Physical Illness, Mental Illness, Invisible Illness

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Am I missing something? maybe a post or tangent in the thread.

I'm hoping that you folks aren't suggesting that someone can just 'think" themselves out of a mental illness/disorder.
Many are chemical imbalances and require medication for treatment/restoration/balance.
 
Pinga said:
Am I missing something? maybe a post or tangent in the thread.

I'm hoping that you folks aren't suggesting that someone can just 'think" themselves out of a mental illness/disorder.
Many are chemical imbalances and require medication for treatment/restoration/balance.
Click to expand...
I think Hermann took a part of Rowan's post and ran with it :)

This isn't really where I was intending to go, nor am I implying that those with mental illness don't deal with these things, but whoever started this seems to think that people with physical illnesses don't deal with similar comments.

As for just thinking your way out of it, I guess that's what therapy and counselling does. I don't know if it's considered to be a cure for some or not, or if when it works it's just relieving the symptoms. Just like avoiding lactose isn't a cure for lactose intolerance. Even if it is a cure for some, I agree that it doesn't work for everyone and medication is needed for some. It's also a very broad category.
 
Indeed there are many trite phrases thrown at people with various physical and emotional diseases. They (as is pointed out earlier) tend to be 'not helpful'.

One that I've noticed several times is the "You should do 'this' type of exercising because it works for me". That remark and guilting was tossed at someone with an unannounced degenerative disease that only close friends noticed (and quietly compensated for). There is also, it seems, some age related competition going on with some people. I know someone who repeatedly guilts others because they are physically unable to do what she can do. Those with diseases don't have an obligation to tell everyone about it. Those with hidden disadvantages coming from disease are almost all doing what they can to maintain the best health and mobility they can. Lung disease can make it impossible to go out jogging. A back injury may make serious weight lifting or situps dangerous. A neurological problem may make activities requiring good balance dangerous.

Nagging a person with depression isn't likely to 'make them cheer up' - but picking them up to go for coffee might be beneficial. Maybe they would get to a doctor appointment if accompanied there by a friend.
 
Good points,Kay.
Those with diseases do't have to tell everybody about it- but it certainly does help to remind people. I.e. we often ignore people with hearing loss, even if there is a speaker system- which often doesn't work well. So, people with hearing loss need to keep telling others what they need them to do so they can hear them.
I once was at a course (for which I have paid) in the school of Occupational Therapy (so specifically those who keep advocating inclusion in their work) and their speaker system didn't work because the battery for the mike was dead. I brought it to their attention twice, missed about 1/3 of words in each sentence, finally they managed to find a battery (that was when the interesting part was over) . I wrote a letter afterwards, never got an answer (poor practice of their OT philosophy). It's frustrating, but if you do speak up, at least there is a chance that people get it.
I think it also depends on how comfortable one is with their disease/ disadvantage. The person who has accepted their circumstances and is mostly comfortable with it, can speak much easier about it compared to the one who is still strugging with accepting it.
I do agree, someone who needs to tell people to do as she does to show off might not be worth explanations, but would simply be one I would avoid alltogether.
 
Chemgal - I think you're right about invisible physical illnesses in that people don't realize why you can't do x or why you feel y. And people do give out unhelpful advice. I think the point here though was that people suffering from physical illnesses that are understood (like cancer or the flu) get a much different response from people with a mental illness (or an invisible physical illness or one that is not understood). My Mother loves to tell me that if I just did a load of laundry I would feel much better - it's minimizing and it's what people with mental illness face all the time. Your issues are also very important but illustrating this barrier for people with mental illness in no way diminishes that fact. My Dad had a few invisible physical illnesses and faced an amazing amount of discrimination.

As for thinking oneself better - I'll try to control myself. For most people with serious mental illness, it's not possible to "think oneself better" - with medication, it's possible to access better modes of thinking and to do things that help (like exercise). There are some thinking things that can be done to mitigate damages done by people living with mental illness, but even they are hard to access and manage when someone has a true chemical imbalance. If I look at me, for example, when I have the right meds I can access skills and things to make my life worth living, but if my meds aren't working that is really, really tough. It would be, in my mind, telling someone with a broken leg that if they took up walking they would strengthen the muscles - but really the break has to be addressed first. I think part of the problem is that when people are feeling down and everyone does at some time, they will say they're depressed or down so when they hear that someone with depression is down, they wonder why they can't function when they are able to when they're depressed.

