Okay. A lot of people have trouble understanding a key term used to describe #mentalhealth:

'Intersectional'.

I figured it out thanks to people like Rajvi @PritiSridhar @mariwalahealth.

Today, I'll try to explain it using a scene from the "greatest show ever made".

Ready?

I dislike any term that reminds me of the literary theory classes from my university days (I'm looking at you, "poststructuralism").

So initially, I cringed a little whenever I heard the words "intersectional," "intersectionality" or "intersectionalities".

How wrong I was. +

Okay. Sorry, busy day. Back to Breaking Bad. Watch out for spoilers (as if like me, you too just started watching the biggest show on Netflix that cost $3million per episode to make).

The episode we're talking about is Season 2 Episode 3.

'Bit by a Dead Bee.' +

So, Walt is firmly in the crystal meth world by now. He is cooking meth like a pro to pay for his cancer treatment and leave $737,000 to cover for his family's needs after he's dead.

Shit happens and he and his partner get abducted by the drug lord Tuco.

They somehow escape.+

Walt's family has no idea that he is now Albuquerque city's finest meth manufacturer and are looking frantically for him. He figures he has to explain where he had disappeared, leaving behind a pregnant wife and a son with cerebral palsy.

He needs a story, an alibi. +

So he cooks one up.

First, he shows up naked in a supermarket.

When grilled by doctors, he says he had no idea how he got there. That he doesn't remember shit from the past couple of days.

Soon enough, he's given a "diagnosis":

Apparently, he had entered a "fugue state." +

Okay. What is a fugue state?

Well, it is a scary and super rare psychological condition in which people suddenly show up in weird places and have no idea how.

According to thisarticle in Psychology Today, they may also develop a "new identity".

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/conditions/dissociative-fugue-psychogenic-fugue +

The doctors can't discharge Walt from the hospital until they're sure this 'fugue state' is non-recurring.

What if he zones out while driving or something?

He's cornered into saying that he's had a lot on his mind lately.

So he is asked to go for psychiatric evaluation. +

Chavez, the psychiatrist, tells him ascertaining he won't "disassociate" again could be a long process. It could take days, weeks, or months.

Walter gets desperate.

"There was no fugue state," he says after confirming "patient confidentiality".

"I was just sick of home." +

So, after that long exposition, we now come to the part where Breaking Bad presents a masterclass on why #mentalhealth is intersectional. Pay attention.

So the psychiatrist is surprised to hear that Walt made up his mental condition.

"Why did you want to run away?" he asks.+

And that's when Walt breaks into the greatest client-to-shrink rant in TV history.

'Doctor, my wife is seven months pregnant with a baby we didn't intend.

My 15-year-old son has cerebral palsy.

I'm an extremely overqualified high-school chemistry teacher..." +

"When I can work, I make $43,700 a year.

I've watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable.

And within 18 months, I will be dead."

(At this point I really wanted to see the psychiatrist's face, pity they only show him from the back.) +

He then closes it out with:

"And you ask me why I ran?"

BOOM. +

What Walt isn't saying is, I may not be "mentally ill", but that doesn't mean my "mental health" is perfect.

I have cancer. A bad job. An unplanned baby coming. A feeling of worthlessness. (And I'm secretly a drug lord.)

See? THAT'S why mental health i called *INTERSECTIONAL*.+

Now, here's an educated white guy who doesn't meet the definition of 'disadvantaged' in any way. And he feels life's attacking him on all fronts.

Apply that Venn diagram to anyone at the bottom of the social privilege ladder.

Can such a person have sound "mental health"? +

This is why "intersectionality" is such a idea - the only way to truly see why mental health isn't about diagnosis or pills or therapy.

It's a package deal. Where on the sliding scale you are depends on *EVERYTHING*.

And none of it is controlled by your "serotonin" levels.+

Intersectionality is a political statement.

It helps individuals demand that society play its role in maintaining their sanity instead of saying, "It’s all in your head. Here, pop a Xanax."

Once you get the idea, you will always see everyone through an intersectional lense. +

... and not just as man, woman, trans, cis, LGBTQIA, white, black, wing, wing, MBA, arts, abled, disabled etc etc.

Yup. Complicated. As are humans.

Remember this next time you want to tell your friend who seems to have everything: Why the hell are *you* depressed?! +

The brain might play a role. Serotonin, dopamine, cortisol, oxytocin might play a role.

But more often than not, a person's longterm mental health comes down to that Venn diagram.

Which, by the way, isn't refined. See REFRAME, the @mariwalahealth journal, for a better version.+

That's it. Now you too can use that Venn diagram and analyse the people you know and "diagnose" their mental health. No, don't. That's a professionals job. But you can make educated assumptions.

Thanks for coming to my Breaking Bad review. I will now finish watching it.

<Fin>