20 ms·

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 re

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 12y 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 12y 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.

erichurkman 12y 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 12y 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.