
Illness is the space where I came to understand the limitations of my being. It’s a lesson we all learn but one I learned harshly and twice, first watching my mother and then enduring my own suffering. Now I know that I can lie down for hours without moving. I can meditate. I can stare at the wall and not despair. If I discovered something redemptive in this experience, it’s that capacity for stillness.

Heavy piece, but her closing paragraph really nailed it. There is a natural quiet that comes to you through solitude and suffering. I wish that didn't sound as poetic as it does. There's a resignation in it, an acceptance. But really, what choice do we have?

Take a walk, it's good for you.

I have a lot going on lately, I'll update properly soon.

In the meantime, check out this article on how Walking lifts your mood, even when you don’t expect it to.

In my experience walking helps me clear my head, and is calming for me.

My goal is to eventually have a job where I can walk to work, having those daily walks built into my schedule.

This is actually something I'm actively working on (finding a job I can walk to). It's part of the aforementioned "update."

My doctor is missing, again.

Well, it happened again. Dr. Rishi is missing.

He was suppose to change clinics this summer. He let me know he was opening his own, which seemed great, since the walk-in clinic he was in was far away and the service wasn't great.

I called to make an appointment with him, and was told he was no longer taking appointments while he set up his new practice.

I saw him on the street outside of work a few weeks later (maybe in July), and he said I'd get a letter with the details of his new office "in August."

Cut to the end of October - where I've heard nothing, so I e-mail his former office, which says they don't yet have any details, and to call the office on October X to see if I can talk to him while he's in.

I call on said day and they ask me to e-mail in. I do. I receive this response:

Dear Patient,

I am currently out of the office and unavailable until November 7, 2016.

I am currently working to move my practice to its new location in Westmount. I will leave full forwarding and contact info with my current clinic as soon as available.

If you require a renewal of medication, please have your pharmacist send a request by fax to 514-281-3885.

If you have an emergency, you should go the hospital. If a non-urgent issue that you would like to be seen for immediately, please visit the walk-in clinic. All of your results and dossier will be transferred with me, and I look forward to seeing you at the new clinic!

Thank you, 

Dr. Rishi 

I do as it asks, I fax in, since my meds are almost up, and I also need an adjusted referral for a dermatologist, and, of course, wait for it, the fax number is out of order.

Ghosted!

Take care of yourself Kid Cudi.

Kid Cudi just posted about going to rehab for treatment, dealing with depression and suicidal ideation.

This is his post:

Its been difficult for me to find the words to what Im about to share with you because I feel ashamed. Ashamed to be a leader and hero to so many while admitting I've been living a lie. It took me a while to get to this place of commitment, but it is something I have to do for myself, my family, my best friend/daughter and all of you, my fans.
Yesterday I checked myself into rehab for depression and suicidal urges. 

I am not at peace. I haven't been since you've known me. If I didn't come here, I wouldve done something to myself. I simply am a damaged human swimming in a pool of emotions everyday of my life. Theres a ragin violent storm inside of my heart at all times. Idk what peace feels like. Idk how to relax. My anxiety and depression have ruled my life for as long as I can remember and I never leave the house because of it. I cant make new friends because of it. I dont trust anyone because of it and Im tired of being held back in my life. I deserve to have peace. I deserve to be happy and smiling. Why not me? I guess I give so much of myself to others I forgot that I need to show myself some love too. I think I never really knew how. Im scared, im sad, I feel like I let a lot of people down and again, Im sorry. Its time I fix me. Im nervous but ima get through this. 

I wont be around to promote much, but the good folks at Republic and my manager Dennis will inform you about upcoming releases. The music videos, album release date etc. The album is still on the way. Promise. I wanted to square away all the business before I got here so I could focus on my recovery.

If all goes well ill be out in time for Complexcon and ill be lookin forward to seeing you all there for high fives and hugs. 

Love and light to everyone who has love for me and I am sorry if I let anyone down. I really am sorry. Ill be back, stronger, better. Reborn. I feel like shit, I feel so ashamed. Im sorry. 

