Why treat mental illnesses that you don't suffer from?

In My Humble Opinion
1

There are mental illnesses and neurological disorders that cause people a lot of suffering…like depression.

Then there are others that doesn’t always cause a lot of suffering. Yet there seems to be family, friends, and spouses who wants the person to get treatment for their issue.

An example, I have OCD, and I am not suffering from my condition. It’s just a “quirk” that I accept, and keeps me from getting illnesses. My parents, however want me to go through therapy and take medications for such. I decline, I don’t have time/money for therapy and I don’t like side effects of those medications. And again, my obsessive-compulsive behaviors don’t bother me. If anything it’s my parents’ reactions that bother me the most. Me and my folks constantly get into fights over this. They say I have problem and this is something that I HAVE to get over. Well, true. I just don’t find it that practical. No time/money for therapy/meds. And most important, I have other problems that NEED MORE ATTENTION than this one! Problems that I am indeed suffering from.

Another example, I have a good friend who is bipolar. He only likes for his depression side to be treated. He only takes anti-depressants which helps his depression and skips his mood stablizers which helps his hypomania. He is an musician and feels that he produces higher quality music when he experiences hypomania. Plus, he just likes the “high” feeling it produces. Problem is that his girlfriend is threatening to leave him if he doesn’t treat all of his bipolar.

Neither my parents nor my friend’s girlfriend can come up with a clear reason why we should get ourselves treatment…other than “this is a problem and it needs to be solved”. Well our “issues” aren’t having any significantly negative impact on our lives, and in some ways they have a postitive impact. We are no harm to ourselves or others.

2

As a medical professional, my approach is that it doesn’t need treatment if it’s not causing the patient problems and not at least somewhat likely to cause them problems.

But once the behavior/disease starts making it difficult for the person to function in their day to day life, then ameliorative strategies should be entertained.

Also, if there’s a significant chance of progression towards problems that can be pre-empted or minimized by intervention ahead of time, then consider starting them.

People should consider changing for the sake of others if they’re willing to pay that price to preserve the relationship. If the price isn’t worth it, don’t do it.

3

If you have OC symptoms but are not bothered by them, by definition you do not have OCD. You have OC symptoms.

One reason why people are encouraged to get help for their illnesses is because mental illnesses often cloud one’s judgment. A person who is depressed may not think they have an illness because they believe their feelings are not irrational and that any treatment would be a waste of money because no drug will make them stop seeing the “truth”. Sometimes I go through this. I won’t be feeling well, but I don’t want to admit that it’s a brain chemistry thing. I convince myself that I’m actually seeing the world for what it is. In the meantime, I don’t eat, I withdraw, and spend lots of time thinking about bad things. The idea that it’s depression crosses my mind, but if I chalk it up to that, then I’m admitting my perceptions are wrong. No one wants to admit to being wrong.

And do not forget about psychosis. Again, almost by definition, a psychotic person will not know they are sick. Or they realize the voices aren’t real and have trained themselves to ignore them, but this strategy comes at the expense of being able to hold a conversation or keeping a job. And they don’t care because the disease makes them completely apathetic. Apathy makes you not care about anything, good or bad. Intellectually you see things going to hell in a handbasket, but it is virtually impossible for you to care. Such a person cannot be trusted to make an informed decision about their medical care.

Personality disorders are especially difficult to treat because the people with them are not psychotic, but the people around them are negatively affected. For instance, you said you have OC symptoms. There is a personality disorder called OC personality disorder–the stereotypical “anal” type who has to have everything his or her special way. They will blow up at you if you don’t put the mug back into the cabinet with the handle facing backwards, or they will spend hours quadruple-checking their work because it has to be absolutely perfect and only stupid people turn in reports with mistakes, no matter how small. They may take pride in their detail-oriented nature, while driving other people into murderous rages. The individual may not feel like they have a problem, but if they are pushing away family and friends with their behavior and sabotaging themselves at work, then they most certainly do.

4

It’s not always clear that the sufferer is really in the best place to decide clearly & factually whether the “problem” needs “fixing.”

Here’s a made-up example … Your bipolar musican pal enjoys his hypomania. But he’s been fired from every job he’s held due to something he did during a manic phase. But he can’t /won’t admit that that’s a true fact. He says they’re just picking on him or it’s bad luck.

