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 most people could make small changes in their lives which cumulatively could increase their sense of wellbeing. If enough people did this, then communities would benefit.

I suggest -

Get enough sleep
So important, especially for young people. So many studies conclude that too many people, especially schoolchildren, are chronically sleep deprived.

Take exercise
Doesn't have to be a hardcore gym workout. A brisk 10-15 minute walk to the station in the morning, or in one's lunchbreak, is beneficial.

Reconnect with nature
As a pp suggested. Take a walk in the park or by a river. Look out for wildlife or signs of spring.

Limit time spent on the internet and 24 hour news channels

Engage in more face to face communication

Support your local economy/small businesses
Use the corner shop sometimes instead of the supermarket, and take a couple of minutes while you're there to chat to the person behind the counter, or other customers.

Make time to chill out and do nothing
Especially, don't sign children up to too many activities.

Anyone who doesn’t think autism is a disability either doesn’t have any knowledge of autism or doesn’t know what disability is.

This.

For every "happy, quirky, successful autistic" there'll be a depressed miserable one who spends their entire life hiding out in their bedroom.

And this.

If autism was a person, I'd kick it right in its fucking teeth.

I'm not comfortable either with autism being discussed in the same context as mental illness. It's not a mental illness, there is no treatment or cure and you cannot recover from it. It's a lifelong neurodevelopment disorder with varying degrees of severity between individuals to the point that there is a saying "if you've met one person with autism, you've met one person with autism".

I had a trained professional ask me last week what DS special ability is because all autistics have one, as if super powers are the trade off for debilitating social-emotional cognitive deficits. People watch Young Sheldon or Rain Man and think it's all quirky behaviour and savant-level mathmatical skills.

With religious decline I imagine many communities aren't what they used to be which would affect how well being religious wards of depression at least to some extent

EwItsAHooman - Your post makes an excellent point, I wasn't comfortable with the way autism was included in the first post but I couldn't articulate why exactly. Your post has done just that.
Your post also made me realise something else that made me uncomfortable, when talking about societal influences and environment "causing" mental illness such as anxiety the implication is that something is causing autism too. And such conversations invariably end in parents being blamed for not interacting with their kids enough and video games/technology causing kids poor social skills which then gets disgnosed as autism. I always find people blaming technology for the so called rise in autism quite funny, because without that technology I'd never have made any friends at all.

I have often thought that increased anxiety and depression etc is a result of our modern living just as obesity is a consequence of changes in how we access and experience food. It now requires a conscious effort to make healthy choices and to stay healthy. With mental health this can be difficult because of conflicting demands e.g. to be well informed without being swamped by news and updated via social media, to be contactable at all times via our mobile phones.

I agree that autism belongs in a different category.

I understand what you mean @Breakawaygirl. If something bad happened to you, it is perfectly normal behaviour to be depressed for a period of time. We tend to medicalize it and give people medicines to raise their mood when given time and space to deal with the problem, they will recover.

I assisted a colleague of mine on a research into mental health conditions in 3rd world countries. One of the key points noted was that conditions such as anxiety, depression, fatigue etc weren't chronic. He found that because one would have to physically get up every day to work, care for relatives and earn money, they would starve otherwise. They couldn't 'afford' to just sit at home, depressed so depression hardly lasted over a few weeks. The individual would still be 'depressed' from maybe their loss but able to still live a normal life and they later recovered.

There is no such thing as benefits in the country I'm from (part of his study was carried out there), no SSP, so who doesn't work doesn't eat. The elderly and sick are cared for by relatives. There is no free health care either so except you had a physical condition, there would be no one to sit at home to care for you or provide food.

I remember a family doctor (GP) saying regarding Agoraphobia, 'when he is hungry, no one will need to convince him to go outside to find food'.

I will probably get flamed for this but I personally think pathologizing normal behaviour is a 1st world problem.

