#teen girls mental health treatment

[intervalbylaventanatreatment]

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[selkies-world]

Me, in the UK, preparing to watch the USA get turned into a fully fledged Christian ethnostate thanks to the fact they willingly voted a Christian Nationalist into power:

Meanwhile, USAmericans:

Here's what's going to happen, now that the orange bastard is on America's throne.

First, it'll be trans people & immigrants that will get the brunt of it. They'll be treated worse than they have this century.

Then it'll be BIPOC and disabled people. It'll be the women & girls who get it the worst, out of these groups.

Then it'll be the gays, and marriage will be returned to the state, Roe & Wade style.

Then it'll be women.

Along the way, they'll also be taking money and funding out of education and the workforce, and putting it into the military, weapons, tech for the pet elongated muskrat, and the church. Funding for climate and science and medicine will be taken away and relocated.

Your weather reports will be privatised, and if you pay to be able to view them, they will give you false information, and will intentionally fail to mention climate change. You will not know when a wildfire is predicted, or a flood, or a hurricane. Likewise, you will not know when those events happen in other states. You will not know what the weather is like in the rest of the world because the news will be heavily censored and filtered.

You will also lose porn. All LGBTQIA+ content, including shows and resources and books, will be classified as pornography, and banned. You will lose the general Internet, and anonymity, and privacy. Spyware will be mandatory on your devices. Anyone caught looking at banned material will be prosecuted, and labeled as a monster - someone looking at gay porn, or reading gay fanfic, or reading up on safe gay sex, will be branded as a pedophile or a sexual deviant.

You will also find that sex ed is removed from schools. Even anatomy & biology classes will be different. You can't miss something if you're never taught it in the first place, surely. Teen pregnancies will increase, as birth control becomes illegal, and pregnancy complications, child deaths, miscarriages and teen parents will be very commonplace. Sexual diseases will also become more prevalent as the medication for them will become scarce; PReP will be next to impossible to access, so a small AIDS epidemic will resurface. Antibiotics and vaccines will become rarer and rarer.

All porn will be deigned as a threat to children, and kink safespaces for adults will be hunted and shut down as being a threat to society. Gay clubs, too. Pride will be canceled, as will pride clubs in schools and colleges. Funding for therapy & mental health resources will dry up.

Families will be torn up, children will be tortured and abused, and adults will be forced to go along with it, face the same treatment, enact the abuse, or go to jail for child abuse because they tried to help their child. Gay adoptions will stop, as will family support for families with gay children.

Meanwhile, the UK will be in a political war with the USA. Palestinians will be bombed more, and so will most countries in the middle East. Egypt will become a target, and a few other parts of Africa. Russia and Ukraine will continue to attack each other, but Russia will be watching the USA and UK. So will North Korea and China.

None of you will be told if there's another pandemic. None of you will be told if there are millions or hundreds of millions of deaths. None of you will be told about loved ones in danger in other countries or states. None of you will be told the truth about anything.

Congratulations, America. You've built your walls high, and fortified your country. But you haven't just shut the rest of the world out; you've shut yourselves in.

If you don't believe me, save this post and come back to it 1 year from now. 2 years. 3 years. 4. Take a screenshot of it. And let's see which of us is right.

[wosieposiecozy]

Finally got the balls to post this

Candybats rambles and HC and individual stuff. Turning these freaks into OCs fr

🦇🎀 Rambles under the cut bc talk of mental health, also note pink text is for things that are more personal to me/ based off my life. I project onto these freaks a whole lot, especially streber! The pink text range from silly to not so silly 🎀🦇

Enjoy!!!

-kevin is a nerd/freak, no way he's friends with Radford and isn't a nerd, bro def has a fixation on sonic the hedgehog but only owns 06 (he borrows other games from rad)

- streber is not an engineer but a theater prop maker, he enjoys the stage and probably was in a robotics club in college but engineering/ robotics was not something he wanted to go into directly. He dose prop commissions and is a teacher assistant at an elementary school.

-streber is great at math and calculations, but my boy can't read/spell well.

- streber likes to fidget with Kevin's hands

-kevin likes to just flop on top of streber. Streber likes the pressure. Kevin's like a cold weighted blanket, and streber is a heating pad.

- streber struggles with depression, it's been a year since Bob and while he's doing better, he struggles with not feeling anything sometimes, he's nervous on how his response to his trauma isn't like others. He kinda pretends it didn't happen and continues on, and only really thinks about it when he's alone at night. (Based on my own experiences with grieving a lost one)

- streber has mixed feelings about people who survived Bob, he never blamed them but he's just is extremely upset he couldn't get the same treatment from that monster. He stopped going to support groups and just dose 1 on 1 therapy.

- streber lived with his parents for a while after getting out of the hospital (the rats stayed with Leon 💪) , and kinda just wanted to rot in his bed, but eventually went to some sort of support. Mainly because of fears of going to the mental hospital (yes, again,based on irl experiences)

-streber refused to talk to news outlets regarding the incident.

- he fluctuates wanting to get a prosthetic arm to not wanting to.

-kevin is on depression and anxiety meds. (Literally hc he has the same as me, bro take them everyday or else bad shit happens!!! )

- Kevin doesn't talk about work when he's not at work, it makes him pissed, mainly because the most interesting thing is skid & pump, police, teens stealing, or killers/demons

- Kevin hates work and dose experience fear of "god, what I'm if I go into day and I die" but the anxiety of having to get a new job and change his norm over powers his fear of death.

- streber bites Kevin, like just a stress and comfort thing, Kevin is okay with it. Streber kinda bites his arm sometimes

- streber and Kevin rent out apartments, they don't live together.

-streber loves his rat children. We got Socrates🐀, motor oil🐀, and Mr. Girl🐀!!

- Kevin had a love at first sight kinda thing but didn't act on his feelings, mainly because he likes to get to know people first before asking them out and bc work has him in a choke hold.

- Kevin would like a pet cat but.... Work 😔

- they met because of Radford 💪 the real hero of spooky month's 18-30 year olds 🫡.

- streber became pretty good friends with Kevin at first then he fell for him, bro just loves cringe fail men (and women). Kevin was beefing with children, no way your gonna find a better boy failure /silly

- streber disassociates during slasher films. He still loves horror and Halloween as it was his comfort growing up, but Bob left a stain that will forever haunt him.

-streber's favorite horror movies are silent & psychological horror.

- Kevin isn't a huge fan of horror movies but he appreciates "Dave made a maze" & probably "Willard", he's like " Dave just like me fr!!!" (Go watch the movie, it free on Tubi 😎)

- both can't drive, streber takes the bus, Kevin takes his bike.

