My Physicalmental Illness
Channel: vlogbrothers
Date: 2021-08-10

In which John discusses labyrinthitis, OCD, categories, the body in thought, and the body in pain.
TWO MAJOR NOTES:
1. Stigma is complicated. When it comes to stigma around mental illness, I've found this paper extremely helpful (I reread it often): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3248273/ One heavily stigmatized illness not mention in the video is HIV, and there has been a lot of research around the causes (and the consequences) of stigma w/r/t HIV; I recommend this overview: https://www.icrw.org/publications/common-at-its-core-hiv-related-stigma-across-contexts/ 

But in general, illness is stigmatized partly based on our ability to treat them/our level of understanding, partly based on who tends to be most affected by them, and partly based on what the illness does and which bodily systems it affects (like, colon diseases are stigmatized in a way that heart diseases aren't). All of this has real impacts on health and healthcare delivery. Consider, for instance, this famous study showing racial disparities in pain assessment and treatment recommendations: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4843483/)

2. This is largely coincidental, but I think it's interesting that it's possible to imagine a patient with OCD being treated with both the medications that were used to treat my labyrinthitis. Althought it is not widely administered, meclizine (which is primarily an anti-nausea medication; you may know it as dramamine or antivert) may have some ability to treat so-called "diminished gating" in patients with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3895242/), and diazapam (commonly known in the U.S. as valium) is often prescribed to treat severe anxiety and panic attacks. (With regular use, patients often become tolerant to diazapam and/or physically dependent upon it, so it is often--or should be, anyway--prescribed with constraint and careful monitoring.)

p.s. Thanks to Rosianna Halse Rojas for very helpful feedback on this video! http://youtube.com/rosianna

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