My Thoughts on Mental Health In America
I'd wager that nearly 50% of the supposed mental illness in this country could be eradicated with one simple remedy. Open up. Unburden yourself. Share. Talking about what's bothering you gives a kind of form to the demons that hide in your mind and eat you from the inside out. That used to be common advice and common practice until doctors started getting huge kickbacks and perks for prescribing this pill or that pill. Have you seen the side effects on these things? Every anti depressant on the market warns that it may increase thoughts of suicide. The meds aren't the cure. They're the problem. I truly believe the old way was the best way. Talk to somebody. It helps. It always has.
Opening up and talking to someone is what therapy is. The difference is most randos are bad therapists.
As for drugs, the reason anti-depressants warn about suicide is a paradoxical effect of starting to recover, where if you're severely depressed enough to spend most of your time lying on the floor feeling sorry for yourself, you're less of a suicide risk than someone less depressed who's capable of being self-motivated enough to carry out a suicide attempt.
It's often the simple answer that's most difficult to uncover. If you see somebody who clearly hasn't smiled in a while, go talk to them. Tell them to open up. You'll both be better for it.
mental illness recovery (or paliatives) depends on three legs: meds, for the critic situations, but the most important thing is, as you tell, therapy, and environment. As patient and social worker experienced on mental health, I always make an effort on these two, therapy is a real helpful part, and working on environment (family, friends, relatives, home, work, school or college...) will make a drastic change and really help on recovering and adapting better the patient. Look at me, for example, I have had a change of meds in may, because I started a depressive crisis in november, only passed 1 of the 5 subjects at college (by this time 3th of the 4 years this studies take) in january. After may, I passed only 3 of 5 (one was a research work with others, one was english and the other was designing projects, just as easy as english you see). So here I am, the change of meds led was because I couldn't focus cognitively, at anything at all. Change led me to a severe anxiety crisis in the middle of class, so the teacher had to take me to the hospital (he works with severe mental health people) because I couldn't even tell where I was (and my college is beside the hospital!), so more meds, and more suicidal thoughts. I go every friday to group therapy, and recently they saw me so bad that the psycologist and social worker caught me apart and asked what was going on, and had to confess that I had planned a date for suicide, so we started heavy work with personal therapy, and review meds, as we are viewing what to do, as environment cannot change, at least family and work... I resteem it, and of course, if you follow me, these kind of posts will be common... the social work and how social work is there for more than help after disaster, we can help prevent!
Thank you for sharing your story here @traba-emo It helps to reinforce the basic notion that all people are susceptible to low feelings. In some cases, like your own, it may move to a critical state. It doesn't have to though. Much strife in this life can be prevented by either asking someone if they need help or asking someone if they can help.
In truth, a good 'therapist' (someone with an empathic ear) is worth their weight in gold. Most often, these people are naturals, and the academic training just helps them strengthen their gift.
"Opening up" to people who are not genuinely interested, or who listen half-heartedly without offering viable help for resolution, can be as detrimental as the 'bad' therapist, or big-pharma-friendly psychiatrist.
So, don't be toooooo quick to ask someone to open up if you're not prepared to do the hard work of helping one see clearly the cause, effect, solution of what's buggin'.
And, don't ignore them either. Let them know help is available. Even offer support groups they can go to for help. Bottom line, there's too-much government regulation causing many who could help to shy away for legal reasons.
Peace.
My father killed himself because he was a motivated loner and my family didn't know. Then, the medical establishment doped him up on SSRIs and everyone just went along with it. I didn't know, or I'd have ripped him away from it! I battle depression and talk to a shrink regularly. It helps me cope with all the other psychopaths in real life!
I have a therapist that I speak to. I also share with the people in my life. This world is a fucked up place and sometimes I just feel so frustrated. Talking helps.
I believe it is only going to get a bit messier. But that's why quiet time, a few good friends and real reflection are so vital. And common sense :)
Nice post...
Interesting post @japhofin8or
I think that opening up, and talking to people certainly helps, but there's a larger issue in our society that isn't being addressed. There's an awful lot of people who need psychological help, but aren't getting it. Either because the therapy is too expensive, or their medication is too expensive. We have to figure out some way to getting people access to the help that they need. If people have to choose between putting food on the table, and paying for medication, food, clothing, and shelter will come first.
Also, I think a lot of people are just too busy with their lives to take much notice of people who need psychological help. I'm always shocked when I find on the news that someone has gone on a murderous rampage, and then it turns out that 20 people knew that the person was having issues, and told no one about it until after the fact. People need to stop being so self absorbed, and take some notice about what's going on around them. Opening up is a great idea, but the problem is that a lot of the time there's no one around who wants to listen.
You make a very solid point: Mental Healthcare is not available to many who would benefit from it. Certainly there are many homeless people in this country who need support and a person to share with who do not get either because they can't afford professional help and people in general avoid the homeless. Homeless people have lost much of who they are in both material things and in their basic humanity.
It doesn't cost anything to listen to another human being share with you except your time. For some people just having somebody listen can help immensely.
I definitely agree with you that listening to people can really help them in a lot of situations. However, when you say that "It doesn't cost anything to listen to another human being share with you except your time.", doesn't that kind of overlook the point that the most valuable thing we have today is our time? When you pay someone to do something, what you're really paying them for is their time. When you give someone your time, in some sense you're giving them something just as valuable as money, maybe even more. I don't know. Perhaps I'm not looking at it in the right way, but it does seem to me that the thing that people lack most these days is time. Some people say that one can make time for things that are important enough, but that's not always easy to do. It's sad that we often don't have enough time for the people in our lives, but that's often the case.
I believe that sharing and open up helps. I personally write my journey and shared it through steemit. Professional helps aren't affordable and I found steemit to be a good place to store all of my journey :)
Thank you for writing this concern out! I couldn't be more happier that someone cares about this issue :)
you are right. that is a good solution, and it is a different game now! phewwiee!