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, 22:04:04 UTC 11 years ago
Let's say that it has very rarely been to my satisfaction.
>>So it's not really safe to make that generalization.<<
It's not universal, but it is widespread -- most often expressed through things like "that heart attack in room 301 is waiting for you." I've heard this in many different establishments and read about it in multiple sources. One explanation suggested in some linguistic texts is that many health care workers find that they have to do something to dehumanize the clients so that they can stand to be around suffering people without melting down themselves. It's a defense mechanism, and it has its uses. But one of the drawbacks is that it can make health care workers very hard to talk to.
You are very lucky never to have encountered this.
Re: Hmm...
August 13 2009, 04:15:51 UTC 11 years ago Edited: August 13 2009, 04:19:15 UTC
But it is so much easier to call it a "psychotic episode" and refuse to describe it further, than to explain what was really going on, because to a person without a comparable understanding of such matters, I might as well be speaking lunacy.