#Understanding Medication Labels

[masonrxpharmacy]

When it comes to managing health, understanding the differences between over-the-counter medications (OTC) and prescription medications is crucial. Each type of medication serves distinct purposes, comes with specific regulations, and is suitable for various health concerns. In this blog, we will explore the medication differences, advantages and disadvantages of both categories, and provide essential medication safety tips to help you make informed choices.

What Are Over-the-Counter Medications?

Over-the-counter medications are drugs that can be purchased without a prescription from a healthcare provider. They are typically used to treat common, mild health issues, such as:

Pain Relief: Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) like ibuprofen and acetaminophen are widely used for headaches, muscle aches, and fever.

Allergy Relief: Antihistamines like diphenhydramine and loratadine help relieve allergy symptoms.

Cold and Flu Remedies: Cough suppressants, decongestants, and expectorants fall into this category.

Digestive Health: Medications for heartburn, indigestion, and constipation, like antacids and laxatives, are also OTC options.

Advantages of Over-the-Counter Drugs

Accessibility: OTC medications are readily available at pharmacies, grocery stores, and online, making them convenient for self-treatment.

Cost-Effective: In general, OTC vs. prescription costs are lower, which makes them an attractive option for patients looking to manage minor ailments without incurring high healthcare costs.

No Prescription Required: Patients can make their own decisions regarding the use of OTC medications without needing to consult a healthcare provider, promoting autonomy in healthcare choices.

Disadvantages of Over-the-Counter Drugs

Self-Diagnosis Risks: The availability of OTC drugs can lead to self-diagnosis and misuse. Patients may overlook serious health conditions that require professional evaluation.

Side Effects and Interactions: Even OTC medications can cause side effects or interact with other medications. Understanding medication labels is crucial for safe use.

[queerhawkeyes]

I keep seeing posts that imply everyone is either transmisogyny exempt or transmisogyny affected and that those labels align with birth assigned sex, and that transfemininity is something only AMAB people can claim, and a bunch of other stuff that just seems to be reinforcing binaries and none of it maps onto my experience. what about people who transition multiple times? who keep transitioning? whose genders are not linear? like either sex is immutable or it isn't, you can't have it both ways. this post brought to you by someone who was on T for a decade as a genderqueer person and then decided to do womanhood without being a woman and who is almost universally read as a trans woman now.

[psychology-department]

hot take apparently: pro self-dx means being supportive of those who self-dxs with research regardless of age because NEWS FUCKING FLASH: YOU DONT KNOW WHAT SOMEONE DOES OR DOES NOT HAVE GOING ON IN THERE. AND FEELINGS OF MINORS ARE JUST AS VALID AS YOUR OWN. thank you.

[ocelotegg]

when i reblog a post like that and give a quick take about the DID community online i am always afraid that i will simultaneously receive messages 1. berating me for being ableist against people with DID because no one on here remembers i have it anymore now that i have stopped talking about it every five seconds, and 2. telling me it is a made up quack disorder, and that this is furthermore somehow my fault and i should be embarrassed

[vampireknitting]

I have to get my wisdom teeth removed here on the 4th and I really wish medical anxiety wasn’t so dismissed or laughed at.

The anxiety has been slowly ramping up since Christmas and now that I have to cut out the only thing that’s managed the fibromyalgia bs. I mean sure it’s just weed. But when my health tanked and I was throwing up half of everything I tried to eat and losing weight like it was nothing. Unfortunately it was the only thing that helped stop the vomiting.

I’ve been put on and taking off several medications over the years for being the unlucky type that doesn’t react well to different meds. All the gut pills they wanted me to take hurt or was you know making me digest my own blood.

The Fibromyalgia began creeping in when I was in high school and the doctors I had told me to eat pills and go away. I had injured my knee and it just didn’t get better. I still have issues with it. Being a childhood cancer survivor means health complaints must be cry’s for attention or drugs.

They asked me to not consume any weed because they don’t know if it’ll hurt me to be put under so they can cut out the heavily impacted teeth. Which fine, I won’t fight because they could label me as some sort of user or drug obsessed or whatever. But the only drug that I know can kill you while being put under is meth.

My sister’s dental surgeon said don’t stop smoking weed because there isn’t anything out that supports either side. Pro weed or anti-weed before surgery. He didn’t want anything to add to the stress of the surgery so he said keep doing what you’re doing.

[2manyythoughts]

Annoyed by the fact that when I try looking up nonbinary celebrities for inspiration some of the first search results are “nonbinary celebrities female” and “male”

Like… what?

[imjustaf444keriguess]

i really find it funny when people say a statement and other people try to argue against the statement and then are a great example of the original statement. comedic.

