6 ms·

Schizophrenia is a serious illness, and often misunderstood as "split personality." It is a constellation of delusions, hallucinations, and scrambled thoughts t

Schizophrenia is a serious illness, and often misunderstood as "split personality." It is a constellation of delusions, hallucinations, and scrambled thoughts that is often (though not always) pretty devastating to work, school, relationships, etc. For some reason, because we have no blood test or genetic test for it, the diagnosis is still met with skepticism from many in the public I'm glad you posted this. These diseases (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, PTSD) are challenging and can be horrible but I feel like the stigma makes them a lot worse. It's like many natural disasters in which the human malfeasance after the event causes more harm than the thing itself. The way people treat people who are afflicted by these diseases is, in many cases, an aggravating factor. Instead of helping them, plenty of people (especially in the corporate world, and in society at large after 1980 or so) kick them when they're down. It's pretty disheartening.

swalkergibson 13y ago
The stigma is absolutely the biggest problem with the treatment of mental illness. It would be as if you went to someone with cancer and said, "Well, if you really wanted to, you could just shrink that tumor right now. You just don't want to commit to changing your life. It is your fault." I never believed this until my sister died. Now I realize just how broken the system is.
- erichurkman 13y ago
  And worse yet, the cause is wildly misunderstood. One person's debilitating depressing might be resolved spectacularly via light therapy, another via a single medication, another yet only moderated by a constellation of medications, and others who have undergone a variety of treatments for a decade with little improvement. Compare that to, say, a broken leg, which is much easier to understand. There's a huge stigma attached to certain cancers, too, like lung cancer not caused by smoking.
- serf 13y ago
  Unfortunately, that stigma exists elsewhere in medicine, too. I'm a quadriplegic. My father has the overwhelming opinion that since my condition is 'incomplete' (meaning that I have some movement in affected regions), that it's up to me to recover, and that I can't walk because I don't put my mind to the task at hand. A shocking thing to say to someone, but his opinion has been echoed to me by various healthcare professionals and therapists throughout the course of my care, that the mind simply will not allow the body to recover without ample hope and work towards such a recovery. I have encountered a set of people in life that , while seemingly uninfluenced by religion or mysticism, believe that certain parts of the body (the brain, especially) work on principles and ideas that we're completely uninformed about. Consequently, those people suggest and use themselves methods derived from mysticism, without a solid scientific backing(not to say that hope and patient mental well-being aren't important for recovery, they are, but you can't 'hope' a spinal cord back together as some seem to think). Hopefully as we document more and more quantifiable physical changes associated to disorders which we know little about this trend will slow. It's important to consider the mental aspects behind a problem, but it's a waste of time and potentially destructive to put the recovery solely in the hands of the inflicted and their mental state.
sanoli 13y ago
Why "after 1980"? What happened?
- Tossrock 13y ago
  Under Reagan there was a national de-institutionalization of mentally ill people, who largely ended up as the multitude of homeless vagrants who occupy urban scenes across the country.
  - orionblastar 13y ago
    You are right, and it was never corrected. You will find that most if not all of the homeless became that way after they became mentally ill and there was no or very little support available for them. If you want to end homelessness you have to bring back a mental health system that supports the mentally ill, helps them make house payments, and can train them for new jobs when they lose them. All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent. This is, of course, not true. But news media makes popular opinion out there. If something is popular, it does not make it true.
    - michaelochurch 13y ago
      All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent. If you factor out drug use, the mentally ill population isn't more dangerous than anyone else. I don't think that the media intentionally vilifies the mentally ill. Instead, I think that people in general seek mental illness as a partial explanation for extreme violent behavior. "He must be one sick fuck." It's much easier to explain human badness in terms of illness than to confront the more complex truths: (a) sometimes good or average people do bad things, and (b) some people are just horrible. If you start concluding that all extremely violent people are mentally ill (which is probably false) and use the flawed (A -> B) -> (B -> A) thinking that passes for logic among many people, you start thinking of mentally ill people as all potentially violent.
tokenadult 13y ago
in society at large after 1980 or so You are, as I recall, too young to know about times before 1980 by personal experience. I'm not sure what you are referring to here, but if you are referring to deinstitutionalization, that happened MUCH earlier, with considerable impetus from the personal experience of President Kennedy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation#President_Kennedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation#Preside... In the old days of Freudianism, stigma was worse and the affliction of people with mental illness was worse. (Basis of knowledge: much specific reading on these topics, including reading about the history of diagnosis and treatment of major mental disorders, and having lived through all the years mentioned in this reply.)

