#and stigmatised

[tleeaves]

Another day, another mental disorder I add to my list to get checked for though the symptoms overlap with others already on there which just makes it more complicated.

@faithfromanewperspective idk if we've talked about it before, but I'm adding a tentative BPD, which is also suspected to run in my family.

[autopsyfreak]

Homicidal Ideation

homicidal ideation is the term for having active thoughts about murdering others. these thoughts can be intrusive, however they can also often be voluntary.

misconceptions:

‘people who have these thoughts either have killed someone or will kill someone in the future’ - this is false. most people who have these thoughts usually have disordered behaviours (most commonly as a result of personality disorders) and struggle to find healthy ways to cope with their emotions, therefore provocation and stress can easily cause thoughts of inflicting harm onto others. this doesn’t inherently mean these people are dangerous, nor does it mean that they’re going to act upon these thoughts. most people who experience homicidal ideation never act on it and use it more as a way to process their distress/frustration internally.

‘having these thoughts about people in your life means you can’t possibly care for them’ - also false. caring for someone doesn’t make them an exception to mental illness and it doesn’t stop your mental illnesses from existing. to think that someone’s love for you is only valid as long as they’re not displaying traits of mental illness is unfair and is hugely misinformed. to love and be loved by someone who is mentally ill is to accept that they will display symptoms of their mental illness. you are not the exception and they do not love you any less by showing traits of being unwell.

‘so you endorse murder’ - no. that’s not at all what this means and if you seriously think this then your grasp of severe mental health issues is too limited to be commenting on such topics.

‘you’re evil’ - for being unwell? don’t be a cunt. if you seriously think that having a disordered manner of processing emotions internally makes someone ‘evil’ then that sounds more like an issue with you being too sensitive and having a lack of understanding, not an issue with the mentally ill person experiencing these thoughts. don’t make your inability to understand mental illness into someone else’s problem.

as someone who does experience homicidal ideation, it’s also important to not make the mistake of assuming everyone who is mentally ill experiences these thoughts either. i had an anonymous ask earlier today that directly associated the fact i’m mentally unwell with murder and homicidal thoughts, to immediately make this assumption just because someone is mentally ill is disgusting.

[kitotherianposting]

hello nonhuman ally / young uneducated nonhuman. you have a bomb strapped to your chest. to diffuse it, you must explain why alterhumans are valid without saying any of these phrases

- they still know they're human / it's not like they believe they're physically nonhuman

- well they're not delusional / mentally ill

- it's just a phase, don't bother them / let kids be kids / they're just exploring their identity

- well they're just [insert something that only describes otherpaws / furries]

you have 1 hour.

[koredzas]

Francesco Morone (1471 - 1529)- Stigmatisation of Saint Francis.

[little-cirrus-fibratus]

A genuine question for people with ASPD or/and NPD

People with ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) or/and NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), I am genuinely curious about what you believe is the core part of aspd and npd, and how you see the world. How does it feel to have these disorders? How do people treat you? How do you treat people? How can one understand how it must be like for you?

These disorders are VERY stigmatised. Even actual medical journals and sites perpetuate this stigmatisation, and there's this whole thing of "narcissistic abuse" or that all people with antisocial personality disorder are serial killers. I simply refuse to believe this, it's not nuanced enough, and I genuinely seek to understand. And maybe other people may find this thread of posts and also understand.

So people with npd/aspd, add on, explain anything you wish people knew about your disorder.

Coming from a fellow person with a highly stigmatised disorder (schizophrenia) who wishes to understand.

[regicidal-defenestration]

Big news from the criminology trenches. Did you know that if you treat someone like a human being rather than Someone Who Will, We Know, For Sure And Undoubtedly, Commit A Crime, So We Must Lock Them Away Before Their Foul Words Can Infect Our Pure Minds, then conversations about cybercrime are more successful? [1]

[1] R. Brewer, M. de Vel-Palumbo, A. Hutchings, T. Holt, A. Goldsmith, and D. Maimon, "Targeted Warnings and Police Cautions" in Cybercrime Prevention: Theory and Applications. Palgrave Pivot, Cham, 2019, 77-99

[dorianbrightmusic]

i'm seeing a lot of Pokémon SV DLC analyses where people say 'Oh, Kieran's fixation on Ogrepon is because he sees it as a path to strength; Carmine's bullied him long enough that his shield against admitting his weakness to himself is adoring a legendary creature'. And don't get me wrong – these interpretations certainly hold water – but I've actually been working from basically the opposite angle for all this time.

