Are explanations for depression contributing to stigma?

There are likely a myriad of causes of the stigma against mental illness that so many people hold and it’s also likely that in any individual multiple ideas are at play in fuelling their prejudices. I think that one of those ideas that drive stigma lies in people’s explanations as to what causes mental illness and their perception of the agency of the sufferer in that causation.

(I’m going to write about depression as that’s what I know but I reckon these ideas can apply more or less as well to many other mental illnesses.)

Everyone who has known someone living with depression has ideas about what causes their illness. It’s possible to consider these theories of causation as existing on a spectrum based on the degree of agency attributed to the person suffering. At one extreme (say, zero on the scale) would be the neurobiological explanation: depression is solely caused by an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain independent of the events in the person’s life. This positions depression as something that merely happens to a person, something independent of their life and experience, something over which they have no control.

At the other extreme (say, ten on the scale) would be the wholly moral explanation: people are depressed because they choose to be, that they are malingering, that they are self-indulgent and sympathy-seeking. This positions depression not only as something entirely within the person’s control but as a state they are somehow encouraging.

Between these two extremes can be placed all other theories of depression causation such as (in rough order of least to most agency): depression is caused by stressful or traumatic events in a person’s life that result in an imbalance of neurotransmitters in the brain; depression is a pathological but understandable emotional response to stressful or traumatic events in a person’s life; depression results from poor coping skills to stressors/traumas; depression is a weakness of character; etc.

In any individual, differing theories of causation will be attributed to different people they know experiencing depression.

For the person encountering someone with depression, the degree of agency perceived to be involved in causing that depression is likely to be directly proportional to the amount of stigma they may hold to the person living with the illness. The higher on the agency scale the person’s causative theory of depression is in any instance, the more they will perceive the depressed person responsible for their own suffering, the more likely they are to view the person to be inherently morally flawed and the less likely they are to feel sympathy or offer help.

It’s human nature to reason about our lives and experience, particularly to determine the cause of problems in order to discover solutions. In depression it’s often impossible to definitively identify the cause of an episode. In the absence of any clearly identified external cause, sometimes people slide up the scale of agency: “Since I can’t see any reason for your depression, then it must be something wrong with you.”

Looking for causes is not only often futile but frequently pointless. Even in instances where contributing factors can be identified, they may not be able to be removed or modified. Where searching for causes encourages stigma, it’s not only unhelpful but positively harmful.

I think the focus on the cause of someone’s depression diverts attention and energy from the immediate issue: someone is suffering immense pain. If you can’t identify and remedy the cause of the person’s suffering, I’d suggest stop trying, accept what they’re experiencing without judgement, be there for them and give them the love and support they need.

(I’m aware of the irony in arguing for less focus on the cause of events in a blog entry exploring the cause of stigma.)

by auchel

the dark underbelly of the trendy eating disorder scene

 

‘Creep not upon the earth, my brother, like an animal. Put on those wings which Plato says are caused to grow on the soul by the ardour of love. Rise above the body to the spirit, from the visible to the invisible, from the letter to the mystical meaning, from the sensible to the intelligible, from the involved to the simple… If with all your might you strive to rise above the cloud and clamour of the senses He will descend from light inaccessible and that silence which passes understanding in which not only the tumult of the senses is still, but the image of all intelligible things keep silence.’  (Erasmus)

Mass Consumption: Asceticism meets Consumerism

 Ascetic Ideal Of Femininity = Anorexia

+ Consumer Ideal = Bulimia 

 When ascetic ideals clash with the status symbols of consumerism it gives rise to contradictions; wo/men should be faithful but also sexually rapacious, wo/men shouldn’t diet, in fact ideally they should eat a lot, yet they should be exceptionally thin and athletic; women should be child-like and submissive to patriarchal views yet independent and intelligent, women who wear make-up are vain yet women should have porcelain skin, long lashes and live up to the airbrushed fantasies in magazines; men should be both sensitive yet strong, emotionally open yet independent, complete in order to be a completion for others yet suffering well-timed moments of weakness for the complete modern woman who needs to be needed.  Both sexes are still too preoccupied trying to make the everything they are supposed to be work to know how to help the other.  Bulimia can be seen as an extreme reaction to, even an embodiment of, such contradictions.  Binge in the consumer mode, purge in the ascetic.  Both ideals, extreme asceticism and extreme possession (a post-modern avarice, self-possession) are incompatible, unsustainable and destructive. 