I heard this quote from Brene Brown (who I just love) - empathy is shame's biggest enemy - I think the world would be a much better place is people showed/were more empathetic. Everyone's experience is unique - take what they say at face value unless they show you that for them it's different.
 
Having an invisible illness presents me with some challenges. There are days when I can and days when I can't do certain things. Mostly I avoid being in situations where the expectation will likely include some lifting, or moving quickly. So far I have also avoided telling people 'why' I can't do these things. In a small town once a couple of people know something so does everyone else! At the moment I just don't think that my medical condition is a suitable topic for public discussion. Eventually it will be obvious - just not yet. I try to use a firm but friendly few words when someone gets a bit pushy (or once in a while,downright rude) about what I can/can't do. I do feel uncomfortable when I hear someone say "Don't be lazy - I'm older than you and I can do it" or "You really ought to go jogging and get in shape".
 
This is quite a conversation. Stress is a huge factor is so much. Lack of sleep, nervousness, IBS (I have it also), cancer, all things out of balanced. I also believe fear is a big stressor. Getting to know ourselves really helps us find out where these things originated. A simple idea is that disease stems from dis-ease. Young children can be not at ease, so if something
can be done to repair whatever it is...do it. For yourself.

There are also so many delicate matters involved. Including our emotions, but also environmental factors, of home, school, work, including our own homes, plus air, water, and soil factors we have changed. Boy, at=re we ever a mixture of all these and mostly still come out okay...right? I mean we are asking questions, having fun, checking out reasoning and wondering why we are here?, where are we going? where did we come from in the first place?

The "Life" questions all human beings are able to ask. I nearly died of a bleeding ulcer in summer 2013. Yes, mostly the H-pylori bacteria... a bad one folks that most people have ..everywhere.... but mainly stress. They said, I find it hard to think we can eradicate any bacteria, or disease completely, that they did eradicate it in me. But the stress is mine. Things do happen beyond our control, but we need to find ways to deal with that. There are many for sure. Talking it out is the best...along with prayer, for example. Yet, not everyone has that possibility in their life, or is aware of their own power.
 
Justme said:
Chemgal - I think you're right about invisible physical illnesses in that people don't realize why you can't do x or why you feel y. And people do give out unhelpful advice. I think the point here though was that people suffering from physical illnesses that are understood (like cancer or the flu) get a much different response from people with a mental illness (or an invisible physical illness or one that is not understood). My Mother loves to tell me that if I just did a load of laundry I would feel much better - it's minimizing and it's what people with mental illness face all the time. Your issues are also very important but illustrating this barrier for people with mental illness in no way diminishes that fact. My Dad had a few invisible physical illnesses and faced an amazing amount of discrimination.
Click to expand...
A slight tweak to the heading is all that was needed. I just realized it's not included in the link in the OP: If physical diseases were treated like mental illnesses.

To me, that heading suggests that the examples shown in the graphic don't occur in response to those dealing with physical diseases, which is why I found it minimizes the experiences many go through.
 
Mental illness is biochemical and therefore physical; however, medicine faultily judges biochemistry to exist withouth interweave of intellectual and emotional process. There is a reason that talk therapy works and meditation works. Great Yogi's really do all that stuff. Great Buddhists really do have control over their bodies from body temperature setting to blood sugar. Psychotherapy really does alleviate fear, loathing, anxiety, and obsessive compulsive behaviours leading to issues with hallucinations, group hypnotism, psychotic meandering, ADHD and Adult forms of Autism spectrum. This form of talk therapy requires so much work, education, trust, and disclosure from both the the initiator of the story and the listener (I think it iis time to get rid of terms called "the-rapist" and "the-raper" etc. Freudian and non-humanist -- ).
 
Yes, jlin, the effects of mental disorder are biochemical and therefore physical, but not the cause. The cause is psychological, but the psychological cause has physical effects, which are more easily measurable and treatable than the cause. Unfortunately, treating the effects does not eliminate the cause. But treating the effect is much cheaper than treating the cause, and therefore is the preferred method of the public health care system. Treating the cause requires, as you point out, much work, and is the necessary homework for people afflicted with mental disorders. The system can't be expected to do it for us.
 
