Category Archives: mental health

Rant: Your Logic is SO Faulty!

mental health, Uncategorized
You have no grasp of logic! Your argument is invalid! – this is what I started yelling at my computer when I came across this story in my Google Reader:

Should parents be worried? A new parent survey indicates that the number of American children with autism has doubled since 2003, to 1 in 91. The National Survey of Children’s Health, which is largely based on unconfirmed information from parents on the health of 78,000 kids, is less official than the U.S. government study of six years ago, causing a debate over how many children actually suffer from autism. If the current figures are accurate, 1.1 percent of children have some kind of autistic disorder compared to 0.57 in 2003. Regardless of the exact numbers, researchers are concerned: “The study shows that the increase in autism is real—you can’t have a genetic epidemic—there are environmental factors in play,” said Rebecca Estepp, national media manager for Talk About Curing Autism (TACA). “This is a national health crisis. … I don’t know how it hasn’t been declared a national health emergency.” (beast)

First of all, lady, the name of your organization is offensive. (Also.)

Second of all, your assumption that the sole variable causing the increase in rate of autism diagnoses is an increase in the occurrence of autism is literally laughable – even more so when the number on which you’re relying on self reporting by parents. But it (rightly) doesn’t count as a diagnosis every time I self-diagnose something with the help of Dr. Web, MD. The self reporting wasn’t confirmed with medical records, not that records would resolve the issue. Pinning down prevalence rates of autism is an impossible task and the variable rates are within the huge margin of error for this difficult measurement.

And then, there’s the whole issue of variance of diagnosis based on race and/or class issues (especially this study demonstrating that prevalence rates vary primarily by income, based on access to care), including the historic tendency to place minority kids in special education as a disciplinary measure.

So basically, SHUT UP.

(very slightly modified from original posting at think on this.)

Why Do I Care What the Families Think?

autonomy, mental health

I have a longstanding problem with reading any comment threads on posts discussing whether people with mental disabilities should be “allowed” to decide what medication and treatment they want, if they want any at all. The threads usually have one or two comments agreeing with the post, and then quickly devolve into stories from people who knew a mentally ill person once and how disturbing or upsetting or unpleasant it was for them when the person wasn’t on medication. And that pisses me off, because the person who should be centered and prioritized in that discussion is the actual person who is taking the meds, not the people around them.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that some people with mental disabilities who are not taking medication are unpleasant to be around. I don’t believe that they’re more likely to be dangerous or violent as a general whole, there of course will be people who are, but that’s the tiny minority. I do recognize that some may be verbally or emotionally abusive to their friends and family. I agree that nobody should be forced to endure abuse of any kind, even if it is caused by the abuser’s mental disability. BUT. The fact that some people may be abusive without medication is nowhere near good enough reason to take away any person’s right to determine their own course of treatment. If an individual person becomes abusive or violent or dangerous, that’s a different situation that should be addressed for that individual person. But a blanket decision that everyone with a mental disability must take medication is an overbroad reaction to a relatively infrequent problem that is a huge infringement on the rights and dignity of the person with the mental disability.

So I really hate seeing the families of the person with a disability, rather than the person themselves, centered in discussions about what should happen to or for the person. Given that, I bet you can imagine my reaction when I saw this headline in the New York Times:

For Families of Mentally Ill, Mixed Feelings Over Push Away From Adult Homes

Joe Newell, a police property clerk on Staten Island, would love for his brother, John, to get out of the Coney Island adult home where his television set and other property have mysteriously disappeared. But Mr. Newell remembers how the last time his brother lived on his own, he stopped taking his epilepsy medication and slipped on the ice, slicing open his nose.

Donald Navard, 71, a retired bartender, wants something better than a threadbare life of bedbugs and institutional food for his niece, Dorothy. But he still remembers how she ran away from her last apartment after a week.

And Florence Weil, a longtime activist for the mentally ill, had high hopes for her daughter, Marci Reller, when she was placed in a small group home last summer. Seven days later, Ms. Reller ran away from the home and drank a fatal cocktail of furniture polish and heart pills.

