I'd add to the conversation that it's important to bring in other elements besides the points you've made so well. My experience is that there is also an interactive, social element to this stuff. How people react to others with specific disorders seem to have an impact on people's ability to deal with their mental illness. I have a close friend who had repeated psychotic episodes when she was living in abusive situation and after the situation changed, the episodes stopped.
There're also financial issues too. I knew another who was severely disturbed (I hesitate to state an illness---but I thought schizophrenia if I had to guess) but managed to keep herself together (car, apartment, clothes) simply because she had financial support from her family. Since poverty is inherently hard work, I can only suspect that many of the things that put us off many people with mental illness is the poverty we force them to live in.
As for dissociative personality disorder, I've had the odd short period of conscious dissociation, so I suspect that I have a better chance to understand it than most. What I learn from it is that the fundamentally unitary model of consciousness that is the Ur Philosophy of modern society is simply wrong. We may not 'contain multitudes', but there are several voices and perspectives in each of us.
As for guilt. That too is a burden. I came from a dysfunctional family and had a dysfunctional adolescence and early adulthood---which means I did some things that weren't pretty and haunt me to this day. I like the idea that people are trying grade mental states on a curve instead of pass/fail. But, as you point out, this can go too far. There still failing grades! But having said that, it is really important to cut out the idea that people have some sort of omnipotent intelligence and self-control that allows them to always do the right thing, in every instance of their entire lives. And if they make one mistake they need to be punished for it forever.
Almost nobody wants to accept that we are all flawed and manifest those flaws in a myriad of terrible ways. If you really hold onto that idea and work through the implications, there are a lot of things that people don't want to accept. For example, how about pedophiles, rapists, mass murders, dictators, war criminals, etc? Where do you draw the line when you start to seriously look at the complexity of human behaviour? That's a can of worms that almost no one wants to open---left or right.
You are so right about life circumstances and their influence on mental health. I remember reading an article years ago that talked about how the majority of people with bipolar or schizophrenia who check themselves into a hospital during an episode are never asked about whether there was a traumatic event that preceded it, but in the vast majority of cases there was. Mental health treatment is usually anything but holistic. More often than not, people are written off when they have a previous diagnosis, and doctors may never look further into other life circumstances that are influencing an episode.
This was an excellent, thoughtful piece about such a very difficult subject. 30 years ago I first met an author, who became a friend, who was writing mysteries with a bi-polar protagonist. Excellent mysteries, but her goal was to push back against the idea that people with mental illnesses were all violent, and her motivation was her bi-polar son. Watching that protagonist struggle with the questions of taking medication, what it gave her, what it took from her, was one of the best educations I have ever had in understanding why it is that the people who have subsequently come into my life, who have that particular illness, so often refuse or go off their medication.
I think one of the best things about Abigail Padgett's series (Bo Bradley mystery series) was that the plot wasn't specifically about the illness. Just as a good mystery with three-dimensional characters will have the protagonist dealing with a variety of things in their lives (trouble with their partners, how to pay the bills, a car that needs fixing) as they go along solving the mystery, for Bo, managing (or not always managing) her illness is part what she has to deal with in life.
I think your question about whether books and movies are moving beyond the surface qualities and deep into the humanity of diverse peoples is a good one. I think that the general mode of contemporary literature today is to feature lightly-flawed heroes—diverse in race and ethnicity but not in depth of characterization.
I am very nearly dumfounded, in the face of the raw narrative in the personal and yet objective article at the heart of your post, and how you turned that into such a well informed presentation of our societies view of mental illnesses and our defensive preference to vanilla-ize those illnesses and those who suffer.
I think the thriller novel, lMystic River” by Dennis Lehane offers one of the most gripping portrayals of mental illness while providing a great murder mystery. The explanation of the inner workings of the mental illness is isolated to one chapter I believe toward the middle of the book, but I remember it being spell binding. At that point when I read it, I had never read the inner thoughts of such a character before. I highly recommend it. The movie adaptation of the novel did not do it justice.
With regard to "Reframing Mental Illness"
Great post.
