How do you fight ignorance on mental health issues?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Helllllo :slight_smile:

How do you articulate your problems to those who have a basic ignorance towards mental health? I used to think that most people were at the least compassionate and try to understand but I’ve come across those who think it isn’t really a problem, something that you can just snap out of (that old cliché)

Ruby Wax has written a show called Losing It and it’s a two woman show with Judith Owens about the entire spectrum of mental health problems and afterwards she holds a forum where people who have these problems can ask questions and get help and support. She told an interesting anecdote in a recent interview with David Frost, where Ruby had been talking to a cancer sufferer at the show who also had depression and Ruby asked her “which is worse?” and the cancer sufferer said that “depression is worse because at least with cancer you get sympathy.”

Do you think it’s something you have to really go through yourself to understand?

2

I don’t think it’s necessary to go through it to have sympathy for folks who suffer from it; a person doesn’t have to understand it in order to be considerate.

Re: explaining - I just do the best I can with it. I do sometimes say “If s/he had a broken arm or was born without a leg, it would be easier because you can see the disability. Mental illness is cruel in that what people can’t see, they often don’t believe”.

3

Like anything you have to live it to understand.

And I think there are differences in “mental health” that leads to confusion.

For instance, in the past I’ve suffered from panic attacks. This is a mental health problem but it’s NOT the same as being bipolar or having schizophrenia.

It’s like having a cold versus having pancreatic cancer.

And I can see both sides to the coin. Having had panic attacks I can sympathize with people who have them, but I can also get frustrated at people who aren’t really trying to help themselves.

And when you express that frustration you get criticized. But the harshness is needed. I also had a bad fear of flying. I lost out on a lot of great opportunities because of it. I am over my fear, I don’t like flying but I can do it. But no matter how bad my fear was, and it was intense, the fact was I still had to get on that plane. You can’t get over your fear of flying without being afraid on that plane.

I disagree with the word sympathy. I don’t need sympathy, I need understanding.

For instance, I was the IT manager of a hotel and they put me in charge of the Business Center too. I hired a person who had a stroke and she has some limited movements. I told her, “I understand you have limits, but since I’m not around much you have to tell me when you aren’t able to do something. I will be happy to accommodate you. But otherwise, I’ll assume you’re OK.”

Now this business center was closed at lunch and the lock to the door was near the floor (it was weird, I know). People would say, “Mark you should go down at lunch and help her. It takes her like five mintues to bend over and lock the door…”

I told them, she disabled she’s not an invalid. Any other time she has had difficulty doing something she asked me for help. And I’ve always helped her.

This is the difference, between sympathy and understanding to me. I’m not gonna insult her dignity by assuming she can’t lock that door. She can, it just took her a bit longer.

And I think with mental health problems we have too many enablers. You MEAN WELL, but aren’t doing anyone any favours in the long run.

4

I’ve posted TMI about my own condition(s), but I’ll chime in with a cosign on Markxxx’s post.

Some people make the mistake of not underappreciating mental illness but going in the opposite direction. It’s like people are starting to understand that mental illness can be really bad, so now they think all the disorders are pure hell. But they aren’t. And even when they are, they aren’t ALWAYS pure hell.

It’s kind of hard to explain to someone like my mother that, yes, I frequently have suicidal ideation and sometimes the longing is so deep that I become frustrated at not being “allowed” to follow through with it and yes, I still see a therapist to handle it, and yet I do not feel depressed 99% of the time. I don’t know how to explain it to myself, let alone another person. It’s hard to explain to her that yes, I know that there’s something wonky going on with my dopamine receptors (I seem to have both too much and too little activity) and it affects my thoughts, emotional awareness, and my movements. But no, I am not stressing out or worried about it. It’s not holding me “back” in life. She doesn’t have to pray for the pain to go away because I’m not in pain. Maybe some mild discomfort, but never pain. She imagines I feel sadness or anger because I’m missing out on experiences that others take for granted. But how can I miss something that I’ve never experienced? I only get shaken up inside when people make grandious statements about what one should do with their life to be “complete” and my life seems to fall short of those prescriptions. Like, an old friend of the family once yelled at me that I need to feel passion about my job and it was very wrong that I didn’t. Uh, no. I just need to do my job well and ethically. Passion is gravy but not a requirement. A dispassionate person may come across as dull and boring, but appearances can be deceiving. I’m not your entertainer anyway.

I walk funny sometimes because of my insane in the membrane, but I don’t need my co-workers’ pity or their words of encouragement when they see me stumble. Shit, I’m in better physical shape than all of them! Why are they feeling sorry for me? As long as I can continue to walk to and from work, why should I care that I occassionally walk funny? I only feel ashamed when someone brings it up. Otherwise, I just assume no one has noticed. So don’t make a big deal about it, people!

So my battle isn’t trying to get people to understand how bad mental illness is. I struggle with convincing people that I’m actually quite fine, despite it all. But I guess that’s better than people having no sympathy at all.

5

By sympathy I certainly don’t mean pity.

Perhaps empathy is a better word.

Some people are just never going to understand. Like the old folks say “you can’t pour it on 'em”. The best you can get is for folks to be respectful of you and considerate. I don’t mean enabling behaviors, like your example of the door lock, monstro.

6

Yes, I do. But I don’t think that should stop us from trying to bring attention to the reality of mental illness. I fight ignorance on it by talking fairly openly about my own experiences. I’m not ashamed of it, it doesn’t define me, it just is what it is.

It’s interesting how deep ignorance about mental health can go. I am seeing a therapist (actually a very good one) who neglected to ask me about past history of hospitalization. The next session, I told him I had been hospitalized for suicidal ideation when I was 20 (I’m 28 now.)

