Skip to main content

The Invisible People

Care is gatekept. Compassion is not available to everyone. It's reserved for people who can socialize normally. This is very difficult for normally-social people to believe.

There's a whole world of invisible people who have no connections to anyone and no way into the spaces that contain everything they need to be not just happy but alive. These spaces are controlled by the normally-social majority, who purport to see the world as mostly fair and to believe that every person in it is as capable as they are of getting help. Many invisible people have social disabilities and can't engage productively with anyone else. Others become victims of social systems that see their victimhood as impossible. 

I saw a YouTube comment that said, "Suicide is a serious issue. If you ever feel down, please reach out and talk about it to anyone around you." This advice presumes that people who are struggling with suicidal ideation necessarily have people to reach out to and can reach out to any of them at all and reliably get genuine care and productive help. In reality, many suicidal people are utterly alone. Some have around them only people who won't listen to them. While everyone fighting suicidal thoughts should definitely look for help, it's important to admit that many people who might consider helping are hopelessly and unabashedly selfish. It's common for those who need help to face resentment when they seek it.

Furthermore, mental health care structures are broken all over the world. Our societies, in general, encourage self-interest, insensitivity, and relentless competition. Care systems fail because they're built to remove the need for care rather than to meet it and because they're so preoccupied with deterring malingerers that they can't focus on people who genuinely need help. There is also in this the notion that people who want to defraud care systems don't need any kind of help, which bears reconsideration.

People fighting suicidal ideation often have nowhere to turn where they won't meet dismissal, derision, or incompetence. If dealing with thoughts of self harm were as simple as reaching out to a network of constant supporters, far fewer people would be as troubled as they are. The assumption that everyone has access to people who are caring and available reveals a misunderstanding that compounds the misery of everyone who's suffering. Many simply do not believe that an invisible population exists. This makes it so difficult for invisible people to find help that suicide begins to seem like the only option that confers any power to those who see not just their suffering but their very existence denied in the world around them.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Man Is Not Great: The Evolution of Anthropocentrism

Why do humans care whether their species is special? Why are they so invested in their specialness that they're uncomfortable with the idea that they aren't? Why is it a bitter pill to swallow that humans aren't uniquely important in the universe, that they aren't the intended end of evolution, and that their wondrous and diverse subjective experiences emerge from the same physical processes observable in "lower" animals? I think that the maladaptive human tendency to insist upon their specialness in the universe is an extension of an adaptive tendency to self-advocate in their tribes. Consider fear. The predisposition to turn around when you feel like something might be behind you is likely to save you when there really is something there. Most of the time, when you can't help but turn around on the dark basement steps, there's no threat. From an evolutionary perspective, it’s better to turn unnecessarily than to do nothing in a moment of danger. That...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gravity of Mattering

I used to care very much what people thought of me.  As a teenager I was desperate to integrate.  I didn't fit in and it drove me crazy.  The world seemed made to reject me, but I didn't see that society is not the world.  I invested in what people thought because I believed winning acceptance was the only path to happiness.  I couldn't have known then what I know now because I had barely been alive.  I hadn't existed long enough to see the world beyond society. I know now that people's opinions are ephemeral.  Good or bad, the thoughts anyone has had about me have been drops in the oceans of their lives.  I remember being made fun of, and when it was happening it was like an apocalypse.  From grade school to high school I was tormented by ridicule and rejection.  But that's over.  There's no resolution to seek now, no balm for the past.  Whether or not I should have been treated in any particular way is an infertile discussi...
2 comments
Read more

George Versus Lennie

People seem to believe that you can't have cognitive deficits if you don't seem stupid. The image many carry in their minds of a person with cognitive problems is an image of someone whose internal dysfunction necessarily finds clear outward manifestation in unusual physical proportions, motor skills, vocal quality, and speech patterns. Less objectively, it's an image of a cartoon idiot: Lennie from Of Mice and Men as depicted in Looney Tun es .  This is a suboptimal situation.  My autism involves some cognitive impairment. Because I'm intelligent and articulate, even paraprofessionals have trouble remembering or, in fact, believing that I'm not as able to apply my intellect as ordinary people are. I'm smart, I'm not Lennie, but I'm not George either. The dichotomy between those characters is the only way many people can understand the difference between neurotypical people and people with cognitive or neurodevelopmental disabilities. If I'm n...
Post a Comment
Read more