-I like to think they're both touch starved.

-kevin likes physical affection and wants to give it to streber but kinda forgets how to

-streber is very big on physical affection but isn't use to it

-

- freak 4 freak

-insert Kevin is a fan of young Sheldon here-

🎀🦇 Oki rambles over 🦇🎀

If you liked it, that's kinda epic

[eyesmadeofpearls]

Since it's not 2020-21 anymore i feel there's one thing i have to say to you all (Prepare for a yap session, and please remember that just because something isn't canon doesn't mean you cant ship it! please, continue to ship as i don't think anyone has a problem with it! :) This is just for people who seriously believe that any of its going to be put into the show and have went as far as harassing horikoshi, so if you find yourself getting angry with my words, then you've probably got a guilty conscious)

The bakudeku shippers who harassed the author and put him under social pressure have completely ruined the series. 🤗

Saying that he "doesn't understand English so he can't be affected by what fans say 🥺" is extremely rude and sooo fucking annoying of you. Of course bro knows English, he kind of has to?? To further my point i think it's pretty well known that the people of Japan are very particular about how others perceive them, they definitely care more than Americans do, that's for sure. To add onto my point above, the social culture over there is extremely lawful and strict, so stepping out of the norm can be scary. Crossing that unspoken line has created problems for people in the past and it's why there's a huge mental health epidemic over there. If you can imagine a handful of people over there harming themselves and becoming shut ins because of that pressure from people in their country, then imagine being a huge artist and show maker in that situation. Except.. It's not just half of Japan who's got their eye on him anymore, it's half of America too now. That is more than 'just' pressure especially when you know how die hard fans can really be.

I firmly believe that in his case he opted not to make any ships canon because he didn't want to anger bakudeku shippers. All of his official art both out of his work career (drawing just for fun) and in his work career (the manga and show) have been set up to ship uraraka and izuku. People seem to have forgotten that although a majority of the show watchers from America are teen girls like me, this show is for teen boys living in Japan because it's shonen. In japan it's also more socially acceptable to be straight and that's why it took so long for gay marriage to be legalized. So no, i don't believe that the horikoshi would be making a boy love anime and manga about teenage heroes in training. Notice how the plot doesn't focus on who he's in love with but it's been very clear he has a crush on uraraka? Yeah, that's what Shonen is. It's more plot than inner life things. It's like dragon ball z. Yeah, goku's got a love interest but guys aren't worried about that. Still, it's cool to see he's got a girlfriend since that's what's inspiring to teen boys i guess. I also dislike fans treatment of "feminine" acting guys. Midoriya isn't feminine, you're just an American and so am i, but at least i know that the way they raise boys over there vs here is wildly different. Our boys are quite frankly super disrespectful, loud, and ignorant as teens. The boys over there have to be respectful, they have to follow the rules, they can't afford to be loud, and their main focus is on being an adult and getting a job. Though i guess their parents strictness no matter how hard they try doesn't stop them from being rowdy after school. It's nothing compared to how guys over here are rowdy though. Because guys over there don't sit in the back of your class making fake moaning noises or begin to flip tables and scream loudly. Think of Midoriya like spiderman, he's just easily flustered, kind, and respectful but not "feminine" or gay.

Also, telling fans they watched the show with their eyes closed just because we acknowledged midoriya wouldn't get with his bully and rival is crazy work.. "He apologized!!'' if a murderer apologized, would you forgive them?? Yeah, he apologized and changed, but that doesn't mean its all okay now. Bro literally told him to jump off a roof, burned the notebook he values the most, and then proceeded to throw it in the water causing all of his time and effort to be practically useless. Not to mention he beat him to the point of real injuries and continued to be a right dick even after "apologizing". (An apology means nothing if you don't actually try to change and be a better person.) And no, insulting someone on purpose isn't romance worthy material. Unless you specify you're joking then you have brain damage for thinking anyone in their right mind would date someone who constantly calls them a nutsack face, an idiot, a dumbass, a loser, pathetic, a nerd, and genuinely believes that you should be below them in every way unless they've got a twisted degrading kink. And also, sacrificing himself for Midoriya is just plot. Everyone at one point has sacrificed themselves for him because he's the main character, the entire point of them trying to fight for him before he does anything is to weaken the enemies so that Midoriya can go in and finish them off after they beat the villains to near death. They all work towards protecting his future and upping his chances to defeat their common enemy and the man who raised villain motivation by creating more of them. (AFO) So yeah, no, it's not romantical at all that Bakugo wants to be heroic and give the only person who can defeat AFO a fighting chance. Midoriya has gotten hurt trying to protect everyone, uraraka included. But now that you know this would you say to my face that he's got feelings for her too? Or all of his friends? No, you wouldn't. Because that's just what a hero does.

Him and uraraka were meant to be a slow build up, people keep saying "well he always blushes!" yeah, but never at other men. It's been only women who can make his face entirely red like that. In japan, anime uses blush for multiple reasons, so you need to learn to read context on why they're blushing and the room.. Shock, a feeling of content, happiness, embarrassment, and romantical feelings can all contribute to blushing. If a guy were to put him in a headlock and bring him close to their chest, he wouldn't blush.. If a girl did it, his entire face would become pink. To clear up the blushing accusations, he blushed at tsu because she asked him to put her down since she was embarrassed, and he got embarrassed too because she didn't want to be held and felt bad for making her feel that way after realizing the implications of the way he held her. He blushed at hatsume because her literal chest was in his face, on top of him. That's called shock and embarrassment which is something you'd feel if a random pretty lady landed on you chest first. The other times with hatsume he never blushes again like he did and they return to speaking terms other than that one time she held his waist but that's for the same reasons as before. Uraraka however has managed to get him to blush with a full face without even doing anything. He called her cute, he said he liked her hair, her outfit, and he's always got to be standing next to her in every official art piece. Tell me when he's ever said anything like that about a man other than "he's so cool"?

Remember that in Japan love is a touchy subject, you're expected to focus on your future first so that you can have all that you need to settle down. A lot of people don't even say i love you until marriage over there, so it's not odd that Midoriya isn't as open about his feelings unlike uraraka. I think it's just common everywhere for guys to not be the first ones to say anything.. When i met a lot of my exes i was always the one to say i love you first and to initiate things, and i think that's just because it makes guys feel better knowing that they're being chased for some reason or it could hurt their social reputation with their friends who'd probably tease them about it. But anyways, when you pay attention to the way they act near each other, things tend to fall in place. Your actions will always speak louder than your words.

