Thinking about my closet depression and the “hot topic” that mental illness has become. My worse years were during the 70’s and 80’s and NEVER did anyone try to force me in to therapy until my girlfriend finally convinced me to go for anger management which was/is driven my by depression. Have a child that’s in jail, that’s bad. Have a child that needs mental health care? That’s REALLY BAD!
I can’t stress enough how bringing and keeping mental health issues in the public eye and ears can only help those that can benefit from care. Yes, there’s some that either abuse the system or are misdiagnosed, but to borrow from Ben Franklin and Voltaire, Better a hundred people with no mental illness seek treatment, than one WITH a mental illness go untreated.
BTW, I’ve spoken about this before, but my anger/depression was diagnosed as a chemical imbalance from bainging my head from as young 5 years old when I was locked in “The Dungeon” (the bath/shower stall) for hours when I didn’t go to school. I was in therapy and on a low dosage of Prozac for about 6 months. During my last session with the Doctor, who said he had done a much as he could for me, I asked if I had to stay on Prozac. His answer was, if I felt I could handle things without it (having tamed my mood swings) I could stop. If I didn’t think I could handle it, I’d have to stay on it the rest of my life. I chose to stop and found the spirituality to keep me going for the past 25+ years.
Edit: The final straws that made my girlfriend force me into therapy was that I broke the windshield on one car from the inside with my hand, bent the floor mounted gearshift on another car and punched the fire extinguisher and mount off the concrete pillar it was attached to. Oh yeah, I’m a tiny guy, 5’ 4" and 150lbs back then. “Don’t make lingyi mad”.
To be clear, I’m in no way boasting about the what I did physically. I’m talking about them as an example of how someone much bigger and stronger and mentally unable to handle him/herself could potentially cause great harm to others if he/she tries to stay in the closet because of the stigma of seeking mental health.
Edit: I hit the fire extinguisher because one of my subordinates ticked me off royally. She reported me to my manager saying “lingyi was out of control!”. He later told me his answer was: “If lingyi was out of control, he would have hit YOU instead of the fire extinguisher!” Nothing ever happened from her complaint.
Another story I just remembered. In the late 70’s, my cousin bought a rifle and wrote out a detailed plan with sketches about how he was going to return to his high school and who he was going to shoot and in what order. I was the only one he shared his “plan” with and of course I didn’t say a word about it. Remember, going to jail for murder was still a whole lot better than going to see a psychiatrist! When my Aunt found the rifle and his manifesto, she called the police and he went “somewhere” for a week or so. When my parents asked me what I knew about it, all I said was “I knew all about it” and nothing was ever said again. When I saw my cousin later, he told me that he wasn’t actually going to anything and we left it at that. Thankfully, as AFAIK, he’s still happily married with children.
Sorry for the flood. But another memory of the stigma of even discussing mental health issues was like during my youth. There were no rehab hospitals, or at least were never discussed. The only place people with mental issues were supposedly sent to was the “Red Roof House”, the Hawaii State Hospital in in the mountains of Kaneohe. As a kid, it was a ‘fact’ that no one who entered there ever came out. We’d kid each other about being sent to or having spent time there, but every once in a while, some kid would own up to knowing someone there and the joking immediately stopped.
Unfortunately a lot of the medications which have been successfully used for adults cannot or should not be used for children. They are still growing and their needs are much more complex. Which makes it even more difficult to find a good solution for a child who needs treatment.
Coincidentally I was discussing suicides with colleagues last evening. November 2019: coworker’s spouse. September 2018: former coworker. May 2017: Coworker
There have been some very famous victims of suicide in the past 5 years. We are better able to understand that depression is not always simple, and even causes pain to those who we would think have successful lives.
Yes, probably Prozac and some of its cousins were oversubscribed. But there is a big problem that not enough people are getting the help they need before it is too late.
Adding stigmatization to the equation doesn’t help. It means that people who could be helped by therapy and/or medicene are not willing to admit they need help. Because they might lose their jobs, their friends, their families.
Until this changes, give mental illness all the attention it needs. Then maybe we could do more research. One of the complaints is that mental illness is not measurable. Maybe it is, but we just don’t have the technology.
And I’m keeping part of the quote from lingy, with bolding from me.
lingyi is right, IMO. There *are *people who have engineered a nice little scam telling folks they are mentally disturbed when they’re not. But there’re so many people suffering from things that neither they, nor their doctors, wholly understand. The suffering is bad, bad, bad. It is.
We must not throw out all the cases of folks who are truly hurting just because some people are faking their illness. It’s like opiates and pain: people are faking it, but there are others in pain who will benefit greatly from opiates.
What? Other people had bad reactions to one dose of a psychotropic drug? I was told that any such occurrence was a psychological reaction and “not valid.” (direct quote).
Odd that I had no history of any mental illness before someone told the cops I was suicidal and ended up being forced to do drugs. I’m proud I didn’t take the experts word and did not do any more prescription drugs to this day.
Let’s bring in the experts. A major meta-analysis of over 500 studies of anti-depressants was published in The Lancet in 2018.
Carmine Pariante, professor at The Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience and spokesperson for the Royal College of Psychiatrist summarized it [emphasis mine]:
So much for the ol’ Big, Bad Pharma conspiracy theory.
Most people take anti-depressants for one-two years. So those people who are on anti-depressants for many years are the exception, not the norm.
For mild depression, other methods such as exercise, meditation, and yoga are probably still the best bet. But for moderate or severe depression, anti-depressants can be a lifesaver…literally.
Another memory. I went to therapy and was on Prozac in the early '90’s. The first thing I said when he recommended Prozac was: “Oh, the killer’s choice!” because there had recently been some killings after the person went off Prozac. The doctor said it would help mellow my mood swings, no super highs or super lows. Real, placebo or a combination of both, it did help me even out my mood swings. During my last session when I chose not to continue taking it, I told the doctor I understood why people sometimes went on a killing spree after going off it. At least for me, it kept me on a even keel. He told me it would a take few weeks or even months for the drug to completely clear from my system.
A few months later, my Dad unexpectedly passed away and a couple of months later, my girlfriend finally left me (in part because I started to revert back to my old ways). I’ll never know if it was the residual effects of the Prozac, but there’s no doubt I couldn’t have made it through that time if I hadn’t gone to therapy. I returned to therapy for a few months after that, with two different doctors, the first for only a few sessions before she said she couldn’t continue with me and the second more neurotic that I was. I meet her a years later and she left the profession.
Let’s hold for a minute on discussing what is and is not effective treatment for mental illness and how we might address root causes, metal health is a “hot topic” both because of increased awareness and increased mortality from mental illness.
Suicide is also the second highest cause of death among postpartum women.
Less important to absolute numbers but more important to public perception are mass shootings associated with mental illness.
Attempting to do something about the second leading cause of death for ages 10 - 34 is important. And the model that works for public health initiatives, be it colon cancer or heart disease or whatever, is prevention, early detection, early treatment, and developing better treatments.
Prevention requires both identifying the root cause for the increase of true disease and being able to do something about it. Speculations about root cause and prevention are however likely beyond the scope of this thread. I certainly have mine.
A push for early detection, which involves among other things destigmatization, is perhaps what the op bemoans.
What is and is not effective early treatment is also a big debate. It does not automatically mean medication. There are a variety of evidence-based approaches but funding for their application and availability of those services by quality providers is insufficient for the need.
Better treatment is a work in progress. It includes new classes of medication and better non-medication approaches.
The question is less why it is “gaining such traction lately” than why we’ve been so horrible about handling mental health as a serious issue, even now.