I think I may have come across you on exceptindreams. My friends page has dwindled as people dropped off the map or moved to facebook or whatever, so I'm always looking out for interesting new people.
I've read the post more carefully. The writer makes good points about stigma. I totally agree that it's a big problem -- and in fact, a national commission studying the state of mental health in Canada identified it as one of the four or five major issues that needs to be dealt with urgently.
What I was trying to get at in my comment was my discomfort with an "us and them" view when it comes to mental health. I am very uneasy with dividing the world up into two groups -- those who are mentally ill and those who are not. Over time, people's mental health status evolves. I may be fine today, but in a year I may have psychotic depression, and in two years I may be fine again, and then in five I may come very close to having mild clinical depression again, but not quite, and then in 15 I may start showing signs of OCD etc etc. Or my child might die tomorrow and you might find me dead by my own hand three months from now, even though I spread cheer and good will across the world for my entire life up to that last three months.
A large minority of people in North America -- tens of millions in fact -- will predictably have clinical depression over the course of their lives. For some, it will recur. Some will battle it their entire lives, some will only have it for six months.
What I'm tryint to say is that there is no us and them -- there is only us. Dividing the world up into the "sick" and the "well" risks increasing rather than decreasing stigmatization. People should self-examine, and they will see that in fact they are not that different from the person two desks over that was diagnosed with depression -- that they may in fact have experienced something similar at some point, or that the capacity for it exists within them for the future.
The varying degrees idea is just to say that there is no magic point at which a person becomes mentally ill. There are varying levels of dysfunction in life, and mental health professionals make somewhat subjective assessments of the threshold at which a dysfunction deserves a diagnosis.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-06-07 02:51 am (UTC)I've read the post more carefully. The writer makes good points about stigma. I totally agree that it's a big problem -- and in fact, a national commission studying the state of mental health in Canada identified it as one of the four or five major issues that needs to be dealt with urgently.
What I was trying to get at in my comment was my discomfort with an "us and them" view when it comes to mental health. I am very uneasy with dividing the world up into two groups -- those who are mentally ill and those who are not. Over time, people's mental health status evolves. I may be fine today, but in a year I may have psychotic depression, and in two years I may be fine again, and then in five I may come very close to having mild clinical depression again, but not quite, and then in 15 I may start showing signs of OCD etc etc. Or my child might die tomorrow and you might find me dead by my own hand three months from now, even though I spread cheer and good will across the world for my entire life up to that last three months.
A large minority of people in North America -- tens of millions in fact -- will predictably have clinical depression over the course of their lives. For some, it will recur. Some will battle it their entire lives, some will only have it for six months.
What I'm tryint to say is that there is no us and them -- there is only us. Dividing the world up into the "sick" and the "well" risks increasing rather than decreasing stigmatization. People should self-examine, and they will see that in fact they are not that different from the person two desks over that was diagnosed with depression -- that they may in fact have experienced something similar at some point, or that the capacity for it exists within them for the future.
The varying degrees idea is just to say that there is no magic point at which a person becomes mentally ill. There are varying levels of dysfunction in life, and mental health professionals make somewhat subjective assessments of the threshold at which a dysfunction deserves a diagnosis.