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About s.e. smith

s.e. smith is a recalcitrant, grumpy person with disabilities who enjoys riling people up, talking about language, tearing apart poor science reporting, and chasing cats around the house with squeaky mice in hand. Ou personal website can be found at this ain't livin'. View all posts by s.e. smith →

I recently came across a Reuters story on a University of Essex study discussing the impact of spending time outside on mental health. ‘Five minutes in the green can boost self esteem,’ the title says. Now, this is actually a study supported by my own anecdata: When I go outside, I do indeed experience a mood improvement, and I know a lot of other folks who feel the same way. So this post isn’t about picking this study apart.

It’s about looking at the framing of the study, because that’s what I think is interesting.

What the study showed is that spending five minutes in a green area, especially if it has water, can have mental health benefits for people, although young folks and people with mental illness experienced the most significant changes. And the way I’m seeing the study reported, the burden is being placed solely on the individual. You need to go outside. You need to spend more time in green spaces. You need to make improvements in your mental health. It only takes five minutes! Get with the program! (P.S. It would be nice if you exercised while you were at it because otherwise you might get fat.)


Are there maybe some obstacles to spending time in green spaces? Let’s explore some of them, shall we?

What about accessibility? Let’s assume you’re a wheelchair user living in an urban area. Can you access a park via public transit? If you get to a park, are the paths navigable? Are you a scooter user? Is it possible for you to get to a park on your own, or do you need a buddy to manhandle your scooter onto a bus for you since a lot of buses are poorly equipped for scooters? Do you use a service animal? Are you going to get hassled on your way to/while in the park?

What about time? If you have odd working hours or you’re caring for children or you’re relying on public transit in a city with poor transit? How are you going to make the time to get outside if the nearest park is a 30 minute trip?

What if you have multiple chemical sensitivity and a park is using pesticides?

What if you have social anxiety disorder that makes it difficult to leave your home?

What if a park is in an unsafe area?

What if…?

The framing of this study kind of exemplifies the medical model of disability; it’s all about things you, the individual, need to do. You are disabled by yourself, not by the world around you. Here in the US, there’s an especially strong emphasis on personal responsibility that I see coming up in disability narratives a lot. It’s that emphasis that says we should cut funding to social programs for people with disabilities because, well, they should take responsibility for themselves! It’s that emphasis that says that accommodations are too much of an obstacle for businesses because, well, people with disabilities should be able to sort it out on their own! The burden is on the individual to figure it out.

What I highlighted when I discussed some of the obstacles to ‘just’ getting into a park for five minutes is the social model. These are failings of society, not you as a person. Being told to ‘just’ go to the park for five minutes a day isn’t enough. You may already be a fan of trees and green spaces and be unable to get to the park because society has decided to make that difficult for you. What we should be concluding from this study is not ‘hey, people should go to the park more!’ but ‘hey, we should make it possible for people who want to go to the park to do that! That would be awesome!’

And what the reports I’ve seen on this study remind me of, over and over, is that we live in a society where disability is deemed to be your fault and your responsibility. Accommodation is not viewed as a social responsibility, full inclusion of people with disabilities is not regarded as a priority, and making spaces welcoming and friendly to as many human beings as possible simply isn’t important. What is important appears to be looking for yet another way to remind people that their disabilities are their own responsibility and that if they just did more maybe they wouldn’t be so disabled.

If you’re the park-going type, what obstacles do you experience in your community when it comes to accessing parks and other green spaces?

I’m a big fan of Miss Conduct over at the Boston Globe, and she got a question recently that comes up a lot in advice columns and spaces like this one:

I am disabled by an incurable disease. On the outside, I appear OK. But on the inside, I am slowly dying. People ask me what I do for work. When I say I am disabled, they seem to require a further explanation. I would like to keep my affliction private, so I would like an appropriate response. J.M. / Essex

Here’s how she responded:

