YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I loved this episode! Loved the bits as much as the serious talk. Hope Paul has Todd back on to talk about his ADHD. Very interested in how it affected him and how he dealt with it on top of the OCD/Dyslexia, if at all.

This was one of the best episodes ever. Todd Glass and Paul are hilarious together. Todd is doing a great service explaining to people the power of words and how painful they can be. I just love him.

Todd's great, if there is one podcast where I wish I could sit in, it would be The Todd Glass Show. It looks like so much fun..

AnnaWall: That's exactly how I felt. So often I feel like my opinions are discounted because people feel like I'm being petty and oversensitive and "PC" (god how I hate that term) but the thing is the people who feel that way and say things like "just get thicker skin" are never the people who are on the life-or-death end of those words. It was great to hear Todd validate my opinions by talking about how much words affect the way we view the world and the way the world views us. It's especially great to hear that from a comics, because so many (hacky) comics relish in how 'un-PC' their humor is. And listen, I love uncomfortable humor, dark humor, humor that breaks taboos. I like humor with shock value that's about saying the most awful, unspeakable things. I'm all for jokes that are offensive in how they subvert the status quo or challenge people's complacency. But making jokes at oppressed groups' expense is the opposite of that. It's reinforcing the status quo. It's cowardly and lazy and I hate that people think it has anything to do with being a good comic.

"Dammit this pen isn't working!... I spent $700 on this pen..." Makes me laugh every time.

This was an incredible episode. I especially appreciated the conversation about language, when to use it, and how it can hurt people. I just wanted to add something that I've learned in my career working with people with "mental retardation". People who have diagnoses such as Down syndrome or other disorders who are sometimes referred to with the R-word, have suggested alternatives to describe their condition, such as "intellectual disability" or the more broad term "developmental disability". Paul and Todd still didn't use the R-word in an oppressive manner, I just choose to use an alternative phrase such as "intellectually disabled" or "developmentally disabled" instead of "mentally retarded" since I prefer to avoid the R-word entirely. Keep these in mind if you'd like to avoid it as well.