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Mar 9 2023
CAMHS in crisis: The systemic failing of Autistic people

I recently wrote an article about my experiences as a former patient of CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service). In this article, I spoke about the effect that failing to support me properly had on my developing individuality and the immense suffering it led to in my early adult life (please find the article here). It was a widely shared piece of writing, but one theme has come up that I feel is important to address.

What are the specific ways that CAMHS fails Autistic children?

This is difficult to summarise. There is an interconnected network of systemic failings that culminate to create a potentially deadly set of failings. Every single day CAMHS turn away Autistic children, denying them support at a time of their life when they desperately need it. To summarise, it is a service that actively works against Autistic children and their families, but I believe we need to get a bit more specific.

1. Staffs knowledge of autism is pathologising and outdated

Staff within CAMHS tend to still favour medical models of autism, seeing it as a pathology that requires fixing (but not by them) and largely believing the incredibly harmful research of so-called experts like Simon Baron-Cohen. Talk of extreme male brain theory and theory of mind deficits would not be unusual in CAMHS. This could be remedied by engaging with emancipatory research models and the wider Autistic community. Unfortunately, this is yet to happen.

2. CAMHS professionals blame everything on autism when faced with an Autistic child

Despite the very specific diagnostic criteria outlined in various editions of the DSM over the decades, autism is still seen as the root cause of psychological distress in Autistic people. This is self-defeating on a number of levels. Most commonly we hear “this child is anxious because they are Autistic”.

Anxiety is not a part of the diagnostic criteria as outlined in the DSM 5. Neither is any other form of psychological distress. Models such as The power threat meaning framework have shown us that environments and power dynamics are the leading cause of distress. However, staff still blame autism, and then use that to refuse to support the child.

3. Parent/Carer Blame

I have spoken at length about institutionalised parent/carer blame and insinuations of Fabricated and Induced Illness. CAMHS are one of the institutions that will contribute to this. Parents who approach CAMHS for support are met with dismissal or blame for their child’s struggles. It is incredibly harmful as this can lead to children being removed from families and families facing criminal proceedings.

4. Medical Gaslighting

Many Autistic people are misdiagnosed. Teenagers in particular, especially those who are assigned Female at birth (AFAB) face diagnoses of personality disorders. Personality disorder diagnoses come with a level of moral judgements where those labelled as such will be told that their distress behaviours are an attempt at manipulation or attention-seeking.

Those misdiagnosed face the realities of carcerative care and testimonial injustice on a near daily basis. Misdiagnosis of such “conditions” is also used to label people untreatable and, once again, refused treatment.

This is not an exhaustive list

This is just some of the ways that I have witnessed professionally and experienced personally, the daily failure of Autistic people. CAMHS is in crisis. Staff are woefully undertrained, and the service does not receive anywhere near adequate funding. The problems with CAMHS can not be changed at merely the service level. We need to make a change at the law and policy level.

Until this is done, the Autistic children of the UK are in danger.

Please click here to help change things by signing a petition.

David Gray-Hammond 2 Comments
Feb 26 2023
CAMHS nearly killed me, and it’s not okay.

I don’t talk about my childhood much. Partly because I don’t want to upset my readers, but also because it is not my story alone to tell. The people who did so much harm to me as a child also caused harm to others that I love immensely. A sad part of my life is that as a result of the harm done to me, I made choices in my life that hurt those people I loved. I don’t blame myself, but I also haven’t quite reach the point where I can release myself from the sense that I need to make reparations.

Something that I think is really important to talk about however, is the way I was failed by professionals who very well could have turned my life around. I am happy with my life now, but I do wonder what it might have looked like had I not been left to drown by a service that was meant to be my saviour. That service was the UK’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service (CAMHS).

The worst part isn’t even that they ignored my mother’s pleas to assess me for autism. It’s not the time that they tried to put me on Ritalin after a five minute conversation. It’s the way they were nearly complicit in my surrender to the suffering that I experienced. I’m a suicide survivor, and CAMHS didn’t care.

