Please Stop Treating Mental Illness Like It Has A One Size Fits All Solution by H. Gladwell
Please Stop Treating Mental Illness Like It Has A One Size Fits All Solution
Mental illness affects one in four people in the UK – meaning at least a few people you know live with a mental illness. But those people are not all experiencing the same thing.
We need to stop talking about mental health issues as one mass of problems with one cure-all fix.
Ways of treating and helping each person will be different.
As someone who lives with both bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder – which share similar symptoms but are totally different – I know firsthand what it’s like to have to treat two disorders differently.
Bipolar disorder is usually treated with medication, while borderline personality disorder is normally treated with psychological evaluation and therapy. Both are very different treatments – even if they achieve similar results. We should look at it this way when it comes to all mental illnesses.
Time after time I’ve watched people suggest ways for other people to cope with ‘mental illness’ or improve their ‘mental health’. These people don’t see mental illness for what it is – a range of disorders and illnesses that come with a whole variety of symptoms.
They see it as one blanket term, as if you either live with a mental illness or you don’t. They hear the term ‘mental illness’ and lump everyone’s experiences in together.
This is only lessening the understanding we so desperately need.
What works for one person won’t work for everyone.
Let’s look at it this way. Antidepressants aren’t going to help anyone who doesn’t live with depression. In fact, antidepressants in some disorders, such as mood disorders, can only worsen the symptoms – as they can trigger mania.
…If people realised just how complicated mental illness is, maybe they’d understand that treatment is just as tricky too.
Read more of that editorial here
Non-Church, Non-Spiritual, or Secular Remedies and Treatments Don’t Always Work
Overcoming Self Doubt, Low Self Esteem, Anxiety and More – You Are Enough – via Marisa Peer
Mistaken Identity Lands Homeless Man in Mental Hospital for Two Years
Discerning Incompetent or Greedy Mental Health Professionals
‘My Therapist Won’t Let Me Break Up With Her!’ By Lori Gottlieb
The Negative Side Effects of Anti Depressant Medications by Sonya Vatomsky
Miss Daisy Flower 
Amen
I have had the same issue from a counsellors perspective and from the families and friends of people who live with mental illness and BPD. No two people are the same, No two people respond to treatment the same way and there is not a one method fits all way of fixing other peoples issues. In fact trying to fix people often makes it worse! Don’t try to fix people.
I have been taught that most often people can and do find their own ways of managing their own circumstances often they just need guidance to discover their own way of coping.
What you said about medication I agree with you but with reservations. I have seen some medications that did make their circumstances worse and others whom medication does work very well for.
I have a several medical issues that require medication. If I want to stay well and be able to remain independent I have to take those medications. I have a friend who has epilepsy they don’t have a choice in taking their medication because the prevent seizures.
I know of people who are very anti medicine. I know others who are very anti psychology and even more hostile to anything they think diminishes faith or could lead them astray. In their mind it is humanistic and anything that is secular is not faith.
If that is true stop buying your groceries from the super market get rid of your car, stop using electricity go and live in a cave and eat locusts and wild honey because the bible doesn’t mention any of those things so they must be from worldly. That type of thinking is absurd and dangerous.