Showing posts tagged mental illness
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But public health and firearms experts assert that focusing on mental illness is unlikely to achieve a significant reduction in gun violence, because the vast majority of shootings are the handiwork of people who do not fit the profile of those deemed dangerous. Moreover, by shifting the debate away from gun control and toward mental health concerns, proponents run the risk of further stigmatizing mental illness, discouraging those who confront it from seeking professional help.

“Gun violence is a mental health issue only to a very small extent and to a much smaller extent than most people assume,” said Paul Appelbaum, a psychiatrist and the director of the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons’ Division of Law, Ethics and Psychiatry.

“Most gun violence is just not committed by people with mental illness,” he said. “Were we somehow to stop violence by anyone with a mental illness — as unlikely as that outcome might be — we would be safer, but only a teeny bit safer. As much as these incidents attract everybody’s attention and concern, they are a tiny fraction of the people who get killed in this country every year.”

Mental Health Solutions Alone Can’t Thwart Gun Violence, Experts Say (via stfuconservatives)
(Reblogged from stfuconservatives)
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Depression is not selfish. Anxiety is not rude. Schizophrenia is not wrong. Mental illness isn’t self-centered, any more than a broken leg or the flu is self-centered. If your mental illness makes you feel guilty, review the definition of “illness” and try to treat yourself with the same respect and concern you would show to a cancer patient or a person with pneumonia.
(via goldenphoenixgirl)
(Reblogged from glamaphonic)

birdblanketsofsnow:

update: today is the fourth, and i still don’t have nearly enough for my rent. this means that tomorrow late fees will start piling up. this normally wouldn’t be that big of a deal, because seriously what’s a month’s late rent. BUT i’ve had so many late months that my security deposit has been eaten away, and i’m afraid that soon the same is going to happen to my roommates’ deposits, because of me. which obviously is totally unfair, and would be yet another thing that i’ll have to repay.

okay i guess it’s time for another “wow i’m broke please help me out” post

most of my followers know essentially what’s going on, but i’ll outline it again here:

last year, i was suspended from school due to failure to perform academically. this was directly due to my issues with depression (it’s hard to focus on your grades when you’re just struggling to live), and it left me in a tough spot; it mean that my only real source of income (a work-study job) was no longer an option for me.

i moved back in with my parents for six or so months, but was unable to find a sublet, meaning that i still had to pay my rent. this ate up any money i had saved, including all of my money for transition. it also used up almost all of the money that i was owed by my mom, as she payed the last several months of my rent. every time i found a job while staying there, it fell through. 

now she’s lost her main job, and i’m stuck in limbo while i wait to find out if my school will accept me back now that i’ve been on antidepressants for several months and have returned to a relatively stable state of mind. 

i have about 40 dollars to my name, which was all my dad could spare when i returned to the city i go to school in. needless to say, my mom couldn’t spare anything. she was too busy trying to get together enough money to get our phones turned back on.

so that leaves me with a lot of things to pay for, and almost no money to do it with. i won’t get a refund check from my school until mid-january, and i still have to worry about:

  • december’s rent & january’s rent, both of which are unpaid
  • utility bills both from this year & the last, which i owe to my poor patient roommate
  • buying testosterone, which i’ve been out of for a week now i have enough money for T!!! but unfortunately that’s the only thing.
  • money owed to a friend
  • money to pay for a security deposit on a new apartment, since my contract on this on is up in may
  • textbooks for when i go back to classes
  • etc.

i’m pretty well set on food, since i have a lot stored here, including cat food. but the rest is still pretty vital, and i have almost no resources left. which is why i’m asking tumblr for money again. (i’ve done this once before, and i’m incredibly grateful for the help i received then; it was the only reason i didn’t get kicked out of my apartment at the time)

i don’t like doing this, and i’m not just trying to be lazy by asking for money i haven’t earned. i didn’t waste all my money on anything frivolous (not that that would even have mattered, because poor people are allowed to have nice things too; anon i’m looking at you). i’m just going through a rougher time than usual, and could do with the help. 

i don’t have much to offer in return, but sometime in the next week or so i’ll probably be putting up a post on the Transgender Clothing Exchange with some old clothes and jewelry and stuff. if you’re interested, there’s not much, but just let me know!

anyway, thanks so much, and if you can’t afford to donate (which obviously i understand lol) please reblog!!

(Source: birdblankets)

(Reblogged from megidoki)
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People get really irritated by mental illness. ‘Just fucking get it together! Suck it up, man!’ I had a breakdown, and a spiritual friend came to visit me in the psych ward. And they said, ‘You need to get out of here. Because this is the story you’re telling yourself. You know, Patch Adams has this great work-group camp where you can learn how to really celebrate life.’ It’s something people are so powerless over, and so often they want to make it your fault. It’s nobody fault. I started thinking of suicide when I was 10 years old—I can’t believe that that’s somebody’s fault. Like, ‘Oh, you’re just an attention getter.’ Mental illness isn’t seen as an illness, it’s seen as a choice…. I have a joke about how people don’t talk about mental illness the way they do other regular illnesses. ‘Well, apparently Jeff has cancer. Uh, I have cancer. We all have cancer. You go to chemotherapy you get it taken care of, am I right? You get back to work.’ Or: ‘I was dating this chick, and three months in, she tells me that she wears glasses, and she’s been wearing contact lenses all this time. She needs help seeing. I was like, listen, I’m not into all that Western medicine shit. If you want to see, then work at it. Figure out how not to be so myopic. You know?’
Maria Bamford  (via yeshairy)
(Reblogged from aquamirage)
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Ever since puberty, ever since I was 11 or 12, I’ve had cyclical depression. That’s something that has been a defining feature of my life as an adult. It’s manageable. But it’s real. And it doesn’t take away from my joy or my work or my energy, but coping with depression is something that is part of the everyday way that I live and have lived for as long as I can remember. … Depression for me, you can’t distract your way out of it. … When you are depressed, it’s like the rest of the world is the mother ship, and you’re out there on a little pod and your line gets cut and you don’t connect with anything. You sort of disappear. And so it’s not something you can talk-therapy out of. It’s really a chemical thing. You get adrenaline from work, but adrenaline is not a cure.
Rachel Maddow on depression (via nprfreshair)
(Reblogged from such-heights)

roxanneritchi:

AND ANOTHER THING THAT BUGS ME: When people claim that mental illnesses are a “modern” problem, as if mental illness did not exist before the 1900s or, if they did, that they weren’t so widespread as they are now with the implication therein that people with mental illnesses are “making it up” or that people with mental illnesses prior to the ~modern~ age were made of sterner stuff than we of today.

Mental illness is not a new thing! It was not invented in the Roaring Twenties! Mental illness has plagued us for thousands upon thousands of years! And people ~back then~ weren’t made of sterner stuff; they coped in what few ways were available to them or, because there were so few means of coping available and even fewer of those means effective, they died whether at their own hand or someone else’s. Mental illness is more widely diagnosed now because we have a greater knowledge and understanding of the symptoms of mental illness, and we can recognize these symptoms as symptoms of mental illness as opposed to, idk, a curse or a demon or a moral deficiency or whatever the fuck. Medicine is prescribed more frequently nowadays for mental illness than before because we have medicines that can be utilized to control mental illness now. Yes, it’s a crutch, as all coping mechanisms for mental illnesses are crutches, but when your leg is busted, you use a crutch.

Mental illness isn’t a modern invention. It’s something we’ve carried all these centuries, all these millenia, and have only recently in the reckoning of our presence on this Earth held up to the light and said, This exists; this is here; what can be done now to stop it from hurting us?

(Reblogged from formerlyroxy)