AIBU to think we over-pathologise very nomal human behaviour?

[Breakawaygirl]

Other threads have got me thinking about this....

We all know that diagnosis of anxiety, depression, autism and other emotional/mental health/neurological conditions are on the rise.

My question is, is it true that we are just paying more attention to conditions that were swept under the rug, or are we over-diagnosing very natural human behaviour.

I've often thought depression, anxiety and other conditions are very natural reactions to our modern world.

Many people wake up early only to be overworked, fed bad food, underpaid, come home to more work, unable to foster connections with loved ones and children, feel lonely, cut off (no community), big uncertainty in the future, pollution, overpopulation, extinction of animals, little nature in some animals and a very aggressive media that seems to have an agenda - surely to feel bad is NORMAL in these circumstances.

I often think the diagnosis is a way of saying it's the PERSON who has the problem rather than the way we conduct our society/culture as a whole.

That is not to minimise that many conditions are the result of neurology and genetics, but a huge component is nurture and lifestyle.

I've often felt that we live in human zoos and are behaviour and neurosis stems from that.

For instance exercise is a natural anti-depressant but most of us don't get enough.

Anxiety is proven to be exaggerated by social media and the idea that everyone is doing better.

Is it that people individually are sicker, or is society sicker?

Curious for people's thoughts.

I think over pathologising is the very normal human behaviour of pattern recognition and wanting clear answers, maybe at times combined with a bit of science fetishising with is fuelled a lot by bad science journalism.

I don't think that's inherently negative (except the bad media), it can be very helpful to know X, Y, Z are concerning behaviours or that many other people also experience A, B, C and we're not alone with that. It can help people feel connected to a community and find ways to manage the very complex process of living and being human in this world. It can also have a negative impact, but, it's quite possible those that those who overuse it to beat others or to shield themselves from consequences or scrutiny would just do it with something else. That's normal human behaviour too.

I would thoroughly recommend reading Sapiens, OP.
So many answers to questions and ideas on this thread.
www.amazon.co.uk/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0099590085/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sapiens+yuval+noah+harari&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1547729660&sr=8-1

I think our positive thinking society really doesn't know what to do with unhappy people. I can think of several friends who (to cut a long story short) are unhappy because their lives haven't worked out the way they hoped. That isn't a disease but it's like we don't know how else to regard it.

Its not heavy human interaction that causes poor mental health in those jobs. Its the fact that they are dealing with angry/dangerous/ill/injured/stressed/anxious people all day long in a systems crippled by budget cuts.

People who have highly stressful jobs in a situation where they feel validated and highly valued by management do very well. Much better than people who earn more but don't feel that their contribution is valued so much.
I used to have a link to a study about it, I'll se if I can find it.

Without being too bleak, I think life just isn't always a very happy thing. We have evolved to cope with abject misery and suffering (short life's, death in childbirth, poverty.) Even with all the comforts of modern life, our brains are hardwired to recognise the negative more than the positive. Maybe it will take us some time to 'evolve' out of this.

I think I read somewhere that not only are we more wired to notice and hold onto the negative, but that human minds aren't always that great at knowing what is making us feel happy/unhappy/positive/negative. Like we don't always know what's caused physical pain or a bad smell, same with feelings. It can be a lot of trial and error to work and we're not particularly trained in this society to do that for our feelings - it's assumed if we're feeling bad, it must be something big and out of our control like our careers or unfulfilled dreams, when it can also be small things that we can do.

Someone upthread suggested living an uncomplicated rural life might make mental illness less likely. I beg to differ. My husband ‘s family are from the North West coast of Ireland and we have a house there. It is a fairly poor area and a widespread community, about 800 residents spread over 25 square miles. Every year for the last 4 years (and many other years before that) there has been at least one suicide including my DH’s first cousin. Poverty, isolation and the very short winter days there mean there is a lot of mental ill health.

I’d say there are some situations where it’s normal to react in a certain way - anxiety or depression- yep similar to animals in a zoo

What you do if the circumstances can’t be altered I guess is what’s next

I think we are more aware of things now. We are much better at diagnosing health conditions in general. There was a time that no one died of cancer. Not because it didn’t exist but because we didn’t know about it.

Depression kills. It kills.

