busyOne of them gave me a shout-out today for a comment I left. We're talking about how and why the treatment of mental complaints lags behind that of physical complaints, and it started with a previous discussion about whether and why drugs can be helpful.
Basically, I have noticed certain patterns in dealing with friends who have mental challenges, and that has built up a little basket of ideas on the topic. Sometimes when an opportunity arises, I set one of them out. One of these days I need to flesh these out and present them in full. You can see bits of several here: different solutions work for different people because there are many different causes of mental complaints, and there's a difference between mental illness and mental </i> injury, and we just don't have ways of perceiving exactly what needs to be fixed let alone the ability to reach in and repair it. So we ... muddle.
Re: Hmm...
August 10 2009, 18:11:14 UTC 11 years ago
I'm mentally ill - I have bipolar disorder, and fairly severe at that. What my experience tells me is that to a great extent, I can tell when it's me speaking or when it's the illness that's speaking (so to speak). And what treatment does, at least for me, is it quells the illness so that it's me that's speaking more of the time. What people seem not to realize is that this demarcation does exist, and that mental illness does not define the person as a whole, which is where a lot of the stigma comes from.
Raven
Re: Hmm...
August 10 2009, 19:10:29 UTC 11 years ago
I was amazed to learn last year that I have also learned to tell the difference between "this major depressive episode is based in my mind and needs to see a counselor" and "this major depressive episode is based in my brain and needs new drugs".
Re: Hmm...
August 10 2009, 21:29:21 UTC 11 years ago
Re: Hmm...
August 11 2009, 14:13:07 UTC 11 years ago