My ex ordered me to see a shrink to save our relationship so I did. After 45 minutes I walked out of his office and thought ‘this guy is more too-koo than I am!
Is it any wonder, how many kids and their parents in this country have been on some type of mood-altering medication since they were toddlers. Combine the drugs with society telling them everything is hopeless, and you create a generation of mindless idiots.
I totally agree that it is a con.
BTTT
the objective definition of mental health is:
Mental health is the state of psychological well-being and adaptive functioning characterized by emotional well-being, cognitive functioning, social connectedness, resilience, and self-awareness. It entails the absence of clinically significant mental disorders and the ability to cope with everyday challenges, maintain healthy relationships, and engage in productive activities.
Looks like a paywall.
Thomas Szasz made a similar argument (as far as I can tell) in the 1960s. He wrote a book called “The Myth of Mental Illness”.
I would say (and I think Szasz also made this point) that some people have a legitimate chemical imbalance. Schizophrenics, for example, have brains that are seriously mis-firing.
But most “mentally ill” people just think in a way which may displease other people. Or may displease themselves. Well, maybe they are not “ill”. Maybe they just need to learn how to think differently.
But we coddle a lot of people. We make excuses. Many people do not function well, and we enable them in their difficulties and tell them that “their feelings are valid”. I’m not sure this works out well for the “mentally ill” or for society.
To be clear: I believe in mental hospitals for people who cannot function. A mental hospital is not a prison. But it’s pretty close to being a prison. Society would benefit if some mentally ill people were locked away.
And if your problems do not rise to the level of requiring hospitalization then I think you should snap out of it. Work on yourself. Fix yourself. Don’t make it my problem that you have a wretched miserable non-functioning personality.
The women I work all have letters before their pronouns and all of them are anxious, skittish and easily offended. The other men I work with are quiet, confident, no pronouns, come in shut up and get the work done.
GREAT article by Theodore Dalrymple. Thanks for posting.
Reminds me of how they “solved” illegal immigration by banning the term.
Call them mentally ill, insane, or just crazy...but don't overlook the fact that they are just plain nuts.
On another issue, the concept of universal basic income will multiply human insanity exponentially because work is integral to human mental health. If humans are paid for nothing and have to produce nothing, they will lose all meaning and drift rapidly into a state of mass insanity.
The big question is, what the hell has happened to humans that they don't recognize the above?
A swift kick in the seat of the pants straightens out a person’s thinking quicker than any pill or analysis.
I had my children just last night tell me that nearly everyone they know has ADHD or mental health issues!
I was SHOCKED
As long as you have a grip on reality, in my opinion, you are mentally healthy.
That does not necessarily mean happy. It is not normal to be happy after something terrible has happened. We should not expect to be so. We should acknowledge reality and deal with it forthrightly, seeking help and support when needed.
Lunacy. Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.
If more than half the population suffered from, say, bubonic plague, one could argue that bubonic plague is "perfectly normal".
This is the case today, when a large percentage of the population suffers from mental illness, and the proposed solution is to declare "mental health" nonexistent and, it obviously follows, that "mental illness" is nonexistent.
Many American psychiatrists abandoned the concept of mental health when they declared that homosexuality is not an illness. It is. It results from a lesion that interferes with the reproductive system.
The "woke" mentality that is destroying America and the American People is certainly a "mental illness". To deny this changes nothing.
BS! The term has been polluted by the commie trash psychologists (except for JPeterson) saying that things like tranny are no longer indicators of mental illness. Ditto with pedo.
I’ve always thought of depression as just feeling sorry for yourself. And it seems to be much more common among leftists than conservatives.
people have to recognize OK... is OK!!!
it’s not a binary, euphoria or depression
People should not be dismissive of others who assert they have experienced extreme emotional pain, such as depression.
You could just as easily dismiss someone’s claims of debilitating physical pain.
Just because you have not experienced it does not mean it does not exist.
Be careful of judging and condemning others lest you likewise be tested,
Emotional pain is more subjective than physical pain because the cause is not always so obvious.
I am close to a young man who struggles with debilitating emotions due to childhood trauma. He lost both of his parents as a child and was also sexually abused. He has been able to get a good education, hold down a well-paying job, and work on recovery while coping with things like PTSD and severe depression. But it is always a struggle.
I’ve had my share of emotional pain also. To limit your beliefs to only those things you have personally experienced is a kind of mental illness itself. Cynicism is not a healthy mindset.
Now, if you want to question how we as a society treat mental health, I get that.
Actual mental health, as understood by professional psychologists, once meant the ability to adapt to the requirements of reality, ie to be able to love and to work. As the field has been usurped the last forty years or so by a bunch of females, this definition has gone by the boards.