Timothy Bryce
Active Member
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.
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.
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