As for having to get on with things. My depression was so bad last week my husband had to take a morning off work to take my children to school because I physically couldn’t do it. If he hadn’t been able to they wouldn’t have gone.

Without being too bleak, I think life just isn't always a very happy thing.
This is why many people were religious in the past and the thought of a happy afterlife sustained them. Now religion is on the decline and people reach towards other gods such as money, beauty consumerism, romantic love. They find that doesn't bring ultimate happiness either.

@derxa

Agree, religion was always people's crutch but we know it not to be true now. I personally don't believe in man-made religion, although I am a spiritual person. We all fill the void with something.

I find nature, sunshine, flowers, changing seasons, the sea, birds etc a good start to this issue of replacing religion. Even in a city.
Probably sounds twee but it’s the thing I go back to.

Agree, religion....we know it not to be true now

You do realise that there are billions of people who would profoundly disagree with this and who do believe it to be true. There is life outside of your small bubble y'know.....

That's a bit generalised Breakaway. Less people are religious nowadays, but that doesn't mean that there aren't still lots of religious people around. You and many others may have 'decided it's not true' which is a bit different to announcing on a public forum that 'we know it's not true now'.

There are also people who believe the earth is flat, man didn't land on the moon and that vaccinations don't work. Religion is not proven to be true - it is a believe. Believe is different to fact. You can believe in religion, you can't prove it.

*Belief

I agree and disagree. I think that our societies pathologise a lot of feelings and responses that deviate from happy happy happy.

So, feeling shitty inresponse to shitty things happening is somehow not a causal ‘thing’ anymore. It’s an illness instead to be cured.

Becoming disabled suddenly and having my whole life collapse a few years ago was fucking awful. I also have no family left as my closest family, well they died in traumatic circumstances during this time as well, of the same condition which has made me seriously ill. They werent diagnosed in time and it was awful. Then I started to lose functionally and doctors finally stopped ignoring it all and copped on.

Afterwards, my life was made so much worse by consultants who failing to actually treat and manage my physical condition, but wanted to diagnose me with depression. And fill me full of happy pills. Which I didn’t need.

What I needed was expert management of my condition and appropriate pain medication... which I didn’t get until 4 yrs later when I got admitted to hospital as an emergency and I happened to get seen by someone who was horrified by the lack of management and the state I was in, and helped get my physical symptoms under control so much more.

What’s written on my file now is that I have ‘reactive depression’. Code for yes she’s depressed but that’s a reasonable response to the situation she’s in.

Personally I hate the phrase. It sounds like an excuse, like I have a reason for feeling this way so i get a little phrase telling other doctors I’m entitled to be ‘a bit down’. Ffs.

To me, it sums up all that’s wrong with societies attitude towards mental health in this respect!

Now, I also have PTSD from the traumatic events of the last few years, and that is absolutely a ‘proper’ mental illness and cannot be cured by enforced community participation and getting up and getting out to work etc. It really can’t. And if you think that type of illness should be ignored or downgraded to not medical in some way, I disagree wholeheartedly.

Ironically, (? Or at least very circularly) a chunk of my ptsd is from those awful hcps who refused to treat my deteriorating physical condition, saying it was ‘all in my head’ instead, and offering antidepressants instead of medical treatment.

In fact, one t@at was still saying that to my sister as they turned her away from life saving medical treatment the week she died. Nice to know that a fatal aortic aneurism was just ‘in her head’. Self satisfied bastard.

I do think people need to be very careful with counselling. Of course there are some excellent counsellors around who are hugely helpful in assisting people to come to terms with issues they're having difficulty dealing with.

But there are also many who encourage their clients to blame everybody and anybody, to over analyse their every emotion and to basically take themselves so seriously that they become really hard work.

Regarding jobs with a lot of public contact:
A teenaged family member took a job on a till (not in a particularly pressured store) and was horrified at the way she was treated by the general public, quite a lot of aggressive/bullying behaviour. Was a real shock. Can see why one would get MH problems dealing with that all the time.

I'm right on that boundary between being a healthy person that reacted very badly to specific situational badness and became ill, was eventually treated and recovered...and being someone who is fundamentally unwell but who can just about make it in life if nothing tips the balance to suddenly.

You could totally look at me and say I have a disabling mental health problem...and you could also totally look at me and say I just had a run of bad luck.