[genderkoolaid]

as someone with ARFID i really couldn't care less about the distinction between "picky eaters" and "genuine eating issues." if you are an asshole to someone you see as "just picky" i will never, ever trust you. i've lived through the trauma of being shamed and humiliated for my eating needs.

frankly i think a LOT of "picky eaters" have some kind of sensory problems– autistic or allistic– and shame is never useful. i don't fucking care how annoying you think we are. if you've never lived through the humiliation of being the only one not eating at a dinner table, or having to choke down something disgusting you already know you hate because other people insist you don't know your own body, or getting a hunger migraine in a house full of food because none of its edible to you? you don't understand how awful it is to have food issues.

whenever i see people draw this distinction between being "just a picky eater" and "having a real problem" all i think is, who does this serve? most people don't even know ARFID exists. there are so many undiagnosed autistics, or just people with a variety of issues that aren't officially diagnosed. why do we need a medical label in order to be treated with respect and compassion? why did i need to be diagnosed as autistic for my family to realize the abuse they put me through for years because of my eating habits?

it's such an easy habit for neglected groups to fall into– the idea that a medical diagnosis can save us. that by appealing to the medical/psychiatric industry, we can be protected from abuse and given basic respect and resources. but the truth is that it should never have come to this in the first place. dignity doesn't come from an abled doctor telling you that there's a medical reason for your symptoms. it comes from being a person. once you accept that you need a Good Reason to have your needs respected, you doom yourself to neglecting and abusing those who have your same struggles because they aren't lucky enough to access medical recognition.

tl;dr solidarity with all "picky eaters" stop guilting people for having varying food needs, if we make you irrationally angry that's YOUR problem not ours, and abolish "children's menus" & replace them with simple-food menus for people of all ages

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

i wrote this in the notes of another post originally and am copy + pasting it here because im right but "tell the cops nothing, tell the doctors everything" is such a stupid ass fucking abled take. doctors engage in policing idk how to explain to yall that some people cannot in fact just tell doctors everything without it putting them at risk

like im not gonna go into the myriad of ways this is bs but like a quick example is i cant tell my doctors about my substance use issues because if i get that listed on my medical records it will actively endanger me. It will impact how I'm treated in emergency situations and will get me labeled as "drug seeking" when i try to get other issues dealt with.

i dont say this to scare people but because this is actually important information for people to have. if a medical professional claims this isnt an issue, they are NOT "one of the good ones". they are either straight up lying or theyre utterly unaware, which is frankly not better. doctors are cops. never forget it

like YES tell ur doctor abt being sexually active but stop saying "tell the cops nothing and the doctor everything" before i start killing in cold blood

I KNOW THE ORIGINAL QUOTE. This is about how people misquote it, as well as how they view the phrase as meaning "all medical professionals". ALSO! emts are not the neutral figures you think they are. please stop spewing your lack of understanding on the topic all over my tags, its embarrassing. Paramedics kill people and engage in policing stop fucking shilling for them indiscriminately

finally, THIS POST IS ABOUT DRUGS. FIRST AND FOREMOST IT IS ABOUT DRUGS. THIS WAS WRITTEN BY AN ADDICT. the way yall are talking about addicts and drugs users in the tags is so fucking dehumanising. you are part of the problem. Id suggest non addicts shut their traps please and thank you.

similarly, before you comment, ask youself: am i an addict ? do i have an understanding of how addicts, particularly otherwise disabled addicts, have to navigate healthcare systems ? if not, consider SHUTTING THE FUCK UP. hope this helps !

read the notes before you leave a comment im so fucking serious. reblogs are off because none of you know how to act and i have zero patience at this point. if you think im being bitchy pls consider the fact that your stupid comment does not exist in a vacuum and i have received and deleted countless stupid notes and abusive asks on and about this post and your stupid comment exists within that context and i am fucking tired.

[nova-rogue]

????????? You have a personality disorder and you’re still calling abusers narcissists like you don’t know what NPD is?????????

i don't have a personality disorder, i don't know where you got that idea from.

2. there is a thing called narcissistic abuse which is not the same as npd. they are separate things--not everyone with npd is abusive, and not everyone who commits narcissistic abuse has npd. the problem with pop psychology (you know, popular talking points about human psychology often done by the masses rather than professionals) is that everyone who sits around talking about this stuff without professional information make things up and decide that you either have to pathologize everything or pathologize nothing. this is a load of nonsense. i have been in therapy with neuropsychiatrists and neuropsychologists for 10 years. i can absolutely confirm with a decade's worth of work with medical professionals that there is such a thing as narcissistic abuse (it's literally what i experienced from my mother), and that NPD and narc abuse are not one in the same. if you genuinely do not believe in what i'm telling you then you need to spend a good long time doing actual research on abuse and psychology because the information i'm bringing to the table is from medical professionals. yours is probably from tumblr, which is a shit place to get your actual real life medical information.