By all means, Kieran idolises strength, but he inhabits Carmine's shadow – he's the weak sibling, and probably has been for a long time. Yet, rather than fixate on the fantastical power of the Loyal Three, he identifies himself with Ogrepon – the downtrodden, ostracised creature cast out to eke out a subsistence. A terrible demon that wasn't quite terrible enough to cause anyone any lasting harm. The creature defeated by heroes, rather than the perfect, heroic figureheads themselves. He's enamoured with the downtrodden; he sees himself in its grief, in its being cast out and excluded. He's been cast out and excluded all his life (and he can't be a bad person, right? It's not fair – he's hated senselessly, surely, rather than for some reason?) – he sees himself as harmless; so the ogre, too, must be harmless, mis-blamed. Strength is thus in resistance; in growing a shell to tolerate others' inexplicable cruelty. So Kieran looks to Ogerpon, and he thinks that the meek shall inherit the earth, and it gives him the strength to tolerate long nights with poor company. Others are villains – not him, not this creature – and he's safe in the knowledge that at the end of the day, at least an ogre can go down in mythology as the putative sole survivor of its trials.

In this sense, Kieran's like Penny – he finds himself in a position of weakness, of being victimised, and forms himself an armour of being an underdog, of being the thing that bites back. Yet while Penny's position is that the underdog might muster the strength to bite back and restore justice, Kieran's view is that at least the underdog was worth loving. He's inert and preoccupied with his inertia. He can't understand that maybe he could be a human, with the capacity to grow, the capacity to sin. And when Carmine is cruel to him, he reaffirms his own contrarian mindset more – she says I am worth little for my weakness, so my weakness is all I am worth; my weakness is my strength.

And yet he chases strength, because he has to to survive. So when the player comes by, and supports him, maybe he has the safety to walk away from his preoccupation with being an underdog, to enjoy strength for strength's sake. And then, he starts losing, but this time, there are stakes, since he can't just withdraw and be consoled by the fact that withdrawing is right, is right, is right. Thus, he must get stronger. And then, when Ogerpon turns out to favour Juliana, who's become Kieran's idol for all that strength means, rather than Kieran, who's Kieran's selfsame designated weaklingpatheticscumidiot——well, what can Kieran do but fracture, since his whole ideology, his whole premonition that he might have the right to inherit the earth, has been fractured? And, under stress, he pivots from one extreme to the other. All he knows is that weakness is now unbearable. He must get stronger. Must get stronger. Must get stronger—because otherwise he's doomed, he's nothing. He has no myth to dissolve his identity in any longer, so he reshapes himself around the only other standard he's ever known. And it twists him and it breaks him into tiny pieces, because suddenly, the last thing he can bear to be is Kieran: Kieran, the downtrodden and meek boy. He has to flip on his axis; he must become the designated villain of his story by popular imagination, or else be subsumed in the fact that he's going to die someday without any place in the world. He has to play a part, because he's been consigned to one so long, and he can't think of anything other than heroes and villains, enemies and martyrs. He can't be the bad guy. Strength is now goodness; weakness is now evil. And he can't reconcile who he thought he was with who he must become, and as a result, all he can do is try to destroy the person who's destroyed his ideology.

[skitskatstudios]

I love how the students of PK Academy (after the volcano) are like “Oh no, it’s former delinquent Kuboyasu. Better stay away from him.” But at this point, he’s gone through so much character growth that he’s literally just a guy that gets anger management therapy.

[glitter-stained]

On Duke Thomas and the problem with the ASPD diagnosis

There are many many messed up things with the way personality disorders are classified in the dsm-5, but I think what best illustrates how fucked up the ASPD diagnostic criteria are is that Duke Thomas (yes, Duke Thomas, the Signal) could definitely get diagnosed with ASPD.

FYI, ASPD means Antisocial Personality Disorder, this is the clinical entity usually referenced when we talk about psychopathy or sociopathy. So how does that fit Duke? (It doesn't. And yet...)