When manic he also tends to be abusive to his GF & to keep late hours which interfere with her sleeping, thier relationship, and her job. Yet he can’t / won’t see anything wrong with that, or dismisses the adverse impacts on her as irrelevant or minimal. After all, he’s fine, really, really, ultra-fine!

End made-up example.

Your parents might be stodgy conformists who are disappointed, nay crushed, that you’re not an ideal Stepford kid.

Or they might see something you don’t. Like that your OCD (however it manifests; I haven’t kept up with your news feed) renders you a social pariah & all but unemployable for anything approaching your non-OCD potential. You meanwhile relish the comfort that complying with your OCD gives you, and subconsciously rationalize away the clear cause-effect connection between acting out & major failure in most other mainstream areas of your life.

I sure don’t know which applies to you; But the more people around you who give you feedback that *this *thing, not *that *thing, needs fixing the more you ought to assume they collectively have a point.
You ask about priorities. For sure some mental / personality issues cause more internal than external disruption. e.g. Most psychopaths seem quite happy with their ailment; only the outer society has problems with their self-centered depradations.

So it’s hardly surprising that you and your audience might prioritize your issues differently. One thing’s for sure though. If they prioritize them A, B, C and you prioritize them C, B, A, and then you do nothing about any of them, well … that’s not going to do any good.

Bickering about priorities is a standard form of passive aggressive denial or action prevention. Think about the sterile debate in legislatures about almost anything. Spending reduction *before *tax increases, or after? etc. It’s all gamesmanship to delay / prevent any & all action. Are you playing that game?
Another consideration: IANA psycho-anything but in general problem solving there are reinforcing & confounding interactions between issues. Even if C, B, A is the correct prioritization, we have to consider whether there is some interaction which makes C all but insoluble while B still exists.

e.g. In order to pull down a building you have to take the roof off first; simply pullling down the walls will cause the roof to fall in on your workers. Doesn’t matter that your real goal is to lower the rubble to ground level & the walls are the only part holding it all above ground level.
Reading your OP a bit more closely, I wonder what your statement that the audience can’t articulate a clear reason really means. Are they too polite? Too fearful of their own issues? Or are they just narrow-minded conformist? Or are you / the musician simply unable to accurately assess whether they’ve given a “good enough” reason?
ETA: triple post. The other two are more qualified than I to offer advice in this area.

5

People who are normal can find people who aren’t normal disturbing and uncomfortable, even if the not-normals aren’t particularly troubled by being not normal. This applies to the disabled as well as those with mental disorders.

The person suffering from a mental disorder may not feel uncomfortable, but that person may or may not be able to judge this objectively. For example, someone bipolar might enjoy the manic phase, but at the same time they may be taking unnecessary risks that inconvenience/endanger not only themselves but possibly others as well.

Sitting here I can’t say if your OCD is just a quirk or if it’s affecting you more than you realize. I do know there is a HUGE pressure in society for people to be normal and to “fix” things, even when that’s not in the fixee’s best interests. I’ve also known many people who weren’t just quirky, their quirks really were causing them problems, even if they weren’t making the connection.

6

Well, sociopaths are fine with being sociopaths, but society has a problem with them because they’re dangerous to others in a variety of ways.

7

And when it impacts others like that, it makes it difficult to be sociopathic, calling for intervention.

QtM, whose patient load is about 20% sociopathic/psychopathic. :smiley:

8

(bolding mine)

Well I think you have an example of the illness have adverse effects on your friend’s life right here. His girlfriend is threatening to end the relationship if he doesn’t treat his condition; so obviously it is harming him and/or others.

9

My father-in-law refuses to get medicated for his bipolar disorder because he loves the high from the mania. The problem is, everyone else hates him when he’s manic because he gets “manic-expansive” (I am an awesome person, don’t you agree? You’d better say you agree, and go along with my plans.) and that can quickly turn into “manic-aggressive” (arguing, long-term grudges, screaming, physical violence against his family that finally stopped a decade or so ago… we think). He rode those highs to do things like spend the money he made at work on anything he wanted but would get seconds/discards from his food business to feed his family, he hit his wife and kids, he cheated on his wife a lot.

So he managed to keep his shit together enough to keep his business running, he rode roughshod over his family and cowed them all into submission and their own mental illnesses (depression, alcoholism, “Stockholm syndrome” in defending him), and ran off most of his friends except those who worried more about his wife. So in his opinion, he doesn’t suffer at all. It’s everyone else who’s being an asshole.