I love you,
Scott Mescudi

You can read it on his facebook.

The Atlantic has a piece up on masculinity, race and depression.

I just wish him love and support. It's rough, I know how he feels, and words are never enough. I wish him a warm blanket and a deep hug. Hot tea and a cuddle. A soft bed and clean sheets. Sun on his face. A hearty laugh. A friendly dog. Those little things help for me, I hope his little things help for him. Small comforts.

My chest aches in recognition.

Lidia Yuknavitch interview.

The Lenny newsletter this week has an interview with Lidia Yuknavitch, whom I love, and whose book the Chronology of Water reached me, and moved me. Mainly because she was using language I understood in a way I'd never experienced before. 

Her interview with Suleika Jaouad is great, I'm basically re-posting most of it here:

Suleika Jaouad: In The Chronology of Water, you wrote: “Aspiration gets stuck in some people. It’s difficult to think yes. Or up.” When did that absence of hope hit you the hardest? 

Lidia Yuknavitch: When my daughter died on the day she was born, a traditional definition of hope was sucked out of my body. I’m not saying I’m proud of this, but it just happened. For me, what became important was learning to breathe again in a way that used regular air. The word aspiration has a breathing sense to it. It dawned on me that we have to breathe and to find reasons to stay alive on our own terms. Sometimes that doesn’t come from what we’ve been told our whole lives. 

I believe in art the way other people believe in God. I’m not trying to make a tricky sentence. It’s just true. I have found reasons to breathe again by living in communities of people who choose self-expression over self-destruction. It’s another way to form hope, without hierarchizing it so that you’re looking up toward a God, or someone smarter or more famous than you are. It’s a lateral definition of hope where you just need each other, and you need to stand up and not leave each other hanging. 

SJ: I think a lot about how much pressure there is to be someone who “suffers well.” There’s a mythology surrounding the “survivor’s story” that can be inspiring to some but can make others feel like they’re suffering the wrong way. 

LY: Boy, I hate that narrative so hard, to be honest. The truth is, suffering sucks and it can take you to a place of wanting to kill yourself, and there’s nothing beautiful about that. Suffering is not beautiful. Suffering, from my point of view, is about a real place in a real body where you face the other side of living. How you choose to understand that story probably determines how you’re going to live the rest of your life. I feel kindred with fellow sufferers, and I don’t ever want to romanticize the story of suffering, because then you’re just playing into making it a good story or a sellable story for a culture. 

SJ: You write with so much rawness and honesty about your life, but I’m interested in the experiences you touch on but choose not to delve into, like the specifics of your father’s abuse and your relationship to drugs and alcohol. How do you decide what to write and not write about? 

LY: You don’t have to read very far into my writing to find those things, but you won’t find them literally represented. There’s no scene of actual sexual abuse by my father in my writing. On the other hand, that sort of paternal sexual violence is threaded through every word I write. It’s as if it’s in the language. It’s in my habit of being. It’s a structure of my consciousness. 

You don’t have to always name the explicitness or literalness of a thing to represent the essence of it to a reader or listener. That’s the reason poetry works and it’s the reason painting works. It’s not explicit. It’s figurative, and it gives you the whole soul-body experience without naming it in a literal sentence. I think the work of art is to push for that so that the reader feels it in their body to be true, whether or not the explicit sentence is there. That’s how I work with material, but I am filled with respect and enthusiasm for people who also represent it explicitly. 

SJ: I think of you as someone who rejects tidy narratives and who doesn’t seem to care about the rules. I’m curious about where your outlaw spirit comes from. 

LY: If there’s one phrase that I should probably tattoo on my forehead it is this: “I’m not the story you made of me.” The more people I can convince to hold that mantra, the more I’ll have been of good use in my life. We don’t have to accept the stories we inherit, the ones that tell us who we’re supposed to be. We can stand up and say no at any point, even if we’ve been saying yes our entire lives. It’s never too late. We can always reject the story placed on top of us, and we can always revise and destroy one story and restore another. It’s a never-ending possibility. 

