Mental illness is one of those really, really tricky issues. It's very hard to determine if someone is legitimately stricken with, say, depression and who is severely discouraged. Heck, sometimes I wonder if cynics are depressed. In any event, corporations are leading the way with mental illness initiatives and the government is finally slowly getting around to it. It's a serious issue as it costs the Canadian economy $51 billion a year.
Why, just the other day, the lady who assumed my small business loan file suddenly left because of anxiety issues - of course, I had to call to find out what was happening with my file.
Anyway.
It's not like I'm alien to the problem. My family on my father's side has a long history of mental illness including bi-polar disorder, depression and autism. I've seen how much of a hard time doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists had nailing down what family members really had. As for those in the old country, it's not like people were aware of these sorts of things back in 1946. Same story here in North America. We just gave people lobotomy's. Further back in our history you were declared possessed. The screening process for mental illness is young relative to man's history.
They say mental illness is on the rise.
Is it?
Some doctors like Thomas Szasz believe it's merely a psychiatric construct.
From wiki:
"...Szasz says that what psychiatrists label mental illness is in fact nothing more than a deviation from the consensus reality or common morality..."
The day they discover a pill that makes happy people miserable is the day they diagnose "cheerfulness" as a disease. Consider that my perspective as someone who went to school to be a pharmacist for 5 of the 6 required years.
ReplyDeleteInteresting angle and one I assume agrees with Szasz?
ReplyDeleteAnd dude, ONE year away? You're 83%pharmacist.
Yeah, I dodged a bullet there. I almost had to deal with frustrated sick and old people for the rest of my life while at the same time worrying about some tweaker trying to rob me at gun point for his fix.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the jobs really sucks is the only thing that keeps me from going on a tirade about how pharmacists are glorified stock boys. The hardest part of the job is telling sick people they're going to slip into a coma later tonight because their insulin is no longer covered by their insurance.
Good times...