I don’t really want to get into a discussion of whether this is the best outcome for the individuals with disabilities, because I don’t think we have enough information to make that decision. And we don’t have enough information because the article focuses only on the reactions of family members (who clearly are upset about the conditions in the group homes as well). There’s a single quote from a person with a disability, even though, according to the article itself, “Unlike some patients in psychiatric hospitals, residents of adult homes are not considered dangerous to themselves or others. They are generally legally independent adults in charge of their own affairs.”

I’m glad that the families are involved in the lives of the people with disabilities and care for them. I know the help and love of my family and friends were and continue to be essential for me in living with my disability. But I am much more interested in what the people who were living in those homes and now will not be think about the whole situation than their families.

Ableist Word Profile: Hysterical

101, Ableist Word Profile, feminism, intersectionality, mental health, ,

Welcome to Ableist Word Profile, a (probably intermittent) series in which staffers will profile various ableist words, talk about how they are used, and talk about how to stop using them. Ableism is not feminism, so it’s important to talk about how to eradicate ableist language from our vocabularies. This post is marked 101, which means that the comments section is open to 101 questions and discussion. Please note that this post contains ableist language used for the purpose of discussion and criticism; you can get an idea from the title of the kind of ableist language which is going to be included in the discussion, and if that type of language is upsetting or triggering for you, you may want to skip this post.

Today’s word: hysterical. There are a lot of different contemporary definitions of the word (Merriam-Webster, Cambridge, Encarta), but the theme among all of them is emotions that are extreme and unmanageable. A movie described as hysterically funny is likely funnier than most and may cause you to laugh uncontrollably and snort soda out your nose. Someone at a funeral who is crying loudly and who cannot seem to stop crying would likely be described as crying hysterically. But while your mental picture of the movie-goer laughing hysterically could have been either a man or a woman, the person hysterical with grief or worry is much more likely to be a woman than a man. That’s no accident – the history of this term is very gendered.

The word itself is derived from the Latin word hystericus, meaning “of the womb,” and from the Greek word hysterikos, meaning “of the womb, suffering in the womb,” from the Greek word hystera, meaning “womb.” And they understood the uterus to be the direct cause of hysteria. As Hannah S. Decker writes, “Various ancient Greek philosophers and physicians, including Plato, had argued that the uterus is an independent entity within a woman’s body… these thinkers concluded that the uterus had an ardent desire to create children. If the womb remained empty for long after the owner’s puberty, it became unhappy and angry and began to travel through the body. In its wanderings it pressed against various bodily organs, creating “hysterical” — that is, uterus-related — symptoms.”

So when someone on a blog tells me to chill out because it sounds like I’m hysterical about an issue,  the etymological meaning is that my failure to put a baby in my uterus (which has independent will and agency inside my body) has caused it to become angry, loose itself from its mooring, and start floating around inside of my body until it bangs into my brain and starts making me unreasonably upset.

There’s also a strong historical tradition of labeling women as “hysterical” in order to silence, marginalize, or even kill them. During the Roman Catholic inquisitions, thousands of European women were tortured and burnt as witches because they were thought to show signs of hysteria. But it was during the Nineteenth Century that things really got going. Some doctors considered the force of the uterus so powerful that it might overcome the brain and cause a woman to have pathological sexual feelings, “requiring” the physicians to “medically manipulate” the genitals in order to release the woman from control of her uterus. Yes, you read that right, the doctors were obligated to fondle their patients sexually for their own medical good. Conveniently, both mental or emotional distress and any physical symptom could be an indication of a woman’s hysteria, so doctors could diagnose literally any woman as hysterical.

Once hysterical women were no longer burned at the stake, the most common treatment was to send them to bed or to an asylum to prevent any activity or thought that would inflame their hysteria. This was an extremely effective way to marginalize or silence women, as any protest that she was not hysterical would be seen as conclusive proof that the diagnosis of hysteria had been correct. This meant, practically, that any woman categorized as hysterical was forever silenced and lost all credibility.