10

Yeah, the musician friend likes the hypomania improving his music and making him feel “high”. And he says it doesn’t negatively impact him. But how does it impact his girlfriend? I highly doubt she’d be threatening to leave him because his music is too good. I’ve known a few bipolar people, and while hypomania feels great to them, it often makes them into a flaming jerk around others, or at least oblivious to the needs of others. Not to mention that the manic period always ends eventually with bad consequences. And if the musician is just taking his anti-depressants selectively if he “feels” like he needs them, they’re probably not nearly as effective as they should be for treating the depression.
As to whether OCD “needs” to be treated, I would agree with others that how it’s impacting your life is important. If it really, truly isn’t causing problems in other areas of your life, then maybe you don’t need treatment. If lots of different people are telling you the same thing (e.g. family, friends, maybe co-workers), then you might want to consider that they all have a point. But if it’s just one or two family members, I would still talk to them and ask how they perceive your OCD to be negatively impacting your life and why they think you need treatment? Are they only disturbed by the OCD behavior in particular? Or do they think it’s limiting your social life or work opportunities? Having a discussion about their concerns might help you make a decision about treatment, and if you choose not to get treatment then it might help them to better understand your position.

11

This is good advice.

Sometimes you don’t know how something is holding you back. This doesn’t just go for mental illnesses, but all illnesses/conditions. For instance, a person with arthritis may think they’re fine just as long as they don’t exert themselves. But this limits them by making them unable to go out in public or do things for themselves. They may think they are simply coping, but it’s hard watching a loved one limit themselves in such a way, just because they are too stubborn to go to the doctor.

Mental illness is the same way. You can cope with issues by building a protective frame around yourself, but it can be so fragile that your life–from the outside observer’s perspective–is very limited. Like a person with an anxiety disorder who stays locked up in their bedroom. In their minds, they are fine as long as things stay as they are. But life is never constant. What is this person going to do when their parents are fed up supporting them? It would only be natural to worry about someone like this.

So sit down with your parents and have a calm, receptive conversation with them.

12

Adding to monstro’s excellent post right above, there’s also the issue that you (general you) may be literally unaware that what you experience isn’t what everyone else experiences, especially if you’ve always had (blah) symptom/issue and that there very well may be better states of being. Or if the change/slide is gradual enough, you won’t notice because the change is so gradual.

A personal example is how I frequently have awful sleep. It takes me a long time to fall asleep and I will wake up 5+ times a night for no reason at all; it gets even worse if I have a lot of stress. I would average 4-5 hours of sleep even though I’d budget hours more in bed. A few years ago, I was watching tv with my now-husband and a commecial for Lunesta (sleeping pill) came on. With NO trace of irony whatsoever, I said, “damn, it would really suck to have insomnia!”

Now-husband looks at me with that incredulous wtf face and says, “uh, YEAH, it sure WOULD suck to have INSOMNIA, huh??” I knew his reply meant, “you moron, you DO!” and was genuinely thrown for a loop. I mean, MY shitty sleep patterns were totally normal to me, so I figured most people dealt with them, too. But INSOMNIA? That’s something totally different, like not sleeping at all and is bad enough that people go to doctors to get it fixed. Meanwhile, co-workers would look at me in horror if the subject of sleep issues came up, yet I still had a hard time thinking it was a PROBLEM or not normal.

I’ve had similar revelations regarding depression and anxiety, but the key was having other people’s reactions hammered into me. My experiences are my only true frame of reference otherwise, so why wouldn’t I figure it’s normal?

13

The existing treatments for the various mental illnesses are crude and problematic.

I’ve been diagnosed with more than one such ailment but I like who I am. I don’t use it as an excuse, either to other people or to myself, and I accept any limitations or attenuations (if they do exist) as preferable to the limitations and attenuations imposed by the available treatments, therefore I go untreated, and whatever my mental condition, it is a condition and not an ‘illness’ since I accept and embrace the difference and don’t designate it as an undesirable condition.

That’s my choice to make. (Even if the rest of you don’t like me as I am).
Your mileage, and that of your relative / neighbor / coworker etc, may differ.

You should do a lot of research, if you’re considering mental health treatment, though. The profession (along with the pharmaceutical industry) pretends to a degree of expertise and precision that they do not possess. In particular, you should read Robert Whitaker’s 2010 book Anatomy of an Epidemic.