3. what the hell are you even talking about? what is this in reference to????? i haven't reblogged or posted anything about this in god knows how long???

do you derive joy from being a reactive and ill-informed person who likes to make things up? like genuinely

[doberbutts]

With this latest round of discourse being "trans men shouldn't complain about being kicked out of women's spaces", I felt the urge to write up a relatively long post regarding the topic, as I feel it is a long tangled mess and involves a significant amount of people simply talking past each other.

To begin, what is a woman's space? I ask this, because "women's spaces" often fall under one of three categories: medical services, social services, and social gatherings. Of the three, trans men need access to nearly everything if not everything included within "medical services" and "social services". These things often need to be considered co-ed anyway, but are still considered "for women" and often are labeled things like "women's health" or "women's defense". Social gatherings- things such as book clubs, concerts, festivals, and other similar outings- can have a nuanced and complicated history when it comes to the inclusion, or exclusion, of trans men.

As an example- I am a binary, gay trans man who has not yet been sterilized. If I become pregnant and need to seek out social services, I must do so via my provider's "Women and Babies" department. I am neither of those things, and yet regardless of whether I am completing or terminating the pregnancy, I must label myself a woman in order to receive care. If I wish to have a pap smear, receive birth control, or investigate my chances of ovarian and cervical cancer, I must do so via the "Women's Health Clinic". I am not a woman, but I must label myself as one in order to discuss sterilization options. Many trans men who have had their gender markers changed prior to sterilization have reported difficulty even booking an appointment, as well as difficulty convincing their insurance to pay for this appointment due to a discrepancy with gender markers vs gendered care. Many have discussed the realities of being a pregnant man, whether they remained pregnant until their child was born, or whether they terminated said pregnancy with an abortion.

It should come as no surprise that the statistics for trans men receiving quality gynecological care are abysmal. It should be equally unsurprising to hear how many trans men have died from botched abortions, untreated miscarriages, infections and cancers of the uterus and cervix and ovaries, and complications during pregnancy or birth. We belong in this space, despite it being labeled "for women", and the only thing pushing us out has done is quite literally what's been killing us.

This is, of course, not even taking into account the numbers of trans men who have been forced to become pregnant via their husbands or families as a means to detransition them, and those who have become pregnant as a result of corrective rape. There is a saying among trans men of my age- it isn't "we all know a guy this has happened to", it's "which of us haven't experienced this? who among us doesn't fear this? who will it happen to next?"

Which brings me to my next point: women's social services. As with women's medical care, nearly everything labeled "for women" as a social service must be inclusive to trans men. Shelters for domestic violence survivors, rape crisis centers, self defense classes, family planning, these are all things that honestly should already be co-ed. But, many times, they are exclusively targeted towards women. I understand why, I do. But with trans men being statistically more likely than cis women to experience the need for these services, it seems a cruelty to close their doors to a vulnerable demographic reaching out for help.

Where should trans men in crisis go? Shutting the door to us without addressing the reason we need to access these resources gives us a single ultimatum: detransition, or die. Go back to being a woman, or die knowing the likelihood that a woman's name will adorn your headstone, and "daughter, wife, mother" will be said in your obituary. Much like the medical services, this incomplete answer has lead many trans men to their deaths. Whether by their own hands, or by their attackers'.

But there are other social services out there that perhaps are not as dire. Women's scholarships, colleges, all girls schools. Girl Scouts, women's sport leagues, gym memberships. Trans men don't need access to these, right?

Well... is the trans man in question out? Has he been living as a man, or is he still closeted? Is it safe for him to come out? Does he pass, or has he just bought his first binder and given himself his first buzz cut? Is he living under the control of his parents, or is he able to freely decide for himself the type of person he'd like to be and the type of life he'd like to live?

You see, I was a Girl Scout once. And, if we are to believe to our core that trans men are men even before they know the words "transgender", this means I was a boy in a girl's space. I didn't know that being transgender was an option for me at the point where my troop disbanded, and another leader to replace the first within my local area was not found until after I had aged out.

But also... I was in 7th grade when my troop disbanded. Two years later, I would learn the word "transgender", and suddenly everything would make sense. Two years later, I would come out to my parents and my sisters. To put this into perspective, I graduated high school in 2010. The Boy Scouts officially allowed cisgender girls and transgender people of all genders to join all programs in 2019.

