Do You Consider Yourself Mentally Ill?

[.Bubbles.]

Yes I do. It is not an injury, I am not "broken", I have mental illness.

 

[Tinyflame]

I think some traumas can leave people feeling broken with or without ptsd. Broken in spirit, broken down physically, broken self concept, broken down in confidence, etc.

 

[littlelostchild]

I have a mental illness. I would say that it is chronic, but im working on having better control of the symptoms and having better coping strategies.

 

[Ronin]

Well I'm sure as hell not 'mentally healthy', which I would guess then means I'm 'mentally ill'. There's definitely aspects of my life affected by that state of things. There's parts of it that were pretty much ruined by it. In just admitting I am, I'm simply facing reality. Step one for dealing with that reality, goodbye denial.

But if I have time to wallow in it, I don't. It's useful to figure why this or that makes me tick. It's useful to figure what I can use as support. It's useful to know what on earth's wrong, have terms to describe to other people, find other people with the same issues. It's useful for helping similarly afflicted people. Community work, that kind of thing. That part of everything's worth it, reminds me there's still some purpose in life even if I feel f*cked. I like purpose.

 

[scout86]

I like the way @anthony put it. That works for me.

I think this can be somewhat important. It can affect how we look at ourselves (or maybe it indicates how we look at ourselves?). The terms others apply to us, and other people with assorted problems/challenges, more than likely do the same.

I'd be more likely, myself, to use the expression "That person is mentally ill." for a person who is out of touch with reality and can't function on their own, in the world. regardless of diagnosis.

I don't think it's all or none, either. A person isn't necessarily either "mentally healthy" or "mentally ill". There's a continuum with people living at all points between the two extremes.

 

[Nyssa]

I don't think I'm ill. But I believe I should. Because I am. Chronically, at least.

I still live under the belief I should be able to act as if nothing had happened to me. And I tend to hate myself everytime I fail at playing normal. This is not healthy.

 

[Go Hungry]

Yes, I do. It's a bummer, but it's just the case. I try not to worry about it too much...

 

[Sammyiam]

I just feel like I have lost myself and I can't find myself anymore. It just seems that when I start to feel like I am just starting to understanding a little about PTSD something new moves on it to sit next to me and torments the hell out of me. I don't know who I am any more or who I will be when I get through this. I hope that I will be a better person than before I started this journey. And to answer the question yes. I am and suffering from the affects of PTSD, Depression, Anixety and DID I certainly feel mentally unwell, so at that point the answer is yes, there are a lot of people out there in the world who you would have no idea that they suffer from a mental illness, just because you do doesn't mean you have a flashing red light on your head and a big fat sign pinned to your chest saying I HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS. It doesn't or should I say shouldn't make a difference to anyone in the world apart from your family and close friends. There is a terrible stigma that we have to start and change in how the world see's mental health

 

[J_trustno1]

Yes, I certainly do and I believe I will never be normal. I feel that i am ruined for lifetime unless I really really try hard and get help for each every individual issue i have.

 

[Hashi]

I consider myself mentally ill for sure. Not from PTSD at this point (although I was before), but from depression and anxiety/OCD.

For me, illness is something that we can recover from - it might be a long bought of something, or an injury, but we can recover. I don't consider myself to have a mental disability or impairment. For me, it's mentally ill. And I'm aiming to be mentally healthy.

 

[greenleaf]

I don't actually generally think of it as a mental illness, probably because that phrase has so much stigma in our society and I can't shake that so totally avoid thinking about it... it feels like a thing thrown at people to discount their perspectives about what happened to them in the case of ptsd. I guess my experience, and my definition of what happened to me as even being abuse, was pretty thoroughly denied by family for so many years that I'm pretty sensitive to anything that feels similar. If I talk about it to a T or close friend, I'm generally talking about specific problems I'm having or what an abuser did, etc. so the phrase never really comes up.

I think that our brains might really benefit from some help rewiring, but what words to use...? "Injury" isn't quite the right term... I guess "disorder" is decent... "Dysfunction" isn't quite right though I think it's good for various symptoms. "Illness", besides the stigma thing for "mental illness", means viruses or bacteria or genetic chronic things to me... How about "overstressed, sub-optimally organized adaptive neural networks"? Sorry, too much Star Trek.

It seems to me that my brain's networks got stressed beyond what they could cope with in a "normal" way, so I've adapted the best I can; those new brain imaging studies for "overmodulating" ptsd (dissociation-related, as I understand it) and the brain grey matter study shows that different parts of the brain have more grey matter than "normal" people. It's almost closer to a scar in a way...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23113800

People who have had extreme physical injuries to their brains can often recover significantly but may never be as good at certain things as they were before; their lives may or may not be changed, depending upon the injury. I read about Gabriella Giffords, who was amazingly eloquent before being shot in the head (and I think could have been President eventually), that she has recovered somewhat simplified speech through intensive work.... her brain has adapted a lot, but some connections that would be "superhighways" in normal people are more like smaller "side roads" in her brain now. The pathways cannot handle as much traffic. The brain's rewiring ability seems to sometimes achieve different results than "normal development". Gabriella gets tired easily from talking. However she is still a wonderful person, doing great things ... probably more slowly and with a ton of support.

 

[Philippa]

I see PTSD as a natural result of abnormal events in my life, and not an illness as such...more a brain injury if anything. The less I take on stigma and labels, the better...at least for me. I realise that many people find comfort in the label and the naming of it. I just don't consider trauma to be an illness...even if the mind is the major part of me that was affected. I also find melancholia to be a totally normal side effect of living in a world this screwed up. It's normal to be depressed. The weird thing is when people expect to be happy all the time when there is so much misery and struggle. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against happiness, and I enjoy being happy as well, when it happens. I'm just not that hung up on having to be happy all the time, like some people are. I believe contrast is what makes life interesting.