Mental Illness.
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@Rancid-Schnitzel said in Mental Illness.:
Just look at those guys who appear to be living the life, with loving families who suddenly commit suicide.
I started researching psychology (even read Jung and Freud, I advise not to) and in particular suicide, a couple of years ago largely because of that quote above. It's hugely complicated of course because people are, but the stats are staggering. Numbers differ depending on country and parameters, but an example is that one in twenty Australians between the ages of 16 and 80 will attempt suicide. Far more think about it. NZ may be worse but unlikely to be any better. So if you know 20 people...
Part of the problem is the stigma associated with it and the bullshit misunderstandings of it that get thrown around. There's a reason that those that should be talking, won't. Anyway, this was one of the first things that I found when I started looking and should be a must read for the general public.
The numbers are US and use different metrics to the Aus numbers that I mentioned.
There are some other misconceptions as well about suicide rates being higher when times are tough, or at least unusual. There is some data that rates drop during wartime, economic depressions (unfortunate word) and even during pandemics (including covid). There could be many and varied reasons that are apparent but the "not coping" thing isn't really about external factors it tends to be a more existential crisis. @MajorRage mentioned the "what's the point?" thought. It's a big one. Difficult to know an answer unless you happen to know the meaning of life (if so please DM me).
I wish that "mental illness" and "mental health" also hadn't become so broadly linked and used. Someone having a shit time of it can be really hurting to the point of suicidal thoughts (or action), but it isn't the same as being bipolar for example. Semantics I know, but thee two terms are linked and yet different, but the same.
I won't go on, but some of the misconceptions and ignorance about "sensitive" topics piss me off. Often by people who should know better.
As for the OP. It's both, we live all wrong (or at least haven't adjusted yet), and we also are recognising the outcomes more. What we aren't doing is curing it, we are addressing the symptoms (drugs), as is the case with so much of medicine. Some real pathology needed back to root causes and a more wholistic approach.
All that is probably more than my 2c worth but I have had some skin in the game.
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@taniwharugby said in Mental Illness.:
Now I'm not discounting what happened to him, or that it didnt impact him, but I also think people are very quick to go down the mental heath issue path, more so that I think they are difficult to truly diagnose (in that I am sure anyone could convince a Dr they have a mental illness) and likely difficult to cure for those with illnesses.
I'm in a strange dichotomy where I think most people are taking the piss when it comes to mental health, but am acutely aware of the debilitating aspects of mental health issues.
A close family member had a promising professional football career destroyed as a result of acute depression. And I'm ashamed to say that my response at the time was less than helpful as I couldn't understand why. Discussing that with my father led to an uncomfortable admission that he'd suffered from depression and contemplated suicide. I didn't feel equipped to continuing having that discussion. I mean, what the fuck do you say to that other than "pleased you didn't"?
I get the feeling that mentioning some are taking the piss in this day and age is social suicide. I've culled my list of acquaintances due to their belief that the topic is sacrosanct and prevailing orthodoxy isn't to be questioned. It's one thing to destigmatise it, it's another to accept without question or criticism when it's brought up.
Case in point; the number of vets who have claimed PTSD as a result of their service. Most of them haven't seen combat, the worst they had to deal with was temporary internet access unavailability. PS employees claiming it from office work, are we really that fragile these days?
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I totally get what you’re driving at, especially the view that nothing can be questioned and this for me is probably the biggest barrier to wider understanding. However it is often difficult to comprehend what mental anguish a person is going through. Ms Cato No1 had a period of pretty deep depression and I found that very difficult to deal with as I just couldn’t understand why. A close friend that had experienced much the same but with far more obvious reasons helped my understanding somewhat. Paraphrased she said “ she’s got nothing to be depressed about, she’s doing the Uni course she always wanted, she has friends, a loving family, she has hobbies, she’s a pretty girl. There’s nothing to be depressed about. And you know what? None of that matters if you can’t see it”.
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@antipodean I've never seen combat as the yardstick for trauma though and don't think it should be.
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@Bones said in Mental Illness.:
@antipodean I've never seen combat as the yardstick for trauma though and don't think it should be.
Gabor Maté certainly agrees with you (and so do I).
He goes one further than just mental illness and includes physical ailments as an outcome of trauma. He also attributes much of modern day living as a causal factor. Not necessary to actually believe all of his theory to understand the point that he is making. He also touches on the more wholistic approach to medicine and finding solutions that don't involve using drugs to treat symptoms. I touched on it before. None of it is new, Eastern medicine has always been more comprehensive in mental involvement in medicine. There is a place for both, but not much money to be made in one of them (other than psychotherapy).
