Sanity is boring
The BBC recently produced a documentary called I Love Being...Mad, which deals with how we approach mental illness in society. This is an interesting subject as more and more normal people are getting a prognoses of having some form of mental illness and put on psychiatric drugs. But this was not the perspective the documentary took. Instead it looks at how we deal with people who are quite psychotic indeed. One in six people suffer from some kind of mental illness. How abnormal is it then really? Is it a sustainable approach to keep on forced drugging the mentally ill? Or should we instead look into new ways of approaching the insane? Should we listen more to the mentally ill concerning how they could best be helped, by involvement instead of shutting them out, by therapy instead of drugs, by activities instead of restraints. After all, there's a bit of madness in anything creative. How boring would the world be without any madness? I know I couldn't bare complete sanity for even a moment. Luckily, I don't have to.
posted by Shamad at Sunday, August 06, 2006
2 Comments:
"Let me help you in helping me" is a quote from some long lost film. Of course we should assist the mentally ill in any way we can, but we are moving on very thin ice if we consult the patient on how he or she should be treated. Or...?
But you are right on one point: drugs are used too often and too quickly at least when it comes to the treatment of the elderly that should be humane above all. Now we are just shutting them down so we don't have to listen to them complaining.
Most mentally ill people want a normal functioning life. They do want treatement, but they don't want to be turned into vegetables and shoved away into some mental institution. The problem is over-medicating and medicating against their will. All they are asking for is an option to choose themselves what they can cope with. Is it better to be a vegetable and free from your mental dillusions or is a moderate medication which limits but does not illiminate the sympthoms yet allows for a sustainable life a better choice?
Post a Comment
<< Home