In response to Guy Walker: I’m mentally ill, therefore I am,
R.Celica wrote:
It is now very ‘cool’ to have mental health problems. This seems to have started with Stephen Fry and his bipolar issues (or manic depression as it used to be known). Now it is used by the comfortably off and famous as a means of joining the victim club without the need to suffer inconvenience. May even gain a few sympathetic tabloid headlines as publicity. They just need to be careful which disorder they favour. Admitting to being a psychopath will not win many friends, but ‘spending time in a dark place’ may well elicit some sympathy from others of the same mindset.
39 Pontiac Dream wrote:
In the last few months, I’ve seen programme after programme, article after article and snippet after snippet on mental health on TV, radio, newspapers. They even wore those silly green ribbons in parliament for mental health awareness week. What I haven’t seen is this translate to the grunts like me who are working on the ground level and still struggle to help those who are really, seriously mentally ill.
The ones who won’t go on TV and advertise their illness. The ones who for the slightest issue could (and have) self harm. The ones who will reach for the pill bottle when things get too much. For anyone who has cared for a loved one, or even a stranger, with serious mental illness, they’ll know that the way most services treat mental health is as a blanket illness. Psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, doctors – they see all mental illness as the same thing and thus everyone with the condition must be treated the same way. It doesn’t work like that. In the same way a physical condition isn’t treated the same (you wouldn’t treat someone with a broken leg the way you’d treat someone with a serious heart condition), serious mental illness treatment must be tailored.
As it is, we have celebrities, politicians, writers getting their faces on TV and talking about how to deal with issues they know little about. And while our MPs virtue-signal this condition, those on the ground struggle away hoping that they can keep those they care for alive day after day after day.
Brian Robins wrote:
This is an excellent article that has needed writing for some time. The current obsession with mental health, whipped up and encouraged with fervour by the BBC on a practically nightly basis, is simply one more example of the narcissisim that pervades life in the 21st century. It is particularly worrying that quite young children are now being taught to believe that normal childhood difficulties are a mental health problem
norman’s nonsense wrote:
Drug trade and the elite want everyone doped up . . . it’s good for their business.