The Myth of Normal - Dr. Gabor Maté
By the acclaimed author of In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a groundbreaking investigation into the causes of illness, a bracing critique of how our society breeds disease, and a pathway to health and healing.
Personally I have seen some pretty horrific things doing disaster relief, medivac, along with severe injuries resulting from violence and don't really even consider them the most traumatic events of my life.
Trauma being the wound that is inflicted by an event, not the event itself, so it is the effect on the individual not what they saw that is relevant.
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@bones. I try.
He actually does it even better:
"Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you."
I'm not a particular follower of his, just read bits and pieces until I get to read the whole thing.
Victor Frankl is another who touches on trauma. He was a psychoanalyst who was in Auschwitz, so has some "lived experience" to draw on for his theories.
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@Snowy Gabor Maté is fantastic and his work has helped my wife and I alot, that book is definitely worth a read if you or someone you know may be suffering from past trauma.
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@No-Quarter said in Mental Illness.:
@Snowy Gabor Maté is fantastic and his work has helped my wife and I alot, that book is definitely worth a read if you or someone you know may he suffering from past trauma.
Yeah, I've read lots of bits of his stuff, just haven't had a chance to read that complete book yet. I stay away from pop psychology self-help type stuff, but he certainly isn't in that category. I'm more interested in the actual psychology, particularly emotional responses and even physiological affects, which make it all a bit more recognisable than what is going on in someone's head. His theories seem to be logical. Interesting history for him too given my comments about Frankl.
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@Bones said in Mental Illness.:
@antipodean I've never seen combat as the yardstick for trauma though and don't think it should be.
I don't recall saying that. But within the narrow confine of military service, I can't think of much that would top it.
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@antipodean yeah sure, if you've served in the military. But for example, I reckon firefighters have seen some ghastly shit I don't even want to imagine.
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@Bones said in Mental Illness.:
@antipodean yeah sure, if you've served in the military.
Which was the entirety of that point.
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@antipodean ok, my misunderstanding. To me it read like you haven't had trauma unless you've seen combat.
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@Catogrande said in Mental Illness.:
@antipodean
. Paraphrased she said “ she’s got nothing to be depressed about, she’s doing the Uni course she always wanted, she has friends, a loving family, she has hobbies, she’s a pretty girl. There’s nothing to be depressed about. And you know what? None of that matters if you can’t see it”.That's the worst shit you hear, people saying you've got a good life why are you depressed? Depression isn't just the result of being unhappy/sad, it's true result of chemicals in the brain. It can be exacerbated by outside life, but it is a medical condition. It can be treated by medicine.
There maybe a big part of diet being the problem with our mental health. Our carb heavy, often just carb meals/snacks, diet not only is making us fat but the spikes and crashes of glucose in the brain has been linked with depression, anxiety, etc.
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@Machpants that's pretty much the guts of it isn't it? being happy/sad is also a result of chemicals in the brain, but working properly. being depressed could arguably be simplified to being sad when you shouldn't be, because some of those chemicals in the brain aren't behaving as they should. so 'what has she got to be depressed about?' is missing the point by about as much as is possible.
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@reprobate said in Mental Illness.:
@Machpants that's pretty much the guts of it isn't it? being happy/sad is also a result of chemicals in the brain, but working properly. being depressed could arguably be simplified to being sad when you shouldn't be, because some of those chemicals in the brain aren't behaving as they should. so 'what has she got to be depressed about?' is missing the point by about as much as is possible.
Indeed, and interestingly guts makes a difference too, we are discovering that our gut microme is a massive influencer of mental health, and out gut microbes are 50% of what they were a few hundred years ago
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@antipodean said in Mental Illness.:
But within the narrow confine of military service, I can't think of much that would top it.
As a possible cause of trauma, not as a measure of trauma. The word comes from Greek, meaning wound, so again it is the outcome, not the event that defines the trauma. There is no "top it" because it doesn't matter what happened, it is what happened to the person afterwards.
I guess that the term PTSD is a bit misleading as it infers that the event itself is the trauma which isn't technically true (my pedantry on the semantics perhaps). PTSED (Post traumatic stress event disorder) is a bit of a mouthful. My understanding, and to para phrase it, is a non normal behaviour pattern caused by an event that a particular person deemed so stressful that it altered their frame of mind and consequent actions. (That is why they didn't let me come up the letters to abbreviate it).
