to wonder if we have all become mentally ill?

[Alameda]

(and for slightly stalking this blogger)

but can 1 in 2 Americans really have a mental illness? have slightly vested interest in this because would quite like my own mental disorder to be somehow integral to society rather than there actually be something wrong with me

psychopathology of american life

We aren't American though? Are you?

yes but like all bad things Americans have exported the concept

although yes I am technically US but culturally UK

It is s sam created by the pharmeceutical industry. America is the only country in the world where medicine is a business for profit. The more people need drugs, the more profits they make.

If we're all mad, then none of us are. QED.

yes, if everyone is mad then I am a Normal Person

which is all I have ever aspired to

sometimes I think that struggling with MH is the only sane response to an insane world; and that it's those who are swimming along, willfully unaware, who are insane.

cheesey, sorry

am sur RD Laing would agree - was he the one who said 'life is a sexually transmitted disease with a mortality rate of 100%' :)

Your answer is in this quote from the article, which refers to the DSM:

"they estimate 57.4% of Americans can expect to meet the diagnostic threshold for at least one mental illness"

The DSM IV is a useful but ultimately highly flawed tool for this very reason.

The blogger is, I believe, more concerned with the mis - or perhaps I should say too hasty - diagnosis of mental illness than with an actual increase in mental illness.

The thing is, it would be a rare person who went their whole life without a physical illness, of any description. Why are we so surprised that mental ill health is prevalent?

the blogger has somehow tracked back to my other link in feminism, about medical arrogance

it must feel very wrong to have to diagnose someone who has no diagnosable condition with something, just so invoices can be sent or whatever

Absolutely - I think the example he gives of having to diagnose a woman with, basically, "general discontent with where life is right now" is an excellent one.

And if it is prevalent, what's wrong with looking for treatment?

Of course, we can all agree that doctors shouldn't be prescribing anti-depressants at the drop of a hat, but ime very few British GPs do.

When I had a bad patch the other year I got a few counselling sessions at work; they really helped and I felt better equipped to deal with the world and myself.

When my mother went through a similar patch she wouldn't even contemplate seeing a doctor, so the rest of the family just had to deal with her increasingly erractic behaviour- quite scary for young teens and not something I would have wanted to put my family through. What it meant was that all the care and propping up that could have been done by a qualified counsellor was done by her teen daugher (me) instead. It kept the statistics down but I don't see it as the ideal solution.

I believe exactly the same happened with my grandfather: in his autobiography he thanks my grandmother for dealing with his dark moods; having dealt myself with his daughter and his greatgranddaughter, I have an idea of how much work that would have been.

Dd is finally on anti-depressants- after waiting for several years- and it is slowly turning her life round. Which means one day I will get my life back.

I don't know if the surprise is the prevalence of mental problems or whether it is the idea that they are medical/biological whatever in origin - as opposed to, as it says, the psychopathology of every day life (wasn't that Freud's book?)

so people are feeling and experiencing all those things (the common unhappiness and the mild depression) but is it helpful to attribute them to a mental pathology and prescribe talking or chemical treatments when perhaps the origins are social or cultural or economic or something?

The problem is not in diagnosing mental illness, but in not diagnosing it.
The problem is not in using drugs to treat it, but only using drugs and becoming dependant on them.
The problem is not counselling, but in forcing people to go to counselling or using inappriopriate counselling.
The problem is not doctors treating mental illness, but in exploiting it to make a profit.

Same with any illness really.

Yep I can see where you are coming from with that.

Now I am not talking about severe mental health problems here - I am talking about that general unhappiness and mild depression etc - and I do believe there is a lot of evidence that being busier and doing things to help others is as effective as any formal treatment.

there isn't a diagnosis for 'shit life syndrome' though, and not only are none of the treatments risk-free - all drugs have potential side effects and even counselling can be adverse - it's not really fair to label someone with something that, however prevalent, is still quite stigmatising when really what might be most helpful is just a good social support network or something

loads of people must end up with milder cases of PND simply through exhaustion and isolation, for example, which is more sort of socially preventable isn't it?

maybe I am missing the point. But anyway don't think blogger is talking about the major mental illnesses here, just sort of every day blues.

oh somehow x posted with Rhonda despite long satellite delay between our posts

yeah, what you are saying. I think.

cory of course people should be seeking treatment for mental illness and I agree that prescribing medicine at the drop of a hat is rare in the UK, though certainly not in the US (which was where this particular article was written from).

