Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #biopsychosocial, aggregated by home.social.
Pop-therapy speak is problematic because it dilutes the “epistemic authority” and therefore efficacy of actual-therapy speech 👇
#therapyspeak #pop #diagnosis #transpersonal #psychology #mentalhealth #narratives #narcisissm #gaslighting #biopsychosocial #epistemology #philosophy #culture #bypassing
which I appreciate – as someone who tends to flagrantly over-indulge in pop-therapy speech –because it is essentially in the same category as over/mis-diagnosis, 1/n 🧵
頭痛醫頭也要醫心？政大楊啟正談「腦震盪」的臨床神經心理學
精選轉載 2026-01-06 16:00:00 CST許多腦震盪患者的臨床表現，遠遠超出輕微的腦部損傷所能解釋：從偶發的劇烈頭暈、頭痛，到記憶力減退、反應變遲鈍，某些患者連情緒和性格都變了，出現憂鬱、焦慮、失眠等情況。 這些現象不禁使人好奇「腦震盪會不會還有更多因素在作怪？」
A newer more succinct version of yesterday’s cartoon. #ME #Disability #Psychiatry #Biopsychosocial @meassociation.org.uk @longcovidsupport.bsky.social #Justice4ME #Plan4ME #HumanRights @ashleydaltonmp.bsky.social @decodemestudy.bsky.social
A (Satirical) Field Guide to Conducting Biopsychosocial Research in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME)
By David Tuller, DrPH
A reader from Belgium sent me the following (satirical) paper she’d written for the “Journal of Entrenched Paradigms.” I found it entertaining, well-written, and on-target, and figured others would as well. It offers a sharp assessment of some of the favorite methodological strategies of members of the CBT/GET ideological brigades. I am posting it here with her permission.
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Field Guide > J Entrenched Paradigms 2025 Aug 25; 8888(Perpetual Issue) doi: 10.1234/j.entpar2025.8888 Epub 2025 Sep
Eminence-Based Medicine: A Field Guide to Conducting Biopsychosocial Research in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (CFS/ME)
ME/CFS patient 1 ; ChatGPT 2
Affiliations
PMID: 00X99999 PMCID: PMC99X00000 DOI: 10.1234/j.entpar2025.8888 ABSTRACT
This field guide provides aspiring biopsychosocial (BPS) researchers with practical instructions for conducting successful trials in CFS/ME. Firstly, we outline the foundational principles of the BPS model, whose cutting-edge theoretical elegance is rivalled only by its enduring empirical evasiveness. Secondly, drawing on the exemplar PACE trial, we present essential and time-honoured techniques for achieving consistently publishable results regardless of empirical validity. The manual emphasises methodological creativity, rhetorical ambiguity, and the strategic application of BPS prestige.
Keywords: biopsychosocial model; doctrinal resilience; academic prestige; canonical trials; methodological creativity; mental gymnastics
INTRODUCTION
In the modern research environment, “evidence-based medicine” can prove unhelpfully constraining. Fortunately, the BPS tradition offers a convenient alternative: eminence-based medicine. Within this elevated sphere, the BPS model was developed to illuminate diseases long asserted by its proponents to be of psychogenic provenance, most notably CFS/ME. Beyond CFS/ME, the model may be freely extended to a wide range of medically unexplained syndromes, including irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and any other condition that resists immediate biomedical explanation.
Despite its inherent theoretical challenges, the BPS model continues to dominate discourse in relation to Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS). Its enduring authority is best understood not as a reflection of scientific validity, but as the product of rhetorical ingenuity and psychological strategy. This paper identifies and categorises the primary methods by which the model sustains its doctrines in the absence of robust evidentiary support, and in apparent contradiction to empirical findings. Observing its prevalence in contemporary scientific literature, one might reasonably conclude that the documented persistence inherently validates its claims.
This updated guide serves as a manual for BPS researchers intent on producing influential findings in CFS/ME. Each section presents a proven technique, carefully refined through decades of practice, that enables the BPS researcher to transform fragile hypotheses into durable dogma.
METHODS
A systematic narrative review was conducted across three primary data sources:
1. published BPS literature (n = too many), selected primarily for prominence and visibility 2. public communication of BPS proponents when challenged by inconvenient data
3. patient testimony, merely anecdotal but occasionally useful for illustrative purposes
Data were coded thematically, emphasising examples that highlighted adaptive interpretive strategies. The approach prioritises interpretive richness over reductive quantification, in keeping with established methodological precedent.
DISCUSSION
The BPS model demonstrates remarkable resilience, not as a scientific framework, but as a distinguished socioprofessional construct. The overwhelming success of this theoretically elusive model can be attributed less to empirical confirmation than to its adaptability, prestige, and capacity for discursive self-preservation. In this discussion, we restate the foundational principles of the model to ensure its continued relevance in research endeavours, policy-making, and health insurance systems.