swalkergibson 13y ago

The stigma is absolutely the biggest problem with the treatment of mental illness. It would be as if you went to someone with cancer and said, "Well, if you really wanted to, you could just shrink that tumor right now. You just don't want to commit to changing your life. It is your fault." I never believed this until my sister died. Now I realize just how broken the system is.

erichurkman 13y ago
And worse yet, the cause is wildly misunderstood. One person's debilitating depressing might be resolved spectacularly via light therapy, another via a single medication, another yet only moderated by a constellation of medications, and others who have undergone a variety of treatments for a decade with little improvement. Compare that to, say, a broken leg, which is much easier to understand. There's a huge stigma attached to certain cancers, too, like lung cancer not caused by smoking.
serf 13y ago
Unfortunately, that stigma exists elsewhere in medicine, too. I'm a quadriplegic. My father has the overwhelming opinion that since my condition is 'incomplete' (meaning that I have some movement in affected regions), that it's up to me to recover, and that I can't walk because I don't put my mind to the task at hand. A shocking thing to say to someone, but his opinion has been echoed to me by various healthcare professionals and therapists throughout the course of my care, that the mind simply will not allow the body to recover without ample hope and work towards such a recovery. I have encountered a set of people in life that , while seemingly uninfluenced by religion or mysticism, believe that certain parts of the body (the brain, especially) work on principles and ideas that we're completely uninformed about. Consequently, those people suggest and use themselves methods derived from mysticism, without a solid scientific backing(not to say that hope and patient mental well-being aren't important for recovery, they are, but you can't 'hope' a spinal cord back together as some seem to think). Hopefully as we document more and more quantifiable physical changes associated to disorders which we know little about this trend will slow. It's important to consider the mental aspects behind a problem, but it's a waste of time and potentially destructive to put the recovery solely in the hands of the inflicted and their mental state.

sanoli 13y ago

Why "after 1980"? What happened?

Tossrock 13y ago
Under Reagan there was a national de-institutionalization of mentally ill people, who largely ended up as the multitude of homeless vagrants who occupy urban scenes across the country.
- orionblastar 13y ago
  You are right, and it was never corrected. You will find that most if not all of the homeless became that way after they became mentally ill and there was no or very little support available for them. If you want to end homelessness you have to bring back a mental health system that supports the mentally ill, helps them make house payments, and can train them for new jobs when they lose them. All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent. This is, of course, not true. But news media makes popular opinion out there. If something is popular, it does not make it true.
  - michaelochurch 13y ago
    All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent. If you factor out drug use, the mentally ill population isn't more dangerous than anyone else. I don't think that the media intentionally vilifies the mentally ill. Instead, I think that people in general seek mental illness as a partial explanation for extreme violent behavior. "He must be one sick fuck." It's much easier to explain human badness in terms of illness than to confront the more complex truths: (a) sometimes good or average people do bad things, and (b) some people are just horrible. If you start concluding that all extremely violent people are mentally ill (which is probably false) and use the flawed (A -> B) -> (B -> A) thinking that passes for logic among many people, you start thinking of mentally ill people as all potentially violent.

tokenadult 13y ago

in society at large after 1980 or so You are, as I recall, too young to know about times before 1980 by personal experience. I'm not sure what you are referring to here, but if you are referring to deinstitutionalization, that happened MUCH earlier, with considerable impetus from the personal experience of President Kennedy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation#President_Kennedy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation#Preside... In the old days of Freudianism, stigma was worse and the affliction of people with mental illness was worse. (Basis of knowledge: much specific reading on these topics, including reading about the history of diagnosis and treatment of major mental disorders, and having lived through all the years mentioned in this reply.)