posted on June 24, 2001 07:32:27 AM
If either party had a serious block of people interested in better mental health care it would happen.
They actually passed legislation a couple years ago to make the insurance companies put mental care on a parity with other care and between loop holes and letting the agencies set the details of how it would work by regulation it is pretty much a dead issue.
posted on June 24, 2001 08:21:57 AM
Folks..... neither political party really wants to go down the path that the mental health profession is leading.
Radical changes will come about regarding free will, individual choice, delusion and reality, etc..
While the present state of mental health care has made leaps and bounds in the last 2 decades, I will be the first to admit it seems we are still trying to build a delicate item with a sledge hammer. But the research is becoming more refined at an alarming pace, in a great measure due to cheap computing power.
However, I never thought I would live to see the day that I could have genes from another mammal spliced into mine or clone myself, yet we are already there.
Inasmuch as breakthroughs will find curitive measures for severe mental illness, I don't believe it will stop there.
Our whole culture is premised on free choice. What will happen when the camel gets its nose in the tent that free will is a delusion in some or all of our "choices"? The opportunity for manipulation of large populations is great.
Here is a clue- find a chain of resturants that doesn't have the color red in its decorating scheme. Then find out why.
posted on June 25, 2001 01:36:52 PM
I don't know what the answer to "curing" mental illness would be(or even if it is possible). I have a life-long friend who has now spent 1/2 of her life in mental facilities/halfway houses.
Her illness was really apparent (in retrospect) when she was just a teenager, but she was not dignosed until she had an "episode" while teaching pre-kindergarten at age 23 and ended up hospitalized for the first time! Her bizarre behavior in the classroom made the school district she was working in decide not to renew her contract. She didn't physically injure anyone, but she frightened a lot of people and especially the young children. She compulses on her belief that there are ground up body parts in all major brands of food. She believes the government is involved in a conspiracy to actually make people mentally ill so they can keep them dependant! We are all being cloned and we can be kidnapped and held against our will (for 90 days at least) in a mental hospital so our "clone" can take over our life. She (like many who are diagnosed manic/depressive with "skizo" tendencies) is paranoid and believes the psychotropic medications she is given in mental hospitals are the problem. So as soon as she is released, she flushes the pills down the toliet and goes about her merry way until she whirls out of control and ends up being arrested for "disorderly conduct" (usually) and is placed involuntarily into a mental facility for the 90 day period.
Usually she goes from the mental facility to a "halfway" house where she is monitored and her medication administered. She gets to doing pretty well. She is allowed to stay there usually up to 6 months (she feels she is being kept there against her will). Then she leaves and throws away her medication and it takes another 3-6months for the cycle to start over again. This has gone on for the last 28 years. It has drained her family. Her parents have now died and her only sister has had 3 divorces because she will not turn her back on her sister and allows her to stay with her (not easy to do because her behavior is very NOT NORMAL and she eventually becomes convinced the ones helping her are part of the conspiracy). I have also had her stay with me several times. She will only stay with me for a few weeks before she becomes convinced I am gone, and my "clone" is working with her sister's "clone" to keep her under "control". When this happens, she takes off and literally vanishes until she ends up being arrested somewhere and is placed in a mental ward. She amazes me how far she can travel on nothing! She has been in mental facilites in probably a dozen different states! Once, when she was staying with me, I awoke to find her moving around my room looking out windows holding a butcher knife...convinced the "government" had sent someone to kill her so she couldn't tell the world the truth! I then had to set up the rest of the night with her (she can go unbelievable long amounts of time without sleep-days in fact) to help her "watch" for the bad guys.
I really don't think there is anyway to "cure" her. I don't think modern medicine is advanced enough to truly fix the human mind. It breaks my heart because even with her bizarre beliefs and behaviors she is still a warm, caring, friendly, SMART person. She speaks 3 languages and can remember anything/everything she has ever read or heard!!! Dispite this, she has been unemployable since she was 23!!!! When her sister dies, I am not sure what will happen to her. She will truely be all alone except for the brief times she may decide I can be trusted!
What can really be done with such people? Where can they be kept "safe" and cared for? Who will be responsible for them? All I have are questions...no answers/solutions. It is truly sad and heartbreaking. It is also a problem that exist all over the world for millions of people!
posted on June 25, 2001 02:45:46 PM
There are different kinds of illness. Your friend sounds like "delusional psychotic." That is a description of the symptoms, not the name of a disease. Practically nothing is know about mental illness, other than a general classification of symptoms.
[Psychoanalysts] talk - a lot. Frankly I think they are a holdover from the 1800's that could be replaced completely pretty soon because we are learning so much about how the mind really works that some of the Fruedian psycobabble is wearing pretty thin. I would just as soon go to a Gypsy fortune teller. I mean come on - what place does penis envy have in most peoples lives? Do little boys have breast envy?