As a paradigmatic case, the PACE trial remains the canonical exemplar of the BPS approach. Even in the face of extensive post-publication critique and methodological debunking, it continues to anchor narrative-driven BPS research. Widely heralded as a landmark study, it illustrates the extent to which methodological improvisation can be reframed as scientific innovation. By simultaneously broadening entry criteria, redefining outcome thresholds, and reclassifying modest symptom improvement as recovery, PACE demonstrated that BPS-oriented clinical trials need not be constrained by burdensome concerns such as internal consistency and statistical integrity.
Building on this template, we outline a set of highly effective research techniques by which BPS researchers may consistently generate favourable findings in the face of unfavourable data. True to the pioneering methodological style of PACE, these techniques include the selective deployment of diagnostic criteria, the artful manipulation of outcome measures, and the judicious reinterpretation of patient non-response. Collectively, such methods guarantee the transformation of contested hypotheses into policy-ready conclusions, securing academic relevance and professional authority.
BPS MODEL FOR CFS/ME: FOUNDATIONAL PRINCIPLES
Ignore official nomenclature
It has long been observed that patients with CFS/ME exhibit behaviour conforming to established diagnoses such as Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) with suspicious regularity. To avoid such diagnostic rigidity, we recommend the liberal use of ambiguous or obsolete terms including hysteria, neurasthenia, and chronic fatigue. Where imagination permits, consider inventing entirely new syndromes of your own design. The strategic deployment of multiple labels introduces productive confusion and enhances the interpretive flexibility of subsequent research.
Ignore evolving diagnostic criteria
We suggest the use of the most outdated diagnostic criteria, as these definitions best serve the interests of BPS research. Outdated criteria are sufficiently vague to capture a wide population, yet precise enough to exclude the bothersome specificity of biomedical definitions. Flexible diagnostic frameworks offer maximal scope for extrapolation, ensuring that your findings apply not only to CFS/ME, but to the human condition itself.
Contemporary criteria definitions should be avoided at all costs, as they risk selecting individuals with genuine biomedical pathology. Including such patients may introduce unhelpful biological noise and compromise the purity of psychological interpretation.
Ignore current biomedical research
Given that the majority of published work supports the established BPS paradigm, it is clear that alternative approaches such as biomedical research are either unnecessary or misguided. Critics in biomedical disciplines who question the efficacy of conventional BPS protocols are likely biased, or simply unfamiliar with the subtle art of eminence-based medicine.
It follows that strict adherence to the traditional framework guarantees both internal and external validity. Any contradictory evidence must be strategically ignored to maintain the integrity, prestige, and narrative coherence of the BPS model. Should inconvenient biomedical findings arise, simply downplay them—true mastery of BPS research lies in the artful avoidance of empirical discomfort.
Ignore institutional guidelines
Major international health institutions have updated their guidelines on Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) to marginalise or exclude BPS approaches, despite decades of authoritative consensus and the occasional inconvenient study. Not to worry: these guidelines may be safely ignored—they are based on a highly selective reading of a voluminous body of BPS research, whose magical results were perplexingly overlooked.
It is absolutely critical that BPS interventions continue to be delivered to CFS/ME patients in order to preserve the appearance of therapeutic momentum and maintain academic prestige. Moreover, as we have already declared CFS/ME to be a psychogenic illness, patient recovery is contingent upon adherence to eminence-based protocols. For these reasons, any official recommendations that contradict established BPS practice may be selectively interpreted or re-framed to maintain BPS authority.
On the Projection Principle
Psychological flaws ascribed to CFS/ME patients—denial, rigid beliefs, catastrophising—are, conveniently, mirrored within the BPS research community itself. Dutifully ignore any acknowledgement of these parallels. Instead, employ projection as a strategic tool to keep the integrity of the BPS narrative intact. This principle, though rarely acknowledged, remains essential to the durability of BPS orthodoxy.
BPS RESEARCH IN CFS/ME: BEST PRACTICE GUIDE
Methods (optional)
Strict adherence to pre-specified protocols is unnecessary and may, in fact, obstruct creativity. Instead, adopt a flexible, exploratory mindset in which the data are allowed to guide outcome thresholds, recovery definitions, and the occasional post-hoc rationale.
Optimise recruitment criteria
Employ the broadest possible case definitions to maximise participant numbers. A larger sample ensures a more impressive publication, regardless of diagnostic precision. Exclude no one; all patients are welcome!
Design study for success
BPS research employs design features that safeguard positive outcomes regardless of actual data. Define broad, subjective measures that can accommodate multiple interpretations. Include objective measures only if they can be conveniently ignored in reporting. Ensuring that participants simultaneously meet entry criteria (illness) and recovery thresholds will prove miraculous for your final conclusions.
