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The origin of one’s illness is not always a biological or intrapsychic one; it is oftentimes a social or environmental one (Arrendondo, Tovar-Blank & Parham, 2008). The longstanding tradition of over-medicating and turning patients’ attention inward to focus on the biological or psychological origins of their suffering, runs the risk of oppressing patients further by denying the effects of their social context. Structural racism and classism require structural change. Focusing on the multiculturalism, empathy, understanding the ‘other’, identifying microaggressions, and empowerment are all helpful to create greater awareness and consciousness of the problems we face. However, ideological changes are more likely to happen by means of a radical confrontation with a racist and classist system.

John’s Story: How Racism and Classism Operate Within the Mental Health Care System

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It’s time for single-payer healthcare; universal healthcare is a basic human right; and moderate centrism is a shit political strategy for fighting Republicans

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Not only working people, but sick and disabled working people, working multiple jobs. 

The great United States of America is just a wee bit behind in a concept so goddamn simple that every other civilized country on Earth has had it figured out for many decades. 

Good grief.  

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This is heartbreaking. 

We should not have to chose. Healthcare is a right not a privilege.

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Well would you look at that. I guess #MedicareForAll isn’t such a “pony” or “pie in the sky” after all. It’s actually a very popular idea that most Americans support

ObamaCare was step 1 and Medicare For All is step 2

Republicans and many neoliberal centrists are still resisting progress. Please call your congressperson and tell them to support Medicare For All

Healthcare Is A Human Right

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This should absolutely be a thing. Getting to appointments when you’re disabled is incredibly difficult and stressful, and usually causes flares for me. Not to mention, it only adds to costs (trains, parking, gas, ect.). Most of the time my appointments did not have to be done in person, either. Let’s make this a thing. 

Telemedicine: Aims Toward Convenience and Accessibility of Modern Treatment

  Telemedicine is the use of information technology and telecommunication devices to provide a healthcare remotely. It is intended to solve distance barriers, improve access to quality healthcare, and designed to save lives in emergency and critical situations. Telemedicine began when…

https://www.socialworkhelper.com/2017/09/26/telemedicine-aims-toward-convenience-accessibility-modern-treatment/?Social+Work+Helper

shared via Social Work Helper

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The State of Eugenics

“The film delves into the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of America’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens over the course of 70 years. Over 30 states had programs designed to reduce pregnancies and reproduction among people deemed to be “unfit,” “promiscuous,” or “feebleminded.” She documents the lives of the people who were directly affected by legal forced sterilizations, and the individuals who fought to stop the program.” (description from this article). 

This documentary looks SO INTERESTING but I swear, if they undermine the fact that racism is fundamental to the “logic” of eugenics and that American eugenics inspired Hitler and the nazis, I will be very mad... 

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Eighty two percent of the traumatized children seen in the National Child Traumatic Stress Network do not meet diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Because they often are shut down, suspicious, or aggressive they now receive pseudoscientific diagnoses such as “oppositional defiant disorder,” meaning “This kid hates my guts and won’t do anything I tell him to do,” or “disruptive mood dysregulation disorder,” meaning he has temper tantrums. Having as many problems as they do, these kids accumulate numerous diagnoses over time. Before they reach their twenties, many patients have been given four, five, six, or more of these impressive but meaningless labels. If they receive treatment at all, they get whatever is being promulgated as the method of management du jour: medications, behavioral modification, or exposure therapy. These rarely work and often cause more damage.

Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

This excerpt discusses the need for the development of a diagnosis for traumatized children that would be a better fit than PTSD. Because the trauma that children can experience is complex, long-term and affects them developmentally, they do not strictly meet the criteria for PTSD, and as a result receive diagnoses for disorders they don’t have. Sadly, these inaccurate diagnoses often follow these children as they age, leading to devastating lack of effective care. 

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TW: If you specifically find mindfulness helpful for you in managing symptoms, this may be a triggering read.  

“Where once problems ranging from bad marriages and work stress to poverty and race discrimination were routinely dismissed as a failure to “think positive,” now our preferred solution to life’s complex and entrenched problems is to instruct the distressed to be more mindful.

