Building Communities of Inquiry
Started Feb. 29, 2008
Started Feb. 14, 2008
Started Nov. 6, 2007
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How are you? Do you mind if I put up some badges like these
Visit Creative Cafe
around the comments on here? Creative Cafe is going to OPEN officially on November 5th but I am inviting some people like you early so we can iron out any hiccups and make the place lively. There is a linked Salesroom site at www.creativecafesalesrooms.com where people can buy and sell art, handmade goods, supplies and equipment.
Anyway hope you will come down and join us soon.
Bye for Now
Jill
Yes it is good to have a discussion about these issues anyway.
I suppose what I am saying is I want each model of madness to have a place in the scheme of things. For people to have choice over finding the meds that may suit them, for therapies of their choice to be available, for potential for recovery and living rewarding lives to be recognised and for the discrimination and stigma association with this disability to be challenged.
It is interesting what you say about shared cultures as I have never thought that is what we are doing when we
have formed our support and politically active groups. But I guess that is what we have been doing. Sharing a culture.
Yes depression can be a nightmare and I don't envy you getting the downers without the highs thrown in. I have also noticed that you can be depressed for ages and the system does not really do much to help but they immediately leap into action where manic episodes are concerned. This is probably why bipolar gets more fuss than depression on its own. I don't think much of the 'genius' stereotype but I don't think much of the stereotype that we are stupid either. There is some truth in the association between madness and creativity but only some. Mainly I suppose I hope people will feel able to be more open about their experiences with mental health issues and these won't be something they feel they have to hide.
Thanks for the interesting discussion.
Bye for Now
Thanks for your reply. The medical model is the dominant paradigm at the moment although they are now running officially running the recovery model alongside it. But the disability movement is gaining ground.
Personally I take meds now because they are not so obnoxious as they used to be in the side effects stakes but I had 14 years without meds when I was younger. I have also been told by psychiatric professionals that I was lucky to have stopped taking the meds for so long because they were then prescribed in such high doses that I would have the permanent shakes as a side effect by now. Some people are able not to take meds just as meds are not necessarily a guarantee of staying well. Having said that I understand you support the medical model and the imbalance of chemicals theories.
Its just that in my experience there is a whole lot more involved in being mad than just taking a lot of pills... Just by going on groups like this and saying I am mad and have a mental health disability is a whole lot different position to take than say the one I took at college which was to hide the fact that I had ever had a manic episode. it was something to hide because of the inevitable discrimination and stigma that would follow. But these days I feel we must stand up and challenge that same discrimination and stigma as other minority groups have done. We have to have our own voice.
(Or do I mean voices?!)
Sorry about that bad joke...
Disability policy scholars describe four different historical and social models of disability: (1) A moral model of disability which regards disability as the result of sin; (2) A medical model of disability which regards disability as a defect or sickness which must be cured through medical intervention; (3) A rehabilitation model, an offshoot of the medical model, which regards the disability as a deficiency that must be fixed by a rehabilitation professional or other helping professional; and (4) the disability model, under which "the problem is defined as a dominating attitude by professionals and others, inadequate support services when compared with society generally, as well as attitudinal, architectural, sensory, cognitive, and economic barriers, and the strong tendency for people to generalize about all persons with disabilities overlooking the large variations within the disability community."
Anyway I do not feel it is as simple as saying that some people suffer mental illness just as some people suffer cancer. Thats the medical model. The disability movement has different ideas:
The disability rights movement is working towards a society in which physical and mental differences among people are accepted as normal and expected, not abnormal or unusual. We have plenty of methods and tools at our disposal to accommodate human differences should we choose to. Ironically, the growth of technology in our lives provides us with both the ability to detect more human differences than ever before, as well as the ability to make those differences less meaningful in practical terms. How we react to human differences is a social and a policy choice. We prefer to advocate for a social structure that focuses on including all people in the social fabric, rather than drawing an artificial line that separates "disabled people" from others. (Kaplan)
The red with black looks smart.
I am a bit concerned you are calling people like me 'those with mental illness' when we usually call ourselves 'survivors' or 'mad' or 'users of mental health services' or something like that these days. I personally either say I have a mental health disability or that I am a mad woman. Both of these sound better to me than being 'one of those with mental illness'. You know those ones over there foaming at the mouth in the corner! Anyway I just wonder why you call us 'those with mental illness'?
Bye for Now
Jill
Ed
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