Tiny survey/research question if anyone feels like helping
POSTED BY: PhoenixRose
UPDATED: Tuesday, October 4, 2011 01:37
VIEWED: 5670
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Rose, that's what I meant by saying all that might be needed in some cases where people are diagnosed is some therapy...like aspirin for a head cold, to carry on your corollary, and when it comes to some traumas, like a head cold they eventually pass, but aspirin can help at the time.
As to why it's not treated like other illnesses, I was told, and read once, that psychiatry is considered the bottom rung of the medical profession, and regular doctors only get a tiny amount of training in it--all geared toward meds (well, so is the psychiatric training!)--not that I would want a GP treating mental illness! But given the apparent lack of emphasis by the medical community, I think that might be one contributing factor--along with the more obvious ones of course!
Kiki, people who talk and talk and get nowhere have one of three problems, in my estimation. Either they have a more severe mental illness, or a bad p-doc, or they're not doing the work. I didn't for a long time when I first had therapy...later after dx when I went back to it, I realized I NEEDED to talk and talk because a) I wasn't ready to confront the real issues, and b) I needed to TRUST the therapist. Both of those took a long time, but when I went back, I worked my ass of and it was immensely helpful. In fact it changed my life. All the jokes about therapy not working contribute to people not trying it, and/or not doing the real WORK...which is damned hard and scary, so it's not surprising many don't want to.
And yes, I've known people with mental illness for whom dietary and other things and had great results. And some who've tried everything, including diet and ECT (don't get me started on ECT!), and have never improved. When it comes to the more extreme mental illnesses like schiz and bipolar I, diet and such usually don't do much--tho' they can help even then for some people.
You mentioned religion. I've known two "Gods" and one "Jesus"--oh, and an "angel"--and in my opinion it's the brain's way of coping with something it can't understand...and in all cases happened to people who are religious to begin with. In all cases, they firmly believed they had all the answers, and could cure everyone if we'd just follow them. It's called "grandiosity" in some cases by some p-docs, texts and people, but to me grandiosity is a component of feeling helpless, not knowing what's happening or why, and the brain giving some explanation...kind of like religion in the first place. ;o)
It's all too complex to get a REAL grasp on, for me; everyone is so individual that everything works differently for different persons...including meds. I'm a firm believer in the subconscious, in messages we got as children which we internalized and which can run our whole lives if we let them. EMDR was a life-changer for me; meds helped, but EMDR was like that light going on--to see things that happened to me, were said to me or I overheard as a child and internalized, as an adult and in most cases realized they were about the other person and had nothing to do with me, was amazing.
I guess I believe in the subconscious because I've seen and heard so many things from others, and because my dreams are so transparent Jim laughs when I tell them to him, they're so obviously about a current issue I'm grappling with, put in "stories". Jim, on the other hand, used to say he never dreamed...and being someone who was very closed off from his feelings, I'm not surprised. After meds (which he was only on briefly but which began the transition), therapy and his own self-education, he learned a lot about himself, his family dynamic and more. Now he dreams...his aren't transparent like mine, but again, he's still somewhat closed off from his feelings even now.
I think the mind is fascinating and can never learn enough about it. I've got so
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Kiki, "crazy" is relative and because it is so vague it doesn't mean anything to me. I think what you're asking and annalyzing is how something becomes "crazy" as opposed to just being different. Every society has certain things that are common. if a belief is common among people then someone with that belief isn't considered weird or odd. But if a person has a belief that doesn't match with those around them then that is considered different, and then in the more extreme that is considered to be brain differences at work. It can very culturally what is considered acceptable to believe and what isn't. In a culture where everyone believes in the gods for instance it would be weird or uncommon for someone to go around spouting about how there aren't any gods at all, they might be considered crazy for thinking something that seems so outrageous. You seem to think its crazy or weird when people believe in higher beings, whereas other cultures would think you were crazy for not believing in them. Those feelins about things like that vary from what we're talking about here somewhat, but you brought it up.
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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It's probably a bit late to respond, but anyway:
My first reaction is to think of my former Step-Father, who was crazy and abusive (not to me) in many ways. Most of this can be attributed to some pretty horrific experiences in Viet Nam, but I don't rule out that he may have had some mental issues prior to his service, which were brought out and/or amplified by his experiences.
"Goram it kid, let's frak this thing and go home! Engage!"
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Well, I don't have much to say, except that I appreciate reading the posts of all the people who responded to my musing with their musing.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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Aye, we do have some interesting and informative discussions in between the partisan ping pong matches, although they can be fun to watch sometimes too.
Makes one ponder though, at what point does such partisanship cross the line into mental illness, I wonder ?
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
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Like anything else it all depends on functionality and how it affects one's daily life, outwardly and inwardly. There are plenty of neurotypical rabid political junkies out there. If being super partisan is the only problem then one could assume that there isn't a mental illness issue. But again I guess the question I'd ask is how this rabid partisanship affects the person's life inwardly and outwardly. And if there's a mental illness present then other aspects of the person's life would be affected, not just their political ideology.
Or was that question just you teasing?