The problem with making a dividing line is that normal reactions to traumatic circumstances can embed behavioural responses in the mind that can become disabling in the future. If you take a few months to bounce back from a terrible event, then thats it done with. If it takes you 3 years to finally seek treatment in recovering from a terrible event then the person you became as a result of the event is almost as real as the person you were before. You might always be influenced by the behaviours you learnt in that 3 year period.

So while it may seem like unnecessary medicalisation to treat someone after 3 months of grief, for example, it is actually a very good idea to head these things off before they become embedded.

I guess it might be similar to treating dubious cells that definitely AREN'T cancer yet, but might be in the future....yes - it might be an unnecessary intervention...but on average its worth it?

It's words being overly used in the wrong context perhaps.

One of the thing which depresses me about modern debates, especially those on the chaos pit that is Twitter is that people are accusing each other of being narcissists all the bloody time. I've lost track of what a narcissist even is, as it just seems to be used as someone who you disagree with, who doesn't find your arguments compelling (for whatever reason). Added bonus points if someone calls YOU a narcissist this automatically makes them a gaslighting narcissist themselves! - it's completely nuts.

I'm certain narcissists are a real thing, just like depression is a real thing - it's just used to describe behaviours which aren't, which makes it appear meaningless at times.

A lot of increase in diagnosis is also down to better understanding about mental health and learning disabilities, better screening and people feeling more open to discussing it.
Historically there has been a huge under diagnosis of girls and women with autism for
Example.

The same is true of allergies. My little boy was diagnosed with an egg allergy at 6 months after we ended up in A&E. A lot of people say "I'm sure there never used to be so many allergies", and perhaps there weren't due to our change in lifestyle, but also the fact that 70 years ago, our little boy would probably have just died from his first reaction and would have been one of many babies who died in infancy.

This of course doesn't mean there aren't also lots of people jumping on the proverbial bandwagon however. And also a lot of people who manage to live with their differences, without needing or wishing to label them.

That’s a very good post sittingonthetallseat. I agree!

I’ve been thinking along similar lines recently about ADHD, since my son was diagnosed with it a few months ago. I definitely believe it’s a real condition, and my boy definitely has it, but what I’ve been wondering about is why it’s viewed as such a problem.

I had a really eye opening moment at a post-diagnosis workshop I went to, where the psychologist running the session was talking about a possible evolutionary basis for ADHD, and how people with it may have been extremely valuable, back when we hunter-gatherers, living in little tribes and not knowing (and fearing) what lay on the other side of the hill. Individuals who were innately fearless, impulsive and tireless would be the ones to go off and explore and make new discoveries and drive progress. Now we all know what’s over the hill, and live in a largely sedantry, conformist and risk averse society, these individuals are viewed as, frankly, a pain in the arse. Especially in childhood, when the qualities adults value most are the abilities to be as still, quiet and compliant as possible.

DS is brilliant. He does his absolute best to fit the mould at school (he has ASD too, so it’s a supreme effort and must be exhausting for him). I just wish that sometimes his natural energy and risk-taking was as celebrated as his ability to suppress them.

I think the problem is that virtually no one is "free". We think we are but we're really not. We are conditioned to become a cog in society. Work hard at school, get qualifications, get a job, pay your taxes, be an upstanding citizen. Drastically step outside of that in any way and you either go to prison or get diagnosed with a mental illness (although nowadays most prisoners are being diagnosed with personality disorders etc!). Maybe some people just don't want to be part of the "machine" but what other realistic options do they have? For a society to succeed it has to be productive and have laws etc but everyone is expected to live this cookie cutter life and it just doesn't work for everyone.

I've stepped out of it in a small way. I don't do social media at all, MN is my only vice! I don't stress about politics or global issues. I only take temporary contracts work wise and I only work long enough to fund various periods of extended travel, which then revives me to get through another period of work. I'm lucky to work in an area which is always understaffed and the pay is decent (although not a high flyers salary by any means). So I can afford to do that and it's been the best thing for my mental health. Owning a house or a new car just wouldn't fill me with the same joy. I don't have a huge amount in the bank or a big pension pot, but I am happy (after many years of diagnosed depression). I've found a way to make life work for me. Most people don't have that means of escape.