Short Reads Social: "Is Everyone Mentally Ill Now?" (May 14th)


Details
Sick of making small talk at networking events or meetups? Looking to have more deep conversations with strangers but don't have the time to commit to a book or philosophy club?
Introducing Short-Read Socials! It's the same as any other networking event/social, we provide a topic and some prompting questions to get people started. This month's topic is mental health conditions and how people define them. Are people too quick to self-diagnose? Has the internet empowered people in handling their mental health or made them pathologize normal feelings? What even counts as mental illness?
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How does it work?
- The event is pretty casual, where you can talk to anyone there with or without our prompt sheets.
- Open philosophical discussion, including for controversial topics, is welcome but be respectful :)
- If you've read/watched/heard anything related to the topic of the month, feel free to bring it in! Not necessarily physically, but you can if you want...
- If not, here are some thought-provoking reads to start you off (read as many or as few as you want):
- How anxiety became a catchall for every unpleasant emotion
- ‘Instagram therapy’ offers self-diagnoses, vocabulary and justifications, but it does not solve anything
- Ontology Of Psychiatric Conditions: Tradeoffs And Failures
- TikTok Gave Me Autism: The Politics of Self Diagnosis
- Inside the Battle to Define Mental Illness (click the '4' button to read the article, and if that doesn't work then enter this link [https://www.wired.com/2010/12/ff-dsmv/] into 12ft.io)
- Feel free to post other recommendations in the comments!
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Finally, Short Read Socials have a 'pay what you can' policy. They'll always be free to attend--but if you've been having a good time with us and want to pass along a couple of bucks to help cover Meetup platform costs for future events, there is a contribution bucket on the table that night and a Paypal link :)

Short Reads Social: "Is Everyone Mentally Ill Now?" (May 14th)