Mental hygiene

[cosmolinguist]

I was just talking yesterday about how some people don’t think mental illness is the same as physical illness. People are ashamed of their depression or psychosis in a way that they wouldn’t be if they had a broken leg, or cancer. Those things are awful, of course, but hardly anyone would blame themselves or be ashamed of having them. Rarely would they be blamed by their able-bodied peers. Yet these attitudes are unremarkable when directed towards people with mental illnesses.

And conversely, most people would not consider it a point of pride to have avoided cancer or broken bones. Grateful, yes, but we recognize it as nothing particular to be proud of because it’s almost all down to chance and factors outside our control (unless you get broken bones because you’re a stunt double or something). We are, thankfully, almost entirely past the age where people consider such illness and injury a sign of demonic possession or retribution for supposed sins of the person or their ancestors.

As a person with varying degrees of depression and anxiety myself and someone who’s worked one of my most rewarding jobs with people hospitalized with mental health issues, I have personal reasons and personal experience motivating me to want to help rid our society of the stigma, ostracism, and fear surrounding mental illness and those who have it. I want for myself to be no more ashamed of my brain chemistry than I am of my defective optic nerves.

And yet I still feel so shitty about even thinking of going for one of the few valium I have left from a prescription I was given a few weeks ago when things were really bad. I still feel like I’ve failed somehow. Like that’d be “giving in.”

So I’ve still got a long way to go.

Comments

[auntysarah.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. I've been trying to cultivate good attitudes towards mental hygiene in my own life, and dealing with internalised stigma is hard work!

I have personal reasons and personal experience motivating me to want to help rid our society of the stigma, ostracism, and fear surrounding mental illness and those who have it.

Thank you.

[cosmolinguist]

Well don't thank me yet. :) Even as I was writing that sentence I was thinking of how I don't really know how to go about raising awareness or having any kind of effect on anybody else's attitudes, not just because I can't even get a handle on my own, but also because I am mainly surrounded by people who have either experienced some kind of mental illness or have been very close to those of us who have.

So I'm lucky enough to be continually reminded that people with mental illnesses can be treated like people with any other kinds of illness (and indeed the two are hardly mutually exclusive! unfortunately). And that means that, if anything, they are reminding me (by example more than anything else) that this is a better way to think about these things. So I feel a pretty poor ambassador for the idea when I so often need to be reminded myself. :)

Hi

[regalangel2000.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad your out there. I'm trying to build a support group of people who also struggle with mental illness. I have a lot to say. I also do not know how to use live journal. So I don't know how if I'm connecting or not. Please let me know. If you want I would like to add you to my friends list. I'm not sure how. Let me know. Peace.

[ludy]

first of all good thoughts for your current "arghh!"

There are physical illnesses that have a similar stigma - STIs and pretty much anything with a strong lifestyle factor like smoking or obesity related illnesses. So presumably people who look down on others with mental health problems somehow see them as having created their problems themselves (not that there isn't a lifestyle factor in some metal health problems but it's more often to do with wider society than an individuals's choices)
In the past physical illnesses like cancer and TB where subject to much more stigma. My grandfather had TB just as drug therapies were becoming available - before that whole families would be labelled as "tubercular" and seen as weak/corrupted rather than there being an understanding that they were simply catching it of each other and maybe shared poor living conditions and diet etc which made it worse. The way that those stigmas have largely faded away gives some hope that maybe pone day the stigma around mental health problems will lift too

[cosmolinguist]

first of all good thoughts for your current "arghh!"

Thank you! I felt a lot better after writing this, actually, and nearly didn't resort to the diazepam at all... though I'm glad I did because a day that started bad got a lot worse.

The way that those stigmas have largely faded away gives some hope that maybe pone day the stigma around mental health problems will lift too

Yes, this is exactly what I was thinking. I didn't know that about TB specifically -- it'd be fascinating if it wasn't so incredibly sad to think of all those poor people -- but I did grow up with some old people who still thought cancer was a taboo subject and where people's obituaries would say they'd died "after a long illness" rather than just say they had cancer. I do hope that one day, shame about mental illness will sound as strange and quaint to other people as that now sounds to me.

[ulffriend.livejournal.com]

I wonder if there is a direct correlation between our ability to treat something and the degree to which it is taboo in our society? Mental illness is one of the few grey areas left in health care, and that makes people nervous ("there but for the grace of god...") so they want to put it away and pretend that it isn't there, like cancer or TB in the day...

Or maybe I'm over thinking again.

[cosmolinguist]

No I think that makes sense. It's true of something like AIDS too; part of the thing that makes new, or newly-high-profile, diseases so awful is that we feel so helpless in the face of them. Hopefully better awareness, both of how to treat them and how to treat people who have them, will do us all some good.

metal illness

[regalangel2000.livejournal.com]

Thanks for being out there. I'm coming to terms with my mental illness. I'm really struggling with it. I'm also a addict. In recovery for 21 years. I have experiences helping others come to terms of being an addict. Professionals like me, I'm a college graduate. I have a b.s in psychology, and I have worked in my field for about 10 years. Ive had bi-polar for quite a while. I have always been able to manage it. Using good diet, working out and the lowest dose of drugs possible. Which I hate. But lately I cannot. I would like to build a support system of other people who are suffering.
I may be silly but I'm not sure if this is what live journal is all about. I'm new here.

[cosmolinguist]

That you mentioned having bipolar disorder reminded me that one of the friends I've made here on LJ has a really good blog about that very subject, http://thesecretlifeofamanicdepressive.wordpress.com/ Maybe that would be something that interests you? You're not being silly, don't worry.

[doctorstewie.livejournal.com]

A superb post, I wish I could add to it.
All I can say is, however far you have to go, you will not be alone.

[cosmolinguist]

That's all I really need to hear :)

I'm more grateful than I can say.