Comic Strips

The medication stigma is based on basically magic thinking: That medicine is alien, external, unnatural while the human body is pure and natural. Therefore any difference between medicated and unmedicated is artificial and caused by the medicine.

No, the body is fucking dropping terror chemicals in my bloodstream. It is changing my personality from easygoing and outgoing to snippy and reclusive. The body is malfunctioning and changing my personality for the worse.

The medicine is reducing the amount and effectiveness of the body's excess of terror chemicals. It restores normality.

If you say 'mental illness' 3 times in the mirror, someone with a Live Laugh Love t-shirt will appear behind you and ask if you've tried going outside.

And now the cropping is fixed, so the comments deriding the cropping don't make sense anymore.

ok, but in america this IS how physical diseases are treated

I'll be honest, going outside does help. The problem is when you don't have a compelling enough reason to (in my personal experience. This might not be everybody's experience)

It's not comparable. Whenever I see these posts, it always feels as if the author is suggesting that mental illness is just like a flu, you just get it accidentally and can't help it and you just need to rest to get over it.

But that is completely wrong. Unless you have developed schizophrenia or bipolar etc, that's a whole different kettle of fish which will likely require medication for the rest of your life. You need to help yourself out of depression and anxiety etc. You can't wait around for it to disappear, you need to see a therapist, take your ass outside and force yourself into uncomfortable situations.

You'll have days you can't do anything and that's completely okay. But I feel like the 'nurturing' of mental health can do some harm.

1, 4, and 6 is how my mom is about flu, cold, medicine.

When you're sick you need to rest and let your body do its thing. You can eat food containing the resources your body needs to potentially speed up recovery. But ultimately you need rest.

Not according to mom.

You have to work your flu out. If you're lying in bed feeling like shit you're just being lazy. You'll stay sick longer if you don't work, so out of bed you go. Come on, it's like you're not even trying to get better!

And of course the medicine your doctor gives you is just poison, because doctors don't know anything and just want to keep their career. Here, have these homeopathic pills instead.

Because medical science really has very little understanding of how mental illness happens, most of thier treatment boils down to "deal with it". Medications help treat some symptoms, but often with lots of side effects.

So really the way we treat mental illness is often simply all we have. And that is the real problem.

We are still in the dark ages of medicine. People like to refer to modern medicine, but we are far from it. If we mobilized even half the amount of population that currently works on war related efforts, we would see astounding progress.

Agoraphobia is a really fun one. “Just go outside! You’ll feel better if you hang out with people!” I’d love to! I’d love for my brain to not put up a great big roadblock that says “you are not going to be able to go into Walmart” or “you cannot complete that piece of paperwork.” That’s the problem I have. If it was as simple as just doing the thing, I’d be doing the thing.

Welcome to the Netherlands...

Awful cropping

Who is going to tell them?

(I have seen a few of these very examples.)

Yeah, about that... my Depression-raised dad didn't even think physical problems were an excuse for slacking or being negative. I think it was the general mood of the 30s when he was a teenager. There was very little public help for people in trouble - basically you could turn to charity or starve. So people were highly motivated to keep going in spite of whatever happened. Bouncing back from problems ASAFP was a survival trait. I always said if my dad saw me get my leg cut off by a chainsaw or something, he would probably run over and say cheerfully, "Oh well, you've still got your other leg, just hop!"

Yeah definitely feel like at least in America we treat physical illness that way a lot of the time too

If you have a physical illness you go to physical therapy, so if you have a mental illness you should go to mental therapy.

Where's the sports ball coach saying "walk it off" to a person with no legs?

I agree with the message but its not entirely true becsuse once you treat the gaping wound, going on walks and just basic physical activity actually helps. It sounds stupid but touching grass is one of the best things you can do when youre in a bad place. Also this one adresses like one of the slides, the rest is bullshit people constantly tell eachother. Actually looking at the person on a deeper level and not just the surface helps a lot. What doesnt help is most people depressed nowadays arent depressed from some personal thing but from the cold hard truth that the world is a horrible place thats falling apart.