SJ: What are your best words of advice for fellow misfits and aspiring writers? 

LY: I’m trying to help us remember that we invent our own beauty and our own paths and our own crooked, weird ways of doing things, but that they’re not nothing and they matter, too. We’re the half of culture that doesn’t take the paths that are sitting right in front of us. Our song may be a little off-key, but it’s a kind of beauty, too. I know I’m not the person who thought that up, and I’m not the person who invented that as a truth, but I can sure stand up and help remind us not to give up, that we have a song, too.

She's someone I look up to. She's survived and she's living off her art. That's as much of a win as one can hope for. As I could ever hope for.

Withdrawal: an essay.

I had put aside Surviving Psych Med ​Changes and/or Withdrawal: an essay & guidebook for creative minds to read at a later time (today!). The piece, by Luke B. Goebel stuck out for me, since I have intense dis-associative symptoms when I don't take my medication. I didn't take it for a few days once due to forgetting it while on a weekend away and it was brutal. I had to ask my mom to drive since I was hearing "brain zaps" and couldn't focus. It was something I do not want to re-live.

I recommend reading his piece in its entirety. Writing, when you feel insane seems impossible. Trying to properly express the entirety of how you feel when you're manic or down is hard enough, but the experience of being in some kind of fit is so fragmented that the parts of us that are able to use language are often partially disabled. There's also trying to organise the madness of it all. It seems like a cliché to put it that way, but things that one day came and went through you become absolute certainties you fixate on, to your own detriment. So much of who you are seeps out, and so much of something darker takes its place.

Goebel:

So much of it is living without a healed self, without a celebrated empowered identity or persona as an author or person sharing how they healed. I agonize that I am not a packageable brand of salvation I can sell, a story line of resurrection and overcoming of challenges. A Ted Talk. No, I’m still trying to crystalize meaning. I’m still wild. I’m still healing this sometimes hard-to-handle self. And so are the authors I’ve mentioned, many of them, and yet they have their story sorted. I don’t need that to be resolved today. I need my medication to straighten out. But in this state, everything swirls together into madness.

It's a difficult place to come to and to accept: there is no downhill, it's all uphill. There is no snap back into place, you'll have scars, that part of you will never go back to how it was before. You might have some good days, but you'll never be better. In Goebel's case as a writer, I can see what he's facing. I adored Lidia Yuknavitch's memoir The Chronology of Water. I felt she wrote it to me. It floored me. But in all the memoirs I've read by the mentally ill / on mental health, so many ended with a "and I'm better now" ending. It isn't the norm. Or is it? Am I part of the statistic that's forever afflicted?  Regardless, the completion of a narrative in art is a false god.

What is having a sorted story? Maybe Goebel is talking about it as a narrative, about a story with a clear arc. I know for me, I had this sense that eventually I'd get my shit together and eventually life would be easier. But that's not where I'm at. My realisation is that no, things just evolve into something else. I have the language now, I have some tools, but the struggle is still omnipresent. 

I may not be actively suicidal, but I am always fucking worrying about job security now. Always worried about being able to afford myself, afford a life. I'm tired. It's been uphill and the slope is unforgiving. I am now piecing together what it is I do have, and trying to focus on what it is I do want. How do you learn to live a life within a "normal" set of societal set of rules when there are days of your life you vividly remember wanting nothing more than to burn it all down.

This bit, ooooof:

He didn’t seem interested in my crashing. He gave me a prescription to add to the stack: Neurontin. He told me I might want to decide to get back on my medication at full strength. (It was left up to me!) Every doctor and shrink I have talked to since say it is insane to cut Desipramine in half as a starting point to weaning off the drug. Not insane—dangerous. Extremely dangerous. I smelled burning plastic that wasn’t there. I wept. I felt panic. Every day lasted and lasted for what felt like weeks.