That’s a whole big mess of etymology and history, so let’s unpack that a bit. When I am told I am hysterical, there is both 1) the implication that I am excessively or unreasonably emotional AND 2) the implication that my condition is unique to my femaleness. It’s also 3) implied that hysterical statements (or even statements from hysterical people) should be discounted and hysterical people need to change in order to participate in the discussion, or should be removed from it entirely. Now let’s look at each one of those individually.

The first is a criticism of and dismissal of my personal emotions based on the observer’s judgment on whether they conform to what “normal” or “reasonable” emotions would be for that situation. The idea of “extremeness” is built into every definition of the word, implying that there is an assumed agreed-upon “normal” range for emotions. In the past, that likely meant “emotions acceptable to white men with money.” Currently, though, the idea is strikingly parallel to current definitions of mental disabilities and mental health diagnoses in the DSM-IV, which require that a specific set of symptoms “must cause significant impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning” in order for a person to meet diagnostic criteria. This means that thee idea of emotions that are outside the “normal” range of experience to the degree that they affect a person’s function is the very definition of mental illness. So the accusation of “hysteria,” with the implication that the hysterical person has abnormally extreme emotions, is very clearly an accusation of mental illness. And remember part 3 — the conclusion that a hysterical person (or a person with a mental disability, by equivalency) should be discounted in discussions because of their hysteria/disability. THAT IS ABLEIST.

But that’s not all. The other implication of the term is that this over-emotional condition is a uniquely female condition and is caused directly by female reproductive organs being sad about not having a baby. While that’s not literally how it’s meant today, it still feels like a slightly nicer way of saying “you’re just upset because it’s that time of the month,” another way to marginalize and dismiss females based explicitly on their femaleness. It’s a way to say “that sounds like something a woman would say when she’s being super woman-y and influenced by being a woman.” And again, this is assumed to be a reason to discount the information or perspective offered and to exclude that person from the conversation. THAT IS SEXIST.

And here’s where the intersectionality comes in. Hysterical is a handy dandy insta-dismissal that slams two marginalized groups at the same time – and it only works because to be related to either group is considered to make you lesser. It also means that this word, with its invocation of both ableism and sexism, is particularly sharp when aimed at women with disabilities. That’s why arguments like “It’s sexist because it makes all women sound like crazies! Who’d want to be a crazy!” are extremely problematic – not only does the word rely on both sexism and ableism, it relies on the interaction between those two axes of oppression to be a super strong word.

If we thought of people with mental disabilities as full equals, with valid feelings, thoughts and perspectives that deserved respect, then the message “you are talking like a person with a mental disability because you are a woman” would be a compliment. The message would be “you are presenting a perspective or idea that deserves respectful consideration.”

If we thought of women as full equals, with valid feelings, thoughts, and perspectives that deserved respect, then the message “you are responding with extreme emotion because you are a woman” would imply that the emotion was valid and important and deserved respectful consideration. It would likely mean that whatever idea or perspective presented with that emotion would be given more credit and consideration, not less.

It only works as an insult, as a way to dismiss and marginalize, because both groups are considered lesser. And this is a great example of why intersectionality is so important – the kyriarchy uses other marginalized groups to attack us. As we support each other and all grow stronger, the kyriarchy will be less able to use these groups against us.

Note: I use the word hysterical in some contexts (‘I was hoping Zombieland would be as hysterical as Shaun of the Dead but it totally wasn’t.’) — I think these concerns are primarily relevant when using the word to characterize an individual’s argument, ideas, emotions, or perspective. I’d be interested in learning if others find it problematic in those contexts.

Portrayals in Pop Culture: Adam

identity, intersectionality, media and pop culture, mental health, , ,

In August the wife and I saw Adam, a romance featuring a person with Asperger’s Syndrome and a neurotypical. And it was really rather good, especially measured against other portrayals of autistic persons in popular culture. It is always astonishing how much of myself I see in depictions of people with AS, even when the wife isn’t nudging me and whispering “You so do that.”