I came to them, beaten and bruised, I laid before them my trauma, my pain, my isolation, my disdain for every aspect of myself. I told them that I couldn’t cope, that I was scared to wake up each day. I told them things about my past that I can’t bring myself to say publicly, even to this day. I was met with silence. Cold, uncaring silence. They did nothing. They labelled me a school refuser. They still refused to assess me for autism.

Is it any wonder then that I found solace in the steel trap of drugs and alcohol? What can one do in the face of unending suffering than desperately scramble to drown out the noise. The noise was inescapable. The voices in my head would scream at me daily. I was paranoid and distrustful of everyone, even those that I loved dearly. CAMHS allowed my psychological wellbeing to deteriorate to the point that I could no longer cope with existing. I resigned myself to an early grave.

Some might ask why this is relevant, I am a man in his thirties, surely this was a long time ago?

No.

This is still happening. Everyday, thousands upon thousands of families are forced to watch on as CAMHS allow their children to suffer. If you want to know why so many Autistic people die by suicide, start by taking a look at this (dis)service. CAMHS are complicit in an untold number of deaths. Each data point in those statistics represents a story untold. A future unrealised. With each child lost by the negligence of those meant to help them, our future becomes a little bit darker.

I am happy today, but it hurts. It hurts to know that my child and millions like them do not have this service in a good working order should they need it. I want a world that protects my child and seeks to heal wounds and change worlds. It’s the least they can do for our precious children.

My name is David, and I’m a CAMHS survivor.

Please help us change children’s lives by signing this petition.

David Gray-Hammond 10 Comments
Feb 26 2023
Reclaiming Neurofuturism: An introduction

In some of my recent articles, I have referred to something called neurofuturism. While neurofuturism itself is not a new word (although weirdly, I didn’t know this when I first used it), I do believe that reconceptualising it may allow for a new discourse in the Neurodivergent community. Namely, a discourse around what the future of the neurodiversity movement and paradigm might look like.

With this in mind, let’s start by considering the original use of neurofuturism and take a look at it through a critical lens.

A lot of the discussion around neurofuturism thus far has looked at augmenting human cognition with technology up to, and including, artificial intelligence. This sounds exciting on the surface; fusing the human mind with technology as a way of unlocking our potential. It sounds exciting, but there are two main issues at the forefront of my mind

  • Technology is not universally accessible.
  • Technology can often be created with one purpose while incidentally fulfilling another.

Consider this, technology allowed us to split the atom. Fission reactors meant that we could create huge quantities of carbon neutral energy. It also meant that we were able to create nuclear weapons, fundamentally changing the nature of human conflict. As I mentioned, technology is not universally accessible. It often requires privilege to gain a seat at the table when it comes to research and design. Because of this, it is likely that people creating technology to go on your head either may not consider negative impacts on marginalised communities, or worse, may use it to actively oppress them.

Remember when Elon Musk claimed that neural interfaces could ‘solve’ autism and schizophrenia? We never asked for that, but it’s reasonable to worry that such a technology could be forced upon is if it were to exist.

So, why am I even talking about neurofuturism?

Neurofuturism has a place in human discourse, but it isn’t with the tech world. I firmly believe we should reclaim neurofuturism and reconceptualise it into something accessible and beneficial to all. What better place for such a concept to exist than within the neurodiversity paradigm?

Broadly speaking, neurofuturism as I conceptualise it has existed for some time. Neuroqueer theory could be considered somewhat of a flagship of neurofuturism. The idea that we can queer our identity and embodiment in line with our neurology is liberational, and that is what neurofuturism should be, a school of thought that emancipates us from the chains of the past.

In my mind, neurofuturism is a word to describe ideas that ask us to not blindly accept the knowledge of the past. It is a school of thought that asks us to take a degree of criticality to everything that has been taken for granted, including the ideas that the neurodiversity movement takes for granted.

