The Philosophy of Mental Health

anon · January 7, 2011, 6:29pm

WW_III_ANGRY:

anon:

turtle:

anon-----of course there is no “the” cause of depression. but there may be certain brain structures or something else that are crucial to the understanding that will come. it wont come via the drug companies.

I’m not sure it makes sense to think of depression as something “fixable” at all. Depression is a natural part of what it is to be human, and in mild form is something I wouldn’t want to do away with necessarily. But depression can be debilitating of course. I don’t know what makes depression debilitating for some people. But regardless of what the main reasons for such debilitating depression may be, I think that by understanding the complexity of all the contributing factors we can empower ourselves to learn to live with pain, loss, and imperfection. I think one significant contributing factor to depression is that we expect and want our lives to go perfectly - or at least very well. Or we want life to be fair, or to be reasonable. But life is neither of these, and our lives our bound to not go according to plan. Coming to terms with this may help.

There is depression and there is clinical depression though.

Yes, I discussed that in what you quoted. Debilitating depression is clinical depression I assume.

turtle · January 7, 2011, 6:30pm

anon:

turtle:

anon-----of course there is no “the” cause of depression. but there may be certain brain structures or something else that are crucial to the understanding that will come. it wont come via the drug companies.

I’m not sure it makes sense to think of depression as something “fixable” at all. Depression is a natural part of what it is to be human, and in mild form is something I wouldn’t want to do away with necessarily. But depression can be debilitating of course. I don’t know what makes depression debilitating for some people. But regardless of what the main reasons for such debilitating depression may be, I think that by understanding the complexity of all the contributing factors we can empower ourselves to learn to live with pain, loss, and imperfection. I think one significant contributing factor to depression is that we expect and want our lives to go perfectly - or at least very well. Or we want life to be fair, or to be reasonable. But life is neither of these, and our lives our bound to not go according to plan. Coming to terms with this may help.

what you say is correct for some of what we see. but if you are talking about the major depressions you are misinformed. i am talking about severe shit that tends toward suicide. ever had a kid kill themselves. then you would know.

anon · January 7, 2011, 6:35pm

turtle:

anon:

turtle:

anon-----of course there is no “the” cause of depression. but there may be certain brain structures or something else that are crucial to the understanding that will come. it wont come via the drug companies.

I’m not sure it makes sense to think of depression as something “fixable” at all. Depression is a natural part of what it is to be human, and in mild form is something I wouldn’t want to do away with necessarily. But depression can be debilitating of course. I don’t know what makes depression debilitating for some people. But regardless of what the main reasons for such debilitating depression may be, I think that by understanding the complexity of all the contributing factors we can empower ourselves to learn to live with pain, loss, and imperfection. I think one significant contributing factor to depression is that we expect and want our lives to go perfectly - or at least very well. Or we want life to be fair, or to be reasonable. But life is neither of these, and our lives our bound to not go according to plan. Coming to terms with this may help.

what you say is correct for some of what we see. but if you are talking about the major depressions you are misinformed. i am talking about severe shit that tends toward suicide. ever had a kid kill themselves. then you would know.

I’m misinformed? How so? By saying I don’t know what the main causes are? By saying that despite that, there are some things that can help anyway?

gib · January 7, 2011, 7:10pm

JohnJones:

It is socially less divisive, and accurate, to describe people who have mental health problems, such as so-called clinical depression or bipolar disorder, as nutcases or crazies, etc. I always do.

Here is the philosophy of mental health - it is a category that stigmatises. Get rid of it. The stigma of mental illness is hard to combat because mental illness IS itself a deliberately created stigma. Better to be philosophically honest and use the term that mental illness is a metaphor for - nutcase, crazy.

To describe our inner life or personhood (or soul or centre if you like) as illness or “healthy” is to socially disenfranchise that personhood by relegating it to the non-social realm of a fleshy machine.

That is why it is better to say that someone who is supposedly clinically depressed, or has some other clinical myth, is crazy. For “mental health/illness” stigmatises a person by saying that personhood, right down to its soul or centre, isn’t that of a person, but is that of a machine that can be tinkered with by clinicians.