Redefine outcome measures
Outcome measures are a moving target. We recommend adjusting metrics mid-study to align with desired outcomes. Remember to describe such adjustments as pre-specified in subsequent publications.
Prevent therapeutic failure
While non-response to therapy is highly unlikely, it is typically attributed to patient non- compliance, misunderstanding, or psychological rigidity. Patient education may clarify the necessity of diligent engagement and simultaneously boost patient empowerment.
Celebrate participant dropout
Patients who leave the study prematurely may be confidently assumed to have recovered so rapidly that continued participation is unnecessary. As recovery timelines naturally vary, some participants will demonstrate wellness earlier than others. No follow-up is required.
Cherry-pick outcome data
Statistical rigour is optional if it conflicts with narrative continuity. Amplify positive findings (however fragile) and minimise contradictory data (however abundant). The phrase “the evidence is mixed” should be liberally applied to protect the overarching narrative.
Curate evidence
Ensure that published conclusions consistently align with the expected storyline. Contradictory data should be footnoted as anomalous or requiring further exploration. Shifting primary outcomes, revising definitions, and adjusting statistical methods is encouraged—continuous improvement is the hallmark of BPS science.
Ethical Approval
Ethical review is deemed unnecessary due to the entirely non-interventional nature of BPS- oriented clinical trials.
Current limitations and future research
The therapeutic potential of current BPS interventions is truly limitless. Future research should focus on expanding the range of established disease entities, integrating more ambiguous diagnostic labels, and further exploring patient psychology as both intervention target and explanatory framework.
CONCLUSION
The biopsychosocial model heralds a refreshing and innovative holistic medical paradigm, unparalleled in human history for its resilience and rhetorical sophistication. The BPS model of CFS/ME has persisted for decades despite accumulating evidence undermining its central claims. While the BPS framework may lack empirical robustness, the strategic application of adaptive methodologies ensures its continued influence. Recognition of these strategies is essential for distinguishing genuine scientific debate from disciplined paradigm maintenance.
The durability of the PACE trial exemplifies the efficacy of these approaches, as its methods remain a benchmark for flexible research design. Preliminary evidence suggests that acknowledgment of error within the BPS community is exceedingly unlikely, further reinforcing the stability of the field. Adherence to the principles and guidelines in this manual is recommended to prevent total methodological collapse.
Eminence-based medicine demonstrates that entrenched models remain superior to experimental innovation. Future research should prioritise replication and refinement of these paradigms rather than pursuing untested hypotheses. Any acknowledgment of BPS controversies should be framed as a minor interpretive challenge rather than a refutation of the overarching model, and any argument to the contrary is either misinformed or irrelevant to the forward march of scientific progress.
Declaration of Interests
Professional, financial and ideological conflicts of interest are extensive, but remain conceptually irrelevant to the conclusions presented here.
Funding
Funding consisted of a modest allocation of grants, most of which were productively applied. The remainder was unfortunately expended on biomedical research, some of which inconveniently produced results.
Acknowledgements
The authors solemnly acknowledge the suffering of CFS/ME patients and remain committed to providing the most evidence-free care possible. To this end, they choose to graciously overlook that much of their work has been thoroughly debunked by the international scientific community. In the interest of maintaining disciplinary continuity, this paper will proceed to publication in the most prestigious journal. The peer review process is conducted entirely at the discretion of the authors and their closest colleagues, ensuring swift publication and the immediate, unquestioning adoption of BPS methods.
Author Contributions
The lead author conceived, designed, and fabricated the manuscript. ChatGPT contributed substantially with rhetorical flourish and stylistic panache. Credit is due to BPS researchers, whose inexhaustible imagination informed this work. Both authors approved the final version, confident that it meets the highest standards of BPS scholarship.
REFERENCES
1. All prior works by these authors, in chronological or reverse chronological order, depending on which better supports current conclusions.
2. Any conference abstract, poster, and footnote ever authored by these authors; all are deemed peer-reviewed.
3. All future publications citing this manuscript are considered part of the evidence base.
Disclaimer
This article is a work of satire and is not intended to be interpreted as a genuine scientific publication. Readers seeking information on health and medicine are encouraged to consult reliable sources such as PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.
