“plenty of research out there to suggest a link”…um WHERE!? what peer-reviewed research journals are you (not) reading?
“There is plenty of research out there to suggest a link” - sorry anon, but I don’t think there is. The recent Cochrane review (they summarise all findings of related papers in as unbiased, statistical way as poss) doesn’t think so.
There’s no research suggesting a link! Anytime Wakefield’s research has tried to be replicated it’s been proven false!
A+ (I failed to pick up on that bit - I love that there’s always so many clued up followers willing to pitch in!)
Anonymous asked: What you just posted about autism and the MMR vaccine is very controversial! Everyone's entitled to their opinion but if parents choose not to vaccinate their children then that's their business. There is plenty of research out there to suggest a link, so of course many parents would be worried and think it's risky. Don't you think that in some children vaccinations overwhelm their immune system? Not every child will react the same, everyone's body is different and some have a sensitivity.
Yeah everyone’s entitled to their opinion but when the opinion is “Ew Autism” that’s when I have a problem. I think you’re deliberately misconstruing my post because it’s quite clear I’m not talking about issues parents might have with vaccinations in general, I’m talking about the MMR ~scandal~. Many parents who denied their children the MMR vaccine were happy for them to have other vaccines, which suggests that their overwhelming consideration was a fear of Autism rather than a generic problem with vaccinations as a concept.
[Trigger Warning: Discussion of violence and abuse against people with mental illness, particularly intimate partner violence]
Mental illness and experience of intimate partner violence: A call for submissions
I just want to clarify: “intimate partner violence” doesn’t just cover physical aggressions.
I’ve had a couple of people write to me with words to the effect of “I’m not sure if this is intimate partner violence but…” and then detailing what is clearly to me as an objective observer sexual, emotional, psychological, verbal and economic abuse.
If your partner restricts where you can go, what you can do, who you can see or what you can wear - that’s an act of violence
If your partner controls your access to or use of money - that’s an act of violence
If your partner threatens you or intimidates you - that’s an act of violence
If your partner initiates sexual activity with you without your consent - that’s an act of violence
If your partner humiliates you or deliberately undermines your self-esteem in private or in public - that’s an act of violence
An intimate partner doesn’t have to lay a hand on you to be violent towards you. Your experiences are valid and real.
Stay strong, xo
[Trigger Warning: Autism discrimination]
If you would rather put your children at (proven) risk of death via Measles than (unproven) risk of Autism via the MMR vaccine, you need to re-examine your attitudes to disability and neurodivergence because essentially you are saying you’d rather your child was dead than autistic.
The study on the MMR vaccine linking to autism was poor and should have never been published anyway. It’s sad that so many children are now suffering the consequences of not being vaccinated. People are far too misinformed and untrusting for their own good sometimes.
Absolutely, that’s one of the points I was driving at:
Measles can be deadly. It’s a proven fact. In 2011 the World Health Organisation estimated that there were 158,000 deaths caused by Measles worldwide.
The ‘research’ linking the MMR vaccine to Autism was shoddy, unreplicated and since discredited. The chump who conducted it was struck off the medical register for it because it was so flawed.
Yet still there are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids… because of what? Rumour? Mythology? Is Autism that abhorrent to them that they’d put the lives and health of their kids and others at risk? Baffling.
[Trigger Warning: Discussion of Eating Disorders and mental illness exploitation]
Officials at one of the largest eating-disorder treatment centers in the world have complained that modeling agencies have been scouting for “new talent” among their patients.
“We think this is repugnant. People have stood outside our clinic and tried to pick up our girls because they know they are very thin,” the chief doctor at Sweden’s Stockholm Center for Eating Disorders, Dr. Anna-Maria af Sandeberg, told the Metro newspaper.
[Trigger Warning: Autism discrimination]
If you would rather put your children at (proven) risk of death via Measles than (unproven) risk of Autism via the MMR vaccine, you need to re-examine your attitudes to disability and neurodivergence because essentially you are saying you’d rather your child was dead than autistic.
