Six Myths About Mental Health
And how to reframe these myths
I have been on this journey as a parent for 22 years, with 8 of them learning about mental health disorders. 1 in 4 people suffer from a mental illness, so chances are, you know someone who is struggling. These are my assessments from my personal experience from mainstream and away from it as well. I am most experienced in SMI (Severe Mental Illness) as that has been my exposure firsthand and in my support communities.
Curious reader, thank you for reading this article with an open mind and heart.
Conclusions and Observations about Mental Health:
Every person’s path is different and needs to be treated as unique
It is massively difficult to find the right support, and only those who have support will find recovery.
The DSM should only be used as a baseline, not as an absolute diagnosis.
Labels should be fluid if given at all.
Symptoms are only masked by drugs and should be seen as temporary fixes.
Multiple medications can cause multiple issues further away from where a person began and sometimes enhance symptoms.
Care for individuals depends on economics and race.
Blaming former President Reagan for dismantling mental health programs only gets me so far. While they weren’t perfect, it was more than what we have today. (And this is a whole separate piece that I intend to explore at some point.)
California has provided some solid programs for my son.
Mental illness and street people are a collective issue, not a city, state, or county issue. Our society and individualistic society created many of these problems and we need to create the solutions together.
How did my family get here?
On Thanksgiving in 2015, 3,000 miles from home, I found my son alone on the couch trapped in an endless world of inner conversations. He had suffered a psychotic break. The experience began a two-year-long journey to understand what had happened and how he could be helped - at a crucial time in an adolescent’s life.
While it took us over two years to help him stabilize, traversing the rocky path through our version of Dante’s Purgatory brought us numerous unanswered questions and emotional strife as individuals and as a family.
Living in suburbia in one of the most competitive places on earth, Silicon Valley, we worked to protect him from stigma as we searched for the cause and treatment for his DSM diagnosis of schizophrenia as a starting point and not as a final point.
As a mother, I continuously reframe this as an illness and as his characteristics and way of being with love as a constant, I know recovery is possible. Blending research from science and mainstream support groups, I have also uncovered some hard truths from interviewing parents, mostly mothers in the trenches with their children.
Many of these mothers are on their own with their children, struggling on modest means, faced with racial discrimination, unsympathetic judges and police, and psychiatrists who are drowning in cases and only have tools to put a bandaid on the issues. And that is putting it mildly as many psychiatrists (not all) are negligent and making it worse. While these are the extreme cases, they are detrimental to all of society trickling into all our lives. I urge you to read the interviews linked at the end to learn more.
Myths about Mental Illness
These are common myths that interfere with mental and emotional healing. By dispelling these myths, I hope they will restore hope in recovery.
Mental illness is caused by genetic defects.
Not true. Schizophrenia does not run in my family.
Forced treatment is necessary.
Not true. Our son was only 14, and we knew hospitalization was necessary. When he turned 18, his last psychotic break and we believed he needed this treatment again, we refrained based on his wishes.
Full recovery is impossible.
Not true. Our son is in recovery now, working part-time and caring for himself while living at home with us. (My definition of full recovery is when he is tapering medication very slowly, working through therapy, eating a nutritionally dense diet for his specific body, taking supplements, working, and living on his own. This is not his definition at this time.)
Based on symptoms, mental illness can be distributed into categories. (multiple diagnoses) Not true.
Some of his characteristics exhibit as though he is on the spectrum. I don’t know if there are other diagnoses, nor am I seeking them out.
Scientific research will uncover the biomedical condition underlying mental illness. Not true.
I don’t think we will ever uncover this and I have stopped trying. I have gone down the road of testing for PANDAs, mold, and other rare diseases. There are blood tests an individual can do to determine whether a medication is the right one for them or not. When taking these powerful psychiatric drugs, it is important to know if a person will have an adverse reaction that can have an impact for many years.
Because individuals do not share the same DNA there is no one treatment for every individual. There are multiple causes of mental illness and each person’s cause is unique to them. Many believe it is trauma-related and could date back from birth, or early childhood and we know this to be true of DID (dissociative identity disorder) diagnoses.
Considerable scientific evidence points to mental disorder having social/psychological, not biological, causation: the cause being exposure to negative environmental conditions, rather than disease. Trauma—and dysfunctional responses to trauma—are the scientifically substantiated causes of mental disorder. Just as it would be a great mistake to treat a medical problem psychologically, it is a great mistake to treat a psychological problem medically.
—Allan M. Leventhal, PhD
At the same time, I also believe in a blend of mainstream and non-mainstream approaches to wellness. We have had some good adolescent psychiatrists and have benefited from early psychosis county support groups and programs. There are amazingly helpful people out there who can help and I think of them as our angels watching out for us. It takes patience, persistence, and often a lot of money to get the best care; true lessons in surrendering over and over.
Health care is mental health care and everyone has a right to the same services.
I don’t have all the answers, yet I do know there are multiple paths to recovery. Without a comprehensive approach, viewing the whole person with fairness and respect, we will not get anywhere as a society. Recovery is not possible when human rights are ignored or neglected. When individuals have support and services no matter their race or economic background and by being active participants in their recovery, there will be more high-functioning members of society.
Thank you for being here, Reader. Please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber at a very low cost of a cup of coffee per day. This is my life’s work as I make my way as a creative contributing to society and activism for mental health awareness. We are all in this together, and I’m so glad you are part of my world.
Sources:
Allen Leventhal, PhD- Mad in America
Caregiver Series, Mad in America - Shelley Karpaty