Nearly 1 in 5 Americans had mental illness in 2009
What’s with the “had”? Is mental illness something one can catch, like a cold? Something that just happens or is built into one’s DNA like inherited diseases? What?
“Mental illnesses”, unless they have a physical cause, are personal choices made manifest. Period. One doesn’t “have” personal choices except in the sense that one makes personal choices. Period. Oh, one might have options and perceptions, and make one’s choices based on perceived options, thus resulting in “mental illnesses” of one sort or another as sort of, semi-almost “defined” by that ever-expanding excuse for “mental health professionals” to bill insurance companies, the DSM-X. Why! As the p-sych professionals expand those behaviors (often once considered normal or merely perhaps a wee tad eccentric) they want to be paid by insurance companies for “treating” I’ll be surprised if there’s on non-“mentally ill” person left in America.
*feh* I’d say a lack of personal responsibility is the cause of most “mental illness” cited by “mental health professionals” as things they want to get to get paid for “treating”. And failure to accept personal responsibility for one’s attitudes, feelings and behaviors is primarily an ethical and moral illness, not a mental one.
“Mental illnesses”, unless they have a physical cause, are personal choices made manifest….
I just cannot agree with that, completely.
Oh I’m not talking about people that have committed a heinous crime and try to get off on the crazy claim. And I’m not talking about people who are simply eccentric.
I’m talking about people like my mother, who for about 3 years (starting 5 years ago) was as crazy as a loon and completely unable to care for herself because of it, and then one day just sort of “woke up” with very little memory of the crazy things she had done in the previous 3 years, but for the most part normal, again.
I just can’t believe that she actually wanted to (chose to) do things like washing dishes in coffee, frying candy wrappers for breakfast, walking 10 miles from home with one shoe on just to climb into the backseat of a random parked car so she could get to church (her reason, when asked), and hitting her kids when we went to check on her because she didn’t recognize us and thought we were intruders, and inviting homeless people to sleep on her sofa because she thought they were her kids. And those things are just the tip of the iceberg.
She never got any diagnosis in the three times she was admitted into a psych ward by police, and she never got any meds or treatment between those times.
Like I said, she’s now completely normal, her old self again, so it wasn’t dementia or senility. She was having no physical issues. She was just damned crazy, mentally ill, that’s all there was to it. WAS.
This is the longest comment I’ve ever left here.
I don’t believe you read the whole post, Mel. I said, ““Mental illnesses”, unless they have a physical cause, are personal choices made manifest.” Note the, “unless they have a physical cause,” please. If she had had competent medical care, given your description of the “switch on/switch off” behavior, I’d be willing to wager that one of her caregivers would have found the physical or chemical (a subset of physical) causes for her malady.
Again: absent a physical cause, mental illness is a choice. Anything p-sych phonies tell you otherwise is a lie. (Frankly, it’s the primary reason I left the field after years of education and training: it’s a field filled with voodoo practitioners out for a buck and dimmer than normal do-gooders who simply don’t know what they’re doing. I simply cannot stand working with liars, incompetents and crooks: those classes that make up easily 90% of the p-sych profession.)
Oh I did read the whole post, three times. She may not have had “competent” medical care, but she was seen by several doctors. Each one getting the full history (that we knew of) since it started. And since not one gave a diagnosis or offered treatment, and there were no physical signs, I can only lean toward thinking that there was nothing physical causing it.
Of course, keep in mind that the switch on/off only happened once. On at the beginning of the three-year period, and off at the end. No on/off/on/off. So the “switch” element was never mentioned to a doctor. Once it was switched off (for lack of a better term) she wasn’t taken to a doctor for that again. She’s been normal for 2 years.
Mel, sadly, as you medical horror stories series indicates (in agreement with my own experiences), competent doctors are a rarity. *sigh* Again, given the description you offer, were something similar to occur again, I’d seek out someone who has some serious diagnostic chops who’s willing to run down the probable physical cause. The “switch on/off” thing would both concern me and give me hope. But I do not play a professional on TV and I didn’t sleep in some special inn last night, so doing your own homework would probably be the best course, since you are intelligent, a capable web researcher and have a real stake in this thing (after all, she’s your mom, not some doctor’s).
Doctors aren’t omniscient, and the tools they have to work with in this area are only a little better than a voodoo priest’s. No, really. People who are really good at dealing with these sorts of issues are scarce as hens’ teeth, because it takes giftedness, not merely training and access to knowledge (which is often–witness the DSM-IV–dead wrong) to deal with things like this as a professional helper.
BTW, if you get the impression that I thionk the only thing the DSM-IV is really good for is a substitute for a Sears catalog in an outhouse, you’d be wrong. Some of its information is useful. The rest is too toxic for me to bring into contact with my nether regions, and would poison the contents under an outhouse. If anyone with common sense were to take a razor to the contents of the DSM-IV, cutting out the toxic waste, a nice lil compact paperback one could slip into a shirt pocket would result.
I don’t agree with 1 in 5 people being mentally ill. We would have to look at their definition of ‘mentally ill cause this is just something to be used as a crutch.
