Reflection on the Often "Mythical" Aspects of Mental Illness
Mental illness in psychology is one of those things that makes a lot of people shuffle their feet and shift in their seat uncomfortably because it's something we — much of the time — would rather not talk about.
Looking Back... and Progressing?
I suppose the whole thing has become a little less weird in the past 50 years or so. I remember having relatives when I was a kid — this would be in the 1960s — who were institutionalized because they had a mental illness.
These situations were often discussed only in whispered tones with guarded words like "Uncle Sven had a nervous breakdown," or "Aunt Gerda is a little bit crazy."
Although things are quite different in this our year 2023, we still make biased snap judgments when somebody we know (or at least are peripherally familiar with) is seeing a therapist. "Oh," we think, "they're a little bit off; something is WRONG with them..."
The Worrisome Landscape...
There are different aspects of it all that worries me, to a great extent.
Perhaps I think more about these things because I have spent much of my adult life involved in some corner of the self-improvement, spiritual development and self-help industry, and I happen to be married to a top rate counselor.
The first of the two things that give me the greatest concern — and I have touched on this in previous posts — is the fact that more and more things that once were considered part of the normal spectrum of The Human Experience are now being classified as "abnormal" or some kind of syndrome.
We love to medicalize everything and then find cures for it. Maybe I shouldn't say "we," so much as "the industry that profits from" determining that the fact that you scratch your left ear 40 times a day somehow constitutes a condition that you need to be treated for.
And guess what? We just invented the treatment for that particular affliction. Note that I say "treatment" here, not "cure..."
Causes and Symptoms...
However, the single thing that troubles me more than the above is the approach generally taken.
Let's, for a moment, look back to Uncle Sven's predicament of 50 years ago and get real about the fact that we are disinclined to truly examine why Uncle Sven has a so-called "nervous breakdown."
In this case, that nervous breakdown being a reflection not of something being mentally wrong with Uncle Sven, but something being fundamentally wrong with the system that doesn't afford Uncle Sven a reasonable way to live and be able to take care of his family in the manner Society imprints on him that he's "supposed to" take care of his family.
Poking deeper into such things has long been considered to be "off limits" because we — meaning "the collective machinery" — don't really want to look at the fact that it's a system of our own making that is responsible for creating the ostensible "mental illness" we're busy treating... which isn't actually an illness in the same sense that we physiologically catch a virus and then end up with the flu.
Uncle Sven isn't who's ill; it's society that's ill, and Uncle Sven is actually a symptom!
So even if we can actually "help" Uncle Sven recover and get back on his feet, his options going forward is sadly limited to a return to the very set of circumstances that caused him to become "mentally ill," in the first place!
So, Why "Mythical?"
I suppose I should start by saying that that I actually am a supporter of, and believer in, the value of psychology and psychotherapy.
That said, I do think many mental illness issues a somewhat mythical in the sense that they only really have meaning of they are viewed in the context of the ills that brought them into being, in the first place.
Giving Uncle Sven "a pill" for his nervous breakdown and teaching him meditation completely overlooks the fact that he is simply overworked and at his breaking point. There was never really anything wrong with him.
The "myth" is that there was...
Sadly, the world is filled with millions of "Uncle Svens," and their prognosis is not good.
But — perhaps — a good start is to simply be aware what it is that's actually "broken," in this equation!
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your day!
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Created at 2023-07-09 14:52 PDT
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