Consider the ever-present threat of identity politics. We see it everywhere, and the neurodivergent community is not free of this threat. Much of the politics surrounding how people identify and what the embodiment of that identity should look like is based on some form of normative thinking. It’s necessary to consider the uncomfortable truth that even the neurodivergent community has its own normative ideas.

Wherever there is community, there is a status quo.

Thus, neurofuturism can be reclaimed as a way of advancing the community through criticality. This critical thought can be used to surgically cut through the chains of “normality”, shedding the excess so that we can walk unburdened into the future of our community.

This comes with a lot of uncomfortable thinking. It raises questions about objective truth and the social construction of everything from language to our own sense of Self.

Neurofuturism is not a ‘natural kind’. It does not exist without people observing its growth and trajectory. Moreover, it cannot exist without accepting certain truths, chiefly;

  • Human thought and experience should not be pathologised. It recognises that our psychological world is not a matter for medical intervention.
  • Where people experience psychological distress, we must look to their environment and the experiences it has afforded them.
  • That if human experience is not a medical matter, then such branches of medicine such as psychiatry must use social change as a means of support, with medicine being a tool rather than a requirement.

These points to me seem as the necessary first ideas to acknowledge in a neurofuturist approach to neurodiversity.

There is much more to be said on the nature of neurofuturism, and I hope that as this blog series progresses, we can explore what the future can look like together. I hope we can use the reclamation of this concept as a way of accommodating all Neurodivergent people, and not just the select few with the privilege of being platformed in the right places.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Feb 17 2023
Power dynamics and mental health: Neurofuturist discourse of mental health

When we consider power dynamics, we often consider our external environment and how power flows through the various parts of society, and where privilege is afforded by that power. While discussion of intersectionality and power dynamics is important when considering where discourse comes from and how it affects groups of people, we often don’t think about how such discourse injures our relationship with the Self.

Mental health has long been the remit of medicine. Distressing or unusual behaviour has been positioned as a pathology requiring treatment for decades, despite this approach not improving outcomes for those it affects in that entire time. We use a lot of troubling language when talking about psychological distress; disorder, condition, ailment, mental illness, psychopathology. Each of these words conjure up images of a medical emergency. They tell us that a problem is situated with us and that we need to be fixed.

We then also have to consider the militaristic language that surrounds medicine. “Chronic illness warrior” and “lost their battle to cancer” immediately spring to mind. The effect that these co-occurring discourse (see what I did there?) have on our sense of Self is to enter us into a fight with our own experiences. Experience helps shape the Self meaning that the popular discourse around mental health is placing us into a war with our Self. It is no longer okay to be us.

The irony here is that constant fighting with our own sense of identity causes further psychological distress. Perhaps the reason that outcomes in psychiatry have not improved for over half a century is because their methods and discourse are actually escalating our distress.

Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me?” We need to shift discourse over to “what happened to me?”. It’s vital that psychological distress be placed in the context of one’s environment and experiences of the complex power dynamics within them. There is a word for systems that require us to fight ourselves into a more socially acceptable place; oppressive.

Current systems within mental health treatment are weapons of the oppressive cult of normal.

As we look to the future, we need to consider how we will emancipate ourselves from normativity of all kinds and what we will accept as freedom. Society has spent a long time pathologising those identities and experiences that do not serve its own goals, and the time has come to stand tall and proclaim aloud; who I am has value, I will not be placed at odds with myself.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Feb 13 2023
Mental health and the diagnostic process: A neurofuturist perspective

As I discussed in my recent article about co-occurring conditions, the diagnostic process in psychiatry is inherently flawed on the basis that we have failed to find any meaningful relationship between the so-called “symptoms” of psychiatric conditions, and physical biomarkers which can be measured. Despite this lack of physiological cause, we are still diagnosing people as mentally “ill”. Despite this model not improving outcomes for around half a century.

So now we are faced with the issue of how diagnosis is not just given, but also how it is given responsibly.

