Mental Illnesses: Why is everyone bonkers?
 

I shall be using this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_illness as my source of info cited.

According to the 2003 report of the U.S. President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, major mental illness, including clinical depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, when compared with all other diseases (such as cancer and heart disease), is the most common cause of disability in the United States.

At the start of the 20th century there were only a dozen recognized mental illnesses. By 1952 there were 192 and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) today lists 374. Depending on your perspective, this could be seen as the result of one or more of:

~More effective diagnosis and better characterization of mental illness, due to over a century of research in a new field of science and academia;

~A highly increased incidence of mental illness, due to some causative agent such as diet or the ever-increasing stress of everyday life

~An over-medicalisation of human thought processes, and an increasing tendency on the part of mental health experts to label individual "quirks and foibles" as illness.

~Increasing politicization of the DSM, perhaps due in part to the Peter principle [defined as: A theory which states that employees within a hierarchical organization advance to their highest level of competence then promoted to a level where they are incompetent, and then stay in that position], which may allow decision-makers with more discriminating, compartmentailizing thought processes to dominate the higher ranks of the medical establishment.

Which reason do you think is the biggest cause? Or are they all equally the causes of the increase of mental illnesses? Perhaps you think there are other reasons. And feel free to open up and share any experiences you’ve suffered from a mental illness, whether it was you, a family member, or a friend.

It's the chlorine in the water!

This is how I see the situation.
"At the start of the 20th century there were only a dozen recognized mental illnesses."
"recognised" being the key word.

I'm bipolar, but I stopped taking the medication a few years ago because of reports of increased risks of heightening mental disorders and sharp uptakes in suicides among dosed teenagers. So far, so good and my mom isn't pissing away her disposable income on psychotropics.

What were you taking? Lithium?

I think half the reason that more people are considered insane or mentally ill these days is because we live in a society that has a set idea about what is normal. The other half is down to the fact that diagnosis is much better. But more often than not I'll read up on some supposed mental disorder and find that the majority of it just seems to be a dislike of a certain personality trait on the part of the author rather than any actual mental health concern.

Any examples of these certain personality traits?

Personally, I think it's a mixture of all 4 choices.

Mental illness runs in my family. My grandfather has some sort of depression that he must be medicated for, otherwise he starts acting like his death is near, and other times he gets really violent. I believe he's been like that since he was 30-40. The violent side is scary while the "saying his good-byes" attitude is... creepy. When he's off his medication he walks out back to the edge of the woods and prays late at night.

My mom has some serious anxiety disorder and chemical imbalance. She's always been really violent towards me and the rest of my family. I have lots of good memories of growing up with her as my mother but also lots of terrifying ones. My dad's side of the family is all trashy, drunken domestic abusers. I know nothing of their medical history, but I'd bet anything that there's some serious mental problems there.

I appear to have inherited the great susceptibility to such imbalances and the like. Yay.

Welbutrin. My grandfather(rest his soul) was on lithium, though. Seems that bipolar disorder runs on my dad's side of the family, especially in the males.

Oh yes, plenty.

People who are eclectic, people who can one day be in the mood for a visit to the beach and the next day be in the mood for something really active and adventurous, people who put a little effort into looking good in front of other people at all times, people who find remaining in a crowd uncomfortable.

These psychobabbling psychiatrists come up with all sorts of presumptuous theories to suggest that these little traits are indicative of mental illness, usually on the basis of a few impressionistic generalisations about the people who display such characteristics. Like how the majority of them were brought up. To be honest I don't remember being involved with that survey.

Was this thread inspired by our discussion ambar?

My mom has some anxiety disorder, but she only needs to take medication during one of her rare panic attacks (complete clean freak though).

On the other hand a variety of physical diseases run in my family, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attack (dad, both grandfathers, and most great uncles had heart attacks early in life, aka 40s-50s). Fun, you can be assured.

While I think all those factors are at least partially to blame, it stands to reason that we are able to better recognize, catagorize, and treat varieties of mental illness in the quest for better quality of life. I doubt anyone knew what an aortic dissection was at the start of the 20th century, when modern medicine had just started to come into being. Similarly its possible treatement of psychological illness is just now becoming as well developed.

Random comment plus tax goes here.

Is bipolar the one where you have massive highs and then massive lows? Or is that something else?

I've found that tonnes of teenagers around town lately are being commited to hospitals because of depression, so that's sad, especially when I know some of them have so much to live for.

Bipolar simply means "two sided". Most people take on one stance or another, but bipolars tend to feel both at the same time, creating unstable, conflicting moods. They'll often argue with themselves mentally, and be confused about how they feel. This behaviour can be exhibited occasionaly amongst mostly normal behaviour, or it can be the entire person. With bipolar, everything is one big indecision. "Maybe I might not go? But I'll see you there anyway!" is not uncharacteristic of someone with bipolar disorder.

For more insight, read the lyrics to Nirvana's "Lithium". They're a good example of the kind of thoughts a bipolar sufferer would have.

Its also known as manic depression. And Facs is mostly right, it can have large mood swings.

You know it. :p

1 cool point for Dino for mentioning Lithium by Nirvana. Bipolar-ism(?) used to be called Manic Depression, didn't it? Or is that something else.. Too lazy to use google.

Bipolarity, I believe, is the term.

Whoo, that song rocks.

My dad is bipolar, and both my brother and sister have depression and take medication for it. I don't know about my sister, since she's been taking it for quite a while and my memory doesn't extend back that far, but I know it really helped my brother. Both sides of my family have a lot of mental illness. On my dad's side it's depression and bipolarity, on my mom's side there's paranoid schizophrenia, autism, all kinds of stuff... No wonder my parents are both psychologists. :p

Funny thing is, I know of nobody in the UK who has a mental illness. Not one. Yet all the American users seem to be like "Yep! I know lots of people!". Maybe it really is a diagnosis thing? Perhaps more and more people are getting checked out for it and it's becoming common public news?