"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya
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Quote:
Originally posted by PhoenixRose:
Hey everyone, I'm writing a paper, and I'd like to test one of my opinions a little before I build on it, so I have a question for anyone who cares to answer.
What is the very first thing you think when you see or hear the words mental illness? Just word-associate it for me.
(No snark, please. Any response of "liberal/conservative/specific person" won't really help me.)
What reason had proved best ceased to look absurd to the eye, which shows how idle it is to think anything ridiculous except what is wrong.
Something we all or most of us suffer from throughout our lives at one time or another, to a degree more or less.
An inexact science, something hard to quantify.
A condition of emotional or cognitive impairment that results in someone feeling unable to cope with everyday life and continues on for a period of time (weeks?).
A distortion in perception of reality?
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Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Ah yes, the old "checklist diagnosis" I hate so much, often complicated by docs taking parents/teachers and so on at their word despite them offering biased or incorrect information for their own reasons, on top of a certain "push" by Big Pharma to get their products in use - which to my mind is downright negligence if not malpractice.
It takes a minimum of ninety minutes in a controlled environment to properly diagnose a behavioral disorder, and anything less is just a halfass guess - but when medical coverage doesn't extend to that, it just makes this all the worse.
Plenty of source documentation for that kinda thing is available if you know where to look.
-Frem
I do not serve the Blind God.
Sometimes when I look at those checklists, mostly American in nature, I wonder if Americans really are a different species.
Years ago I worked with a practitioner who was madly into 'learned optimism'. I read Seligman and did his checklists and it said I needed to see a psych IMMEDIATELY urgently. Funny thing was that I was feeling in quite a buoyant mood, god help me if I'd done it at my lowest. I figured that it was a cultural thing. My family are Irish descent - 'never expect too much you'll just be disappointed' kind of philosophy, but no more prone to depression than anyone else, probably less because they don't expect too much and are therefore easily delighted when things go well.
Needless to say, I gave the book away.
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Magons, you have a point about culture. Bear in mind the differences between living in Australia and living in America. Just as (to use the comparison again) the Japanese work themselves to death, as opposed to Europeans having so much more time off than we do in the States. Most of our lives here aren't healthy, which means they're not healthy mentaly as well as physically. So yes, there no doubt are differences. In some cultures, some mental illnesses are seen as witch doctors or seers or whatever.
Bear in mind, once again, that the DSM-IV (and all the DSM's before it and no doubt after it) stress that it's NOT mental illness if you can function in your life. Sure, "function" is a loose term, and there are certainly those among us who are mentally ill but "function" perfectly (at least for a time), and some who live their entire lives mentally ill and never know it (Bipolar IIs as an example). However, those who "function" well yet are mentally ill won't ever seek treatment, nor will many of those who never know it--it gets passed off, as it was for me, as just "overdramtic", or "eccentric", as it mostly was in the past. That doesn't mean it's not mental illness.
So "functioning" in one's life depends to an extent on the society within which one must function...naturally that makes it different for different cultures. The checklist you mentioned is bullshit, in my opinion; it takes far more than a checklist to determine such things. On the other hand, I did a checklist of bipolarity when I was only dx'd unipolar (depressive), and it was frighteningly right on; once properly dx'd, my life changed. I HAD been dysfunctional my whole life, I just assumed I was "screwed up" or "bad". Knowing otherwise, and knowing I wasn't alone, got me to do many things which have made my life better than I ever could have dreamed. I'm a bear about self-education for those who have been dx'd, it's one of the main things that helped me.
So yes, it's obviously different by culture, but when one's life is bad enough to seek help, one needs help, perhaps in very short term, perhaps as far as meds and a lifelong battle. When you look at the list of people who've been dx'd (some posthumasly), their lives leave little doubt. Many of them are very famous throughout history, some were hospitalized (even back as far as a hundred years) because their actions were self-destructive, and/or they recognized a problem themselves. Many ended in suicide, which I think you might agree means they needed help.
There are so many intricacies to mental illness, and I've learned so much about it, I could go on all day. But of course I won't; that's for another venue. I can only speak to my own life, and if I'd been dx'd before I was 48, my life would have been vastly different. For one thing, I'd NEVER have gone into the corporate world, which is one of he worst places for the mentally ill--especially bipolars!
Hippie Operative Nikovich Nikita Nicovna Talibani,
Contracted Agent of Veritas Oilspillus, code name “Nike”,
signing off 
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"If being super partisan is the only problem then one could assume that there isn't a mental illness issue."
Well, what if being super-partisan leads you to deny whole chunks of reality and believe in whole chunks of fables? I know I have referenced this a few times already, but it was a real eye-opener to me which outlines a basic mental glitch in processing reality in the super-partisan - How facts backfire ( http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_
backfire/).
Saying that people are sane except for super-partisanship, seems to me a bit like saying well, you're basically healthy except for that metabolic cystic fibrosis glitch.
Remember when teachers, public employees, Planned Parenthood, NPR and PBS crashed the stock market, wiped out half of our 401Ks, took trillions in taxpayer funded bailouts, spilled oil in the Gulf of Mexico, gave themselves billions in bonuses, and paid no taxes?
Yeah, me neither....
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