I disagree that the cause is psychological. I think that mental illness can be traced back to a variety of issues from autism spectrurm to diabetis. The problem is that when we begin to manifest psychological issues our very puritan look at medicine and society establishes a separation. We do this because we treat brains and biochemistry as a disease model. What is actually going on is a ignition of inherited dispositions through any form of environmental circumstance. That this is the best model we have come up with to explain the high frequency and inclusive nature of amentala illness (all families experience it and likely 100% of the population - at some scale) tells us that mental illness is not only correctly established and mental clarity, by psychotheroists like RD Laing and co., but an interal part of of human evolution; like learning how to clean a wound or wash one's hands before delivering a baby. Our social taboo boooooo boooo hooo s and myth structures have put us lightyears behind where we could be with this, but that is par for the the course. People still believe in religions, nationalism and personal relationships with gods, heroes, heroins. Our meditiation in life is fear. fear nazi. And it is interesting to me that people under the confusion of fear have opted to make Germany their hero culture of the moment. Aryan myth - the world over as propelled by Asia, specifically and infused by North American eugenics. Nothing has changed in 100 years.!
 
Yes, of course, the cause can be related to a wide variety of issues. But, ultimately, what we think plunges us into a mental disorder, not the underlying illness. And disordered thinking is psychological. An illness or trauma all by itself causes injury to the organism, but does not necessarily cause unsound thinking.

But I agree that it is a mistake to separate the psychological from the physical, for the two are so intertwined that one can't tell where one ends and the other begins. One could very well argue that the psychological is physical, or vice versa. Our psyche is, after all, an inseparable part of our physical makeup.
 
We could probably argue long and hard about what comes first - the physical changes or psychological/thinking changes of 'mental disorders' such as depression - but to what end? I'd vote for both being factors in onset, and in recovery/management. Today I came across this blog post which I thinks states well many things about depression - it's a liar & a bully for sure. http://www.vox.com/2015/1/8/7509715/depression-help We fall into danger when we believe everything we think.
 
on my scale of mental illness, depression rates a three out of ten. I am not being a snob, it's just that being forced to play the mental health game because of my vulnerability to the system of psychiatric/social work/et al mental health business (like educatin business, having little to do with actual education), there is a hierarchy of bulls**t. Forcing your way up the ladder from schizophrenia, through ptsd, bioplar manic depression, psychosis, into housewifely forms of acceptable depression. It's all horse puckies. all the labeling. The only good thing that all this computergame social work has done is given a potential place for a statistical average to meet and "unionize" - which is going on right now.
 
righto -- those who don't fit in are offered various unguents to try to get them to fit in

Hey, WE'RE LIVING IN THE MATRIX!

HELLO, FELLOW COPPERTOPS!!!
 
There are certainly physical aspects to mental illness, I don't mean to separate that out by splitting the physical and mental. I think I was actually splitting them less than the meme.
Mental illnesses are often treated different that certain physical illnesses by those not affected, as the image shows. Similar comments are also made, especially with illnesses that are less understood or less visible. Ie. HAE, juvenile arthritis, fibromyalgia, etc.

I've seen this said in other ways. An article about the physical support for a cancer diagnosis - rides, food, etc. but none when it came to mental health. The same could be said for my HAE. Other than my husband, there was no support for getting back and forth for my training appointments, which meant I wasn't even able to take a medication that I had. There was no food being dropped off when I was dealing with the stress of the tests and medical mixups, diagnosis, treatment training, or days in the ER. I may have had more emotional support than many of those with mental illness.
 
You make a very good point ChemGal re the supports available - basically non-existent for people with MH disorders, & lesser known physical illnesses. A big challenge in my work sphere is somebody who needs daily on-site reminders to do insulin injections & eat properly re diabetes - living alone & has mild cognitive impairment, but can generally manage. This issue not being addressed keeps health spiraling downward, leading in the direction of needing institutionalized placement - which nobody wants. But community services are not available. It's sad, and short-sighted.
 
And being able to make very behavioural judgements like checking on insulin is exactly the sort of thing that would fill a salary and do nothing for mental health. The problem lies in the valuing of disease-forms as diagnosis; which is individual laden. When we veiw statistics on a community grid, we have a better idea of how to engage the issue and procure a treatment, I think. This is an essay so I will not go on about it.
 
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