Look, folks, when you write your villains, stop using "They're crazy!" as a motivation. Crazy is not a character trait. Crazy is not a reason to be a villain. Crazy is a thing that happens to villains, heroes, and bystanders, and it doesn't turn the one into the other. I'm looking at you, Batman writers ( Read more... )

Isabelle "Issy" Stapleton is fourteen years old. She is in the hospital because her mother tried to kill her. On Wednesday, Issy's mother locked herself and Issy into their van and filled it with carbon monoxide. Issy's mother regained consciousness soon after the attempt. Issy is still in a coma ( Read more... )

I guess I'm expected to post some kind of response to the Newtown shootings. About how some people say the shooter had autism. About how autistic people aren't any more likely to be violent. About how autism doesn't skew your sense of morality, or cause you not to care about others. I've had a lot of trouble putting my thoughts together, though ( Read more... )

I'm taking a class on occupational safety and health, and last night I was reading a chapter in the textbook about workplace violence and how to prevent it. As I was reading along, I found some rather troubling statements about workplace violence risk factors that I was pretty sure weren't correct.
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I ended up writing an essay in response to this blog post. I'm re-posting it here on my own blog.
Mad Pride Movement Meets in Toronto

The sensationalistic approach to covering the “Mad Pride” movement seems to be claiming that they are against psychiatric drugs. They are not; they are against forcing drugs on someone who has made the decision to ( Read more... )

A strategy that some people want to take when they try to increase acceptance is to emphasize the similarities between a minority individual and the "norm"; to try to explain to people that, "He's a lot like you. There's no need to reject him for being different because he's not really that different." It works pretty well with racial minorities, ( Read more... )

Just being a human being in the Western world, you have about a fifty-percent chance of ending up with some kind of mental problem sooner or later. It could be when you're very old and you get a stroke; it could be complicated grief; it could be social anxiety disorder; it could be something less common. And being autistic, of course your risk is ( Read more... )

Last week, I had an anatomy test. The lab had been rearranged so that the tables were in rows and every seat had a number. Since, as usually happens, I was disorganized that day, I was one of the last people in. And one of the last seats left was #13. Amused, I took the seat and did my test, more fidgety than usual because I was in a very ( Read more... )

OK. So you've got a mental illness. Should you take medication?

Unless it's a life-or-death emergency or you can't think straight enough to say yes or no, that's your decision to make. But remember that medication is neither a cure-all nor a poisonous substance to be avoided at all costs; and making a snap decision either way will cost you.

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Isn't it funny how people call cruel things "insane"? It's like they want to pretend that people are not naturally cruel, that you couldn't possibly do these "insane" things unless you were... well, insane ( Read more... )