Debunking the Myths about Mental Illness

I have recently been doing some volunteer work for the local chapter of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness), helping out with the CIT (Crisis Intervention Team), Training course; a course that is designed to educate law enforcement officers, 911-dispatchers and other professionals about how to effectively deal with persons who struggle with a mental disorder, the goal being to get consumers into treatment and not have them unnecessarily incarcerated.


If there is one thing that I have learned from participating in these classes, it is that there is a lot of ignorance when it comes to what exactly it means to struggle with a mental illness. Too often, when you hear the words "mental illness", we think of people who are looking for a crutch to excuse bad behavior, or we think of people who are morally weak and simply just won't "get their act together." Words like "crazy", "lunatic", "retard" etc are thrown out carelessly to describe real people with real medical symptoms. Science has shown that these improper assumptions are not only wrong, but they feed into the stigma that prevents people with these type of disorders from getting the kind of help that they need, and subsequently is the reason why generally speaking, people with a mental illness have a life expectancy significantly shorter than the rest of the population. I will never forget looking at my doctor with a sense of sheer disbelief and horrow several years ago when he suggested a few years ago that I might need to go on an anti-depressant. I kept thinking to myself, "what is he trying to say? That I am not strong enough to handle my own life?"

I was recently reminded of the importance of awareness of the plight of people who struggle with a mental illness after hearing this past week of a friend and former colleague who tried to take his own life in a very gruesome way. Fortunately, he did survive, but has needed intensive care since the incident. He had been suffering in silence through some very turbulent emotional issues and he saw death as the only way out. I wondered to myself, "had he not done this, would we even be cognisant of his pain and sorrow?"

If you go to the NAMI website, you will find this definition and quote about mental illness:

"Mental illnesses are medical conditions that disrupt a person's thinking, feeling, mood, ability to relate to others and daily functioning. Just as diabetes is a disorder of the pancreas, mental illnesses are medical conditions that often result in a diminished capacity for coping with the ordinary demands of life. Serious mental illnesses include major depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and borderline personality disorder. The good news about mental illness is that recovery is possible."

I used to be one of those skeptics that thought that such definitions and claims by people supposedly struggling in this arena were not only bogus, but based on pseudo-science that was aimed to cause people to see themselves as victims. That was until I had to face my own struggles, and also when I objectively looked at the scientific evidence for what it is. Technology is so advanced that we can actually see, for instance, the changes that the brain goes through when a person is chronically addicted to a substance.

Here are some of the myths that must be dispelled if people who struggle with a mental disorder are going to get the help that they need:

1. Mental Illnesses are nothing more than signs of character flaws or signs moral failure. This could not be further from the truth. The fact is that most people who struggle with a mental disorder are acutely aware of their own moral ineptitude, but know that they do not have the power within themselves to overcome in areas where they struggle.
2. Willpower alone is enough to overcome a mental illness. This is as ludicrous as telling a person with diabetes to "will" their sugar levels back to normal.
3. People who struggle with a mental illness are simply looking for a crutch, so as not to work or to take advantage of the system. This is another unfortunate but common assumption that is really related to statement #1 above. The fact, however, is that many people who struggle with a mental illness who have a hard time holding down a steady job are in the catch-22 predicament that often arises when you are unemployed, an unemployed person does not have access to steady health care, and if you don't have access to adequate health care, you often cannot get the treatment that you need, this ends up feeding into the domino effect that spirals out of control in the person's life, making it hard for the person to be steady enough to get the job in the first place and be steady it in. We put the cart before the horse when we think that if they just go out there and "live life" like others, everything would be alright. Mental health treatment must preceed and accompany living life.
4. People who struggle with a mental illness are "crazy" and liable to just go off on you at any moment for no reason: This is another popular assumption, usually fueled by the stereotypes of people we see on TV or in the movies. But it is not based in reality or truth.

The bottom line is that there is very little awareness when it comes to issues of people who have a mental illness. Yes, this is changing, but change often takes time, and it is usually only when a family has become personally affected by the plight of mental illness that they seem to "get it". We all know someone that has struggled or is struggling with a mental illness, the question is, "do they know it and are they getting the help that they need!" Hopefully, with more and more people having the courage to tell their stories of healing and survival, we will enable more and more people to be less shamed of getting the help that they need.

Stephen O. Akinduro