Welcome to the Krazy Katz MentalHealth column which focuses on
alternative and conventional approaches, and critiques of the past,
present, and future practices and theories in the field of MentalHealth.
I am not an expert in this field, however, my perspectives and insights come from years of lived experience dealing with extreme mental states that have been rewarding at times, and at other times terrifying. I’ve been arrested, certified numerous times under the Mental Health Act, locked up, drugged, and traumatized by invasive treatments. I have had numerous encounters with “MentalHealth Professionals” that have been both lovingly positive and demeaningly negative.
l have spent much time researching the many different aspects of the field of the psychiatric “Medical Model” which theorizes that neurodiversity and extreme states of behavior are a physical/organic problem in the structure of the brain and thus, people are labeled “Mentally ill”. This is a theory that does not have strong repeatable evidence to back it up.
Experiencing extreme states can lead to intense mental struggles that can
have a detrimental impact on one’s psyche, physical health, and on family and friends. This can be observed in extreme fluctuations in mood and behavior where one feels on top of the world, where they can do anything with superhuman abilities, and have unlimited intense energy with no sleep or food for days on end. Whose behaviours during an episode can sometimes be positive and sometimes very destructive. And more often than not when “coming down” from this type of extreme state, there can be a fall into great despair leading to thoughts of self-harm or suicide.
Extreme states are a result of many different factors. One of the largest factors is the impact that traumatic events can have on the mind, body and spirit. The degree of impact of a particular negative event, such as being a confused distraught child during their parents’ divorce, can have a very traumatic lasting impact, while some children are not really affected by it at all. Sometimes, the negative mental impact of a parents’ divorce experienced by one child, can be equally as traumatic as that of a child who experienced repeated childhood physical abuse. Why is this so? It is not completely understood, but it goes to show that the degree of the mental impact of similar or drastically different traumatic events varies greatly from person to person. Judgements about what events should have a greater impact on one’s mental health can not be made with any kind of certainty.
A big contribution to our mentaland physical wellbeing comes straight out of our surrounding social/political environment. Current social/political systems are dysfunctional, demanding, life-draining systems of control that have a negative impact on the mental well being of its citizenry. As the saying goes “Madness is a sane response to an insane world”. It’s important to realize that individual and cultural trauma can also be passed on “intergenerationally” down family/cultural lines, demonstrating that psychological distress can be an ongoing outcome born out of dysfunctional societies where the effects of this type of distress falls along the different spectrums of adverse behaviors, emotions and states of being. Some of the common states of being, known as clinical depression, anxiety, ADHD, psychosis, Bipolar I and II to name a few are the diagnostic labels given by the conventional psychiatric system to categorize expressions of different behaviors. Diagnostic labels can lead to such problems of feeling of low self worth and sigma.
Society is sick, and not surprisingly its sickness is negatively impacting all of us in one way or another. It’s time to look into transforming society into a life enhancing poetic experience of the marvelous, rather than the oppressive patriarchal, colonial, racist, violent, alienating capitalist society we are currently in. Our society has completely gone mad…driven off the rails by its “crazy making” structures and comformity to demanding authoritarian systems . The statistics show that the incidence of ” Mental Illness” is continuing to grow at an alarming rate…of course it is.
A sick society equates to a great number of negative mental and physical
effects, and some very extreme difficulties for individuals to deal with
on their own.
To be continued in the next issue.
