https://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/483855073/the-problem-with-the-solution
I've been listening to non-comedy podcasts for a few months, but this is the first one that's been relevant to this blog. So, exciting! I'm hopeful that as I find more disability-relevant podcasts, this will happen more often.
This podcast, Invisibilia, is about the invisible forces that shape culture: ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and emotions. I studied psychology in college, so no surprise I was interested in this particular podcast. The show tends to try to humanize its subject, showing different ways to look at a subject through the lens of true stories.
This particular episode is on mental illness, which you'll note tends to occur alongside autism due to the stresses of an unaccepting society, as well as biological and neural weirdnesses. There are a lot of causes of mental illness, and none are the person's own fault.
The going philosophy on mental illness is that it needs to be "fixed." This is because in many cases, the symptoms of mental illness are harmful or extremely unusual. And the show starts out by noting, in a humorous fashion, that it's the US mentality to find solutions to things.
As the episode goes on, though, it suggests a different idea for how to think about mental illness. It's the kind of philosophy that can be taken too far, but aligns very impressively with the general autistic self-advocacy opinion that people should accept, not shun, differences.
I don't want to spoil the episode too much, so give it a listen while you're doing chores or driving somewhere! I really enjoyed it, even getting teary-eyed near the end.
I've been listening to non-comedy podcasts for a few months, but this is the first one that's been relevant to this blog. So, exciting! I'm hopeful that as I find more disability-relevant podcasts, this will happen more often.
This podcast, Invisibilia, is about the invisible forces that shape culture: ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and emotions. I studied psychology in college, so no surprise I was interested in this particular podcast. The show tends to try to humanize its subject, showing different ways to look at a subject through the lens of true stories.
This particular episode is on mental illness, which you'll note tends to occur alongside autism due to the stresses of an unaccepting society, as well as biological and neural weirdnesses. There are a lot of causes of mental illness, and none are the person's own fault.
The going philosophy on mental illness is that it needs to be "fixed." This is because in many cases, the symptoms of mental illness are harmful or extremely unusual. And the show starts out by noting, in a humorous fashion, that it's the US mentality to find solutions to things.
As the episode goes on, though, it suggests a different idea for how to think about mental illness. It's the kind of philosophy that can be taken too far, but aligns very impressively with the general autistic self-advocacy opinion that people should accept, not shun, differences.
I don't want to spoil the episode too much, so give it a listen while you're doing chores or driving somewhere! I really enjoyed it, even getting teary-eyed near the end.
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