June 9, 2005

  • Mental Illness Said to Affect One-Quarter of Americans

    More than half of Americans will develop a mental illness at some point
    in their lives, often beginning in childhood or adolescence,
    researchers have found in a survey that experts say will have
    wide-ranging implications for the practice of psychiatry.

    ...As expected, the researchers found that the most common problems were
    depression, affecting about 17 percent of the people at some point in
    their lives, and alcohol abuse, affecting 13 percent. Phobias were also
    common, including social phobia, a form of extreme anxiety that
    affected 12 percent. More than a quarter of those interviewed had had a
    mental disorder in the last year.

    I linked to the New York Times
    article, but if you can find the Wall Street Journal for June 7th, I
    liked that article better. It's online for all you other WSJ
    subscribers.

    Mental illness is a long topic,
    but Chris and I were surprised that 28% had a mental illness in the
    last year as determined by psychiatry's diagnostic manual. Perhaps the
    definition of a mental illness is far too broad, but nevertheless, this
    put into words what I've witnessed just going about daily life. There
    are some truly hurting people out there.

    As mentioned in the article, there are people with fairly trivial
    issues, but I regularly see people with debilitating illnesses.
    Sometimes it's funny. One time a woman stepped out of her condo to ask
    me if I was spraying for the alligators. We're in Wisconsin. I've never
    seen one outside the zoo. Oh, she says, I thought someone was coming
    out for that....

    And sometimes it's sad. There are a couple of people in my neighborhood
    who I see all the time with blank eyes and distant stares who walk for
    miles down the road by themselves with odd postures and strides or ride
    around on a bike in their driveway for hours, despite being fifty-plus
    years old.

    Lots of pain out there.

    CVS to Sell Disposable Video Cameras

Comments (3)

  • I'm no expert, but I do have a little bit of insight due to experience.  ...Our little family spent two years in the LA area: oceans of people, and it's the loneliest place on earth.  That may be a result of self-preservation (are you willing to take the chance that that stranger is not going to be a bad guy?) or because admitting that one longs for human interaction hurts one's "cool" image.  At any rate, though we _tried_ to make friends (something we have no trouble with in Montana), we spent two years in practical isolation.  And I was mentally "ill."  Not certifiable (you couldn't even tell by looking), but my person was "not well."  So it is very easy to imagine that people who are isolated (or emotionally mistreated) would eventually walk around aimlessly with blank eyes and distant stares, at any age.

    I don't know if I have a point.  If I did, it might relate to your previous post about communication.  Yeah, some people have ridiculous addictions to cell phones (or the internet), but people NEED human interaction - whether or not they are willing to admit it.

  • As long as we're referencing previous posts...

    I wrote on the topic a little bit here.

    And that was sparked in large part by Rachel.

    We live in a lonely connected world. Mentally well or not well, we all struggle with identifying and belonging. Thank God for God. We have a role to play in reaching out to the people that are seeking help and to the people that either don't want to ask or don't know they need the interaction.

  • Could we stop with the psychicness already?  Sometimes you write exactly the right thing at exactly the right time.  What's up with that?!?! (Check my site, you'll see what I mean.)

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