First is the question of why should we diagnose Duke, a teenager whose personality is still in construction, with a personality disorder? Well, while you only get diagnosed at 18 (criteria B), your "transgressions" occur since age 15, which means Duke's behaviour in We are Robin (when he was a traumatized homeless teenager in a hellscape of a city)can 100% be used to spring a diagnosis on him at 18. Criteria D is just excluding schizophrenia and bipolar episodes. Now let's take a look at criteria A: at least three manifestations from this list of signs that someone is "disregarding and transgressing other people's rights" :

1. Repeated liable to arrest behaviours

So, like when Duke got arrested for being part of We Are Robin, then escaped arrest and did it again and again?

2. tendency to lie for either profit or pleasure: repeated lies, use of pseudonyms or scamming.

Funnily enough, I don't think Duke had a pseudo in WAR aside from Robin ofc (feel free to correct me if I misremember) but Isabella and the others sure did! Still, when Duke gets arrested, he lies and insists he isn't part of the WAR and hasn't done anything illegal, which fits the criteria as "lying for personal profit". (If you're feeling full of righteous rage reading this it's normal, I'm trying to prove a point.)

3. Impulsivity OR inability to plan ahead.

Duke is definitely able to plan ahead, but I know very few clinicians who, upon hearing how this mf jumped off a bridge to escape a moving police car, wouldn't write down "impulsivity"... And it's not like it's his only similar offence. I'm not saying he is impulsive, but that behaviour is definitely enough to get him classified as one in the eye of a clinician, especially if they're meeting him after an arrest and hearing from that episode second-handedly.

4. Repeated fights and aggressions.

Do I need to develop why this would fit Duke?

5. Inconsiderate disregard for his safety OR other people's safety

If you thought I was being unfair about the impulsivity for jumping from a bridge, you can't tell me this doesn't fit here. Again, far from the sole iteration of it from Duke in WAR, but one of the most memorable.

6. Persistent irresponsibility: this one is all about pathologizing and shaming financial and employment struggles, which is its own nest of issues but doesn't concern our boy Duke since he isn't an adult.

7. justification/indifference after harming, stealing or mistreating someone (lack of remorse).

The question here is, does street vigilant violence count as harming someone? I'm gonna go with yes, because there is no question of whether it is justified, and attempting to defend oneself is here considered a sign of a lack of remorse. (Whether or not you count it doesn't matter so much though, because we're already over three hard yesses.)

So, to recap, whether or not we count criteria 7 and 3, Duke already fits the bill of 3 criteria, and thus fits criteria A.

The last criteria to examine, criteria C, is :

"manifestations of a conduct disorder before 15". So you're going backwards in time investigating the person's past actions to see if they fit the criteria having, most of the time, only data like police records, grade reports, foster care interviews sometimes, on top of your own retroactive bias. To quote Duke's bio "during his time in foster care, Duke went from an upstanding student to becoming a bit of a delinquent, receiving poor grades and racking up an extensive police record due to his investigations into his parents." I'm not gonna go through the whole list of conduct disorder symptoms because there is so many, just know the cutoff is 3. For Duke, we can identify: "picks up fights", "stays up late at night despite interdiction from his guardians (before 13 -when was Duke first placed?), "often skips school" (again, before 13), "has run away and spent the night outside at least twice or once but didn't come home for a long time", "has b&e into someone's house/car/building" (i'm pretty sure that happened at some point? An abandoned building that legally belongs to someone else counts btw), "lies often to avoid obligations". I might have missed some from Duke's time in foster care so feel free to point out any sign of conduct disorder I didn't spot!!

In conclusion, Duke fits the criteria for ASPD and would have been, in universe, liable to be diagnosed as soon as he turned 18 (which could very well had happened if he had stayed in the system or gotten arrested). So, is the conclusion that Duke Thomas actually has ASPD? Obviously not. The point is the dsm criteria for ASPD (and conduct disorder) are so fucked up that fictional superheroes who definitely don't have it meets them on a technicality. Even if we accept ASPD as a valid clinical entity (which is highly debatable) this wording is so wrong I can't wrap my head around this.

Another point you might have noticed is that post-crisis Jason Todd (Jaybin, not the Red Hood) would also have been a very valid test to highlight how problematic these criteria are. While little Jason is at risk because there is also a huge classism problem in these criteria (which don't do shit to acknowledge necessity theft and actively shame financial insecurity), Duke is at risk because studies have highlighted the racist bias in these criteria: regardless of clinical intent, the awful, unclear wording of these criteria have led to a huge race difference in ASPD diagnosis. Add to that the foster care to prison pipeline, a story where Duke had been diagnosed with ASPD would have been all too realistic (assuming dc writers know about aspd).

