In my layman’s opinion, mental illness is a physical brain disorder and should not be completely separated from physical illness. A disordered brain will have some sort of physical failure. Either or both physically witnessed trauma (severe stress) and natural (inherited) chemical dysfunction.
Mental illness can be mild, severe, undetected and unresolved which can undermine and distort social and cultural behaviors.
Social stigma
Society takes a barbaric role when it comes to dealing with severe mental illness. Typically hiding the mentally ill behind a social curtain, further separating the mentally disordered from the social world. The mentally ill, commonly in turn, separate themselves from society due to a lack of coping skills.
This leads to a social masking of mild cases of mental illness. Just like with certain inherent physical conditions, there are mental conditions which are, or can become, acceptably manageable. People with mental problems can still function successfully in the marketplace and society. Sometimes even without the aid of medication and behavioral therapy specialists.
But if we hide problems they don’t get fixed… they fester.
Putting an isolating curtain in front of the mentally ill can be detrimental to everyone’s health.
The primary drawback from our socially hiding mental illness is that people can knowingly be mentality ill but fail to seek help because of the social stigma.
There’s also the mentally ill that don’t know they are sick. I believe that if society accepted mental illness like it does for example, diabetes and high blood pressure, then people would eventually become more aware of their symptoms and seek professional help.
Social curtains
The most destructive effect of society’s hiding and shaming of mental disorders is suicide. Since the mentally disturbed are basically socially rejected, hope for help is diminished.
Typically, if we discover that someone is mentally ill, we assume they’re incapable of normal behavior. You might be surprised to learn that your workmate or good friend has a mental disorder that they’ve been hiding for a long time.
The primary benefit from socially accepting mental illness as a treatable condition, is that the mentally ill can gain open and healing support from everyone.
It’s a paradoxical perplexity because mental illness is unacceptable and incomprehensible to mainstream society. Ignoring mental illness is way more dangerous than dealing with it. Dealing helpfully with mental illness can make the incomprehensible comprehensible. There’s always a reasonable reason. Exposing problems leads to solutions.
Sometimes all a person needs is to be accepted.