This is a kind of neo-liberalism of the emotions, in which happiness is seen not as a response to our circumstances but as a result of our own individual mental effort, a reward for the deserving. The problem is not your sky-high rent or meager paycheck, your cheating spouse or unfair boss or teetering pile of dirty dishes. The problem is you.

It is, of course, easier and cheaper to blame the individual for thinking the wrong thoughts than it is to tackle the thorny causes of his unhappiness. So we give inner-city schoolchildren mindfulness classes rather than engage with education inequality, and instruct exhausted office workers in mindful breathing rather than giving them paid vacation or better health care benefits.

In reality, despite many grand claims, the scientific evidence in favor of the Moment’s being the key to contentment is surprisingly weak. When the United States Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality conducted an enormous meta-analysis of over 18,000 separate studies on meditation and mindfulness techniques, the results were underwhelming at best.

Although some of the studies did show that mindfulness meditation or other similar exercises might bring some small benefits to people in comparison with doing nothing, when they are compared with  when they are compared with pretty much any general relaxation technique... they perform no better, and in many cases, worse.”

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Research: The Girl Who Cried Pain: A Bias Against Women in the Treatment of Pain

Abstract:

In general, women report more severe levels of pain, more frequent incidences of pain, and pain of longer duration than men, but are nonetheless treated for pain less aggressively. The authors investigate this paradox from two perspectives: Do men and women in fact experience pain differently - whether biologically, cognitively, and/or emotionally? And regardless of the answer, what accounts for the differences in the pain treatment they receive, and what can we do to correct this situation? 

Findings: 

“Research indicates that differences between men and women exist in the experience of pain, with women experiencing and reporting both more frequent and greater pain. Yet rather than receiving greater or at least as effective treatment for their pain as men, women are more likely to be less well treated than men for their painful symptoms. There are numerous factors that contribute to this undertreatment, but the literature supports the conclusion that there are gender 23 based biases regarding women’s pain experiences. These biases have led health-care providers to discount women’s self reports of pain at least until there is objective evidence for the pain’s cause. Medicine’s focus on objective factors and its cultural stereotypes of women combine insidiously, leaving women at greater risk for inadequate pain relief and continued suffering.”

By Anita J. Tarzian and Diane E. Hoffmann

University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Vol. 29, pp. 13-27, 2001

Full paper pdf here

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You can't fight stigma by making disability unspeakable

I’ve noticed that a lot of well-meaning people try to fight disability stigma by making disability unspeakable.

The logic seems to be like this:

They notice that when people are seen as disabled, they are respected less. 

They call this stigma, and think of stigma as a very bad problem. 

They then try to figure out how to make stigma go away so that people will be respected more.

They think that if no one was seen as disabled, there would be no stigma.

They try to get people to pretend that disability doesn’t exist.

They expect this to somehow improve the lives of people with disabilities. (On the grounds that if everyone ignores disability, there will be no disability stigma.)

This approach doesn’t work. Disability exists, whether or not anyone is willing to acknowledge it. When we try to fight stigma by ignoring disability, we send the message that disability is unacceptable.

When people are made to pretend that their disability does not exist, they learn that basic things about their body are unspeakable. When people are made to pretend someone else’s disability doesn’t exist, they learn that if they stopped ignoring basic things about them, it would be impossible to keep respecting them. These are not good lessons.

If you need to pretend someone isn’t disabled in order to respect them, you’re not really respecting them. You’re giving imaginary respect to an imaginary nondisabled person. People with disabilities deserve better. People with disabilities don’t need fake respect handed out as a consolation prize. People with disabilities need to be treated with real respect, as the people they really are.

If we want to fight stigma, we have to get real. Disability exists, and pretending that it doesn’t just makes the problem worse. Stigma is not caused by noticing disability; stigma is caused by ableist attitudes towards disability. It is ok to be disabled, it is not ok to be ableist, and it is upon all of us to build a culture that understands that.