stillness is a lie, my dear
Depression is a funny and inconsistent beast. It’s not like a skinned knee, which stings for a moment before flushing red, drops of blood appearing on the surface, following a predictable and neat pattern from beginning to end. You fall down, your knee hurts, you clean it, it scabs, eventually it heals over, first with […]
I’ve discussed the false claim that mental illness and violence are linked at length here — and I’ve also debunked the claim that mentally ill people ‘get off‘ when they’re convicted of crimes by reason of their mental illness. (Yes, because long-term institutionalisation, quite probably in a facility that doesn’t provide many options in terms […]
Explaining depression to people is really difficult for me. It’s not just because people experience depression radically differently and I don’t want people to get the mistaken impression that a variable experience can be summed up by a single person. It’s also because it’s such an experiential thing, something that requires living in your own body and […]
One of the most popular, enduring, and irritating myths about depression is that it means depressed people are sad all the time — and that by extension, people who are happy can’t be experiencing depression, even if they say they are. It’s a skewed and horrible version of depression, and it’s one that further stigmatises […]
There’s a commonly used tool in psychiatry and psychology called the global distress score. The patient is asked to respond to a series of prompts like how often the test-taker has thought about suicide, or has been anxious. Each prompt is scored along a scale, allowing patients to say these issues occur daily, occasionally, or […]
Content note: This post contains discussions of suicide, self harm, and depression. I dreamt that I was dreaming/I was wired to a clock/I tinkle by the minute Hey/tick tock tick tick tock I can’t remember the first time that I wanted to kill myself. I know it was a long time ago, longer ago than […]