The Mental Illness Question

[Smart_Guy]

Thank you so much for sincerity, I do like you too . I think I am recovering. I really don't know what happened to me within these a few days; too too much work stress made me like this. When I can not be successful,I collapse.

I decided,I will stay alive .

You know, if you know how much trouble I face in my life, you would have unlimited question marks over your head on how come this pathetic Smart Guy is still alive and managing. Let's show this so called "life" who's the boss

If you want someone to talk to, I'm here for you

 

[Deathbydefault]

This is a topic of interest of mine for a variety of reasons. Especially in my line of work, life and observations of the lives of various, if not all, people I've encountered in my life, mental illness and health seems to be a prominent, if not latent, issue. There's a lot of open ended questions I seem to have.

My first response to the issue is to identify it as a cultural/societal construct where a society decides to categorize and treat various types of personalities, dispositions and disorders so that it isn't disrupted by the individual and that the individual benefits in having said illness/disorder treated or cured. This raises a talking point in which I'm forced to consider whether these relatively artificial labels being applied to people is necessarily for this supposed greater good.

I'm also concerned with the apparent impact that a doctor or psychiatrist's diagnosis of a person's individual mental circumstances falling under a general term has on that individual's "mental health" in general. Whether labelling someone with "depression" may be a counterproductive measure which holds the potential to discourage someone from addressing the material circumstances that have caused a persistent low mood and assume that their mood is in the hands of circumstances that are completely out of their control. Big pharmaceutical plays a role in this concern as each diagnosable mental issue seems to have a medication available to treat it in addition to availability of psychological treatment; all of a sudden the concept takes on the character of a working industry.

All of this raises questions about maintaining a status quo that is threatened by an inclusiveness of people with temperaments, dispositions and psychological makeups that are alternative to this. I recall having a conversation with a New Age type who cited ancient and not so ancient civilizations who actually privileged various types of people who, in today's western culture, would be considered to be insane or suffering from a mental condition. I've heard and entertained the suggestion that people with schizophrenia were actually considered to be naturally gifted shamans with an ability to access the mystical and divine.

My sister is a psychologist and deals with people locked away in asylums and we discuss whether these people - if they were of a different time and place - might have been celebrated in ways that most of our culture only knows how to apply to celebrities, sports figures and politicians.

Does anyone have any insight or able to share any experiences opinions on the way western culture perceives mental "deviances" for the lack of a better expression?


EDIT: I also recall having a conversation with a former housemate about certain celebrity lifestyles in modern western culture (at the time we refered exclusively to "troubled rockstars") and my housemate suggested that many of the icons who experienced recreational substance use and a spectrum of mental dispositions were actually our version of a venerated class of people - "Our shamans". The 27 club was brought up and we were left wondering whether many of the early ends to these lives was a necessary aspect of their role - to eventually end up with a form of total self sacrifice for the benefit of the greater good - "the legendary sacrificial lamb remixing christ's greatest hit". Wild stuff I thought.

I've been diagnosed with a good few mental disorders, the one most prominent being my APD.
I also have minor schiz, MPD, and sever emotional deficiency.

That's a recipe for a psychopath if there ever was one, but my main personality stays in control 95% of the time.
Because of my main personality, the one present currently, I don't have to be institutionalized.
Which was the first big break I've gotten in the last decade.
So I got away with my freedom at the cost of being somewhat heavily medicated, and biweekly therapy visits.

 

[MARCELLO]

I am so sorry to see and read that how so many of us have mental problems. Why bread and water are not enough for us to survive? That's something I will never know. FYI,almost 2 billions of humans just live to get bread and water.

 

[MARCELLO]

Do you know what I did under my crisis ? I text messaged my mummy that whenever I am able to find a gun I will kill myself at 11 oclock at night. I am so sorry....

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I am sorry but you are terribly wrong. In order to receive a medicine diploma you have to know (at least 70 %,maybe more you need ) of human body and its contradictions.

