posted on June 23, 2001 04:05:06 PM new
After the dark event in Texas this week, do you feel that this country is ready to have a meaningful discussion of mental illness, its possible consequences, and its cause and treatment? I think that the people here have started to talk about this topic reasonably. Do you think that the rest of the country can follow? Or should?
As professionals in the field debate "Nature vs. Nuture", do you think that Nature is winning? If chemical imbalances in the brain are the triggering factors, why aren't the mentally ill given parity in medical treatment?
Will the reactions to the killings in Texas cause more people to seek treatment or drive them back into the closet?
posted on June 23, 2001 04:50:06 PM new
I'd be surprised if anyone could walk into a psychiatrists office and not be told they had some 'issues' that needed to be dealt with. Personally I don't think they have the answers most of the time and I think it is far from an exact science. Sure they can help, but I also believe they can cause harm.
posted on June 23, 2001 04:59:29 PM new
Education is the answer. As you can see, based only on the posts here, there is a lot of misunderstanding and complete ignorance regarding the issue of mental illness.
People seem to see mental disorders as moral shortcomings rather than illness. Mental illness does not always develop from bad parenting or failure to go to church but rather from chemical imbalances in the brain.
While humans can and do react to their environment, the tools and outcomes for reacting are totally dependant on brain chemistry. This explains people in identical environments reacting or exhibiting long term behavior totally different.
Brain chemistry accounts for our similarities and our differences in behavior. Even the ability to repress behavior is dependant on one's brain chemistry.
I don't think the public is ready to accept the truth about who we really are, and how we got to be the way we are, and just as importantly and freightening, our "self" is determined by things we have little control over.
However, just as freightening, is the prospect that science can and does have the ability to manipulate brain chemistry which gets more effective as experimentation goes on.
Imagine the efficiency and effectivness of spraying a group of rioters with a "super" fast acting Prozac like drug instead of using physical confrontation. The Supreme Court has already found that a prisoner can be given psycho-tropic drugs to make him "sane" so that he can be executed.
The research in this field is growing and profound, and we are at the tip of an iceberg that will change the definition of who we are as individuals and how the "self" can be manipulated, and nobody wants to face the realities of that iceberg.
posted on June 23, 2001 05:09:50 PM new
Police are the primary care givers for the unemployed mentally ill. Two hundred thousand are homeless, according to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill. Two hundred thousand are in jail, usually as a result of petty crimes. Surprisingly, Less thatn 70,000 are in state mental hospitals.
posted on June 23, 2001 05:17:56 PM new
I think the reactions to this story is like a train wreck of two ideas that we've had drummed into us for quite a few years. On one hand is the "mental illness is a real disease that people aren't at fault for contracting," mantra, and on the other hand is "get tough on crime." What you get, in some cases like posters here, is taking the position that "Yes, she had a real disease, but she should be punished to the max." If you fall on the other side of the track after the resulting collision, your point of view is - "Yes, what she did was horrible, but she shouldn't be punished at all."
posted on June 23, 2001 05:32:12 PM new
There is a world of difference between psycologists and psychiatrists. And then there are Psychoanalysts.
The public need to understand a lot of things including this before they can make intelligent decisions.
Psychiatrists are MD's and can prescribe drugs and even suggest such specialized things as surgery. The distinction has become all the more important in the last few years as more drugs become available that really can do something. So they deal with really clinical problems of organic disease. It is only recently that we have been able SOME of the time to distinguish between emotional problems and actual defects of the brain.
Psychologists tend to be more councelors. They deal with emotional problems that can be changed by behavior modification. As more drugs are discovered and the instruments to detect what is actually happening in the brain improve more of the things that had to be addressed by psycology move over into the
proper interest of the Psychiatrists.
Psychoanalysts model behavior from word model theories about how the mind works and like Psychologists try to change your behavior with counceling but especially by getting you to have self understanding. They 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? It is a male oriented Victorian mess.
The insurance companies have not caught up to the fact we know enough to actually be able to help some of these people where before it WAS mostly throwing your money away.
