#Medical-industrial Complex

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

A few more thoughts on why I was, and remain, enraged by these words:

(A follow-up to this post: "Let's Play a Little Game, Shall We ... ?")

It can be frustrating for adults to deal with a health care system that appears to have little knowledge or interest regarding the changing needs of aging with a disability. A positive attitude makes a big difference, and developing relaxation techniques and coping skills can have a beneficial effect on mental and physical health.

When I was first diagnosed with cerebral palsy (C.P.) as a two-year old, back in 1966, the consensus among medical professionals was that intellectual disability was one of its more common symptoms. And, indeed, that was the first, knee-jerk diagnosis from the child psychologist who tested me.

[Note Well: The Stigmatization of Intellectual Disabilities is Wrong, and Undeserved. But the support needs for physical disabilities and intellectual disabilities are different, and misdiagnosis benefits no one]

Periodically, in the years since, I've gone looking for whatever is being written about cerebral palsy at the moment, to see if there's been any shift in that professional consensus. And I have been perennially disappointed.

On the particular night in September, 2012, when I'd stumbled upon the above quote, I'd already been going down that rabbit hole for many hours. And nearly every webpage on Cerebral Palsy I came across had three things in common:

They all had almost the exact same wording (leading me to believe that everyone was plagiarizing everyone else, and not actually writing from their own unique perspective)

They were all written toward an audience of parents of infants, or very young children who were newly diagnosed with C.P., and

Among all those recurring words I read were: "Devastating," "Debilitating," and "Severe."

(Very few of the webpages were clear, up top, about who had written them, but if I scrolled down and clicked the links in fine print at the very bottom, a majority of them turned out to be from law firms specializing in medical malpractice)

I was spiraling deeper into depression and anger, when, at roughly 4 am, I came upon a pamphlet titled: "Aging With Cerebral Palsy." And it was: A) Written for Adults with C.P., and B) Did Not paint C.P. as an absolute tragedy.

.... Just when I was beginning to feel both seen and validated, and began to breath a little easier, I was smacked in the face with those two sentences: Acknowledging that no one actually cares about my welfare, and then telling me that I shouldn't be angry, or do anything to fight back.

And it hit me that the medical and social clinicians in whom I'm expected to place my trust were on the same team as those medical malpractice-pedaling lawyers:

All they're really interested in is selling their services to the parents with money -- promising that this medicine, that surgery, or X number of hours of physical therapy, will make their child "more normal," and make their condition all but invisible. Once we reach the age of majority, however, and they're required to get our consent (rather than that of our legal guardians), they lose interest in us.

There's little in common between autism and cerebral palsy, except that people in each camp have to deal with similar B.S. from the medical and educational "experts."

[aronarchy]

[homehealthcareinc]

Medical-industrial Complex

     Medical – Industrial Complex; What is it you ask? The medical-industrial complex refers to the interconnected network of private and public entities that dominate and influence healthcare systems. This includes pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, hospitals, insurance companies, healthcare providers, and research institutions, all of which operate within a framework driven…

[honeylemony]

"therapists are only necessary because we aren't fulfilling each others emotional needs in society"

While I agree on this to a degree, I don't think this fully appreciates the role therapists play. They're neutral, non connected, third parties that supply psychological therapy/support.

Even if society was better, some people are going to have psychological needs that outweigh the capacity their network has. Some people will need a disconnected party to vent their feelings and frustrations about their friends and family with. Some people will need a neutral party to talk about things they're scared about or may lose relationships over. It is BECAUSE it is their job and they consent to this that we need them. They understand the ways to keep psychological help safe. They devote their lives to understanding it. There is not one person in your life who can 24/7 fill the exact same role a therapist does, with the same protections a therapist has.

Yes, we need to support each other better as people. That's fully not the same thing as actual, psychological help.

[pippalovestunabrick]

No but this is so important and not just because Nureyev is finally waking up to something outside his Slip tunnel vision. But because Nureyev has never been in the position to plan for a life. His entire focus has been on survival and obligation and anonymity since he was (the equivalent of) a high schooler. He has never had the opportunity to be like "what do I want to do with my life?" because that agency was taken from him by the GAS, by Mag, by being a fugitive, by Dokana and he has actually never been at liberty to just, choose.

This aspect of Nureyev makes me that much more feral about his offer to run away with Juno way back in season 1, because being able to run away and live a life he wants is not something he allowed himself to even imagine until he met Juno goddamn Steel and that meeting like jumpstarted his heart. The life of thrills and decadence across the galaxy might not even be what he truly wants, but even being able to envision the fantasy of it was HUGE for him. Which makes Juno’s rejection of it (in Murderous Mask, but moreso in Final Resting Place after everything they went through together with Miasma, and realizing that there was the potential for genuine love, trust, compatibility between them) all the more devastating. It wasn't just a rejection of Nureyev, but effectively crushed that first real hope for the future that he had allowed himself since Saraswati.