It is beyond me, how we're asked to make life-altering, DANGEROUS decisions while possibly manic or going through some kind of panic or psychosis. WHY DOES IT TAKE THE MENTALLY ILL OF US TO POINT OUT HOW THAT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE. I've documented my own experiences in accessing care, and time and time again I've been dumbstruck by how often we're left to our own devices. 

Read Goebel's piece. 

Mental health 'zines.

Dazed has a piece up on mental health 'zines worth checking out. 

I've been thinking a lot about taking my creative time more seriously, about really putting in the time and the word, so exploring ways in which I can write, design and illustrate is something that's been on my mind.

Buddies of mine have been making 'zines forever, it just never really clicked with me.

Seeing such amazing work makes me reconsider what it is I can really accomplish through 'zine making. Sharing my stories in a really personal way might be good for me.

I was especially drawn to shit's fucked. 

The illustrations are beautiful.

I'm checking out the site that sells it. I might order a few. Check it out!

Things are weird with me lately! I feel like I,m in a haze! I don't know what's going on! I feel like I need a good re-centring.

Any recommendations?

Van der Kolk on feeling safe and treating trauma.

Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives. 

– Van der Kolk

There's an interview with Bessel van der Kolk here. Van der Kolk is a Dutch psychiatrist noted for his research in the area of post-traumatic stress since the 1970s. He's also introduced as the medical director and founder of the Trauma Center at Justice Resource Institute and professor of psychiatry at the Boston University School of Medicine in an interview with psychotherapy dot net.

He talks about his work, and how his research posits that talk-therapy alone cannot treat trauma.

Of course, talking can be very helpful in acknowledging the reality about what’s happened and how it’s affected you, but talking about it doesn’t put it behind you because it doesn’t go deep enough into the survival brain.

He goes on ...

But there is a mistaken notion that trauma is primarily about memory—the story of what has happened; and that is probably often true for the first few days after the traumatic event, but then a cascade of defences precipitate a variety of reactions in mind and brain that are attempts to blunt the impact of the ongoing sense of threat, but which tend to set up their own plethora of problems. So, trying to find a chemical to abolish bad memories is an interesting academic enterprise, but it’s unlikely to help many patients. It’s a too-simplistic view in my opinion. Your whole mind, brain and sense of self is changed in response to trauma.

In the long term the largest problem of being traumatised is that it’s hard to feel that anything that’s going on around you really matters. It is difficult to love and take care of people and get involved in pleasure and engagements because your brain has been re-organised to deal with danger.

It is only partly an issue of consciousness. Much has to do with unconscious parts of the brain that keep interpreting the world as being dangerous and frightening and feeling helpless. You know you shouldn’t feel that way, but you do, and that makes you feel defective and ashamed.

Instead, Van der Kolk discusses other helpful methods to incorporate, including EMDR and body awareness (he uses Yoga in a lot of his work, and claims in 8-week yoga trials people felt significantly better):

Traumatised people often become insensible to themselves. They find it difficult to sense pleasure and to feel engaged. These understandings force us to use methods to awaken the sensory modalities in the person.

When asked about what research he's found promising lately, he highlights a few new areas of research:

Learning how to interpret quantitative EEGs allowed me to actually visualise what parts of the brain are distorted by traumatic experiences, and this can help us target specific brain areas where there is abnormal activity and where the problem actually is.

In another example, the frontal lobes of traumatised people often have activity similar to that of kids with ADHD, which makes it difficult to attend with the subtlety that we need to lead nuanced lives.

There is still so much work to be done regarding new treatments. Treatment is still being tested and quantified. There are different camps touting their own methods, and accessing any of it isn't always possible. I find it promising, and that's not nothing.

* The Establishment also has several articles on trauma and PTSD that were published today. *

Echoes Of Being An Unperson and inappropriate waiting-room art.

Check out Echoes Of Being An Unperson: Institutions Don’t Help The Mentally Ill by Kit Mead. She talks about her experiences with a depressive break-down and being hospitalised. Her account of how she was treated in the hospital is really disheartening, but, unfortunately, not an uncommon experience. 

