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Thoughts On Mental Illness

codependency is a big problem i feel, and see it that the production of psychiatric medication would be around half of what it is, and more effective organic/environmental therapies would exist too, with out the misguided demand of those who dont ever actually take the drugs - another example of this would be parents of children they feel they can not handle(they could use the therapy the kids could use the love)

the demand for illicit substances and the crime rate from here would drop like led rocks, if drugs were not taught to be so okay, and people were not convinced that they were doomed to be crazy for the rest of their life(what have you got to live for?)


so many psych diagnoses are often worn like a badge by people too.


it is amazing what a persons diet can do for their minds.
 
mental illness is diagnosed by a doctor or psychologist, not by the person. who are you to judge what your friend does? if it makes her feel better where's the problem? the stigma around mental illness means it is not exactly easy to decide to get help. and i don't think it's easy for someone who has not experienced a severe mental illness to understand quite how debilitating having your own mind fuck you over can be.

yes, some criticisms of the current system are valid, but just look at how far treatment has come in 100 years, from locking people up and viewing them as spectacles, to actually trying to help them get where they want to be.

As I mentioned, this is for non life-threatening cases. In more extreme cases, requires more extreme intervention. Much like addiction.

I am not judging my friend. She has told me that the medications are not working and never have and that she's still depressed and has anxiety. She had to leave her job because she would get extreme anxiety when she was there. She's on social security disability now. I think she was taking four different anti-depression pills a day. I haven't seen her in a while...

I think for most people with very severe to profound mental disabilities, they probably don't HAVE a place where they want to be because they can't imagine one, let alone actually function and take care of themselves. In all honesty, if anything, I think it is indeed a load for the rest of society to pick up.

If we take a look at human history (and Darwinism), only those that are strong enough will make it on their own to reproduction and living a long life.
 
I think any form of illness may have a silver lining somewhere... If not for the individual suffering (hopefully they get to experience some good though), to others. Kind of like how hackers might continually inadvertently beef up security of systems... There will always be weak spots to exploit sure, but in ways it keeps us on our feet, active, and flourishing. Kind of vague... Sorry. On phone. Will edit later when read other posts more.

In my experience though before I close it, my illnesses have definitely taught me this... Both mental and physical... And have helped me to perhaps have insight into the difficulties of others. If I allow my heart and mind to be open, this allows for so much understanding that I might not have had... Opening more doors. Clearing.'

nevermind: I'm editing to say I don't need to edit.
 
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The patient that is diagnosed with mental retardation, schizophrenia, bi-polar, or depression is put into the category of "mentally ill." I believe that when that day comes and he realizes he truly is ill and believes what the doctors tell him, is the day he is finally cured. There may be traces of whatever is left over still lingering in the mind but the mind is fixed, like a key fitting into a lock.

The psychology of the mind is an extensive network of many happenings occuring inside the brain. It is reasonable to ask if you are labeled crazy for many people because people don't usually ask that question. Naturally you would think it would be a bad thing to tell your doctor that you might be crazy. For the most part, you aren't and are considered sane by legal standards.
 
There's a guy called Thomas Szasz..I think I spelled that right. Check him out.

Too many people are getting diagnosed these days when all they have is some sort of lack of self-control combined with destructive behavior patterns.
 
Here's a post I made on another forum some time ago where a similar discussion was taking place. I was influenced by Szasz at the time. I still think this way now.

So I recently listened to some podcasts with Thomas Szasz and I thought of this thread.

Now I agree for the most part with Szasz's position. The point is basically this:

There would be no problem with psychiatry if psychiatry were simply a descriptive science. There would be no problem with psychiatry if the theoretical entities of psychiatry (to wit, "mental disorders") were simply entries in a taxonomy of behavior. But psychiatry is not simply descriptive; it is normative. And it's theoretical entities are evaluative. A disorder is bad. People with disorders are sick.

But why on earth should we call the theoretical entities of psychiatry "disorders" and why should we think that the people to whom they apply are "sick"?

For instance, looking at the wikipedia page on Personality disorder, I see the following definition attributed to the DSM-IV: "an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the culture of the individual who exhibits it."

This is bizarre. Clearly the definition given describes deviant behavior. On what possible grounds should we say that the behavior is also "sick"? Moreover, suppose we transplanted our sick patient into another culture or subculture where his behavior is not deviant. Would we now say that he is cured? I am reminded of something R.D. Laing said, to the effect that a bird flying out of formation might still be flying the right way.

Now to be fair, earlier in this thread ganstaman was arguing with OP and pressing the point that one wouldn't be diagnosed with a personality disorder unless one was also "distressed" about it. Well, I have no problem with this. If someone comes to you and says, "doctor, I am in distress, my brain and body are not working as intended, please help me," well of course you should help this person. And if this means giving him pills, then give him pills.

But again, to say that this person is distressed is not to say that he is sick. So now, what's the point? Well, the point is this. If I am in distress over finals and I come to you and I say, "doctor give me some modafinil" or whatever, why shouldn't you give it to me? Well, you might want to say, because I am not sick. But look, why do you say that any of your other patients are sick? Well, they have certain problems in their life that they can't overcome apparently, without medication. But look, I have this problem of the finals, and maybe no matter how hard I try I won't get the grade that I want unless I take something.

When I look at how psychiatric disorders are diagnosed, I see basically two sets of criteria. Either the behavior is abnormal or the behavior causes distress to the patient, or both. Now, try as I might I can't see how either of these criteria could ever be sufficient to say, "so-and-so is sick; he has a mental disorder". I don't care if a behavior is abnormal. Abnormality is just variation; it isn't sickness.

