Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder, Schizophrenia, etc.
Sukey - Oct 5, 2003 4:27 pm
Edited by Oct 14, 2004 8:04 am
For some bizarre reason, I feel like talking about this. And ususally I don't.
Bill Russell
- Oct 5, 2003 4:33 pm (#1 of 1104)
Edited by Oct 5, 2003 5:34 pm
I'm listening..........
- Oct 5, 2003 4:41 pm (#2 of 1104)
What do you want to say about it, Esme?
Bill Russell
- Oct 5, 2003 4:42 pm (#3 of 1104)
I'm for mental health. Try religion.
- Oct 5, 2003 4:43 pm (#4 of 1104)
Esme, if you please.
Bill Russell
- Oct 5, 2003 4:44 pm (#5 of 1104)
Esme doesn't please.
Sukey
- Oct 5, 2003 4:45 pm (#6 of 1104)
Sorry. I was doing my horoscope.
I'm just curious how many people here have knowlegde of someone who is mentally ill or have/had a mental illness themselves.
I don't mean for this to be a pity party. I just get tired of mental illness being either bandied about as a casual insult (I do it myself) and wonder what people would have to say in a serious discussion of it.
Aleph
- Oct 5, 2003 4:45 pm (#7 of 1104)
Edited by Oct 5, 2003 5:47 pm
I think Freud managed to convince the world that everyone was mentally ill to some extent, but how much Americans have recovered from it, I don't know. (I've seen too many Woody Allen films.)
Anyway, with mental illness as with other things (paraphrasing Woody in Annie Hall) there are the horrible and the miserable. The horrible would be the chronic, visible, unbearable forms of mental illness - people with diseases or other stuff; and then there are the miserable - the depressed, the obsessive-compulsive and so on.
I am not sure about the extent to which one can discuss these things in public.
Sukey
- Oct 5, 2003 4:47 pm (#8 of 1104)
Gee, thanks for that post Aleph! But I would add that Chronic depression is pretty horrible, though it is often hidden from view.
Bill Russell
- Oct 5, 2003 4:49 pm (#9 of 1104)
Edited by Oct 5, 2003 5:52 pm
"I'm just curious how many people here have knowlegde of someone who is mentally ill"
I have 14 years of such experience. That person is no longer among the living.
I also serve on a state board which advises the governing board of the state mental hospital, and another state board on, "Mental Health and Substance Abuse". I was appointed by the governor of the state.
- Oct 5, 2003 4:50 pm (#10 of 1104)
Mental illnesses are just like any number of other illnesses - treatable to varying extents, sometimes devastating to the person with the illness, sometimes not at all devastating.
Sukey
- Oct 5, 2003 4:51 pm (#11 of 1104)
If you don't mind, Bill, what was the nature of the illness?
- Oct 5, 2003 4:52 pm (#12 of 1104)
One of my daughters has manic-depression (bipolar disorder). She's had it for about 10 years now and is, unfortunately, one of the percentage of people with the disease who don't respond well to treatment.
Sukey
- Oct 5, 2003 4:53 pm (#13 of 1104)
Well, Blazes, I am often surprised at the confusion that surrounds mental illness. For example, never having known a schizophrenic, many people think that "schizophrenia" means "divided personality". Which it does not.
Aleph
- Oct 5, 2003 4:54 pm (#14 of 1104)
Edited by Oct 5, 2003 5:54 pm
Sorry to hear that Bill and Blazes.
Esme, I don't want to encourage the hypochondriacal diagnoses of psychoanalysis, but I think many people have some form of mental illness and don't realise it, or think that no one else has it, and try to repress it as much as possible, which can lead to further problems. Chronic depression is only one of those illnesses - have you seen As Good As It Gets?
Bill Russell
- Oct 5, 2003 4:54 pm (#15 of 1104)
Edited by Oct 5, 2003 5:55 pm
"the nature of the illness"
Severe agoraphobia with severe depression, the result of cancer and its medical treatment.
- Oct 5, 2003 4:54 pm (#16 of 1104)
There is a lot of confusion and a lot of misplaced fear of the mentally ill.
Sukey
- Oct 5, 2003 4:55 pm (#17 of 1104)
I have chronic major depression, and have had it on and off, but mostly on, for almost forty years. I get tired of pretending about it sometimes.
Hobbes
- Oct 5, 2003 4:58 pm (#18 of 1104)
I don't know much about mental illness as I have not really personally experienced it within my family and I think one needs to experience it in such close quarters to have somewhat of an understanding.
I did hear the other day that physicians are just realizing bipolarity starts at a young age. A lot of children who suffer from it are being misdiagnosed with ADHD and given incorrect treatment.
We are all mentally ill to some degree though.
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Depression, Bi-Polar Disorder, Schizophrenia, etc.