I was not expelled from my Girl Scout troop. My leader simply stopped showing up to meetings, and my troop disbanded to go our separate ways when leadership could not find someone quickly enough to replace her. But... if this had not happened, I would have been a recently out transgender boy in a girl's social service, still wearing push up bras and frilly shirts because that's all my parents would buy me until I became an adult and moved out and had a job with my own money to re-purchase myself a wardrobe. Indistinguishable from any of the others, outside of what went on inside my own mind.

I would not have been accepted into the Boy Scouts, if Girl Scouts had been taken from me as abruptly as it was from a different transgender boy in the same state I was born and raised. Which would have left me with... nothing. Neither. And the only reason I even joined the Girl Scouts was because I had wanted to join the Boy Scouts and the local troop had refused to allow me, because they had labeled me a girl.

I don't believe I'm the one that coined Schrodinger's Gender, but I do reference it often. In this situation, one is both a boy when it hurts, and a girl when it hurts. Even if that gender label changes by the second, the point is to use your gender and your assigned sex to hurt you.

But then, why do these services even have to be gendered to begin with? After all, Boy Scouts just updated to be The Scouts, and has removed (on paper) the insistence on gendering.

Well... I certainly agree that the majority of gendering these services is at this point a concept that needs to be reformed, but I'm unconvinced that we will be able to completely integrate without addressing the reason they were segregated by gender in the first place.

Women's gym memberships are gender segregated for two reasons. Women and girls- and anyone labeled as women and girls, regardless of true identity- are frequently not afforded the same access to resources as cisgender men and boys. Women and girls- and anyone labeled such- are frequently at high risk of predatory sexual behavior and physical violence. Both of these problems are symptoms of a larger system of misogyny at play, and both of these problems directly affect trans men especially those who have not transitioned in a way that makes them pass for cis men.

Regardless of the truth of my identity, the reality is that I was seen as and treated as a girl when it came to physical fitness, and thus barred from the same activities freely offered to the boys. Regardless of the truth of my identity, I have experienced predatory sexual behavior from cis men as young as 8 or 9 years old, continuing past when I came out and began to transition socially.

If the problem is not addressed, cis women cannot re-integrate with cis men. But, additionally, if the problem is not addressed, the choice still remains clear for trans men. Detransition, stay closeted, or go without.

A common complaint of trans men is the invisibility and erasure our demographic faces. It should be easy to see why this happens. The problem of a misogynistic society is one that continues to this day, and without addressing the problem we cannot hope for success in creating a more inclusive space. At the same time, trans men are being pushed out and isolated as they realize they must make a choice.

As for social gatherings, such as a woman's retreat or a woman's music festival? Of course, it may sound odd to say that a trans man should feel welcome there. But the truth of the matter is the majority of the trans men asking for the ability to stay are trans men who have been within that space for years already, prior to coming out, prior to realizing some things about their genders, prior to taking their first steps as men.

I'm pretty good friends with an older butch who told me that I am the first person they ever told that they were a nonbinary man. This person is in their 50s. They're married. But the wife doesn't like it, and they love their wife too much to cause friction in the relationship, so they keep it to themselves, and they keep quiet, and they don't say anything about being transgender, but in their head they aren't a woman. This person is not a woman, by their own insistence. Should this person be forcibly ejected from their local lesbian community, which they and the wife helped form decades ago? Should they divorce their wife, since that would make her not a lesbian anymore?

What harm is it, truly, to allow this person to stay? Social isolation kills people. The trans man suicide statistics are just as abysmal as any of the others I've mentioned here. Forcing someone to burn 20, 30, 40 years of their lives and their friends and their achievements because they are finally living as themselves is a deeply hurtful and isolating experience.

The majority of trans men asking to be included in these spaces are not trans men like me- who never really jived with the idea of womanhood and distanced ourselves as much as possible the moment we saw the opportunity. They are men like my friend, often existing outside of the binary, often with a deep love and appreciation for womanhood despite realizing that perhaps the label does not fit them as well as they once thought. They often have many years of connection, entire lives spent intwined in these spaces.

What good does it do to chase them out? What harm does it to do let them stay?

[clockwayswrites]

The Birdritch's Nest part 25

masterpost

“That is a lot of plants,” Jason said. He swept his eyes over the space as he slipped his lock picks back into their little pouch.

“He has a botanist friend, apparently, and she keeps giving him plants,” Dick explained as he squeezed past Jason and into the apartment.

“Why are you here again?”

“Because I have a car which is better to carry all of Danny’s stuff in than your bike,” Dick explained. He went over to the wall of plants in front of the windowed corner and squinted down at something on his phone.

