What I was going to post, I decided not to post. I don’t want to give anybody the idea I believe any of the bunk about serious mental illnesses circulating near and far. It is a religion that I personally choose not to buy into. It sure as hell is no science. I feel sure I will not be missed. Other people can pursue the career mental patient path to their heart’s content. Mental health facilities are full of the recovery resistant. I have better ways to use my time.
Friday, October the 10th, has been dubbed World Mental Health Day by the World Federation of Mental Health, and celebrated around the globe since 1992. I prefer to call it World Mental Illness Day. Why? I refer to it as World Mental Illness Day because conventional mental health treatments are failing disastrously throughout the world. Not only are people not recovering from the labels they have been given, but the population of labeled people is growing.
Now in the USA as a part of the federal government mandate to transform human services, consumers of mental health services are being employed by the mental health system. These peer support specialists, as they are called, are supposed to help other consumers who are perceived as not being as far advanced in their recovery as the peer support specialists are to advance in their recovery. I’m wondering when these people will actually recover rather than just talk about doing so. There’s the door, and here’s the labyrinth in your head that keeps you from taking it.
If 95% of the population were mentally well, and 5% of the population were mentally ill, some of the 5% of the population could enter the 95% by recovering, or no longer needing treatment. I’ve written recently about how the population of people labeled mentally ill has been rising steadily since around 1900. This means that some of that 95% of the population would be capable of entering the 5% of the population labeled mentally ill. More to the point, if the percentage of people labeled mentally ill is rising, the percentage of population thought to be mentally well is declining.
I know that some people will attribute this to the complexities of modern times but still, it must make you wonder sometimes whether or not we might not be taking the wrong approach to this matter.