Mental illness and experience of intimate partner violence: A call for submissions
[Trigger Warning: Discussion of violence and abuse against people with mental illness, particularly intimate partner violence]
Some of you may have seen an anonymous message I received yesterday from a person with mental illness who has been experiencing intimate partner violence. Unfortunately this is far from the first correspondence of this nature I’ve received through the zine, and unfortunately, this doesn’t surprise me. People with mental illness are are at the same time both a population stigmatized as ‘violent’, ‘unstable’ and ‘dangerous’, but actually more likely to be harmed than to harm:
- People with mental illness are more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violent crime.
- People with ‘severe mental illnesses’ (Schizophrenia, Bipolar Disorder or Psychosis) are 2 ½ times more likely to be attacked, raped or mugged than the general population.
- People with mental illness (across diagnosis and gender identity) are more likely to have experienced intimate partner violence than the general population.
- Intimate partner violence is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for women of childbearing age worldwide, with the main contribution being from the mental health consequences of abuse.
It’s not always that intimate partner violence itself triggers mental illness, there is also overwhelming evidence that people with existing mental illness are more likely to be victimized by an intimate partner. This relates to evidence suggesting that people with other disabilities such as physical and learning disabilities are also more likely to experience intimate partner violence.
I’m hoping to write an article in more detail on this issue to be published online. If you’ve been following the zine for a while, you’ll know that I have lived experience of mental illness, a pretty strong academic background in mental health research, and I really value lived experience as an evidence base (like, above all other evidence).
With that in mind, I don’t have first-hand lived experience of intimate partner violence. If you do and identify as mentally ill and wouldn’t mind me incorporating quotes from you into my article, please get in contact. All communications will be under the assumption of anonymity unless you express a preference otherwise. I welcome any comments or insight you may be able to share with me but here’s some ideas, each of which may vary in relevance to you depending on your experience:
- Do you feel like there’s a direction of causation for you? (Did your experiences of intimate partner violence predate your mental illness or the other way round? Do you feel like your illness has made you more vulnerable to exploitation?)
- Are there any ways in which you feel that being mentally ill changes your experience of intimate partner violence? (Does or did your partner ‘use your illness against you’ e.g. suggest nobody would believe you if you report your abuse or exploit it as emotional or psychological manipulation? Do you feel more or less resilient than if you weren’t mentally ill?)
- If you are a survivor of intimate partner violence, was your mental health a barrier to finding support?
- Has your abuse ever been noticed by a mental health / health care provider? Were they helpful?
- Do you feel that abuse survivor services are sensitive to or appropriately equipped to deal with your mental health needs?
You can send me an ask or a submission here, or e-mail me at mindovermatterzine at gmail dot com. I’m looking to write the article up this weekend (20th/21st April)
If you are currently experiencing abuse and need signposting for support services, would like advice, or just someone to listen, please get in touch and I’ll try my hardest to help.
Thanks and love, xo
You can’t always tell whether somebody has a mental illness by the way they act.
And “but you seem so happy/confident/well-rounded/normal” isn’t a compliment.
“but I would never have been able to tell!”
….thanks? (no thanks) like….no.
(Source: queenlisasimpson)
Anonymous asked: when i was younger my mom used to tell me i had "avoidance issues" wasn't sure what that meant until now. now when i wake up everymorning ifeel depressed and unmotivated, and iconstantly worry about going to class b/c people will see me and see what i'm doing, so lately i've been avoiding class/socialization and it's been adding up. ilive alone and it's getting harder and harder for me to go to class. idon't want to fail,and nowifeel embarassed that i'm afraid to go and don't know how to explain
Ok, I know this one first hand and can totally sympathize. I used to be able to go weeks at a time without leaving my room or saying a word to anybody and it was a vicious cycle. Though I had no motivation because I couldn’t anticipate anything good coming from the day, the gradual sense of achievement I amassed by getting back out there and getting even simple things done slowly helped me. You’ve identified yourself that the root of this seems to be depression and anxiety - are you receiving any treatment for these (medication or therapy?)