No you don't, but even if that were true, we lack the requisite knowledge of the brain to support any medical diagnosis of any mental illness other than via presentation (and classification) of symptoms.

Why don't you trust my true knowledge?

Because my field is neuroscience, and even though it has rarely directly concerned clinical matters I am interested enough in the literature in psychiatry, neurology, clinical neuroscience, clinical psychology, etc., to keep up on it. Also, I spend a lot of time talking to and helping my cousin (she's finishing up a dual MD/PhD program in radiology and neurology) which gives me additional reasons to not only keep up on the fields but the research methods (e.g., the advances in diffusion tensor imaging in MRI spectroscopy or psychopharmacology).

I want to kill myself if I am brave enough to do that,no doctor can cure that( do you bet with me?)

I don't think any doctor can cure that. But I do hope that you don't, that you are able (through whatever means work- psychopharmaceuticals, CBT, etc.) to overcome such depression and despair.

Coz I feel I am not the right one to suffer for all these stuff,why should I care?

I'm not qualified to answer such questions and lack the knowledge and ability to do so. But I hope you find someone who can provide answers that convince you to care and which are able to alleviate your suffering.

There is '' simply'' no doctor or medicine that can cure self hate. Do you bet with me?

I argued that self-hate isn't a medical diagnosis and therefore can't be "cured". That doesn't mean it can't be treated/addressed.

 

[Timothy Bryce]

I've heard the same thing about antidepressants interfering with psychedelics. I wasn't taking any medications at the time when I experimented with LSD, but I have wondered if there is something different about the chemistry of my brain that causes me to be depressed and also to not experience LSD normally. Every time I took LSD, I felt so yucky and depressed that I wished I could remember so that I would never take it again.

The most profound experience I ever had was under influence of carrots believe it or not. I was extremely depressed and ate a whole bag of carrots before curling up on the floor of a motel room. Then I had this dream that was like a flashbulb in this world and an eternity in the afterlife. I thought I saw God and I no longer fear death like I used to. Of course I'm an atheist now, so I don't know how to rationalize the experience. I feel that I already died briefly in a way, and I know what is there.

Yeah, it's a moot point for me.

From my own personal experiences, I found that my engagement with psychedelics (and their red-headed stepson: the literally hundreds of forms of modern day ecstasy that serve mostly as "training wheels" to get one's head around the idea of taking manual control of your body chemistry and navigate it towards the most rewarding ends) was the most profound catalyst for sorting out many of the adolescent issues that had caused me grief in the past; they also continue to shed light on my mental state to date. Often times nowadays, I consider tripping to be a "trip down memory lane" or "to do some spring cleaning and dust away some of the mental spider webs".

Granted, the less artificially induced experiences that have forged my personal development have been just as influential (such as: getting in my first violent confrontation, having sex for the first (first 10 even? lol) times, countless instances of falling in love with different people in different ways, getting arrested, giving altruistic love to people, experiencing human love from others, having those same loving people grab me by the scruff of my neck and kick me in the teeth when needed, etc) - however, I do consider all of these experiences to have been more personality forming while psychedelics seem to transcend and merge it all and delve into the fields of the philosophy and spirituality. Until LSD, I had lived the first 17 years of my life spiritually barren and resigned to an obsessively bitter, nihilistic philosophical understanding of the universe. Personally, if it hadn't been for recreational drugs, I'd continue to have no semblance of spirituality and I'd probably be a lot more bitter and jaded as a result. But that's just me.

I have been told once that I might have just been confusing this personal growth with natural emotional maturity that young men seem to go through between 17-25ish. That person was a loser though; I hate it when people express their ability to gauge "maturity".

 

[Timothy Bryce]

Well I don't know why you ignored the post relevant to this thread, but I suppose it's your thread anyways. Non-traditional sex from the religious perspective is sex that violates the traditional norms. For example, sex for pleasure, bondage, homosexuality, anal sex, and so on all are nontraditional sex for groups like orthodox Christianity and similar things.

What about a casual frosty jim?