Healthcare for Argentina? Milei is destroying public welfare. That’s for other oligarchs. $40M in exchange of… Well, Milei is acting unhinged and won’t explain, but probably lands, water, lithium. Trump bought something, we just don’t know what yet.

And including CDS in the next DSM would help a lot. We need to identify people with the CDS profile as the things that work for them are (slightly) different from ADHD’s.

We are not the armchair philosophers of yesteryear.

Ironically, a big problem here is philosophical.

The autism spectrum was formed from reuniting different disorders and proposing a board neurodevelopmental category in which symptoms may vary widely from individual to individual. That was ontology informing nosology. Now we are seeking patterns again within this spectrum and finding a different number of them depending on which criteria we focus on. This is again a matter of abstract categorization, prioritizing some concepts over others, defining entities beforehand: philosophy again.

The latest study that was very popular found four categories considering age in which DSM-5 symptoms appear, and ‘cluster’ and severity of said symptoms. Those four categories still don’t explain the PDA profile or the giftedness comorbidity that seems to actually change the cognitive patterns of classic ASD such as the preference for concrete thinking and the black and white (polarized) thinking, probably because behavioral and cognitive patterns weren’t an important axis here.

Horribly said, the preliminary work in nosology is philosophical. I guess in all sciences. We often make our minds about what we are searching for before starting to empirically searching for it; and then the findings channel another series of scrambling concepts, updating hypothesis, etc.

Funnily enough, the philosophical weight only grows when the brain is part of the enigma (entire branches of philosophy dedicated to the “mind”, the brain, etc.). Armchair philosophers’ work again so that the field work is actually well designed/directed and meaningful in the ways we want it to be.

Let’s not reduce the role philosophy has in current times, please.

How about the 1-2% that indeed have a ‘biological’ disorder? This supported by scientific evidence and characterized not only by being responsive to medication but, most importantly, unresponsive to talk therapy and other therapeutic psychological approaches as per their main symptoms. These would be psychotic, manic, and some severe depressive states (and their manifestations: delusions, catatonia, hypergraphia, etc.).
While schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, being the two classic examples, might worsen because of the environment and of course are affected by lack of support among closed ones and other societal difficulties, the research suggests they’re highly genetic (BD is the most inheritable disorder today with ADHD, if you count it as a disorder) and biological. Give a stimulant to a euthymic patient and see how fast they get manic for weeks. That’s not psychological, that’s not a response to social problems. And yes, the genes might be triggered by stress (man-made or not), but the faulty biology gets a life of its own after that. The first psychotic episode might start after the stress of poverty; the rest might happen in a mansion. These are lifelong conditions that we only know how to keep at bay chemically, we don’t know how to get the genes or nervous system responses dormant again. The meme’s take is useful for the majority, but erases a vulnerable minority whose existence is not only real but needs not to be forgotten (especially after decades or centuries of fighting the “it’s demonic possession”, “it’s a family curse/God’s wrath/whatever”, " no such thing as madness", etc.).

No, I like reading and writing here, but I spend a lot of time watching short videos. It’s a constant bombardment of interesting facts (mixed with some news, memes, trends…); it’s stimulating.

Both the psychiatric medication and the mood fluctuations (in this case, from your depressive episode) can alter sleep and dreams. Also, if you’re AFAB, your monthly hormonal cycle can also alter your dreams, especially before menstruation.

He had shitty opinions, we know. I won’t follow them. I will have empathy and I will not celebrate his death. Still, I think the world’s population improved with one less hateful person around.

Colonization made strange things happen. Once, for example, Spain recruited indigenous warriors from Tlaxcala (Central Mexico, allies of theirs since their battles against the Mexicas/“Aztecs”) and went to the Philippines, and there they fought Japanese pirates and samurais, basically.

Accurate info here.

So… I’m not an expert on the brain, but I love to read about mental health, and I’ve learnt that the brain craves that level of stimulation when things aren’t right (outside, inside, or both). It may be an addiction, a cope for depression, hormonal imbalances, etc. Maybe many things at once. But I assure you the solution to boredom, the craves, the feeling of nothing being enough, and more, is not sex (not even relationships, although they might help when you’re in your way to recovery).

Seeking a good health (mental and physical) is all we can do to feel good at the individual level, honestly. All other paths (fame, power, sex, drugs…) are really traps, or that has been my experience and the conclusion I also reach from my readings. I know it’s not easy, not only emotionally but also on other aspects (money, finding the problems, finding solutions or treatments, etc.), but it’s a bet you can place outside the Kurt Cobain option. I really think it’s worth the tries (in plural, probably).

Intellectual snob.

Pseudo intellectual. Pseudo polymath. Pseudo erudite…

Advanced whatever will always lead to philosophy, and there are no definitive answers there or elsewhere. You can debate the meaning of a state of matter, of gender, of life, of number, etc. (That’s why there is philosophy of physics, biology, mathematics, chemistry…). So I don’t think that’s the point.

Yes, both sex and gender get complex, but the answer to conservatism isn’t to say that advanced science has it all figured out because that would be a lie. They’ll ask us to demonstrate ontological categories that we cannot demostrate through science. It might be true sometimes the: “you are conservative because you rely on basic science, and progressivism and other leftists ideas lie on advanced science”, but ultimately, the debate is open and we need to be careful not to bluff about science being on our side because science has its limits.

Philosophy is the final battleground, and in there we do have strong arguments, but still, I feel this “smarter than thou” attitude is not it.

Magnesium glycinate, +1. It saves my sleep…