[librarycards]

At the origin of trans medicalization lies what remains a fatal flaw: there was, and is, no way to objectively diagnose someone as trans, except if you accept that they want to transition. The problem of detransition is therefore a mythology, the accumulated effect of decades of storytelling to justify why doctors and psychiatrists had to reject trans people without being able to say it was because they aren’t objectively trans. Detransition, much like its cousin, medicalization, are mythologies that rationalize the intense social hatred of transition acted out by clinicians, dressing it up as sober caution.

Any pundit today can take up the vast field of out-of-date studies from this era, online misinformation, and the cultural shock value attached to changing sex to rationalize a call for limits on transition, but they will get no closer to legitimacy than the brutality of the gender clinic of the 1970s. They call for more guardrails, more caution, or more psychological assessment, not needing to know that what they really call for is the medical totalitarianism of yesteryear, barely blunted in recent reforms. For at the heart of the myth that transition is something that people can accidentally do despite how impossible it is to obtain in the real world is an uncomfortable truth. There is a form of social and political control implemented by medicine, a way to sever an unpopular minority from their own bodies and then sell back limited access to their bodies if they will submit to a set of trials to prove they can be good people, or at least made better. The people opposed to that kind of medicalization simply think that trans people enjoy no right to their bodies at all, under any circumstances.

If you want to debunk the politicization of detransition, by all means, seek out credible sources that do so. My point is more elementary. I ask you this, New York Times reader: if, tomorrow, your ability to make decisions about your own body were taken away from you, and the only way to get it back was to submit to the process that trans people go through to transition, would you agree to those terms? If you would not, then why are you okay with it happening to us?

Jules Gill-Peterson, Detransition is a Mythology

[emphasis mine]

[x-other-souled-x]

No. Nope.

Using language that systems may also use in a medical setting to describe their expereinces and go through treatment is not appropriation. Full stop.

There is no culture being exploited, unless you want to argue that the medical-industrial complex is a closed culture somehow.

Which I have definitely seen posts saying something dangerously close to this, and I urge you to not base your entire sense of self on the guys making money off of you. Even if they're helping, there's intentional siphoning of money from poor patients.

Secondly, language is a tool used to communicate. Words exist as "bodies" to a concept, and sometimes this concept is interpreted a little differently from person to person. There are a lot of words that mean several different things depending on the context. The most important thing is the setting which they're used in. A good ammount of medical terms are also words that are used by laymen in other contexts, meaning something different.

A system is a group of interrelated parts working together as a whole.

An Operating System (OS) is a system of code and software that tells the hardware what to do in order to make your computer run. There's agricultural systems, government systems, the solar system itself. Are these things appropriating the medical-industrial complex by existing as parts that make one whole thing work?

And before anyone splits hairs about this, I am not equating human life to computers or the government. These are examples of things that are literally defined AS SYSTEMS. The main takeaway you should be having here is that system is a broad term with many many applications outside of the medical-industrial complex. That one institution does not own the word nor the concept of being multiple parts (headmates/alters/whatever) working together.

The concept still exists and system still is a word outside of a medical context.

In other words, people would have eventually came to the conclusion of calling themselves systems regardless of if it was used in a medical context or not. It's not hard to put 2 and 2 together, to see parallels in concepts and expereinces and decide those words work just fine. Thank you for coming to my TEDtalk.

This is a post online, made by a trauma-formed system. I'm not going to have the time and foresight to cover every little nuance, and I don't care to be pedantic and pick apart small case instances. At the end of the day, this does not actually matter to how I live my life, how I get therapy, how we as a system have to work together. Endos using terms that are also used in a medical setting (but also used outside of medical settings) is not harmful to me in any way. And quite frankly, I think anti-endo witchunting has done more damage to us as a system trying to figure out how to navigate life than any endo friendly post has. I'm not arguing semantics, I'm going to go live my life and go outside and do my job and pay my bills like everyone else.

All this discourse around stealing terms and what you can and can't call yourself is so seriously unimportant in the grand scheme of things. You all sound so comfy and privileged to be worried about something so trivial as a word or three that is used in multiple contexts accross human language.

[halogalopaghost]

Really extra tired of black and white thinking around COVID like can you guys activate your brain and understand that lockdown was NECESSARY to prevent massive economic and social breakdown that would have been induced by our entire population getting infected at once before we figured out how to treat it

Not to mention the whole "young people didn't need to worry about dying they shouldn't have been locked down what about their social lives!!11!!!"

Hi. Hello. I am a youth that was disabled by COVID how are you doing today. Oh, you're not disabled by COVID? Cool shut the fuck up forever.

[theaethernetconnection]

I never get more pissed off than with the medical industrial complex and fucking insurance

[inkskinned]

you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.