It’s true, I do. I’m older than Adam and my (admittedly self-diagnosed but dude it really fits) version of the autism is a bit different than his. But we still share a lot of traits. Tinnitus, check. Visual distortions? Yup. Difficulty with officials and paperwork? Yes. Socially inappropriate questions? Oh deep fried shit on a stick yes. Rage? HULK MOIRA SMASH!

Of course, when I was a wee bairn, Asperger’s Syndrome as a diagnosis hadn’t made it to the U.S. yet and wouldn’t until 1992. Autism, then, meant you didn’t talk and I talked like anything. I didn’t talk like a kid. My family still tells these things as cute baby stories: I taught myself to read by the time I was three and read compulsively. If there was a cereal box on the table I had to read everything on it. I would grab my crossed ankles and rock on my back for hours at a time. The day I found out what penises were I went around the neighborhood asking everyone if they had one. I did not know how to make friends. I sort of wanted to, but I was most comfortable in structured settings like Scouts or, later, role-playing games. It was (and remains) difficult for me to look people in the eye and to touch them and I was constantly being told to do that and to shake hands firmly. I needed to look more like I was paying attention in class. I actually was paying attention as was demonstrated every time a teacher asked me a question and I answered it correctly; I just didn’t look like I was paying attention and that made them angry.

When I am very upset I stop being able to talk. I pick compulsively at my skin. I don’t interview well — I’ve never gotten a job by applying and interviewing for it. Every job I’ve ever had I’ve gotten because I started as a temp and they kept me. I’m not good with figurative speech or most kinds of humor. If I get something in my head I want to say it will come out.

So, Adam. His is the version that has more externally-directed rage. (Mine is turned mainly on myself, hence the scars and the hospitals and becoming a veritable sommellier of psych meds.) It’s done very well. Hugh Dancy spends a lot of time with reddened, tearful eyes, but he has suffered a series of very large life-changing events. He does a pretty good job portraying a person with AS without making Adam a straight-up freak. It’s clear that Beth (Rose Byrne) loves him at least partly because of (and also in spite of–I know I’ve been difficult to live with at times) the way his brain works. Adam-the-character is rather luckier than most of us; he grew up upper-middle-class in Manhattan, inherited a fair amount when his father passed (before the movie even starts, it’s not a spoiler), he gets lots of interview coaching and gets his well-paid dream job.

It’s not exactly the median experience. It can and does happen, but many more of us work a series of low-end, low-paying jobs until our social difficulties get us asked to move on (which has happened to me, though it was also tangled up with transgender issues). My résumé is a very model of stability by AS standards despite the occasional long gaps in it.

Sorry. It’s hard to talk about the movie without talking about AS in general and about me. It’s a sweet movie. It’s nice to see someone like me as something other than a socially crippled freak or the larval stage of a serial killer. It’s just the movie version of an autistic person’s life: charmed and ultimately successful (socially, financially, romantically) despite occasional setbacks.

Of course I consider my life moderately successful and I’m looking at not working at all soon. I have a family. I’m loved. I’m still poor.

There’s one thing I’d change about Adam-the-movie: After Adam-the-character’s father dies, a guy named Harlan (Frankie Faison) fills in as father figure. The role edges into Magical Negro territory. It didn’t have to be this way. Harlan, you see, is a locksmith. He drives a beat-up green van and wears a gimme cap. He is the only working class character with a significant role in the film and the only person of color with a significant role in the film. I suspect that since Adam was given a folded flag at his father’s funeral (again, not a spoiler, it’s the first scene), Harlan knew Adam’s dad in some sort of uniformed service and stayed in touch after despite Harlan being a black locksmith and Adam’s dad being a white professor at Julliard.

I’d have made Harlan one of Adam’s dad’s colleagues from Julliard. A piano instructor or something. Put him on an equal footing with regards to social and economic class with the white people, instead of the working stiff they did. I can’t tell you how many books and movies I’ve seen the same damn thing in. Hey! Creative people of America! There are rich black people! They go to college! They teach at college! Put them in movies and TV shows and books already, you crypto-racist falsely-inclusive jerks

Guest Post: Why I didn’t celebrate “World Mental Health Day”

guest post, language, media and pop culture, mental health

Everyone, please welcome our first guest poster, Arwyn of Raising My Boychick. Arwyn lives in the United States’ Pacific Northwest with The Man, the Boychick, bipolar type 2, and migraines. When the intersection of her neurology and the kyriarchal society she lives in allows, she writes feminist thoughts inspired by parenting a presumably-straight white probably-male at Raising My Boychick.