J.M., I am in awe of your courage. But you probably don’t want people to be in awe of your courage, or shamed by your stoicism, or inspired by your grace, do you? You probably just want to be J.M. from Essex, who can bloody well make small talk like everyone else. What else are you doing besides tending your illness as best you can? If you’re well enough that people don’t realize you are sick and well enough to write to me, you are probably engaged in some kind of activity – crafts, reading, going to movies, listening to music, following sports. People aren’t prying into your work or health situation, necessarily; they’re probably only looking for some conversational fodder. So give it to them: “I’m not working right now because I’m dealing with some health problems – that I’m really tired of talking about! But I’ve been listening to books on tape lately and really getting into the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series. Have you ever read those?” (or whatever is appropriate for your interests). If people keep pushing (most won’t), repeat that you’re not interested in discussing work or health, but how ’bout them Sox? If they still pry, say, “I think I left the oven on” (or some similarly nonsensical excuse) and wander off.

Now, there are some things in this response that make me a little tingly in an irked way, but that’s not actually why I’m writing this post. I’m writing this post because, well, y’all are pretty awesome when it comes to crowdsourcing solutions and ideas, and I’ve got two questions for you:

And, a followup, because this is something I always have trouble with: What exactly is ‘small talk’? 

Tasha Fierce at Red Vinyl Shoes: My Kind of Crazy

Wheelchair Dancer: Sins is Hiring

I’m leading off today’s dance videos with a lovely solo ballet piece:

Performers in Sweden Signing and dancing:

More performers using Teckenspråk, Swedish Sign Language:

Gestim, a Deaf dance group, performing in Bulgaria:

A recent study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine has attracted a lot of media attention. ‘Chocolate and Depressive Symptoms in a Cross-sectional Analysis‘ has been written up in a number of newspapers here in the United States, often in the ‘oddly enough’ news sections, which is where ‘whimsical’ news about scientific studies often seems to end up.

There’s kind of a long history of media outlets writing up studies on food and twisting or ignoring the conclusions of those studies. Contradictory information about food is readily available through the media and sometimes there are very serious problems with the framing of these ‘oddly enough’ food stories. Like the claims that red wine is good for your heart, which ignored the fact that most studies supporting this claim pointed out that you would have to drink a lot of red wine to achieve cardiovascular benefits. The chocolate study involved 1018 subjects from San Diego, 931 of whom were not taking antidepressants. Researchers used the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D) to gauge levels of depression among the participants, and then collected information about chocolate consumption. What they found is that people with higher scores on the Scale tended to consume more chocolate. For people with very high scores, chocolate consumption was doubled.

The conclusion?

Higher CES-D depression scores were associated with greater chocolate consumption. Whether there is a causal connection, and if so in which direction, is a matter for future prospective study.

The media jumped on this study with headlines like ‘Study links chocolate and depression.’ ‘Study: Chocolate and depression go hand in hand.’ ‘Say it ain’t so: Study links chocolate to depression.’ And so on. Some articles went right ahead and used the ’cause’ word.

These articles theorize that either depression triggers chocolate cravings, or chocolate makes people depressed. They’ve made the classic mistake of conflating correlation and causation. abby jean has talked about this problem elsewhere on FWD, discussing the problem of bias in studies and bias in the way people talk about scientific studies. Recently, I discussed some of the problems with tests administered to measure levels of depression in ‘Internet Use and Depression.’

There are a couple of questions which should be asked about a study like this. The first is how the sample was chosen. Because I can’t access the full text, I can’t answer this question (someone who has read the study is welcome to chime in in comments). One thing which is notable is that this study took place in the United States. Here in the States, eating chocolate to  improve mood is a learned behaviour, and thus I can’t say that I was terribly surprised to  learn that people in the US who appear to be depressed are eating more chocolate. Since this study took place in a country where people believe that there is a link between chocolate and mood, it’s possible that some observer bias was involved in this study.

People believe that chocolate will make them feel better when they’re down1. In other cultures, there are other comfort foods which people eat to make themselves feel better. It would be interesting to see a cross-cultural study. As it stands now, we know that chocolate consumption appears to be higher in depressed residents of San Diego, California.

