I’m a librarian, not a doctor
For the last several months, I’ve been helping (off and on) a member of the public who is pretty far down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole–far be it from me to try to diagnose anyone, but this person seems to have a lot of paranoid, delusional, and irrational thoughts.
On the one hand, I truly sympathize because my anxiety has gotten me into some extremely irrational spirals (not to the point of delusional thinking but, you know, we were close there a few times). It is a Bad Time™
On the other hand, I am a librarian–not a therapist, a counselor, a psychologist, a psychiatrist, or a social worker. A librarian.
I don’t have the resources to help this person. And I am starting to get compassion fatigue.
Libraries are one of the last truly public institutions in the United States. As such, they’re also becoming the front lines of a lot of problems and issues (ask me about libraries keeping naloxone on hand) that could and should be solved by other, appropriate institutions that should be (but usually aren’t) public.
This is why we need guaranteed universal healthcare. Among a lot of other things.
Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/171838631631.
