I think this is an important point to make. There is a continuum of impact when we look at mental illness. Not all people who are mentally ill are psychotic. Not all people who are mentally ill have the ability to make self-determining choices. Not all of us are the same. I've pretty much always been functional. Over my lifetime, I've worked. I've raised a child. I've limped along. But I have also had those periods when my illness was debilitating. I've had times when I needed intervention in order to continue. Those were times when my depression was so overwhelming, I couldn't interrupt the impact without outside help. Why do I mention this? Because I think that there are still people out there who define mental illness by the farther out end of the continuum.
Now, I would count Maxine on the farther out end of the continuum. The impact on her life was pretty much continually debilitating. Seriously...the woman made a choice to not bathe. She wasn't able to moderate much of her behavior. She saw the world operating in a certain way and couldn't change that view. My Dad was a "queer" who was out to hurt her. Her children were "sluts". She wasn't the one with the problem...we were. Could my Mom get out and get a job? Clearly not. Nobody is going to hire a woman who doesn't bathe. And I am hazarding a guess here...but if she managed to get a job, she would probably have been fired the first time she called someone at work a "slut" or "queer". So, in a way, she was lucky. My Dad enabled my Mom to live. And he had the loyalty to stick it out with an untreated mentally ill woman for years. Most people on the farther out end of the continuum don't have someone like my Dad in their life. Nobody is supporting them.
And this is an important point in the debate about mental illness. We need to understand the physical basis of mental illness. We need to understand the continuum. We need to understand that there is treatment available that wasn't available when my Mom was so sick. And we need to be able to plug people into the level of support that they need. That is the only way that we will ever be able to deal with the impact of mental illness on our country. Seriously. There are tools out there today that can assist people to become functional. If they are readily available. There are also some folks that won't become functional, even if we throw everything we have at 'curing' them. We need to plan for that too. Just because we pretend it isn't there, doesn't mean that it isn't. So, what is the future going to be like? Are we going to continue to allow mental illness the control over our national landscape that we currently have? Are we going to look at humane options to help people dealing with it? Or are we going to continue our current national tendency to place our heads firmly in the sand? What do you think? Let's talk!!
Now, I would count Maxine on the farther out end of the continuum. The impact on her life was pretty much continually debilitating. Seriously...the woman made a choice to not bathe. She wasn't able to moderate much of her behavior. She saw the world operating in a certain way and couldn't change that view. My Dad was a "queer" who was out to hurt her. Her children were "sluts". She wasn't the one with the problem...we were. Could my Mom get out and get a job? Clearly not. Nobody is going to hire a woman who doesn't bathe. And I am hazarding a guess here...but if she managed to get a job, she would probably have been fired the first time she called someone at work a "slut" or "queer". So, in a way, she was lucky. My Dad enabled my Mom to live. And he had the loyalty to stick it out with an untreated mentally ill woman for years. Most people on the farther out end of the continuum don't have someone like my Dad in their life. Nobody is supporting them.
And this is an important point in the debate about mental illness. We need to understand the physical basis of mental illness. We need to understand the continuum. We need to understand that there is treatment available that wasn't available when my Mom was so sick. And we need to be able to plug people into the level of support that they need. That is the only way that we will ever be able to deal with the impact of mental illness on our country. Seriously. There are tools out there today that can assist people to become functional. If they are readily available. There are also some folks that won't become functional, even if we throw everything we have at 'curing' them. We need to plan for that too. Just because we pretend it isn't there, doesn't mean that it isn't. So, what is the future going to be like? Are we going to continue to allow mental illness the control over our national landscape that we currently have? Are we going to look at humane options to help people dealing with it? Or are we going to continue our current national tendency to place our heads firmly in the sand? What do you think? Let's talk!!
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