Thread by @shannonrosa

Now reading Nobody’s Normal: How Culture Created the Stigma of Mental Illness. It’s a new book by @roygrinker, who also wrote the autism assumptions-challenging Unstrange Minds. Will try to thread my ongoing commentary.

#NobodysNormal

Although Grinker is not himself a psychiatrist, he comes from a line of such professionals, and also studies mental illness from an anthropologist’s perspective.

“Although 60 percent of people with a mental illness in the United States still receive no mental health treatment, mental illness is fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of the human condition.” @roygrinker, in #NobodysNormal

“Stigma isn’t in our biology; it’s in our culture. It is a process we learn from within our communities, and we can change what we teach.” #NobodysNormal

Grinker’s grandfather, formerly a patient of Freud’s, said one of Freud’s wishes was that “doctors could lead people out of misery, not into a perfect life but into ordinary unhappiness.” #NobodysNormal #MentalHealth

“The stigma of mental illness is when your psychological state defines your identity; when people see you as flawed & incompetent; when you are invisible; or when people see your suffering but blame you for it.” -Roy Richard Grinker, in #NobodysNormal

“By illuminating the extraordinary range of beliefs & practices in the world, anthropology challenges the mechanisms of exclusion—race, class, sex & the institutionalization of the “insane,” for ex.—that doctors, scientists, & policy makers once justified w/biological arguments."

“Nobody’s normal. And since we have for so long used the concept of ‘normal’ to decide who we accept into our social worlds and who we reject, it’s about time we realize that normal is a damaging illusion.” @roygrinker, in #NobodysNormal:

amazon.com/Nobodys-Normal… #neurodiversity

I had no idea (or more likely had not retained) that the DSM-I (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) was written by U.S. Military psychiatric personnel during WWII, and was not adapted for civilian use until 1953. #NobodysNormal

An obsession with “independence” is why Europeans "created mental illness categories during the early industrial revolution. The idea was to separate out unproductive workers into distinct identities.” #NobodysNormal

In societies with multiple caretakers and a range of social supports, no one expects anyone to be completely independent, which means disability isn’t stigmatized the same way as it is in Western society—because Interdependence is the implicit norm. #NobodysNormal