What Do People Think About The Term 'mental Illness'?

[Nevermore]

But I think most mentall illness does result from an event/events - the exception being schizophrenia, a horrible inheritance.
A psychologist told me once that if cptsd was acknowledged formally it would wipe out over 80% of the DSM!
Drug companies have big stakes in the term " mental illness" inferring that it's only curable by drugs. Most mentall illness is a reaction to an injury, I think. It just doesn't get treated that way - and much of the treatment, the stigmatisation etc etc only increases the injury.
once you get a label slapped on you are seen as different from others, rather than a person trying to recover from trauma.
If only these labels and their treatment actually helped heal the person - but that's not what I've seen in my life.

 

[Chava]

It is stigmatizing. I don't actually care about terms much, but I think it's also a little misleading. "Illness" means something quite different than "injury" or "disorder". Personally I feel my complex trauma as an injury to my entire nervous system. Being the nervous system and all, that has some wide-reaching effects. I wouldn't even say I was born okay because I was not. But if you are a totally healthy and safe child, and then you are traumatized and never quite recover, you are not "ill" (which really means sick), but you have been injured....like a broken leg bone that never healed and continues to cause pain or other problems...and going too long it's possible to even make adaptations that help you go on but, in a maladaptive way wreck your hip over time (just a weird metaphor example).

I don't have a better term...not thinking "mental disorder" or "mental injury" sounds any better. But there is such a range that I suppose "mental illness" lumps all disorders, mental illnesses, and mental injuries together. Personally I just say I'm Chava. A few people know I've struggled with addiction. A smaller few know I struggle with complex trauma. But I never refer to my stuff as mental illness because that doesn't help. It's specifically complex trauma and I'm not actually ill.

On a stigmatizing basis, the term feels to permanent. Illnesses aren't permanent, but somehow it feels like we have connected it to personality or other mental defects. I suppose there needs to be a new term (or set of terms for purpose of generalizing) but really just greater awareness. We can be whole people, even well functioning, and have a struggle that effects our emotional regulation or thinking. Not sure why that should be more shameful than having GI issues, chronic headaches, etc. But the difference seems to be in connecting "mental" to "mind" and "mind" somehow to character or something like that...

 

[Stickler]

Regarding schizophrenia...you certainly have to inherit the ability to get it, but...

Dead Link Removed

Childhood trauma may aggravate one's propensity to get it.

 

[Lucycat]

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5®)

I think this is key to the discussion.
All diagnosable mental conditions within the DSM are 'disorders' . They have done away with the mental illness terminology. Why are we still using it?

The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) also uses the term mental disorders for the relevant sub sections.

 

[Stickler]

Nutter? Whackjob? Mad? Touched in the head? Crazy?

The DSM and the ICD are one thing...having to do my level best to stay in the padded rubber closet on the job...

 

[oasis2003]

Thing is who is to say who is sane and who is not ? What is normal? What are you supposed to compare yourself to? All of these medical holes that people are defined as, just because you do not fit a hole or category I would say they were individual, or created an amazing coping strategy, to extraordinary events. If that hyper sane person who fits all the categories were subjected to traumatic events how would they cope , keep sane, survive ? We cannot do experiments like this though can we?!

 

[Anarchy]

I stumbled on a neat idea in a paper that explores how the words we use and how we use them can expand, limit or distort what we see in ourselves and our surroundings.

Disease
Versus
Dis- ease.

 

[Milo's papa]

First off, I want to say this is one of the best threads I have seen on this site yet.
I don't have PSTD, but I do have a "mental ilness", I was diagnosed as Bipolar with anti-social traits at the age of 11. Combine that with a severe neurolgical disorder that serverely affects my ability to control my muscle coodination and you can just about imagine the way people react to me. Not very nice, I assure you.

I don't let lablels bother me any more. I've lived with them so long I've had to develope what I call "rhino hide", what others say about me just rolls right off. Don't get me wrong, i still feel it, I just won't let them know it has any affect on me. That way I can minimize the effects their comments accually do have on me.

 

[RavenGirl]

@Milo's papa , Oh believe me I do that too. They will NEVER know how badly what they said or did hurt me or bothered me.... but that doesn't mean that it didn't. I think "just rolls right off" and appears to roll off are 2 very different things. Some labels hurt, especially when people labeling really don't understand what we go through. :(

 

[Changing4Best]

My mother told me, when I was a kid, never to mention to ANYONE that she was mentally ill. I followed that advice and in general, now some 50 years later, I still follow that advice, concerning my own PTSD and BI-POLAR. I only confide these things to very close friends, after I know for sure that I can trust them. I will also speak to my pastor about it, because they are bound to secrecy, thankfully!

 

[Milo's papa]

@Milo's papa , Oh believe me I do that too. They will NEVER know how badly what the...

Well put Ravengirl, I agree that it really is just in appperance only.

 

[anthony]

I've had to develope what I call "rhino hide", what others say about me just rolls right off

LOL... I call it "teflon coated," as everything just slips right off.