Jason pulled out his own phone to glance at what Tim had sent. “You say ‘all Danny’s stuff’ like the list was long. The guy hasn’t exactly been demanding.”

“The ‘guy’ expects to actually go home in a few days,” Dick pointed out.

“And is an adult and so can, you know, actually go home,” Jason retorted.

“Damian’s attached.”

“…I concede to your point,” Jason said once that thought sunk in. “Double the clothing asked for?”

“Basically. Make sure that he has a weeks worth, Alfred can always do laundry,” Dick said before letting out a little noise of triumph and doing something over by the plants. “There, watering system turned on.”

“Congratulations, you’re a genius,” Jason drawled. “Now go get his medication gathered up and snoop a little while you’re at it.”

“I thought we weren’t supposed to be snooping,” Dick, words a teasing sing-song as he passed by.

Jason flicked him off. “Like you wouldn’t anyways. I just want to know what you find.”

“Only if you tell me what you find in the bedroom.”

“Deal.”

The bedroom was almost startlingly normal after the plant filled living main room. It didn’t look like Danny really spent much time in it beyond sleeping. The bed was absentmindedly fixed, a black down comforter over pale blue sheets. There was a paperback on the nightstand next to a lamp and a pocket sized notebook with a pen clipped onto the bent and battered cover.

It was the first thing that Jason picked up.

The notebook was obviously where Danny made notes when he was already settled in bed. As Jason flipped through the pages there was everything from to-do lists to invention ideas to… a lot of thought about wings. Jason turned the notebook in his hands. That page wasn’t in English. The language felt like it was on the tip of Jason’s tongue but he just couldn’t get it out.

Maybe some sort of dialect?

Jason couldn’t actually read it, but there was enough to piece together from similarities that tugged on his memory. Enough to understand it was about the wings. Something about the process of change? Aging?

“Hey Jay?” Dick interrupted, scattering Jason’s thoughts. “Can you read the label on these bottles? There’s some serious printing issues happening, I can’t even tell what language it’s in.”

The pill bottle felt oddly cold in Jason’s hand when he took it from Dick, but maybe the bathroom just had shit heating in this place. It would be just like Gotham builders to mess that up.

“Oh, that’s the same thing Danny is writing in here,” Jason said passing the notebook to Dick. “It’s something about wings and getting old, I think, but I can’t really read it.”

“Read it? I don’t even know what it is. Gives me a headache just to look at it,” Dick grumbled as he flipped through the notebook. “The whole bird thing has really been on his mind, hasn’t it?”

Jason gave a little huff. “Do you blame him? The guy has wings now. It would be on my mind too.”

“Yeah… guess I really can’t,” Dick said and snapped a picture of the page with the unknown writing to send to the group chat. “Any idea what it is?”

“Nope. It’s like it’s a distant dialect or that it uses some of the same alphabet of something I learned some of once. Like how Chinese and Japanese use some of the same characters, you know?” Jason explained as he opened the side table drawer and then quickly closed it again. That was more than he needed to know about Danny. “Maybe something from when I was catatonic in the league, who knows. There were a lot of languages in that place.”

“Cass or Damian might now it then,” Dick said as he eyed the drawer Jason had now moved away from.

“Don’t, trust me,” Jason said. “Did you get the medications you needed to grab?”

“Yeah, they’re in the bag. Just a standard bathroom, really. Though he keeps his toothbrush in this old mug with a hero I don’t recognize on it, someone called Phantom.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, but it sure sounds like a hero name. Add it to the list,” Jason said as he started on gathering up the requested clothing and extra enough to last a week. “Check the closet to see if there are any shits in there that work around wings.”

Jason rolled his eyes as Dick threw the closet doors open dramatically and focused on his task. Jeans, sweatpants, underwear, what he guessed was pajamas were all added to the bag.

“So, nothing that looks like it was made for wings,” Dick said and tossed some normal shirts and a few sweaters into the bag. Jason sighed and folded them neatly. “Maybe he hasn’t had time to find any yet? It hasn’t been that long since the bird thing and seems it all started there. Or maybe he’s just always home when he’s had then?”

“Better let Alfred know then. He’ll want to get something as soon as possible.”

“Yeah, good point,” Dick agreed.

While Dick stepped out of the bedroom to call Alfred, Jason took the time to double check the list. It really was pretty basic. Jason didn’t know if Danny was just trying to not be demanding or if the guy didn’t need much, but Jason went ahead and put the bedside paperback and notebook in the bad too. Jason slung the duffel bag Dick had brought over his shoulder (he totally could have ridden his bike like this) and took a little bit of time to snoop through Danny’s bookcase while Dick finished the call. Sci-fi, horror, old text books, and a ton of notebooks filled the shelf with knickknacks and a few figures. Jason at least had to give Danny points for having some of the sci-fi classics, even if the range of works was pretty limited.

