The "just snap out of it" school of armchair analysis.

boomerang- This is so difficult. Even the most sophisticated of the older generations had little practical knowledge of emotional illness. For years, it was hidden, and not spoken about.

IMO, part of the problem is that until the 1970s, when psychotrophic medications were created, there was little that could be done for people with mental illness. On top of that, the body/brain connection was not well understood, so who was the one to take the blame when something went awry with little Johnny? It was momma, of course. For years, depression and other mental disorders were attributed to poor parenting, with the mother getting the lion's share of the blame.

So, you can probably understand why your folks were in total denial about your problem. They believed, on one level or another, that it was their fault! So it was much easier to consider the problem as a developmental "stage", one which a young person outgrows. In many cases, that was what does happens.



Looks like your mom was still buying into that old yarn. You have to remember that her reaction was the usual one for older people. Now if we know now that mental illnes is a combination of genetics and environment, would your mom blame herself for giving you the gene for asthma, or heavy thighs? It is all a matter of educating people as to the realities of emotional problems.

When I worked with the severely chronically mentally ill, there was this woman, in her early forties. In college, she developed schizophrenia. Her folks were middle class, and had spent a fortune to help her. Nothing worked. She was now living in a congregate care facility, spending most of her days walking around the day room, smoking and twirling her hair.

Anyhow, we invited her father to our staff case conference on her. The woman was at the meeting, looking up at the ceiling, and showing not the slightest interest in what was going on. At one point, the father turned round to his daughter, looked her straight in the eye, and said something to the effect, "Why don't you cut out this nonsense, and get a job already?"

Now THAT'S denial!

My husband has finally realized that you can't just "snap out of it". It is tough. I know. Especially when all you want to do it just snap out of it.

Thank you for opening this topic, Boomer. The thought covers many aspects of mental health issues. My daughter suffers from anxieties. That's one of the reasons I try to get the over-anxious folks on the relationships board to get professional help. K is only 14 but has already started counseling for anxiety and some latent depression - possibly an outcome of not dealing with the anxieties early enough. As much as she would like to just have it all go away and not affect her, it doesn't just go away and it does affect her.

I just got off the phone with her school. She is getting two mid-quarter warnings. They are both is classes where she is anxious; one because of some social issues going on in the room and the other because of some academic issues. Both the social and academic stresses cause her to shut out the discussions in the room and get further and further behind. I hope the day will come where this will all be a thing of her past but I don't think it's ever something you 'just snap out of'.

That's a very good point Phoenix - nobody talked about it because it wasn't understood and there wasn't anything they could do about it.

I read the latest Newsweek about autism yesterday and how they are trying to learn to diagnose the potential for autism before the first birthday by examining infant's brain size, among other things. This is kind of where mental health issues like depression, OC, schizophrenia, everything else was in the 70s when I was a teenager.

And some people do grow out of it.

And some people do grow into it.

My conversations with my mom were years and years ago. Now she has come to understand that it is nobody's fault. She's cool about it now.

And you're right Bella, people do want to "snap out of it" but the more you suggest that the deeper into it they go -- because they start to fret about WHY they can't snap out of it when everyone thinks they're just being self indulgent.

What I find really interesting is that there are so many people younger than me who still seem to think that emotional and behavioral problems are somehow an admission of weakness, or poor parenting, or a million other "reasons" that you can't do anything about.

The Classic Conversation:

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know"

"What do you mean, you don't know?"

"I don't know. I just feel.....sad."

"There has to be a reason. Why do you feel sad?"

"I don't know. I just do."

**Exasperated sigh** "Why won't you talk to me? I am not going to beg you to tell me what's wrong."

"I am talking to you. I just don't know WHY I feel so sad. I just do."

"You don't just feel sad for no reason. There has to be something wrong...."

Good for you, J_B. And especially good for K.

I'm sure she would like it to just go away - how easy life would be if we could do that. I think your point about intervening early is very important.

People who would never ingore serious physical symptoms or who would never delay treatment for a physical illness are sometimes the same ones who brush off mental health issues.

I think that is so odd.

But I am trying to understand it.

Bella, I can so identify with that conversation. I am such a believer in listening -- even when someone doesn't have the right words to explain something.

