The multiverse is under construction
What would happen if every psychiatrist was 1% moth? How would psychiatrists commute if the earth succumbed to a devastating greenhouse effect resulting in floating cities in the sky? These are the questions that no one is asking, with wildly speculative answers. Welcome to the Psychiatric Multiverse!
Each article in this newsletter proposes a hypothetical parallel universe (a “Psyverse”) where psychiatric culture is changed by a technique, idea or perspective from another area or subject. It will be weird. It will be wacky.
I am Alex Mendelsohn, a distinctly ordinary physicist with an out of the ordinary story. Much of this newsletter will be inspired by my decade as a patient in the psychiatric system.
In a contender for the most obvious statement of the year: being sick has several drawbacks. One such drawback is a lack of energy.
Many a writer starts a newsletter with well-meant optimism. “I shall write two articles a week!” they might think, before eventually settling down into one article a month.
I intend to start with well-meant pessimism. Recovering from mental illness while rebuilding my social life and career is a time-consuming process – keeping to a regular schedule of posts will initially be… difficult. So, I’m currently building a backlog of articles, to take some time-pressure off.
I’m hoping that within the next six months I’ll have this newsletter up and running, but I’m not putting a date on it. When the time does finally arrive, I’ll aim to post once a month and everything will be free. In the meantime, please feel free to have a look at some of my previously published articles.
This newsletter is by no means intended to be a lopsided multiverse. If you have a left-field ridiculous idea about how the psychiatric system could be improved and want to have a little bit of fun, please do reach out1.
That is all for now, see you in the first Psyverse!
Either through substack DM’s or see my about page for contact details