I don’t think this is right at all. If the term ‘mental illness’ were ever thought to be perfectly interchangeable with ‘crazy’ or ‘nutcase’, that would be derogatory and a radical misunderstanding of what the term ‘mental illness’ is supposed to mean. Any professional - or just those of us who wish to speak out of respect and compassion - will prefer the term ‘mental illness’ precisely because we wish to distance ourselves from the pejorative stigmas that come from other terms such as ‘crazy’, ‘nutcase’, ‘batty’, ‘loony’, etc. We want to reflect that mental state of the subject as an objective, medical fact - not a judgment. The goal is to help the person by starting with the most realistic assessment we can, not to relegate the person to the dark corners of society where they are ridiculed, raped of their sense of self-worth, and basically done away with so we don’t have to deal with them. It’s only the latter from which any stigmatization gets attached. If we could ever do away with it (which is an impossible ideal), stigma would be replaced by compassion.

And yeah maybe it is a label of sorts, maybe it’s condescending, and maybe we’re just plane wrong in our so-called medical/objective self-appointed ‘expertise’, but at least we’re trying to help, at least we haven’t lost our compassion. It is not dehumanizing at all - at least it’s not meant to be - and it is not supposed to reduce the subject to a machine needing to be ‘fixed’. What it is is a perspective that reminds us - or is supposed to - that there is a real person within the fray of the mental condition, a human being that might need some measure of help to deal with that condition. To toss out the label of ‘mental illness’ - or worse, to replace it with ‘crazy’ - is to turn a blind eye to this fact - that he or she is still human and still deserves respect and love.

statiktech · January 7, 2011, 7:48pm

turtle:

anon:

I’m not sure it makes sense to think of depression as something “fixable” at all. Depression is a natural part of what it is to be human, and in mild form is something I wouldn’t want to do away with necessarily. But depression can be debilitating of course. I don’t know what makes depression debilitating for some people. But regardless of what the main reasons for such debilitating depression may be, I think that by understanding the complexity of all the contributing factors we can empower ourselves to learn to live with pain, loss, and imperfection. I think one significant contributing factor to depression is that we expect and want our lives to go perfectly - or at least very well. Or we want life to be fair, or to be reasonable. But life is neither of these, and our lives our bound to not go according to plan. Coming to terms with this may help.

what you say is correct for some of what we see. but if you are talking about the major depressions you are misinformed. i am talking about severe shit that tends toward suicide. ever had a kid kill themselves. then you would know.

No, you wouldn’t. Your kid would know, but you’d be left speculate after his death and wallow in your own self misery [as if it is somehow akin to his]. I think Anon hit the nail right on the head, personally. I’m not here to wax indignant about my personal problems, but I will say that I speak from experience.

We are conceived and raised under the burden of expectation – to be human is to desire, and most parents naturally desire their own offspring to be “healthy” and “happy”. However, those terms do not represent states of being in themselves; they represent some cultural notion of what constitutes a “good” quality of life. Thus, for instance, rather than living with Autism as a natural variation among human beings, we treat it as a sickness because it differs from what we - who are NOT autistic - determine as “normalcy”.

Even in people with Bipolar disorder, or schizophrenia, that depend upon medication to assist them in coping, and introspective understanding is absolutely integral to their desire/ability to live and function according to expectation. If you can’t be considered “normal”, you may as well maximize your quality of life as you are. That kind of understanding is empowering to people who have been treated as if biologically inferior.

iambiguous · January 7, 2011, 8:07pm

JohnJones:

It is socially less divisive, and accurate, to describe people who have mental health problems, such as so-called clinical depression or bipolar disorder, as nutcases or crazies, etc. I always do.

Here is the philosophy of mental health - it is a category that stigmatises. Get rid of it. The stigma of mental illness is hard to combat because mental illness IS itself a deliberately created stigma. Better to be philosophically honest and use the term that mental illness is a metaphor for - nutcase, crazy.

To describe our inner life or personhood (or soul or centre if you like) as illness or “healthy” is to socially disenfranchise that personhood by relegating it to the non-social realm of a fleshy machine.

That is why it is better to say that someone who is supposedly clinically depressed, or has some other clinical myth, is crazy. For “mental health/illness” stigmatises a person by saying that personhood, right down to its soul or centre, isn’t that of a person, but is that of a machine that can be tinkered with by clinicians.

Is this perchance an actual clinical observation on your part? If so, which cloud do you practice on? I’m up here on 9 and haven’t seen you around. ; o )

Seriously though, mental health and mental illness are just words we invented to describe something that can never actually be described. It’s easy enough to embrace the ideas of Thomas Szasz, RD Laing and Nurse Ratched. Just assume mental illness is a political construct.

Simply fly over the cuckoo’s nest and get on with your life?