[notjosieyouremy]

every edsheeran book ive ever read and what i thought

*reblog without tags please

update #1: i just finished reading Letting An@ Go by anonymous. the teenage drama and romance is gross and annoying. the protagonist has a lot of strong opinions about peoples weight, especially her mother’s, which is very triggering. plenty of m3an $pO if that’s your thing. rampant fatphobia. i give it 3 out of 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

5 star tier ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• hunger: a memoir of (my) body by roxane gay. one of the best edsheeran books ive read. it’s about sa, food addiction, boolimia, feminism, fatphobia, the struggles of just trying to exist black woman in a large body. would recommend

• i’m glad my mom died by jennette mccurdy. it’s so good. i think i finished it in a day. it’s about a lot more than edsheeran. highly recommend. go read it right now

• unbearable lightness: a story of loss and gain by portia de rossi. a gay actor’s struggles with edsheeran. one of the few i’ve read more than once. would recommend

• wasted: a memoir of an0rex!a and boolimia by marya hornbacher. really deserves to be in a class of its own. it’s the best written edsheeran book out there. it’s sad, hilarious, intelligent, perfectly captures the internal voice of mania. highly tr!ggering, so proceed with caution. after wasted was published she relapsed, which she speaks about in madness: a bipolar life. it’s also a very good book but edsheeran is not the focus

4 star tier ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• insatiable: a young mother’s struggle with an0rexia by erica rivera. if you wanna read about someone who takes fistfuls of bisacodyl and exercises intensely, you might like this book. it’s very good. would recommend

• dying to be th!n by nikki grahame. imagine being so severely malnourished as a child that you never go through puberty. thats how serious her illness was. she basically grew up in treatment facilities, managed to recover against all odds, went on big brother (the reality show), published a book, relapsed, and tragically passed away in 2021. the covid lockdowns were hard on her mental health. would recommend

• the girls at 17 swann street by yara zgheib. semi-autobiographical work of fiction. what sets this one apart is the protagonist isn’t a teenage girl. she’s, like, 28 i think? something like that. would definitely recommend if you get tired of reading about teens and preteens all the time

• elena vanishing by elena dunkle. at a certain point, all these books can be summarized in one sentence: she had to choose between recovery or death. it’s a very good memoir. would recommend

• born round: the secret history of a full-time eater by frank bruni. we love to see male representation in the edsheeran community. he was a chubby kid, turned to unhealthy means to achieve we!ght loss, eventually learns to heal his relationship with food and becomes restaurant critic for the new york times (ever heard of it?). would recommend

• sure, i’ll join your cult: a memoir of mental illness and the quest to belong anywhere by maria bamford. if you don’t know who maria bamford is, she’s one of the best stand up comics, period. that’s not even my opinion, it’s just an agreed upon fact within the stand up community. she’s brilliant. the book is about her mental illnesses and all the different self help groups she joins (so many!). she does go into her struggle with exercise boolimia, though that’s not the primary subject. it gets 5 stars as a book, but 4 stars as an edsheeran book because there just isn’t a lot of dis0rder talk

3 star and below ⭐️⭐️⭐️

• stick figure: a diary of my former self by lori gottlieb. good but i had trouble relating to the protagonist because was quite young and immature

• the art of st4rving by sam j. miller. some much needed male representation in edsheeran literature. and some lgbtq representation. it’s YA (young adult) fiction, not really my taste. would recommend for those who like YA. great cover art!

• wintergirls by laurie halse anderson. a lot of people love this book. i thought it was ok. it’s a work of fiction by an author who isn’t really part of the edsheeran or recovery community. it’s another YA book. i will always prefer memoirs and non-fiction

• fat chance by lesléa newman. this was the first edsheeran book i read. it was assigned reading for my high school health class. it’s a YA novel about a 13 year old girl who wants to lose we!ght. she re$tricts, she b;nges, she poorges, she becomes boolimic. i can trace my edsheeran back to this book. i started d;eting, b;ngeing, and abusing lax4tives as a direct result of reading this material. it did the exact opposite of its purpose, trying to steer young people away from toxic d!et culture. my take away was, i’m overweight, therefore i should be willing to do anything to get th!nner. it’s not very good tbh. maybe if you like YA you’d like it but otherwise, would not recommend

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

"The amount of mental health issues that go untreated and ignored because of gender nonsense" unfair to blame it on gender nonsense tbh. Mental health issues have been ignored long before trans teens came into the spotlight.

But we were making a lot of progress. The stigma of mental health was a lot better compared to how it was even 20 years ago. And even 20 years ago it was known that teenage girls have a much harder time going through puberty than boys, on the average. More mental health issues crop up more often with them during that time period. Then trans ideology came along and suddenly mentally ill teen girls were very quickly being replaced with "trans men".

I would agree that there was, and is, still a lot of progress to be made with mental health. But trans ideology is one of the single most regressive things we've seen in decades. It appropriates symptoms and demands the most extreme "solutions" be the first and only steps. It demedicalizes itself so the insanely harmful practice of self-diagnosis is elevated to the same level as professional diagnosis (and sometimes even higher than that). Oh, and the "treatment" is, of course, lifelong hormones and expensive, life altering surgery. I don't think I've ever seen the medical industry taking such blatant financial advantage of mentally ill people in my lifetime.

So, don't pretend that trans ideology isn't ravaging a good deal of the real progress that was made on mental health. Because when you do that, you're part of the problem.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Dr. Phil: States across the country have passed laws banning "gender affirming care" on minors. Our next guest is a queer woman who is married to a trans man. When Jamie Reed worked as a caseworker at the transgender centre at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, she thought she was saving trans kids' lives. But she claims what she witnessed there was so morally and medically appalling that she had no choice but to expose what was really going on.

Jamie Reed: I was working in a paediatric gender for 4 1/2 years, primarily responsible for patient intakes. The center followed this message that transition would solve everything. That it would solve a child’s mental health problems. There were very few written protocols or guidelines. One of the providers even said we were "flying the plane as we built it." Doctors are acting like they're God when it comes to medically transitioning children.

Children could identify themselves as transgender, see a therapist for one visit, see our endocrinologist for one visit, and end up with hormones that would impact and change their bodies for their lifetime. These were identities that were still shifting and changing, but the treatments were irreversible and permanent. I saw a young person who was begging to have their breasts put back on after having surgery.

We were encouraged not to make a big deal out of it and definitely not to tell other families. I couldn't continue to be silent on it. The medical harms and trauma that I saw with these teens just took over my life. I was told I could no longer raise concerns or even use the phrase, "I have concerns about a patient." I have no trust in this industry medically transitioning minors anymore.