And society has not dropped 99% of the idea that you are just weak willed and selfish if you have mental problems.
posted on June 23, 2001 05:33:58 PM new
You're right Hjw. After several news exposes' on mental institution conditions, the de-institutionalization took place. I think it was about 30 years ago.
I saw one Sheriff in I believe Louisianna overwhelmed by the mentally ill he had at his jail. He totally lacked the resources to house or help them.
I started a thread with a link about our mental "make up" shortly before the Texas tragedy happened. Most were unwilling to accept that our thought processes and behavior were determined by brain chemistry. Yet there is everyday evidence of this occuring through brain injury, drug ingestion, including alcohol.
Just the example of alcohol is interesting and right in front of nearly everyone. How can ingesting a drug [alcohol] make us lose our inhibitions and radically change our behavior? Men and woman do things when intoxicated that they wouldn't dream of doing when sober.
So we have had a drug [alcohol] around for thousands of years that drastically changes our behavior to the point that the intoxicated individual can not reform his/her behavior while under its influence. The justice system has handled this scientific fact by proclaiming that becoming intoxicated is a voluntary act, so you are still responsible. But this is softened when a bona fide alcoholic shows up in court as science shows that drinking is a behavior that some can not stop.
If science shows otherwise, that is, that free choice does not exist or is not free in some situations, what happens to our justice system ? Crime and punishment are based on free choice, or at least its illusion. What happens when it is shown otherwise when brain chemistry is of a certain make up ?
This is at the core of how the Texas case will be handled. While I admit that mental health research is not quite to a point to competently bring these revelations into court, it is just around the corner. We didn't think we would be at the stage we are now with genetic mapping and direct manipulation until 2020 AD, and its realities are in labratories, our food, and in the human population right now.
[ edited by reamond on Jun 23, 2001 05:37 PM ]
posted on June 23, 2001 05:44:00 PM new
Yes there are some ugly decisions that are going to have to be made when the liberties we are guaranteed conflict with ability to say that a person has a defect that prevents him from exercising those liberties without harming others. The courts have pretty much decided that you can not force medication on someone that does not want it. Are you going to allow him to come and go as he pleases when you have solid evidence he is primed to attack and hurt others due to choosing not to be medicated?
posted on June 23, 2001 05:44:05 PM newAnd society has not dropped 99% of the idea that you are just weak willed and selfish if you have mental problems.
I don't know about that. In some circles it is downright fashionable to have a psychiatrists or be on some medication. I've had casual acquaintances give me their physiological evaluations or list their medications to me as though they were showing off a new car. It can be a sign of uniqueness and many people embrace uniqueness and love to show it off.
posted on June 23, 2001 05:46:34 PM new
Let me guess we are talking about the coast here right? Is it proximity to water taht makes everyone near the edges like a different culture? Of course that is were all the new stuff starts so I guess that is a good sign.
posted on June 23, 2001 05:52:04 PM new
No I don't think this country can start a meaningful dialogue about mental illness. I think the screaming matches on Fox news will be all that happens. And perhaps a few worn out actresses will try to get publicity saying how they had post partum depression once.
Sorry to sound so cynical, but so far the meaningful dialogues re: drugs, guns, welfare, hmo's, etc. have led to squat.
posted on June 23, 2001 06:13:40 PM new
Manic deppressive or bi polar disease is real, and can be called a mental illness, but is more of a 'biological disorder'.
Lithium has proven most effective in a lot of cases.
And then there are different 'levels' of bi polar.
I know all this, my father is bi polar.
He went on lithium, and was 'totally normal', so 'normal' he even admitted, that it was boring. They love the mania part.
Its a total high. And they don't hear voices or anything, its like a coke high, and they can do and accomplish anything. And there are many real accomplishers throughout history who were bi polar.
The down side is the depressive part, which can put one so down its awful to see.
posted on June 23, 2001 06:27:27 PM new
It would take a major change to train prosecutors and police to evaluate when they should take people to be exaimined for mental problems, and to consider it part of their job and duty.
