Discussion what makes some people ignorant or blind to mental health struggles?

[anonymouswebuser]

am I the only one who gets incredibly pissed at people who refuse to acknowledge mental illnesses?

I just had an argument with someone who insists that depression can be cured simply by traveling, socializing, or praying—without taking any real action—because they don't believe it's a real condition or something people genuinely SUFFER from
if it was that easy to recover, pretty much no one would've had to suffer from depression for years
they also claimed that seeing a psychiatrist is unnecessary since "they'll just give you medication that makes you fatigued" and that psychiatrists only make things worse

sure that last part is their opinion of psychiatrists, but they were responding to someone specifically ASKING for recommendations for a good psychiatrist meaning that person had ALREADY made the decision to seek help
why just completely crush the idea that maybe just maybe that person will genuinely get better if they seek someone?
I personally went to 4 different psychiatrists and overall I haven't improved but if someone asks me I won't just tell them to never ask for help just because I haven't seen any progress with myself
everyone has different experiences
but that person just kept insisting they don't and dismissed the entire existence of mental illnesses altogether

 

[-Link-]

Enlightenment takes effort. It's a lot easier to double down on snap judgements and preconceived notions than it is to challenge them, especially if it's a third party doing the challenging.

For someone to deny the existence of mental illness is a sure sign that your mental energy will be wasted in arguing with them.

Try to maintain distance from people like this. If this isn't possible, then try to keep interactions on a superficial level. Only if this person is someone you love (and someone who loves you back) would it be worth trying to break through to them. But even then, it's going to take a long time -- denying mental illness altogether is a pretty low threshold to be starting from.

If you're a bystander to somebody being fed misinformation and you'd rather avoid arguing with the other person in the moment, just make a point to talk to them in private at a later time instead.

 

[citrusrope]

I feel like that goes for a lot of things not just mental health (Although mental health issues are a lot easier to dismiss because to a lot of people, the phrase "It's all in your head," is a pretty easy way to think about it. Kind of like a, if you don't see it physically in a visible to the eye way, then it must not be real, deal.)

But honestly, I used to have eczema and the amount of people who genuinely believed that if I were to just try putting on some lotion it would go away or whatever, was majority of everyone around me. Unless they in some very ironic turn of events also develop eczema (or in this case, get hit with a treatment-resistant mental health crisis), they just won't ever fuckin' get it cause they think that their experience is some sort of golden standard of this world.

Not to mention, I think a lot of people have the wrong idea as to what mental illness even is. A lot of non mentally ill people will conflate their experience of 'that one time I felt REALLY sad,' to equal the same thing as something like clinical depression. So it ends up being something like: Well I was able to get out of my depression and pull myself up out of being sad, why can't you? When in reality, what they probably experienced was just a one-off isolated experience of feeling depressed; not having depression.

I don't know if I articulated myself very clearly but yeah.

 

[Yonlux]

The culture of a society in overall, for example in Asia usually mental diseases is just ignored because they treat that as a weakness and their culture don't tolerate that, that in consequently results in more "tolerance" to not talk about this.
Other aspect especially in the occidental culture with predominance of Christian nations is natural treat mental diseases as "demons attacking" or "lack of God" and this not help to cure the disease scientifically and rationality what disturb to solve.
Summary, the ignorance caused by the culture that blind the value to combat against the problems that is the mental diseases.

 

[anonymouswebuser]

Enlightenment takes effort. It's a lot easier to double down on snap judgements and preconceived notions than it is to challenge them, especially if it's a third party doing the challenging.

For someone to deny the existence of mental illness is a sure sign that your mental energy will be wasted in arguing with them.

Try to maintain distance from people like this. If this isn't possible, then try to keep interactions on a superficial level. Only if this person is someone you love (and someone who loves you back) would it be worth trying to break through to them. But even then, it's going to take a long time -- denying mental illness altogether is a pretty low threshold to be starting from.

If you're a bystander to somebody being fed misinformation and you'd rather avoid arguing with the other person in the moment, just make a point to talk to them in private at a later time instead.

I had to realize that after calming down since I wasn't really gentle with my speech while talking to that person and I was just purely angry.
Thankfully, No that's not a person I have to interact with every day and it's not a person I love or who loves me either so I'll just have to stay away.

 

[Lost Magic]

Yeah, they call it the invisible illness. Society is also losing empathy for people with any kind of illness, especially people with mental illnesses. It's so sad.

 

[FoxSauce]

Yeah sadly ypur labeled as a crazy dude or demented.

Media plays a part of this as well sadly : they shows extreme/ wrong represention mental illness with a straight jacket and strapped down.

Other is relion saying that is a test from god or just demons wanting you to give in the the dark prince.