A different form of consumption has taken hold of men and women alike.  Not a huge surprise that modern ideas of anorexia emerge most evidently in the industrial metropolis.  Advice pages of Victorian Ladies Magazines are full of mother’s panic about their hitherto bright daughters cutting off their circulation with corsets to get the desired figure.  No wonder sensation novels are full of girls having fainting fits.

Feminism never got rid of corsets, society merely internalised them.  And, to pre-empt the burning bras corollary, women need them for comfort and feminism always knew it. Burning bras was a media invention to disparage a 1969 No Miss America march.  There is nothing intrinsically wrong with corsets for that matter, they can accentuate that pelvic curve; rather the insidious cultural restrictions that impel a singular figure that’s the problem.

The media doesn’t cause anorexia or bulimia any more than a drug dealer causes addiction.  Yet society doesn’t allow dealers to hang out in the school playground without a fight.  Images of perfect bodies throughout culture must an atmosphere in which eating disorders thrive.  Disordered eating may begin as an unconscious attack of unacceptable social ideals, but if forced conscious it may become a reaction against.  The patient is not a model of the ideal; their behaviour is symptomatic of the reasons for objecting to such generic standards.  At a certain point of recovery, the stand-up and saying ‘My name is… and I am a bulimic’ stage, unconscious reaction to society becomes a conscious reaction against.  That is when the madperson can become the radical, lobbying for reform.

Cultural expectations control passion to the point of screaming.  The individual fights against it, striving for compromise equilibrium.  Forced into conscious thought, even locker room jokes are spoilt, male desire is as tangled up as female desire ever was.  Every romantic comedy shows a prohibitive standard of perfection tying the knot of attraction.  Beauty is only skin deep but the gaze depends on cultural expectations, and so does sexual love.

In the earliest extant law book, which biologically speaking is not that old, a charter myth of patriarchy follows fast on the Word’s Creation.  Si[g]n came into the world through that original woman eating knowledge.  Peace plucked into bits when she shared that food for thought with her other half.  The punishment, to be shamefully aware of flesh and painfully aware of Bloody childbirth (the spiritual origin of community).  Beauty and shamefaced ugliness, those binary opposites, are the apple of every communities eye; cultural standards that frustrate natural energy.  The story of Adam and Eve is a piece of art, sign or symbol, that naturalises intellectual standards of beauty as opposed to instinctual attraction.  These aesthetic social ideals crafted the psyche as soma, naturalised intellect as sympathetic flesh and communities Blood as Spirit.  And so Eve ate the apple.  Natural matter imbued with Si[g]n, so says the Word, decayed humanity.  Si[g]n is frustrated instinct, natural Passion becomes unnatural appetite.  The woman, functional as a ribbed and ribbing body to birth man, is coiled in her own brain tissue by reaching beyond her caged maw.  So, rebellious, Eve need submit to more suffering during childbirth.  The body as community as culture; much like the Tower of Babel story it is society, connections between two, that moral codes go between.  Associated then is woman’s submission to her own leaking body and her desired physical and mental submission to man who submits to God.  This may be verified by Lilith, who in some popular versions of the myth, refuses to submit to Adam and is punished with eternal barrenness; the natural state of woman’s Blood without violence translated to vicious nightmare, vampiric miscarriages of maternal instinct.  Women out of control are morally repugnant.  Unsubmissive sexual appetites belly crawl outside acceptable social functions, and are as such connected with indulgence of the senses; libidinous, gluttonous, curious.  A questioning mentality is translated physically.

