How do we understand mental illness?
Many depictions of mental illness in movies and TV shows are inaccurate. Understanding that takes some effort.
To understand mental illness, we first need to know how symptoms differ from the typical human experience.
Mental illness cannot be understood until it is viewed from both a personal and an artistic perspective.
It's not easy knowing someone else's experience. This is especially true when their experience is of a different kind than anything you know. We can find out what it means for your friend to have a bad cold, a broken bone, or other common ailments. But clinical mental disorders fall into an entirely different category. How can we know what this means if we have not had this experience? This may sound like an academic question, but it becomes important when the person suffering is the person you care about.
You might think that if you want to know what mental illness looks like, you just need to watch shows or movies, and you'll find someone with bipolar disorder, OCD, anxiety, or psychosis. But this is not an accurate perception of mental illness, for the following reasons:
First, mental illness makes it difficult to do the normal things in life that need to be done. This may vary from slight weakness to complete disability. Doing unusual things or having special powers is not part of the picture.
Second, it is important to add that not only does mental illness get in the way of a person; But it hurts. The patient has real mental pain.
Finally, it is very difficult to see the way back. Once a person gets sick, he looks around and sees only obstacles and darkness from which there is no way out.
How do you know the fact that a mental disorder?
Well, there are three steps to take towards the understanding you want. The steps are not complicated, but they do require some work. If someone you care about suffers from a mental disorder, or you are just a good person and want to learn about one of the most important issues in human health, you will feel good about doing this project. You'll know something basic about conditions that 1 in 5 people have. It is well worth the effort.
Step one: Recognize the symptoms
The first step is education. Hear what the experts have to say. Do research online and learn about the diseases themselves.
You'll be able to find lists of conditions, symptoms, and discussions to follow. These lists are not rigorous, but are the result of a lot of research and are of great value to those who struggle with these problems.
The most important point in the lists of symptoms are:
Patients' experience differs from the normal human experience.
The most important difference is that people with the disease in question have a range of symptoms; These symptoms persist. Standards may say they last two weeks or a month, but usually there are five or six of these symptoms for several weeks or months. In fact, these symptoms change the patient's life.
The second, more obvious difference involves experiences that people don't normally have. Including strange and frightening thoughts, unusual fears, and sensory experiences, such as hearing voices when no one is around, are fundamentally different from what people know from their own lives.
Step 2: What does it look like in person?
You should explore what it looks like from a personal perspective on injury, and fortunately, many people have written accounts or memoirs of their experience. It aims to provide deeply personal accounts of the experience. This may include: how they discovered the error, how others responded, how (or if) they received treatment, how their therapists acted towards them, etc. A mental disorder is a very personal and social experience.
Step Three: What If I Was You?
The last step takes the least amount of work but is actually the hardest. Here, you put all the books aside and think about what it would be like if this happened to you. you imagine the presence of symptoms; How will you feel? How will this affect your normal life? Perhaps you should stop working for a while. How will this affect your career? Can you fulfill your obligations to your family? How will the people you love react? Will your whole life collapse?
And how do you feel when you have these unusual feelings and thoughts that you can't control? Are you afraid to lose your mind? Are you contemplating suicide?
This part is the hardest because you can't know the answers to most of these questions. This is completely normal. You may know some of your affected loved ones, but most of the answers are beyond the capabilities of most of us. Because we haven't tested the case. So you have to do your best in this last part. And you'll hear something from someone with a mental disorder and you'll think, "That's exactly what I wondered about." By trying to think about these questions, you are preparing yourself for these symptoms to appear in your life.
Yes, it takes a small amount of work. But when you do, you are not only closer to the people you care about, you are also closer to a large part of humanity.