One of the biggest flaws of psychiatry is the circular logic that dominates the diagnostic process. A person is Schizophrenic because they have symptoms of Schizophrenia, and they have those symptoms because they are Schizophrenic. This logic does not allow for a nuanced understanding of why a person may experience this particular cluster of traits, it simply follows that A = B, which is because of A.

If this is the case, how does one escape from circular logic?

We have to look for causes for traits and “symptoms” outside of the realm of medicine. While I have often remarked that external factors are the only thing with a meaningful relationship to these experiences, medicine is yet to catch up. It seems reasonable to assume that traumatic experiences are the cause of psychiatric conditions and not a problem within the body. This has ramifications for the future of psychiatry.

If people are not “unwell”, psychiatry now has a moral duty to advocate for it’s patients. Psychiatry needs to evolve into a tool for social change, and cease to be a weapon wielded by normative society. Beyond this, psychiatry needs an understanding of the relationships between neurodivergence, trauma, and psychological distress. It is not enough for psychiatrists to bandage the wound, they need to remove the knife from the hand of society.

This requires us to radically rethink our entire perspective on normality and cultural normative standards. We can not just medicate people and expect them to assimilate into society. We need to help them understand their own unique space in the environment and how to embrace their journey through that space.

As I discuss in my book A Treatise on Chaos, identity is a shifting and ever changing value. We are, at our core, beings of chaos. Psychiatry needs to be a tool for supporting us in the more challenging parts of that chaos, and not serve as a ring-fence around the Self.

Psychiatry is not completely off the trail. Medication can serve as an important tool to support a person’s wellbeing, and can be very helpful for reducing the more troubling and distressing aspects of psychological distress. The most important thing is that we all put in the work to evolve psychiatry and mental health support into a means to challenge the oppressive systems that exist within our world.

It’s time to stop the navel-gazing, and build a better future.

David Gray-Hammond 0 Comments
Feb 12 2023
Autism and ADHD: The myth of co-occurring conditions

It’s a very poorly kept secret that many people who are given a diagnosis of autism also meet the criteria for a diagnosis of ADHD. One could be forgiven for assuming this means that people who meet the criteria for both (often termed AuDHD) have two co-occurring conditions. Unfortunately, nothing in life is simple, and the actual answer to this situation is far more complex.

Co-occurring disorders refer to two separate conditions that are occurring at the same time. For example, one might be both asthmatic and diabetic simultaneously. I have chosen this particular example because I want to explore the disconnect between physical health and psychiatric diagnoses.

Diagnosis is a two part system. Step one is research. Clusters of symptoms are matched up to biological signs (known as biomarkers). Where a meaningful relationship can be found between symptoms and biomarkers, you have a disorder. In psychiatry, however, it does not go this smoothly. We can identify clusters of symptoms, usually behaviour or thoughts and feelings that have been deemed troublesome or pathological by those with the privilege of not being oppressed. The problem comes when we try to find a meaningful link with biomarkers.

Despite decades of research, we are not any closer to finding a quantifiable difference in the human body. The research that does exist has been largely inconclusive.

So here’s where autism and ADHD come in. Many of us meet the criteria for both diagnoses. This is because diagnostic manuals specify lists of traits, and if you meet enough of them, you get diagnosed. The problem is that much like pseudoscientific personality tests, humans don’t fit neatly into categories. The criteria for many diagnoses overlap and mic together.

The point I’m trying to make is that AuDHD’ers do not have two conditions simultaneously. In fact, according to the neurodivesity paradigm, there is nothing medically quantifiable. Humans have individual sets of traits that are diverse and interlinked. Remember the saying “if you’ve met one Autistic person, you’ve met one Autistic person”?

That’s because autism doesn’t actually exist. It’s not a physical abnormality, it has no presence. Autistic people exist, and being Autistic is an identity based on shared culture and language. So, what is far more likely is that Autistic and ADHD people are more likely to share particular clusters of traits. You don’t have two conditions, your particular flavour of diversity just happens to tick the right boxes for both.