Anyone who uses the term "Freudian psychobabble" has no understanding of Freud's work. He was a genius and still beyond the thinking of most. Especially those who criticize without understanding what he said. Freud never claimed to have all the answers and revised his work many times. Obviously, his opinion of cocaine as a wonder drug was flawed. Freud's investigative technique was incomparable. His ideas may be outdated today, but Freud "invented" the idea of a subconscious. To dismiss his work is foolish.
If you're looking for a good start, read Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" which contains an encapsulation of his important theories. A shorter version of much the same is "Jokes and Their Relationship to the Unconscious." Both books clearly demonstrate the workings of the unconscious mind.
posted on June 25, 2001 05:58:24 PM
Psychotropic drugs are NOT a cure...merely an inadequate treatment for mental illness. People desribe it like living in a fog (taking the meds). Either way...they are not "normal". There are no cures for the majority of mental illnesses...there are no sure causes and the funding is inadequate to find the answers.
Mental illness (like cancer) is really a multitude of different diseases. Meds work for some, psychoanalysis for some, behavioral modification works for some and a combination of treatments for others. For many none of the treatments work and their life becomes a continuous cycle.
posted on June 25, 2001 07:43:48 PM"Practically nothing is know about mental illness, other than a general classification of symptoms"
How odd is it that a person would say such a thing and follow with an espousal of the genius of the work of Sigmund Freud, who spent all of his tears after age 40 in study and theorizing exactly what is now claimed to be unknown above.
Sigmund Freud was a theorist who suffered seeing his ideas discounted, his co-investigators split off.
Certainly he is now a sort of Jewish hero with a dedicated museum honoring his life and work in Jerusalem, but I hardly think that that status warrants a defense to the point of calling other posters foolish if they do not subscribe to the same reverence as another.
Reverence of Freud. Had he had much humor I guess he would have found some in that for he was a dedicated and aggressive athiest.
posted on June 25, 2001 08:47:05 PM"sulyn- you stated in you post that there is a cure- she just won't take her medicine."
This is a common misconception about mental illness. Just take a few Happy Pills and you can go about your merry way! Life is normal on Prozac!
WRONG!
Like Sulyn's friend, my sister has about the same problem. She was just fine until she hit puberty at age 12-1/2. Then, she went insane - screaming, yelling, foul-mouthed to the EXTREME, paranoid, etc. Because she never broke any laws or attempted to hurt herself, she never went to a mental institution, simply because she believed that she was fine and it was everyone else in the world who was ill.
At age 43, events took place so that she sought refuge in a mental ward from her demons. Although she was released after two-weeks of observation, she did not get her kids back from the state. The state used the kids as leverage for her to go get the help that she needed. It was either the drugs and therapy, or good-by kids!
At age 45 now, she takes her medication daily. She no longer flushes the pills down the toilet as she did in the past, because she learned that her illness was the cause of her many, many problems. She is almost like a zombie now, sleeping a lot, sort of lethargic. But at best, she is no longer out of control and her life is slowly getting back together. It's a worthy trade-off that she'll have to live with for the rest of her life. She will have to live on public assistance - a "hand out" for as long as she lives. Don't think for a moment that she enjoys that either.
So, I have to tell you that even if Sulyn's friend did take her medicine, it would not "cure" her. It may not have even controlled her for long either.
I come from a poor, working class family. None of us has the means to support my sister. Should she be in prison instead of on assistance? Would that be a better place for her? I get so angry when I read the stupidity of posters who feel that if "only they'd all get a job we'd stop being put upon". What a load of crap. If it weren't for public assistance, she would either be in jail/prison at 10 times the cost in taxes, or dead. I guess for most of those folks, they'd just like to see all of society's less fortunate euthanized just so they can save a few dollars per year in taxes. Some even advocate a return to Fascism ... only it won't be the same as last time.
Right.
edited for sp.
[ edited by Borillar on Jun 25, 2001 08:52 PM ]
posted on June 26, 2001 05:17:19 PM
Why is mental illness less important than our physical health? Is the brain not a part of our physical body? And is mental illness not directly related to the conditions in our brains?
I've never hidden the fact that I take anti-depressants, because to hide that fact only feeds the fire that mental illness should be tucked away and never spoken of. Those meds have saved my life. My mother suffered from depression. My brother still suffers from depression (and takes meds as I do). It's genetic, to some extent, in my case.
This is not a snap out of it situation. This is very very real, and terrifying for those living it (or with it). When I went without my meds for a few months due to no insurance, I thought of suicide every day. I don't know how I held on, but somehow I did. This isn't something you can snap out of.
posted on June 26, 2001 05:50:18 PM
If a person breaks his leg, he wears a cast and walks with a limp .... he's still accepted by society. When there's something wrong with the brain, the only symptom will be how the person acts, which everyone else sees, and calls them "crazy". Sadly, there's no cast to go on the brain.
