Mental Health Update

Today is one of the days when I ask myself what is realistic for someone with a mental illness.

Several years ago, a lot of that ended when I had my first panic attack. I had gone on a medical mission to Guatemala, and as a flight was about to take off from Texas to the West Coast, I had my first panic attack. We were stopping in Texas from Guatemala City and allowed to get off the plane. When reboarding, the plane was extremely hot, crowded and we were lined up in the aisle moving very slowly to our seats at the rear of the plane. I suddenly began to perspire and had a fear that if I did not exit the plane immediately, I would die. I was almost to the back of the plane, and I suddenly turned around and started marching fiercely toward the front of the plane, pushing everyone aside and begging them to please step aside and let me off.

The highest risk of autism was found in families with a history of autism, or Asperger's syndrome and other PDDs in siblings, supporting the commonly accepted knowledge that genetic factors are involved in the etiology of autism.

My friend has a good intuition about people, and he felt something wasn’t right–aside from her expensive looking clothes being a tad bit dirty. He approached the young woman and began to talk with her. She told him, “I’m a manic depressive.” So either she or someone else had given her the identity of “manic depressive”, and she’s accepted this label. So he said, “You’re not a manic depressive. How can you be that? You might have this thing called manic depression. People have habits, but habits can be thrown away.”

I’ve been thinking more and more about what exactly it is in American culture that causes so many of us to be diagnosed with anxiety and depressive disorders. In the United States, it is easy to “live in a box”, an artificial life of sorts. I’ve been thinking about this lately because I live in a very nice, quiet apartment where people pretty much keep to themselves.

When I entered the room my supervisor had asked me if I knew a certain psych patient. The patient he was asking me about did not seem to belong on a psych ward. Granted the patient did mention that he was having suicidal thoughts, but had shown no signs of a mental illness.

Our society isn't very good at making space for healthy emotional expressions. We are "embarrassed" to cry in public, we can accept an angry man but get really uncomfortable if a woman expresses anger. If someone is having a bad day people are inclined to say, "cheer up" or worse yet, "why don't you smile?"