Mental Health

Just another day in America:  yet another mass shooting, the third in the span of 24 hours.  Everyone is pointing the finger of blame at gun laws, but the real issue is mental health.

If one is mentally ill, it means they are crazy, right?  Not so much, but that's exactly why people don't seek treatment for the way they feel, mentally, when they would absolutely seek treatment if they don't feel well, physically.  An illness or physical injury can be fixed, but an illness in the brain just doesn't compute.  We avoid those folks.

I am certainly no scholar of mental illnesses, but I understand that 90% of us avoid treatment for difficulties of the brain because we are afraid that we will be labeled as crazy, psychopathic, sociopathic, autistic, or otherwise just out of the norm.

So, what conditions make up mental illness?  What are the labels?
Depression.  Levels:  suicidal, bipolar, clinical, situational.
Brain Injury.  Causes:  birth accidents, car accidents, serious concussions, brain bleeds.
Autism.  Levels: a huge spectrum of functionality, from high to low.
Personality Disorders.  Schizophrenia, Post Partum psychosis, Narcissism, Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Reactive Attachment Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder..and the list is endless.
Dementia.  Alzheimer's, Fronto-Temporal Degeneration, Lewy Body Dementia, all play a part in caring for elder loved ones.

In my 40 years of teaching, I encountered all of these with students.  Hell, in my 71 years of living, I encountered them all without benefit of youthful ignorance.  If I were to make an unscientific guess, I would say that 30% of the human population suffers from some sort of mental illness.  That, of course, does not factor in alcohol or drugs which change human cognition.  Add those, and the incidence goes way up.  My best guess is that less than 10% of sufferers actually seek professional help.  Why?  Everything costs money, and mental health treatment is quite expensive and lengthy, and not always covered by insurance.  Plus, even people who think they could use treatment wouldn't seek it because they would think of themselves as "crazy" and/or don't want to throw a pill at the problem.

Yesterday, I had occasion to talk to a doctor about my health.  At one point, he asked about why I had never taken advantage of a certain medication that could have helped me.  I confessed that it had scared me because, at the time, I was at a particularly dangerous episode in my mental health, and one of the side effects of the drug was the potential for suicidal depression.  I told him that I desperately had called every place I could think of  in those days to find help for myself, but didn't need a pill to push me over the edge..and that's when he went from treatment mode to listening mode.  In short order, he confessed to me that his mother was schizophrenic and that his family had suffered greatly from it...and before my appointment was over, this man said, "I am here to help you.  You are not alone."  You can't possibly know how much that meant to me.

I can't fix the problems of the world, but I wish I could!
There is not a soul on the planet that wouldn't benefit from mental therapy.  Not one!
And today marks a 24-hour period with three mass shootings in the United States.
How can we help our fellow Americans deal with their anger and disappointments??

I want my legacy to be more about how to help than how to criticize.  Please help me spread the word!