The obstructed path

A reflection on Autistic existence and madness

We are taught that to be “mentally ill” is to require intervention. The world is full of anti-stigma campaigns that situate our experience of our own mental health as being a fault of the individual, and not the environment that traumatised us. This individualist approach to madness encourages us to use psychiatric knowledge to understand ourselves through the pathology paradigm, exercising, socialising, and medicating our suffering away.