All these critiques are acknowledged in the DSM-5: Revised Text version, where researchers warn against the bias and unclear wording of these criteria. But let's be honest: clinicians barely ever read the diagnostic characteristics of the original DSM-5, let alone the revised text (generally because 1. They're overworked and 2. To interview properly, you need to ask questions based on the criteria while talking to the person, which is super hard and means you need clear, defined, easy to memorize criteria). So most of the time, clinicians just base themselves on the diagnostic criteria. Just saying "hey careful about bias these criterias aren't that well written" in the revised text isn't enough : if ASPD is going to stay an entity at all, it needs better criteria.

The ASPD criteria are amongst the worst failures of the DSM-5, and the case of Duke Thomas perfectly illustrates the pitfall in which we might fall if we don't remain critical of classifications and take into account how they fit within a social and political sytem.

*This post simplifies listed criteria to what clinicians actually use while diagnosing for clarity's sake, but doubting your sources is smart, so feel free to check out the detailed criteria to check I'm not misinterpreting what the dsm says by simplifying it since the DSM-5 is available online for free, search key for ASPD is F60.2 and for conduct disorder is F63.81.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

I’m so fucking glad we're getting Maria Robotnik content again she’s so underrated. Like she only shows up really briefly in Adventure 2 and Shadow so I get it but genuinely there’s way more to her than you’d think just from those games. Like she’s a little girl with a severe terminal illness (she’s basically got AIDS in all but name) and she's still so strong and determined. She’s kind and loving, sure, but I think the most important part of her that we see that some people apparently didn’t pick up looking at Some Stuff is that she very deliberately sacrificed herself for Shadow. Like this was a twelve year old girl terrified and confused but she was brave enough to go and save her brother without hesitation even though she knew she'd die if she did so. Like even if she wasn’t going to get shot she was again terminally ill and likely only alive at that point bc she was receiving cutting edge treatment like keep in mind her story takes place 50 years ago she had no treatment options on earth in, to be generous, the 70s and most likely the 50s. She knew she was dead the second the Ark shut down and so she sacrificed herself for her brother and even in her dying breath asked for kindness to a world that gave her none. She’s the epitome of doomed by the narrative and I love her.

[rainesol]

Guys I’m not headcanoning Riddle as having OCD because I’m #woke or projecting or reaching or whatever. I’m headcanoning it because I played the fucking game 😭

[autopsyfreak]

‘i support all abuse victims’ do you?

do you support abuse victims even if they:

develop a stigmatised disorder as a result of their abuse (e.g: NPD, DID, etc.).

seek out other unhealthy/abusive relationships and/or cannot allow themselves to remain in healthy one.

respond to triggers with defensiveness and aggression instead of fawning.

do not want to pursue mental health support.

develop ‘toxic’ or unhealthy mannerisms as a defensive mechanism.

struggle to engage with others romantically and/or sexually after what happened.

are still in contact with their abuser(s) and/or still love/care for them.

keep returning to their abusive relationship.

resort to substance misuse to cope.

assume the worst in you, distrust you and are afraid that you’re going to do something terrible to them.

never recover.

if the answer to any of this is ‘no’ then you do not support /all/ abuse victims.

[kkoct-ik]

god i love toko fukawa but i forget how badly written she is in her starring case

[swordsonnet]

when talking about topics like maturity and (self-)infantilisation, it's important to remember that there will always be disabled adults for whom the "normal" benchmarks of adulthood are not attainable or even applicable at all. if you want to be an ally to disabled people, you need to support all of us, not just the ones you find palatable - and that includes people who have "childish" interests, who get very emotional about seemingly trivial things, who aren't able to be independent in the way that adults are expected to be. that doesn't mean that we "need to grow up", or that we're reverting to a childlike state to avoid our responsibilities, or whatever op-ed writers think is wrong with gen z these days. it's just the way we are, and liking plushies or struggling with certain tasks doesn't in fact make us children! disabled adults are still adults, and still deserving of dignity, regardless of whether or not we can live up to the rigid societal norms of what it means to be an adult.

[p1-norris]

my god there is nothing worse than when f1 fans on twitter start doing fucking ‘mental strength’ discourse

[ranticore]

i don't think having marginalised characters necessarily has to mean anything and I certainly don't care about Representation but that aside the best thing i can do with my trans characters is to use them for srs propaganda