Unless of course you really are cuckoo.

jonquil · January 7, 2011, 8:29pm

Lol. Won what? You didn’t answer the question. I don’t need to study this stuff, you need to answer my questions here, now.

OK, I’ll put you out of your misery. Drugging is a form of abuse and oppression, particularly when the drug is worse than the ailment.

uglypeoplefucking · January 7, 2011, 9:48pm

drugs allow some people to function practically in spite of depression; they can be good things; necessarry things. yes we should also address all the environmental and social contingencies that contribute to and exacerbate the depression, but if a chemical imbalance can be rectified or at least made less severe then that helps too. medication may be overprescribed but that doesn’t make it bad for everybody.

statiktech · January 7, 2011, 10:13pm

Which is worse: A debilitating biological condition or the “oppression” of a medicine which lightens the burden?

Common sense alone should suffice on this one…

JohnJones · January 7, 2011, 11:11pm

I agree. Though if I get rid of “nutcase”, you must get rid of “malfunction”.

JohnJones · January 7, 2011, 11:13pm

Yes, that’s a good one too. Twat is much better than being clinically sad.

Jakob · January 7, 2011, 11:26pm

Sickness of this type, compulsive neurosis, psychosis, can be of use if it is present in a person with artistic talent. Such a person may suffer for the benefit of others and ultimately for himself, as he finds salvation of a new sense of self, a self which he may even esteem, in the meaning of his suffering. The madman can attain a greater stability of in this way, a new faculty in the consciousness - a form of sanity not known to sane people. This sanity will ironically provoke the most shocked reactions in the listener when it is formulated by the mad artists - he will use the most perverse and violent concepts to justify the everyday, mundane, healthy world in a sardonic sense of bitterness, which only to him is tasted as sweet, irony, beauty, sense - and the highest value of this everyday world, which to him is hell, is its use to breed the most perverse and violent concepts by he transmutes his own suffering into the objects of stern balance within wild eruption that only such madmen are capable of creating.

cheegster · January 8, 2011, 1:28pm

JohnJones:

It is socially less divisive, and accurate, to describe people who have mental health problems, such as so-called clinical depression or bipolar disorder, as nutcases or crazies, etc. I always do.

Here is the philosophy of mental health - it is a category that stigmatises. Get rid of it. The stigma of mental illness is hard to combat because mental illness IS itself a deliberately created stigma. Better to be philosophically honest and use the term that mental illness is a metaphor for - nutcase, crazy.

To describe our inner life or personhood (or soul or centre if you like) as illness or “healthy” is to socially disenfranchise that personhood by relegating it to the non-social realm of a fleshy machine.

That is why it is better to say that someone who is supposedly clinically depressed, or has some other clinical myth, is crazy. For “mental health/illness” stigmatises a person by saying that personhood, right down to its soul or centre, isn’t that of a person, but is that of a machine that can be tinkered with by clinicians.

I think ‘mentally ill’ is just fine. Asides from ‘nutcase’ being a fairly harsh word for some ‘mental illness’, it’s seen as morederogatory as well. I’m not convinced there’s much more to it than that.

JohnJones · January 9, 2011, 10:37pm

Jakob:

Sickness of this type, compulsive neurosis, psychosis, can be of use if it is present in a person with artistic talent. Such a person may suffer for the benefit of others and ultimately for himself, as he finds salvation of a new sense of self, a self which he may even esteem, in the meaning of his suffering. The madman can attain a greater stability of in this way, a new faculty in the consciousness - a form of sanity not known to sane people. This sanity will ironically provoke the most shocked reactions in the listener when it is formulated by the mad artists - he will use the most perverse and violent concepts to justify the everyday, mundane, healthy world in a sardonic sense of bitterness, which only to him is tasted as sweet, irony, beauty, sense - and the highest value of this everyday world, which to him is hell, is its use to breed the most perverse and violent concepts by he transmutes his own suffering into the objects of stern balance within wild eruption that only such madmen are capable of creating.

This “sickness” you speak of is fausty, it has the odiferous whiff of the status quo and its moral censure.

JohnJones · January 9, 2011, 10:39pm

cheegster:

JohnJones:

It is socially less divisive, and accurate, to describe people who have mental health problems, such as so-called clinical depression or bipolar disorder, as nutcases or crazies, etc. I always do.