Eventually they discharged me with referrals. I had simply waited until I felt less like wanting to die to push for leaving. Nothing they had done had helped with that.

So few of my experiences with "mental health professionals" have been successful. I've seldom left an encounter feeling I was in good hands, or that I trusted their take.

There is no fundamental problem with hospitals and institutions, but instead a complicated and interrelated web of failings. They’re not comfortable enough, the staff do not treat patients as people; these entities exercise total control and ultimately become custodial, often trapping people in a cycle of neglect or mismanagement for their entire lives. They are a dumping ground for America’s unwanted; the abuse within hospital and institution walls was and is rampant.

This isn't news to anybody whose ever experienced mental health services. If you're chronically mentally ill, you've been in and out of places seeking treatment and looking for something that helps, so you have tons of examples of the seemingly obvious ways these places fail their users through a ridiculous lack of common sense.

The first psychiatrist I accessed through a free service I saw every few months in an old, largely empty office downtown. The waiting room had a giant painting of someone in a burning room. It literally looked like a person on fire - in the waiting room of a mental health practitioner. What the fuck kind of sense does that make? It was dark as hell! 

I'm going to try and find it on my facebook ...

Success I found it!

Look at this thing - for fucks sake!

Imagine sitting in a waiting-room, anxious as hell and staring at this fucking thing! 

In Mead's piece she refers to those with mental illnesses not even being included in the discussions happening right now around the return of asylums. This doesn't surprise me. It is however, an absolute symptom of a system created to "deal with" the mentally ill and not necessarily properly treat and support them.

As Mead concludes, what we need is funding for community-based support. What we need is housing. What we need are long-term plans and systems that can support those who struggle, but are able to live productive lives. We need access. We need support services outside of the crisis period. Ann when in crisis, we need intervention that is well-informed and empathetic. 

There is so much work to be done on and around the systems that are in place, and the conversation needs to be inclusive.

Stop blaming mental illness for violent crimes.

Just read Stop blaming mental illness for violent crimes by Dean Burnett over at The Guardian. It reminds me of  some tweets I’ve been seeing regarding the media coverage of this - and all recent - shootings. First, that "mental illness" is used as a descriptor in regards to white shooters only, whereas terrorism or other racially charged language is used with people of colour, and also, white folks are often represented with "nice" photographs - never their mugshots. Especially young white people.

Why do we only discuss mental health when the shooter is white? Muslim dude that did this must be mental unstable to justify this. #Orlando

— Hari Kondabolu (@harikondabolu) June 12, 2016

I've never seen a mugshot like this before. Oh, wait. https://t.co/7COOQTmP7V

— deray mckesson (@deray) June 20, 2016

if a black man killed a woman, they'd show his mugshot not a prom photo. https://t.co/ocRjI3U5Hh

— antonio (@antoniodelotero) June 17, 2016

1. Show us his mugshot not this innocent boy-next-door photo
2. Swimmer attacker??? try RAPIST https://t.co/eqVop9GvYR

— Chloè-Anna (@tashamac228) June 7, 2016

Convicted of murdering a child and your mugshot is not used #WhitePrivilege https://t.co/3jfRL3LWyC

— Civil Savage (@Hustle_Scholar) June 21, 2016

So has Jo Cox's murderer been called a terrorist yet? No? Thought so. Even though he fits the definition perfectly. #whiteprivilege

— Umarah (@_umara) June 17, 2016

#WhitePrivilege is rampant in the coverage of the tragic shooting of #JoCox 😢😡😪 pic.twitter.com/VzOs7xfx3X

— Cerian Jenkins (@CerianJenkins) June 17, 2016

Muslims = Terrorism
Whites = Mental Illness #WhitePrivilege

— admtnmkrz (@ATMology) June 16, 2016

#WhitePrivilege pic.twitter.com/G0ykg6XCYv

— (((Sony Kapoor))) (@SonyKapoor) June 12, 2016

These last few weeks have been heavy. 2016 is a fucking brutal son of a bitch. The Ramsay Bolton of recent years (the Game of Thrones episode "Battle of the bastards" just played this past Sunday). It's shooting after shooting. Celebrity deaths (Bowie, Prince, Anton Yelchin just died). Personally my family had its medical issues, Global Transient Amnesia, Vertigo, and Bell's Palsy (all in early 2016). It's just been exhausting. I'm tired. But the onslaught continues.

