I've been thinking this for awhile. Why are those who have reasonable reactions to their surroundings and circumstances called broken? These people are given therapy they cannot make time for, medication they cannot afford, hospital visits that lead to being made worse than before and now attaining crippling debt on top of it. Why do WE need to be fixed? It's our environments that need to be fixed more than anything else. It's a perfectly understandable response to be anxious in times like this. Depressed. Even a little crazy honestly. We're not broken, we're merely mirroring the state of our world. We are the us of the times.
Jojo
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Comments
@PearlHikara Probably 4 generations actually...
While “broken” is an overstatement and rather insulting, the thoughts of someone with depression or anxiety are not always a “reasonable reaction”. You’re someone who’s relatively chill and mature, and so you see it through this lens, but I’ve dealt with people who were contemplating hurting or killing themselves to get back at others who had done relatively minor things that a mentally healthy person could easily move on from. In fact, some of the problems of the world - namely our current culture of rampant infighting and violence in many forms - are most likely due to the lack of self-awareness of both older and younger generations with regards to how they view the world through a lens of fear rather than reason. It’s understandable that they do, but it manifests in ways that are unjustifiable.
Could these people be benefited through better mental health care? Maybe. Mental health care does need to be improved, and there are efforts in place to make self-help a more effective and accessible strategy and to make medication more affordable. But at the end of the day, mental health isn’t like surgery, where the doctors do everything - it requires a lot of cooperation too. And some people just won’t cooperate no matter how much they’re given. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, though.
I agree. We definitely need better mental healthcare. Not just getting pumped with shitty lobotomizing drugs and being sent back home with a bill that has no way out but bankruptcy.
@JojoJukestar I think you missed all the nuances of my point and are restating what you already said. I hope you feel better soon.
At least here in the states, I think calling those with mental illness "broken" is a by-product of the cultural focus on individual responsibility, the "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" mindset.
That mindset isn't inherently malicious, but many people (especially politicians of certain creeds) become tunnel visioned in that philosophy.
They sometimes become purposely blind to the inherent issues within our systems, believing that we live in a genuine meritocracy, when we actually live in a bit of an oligarchy.
Therapy has its merits, medicine has its merits, but the cost is disproportionately pushed on the patient (it honestly drives me crazy how many people have to spend their life savings in order to have their life saved).
There's also the fact that mental health education is extremely poor throughout a lot of the world. Depression, bipolar disorder, Autism Spectrem Disorder (I would fit in this category, tho my official diagnosis from 20 years ago is "Aspergers"), ADHD-- there's so many misconceptions that are pervasive throughout our culture, and are even hardcoded into how our infrastructure is managed.
It's definitely a system issue that will take time and effort to fix.
I remember when I was told my monthly shot of a certain antipsychotic would be $1,000 each. I said "fuck, no" to that and went on Abilify, which did shit to nothing. I don't even have problems with psychosis anymore since I dumped religion. Now it's just anhedonia and sometimes deep depression.
RosieUV
and then the boomers wonder why 2 generations are in depression...