Most people are familiar with the psychological experiments that have placed mentally sound adults in clinical settings for a prolonged length of time, leaving the participant to filter in with the rest of the clinical population, only to produce in the subject what has come to be known as 'institutional insanity'. To surmise the findings of these studies,if you take a sane person, place him/her in an environment with mentally unstable cohabitants, treat the 'normal' adult as though he/she was no different than the clinical population, then he/she will later produce behavior that would be characterized as insane. Watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest if you'd prefer a visual depiction rather than a scholarly journal article. It's debatable if RP McMurphy was truly mentally fit before entering into what was then called an 'asylum', but what would now be euphemistically labeled a 'mental health rehabilitation center', but regardless, when you placed his behavior under a microscope, he too fit the bill of a 'lunatic' just as the other men on his ward did. With all of our idiosyncrasies, couldn't each of us, for some reason or another, be diagnosed with one or more disorders from the DSM-IV? The answer is 'yes'.
I have my gripes with the psychological field. More so because there exists a schism between researchers and clinical practitioners that goes unnoticed by the population at large. In my own opinion, I feel that there is much less bullshit to trudge through for the researcher, whereas clinicians practice theories (in most cases) that have yet to be determined as effective more than chance results alone would predict. I, for one, feel that society is becoming too dependent on medication, and physician evaluation to function in everyday life. I'm not pulling a 'Tom Cruise -jumping-on-couches-and condemning Brooke Shields' moment. In cases where there is severe trauma or chemical imbalance, I believe that it is more than appropriate to seek professional help. My major issue is that people who could function on their own, but need reassurance from a counselor/psychologist/whatever other name a 2 year degree can post on your wall, use the mental health profession as a crutch.
Everyone has problems. No matter how perfect your life may seem, there's always something that causes consternation at some point in time that makes you remove your rose-colored glasses, rub your forehead, and say "Shit!". A person's behavior when this happens says a lot about their character. Do you choose to drink your problems away? Do you stop eating? Do you overeat? Do you call your best friend for a good chat? Or do you hop on the telephone with your general physician to get a referral to the nearest and most ready-to-prescribe mental health clinician available?
People cope differently. That's part of what makes humans unique... to the extent that we can even say that we truly differ that greatly from one another. For an example, here's how I cope:
Something shitty happens to me that I find irksome/depressing/infuriating. I come home from work, call my best friend, bitch for a few hours, end up laughing about how ridiculously absurd life is, and then depending on the severity of the issue, close the night with a few beers or watch a few episodes of Arrested Development to take my mind off of things. I'd venture a guess that lots of people cope in a similar way. However, when your knee-jerk reaction is to immediately think "No one could ever feel as awful as I do. This is the worst agony ever experienced by a human being. I need some Valium/lithium/Prozac/ambien/xanax/anything with a chemical name that is too long to pronounce correctly." Then... perhaps you have a problem that cannot be mitigated by drug use.
I'm incredibly sympathetic to those that need medication to alter their internal chemical state to achieve homeostasis and a better quality of life. However, if you use a medicine-cabinet cocktail to elevate your mood when sad, and calm you down when anxious, then you're no longer living... you're simply just reacting to chemical stimuli.
Emotions are what make us human. Accept them for what they are. Appreciate the times in life when you feel that the weight of the world is on your shoulders. There will be a reprieve, and when it happens, you'll be able to enjoy the lull in the storm all the more because you'll know how much of a suck-fest life can be at times.
If you have a friend going through a rough patch, talk to him/her. It seems that people's reliance on mental health practitioners could be somewhat lessened if people felt comfortable expressing their true feelings to a good friend who can offer at the very least empathy if not sympathy. It's a sad state of things when in today's world it seems that there's more of a dearth of good, reliable confidants than there is a paucity of mood-altering pills.
Cheers.
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