4 ms·
As someone who has depression and anxiety, I can definitely testify that there's a certain fatalism that one experiences once they've been "diagnosed" with ment
by _bxg1 8y ago
As someone who has depression and anxiety, I can definitely testify that there's a certain fatalism that one experiences once they've been "diagnosed" with mental illness.
However. There's a dangerous perspective held by a conservatively-minded minority of more people who say mental illness "isn't real" and you just need to "suck it up" and "have stronger character", and it amounts to victim-blaming. Arguing to eliminate the insanity plea sounds very much along those lines, regardless of what the book said. Whether the doctor in question falls into that camp or not, it's a dangerous line to walk.
Personally I think of mental illness as analogous to obesity: it is simply a current state of being, and a spectrum at that. But it's important not to let it slide outside the realm of medicine and of having factors outside of the victim's control. People have fought long and hard for that ground and it's understandable they would feel threatened when someone (even just seemingly) tries to undercut it.
- empath75 8y ago> There's a dangerous perspective held by a conservatively-minded minority of more people who say mental illness "isn't real" and you just need to "suck it up" and "have stronger character" I don't think most cases of depression are an illness for the same reason that I don't think that hunger is an illness. It's the body and mind's natural response to a life which it wasn't evolved to cope with. Which isn't at all the same thing as telling people to suck it up. If everyone is forced to take drugs in order to thrive in what civilization has become, it's not the depressed person who is sick.
- _bxg1 8y agoRight, so you're not in that group. But there are people who literally write off every possible thing that's wrong with someone's mind as a character flaw and therefore that person's fault and something they don't need any professional assistance to deal with.
- empath75 8y agoI wish we thought of depression as a disease of systems instead of of people -- and that our first response to rising numbers of depression diagnoses wasn't only to treat people, but also to reform society. Like if a building is on fire, you don't just do first aid on people that get burned. You evacuate the building and put the fire out.
- elbasti 8y agoI completely agree and understand the defensive position. I don't think that Szasz (and certainly I'm not) saying that the condition/suffering/symptom's are not real; and I think that's why he regrets calling the book what he did.