My twitter and facebook feeds are lighting up: if you need help, call 1-800-273-8255 (The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline). Reach out—you’d be amazed how many people have struggled too. And, in time, get (professional) help—it helps. That last bit should come with an asterix. I’ve been struck lately by the narratives I’ve read—from this piece… Continue reading Getting Help
My students are anxious, and they’re not making it up. A meta-analysis of surveys found that one-third of college students met criteria for a mood disorder, with higher rates among women, first generation college students, and racial minorities. Since many of my students are all three, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that a half-dozen… Continue reading TA (Teaching Anxiety)
“Can you remember what you felt like when you walked through that door?” “No,” I blubber back. “You said you were feeling okay. It was just twenty minutes ago.” “I’m not okay,” I insist, through tears. “I’m not going to be okay.” It hadn’t been an easy day. I had a total meltdown over the… Continue reading Out of Sense, Out of Mind
8:00 a.m. – Breakfast 8:45 a.m. – Community Meeting 10:30 a.m. – Snack 11:00 a.m. – Group Therapy 11:45 a.m. – Lunch 1:00 p.m. – Visiting 2:00 p.m. – Activity Group 3:00 p.m. – Snack 4:30 p.m. – Walk (if approved by insurance and doctor) 5:45 p.m. – Dinner 7:00 p.m. – Visiting 8:30 p.m.… Continue reading Impatient Inpatient
“He’s trying to figure out if he’s high or just psychotic,” I explain. I’m listening as a doctor a few feet down the hallway tells a middle aged man, “We’re worried that you’re hearing and seeing things that aren’t there, so you’re going to need to stay for a little bit.” I’m with a friend… Continue reading Auto-Ethnography
Perspective for those who observe mental illness, but for me, as a subject, this tree bore only dry and tasteless fruit. . . I have a chemical imbalance; I really didn’t feel those things. I have a chemical imbalance; I didn’t really experience those things. I have a chemical imbalance; I didn’t really think those… Continue reading Planes, Brains, and the Unexplained
The months tick upwards. I tried to write this as four months, rewrite it at five, post it at six. I wish I could say it was because I wanted to say everything perfectly, but it’s not. Life overtakes us, and promises we make glibly to ourselves—“I’ll think of her everyday”—are forgotten fast. She always… Continue reading You Are Here
Did you know that going on extremely long vacations and then forgetting about them used to be a socially legitimate—if not exactly socially acceptable—way to go crazy? Maybe. It’s certainly not an original discovery of mine: it has come from reading Ian Hacking’s brilliant Mad Travelers, which explores the cultural niche, formed from anxiety about… Continue reading Freudian Shifts
Perhaps because the novelty—by which I mean an alcohol-accentuated tincture of horror and awe—has worn off, I’m not coming away from my fifth reunion with the same crazed list of stories as I had after, say, my Freshman year. There were no drunken alumni saving me from arrest at the hands of Mohawk-profiling P-safe officers;… Continue reading Going back was the best of times, going back was the worst of times
A few weeks ago, I spilled my coffee at the breakfast table three days in a row. Someone suggested that maybe I was guzzling too much caffeine, and I replied that, no, I’ve been on an unhealthy-grad-student level of coffee consumption for some time. Curious, though, I went off for a few days, but it… Continue reading The Normal One
Alex V. Barnard - Sociology 