Mental Illness

Often what is characterized as mental illness is people no longer willing/able to go along with the societal or group/family crazy dynamics that we (society/groups/families) create and adopt to try to take off the rough edges or totally avoid the harsh life we are currently a part of where we and everyone we love dies and lots of other pain also occurs.

So at least some of the time (and I’d say a lot of the time) what is characterized as mental illness at least starts as intuitively seeing/feeling things too clearly without having a good solution for the problem that we are willing and able to work towards. Unfortunately since society/groups/families are so invested in their crazy dynamics and most help for those seeing things too clearly tells the person they and how they are seeing things is the problem, rather than accurate, the person normally develops coping mechanisms also to survive that are accurately described as mental illness.

Unfortunately, our mental health system has pretty much given up on ever seeing the accurate root cause of the problem and true solutions to that and has instead shifted to trying to help people develop more effective and less disruptive coping mechanisms, while still labeling them as the problems and ignoring the root crazy thing the person was originally reacting to.

The Road Less Traveled (by M. Scott Peck) came from the end of an era of actually trying to heal the root of the problem, as we went to drugs and superficial cognitive behavior therapy as the answers starting in the late 80s and early 90s full bore with very few looking back since to see if that was a wise thing to do. I’d say the short term results are probably better with our current approach but the long term results are not hardly positive at all. And there is good evidence that we are not really improving our mental health at the societal level with our current approach. Instead at the macro level we are probably getting worse rather than better. To be fair we were not very effective with a deeper approach either though.

The way I write is often confusing, my apologies. And I am perfectly fine with you having your answer and I having mine. To clarify though, I was not saying mental illness develops as a result of a distorted world view. I was saying the opposite, that its original root is normally a more accurate world view than can be implemented in our current immediate surroundings.

I actually think we mostly agree, but I could be wrong, and again we do not need to at all. I’m saying that something like a trauma or intuitively seeing things clear enough to no longer feel OK going along with the status quo of our immediate surrounds causes changes in brain functioning and chemicals that along with our surroundings still normally being inconsistent with what our intuition is telling us, leads us to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms, like lashing out, withdrawing, escaping with or without chemicals, anxiety, depression, creating alternative realities, etc. That further exacerbates the problem, including brain functioning and chemicals. So then, yes, a combination of drugs and therapy are often needed to find the best solution possible. The legal and/or properly prescribed drugs never did much for me, but I absolutely know they do greatly help a lot of people and are probably indispensable for many.

And of course there is a heredity/innate component to all of it also. Part of the exciting thing to me though is that if what I am saying is true, being sensitive and perceptive and thus maybe more prone to what we characterize as mental illness can be every bit as much as a gift as a curse once we work through things and find ways to live that are consistent with what our intuition tells us, both in finding our own wholeness and happiness and in sharing that with the world. And I am not saying this is the norm, but I am saying that I have seen it play out in too many great examples to think/believe anything else.