When I heard Friday night that Saturday October 10 was World Mental Health Day, I was excited: another day like Celebrate Bisexuality Day, but for us crazy folk?? Sign me up! When I Googled it, however, this is what I found:

World Health Organization:

Mental, neurological and behavioural disorders are common in all countries around the world, causing immense suffering and staggering economic and social costs. People with disorders are often subjected to social isolation, poor quality of life and higher death rates.

Bellevision Global (a parish in the United Arab Emirates — particularly look at the pictures on this site, if you are able):

Mental illness such as anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, if not properly diagnosed and treated would lead to poor work performance, family disruption, and contribute greatly to the global burden of disease.

Emax Health:

[United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon] states, “Mental disorders contribute to more disease burden and disability in developing countries than any other category of non-communicable disease, yet only a small minority of people with mental disorders in these countries have access to mental health services.”

Well ain’t that just fucking cheery. Thanks ever so much for the pathologization folks; there can never be enough support for the “those crazies = horrible miserable burden on society!!1!” meme.

To be fair, there was some good coverage as well. From the World Federation for Mental Health:

“Today, we call on all governments and partners to include measures for mental health in efforts to achieve human development and respond to humanitarian crises,” Ms. Obaid said. “Mental health is central to human dignity.”

See the difference there? How the first three talk about how those people (that’s me, gentle reader!) affect the rest of us (that’s all you normal, sane, not-crazy people; you know, the ones that matter)? How they say the reason “mental illness” needs awareness is because they (still me!) are a burden, a drag, a fiscal drain? And then how the last one is based on the radical idea that, gee, we are actually people and we matter too? Tiny difference there, don’tcha think?

If you’ve been following along, you know that I’m not in the greatest head space right now — to say the least. And yet, silly me, I still expect that when a group (or a day) purports to be helping me, to be bringing awareness to my needs, I not be dehumanized, pathologized, Other-ized, and victimized once again. I expect that it be recognized that my dis-ease, my dis-ability, arises from the intersection of my being and the kyriarchal society I live in. I expect to not be confronted with still more language and images that portray me and mine as miserable, sick, taunted, shunned, hated, and ignored. (Are we those things? Yes, in this fucked up kyriarchy, we are. But we’re also joyful, healthy, embraced, befriended, loved, and celebrated, and we damn well should be portrayed that way too. The constant portrayal of us as stigmatized contributes to our stigmatization.)

So no, I did not celebrate World Mental Health Day, because it was just World Fuck Over the “Mentally Ill” Day, which makes it different from the other 364 days a year… not at all.

Wake me up when it’s World Mad Pride Day. That, I think I can get behind.

This post is being moderated by the FWD staff.

Mental Health Services and the Welfare System

class issues, intersectionality, mental health

The United States cash aid welfare system underwent a major overhaul in 1995, when Congress and Clinton famously “ended welfare as we know it.” There were a whole lot of important changes made to the system then, but the most significant was the imposition of 5 year lifetime limits on welfare receipt. Under the previous system, people could receive welfare as long as they were eligible by having a child under 18 and being economically eligible. Now, even if a person has minor children as is poor enough to qualify for welfare, if that person has already received 60 months of aid, she cannot receive any more. (I use female pronouns when referring to people who are on welfare because the caseload is predominantly female, but men do receive it also.)

