Hey, I was just wondering how much people knew about mental illnesses such as depression, anxiety, anoxia, bulimia, schizophrenia and manic depression. What do your cultures, families and you think about them? What do you know about them and where did you learn what you know (e.g, manga, internet, tv, movies.)



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We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, out doubt is our passion and our passion is our task, the rest is the madness of art. Henry james

I have bipolarity, depression and some other shit diagnostics and medicated... so i learn it from the guy who said: "you are fucked up", Jk, will you call that first hand experience?

IMO, when you act or start thinking without solid reason in your mind then you probably have some sort of mental illness. For example, most people tend to be hoarders, which is a mental illness with a grading I think; almost all of us tend to keep stuff that we 'might' use. Those stuff accumulate overtime and turn us into some sort of hoarder. Another example would be fear. We all fear something, darkness, sharp object, poisonous spiders. When our fears took over our bodies constantly, they become phobia.

Imo, a mental illness is a highlighting or overcharge of something that is natural to us, or something part of our instinct. The effect is enough to overwrite our reasoning. This means we all have a fair bit of mental illness in each one of us. It's just that most of us can overwrite that with our reasoning.

For example depression occurs when your perception of the world and your surrounding is bleak for a prolong period. This is because the insanity check in our instinct kicks in. We are crazy when we keep repeating the exact same thing over and over expecting different results. If you keep fighting against life over and over and kept losing then you probably should try another approach. Our instinct is telling us that we probably won't work out if we keep doing the same thing over and over so it tries to stop us by discouraging us from doing that. Of course instinct is as smart as a badly written program that occurs by trial-and-error so we often try to overwrite it with our reasons.

Anxiety for example, is our foresight instinct overacting. We can't really survive in the wilds being a worry-free fool. We try to survive by reading ahead, be prepared and aware of our surrounding. Of course, if you keep being aware, alert and reading ahead for a long time then you probably have some sort of anxiety problem if you don't have an extremely high IQ.

I come back, i just want to point out that when we talk about a "mental illness" we are talking about an unbalance in the chemistry of the brain, what you are describing goes more for the physiological and it's hardly called a "mental illness", think about it this way; a real mental illness can be passed from parent to child regardless of how the kid is educated.
There must be another world to describe pathologies that do not affect the physical part of the brain such as Bulimia, I'm just too ignorant of such thing to actually know for sure tough.




About the instinct thing, Odd, the most basic reaction is always "Can i escape?->Yes-> Run" "Can i escape?->No-> Attack", often when we get stuck in a situation in which we feel fear is due to the contradictions of instinct and reasoning. Anticipation is associated with evolution, the ability of predicting an outcome trough logic is mostly human or at least was believed to be a humans-only quality. Now, tough, there are proofs of similar behaviours in advanced animals such as dolphins. or at least that is what i know about such topics.

This is me. Officialy diagnosed with Bipolar disorder type 2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_disorder

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Books, tv, internet & my psych classes

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Uhh, severe long-term depression, large mood swings, problems with sleep, suicidal thoughts, swinging between hyperactivity and complete apathy, paranoia... probably much more, but I don't know them so I can't really list them

I'm still wondering, what do the people around you think about mental illnesses, and, what I am really interested in, is what people know about anorexia and bulimia. Why do you think people are anorexic?



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We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, out doubt is our passion and our passion is our task, the rest is the madness of art. Henry james

I know by acquaintances and personal experience. Some researches too.
Most stuff you see in movies and popular culture is false.
As for the culture, mental health is not discussed much,
but has always been pretty questionable around here with pretty high alcohol
consumption and general pallidness of the people.
Nobody wants to discuss it as it is not an easy subject and for those
who have no experience can't comprehend it any better than a child
comprehends sexuality. It's generally something that people are afraid of
dealing with. Mental illnesses are the drawback of being intelligent.
Most geniuses are total oddballs. Artistic people tend to be more likely to
get mentally ill. Artists, dancers and writers are way more likely than others.
Liability is genetic but usually needs something to trigger mental instability, like a trauma.
If you're into writing, you're about twice more likely to commit suicide.
The genetic error in evolution that caused abstract thinking also made things
with higher consciousness too conscious about some things.

As for distorted self-portraying like bulimia or anorexia, can't say.
Don't know anyone personally. I see it as a self-esteem problem.

Last edited by Mamsmilk at 8:09 am, Jan 1 2013

Because people aren't open about mental illness, it becomes an even bigger problem, and far more dangerous and difficult to deal with. When people don't know the signs for mental illnesses and don't understand why people have mental illnesses, that is when the people suffering from them can't get help and hide it from the world.

Hollywood has done a great job of messing with the image of people with anorexia and bulimia. They often aren't caused by a lack of self esteem, but a need for control. No matter how much your life is spiralling out of control, no one can force you to eat food, and no one can stop you from destroying your body. Sometimes people are so afraid of the world, the disappointments and the hardship, that they choose to self destruct, rather than have to deal with another doing it. And the last main reason is that it is a slow form of suicide, a person doesn't want to live, but they don't want to die, so they slowly kill themselves. Bulimia is similar, and of course, having low self esteem doesn't help. Often it is a mixture of the three. Both are more deadly than depression, and often go hand in hand with depression, and depression often goes hand in hand with anxiety.

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We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, out doubt is our passion and our passion is our task, the rest is the madness of art. Henry james

I have a long-term mental illness, being an Anxiety Disorder and Severe Depression, although both are very much background elements nowadays. Most of what I've learnt's been from doctors and friends who suffer similar ailments (depression more than anxiety, I'm pretty isolated with that in my circles).

As for how family and friends deal with it? My Dad and my older brother are probably the only people who take it as seriously as it should be, due to their own experiences with other people with similar problems. They've been great about it. Rest of my family are odd about it, with all the usual excuses that surround it, of it not being real or just being acting out or whatever. Which is... well, a bummer really. Friends are good too, but when you have a handful with their own problems, it becomes hard to talk about without everyone trying to one-up each other, or worse, not feeling they can burden each other with their issues.

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Mental illnesses are the story of my life. I've been diagnosed with severe depression, bipolar disorder II, OCD, and an always-evolving eating disorder (I've had anorexia, bulimia, and a binge eating disorder at different points in my life). I've been on countless medications, none of which seemed to help long-term.

I agree that the portrayal of mental illnesses is often inaccurate. Mental illnesses are basically like physical injuries, but people often misunderstand because it's not something concrete, and its symptoms vary among its victims. If someone breaks his leg, he's inundated with sympathy. If someone has depression, people pity him. It's ironic because it takes a lot more strength to recover from a mental illness than from a physical injury.


This is both true and false. To a healthy, sane person, the actions and beliefs of someone suffering from a mental illness seem irrational. However, this isn't always the case for the mentally ill people themselves. I'll give you an example: when I was suffering from anorexia, I had a really distorted body image. My mirror image looked fat even though I was, in reality, underweight. The problem was that my mind analyzed my mirror reflection incorrectly, to the point where I really believed I was fat. To me, it was a very rational reality.

Family members. They're fucked up. j/k

My mom's a shrink, so I've learned about it since I was a kid. Lived with a schizophrenic aunt who had delusions of grandeur, she passed away years ago, but she would always be my favorite relative. Anyway, mental illnesses don't freak me out, it's just part of being a normal human being.

Well, so far none of my family members were diagnosed with any, but that doesn't mean there is nothing at all.

It's not a big deal for me, since everyone has some issues in some degree.

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