Good Mental Illness and Bad Mental Illness.

I have been thinking about this for some time, maybe even some years. Trying to put my finger on what bothers me about the nature of the discourse on mental illness, and something happened today, that helped me grasp what it is I think.

Someone said to me that, it is unfair to say that a known gun man in a mass shooting has mental illness, because you don’t know whether they might have depressive disorder, which wouldn’t make them dangerous, and that’s not fair.

And suddenly I got it. Somehow, there has been a schism in mental health reporting and talking. It has become OK to talk about, claim, write about, be aware of, be comfortable around friends who have been diagnosed with CERTAIN mental illnesses.

Now, I absolutely don’t wish to negate the suffering that ANY mental illness causes, my issue is absolutely not with that, no one’s suffering or surviving is less valuable and less painful.

I do, however, suggest that, the current standpoint *may* actually decrease stigma and improve life and opportunity for people with what are considered the “good” mental illnesses, an equivalence, if you will, to the deserving poor of yesteryear. But it seems to be INCREASING stigma for people diagnosed with the “bad” mental illnesses. You know, the ones the person talking to me was referring to, the ones we are still frightened of. Severe and Enduring mental illness, possibly including an element of psychosis.

How come this person was happy to make a distinction for reporting? Would it not have been better NOT to have referred to the mental health of the gunman? People with all manner of mental illness, even the scary illnesses, are MUCH more likely to be hurt as a result of violent crime than they are to commit such a thing.

I don’t want to distinguish experiences. A person may present at the GP and feel true terrible, while for others, the very act of being ABLE to turn up, at a specified time, and hold a conversation represents a level of wellness that they cannot imagine. These people may have the same diagnosis. People who have spent many months in psychiatric wards will have a different view of the mental health care provision than someone whose only experience is with primary care services. This does not negate either persons experience (although only one of them is having an experience of mental health care service as a distinct NHS provision)

It feels like people with more severe and enduring mental illness are being left behind while some mental illness becomes easier to talk about, and to live with (in terms of what it is possible to do, societally speaking)

Yes there is still stigma, there are still huge barriers to work and services. But these are improving. I have seen them improve in my life time of being a person with a severe and enduring mental health issue. It matters that no one is left behind. No person with mental illness asked for their health problem. No person with a mental illness is less of a person.

It matters when we speak of mental health awareness that we include all elements of that. Which is hard, I mean, no one tries to raise awareness of “Physical Health.” But, the stigma and challenge of living with mental illness of all kinds has always been so huge that, it has mattered to speak about all as one group.

Is it possible to keep speaking of this group as homogenous? Can we raise any more awareness of “mental health”? I am not sure that we can, not without in school programmes teaching children to CARE FOR their mental health, in the same way as we teach them to clean their teeth, or get their eyes tested, or hearing. I’m not sure that we can without funding to support or address not just the barest minimum of need.

I am not for splintering, and making new groups. I am just talking it through. There must come a point where raising awareness, where there needs to be a way of channeling that awareness, and providing care for the additional need it causes. It may well cause an easier world in which to live. It may improve many things, but it needs not to leave groups behind.

The cheery stories of experiencing a mental illness and getting over it, and looking back on it *are* helpful. But, what if there is no salvation? What if there is good and bad forever? That is the reality for many people. What are they supposed to learn? That they are failing to overcome an illness that actually, is there, part of the rest of their life. They are not FAILING not to be well forever. They are not even in a world in which “overcoming” is a possible outcome. These people are not less, these people NEED not to be left behind as we try and make improvements in mental health care, and acceptance of mental illness as a thing it is OK to talk about.

 

A Teenaged War Hero

 

Yes, there are are child soldiers in the world. They are suffering and dying. People are. All over the world. But this does not make anything you endure less. There is no correlation between their suffering and yours. You can suffer. They can suffer. It is different, but one is not validating, or reducing the other.

To insist one is more or worse or has more value dismisses the struggles. To fight, alone, though a world where reality is not to be trusted, where people can lie about you, and no one will believe you because, you are the person with mental health problems. Where people who were friends leave you as if you were dead, where nothing you used to be able to aim for is there anymore. Through an internal landscape either so deeply destroyed and pitted and dangerous and dark, OR so sharp and sparkling and fractured and invincible. To survive every day with that as your internal world, and a lot of your external world, is to fight in a war.

The “help” you can receive does not understand this. And they talk about adjusting expectations, and stopping wanting the things you wanted. They ask you to not be you, so that they can pretend that this new version of something resembling a person like you is well and can at least be in the world, even though you are not well, you are irreparably stolen from and damaged. And they let you go, like that, because, their parameters are not set such to rescue YOU, but simply to prevent you hurting anyone. Physically, that INcludes you, psychologically, no one but you knows or cares.

They want to make sure you are not hurting your body. Even if you hurt your body to remind yourself that you ARE actually a person, who is capable of hurting – because the system expects you not to be, to not care the things you have given up. They expect you to NOT be a teenager, to suddenly NOT need family, or friends or fun or ambitions, and just to sink to a level where being alive is enough. If you can’t believe that, then you are failing, and they won’t help because, that is all they can offer.

It is war. To come out of the other side is HARD. To find a person who can see this, and who can hold on and see you through this and see that you have value and CAN do at least SOME of the things that drove you initially, those dreams that are part of you. You need someone to tell you you are allowed MOST of those, and someone to help you rebuild those you can’t have.

To come so far out the other side to have built a career and a family is wondrous, but, every step is precarious. To place your trust in that relationship you have CHOSEN, than family you have built, is to risk someone ridiculing that, and making that even less possible.

To those people, those teenagers who have fought and fought and succeeded against the professionals, and the medications, and the stigma, and prejudice and are now successful adults, this is to be a war hero. TO have made it through, and achieved and not to have been wasted by the mental health machine, either the monster of the illness, or the insidious cruelty of the system and society.

Those in the midst of such a journey. It CAN be won. it IS possible. Do NOT give up.

You cannot know whether you will be the one to succeed. So you have to fight as if you will be.

And you have to celebrate every step. And know that no matter what anyone else thinks, it is hard won, and worth celebrating.