Mental Health & Disability

An academic text for teachers cowritten with Mojdeh Bayat, Ph.D. This book follows the as-of-then latest neurobiological research on the effects of trauma and stress on the developing brain, and includes Bayat's novel Resilience-based Interaction Model (RIM), which combines behavioral and emotion-based theories of development with practical steps for teachers and parents—all of which centers the child and their needs.

The University of Chicago’s annual Scavenger Hunt (or “Scav”) is one of the most storied college traditions in America. Every year, teams of hundreds of competitors scramble over four days to complete roughly 350 challenges. The tasks range from moments of silliness to 1,000-mile road trips, and they call on participants to fully embrace the absurd.

We Made Uranium! shares the stories behind Scav, told by participants and judges from the hunt’s more than thirty-year history. This anthology includes my piece, "Item 229, 2013: The Final Feast."

In 1938, a man receives a thirty-three paged letter. It describes the history of Donald T., aged five years and one month, from his birth, to eating habits, to attitude. In 1943, the same man publishes a paper in the Pathology section of Nervous Child. He talks about eleven children, eight boys and three girls, all of them similar to Donald.

This is Leo Kanner, a name which will never fall on your lips but will bleed into mine, and our mother’s, and maybe even our father’s. This is Leo Kanner, the man who really names you.

See also:

• The Saturday Rumpus: Heirlooms

At the beginning of my fellowship at Bitch, I read an incredible piece by Kara Melton about the assumption of whiteness in virtual reality spaces. Since then, I’ve wondered about the assumption of ability in virtual reality and video games as a whole. How often are disabled characters featured? How often can you play a disabled character? And what does it mean if the industry is ignoring yet another marginalized group? (Despite the common misconception that most gamers are white teenage boys, adult women actually make up the largest group of gamers in the U.S., and a 2015 Pew Research Center study showed that Hispanic and Black people are just as likely as non-Hispanic white people to play games. And yet, both female characters and characters of color are vastly underrepresented in games.)

See also:

• Needles and Spins: Anti-Vaccine Propaganda is Dangerously Profitable
• Our Healthcare System Is Completely Unprepared for Long COVID

What is remarkable about so many games is how I can forget about my personal failings and the marginalized identities that define my interactions with the world. I don’t have to worry that people think I’m a girl instead of non-binary. I don’t have people erasing my queerness because I’m married to a cis man. No one ignores my Persian background and Muslim faith because none of those things matter when I’m trying to stop Daein from killing all laguz and taking over the continent. Only when something from my everyday life does come into my game—like fat-shaming, for instance—do I suddenly remember where—and who—I am.

See also:

• Mystic Messenger Trash: On Mental Illness, Self-Sacrifice, and "Casual Racism" in Yoosung's Route
• Mystic Messenger Trash: How Abuse Hides Itself as Love in Jumin's Route
• Mystic Messenger Trash: Rika Behind Story, Mental Health, and Villany

What I didn’t expect was the silence from our mutual friends. I waited for the texts and emails that never came. I waited for them to say that they had no idea things were that bad, that they couldn’t believe what had happened under their noses. I hoped that, now that they knew, they would stand up for me by coming back. Instead, pictures of him with our old friends kept going up, one by one, on social media.

It’s easier to look back and want to be the person I once was, because I know who that person is. That person was so deep in illness that it was all they knew. They weren’t responsible for themselves, in a way, because they were deeply responsible. But I also know how to take care of that person I once was, because that person became me. I got me to here—with help, of course, but nonetheless, I did it. And if I met myself again, the one who was literally crazy, I would know how to care for them.

See also the Happiness Hit series, on using the science of mental health to boost your mood

I can explain why: you didn’t think you were worthy of love. You hated yourself, your body, your personality, your passions and laugh and everything that made you the imitable Naseem. You hated that you weren’t the gentle breeze you were named after; you hated that you were a hurricane that couldn’t be stopped. You wanted to carve into your flesh and burn in there your worthlessness, that everyone around you deserved better, that if you weren’t living a life that was only for others, you were meant to die.