"illness" Or "adverse Experience"

[Mammo]

Hi all,

This is something I question a lot and I'd like to understand people's feedback.

What I imagine we have in common in this forum is "adverse experience" of multiple varieties. I think most people recognise such experiences leave their mark on people. However - do you consider these effects as "illness" per se? (Don't get me wrong, I totally understand that the impacts on people can be so severe they can be truly debilitating) But to what extent do you translate the impacts of these experiences as an "illness" or "disease"?

By way of context, in the course of an involuntary hospitalisation a few years ago, I had the (dis)pleasure of Doctors dogmatically insisting that the reason I was depressed and wanted to die, was due to a "chemical imbalance in my brain"; a physiological illness...which to me translated as being nothing to do with my past.

E.g. I appreciate that PTSD is a diagnosis in the DSM - however, DSM diagnoses are descriptions of symptoms as opposed to a specific underlying pathology.

What do you guys think? (I'll add a closing note, that I hope this question isn't upsetting, that's not my intention - but personally I found being given a "biological" explanation for my circumstances very distressing)

 

[Lucycat]

ACE
I don't know if you have already come across this but it is one of the largest studies ever conducted. I think you might find it interesting.

 

[Friday]

I don't like the terms Mental Illness or Mental Sickness applied to any neurological condition or divergence (that is psychiatric)... Period. Whether it's innate or acquired. I believe it to be bad taxonomy.

((Especially as there are a significant number of people who are sick in the head... But completely neurotypical. No pathology whatsoever. Meanwhile there are many neurological conditions that are in no way "sick". ADHD to Dyslexia to Giftedness to so very many more. The terms simply lump everything together -badly- under one misshapen umbrella of "not normal". I think, perhaps more than anything else, show us how very much neurology is in its infancy.))

Factually, however, we're stuck with the terms for the time being.

 

[Meadowsweet]

It is only a personal preference, but I relate better to the term psychological disorder.

I think this is because I relate 'illness' to something for which the treatment is beyond our conscious efforts, eg, our antibodies might fight it off, or drugs/surgery having a direct impact on the physical systems might rid us of it or manage it.

Whereas the term 'disorder' resonates more with how my mind feels. When I'm in a bad place my mind feels messy and I like I can't find anything that I'm looking for and am tripping over loads of shit - and it feels like it is not working in an ordered systematic way. Maybe it's a metaphoric view, but it describes better what I'm experiencing.

Also, the word 'disorder' relates to the way that I manage my disordered mind, by using my non-emotional/logical mind to put things in order. For me, that can mean putting the emotional child in one box, the abused/fear filled person in another box, the professional person in another box etc. I recognise that that isn't 'normal', but it brings some sort of order that I can function with.

 

[Mammo]

Hi @Lucycat - yep, am familiar with the ACE study...pretty sobering stuff. Things like the ACE study provide a completely different viewpoint to behaviour that likely overlaps materially with behaviour that is often described as "mental illness". Part of me wants to grab the psychologists and the psychiatrists, and bang their heads together. It feels like they never talk to each other.

@Meadowsweet and @FridayJones - hmmm, not really opined much on the term "disorder" itself. Reviewing my hospital file from beforehand the Doctors were contemplating whether in addition to "depression" I also had either borderline personality traits v. narcissistic personality traits...(this was upsetting) - these are considered personality "disorders" - is this what you mean, or something else?

cheers all for the replies

 

[Lucycat]

When it is suggested that it is disorder or illness ( as a consequence of events) I prefer the term emotional distress. For me that encapsulates it all. You don't need to be ill to be distressed, but being distressed is an indication of being less able to function in ones daily life.

I think people are damaged by labels, and labels tend not to be reviewed - they keep on sticking.

 

[Meadowsweet]

@Mammo, the word 'disorder' can be interchanged with illness, it's not particularly related to the specific conditions that you mentioned. Maybe specific mental health 'conditions' would be a better word than either illness or disorder.

