Diversity Quotes

[Daniel E.]

From an interview with the author of Strangers to Ourselves:

To get to the root of mental illness, Rachel Aviv went to the patients

In 'Strangers to Ourselves,' New Yorker science writer Rachel Aviv probes mental illness through the eyes of the patients themselves.

www.latimes.com

We think when we receive a diagnosis that it’s describing something that has already occurred, but a diagnosis acts on us. It’s not neutral. If an explanation contradicts the sense of who a person is, it can be damaging. There should be more attention paid to the way people describe their own distress.

Also, loneliness is such a huge part of mental illness: the loneliness of not being able to communicate about it or having someone who understands. I was struck by how a community response contributed to someone’s deterioration or recovery. It seems so basic, but it’s huge.

 

[Daniel E.]

Rachel Aviv on how the stories we tell about mental disorders shape patients' lives

The New Yorker writer and author of "Strangers to Ourselves" says we can increase our understanding of mental illness by paying more attention to the stories patients tell about their individual experience to find meaning for themselves.

www.cbsnews.com

"Psychiatrists have a limited understanding of why one person's illness becomes a kind of life sentence and another person with the same diagnosis moves on. Answering this question, I think, requires that we pay more attention to the individual stories through which people find meaning for themselves."

 

[Daniel E.]

What "Latino" means, more than anything, is that you are part of a story that links you to other people with roots in a southern place. ... More than likely this story involves the journey a migrant made in search of work and opportunity.​

Héctor Tobar, writer​

 

[Daniel E.]

'Disturbing': Experts troubled by Canada’s euthanasia laws

TORONTO (AP) — Alan Nichols had a history of depression and other medical issues, but none were life-threatening.

apnews.com

Euthanasia “cannot be a default for Canada’s failure to fulfill its human rights obligations,” said Marie-Claude Landry, the head of its Human Rights Commission...

Tim Stainton, director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship at the University of British Columbia, described Canada’s law as “probably the biggest existential threat to disabled people since the Nazis’ program in Germany in the 1930s.”

 

[Daniel E.]

Why is Canada euthanising the poor? | The Spectator

There is an endlessly repeated witticism by the poet Anatole France that ‘the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.’ What France certainly did not foresee is that an entire country – and an...

www.spectator.co.uk

"Canada’s lavishly subsidised media, with some honourable exceptions, has expressed remarkably little curiosity about the open social murder of citizens in one of the world’s wealthiest countries. Perhaps, like many doctors, journalists are afraid of being accused of being ‘unprogressive’ for questioning the new culture of death, a fatal accusation in polite circles. Canada’s public broadcaster, which in 2020 reassured Canadians that there was ‘no link between poverty, choosing medically assisted death’, has had little to say about any of the subsequent developments."

 

[Daniel E.]

 

[Daniel E.]

Shyness: Evolutionary Tactic?

Shyness: Evolutionary Tactic? By SUSAN CAIN, New York Times June 25, 2011 A BEAUTIFUL woman lowers her eyes demurely beneath a hat. In an earlier era, her gaze might have signaled a mysterious allure. But this is a 2003 advertisement for Zoloft, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor...

forum.psychlinks.ca

"We need to rethink our approach to social anxiety: to address the pain, but to respect the temperament that underlies it. The act of treating shyness as an illness obscures the value of that temperament. Ridding people of social unease need not involve pathologizing their fundamental nature, but rather urging them to use its gifts."

 

[Daniel E.]

"In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight."

~ Ram Dass

 

[Daniel E.]

In Case You Haven't Heard, Ancient Egypt Was Totally Queer

"Queer Egyptian history is caught in a double bind: it is rarely seen as queer, and rarely seen as African."

www.them.us

Archaeology — “a discipline that has reproduced itself through the colonialist white male lens...explaining away things that appear queer.”

 

[Daniel E.]

The Ultra-Introverts Who Live Nocturnally

While most people are fast asleep, some are going about their lives, reveling in the quiet and solitude. They challenge a core assumption of psychology: that all humans need social connection.

www.theatlantic.com

The past decade or so has seen a growing acceptance of different identities, including a flourishing neurodiversity movement. Traditionally, that’s been focused on neurological differences—but some have argued it should encompass variations in the mind, as well as the brain. Most people probably wouldn’t think to champion nocturnal people under the same banner, or in the same spirit. But maybe we should.