My review of the Doctor Who finale is up at TV.com!

There was a totally normal, sexual, badass, fun female character who also happened to be overweight in a few episodes of The New Girl. Huge progress, guys!

The final episode of Fetch Quest went up today! Go watch!

Where am I, hormonally, if this video of a man recreating his interpretive dance to Landslide 10 years later made me cry?

Girls are distracting boys with their normal outfits. Sheesh.

This puppy has the hiccups, and it’s very cute.

Let’s first talk about this DSM. Here’s how it got started, way back in 1952: a group of psychiatrists got together and talked about the things they saw in the patients they were treating. They noticed similarities, so they hashed it out and came up with diagnoses (and really, disorders), based on the symptoms they saw in their clients. Then they put them in a book. That book has changed significantly over time, but the criteria for mental illness continues to be based on the behaviors you see a person doing, and what they report to you.

This has always been problematic for a few reasons-

1) Even psychiatrists have a hard time being objective about the behaviors they see in their clients- very concrete behaviors to count, MRIs, watching dopamine levels- all are better than your opinions on how people seem unhappy, or how they say they’re unhappy.

2) They normed pretty much every diagnosis on white men, so if you don’t experience depression like a white man but you are depressed, you may be SOL. I have a real soapbox about how African-American men, to me, often experience depression differently than white men. What I have seen as depression is labeled as schizophrenia, and then the men are drugged up within an inch of their lives with tranquilizers when they are actually just depressed.

3) It’s a bit of putting the cart before the horse. They saw these symptoms and decided they were related and called them _____, so if you have these same symptoms, you are also _____. It doesn’t address etiology or context. A  person who lives in a hot, rat-infested house with ten other people is going to have so many other emotions- rational emotions- occurring on top of whatever depression and anxiety they’re genetically feeling, but none of that is addressed with our current system. There’s a spot in the diagnosis paperwork where you can list “psychosocial stressors”, but never does that actually affect diagnosis. Usually it’s just a list you look at and go “well no shit you’re depressed”.

4) Some patients, especially teenagers, know exactly what professionals are looking for and will fake themselves “crazy” for so long that they eventually lose themselves in it.

From NIMH director Thomas Insel:

“While DSM has been described as a ‘Bible’ for the field, it is, at best, a dictionary, creating a set of labels and defining each.” “The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been “reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in the same ways. The weakness is its lack of validity. ”Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure.”

Now, let me tell you from a lowly talk therapist’s perspective: as it was not my job to prescribe psychotropics that would change brain chemistry, but rather to help a person learn coping skills for their own symptoms that make them uncomfortable, so for me, diagnosis was never that important. I worked hard (and I’m no saint- it was sometimes difficult to do when I had a massive case load), to see all my clients as individuals, rather than diagnoses. I saw the DSM, and diagnoses, as slight guideposts, but more importantly, as the way that my clients’ treatment was paid for by insurance. So I learned to work it the best I could. The DSM is not perfect, never has been, but it’s all we have currently.

So what does NIMH want to use instead? They have put together a project called the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC), where they are looking to diagnose disorders based on concrete biological changes alongside behavioral changes. Their aim is to combine clinical observation with genetics and neuroscience to get a better picture of what’s actually going on inside and outside.

This is a long range project, NIMH says, but in the mean time, they aren’t paying for any more research that would bolster the DSM. The goals feel a bit lofty to me at this point, as I have worked in some backwoods tiny mental health clinics that don’t have copy machines, let alone MRIs, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.

RDoC could have huge implications for medication, but I would like to think that it won’t change the job of a talk therapist, who is always just supposed to put together a toolbox to use for each person in front of them.

Prince doesn’t talk about Minnesota’s recent legalization of gay marriage, because Prince.

Changes in Doctor Who’s newest companion Clara, from Neil Gaiman’s mouth!

Plus size model Jennie Runk talks about why her job is important.

