Neurodiversity vs Mental illness

[annwfyn]

So, for various reasons, I’ve decided to post here about MH stuff instead of FB and make FB a more impersonal place/more of a conversation about non-touchy things as I’m not convinced most people want to have my deep and meaningful thoughts thrust on them via FB.

And I’m putting up a bunch of stuff about the neurodivergent model vs mental illness model discussion because it sort of happened on FB today and I think went to a maybe not ideal place and so I took the post down there.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/abcs-child-psychiatry/201510/is-autism-mental-illness?fbclid=IwAR3PTVkVT3f1hUM_Gm6d9jTEx5JRIswnYD0p9KzTJ6FFURIUp0GauUDTKhs

This is the link I started with. I found it because I’d been reading around to try and deal with some of my feelings of discomfort around the whole ‘I’m not unwell, I’m neurodivergent’ conversation. And having now had more of a conversation with some proponents of it, I think I now feel even worse about the subject, and it’s thrown up a bunch of really uncomfortable thoughts about who I am, why I am, and how I feel about my own brain.

The basic summary, as given to me, is that the neurodivergent model says:

“People who are bipolar would generally have better lives if nobody was bipolar. People who are autistic would generally have better lives if everybody was autistic.”

I’m trying hard to not comment too much on the latter part of that although I’m always reminded of the Slatestarcodex article on this - https://slatestarcodex.com/.../against-against-autism-cures/ - which offers both a counter and also sparks an interesting comment on a problematic dynamic in activism where the highest functioning within a specific group often become very dominant voices within the conversation whilst maybe not entirely getting some of the issues others have. Certainly, it’s a reason I’ve stepped back from many many conversations about MH and disability because I’m painfully aware that I am incredibly lucky and don’t have a lot of issues other have and I feel as a result maybe shouldn’t be commenting on what you can or can’t do with a MH condition. But that’s an aside.

But I am feeling weirdly angry and defensive over the ‘bipolar people would have better lives if nobody was bipolar’. I don’t know why, but I really am, and I feel like it is an accurate summary and also a summary that to me feels like ‘it would be nice if people like Sally didn’t exist’. And so I’m trying to break it down.

• I think a part of the reason I have a terrible knee jerk gut punch reaction is that if no one in the world had bipolar disorder, I wouldn’t exist. Not ‘I’d be fine’, but ‘Sally, as I understand myself to me, and as the world knows me, would not exist’. I come from a family with a genetic history of bipolar disorder. I always lived at extremes of emotion, from when I was tiny. I had my first episode in my teens. I don’t remember not being mad. My entire adult life was shaped by the condition. I’m now 41 and in remission, but even now, massive aspects of my personality remain shaped by the same factors that drive the bipolar disorder.
  
  I am not just ‘Sally who has this occasional bolt on’. I am ‘Sally who lives with this every single day and is shaped irrevocably by this condition’ and it is genuinely painful to be told ‘we are special. We think people like you would be better off not existing’. Which isn’t exactly what is meant, I’m sure, but it feels like a weird undercurrent within the movement.
  
  To put it in nicer terms, I am upset by a model of activism that says ‘let me use people like Sally as a comparison. I am nice and special and good and the world needs to make space for me. Because I’m not like the crazy bitch over there’.
  
  Am I that bad?



• And I’m also not entirely sure I approve of that model, even intellectually, as a tool for social progress. It’s very very divide and conquer.
  
  I do think there is a place for people with certain disabilities to stand together and show solidarity and in that respect, if we’re talking about X as a ‘social category’, I tend to think that if you are someone’s who’s mental processes are variant enough that you may face issues in the world as it stands now – you might need to ask for reasonable adjustments at work, or struggle with a job or study, or you might find some relationships are more difficult than they should be etc – then you ‘count’ as being part of team ‘non standard brain’. And in those terms of social recognition/stigma, I’m not sure it’s helpful to sub-divide, much as I’m not very keen on an artificial divide between mood disorders and personality disorders for example. I think any statement that says “I’m not like those people” is one that I’m uncertain about, although I think it’s a very human need/response. I remember one lass on a bipolar forum I’m on saying “I always tell people I’m BP2, not BP1. I’m crazy like Catherine Zeta Jones, not like Charlie Sheen”.
  
  It’s that model of the neurodivergence conversation I don’t much like.
  
  Within treatment plans etc, where it is very useful to differentiate (see accepted variety of treatment options within physical health v mental health) I think there clearly will be way more of a variation, although there’s going to be loads of those, and I guess, yeah, I can see the logic of wanting to embrace developmental differences in the way neurological physical conditions such as Parkinsons, HD etc like to band together to promote research/care pathways etc. I’m just not 100% convinced that this is the point of the neurodivergence movement and as yet no one has even suggested it’s the bit they care about either.