One could argue that this means a separate diagnosis should be created for people who meet both criteria or that classification should be changed to have them listed as part of a shared spectrum. The problem is that current diagnostic models are unreliable and prone to mistakes. We often find our diagnosis changing from doctor to doctor.

This isn’t necessarily because doctors are bad at their job. It’s because we are trying to pathologise human experience and identity. You can’t measure psychiatric conditions with a blood test, doctors know this, and they’ve been trying to do it for many years. This means that not just diagnosis, but the criteria themselves are at the whim of individuals. Experts and professionals bring their own individual biases to the table, and each one will interpret traits differently.

This is why it’s important that we move towards a demedicalised approach to neurodiversity. We need to stop assigning people fixed identities through diagnosis and instead explore the very real fact that everything about us, including our neurology, changes with time.

People should be allowed to explore their identity and try on whatever labels they feel are right for them.

If this has intrigued you I highly recommend the Neuroqueer series that I co-author with Katie Munday and the interview I recently has with Dr. Nick Walker for my podcast.

David Gray-Hammond 15 Comments
Feb 10 2023
Drug use, addiction, and neuroqueering

I have extensively explored my Autistic relationship with addiction thus far. I have considered and lamented the inappropriate treatment services, the suffering, and rejoiced in the moment that I came out the other side. I have listed numerous reasons that contributed to my active addiction, but what I have not done is really drive home the core point of why I kept coming back to drugs. I need you to know what gave me that drive to persevere with something that could have very well cost me my life.

I was undiagnosed Autistic for the first 26 years and 7 months of my life. I know that many, if not most of you, will understand the isolation and alienation that comes with such an existence. It seemed as though everywhere I turned, I was met with condemnation and assertions of my inadequacy. It extended far beyond bullying. It was more than abuse. The world taught me that who I was, the very essence of me, was only as valuable as my ability to assimilate into the culture of my local environments.

I had never wished to enter into the culture of normality. I felt that my lack of desire to fit in reduced me to a non-person. In a world where I could be anything, I would give anything to not be me. My fluid identity was more akin to vapour at this point than it was to any tangible form. Society constructs our sense of Self through our interactions with the environment. My environment rejected me like a gangrenous limb.

Perhaps then you can start to see where the twisted beauty of drugs seeped into my life. Not only could I alter my perception of the environment, but I could also alter the way those in my environment perceived me. Different drugs allowed me to put on and take off identities like clothes. They allowed me to explore the inner workings of my mind. I could manifest the Self in whatever way I saw fit.

Much like the sculptor trying to free the art from its marble prison, I was able to shed the constraints of human thought. Drugs allowed me to rewire my bodymind. I was no longer the necrotic manifestation of the universe, but instead the explorer. I was attempting to neuroqueer without even knowing it.

Sadly, this lifestyle was not sustainable. In order to explore the fluidity of one’s identity, it is necessary to be at some level of peace with your Self. At least in my experience. My attempt to neuroqueer my way to peace was fundamentally flawed. I wanted to subvert myself, not normative attitudes. I was trying to diverge into neurotypical performance.

Perhaps that is why I kept returning despite the dangers. Neurotypicality was a performance that I could never manage. What is it they say about try8ng the same thing over and over and the definition of insanity?

The irony in this story is that at almost seven years of tee total sobriety, I can now see that my journey through that time has actually made assimilation not just less possible; The thought is abhorrent to me. For my safety now, I steer clear of “recreational drug use”. My days as a self-confessed psychonaut are over, and quite honestly? I’m okay with that.

Some people falsely believe that addiction is an illness. Personally, I believe that given the right environmental ingredients, it becomes an inevitability. For me, addiction has been a necessary evil. It was necessary for me to deconstruct the Self that had been built on the rotten foundation of subjugation and childhood trauma. That deconstruction allowed me to make space for the infinite possibilities that lay within my neurology.

The world needs us to regularly deconstruct that which society has built. It’s often a violent and painful process, but necessary as we explore what it means to be neurodivergent. Perhaps more so, what it means to be human.