(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)

but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.

(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)

there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.

(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)

you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.

(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)

you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.

in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.

but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.

they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.

it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.

[lesbiankendall]

i follow a lot of people w chronic illnesses on tiktok, most of them from usamerica and it just blows my mind just how many different medical options they have....like the amount of different tests, equipment, experimental trials is mindboggling. of course you need lots of money & insurance for it but like. my country doesn't even have the option for any of those things.....it's so fucking bleak dude

[girderednerve]

all these leftists casually like "we won't have plastic after the revolution" okay i get it & i endorse this set of priorities but just consider how entrenched plastics are in vital industries. i've seen acknowledgment that some medical devices are plastic & will still be needed but what about my squishable realistic packer. what about my dick, guys

[zigcarnivorous]

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[bonni]

I. already kind of regret choosing to write a huge paper about play therapy as an alternative to ABA. almost all of the research I have found into play therapy treatment has presented it as something that should be provided in addition to ABA for supposed behavioral benefits, which is fucking asinine. the number one goal of child-centered play therapy is to cultivate an environment of self acceptance, and ABA is completely antithetical to that. if I have to read one more fucking article that talks about how play therapy did or didn't have an impact on the amount of eye-contact a child made at home as if anyone should give a shit about that I'm going to kill us all with hammers

[owlbelly]

man i can't stop thinking about that antidepressant post going around (this is really long & not happy)

the one that started out as someone comparing taking their SSRI to taking insulin or thyroid medication, & turned into other people linking all the studies showing that the serotonin deficiency / "chemical imbalance" theory of depression has been pretty well debunked & that doctors/scientists don't really understand how a lot of psych medication works, particularly SSRIs, so you can't really compare taking a medication for something your body actually physically lacks or that's correcting a chemically measurable problem to taking a psych med that isn't doing either of those things (no one is measuring your brain chemicals & there's no agreed upon baseline for something like seratonin - a re-uptake inhibitor isn't making you make any more of it either it's just prolonging its effects in your system)

like. idk. i understand that the science is demonstrably faulty & that advertising campaigns for medications are the reason the popular conception of innate "chemical imbalance" persists even among doctors! this is not new information to me & it's obviously critical to talk about it & continue to do research.

but i also feel like there has got to be a way to talk about it that doesn't implicitly shame or, idk, outright deny the experience of people for whom taking SSRIs has been life-improving or even life-saving? "this stuff doesn't work the way they tell you it does" is one thing, but it so quickly seems to turn into "this stuff doesn't do anything at all (except hurt you)" which is...literally just not true. we can question whether or not medication is the best choice for someone, we can criticize the intersection of capitalism & medicine that's resulted in poorly understood medication with serious side effects being pushed through to sales, we can talk about how structural/societal change would help most of us MUCH more, etc. etc.

but for some people nothing else works, or nothing else works without an additional boost, or nothing else is accessible (which is fucked). these are shit circumstances. idk i think the wording on that post was like "it's fine if you feel like they help you but don't spread this misinformation about depression as a chemical imbalance" & i guess "it's fine if you feel like they help you" always reads to me as "okay sweetie, you have the right to enjoy your poison placebo." clearly they fucking do help sometimes. we don't know how exactly & we should be concerned about lying corporations & shitty institutions, but like...some people are clearly getting results from them. not all of them good results! but good enough that we can function & live, otherwise we wouldn't take them.

lmao maybe i just don't know how to not feel like shit about any discussion of SSRIs, since i have taken them longer than almost anyone i know (almost 25 years) & from a young enough age that they've possibly shaped the development of my brain in ways that no one really understands & the side effects have definitely shaped my life & i have never been able to function without them! maybe i never will be able to now. was it wrong for them to be prescribed to me in the first place? idk i was pretty set on being dead at that point. maybe i would have been okay, maybe not. i've tried to taper off them multiple times, both with doctor supervision & without. it fucking sucks & i stop feeling like living. should i do it again & stick it out to the point of wanting to die because "depression isn't actually a chemical imbalance" & i am just a duped pawn of big pharma?

or am i SSRIs Georg now, who has been taking Prozac for a quarter of a century & does have a resulting "chemical imbalance" & is an outlier, should not have been counted

sorry i hate this i hate being both critical of & also dependent on psych meds, i hate the way everyone talks about it. people who are pro-meds always act like no one is ever forced to take them or stigmatized for not taking them & that the science around them is clear-cut, people who are anti-meds always talk like there's no stigma around taking psych medication (lmao! even antidepressants!) & also like they're just shit placebos for idiots.

i super hate not knowing what 25 years of SSRIs has done to my body & also being pants-shittingly terrified of trying to remove them from my life. it all fucking blows i just want to see a little more compassion for all of us trying to survive here in whatever way we can