A society that doesn't know how to care

by Brian Disagree

I started struggling with mental health issues back in 1986 when I was six or seven years old. Today, I am 27 and because of standard psychiatric practices and policies, nothing has gotten better. The issues have actually gotten worse. You would have thought that our current mental health system with its potent mind-numbing drugs, confinement and oppression would have worked, or at least they want me to think it would. But it never has and never will. When does forcing drugs down a person's throat and locking them up in a confined space, because you don't fully understand what is happening to them, do them any good?

some of us do understand what is happening. However, we continue to suffer because we live in a society that has never learned to help people in a positive way when they are struggling with certain issues in life. Many of us have few, if any, close knit relationships where we can talk about very intimate issues in a deep manner. Oddly enough, some of us have simple nutritional imbalances because we can't afford to feed ourselves properly. And others - we're struggling with societal and situational oppression, like physical or verbal abuse, which is wrapped around us.

Unfortunately, mental health issues are not easy to solve. No problem is easy to solve and we know that. There is, however, a vast amount of knowledge of these issues already out there but we live in a close-minded society where people like to think that they know everything (about mental health issues) and the person going through them is wrong. The closed-minded psychiatrists continue doggedly with their "science-based" approach without actually looking for a real solution, such as how the person might want to be helped. They would rather cover up the problem so they can pretend they are doing something good. In their minds they have helped the person, but I am proof that twenty years later, oppression someone by locking them up against their will and forcing drugs down their throat to cover up the problem doesn't make someone's life better. It makes it worse.

My life today is no different that it was twenty years ago in terms of struggling with fewer issues. You'd think this would make the doctors change the way they "help" people, but they continue to persist in ruining what would be and could be good lives. These policies they use disable your mind and in return disable your life and you continue to live in a state of being disabled when you aren't. It's okay to be disabled, but when you weren't born disabled, why would you want to be turned into a disabled person?

I understand mental health issues are caused by different things, namely societal, environmental, nutritional and so on. But we need to look at the root of the issue.

If a light bulb turns off because I blew the fuse, I'm not going to put a new light bulb in and think the problem is corrected. I'm going to go to the fuse box and put in a new fuse and then turn on the light. Do you see what I mean?

I really don't want other lives to be destroyed like mine has been. I should have a wife by now or at least a girlfriend, but I don't. I actually haven't ever held down a full time job. I continue to struggle with what happened 20 years ago.

Psychiatry's oppressive methods obviously haven't worked. I bet you that if, from the start, they had showed me love, attention and support, as well as taught me about good nutrition, I would not suffer from mental health issues. Good food and intimate relationships filled with compassion and lots of support is what we need, not oppressive psychiatric policies which disable and hurt us emotionally as well as physically.

Now, here I am. I can't help but be depressed. A change in tactics from these doctors, like acquiring compassion, empathy and understanding, as well as an open mind to other methods of helping a child struggling with "mental illnesses" would have changed my life for the better. But they don't have that, so I will probably continue to suffer.