Struggling with Mental Illness

Struggling with Mental Illness

Mental illness is very difficult and is even harder because of the stigma attached. At the time of writing there is a Bell campaign dedicated to alleviating the stigma attached to suffering from a mental affliction. Still, those suffering often must struggle in silence for fear of being ridiculed. No one wants to be called crazy or told to “snap out of it” when they have a legitimate disease. On the scientific side, mental illnesses are classified by the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistics Manual) published by the APA (American Psychiatric Association) and an alternative publication named the ICD (International Classification of Diseases) distributed by the WHO (World Health Organization). Psychiatrists are the medical professionals most closely associated with treating mental disorders. Psychiatrists are medical doctors or physicians who have completed a specialization in psychiatry upon finishing medical school.

Schizophrenia merits a community response. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

So what to do if you have a mental illness? First, one has to see a general practitioner or family doctor. Many people even go to hospital emergency rooms. Once the nurses and doctors there determine that the condition has a psychiatric component, they will refer the patient to a psychiatry emergency unit. Psychiatric problems are exacerbated by the fact that the patient may not understand that he or she has a problem. For example, a person may have delusions. Delusions are persistent false beliefs held despite all evidence to the contrary, while hallucinations represent sensation and perception in the absence of any real stimuli. Thus, a person may experience erotomanic delusions, believing he or she is in a relationship with someone they have only briefly met. Let’s examine the situation from a closer point of view…

Depression affects more people than we think. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

Imagine a young woman with erotomanic delusions, such a case was portrayed in the French movie He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not. I personally once knew a woman who was in the same type of situation described in the movie. She believed she had a relationship with a man she barely knew and had only met a couple of times. Sure, she had sex with him on a couple of occasions, but the man was not in any way interested in her. As sad as it may sound, those things do happen. Sometimes you meet someone and the chemistry is just not there, and it is much worse when the chemistry is not there on only one side of the equation. But the problem lies elsewhere. Any person without a mental illness would just forgive and forget. After all, some people like you and other people do not, and that is the way the world is and the way it has pretty much always been.

Substance-induced psychosis may be treated. Image: Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

But the situation is quite different in the case of a mental illness, particularly in a case like erotomania. The person with the disease imagines that there is a relationship and that the object of their infatuation, not to call it love since it is undeniably mistaken, loves them back. In the case of the young woman I once knew, she believed that the man communicated with her through newspaper advertisements, movies, strangers on the street, TV, the radio and so on and so forth. She even had enough insight into her own ailment to ask herself, how would he be able to tailor the whole world according to their relationship? But the problem is that if a mind is ill, then it finds answers when none exist and creates scenarios that only make sense if seen through the lens of the illness. Hopefully, the woman hereby described got the help she so desperately needed and got well if not right away, then at least over the years. As many mental health professionals would agree, there is always help.