/lit/ - Literature

>>19294248
>Western ideas did not simply obscure the understanding of anorexia in Hong Kong; they also may have changed the expression of the illness itself. As the general public and the region’s mental-health professionals came to understand the American diagnosis of anorexia, the presentation of the illness in Lee’s patient population appeared to transform into the more virulent American standard. Lee once saw two or three anorexic patients a year; by the end of the 1990s he was seeing that many new cases each month. That increase sparked another series of media reports. “Children as Young as 10 Starving Themselves as Eating Ailments Rise,” announced a headline in one daily newspaper. By the late 1990s, Lee’s studies reported that between 3 and 10 percent of young women in Hong Kong showed disordered eating behavior. In contrast to Lee’s earlier patients, these women most often cited fat phobia as the single most important reason for their self-starvation. By 2007 about 90 percent of the anorexics Lee treated reported fat phobia. New patients appeared to be increasingly conforming their experience of anorexia to the Western version of the disease.

A few weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled "Teen Girls Are Developing Tics. Doctors Say TikTok Could Be a Factor." Mainstream media and the normiesphere is aware of this. "Fake" disorders isn't something only discussed on Mongolian basket weaving forums... The young women typically have pre-existing mental health issues (anxiety and depression) and are algorithmically funneled into watching large numbers of these videos. They can be treated without medication, but treatment involves recognizing that this is a psychogenic illness and developing mental techniques for combating it.

Rapid-onset gender dysphoria is also a thing... But Littman got cancelled for suggesting that some might start feeling like they're trans because of social pressure rather than due to something innate.

But is there a way of telling whose mental illnesses are real and whose are not?

Baudrillard, far from being an expert in psychology, nevertheless comes to mind:
>Simulating is not pretending: "Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littré). Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact... Is the simulator sick or not, given that he produces "true" symptoms?