Mental Health & Twitter.

Lets cut the crap: many of you on this app are not okay.

It has been a bad 10 months, & while some cracked earlier, some of you are starting to crack down recently & it's time we talk about it.

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A staple of anti-lockdown conspiracism in yoga/wellness is that public health measures are oppressive, authoritarian, and stifling what it means to be human. Masks suppress identity and speech. Vaccines assault the sovereign body. Influencers must rise up against tyranny! /1

Ironically, pandemic management in economies where yoga/wellness is lucrative has been a neoliberal, choose-your-own-adventure mess in which centre-right governments barter with public health to enact a patchwork of half-measures that punish the poor and marginalized. /2

The goal is not universal health rights, or protecting medical systems, or saving as many lives as possible. The goal is to return to business-as-usual, using public health as a pit stop on a productivity race off a cliff. The ice caps aren’t melting fast enough, I guess. /3

Right-leaning governments, like influencers, have assessed the COVID threat with the magical bias of limitless optimism. Then they work to normalize COVID casualties as a new cost of doing business. *This* is what alt-healthers and Qamoms call “socialist”, or “communist”. /4

Centre-right governments and wellness influencers share a goal: get back to the optimism of making productivity heroic and consumption virtuous, without any reflection on structural issues of injustice, or what universal health care funding and standards would look like. /5

We’ve done menstruation, let’s talk about the menopause! Because only women however they present can have the menopause although men who have had treatments for prostate cancer can have symptoms mimicking the menopause. There’s nothing scary about

the menopause. It’s a perfectly natural function of the body but it’s tied up with a thousand stereotypes of women, ageism and ‘old women are frightening’. True, old women are often very frightening to young men because look! A woman who doesn’t give a rat’s

arse what you think of her now all her mating hormones have gone and with it your charm as a potential mate. Now you’re just another annoying lad. That’s gotta hurt. Menopause means Wisdom, like it or not and it’s not always nice or cosy. Old women

are encouraged to refer to themselves as ‘young at heart’ and ‘as young as you feel’ and other such crap and told to ‘never give in to age’ which is ludicrous. Cosmetic surgery is now a thing but I can tell you what the surgeons and marketing

men won’t - it does not make you look young. You’re just an old woman who looks like at best, she’s had a great holiday and at worst like she was was trapped in a wind tunnel. Old is good. Old is meritorious. Old is survival. Old means you didn’t die young

is ADHD a mental illness ?

a thread

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder - people with it are born with it and it cannot be altered because it's part of their brain structure and is seen on brain scans. ADHD is also linked to premature births and hypothyroidism during pregnancy, among other things

from the WHO website: "neurodevelopmental disorders are disabilities in the functioning of the brain that can affect behaviour, memory and/or ability to learn."

neurodevelopmental disorders are not caused by external/environmental factors. you cannot *develop* these conditions

mental illness is a general term for a health problem that significantly affects how someone feels/thinks/behaves. mental illnesses cause suffering to those who experience them, as well as often their loved ones. ADHD does not directly cause suffering.

neurodevelopmental disorders are not mental illnesses. ADHD however, does make it more likely for a person to experience mental illness. ADHD can cause dysfunction and stress, but more often than not this comes from lack of accommodation rather than the symptoms themselves.