Although biological functions have defined her as a slave to instinct, the New Testament has it that woman shall be ’saved by childbirth’.  Through childbirth the female form can be thought of as a creative not just a sensual canvass.  Motherhood is dissociated from Passion (from the virgin birthing a human saviour born of Blood yet conceived free of sexual ‘sin’.  His Passion translated to self-sacrifice through the body, a violent blood letting).  That Biblical mother’s (i.e. the birth of Samson) need to refrain from eating unclean things may be significant as part of this trend.  A nurturing woman’s needs must be under control.  Marriage as a financial appropriation of emotion submitted body and Passion to un/comfortable social definition, containing her procreative capacity within functional economic bonds.  Tied by apron strings, or more atavistically the umbilical cord, to the duties of preparing meals social definitions of femininity are forever entangled in food.  In this respect gluttony is a reader’s digest of instinct twisted by social definitions of gender.

Divorced from reality, traditional moral restrictions no longer go between human thought and action.  Post-modern mental rot has enacted umbilicus decay.  Dissociate from spirit, blood is clogged with transfat.  Dissociate from control, people sleepwalk into ambien eating.  Dissociate from comfort, bodies coil brains.  Women, no longer desired for their procreative abilities, should be girls with slight pelvis; their breasts apparently not required for feeding babies can be plasticity pumped full of toxic chemicals, to satisfy the mechanised gaze rather than natural hunger.  Irresponsible perhaps to have cosmetic surgery.  Still nobody is directly responsible; peer pressure is fatal and fitting in remains perhaps the least worst reaction for that bullied individual.  Haggard from birth by distant-screaming guilt, our aging society is determinedly youthful in its search for comfort.  Perhaps the only way an anorexic feels they can reject such frustrated pleasure pursuit is a distracted unconscious writhing that mortifies the flesh, as never being good enough gets depressed into self-destruction rather than being transcribed into useful creation. So consumerism runs rampant, pooling stagnant milk lakes and steeping bread mountains, while, counterbalancing industrial horizons, Romantic views idealise childhood.  Naturally, we want to be young, fresh faced, lithe, and carefree; not responsible for any of this.  This is perhaps where female images diverge from male.  Men are still signposted towards worker’s brawn and muscle, consummately responsible for good work, although a trilling boy power is catching on, cause celebre style.  The only responsibility empowered girls are weighed down with still tends toward shame for not being what they should, even if such blame is laughed off with a ‘zigiziga’ and a ‘what a wanker’ gist of the wrist.  Instead of defining ourselves based on natural talent, live action, definition continues to be mistranslated by fleshed senses.  Sexbomb successes.  Fat failures.  How sexually attractive is that fifteen/fifty year old?  The twenty-five year old is now the ideal youth, lithe and carefree, that actual adolescents defer childhoods to be, and older people botox reason to become again.  Our lives, our identities, are determined by distracted sensation.  Associated with moral codes, unreasonably valorised, that only result in senseless guilt.

So what is the compromise equilibrium for cultural si[g]n, for men and women, sexuality in equality, for identities, bodies, eating?  Disorder, at the moment, as the wor[l]d is deconstructed.  Those decaying binary oppositions of beauty and ugliness need to be, now fragmented yet figmented, re-imagined beyond cathexis.  Shame is a reaction against pride.  Without pride there is no shame.  Without singular beauty there is no shamefaced ugliness. Without forbidden knowledge, maggot bit by an absolute Word, associate bodies need not be riddled by self-consuming self-indulgent guilt, that pride of shame over comfort men and women might find an equilibrium, and live together even on this compromised earth without Passion becoming appetites.  If and when gluttony is no longer profitable to mass produced culture, disordered eating might move beyond bloated self-negation and create out of individual upheavals a motion against consumptive social definition.

by eleventhetter

Why ‘Improvement Rates’ in Psychiatric Treatment are Meaningless:

 

Let’s face the facts: some people probably do get better after undergoing psychiatric treatment. However, some people also get better from a placebo or on their own. In such complex emotional problems, a small trigger can occasionally lead to a huge mental shift, provided that a person was nearly ready to make that shift. With placebo treatment, this ‘positiveness’ is usually more temporary, but is also beneficial.