The point is that a failed marriage may cause more trauma than seeing your best mate's brains blown out on a battlefield. It depends on the person. A true psychopath would in fact have no psychological wound at all. Which is not to say that people unaffected by such events are psychopaths, just that they have managed to deal with it. Would be great to know exactly how!
So although combat is not doubt an horrific thing to witness it isn't necessarily going to cause any wound or neuroses (in Freudian terms - the Wiki page is actually quite good). That would depend on the individual, it may range from nil to catatonia, and as such isn't a measure (or "yardstick for trauma" as @bones correctly said). The severity of the event is irrelevant.
Why do I care? It is what makes it so interesting (and difficult to fathom) because what might seem a minor trivial event is actually significant to that person, and yet seeing a children's hospital blown up may not have quite the effect that we would expect it to. Dealing with our own issues is a lot easier if we can identify them. As I said above, I've seen some bloody (literally and figuratively) awful things but they usually aren't front and centre if I feel shit and that the world is a truly awful place. Some of our demons can be latent.
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@Machpants said in Mental Illness.:
ndeed, and interestingly guts makes a difference too, we are discovering that our gut microme is a massive influencer of mental health, and out gut microbes are 50% of what they were a few hundred years ago
Apparently they now are considering the gut as a second brain, for want of a better term and yep, hugely significant.
Re the other comments above - to consider depression, or anxiety, as purely chemical imbalances in the brain is thought to be an oversimplification (as you say @reprobate ). It certainly can happen with those results, and yes drugs can alter that, but we don't know enough about it. Serotonin alone is massively complex in what it does and how it affects us. And to come back to the Machpants gut comment it is produced both in the brain and the gastrointestinal tract so very significant as a clue as to how the gut does affect us, and how we should be treating the whole body as a being, not compartmentalising the mind or brain. The body is very much a team effort.
The reason that I mention serotonin is because it was believed that lack of it caused depression but there is actually no evidence to back that up. Even defining depression is problematic, diagnosing more difficult still, and pathology...
Yes, some cases are distinct, diagnosable and treatable, but there are many variables.We also generally learn what works for us to help as well. Whether it be exercise, meditation, playing with the dog, whatever, and it is also why younger people are so problematic, they probably haven't worked out what causes them problems or what helps to remedy it. Most of us adults (term used loosely in my case) still haven't worked it all out.
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@Snowy said in Mental Illness.:
There are some other misconceptions as well about suicide rates being higher when times are tough, or at least unusual. There is some data that rates drop during wartime, economic depressions (unfortunate word) and even during pandemics (including covid). There could be many and varied reasons that are apparent but the "not coping" thing isn't really about external factors it tends to be a more existential crisis. @MajorRage mentioned the "what's the point?" thought. It's a big one. Difficult to know an answer unless you happen to know the meaning of life (if so please DM me).
You are the only one I read that mentioned COVID-19, maybe there were more, but I think the isolation factor and fewer social contacts have had a huge influence on many, especially teenagers, and young adults (grumpy old men, maybe not quite so much). This and our smaller, more isolated families, and possibly diet and the plastics affecting our guts (https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/what-do-we-know-about-microplastics-in-food#The-dangers-of-microplastics) and along with general pollution, perhaps, our mental health (https://www.ehn.org/mental-health-2655533166.html)?
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@Snowy said in Mental Illness.:
@antipodean said in Mental Illness.:
But within the narrow confine of military service, I can't think of much that would top it.
As a possible cause of trauma, not as a measure of trauma.
Yes, cause. Measuring it via PCL is still subjective.
The word comes from Greek, meaning wound, so again it is the outcome, not the event that defines the trauma. There is no "top it" because it doesn't matter what happened, it is what happened to the person afterwards.
The DSM definition/ diagnosis requires exposure to a traumatic event, what happens after is the emotional or psychological response. So back to my point about the veracity of the traumatic episode (or episodes as typified in police etc.)
In one of the most comprehensive studies undertaken of a specific population, the ADF determined it had over a fifth of its members had a mental disorder in the preceding 12 months. This for a group that is supposed to be selected and trained to bear a psychiatric burden related to the nature of their work. Almost 15% for an anxiety disorder and 10% for an affective disorder. The most interesting for me was the lack of statistical differentiation between those who had deployed and those who hadn't.
Related but different is the suicidality of ex-members, which is at a rate significantly over the general population, manifested in those who had involuntary separation,, specifically for those who had medically discharged at lower rank. And I'm not alone in possessing the suspicion that that's related to a loss of identity and perhaps ability to identify other opportunities.
We shall see what the Final Report of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide and the Minister's response brings.
5 Common Myths About Suicide Debunked
