I get your point, but you have to acknowledge that there is a gap between "suffering from mental issues" and "treatment is necessary" even in wealthy societies like America and free-healthcare societies like Britain. The best emergency room in the world has a "triage officer" whose job is to determine who needs treatment, and who is merely suffering, at any given time.
People with easy access to mental health care often think that they need treatment for whatever ails them. Similarly, people with the opportunity to worry about Big Problems and argue for whatever they believe (without consequence) often think that they need to have nasty, dehumanizing duels over temporary political phenomena that will be forgotten in a few years.
Nobody should be discouraged from finding help for their mental issues (or standing up for their beliefs), but at the same time they should understand that it may be a luxury and not a necessity.
Sure mental health treatment and agencies are notoriously underfunded, understaffed, and underpaid. But
Mostly we have a society that views those with mental health struggles as 'less than' and not fully adults, because they can't support themselves in some fashion and contribute to the GDP (from a very 10,000 foot view).
We can pay for support all we want, until society at large stops viewing these people as burdens, it's not going to really fix anything.
I feel like if America has a mental illness problem, surely it would be addressed by providing more mental health services perhaps cough universally to the populace somehow. But, it's all rhetoric. If claims there was a mental illness problem were in good faith, we'd see American action on mental health.
I believe your (excellent) point also applies to the broader issue of mental health.
Based on being around and close to many people with mental health problems (and, to some degree, based on my personal experience), a major problem is transitioning back into society after prolonged periods of 'problems' and/or therapy. Quite a number of them struggled for years to get back into some kind of 'normal' life, if they managed to do so at all.
In a few cases I've even wondered if they'd been better off not being treated and labeled and instead figuring out over time how to cope or deal with their problems in better ways.
It's like breaking a leg and - after it being fixed and healed - being sent home without any physical therapy or instructions on how to regain muscle strength, and everyone expects you to just get up and walk like they do.
Now, and I can't emphasize this enough, I'm not saying that therapy is a bad idea. In many cases it's absolutely necessary and in most cases it's the best we can do what with our limited understanding of the mind and the society/reality we live in.
But still, I wonder if the success rate of treatment for things like depression, addiction, and many other problems would be significantly higher if we put more effort into the rehabilitation process, both as 'caregivers' and as a society.
It's difficult to raise this issue without getting into the problem of the hyper-individualistic nature of (western) society though, which I think lies at the root of this issue (and perhaps at the root of many mental health issues). Perhaps we've prized and institutionalized freedom of choice and self-sufficiency so much that we forgot how to deal with those who, for various reasons, are unable to.
There's a book called The Myth of Mental Illness[0] that deals with this issue at length. The author argues that many forms of what we call "mental illness" are not real illnesses at all, but extreme preferences that prevent people from successfully integrating in society. He's not saying that these behaviors are healthy or natural, but he makes the argument that because these behaviors arise from differences in preferences we shouldn't make treatment compulsory, in part because doing so abridges a person's rights to liberty and also because it's hard to "cure" someone who doesn't see their behavior as problematic.
If you're going to disagree with these arguments please realize that they are not my own. While I agree with much of what's in The Myth of Mental Illness, I don't agree with all of it. The above is obviously a very brief summary and leaves a lot unaddressed.
Oh I see the point, yes this makes sense to me. Obviously it's not a black-and-white world of "crippling mental problems" versus "no mental problems", and to plenty of folks, engaging in mental health care is closer to life optimization and perhaps a luxury rather than a necessity.
Come on. Let's take the definition of mental illness in this article:
"declining communities must respond to drug abuse, homelessness, and antisocial behavior"
A significant cause of drug abuse is chronic untreated pain, another significant cause is addiction CAUSED by medical treatment (the so-called opioid crisis), and of course neither homelessness nor antisocial behavior are even remotely mental problems. In short, VERY few of these people have mental illnesses other than being poor.
In other words what this article is complaining about are ... economic problems that cause people to become more desperate, less willing to compromise and all of those economic problems must of course be mental illnesses. Futurama put it best:
All of this of course means that the vast majority of "mentally ill" do not have any problem responding rationally. Their rational responses are simply not what the clinic and/or other people want to see. For example panicked responses to not receiving treatment for a child because they have no alternative. The article reports that ERs let some people wait for weeks before any actual medical care was provided, then complain these people protest, and at some point protest strongly, even violently.
We're talking about two different things: the cause of mental health issues and the treatment of mental health issues. The US is pretty modern at treating them and pretty outstanding at causing them.
It is just me or is anyone else reading the comments getting the feeling that mental health issues are rampant today probably the most neglected space of health care or at least public awareness?
Shouldn't society and/or the government do more to increase awareness of these mental Heath issues and make information and treatments more widely available?
Yeah I get what you’re saying but I am so fed up of articles like this proclaiming x to be the secret to happiness or y to be the cure for mental health issues when the reality is that it is political and socioeconomic economic causes at the root of the majority of problems in this country. If people are mentally unwell, they should be able to access a therapist not told to go take a trip to the beach.
The mental health aspect is solved by the experts in that area of the field, the treatment is known.
People in the public with little knowledge about the area constantly insisting on it not being solved and that it needs discussion is a bit like arguing about if we should tell people with heart problems to hit the gym while the heart surgeon is recommending a transplant urgently.
That is to say very unhelpful and possible harmful.
I don't understand what you're trying to say. Is this a US specific problem? Most universities where I live provide free mental health service's through the government, though it's a more limited than real therapy.
Just as a point, your argument is a false dichotomy. The only two choices you allow are a ruthless capitalistic society or a communist society. The poster could have allowed for any colorful regions of societies in between.
I would argue most societies throughout history have treated people with mental illness less than kindly. But if wish to treat them better we must stop thinking of people as factors of productivity, and therefore their worth is only as useful as the amount they add to the bottomline. (Though I'd presume, albeit with little evidence currently, that society would be benefited in probably cost and happiness if we were to take on the task of providing adequate mental care to all.)
When the damage is already done, you need both. You need to address the social problems that cause mental health problems, which, by the way, is not easy, and you need therapy for those who already have mental health problems.
People with easy access to mental health care often think that they need treatment for whatever ails them. Similarly, people with the opportunity to worry about Big Problems and argue for whatever they believe (without consequence) often think that they need to have nasty, dehumanizing duels over temporary political phenomena that will be forgotten in a few years.
Nobody should be discouraged from finding help for their mental issues (or standing up for their beliefs), but at the same time they should understand that it may be a luxury and not a necessity.
reply