Mental Illness and You

Mass shootings have been in the forefront of the news regularly for years. As a result, the mental health system in America has been questioned. Going back to the Columbine school shooting in 1999, and now the most recent Newtown, Aurora, and Tucson shootings, the mental health of shooters has become a pressing issue.

However, the issue at hand is not the mere reality of mental illness within America. With an estimated 26.2 percent of adult Americans suffering from mental illness, it should be something regularly treated, widely accepted, and properly funded. Many families and adults find it incredibly difficult to find treatment, if they even seek help.

In the most recent school shooting, Adam Lanza killed his own mother and then 20 children and six teachers at a local elementary school. Although his mental health history remains unknown, it follows a similar pattern of the shootings within the last few years.  In 2007, Seung Hui Cho killed 32 and wounded 17 people in Virginia. He had a long, documented history of mental illness, including being diagnosed with severe social anxiety disorder. In 2011, Jared Loughner opened fire in Tucson, killing 6 and wounding 19. He had previously been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression. Just a few months ago in July 2012, James Holmes killed 12 and injured 58 in a movie theater in Colorado and has been described as mentally ill by his defense attorney.

 Shooters from the Aurora and Tucson shootings, respectively, suspected of having mental illness.

All of these cases of mental illness and violence bring up the issue of treatment of mental health in America, but also create a negative stigma for all people suffering from mental illness. Most people suffering from mental illness do not have homicidal tendencies and are usually only a direct threat to themselves. However, with the negative stigma surrounding mental illness and the lack of treatment centers, many suffering will never seek help. When those suffering do not seek help, they can have trouble holding a job, maintaining a place to live, and ultimately become a threat to themselves or others.

This vicious cycle is the basis of the mental health issue within the United States. If more people accepted mental illness as a part of every society, and realized it is something that people have no control over, but can be treated through therapy and medication, the negative stigma would dissipate and more people would seek treatment. In addition to changing the general attitudes, mental health groups agree that in order to help the issue at hand community mental health services need to double their capacity, school-based programs need to be improved, and children and student need to be educated in how to recognize the signs of mental illness and how to seek help. Immediately, the issue could begin to be helped if young people began to change their attitudes towards mental health and understood its importance. 

Introduction

Mental illness has often been stigmatized as an excuse for one own's weakness, instead of the understanding the reality of the disease. This perspective places the fear of being ostracized by society, deemed as an outcast and unable to handle their own problems. It is for this reason why so many who suffer do not seek treatment, but rather bear it alone, self medicate, or at times rather take their lives than ask for help.

Here we will be discussing:

• Whether mental illness is something that can be cured or only contained?
• If societies perception on mental illnesses worsens the symptoms for individuals, or even causes them?
• How can we remove the negative stigma for people, so they may feel comfortable seeking treatment?

Here we delve deeper into the issue surrounding mental illness in the United States, and center on the acceptance and appreciation of its reality in our society. It is important for all people to understand the large role mental illness has in our life and current issues that have been arising because of it. 

The Unseen Wound

            Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is often perceived as a mental illness that only soldiers receive after experiencing horrors on duty. In reality seven to eight percent of Americans will experience PTSD sometime during their life. The problem is that the general public does not know what PTSD is and those who have it are too afraid to seek treatment, not wishing to be labeled broken or crazy.

  

Care for Mental Patients in the U.S.

Understanding Mental Health
 
Mental health is a real issue in the United States. Studies have shown that twenty-five percent of the U.S. adult population experience a mental health disorder any given year. Oftentimes, people are greatly benefited, if not completely cured, from receiving medical attention. However, both our society and the mental health care system itself place a large amount of uncertainty in the mental health care system.

Social Response to Mental Health Care

People are frequently reluctant to receive help from professionals because society denotes mental illness as a weakness or something to be feared. Criminals and evil geniuses in countless movies are termed "mad" or "insane," thereby suggesting that such things are abominable in their very nature. Someone that acts obnoxiously at a party is termed "mental." Telling someone that you suffer from schizophrenia  does not receive the same sympathy as being a cancer patient. Mental illnesses are no less real and painful. We as a society ought not to judge the twenty-five percent of our population as being anything less than valuable and important. We must sensitize the public to better understand mental illness as something to be cured, not feared.

Treatment of Mental Illness 

Even among doctors trained to treat mental health, there is a large amount of mistrust of a patient's ability to recover. There is still bias as to whether a patient is capable of receiving treatment and recovering. In the Rosenhan Experiment, psychologist David Rosenhan decided to test the validity of mental health diagnoses in several mental health institutions. He had eight mentally healthy associates seek admission into twelve mental hospitals by briefly exhibiting auditory hallucinations. They were admitted, and then acted normally and insisted they felt fine. Each one was forced to admit to having a mental illness and was required to take an antipsychotic drug as a condition of release. Average time spent in the mental hospitals was nineteen days.

This proves people's mistrust of actually being cured of a mental illness. Those that truly struggle with a   mental disease may be frightened of being locked up for years, despite full recovery. Mental health care should be more focused on the individual. Rosenhan showed how many patients are dehumanized upon diagnosis. Doctors should be more focused on truly curing patients, and giving them the help they need to move on with their lives. Nineteen days in a psychiatric hospital for one brief bout of hallucination sounds like doctors may feel mental illnesses are incurable. I believe that they are.










     

Allison Wilson's Thesis Statement

Thesis: to better educate the public in understanding mental illness as a disease to be cured, and not an abnormality to be shunned and feared.

    Soldiers diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (Ptsd) are often labeled in the minds of Americans as dangerous and unstable.  Ptsd though has no relation to violence by itself, but id is often connected to such things as substance abuse or head trauma which can cause this. Thus Ptsd often leads, or is the last straw of an already violent personality that causes the violence that we have so readily seen.  Returning soldiers need help adjusting to life, otherwise Ptsd can, has and will continue to cause problems.

We've got this!

Hey! I am really excited to get started on blogging. For me, I would like to focus on the effect video games and instant gratification (through internet, loans, etc) have on the violence rate we experience today. Let's get cracking! :D