More than anything else, we need to stop stigmatizing mental illness

actionsub

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Your friend needs to take a few courses in human psychology.

I think he had a couple courses in his undergrad days, but now he believes human psychology is "based on Darwinism" and of the devil. It would help him, sure; but I doubt he'd learn much with a presupposition that it's evil!
 
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bhsmte

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I think he had a couple courses in his undergrad days, but now he believes human psychology is "based on Darwinism" and of the devil. It would help him, sure; but I doubt he'd learn much with a presupposition that it's evil!

Doesn't sound like it.
 
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dysert

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Was it negatively impacting your job performance?

Were you offered any help?
I would say it was not impacting my job performance, but they would likely have said it was. As a software developer, job performance is assessed quite subjectively anyway.

I was not offered any help.

And if that stunt wasn't enough, the only way they knew of my illness is because the company doctor (it was a big company) likely told management of my condition -- a clear violation of HIPAA. And, this was after I came back from FMLA leave, probably another violation!

Personally, I think they were scared of me. They didn't want some maniac with a gun coming in and shooting up the place, so they wanted me gone.

I know I could have gone to court over this, but everything would have been so hard to prove. At the time I didn't have the money, time, or energy to go through it. If it happens again, though, I won't hesitate.
 
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Armoured

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Yeah, being told that I just need to pray more and my treatment-resistant depression will go away really is fun.


This might be surprising, but if the DSM V disagrees with you then you're wrong.

Because the people with PhDs in fields like clinical psychology, neuropsychology and psychiatry know more than a layman about mental illness, and the DSM is based upon expert consensus.

Edit: I have a mental illness that was only recently recognized as one in the latest DSM, but that's different from saying that, say, Judging Other People Disease is a real illness when most experts are familiar with it and have almost all said that it wasn't.

It's not that these things haven't been considered -- they're been rejected.
Typical elitist librul! Where do these people get off? Thinking they know more than me just because they have multiple advanced degrees and years of experience in relevant fields!
 
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Armoured

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This just shows that if you have a mental illness, you probably should not have guns in your house.
Depends on the mental illness, and how the guns are kept. I have a mental illness, AND keep guns in the house, so I caution your breadth of brush.
 
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Dave-W

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Do you ever seek medical care when you are sick or in emergency situations?
Or, do you just say a prayer to be healed?
I guess that answer would depend on whether the person was a follower of Hobart Freeman or not.
 
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DogmaHunter

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I just read that a mother who shot and killed her two daughters in Texas before being shot and killed herself had a history of "mental illness".

Reading the comments after the article I see writers saying things about guns and "crazy people".

If it is not "crazy people" it is "a danger to themselves and others", "mentally unstable", etc.

All of those words are in reference to conditions that we now view as medical conditions.

Yet, we do not treat the people who have these conditions like they are suffering from an illness. Outside of the clinic they get almost no empathy, compassion or care. They get called things like "crazy people". They get dragged into every debate about access to firearms. They get dragged into debates about inadequate access to mental health services, not because we do not like to see them suffer, but because we see them as a threat to public safety.

In the time of modern medicine has there ever been any other condition that is viewed as a medical condition but is stigmatized so much?

Maybe I do not follow the news media enough--I do not even own a TV set--but I do not hear anybody calling for us to respond appropriately to the suffering of those who have mental illnesses. Maybe it is long past due. Maybe the suffering of the mentally ill, not the danger of guns, is where our energy should have been focused all along.

The taboo around mental illness is a cultural one.

For centuries, millenia even, religion has been telling us that there is "the mind" on the one hand and then "the body" on the other. As if they are seperate things.

This results in the idea that those with mental problems have a "spiritual" problem, rather then a physical one. But the reality is that "the mind" is directly related to "the brain". In fact, it isn't at all incorrect to say that the mind IS the brain.

The brain is an organ just like any other.
And like your liver, your brain can fail or function improperly to.

This is why an exorcism and prayer doesn't pull people out of psychosis, but anti-psychotic medicine does.
 
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Dave-W

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The taboo around mental illness is a cultural one.
In ancient Greece, the mentally ill were thought to have been visited by the gods.
Hence they were considered seers, oracles and prophets.
 
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Dave-W

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This is why an exorcism and prayer doesn't pull people out of psychosis, but anti-psychotic medicine does.
But by the same logic, anti-psychotic drugs do not not cure true cases of demonization.
 
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FreeSpirit74

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Yes mental illness has a stigma to it. But in this modern PC world, we cannot look at it like that. We have to view someone who is clearly unstable as "OK" and to be accepted just as they are.

We just had a case in my area where an older man has been arrested for following several women with young children around in several different stores in the area. On the Facebook articles there are plenty of apologists trying to say "well, maybe he has dementia or Alzheimer's onset." As a woman who does not like and draws the line on having strange men in my airspace who act hinky, I wouldn't care WHAT his problem was if he had done this to me.
 
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