Mental illness - barking (mad) up the wrong tree

This is a new one for me! Not a thought in my head (worth writing about, that is) but I am writing all the same.

Take the way most of us look at life! A great deal of disharmony and general unhappiness in life generally arises because we, again generally, don’t understand how life works. Taking a ‘mechanistic’ view of life gives rise to many misconceptions. We buy things and do things because they bring us comfort or pleasure. We then take this same thought process and apply it to all aspects of our lives. We have this belief that buying something new will make us happy. We tend to use ‘retail therapy’ to solve our problems, or try to solve them. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach to life – in fact it is a necessary facet of life in the 21st Century. Trouble is, this approach is not always as effective as we would hope or expect, is it?

We are a whole lot more than the molecules that constitute the 50 billion or so cells that make up each of our bodies. We have sense impressions; we have thoughts and ideas; we have emotions that somehow are all derived from these self same molecules and cells. Now, I cannot believe that a bunch of (originally) inanimate substances, which I might add will return to their inanimate state at the time of my (hopefully lamented) death, constitute all that I call ‘Life’ and ‘Living’. There is something else, something that animates the collection of cells. This of course applies to all things that we observe to be ‘alive’, be it a plant, an animal, insect, amoeba or any other form of ‘life’.

This ‘matter’ of ‘Life’ gets even more confusing if we delve deeper and enter the realm of quantum physics (about which I know very, very little) which states that matter = energy and that energy = matter (remember E=MC2?). If this is true where does this leave ‘life’? How can energy be animated? What is ‘dead’ energy (i.e. some matter which was alive and is now dead) compared to ‘live’ energy (i.e. some matter which is animated and alive)? Nobody knows.

In all this the human brain remains a lump of gray matter, alive but without any sense of touch (it has no pain receptors so feels no pain) it is a processor - like the mother board in a computer. Basically it processes the information it receives from the body’s senses – it cannot do things for itself; it cannot tell itself what to think.

"As the scientist Gerald Edelman has pointed out, the human cortex alone has 30 billion neurons and is capable of making 1 billion synaptic connections. Edelman writes, 'if we consider the number of possible neural circuits, we would be dealing with hyper-astronomical numbers: 10 followed by at least a million zeros, (there are 10 followed by 79 zeros, give or take a few, of particles in the known universe).' These staggering numbers explain why the human brain can be described as the most complex known object in the universe, and why it is capable of ongoing, massive microconstructural change, and capable of performing so many different mental functions and behaviours, including our different cultural activities." (Norman Doige, 2007, “The brain that changes itself” p294).

Wonderful as the brain is, it is not the ‘mind’. As I have said on other occasions there seems to be something ‘behind’ or ‘above’ or ‘superior’ to the brain that promotes thoughts, ideas, emotions and concepts – call it ‘Life’, or ‘Consciousness’ or whatever – something exists to make something ‘alive’.

All this gets me to where I was going when I started writing – that we are more than the body; that our mind is more than the brain. So it worries me when people either pump themselves full or are pumped full of ‘mind altering’ drugs to ‘cure’ a mental illness (this is the ‘mechanistic’ approach). To me an illness is something which affects the body in a manner which can be verified – such as measles, Aids or cancer or a diseased organ (liver, kidney etc). An illness is something that happens to a person which can be tested pathologically. What is called a ‘mental illness’, to me, is something which is judged or assumed to be as such, because of what people do – there is no known pathological test for a ‘mental illness’. This is a big difference. So it worries me when I read in various documents published by the Western Australian Government’s Chief Psychiatrist regarding ‘treatment for this supposed ‘mental illness’ that:

“The psychiatrist’s decision to make you an involuntary patient will be based on his or her opinion of whether or not you have a mental illness. A Mental Illness is defined in the Western Australian Mental Health Act (1996) as:

‘a disturbance of thought, mood, volition, perception, orientation or memory that impairs judgement or behaviour to a significant extent’.”

My comment:

How in God's name can this 'definition' be described as defining an illness and from who's view point? That of the psychiatrist? How does he/she know WHY a person may think the way he or she does?

What is a disturbance of thought? And what is a 'disturbance ... to a significant extent? How much is significant? Who decides this? What is normal and who determines any variance from ‘normal’?

Many of us have moments of impaired judgement - no one is perfect!

The ‘treatment’ for this so called ‘mental illness’ may involve the voluntary (or involuntary) consumption of brain altering drugs. This really bothers me particularly when the following warning is thoughtfully provided by the Chief Psychiatrist at the end of his various publications (remember the treatment is supposed to cure the ‘illness!!):

“ FDA Product Information Warning
Patients with major depressive disorder, both adult and pediatric, may experience worsening of their depression and/or the emergence of suicidal ideation and behavior (suicidality), whether or not they are taking antidepressant medications, and this risk may persist until significant remission occurs. Although there has been a long-standing concern that antidepressants may have a role in inducing worsening of depression and the emergence of suicidality in certain patients, a causal role for antidepressants in inducing such behaviors has not been established. Nevertheless, patients being treated with antidepressants should be observed closely for clinical worsening and suicidality, especially at the beginning of a course of drug therapy, or at the time of dose changes, either increases or decreases.

Consideration should be given to changing the therapeutic regimen, including possibly discontinuing the medication, in patients whose depression is persistently worse or whose emergent suicidality is severe, abrupt in onset, or was not part of the patient’s presenting symptoms.”

I really don’t think they know what they are doing and I don't believe this is ethical! Being an ‘involuntary’ patient must be an awful experience – worse than jail – and to have brain altering drugs forced down ones throat!