Politically lately the rhetoric and news coverage has been tense. The UK has Brexit, the Americans have the presidential race and their gun debates, and locally it seems like the economy and jobs has been the big issue. I've been having trouble at work, my hours have been cut, it's super quiet, I just feel zero job security and its playing on my anxiety and depression.

It just feels like a tense time. And right now I feel like terms like "mental illness" are being thrown around a lot in the media, especially in regards to white shooters. Burnett's piece pulled out certain points I'd like to talk about here.

But the idea that certain mental illnesses inevitably cause violence is far more prevalent than the evidence warrants. Numerous studies have shown that those with mental health problems are more often the victims of violence, not perpetrators.

It seems out of every few stories coming out of the united states where a black man was killed by police, information surfaces afterwards about that man having been in crisis. Overall the media coverage of the last few months has been torn apart on social media because of how lacking it is. Intersectionality is rarely applied.

Mental illness doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It’s tangled up with everything else in a person’s life. Upbringing, background, poverty, general health, experiences, genetics, and so on. Essentially, if you exclude the contribution of all other possible factors, the link between mental illness and violence becomes increasingly small. It’s far more common for people to be violent if they also have a substance abuse problem. You could argue this implies the mental illness is a consequence, alongside the violent behaviour, of other issues affecting the person. So blaming mental health for crimes is often like blaming the getaway car for a bank robbery; it’s just one part of the whole situation, and not even the most important.

How is it that some of us feel it all, and some of us don't? We see it. Don't they?

You’d think if the people/media who blamed mental illness for violent crime genuinely believed that, they’d be more alarmed about the state of mental health treatment and facilities. But no, there’s rarely a mention as mental health services are put under massive debilitating strain by cuts and ignorance. We live in a world where a pensioner can’t take a bottle of water onto a plane because they might somehow turn it into a bomb and countless rights are sacrificed in the name of security, but those who think people with mental illness are all killers-in-waiting are fine with them not getting adequate help or care.

Is it all about money and power? Is it about easy blame and distraction? It's all too much these days. I need a break. A vacation. A holiday. I'm broke. My job situation is a mess. What are my options? Lately, it's been a shower and going to bed real early. It's all I've got right now.

Assisted suicide and mental illness.

I've thought about suicide before. More precisely, assisted suicide. There are times when I've been in such pain, it seemed a kindness to myself. But, I don't want to hurt myself. I don't want my mother finding me. I don't want to horrify those I love.

So, a few articles around assisted suicide and the mentally ill have crossed my path, and I've finally had the time to read them. First, Assisted Death: Decision Extremely Complex For Those With Mental Illness - over on Huffington Post.

Last week, a parliamentary committee recommended that Canadians with psychiatric disorders that cause intolerable suffering should be included in any regulations governing physician-assisted death, which becomes legal June 6 under the Supreme Court of Canada's landmark ruling a year ago.

I actually reached out to the doctor quoted in the above article. The parliamentary committee is touching on legislation that directly affects me and people like me. I'm not saying I plan on applying for assisted suicide, but I would like the option. I also would be a great example of the type of person who could talk their way into an approval. There are points and counter-points to all of it, and it should all be discussed.

There's also this post over on Broadly, This Man Wants Doctors To Euthanize Him Because He Can’t Accept His Sexuality, which first, says a lot about homophobia and shame, but also talks about how in Belgium the laws around assisted suicide include mental illness.

A Stolkhom lawyer:

"It's possible to have euthanasia for recognized psychiatric disorders that cause you unbearable pain and hopeless suffering."

