meow

or if they have any sort of critical thinking skills, they can recognize how mental healthcare is imperfect but still believe that the systemic violence is justified because they don’t view psychiatrized people as human.

or they think any anti-psych talking points are simply the Clearly Irrational Ramblings Of An Insane Person. again, because they don’t view psychiatrized people as human.

or they believe that psychiatrized people who don’t want therapy, meds, hospitalization, etc. are walking red flags who are bound to become abusers or otherwise dangers to the community. not realizing that many people (like myself) endured years or even decades of abuse from authority figures in white coats, thinking the ongoing trauma was all going to be worth it in the end if it meant feeling better, before finally realizing that the system is not made to benefit them.

And of course a lot of these studies suck. A lot of them didn't actually think to ask WHEN the schizophrenic acquired the cat, so it's just always presumed that the cat came before the schizophrenia. Most don't really account for the fact that a schizophrenia diagnosis is often a very slow and complex process due to specific regional legalities associated with having "doctors can turn your rights off whenever" disorder. Basically, the same scientific half-truths that surround the phenomenon of "drug-induced schizophrenia," that is the conflation of schizophrenics self-medicating before their formal diagnosis is set and the ambiguity of proving when symptoms onset in relation to that, has been completely replicated for cat-induced schizophrenia lol.

And I love this because it's kind of a perfect demonstration of how the stigma associated with schizophrenia works in medical and scientific settings, right. Everything becomes possible to pathologize, from smoking weed to owning a cat. While the science here is usually pretty bad, "science communication" outlets make it much worse because they run with the most broad dumbass versions of these stories and present them to the public as if there's a clear causal relationship between owning a cat and having schizophrenia, instead of actually reading through the research with an appropriate critical lens and demanding real actual meta-review of obviously flawed studies.

Which is not to say that schizophrenia can't be caused by cats or THC exposure, but that the standard for a concept to become "scientifically true" when dealing with schizophrenia is uh, let's say lower?

every therapist makes snap judgments. every therapist's snap judgments inform how they treat their patients. i'm not going to make excuses for any therapist, but i will say that most therapists who have any chance of being helpful understand that these initial observations can be wrong and in fact might in some cases be motivated by underlying prejudices.

and yet here was this woman, sitting on her couch, staring blankly at the camera in order to disguise her complete glee that she has this "superpower" of snap judgment? first of all, i'm incredibly doubtful she can just look at someone and tell what they will have in any real way, even if we're pretending diagnosis is a hard science. like, even before they open their mouths? ok.

secondly, deciding for someone before you've even talked to them (!) who they are (and this woman thinks personality disorders are who ppl are) means you are not open to hearing from the person themselves. you know, your patient. the one you're paid to listen to. you're going to close them into your narrative. which probably does actually dovetail quite nicely with what you've decided their diagnosis is.

i'm not sure how to fully articulate the feeling that at least gave me (there are so many feelings honestly. there are so so many ways having that happen to you fucks you up. this post is really only about one of them but there are so many more) but it sure as hell does not make people less suicidal. there are better ways to support your friends i promise

And that was the truth! another ambulance came, I was strapped down to the bed in the back, and carted away still without any sleep or privacy. Finally, I thought! I would be somewhere comfortable. They unloaded me and had me walk in. It was full of people I didn't know, I was practically nude in front of strangers, as they had not given me back possession of my actual clothes. They settled me in, told me I would be safe there; which is exactly when the psychological torture started. …At least they showed the mercy of giving me my pills and clothes.

Tell me, have you ever been denied access to your phone and access to any outside communication with your loved ones for days? Have you ever been subject to violations of your private regions, and several forceful medical examinations? Have you ever been in a place with no clocks, where you aren't allowed to know the time without begging a nurse to tell you? Have you ever been forced into grippy socks, and force-fed food you can't eat? Have you ever been stuck in a place where the bathroom has no door? Can you imagine being a transfem and trapped for DAYS in a place where they will not let you shave your face or do your injections? Oh, but fret not! There was allotted 'outside time' where we were given the magnificent privilege of walking around a barren, walled courtyard, filled with turf for 15 minutes twice a day. I never had a consistent roommate, they changed them out every day. I was allowed no privacy, not even while sleeping. Snoring kept me up for hours, the hard mattress refusing to let me sleep, even though I would've gotten 5 hours at most given the regimen they kept there. What a mercy I had been shown by being forcibly sent here! As fucking if.

