Howdey,
So I am currently taking part in some free on-line further eduction courses and the first one to start is surround the topic of mental health.
Now I am meant to be reading articles and watching videos but I was distracted by a report in the further reading list - it is labled as a introduction to mental health and psychology.
I would argue we are all mentally ill – just varying
degrees of it. Discuss :)
You can find out more about this course and other free courses at https://www.futurelearn.com/
(1) “There is good reason to believe that mental health and ‘mental
illness’ (and different types of mental ‘illness’) shade into each other and
are not separate categories.”
I read this in the
report from the suggested reading list and it sparked a discussion I had once
in a pub (where all good discussions take place ;).
My point in the discussion was there is no
normal. I honestly believe everyone has some level of mental health issue or
mental distress as the report phrases it. I imagine the population as a box and
whisker diagram
The vast majority fit
inside the box and I am sure we all know of people or are on the edges of the
box by Q1 (lower quartile) and Q3 (upper). For instance in the report it
brought up how a Dutch TV programme had met people who hear voices in their heads
but were not mentally ill.
(2)
“ When we first met these
people in the wake of the TV programme, we were quite astounded because, like most
psychiatrists and indeed most lay people, we were used to
regarding people who hear voices as mentally distressed.We were forced to
change our ideas when we were confronted with well-balanced, healthy people...”
Then we have the whiskers. The
whiskers show the most extreme data points. These data points tend to be the
sensationalised view given by the media – the view which creates the stereotype
and stigma surrounding mental health.
(3) “In
2009, the total population in England and Wales was just over 43 million.
It is estimated that about one in six of the adult population will have a
significant mental health problem at any one time (more than 7 million people).
Given this number and the 50–70 cases of homicide a year involving
people known to have a mental health problem at the time of the murder, clearly the statistics data do not support
the sensationalised media coverage about the danger that people with mental
health problems present to the community.”
So is it as black and white as "a person can either be
mentally ill or not"?
I would argue we are all mentally ill – just varying
degrees of it. I would also argue that alot of people are pushed further from the median by the weight of living.
Discuss :)
Quotes 1 and 2 from Recent
advances in understanding mental illness and psychotic experiences, A report
by The British Psychological Society - on the further reading list. Quote 3 is from the Time to Change website.
Time to Change is a campaign run by the mental health charities MIND and
Rethink to end the stigma of mental health.
(http://schizophrenia.com/research/Rep03.pdf)