@Lucycat, at times people have related to how trauma effects my mind by believing that it is purely stuck emotions, and that releasing them will cure it and for me that's really not the case, so for me, I feel that the term 'emotionally distressed' would be misleading.

 

[Lucycat]

effects

??
Do you mean affects?

 

[Meadowsweet]

@Lucycat I never understand which word to use where, feel free to teach me the difference.

 

[RussH]

@meadosweet effects is a noun.
The effects were amazing
Affects is a verb
It affects my ability to think.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I think it's interesting that people don't want anything that labels them as ill or disordered but then go around stomping their feet and throwing a hissy fit when the rest of the world doesn't take ptsd seriously!

Ya can't have it both ways. People won't ever take ptsd seriously if it is termed as an adverse experience. Breaking up with your partner is an adverse experience! (Do you see where I'm going with this?)

I won't EVER deny that I am mentally ill or have a disorder. (Unless I heal and get to the point of being un-diagnosable.)

We are all fighting to be taken seriously and to strip ptsd of these connotations would take us backward. Argue with me all you want, but normal people wouldn't take us seriously if ptsd wasn't a disorder.

Getting down to semantics......is my body in order? No. If it was, I wouldn't have catecholamines that are to great excess running around my body, I wouldn't have nerves that don't function properly. Since my body is not *in* order, it is DISordered.

If you can't feel the actual DISorder in your body, then maybe you should thank your lucky stars that your ptsd isn't (as) physical. But please, don't campaign to have this de-classified because you don't experience it like others do.

 

[Kefira]

But to what extent do you translate the impacts of these experiences as an "illness" or "disease"?

Well, it's not a disease, but it is a disorder. I think I agree with @Meadowsweet and her preference for the word disorder rather than illness just because illness IS typically used in cases where there's something to treat. That's not always the case, and that might just be a personal bias against the term "ill". But it is definitely a disorder OR an illness and I think that's important to own for all the reasons @itsKismet mentions.

I had the (dis)pleasure of Doctors dogmatically insisting that the reason I was depressed and wanted to die, was due to a "chemical imbalance in my brain"; a physiological illness...which to me translated as being nothing to do with my past.

I would like to suggest that the fact that they believed it was due to an imbalance doesn't mean that it has nothing to do with your past. The effects of trauma are often physical, particularly in the case of PTSD, which is why this is a disorder. Our brains are different. There are biological changes that have taken place. That doesn't invalidate what we've been through, it only says that because of what we experienced and how we processed that experience it has literally changed our brains on a biological level. That actually says a lot about why PTSD is a disorder- the human body is very resilient. Ours have been stressed to a point where our brains had to adapt and change in order to survive.

I think it's interesting because we do want to be taken seriously and yet it's so hard to take on labels that are so stigmatized. I have been going through the process of getting a service dog, and it took most of a year to be okay with the fact that I am legally disabled because of my PTSD. Now I have some understanding friends who when I can't do something will gently remind me, "It's not because you're weak, it's because you have a disability (or have wounding, or whatever other term they want to use at that point)". It took me a while to be able to see that as validation rather than have the knee jerk "of course there's nothing wrong with me" reaction. Because there IS something wrong with me, or I wouldn't be here. That's not fatalism, and that's not saying it can never get better: I absolutely believe this can be mitigated even if it can't be cured.

I just realized after a while that personally I wasn't doing myself any favors by trying to avoid the big bad scary labels. They are accurate. For me embracing them is validating overall even if it's sometimes challenging. And it also gives me words (even if we are admittedly limited in vocabulary in this area) to talk to other people with to help them better understand. To say something like "because of bad experiences in my past I have difficulty functioning sometimes and experience emotional distress as well as altered perceptions and physical symptoms" is accurate, but most people will take the worst thing they've experienced and assume that what you're describing is that. To say "because of trauma I have a disorder that has biological components and leaves me legally disabled" will make most people actually listen. Just in my experience.

Everyone's got their own feelings on this, but there's my .02