If you find this too much to read click on +Alt for a description of the cartoon about a forthcoming comic strip #ME #LongCovid #Biopsychosocial @meassociation.org.uk @longcovidsupport.bsky.social @chronicillness.bsky.social @nhsengland.bsky.social @nhsengland.bsky.social @bmauk.bsky.social
Oxford Scholars Blame Biomedical Research Hegemony for Fibromyalgia “Chronicity Rhetoric”
By David Tuller, DrPH
Social Science & Medicine (SSM) is a prominent interdisciplinary journal that publishes social science research related to health. A recently published SSM paper is called “Chronicity rhetoric in health and welfare systems inhibits patient recovery: a qualitative, ethnographic study of fibromyalgia care.” Part of a larger, multi-partner, Oxford-based project called Patient-centred Care for Fibromyalgia: New pathway Design, or PACFiND, the new paper is based on 59 interviews with health care providers as well as field notes from observation of service provision. The providers interviewed are from a range of specialties, but they share one characteristic: They offer services and interventions categorized as “biopsychosocial.”
In this context, “biopsychosocial” includes not just standard psycho-behavioral treatments like cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and graded exercise therapy (GET)—the treatments recommended in the fraudulent PACE trial for ME/CFS–but also so-called “mind-body” programs. These approaches tend to toss together, in various combinations, elements of meditation, relaxation exercises, positive affirmations, neurolinguistics programming, cognitive behavior therapy, health coaching, and other modalities. Well-known examples include programs like the Lightning Process, the Gupta Program, Dynamic Neural Retraining System, and the Chrysalis Effect, the latter mentioned specifically in the paper.
The three main authors are from Oxford University; the corresponding author is a health services researcher and the senior author is a medical sociologist. (Perhaps they are colleagues of Professor Michael Sharpe, lead PACE investigator and Oxford’s self-styled “harassment” victim?) They reveal their view of the insidious nature of “chronicity rhetoric” from the start. “We focus on representations of fibromyalgia as a ‘chronic condition,’ which infiltrate and disrupt healing work,” the paper declares.
Basically, the argument goes something like this: Any approach to fibromyalgia focused on biopsychosocial “healing” is good. The rigid evidentiary demands of biomedical research’s “hegemonic position” disadvantage biopsychosocial healers, who are unfairly barred from making claims about “recovery” based solely on anecdotal accounts. Advocacy organizations are grifters who hype the “chronicity rhetoric” for fundraising purposes. The welfare benefits system further reinforces the need for fibromyalgia to be constructed as “chronic.” And so on.
This is the premise grounding the paper:
“New service models for people with fibromyalgia recognise that people are complex and integrated body-minds that are responsive to, and interactive with, their social/material environments. In other words, “everyone’s disease is the product of the individual history of exposures [including a wide range of psychosocial stressors], superimposed on their underlying genetic susceptibilities”. Psychosocial pressures get “under the skin” and need addressing to mitigate symptoms. Neurobiological concepts of Central Sensitisation and Central Sensitivity Syndrome (CSS) are important to such models, providing mechanistic explanations of fibromyalgia, and opportunities for treatments that involve desensitising (or “dampening down”) a person’s nervous system.”
Note the presumption here that any new service model presenting itself as holistic or involving “body-minds” should essentially be accepted as valid and legitimate. The same goes for the “neurobiological concepts” that offer “mechanistic explanations” and “opportunities for treatment.” The paper includes no discussion of actual evidence for these theoretical constructs and the interventions based on them beyond the pronouncements and opinions of the interviewees.
Qualitative research fulfills important functions, but being able to reach definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of interventions is not among them. So it seems rash for the authors to take at face value that whatever someone might frame as biopsychosocial “healing work” is in fact “healing work.” They have no credible grounds for making broad judgments about whether “healing work” is taking place.
All they can do repeat is anecdotal accounts. While interesting and informative, such accounts do not constitute proof of effectiveness. And in this paper, the anecdotal accounts are from biopsychosocial healers, who have an obvious interest in framing their work as successful.
Which brings us to the Chrysalis Effect.
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Advertising regulators ban Chrysalis Effect “recovery” claims
In the paper, the authors write:
“A major obstacle faced by practitioners working in biopsychosocial services is that they lack established, ‘evidence-based’ ways of demonstrating that they work (as established through gold standard clinical trials)…We illustrate how the hegemonic position of EBM [evidence-based medicine] within Biomedical Research helps to construct fibromyalgia as a chronic condition with detrimental consequences for new service development.”
From this viewpoint, the issue is not that fibromyalgia is—in reality–a chronic condition. The issue is that this perception of fibromyalgia is, I guess, a sort of illusion, even a deception, since the disease is only “constructed” as a chronic condition by larger outside forces. (Reminds me of the famous line spoken by the voluptuously illustrated cartoon character Jessica Rabbit, the wife of the eponymous character in the 1988 comedy “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”: “I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.”)
The paper’s example involves the Chrysalis Effect, a mind-body intervention with a history of making extravagant boasts about “recovery” from complex illnesses like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS. As a result, the UK ME Association complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), an independent regulatory body. In a 2023 decision, the ASA barred the Chrysalis Effect and its practitioners from repeating such statements.