Dr. Phil: Jamie, thank you for being here.

Jamie: Thank you for having me.

Dr. Phil: You describe yourself a queer woman married to a transgender man and you're a member of the LGBTQ community and you went there to do something good, something positive at this clinic in St Louis. What changed your mind?

Jamie: A number of things. We started to see patients who were experiencing very significant medical harms. Being rushed to the emergency room with lacerations requiring stitches. We had patients contact us who were begging to have body parts put back on within months of having surgeries. And the thing that kept happening is every time I would raise concerns and ask about the protocols and ask about the guidelines, this is just how the industry works. If a child says they're trans, there’s no questioning it, we just say, "yep, you're trans, what would you like?"

Dr. Phil: You’re telling me that a 12- or 13-year-old who can’t decide which pyjamas to wear can come in and say, "I’ve decided that I want to transition," and with no more than a couple of hours - or two visits, not even a couple of hours, two visits - they say, okay, start taking this, start doing this. Which alters their biochemistry in a way that you can’t come back from.

Jamie: Correct.

Dr. Phil: And you say you saw dramatic increases in teenage girls that had no previous history of gender distress and they suddenly declared themselves transgender and demanded immediate testosterone [and] blockers.

Jamie: When I started - so I was there for 4 1/2 years, and when I started, I maybe would have 5 to 10 new incoming patients a month. By the time I left it was close to 50 every single month. My background is in clinical research and so I started looking at the data, I wanted to know what the numbers told me. And towards the end of my tenure, 73% of the new patients coming to us were girls who were in their teen years, so in that really vulnerable age of like 13 to 16 where they are just exposed to so many social pressures and they’re so empathetic to what’s going on around them too, that they really pick up on what’s going on in their peer group. We had clusters where it would be a handful of one whole high school classroom would come in all trans identified.

Dr. Phil: Historically, this typically would be males and you would have a female how often?

Jamie: Oh, very rare. And also, the ages were different. So, it would usually be younger boys who seemed very feminine or had feminine traits to their family and their families would seek care trying to understand what’s going on for their young male child. This was never something that would start in adolescence.

And these girls were also learning on TikTok, Instagram, they would come in and they would almost have the exact same storyline too. Like they learned what to say from a video to explain, "oh no really, I’ve felt this way from early childhood." But a lot of their parents couldn’t remember anything like that.

And part of what’s going on right now is that if you question this at all, you are immediately called transphobic, you’re immediately called homophobic, you’re immediately considered a bigot. And it’s just not scientific reality.

Dr. Phil: Jamie Reed says that her goal was to support trans youth. Jamie says patients had no idea what they were going to be as adults, yet all it took for them to permanently transform themselves was one or two short conversations with a therapist. When you say short, what would you call short?

Jamie: One visit. I saw letters being written approving children for puberty blockers or cross sex hormones after a single visit with a therapist.

Dr. Phil: And how long would that visit be?

Jamie: 30, 40 minutes.

Dr. Phil: And you said that the clinic would actually provide them a letter that checked all the boxes for them to qualify for the treatment.

Jamie: It wasn’t the clinic, it was me. It was my job. I sent out the fill-in-the-blank letter. I sent it. It’s what we did. We sent it directly to the community therapist and said just fill this out, plug-in where you need to, and we’re good to go.

Dr. Phil: What kind of things would it say?

Jamie: At the end of all of the letters would say, "I am approving this patient for puberty blockers or cross sex hormones." "They meet criteria."

Dr. Phil: There were some emails that you saw that were very troubling to you and I’d like to look at these.

Email to Jamie from Parent Revoking Consent June 9, 2022

"Please be advised that I’m revoking my consent for this course of medical treatment. Grades have dropped, there’s been an in-patient behavioural health visit and now he’s on 5 different medications. Lexapro, Trazadone, Buspar, etc. Blank is a shell of his former self riddled with anxiety. Who knows if it’s because of the hormone blockers or the other medications. I revoke my consent. I want the hormone blocker removed."

Jamie: The mom, who is a legal guardian, sent us that email and we acted like we knew better than a parent. And we refused to remove the blocker.

[homosexuhauls]

i'm against minors being medically transitioned, but if we're arguing solely on the basis that children/teens don't or can't understand irreversible consequences, we're opening ourselves up to arguments in favour of abortion and contraceptives being denied to young girls without parental consent (etc).

the issue isn't that minors can't or shouldn't be assessed as competent to make their own medical choices. the issue is

that patients and their parents are being lied to by uninformed or agenda-driven doctors;

that non-critical affirmation-only policies are preventing the identification and treatment of underlying mental illnesses/developmental disorders;

that life-changing side effects are often either given lip service or left completely unacknowledged, making informed consent a completely meaningless term;

that dysphoric children are being used as a shield for paraphilic adults;

that gender non-conformity and indicators of likely homosexuality are being pathologised and treated as symptoms;

that medical transition almost invariably correlates to social transition and the support of magical thinking;

that medical transition is portrayed as a gentle alternative to an otherwise inevitable suicide, rather than the series of elective experimental procedures it actually is;

that "watchful waiting" and "persistent and insistent" have been thrown out of the window, and

that the many potential individual and societal causes of dysphoria in young children and teens can no longer be explored or addressed because it's deemed transphobic.

there are plenty of arguments to choose from, no need to keep stumbling into conservative talking points and rhetorical traps.

health care is about improving outcomes, or at the very least, reducing harm. we need to give young people a better range of options to reduce the harm of dysphoria, not to exclude them from the decision-making process altogether.

[thevoidscreamer]

Hey all! Transgender military spouse (and parent to a transgender kid and friend of several transgender service members, transgender former service members, and transgender family members) here with some news.

The NDAA, the defense bill, is headed to President Biden's desk to be signed. I do not expect him to veto this bill. What's wrong with it? A lot of things, but today we're going to talk about how this will impact my family's ability to access lifesaving care. Let's get into it.

The bill bans the military health program, TRICARE, from covering some gender-affirming care for the transgender children of service members "if it could risk sterilization." This is vague terminology. Science-wise, many things could risk sterilization. We know from literal decades of research and practical application that puberty blockers alone and HRT alone do not cause sterilization, but is that enough of a buffer to warrant its coverage by TRICARE? Seeing as TRICARE doesn't cover gender affirming surgeries or vocal training for grown adult dependents (hi, that's me), I'm going to bet not.

