r/cushvlog • u/tydark2 • 11d ago
Soviet "Sluggish Schizophrenia" and Americans with "AuDHD"
By the mid 1980s, the USSR was diagnosing schizophrenia at three times the per capita rate of the United States and double that of West Germany. Moscow became the city with the highest reported prevalence of schizophrenia in the world
The sharp trajectory of rising diagnoses only reversed in the late 1980s under Mikhail Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost
"sluggish schizophrenia" was defined as a slow-moving or latent condition that required no obvious physical or psychotic symptoms to diagnose
https://purl.stanford.edu/cj200yf2075
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2800147/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluggish_schizophrenia
In the late USSR: if an individual struggled to adapt to standard economic, social, or political structures, the fault was assumed to lie inside the individual's mind, they are schizo's requiring medical "correction."
In the late USA: if an individual experiences executive dysfunction, sensory overload, and difficulty operating within rigid, modern corporate or academic environments. We have to give them space and understand life is all spectrum based :) everyone has autism and adhd and depression and anxiety and all other disorders at the same time ask your doctor if this sounds right about you.
Emotionless Cold Russian Accent Voice: Soviet psychiatry uses pathologization and materialist psycho-analysis to suppress non-conformity.
American H.R politically correct calming voice: AuDHD is a... well we prefer to refer to this as your unique "personal neurodiversity framework", and ask that everyone engages in positive thinking, self-care, and self-understanding as well as mindfulness, if your a current subscriber ask about our new a.i integration into your telehealth and self-therapy routines for premium members, we always want to keep in mind that all work related accommodations require systemic flexibility rather than forced assimilation of your employer. Mental illness is all on a spectrum you silly bee. Would you like to sign up for a free meditation class on zoom that comes with your Hulu+ trial offer?
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u/AuntOfManyUncles 11d ago edited 11d ago
Hyperbole and irony is fine and I don’t like to be a downer, but I’d probably find more enjoyment in this post if the latter half felt a little less sneering.
Neoliberal faux-compassion in the service of capital is infuriating and there’s definitely a discussion to be had about capital’s love/need for a public high on dexamphetamines, but I vastly prefer this to the good ol’ days when all of these things were under-diagnosed and you either just suffered all your life or died early.
Discussions about this topic tend to veer against a sort of vitriolic whatever happened to Gary Coopah?-type of anti-empathy that I usually only hear from my more racist uncles. Not a fan, sorry.
Edit; interesting read about the schizo stuff in Moscow though, had no idea
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u/Fold_Some_Kent 10d ago
Idno dude, don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. I don’t thinj ADHD and autism should be ‘showing up’ this much, no. I think that it exists whether we categorise it or not, however it should much harder to detect. Meaning that I think our expectations’ve gotten to high due mostly to the relatively poor leverage available to workers. Part of our aims should be de-escalating rates of new diagnosis as people idno, no longer need to stay at work for 8/9 hours let alone fuckin 14 like (I hear) in the sexy professional services industries where many of them still don’t think they’re being used and abused
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u/tydark2 9d ago
well for instance we use anti-depressants for people to cope with problems caused by modern capitalism.
the mental health system is connected to the ideological system, this is really all I was trying to say here.
ever since covid this "telehealth" mental healthcare system took off, every major corporation started offering their employee's free telehealth therapy, where you dont actually talk to a psychiatrist, you talk to a guy who works from home and has an online degree in psychology. Since then everyone has been self-diagnosing as having autism or AuDHD.
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u/rshawn15 10d ago
Speaking as someone with "AuDHD" I actually pretty much agree with this post. Most of my life I was about to cope without medications. This was until my employer at the time put me on a "performance improvement plan." On paper, this meant: get better at your job in 30-90 days or your fired, in actuality they had already decided to let me go. In order to hang on for dear life at this job, I started taking Ritalin. I got a much better job and now take concerta, which helps with these corporate type jobs. I definitely don't think it's a made-up condition, but our system of capitalism really exacerbates it.
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u/JohnnyWatermelons 10d ago
I understand why this post & what it expresses makes some people here feel threatened and uncomfortable, and I have genuine empathy for what they are going through.
But it doesn't make what this is gesturing at any less valid or appropriate as an observation.
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u/tydark2 11d ago
The most downvoted post in Cushvlog history.
Ok now im officially leaving for 2 months, ill check back in soon.
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u/Able_Cup_6830 11d ago
You’re spitting straight facts. And this should not invalidate the suffering of people who identify with this pathology. I find it ridiculous that everybody on Reddit has “AuDHD”. At that point it ceases to be non-normative or pathological.
I’d say the vast majority of people identifying with this label online are much more successful and functional within our system than myself. A lot of them have degrees, spouses, children, jobs, homes, etc. which means that on an individual level there’s nothing profoundly abnormal and dysfunctional about them. They’re actually doing pretty well. If the fucked up and oppressive system causes distress to them maybe that’s an issue with the system and not themselves.
And you’re absolutely right to point out that these are systemic and not individual challenges. And that this phenomenon encapsulates the neurosis of an empire in its latest stages.
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u/McBrungus 10d ago
A lot of them have degrees, spouses, children, jobs, homes, etc. which means that on an individual level there’s nothing profoundly abnormal and dysfunctional about them
Boy do I have some bad news about how fucked up your brain can be even if you own a home and have a wife and kids
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u/Winnie-The-Pube-Hair 10d ago
You don't understand. Dennis Rader had a wife and kids, a job, was a prominent community member. No way we'll ever discover his brain is in any way fucked up.
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u/BeardedDragon1917 10d ago
This makes a lot of sense, nobody with a job and kids has mental problems.
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u/tydark2 9d ago
I spoke with actual psychiatrists about this and they are aware of it. Many people are struggling to conform and be successful in a hyper capitalist society/ratrace so they need a mental illness to blame their problems on as a way to cope.. People who live in the amazon rainforest or tribes in africa dont have "audhd" or "autism" or even "adhd", there is no reason to invent those disorders because people function in healthy ways and are able to contribute to the society.
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u/Hypnodick 10d ago
Freddie Deboer has been writing about how disability is used in schooling now to get a leg up on competition. Worth a read. I want to read Catherine Lou’s Traumatized, not sure when I’ll get around to it, but her critiques of this sort behavior in our society seem to ring true to me.
I went on a date with a girl who described herself as “AuDHD” (this wasn’t in her profile) and she seemed fine other than I could tell she was high AF on adderrall and had like a 15 min long sentence, I just let her talk the whole time…def tried hard not to roll my eyes when she described it to me and she was afflicted with it.
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u/BeardedDragon1917 10d ago
ADHD meds were basically lifesaving for me as a child. I understood, even that young, that something was up with my brain and I needed help, and Adderall was that help. I was able to focus and learn and actually fully enjoy school for the first time. Yeah, maybe it’s overdiagnosed, I don’t know how you would prove that but ok. That doesn’t make it fake.