EBD Blog

In a New York Times article entitled “‘Mad Pride’ Fights a Stigma,” Gabrielle Glaser reports about efforts by individuals with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders to promote public understanding of their problems. Although I don’t usually cover adult issues on EBD Blog, I think this story merits mention.

Ms. Glaser leads with two cases:

IN the YouTube video, Liz Spikol is smiling and animated, the light glinting off her large hoop earrings. Deadpan, she holds up a diaper. It is not, she explains, a hygienic item for a giantess, but rather a prop to illustrate how much control people lose when they undergo electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, as she did 12 years ago.

In other videos and blog postings, Ms. Spikol, a 39-year-old writer in Philadelphia who has bipolar disorder, describes a period of psychosis so severe she jumped out of her mother’s car and ran away like a scared dog.

In lectures across the country, Elyn Saks, a law professor and associate dean at the University of Southern California, recounts the florid visions she has experienced during her lifelong battle with schizophrenia — dancing ashtrays, houses that spoke to her — and hospitalizations where she was strapped down with leather restraints and force-fed medications.

If, like me, you consider this sort of story worth reading, here’s a link to Ms. Glaser’s article.