[split] Sanity -- from the Humanities Zoo thread

[Yelleryella123]

They're making me go out of this house now. I don't have Internet in the room where I stay. So tomorrow, I hope you'll see that I'm not being sarcastic at all. That I've had many fights about mental health with doctors and family. And I truly appreciate the things you say.

It is all labels Rowens. I don't think it is very hard to make someone believe there is 100 things wrong with them.

This is just a theory:

If the highest virtue in our society is altruism - selflessness and taking care of others -then people being sick or in need become the most important things. How else can we be virtuous? So a system has been put in place that makes people believe an ache or a pain might be cancer.. (I'm exaggerating, not everyone is a hypochondriac but I hope you get my point) - when it comes to mental illness if we don't fit the "mold" something is wrong with us, right? Same goes for education but that is a whole other topic.
We are multifaceted creatures yet we are portrayed on television (for example) more often than not as one dimensional beings - it is alienating from a young age and I feel it makes us feel like there might be something wrong with us when anything outside of our minds suggests we are different. When we are labeled with say, bipolar-ism - I think we tend to identify with these labels more than what we are outside of that one facet of our being. If we didn't have the illness to begin with but we start to think we have it, the illness can manifest. If we label an illness we already 'have' the more we identify with the illness the more aggressive it becomes. A placebo effect - and then the medication comes in and the dependency begins.
How many times do you hear, "Hey how are you?" "I am good/I am fine"
Some people speak up but we often keep to the status quo and I feel like it is seriously damaging our mental health because we take our cues from others without even realizing it as a problem. We don't express ourselves fully in the public eye because the public eye seems to always look for what is out of place. Even if we think we are different, it goes much deeper than the subcultures within our culture.. Something we learned when we were very young, the social norms of how to interact - But it isn't how we have always existed as human beings and it isn't how all humans exist.

Mental illness: some of us seem to believe too easily. It is all in the mind and the "system" is profiting off of our paranoia and our dependency. I am more concerned with preventing mental illness than the business of treating it. This culture seems to be a breading ground for any illness you want to make up and give a name to. One theory is that the illnesses treated with drugs now could have been treated with placebo to begin with had they been given a chance. I don't think any amount of drugs can help a mind if the mind has decided it is sick and really believes it. Drugs can numb the mind but never get at the root cause. And no drug will ever get at the root cause because no outside measure can be taken to change what is inside the mind, only the individual can make that choice. It is all about what exactly we think about our minds. If atoms are 99.999999999999 % space, what are we? We are our mind. Our mind is not our brain, it is our perception and that is shaped. Think about how we are as children. Where do our insecurities come from? Our culture. Where does our paranoia come from? It is learned. Who named these perceived mental illnesses? Hm. It more than important in this day and age to slow down, meditate and try to understand our own minds before some outside source dictates who and what we are. Try not to get stuck on what "this" is or what "that" is - culture shapes us but we also shape our culture. No paradigm is permanent, I think people either forget that or they were never told. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYfNvmF0Bqw

I realize I am not giving people who have a mental illness enough credit here outside of the point I am trying to make. I hope this is well received.