The paper’s stance is that clinical trials are not appropriate for assessing the benefits of biopsychosocial treatments. And the authors appear to blame the lack of documented benefit in such trials on deficiencies in the patients, not the interventions. As they write:
“The ASA’s determination (that there was not enough trial evidence to support claims about recovery) is hooked into a dominant biomedical infrastructure, in which clinical trial evidence is the gold standard. Within these governing systems, biopsychosocial (and often locally-developed) services find it difficult to demonstrate benefit (i.e., that healing work works)…The benefits of supporting this kind of work through individualised and therapeutic coaching is difficult to prove. Clinical trials cannot account for, or control for, such diverse social challenges or the individual neurobiology that may be involved in addressing them. In practice, trials of biopsychosocial models of care may not demonstrate improved outcomes, not because the interventions (care practices) involved are unfounded (non-evidence-based), but because patients do not have the social or psychological resources to maximise benefit from them.”
I guess one could refer to the standard approach to evidence as biomedical hegemony. From my perspective, it’s just a matter of requesting some sort of convincing data to support assertions of “recovery” rather than hyping anything labeled as “biopsychosocial.”
The paper also includes a slam at advocacy organizations, including the ME Association, for adhering to the biomedical paradigm and its accompanying “chronicity rhetoric.” This position is framed as a big grift:
“In order to secure donations, patient charities and affiliated researchers emphasise that conditions such as fibromyalgia have no cure. Donations fund (almost exclusively) pharmaceutical research so that ‘one day we hope we might discover a diagnostic marker and effective treatments’ (The ME Association, 2024). It therefore makes sense for such organisations to assert that ‘getting better’ or ‘recovering’ from fibromyalgia is rare, and that chronicity is the more probable trajectory.”
Contrast that, I guess, with an approach designed to convince desperately ill people to pursue anything that promotes “recovery” and is called “holistic” or said to relate to “body-minds.” The ME Association issued a robust response to these accusations.
The paper makes similar points about the structures involved with the provision of welfare benefits. I have more sympathy for some of the concerns raised in this section. It is not a new complaint that disability programs can be so inflexible in their demands and requirements that they undermine genuine efforts by patients to return to work. In the US, for example, such restrictions have long been a problem for people with HIV/AIDS and other chronic illnesses on long-term disability.
So yes, there is a larger question about the best way to organize these systems. But that is very different from blaming the provision of benefits for generating purportedly harmful “chronicity rhetoric.”
Putting that aside, however, the major flaw in the paper’s entire argument is this–the true source of any “chronicity rhetoric” involving fibromyalgia is reality, not the coercive demands of biomedical research and the welfare benefits system. The investigators themselves note that “chronicity does accurately reflect the findings of published epidemiological research and the experience of many people with the condition.” Ok, then.
But that view, they continue, “is also challenged by practitioners and patients attempting to harness (new) understandings of neurobiology, with emancipatory goals of improvement and/or recovery…Practitioners and patients argue from practical experience that improvement and/or recovery are possible with the right support and individual resources to make changes.”
That might be. And who could possibly be opposed to “emancipatory goals of improvement and/or recovery”? But—luckily for the safety and well-being of the general public—such claims still generally require more convincing proof than glowing testimonials about “healing” on websites and in qualitative studies.
The Body's Drama: Emotions, Allergies, and the Wild Ride of Responses
#Allergies #Emotions #ImmuneSystem #CognitiveTherapy #Histamine #Biopsychosocial #HealthJourney #EmotionalBalance #AllergyAwareness #Asthma #FoodAllergies #Wellness #MentalHealth #ChronicIllness #SelfCare #HealthEducation
Urban Minds & Green Remedies: The Connection Between Environment and Mental Health
#EnvironmentalNeuroscience #MentalHealthMatters #UrbanLiving #NatureHealing #IndoorPlants #GreenRemedies #Psychology #SocialDrift #SocialCausation #MentalWellness #Biopsychosocial #Mindfulness #IntergenerationalMobility #PlantTherapy #NatureInspiration #WellbeingJourney
In Which We Answer Some Questions
Here are some questions posed to us for inclusion in an allied organization’s newsletter. We cover community art, direct giving, research, ableism, and more.
Table of Contents
The artwork on your website is amazing, where does it come from?
Our art comes from our community. We practice constructionism and actively engage in constructing things in the world. Practicing our art makes our souls grow.
Featured Art
“Floralis (Flourite Spheralite)” by Adriel Jeremiah Wool is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 About the art: Floralis (Flourite Spheralite)Description: A bursting kaleidoscopic geometrical form with 4 sides of symmetry pointing angularly to each of the four corners of a square shaped canvas against a dark grey textured wall. There is a small red shaped plus at the very center, surrounded by orangish-peach and periwinkle butterfly like shapes at 45 degree angles from each other aligned to the mid center going up and also to the sides. The butterfly shapes are encased in a deeper red flower like shape before a region of light blue geometric textures. Near the corners are feathered white, dark grey-purple, burgundy and orange feather like edges.