Another question about this study is whether the researchers controlled for other dietary factors or behaviours. Apparently they did control for ‘common’ factors like caffeine and carbohydrates, but it’s unclear how far they drilled down. Is it possible that people with depression also eat a lot of, say, peas? Brazil nuts? It’s impossible to control for everything, of course, but food and diet are complex issues and we’re still learning a lot about how food works, the compounds in food, and how different foods interact.

Furthermore, the study was not long term. More meaningful results might be obtained with a more extended study tracking people over months or years. It would also be immensely helpful to have subjects keep complete food and activity diaries to generate a spread of data which could be used to look at other things which might be correlated with depression.

Chemically, chocolate is incredibly complex, especially when you start talking about all of the varieties of chocolate available. There could be something going on here, but it would take a lot more research to find out.

It’s Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010, and I would highly recommend checking in at Diary of a Goldfish to see other posts on the theme!

A question that I get from a lot of nondisabled folks as they are starting to explore ableism and interacting with people with disabilities is ‘I really can’t stand it when someone appears to be in need of help, and I want to offer assistance, but I don’t know how. Can you tell me how to politely ask someone if help is needed or wanted?’ The desire to offer assistance is a natural one, but it often expresses in really offensive and sometimes dangerous ways (‘here, let me push your chair for you!’) so this is a question I don’t mind answering!

And I’m going to start my answer with an anecdote from my own life which I think illustrates a reasonably good example of how such interactions can go:

I was in line at the grocery store, and I noticed a wheelchair user behind me with a basket. I quickly observed that his chair was low and the conveyer belt was high, and it might be difficult for him to get his groceries up onto the belt, so I said:

‘Would you like assistance with that?’

And he said:

‘No, thanks, I kind of just shove the basket up there and let the checker deal with it.’

And I said:

‘Ok, cool.’

And then we had a conversation about fruit.

Note that this interaction had several characteristics. I observed something which I thought might be an issue and offered assistance. I did not yank this gentleman’s basket out of his hands. I didn’t shout at him or talk very slowly as though I was afraid he wouldn’t understand me. I looked at his face, not his chair, while we were talking.

And when he said ‘no, thanks,’ I didn’t force the issue. I gracefully acknowledged his equally graceful decline of my offer, and we went on with our days. In other words, we had an interaction where we both treated each other like human beings, equally deserving of courtesy, respect, and autonomy.

When you want to offer assistance to someone, offer politely, and don’t swoop in as though you are assuming that your offer has already been accepted. Never touch a person’s body, service animal, or assistive device without permission. If that person says ‘no, thank you,’ say ‘ok.’ If that person says ‘yes, please,’ pay attention when that person explains how you can be of the most help.

Over at Jesse the K’s place, a great conversation took place recently in which we talked about the language people use when offering assistance, and what a difference it makes:

When someone says “Can I help you with that?” my negative response can be interpreted as “you’re not capable of helping me” (which many folks would perceive as rude). To me, that question is more about the asker’s need to help than my requirements for assistance. When someone says “would you like a hand with that?” saying “no” focuses on me, not the asker. (Jesse the K)

When framing offers of assistance, it is tremendously beneficial to phrase them in a way which centers the person who appears to need help, rather than the person offering it. Saying ‘Do you need assistance?’ or ‘Do you need a hand with that?’ sounds very different from ‘Can I help you?’ In addition to watching your literal language, it helps to watch your body language and tone; are you using a sing songy voice? Are you talking any differently from the way you would talk to anyone else? Are you staring at a physical impairment or assistive device while you talk?

The brief version of the answer to the question of ‘how can I offer help without being intrusive or offensive?’ is:

In respect for the spirit of Blogging Against Disablism Day, particularly the language amnesty, this is designated as a 101 thread. People with all levels of experience with disability activism and the disability community are encouraged to comment and exchange questions and ideas.

(Crossposted at this ain’t livin’.) 

Mia Mingus at Leaving Evidence: Interdependency (via curate)

Wheelchair Dancer: Arizona’s Immigration Laws 

The 24 April edition of Dear Abby led with this letter:

How monumentally unhelpful.

–Marcelo in the Real World, by Francisco X. Stork