• I think it’s also making me think about my relationship with bipolar disorder, which I’ve been reviewing lately anyway. I made a conscious decision a while ago to take a ‘no romanticizing this bullshit’ stance on my condition and not give in to the ‘bipolar people are super creative snowflakes’ but sometimes that’s hard to be so relentlessly negative. Even if I’m apparently right.
  
  https://www.karger.com/Article/Fulltext/452416
  
  There are actual studies on how it's genetic, heritable and there are lots of suggestions as to how it may have evolved as a positive in human evolution. If you can’t be bothered to read it, it says that bipolar disorder has a bunch of traits which are also found in highly creative people, including impulsivity, openness, neuroticism, extraversion and irritability (as a note – all of these traits are, ahem, perceivable in me).
  
  However, only 8% of those with bipolar disorder could be considered highly creative, and the study also notes that it’s possible that even within that, bipolar people may be overrepresented in some of the areas which are considered to make someone ‘highly creative’, such as working in a creative industry, because those jobs often support an unconventional lifestyle and bipolar people are traditionally very bad at maintaining stable employment.
  
  The primary suggestion is that those traits are basically positives which the populations wants to have, and in reasonable doses tends to hugely benefit carriers who may be hugely successful for those very traits, which then continue to trundle along until someone is born with an excess of them which becomes bipolar disorder.
  
  Which I think means maybe I was right all along and people with bipolar aren't special snowflakes and I should take my medicine after all. Also, we share a lot of traits with people with schizophrenia and there’s been some talk about how both conditions should be put in a shared ‘psychosis spectrum’ disorder.



• And so maybe I’m just bitter that other people get to have Special Sparkly Unicorn Syndrome and I just suck. Maybe I just hate this conversation because it makes me feel erased although I really should suck it up because not everything needs to be about me. Except it’s a bit shitty when it feels like I’m being used as the punch line. And so I spout this out into the void here where hopefully people will be nice because few will see.



• For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t want to just Not Be Bipolar. I mean, mostly because I want to be me. Not someone else. Not someone with a different brain and set of emotions and feelings. I know the occasional bouts of hyperfocus are annoying for people around me at times, but it’s meant I’ve learned loads of stuff I’d never have not done, and gone further than I think I could manage any other way.
  
  No idea if I count as ‘highly creative’ – I suspect I’m more of an intellectual magpie – but I am good with words and I do make a living writing things that make people want to help others. That comes from the same place as my bipolar does, I think, and I’ve done good with it.
  
  I know hypomania crashes into depression eventually, but it’s fricking great as an experience in the short term and I don’t regret those moments of glorious total happiness or the ideas or experiences I’ve had. I mean, I’m told that mania sucks, but I am kind of glad I’ve had at least one moment of feeling like I was walking with a god. I’ve had the chance to live in my own mad fantasy novels and I like some of the poems I wrote while I was there.
  
  OK, so taking off to the other side of the world on a whim maybe isn’t always ideal, but I’ve seen a lot of cool stuff along the way. I’m glad I’ve got those travelers’ tales.
  
  I’m glad that the traits that make my family apparently constantly on the edge of bipolar disorder exist. Mostly because in the last 300 years we’ve founded a minor school of art, made at least one outstanding major scientific discovery and lived on every continent bar Antarctica. I think the world is a better place for having our genetics in it, even if the combination misfired in me a bit.
  
  I think I like some of my emotions as well. I don’t like to sound all Sparklepony Princess about this, but I am told that bipolar people traditionally ramp many of their emotional responses up to 11 and I have been able to love and rejoice and glory deeply and intensely. That’s kind of cool. I accept no one else likes the murderous rage, but it does mean I’ve run further to burn it off than I’d ever have run otherwise.
  
  And I think bipolar disorder – learning to live with it, fight it, manage it – has made me a better person. Not in spite of bipolar but because the shape of the life that has emerged from Sanity learning to work with Madness is a shape I like and am proud of.

And now I feel better for having written this.

I still might be wrong and I don’t want to shit on autistic people. I just wanted to try and get this out somewhere.

Comments

[annwfyn]

https://medium.com/invisible-illness/autism-and-mental-illness-6901b93d6234

This, by the way, is an interesting article with a totally different set of issues with the neurodivergence movement. I also note, for reference, some people do see psych conditions such as bipolar and schizophrenia as part of nueordivergence, which then brings up its own issues such as 'it it's not an illness, should it be treated?'

And, while I sort of feel like I'm better off being here and me than not, I am not going to say conditions shouldn't be treated.

I'm probably being quite mad trying to process all this stuff.

[satyrica]

I'm always impressed by the patience you have to think things through and then write it out clearly and thoroughly, it's always worth reading

[annwfyn]

Thank you! It's actually, I suspect, another random gift from my shonky brain chemistry. The natural state of my brain tends to involve a lot of really overwhelming thoughts and feelings and odd leaps and I kind of learnt as a teen that if left in my brain I would fall into some odd jumbled places. I write stuff down to give it order, shape, form, and put all my thoughts and feelings into a place where I can deal with them.

An unexamined Sally life is a chaotic and dangerous Sally life!

And some of the neurodivergent conversation on Facebook was genuinely beginning to stir up a bunch of emotions in me that I didn't want to unleash on my poor friends.