Mental health

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, this sounds like a well-made piece of television heading our way: MTV is debuting a new reality show in October in which a small town girl moves to Los Angeles to pursue her dreams in the fashion industry. The twist? She’s fat. (Note: the linked article actually lists her weight, so if that’s triggering [...]

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12 Steps to Institutional Neglect and Compounded Violation

I feel like there should be a trigger warning for “just so generally horrible it makes me lose what little faith in humanity I had left,” but I will go with this: This story concerns sexual abuse of an intellectually disabled middle-schooler. If you can keep reading without cringing, you’re a stronger person than I. [...]

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“I Can Handle It”: On Relationship Violence, Independence, and Capability

[This piece may contain triggers on relationship violence.] I. In early 2001, a group of friends who had introduced me to my then-boyfriend sat me down at a kitchen table. “We’re worried about you,” one said. “Has he hit you?” The answer, at the time, was no. Ten months later, I stumble into the emergency [...]

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Jailing women who try to commit suicide

Bei Bei Shuai tried to kill herself with rat poison last year. She survived. But she was pregnant, and her fetus died. Now she’s being charged with murder and attempted feticide. Shaui’s downward spiral began in late December, when her boyfriend blindsided her. It turned out the man who had fathered her baby and promised [...]

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Compassion Fatigue

I’m in a clinic. It’s dirty. There are lots of other women there, women who look like me. The room is rectangular and the chairs squeak when you get up. I’m there to have an abortion. I’m 14 weeks pregnant. I’m on an operating table. I see the doctor. I’m filing charts. I’m calling patient [...]

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Sending mentally ill people to Siberia

“He’s really really old and has therefore earned the right to say what he thinks” doesn’t really apply when the old person in question suggests sending mentally ill people to Siberia so that they can die of exposure, and when he says that Hitler did something right. Especially when the person in question is a [...]

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On mental illness and crime

I’m hoping to write more about this in the coming days, but this article in Slate is a good look at the connection between mental illness and crime — that is, that people with mental illnesses are much more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators, and our culture so thoroughly ties [...]

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