About the only behavior that generates that response now is suicide. It is not part of their job description or training to direct people for medical problems. We can't even get jailers to take sick prisoners to the hospital for heart attacks or asthmatic attacks much less mental problems.
Every year in this area 3 or 4 people die in jail while the cops sit and watch them gasp and turn blue and croak. There is just no empathy there at all. After enough exposure
to the rough characters they are so hardened they just assume all prisoners are faking it when they complain.
posted on June 23, 2001 07:59:17 PM new
I am no expert, and my experience with therapists, psychologists & psychiatrists is limited to an uncle subjected to electroshock treatments in the 60's & confined to the VA mental hospital, a friend suffering from Bi-polar depression & my teenage son (diagnosed by several "professionals" with "several" different mental illnesses).
I believe that mental illness is real. I believe that there are many degrees of mental illness and the effects that they have on people. I believe that people have suffered for hundreds/thousands of years, some able to function in society and some too effected to live outside on an institution.
I think that the increased awareness or better said, the recognition that mental illness is real, and the drugs designed to combat these illnesses are doing more harm than good. Why? Because it is not an exact science and there are too many so called professionals out there who diagnose based on "typical" illnesses: eg. child between the ages of 2 and 16 - ADD (or some form there of), woman between the ages of 22 and 60 - Depression (in some form or another) Treatment plan: drug of choice, typically whichever is being pushed harder by the manufacturer, with very little regard for side effects & fine tuning to insure that the patient is actually being helped.
I believe that the pictures of those 5 children should become part of a campaign for mental awareness. Something along the lines of a national mental health HELP group, an easy to remember phone number, where people in need can get the help they so often cannot find! There lives are tragically over, but if another child can be saved from the same fate, their deaths, perhaps, will have some meaning.
posted on June 23, 2001 08:46:22 PM new
Electro Convulsive Therapy (ECT) is still in use (and probably more in use now than it was in the 70s and 80s.) If you ever saw "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" then you know what ECT isn't. You are unconscious when it is done to you, you'll wake up with a headache, and there is memory loss, sometimes the memories come back and sometimes they don't.
Here's the weird part about ECT. They don't know why it works.
posted on June 23, 2001 08:58:26 PM new
Gravid, I agree with the distinctions you've made between the various professionals in the mental health field. I guess the fastest growing segment may be composed of psychopharmacologists.
My husband's family has several members who are alcoholics. It's known but not admitted.
One of his brothers is fifty and now living at home with his mother. He's had a lifetime of problems. We thought maybe the problems stemmed from an incident in his childhood or his time as a medic in Vietnam. However, a couple years ago I was talking to my husband's mother when she mentioned that her father was a manic-depressive and she herself had suffered from depression. Perhaps my brother-in-law has self-medicated with drugs and alcohol all these years because of depression. Who knows? (As far as I know no one in the family except my husband and I are aware of this family history.)
I feel that if mental illness isn't discussed then there isn't much hope for treatment. Not that professionals in that field can necessarily pull off miracles.
[ edited by saabsister on Jun 23, 2001 09:00 PM ]
posted on June 24, 2001 12:39:49 AM newgravid and reamond hit the nail right on the head; or, at least that was what I was going to say.
You know, with as much mental illness as there is in this country; such as, rolling back environmental protections so that corporations can make a few more bucks or that voters vote for 12-year olds into presidential offices, I'd say that the great number of people in this nation need mental health therapy.
If your brother had diabetes, would you look disdainfully upon him because he had to take shots of medicine everyday to survive? if your father had arterial schlerorsis (Harding of the arteries) and had to take blood thinning medicine, would you try to convince him that it's all his imagination? Sop why, when the chemical receptors do not respond to the right chemicals, or put out the right chemicals in the brain do we sneer at people with this problem and slam them for any behavior that becomes a consequence? It doesn't make any sense.
HANG THEM ALL!