Going for counselling is exactly the kind of thing people going through a bad patch should be doing, rather than going to a doctor who forces a diagnosis upon them and treats that rather than the root of the problem (which a counsellor, by talking you through it, would).

Needless to say people with a genuine mental illness may only find life manageable with chemical treatment.

Hmm I agree with all your statements except the first. That's sometimes the problem, but sometimes it's quite the converse i.e. diagnosing someone and then pigeonholing them into having a condition which becomes a self fulfilling prophecy (and is more likely to lead to dependence on drugs).

Alameda neuroscience shows mental illness to be biological/chemical in origin. The problem is that the diagnostic tools are behavioural rather than physical, so it might be a chemical imbalance causing depression, but it would be statements like lacking energy/hopelessness etc that would typically result in the diagnosis.

As I said before it is very often the right thing to diagnose a mental illness and treat appropriately - with drugs and counselling. The danger is that many people who are simply suffering from "the blues" (I'll keep using depression here as it's somewhat easier to do so, but a plethora of other 'disorders' could fit) then get diagnosed with depression, start taking anti depressants, find it hard to cope without them, etc... it's a downward spiral.

Sorry Alameda x-posted with you. I think we're both coming from roughly the same place!

The trouble with measuring mental illness, which suggests abnormality, is that we are, on the whole, pretty dreadful at identifying what we would otherwise consider 'normal'. And, furthermore, we measure unhappiness (say) against happiness, as if it was possible or desirable to be happy all of the time (so any deviation from happiness is, necessarily and by definition, unhappiness and so on).

Are one in two people mentally ill? Well, perhaps measured against some culturally defined unobtainable model of 'happiness' or normality, they are. Do they all need drugs or counselling? Probably not. Does that still mean they're 'ill'?

Freud - who is, on the whole, discredited - was still right when he insisted that, a) normality is the odd one out; b) the 'pleasure' principle is best understood not as the presence or experience of pleasure but actually as the absence of pain.

I found counselling extremely helpful when it came to shit life syndrome. Did it matter that the origin was almost certainly due to circumstances- those circumstances can't be changed, but CBT and the opportunity to talk to an objective outsider, who wasn't going to get hurt by what I said, meant I could work out some strategies for dealing with it. To an outsider it looked like mild depression/just shittiness of life, but as far as my work went, I was just going through the motions; after treatment, I was coping.

Dd is having ongoing counselling to deal with the fact that she has a lifelong disability (clear cut case of shit life syndrome)- of course if somebody could come along and cure the disability that would be a lot more helpful but it's not going to happen any time soon; in the meantime she still needs the strategies to get her out of bed in the morning and not cut herself when she is in pain and frightened.

In my work experience, depression in students (of which we see a lot) is almost always triggered by some passing shit life experience. But can have absolutely devastating effects on their performance.

summerintherosegarden Tue 29-May-12 13:36:56

"Going for counselling is exactly the kind of thing people going through a bad patch should be doing, rather than going to a doctor who forces a diagnosis upon them and treats that rather than the root of the problem (which a counsellor, by talking you through it, would)."

Many people need to go through their doctor to be referred for counselling. I was lucky enough to get it on work, but dd had to go on the waiting list.

interesting

what neuroscience shows which mental illness to be 'chemical in origin'? have always been under the impression that 'chemical imbalance' (eg depression) was a marketing rather than medical term or are you talking about something else summer?

Sorry, poorly written on my part. For doctor read psychiatrist.

No that's not marketing, an example of a chemical imbalance would be an inability to produce sufficient quantities of serotonin, or - a biological one - a lack of receptor neurons in certain parts of the brain.

There are lots of great, very accessible books on this topic - e.g pretty much anything by Antonio Damasio or VS Ramachandran. To be honest it's been a few years since I studied it in depth but I try to keep vaguely up to date because it's a topic I find extremely interesting.