But even so, biopsychiatry’s ‘treatment’ figures fail to properly state the failures of the profession. What’s an easy way to this? Blame the person as a biological entity for being ‘treatment resistant’ rather than relating to them and trying to ascertain what made them feel that way. This easily absolves psychiatry of admitting ‘treatment failure’ and rather blames the patient. Thus, instead of laying off, they now have the go ahead to force more drugs and possibly electroshock. It’s brilliant, but sickening. Here, psychiatry has created a logical loop which always ends up with them winning out. By refusing to acknowledge the dismal conditions of ‘hospitals’ and the lobotomizing effects of drugs, the field has come to be viewed as ‘ironclad’ by many misguided individuals.

Also, biopsychiatry neglects the fact that ‘treatment’ or ‘improvement’ is highly subjective, and that this judgment is probably best made by the person being ‘treated’. Of course, placebo can play a role, and in a drugged up fog, people may think they’re doing better because they’ve been blunted and can’t feel anything, but often psychiatrists will judge someone as ‘better’ simply because they’re less expressive and easier to control. This hardly constitutes an improvement at the root of the problems at hand, and may actually worsen them (especially if these problems are with authority).

If one references to David Rosenhan’s sham patient experiment, ‘normal’ individuals found that the only way to escape hospitalization was to pretend that they were insane and had gotten better. This, of course, could account for even more of the ‘improvement’ since ‘treated’ individuals are largely not heard out.Human beings are complex.

There’s no doubt about that amongst people with common sense. But biological psychiatry tends to be devoid of it. I’m not going to deny that this may be difficult for some to understand, because it not only represents a loss of trust that has been placed in the system of many but a deeper flaw in our population itself. But in order to eliminate the stigma of mental illness we need to understand that emotional help is NOT an objective phenomenon, is NOT necessarily dependent on university work, and cannot simply be centered around convenience or simplification.

by sociopathicregret

An Alternate Viewpoint on School Shootings

 

The focus on gun control and mental illness after school shootings is largely unjustified. Of course, this is common knowledge to people with any shred of logicality, but I’m going to take it a bit further. There are many factors involved in these shootings, including parental neglect, reading insane material, depression, and…..

ZERO TOLERANCE POLICIES!

Yep, I said it. The very policies that the schools supposedly ‘rely on’ to ‘prevent’ violence are actually a major cause of explosive violence and school shootings.

Why? They don’t differentiate between self defense, retaliation, and aggression. This creates a catch 22 for people who are made fun of and feel as though they have nothing to do. Their parents can commonly be seen calling the school, but the school does little, and if they do, the insults continue behind administrators backs. Even so, they’re called rats and made fun of even more.

This unintelligent school policy not only reeks of lack of empathy, but is blatantly in line with the ‘politically correct’ groupthink of today.If these individuals ignore aggression, they run the risk of getting hurt but much more likely being completely humiliated. This leaves one option: fight back.

However, with zero tolerance policies, all parties involved are almost always punished equally. This leads to many who just defend themselves or stand up for themselves to think that they are at fault, and even if they realize that this is not the case, it creates a lot more frustration than necessary.

People who are made fun of and snubbed thus have no option other than to suffer, or explode like many of the school shooters do. Even before these ‘zero tolerance policies’, school policy largely started leading up to this. It clears the school’s ass of blame no matter what and makes for an easy method of ‘processing’ cases without any real critical thought, time or effort.