The anti-science and pseudoscience spewed by non-experts (and an even smaller percentage of the already small 1% of people who regret transitioning) has been effective in radicalizing politicians and right-wingers against HRT for pre-teens and teens. Words like "mutilation" and over generalizations "you send your son to school one morning and he comes home a girl," are used to monger fear among those unable or unwilling to sit down and crack open a bonafide research study. Some people in my current audience fall into that category.

So let's clear the air with a few facts.

Puberty blockers are usually prescribed to adolescents 10-13 years old and are meant to be used for about two years while the kid figures out which puberty they want to go through. They undergo regular checkups with a pediatric endocrinologist on hormone levels, blood biomarkers, and bone density during this time, while also attending therapy sessions with one or more mental health doctors. Aside from the therapy sessions, this is all the same treatment received by kids with precocious puberty, who are between the ages of 6 and 9 years old with early pubertal presentation.

This has been the treatment for those kids for decades, which is why doctors and scientists are pretty dang solid on the side effects, optimal length of treatment, and general wellbeing outcomes for patients.

According to the Mayo clinic: "GnRH analogues don't cause permanent physical changes. Instead, they pause puberty. That offers a chance to explore gender identity. It also gives youth and their families time to plan for the psychological, medical, developmental, social and legal issues that may lie ahead. When a person stops taking GnRH analogues, puberty starts again."

According to UCLA Health: "If the pubertal blockers are started in the later stages of puberty, you may already be making fertile sperm or eggs. Some people choose to preserve their sperm or eggs before starting pubertal blockers, to keep options open about how to build a family in the future. If you later wish to have genetic children, you would likely have to stop the pubertal blockers and proceed through most of your own biological puberty in order to achieve effective fertility; this may take several years. This would mean you would develop some features of puberty associated with your sex assigned at birth; for some people, this could be distressing."

What about full HRT (testosterone or estrogen)? Test and E are generally not accessible to people younger than the age of 16. If received right on the heels of hormone blockers, THIS may result in infertility. However, those patients who are ONLY seeking full HRT without having done puberty blockers, which is most patients receiving full HRT, are typically able to come off of that HRT and achieve full biological puberty and even procreate.

You've heard of men getting pregnant, right? Those are transgender men who have gone off their testosterone specifically to have biological children. There are, however, other options, for transmascs who don't wish to carry their own child. Namely, egg harvesting, wherein the man goes off of testosterone and receives a hormone injection to stimulate the overproduction of eggs to be harvested and frozen for use at a later date. Both of these methods do require the person to have developed and retained their gonads (testes and ovaries), which is achievable by allowing the body to go through biological puberty (which may be assisted in some cases by additional HRT).

Testosterone and Estrogen are both present in the human body regardless of sex. These hormones do not permanently sterilize a person. So, no, HRT does not generally result in infertility. Gender affirming (lower) surgery, however, can.

Gender affirming surgeries are not available to transgender minors except in extreme cases, and in those extreme cases, it is top surgery, not lower surgery. Gender affirming cosmetic surgery is available to (and undertaken by) cisgender minors starting at 15 or 16 years old (in the form of augmentations, reductions, body shaping, rhinoplasty, and face shaping), and should also be available to transgender minors in the same age bracket.

Lower surgeries are not accessible to minors, and most people under the age of 25 cannot get approval to receive them due to providers not wanting to undertake the liability of possible regret -- even though the regret rate for transitioners is 1%, whereas the overall surgical regret rate average for ALL procedures is 14%. Even in adulthood, transgender men are less likely to be able to access gender affirming lower surgery (hysterectomy, metoidioplasty, phalloplasty) than transgender women, due to doctors' collective reluctance around medical care for people designated female at birth.

No children are receiving gender affirming care that would permanently sterilize them. So why? Why this provision in the NDAA about gender affirming care that "may" sterilize minors? Because of successful fear-mongering and the anti-science movement. Because of the relentless onslaught of anti-trans advertisements during the 2024 campaign season. Because of the unwillingness of self-proclaimed allies in our current institutions to stand by marginalized groups.

I do not expect this policy to remain at a military level. I fully expect that, come 2025, we will see a massive stripping of the protections and supports painstakingly put into place over the past decades, aided and abetted by the democratic party, then glossed over as not being that bad by people who claimed to be our friends. In the next four years, I foresee my gender affirming care, which is covered by TRICARE, suddenly needing to come out of my own pocket. My kid's already will, come the new year.

Ultimately, though, I think that it will be about more than gender affirming care, but queerness in general as a concept -- I foresee transgender service members either erased or forcibly separated. I foresee emboldened discrimination against queer workers and queer students and queer families seeking housing or other support. I foresee bathroom bills and sports bills, and all these things that do not require scientific support, though they may falsely claim it.

Right now, federal and state laws prohibit discrimination against transgender individuals by most public and private insurance health plans. This means insurance companies must cover transition-related care that's medically necessary and it is illegal for them to deny coverage, in most cases. TRICARE seems exempt from this rule. Ultimately, I think over the next four years, those laws will change in an anti-progress fashion.

One of the provisions proposed by Republicans for the NDAA bill was not only to prevent coverage of gender affirming care for minors (which is already shitty) but to prevent that same coverage for adults. While the adult provision did not make it into the bill, the minor provision did, and it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Yes, wages increased for service members across the board, at rates never seen before. But while some of my friends may be celebrating that fact, please keep in mind that while transgender people aren't incredibly visible in your circles, we're literally all over. There are so many of us on and around base (service members and family) and the fact that a removal of access gender affirming care for adults was even legitimately considered is a HUGE warning flag for all of us, as is the removal of access to gender affirming care for minors.

I don't know how to close this out, other than to say that I will never stop being relentlessly visibly queer, regardless of what's to come. I'm considering setting up a meeting group for queer military dependents and service members, though I'm unsure how I want to go about that. Let me know what you think in the comments.

Yours in grief and resistance,

B

Link to Reuter's article: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/majority-us-senate-backs-massive-defense-bill-voting-continues-2024-12-18/

[intervalbylaventanatreatment]

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[coochiequeens]

But no one transes kids. And on a more serious note have the TQ+ so internalized their emotional blackmail of "accept my gender identity or I might kill myself" that when they hear of a minor trying to commit suicide they refuse to consider other issues therefor sabotaging recovery?

By Reduxx Team July 19, 2024

A family from Maryland has accused the Children’s National Hospital of encouraging their autistic teenage son to identify as a “girl.” The biologically male child was then taken from his family’s care due to their refusal to “validate” his transition, and has now been placed in the home of the Hospital’s non-binary “chaplain,” who has connections to Assistant Secretary of Health, Rachel Levine.

