Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Discussing Mental Illness

Blog Explosion is a traffic engine that has given me some great viewers over on Gaiatribe and Hypatia's Hoard of Reviews. It also introduces me to some interesting blogs along the way. A couple of these deal with various flavors of mental illness; anxiety seems big right now.

One 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.
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  • 36 comments
...go 8 levels up... Expand
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

August 11 2009, 16:55:55 UTC 11 years ago

The military tries very hard to modify people's ethics. It does not always succeed; other times, it succeeds too well. After all, their understanding of the human mind and brain is no more advanced than the health care industry's understanding. And their overall understanding of the human soul is ... rather lacking, which is what the chaplains are there for.

Once someone has learned that certain things are "wrong," those things are difficult or impossible to change. People may do them anyway, particularly with the sort of terrific justifications that the military provides for the wholesale slaughter of other human beings -- but deep down inside, most sane people still believe that killing is wrong. So they tend to be distressed and damaged if they do it; this is a known factor in PTSD. In fact it's on the test for that.

The fact that killing people tends to be injurious to the soul is one reason why so many higher powers have told humans not to do it. Don't stick a fork in the light socket, you'll hurt yourself.

Deleted comment

ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

August 12 2009, 05:09:52 UTC 11 years ago

>>I think religion offers a kind of Catch-22, with the "higher" or hired powers jerking people around.<<

That is true of some religions, though not all of the ones I have encountered.

>>You'd think that the omnipotent would be able to pass his/her wisdom down in a way that cannot be mistaken or corrupted by mere mortals.<<

Dude. I think you just identified something that the Omnipotent God can't do. Or at least, demonstrably has not yet figured out how to do.
siege

Re: Hmm...

siege

August 13 2009, 03:51:15 UTC 11 years ago

The modern translators of the Ten Commandments have, in general, stuck to the King James version, placing the generic "kill" where "murder" is the more appropriate verb. Thus, ancient Jews were allowed to claim territory or drive off invaders through combat, but killing someone without a just reason is banned by the highest law.

Deleted comment

ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

August 15 2009, 19:11:21 UTC 11 years ago

Or simply let people die for lack of food, water, or medical care.

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