He did a double-take, apologized for missing that very important question, but then said, ‘‘I guess you just didn’t seem like someone who had ever been hospitalized.’’ I thought that was interesting - the idea that you could tell something like that by observing someone’s mannerisms and appearance. You can’t, of course. It’s not like I shamble and mutter to myself or anything.

This is the problem with our world, though. We see other people who look happy and assume they are - or that they always have been. We don’t realize how many of us there really are who struggle with mental health issues, both diagnosed and undiagnosed. And that’s because we’re working hard to put on the facade and many of us don’t talk about it. Well, I’m going to talk about it. I’m going to be successful and generally happy and good, and not apologize or minimize the fact that I have severe chronic depression and anxiety.

7

Where would the line be between enabling and helping though, the brain has essentially broken down there isn’t going to be a receptive back up brain that will see the sense of the people who are trying to help you.

I agree that empathy is a lot more important than sympathy, it seems to empathise is a difficult thing to do in some people, I feel emotional intelligence isn’t as revered as intellect even though I would say emotional intelligence is just as important.

olives, I’m happy you can be so forthright when it comes to explaining your problems, I myself would happily talk about mine if I could clearly gauge how someone would react to it. You just never know and questioning on the spot stumps me, I just don’t know how to react when someone makes flippant remarks about what I’ve just told them

8

I can make no claims to exorbitant depressions but at my worst times I didn’t want sympathy or anything but that people’d fuck off. Some depressions come on their own accord but remember that depressions also come naturally to human beings whose lives are shit. I owe a lot of happiness to the opportunities that depressions have created for me to ponder life and I am genuinely worried that sympathy for the depressed will lead some to take a fatalistic view on their discomfort/horrible pain and seek medicine where they might’ve sought a solution to their troubles.

The best way to make sure a prisoner will never escape his prison would be to give him drugs that make his cell seem like Disney world. In my experience pain accompanies depression but it’s ultimately rooted in hopelessness. Take away the pain and you take away the cure.

9

That should be “of their own accord” of course. Since there is a time window (which, at least, should be larger in the middle of the night) you will all have to deal with endless streams of doubleposts by people explaining that they’ve missed the edit window/time limit/window limit and even more petty little linguistic mistakes. This is mine. Enjoy.

10

I understand your point - I really do - but for some people, the only trouble causing depression is wacky brain chemistry. Back when I had PTSD, we all assumed I was messed up because of my past, but once the PTSD was treated, the anxiety and depression remained. It’s like my brain is wired to suffer. My current depression often takes the form of a purely physical malaise. My life is pretty awesome and I’ve made healthy choices for myself, so I don’t really have much to get depressed about. I’ve learned through CBT not to berate myself; I’ve learned through behavioral activation to get off my ass and do something like exercise to prevent it from getting worse, but sometimes the most diligent efforts to change behavior and cognitions cannot prevent me from just becoming utterly depressed. It’s like any other chronic disease.

To be perfectly honest, it’s not like I just strike up a conversation about mental illness with everyone I meet. But sometimes, if the conversation seems to be heading that way, I do. At my high school reunion last weekend I talked about the side effects of a new medication I was taking, and when asked what it was, I told her. Turns out she had anxiety problems too and we found another reason to connect. And I will talk about it with friends. I don’t catastrophize or exaggerate its importance. While catching up with someone, it will be like, ‘‘We’re doing great, I’m working on my LSW, we’re moving soon and I have an awesome new therapist.’’ In my experience, the more you act like it’s abnormal, shameful or extra special, the more the stigma sticks. But if you just talk about it like everyday life (which is very much what it is for me), then that’s when you can really fight ignorance.

11

Ah, sweet delusion! That delightful condition where your mind twists, edits and embellishes your sensory input to match up with a fantasy it’s created for you! Long and short of dealing with this? Learn to determine what is “right” and dismiss all reality that conflicts with rightness. This requires tons of faith that your “right” is accurate, and exhausting self-discipline to ignore the delusions that smell so strongly of reality. It also makes you succeptible to actual conspiracies that incorporate you as a fall-guy, but you just can’t live your life being afraid of stuff like that. So, in other words, you create for yourself a back-up brain whose sole purpose is to recognize delusional states and to be receptive to help. This is hard to do. And once you’ve done it, you need to let those closest to you know about it and when you’re fighting.

You can’t control how others think or react, but you CAN control, to some extent, who is around you. I’d suggest not reacting, but remembering who is likely to aggravate you when you’re less-than-lucid. Incorporate that knowldge into your “right” and avoid them when you’re in bloom.

Like Olives, I don’t just start in on it. But it’s come up often enough here at work that people know who and what I am. I’m a resource a lot of the time, only a few have decided I’m too odd to deal with. But nobody likes them much either.

12

That’s why I believe that if you know you’re vunerable, you put your support network in place before your brain breaks down. That’s why I continue with therapy even though I do not feel sick. Because I know I am at-risk and I need someone who I trust to tell me, “Hey, you’re weirding out now and I’m worried.” Or, on the other hand, someone to say, “Hon, you’re blowing things out of proportion. You’re fine.”

If you have someone in your life who’s either constantly telling you they are worried for you or that you’re just being a silly attention-whore, that person will be of little help because you won’t trust their assessment of the problem. But if you have someone who knows the difference between “eccentric and quirky” and “something is really wrong” and actually knows your everyday baseline, then you need to keep that person in your back pocket and keep in contact with them on a regular basis.

I don’t know how to find such a person in the general population, and so that’s why I rely on a professional.