Even the federal government realized that if we were going to cut people off at the end of 5 years, we had to offer them some tools to move towards economic self-sufficiency and to remove any existing barriers, such as mental health problems, substance abuse issues, or domestic violence.  So, in theory, a person can use her 60 months of aid to receive treatment, medication, and therapy for a mental health problem so she is more able to work when her time limits kick in and her case aid is cut off. In theory, the group of people who are very poor and have disabilities so severe that they cannot engage in work activity are not in the welfare population because they are already on the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program through the Social Security Administration, so welfare administrators assume that everyone on welfare will eventually be able to work and support themselves once the “barrier” has been removed.

To be clear, the concept and terminology of “barrier removal” is the welfare program’s and not mine. I don’t find it a particularly helpful or accurate framework. I do not think that a mental health problem is something like a brick wall standing between me and the workplace and if I could just dismantle the wall, I could go right into work without any problems. I think it’s unproductive to frame it as a temporary condition that can be permanently eradicated, rather than a life long disability that can be managed to various extents but will continue to need attention, treatment, and management over time. I also think framing it like this gives the welfare system tacit permission to blame people who have undergone treatment while on welfare but who are not economically self-sufficient at the end of the 5 years, whether that be because their ongoing mental health issues need ongoing management, the failure of workplaces to provide meaningful accommodations, or even the lack of jobs that provide living income wages.

Even presuming the framework in which the welfare system thinks about mental health care were a meaningful one, their administration and implementation of that framework is … problematic. To phrase it generously. I’ll primarily focus on the Los Angeles County implementation, as that’s what I’m most familiar with, but problems like this exist to some degree in most welfare programs. Keep in mind that California is considered to be very generous with our welfare benefits and progressive in our “barrier removal” methods, so this may be the best case scenario.

For this discussion, I’m also assuming that participation in the mental health system is a good and beneficial thing, which is also far from a foregone conclusion, especially given the language and cultural diversity present in the welfare population and the, um, lack of such diversity in the mental health providers. (For example, good luck finding a therapist who can talk to you in Khmer! And good luck benefiting from therapy that has to go through a translator!)

The welfare system aims to identify people would would benefit from mental health treatment and connect them with providers. And right there is where there’s a major breakdown in the system. How do we identify people who would benefit from treatment? The welfare system relies primarily on what they call “self-identification,” where a person meeting with her caseworker would be asked if she has any mental illnesses. If she discloses, she will be routed into mental health services. If not, she would not.

Obviously, self-identification is a very problematic method. First, there are significant barriers that would prevent a woman from disclosing an existing mental illness to a welfare caseworker. Among those barriers: fear that disclosure will result in a referral to child services and could result in the children being taken from the home; fear that disclosure will result in involuntary treatment and/or institutionalization and/or medication; fear that disclosing will result in losing welfare and/or food stamp and/or Medicaid benefits; fear that any personal information disclosed to a caseworker will lead to discrimination, etc. And those are just the fears specific to the welfare context – there’s also general stigma issues and everything else that makes it difficult for anyone to disclose a mental health issue, even if they’re not financially dependent on the person to whom they’re disclosing.

And that long list of problems only applies to the people who already know that what they are experiencing is considered a mental health issue, usually people who have already had some access to the mental health system and gotten a previous diagnosis. If I don’t know that the anxiety and panic I sometimes feel culd be considered a panic attack, I’m not going to disclose anything. If I don’t realize that the depression and hopelessness I feel is not how everyone feels and might be related to a mental health issue rather than my abject poverty, I’m not going to disclose anything. The relationship between welfare recipients and caseworkers is notoriously fraught with mutual distrust, so I’m certainly not going to start discussing my symptoms with the worker, and even if I did, a caseworker with no mental health training isn’t going to recognize my symptoms as a potential mental health problem.

I know very well what happens to people who have mental health issues who are unable or unwilling to self-identify to a caseworker — they’re required to comply with work requirements (in CA, 30 or 35 hours a week, it varies by state) and if they’re unable to comply because of untreated mental health problems, they’re sanctioned for failing to work and their cash grant is cut significantly. If they continue to be unable to comply, they will eventually be cut off the grant entirely and cash aid will go only to the minor children (again, in CA. In other states, the entire cash grant, including that for the kids, will be terminated.).