However - I know I am gonna be way unpopular - especially on a US board - for this - but, the thing is, that good psycho-therapy is shaping up to be as good as medication (and to be more effective in preventing relapse).

The mind-body connection goes both ways. (Well, mind IS body - but nemmind)

The last few years have, I believe seen, a way over-stampede towards medication - (especially in the US, I believe - with us close behind you) - the ship is showing signs of beginning to right itself again, as more and more research is looking again at psycho-social factors, the promise of the drugs fails to be fulfilled (anti-depressant safety for adults is beginning to be questioned, for example.)

Not denying the place of meds, of course - but I DO think they have been over-emphasised recently.

In my country, GPs especially (psychiatrists far less so) hand anti-depressants out like lollies - half the time in sub-therapeutic doses!

That is not an unpopular thing to say to me, dlowan. I completely agree!

Especially when it comes to kids. The autism article I mentioned talked about giving drugs to kids as young as two. I'll have to check on the age thing.....

Here, ADD is diagnosed by teachers, or so it seems. Everyone I know with a son in school has been challenged with the ADD "diagnosis".

My provider (I'm in a HMO) won't prescribe any kind of anti-depressant without the benefit of "talk therapy".

I completely agree too.

When K first started counseling she was thinking in terms of meds because she's surrounded by teens on this med or that. I took her to a holistic medical center where they prescribed talk therapy, breathing lessons, and a low dosage of valerian (over-the-counter herbal sleep aid) when needed to take the edge off the anxieties. She doesn't take it often, but she knows it's there if she needs it and I know it isn't going to have any negative side effects.

Good for your provider.

Bella, I've long held that losing my hearing saved me, in a way. Both sides of my family are rife with clinical depression, but when I was a teenager and someone asked me that -- "why so sad?" -- I had a really, really good answer! ("I can't hear well today and it looks like I'm probably going to go completely deaf.) That really focused things that were there anyway -- I guess it's impossible to know where I would have been mental health-wise without becoming deaf, but as it was I went through some very deep depression and with talk therapy and the fact that there were things I could do -- learn ASL, etc. -- came through the other side. Still have tendencies and use a lot of techniques that I learned then to keep things at bay, but depression is not a major part of my life now.

I'm a bit of both
"snap out of it"
AND
"now let's talk about this a bit more and see what's going on here"

Let me start off by saying I believe that there are valid folks out there who are emotionally, mentally and behaviorially in need of real help - drugs or otherwise - and I'm all for the support of that. That's number 1. I would hate to go back to the times when nothing was known about mental problems and it was pooh poohed as invalid.

On the flip side, I also believe that there are folks who do not take responsibility for their own lives and need a whack in the pants to step up to the plate. I am concerned about it being too easy for people to use mental or emotional disorders as an excuse for why they are needy, lazy, whatever, and I am concerned of it becoming habitual - if I act like I'm depressed I'll get lots of attention, won't have to work, get free drugs, coupons, cheap housing, live off the taxpayers, etc., etc.

The difficulty with mental/emotional disorders is that they are not as clear as physical disorders/injuries to identify. You know if you chop your finger off, well it's gotta be sewn back on. But how to you diagnose an emotional problem properly? How are you really sure the treatment is helping? How are you sure that the patient is not faking it or lazy?

I gotta tell you it scares the bejaysus out of me if all the people out there who are seeing shrinks, locked up in institutions, taking medication, are seeing doctors for mental or emotion issues, are all really mentally disturbed. It seems to show me that the society we have created for ourselves is really too much for the normal human psyche to handle, that we are just overstressing ourselves with no sign of slowing down. Must we push ourselves so hard that peoples mental abilities break down? What will the pressure on us be like in 10, 20, 50 years? I've never been more stressed in my life and I am having difficulty being able to inject humor into the situation (with is my coping mechanism). It's getting harder and harder for us all not to turn into whack-jobs!

I will second that, Heeven!!!

Truly, some days, just relaxing into saying I really CAN'T cope any more is the most inviting thing...

dlowan- I absolutely agree with you. The problem in America is that everyone wants a "quick fix". Pop a pill, and all will be better. Take this, and your troubles will vanish. Well, I don't think that life works that way.