About the artist: Adriel Jeremiah WoolOur featured artist is Adriel Jeremiah Wool.
Adriel Jeremiah is an computer programmer with a deep background in origami and folding. This artwork is an extension of a world view involving folding; often involving higher dimensional spaces. Many of these designs contain the mathematical magic of the transcendental numbers of nature, and all of them are the extension of the provisions of space itself; to be both physically folded, and conceptually folded, circularily and across many levels of expression.Shop Art by Adriel
His spectacular new piece derives its color stream from a fluorite crystal that has a spheralite imperfection / inclusion (the red, purple, and orange).
AJ describes what these fractal pieces are in this accordion. Their construction will broaden your perspective on perspective.My artwork is digital photography in a world where objects exist in more than 3 dimensions, and where no known means of physical representation has yet been discovered to exist.
AJ is a regular contributor at Stimpunks. He kindly licenses his work as free cultural work. He helps us tell our stories with his art, music, photography, videos, audio engineering, poetry, prose, and lived experience.
AJ has a gallery in Ketchum, Idaho. Drop by if you’re around. He tries to make it a welcoming third place.
About the process: My artwork is digital photography in a world where objects exist in more than 3 dimensions, and where no known means of physical representation has yet been discovered to exist.Stimpunks is gently debugging society.
The charity protects, helps and comforts individuals, while pointing out library-level flaws in some of the concepts that end up harming those individuals.
This help is profoundly wonderful, morally and functionally coherent to great need, and as true as a pure circle in its cause-and-effect form.
The artist hopes to convey this: that the universe is given forth folded and unfolded. Although explicit understanding helps, it is too cumbersome, and should only provide refinement to something already greater that exists.
That greater thing is what was given to the artist first by the practice of origami. An enlivening of the intuitive mind, experience with a universe of many dimensions, and the promise of creation revealed when one folds a flat square into the likeness of a higher dimensional thing. That inspiration reaches a young mind in a powerful way.
The artist wants the viewer to see proof of what their intuitive mind already knows is true, the universe is a multidimensional phenomenon and the ability to understand its nature already exists within us each.The artist hopes the viewer will be inspired to seek the understanding of freedoms available to the individual inspired by the exposure to artistic expressions, and of a nature of dimensionality unimaginably greater than the object presented here.
A time has come to again look at changes in the way technology allows us to see the world and experience it. First was the human eye, with a lens made of flesh. Later humans developed a replacement for the eye but in the form and fashion of the lens of the eye; this time it was made of glass doped with metals to enhance its control of light. To see, the human eye has a retina filled with responsive cells which look for contrast and color.
Technology has allowed us to create a replacement for the retina called a CCD with metals which respond to color and report those values to a microchip which converts them to bits and bytes for storage. I will present to you the same extension of sight by explaining how the images you will see come into existence.
In my artwork the landscape is created via the execution of a seed of a formula, allowed to grow and flourish in a mathematical set of steps. In a similar way, crystals grow underground in a cave over many millennia but they follow a seed of a universal pattern related to their atomic structure and facilitated by the chemical nature of their environments. In our regular world, we have 3 directions we can move, forward-back, up-down and left-right, but these crystals can move in another set of directions allowed by the universe and mathematics. They are, and must be considered elements of nature, and it follows that the methods used to convey them must be considered legitimate tools of expression.
A crystal starts at a virtual geometric position, a virtual center, then it mathematically and procedurally grows outward and inward according to a seed formula. However it exists in a dark world devoid of light and color; it is only a cloud of form. As an artist, I create an eye with a lens which follows the same mathematical processes as the lens of a camera and the eye itself. I situate the virtual eye to be gazing upon the crystal as I create sources of light which will illuminate the crystal and reflect light back to the lens.
As an artist I imbue color to the crystal, I imbue reflectivity, I imbue refractability, and I imbue density or transparency exactly towards the same purpose as a painter would do, in combining pigmented oils on canvas with a brush in his or her hand.
My artwork is digital photography in a world where objects exist in more than 3 dimensions, and where no known means of physical representation has yet been discovered to exist.
Adriel Jeremiah Wool
It’s gonna be an art party.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZRFkJsGNjI
We’re gonna make, make something great for
All of us to see and appreciate
It’s gonna be an art party
It’s gonna be an art party
Come on over it’s time to start
It’s a great big party where we make and share art
Art Party (feat. Portugal. The Man & Paul Williams) – YouTube
What is your latest research on?
Monotropism, neuroqueer learning spaces, and Cavendish Space.