I ask how a mental illness resulting from an inability to accept being gay might fit within the law. "Events in your life—such as the death of a loved one—can cause you to develop depressive disorders. In the same way, the difficulty of coming to terms with your sexuality can cause someone to be depressed. 

"That's potentially what fits within the context of mental disorder in this case."

To be clear, the assisted suicide here is because of his depression and anxiety. Due, seemingly majorly, to his being in a lot of pain regarding his being gay (and no doubt other underlying issues). As said by the article:

The case serves as a depressing reminder that the discrimination experienced by some LGBQT people in their formative years can have a hugely scarring and lifelong effect. "Unfortunately we still live in a world where hate and discrimination directed toward lesbian, gay, bi and trans people can lead to many of them feeling distressed, alone and even suicidal," says a spokesperson for Stonewall, an LGBT charity. "We still have so much left to do until all LGBT people are accepted without exception."

This is timely. Days after a possibly-closeted man murdered 49 LGBTQ/Latinx club patrons, and injured 53, there's a lot to discuss regarding homophobia, being closeted, self-hatred and toxic-masculinity. It all intersects. It all compacts. It all kills.

How to Fix a Broken Mental-Health System.

Though set in an American context, How to Fix a Broken Mental-Health System does have parallels to Canada, and I'm sure many parts of the West. The piece speaks to laws enacted to get the mentally ill out of institutions with deplorable living conditions and into community-based centres.

The law was built around a two-step process—release and catch, as it were. De-institutionalize the mentally ill in these deplorable institutions, and then get them into the system of community health centres. But there was no step two. More than half of the proposed community health centres were never built.

In a Canadian context, similar policies were put in place. In a Quebec/Montreal context it's been said that CLSC's (our local health clinics), are meant to pick up the slack. My local clinic said there was a 3-year waiting list to see a psychologist, and closer to a 5 + year wait if I wanted one who spoke English. Hence my decades worth of travel and high-cost to access English services.

The read is interesting, especially if you're American. There is so much work to do be done.

Lizzo and Caroline Smith - "Let 'Em Say."

I also love Lizzo's "Good As Hell."

Reasons to stay alive.

Just read Reasons to Stay Alive by Matt Haig.

Overall I thought the book was a "meh." It lost me on a lot of sections, and overall I just wasn't impressed by it. It did, however have some sections I highlighted for further inquiry or just to excerpt here.

Page 18:

Now, listen. If you have ever believed a depressive wants to be happy, you are wrong. They could not care less about the luxury of happiness. They just want to feel an absence of pain.

I think that's a fair statement. For me, suicide, or death, or just a loss of consciousness just sounds peaceful and nice sometimes.

Page 104:

The thing I hadn't realized, before I became mentally ill, is the physical aspect of it. I mean, even the stuff that happens inside your head is all sensation. My brain tingles, whirred, fluttered and pumped. Much of this action seemed to happen near the rear of my skull, in m occipital lobe, though there was also some fuzzy, TV-static, white-noise feelings going on in my frontal love. 

Well, this is me these days. Zapping, whirring sounds, frontal lobe throbs. Feeling like these's a white-noise swarm in between my ears. These are real symptoms, and Haig mirrors my experience here.

Page 125:

The main thins is the intensity of it. It does not fit within the normal spectrum of emotions. When you are in it, you are really in it. You can't step outside it without stepping outside of live, because it is life. It is your life. Every single thing you experience is filtered though it.
...
Depression for me, wasn't a dulling but a sharpening, an intensifying, as though I had been living my life in a shell and now the shell wasn't there. It was total exposure.

I feel that. Like an open, raw nerve. Like I hear everything. Like it's all too much.

Page 131:

If you are the type of person who thinks too much about stuff then there is nothing lonelier in the world then being surrounded by a load of people on a different wavelength.

Preach.