Lest you forget Madonna’s… Madonna power, she posed for an Instagram of herself with a vacuum cleaner, and sales of that specific type of vacuum have skyrocketed.

These students have been mapping where hate speech on Twitter exists in America. Yeah, it’s a restricted range of the people who are actually able to be online and know about Twitter, but it’s still fascinating.

Oh hey look, the HBO pilot Kumail was in got picked up to series! Created by Mike Judge!

New Indoor Kids, with Anders Holm of Workaholics!

Monterey Jill, because ladies be fat.

My review of Saturday’s Doctor Who at TV.com!

Bloodwood tree. Badass.

On the real, this is the best damned thing I’ve ever seen, and if I can get this to happen to me, I can die happy .

The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail is putting on a show on a special night and at a special place in order to benefit the Cancer Support Community, and guess what? Because you’re a fan of the show, you can get in for cheaper than everyone else!

What: The Meltdown with Jonah and Kumail, featuring Andy Kindler, Nick Swardson, and a special guest!

When: Saturday, May 18th. Event starts at 7pm, our show starts around 8:30pm. 

Where: The Museum of Flying, 3100 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405

How much: $100 gets you free food, free drinks, The Meltdown, and the knowledge that you’re contributing to a good cause! (This is a crazy discount.)

So come join us in Santa Monica! To get these special discounted tickets, you must call Jennifer at 310-314-2589 to reserve. There are only 50 tickets available at this price!

For Screen Crush, I wrote a thing about movies I’d love to see adapted into video games that will never happen.

I have become obsessed with this YouTube Trends Map. It updates regularly and shows what people in different cities across the US are watching the most. AND YOU CAN LOOK AT GENDER AND AGE GROUPS TOO!

I wrote this for HuffPo about five things that can help you get through a divorce.

After 19 months, Allie Brosh is back. Thank god.

New Indoor Kids up today! Dominic Dierkes is with us to talk game mascots!

An amazing post about bad TV actors from my former Vulture editor Willa Paskin!

Kids check email/Instagram/Facebook during studies about how they study, because they cannot even go 15 minutes without multitasking. WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE.

Here’s a link to my Tumblr, How to Disappear Completely. Go follow it! I’m more active there these days!

The Disney Princessification of Disney movie heroines.

I was interviewed over Google Docs over a period of a couple of weeks by this dude, and it was fun! Go read the result!

Elizabeth Smart speaks out against abstinence-only sex education, where analogies are made that sex makes you a chewed up, used piece of chewing gum. Boys aren’t used up after they chew one piece of gum, but the girls, who are the gum, are wasted and useless. Horrible analogy.

Madonna, some dude, and Frank Ocean at the Met Gala, which was punk themed, and yes, I still feel weird about it.

A new thing I wrote for ElizabethBanks.com, and it’s about pre-date stalking!

An amazing post at The Militant Baker of things no one will tell fat girls. Really funny and good stuff.

Vh1 is making a TLC biopic because someone needed to.

Doctor Who review for you from me! At TV.com!

All this week (and in the month or so beforehand) I’ve been the Director of the first ever comedy festival on Twitter, for Comedy Central! Here’s a great piece about it in the New York Times!

George RR Martin, rather than finishing the Song of Ice and Fire books, is making this bullshit Tyrion quote book.

The Meltdown (and yours truly) were featured in The Hollywood Reporter‘s annual comedy issue, as one of the top places to see standup in LA! Yay!

(And yes, they did get the day wrong. Sigh. That’s Hollywood!)

New Indoor Kids up today! We have the guys from Unfinished Swan on to discuss indie games, and we also talk gaming news, TV, games we’re playing and more!

Jason Collins came out as gay today! Go read all about it!

My review of Doctor Who is up at TV.com!

I was interviewed for SPARK, an organization hellbent on fighting the sexualization of girls in the media.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working to put together the first ever comedy festival that takes place entirely on Twitter, alongside Caroline Creaghead, Twitter, and Comedy Central. And it starts today! Enjoy it!