What does direct support look like for your organization? The website mentions a lot about mutual aid?
Direct support includes, first and foremost, giving people money with no strings attached. Folks know what they need and how best to spend the money. We also help people navigate our systems by filling forms and making calls for them. We provide warm lines and peer respite. We practice library economies, competency networks, sharing spoons, and support swapping.
“Mutuality is a feeling, an action, and a relationship based on shared benefit between individuals and groups in a society. It materialises in many, many ways and is arguably a universal constant of our human nature. We rely on mutuality to survive and progress through our day to day life.” (Andrewism)
“When systems of power fail, it is mutuality—neighbours helping neighbours—that holds communities together.” (Andrewism)
How can individuals reading get involved in mutual aid in their communities?
Start with pod mapping.
Source: Mutual Aid 101 – Google Slides
What are some wins you want to share with the community at large?
Our Map of Monotropic Experiences has been widely shared and incorporated into care settings and training.
What are some barriers you want the community at large to know about regarding ableism?
We live in an age of mass behaviorism. Behaviorism such as ABA and PBS are rife in education and healthcare settings. “Behaviorism is a dehumanizing mechanism of learning that reduces human beings to simple inputs and outputs. There is an ever-growing body of research suggesting that behaviorism is not only harmful to how we learn, but is also oppressive, ableist, and racist.” (Human Restoration Project)
Behaviorist education is ableist education. Behaviorist healthcare is ableist healthcare.
How can we best support Stimpunks.org?
How can Non-Disabled People show up better? And love better?
We exist as friction. Load-share the burden of existing as friction.
I love how activist research is also about transformative action. Can you speak more to this?
“three characteristics that delineate activist research from other types of research:”
(1) combination of knowledge production and transformative action;
(2) systematic multi-level collaboration; and
(3) challenges to power.
(Denisha Jones)
A hallmark of good research is that it embraces epistemic justice and rejects scientism.
Another hallmark of good research is naming the systems of power. If you’re not naming the systems of power in your research, you’re missing a vital component.
The ideas of community, interdependence, and the political really spoke to me, can you speak more on this?
In the past, the disability rights movement focused on independence, including it as one of the pillars of the ADA. Disability Justice moves away from independence framing, because independence is a myth.
“I am fighting for an interdependence that embraces need and tells the truth: no one does it on their own and the myth of independence is just that, a myth.” (Mia Mingus)
“Access intimacy is interdependence in action.” (Mia Mingus)
“It is time to celebrate our interdependence!” (Jorn Bettin)
“We recognize that there is no justice that neglects disability.” (Philosophy – Stimpunks Foundation)
Working at my org I really believe this and feel that everyone who works here also believes this. We cannot neglect disability in our policy and conversations and our care. If you have anything to add to this.
There is no path to justice that does not involve direct confrontation with ableism and inaccessibility. To neglect disability is to neglect two of the major forces of injustice.
Ableism is at the root of all -isms.
“Ableism is what makes all other “isms” effective.
White supremacy is the goal, ableism is the toolkit.” (Imani Barbarin)
“…so much of what disability actually is, is just humanity; and so much of what ableism is, is a humanity heist.” “Ableism enables all forms of inequity and hampers all liberation efforts.” (Talila A. Lewis)
Disabled and neurodivergent people are always edge cases, and edge cases are stress cases.
We choose the margin, because design is tested at the edges.
“Living as we did on the edge we developed a particular way of seeing reality. We looked both from the outside in and from the inside out. We focused our attention on the centre as well as on the margin. We understood both.” (bell hooks)
“No one knows best the motion of the ocean than the fish that must fight the current to swim upstream.” “By focusing on the parts of the system that are most complex and where the people living it are the most vulnerable we understand the system best.” (Tressie McMillan Cottom)
I really like these ideas: Community is resistance. Asking for help. Showing up to give help. Collaboration.
I think if we’re going to have a future we need to embrace and act in these ideas. How would someone start if they are new to these ideas and new to community engagement?
Find people with which you share a concern or passion. You can do this via the pod mapping described above.
“Communities of Practice are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Wenger-Trayner, E. & Wenger-Trayner, B. 2015)
“Through free association, people will find those of mutual interests in every sphere of life to form groups on the basis of their affinity.” (Andrewism)
#ableism #accessIntimacy #accessibility #activistResearch #affinityGroups #art #behaviorism #biopsychosocial #care #cavendishSpace #community #competencyNetwork #constructionism #criticalWellness #directSupport #disabilityJustice #edgeCases #edges #education #epistemicInjustice #equity #forcedIntimacy #framing #identityFirst #interdependence #libraryEconomy #monotropism #mutualAid #mutuality #neuroqueerLearningSpaces #pathologyParadigm #peerRespite #podMapping #power #scientism #sharingSpoons #supportSwapping #warmLines #wellness
By David Tuller, DrPH
October is a crowdfunding month at University of California, Berkeley. If you’d like to support my work, you can make a donation to the university (tax-deductible for US taxpayers) here.
