Posted by waterlily on May 23, 2002, at 16:33:59
In reply to how do YOU handle the mental illness question?, posted by terra miller on May 23, 2002, at 9:44:23
Some people were talking in the break room the other day about mental illness and how all you needed was a good diet, some shopping, and a bath to get over it. I don't usually talk to these people, but I told them that they could never truly understand depression (or any other mental illness for that matter) until they had gone through it. I told them that I take medication for depression and generalized anxiety. I was not ashamed. They should have been ashamed to talk like that without being better informed. I told them my grandfather spent some time in a mental institution, my dad was depressed and committed sucide, I have depression that is (thankfully) in partial remission, and that my 10 year old daughter has it as well. My 7 year old does not. How can you blame that on diet? I also told them about my sister-in-law who has a shell of a life due to her severe manic-depression that causes her to hear voices, attempt sucide, and spend a few months out of a year in the psychiatric hospital. Who would choose to live like that? She is adopted and her birth mother was manic-depressive. No one in her adoptive family (my mother-in-law, father-in-law, and husband) has it. If I have helped them to think differently I've done a small part in breaking the stigma of mental illness. If they think I'm strange now, too bad. I don't the approval of ignorant people.
The word "sucide" is deliberately mispelled because if I spell the word correctly my computer deletes it. Go figure.
poster:waterlily
thread:96
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20020516/msgs/98.html