The lawsuit, which was filed in March by Maryland couple John Doe II and his wife, states that their 16-year-old autistic son was admitted to the hospital after a suicide attempt in November 2021. Shortly after his admission, the parents allege that hospital staff began to insist their son was transgender, despite the boy never questioning his gender identity before his hospital stay.

According to a press release issued by Partners for Ethical Care, the suit claims that the hospital “intentionally set out on a … program to identify, critique and then rebuke the family’s professed religion… [and] to expressly require the parents to convert to the ‘new Christianity’ by engaging in faith-conversion sessions with the hand-selected [hospital] chaplain not of any of the Doe family’s faith, Lavender Kelley.”

Kelley, a biological female who identifies as non-binary transgender, has repeatedly posted in support of the medical transitioning of children against the wishes of their families.

“I’m so drained from watching children die because their families don’t understand the science of gender or the psychology of coercion or the damage of weaponized religion. And to see government be not just merely unhelpful but outright violating means only more suicides and profound mental anguish to come,” she wrote on Facebook in March 2022, only two months after the family were told in CPS court proceedings that their son would only be allowed home if they affirmed his new trans identity and stopped reading “particular passages” of the Bible at home.

“Even if you don’t agree with gender affirming therapies, please, please, please know that they stave off suicides and give children space to grow up and grow into authentic identity,” she continued in the post. “There’s nothing that’s done in gender affirming therapies for children and adolescents that isn’t 100% reversable [sic] if they change their mind. We’re buying them time to understand the complexities of gender but in a way that promotes psychological growth along the way,” Kelley continued.

Despite her insistence otherwise, “gender-affirming” therapies such as hormone treatment lead to permanent effects.

Prior to being placed directly with Kelley, the boy had been released into the home of a foster carer, one who is alleged to have been a close personal friend of Kelley.

The suit claims that the “foster mother” had a previous assault charge in Maryland, and began “exploiting” the teenage boy by posing him as a female in Instagram photos, despite allegedly writing that he “did not want to be a woman.”

Disturbingly, after being tested for sexually transmitted diseases in the summer of 2022, the boy was once again hospitalized for a suicide attempt.

The suit further adds that the “foster mother” suddenly died, and as a result, the teen was rehoused into the care of hospital Chaplain Kelly herself, where the parents claim he still resides to this day to the best of their knowledge, despite having turned 18 in March of last year.

In another Facebook post from June 2023, during the time period that the suit alleges the boy was living with Kelly, the chaplain and her partner are pictured at an event at the Israeli Embassy in Washington DC, with transgender Assistant Health Secretary Admiral Rachel Levine.

Levine has been one of the most vocal proponents of the medical transitioning of children. “Gender-affirming care is life-saving, medically necessary, age-appropriate, and a critical tool for healthcare providers,” Levine said in June 2022. “As a pediatrician, when it comes to making sure kids are healthy and happy, I know how important care that affirms someone’s true identity can be.”

Even though a judge found in August of 2023 that abuse charges brought against the parents by the hospital were unsubstantiated, the parents have not had their son returned to them.

“This is the craziest case I’ve ever had,” said the family’s lawyer, Mr. Amos Jones in March. “I don’t know why there are people who think this makes sense. But I guess lots of people agree with this in Washington D.C. now… There is a sensitive way to welcome and serve families caring for a child struggling with identity concerns. Instead, this hospital decided to disregard the parents’ rights, and the oppression has operated over a period that now spans four years.”

[tainted-harmon]

today i was tik tok of girl saying violet would have bpd (Borderline personality disorder) but also i search she had major depression mostly and the girl is just saying about how she acted with tate etc. what do you think about it? (sorry if i made mistakes im from Germany😁❤️)

Hey, I was actually diagnosed with BPD as I turned 18 (I’m 28 now). I strongly disagree that Violet had BPD, her behaviour was typical teenage behaviour, added with depression. Lots of teenagers suffer depression and self harm, and it’s more common than people realise for teenagers to struggle with suicidal thoughts.

I think a lot of people misunderstand this condition but one thing that is important to point out is that it cannot be diagnosed in anyone under 18, and often doctors don’t like even diagnosing it in people before their 20s because it’s a very complex condition. It’s something that is typical a lifelong condition, meaning it doesn’t get better. Most people with depression do get better or have large periods of being able to function. A lot of people throw these terms around, especially Bipolar when explaining normal mood swings. People under estimate how much hormones can affect someone’s mental health and cause mood swings. Violet was dealing with a lot of typical things that people go through, parents having issues, bullying, but she did have the added experience of a sibling death.

I’ve mentioned years ago on here, but basically I experienced a trauma during childhood and started self harming from the age of 9. Then when I was 12 my mum had a stillborn when she was almost full term and I got to hold him every day until his funeral (I was given the choice to see him and the funeral and was never forced) but this then impacted me further because it was a very hard thing to see. From this point I developed really bad depression, ended up with stitches from self harm and through my early teens until I was 18 I was in and out of hospital because of self harm and suicide attempts. When I was 16 I got put in a child mental health unit because I was was taking so many overdoses and cutting very deep on impulse. I honestly couldn’t tell you the amount of times I had to go to hospital for hurting myself before the age of 16. My school even had to call an ambulance because I overdosed in the school bathrooms when I was about 15.

When I got out of the unit is when I first saw American Horror Story on television and I felt this immediate connection with Violet.

Sorry I made this a bit personal but I think it’s important to explain why I don’t believe Violet had BPD. Violet was depressed, which is obviously a very common condition and many of us will experience it. BPD is almost always caused by an early childhood trauma, usually sexual abuse or something similar, and this has an impact on someone’s emotional development and personality.

I think people may be assuming Violet has BPD because she made one impulsive decision to overdose on sleeping tablets, but a single or even a couple of impulsive decisions can be made by anyone. I was diagnosed with BPD because I had almost a decade long history of behaviour that was impulsive and was having major issues in my relationships with people (these are both things I have worked on and been improving through my 20s but still struggle). I still receive mental health support and will do for the rest of my life because even in the last 12 months I’ve received medical treatment for incidents or self harming behaviour.

I hope this helps explain things a bit ❤️

[rumbleonthemill]

Neighbor's torture

I listed the traumatic things Neighbor goes through in the franchise. let me know if I missed something! 