I’m not condoning school shootings. I understand that they are the minority of those put in this situation; those who have come across certain rhetoric, those who are often abused the worst, those who have formed thoughts that it is okay to commit such a horrible act. But just imagine a poor kid who has been verbally and physically abused in school for eight years. He finally gets the guts to fight back and guess what happens? He’s suspended, or worse, maybe expelled if he does a number on the other guy. What’s more, his parents make him out to be bad. In the short term, it may shut things up, and make the school look peaceful. But in the long term it fuels an explosive rage that just doesn’t go away.

So, next time you see this on the news, don’t think ‘That guy just must be crazy!’ It’s certainly true that some may be in a rather unstable state of mind, but think of the causes of this. Think of the treatment they endure, and think about how all their exists are blocked. Different people have different tolerance levels depending on many different factors, and though we should not condone violence, we must give suffering individuals a method to alleviate that suffering.

Otherwise, we are unfortunately contributing to the problem.

by sociopathicregret

Stigma in Scotland Quiz

Hiyas all. Bit bored at work today, little outta it after a night of partying and stumbled on the blog. Wanted to throw my two cents in with a quick wee quiz. It’s kinda Scottish related, me being a celtic gal’n'all but kinda relevant to the whole mental illness schtick. Hopes ya enjoy Will write more after chrissy, have a good ones all

Take Sammi’s Scottish Stigma Quiz…go on now, else I’ll come get ya!

by samceebell

(Some) True Confessions of a Self Harmer

 

Disclaimer:

I AM NOT PRO-SELF HARM!

I am not advocating the self-infliction of injury.

People who self harm have a problem and need help and support.

This post contains written examples of injuries I have inflicted.

Please do not read if you think you will find this disturbing or upsetting.

We’ll start with a bang to get everyone’s attention:

I ONCE PURPOSEFULLY IGNITED A FULL BOX OF MATCHES IN MY CLOSED FIST

So what’s your reaction?

OOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!      ?
HO-LY …!!      ?
OOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!      ?
[stunned silence]    ?
OOOWWWWWWWW!!! OWWWWWWWWWW!! OWWWWWWWWW!!   ?

My guess is all of the above, and then some.

Try these…

My top 5 most painful injuries, as inflicted on myself, in reverse order:
5) When I was 14, I stabbed a pencil into my finger whilst in the middle of a class at school.
4) When I was 21, I whipped myself so hard with a belt it I couldn’t sit, lean or lie on my back for just under a week.
3) A couple of days before being diagnosed as having a breakdown, I was sitting on a beach in Port Fairy. I started a small fire, took one of the burning sticks, and burned both my chest and shoulder. It was this event that made me realise I needed to see a doctor!
=2) That box of matches hurt like…well…a box of matches igniting in your closed fist!!!!! I had burns on the palm of my hand, thumb and two fingers for weeks.
=2) In July 2007, I knocked myself unconscious by throwing myself into a tree.
1) The cutting/hitting/burning incident in May 2007 prior to my suicide attempt.

I had to start like that! There was no other way to do it. Like every single form of mental health problem that exists, we need to talk about self harm in order for the stigma to be eliminated. The only way to do this is in a blunt, bloody and brutal way.

Hurting yourself is NOT about attention!
Hurting yourself is NOT about wanting to kill yourself!
Hurting yourself is NOT about bloody EMO!!
Hurting yourself is NOT about proving how cool you are!!
Hurting yourself is NOT about having a weakness of personality!
Hurting yourself is NOT about self-hate!!
Hurting yourself IS a symptom of a larger problem!
Hurting yourself IS a symptom of a larger problem which the person may not even be aware of!!
Hurting yourself IS AN ADDICTION!!
Pure and simple.

Even though burning myself with that stick hurt like nothing else, I’ve still burned myself since. Even though I couldn’t sit down for a week, I’ve still whipped myself again. Even though I bled all over my school books, I still stabbed myself with a pencil again.