If I could ask one thing of you, dear reader, it is this; when you see a person suffering, do not offer them vague pity and generic platitudes. Offer them your hand to place a new foundation, upon which all can stand to explore the fluid nature of human identity.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Feb 8 2023
Latest updates on my books!

It’s been a hectic time since I published my first book at the beginning of November 2022. I have worked hard to get The New Normal: Autistic musings on the threat of a broken society out in the formats that people asked for. With that in mind, what formats is it out in?

First and foremost, it is out in paperback and ebook format, available from Amazon in multiple countries, and Barnes & Noble (paperback only, and US only). There are two editions out. This is because the first edition did not meet requirements for wider distribution off of Amazon.

So here are some links if you wish to purchase the paperback and ebook formats:

Amazon Link
Barnes & Noble Link

Lots of you also asked for an audiobook version. So, naturally, I made that happen! The audiobook is currently available on Audible, but will soon be available on Amazon and iTunes. Here is the link to the Audible edition:

UK Audible
US Audible

So what else?

I recently published another chapbook. No, it’s not a poetry book this time. This is a three part essay on my experiences with neuroqueering, and it is also where I introduce my concept of the Chaotic Self that you may have heard me talk about in livestreams!

The book is called A Treatise on Chaos: Embracing the Chaotic Self and the art of neuroqueering. It is currently available in paperback and ebook, also both on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Here are the links:

Amazon Link
Barnes & Noble Link

If I can ask one thing of you all, please share the he’ll out of this news! Tell people about my books, write reviews, spread the word! Being self-published was a fun experience, but sadly, I lack marketing resources and I am being drowned out by some of the other wonderful books that are releasing at the moment. I would love to think that people get a chance to hear my message!

I am published in print in a couple of other places. For more information please click here

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Jan 31 2023
Five things I want parents of neurodivergent children to know

It can be very difficult to wrap your head around neurodiversity when you have spent your life being taught that any deviation from the status quo is a disorder. It’s all the more overwhelming when your child is discovered to be neurodivergent, and suddenly, you live on a battlefield between advocates and professionals. In this post, I hope to give you a starting point with five things that are important to know in your attempt to affirm your neurodivergent child rather than force them into what the world tell you they should be.

1. Person-first language versus Identity-first language

This has been a point of contention for as long as the neurodiversity movement has existed. Broadly speaking, the Neurodivergent community (in particular, the Autistic community) prefers identity-first language. Identity-First language requires us to stop viewing neurodivergence as an illness or disorder and instead view it as an identity.

Instead of person-first language (person with autism/ADHD), try using identity-first language (Autistic person/ADHD’er). As a community, we prefer it because our neurodivergence is inseparable from us and fundamentally; we don’t need to be reminded of our personhood. There are wider discussions around cure culture and normativity, but the information here is a good basis to start learning from.

2. Familiarise yourself with the social model of disability

Discussion of appropriate models of disability can get complicated, so I will try and explain this simply. Autism (as an abstract concept) classes as a disability. There has been a great deal of discussion around whether disability is centred in the person (the medical model) or the environment (the social model). For the purposes of starting to understand disability in the context of neurodiversity, you will need to rethink your conceptualisation of disability.

For the most part, disability arises in neurodivergent people because society and the environments it provides are inaccessible. Rather than considering your child to be disabled due to deficits, start to consider that the issue is oppression. It sounds extreme, but due to the neuronormative attitudes of society, we are held back until we can conform to perceived cultural norms.

This is largely where functioning labels arise from. The idea that people are more or less disabled comes from normative thinking, as does the medical model of disability. Speaking of which…

3. Functioning labels give you very little useful information

You have probably heard of people being labelled as high or low functioning. This is a falsehood. Primarily, disability from neurodivergence has a tendency to be dynamic. A person’s functioning depends on so many variables that different times, environments, and states of health will alter a person’s functioning.

Something else to consider is that those labelled low-functioning are considered so because they do not fit the stereotype of a person who will ever be able to contribute to society. Therefore, they are denied agency. Conversely, those labelled high-functioning are considered valuable to society despite their quirkiness and, for this reason, are often denied resources.

