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
There is some tremendous research taking place that’s likely to turn the public’s idea of what mental illness is or is not on its head. Discoveries about commonalities between major mental illness and diseases of other bodily systems (outside of the brain) might surprise you a great deal. I’ve been reviewing some of those studies and am compiling some links to them. I believe these studies will ultimately have a very positive impact on the stigma of mental illness.
I love what you have to say about society as a whole, these days. I think you’re right on target. “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.” If ever there was a society tailor made to trigger mental illness in people with a biological predisposition to something, this is it. The extremes of our decisions are impacting our entire climate — and our entire population. My fervent hope is that societies begin a shift back to a more old-fashioned way of life sometime soon. The things that are wrong with the world today are almost enough to make me hope we go back to the dark ages (but not really). I wish I had been this age 100 years ago. I don’t believe the trade-offs our discoveries have brought about since then are worth it.