Stigmabase | North America

Is it a Mental Illness or a Mental Disorder ? - A few months ago, someone told me that autism was not a mental illness and that when people call it that, they are wrong. Today someone challenged me again that autism is not a  mental illness, but a mental disorder. Is having a mental illness such a bad thing? I have bipolar disorder and it definitely is not something I would wish on anyone.  However, I believe that mental illness is considered such an awful thing because of the stigma and because people are just not educated about it.

Your new iPhone's features include oppression, inequality and tax avoidance - Whatever marvels have been shoved into the new iPhones, the devices serve to increase the gulf between the super-rich and the rest of us, deny countries of rightful tax revenues, and oppress Chinese workers even while depriving Americans of high-paying jobs. Arrogant towards critics and governments, glutted with cash and yet plainly out of ideas, Apple is elegant shorthand for a redundant economic system. One of those attempted suicides, a 17 year old called Tian Yu, flung herself from the fourth floor of a factory dormitory and ended up paralysed from the waist down. Speaking later to academic researchers, she described her working conditions in remarkable testimony that I then covered for the Guardian. She was essentially a human battery hen, working over 12 hours a day, six days a week, swapped between day and night shifts and kept in an eight-person dorm room. When the historians of globalisati...

Is it possible to survive a 5 hour flight in a plane's wheel well?  - A 16-year-old California boy miraculously survived after reportedly stowing away in a plane’s wheel well during a 5 and a 1/2 hour flight from San Jose to Honolulu on Sunday. So how do you survive being a stowaway in a jumbo jet?

The belly dancer donning a beard to protest LGBT abuse in Egypt - On a chilly March night, Shrouk El-Attar is preparing for a belly dancing show at a London club by pulling on a shimmering blue skirt, fixing a sparkly bra - and sticking on a beard. The act, called "Dancing Queer", is a protest against the persecution of gay, lesbian and transgender people in El-Attar's ...

Gay adoption: It is 'natural order' for a man and a woman to have a ...  - Gay adoption: It is 'natural order' for a man and a woman to have a child , says Northern Ireland Health Minister Edwin Poots. "All of the people that were giving  ...

is having a mum and a dad the very best thing for a child ?  - So who are we to deny a child the right of having a mother or a father? ... For example, when measuring child health the Child Behaviour Checklist ...

Straight Christian who believed homosexuality was a sin lives a year as a gay man He started snooping around his mother's journal to find out how she really felt about having a homosexual son and got his answer. 'I'd rather have found out from a doctor that I had terminal cancer than have a gay son,' she'd written. To make the ...

Trump's Budget Is a Blueprint for a Banana Republic - The Trump Administration has officially unveiled its proposed budget to "Make America Great Again," and by all accounts it’s a total flop. Most news outlets are ignoring are the greater implications of what is proposed in the budget itself—the society America would become if the Trump budget became official. The specific elements of the proposal highlight severe cuts to programs that support the middle class and the poor, like the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, or food stamps), a move that is worthy of disdain on its own. However, the general sentiments of the proposal suggest a perspective and intention that is far more disturbing and could transform America's constitutional Republic into a de facto military junta. Is this Trump’s true vision for American greatness?

A simple test proved that a teen with stomach pain wasn't a hypochondriac after all  - Alana Broe had hoped college would mark a turning point in her health . Since third grade, Broe had battled a constellation of ailments that had kept ...

Church helps homeless man build a life : "Once homeless , Davis now lives in a home with people he didn't even know six months ago. He has a job, a car and a bedroom. When he pushes back the curtains, he sees a large, lovely pond behind a tree that towers over the house. ... العالم العربي (AR) | ASIA AFRICA | English | Las Américas

A new dimension of bullying : 1 out of 5 children will receive a sexual image in a text  - This past year a Cleveland County School student spoke at a Board of Education meeting about how she had been bullied so much, she almost ...

