Eight things you should know about Minds

[A B]

These are not new ideas; any psychologist would confirm them. In an ideal
world everyone would already be familiar with them. But this isn't an ideal
world, and many people don't - some of them qualified doctors - and I'm
about sick of it. So I apologise if I'm stating the obvious!

The world cannot be divided into "sane" people and "mad" people. People who
have trouble with their minds usually started life just like anyone else,
and, except for their one particular problem, they still are - just as
somebody with a broken leg isn't innately a "sick person" and won't be
covered in spots!

One in four people has a definite mental problem at some time in their
lives. So obviously they aren't all raving lunatics.

Diseases of the mind vary as much as, say, diseases of the skin. Dismissing
what someone says because they have OCD makes no more sense than
quarantining them because they have sunburn.

People who are irrational on certain topics (e.g. paranoid psychosis) or at
certain times (e.g. manic depression) are usually entirely sane otherwise.

Having a mental problem doesn't necessarily make you irrational at all.
Someone with anorexia or clinical depression is as much worth listening to
as anyone else.

Schizophrenia is nothing to do with split personality; it's marked by
delusions and hallucinations. OCD is not perfectionism, but repetitive
actions to ward off a terrible fear. Tourette's Syndrome is not swearing
and bad attitude, but disabling nervous tics of various kinds. And
clinical depression is entirely different from ordinary "blues", and can
happen for no reason at all.

Sometimes mental problems can be entirely cured, leaving the person as sane
as you are (if you happen to be sane :-)). Often they can't, so it's no use
trying to blame someone for still having them. Many professionals think
that psychiatry is still no more advanced than physical medicine was in the
1950s.

Anyone, however impeccably "normal", can develop a mental problem. So think
before you speak - one of these days it could be you.

--
A. B.
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My e-mail address is zen177395 at zendotcodotuk, though I don't check that
account very often.