This doesn’t even deal with the problems with the mental health care that is offered to those identified as needing it, just illustrates how a significant number of people with mental health disabilities will not even make it that far and are likely to be penalized financially for their disability status. And in some cases, their children will be significantly penalized also – simply because the welfare system cannot figure out how to meaningfully identify and accommodate people with mental illness in the welfare system.

How Do We Understand This Experience?

intersectionality, mental health

This the story of the first time I really understood the degree to which intersectionality was key to understanding and addressing mental health issues.

When I was first diagnosed and the subsequent years when we all tried to figure out what was really wrong with me and what medications would allow me to function without too many problems, I had a lot of problems with anxiety. Or hypomania, or mixed state, or whatever people want to call it. But back then I had absolute faith in the power of the DSM-IV, and the medical professionals for which my parents were paying big bucks, to analyze my illness, assign it to a category, and know exactly the protocol to treat me. So back then, I thought of the episodes I was experiencing as panic attacks.

They felt like sheer terror, like my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it through my whole body, like my hands were a blur of shaking, like my muscles were pulled tight beyond their limit. I couldn’t make myself breathe right, taking a short gasp each time my heart thudded. But it was even worse inside my head, where a giant storm raged and kept me from thinking even a full thought because I was so overwhelmed with the thunder of certain and unavoidable bad! harm! doom! destruction! And after ten or fifteen minutes, the storm seemed to pass, and I could take deeper breaths, but felt battered and sore. They were awful and I hated them and resented them for appearing out of nowhere. I was ashamed that I could be so affected by whatever it was that set one off, if that could even be identified. I felt like I had no power to affect them.

Years later, when I no longer carried a bottle of tranquilizers with me just in case I had an attack, I went to a week long training up in the mountains with people from all across California. We were all young professionals with lots of degrees and post-grad degrees from US institutions. One night, I sat with some of the other women at the edge of the forest, in the kind of pitch dark you don’t get very often in California, with all our lights. It was super quiet, with no cars around for miles, and you could hear rustling of animals in the trees. Frankly, it was a little scary, so we of course decided to tell ghost stories.

One of the women told us a story about a road near her house in rural California. She said there was a section of the road where a bad car accident had taken place in the past that when you drove through, you could feel it was haunted. She told us how people from the surrounding area would drive by it to try to see the ghosts. I’m a complete skeptic about anything remotely paranormal or extraterrestrial or psychic, so I wasn’t making much of the story, and neither were some of the other women. But the woman explained that while the people who came to the spot were silly and would never get anything out of it and were wasting their time, she said she was certain that there were ghosts there.

She told us that her grandmother was from one of the indigenous tribes of Mexico and had been considered a holy woman because she could be possessed by ghosts. Her grandmother would be possessed for short episodes, around ten to fifteen minutes, and during the possession she would breathe quickly and her muscles would shake and she felt overcome by fear and evil. And the woman had inherited some of this ability through her grandmother’s bloodline and had similar episodes sometimes. She described the possession in detail and it was if she was reading my psychiatrist’s notes on my experience of a panic attack. Exactly the same – it felt like we had experienced the same thing.

I still remember the feeling I got then, when I realized that what I called a panic attack and thought of as a mental health problem to be treated with medication, she experienced as a ghostly possession and thought of as a valuable ability and a tie to her grandmother. And that neither of those definitions or perspectives or frameworks was any more valid. It was like one of the optical illusions where suddenly what I’d been seeing as a vase was also two faces in profile. That there were two realities that had been co-existing this whole time and I’d just now noticed one of them was there.

I was, and am, still overwhelmed with the implications of that realization. How would a person with her framework interact with a mental health system with the DSM categories and staggering range of medications? What would happen if she described an episode of possession to a physician or psychiatrist? And what would the difference be if I could think of it as a valuable ability instead of a debilitating problem with my brain? Would I even want or get any treatment if that were my perspective? What if my culture valued me for this? How does she handle the prevalent skepticism to ghosts and such? So many things to consider.

And then there’s the remaining question: how many other realities are there? How many other perspectives are on this experience we’ve had? How else can I think about what I experience?