Right. Mentally ill people are just "stressed out" and "deluded" that they have a problem. It's only a choice and they can change their minds at any time that they want to "grow up" and take care of themselves and go get a job and stop bothering everybody. Many times, a chemical imbalance will screw up their lives, making them act erratically, and causing much baggage to be accumulated with any issue. Mental health is seen as "for weaklings" and the weak-minded. What a load of crap that is! How can a person, who is born with a defective brain, just like a defective liver or kidney or heart, be held accountable when it affects their behavior?
So should we give them all a lethal injection when they drown their kids? Should we give them a lethal injection when they blow up a federal building? Did the Death Penalty stop either one of them from committing crimes? NO! It never does. We are a sick society that kills people who are mentally ill.
You know, if this was the year 1901, the negative attitudes towards mental illness would be in line. But now that medicine has advanced so far and public awareness of the true facts has been made clear to everyone who will listen, there is no longer any reason to execute people for mental illnesses or to simply brush them off as "lazy". That crap has to end and will only do so with the demise of the Republican Party.
edited for sp.
[ edited by Borillar on Jun 24, 2001 12:40 AM ]
posted on June 24, 2001 06:38:05 AM new
To admit that mental illness is real is to accept that it could happen to any of us. Denial relieves that fear for many of us.
posted on June 24, 2001 07:02:23 AM new
Biddy, Yes, it is.
Mental health advocates are disappointed with allocations in the Bush administration's proposed fiscal 2002 budget for mental health programs. While the president's budget would increase overall federal discretionary spending by 4%, discretionary spending at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA's) Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) would be cut by $16 million, after having received a $67 million increase in fiscal 2001 under the Clinton administration's final budget. According to advocates, the administration says that $11 million of the cuts will come from the non-renewal of one-year projects and that $5 million will come from the non-renewal of grants that expire during fiscal 2001. According to the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, several newly authorized programs would receive no funding under Bush's proposed budget. CMHS's other major programs would only be level-funded, after all received increases last year. This proposal occurs at a time when states are feeling pressure to comply with the Supreme Court's 1999 decision in Olmstead v. L.C. by providing more community-based mental health services. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) does receive an 11% increase under the Bush budget proposal, but advocates say this percentage increase is less than that of most of the other institutes under the National Institutes of Health (NIH). There is no proposed increase to SAMHSA's mental health block grant, which received a $64 million increase in fiscal 2001.
posted on June 24, 2001 07:25:29 AM new
See...Ken doesn't want a free ride..
Helen...yes Bush (and even more so Reagan, during his era) cuts funding for mental health services....BUT...
Political party affiliation has absolutely NO bearing on the individual's refusal to discuss mental illness as a real entity. Nor does political party affiliation have ANY bearing on who is effected by mental illness. Take my word for it (or not)...I have had plenty of chance for observation.
Even during the Clinton years mental health facilities were down sizing and closing. The mentally ill are frequently homeless or incarcerated. Yes...this trend began with Reagan, but continued on through the Bush and Clinton administrations. Ya see...the mentally ill usually don't bother to vote.
During the 40s, 50s and 60s the mentally ill were used as research subjects. During an earlier era they were chained to the walls (not to cure, but to keep them from being seen by society). They are a non-population...for the most part we want to be able to pretend they do not exsist...we, as a society, are more comfortable with that attitude...and it is not correlated with out political party affiliation in negatively or positively...only with our being human.
Post partum depression is not an uncommon event. It can range from mild to psycotic, supported empirically...yet frequently the woman is merely told to "snap" out of it...some times they just snap instead. Healthcare practicianers are slowly becoming more educated in the matter, but health insurance, loved ones and even those effected lag far behind. It is the same with most forms of mental illness.
I think that a dialog about mental health is needed. And I think that it should be sans political blame. It is we as individuals, [not "them"] that need to become informed. It is we as a society that need to understand that good mental health is important to all of us...individually and as a whole. Democrates, Republicans, Independants, Liberals, Communista and everyone else.
I could carry on this rant, but the race is on later and I gotta get other stuff done.
It can be a sign of uniqueness and many people embrace uniqueness and love to show it off.
