I’ve been thinking about the nature of mental illness and the role of therapy this month. There are clearly important debates to be had about whether we over-diagnose mental illness nowadays and medicalise emotional states that are either just part of being human or a normal response to abnormal situations - such as lockdown. Escalating numbers of people self-reporting mental illness suggest we live in a culture that both nurtures and validates individual vulnerability. But while this is a broader social and political issue, we also need to think about how we treat individuals who are suffering with mental illness.
My nephew showed alarming signs of mental abnormality in middle adolescence. From that point, he was given medications. Many different ones as the years went by. He became steadily worse. I asked my sister several times what his ailment was. She said that they didn't know, which was why they kept changing his medication. When he was in his thirties, in frustration I asked how they could treat a condition with medicines when they didn't know what it was. When I asked again, when he was in his forties, she said they thought it was schizophrenia. In his fifties, he was confirmed as an acute schizophrenic. My response was, "Well, he is now."
My nephew showed alarming signs of mental abnormality in middle adolescence. From that point, he was given medications. Many different ones as the years went by. He became steadily worse. I asked my sister several times what his ailment was. She said that they didn't know, which was why they kept changing his medication. When he was in his thirties, in frustration I asked how they could treat a condition with medicines when they didn't know what it was. When I asked again, when he was in his forties, she said they thought it was schizophrenia. In his fifties, he was confirmed as an acute schizophrenic. My response was, "Well, he is now."