Hide and seek

losing his wife in accident(loss,grief,depression)

losing and burying his daughter due to accident 

dealing with his son's anger issues 

Hello Neighbor 

dealing with a random kid breaking in to his house

needing to close and keep a random kid in the basement,otherwise he'd call the police and his son would be taken immediately 

basically failing to escape from the game, because he cannot be deleted from the files.

HN2

dealing with a journalist who wants to expose him and literally kidnap his kid

needing to escape

dealing with townspeople most likely hunting him since they're cultists and against his whole family

dealing with his son who has anger issues and actively works against him

a fucking statue literally falls on the man

SN

knowing that a bunch of kids want him dead (they don't know every detail and won't)

HNVR

dealing with a bunch of kids harassing him and breaking in to his house 

dealing with his son still working against him to the point he makes a deal with a demon just to hurt his dad

being possessed?????

chased by police????(credits)

HE

most likely escaping to the park to be on his own, but needing to deal with the bunch of kids' harassment who go after him!!!

BOOKS 1-3

going crazy (mental health)

losing his daughter 

losing his wife

dealing with his son's misbehaving

being hated by literally every fucking one

not getting any mental treatment or help 

dealing with kids breaking in to his house multiple times, actually stealing stuff from him.

his remaining family (sister etc) turning their backs on him

being stalked and accused for things people only SUSPECT (he doesn't hurt Nicky)

being pulled on strings by his own son

BOOKS 4-6

losing his best friend

being chased by police through countries (he's forced to build the parks dangerous)

kinda losing his parents due to fake accusations 

being chased by a cult

being forced to build the GA park dangerous because he's blackmailed by the mayor

fighting cultists 

people dying on his rides due to things that are beyond him bc NOT just one person builds a park attraction.

his son works against him all along,because he can't stay on his ass, he must save the kid multiple times

being emotionally blackmailed by his family who show zero signs of love, just make drama bc they aren't involved in dirty stuff, they refuse to listen to him, despite he wants to help them

BOOK7

idfk i didn't read it,but surely he suffers

COMIC1

dealing with random teens,who want to expose him for a mistake that's beyond him (he was forced to build the attraction like that) 

a building collapsing on him

COMIC2

literal death???

guest possessing his body??? who tf knows what's the fuckin plot

CARTOON 

being stalked by kids

being harassed by kids / kids break in to his house multiple times

being taken by police with his son staying alone (10/10 plot congratulations)

needing to take prey to some demon ass bird in the basement (why???)

for this he needs to hurt people for some reason 

losing his brother (which he suddenly has)

being bullied by townspeople already at young age

losing wife + daughter

girl dying on his rides, probably due to the reasons I mentioned in the books section 

[beardedmrbean]

A homeless man freed without bail after randomly breaking a woman’s nose went on to sucker-punch a 9-year-old girl in the face in Grand Central Station, MTA officials said.

Jean Carlos Zarzuela, 30, was busted after he allegedly socked the youngster as she stood next to her stunned mom in the station’s dining concourse at about 11:50 a.m. Saturday, MTA police said. Medics took the girl to NYU Langone’s Tisch Hospital for treatment.

Zarzuela was caught on video inside the transit hub, and the MTA released his name and photos to the media shortly after the Saturday attack.

MTA cops knew Zarzuela’s last known address was a homeless shelter on E. 125th St, so they headed to the E. 125th St. subway station on Lexington Ave. Saturday evening and asked a pair of NYPD transit cops for help, according to law enforcement sources.

Sure enough, the NYPD cops recognized his photo and said they had seen him about 10 minutes earlier. NYPD transit cops found Zarzuela and took him to the MTA police officers, who made the arrest at about 10:20 p.m.

Zarzuela is also accused of punching a 56-year-old woman in Grand Central Station on April 4. MTA cops initially charged him with felony assault, but prosecutors in Manhattan dropped that down to a misdemeanor.

Sources familiar with the case said the decision came after police and prosecutors did not receive a supporting deposition from the victim in the case, which is required by law within five days if there’s bail set.

Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Pamela Goldsmith ordered him held on $2,500 cash bail or $10,000 bond. Records show he had a bench warrant out for assault cases in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

On Tuesday, he appeared before Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Laurie Peterson, according to the court system’s online docket. She released him without bail just four days before the attack on the young girl.

“It doesn’t make any sense that this guy — who recently was released after being charged with randomly punching someone else and breaking that victim’s nose — should be back in a public space where he can attack others, especially children,” MTA Communications Director Tim Minton said.

“The people responsible for the criminal justice system need to learn from this episode before more innocent people become victims.”

Zarzuela was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court on Sunday evening. His lawyer declined to comment.

The attack comes less than four months after another recidivist criminal was accused of stabbing two teen sisters visiting New York from Paraguay at Grand Central on Christmas morning.

Steve Hutcherson, 36, who also uses the name Esteban Esono-Asue, allegedly stabbed a 16-year-old girl in the back and her 14-year-old sister in the thigh in an unprovoked attack. He’s also accused of slashing another Rikers Island inmate as he was held without bail in the attack.

In an interview with the Daily News, Hutcherson’s ex-girlfriend said his mental health began deteriorating in June 2021, when he told her he suffered from paranoia, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

[aspd-culture]

Aspd culture (and just general mental illness culture in general) is not being allowed to make jokes about your disorder because people will pearl-clutch about how you shouldn’t pathologize everything about yourself and how tiktok is ruining mental illness awareness. It is but also this isn’t that and stop assuming everyone ever who talks about things super blasé and nonchalantly is tiktok poisoned, I am literally just a silly guy who makes jokes, maybe get off my dick because it isn’t a replacement for the stick you have up your ass

On the one hand, I agree with 90% of your ask.

But also, there's the fact that tiktok isn't ruining mental illness awareness. People said that about tiktok, tumblr, and honestly every place that any semi-large community has ever talked about mental health.

That talking point is complete bs and stems from people who don't want to risk admitting that mental illness is very common and specifically originated in two groups as far as I've seen.

The first was older (like boomer to gen x), abusive adults who did not want to acknowledge their spouses and children were sustaining life altering damage from the things that came out of their mouth and common abusive punishments like removing a door. If they acknowledged mental illness, how common it is, and the science behind what causes it, then they would have to admit what they did was abuse even though they "never raised a hand to them", as they love to point out.

The second is people being sexist and infantilizing and just plain attacking young people, particularly girls and lgbt ppl. They don't want to admit children and young adults can ever have real problems, so they spout this idea that people who talk about their mental illness on social media (sites that are statistically more appealing to mentally ill people, teens, and young adults, especially afabs) are somehow invalid or "romanticizing mental health problems".

