Consider this amazing statistic about social influence.

Originally posted by KnowYourEnemy

Originally posted by boymonkey74
I work in a Mental Health unit and it is hit and miss with the medication they give out, some works for one person and others work for another, but I have noticed a lot of press saying you can cure mental illness with diet etc,
I see the things people can do when mentally ill and it scare's me.
I had one patient who had to stop taking his med's because of some health scare and he was off them for a week and boy he was way way way worse than he was when he took his med's.
Mental illness can be caused by a lot of different factors and trust me when I say it's better for those people and everyone else around them that they take the med's.
Its the hardest job I have ever had and the amount of time's I have come home in tears because a patient I have been working with and get on with attack's me and beats the crap outa me because of his illness.
The burnout rate is one in three in my job and the company I work for have a special unit for staff who have burnt out or started to get mentally ill themselves because of the job.
I dont think we will fully understand mental illness for a long time but at the moment lets leave the treating of it to the professionals.
And remember mental illness will affect one in three of us in our life times. So don't laugh at people you meet who are mental.
BM xxx

Thanks for the input.
That’s a good point, it is very individual. I think the saying goes every mental illness is unique, or something along those lines. These drugs each do very specific things and when a different diagnoses and medication is only a checkbox away, there is no way to promise successful treatment or the correct treatment at all.
I believe it is 100% true you can prevent mental illness with good diet and an active lifestyle, but it probably won’t work for all treatments.
A lot of people who get extremely angry are addicted to the drugs, wether they know it our yet.

It would be a hard job and thankyou for what you do. You people are highly underpaid.
I think mental illness would be simple to work out and that corporations already have.

Why are you calling them mental if you work in the field?

Heck we call them all type's of names just after they have kicked off, its a way of coping I suppose. Doctors have big long names for the conditions but as an NA we just say it as we see it sometimes. Our fave term in the unit is Mad as a box of frogs lol. We gotta use humor to get thru the day.
For example if a fella has just kicked off and we have had to restrain him we have to do a report and the doctors will ask us questions about it, IE: What happened to cause *insert patient name here* to attack whoever, my replie could be I dont know he just went chuffin mental. The doctors know what we mean.
The amount of times I have just cracked up laughing at some of the things they say I couldnt guess but when for example I ask patient A how are you today fella and he says "well its all a bit chocolately" and starts laughing well you gotta laugh with them.
Mental illness can be caused by thousands of different factors, Social history, whether its in their genes, brain injuries etc everyones brain is differently wired up and that why its so hard to fix when something is wrong.
I have noticed that some patients act insane for the sake of being labeled insane and its quite easy to spot that.
Oh and a tip to you all if you ever get sent to jail never play the insanity card, I have known people who have been in jail and have come to my unit because they act insane (they see it as easyer than jail) well these guys end up staying alot longer (sectioned) than they would have if they just did their jail time.

Just a final word I work in a place where my patients have done scary horrid things/not their fault its the illness's fault and unlike america we are not allowed to use straight jackets/tazers and can only sedate them when its been signed off by a doctor.
I have seen workmate's with arms broken, bite wounds, stabbed and its really not nice but if I have one good day a month with a patient and I think they have enjoyed my help it makes it all worth it

reply to post by KnowYourEnemy


It's a fascinating subject

Mental illness is real - there's no doubt about that. How it's viewed and treated has changed and will continue to change as we learn more about it - just as how we treated other health issues in the past is different from how we treat them now. Who knows what the future will bring? We can only hope treatments will improve with research , understanding and time

There are always abuses in any system - health-care is no different. There are always people who will prey on the people who are the most vulnerable...

Here's an interesting story - and timely:

But was Sybil's story really true? A new book, "Sybil Exposed," suggests that Sybil, whose real name was Shirley, pretended - she pretended to have multiple personalities, in part to please her therapist. Joining me now to talk more about it is Debbie Nathan, the author of "Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case." She joins us here in New York, at our studios. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

www.npr.org...

en excerpt from the transcript of a live interview on NPR

Debbie Nathan’s “Sybil Exposed” is about psychiatric fads, outrageous therapeutic malpractice, thwarted ambition run amok, and several other subjects, but above all, it is a book about a book. Specifically, that book is “Sybil,” purportedly the true story of a woman with 16 personalities. First published in 1973, “Sybil” remains in print after selling over 6 million copies in the U.S. alone.

A work of high Midwestern gothic trash, “Sybil” might have been purpose-built to enthrall 14-year-old girls of morbid temperament (which is probably the majority of 14-year-old girls, come to think of it). I would not be surprised to learn that it is circulated as avidly on middle-school playgrounds today as it was in my own youth. My sisters, my friends and I all devoured it, discussing its heroine’s baroque sufferings in shocked whispers before promptly forgetting all about it until the TV movie starring Sally Field came along.

That should have been the end of “Sybil,” another flash-in-the-pan “true life” paperback shocker that people sorta believe but mostly not — rather like “The Amityville Horror.” Instead, the book, written by journalist Flora Rheta Schreiber, became the catalyst for a psychotherapeutic movement that ruined many lives, beginning with the woman whose story it claims to tell.

www.salon.com...
and from a review of the book in Salon

So - was the original story a complete work of fiction - and how many lives did this story affect directly in the years after it came out? How big an effect did it have on our culture, how we view mental illness - and how we treat it?

also, curious about some of your quotes in the OP - are they yours - or from another article you haven't linked?

In any case - like I said - it's fascinating. Hopefully things will continue to improve - even if it does feel like two steps backward for every one forward

Just to put some things into perspective.

Some people REALLY are mentally ill, and they really do need medication to make them suffer less. Society is also a problem and a possible catalyst, although I also believe bad diet, rushed lives, stress, alcohol, legal and illegal drugs, pollution and such also contribute.

There's no doubt some of the pharma companies are corrupt and do profit on the sick, but let their be no doubt that some people are sick and need medication.

Maybe we should be looking at reducing the negative aspects of society to provide balance and leverage for those who need it.