Mental illness is a major crisis that will only get worse unless society as whole begins to admit to its severity and pervasiveness. Responsibility must also be taken for its causes, perpetuation, and avoidance of effective (but necessary) solutions.
Why does society not want to admit to the true extent of the problem, or take responsibility for it? In my opinion it is because to truly confront the problem, we have to honestly look at the ugly reflection it shows us. Most of the issues we face in dealing with mental illness point to many other problems/faults that exist throughout modern society.
Because all of these problems are interconnected, each one helps feed the others - causing a snowball effect. To find a complete solution, many different problems must be confronted simultaneously.
Many of these problems “outside” mental illness are also issues that society has avoided finding workable solutions for. Some of these issues are drug addiction/alcoholism, criminal justice/rehabilitation, medical insurance costs, broken/dysfunctional families, economics, “healthy” cultural values, ect.
Why are there more mental health problems every year? Let me try to explain why I feel this way. My own beliefs on mental illness have me break down the causes into three categories. The first two are biochemical/physiological (separated by their severity) and the third environmental/social.
1. This category includes the textbook cases for extreme mental illness by biochemical/physiological problems in the brain. They are caused by either genetics or some environmental pathogen.
Why are their more cases now? - better diagnosis and possibly pathological environmental exposure.
2. The causes are the same as the first category, but are not as extreme. In this case the effects of these problems can be very subtle and do not always result mental illness, but determine the tendency to become mentally ill. What I’m looking at here are temperaments of character that are innately born into each of us. Examples of these are temperament towards - impulsiveness, fear/anxiety, excitability, persistence, sentimentality, empathy, ect.
Depending on how these temperaments are mixed in a person will create a certain level of “character/personality fragility.”
Why are there more cases now? - This is what I was thinking of when I mentioned the ugly reflection earlier. I do not believe that there are really statically many more cases of this “character/personality fragility”, but that living in our modern society has brought more of these people over the edge and led them into mental illness.
3. The third category deals with people pretty much mentally healthy (whatever that means), but become mentally ill by extreme trauma or unhealthy life experiences. For example experience of violence, or their childhood personality development was dysfunctional.
Why are their more cases now? - I blame modern society again.
Looking beyond the causes, I now turn to the lack of understanding and treatment. Why isn’t mental illness looked upon as the crisis that it is?
1. The biggest reason is the refusal/denial of our modern society to look at itself and its part in creating it. It seems much easier for society to stigmatize mental illness then to accept part of the blame itself.
2. Even if modern society accepted responsibility, the truly effective solutions would be daunting. Almost everything would have to be looked at - Health costs (prevention not crisis management), economics (the biggest cause for broken/dysfunctional homes), moral values (turning away from things like materialism or outward beauty), education (striving for better people not just smart people), crime (examining mental illness’s role better), homelessness, drug addiction/alcoholism, ect.
3. Mental illness goes undiagnosed, because people are either reluctant to seek treatment (stigma), or don‘t realize they have a problem (lack of education/self-awareness).
4. Because of untreated mental illness, many find ways to treat themselves by self-medication (drugs & alcohol), or other pathological behaviors.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
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