He also quotes Keats, "Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?" And you know I'd be lying if I said this never crossed my mind, but there are those who do not struggle this way, and who do not have a relationship to pain the way I do, and they have souls, do they not? I understand Keats' wanting to romanticize the pain, since it's his job, but sometimes romanticizing pain does us, those who live it, a disservice.

And then he quotes Vonnegut, "Reading and writing are the most nourishing forms of meditation anyone has so far found." And this is something I am exercising now. It is an attempt at exorcism through an art. Through a practice.

Overall the read was short. I thought Haig clearly had an anti-medication sentiment. And though he claimed to not judge those who needed it, he was always quick with a "but" which negated whatever non-judgmental statement he had just made. He also had these weird fake conversations between past him and present him. I thought they were simplistic and infantile. I also did not like his using twitter-based interaction as page filler. It just seemed amateurish. And I'm the amateur. Writing to the void.

Overall, I wouldn't recommend the book really. Unless you're drawn to "lighter" books about mental illness. I'm not.

Exercises to "bust" your depression.

I don't love the title to this. It's click-batey. I get that it's the joke, but it bugs me.

Depression-Busting Exercise Tips For People Too Depressed To Exercise by Sarah Kurchak. 

Her piece is good though. She talks about the infuriating reality of being told to exercise when you're going through a depression.

When it comes to having a mental illness, the G.I. Joe doctrine is meaningless: Knowing what will help you isn't close to half the battle. It’s a tenth of the battle, at best. Most people with depression are already aware—often too aware—of all the things we could or should be doing to combat our condition. But where the well-meaning mentally healthy person sees a straightforward progression toward improvement, we see the paradox: yes, if we could do those things, it might help our depression, but not being able to do those things is a major part of being depressed.

I think neurotypical people just don't get that. How ambition and energy just evaporate. It takes all of your energy to just do the most "routine" of things.

When you’re depressed (you're navigating) a labyrinth of garbage fires fuelled by physical and mental exhaustion, self-loathing, defeat, and frustration.

Well, balls. This is me right now. I'm going to bed at 9 pm and am just exhausted most of the day. One of the pieces pull quotes just got it and fucking nailed it to the wall.

If you’re staying alive, you’re already doing the hardest workout imaginable.

Preach.

Trust.

I watched Super Soul Sunday yesterday, which featured Iyanla Vanzant. She was promoting her new book, which is all about Trust. Although I like Vanzant sometimes, her experience is very God-centered, and it sometimes alienates me. There was however, a quote from the episode that poked me right in the guts.

There is no greater battle in life than the battle between the parts of you that want to be healed and the parts of you that are comfortable and content remaining broken.

Snap!

There's a lot to un-pack here.

First, the comfort of what is known, and what is habit. There is absolute comfort in things remaining the same, or as constant as possible. I am a creature of habit, I could do the same thing weekly, on rotation, and be reasonably content. There's also comfort in habit and in minimizing surprises or discomfort.

My friend E and I were talking about someone who has a "victim mentality" and who often re-frames situations to always revolve around her, and on top of that, inconvenience or hurt her in some way. For E, it took years for a pattern to make itself visible. After a while she realized that her friend was always at the centre of the drama, and seemed to stoke that drama when and where she could. We talked about it, and it became increasingly clear it's a large part of her (self prescribed) identity and that she get a lot out of it. She wanted to re-centre herself. But it's also part of how she lives, and how she has lived for over 30 years.

In her case, she seems to invigorated by being put-upon. Are she and I alike? Do I see the things that bind me to habit? Do I see my triggers?

What do I get out of identifying with my illness?

How is it certain memories can completely drag you into a remembered shame or pain?

Why is it so difficult to let go of?

What do I get out of the safety of isolation?

What does my lack of trust for the male sex really mean for me? It means loneliness, doesn't it? I'm attracted to heterosexual males, unfortunately for me, that's a group that I have a lot of distrust for. I guess there's also safety in shutting down that conversation, or possibility before anything ever happens. There is zero room for rejection, since I do not put myself in situations in which I can be rejected.

I can't be rejected if I don't even show up.