Some vulnerable groups survive by embracing each other, such as sexual minorities forming the LGBT community to try to reduce discrimination. Uremia patients can also band together to survive in factories that provide dialysis services. And some regions have labor unions and victim groups. But do people with mental disorders, personality disorders, etc., huddle together for warmth?
There used to be large-scale huddling, but the reason for huddling was to oppose psychiatry. This was in the 1960s, when there were many inhumane treatments (such as lobotomy and electroshock), and Soviet mental hospitals arbitrarily diagnosed political dissidents as schizophrenic. Various events made the Western public full of doubts about psychiatry, so there were anti-psychiatry marches and other activities.
The potential results of this activity, in addition to removing homosexuality from DSM-II and using the more neutral “gender dysphoria” to replace the past, which may have contained some stigmatization, “gender identity disorder.” But this has not changed much for communities with depression, dependent personality disorder, etc. Now, apart from online communities, there may be no huddling.
Since then, people with mental disorders no longer gather on a large scale in the name of “resistance”, but express themselves in a more personalized and marginalized way – such as the Problem Children Cafe (問題児メイド喫茶). The store manager claims that in order to improve the lives and psychology of vulnerable groups, the recruitment criteria are: emotional instability (メンヘラ), mines, self-harm and drug abuse problem girls. However, in the first week of opening, many employees were absent from work, and then some employees dripped blood into the drinks (the store manager then fired the employees who violated the rules). Fortunately, this cafe has persisted until now.
However, there are also complete failures. I saw someone sign several dropouts with mental illnesses before, planning to become Vtubers, but they soon lost contact or committed suicide. (I can’t find the original text, the above is the general idea)
Perhaps the stigmatization is serious, and I also tend to think that this is a disease, so I cannot have the enthusiasm like the LGBT community and easily hold various pride parades. The activities held by a few confident people are very subtle. The name of the parade is called “Mad Pride“, its influence is limited, and it mainly covers groups such as schizophrenia.
P.S.: Although there are online communities, you also need to be careful. For example, in the Reddit depression community, people often share suicide plans, last words, etc. … Rather than huddling together for warmth, it may be more like chronic suicide. Maybe it’s not that I don’t want to huddle together, but I can’t even hug myself.
P.S. 2: Many of the materials for the Problem Children Cafe come from Cha Ji’s video program “Theme Restaurant That Only Recruits Problem Children!? All the employees are Yandere and Landmine Girls, and they collectively disappeared 6 days after opening!“.