People have this bizarre idea that mental illness somehow doesn't "count". That you have to fight it, and that if you lose, it's your own fault.
You are, right here, blaming the victim of the disease. Your brother died from a mental illness. It killed him, just as surely as cancer or a heart attack might have killed him. You'd never, ever, ever say that someone who's killed by a heart attack is "selfish", so don't do it for mental illnesses either.
Perhaps we should should recognise an ill person cannot be held to the same standard expected of a well person, but can still be considered to have some degree of agency in their actions.
It's especially problematic because mental illness is a fault in your thoughts, and not in, say, your arms or legs. But you don't have thoughts in the way you have arms and legs - you actually are your thoughts.
That makes no sense. There are plenty of physical diseases where that doesn't apply, and many where the only cure requires lots of work on your own part.
1. In point of fact, much scientific evidence shows that depression is a physical illness, not a mental illness.
2. The only reason treatments are not available for the physical illness of depression is because of the primitive state of neuroscience.
3. But neuroscience research is moving apace, and is very promising. Read this: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/02/magazine/02depression.html...
4. A quote from the above-linked article: '"So we turn it on," Mayberg told me later, "and all of a sudden she says to me, 'It's very strange,' she says, 'I know you've been with me in the operating room this whole time. I know you care about me. But it's not that. I don't know what you just did. But I'm looking at you, and it's like I just feel suddenly more connected to you.' '
"Mayberg, stunned, signaled with her hand to the others, out of Deanna's view, to turn the stimulator off."
'"And they turn it off," Mayberg said, "and she goes: 'God, it's just so odd. You just went away again. I guess it wasn't really anything.'"'
5. Psychiatrists and psychologists, of course, insist that depression is a mental illness and is treatable with therapy and drugs. But there is no reliable scientific evidence for this view.
6. President Obama recently announced a major "brain initiative", meant to speed up the pace of neuroscience research. More here: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/04/02/fact-s...
7. Notice that the initiative is not called the "mind initiative". The reason? Psychology had its chance and failed. It's time for a new approach.
> It's especially problematic because mental illness is a fault in your thoughts, and not in, say, your arms or legs.
That's what psychiatrists and psychologists would like you to think, but it's false. Some day this way of describing mental illness will be judged to have been criminally false.
A false dichotomy there.
"Psychiatrists and psychologists, of course, insist that depression is a mental illness and is treatable with therapy and drugs. But there is no reliable scientific evidence for this view."
Stated without actual evidence, naturally. On a scale of One to Clear, how much do you love L Ron Hubbard?
At the same time, at some level it really comes down to a personal choice to either keep fighting against it, or just give up. The nature of despair and depression can make it less appealing choose to keep fighting, but it's still a choice.
But that doesn't change the fact that people should be supportive and compassionate toward people struggling in these ways. It's never ever ever good or healthy or productive to condemn someone who's made some kind of mistake, because mistakes are usually the result of an internal struggle of some kind. Condemning or blaming someone only makes it harder for them to win the fight against whatever they're battling internally, and ultimately we just want everyone to win these internal fights.
You have some control. Far less than the "suicide is selfish" idiocy assumes.
Great, maybe that's the case. However, there's no more evidence for that than the assertion that suicide is a choice.
Would you mind giving me the name of your practice so I can make sure that nobody I care about ever, ever goes there?
The problem isn't just the illness clouding the need for them but also that there are sometimes more significant side-effects as well.