“Okay, Alfred is on it,” Dick said. “Anything else we need to do?”

“Nah, I think we’re good,” Jason said. Something made him not want to look through the notebooks, like they had already done enough snooping. It was an odd feeling. “Let’s get going, I’m hungry for whatever dinner is.”

“You’re always hungry,” Dick said.

Jason shrugged rather than dealing with how true that statement was. “I’m a growing boy.”

“You’re a trash pit.”

“Yeah, you want to go there, cereal boy?”

“Leave my cereal out of it!”

---

AN: I do love writing Dick & Jason so much. Can you tell I have an older brother? Also sorry for the mistakes I'm sure are abounding. Guess who turns out to be anemic? This critter! Maybe getting that fixed will help...

[trans-axolotl]

also in regards to that last article about varied ways of thinking about psychosis/altered states that don't just align with medical model or carceral psychiatry---I always love sharing about Bethel House and their practices of peer support for schizophrenia that are founded on something called tojisha kenkyu, but I don't see it mentioned as often as things like HVN and Soteria House.

ID: [A colorful digital drawing of a group of people having a meeting inside a house while it snows outside.]

"What really set the stage for tōjisha-kenkyū were two social movements started by those with disabilities. In the 1950s, a new disability movement was burgeoning in Japan, but it wasn’t until the 1970s that those with physical disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, began to advocate for themselves more actively as tōjisha. For those in this movement, their disability is visible. They know where their discomfort comes from, why they are discriminated against, and in what ways they need society to change. Their movement had a clear sense of purpose: make society accommodate the needs of people with disabilities. Around the same time, during the 1970s, a second movement was started by those with mental health issues, such as addiction (particularly alcohol misuse) and schizophrenia. Their disabilities are not always visible. People in this second movement may not have always known they had a disability and, even after they identify their problems, they may remain uncertain about the nature of their disability. Unlike those with physical and visible disabilities, this second group of tōjisha were not always sure how to advocate for themselves as members of society. They didn’t know what they wanted and needed from society. This knowing required new kinds of self-knowledge.

As the story goes, tōjisha-kenkyū emerged in the Japanese fishing town of Urakawa in southern Hokkaido in the early 2000s. It began in the 1980s when locals who had been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders created a peer-support group in a run-down church, which was renamed ‘Bethel House’. The establishment of Bethel House (or just Bethel) was also aided by the maverick psychiatrist Toshiaki Kawamura and an innovative social worker named Ikuyoshi Mukaiyachi. From the start, Bethel embodied the experimental spirit that followed the ‘antipsychiatry’ movement in Japan, which proposed ideas for how psychiatry might be done differently, without relying only on diagnostic manuals and experts. But finding new methods was incredibly difficult and, in the early days of Bethel, both staff and members often struggled with a recurring problem: how is it possible to get beyond traditional psychiatric treatments when someone is still being tormented by their disabling symptoms? Tōjisha-kenkyū was born directly out of a desperate search for answers.

In the early 2000s, one of Bethel’s members with schizophrenia was struggling to understand who he was and why he acted the way he did. This struggle had become urgent after he had set his own home on fire in a fit of anger. In the aftermath, he was overwhelmed and desperate. At his wits’ end about how to help, Mukaiyachi asked him if perhaps he wanted to kenkyū (to ‘study’ or ‘research’) himself so he could understand his problems and find a better way to cope with his illness. Apparently, the term ‘kenkyū’ had an immediate appeal, and others at Bethel began to adopt it, too – especially those with serious mental health problems who were constantly urged to think about (and apologise) for who they were and how they behaved. Instead of being passive ‘patients’ who felt they needed to keep their heads down and be ashamed for acting differently, they could now become active ‘researchers’ of their own ailments. Tōjisha-kenkyū allowed these people to deny labels such as ‘victim’, ‘patient’ or ‘minority’, and to reclaim their agency.

Tōjisha-kenkyū is based on a simple idea. Humans have long shared their troubles so that others can empathise and offer wisdom about how to solve problems. Yet the experience of mental illness is often accompanied by an absence of collective sharing and problem-solving. Mental health issues are treated like shameful secrets that must be hidden, remain unspoken, and dealt with in private. This creates confused and lonely people, who can only be ‘saved’ by the top-down knowledge of expert psychiatrists. Tōjisha-kenkyū simply encourages people to ‘study’ their own problems, and to investigate patterns and solutions in the writing and testimonies of fellow tōjisha.