People will probably say, 'you've never had a loved one suffer with depression'. Well, I had 'depression' after the birth of my DC. I had to get up and move because as an immigrant, I wasn't entitled to benefits (in the UK).

My niece was diagnosed with ADHD when she was 5 - my loving grandma thought she was just being 'naughty' and convinced my DB to bring her back 'home'. She's 12 now and has had no issues since. I'm not saying she was right but it makes one think, really.

Spot on, Jan! My son has 'HFA'. It is a disability. A very serious one. Fucked off with people who say it isn't or a gift and really wish they would fuck right off to Neverneverland and take their ignorance with them.

My son was born with autism. He didn't get it from not having enough sleep or not eating the right food or any of the rest of it. Like anyone he feels more uncomfortable if he doesn't get those things but either way he has autism.

My son will probably never leave home as he's a highly vulnerable child who will grow up to be a highly vulnerable adult #gift #blessed

Modern life has not caused the rise in autism, it really is down to more recognition and refinement of the diagnostic process so that children who would previously have been written off as naughty or difficult are now supported (or should be, there are still many who slip through the gaps in the system). Many children with autism have co-morbidities, for example DS has global developmental delay. Other common co-morbidities include epilepsy, mitochondrial diseases, fragile X syndrome, metabolic disorders, neuropathies, immune disorders, and gastroenterological disorders. In previous generations some of them would have died in childhood for various reasons, others would have been obviously unwell with one condition (e.g., gastroenterological problems) so the autism went unrecognised, others with severe autism or conditions such as fragile X syndrome would have been placed in residential schools or infirmaries and considered to be either insane or mentally underdeveloped (I don't want to use the r-word as I hate the r-word), the word "autism" wasn't used as a diagnosis until around 1943.

'For every "happy, quirky, successful autistic" there'll be a depressed miserable one who spends their entire life hiding out in their bedroom.'

Yep, or a non verbal, self harming autistic person in residential care or hospital.

Having said that I agree with the general point about mental health and how the way we live affects it.

I agree, obviously it is not the one and only answer, there are layers, but generally I think the way we live now affects us in a negative way.

inside I would agree depression is a 1st world illness, but I have a slightly different take on it. There are places in the world were there is very VERY little depression and these are almost uniformly poverty stricken places with high levels of casual violence.

My own descent into depression was precipitated by child birth, and way I see it is that it is hard to be traumatised by child birth (for example) if you have spent your entire life subject to physical pain from everything from malnutrition, untreated dental problems to casual rape. But when child birth is your very first experience of uncontrolled pain and people treating you like you are sub-human...then it has a vastly larger psychological impact. You have no other experience to map it on to and this leads to high levels of PTSD and then post natal depression.

If you add this factor on top of your very valid point that you have to be able to disengage from work/socializing without dying of starvation in order to become depressed and that makes depression a first world problem.

I do not however think we should look to such places for solutions to endemic depression. A childhood of deprivation/casual abuse/ beatings/sexual assault may be a good way to avoid later episodes of depression but I can't help thinking there must be a better way.

Maybe you’re right Op.
But I found that my depression was unrelated to circumstances. I have been deeply depressed on (ostensibly lovely) holidays, for example.

I guess I think its like ending up with a non-functional immune system because you were kept in a clean room all your life...

We don't experience horrors on a daily basis, so our mental immune system can be horribly unprepared when an unavoidable trauma comes along....

Again..I don't think the answer is to subject kids to pain/violence...but maybe some other forms of serious adversity...

Apologies if this has been touched on already but has anyone heard of the 'social model' of disability? This points out that disability and illness are often defined by artificial barriers that are put in place by society. To give a couple of concrete examples, the biggest problem a lot of people with achondroplasia have is that everything is physically set up for the taller majority. If they had equal access to equipment, clothes etc. that fitted and suited them, would they be regarded as 'disabled'? Should they be regarded as disabled?