Like any form of addiction – gambling, drugs, smoking, chocolate, porn – you simply have to do it again, only with every new time you do it, it has to be bigger in order for you to receive the same “hit”. Cutting yourself once will do the trick, but sooner or later you find you need to cut yourself dozens of times to receive the same fix. This is where the problem hits, because sooner or later you’re slicing a pound of flesh from your arm and not even feeling it.

This is where people who aren’t even suicidal are killing themselves by accident.

I’m not saying that everyone who self harms isn’t suicidal, nor am I saying that anything which I have written above about what self harm is/is not is set in stone. People self-inflict for all sorts of reasons, but from my experiences not only with my own self harm but also talking with people, who do the same thing, they aren’t suicidal or weak (in fact, some of the people who self-inflict that I know personally are the strongest most beautiful souls I’ve ever met)

I started self harming in 1993 whilst I was at school. I was able to get this under control by mid-1999 whilst working at the video shop. Throughout my time backpacking I was not having any urges to do so and thought I had it under control.
I did relapse however during the last four months of 2000; whilst trying to cope with Rachel’s death, restarting college and after my first suicide attempt [remember that word for later; after.]

From December 2000 to December 2006 I only self harmed on two occasions. It wasn’t until my breakdown in March 2007 that I relapsed and once more began doing so. I was able to get it under control again between May 2007 and July 2007, but suffered another major relapse, and have self-inflicted on/off since.
The last time I self-inflicted was two days after my last suicide attempt, October 2007 [and note the use of the after again].

My trick with self-harming was to attack parts of my body which I could cover – legs, arms, buttocks, back, chest – by throwing on some form of clothing, beit a jumper on the middle of a summer’s day or a long sleeve T-shirt on a cooler one. Always with injuries which wouldn’t leave any long-long term scars.

I would always use similar methods – cutting, burning, scolding, hitting – and every now and then, when the mood struck, would become creative and run into trees or ignite boxes of matches in my closed fist.

I was never doing it because of wanting to kill myself, or hating myself, or wanting to prove how tough and resilient I was. Nor was I doing it for attention – if attention was all I was after I would release a wombat into a crowded shopping precinct or streak Brunswick Street on a Sunday afternoon. It was always about this PAIN-PLEASURE balance I mentioned in an earlier post.

(And no, I’m not referring to this pain-pleasure as in a sadomasochistic way – ‘cause if that was the case whenever I felt like self-inflicting I would just go visit a dominatrix and have some sexy woman whip me rather than doing it myself.)
I’m referring to the coping mechanisms people have when their internal pain becomes too great.

Remember I said earlier to note the use of the word after in relation to my suicide attempts. The reason I self-inflicted after those attempts was as a way to control the inner conflict, pain and turmoil my mind was going through as a result of them. It was a way to stop me from trying again! It wasn’t because I still wanted to die; it was because I wanted to live!

The other times I self harmed was as a way to feel something. Life had become numb, frustrating, painful, empty and meaningless. The over-riding feeling of loneliness and emptiness is a powerful influence, because we live to feel, and if we are feeling nothing then what is the point of being alive? Again I wasn’t self-inflicting because I wanted to die, it was because I wanted to feel something: to feel like I was alive!

Having a tree knock myself unconscious, burning my chest and not sitting down made me feel something that I was missing.

Hence, why, before my third suicide attempt I did self harm – as a means to grab some physical feeling. something to convince myself not to go through with what my brain was telling me to do. However, on this instance, no matter what pain I caused myself, it didn’t work.

Overcoming the urge to self-inflict has been one of the hardest things I have had to deal with through this tumultuous time suffering from depression.
As I said above, IT IS AN ADDICTION. Pure and simple!