Finally, there is this other point about the biological underpinnings of the disorders. When I was listening to the Szasz podcast, a sentiment was expressed to the effect that Szasz isn't very relevant anymore, because now psychiatry is on a firmer basis, theoretically. Now, sorry, but I don't get this at all. The best you can do is point to some abnormality in genetics, or in the brain architecture and say that it correlates with some abnormality in behavior. But so what? You wouldn't say that the neural or genetic abnormality was indicative of sickness unless you thought that the behavioral abnormality was a disorder. It is totally circular. Again, the problem isn't that the theoretical entities of psychiatry are purely imaginary. Of course they are not. The problem is that they have a purely imaginary evaluative function.
 
I have my own, strong opinions both from dealing with psychiatric (and psychological) intervention personally and from academic study of psychopathology. But here, I think that I, and everyone, will gain greater insight from others' opinions on the matter.

ebola

Don't be a tease. Please share your strong opinions.
 
regarding personality disorders - obviously i am not a qualified to diagnose, but an ex exhibited "traits" of borderline personality disorder, it's not that it is a "disorder" with regard to cultural norms, it's like it's an actual disorder in thinking, her whole ideas regarding love, how to get it, being abandoned etc., seemed like a distortion of reality, like she was shooting herself in the foot without realising it.

i realise this probably makes no sense. and might be total bullshit. good topic tho! :)
 
What's threat? We're back at subjective cultural norms and impacts.

I mean, obviously physical harm.
But we're talking mentally here.

If I present you with irrefutable evidence against your thought-system, that would be a huge threat to many.
But it's just variance..
What if I wasn't attacking your view, but defending mine against a hostile force?

It's all too arbitrary.
 
No. All I'm saying is this: If I avail myself of any healthcare or mental health professional with an objection or aversion to the way my own mind is working, or a healthcare professional has received a complaint from someone else about how I'm acting and apparently thinking, I get a psych workup.

Honestly, I don't like the phrase "mentally ill" all that much, for the same reason I'm not a big fan of "indigestion" -- both can be used to obfuscate, because they're broad categories on the surface of it, while only having a few correct uses in common parlance. "Mentally ill", at least where I am, usually means either schizophrenic or obsessive compulsive. I think using this phrase does a disservice, because not only does it single out only two of many important types of mind disease, but conflates two pretty different diseases (which doubtless share many features).
 
regarding personality disorders - obviously i am not a qualified to diagnose, but an ex exhibited "traits" of borderline personality disorder, it's not that it is a "disorder" with regard to cultural norms, it's like it's an actual disorder in thinking, her whole ideas regarding love, how to get it, being abandoned etc., seemed like a distortion of reality, like she was shooting herself in the foot without realising it.

i realise this probably makes no sense. and might be total bullshit. good topic tho! :)

Someone who has the wrong idea about something is not "sick". They are just wrong.

A big problem with the medical model in psychiatry is that it violates what philosophers call the "principle of charity", which says basically that we should always assume that the person we're talking to is rational and that their thought process makes some kind of sense, whether we agree with it or not. Once you label someone as crazy or mentally ill, or whatever, you are basically dismissing your responsibility to take them seriously as a person. And people who are given such labels can stop taking themselves seriously as people, which is why they start saying stupid shit like, "my illness made do it."

I think that in fact most of what passes for "mental illness" are pseudo-adaptive behavior strategies that people acquire as they develop and that actually made sense and served a purpose once upon a time. These strategies, like most human learning, eventually become automatic and recede from consciousness, which is why people become stuck in them as adults and start to "fail at life". But the only way to break them is to understand that you are doing them (not "your illness") and why you are doing them, i.e. what you expect to gain.

In other words, there is no sharp demarcation line between "mental illness" and just acting badly or wrongly. Like I said above, a major criterion for diagnosing mental illness is "distress" in the patient. But people are distressed about their behavior and cognition all the fucking time. Everything from procrastination to hypocrisy to stupidity to lack of willpower is "distressing" but we don't think of these things as symptoms of illness.
 
No. All I'm saying is this: If I avail myself of any healthcare or mental health professional with an objection or aversion to the way my own mind is working, or a healthcare professional has received a complaint from someone else about how I'm acting and apparently thinking, I get a psych workup.

This reads as though it is sufficient that someone be displeased with how my behavior and cognition affects them that I be considered "sick" (or potentially "sick"). That can't be what you mean.
 
I think that in fact most of what passes for "mental illness" are pseudo-adaptive behavior strategies that people acquire as they develop and that actually made sense and served a purpose once upon a time. These strategies, like most human learning, eventually become automatic and recede from consciousness, which is why people become stuck in them as adults and start to "fail at life". But the only way to break them is to understand that you are doing them (not "your illness") and why you are doing them, i.e. what you expect to gain.

i think i agree, and psychologists would too, that this is pretty much the case. i guess it depends on your interpretation of "illness", e.g. when i developed OCD there were some very distressing things happening to me that i could not control, and in a fucked up way, OCD is about control (please widen your thinking more than just hand washing, counting etc).
 
So now we're saying there is such a thing as being "wrong"?

If someone takes issue with the way you think or act, would you rather they think that you are sick or that you are wrong? When two people disagree about who is in the right, they can go at each other in a meaningful argument or dialogue. But when one person is labelled sick, then anything that person says can be seen as a manifestation of their diseased thought process. There's a big difference between engaging someone's ideas and operating on their "sickness".
 
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