UNCLE GEORGE IS FUCKING PISSED

Chronic illness is so different from “regular illness.” No one is running medicine and soup over to your house when you say you don’t feel good. No one is running you to the hospital when you’re crumpled up in pain. Doctors don’t run around you ordering immediate tests and skipping lunch to go over your results. You’re not excused from anything. You’re just expected to go about your life with way less spoons than everyone else has. If you’re in pain, you hide it, because it’s not a rare occurrence. If you need a doctor’s appointment, well the next one’s in five weeks at a time/day that you need to cancel all your plans for. And if you can’t make that one, well the next ones in 3 months. Need some tests done? We’ll order one at a time, and they’ll take a few weeks to have a spot open for you. Then a few more weeks to get the results. Medicine?! You don’t need medicine. You get through school/work just fine. Not like we’d know what to prescribe you anyway. And not like it’d actually help. Have you tried some Advil? Tums? You’ve had this for how many years? You must be used to it. We need to focus on the people coming in with NEW pains. Pains we may actually have a diagnosis for, and not just a coverall name.

Schizophrenia Jokes

I’m here to talk about schizophrenia jokes. They aren’t funny, you aren’t clever, and we aren’t a walking one liner for you to tell. For starters, most schizo jokes are made at the expense of people with dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities) which is an entirely different thing than schizophrenia or its spectrum, (with its own stigma that I cannot speak to). This is annoying for a myriad of reasons but mostly it goes to show just how little is known about schizophrenia by the lay person and how frustrating it can be to have a disorder no one understands but everyone has an opinion about.

Schizophrenia is a spectrum, similar to the autism spectrum. Many people may have schizophrenia or an associated disorder and be perfectly able to live a normal life independent of assistance of any kind, others require round the clock care, and there are a million versions of ‘inbetween’. Everyone on this spectrum deserves the same amount of respect and kindness as people without schizophrenic disorders. There is literally no reason to assume someone that hears voices can’t hear you laughing at them. Or that someone who sees things that may not be there or believe in things they shouldn’t doesn’t know you’re a huge piece of shit.

Stop talking shit about the homeless people you see that are shouting at no one. Stop making fun of people who live in tin foil lined apartments. Stop assuming you know literally anything about another persons mental health simply because you have witnessed one symptom. Stop thinking that “hearing voices” is somehow a joke in and of itself.

I’m relatively well off, considering I’m on this spectrum, and many of my friends and family had no idea until I told them that I have this disorder. What does that mean? It means most of the time I’m telling these people after they’ve unknowingly made an insensitive remark or an offensive joke at my expense. I’m in a place where telling people about my illness doesn’t put me at risk. I’m lucky in that respect. Most people have negative opinions about schizophrenia – assuming they know what it is when they likely have no idea at all, and assuming those of us on the spectrum are incapable and utterly “crazy”. This stigma means that most people on the spectrum aren’t going to call you out on your shitty jokes for their own safty, so just stop.

If you can’t find a better word to use than schizo, crazy, insane, loopy, psycho etc then you need to beef up your vocab. We aren’t a joke. We don’t deserve to be the butt of your shitty jokes. I’m here for my schizophrenics and I’m determined to see positivity for us on this god forsaken website.

grizzly bear having a swim

One of the best examples of abled people taking it upon themselves to advocate for the disabled community while simultaneously ignoring the voices of people with disabilities until they’ve made things worse is the “new” international symbol of access.

The original, established, symbol is on the left and the “new” symbol is on the right.

So what’s the problem?

Well, the biggest problem is that the newest symbol wasn’t designed by someone in a wheelchair. It was designed by two artists who don’t use wheelchairs who thought that they could speak on behalf of people who do.

Who cares, it’s a good symbol, right?

Nope.

See the original symbol, the one that’s been around for decades and has been embraced by the disabled community, works for both people in manual wheelchairs and people in electric wheelchairs. The second one is obviously someone in a manual chair, excluding those who use electric ones.

There’s also ironically an ableist message behind their reasoning that the person on the right symbolizes an active member of society, whereas the non-moving person on the right can be depicted as lazy. This reasoning is extremely ableist and ignorant, artsy for the sake of being artsy without giving thought to what they’re actually implying.

The real kicker?

My college has the new signs everywhere. New York State as a whole adopted these new signs. A ton of different buildings around the nation are putting up these new signs because people are just sort of assuming that everyone with a disability approves, even though most people in wheelchairs are objecting to it and the people who are advocating for it aren’t in wheelchairs in the first place.

And guess whose voices are the ones being heard?

And guess whose voices are the ones being ignored?

If you like more of this, follow @psych2go​.

This resonates with me. My brother is disabled and under the purview of MHMR, and I'm well on my way since my psychotic break. We're both POC and I'm gay. I also look Muslim, even though I'm not, but most of this country can't tell the difference between brown people making my visage all the more dangerous to have. I've also been sexually assaulted.

My PTSD says to be terrified. My paranoid schizophrenia is already pretty terrified. My depression is shutting me down. My anxiety will not abate, and has been a constant companion since the debates. Being in public is terrifying. As terrifying as it was to be in Kuwait in 2007, and introduced to Iraqis as American, during the war. (The only time I'm considered American is oversees, go figure.)

I consider myself Texan, born and raised, but I'm never considered a fully fledged person because some facet of my personality is constantly being denied rights, equal treatment, or under threat of those rights being revoked. When these benefits will be taken away, I'll not only lose any security left, but I'll also be viewed as less than a fully formed person because my rights will be nonexistent and the rights I still have will be misapplied and overlooked for not fitting in to any group. And don't get me started on being ignored and mistreated by other minority groups for not fitting in with them.

Please stop excluding disabled people in your posts about minorities who are being affected by the election results. Disabled people in the US are being affected too and we matter.