For years, it amazed me that the vast majority of people in the mental health field were in one of two camps- the nurture camp which believed that it was the environment that caused mental illness, which could be fixed through talking therapies. Then there was the nature camp, who believed that a person's fate emanated from his genetic makeup, and that a pill could fix any chemical imbalance that he might have.

I think that life is much more complicated than that, and that mental health, or lack thereof, is a complex matrix, which cannot be separated out into discrete component parts. Each person has his own heredity tendencies. Coupled with the environment in which he lives, there might be a case for a statistical probability that he may grow up emotionally well, or damaged.

Let us say that a person has a familial predisposition to certain allergies. If he lives out of the area where the offending substances are present, he may never develop those allergies.

There are two chain smokers. They smoke the same number of cigarettes for a similar amount of time. One gets lung cancer and dies, while the other emerges unscathed.

The same can be said for mental illness, where there are familial tendencies. There are statistics that show that a person with 1 schizophrenic parent has a certain probability of acquiring the disease. If 2 of the parents have schizophrenia, the probability zooms upwards. But not every child who has 2 schizophrenic parents acquires the disease.

There is something very complex working here. Recessive genes? Maybe. Differences in the "hardiness" of the individual that spares him from the illness? Maybe. Differences in the environment? Possibly. I doubt though that there are any twin studies that would illustrate how two children, separated at birth, with a poor prognosis for mental health, have fared.

The nature school insists that popping a pill is a cure all. Lets take this as an example. You have a child who is born with a birth defect that makes him very ugly. People stare at him, and whisper behind his back, People say unkind words to him. As a result the child has developed some maladaptive coping mechanisms.

In his teens, a plastic surgeon gets a hold of him, and fixes the deformity. He is now gorgeous. He moves to a new town where no one knows him from before. Girls flirt with him, and everyone is looking to gain his favor.

Will that young man be emotionally healthy? Of course not. The maladaptive mechanisms that he has learned to cope with his former life cannot be turned off, like a light switch. He will have to go through intensive therapy to learn to live with his new body.

The point of all this, is that one must realize the complexity of the situation. Each person with emotional problems needs a whole individualized array of therapeutic modalities, in various proportions, in order to achieve optimal mental health.

It is interesting to read these comments in light of the autism article that prompted the question.

I just went back and pulled the article and looked over all the different "treatments" for this disorder. It's all over the map!

Saunas to rid the body of toxins, not having immunizations, all kinds of behavior therapy, all kinds of drugs, neurofeedback, reducing exposure to environmental chemicals from carpet, water purifiers. One pull out quote is "I am willing to try just about anything if it makes sense."

Other types of mental health have been narrowed down in comparison to autism. This science is in its explosive growth stage similar to that of other disorders were in the 70s.

And they are finding that there is no one therapy/one pill that works with all kids - they all require an "individualized array of therapeutic modalities, in various proprotions" just like Phoenix said.

Another thing to keep in mind about autism is that the manifestations of autism cover an entire spectrum of behaviors. Someone who demonstrates 'high functioning autism' disorder would require a completely different set of therapies than someone who was totally noncommunicative and withdrawn.

I think most mental health diagnoses are subjective and made on observance of a collection of symptoms and propensities. There is tremendous overlap between the different diagnoses and the symptoms they present. It is very hard to get an accurate mental health diagnosis and even harder to get the right therapy for the right individual. A lot of it is trial and error.

That's interesting soz. You really had additional complications that most kids don't ahve to deal with. From what I've read you say about your parents it doesn't surprise me that they were perceptive enough to make sure you had all the resources available. I think they clearly passed on their perceptive parenting skills to you.

Hiya, Heeven, long time no see.

I agree that there are some people who use mental health issues as a crutch to find an easy way out of responsibility.

But I think that holds true with phycially ill people too. I once had to go through a huge deal of creating and submitting and having approved a job description for a girl who injured her shoulder on the job. She basically could do book work because the poor thing hurt so bad.

.... except when she played on her weekend softball league.

But it is harder to pinpoint. It doesn't leave visible scars and you can't put it in a sling so it is a bit harder to believe, in a way.

I couldn't have said it better myself!

Hey boomer m'lady - how you doin?
Good I hope.