Ones access to humanity and support is often dictated by the functioning label you are assigned.

4. Neurodiversity covers more than autism and ADHD

Neurodiversity refers to all brains, including those considered neurotypical. Neurodivergent people are those who are not neurotypical. For more about terms and definitions I recommend this article by Nick Walker.

People who are not neurotypical also includes those with what is traditionally considered mental “illness”. It also includes things such as Down Syndrome and epilepsy. In particular, I would like you to think about how mental health has been pathologised and how we might move forward to a more inclusive society.

Onto my final point.

5. Almost anything can be traumatic

You may have heard about the high rates of trauma amongst the Autistic and otherwise Neurodivergent community. Our understanding of trauma has been heavily influenced by normative attitudes. The truth is that a wide range of things can traumatise your child.

It’s probably not reasonable to expect yourself to protect your child from every trauma, but having a trauma-informed perspective will help your child-parent relationship a lot.

I hope that this gives you some food for thought and helps you feel as though you can start your journey of learning. Remember, it’s okay to be scared, and it’s okay to make the odd mistake. Allow yourself space to admit your shortcomings, and always consider asking neurodivergent adults about things that helped then as children.

Neurodivergence is not just for childhood.

If you have found this helpful and would like to read something a bit more in-depth about normativity and its impact on neurodivergent people, please consider purchasing my book The New Normal: Autistic musings on the threat of a broken society

For further reading on my website, please check out the Creating Autistic Suffering series that I co-author with Tanya Adkin and the Neuroqueer series that I author with Katie Munday.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
Jan 30 2023
What purpose does the concept of mental “illness” serve?

As a Schizophrenic person, I see many talk about me as being mentally “ill” and in need of medicine. I do take medication, but for me, medication usage is similar to what one might see within ADHD communities. Medicine is a tool, not a treatment. It allows me to function in environments that are not designed to be accessible to me or my needs. It allows me to live my life without the constant experience of distress, one that I experience without medication because the world is not designed for me.

All suffering is valid, and all neurodivergence can result in suffering. Not because we are ill, but because the world is a traumatic place to live. Neurodivergent people have to face the oppression of all that is different on a daily basis.

“Illness” as a concept within psychological wellbeing a distress is a convenience. It allows professionals to tell us our suffering is unavoidable. If we die by suicide, then we are collateral damage. Victims of a pathology ravaging human kind. If we are “ill” then professionals and leaders do not have to acknowledge their role in a system, causing us distress.

This is what we are actually experiencing. Distress. When we can move forward from pathology models and start to consider that what is happening is a very human experience, we can start to point the blame where it belongs. A world that is violent and terrifying for a huge portion of the population. It is not on us to recover from a mysterious, unquantifiable entity of illness. The world needs to change.

We need to recognise that distress is a human experience, and no two humans have the same experience. Just because my distress looks like the loss of our shared reality does not mean that I am ill. Just because I take medicine that eases my distress does not mean I have a disorder. We don’t assume ADHD’ers to be ill for taking medication. Why do we do it to other forms of medication-assisted neurodivergence?

This ties us up in ideas around med-shaming and toxic positivity. One of the reasons people feel shamed of their meds is because, to them, it feels like an admission of guilt. They weren’t strong enough to survive without becoming ill. It’s not fair to let people feel that way. It’s also unfair to go the other direction and tell people to manage their distress without tools such as medicine. It’s possible to be neurodivergent (and not ill) and still need medication for day to day life.

Neurodivergence is aggressively neutral. It has positives and negatives, and it also has experiences that are not able to be compartmentalised. Truthfully, neurodivergent experience is human experience. The fact that we have to section off different experiences and diagnose them as “illness” or “disorder” fundamentally undermines the neurodiversity paradigm.

Mental “illness” is a deeply flawed concept, and until we fix this, we will not be able to reduce human distress.

David Gray-Hammond 1 Comments
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