Are there real people who do that? Of course. But they are not a product of tiktok, or tumblr, or any social media site, or the internet.

For as long as there has been any discussion about mental health, there have been people romanticizing, sexualizing, demonizing, and invalidating it.

But that doesn't suit the talking points of the people who want to invalidate the harm caused by non-physical ahuse, nor the talking points of those who wish to silence young people. So instead, they continue to attack tiktok - a site which has not spread significantly more misinfo than this app we call home or any other social media site or even just... any group of semi-educated people talking anecdotally? - but has been proven over and over to have helped a huge wave of people find out information that led to diagnosis and treatment of disorders, especially obscure disorders (both mental and physical), in people that never would have otherwise known there was a name for their problem.

That is huge. That is a great thing.

I first heard the word (tw) sociopath when I was about 13. I ignored how much the book in question (actually about ASPD) fit me, and moved on because I thought "that's too rare, I must be misunderstanding it", and even then it was only because of my special interest in mental health that I found the book to begin with. Then I saw it spoken about again on here and on tiktok, and I realized I needed to research this again and not be afraid of it, and here I am professionally diagnosed.

I never knew before a few months ago that I even *might* be autistic. Guess who taught me? Tiktok. For 3 years I have seen bit by bit, video by video, symptom by symptom, tiktoks that I related to way too much from people (both professionals and regular autistic people of various ages, genders, etc). I unlearned so much ableism and stereotypes about autism that I internalized from the idea that only little white boys have it, thanks to tiktok. So, when my therapist brought up wanting an autism evaluation for me, I wasn't blindsided. And when I found out I had it, I had been suspecting that was the case for a while. I might not have handled the process of a new diagnosis so well had I not known it might be coming.

Tiktok is advancing awareness and respect for people with mental and physical disorder that the public hasn't heard of. That's not "romanticization", that's destigmatization. Two very different things.

/nmay nor is all of this really a direct reply to you. This ask just gave me a reason to talk about something I've been seeing on here and not liking for a while. We're not better than people on tiktok, and that in itself is elitism.

[risingfire17-the-weeb-trash]

40 Day Anime Challenge Day 10- A character you despise with all your heart and soul: Almost everyone in Welcome to the NHK (2006)

I was excited to watch this. It had great reviews, and fans raved that it was a realistic and positive portrayal of people with mental health issues. As someone with these myself, of course I was excited.

But here are my thoughts after watching the anime: 

1) It is not a realistic portrayal of people with mental illness, because the characters are not given much characterization beyond the problematic behaviors of their disorders, no redeeming qualities, and very little character development that was rushed at the end.

2) It is not a positive portrayal of people with mental illness at all. Once again, they are almost entirely reduced to stereotypes, and they’re pretty terrible people. If this is the representation people like me, who has put in a lifetime of therapy and self-reflection to continue overcoming my issues and have healthy relationships, then I fear what those without mental illness would think of me based on what they see in these individuals.

So let’s get to why I despise the characters, yeah? (Spoilers ahead)

Tatsuhiro Sato, our protagonist. 

I don’t have a problem with the fact that he is a NEET. I have a problem with the fact that he never got professional help. I have a problem with the fact that he lied to his parents to keep getting their money, and cursed them when they finally cut him off. I have a problem with the way he treated his friends, yelling, name calling, throwing things, and then guilting them into letting him mooch off of them. I have a problem with his attraction to Misaki. First, because she is a teenager, and instead of staying away from her so he doesn’t act on this, he continues to spend time with her, has her pretend to be his girlfriend at one point, uses her as a cook and housekeeper, and ultimately confesses his love and starts dating her. The second reason is that until a rushed confession in the last episode that may not even be genuine because he said it to literally talk her off the ledge, he was only attracted to her physically and because she would do anything he wanted. He told her multiple times that she was a nuisance, a nag, had a terrible personality, etc. He belittled and bullied her through most of the series.

Misaki Nakahara, our wannabe hero. 

Clearly, she’s a struggling teen and needs help. What she does not need to do is berate and enable a grown man that she only latches on to because looking down on him helps her feel good about herself (which she admitted to halfway through the series and never worked at changing afterward) She coerces him to go along with her “treatment plan” rather than encouraging him to seek actual professional help. She nags at him, bursts into his home, and often pushes him farther out of his comfort zone than he can handle at the time. She enables his codependency when she starts cooking and cleaning for him, all the while scolding him for not doing it himself, so he learns that he is incompetent and should just let her do everything and accept her criticism when he does. I’ll give her a bit more of a pass than the other characters, because unlike the other characters behaving like children, she is literally a child. But she is still a toxic and manipulative person and her problematic behavior needs to be addressed by her guardians (and a licensed therapist)

Hitomi Kashiwa. 

This girl was the catalyst for Sato having a breakdown, always talking about conspiracies. When she comes back into his life, she asks him to join a group she is part of for a trip, not telling him that they are all there to commit suicide! She takes her vulnerable junior, who, despite all his flaws, is at least trying to get himself together, and exposes him to a group exacerbate his depression and he almost gets killed because of it. I haven’t read the manga, but I am told she tries to have an affair with Sato after she is married with a kid. (And the person she is married to, Akira Jogasaki, is so sweet and supportive, he’s the only character I like in this show, so it really hurts to see her betray him like that.)

Kauru Yamazaki, Sato’s best friend, giving otakus everywhere a bad name.

 This guy is supposed to be the “functional” one of the group, being the only one who has a job and is in school to pursue a meaningful career. That’s great and all, but he has a shit personality. His life revolves around perving on 2D women, and complaining that real women can never compare because of the imperfections that make them human, like having their own personalities, motives, and goals. He voices this in a way that is very misogynistic, painting women as manipulative. When he finally starts to fall for a human girl, he pursues her after being rejected, gets mad at her for interacting with other males, and has Sato videotape his confession to her without her knowledge for reference for their game. After moving home, he dates a girl who looks just like her, implying that he does not love this girl, but just sees her as a stand-in. And this is the guy Sato goes to for advice, ugh.

Finally, Megumi Kobayashi. 

After finding out about Sato’s issues, she lies to him and manipulates him into joining a toxic MLM scheme. Even when he tries to get out, she tricks him multiple times into buying her stuff. Look, I feel sorry for her circumstances, but that doesn’t excuse her behavior.

This show was painful to watch. (Even with Akira Jogasaki carrying the whole show on his back) I don’t know if the manga did any better and never will because I’m never touching this series again. I hate these people. Time to search for an anime that is actually a realistic and positive portrayal of people with mental illness.