And anyone who has tried giving up smoking or gambling or Lindt or badgers will know that overcoming addiction is fucking hard! Not only because of the pure level of addiction, but also because it means having to face up to whatever problem is feeding that addiction in the first place. Whatever buried pain is making us smoke, drink or gamble needs to be faced up to. In essence, we need to become whip-wielding dominatrixies in order to tame and eventually command our problems.

To overcome self-harm we, like with every form of mental illness, we need to start talking about it in order to understand it, in order to help people overcome and control their addiction.

So how can you help? If you know someone who self-harms here are a few pointers:

- Whatever they’re doing DON”T take it personally. It isn’t about YOU!
- Be available and LISTEN to them if they need to talk.
- ACKNOWLEDGE their pain, it won’t make it go away, but it will make it more bearable.
- DON’T avoid the subject or pretend it’s not there.
- ASK THEM “I know you hurt yourself and I would like to understand it a little more, could you maybe explain why you do it? I’d be grateful if you could.”
- DON’T confiscate their “tools” (because I guarantee you this will lose their trust and they will just get more creative anyway)
- BELIEVE in them and BE HOPEFUL
- DON’T push them
- TAKE the initiative and distract them; take them to the cinema, rent a DVD, bake some chocolate brownies, go to a trivia night, go for a walk, have a playful pillow or water pistol fight, hell, if they’re your bf or gf, do a seductive strip tease and get them thinking about that cute butt of yours.
- DO spontaneous acts of kindness
- Be available, and willing, to LISTEN if they need to talk.
- EDUCATE yourself – slip on your Willow hat and hop on the net for some research.
- SUPPORT them physically; call them up and tell them you’re worried about them and invite them over for a game of scrabble or a blueberry muffin.
- SUPPORT them emotionally; go to the Doctor/Psychologist with them.

And please, please…whatever you do…

- DO NOT TRY TO MAKE/ORDER THEM TO STOP!!!!!!!!! If you make them feel guilty, or punish them in any way, this will just add fuel to their addiction.

And please, please, please, please…whatever you do…remember to…

- Take TIME OUT and recuperate, caring/loving someone who suffers from any form of mental illness is exhausting and you need to look after yourself.

Although it’s confronting, brutal and painful to think that people you care about are inflicting this pain on themselves remember that to them it is merely an addiction. A symptom of a larger, possibly unknown illness or condition, and they just need some help and support in order to get them through it.

As we’ve all experienced from time to time: the over-riding feeling of loneliness and emptiness is a powerful influence. It’s time to stop judging people who self harm, and start understanding what they are feeling; it’s the only way to understand their pain.

More self-harm pages on this blog you may be interested in:

• Self Harm: Coping and Distraction Tips
• DOs and DON’Ts of Self Injury
• Seven Ways to help stop SI

by Addy
Originally posted on All that I am, all that I ever was

The main cause of the stigma of mental illness.

I’m going to point out something that many may find convenient to skip over.  This is the reality that the ‘medical’ view of depression, suicide and mental illness promotes stigma. Of course, this medical view and the pharmaceutical establishment are ultimately derived from both misunderstanding and greed, the former which can be further derived much from a high paced lifestyle in which critical thinking is discouraged and so on and so fourth.

If a mental illness is an ‘illness’, it’s very easy for people to say ‘Oh, it couldn’t happen to me!’. Perhaps they might say ‘That guy is just messed up! Don’t bother trying to help!’. See, if it is an objective ‘disease’ or ‘illness’ it’s easy to pass off as not subject to influence by others, including themselves. That means that their actions supposedly will not have an impact, and they don’t need to intimately spend time trying to help. It isn’t a human problem, ‘you can’t talk to disease’!

