A Mental Disease by Any Other Name - Issue 58: Self
▻http://nautil.us/issue/58/self/a-mental-disease-by-any-other-name-rp
It starts without warning—or rather, the warnings are there, but your ability to detect them exists only in hindsight. First you’re sitting in the car with your son, then he tells you: “I cannot find my old self again.” You think, well, teenagers say dramatic stuff like this all the time. Then he’s refusing to do his homework, he’s writing suicidal messages on the wall in black magic marker, he’s trying to cut himself with a razor blade. You sit down with him; you two have a long talk. A week later, he runs home from a nighttime gathering at his friend’s apartment, he’s bursting through the front door, shouting about how his friends are trying to kill him. He spends the night crouching in his mother’s old room, clutching a stuffed animal to his chest. He’s 17 years old at this point, and you (...)