Interesting, huh. I always thought that only the latter of the two was permanent. Now if it's a chemical imbalance, then wouldn't proper medicine restore balance? Forgive my ignorance.
If they ever do discover the proper medication, then perhaps mood disorders will belong to the past. The medications that we have now do not do the whole job; what they do is alleviate the worst of the symptoms., making it possible for therapy to be more effective. My psychiatrist was quite frank in explaining this to me, and he even admitted that, currently, there is no real understanding of how the medications work. All they know is that this or that medication helps this or that patient. Some patients respond to nothing at all, and most patients have to be given many different medications before one that helps is found. I got lucky. Wellbutrin has done wonders for me; at least, I am no longer suicidal - and I have begun to socialize a little (my joining this site is proof of that).
As far as I know, mental illness is typically defined as the inability to cope, so being psychologically indestructible therefore seems like a benefit, not a deficit.
You probably have a point, at least in your benefit/deficit assertion. However, mental illness is not an inability to cope; no, an inability to cope is a common result of mental illness - a subtle but very significant distinction. For instance, psychopaths/sociopaths - who are definitely mentally ill - actually cope quite well; often, they are very successful in worldly terms, and only the shrewdest observers see them for what they are.
Oh, I see now. You're saying that a "well-adjusted" American is actually quite warped by the surrounding culture and given unhealthy coping mechanisms to deal with the pain of warping. I get it.
Hmmm ... I don't deal with very many well-adjusted people. And the successful people that I have known have seemed rather unhappy once my eyes got accustomed to the glare of their success. Frankly, I have yet to meet anyone, no matter how well-adjusted he or she presented him or herself, who did not turn out to be a knot of assorted miseries in desperate need of untying. But I don't live in the real world, do I? My viewpoint might be what is warped.
But not every normal person follows the American dream, and not all parts of the American dream are necessarily inherently bad. A white picket fence won't actually walk up to your room at night and terrorize you in all its wooden glory, and not every dog is a psychological Kujo. The trick is understanding the difference between wanting something because the social narrative demands that you want it and wanting something because you want it. In essence, learning to rise above peer pressure.
In itself, there is nothing wrong with the American Dream. What is wrong is what you say - people chasing after something because they feel that they must. And I think that doing that does make people ill - stress and strokes and heart attacks. It's the trying to "keep up w/the Jonses" that kills people.
Never try to keep up with the Jonses. Drag them down to your level. It's cheaper! - Quentin Crisp
Perhaps you know more than I do, but the people whom I've worked with have always tried to understand etiology where such etiology is relevant.
Well, yes - nearly everyone that enters the caring professions does so with the very best of intentions. However, unfortunately, there is the System. Insurance companies are not willing to pay for years of psychoanalysis, so only the wealthy can benefit from that type of therapy. Instead, insurance companies are eager to shove people into CBT programs, Cognitive Behavioral Programs, which, in 12 weeks, can get a mentally ill person back to work. It does not matter that the person almost invariably breaks down and winds up back in the hospital. By then, the insurance companies can drop the person because he or she will now easily get a Med-1 Form - that is, a paper that entitles a person to collect government benefits. In a system such as ours, in the end, what matters is the billing. Everybody (who counts) wins if a mentally ill person commits suicide in between rounds of treatment. Work in a mess like that long enough, and even a saint becomes at least a little callous.
Wow, those others are quite clueless, then. Isn't the connection between Major Depression and pessimism glaringly obvious even with only the DSM to guide them?
I'm a philosophical pessimist; my "guru" is the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (major influence on Freud and Jung, by the way). If you are interested, I am willing to discuss this at length. For now, I will just say that philosophical pessimism has little to do w/the old "half full/half empty" nonsense. Society and Philosophy do not define "pessimism" in the same way - just as Society and Philosophy have different definitions for the word "ideal."
You'd rather that they be crazy, you mean?
. Maybe. I don't know.
Ah, OK. You want the patient to relate to the clinician.
Well, I think that that is necessary.
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Well, mental patients are notorious for developing unrequited crushes on their therapists - and believing that the feelings are requited. I had others raise their eyebrows when I have said that my therapist likes me.