English actress Jennie Jacques is known for her roles in the BBC’s Desperate Romantics, a 2009 series about the Pre-Raphaelites, a police procedural called WPC 56, which ran from 2013 to 2014, and Vikings, a History Channel offering from 2015 to 2019. In 2021, she discussed having developed ME/CFS in a profile that appeared in The Times, in which she reported being “a shadow of my former self physically.” (The author of the article, Sean O’Neill, is the father of Maeve Boothby O’Neill, whose death of complications from ME/CFS has been widely covered in the British media.)
Although Jacques’ acting career has since been on hold, she has dedicated herself to ME/CFS advocacy. In particular, she has posted a series of interviews on her youtube channel. Last week, she hosted Guardian columnist George Monbiot and me to discuss the incredible mess created by the CBT/GET ideological brigades with their decades of disastrous and sometimes fraudulent research. (As I have repeatedly explained, I am not accusing anyone of “fraud” in the legal sense. I’m not a lawyer and so I have no public opinion to share on such matters. As a writer, however, I am using “fraudulent” in its meaning of “deceptive” or “misleading”–the research equivalent of a Potemkin village.)
I was really pleased to be asked to participate in this conversation. We covered a lot of territory. And yes, I did manage to point out that this cabal of investigators has engaged for decades in one big “circle jerk.” (For those unfamiliar with the figurative meaning of this term, it is, according to this slang dictionary, a “group of people who are ‘getting themselves off’ in the echo chamber of their own opinions or activities.)
Here’s the interview.
Recognised by #WHO since 1969 as a #DiseaseOfTheNervousSystem:
Despite efforts of the #BioPsychoSocial brigade to have it reclassified, it remains categorised as a neurological illness.
#pwME #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis #MECFS #CFS #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #PVFS #PostViralFatigueSyndrome #ELCI #PostViralDisorder
The causes of mental health issues go far deeper than chemistry.
We need to shift from a medical model that purely looks at medical and individual issues and towards a biopsychosocial model that really takes into account not only our biology, but how the environment and systemic issues shape mental health.
#mentalhealth #biopsychosocial #mentalwellness #environmentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness
@DocMCohen sorry this just ticks me off. #Naturopaths keep making this claim as if it’s something special they do.
This is the #BioPsychoSocial approach that _all_ #FamilyPhysicians practice.
“Their approach is to look at the whole person. So not just their physical aspects, but mental, emotional, social, environmental (factors)," [O’Reilly] said.
Loneliness worse than smoking, alcoholism, obesity; study suggests primary care clinicians can offer solutions
https://www.regenstrief.org/article/clinicians-can-offer-loneliness-solutions/
#science #health #mentalhealth #neuroscience #psychology #biopsychosocial #stress #depression #lonliness
An exploration of victim blaming in ‘medically unexplained symptoms’: Neoliberalism and the need to justify the self, group and the system - Jo Hunt.
Only abstract free:
https://rb.gy/ar8bg
In this article, Hunt argues that "Narratives within mainstream psy disciplines around ‘medically unexplained symptoms’ (MUS), as constructed through (bio)psychosocial theorising, have been charged with promoting victim blaming."
🧵
'Media silence on the politics driving 'one of the biggest medical scandals of the 21st century'
by
Joanna Hunt
------
Tom:
There are a few slightly "difficult" words in this but I think it should be understandable for people who, say, finished high school/secondary education or equivalent. My impression was it gets a bit easier to read as it goes along
#psychobabble @CFS #biopsychosocial #MyalgicEncephalomyelitis #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #MEcfs #CFS #PwME
1/
Great points about what a reasonable, non-Strawmanning view of the mainstream #psychiatric conceptualization of mental health looks like - I remember in my psychology course the #biopsychosocial model was taken as received wisdom like 20 years ago already. Very much the same for #addiction and misrepresenting #Leshner's paper on the brain disease model, which very very explicitly included psychosocial factors, the ignorance of which annoys me no end.
The #ICD-11 includes a new #chronicpain section. #AntoniaBarke et al. introduce new #pain diagnoses that are now based on the #biopsychosocial model and highly relevant for #clinical #psychologists.
#KirstinGreavesLord et al. present innovations of the #ICD11 in the field of #AutismSpectrumDisorder. The psychological approach provides additional viewpoints from #biopsychosocial models and the #neurodiversity perspective to the medical model of #ASD.
I want to start a conversation about the relationship between #biopsychosocial factors, #information pathways, and perceptual experience.
Also, I need to clear my white board.
Let me know what you think, ask for clarification, send help, etc.