The ‘genetic’ theories of mental illness have been around since before DNA was even discovered, merely on presumption based on no evidence whatsoever. Thus, the cart has become before the horse, and by this it can be shown that these theories have arisen due to social construct rather than genuine scientific evidence.  Perhaps personal ignorance and lack of empathy has played into this, after all, it has never been convenient to have to deal with someone who is ‘mentally ill’, especially if you had something to do with it.  A bigger picture is that society has a big role to play in why people are mentally ill. We have little left to offer in terms of quality; all that is left comes mostly in the form of mass quantity. Much of the time we are too busy scrambling through a rat race to attend to ourselves or others. In the meantime, we are showered by shallow rewards and distractions so that we don’t wake up from this stressful state. It’s far easier for society to blame the individual for a flaw rather than look at not only the immediate environment around such a person but their large scale environment. In the past, societies did indeed try to cover their tracks, but because interactions were commonly more honest and direct (executions instead of life sentences, etc), poor systems fell more quickly. Now, society covers its tracks very well by virtue of sheer massiveness and replaceable parts.

The stigma of mental illness mostly results from lack of empathy and caring, to tie this up. But that lack of empathy,  if one looks closely, has many roots.

by sociopathicregret

What do I mean by stigma?

“Pop quiz hotshot; how many times have I used the word stigma in this blog?”

Got your answer, good, scribble it down on a piece of paper because you’re about to do some basic maths. (You shouldn’t need a calculator)

Now, head over to Facebook and see how many times I’ve used the word there – and remember, there’s more on Facebook than just a profile page, we’re talking about every single time I have used that word there; groups, blogs, wall-to-wall messages, the lot!

Got your answer, excellent. Scribble it down after the number you had from this blog.

Now, go onto DepressionTribe, My BlogLog, MySpace (ick), every single blog listing directory I am on. Go into every message board, forum, chat room, email and website I have visited or sent in the last 4 weeks and take down every single time I have used the word stigma. To make it a little easier, some of my room IDs are: addy, straythoughts, addy50of3, allthosestraythoughts and naughty_addy (for those times when I’m just feeling cheeky!)

Got all those answers.

Excellent.

“Pop quiz hotshot; how many times have I used the word stigma on the internet as a whole in the last 4 weeks?”

You answer is…?

Well, I can’t tell you if you’re correct or not because, to be honest, I couldn’t even be bothered working out how many times I’ve used it on this blog, so whilst you’ve all been hurriedly trying to work this out in the hope of winning a sandwich toaster or a “John Howard: He’s a Twat!” commemorative mug, I’ve been logged in to some of those chatrooms having some cheeky fun as and messing with all your sums by just repeatedly typing stigma over and over again. Ah, good times! I will however ask this:

“Pop quiz hotshot; what the hell do I mean by stigma?”

My War against Mental Illness

There is a war raging most people do not know about.

It’s crippling people, ripping apart friends and family, destroying millions of lives across the planet. This war is killing people daily, and yet it’s passing so many people by.

I could reel off statistics to prove this: “by 2020, depression will be the second largest killer after heart disease”[1] or “about twenty in every hundred people will experience some form of mental health problem at some time in their lives.”[2] How about, “up to 12% of people affected by mental illness take their own lives (compared with an average of 1.7% for the whole population)”[3] I could go on and on, citing references, figures, percentages, but what’s the point? It’s boring and no-one’s listening.

In any war, the truth of the conflict doesn’t hit home until it affects you personally. It is the individuals on the front line who are often forgotten about, it’s their stories I’m interested in.

My name is Andrew Lake, I am 28 years old, and I exist in Melbourne. I have been fighting on the front line against chronic depression for fourteen years now, and have no military training.

A Warm Welcome!

Welcome to Eliminate the Stigma of Mental Illness the open blog project for those passionate about mental health.

To get started you can read the about page and then head on over to the contribute page to get yourself signed up.

This blog is a place where you can share your thoughts, articles, reviews, rants, raves, jokes and diatribes on mental health with the world.

Whether you own a blog or have never written for one in the world, sign up as a contributor, and start sharing your opinons to fight the stigma against mental illness!

I’m looking forward to seeing them all