Also you didn't hear about dyslexia before the advent of mass schooling, because before then (a) most of the working class couldn't read and (b) it wasn't essential for any but the privileged to be able to read. If you did happen to be a child from a wealthy family with difficulties you would probably have had private tuition and had those difficulties worked round with varying degrees of success.

Similarly ASD and ADHD diagnoses, especially at the higher functioning end, say as much about the unsuitability of most normal schools as a learning environment for those with the diagnosis, as they do about those who may work better with fewer people around, or who need much more physical activity and more breaks with shorter bursts of learning, for example. Anxiety and depression can be seen as the result of this profound incompatibility.

M3lon, do we know for a fact that more women get PTSD in “first world” countries or is it speculation? Have anyone asked the women in third world countries?

user I didn't say more women get PTSD from childbirth in the 1st world...I said more women get depressed.

I don't know anything about PTSD rates in other countries.

I'm pretty sure if I was raped on the way home from work today I would develop PTSD. A great deal of UK rape survivors do.

I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't develop PTSD if raped tonight if I'd been raped all my life on a semi-regular basis. Chances are I would just have accepted thats what life was like by now.

I definitely think that living a life without pain and violence leaves you finding it additionally difficult to deal with when it does happen.

I don't think adding pain and violence back into people's lives is a good way to combat depression.

although it does in fact turn out that PTSD is far more prevalent in 1st world countries...apparently the conclusion drawn is indeed that it is because a violation of your expectations is required for PTSD....

Wtf is a 'happy quirky autistic'? Talk about diminishing the experience of a person living in a world that can't be bothered to understand or accommodate.

Also, there is no such thing as 'severe autism'. Autism is autism - a person will have some traits that are more intense, but a person is either autistic or they aren't.

Sorry if I come across as being very direct, but I'm very direct.

For most Women sociel anxiety wouldn't be an issue. Staying at home was being a good Wife/Mother.

You only have to read a few 19th century novels to realise that many, many women suffered with a number of ill-defined health problems. These may have been labelled as neurasthenia, hysteria or a 'delicate' constitution, to name just a few. There might have been physical causes for some of these ailments (everything from arsenic poisoning to PCOS) but some will have been mental health conditions. Look up the story of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

@insideoutsider I have seen it said that cultural differences can effect how mental illnesses present. Presumably the same could be said for how people live, so yes, in the UK where there is the safety net of benefits people can be depressed long term, and have the expected symptoms, the diagnostic manuals presumably being based largely on the experience of people in the US and Europe. In countries where you work or starve, perhaps symptoms would not be what we expect to see.

For myself, I believe I have a genetic predisposition to anxiety, I can see it all through my family. It doesn't stop me working, but it does stop me doing other things. Socialising, for example.

You only have to read a few 19th century novels to realise that many, many women suffered with a number of ill-defined health problems

This is very true. Apparently my great grandmother, who was born around 1890, had several "funny turns" as they were labelled then. Apparently a while after giving birth to my grandmother she wandered off for a couple of days and was found in a "confused state". Maybe PND? She was never bad enough to be long term hospitilised, thankfully, but she clearly had some problems with her MH.

Name change
I work in emergency services 999 response type thing
Have obviously experienced many unpleasant incidents, deaths, have had to tell family that someone has died etc
This is my job and I knew what I was signing up for.
The organisation are obsessed with the fact that we might have trauma/PTSD. I’m fed up with hearing about it tbh, partly because I know it’s purely box-ticking. And I’m getting conflicting messages..

1. Big emotions are bad. Something is wrong with you
2. You should be having big emotions and if you’re not, something is wrong.

Now if say someone dies it would be normal to feel sad and think about it for a bit. But I feel there is a scramble to poke and prod us (metaphorically) - almost like stirring up a hornets nest. Let people deal with things in a human way-cup of tea, chat etc. If they need help, great-offer support. But stop over thinking it!

Responding to the bolded post about SAHMs I disagree, I’d imagine social anxiety can be exacerbated by the modern isolation of sahmhood.