When I was trying to recover I set myself 2 alarms in the morning: one to wake up/get out of bed, and one to get out of the house by. I found that if I didn’t leave by a certain time, I wouldn’t leave all day. Do you live with other people or know anyone who might be able to hold you to this sort of plan? I found having someone pestering me or waiting for me helped me to get out there…
I also recognise the embarrassment you might be feeling about class. Do you have a personal tutor or a student support service you can call on? If your teachers are not total turds, they should support you if you level with them and tell them you’re struggling with these issues but you care about the course…
E-mail me at mindovermatterzine at gmail dot com if you want to talk more. xo
Anonymous asked: hi! a few things [TW- ABUSE]: 1) i love this blog. <3 2) i'm in an abusive relationship currently (likely getting out of it soon), and my mental illness(es) are often used against me i.e. "i don't really treat you that badly; you're just crazy," said to me after i was choked, shoved and dragged across a floor. are there any statistics out there on the rates of violence against mentally ill people, due to the vulnerability that whole "just crazy" thing creates? i can't imagine i'm the only one.
also, when i actually sought out some moderate help after the aforementioned incident because i could barely walk from being pushed to the floor multiple times and additionally had marks all over my face from being grabbed by the head, like his nails had been digging into my face, he tried to say that i had “scratched” myself because i’m ~crazy~. luckily, my one condifant knew he was lying. sadly though, i could see that kind of thing working..which terrifies me to the core.
sometimes i find myself in the troubling pattern of defensively saying, “i’m not crazy!” when i AM a little crazy and really want to own that in theory…but what i’m really saying is, “don’t invalidate me! i’m not imagining the way you’re treating me; please don’t try to dismiss me like that!” except it never comes out that way because i’m usually panicking by then. any insight into this perhaps? how can i get that across simply?
Hey, first up: are you safe? I really hope you’ve managed to find help and support and to get yourself out of this terrible situation. Please message me again - I’m worried about you.
You may have seen the statistic I posted doing the rounds about how “Women with disabilities are twice as likely to experience domestic violence as non-disabled women.”(x) Nearly 40% of women with disabilities report being victims of domestic violence(x) and let’s be honest: that’s a conservative estimate, because for every woman who reports it, there’s more hidden in fear.
Data for men, non-binary and trans* folks is unfortunately harder to come by, but it seems to be the case across gender that domestic violence is more likely to be experienced by people with disabilities. While you may not choose to identify as disabled, mental illness falls under this…
A recent study by KCL found that men and women with mental illness, regardless of diagnosis, are more likely to have experienced domestic violence than the general population.
I’m sorry to get so academic on you thus far, but you did request statistics/evidence and it sounds like you might be looking for some validation of your experience. (By the way, yes your experience is totally valid and - though I wish it wasn’t so - shared by millions of others).
What you mentioned about your abuser stating that nobody would believe you because you’re “crazy”, I think this is unfortunately why many mentally ill folks are more likely to be victimized by an abusive partner. The abuser thinks (or knows) they hold a position of power, not only physically and emotionally, but epistemologically. They know that their partner faces significant barriers to reporting the abuse above those which exist for people without disabilities e.g. fear of losing a caregiver, inability to verbally communicate as a result of a disability (I’m not just talking motor impairments to communication but severe social anxiety, cognitive symptoms etc), and fear of not being taken seriously.
If you’re looking for a succinct way to reply to your abuser, I can’t think of shorter than “FUCK YOU”. However - and I really hope this isn’t needed because you’re out of the relationship by the time you read this - you might consider telling them that yes, you are crazy which doesn’t make you a bad person, but they’re an abuser, which totally does.
Sending love your way, xoxo
Sorry for the recent paucity of posts and high percentage of those as reblobs. Life has kind of got in the way lately. Will try harder. xo
This post is some personal observations I have made about people’s perceptions of The Autism Spectrum. When I refer to “people”, I don’t mean “all people”, I just mean the people I’ve encountered personally, whether in real life or talking to online.
