Of Mental Health and Quick Fixes

[alivemagdolene]

Courtesy ☮freedom☮ on Flickr

I'm going to share something about me with you that you probably already know.

I have a disease that's potentially fatal, I take medication for, I struggle with every day, and yet a significant portion of the population doesn't believe is actually even a real disease.

I'm talking about Depression. Not being sad, not being depressed, I'm talking about clinical depression, also known as chemical depression, unipolar (the kind I have) depression, and major depressive disorder, among other names. And I'm not alone.

But this isn't necessarily about me. This is about everyone who struggles with a mental illness, whether it be Depression, PTSD, social anxiety disorder, OCD, anorexia, or any of the other plethora of mental illnesses. This is about them and the ignorant and insensitive who don't understand and refuse to be educated.

Mental health, like any other kind of heath, is complex. You can't tell a Depressed person to "cheer up" and although stories of people who've had it much much worse are indeed horrible, that's not going to help someone who by his or her brain chemistry has a persistent hopelessness. In fact, as one of my life-heroes and favorite people, my Aunt Mary articulated it, "That only makes it worse. It makes you feel like your problems, which are very real to you, are just 'complaining' and then you have guilt on top of your initial unhappiness." I should mention that it was Aunt Mary, among others, who has fostered in me the stereotype that all nurses are awesome (I'm aware a great many aren't, but I'm fortunate to know some wonderful people that are). Similarly, telling someone suffering from the complexities of anorexia nervosa to watch an inspiring video about body image and "that's all you'll need to see" is an example of the well-intentioned but shallow approach (if it were as easy as watching a video to cure anorexia, don't you think people would stop dying from it?) taken by far too many ignorant people. It's tragic how so many people treat mental health (and its sufferers) so arrogantly and foolishly. It's also pretty dangerous.

I'm aware that in addition to having Depression, I also started studying early on puts me in a different position than many people. But some of the accounts I've heard of how people treat the suffering... it's enough to make you wish for information packets sent to all citizens and mandatory sensitivity training. Bitching about how annoying it is to you when Depressed people are just "complaining that there's no way out for them" (which generally means that the individual(s)trusted you enough to tell you something in the first place) is flat out nasty. Not to mention ignorant. Let's say you have a friend with diabetes who confides to you about how he's having a difficult time with his dizzy spells and insulin. If you then declared to people how your friend was "complaining", you'd look pretty insensitive, no?

Expanding on a subject I mentioned above, it's pretty sorry in this day and age when people are honestly so ignorant they think it's somehow helpful to say to someone of ANY kind of misfortune that there are worse off people than they are. Of course there are, there always are, but what does it help? Would you tell a child whose house had just burned down "Hey, imagine if you were in Haiti right now!"? Would you tell someone in Haiti "Hey, at least this isn't Nazi Germany!"? It's the sort of faux "perspective" nonsense that's so troublesome because it can seem so innocuous and well-intentioned.

Examine your assumptions. Educate yourself before you cast judgment. Educate yourself period.

Comments

[alivemagdolene.livejournal.com]

Hey.

Hey you.

For a number of reasons, you're awesome.

[queer-theory.livejournal.com]

If anyone tells you to just cheer up and get over it, you know what to tell them in return:

(http://s4.photobucket.com/albums/y147/muckalarkuary/?action=view&current=vsi4rb-1.gif)

[alivemagdolene.livejournal.com]

Oh man... if I'm ever empress of the universe, I'm going to hire Jon and that choir to sing that to people that piss me off.

Yeah, I was definitely thinking this recently.

*is cheered up immensely by this gif*