I have seen a prominent sign posted outside a well known mental health institution which proudly displays that 1 in 4 people suffer from some kind of psychological ailment.
Could this be true? Are 1 out of 4 North Americans mentally ill? How are these statistics arrived at and who decides on the norm by which these four arbitrary people are judged?
Is this simply a case where the somewhat ridiculed medical branch of phsychology/phsychiatry is attempting to drum up additional grant money in lieu of the attention Cancer, HIV, Diabetese and major neurological diseases are getting.
Is it easier for most people to sympathise with a beloved public figure like Michaels J. Fox in his fight against Parkinsons (or is it MS - forgive me, I don’t recall), rather than trying to muster sympathy for the actress who played Superman’s girlfriend (what’s her name?), found cringing and insane in somebody’s back yard a while ago?
Seems people tend to feel far more sympathy for a physically challenged individual who still manages to retain his/her her wits as opposed to a physically healthy person who stands on the corner shouting at the traffic passing by.
But back to my original question. Is it truely possible that one in four dopers are slightly off their rocker?.. and no fair picking on the theists!
Well, as Cecil has rightly pointed out numerous times in past columns, blatantly self-serving statistics should be taken with a pretty huge grain of salt. As such, I would tend to disbelieve said statistic without more information. Who gathered the data? What measures were used in the determination of what constitutes “mentally ill?”
If the sign said “One in Four people are assholes,” then I may be more inclined to agree without questioning it
Maybe they are using the rational choice of declaring all fundamental christians mentally ill. I’m sorry I had to pick on the theists. It’s too easy.
really though. I think you can classify depression and a host of other minor ailments as a psychological ailment. If they took everyone who has suffered a psychological ailment and used a pretty broad definition, I think they could get away with that number. Of course I’m in SF and 1 out of every 2 people here suffers some kind of mental ailment.
You sure “the actress who played Superman’s girlfriend” doesn’t refer to Noel Neill (sp?), or Terri Hatcher, or that lady who played Lana Lang in Superman III?
I tend to see human behavior as more or less a continuum, and what we percieve as psychological ailments as regions of behavior not so much categorically different from “normal” behavior as extremes, and sometimes even arbitrarily defined regions. What is a psychological ailment depends a lot more on the ability of the one suffering from it to function in society than on the behavior of that individual taken independently.
Then again, I might just be the one out of four…
“It seemed like a good idea at the time…
…but then again, so did the atomic bomb.” -Charles Sismondo
Sorry to monopolize the replies right off the bat, but upon reflection, “psychological impairment” is a pretty broad term. It could mean anything from Paranoid Schizophrenia to mild Dyslexia. If that one in four figure represents anybody with a mild spider phobia to Jeffry Dahmer then it very well might be accurate.
As far as the issue of sympathy goes, I think people do generally feel less sympathetic toward the mentally ill. That may stem from the fact that mental illness is solely about behavior. Otherwise healthy people do really weird or even sociopathic things for no apparent cause. Sure, psychologists may develop pet theories and tag labels to certain symptoms (many of which are evaluated by very subjective means), but it’s hardly a very reliable or scientific branch of study. The disparate schools of psychology are so at variance with one another in explaining the most basic concepts of mind and memory that it’s small wonder that it’s deemed “psychobabble” by so many. While there have been some extraordinary advances in neurochemical treatment of certain disorders/symptoms, I hesitate to put credence in the abilities of the Bob Hartleys of the world.
Another reason that the mentally ill get a bad rap is that so many behaviors have been given the “disease” label. People who eat too much, sex addicts, alcoholics, the depressed, attention deficit disorder. I am not saying that any or all of these are NOT diseases BTW, (that needs a different thread entirely) but lots of people do. When people see someone who tops the scale at 600 pounds crying about their “food dependency”, (and often revelling in their “victim status”) a natural reaction to many is “Quit eating so much, Butthead!” And when these types of people are given validation by psychologists, the conclusion that the psych types are full of it isn’t always far behind.
If we’re talking about a psychological condition, we could probably slap some DSM-IV designation on damn near everyone. I wouldn’t call it an “ailment” until it is causing problems for that person.
That said, we do treat a lot more psychiatric conditions these days, but not because there are more of them out there–we’ve just lowered our standards for treatment thanks to better drugs. It used to be that the only antidepressants were tricyclics and MAOIs, which have some fairly ugly side effects and contraindications, so we didn’t treat anyone unless they were fairly depressed. Now that we have the SSRIs (Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil), which don’t have quite the adverse effects, we aren’t as reluctant to hand them out.
Dr. J
“Seriously, baby, I can prescribe anything I want!” -Dr. Nick Riviera
And you got this definition where? Your background in psychology is what?
The OP specifically said “some kind of psychological ailment,” not “insane.” There are so many “psychological ailments” listed that I’m surprised it’s only one in four!
“Who in the rainbow can draw the line where the violet tint ends and the orange tint begins? Distinctly we see the difference of the colors, but where exactly does the one first blendingly enter into the other?”
– Herman Melville, Billy Budd, 1924
Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.
Dr. Watson
“Sorry, the obligatory obscure quotation for this post has been used. Please check back later.”
"It does depend a lot on how you define “ailment”. DoctorJ
Getting a divorce, separating from a live-in lover, the death of a parent, poor grades, loss of a job, quitting a job - all of those have the potential for becoming “ailments.”
Some people just drink their way through these life altering events, some see a doc.
Are you driving with your eyes open or are you using The Force? - A. Foley
According to the DSM IV any sort of maladaptive substance dependence or addiction is a form of mental illness. Consider this combined with other common forms of mental illness (depression, ADD, etc.) and the 1/4 figure seems fairly belivable. Especially if you count everyone who’s unwillingly addicted to nicotine.
i’m not a vegetarian because I love animals; I am a vegetarian because I hate plants.
