The epidemic of mental illness

[mariness]

Much to write about, but still too exhausted to write most of it, so instead, linking you, and especially trouble and caligatia, to this article in the New York Review of Books about the epidemic of mental illness and pharmaceutical drugs.

(Not adding any personal comments/insights, just noting the article.)

Comments

[trouble]

A few of my thoughts, at least:

I do think that there's a tendency to view mental health conditions, whether short or long term, or permanent, as "medicate them and get them away from me." I've been prescribed psychiatric medications with no follow-up by medical doctors who I literally walked in off the street to see. There's never been any suggestion that I do any other type of therapy to handle my concerns. I think it's part of the problem that mental health care concerns are just not seen as a priority.

Based on that article (which I know is part 1 of 2), I can't tell if the authors of these books imply as much about the history of mental health conditions as the author of the article does. There's this weird theory that mental health conditions in general seemed to suddenly spring into existence in the 60s, and are now useless frippery indulgences in the US since the 90s. Which nicely ignores the huge amount of research into mental health conditions that goes back at least till the eleventh century in Europe, including quite famous examples of people with long-term and repeated lapses into the sorts of symptoms they're describing as schizophrenia.

[mariness]

:: nods :: Thanks. I admittedly don't know much about the history of mental health, but I do know that the 14th and 19th centuries certainly had numerous people with long term symptoms - in some cases, probable schizophrenia, in other cases (the 14th century in particular) what would now be called post traumatic stress (for survivors of the Black Death and the often turbulent social conditions that followed.) I do know that in 14th century terms "diseases of the mind" were often used for very specific political and social purposes, which makes any type of determination of the rate of mental illness suspect.

But this is all stuff gathered accidentally through other studies, and it's definitely not my field, which is why I wanted your considerably better researched outlook :)