There is a stigma that haunts people who suffer from a mental illness. This is because so many people, including those afflicted, do not understand mental disorders. Below is some vital information about mental illness - some myths and the realities.

• Mentally ill people could avoid getting ill if they tried a little harder. Likewise, healing requires only trying harder, "getting over it," or "snapping out of it," or other platitudes.
  
  Mental illness is what the name suggests: an illness. This illness has symptoms that display as emotional instability or abnormality - as well as physical problems. While many diseases are caused by pathogens or abnormal cellular growth, mental illnesses are caused by imbalances in brain chemistry. Healing requires treatment, not attitude adjustments.
  
  
• If no one in the family has had a mental illness, then mental illness won't strike.
  
  There is a genetic predisposition to some mental disorders. However, mental illnesses afflict people with no family history. Likewise most people who live in families where there are mental disorders do not develop these diseases.
  
  
• Mental illness is caused by upbringing or lifestyle.
  
  Mental illness is a physical illness in which the delicate brain chemistry goes out of balance. There are 'triggers' - life events - that can cause or worsen episodes of illness.... the key word being episodes.
  
  An illness that is similarly episodic is diabetes. People with diabetes occasionally have episodes in which blood sugar gets out of balance. In those episodes, the unpleasant symptoms are signs that the imbalance has occurred. The episodes are often triggered by missed or incorrect injections of insulin or by improper diet.
  
  
• Mental illness is rare.
  
  The incidence of mental illness far exceeds the combined incidences of cancer and heart disease. More than 50 percent of U.S. families will have members who suffer some form of mental illness at some point in their lives.
  
  
• Mental illness is an annoyance, not a disease.
  
  Mental illness can - and does - kill. Depression is the most common of mental illnesses. Experts say that 95-98% of suicides (and suicide attempts) result directly from depression. Suicide is the #11 cause of death in the USA.
  
  
• Mentally ill people get violent.
  
  Studies show that mentally ill people are no more likely to commit violent acts than anyone else. Mentally ill people who are in treatment may be statistically less violent than the general population.
  
  
• The law requires that medical insurance companies cover mental illness.
  
  It depends on where you live. Some states require that insurance companies cover treat mental illness the same as other illnesses.. Other states are not so enlightened, and continue to discriminate against those who suffer from mental disorders.
  
  
• Schizophrenia is a duality conflict that results in multiple personalities.
  
  Schizophrenia, like other mental illnesses, is actually an imbalance in brain chemistry. The primary symptom of schizophrenia is an inability to discern what is real and what is not. "Hearing voices" and multiple personality disorder are sometimes symptoms of schizophrenia. However most schizophrenics do not display either symptom. In fact, multiple personality disorder occurs more in movies than in real life.
  
  
• Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.
  
  Depression - often called unipolar depression - is the most common of mental illnesses. Its symptoms look like grief, sadness, melancholia. Those conditions may be displayed in depressive episodes, but they are neither depression nor its primary symptoms.
  
  Everybody has a bad day now and then; everyone gets sad, everyone will deal with grief. People who are suffering from the real thing, however, know that their illnesses aren't just temporary feelings caused by unpleasant events. If you're not suffering from clinical depression, your most trying day might just be more pleasant than what someone with that malady would consider a good day. When someone who is depressed has a bad day, the emotional (and sometimes physical) pain is beyond anyone else's understanding.
  
  The point is that while a person's immediate situation does make a difference in his or her mood, it can't explain away chronic or persistent, recurring depressed moods.
  
  
• Manic-depressives are in constant turmoil.
  
  Most bipolar disorder ("manic-depression") is episodic: those who suffer from this condition tend to appear quite "normal" most of the time. It is a very complicated illness in which its victims tend to have dramatic mood swings. Episodes may occasionally be caused or exascerbated by triggers - external events. More often, however, the episodes seem to come from nowhere.
  
  The hallmark of the disorder is that the episodes can be either manic or depressive. There is a manic phase in which the person displays great energy and occasional abnormal behavior. There is a depressed phase which closely mimics unipolar depression. However, as in all mental illnesses, imbalance in brain chemistry is the root cause.
  

Mental illnesses are real illnesses. They are treatable with medication and other therapies. However, people with mental disorders fall victim to derision, discrimination, and bad public policy.

Labels: bipolar, brain chemistry, clinical depression, depression, manic depression, mental illness, multiple personality, schizoid, schizophenic, Schizophrenia, suicide