Self-reflection is at the heart of this practice. Tōjisha-kenkyū incorporates various forms of reflection developed in clinical methods, such as social skills training and cognitive behavioural therapy, but the reflections of a tōjisha don’t begin and end at the individual. Instead, self-reflection is always shared, becoming a form of knowledge that can be communally reflected upon and improved. At Bethel House, members found it liberating that they could define themselves as ‘producers’ of a new form of knowledge, just like the doctors and scientists who diagnosed and studied them in hospital wards. The experiential knowledge of Bethel members now forms the basis of an open and shared public domain of collective knowledge about mental health, one distributed through books, newspaper articles, documentaries and social media.

Tōjisha-kenkyū quickly caught on, making Bethel House a site of pilgrimage for those seeking alternatives to traditional psychiatry. Eventually, a café was opened, public lectures and events were held, and even merchandise (including T-shirts depicting members’ hallucinations) was sold to help support the project. Bethel won further fame when their ‘Hallucination and Delusion Grand Prix’ was aired on national television in Japan. At these events, people in Urakawa are invited to listen and laugh alongside Bethel members who share stories of their hallucinations and delusions. Afterwards, the audience votes to decide who should win first prize for the most hilarious or moving account. One previous winner told a story about a failed journey into the mountains to ride a UFO and ‘save the world’ (it failed because other Bethel members convinced him he needed a licence to ride a UFO, which he didn’t have). Another winner told a story about living in a public restroom at a train station for four days to respect the orders of an auditory hallucination. Tōjisha-kenkyū received further interest, in and outside Japan, when the American anthropologist Karen Nakamura wrote A Disability of the Soul: An Ethnography of Schizophrenia and Mental Illness in Contemporary Japan (2013), a detailed and moving account of life at Bethel House. "

-Japan's Radical Alternative to Psychiatric Diagnosis by Satsuki Ayaya and Junko Kitanaka

[gonyadaldysgenesis]

i dont really understand why people are so against ridding of the concept of AGAB/ASAB altogether in the name of "well, how would we define being trans then?"

a woman is "someone who identities as a woman." there is no other definition that does not exclude people who are women.

why does it make people uncomfortable to define trans people as "someone who identifies as trans"? trying to force it into some other definition will always exclude or include someone who either does or does not identify with the label. even if we are defining transness using AGAB/ASAB to say "someone who is transitioning away from/does not identify with their AGAB/ASAB", this is already true; there are GNC binary men who were AMAB who identify as trans and bigender women who were AFAB who identify as cis.

we do not need to keep around an oppressive concept that harms thousands of people in systemic and medical fashions because it would be harder to define some words. words that are used for identification are already going to be nearly impossible to define due to the complexity of human identity.

[transmutationisms]

forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but isn't every medical diagnosis an artifact of human taxonomic schemes? I know I'm not treading new ground here and that diseases/medical conditions aren't like, drawn from thin air in the way a lot of psychiatric conditions are i suppose it just confuses me a bit

no, & this is ancillary in some ways to what i'm actually criticising about psychiatry. it's true there are non-psychiatric medical diagnoses that work analogously to psychiatric ones: think ME/CFS, hEDS, fibromyalgia, most things that have 'idiopathic' in the name. these are names given to clusters of symptoms, like the way that psychiatric labels are just names for a certain set of behaviours. we don't know what causes these issues, though people have various theories and there is (a varying amount of) research ongoing that aims to find the etiologies.

however, that's not the case for all non-psychiatric diagnoses. think about a viral or bacterial infection, a torn ACL, or Down syndrome. these are diagnoses that do refer to specific infectious agents, anatomical problems, genetic variants, and so forth. that doesn't mean the diagnosis is always easy to make, or that it's always made correctly, but it does mean that when you are diagnosed with one of these problems, a specific cause is being identified (& sometimes they might even be right). it's not just a convenient shorthand name for a group of symptoms, even though of course, most things that are diagnosed are done so because they cause and are associated with symptoms. (most but not all lol.)

psychiatry is distinct as a discipline in that all of its diagnoses function the first way i described. they are not referring to disease entities or processes; there is no credible hypothesis for a biological etiology. why? fundamentally, because the psychiatric diagnoses generally exist to pathologise socially unwanted behaviour: the taxonomy is a reflection of a political agenda and the priorities of clinicians. it's not even really an adequate framework for grouping patients together, because you get placed in a category based only on, again, external manifestations (behaviours). who says any two people who hallucinate or cut themselves are doing it for the exact same reasons? well, no one, because again, even getting the same psych diagnosis doesn't indicate anything about an actual etiology or underlying biological process or anything. there is no referent; the psychiatric diagnosis is only defined heuristically and circularly.

