3/3/2022

The 33 Project

A bit delayed today, as in life. But, don’t worry, still very much here. Today’s 3 are really all over the place. I guess I’m here to diversify the content you consume so let’s get to it. The recs:

1/ This article on mental illness in the UK was super interesting. Two important pull quotes to further sway you into reading the piece:

The most complicated factor to consider is what it feels like to be told you have a mental disorder. As Timimi puts it: “The object of study, which is the mind, is not the same as the object of study when it’s a kidney. The kidney doesn’t worry about the future. The kidney isn’t going to abandon me if I read out a set of kidney results.” He observed that the language psychiatrists use can have a huge impact on a person’s self-perception: there’s a big difference, for instance, between being told that you are ambitious and being told you are suffering from delusions of grandeur.

and…

When we spoke over Zoom, I asked Jones what had aided her recovery. She didn’t hesitate: “empowerment”. The worst part of falling ill had been becoming a psychiatric patient. “The problem wasn’t: ‘You’ve got schizophrenia, or you’ve got psychosis’… The deep thing was losing all meaning in my life, all social value. And the healing thing was being able to enter into conversations as an equal.”

I always appreciate reframing an issue or at least considering different approaches. Curious how this evolves over time.