5 ms·

Thankfully I've been seeing progress in the professional world in this regard, at least in regards to autism and schizophrenia. Treatment that is more focused

by mercer 10y ago

Thankfully I've been seeing progress in the professional world in this regard, at least in regards to autism and schizophrenia. Treatment that is more focused on 'living with' rather than on fixing, repressing, or medicating. More emphasis on creating and finding the right environment to function in. And in the case of autism, less focus on treating the umbrella-term 'autism', and more focus on specific treatment for specific issues (many of which are not unique to autism). Perhaps this is only my experience, but I hope it reflects a larger shift in thinking. Sadly I notice much less of this in 'regular society'. Mental health issues are still 'icky' to many people and beneath a thin veneer of acceptance there's ultimate very little patience or understanding for the outliers. > The "normative" needs to be replaced with the garden - humans, like all life, are a basket of diversity. We differ from each other in our very natures; forcing us all towards an ideal, "correcting" our sicknesses so we all become alike in thought, is the wrong model for us. So true. It sometimes feels like a white lie to talk about the 'upside' of various disabilities, but when I look at my past it's not a lie at all. I, with my 'special condition' am liked (loved, even) often precisely because I'm 'weird'. Two friends of mine suffer from schizophrenia and it's not a lie to say that their 'condition', and the resulting worldview, hardships, and so on are immensely valuable.

astazangasta 10y ago
I am really into R.D. Laing and a more obscure psychologist named John Weir Perry. They have fairly different approaches (Laing is more of a post-structuralist, Perry is a Jungian), but both of them were firm believers that schizophrenia was a process that could be worked through; Perry in particular believed that it was a healing process, not a destructive one, and that successfully going through it (to the other side) involved a reconstruction of the self that left people better-equipped to deal with their lives. I recommend his book, "The Far Side of Madness", for this reason alone, that it contains stories of people who recovered from schizophrenia and felt it had somehow improved them.

by mercer 10y ago

astazangasta 10y ago

I am really into R.D. Laing and a more obscure psychologist named John Weir Perry. They have fairly different approaches (Laing is more of a post-structuralist, Perry is a Jungian), but both of them were firm believers that schizophrenia was a process that could be worked through; Perry in particular believed that it was a healing process, not a destructive one, and that successfully going through it (to the other side) involved a reconstruction of the self that left people better-equipped to deal with their lives. I recommend his book, "The Far Side of Madness", for this reason alone, that it contains stories of people who recovered from schizophrenia and felt it had somehow improved them.