Sitemap

health advisory Hospital Mental Health 2007-11-15 19:02:01

When you meet someone who has some "un-common" thoughts usually a person just thinks "oh they're kind of weird or funny" but when you find out they have a label of something then people start to focus on the label and forget about the person. My personal opinion is that we need to learn to only use the label for treatment in the illness, and otherwise put the person first. They still deserve to be treated like anyone else, with respect and dignity.

---

I think the change is because of society's new views of mental problems. In the past, mental illness wasn't accepted or promoted. People would try their best to "hold it together" for as long as they could. They wouldn't go to a Dr. and get a prescription for antidepressants or anxiety or whatever. Then, finally, they would just "snap." Then they'd finally get some help and they would have a suprised and helpful support system available to help them get through it.

Nowadays, mental illness is a trend. People aren't nearly as ashamed about it and sometimes will even go out of their way to get diagnosed with bipolar, or OCD, or whatever. They start getting attention and treatment for it right away, so they don't "snap," but their support system isn't as available because they've been hearing the person talking about their problems for a long time and know what's going on.

I personally think it's worse today. People with mild mental illness (or just attention-seeking behavior) get the same diagnoses as people with severe mental illness, so there are lots of them out there and people aren't generally as supportive for the truly mentally ill as they used to be.

---