I'd add to the conversation that it's important to bring in other elements besides the points you've made so well. My experience is that there is also an interactive, social element to this stuff. How people react to others with specific disorders seem to have an impact on people's ability to deal with their mental illness. I have a close friend who had repeated psychotic episodes when she was living in abusive situation and after the situation changed, the episodes stopped.
There're also financial issues too. I knew another who was severely disturbed (I hesitate to state an illness---but I thought schizophrenia if I had to guess) but managed to keep herself together (car, apartment, clothes) simply because she had financial support from her family. Since poverty is inherently hard work, I can only suspect that many of the things that put us off many people with mental illness is the poverty we force them to live in.
As for dissociative personality disorder, I've had the odd short period of conscious dissociation, so I suspect that I have a better chance to understand it than most. What I learn from it is that the fundamentally unitary model of consciousness that is the Ur Philosophy of modern society is simply wrong. We may not 'contain multitudes', but there are several voices and perspectives in each of us.
As for guilt. That too is a burden. I came from a dysfunctional family and had a dysfunctional adolescence and early adulthood---which means I did some things that weren't pretty and haunt me to this day. I like the idea that people are trying grade mental states on a curve instead of pass/fail. But, as you point out, this can go too far. There still failing grades! But having said that, it is really important to cut out the idea that people have some sort of omnipotent intelligence and self-control that allows them to always do the right thing, in every instance of their entire lives. And if they make one mistake they need to be punished for it forever.
Almost nobody wants to accept that we are all flawed and manifest those flaws in a myriad of terrible ways. If you really hold onto that idea and work through the implications, there are a lot of things that people don't want to accept. For example, how about pedophiles, rapists, mass murders, dictators, war criminals, etc? Where do you draw the line when you start to seriously look at the complexity of human behaviour? That's a can of worms that almost no one wants to open---left or right.
You are so right about life circumstances and their influence on mental health. I remember reading an article years ago that talked about how the majority of people with bipolar or schizophrenia who check themselves into a hospital during an episode are never asked about whether there was a traumatic event that preceded it, but in the vast majority of cases there was. Mental health treatment is usually anything but holistic. More often than not, people are written off when they have a previous diagnosis, and doctors may never look further into other life circumstances that are influencing an episode.
This was an excellent, thoughtful piece about such a very difficult subject. 30 years ago I first met an author, who became a friend, who was writing mysteries with a bi-polar protagonist. Excellent mysteries, but her goal was to push back against the idea that people with mental illnesses were all violent, and her motivation was her bi-polar son. Watching that protagonist struggle with the questions of taking medication, what it gave her, what it took from her, was one of the best educations I have ever had in understanding why it is that the people who have subsequently come into my life, who have that particular illness, so often refuse or go off their medication.
That sounds like an amazing story. I’d like to see more characters like the people in my life in mainstream books. I think most people feel that way.
I think one of the best things about Abigail Padgett's series (Bo Bradley mystery series) was that the plot wasn't specifically about the illness. Just as a good mystery with three-dimensional characters will have the protagonist dealing with a variety of things in their lives (trouble with their partners, how to pay the bills, a car that needs fixing) as they go along solving the mystery, for Bo, managing (or not always managing) her illness is part what she has to deal with in life.
I think your question about whether books and movies are moving beyond the surface qualities and deep into the humanity of diverse peoples is a good one. I think that the general mode of contemporary literature today is to feature lightly-flawed heroes—diverse in race and ethnicity but not in depth of characterization.
I think you are absolutely right.
I am very nearly dumfounded, in the face of the raw narrative in the personal and yet objective article at the heart of your post, and how you turned that into such a well informed presentation of our societies view of mental illnesses and our defensive preference to vanilla-ize those illnesses and those who suffer.
I think the thriller novel, lMystic River” by Dennis Lehane offers one of the most gripping portrayals of mental illness while providing a great murder mystery. The explanation of the inner workings of the mental illness is isolated to one chapter I believe toward the middle of the book, but I remember it being spell binding. At that point when I read it, I had never read the inner thoughts of such a character before. I highly recommend it. The movie adaptation of the novel did not do it justice.