14

My knee-jerk response to the OP is, ‘‘Because living with someone with a psychological disorder is a giant pain in the ass.’’ My depression is almost as hard on my husband as it is on me. My mother’s personality disorder damn near killed me. People with bipolar might luuuurve their mania, but generally it wreaks havoc in the lives of their loved ones. I think it’s just willful ignorance for someone to assume their disorder isn’t affecting others.

AHunter3, even though I’ve had some good results with one of my medications, I might have to check out that book.

15

Oh yeah. My dad didn’t suffer from an addiction, he enjoyed every minute of it. He was also very controlling and had the personality of a zombie.

If you (and I’m using you in the general sense here, not specifically referring to the OP) decide that you have no intentions of getting treatment or trying to change your behavior, do everyone around you a favor and tell them so explicitly. Then they’re free to decide how close they want to be to you/your behavior. No “oh, I’m working on it, you’d be a terrible person if you left me now, because I’m trying to stop” while still working on step #2 after five years in your twelve step group. :smack:

16

The most common problem with OCD and families is that the OCD person is not experiencing distress because the family is instead, by trying to accomodate the persons OCD.

So one question is how distressing you will find it if they stop doing so and the costs become more directly apparent. One example I can think of is where the person quizzed family members of what chemicals they had been near if they had left the house, where they had travelled, if they had been near certain factories etc.

Once they refused to keep doing this, the persons distress increased drastically, and they realised how impossible things were going to be for them to try and do things without them.

Otara

17

I’ve had low-level depression my whole life, and I have friends with various levels of paranoid schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress, erotomania (!), anxiety . . . My take is, “*everyone *is ‘crazy’ to one extent or another; what matters is, are you functional?”

I am so used to the low-level background hum of hopelessness and depression that I see no reason to go into therapy or take scary drugs. I get along just fine.

Now, my paranoid schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress friends really, *really *need help, but only the latter is getting it. The paranoid schizophrenic fellow is going to come to a bad end, but there’s nothing *I *can do about it.

18

Depends on how you define harm, I guess. Personally, I would consider loss of relationships as a fairly significant harm to oneself, and driving someone so nuts they just can’t deal with you any more to be harm to others. And indeed, that’s one of the metrics mental health professionals use to determine the difference between having xyz characteristics and having xyz disorder, whether or not something is interfering with your relationships.

19

The mother of a friend of mine may or may not suffer from OCD, but her family does. The one thing her sons couldn’t wait to be able to have when they left the nest was not their own rooms, or their own meals, or their own hours, it was a bit of chaos: they were dying to be able to leave the lid in whichever position they’d used it last, to leave the bed unmade if they wanted to and to have stuff strewn about without driving another person into a fit of cleaning and arranging. When we went to their house to play tabletop RPGs, we had to make sure to leave everything Just So: it wasn’t enough with leaving the cocoa powder in its usual place, it had to be oriented correctly. In any other house, wrapping up the game was a matter of each of us grabbing our things, getting our coats on, putting glasses in the sink/dishwasher, and taking the trash out if it was full; at that house it took over half an hour.

20

The only definition of mental illness is a problem that prevents you from living a normal life (holding a job, having healthy relationships, etc.) It is all very relative to your community, your peers, and your expectations for yourself. And yes, this all does involve some level of bullshit. We basically are defining “get a job, have reasonable relationships, etc.” as being the goal, and hey, maybe you do have other values. But there really isn’t any better way to go about it. We live in a society, and sometimes a society needs to come up with something and run with it just to keep things moving. There are a lot of crazy people out there who are all crazy in different ways, and we’d all get lost trying to perfectly accommodate that. You can make yourself upset thinking about it, but you’ll make yourself actually crazy if you pick apart everything with a case of fuzzy goalposts in your life.

Your friend sounds like his illness is in fact causing problems- bipolar disorder make people famously difficult to be around. But yeah, not every mental illness does. I get panic attacks. Randomly my heart will race, my breath gets short and I start feeling very panicky. Then I say “Oh, ha! It’s a panic attack!”, sit down for a couple minutes, and wait it out. Doesn’t bother me a bit, and doesn’t affect anyone else. I can’t imagine why I’d bother treating it. I don’t know what your OCD is like, but it may or may not be a problem. Have you asked your friends? It might be interesting to get their perspective on it.