what's up

NPD awareness month 2026 questions!

theres more to this than i can properly express right now but theres something interesting about how "awareness" efforts interact with mental health/disability issues within a wider oppressive society. People have rightfully brought attention to the way that some disorders are now seen as less serious due to their normalization, things like depression, anxiety, adhd, etc... are often made out as quirks rather than conditions which can be disabling. To some extent, this awareness can still be helpful, and I think many would default to being in favor of it, viewing the de-emphasis of these disorders as an unfortunate byproduct. I'm not here to say that awareness is bad, but I do think we should take a look at the other side of the coin and consider what that tells us about the situation. When some disorders are accepted as normal, as acceptable to have, what does that say about those disorders that don't reach the same status? Are they brought up along side those other disorders? or are they pushed down into the depths of social taboos? I would argue in many cases its the latter. Look at how popular sentiment treats schizophrenia or NPD. These conditions are deeply dehumanizing labels which people treat in a way so vile its difficult to even describe. the terms for diagnosis themselves become synonymous with evil or bad people. If you're being rude or uninformed you're "psychotic", if you're abusing someone you're a "narcissist", similar can be seen with ASPD and how people use the term "psychopath" and "sociopath" These disorders are pushed so far away from any form of real acceptance that its hard to believe psychiatry and these awareness efforts are working to truly destigmatize mental differences and help people. Rather, what it appears to be doing is simply shifting the line. Shifting the line of whats considered acceptable, whats a normal human (dis)order, and whats an evil disorder thats exclusive to inhuman caricatures. In the process of moving the line like this, changing the boundaries for which disorders are accepted, not only does it enforce that the boundary deserves to exist, and that these set of disorders are really extra special bad™, it also loops back around to where I started this post, to issues like anxiety and depression. To become accepted in a deeply ableist society, we can't simply change what we views as acceptable behavior or disorders, we have to change the disorders themselves, reshaping them to fit into the existing accepted standard. We mold conditions into pretty little shapes to allow for their acceptance. This might sound strange in some ways, but its really nothing new. Many other social groups have long been fighting the battle between assimilation and liberation, where you either give up part of your distinctness to fit into an oppressive system, or you fight the system as a whole to fundamentally change it and who its for. What I'm saying here is that the same struggle between liberation and assimilation applies to mental health awareness and disability rights issues. We can't simply fight to have depression recognized as a "normal person disorder", that puts down people still classified as having "bad person disorder"s, and it white washes realities of depression and just how serious it can be.

What I feel people frequently forget about autistic special interests is that they aren't always information based. They may simply be visual or mental

bpd saneism is saying that most teenagers who think they have bpd are actually just going through puberty. like Yes, there are some experiences that can overlap with puberty and you're more likely to be formally diagnosed when you're older, but please look me in the eye and tell me that the near-textbook symptoms of self-destructice bpd that i've been dealing with since i was 14 can just be chalked up to puberty. (i'd also argue that it's ageism too because of the idea that a teenager is incapable of properly researching the disorders they may have or is simply "pretending" to have bpd for attention)

Political pet peeve but nothing being done is a "distraction" from anything else. Everything that the current administration is doing is an extension of American imperialism and conservative American values. Iran is not being bombed to "distract from the Epstein files", trans legislation is not being passed to "distract from Palestine", none of this is happening just to "distract" you. And dismissing certain issues as "distractions" is a horrific excuse of them.