Here is the philosophy of mental health - it is a category that stigmatises. Get rid of it. The stigma of mental illness is hard to combat because mental illness IS itself a deliberately created stigma. Better to be philosophically honest and use the term that mental illness is a metaphor for - nutcase, crazy.

To describe our inner life or personhood (or soul or centre if you like) as illness or “healthy” is to socially disenfranchise that personhood by relegating it to the non-social realm of a fleshy machine.

That is why it is better to say that someone who is supposedly clinically depressed, or has some other clinical myth, is crazy. For “mental health/illness” stigmatises a person by saying that personhood, right down to its soul or centre, isn’t that of a person, but is that of a machine that can be tinkered with by clinicians.

I think ‘mentally ill’ is just fine. Asides from ‘nutcase’ being a fairly harsh word for some ‘mental illness’, it’s seen as morederogatory as well. I’m not convinced there’s much more to it than that.

To describe our inner life or personhood (or soul or centre if you like) as illness or “healthy” is to socially disenfranchise that personhood by relegating it to the non-social realm of a fleshy machine.

That is why it is better to say that someone who is supposedly clinically depressed, or has some other clinical myth, is crazy. For “mental health/illness” stigmatises a person by saying that personhood, right down to its soul or centre, isn’t that of a person, but is that of a machine that can be tinkered with by clinicians.

JohnJones · January 9, 2011, 10:42pm

iambiguous:

JohnJones:

It is socially less divisive, and accurate, to describe people who have mental health problems, such as so-called clinical depression or bipolar disorder, as nutcases or crazies, etc. I always do.

Here is the philosophy of mental health - it is a category that stigmatises. Get rid of it. The stigma of mental illness is hard to combat because mental illness IS itself a deliberately created stigma. Better to be philosophically honest and use the term that mental illness is a metaphor for - nutcase, crazy.

To describe our inner life or personhood (or soul or centre if you like) as illness or “healthy” is to socially disenfranchise that personhood by relegating it to the non-social realm of a fleshy machine.

That is why it is better to say that someone who is supposedly clinically depressed, or has some other clinical myth, is crazy. For “mental health/illness” stigmatises a person by saying that personhood, right down to its soul or centre, isn’t that of a person, but is that of a machine that can be tinkered with by clinicians.

Is this perchance an actual clinical observation on your part? If so, which cloud do you practice on? I’m up here on 9 and haven’t seen you around. ; o )

Seriously though, mental health and mental illness are just words we invented to describe something that can never actually be described. It’s easy enough to embrace the ideas of Thomas Szasz, RD Laing and Nurse Ratched. Just assume mental illness is a political construct.

Simply fly over the cuckoo’s nest and get on with your life?

Unless of course you really are cuckoo.

What’s “clinical” ?

JohnJones · January 9, 2011, 10:44pm

WW_III_ANGRY:

anon:

turtle:

anon-----of course there is no “the” cause of depression. but there may be certain brain structures or something else that are crucial to the understanding that will come. it wont come via the drug companies.

I’m not sure it makes sense to think of depression as something “fixable” at all. Depression is a natural part of what it is to be human, and in mild form is something I wouldn’t want to do away with necessarily. But depression can be debilitating of course. I don’t know what makes depression debilitating for some people. But regardless of what the main reasons for such debilitating depression may be, I think that by understanding the complexity of all the contributing factors we can empower ourselves to learn to live with pain, loss, and imperfection. I think one significant contributing factor to depression is that we expect and want our lives to go perfectly - or at least very well. Or we want life to be fair, or to be reasonable. But life is neither of these, and our lives our bound to not go according to plan. Coming to terms with this may help.

There is depression and there is clinical depression though.

That must be one of the all-time great platitudes.

What, exactly, or even roughly, is the distinction between clinical and non-clinical? I don’t think anyone thinks about the way we parrot that bogus distinction.

rust · January 9, 2011, 11:16pm

Compensation, literally.

WW_III_ANGRY · January 10, 2011, 12:47pm

So you have dubbed it a bogus distinction while asking what it is at the same time? What are you prematurely applying some defense mechanism for your own ignorance? Since you have done such already, google is your friend, if you really want to know.

cheegster · January 10, 2011, 8:16pm

It depends if you take a physicalist appraoch. Although I generally like to think in terms of humanism, I find the physiological approach to humans pretty much spot on. So describing a person as a ‘fleshy machine’ to me is ultimately correct. To say it is relegating a person to this state…hmm that’s interesting. Not sure if I agree with that or not.

Would you generally like to regrd humans as a fleshy machine then?