WhiteSnow: If your blood pressure is OK, just sit down for a weekend with the DSM-IV and read up on classifications of “mental illnesses”. The thing’s designed for one thing and one thing alone: generating billables to submit for insurance claims. EVERYTHING is a “mental illness”. All it takes to be classified as “mentally ill” is for someone to visit a p-sych and generate a bill to submit to some insurance company. If there’s not something in the DSM that fits like a glove, then there are “undifferentiated” diagnoses that can be submitted. Seriously.
It’s a scam.
Here’s some input from someone with 1) personal experience with mental illness and 2) is a paramedic and has a mother who is a Christian counselor, as TWC knows…
but once upon a time, I was diagnosed with mild-to-severe depression that landed me on a pysch floor for 24 hours..the day before New Year’s Eve. (Last place you want to be on New Year’s Eve, trust me..)
After finding myself trapped in there, I knew I had hit rock bottom. I swore that I would do whatever I needed to do to get better.
I quit my Zoloft cold turkey during medic school when I realized my hands were shaking too much to hold a needle steady. My psych wasn’t thrilled, but I was able to prove that I was doing okay off it…although there were days when everyone else around me said I needed to go back on it. I knew I would only defeat my depression if I dealt with the issues behind it…and I think I’ve done pretty good, thus far, but that’s just me.
Part of depression is learning to fight that feeling of “learned helplessness.” When it gets rough, it’s hard to fight, but supportive family, friends, exercise, and routine . (When I look back, I had some severely toxic friendships during that time.) I have days where it feels like it’s about to overtake me again, but I fight it back with postive thoughts, exercise, and venting/ranting to friends and on the ol’ blog. =D
From my mother’s point of view, she always states that her job is to get her client to the point where they don’t need her anymore (and my own counsler echoed this sentiment.)
Just my two bits on the subject…
I’m many years out of the game and have deliberately slashed and burned that area of my thinking, but… Keys: toxic friendships (choices–I almost typed “toxic fiendships” which is probably a better term, anyway) and that very good description, “learned helplessness”.
There are frequently genuine physical/chemical causes of genuine mental illness, but most “mental illnesses” are brought about simply by (combining useful phrases) toxic learned behavior.* While I believe I legitimately criticize the p-sych profession as voodoo p-science only in part because it’s so dominated by the DSM-IV’s crappy attempt at taxonomic descriptions of social-psychological disorders for the purpose of making p-sych hours billable to insurance companies (there are other reasons for the “voodoo” label), I know that, as with teaching, there are a few good, intelligent, caring people in the field trying to help others. They are in a shrinking minority, IMO.
Dutch Boys, meet multiple dykes. With more holes in ’em than you all have finders.
Those folks with genuine physical causes for genuine mental illness need intelligent medical care to give them time and energy to work out their other issues stemming from choices they can make once the physical causes of their problems have been alleviated. (And medicine, though the handmaid of science, isn’t all that scientific, still. It’s still an art, IMO, and best done by gifted, well-trained hands supported by gifted, well-trained minds and gifting hearts, but that’s an entirely different rant. :-))
Your recovery protocols for depression of a very common nature (I know it doesn’t feel common while one is depressed… ask me privately sometime how I can say that:-)), PP, were a sane combination of communication and movement. I came to think of “common” depression–that of the kind I experienced and of the kind described by you both here and on your blog–as more “accedie” (one of the classic Seven Deadly Sins), as one description puts it, “a spiritual attitude that rejects all the pleasures of life and turns away from what is good. In accedie the mind is stagnant and the flesh a burden.” Choosing to connect with positive relationships and simply moving forward–physically and emotionally–and “gutting it out” takes an act of will that’s more difficult than those who’ve not fought this monster can understand.
But it’s not a monster that’s easily slain. The fight to keep moving forward really must be vigilant.
And so it is with all sin. *heh*
*Note: I acknowledge that physical signs (observable by others) and symptoms (observed, noted by the subject) can be caused by problems arising from personal choices, and alleviating these issues can often make it easier for someone to deal with suboptimal choices that have caused them distress–both emotional and physical in many cases. Is N demonstrating signs that mimic a psychotic break because of a lack of sleep? (Symptoms experienced by subjects suffering from severe sleep deprivation often mimic serious p-sych disorders.) What’s causing the lack of sleep? etc. Depressed and extremely enervated? Depression always has a physical component, but determining its etiology is important to treatment. Which is the chicken and which is the egg? Most p-sychs don’t care, really. Could be neither.
BTW, I have frequently said that this blog is mainly a way to mollify the voices in my head. These public journals serve much the same purposes of private journals–expression of feelings and thoughts. When I put things down on paper (or electronic ink), I can see them with a different perspective. What I confess here may be slightly redacted versions of similar thoughts and emotions in a private journal, but serve the purpose of being open to responses from others. All that to say that I, too, have found my blog to be my own sanity enhancer. 🙂 At least it keeps the noise from the “voices in my head” down to a small roar. *heh*