Or pyramid schemes that one man says he can cure autusm just by drinking bleach (ik autism is not a mental illness)

Or some hobo claming that by paying a big sum of money he can cure mental illness .

Or just ignorant people that just dont know where there standing and just think mental illness is something your just whining about.

There may be more but thats all i can think of.

 

[sad_dog]

i think it's really complicated. there's not a good scientific understanding of what mental illness is so I think people just assume it's kind of made up. I also think for depression and SI a lot of people have brief periods where they feel some of those things and then they recover to their baseline so when you talk about being depressed or suicidal people are like "Oh yeah! I felt kind of like that once, but it gets better!".

 

[anonymouswebuser]

Yeah sadly ypur labeled as a crazy dude or demented.

Media plays a part of this as well sadly : they shows extreme/ wrong represention mental illness with a straight jacket and strapped down.

Other is relion saying that is a test from god or just demons wanting you to give in the the dark prince.

Or pyramid schemes that one man says he can cure autusm just by drinking bleach (ik autism is not a mental illness)

Or some hobo claming that by paying a big sum of money he can cure mental illness .

Or just ignorant people that just dont know where there standing and just think mental illness is something your just whining about.

There may be more but thats all i can think of.

People around me usually do commonly associate it with religion or that I'm not close enough to God indeed and it's frustrating it's like the only phrase they know to shut others up

 

[saturn1402]

I can relate to this question because I didn't understand mental health struggles until about a year ago. I used to think life was beautiful and that if you just focused on positive thinking, everything would be fine. I believed the solution to most problems was simply to 'look on the bright side', travel, make friends and life is beautiful…

But I've since learned that mental health issues are far more complex. They're not just about having a bad day or needing more optimism. They're rooted in biological, emotional, and psychological factors that can affect anyone, no matter how good their life may seem. Mental health struggles are invisible, and they don't go away by just changing your mindset….

I learnt it the hard way.

I am always in a way glad when people don't understand mental health issues cause it means they never experienced it so I am glad for them cause they are lucky

 

[MathConspiracy]

I personally don't care about what they think. Whatever I'm experiencing, I know that I'll never take any action against it. So, officially I'm not mentally ill. I just want to die before this gets any worse. Sorry about the rant.

 

[22yearsbroken]

Sometimes... well all the time i think that with mental healrlth we do get a little thing in return.. we tend to think outside the box... have our way of tbinking and 9 out off 10 its higher knoeledge of topics and thoughts tbatthey just dont get or understand.. our minds work more weird more central we ask questions ..that others avoid...

Because it scares people ..being honest.

 

[CentreMid]

am I the only one who gets incredibly pissed at people who refuse to acknowledge mental illnesses?

I just had an argument with someone who insists that depression can be cured simply by traveling, socializing, or praying—without taking any real action—because they don't believe it's a real condition or something people genuinely SUFFER from
if it was that easy to recover, pretty much no one would've had to suffer from depression for years
they also claimed that seeing a psychiatrist is unnecessary since "they'll just give you medication that makes you fatigued" and that psychiatrists only make things worse

sure that last part is their opinion of psychiatrists, but they were responding to someone specifically ASKING for recommendations for a good psychiatrist meaning that person had ALREADY made the decision to seek help
why just completely crush the idea that maybe just maybe that person will genuinely get better if they seek someone?
I personally went to 4 different psychiatrists and overall I haven't improved but if someone asks me I won't just tell them to never ask for help just because I haven't seen any progress with myself
everyone has different experiences
but that person just kept insisting they don't and dismissed the entire existence of mental illnesses altogether

In my experience, it's usually because the ignorant person has never experienced things themselves. This applies to mental illness as well as a myriad of other situations/experiences.

For example, I find it incredibly difficult to open up to people who have healthy relationships with their parents because the moment I speak up about my situation, I always get "oh but they're your parents!" or "but I'm sure they love you, they just don't know how to show it!" and they never stop to think "what happened that was so damaging that it caused (CentreMid) to want to cut off contact from their family?" - people whose parents love them can't wrap their heads around the fact that other parents might actually be abusive, so they just victim blame to make the situation make sense to *them*, regardless of the situation in reality.

But I digress.

If someone is unable to acknowledge the existence of mental illnesses altogether, I'd steer clear of them as much as possible. Those types of people simply aren't worth the effort to try to reason with, unfortunately.

 

[anonymouswebuser]

Sometimes... well all the time i think that with mental healrlth we do get a little thing in return.. we tend to think outside the box... have our way of tbinking and 9 out off 10 its higher knoeledge of topics and thoughts tbatthey just dont get or understand.. our minds work more weird more central we ask questions ..that others avoid...

Because it scares people ..being honest.

that's a nicer way of looking at it