When people first learn about autism, it’s because their new friend [be it a real person or a fictional character] has been described as “having autism”. These people, not really understanding what autism is yet, look at their friend’s characteristics and decide that all the traits they have are autism - that’s what autism is, it’s being like Sherlock, Abed Nadir, Einstein, that quiet kid in class, your friend’s nonverbal son. The stereotypes can be nice (look at all the aspergers characters in film, books and television, which paint most of them as eccentric, bad with people, but nevertheless geniuses) or they can be bad (like “Autism moms” complaining how difficult it is for THEM to raise their child… or Louis Theroux’ documentaries painting a bleak portrait of autism “sufferers”).
At this stage, the person learning about autism usually seems to think of it as a binary state… like a lightswitch. They’ll tell you you either HAVE AUTISM and are therefore exactly like the stereotype they’ve created (lights on) or you DON’T HAVE AUTISM because you’re not exactly like that stereotype (lights off).
If they’ve read up a little more, they might have seen the word “spectrum”. Now they have a more generalized view of autism. But they get the idea of “spectrum” wrong - they see it as a linear thing: a number-line, a scale, a dimmer switch or volume control, from Zero to Autistic — or from “low-functioning” to “high-functioning”. At that point they say silly things like “You’re very high-functioning!” or “No, but I mean like, the really really autistic kids, who, like, can’t do anything because they can’t talk”. They invent this linear relationship between a person’s verboseness and “how autistic they are”.
A lot of people seem to get stuck at this point, so I think the word “spectrum” requires some explanation.
When I see the word “spectrum” I immediately imagine a rainbow, or light being split from a prism. I’m sure most people do. And sure, the spectrum of colours is derived from the electromagnetic spectrum - we get different colours at different wavelengths - it’s a continuous range.
BUT- where does white light come from? White light is a combination of all those different wavelengths. You can create new colours by mixing different colours together. You can make colours brighter by adding a little bit of the other colours. You can mix the wavelengths together at different intensities. There’s a lot of ways of combining colours.
Which essentially what the autism spectrum REALLY is. Which is why labels like “high functioning” and “severely autistic” are dumb labels. Just because one autie excels at public speaking doesn’t make them unanimously “high functioning”. Conversely, I know of nonverbal auties who are masters of writing. To tell someone with a vibrant imagination, intense emotions, passionate interests and brilliant intellect that they’re “low-functioning” because they don’t vocalize their thoughts out loud is a massive insult. To refuse someone’s pleas of help because they’re “too high functioning” is also a shitty thing to do (I’m looking at you, ATOS).
There’s lots of ways in which we function, some of which are interdependent, others independent, and the levels vary wildly between autistic people, and they also vary wildly in non-autistic people too:
- Long-term memory
- Short-term memory
- Socializing
- Physical awareness
- Spatial awareness
- Vocal ability
- Verbal reasoning / ability to understand instructions
- Linguistic skills
- Mathematical and logical skills
- Executive function / Planning
- Ability to filter information
- Processing speed of sensory input
- Ability to focus / attention span
- Emotional self-awareness
[These might not be the exact distinct cognitive ‘functions’ as according to all the sciencey literature, this was verbatim]
I see my functions as a bar chart. In the version I drew it’s a prism splitting white light into the whole spectrum, but the different colours fade out at different places (and it’s a homage to Pink Floyd :p). That bar chart can vary throughout the day, be markedly different on different days, and is always changing over time.
In times of anxiety all the functionality unanimously drains out of me. In a nice chilled out environment it all comes trickling back.
When I’m in the zone doing something I enjoy, some of those rays of colour will be shooting off the image :D
(Note how there’s no lines on the image denoting the “average person“‘s ability towards a particular function, because this shit is nigh on impossible to quantify person-to-person. All you can do is compare yourself to yourself)
I think that’s more accurate than “low functioning” vs “high functioning” ??????????
Safe spaces are kind of like ghosts. I don’t trust anyone who is super into believing they actually exist
(Source: princecryingto, via prudeboy)
Why is social anxiety associated with being “cute” because my sister has had it her whole life and watching her grow up locking herself in closets because she couldn’t go out in public and seeing her nearly cry at age 23 in the supermarket because she’s too scared to ask for help with something is not cute it’s sad and horrible
