Down the rabbit hole

coverme-in-chocolate:

SIGNAL BOOST!!!

youarenotyou:

TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE, ANTI-PSYCHIATRY BULLSHIT

toopunktofuck:

californiaexpatriate:

drugsandanarchy:

mh-things:

Unfortunately true.

It’s a bit unfair to compare something life threatening to something not immediately life threatening.

Also, psychiatric care is really just a nice way of saying, “mind-altering drugs”.

I’m writing my own response to this, because honestly I am absolutely SICK of this photo set and its ignorant comments and have a lot of things to say that haven’t already been covered.

Hello there, my name is Stiv, I’m almost 21 years old, and I have been mentally ill as far back as my conscious memory goes. I have Borderline Personality Disorder, OCD, and dysthymia as official diagnoses. I also might have some other issues my therapist hasn’t disclosed to me because BPD patients sometimes have an issue where any new diagnosis becomes their new identity, and I totally understand their fears.

Do you want to know the main theory as to why I am mentally ill?

Physical illness.

The day before my fourth birthday, in upstate new york, in the year 1996, I got bit by a tick and by the end of the night of my birthday, I had a full-blown fever, bullseye rash, and aches and chills.

That’s right, I had lyme disease.
This might sound unrelated, but there are new studies coming to the surface regarding young children who had lyme disease - many of them have various neurological and mental illness symptoms, and BPD is particularly common among people who had lyme disease as small children. One of my best friends also had lyme, and she has BPD traits. Her little sister had it too and she has full blown BPD at age 15.

The bacteria that causes lyme disease infects the spinal cord and nervous system in children much quicker than it does in adults. It’s thought to cause neurological damage.

And yes, at that age, lyme disease almost killed me.

But years later, my BPD almost killed me more than once. I wanted to die.

What really, really baffles me about everything is, this is just one example of many, MANY instances of a physical illness, life-threatening or no, becoming a mental illness. Many older people with chronic pain become depressed, anxious, or develop substance abuse issues. Hell, why do you fucking THINK people with cancer get therapeutic counseling?!

“NOT IMMEDIATELY LIFE THREATENING” also pisses me off, because nobody who has been in a room with a person who has just attempted suicide and can come out and say that shit.

Suicide is a HUGE risk in BPD. 10% of BPD patients eventually successfully commit suicide.

That’s REALLY high

and do you fucks know why there is shitty quality of care for mentally ill people?

BECAUSE OF SHIT LIKE THIS

People spread myths about mental illness like “they’re not life threatening” and these myths are one of the biggest contributors to stigma.
As a result of stigma, people won’t admit they’re mentally ill, people won’t admit their relative is mentally ill, or their friend, and because of stigma, very little hospital funding actually goes into helping people on psychiatric inpatient and outpatient units. Our medications are ridiculously expensive ($700 for Abilify without insurance) and not well-researched and many of the newer ones could be dangerous, as they were just shuffled onto the market without extensive years of study.
Many psychiatrists in the United States are not psychiatrists because they wanted to help the mentally ill, but because they were failing out of med school. There’s actually a shortage of people who actually give a fuck in the systems that are supposed to be helping us.

I hope you’re all happy with yourselves because this is an attitude that legitimately kills people.

i am genuinely amazed at people who think mental illness isn’t life threatening. y’all can go fuck yourselves. locked psych wards exist for a reason, dipshits

and yr “mind altering drugs” ARE ACTUALLY REALLY NECESSARY FOR SOME OF US TO CONTINUE LIVING

THX