A few months ago, I accidentally learned of a great-grandmother of mine that struggled with mental illness. Needless to say, I was intrigued- not so much because I work in mental health, but because I had lived 28 years and never heard a word about it. In fact, when I inquired about it, I recieved a rather suprising response:
“We don’t talk about that, Mark.”
“Why not?” I asked, honestly wondering.
“We just don’t. Can we talk about something else?”
There is a fundamental question that needs to be asked, if we are to be serious about caring for others. One man in a crowd listening to Jesus put it this way (a paraphrase): “Who is my neighbor anyway?” For our purposes, I’ll frame it like this: “who are the mentally ill anyway?”
The simple answer is that they are our brothers and sisters, our mail-deliverers, our store clerks, our librarians, our homeless, our pastors, our rich, our poor, our middle-class- you get the idea. The statistiscs are truly astounding: About 26% of the US populace suffers from a diagnosable mental illness in a given year, a number just short of 58 million people. Approximately 6% suffer from a serious mental illness, or about 1 out of every 17 people. Among those that meet criteria for a mental disorder, almost half meet criteria for 2 or more.
So given the apparent ubiquity of mental health issues in the world, and more specifically, in our smaller worlds, why does this idea that we don’t know anyone with a mental illness persist? For the same reason that my grandmother would be horrified if she read the beginning of this post: because mental illness is a dirty little secret, or at least we’ve made it one.
I really believe that in most cases this is not intentional (unfortunately in some it is). Maybe its just easier to ignore what we don’t understand. Maybe its too overwhelming to think about. Maybe its so complicated that we think that other people, professional people, are more qualified to think about it, to talk about it, to deal with it. I hope that we are this innocent, or rather naive. Because if its understanding that we lack, there is probably hope for us. Thats why I wanted to start this blog- thats why I want us to talk about this. So lets start talking…
Eric said...
1Very well said.
12/9/08 5:53 PM | Comment Link
Todd said...
2it’s not surprising that the stigma of mental illness is so severe. i remember watching a movie when i was a kid and a schizophrenic woman went nuts and killed someone then ran through the streets half naked. why would i want to associate myself with that?
of course, this come down to education which i am sure you will touch on in another post. but this has to be part of it i think.
12/9/08 9:09 PM | Comment Link
Randall said...
3I think that many members of society are becoming more educated about mental illness (thanks to those like you who talk about these issues), but it is an uphill battle against stigma that exists from many generations of ignorance and from mass media representing extreme forms of mental illness. The movie Todd mentioned is a good example of those extreme forms.
News media also feeds the stigma. If someone without mental illness commits a crime, they are portrayed as a bad individual. If someone with a mental illness commits a crime, it’s suddenly, “Schizophrenic Kills Family,” “Manic Depressive Robs Bank.” The whole community of people with mental illnesses is found guilty.
12/10/08 8:58 AM | Comment Link
Dorie Morgan said...
4This reminds me of when I was a kid and I was diagnosed with ADD. My mother was so insistent that no one know about it. I was even taken to a psychiatric office in a different school district so no one would see me there. I remember getting in trouble for telling one of my friends. i remember shame when I told my youth pastor in 9th grade.
There was a lot of shame and fear in something so small. The fear and shame were actually more disabling than the ADD itself. I feared the ways it made me different rather than learning from the ways it made me unique.
I’m 26 now and we still don’t talk about it at home. Much like we don’t talk about the suspected mental illness that impacts other family members – we certainly don’t pursue a diagnosis because then it would be something else to hide. If something as small as ADD was such a source of fear, something bigger would be totally unbearable.
12/10/08 9:05 AM | Comment Link
WeissGuy said...
5Dorie,
I think you bring up a great point about the struggles of a diagnosis.
Sometimes it confirms the shame.
Sometimes it gives relief, because people hope something that can be named can be “fixed.”
Sometimes the latter hopes fail when some mental illnesses can only be “treated.”
12/10/08 5:57 PM | Comment Link
jeff said...
6what a great blog mark. like you pointed out, if there is anyone that should be opening its arms and becoming a part of the solution (and not the problem), it should be the church.
12/11/08 6:19 PM | Comment Link