Stuff on schizo-

Distress and disability

Some suffer little distress but have high levels of disability and vice versa. Some suffer extremes of distress and disability. Others don't.

The assumption is psychopathology and disability go together as the same continuum of mental health but I don't think this is true. I think they need to be separated because in some cultures and settings high levels of psychopathology don't meet with high levels of disability. Bentall's criticisms also challenge the validity and reliability of the research which adds fuel to the idea of the separation between psychopathology and disability.

This createa a triple continua model but I think this is wrong. This is wrong because I disagree with psychopathology. It is meant to reduce disability but in practice doesn't. Many people still suffer disability and this is broader than the labelling system of psychopathology. The disability and its rectification is the important thing but seeing disability doesn't need psychiatric labels or diagnosis. It is the worse life many people live when it needn't be a worse life. This is the product of the determinants of social disability and equality discrimination.

I would love to see a disability rectifcation system which encompasses all disadvantage but it can not be medicalised. If it was then black skinned people will be turned white by doctors. A disability rectification system unites the fight for all equality if the definition of disability disregards psychopathology and just seeks to understand how anyone becomes disadvantaged, and resolve it such that equality discrimination no longer exists.

It is prejudice and discrimination which creates the need for a psychiatric system to define psychopathological labels in the first place. This is the root of The Great Confinement but why it had to happen - to deal with those outcast and disadvantaged by social prejudice and discrimination against different human types, types such as those labelled with dementia praecox or manic depression way back in the day.

Before the mentally ill there were black skinned people who suffered the inequities of 'civilised' society. Slavery ended but it took the black rights struggle to bring a modicum of equal treatment in the 20th century. Today black skinned people still have to survive disadvantage and psychiatric oppression in the UK and US, and other countries too. This creates worse life outcomes which could be seen as disability and may create traumas which express as the symptoms of the modern 'definition' (it varies so much in clinical practice that it can't be considered as a defined concept) of schizophrenia.

And don't even get me fucking started on the distress. Fuck me. The greatest challenge is solving distress, especially subjective distress. I don't think positivisitic scientific methods are ready to be applied to subjective self reported unwellness. Perhaps the people have the answer rather than the scientists because many scientists are pretty unhappy.

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