I realized my only way out of this psychological torture chamber was not honesty, not recovery, not healing, but lies and the same happy deception I had enacted for years on my horribly abusive parents. I had to lie my way out. I had to put on my biggest smile, my happiest face, my cheeriest attitude, my most happy-go-lucky tranny face, and fucking brute-force my jailers into believing that I was okay, that I suddenly wasn't suicidal anymore. And you know what? It fucking worked. It fucking worked because none of those people knew me. None of those people wanted to help me. None of those people could help me, even if they wanted to. And so, I got out a day before my psychiatric hold period officially ended. I never followed the recovery criteria they gave me, I never did anything they told me to. Forced institutionalization helps no one. It is not a kindness, it is psychological torture, physical torture, and an utter cruelty. Why, then, do you think your suicidal friends are so terrified of telling you or their therapist about the thoughts they're having?

the DSM, the most prominent diagnostic manual in the field, has pivoted in recent editions towards building a reputation for being rigorously scientific, the consensus product of intensive research and vigorous debate between experts. which is kind of true: many big names in the field make contributions and many thousands of research articles are considered in the course of each revision.

and indeed: the patterns of traits described in each section are known to be highly reliable. that is, people who suffer from feeling depressed often also report feeling hopeless; people who report worrying excessively often also have difficulty falling asleep; people observed to have patterns of unstable relationships often also get told that they have a sharp temper (note the shift in phrasing and the implications of who gets to wield epistemic authority). but any student of science can tell you that reliability is neither the same as nor a substitute for validity.

some psychological phenomena, like panic attacks, are strongly validated. the construct is neatly defined in a way that is easily operationalized and can be observed and measured across cultures (which makes sense, given that panic attacks are a largely physiological response which can be assessed through even simple biometrics). but most others are not. psychiatric diagnoses are not made on a psychological basis. consequently, it is possible for two people to both have diagnoses of major depression disorder with no overlapping traits or diagnostic criteria. the long-championed "low serotonin" hypothesis of depression has been debunked by clinical research. whether you get diagnosed with trauma or personality disorder may depend on your gender, sexuality, and/or the circumstances of your experiences. whether you have are #neurodivergent or an ontologically criminal person with ASPD or ODD is often a matter of your race more than any actual difference in clinical presentation.

there are no blood tests for psychiatric diagnoses. diagnoses are not made on the basis of brain scans (fmri studies are infamous for poor replication and confirmation bias (itself ironically an extremely well documented psychological construct)). psychiatric diagnoses are assessed and assigned based on cultural biases of the assessors. those who would reassure themselves that newer assessment tools are increasingly more inclusive are ignoring that the core assumption of psychiatry, that a medical framework is the most appropriate way in which to define and interpret subjective distress, is itself a cultural bias and not a prediscursive fact of nature.

these kinds of tags really frustrate me. pop psychology is no more problematic of an idea than any other framework that lacks construct validity, which includes the vast majority of the literature supporting psychiatric practices.

(im actually curious if there's a realistic way to assess the relative damage caused by pop psychology compared to formal, academic psychology (hell, I'd settle for a methods section that could operationalize either definition...), but that's a moot point. )

ironically, this is the kind of mindset common to academics in this field and it's why i contrasted reliability and validity and specifically reminded readers that the former is not a substitute for the latter. no matter how reliably one's tools measure, they cannot to be said to be true unless they can be shown to measure what they measure. a scale that always reads 5lbs heavy will never produce valid answers no matter how steadfast and consistent it is in its wrongness. a data set that shows the diagnostic criteria for major depression disorder are highly reliable clusters of behaviors has not shown that major depression disorder is a real medical condition with a specific pathology and recommended course for treatment.

psychiatric diagnoses are not made more dangerous by professionals who incorporate folk/pop/vulgar psychology into their practice because even rigorously "pure" psychiatry has no better claim to the truth.