Mental Health Matters
Today I joined NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Until I had a friend suffer a psychotic break, I did not fully understand the ramifications of severe mental illness. The stigma associated with schizophrenia and mental disorders is such that people tend to automatically look down on people living with mental diseases. They seem to think, “Why can’t those people just tell themselves to pull out of the depression? Why can’t they just ignore the voices in their heads?”
An illness in the brain is just like an illness in any other organ of the body. We don’t tell someone with diabetes to just tell their pancreas to start producing more insulin, so why do we think differently about brains that are malfunctioning?
A study released in 2017 that compared MRI brain scans of healthy people to brain scans of patients who had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder showed actual structural differences in the brains of those who have bipolar disorder. These differences were more pronounced in patients who also experienced psychosis. Mental illness is not just a cop out or an excuse. It is nobody’s fault — except maybe God’s, but that’s a story for another blog.
This week’s literature selections all shared some themes about mental illness. The Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was a psychopath (and an argument could be made that the grandma suffered from mental illness of her own). The narrator in “The Raven” experienced delusions or hallucinations while lingering in the throes of grief after his love Lenore died. And in “A rose for Emily,” Miss Emily was so mentally ill that she murdered her lover and then spent the last years of her life sleeping in a bed next to his decomposing, decaying body.
All these examples show a variety of mental illnesses, and the characters in these stories and poems find different ways to deal with their problems: the grandmother recognizes illness in the Misfit and, contrary to all logic, labels him a “good” man. Perhaps she sees beyond his psychopathic delusions to the person underneath. The narrator in “The Raven” endures his hallucination for the rest of his days, alone. And the townspeople overlooked obvious evidence that Miss Emily needed intervention. In real life, some of us seek rehabilitative justice over retributive justice, even for those who, like the Misfit, commit homicide. Some of us ignore those who are suffering and leave them to deal with their illnesses as best they can, alone. Others actively look the other way when they encounter someone in obvious crisis.
Let that not be us. Let’s reach out to our friends and neighbors. Instead of turning our backs on them, let’s educate ourselves about how we can best support a loved one who is experiencing a severe mental illness. And let’s do our best to remove stigmatizing words from our vocabulary. It helps no one to refer to mental illness patients as crazy, mad, or nuts. Choose the right words for the right situations, and do not lump everyone in the same. Depression is not the same as manic depression. Anxiety is a real mental illness. People with schziphrenia and other severe mental illnesses are human beings who deserve love and kindness. Mental health matters.
