seniors aging gracefully

Mental illness is a reality and has been a reality since the beginning of mankind. While some mentally ill people have been called visionaries and prophets more often they are vilified. They have been banished, shunned and killed. In modern times they are often “treated” but too often these days this is merely institutionalized. While the treatment of the mentally ill was adequate 50 years ago, prior to that many mentally ill people were subject to frontal lobotomies. Even shock therapy, which some may view as barbaric, exists today.

When I started out as a psychologist over 40 years ago, mental hospital stays could be for months; however, when I stopped working at a mental hospital 10 years later, the length of stay had dropped to mere weeks. Since the advent of psychotropic medication, the behavior of people with a severe mental illness such as schizophrenia, is more in control. Despite the advances in psychiatry, too often mentally ill people wind up in jails. Those that have the means of paying for treatment do much better.

Except for conditions such as depression, anxiety and PTSD, most mental illnesses are brain based, due to an imbalance of serotonin and dopamine or brain damage. While the incidence of disorders such as schizophrenia has remained fairly constant across time, other disorders such as depression, anxiety and autism have risen. In part this may reflect environmental causes and in part this may be due to better diagnostic abilities.

In general, there are things that you can do to help someone in your life who is dealing with a mental illness. First and foremost is to have compassion for this individual, they are suffering. Providing a stable environment, a willingness to listen without judging and limit setting are all good ways of helping. Stress in general does exacerbate all mental illnesses. As a care giver you also have emotional needs. As a flight attendant will tell you, you must first put on your oxygen mask before attending to your child. It also helps to educate yourself and this may mean reading research papers on mental illness. New research is coming out daily. As they say, knowledge is power.

Of course there are things you should not tolerate – violence, destruction of property, and other extreme behaviors. When pushed to your limit, you must reply on law enforcement. And know that you are not alone.