A bipartisan proposal to make a universal basic income a reality in America  - It would reduce poverty , but would be less politically vulnerable to cuts than ... Still, a UBI remains a pretty outlandish idea in the context of American  ...

An Army veteran undertakes a grueling challenge of generosity 26.2 miles at a time : The combination of charitable intentions and a more fitness-conscious society has resulted in a significant uptick in running participation. According to Running USA , 507000 runners finished a marathon in the US in 2010 - a record, and more than double ... العالم العربي (AR) | ASIA AFRICA | English | Las Américas

Jersey girls strike a pose in a book celebrating LGBT youth “Speaking OUT: Voices of Queer Youth” is a work in progress–a collection of photographs of LGBT youth and their personal messages, which she is compiling into a book. Here's the concept for the project. Smith photographs a queer youth in her studio, ...

How a psychopath is made - The Norwegian University of Science and Technology interviewed high-security prisoners and found many have a history of either total parental neglect, or rigidly controlling, authoritarian parents. A psychopath is a person who suffers from a chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior. They are defined by their lack of empathy and have a tendency to manipulate people without any guilt. The startling research found that all criminal psychopaths studied also had a history of grotesque physical and/or psychological abuse during childhood.

Sandy Rios Calls LGBTQ Relationships A 'Dangerous' And 'Sordid Business' - Anti-LGBT activist Sandy Rios of the American Family Association responded to LGBTQ Pride celebrations across the country on Monday by calling the lives of gay men the “most sordid business” and castigating church leaders who have accepted homosexuality because gay people are “really losing their opportunity to shake loose of it.” Rios claimed that the true nature of LGBTQ relationships is “so misunderstood” due to the “cleaned-up,” positive representations of LGBTQ couples on “HGTV, as though they’re a married couple, the same as a heterosexual couple, and that is just not true.” She then adamantly asserted that “sex between two men is not the same as sex between a man and a woman. You know, the process that God has created is a physical thing that physically completes one person with another, it is the way we are constructed, and anything other than that does not do that.”

Fuel poverty forcing many to live a life of candlelight, cold and early nights For Julian Rutter, finding himself in fuel poverty has been a great shock. A 44-year-old water engineer used to a salary of £45000 a year, his energy bills soared when he was diagnosed out of the blue with a rare form of bowel cancer. ...

Giving LGBTQ students a say in choosing a director for the LGBT Resource Center is essential - Syracuse University is holding public forums this week in its search for a new director of the LGBT Resource Center, rightfully offering LGBTQ community members a seat at the table on a decision that will influence student life at SU. Student support offices — especially those that back marginalized ...

Fate dealt a wicked hand': One police leader's triumph over trauma and depression - Whenever Alan Clarke stepped in to run a major police operation, a sense of calm accompanied him. His thinking was always clear. He was composed when deciding how to make sure 1 million people celebrating New Year's Eve in the Sydney CBD would get home safely, even in the face of a growing terrorism threat. He was controlled and level-headed when trying to keep a lid on tensions that threatened to spark a repeat of the violent 2012 Hyde Park riot.

Is Donald Trump truly crazy?: Hepburn - As the long U.S. presidential election unfolded, I marvelled at Donald Trump’s bizarre and at times seemingly unhinged approach to campaigning. Trump was unpredictable, vulgar, volatile, nasty, petty and thin-skinned. His supporters knew he was a liar, narcissist, a possible misogynist and racist, xenophobic and a raging egotist. They didn’t care. They voted for him anyway.  It was a crazy ride, for sure. Now, I’m convinced he’s just crazy. Some disability advocates will likely criticize me for calling Trump crazy. They will rightly note that mental illness is a serious health issue that should not be taken lightly or trivialized. But the evidence is growing that Trump is losing touch with reality, with his childlike actions and aberrant behaviour prompting more and more concerned mental health professionals to speak up. So worried are these experts about Trump that they are ignoring the so-called Goldwater Rule...