Could a Marvel product be not 100% realistic?
And four other mental health related things I think you should know about
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Talking about a Marvel tv series in two ways
So there’s a new superhero series arriving and it stars Oscar Isaac. He plays Moon Knight, which is not a cross between Sailor Moon and Ted Knight at all. No, it’s just a guy who has dissociative identity disorder and gets into a situation involving ancient Egyptian gods.
Like you do.
From USA Today:
It was important to Isaac that the series feels “experiential” for audience members and "quite true to the psychological horror of not knowing what's happening and the slow revelations of the truth," so that they have a better understanding of what having dissociative identity disorder is like.
“It's amazing that the brain has this survival mechanism, this way to cope,” Isaac explains. “At a very young age, if you're going through sustained horrible trauma and abuse, something that can happen in order for one to survive is the brain splits into an alternate personality that has no idea of what's happening. Otherwise, you die because it's just so awful. And that is its own incredible, kind of beautiful superpower.”
My charitable take:
Dissociative identity disorder is a real thing and any awareness raised about mental health is a good thing. Hey, at least they’re not calling it multiple personality disorder.
My more cynical take:
This is an incredible rare disorder and is so incredibly overrepresented in Hollywood already through countless movies and tv shows. Usually it’s an excuse to let an actor ham it up and save some money on your casting salaries.
My Oscar Isaac take:
I do like Oscar Isaac though.
Climate change is donking up mental health
The New York Times has a highly produced visual … journalistic … article … thing about people getting all messed up. It’s one of those deals where you scroll a lot and some pictures are fuzzy until they’re not and you wonder what the NYT is even trying to do with their life.
Some people grieve the loss of serene hiking trails that have been engulfed by wildfire smoke while others no longer find the same joy or release from nature. Some are seeking counseling. Others are harnessing their anxiety by protesting for change or working to slow the damage.
“This is becoming a No. 1 threat to mental health,” said Britt Wray, a Stanford University researcher and author of “Generation Dread,” a forthcoming book about grappling with climate distress. “It can make day-to-day life incredibly hard to go on.”
Psychologists and therapists say the distress of a changing climate can cause fleeting anxiety for some people but trigger much darker thoughts for others. In a 2020 survey, more than half of Americans reported feeling anxious about the climate’s impact on their mental health, and more than two-thirds said they were anxious about how climate change would affect the planet.
There are whales near Manhattan. See?
The World Nature Photography Awards are out.
First place, Urban Wildlife. I finally got the shot I wanted: a humpback's fluke with the downtown New York City skyline in the distance. As water-quality measures and conservation efforts have started to show real results over the past few years, humpback whales have become a more and more common sight in New York waters.
© Matthijs Noome / World Nature Photography Awards
Follow that link to a picture of some cheetahs crossing a river and having a hard time of it.
I was going to tell you about my appearance on My Unsung Hero but here’s just, you know what, here’s a tweet about it, it’s fine
Conversion therapy is cruel and it kills people
I would hope you already know that but now there are some numbers.
It’s no secret that conversion therapy, a pseudoscientific “therapy” that seeks to “cure” an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, is a deeply harmful practice. And now a new study has corroborated the harmful effects of this discredited practice, finding that young LGBTQ people subjected to this so-called therapy were more likely to face “serious” mental health issues. 47% of recipients experienced severe psychological distress (compared to 34% of LGBTQ people who did not undergo conversion therapy), 65% experienced depression (compared to 27%), 67% faced substance abuse (compared to 50%), and 58% attempted suicide (compared to 39%).