many people are confused by this because, in both popular and professional discourse, psychiatric diagnoses are consistently spoken about as though they DO refer to an underlying discoverable disease or disease process. despite hundreds of years of looking for such things, psychiatrists are yet to find any, and if they did, the condition in question would be reassigned to the relevant medical specialty, because psychiatrists also cannot treat infectious agents, anatomical problems, harmful genetic variants, and so on. (when i worked as a bibliographer we used to have extremely funny arguments over whether materials pertaining to the psychiatric search for biological disease processes should be categorised under psychiatry, neuroscience, medicine general, philosophy of medicine, 'science and society,' or just 'controversies and disputes' with no real subject label.)

to be clear, when i say psychiatric diagnoses aren't referring to known or discoverable disease processes, that's not a moral indictment. it's not an inherently bad diagnostic process, provided the patient understands that is what the process actually is. sometimes we just don't know yet what we're dealing with; sometimes a heuristic diagnostic label is just a way of billing insurance for a treatment that we know helps some similar patients, even if we don't know why.

however, with psychiatric diagnoses, evidence for such efficacy is widely lacking and often even negative; this is fundamentally because psychiatric diagnoses are not formulated on the basis of patient needs but on the basis of employer and state needs to cultivate a productive workforce and by corollary enforce a notion of mental 'normality.' all medicine under capitalism has a biopolitical remit; psychiatry has only a biopolitical remit. it has never at any point succeeded in making diagnoses that refer to demonstrable disease processes, because that's definitionally not even under its purview. these diagnoses have never been satisfactorily shown to be related to any disease process—and why should we expect that? historically, that's not what they exist for; it's not the problem they were invented to solve. they are social technologies; they're not illnesses.

[iatrophilosophos]

Hey I'm hearing uh. More, and more, and more buzz about GLP-1 agonists like ozempic from random ppl and healthcare providers alike and there's like a terrifying lack of lucidity abt it so I just wanna say, if you've heard some stuff and are curious:

Ozempic is a chemically-aided crash diet. That's it.

Like metformin, an older diabetes medication used off-label for weight loss, it's functioning as an appetite suppressant in this use-case. It's not magic; it's not changing how your body makes or uses fat; it just makes it less miserable to eat less. It is contraindicated by histories of disordered eating and should absolutely not be prescribed without a full screening for above-adequate food intake and nutrition *and* ongoing screening for adequate nourishment/malnutrition: this is broadly not happening.

I've also seen no indication that ozempic/GLP-1 agonists are any less likely to lead to weight cycling (w/o constant use) than a straight crash diet, or do anything meaningful to limit the known, significant health risks of weight cycling.

Nothing has changed:

The main things we know from a western scientific perspective about weight and weight loss are that 1) almost all people who lose significant weight gain it back and 2) weight cycling causes cardiovascular and metabolic health complications. Yall we aint even have strong evidence to suggest that weight loss is beneficial to health conditions associated with higher weights. This *should* point to Dr's never ever reccomending weight loss (we do know it can hurt, don't know it can help) but yknow we live in uhhhh fucking world.

We are possibly ripe for an aggressive intensification of anti-fat medical rhetoric, especially in pediatrics

Among the projections for an RFK FDA that ive gotten from folks i know in these fields is a renewed focus on childhood obseity and general military-style fitness. As the ozempic fad has already been ramping up, I'm kinda! concerned! about this being a major point of focus for the oncoming administration--i figure we're ripe for another mass diet craze associated with a wide variety of deaths anyway and that existing cultural+market inertia added to it being literally on the agenda spells some not great things. I really seriously reccomend paying extra attention to this area.

Clinics love ozempic because it's extremely popular and extremely profitable--i even know someone who's job was threatened for refusing to prescribe it. We already know that we cant trust doctors to be informed around weight or for the system to sound public alarms.

Obviously, people have the right to do whatever they want--but the disclosure just isn't there and people are being sold this stuff based on the idea it'll make them *healthier* and prevent disease. It can't and it won't.

If the claims here about weight in general are new to you, start here: (Don't love the title of the article, second the exasperation)

If you want to understand more about glp-1 agonists specifically, like, start with the Wikipedia article and do some googling it lays out the pharmacology in relatively plain language. Sry i ain't doing a buncha work to find citations ppl won't click; there's not a lot of good critical stuff out there that's actually published but it doesn't actually take a lot of reading up on critical weight science to form a critical take on the sources singing ozempics praises.

Peace, good luck, do whatever you want forever, maybe tell ur mom that this isn't any different from the disastrous weight loss fads of the 90s.