Can there be Mental Health in the Workplace? A Modern Marxist Critique in 5 Minutes!

How to make the work place less detrimental for mental health? When invited to speak at the Legal Wolf's global event, I had a clear response to this: 1. Help people realize that it's not an individual weakness, but structural (so basically topple neoliberalism).2. Introduce a 4-day working week.3. Introduce a Universal Basic Income. Here … Continue reading Can there be Mental Health in the Workplace? A Modern Marxist Critique in 5 Minutes! →

To the suicidal kid and pellet gun victim from Kashmir

Trigger Warning: Torture, Terrorism, Police Violence, Suicide I honestly don't know how to name this blog post. For the past few days, I've been reading bits and pieces of a report by the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons, a loose organization based in Indian-occupied Kashmir. This particular report is about pellet guns used … Continue reading To the suicidal kid and pellet gun victim from Kashmir →

How Turtles All The Way Down Teaches Us Abnormal Psychology in Ways Textbooks Never Could

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
– William James

What I Have Learned About The World From Nine Years Of Pulling My Hair (Trichotillomania: A Series)

I suffer from a rather unknown mental illness called "trichotillomania" - what does that mean? Well, I am unable to control certain urges and pull out my own hair. This podcast is an attempt to ask some fundamental questions that have been bothering me: Why do I think people are disgusted by me? Why do I desperately try to hide my pulling? Why do I hate it when people tell me I can learn how to control my pulling? Why do I hope that there is some fundamental biological cause for my pulling? This podcast draws on various topics from anthropology and sociology, but at the same time tries to unpack them in ways that not just academics can understand.

Introducing: Trichotillomania (a series)

As part of my class Public Anthropology at the American University of Cairo, I am working to understand the mental disorder Trichotillomania and will make a podcast about the experience of living with it. Here, I want to introduce the illness and share the first part of the podcast proposal I submitted. I have altered … Continue reading Introducing: Trichotillomania (a series) →