Myth Busting Mental Illness

Beezer

Beezer

Well-known Member
My wife is Bipolar...I'm schizophrenic. Our twin daughters have turned out just fine. One is going to College for Advertising and Marketing...the other to University for Psychology.

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Yeah, there's definitely a lot of myths surrounding mental illness. It's kept us in the dark for a long time. The way I see it is that there are tons of people with brain illnesses that are call "mental". That has a bad connotation. We are all more similar than different.

Sweet kids you have there!
 
Firstly, your daughters are gorgeous, happy and bright.
Secondly, they vividly display the love you & wife showered them with.
Thirdly, I wish you all the best, Beezer, you have so much to be grateful for.
 
Mental illness? Why is it called an illness besides the fact that it can sometimes cause severe discomfort? On that note I guess mentally ill is the opposite to mentally well? Can people with mental illness be mentally well? Should people with mental illness be held accountable for the actions...absolutely.
 
Thomas Szasz made a name for himself in the field of Psychology by writing a book The Myth of Mental Illness. Explores the philosophical problems involved when dubbing mental activity/behavior as an "illness". I believe his ideas were quite stirring and produced new ways of looking at behavior.
 
jpstrap said:
Thomas Szasz made a name for himself in the field of Psychology by writing a book The Myth of Mental Illness. Explores the philosophical problems involved when dubbing mental activity/behavior as an "illness". I believe his ideas were quite stirring and produced new ways of looking at behavior.
Click to expand...
I read this book in the 80's. I loved it.
 

The Myth of Mental Illness​

The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct is a 1961 book by the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, in which the author criticizes psychiatry and argues against the concept of mental illness. It received much publicity, and has become a classic, well known as an argument that "mentally ill" is a label which psychiatrists have used against people "disabled by living" rather than truly having a disease.

Background[edit]​

Szasz writes that he became interested in writing The Myth of Mental Illness in approximately 1950, when, having become established as a psychiatrist, he became convinced that the concept of mental illness was vague and unsatisfactory. He began work on the book in 1954, when he was relieved of the burdens of a full-time psychiatric practice by being called to active duty in the navy. Later in the 1950s, it was rejected by the first publisher to whom Szasz submitted the manuscript. Szasz next sent the manuscript to Paul Hoeber, director of the medical division of Harper & Brothers, who arranged for it to be published.[1]

3 min read

The Myth of Mental Illness - Wikipedia
 
I don't think playing semantics over " mental illness" does any good. People are having problems with functioning in real life situations. I remember a schizophrenic person tell a long involved story about abduction by Russian agents, and being shot in space by them. He said, " To you these are delusions, to me these are true." I don't think most really understand that mental illness is a medical condition on the same order as diabetes, or heart problems., etc.
 
All our beliefs are myths ... in reality ... ;)
 

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